Flashdance

Flashdance, the first collaboration between Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, and starring Jennifer Beals, is the story of Alex and her dreams of leaving behind the exotic dance scene and pursuing more traditional, socially acceptable genres of dance. Somewhere along the way, she falls in movielust with her boss, who will henceforth be referred to as ‘Creepy Boss.’ Will Alex and Creepy Boss find their happy ending? Will you feel clean after watching this movie? Only The Scorecard knows…

• The rocking out session necessitated by the opening credits’ quintessential 80’s anthem, "Flashdance… What a Feeling” = +5pts
• Alex’s perfect hair cascading out of welding mask. = +4pts
• Iconic wet chair dance scene does not disappoint! = +10pts
• For having the creepiest meet cute of all time. Ew. Has it ever been socially acceptable to pursue an employee to whom you suddenly became attracted after seeing her stripping at a sleazy bar? = -3pts
• Alex’s super cute pit bull stealing all the scenes and having a better screen presence than Creepy Boss could ever dream of having = +1pt
• Discussing sex in a gothic cathedral with a way-too-interested priest = -2pts
• Girl obsessing over whether or not the guy will call. = -10pts (In 1983 = +13pts, in 2013 = -23pts)
• Appropriate use of the word “honkey” = +3pts
• Creepy Boss thinking it’s cool to follow a girl to her place of residence after she narrowly escapes a rape. = -7pts
• Having sex with guy so he won’t leave. = -10pts (Classic!)
• Not waking him up for work the next morning even though he’s your boss and you have to be at the same place at the same time. = +5pts
• Cheesy lover’s stroll montage including high heels and railroad tracks. = -12pts (Could have been a positive had they realistically cut to a broken ankle and scene in an emergency room.)
• “If you close your eyes, you can see the music.” What does that mean when there’s no music playing? = -7pts
• But really, who is that old lady? Were we still contemplating the “see the music” line or maybe dozing off when she was introduced? She seems to be some sort of ballet Mr. Miyagi…only time will tell. = -5pts
• Throwing a rock through the window of a cheating man’s house. = +8pts
• Oh, wait, he explains it away in less than 5 minutes. = -5pts (A very tense 5 minutes...)
• Dude! You are not seriously following her again! = -13pts
• Calling your friend on the Arts’ Council because you have zero confidence in her ability to get an audition based on her own merits= -16pts
• Jeanie leaving the bar with handsy rapist?! = -21pts (Too much to handle…feminist capacity…shutting down…to maintain sanity.)
• Irrational female emotion causing car wrecks and shit. = -6pts
• Domestic violence. Always lovely. = -19pts
• Kickass dance audition. = +14pts (Female empowerment, dreams are alive and well! Well, except for the rape, stalking, and gaslighting.)
• All the goodwill of previous score negated by Creepy Boss creeping outside the audition. = -14pts. (It’s probably better not to contemplate how he kidnapped her dog from her house also.)

Total Score = -103pts
Available On: Netflix Instant Streaming, Your Mom’s YouTube List Entitled “Dead Dreams From the 80’s”

The best thing about Flashdance is inarguably (seriously, don’t argue) the perfect 80’s tunes that accompany the big-haired, backlit exotic dancing.  You know you want to watch it again.

Flashdance…What a Feeling, performed by Irene Cara won both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Thanks to this movie, chair dancing is now a legit subset of dance and can be majored in at Julliard or any community college across the U.S. and more progressive parts of Northern Europe. While it was exhausting to watch this confusing relationship unfold between Alex and Creepy Boss, it reminds us of how far romantic comedies have come in the thirty years since this movie was released. We put our faith in 30 Rock that the new Millennial woman would never stand for a bland leading man with stalkerish tendencies. One thing is clear: Stripping ain’t what it used to be.

Score Technician: Savannah Tankersley

Saturday the 14th

From the writer of the Care Bears cartoon comes Saturday the 14th! Get your Scorecard ready, because, if the trailer is to be believed, it gets bad on Friday the 13th, but it gets worse on Saturday the 14th!

• Setting the tone of the film with a cartoon intro featuring a coughing wolf, a bat wearing 80’s sunglasses, and poorly-edited rain effects. = -11pts (This is going to be a bumpy ride). 
• One of Jeffrey Tambor’s first roles in a feature film and it’s as a jive-ass Dracula. = +5pts 
• Not being able to tell if Jeffrey Tambor’s comment about having children as often as possible was in reference to how often he plows his dominatrix wife, how often he drinks underage blood, or how often he… euggh… = -13pts (eughh…) 
• Knocking out an old lady by giving her the raspberry. = +2pts 
• “Now we won’t have to be afraid to let the children go out and play!” has never before been said with such heartfelt sincerity by someone who just inherited a cursed Draculahouse. = +3pts 
• Hold on, the executor just straight up died! Why isn’t anyone helping him? Lady, stop worrying about how you just inherited Draculahouse and call an ambulance! = -14pts 
• Why is the realtor showing a house that has not only just been inherited, but has the new owners’ MOVING VAN IN THE DRIVEWAY!? -11pts 
• Vampires inexplicably walking around in the daytime? This shit’s bananas. = -12pts 
• That girl is one of the daughters from Gimme a Break! Where’s Nell Carter? = -6pts 
• Turning on candles with a light switch. =-2pts 
• Did the mom just ask her kid if he was hiding inside a big dog again? = +2pts 
• Not appreciating a TV that only shows The Twilight Zone. = -6pts 
• We aren’t sure what’s weirder: the mom finding, dusting, and generally not giving a shit about the human skull in her kitchen cabinet or the dad finding a note from his dead uncle in the refrigerator. = +7pts 
• Calling the book of evil “The Book of Evil.” = +3pts 
• Are we supposed to not notice that the dad just took a bite out of a sandwich from an old refrigerator? = -4pts 
• The 50’s movie monster costumes, including what appears to be some sort of werewolf sasquatch. = In the 80’s, -10pts. Today, +10pts for the genuine charm. Final score= +0pts (a wash). 
• What the hell kind of real estate agent harasses people in the middle of the night? The kind that deserves to be mutilated by a weresquatch. = +3pts 
• Mom and Dad hear the horrified screams of a woman outside; Dad blames it on owls and Mom backs him up after seeing a bat flapping outside of the window. = -19pts 
• How does Dad not smell the alien gorilla monster standing directly behind him? Oh, that’s right, because owls. = -6pts 
• Sweet claymation sequence of flowers dying at the sight of the weresquatch. = +4pts 
• Not even the 80’s can explain why the teenage daughter is wearing a canary-colored dress shirt with red hot pants. = -5pts 
• Why did Paul Blart: Mall Cop just run through their front yard? Oh, because he forgot his badge. What a shithead; he can’t die fast enough. = -4pts 
• The shots of the bra-less teenage daughter getting undressed, focusing more on her sparkling white panties and less on the sideboob. = -5pts, until IMDB reassured us that the actress was an adult. Now, = +8pts 
• Subverting the Jaws parody with a Creature of the Black Lagoon spoof. = +4pts 
• The trumpet accompaniment to Billy running up the steps made it seem like he was ascending a staircase fashioned from clown horns. = +11pts 
• Fish man not reacting to Debbie’s buffalo shot when, after tripping over the carpet, she scrambles away wearing only a tiny towel. = +7pts for including a gay fish man without making a real show of it. 
• After shrugging off repeated gunshot wounds (including a headshot), gay fish man murders Paul Blart: Mall Cop and drags his corpse away. = -7pts for embracing negative stereotypes of gay fish men in cinema. 
• Billy doesn’t sneak a peek at his sister after almost drowning her in the bubble bath. =+13 classy pts 
• Playing ominous synthesizer music at the mention of the movie’s title. = +1pt 
• Man alive, Dad just put goddamn peanut butter on a Shag-and-Scoob lunch meat sandwich. = -8pts 
• Realistic portrayal of a cat being a fucknugget. = +4pts 
• If Mom was bitten by fake Dracula, why is she getting savaged by bats AND CALLING THEM OWLS? = -9pts 
• A beardy German exterminator in a three-piece suit named Van Helsing reveals that Draculahouse resides on Elm Street. = +0pts in 1981, but after 1984 = +75pts 
• Dad says that ten-year old Billy is the smart one in the family. Billy responds by saying how he throws away his books when he’s done reading them. = -11pts 
• Van Helsing’s appearance causing Mom to go into a fifteen-second screaming fit (trust us, we counted). = +7pts 
• Monsters can do the dishes, clean your room, and put a severed head in your fridge, but they can’t spell “dead.” = -3pts 
• We get it, Debbie. Everything is creepy. Now go get a job. = -5pts 
• Risking legal action for unlicensed usage of Froot Loops, Wonderbread, Mickey Mouse, and the likenesses of Laurel and Hardy. = +3pts 
• Implying that, for opening the Book of Evil, Billy’s soul is damned eternally. = +7pts 
• “Selling the house now would be like closing the barn door after the horses have eaten your children.” Everything that Van Helsing says is pure fucking gold. = +18pts 
• Three words: pink pajama cameltoe. = -14pts 
• Plot twist: weresquatch is the housekeeper! Up yours, Nell Carter! = +5pts 
• How does Debbie not smell the gay fish man as they fumble around in the foggy bathroom? Don’t answer that. = -9pts 
• Implying that Jeffrey Tambor is actually Dracula, only to have him frightened off by a beaker of smoking Kool-Aid in the scene that immediately follows. = -6pts 
• Van Helsing eating a bowl of Count Chocula and shouting about old Barbara Streisand records. Seriously, why isn’t the movie all about him? = +7pts 
• Dad’s joke about not being able to “stand the sight of” coffee with eyeballs floating in it. = -9pts 
• Whose liquor store delivers Doritos, club soda, and Streisand records? = -3pts for setting unrealistic expectations. 
• The director includes a scene of the mom buying a Venus flytrap earlier in the film in order to set up a Little Shop of Horrors joke in the last act, but he doesn’t explain why Jeffrey Tambor can walk around in the sunlight? = -21pts 
• Van Helsing’s knocking over of a vase while trying to light a match didn’t seem to be intentionally included the film. + 6pts 
• Of all of the times for Debbie not to call something creepy, it’s when creepy-ass Cousin Phil shows up. = -3pts 
• Old lady from the start of the movie getting eaten by a monster in a fur coat. = +4pts 
• Van Helsing’s muttering to himself and generally being the best/worst bartender. = +2pts 
• The “who’s that guy?” joke about the kid from the liquor store manages to stay funny after the third time. = +2pts 
• Van Helsing suggesting that the first person who finds the missing Billy gets to keep him and then looking genuinely dismayed when Mom tells him no. = +6pts 
• Paul Blart: Mall Cop’s wife nagging her husband’s severed head to save her from the weresquatch. It doesn’t. = +3pts 
• Real-estate agent re-appearing as a vampire or a ghost or something. = +1pt for her Don King hair. 
• The buck-toothed gorilla’s “O” face as it strangles a houseguest. = +3pts 
• What the!? Van Helsing is the bad guy and Dracula is the good guy? Jeffrey Tambor admitted to doing unsavory things to children at the start of the movie! We call shenanigans. = -38pts 
• Van Helsing’s final showdown against Jeffrey Tambor and wife consists of them making silly faces and noises at one another, including Van Helsing laughing like Renfield when the 667 he painted on the wall goes up in smoke. Meanwhile Billy floats in the air while wearing a cape. = +24pts 
• Oh, snap! Gay fish man just broke through the window and accidentally got to second base with Debbie! And he’s never seen again. =+3pts 
• Van Helsing disintegrates after touching the book and now Dracula’s wearing a white bowtie. As stated previously, this shit’s bananas. = -10pts 
• Dad ruining the liquor store kid joke by explaining it. = -1pt 
• Did the movie just end with the family cheerily mugging from the doorway of the neighbor’s house? But why did Dracula want the book – just to beat Van Helsing? To rule the world? Is the mom forever cursed with vampirism? What happened to Cousin Phil? Was this even a movie for kids? Fuck it, roll credits. = -99pts 
• Composing an ending theme longer than the credits, and then letting it play over half a minute of black screen instead of either making the credits longer or cutting the music short. -7pts

Total Score: -123pts
Available on: Netflix Streaming, your childhood in an alternate dimension

Saturday the 14th has no idea what it wants to be. The humor is derived equally from intentional gags and unintentional awfulness, with dialog that swings from clever to groan-inducing without warning. Some parts are too silly for older children and others are too gruesome for little kids. This confusingly silly spoof tries hard enough to move it beyond the Wayans Brothers’ league, but fails to achieve cult status thanks to its own asphyxiating ineptitude. It makes for pretty tragic viewing, but, hey, at least it’s an amusing failure! It’s enjoyable for (mostly) all of the wrong reasons and can really only be properly appreciated with a Scorecard in hand.

Score Technician: TJ Geise

Paranormal Activity

The Paranormal Activity franchise was almost solely responsible for resurrecting the found footage film and has, to date, grown to encompass something like 48 sequels. Today, we're taking it all the way back to the original. How will this modern-day masterpiece of supernatural horror hold up under the Scorecard's pitiless gaze? Read on, gentle reader, and find out...

• For being a recent horror movie that isn’t a remake and doesn’t revolve around Real World cast-offs being subjected to surgical torture. = +20pts
• For being one of those “found footage” horror movies. = –15pts
• Isn’t there only one camera? How come the POV keeps changing in the kitchen? = –5pts
• So, just so we’re clear here, malevolent poltergeist haunting my girlfriend: Totally within the realm of possibility. Psychics who can perceive and study said poltergeist: An obvious load of bullshit invented to defraud the gullible. = –10pts
• For giving us the Paranormal Activity Drinking Game (every time there’s a loud noise from downstairs, take a drink; if Micah or Katie yell “Fuck” right afterwards, chase it with a shot; guaranteed black-out drunk in 90 minutes or less). = +20pts
• For defining “demons” for us. (Because an entire lifetime of living in a Judeo-Christian Western society hasn’t familiarized us with that concept.) = –3pts
• Micah’s “research” on the supernatural consisting of one evening thumbing through My First Picture Book of Demons. = +8pts
• Despite the fact that the psychic explicitly said NOT to use a Ouija board, that’s pretty much Micah’s go-to solution. For showing some real moxy: = +10pts
• For being a willfully obtuse horror movie character. = –15pts
• So basically, Kate and Micah share a living space with something that throws stuff on the floor, leaves faucets running, and makes loud noises while they’re trying to sleep. Maybe we're alone in this, but we think that in order for the supernatural force in a horror movie to really be effective, it needs to be more threatening than, say, an inconsiderate roommate. = –18pts
• At a certain point, wouldn’t the logical response to the “haunting” be to shake your first in the direction of the loud thumping, mutter a semi-coherent reprimand, and then roll over and go back to sleep? = –7pts
• Sprinkling talcum powder on the floor to solve your ghost problems.  = – 2pts
• Claw marks on Micah’s picture; I think we see eye-to-eye on this one, demon. = +32pts
• Attempted ghost rape. =+12pts (For being kind of scary. Not for...you know...the whole rape thing.)
• The end takeaway of this movie being “See the next movie to find out what any of this shit means.” = –20pts

Total score = –23pts
Available on: Netflix DVD, your little brother's list of "scAryEst mOvIEz EvArrr!"

As close to a zero as just about anything we’ve ever reviewed. Proof that the scorecard never lies! We’re pretty sure that we’ve watched instructional videos on performing simple Excel functions that were more frightening than this film.

Score Technician: Joe Hemmerling

Zardoz

Those of you already familiar with John Boorman’s magnum opus probably remember one thing about this film and one thing only:

Yep. That’s pretty much Connery’s get-up for the duration of the movie. The mind reels trying to sort out why a bro who’d made some pretty substantial waves of goodwill amongst cinema-types with his taught, deftly wrought Burt Reynolds thriller (Deliverance) would decide to follow it with a flick that offers little more than an opportunity for long tracking shots of Sean Connery in a hair weave and a cod piece. But is there more to this utopian nugget than cod pieces and matching ammo belts? Let’s find out!

• Using the disembodied head of consummately smarmy Niall Buggy to introduce the film. = -4pts 
• Giving Mr. Buggy unexplained and intricate sharpie-drawn facial hair (betting long that frat culture would gain ascendency by the 24th Century). = -6pts 
• “Is God in show business, too?” as the final line of that intro, which comes dangerously close to directly blaming the existence of this movie on the Most High. = -1pt 
• The Allegretto from Beethoven’s 7th is naturally brimming with emotion. Somehow finding a way to sap all of that emotion from the piece by recording the most tepid synthesized version of it possible = -12pts 
• Having aforementioned smarmy Mr. Buggy pilot some crazy prehistoric looking stone flying head that stirs bloodlust amongst cod-pieced and already bloodthirsty future savages in a totally barren wasteland (most likely Scotland) = -46pts 
• One of the best pep talks in recorded history about how it’s way cooler to kill people wearing sport coats than it is to have sex. = +15pts 
• E.G., “The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was, but the gun shoots death, and purifies the Earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth ... and kill!” = +21pts 
• Sub-E.G., The whole reason for that speech hinges on the fact that at some point all the smart people in the world decided to live forever and stop having kids, and it was poor people (presumably mid-level managers from their tendency to all wear sport coats) who were plaguing the earth with their fecundity. = -19pts 
• Sean Connery’s non-plussed first reaction upon finding out that the head’s filled with fully-grown human beings in what look like blister-packs = -7pts 
• Sean Connery copping a feel on one of the blister-pack ladies. = -3pts 
• The director’s shrewd decision to make sure Sean Connery’s first reaction upon seeing a man with sharpie facial hair is to shoot and keep shooting. = +13pts 
• So, Sean Connery shoots this dude with hand drawn stubble, right? And the dude’s totally crushed about being shot, and “falls” out of the stone head. But also, while he’s falling, he kind of lingers in mid-air telling Connery that he could’ve shown him so much more (presumably, how to apply a douche-y mustache with magic marker). Flying never explained. = -7pts 
• Connery arrives in a perfect utopian society where even the plants seem like they’re always on the verge of having an orgasm, and finds that they’ve replaced every “s” with a “z”. = +8pts 
• A conversation between Sean Connery and a sentient ring he’s wearing about flowers that quickly segues into him oogling a topless be-freckled female horse-rider. = -5pts 
• Connery somehow decides upon following the rider that killing her would be way more baller than giving her the old high hat. = -3pts 
• Fortunately, her telekinetic powers overcome his more basic instincts. +4pts 
• Giving women codpieces, too. = +25pts 
• Connery, laying on some futuristic table, being studied by beings light-years beyond his intelligence and most likely intending to kill him, still looks bored and DTF like always. = +15pts 
• The guy who acts as explicator par excellence to Connery as he navigates through this painfully anachronistic utopia is also regressively type-cast as a totally effeminate gay dude. = -50pts 
• People who can’t handle the fact that sex and eating and being with other people are awesome have lost their zest in an endless tranquility, *literally* turning into zombies called “Apathetics.” = -4pts 
• Connery totally puts it on the most attractive Apathetic he can find. Kind of like, “Hey, don’t care about nothing? How’s about I show you this excellent cold sore??” = +11pts 
• We’re introduced to Charlotte Rampling and become 88% certain we’ve just surmised why it was that Sean Connery signed-on to the movie in the first place. = +12pts 
• They don’t even do it. = -32pts. 
• Some stuff happens where Connery realizes he was “chosen” from the beginning because one time when he was murdering sport-coated poors he found out that Zardoz (his God) was actually pulled out of Buggy’s ass from (SPOILER ALERT!) “The wiZARD of OZ” = -31pts 
• Also! Buggy comes back to life, because as “An Eternal” he can never really die, he just turns into a weird-looking baby in a blister pack. Grody to the max. = -24pts 
• In this perfect society, when you do something bad, your punishment is to languish in the boring-est supper club imaginable with old people listening to music that fell to the cutting-room floor when they were deciding what would make a totally bitchin’ score for “Are You Being Served?” = -4pts 
• Connery’s animal magnetism creates a faction amongst those so perfect they’ll live forever, and it’s like half of them are totally okay dying as long as Hai Karate and cod-pieces will escort them to the next plane of existence (don’t even front, if Big Tam was wearing a scent, it was Hai Karate) = +23pts 
• The Eternals start realizing that living forever is boring as hell, especially when they’re eating nothing but orgasmic kale and only getting erections from killing poor mortals. = -13pts 
• There’s some shit about crystal skulls (or crystals inside of skulls), but not the kind that Harrison Ford thought were cool enough to make movies about a couple years ago. = -3pts 
• Also, all those primitive bros start going buckwild on people with nicer cod-pieces than them. = +2pts 
• Death orgy vs. orgy orgy? = +7pts 
• Nary a sharpie-bearded savant to be seen by the end, and that butchered Beethoven’s 7th isn’t helping much. = -4pts 
• The “gift” that Connery brings to the hoity-toity immortal smug-bugs is death… Which, all things considered, is way better than All Things Considered. = +16pts 

Total Score = -106pts
Available on: Netflix, DVD

Sean Connery’s garb is unavoidable and ever-present in this film, and those initially put off by his choice of wardrobe find themselves oddly soothed by it towards the end of the film. There’s a kind of magic in that. Zardoz, while ultimately ridiculous, dated, and philosophically immature, still has its bright spots, and is totally worth watching. You’re just going to want to make sure you have a scorecard present while doing so.

Score Technician: Paul Bower

Dead End Drive-In

The Australian film Dead End Drive-In is often lumped in with the post-apocalyptic sub-genre, but only because no one can figure out a catchier term for ‘post worldwide economic collapse.’ Apparently, the world seems to be suffering from something to do with “Inflation, shortages, unemployment, and crime wave.” The Australian government is clearing society’s undesirable elements out of the way by turning drive-in theaters into ersatz concentration camps. Don’t – just, no – why are you asking questions? Don’t ask questions.

• Sign of Post-Societal Collapse #27: Every available surface must be covered in graffiti. = +25pts.
• Sign of Post-Societal Collapse #8: As many trash fires in the background as possible! Opening scene trash fire count = +6pts. (1 point for every fire.)
• Sign of Post-Societal Collapse #2: Gangs of hoodlums constantly wooting and laughing obnoxiously while banging on metal things. = +25pts. 
• Driving car through the inside of a train to escape said hoodlums. = +47pts. 
• Brilliant plan to trick young punks into voluntarily entering a concentration camp by putting an electric fence around a drive-in theatre and then just hoping said punks will, um…drive in.  Just go with it. = -30pts. 
• 30 minute mark: Gratuitous breast count = +3pts. (1 point for each breast.)
• 30 minute: Updated trash fire count. = +27pts. 
• Breakdancing. = -20pts. 
• Wait, a certain lead character could have just escaped the camp by asking the manager to notify his brother to come pick him up? Worst. Concentration camp. Ever. = -100pts. 
• LEAD MUST SHOUT ALL LINES TO INDICATE FRUSTRATION! = +10pts.
• LEAD MUST ALSO LEAVE MOUTH AGAPE AND SMILE CONSTANTLY, EVEN DURING THE MOST INAPPROPRIATE OF MOMENTS! WHY ARE WE STILL SHOUTING? = -34pts. 
• 60 minute mark: Gratuitous breast count = +2pts.
• 60 minute mark: Trash fire count. = +67pts
• One wall of drive-in office not covered with graffiti. = -78pts.
• Endearing early digital age trope in which characters can sit down at a computer and instantly reveal information vital to the plot by slapping a paw on the keyboard. = +7pts. 
• Brilliant escape plan: steal one car, drive up to cops and honk, drive haphazardly through lot, crashing into things. = -34pts. 
• Actual Exchange: “What do they call you? “Crabs.” = +15pts (We are officially considering this quote for our tombstone.)
• Final trash fire count. = +153pts (This is an estimate, internet nerds. There is no way we’re counting all the trash fires.)
• Final gratuitous breast count = +6 (+1 thrown in for earlier gratuitous shot of lead in Speedo briefs.)

Total Score: = 98
Available on: Netflix, DVD, for free in a bin outside any Blockbuster that happens to still be open in Australia.

We see the movie Dead End Drive-In as quaint now because we know that, rather than luring outcasts to drive-ins with the hope of getting lucky in a parked car, we can entrap all of the members of society’s bottom strata by simply throwing up a bunch of tables and hanging a large sign that reads “SWAP MEET.”  While any hopes we had of the movie being logical enough to retain relevance to our contemporary world of economic crises were dashed, it’s an enjoyably bad movie, full of quotable moments. Perfect for a night of b-grade Australian films and cheap beer.

And if we may be allowed to end on a tangent, drive-ins may finally be going kaput this year.  The drive-in is the best possible venue you could hope to ever view the types of b-movies embraced by the Progressive Cinema Scorecard, for um, many important reasons. If you have the chance to go to the drive-in, take it.

Score Technician: Alex Pearlstein

The Return of the Living Dead

From the Scorecard vault, comes the movie that gave zombies brains: Return of the Living Dead. If there's one thing this movie taught us about zombies/interracial gangs/the army/naked punk chicks/toxic waste/brains it's that you never want to wade into an impending apocalypse sans Scorecard.

• Asserting that this movie is based on real and true events when that is clearly impossible = +50pts
• Having the guy who played Governor Fritz La Chatte from the TV show Sledgehammer as one of your leads = +8pts
• Asserting that all skeletons used in medical reaserch come from India because they have nice teeth = -100pts
• Having a teenage gang with every single 80's stereotype represented, as if they were all in one group and actually hung out together (in 1985 = -13pts), in 2011 = +13pts
• Having a main character speak to the integrity of a toxic drum by claiming that is was made by the Army Corp of Engineers right before it promptly falls apart (in 1985 = +5pts), Post Katrina = +10pts
• Having your punk chick character talk about her fantasy death and it involving being raped and eaten by a bunch of dirty old men and then having her take off her clothes (tops AND bottoms) to dance completely naked on a giant tomb = -100pts
• Introducing brains to the discriminating zombie pallet = +50pts
• Not giving the naked punk chick any clothes, even after brains start being eaten = -100 pts
• Having a Motley Crue knock-off play during the cemetery awakening montage = -3pts
• Not killing the only black dude in the movie first = +20pts (In any era.)
• Not putting zombie make-up on a significant portion of the "zombies" in the wide group shots = -13pts
• Little person made to look like a zombie with no legs = +10pts
• Zombies using the CB radios to lure more paramedics/police officers to the scene for more brains = +50pts
• Bringing back the naked punk chick, even after we thought she had mercifully been killed, and still not giving her any clothes to wear = -100pts
• Clips from the movie you just watched playing during the credits and they are not outtakes = -10pts

Total Score: -215pts
Available on: Netflix, DVD, Ryan VenHuizen's Creepy Uncle's Basement Video Collection

A movie that has (for good or bad) made a significant mark on the zombie cannon. Once again, the scorecard's rigorous formula provides the exact kind of feedback you need before making your next viewing choice. In short, The Return of the Living Dead, while not very progressive, isn't exactly Birth of a Nation. But then what is?

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

Tetsuo: The Bullet Man

Tetsuo: The Bullet Man is on Netflix?! This must mean that it is the best of the Tetsuo movies! And, while even Wikipedia can't seem to discern the difference between any of them, we figured we'd give it the old Scorecard try. Warning: Watching this film without a Scorecard handy may result in fits of serenity and bliss, both of which strongly correlate with spontaneous combustion.

• Hmm, wonder what possible movie Tetsuo The Bullet Man Group might be presenting? = +15pts
• Wait, that dude isn’t Japanese! = -6pts
• Hey, what’s that condition guys get when they hear their wives/girlfriends mumbling murderous things to themselves on the toilet in the bathroom and rather than take her to the doctor, they go to the doctor for a standard check-up instead? Oh yeah, douchbagery. = -2pts
• If your bio-technician father runs towards you after you cut your hand on a tiny piece of glass because he thinks he sees smoke coming from your wound, then you probably need to change doctors. = +3pts
• It’s hard to say what exactly happened at this point in the movie. Best to keep it short: Terrible set. Eurotrash sedan. Running over a child. Scratch that, running over a howling creature. A pool of smoking blood. Sadness. Dancing. = +3pts
• Hey, what’s that condition guys get when their kids are run over by a strange car and then they inhale their child’s smoking blood while dancing/writhing underneath a spotlight and a shower in a three piece suit they weren’t wearing 10 seconds ago? Oh yeah, The Prodigy. = +2pts
• Oh yeah! It’s called Tetsuo: The Bullet Man! How could the Testuo The Bullet Man Group have let us forget? Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to have an epileptic fit during this opening credit sequence. (+3pts for the reminder, -10pts for the seizure) = -7pts
• Waving the camera around to emphasize inner physical and emotional turmoil. = -5pts,
• Doing so after your audience has just recovered from a seizure. = -10pts
• Where do these people live? At the Sharper Image, or in The Book of Eli? = +2pts
• If your ringtone causes you to curl up, dry heave, and see a spinning gear faced apparition, you may need to put some Umbrella on that shit instead. =+5pts
• If the sound of your boss’s voice demanding you finish a presentation for work (3) days (tops) after your son was mysteriously killed causes you to spit up black fluid, consider consulting a physician who is not you bio-technician father. We’re just sayin’… =  +5pts
• For a movie that is only 70 minutes, it sure feels like it’s been playing for hours. = -25pts (Mandatory Deduction)
• Apparently when a white man speaks Japanese, things will spontaneously grow out of his face, and the FedEx guy will be obligated to try to kill him. Message received Japan. Loud and clear. = +3pts
• Can’t think of many American white boys who went to college in the 90’s who didn’t fantasize about John Woo shooting them dead in a bathtub. We bet they’d even settle for a dead-on-lookalike like the guy in this movie. = +5pts
• Falling from several stories up onto a bad guy’s car even though he’s driving through a low-ceilinged parking garage that your average semi couldn’t drive through. = +3pts
• Bullet Bukkake! = +5pts
• You’ve just bullet-jizzed over an entire car. Why not check your email next? What else are you gonna do? = +3pts
• Hey, look! Another epileptic fit courtesy of the camerawork of this movie! Thanks movie! = -10pts
• Things you wouldn’t mind finding when going through your parent’s closet after they’ve died: porn, weed, money, bonds, your real parents’ address and phone number. Things you would mind finding: Homemade porn, letters from your real mother that have been written throughout your adult life but were sequestered by insecure fake parents, evidence that your bio-technician father had been experimenting on you and your son, thus explaining your new cock rifle. = -4pts
• Scratch that. Finding those things and the preserved remains of your mother who even in death appears to be weeping. = -8pts
• Hold up. Finding out all of the above and learning that you were a weaponized android (who knows at this point?) placed into the body of another android created from the body of your dead mother so that your bio-technician dad could…um, not be lonely? Not a good day for you, sir! = +10pts (To help you turn that gun-frown upside down.)
• Casting a movie with what appears to be your paintball buddies as opposed to real actors. = +3pts (This is always a good thing.)
• How does turning into a living machine gun also grant you the powers to defy gravity and climb walls!? Talk about an embarrassment of riches! = +10pts
• Suicide fail. = -3pts
• Tetsuo Jenga with your wife! It’s big in the swinging red-light district of bat-shit crazy! = -3pts
• A nice candlelight dinner with dad. = +2pts
• Worst PSA for procreation ever. -3pts
• Worst PSA for women ever. = -10pts
• The Hulk called and he’d like his catchphrase back. = -3pts
• Worst. Episode. Of. The. Bachelor. Ever. = -3pts
• For having more endings than Lord of the Rings. = -5pts
• Just cause he has a sweet ass and is covered in oil-sweat don’t make him normal, sweetie. = +5pts
• Um, your new kid looks exactly like your old dead kid. This will end well. (Again…) = +5pts

Total Score = -18pts

It’s rare that a movie can literally cause you physical pain. So let’s give credit where credit is due! Well done, Shinya Tsukamoto! You’ve created a film that is punishing to all five senses, while offering little in the way of plot, characters, or resolution. And you did so in only 70 excruciating minutes! Now, if you’ll excuse us. We have to go make ourselves a glass of hot coco. 9 out of 10 bio-technician father/doctors recommend reading this scorecard rather than watching this movie.

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

The Ward

John Carpenter is still alive! Or is he? Welcome to The Ward. Be sure to pack your Scorecard.

• Being John Carpenter's first movie in nearly ten years. = +13pts.
• Setting the film in a 1960s insane asylum. = +14pts
• Realizing that setting is not as scary or interesting as it sounds. = -6pts
• Strangulation within the first five minutes!  = +9pts
• Having a creepy opening title sequence chock full of ghastly asylum photos.  = +6pts.
• Realizing in hindsight that the title sequence is scarier than anything that happens in the rest of the movie. -3pts.
• Police assuming that the scantily-clad girl staring blankly at a burning home is an arsonist rather than a traumatized survivor. = -12pts.
• North Bend, Oregon doesn't have an Olive Garden, let alone an insane asylum. = -5pts
• Shots of Pacific Northwestern beauty to justify the second unit director’s paycheck. = +11pts
• Setting the film in Oregon but actually filming in Washington instead of just saying that it was in Washington to begin with. = -4pts
• Hey, the doctor is Winona Ryder's charmingly jerky boss from Mr. Deeds! = +12pts
• Making every character hideously obnoxious so that you don't feel bad when they all inevitably die. = -27pts
• Nurse Lundt. = +1pt
• Realizing that Iris is Ted's daughter from How I Met Your Mother. = +8pts
• Trying to escape scant seconds after being detained for the night. +7pts
• Being surprised when the trained orderly is there to catch you. -5 pts (This isn’t Canada!)
• Flashback scenes with heavily implied child molestation. = -12pts
• Being able to figure out the plot twist before the film's halfway point. Nice job, "sad people." = -18pts
• Wait, where did all of the other crazy people go? = -11pts
• Showcasing 60’s fashion with high-waisted skinny jeans. = -5pts (It wasn’t as sexy as one would think).
• Why is everyone suddenly dancing? = -7pts
• The obligatory shower scene interrupted by a ghost! = +10pts
• Not being able to tell if the ghost is a ghost or a zombie (A ghost zombie? A zombie ghost?). = -6pts
• Ghost zombie's exposed and squirming veins. = +2pts
• Death by lobotomy! = +15pts
• No one commenting on Emily's inexplicable Joker smile. = +18pts
• The orderly being too busy screwing a grate onto a vent to screw a mental patient. = +14pts (Did you see what we did there?)
• Gimme gimme shock treatment! = +6pts
• Stuffing paper towels in the cell door to make it seem locked from the outside so that you can fail to escape again. = -3pts (When you’re trying to sleep tonight, remember that John Carpenter directed this scene.)
• A jump scare that actually worked only because there was no logical place for the ghost zombie's arm to appear from. = 0pts
• Showing the dangers of feigning a suicide attempt for attention. = +9pts
• MacGyvering out of a straightjacket by using a bedspring. = +2pts
• Making us feel bad for the orderly getting knocked out when he's just trying to read his book. = -3pts
• With the orderly angrily giving chase, Zoey’s casual one-liner (“He’s mad.”) was amusingly apt. = +13pts
• Successfully killing the ghost zombie with a fire axe. = +18pts
• The ghost zombie's flopping, shrieking, unintentionally hilarious demise which really hams up the climax. = -4pts
• A plot twist that makes us wish that the movie could have pulled it off better. = -19pts
• Kirsten not being a ghost zombie in the ending scene. = -15 pts (Normal people attacking you through a mirror isn’t scary.)
• Hearing John Carpenter drop a deuce on his filmmaking legacy. = -18pts

Total  = +5 points

The Ward had delusions of grandeur but ultimately came off like Identity with cookie-cutter characters and a ghost zombie. It’s not awful, but having John Carpenter's name plastered all over it set our expectations higher than the film could reach. Spending nearly two hours in a real sanitarium would be scarier and more interesting than this snoozy slasher. One should never  venture into The Ward without a Scorecard. Ever.

Score Technician: TJ Geise

Inferno

A sequel to Dario Argento’s amazing Suspiria!? And you're calling it Inferno?! Those are our favorite kinds of fires! How could this possibly go wrong!?

• Alleged second part of “trilogy” that started with Suspiria. = +50pts (A good movie.)
• Needing a knife to open a book. = +3pts (The way mom used to do it…)
• Passive aggressive diary read by someone who sounds a lot like Kahn from Stark Trek, and that over-explains the “concept” of the “Three Mothers.” (Wikipedia tells me the diary is referencing “witches,” but it sure sounds like he means “women.”) = +5pts (For the Kahn voice, not the misogyny.)
• What?! No Goblin?! = -5pts
• Lighting a movie in 1978 so that it looks like Miami in 1988. = +3pts
• A New York with no New Yorkers. = +10pts
• Why would an “alchemist” have written a book about houses of the damned instead of…I don’t know, maybe a book on alchemy? = -3pts
• Dialogue = Exposition = -5pts.
• Deflecting odor of obvious “witches’ den” by claiming proximity to a “cake factory.” = +8pts (Explains so much about Willy Wonka’s pad.)
• GODDMAN IT WE KNOW THAT THE SECOND KEY IS HIDDEN IN THE CELLAR!! GET OFF OUR SHIT ALREADY!! = -1pt
• Not explaining who your leading lady is, what she does, why she is where she is, or why she would attempt to find a hidden key to a witches’ den because of a random book she read. = -2pts
• Sticking your hand in a pool of dirty water you found in the basement of an abandoned building. = -3pts
• Deciding to simply dive into the above mentioned dirty water for a set of apartment keys to the building you’re already in.= +15pts (Beautifully shot, but so fucking nasty.)
• Creepy pretty cat lady in classical music class. = +3pts
• WHO THE FUCK ARE ANY OF THESE PEOPLE?? = 0PTS
• Telling the librarian in an ancient Roman library full of books that you are looking for an “old book.”=  -2pts
• Coming in through the front door and exiting through the basement for no reason whatsoever. = +7pts
• Where does this random basement door lead? An alchemy lab? Might as well go in and see what’s up, random new person whose name and presence in this film is still a mystery. = +3pts
• Giant apartment in Rome for woman claiming to be a “music student.” Riiight.= +3pts (Wink!)
• An actual exchange: “Have you heard of the Three Sisters?” “You mean those black singers?” = (In 1978, 0pts, In 2013, -10pts)
• Ah, Sarah. We hardly knew ye, or how ye scored that great apartment. = +5pts (But we have an idea…)
• Mark finally has a name! And apparently a different voice! = +10pts
• Interior design plan of black gloved killer: “So here’s what’s going to happen: I’m going to stab this guy in the neck, you in the back, and then I’m going to install a drape wall here so that you can dramatically scratch your way through it when Mark shows up. It’ll be fabulous!” = +2pts
• “And then, that same night, I’ll magically appear in an abandoned New York city, show up at the building with the dirty pool, strategically drape some more curtains throughout the building—you know wherever the inspiration strikes—possibly adding some strobe lights and stuffed alligators, and then pipe in some classical music, while the chick from the beginning stumbles around her building (in which she is apparently the only tenant) until I eventually kill her with this really shitty guillotine. And when I say shitty guillotine, boy do I mean shitty guillotine! This thing couldn’t cut a grape! It’ll be totally scary and not the least bit nonsensical.” = +15pts
• Mark is back with yet another new voice! = +3pts
• Wait…Mark is back... = -25pts
• “Hmm, it looks like something violent and mysterious may have happened to my sister in her apartment… I’d better move in and hang-out. What?! Police-who?” = (If it results in Mark dying.  = +50pts, Anything less than that. = -75pts. To be determined.)
• Creepy butlers. = +1pt (“Yes, yes! You’re just creepy enough to be in charge of my personal safety! You’re hired!”) 
• Dialogue = 3rd refresh of repeated exposition = -15pts
• Death by cat bukkake!! = +25pts (Almost priceless.)
• If you want to survive this movie here’s a tip: Don’t ever repeat the “plot” as it was initially described in the first 10 minutes. Death is winning that battle 3-0. (No score. Just free advice.)
• Die, Mark. Please die. = -10pts
• Asshole bookshop owner bitches about getting scratched by a cat, while girl killed from cat bukkake remains eerily silent. = -5pts
• Creepy bookshop owner’s random burlap sack of cats he keeps in a trunk in his bookstore. = +5pts (+30pts if he throws said bag into a river.)
• Oh shit he’s gonna do it!.... (Points frozen until outcome determined.)
• Trying to drown back of cats in an inch of water. = +30pts for the attempt, -20pts for the follow-through. (That’s some weak sauce bookshop guy!) Net score = +10pts 
• Watching bookshop guy fall into river (irony!) and get eaten alive by rats. 0pts (It’s nasty, but it’s a wash due to mixed messages about cats from the filmmaker.)
• Conspicuously placed Hot Dog truck in shouting distance of screaming man being eaten by plague of rats emerging from the sewer. Do I even need to explain where this is going? = +30pts
• It’s hard to get scared, or feel sad for the deaths of characters you met literally 2 minutes ago. Especially while Mark is still alive. =  -5pts
• Watching a cat eat a live mouse. = -10pts (Barf!)
• That climactic Falco-esque song. = -3pts (This should have been a win, but it wasn’t.)
• Okay, it needs to be said: It looks like Mark doesn’t have a penis in those pants. (But we knew this already.) +5pts 
• Actual exchange: “I suppose you know who I am.” “Um…no, uh, I don’t.” From the mouth of babes. = +5pts
• “Quick this way!” Door opens. “Huh, this is quite the den of Mother of Darkness. We must run into it!” = (If Mark dies, +20pts, If Mark lives, -30pts. To be determined…)
• Mark lives. Goddamn it. = -25pts
• When your list of cast and characters consists of single-named characters or the jobs they performed in the movie, you probably don’t have a lot of meat on your story. = -10pts

Progressive Cinema Scorecard Total: -18pts

Pretty close to a zero rating. There not much to add. Literally, there is nothing to add to this movie that wasn’t covered by the scorecard. If it wasn’t for the nonsensical plot, lack of identifiable characters or motivations, and a bizarre love/hate relationship with cats  (so, essentially, if it was a completely different movie from the one that we actually watched, we guess), Inferno may have been a movie worth watching. If it were half as good as Suspiria, we’d all be winners in this scenario. As it stands, it is only a movie worth watching if you have a scorecard handy. And dogs.

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

Requiem for a Vampire

The most successful of French horror maestro Jean Rollin’s erotic vampire films, Requiem for a Vampire centers around a pair of female fugitives who seek shelter in an abandoned castle, only to find themselves at the mercy of a vampire cult. The description on Netflix promises blood, boobs, and surrealism. Whatever happens, it’s probably better than Twilight, right?

• When the intro for your film’s distributor is a grainy video of a female vampire biting into the neck of a topless model, you know you’re in for some classy entertainment. = +10 pts
• Opening with the most leisurely car chase in the history of cinema: = +5 pts
• Only two thirds of your criminal gang dressed in circus regalia? = -2 pts
• The ladies torch their getaway car with their “dead” partner’s body in it… in spite of the fact that he was visibly stirring while they doused him with gasoline. = +8 pts
• Ladies score some provisions off a food truck owner with poor impulse control and an even poorer grasp of object permanence. = +2 pts
• The brunette tumbles into an open grave and knocks herself unconscious just as the grave diggers show up to start filling it in, in spite of the fact that the shots from her P.O.V. clearly show the grave digger looking straight down at where she’s lying. For displaying that famous Gallic commitment to a job well-done: = -7 pts
• That’s okay, though, because after about nine or ten shovels-full of dirt, the grave digger and his partner (who, by the way, has not so much as touched a shovel as long as he’s been onscreen) head back to the office to drink a bottle of wine. = +10 pts
• An inexplicably plush, fur-bedecked bed in the middle of an abandoned castle: The perfect place for two girls to strip naked and then awkwardly run their hands over each other’s backs. Pay no attention to the fact that the candle-holder in the bedroom is straight-up some dude’s arm. = +1 pts
• Someone spent an awful lot of time setting up that skeletal monk tableaux in the chapel. Eternal life leaves you with a lot of free time on your hands. = +2 pts
• For giving the absolute fewest number of shits possible when designing your vampires’ fangs: = -10 pts
• It’s still pretty bright out for a vampire to be walking around outside. This isn’t Buffy or Angel, dammit! = -5 pts
• Ladies driven straight into vampire henchmen’s rape chamber. No matter how hard he tries, the henchman with the bald spot just can’t get in on any of that sweet, sweet sexual assault action, though. For discriminating against bald men: = -4 pts
• Apparently, all the girls had to do to escape was lightly push Lady Vampire Erika. = +2 pts
• And now, all of a sudden, it sounds like the movie is being scored by Boredoms. A progressive musical choice for your vampire porn: = +4 pts
• It’s a pretty great chase when, two-minutes in, all parties concerned just say “screw it” and start walking. =+3 pts
• We know the sexy vampire wouldn’t fully have his moment until Anne Rice came onto the scene, but are you telling me you couldn’t do any better than this Steve Buscemi-looking motherfucker? = -15 pts
• Oh, hey the vampire gang has an even bigger rape dungeon stocked with women at the bottom of this mausoleum. That’s… cool? (It really isn’t.) = -10 pts
• There’s a lot more rape in this movie than we were expecting. Who was this made for? = -25 pts
• Wait, seriously? Now the bats are getting in on the action? For making any viewer with a conscience permanently impotent: = -50 pts
• Apparently, the two girls we saw lying naked in bed together just twenty minutes before are “virgins.” That’s…something else, Jean Rollin. = -5 pts
• Lady Vampire Louisa: designated cult on-boarding officer. = +2 pts
• Apparently the reason that the lady vampires can walk around in the daylight is because they aren’t full vampires yet. Sorry, movie, here’s your 5 point penalty back, plus a couple of points interest. = +7 pts
• So our two “virgins” are going to get to become vampires, eventually, but in the meantime they have to go out and hunt for dudes to bring back to the castle for the others to feed on. Sounds an awful lot like a multi-level marketing scheme. (I’m pretty sure I saw an episode of Angel about this.) = -10 pts
• Protip: If you ever find yourself in the middle of the woods when a French girl wearing nothing but knee socks appears out of nowhere and tries to lead you back to an abandoned castle, you are more likely to end up as the middle segment of a human centipede than as her lover. = -5 pts
• Watching a girl “lose her virginity” to a guy with amazing ‘70s hair is waaaaay less sexy than it sounds. = -15 pts
• In order to save her lover from the vampire cult, Blondie decides to hide him inside the castle where they all live. = -3 pts
• To commemorate the ladies’ first experience of “the vampire’s embrace” (which I’m guessing is a very special hug that’s only for adults?), the vamp cult pulls out all the stops and drags the old concert grand out into the graveyard. = +2 pts
• If you have to be a virgin to become a vampire, wouldn’t that make Vampire Steve Buscemi, like, a 50-year-old virgin? For giving us the awesomest idea for a cross-franchise prequel ever: = +10 pts
• Vampire Steve Buscemi reveals to Blondie that the members of the vampire cult are basically just squatters. = +3 pts
• In order to extract the location of Blondie’s illicit lover, the brunette strings her up by her arms and “tortures” her by whipping the ground. = -7 pts
• A gentle shove is like Lady Vampire Erika’s own personal kryptonite. = +4 pts
• How does everyone have a gun all of a sudden? = -1 pts
• Not sure who quite makes out worse at the end of this movie. Lady Vampire Erika, whom Vampire Steve Buscemi has condemned to a slow death by blood-starvation, just so he doesn’t get bored while dying in his mausoleum, or Lady Vampire Louisa who has to be the lookout for the two of them like some kind of undead third wheel: No points, more just something to think about.

Progressive Cinema Scorecard Total: -67

Final Note: A weird mashup of ‘70s Euro arthouse aesthetic and cheap, incompetent storytelling insure a movie that swings wildly between being intriguing and laugh-out-loud absurd. The fact that rape, bestiality, and torture are played off as “erotic fantasy,” though, is…well, kind of icky. In fact the whole movie will leave you feeling like you need to sit under a shower for a day or two to feel human again.

We’d still watch it again over Twilight, though.

Score Technician: Joe Hemmerling

Phantasm II

The Progressive Cinema Scorecard for Phantasm II:

• Calling your big evil guy the "Tall Man" and then giving him lifts so that he is even taller. = +25pts
• The implied sexual relationship between the main character and his "Uncle" Reggie. = -40pts
• The extensive use of little people as druids and staging several scenes around their ability to hide in just the right cabinet. = +25pts
• Watching a grown man toss aside his shotgun in favor of fleeing a two-foot tall little druid climbing up a laundry shoot. = +25pts
• Trading in "gender-confusing-Mike" (think the guy/girl from Real Genius) for "less-gender-confusing-Mike." (back then = +30 pts) Now = -10pts
• Not hiring Brad Pitt for the role of Mike. I am dead serious. They could have. = -50pts
• Calling little people midgets. (in 1988 = 0pts) Now = -10 pts
• Mike's need to continually dig up graves even though it's clear after the first couple that the bodies are suspiciously missing, thus proving that his time in the mental institution wasn't totally unwarranted. "Look, Mike, you may be right, but that doesn't mean you aren't a little crazy. Let's talk about your Uncle Reggie." = +10pts
• Blowing up Uncle Reggie's house twice in the fist 12 minutes. (2 separate houses. Does this go without saying? Cause they look like the same house.) = +30 pts.
• The bizarre shift in voiceover narrators. Who's story is this anyway? = -10pts
• The bizarre genre shift 20 minutes into the movie. "Horror? No, no, no, no. We saw this movie called Terminator (and at least six other movies who's names escape us at the moment) on VHS, and they were really cool.= -30pts
• Paying for things you clearly stole when there is no actual cashier working there to tell you how much things cost. "What would you say, 40 bucks for all of the large unwieldy tools and sharp objects? Wait, don't forget every mini-propane tank they had and the use of their buzz-saw. Oh, and the chainsaws. Yeah...you're right. 50 bucks." = +10pts
• Talking in the past tense about things that haven't actually happened yet. = +40pts
• Having the main character tell his uncle while robbing a tool shop stocked with shotguns that shotguns won't do anything to the little druids, only to see him 8 minutes later hand over his flamethrower to his uncle so that he can approach a little druid armed only with a 9mm. (Additional proof that this movie was conceived by an orgy of at least 3 other movies and born in the filthiest B-movie back-lot and left to feed itself or die. Not always a bad thing.) = +20pts
• Second. Best. Back. Acne. Scene. Ever = +75 pts
• Perigord, Oregon. = -10pts
• Oh, look, it's a drunk Catholic priest who questions his faith. Snore. = -10pts
• Uncle Reggie using the term "take a leak" as an excuse to talk with his nephew in private and then standing too close to his nephew while he takes an actual leak, and doing so at an angle that seems to imply he is either peeing on his nephew's feet, trying to get him to look at his junk, or both; while simultaneously trying to convince his nephew (but really, the audience) that he has a thing for the hitchhiker he just inexplicably picked up. You aren't fooling anyone Uncle Reggie. = -20pts
• The ball = +50pts
• Making out with a guy you just met in an open grave. = +50pts (True love. Can you really put a value on it?)
• What are you Reggie? Bad-ass road warrior? Handyman? Pederast? Your tool belt is confusing us. = -25pts
• A bag of bone-dust labeled "Mr. Sam Rami". That explains so much. (The 4-barrell shotgun. The chainsaw. Etc.) = 0pts (We aren't whores.)
• Two words: Chainsaw. Duel. = +80pts
• Gold Ball = 0pts (We said we aren't whores! Although a laser that makes things explode and can saw its way up and through a man's back before getting stuck in his jaw comes close.) Who are we kidding, we are total whores! = +50pts
• Three words: Chainsaw. To. Balls. = +30pts
• Turns out shotguns do work. = -25pts
• "Hey, Mike. Remember back in the original Phantasm when you fell into the interdemensional doorway and almost died? That couldn't possibly happen again, right? Mike? MIKE?!" = -10PTS
• The scene with the Tall Man dying from what looks like a transfusion of frat urine. = +20pts
• The final scare in which a main character dies, thus negating a majority of the voiceover. = -50pts

Progressive Cinema Score Total: +240pts

Final Note: A classic piece of frankensteined genres that somehow finds itself with a ridiculously high score. Good on you, Mr. Don Coscarelli. You completely untalented hack, you. We'll see you at John Dies at the End.

 Scoring Technician: Sean McConnell

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What is the Progressive Cinema Scorecard? There is no simple answer. The Progressive Cinema Scorecard was initially developed by a team of MIT research assistants as a means of stress-testing military structures. Using the latest advancements in arbitrary reasoning, the PCS can be applied to nearly any purpose or situation in order to provide its users with an unimpeachably accurate analysis. After losing all of their funding in the wake of a skull & bones prank gone horrifically wrong, the contributors to this site decided to apply this delicate process to that which is valuable to everyone: films. What types of films you ask? The best kind. But also some of the worst kind. Using the Progressive Cinema Scorecard you’ll be able to determine the entertainment value of any movie.

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