The Screengrab : jail bait

Screengrab Death Watch: Day One

Andrew Osborne — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:49:00 GMT

And now, the end is near, and so we face the final curtain...

Yes, it’s true...as it turns out, the shitty economy, global warming, the death of print media and the looming Swine Flu pandemic are only the tips of the iceberg of sadness we’ll all have to deal with this year.

We learned yesterday that Nerve.com will be shuttering some of its culture blogs including...(sniff, sniff)...this one: sad to say, the Screengrab is not long for this dirty old world.

So enjoy our beloved, non-commercially viable coverage of the cinematic universe while you can...and stay tuned for plenty of clip-show nostalgia, maudlin eulogizing, a heart-tugging farewell song from Bette Midler and, in a last-ditch attempt to boost hits, 100% more gratuitous Tits & Ass...like, uh...that chick from The Hills showing her butt!

Unwatchable Recap: 61-70

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Welcome to part four of the Unwatchable halftime report. New Unwatchable content is coming soon (watch this space tomorrow for a special announcement), but before we tackle the 50 worst movies of all time according to you, the IMDb voters, we’re taking a moment to look back at the horrors we’ve already survived. And remember, when I say “we,” I really mean me. I’m the one who actually has to watch that stuff. Your part of this process is simply to read what I write and laugh at my expense. Join me now for another ten classic moments in the annals (or perhaps anals) of Unwatchable.

70. Epic Movie. “The only good news is that, much like Spartans, Epic Movie barely crosses the 60 minute mark before the extended credits, complete with dance sequences and hee-larious outtakes, begin.”

69. The Perfect Holiday. “So far so bland, but on the family holiday movie scale, there’s nothing out of the ordinary to justify The Perfect Holiday’s place in the Bottom 100. Except…I haven’t mentioned Queen Latifah and Terrence Howard, have I? Well, they’re in the movie too, although I’m not sure I could tell you why. I guess they’re angels or magical elves or…some sort of shape-shifting Greek chorus, anyway.”

68. Kazaam. “To his credit, Shaq does an admirable job of convincing us that he is, in fact, seven feet tall. Honestly, I would place little of the blame for Kazaam’s failures at the big man’s big feet, even if they are encased in goofy pointy-toed genie shoes for much of the running time.”

67. Nine Lives. “As a blizzard swirls outside, the very, very boring young people drink wine and exchange snooty quips. One of them – it’s either Tim or Tom or Pete or Paul or Andy, I’m not sure – finds a musty old tome telling the tale of the ancient Scot warrior whose name alone evokes the most primal of terrors: it is he who is called…Murray.”

66. Jail Bait. “Wait – the gun is jail bait? Oh, Edward D. Wood, Jr.! I see what you did there! You got me again.”

65. Meet the Browns. “Basically what we have here is another bowl of Tyler Perry’s usual tepid gumbo of sermonizing, self-help platitudes and ham-handed ensemble comedy.”

64. Angels’ Brigade. “Reasonable people can disagree as to the film’s moment of greatness. Some would single out the beach scene in which the gals strip down to their bikinis and seduce a couple of yahoos responsible for bringing a drug shipment ashore, or perhaps the slow-moving rooftop chase in which Palance barely breaks a sweat in his leisure suit. I would point to the white supremacist group led by Jim Backus in a Sgt. Pepper outfit.”

63. Alone in the Dark. “Of the many fine and noble reasons to take on this Unwatchable project (a paycheck, an outlet for repressed hostility, an excuse to put off watching Berlin Alexanderplatz), the chance to familiarize myself with the oeuvre of Uwe Boll certainly ranks…somewhere.”

62. Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie. “I always associated the Power Rangers with the Teletubbies: Both were programs that, although intended for children, held great appeal for the 420 crowd. Both centered on a group of color-coded characters, one of whom was gay.”

61. Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie. “There are episodes of He-Man from 1983 that are more artistically accomplished.”

71-80
81-90
91-100

Unwatchable #66: “Jail Bait”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

At last, it’s Ed Wood! For months I’ve been dutifully trudging my way up this list of the 100 worst movies of all time, and somehow made it a third of the way through without encountering a single work by the man celebrated far and wide as the worst filmmaker ever. I suppose that makes sense, in that the most notorious Wood works – the likes of Plan 9 from Outer Space and Glen or Glenda – must be lurking near the top of the chart. It so happens that I’d never seen Wood’s second feature, Jail Bait, so this promised to be quite a treat. We’re huge jailbait fans here at the Screengrab…er, in the cinematic sense, that is.

Wood’s work is tough to rank on the Unwatchable scale, just because he’s usually at his most watchable when he’s at his worst. That is, his bizarre mix of enthusiasm and incompetence only soars when he goes completely off the deep end, as in Plan 9 or Bela Lugosi’s infamous “Home? I have no home” monologue from Bride of the Monster. Jail Bait is as shoddily constructed as you’d expect, but the goofy juice doesn’t really get flowing until the last ten minutes or so.

The story concerns handsome young doofus Don Gregor, son of the famed plastic surgeon Dr. Boris Gregor. Instead of lounging around the house and spending his dad’s money, Don has taken to hanging out with low-rent mobster Vic Brady. One night the cops pick Don up for carrying a concealed weapon and his sister Marilyn has to bail him out. (Marilyn is played by Wood’s girlfriend Dolores Fuller, who no doubt worked for free and gives a performance worth every penny.) Marilyn lectures Don that she won’t do so again: “That gun is jail bait!” Wait – the gun is jail bait? Oh, Edward D. Wood, Jr.! I see what you did there! You got me again.

Don doesn’t heed his sister’s warnings – instead, he goes ahead with Vic on a planned robbery and ends up killing a security guard in the process. Vic shoots a witness who survives and can identify both men. The cops (including a pre-Hercules Steve Reeves) go to Dr. Gregor and urge him to convince his son to turn himself in. Before Don can do so, Vic kills him. But how can Vic evade arrest himself? Simple! He’ll blackmail Dr. Gregor into performing plastic surgery on him, promising to return Don alive if the doc gives him a new, unrecognizable face.

Dr. Gregor is prepared to go along with the plan, until he pokes around Vic’s kitchen and finds his son’s corpse standing upright in the pantry. He gives Vic a new face, alright – spoiler alert! – but it’s the face of Don Gregor! The cops arrive on the scene to arrest him for murder, but Vic-with-Don’s-face flees and is gunned down, flopping face-first into the pool.

To be sure, many of the classic Wood virtues are on display here: the cardboard sets, the absurd mix of catatonic and scenery-devouring acting styles, the Sarah Palin dialogue (“I hope I’m happy to know ya.” “South America! The foreign countries! Where we’ll live like kings!”), the 71-minute running time padded out with 26 minutes worth of footage of cars pulling in and out of driveways. There’s even an utterly gratuitous shot of Steve Reeves putting on his shirt, and I haven’t even mentioned the inanely insistent zither score that will probably follow me to the gates of hell. I know it all sounds good, but it mostly plays like a dull episode of a ‘50s cop show. Only the big twist ending, with the unveiling of Vic’s new face (a scene that surely influenced Ed Wood director Tim Burton’s revelation of the Joker’s face in the 1989 Batman) reaches the heights of top-shelf Wood (or the lows of bottom-drawer Wood, depending on how you look at it).

Previously on Unwatchable:
67. Nine Lives
68. Kazaam
69. The Perfect Holiday (pending)
70. Epic Movie
71. Gigli