Your Stupid Minds

Christmas season in high gear, and that means we'll be looking at less-than-stellar Holiday movies in the month of December. Our first foray into the genre is Ron Howard's brazen cash grab live action remake of the Dr. Seuss classic with How the Grinch Stole Christmas (a.k.a. Grinch 2000). Jim Carrey cranks it up to 11 with his manic interpretation of the Grinch that is 60% Richard Nixon, 3% Jerry Lewis, and 37% Other Parts. Howard and company pad out the 64 page illustrated source material (with additional heavy influences from the 1966 Chuck Jones cartoon) by adding signature Carrey ad libs, a needless Grinch backstory, additional characters, a love interest, and precocious Cindy Lou Who (Taylor Momsen) as a nearly jaded young adolescent.

Patrick Regan returns to Your Stupid Minds after his appearance in Jonah Hex (both the episode and the movie) to help us review Universal’s 2010 flop The Wolfman (back when Universal used to make flops). This episode is part of our de facto ghoulish Halloween theme, when we review some scary movies in October and then go back to other things.

Lawrence Talbot (played by the excessively British Benicio Del Toro) receives a visit from his sister-in-law Gwen (Emily Blunt), who tells him his brother is missing. After some reluctant hero hemming and hawing, he takes the train back home to his bizarre father Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins) where some spooky doings are transpiring. His brother was ripped to shreds and the locals suspect either a gypsy bear or a werewolf. During a visit to the gypsy camp, Lawrence is bitten by a werewolf and later transforms into a werewolf. Then Hugo Weaving shows up as a Scotland Yard inspector and we glacially proceed to the giant London action set-piece and inevitable Marvel-style werewolf fight.

Another ninja movie! This time with actual ninjas and not some snot-nosed kids, it’s the Cannon Group’s Ninja III: The Domination! Offering little to no continuity to its predecessors Enter the Ninja and Revenge of the Ninja, Ninja III involves a headstrong telephone company employee/aerobics instructor Christie (Lucinda Dickey) possessed by the ghost of a mystical ninja who recently went on a cop killing spree at a nearby municipal golf course.

After some questionably strong seduction tactics, Office Secord (Jordan Bennett) joins Christie in her apartment for V8 juice-infused sex near her arcade machine for the unreleased game Bouncer. Soon after she surreptitiously begins murdering the cops who took down the ninja using her newly-infused martial arts skills and floating Ninjato sword. Will Officer Secord stop her before she murders all of the leery cops? Is a newly-arrived eye-patched Japanese man a friend or foe? Pick up the Blu-ray and find out!

Your Stupid Minds takes advantage of the Criterion Channel doing our curation for us by choosing a spook-em-up in its 80s horror series: another Lucio Fulci movie, it’s 1981’s The House by the Cemetery!

Dr. Norman Boyle (played by the incredibly Italian Paolo Malco) his wife Lucy (Catriona MacColl) and their cherubic, etherial son Bob (Giovanni Frezza) move temporarily into a creepy New England house so the dad can do research or something.

Over time it turns out this creepy house is, like, really creepy. Bob is clued in by another cherubic, etherial child Mae (Silvia Collatina) warning him against going to the house. A series of gruesome, Fulci-style murders later (not counting the one in the cold open that has nothing to do with anything), and Norman is determined to save his family from this malevolent force.

It’s finally here! In keeping with tradition, we reviewed Neil Breen’s newest film Cade: The Tortured Crossing, an actual sequel to Twisted Pair that acts more like a spiritual sequel to Twisted Pair. Joining us is friend of me, the show, and bad movies in general Austin Buchan, who knew absolutely nothing about the movie or Neil Breen before watching it.

According to the Alamo Drafthouse website (and, more likely, the press packet that Neil sent to the Alamo Drafthouse) Cade: The Tortured Crossing is about: “An identical AI twin brother restores an old mysterious mental asylum. He takes it upon himself to mystically train the patients as warriors for humanity and justice.” Abstractly, that is a correct description of about 5% of the film, but adding additional information, or editorializing about the content, would not adequately prepare you for seeing this on the silver screen.

In a way, this is Neil’s most ambitious film, combining his love of stock footage and indifference toward directing actors, he has chosen to eschew actual sets entirely, and composite greenscreened every single character into a dream-like void of proportionally disorienting stock photos and footage, even when using a real set (like a repeated scene of a man plopping into a dingy bed) would have been cheaper and more realistic.

If you haven’t seen Twisted Pair, you will not be at a disservice, as basically nothing carries over into Cade except that there are two identical twin brothers, both played by Breen, and they have mystical computer powers. If you’ve never seen a Breen (such as our guest Austin) it’s probably the second most baffling experience you can have being introduced to him (aside from Pair, which is probably his most impenetrable and least audience friendly).

So come with us on this journey, and we’ll tell of our theater experiences seeing Neil Breen’s newest masterpiece.