FATEFUL FINDINGS (2014) ****

Did James Nguyen’s Birdemic leave you in stitches?  Did Tommy Wiseau’s The Room drive you into hysterics?  Then folks, Neil Breen’s Fateful Findings is for you!  I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard at… well… anything. 

A true Renaissance man, Breen, who looks like a freeze-dried Bob Dylan, wrote, produced, directed, and stars in this sucker.  He plays an author who is now “hacking into government secrets” to expose corruption.  One day, he is hit by a car and instantly gets better.  His doctor also happens to be his long-lost childhood friend who, as a child, was there when he discovered a mystical cube hidden inside of a mushroom.  When she is kidnapped, Neil uses his mystical powers to get her back. 

Like The Room, our main character is always right about everything and there is little to no drama as the plot conveniently bends to his whims.  When he finds his childhood friend, he wants to be with her, but he’s already married to a hot foreign babe.  No problem, because almost immediately, she commits suicide and now he is free to court his long-lost love. 

Speaking of suicide, the ending has to be seen to be believed.  Remember the end of On Deadly Ground where Steven Seagal gave that big political speech?  He’s got nothing on Neil Breen.  When Breen holds a press conference and exposes all the crooked fat cats, they take the stage, immediately apologize for all wrongdoing, and promptly off themselves, some right on stage and no one does anything.  Heck, Breen keeps right on talking!  Incredible. 

Speaking of suicide (yes, I know this is the second paragraph in a row that I have started with that phrase, but it is a running theme throughout the film), nothing, and I mean nothing can prepare you for Breen’s reaction when he finds out his friend has committed suicide.  Be prepared to rewind and rewatch this part over and over again.  It's pure comedy gold.

This is a vanity protect through and through, but it’s so spectacularly inept it’s guaranteed to make your jaw drop every ten minutes.  Dialogue scenes start with lots of yelling, then somehow everyone is all happy, only to start yelling at each other again in the next scene.  People are shown talking on the phone to persons unknown about God knows what.  Breen also gives us a lot of gratuitous nude scenes of himself.  Thankfully, he spares us the sight of his Breenis.  (Or maybe his Oscar Mayer Breener?) 

The motif of Breen trashing laptops is downright perplexing.  He has no less than four of them in his office, and none of them are ever turned on.  Whenever he gets mad, he tosses them to the ground in anger.  Try to keep a running tab of how many times it happens.  (He also types like someone with acute nerve damage to his hands.)  Also, this flick has the most random closeups of feet outside of a Doris Wishman movie. 

When you watch Fateful Findings, it becomes apparent Neil Breen, the writer couldn’t write a coherent scene if his life depended on it.  It’s obvious Neil Breen the actor, couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag.  And it’s painfully clear that Neil Breen, the director had no idea what the fuck he was doing behind the camera.  And you know what?  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  This is one of the funniest bad movies I’ve seen in a long, long time. 

GHOST NURSING (1982) ***

Jackie (Suit Li) is a hooker from China who moves in with her sister in Thailand.  Before long, she gets Jackie a job turning tricks out of a nightclub.  After witnessing a murder, Jackie becomes convinced she is jinxed.  She consults a mystic who confirms she is cursed by misdeeds from a previous life.  The only way to break the curse is to “adopt” a baby ghost, which means bring home a fetus, put it on an altar, and pray to it daily. 

What do you know?  It works.  And soon, anyone who messes with Jackie has something dreadful happen to them.  However, when she finds true love, our heroine becomes so busy she forgets to leave offerings to her ghost baby.  Naturally, the supernatural tyke sets out to make her new man’s life a living Hell.  He soon turns to his friend, a professor of the occult for help, which only makes things worse. 

The scenes where the ghost protects Jackie from lecherous men are fun.  It makes one perv slip on a banana peel like a goddamn cartoon character.  Another dude pukes maggots.  Then, a gangster rapist gets killed by his own zombie henchmen.  Even with all this zaniness going on, the biggest laugh comes during a long nightclub scene where a lounge singer does a thoroughly mid version of Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All”. 

Ghost Nursing isn’t perfect by a long shot.  The scene with the mystic performing a ritual on a (real) dead monkey was a bit unnecessary.  There’s also way too much slow motion in the third act and it suffers from an abrupt ending too.  However, if you know what to expect from these anything-goes types of Chinese horror movies, you’ll probably enjoy it as much as I did.  The electronic heavy score is quite good too and sounds like Goblin in some places. 

Besides, Ghost Nursing features some shit I’ve never seen in a movie before, so for that, it gets a gold star.  I mean, if you ever wanted to see an exorcism performed on a fetus, then this is your movie.  If you’ve ever had a hankering to watch a crucifixion with a pair of flip flops, then move this to the front of your queue.  Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

MICKEY 17 (2025) *** ½

Robert Pattinson stars in the latest from director Bong Joon (Parasite) Ho.  It’s a wild and surprisingly touching Sci-Fi flick about an “expendable” named Mickey (Pattinson) who works for a big futuristic conglomerate.  They send him on various dangerous missions and as he dies, they collect data for scientific research purposes.  Once he’s dead, they just clone a new Mickey (the clone machine looks like a big inkjet printer, which is a nice touch) and send him out on his next mission. 

One of the major themes in Ho’s work has been class inequality.  With Mickey 17, he yet again provides some sharp commentary as Mickey is looked down on by nearly everyone who comes in contact with him.  There are also themes about immigration and a few completely unsubtle jabs at the MAGA crowd. 

Pattinson works overtime here, sometimes reaching Nicolas Cage levels of acting zaniness.  He adopts an accent that almost sounds like Steve Buscemi with a mouthful of Novocain, and his body language and mannerisms are about as far from the Twilight movies as you can get.  What’s terrific about his performance is that he endears himself to the audience right from the opening moments.  Once we understand his plight, we are with him through thick and thin as most of our empathy for Mickey comes from seeing him used as a human guinea pig. 

Mark Ruffalo gives another finely tweaked performance that ranks up there with his role in Poor Things in terms of brazen peculiarity.  He is sneakily becoming one of our go-to guys for oddball supporting roles.  Toni Collette is amusing as his wife, and Steve Yeun gets some laughs as Mickey’s former associate. 

The film does lose a bit of its zing when Mickey realizes he’s a “multiple” and there’s another one of him running around.  (The scene where his girlfriend tries to have a threesome with him notwithstanding.)  Ho also has a habit of being a little on the nose when it comes to the points he’s making, but I guess you can do that in a Sci-Fi satire and get away with it.

I have to hand it to Ho for taking a big swing after winning the Oscar for Parasite, a small, personal indie and going to the opposite end of the spectrum with a big budget Sci-Fi movie but still keeping those same kinds of ideals intact.  It’s the kind of crazy movie you can only make after you win an Oscar and Hollywood lets you do whatever the hell you want.  The film runs maybe twenty minutes too long and has one or two unnecessary subplots, but again, if you win an Oscar, you’re allowed to indulge yourself a little bit.  Since Mickey 17 was a big flop, I don’t know what Ho will do for an encore.  One thing’s for sure; I will definitely check it out. 

JAMES BANDE 00 SEX (1982) **

This French porno spoof of James Bond starts off with a dude getting a blow job while working out on a rowing machine.  The funny this is he doesn’t stop working out.  He keeps rowing back and forth while the chick bobs up and down on his knob.  That’s what I call dedication to your workout regimen.  I have to admit, I couldn’t get into this scene because I kept thinking he was going to accidentally smack her in the back of the head while she was going down on him. 

Even though I had the benefit of subtitles, I am still hard pressed to remember the plot.  There is a meeting between super spy James Bande (Guy Royer) with his “M” like female superior who gives him his mission, but most of the time is spent on them having a three-way with her secretary.  (The unnecessary fly-eye lens during the blow job scene kind of ruins the fun.)

In one scene where he does some actual spying, he just looks through a pair of binoculars on a couch and sees a couple doing it.  He doesn’t even look out the window or anything.  He just holds them up to his eyes and we assume he’s got Superman vision or something.  Even better is the fact that it looks like the couple he’s spying on is in the same room!

The humor is pretty lame, like when Bande scuba dives and comes up for air in a bathtub where interrupts a woman who’s masturbating.  Another humorous scene has a pair of sunbathing ladies having a poolside lesbian session in broad daylight until they accidentally roll down the hill in the interlocked 69 position. 

I guess I could abide a James Bond porno spoof that wasn’t funny and didn’t really satirize the series directly if the sex scenes were hot, but they aren’t very good either.  One potentially steamy scene where Bande and a buddy bang a bimbo is ruined by close-ups of their constant mugging while she is going down on them.  The scene with the lesbians who become horny while playing a board game and proceed to 69 starts with promise, although it ends much too quickly to be very satisfying. 

The only memorable scenes happen at the very end.  The first is when the villain uses a gun on a captive female as a marital aid and the other… uh… comes when Bande disarms a henchwoman by cumming in her face.  (Which is blue for some reason.)  Sadly, oddball moments like these are few and far between. 

If you’re watching this to get off, you’ll probably wind up with a case of Thunderballs. 

AKA:  Clemintine.  AKA:  Clemintine 006.

SWAMP THING (1982) ** ½

After the success of Superman, DC tried to kickstart another comic book franchise, with mixed results.  While Swamp Thing isn’t exactly bad, it’s kind of an odd duck.  Despite the pedigree of horror maestro Wes Craven behind the camera, and a who’s who of genre vets in supporting roles, it never quite gels. 

Doctor Holland (Ray Wise) is performing experiments in the swamp when the evil Arcane (Louis Jourdan) steals his work and sets his lab (and Holland) ablaze.  In the fire, Holland’s formula grafts onto his body and turns him into the rubbery looking Swamp Thing.  Arcane wants the formula for himself, so he sets a trap for him by using Holland’s associate Cable (Adrienne Barbeau) as bait. 

Craven tones down his usual horror instincts and takes an overly comic books approach, which is only occasionally successful.  The comic book transitions are a little too on the nose, as if to wink to the audience and say, “Hey guys!  It's just like a comic book!”  Even the straightforward attempts at horror wind up being a little goofy and don’t really land.  Conversely, the score by Harry Manfredini works overtime trying to sound like a horror film, which doesn’t quite match the action on screen.  (It often sounds like outtakes from his score to Friday the 13th.)

The Swamp Thing suit often looks phony baloney too.  You can see the seams, and the rubber bends and bulges when he walks around.  He looks much better from afar and he takes on a Bigfoot kind of mystique when he runs around the swamp in long shots.  Maybe if he had been kept in the shadows, it might’ve been a different story, but in brightly lit scenes, it looks like a monster from a ‘50s movie.  The final Arcane monster is particularly silly looking. 

That said, it still remains reasonably enjoyable, even if the film never lives up to its potential.  Barbeau is fun as the spunky and resourceful heroine.  Craven’s Last House on the Left leading man David Hess makes a memorable impression as Jourdan’s right-hand man, as does Nicholas Worth as another one of his armed guards.  Jourdan makes for an appropriately smarmy villain, but it’s Reggie Batts (in his only film role) who steals the movie as Barbeau’s wisecracking sidekick. 

Ultimately, I think Jim Wynorski embraced the camp factor much more successfully with the sequel, The Return of Swamp Thing.  (The Swamp Thing suit looked a lot better in that one too.)  The TV series which soon followed did a better job with the horror elements and mood.  This one sort of falls in between those efforts in terms of tone.  Overall, it’s not one of Craven’s best, but it’s an interesting enough attempt of a horror master trying to go mainstream. 

Kudos to the folks at MVD for releasing the mythical unrated version.  This edition contains some extra nudity from not only Barbeau but a few random belly dancers as well.  It’s nothing to get your heart racing or anything, but it at least gives the film a bit more edge. 

HEAVY METAL (1981) *** ½

Ivan Reitman produced this dazzling, sophomoric, and fun animated adaptation of the popular magazine.  Like most anthology movies, some segments are better than others.  However, there isn’t a bad story in the bunch.  Of course, the copious amounts of animated T & A doesn’t hurt either.

The wraparound segments, entitled “Soft Landing” (***) are probably the weakest part, but they’re still pretty good.  An astronaut brings a glowing orb home as a gift for his daughter.  After vaporizing dear old dad, the orb tells the girl about its previous incarnations. 

“Harry Canyon” (***) is the first official story.  The eponymous cab driver ekes out a living in futuristic New York City.  His world is turned upside down when he meets a woman whose father discovered the orb.  She’s on the run from sinister agents who want the orb and Harry tries to help her out of a jam. 

This segment has a fun, futuristic film noir feel.  (Harry’s hardboiled narration would be at home in a ‘40s detective movie.)  The voice acting by Richard Romanus is good and the New York cityscape looks cool, but the ending kind of fizzles out. 

The next sequence is “Den” (****).  A nerdy boy gets whisked away to another planet by the orb.  The kid transforms into a bald barbarian and sets out to rescue (and bed) a hot, perpetually naked woman. 

This one is the best of the bunch.  It has a perfect measure of self-parody while still giving fans what they want to see, namely cool monsters, gore, and naked chicks.  John Candy’s voice work is terrific in this and his running commentary on the action is often hilarious. 

“Captain Sternn” (***) follows.  It’s a courtroom drama about a slimy space captain on trial for numerous offenses.  He thinks a key witness (who is possessed by the orb) will help him out of his jam, and he’s right… to a point.

This one isn’t quite as strong as the other segments.  It’s kind of slight and lightweight.  On the plus side, the ending is a lot of fun, and John Vernon is great as the voice of the grouchy prosecutor. 

Then, it’s horror-tinged “B-17” (****).  An American bomber takes on enemy fire during a mission.  When one of the pilots goes to assess the damage, he is horrified to learn that a green glowing light has turned his fallen comrades into skeletal zombies. 

This segment, written by Alien’s Dan O’Bannon, is a wonderful mood piece.  It’s scary and atmospheric and would fit right at home in an episode of Tales from the Crypt.  It’s also just different enough from the other stories to feel like a breath of fresh air. 

“So Beautiful and So Dangerous” (***) is next.  A Pentagon secretary is abducted by aliens flying around in a smiley face spaceship.  A horny robot quickly turns her on to the joy of automaton lovemaking, but will their relationship be able to stand the test of time?

This story is lightweight, but it gets plenty of big laughs.  That’s largely due to John Candy’s voice acting as the Casanova droid.  Harold Ramis and Eugene Levy are pretty funny as the drug-addled aliens, but their scenes almost feel like they came out of another sequence entirely. 

The final story is “Taarna” (***).  A green goo turns a guy into an evil dictator, and he sets about to take over the planet.  The people’s last hope is a brave (and half naked) warrior woman who flies around in a pterodactyl. 

Trippy visuals and sexy women highlight this tale.  It more or less gives you everything you want from something like this.  The only downside is it runs on a bit too long. 

Overall, Heavy Metal is a lot of fun.  It gleefully caters to adolescent fantasies and features copious amounts of gratuitous violence and T & A.  Although the soundtrack is quite good, there’s only one song in there that I’d consider “Heavy Metal”.  (Journey’s “Open Arms” is about the farthest thing you can get to heavy metal.)  Still, that’s a minor nitpick as the movie more or less… uh… rocks. 

Heavy Metal 2000 followed nineteen years later. 

D'WILD WILD WENG (1982) *** ½

You loved him in For Your Height only playing the diminutive Secret Agent 00.  Now, everyone’s favorite two-foot nine Pilipino action star Weng Weng is back, this time in the outrageous Kung Fu Western, D’Wild Wild Weng.  Of all the Weng Weng movies I’ve seen, this one might be my favorite. 

Weng stars as Mr. Weng, who along with his Kung Fu fighting pal, Gordon (Max Laurel) are on their way to Santa Monica.  They soon learn the place is overrun by the evil Sebastian (Romy Diaz) and his gang of ruffians.  It then falls on Mr. Weng and Gordon to liberate the town. 

There are some things I never thought I’d see in my lifetime but can be found in this movie:  A remake of The Magnificent Seven starring a little person.  (It’s more like The Magnificent 1 ½.)  A flashback told by a man with no tongue.  A Native American tribe comprised of little people.  Folks, this movie has everything:  Mexican banditos dressed like Slow Poke Rodriguez, Ninjas, and an ending that features the hero sneaking into the enemy camp when his sidekick throws him over the wall like a human lawn dart.  Also, Weng Weng has Kung Fu training montages set to mariachi music. 

And get this:  Weng Weng SINGS!  Remember that scene in For Your Height Only when Weng Weng flew around using a jet pack?  Well, somehow this scene manages to be even more unbelievable. 

D’Wild Wild Weng exists in a weird time warp, which adds to the charm.  At first, it looks like it’s set in the Old West, but about halfway through we see someone riding around in a dune buggy.  The fact that Samurais and Ninjas are also in league with the villain just adds to the WTF factor. 

Once again, Weng Weng throws himself into his fight scenes with gusto.  He kicks lots of ass as he uses his height difference to his advantage.  He even performs his own crazy stunts (where could they possibly find a double?), which gives many of his scenes a Jackie Chan kind of vibe.  Sure, the film starts to stall here and there in the second act, but overall, this is a jaw-dropping good time.