Recently, I was lucky enough to watch a few movies with friends that ranged from awful in a genius way to awful in an awful way.
Blood Car
Everything you need to know about the 2007 indie horror film Blood Car is right there in the title. It is about a car that runs on blood. In the not-too-distant future, gas is priced at nearly $40 a gallon. Practically no one drives, although to actually be able to afford to drive is the ultimate status symbol. Our hero, Archie Andrews, is a vegan kindergarten teacher who attempts to invent a car that runs on wheat grass. When Archie accidentally cuts his finger one day and gets a little blood in the mechanism, causing the engine he's working on to whir to life, he has his "eureka" moment. It's not long before Archie is turning his back on his vegan principles: shooting puppies and killing disabled, homeless war veterans to fuel his car. Why does Archie feel the need to commit serial murder to run his blood car when he has a perfectly good bicycle? To get laid, of course! Blood Car has a really complex view of women: there's the dorky, nice, good girl who works at the wheat grass store and pines for Archie...and the bitchy, slutty, bad girl who works at the "meat shack" and wants to use Archie for his car and his...erm...meat. But I can't really condemn Blood Car for it's laughable misogyny when Archie himself is such a terrible, undeserving person as well. If there's such a thing as a sociopathic hipster, Archie is it. Also, it's a horror film. The whole point is to hate the characters so you don't feel bad when they end up in the trunk of Archie's death car.
For what it is, Blood Car is actually pretty damn funny. The very concept of a "blood car" has limitless potential, and I liked the idea of a self-absorbed, horny vegan guy as both the protagonist and the killer at the center of the story.
3.5 out of 5 stars
April Fool's Day
Speaking of terrible, sociopathic characters, April Fool's Day (the 1986 version) is full of them! The film is about a group of preppy college friends who get together at the "remote island mansion" (there's your first clue that something will go horribly awry) of their friend Muffy St. John (no, she's not a porn star...just a hardcore WASP) during April Fool's Day weekend. It's not long before bodies start piling up. But the characters are so, so awful that's it's actually a disappointment when you find out...SPOILERS!
...that the whole "mass murder" thing was staged by Muffy as an elaborate April Fool's Day prank! Oddly, everyone was in on it except for two of the friends who were the ultimate victims of the prank, which is like, really mean when you think about it. I was so mad that no one was actually killed by the end of the movie because they all totally deserved to die horrible deaths. Lame.
Oh, and April Fool's Day may be the preppiest film of all time. Here's a partial list of the characters' names:
Muffy
Kit
Nan
Chaz
Arch
Skip
And yes, they behave exactly as their names suggest.
2.5 out of 5 stars
Heartbeeps
In the horrendous affront to human dignity that is Heartbeeps, Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters play humanoid robots that go on the lam and fall in love. I watched this movie at a "bad movie party" where the idea was to sit around and laugh at a bad movie. While Heartbeeps does have it's share of laughable-bad moments, there were also long stretches that were so bad and so boring that no one was laughing. One of my friends did fall asleep though.
The whole thing was just...weird. The dialogue was mostly stilted because, you know, these are robots. But after an hour of stilted, "logical" robot discussions about the nature of love and the meaning of life, I was ready to shoot myself. It was like listening to Sheldon from "The Big Bang Theory" talk for 80 minutes, but minus the humor and nerd references. Also, Andy Kaufman has a really annoying voice.
However, Heartbeeps was so terrible that you got to a point where you just surrendered yourself to the terribleness and end up gawking at the screen, gape-mouthed, the way someone would watch a train wreck. The badness was like a drug that made you unable to move...just sit there and wonder "how did this get made?!"
Oh Christ, no.
1.5 out of 5 stars
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