The Landlord (2009)

Bad movies come in all shapes and sizes.  There are four main categories though.  There are the bad good movies, where the production quality is good but the movies are not.  There are the good bad movies, where the production quality is poor but the movies are entertaining.  There are bad bad movies where the production quality is bad and there is no entertainment to be had.  Then there are the forgettable movies that, well, are forgotten soon after watching.

One movie that landed in the good bad area, though it was close to being bad bad, was 2009’s The Landlord.  Tyler (Derek Dziak) was the landlord of an apartment building.  Every new tenant that came into the building would go missing.  Police were investigating, but it continued happening.  That’s because two of the tenants were demons that would eat the other tenants.  Rabisu (Rom Barkhordar) was the more affable, personable demon, while Lamashtu (Lori Myers) was a flesh-hungry dog monster demon thing.  When Donna (Erin Myers) moved into the newly empty apartment, Tyler fell in love and tried his hardest to stop the demons from eating her.

The Landlord ended up in the good bad area of bad movies because it managed to be just ridiculous enough to actually work.  There were a bunch of crazy things that happened throughout the movie that brought it above other bad movies of this kind.  It didn’t take itself seriously, which made it fun.  It was a horror comedy, which lightened the mood a little bit, especially since the comedy sometimes landed.  They weren’t the highest level of laughs, though they were entertaining enough to tickle the funny bone once in a while.  If they weren’t, they were dumb enough to just add to the overall goofy feel of the movie.  It came together in a nice little bad horror comedy package.

The place to start would be the opening of the movie.  The Landlord began with a new couple moving into the apartment that was being rented out.  While the wife was placing all of their belongings in what she thought would be the most decoratively appealing way, the husband was shopping for the few goods that they would need.  One of them was a hacksaw, which the wife questioned, and the husband said it was to “hack things.”  It was ominous and wouldn’t lead to much, since the guy is never seen using the hacksaw.  He ended up beating his wife with a baseball bat after seeing Rabisu in the mirror.

There was a joke in that opening scene about a toilet seat.  Apparently, after the last tenants were removed from the premises, a new toilet seat was required for the apartment.  Tyler hadn’t yet gotten around to putting that toilet seat in.  He told the tenants when they agreed to rent the apartment, and they moved in without the toilet seat.  When Tyler arrived with it, they were already dead and dismembered.  Seeing that, he threw up through the uninstalled toilet seat.

That was only the opening scene.  A lot of other crazy things happened as the movie went on.  Moving ahead to the introduction of Donna, that was one of the oddest scenes in the entirety of The Landlord.  When Donna was trying to find a place to live, she came across a seedy hotel.  The clerk (Emil Hyde) was a major ass.  When Donna walked in, a homeless guy walked in behind her, and the clerk immediately began harassing the homeless guy.  He was yelling at him, saying things like “You are on the shit list” while pretending to wipe his ass.  Then there was a guy who walked in asking for a room to have sex in and the clerk said he would get him a room after he was “done with this bitch.”  He was talking about Donna.  The over-aggressive personality of the clerk made for one of the craziest scenes in the movie.

Donna eventually moved into Tyler’s building, where he instantly fell in love with her.  They went out for drinks and karaoke quickly after.  She sang a country song about moving on from a bad relationship, an obvious hint at her actual life.  Then Tyler sang House of the Rising Sun because… Because it’s a good song, maybe?  Neither of them were good.  That’s to be expected though.  Karaoke rarely is.

At the same time as the karaoke bar experience, two police officers were searching Tyler’s apartment building without a warrant.  Detective Lopez (Kurt Ehrmann) and Detective Rosen (Ezekiel Brown) had been investigating Tyler for a while.  They knew that people kept going missing after moving into Tyler’s apartment.  Tyler was too good at cleaning up his mess, though.  He managed to keep them from getting any concrete evidence.  All traces of the tenants were gone.  No blood, no bones, no body parts of any kind.  He was doing a good job of getting rid of corpses.  The detectives chose a time when he wasn’t there to infiltrate the building and find something.  They went into the basement, where they saw weird symbols on the ground.  Then Rabisu showed up, possessed one of the detectives, and caused him to kill the other before taking his own life.  Fresh detective meat.

What was Rabisu doing at the time the detectives showed up?  He was sitting in front of the television, watching an infomercial about a jerky machine.  It was an appliance that could turn any meat into jerky, and give jerky juice as well.  Rabisu used Tyler’s credit card to buy one, and when Tyler caught him trying to use it, he fessed up to the stolen credit card.  Tyler and Rabisu had a friendly antagonistic relationship.  They would never trust each other, but they got along enough to have built some sort of relationship.

Two other relationships that have yet to be mentioned are those of Tyler to his sister Amy (Michelle Courvais) and her relationship with her coworker Warren (Rob McLean).  Amy and Warren were crooked police officers who would get the vampire ghouls living in their city to kill drug dealers and give them the drugs that were recovered.  They were also cheating on their significant others with each other.  They weren’t good people.  Tyler’s relationship with his sister was that she was forcing him to remain the landlord of the apartment building with Rabisu and Lamashtu.  She lived a cozy, crooked cop, family, cheating life while Tyler was stuck with the two demons.

None of that mattered in the end, though.  Nobody ended up in a good situation at the end of The Landlord.  After a dirty deal gone bad, Amy and Warren murdered one of the vampire ghouls.  The leader of the vampire ghouls then came to Warren and threatened his life.  Warren was turned into a vampire ghoul and tasked with making Amy the same, since Amy was the one that could make a promising new monster.  The vampire ghouls attacked her home and she sacrificed herself to let everyone else escape.

Meanwhile, back at the apartment building, Donna was being held captive by Lamashtu.  Donna was pregnant from her previous relationship, which she was running away from.  Her husband showed up and was killed by Rabisu because of how abusive he was being to Donna.  Rabisu had a heart, to an extent.  Lamashtu wanted to eat the baby, so she was holding Donna captive until the birth.  Donna, upon discovering that Tyler knew about the demons, ended any chance of relationship between the two of them.

The weird symbols that the detectives found in the basement of the apartment building were actually a portal to Hell.  Tyler got rid of the demons and freed Donna by sending them back to Hell through the portal, which then caused an explosion that destroyed the apartment building.  Tyler and Donna got out in time to watch the building explode.  Donna then shook herself off and ran down the street screaming, never to come back into Tyler’s life.  He was alone, homeless, and had no source of income.  It wasn’t his lowest point, because there was the whole demons in his life thing, but it was a pretty low point to end on.  As was already said, nobody ended the movie in a good situation.

With the demons gone, Donna gone, Amy and Warren as vampire ghouls, and Tyler without anything in his life, The Landlord went to credits.  It was a crazy, semi-fun ride.  There was enough crazy stuff between the weird situations, the goofy characters, and the bad acting that the movie was entertaining.  If more bad movies were like this, it wouldn’t be as difficult to get through some of them.  The good bad movies are the best of the bad movies and there need to be more of them.

With every post, there needs to be notes:

• The Landlord was suggested by @Mimekiller, who also suggested Gymkata (week 76), Gnome Alone (week 151), Timeline (week 222), and The Lair of the White Worm (week 255).
• Have you seen The Landlord?  What did you think?  What do you think about the bad movie categories?  Let me know in the comments.
• Any suggestions for movies to watch could be given in the comments or on Twitter.  I’m always open to movies I might not have otherwise thought of for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  The suggestions make for an even better variety in the posts.
• Sometimes I will share clips of the bad movies I watch on my Snapchat account.  If that sounds like something you might want to see, add me (JurassicGriffin).
• Now we get to look ahead to the post that comes next week.  Instead of a horror comedy, I’ll be checking out a teen sex comedy, inspired by Porky’s.  The movie being covered will be 1983’s Screwballs, and I already have a post in mind for it.  I’ll share that with you next Sunday.  See you then.