We at Culture Fusion are going to open up our doors and our interests a bit more fully. Music reviews are great and all but we also love movies and to show this off, I’m starting a new series called “Tinseltown Thursday.”

Every Thursday, I (or another writer) will explore a random A or B movie (although I’m sure to delve more deeply into the “D” aspect) trying to highlight the strange, the unusual, the unique, the fun and the fucking weird.

The first entry into this new series is “Sore Losers.”

The 60’s-70’s explotation movie aping poster might just be the best damn thing about the movie.

I can hear you all now asking an understandable question: what the fuck is “Sore Losers”? It’s a movie I discovered about 10 years ago on a “Four Freaky Movies” (or something to the effect) compilation from a Sam Goody in Marquette, Michigan. I don’t think I’ve watched the other three movies (two of which are Witchcraft sequels).

In fact, I actually bought the box set because of the description FOR this movie…and the tag line in particular. “They wanted meat…so they ate the flower children!” It’s a movie so obscure I could barely find pictures for it.

Made in 1997 by writer and director John Michael McCarthy it stars nobody at all. There’s some dude that looks and dresses a lot like Prince as well as a girl who, I swear, is Divine’s son i.e. she looks like a fat guy in drag.

She’s the femme fatale of the movie.

The plot is elegant in its simplicity: an intergalactic serial killer named Blackie returns to Earth to complete his mission of killing 12 random people. He killed 10 people 42 years ago but was unable to finish his mission, earning the status of a “sore loser.” Somehow (it’s never explained why) he has a second chance. He busts out his buddy Mike (the Prince-look-alike) and hooks up with psychopathic Kerine (Divine Junior).

Blackie realizes that any kills done by his buddies counts towards his total. However, Kerine screws up and kills both her parents (when he only needed one more kill, after a strange magazine inflicted death of a store keeper) and he may be trapped on Earth.

However, this sore loser has the chance to “take back” the 13^th death by killing somebody the elders choose. But they gotta bring Kerine’s loathed mother’s corpse along with them until they snag their last death…which turns out to be Mike’s love interest Goliatha who has no attention span but has the strength to lift a motorcycle over her head.

However! The Men in Black (guitar noise rock group Guitar Wolf) show up and take Goliatha and frame her for the sore losers crimes. Now, it’s a race against time to stop Goliatha’s execution and kill her (as Blackie must kill her himself).

YOU GOT ALL THAT?!

I only go into so much depth with this plot (something I probably won’t do again) to try to detail the insane and ridiculously intricate nature of this movie’s plot. I swear to Goliatha, I’ve tried to watch this movie a solid…10 times but I always lose track of what’s going on half way through and begin losing interest.

It’s usually when Guitar Wolf shows up and starts killing old farmers, who’s daughters turn into angels and banish the proud punk paranoid psychos.

And Guitar Wolf as…themselves.

This movie is insanely ambitious and insanely low budgeted: there are scenes of severe “under dubbing” (as my friend Jeff “dubbed” it) wherein all sounds from the scene drop out while two characters talk. Film stock (they used film! My God!) suddenly becomes drastically, drastically poor.

Nobody can act. The dialogue is sub-Tarantino (if Tarantino was trying to write like Troy Duffy) and filled with dozens of fan service scenes of nudity.

I can’t even begin to explain half of the insane, pretentious shit that happens in this movie. I already mentioned the angel. Well, there’s another scene where Kerine and some random girl just start…having sex with each other. On top of Kerine’s mother’s corpse.

Intense close ups. Looped laughter. Lines like “I don’t do it for the money…I do it for the kicks!” as well as the worst hippie impersonation you’ve ever seen. Say hello to an immortal nurse from the 50’s with double D’s and punk rock tattoos and mascara! She is chocked to death for no good reason. The mother’s corpse screams random insanity and somehow causes the city to blow up at the end of the movie simply by screaming (SPOILER ALERT!).

So yeah, it’s stupid. Incredibly stupid. It’s technically inept, poorly scripted, ridiculously acted and a failure on all levels…but is it fun?

This is a tougher question to answer. The first…half of the movie is definitely a lot of fun. The whole opening scene which introduces Blackie with the worst CGI this side of “Feeders” features a hilarious monologue that describes the basic plot and ends with the line “get away with murder!” echoed a dozen times.

Blackie walks into the shittiest gas station ever, where a weird old man strums an acoustic guitar and sings a sad folk song. Blackie kills the gas station owner by shoving a magazine in his mouth (ostensibly because he had no “Tales from the Crypt” comics). The old man playing guitar just keeps on playing.

Suddenly, Goliatha is sitting on the counter but she “don’t remember nothing” as her attention span is shot. That’s a plot point, by the way. In fact, just about every other half mumbled non-sequitor in this movie somehow becomes a plot point.

Blackie and Kerine fall in love after almost running each other off the road and taking pot shots at each other.

Guitar Wolf attacks by shooting lens flares at everybody. Blackie receives regular visits from “An Elder” (Florida exploitation God David Friedman) who smokes a cigar, cackles and tries to explain the plot some more.

Everybody goes to a carnival where Blackie explains to Mike that they gotta kill Goliatha. Mike doesn’t like that so they run away but Guitar Wolf takes her and…fakes her death? And then frames her for it?!

On Goliatha’s execution day, Kerine seems to simply waltz into her execution chamber (in a leather bondage suit for no reason) and gets into a fist fight with her. While the execution is taking place. Both die, as the governor frantically pleads over the phone to stop the execution.

Somewhere off screen, a heroin dealer ties off the director’s arm and gives him his daily dose of “inspiration.” Hell, the director probably paid him back by putting him in the movie (my guess is that that’s him underneath the horrendous “old lady” make up on Kerine’s mother).

If it sounds fun that’s only because it is but only in fits and spurts. There are a few amazing D-movie level scenes (such as the scene where Goliatha picks up her motorbike in front of a green screen THAT HAS NO IMAGE PROJECTED ON IT!) but there are also too many slow moments and way too much explaining.

Yes that’s a green screen. No nothing is projected onto it. Think this scene looks sexy? Wait till you see how awkward it truly is…

That’s the essential problem with this movie: they wanted to make a trashy, fun, exploitation flick but they delve into too many moments of intensely pretentious insanity. The plot is way too convoluted and confusing to work (my plot description only touched a portion of what happened in this movie) and having characters stop and talk about it for 10 minutes at a time only makes things worth.

After all, you can’t watch Guitar Wolf shoot lasers out of their eyes (or admire the rather sexy Goliatha) if you fall asleep listening to Blackie and Mike babble on about blood transfusions and the Lo-Fi Frequency or how certain kills don’t “count” for weird and not previously established reasons.

But I can honestly say I’ve never seen a movie like this in my life (it’s way too weird to be counted in among the usual “post-Tarantino” waste bin) and I’m definitely glad I own it…I just don’t think I’ll ever be able to finish the damn thing.