B-Rated!
Improvised cheesy movies with improvised jokes at their expense. Every first Friday of every month at 9:30 PM at CSz Seattle, in the Atlas Theater in Fremont.

B-Rated! is two shows in one: a fully improvised so-bad-it's-good B-movie, complete with cheesy acting, corny plots, and hammy characters; and a fully improvised commentary track, heckling the movie and loving it too. You choose the genre and the title, and the rest is cinematic history.

Check out the plot summaries of some of our recent shows below to get a taste of just how bad-yet-good these movies can get!

June 2023

"Blood of Housing Developments"

Horror. Gordon and Drew riffing.
A nervous boy (Kevan), his hard-partying sister (Erika), and her horndog boyfriend (Chris) are just normal teenagers, hanging around housing developments the way we all did when we were in high school, looking to get high, get drunk, get laid, or get our names on a housing lease. But they've wandered into the wrong development, because a sinister figure (John) appears and convinces the boy to accept a leasing form, then issues the cryptic warning "THREE DAYS." The boy struggles at first to understand the form (full of perplexing terms like "net income") and ends up in the cemetery talking to the ghosts of his dead parents after a flashback in which he sees the same sinister figure convincing them to sign a similar lease. The boy discovers that he was adopted, which is for some reason the key to turning the tables on the sinister figure. Can the boy keep his sister and her boyfriend from suffering the same fate their parents did? What will happen if he signs the lease? What will happen if he doesn't? And will anyone in this horror film actually die?

"Kiss, Bowling Alley, Snakes"

Romance. Erika and Ian riffing.
It's another lonely Friday night for snake wrangler John (John), as he bowls his troubles away down at the alley. But something's different tonight, because when Petunia (Kevan) walks in and takes up the lane next to his, he falls instantly in love. Petey (Gordon), who is working at the alley that night (and apparently every night), fills John in on Petunia's peculiarities, including the fact that she brings her own shoes, and her shoes are absolutely filthy. Recounting all this the next day to his boss (Chris), John is horrified to hear that the incredible woman he's describing having fallen hard for is in fact his boss's wife. To make matters worse, the boss's favorite snake, Cobra 17 a.k.a. Petunia or "Little P," is missing! Desperate to avoid becoming a homewrecker, John enlists Petey's help to try and convince Petunia that he (John) is celibate, but Petunia's highly precise bowling skills help her win a wager with Petey that gets the truth out of him. Meanwhile John finds Cobra 17 (Gordon), or rather Cobra 17 finds him, and is not inclined to be wrangled, at least not before biting an old-timey police officer (Kevan) who encourages John with his dying breath to carpe diem. Is Petunia's marriage to John's boss truly over, or is it Petunia and John's love that's doomed? How is the cobra able to speak, and what is its plan for its human? And what is the deal with those dirty, DIRTY shoes?

September 2021

After a long break from B-Rating, we're back! We'll be performing at 9:30 PM on the first Friday of every month at the Atlas Theater, home of CSz Seattle. Wear a mask and come support us in half-anonymity! We've missed you.

January 2020

A very exciting month for B-Rated!: not only was this the grand opening of our Twitter and Instagram presences, it also marked the launch of the website you're reading right now. We presented two of our more bizarre movies at the Atlas Theater, then did a 25-minute Pokemon love story at the Once Told Tales festival at SecondStory Repertory in Redmond.

"Spinners"

"Saw and spiders" horror. Daniel and David riffing.
When Dave (Kevan) and Danny (Drew), two nerdy high school students, find their late classmate Beth (Jekeva) face down in a puddle, they're immediately suspected of the murder. Eventually they're able to convince the sheriff (Jackson) and his secretary/sergeant/deputy (Jekeva) that they might not have committed the crime they themselves reported to 911. The sheriff investigates down at the town's only river next to the town's only old factory, accompanied by Danny and his uncle, the environmental lawyer Mr. Forelli (John). But when Danny leaves the two men alone for just a few minutes, Forelli reveals himself to be the murderer and takes the sheriff prisoner. Meanwhile the deputy and Dave have been looking for clues in Beth's room, and find a diary that leads them to the old factory after narrowly surviving an encounter with the sheriff, whose body has been taken over by the spiders that do Forelli's bidding. Danny, also captured by his uncle and told of the sinister family legacy he carries within his blood, manages to saw Forelli's arm off and escape, only to end up in a final encounter that will change everyone's lives forever. Will the only two members of the town's police force survive the environmental lawyer's revenge for pollution and cigarette butts? Or will Danny's dark inheritance turn him into a monster too?

"Daniel Radcliffe and the Rosetta Stone"

Romcom from the year 2050. Drew and John riffing.
This movie sent back to us from thirty years in our future stars Daniel Radcliffe (Jekeva) as himself, already a rickety old man at the tender age of 61. Like everyone else in 2050, he has a fleet of identical robot butlers named Jeeves (Daniel and Jackson), but this constant companionship doesn't keep him from feeling lonely and contemplating what could have been. At a gala ball in the British Museum, he runs into his old co-stars from the Harry Potter movies, Emma Watson (Kevan) and Rupert Grint (Jackson). Emma and Rupert's marriage is a troubled one; fame and money have turned Rupert into a Monty Pythonesque upper-class twit whose only delight is spending money with wild abandon. Daniel longs to make some grand gesture to tell Emma how much he still cares for her, but the British Museum's curator (David) is reluctant to allow Daniel to decorate an entire wing of one of the most famous and prestigious museums in the world with balloons and streamers. Meanwhile one of the Jeeveses has developed feelings for his master, even though his range of emotions doesn't even allow him to cry -- or so he says. Jeeves loves Daniel, Daniel loves Emma, Rupert loves money: how can these aging stars and domestic androids ever find happiness in the weird-ass world of the future?

"Pokemon Go Dancing"

Romance. Alex and Daniel riffing.
Pokemon trainer Brick (John) has dedicated his life to his sport, but he can't help feeling there's something more. His friend Bash (Drew) happens to have an invitation to the Poke Ball, which might be the perfect place for Brick to find love, or at least a new passion. Large-eared Pokemon Nimanzee (Phoebe) also longs to make a change in her life. She convinces her trainer (Kevan), whom she refers to as her "master" (don't ask), to free her from her life of battles and let her, too, attend the Ball. Unfortunately the smarmy Jim (Drew), a member of the unscrupulous Team Spacecraft, is determined to make life difficult for his rival trainers. Just as Brick and Nimanzee seem to be bonding, Jim captures her in a Pokeball and takes her back to his headquarters. Brick stages a daring rescue, in which he is forced to send his own Pokemon, Koomi or Noomka or something like that (Kevan, who doesn't remember what John called him either), to battle Nimanzee. Can Nimanzee win the battle using her enormous ears and the whip her trainer bequeathed her (seriously, don't ask), and if she does, will she and Brick find cross-species happiness, or is her true love Koomi or Noomka or whatever?

December 2019

"Malibu Sunrise"

Romcom. David and Drew riffing.
Struggling artist Jessica (Jekeva) has just 24 hours to come up with money to pay her rent, and her tyrannical landlord (John) does not accept paintings as legal tender. Luckily she meet-cutes professional surfboard waxer Steve (Kevan) while stumbling into the surf shop "Jenk and Surf," and is so flustered she nearly spills her burnt umber everywhere. The two hapless lovers get caught up in the tangled family drama of surfer Jim (Alex), his Machiavellian girlfriend Tiffany (Phoebe), and his mother Marlene who may just be (okay, she is) the same person as the gallery owner Charlotte (Erika). All looks lost until the surf shop owner Mr. Jenkins (Bogan), makes a timely call to his art-loving friend, who just happens to be Angelina Jolie.

"Nutty Marbles"

Action. John and Alex riffing.
Secret agent Jamie's (Phoebe) boss (Jekeva) may be an HR nightmare, but she has a mission for Jamie and her cheerful juicebox-loving new partner Samson (David) of the utmost importance. It seems that Russian spies going by the aliases of "Olivia" (Erika), "Miss Simmons" (also Jekeva), and "Mr. Wilson" (Drew) have, however improbably, created a sleeper agent factory based in a preschool. Jamie and Samson infiltrate the preschool disguised as ordinary toddlers and uncover the secret plan to nuke our neighbor to the north. Can they stop the Canada-pocalypse before four-year-old sleeper agents Sergei (Bogan) and Vlad (Kevan) hear the secret owl-hoot signal, press the buttons on the marble-shaped devices in their pockets, and activate their secret training as animatronic killing machines?

November 2019

"Bitches in Space"

Sci-fi horror. Daniel and Anjl riffing.
Captain Luke Pickard (Alex) and his crew have intercepted an untranslatable message from a nearby ship and form an away team to investigate. The communications officer (Erika) and security chief (Kevan) encounter a mysterious alien named Kaan (Drew) and find their personalities changing to become petty and vindictive. Two ensigns (Jackson and John) and their commanding officer, a veteran of the battle at Epsilon 7 (David), find their guns inoperable and fall back to form a plan to rescue their crew members from Kaan, who turns out not only to be into eating humans and laying eggs in their chest cavities, but also to have a grudge against Captain Pickard. Can the beleaguered crew find a way to stop Kaan without invoking the last-resort Omega Protocol and destroying their ship?

"My Little Princess: Friendship is Magic"

Superhero romcom. David and Drew riffing.
Patriot City's resident superhero, Captain Friendship (Kevan), is impervious to bullets and even small grenades, but his real superpower is the ability to make the most amoral of bank robbers (Alex and John) into friendly pacifists. His friendmaking powers create unexpected jealousy between his old friend (Erika) and his new one (Anjl), and attract the enmity of the local chief of police (Daniel). Is the magic of involuntary mind-control friendship enough to overcome these obstacles to peace, or is the city doomed?

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