The world would be a much finer place if Dane Cook had never gotten an acting job. “Simon Sez” features one of his earliest and largest movie roles. In it, Cook is one half of one of the most regrettable buddy cop style duos of all time, alongside former NBA star Dennis Rodman. To Rodman’s credit, he holds up his end moderately well in the film. Cook, on the other hand, does not. It is one of the most unintentionally uncomfortable performances ever put on film. Nothing Cook says is funny, and he is putting every ounce of his effort into the lines, which ultimately just enhances how horribly written everything is (because the guy really can’t act).
Outside of the central players, the rest of the cast doesn’t exactly pick up the slack. Theoretic “comic relief” is provided by a pair of monks who work behind the scenes with Dennis Rodman’s super-spy character. We are also treated with a love interest for Rodman who spends most of her time doing astoundingly poor wire-work stunts, and a villain who enjoys cheesily chewing scenery throughout the run time.
One of the biggest issues with this movie (outside of the cast) is general inexperience behind the camera. This was director Kevin Elders’s first and only theatrical directorial feature, which I think explains a lot of the poor fight cinematography and the generally mediocre shots. To his credit, this is far from the worst shot movie I have seen, but it is still a good deal away from good.
Surprisingly, despite the many flaws, this movie is pretty watchable (whenever Cook isn’t on screen). It is still not good by any means, but it is possible to sit through as a mediocre action movie. The wire-work is bad enough to be funny, and there are a couple of genuinely dumbfounding moments that are enjoyable in an odd way (surprise bedroom strobe-lights during a sex scene). It isn’t quite enjoyable enough to recommend, but it isn’t necessarily a painful experience (save for, again, whenever Dane Cook is on screen).
Not unlike “Mitchell”, I think there might be a half-decent movie hiding in “Simon Sez” somewhere. Maybe with a different cast and a more experienced director, this could have been an ok action-comedy flick. Unfortunately, Dane Cook just isn’t capable of holding up the comedy half of an action-comedy duo, and Dennis Rodman is only just barely passable on the action end. “Simon Sez” just doesn’t reach it’s potential at all. From the foundation to the spire, this is an under-performer that doesn’t quite match the grandiose blueprints.
Over the years, I had somehow forgotten how bad “Jaws 3-D” is. It isn’t just a mediocre sequel to a treasured movie that doesn’t live up to its potential (I’ll get to “Robocop 3” soon), it is an abysmal, lazy, and gimmicky film. It may not be on a “Birdemic” level of incompetence, but this movie is bad.
Let’s start with the title. In the years since the theater run for this movie, everything possible has been done to officially change this movie’s name to “Jaws 3”. Unfortunately, that doesn’t do anything to mitigate the numerous bad 3-D shots, nor the fact that the entire marketing campaign was centered around the 3-D gimmick. Check out the initial teaser for the film:
Yikes, that is pretty blatant. Now, check out the attempt to retroactively re-title this flick in the opening title card:
Honest effort, folks. Anyway, there are far more issues with this movie than just the 3-D effects and dated marketing campaign. For instance, this movie has one of the most perplexing product placements possible for a film about a killer shark: Sea World is absolutely everywhere in this flick.
For the life of me, I don’t understand the logic of Sea World agreeing to have the movie set at a parks with their brand everywhere. Not only is there a shark that endangers guests in the park, but the park itself is wrecked by the rampaging animal over the course of the movie. Shouldn’t you, a major entertainment park, want people to feel confident in your security and their safety on your grounds? Putting your name all over a “Jaws” movie isn’t exactly the best way to do that.
On to some mechanical issues: one of the strengths of the original “Jaws” movie was the creative scarcity of the monster. It helped build the tension and a mystique around the shark: a convention still used in many monster movies today. The sequels to “Jaws”, however, fail to follow this principle. “Jaws 2” uses a fair amount of shark stock footage, but that doesn’t compare to how poorly “Jaws 3-D” fails in this department: not only do you see the shark way too much, but there is even a baby shark that is captured early in the movie. At that point, there isn’t any great dramatic reveal when the big shark shows up. Without that tension, there is nothing to make the movie compelling or…well…interesting.
The acting is pretty mediocre all around, so it basically blends into the background. I think this is mostly a problem with the writing as opposed to the cast, because there are some half-talented people in there that may have pulled something off with a stronger script. Dennis Quaid and Lea Thompson both have some capabilities, even though this was early in their careers. Then again, it is pretty hard to act in a scene like this:
Unless you are planning to marathon the entire “Jaws” series, there isn’t any reason to specifically watch “Jaws 3-D”. Surprisingly, this isn’t even the worst of the franchise: “Jaws: The Revenge” consistently gets that honor (stay tuned). Still, the really bad effects, poor writing, and mediocre direction make this quite a chore to wade through. Outside of the unintentional humor of the 3-D shots and the surreal Sea World advertisements, there just isn’t anything to enjoy here.
The good folks at We Hate Movies podcast have a pretty good episode on “Jaws 3-D”, and it touches on some of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans that led to the creation of this movie. Apparently, the movie was initially envisioned as a spoof film, and Spielberg threatened to walk out on Universal if they went through with it. It is a shame they didn’t just ditch the idea altogether.
Let’s start this review off a bit differently. Join me, if you will, by taking a look at “Glitter” star Mariah Carey’s IMDb listing as an actress:
A screenshot of the moment I said “She was in ‘The Butler’? Why?”
You should notice pretty quickly that Mariah doesn’t have an extensive amount of experience in front of the camera. Specifically, check out where “Glitter” is on that list: it was her second-ever acting credit.
Yikes. Well, I think I’ve found your problem, “Glitter”.
Not only does Mariah Carey’s acting inexperience hurt the film on screen, but the semi-biographical nature of the flick means that she is essentially playing herself. That really messes with the film’s tone if you ask me: participating in a movie about yourself is already pretty self-indulgent, but starring as yourself in a biopic? Wow. It also doesn’t help that Mariah’s stand-in character, Billy Frank, has absolutely no flaws. Bad things happen to her, but she has no depth as a character. That, combined with the constant compliments and fawning over Frank by all characters in the film, turns the self-indulgent tone up to 11 and beyond.
The issues with this movie don’t stop at the tone issues and Mariah’s acting: most of the cast seems to be phoning it in, which is more than understandable given the scripts they were working with. Dice, the love interest in the film, is one of the most inconsistently written characters I’ve seen on screen in a good while. He flips from being shown as an openly insulting dick to being portrayed as the perfect heartthrob from scene to scene. After he is killed (spoilers), all of the dick moments and glossed over and forgotten forever. Speaking of his murder, Terrence Howard is the only watchable performer in this movie: he barely gets any screen time, but he totally sells his dingy record producer character. Usually, that means that he stalks around in the background, issuing vague threats while wearing a hat. For this movie, that is A+ work.
For the life of me, I do not understand how this movie wasn’t just made for TV. I’m guessing the budget necessities prevented that from being a possibility, but this movie honestly belongs on VH1. The quality of the writing and acting is barely passable for TV grade, and it would have been a thoroughly mediocre movie to put on between reality shows and occasional music videos.
“Glitter” is nowhere near as bad as most films on the IMDb Bottom 100, but that certainly doesn’t mean I am going to recommend it. There isn’t much entertainment value here if you ask me, which makes it just a waste of time. However, there is a Rifftrax of the movie out there that is apparently pretty popular. For those unaware, Rifftrax is essentially the heir to MST3k: it is run by the final lineup of the show, and they do independent commentary tracks for movies in the same style that MST3K worked, just without the robot silhouettes. I haven’t seen the whole riff, but the clips I have caught are pretty good. I would give the movie a light recommend with the Rifftrax.
“Zombie Nightmare” is a very boring movie. Outside of the near-indistinguishable “Prince of Space” and “Invasion of the Neptune Men”, I haven’t had to rewatch any IMDb Bottom 100 movies as many times as this snoozer. I don’t know what it is about this movie, but the details of it vanish from my memory as soon as I watch it.
After the first time I watched “Zombie Nightmare”, the only memories I retained were disturbing images of Adam West in a creepy mustache, and the sound of a poorly dubbed voice that sounded vaguely like The Penguin. I tried reviewing it based on those recollections alone, but that wasn’t going to do.
When I watched the movie for the second time, a few more things stuck with me: really bad 80s fashion everywhere, the zombie’s revenge plot against the unrealistically shitty hit-and-run high schoolers, the origin story of the zombie (and his father’s death in the opening sequence), and one of the slowest chase sequences of all time through what looks to be a YMCA. I half-expected the Toxic Avenger to show up at some point during the pursuit. Anyway, I was pleased to retain details that time around!
Would I rather watch “The Toxic Avenger”? Sadly, yes.
Then, before I wrote this review, I went on a brief hiatus from the blog. And, of course, I forgot most of those details again. Thus, I watched the damned movie again. This time, things stuck out differently. All of the previously mentioned details were rattled out of my memory, but I caught a few more that didn’t stick with me previously: I’m crediting this to the fact that I had myself glued to my computer for this viewing. Believe me, there is little I want to do less than watch this movie for a fourth time. Anyway, this time I particularly noticed the horrendous overacting by the voodoo priestess who resurrects the zombie, and caught a lot more details about the subplot of police corruption in the film. The movie almost takes a “Touch of Evil” turn to focus more on the shady police practices by Adam West and the other senior officers than the giant zombie wandering around the town tearing people apart.
Oh yeah, and the zombie drags Adam West to Hell via an open grave. That was actually pretty awesome.
They used it for the soundtrack cover. Also, “Batman Goes To Hell” has a nice ring to it.
So, do I recommend “Zombie Nightmare”? Honestly, despite the fact it is incredibly boring, it isn’t nearly as bad as a lot of the flicks on the list. In this case, that is kind of a weakness? It isn’t consistently bad enough to be a whole lot of fun. It is certainly incompetently thrown together, but not in a charming or entertaining way. I enjoyed little pieces of it, so I can maybe recommend the MST3K highlights. I certainly can’t recommend sitting through the whole thing, unless you just want background noise of low-quality rock songs. Speaking of which, for a movie that sells itself on the soundtrack, the audio quality is really bad. Seems like a bit of a squandered opportunity, but what isn’t in this movie?
Honestly, I felt like this was a stone’s throw from being a “Maniac Cop” movie. Speaking of which: just watch “Maniac Cop”. You get police corruption, a giant revenge-seeking zombie, better deaths, better writing, and Bruce Campbell. And, if you stick it out to “Maniac Cop 3”, you will even get an overacting voodoo priest. If for no other reason, watch it for Robert Z’Dar’s chin.
I genuinely feel like there is a good, entertaining movie hidden inside of “Mitchell” somewhere. The idea of an eccentric, schlubby cop with curious and unclear ethical boundaries solving a major crime sounds pretty great to me. Unfortunately, “Mitchell” doesn’t live up to its potential, which is a real shame.
In the hilarious MST3K riff of “Mitchell”, Joel and the bots have a lot of fun poking at the acting and physique of star Joe Don Baker. For the record, I didn’t think he was all that bad in this movie. I personally feel like he did the best he could with the writing, but it just wasn’t a good enough foundation for the movie. None of the banter works, particularly the brief interaction between Joe Don and a young child which plays out in an incredibly grating fashion. Also, there is a serious problem with the tone of the film: it seems like it wants to be an action movie and a comedy movie, but somehow does neither well enough to be an action-comedy. I’m still not sure how the audience is supposed to feel in the infamous sex scene, which features the song “My My My My Mitchell”: a tune as silly as it is catchy.
I think that the MST3K treatment of “Mitchell”, while perhaps unfair at times, is one of their best. It also holds a important place in the series, as it is the last episode to star creator Joel Hodgson. I recommend the episode highly, though I can’t necessarily say the same for the film on its own. The pacing and editing are almost as bad as the writing, which makes it pretty dull to sit through. Even the ending is anticlimactic, which means there isn’t really any payoff to the wait. There are a few clips, like the sex scene, that are absolutely worth catching, but not much else.
“Mitchell” has a pretty firm placement in the IMDb Bottom 100, though not as highly as another Joe Don Baker movie: “Final Justice”. Truthfully, it is hard for me to pick between the two of them. “Final Justice” is probably objectively worse, but “Mitchell” irks me in a unique way in how it squanders what I see as a promising premise. Then again, I might be biased: some of my friends have claimed that my destiny is to successfully remake “Mitchell” into an awesome movie. Maybe I will get to that some day.
Welcome to the first episode of Misan[trope]y’s (Plot)opsy Podcast! My name is Gordon Maples, writer of the Misan[trope]y Movie Blog and a somewhat obsessive film buff.
Here on the (Plot)opsy Podcast, you can hear yet another dude on the internet talk about movies. More specifically, I will be looking at the narratives behind movies: their cultural contexts, the startling personalities around them, and the curious production paths that led to their creation. I am going to focus on memorable films, both good and bad, new and old. I intend to be joined by guests in the future dissections, but today, on the pilot, you just have me. Welcome to the (Plot)opsy. Scrub up.
This first feature I am covering is the smash hit “Guardians of the Galaxy” by Troma alum and generally awesome weirdo James Gunn. Listen to the whole episode below:
Here are some relevant images to go along with the episode:
“Tromeo and Juliet” was the film writing debut of James Gunn, a Troma flick primarily in iambic pentameter that he wrote while interning with Troma Pictures. Rumor has it that he was paid $150 for the screenplay.
James Gunn co-wrote a book with Troma head Lloyd Kaufman detailing the history of Toma Studios
Yondu from the source comics (left) and the film (right, Michael Rooker)
Vin Diesel’s best known voice work is as the eponymous Iron Giant from the animated cult classic. His part as Groot in “Guardians” is highly reminiscent of the lovable giant robot.
For about the past week, I have been away on a much-needed vacation. For a pasty nerd of my particular variety, “vacation” means that I spent a week watching shitty movies at a beach-adjacent location while drinking fruity things. Hey, it works for me.
Anyway, the specific goal of this trip was to watch through the entire Gamera franchise with some friends, which proved to be quite a task. By the end of the trip, we had cut our way through all 8 Showa-era Gamera films, but elected to give a pass on the Heisei-era features (for now).
I have mentioned before that I grew up on Showa-era Toho kaiju features (Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, et al). Being a little kaiju snob as a kid, I never gave the knock-off Daiei-produced Gamera flicks a second glance outside of the realm of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Honestly, now that I have watched all 8 original Showa Gamera flicks, I kind of regret that position.
Most of the Gamera movies are abysmally paced and crammed with crappy child actors, but the actual kaiju fighting is all amazingly over-the-top. I laughed my ass off when Gamera started playing his theme song on Zigra’s back spines after defeating him, heartily chuckled at his gymnastic stunts in Gamera vs Guiron, and sang along every time that damned catchy theme song came on.
Speaking of which, that theme song is pure, uncut magic.
So, let’s break it down the original 8-feature Gamera series by film, shall we?
Gamera
To my surprise, this was poorly paced and incredibly boring to sit through. It was clearly trying too hard to knock-off Godzilla, and the filmmakers weren’t having any fun with their ridiculous creature. I did like the slow “revelation” of Gamera’s flying abilities, and the beginning of the “friend of all children” concept. I personally enjoy the dubbed version better than the subtitled version, if for no other reason than the abysmal work done for Kenny, the central child character. It really is quite astounding. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 riff of this one is an absolute must-see.
Gamera vs. Barugon
This one is still more grounded (read: less fun) than the later entries, and not quite to the level of a pure kid’s movie. That said, I like the monster design of Barugon: as an ice-elemental beast, he makes for an interesting foil to Gamera. I also kind of like that a good number of the Gamera adversaries are quadropeds, a trend started by Barugon. It is a nice distinction from the by-and-large bipedal Toho monsters. Also, Barugon has that lovely rainbow. You just have to love that.
Gamera vs. Gyaos
I do love me some Gyaos. My favorite monster in the Toho universe is Rodan, and I feel like Gyaos is the closest analog for the Daiei troupe. He is kind of like a paper mache Rodan with some extra powers to make up for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, one of those powers involves armpit gas ducts. It is also kind of interesting to see a kaiju aerial battle, something else that isn’t seen much in Toho. Even Rodan and Ghidorah did most of their scuffling on the ground. This is a pretty fun Gamera flick, but the series doesn’t really hit its stride until Viras if you ask me. I honestly don’t recall much about the plot from this movie, which should speak volumes for its quality.
Gamera vs Viras
The version of Gamera vs Viras I saw included a fantastic clip show of the previous movies that essentially boiled them down to the most entertaining parts. That significantly contributed to this being one of the most watchable and ridiculous of the Gamera movies. The aliens under Viras kidnap children, blackmail Gamera, and eventually take over Gamera’s mind using vague alien science, before having their plot ultimately foiled by meddling kids. The eventual Viras fight is pretty memorable in its own right due to Gamera using the squid monster like a Jet Ski, and eventually killing him with a bizarre spinning top attack. I can’t recommend this one highly enough, honestly.
Gamera goes to space to fight a space-shark with a giant Bowie knife for a head. That’s should be all you need to know about this brilliant work of cinema, but in case you need some extra motivation, check out Gamera’s mad gymnastics skills. You know what? Just note everything that happens in this clip.
Did you catch the Gamera athletics? The dancing? Guiron’s head shurikens? This movie is pure glory.
Also, Guiron may have the best kaiju death ever. Gamera literally shoves a missile through his head. I’m a little surprised that he didn’t blow into spaceshark chunks, but I suppose this is technically a children’s film.
Last but not least, “Gamera vs. Guiron” brings us the Gamera theme song from space, which inspired the legendary MST3k lampooning. I would actually go so far as to say that the riff of this movie is one of the best in the entire MST3k catalog, and is a must-see for fans.
Gamera vs Jiger
Boy, is this a weird one. First off, this is one of the strangest advertisements of all time. Essentially, a good chunk of this movie is dedicated to promoting the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka. For the life of me, I have no idea why anyone thought a kaiju movie would be an appropriate venue for doing that.
Adding further to the weirdness of this film is an extensive segment in which children take a submarine inside Gamera to save him from a parasite, “The Fantastic Voyage” style. The entire ordeal is quite surreal, but winds up slowing down the movie too much if you ask me.
this is how Gamera reacts to parasites
When Gamera is actually conscious, the fights with Jiger are only ok. Jiger has some odd nuclear attacks that are poorly explained, as well as spear like projectiles that are used to impale Gamera on a number of occasions.
…what the hell?
Once Gamera recovers from the Jiger parasite though, he pretty quickly stabs Jiger prime in the head with a magical talisman thing. That part is pretty awesome, but overall the movie is definitely a lesser Gamera entry.
Gamera vs Zigra
This movie, like “Gamera vs Jiger”, has yet another unprecedented real world tie in, and with a message to boot! Sea World is featured prominently throughout this movie, a whole 12 years before the organization made the even worse cinematic decision of getting in bed with “Jaws 3-D”, and 42 years before it was eviscerated by the documentary film “Blackfish”. Sea World should probably just avoid movies in general in the future (if it has one).
Anyway, this movie has a very strong environmental, save-the-oceans message that feels pretty shoehorned into the story. The evil aliens under Zigra are expert aquatic predators who hunt land animals in the same way that we fish, and intend to capture and consume Earth’s entire human population. So, I guess that means the lesson is that we should take care of the oceans, or else they will eat us in retribution.
Zigra himself is actually one of the better adversaries that Gamera faces. He is the intelligent overlord of the invading aliens instead of a simple wild beast, which I found pretty cool. Unfortunately, lighting issues make all of the underwater battles unintelligible, which is a real shame, because that means that nearly all of the fighting in the movie is visual nonsense. Once the fight does move to land and the audience finally gets a good look at Zigra’s beaked, sturgeon-shark form, the battle is all but over. At least the fight ends with Gamera playing the first six notes of his theme song on Zigra’s spine, which is one of the best moments of the franchise if you ask me. For that alone, this is a recommend for me. Be warned: the rest of the movie is very slow and child-heavy, though.
Gamera: Super Monster
“Gamera: Super Monster” is barely a movie. Made in 1980, a mighty 9 years stood between “Gamera vs. Zigra” and this film. During that time, Daiei Films went bankrupt, causing the series to go dormant. “Gamera: Super Monster” is thus a loosely thrown-together clip show of the previous Gamera movies, with no new Gamera footage at all. Basically, this was a way for publishing company Tokuma Shoten to make a quick buck off of the acquired property of Gamera.
What “Gamera: Super Monster” does have is a team of magical superwomen from outer space, and a cobbled together plot that makes negative sense. Also, the movie commits two grave sacrileges: 1) It replaces the Gamera theme with a far less amazing Gamera march, and 2) Gamera dies by crashing into a Star Destroyer from “Star Wars”.
You might think that a clip show of all of the monster fights of the previous films would be a great way to conclude the Showa-era Gamera series, and that a heroic sacrifice by our beloved jet-powered turtle monster is a perfect cherry on top. Well, that might be true if it were done with any kind of competence. However, this being Gamera, that wasn’t the case. The clip show from “Gamera vs Viras” was way better than any of the weirdly placed, re-purposed battles in this film. Even worse, because there is no new Gamera footage, our hero is killed off by an implied collision and a cheap, shitty explosion special effect. That is not good enough. Not at all.
One potential positive of this movie is that it cleared the way for the later Gamera Heisei series of films. Though, honestly, I see this movie as more akin to the Paul McGann Doctor Who TV Movie: it was an attempt to reach a new audience with an old property, but it came at the wrong time and from the wrong direction.
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So, that is it for the Showa-era Gamera movies. It was an absolute blast to burn through them all, even though it slowed down dramatically at times. Overall, it is something that I can recommend to any bad movie fanatics or general kaiju fans. I know that I have found a new appreciation for that ridiculous giant turtle beast from the experience.
I admittedly did no research ahead of watching “Miss Castaway and the Island Girls” for the first time, so I wasn’t quite sure of what to expect going in. I can say that the last thing that I anticipated was a low-budget “Movie Movie” with a plot involving Noah’s Ark, Michael Jackson, the Tim Burton “Planet of the Apes”, and a giant prehistoric bipedal pig. I have talked and written at length before about the weaknesses of the “Movie Movie” genre in my reviews of “Epic Movie” and “Disaster Movie”, both also on the IMDb Bottom 100. I won’t retread that ground, other than to point out that this style of movie has no longevity for future audiences due to their reliance on references and current pop cultural references. “Miss Castaway” definitely suffers from this in a huge way, given most of the ‘humor’ is derived from lampooning movies like “Castaway” and “Miss Congeniality”, which are barely on the cultural radar nowadays. However, that is a weakness of all of these movies, and there are plenty of issues unique to “Miss Castaway” that the big budget sister films like “Epic Movie” and “Disaster Movie” were able to evade.
First off, “Miss Castaway” is a cheap movie, and that is a fact that shows itself at every turn. Any time CGI is used (which is far too often), it looks like it was scraped out of the bottom of a barrel. Check out this clip featuring “Jurassic Pork”, one of the handful of CGI creatures in the movie.
Also, check out this dodo bird / alien thing. Doesn’t it look fantastic? As you would expect, all of the acting and writing is abysmal. The acting is about what you should expect from any spoof movie, but the line deliveries are particularly stilted and wooden. Then again, there is no way to seriously deliver half of the lines in this script. For most of the movie, I was wondering if the writers had ever heard a human being talk before. In some ways, “Miss Castaway” dialogue feels like an alien race is trying to communicate with the audience, but their only knowledge of our planet, culture, and language is through movies circa 2004.
The plot feels like a clumsy patchwork to drive the characters from one reference to the next. It progressively devolves into incoherence, and it doesn’t make much sense to start with. I believe there are secret agents from the Vatican on board the crashed airplane who were hunting for Noah’s Ark, and were charged with saving it from humanoid Ape creatures who want to destroy humanity? There are also aliens involved at some point? It lost me about halfway through. I think Michael Jackson was in league with the Pope though.
Honestly, there isn’t much else to say about “Miss Castaway”. It is a cheap spoof movie that fails to be funny on paper, and is executed incredibly poorly. It is hard to compare Movie Movies to other kinds of movies, as they are kind of unique beasts. In comparison to the other Movie Movies on the IMDb Bottom 100, I can at least say that “Miss Castaway” is less low-brow that “Epic Movie” and “Disaster Movie”. It is far from high-brow, but I don’t recall much. if any, poop or bodily fluid humor, which puts it a notch above “Epic” and “Disaster” at least. However, the incredibly poor effects work probably puts “Castaway” right back down on their level. So, I guess it is pretty close to a draw? That is actually saying something for a movie with a fraction of their budgets, though.
In general, I don’t see any reason to recommend this movie. The plot is bafflingly stupid, the acting and writing are bad, and the effects are horrendous. If there were any actual humor to be had in the writing, the effects, acting, and plot might have been overcome. However, that was not the case. I advise avoiding this one, unless you have a burning need to see miserable CGI.
“The Hillz” has been perhaps my least favorite film from the IMDb Bottom 100 thus far. It isn’t the worst of the list (though it is certainly high up there) in terms of film-making incompetence, but the writing, dialogue, and general tone of the film are all incredibly revolting. The sheer vapidness of the screenplay puts a thin coating on top of the immense quantities of sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and pretty much every other shitty quality a thing can have. I would venture to say that absolutely anyone could be offended by something in this movie. One particular sequence that comes to mind is the ‘humorous’ story of “Monster Head”, in which a transexual prostitute is murdered mid-fellatio by one of the central characters. Lol.
Even the actors are looking for other things to do
“The Hillz” presents the audience with an incredibly forgettable and thoroughly reprehensible cast of characters, including a dull college baseball star lead who is infatuated with an inconsistently-written Paris Hilton who plays his best frenemy and perplexing love interest. He also has a group of close friends who he smokes crack with on occasion, and who operate a criminal empire comprised of robbing Beverly Hills mansions at house parties and executing people for $80 debts.
Smoking crack with the buds
The one saving grace in regards to the character cast of “The Hillz” is that they are mostly corpses by the time the story comes to its abrupt conclusion. I don’t want to assume that this ending was karmic repayment for their general shittiness, because the movie never particularly gave me the sense that they did anything wrong in the storytelling (they very obviously did, but I only know that because I have some sense of right/wrong, not because the movie conveyed it).
All of the actors are absolutely miserable in this movie, with the notable exception of the fellow playing the gang leader with a notably violent temper (the one who killed “Monster Head”). The character is one of the most horrid I’ve seen put to screen, but the actor really does his best to sell it. That is more than can be said for anyone else on screen throughout the run-time of this movie.
He was doing his damnedest
The editing in “The Hillz” definitely goes a long way towards setting it apart from the herd. This movie would have been horrible based on the writing and acting alone, but the astoundingly incompetent transitions are mind-blowing. I think that this movie was edited in Windows Movie Maker, and the editor just used random transitions available in the program. There is at least one instance where a star transition is used, and those always look awful.
One thing that is worth pointing out about this movie is that, despite the trailer and all of the marketing materials, Paris Hilton does not feature prominently in the movie. She doesn’t have any relevance to the primary plot, and sort of floats around the edges of the movie as a source of frustration for the main character. I honestly don’t much care about deceiving people who would watch a movie solely for Paris Hilton, so that marketing deception is a pretty minor gripe in my book.
Last I checked, “The Hillz” was just about to fall out of the IMDb Bottom 100, which really does surprise me. This is more incompetent and offensive overall than either “Pledge This!” or “The Hottie and the Nottie”, two other Paris Hilton movies that tend to hover around the top 10 on the list. My guess is that this is primarily due to the relative lack of exposure of “The Hillz” in comparison to either “Pledge This!” or “The Hottie and the Nottie”, because I can’t believe that anyone would objectively regard those as worse movies than this piece of work. There are only a handful of IMDb Bottom 100 movies that I think of as mechanically worse than “The Hillz” (“Ben and Arthur”, “The Maize”, and “Birdemic” immediately come to mind), but none are as thoroughly offensively written as it. In the words of the late Roger Ebert: I hated, hated, hated this movie.
“Torque” is basically a “Fast and the Furious” movie with all of the dials turned up to 11, and with motorcycles instead of cars. That pretty much covers the basic summary of this movie. The film takes place in what I assume is a fantasy realm with looser physical laws more akin to the Loony Toons universe than our own, at least judging from the ludicrous opening sequence.
Something that I neglected to mention in the video review up top is the plethora of product placement scattered throughout this movie. The sheer quantity and brazenness of the advertisements make Michael Bay movies look subtle. For one particularly notable instance, there is a climactic bike duel that prominently features billboard backdrops of Pepsi and Mountain Dew. It is impossible to be more blatant with product placement than in this scene (or if it is, I’ve never seen an example of it).
I would be doing a disservice to everything good in the world to not at least mention the absolutely ridiculous special effects in this movie. I think they can be best described as “overzealous”. Just check out this final fight scene from the movie, and tell me they didn’t go completely overboard with the effects.
I had to re-watch that scene so many times to figure out what exactly happened. Everything is so distorted and frenetic that it is nearly impossible to make out the details of what is actually going on. That takes some real talent to make your pinnacle action scene so action-packed that the movie loses coherency.
Oh yes, there are also actors in “Torque”. They don’t matter all that much, but they are present. Most notably, Adam Scott of “Parks and Recreation” and “Party Down” plays one of the primary antagonists: a dirty special agent who is tracking down the film’s “hero”. To say that Scott’s performance is absolutely ridiculous doesn’t go nearly far enough: I am shocked that he ever got acting work ever again. Other notables in the cast include Ice Cube, who does his typical role of scowling and being angry at things, and Dane Cook, who is mercifully absent for the vast majority of the movie.
thank goodness
There is interestingly a fair amount of controversy around “Torque” in the bad movie community, specifically in regards to the film’s earnestness. Is “Torque” an honestly made bad movie? There seem to be lots of people who think that Torque was made intentionally over the top as a self-parody on the genre. I can see some slight nods to this in the movie, but I don’t think they are quite frequent or blatant enough to convince me that this movie was an intentional farce. My personal opinion is that the filmmakers realized that the movie was going too far over the top, and the humor was an attempt to try and ground it in some way. If you ask me, the nods and winks actually did the movie a disservice. I know I would have enjoyed the movie more as a bad movie if it didn’t try to feign parody, and just owned the identity as a ridiculous action movie.
When it comes right down to it, I feel like I can recommend “Torque” for what it is: dumb action. If you want to see over the top explosions and ridiculous content, this is a movie to check out. Just don’t expect anything more than that.
“Torque” isn’t in the IMDb Bottom 100 any more, which isn’t terribly shocking. The movie is silly, but the production values are good, and the semi-popular opinion that it is a self-parody has gained it some levity from audiences I think. I personally see this as a genuinely bad movie, but not so bad that it necessarily merits a spot in IMDb’s basement.
If you would like to hear more about the good, the bad, and the ugly of “Torque”, I highly recommend checking out the Bad Movie Fiends Podcast episode on the movie.
Reviews/Trivia of B-Movies, Bad Movies, and Cult Movies.
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