Weekly Dose of Head Trauma Extra: UltraChrist!

MMA Team | Friday, July 24, 2009 | , , | 0 comments



First off, I have to say I never realized that intentionally looking for bad movies could be such a pain in the ass. I literally spent several hours to find this (my sister was the one who insisted we watch it actually), but wow....just wow, "UltraChrist!" melted sections of my brain that somehow survived my viewing of "Jesus Christ: Vampire hunter".




The plot begins with Jesus coming back down to earth and the first 3 minutes pretty much deal with him getting clothes. Yes, you read that right. If your first thought was "what the hell?" that pretty much sums up this movie. After he finds a smoking jacket and a pipe (God, I wish I were kidding) he meets and gets drunk with an ex-marketing guy who isn't really relevant to the plot until like the last 20 minutes of the film. Anyway, this guy sends the film on a further downward spiral by recommending Jesus should mimic a superhero in order to "reach out to the youth of today".




So yes, most of the movie is focused on Jesus running around in spandex fighting sin and building very flat romantic tension with his seamstress friend, while God (understandably) wants him out of the costume and sends an archangel to get him out of it. Lurking in the background of this is the AntiChrist, who has taken the role of the most important man possible (at least according to this movie) the head of NY's park service.



(This man decides if you can use parks and the torment of your immortal soul, fear him)

So after Satan fails to kill Jesus with a PDF (yes, I know this shit is bananas, just run with it) he summons the most evil people he can think of to be his personal Legion of Doom, if you'll allow the incredibly geeky analogy; Hitler (well, a rather portly one who likes bestiality), Vlad Ill Tepes a.k.a Vlad the Impaler done up Drac style, Richard Nixon (basically a dude in a Nixon mask with a recorder taped to the side of his mask), and the lead singer of The Doors for some reason.



The rest of the plot is mind meltingly bizarre, and it ends with a cage fight between the archangel sent down to take Jesus' spandex horror suit and a dude in a Richard Nixon mask. This is followed by a bad musical number about how Jesus approves of sex, which somehow converts most of the world's youth to christianity. The only good thing about the end is watching a "terrorist" toss a bomb into the trash because he decided he was through with terrorism.



Overall the movie looks like it was done by three guys and their friends one booze-soaked weekend. The movie just feels either like a cheap class project, only the content is something you'd never want seen publicly, or, given how many things are explicitly about sex, a bad soft core porn. I honestly can say this is a brain stabbingly bad movie and if you feel like torturing yourself for an hour and a half, have fun with it. I just needed to share this little horror and purge myself of what it's done to my brain. Now, I just need to stop the blood leaking out of my ears...



Forsees no Spandex related panic in the near future,

Jenna Darknight


(The pictures are used for non-profit purposes. Ultrachrist belongs to Kerry Douglas Dye and the others involved in the project. ...who are nice people and don't want to sue me.)

Weekly Dose of Head Trauma: The Spirit

MMA Team | Tuesday, July 21, 2009 | , , , , , | 0 comments



Okay, I confess, this has become less a weekly thing and more a "whenever the hell I feel like it" sort of a thing, but since we're now two months into the doldrums (better known as summer break)  I will try to keep this at a more regular interval.  Well, after next week, I've got family crap to do and I will have no internet for that time, but after that I'll try to do an article once a week.

Now, normally when summer comes around my sister and I sit down and pick a theme (well not so much pick as walk into the video store and realize there's a whole section of ridiculous we hadn't sat down and watched yet).  Last year it was Spy movies/TV/media.  This year it's westerns and Film Noir.  Firstly, no, I have no idea how those two got paired together and secondly, shut up.  



Why we ended up renting The Spirit, I'm not sure.  I'm admittedly a bit of a graphic novel geek, but The Spirit was one of those comics that was way before my time and I had only a basic knowledge of coming into this film.  Aside from the general plot (cop gets killed, but his thirst for justice is so great he comes back to life to continue his civic duty as a masked vigilante, hence the title of The Spirit) I knew it was a Frank Miller movie and while I'm not a big Frank Miller fan, I will say that I rather enjoyed Sin City. 



Anyway, my point is that, coming into this I was expecting a gritty Sin City styled version of The Big Sleep or something similar.  What I got was an over the top comic book-esque action movie that was equal parts awesome and just plain ridiculous.



Firstly, I have to talk about the cast because I would never pass up a chance to be petty and make fun of the fact the Eva Mendes is a mouth breather with Baywatch pontoon lips who can't act.  Granted, my most recent experience with her was Ghost Rider, a movie that somehow managed to make one of the coolest Marvel characters lamer than hell, but that doesn't change the fact that she just seems to play the same sort of character in most of the films I've seen her in.  In this one she's the Spirit's old flame who happens to be a thief after Jason's Golden fleece (because a super hero film noir movie wasn't weird enough apparently).  She sort of sits around, has two guys kill themselves for little to no reason and flirts with the Spirit. Of course the Spirit is played as a skirt chaser of Bond proportions, so I suppose you can't fault the film for being consistently shallow.



Honestly the two best actors in the film are Scarlett Johansson (who plays a deadpan lackey to Jackson and complements him beautifully) and Samuel L. Jackson to my eternal surprise. l Normally I think of Jackson as this guy who's pretty much played the same role his entire career (meaning he's an angry Black guy who's tired of your shit and isn't going to take it any more), but he really went all out as the Spirit's archnemesis, The Octopus.  He's ridiculous and over the top while still managing to seem threatening.  Plus he beats a guy over the head with a toilet.  I'm not joking about that.




He changes costumes that range from slightly normal to completely outlandish, even ending up in a Samurai outfit (complete with topknot and fro sideburns) to cartoonishly hack his henchmen apart (aside from Johansson, but she's the only competent henchperson in the entire flick) to a Nazi outfit complete with a monacle that makes him look like a poor imitation of Rommel.  To add to it, Jackson seems to revel in the absurdity he's participating in and proceeds to consistently steal every single scene he's in.





In terms of plot the movie is pretty standard noir fare up until the last half hour or so.  The Octopus grabs a chest and some guys show up dead, so the Spirit looks into it.  However, it then devolves into some insane plot that's built around the Golden Fleece (which is armor for some inane and arbitrary reason) and Samuel L. Jackson wanting to drink Herakles' blood  (That's Hercules to those who aren't so mythologically nitpicky).  The latter part of the plot is more in tone with the beginning of the movie where the Octopus and the Spirit engage in an over the top and ridiculous fist fight in the mud that escalates into hitting each other with a toilet and a sink, where the straight up Noir stuff feels way to serious in a movie that doesn't seem to take itself or it's audience seriously.

Overall, I found myself enjoying The Spirit even though I shouted at the screen repeatedly (to the point where my mom actually told me to stop shouting "That's insane!" at the screen or she'd come and sock me).  It was insane and over the top, but it seemed to enjoy being so outlandish that you couldn't help but be sucked in.  I recommend it, even if it will make blood come out of your ears at points.  



(not quite) Dead and loving it,

Jenna Darknight

(the images used here were used for non profit reasons and belong to Frank Miller and Lionsgate Studios...who are nice people and don't want to sue me.)


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