10th Post Special: The Movie Out Here

Title: The Movie Out Here
Year: 2013
Got It For: VERY Limited Theatrical Release

I’m sort of breaking my gimmick of movies I find for cheap on DVD and Blu-Ray for this one, but I’m still going to count it because it will more than likely be given out with cases of Kokanee beer in the next few months. You see, about a year and a half ago, British Columbia based beer label Kokanee got this idea to hold a contest in which the winners would appear in an actual feature film loosley based around their Kokanee Ranger TV spots. The ads had been running for a few years at this point, and were based around a mountain/park ranger attempting to track down an apparently alcoholic Sasquatch who breaks into cabins to steal cases of Kokanee beer. I don’t even remember what the exact details of the contest were (or if said details were ever mentioned in the commercials). But sure enough, the film got a theatrical release in Western Canadian Cineplex theatres and…well…this is the result.

Keep in mind, I work at a Cineplex theatre to help pay for my everyday expenses as a university student, and one of the perks is getting movie tickets for a small charitable donation through the company. Maybe 40 people had seen it at my theatre in the three days it was out, 25 of them being one of the actors or contest winners and his friends. Seeing as how terrible this 90 minute long beer commercial looked, I managed to convince a friend at work to see The Movie Out Here as a lark and a good time at a terrible movie. We ended up being the only two people at the screening.

So the movie starts with a little old lady watching Reel Zombies on an old TV. Suddenly, she is aware that she is being watched…BY SASQUATCH! Sasquatch smashes through her window, and naturally granny runs to the door, opens it, and sees Sasquatch standing there. So she promptly kicks him in the nutsack. And if you like nut shots, you’re in luck as there are about 20 more scattered throughout the film. Anyway, this begins the first of 867,984,767 subplots this movie manages to cram into its runtime. After the animated opening credit sequence, we meet our actual main character, Adam. Adam works at a Toronto law firm (or something like that) with a fat guy and a horrifically foul mouthed female boss who follows her male employees into the washroom and comments on their genetalia. Um, where the HELL is HR on this one? The boss tells the fat guy that he has to go to Fernie, BC to file some paperwork about zoning and development for one of the firm’s clients, a big corporation called MegaDeuce whose CEO eats panda brains. No, I’m not kidding, that actually happens in a scene. Fernie happens to be Adam’s hometown, so when the fat guy has a heart attack on the toilet and can’t go, it’s up to Adam to do the job. Oh, and of course when Adam tries to help out Fat Guy, he ends up with an unconcious farting Fat Guy on top of him with his poop stained ass in his face. And if you enjoy staring at people’s bare posteriors, you’re in luck because…well, you get my drift.

So Adam hops on a plane to Fernie and, after being sprayed in the face with breast milk thanks to a woman and her baby seated beside him, runs into a few of his old hometown friends and enemies. One of his friends runs some sort of…hair removal junk shop store, or something, and is $20,000 in debt because he spends all his money on some fake “spiritual advisor.” And wouldn’t you know it, the zoning papers Adam just filed are about to result in the demolition and displacement of his friend’s business. Naturally, the only way to save the business is to spend thousands of dollars on Kokanee beer and throw a drunken party.

The rest of the movie essentially consists of Adam and his two friends atttempting to find beer while the MegaDueceCEO and his two bully sons (who happen to live in Fernie as well, for a small town in the middle of nowhere, there sure are a lot of important people around). There’s plenty of tasteless and somewhat sickening scenes, and for a movie funded entirely by a beer company with a bunch of cameos from Canadian athletes and musicians (rapper Snow’s appearance leads to the only genuinely funny scene in the movie), the company sure doesn’t look very good in this film. After a scene in which Kokanee loses track of one of their trucks shipping beer to Fernie, my friend remarked that “they can’t keep track of their shit.” So if you’re in the mood for a disgusting “comedy” with B-plots about mountain rangers named “Glacier” and “Fresh” (JUST LIKE KOKANEE’S SLOGAN LOL) this one’s for you.

Oh, and the movie ends on a hilarious note about Sasquatch raping one of the main characters. Thanks Kokanee! Stuff like this is why I don’t drink.

Double Feature: Fantasy Mission Force/Fire Dragon

Titles: Fantasy Mission Force, Fire Dragon

Years: 1982, 1986 respectively

Got Them For: $1.25 each, $5 set of four movies

There are a couple of friends I have who only get together every couple of months, as the one common friend that links us – the one whose house we use a vast majority of the time – attends school in another part of the province. For a few meetings, one of these friends told me the tale of the “Jackie Chan Action Pack,” which he had picked up for five dollars God knows where. None of the movies had Jackie Chan in any soert of leading role, and my friend had managed to sit through one movie, Fantasy Mission Force. Naturally I was intrigued. For months I demanded to see this set of DVDs. Finally, my persistance was rewarded and he gave me the set free of charge.

Oh boy. This set is a cheap bargain title and it shows from the minimal menu (stating the titles of the two movies on the disc and playing a twenty second clip of music that sounds suspiciously like “25 or 6 to 4 over and over again) to the hilariously poorly written synopsis of each movie on the back, two of which give away the endings of the movie.

We’re just going to cover two of the movies here; though honestly they’re almost the exact same thing. No literally. Fantasy Mission Force is probably the most bizarre comedy I’ve ever seen in my life. It apparently takes place in World War II, where a group of rag-tag fighters with over-the-top personalities are recruited to find a case of money stolen by “the Japs.” Their words, not mine. Along the way they encounter a haunted house, a village of warrior amazon women led by Tuxedo Mask, and Nazis driving Mad Max style muscle cars. The movie is completely insane and completely entertaining (if you can take some light hearted racism and violence against women). Jackie Chan plays a theif who ends up helping our main heroes a few times along the way, and even defeats the big baddie at the end.

Our second movie on the docket is Fire Dragon. I had no idea what was going on throughout quick cutting and murderous midgets hiding in cakes, so I’ll just let the back of the box explain it.

“During a war, the intelligence group of the country several members of the commitee to form a team to steal the seret file from the enemy’s army base. Among the members of the team are prisoner, famous theives and great fighters. Their destination is the Island of the Women Warriors. Unfortunately they are trapped on an island. Will they be able to succeed with their mission? Or will they discover something so unbelieveable about their own intelligence group?”

Sound familiar? It should, 80% of Fire Dragon is stock footage of Fantasy Mission Force, making it almost impossible to review this movie on its own merits. The filmmakers spliced in shots of two other actors and some body doubles and very poorly tried to disguise the fact that some of the actors in were not the same as those in other parts of the movie made from the butchered FMF (including a shot from behind “Jackie Chan”). It’s so horrible that in one scene the FMF characters meet up with the two being shot for Fire Dragon and even through the silhouette disguising their faces it is obvious the Jeep the FMF chracters are riding in changed colour.  Ugh, I’m getting confused again…it’s hard to believe a movie that’s made almost entirely of a movie I’ve already seen is so hard to understand.

Fire Dragon is absolutely painful, and the only redeeming qualities are the hilariously awesome dub done for the hero (the one actually shot for Fire Dragon) and hearing the Psycho shower music during a flashback scene.

Creature From the Haunted Sea

Title: Creature from the Haunted Sea

Year: 1961

Got It For: About $1 ($5 DVD with 5 movies)

The original poster for Creature from the Haunted Sea begs me “PLEASE DO NOT GIVE AWAY THE ANSWER TO THE SECRET.” That secret apparently being that this film is actually a comedy. Going in, I had no idea that this was going to be an intentionally funny movie, as most advertising for the movie played it up as a straight up creature feature. The plot is that an American criminal and his crew (one of whom is actually an American spy) assist a number of Cuban loyalists in stealing a large amount of gold from the Cuban treasury. They then proceed to bump off each of the Cubans on the way to Puerto Rico, blaming it on a made up monster that, of course, turns out to be real. And made of sentient seaweed and ping pong balls apparently.

According to IMDB, the original runtime for this movie was 61 minutes. The version on my disc is about 75 minutes long; evidence that it’s actually the TV cut that had a number of scenes added later on. While the main plot is straightforward and has some pretty funny writing, there are a number of subplots in this version that are convoluted, don’t make much sense, and take away from the movie overall. The production values are obviously quite low, this being an early-ish Roger Corman film. Props and costumes look cheap and somewhat silly, and one scence near the beginning is so poorly lit you can hardly tell what’s going on until a random car chase breaks out…and even then it’s pretty fuzzy.

This movie is certainly an odd one. Part spy spoof, part monster movie spoof, part crime spoof, it’s an aqueous solution of funny, weird, and low, low budget. If you’re like me and have a taste for aged cheese, I say try it out. Otherwise you’ll probably be left scratching your head wondering where the last hour and fifteen minutes of your life went.