'Hightlights' of Bad Movie Night

As advertised, I present you with the highlights of our semi- regular Bad Movie Night last Thursday. There were only five guys in attendance so we had more room than usual on the two basement couches. I assure you all that cuddling was not necessary. This time. The evening had a decidedly French flavour and was unique in the fact we had 3 short films as trailers before the main feature.

The first trailer, and I must say easily the highlight of the evening for me, was a 10 minute film called 'Le Queloune' (The Clown) from 2008. You might sub-title it Zombie Clown, but I suppose the title character is a zombie in a classical sense. I'll let the horror people decide for themselves. I searched IMDB but could find no entry for this feature. The clown in question is played by French actor Dominique Pinon and he's absolutely brilliant as the resurrected clown. If you are not frightened by clowns, and choose to view the movie, watch his mannerisms closely. It's a humorous film in the macabre sense, high quality and well worth the 10 minute investment of your time. I would say the 1/2 million hits it's had in the past year is a testament to its popularity. Click here for the link to the YouTube film.

The next short film was an American WWII training movie on "How to Fly a P-47" aircraft. It was part 2 of 3 and they are all available to view on YouTube as well. It was a basic trainer about ground handling at take-off, standard flight and landing the aircraft. The movie was pretty dry, as you would expect from the air force in 1943, but gave a bit of insight into the technology of the day and all of the bells and whistles that need manipulating during a standard flight. We have a friend who flew Lancaster bombers during WWII, and it gave me a better appreciation of what he would have had to do (except on a larger scale) to fly an aircraft. I would only recommend it for the war buff. You can link to that YouTube video here.

The other short movie was quite different. It was a French film by Oscar-winning director Claude Lalouch called 'C'etait un Rendezvous' (The Rendezvous) from 1976. The story is that he was just done shooting a movie in Paris and had 12 minutes of film left and the use of a gyro-stabilized camera mount. He mounted the camera to the grill of his Mercedes and went for an early morning non-stop drive across Paris. You get quite the sense of speed from the shifting of gears, revving of the motor and squealing breaks. Mr. Lalouch noted that the route driven was only 6 1/2 miles long and he drove no faster than 85mph at any time. It's an even better view on a large-screen TV with quality speakers. Do watch this film...it's worth the 9 minute investment of time. You can link to the IMDB information here and watch the film on YouTube here.

And of course, there was our feature film which must live up to the billing of Bad to make the evening a success. And we weren't disappointed. "Morgane et ses Nymhes" (Girl Slaves of Morgana LaFay) was another French film from 1971. It is billed as a fantasy/horror. I didn't find much horrific about the movie but it did have a surrealistic, other-worldly feel to it. This movie scored a 9 out of 10 for the WTF factor...two women get lost in the woods trying to drive somewhere. They bed down in a straw-filled barn, make out and fall asleep. One wakes up to find the other missing and wanders through the woods, gets on a self propelled dingy and is taken to an island with a castle. Then it gets weird...

There was little plot to the story and a number of nude scenes with women making out were thrown in attempting to distract the male viewer from realizing there was little plot. It got to the point that even the naked women couldn't hold our attention. The title character Morgane had a harem of women kept at her castle in what seemed to be a middle-age, fairy-like time period. We tried to amuse ourselves by guessing at the gender of the diminutive, hunch-backed servant Gurth but they eventually referred to it as a 'he' so we couldn't even play that game any more. I must say, for 1971 there was a lot of nudity and more than a little alluding to lesbianism in this movie. If that sort of stuff is relevant to the plot line and moving the story along I'm all for it. The problem here is we had no plot and it was all fluff and filler. Yes people, another successful choice of bad movie that I can't recommend to you. But perhaps you like that sort of thing and will check it out anyway...here's the link to IMDB.