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.

Lavalantula (2015), 2 Lava 2 Lantula (2016) and How They Play With Movies

The movie business is filled with people who love the movie business.  They like to make content about movies or about making movies.  That’s why there are so many biopics about people who were famous for being a part of the Hollywood business.  That’s also why many movies are made that involve the Hollywood world in some way or another.  Remember Argo?  It won best picture and was about how Hollywood helped to save a bunch of hostages.

When SyFy wanted something along the lines of the popularity they got through Sharknado, they decided to infuse the new franchise with some Hollywood buffoonery.  Lavalantula and 2 Lava 2 Lantula! was the new franchise.  It followed Colton West (Steve Guttenberg), an almost forgotten action star who had to fight off lava spewing spiders after a volcanic eruption in Los Angeles.  He was out to save his son Wyatt (Noah Hunt) and his wife Olivia (Nia Peeples), and ended up saving Los Angeles in the process.  In the sequel, he would fight off the spiders in Florida as he tried to save his stepdaughter Raya (Michele Weaver), a med student in Fort Lauderdale.

Colton West’s past as an action star of the 1980s and 1990s brought in a fresh dose of Hollywood comedy.  Both of the movies were heavily draped in the film industry.  They began with Colton West filming his roles.  He used his knowledge of the business to overcome the monsters that were infesting whatever area he was in.  Everything that he did came back to the movies he was in.  His past dictated what he did in his present, and helped the world have a future.

Why don’t we tear the two movies apart and see how laced they were with Hollywood references.  Both movies had Hollywood in their veins from a story standpoint, as the main character had been a star, and was trying to revive his career.  Hence, the opening of each movie involved a new movie he was making that he would step away from as soon as the disaster hit.  There were other references throughout each movie that would speak to the film culture.  They weren’t always the most subtle of references.  In fact, they were never subtle references.  They were always on the nose and obvious.

Lavalantula opened up on Colton West filming a new movie with bugs as monsters.  This would be foreshadowing for what he would face in his real life.  Another bit of foreshadowing would happen during one of the stunts.  Smoke billowed out around Colton West, and he began to complain before walking off of set.  The new smoke that they were using could have killed him.  He would find out in the final act that the smoke could kill the lavalantulas.  Thus, he went back to the crew of the movie he was making, and teamed up with them to use the smoke and defeat the monstrous spiders.

There were some other moments throughout the movie that also referenced the Hollywood lifestyle.  Early on, when Colton was trying to escape his house and get to his son, he commandeered (some people might say he flat out stole) a Hollywood tour bus.  The people on the bus recognized him for his old action movie work.  This was a purely Hollywood moment.  Outside of the city of celebrity, there aren’t too many places with tours like this.  There are tours for other things, but only Hollywood is really known for tours where busses of people drive past the homes of the famous.

Then there was what was happening in Colton’s home.  Olivia was being a full on badass, taking down spiders as they broke in.  The Hollywood influence was there during this part of Lavalantula as well.  She wasn’t attacking them with any household item.  Olivia was taking props from the action movies that her husband had starred in and was using them to take out the arachnids.  For some reason, Colton had kept many of the weapons that he had used in his movies, and now Olivia was using them to kill spiders.  It was that Hollywood past playing into the present.

Also coming from Colton’s past was Red Rocket, which was a one-off superhero movie that he had starred in.  It was mentioned throughout the movie until Colton West suited up as the character at the end of the film.  He used the costume to distract the queen lavalantula before throwing a bomb into its mouth and flying away with Red Rocket’s jetpack.  It was Colton’s most heroic moment, where he once again became the cult hero that people knew him for.

The final piece of Hollywood influence on the first movie that should be mentioned is a character that Colton West ran into during his trip to find his son.  Actors enter and exit each other’s lives all the time as they line up different projects with different people.  During his travels, Colton ran into someone he had worked on a film with.  If that wasn’t Hollywood enough, that actor was now working as one of the impersonators that hangs around the streets of Los Angeles.  Specifically, he was Pirate Jack, the impersonation rip-off of Captain Jack Sparrow.  Having this character around played on the Hollywood life in a way that a movie like Sharknado (whose lead character, Fin, showed up for a cameo in Lavalantula) didn’t capitalize on.  The city and the life there were a part of the movie.  This would continue in the sequel.

Much like its predecessor, 2 Lava 2 Lantula! began with Colton West working on a movie.  This time, he didn’t leave the set prematurely.  He left when disaster struck because he had to get to his stepdaughter and make sure she was okay.  He took his friend and co-star Marty (Michael Winslow) with him, instead of running into him at the end of the movie like he did in Lavalantula.  Together, they travelled through Florida to get to Raya.

Along the way, there were a bunch of references to Hollywood that were made.  It wasn’t the same depth as in Lavalantula, since the characters had relocated to Florida.  It’s hard to dive into the Hollywood life without being in Hollywood.  That’s why there ended up just being a bunch of fun references to different, popular movies and television series.  The thing is, the references fit with the setting of the movie, which made them work better than they could have.  For the most part, at least.

I’m going to start with the one that didn’t quite fit the setting.  The moment when Colton met up with his daughter followed a full on Jurassic Park recreation.  While trapped in a building, Raya and her new acquaintance TJ (RJ Walker) were trapped in a kitchen.  It was very much like my favourite moment from my favourite Steven Spielberg movie, the kitchen scene with the velociraptors.  Raya hid at the end of countertops while a spider crept toward her.  She and TJ escaped, and got into a big foyer, where the spiders were killed by Colton and his crew, before a banner fell down in a recreation of the iconic T-Rex versus raptor scene from Jurassic Park.  It was all about that reference.

Slightly more related to the landscape of 2 Lava 2 Lantula! was an earlier portion of the film where Colton and Marty were travelling through the Everglades.  They came upon a seemingly abandoned shack in the marshes and quickly stumbled upon a familiar looking man.  His name was Alligator Dundee, a clear play off of Crocodile Dundee.  This reference was so obvious that even the characters made note of it.  They mentioned how familiar he seemed to someone else they knew.  When he didn’t understand, they dropped it.  It was a winking moment to the audience showing that the movie was in on the fun that it was having with movie references.  It was self-aware of how goofy the nods to other movies were.

The Florida setting was even more necessary with the other two big references, which each played into the Miami vibe of a Florida setting.  The first one was when Colton and Marty searched through an apartment building.  Not only were they dressed like their Police Academy counterparts, butColton came upon a room where a man was tied to a shower curtain rod while two other guys tried to hurt him with a chainsaw.  It was a visual ripped straight from Scarface.  The Miami of it all wasn’t lost in the process.  They were taking one of the more famous Florida set movies and playing with one of the most striking scenes in it.

The other visual taken from the Miami history of film and television followed that scene.  After the trek through the hotel, Colton and Marty needed some fresh, clean clothes.  They went to a store and got the wardrobe they needed.  It was a wardrobe directly taken from the Miami Vice series of the 1980s.  It wasn’t the movie that was being used as a reference point.  It was the suits of the television show that were the visual callback.  The Miami vibes were all over 2 Lava 2 Lantula!

Though the first Lavalantula movie was more steeped in the Hollywood lifestyle, both movies played with the history of Hollywood to have fun with their lava spewing spider concept.  They weren’t afraid to show their inspirations and create new B-movie versions of popular moments.  It was something that kept the entertainment value up throughout the two movie franchise.  Had the movies continued beyond that point, it would have been interesting to see what other movies they used as fodder for the lavalantula hijinks.  Alas, the franchise stopped at two movies.

Hollywood likes Hollywood when they’re producing movies.  The Lavalantula movies were part of that, using film history as a backdrop for the action.  They’re not the only movies to do that.  The Artist and Argo were both best picture winners that played with the history of the silver screen.  For people who like movies, movies about movies or movies involving movies can be just as entertaining as any other movies out there.  The business likes to entertain themselves with their own antics, and audiences seem to eat that up.  Money that was made can be used to make more money.  That’s how the business works.

No post would be complete without the notes:

• Lavalantula was directed by Mike Mendez who directed another Los Angeles spider attack movie called Big Ass Spider! (week 61).
• Ian Ziering showed up in a cameo role during Lavalantula.  He was the star of Sharknado (week 190), Sharknado 2: The Second One (week 190), and Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (week 190).
• Danny Woodburn showed up in both Lavalantula movies.  He was previously in 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (week 10) and Jingle All the Way (week 160).
• Patrick Renna played one of the people on the tour bus in Lavalantula.  He was previously seen in National Lampoon’s Dorm Daze (week 40) and Son in Law (week 251).
• Jon Mack was in both Lavalantula movies after appearing in Playing for Keeps (week 21).
• Michael Winslow played Marty in the Lavalantula movies.  He also had a small role in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (week 190).
• Four actors made their first two Sunday “Bad” Movies appearances in the two Lavalantula movies.  They were Joe Forbess, Steve Guttenberg, Noah Hunt, and Marion Ramsey.
• Lavalantula featured Nick Principe, who was first featured in The Summer of Massacre (week 26).
• Ruben Pla and Shannon Robles each made their second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance with Lavalantula.  They were both in Big Ass Spider! (week 61).
• Carlos Bernard had a bit part in Lavalantula during the movie in the movie.  He was also in Ghost Storm (week 97).
• Ben Maccabee made his second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance this week, having already shown up in Steel (week 127).
• Another two timer was Jennifer Wenger, who showed up in Lavalantula after showing up in Chicks Dig Gay Guys (week 145).
• Ralph Garman was Pirate Jack in Lavalantula.  If he looked familiar, it may have been because he was in Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance (week 241).
• 2 Lava 2 Lantula! featured the second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance of Leslie Garbett, who was in Rise of the Zombies (week 16).
• Robert Craighead returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in 2 Lava 2 Lantula!  He had already appeared in Zarkorr! The Invader (week 123).
• Finally, 2 Lava 2 Lantula! was the second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance for Raymond Forchion, who was in Mac and Me (week 125).
• Have you seen either of the Lavalantula movies?  How do you think they handled the Hollywood aspects?  Do you like movies that involve movies in the stories?  Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
• Twitter and the comments are good places to put any suggestions that you might have for future movies for me to watch as part of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I’m always on the lookout for things I might not know that could make for good posts.  Let me know if you have any movies in mind.
• When I’m watching bad movies, I like to share clips of them on my Snapchat.  I did that this past week when I watched the movie I’ll be covering next week.  It was a good time.  If this is the sort of thing you want to see, add me (jurassicgriffin).
• Speaking of next week, the movie I’ll be covering is a low budget horror comedy called The Landlord.  It was one of those movies that was just dumb enough that it kind of worked and I’m excited to write about it.  I’ll see you next Sunday for the post about that one.