A Deep Dive into Weirdo Cinema [5] Quiz

Answer: Happiness

Todd Solondz's 1998 dramedy was a bit perverse despite the innocuous name as the content, which contained all manner of lewd and taboo acts surrounding a suburban family (many of which were HIGHLY problematic), was a major turn-off for some festivals. Sundance rejected the film entirely; Cannes gave it the FIPRESCI Prize.

Starring Jane Adams, Lara Flynn Boyle, and Ben Gazzara, the movie also had appearances from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jon Lovitz, making this a particularly interesting movie to have buried. The film ended up releasing in a short run of theatres-- limited and in an unrated form.

Darren Aronofsky's "Pi", unlike "Happiness", did make it to Sundance in 1998. "The Blair Witch Project" and "Run Lola Run" made it in 1999.

Answer: Six-Shooter

A colossally-long series of movies created by Charles Band and Full Moon Pictures, the "Puppet Master" series isn't particularly good, but it does have a certain spirit that's hard to find in long B-movie franchises. The original, made in 1989, features a crew of puppets haunting the Bodega Bay Inn, having been stored there by their creator, Nazi antagonizer Andre Toulon, moments before his suicide in 1939. The puppets-- including Blade, Leech Woman, Pinhead, Tunneler, and Jester-- spend their resurrection killing the psychic inhabitants who arrive there in the modern era...and they make a lot of really weird noises a long the way. Six-Shooter doesn't show up until the second sequel.

The series is a long one too. "Puppet Master", since 1989, had more than a dozen sequels by its thirtieth anniversary (and more after), some of which are essentially just clip movies recapping earlier ones, and many of which retcon entire swaths of plot in favour of exploring a retro era or a new origin story. And the original one? So gooey. It's rare to find a film where all of the actors and all of the puppets are just covered in a layer of sweat.

Answer: Kung Pow!

Starring Steve Oedekerk as The Chosen One, "Kung Pow! Enter the Fist" is a martial arts parody film with a particular twist. Leveraging much existing content from a 1976 Hong Kong film called "Tiger & Crane Fists", Oedekerk inserted his own, original scenes and plot to create the resulting comedy. The finished product didn't stray from expectation, and in an era where TV shows like "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge" made bank, it's easy to overlook the 'Chosen One saves the girl and beats the evil guy (named Betty)' plot.

Though an interesting idea on paper, critics didn't care for it. Neither did audiences-- it only made $17,000,000 USD in the box office. Bad reception ultimately quelled plans for a trilogy of films exploring other genres, like the spaghetti western, as Oedekerk originally intended. If you want weird slapstick though, this might be it.

Answer: Ghost Ship

After Dark Castle Entertainment decided to remake "Thir13en Ghosts" in 2001, they set director Steve Beck's sights on a new horror film, the simply-titled "Ghost Ship", which saw a cast of salvage crew members coming across information leading them to the long-lost MS Antonia Graza, which vanished mysteriously decades before. Of course, what they found there was ghostly. In a bad way.

This movie was notoriously not well-received, though it was kind of par for the course, coming in around the time that J-horror was hitting a stride in American cinema. Notably, within the horror community, the opening sequence involving a dance floor and a long strand of wire is regarded as one of the more shocking and graphic horror scenes of the decade. Suffice to say, the first five minutes don't make up for the subsequent eighty-ish.

Answer: No

The legacy of this story starts before even the first "Scorpion King" movie since the title role originated in "The Mummy Returns" when an absurdly bad CGI version of Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson emerged from a pyramid chamber to fight Rick O'Connell and Imhotep. A spin-off was born in 2002 with Johnson reprising the role as a prequel, and he didn't come back for any of the others, all of which went straight-to-DVD.

In "Rise of a Warrior", Michael Copon takes Johnson's role as Mathayus of Akkad and searches for the Sword of Damocles in an effort to avenge his father's death. Of particular note, the end of the movie features a battle against a giant, invisible scorpion and it's a fight with computer graphics that I can only describe as... harrowing. The graphics-- not the battle. It's wild. Copon didn't return for the sequels; he was replaced by Victor Webster for "The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption" in 2012, and Webster would be replaced by Zach McGowan for "The Scorpion King: Book of Souls" in 2018.

Answer: Church Girl

Though "Ja Rule" had been fostering an acting career since 2000, his turn as Miles Montego in the 2013 film "I'm in Love with a Church Girl" was one of the first times he had top billing, sharing the main credits with Adrienne Bailon, Stephen Baldwin, and Toby Mac. The film starts with Montego as a drug dealer, but in meeting Bailon's character, Vanessa, he has a change of heart, meets her family, falls into a coma, and finds God, ending the movie as a pastor in what appears to be a mega-church.

In addition to a scene where Bailon's mother gets extremely excited about a trip to Sandals Resorts, the movie is particularly fascinating for a lengthy scene in which Ja Rule monologues to God in front of a massive stained glass window in a hospital chapel. While receiving a moderate amount of good praise from Christian audiences, the film ultimately flopped, making less than its $15,000,000 USD budget and getting critically panned.

Answer: Gene

Did you ever want to see Sir Patrick Stewart playing the role of the Poop emoji? How about celebrity chef Rachael Ray as a Spam Message emoji? Well, Sony has you covered because this 2017 movie, capitalizing on the emoji...craze(?!)... became a thing upon releasing wide to international audiences. Problematic actor T.J. Miller played Gene Meh, an emoji in the 'Meh' family seeking to achieve his own fame as a ubiquitous text message image. What results is a traipse about the internet.

Though the creators claimed the movie was for the under-18 crowd, critics (and audiences) agreed that it was for no crowd at all. "The Emoji Movie" made bank but was regarded as one of the worst movies of 2017, receiving particular (and ironic) scorn on the internet and social media. It became the first animated film to win the Worst Picture Razzie and it took home three other awards from the ceremony.

Answer: Twilight

The highly-anticipated adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight", this film was notably quite the hit, capturing teen and adult audiences alike by introducing the world to Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, and Jacob Black, who would continue to appear in the series' films for another four movies after their debut. Releasing in 2008, "Twilight" was just the start, where Bella and Jacob met and she discovered he was a sparkly, sparkly vampire living in Forks, Oregon. And thus, the world opened up to her.

Wildly melodramatic and deeply unemotional all at the same time, the film made money hand-over-fist with the series as a whole clocking in over three billion dollars USD at the box office. All this despite Kristen Stewart's acting being described as wooden, the story being contrived and problematic, and the vampires literally sparkling in the sunshine (hence living in Oregon). This said, the soundtracks for each were loaded with bangers, and if you want something really outlandish, you'd be wrong to avoid watching the thunderstorm baseball scene set to Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole". Simply absurd.

Answer: The moon

Set in an alternate timeline from ours, "Iron Sky" posits the age-old question "what if there were Nazis in a secret moonbase?" That's virtually the entire premise, and it follows the Nazis (and those against them) as they take their space fleet and converge on Earth from the skies above.

Made in Finland (at one point being the nation's most expensive film), "Iron Sky" released with the same sort of camp cheekiness as Norway's "Dead Snow" a few years earlier (and hey, both featured Nazis!). Definitively an interesting hypothetical, unfortunately the studio that created it went bankrupt in 2020, ending the inevitable series with a second film, "Iron Sky: The Coming Race", funded through IndieGogo and releasing in 2019.

Answer: Yes

Another immortal, age-old question, eh? "Dude, Where's My Car?" starred Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott as two stoner buddies who spent the entire film looking for Chester's car, and what unfolded was a long-winded adventure through town involving a cult, alien women from another planet, their girlfriends, emus, and a Continuum Transfunctioner. They absolutely found their car at the end, but only by stopping the threat and going back in time, allowing the thankful good aliens to put the car right out by the curb where it needed to be.

Despite poor reviews upon its release, "Dude, Where's My Car?" managed to rebound in later years, becoming a stupid, but classic early 2000s comedy for people of a certain age. Considering the subject matters of similar yet-to-come films like the "Harold and Kumar" series and "Eurotrip", this one managed to transcend a bit better. It helped that many of its jokes were eminently quotable, even if they were as annoying as a "Scary Movie" wazzup.