I have a long history with bad moves. Back in the day, our optimal hangover cure for Sunday afternoons was to head over to the local mom and pop video shop, load up on whatever happened catch our fancy and watch movies for the rest of the day. These movies were generally awful, but we didn’t care. It was a weekly tradition that we never missed for a solid two or three years.

Last night on a holiday visit home I met up with my good friend Chris. Chris was the other key part to those original ‘cheesy movie sundays’. The other players would float i and out of those Sunday afternoon trek into bad cinematic filth; Chris was always there, ever step of the way. He sort of had to be, it was his apartment. But I digress. There is something about this sort of setting that makes even the wost movie morph into something watchable. It’s the sense of comeraderie in the air as you and a friend suffer together through hours of trash. The feeling of knowing you’re not alone on your journey that is tainted with a heavy headache and queasy stomach from a weekens worth of drinking. The string of jokes and one liners that fill the air as the movie unfolds, jokes that are only funny to the people in the room.

This weekend being a holiday weekend, the family and I packed up and headed north to my home town. The weekend plans consisted of cookouts and time spent with friends which is exactly what we did. As Saturday unfolded, I found myself out at Chris’s house once again Saturday night, sans the hangovers. Even though we’re both over half way through our 30′s our minds still think mainly alike, which if you knew the history is quite frightening in fact, and it came time as the evening winded down to decided what we were going to do to cap off a great day. There really wasn’t much thinking involved, we all knew that we’d end up watching some sort of bad movie; it’s what we do. Armed with a stack of DVD’s, we decided on ‘Transylmania’ and set off on a journey of heavy handed satire and a dissapointing lack of femal anatomy.

To put it bluntly, “Transylmania” is not a good movie. The plot makes little sense and feels disjointed by the efforts to cram in as many jokes and site gags as possible. Since the movie is nothing but one ongoing joke after another, they are often rapid fire and low on the intelligence scale. The actors at play here are bog standard as far as budding thespians go with nothing but ham handed-ness and lackluster deliveries. There’s just simply nothing here to leave you impressed or feeling intelligent. The movie does however play directly to the sense of group mentality of a few good friend and many beers which makes this movie an odd little joint indeed. Even though the movie is technically bad, sitting there watching it with my long time brother of bad movie battles, I couldn’t help but to enjoy myself.

“Transylmania” is billed as a horror comedy, much in the vein of other such films like “Scary Movie” and the like. When compared to these other films, “Transylmania” actually rates higher than most. Sure, the jokes are just as stupid, but most seem to contain a bit more meat to them. There is a little more setup which yields just a bit more laughs. They lend themselves well to the group viewing format and to be frank, the cast is pretty as well! For such a film, it was a bit shocking on how much lead up was given to things such as bare breasts what with all the sexual innuendo and things like ‘vampire orgies’ being a plot point, yet they never really showed the boobs. Still, the movie was watchable even though it did feel like it may have destroyed some brain cells in the process.

This isn’t a great film by any means but if you can go into this movie with the right mind set, a group of like minded friends and a lot of beer, you can still have quite a bit of fun. There are moments that are genuinely laugh out loud funny and more that are funny just for the sheer stupidity. All in all; “Transylmania” is a definite rental for a paryt minded vibe.