Adventures in Cleaning Out the DVR: A Teacher’s Obsession (dir by Blair Hayes)

Posted on November 14, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Continuing my adventures in cleaning out my DVR, I followed up Girl Missing by watching A Teacher’s Obsession, a batshit crazy little film about … well, about a teacher’s obsession.

A Teacher’s Obsession originally aired on September 6th on the Lifetime network. Now, usually, whenever you see a Lifetime movie called A Teacher’s Obsession, you assume that the film is going to be about a teacher having sex with (or trying to have sex with, depending on the film) a student. But, in A Teacher’s Obsession, the teacher wants to be a student’s new BFF.

The student in question is Bridgette (Mia Rose Frampton), who is your typical spoiled upper middle class brat. Her mother, Candace (Molly Hagan), is a local politician. Bridgette makes it a point to always call her mother by her first name and always does so in the snarkiest tone imaginable. Bridgette attends a prestigious academy, where she’s the captain of the school lacrosse team. (What’s the deal with rich people and lacrosse?) However, Bridgette is failing her English class. As the film starts, Bridgette has just been put on academic probation. That means no lacrosse! And, even worse, Candace has forbidden Bridgette from seeing her boyfriend, Bobby (Dillon James).

Fortunately, there’s a new English teacher at the Academy. Her name is Jane (Boti Bliss) and — oh my God, Jane sure is crazy! In fact, Jane is so totally and completely crazy that you can’t help but root for her. That may sound strange but seriously, all the other teachers at the school are so boring and Bridgette is such a spoiled brat that you can’t help but think, Yay! Jane’s here to fuck things up!

The painfully boring (and bearded) calculus teacher, Mr. Jeter (Eric Curtis Johnson), has a crush on Jane and, when she has to, Jane has no trouble leading Mr. Jeter on. But the thing is, Jeter starts to get a little bit too needy and it all leads to this great scene where Jane totally goes off on Mr. Jeter in the teacher’s lounge. While the rest of the teachers sit around and listen like mummified relics of a past era, Jane tells Jeter that he’s overweight, that he has bad breath, that his beard is disgusting, and “your penis is miniscule.” Jeter sits there and listens, unaware that he has soup in his beard.

Jane may occasionally spend time with Mr. Jeter but she is far more interested in being Bridgette’s best friend. She encourages Bridgette to continue to see Bobby and even gives her birth control pills. She tutors Bridgette in English class. She conspires to help Bridgette cheat her way through Mr. Jeter’s class. Jane excitedly makes plans to get a tattoo with Bridgette. (“Do you think I’m too old for a tattoo?” Jane asks with a giggle.) When Bridgette gets a tattoo without inviting Jane to come with her, Jane goes crazy and accuses Bobby of trying to rape her.

And through it all, Candace has secrets of her own to hide. It turns out that Candace and Jane knew each other in the past. Jane used to be obsessed with Candace. Now, she’s obsessed with Bridgette…

A Teacher’s Obsession is one of those batshit crazy Lifetime movies that’s so unapologetically over-the-top that I couldn’t help but love it! Seriously, it was a lot of fun to watch Jane make spoiled Bridgette’s life difficult and Boti Bliss attacked the role of Jane with a ferocity that was truly admirable! Meanwhile, the underrated actress Molly Hagan brought unexpected depth to her role and the end result was an unexpectedly entertaining Lifetime melodrama.

Adventures in Cleaning Out The DVR: Girl Missing (dir by Joel Soisson)

Posted on November 14, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, I recently turned on the TV, checked the guide to see if there was anything on worth recording, and discovered, to my horror, that I only had about 5 hours of recording space left on my DVR! Making matters ever worse was that the DVR was threatening to erase the two oldest recordings in order to make more space. Terrified at the thought of losing both Bend it Like Beckham and Jesus Christ Superstar, I realized that it was time to borrow a page from the Gary Loggins playbook and starting cleaning out my DVR!

I started things off by watching Girl Missing, a film which I recorded off of Lifetime on October 25th. (What was I doing on the 25th that required me to record the movie? I was at a Halloween party, dancing in my underwear and then getting soaked while running through the rain on the way back to the car. Or, at least, that’s what I think I was doing. My memory of that weekend is hazy, at best.)

ANYWAY — according to the IMDb, Girl Missing was originally entitled Forgotten but I imagine Lifetime changed the title to remind viewers of Gone Girl. The film opens with two hunters wandering across a frozen wilderness in the snow. I point this out because the film’s opening few minutes really are impressive and visually striking. The image of those two hunters wandering across that desolate landscape have an otherworldly feel to them. Eventually, the hunters come across something unexpected — a ten year-old girl has been abandoned in a ditch.

Flash forward ten years and that girl has grown up to be Jane (Francesca Eastwood). Jane has no memory of her life before she was found in that ditch. However, that starts to change when she’s contacted by Sylvia, a wealthy New York widow who claims to be her mother. Sylvia is played by Kiersten Warren, who once played Alex in Saved By The Bell: The College Years, a series that my friend Derek and I are currently reviewing over on PrimeTime Preppie.

After traveling to Sylvia’s mansion, Jane is at first excited to finally be reunited with her mother. However, it quickly becomes apparent that not everything is as it seems. Sylvia is nervous and evasive, especially when talking about her husband’s suicide. Her boyfriend, Carlo (the wonderful Federico Dordei), gives off a vibe of pure sleaze and Jane is not happy to discover that Carlo and Sylvia’s affair started while Sylvia was still married. Soon, Jane is having sepia-toned nightmares of past violence and she starts to see a mysterious little girl wandering through the gray hallways of the mansion…

As I watched Girl Missing, with its chilly visuals and twisted storyline, I thought to myself, “This movie must be Canadian.” (And, just so there’s no misunderstandings, I totally meant that as a compliment!) However, I then checked with the imdb and discovered that no, this was not a Canadian film. Instead, it was filmed in Minnesota, which might be close to Canada but is still definitely a part of the United States.

But no matter. Whether the film’s snow was Canadian snow or Minnesota snow, director Joel Soisson still made good visual use of the frozen and desolate landscape. He also made good use of Sylvia’s shadow-filled mansion and the entire film had an enjoyably gothic feel to it. In the end, Girl Missing felt like a fun little Young Adult mystery. It was the epitome of an enjoyable Lifetime film.

#LateNightMovie review: The Alien Factor

Posted on November 14, 2015 by paddiesthoughts

Being that this is my first #LateNightMovie review on TSL, just want to let you all know how this mess got started. Several years ago I was tweeting bad sci-fi movies late at night. Somehow Holly (@hwilson2009) and Janeen (@Janeen_FluffyJ ) found out that I was doing that. Holly was the first one to ask what I was doing, soon after Jinni joined in shortly after Tammy (@TRDowden) joined in. We quickly learned that twitter wouldn’t be able to keep up with us. Holly had this great chat room (@syfydesigns) for us all to talk in and #LateNightMovie was born. Thru there we have found a great group of friends to hang out with every Friday and Saturday nights!

This past week we watched “The Alien Factor” I found this movie while perusing the depths of Hulu during one of my movie watches a few months ago. Kinda tossed it in the back of my mind and then stumbled across it again.

affiche-the-alien-factor-1978-1

Director and writer: Don Dohler

Stars:

Don Leifert as Ben Zachary

Tom Griffith as Sheriff Cinder

Plot:
A spaceship with an extraterritorial zoo crashes on Earth near a redneck town, how could this go wrong!

Review:

This was Don Dohlers first credited movie. He did revise it later in the 1982 movie “NightBeast” and later in 1982’s “Aliens Factor 2” Both of which failed horribly. The thing is, Don Dohlers is not credited enough. As a low-budget film maker, Dohler did some really great work. His work has that capture you anyway feeling about them. Infectious and raw at the same time. So I am going to take this time, as a horror and sci-fi junkie, just to appreciate this movie for what it is; A great, low-budget film, that we all can have fun with!

And speaking of fun, The #LateNightMovie gang had a great amount of fun! The quips were awesome!

Quips:

garnerhaines:
This was before they invented tailgate parties.

WarrenPeas64:
Three Dog Night lost their Mystery Machine van

Janeen_FluffyJ:
aaaaahhh, poking with secreations… she was attacked by a turkey baster?

Philo1000:
Alien or jerk boyfriend? choose

Phil had a choice to make! lol

Philo1000:
#BEER RUN BRB

Janeen_FluffyJ:
That was the last dance for Mary Jane folks.

garnerhaines:
So, are there two alien factions trying to annihilate the town? One glowy and the other with slimy armor?

WarrenPeas64:
The bears injected the guy with poison to frame the chipmunks. It’s SO obvious

ElwayC:
atari rules

kurtzellner:
i want the partridge family to sing again they rocked

LeMyrn:
married sex is alien sex

Philo1000:
seriously?

Yeah, Phil, seriously I made that joke!

Thank you Garner, Kurt, Phil, Ambie, Becs, Jes, Cindy, Jinni, Myrna, Warren, Holly for watching #LateNightMovie with me this week!

In Memorium: Vive La France!

Posted on November 13, 2015 by gary loggins

Film Review: Animals (dir by Collin Schiffli)

Posted on November 12, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Animals is a pretty depressing movie and I guess that’s appropriate since it’s a movie about two heroin addicts. The script was written by David Dastmalchian, who also plays the role of Jude. Reportedly, he based the script on his own experiences with drug addiction. As a result, Animals is one of those movies that is full of believable details. I’ve never used heroin and I don’t think I ever would. However, even if there was a chance that I would touch heroin, Animals would probably change my mind. It’s a seriously dark movie.

And don’t get me wrong — that’s a good thing. If you’re going to make a movie about two people slowly killing themselves as a result of their drug addiction, the movie probably should be a bit on the dark side. But, at the same time, that doesn’t necessarily make Animals a lot of fun to watch.

The film tells the story of Jude and his girlfriend, Bobbie (Kim Shaw). They both come from upper middle class backgrounds, they’re both obviously well-educated (it’s suggested that Jude may have gone to medical school), and — even in the throes of drug addiction — they’re both still attractive enough that they can still blend in with “mainstream” society. As we see, in a handful of flashbacks, they once owned a comfy apartment together. Now, they live in a car that they park outside of the Chicago Zoo. Jude and Bobbie spend most of their time trying to figure out how they’re going to make enough money to get their next fix.

And the best parts of the film are the parts that deal with Jude and Bobbie tricking unsuspecting people out of their money. As tedious as Jude and Bobbie’s addiction-centered existence may sometimes be, it’s hard not to admire their determination. Their schemes range from the simple to the complex. They go to weddings and steal the gifts. Pretending to be a high-priced online prostitute, Bobbie goes to men’s houses and, after grabbing their money, runs outside where Jude waits for her in a running car. (Needless to say, none of the men are willing to risk the public shame of calling the police and admitting to how they met Bobbie in the first place.) Probably their most impressive scheme involves tricking a mall security guard into splitting the reward money for finding a stolen laptop. Jude and Bobbie are so good at cheating people that you do end up regretting that they couldn’t put their obviously intelligence to less self-destructive uses.

Eventually, of course, one of the two has an overdose and gets taken to the hospital. For the first time, the two of them are separated and forced to realize just how destructive and co-dependent their relationship really is. Will they stay apart and get clean or will true love (and heroin addiction) conquer all?

There’s a really harrowing scene in which Jude and Bobbie are harassed by some undercover cops who turns out to be just as brutal as the drug dealers that they claim to be fighting. And both Shaw and Dastmalchian give good performances. Even John Heard gets to play a character who isn’t a scheming and corrupt government official. There’s a lot to admire about the film but, ultimately, it’s so dark and depressing that it’s difficult to recommend. Unlike a film like Trainspotting, there’s not much going on underneath the grimy surface. On the basis of their work here, I’ll watch anything else that Schiffli, Shaw, and Dastmalchian do but Animals is one of those films where one viewing is more than enough.

Film Review: Antboy: Revenge Of The Red Fury (2014, dir. Ask Hasselbalch)

Posted on November 12, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Well apparently, it doesn’t matter what I watch. It can be softcore porn. It can be a Disney Channel movie. It can be a family entertainment cash-in film. It can even be a Danish kids superhero movie. Regardless, it will always include invisibility in it. I don’t know why, but it appears to be true.

Moving onward, back in July one of my first reviews here was for a Danish superhero movie called Antboy. Took me a few months to get back to it, but I’m now reviewing the sequel. Yes, his piss is still acidic. Honestly, they could have renamed this movie Antboy: Young Love Is A Bitch. The film opens up with Antboy stopping a robbery. Then they go to the movies.

For those of you who haven’t seen the first film. This is a superhero franchise that acknowledges the existence of other superheroes in comics and films. Also, look at the names of the two movies playing. Not since I watched The Amazing Wizard of Paws (2015) have I seen a director shameless plug one of his movies within another one of his movies. Only difference is that this movie is fun, whereas The Amazing Wizard of Paws is pretty bad.

That’s Antboy/Pelle (Oscar Dietz) on the right and his girlfriend Ida (Amalie Kruse Jensen) on the left. I really only put that screenshot there to make sure you notice the obvious size difference between the two actors. There are at least two times when this movie bumps up against a barrier. In the case of their size difference, it’s that they obviously didn’t have the money to convincingly have Antboy carry her near the end of the film. But they work around that nicely.

This is Antboy’s friend and sidekick Wilhelm (Samuel Ting Graf). Wilhelm has come up with a solution so that Antboy can stop destroying toilets every time he needs to pee. However, given that this isn’t child porn, they can’t actually show him use that thing. Honestly, they don’t answer how that works till the end of the movie. Until then, you wonder, does he pee into that little bit at the end of that capsule? The look on Antboy’s face when his friend shows it to him makes you think that.

This is Maria (Astrid Juncher-Benzon). Antboy rescues her on an ice rink from some hockey guys who were harassing her. To say she has a crush on Antboy is a drastic understatement considering the remainder of this film. Just take a look.

He doesn’t help things by saying he’s going to show up at a party as Antboy, but changes out of the costume, thus standing her up. To say she’s angry is also an understatement. Let’s introduce her dad.

That red thing he’s wearing is supposed to make him invisible, but it doesn’t. Well, it doesn’t work yet. After abandoning it, Maria finds it in the trash can and it sort of springs to life. I don’t remember if there was a reason or if it just happened. Now she gets to work transforming it into a full fledged uniform.

I’m sure that uniform isn’t supposed to remind us of Iron Man in slightest even though it’s power comes from a circular thing on it and it is all red.

That makes up the rest of this movie. Basically her trying to get even with Antboy, then going too far after her father ends up getting injured. At that point, she visits The Flea in prison and helps him. Not to break out, but to turn two twin boys into killing machines to go after Antboy.

If you don’t want the ending, then stop here, but it’s not much of a spoil anyways. You already know what that is, but here’s a screenshot to separate this from that.

In the end, when Antboy is on his last legs with the terrible twosome, he is able to get a change of heart out of her. A part of me wishes she had come around earlier, but considering the setup, I don’t think I would have bought it if it hadn’t come down to a life or death situation. All that needs to be said is that Antboy not only has an ally, but there are now two superheroes in the Antboy universe dishing out justice. She is the Red Fury.

I’m pretty sure that suit only gives her the power of invisibility, but you probably can’t convince this guy of that…

because she kicks the crap out of him. I’m just going to assume the suit helps her or that Danish women are just not to be messed with. Probably both.

Is it as good as the first? No, I don’t think so. But it’s still pretty fun, and I will definitely watch the third one, which is apparently set for 2016.

James Bond Film Review: SPECTRE (dir by Sam Mendes)

Posted on November 12, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(SPOILERS)

Three years ago, Arleigh, Leonard, Chris Mead, and I reviewed every single James Bond films up to Skyfall. Leonard often refers to this as being our Avengers moment and it remains one of my fondest memories of my time here at the Shattered Lens. It really doesn’t matter who is playing the role or what the villain’s evil plan may be, or whether the individual film was made in the 60s or just last year, the Bond films are a lot of fun. Some of them are better than others. Sometimes, you get lucky and you get something like For Your Eyes Only and sometimes you have to settle for Die Another Day. Ultimately, every Bond film is an event and, in many ways, they are critic proof. As long we hear the iconic music, as long as Bond gets a few good quips, as long as the villain chuckles while explaining his evil plan, as long as there’s an exciting chase and a big explosion, and as long as there’s a lot of gorgeous clothes to look at and at least one tastefully lit sex scene, most viewers will be happy.

If it’s not broken…

Most viewers will probably be happy with SPECTRE, the latest Bond film. I saw the film yesterday and, even if it won’t ever make my list of top ten Bond films, I enjoyed it. Daniel Craig is back as Bond, Christoph Waltz fulfills his destiny by becoming the 9th actor to play the iconic villain Blofeld, Dave Bautista is a properly intimidating henchman, and Lea Seydoux is the strongest Bond girl since Eva Green. One thing that I especially appreciated about the film is that, in the roles of M, Miss Moneypenny, and Q, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, and Ben Whishaw are actually given an opportunity to get involved in the film’s action and all three of them are a lot of fun to watch. The film has an absolutely brilliant opening, featuring Bond assassinating a man in Mexico City and destroying a city block in the process. There’s an exciting chase scene, there’s a few moments of genuine wit, and there’s even one of those patented Bond train journeys, where sex and violence are mixed with intoxicating results. And yes, the clothes are to die for…

To Die For

It’s good and undeniably enjoyable in so many ways and yet somehow, SPECTRE still left me feeling slightly disappointed. Some of that is because SPECTRE exists in the shadow of Skyfall. After Skyfall (which I feel should have been one of the films nominated for best picture of 2012), expectation were sky high for SPECTRE. Those expectations were so high that there was no way that SPECTRE could have hoped to meet them. (You could argue that Quantum of Solace faced the same problem when it had to follow Casino Royale.) SPECTRE is no Skyfall but, then again, few films are.

Speaking of high expectations, I think we were all expecting Christoph Waltz to be one of the best Bond villains. After all, Waltz is a legitimately great actor and he specializes in the type of cheerful arrogance that has epitomized some of Bond’s greatest antagonists. (One can easily imagine Waltz playing Auric Goldfinger.) Add to that, Waltz is playing Blofeld, the ultimate Bond bad guy. As it is, Waltz gives a good performance but SPECTRE‘s Blofeld just isn’t that interesting. He has a lot more in common with the generic baddie from Quantum of Solace than with Goldfinger or the fascinated Raoul Silva of Skyfall.

As well, it wasn’t just enough for Blofeld to be the leader of a secret organization bent on world domination. It wasn’t enough that Blofeld was secretly responsible for everything that happened in Casino Royale, Quantum, and Skyfall (which, as much as some critics have complained about this particular plot twist, is actually a clever reference to Blofeld’s shadowy presence in all of Sean Connery’s Bond films). For some reason, the film’s writers decided it would be a good idea to make him Bond’s jealous stepbrother. Blofeld’s past relationship to Bond feels incredibly superfluous. I like to think that I’m pretty good at suspending my disbelief (especially when it comes to a Bond film) but I have to admit that I found myself rolling my eyes while Blofeld talked about how jealous he was when Bond came to live with his family.

We all know it’s you, Christoph…

(As well, Blofeld’s jealousy was a bit too reminiscent of Raoul Silva’s jealousy of Bond. It worked in Skyfall because we weren’t expecting a Bond villain to have a vulnerable side and Javier Bardem’s perversely charismatic performance caught the viewers off guard. In SPECTRE, it just feels like something that should have been eliminated during a rewrite.)

Daniel Craig, of course, is the sixth actor to officially play the role of James Bond. It’s always interesting to see how each actor interprets the role. The most successful Bond films are always built around the actor’s individual interpretation. For instance, it would be difficult to imagine Roger Moore in any of Sean Connery’s Bond films and, at the same time, it would be hard to imagine Sean Connery in The Spy Who Loved Me. Sean Connery was the Ruthless Bond. George Lazenby was the Insecure Bond. Roger Moore was the Bemused Bond. Timothy Dalton was the Boring Bond. Pierce Brosnan was the Suave Bond. Depending on which one of his films you see, Daniel Craig is either the Professional Bond or the Whiny Bond. SPECTRE continues the pattern that we’ve seen in the previous Craig films of presenting a James Bond who is struggling to balance his humanity with his job. When it works, like in Skyfall, it’s riveting. When it doesn’t work, like in Quantum of Solace, it runs the risk of getting rather tedious. SPECTRE finds Craig in between those two extremes. It’s an uneven performance. Craig and Seydoux have great chemistry and the scenes where Craig interacts with Fiennes, Harris, and Whishaw are fun to watch. But there are other scenes where Daniel Craig just comes across like he’s bored with the whole thing. Craig’s Bond has spent four films trying to figure out how he feels about his job. If Craig returns for a fifth film (and, as of right now, that seems to be a big if), he will hopefully have finally gotten over it.

(That said, SPECTRE was definitely written for Craig’s bond. At the end of the film — SPOILER, obviously — Bond has the choice between executing a man in cold blood or allowing the authorities to arrest him. Craig allows the man to be arrested. Connery would have put a bullet in his head and then smirked about it.)

He totally would…

And if it seems that I’m being critical of SPECTRE — well, I am. It’s one of the more uneven films in the Bond franchise, one that especially suffers when compared to some of the other spy films (Kingsman, MI: Rogue Nation) released this year. But, at the same time, SPECTRE does deliver the basics of what we expect from a Bond film. It’s entertaining and it has its fun moments. It’s no Skyfall but at least it’s better than Quantum of Solace.

Incidentally, I want to be Lea Seydoux when I grow up…

Other Bond Reviews on TSL:

4 Shots From 4 Grace Kelly Films: Fourteen Hours, Rear Window, To Catch A Thief, High Society

Posted on November 11, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.

Tomorrow would have been Grace Kelly’s 86th birthday! This edition of 4 Shots From 4 Films is dedicated to her.

4 Shots From 4 Films

Fourteen Hours (1951, directed by Henry Hathaway)

Rear Window (1954, directed by Alfred Hitchcock)

To Catch A Thief (1955, directed by Alfred Hitchcock)

High Society (1956, directed by Charles Walters)

Navy Film Review #1: Alice In The Navy (1961, dir. Alekos Sakellarios)

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Recently, Michelle of Michelle, Books and Movies Addict nominated me for one of those blogging awards. I’ve blogged off and on since 2008 so I’ve done blogging awards, blogging associations, blogathons, etc. That’s why I really like writing here cause I don’t have to deal with any of that. I can just write. However, I told Michelle that I would review 10 Navy related movies. I thought that would be fun given that she was once in the Navy. So of course that means I start with this 1961 Greek comedy. How was I so lucky to come across this as the first movie?

It’s about a girl who falls in love with a sailor, follows him aboard ship, and needs to be hidden as a male sailor from her father who captains the ship. I know this doesn’t sound very realistic, but Michelle has assured me this once happened on a ship she was aboard (sarcasm). The difference was by the time she was in the Navy sailors had stopped breaking into random and pointless musical numbers. Speaking of musical numbers, this is one of those foreign musicals that doesn’t bother to subtitle the singing. They dub the dialogue, but I have no idea what they are singing. Can you imagine watching Singin’ In The Rain (1952) without knowing what they are singing about? Anyways, the movie opens up on a beach ball in the water.

Then we see a ship come along and pick it up. This ticks off a girl in another boat. This is Alice or Aliki (Aliki Vougiouklaki) depending on which version you are watching.

As you can see, she’s not happy about having her ball taken by the other ship. She jumps in the water and swims to the other ship. The guy there decides to play a pirate since she’s already called him one. But really, was it necessary to nearly bonk the guy on the head with the boom mic?

The boom mic has been dropping in a lot of the movies I’ve watched lately. However, to be fair, none of them have beaten The Explosive Generation (1961) in that department.

And that boom mic moves from the upper right to the center of the classroom, then droops down even further. But back to Alice In The Navy because it’s time for Alice to sing while riding a donkey.

I have no idea why, but then again I didn’t know why there needed to be music in the Bollywood remake of Switch (1991) called Mr. Ya Miss (2005), but there is. And more importantly, why have I seen it? It was bad.

Well, a large portion of this movie can be summed up like this.

Actress Aliki Vougiouklaki parades around in cute outfits.

Alice and sailor boy keep looking for each other and occasionally do find each other.

And the movie pads itself out with shots that don’t need to exist.

Wanna take a guess when the movie finally has Alice aboard the ship dressed as a sailor?

It happens 60 minutes into this 90 minute movie. Not since I watched Programmed To Kill has a movie taken that long to finally get to the point. And once it does, it doesn’t matter because the remainder is music, trying to hide her by pretending one of the male sailors can do a natural female voice (which his superior buys he can do), and the boys trying to get her a dress to leave the boat wearing.

This is all highly inaccurate. I can buy that male Greek sailors break out into song in Greek and speak dubbed English, but I can’t accept that any of them have done voice training to speak with female voices just for kicks.

Of course the father finally catches on and they get punished. By punished, I mean they get married.

This movie was bad. It just seems to drag on forever before getting to the it’s main plot point where it does a little music and a little unfunny comedy before just ending. It felt like just an excuse to say: Hey! We got hot blonde girls here in Greece too! Take that France and that Bardot woman of yours.

There’s no reason to sit through this. I’m sure there must be better movies with Aliki Vougiouklaki in them. Apparently, she was quite popular in Greece.

Film Review: Mom’s Outta Sight (1998, dir. Fred Olen Ray)

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

For those of you keeping track, this is now the third movie with invisibility that I’ve reviewed for this site. Invisible Centerfolds was a late night cable movie. Invisible Sister was a Disney Channel Original Movie that for some reason included a scene of a girls pep squad giving each other massages (yes, I know that actually happens, but it shouldn’t have been in the movie). And now we have Mom’s Outta Sight directed by Peter Stewart. Yeah, you can even put a fake bio for that fake name on the DVD Fred Olen Ray…

but we know it’s you. What is with this guy and making parents invisible? He also directed Invisible Mom (1996), Invisible Mom II (1999), and Invisible Dad (1998). In recent years he must have decided that it was enough with invisible parents so now pets must be invisible with Abner, the Invisible Dog (2013). Now he seems to have latched onto the Christmas movie craze. Given his roughly decade long commitment to making every movie possible with “Bikni” in the title, I guess Invisible Santa In A Teenie Weenie Bikini is just around the corner for Fred Olen Ray.

Mom’s Outta Sight is what happens when a king of the cash-in genre decides to cash in on the 90s family entertainment craze. That’s the same kind of thing that brought us those two stupid Skateboard Kid movies. Too bad I can’t write reviews that short anymore. So, here we go.

The movie opens up and who cares what happens there. The movie revolves around this machine called the Triton. What does it do? Apparently, whatever is convenient for the movie. Seriously, one minute it’s transporting things from one place to another. Then it can rearrange someone’s molecules to turn them into another person, animal, or anything else. Suddenly, it can also turn someone invisible. This is a very handy device for screenwriters.

The guy on the left is a scientist that is being payed off to help some bad guys get the Triton. The girl in the middle is working with him and will be transformed into the guy (Hannes Jaenicke) on the right to help steal the plans for the Triton. So wait, Invisible Sister turned out to be a body swap comedy in disguise and this one is largely a gender body swap comedy. At least with this one, when she becomes him and acts like a female stereotype, she was already a female stereotype before the switch occurred.

There are some kids and other people, but who cares. The only other person of consequence is Mom (Mary Elizabeth McGlynn).

The bad guys plan is to turn that one lady into the Dad so that they can steal the Triton, blame it on the Dad, and get the plans at the same time. In other words, it’s this movie’s excuse for why the girl scientist needs to become a man instead of simply replacing the mom since she needs to become invisible and all. Well, she spends a bunch of time making an ass of herself as the Dad before people really catch on. Thank god Mom has that degree in fiber optics! No seriously. There’s a scene early in this movie where the Dad bitches about the fact that she’s chosen to spend her time raising the kids instead of also putting her degree she worked for to use. Also, they drop in that she was once a biker. Anyways, Mom knows what to do!

That’s right! Make sure to screw it up so that she ends up invisible. Now Mom is on a mission! A mission that takes her past this.

This actor gives the worst fake sneeze I have ever heard in a movie. While I’m talking about sound in this movie, throughout this thing it plays some of the most stock family friendly movie music I’ve heard in a while. I thought I was watching A Talking Cat!?! (2013). And if you haven’t suffered through that movie yet. Here’s the best of A Talking Cat!?!

Oh, and there’s a second one called A Talking Pony!?! David DeCoteau’s feminine side called Mary Crawford apparently likes making really bad animal movies. But getting back to this bad movie. Things come to a head pretty quick. All you need to know is that this giant rat…

still looks better than CGI Splinter in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014). And it all ends like we expect. Well, yes, the movie does reference The Invisible Man with Claude Rains, Mom’s biker friends show up, and the bad guys are caught, but I mean this.

That’s right! Mom turns the family into human cats.

Ugh, this was bad. Really bad. Stay away from this one. Now I’m going to have to review those other Fred Olen Ray movies with invisibility in them, aren’t I? Life sucks!