Cinema Craptastíque: RiffTrax Edition

The latest in a series of essays about classic, awful films.

This is a very special edition of Cinema Craptastíque, wherein I’ll review some very awful films I might not otherwise have seen, were they not featured in Mike Nelson’s series of online mp3 commentaries known as Rifftrax. 

These films fall into a very specific category. They are not the z-grade, so-awful-they’re-great classics featured on Nelson’s previous gig at Mystery Science Theater 3000. But neither are they what any decent person would describe as “good” movies. These are modern mainstream flicks, most of them successful (by certain criteria), that are just complete turds when you get down to it. They are, truly, Cinema Craptastíque.

Road House
Road House was directed by Rowdy Harrington. There are no quotes surrounding the Rowdy, indicating that it is not some cute nickname given him by college pals but something far more sinister. Anything that can be said about Road House stems from its bizarre premise. Bizarre isn’t even the right word. Human nature is bizarre. This movie is completely ape @#%&*! .

A world famous bouncer with a graduate degree in philosophy played by Patrick Swayze (I could end the review right here) is brought in to clean up a rough joint in Jasper, Missouri, the Double Deuce. He intends to stay only long enough to finish the job before moving on to the next adventure, but small town politics envelop him and he sticks around to kill several people. Most of them are probably pretty bad, and they’re all men, so it’s OK. Sam Elliot, Kelly Lynch, and Jeff Healey are added for flavor.

Road House really is the zenith of the 80s action flick. All of the ingredients are present: 

• Vaguely zen hero who really wants to live in peace, but spends most of the movie covered in other people’s blood
• Boobs
• Ridiculous villain who is evil, primarily, because he is rich
• Breasts
• Ugly clothing (though the perpetually shirtless Swayze would have done well to put anything  on)
• Hooters
• Bad music (Healey’s very talented, but the soundtrack is dated)
• Ninnies
• A monster truck
• Jugs

By now half of you are shaking your heads in disapproval, and the other half are queuing up Road House over at NetFlix. Personally, I wasn’t even able to enjoy it at the “guilty pleasure” level. There are some visceral thrills, delicious overacting from Ben Gazzara, and countless mammary glands, but in the end it’s just another hypocritical Hollywood bloodfest. Giving your hero the conscience of the Dalai Lama doesn’t offset the carnage the way you think it does. 

“He didn’t want  to rip that guy’s throat out, he had  to!”

Crossroads
Bad movies are charming when they are made with sincerity and goodwill. Even Ed Wood was being creative. The worst kinds of bad movies are those made as part of a business plan, your video game tie-ins, your remakes, your pop star vehicles. The Britney Spears road movie Crossroads is one of these atrocities.

There is not a moment in this film when you are not keenly aware that you are watching a hand tailored star vehicle for a moderately talented pop singer. There is a look on Spears’ face throughout the ordeal that screams “I get to do my movie now!”

The semi-biographical story is not worth summarizing, as it is not the point. The screenwriter (I’m shocked that there was only one) was clearly working from an outline of moments. “There’s got to be a scene where she’s wearing only a towel.” “what if they think the cute guy is a murderer for a few scenes?” And so on.

By far the most offensive to the intelligence are the scenes relating to Britney’s revelation as a singer. She stumbles onto it, stepping up for a nervous friend at a karaoke contest, transforming in mere seconds from a timid good girl to the embarrassing slut we’ve all come to know and fear. For the rest of the film, the friend (whose dream of musical fame put them on the road in the first place) drops her plans and it’s the Britney show. In what just might be the most ludicrous scene ever committed to film, she sits down with the “cute guy” and co-writes her hit song “Not a Girl” in about twenty three seconds.

Throw in some maudlin, ill-fitting Lifetime movie tragedy and you’ve got a completely bad movie. This film wants to hurt you in a very deep and personal way.

Point Break
Patrick Swayze plays another  zen terrorist in this outrageous and extreme adventure from the late nineties. This time Swayze is the bad guy, a Buddhist surfer who steals and murders to make some kind of obscure point about society. Keanu “Woah” Reeves is an FBI agent who must learn to surf to gain the confidence of Swayze and his crew of bank robbers. Gary Busey is also on hand to flash his frightening teeth and act generally nutty.

Take Road House, remove anything resembling charm, throw in Keanu Reeves and you’ve got Point Break, sort of. This movie takes itself a lot more seriously than Road House does, while simultaneously asking us to reach even farther in our suspension of disbelief. A world famous bouncer is a pretty tough concept to wrap your brain around. How then, am I to feel about a wise Buddhist surfer dude who hangs out with Anthony Keidis and robs banks in the spring to pay for his surfing adventures in the summer? And will the FBI really pay me to learn the techniques of some extreme sport so I can cozy up to some criminals? Forgive me if I’m dubious. 

Looking back at Point Break, I can see why the Keanu Reeves of today spends his screen time holding his head and body completely still, moving only his lips and carefully supressing any vocal inflection. He tried acting in this movie and the results are harder to watch than Faces of Death. Gary Busey may be crazy, but he’s also a big ball of charisma. Next to him Keanu looks like, well, like Keanu Reeves trying to survive onscreen next to a professional actor. Ouch.

Not as difficult to watch as Crossroads, but painful nonetheless.

That’s it for this installment. I was going to go on to talk about the two Tom Cruise flicks featured in RiffTrax (Cocktail and Top Gun), but that’s a whole ‘nother universe of discomfort and hurt. Maybe next time.