Sinbad and the Minotaur Ft. Tropical Mary

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Adventure / Fantasy
IMDB Rating: 3.5 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0/5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

The time has come for another episode of Historically Inaccurate Movie Night with Tropical Mary. We’ve done quite a few of them already, but we always had a special love for Cyclops, the movie that started this particular little adventure of ours. Nothing’s beaten Cyclops yet in terms of sheer laughs and total disregard for any semblance of historical truth, but this came pretty close! I don’t know much about Sinbad, but if we were to take the accuracy of the Minotaur’s portrayal as a guide, I’m gonna guess that they got his character completely wrong as well.

In a very loose sense Sinbad and the Minotaur follows Sinbad as he tries to locate the lost treasures of King Minos. There’s a minotaur, a sorcerer, a cannibal and various horned zombies thrown in to pad out the action, but not in any serious way that’s gonna make truck loads of sense. When all is said and done, though, it’s a barrel full of laughs if you’re in the mood for some mindless entertainment. As I did with The ImmortalsI present to you the polluted stream of consciousness that flowed during the course of this movie, followed by a fun little exercise Tropical Mary and I did in transliterating the Greek text in the movie 🙂

Kiss me, kiss me hard!

• America World Pictures and the Brothers Bradley present… Manu Bennett.
• This female is skilled in the deceptive art of stripper belly dancing.
• The Seven Wonders of the World before there were Seven Wonders of the World…
• And he’ll beat the crap out of you with the pepper grinder of doom!
• Make way for Emperor Trenchcoat Terry!
• Use the magic mist to escape!
• I have no idea what’s going on, but apparently it has something to do with a coke whore called Germaine.
• Now they have to go to the gates of the rash. Things are about to get nasty.
• Ancient Greek spoken by the whole Tourette’s of the world.
• Does anyone in this movie speak English?
• Quickly! Don the see-through harem pants of escaping!
• Everyone’s been at sea and now they’re bitter and blue-balled.
• Quickly men! Gather your ancient sporks and do battle with the enemy!
• This whole forest is made out of plastic.
• I totally promise this is a real cave. It looks like plastic bags held together by used chewing gum, but it really isn’t.
• I wonder if Harry Potter’s dad inherited his invisibility cloak from Sinbad?
• Reptilian Minotaur! I command thee to stand sloppy or get loosen!
• Something about Cinnabon’s adventures on the Seven Seas.
• The Dannii Minogue / Natalie Imbruglia look-alike is either plotting something spectacular, or her next album.
• By the blood of Pythagoras, if anyone here owns a MILF, kill them!
• What draconian laws these people have.
• Wait, if only the MILF owners are being killed, what happens to the MILFs?
• Welcome to a very special episode of Law and Order: Ancient Edition.
• How did Helios, the sun god, father a giant scaly minotaur?
• Hang on, how is this minotaur any different to a regular old bull?
• Helios the All Father? Got some Scandinavian leakage going on here…
• This girl’s really clever – she’s actually a raptor.
• He is the Lord of the Dance said he and he’ll lead you all wherever you may be.
• So the Minotaur is the god of the mountain named Monkey?
• You’d think the Colossus of Rhodes would be… more colossal.
• The High Priestess of the Minotaur is super high.
• A prophylactic like that must be worth something.

A big part of the movie’s plot revolved around Sinbad’s discovery of an ancient text written by King Minos. For such an ancient text it’s been typed out in beautiful Arial Greek font. Now, Tropical Mary’s Ancient Greek is far superior to my own, but I can read the alphabet, and we had a great time transliterating the text that popped up on-screen. To give you an idea of just how archaic the language is, the scroll reads:

espskssss kssiphgsb s hste oite uksooe ou zdksthtksieeph ksopsephbks chti thdrzd szdepsch.

Bet the guys behind the movie weren’t betting on people like us watching it 🙂 That’s Greek as spoken by a two-year old with a forked tongue.

The unholy offspring of a bull and a dung beetle’s night of drunken regret.

SINBAD AND THE MINOTAUR TRAILER

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Terror at Blood Fart Lake

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Horror / Comedy
IMDB Rating: 3.1 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy
Breast-O-Meter: 1 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Let’s all be honest with one another right from the get go: this movie’s title really gives away the fact that you’re not meant to take it seriously. Since it falls on the ‘Lobotomy’ end of the Level of Awful scale it ranks itself right up there with the absolute worst of the worst but, at the same time, gives you one of the best laughs you’ll ever have. I literally nearly wet myself a few times during the movie’s 70-odd minute run. It’s a cautionary tale about choosing your vacation destination’s name wisely, the power of Evanescence in the goth community and the need to be careful when allowing Tim Burton near your anal cavity.

It’s not gay if it came out the fruit bowl.

If one thing rings true about today’s youth it’s that they’re always ready to flock to an attractively named holiday resort. To be honest, of the 6 main characters we have to keep our eye on, I can only remember Gwen’s name. The reason for this is that, rather than running around a lake on holiday, Gwen should be institutionalised and subjected to electric shock therapy until she sorts some of her shit out. You wouldn’t think that one woman could live her life in a constant state of dancing and jazz hands. The rest of the group is made up of a very ungothic goth chick, a guy from New Jersey whose mouth moves but nothing resembling words come out, a stoner wigger New Jersey guy light, a guy who makes and sells shirts and another girl with ample bosoms (and ample everything else).

Why is the goth wearing pink hearts?

Trying to explain the storyline (what little there is) is an exercise in futility. Instead allow me to regale you with some dialogue from our dear, beloved characters:

“Can’t I just kill a squirrel and use that as a rubber?”

“Do you practice the dark arts? And listen to Evanescence?”

“I had a dream that you were rubbing Toblerone all over my asshole. Then Tim Burton popped up… and scurried away into my anal cavity.”

“Cling tenaciously to my ass!”

“It was good, but I reject the taste of your syrup. A warrior woman must be purified with only the finest nut butter before battle.”

No, I’m far too classy to do that…

So yeah, that should give you a clue of what you’re up against if you choose to go forward with watching this movie. Thrown into the mix is a cursed and very gay scarecrow, amateur liposuction, a varied selection of $1 wigs and fake moustaches, incredibly sharp corn, scenes that go a little bit further than softcore porn, people constantly popping out the floor, driving passed Jupiter on our way to Blood Fart Lake and women trained in the fine art of using sabre-toothed ass leeches to defeat her enemies. Another word of caution: there isn’t a single attractive person in this movie, no matter what preference you may have.

I don’t know what else to say. This isn’t one of those movies that words could ever do justice for. It will do unspeakable things to your mind, it’ll make you question every belief you’ve ever held and it will ruin Toblerones for you for the rest of your life. Even with all that, I still recommend you grab a copy and give it a watch. Just don’t do it alone – this is best done as a group effort so you can help each other get off the floor when it’s all over.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• A full bladder of urine can easily be turned into a full tank of petrol.
• A broken car engine can be fixed by unscrewing a single screw in the car’s hood.
• An evening of eats and wild tomfoolery is now limited to a few dry crackers and telling ghost stories.
• Things can be as square as a rhombus.
• Kernels of corn can be used with brutal and bloody efficiency.
• Fat people’s bodies are made up of a combination of blood and whipped cream with roughly 1 part blood to 30 parts whipped cream.
• Certain lakes don’t make you wet when you swim in them.
• Tibetan monks are currently training an army of sabre-toothed ass leech-wielding warriors.

TERROR AT BLOOD FART LAKE SAMPLE

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Late Fee

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.6 / 10
Level of Awful: Low
Breast-O-Meter: 1.5 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Oh dear, another interesting concept that never quite reaches the level you want it to. Late Fee is an anthology collection of gruesome torture shorts that are meant to come together to shock the audience with a final twist ending. The ending itself is quite clever and, admittedly, I never saw it coming but something about this movie in its entirety just isn’t quite right. You can plainly see what it was going for but the problem is that you’re never actually frightened or completely grossed out or shocked by what you’re seeing and that’s where it all falls a little flat. Pity, because it had all the potential to be a really good movie.

The far more stylish hooker and pimp await the next round of customers.

It’s Halloween, a night for everyone to indulge in their most frightening of fancies. A couple (whose names are not given to us) decide that their Halloween is going to be spent at home watching the most gruesome and disturbing horror movies they can find. They head out to a video store that’s supposedly notorious for the films they are willing to carry on their shelves. The two settle on ‘The Pick-Up’ and ‘Damnation’, although the owner of the store quickly comes in to say that those two particular movies are banned in most of the world and shouldn’t have been placed on the shelf. After much begging and pleading the owner eventually relents and allows the couple to rent them with the caveat that the movies have to be returned by midnight. The store has a very strict late fee and warns the couple that they do not want to incur it. Not taking him very seriously the two head home to begin their evening of terror.

Fetish justice delayed is fetish justice denied.

The first movie the couple watch is ‘The Pick-Up’. This is a delightful tale of a woman who will literally walk a hundred miles to meet up with her next client. Being a relatively high-class hooker the woman only picks the most distinguished gentlemen with which to share her company. This evening’s particular gentleman is a rather shy and reserved little thing whose wife just isn’t giving him what he needs. One look in his briefcase full of knives, razor blades and a dildo with nails in it may explain the wife’s reluctance but, since this is his first night together with this particular hooker, he decides to leave his toys out of it and save that for when they’re better acquainted. Without his toys, however, the man is rather dull, something that his Tarzan loin cloth does little to save. Insisting that the hooker get down to business because he has to be somewhere else in an hour sex is initiated. What he’s about to discover is that it’s a whole different kind of sex and he’s going to meet an end that still isn’t as weird as Tokyo Gore Police.

I'll let your imagination figure out how this ended.

‘Damnation’ is a completely different kind of movie but not at all lacking in its own pleasures and gory delights. Out for a drive one day Justine is pulled over by a cop that arrests her for no apparent reason. Her car is stolen and she is dragged before a less than reputable judge to be tried for something she isn’t told about and berated for not being able to defend herself. Before you know it Justine finds herself at the centre of some bizarre medical and judicial Satanic cult punishing anyone who crosses their paths because, inherently, every human is guilty of something. There are strange wardens, police women, doctors and cannibalistic brain-dead women running around that Justine will need to contend with if she has any hope of making it out of there alive.

Needless to say once the couple finishes watching the movies it’s after midnight and they’re about to learn just what the late fee they’ve incurred is.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Some men are always open to a good brain suck.
• Some men are quite willing to exchange their girlfriend’s breasts for banned DVDs.
• Hitchhikers are more than happy to make sweeping statements about your personal life.
• Top quality motel managers ensure there isn’t a DNA sample left behind after an adulterous liaison.
• There’s nothing quite like being in the capable thighs of an experienced call girl.
• The Law of Claw and Fang is still observed by some of the more archaic and brutal law courts.
• In some parts of the world a cannibal eating a pregnant woman is seen as a viable form of birth control.
• For hardcore criminals tracking devices now come fitted with plastic explosives.

LATE FEE TRAILER

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