Total Box Office = US $20.
Last week I put forth the case for the existence of B-Movies and their value to society, especially guys with spare time on their hands. I knew that I need to acknowledge the B genre, and I promised to myself some time ago that regardless of how old, worthless, obscure, pointless, well-known, good or crappy the film was if I decided to watch it I would review it.
With all that said most B Movies are hardly sought out by punters unless they have cult value, in 5 minutes at the DVD shop you can safely grab half a dozen from the shelf and know that they will probably be as good – or bad as the next half dozen.
So me describing them in any sort of detail seems redundant. But I, like most movie-consumers will continue to trawl through for the undiscovered gems that appear with diminishing frequency as Hollywood tests and filters out almost anything creative in the desperate hunt for mainstream acceptance – and by that I really mean profit.
So thinking to myself that if I watch them I might as well review them, but at the same time acknowledging my 900 words breathlessly describing Mighty Ducks 3 is hardly dragging in readers from all over the globe, I have decided to keep things brief.
And what could be more brief than a Haiku – the Japanese poetry technique that only demands brevity and uniformity of the creator?
Thanks to Wikipedia I learned that a true Japanese Haiku consists of 17 “moras”, which are similar but not the same as syllables, and usually contains a reference to a season. In true Western form I will keep what suits my purposes and conveniently ignore what doesn’t so out go the seasons and in come the syllables!
The format foes 7 / 5 / 7, meaning three lines containing 7, 5 and 7 syllables respectively. Also from Wikipedia:
“Some haiku poets are concerned with their haiku being expressed in one breath and the extent to which their haiku focus on “showing” as opposed to “telling”. This is the genius of haiku using an economy of words to paint a multi-tiered painting, without “telling all”. Or as Matsuo Bash? puts it, “The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.”
Cheers Matso, my challenge is to purvey my thoughts on each film as succinctly as possible, telling you enough – but not too much. These will strive to be as faithful to the Japanese haiku format as possible – they will just have far more swear words than usual.
First up it needs to be said:
These are my first hai-kus
No doubt they suck bad
Sor-ry jap-an-ese peo-ple
And without further ado I would like to introduce to the world B Movie Haiku Reviews.
Single White Female 2
First off the bat, a sequel to a decidedly average 90s effort that was released to universal “meh” and scarcely warranted a follow-up. In the interest of lazy cash-ins we got one anyway, I guess these must be cheap to make.
Plot Overview
Two skanks fall out o-ver job
A third gives shel-ter
But is this real-ly safe-ty?
The action
Bad film hopes to tit-ill-ate
Fake t and a
Side-boob and pan-ties for all
In summation
An aw-ful co-py of first
La-zy and un-in-pired
Chicks are-nt ev-en that hot
Final Rating – 2.5 / 10. Hated every second of this one. If I wanted to watch two vacuous bints fighting over a job I’d watch reality TV. My forehead got a workout with all the eye-rolling I did as things became ever more ludicrous.
Road House 2
In true B Movie style, when you make a mediocre formula movie and the damn thing becomes a cult classic, go back to the well. Jonathan Schaech plays a cop who abruptly becomes embroiled in a battle for his Uncle’s bar when local criminals decide it is a key in their drug related activities.
Plot Overview
Sta-mos lite in Sway-ze role
Takes o-ver fam bar
Quick fists, light-ning zip-per
The action
Bad guys look like boy band jokes
Fake wanna-be thugs
Chick hot, but no nud-it-y
In summation
Fights brief, al-ways stunt dou-ble
By the num-bers stuff
Be-yond me why they both-ered
Final Rating – 5 / 10. What can you expect when the lead is a guy who lives off the scraps of other B Movie actors steps into a franchise that was pretty awful to begin with? Bonus points for having the balls to include a Busey.
Zapped Again
A sequel to a film I never heard of – never a good sign.
Plot Overview
Mag-ic juice gives nerd pow-ers
He makes the right choice
Us-es it to re-move clothes
The action
Lead guy act-ual-ly has flair
Stran-gely like-a-ble
He can’t make this junk work though
In Summation
Stan-dard jocks vs nerds sex romp
No laughs, few-er clothes
But not a boob job in sight
Final Rating – 4.5 / 10. I love it when filmmakers come up with bizarre reasons to expose supple female flesh in the name of “art”. This is pretty lousy but the inexplicable self-confidence of the lead guy and the lightness of the material make it bearable-ish…
So that’s the first issue of B-Movie Haiku Reviews. I tend to watch a lot of films, and a fair proportion of those are shitty B-Movies, so as they accumulate I’ll bust out one of these every now and then.
