RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[javakoala]

I read this review 2.5 hours ago but one bit is still pestering me.......

"Morbid" (2013)

While the three-foot schlong towards the end was different,

.......How exactly does the errr three-foot schlong come into play? Is it relevant to the murders...? To the big game...? Or is the schlong non-diegetic.......? I might lose sleep over this.

The final girl goes off on a rant about how the killer uses the big knife to make up for a tiny wang. The killer rolls his eyes and whips out the 3 footer to her horror. If her rambling rant hadn't taken so long, the joke would have been a hint funnier. Still, really out of place in a scene shot with the intention of building tension (failed miserably to no one's shock given the poor structuring of the rest of the direction).

It might have been better if she delivered her rant, he made the motions of whipping it out, and you only see her horrified face as she screams. Leave SOMETHING to the imagination. Alas, that would require both a competent director and a decent actress, neither of which had any connection to the film.

[javakoala]

"Blood Pi" -- aka "Sorority House" (2020)

Instead of physical self-harm, I just watch movies like this. It may be more self-destructive in the end.

Amber kills her parents and puts them in the basement of the family home. Why? Don't ask, because the movie will never tell you.

She goes to her college and, out of the blue, decides to befriend the class dorkette. Why? Again, don't ask.

After giving the dork girl a hint of self-confidence, said dork girl decides to believe the b***hy sorority girls (who were picking on her) when she say she can be like them and join their sorority.

Cue Amber's killing spree.

No character motivations are explained other than a beefy jock (played by director Jordan Pacheco) having the hots for a mousy girl in the sorority, even though she sells him out to save face with her "sisters", and that the girls intend to humiliate dork girl Agnis in sick, sexual ways, including a roofie rape scene you are shown in detail.

Acting is mostly awful, though Anna Rizzo (Amber) isn't horrible even when she overdoes it now and then. Editing done by a dull food processor. Mostly boring gore that is utterly unconvincing.

The bulk of the film is built around various parties thrown by frats and sororities, yet you never EVER see more than 7 people in any group shot. And, somehow, Lilith Astaroth gets nearly top billing even though she has about 90 seconds of screen time as a DJ at one of the parties.

Stupid film poorly put together combined with throw-away performances equals a waste of your time. Worse yet, this stinker has had two shots at life and died on the table both times. Originally released as "Blood Pi" to VOD, then released on physical media as "Sorority House" a couple of years later. I'm shocked the director doesn't hand out copies of the movie in an attempt to give it some sort of traction. Hope they didn't spend much money on this wreck. If I was an investor, I'd be demanding my pound of flesh, which the director, given his size, could easily give without losing a bit of his bulk or an ounce of his non-existent pride.

[javakoala]

"The Families Feud" (2023)

How is God's Divine Name does this have a rating of 7.0 on IMDb without trickery?

Okay, compared to a lot of the garbage I've been watching, this movie has a bit of brains behind it, but it is only there to say, "Hey, we know our movies, so give us a break, okay?"

Some Mafia-type goombas go deep into the backwoods to bury someone they whacked. Based on their reaction to the bagged-up body, it took them a LONG time to bury the body. Yeah, I know, don't apply real-world stuff to movies, but the level of rot they complained about wouldn't have set in if they buried the body within hours of killing the poor bastard.

Anyway, while attempting to bury the body, a few Bigfoot, or Squatch (short for Sasquatch), hunters appear. They have a gun fight and one of the Don's army is wounded. The capo and his right-hand guy go for revenge. After offing the wounded guy. Go figure.

They end up captured, and the Don knows this.

Just so happens that the Don is under fire from another Mafia boss, who is attending the longest running poker game I have ever witnessed. But whatever. It's a movie, right?

You can see where this is heading. Things escalate. More Familia are sent in, and more hillbillies arrive. An all-out war takes place in the backwoods while the Don is fending off hired killers in the big city.

This is a really great set-up. Totally fumbled because the filmmakers must be Tarantino freaks and wanted to show their knowledge of film history as they work in endless references to infinitely better films of the past. None of these references are subtle. I. Mean. NONE!

These references are occasionally funny, but they undermine what could have easily been a "Southern Comfort"-type of situation. I would have loved that.

Instead, beyond the "slap-you-in-the-face" film references, you get poor editing and performances that are both over the top as well as being deeply rooted in simplistic cliches from both "Deliverance" and every crappy Mafia movie, up to and including "The Godfather" franchise. It doesn't work as a straight film, and it ultimately fails as a parody. A double loss.

How in hell does this movie have a rating of 7.0 on IMDb if not for padding by the cast and crew of this mediocre attempt? I mean, if they had played it straight, it might have been interesting, but as a cheap comedy, it falls on its face, even though it clearly had a reasonable budget to work with.

I picked this because of Anna Rizzo, from the previously reviewed/mentioned "Blood Pi". Again, she does a decent job here and, again, looks utterly wonderful with her cleavage deserving its own screen credit. I hope this lady finds some success outside of these crappy movies, but even in low-budget fare, she stands out.

Seriously, other than friends of the production skewing the score, this film deserves a marginal 6 for simply not being totally braindead, but never a 7. A 5 or a 4.5 would be far more accurate.

Again, like most of the recent films I have listed here, it can be found on Tubi. And, no, I'm not advertising for them. They just have a lot of crap to watch. Including the old-school "The Partridge Family" series, which I watched the first episode again and greatly enjoyed in spite of it aging somewhat poorly.

This movie, however, is worth a watch if you just have to see the Mafia, hillbillies, and a touch of Bigfoot horror blended into a comedy that barely works 37% of the time. Be ready for a TON of jokes based on the most tired cliches connected with each overall category.

[claws]

How is God's Divine Name does this have a rating of 7.0 on IMDb without trickery?

It only has 37 votes so far. Sometimes people involved with a certain movie boost IMDb rating with fake accounts. However, a rating becomes 'legit' at IMDb when it has 10,000 or 25,000 votes.

[M.10rda]

It's got Bigfoot, so I'll be watching it eventually. Unfortunately, the movie I'll be reviewing has no giant cryptids...

THE HOUSE OF USHER (1989):
...Unless you consider a portly-looking Donald Pleasance not appearing until nearly an hour into the movie to be a "giant cryptid". Pleasance has a lot of fun playing a kindly-then-menacing kook and therefore is the only reason to watch this absolutely pathetic, grueling 80s Euro-horror. The drawbacks are an entirely bored/hung-over Oliver Reed  sleepwalking through the entire film, a leading lady who can't act at all playing a character who is exceptionally dumb, a molasses-slow plot that repeatedly loses itself, dialogue that routinely contradicts previous dialogue, and only a little bit of gore... nearly all of which is sadistically rung out at the expense of innocent female characters instead of from the loathsome male antagonists. In other words, not much fun...

...So much so that I stopped watching it possibly as many as SEVEN (7) months ago with only about 10 minutes to go in the running time. For some reason I decided to wrap it up this weekend, and in some small way I'm glad I did, because the final scene elevates HOUSE OF USHER to the level of mythically bad movies: as the leading lady stumbles from the burning HOUSE, one of the bad guys or another leaps through a window at her. HARD CUT to... no, not her waking up in bed in her hotel from the first scene of the movie... 'cause It Was All A Dream... instead, Hard Cut to her and her husband driving down a country road as they did about 5 minutes into the film, towards the House of Usher, then deciding to turn around and drive the other way! Yes... the crap filmmakers decided to do the It Was All A Dream bit from countless shocking finales without the main character even waking up.

Now THAT'S some next-level laziness. It would almost be MONSTER-A-GO-GO galling, except MONSTER-A-GO-GO really puts its back into its bulls**t ending. Now I've spoiled the end of HOUSE OF USHER for you, and the end is (besides Pleasance) the only noteworthy thing about it. Thus - never ever watch it! You're welcome.

1/5
MONSTER-A-GO-GO is a much better film than HOUSE OF USHER. I mean, obv!

[javakoala]

"Amityville Frankenstein" (2023)

Supposedly cobbled together from a FMV game called "Fiendish Theives". Not making an excuse for this. Just supplying information.

I always scoff at people who repeatedly say in their reviews, "This is the worst movie I have ever seen." Then, two reviews later, they repeat the claim. They are clearly idiots.

THIS...thing I just watched is truly the worst thing I have YET seen. If there is something worse out there (and I am sure there is), I dread finding it.

OVER 8 MINUTES OF REPEATED FOOTAGE OF TWO GUYS WALKING UP STAIRS IN MINIMAL LIGHTING!!!

The film begins with credits that run longer than a prostate exam by a foul-smelling inmate named Bubba with warts on his member.

Then we get "Somewhere near Amityville..." before watching a moron select snacks to eat while watching a horror movie. Yep, that is the Amityville connection. Period.

The dork goes into a room loaded with DVDs and Blu-rays (as a way of someone showing off their collection) where he opts to watch something on TV.

"Terror Telly" is the show, with a nearly two-minute long intro (which is repeated, in its entirety, for the "Thanks for watching" and "Next time on..." bits).

A dreadful host introduces the film.

OVER 8 MINUTES OF REPEATED FOOTAGE OF TWO GUYS WALKING UP STAIRS IN MINIMAL LIGHTING!!!

Two thieves go into a warehouse to steal a watch. Good luck figuring this out as the audio is severely glitched and virtually unintelligible.

OVER 8 MINUTES OF REPEATED FOOTAGE OF TWO GUYS WALKING UP STAIRS IN MINIMAL LIGHTING!!!

They finally come to a room where they find a woman's body and ignore another body leaning against a wall.

One of the guys attempts to turn on the lights, which leads to him being electrocuted for nearly 3 minutes, but, during the last third of this endless scene, the spark awakens the two bodies.

OVER 8 MINUTES OF REPEATED FOOTAGE OF TWO GUYS WALKING UP STAIRS IN MINIMAL LIGHTING!!!

The two guys scream a lot.

We then see the mad scientist who wanders around spouting something that I could not understand no matter how hard I tried or how loud I turned the audio. He is grabbed by hands and pulled behind a wall.

OVER 8 MINUTES OF REPEATED FOOTAGE OF TWO GUYS WALKING UP STAIRS IN MINIMAL LIGHTING!!!

Then we get a glimpse of "tomorrow night's feature" titled something like "I Watch You Slowly Die Whilst Sipping My Tea". This drags on for 4 or five minutes.

OVER 8 MINUTES OF REPEATED FOOTAGE OF TWO GUYS WALKING UP STAIRS IN MINIMAL LIGHTING!!!

Then the show ends. The dork goes to bed, and the overly-long opening credits repeat.

I wish I was kidding. All of this misery wrapped up in about 62 minutes.

OVER 8 MINUTES OF REPEATED FOOTAGE OF TWO GUYS WALKING UP STAIRS IN MINIMAL LIGHTING!!!

Have I made it clear that there is a lot of footage of two guys walking up stairs?

This had to be someone's idea of humor. This person or these persons should never be allowed to interact with humanity ever again. Even Zach Snyder is better than these people, and I hope Zach emulates Tony Scott's final moments on this planet. That should tell you something. I mean. other than telling you that I am not a nice person, because I really am not. Especially after watching OVER 8 MINUTES OF REPEATED FOOTAGE OF TWO GUYS WALKING UP STAIRS IN MINIMAL LIGHTING!!!

Other than all the stuff I have said, this movie really sucked. And not like an ugly hooker with broken teeth giving a BJ in a dark alley while you are both whacked out on meth. That would be pleasurable in comparison. 

For those who care, there is one scene of fart/shart humor. It, like the rest of the film, is not funny.

[lester1/2jr]

Java - have you ever seen "Marina Monster"? if you like self harm

[javakoala]

Java - have you ever seen "Marina Monster"? if you like self harm

Welp, now I need to find that movie. Thanks? Or should I wait to watch the film before thanking or condemning you?

UPDATE: Sadly, not on Tubi or on any of my other sources. Apparently it was on Amazon Video, but I no longer have that service.

I do enjoy the fact that the trailer for the movie on IMDb shows the footage running backwards of the guy dragging the net through the water. And from the look of the trailer, it appears to be far superior to OVER 8 MINUTES OF REPEATED FOOTAGE OF TWO GUYS WALKING UP STAIRS IN MINIMAL LIGHTING!!!

I ought to make that my new signature....

[javakoala]

"Mister White" (2013)

Up front, this movie falls into the Bad Movie Thread because of two main things: GAWDAWFUL acting and shortcomings in script and direction.

Basic story: A weird guy is the target of other college classmates (the whole thing feels more like a high school premise but it is college for some reason). The weird guy stutters and has strange body tics. At one point, the dialogue seems to indicate that he used to be okay, but after a severe beating, he developed these issues, but this is never mentioned again.

It turns out that the girl dating the alpha male of the tormentors actually spent a night with the weird guy at some party a few weeks prior to taking up with the alpha male dude. She tries to prevent her group of friends from torturing the guy, but she keeps her distance to protect their undisclosed past.

Our main character, the weird dude (here after labelled WD) has been talking to people who aren't there and getting into Hoodoo, which is greatly ignored in the script. His dad thinks he is a Goth freak, and his mom is in the nut house. Well, Daddy just disappears from the storyline, though he deserves to be on the list of victims. The mom can suddenly see this person her son has been talking to for a while as can every other person in the nut house.

When the truth of WD and the girlfriend of Alpha Dude (now called AD) comes out, AD demands she spit on WD during a confrontation. She does, then AD beats the living hell out of WD as their group of twisted friends cheer it on.

We find out that the entity WD is talking to is Mister White, a former slave owner and psychotic doctor, who was cursed and killed by his slaves in an act of revenge.

WD, after the humiliation by his former lover and the severe beating, makes a pact with Mister White to slaughter his tormentors in return for his soul.

Then begins the slaughter.

The story isn't anything new or great. Still, with a little fleshing out (which might have added about 10 minutes or so to the runtime) and some critical direction (and, yes, a slightly larger budget), this could have been a nice little revenge horror flick with a few intense sequences. Sadly, the acting is dreadful by most of the cast with very few exceptions, and even those are shaky. Supporting roles, like the uncle and dad, are fine but have little impact on the film. The former love interest does well enough, but only now and then. I blame the script for her undoing.

Virtually no gore though you are led to believe some of the deaths are quite gruesome. Character issues that should play into the script get tossed aside, such as one character's fear of spiders but then he just gets flailed to death so why set up the fear?

If the script had played a bit with the "Final Destination" concept, the kills could have been more interesting. Also, given the slight element of "It Follows" (which came out the next year), the next victim should have been able to see Mister White while the rest of the friends couldn't. That would have punched up the tension and chaos. Didn't happen.

Like I said, this would never be one of those "Gosh darn, that was fresh!" kind of movies, but it could have done a far better job with its concept than it did.

On YouTube and Tubi if you are curious. Worth watching if you dig horror films built around revenge. And it at least gave you some sense of the history to the situation so it wasn't just a killer whacking annoying teens to fill 90 minutes of screen time. Only mostly bad.

[Alex]

Halfway House.

With boobs and a Lovecraftian monster on screen both within the first five minutes I figure this is a film for Indy. Looks like it was made in the 80s, but seems to be from the mid noughties. Young women are going missing around a halfway house run by nuns. A police officer helps a woman whose sister has went missing infiltrate the house.

Cheerfully bad.

[lester1/2jr]

Cruel Jaws (1995) - C'mon guys, lets get it! Powerfully stupid Jaws rip off that does the shark slaughter rampage scene half an hour in and is thus left with an hour of ridiculous trying to find and kill the fish stuff.

There's also a subplot about the main "nerd" scientist guy's girlfriend having an affair with the bad guy's son, but then there's a good guy who looks just like him (the bad guy) so I forgot what happened with all that. His even more bad guy Dad wants to disrupt the "Flipper" like tranquility of a Hulk Hogan looking guy's aquatic zoo thing with a beachfront hotel. The good guy's handicapped daughter is sweet and wants to help the dolphins and the people. The slutty girlfriend sometimes takes care of her they all like know each other.

"We're gonna need a bigger helicopter"   < actual quote. Bruno Mattei is at the helm which means no apologies for intellectual property theft or second takes. Some hot 80's style beach chicks, but not enough. The beach scenes seem to take place in an entirely new time of the day that is both dark and light.

5/5

[M.10rda]

Lester, I think I watched in early in the pandemic quarantine and luh-UVVV-ed it.

[lester1/2jr]

It would have been better if the little girl in the wheelchair was one of the bad guys.

[claws]

60 Minutes (2024)

A German Netflix production about a mixed martial artist racing across town to make it to his daughter's birthday party—or risk losing custody. The catch? He ditched a scheduled fight for this, leaving a trail of angry goons in his wake. Naturally, instead of calling a cab, hopping on a bike, or taking the subway, he must run the entire way, punching and kicking his way through obstacles.

The last German martial arts film I watched was Plan B (2016), an indie flick picked up by 20th Century Fox and marketed as a love letter to 1980s action films—despite lacking anything remotely '80s. It starred modern-day German martial arts "legends" Can Aydin and Mike Möller, yet despite Fox's YouTube ads, the film flopped and failed to gain cult status. 60 Minutes, in contrast, opts for a gimmicky real-time format, essentially making it Run Lola Run (1998) with a male lead. Emilio Sakraya plays our so-called next big German action hero, flanked by martial arts YouTuber Bruce Willow and two tough female MMA fighters—who, let's be honest, seem shoehorned in for the sake of a gender quota. Unfortunately, none of the characters bring anything remotely interesting to the table.

The fights? Average at best, lazy at worst. Over-stylized choreography drains them of any real impact, and the film's attempt to mimic John Wick's fight sequences reeks of desperation rather than homage. And let's not forget the glaring plot holes. Since our hero effortlessly mows down everyone in his path—including the very guy he was scheduled to fight (in under three minutes, no less)—he could have just done the match, scored an easy win, and still made it to the birthday party on time. Instead, we get a nightclub fight where random onlookers watch blankly, security is nonexistent, and no one thinks to call the police. Speaking of which, in the real world, this guy would not only lose custody but also face criminal charges for reckless street brawling. But hey, realism takes a backseat when there's a clickbait plot to push. The Netflix crowd seems to love it, though, with some even praising its "realism"—a notion almost as hilarious as the film itself.

My rating 1.5

[lester1/2jr]

What is going on with Italy? They have the best food, most beautiful women, and a ridiculously awesome past full of sculpture and art ... yet 90% their movies are cheap garbage. How does that work?