1994

The existence of the movie Tammy and the T-Rex, starring Denise Richards and Paul Walker, seems like one of those pieces of internet lore that everyone on the cool message boards already knew about (and didn’t tell me), but the YouTube video only has 11,000 views when it should have at least 11 million, so I’m considering it a Forgotten Classic for our purposes.

Directed by Mac & Me‘s Stewart Raffil, who should get some kind of bizarre-movie lifetime achievement award for these two titles alone, Tammy and the T-Rex stars a pre-breast implants Denise Richards and a be-bellyshirted Paul Walker in those heady days of 1994. It has a plot that I could try to explain, but I think I’d rather just copy the trailer narration word for word, because this is like dada-ist poetry:

Everything in Tammy’s life is just great. But when you’re young and in love, life can get VERY complicated.

(*cut to shot of Paul Walker eating a rose*) [Note: It is never explained why Paul Walker is eating a rose]

ESPECIALLY when it involves an INSANELY JEALOUS creep.

(*cut to a fight, including the line “DO it, Billy! Do it!”, which belongs in every film*)

Late night phone calls. Sneaking around in your own house. Your boyfriend getting dumped in a wild animal park. And a crazy doctor… who turns out to be a MAD SCIENTIST.

…with an insane invention, that only needs a brain.

But THIS Tyrannosaurus Rex just wants to be a PARTY ANIMAL.

This narration should be in a museum.

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Our friends at EverythingIsTerrible always dig up the best stuff (in fact, it was they who first introduced me to the Arnold in Rio video referenced in the previous post, something for which I can never repay them), and this latest video is no different. Nowadays, Kirk Cameron is known the world over as a Subway sandwich-loving evolution denier who can prove the existence of God using nothing but a banana and a tasteful sweater. But back when this video, “Sex, Lies, & the Truth,” produced by James Dobson’s Focus on the Family was made, he was just a fresh-faced young abstinence promoter, traveling the world in hip Birkenstocks and sinfully short shorts, trying to reach America’s at-risk youth. YOUR ATHLETIC THIGHS ARE LEADING ME UNTO TEMPTATION, KIRK CAMERON! Oh well, even Christian soldiers are allowed the occasional youthful indiscretion.

Let’s take a look at the video, which is fantastic.

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"Hello, ALF? It's your agent. We're back!"

For a TV show that lasted only 4 seasons, ALF has surprisingly managed to stay occasionally relevant during the 22 years since it went off the air. That’s probably because the show’s creator, Paul Fusco, has done everything that he can to keep people talking about it, because it’s all he ever did. Fusco’s resilience is actually why we’re talking about the tale of Gordon Shumway today, because he has signed a deal to finally bring Melmac’s most favorite immigrant to the big screen for an ALF movie.

So, why now when – aside from a TV movie, Simpsons joke, a talk show on TV Land, an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, and maybe some mentions on Best Week Ever – nobody has really cared about life without ALF for two decades? Fusco thinks that his furry alien puppet is more important than ever, because just sign the check, Sony.

“ALF could be more outspoken now than ever, because the world is a whole different place than the ’80s. And I think the character still stands up and certainly has more to say now than ever. I think we would approach it in a fresh way. I don’t think we would duplicate the TV show, but I think we would maybe put it in a storyline where we would explain how ALF got here and put him with a new family and let the character speak for himself.” (Via Screen Rant)

I loved ALF when it was on NBC from 1986 to 1990. My friends and I thought it was awesome, but that’s because we were 7 and stupid. So I get where Fusco is coming from, because today’s kids are dumber than ever, so why not try to get a new generation hooked on an alien creature that eats cats?

At first, my reaction to this news was, “What the f*ck, why is Sony Pictures (which I love) trying to wipe its ass with my childhood again?” But as I always say, there’s no point in being outraged because everything that we’ve ever loved will be re-made and milked to death for the sake of a dollar. So I hope that Fusco and Jordan Kerner (The Smurfs, George of the Jungle, Inspector Gadget, my vomit) see this as an opportunity to lean more toward 21 Jump Street and less, well, anything that Kerner has previously done.

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"Is my career in there?"

Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 classic, Starship Troopers, is either a brilliant satire of a terrible movie or a brilliantly terrible movie, depending on whom you ask. And while fans seemingly would have already gotten their fill of giant bugs and Jumpball from two direct-to-DVD sequels, Sony, along with Fast/Furious producer Neil Moritz, have decided it’s high time for a reboot of the franchise (that’s industry talk for a remake of the original that ignores the stories of the sequels). In related news, Casper Van Dien’s offer to suck your dick for a corndog still stands. “Please,” he said, “I’m so hungry…”

Moritz has assigned the script to screenwriters Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz, who, among other things, wrote Thor and X-Men: First Class, as well as many episodes of the TV shows Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Fringe. Of course, they also wrote Agent Cody Banks. [Vulture]

How dare you! Anyone with half a brain knows that Agent Cody Banks was actually a scathing critique of the proto-fascist tendencies of the cloak and dagger milieu, NOT TO MENTION a frolicsome send up of the post-corporate, Malcolm in the Middle middle class. In any case, I think the choice for a new Johnny Rico is obvious: Kellen Lutz. Kellen Lutz is the Casper Van Dien of the post-post-9/11 era.

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Who would've guessed the one making that idiotic face would be the one to go on to greater fame?

Few movies are as emblematic of forgotten, mid-90s badness as Good Burger, which opened the same weekend as Air Force One in 1997 as a vehicle for the stars of one of Nickelodeon’s horrible, horrible sitcoms, Kenan and Kel. If you don’t remember it, 1. consider yourself lucky. And 2., you’ll have the chance to remedy this situation this weekend at Cinefamily in LA, where this Sunday afternoon, Kel Mitchell (who, sidenote, is some kind of Christian Pastor now) will be the special guest at a barbecue/screening of what Cinefamily accurately calls, “the single greatest ’80s movie made in the mid-’90s.”

Would you like a little Good Burger with your Good Burger? Then this is your night, ‘cause we’re watching [Good Burger] and serving it up with a bounty of ground beef on the side at our all-nite back patio Burger Bar — seriously, we’re serving burgers all night! Two zany teens (Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell, of Nickelodeon’s “All That” and ”Kenan And Kel”) take summer jobs at a small independent burger joint and suddenly they find themselves trying to save their thriving mom-and-pop restaurant from the encroachment of the evil corporate Mondo Burger! Of course, outrageous hijinks ensue, including spy maneuvers, insane asylum breakouts, and transvestitism — all in a film produced by a childrens’ cable network. Whaaa? YEEEAAHHH!!!
Good Burger star Kel Mitchell will be here for a Q&A after the film! [Cinefamily]

Sure, it’s cheap nostalgia, but where Limp Bizkit is confusing and sad for anyone viewing it after 2002, there’s a pleasantly-anachronistic charm to seeing Kel Mitchell croak “We’re All Dudes” with Less Than Jake as his backing band on the soundtrack to an innocuously terrible movie. Also, Abe Vigoda is hilarious in it, and I’m not even being sarcastic.

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