0 stars

Starring George Lopez, CGI dogs
Directed by Alex Zamm

Synopsis

Papi, Chloe, and a gang of puppies work to save a house from foreclosure.

The Good

• Some cute dogs in ridiculous outfits.

The Bad

• The first film’s voice cast (Drew Barrymore, Edward James Olmos) is notably absent save for George Lopez, who reprises the voice of Papi. Chloe’s owner, played by a different actress, immediately vanishes to the Amazon with her mother, leaving all new human characters to deal with the never-ending cutesy antics of Frankenstein CG and real dogs. All the money saved from star salaries equals Disney laughing all the way to the bank, with us chumps hitting fast-forward, searching in vain for something on par with the first installment.
• I gave up halfway through, whereas I at least crawled on all fours through the original.
• Spouse — who loved the first one — gave this one a paws-down.

Conclusion

I could write a longer review about my general distaste for CGI, Hollywood sequel-itis, the corporate ethics of passing off a crap sequel for sure profit, and the head-slapping comedy stylings of George Lopez — but the less said about these kibbles and bits the better. Skip it.

IMDB: Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2
Wikipedia: Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2
Rotten Tomatoes: Beverly Hills Chuhuahua 2

0 stars

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Michael Douglas
Directed by Mark Waters

Synopsis

Womanizing bachelor asshole Connor (Matthew McConaughey) is on the road to sabotaging his younger brother Paul’s (Breckin Meyer) wedding, so dead Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas) appears along with ghosts of past girlfriends to set him straight. Hilarity ensues.

The Good

• Douglas is mildly amusing as the sleazy uncle, and Garner is decent as Connor’s childhood girlfriend Jenny, unfortunately the only normal character amid a roomful of morons, rather like Bob Hoskins in that live action cartoon with the insane rabbit.

The Bad

• Essentially A Christmas Carol grafted onto a stock romantic comedy. The result is devoid of any dramatic tension whatsoever — Connor will change his ways and get the girl. Some interest could have existed in how slimy Connor was to begin with. Also lamely strays from the Carol basis: “Ghosts” implies at least three of Connor’s exes should be dead, but the ghost of the present is Connor’s office assistant who is still alive, and the ghost of the future is never explained.
• Not funny. Joke after joke falls flat, due to a general tone of disgusting, stupid, or gross behavior limply presented as humor. Jerky Connor is the best example, but the bride-to-be is such a prima donna whiner I started wondering if Connor was justified in destroying this marriage. Desperation sets in as all kinds of useless characters pile on: horny bridesmaids, in-laws, the bride’s mom, and a Japanese archer, all brought together in one of the worst endings I’ve seen in recent memory.
• McConaughey has certainly made a name for himself playing smart-ass sleaze bags, but ever since The Wedding Planner, I can’t name a decent flick starring him (it wasn’t this, nor this). Vince Vaughn is doing a better job.

Conclusion

If your significant other points the remote in this movie’s general direction, slap their hand and take your lumps before serious brain damage is done. Stay far, far away — this is a wedding cake filled with dog crap.

IMDB: Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past
Wikipedia: Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past
Rotten Tomatoes: Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past

0 stars

Starring Heather Graham, Jerry O’Connell, John Corbett
Directed by Brian Herzlinger

Synopsis

Career woman Angela (Heather Graham) and husband Curtis (Jerry O’Connell) suddenly find themselves unexpectedly expecting. Best friends Danny (John Corbett), Sylvia (Katie Finneran), and demanding boss Mary (Lara Flynn Boyle) inavertandly threaten to tear the couple apart.

The Good

N/A.

The Bad

• You know you’re in for a bad time when the opening credits feature crappy CGI that could date from 1992 on an Amiga.
• Intent on testing the boundaries of gross-out comedy, mostly ends up merely gross. You get to see a man yanking off in his office, a flesh-light, many boners, water breaking, and some lame running joke about Korean massage parlors.
• Graham and O’Connell just look confused or unhappy to be there, Graham in particular defining that vapid “deer caught in the headlights” stare.
• Many jokes look pathetically added in later via closeups after the footage was shot, likely an attempt to salvage a bad movie but just making things worse.
• None of the characters behave with any awareness of being a human being; all are cartoony stereotypes on which to drape gross jokes.

Conclusion

Absolutely horrible. One of those films where you never once believe any of the characters are real, and your mind wanders toward pity for everyone involved, and wonderment at how such dreck gets green lit and foisted upon the public.

IMDB: Baby On Board
Wikipedia: Baby On Board
Rotten Tomatoes: Baby On Board

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating: –8 stars

Starring Bill Cosby, Tom Courtenay, Gloria Foster
Directed by Paul Weiland

Synopsis

Leonard Parker (Bill Cosby), super-spy, emerges from retirement to thwart a vegetarian psychopath’s plan to destroy the San Francisco Bay Area with an army of mind-controlled animals.

The Good

• Takes place in San Francisco.

The Bad

• The opening credits feature kids drawings of animals drawn in crayon.
• Primary theme of Leonard being awesome. Probably due to Cosby’s ego.
• Direction all over the place. One of those movies where things are shot from all kinds of crazy angles for no conceivable reason, maybe on some prayer it would be worked out during editing. Everything, particularly action scenes, are rendered incomprehensible.
• Several decades on where veggie burgers are standard fare, the anti-vegitarianism angle comes across as dumb, not funny.
• Bill Cosby plays straight man to all the ridiculousness exploding around him, but he just looks bored.
• A litany of regrettable movie moments: Cosby riding an ostrich, raw hamburger used as a weapon, biting rabbits, terrible 80s music, dancing henchmen, the most ridiculous hero car ever, a butler that is no help whatsoever, lobsters, and Cosby covered with food.

Conclusion

Leonard Part 6 appears on many lists as one of the worst movies ever made. It lives up to this reputation. I can’t even make a list of suggestions on how to improve it — the entire movie is flawed from inception. This turkey is six parts dumb — plus one part ostrich.

IMDB: Leonard Part 6
Wikipedia: Leonard Part 6
Rotten Tomatoes: Leonard Part 6 9%

0 stars

So Bad It’s Good Rating –4 stars

Starring Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden
Directed by Ronald Neame

Synopsis

A meteor hurtles toward earth. Only scientist Paul Bradley (Sean Connery) can save humanity. Hilarity ensues.

The Good

• Surprising amount of stars: Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Martin Landau, and Henry Fonda as the President. Connery is passable as a secretive scientist that can save the world, but his presence in this flick has me wondering what the hell he was thinking in the seventies, what with Zardoz. Landau is miscast but highly amusing as the obligatory high up general whose primary purpose is to get angry a lot about the stupidity of the plan, specifically, collaboration with the Russians.

The Bad

• Produced by Samuel Arkoff, a name that should ring some serious alarm bells. He was responsible for the 60s beach party genre and many early 70s horror films. His formula for a successful low-budget movie is: action, revolution, killing, oratory, fantasy, and fornication. All are on ample display in this flick.
• The list of crap-tastic aspects are endless: pointless camera zooms (meaning, the camera zooms in on a character as if they’re about to say something important, but don’t), a pointless intro narration explaining what a meteor is and what past civilizations thought about them, and special effects beamed in from the 1960s.
• The film’s basic pattern through the first half: people on earth scream and yell about what to do, cut to the big scary meteor hurtling toward earth, yet another tiresome scene of people arguing about what to do. The movie picks up a lot when the meteors start falling and said people start dying.

Conclusion

This flick falls fast into so-bad-its-good territory, and is a disaster amid the genre of 70s disaster movies. Perhaps that would be a better film to make: a disaster movie about the making of a disaster movie. At some point the cast realizes the movie is going to sink like the Titanic and they strangle the director.

IMDB: Meteor
Wikipedia: Meteor
Rotten Tomatoes: Meteor Meteor 9%

0 stars
So-Bad-Its-Good Rating: –6 stars

Starring Ron Ely, Paul Gleason, William Lucking
Directed by Michael Anderson

Synopsis

Doc Savage (Ron Ely) and the Amazing Five travel to South America to battle the evil Captain Seas and fight the mysterious “green death.”

The Good

• There’s a core of a great action-adventure movie here, as it’s based on a popular series of  pulp novels from the 1930s. The adventure is quite similar to James Bond or the Indiana Jones movies.

The Bad

• Pretty much everything else falls very short. The production values are poor, the acting sub-standard, and all else is only amusing from a campy perspective.
• The Amazing Five are old war buddies of Doc Savage. Just their names alone speak of a corny adventure: Major Thomas J. “Long Tom” Roberts, Colonel John “Renny” Renwick, Andrew Blodgett “Monk” Mayfair, William Harper “Johnny” Littlejohn, Generral Theodore Marley “Ham” Brooks.
• All the characters are quite cartoony and maintain their goofy persona even when it’s totally inappropriate for the situation. Doc Savage is manly, tanned, and muscular, with a continually unbuttoning shirt. There’s an assassin running around the city in Native American gear (wouldn’t he be cold?). “Monk” of the Fabulous Five totes a pet pig at all times. Ultimately, the Fantastic Five prove rather useless in the larger scheme of things, leading one to wonder why Doc Savage, who seems able to handle everything on his own, even keeps them around.
• Many unintentionally funny moments: Captain Seas bursts into maniacal laughter at a party, inciting everyone to uncomfortably laugh along with him. The opening sequence displays a very strange polar Fortress Of Solitude with some cheesy narration explaining Doc Savage’s awesomeness like a late-night infomercial.
• Also quite head-slappingly hilarious are the simplistic solutions Doc Savage uses to escape sticky situations. A piece of fabric allows him to slide down an elevator shaft, an electric fan chases off the “green death,” and a Morse code message leads him to find a pathway hidden behind a bush that could have been easily found with a bit of searching. Oh, and then there’s that remote control airplane.
• For some reason (probably rights-related) the soundtrack consists of John Philip Sousa marches, the theme song being lyrics written to one of the melodies. This culminates in a ridiculously slapstick fist battle set to said music.

Conclusion

Mildly amusing from a so-bad-its-good perspective. Supposedly, producer George Pal had to shelve the sequel already in the works (Doc Savage: The Arch Enemy Of Evil) due to the poor box office reception for this installment. No surprise.

IMDB: Doc Savage: The Man Of Bronze
Wikipedia: Doc Savage: the Man Of Bronze

0 stars

Starring Bob Corff, Elaine Giftos, Talia Shire
Directed by Roger Corman

Synopsis

The military accidentally releases gas that kills everyone on earth over the age of 25. Hippies and youth culture take over.

The Good

• Long hairs, counter culture, drugs, and do whatever you want take over the screen. There’s a real loosey-goosey, retro everything on display here, the hairstyles alone are worth gawking at.
• Some daffiness at seeing some stars who would later become famous: Cindy Williams plays a pregnant rock fan, Ben Vereen a Malcom X admiring cowboy, and Talia Shire as an airhead.

The Bad

• Also contains all the worst elements of the sixties — nonsense, random elements “arrow feather?!”, and drug inspired visuals passed off as profound, and the thought that the trip had to be taken even if the destination was unknown.
• In the absence of any authority, the entire world becomes a playground of youth, with rock concerts and road trips, anarchic looting by high school students, and Lord of the Flies style disagreements about what the future world should be like. And in true sixties fashion, there are no credible solutions.
• I got bored about 2/3 the way through and decided doing the dishes would be more fun.

Conclusion

This film is mildly amusing from a historical standpoint as it captures the youthful optimism that perhaps the sixties revolution would lead somewhere better, but film-wise it’s a muddled mess and a total waste of time. Avoid at all costs, man.

IMDB: Gas!
Wikipedia: Gas-s-s-s
Rotten Tomatoes: Gas-s-s-s

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating = –10 stars

Starring Nancy Kwan, Ross Hagen, Maria De Aragon
Directed by Robert Vincent O’Neill

Synopsis

Dr. Tsu (Nancy Kwan) leads a deadly team of female martial artists that harvest athlete’s brains for elderly millionaires. Insurance man Mike Harber (Ross Hagen) is sent to the Philippines to this travesty. Also titled Wonder Women, Chinese Puzzle, or Women Of Transplant Island.

The Good

N/A.

The Bad

• The first ten minutes lack dialogue, making me wonder if the whole cinematic ordeal would be mimed.
• Truly horrid soundtrack. Funk-porn waka waka theme song, and a particularly atrocious Wonder Women tune.
• Some interest in the early seventies Philippine location. Must have been a cheap place to film.
• Dated seventies topics: women’s liberation, black power (one woman operative has a particularly huge afro) and a James Bond-like plot of an evil mastermind with utopian but deeply flawed plans. But it’s really all an excuse for tame, seventies style raunch of heavily armed women in bras and swimsuits.
• Laboratory scenes contain red and green lights leftover from some psychedelic concert hall, strange analog synth warbles, and men and women in tubes covered in plastic. The operating outfits resemble translucent rain suits purchased from the nearby Manila 99 cent store. The top off is a secret hideout tour with complete mumbo-jumbo scientific explanations, brains in fish tanks, body parts in a refrigerator, and creatures in jail cells — actors likely pulled from the local Manila night club. You think I’m making this up.
• A Chinese fellow named “Won Ton Charlie.”
• Ross Hagen looks bored throughout, except when ogling long legs of the women he fights against.
• The “kung fu” fighting — if you could call it that — is exceptionally awful. Fast editing, and flailing limbs, and much hand waving and tumbling. All the women were obviously chosen for hotness and not martial arts training.
• Said women traipse through the jungle armed to the teeth but dressed in the most inappropriate clothing: pastel bathrobes.
• “Brain sex.”
• There’s a mustachioed guy in an Austin Powers type blue suit and cane for reasons that completely escape me.
• The ending is as slick as can be, a chess game between Mike and a dorky blond is rudely interrupted by some pretty operatives. If you were expecting a hot sex scene you’d now be asking for your money back.

Conclusion

This movie is such an egregious piece of garbage but is often sloppily entertaining. Add it to your list of comedies — if you dare.

IMDB: Wonder Women

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating –9 stars

Starring Linda Blair, Richard Burton, Louise Fletcher
Directed by John Boorman

Synopsis

Father Lamont (Richard Burton) is asked to investigate the death of Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) which leads him to the older Regan (Linda Blair) who was possessed by the demon Pazuzu in the first film. This trip takes Father Lamont (Richard Burton) to Ethiopia and beyond.

The Good

N/A.

The Bad

• The credits deserve some mockery, a list of moderately famous people set to a soundtrack of a disturbed woman freaking out. Not very scary, just gross.
• If you ever wondered what became of Louise Fletcher, Oscar winner as Nurse Ratchet, now you know, she plays child psychologist Dr. Tuskin. Overall I’d say the locusts buzzing about are more animated.
• Linda Blair, the little girl Regan from The Exorcist, is an appealingly daffy young teenager, but in that rough child star mode — over-compensating in the acting department as if to demonstrate she has talent. She looks a bit like Carrie Fisher mashed with Chevy Chase’s daughter in National Lampoon’s European Vacation. Ultimately, Blair’s most notable contribution is a coat hanger for some really inventive seventies fashions.
• Dr. Tuskin links herself psychically to Regan using some machine, resulting in some silly film overlays of Father Merrin and Regan superimposed over the doctor who has her heart squeezed by a demon. This goes on much too long and it moves from creepy to ridiculous and then laughable in a few seconds.
• Eventually we meet Pazuzu, some kind of locust spirit type guy who lived in a small African village, long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away. Sorry, wrong movie. We see Father Merrin carrying a possessed child up a cliff to some mountain temple for an exorcism. This whole locust thing is taken a bit too far and is way too much explanation — as if the Midichlorians were portrayed in some extended sequence from ages ago, giving birth to Jedi. Yes, right movie. Boorman sure gets a lot of mileage out of that one locust shot.
• What the hell is up with Regan’s tap dancing? Oh, the stage is set for her to flip out as Father Lamont (Richard Burton) is stoned by villagers who think he’s a devil worshiper. Could I get stoned, too?
• Lamont makes his way to James Earl Jones playing African priest, the possessed boy all grown up. He’s dressed in a giant locust outfit. Yes, it’s Darth Vader from that other movie, dressed as a giant insect. He spits a fruit into a pit of spikes. Oh, it’s just a dream. James Earl Jones is actually a doctor that studies locusts. Now we’re watching a National Geographic documentary on locusts. Am I in the right theater?
• Things eventually snowball to a nonsensical climax where everyone makes their way back to the original house, locusts swarm over Washington DC, the caretaker nearly burns up Dr. Tuskin, and Lamont chokes and has sex with Regan simultaneously. I won’t claim to understand what the hell happened here (something to do with turning the victim of the first movie into the savior of the second), but they should have brought back James Earl Jones in the giant locust outfit.
• Father Lamont holds a burned body of as Lamont and Regan walk off in the distance. I think there’s a rather perverse angle there I won’t get into. The authorities suddenly arrive to pick up the pieces at another head-scratchingly wrong moment, obviously saved for dramatic effect. At this point I felt a strange sadness, and empty feeling, as I had just wasted precious minutes of my life watching this flick while I could have done something more entertaining like cleaning out the kitty litter.

Conclusion

I was depressed to learn this horrid sequel was directed by John Boorman, whose films Exaclibur and Deliverance I liked. It’s woth noting that the latter film’s banjo-playing rednecks were more frightening than anything depicted in this flick — James Earl Jones in a giant locust outfit included.

I’m not a fan of horror movies because “scary” often crosses the line into “silly” and “unintentionally funny.” This film fails whenever the camera lingers too long on the scary stuff which lessens its impact. The rest is just a mess of a script that makes absolutely no sense despite all attempts to explain, which also lessens the horror.

But in term of a so-bad-it’s-good contest, this is all a positive.

IMDB: Exorcist II: The Heretic
Wikipedia: The Exoricst II: The Heretic
Rotten Tomatoes: The Exorcist II: The Heretic 14%

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating: –5 stars

Starring Guinevere Turner, Dot Jones, Bill Sage
Directed by Catherine Crouch

Synopsis

Darla Carter (Guinevere Turner) and her two young children live in rural America with a morose sister-in-law (Dot-Marie Jones), and an alcoholic, absent husband (Bill Sage). Hilarity ensues. Well, unintentional hilarity.

The Good

• N/A.

The Bad

• The set-up: mom with two unruly kids. Alcoholic, deadbeat husband. What oh whatever shall happen? Whatever you’re thinking, pretty much does.
• The tagline: You’re born on the mountain, you die on the mountain. Hint duly taken that there will be some dying in the movie.
• Exterior, run-down house. Mom isn’t watching her kids, one of whom pours gasoline in a pile of dirt and lights it on fire. Guess there isn’t any World Of Warcraft out here in the sticks. Mom meanwhile looks quite wistful and uninterested in the havoc the kids are wreaking around her. Must be the gasoline fumes.
• In these parts, people speak in cliches and euphemisms, I suppose because it’s always been done this way and there ain’t no sense in doing done things any different. You know what they say — eyes in the back of his head, I need you to be my little man, Are we broke? No, we’re poor.
• Darla’s sister-in-law Jolene is a lesbian, implying she’d make a better parent to the kids than the deadbeat, alcoholic one (absent in the movie so far) but Darla is clueless or at least could never entertain the thought. I guess episodes of the L Word haven’t quite hit this neck of the woods, either.
• Drunk husband returns and starts laying down the law, in a very distasteful and depressing manner — he ties up mom with a belt and hangs her form a pole. Maybe he’s been to a big city where they practice bondage.
• Since Jolene is twice hubby’s size and he’s drunk, I think she and Darla could easily take him out, but they never do, since he has a shot gun. Or perhaps they’ve been raised to never question the men, yet another rural custom that I would have figured died along with the advent of cable television. Oh, but they don’t get that out here in these them parts.
• The ending just begs to be spoiled. Dad shoots his sister, spraying blood on one of the kid. He starts sucking his thumb. Dog attacks dad. Second kid tries to shoot the dog and accidentally shoots his own “pa.” A really long, pointless shot of the younger kid sucking his thumb while sitting in the front seat of Darla’s car before they drive off to parts unknown. All this death and destruction, and all I could think was, that thumb must taste good.

Conclusion

Stray Dogs is essentially an excruciatingly tedious, dull play, all set in one yawn-inducing single location. The acting is decent but everything else fails to provide any support. I wanted someone to put me out of my misery. And some complain Mad Men is too slow.

IMDB: Stray Dogs

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating = –9 stars

Starring Grant Williams, Kent Taylor, Regina Carrol
Directed by Al Adamson

Synopsis

Amir is the dying leader of the nation Kalid. His body is flown to America where Dr. Trenton (Kent Taylor) tries to save his life by transplanting his brain into another body. Naturally, everything goes horribly wrong, not the least of which is the plot, which not unlike the dying leader, soon collapses and must be put on life support.

The Good

• N/A.

The Bad

• A hallmark of any decent terrible / bad movie are the characters explaining things to the audience as if in anticipation of the stupid plot.
• Holy hell, the credits music is terrible with a tuba, timpani, and female chorus, set to an extremely gross animation of blood filling a skull.
• Amir’s corpse is covered in tin foil. I guess if it’s good enough for paranoid hats, it can preserve the recently deceased.
• Oh crap, the doctor’s assistant is a dwarf. Is this Mike Meyer’s inspiration for Mini Me?
• An assistant is told, with hefty amounts of reverb, to find a young, healthy strong body. He hides in a girl’s closet. She disrobes, only to faint when she sees… a big tall bald dude. What the hell is going on here? The tuba music has no answers.
• Ugh. Buckets of blood (red paint) in closeups of cutting open a head. The mysterious vials of green, bubbling liquid are no better than the tuba music in providing explanations. A huge, disgusting, bloody, brain is put into a bowl.
• Then there’s another man who has a scarred face (John Bloom). Turns out he got that way because his friends doused him with battery acid (depicted via flashback).
• Eventually the leader of the other country has his brain put in the battery acid dude’s body. When he awakes, he’s pissed. Maybe less because of the body and more because he’s trapped in this awful picture.
• A long sequence where the battery acid dude runs around and the doctor tries to reel him in using a radar gun. He’s chasing the brunette (Vicki Volante) who escaped earlier by stabbing the dwarf in the stomach with a syringe. She had spiders crawling on her and her blood drawn.
• Best part — battery acid face dude chases a blond off a cliff. Loud, voice-over scream, yet it’s so obvious her body is an inflatable dummy. LOL moment.
• At movie’s end, the doctor places the leader’s brain in a more suitable body that is operated on to look like the leader. Yet, the leader is now under complete control by the doctor who will operate things behind the scenes. Then there’s a flashback of like — everything that just happened. Now that’s scary.

Conclusion

A bit of cursory Internet research revealed that the director Al Adamson made several schlocky B-movies specifically for drive-in movie audiences, of which Brain Of Blood is one of the best. I’m not sure what this means in the context of the So Bad They’re Good movie contest except for a sigh of relief on my part that I was spared the worst. Which should have been the best.

IMDB: Brain Of Blood
Rotten Tomatoes: Brain Of Blood N/A

0 = –23 stars

Starring John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker
Directed by Roger Christian

Synopsis

In the year 3000, humans have been enslaved by the Psychlos, an alien race, for a 1,000 years. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) rises as a human leader who will lead a rebellion to overthrow the alien tyranny.

The Good

• Unintentionally funny in every way.

The Bad

• John Travolta plays the Psychlo alien leader Terl. His costume involves elevator boots, dreadlocked hair, and klingon-like facial hair, and the wussy Travolta voice. It’s not terribly alien or menacing; just bizarre.
• Pretty much every action movie film technique is employed (tilted cameras, slow mo, green filters, Star Wars “wipes”) wherever they make no sense.
• Mind-numbingly horrid dialogue. Too many examples to list here, but the catch phrase “piece of cake” is uttered one too many times.
• Amazingly retarded plot developments. The Psychlos have a galactic empire and a machine with incredible knowledge, yet based on their behavior, they are complete retards. They back-stab themselves to the point of shooting themselves in the foot. Then there’s a laughable situation with the gold — Terl looks at the perfectly smelted gold bars that the humans stole from Fort Knox and doesn’t ponder long on how the “man-animals” got the precious metal into that state. The list goes on and on — the Psychlo planet’s atmosphere will explode in contact with radiation, the humans use a flight simulator to learn how to fly jet planes, and most egregiously, Johnnie is hooked to a “learning machine” giving him too much knowledge — and then Terl leaves him and other humans totally unsupervised (not even a “button camera?”) along with Psychlo aircraft to mine the gold. The Psychlos stupidly sow the seeds of their own destruction.
• Imagine the future morons of Idiocracy except taken dead seriously. At least the humans have an excuse for their retardation — they’ve been enslaved for 700 years. The Psychlos, with teleporters and space ships, are inexplicably even dumber than the humans. The movie documents their moronic efforts to outsmart each other.
• Forest Whitaker, as the assistant Psychlo, looks truly embarrassed the entire time. This is a far cry from The Last King Of Scotland.
• You cheer at the end when the Psychlo home world is destroyed — not because the hero wins, but because the movie is finally over.
• Add a layer of hilarity as the movie is a creation of Scientology — the creator of all that Xenu stuff wrote the book that inspired this film. You may gain some unwanted insight into a truly warped view of the human condition and the universe.

Conclusion

Battlefield Earth is a so-bad-it’s-good masterpiece. Check it out if you’re in the mood for a comedy. If you’re looking for sci fi or action, stay far, far away.

IMDB: Battlefield Earth
Wikipedia: Battlefield Earth
Rotten Tomatoes: Battlefield Earth 3%

0 stars

Starring Kevin Hart, Tom Arnold, Snoop Dogg
Directed by Jessy Terrero

Synopsis

After lodging his posterior in an airline toilet, Nashwan Wade (Kevin Hart) is awarded a hefty settlement. He uses the cash to open NWA airlines, featuring a huge purple jet catering to the African American demographic. Hilarity ensues.

The Good

• Eventually, it ended.

The Bad

• Within the first few minutes, a flight attendant tosses a dog carrier onto the tarmac. The same dog is later sucked into a jet engine. That’s the least offensive joke. The rest are even more predictable, crass, and offensive.
• Way too much bawdy humor. Sex between a blind man and a potato, a flight attendant riding a pilot during descent, or the sad couple that copulate on the landing gear — while the plane is still in flight.
• Tom Arnold is father of the “Hunkee” family. His wife is the lady with the inverted lizard-like face, Missy Pyle. Predictably, they all get jungle fever.
• Crassly offensive to African Americans.

Conclusion

I write this review as a public service to prevent others from wasting their time with such cinematic toxicity. Steve Jobs, if the 99 cent rentals scrape the barrel like this one, I’ll quit renting them. You owe me a year of your salary just for the blind man and the potato.

IMBD: Soul Plane
Wikipedia: Soul Plane
Rotten Tomatoes: Soul Plane 19%

0 stars

Starring Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder
Directed by Sidney J. Furie

The fourth installment of the Superman franchise nearly made me cry (and would have been a good entry in the So Bad They’re Good movie contest). This is despite solving one problem of Superman III: Gene Hackman and Margot Kidder are back as Lex Luthor as Lois Lane — but unfortunately, everything else is a complete and utter disaster.

Injustices rain down from the start: cheesy zooming credits and a head-on Superman flying sequence that is tragically recycled throughout the film. We meet terrible characters like Lex Luthor’s nephew Lenny Luthor, a Valley-boy plaid-wearing retard (John Cryer) and Nuclear Man (more about him later).

Superman himself is out of character, sporting the undocumented super power of a super-stare used to rebuild the Great Wall of China and a super-kiss. Bad behavior continues as Clark Kent leaps off a building with Lois Lane, and reveals his secret identity. They then fly around the world, striving to relive the romance of Superman I, but due to bad effects and editing, Superman looks like he’s deliberately dropping and catching Lois repeatedly, smiling as she screams in fear — as if she’s a plaything. The capper is a “super-kiss” which wipes her memory of this nightmare. When did Supes become such an asshole?

Another lapse of reason is Superman’s quest to rid the world of nuclear weapons. He basically steals the world’s nuclear missiles, puts them into a gigantic super-space-sack, and tosses them into the sun. It’s essentially theft, and doesn’t solve the political issue of pissing off nuclear powers, or the practical issue of them simply building replacements.

But it gets worse: Meet Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow), created by Lex Luthor using a strand of Superman’s hair. Nuclear Man is solar powered, his outfit resembles a toga from Clash of the Titans, and his secret weapons are nuclear fingernails with which he must scratch Supes.

The romantic aspect is another head-shaker. Lana Lang of Superman III has inexplicably vanished, so Lacy Warfield (Mariel Hemmingway) appears as Clark Kent’s new distraction. In one mindless scene, Lacy has a date with Clark Kent while Lois has an interview with Superman. Superman has to change back into Clark Kent and vice versa repeatedly. No sparks fly, and all romance is abandoned for Nuclear Man and boring fist-fights on the moon.

Short list of other travesties:

• Clark Kent aerobics.
• Un-super-speech at the low-budget United Nations.
• Superman stopping a volcanic eruption by cutting of the top of a mountain with laser-eyes and tossing the top into the volcano.
• Nuclear Man throwing the Statue of Liberty into Manhattan.
• Nuclear Man kidnaps Lacy and flies her into deep space where she neither explodes or dies of asphyxiation.

If you must know, the cinematic suckitude is due to unfortunate movie monkey business. The Salkinds (producers of the first three films) sold the rights to financially troubled Golan & Globus of Cannon Films, who cut the movie’s budget in half after production started. The cost-cutting showed, so just before wide release, someone decided to hack the film to pieces in a last-ditch exercise in futility: 45 minutes of pointlessness was eliminated to create something even more pointless and borderline incomprehensible — but at least the end result wasted a little less of the audience’s time.

The DVD commentary track by Mark Rosenthal may be the first I’ve heard where the speaker trashes their film. It’s actually quite hilarious — he rants on and on about the vast difference between his intentions and the shameful results on screen. Rosenthal considers the movie a personal insult and essentially borderline-unethical in its treatment of Christopher Reeve, who was convinced to reprise his role script unseen.

The saddest revelation is that everyone’s intent was to make a better film than Superman III (which they considered an embarassment) but somehow created film that was even worse, killing the Superman franchise for nearly two decades. Superman IV is cinematic kryptonite.

IMDB: Superman IV
Wikipedia: Superman IV
Rotten Tomatoes: Superman IV 11%

Zero stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating: –4 stars

Starring Stan Ivar, Klaus Kinski, Diane Salinger
Directed by William Malone

I watched this cosmic travesty via Joost’s “The Really Terrible Film Channel”. Warning signs to waste my time elsewhere began with the very first frame, stating: “In the competition for new materials and advanced manufacturing techniques, two multi-national corporations have invested heavily in space,” read by a super-hokey narrator. We’re soon aboard the Shenandoah, a spacecraft populated by C-list television actors that all look sort of familiar, having guest-starred on ER, Who’s The Boss, or Knight Rider. Sadly, this flick is a step down for all of them.

Creature is a rip off of Alien, with the addition of a silent, dominatrix style security officer and the mysterious astronaut Hans Rudy Hofner (played by the infamous Klaus Kinski) who adds a heck of a lot of camp. The strange, white haired German steals the show with lines like “this creature is sly…!” and mumbling with his mouth full. But even his lively performance can’t raise the aroma of sheer death permeating this flick. He’s also killed before he can pull an Aguirre with this hapless crew.

This is one of those frustrating films where nobody notices anything is odd (although they are) until it’s too late — as if they’re already zombies. One by one, clueless crew members are possessed by an alien creature, and each new possession is used to lure others into the trap. This makes the pointless nude scene or two a little less so.

The final payoff is supposed to be seeing creature itself after it’s spent so much time hiding in the shadows. Unfortunately, it looks much like you’d imagine a low budget sci-fi-horror alien to look like — a guy in a monster suit with a head resembling a giant plastic elephant’s trunk.

There really is no reason to see Creature. Even the gratuitous nudity and explosions weren’t worth trudging through the vast reaches of boring, boring, boring (did I say boring?) galactic space.

Additional Reading: Feomante, X-Entertainment, Beckoning Chasm

IMDB: Creature
Wikipedia: Creature

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating = –3 stars

Starring Nobody In Particular
Directed by Neal Israel, Bradley R. Swirnoff

Joost has one channel, custom-made for my occasional desire for cinematic self-abuse: The Really Bad Movie Channel. There, I found the burn-out comedy Tunnel Vision, in the same vein as Amazon Women On The Moon or The Kentucky Fried Movie — a stream of semi-funny, slightly ribald SNL-esque skits. The goal of Tunnel Vision is to lampoon terrible television, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it’s too easy of a target and genuine, unintentionally bad television is often funny enough and in large supply on YouTube today.

Anyhow, as typical with the shotgun approach, I found a few bits fairly amusing, namely the fast food broccoli restaurant and a rock concert where the audience is invited on stage to pummel the musical group. There’s also a bit of political satire that has a decent bite — namely an oil company commercial that applauds the great benefit of killing those pests the ocean fish via oil spills.

But don’t get your hopes up. Despite having some brief appearances by John Candy, Chevy Chase, and Al Franken, Tunnel Vision is a complete waste of time — don’t bother!

IMDB: Tunnel Vision
Wikipedia: Tunnel Vision
Rotten Tomatoes: Tunnel Vision

Starring Joey de Leon, Keempee de Leon, Rene Requiestas
Directed by Tony Y. Reyes

Best described as “Filipino Bat Man and Robin” this terrible-on-the-verge-of-hilarious flick is an unauthorized Batman spoof with the familiar caped comic-book crusaders played by local Filipino comedians — none that I recognized, naturally, since I know nothing about Filipino cinema. Batman and Robin fight the Joker and the Penguin, and the antics and costumes are all lifted from the sixties television show.

I enjoyed watching the first half hour, trying make heads or tails of the mostly Filipino dialog (this DVD had no subtitles) that occasionally lapses to English for key movie phrases like “my hero!” or “I love you!”. The film also occasionally lapses into a musical — one feel-good number features the Joker and the Penguin robbing a bank joined by fifty armed heavies. Most of the songs are covers of American rock tunes translated into Philipino except for a few English words, so the Beach Boy’s Surfin’ Safari is changed into Batman and Robin.

The actor who played the Joker (Rene Requiestas) was pretty freaking hilarious, cackling like a cockatoo, sporting an appropriately cockamamie hairstyle.

Here’s a really crappy-quality trailer but from it, you can get the gist of this inanity:

In watching Alyas Batman en Robin, I realized the leotard is an extremely unforgiving outfit — the average joe looks decidedly non-super. But what’s funny is how behavior transforms once the super-suit is donned. This Batman acts quite heroic, employing a unique double-fisted alternating punch-to-the-stomach technique that serves to eliminate 90% of the heavies that attack him. No wonder he never employed his utility belt.

Anyhow, there really isn’t much else to say about this film (not even the midget Spider-Man or the modified black Chevy Batmobile). Here’s a picture gallery if you have even a passing interest in this flick. It’s truly one of those toxic entertainments, that could be really awesome in certain situations and in particular company, but if you’re feeling slightly off, I feel you’d not get five minutes in before saying “this sucks.”

IMDB: Alyas Batman en Robin
Wikipedia: Alyas Batman en Robin
Rotten Tomatoes: Alyas Batman en Robin

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating –7 stars

Starring Pat Morita, Erik Estrada, Donna Speir
Directed by Andy Sidaris

Andy Sidaris may be the Alfred Hitchcock of So Bad It’s Good movies. His “Bullets, Bombs, and Babes” style flicks all follow a fairly standard pattern:

• Exotic location (usually Hawaii).
• Playboy or Penthouse playmates in starring roles. This means little acting talent, but they bring considerable assets — of another sort — to certain scenes.
• B-movie actors (Do Or Die features Pat Morita and Erik Estrada).
• Scads of senseless action and cartoon violence.
• Low budget for a quicker road to profit.

This sort of movie has a specific target audience: bored twenty something college males. The movies are direct to video and rented by folks tempted by the women wielding weapons on the box covers. The low budget surely means it’s easier for the film to make back its investment.

While this sounds like great film-making from the business point of view, from the aesthetic perspective — they completely suck. Do Or Die is essentially soft porn with tons of mindless, dumb action movie contrivances like explosions and a connect-the-dots plot. However, due to the odd combination of Pat Morita (he plays a bad guy with the same last name as mine) and having grown up in Hawaii, this dumb movie hits a sweet spot of numb-skull entertainment.

Here’s the quick run down:

• We start with some cheesy synthesizer music. We’re on Molokai in Hawaii.
• Two women with extremely large bosoms are revealed to be government agents. Two muscle men with equally large biceps bring the pair to Kane (Pat Morita) who wants to kill them. Kane reveals that his full name is “Kaneshiro”. Alright, what joker submitted this film to the contest?
• Not even 7.00 minutes in, we get two nude women in a hot tub. One opens up a suitcase to reveal a satellite phone complete with radar dish. We cut to an executive office at the Sands hotel. On a table is another satellite dish, which is obviously meant to make it quite clear to us stupid viewers that the two individuals are talking to each other. But based on the low budget, I’m certain it’s the exact same prop.
• Kane has a presumably expensive computer that displays a moronically simple graphic. Here is us. There are they. The killer computer graphics are LED lights shining through a paper map. (8:28)
• The government agents, while driving a car, are shot at from behind by a machine-gun wielding muscle man in a helicopter. One of the agents shoots at the copter with a pistol — which is not too effective. A walking cane is turned into a missile launcher which destroys the helicopter. We should remember that random props may be lethal weapons. (9:40)
• Pat Morita performs shiatsu massage on a gorgeous woman, which is largely an excuse for a breast shot. Poor Pat must be wondering what his agent has gotten him into. (14:18)
• Erik Estrada shows up as a colonel. This movie just received –4 so bad it’s good points. We’re then treated to the most ridiculous backwards undressing scene ever, in a trailer at a remote control airplane show. (19:15)
• The agents, now driving in another car, are shot at from behind by bad guys in a car following them. They ought to avoid motorized vehicles, because any time they drive one, they’re shot at from behind. (27:26)
• Erik Estrada shows up with a really cool gun that sounds like a roman candle. (28:28)
• Some cowboy lounge where a really awful Achy Breaky Heart song is performed by a hot wench in a cheesy lingerie. A Fabio look-alike throws in some odd moves, and we’re thrust into a sudden and totally cheesy love scene. I feel unclean.
• A cat dies after eating poisoned catfish, keeping the diners from eating the food themselves. It sure is convenient to have a hungry animal show up at the right moment. (44:40)
• All these central characters seated around the table are completely indistinguishable from one another — I can’t even remember their names. This was also a problem in Plan 9 From Outer Space. (51:44)
• If you ever want to see a Pat Morita love scene, now you know where to look. I wish I hadn’t. (53:53)
• Remember those random props? Erik Estrada has three baseballs in his pocket. It’s later revealed one is actually a bomb. (1:00:00)
• Another pat Morita love scene. Was this in his contract? (1:05:00)
• Um. Really large — hair styles — beneath a very small waterfall. (1:10:20)
• “My god they’re shooting at us!” Because they’re driving a boat, of course two people will approach from behind and start attacking. (1:13:05)
• Yes, even Pat Morita has a satellite dish on his desk. (1:21:00)
• Ridiculous martial arts fighting. Two ninjas rise out of piles of leaves for a battle. One agent hits a ninja with a baseball bat. A ninja star is thrown into the other’s shin. Hey, I thought this was hand to hand combat — you cheaters! (1:25:00)
• A remote control helicopter is equipped with missiles. The two ninjas creep into a woodshed. Boom. Awesome, this means the film is nearly over! (1:29:13)

I’ve seen several of the Andy Sidaris films, and probably recall Hard Ticket To Hawaii most fondly. I don’t think there’s much continuity between them. I actually would be impressed if someone told me they had seen them all — and can actually distinguish one from another.

IMDB: Do Or Die

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating = –3 stars

Starring Julianna Margulies, Gabrielle Byrne
Directed by Steve Beck

The common denominator with bad horror movies is they’re simply not scary. In Ghost Ship, I found this true for two reasons. First, the characters are insanely stupid; and because they get themselves into dumb situations, it’s like, well, what happy place did you think you’d find on a dark, damp, abandoned ocean liner floating in the icy Pacific? Now you’re going to die; ooh, not scary. Second, the evil creature revealed as the mastermind behind the haunty stuff is quite non-scary. The result of un-spooky threats means that which is meant to be suspenseful ends up pro-boring.

Ghost Ship features tug boat with a crew of six, all on varying degrees of the stupid scale. Least stupid is Captain Murphy (Gabrielle Byrne) so I think you know what happens to him before the movie is half over. They’re asked by a random stranger to go check out the recently discovered, abandoned ocean liner Antonia Garza that has been lost at sea for decades. Upon finding the ship and surveying the damage, they plan to repair and navigate it back to land so they can claim whatever valuables it contains for themselves. But as horror movies go, an expected mishap destroys their tug boat, leaving them stranded on the creepy ocean liner.

One guy has a relatively non-stupid idea: build a raft and get the heck out of there, but no, the crew decides to stay. Creepy stuff starts happening — music coming from nowhere, dead bodies floating a pool, and a little ghost girl. In the film’s first flash back sequence, she complains of being bored. My thoughts exactly.

If you’ve seen any other horror movies you know the rest. One crew member is revealed to be the evil, supernatural being that is actually running this whole spook show. You can figure it out from this review, but it’s so mind-numbingly obvious I’m not spoiling anything. The ghost girl inspires more head thwacking — someone on the crew should have seen enough bad horror movies to think: hey, here’s a creepy ghost kid. Maybe we should ask her what’s going on?

Eventually Ghost Ship drifts toward an unsatisfying ending. By that point, I don’t know why any character would care about the gold bars that pretty much got everyone killed. Please skip this one.

IMDB: Ghost Ship
Rotten Tomatoes: Ghost Ship 12%

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating = –8 stars

Starring Dolly Read, John Lazar, Cynthia Myers
Directed by Russ Meyer

Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls can only be weakly described as psychedelic-musical-camp-soft-porn-satire. The wacky masterpiece was directed by Russ Meyer (admirer of top heavy actresses) featuring a screenplay written by Roger Ebert (yes, the movie critic with the up or down thumb). They were hired to create a sequel to Valley of The Dolls, a movie adaptation of a best selling book, but the author wanted nothing to do with the project. Hence the disclaimer at the start which denies any relationship to that also bad film.

The movie follows three women in a rock group that travel to Los Angeles for fame and fortune, documenting the hip, groovy, funky, heavy happenings they encounter in psychedelic late-sixties California. As with many bad films, the style oscillates wildly between genres. But this dream world — where no one blinks and rife with big hair, bright smiles, and ample assets — I found quite hilarious.

Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls also features some memorable performances, most notably Dolly Read as singer Kelly McNamara (so wide eyed her peepers might pop out of her head) and John Lazar as the quirky producer Ronnie “Z-Man” Barzell (Phil Spector?) who yammers Shakespeare while hiding a deep dark secret.

The actresses in the movie band The Carrie Nations have no musical ability, so the actual songs and voices are a combination of The Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Sandpipers, Stu Phillips, and a lady named Lynn Carey from the group Mama Lion. The result is the AM radio brand of wimpy PBS fund drive rock (horns and strings). The film’s lip synced performances are awesome, cartoony-retro cheese.

Many scenes reminded me of bad music cartoons I used to watch in the seventies — Josie and the Pussy Cats, The Archies, Scooby Doo, and the faded memory of The Brady Kids. Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls feels like a cartoon with a heavy dose of dad’s nudie mags and Robert Crumb comics. Were the Saturday morning cartoon makers inspired by Ebert and Meyer? I don’t want to know.

But this is no children’s flick. It contains homosexuality, ethnic diversity, abortion, drug use, and extreme violence. All this stuff is surprising, but post The Crying Game and Pulp Fiction - more darkly humorous than gut-wrenching.

Here’s my quick list of bad movie moments:

• Why on earth are credits shown over an action scene?
• Psychedelic nuttiness and hot sixties beat psychedelic music. Josie and the Pussycats! (3:06)
• Meyer: more jump cuts than Bruckheimer. I can’t make heads or tails of the really strange poetic ode to LA. (6:31)
• How not to shoot dialogue. Large hair, and Kelly’s eyes look like they’re going to pop out of her head. Does anybody ever blink? (10:22)
• A groovy party where meet the incomparable Z-Man, stoned thespian. Classic line: “It’s my scene and I’m freaking out!” The Strawberry Alarm Clock is there. (13:24)
• The birth of The Carrie Nations. This is my kind of retro schlock — girls faking it on the instruments, terrible lip sync, and overlays of the male musical producers. (29:06)
• Making it in a Rolls. Bentley. Rolls. Bentley. (39:54)
• “Listen to me hippie! I’m a capitalist I work for my living, not to suck off someone else. Up yours Ratso!” Love it. (42:57)
• Thumbs up to the ethnic diversity. (44:49)
• Dance segment in front of an old perv of the older generation. Now that music is groovy. Any explanation for the guy with the shades? (49:26)
• Oldster Porter is introduced to “smoking tea”. He puffs it like a cigar. I love the raunchy music and dejection when Mary slips into something more comfortable. Her groovy pad looks like thrift store throw up.
• Musical montage number 2 for Look On Up At The Bottom (unintentionally funny song title). (1:12:45)
• Is that a jet plane? (1:16:50)
• “Meet Randy Black — we call him The Man.” Inspired by Ali? Wasn’t that a seventies cartoon, too? (58:36)
• “You’re drunk and you’re stoned and you’re a lousy lay.” Edy Williams’ lips and teeth look like they could cut glass. I love the way the horns follow the ultimate insult. (1:01:00)
• Costume party led by Z-Man Bat-Man, Robin, and Tarzan. Askew camera angles, colored lights, drugs galore. Cue the song “The Valley of the Dolls in the corner of the sky, you are reaching for a cloud…” (1:25:00)
• Cute women getting it on. I noticed this happened in Tombs Of The Blind Dead, also. It seems when filmmakers run out of ideas, a lesbian scene comes to mind. (1:29:17)
• Man on man love scene that never gets off the ground. “How now jungle lad?” “I don’t want to know your story! You’re a stoned freak!” Z-Man calls himself “super woman” and tries to get it on with the blonde lothario in the tiger print Speedos. (1:34:40).
• Oh crap. I didn’t realize the Z-Man had a deep dark secret. Decapitation. There’s guy in a Nazi suit running around. It’s like the Scooby Doo gang hunting down Charlie Manson. (1:37:15).
• Some really strange narration explaining all the characters really were there to teach us a lesson about life. I’m not buying it — this is just a cover up for realizing your film is terrible. (1:44:28)
• Brady Bunch Epilogue. (1:47:52)

This flick may be new “so bad it’s good” masterpiece. I’d actually watch this one again. But I’m a sucker for girls with guitars and that cheesy James Bond sixties vibe. Anybody want to loan me the soundtrack?

IMDB: Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls
Wikipedia: Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls
Rotten Tomatoes: Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls 57%

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating = –8 stars

Starring Linda Carol, Wendy O. Williams, Sybil Danning
Directed by Tom DeSimone

My eyes are really burning now, but there’s much laughter. Reform School Girls features tough women acting manly, senseless violence, a crayon-on-construction-paper plot, tortured emotion, cat fights, prison riots, ridiculous camera angles, over-acting, pointless underwear and nudity, a low budget, and cheesy soundtrack to boot. Did I leave anything out? Think 1986 on infinite repeat over night on some pay cable channel. It’s bad and badderer.

The so-bad-it’s-funny movie elements of Reform School Girls are endless, but here’s my abridged list:

• Movie title appears over shocked juvenile Jenny’s (Linda Carol) face. After a stern lecture from a judge, the gavel starts a rock tune and the film begins. (2:04)
• The words “Pride More” on the van are stickers. I love it when a film is too cheap to spray paint on a rented vehicle. (4:44)
• Not even five minutes in and the women have to undress, take a shower, and sprayed down with DDT. (5:30)
• Lisa is not used to hard time and has a stuffed bunny toy that she can’t give up. It squeaks. It’s all she has in the world! (6:21)
• We met Edna (Pat Ast), the head matron — Nurse Ratchet on steroids. She takes Lisa’s bunny away. Squeak, Squeak. (9:16)
• The dorm looks like a Motley Crue video. This film was made when both band members and groupies sported the same hair styles. (12:40)
• Charlie (Wendy O Williams), the resident tough dame, is lifting a barbell. She’s blond, brutal, and usually wears a leather bikini. She should have been the villain in Runaway instead of Gene Simmons. Fight! (14:34)
• Are those tampons hanging from chains? (16.09)
• Stuffed rabbit on fire. (24:43)
• Keyboard music for the entry of Warden Sutter (Sybil Danning), a dominatrix warden with an S on her buckle. I have to watch Battle Beyond The Stars again. (34:05)
• Hard labor means hoeing in one dirt patch with little bits of carrots scattered about. Hey, that’s the first man we’ve seen in quite some time; guess what he’ll be doing later. (37:12)
• “You’re all wankers! This is place was running smooth until you started messing things up!” The contraband kitten is out of the bag. (1:05:42)
• Lisa dies falling from water tower. Crazy prison riot — beds, feathers flying, women in underwear destroying everything. Warden Sutter fires a shot gun to end this nonsense. (1:10:05)
• Edna empties a fire hose on Jenny. Phallic symbol noted. 1:14:03.
• Why does Edna have such a long ash on her cigarette? (1:22:15)
• The angry women march for justice. Edna grabs a gun and starts shooting, causing everyone to run in circles and scream. I think the leather bikini has out worn its welcome. (1:24:48)
• Oh wait, “Pridemore” is spray painted on the bus. I guess I was wrong about low budget. (1:27:35)
• The climax is serious B-Movie schlock-o-rama. Charlie rides a bus into the water tower and the whole thing blows up in flames. (1:27:59)

Man this movie was bad. It’s so bad I constantly wondered if the filmmakers intended it to be so awful or were they just looking for a quick buck?

The music was all done by Wendy O. Williams, lead singer for the Plasmatics. She kinda sounds like Byran Adams crossed with KISS and Joan Jett. Her gruff performance is the primary reason to see this film. But don’t take that as an endorsement.

Here are some articles written by some folks who felt it in them to spend much more time thinking about this film than I:

• Prison Flicks.com
• Trash City: The Incredibly Bad Film Show

IMDB: Reform School Girls
Rotten Tomatoes: Reform School Girls 17%

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating –2 stars

Starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendez, Peter Fonda
Directed by Mark Steven Johnson

Seems like most of the films entered in the contest have been horror movies. Still, Ghost Rider is the best out of the So Bad It’s Good movies I’ve seen, but not because it’s awful. It’s actually okay — although I’m glad I didn’t pay good money to see it in the theater. Even as a rental it’s a waste of time.

Based on a Marvel comic book, Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage), a stunt motorcyclist, sells his soul to the Mephistopheles in order to cure his father of cancer. Mephistopheles transforms Blaze into the Ghost Rider and commands him to fight the devil’s son, Blackheart who wants to create a hell on Earth. Along the way, Blaze’s lifetime love Roxanne (Eva Mendez) discovers and must come to terms with the fact that she’s in love with a burning skeleton that rides a motorcycle and fights off denizens of the underworld.

I actually found the first quarter of Ghost Rider fairly entertaining, especially Nicolas Cage as the grown-up Johnny Blaze. The quirky actor displays some unique, neurotic character touches like drinking coffee straight out of the pot and listening to The Carpenters before making a big jump — almost like a dark, confused Elvis just before show time. Also truly strange is when Blaze transforms into Ghost Rider, a leather jacket wearing skeleton with a burning skull head, riding an amped-up motorbike.

Because I’m reviewing this film in a so bad it’s good manner, here are the moments that evoked unintentional chuckles on my part:

• Johnny Blaze, on the ramp of a huge jump, puts his hands out and fireworks explode! I guess this is foreshadowing of his later pyromanica powers. (19:13)
• What the heck does Blaze have in his martini glass — jellybeans? (26:21)
• “You’re stepping on Karen.” Blaze in Elvis shades drinks coffee straight from the pot, while listening to The Carpenters. (32:10)
• Why would Roxanne pull out a Magic 8 Ball while waiting for Blaze to show up for a dinner date? Don’t tell me she carries it around in her purse. (42:13)
• The first transformation of Blaze into Ghost Rider. At this point, I was like — okay… (49:00)
• Old guy asks Blaze to sterilize a needle, and Blaze tries to light it on fire with his hands. (59:28)

After the above, Ghost Rider collapses into action-horror-western-comic book-bad movie nuttiness. Believe me, you already know how it all plays out. Just add in all the expected horror flick conventions such as special effects, creepy monsters, helpless police, and lazy plot devices. Blaze will get the girl, save the world, and lay the groundwork for a sequel, although in this case I’d be surprised if that happens.

IMDB: Ghost Rider
Wikipedia: Ghost Rider
Rotten Tomatoes: Ghost Rider 28%

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating: –4 stars

Starring Faye Dunaway, Diana Scarwid, Steve Forrest
Directed by Frank Perry

Recently on Market Street I saw a mother shoving her screaming child into a stroller, hysterically shrieking all sorts of dramatics about teaching children to behave. Perhaps this was justified, but to an outside observer it just looked like a big person beating the crap out of a smaller, weak, helpless one. The added layer of public humiliation just made me feel terrible.

Well, if mom keeps it up, child eventually grows up and makes a film like Mommie Dearest — and I felt terrible watching it. It’s based on a tell-all memoir written by Joan Crawford’s adopted daughter, Christina. Joan Crawford, the famous actress, is played by Faye Dunaway (whom I really loved in Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown). Unfortunately, instead of a gorgeous gangster or femme fatale, here Dunaway plays a noxious hag.

Withering critiques of Hollywood’s effect on actresses can be compelling, as in All About Eve or Sunset Boulevard, but Mommie Dearest goes for the sensational and bizarre jugular. There’s nothing sympathetic about this abusive, nutcase Crawford character. We get zero introspection into her life history or why she behaves in such a neurotic-moronic manner.

Well, we do learn early on that Joan has an obsession with cleanliness and perfection, as she berates a housekeeper who neglects to polish the floor beneath a potted plant. Soon, Joan’s desire to raise a presumably perfect child means locking Christina in a pool dressing room, cutting off Christina’s hair, and destroying garden roses before taking a hatchet to an orange tree. Especially tense is a lunch where Christina refuses to eat rare, bloody steak, so Joan serves the same meal over and over until one of them cracks.

Eventually, Joan’s behavior becomes so random and bizarre that all I could do is meekly chuckle at the sheer nonsense of this witchy bitch gone bats. The most bizarre scenes:

• “No wire hangers! Ever!” Joan in a mud mask flips out about Christina’s $300 clothes on wire hangers. Then its, oh crap, daughter is beaten with one. Suddenly, it’s a lesson on how to clean the spotless bathroom, resulting in Old Dutch cleanser shaken all over the place. Christina is ordered to wipe it all up. Cinderella had it easy. (1:00:00)
• “I’m not one of your fans!” blurts Christina, spit flying. Joan again goes ape and starts choking her now teenage daughter. Housekeepers intercede, wrestling Joan off her dying offspring. Joan screams in an action-movie manner that had me laughing. Daughter then prays at church, possibly in hopes of an exorcism. (1:32:30)
• “But my character is only 28 years old…” Christina’s budding television career is sidelined by food poisoning. Joan stands in for ill daughter on the show, seemingly refusing to allow any hope of Christina becoming a better actress than Mommie Dearest. Freud, your field day is calling. (1:53:50)
• “As usual, she has the last word.” “Does she?” Finally, the end. Joan is dead… but Christina and her brother learn that mom wrote them out of the will. Ultimate suckitude. Luckily, Christina’s ambiguous “Does she?” surely refers to the book and film we just watched — and not a Mommie Dearest sequel. Anything but that!

The flick kinda-sorta works as a dark comedy, horror film, or camp masterpiece. A big element of the unintentional laughs is Dunaway’s acting, which drifts into caricature and eventually “drama queen” of the corny order. It doesn’t help that her costumes are often over-the-top, complete with painted-on eyebrows and an endless array of slightly askew hairstyles that have her resembling a wet, washed up drag queen.

I must mention the rather disturbing similarity of Mommie Dearest to Freddy Got Fingered, an equally awful film I recently reviewed, in which Tom Green attempts to “out compete” his father by hosing him down with elephant semen. Mommy Dearest is a battle between mother and daughter, perhaps displaying an “Electra” complex. Both films depict parents in a cruel, caricatured fashion which likely formed when the filmmakers were seven years old. And yes, by saying that, I do believe a seven year old could have written Mommie Dearest.

IMDB: Mommie Dearest
Wikipedia: Mommie Dearest
Rotten Tomatoes: Mommie Dearest 57%

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating: –8 stars

Starring Bela Lugosi, Vampira, Tor Johnson
Directed by Ed Wood

I’ve seen Plan 9 From Outer Space, directed by Ed Wood, three times now. It never gets any better. It is beyond suck, and truly crosses over the line into “must see” territory. Pretty much everything about it is horribly stupor inducing, and often laughable.

Here’s a list of the most notable offenses:

• Terrible cast: Vampira. Tor Johnson. Bela Lugosi. But none of the big names have any dialogue. The rest you’ve never heard of but they speak much too often.
• Terrible plot: A gut-wrenching combination of horror, sci-fi, detective, and war movies. Every cliche from each genre is employed.
• Terrible characters: Absolutely none of the characters are notable in any way.
• Terrible dialogue. Every character phones in the exact same, terribly written dialogue, as if written by one clueless filmmaker. Start with the the Criswell introduction that precedes the film, boring beyond the pale, which ends with the classic line, “Can your heart stand the shocking facts — of grave robbers from outer space?” The rest of the film contains more of the same head-scratching language.
• Terrible continuity errors: Seams of filmmaking are on constant display:
  • Little effort is made to conceal stock footage.
  • Sets don’t match: the most egregious error is in the Bela Lugosi scenes, which look improvised — he’s goofing around in a Dracula costume. All of his scenes look like they were made before the film was thought through completely.
  • The “old man” Bela Lugosi dies early on and when his “undead” character appears as Dracula in the later scenes with other characters, he’s played by another actor. In hopes that you won’t realize it’s someone else, the new guy covers his face with the cape.
  • It seems doubts about the film’s consistency were anticipated by Wood and are weakly addressed through the film itself. The result is truly laughable dialogue where characters attempt to explain things, which only makes things worse. Example: at the funeral the “old man” two funeral attendees wonder why was he buried in a crypt when his wife was buried in the ground (the first funeral was filmed outdoors and the crypt scene is filmed in an indoor set). One character mumbles that it’s something to do with family tradition, or superstition of some sort. Better to leave this question alone, but Wood fills our ears with pointless dialogue, answering questions nobody is asking.
• Terrible everything else: I haven’t even mentioned the bad acting, music, special effects, costumes, set design, or basically anything else having to do with film making. It’s all sub-par here.

Anyhow, here’s my list of highlights / lowlights that are must sees of Plan 9 From Outer Space:

• The first sighting of the UFO. The plane cockpit is obviously a set, as noted by the plastic drape over the entrance and controls that are essentially semicircles on poles. They see something: A UFO. It’s a tin plate on a string. Holey Mackerel! (4:15)
• Bela Lugosi death scene: After his wife’s funeral, the “old man” emerges from his house which is now “a tomb” and the sky a “covering for her dead body.” Why doesn’t he speak? He’s then run over by a car off screen. (6:53)
• Invasion and war on the aliens: This is all constructed from stock footage and amateurish special effects. Note the actual footage of Colonel Edwards standing alone in front of a sheet, in a feeble attempt to blend in with the borrowed footage. Contains the brilliant line: “They attacked a town. A town of people. People who died.” (17:19)
• Meet the aliens: These Flash Gordon rejects greet each other by crossing arms — strange invaders with alien ways. They explain Plan 9: “A very complex plan of resurrection of the dead.” (22:00)
• The aliens’ message to Earth: Two generals take in the serious threat of alien invasion. “This is Eros, a space soldier from a planet in your galaxy… you didn’t actually think you were the only intelligent life in the universe… how can any race be so stupid?” (43:40)
• Tor Johnson attacks an alien: The electro gun is jammed! Choking! That was too close! I love the female alien’s sickly reaction. (48:36)
• Dracula attacks a policeman. Why doesn’t anybody run? Is acting in a film that boring? Check out the woman’s hilarious, knuckle-biting reaction shot and Wood’s ham-fisted inability to build tension. Gun shots are fired. Dracula deploys a double-shoulder-shop. A strange noise kills Dracula. The cape is pulled back from the corpse to reveal — ultimate suckitude. Cue scary music and my laughter. 53:46.
• Earthlings confront the aliens: The reason for the invasion: “Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots!” The alien explains the retarded theory of the “solanite bomb”: a way to explode the actual particles of sunlight. It makes no sense, but the alien retorts, “Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!” (1:04.00)
• The climax: The last few minutes starting at (1:12:27) are better, mostly because two cops finally get a clue and use brute force against one of the undead. All hell breaks loose with some fist fights, fires, and boredom-chasing explosions. One more continuity error cover-up occurs as the lady wonders what happened to Vampira. But Criswell returns to save the day, and he is welcomed as it means the film will soon be over.

Plan 9 From Outer Space is a genuinely terrible movie. It’s so bad it could never be remade — there is absolutely nothing worth reimagining. I’m starting to love it, in a strange way.

This whole dreck of a flick is on Google Video: check it out if you dare.

IMDB: Plan 9 From Outer Space
Wikipedia: Plan 9 From Outer Space
Rotten Tomatoes: Plan 9 From Outer Space 59%

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating –3 stars

Starring Lone Fleming, Cesar Burner, Maria Elena Arpon
Directed by Amando de Ossorio

Argh. After watching this flick I feel I’ve been blinded — my eyes picked out by ravens.

I’m not a horror fan, mostly because scary movie stuff has a bad habit of becoming funny if it isn’t executed well. Unconvincing costumes, fake blood, and terrible acting can all sink the threat of impending doom. Tombs of the Blind Dead is yet another entry in the Webomatica bad movie contest, and it’s pretty much both, and the film’s title could have also included “tone deaf” and “dumb.”

This foreign entry into schlock-horror starts out rather slow, but it’s all a tension build-up to about 30 minutes in when the scary stuff begins. Creepy monsters start chasing a pretty girl and eventually other clueless people, all so paralyzed by fear that their brains freeze and they become easy prey. There’s a break in the action as a professor educates the main characters about the old legend regarding Knights Templar — which is conveniently ignored.

Tombs Of The Blind Dead contains a long list of unintentionally hilarious horror movie moments and cliches:

• Two pretty girls = lesbian encounter.
• Pretty girls remove their clothing for no logical reason.
• Pretty girl thinks it’s a good idea to get off a train and wander into an abandoned village, alone.
• Creepy monsters in terrible makeup, and a skeletal hand that is essentially a long stick with immobile fingers.
• Totally manipulative horror film tactics such as sudden camera zooms enhanced by scary sound effects.
• Creepy monsters move so slowly that anybody under the age of 54 could outrun them. And the kicker: they’re blind. But of course, everyone screams when they approach, making the blind thing not much of an issue.
• While chased by creepy monsters, girl’s impractical shoe gets stuck in a staircase.
• Two people ride horses into the abandoned town — and the horses run off, conveniently leaving them stranded.
• The local police are useless.
• A demonic-looking doctor (well, he actually kind of looks like Jack Black) in the morgue shows the wrong body — scaring everyone — for no reason whatsoever.
• Demonic-looking Jack Black doctor is then killed by pretty girl who has inexplicably been transformed into an undead vampire (I think).
• Pretty undead vampire girl is set on fire in a mannequin factory.
• Scary (satanic?) blood drinking ritual with cuts on a nude woman’s body… that looks like a mannequin. No, I don’t think it’s from the factory.
• Nobody takes the legend concerning dead Knights Templar seriously until it’s too late.
• Four people go to the abandoned town but through petty disagreements, are separated and picked off one by one by creepy monsters.
• Did I mention buckets of fake blood?
• One of the people killed is a real asshole, so we’re glad to see him perish.

Probably the most notable bad movie element of Tombs of the Blind Dead is its complete lack of a resolution. The monsters kill most of the main characters — and that’s the end. There’s never any satisfying headway made in fighting these creepy, slow moving vampire undead Knights Templar creatures, and now they have ridden a train into town where I guess they will kill even more glaically moving, clueless Europeans. Maybe this lack of an ending is why there were several sequels. I think it’s safe to say I’m not going to watch any of them.

To top things off, I found a bit of trivia at Hollywood Gothique that is laughably bad:

TOMB OF THE BLIND DEAD also underwent the indignity of being retitled REVENGE FROM PLANET APE, in an attempt to pass it off as part of the PLANET OF THE APES film series. The DVD includes a brief alternate opening sequence wherein a voice-over narrator explains that the eyeless horrors we are to meet later in the film are actually simian invaders from another planet, defeated and blinded centuries ago!

Now, that’s a bad movie. Do I have to watch more of these? Oh, the horror.

IMDB: Tombs Of The Blind Dead
Wikipedia: Tombs Of The Blind Dead
Rotten Tomatoes: Tombs Of The Blind Dead 67%

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating: –5 stars

Starring Tom Green, Rip Torn, Marisa Coughlan
Directed by Tom Green

Uh… okay… this movie made me angry. I actually gave up on it halfway, and only endured the rest for the sake of the contest.

First, I don’t know much about Tom Green except he pioneered an MTV style of “shock” humor, appealing to teenage boys the age of twelve. I am not twelve, but I can imagine the state of mind: everything representing adult life “sucks” and the coolest thing ever is one of your friends destroying a classroom while riding a skateboard, swearing profusely, hitting adults with a long phallic object (a stick, a sausage… anything long and hard) and chanting “bum bum” and “ding dong.”

That’s basically the gist of Freddy Got Fingered, except with the addition of an angry father and a handicapped girl who loves oral sex. Gordon (Tom Green) is 28 and still lives in his parents’ basement. His dream is to sell his cartoon, “X-Ray Cat” to Hollywood. This whole plot line is supplemented by gross-out comedy and an increasingly tasteless and sadistic battle between Gordon and his cruel father (Rip Torn).

Unfortunately, Gordon is a despicable character whom I didn’t root for, and therefore the entire film is pointless. To quote a character talking about Gordon’s cartoons: “It sucks.” Later, Gordon uses that word in another sense when he talks about a “sucking to date” ratio, which is about the extent of Green’s wit.

I did find the film funny when Green gets past the gross-out stuff and enters the more surreal and insane — such as “backwards man,” Zebras in America, or playing the piano with sausages and steaks hanging from strings, singing “daddy would you like some sausages.” But this stuff is few and far between.

It’s as if Tom Green wrote the entire screenplay in one draft over the course of an hour, jotting down the first things that came to mind. It’s rather amusing as insight into an uninhibited male psyche. Gordon has a gigantic Oedipal complex — he and his father share the same facial hair and at one point he advises mom to sleep with Greeks and basketball players. At the film’s “climax” he hoses dad down with elephant penis. Freud would have had a field day.

To save you the trouble, here is a list of terrible, horrible things in Freddy Got Fingered that I now want to forget:

• X-Ray Cat.
• Tom Green grabs and waves a horse penis.
• Tom Green holds a large salami between his legs and hits a co-worker while saying “ding dong.”
• Tom Green guts a deer and rolls around in its skin on a road and is then hit by a truck.
• Tom Green watches two horses mating while eating a sandwich.
• Tom Green licks the exposed, broken shin bone of his friend after a skateboarding accident.
• Tom Green delivers a baby, bites its umbilical cord, and then swings the newborn around his head like a yo-yo. Blood sprays all over everything.
• A cute handicapped girl says she likes rockets because they are hot, hard, and long, and asks Tom to whack her in the legs with a long stick. While removing his pants, she finds that Tom Green has an umbilical cord still taped to his body that never fell off of his navel.
• Tom Green in a scuba suit drops soap on a rope in the toilet and dives in to retrieve it.
• Rip Torn takes down his pants and invites Tom Green to do the deed.
• Tom Green hoses Rip Torn down with elephant semen.
• Shaq doing something extremely odd on a bed in purple shorts.

I find situational humor extremely funny when it involves sympathetic characters. When a sex-deprived teenager we feel sorry for humps a pie and might get caught by his dad, it’s funny. Borat was also on higher level of characterization and social satire.

Ultimately, the only humor here in imagining how this film was made. The biggest joke of all is on whomever approved this project and allowed Green free reign over millions of wasted dollars.

Now, in the context of the So Bad It’s Good contest, Freddy Got Fingered easily one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. I’ll have to watch a few more terrible films and see how it stacks up, but right now this film is a true low point in awful movie making. I feel like someone is laughing at me for watching it.

IMDB: Freddy Got Fingered
Wikipedia: Freddy Got Fingered
Rotten Tomatoes: Freddy Got Fingered 10%