Once in a while, I’ll watch a movie and get really hung up on a single detail. It’s not to the point where it will ruin the movie. There just happens to be one little tidbit that sticks out and makes me think much longer than I should about it. I wouldn’t call it a nitpick. I’m not complaining about a small detail as if they got some continuity wrong. It’s more an observation than anything. But I can’t stop thinking about that thing. It sticks in my brain in a way that it shouldn’t.
What I want to do is go over a few movies within Sunday “Bad” Movies that had these types of things. Something within the story that has me sitting here, wondering why they wrote it like that. This could end up being one of the shortest posts in a while, or it could end up being my opus. I don’t know. I haven’t planned it. All I know is that I’m going to start with the movie I just watched, the movie that inspired this whole idea.
Slashlorette Party was a slasher film set at a combination bachelor/bachelorette party. Brie (Molly Souza) was having second thoughts about marrying Dolph (Andrew Brown). He was emotionally abusive, and she had nightmares where he turned physical. She only went through with the party because it had already been planned with all their friends at a rented cottage. Things turned bad, however, when the friends were attacked by masked men.
The combination bachelor/bachelorette party wasn’t so out of the ordinary. That’s something that happens. People would rather have their final party before marriage together than separate. You want to be with the person. Why would you want that extra time away to get things out of your system? It’s not necessary. So you throw the party together with your friends. A sort of pre-reception, pre-wedding party where you get to have fun without the formality.
It was one of the events that happened at the combined party that threw me for a loop. One of the stereotypical events of a bachelor or bachelorette party is to have a stripper come in to perform for the lucky lady or gentleman. Slashlorette Party had a stripper scene, but things got a little odd. The bachelor and bachelorette were placed in chairs across from one another. They had to watch the other one get a lap dance. They weren’t entirely comfortable with it. I don’t know why either of them agreed to it. Dolph got angry when the stripper rubbed up against Brie. Why would you include this at your party if you weren’t okay with it? It baffled me. I’m still sitting here wondering why they would choose to do that. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
This is the kind of thing I mean when I say that I’m not nitpicking. Maybe I’m nitpicking. But I’m not nitpicking the quality of Slashlorette Party like people tend to attack the quality of a movie when they nitpick. I’m more nitpicking the motivations of Brie and Dolph when they agreed to be cucks to each other’s lap dances. If you aren’t comfortable with it, you shouldn’t agree to it. It was an odd thing for either character to want to experience on the eve of their wedding.
Slashlorette Party wasn’t nearly the only movie with a moment like this that I cocked my head and wondered why it was there. Or one that was so random I couldn’t stop laughing. Things that I fixated on because something about them wouldn’t stop scratching the darkest crevices of my brain. There have been plenty, partially because I’ve seen plenty of movies, and partially because I definitely have something undiagnosed going on. I’ll get around to that at some point, but not now. Now is for those little pieces of movies.
Let me take you to the Birdemic franchise. None of them were particularly good movies. The third was atrocious because of a lack of effort, but I’m not looking at that movie. I want to take a look at Birdemic 2: The Resurrection. However, to get context for this moment, I need to quickly glance back at Birdemic: Shock and Terror.
The first Birdemic movie came out and was almost instantly deemed a modern bad movie classic, in the same vein as Troll 2 and The Room. There was a lot of heart and effort put into the movie, yet it all failed miserably. Maybe not all. Birdemic did have that Damien Carter banger partway through. The vast majority of it didn’t have any level of quality, though. It was a love story turned road trip survival story, where the romantic couple became surrogate parents for two children they found in a van. They caught fish at the beach to eat, met a nature guy who told them all about global warming and other bad ecological things. You know, basic family stuff.
Jump ahead to Birdemic 2: The Resurrection and only one of the children remained. This was where we got the moment. This was where my mind started racing because I was so in shock with what just happened. The remaining kid made a remark about how his sister would have loved to see a museum, had she not died from food poisoning from the fish they ate in the first movie. What was that comment? Why was it in there? It made the hero of the movie, or rather the secondary hero in the sequel, look like a bad guy. He not only couldn’t save his friends in the first film, but he caused the death of the child he took in. What a weird choice.
Also, now that I think about it… Why did they still have one of the two children anyway? I understand that the parents died during the bird attack of the first movie. That made sense for taking the kids in. But in the aftermath, after everything settled down, wouldn’t the kids have gone with extended family? Wouldn’t they have gone into foster care? I have so many questions stemming from this one moment. Birdemic 2: The Resurrection turned one line into such a crazy thread spiral in my mind.
I could make an entire post like this just for Nicolas Cage movies, but I won’t do that yet. This isn’t the time for a whole bunch of Nicolas Cage. I’ll, instead, give you a little taste through one choice in Ghost Rider. No, not the sequel. The first Ghost Rider movie that Nicolas Cage was in. The one where he was basically Evel Knievel. Yeah, that one. There’s one detail in that one that I’ve been stuck on ever since I first saw the movie.
So you’ve got Johnny Blaze, a stunt performer who just jumped over… I can’t remember if it was the semi-trucks or the helicopters. Either way, he was in his room talking to his friend. He had a martini class. However, the glass was filled with jellybeans instead of a martini. What I can only assume happened was that the screenwriter wanted to have Johnny Blaze as an alcoholic because of how rough his job and his superpower were. The studio didn’t want the movie to be that hard, though, so they asked the director to pull it back. Rather than rewriting the scene, they substituted alcohol for candy. And there we go.
I don’t know if that’s true at all. It’s an assumption, twenty years after the making of the movie. I had nothing to do with it. Whatever the case, it left this strange image of Nicolas Cage sitting around with a martini glass full of jellybeans. This moment became one of those quintessential Nicolas Cage moments, even if it wasn’t dependent on his strange choices as an actor. It was the strange choices of the movie that brought it about.
One final movie I want to bring up is Scream Returns. It was a French fan film for the Scream franchise made before the newer sequels started coming out. There was some real weird stuff in there, none more notable than the scene I’m about to get into. Yes, a full scene, not just a moment. The scene was so crazy that I’ve been thinking about it ever since. You know when you see something and you’re just blown away by it? Yeah, that’s what this was.
There was a moment in Scream Returns where the action went from live action to animated. Specifically, it was animated by a video game engine. It was Grand Theft Auto V, okay? Trevor popped up and fought with Ghostface. It was a whole big fight scene in Michael’s house in Grand Theft Auto V between Trevor and Ghostface. I could not believe my eyes. It wasn’t ten million fireflies, but it sure was something.
This scene didn’t really get me thinking. It wasn’t one of those moments where I questioned why it happened. All I could think about was what I saw unfolding. I never expected to watch a movie and see a GTA V character going up against a slasher villain. It wasn’t on my horror bingo card. But I saw it and it was glorious. It was all I could have hoped for and more. Why did it happen, though? I don’t know, but it was great.
There are moments all throughout film history that will make you wonder why they were done the way they were done. Or they’ll make me wonder. Because I’m like that. I get hung up on small moments. I get hung up on moments that might pass other people by. They stick with me in a way that makes me think about them far longer than I should. These moments become a part of who I am. Yeah, it’s a me thing.
What I like about Sunday “Bad” Movies is that they teach me to embrace things about movies and things about myself. Would I have written this post if I hadn’t seen Slashlorette Party? Probably not. Would I have seen Slashlorette Party had it not been for this blog? Probably not. But I did and I did, so there’s that. I love this blog.
It’s about time we got some notes in here:
- I mentioned a few other movies in this post. Birdemic: Shock and Terror, Birdemic 2: The Resurrection, Birdemic 3: Sea Eagle, Ghost Rider, Troll 2, The Room, and Scream Returns.
- The only actor from Slashlorette Party to be in another movie for Sunday “Bad” Movies was Drew Marvick, who was in Another WolfCop.
- Have you seen Slashlorette Party? What did you think? Are there any other movies you can think of that had moments that you fixated on? Let me know your thoughts in the comments, of you can find me on Bluesky or Threads.
- If there’s a movie you think I should check out for Sunday “Bad” Movies, drop that suggestion on Bluesky or Threads, or you could drop it in the comments.
- Now I’m going to do a quick little look ahead. I only have one post on the docket right now. It’s a nice little franchise post, so I’ll be looking at four movies. More specifically, I’ll be looking at the four Bandit television movies from the early 1990s. You know, the reboot of Smokey and the Bandit? Yeah. I’m not sure what I’ll write, but I’m going to write about them. See you soon for that one.
