The Unrepentant Cinephile

by Jason Coffman

  The Cell (2000)

  Rating: 9.5 Beans

  The Cell is a very special film: not since Belly has a music video director released a debut feature so relentlessly unpleasant. Where McG's Charlie's Angels is brightly-colored and (supposedly) fun, and Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich is subdued and very funny, Tarsem (whose biggest claim to fame is R.E.M.'s video for “Losing My Religion,” or so every piece of promo material from this film will have us believe) decides to take the Hype Williams/David Fincher route. While The Cell does feature some amazing sights, it wallows so deeply in its horrors that it is virtually impossible to sit through.

  Jennifer Lopez plays Catharine Deane, a child psychologist and empath who has been developing a system that allows her to enter the mind of another person and move about freely and communicate with the subject's subconscious. This system becomes the focus of an FBI investigation when it is discovered that serial killer Carl Stargher has suffered a massive seizure, leaving his latest victim stranded in his demonic drowning machine (the device from which the film takes its name). Her only hope is that Deane can enter Stargher's mind and attempt to somehow coax the information from him.

  The previews and trailers for The Cell all rightly highlight the amazing world inside Stargher's head-- the scenes that take place there are truly incredible. Too bad none of those scenes are in the first 40 minutes of the film. That time is dedicated to a fairly interesting police procedural.

  Unfortunately, it is also dedicated to portraying, in graphic detail, what it is that Stargher does to his victims' corpses after their time in The Cell is complete. The people sitting in front of me walked out, and had I not been with a large group of people I may well have joined them. It is shocking to me that this film, with its scenes of drowning, bathing the nude corpse in bleach, and ultimately necrophilia can sail past the MPAA with an R rating while Eyes Wide Shut would be marked NC-17. But that's an essay, not a review...

  At any rate, Tarsem does create a palpable sense of unease and evil. Many of the scenes in Stargher's head are as disturbing as they are imaginative, and the tension is high-- not just because something horrible might happen to the characters, but because God only knows what the director and his production designers might have in store for our poor raped eyes next.

  I can't imagine anyone saying that they really “enjoyed” The Cell. It's not a film that is meant to be enjoyed, I think. No doubt Tarsem wanted to bring to the serial killer genre a new depth and perhaps even a new visual vocabulary; the problem with making a film this visionary is that some people are bound to be turned off. I guess that's why the first half of the film is spent on murder and necrophilia, to reel in the audiences.

  Of course, on my way out of the theatre, the only thing I heard said about the film was, “Jennifer Lopez got a sweet azzzzzzz!” Which may well sum up the feelings of many people. Too bad those people will now forever associate Jennifer Lopez with visions of bleached corpses and massive body piercings.

  Cheerleader Camp (1987)

  Rating: 9.5 Beans

  Oh my. This just...this is it. Cheerleader Camp could well be the most embarrassing movie I have ever seen in my entire life. Worse than Back to the Beach. Worse than Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. There aren't words for it. You will be in awe.

  The plot: A group of cheerleaders (along with two male cheerleaders) go to some place up in the woods which is apparently the home of the National Cheerleading Championships or some other such prestigious cheerleading event. One of the cheerleaders has personal problems and keeps having terrible nightmares. Soon, cheerleaders from other squads start turning up dead, and the killer could be anyone.

  The cast: Lucinda Dickey, better known as Kelly from Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo plays the squad's plucky mascot. Rebecca Ferratti, that one woman who had one line in ¡Three Amigos!, plays another of the cheerleaders. Travis McKenna, the fat clown who had one line in Batman Returns, plays Timmy, the randy male cheerleader who sticks his butt out a van window in one of the most terrifying scenes ever filmed.

  Of course, the best parts of the movie are the scenes with Pop (George “Buck” Flower). Pop is the one who gets to say things like, “You kids are cuttin' into my drinkin' time,” and “I hope you die.”

  But, oh, the things you'll be shown. A scene in which the male cheerleaders rap about the girls is but only one of the things which make this one of the worst films ever made.

  Cheerleader Camp falls apart in the last third, mainly because it starts taking itself seriously and trying to wring suspense out of its tired plot. That's when it gets boring. However, the ending is definitely worth it, so just leave the room for a while or close your eyes and try to not see Timmy's butt haunting you.

  As I said before, Cheerleader Camp is incredible. It is a classic of bad cinema. See it as soon as possible. You will be horrified.

  Cleopatra Jones (1973)

  Rating: 8 Beans

  The title character's last name is Jones. The film stars Antonio Fargas as a character named Doodlebug. Also, Bernie Casey is one of the main characters. It was made in 1973. I don't think I even need to write a review for this movie. Cleopatra Jones isn't quite on the same level of brilliance as the incredible Black Belt Jones, but has a subtle charm of its own.

  Cleo (Tamara Dobson) is known around the world as one of the best. She's a United States Special Agent, cracking down on the drug scene. She is introduced during the opening credits supervising the destruction of a poppy field. You know she's for real. The bad news? The poppy field is a major source of supply for lesbian gangster Mommy (Shelley Winters). Naturally, Mommy wants Cleo eliminated, but Miss Jones has other plans.

  Cleopatra Jones is weird. Shelley Winters is largely responsible for this, over-playing Mommy so much that the performance is more often embarrassing than anything. One of my female friends told me that the scenes with Mommy and her various girlfriends (she gropes and makes verbal advances toward them, but there's nothing explicit) made her acutely uncomfortable. Of course, in between weird scenes like that, we get to see Cleo, six feet of dark chocolate, kick an awful lot of criminal ass.

  Any student of Blaxploitation film absolutely must see Cleopatra Jones, not just as an example of how the studio probably saw a chance to cash in on both Blaxploitation and feminism in one fell swoop, but for Antonio Fargas' performance. Fargas is legendary for his portrayals of pimps and pushers, and Cleopatra Jones sees him at the top of his game. Plus, the theme music is incredible, and there is a jive scene which is nearly unintelligible. Watch it back-to-back with Black Belt Jones for a great Warnter Bros. Blaxploitation night.

  The Coroner (1999)

  Rating: 9.5 Beans

  Finally, we discovered why DVD was invented.

  The Coroner is the first really awful movie I watched on DVD, and it's a spectacular way to start. I didn't actually get around to watching the other previews on the disc, but I can't imagine they'd be any more effective than the one for this film itself. Bleah.

  The plot involves a female lawyer named Emma, who defends kindly junkie prostitutes. Or something. Anyway, one night while she's out jogging, she gets shot with a blow dart and captured. When she wakes up, she's strapped to a table...if I remember correctly, she's in a Catholic schoolgirl outfit by this time. It doesn't matter, she spends most of the movie like that.

  Eventually, we discover that Emma has been kidnapped because she tried to commit suicide when she was a teenager. Her kidnapper? Well, after she escapes (which takes long enough for us to see him naked in a “Kiss the Cook” apron), it turns out he's...THE CORONER!

  Not much of a surprise, given the title of the film.

  At any rate, The Coroner feels cheated that she tried to kill herself and lived. So he's been finding girls who attempted suicide and finishing the job. Emma escapes and finds that legal means are useless, so she decides to kidnap him and keep him in her basement.

  This Coroner fellow is crafty, however, and manages to trick Emma's
boyfriend into thinking she's insane. Once The Coroner is loose, however, he kills Emma's boyfriend and then Emma kills him. For some reason, this results in Emma being put in a mental institution.

  Curses! I just told the story of the entire movie. Oh well. Somehow, this story is STRETCHED to somewhere around 80 minutes-- yes, it feels much longer than that. The acting is uniformly straight-to-video quality (sometimes worse), and the guy who plays The Coroner is hilarious. Sadly, the part would have been much better if played by Will Ferrell (the tall brother from A Night at the Roxbury, if that helps).

  To give you an idea of how important this film is, the Internet Movie Database has virtually no information on it-- cast, crew, languages, etc. And honestly, if the people who painstakingly maintain a page of information about Cheerleader Camp didn't bother, why should you?

  Cruel Intentions 2 (2000)

  Rating: 7.5 Beans

  In the land of the late 90s teen movie, there was no other film like Cruel Intentions. The film almost came across as more of a comic book than a drama, with impossibly devious characters played by some of the most popular young actors around. And they were all behaving very badly. Badly enough to secure the film an R rating, which should have killed it immediately at the box office. But its combination of slick looks-- courtesy some nice direction and cinematography-- and pitch-black humor drew in enough of the over-18 crowd (along with those sneaky kids) to cause someone, somewhere, to think a spinoff TV series would be a good idea.

  It wasn't.

  Cruel Intentions 2 is actually a straight-to-video version of the pilot episode of Manchester Prep, the planned prequel series that follows the characters of Sebastian Valmont and Kathryn Merteuil before the events in the first film. Spliced in with the pilot are scenes from the other two episodes of the series and some newly-scripted scenes to help pad things out and ensure that the video is rated R. And it's every bit as bad as that sounds.

  Perhaps the first clue that things are off is the fact that these people do not even closely resemble the actors that played the characters in the film-- Ryan Phillippe, curly blonde hair and all, played Sebastian Valmont in the film. His replacement? Robin Dunne, a slightly less svelte young man with dark hair who looks as much like Ryan Phillippe as he does me-- in other words, not at all. Sarah Michelle Gellar's Kathryn is portrayed by Amy Adams, whose other film credits include Drop Dead Gorgeous. Interestingly, Gellar had dark hair in the film, while Adams's hair is extremely light blonde. And she seems alarmingly thin, as well, which is pointed out by a jolly reference to her character's eating disorder.

  It's not hard to tell that this was made for television-- it really, really looks like it. Every scene has obviously been shot for a television screen's square aspect. Plus, there is very little profanity or nudity in the film, and what little there is was clearly edited in at a later date.

  Due to this, the film often feels like it was written by about five different people who were not made aware of what the others were writing. In a series of two scenes, Sebastian goes from being a very nice young man to suddenly being extremely evil and swearing profusely. His girlfriend Danielle is his school headmaster's daughter and is very wholesome and nice, until suddenly she's practically raping Sebastian at Central Park in broad daylight.

  The most telling aspect of this sloppy editing is the scene where Sebastian catches his father in a tryst with a young woman-- Sebastian puts his leather jacket on her and accidentally leaves it with her. We are then given a meaningful shot of her clutching the jacket and giving a sly look in the direction Sebastian left in, indicating that at some point she will likely return the jacket and in doing so cause mischief. However, after this scene she is never seen or even mentioned again, yet Sebastian has his leather jacket just a few scenes later. Oops.

  The effect of having adult content in a movie that is, by and large, an episode of a television show, is jarring. After long stretches with no swearing, a barrage of profanity erupts. After what seems like half the movie with little more naughty content than school girl outfits, the movie drops two lesbians in a shower with Sebastian and later tosses in the Central Park scene with Sebastian and Danielle. The result is a movie that feels completely and utterly schizophrenic.

  In all honesty, I did laugh quite a bit at Cruel Intentions 2. Not where I was probably supposed to laugh, but the sheer ineptitude with which it was cobbled together is undoubtedly the most entertaining aspect of the movie. It's probably for the best that this didn't end up as a television series, as the basic idea of the plot would be pretty tough to shoehorn into too many episodes. Plus, this way the unfortunate idea is over with in about 80 minutes instead of a full season of full-length episodes. I guess we're lucky that way.

  I guess.

  Disorderlies (1987)

  Rating: 8 Beans

  It is way too easy to find a copy of this film. I say this because I have been able to find a used copy in virtually every video store I have recently visited. What's wrong with this? Well, first it says that Warnter Bros. pressed an awful lot of copies, and second it says that not enough people realize the entertainment potential of any film starring The Fat Boys.

  The plot of this film is useless. It involves Winslow Lowry (Anthony Geary, Luke from General Hospital) as the evil nephew of aging millionaire Albert Dennison (Ralph Bellamy), and his plot to kill off his uncle to pay off gambling debts. His plot is to hire the worst orderlies in the world, who could be blamed for Albert's death due to their incompetence. Somehow, he finds out about Markie, Buffy, and Kool (The Fat Boys) who work at an old folks' home. They are fired for eating all the cake meant for the old people, and are promptly hired by Winslow.

  From here on, the wackiness ensues. Basically, several scenes happen in an extremely disjointed fashion which makes the film feel like it was edited completely at random. The boys take Albert out on the town, they go roller skating, later on they make a video of themselves performing “Baby You're a Rich Man,” and eventually foil Winslow's scheme. I guess I should have put a “spoiler warning” at the beginning of this review. Oh well.

  Half the fun of Disorderlies is the same kind of fun found in Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. Both are films which a studio believed would be a good idea to release (let alone finance). And despite the references on the video case about The Fat Boys being “The Three Stooges for the 80s,” they aren't. Half of their lines are unintelligible, and the other half aren't funny. But at least “Wipeout” and “I Heard a Rumour” (by Bananarama) are on the soundtrack. And it is more entertaining than Almost Heroes, another film featuring a main character whose obesity is unhealthy (to say the least). So if you're looking for low production value, fat jokes, and cartoony “boing” sound effects, Disorderlies is your prescription for fun.

  I hate myself for that sentence.

  Going Overboard (1989)

  Rating: 10 Beans

  I give this film ten beans only because I cannot give it fifteen. Since I started writing for Bad Movie Night, I have rented movies for the purpose of being entertained and writing reviews for them. Now, I have found the worst film I have ever seen. Perhaps it's because I wasn't expecting it. In any case, this is not a film.

  It's an endurance test.

  Adam Sandler plays Shecky, a waiter on a cruise ship who wants to be a comedian. He got the job as waiter because he didn't get the job as ship comedian. The entire movie is about Shecky and his misadventures on the ship; after a while, General Noriega (Burt Young) sends a couple of inept assassins to kill Miss Australia (Lisa Zane) because she made fun of him. It doesn't make nearly as much sense as you might think.

  Shecky talks to the camera constantly, which is usually a bad thing. It certainly is here. In his adventures, he meets ship comedian Dickie Diamond. Dickie swears constantly. That's funny, right? Then there's Adam Rifkin (of Bikini Squad and Psycho Cop Returns) as the singer for a rock band called Yellow Teeth. They perform their hit single “Slap Your Cat.” Then it's played again over the end credits.
Now, rock star stereotypes are funny, right?

  Right?

  To give you an idea of just how bad this film is, a friend of mine sat through about ten minutes before getting up, storming out of my room, and slamming the door behind him. It breached his threshold for endurance. The fact that Billy Zane (Titanic) and Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade, Armageddon) appear in Going Overboard help out a little. The scenes with these characters are pretty much the only scenes in the entire film which are watchable. That's not to say they are the film's redeeming qualities: it has none.

  The second half of Going Overboard drags badly; of course, with my sense of time as warped as it was by this horror, “the second half” could be the last hour and ten minutes. If you're an Adam Sandler fan, stay away from this film. I don't care if you can recite every one of his lines from Mixed Nuts. This is a horrible, horrible movie. If you don't like Adam Sandler, you'll have more ammunition when you argue with his fans. Of all the comedies I've seen that weren't funny, Going Overboard is the absolute worst. Luckily, it's pretty hard to find.

  Don't go looking for trouble is all I'm saying.

  Hard Rock Zombies (1985)

  Rating: 10 Beans

  It has been some time since I saw a movie that had my jaw dropped wide open in disbelief of what was happening on-screen for nearly a full half hour. It takes a very special film to do that. The last was probably Breakin' 2, which held me in that magical state for its entire running time. The most recent film to completely floor me is Hard Rock Zombies.