Before I go into this week’s entry, I need to admit something that may alienate people right away, or at the very least, make my case a lot harder to establish — I hated “Donnie Darko.”

Okay, “hate” is a strong word. Probably too strong, but I think the movie is a bunch of loosely defined Sci-Fi elements attached to a story that never really develops into a substantial narrative. I’d go a step further and say that there are three things that make the movie memorable: the introduction to Jake Gyllenhaal, the visually striking nature of Frank The Bunny and this scene, which I love:

Did you catch the Seth Rogen cameo?

Anyway, there are a few other music video elements to the movie that director Richard Kelly throws into Darko that work, but none of them hit with the inventiveness of this scene, which essentially tells us everything we need to know about Donnie’s high school in two-and-a-half minutes, rather than over the course of a few dull scenes where we meet the players and learn the social structure.

So, why the strong words about “Donnie Darko”? Honestly, it’s the fervent cult that sprung up around the movie that really pushed me into disdain territory. Maybe that says more about me, than the film, but give me a mediocre work of art that people rally around or canonize and it’s my natural instinct to shrink away. I’ve also had to endure plenty of the “You don’t like ‘Donnie Darko’? That movie’s amazing,” talks.

Anyway, I mention all of this because my natural repulsion to the movie Kelly is most remembered for would make my response to “Southland Tales,” his critically and culturally reviled follow-up, a foregone conclusion.

But quite the opposite. I love “Southland Tales,” specifically because it functions as a the continuation of a lot of the elements seen in “Donnie Darko.” It’s also worth noting because it’s one of those movies that makes you wonder not why it exists, but how it exists.

I won’t bother recapping the plot, it’s definitely convoluted and definitely warrants being seen and unpacked by the viewer, especially considering many will likely have different interpretations. My only advice would be to not take the easy out and instantly write “Southland Tales” off before the credits roll.

What I will say is that it’s Kelly’s most ambitious film and while ultimately, his vision fails, there’s enough bizarre originality on display here to make it memorable and worth at least a second view. All of his tells as a director are present and accounted for — the inventive camera angles, the creative in-camera effects, the cast of memorable characters, an ending that asks more questions than it answers and oh, those music video segments I mentioned earlier? Kelly takes his eye for sharply cut montages or inventive follow-shots like the Darko video embedded above and turns in a piece of pop art that smarter people than I (read: The A.V. Club) have labeled as one of the best scenes from the last decade.

Out of context that scene makes only slightly less sense than it does in context, but that’s fine. What it does do a serviceable job of encapsulating is the restlessness of a returned soldier who once had a purpose and now scrapes by dealing drugs in addition to working glorified security. Justin Timberlake’s character isn’t buying the U.S.O. show. He just wants to drink cheap beer and be alone in his head.

“Southland Tales” is a great 2 a.m. movie, most likely for all of the reasons it didn’t find an audience — it’s slap-dash, confusing and a fantastic excursion into bizarre performances from an odd collection of actors including Wood Harris, Cheri Oteri, Wallace Shawn, Kevin Smith in terrible old man makeup, Janeanne Garofalo, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott, Christopher Lambert, Jon Lovitz, Mandy Moore, Dwayne Johnson, John Larroquette, Bai Ling, Amy Poehler and Miranda Richardson. It’s a Six Degrees of Separation gold mine and if anything, you can default to “Hey! That guy’s in this?” mode, should you get sick of trying to keep track of the plot.

The fact that the movie plays like a fever dream compliments being half-awake quite well, possibly allowing you to function on the same wavelength as Kelly when he made this. But there’s not much more I can say about “Southland Tales.” It’s just one of those movies you have to see in order to understand the legend behind it. Now it’s on Netflix Instant, so it’s never been easier to get ahold of.

Usually the goal of Insomniac Movie Theater is to highlight an established cult classic or classic train wreck through the lens of exhaustion and all of the fun side effects that come with it (halucinations, iritability, etc.), but this week’s entry is a little different. Rather than write about an established failure or a little-known, but beloved classic, I tried to predict a movie’s impending cult status based entirely off of trailers, early buzz, and word of mouth.

The above paragraph is a feathery way of saying that I drug myself, two friends, and a $5 flask of Jack Daniels to see Nicolas Cage’s newest movie/offering to the IRS, “Drive Angry 3D.”

“Drive Angry 3D” exists in the same self-aware sphere as “Planet Terror” and “Death Proof,” in that it is totally self aware of its grindhouse trappings, though it doesn’t go the visual lengths those other films do to date itself. There are no “scene missing” cards, film grain or cigarette burns here, but considering the movie opens with voiceover from William Fichtner explaining that sometimes “badass motherfuckers are so badass that they actually escape Hell,” it’s heart is in the right place.

Bonus points to the movie for it’s explosive opening scene on earth, which has Cage stepping out of a hot rod and being greeted with a blaring guitar riff before dispensing some unholy justice with pistol-grip shotgun. Cage’s delivery is intentionally cheesy and staid, at least in this early scene, which climaxes with a slow motion explosion as Cage walks toward the camera.

Unfortunately, that’s as close as “Drive Angry 3D” comes to a high point. Self-awareness only gets you so far with a movie like this and once the initial humor wears off, what’s left is a very boring, standard revenge plot without much to distinguish from a performance or production level. The visual element is especially disappointing considering the movie was shot in 3D, not retrofitted.

It also doesn’t help that one of the movie’s more gimmicky action scenes has been done before. The scene in question involves Cage’s character having a gun fight was still having sex with bar waitress he picked up with on his journey. While it tries hard for camp and parody, it doesn’t really get the job done. Partially because Clive Owen and Monica Bellucci already covered the gunfight/sex scene territory in “Shoot Em Up,” but mostly because the choreography of the scene is boring and unmemorable and director Patrick Lussier depends too heavily on slow motion.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from “Drive Angry 3D” it’s that true camp is never achieved on purpose. Think of the classic campy movies: “Xanadu,” “Battlefield: Earth,” “Wild Things,” “Tarzan: The Ape Man,” and so on, none of them give up the ghost and acknowledge their own ridiculousness, if anything, self-seriousness attributes to the its lasting campiness.

While “Drive Angry 3D” is somewhat fun, it definitely isn’t worth the inflated 3D ticket prices and no one will be talking about it five years from now unless Cage goes on a Charlie Sheen-caliber bender and it becomes the last movie he ever made.

Oh boy. This week’s entry tackles Frank Miller’s hastily released and quickly forgotten take on Will Eisner’s pulp comic book “The Spirit.” Even in the fog of a late night, sleep-deprived viewing, it’s hard to see the litany of problems and the movie’s fast and loose style as interesting or likable.

Hot off of the success of “300” and “Sin City,” Miller finally got the chance to write and direct a film and he didn’t disappoint. He demonstrates every bad habit he nurtured while writing sub-par noir, over-simplified characters, and misogynistic garbage during the ‘90s. The same tripe that got turned into over-simplified misogyny by the likes of Robert Rodriguez and Zack Snyder a decade later on the big screen.

“The Spirit” follows the titular hero as he battles his mortal enemy The Octopus, played by a completely unrestrained Samuel L. Jackson. Both The Spirit and his adversary are virtually immortal, so their battles are essentially consequence-free, as they stab, impale and bludgeon each other to undeath in a gag that quickly gets old. There’s a larger plot about the blood of Hercules and immortality and so on, but it’s less than coherent.

In fact, there are quite a few gags that ring hallow throughout the movie. The Octopus has clone henchmen, each with names ending in “-os” written on their shirts. These goons, played by Louis Lombardi, aren’t funny the first time and especially aren’t funny after you’ve seen five pairs of them. Likewise, the women in the movie have names like Silken Floss and Sand Saref, which characters have to say without any sense of irony.

Miller borrows the visual style stock and barrel from “Sin City.” The stark colors –– black, white and red –– dominate each scene and when the movie does go full color, it’s that weird, washed out image that occurs when a film is digitally treated like this one. But while the effect was original and captivating in 2005, here it’s just a gimmick, as it doesn’t enhance the noir elements of the story, it just serves to mask the movie’s low budget.

Some people give “The Spirit” a pass for not taking itself too seriously, but the movie reeks of all the problems that are inherent in Miller’s work from the last 15 years. It depends far too heavily on internal monologue to move the plot along. The women are either hyper-dependent waifs or fetish dolls –– especially Scarlett Johansson’s character. And the humor and tone are all but wasted on lame, repeat gags.

I hope that Miller had fun casting Eva Mendes, Johansson, Jamie King and Sarah Paulson as well as casting himself in the movie. He won’t likely get to do it again anytime soon.

What Zack Snyder movie had this awful creature in it?

This week’s girl-powered entry suffers the same fate as any other music movie that attempted to capitalize on the popularity of its subjects –– it was dated by the time it was released. But even if “Spice World” had been released at the height of the Spice Girls’ popularity rather than in its decline, it would still stand out as a “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”-caliber disaster.

“Spice World” doesn’t have a plot. Instead, it has bits and pieces of several plots, none of which are strong enough to stand on their own and all of which are as subtly and logically inserted into the movie as this picture of Geri Halliwell:

Here’s a brief rundown of the plot elements mindlessly chained together for the movie’s barely 90 minute runtime:

Take all of those plotlines, add in an absurd number of cameos, and insert an entirely Spice Girl-driven soundtrack and there it is, “Spice World” in all its glory.

But watching the movie almost 15 years after its release (don’t hold your breath on a special edition), it becomes abundantly clear just how creepy the Spice Girls were.

Ginger Spice is an over-sexed corset magnet who champions girl power and women’s liberation, which is all well and good when you look like Geri Halliwell and all, but not so much if you look like Jerry Lewis. At the same time Sporty Spice has a bad case of crazy eyes whenever she sings, Crazy Spice is timid by today’s standards, and Posh looks like one of those Real Dolls people order on the internet.

But the absolute creepiest Spice Girl is easily Baby Spice. Within 20 seconds of looking at the group, it’s obvious hands were involved in shaping the individual members. They didn’t just happen upon each other and it’s no coincidence that each member represents a very specific subset of human interests. But while it’s fine that consultants or Simon Cowell himself dressed Geri like a cartoon character and Posh like an Italian prostitute (an expensive one, but still), who decided that the group needed a member that appealed to pedophiles and fans of barely legal pornography?

That’s Baby Spice. That’s her demographic. Her hair, her flimsy cocktail dresses, her pigtails, and the bizarre obsession with stuffed animals and lollipops –– all of these things are there to make a grown woman look like jail bait and not to the legions of prepubescent fans the group was supposedly meant to entertain.

Fan fact about that clip: The actor who plays the photographer is none other than Dominic West, Jimmy McNulty himself.

“Spice World” turns out exactly as expected. It’s short-sided, instantly dated, and totally nonsensical, but at the very least it has a sense of humor about itself, even if it’s a pedestrian one.

That’s not enough to save it. Neither are cameos from Elton John, Elvis Costello, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Meatloaf, Bob Geldof, or Bob Hoskins.

But with that many random appearances and a broken plot, the movie seems like a fever dream at 3 a.m.

Tonight’s Insomniac entry was 15 years in the making. When I was in junior high I loved S.E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders” and went out of my way to read everything I could by the lady. I’d seen the movie adaption, but always thought that “Rumble Fish” would have made a better movie, as it dealt with more adult characters and themes. One night I had a dream that there was, in fact, a movie version and that it was in black and white with Matt Dillon as the star. I must have fallen asleep with the TV on because that exact movie exists and is the subject of this week’s entry.

Of all the 60s film school brats, few have enjoyed such a substantial drop in both quality and proliferation than Francis Ford Coppola, who I’m convinced bartered the last of his talent to finish “Apocalypse Now,” a filming process that stands next to Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo” in its extremity, though for completely different reasons. It’s fitting then, that the making of both films and the obsession that gripped both directors were captured in the documentaries “Hearts of Darkness” and “Burden of Dreams,” respectively.

Anyway. 1984’s “Rumble Fish” is an excellent example of the same talents Coppola displayed in “The Godfather,” “The Godfather: Part II,” “The Conversation,” “Apocalypse Now,” and “One From The Heart” working against him. In the latter films, Coppola’s attention to detail and indulgent craftsmanship worked in favor of the Greek tragedy elements in the Godfather series and gave “Apocalypse Now” a realism rivaled only by Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.”

But “Rumble Fish” is a train wreck of pretension and self-indulgence capped by an atrocious original score from The Police’s Stewart Copeland and some truly wooden performances, which is especially ironic considering the movie is a character drama.

Based on the S.E. Hinton novel of the same name, “Rumble Fish” centers on Rusty James (played by Matt Dillon), a loner, streetwise adolescent from the same streets of Hinton’s other book-turned-movie that Coppola directed a year earlier, “The Outsiders.” Rusty James has an older brother he idolizes called –– unironically, mind you –– Motorcycle Boy. Motorcycle Boy (played by Micky Rourke) comes and goes when he pleases, boosting bikes and acting generally aloof. And that’s basically it.

There’s no forward motion to the plot. No grand scheme or commentary on class structure or the fragility of youth and young love. “Rumble Fish” is simply a vignette into the lives of about five characters over the course of a summer that doesn’t end so much as just fade out. And while there are plenty of great movies that offer only temporary glimpses into a memorable cast of characters’ lives without a driving incident propelling them forward, “Rumble Fish” isn’t one of them.

Coppola found a way to make black and white pretentious, as “Rumble Fish” is shot in stark monochrome with the only color coming from an aquarium full of beta fish in a pet store. The conscious decision to shoot in monochrome clearly wasn’t a budgetary one, as Coppola does it all for a simple visual gimmick that gets used three times throughout the course of the entire film.

What’s more, rather than live in the shadows and have some fun with the darkness and mystery that comes with black and white, “Rumble Fish” is remarkably well lit. Making even the outdoor sets look like theater props rather than living, breathing locales.

Another conscious decision that fails miserably is the asynchronous soundtrack. I’m not sure who decided the drummer from The Police would be the best choice for a composer, but Copeland’s soundtrack is ever present and constantly out of place. What’s more, Coppola dubs over other bands with Copeland’s music, which is not only confusing, but hilarious — especially when Rusty James is shooting pool in a jazz hall.

But it’s the performances that really kill “Rumble Fish.” Dillon is incapable of doing anything other than mugging for the camera and punctuating every sentence with the arbitrary “fuck” or “man.” It doesn’t help that he looks like a reject from “The Warriors” either.

Rourke puts on a master class in underacting. He’s so disconnected in his role that I’m pretty sure a production assistant had to check his pulse in between each take just to make sure he was actually alive.

Even with 15 years of stored up goodwill and eagerness to like the movie, “Rumble Fish” is a thorough disappointment. It’s a shining example of what happens when pretension overshadows execution and that there is an art form to playing subtle and when an actor is on the wrong side of that line, they appear dead.

After a two-week, semi-accidental sabbatical, I return with Peter Berg’s darkest, funniest and best movie, “Very Bad Things.” And it’s perfect for the 3 a.m. treatment because under regular viewing conditions, you’d likely kill yourself.

Standing in stark contrast to Berg’s more cineplex friendly recent work, “Very Bad Things” is a pitch-black comedy that moves along at a rapid pace as Berg gleefully puts his ensemble cast that includes Jon Favreau, Cameron Diaz, Christian Slater, Jeremy Piven, and Daniel Stern through hell before concluding with one of the most darkly funny images of poetic justice committed to celluloid.

This plot unfolds thusly: Favreau plays Kyle Fisher a lucky schlub with a good life preparing to marry his fiance Laura, played by Diaz. Naturally, Fisher has to go on a bachelor party, so he and his life-long friends pack up and head to Las Vegas for one wild weekend of gambling, casual drug use, and a more believable and hopelessly darker bender than the one from “The Hangover.”

Unfortunately this bender takes a turn when Piven’s character Michael accidentally kills a call girl during some especially rough sex. This prostitute is the group’s albatross, because killing her essentially curses the group as they are consumed by guilt, killed, or forced to kill others to keep their secret safe.

But it’s funny. Remarkably so, actually.

“Very Bad Things” has a pitch-black sense of humor that revels in the suffering of its characters and the increasingly dire situation. It’s also helped out tremendously by Diaz and Slater who are the self-centered and sociopathic cornerstones of the movie. Diaz’s character is so obsessed with the details of her wedding that she won’t let anyone or anything keep it from being perfect. When she learns what happened in Vegas, her response isn’t repulsion. Instead, she instructs her fiance and his guilt-ridden friends to suck it up and get through the wedding.

And Slater is downright menacing as Robert Boyd. Boyd becomes the mastermind of the group’s ever-expanding lie after he kills a hotel concierge that discovers the recently bludgeoned prostitute. Slater is always at his best when he’s unhinged and his character’s matter-of-fact explanation of how he killed his friend’s suspicious wife is equal parts humorous and troubling.

The violence in “Very Bad Things” is visually shocking, but almost slapstick in its delivery and physicality. The death of Stern’s character is a great example:

Finally, the movie’s final scene. I won’t actually give it away, but I will say that it’s an appropriately grim conclusion to a movie that has been nothing but darkness. Had Diaz not played her character so perfectly loathsome, it would be easy to feel sorry for her. But because she was so horrible for the duration, the ending carries an appropriately comedic edge. Catch it late at night and have fun trying to sleep afterwards.

When it came out last fall, “Gamer” was quickly dismissed and almost as quickly left theaters, leaving in its wake a handful of dedicated fans and critics that either hailed it for its technical wizardry or panned it for its rapid-fire editing, fevered pace, and outrageous plot. In short, it had cult classic written all over it.

“Gamer” comes from the creative duo of Neveldin/Taylor, the same people responsible for “Crank” and the vastly superior “Crank 2: High Voltage” and their trademark style is immediately recognizable. Neveldine/Taylor make movies like people who have never made a movie before, that is to say, the same rules and conventions on both a technical and storytelling level don’t apply. This approach is easily the movie’s strongest element, as the premise is flimsy at best.

Gerard Butler plays Kable, a death row inmate who participates in a game called Slayers. You see, in the distant future, video games have evolved to the point that people are able to control other people, seeing through their eyes and controlling their movements. There are two games that are immensely popular in the future.

The first is Society, a game similar to The Sims, that allows people to assume the role of another person (called an I-con) in an environment where anything goes. The second is Slayers, which is a first-person shooter that follows a group of death-row inmates as they battle from one end of a play area to the other. Their only goal being survival. If a slayer survives for 30 sessions, he earns his freedom.

Kable is closing in on his 30th win and has become an international phenomenon. His likeness is plastered over entire skyscrapers and across skylines. People cheer for him in multiple languages and it’s easy to see why. In the movie’s thrilling opening, we see exactly what it takes to survive Slayers, as Kable works his way through a hardened battlefield, killing any and everything that gets in his way before finally reaching the Save Point, the map’s conclusion.

The sequence features plenty of the sick humor and the frenetic pacing that permeated the “Crank” series, as a slayer stops to teabag a fallen enemy. There’s plenty of the usual shaky cam that dominates trench combat in movies these days, but when “Gamer” slows down the level of choreography and complexity, the action sequences are equally remarkable, particularly in Kable’s 29th and 30th matches.

“Gamer” tries to extend past its action-movie premise a few times with limited results. The concept of ownership is explored in segments that focus on the other game, Society. There, we see people being involuntarily subjected to numerous implied sex acts at the hands of their puppet masters. Neveldine/Taylor delight in focusing on the unnatural interactions between characters and dressing the Society I-cons in ridiculous ensembles, a detail any fan of The Sims will appreciate.

It’s unfortunate that the movie ends up settling into a “man vs. the system” structure that gives way to a villain that personifies everything that is wrong with the story’s society. This decision is an easy ‘out’ and it distracts from the true villain of “Gamer” –– a society so self-absorbed and with so little regard for life that the games within are allowed to happen at all.

At least things blow up purdy.

Tonight’s entry comes at the behest of my Mr. Eric Melin, who assured me that 1994’s “Clifford”, directed by Paul Flaherty, would be the kind of cult romp practically made for Insomniac Movie Theater. And boy, is it ever.

“Clifford” features the dynamite comedy duo of Martin Short and Charles Grodin, the former enjoying the last bit of comedic magnetism before slipping into temporary obscurity, the latter enjoying the sweet success of the “Beethoven” franchise before disappearing into long-term obscurity.

Short plays the titular character, first as a geriatric priest, and then, more famously, as prepubescent boy despite being 44 years old at the time of movie’s release. The premise is simple enough: Short’s Clifford is a terrible child who desperately wants to go to Dinosaur World, a dinosaur theme park. His uncle, played by Grodin, wants to prove to his fiance Sarah (Mary Steenburgen) that he’s ready for children, so he offers to look after Clifford for a week while his parents are in Hawaii.

But wackiness ensues, as it’s known to do in movies like this. In “Clifford,” however, wackiness takes a much different form. Clifford is a sociopath; a calculating, mercilessly vengeful little bastard that stops at nothing to get what he wants. And when his uncle postpones their trip to Dinosaur World, Clifford snaps.

During the movie’s remaining hour, Clifford gets his uncle arrested, tricks him into traveling to San Francisco, destroys his life’s work, and most devious of all, convinces his fiance that he molested Clifford, or rather, allowed a biker gang to do so. (Ed. note–WTF? I have to see this movie.)

On paper, the movie has all the trappings of a fantastic black comedy in the same vein as Peter Berg’s “Very Bad Things,” but despite the movie’s best efforts, it can’t escape the comedic vacuum of Short’s gimmickry. The script and director Flaherty bend over backwards to incorporate all of Short’s well-worn foolishness: he awkwardly dances, he does over-reaching impressions, constant pratfalls –– essentially everything he’d been doing since his SCTV days (where Flaherty was a director). Take, for instance, this scene:

Despite scenes like that, there are some genuine laughs in “Clifford,” mostly because of Grodin, who may only be capable of one kind of character but he plays that character remarkably well. And cheap shots aside, Short and Grodin do work well together, when Grodin is commanding the scene and Short is reacting. This scene perfectly displays both Short’s ham-handedness and Grodin’s timing and ability as a straight man.

In terms of legendarily weird movies, “Clifford” is required viewing, if only for the fact that Short plays a character at least 40 years younger than his age at the time of filming and every actor is required to pretend that the idea isn’t preposterous. That alone is worth the price of admission –– or in this case, a Netflix stream.

But past that, “Clifford” is a movie that is largely wasted potential. It’s understandable why the movie didn’t go darker. Short had an image at the time of being a goofy character actor that starred in goofy, but family-friendly movies. Grodin was coming off the Beethoven sequel and was two years away from his CNBC talk show.

That said, had “Clifford” gone further, maybe it would have more to say for itself than a middle-aged, preteen protagonist. At least Grodin’s funny.

As keeping with horror remake month and the rules set out by the Insomniac Movie Theater blog that all movies must be on Netflix Instant, late-night television, or from my personal collection, I got to rewatch one of the all-time great horror movies on a technicality.

Less of a remake and more of a total overhaul, John Carpenter’s “The Thing” is a remake of “The Thing from Another World” the same way that Martin Campbell’s “Casino Royale” is a distant, distant cousin to the 1966 original. This is the sum total of commonality the two films share: Scientists at an arctic research base discover an alien life-form that means them harm.

But while the original was a schlocky monster movie in the same vein as the Universal classics of the era, Carpenter wisely focused on the isolation and paranoia that begins to creep in as a group of men are slowly picked off by an alien that emulates organic lifeforms, assuming the form of the research station’s crew in the process.

Of course, Ennio Morricone’s minimalist soundtrack compliments the sparse landscapes and close-quarters that the crew inhabit perfectly and in the process raises Carpenter’s already high sense of danger and vacancy.

And inhabiting this lonely environment of eminent doom is a perfectly cast set of character actors, who all fill their roles perfectly, giving believable performances without ever trying to outdo one another. The cast is lead by Carpenter favorite Kurt Russell, but also features great work from Donald Moffat, Keith David, and, yes, Wilford Brimley. Russell is given starring credit as RJ MacReady, but he shares screen time with the rest of the cast to the point that the title is almost inaccurate.

As MacReady, Russell demonstrates that he is capable of a metered performance in the hands of Carpenter, who often had him playing one extreme (Snake Plissken) or another (Jack Burton). MacReady is the best kind of action hero, in that he’s unpredictable and uncertain. He reacts to the events that unfold in front of him indistinctly and because of that, sometimes he saves lives and other times people die.

The real star of “The Thing” is the creature itself. Roy Arbogast who has worked on special effects milestones such as “Jaws,” “The Return of The Jedi,” and “The Fugitive” leads a crew that did a lot with a little, using a combination of complicated puppets and mechanical creatures and old school camera tricks including reverse photography. The first appearance of the creature is still as creepy as it was 28 years ago:

But if there’s any one scene that defines “The Thing” it’s the blood-jump scene, as it epitomizes everything the movie does right. In the scene MacReady has established that he’s in charge, fending off the remainder of the crew with a blowtorch and forcing them all to tie themselves up. But MacReady has a plan. He takes blood from each of the survivors, collecting it in a Petri dish and then explains that while the blood is just blood in a human, in the creature, it’s living tissue that will react to stimuli. He then heats up a copper wire and prods each sample of blood.

The anticipation, MacReady’s instincts, the uncertainty and unpredictability, and the sudden, but earned scare, all go a long way in creating a memorable scene and defining the movie as a whole.

“The Thing” may technically be a remake, but if all remakes were this good, then Hollywood might not need inflated ticket prices to stay in the black. And I might not cringe every time I see a trailer for “Valentine’s Day,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street” or any other horror movie that was made once and now gets to be made again with even more gimmicks attached.

The second installment in our month of bad horror remakes is the 2005 Paris Hilton/Elisha Cuthbert vehicle “House of Wax.” Like last week’s disaster “The Wicker Man,” “House of Wax” commits the cardinal sin of a bad horror movies: It takes itself painfully, painfully seriously.

Music video director Jaume, who’s other major movie was 2009’s “Orphan,” helms “House of Wax” with the kind of gritty self-seriousness that would serve a better movie well, but with a story this boilerplate the main draw becomes waiting for Paris Hilton to be killed. Incidentally, I root for the same thing in every movie starring Paris Hilton and some she’s not even a part of.

Cuthbert and Hilton are joined by Chad Michael Murray, Jared Padaleki, and Robert Ri’chard as five unsuspecting teenagers who are out on a Friday looking for a good time. Cuthbert is the girl next door, Padaleki is the boy next door, Murray is the broody one, Hilton is the sex bomb, and Ri’chard is the jock. The good-time gang is on their way to what is likely a slammin’ party when a detour leads them into the woods. Of course, they could have skipped the party or gone back to town, but it’s a horror movie and a very standard one at that, so not only do they set up their tents, they bait an ominous stranger.

The next morning, Padaleki’s car breaks down and so he and Cuthbert head into the nearest town, where underused character actor Brian Van Holt helps them get on the fan belt they need and then things get weird.

The whole town is seemingly devoid of people, save Van Holt and a few funeral attendees that Padaleki and Cuthbert barge in on. Naturally, and again, because it’s a boilerplate horror movie, the couple go snooping around town, stopping at the old House of Wax wherein they find various wax sculptures posed in everyday situations.

Jaume does this much right with his characters: He brutally, brutally hurts them. An early scene finds Cuthbert, the movie’s star, in a situation where her finger is cut off and her mouth is superglued shut, forcing her to tear away at her lips until she can manage a scream. Jaume’s willingness to hurt his cast makes “House of Wax” much more uneasy, as it successfully communicates that no one is safe, adding some much needed predictability to the proceedings.

Unfortunately, the movie that follows is very predictable. Van Holt turns out to be one of the movie’s two villains, his character being the deranged murderer and his character’s brother being the deranged murderer who embalms people in wax while they’re still alive.

While Van Holt is hunting Cuthbert and Murray in town, Hilton and Ri’chard are being dealt with in the country. This next clip is extremely grisly. Not for the faint of heart. But it’s totally worth it to see Paris Hilton catch a spike with her face.

As satisfying as that clip is, it’s also a good indication of how Jaume deals with violence in “House of Wax,” that is to say, liberally, which, like his willingness to hurt the characters, is necessary to keep the movie remotely engaging.

Jaume’s other artistic flourish in “House of Wax” doesn’t work as well. In what is possibly the most literal movie title since “Throw Momma From The Train,” the house of wax in the movie is made entirely out of wax. Let’s hold on that idea for a second. This would mean that Vincent, the wax-obsessed brother (also played by Van Holt) spent years faithfully recreating an entire building, plus all of its furniture, appliances, everything out of what would have to be thousands and thousands of gallons of wax. What’s more, the building itself is in the sun all day, which begs the dual questions, “Why doesn’t it melt?” and “Where did all of this wax come from?”

I guess it’s kind of hypocritical to call a movie unoriginal and then slam one of its few original ideas, but that’s just stupid. In theory. In practice. Though, it does make for an interesting final confrontation. Enjoy the terrible song that comes with this video.

Unlike “The Wicker Man,” which builds to something so bad its beautiful, “House of Wax” doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself for better or worse. What’s left is a movie with some impressive sets, one brutal and memorable murder, and nothing else. It even teases a sequel in a final act of desperation.

It’s October and with it comes Halloween, autumn, and the first theme month at Insomniac Movie Theater. In honor of Halloween, it’s bad horror remake month on Insomniac Movie Theater and there’s no better movie to kick it off than 2006’s Nick Cage catastrophe “The Wicker Man.”

Written and directed by one-time University of Kansas graduate student and accomplished playwright Neil LaBute, “The Wicker Man” bares a lot in common with the 1973 original, from a plot standpoint, at least.

Cage plays Edward Malus, a police officer haunted by a vehicular homicide he witnessed during a routine traffic stop. One day Malus receives a letter from his ex-fiance Willow Woodward, asking him to come to Summerisle Island and help her find her missing daughter, Rowan.

Things are instantly off on the island as the locals dress in colonial-era garb and can barely hide their ulterior motives for Malus. What’s more, the island is populated predominantly by women, with the men appearing meek and soft-spoken. There are no male children on the island and every woman is referred to as “Sister Insert-plant-name-here.”

Much has been made about Cage’s abysmal performance and the overall poor direction of LaBute, but the worst thing about “The Wicker Man” is its banal tone and its uneventful pacing. Maybe the banality was intentional because by the time Cage starts really scene-chewing, it’s a welcome change. It’s a terrible example of acting, but at least it’s entertaining. At least something is happening aside from LaBute’s grossly mishandled flashback sequences and shots of a clearly slumming Ellen Burstyn like this one:

But once Cage goes bonkers, he really goes bonkers. Fed up by the town’s lack of cooperation in his investigation, he finally snaps when he discovers that Rowan is likely to be sacrificed as part of a harvest festival. When that happens, he becomes a crazed hunter, stalking from house to house in the movie’s funniest montage. And when he’s not doing that, he’s harassing the townsfolk, knocking masks off of children’s faces and kicking Leelee Sobieski in the face.

But the absolute best part about Cage’s performance in the last 40 minutes of the movie is his reactions. There’s nothing worth saying that the following video can’t say better, but I imagine this is how LaBute’s direction went:

LaBute: “Okay Nick, for this next scene you’re enraged by the town’s apathy toward your investigation and their continued denial that Rowan even exists.“

Cage: “I’m thinking I’ll approach this scene with tangible frustration and irritability. Maybe appear kinda world weary.”

LaBute: “What? No. You know how people interact with each other on a daily basis, talking and listening and actually making metered responses? Do the opposite of that.”

Anyway, even with Cage’s campiness and the hilarious alternative ending that sees his character getting his legs broken and his face stung by dozens of bees, it’s not enough to make the rest of the movie worthwhile. Especially frustrating is the gorgeous cinematography by Paul Sarossy, which is the equivalent of a shiny new paint job on an abandoned car that a pack of raccoons have lived in for a year.

Luckily, some faithful YouTuber collected most of the best scenes into a single clip, saving you from having to suffer the same fate I suffered.

If you want to see Cage in a good crazy mode, check out “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.” And for a great LaBute movie, check out “In The Company of Men,” if you haven’t already, but skip this PG-13 remake at all costs. It’s so bad that I was advised to just watch the above YouTube clip BY THE PEOPLE RENTING ME THE MOVIE. There’s a tagline fit for the posters: “So bad, not even retailers want to make money off of it.”

I try not to go to the Arnold Schwarzenegger well too often. After all, the man’s entire career has a place on this blog. Ever since he made is debut as Hercules in “Hercules In New York,” his acting career has been a virtual litany of bad action movies or just plain bad movies meant for late-night viewing or TBS weekend marathons. For every “T2: Judgement Day,” there’s a “Junior,” “Red Heat,” or in the case of tonight’s entry, 1987’s “The Running Man.”

The plot of “The Running Man” is relatively simple: In the year 2017, Ben Richards (Schwarzenegger) is framed for a crime he didn’t commit and then forced to be a contestant in The Running Man, a network game show where criminals are hunted by Stalkers –– high-powered thugs sponsored by the network. The entire goal of the game show is to distract the broken, disenfranchised populace from just how terrible the totalitarian society has become.

Usually, sci-fi movies overshoot futurist predictions, but thanks to the recent economic collapse, the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, and the entire world’s obsession with reality TV, the idea of the country being obsessed with a manhunt-style game show within seven years doesn’t seem too far-fetched. I’d say we’ve got a 30 percent chance of a Running Man scenario in the next seven years, though those odds could go up dramatically after November.

Schwarzenegger is his usual one-liner-tossing self as Richards, but again, his natural charisma and self awareness elevates the role and therefore the movie above made-for-TV fare. He notoriously loved taglines and catchphrases in his scripts, but here it makes sense, as they cut the tension and keep a movie with admittedly low production values from taking itself too seriously. In this clip, Richards dispatches Buzz Saw, a Stalker with –– wait for it –– a giant chainsaw.

“The Running Man” was based on the Stephen King book of the same name the way that frosting is based on food coloring, cake is based on flour, or ice cream is based on rock salt. King’s story, which he published in 1982 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, was about a young, thin man named Ben Richards who was unable to get work in a dystopian United States and finally applied to be a contestant at the Games Federation in Co-Op City. Richards had a sick daughter that desperately needed medicine and that was his motivation for entering.

Rather than saying “Based on the novel by Stephen King,” as it does in the credits, it would have been more accurate had the credits read, “Based on Louis Fassbender’s high school book report of the book by Stephen King.” Ignoring the inaccuracy, Paul Michael Glaser’s version features way more explosions, Jim Brown, Jesse Ventura, and Mick Fleetwood. Yes, Mick Fleetwood. Here, Ventura plays Captain Freedom, a retired Stalker who’s taken up another line of work.

What was an embittered comment on the state of star culture and Reaganomics in the 80s became an enjoyably ridiculous vehicle for Schwarzenegger, built on bad jokes and a hackneyed revolution plot meant to overthrow the Games Federation and clear Richards of his criminal charges. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that both of these things happen, but the movie doesn’t really address what happens next. The rebels are still impoverished, the sick are still sick, and the government that got them where they are is still in power. “The Running Man” is a perfectly serviceable action movie, especially by 3 a.m. standards where its bright colors and flashing lights help hold waning attention spans and its simple plot is easy to follow.

But in this age of remakes and reboots, “The Running Man” might be one worth doing. The tenets of its story still work and, if anything, are even more relevant now. What’s more, either version, the book or the movie would make a solid adaptation, but for now I’ll have to settle for Joan Allen and Jason Statham in “Death Race.”

As anyone who’s seen it can attest, 1987’s “Over The Top” is without a doubt the worst movie in Sylvester Stallone’s career–a career, mind you, that includes “Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot” and “Judge Dredd.”

After the surprising success and critical acclaim of “Rocky” and the decision to turn the seemingly one-off story into a franchise and the cannibalize the series with four sequels in the 80s, it became clear that Stallone would basically do any project put in front of him. Sometimes that meant the ridiculous but awesomely self-aware “Tango and Cash,” and other times that meant “Over The Top.”

The movie tackles the tumultuous relationship between an estranged father and his unruly and confused son, who has been raised by his grandfather and is now coping with the impending death of his terminally ill mother. All set to the backdrop of competitive arm wrestling. It’s Shakespearean in its complexity.

Stallone plays the estranged father/arm-wrestling protagonist Lincoln Hawk. Hawk’s a hard-driving trucker who stops at a military school to pick his son up for a road trip, right after his junior graduation. What follows next is what can be best described as kidnapping. Hawk’s son Michael doesn’t want to go and hasn’t been informed of this road trip beforehand.

Schlock like “Over The Top” practically writes itself. Father and son bond. Father and son are separated. Father and son are reunited in the end during the big finale. But there are two things that separate this tripe from the usual 80s action fare: Stallone’s performance and the arm wrestling itself.

Stallone has never been a good actor and to be fair, it’s hard for him to exhibit any range given the roles he’s played, but his career performances can be summed up by the volume and clarity of his speech and little else. For “Over The Top,” he chose to give the wounded and vulnerable Hawk a soft-spoken mumble that barely qualifies as acting.

As for the arm wrestling, it’s arm wrestling. It wouldn’t matter if “Over The Top” were directed by Akira Kurosawa and written by Robert Towne, there is no way to make arm wrestling interesting and there is no way to shoot it that makes it compelling. This scene properly demonstrates why.

No amount of showmanship can hide the fact that arm wresting is the least interesting sport to commit to film. There are movies about pool. There are movies about golf. There are movies about hockey and horse racing and dodgeball and nearly every other sport (save curling) and any and all of them are better suited for the screen than arm wrestling. And yet here it is, a movie where Sylvester Stallone arm-wrestles a man for the custody of his son and shiny new semi.

As was the rule during Stallone’s reign over action movies in the 80s, the soundtrack to “Over The Top” is hilariously awful. Sammy Hagar contributes the theme song “Winner Take All,” which is a combination of guitar riffing and cabana music. And Kenny Loggins, who was contractually obligated to write an inspirational song to every underdog soundtrack in the 80s, also appears with the song “Meet Me Half Way.” It got an appropriately hilarious montage video.

After catching “Over The Top,” I’m tempted to revisit the Stallone well several more times in the coming weeks. If there’s a specific Stallone movie you think I should do, mention it in the comments section or post a reply on Facebook.

Today’s entry has the dubious honor of being the first movie I had to watch in two parts and in the process of doing so, I learned what element of a bad movie topples my threshold. I have seen worse movies during my run on Insomniac Movie Theater, but none of them so far were as aggressively bad and campy as 1995’s “Tank Girl.”

Put simply, “Tank Girl” is a time capsule of everything that was wrong with the alternative movement and Generation X, who embraced it. It features a soundtrack indicative of the time (and buried in the movie’s horrible sound mix), a one-off actress that exudes enough quirky, unhinged energy for three people–and it uses enough jump cuts and rapid-fire edits to make even the most deluded 90s music-video aficionado motion sick. The title sequence is a perfect example of this:

In case you missed it during that endless montage of comic-book images and a half-baked version of “Girl U Want,” Lori Petty stars as the titular hero. Petty is one of five people in the entire world that could accurately be described as “plucky.” (The other four being Katie Couric, Richard Simmons, Kerri Strug, and Dame Edna.)

Petty is so spunky, so unbelievably quirky, it is intolerable. The degree to which director Rachel Talalay and Petty go to cram the character’s alternativeness down the audience’s throat is remarkable. Whats more, it backfires. Instead of her performance being fun and entertaining, Petty instead comes off as strained and awkward and like the rest of the movie, her performance doesn’t age well.

But that’s the problem with the movie overall and what drove me to break viewing it into two parts: It’s dated, but not lovingly nostalgic or likable. The resultant movie 15 years later is more uncomfortable and abrasive than anything else. It’s not even engagingly bad like “Tarzan: The Ape Man” or “Barbarella.” It’s just a string of post-grunge aggression, in-your-face faux individuality, and the other pissy emotions that lingered in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s suicide and the first Bush administration.

By trying to adapt an alternative indie comic that features a female protagonist that is unconventionally drawn and sexually ambiguous into a movie that is cut to ribbons, features comically exaggerated characters, and a music-of-the-moment soundtrack, the end product is too spot-on. It was already dated by the time it was released.

Or maybe it’s just bad. Based on the song-and-dance scene embedded below, it’s the latter.

When “Tank Girl” isn’t using mini-montages of seemingly found footage to transition from one scene to another, it’s using animated vignettes to move the story along and make an already rushed movie even more so.

See how efficient that was?

Finally, it’s impossible to talk about the movie without mentioning the Rippers. Designed by special-effects guru Stan Winston, the Rippers are a team of super soldiers that had their DNA merged with a kangaroo’s. The end result being an excuse for a series of animal jokes, howling jokes, and dick jokes. Worse yet, Ice-T plays one of them. Check this out:

He is right. It is pathetic. At the time, “Tank Girl” spawned a small cult following and expanded the comic’s audience, even though it doesn’t follow the comic in any discernible way. Now it’s dated to the point of awkwardness. On top of that, “Tank Girl” is so scattershot and jump-cut heavy, it’s difficult to follow, making the entire experience grating and annoying. Especially late at night.

On paper, this week’s entry should be a total failure. It features a former child actor, a hackneyed kung fu plot, and some special effects that are economical at best. Add to that some vague Chinese mythology as the backdrop and a soundtrack that was composed by the director and his editor and it should be garbage.

But when that child actor is Kurt Russell and the director is John Carpenter, the result is one of the campiest, most likable movies around, “Big Trouble In Little China.”

Russell stars as Jack Burton, a hard-driving trucker with a penchant for meandering, long-winded speeches into his CB to no one in particular. Russell could have played Burton as a straight action hero, but through Carpenter’s script and direction and Russell’s own charm, Burton is instead a bumbling idiot and the movie is all the better for it.

We first meet our hero cruising toward San Fransisco’s Chinatown in his trusty 18-wheeler, The Porkchop Express. After Burton delivers a textbook speech, he meets his buddy Wang for some wanton gambling and drinking. Eventually the two end up at the airport to pick up Wang’s mail-order bride. It’s here we meet Gracie Law, played by a pre-”Sex and The City” Kim Cattrall.

Wang’s girl is kidnapped by a Chinese gang and then things get a little weird. Turns out, Burton has stumbled into a gang war between Chinese factions and a plot to resurrect David Lo Pan, a sorcerer who is already resurrected. Here’s Burton’s first encounter (the ones in yellow are the good guys):

I don’t think anyone would consider “Big Trouble In Little China” to be a good movie in the classical sense of the word. After all, it’s cheaply made, excessively silly, and completely nonsensical, but it is a lot of fun and completely self aware, two features that go a long way in making a cult classic. Russell is clearly having fun here and Carpenter’s direction is loose, but kinetic. But the clear scene stealer in “Big Trouble in Little China” is veteran character actor James Hong as Lo Pan. Here, Lo Pan is confronted by Egg Shen, a sorcerer/tour guide allied with Burton:

Just look at how much fun Hong is having. The thumb gestures, the crazed look in his eyes, his hilarious delivery, all go create an antagonist that you actually look forward to watching. What’s more, Hong maintains that level or deranged excitement for the entirety of the movie.

Russell does his damnedest to keep up with Hong and for the most part, he succeeds, mostly because his character stands in stark contrast to the type of isolated, deliberate antiheroes he played in previous Carpenter outings “Escape From New York” and “The Thing,” two excellent movies completely worthy of every positive thing ever said about them.

Russell’s Burton is a bumbler, sure, but he’s a lovable one. Russell embraces the situations Carpenter puts his character through and comes out with some memorable one-liners and some truly hilarious expressions. If Burton has anything going for him, it’s definitely his keen reflexes.

The result is the perfect kind of late night movie. “Big Trouble In Little China” is the type of movie that works great in the background while you’re chatting with friends, getting a drink, or whatever other distractions are necessary to keep a person awake at 4 a.m. It’s dumb, loose, lovingly made fun.

Bonus: John Carpenter’s band The Coupe De Villes did the soundtrack and they cut a pretty wicked music video to go with it.