RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[RCMerchant]

^ I need to see that! I love the Ormand's quasi-Christian/ horror movies!

[Rev. Powell]

^ I need to see that! I love the Ormand's quasi-Christian/ horror movies!

They are... something else. They scare little kids and make adults laugh. The anti-Communist one is insane.

[Trevor]

^ I need to see that! I love the Ormand's quasi-Christian/ horror movies!

I remember seeing IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU WHAT WILL HORSES DO many years ago and went 😳😳😏

[M.10rda]

You say "Estus Pirkle", I say "How high..."

".......Do I have to be before I can swallow that guy's baloney and not want to puke pea soup in his sanctimonious face?" 

[Rev. Powell]

THE GRIM REAPER (1976): A man refuses to get saved even after his unsaved race car driver son dies and goes to hell, preferring to attend seances conducted by an obvious charlatan (whom the movie obviously believes can really speak to the dead). Spoiler: he eventually goes to church and accepts Jesus. A recycled version of Ormond's previous "The Burning Hell," with less hell footage, but with June Ormond dressed as a Halloween-store witch to reenact Saul's trip to the necromancer in 1 Samuel. 1/5.

[lester1/2jr]

The Red Light Sting (Made for TV 1984) - The feds buy a whorehouse in an attempt to take down an extortionist mobster, played by a guy (Harold Gould) who looks like Ricardo Montalbán but isn't. Having Farrah Fawcett as the Madame and girls who look like they just filmed the "Super Freak" video as whores works. Having Beau Bridges as the pimp definitely does not.

In fact, it really starts to get irritating. Maybe there is something clever to Bridges as the worlds first "aw shucks" pimp, but I just wanted to slap the guy. The best part of the movie is the goofy pimp costumery and insanely tacky crib he's holed up in while on the assignment. After this, Fawcett was in the landmark domestic violence movie "The Burning Bed" which I watched in horror as a 9 year old. Didn't the husband try to feed her to alligators or something?

This movie is in no way notable and even if the pimp/ cop role had been correctly cast it would basically be at the level of a Charlie's Angels episode.

1.5 / 5

The "Dondi" of s**tty made for tv movies

[M.10rda]

Casting Harold Gould as Ricardo Montalban is just as funny as casting Beau Bridges as a pimp. What a profoundly white White Person movie!

[M.10rda]

THE BOXER (1972):
After the extremely classy FALLEN IDOL I needed some sleazy sorbet for my movie palate and figured the trick would be done by an Italian crime thriller starring Robert Blake and Ernest Borgnine and directed by Franco Prosperi, the ghoul who invented the Mondo film genre and created its most horrifying and inhumane entries. Well, in spite of the opening credits declaring that THE BOXER is "Directed by Franco Prosperi", can you believe it was actually directed by some nobody named FRANCESCO Prosperi who isn't Franco Prosperi in the slightest? I shoulda' known when mid-way through the flick Blake speeds away from a crime scene, runs over a dog ONLY off-screen (w/ sound FX), and then in a later scene we're told that the dog will be fine. This one detail was a clear signal that I was watching the work of an imposter....... as of course the Real Franco Prosperi was the maniac probably most singly responsible for the introduction of the "No Animals Were Harmed During The Making Of The Film" disclaimer. Now I don't mind NOT seeing (or hearing) dog-death in the slightest - I love dogs and other furry animals. But almost every other aspect of THE BOXER is equally toothless!

Blake at least moves and behaves quite convincingly as a bantamweight who flees one bad match and of course stumbles directly into a much dicier murder plot, set up by greasy bad guy Tomas Milian (as "Hippy!"), who is underused but easily the most entertaining thing about the movie. Eventually Borgnine shows up as a homicide detective and does a pretty weak job of trying to straighten things out. It's unclear if THE BOXER was shot entirely in Europe but it looks like it was mostly or entirely post-dubbed in the Italian tradition. Blake and Borgnine's unmistakable voices are definitely their own, but the looping seems to have inhibited both actors from delivering masterful performances, w/ Borgnine seeming a little stiff in the interest of syncing his lines, while Blake just goes full-chop socky/anime gonzo and litters his vocal track w/ constant weird non-verbal interjections. ("Ah! Huhhhh! Oh?!")

There's some mostly bloodless fisticuffs and gunplay, plus a little okay car-chasing. Camille Keaton appears very briefly in flashback - she'd have been better utilized as the female lead, which is filled by flavorless Catherine Spaak. There's no spaaks to be found between Blake and Spaak, yet she still appears incongruously at the end of the climax and just before the credits roll to stare longingly at Blake (and vice versa) in a series of long awkward cut-away close-ups. It's just about the least well-motivated erotic staring sequence I've seen since the opening weekend finale to LOTR: RETURN OF THE KING in 2003! Fortunately it's about one-thirtieth as long as the erotic staring sequence in that film but it's still too much.

2/5
Nothing to see here!

[M.10rda]

I figured I should check out the motion picture that everyone's talking about.......

MADAME WEB (2024):
Produced not by but "in association with" Marvel Studios, who I guess didn't give Columbia Pictures the memo about their own recent flop headlined by D-list female heroes, THE MARVELS. I'm gonna' frame this like I would in a lecture for the "Superhero Cinema" college course that I taught for about 3.5 years, through the lens of a lifelong comics reader who now struggles to keep up w/ the increasingly trivial programming of a post-ENDGAME Avengersverse... none of the four female protagonists in MADAME WEB are terribly (or at all) significant in comics or to most comic readers, and nor is the antagonist. The title character was a somewhat sinister minor superpowered old woman introduced in 1980, who only stuck around for a couple years in subplots and bore a closer resemblance to O.G. Aunt May Rosemary Harris than to the lithe and youthful Dakota Johnson. Don and Melanie's daughter is braced by three teenager girls: the Latina (underwritten) is a newer character named "Silk" (though she's never referred as this onscreen) who had her own comic for a while a couple years ago; the redhead (also underdeveloped) was the second Spider-Woman for a bit in the late 80s and then much later took on the "Madame Web" name but remained more or less obscure; and the black girl (supremely annoying as written and played) is no one I've ever seen or heard of in a book. Meanwhile, the villain , "Ezekial", was the focus of a rather unpopular storyline in the 90s and hasn't been up to much (or has been dead) ever since. The absence of Jessica Drew, the original Spider-Woman who probably would have much higher recognition among mainstream filmgoers (or at least some) and wore a similar costume to Spider-Man's is puzzling... for that matter, Spider-Gwen is now super hot in comics and thanks to the SPIDERVERSE movies, so why not just make a movie about her?

All of the context above, plus the tangential appearances of Uncle Ben Parker, his sister-in-law Mary, and even (briefly) Peter as a newborn, stinks of drinkin' thinkin' or just plain desperation. Presumably someone envisioned this as a franchise that could run in tandem w/ more future live-action Spider-Man movies, as its set (otherwise pointlessly) in 2003, allowing the screenwriters to incorporate a Britney Spears song as if it was timely and also (I guess) allowing Dakota to be somewhat older (though probably still just a foxy 45 year old) when Spider-Man himself starts swingin'. Most bizarrely, Dakota's proteges never appear in costume EXCEPT in brief FLASH-FORWARDS to....... a future entry in the franchise! (Always smart to lay a two-hour foundation for something that barely anyone is interested in seeing to begin with.)

To MADAME WEB's credit, there are actually multiple brief bursts of well-directed suspense and/or action, including a surprisingly effective use of that Britney song. Dakota is a more compelling lead than her mother, anyways; Zosia Mamet shows up for several scenes as a plot device, but I'm not complaining; and Adam Scott   delivers what is probably his least punchable performance to date, though of course he's no patch on either Martin Sheen nor Cliff Robertson. All those qualified kudos ultimately amount to little, however, in the face of one preposterously improbable plot contrivance after another hollow dialogic inanity. While it's shot and produced with some panache, you'd have to harken back to the pre-IRON MAN era to find another superhero film this poorly and senselessly written. In fact I was reasonably convinced that MADAME WEB was the first Avengersverse film scripted entirely by A.I., until the closing (and only) credits announce five count 'em FIVE human screenwriters. You know what, if this is what you get after paying five screenwriters to write a movie, maybe A.I. is the right way for studios to go...

Still, it was better than MORBIUS.
2/5

At the climactic moment when Johnson becomes "Madame Web", she is laying on blacktop next to a giant "210" in white paint....... baldly nerd-signaling towards the character's first appearance in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #210. I guess this is what 21st century Cinema has come to!

[Rev. Powell]

THE BELIEVER'S HEAVEN (1977): Having threatened unbelievers with the torments of Hell in his last two films, Estus Pirkle describes heaven in this sermon interrupted by questionable amateur Bible reenactments, icky musical numbers, and trotting out disabled people to point out how they'd be cured in the afterlife. THE BELIEVER'S HEAVEN is much duller than THE BURNING HELL, which is perhaps why they take a brief trip to Hell at the end to relieve the tedium. The first forty minutes or so are a complete waste of time; the singing dwarf, however, is unforgettable, and really belongs in a David Lynch movie. I think Pirkle had zero charisma--maybe that's why he relied almost entirely on fearmongering and freak-show antics to keep his congregation engaged. 1/5.

[Trevor]

Street Knight (1993)

The last film Cannon Pictures made I believe.

[chainsaw midget]

Don and Melanie's daughter is braced by three teenager girls: the Latina (underwritten) is a newer character named "Silk" (though she's never referred as this onscreen) who had her own comic for a while a couple years ago; the redhead (also underdeveloped) was the second Spider-Woman for a bit in the late 80s and then much later took on the "Madame Web" name but remained more or less obscure; and the black girl (supremely annoying as written and played) is no one I've ever seen or heard of in a book.

The black girl was a VERY short lived Spider-Woman in the comics, who actually started out pretending to be Spider-MAN when Peter briefly retired.   She's white in the comics. 

[lester1/2jr]

Deadly DILF (2023) -( before I get into the hyperbole, it's an unimaginative Fatal Attraction imitation. Bottom line: that's all it is. )

Wow, I can't believe I finally made it through one of TUBI's "urban" offerings. I got 1/3 of the way through Plug Love and about the same with Lot Lizards. A stupid idiot Dad has a one off with the babysitter, who then becomes a crazy, but clever, stalker. Generally being no help at all are the guy's likeable but also stupid brother and gorgeous but oblivious wife. The director of Jersey Shore Shark Attack loads this with cliches, unexplained stuff ( how did he manage to give her the drug that caused her to fail the drug test???) that probably just got cut out to make the run time, and hot biracial chicks who keep all their clothes on so why even bother having them look so good?  

Yet, there is a kernal of believability in all of it. The Dad does seem like kind of a dummy, and the wife's control of their finances would be genuinely emasculating. Just a kernal, though. Also what happened to the gay best friend? It was colorful and entertaining for the first 1/3 (that number again) but I had to power through the rest.  

2.5 /5 they did nothing with the well worn concept here, but it is "so bad it's good" in places

[M.10rda]

Don and Melanie's daughter is braced by three teenager girls: the Latina (underwritten) is a newer character named "Silk" (though she's never referred as this onscreen) who had her own comic for a while a couple years ago; the redhead (also underdeveloped) was the second Spider-Woman for a bit in the late 80s and then much later took on the "Madame Web" name but remained more or less obscure; and the black girl (supremely annoying as written and played) is no one I've ever seen or heard of in a book.

The black girl was a VERY short lived Spider-Woman in the comics, who actually started out pretending to be Spider-MAN when Peter briefly retired.   She's white in the comics. 

I don't mind that they made her black, but was she so aggressively insufferable in the comics?

[claws]

The Last Kumite (2024)

A karate champion is forced into an illegal underground fight tournament to save his kidnapped daughter.

This German martial arts film is a blatant homage to Bloodsport (1988) and 1990s direct-to-video fight flicks, made by fans for fans. It brings together a nostalgia-heavy cast, including Matthias Hues as the villain, Billy Blanks and Cynthia Rothrock as the hero's mentors, and German martial artist/stuntman Mathis Landwehr in the lead role. The film also throws in Kurt McKinney (No Retreat, No Surrender), Michel and Abdel Qissi (regulars in Van Damme films), German action choreographer Mike Möller, martial arts YouTuber David Kurzhal, and a few lesser-known German fighters. The final "boss" opponent is played by Mike D. Vecchio from the German Wrestling Federation, who looks like Seann William Scott after an all-steroid diet.

So, is it any good? Well, it's no worse—or better—than your average bad '90s DTV martial arts sequel. The movie takes itself seriously, with Hues delivering some laughably bad acting moments and Rothrock getting an oddly unnecessary final scene where she kicks a downed, bleeding guy in the head—because, you know, he flipped her off. Classy. The fights are serviceable, though the big final showdown between Landwehr and Vecchio is massively underwhelming. Landwehr gets a quick beatdown, has a sudden epiphany/motivation boost, and then wins way too easily. They try to make it feel epic with a few slow-motion shots, but the fight itself is short and forgettable. Worse yet, it's constantly interrupted by a secondary fight that somehow lasts longer than the main event. Who thought that was a good idea?

A proper villain beatdown is martial arts movie rule #1, and The Last Kumite completely drops the ball here. There's also a semi-cheesy theme song, because of course there is. The film had a brief theatrical run in May 2024 (mostly fan screenings) before heading to streaming and physical media, and judging by its low IMDb rating, most viewers weren't impressed. While it has a few moments of mild entertainment, the non-fighting scenes are dull beyond belief.

Real-world rating: ★☆☆☆☆ (Poor) – Won't stimulate your intellect. Just guys punching each other.
Fan rating: ★★☆☆☆ (Barely passable) – A solid final beatdown could have easily bumped it to a ★★★☆☆ (Good).

On a side note, and no judgment here—we all get older—but the only cast member who actually aged well is Billy Blanks. I want whatever anti-aging serum he's been taking.