Spare Parts (1979)

Going in to Spare Parts I expected something horrible. We're talking about a '70s made for TV move that was shot in German and then dubbed into English. That's pretty much a recipe for disaster right there.

But Spare Parts surprised me... no, not because it was a great movie. Hell it wasn't even all that good of a movie, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be. It had its ups and downs but overall came out fairly well.

Spare Parts is about a man and woman, Bill and Monica, who stay at the Honeymoon Motel for their... Honeymoon. First off let me say that I wish there were still motels that cost $7.50 a night... or maybe I don't, I'm not sure. Back to the movie though. Despite the fact that the desk clerk is the creepiest woman ever, the newlyweds decide to stick around and do newlywed kind of stuff (sex) and watch the sun set in a field.

This was their first mistake.

You see, as they're sitting in the field watching the sun set an ambulance drives up to them. Now most people would quizzically wonder what the hell an ambulance is doing in the middle of a field, and in fact that's exactly what Bill does. Monica on the other hand has the complete opposite reaction, she runs away screaming like a mad woman.

Bill should have listened to her.

Bill is kidnapped by the two men in the ambulance and carted away to god knows where, all the while Monica continues running away screaming. Though I can't blame her, the two men in the ambulance did have comically large guns. Either way she takes her screaming all the way to highway where she's promptly picked up by a friendly trucker. I can never decide if that's a good idea. On the one hand she's a hot twenty something blond wearing nothing but a white tank top and short shorts. On the other hand she's disheveled and crazy looking. Kind of a toss up about what's going to happen.

So this is what cataracts are like.

Luckily Trucker Mike is a nice guy who decided to help out our poor, crazy Monica. And I don't mean just a little bit of helping out, I mean going far beyond the call of duty on this one. He's devising plans on how to help her get her fiance back.

The whole movie involves Trucker Mike and Monica devising a plan that would allow them to find out who kidnapped Bill and how they can stop these people. So they pretend to be newlyweds and go back to the same motel that this started in in hopes of having the exact same thing happen again. And luckily for them it does! They manage to extract the information from the ambulance drivers and find out what they want with the people they're kidnapping. Spare parts of course! You see, there's a group that kidnaps people so they can harvest their organs. Seems like it would be easier to target say, homeless people as opposed to normal everyday people off the street who may have families that will miss them... but I guess that doesn't make as compelling of a movie.

The last half of the movie is where it starts to somewhat go downhill for me. It's not that the movie gets bad it's just that it's when it seems to start dragging on. The first half of the movie was generally pretty good, but the last half just seemed kind of odd and a almost like a different movie. The first part was a pretty good horror/thriller movie but the last half just turned out weird. It involved Trucker Mike and Monica going undercover in the group to find out who is behind the whole body harvesting scheme... and then get help from a very unlikely source to bring it down. The last half isn't bad, it just feels kind of off to me.

Like I said, it's not bad and it's not good. The story isn't bad but tends to drag on in places. The characters tend to do things that I don't think normal people would do, but that tends to happen in a lot in movies. The acting isn't bad when, again, you consider it was a made for TV movie from the '70s.

Spare Parts falls into a weird category for Bad Transfer Reviews, because while it's not bad I certainly wouldn't sing it's praises. It's just kind of there. It's better than a lot of the things I've had to watch, but I wouldn't really suggest that everyone rush out and see it.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Death by Dialogue (1988)

At some point in time a person sat down and wrote a movie, he decided that "Death by Dialogue" was a good title. At some other point in time he pitched that movie to some studio executives and they too decided that it was a good name. Somehow none of these people decided that "Death by Dialogue" might be the most boring name ever.

Death by Flames is a much more awesome name.

Have you ever thought the idea of a killer movie script sounded interesting? Yeah, me either. Though apparently someone did because that's what Death by Dialogue is about.

Our story starts out with a man reading said script, and not soon after he's lit on fire by a woman wearing garters and carrying a flamethrower. And yet somehow this movie makes that really kind of boring. I'm not sure how you manage that but it does. After that you're instantly cut to a scene with some bad 80's music where you meet the characters in the story who might actually matter: Lenny and his friends.

Lenny and his four friends decide to visit Lenny's uncle, though I'm not entirely sure why. I'm not even really sure if it's specified in the movie why they do this... I mean besides to advance the plot. It just strikes me as odd that a bunch of people in their mid-20s would decide to vacation at one of the dude's uncle's house. I would think the beach would be a lot more exciting... and rarely do you run into any demonic movie scripts at the beach.

Either way Lenny's friend Shelly stumbles across the movie script and that's when shit starts to hit the fan. Kind of. Mostly it's after that when it starts getting kind of confusing... and stupid.

While Shelly is reading the script what she's reading is actually happening, or at least there's little hints to that. And yet when she reads about her friends dying she doesn't seem all that concerned when they're missing the next day. I would like to think that if I found a script that oddly had my friend's names in it, described the location where you were at, and then when I read that they died in the script it just so happens that they're missing the next day I might at least mention it to someone else. Apparently not Shelly though.

Maybe I'm wrong about the movie though... maybe that's not what happened. I can't tell you because this movie has parts in it that make absolutely no sense. Like the two friends who go missing that I mentioned up above. It all starts off with a sex scene where at the end the woman gets blown out a window and disappears. The man runs off into the forest looking for her only to find... an '80s hair band rocking out in the middle of the forest. I have no idea why. I'm not sure it's ever really explained. This is a total Birthday Fish moment. There's several of these kinds of moments throughout the movie. It's very difficult to make sense of a movie that has a habit of making no sense.

There were roaming gangs of hair bands in the '80s

So after a few more deaths our characters finally figure out that it's the evil script. I can't remember if they figured it out or the uncle told them... because he knew about it all along. You know, I don't think if I had a problem with "killer manuscripts" running rampant I would let my nephew and his four friends come out to my house to hang out like lambs to the slaughter. Then again, I'm not a dick.

So after they figure out it's the script killing everyone they have figure out a way to stop it. Just writing that sentence I feel stupid. They wrote a movie about it. Either way the ending is... well horrible. It contains demons and fire and... dirt bikes. Also a whole lot of confusion. It's one of those things you kind of have to see for yourself, but I wouldn't suggest it. It's as bad as it sounds.

All and all the movie was pretty terrible, had a lot of rather confusing parts to it, and also had the worst name I could possibly think of. Also a movie about a killer script is pretty lame.

One thing I would like to point out though. Look up at the top, that's a poster for this movie. I'm not sure if you can read what it says so here it is "Ken Sagoes, the kid who survived Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is back!". That was their big selling point... now you know what you're getting yourself into.

3 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Legacy of Blood (1971)

I'm pretty sure I saw this plot on Scooby Doo. So a rich old man dies but instead of leaving money to each one of his kids he's a dick. According to his will his four kids must spend the night in his mansion and whoever is left in the morning will receive or split his fortune. Guess what! Things go wrong and people start dying! Seriously if the house had been haunted this would have been a Scooby Doo episode. I'm sure the cast of Gilligan's Island would have showed up at some point.

Hackneyed plot aside this movie is awesome, and by that I mean terrible. Sorry apparently watching this movie has made me just as retarded as the people who were in it.

Before I talk about the movie let me ask you something. If someone said that you would get millions of dollars if you could sleep in a house overnight wouldn't you be at all suspicious? I mean, I sleep in a house every night and I've yet receive any sort of payment for it. Yet no one seems to wonder what the catch is and seemed somewhat surprised when shit went bad.

Do you remember The Surreal Life on VH1? Basically they got a lot of D List stars who had tons of personal problems and threw them in a house together? Shockingly crazy people do crazy stuff. Legacy of Blood is kind of like The Surreal Life, but instead of booze and STDs you have incest and LSD.

Seriously, only one of this man's four kids turned out even sort of normal. Not a great batting average there. Let's see you have Laura, the normal one. She spends most her time doing boring things with her equally boring husband. Than you have Johnny, he's the brother who I'm pretty sure slept with his sister Leslie... the movie was a little vague in that department, also he's completely crazy in an overacting kind of way. Than you have Veronica, I guess she's kind of normal too but also somewhat manipulative and bitchy. And finally you have Leslie, I can't tell you if she's normal because she slept through about 90% of the movie. Either way she was hot, they should have fleshed out that part of her story more.

On top of that you also have the spouses and the help. The only one worth talking about is Leslie's husband. He was a psychiatrist and sleazebag. While he didn't sleep with everyone who was at the house I think given the opportunity he would have. Than there's the help. Apparently if you have a crazy family you have to hire crazy ass help. We'll start off with the driver Frank. I think if I hired a driver who's room looked like it was decorated by Hermann Göring I might consider getting a new one.



Now granted all of that is from Nazi's he killed during WWII not that he was one... still I like to think that when someone you employ has a lamp made of the skull and skin of a Nazi he killed he may not be the most stable of people. Moving on you have Elga, apparently she's the creepy nanny who raised the kids. Which would explain why none of them turned out. Finally you have Igor, yes Igor. I'm not really sure what his job is other than to look like a muscular Mel Brooks and have a creepy relationship with Elga.

I loved you in Spaceballs. Now please put your shirt back on.

There's one more character, Sheriff Dan Garcia. He's the first to die so he's not all that important. He comes over to the house, only to end up as a severed head in the fridge. I only bring this up because it seems weird to include it in the movie. Seriously, no one notices that the town sheriff goes on a call and than doesn't come back for hours? I didn't know this mansion was in Mayberry.

After the Sheriff's untimely death, members of the family start turning up dead. As they wonder who is killing them off one by one you're treated to a look into the family's lurid past via flashbacks or perhaps acid trips. Really, the flashbacks are like looking at the world through Hunter S. Thompson's eyes.

Makes sense to me.

So slowly over the course of the night more and more of the family members are killed in more and more gruesome ways... and yet no one just leaves. Maybe this is some sort of metaphor for our power and money hungry lives. That these people are willing to die or witness their family die all for the almighty dollar. On the other hand it could be that the entire family is just retarded. Yeah, I'm going with that one.

3 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Katie's Passion (1975)

Katie's Passion. The title sounds kind of like a porn movie, hell even the plot sounds kind of like a porn movie. A young woman trying to find a better life moves to turn of the century Amsterdam with her family. Instead what they find is the same thing, bad working and living conditions. Eventually Katie's new life leads her to a job in prostitution. Also Rutger Hauer.

But it's not a porno! It's actually a period drama... brought to you by the director who gave the world Showgirls and Starship Troopers, two of the greatest comedies of the '90s.

I'm going to let you in a little writing secret. I've just spent the last 15 minutes staring at the screen wondering what to write about this movie. It's not great, but it certainly wasn't a bad movie. I'm just not sure what to say about a period drama that was good. I could make fun of the fact that Rutger Hauer is in it, but I already have. The fact that Paul Verhoeven directed this and some other awesomely bad movies? Check. So I've run out of cards.

Katie's Passion wasn't a bad movie, but if you're not interested in period pieces it's not going to bring something to the table that's going to make you want to watch it. It seems to be acted well, but since it's a foreign film that's dubbed it's kind of hard to gauge. Overall it was an okay movie that didn't really do anything to stand out, but certainly wasn't awful in any way.

I'm just not sure what to say about this movie, at the end of the day it was decent. Not necessarily my cup of tea, but generally better than anything else I've watched in the recent past. This movie isn't good because it falls into the "so bad it's good" category like some of the other movies I've watched, it's actually just a good. So if you're into period pieces go for it.

Sorry this review is kind of short and maybe light on chuckles, but I'm really at a loss for anyway to remedy that. So I'll just leave you with parting shot of Rutger Hauer:

You're Welcome.

1 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

How the Rating System Works

I thought I should specify how the rating system works, just in case you don't read the Mama Dracula review. Most of these movies that I will end up watching are going to be terrible. Not just terrible because of the bad acting, lousy productions, awful scripts, and horrible directing... those are all part of what makes them bad. What I've found generally with these types of movies is that you have all of those things, but you also have a movie that in the end is incoherent and confusing. Plot points not explained, new characters popping in with little to no explanation, horrible continuity issues, etc. It's things like that which take a movie from being bad to a movie being incomprehensible. A lot of those things popped up in Mama Dracula, like the Birthday Fish. I don't know why it's there, where it came from, or its purpose... but here it is. So instead of a lot of one star reviews I've decided to essentially rate there WTF?ness.

WTF?

If a movie is descent and watchable you're going to get one birthday fishes. If the movie is an awful mess that's probably not going to be enjoyed because it can't even be comprehended, then you're looking at a five birthday fishes kind of movie.

Hopefully this kind of clears up the rating system here at Bad Transfer Reviews. Just remember that here, one birthday fish is better than five birthday fish.

Squid.