Alec Reviews Class of 1999

As a fan of bad movies, I am a fan of the YouTube movie section.  Yes, YouTube has a movie section.  They recently branched out and have added many higher quality movies that you have to pay to watch, however I was using it when almost all the movies were free and almost all the movies were terrible.  Those terrible free movies are still there.  There are even some gems amongst them, like the fantastic Wheels of Meals (Starring Jackie Chan).

I was perusing the selection of free action movies on YouTube, when I came across one I hadn't seen before.  The cover has a picture of a cyborg, and the title is "CLASS OF 1999."  Upon further examination, it's a sequel to another movie called "Class of 1984."  My curiosity is piqued, so now it's time to watch this thing.

The film starts with a helpful infographic as a narrator talks about the rising threat of youth gang violence.  The narrator is speaking through a vocorder, or possibly a fan.

A grim future where Los Angeles is plagued by gang violence

The narrator goes on to say how there are gang controlled regions in these cities called "Free-Fire Zones" where the police dare not tread.  One of these has formed around a Seattle High School, which I assume will become the focus of this film.  The narration finishes by saying that a Department Educational Defense  has been formed to reopen the school and bring the gangs under control.  We then see-

Wait, wait, I'm going to stop you right there.  Just...just look at that.  This is the first goddamn shot of the film after the opening narration.  I'm going to have trouble paying attention to the rest of this movie knowing that mullet exists somewhere in its canon.  Anyway, Mullet here starts talking about his company Megacorp and-

SERIOUSLY!?

Fuck...That mustache...with that mullet...and the glassy eyes...

Okay, pull yourself together, Alec, you're only 2 minutes into this goddamn film.

Mullet introduces his team of robotic"super-teachers."  They are trained both in education and combat.  One of the super-teachers pulls back his face to reveal his robotic nature to the education committee.

At least it's better than that mullet

Meanwhile, they let are letting a guy out of prison to go back to school.  I'm assuming this guy is going to be the hero of this movie, as the educators were destined to be the villains ever since they teamed up with a guy with that mullet.  Outside the jail, he meets up with his buddies.  Meanwhile, in the soundtrack, a song plays which seems to be written by someone who has no knowledge of Punk, Rap or Metal, but is trying to be all of them at once because it's what the kids are into.

They start snorting a new drug called "Edge," which is apparently the best new drug since "Skin."  Man, drugs have really dumb names in the future...Or past I guess at this point, since this movie takes place in 1999.

Ah, but our hero isn't into silly sounding drugs!  He's a changed man!  He throws the drugs out the window.  He then drives directly into the territory of a major gang, in order to trade insults with the leader of said gang, leading to a chase scene.  The gang leader's car flips, and our hero says "Looks like hector's going to be late for school."

Yep, school-themed one-liners.  Great.

They wind up at the school, where our hero's friend picks a fight with one of the heavily-armed officers.  He decides not to get involved.  He then runs into this motley bunch:

We find out that they are our hero's old gang,who say they'll have to kill him if he wants out.  Also, I find out that our hero's name is Cody.  Cody says he'll have to lay low for a while while he's on parole.  Why parole means anything in this gang-run hellscape, I don't know.

We then see that this school uses teaching methods adapted from sitcom studio audiences.

In the future, teachers will say "learn" and then students will have learned.

We then begin class, as taught by a robotic Pam Grier.  She walks around the room scanning everything with Terminator-vision.

Education levels have reached 1225%!  She can't take much more o' this, cap'n!

Pam Grier starts beating up trouble students, then calls roll.  Meanwhile, Mullet and a team of scientists watch on on monitors.

After class, the girl in the class starts talking to Cody.  Turns out she's the daughter of the Principal, too.  She asks if he Cody wants to "Do something, sometime."

On to History class.  The teacher has a zero tolerance policy.  Two guys start cursing at each other in class, and then start fighting.  The history teacher's Terminator Vision tells him that the only solution is...spanking.  He spanks one while holding the other down with his feet, all the while staring at the rest of the class with cold eyes as if to say "I take no pleasure in it, but it isn't a chore either.  I will do this to anyone who fucks with me."

The next day, Cody rescues the principal's daughter from a rape attempt by fighting off the rapist.  Cody is brought before the principal for fighting.  The principal, while he appreciates the sentiment behind rescuing his daughter from rapists, disapproves of the violence Cody used, and felt that Cody should have went and gotten a teacher or something.  The principal lets Cody off with a warning.  For rescuing his daughter from rape.  Cody'll have to remember not to do that again.  By the way, the principal is played by Malcolm McDowell.  So there's that...

Next up is gym class, after which the gym teacher keeps Cody after class in order to try his wrestling moves out on him.  I'm assuming this is some sort of punishment for the previous rescuing of the principal's daughter.  One of the other students who sees this comes back with a gun, but the gym teacher robot decides to snap his neck.  Mullet, watching on monitor, thinks this response is a brilliant evolution of the AI.  The word "multi-dimensional" is used.  Apparently the program is evolving.


Next up, history class, where Cody's friend is taken out and killed via force-feeding of drugs, for he crime of being a drug addict.  At least these robots have a sense of irony.  He also beats him up and breaks his neck for good measure.  When explaining to the principal, the teachers try to say that these are all just side effects of the drug, and when the principal isn't buying it, that it was self defense.

Meanwhile Mullet continues to look evil.

SERIOUSLY?

Slightly later, he drinks milk, and it somehow makes him look more evil.

COME ON!

I now begin furiously writing more of this review just to get the previous two pictures off the screen so he'll stop staring at me.  Cody goes into a raging club.  People are dancing with automatic weapons in their hands, firing them into the air.  All the other guys in the club, who are also members of the gang, buy the story that the recent death was a result of a drug overdose.  When Cody argues, saying the teacher killed him, his anti-authority friends beat him up for questioning authority.

Cody and the principals daughter skip class to investigate their teachers.  Turns out all the teachers live in the same apartment.  And their place is sparsely furnished with three small chairs, and a cabinet stock full of oil. The type of oil you would use on some sort f machine.  Almost as if they're ROOOOOOBOOOOTTTTSSSSSSS!

Our intrepid duo finds this all slightly, but not very, strange.  Cody accepts this all as quirks of teachers.  The robot teachers arrive home, and get in their car to begin chasing after Cody, who is on his motorcycle.  As they do, they point out all the road rules he's breaking, and then try to knock him off the road.  However, they manage to drive their car into the ocean in the process.

After they walk out of the ocean, they come after Cody's other friend, who they decide to "exterminate."  Then they kidnap a pizza delivery man, who they set on fire and throw though the opposing gang hideout window, who immediately assume Cody's gang is responsible.  They leave the corpse of Cody's friend with Cody's gang, framing the opposing gang.

So now the teachers have quit teaching and started a gang war.  Mullet seems absolutely pleased by this new development, and believes it is a sign that they are becoming capable oh human reasoning and thought.  Either that, or they're reverting to their military programming.  Doesn't matter, Mullet is still pleased.

The teachers go to where the two gangs are fighting, and start picking off gang members one by one.  I've got to admit, the sight of three professors casually strolling through a gang war and nonchalantly offing gangsters is one of the more entertaining things in this movie.  However, Cody gets away for no good reason, meaning this whole ridiculous plan was a failure.  Or not, according to the history teacher, who provides no explanation for how it wasn't a failure.

Meanwhile, mullet continues to look evil as he explains to the principal how he used surplus battle droids for the robot teachers. 

The principal demands that he turns them off, because this was a horrible idea the whole time.  However, mullet disagrees, and his robots kill Principal Malcolm McDowell.

Okay, I missed the context here, but the guy leading the opposing gang just used the expression "[I trust him] Like a vampire giving me a blow job."  I guess the teachers sent another challenge posing as Cody's gang to start another gang fight.

Pam Grierbot goes after the principals daughter, then calls Cody.  Impersonating the voice of the leader of the opposing gang, she says she has his girlfriend, and to come to the school to duke it out.  However, he's not fooled.  Why would his gang-leading opponent stay at school after hours?  It must be the teachers!  Cody's gang rides in full force.

Cody explains the whole killer robot thing to the opposing gang, leading to both gangs teaming up to take on the teachers.  They begin riding their motorcycles through the school.  Cody and the other gang leader run into Pam Grier.  Cody's first plan is "shoot her."  When that doesn't work, his second plan is "shoot her again."  She then reveals her robotic form and starts shooting fire at them.  They soon run into the other teachers as well, who also reveal their robotic forms, along with their built in weaponry systems.

Cody finds the principal's daughter, but the history teacher is waiting for them with his claw arm.  They grapple, but Cody takes him out with an automatic weapon lying around.  They then take out Pam Grierbot by turning on all the gas in the chemistry lab and waiting for her to use her flame thrower.  Cody also throws an axe at her, for good measure.

One liners during this section include "You're history," "Guess I blew that class," "She's toast".

They've got one teacher left, who has a machine gun for an arm.  They drive a school bus into him.  Problem solved.  Everything explodes.  The heroes begin searching the school for survivors.  However, unbeknownst to them, the gym teacher crawls out of the wreckage, looking rather worse for wear,

Also mullet gets the principal's daughter at gun-point. However, the gym teacher robot has gotten its wires crossed, and decides to kill Mullet.  It the proceeds to try to kill everyone else in the room for good measure.  Cody kills it with a fork lift.  They also strangle it with a chain, for good measure.  "Have a nice stretch, coach" is said, as they pull off its head.  The end.

Well...That was certainly something.  I think this definitely works well as a so-bad-its-good movie.  It's entertaining in a deliciously over-the-top way, and it's got a creepy, if absurd, looking villain.  And the special effects are even fairly good for what they are (what they are being cheesy low budget effects).  All in all, a fun B-Movie.

-Alec

Alec Reviews Banana Moon

Delve with me, dear reader, into the depths of obscure and esoteric music.  Our journey begins in the land of Progressive Rock, a fairly prominent genre in the 70s, which combined elements of Classical and Jazz music with rock, and also often involved science-fiction and fantasy subject matter.  From there, let's look at one of my favorite sub-genres within Progressive Rock:  Canterbury Scene.  Canterbury scene was a fairly small collection of groups which made very Jazz influenced Progressive Rock with many elements of the Psychedelic thrown in.  One of my favorite of these bands is called Gong.  One of the original Canterbury Scene bands, Gong combined Jazz, Progressive Rock and Pink-Floyd style Space Rock into a bizarre and whimsical blend.

The album I'm going to be reviewing now is not a Gong album, or even a particularly good starting place for understanding the Canterbury Scene.  It is a Solo album from Gong front-man Daevid Allen.  This is Banana Moon.  Welcome to the deep end.

My first Google search for "Banana Moon" just turned up Bikini Pictures 

 

I'd like to start out by saying Banana Moon was not quite what I was expecting (Although with Daevid Allen, it is always best to expect, well, the unexpected).  The album is much less Jazz influenced than his output with Gong, and instead more of Allen's take of straight-ahead Psychedelic Rock.  However, there are certainly notes of Gong in here.

The album opens with "Time of Your Life," which, from its opening riff, could almost be mistaken for a Beatles song, until Allen's frantic vocals come in.  This song has a panicked intensity to it, the drums pounding out a furious beat that the instruments riff over.

This moves on to "Memories", which was apparently originally intended to be a Soft Machine song (Soft Machine being another central Canterbury Scene band, which Allen was briefly a member of).  Soft Machine singer Robert Wyatt provides the vocals to this song as well.  It's some welcome relaxation after the nervous energy of "Time of Your Life."

Next is "All I Want is Out of Here."  This has Allen half-singing in an out-of-character low growl as the electric guitar screams.  This is followed by Fred the Fish, which is an energetic sing-along.  It's the sort of thing a bunch of musicians in a bar would start singing once the drink had kicked in, complete with people shouting in the background and improvised instruments.

White Neck Blooze is the closest I've heard Allen come to a traditional Blues-Rock song.  The highlight is the chorus of "Who's....Been...Put...You...On," which takes a psychedelic turnin the ending "Codein Coda" section, which repeatedly fades in the "On" from the chorus as the guitars form a cacophonous background.

Okay, here we are.  This is Stoned Innocent Frankenstein.  This is the song on this album that comes closest to sounding like a Gong song.  Allen's whimsy is on full display juxtaposed with jagged guitars.  This is probably my favorite track on the album.  It's what I came here for.

The album then continues with "And His Adventures In the Land of Flip," which is the extended length piece on the album, coming in at nearly 12 minutes.  This song fills the album's quota for Space Rock, with hints of the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows."

The album closes with "I Am A Bowl," which is pure psychedelic whimsy along the lines of "Bike" by Pink Floyd.  A distorted guitar plays a riff over and over as Allen sings about being a bowl.  As the song progresses, more instruments join the jam.  He seems to end each verse either praising or chiding the rest of the band depending on if they kept up with his phrasing. 

All in all, a fun album, although I don't quite rank it up with Gong's masterpieces, as it doesn't quite reach the heights of, say, Camembert Electric or Angel's Egg.  However, the album is still worth-while, especially for songs like "Time of Your Life," "White Neck Blooze/Codein Coda," and "Stoned Innocent Frankenstein."

-Alec

Alec Reviews Infested Planet

Before I talk about this game, I should mention my interaction with the people who worked on it.  The artist is someone who I've met at a couple of events, and who has been a very friendly guy.  The designer and programmer is a guy who I've have had an online argument with on the subject of Procedural design vs. Pre-made content.  Not a bile-filled argument, mind you, but a polite and productive one that makes you consider and develop your position.  So all in all, I think the guys that made this are pretty cool guys.  I was also interested to see what developer Alex Vostrov would create with his love of procedural design.

I am of the opinion that strategy games and tactics games are best when they focus on one or the other, rather than a little of both.  I don't like most RTS games for this reason, preferring 4X games for Strategy and Tactics games for, well, tactics. (The exception being the Total War games, which do a good job of seperating the strategy and tactics within the game, by having a Grand Strategy game with tactical battles).  This game falls firmly into the genre of tactics games, specifically Real Time Tactics, which is something of a rare beast.

The basic premise of the game is you control a squad of space marines who have to fight off swarms of aliens.  And when I say swarms, I mean swarms.

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!

The game revolves around the idea of brains vs. numbers. You are outnumbered by aliens hundreds times over, and they will keep spawning from their hives.  You have to use your tactical abilities to face the mindless hoards of aliens.  You begin the game with one base.  You must capture all the control points, which contain alien hives, and turn them into bases.  As you capture points, you gain build-points, which you can use to train your units, build turrets and other buildings, and research technologies.

What this all ads up to is a limited resource with which you can customize your team to fit your play-style and your tactical needs.  You can give your guys flame throwers for crowd control, give one a sniper rifle to take out enemy towers from a distance, recruit an extra unit, give your units recovering health, build towers to help defend key points on the map, among many other options.  The game also lets you sell back the things you buy for a refund of you build-points, allowing to reallocate them as you please.

It is important to keep modifying your team build and your tactics because of one of this game's most important features.  As you capture control points, the aliens will gain random adaptations.  These can range from new unit types, to improved towers, to pods that spawn clone versions of your own units.  This not only leads to a increase in difficulty as the game progresses, but also to new and interesting situations emerging from the combinations of these random mutations.  Because of this, you'll have to keep adapting your tactics to the changing threat from the aliens.

Tell my wife I love her very much

This, however, leads to one of two problems I have with this game.  Because of the random nature of both the enemy's adaptations and the layout of the level, the difficulty can shift quite a bit from game to game.  Enemy hives clustered together and powerful adaptations can increase the difficulty dramatically, whereas more manageable adaptations and natural choke-points in the level can make the game much easier.  To some extent it comes down to luck of the draw.

The other problem I have is that the game is often hard to win, but also easy not to lose.  I've maybe lost one game at most, but I've quit a few games when I ended up in a stalemate where I couldn't capture any more points, but could defend the points I already had.  The enemies are dumb (as they should be, they're alien bugs) and therefore won't shift their strategy when attacking, and they don't gain a mutation unless you capture one of their hives.  This means the game often ends up in a holding pattern.  Sometimes this gives you time to plan a strategy that can let you advance, but sometimes the mix of mutations and map layout means you can't make any headway, leading to a stalemate.

However, despite these issues, I definitely enjoy this game.  When the game is at its best, it's really intense, and the victories feel hard earned.  You feel occasionally overwhelmed, but through tactical planning, you can turn the tides in the battle most times.  The game really pulls off the feeling its trying to go for very well.  The swarms of enemies are massive, and there's always a moment of panic when the aliens mutate and you have to quickly manage some new threat.

At the time of writing, the game is in Beta and is available for $15 here.  Once it goes out of beta, the price will go up to $20.

-Alec

Alec Reviews Thunder Ninja Kids in the Golden Adventure

Godfrey Ho.  Some of you may already know what we're in for just from that name.  For those who still have their sanity and have never delved this deep into the waters of Z-Grade Kung-Fu, I'll give you an explanation.

Godfrey Ho's imdb page contains over 100 movies which he directed.  Over 50 of these movies contain the word "ninja" in the title.  He achieved this prolific output with something called the "cut-and-paste" technique, which really just means most of his movies are made of stolen footage with original footage spliced in.  Then through editing and dubbing, the two story-lines from the two separate films interact briefly a couple of times.  Usually both films will share a McGuffin.  Another staple of Godfrey Ho films is that the original footage would usually star white actors.

This is the first Godfrey Ho movie I watched all the way through, and what an introduction it was.  It has just about everything a Godfrey Ho movie needs.  Stolen footage from a ridiculous movie, added footage with goofy white guys, ninjas, silly dialogue, ninjas and ninjas.  Also, this review will be much funnier if you keep in mind the assumption that this is supposed to be a kid's film.  It still remains one of my favorite Godfrey Ho movies (second to Ninja Terminator).

For our purposes, let's call the Godfrey Ho footage "Movie A" and the stolen footage "Movie B," although, like most Godfrey Ho films, the stolen footage comprises the majority of the film.

The film literally starts with the characters from Movie A watching the events from Movie B through a peep-hole.  The villains from movie B (who never actually appear again, as they are replaced by different villains, more on that later) are conspiring to hire The Black Ninja Force (in Godfrey Ho movies, ninjas wearing black is an odd occurrence, so they need to be specified) to steal the Golden Ninja Warrior Buddha Buddher.

It's then that we meet the heroes (?) of Movie A:  A stereotypical muscle-bound 80s guy and his crotchety old father.

Their plan is to steal the Buddher from the ninjas that are stealing the Buddher.  Or, to put it more accurately, the characters from Movie A are trying to steal the McGuffin from Movie B.



So the villagers discover that the Buddher has been stolen by the Black Ninja force, and our ridiculous duo begin their plan to steal it from the Black Ninjas.  I don't really know or care what the names of these characters are, so from now on, I'll refer to them as Captain 80s and Old Man Jenkins.  Captain 80s pulls out a gun to ambush the Black Ninja with the Buddher.  Old Man Jenkins says that this won't work, and then pulls out his case of special bullets (note:  this will become important later).  He chooses one which will allow them to get the Buddha from the ninja, although he doesn't say how.

The special bullets seems to do nothing, so Old Man Jenkins has Captain 80s fight the Ninja.  Captain 80s shoves Jenkins to the ground and begins fighting the Ninja, who slowly begins to feel the effect of the sleeping agent in the bullet (it seems a normal bullet would have been more effective).  Old Man Jenkins decides finally that maybe shooting the ninja WOULD be the best idea, but the Ninja teleports away in a puff of smoke, only to be spotted seconds later running into the woods with the Buddher.

Their plot continues with them hiring a female Yellow Ninja to go after the Black Ninjas and get them the Buddher.

Meanwhile, in Movie B, 3 kids (who I can only assume are supposed to be the Thunder Ninja Kids, although this is never stated) decide they want to go to the big city to visit their aunt.  They don't have much money so they decide to walk. 

Now, they try to show the culture-shock of kids from a small village going to the big city, but it ends up coming across as the type of culture shock that only happens in time-travel movies, when someone from the past visits the present and is confused about everything.  The kids start wandering the city, bamboo staffs in hand, ready to attack anything they think could be a spy sent from home to bring them back, up to and including themselves reflected in the mirror.

Now, I'd like to pause for a moment to say that, in my experience, there are three types of Godfrey Ho movies.  And these movies are separated by the B plot, because the Godfrey Ho footage is consistently ridiculous and entertaining.  There are movies where Movie B is impossible to follow, movies where Movie B is boring, and you're constantly waiting for the Godfrey Ho footage to come back, and there are movies where Movie B is awesome in it's own right.

At first I thought of this movie as being in type 2.  That is, until the Thunder Ninja Kids joined the goddamn mafia.

Things just got bad-ass

See, they are tricked into delivering mafia documents in exchange for free food.  However, once their in, and they want out, the mafia kidnaps their aunt.  Also, for some reason, the Thunder Ninja Kids believe that the mafia has the Buddher.  Awesome fight scenes ensue.  Also, the little Thunder Kid of indeterminate gender turns out to be a badass.

Seconds after kicking a dude in the nuts

In reality, Yellow Ninja stole the Buddha from the Black Ninja Force, and turned around and betrayed Old Man Jenkins and Captain 80s by selling it back to a character from Movie B.  Now the mafia want the Buddher from the woman that the Yellow Ninja sold it to, and Jenkins and 80s want the Buddher

The Thunder Ninja kids go find the woman who has the Buddher, and fight her guards, after which she gives the Buddher to them willingly.  But not before they do the most confusing martial arts moves I've ever seen.

"What the fuck did I just see?"

Long story short, they get the Buddha, but then have to give it to the mafia as ransom for their aunt, but then beat up the mafia to get it back, and then laugh at the mafia as they all scurry around the ground to pick up the money lying everywhere in the aftermath of the battle.

Meanwhile, Old Man Jenkins and Captain 80s are battling the Yellow Ninja.  They try tricking her into taking an empty suitcase rather than the one filled with money they got from selling a fake buddher.  This continues with Yellow Ninja catching up with our intrepid duo, and Old Man Jenkins trying to give her the slip.  Finally, fed up, she throws THE NINJA BOMB!  This leads to one of the best lines in the movie:

They end up in a gunfight with Yellow Ninja, who keeps jumping around until they run out of bullets.  Yellow Ninja then decides to play a game with the duo.  She gives one a gun, and the other a bullet, and tells them whoever gets both and shoots the other gets to go free.  She sees no flaw in this plan, but neither does the director, so it's fine. 

Through some trickery, Jenkins replaces the bullet with one of his  special bullets, and gives it to his son, who has the gun.  When his son won't shoot him, he pulls out a fake gun and shoots himself.  Now, remember when I said this is funnier if you assume it's supposed to be a kid's film.  Behold the following line:

So Yellow Ninja decides to shoot him as well, not counting on the fact that Jenkins had put a special bullet in the gun.  An explosive bullet.  An explosive bullet that only blows up the gun that it's in.  God damn, who'd have ever thought that would be useful.  Yellow Ninja explodes, and father and son argue about how the father nearly killed the son with an exploding gun trap.

The end.

Okay. So this movie is terrible.  But I love it.  I would consider myself a connoisseur of bad movies, and this is one is a fine example of so-bad-it's-good.  Over-the-top acting, nonsensical plots, brightly colored Ninjas and absurd martial arts.  It all collides here in a movie that shows Godfrey Ho doing what he does best.  Making terrible movies about ninjas.

-Alec

Alec Reviews Everything

Well...kinda.  Basically, I review whatever the hell I want.  On this blog, I'll be reviewing movies, music, games, and other things.  They'll mostly fit into my own tastes within those mediums, so expect a lot of reviews of B-movies, Kung-Fu, Prog Rock and games from the 90s.

My goal will be to communicate in the reviews the experience of watching the film, playing the game, ect.  They'll mostly be formatted as logs of watching/playing/listening interspersed with images of the thing being reviewed.


Anyway, hope you enjoy.

-Alec