Movies So Stupid They're Almost Good - No, Wait, They're Still Bad
Nightmares (1983)
What's worse than seeing a bad movie once? Seeing it twice. When this first came out I saw it and went 'oh come on' to the story ideas and the fact that it was deemed 'too scary for TV'. Obviously we were all severely underestimated. Nevertheless, this movie managed to draw a couple of names to it and is mildly entertaining for its kitsch value if nothing else. If you want to reminisce about the 80's without expecting much, this movie might be all right for you.
On to the uh, scary stories:
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| At night we all look like serial killers. |
Terror in Topanga: An escapee from a mental asylum is going around knifing people in the California valley. No, that's not the scary part. It's that a mother of two children is so addicted to cigarettes, she's willing to put her life on the line just to sneak out to buy some smokes. Even after her husband forbids it (this is the 80's - not a lot of progressive thinking here) she sneaks out anyway. And we know the ending before we even start. On her way home, she sees she's almost out of gas and low and behold there happens to be one gas station just in time. As she's getting her gas she notices the attendant sort of resembles the description of the psycho knifer. When her total comes to five bucks (ah, the 80's - gotta love those gas prices) she rolls the window down just enough to slip the money out, keeping her door locked. The attendant (William Sanderson in an uncredited role - another face you've seen a lot even if you don't know his name) still has the gas nozzle in his hand. Suddenly he uses it to break the driver's side glass, unlocks the door and drags her out. Now she knows she's going to die. He drags her to the station building and gets out a rifle. He points it, she thinks at her, but it's at the slasher psycho who was hiding in her back seat. In other words, this was yet another take on the Urban Legend (or, as most Facebookers call it, the 'absolute truth'). Duh. She's driven home by the police and she pulls the carton of smokes out of her grocery bag and throws them in the garbage. This is a happy ending - I guess. For the kids anyway - they won't have to be breathing that crap anymore.
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| What're cops complaining about? This is easy! |
The Bishop of Battle: J.J. Cooney (Emilio Estevez in his teenage, blonde days) is a video game wizard (Wow, was that really a big deal back then? Well, I do remember playing an awful lot of Donkey Kong, Tron and Frogger.) His big goal is to get to level 13 in The Bishop Of Battle, which looks like one of those maze games with stuff coming at you that drove me nuts. He's desperate to get there, only rumors have been heard of anyone getting that far. He repeatedly tries and fails to make it to level 13 until the owner kicks him out at closing time. He even ignores the hot girl (Moon Zappa, I guess she was supposed to be hot). He's then grounded for, oh, everything we got grounded for back then, so he sneaks out to break into the arcade for one more try. Okay, this part is really funny. To 'prepare' for this role, Emilio actually took two weeks of gun training with the NYPD. For a video game. Massive duh quotient here. Back to our antihero - after breaking in he sweats out the twelve levels he's mastered time and again and whaddya know, he makes it to the level 13. The game is shaking and smoking, he just thinks it's funny. Anyone else with a pulse would have split after the first shake. Oh no, we get to watch him giggle as the video game literally blows apart. Yeah, public destruction of property is a gas.
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| Hey, don't laugh, I've got it all over PacMan... |
Suddenly, in high definition (for the 80's) the game has enveloped the whole room - and J.J. still has the laser gun in his hand. So I guess the next few minutes are to show off what he learned in those two weeks of training, but he's finally had enough (and the place is completely trashed) and he escapes out to the parking lot. As he leaves, the 'Bishop' game reassembles itself. But run as he might, the Bishop is right behind him, overtaking him in a very scary (sorry, just kidding it was really dumb) scene. The next morning a friend of his tries to help his parents find him. They go to the arcade - it's trashed, except for the 'Bishop' game. And the opening sequence now has a teeny tiny Emilio for people to 'play' with. Brrrr... I got chills. For you gamers out there (since I know nearly nothing about the subject) the computer game sequences in this segment were generated on an ACS1200 and cost so much that it nearly bankrupted production. If that makes sense to you, congratulations. It just makes it that much funnier to me.
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| Damn! I broke a nail! |
The Benediction: Oh goody, a story of a priest serving a small Spanish Catholic church. Hey, but one good thing - it's Lance Henriksen, so okay, it's watchable. Now MacLeod (Henriksen) has lost his faith. During the funeral services for a small boy, he's pretty much done in by the whole 'good and evil' process. He decides to leave. In frequent flashbacks we see his 'crisis' has been coming on for quite a while - now it's time to get out. He's got a real POS of a car, even for the early 80's - and he's going to drive it across the desert. So he does one smart thing - he grabs the jug of 'holy water' from the other priest, telling him when he protests 'Hey, it's just tap water.' Do we see the ending coming up with this yet? Of course we do. As he's driving down the desert road, no one else around, all of a sudden a black Chevy pickup blacked out with extra lights starts to hassle him. Now we've got a rip off of the movie Duel going. For a while they play cat and mouse - the truck rams him, takes off. It makes him run off the road, then takes off. The only cool part (hey, the only cool part of the whole movie) was MacLeod watching the desert earth ripple and move (Tremors? No?) and then the Chevy bursts from the earth itself to ram him but good. Finally, his car upside down and in flames, him messed up pretty good, we get to... say it with me... saaaaay it!!!
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Chevy beats POS every time.
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The jug of Holy Water (only capitalized for your attention). He throws it at the pickup and POOF... it's gone. The cops and ambulance (wherever they came from) see no tire tracks, no strange paint on his car, and think he just fell asleep and rolled his own car. He asks that the ambulance drive him back to the church. Why? Did this restore his faith? The fact that Holy Water dissolves a Chevy truck? Okay, let's go on to the last (finally) story...
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| This looks totally real, right? |
Night of the Rat: This will be short because I hated it and it was the stupidest. A wife hears rats in the walls, her husband is a massive jerk and her kid a whiny little... okay the kid was just a kid, I just don't like 'em. The husband does the minimum to shut the wife up, managing to trap a little rat and throws it away, satisfied he's done his duty. But the wife still hears nasty roaring sounds, and when she crawls under the house she finds the mangled body of the family cat. An old exterminator tells her she has a nasty problem but the husband, only thinking of his wallet, tells the guy to beat it. The exterminator calls the wife and tells her it's a 'Devil Rat' and can't be destroyed. The husband is only pissed off and hangs up on him. Sooo.... the rat pretty much destroys the house. When the jerk of a husband comes home he gets his rifle (oh yes, start shooting at shadows with a wife and kid in the house). Finally in the weakest and fakest scene of the whole movie, the very large rat (this was before CGI, so we just have bad splicing) is 'talking' to the little kid who says 'she' wants 'her baby'. That's the rat the jerk killed. Once he gets it out of the garbage and gives it to the 'mommy' it takes off out the window. And the story is over. And we are done. And you didn't have to watch it.
You're welcome.
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