A Deep Dive into Weirdo Cinema [17] Quiz

Answer: The Host

"The Host" is undeniably a popular name, also happening to be the title of a 2006 South Korean kaiju movie as well. At the very least, this one comes from a teen fiction novel, this one capitalizing on the dystopian sci-fi trend of the era, and from none other than "Twilight's" own, Stephenie Meyer". A stand-alone novel, "The Host" posited that all humans were infected by consciousness-like alien parasites that controlled and surveilled their every move. Naturally, teens featured in the plot, so a handful of these found the ability to rebel against the norm.

Starring Saoirse Ronan in an early role, the film was a bit of a flop at a time when movies like "Twilight" and "The Hunger Games" really gripped cinema and made huge waves at the box office. Director Andrew Niccol, who had previously filmed "Gattaca" and "Lord of War", failed to reclaim any significance in the box office in the years to follow. All this said, "The Host" is a somewhat forgettable teen drama, but it was indicative of a certain bland, hollow, psuedo-future aesthetic that would persist in the genre well after (in teen adaptations like "Divergent" and "Uglies"), and that's interesting to track (or use as a warning sign, depending on your preference).

Answer: The X-Files

With "The X-Files" coming to a natural conclusion at the end of its fifth season, airing in 1998 on FOX, the creators and stars opted to tie up the show with this film, "The X-Files: Fight the Future", that summer, and it elaborated on one last major alien case (and the cover-up) as investigated by Mulder and Scully across continents. What no one anticipated was that the film wasn't the end. As it turned out, "The X-Files" was seen as too lucrative an intellectual property for FOX to let it go; Duchovny, Anderson, and creator Chris Carter would return for another four seasons, ending instead in 2002...and then again with a second movie, "The X-Files: I Want to Believe"...and then another two 'limited' series in 2016 and 2018.

But what "Fight the Future" has, even if you're not completely sold on the show's paranormal cases, is a handful of good setpieces-- one in a Texas facility filled with bees and another in Antarctica. It's a movie that doesn't completely need the show, preceding it, to fill in the gaps (ie. it holds up!).

Answer: Courteney Cox

The missing link in this cast quartet is actually Cox's "Friends" co-star, Jennifer Aniston, who plays stripper-turned-fake-mother Rose as 'The Millers' attempt to smuggle drugs into the U.S. When Jason Sudeikis' character, David, is forced to get a cache of drugs from Mexico to clear his debts, he tricks Rose, Casey (a young thief), and the hapless Kenny into joining him as a cover. What they find is that, together, they actually fit quite well as a family unit.

Though middling in terms of critical reception, this 2013 comedy actually manages to stick the landing due to its acting talents, especially with supporting turns from Nick Offerman and Kathryn Hahn, a married couple with the former being a DEA agent. The movie took in more than $270,000,000 USD in the box office which, honestly, isn't all too shabby.

Answer: Lavalantula

When volcanoes started to crack open in Los Angeles in this made-for-TV creature feature from the SyFy Network, things got crazy fast, and Colton West (Guttenberg) attempted to gather his wife and son to escape the disaster altogether. Naturally, the movie couldn't let that happen, so what followed was a series of encounters with massive spiders, many of which could shoot balls of fire at hapless Los Angelinos. And you know what? Even though Colton West was just an actor, let's just say he knew his way around creating a liquid nitrogen bomb.

Also featuring "Police Academy's" Michael Winslow and Marion Ramsey, "Lavalantula" received as much hype as you'd expect from this kind of B-movie fare (especially from the network that brought us "Sharktopus"). The following year, SyFy released "2 Lava 2 Lantula", bringing back the original cast to fight the spiders again. It was also implied that these took place in the "Sharknado" universe, another key IP from SyFy, so if you're keeping up on one, you might as well check the other.

Answer: The Toxic Avenger

Melvin may only be a 98-pound nerd and service worker, but Toxie is for the people! When a janitor is bullied out a window and into a barrel of toxic waste, he manages to transform into a shambling creature who vows to fight crime as a vigilante waste monster in this Troma classic from the mid-1980s.

Though Troma released a LOT of weird content in the 1980s and 1990s ("Class of Nuke 'Em High" being another classic), "The Toxic Avenger" has been beloved by B-movie enthusiasts for quite a while, and even in its day, it was clear that it was a cut above-- after all, it received sequels until 2000 and then a remake starring Peter Dinklage in 2023. It also managed to appear as a rock musical in 2008! If you're looking for classic '80s splatter horror, this is a name to know.

Answer: Internet pornography addiction

Lifetime always has a wild tendency to overdo sensationalized topics, and in 2005, anxiety persisted, at least within their core viewing demographic, with children and their use of the internet. "Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life" featured "Friday Night Lights'" Jeremy Sumpter as a teenage boy, Justin-- top of his class and on the swim team-- throwing his life away over the prospects of internet pornography as his addiction, as a fifteen year old, leads him down the path of failure (and the failure of all those around him, including Monica, who confusingly decides to harm herself due to Justin's own confusion about his addiction).

It all works out in the end, of course, but not before an attempted suicide in the school pool during which Justin seems to snap back to reality apropos of very little. All said and done, "Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life" is wildly overdramatic, cautionary to a fault, and so problematic it could really only be a Lifetime movie. And that's what makes it so compelling-- it has an eyes-glued-to-the-screen-because-it's-really-taking-it-to-that-extreme sensibility.

Answer: Get Squirrely

Although you may think "wasn't this movie also called "The Nut Job"?", it wasn't. That was a different movie that came out in 2014 and starred both Will Arnett and Brendan Fraser. Though also an animated film, this movie happened to be one of those all-too-normal 'same idea, same time' movies, but this one had less clout behind it-- "The Nut Job" managed to make one hundred times the box office returns.

"Get Squirrely", about a squirrel who unveils a conspiracy to steal nuts brought on by the nefarious A.C.O.R.N.S. Corporation, featured comedians Jason Jones, Samantha Bee, and Will Forte in its top roles and was made by UK's Vanguard Animation, who previously released "Space Chimps" and "Happily N'Ever After", neither of which really made it big. It's a frenetic animated tale (and a short one) and a clear example of the fork in the road for these kinds of coincidental twin releases.

Answer: Wendy Williams

Though she was, at the time, still actively making her daytime gossip TV show, Wendy Williams was already in the spotlight quite a bit, and the 2021 Lifetime biopic about her life honed in on that with director Darren Grant (known for a number of music videos and Tyler Perry-led movies) at the helm. The movie had Wendy's eye on it, advising on a number of key facets of her life starting from her teenage years, moving into her shock jock radio career, and eventually culminating in her cocaine addiction.

Wendy's health issues grew quite severe in the year to follow; her show ended as a result and, by and large, she retreated from public life. Lifetime did, however, commission a documentary following her in the wake of the show's cancellation and released a four-part series, "Where Is Wendy Williams?", to chronicle that (with Wendy, again, giving her guidance). Critics called it exploitative which, if her own talk show was a baseline, it wouldn't be hard to believe. If anything, Williams' tendency to say things on the edge of acceptability led to some campy and lasting moments in the biopic, and it may be worth it for those alone.

Answer: Hot Fuzz

After the release of "Shaun of the Dead" in 2004, Edgar Wright followed it up with the second in his 'Cornetto Trilogy' with "Hot Fuzz", a completely different movie in a different genre altogether, but reuniting Pegg with Nick Frost for outlandish adventures in the UK. In this one, Pegg's uptight London sergeant, reassigned to the quaint town of Sandford, started to peel back the layers to find the quiet village was actually being run by a cabal.

Quite well-received as a mid-2000s comedy, "Hot Fuzz" managed to push the buddy cop concept to the extreme, turning Gloucestershire into a gritty battleground where slow-motion gunfights could break out at any moment. Wright would finish out his trilogy with another pivot in "At World's End" though many consider the preceding two films to be high water marks for their respective genres (horror-comedy and action-comedy, respectively).

Answer: Adam Copeland

There's a lot to be said about "Money Plane", but I have to start with the fact that it was directed by Andrew Lawrence who, as it seems, may have created the money as an opportunity to act with his brothers Joey (of "Blossom" fame) and Matthew (of "Boy Meets World" fame) in one film. What they created was a heist movie set in the skies wherein pro wrestler Adam Copeland (Edge, in the WWE) managed to infiltrate the one-room casino onboard to perform the highest heist of his life.

While "Money Plane" featured significant name draws like Kelsey Grammer, Denise Richards, and Thomas Jane, all three of those actors never stepped foot on the plane set, instead being relegated to a small handful of scene-chewing on-the-ground roles. The quality didn't pass muster either-- the plane casino set was a room, draped in curtains, with a table in the middle of it. Releasing in mid-2020, it made just around $600 USD in the box office. That's right-- six hundred dollars. It was released to VOD shortly after due to the COVID-19 pandemic.