pornokitsch

Monsters & Mullets: The Beastmaster (1982)

So. What we have today is your basic barbarian movie, in pretty much its purest form. Prince in disguse? Check. Magical talents? Check. Imperiled slave-girl love interest? Check. Revenge quest? Check. Faithful companions? Monsters? Sweeping score? Check, check, check. Naked, muscle-bound, bowl-cut-bearing barbarian? Check and mate.

Of course, in this barbarian movie, Doctor Dolittle Dar can talk to the animals.

The opening titles are credits shakily interposed over dark photographs of two animals: the eagle appears to be a living, breathing animal (indeed, these are stills from the film), but the "black tiger" is clearly a single taxidermied tiger shot from a few different angles. There's a particularly awful irony to that fact; the actual, living tiger used in the movie died two years after filming wrapped because the black dye they used on it was toxic. Which is a bummer of a fact to begin this review with, but there it is.

Monsters & Mullets: Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves (1991)

This is a terrible movie. It is also a wonderful movie. It is, indeed, everything a great Monsters & Mullets movie is supposed to be: equal parts nostalgia-evoking, horror-inducing, cringe-warranting and adoration-justifying. It is horrific contrivances running amok amidst the pillars of some of modern film’s greatest campy acting, chased down by the swelling tide of heroic music and lovingly beaten to death by absurd slow-mo action sequences.

It is Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. And it is amazeballs.

The film opens with a titles crawl over the Bayeux Tapestry. The use of the Bayeux Tapestry here is important for one of the following two reasons. A) Because the Tapestry represents the Norman invasion and William the Conqueror’s victory over the Saxon English king Harold a hundred years before this film is set, opening the movie by referencing the Tapestry subtly sets up the central socio-political tension of the Robin Hood myth between the conquering Normans and the subjugated Saxons, or, B) we learn later that Maid Marian embroidered all 230+ feet of the tapestry herself.

Monsters & Mullets: She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword (1985)

Just a quickie guide before we get into this, the “feature-length” origin adventure of She-Ra, barbarian princess of tie-in toys. Mattel passed up the opportunity to produce the Star Wars tie-in toys, a decision they never came to regret despite the series’ immense and lucrative popularity. Oh, ha hah, I kid. How I kid. The Mattel muckity-mucks spent the next few years sacrificing Barbie dolls to Ba’al in exchange for another shot at the Lucasian stupid-money.

Then, in the very early ‘80s, Mattel’s lead designer slapped some clay muscles onto a doll made of knocked-together parts from some random line and Mattel declared his creation “good.” Then he named it He-Man, generic enough to be marketed really easily, and the Mattel called it “very good.” And thus, in 1982, was He-Man brought into the world. It was a world obsessed with swords n’ sorcery, delighted by all things barbarian, and right then, totally digging on Conan (the Schwarzenegger film was one of 1982’s major hits).

The toy line sold well, but Mattel wanted more. So they created a tie-in animated series and BOOM. Lucasian stupid-money achieved.

Doctor Who: The Movie (1996)

I like Paul McGann.

I saw him on stage recently, and he invested a fairly two-dimensional and heavy-handed character with a dignity and gravitas. And I like him on Luther, in his thankless role as sad-sack non-rival to the riveting Idris Elba. He's got massive presence, and I respect that he doesn't vanish under the weight of thankless roles.  Let's see how he does in the infamously terrible Doctor Who movie.

I couldn't be bothered to go search for or make screen-caps, so I've re-enacted key scenes from the Doctor Who movie with action figures and such props (index cards; candy wrappers) as came to hand.

Friday Five: Sexy Beasts

We've all felt them: the strange stirrings of attraction, however vague and however meaningless, inspired by something different. Something horrible. Something other.

Something beastly. Whether it be Smaug's sexy basso profundo or the slow-moving eroticism of a well-decayed zombie, we geeks are no strangers to the idea that, sometimes, the monsters are the most interesting characters in a book or a film or a show. They're also, occasionally, the sexiest characters. For today's Friday Five, we're unburdening ourselves of our secret - and not so secret - inhuman desires. Why not display the underside of your own libidinal rocks in the comments? We don't judge.

As he's written a story about sexy monsters for our Pandemonium anthology, we can't think of a better person to join us for this week's list than Gentleman Geek Den Patrick. Den lives in London and loves genre literature, cinema, peculiar music and writing. He can letter comics, proofread and tie his own shoe-laces. He also makes a mean cup of tea.

Monsters & Mullets: The Little Mermaid (1989)

Our generation (late X) has made it to the crossroads of cynicism and nostalgia. Our knee-jerk poo-pooing of the things we loved as children is just starting to become knee-jerk wistfulness, in part because we haven’t done much thinking about these things in recent years, and in part because we’re starting to have our own children, and want to introduce them to the things we loved ourselves. However much qualified our interest in the artefacts of our own childhoods, they remain inherently fascinating to us.

Which may explain, in part, the backlash against the so-called Disney Renaissance films of the early '90s that seems to have infected the internet of late. From Hipster Ariel to Cracked.com’s takedown of Beauty and the Beast, it seems that everyone’s talking about Disney these days. And not particularly flatteringly.

And it’s tempting to want to join that hayride. Traditional cel-animation looks impossibly dated in these halcyon days of (occasionally) exceptional CG: the camera doesn’t move, the figures appear too flat and too smooth. Everything just looks so… well, cartoony.

Monsters & Mullets: Beetlejuice (1988)

Jared and I sat down to Beetlejuice with pretty low expectations. We'd seen the film as kids, of course, and again at some point after we'd hit the puberty wall. Jared thinks he must have been about 14; I honestly have no idea how old I was when last I watched it. But our memories were hazy, all stripes and sandworms and weird subplots about model towns. It's okay, we reassured each other; we only have to watch it once.

You know what we discovered? Beetlejuice is actually pretty great.

Adam and Barbara Maitland are a pleasant couple. They have an enormous, creaky old mansion (a comfy version of the Bates Motel house) and a two weeks vacation ahead of them. They can't have kids (this is nicely, if not subtly, established). They love each other. They're happy.

Of course they die horribly.

Monsters & Mullets: Gremlins (1984)

If there is one name that looms large over the cinematic landscape of the 1980s, that name is Steven Spielberg. Spielberg had already proven his credentials with his break-out Jaws, and cemented his reputation with Raiders of the Lost Ark: both movies were popular and critical successes, and have proven enormously influential over the last three or so decades.  But ET the Extra-Terrestrial, released in 1982, brought Spielberg superdooper fame.  ET was, at the time, the most successful film ever produced, making more money at the box-office than Star Wars, garnering nine Academy Award nominations, and making Reese's Pieces famous. Today the film has a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

It also has a lot to answer for.  ET pretty much set the formula for kids' movies in the '80s.  Twinkly suburban setting?  Check.  Lonely kid, usually a caucasian boy? Check.  Kid-heavy cast?  Check. Fantastic being/ability/occurrence that adults find frightening or incomprehensible, but which improves lonely kid's life? Check.  Valuable life lessons? Check.  External authority subverted?  Check.  Central importance of family reasserted? Check and check.

And somewhere, amidst all these Spielberg-inspired - even Spielberg-created - sweet and unchallenging exercises in schlock-making for the kiddies, something else sneaked in. The Spielberg-produced Gremlins.

Gremlins is not a great movie.  It's not even a very good movie.  But it is a deeply, profoundly weird movie. 

Harry Potter and the Listicle of Pornokitsch

Well, we've read them all, and now we've seen them all. Clearly it's time for a listicle!

Favorite book: Goblet of Fire.  The early Harry Potter books (and films, Prisoner of Azkaban aside) are not works of art, not by any stretch of the imagination.  But they do convey a combination of awe and utter, staggered delight with the idea that magic is real and people can do it.  Man, these books are saying, this shit be awesome.  The later books lose much of that innocent pleasure in favor of shit getting real, and then realer and realer, until nothing's left but a bunch of balding, middle-aged characters who lived the best years of their lives before they turned 20 and are glad for it.  In the Harry Potter plot Venn diagram, Goblet alone stands as the perfect combination of "shit be awesome" and "shit be real." Goblet was also the last book where Harry Potter was, essentially, likable.

Friday Five: Our Favorite Dragons

We're celebrating Tuesday's release of Kevin Costner's epic Dances with Dragons on Friday Five today by fessing up to being giant nerds. 

Which, who or what are your favorite dragons? 

Join us as we beat our knives against the table and chant "one of us" in the comments.