About a week ago, my brother-in-law sent me a clip of this hilariously bad film on Youtube by the name of Revenge Of The Red Baron. The clip was in the middle of the movie where Tobey Maguire's character-Jimmy Spencer-has been brought into a mental facility based on the fact that his dad was murdered in his own swimming pool by his hand, tossing his giant bug zapper into the water while it was turned on, frying those little blood sucking bastards into oblivion. Except that's not what took place. Not at all. Jimmy's dad was killed by The Red Baron himself because he in fact is the one that did a nose dive right into the device and pushed it into the pool to effectively electro-shock his father into the afterlife. So the cops were called by their dumbass neighbor who can't seem to never be an asshole or have a cigar in his mouth because he's nosy, and the main detective is great because he's freaking Bob Pinciotti from That 70's Show. That's right-Don Stark makes an appearance here and I really enjoyed his candor and over-the-top leaning for this particular cameo because all he's here for is to send Jimmy's ass to either juvenile hall or some kind of shrink hospital for his rantings and ravings about a killer German Baron flying a little mini triplane from WWI. If this shit actually happened, no one in real life would believe him either because it's hilarious, delusional and of all the things to randomly come alive to try and murder you, why would it be the red baron of a German triplane from WWI. That's some serious imagination cranking there and it for sure warrants a straight jacket. But here's where the story for this starts-it's France 1918, and there's a dog fight taking place between The Red Baron and what seems to be a few American biplanes, and for my sake, yours, and a tad bit of historical accuracy, I actually looked up a bunch of photos of these types of aircraft while this opening was playing out just to see what I was dealing with in the moment and the planes that were used as American ones in this scene weren't American at all-they were British Sopwith biplanes being posed as American ones. Most people when this film first came out probably didn't realize the difference or even gave a shit (and to be honest if I was just watching this just to watch it instead of writing about it, I probably wouldn't have cared that much either) but I just wanted to point this out because I felt like I had to and it actually kind of adds to the overall cheapness and lack of quality that this film holds. In the entertainment department, I was all smiles and ridiculous cackles when it came to sitting through Revenge Of The Red Baron, but when it came to pretty much everything else-I was groaning and rolling my eyes at how inept this thing became. So at the end of this dog fight, The Red Baron himself is shot down and explodes in one of the crappiest explosions I think I've ever seen, and then after some embarrassingly bad score music, we are cut to Jimmy playing some flight simulator looking game on an NES, which looked like it should have been running on an early Windows 95 pc of the time or the original Playstation. That in and of itself is just insane because the writers and director clearly didn't know anything about video games at the time, and once again adds to just how quirky and terrible this film actually is. But the baron is brought back to life because Jimmy is sent to his dad's house where him and his Grandpa live so he can get some discipline and/or course correction because he's always fucking up at school and is always getting into fights with other students and teachers. His Grandpa ends up being the fighter pilot in WWI that shot down the baron in the beginning of the film, and his hobby now is that he builds and flies WWI era RC planes, and of course wouldn't you know it-he built the exact triplane that the baron was flying when he shot him down all those years ago and it's hanging from the ceiling on display. For some bizarre reason, he tells Jimmy to cut that plane down and one of the "American" ones, they fly them outside together and pretend to have a dog fight, when all of a sudden a storm comes and bolts the baron's plane with some lightning, and now he's alive and full of some of the shittiest German war era one-liners possible. The puppet that was used for the baron is so stupid looking and it almost made me feel like I was watching a lost Puppet Master film or something, which to be fair would actually fit into that canon somewhere because there's a whole WWII lore going on there with Toulon and all that-but I'm not going to get into any Puppet Master shit here. After all of that happening in the opening moments of the film, it's basically the baron following Jimmy and his grandpa around after he ends up in the hospital from having a coronary, trying to do whatever he can to eradicate him because he blasted his ass into smithereens back in WWI. There is a scene in here-and this is where the baron gets ammo for the guns on his plane-where Jimmy and his mom are actually trying to shoot him down skeet shooting style with duck hunting shotguns and lever action repeaters-they of course miss a million times and never hit him-but his mom goes to the gun cabinet for more ammo, she drops the whole box on the floor, leaves it there, and the baron sees it when he flies into the house to chase Jimmy's mom only to say "Ah, bullets. Danke schon." Then after that for the whole rest of the film he has seemingly unlimited ammo and ends up mowing down quite a few people who get into his way up until the very end. I normally do what I can to not spoil how any of these trash heaps end because it's just a better experience if you've never watched any of the movies that I review, but here's the ending for Revenge of The Red Baron-Jimmy uses the RC "American" plane to fly in circles until the baron finally screws up and flies into the power lines hanging above his grandpa's house, but he doesn't get electrocuted. So grandpa stands up out of his wheelchair next to the cut power box that's supposed to power those specific lines and he stretches those wires together to fry himself and the baron so this mess is finally all over and they can live happily ever after. I highly (and I mean HIGHLY) recommend looking up Revenge Of The Red Baron on Youtube because the entire film is there for anyone to enjoy and this is a rare one that suggested to me that I actually ended up enjoying because of how insane it was. Me putting this review together really doesn't even scratch the surface of how hilariously bad this flick is because I didn't even talk about any of the one-liners that the baron spits out or how much of a shitty teenage attitude Jimmy bares on his shoulders, his dad's dickhead of a neighbor, the hot nurse in the hospital where his grandpa ends up or piles and piles of other things that you just need to see for yourself. Go watch this and may historical accuracy be damned.
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