The Screengrab : the smokers

Unwatchable #37: “Bad Girls from Valley High”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

First let me tell you a little about the movie I won’t be telling you about today. As any loyal Unwatchable reader knows, occasionally the IMDb Bottom 100 list presents us with a stumper. As I consulted the list in preparation for today’s entry, the title at #37 struck me as vaguely familiar: Hababam sinifi 3,5. I checked the archives and sure enough, the originally scheduled title for Unwatchable #59 was Hababam sinifi askerde, an earlier installment in the Hababam sinifi series of Turkish comedies. Apparently there’s a hardcore band of Hababam sinifi haters in Turkey…which doesn’t really help my cause since these movies aren’t available in the U.S. However, I was able to find a few YouTube clips, and I like to think this one captures the essence of whatever it is that makes these movies so hateable:

With that out of the way, it’s time to find a substitute for Unwatchable #37, which I accomplish by consulting the current version of the Bottom 100 list and selecting the first title that does not appear on the list I’ve been working from all along. And that selection, as you already know, is 2005’s Bad Girls from Valley High. A promising title, you might agree, but alas…

Like the earlier Unwatchable The Smokers, what we have here is a “chick clique” flick that draws its meager inspiration from the likes of Heathers and its many imitators. The bee-yootiful Julie Benz (Angel, Dexter), a good decade too old for the role, stars as 17-year-old Danielle, queen bee of Valley Gorge High School. Her obligatory satellites are Tiffany (Nicole Bilderback) and Brooke (Monica Keena), the one with a sliver of a conscience. Danielle may be Miss Popularity, but there’s one thing she wants but doesn’t have: dreamy Drew (former child star Jonathan Brandis). Drew only has eyes for his girlfriend Charity Chase, until the day Danielle and her minions decide to put a scare into her and accidentally cause her to fall to her death.

A year later, the students of Valley Gorge High are still mourning what they think is Charity’s suicide, none more so than Drew. Danielle is ready to make her move on him, but she is thwarted by the arrival of Romanian exchange student Katarina, who soon has Drew emerging from his funk. Danielle plots to get rid of Katarina in similar fashion as Charity, but her efforts are hampered when she, Tiffany and Brooke begin to suffer from humiliating bodily breakdowns. Tiffany’s eyesight worsens, Brooke gets all farty and Danielle starts uncontrollably whizzing herself. The bad girls begin to suspect Katarina is actually Charity’s ghost, and that she’s put a curse on them.

Aside from providing humiliating late career roles for Christopher Lloyd (as a suspicious, accident-prone teacher) and Janet Leigh (as a comatose stroke victim – don’t ask), Bad Girls from Valley High is just the sort of dopey, barely competent high school comedy you’d expect to go straight to video after sitting on a shelf for five years, which it did. The suicide storyline is particularly queasy-making in retrospect, as co-star Brandis killed himself between the time of shooting and the eventual DVD release. I guess I’ll never know whether or not this is a worse movie than Hababam sinifi 3,5; that will simply have to remain one of the enduring mysteries…of the Unwatchable.

Previously on Unwatchable:
38. Chairman of the Board
39. The Invisible Maniac
40. Son of the Mask
41. Troll 2
42. Zombie Nightmare

Unwatchable Recap: 71-80

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:00:00 GMT

It’s time for part three of the Unwatchable Halftime Report. As you must know by now, I am watching and reviewing every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Last week I hit #51, which means I’m halfway home. Next week we’ll get started on the 50 worst movies, but I’m putting that off as long as I possibly can so that we can enjoy the fruits of my labor so far. We’ve been tackling the Unwatchables to date in groups of ten, and today it’s time for # 71-80.

80. The Smokers. “They smoke. They smoke a lot. They smoke the cigarettes and they smoke the pot. Also, they have boy troubles.”

79. Anus Magillicutty. “When it was over, I found myself actively wishing harm on those who made it, any loved ones who encouraged them to make it, and their employers (should they exist) who wittingly or not subsidized its making.”

78. The Quick and the Undead. “What we have here is your basic meat-and-potatoes (but mostly meat) post-apocalyptic zombie western.”

77. BloodRayne 2: Deliverance. “Sure, in her leather cowgirl outfit she looks like she should be pouring Jager shots and dancing on the bar at Coyote Ugly, but she’s handy with swords and guns that fire silver bullets rubbed in garlic and blessed with holy water. Her showdown with Billy the Kid is one for the ages, assuming the ages were between 9 and 9:30 last night.”

76. Kickboxer 3: The Art of War. “The high point of Kickboxer 3 arrives with a montage of wise Xian’s efforts to heal Sloane in time for the fight. He collects various roots and mouse tails and the venom from a snake to prepare a healing elixir, then smears Sloane’s body with some sort of fungal poultice. Hey, it works!”

75. The Last Sign. “I’m immediately suspicious of any movie that opens with a shitload of logos for companies I’ve never heard of. This makes me think what I’m about to watch is more of a tax shelter than a motion picture.”

74. You Got Served. “Can David and Elgin squash their beef in time to bring home the big prize? And did it really, really embarrass me to type the phrase ‘squash their beef’ just now? The answer to both questions is the same.”

73. Fascination. “The first liaison between Scott and Kelly takes place on a slanted corrugated tin roof in a photogenic rainstorm that comes out of nowhere. Just when you’re thinking, ‘Gee, looks like fun, but also a good way to fall to your death,’ Scott and Kelly slip and nearly fall to their deaths.”

72. Meet the Spartans. “Really, it’s not like I’m looking for some explanation for Britney Spears being in ancient Sparta. I realize it’s all part of the free-wheeling zaniness. But you can’t just have her shaving her head and flashing her girl parts. We’ve already seen that.”

71. Gigli. “J-Lo is also stuck with a sub-Tarantino soliloquy on the subtleties of ripping someone’s eyeball out of its socket. It’s almost harder to listen to than ‘Jenny From the Block’.”

81-90
91-100

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: June 28-July 4, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Hey gang, we're taking the day off to roast some weenies and blow a few bottle rockets off the roof of Screengrab headquarters. But that's no reason you can't celebrate your independence by catching up on the week in Screengrab!

Do your patriotic duty and check out America the Beautiful: 15 Movies That Show What's Right with U.S. (Parts One, Two and Three)

Celebrate your Independence Day with, er, Independence Day. Either that or cheer on our national pastime with The Bad News Bears Go to Japan.

Here's an All-American Gal for ya! OK, a South African All-American Gal, but still: Charlize Theron Is a Sexual Creature.

If you have the day off, why not catch up with Wall-E? We investigated director Andrew Stanton's Retro-Futurism and pondered whether Wall-E and Silent Running were Separated at Birth.

When I'm grilling my burgers, I like to crank up the Superfly soundtrack, especially if it's a Long Hot Summer.

No celebration of what makes America great would be complete without The Joker, The Smokers and The Midnight Tokers. (At least, we assume they were toking something to conceive a sequel to 300.)

You know who wasn't American? Derek Jarman. However, Don S. Davis was.

And finally, we hope you all are taking a much-deserved Requiem for a Day Off.

Unwatchable #80: “The Smokers”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Take a look at that DVD cover and you’ll probably think you have a pretty good idea what to expect from The Smokers – a “chick clique” flick in the vein of Heathers, Mean Girls and Jawbreaker. At times it does play like that sort of movie, but at other times, it strives to present some big ideas. Some big, dumb ideas.

The Smokers was clearly made by someone who once read that a gun introduced in the first act must go off in the third, but didn’t get much beyond that chestnut as far as the finer points of storytelling are concerned. When it was over, I immediately went to the IMDb to find out who was responsible and what else they might have done. The writer/director in question is one Kat Slater, and here are some of the films she has made since The Smokers: Young Sluts, Inc. 4, Young Sluts, Inc. 6, Cum Swappers 1, Cum Swappers 2, Cum Swallowers, Cum Swallowers 3 and Campus Confessions 6-9. Those titles being a little too subtle for me, I did some research and it turns out they’re all hardcore porn releases from Hustler. I found this a bit surprising, given the extreme feminist ideas explored in The Smokers, but as I believe I mentioned, they are very dumb feminist ideas, explored very poorly.

The Smokers are Jefferson (Dominique Swain, Adrian Lyne’s Lolita), Karen (Busy Phillips of Freaks and Geeks) and Lisa (Keri Lynn Pratt, Miss Teen New Hampshire 1994), three students at the upscale boarding school Lindenhurst Academy. They smoke. They smoke a lot. They smoke the cigarettes and they smoke the pot. Also, they have boy troubles. Lisa’s boyfriend David cheats on her, Jefferson falls for a gay singer and Karen gets the brush-off after a one-night stand in the back of a limo. After Jefferson’s wacko sister Lincoln (where have you gone, Thora Birch?) pulls a gun on Karen (all in good fun, of course), the Smokers decide to use the weapon to turn the tables on the male of the species.

Thanks to the movie’s wildly inconsistent tone, it’s hard to say how we’re supposed to take this development. Is it just a goof when they sexually humiliate David at gunpoint, or is it rape? If it is just a goof and we’re meant to take it all lightly, what about the later scene in which Karen is date-raped on the hood of her one-night stand’s limo? It’s a disturbing moment deprived of any meaningful context. If The Smokers can’t decide how it feels about its own message of empowerment – that is, whether it’s a satirical take or a cautionary tale or even a genuine call to arms – then how are we supposed to figure it out? It’s not that the movie is being deliberately ambiguous, it’s just inept filmmaking hardly aided by unappealing performances, notably by the shrill Phillips.

I did find one hint as to the filmmaker’s intentions after the fact. If you check out the Amazon customer reviews of The Smokers, you’ll find this comment from one Kat Slater: “Finally a chic flick without all the wimpy girls. These girls are cool. It's very stylish and great preformances by Thora Birch and Dominique Swain. I loved it! And guys... you want to see what girls are all about... this is it!” So…this is the same person who went on to make movies with titles referring to women as semen receptacles? I think I’m more confused than ever.

Previously on Unwatchable:
81. Soccer Dog: The Movie
82. American Soldiers
83. First Sunday
84. It’s Pat
85. Battlefield Earth