Bad Movies Done Right — Sex, Drugs & Rock and Roll

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Let’s face it; no matter how many cult classic movies Hot Topic turns into t-shirts, being a movie geek is never going to make you the epitome of cool.

You’ll never see The Fonz discussing the pros and cons of Blu-Ray discs versus DVDs and nobody will ever get laid based on the size of their movie poster collection.

That doesn’t mean movie nerds can’t use their love for film to help them bone up on being Joe Cool. By turning down the lights, microwaving a bowl of popcorn and popping in a DVD, you could be on your way to becoming the big man on campus — one movie at a time. Here are some films to help you learn more about the holy trinity of cool: Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll.

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18-Year-Old-Virgin — 2009

What’s it about: Just when you think you know a movie studio…

I assumed that The Asylum, the studio behind Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus and Transmorphers was strictly in the business of making cheesy low-budget science fiction movies. Low and behold, it turns out they also make cheesy low-budget teen sex comedies. Or at least that’s what I think that’s what 18-Year-Old Virgin was supposed to be.

18-Year-Old Virgin stars Olivia Alaina May as Katie Powers, a high school senior on the verge of graduation with only one thing on her mind — sharing a bed with her long-time crush Ryan Lambert (played by Dustin Harnish). The only problem is Ryan refuses to sleep with a virgin. Desperate to have sex with the man she believes to be her soul mate, Katie hatches a plan to loose her virginity before Ryan leaves town the next morning.

You’ve got to respect any trailer that will include fart noises.

Life Lesson: Being a virgin is a fate worse then death.

In the film, Katie is treated with the level of scorn usually reserved for child rapists and Joe Wilson due to the fact that she is a virgin. Fellow classmates offer her sneers, snide comments and flat out hostility as they discover she hasn’t had sex yet at the ripe old age of 18.

Apparently if you have not lost your virginity by the time you graduate high school, you have failed at everything in life.

Should You Watch It: I’ve got to admire any movie that will fill its cast with almost exclusively douche bags.

Truth be told, syphilis is more funny then the movie. I’d rather hear the death rattle of a puppy dog then have to watch this terrible, terrible movie again.

In fact, the plot is about as threadbare as a Family Guy episode — with scenes hastily strung together in an excuse to cram as much disrobing as humanely possible. There are several scenes that feature full-frontal nudity — including some of the smallest dicks to ever grace the movie screen since Joe Pesci.

I will say one nice thing about 18-Year-Old Virgin. The acting from most of the main characters wasn’t all that bad. None of the film’s cast is going to become the next big thing in Hollywood, but they all did an acceptable job working with the atrocious script that was served to them. Except for one man.

Normally I would feel bad about singling out an actor in a small-budget film — especially a guy with only three films to his IMDB credit. But J. Michael Trautmann’s acting in 18-Year-Old Virgin is so gloriously bad it transcends awful to become something almost sublime

J. Michael Trautmann delivers lines like he only just recently learned how to talk.

Trautmann delivers every line with a smug lazy smirk that threatens to overtake his face. Acting like he has been slipped horse tranquilizers, Trautmann waltzes through the movie gloriously unaware of just how poor he is delivering lines. Seriously, he’s high school play understudy’s understudy bad. He is so bad, I pray he is cast in a hundred movies just so I can see him “pffft” and roll his eyes five hundred more times.

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Hanna D.: The Girl from Vendel Park — 1984

What’s it about: Ann-Gisel Glass plays Hanna, a young girl torn between her love for rich, hunky men who can provide for her the life she has always wanted and her crippling addiction to a cornucopia of the finest narcotics known to man.

Italian director Rino Di Silvestro writes and directs this confounding film that at once is pure exploitive drivel barely emerging above the simple label of pornography and also a shockingly persuasive treatise on the dangers of drug abuse.

As Hanna is tossed from lover to lover in the film, further sinking into her own drug-fueled hell, viewers are left wondering what exactly they are supposed to get out of the film.

Weather its watching Hanna have graphic sex with her pimp, get into a heavy-handed shouting match with her mom (played by sex star Karin Schubert) or, in a moment of extreme desperation, wipe the already-drying vomit from her mouth and huff of rags soaked in gasoline, this movie pulls out all the stops in showcasing the sort of lurid lifestyles junkies tend to lead.

Life Lesson: If you’re going to be a junkie, mother is the necessity of invention. Sometimes you just have to be creative when nurturing your drug habit. Thankfully, Hanna D isn’t afraid to show you some creative ways to get your drug on — from smuggling narcotics into prison by stuffing them up your butthole to injecting heroin into the fleshy part above your eyeball, the movie shows, in surprisingly vivid detail, how to become the Macgyver of junkies.

Should You Watch It: Well, if you’re going to watch any early ‘80s Italian junkie film, it might as well be Hanna D. Simultaneously graphic both in its degenerateness and its cheesiness, the film is extremely enjoyable as a movie so bad it becomes fun to watch. Released on DVD for the first time a month ago, the movie comes with the added bonus of an interview with Di Silverstro, which is perhaps even more watchable thanks to the sheer balls on the recently deceased filmmaker as he tries and defends Hanna D. as an important addition to the world of cinema.

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Six-String Samurai — 1998

What’s it about: Six-String Samurai opens with the apocalypse and ends with the death and subsequent rebirth of rock and roll.

In the mid 1950s, Russia nuked the United States, creating a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The last great settlement is Lost Vega$, ruled by King Elvis. But the king is dead, baby, and America needs a new hero.

Buddy (Jeffrey Falcon) is a wandering artist/warrior. All the while strumming his six-string, he is on the road to Vega$ to become the new king. But like all great hero quests, Buddy’s trail is fraught with peril. From acquiring a new traveling partner after saving an orphan (Justin McGuire) from a band of roving cavemen to being hunted by Death, Buddy has a long way to go before he reaches Vega$.

Life Lesson: Jeffrey Falcon’s performance as Buddy stands as one of the most engrossing film characters in American cinema, combining the outward appearance and dress habits of the late rocker Buddy Holly with a personality at once both The Fonz and Bruce Lee.

And the cherry on top Buddy’s cool exterior?

His sword.

In today’s society, it seems we have forgotten just how cool swords are. In order to be someone who is looked up to and achieve the same kind of respect Buddy is showered with, I would suggest going to the nearest military surplus store and buying their most expensive sword replica. Sling it across your back and be at ease with the knowledge that you have become a man women want and men want to be. Plus you’ll never have to buy a letter opener again.

Should You Watch It: Bringing together Elvis Presley, the yellow brick road, suburban cannibals and Death himself, Six-String Samurai mixes Sergio Leone chestnuts with an eastern sensibility to create a sushi-western with killer action scenes, great music and hidden depth.

Not content to fit under a simple label, the film smears itself in honey and rolls in American cinematic history – sticking to whatever genre it can grasp. Recommended to both fans of action and music history, Six-String Samurai is one forgotten film that deserves to be discovered.

When not being traveling the country with seminars on being cool, Robert Saucedo is an occasional freelance writer whose work appears regularly in The Bryan/College Station Eagle, Dryvetyme Online and in the missed connections section of Craigslist. Visit him on the web at The Carrying On of a Wayward Son.

Robert Saucedo is an avid movie watcher with seriously poor sleeping habits. The Mikey from Life cereal of film fans, Robert will watch just about anything — good, bad or ugly. He has written about film for newspapers, radio and online for the last 10 years. This has taken a toll on his sanity — of that you can be sure. Follow him on Twitter at @robsaucedo2500.