Grainy '80s Sci-Fi TV-Movies in our Classrooms

So I'm really excited about the re/reading of all these middle school novels on the horizon. Does anyone want to do a middle school book club with me, come January? Sally, you said you'd be down. We can raid the young-adult section of our local libraries without shame.

All this talk about middle school had me thinking of other media memories inflicted on me. I spent a little while trying to find this film that we watched in my seventh grade English class. I know we also watched Schindler's List during the Holocaust unit (if your parents signed the note saying it was ok) and the TV-movie adaptation of the awesome Lathe of Heaven, which was significantly less awesome:




Lathe of Heaven is on youtube (in all 15 parts), too, but I'm not going to try and inflict that on anybody.

Anyways, after a little research I found the short film I was trying to remember, All Summer in a Day. Like Lathe it's grainy late-'70s/early-'80s sci-fi, it's kind of a bummer and it's firmly entrenched in my memory. It's all about these kids who live on a planet where it rains all day every day except very special times when the sun comes out for, like, two minutes. Did anyone else watch this?

Fun fact: this movie accurately portrays what living in Portland is like.
Fun fact #2: recently the kid who plays little bitch-ass William in this played "Loudmouth guy" in the movie Just a Little Harmless Sex opposite international film star Rachel Hunter.
Here it is in it's entirety:

Bitching Post: Americans vs. Natural Beauty

Went to the Giant's Causeway today and dealt with terrible, terrible, terrible Americans on the bus. I had already complained about the people in my study abroad group, but little did I know that some of the kids who are studying the Republic would be 10x worse. They came up en masse this weekend to go on a catered trip around NI and I tagged along with some of the people in my group. It was awful. Things that I was subjected to listening to on the bus:

• The worst game of "Would You Rather" ever. Sample questions: would you rather fuck your mom or be fucked by your dad? Would you rather get AIDs or (something equally offensive and unclever).
• The fact that most of these college-age Americans don't know what "secession" means nor do they know who Robert E. Lee was ("Was he a poet?").
• Insensitive stupid shit about Northern Ireland like "There's no old buildings 'cause they've all been bombed." They also split their group into two teams for some drinking game they have planned for later, naming themselves the IRA and the Loyalists.
• Speaking of that drinking game, they talked about it for at least five fucking hours. How can you talk about a future drinking game for that long? Why? Are you trying to impress somebody? What is there to say? "You just gotta chug it, playa."
• "That's what she said."
• A long joke about the different connotations of the phrase "eating out."
• The fact that they are all simultaneously reading books in the Twilight series (you know, the one about vampires that the 7th-graders I taught this summer read?).
• "Tonight I'm gonna get as stoned as a witch in Salem." "Weren't they burned at the stake?" "Oh, then I'm gonna get blazed." (...kinda clever comeback)
• A couple making out and dry-humping in the seat in front of me.

Despite the awesome natural beauty of the Causeway (pictures later), this trip was just a cherry on top of a delightfully shitty reading week sundae. I really forget how specialized and marginalized they people that I really enjoy spending time with are in the whole scope of people my age. I also forget how awkward I am in general around people I don't know. Things to cheer me up:

First of all, courtesy of the Miami Sun Sentinel via the AV Club: a list of the worst football rap music videos of all time. A taste - you'll think you won't want to watch all five minutes of this, but I defy you not to:



Robots! Presented in the most casually snarky, British way possible:



Also, I got three movies from the library - Ran, Bande a part, and An American Werewolf in London (which I, ironically, have never seen).

Also, I'm going to eat chicken dinosaurs for dinner. Nothing can stop me from having fun!

Get off your cellph, that cow's talking!

Today while I was scouring the Prelinger archives for some old films to watch I ran into an ad for a Northern Irish horror movie called Shrooms. It's about American students (like me!) who go to Northern Ireland (like me!) to get high in the woods (not yet).
Seeing as how it looked like B-level, straight-to-DVD horror I was pretty sure that someone would have loaded it onto Megavideo and I was right. Unfortunately this isn't B-level fun horror like Basketcase, nor F-level fun horror like Plan 9 From Outer Space. Rather, this is D-level terrible horror by an Irish sub-Eli Roth (who himself is strictly sub-par) that is so mind-numbingly, skull-scrapingly awful it makes you want to throw a petrol bomb. The dialogue bears no semblance to how real people speak, coming from three identical bimbos, a backwards-hat-wearing thug with roid-rage (named Bluto!), a muscley Jay from Jay and Silent Bob and an Irish guy who's obviously actually English.



Oh, also some drooling, livestock-screwing locals in the vein of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and every other movie that ripped it off. One of them confesses that, unlike his brother, he never fucked pigs. "My only weakness now would be for a bullcalf tied to a gate. Lovely tongue on a bullcalf - like... sandpaper." That's the authentic Irish flavor I've been trying to communicate in this blog. My other favorite moments:

British guy: One rule - no mobile phones.
Roid-rager: But I'm lost without my cellph!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Roid-rager: (on finding a strange girl in an abandoned car in the middle of the woods while wandering in his underwear) Lemme in lemme in lemme in!
(she rolls down the window)
Roid-rager: (pulls his dick out) Look what I got for you baby? Yeah, you like that.
(she obviously gives him a blowjob)
Roid-rager: Oh yeah! Yeah, babygirl. So soft. Oh!
(Oh no! It wasn't a girl at all, but an ancient druid! It pulls his dick off)

The choicest dialogue comes from the girls. Writer, Pearse Elliot must have never heard real human females talk, because judging by Shrooms their only conversations are about is sex and tampons, plus these true-to-life exchanges:

Bimbo 1: (on being charged with voyeurism) What, you think we wanted a peak at your hairy 'stache?
Bimbo 2: You know what, bitch, at least my tits are real!
Bimbo 1: Oh you wanna play like that, Chewbacca? 'Cause I will rip that hair right off you!
Bimbo 2: Fuck you.
Bimbo 1: Eat me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bimbo 2: (on a hike in the woods) I wish I'd brought adequate footwear.
Bimbo 1: Yeah, well maybe if you took better care of yourself your boyfriend wouldn't have to check me out every five minutes.
(catfight)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bimbo 1: I'm so sick of this - our bickering, the mood swings, our stupid fights when you go on the steroids, and your pimply ass... and most of all your perverted behavior.
Roid-rager: You know you're not so hot yourself.
Bimbo 1: What?
Roid-rager: You fart in your sleep
Bimbo 1: No I don't! (farts)

Slather that class on top of a bunch of quick cuts, fish-eye-lens and "am I scaring you yet?" wannabe-Ring cheap-shots and you have Shrooms! Not only is this film unrelentingly stupid, but it's never scary (watch out for those druids!). Maybe now is a good time to mention that this film was nominated for two Irish Film and Television Awards, including Best Film. Really, Ireland? Really? This?

Perhaps the scene that put it in the running is the following exchange where Roid-rager, sulkily pondering his pimply ass downs some shrooms, vomits on his own face, follows a mysterious naked girl into the woods and discovers a talking cow that sounds like the movie trailer voice-over guy. To get the full effect of this scene you have to imagine dissonant strings in the background, a cool, blue color palette and a cow speaking with the most sinister, gravely voice imaginable:

Roid-rager: Holy shit. Huh huh huh. Hello?
Cow: Well well well...
Roid-rager: Haha, you can talk.
Cow: That's cuz you're out of your mind.
Roids: You see a girl?
Cow: She went that-a way.
Roids: Thanks.
Cow: Wouldn't do that if I were you!
Roids: Why not?
Cow: You know you're fucked.
Roids: EEEEe, yes I know.
Cow: I mean.... dead fucked.
Roids: What, you're just a fuckin' cow.
Cow: A fuckin' cow... that can fuckin' talk.
Roids: I gotta go.
Cow: Yeah... bye bye.
Roids: (vomits)

Does Northern Ireland just hand out awards to every Tom, Dick and Paddy who figures out how to make a cow talk? Or is this movie actually a sly commentary on American students?
Whatever it is, I thought I'd turn it off pretty quick, but this movie sucked so hard that it sucked me in. I really wanted to see if it had bottomed out early or if there was deeper to go. Does that make Shrooms a success? Maybe...
Let me ruin the ending for you and you can decide. As she's being carted away in the ambulance after the ordeal is over, protagonist, Bimbo 3, realizes that all along the killer was, in fact HER! Why?
Because the whole time she was tripping...

...ON SHROOMS!