The
other night we had a movie party, our guests picked the line up and
they chose some amazing flicks. Here's a rundown:
Never
Too Young To Die
Lance
Stargrove (John Stamos) is your average college student/star gymnast
who's dad (George Lazenby) is never around. Lucky for Stargrove, his
father is killed during a secret mission, leaving him to discover his
father's secret life, his spy partner Danja (Vanity) and his arch
nemesis Velvet Von Ragner (Gene Simmons). Stargrove quickly fills his
father's spy shoes with help from his science-minded gadget-building
friend, falls in love with Danja and saves the water supply from
Ragner's evil plot. The glorious soundtrack features, at minimum, 4
variants on the Stargrove Theme, each explicitly emphasizing the many
facets of Stargrove's characters surroundings. Sadly for us, this
movie's cries to be picked up as a series went unanswered, it's
sequel could have been glorious.
Things
to watch for: A theme song that will haunt you for years to come; the
second most awkward love scene ever [see Ninja III for the first];
the inexplicable stage ”performance” of Ragner; Robert Enguland
as a computer whiz; John Stamos definitely doing impressive
gymnastics and not having a double do it; the worst fake beard ever
to grace the silver screen; Gene Simmons as a hermaphrodite
drag-queen gang-leader; a post apocalyptic gang living in a suburban
80s world; and every character asking for the “RAM-K”'s location
over, and over, and over again.
Ninja
III: The Domination
[Full
disclosure, we don't know how Ninja II ended, so we were pretty
surprised when...] Ninja III jumps into the action head first as most
of the L.A. police force is slashed, dropped, drown, and ninja stared
to death. The cops are on the scene responding to a
out-of-the-clear-blue ninja-murder of a golfer and his entire golfing
party. The cop-massacre ends when our ninja is filled with more
bullets than I've ever seen a guy filled with on screen, and wanders
into the desert to die. Luckily he runs into Christie, our plucky
utilities worker/aerobics instructor; he gives Christie his sword,
causing his spirit to possess her body. Christie reports most of this
to the police, where she meets Officer Billy Secord, a tenacious cop
who stalks her until she agrees jump into a serious relationship with
him. One by one, Christie picks off the cops that didn't die while
defending themselves during the cop-massacre, while slowly becoming
aware of her “possession”. Honestly, this movie gets better and
better at every turn... if your version of “better” involves fog
machines and laser light shows.
Things
to watch for: Epic fog-machine use at the flimsiest excuse; a cop
that witnesses an attack against Christie, does nothing to help her
as she fends off her attackers, and then “arrests” her for assault as
a way to win her heart; the aforementioned wooing plot working; the
grossest use of V-8 Juice in a sex seen; an arcade game scanning
Christie with lasers, for a very long time, for no clear reason; the
revelation that “only a ninja can kill a ninja”; attempts to
jazzercise the ninja spirit away; a man who wears a sweater under all
his tank tops... hold on, maybe that wasn't a sweater...
