What even are these movies

I thought the "pre-Christmas new release slowdown" was only an Australian thing, but apparently not.

Even without specifically having Boxing Day as a major national holiday upon which you heap anywhere from six to ten new releases, like Australia does, the U.S. is running on pre-holiday fumes, if this weekend's movies playing at the Mission Tiki Drive-In in Montclair, California are any indication. 

I no longer live in California, of course, but even after being gone for nine years, I still get the Mission Tiki emails.

I suppose there are two unique different shocks I could register over this weekend's offerings.

The first is, as the title suggests, the very random nature of two of these four movies. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever? Sure. Major hit. Violent Night? A Christmas movie that most people seem to like, even if I am not one of those people.

But what even are these other two movies?

Christmas Bloody Christmas? What the hell is that?

Just when you assume that all this year's Christmas movies have been released, along comes this not-ready-for-primetime nugget of seeming awfulness. It stars (checks notes) Riley Dandy, Sam Delich and Jonah Ray. You know, Jonah Ray. It was directed by (checks notes) Joe Begos.

If you look down far enough in the cast on IMDB, you will see exactly one name you recognize, but maybe only if you watched ER and Parker Lewis Can't Lose back in the 1990s. That's Abraham Benrubi as Santa Claus.

For what it's worth, the film was also released on the internet on the same day, which was Friday.

Savage Salvation? What the hell is that?

This movie at least has recognizable stars, though you can't trust them not to have crossed over into that phase of their careers where they are happy enough to take the same sorts of roles as Nicolas Cage, John Travolta and (before he retired) Bruce Willis. Robert De Niro and John Malkovich star, though De Niro is a whisper away from 80 and Malkovich a whisper away from 70. (In fact, Malkovich celebrated his 69th birthday on Friday with the release of this film. That may be more a curse than a blessing.)

This film is directed by Randall Emmett, as you do. And wouldn't you know it, he did direct Willis in Midnight in the Switchgrass, a 2021 film co-starring Megan Fox that earned multiple Golden Raspberry nominations, not to mention a similar essentially straight-to-video fate.

Except this one isn't straight to video. It's playing at the Mission Tiki Drive-In.

This is the place my wife and I used to go when we were poor and wanted to see two new first-run movies at a discount rate, while bringing in whatever snacks and drinks we saw fit. Which brings me to my second point of criticism:

All four of the movies that are playing are playing as a double feature with themselves.

I've seen Mission Tiki pull this nonsense before, but it's usually only on one screen. I noticed it specifically with last week's email, where Black Panther was playing back-to-back on the one screen. Since they don't let you drive around and change screens between movies -- a lesson I learned the hard way once --  I figured they considered Black Panther to be a marquee enough attraction that they could essentially charge you the price of two features to see just the one. Sure, you could stay and watch it again, but most people probably wouldn't. And those cars would be replaced by the ones who drove in for the later showing.

But each screen showing only one film, played a second time on the same screen?

That's some bullshit, or maybe, sadly, just a sign that times are hard for Mission Tiki.

Maybe there aren't a lot of new releases right now, but I'm a bit shocked that they had to scrounge to get two movies that were no better than straight-to-VOD -- and then not even give you two of them for the price of one ticket. 

I'll have to monitor the health of Mission Tiki from here, but I wouldn't be surprised if next week's email has Avatar: The Way of Water on all four screens -- back-to-back as a double feature with itself, of course.