Meatballs Part II

There’s trouble at Camp Sasquatch when the camp across the lake, Camp Patton, threatens to revoke Camp Sasquatch’s access to the lake. What’s a Summer Camp without a lake? Going for a Hail Mary, Coach Giddy strikes a deal Colonel Hershy, whichever camp wins the Champ of the Lake boxing match at the end of the Summer wins the rights to the lake. After Camp Patton takes out Boomer, Camp Sasquatch’s boxing hopeful, it’s up to a juvenile delinquent counselor-in-training named Flash to save the day. Spoiler alert: he gets some help from a visiting alien named Meathead. Meatballs Part II is a goofy 80s comedy that wants to be edgy and raunchy at times but never crosses the PG line. The cast includes Richard Mulligan, Kim Richards, John Larroquette, Paul Reubens, Archie Hahn, Jason Hervey and Donald Gibb. Meatballs Part II is a dumb movie filled with tons of gags, many of which have not aged well, but it maintains an easygoing charm.

Rating: 61%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Fun Fact: In one scene, some of the campers are seen watching director Ken Wiederhorn's 1977 Nazi zombie movie Shock Waves.

Invaders From Mars

A kid sees a flying saucer crash, and soon evil aliens are taking over every adult in town! It’s pretty decent for a kid friendly sci fi horror flick, even if I hated the ending so, so much (which apparently the 50s version did too).

RATING: 54%

Contamination

Some space aliens decide to lay eggs on earth and totally rip off Ridley Scott’s Alien for Italian reasons. It’s not good but there’s some fun splatter in it.

RATING: 46%

Alien: Romulus

A poor miner and her robot brother try to escape their planet with a salvaged ship fulla eggs, and not the kind you can benedict! The first two thirds are kind of bland, but the last bit is great.

RATING: 77%

Kids vs. Aliens

From the heart of Dartmouth comes Jason Eisener's Kids vs. Aliens. Imagine if the kids from Stranger Things met up with the kids from Super 8 but instead of being into Spielberg and D&D, they were really into Troma and the WWE. It's a coming of age tale about family and creativity that's not afraid to get weird and gross at times.

Rating: 60%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Jolly Old St. Dick

I definitely watched 3rd Rock from the Sun for a chunk of its six season run back in the day, but very little of it has stayed with me in the years since. I've actually tried to revisit the series after seeing it pop up on various streaming services, but I found the show's aggressive laugh track to be distracting. However, while watching "Jolly Old St. Dick," I couldn't help but appreciate the show's pacing and jokes per minute ratio. With the four main characters each getting a plot thread, plus appearances from half a dozen supporting characters, it's a wonder that the show wasn't a jumbled mess. As a youngster, I was in a school play about aliens coming to Earth and learning the true meaning of Christmas, so it was especially nostalgic for me to watch this episode where the alien leads get to be confused, excited, frustrated and ultimately delighted by the whole Christmas experience.

Rating: Travel Mug%

The Last Starfighter

Breaking the high score on an arcade game lands Alex Rogan on the front lines of an intergalactic war. With the fate of the universe hanging in the balance, Alex must choose between his dangerous destiny and his boring old life back at the trailer park. The Last Starfighter is equal parts Star Wars, Excalibur and Galaga. It was not a successful movie when it was released but it has since gained a cult following. The movie features a considerable amount of CGI for its time. And while that CGI definitely looks dated now, it's far from embarrassing. There's plenty of CGI from the 90s that hasn't held up as well as the effects in The Last Starfighter.

Rating: 73%

Fun Fact: Nick Castle, the director, worked with John Carpenter on Dark Star, Halloween and Escape from New York.

(Image from Wikipedia)

Voyage of the Rock Aliens

A group of aliens, who look like discount Devo, come to Earth in a guitar-shaped spaceship to discover the source of Rock and Roll. The leader of the aliens falls for an Earth girl named Dee Dee. Dee Dee's boyfriend Frankie doesn't take too kindly to the intergalactic interloper and sics his gang/band, The Pack, on the aliens. Meanwhile, for some reason, two maniacs escape from the local mental hospital and start a killing spree. Unfortunately for the good folks of Speelburgh (yes, that's the name of the town where all this takes place), the local Sheriff, played by Ruth Gordon, is too occupied with hunting down the aliens to notice all the corpses piling up around her. And, I'm not kidding when I say this, that's not even a comprehensive account of all the weird shit in this movie. I'm brushing past the robot voiced by Peter Cullen, the Jermaine Jackson cameo, the polluted lake, the battle of the bands and the Lovecraftian tentacle monster. Voyage of the Rock Aliens feels less like a movie and more like a series of music videos cobbled together into a loose narrative. It's a fascinating thing to behold. Highly recommended for lovers of bad movies.

Rating: 52%

Fun Fact: One of the escaped maniacs in the movie was played by Michael Berryman, the poster boy for Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes.

(Image from Wikipedia)

The Tommyknockers

 

A quiet New Zealand, erm, New England town gets turned all fliparoo whenever a lady digs up an ancient crashed spaceship, hypnotizing everyone into building inventions like laser lipsticks. It may be the worst Stephen King movie I've watched so far, but at least there's an alcoholic poet who tries to save the day.

RATING: 17%

The Dark Half

A Cosmic Christmas

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A young boy encounters three wise aliens who have come to Earth to discover the true meaning of Christmas. The young boy and his pet goose, Lucy, take the aliens all around town trying to show them the reason for the season. Mostly, they just encounter people being shitty to one another. I guess some things never really change. Eventually, all the townsfolk come together to rescue our lead and a punk-ass goose thief after they fall through the ice on a lake. The aliens, content that they finally understand the true meaning of Christmas, take off and everyone in town has a rip-roaring house party.

Rating: Goose Sweater%

(Image from Nelvana.com)

The Faculty

Remember in the 90s when meth was a drug that was "cool" enough that you could have the high school meth dealer in a horror flick defeat the alien teachers with his meth?

RATING: 36%

Star Trek: The Next Generation - "Schisms"

The crew can't sleep well because they're getting abducted by space aliens. I mean, space aliens that are even more space-alieny than usual.

RATING: 55%

Star Trek: The Next Generation - "First Contact"

Riker gets injured while posing as an alien on a first contact mission which is pretty interesting though points off for Riker being coerced into sex with an alien being played for laughs.

RATING: 57%

Enterprise S3E3 - "Extinction"

Archer, Reed, and Sato get turned into aliens by a disease. No.

RATING: 16%

Enterprise S1E21 - "Vox Sola"

After making some aliens mad by being culturally insensitive, the Enterprise gets invaded by a gooey space web alien who cocoons a bunch of crewmembers. Pretty creepy TOS style working here.

RATING: 70%

Enterprise S1E11 - "Silent Enemy"

Some tall, skinny alien bros decide to crash Enterprise's space party they're throwing for Malcolm, so the Enterprise decides to invent phasers to teach these space bros a lesson.

RATING: 21%

Enterprise S1E8 - "Civilization"

Some space pirates are mining poison out of a Medieval style alien town, so Captain Archer pulls a Kirk and makes out with a space lady to save the day.

RATING: 36%

Enterprise S1E4 - "Unexpected"

You know that thing where you meet an alien species so you accidentally hold hands and then grow a bunch of extra nipples because you're now pregnant? No?

RATING: 69%

V/H/S/2

So I didn't really like the first movie in this anthology series, but then a few different people told me the sequel was worth it because there was one great segment included. Unfortunately, every person forgot which number segment it was so I was doomed to watch this whole movie. Like the first one, some people are compelled for some reason to watch a bunch of snuff films, which, despite the fact that this takes place in modern times and every individual short film was shown in context to be shot digitally, have all been transferred down to big ol' unreliable VHS copies. Anyway, there's a boring ghost one, a boring zombie one, A TOTALLY BONKERS AMAZING SHORT HORROR FILM THAT DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE PACKAGED IN THIS SHITTY DEAL, and a boring alien one. Just watch the third segment and you'll be fine.

RATING: 85% (Third segment)
RATING: 26% (Whole movie)

Paul

As cliché as it may sound, Paul is a movie made for geeks, by geeks, about geeks. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost play two British sci-fi enthusiasts traveling across America in an RV who encounter an extra-terrestrial name Paul. The movie's got car chases, explosions, references to classic (and not so classic) sci-fi films, and a subplot that seems to exist only to make jokes at the expense of fundamentalist Christians. While Paul might not be as good as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz (Pegg and Frost's two prior cinematic pairings), it works along similar lines, mining laughs from pop culture's past and finding a satisfying center in a story based around friendship. And jokes about three-breasted women, can't forget about those.

Rating: 79%

(Image from filmofilia.com)