If I were a nicer person with, like, empathy and stuff, Moron Movies would probably make me sad.  There’s nothing inherently sad about the premise – it’s a collection of independently made short-form comedy sketches.  However, you could also make Auschwitz sound like summer camp in the Catskills if you refer to it as “A gathering of people of the Jewish faith.”  Speaking in general terms hides the sadness that lies within.  Such is the case with Moron Movies, a movie made by a Pennsylvanian housepainter named Len Cella.  Let me elaborate on that.  Filmed, directed, written, edited, starring, and everything else by Len Cella.  There are no extras, nobody else did camera work while he acted, Len is the only willing participant in this entire film.  All sketches take place in his empty home or backyard.  The only other people in the whole movie are people who were driving or walking by his home in one 10-second sketch where he decided to point his camera out the window.  On top of this complete isolation there’s something else immensely sad about the movie – Len Cella’s comedy.  It isn’t funny…  which makes this whole movie hilarious.  No explanation of what you’ll see does it justice.  Take 15 seconds to watch this clip and you will understand.

No, that’s not a stupid clip I took out of context.  That IS Moron Movies.  I could have picked “Bowling Ball Imitation” in which he dons a black-colored paper plate with three holes in it on his head and rolls around his yard.  I could have picked “Cheapest Airline Seat” where he simply points the camera at a picture he made of a rocking chair on the wing of a plane.  Or, I could have just shown “Jell-o Makes A Lousy Doorstop” which goes exactly how you’d picture it.  This is a completely fair and representative clip.

Oddly, this is what makes Moron Movies amazing.  It has an addictive quality to it where you just become overwhelmed with how insanely devoid of humor each sketch is and have to see the next one because you think to yourself “Well, clearly there cannot be anything more insane than that little nugget of crazy I just watched.” and, without fail, the next sketch will top it in every way.

On top of the humor being hilariously non-existent, attempts at humor are either darkly bitter, like where he shows his child’s crayon drawings and laments about how shitty it is, or it’s very perverted uncle, like where he assumes the role of a teacher, teaching the viewer how to spot a nice ass.

An odd side note about Moron Movies is the fact that it might be one of the more well-known movies on CinemAIDS.  You may have even seen it, or parts of it, if you happen to be in your late twenties or older.  It made the rounds on not one, but two big network shows at the time.  It was showcased as “Silly Cinemas” on TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes with Ed McMahon and Dick Clark (the word “moron” was apparently just too harsh for prime time TV).  But, the only reason it was even played on that show is because of the pull one of Len Cella’s fans – Johnny Carson.  Carson played it on The Tonight Show as a recurring gag and reportedly loved it, presumably for the same reasons we love it here at CinemAIDS – it’s funny to laugh at.

The big question is “Is he completely comedically inept or is he self-aware and is just master of being so not funny that it’s funny – a king of antihumor?”

Ok, he’s inept.

  There’s not really ANY premise, but the sketches are ridiculous.

 Shot by one guy, all alone, with a home video camera.

 It’s really just something to behold. 29.97 frames of pure insanity per second.

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You always know you’re watching a masterpiece of a film when the words “tha hood” are in the title.  Who could forget the classic Citizen Kane 2: Sledding In Tha Hood, the gripping Schindler’s List 2: Liberated Jewz In Tha Hood, and the timeless Wizard of Oz In Tha Hood: Follow The Yellow Brick Glock.  I think none of us could ever forget that memorable scene where Dorothy gets “sexed in” to the Lollipop Gang.  It would appear that Jesus Christ himself is following this lead now and has decided to pay a visit to “Tha Hood” as well.  Unfortunately, the movie has taken to the less creative title JC In Tha Hood rather than my more alliterative suggestion Ol’ Handholes in Harlem.

The movie begins with Jesus and Satan standing on a precipice overlooking the eponymous ‘hood with Jesus talking about how tired he is of Satan making everybody sin and Satan talking about how much he hates people who sin – which would make it seem like they’re on the same side but, to be fair, that’s a plothole that predates the movie by about 2,000 years.

Zing! Gotcha, Pope.

The meat and potatoes of the movie is a series of vignettes showing people who have been “lost” to sin.  One to gang violence, one to drugs, one to suicide, and another to prostitution.

Now this is where I’m going to get into some territory I’m dangerously underqualified to comment on, but am going to anyway.  Now before we continue here I’m going to disclose something: I’m from New Hampshire.  Around here black people are seen in the same light as unicorns or the chupacabra – we’re not fully convinced they exist because we’ve never seen them.  So, with that out of the way, I’m about to say something I’m grossly unqualified to say: “I don’t believe this movie accurately portrays the lives of African-Americans in the ghettos.”

God yes, this Jiffy is WAY better than that Bisquick shit.

Hold on while I put on my eggshell-walking shoes.  Yes, I know this movie was made by real-life black people and it’s a possibility that they, unlike me, may (I AM NOT MAKING ANY ASSUMPTIONS) have grown up in a real-life ghetto, and perhaps had their life touched by things like drug use or prostitution (OR MAYBE THEY CAME FROM A WEALTHY FAMILY OF SUCCESSFUL, ASTROPHYSICIST, CRIME-FIGHTER, ONCOLOGISTS) but it seems like things are a bit  over the top in this movie.  For example, I’m reasonably certain that when heroin addicts are shooting heroin they probably don’t lean forward and declare with carefree aplomb “I LOVE DRUGS” as they do in this movie.

My entire view of what life in “tha hood” is in 2012 would be basically what I saw in the Gin And Juice music video and the movie CB4 in the early 90s.  This movie’s biggest problem is that it looks exactly like that and surely, SURELY, my perspective is comically outdated by now.  Right?

Seriously, it still looks like this? It's one bouncing Cadillac away from being an Onyx music video.

Shaky authenticity aside, the story just doesn’t have anything to it.  On drugs?  Find Christ.  Suicidal?  Find Christ.  Drug-addled hooker?  Find Christ.  People who are really big on Christ might dig it, but anybody who was going around shooting heroin, prostituting themselves, doing drive-by shootings and contemplating suicide without a thought to whether a deity of questionable origin approves of it will probably find themselves unmoved by the story, as it just rehashes the same old, same old.  Bad for their message, but good for us here at CinemAIDS because the story is so threadbare you can’t help but laugh at nearly every scene.

Ugh, this movie, I'm right there with you, man.

Not only is the content short on value, but the movie itself is short on content, probably clocking in around a half hour or so.  Now, O fact-checking, internet-savvy readers, you may be saying “Not so! I see here on IMDB it’s 76 minutes long.”  Technically that’s right, but it doesn’t take into account the Director’s unique take on editing flashbacks.  You see, usually, if a flashback to an earlier point in the movie is required the director would just show you the important parts.   An inexperienced director may let it run on a little longer than necessary, maybe show an entire short scene when a few lines would have done.  This film’s director does neither.  Instead he decides to walk a less-often walked path and he shows you THE ENTIRE FUCKING MOVIE ALL OVER AGAIN.  You will see just about every scene in the movie, sometimes with slight changes, mostly with no changes at all, up to three or four times each.  The middle portion of the movie is nothing but an unending torrent of flashback upon flashback upon flashback – it’s like Inception for people with unfathomably poor short-term memory.

The Gang Member or, as I like to call him, Black Steve-O.

The movie may be Christ-like in its mercy, clocking in at just barely over an hour and about three minutes if you decide to fast-forward through the flashbacks, but with its comically thin plotline and hilariously naive view of the world, it still feels like a little slice of cinematic hell.

 Shot on video, cheeseball special effects, awful acting/dialog.

 Satan is a black man wearing George Burns’s suit from Oh God, You Devil.

 Well, that JC Doesn’t stand for Joan Collins, after all.

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Any country worth a damn has their own superhero.  Here in the states we have good ol’ Captain America.

Over in Britain they have Union Jack

And in Japan they have

“Oh sweet bungee jumping Christ, what the hell kind of superhero is that?” you may be thinking to yourself.

That, my friends, is The Rapeman.

Yes, I’ll get this out of the way right now.  You probably saw the title and thought, understandably so, that the character clad in all black leather with a black hockey mask who breaks into women’s houses and places of business and mercilessly rapes them is the villain in this picture.  This is the part where you should probably sit down.  You see, Rapeman is the hero.  At this point maybe you’re thinking “Well, it’s kind of a dark concept, but maybe he’s depicted as kind of an anti-hero, like The Punisher.”  Wrong again.  In fact, he’s depicted as such a sqeaky clean do-gooder that he makes Luke Skywalker look like Timothy McVeigh.

Surprisingly, this is the most camel toe you'll see in any given scene of the movie.

The story centers around Keisuke, a mild-mannered school teacher, and his uncle.  Together they run a business called Rapeman Services where people come in and plead their case to hire Rapeman.  If their story seems genuine and the potential rape victim really deserves it, they accept the money and take the job.  Their motto?  ”Righting Wrongs Through Penetration”.  No, I did not just make that up.

But, as I mentioned, Rapeman is a squeaky clean hero.  No true hero would do their heroic deeds for monetary gain, right?  Right.  That’s why it turns out that Rapeman does what he does because he loves justice but, more than that, he loves orphans.  Rapeman and his uncle donate all the money to an orphanage that they hold close to their heart.

 Thankfully, Rapeman is not a dead serious action movie.  It’s more of an action/comedy so it doesn’t take itself incredibly seriously, but possibly a smidge more seriously than a movie about a rapist-for-hire superhero should be.

Once the movie picks up some speed Rapeman and his comic foil uncle get embroiled in a political scandal masterminded by Yakuza.  This is where the movie starts poaching Looney Tunes tropes to move the plot along.

First, Keisuke’s uncle is kidnapped by Yakuza so to rescue him Keisuke plays the role of a bumbling employee of the gas company, which is about the same as dressing up in a Western Union uniform and saying “Telegram for Yakuza boss.” and handing him an exploding telegram.

Second, once Keisuke is in their hideout dressed like the gas man he runs to a bathroom and quick changes into his Rapeman outfit like Clark Kent in a telephone booth.  Also in the Clark Kent vein of things, Keisuke’s uncle runs into the same person who abducted him in the first place later in the movie, but goes unnoticed because of his clever disguise – glasses and a different suit.

Third, this one’s more of a sitcom trope, but Rapeman sends a crooked politician and a Yukuza boss a letter to meet in a certain location, signed by a girl they both know.  You could definitely see DJ and Stephanie Tanner setting this same situation up to have Uncle Jesse and Joey meet up somewhere after they’ve been angry at each other, at which time they learn a lesson about the importance of family and friendship.  The only difference here is that they learn nothing about friendship and a business associate of theirs ends up getting viciously justice-raped.

And finally, the final scene of the movie (no, this is not a spoiler because, seriously, who gives a shit) a journalist who was working with Rapeman comes into the Rapeman Services Agency and it goes something like this:

Journalist Girl: “I want to hire Rapeman.”
Keisuke: “Oh, really?  Who is the target.”
Journalist (gives him a sultry look) “Me.”
Cut to an extreme close up of Keisuke’s face making a zany surprised face (see title graphic above).  All this scene was lacking was an over-the-tope “boi-oi-oing” sound effect.

Now, I didn’t start watching The Rapeman only to turn around and tell you all I was shocked, shocked, that this movie would make offensive references to rape.  I knew what I was watching and I thought the premise was hilariously terrible.  The only part of the movie that really made me think that they might be stretching the boundaries of good taste was after every rape scene the victims would say something to indicate that they loved being raped by him.  Some of them even begged for more.  Now, listen, I’m not Dr. Drew Pinsky over here, but from what little I know about women – WOMEN DO NOT LOVE BEING RAPED.  Also, since the whole point of Rapeman is to punish evildoers by putting them through the horrible experience of being raped – shouldn’t they NOT like it?  I mean, if they all really love it then you’re really only punishing evildoers with what is, apparently, really great sex.

Rapeman is ridiculous.  The concept is so insane and it only gets crazier as the movie progresses – which only makes it more enjoyable. The whole thing is a train wreck of offensive ridiculousness and needs to be watched, if only to be able to say you saw a movie starring a superhero rapist.

Actually, there aren’t many social situations where you should say that, but you can consider it a personal accomplishment if nothing else.

 A rapist-for-hire superhero saves an orphanage?

(about badges)

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It’s been a long time and it took months of hard work (sitting around with a thumb up my ass) but CinemAIDS is back in business.

You may be wondering, where’s all those reviews you wrote before this relaunch?

Yeah.  Funny thing about those.  Turns out I didn’t know as much about backing up WordPress sites when changing hosts as I thought I did.  I also didn’t do anything silly that people who know their asshole from a hole in the ground do like make incremental backups of all my content, so it’s all gone.  In brighter news, I’m sure to win an award for Worlds Greatest Website Administrator for 2012.  Fingers crossed.

So, I’ll be recreating all the lost content, along with putting up some new stuff over the next few days.  I know, it’s April Fool’s Day, and I’m really missing out by playing it straight rather than going for the yuks and putting up a review of Casablanca or something.  I’ll just pull out that clever little chestnut for next year’s April Fools festivities.  Act surprised.

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