Feliz Año Nuevo!

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BUY HIJINKS ENSUE BOOKS IN THE HIJINKS ENSUE SHOP!

Theoretically, when someone opens an eventual 4th HijiNKS ENSUE Book THIS will be the first comic they see. Seems like the perfect way to scare off the normals. 

I spent New Years Eve (eve) with Eli, Josh and a slew of other friends at Eli and Denise’s home. There was food and beer and snacks and beer and eatables and beer. Also beer. Eli rigged up a ghetto movie theatre on the back porch and we suffered the freezing night (which is Texas is something like 60 degrees) to watch shitty movies projected 12 feet high on his wall. There was talk of subjecting us all, once again, to RikiOh: The Story of Ricky, but the vault Josh keeps that particular bit of punishment in can only be opened by turning three keys simultaneously and I wasn’t about to relinquish mine.

Instead, Eli subjected us to Chillerama, a collection of 3.5 short films… “filmed things” based around the last hurrah of a drive-in theatre on its final night before closing up shop for good. All you really need to know about Chillerama are the titles of the vignettes. The show started with Wadzilla, a 1950’s monster movie send up about a man who, after taking an experimental drug, ejaculates a single giant sperm which continues to grow and devastate the city. More? Really? You want more? Ok, how about I Was A Teenage WereBear? A 60’s beach party movie spoof about a sexually confused teen who get’s bitten on the ass by a WereBear (a skinny gay teen who transforms into a burly, bearded, be-fanged leather daddy). Considering there were no less than 4 bears in attendance that night, this segment was certainly proof that there IS a god and he is super gay. The third installment was called The Diary Of Anne Frankenstein. They really should have stopped with the title. There’s no further explanation needed. That’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard and nothing the filmmakers could have put after that title could have possibly lived up to it. There’s no point in me even explaining it. Your imagination will do a better job than I could. There’s sort of a 4th short film, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise. The shorts are wrapped up in an A-story about a drive in worker who, through acts of necro-feelin’ ya, begins to accidentally spread a “super horny zombie” virus to all of the drive-in patrons.

If none of this has scared you off, I actually can recommend Chillerama for your next drunken shitty movie night. It almost crosses the line between “we tried but this came out shitty,” and “HEY! Look out shitty this is on purpose!” a few times, but manages to reel it in with genuine cheese and above average special effects for a low budget D-movie. It’s hard to talk about production quality with films like this, but it really does help you to stomach the bad jokes, worse acting and ridiculous plots when you can actually HEAR and SEE everything the creators intend you to. Most movies of this caliber suffer greatly from technical shortcomings. By contrast, Chillerama is extremely watchable for something that is nearly unwatchable. I believe it’s on Netflix instant now and should make for an interesting evening with inebriated friends.

COMMENTERS: Josh actually made be watch Riki-Oh during one of the first times we ever hung out. It was an event that would set the tone of our friendship for the next decade or so. Has anyone ever made such an impact on you by forcing you to sit through an unbelievably terrible movie? Did you uncle show you the Star Wars Christmas Special in your basement? It’s OK to share. You are among friends.

Do you have any geeky new years resolutions? Any shows you are determined to finally plow through?

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39 Comments

  1. One night a friend and I sat down to drink wild irish rose and watch a film called "Even Dwarfs Started Small".

    It's about an inmate takeover at a mental asylum.

    Featuring an all-midget cast.

    I'm pretty sure I saw a chicken try to eat another chicken in that movie, but I can't be sure.

    • "Even Dwarfs Started Small" is considered one of Werner Herzog's finer movies. It's only the second movie with an all "little person" cast, after "The Terror of Tiny Town".

      While I don't remember chickens with cannibalistic tendencies, watching a midget giggle (for what seems like forever) at a defecating horse shall forever be seared into my brain.

      • It's only the second movie with an all "little person" cast, after "The Terror of Tiny Town". – Nerd Adjacent

        Clearly someone's never seen "Itty Bitty Gang Bang".

      • It was a camel. And now I have another movie to watch with my friend. This time I think we'll drink cisco.

        And it wasn't, like, guts laid open. It was the scene with a chicken that only had one leg. Other chickens kept trying to peck out chunks of the stump.

  2. Growing up my mother constantly rented movies based solely on the vhs/dvd cover, so I was exposed to many direct to video movies. The one that sticks with me is the Black Scorpion. She thought it would be just like Batman, it was not.

  3. My husband and I love super cheesy movies like this; the more processed the cheese product is, the better we like it. Two of my personal favorites are both Rutger Hauer masterpieces; Split Second, a creature feature set in a 21st century London that is mostly underwater; and Flesh+Blood, one of the best/worst medieval style movies ever made. Plus it has Jennifer Jason Leigh! I highly recommend both of these.

    • I love Flesh + Blood (aka Rose and the Sword) by Paul Verhoeven (Starship Troopers, Basic Instinct, Total Recall, Robocop, etc) That man can figure out a way to get anybody naked in his movies. It takes a genius to fit a hot tub scene in a realistic take on medieval France. Other great Rutger Hauer movies include Blind Fury (a remake of Zatoichi) and The Blood of Heroes.

  4. Ninja Bachelor Party and Dancing Outlaw make up the twin serpents of AURYN for our little clique. As the only gay member, I always suggested Meet The Feebles, too. In my family we always tortured girl/boyfriends with The Pirate Movie, which explains why my little brother is gay, too.

    • I brought Pirate Movie to the after-party of the Gilbert & Sullivan production of Pirates of Penzance. They loved it! Unfortunately, I loaned my copy to a friend and didn't have the heart to ask his widow for after he passed. I can't find it for less than $30 on Amazon!
      I will be suggesting Chillerama to a friend. Let's see if they remain a friend.

  5. I constantly and without shame subjected people to "Shark Attack 3: Megalodon" to test what kind of friendship we could have. I have watched it lord knows how many times, lost in a fit of giggles while my friends sat in horror. My true friends were the ones who asked to see it again. I lost my copy to Katrina… *shakes fist*

    Shark Attack 3: Megalodon was something my sister and I accidentally stumbled upon at the Blockbuster for our weekly Taco Bell & Bad Movie night. We liked to pick things with giant mutated animals. This is before the SYFY channel machine, of course. It is my favorite horrible movie and my first exposure to Mr. John Barrowman years before he graced the BBC.

    • I attend UCLA, where the director of SA3:M works as a professor of film, and got him to sign my copy. It's possibly the best worst movie ever.

      • Wait..wait…so it is possible to sign up for a class taught by the director? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS FOR HIM. Like, what the hell is going on at that beach party? Why is it sort of like a 90's grunge video or lost footage from Point Break? Did you intentionally do that awesome 360 shot in the hotel room or was that accidental talent? Why are the voices dubbed over?!

        Sometimes I think really its just the best movie ever made because it transcends badness and is in itself a work of art.

        • Most definitely yes. This was two years ago, but my film major roommate took a class from him, which is how I found out that he works at UCLA. In person he was a nice guy, rather unassuming, and seemed to think reasonably well of SA3:M. I told him that I liked his movie and tried to play down the fact that I liked it because of how awesomely bad it was.

          If you really want to email him, he lists his email address on his website (http://davidworthfilm.com/).

  6. My mom made me see Beverly Hills Chihuahua in theaters with my little sisters. It was a perfect storm of things I hate: talking dog movies, people who treat their pets like children, and Jamie Lee Curtis.

  7. I grew up watching Captain USA's cheesey movies every Saturday.. now WE are the horrible people who subject our friends and relatives to the bad dreck.. and we make them see it sober! 🙂 we've been handing out copies of the SW Christmas special for the last few years, made the kids sit through old Smurf and he-man cartoons, and the Worst Witch and really BAD ninja robot geisha movies (Robo-Geisha.. seriously insane..)

  8. My friend and I were both up really late and chatting online and at the same moment said "This movie I'm watching is so awesome". He ended up calling me and we watched it, laughing at the nonsensical plot. The movie? Runaway Car – A 1997 TV movie starring Judge Reinhold.

  9. Geeky resolution: Finally watch all of Being Human (UK, not US).

    A friend of mine made me watch Moulin Rouge one of the first times we hung out. I did not approve. It just struck me as an obnoxious mishmash of pretentious self-awareness and horrible song choices, topped with extra cheese.

  10. When I was in grad school, a friend hosted a weekly movie night for a few years, mostly inspired by the Weird Wednesday series at the Alamo Drafthouse here in Austin. We did watch Riki-Oh and the Star Wars Christmas special, but there was a huge list of other movies. Some memorable ones included Freaks, a 1932 movie starring actual circus freaks; the original Wicker Man, well before the 2006 Nic Cage remake came out; Starcrash, a crazy 1979 low budget rip off of Star Wars; Psych-Out, a 1968 movie about hippies and drugs; and Night of the Lepus, a movie about giant rabbits with some fantastic slow motion rabbits running through what looked like model train landscapes. There are many many more, but needless to say they were some of the better moments of my grad school career.

  11. I love the Wicker Man, and Freaks. "One of Us, One of Us!"

    The worst movie I've been subjected to in a get-together is Transformations, truly awful.
    For some reason I have been wanting to watch "Solarbabies" for years, but now that no one rents video tapes, it's a hard find.

  12. For being a guy who isn't hard core into his shitty movies I watched Chillerama a few weeks ago and found it to be quite good for humor and cheese. I didn't care for the "I was a Teenage Werebear" as much but over all I liked it. I thought it was far better than Zombie Strippers although I don't know if that means anything. Viva 2012… good thing we don't follow the Mayan calender!

  13. Ankle Biters, got one of my finer Bad Movie Ambushes with that one. It's about midget vampires who want the sword of Dracula to make a race of super 'tall' vampires. This film, NO BS, has a leather clad hero with a midget in a side car. Fantastic.

    My personal favorite is Microwave Madness. Horrible puns, murder, and cannibalism. What can be better?

  14. First weekend at college my roommate, two friends, and I stayed up to watch movies in our room. The first one he picked? Killer Klowns From Outer Space. I was the only one still awake through the whole thing, and that's because I ended up playing C&C rather than actually watching.

  15. one of the first times my boyfriend and I hung out, just the two of us at his place with no 'date' before/after, he sat me down to watch Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century. Pretty much set the bar for the relationship.

  16. My friend made us all watch the indescribable Gozu. It had yakuza, and yakuza skin suits, and random bull headed creatures, elderly japanese women lactating for no apparent reason. Because of this movie I will never look at a ladle the same way again.

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