Ganjasaurus Rex (1987) is a movie I've heard about for a long time. I'm not quite sure why, but I used to get the Rhino Home Video catalog when I was a kid and this movie was always in it. Being a big fan of Godzilla and other giant monster movies, I was always sort of curious about it. Ganjasaurus Rex centers around a group of pot farmers in California who discover and plant a long extinct oversized strain called cannabis sequoia. When the DEA begins cutting down other plants in the area, it awakens the ancient Ganjasaurus Rex, a creature attracted to flora and especially cannabis sequoia. It's up to these local pot farmers and a professor who has been studying the creature to find a peaceful solution to Ganjasaurus Rex's rampage, before the DEA nukes the entire Lost Coast area. Ganjasaurus Rex looks as though it was made with a home video camera and is pretty badly acted. As bad as it is though, there's something oddly charming about it, especially the stop-motion monster itself...
Ganjasaurus Rex is definitely something fans of giant monster movies will want to check out, even if it's just to say they've seen it. I give it 3 1/2 out of 6 beers.
Rubin and Ed (1991) has become sort of a legendary cult classic, thanks mostly to Crispin Glover's infamous appearance (in character as Rubin) on Late Night where he almost kicked David Letterman in the face and was promptly removed from the show. Crispin Glover is definitely the high point of this "buddy road movie" where eccentric Rubin drags straight-laced Ed (Howard Hesseman) into the middle of the desert to find the perfect place to bury his cat. To me at least, Rubin and Ed was more bizarre than it actually was funny. It's definitely worth a watch as an oddity or if you're a big fan of Crispin Glover, but those looking for a laugh riot would do best to look elsewhere. Rubin and Ed gets 4 out of 6 beers.
I figured it was about time to tackle the second in the Bikini Summer trilogy (Yes, there are THREE of them!) and I realized pretty quickly that it was a mistake. Bikini Summer 2 (1992) has very little to do with bikinis or summer and instead focuses on homeless musician Joshua and his homeless girlfriend Noreen who are taken in by a pair of rich daddy's girls (one of which is Melinda Armstrong, just about the only returning actor from the first film). Joshua and Noreen then give them the motivation they need to open a nightclub and make a name for themselves. And that's about it. No one watches these movies for the plot anyways, they watch for the endless scenes of girls in bikinis, topless girls cavorting, girls in wet t-shirts, etc, of which there are plenty in this film. Jessica Hahn (Remember Jessica Hahn? No? Google it.) is also shoehorned into the movie apparently just to cash in on her fleeting popularity. The original Bikini Summer was not a good movie, but at least it sort of had a heart. You could tell that they came up with the simplistic plot first, then built the gratuitous nudity around it. Bikini Summer 2 feels like the opposite. Bikini Summer 2 is bad. Real bad. Good lord, I am not looking forward to part 3. Bikini Summer 2 gets one beer, but you're gonna need a lot more.
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