The Home Teachers -- Mormonism's best bad movie

 

The competition’s tough, but “The Home Teachers” is Mormonism’s Best Worst Movie!

After watching “Best Worst Movie,” the film homage to the deliriously bad “Troll 2,” I got to thinking: What is the best worst LDS movie — the one so bad that it makes you squirm but you still like enough to put in the DVD player a couple of times a year?

The battle’s fierce. Among the contenders are:

• “Book of Mormon Movie,” where the actors’ age with salt n pepper hair but no facial lines.

• “Charly” where viewers wish star Heather Beers would reject all the dreary men in her life.

• “Beauty and the Beast,” where bad acting is mixed with cinematography and sets more often used in soft-core porn.

• And “The RM,” where love occurs in a montage with bad music.

But “The Home Teachers” gets my vote for the best of the worst. Directed by Kurt Hale, the 2004 Halestorm film takes a subject that could have been softly parodied for a few chuckles and instead turns it into a road movie featuring a poor imitation of a Chris Farley, David Spade buddy film.

The Farley character is family man/football fanatic Greg Blazer (Michael Birkeland), who just wants to get home from church and watch NFL football. Unfortunately, he’s corralled by the Spade character, Nelson Parker (Jeff Birk), his anal retentive home teaching companion, who insists they get all their families visited even if it requires a three-hour drive across the state.

Birkeland is the better actor, but he’s no Chris Farley. He whines instead of creating pathos and his voice is a monotone. His one talent, physical comedy, makes the film watchable. My children howl with laughter during an otherwise appalling home teaching scene where Birkeland’s Blazer destroys the home of a down on their luck family. There is another, funnier Farleyesque scene where Birkeland ends up doing the “tango” with a corpse during a funeral viewing. And my kids scream with laugher when Birkeland, with a deer head over his head, runs frantically away from stupid hunters.

Birk’s obsessive compulsive “Nelson Parker” is very bizarre. He looks more like Ben Stiller than David Spade and he acts nothing like Spade. Although intended to inspire comedy, Parker is very creepy with his steely grin and troubled eyes. There were times I thought Parker might physically attack his home teaching companion. When, near the end of the film, Parker admits that his unseen wife has left him, I was relieved; I’d been worried he’d killed her for unfaithfulness.

With Birkeland’s comedy, Birk’s creepiness and jazzed-up LDS songs, the film remains very bad, save for a too-small performance by the always-talented LDS actress Tayva Patch as a criminal’s moll. (Patch died in 2015). There are cameos by celebrity Jimmy Chunga and baseball player Wally Joyner. The film has the usual let’s-wrap-it-up-with-a-spiritual-experience scene accompanied by familiar montage music and all ends well — even creepy Nelson wins his wife back!

After the credits, there’s a bizarre scene where the home teacher visits Fred Lampropoulos. He talks a mile a minute to them amidst a home decorated with his campaign signs. It’s a weird time capsule — Lampropolous failed in a Utah gubernatorial bid in 2004. It seems way out of place in this already goofy film until you notice that one of the film’s associate producers (investors?) is another Lampropoulos.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published in 2009 at StandardBlogs.

The Fighting Preacher is T.C. Christensen's best film

This is not really a review. I watched, with great interest, T.C. Christensen's film, "The Fighting Preacher," which is the story of Willard Bean and his wife, Rebecca, and their efforts to revive the LDS Church in Palmyra, New York. Their mission lasted roughly 25 years. Christensen has consistently improved film by film and that makes "The Fighting Preacher" his best film. "The Fighting Preacher" is faith-affirming without the syrup and suspension of belief that accompanied earlier efforts. He's more subtle in this film.

A perfect example is the film's strongest scene, where Bean, talking to a formerly hostile Palmyra local with whom he has slowly developed a friendship, mentions his first, unsuccessful marriage. Talking about his wife's tragic murder at the hands of an abusive man after her divorce, Bean expresses deep regret and sadness that he wasn't a better husband to her, saying, clearly remorseful, that he could have done better.

I should note that the two actors playing Willard and Rebecca Bean, David McConnell and Cassidy Hubert, are superb in their roles.

Boxing plays a big role in the film. Until Gene Fullmer came along in the 1950s, Bean was arguably the best Mormon boxer who was active in the faith (Jack Dempsey was an inactive Mormon, who jokingly called himself a "Jack Mormon.") The film depicts Bean as a middleweight champion, and shows him winning a major title. I've done research on Bean's boxing career and am convinced he was never the middleweight champ, national or world. The world middleweight champion during that era was Tommy Ryan.

Bean's BoxRec.com boxing record lists his fighting days ending in 1902. BoxRec is likely not complete and it's very possible Bean fought for a promotion that described his fight as for the "world's or national middleweight championship," (that kind of stuff happens today) but it wasn't, if it happened, for a title that the high-level boxing world of that era would have paid attention to.

However, Bean was a very good pro fighter. He lost a decision to Fireman Jim Flynn, who fought twice for the world heavyweight title, and defeated Jack Dempsey (Flynn lost the rematch). Bean also fought to a no decision, although newspaper reports tagged him the loser, to Joe Choynski, one of the early greats of boxing, a Hall of Fame boxer. So no bones about, Bean was a splendid boxer.

Here is an Ensign article about Willard Bean that serves as a template for "The Fighting Preacher." There is a larger book version of Bean's life but I have been unable to procure a copy.

Here is a link to my blog post on Bean's boxing career, Willard Bean, Mormonism's Fighting Parson, did have an admirable pro career.. His life was a fascinating one.