IMDb Bottom 100: The Quarter Mark, Part 4

February 13, 2014 Gordon Maples 34 Comments

IMDb Bottom 100: The Quarter Mark, Part 1
-SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2
-Going Overboard
-Manos: The Hands of Fate
-Birdemic: Shock and Terror

IMDb Bottom 100: The Quarter Mark, Part 2
-Space Mutiny
-Turks in Space
-Crossover
-Pledge This!

IMDb Bottom 100: The Quarter Mark, Part 3
-Pod People
-Girl in Gold Boots
-House of the Dead
-Pumaman

—

The Starfighters

Well, there isn’t much to say for this movie. This is one of those movies that relies on massive amounts of stock footage just to get by, and it makes the whole thing just about unwatchable. It can only just barely qualify as a movie. It is a series of uninteresting scenes interspersed with stock footage of planes (mostly in the act of refueling). It reminded me of a B-movie I recently watched called Frogs, in which stock footage of animals starts attacking the people living in a remote swamp. That is actually an overall enjoyable crap movie though, making it nothing at all like The Starfighters.

The acting, when there is acting, is not exactly your typical fare of most B-movies. It feels and sounds more like a classic social hygiene films, but without the entertaining cheese and vapid moral message. It isn’t as over the top as Reefer Madness, as it is quite a bit more subdued in regards to the tone and acting. I think all of the military style throughout the movie gives it that rigid quality, and prevents anyone from being particularly interesting. The same pretty much goes for the writing, it is just completely forgettable. The plot is not very deep, mostly just a father and a son arguing over whether bombers or fighters are cooler (fighters obviously, right?). The whole thing just doesn’t entertain in the slightest.

If you took Dr Strangelove and cut everything but the stock footage of airplanes refueling over calming music, and repeated that for an hour, you would have something pretty close to The Starfighters

I actually don’t think this belongs on the Bottom 100 (#68 currently), because there is no reason a movie like this should have enough votes to qualify. I would bet there are countless movies on par to this from the early 60s, but they have all been rightfully forgotten. It isn’t one of the worst movies ever made: it is a slice of history, a relic of an extinct style of film. This should absolutely have the low rating that it does, but I think it almost deserves to exist on a different plane than the other movies on the Bottom 100. The vote quota exists in theory to prevent the endless numbers of movies like this from flooding the Bottom 100 list. The list would be absolutely overrun with unwatchable social hygiene movies and homemade YouTube films that don’t deserve any kind of recognition on a list of this kind.

At the same time, this movie does belong on this list. This is a movie that is absolutely saved by the MST3K riff in every sense. Not only does it make the movie watchable, but this is one of those films that would have been completely forgotten if not for the MST3K treatment. I think that fact enough gives it an understandable case for being on a list like this. MST3K made this movie memorable, and turned it into more than what it is on the surface. I feel the same about movies like Red Zone Cuba, which shockingly does not have a spot in the Bottom 100. The votes for this movie aren’t about the movie itself, but a testament to the influence of Mike, Joel, and the Bots on the hobby and culture around terrible movies today.

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Boggy Creek 2: And the Legend Continues

*this is the first video I did, and is much longer and rougher around the edges than the others*

I decided to repost this video, primarily because I spend quite a bit of time talking about Devil Fish and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies in there. As for Boggy Creek 2, I feel like it is a comparably boring movie to those two. Nothing particularly stands out in the movie, and they show the monster far too early on for there to be much suspense or anticipation. The effects and acting are both typical 0-budget fair, and there just isn’t much else to say about it. There is apparently an entire sub-market of Sasquatch movies out there that you can delve into if that seems up your alley though.

—

Devil Fish and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies

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Devil Fish

This movie is Sharktopus if it was made in the 1980’s Italy. Yow.

It was obviously a Jaws knockoff in concept, but it clearly went very wrong. Everything moves very slowly in this movie, and all of the plot lines are equally boring. None of the dialogue is very good, and there is tons of bad science loosely thrown around to try to explain the squid-shark thing. I particularly like that it is supposedly going to break down into individual cells and reform into countless copies of itself if they don’t destroy it within a set amount of time. That is some impressive garbage writing. When it comes down to it, the writing is definitely at the rotten core of this movie, everything else was just orbiting it. I don’t even have anything to say about the general plot. There are scientists doing something. Some bad scientist made a sharktopus for some vague military reason. Sharktopus is eventually stopped. End on freeze frame of elated laughing.

As bad creature movies often do, the monster was shown far too early on here, which is always an issue if the monster is the key to the film. On top of that, it looked really damn goofy. It looked good as far as quality goes, particularly for a movie like this, but it the design of the thing was horrendous. It didn’t look intimidating or frightening, it just looked…odd. As the dialogue loves to remind everyone, it is clearly not a shark. Despite that, one of the most common alternate titles of this movie is simply “Shark”. Good job there, folks. Aside from the monster, the blood effects used are really shoddy. There is a point where a character is shot and instantaneously has clearly fake blood dried on his shirt. Just lazy work all around there.

As with any Italian movie aimed to a US audience, there is bad dubbing here. It is better than some movies for sure, but it is definitely a long way from good. If you are used to watching crappily dubbed movies, it isn’t particularly jarring. For a casual audience, I’m sure it would be distractingly noticeable though. The acting is pretty much standard fare for this sort of movie, but it is pretty overwhelmed by the dubbing regardless.

This is another one of those movies that is so entertaining in concept that it is baffling how they messed it up to the point of it being boring. Showing the monster early hurt for sure, the bad effects hurt, the dubbing hurt, but the inability of the writing to keep this movie going at a decent pace was absolutely fatal to the film. A movie that ends with a sharktopus being torched with flamethrowers shouldn’t be so absolutely unwatchable. There isn’t much else to add, this is just a thoroughly boring movie to sit through. There are too many dull attack scenes throughout the movie, which means that there is no suspense and no stakes involved at the climax. It thus makes the climax of the movie monotone with the rest of the film, which makes it feel even longer than the movie actually is. All of the attacks even look the exact same for the most part. Jaws goes after a few different sort of targets to give some variation, which makes the attack scenes more interesting to watch. No such luck here.

This movie is currently #48, which places it very close to …Mixed Up Zombies. There are some definite similarities between the two, but I would give the edge slightly to Devil Fish for reasons I don’t entirely understand. They are both similarly boring and poorly paced, and both have an interesting enough premise. I suppose the flamethrower scene, lack of poorly shot musical scenes, and mostly mediocre camera work puts Devil Fish just ahead of …Mixed Up Zombies in regards to entertainment value.

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The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies

Yep, this one is a train wreck.

I don’t understand why on earth this had to be a musical. All of the numbers are distracting, poorly shot, horribly executed, and they drag out the story much longer than it has any need to go. I never thought I would praise Girl in Gold Boots, but it looks like a professional musical production compared to this mess.

Related to the musical numbers, the costuming is surprisingly dull given the setting of the movie at a carnival. The makeup on the antagonist is way over the top though, which I see as an all or nothing thing: either go all out with the makeup and costumes or don’t. The MST3K folks make a really big deal of the hair in this movie. Personally, I think it is just a relic of the era it was made in, but it does look pretty hilarious in retrospect.

The cinematography in this movie is just straight bad. There are POV roller coaster shots that are excessively shaky to the point of causing nausea. There are superimposed images on superimposed images in an attempt to look surreal. Worst of all, the performance scenes are just inexcusably poorly shot for something billed as a musical (again, why?). There are also excessively dramatically angled shots during the initial palm reading scene, which the MST3K guys hilariously riffed without saying a word: they all just leaned dramatically in a given direction to imitate the shot. Personally, it reminded me a little of the Lord of the Rings ripoff scene in House of the Dead, in that it immediately brought to mind the intimidating shot of General Ripper behind his desk in Doctor Strangelove (this one: http://tinyurl.com/n2psd6j). I don’t think this one was nearly so blatant or intentional though, it didn’t take me out of the movie at all. It still looked pretty bad though, without any doubt. It just totally missed the mark that they were aiming for.

There isn’t much to say about the acting apart from that it was 60’s style cheesy. None of it was good, although the villain hammed it up a little bit. Nothing stood out like Torgo in Manos for sure. I actually think if the villain had played it up a little bit more, this would have been a little easier to sit through.

As it stands, the pacing of the plot in this movie just killed me. It has musical numbers chained to both ankles, and can barely hobble along through the run time. There are scenes that are too long, and plenty of footage that isn’t necessary at all throughout the movie, like San Francisco stock shots in The Room. I think this movie could be recut into something slightly better, but only slightly. There just isn’t quite enough decent content in this for a full-length quality movie.

I do like the premise here, though. Pre-Romero zombie movies are interesting to bump into, and pull from the classic zombie lore that is mostly forgotten by cinema. This sticks to the mind control / voodoo aspects of classic zombieism pretty well, and could have been a good horror movie with a different director, writer, cast, and 100% less musical numbers. You know, a different movie entirely.

Also the title is dumb.

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Son of the Mask

This is another one I hadn’t seen before, and expected very little from. I interestingly have way more to say about it than I could have imagined I would going into it. From what I had seen in reviews of the movie, it is criticized for being essentially a string of loud noises and colorful images without any actual substance behind it. That is absolutely accurate and inarguable. This movie is as vapid as movies come.

However, there’s something that seeps out of every goofy, ridiculous pore of this movie: nostalgia. This movie suffers from the same issue that Lawnmower Man 2 does, in that it is completely misplaced in time. It is a 2005 movie trying to recreate the success of a 1994 movie that in turn relied entirely on long-expired, Tex Avery style cartoon humor left over from the mid-century. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an anachronistic film.

The longing for a return to simplistic cartoonish violence hangs over the movie, which gives it an oddly sad tone at times despite the constant stream of bright colors and noises. Jamie Kennedy’s character is clearly an avatar for the film’s writer, who (unsurprisingly) was a struggling cartoon writer, working on shows like “CatDog” and “Aaahh!!! Real Monsters” in the 90s. When things are actually focused in on the lead character, there is an interesting metamovie to dig into. There is a lot of honesty written into the character throughout the movie, particularly before the zaniness gets put into high gear. I really felt bad for the writer of this movie, because it has to really suck to suck at the thing that you most love doing. I get the feeling there are some really unfunny original ideas in this guy’s head that have been rightfully and routinely shot down throughout his entire career. He doesn’t realize that his ideas are bad though, because they are just like the cartoons he watched as a kid and loved (and went stale decades ago). I would bet that he has been fired after a flopped pitch meeting before, not unlike in the movie. If you watch it from that angle and ignore the near-plagiarized cartoon that makes up most of the movie, it is actually a mildly interesting (and very depressing) movie.

If you are a fan of the old Tex Avery Looney Tunes stuff, I still couldn’t recommend this movie to you. I can recommend that you go on an “Animaniacs” bender, because that show knew how to pay homage to the past while still being original and funny. I dearly wish that I had spent this movie’s run time watching “Animaniacs”…

On to more failures in this movie:

I’m not going to gripe on the acting. Jamie Kennedy was absolutely devastated by the outcome of this film, and it is clear he is doing what he can with what he was given. And I didn’t hate Cumming as Loki, surprisingly. His costuming was, at best, distractingly stupid though. (Oh yeah, this movie involves Norse mythology by the way. I want to treat it as canon with the Marvel movie universe pretty bad) Everyone else was just…there. Steven Wright was actually a pretty convincing scumbag boss, who oddly never faced a comeuppance. He didn’t have much screen time to speak of, however, and Mr. “Super Sounds of the 70s” has a knack for lulling into the backdrop with that voice. The real problem with this movie in regards to acting were the…nonhuman?…actors.

It is no shock that some of the people behind Cats and Dogs were involved in this godawful mess. The special effects are absolutely horrendous, and look like they could have been lifted directly from Cats and Dogs, which was released a number of years prior to this one. Once again, this movie is completely lost in time: A 90s movie with bad early 00s CGI and 40s cartoon writing. The practical effects didn’t look so bad on the actors, but the CGI dog and baby were just a atrocious, and they were regrettably the primary focus of the film. There isn’t much else to say, except it looked really damn bad and distracting.

This movie is sitting at 38 in the bottom 100 currently. I can’t argue with that placement, primarily because of the disparity of quality I’ve seen among the movies I’ve hit so far. This was less generally boring than Lawnmower Man 2 (to be covered in Part 5) and less rage-inducing than Pledge This! for sure, but not fun to watch by any means. I think it belongs in a special cage on display as an example of how humor needs to evolve to survive, and as a warning to not make unnecessary sequels to already bad movies.

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Soultaker

Mediocre. Just mediocre.

There’s not a whole lot to say about this one. I actually don’t hate the story to Soultaker, it is just executed really poorly all around. The soultakers themselves are really unconvincingly done up, and the “souls” (read: glowsticks) are just silly.

There isn’t a whole lot of tension to the movie for some reason, despite them being chased down and running against a clock. I think the movie really needs to be shorter, and perhaps cut a little better to build up suspense. The movie just does a bad job in pacing, and it doesn’t help that everything moves slowly in the movie anyway. This is a movie where the riffs don’t even really help the film much, though they don’t do a bad job with it.

The acting doesn’t particularly hurt the movie, but I feel like if someone had put in the effort to go overboard, it would have been much more watchable. Maybe not better though, to be perfectly honest.

This is sitting at #41 in the Bottom 100 right now. I’m not going to argue with that, but it is a very forgettable movie. I’ve probably watched it five times at one point or another, and the only things I have ever remembered about it were the glow stick souls and Joe Estevez in a leading role. Not one I can recommend.

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: The Quarter Mark, Part 3

February 12, 2014 Gordon Maples 22 Comments

IMDb Bottom 100: The Quarter Mark, Part 1
-SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2
-Going Overboard
-Manos: The Hands of Fate
-Birdemic: Shock and Terror

IMDb Bottom 100: The Quarter Mark, Part 2
-Space Mutiny
-Turks in Space
-Crossover
-Pledge This!

—

Pod People

Most MST3K fans are likely familiar with the movie “Pod People”, a poorly constructed and confused mess of an ET ripoff film that was famously featured on the show.

I almost feel like this movie could have been decent. If someone has taken a keener eye to the script and done some better camera work, this might have been a perfectly mediocre movie. As it stands, it is an incredibly bad, confused mess of a film. There are some laughs to be had at the poor special effects and horrible acting, but in general the writing is too unfocused to keep your attention throughout the movie. The famously bad recording studio scene is about the only part of this movie worth watching, save for the poor effects during little Trumpy’s tirades. The plot just takes too long to get moving, and there are too many threads introduced too early in the movie. If you can stay awake through the first half-hour though, you are golden for making it through the rest of this mind-numbing movie.

About the only thing I can credit to this movie is that it was easy for the MST3K crew to tear to shreds. Their riff on this one is one of the better episodes of the show without a doubt, and is the only way I could possibly recommend watching this movie. Otherwise, it is just an incredibly boring time killer.

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Girl in Gold Boots

I have been ruminating on this one for a while. I initially procrastinated writing out my review on this so that I could read up more on the fascinating man behind this film, Ted V. Mikels. There is certainly a lot of interesting reading about his career and personality, and he has a lengthy filmography of crap to sift through.

Now, after sitting on this movie for a while, I think I actually like it.

This isn’t as good of a bad movie as “Manos” or “Plan 9”, but it really is an enjoyable watch if you are hunting for a B-movie. The acting is all way overdone, which is exactly what you want to see in a film like this. The same goes for the writing and dialogue, it all just hits the spot for what this movie is. The editing mistakes are actually pretty entertaining as opposed to jarring, which is ultimately a boon to the entertainment value of the film.

Last but not least, I think I have actually come to like the music in this movie. The whole film relies on the intermittent musical numbers, which alternate between Critter’s sappy acoustic bits and the backing band’s rock(?) numbers. The main theme is actually pretty catchy, and the others can actually grow on you if you aren’t careful. Kind of like “Hear the Engines Roll Now” in Pod People, they are sort of endearingly terrible. Honestly, I think that sums up the whole film: Endearingly Terrible.

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House of the Dead

To start off with, the movie isn’t unwatchable. It is bad in just about every way, but it isn’t particularly difficult to sit through. That is about the only thing positive to say about it.

The practical effects in this movie are somehow not over the top enough, believe it or not. There are times when zombies are briefly on screen when I’d swear they didn’t have any make up on the extra at all. The ones that they do put effort into came out way too cartoony if you ask me, and i just didn’t buy them. I actually think in this aspect Boll was a little too loyal to the games, whose zombies are a bit too sci fi and not very horror.

Speaking of loyalty to source material, this is a mighty inconsistent movie. Boll goes so far as to splice in direct shots from the game for transitions, but can’t be bothered to actually set the movie in a house. I actually appreciate that he tried to give the movie a video game feel with the death screens, but he didn’t do those consistently with every character. Even the few things he does decently wind up being used ad nauseam or inconsistently applied, which dulls down the whole movie. There were times I would groan at yet another bullet shot, and be let down when I anticipated a death screen.

The special effects are typical Uwe Boll schlock. A ridiculous amount of slow motion is used, along with inexplicable fireballs and CGI gunshots. That’s basically a trade mark of his movies at this point.

The acting is actually not particularly bad for low-level horror movie, with the exception of “Captain Kirk”, who I swear starts drifting into a Russian accent at one point. In general, these people had to do what they could with the script, which wasn’t doing them any favors.

Speaking of the script, the writing is just miserable here. The dialogue is all pretty forgettable, but the story really disappoints. We are treated to the legend of the island well past the halfway point, and the truth behind the island is all crammed into the last few minutes. At that point, why even bother? Nothing bothered me about this quite as much as the botched attempt at a “The Reanimator” ending. For all I can say about “The Reanimator”, the last scene / shot of that movie is awesome. This movie tries to do the same thing, but decides to cut that crucial shot, instead just telling us what happened over the course of the helicopter ride home via voice over narration. There are so many better ways to end the last couple of minutes of this movie that it is actually infuriating to watch this happen. You don’t even have to tweak the outcome or story in any way, and you could dramatically improve the effect of this ending. Did Boll not put any basic thought into his finale at all? “Show don’t tell” ring a bell, dude? Surely he’s seen “The Reanimator”, or he wouldn’t be blatantly ripping it off here. Maybe he just needs to take better notes the next time he makes a movie.

Speaking of blatantly ripping off other movies, there is a baffling and unnecessary sequence that directly rips off “Fellowship of the Ring”. Remember when Frodo famously hides behind the log when being chased down by the Nazgul? It is a really fantastic sequence that is impressively creepy and builds a lot of tension. Well, this movie decided to do that exact same shot, but without any of the ambiance or tense buildup that made the original sequence so excellent. It is painfully obvious that the scene was taken from LOTR today, so I can’t imagine how blatant it looked for people watching this in 2003. Just a really lazy move by Boll to throw that in, especially since it contributes nothing to the movie. The character who is hiding is caught and killed literally seconds after the shot concludes.

“Fellowship of the Rings” scene

“House of the Dead” scene (1:28-2:15)

There are so many more things to complain about in this movie, but I don’t really want to write a novel on how much Uwe Boll sucks. This movie has rocketed from #25 to #16 since I froze the IMDb bottom 100 for this project, which doesn’t surprise me. This movie has the internet’s nerd rage and Uwe Boll’s unpopularity as both a filmmaker / human being working against it, which is obviously going to show up on a democratic ranking. For what it is worth, the movie is watchable. It is worse than a typical Hollywood box office bomb, but not nearly as bad as the stuff you would find in MST3K. It probably belongs on an objective list of the worst somewhere, but this is honestly mostly a victim of the democratic nature of the Bottom 100. I could actually recommend this one to people who enjoy crappy horror movies. There isn’t much in the way of laughs to get out of it, but it is an interesting one to dissect in order to see how it ticks.

—

Pumaman

I watched this movie twice, just to make sure I caught everything.

This is a very bad movie. A very bad, amazing movie.

The trailer alone lays out most of what you need to know. The attempted flying effect in this movie is just pathetic, to the point of being absolutely hilarious. It is something that you need to see to believe. Aside from that, there are a number of other really unimpressive attempts at special effects, that mostly come down to shaking the camera. It does not come out well.

The acting is unsurprisingly sub-par, but Donald Pleasence does ham it up a bit. There are a number of moments where you can tell that he knows how bad this movie is going to be, but he still puts a little bit of effort into it. It has to be hard to effectively act like a sinister villain when you are having to peek out from behind a giant ridiculous mask prop the whole movie. I’m amazed he put any effort at all into this movie, especially since he apparently listed it as the worst movie he was ever involved in.

The story makes very little sense. I’m still not clear on why the main character is a “puma” man, given his powers involve teleportation, flying, and faking suicide. Are those typical puma behaviors that I wasn’t aware of? I also particularly like how his powers are granted from aliens in a way that is directly hereditary(?). I’m going to try not to put too much thought into that, but I will note that the alien spaceships look like the Monarch’s Cocoon from “The Venture Bros.”, or alternatively like leftover Christmas ornaments. Clearly a lot of effort was put into this film.

This movie has been moving up the Bottom 100 with all of the grace and stealth of an actual Puma. It popped into the top 20 just recently, and is sitting at #19 currently. I am actually perfectly happy with that placement at this point, because this movie is a fantastic brew of various incompetencies that churns out a genuinely entertaining product. It is absolutely terrible in every technical aspect I can think of. It is a hilarious experience to watch it confusedly stumble its way through the run time. This is one that I may honestly go back and watch again just for the fun of it.

Bargain Bin(ge)

Bargain Bin(ge) III

February 10, 2014 Gordon Maples 1 Comment

Bargain Bin(ge) Part 1
Bargain Bin(ge) Part 2

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Shark Week

This is a shark movie from The Asylum. It is pretty hard to go wrong there. The Asylum makes their money doing two things: making CGI shark movies, and ripping off current blockbusters. I’m not expecting something on the level of “Sharknado”, but this one does seem to have a dumb plot to contend with the best of them. There’s a cheesy villain as well, and that is pretty much all I need to justify the one dollar I spent on this.

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CyberTracker

This looks like a pretty promising B movie to me. However, the Red Letter Media folks apparently found it to be incredibly boring on “Best of the Worst”. This might be one of those cases where the trailer is crafted in such a way that it can fool you, but I am really curious to try this one out for myself. At the very least, I can see how my tolerance stacks up against the Red Letter Media crowd. I also love that the super cyborg prototype looks like the evil robot version of Sonic the Hedgehog in “Sonic the Hedgehog 2”.

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Judgment

Oh my. I can’t express how excited I am to watch this movie. Not only is there a silly plot about our dark future of christian persecution, but this stars both Mr. T and one of my favorite overactors, Corbin Bernsen. “The Dentist” is still one of my favorite underrated shitty movies, and Corbin Bersen tears up his gums throughout that piece of trash from gnawing on all of the scenery. This trailer has me even more giddy about getting to this one, because the dialogue sounds just awful. I particularly like the line “I call to the stand…Jesus Christ”. That’s just gold.

—

Shredder

I remember watching this movie on FearNet a number of years ago. It is a pretty run-of-the-mill slasher movie, apart from the snowboarding focus. I do seem to recall a semi-interesting twist/whodunit plot that set it somewhat apart from the pack, but overall it was your typical gory slasher movie. Again, it has been a number of years, so I am interested to see how much I might have forgotten.

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Thunderpants

This is a movie about a farting child. It co-stars Rupert Grint of “Harry Potter” film franchise fame, and the marketing unsurprisingly focuses squarely around him. His involvement is probably the only reason this has as wide of a DVD release as it does, hoping to cash in his popularity. It seems similar to how recent releases of “Mazes and Monsters” really emphasize the fact that it stars Tom Hanks, even though no one knew who he was then. In any case, this is a family-friendly movie about farts, so that’s pretty much what I am going to expect to see here. Lots of fart jokes.

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Bigfoot

Danny Bonaduce starring in a movie is pretty hard to believe, but that is an easier pill to swallow than the CGI on the supersized Bigfoot here. Why did they feel the need to make Bigfoot so large for this anyway? I expected more of a typical Sasquatch movie, but this is pushing more into King Kong territory. In any case, I’m looking forward to the typical monster movie cheese here. I’m also curious if they push the environmental message to “Birdemic” levels, and if they will find some way to make destroying Mt. Rushmore interesting.

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Mazes and Monsters

This movie will make you wonder how Tom Hanks ever wound up with a career. This absolute stinker of a movie plays off of the paranoia surrounding the popularity of “Dungeons and Dragons” back in the day, and comes out somehow more nauseating than the classic Jack Chick tract on the subject. Tom Hanks hams it up throughout the movie as the lead character, and has a number of notable scenes in this one that are hard to forget. All of the dialogue in the movie is atrocious from what I have seen in reviews, but I haven’t actually sat through this monster myself. I’m looking forward to rolling the dice on this one.

—

Slipstream (2007)

I mentioned in a previous Bargain Bin(ge) that there are a number of shitty movies out there with the title “Slipstream”. As luck would have it, I have now found the other two movies with the title (there is a fourth as well according to IMDb, but I don’t think any copies actually exist).

This one seems to me to be Anthony Hopkins’s dream project. Anytime someone writes/directs/stars, you have to wonder if they might have too much invested in the movie to cut at it objectively. Some people apparently really appreciated this as a surreal film, but the general consensus is that it doesn’t quite hit the mark, and is just a confusing and jumbled mess. I am really curious about it myself. The concept sounds really cool, and the cast is all pretty competent (maybe not Slater), but I could see how it could trip over itself.

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Slipstream (1989)

Another “Slipstream”! This one is more of a straight B-movie than the previously mentioned films of the same name. This one features Bill Paxton and Mark Hamill in a futuristic wasteland, and strikes me initially as being a pretty interesting movie. The chemistry between Paxton and Hamill seems pretty solid from the trailer, and I like how this movie seems to be drawing from multiple genres for inspiration. I am pretty surprised I hadn’t heard of this one, because it looks like it has some great potential for unintentional entertainment at the very least.

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She Gods of Shark Reef

I’ve never caught this one before, but it looks like more or less the usual Roger Corman fare. I actually found this the day after I watched the above commentary by Corman on this film’s trailer. There isn’t a whole lot of information about the film revealed in there, but it is nice to know that Corman enjoyed his time filming in Hawaii. I am curious exactly how one “controls” a shark, though.

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: The Quarter Mark, Part 2

February 3, 2014 Gordon Maples 14 Comments

IMDb Bottom 100: The Quarter Mark, Part 1

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Space Mutiny

Ah, Space Mutiny. Another B-movie that faced the tribulation of an MST3K spotlight. Something I noticed when I first looked through the bottom 100 is that there are consistently tons of MST3K victims inhabiting the list.

I think that the MST3K treatment is a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to this particular list. The show brought a lot of eyes onto some really obscure movies, and for some people that is as far as they go into the land of B cinema. Given that the IMDb Bottom 100 is both a democratic list AND requires a quota of votes for a movie to qualify, the popularity of MST3K movies definitely seems to skew the list in favor of them.

Space Mutiny, for example, is a movie that I find completely watchable. It is super cheesy in regards to the effects and stunts, and Reb Brown howls his way through the leading role just as he does in any movie, but I don’t think it is anywhere near the realistic bottom of the barrel of movies. The MST3K crew did an awesome riff of the movie that was a bit harsh in my opinion, but still very funny. I think their skewering has greatly manipulated people’s opinions on this one, and is the only reason it is as low as it is (top 10) on the list. I’m honestly not sure if this legitimately belongs on the list as all, much less that high. It isn’t good, but like Manos, this is a plenty enjoyable B-movie that somehow redeems itself through charming incompetence. Even the hammy accessory cast and the pathetic sets and props have a sort of endearing quality to their over the top-ness that is hard to put down.

If you are a fan of MST3K or bad movies in general, their Space Mutiny riff is one of the finest of the Mike Nelson era, and I can’t recommend it enough. It is definitely a fun watch. In fact, I recommend just about anything from Reb Brown’s filmography. He is a blast to watch work and has an amazing quality to elevate bad movies, just like how Nic Cage can make an otherwise miserable movie watchable.

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Turks in Space

I had an odd thought about “Turks in Space” recently. The more I look back on the movie, the more it feels like a Shakespearean work.

That isn’t to say that the movie is good, of course. However, there are some very Bard-like things going on in this film. First off, there is a whole lot of focus on twins and mistaken identity (in the hopes of generating comedy out of confusion). Unlike in a Shakespearean comedy though, none of it actually comes out entertaining in the slightest. There are also a whole lot of almost entirely pointless comic relief characters revolving around the plot, acting as commoners who occasionally poke at current events through the fiction. All of their humor is low brow as well, which is consistent with their analogues in the comedies. It goes without saying that having the romantic interests tied into the mistaken identity subplot and throwing a diplomatically important marriage into the mix also calls back to the much finer works of the finest playwright in history.

As much as I hate the idea, I may actually give this movie a rewatch to see what else I can come up with. If there is more to find, then the making of this movie gets much stranger. It is already a very odd romantic comedy science / fiction concept, and throwing in a screenplay that is trying to imitate the Bard adds a whole extra layer of strangeness onto the making of this movie.

Maybe this is actually a lost work of Shakespeare. Maybe Shakespeare wrote an entire play about spaceships and bad Turkish social humor while he was incredibly intoxicated one night, and then promptly attempted to dispose of his abominable creation when he awoke to discover it. Sure he penned some less than great comedies, but I would wager that Shakespeare’s “Turks in Space” would have demolished his reputation. On the flip side, I would love to see someone try to turn this movie into a play and attempt to put it on. With some better dialogue and a lot of cutting from the script, it might actually not suck. Maybe.

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Crossover

Well, this was quite unexpected.

This movie does not belong in the Bottom 100. It is incredibly cliche in the story and writing, and the acting isn’t great, but it is overall a pretty run-of-the-mill sports movie. This does not have any business being on this list, especially not as low as #15. That is just ridiculous.

One thing that I expected to be horrible in this movie was Wayne Brady, who plays a sleazy bookie and former sports agent. Honestly? He was pretty believable. He probably did the best job in the film, which was quite unexpected. The rest of the cast was pretty bland, but the acting wasn’t so bad that it was excessively distracting.

There seems to be a lot of criticism of the stunt work in the basketball scenes, but I didn’t find it incredibly distracting. It was definitely beyond belief, but I will forgive that because it sets the tone of the games being played. It establishes the skill of the players involved, which is important for the story to get across. If it just looked like standard pick-up basketball, a lot of the character motivations wouldn’t make as much sense.

The story, as mentioned before, is pretty run-of-the-mill. You can probably call everything that is going to happen in the movie well ahead of time, but overall it isn’t necessarily bad. The predictability makes it a little boring in that it takes out the stakes, but it isn’t so bad that you can’t keep watching. It is the same story with the dialogue, in that it will never surprise or enthrall you. However, it gets the job done.

This seems like a movie that isn’t ideal for hard core basketball fans, though. The unrealistically cut games apparently turn people off from the reviews I’ve seen, which seems like an interesting version of nerd rage for sports movies. I would imagine that a casual sports movie fan would be ok with the movie, though.

All of that said, I’m not sure if there is anyone who would absolutely love this movie. There is no way that this is anyone’s favorite film. It is one of those movies that is likely to slip your memory after a little while, and you won’t have any cause to recall it after it has.

I hope I run into more movies on this list that are as surprisingly watchable as this.

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Pledge This!

Pledge This almost certainly deserves the very low slot (top 20) it has in the Bottom 100. That is almost entirely due to the script, which is a racist, shallow, mind-numbing pile of garbage. All of the acting is atrocious, but what the hell could they have done anyway with what was given to them? You could have the finest cast of actors here and this would still be a crap movie. As it so happens, they actually had the worst actors. So, it came out much worse than a crap movie.

I can’t think of any redeeming factors to this thing. There just aren’t any. The relationships make no sense, no characters are likable, there are idiotic cartoon sound effects inserted for no particular reason, the jokes are all flat, and there is no reason to be invested in what plot the movie bothers to have.

The one thing I can say for this movie is that it actually surprised me. I expected moronic dialogue and stupid hazing jokes. I did not expect Paris Hilton’s dog to blow a guy. I did not expect a toilet explosion. I did not expect a giant ball of used condoms. These were not good surprises, but they were certainly not expected.

Neither of the writers of this movie have written a movie since from what I can tell. That is reassuring to me. There should have been a notification of this fact post-credits, and I might have actually clapped.

I am deeply dreading the other National Lampoon movies that I have to watch on this list. I have to deal with Paris Hilton’s acting a few more times, and unfortunately one of them, “The Hottie and the Nottie”, is ranked even lower than this stinker. I really hope I have some watchable movies come up before then.

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Bargain Bin(ge)

Bargain Bin(ge), Part 2

February 2, 2014 Gordon Maples 2 Comments

Bargain Bin(ge), Part 1

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Beyond Justice

I always love coming across obscure Rutger Hauer movies. The plot to this one involves a kidnapping and some hardcore child custody issues with international implications, which isn’t something you hear about a movie every day. I’m curious if this is going to have some sort of major plot twist in it, as it seems kind of ripe for it. I’m hoping for some decent action in this one, but I am a little concerned that it might get too wrapped up in the complexity of the plot and detract attention from Hauer’s character. Hopefully this grainy old flick doesn’t take itself too seriously, and is ultimately a decent watch.

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Iron Maze

This movie looks pretty bad from what I have seen so far. There is an interesting mechanism here that films love to use, wherein we are given multiple views of a crucial event from a number of unreliable witnesses. That would normally have me optimistic, but the acting and production values that I saw in that trailer are just horrendous. I have the feeling that this one will ultimately just be a boring, poorly paced wreck, but I don’t want to judge it too harshly before I see what it truly has to offer.

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Slipstream (2005)

It turns out that there are a lot of movies with the title “Slipstream” out there. Who knew? This one actually has a cool premise, based on a limited time manipulation device and its use to change the events of a tragic bank robbery. I am interested in seeing how this movie winds up going wrong, because the trailer actually paints it pretty well. I am always thrilled to see Mr. “Midnight Meat Train” Vinnie Jones in a B-movie, and expect that he pulls a good performance here. I’m not particularly familiar with the rest of the cast, but I am looking forward to this one regardless.

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iMurders

This looks to me like a horror movie cashing in on people’s fear of technology and the internet. Sounds absolutely delightful! I am guessing this one will be looked at in the future in the same way that we look at movies like “Beeper” now. In any case, I love a good luddite-fueled horror movie, so I am hoping for some good laughs out of this schlock.

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The Eliminator

Having your action movie star a non-actor is always a promising start to a B-movie. This particular “Most Dangerous Game” style movie starts a former(?) UFC fighter who I haven’t heard of before. I figure as long as he poorly delivers lines and can beat the crap out of minions on screen, he’ll be able to make this thing enjoyable. I am interested to see how this manhunt movie stacks against “Deadly Prey”, as there are some definite similarities between the two. This one does have an interesting gambling element thrown in that I am digging from the trailer, so I am interested to see how that plays out.

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Project Eliminator

This movie features David Carradine and a “top secret…ultra-sophisticated flying attack laser”. That’s more than enough incentive to get me to watch a movie. I have high hopes for this being a truly wretched movie with plenty of unintentional laughs. It is worth pointing out that I couldn’t find a trailer, so I am going to be going into this one absolutely blind. Oh goody! I’m also interested to see how it stacks up to the previously mentioned and similarly-titled “The Eliminator”

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Kiss Daddy Goodnight

I couldn’t find a trailer on this one, which in my experience is consistently a bad sign. This one mostly caught my attention by featuring a pre-fame Uma Thurman, and the highly creepy title definitely managed to stick out. The premise paints it as a noir thriller (that definitely caught my interest), as it follows Thurman’s character as she drugs and robs random guys who try to pick her up at bars. At first glance it all seems very promising, but clearly something went wrong with this movie to merit a 4.1 IMDb score. I am very interested to see what exactly that is.

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Green Guys

This is one that I am pretty curious about. It seems to be centered around some Wall Street-style swindlers who get on the wrong side of the mob, which is an interesting enough premise. The trailer doesn’t particularly excite me though, and the IMDb rating is an abysmal 4.5. I’m looking for some good shitty movie entertainment value out of this one, which is appropriately a bit of a blind gamble.
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Undercurrent

I kind of wish that this trailer didn’t tell me so much. Clearly there is a twist/betrayal well into this movie, but it is totally ruined by this trailer. Regardless, at first glance this seems to be a decently action-filled tropical flick. The premise is a bit odd for an action movie, as it seems mostly based on a monetary deal offered to the lead character in return for him sleeping with another man’s wife. It seems a bit bizarre and convoluted, but I’m going to go out on a limb and assume there is a sufficiently acceptable reason for the proposal in the film. In any case, the whole thing clearly goes haywire. This is another one that looks watchable enough to me, but it has clearly not swooned most watchers according to a 4.7 on IMDb. My guess is that the plot ties itself into too many knots and ultimately bogs itself down, but I’ll be interested to see if there are some other failures thrown into the mix.

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Deadliest Prey

I can’t wait to watch this. “Deadliest Prey” is a near shot-for-shot remake/sequel of the cult classic “Deadly Prey”. From everything i have seen, this movie lives up to the original. They pretty much just retread their previous path with the same now-aged actors and improved effects, but there wasn’t all that much that needed changing from the original. I am still just giddy that I came across a physical copy of this.

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Mindhunters

I saw this movie a number of years ago, and recall some very specific things about it. First off, I remember the deaths being very Rube Goldberg in their complexity and ridiculousness. Secondly, I remember there being an absurd number of twists and unexpected turns. Normally that would be good for this sort of movie, but this one went a little overboard with it. I am always reminded of this movie whenever Deep Blue Sea comes up in bad movie conversations, because this does some similar unexpected star-killing, though not nearly as dramatically as Jackson’s fall in Deep Blue Sea. I’m looking forward to seeing this again, I hadn’t been able to find a DVD copy of this until very recently. Apparently there was a lot of studio turmoil behind this movie, which contributed both to its flop and perhaps to its lack of wide distribution.

Misan[trope]y

Monthly Archives: February 2014