If you were reading our blog last year, you probably remember our elaborate Van Damme Movie Marathon, complete with different foods to match each movie, and super creative Photoshop works of art that I made to make my husband look like he was on the covers of the DVDs.
In an effort to outdo ourselves, for this year’s crazy movie marathon, we chose Hulk Hogan. It seemed like the perfect star: I love 1980s wrestlers, and Michael loves pointless feats of strength.
And so, with this in mind, we decided to not only watch Hulk Hogan movies, but to play the Hulk Hogan Movie Drinking Game, which is, in short, this: every time he performs a feat of strength, you must take a drink. Things were about to get very sloppy, very fast.
Michael picked out the movies, being the true fan out of the two of us. We started with Mr. Nanny.
Oh, Mr. Nanny AND a bottle of Project Paso (we had sampled this wine at the DMB Caravan festival in Atlantic City over the summer, and the PA Wine stores now carry it!).
Lucy was a little skeptical about how this night was going to go, but she didn’t have much a of a say in the matter.
To make sure we were keeping an accurate tally, I made a “Feat of Strength” sheet. This required several pauses of the movie, when long strings of feats of strength were happening in a row, but I was dedicated to the cause!
Mr. Nanny is the charming story of Sean Armstrong, a retired wrestler who is hired to be a bodyguard to two very badly-behaved kids of a rich dad (who is the Peter Marie guy from Oz, those of you nerds like us who loved that show). As it turns out, the kids are acting out because they are not getting enough love and affection from their dad (and their mother passed away), so they consistently terrorize nannies Home Alone-style, and Hulk Hogan has to take over the role of both bodyguard and babysitter. Hilarity ensues!
To be quite honest, maybe it was the wine consumed from the 20 feats of strength (over an 84 minute-long movie, I might add), but this movie was just incredibly charming! Hulk Hogan grows as a character, and so do the badly-behaved children and their workaholic dad. Good prevails over evil, and everyone learns some valuable lessons. During these touching moments, Hulk Hogan also:
~ Rips chauffer hat with bare hands
~ Excessively lifts weights in a way that furthers the plot
~ Breaks a teacup with two fingers
~ Fights the bad guys while wearing a tutu
All in all, some exciting and satisfying feats of strength, as well as some less-satisfying feats of exposition. We also found ourselves so wrapped up in the plot that we began critiquing the quality of the child actors (good!) and the quality of Hulk Hogan’s lullaby singing (pathetic, but charming!).
The second movie we attempted to watch was the third 3 Ninjas movie, which deceivingly features Hulk Hogan on the cover. This implies that he is a star and will therefore perform many feats of strength, but it is not so. He plays a kind-of-fake martial arts TV star who gets kidnapped and has to get rescued by the annoying child ninjas. Boo!
So we did the only logical thing, which was to completely ignore the movie and instead try to use our popcorn maker to make a nice bowl of healthy, delicious popcorn to enjoy during the third feature. Conveniently, this also counted for our #9 Achievement, so we were multi-tasking!
We received this popcorn maker as a grab bag gift from our friend’s Christmas party last year. We had never yet used it, because the thought of making homemade popcorn is rather intimidating.
But on Hulk Hogan movie night, nothing would be intimidating! I performed a great feat of strength in opening the popcorn kernel bottle! RAWR! (Please ignore Lucy’s face: she is not taking me seriously.)
Then we filled the bottom of the little bowl with the kernels. In an effort to be healthy, we did not use any oil. You will see why this was stupid.
Next, Michael aggressively punched in the time on the microwave. Yes, this popcorn maker that we have been apprehensive about using all this time works in the microwave. Wow, we’re wusses.
We followed the directions to a T, and… the popcorn came out burnt. Yuck.
We started from scratch for batch #2, and while this one did not burn (we ran it for a much shorter time in the microwave), it tasted like very light pieces of paper. Yuck!
Finally, I bit the bullet and put in a little bit of oil, plus some onion and garlic seasonings, and put in a THIRD batch.
When this one came out, Michael performed a Feat Of Seasoning with some Kernel Season’s, and we actually finished off the bowl. (This was a LOT more work than making a microwave bag, so don’t count on seeing us with gourmet popcorn concoctions any time soon!)
Finally, it was time for the third and final movie of the night, Suburban Commando. This is the story of Shep Ramsey, who is a space hero who comes to earth on a small leave of absence from his space job (yes, I’m not making this up) and is forced to try to fit in with American society. Not only does it require a feat of strength to get through the early ’90s soundtrack songs, but it takes several feats of strength to survive the feat of strength drinking game for this movie, as Mr. Hogan performs more than THIRTY gratuitious feats.
(#31 is when Lucy and I fell asleep. There may have been more – we were averaging one feat of strength every minute and a half at one point.)
Some of the classics include ripping doors off of many cars, accidentally injuring a mime (on several occasions) while trying to assist him, exploding an arcade game, and catapulting a cat from a tree branch he has bent. Hulk Hogan also avoids turning into ice from a freeze ray gun by drinking antifreeze.
While Suburban Commando was a better measure of Hulk Hogan’s sheer force and strength, I think that I enjoyed Mr. Nanny the most, as it showcases not only his ability to smash things and beat the hell out of bad guys, but his tender, caring nature and poor but endearing acting skills.
However, I feel like the placement of the movies in our marathon was probably for the best, as starting with Suburban Commando would have resulted in us all passing out and missing the other movies.