A Guide to Awesomeness on Netflix Instant Watch

So, it’s just another shitty Wednesday night and you and your bros have gathered at whoever's place has the best TV and or best booze situation and you are at a loss for what to do. Obviously you cant sit around and talk about your day’s and feelings while knitting socks like a bunch of ladies, no your sacks are too full and manly for such femininity and you need to direct said manliness at a tangible experience that you and your bros can share in while not making eye contact. A movie seems like the obvious choice (you may be tempted to insert sports here but dudes who watch sports together secretly just want to gargle nuts so this should be dismissed. Unless you and your bros do all want to gargle nuts and are totally cool with it, in that case totally go for it. Gay does not equal feminine so go ahead and watch some sports, work out and have some sweaty and very active man lovin all the while being totally badass in the process) the question is, what movie? Comedies are good for group situations, after all everyone loves a good laugh. Problem is most of the really good comedies everyone has seen a billion times and Hollywood hasn't provided many gems of late, unless you consider Adam Sandler playing the same shlub he always does while also playing his own twin sister hilarious, in which case id suggest killing yourself, preferably by sack tapping an already pissed off, hungry tiger. The same goes for a lot of action movies too. You all have already watched the ones that are legit and somewhere in the mid 90s. Hollywood took the fun out of action movies by making them all serious with all that shaky camera bullshit that makes it hard to actually tell what is happening (by the way I know what they are trying to do there, give it the “natural” feel which is all good and impressive from a cinematography point of view but for fuck sakes if your going to spend millions on an action movie at least let us see what your shooting). And woe of woes blockbuster drove out all competing rental stores in your town and then shut down themselves so there’s no where to go to ask someone who may know about this shit. FUCK! WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO! YOU MAY ACTUALLY HAVE TO INTERACT ON AN EMOTIONAL LEVEL WITH THE DUDES YOU HANG OUT WITH!

Calm down. Im here to help.

All you need is access to netflix instant watch, a little patience, and some rules for finding things that are fucking awesome.

First, it is important to note that there are only three sections that really matter, Sci-fi/fantasy, Action/adventure, and horror. Which section you go for is a personal choice but for me Sci-fi/fantasy is always where I start so lets lay down the guide for that first.

Narrow your search

In general, with all of these sections you are not looking for anything that's actually “good.” Good movies are great to watch by yourself and appreciating good film is something that we as a country really should work on. Maybe in doing so we will drain Michael Bay’s life essence enough that he will no longer be able to maintain his human form and finally expose him for the demonic shit lizard he is, in which case we will be justified in exploding him (an appropriate death for such a “man”) But watching good movies with all your friends is not a good call, it just doesn't work. You need a movie that you can interact with, not just watch and appreciate. What you need is one of two things; something so shitty that its amazing (note the following)

or something that has a budget but somehow they still produced a movie that is hilarious and shitty while being actually awesome in the context of the action in the movie and the world that is created. (again see the following)

To increase your chances of hitting the mark on these criterion your gonna need to look for movies made in the 80s, with a high cut off of early 90s at the latest. This is because (and this is a bit of an aside but damnit im just full of information) the 80s saw the advent of technology for watching movies at home with laser discs, beta max and VCRs, which of course meant the industry needed to start pumping out titles to fill the shelves at rental places. This led to a lot of money ending up in the hands of people who didn't have a fucking clue what they were doing and or in the hands of film makers who knew what they were doing technically but whose ideas were so bad they would never fly in any other era. Thus was born the renaissance of beautifully terrible film.                                                                                                           

So, now you have a time period to work from, how are you going to sift through the garbage to find the delicious chocolate hidden at the bottom? Well heres a list for you!

Things to keep an eye out for

1) Any title that contains the following words:

-Laser (especially if its spelled lazer)

-Master

-Space

-Time (the 80s took the concept of time manipulation to such amazingly hilarious lengths you really cant go wrong with movies that focus on it)

-Sword

-Sorcerer (case and point, the Sword and the Sorcerer has two of our key words and is double the kickassitude. Seriously a movie that has a tri sword that shoots sword missles? Cant go wrong!)

2) Look for genre crossovers. Take this gem I discovered, Dungeon Master (see there’s master working for you right there) that is essentially about computers vs. magic, specifically magic controlled by the devil.

3) Look for nostalgia. If you're my age you probably grew up with a lot of the movies from this era, though you probably haven’t watched them in a long time. Change that. Running Man is still fucking amazing, so is Total Recall. The Last Starfighter? Fucking dope. Krull? Winner every time!

4) Look for characters you've never heard of. There were a lot of attempts to establish dynasty film series like Star Wars and Star Trek and pretty much all of them failed. These movies can be absolutely amazing. Hawk the Slayer, Yor, the Hunter from the Future, these movies will make you laugh, cry and regret forever that they didn't get picked up for sequels…yet…

That's about it for the sci-fi fantasy side of things. The list for finding the best action movies is way shorter.

1) Schwarzenegger, Norris, Seagal

These are the only names that really matter when it comes to totally sweet movies. Sure, Van Damme, Jackie Chan, Jet Li and the likes can get you some pretty sweet movies, but those guys never fought vampire zombies like Steven Seagal did (this is a recent movie by the way so its extra rad because Seagal is all chubbed out making the action that much more hilarious). They never played a magic forest spirit that could transform in to a bear a hawk AND a wolf like Norris did in Forrest Warrior. And for fucks sake none of them ever PUNCHED A CAMEL IN THE FACE like good ol’ Arnold in Conan. Sure there are many good movies outside of the big three but why even bother?

(By the way I know the above movies were made more recently then our timeline generally allows but all rules have exceptions and just look at these beautiful miracles of film mastery!)

Finally, horror. Picking a good horror movie is tough. The line between a horror movie that is amazing and hilarious and one that is just shitty is pretty fine. Picking one that will STAY good is even tougher. Note Leprechaun in the Hood. Starts off awesome with Ice T searching for treasure in the ghetto, which is fucking rad, but man does it suck after that. In reality horror is much more of a crapshoot and there’s only a few suggestions I can offer to better your chances (in other words you need lots of practice in picking winners to find the good ones in horror)

1) Except for the rare case, do not watch sequels. For every Jason X there is a hundred Pumpkin Head 2 or Hell Raiser whatever the fuck they are on.

2) Set your time line back a bit. The 70s seem to have gotten the “lets think of all the crazy ways we can kill people” bug up their ass. Which brings us to our next point.

3) Look for movies that kill people in crazy ways. Things like Blood Hook where a dude goes around killing people with a giant human sized fishing lure.

4) Watch Sleepaway camp. Just fucking do it. 

5) If it’s got a lot of hot babes in it, its probably really shitty. The uglier the people are in a horror movie the better it probably will be. (note the following) 

Original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Ugly people, awesome movie

New Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Attractive people, shitty movie

Heed my instructions well and you will never be without entertainment. Unless you don't have netflix instant watch. If that's the case I would strongly suggest climbing out from under your rock and join us here in the future you fucking troglodyte.