Bad Movie Night (Martial Arts Style) – Edina, MN

To continue the amazing series of films we’ve been having at my house, I decided to roll out one of my all-time favorite themes for Bad Movie Night – Martial Arts. I grew up watching waaaaaaaay too much Kung Fu Theater back in the day. So I could have spouted off half a billion ridiculous kung fu movies where the mouths don’t line up with the overdubbed sound track or scenes where ridiculous and impossible fight scenes occur. However, for this group of people, you need very specific styles of martial arts to hold their attention and to bring out the cat calls, scream, and yells.

I had one movie in mind for this film from day one. The second one was up for grabs. I grabbed all of my martial arts DVDs from the basement and began previewing… wow, do I really own THAT many martial arts DVDs? Yes, I do. And yet, I couldn’t find one that would draw laughter and yelling. So I hopped on the Internet and found some recommendation of ridiculous dialog or mind blowing fight scenes. I fired up the credit card and ordered way too many more martial arts films. Then D.Rough and I drove past a Hollywood Video that was liquidating and I scored about 12 more. I spent almost two months previewing nothing but Asian films for this one night.

I told people to bring various Asian-inspired food for the potluck portion of the night and we got some winners. Bacon fried rice, peanut noodles (delicious, Low-Vee), Ramen noodles, Pocky, Choco-Pandas, disgusting jelly shooters, and EJens brought this incredibly terrible drink that looks like tadpole eggs. It was some sort of basil seed drink, but the seeds were suspended in some sort of goo pouches. He poured it into a glass and dared people to drink it. It smelled like dirt and bananas. Super weird and the seeds squeaked when you bit them – I said it was the tadpoles screaming for help, but apparently, that wasn’t as amusing as I thought. Maybe that person wasn’t as drunk as they needed to be to find me amusing!

Additionally, B.Sweet was cranking out amazing mojitos with sake in the kitchen, while sporting a killer facial hair situation!

The night of the event rolled around and I still hadn’t decided on which movie to show. I had it narrowed down to two options. I weeded out some films that will get special recognition:
- Big Man Japan – funny but not all the way through
- Shaolin Soccer – Soccer and Kung-fu, really
- Kung Fu Hustle – the box says it combines kung fu and Warner Bros cartoons
- Tokyo Gore Police – there is a gun that shoots dismembered FISTS!!!

I told the crowd they had to decide which first film we’d be watching. The choices were: The Foot Fist Way or a Manga-derived film called Cutie Honey. The Foot Fist Way is a movie about a white trash tae kwon do instructor played by Danny McBride – it’s pretty funny. Cutie Honey is a movie based on a comic hero from Japan and is geared toward 14-year-old boys. While the initial consensus was Foot Fist way (mainly because Danny McBride is hilarious), the low-brow mentality of the group won out and we got to watch Cutie Honey instead.

Cutie Honey’s father was a police chief killed by some bad guys. Somehow, Cutie has been biomechanically enhanced to be a superhero and she’s on a mission to find the bad guys. There are four clans in the city who are all working for Jill, the main bad guy (or girl in this case). There is lots of fighting and explosions and ridiculous CGI in this film, but most of it is so outlandish that you HAVE to yell along at the screen. And, as I told the people in my living room, “This film is geared to 14-year-old boys, so there’s going to be lots of boobs in it. Sadly, you won’t see any of them.” There’s some running scenes and some underwear scenes, but never do you actually see anything. Besides, everyone knows Japanese lady parts are pixilated anyway. Hahahaha. (If you’re interested, I reviewed Cutie Honey on my other blog.)

We took a break and then started the greatest bad martial arts movie of all time. It’s called The Story of Ricky-Oh (or Ricky Ho in some versions). This movie has everything, awesome martial arts, terrible overdubbing, bad acting, changing hairstyles, androgynous prison bosses, super fakey special effects and blood, a guy that kicks a dog in half, another guy that ties his own severed tendon back together with his teeth so he can continue fighting, another guy that strangles someone with his intestines, a leaf played like a flute, face slashing, a fake eye that doubles as a mint-holder, and much much more! Just watch this one with some friends and you’ll end up needing Tylenol from laughing so hard. It’s brilliant.

Overall, a fantastic night of great fun food and hilariously awesome movies. I know the next one is going to have some sort of summer theme or cheerleaders or carwashes. We’ll see how creepy I can make this experience for people. hahaha