I AM HERE…. NOW (2009) ****

Of all the Neil Breen movies I have subjected myself to lately, this one is my favorite.  It’s a perfect crystallization of his ideas, themes, motifs, fetishes, and cinematic wizardry.  It’s also one of the funniest movies of all time. 

What makes Breen’s films work is his absolute dedication to the piece.  He believes everything he’s saying and the unabashed way he wears his heart on his sleeve while simultaneously falling short on a technical level is reminiscent of both Tom Laughlin’s Billy Jack pictures and Ed Wood’s best work.  Whatever may be lacking in terms of plot, dialogue, editing, coherence, logic, and sanity, Breen’s message shines through and his passion is evident.  Because of that, his movies are like a trip inside his mind.  I am Here…. Now is simply a unique and unforgettable experience. 

Breen stars as “The Being” who is kind of like Robo-Space-Jesus.  He appears in the middle of the desert in a white robe and what looks like a computer motherboard glued to his chest.  He becomes disgusted to learn humans are not using solar energy to its fullest and is repulsed by corrupt government officials and lawyers who are preventing the technology from reaching its fullest potential.  (No, really.)  He also tries to help two sisters who have lost their jobs at the solar energy plant and have turned to selling themselves on the streets to provide their family.  (Represented by a rubber baby doll in a stroller.)

Speaking of baby dolls, the scene where Breen walks through the desert past several severed doll heads is legitimately cool looking and would make for a great album cover.  The rest of the movie is about as unintentionally hilarious as they come.  I had to stop and rewind scenes to relive the nonsensical story beats and jaw-dropping dialogue a second time.  My favorite line comes when one of the sisters says she will hide her sex work from her boyfriend by saying, “I’ll tell him I got a part-time job at the mall!”

Breen’s rage at corruption in Washington is on full display here.  I don’t want to spoil anything for you but as is the case in most of Breen’s work, the corrupt officials all get what’s coming to them.  This time in biblical fashion. 

I also loved the scenes where the Being punishes people for their wicked deeds.  There’s a great bit with an old guy in a wheelchair (“Cancer chemo kicked my ass!”) gets knocked down by a passerby and Robo-Space-Jesus makes his eyeballs bleed.  These moments have a real Billy Jack type feel to them.  If Billy Jack was a partially robotic deity from outer space, that is. 

I am Here… Now is Breen’s finest hour.  It’s like a ‘70s Ron Ormond religious movie directed by Tommy Wiseau.  You’ll laugh.  You’ll cry.  You’ll laugh so hard that you’ll cry again.  In short, Neil Breen is Bad Movie Jesus and we all should worship him. 

DOUBLE DOWN (2005) ****

Double Down was the first cinematic endeavor by the King of Grade Z WTF independent filmmaking, Neil Breen.  It features all the hallmarks he would carry throughout his filmography.  There are random shots of skulls, scenes of him furiously typing away on his laptop, long stretches of him roaming through the desert, enough stock footage to draw comparisons to Ed Wood (such as scenes of the Las Vegas skyline, NASA stock footage, and random shots of planes taking off and landing), and the most random close-ups of feet outside of a Doris Wishman movie. 

Another Breen trademark:  He stars as an all-powerful hero with mysterious and vague powers who is seemingly infallible, incorruptible, and spouts anti-capitalism New Agey nonsense.  Breen is a shadowy agent who lives out in the desert who has orders to bring Las Vegas to a standstill using his advanced satellite technology that he runs out of the trunk of his sedan.  He’s also a part-time bioterrorist who can bring down major cities should his employers ever think to double-cross him.  Eventually, he has a crisis of conscience and sets out to stop his own plan. 

Most of the time, Breen walks around by himself while mind-numbing narration plays over the action.  (If you can call it that.)  The visions and flashbacks of his dead wife are also humorous, but it’s the scene where Neil reacts to her dead body that may go down as his all-time best moment on screen.  As he holds her corpse close to him, he lets out a quick little yelp that sounds more like a reaction someone would have to a paper cut or hangnail; not exactly losing the love of your life.  Oh, and did I mention Neil is NAKED in this scene?  Of course, because why wouldn’t he be?  (Gratuitous nudity by Neil is yet another Breen trademark.)  Despite coming perilously close to seeing his little Breener, you’ll be scrambling for the rewind button to play this scene over and over again. Trust me.

The movie is chockfull of scenes where Breen spouts out fortune cookie wisdom while banging away at his computer.  His diatribes are a word salad of mystical gobbledygook and indecipherable technobabble.  The so-called action scenes are jaw-dropping.  Folks, you haven’t lived until you see Neil get the drop on absolutely no one at all, shoot the nonexistent gunmen, and then nonchalantly wipe their blood off his face. 

In short, Double Down is a modern WTF classic that will have you scratching your head and laughing your ass off in equal measure. 

BODACIOUS TA’TA’S (1983) ***

Alex (Dave Cannon) throws a bachelor party for his stepson Jim (Greg Ruffner) at a strip club.  After a few drinks, their pal Jack (Ron Jeremy) pays a few of the dancers to have a private party back at Alex’s place.  It doesn’t take long before the girls start earning their money and give the boys a real show in the bedroom. 

The first act of Bodacious Ta’Ta’s is mostly devoted to stripteases rather than sex as it’s primarily set inside the strip club.  It’s hard to complain though, especially when you have Kitten Natividad, Bridgette Monet, and Patty Plenty doing the stripping.  Patty performs a particularly memorable tassel twirling number that’s not to be missed and Kitten’s dances are great too. 

We do get a few strong XXX scenes once the action finally switches back to the house.  They include straight fuck scenes, anal, and voyeurism.  It takes a while before Kitten gets in on the fun, but her steamy lesbian scene with Patty is more than worth the wait. 

Jeremy is funny as the sleazy, fast-talking friend, but it’s the ladies in the cast that make it recommended.  Monet is as sexy as ever and has a steamy romp in the bedroom.  Plenty lives up to her name too as she also gets fucked with panache. 

The movie really belongs to Kitten.  Even though she only partakes in the hardcore action at the very end (she didn’t start doing Guy on Girl scenes in porn until the ‘90s), her sexy strip numbers are quite eye-popping.  Heck, even the scenes where she just sits there while Jeremy feels her up are kinda hot. 

So, if you’re watching Bodacious Ta’Ta’s with the expectation of watching Kitten embroiled in some heated and hardcore XXX action, you may be a tad disappointed by this one.  In fact, it often feels like a “real” movie before the sex scenes begin to dominate in the second half.  That’s really a testament to director Paul G. (Stiff Competition) Vatelli’s work behind the camera.  (Even though the film is primarily set in two locations, it still feels rather polished.)  While she may not go all the way with the male members of the cast, it’ll still be worth a watch if you’re a fan of Kitten, if only to see her shaking her certifiably bodacious assets. 

ROADSHOW TRAILERS VOL. 1 (199?) ***

Here’s a Something Weird compilation of trailers for movies that could only be shown as roadshow attractions.  These are films that tackled taboo (for the time) subject matter like sex and drugs.  Because of that, “respectable” theaters wouldn’t touch them.  Most of these were “scare” films meant to “educate” the moviegoing public, but nine times out of ten they were just good old-fashioned exploitation.  Producers would also throw in a lot of ballyhoo and sell pamphlets that pertained to whatever scandalous topic the picture claimed to warn against to further increase profits. 

Some of the topics and subgenres that are covered include drug scare pictures like Hopped-Up (starring Timothy Farrell), Devil’s Harvest, and Assassin of Youth.  “Family” pictures are represented by the likes of Test Tube Babies, Mom and Dad, and Tomorrow’s Children.  Then of course, there’s salacious “Adults Only” sexploitation such as The Flesh Merchant, Slaves in Bondage, and Child Bride.  There is also a heavy concentration of jungle pictures (most of which rely on native nudity as a selling point) like The Virgin Goddess, Mau Mau!, and The Gorilla Woman, and Burlesque features including A Virgin in Hollywood, Vegas Nights, and Woman’s a Fool (an all-black cast effort).  Ed Wood is also well-represented as we also get previews for Jail Bait, I Changed My Sex (AKA:  Glen or Glenda?), The Violent Years, and The Sinister Urge. 

The highlights come courtesy of the coming attractions for The Lash of the Penitentes (which features some surprising nudity), Vanishing Gangsters (a documentary on real life gangsters), Nudist Life (which humorously misspells “Nudist Park” as “Nudest Park”), and producer Kroger Babb’s personal message about the godless Communists in Half-Way to Hell.  Along the way, there are some great taglines.  A few of my favorites include Marihuana (“Divulging heretofore unheard of orgies of youth’s dissipation!”), I Want a Baby (“Teen-age girls with speed to spare and rarin’ to go!”), Karamoja (“See men pay for their young brides with cattle!”), and Blonde Pickup (“Now at last!  Life in the raw!”).

Even though most of the movies featured here are from the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, there is still plenty of nudity, jaw-dropping subject matter, and camp value here.  Even in two-minute trailer form, the films contain more T & A than the previews seen in today’s theaters.  Overall, it’s a fine sampling of the roadshow and scare picture genres.  It features many of the best-known films of the era and many deep cuts and rarities.  Fans of this sort of thing are sure to find plenty of obscure titles to add to their watchlist. 

The complete list of trailers is as follows:  Karamoja, The Virgin Goddess, Hopped-Up, Test Tube Babies, Youth Aflame, Gambling With Souls, Maniac, Lash of the Penitentes, A Virgin in Hollywood, Mau Mau!, Vegas Nights, Souls in Pawn, Bedroom Fantasy, Pin Down Girls, Buxom Beautease, Mom & Dad, Vanishing Gangsters, Karamoja (a slightly different trailer than the first), Peek-A-Boo, Unmarried Mothers, The ABC's of Love, The Art of Burlesque, Outrages of the Orient, Atrocities of Manila, B-Girl Rhapsody, Bagdad After Midnite, Hollywood Burlesque, Devil's Harvest, The Devil's Sleep, Nudist Life, Ding Dong, Halfway to Hell, Tomorrow's Children, Marihuana, The Flesh Merchant, Jail Bait, Malamu, Forbidden Adventure, Slaves in Bondage, Assassin of Youth, The Gorilla Woman, I Changed My Sex, Escort Girl, Child Bride, I Want a Baby, Tijuana After Midnite, Woman's A Fool, The Violent Years, The Sinister Urge, and The Legend of Bigger Thomas. 

CADE: THE TORTURED CROSSING (2023) * ½

Cade:  The Tortured Crossing is Neil Breen’s sequel to Twisted Pair.  This might be Breen at his Breeniest.  Although I loved Fateful Findings and enjoyed Twisted Pair, my resolve was severely tested with this one.  “Tortured” indeed. 

Breen returns as Cade, the superhuman hero.  He bestows a bunch of money to a hospital sight unseen and is horrified when he learns the place is a dump.  Even worse is the fact the doctors are performing illicit experiments on the patients.  Cade’s evil twin Cale (also Breen) assists the doctors by kidnapping homeless teens in exchange for drugs.  Cade then teaches the teens to fight and together, they take back the hospital. 

There is one scene that is so purely Breenian that it will make your head spin.  I’m tempted not to spoil it for you, but I feel it’s worth mentioning, if only to sort of get you interested, as much of the rest of the film is a slog.  This scene finds Breen walking through a green-screened meadow (99% of the movie uses greenscreen) where he runs into a poorly CGI white tiger and they proceed to fight.  Then, they become friends, and the tiger transforms into a hot babe with big boobs.  This scene is WTF bliss and deserves to be shown in any compilation of Z-grade bad movies.  This moment alone is worth at least One Star in my book. 

There’s another sequence that’s not quite as nutty, but it did make me laugh pretty good.  That was the impromptu dance scene with all the teenage patients.  That was good for a Half-Star.  These two admittedly goofy bits are the only bright spots in the film. 

Sadly, the rest of Cade:  The Tortured Crossing is a mess.  It’s nowhere near as fun as his previous work as the scenes with the patients get repetitive in a hurry.  Sure, there are some chuckles here and there (like when Breen repairs an SUV with his mind), but the awful dialogue and awkward editing just doesn’t quite have the same zest of his previous entries. 

The over-reliance on greenscreen work is mind boggling.  Instead of just finding a location and filming there, Breen just inserts himself and his cast onto stock photos he found on the internet.  Only a director like Neil Breen would do something like this.  Because of that, I guess you could call this technique “Breen screen”. 

CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD (2025) ***

General “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford) is now President of the United States and offers Captain America (Anthony Mackie) an opportunity to restart The Avengers.  However, when an associate tries to assassinate Ross, Cap must get to the bottom of the attempt on the President’s life.  Meanwhile, the evil Leader (Tim Blake Nelson) has been manipulating Ross into turning into the rage-driven Red Hulk to show the world what a true monster he is. 

I enjoyed the Marvel show Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which had Falcon picking up the mantle of Captain America.  This big screen movie sequel feels more like a TV show than many of the recent Marvel pics.  The action scenes are decent enough I suppose, but they are a tad underwhelming for a big budget comic book movie.  While I probably would’ve been more disappointed if I saw it on the big screen, it looked fine at home on Disney+. 

As a fan of 2008’s The Incredible Hulk, I was intrigued to see all the stuff that was set up in that flick so long ago finally beginning to pay off.  It’s just kind of odd to see it happening in a Captain America movie.  The film also deals with the fallout from The Eternals (of all movies), which is kind of weird.  (The mention of adamantium also leads me to suspect they are starting to set up X-Men here too.)  Because of that, it felt less like an honest to God Captain American movie and more like Marvel tidying up their house a bit as they inch closer to another Avengers film.

This is kind of a disservice to Mackie, seeing as it’s his first solo shot as Cap.  The finale where Ross turns into Red Hulk is pretty good though and makes up for some of the film’s shortcomings.  You have to wonder if the symbolism of a black man trying to stop a President who has become a red monster from destroying the White House was accidental or intentional though. 

While the prospect of having Ford take over for the late William Hurt was promising, Ford seems grumpier than usual, especially when he’s supposed to be acting presidential.  Mackie is OK in the lead, but he’s just not given a whole lot here to work with.  Although he had an opportunity to properly flesh out his character on the Falcon show, he’s basically required to do little more than spout exposition and glower here.  Danny Ramirez, who plays the new Falcon, is pretty entertaining and brings some much-needed humor to the film.  Nelson is fun as Leader too, although it’s a shame they waited so long to utilize him. 

Marvel Cinematic Universe Scorecard: 

Spider-Man:  No Way Home:  ****

Avengers:  Age of Ultron:  ****

The Incredible Hulk:  ****

Iron Man:  ****

Thor:  Ragnarok:  ****

Avengers:  Endgame:  ****

Ant-Man and the Wasp:  ****

Spider-Man:  Homecoming:  ****

Iron Man 3:  ****

Captain America:  Civil War:  *** ½

Ant-Man:  *** ½

Guardians of the Galaxy:  *** ½

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2:  *** ½ 

Avengers:  Infinity War:  *** ½

Werewolf by Night:  *** ½ 

Black Panther:  *** ½ 

The Avengers:  ***

Captain America:  The First Avenger:  ***

Captain America:  The Winter Soldier:  ***

Deadpool and Wolverine:  ***

Thor:  Love and Thunder:  ***

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness:  ***

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings:  ***

Captain Marvel:  ***

Spider-Man:  Far from Home:  ***

Thor:  ***

The Marvels:  ***

Captain America:  Brave New World:  ***

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3:  ***

Thor:  The Dark World:  ***

Iron Man 2:  ***

Ant-Man and the Wasp:  Quantumania:  ** ½ 

Doctor Strange:  ** ½ 

Black Widow:  ** ½  

Black Panther:  Wakanda Forever:  **

The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special:  **

Eternals:  * ½  

TWISTED PAIR (2018) ***

You get two Neil Breens for the price of one in the fitfully hilarious, but ultimately uneven grade Z Sci-Fi opus, Twisted Pair.  Breen stars as identical twins Cade and Cale who become humanoids and have superpowers.  Cade uses his gift to prevent “cyber and terror attacks” while Cale kidnaps and tortures crooked white collar criminals. 

For the first half hour or so, I thought this was going to surpass Breen’s manic WTF classic, Fateful Findings for sheer bad movie lunacy.  There were at least three times during that stretch where I actively doubted my sanity and mistrusted my own eyes.  The scenes of Breen walking in front of green screened backgrounds, leading troops into battle, and flying around like a half-assed superhero were 100% uncut Breen insanity.  The stuff with the evil Breen (yes, he has a poorly pasted-on goatee so you know he’s the bad twin) is good for some laughs too, as is the scenes with the villain (who looks like Michael Stipe cosplaying as Elton John with a Darth Vader voice).  Breen’s interaction with his wife is particularly mind-boggling as their first scene together requires them to do and say things that no two sane people who are supposed to be in love would ever do. 

In short, it’s your typical Neil Breen scene. 

Somewhere around the third act, the DIY charm begins to wear off and the inspired inanity starts to lose its luster.  Yes, the unexplained appearance of a Tinkerbell like fairy is batshit insane.  Yes, I laughed every time Breen said he was going to take down “Cooze’s Empire”.  However, the over-reliance on repeated scenes and fake looking explosions tend to feel like padding.  There’s a set-up for a sequel too that eats up some time, but of course, I intend to watch it ASAP.