beers and b-movies

Dragon’s Milk and Bikini Girls On Ice

Today is Halloween, which means that the next 24 hours will be filled with copious amounts of alcohol, candy, and law enforcement, at least if previous experience has taught me anything.

In the interest of not spending Thanksgiving in jail for a drunken disorderly, I figured it might be nice to curl up with a nice beer and a slasher flick and take it easy for the night.

Wrong choice.

The Beer.

Okay, this part was really nice.  Dragon’s Milk is a wonderful beer. 

You can tell because the photo I’m linking to without permission is very classy.  Oh, and once again, this beer is brewed by New Holland.  Good work, Michigan.  

This is a beer that smells like alcohol.  And in the pleasant, dignified way.  Not in the way that the shag carpeting on the floor of the unfamiliar room I woke up naked in last Sunday morning smelled like alcohol.  That was gross.  As soon as you uncap it, you’re treated to both a random word printed on the cap as well as a strong smell of bourbon.  There are notes of vanilla and coffee as well, and these aromas become more and more pervasive as the beer is poured.

Dragon’s Milk, like bacon, is a product meant to be experienced with all the senses: seen, smelled, heard, rubbed all over one’s body, and finally, tasted.  And it tastes just as good as it smells, sounds, looks, and feels.  The strong notes of bourbon, vanilla, and coffee are still there, along with a nice malty finish.  

The one downside is the price point.  This is one of those beers that’s around 15 or 20 dollars for a four pack, like Delirium Tremens or Arrogant Bastard. 

It’s worth it.

Verdict: Highly Recommended (if you can afford it).

The B-Movie.

Here’s where it gets bad.

I can hear you through your computer monitors, by the way.  You’re screaming at me like I’m the dumb blonde in the slasher flick that’s about to go off to the basement where the killer has obviously hidden. 

“Why, Sam?  Why did you think that watching a movie called Bikini Girls On Ice would be a good idea?  You would have been better off with Killer Klowns from Outer Space.”

While you make a good point, hypothetical audience member, I do have an answer for you, and it’s the first two words of the title of the movie. 

Cut me some slack.

Before the opening credits roll, we get a nice introductory scene setting up the abandoned gas station from Simon Says where most of the movie takes place, the killer, his penchant for stabbing bikini girls (of course) with ice picks, and the Pepsi-Cola cooler he dumps his victims in.  It’s a decent fake-out, you think that we’ve been introduced to the main character, and then she gets stabbed a whole bunch by the lead singer of every grunge band ever.

After the credits roll, we switch genres and we’re suddenly in a college movie.  A bad college movie, complete with entirely generic rock music from the director’s kid brother’s band.  We get sentence-long introductions to all the characters: The Lead, The Roommate, The Slut, The Bitch, and the One With The Really Nice Ass, as well as these two dudes with odd Eastern-European accents that I can’t place. 

So, they’re all involved somehow with the college soccer team, and they’re doing a bikini car wash to raise money.  But, oh no!  The bus breaks down by an abandoned gas station way far away from the beach that the car wash is supposed to take place at!  So, the plucky coeds decide to just have the car wash there instead.  What could possibly go wrong? 

Predictably, the killer starts picking off the girls one by one, as they all enter the gas station for no good reason.  And The Slut bones some dude in a PT Cruiser convertible. 

One thing leads to another, and before long-

You know what?

No.

I’m done summarizing this piece of shit.

I wasted two hours of my life on this movie, and with the exception of The One With The Really Nice Ass, nothing on screen hooked my interest.  After she died, I literally started staring at the wall behind the TV.  It’s fucking halloween.  I should either be laughing, or be terrified by whatever I have on TV.  I despise this movie for wasting my time, and now I’m putting it on ice.

Jesus, that was awful.

Sorry.

Having watched as many of these kinds of movies as I have, you start to notice things, things that make bad movies still work.  Personally, I find joy in two main ways with these movies: in what I know about them, and what they surprise me with.  What I mean by that is that, naturally, with a formulaic movie, an audience is going to make guesses about what happens next.  There are tons of great moments in Simon Says, in Troll 2, and in Death Race 2000 where the movie rewards you for being right about a prediction, or surprises you in a great way, proving you wrong.  I’ll give you an example.  In Troll 2, you can guess from the start who lives and dies, but when they finally do, they do so in weird and awesome ways, like in gigantic popcorn makeout sessions.

There’s no such joy to be had in Bikini Girls On Ice.  Everything is known from the start, from who lives (nobody) to how everyone is going to die (with an icepick).  

The most frustrating thing is that, for a movie selling itself on sex appeal, the director seems to really not understand the concept of a money shot.  The killer offs maybe six or seven of these guys.  Half of these killings take place offscreen, or are implied by a cliche blood spatter across a wall.

There’s also like only one naked boob that ever shows up in the movie, so it fails there too.

It’s like they threw all the elements of b-movies into a humorless movie-making robot who is powered by the broken dreams of film students.  All the elements are there, at least in theory, but there’s no passion, no joy, no fun.

So, you know what?  Fuck you, Bikini Girls On Ice.  Fuck you and the fact that you thought that this face:

was worth two straight minutes of screen time as the movie climaxed.  Fuck you for giving me the false hope that the whole gas station would explode, saving the entire movie while dooming all of its characters.  Fuck you for killing off the One With The Really Nice Ass early in the movie.  And fuck you for inadvertently causing me to go on a philosophical tangent regarding the merits of bad films.  Because now my head hurts.

Verdict: Just, just fuck you.  Fuck you, movie.  I’m watching Red Dragon.