And I'm Victoria!

Well, I've been running a little heavy on horror movies these past few posts.  Let's get a little lighter and talk about something really fun: Spice World!

Is Spice World the best movie of all time?  Of course not.  But is it damn fun?  Absolutely!  It's so silly in that British way that I just love, and the movie knows it's not out to accomplish anything grand.  It's of course a retread of A Hard Days Night with the Spice Girls running around London, singing, dancing, and trying to be good friends while enduring the pressures of fame.

I used to really love the Spice Girls when I was a kid, but I think everyone did.  Come on, when you hear the start of this, doesn't it just brighten your day a little?



I remember my best friend and I wanting to see it in theaters really badly, but somehow we never got around to it.  Or rather, our parents never got around to getting us there.  But after the movie came out on video, my dad got me some kind of advanced copy from a work associate of his, which is especially impressive because he didn't even work in entertainment (nice string pulling Dad!).  The only problem with the video was, because it was some promotional advanced copy, a watermark message would scroll across the screen from time to time with dire warnings about not copying or distributing it.  But it didn't matter because you could still see the movie, and I got to see it early on beautiful VHS.

Spice World is just campy as all get out, full of celebrity cameos, and really fantastically silly moments, plus Spice Girls music (which may or may not be your favorite thing).

This is, easily, my favorite part of the movie though:



Victoria, aka Posh Spice, is actually suprisingly funny in this movie.  She'll never be a great comedienne, but she nails whatever they give her here.  She does her goofy stuff with a straight face, and the mash up between her "Posh Spice" cool, aloof persona and the wacky goings on around her make her a sort of straight man, but a disdainful, idiotic one.

Someone helpfully did a super cut of all her moments (this person also has too much time on their hands).  Among the "highlights," I think I like it best when she refuses the obstacle course at the 2:00 mark and prissily walks past it in her heels and tiny dress (which is so short, you'll notice she has to keep yanking it down).

(Skip the bus scene at the end of the clip for the moment, there's more on that later)


My second favorite part is the capper to a running gag they had going.  In the movie, the Spice Girls manager, played awesomely by Richard E. Grant, is hearing movie pitches from two Hollywood guys, played by Mark McKinney (of Kids in the Hall Fame) and George Wendt.  Each pitch has been increasingly ridiculous, such as suggesting a movie where Sporty Spice would try to win a skiing championship to save the girls if she could just get over her crippling fears of heights, skiis, and snow.

The final pitch they deliver is a self aware tie in with the plot of the movie, which is essentially that they have to get to the concert in time, but of course there are Hollywood "rules" they have to follow and a chase ensues.  Richard E. Grant listens to the insane description of everything happening (while we viewers see it as it's happening), and then when they don't rush through the door as promised in the pitch, he shouts "YOU LIED!" and tries to choke Mark McKinney.  The unexpected intensity of his reaction is what sells the joke for me.

Long story short, watch the first three minutes of this clip to get the idea.  You can also stick around and watch them perform "Spice Up Your Life" while everyone dances, including Roger Moore.  I know I just did.



The movie serves as a silly time capsule of 90s fashion and pop culture, and captures a moment when the group was at the absolute height of their fame.  They must have known they wouldn't be around forever (brief reunion tour not withstanding), so why not preserve some of that in a way that includes Meat Loaf making a less than timely "I Would Do Anything For Love" joke?



The movie never takes itself seriously, and it was never meant to.  Some of the jokes are simple or even lame, but I think the more unexpected ones (like the few shown above) are really fun and keep it from being completely terrible.  It's a ridiculous movie with a ridiculous premise, a slip of a plot, and no major character development, but that's not the point.  It was never going to be a grand cinematic outing, it was going to be a fun movie about a fun group of girls with stock personalities driving around in what appears to be Dr. Who's TARDIS disguised as a double decker bus (remember, it's bigger on the inside) getting into vignette adventures with the likes of Hugh Laurie, Alan Cumming, Stephen Fry, Bob Hoskins, and Elton John.  And damn it, I like it.

Plus, Richard O'Brien, better known as Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, appears as a nefarious paprazzo.  I'm not saying he didn't do it for money, because let's face it they all did, but if you have the creator of probably the best known camp movie ever showing up in your campy version of A Hard Days Night, well I think that serves as an unwritten seal of approval.

So, if you're feeling a like watching something light and want to do the equivalent of dumping cotton candy on your brain, revisit Spice World.

And remember, there's always room for wacky photo shoots!

Peaches? Peaches!

I was going to originally write this post about seeing the movie Selena for the first time and learning about her life, and other more serious ruminations. But I'm saving that for another post where I can pay her and the film its proper respects.

Because I just found out that the movie Amityville 1992: It's About Time is on YouTube in full.

Backstory on the Selena/Amityville connection: I was at a good friend's slumber party when I was in middle school, and both movies were in the stack of videos for the night. Why both were in the rotation I have no idea, but any good girls' slumber party should have a mix of laugh inducing horror and tear jerking romance or weepies.

Amityville 1992: It's About Time, is about a CLOCK from the Amityville house that wreaks havoc on a family. And it's pretty much as amazing as it sounds (if you love terrible horror movies and making fun of them as I do).

There are three things that I distinctly remember about this movie, apart from all the laughter.

The first that leaps to mind features an old lady looking for her dog, crying out, "Peaches? Peaches?" At some point, the dog has been eaten by a pool drain, and the lady is about to make a nasty discovery.

Check it out, starting at 3:50. And brace yourself, it's pretty gross.



Now, you might say, "You terrible girls, how could you laugh at that poor dog and old lady?" Well, as you may have guessed the movie itself is pretty silly. Something about the voice yelling "Peaches" over and over, and the timing of the sound effect just sent us into peals of laughter. And the dog's name is Peaches for crying out loud.

Secondly, we were all beyond skeeved out when the daughter of the family becomes possessed and decides to seduce this kid.



That's her brother by the way. Believe me, I re-watched a couple scenes from earlier in the film to try to make it less nasty and say, "Oh, well she's his step-sister, so it's only slightly creepy." But re-watching the opening scenes has made it unfortunately clear that they share DNA.

Finally, our heroine is able to undo everything the evil clock did and the movie starts over. At that point, she beats the hell out of the clock and walks out, but not before this amazing exchange:

"What was that all about?"
"It's about time, that's what!"

You need to jump to about the 7:57 mark to enjoy it:



Classic.

Many thanks to Water Cooler Films on YouTube for hosting the shorter chunk of the movie.

But don't you think it might be worth it to watch it in all its glory?

We Gotta Find A Place to Crash!

I used to really love going to the video store. In fact, I miss going to the video store. I miss wandering from section to section, picking up titles based on the covers and reading the backs, trying to decide if I'd be interested in it. Sometimes, you could find some real gems, something you overlooked when it was in theaters or just flat out never heard of.

And other times, you find some fantastically amazing crap.

For years, every time my best friend and I would go into the local video store, we would always see this box cover:

So, it's an art film then?

It intrigued, it bewildered, it tantalized, and it made us ask just what the heck was this movie? No matter who we were with, we'd ask, "Can we rent this?" And it was always met with, "Ha ha, very funny guys. No." We knew as long as we couldn't rent videos without a parent, we weren't going to see it. But we'd always look at it, every time, without fail.

"One day," we'd say. "One day."

And then, sometime around the start of college, we did it. We rented Motel Hell. It was tucked in along with a handful of other cheesy horror movies, our favorite for sleepovers and birthday parties. I remember we didn't end up watching it until morning, but, in so, so many ways, it was worth the wait.

Motel Hell is the classic story of a farmer and his sister, who either kidnap people from their motel, or cause their cars to crash off the road for their human sausages. They keep the people in the ground, buried up to their necks with their vocal chords cut so they can't scream, and keep them hypnotized until they're processed into "Farmer Vincent's Fritters." But one day, a young couple are caught in the trap. Farmer Vincent becomes smitten with the little lady, and she does in return. Farmer Vincent's sister is jealous/flat out crazy and is really committed to the whole "cannibal sausage" plan, eventually threatening Farmer Vincent's beloved. At some point another young man joins the equation, creating one of the weirdest love triangles in horror history.

It's just so hard to decide between the admittedly bland but far less murderous younger man and the incredibly creepy, cannibal farmer and his sister.

Our heroine is pretty game to hook up with Farmer Vincent, and it's just really weird. Of course, as these romances do, it all kind of falls apart when she discovers the horrible secret and is almost turned into sausage by his sister. She escapes with the indistinguishable young guy while the people in the ground bust out and attack Farmer Vincent and his sister. I'm pretty sure everyone dies with the exception of our heroine and the random young man.

Perhaps justifiably, there aren't many video clips of the movie online, except this trailer.



The grainy quality coupled with the surprisingly graphic shots for a trailer really don't do justice to how supremely silly everything in the movie actually is. You can also spot a few shots of the van for the band Ivan and The Terribles, who are responsible for the best scene in the entire movie.

The driver of the van is a very Rasputin-looking member of the band Ivan and The Terribles. The scene shows the band smoking weed, drinking, and generally being an awesome late 70s band. I forgot exactly what prompts it, but the driver says, "We gotta find a place to crash."

And then the van crashes.

Maybe you had to be there, or have to actually see the scene, but by God it is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life. The timing of it is absolutely amazing, and the look of the band just adds to the overall impact of what I'm guessing wasn't supposed to be a joke, but ended up hilarious anyway. They of course become part of the Farmer Vincent garden patch, but are also around at the end for the cannibal vegetable attack.

So if you're ever wandering around one of the last of the video stores, looking for something strange and hilarious, I recommend Motel Hell.

Is that a garden of people? Oh, Motel Hell, wonders never cease!

It's Just So Sad!

Several of my friends adored Josh Hartnett when we were teenagers. I'm not sure who I was giddy for at the time, but I wasn't a fan. I just didn't get it. Where was the pizzazz, the personality?

Eh, I'm not that excited.

I liked Ben Affleck a little more at the time, so I was willing to check out Pearl Harbor when the posse got together one summer afternoon to head to the movies.

Oh, that Affleck.

I didn't really care for the movie. I had the same problem with Pearl Harbor that I did with Titanic. I was ultimately more interested in what was going on around the main characters than the characters themselves.

However, the silly love triangle between Affleck, Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale resulted in the most incredible overreaction I've ever seen in my life.

To refresh your memory, Kate Beckinsale dates Ben Affleck before the events of Pearl Harbor. She thinks he dies during the attack and seeks solace in the arms of his best friend, Josh Hartnett, and gets pregnant with his baby. Somehow, Affleck comes back, everything is more or less forgiven, they go off on the Doolittle raids in Japan with Alec Baldwin, where Josh Hartnett dies. Affleck returns to Beckinsale with the bad news, and they raise Josh Hartnett's son together as their own.



Right around the 2:30 mark is when my friend completely lost it. She started crying really hard as the image flowed and the credits rolled. (Apologies if the audio is too low, that's how the link came. Plus, do you really want to hear the malarkey that Michael Bay wrote?)

With a huge sob and a sniffle, she exclaimed, "He looks....just....like him!!" We started to leave the theater, but the tears were a-flowing like you wouldn't believe.

We talked her down and she was able to laugh it off, admitting that she probably overreacted. But never before or since have I seen someone burst into tears that badly during a movie (except that time I watched Selena at a slumber party, but that's a whole 'nother post).