Watching DVDs with friends tonight? Have a game plan
Bringing friends together for an evening of movies has always been great fun. Over the years I’ve worked out that some types of films work better at specific times in the evening. Try an arrangement of three movies in this order: bad movie good movie action movie.
TEXT BREAKER: FIRST FEATURE: THE TURKEY
There’s a lot of fun to be had with terrible movies and I recommend starting the evening with one. Everybody’s still in a chatty mood and latecomers might still be arriving so why not start things off with a film that demands minimal attention from the audience? This does not mean that the film should be dull; what you want is a movie that is absolutely ridiculous — something that will eventually feature such outlandish visual imagery that everybody stops socializing for a minute and gapes at the sight of it. Some prime examples:
• House of the Dead (2003): Notoriously wretched director Uwe Boll began the “video game adaptation” phase of his career with this wonderfully stupid zombie flick; still one of the most entertaining “bad” movies in recent years. Classic dialogue: “You made yourself immortal! Why?” “To live forever!”
• Tarkan vs the Vikings (1971): Ridiculous Turkish cinema at its finest. The costumes alone are hilarious; the title character dresses like Barney Rubble and the main villain is a dead ringer for Asterix the Gaul. Everybody else is covered in so much pastel-coloured faux fur it looks like the castle is being attacked by The Muppets.
• Starcrash (1978): An unbelievable Italian Star Wars rip-off enlivened by some truly ludicrous special effects and the welcome sight of a smoking hot Caroline Munroe running around in a space bikini. All of the stars in the sky are lit up in primary colours like a Christmas tree and the villain’s main spacecraft resembles a giant hand complete with movable fingers. There’s also a robot cowboy a mascara-wearing David Hasselhoff a lightsaber battle and Christopher Plummer as the Emperor of the Universe who saves the day by commanding his underlings to “halt the flow of time!”
TEXT BREAKER: SECOND FEATURE: THE HIDDEN GEM
The temptation will be there to fire up a second “bad” movie but resist it. After sitting through “the Turkey” everybody’s probably in the mood for a step up in quality. Ideally opt for something really good that most of your friends haven’t seen yet.
• In Bruges (2008): Astonishingly good non-genre flick about two hitmen vacationing in Belgium after a botched assignment. It’s funny unpredictable suspenseful and heartbreaking. If there’s any justice word of mouth will make this flick a hit on video.
• Flirting with Disaster (1996): OK we’ve all seen one too many “wacky” Ben Stiller comedies but this one is so good you can understand why the guy stuck with the genre. Everything works beautifully nothing seems forced and the whole thing is laugh-out-loud funny from start to finish. Every single person I’ve shown this to loved it.
• Spaced (1999-2001): Now that this brilliant British sitcom is finally available in Canada it’s time to initiate your friends into the cult of Spaced . The scripts are clever the geek-culture references come thick and fast and the “zombie” episode paved the way for director Edgar Wright’s equally superb Shaun of the Dead (2004). There’s only 14 episodes in total so portion them out sparingly and move on to…
TEXT BREAKER: THIRD FEATURE: THE THRILL RIDE
By this point it’ll be getting late and energy might be flagging but the evening doesn’t feel over yet. You need something short exciting easy to follow and fast paced. Like these:
• District B13 (2004): Oh hell yes. Escape from New York (1981) meets Jackie Chan-style action sequences as a virtuous street tough and a kung fu supercop join forces in order to kick-box dozens of bad guys and defuse a neutron bomb in the heart of France’s worst slum. The stunt work is eye-popping and more importantly real. We gape at Cyril Raffaelli’s unstoppable badass and get to see jaw dropping parkour moves by David Belle the dude who actually invented parkour. If you doze off during this one there’s something seriously wrong with you.
• Ninja Scroll (1993): Eschewing realism all together (and all the more exciting for it) is this rabid anime classic. Giants with granite skin swarms of killer hornets and hordes of ninjas shredding a forest with a barrage of shuriken — this one’s filled with superpowered evil warriors and it hits the ground running and never stops.
• John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982): A gruesome suspense-filled classic that deserves revisiting from time to time. Very heavy on the testosterone and on astonishing non-CGI special effects.
