The problem often falls into one of two categories: a lack of focus on your subject (see Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein versus Dracula: Dead and Loving It), or a lack of respect for it (see the complete works of Friedberg and Seltzer… and by “see” I mean “for instance,” no one should actually see them).

The greatest parody comes from a certain appreciation and understanding for what you’re making fun of. That’s why Roasts are so damn funny, and “spoof” should be considered a dirty word.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone like to walk that line. In films like Team America and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, they make it work by wrapping the things they love around the stuff they’re making fun of. Hence puppets spouting right-wing rhetoric and children singing Broadway songs about Canada. There’s a certain genius to it, and it’s made them both a lot of money.

So, I was curious to see Trey Parker’s first film, Cannibal: The Musical, from 1996 (shot in 1993 when he was still a student at University of Colorado at Boulder), available for free on Hulu.com. Would it be a freshman misfire, or the first step on a path that brought us marionettes shitting on each other?

And, honestly, I was pleasantly surprised.

The film is based on the true story of Alferd Packer, a prospector in the late 18th-century and the only man ever convicted of cannibalism in Colorado. Packer tells the story of leading a group of men from Utah to find gold in Colorado. Along the way his beloved horse disappears and he takes the expedition off course to find her, eventually getting snowbound in the Rocky Mountains, the end result being Packer gets arrested for eating his companions and sentenced to death by hanging.

It’s all told in a mixture of comedy, ranging from wordplay to slapstick, and song and dance that feels like an uber low-budget “Oklahoma!”, which the film cites as a template in its opening (and fanciful) scroll.

The whole effect is fun and cheesy and, while some of the jokes fall flat, it garnered several genuine laughs from me. And, between the “period” costumes that make everyone look like Al Borland, Japanese Native Americans and sprinklings of extreme gore, the film’s so earnest and fun you can’t help but get swept up in it.

And, most of all, the songs don’t suck! A couple are actually kind of awesome, with titles like “Shpadoinkle,” “Hang the Bastard,” and “When I Was On Top Of You” (a love song to a horse).

But, what makes it all work is that Trey Parker and his cohorts really love the classic American Musical. And, they’ve made one complete with overture, reprise and ballet! This is truer in style than Chicago, and it’s funnier, too.

Everyone knows the difference between good and bad parody. You can feel it after the credits roll, when you’re driving home or, in this case, closing the browser window. It’s that moment of debate when you ask yourself “Was that a real movie, or was it just jokes?” Did it tell a story, did it make me care, or did I take a bathroom break without hitting pause and still not miss anything? It’s the difference between Airplane! and Airplane II.

Cannibal: The Musical is good parody. It’s truly shpadoinkle.

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However, once in a while, a film comes along that makes me happy and yet is so bad, so misguided, so entirely beyond defense, that even I’m forced to squirrel it away at the bottom of my DVD shelf and hope nobody notices.

Thus is the case with the abysmal, 1996 production of Tromeo and Juliet. Yes, it’s a film based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and yes, it’s made by legendarily bad film company Troma Entertainment. And, yes, that’s why the main character is named Tromeo.

Troma Entertainment is famous for its horrible films. Their priority is not quality or fun or exploitation. Their priority is completion. And then, profit. And, boy, do these guys profit. They’ve distributed movies like Blood Sucking Freaks, Cannibal: The Musical (the first feature by Matt Stone and Trey Parker) and Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator, and produced such video “classics” as The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke ‘Em High and Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD. They re-use footage from other movies, hire the worst actors in New York and live and die by the belief that you can overcome any script problems with bad puns, cheesy gore and fake boobs.

There’s a huge audience for these films, but honestly, I’ve never liked them. They were just too much cheese and not enough give-a-crap for my tastes. But, Tromeo and Juliet, man, that one gets me every time.

It loosely follows the story you were forced to read in high school: Tromeo Que (son of Monty Que – hear the rimshot) courts a whore named Rosy, until he meets Juliet Capulet at a party. Of course, their families hate each other. Juliet’s engaged to marry a suitor chosen by her parents, inexplicably named London, but still, Tromeo and Juliet fall in love, get married, Juliet’s cousin kills Tromeo’s friend, Tromeo kills Juliet’s cousin and he gets banished.

And, it’s smart enough to leave out the lame parts of the play, namely the last 30 pages. Juliet takes a potion to, rather than fake death, turn into a monster, and scares London off. Tromeo returns, kisses her and makes her pretty again, enraging her father who is a psychotic child molester. A bloody battle ensues.

And, let’s be honest, that sounds awesome.

And, on the surface, it is. The story is so egregious, you giggle when you should be horrified. The music kicks ass, with many songs written specifically for the film, and others by Sublime, Superchunk and The Wesley Willis Fiasco. And, there are inspired moments where Lemmy, from Motorhead, recites a doctored version of the play’s opening monologue, or Tromeo and Juliet goof around in Central Park and screw beneath the stone lions in front of the New York Public Library.

The onscreen high-point are the leads, Jane Jensen and Will Keenan. As Juliet, Jensen manages to remain precious while fondling a giant goo-covered penis monster, and Keenan, as Tromeo, smiles through the madness so genuinely that he manages to keep you from writing it all off as frivolous. They make a believable, charming couple. (Incidentally, Jensen also created an alt-pop album in the late 90’s called Comic Book Whore that I listened to constantly; and Will Keenan insulted my girlfriend on his website.)

The script, too, has a lot of potential, written by James Gunn, who later created Slither and PG Porn. It actually includes text from the original play and much of it is written in iambic pentameter.

And, on a totally random note, this is the only movie I’ve ever heard of where the R-rated version is 6 minutes longer than its Unrated version!

But, after a while, it’s all cheap and soulless.

Most of it is exploitation masquerading as satire. The jokes are offensive without the benefit of being funny and the visual style is flat to the point of cardboard. Lloyd Kaufman, the director and producer, just wants to get his characters in the frame, paying little attention to whether or not they’re well-lit, well-dressed, or even in focus. And, while he would claim that his film “takes no prisoners,” its comedy is too cheap and jabs too random to be enjoyed.

The cast is a hodgepodge of hipsters and Troma regulars, and most of them aren’t able to rise above the ugliness of the film’s spirit. They read the lines with earnestness and enthusiasm, but the script does them no favors and their best deliveries fall flat.
But, in the end, the real problem with Tromeo and Juliet is one of respect. The movie doesn’t have any. Not for its cast or crew or script or audience. It’s a random, mean little film that wants to have class and style while still being trashy and fun, but it gets lost somewhere between Juliet’s lesbian nurse and the over-acting priest telling two-cent molestation jokes.

Still, I’ve probably watched this movie more than any other DVD on my shelf. I know some scenes word for word, and have my bathroom breaks timed down to the second. I’ve followed the careers of the movie’s cast, purchased the soundtrack… I even pre-ordered the Blu-Ray!

And why do I keep coming back? I really have no idea. While that goes against all my rules of liking something inexplicably, I still do.

The only way I could get my wife to watch this movie was to win a bet. When I finally got her to sit down long enough for me to push play, she fell asleep twenty minutes in. And, you know what, I was so embarrassed by what was happening onscreen, I didn’t bother to wake her up.

I just smiled and giggled and shook my head all by myself.

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But, if at any point someone turns into a zombie or breaks out into song, it’s at the top of my Netflix queue.

The difference is that there’s nothing popular about the latter. Sure, there’s an audience out there for them, but they aren’t big money audiences and they don’t win awards. To make an unpopular movie takes either passion or hubris. Or, if I’m lucky, it’s both.

Hence, my life-long affection for Fred Dekker’s 1986 Horror/Sci-Fi/College Comedy/Cop Action/B-Movie Homage Night of the Creeps. This is Dekker’s first movie, so there isn’t much opportunity for hubris in the film’s brisk 88 minutes, but man, is there passion.

This is a construction paper scrapbook of one man’s love for the movies. It’s got an alien invasion, a love triangle, a ’50’s setting, a zombie outbreak on a mountain road while a woman gets attacked by an axe wielding maniac, and that’s just the prologue!

Then we fast-forward to the 1980’s, where we meet Chris, played by Jason Lively, older brother of my childhood crush, Robyn (oh, and some chick on Gossip Girl), who sees the girl of his dreams and decides she’d only go for him if he was in a frat. He and his best-friend J.C., in an attempt to join said frat, accidentally release a cryogenically frozen body that carries alien slugs in its head that turn people into zombies and, needless to say, blood is spilled, brains are eaten and a boy becomes a man.

This movie is just bursting at the seams with cinematic joy. Chris is the original “dorky yet charming,” his lady-love is classic ’80’s hot, his best-friend is one of the most awesome best-friend characters ever put in a movie (seriously, as a writer, I’ve blatantly stolen the character more times than I can count), and then we mix in Tom Atkins as an alcoholic detective with a secret, a vendetta and a goddamn catch phrase (“Thrill me”).

The plot of this movie is like reading my Christmas List from 1987.

And yet, despite all of its awesomeness, the great explosions, the world-class one-liners, the bad-ass finale and the little-people in alien suits, this is not a very good movie. I’d spent my whole life believing it was fucking Citizen Cane, until I sat my wife down to watch the Blu-Ray and, half-way through, found her bored and myself embarrassed. As much as I love it, as a whole, it just doesn’t hold up.

The script isn’t nearly as cohesive as it should be, there are entire scenes that just plain don’t work, and, despite a short running time and enough plot to fill a space-ship, it really drags. It makes strengths out of stuff that usually bugs me – cheesy special effects, stereotypical baddees and a dream sequence (I really hate dream sequences) – but, it can’t overcome the too-long tracking shots, the hideous music, schizophrenic lighting and a painfully slow epilogue.

But, a lot of this can be chalked up to the simple fact that this was the director’s first movie. That he was truly learning on the job and, from what I’ve read and heard on the commentary, he had different opinions about pacing and style than the producer. But, there I go again, defending a movie I love, despite its flaws.

This movie is a classic example of potential over product, and I’m totally okay with that. Because, in the end, I’d rather watch a 26 year-old guy swing for the fences and land a double than a dozen Michael Bay movies slip past the infield. (That metaphor quite doesn’t work, but I won’t miss an opportunity to take a stab at that jack-ass.)

Night of the Creeps isn’t a great movie, but fuck if it isn’t worth your attention, your respect and, at the very least, your time. You can call it shit, but you can’t call it lazy. And, I’ll take that over “the feel good movie of the year” any day.

P.S. Dekker would go on to make Monster Squad. Now, if you call that one shit, you and I are gonna have a problem.

P.S.S. That’s me in my Night of the Creeps t-shirt. Suck it, haters.

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The Captain, an American soldier named Steve Rogers, sets off to put right what Dr. Vaselli once put wrong, and ends up battling the spoils of her foreign work, the Red Skull. I’m not sure why Rogers came out looking like a cover model while the Red Skull looks like a character from Nip/Tuck, but Skull doesn’t seem very pleased about it. Their battle ends with Cap’n US grabbing onto a Nazi missile aimed at the White House. He rides that bad boy like a West Hollywood Slim Pickens all the way across the pacific, choosing to divert it a few feet from its intended target and aiming it into a Washington state forest. It’s best not to pay very close attention to this, because the logistics read like a question on the AP Math test.

Anyway, the missile crashes, plunging Blue Boy into the ice and freezing him long enough to be thawed out in the 1990’s, where he wakes up, steals a car and meets up with his depression era sweet-heart. She’s now in her eighties, while he still looks thirty. They have a surprisingly touching exchange before he takes up with her twenty-something daughter in an oddly incestuous turn, and spends a lot of time watching television and brooding about the events of the last fifty years.

The Red Skull is still alive, hears of Cap’s return and unleashes his daughter to bring him in, igniting a chase that takes them all to Italy (because, apparently, Germany was too obvious) and involves kidnapping the president.

For an action/adventure movie, it contains very little action and even less adventure. Plus, our boy spends most of the time running around sans tights, looking like a character from Melrose Place, wondering where the time has gone. So, really, this is less Captain America and more Rip Van Whiny.

Plus, I’ve never read the Captain America comics – he was always a bit too Batman-meets-Lynyrd-Skynyrd for my tastes – but after watching this movie, I really have no idea what special powers this guy is supposed to have! He gets shot twice, and ends up in the hospital, so he’s not invincible. He throws people around, but when he punches someone, they’re more than likely to get back up. In the end, the only thing this dude seems good at is riding in a car, then convincing the driver to stop because he’s “gonna be sick,” only to lure them away from the car long enough to steal it and leave them on the side of the road. That’s gotta be the lamest super-power ever, and he uses it… twice!

Really, what makes this dude worthy of the name Captain America? Because he wears red, white and blue? If you change the cowl to a beret, he could just as easily be Captain France. He really likes the President, but then, so did Tony Blair.

No, a real Captain America would stride into danger, armed with a Marlboro and a bottle of Coors, wearing Levi’s and chewing on a buffalo steak. He hasn’t shaved in forty-eight hours, but he still smells of Aqua-Velva. He raises a handgun to the Red Skull, while his lawyers, publicists and life coaches take notes; and, just before sending the red menace back to hell, he crosses himself, takes a bribe and sings the refrain from “You Give Love a Bad Name.”

Now, that’s my kind of super hero.

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I love you, “Repo! The Genetic Opera.”  For all the wrong reasons.

When we’re together, at first, you’re so much fun.  You take me to cool places, play me your weird songs, introduce me to insane friends and tell me a story that’s so dense with pathos that my inner-14-year-old girl screeches with glee.  It’s like a Rocky Horror Grand Guinol.

Quite frankly, you’re everything I dreamed of, scribbling away in my Junior High unicorn journal.

You tell the story of a future where organ failures run rampant and a company, GeneCo, that rises to fill the void.  But, organ transplants don’t come cheap and if you can’t make your payments, they send the Repo Man, Nathan Wallace, a legal assassin, to retrieve GeneCo’s property.  From there we meet, Rotti, the terminally-ill president of GeneCo, his three children vying for the company after their father’s death, a Graverobber, who traffics an illegal pain-killer, and Shilo, Nathan’s sick daughter, locked away in a tower.  Yeah, I keep a flow-chart close at hand.

And, it’s all told against the backdrop of a city that is equal parts dystopian and beautiful, with vibrant special effects, timeless set design and songs that combine Wagner, Rammstein and German folk. At first it’s such gothy, silly, black-lit fun!

But, as the night wears on, you get lazy, inattentive.  Your songs lose their thrill, your sets all go away, except for one bland opera stage, your back-story requires a cheat-sheet and you wrap up your plot with a mountain of exposition, leaving plot-holes the size of Paul Sorvino’s breakfast.

And, when you leave me, my friends remind me just how bad they think you are.  How your music is “too repetitive,” your story “too confusing.”  And, your third act sucks.

And, you know, I can’t disagree with them.  The story is unnecessarily complicated, the flash-backs do kill the momentum, Alexa Vega really can’t sing.  And, your third act really does suck.

But, they don’t understand you.  They don’t see the passion with which you were created.  Your flair for going way too far.  Anthony Stewart Head tearing up the scenery.  Paul Sorvino as a great opera villain.  Bill Moseley, Ogre and even Paris Hilton managing to not suck and Terrance Zdunich playing history’s sexiest Christian Death fan.  Your sets are amazing, your death scenes are awesome and most of your songs straight up kick-ass.

You’re not perfect, but you’re a work with insurmountable potential, and if you fulfilled it, we’d all be complaining you were too popular.

So, “Repo! The Genetic Opera,” I will return to you tonight, as I have many times before, and as always, you will hold my attention for about 30 minutes and then squander, neglect and abuse me for another hour, leaving me to feel embittered, dirty, wishing you would change.

Just take your Ministry t-shirt and go.

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