RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[LordGraal]

Metalstorm - The Destruction of Jared Syn (1983)

I've had a fascination with this movie for years but only recently watched the Blu-ray print.  It really has a ridiculously low budget for what they were trying to achieve.  The opening titles and the music suggest an epic is coming up.  But going from impressive visuals and big orchestral music to a bloke driving around a quarry in a rickety vehicle with an el cheapo interior trips up my brain.  I guess the setting is supposed to be a desert planet - but it's a quarry.  The 'town' set is just a few marquees.  Any set that is supposed to be impressive is just an underwhelming prop in the quarry or construction put in a cave.  There's a massive 1950's b-movie feel to it and I wonder what the budget was.  The epic music is so out of context with the visuals it makes me think 'how isn't this better'? 

It was in the cinema's as 3D but I've never seen it in that format.  I wonder how impressive the 3D is, especially when there are so many driving along dust roads in the quarry sequences that have no visual interest when viewed flat.

In the 'making of', someone describes that it was a concious decision to not have the traditional middle of the forehead eye cyclops design for the cyclopean characters.  Total nonsense.  They didn't have the budget to create convincing make-up for a traditional design. 

The plot is plodding and the world building non-existent.  What is a 'Ranger: finder class'?  What were the sand wars?  What is the villan so upset about?  Where do the crystals come from?  I'm giving this film too much thought but as I said - it's fascinating in it's badness.  But Tim Thomerson is good.

Anyway, nice to get that off my chest and hello to all.

[Alex]

Welcome to the forum JaredSyn. I remember watching that movie as a teenager back in the day.

I spit on your grave: Deja Vu.

Such terrible overacting, this was verging on painful to watch. The actress from the original movie reprises her character. Not as brutal or shocking as the original but with all of its problems. Even the remake was better than this. The lead actress is supposed to be the most beautiful supermodel on the planet and while she is pretty I wouldn't go that far. It has some nudity in it, but I couldn't recommend watching it even for that.

[Dr. Whom]

Voyage to the planet of prehistoric women (1968)

This is one of the movies where the making of is more interesting than the movie itself. Most of the scenes come from the 1962 Soviet movie Planeta Bur (Planet of Storms). Roger Corman acquired the rights, recut and dubbed the whole thing and added some scenes to produce Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965). Then, he decided that what the movie really needed was more pretty girls, so he re-used the Soviet footage, had Peter Bogdanovich shoot some scenes with Mamie Van Doren and assorted beauties on a beach and voilà, Voyage to the planet of the prehistoric women was created.

This is a dreadful slog. While the Soviet movie provides impressive modelwork and general production values, it would seem to be just as fun as First Spaceship to Venus. The recut/redubbed scenes make little sense, and the whole thing is pitched as a love story, while both protagonists are in different movies altogether.
Avoid.

[M.10rda]

I've at least seen VTTPP and VTTPOPW and maybe PLANET OF STORMS as well. What have I done w/ my life? Yes, they're all slogs, though the original Russian footage is pretty cool in small doses.

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Cyborg 2087 (1966)
https://youtu.be/9vGu55liVMM?si=uJnq0xJJGZOw-GpM

The audio is missing from the first couple minutes, but to no real consequence.....
A man is sent backwards from the future to find a scientist...
At first, he finds himself in an abandoned wild west town, but then a couple guys in a jeep show up...
He swipes the jeep, runs from local authorities, then finds the secretary & tells her he needs to stop the scientist from creating a brain control device that will be used by autocrats...
Then the authorities from his own time show up...

Rather goofy, with it's riffable moments, but tends to drag....

[Dr. Whom]

the original Russian footage is pretty cool in small doses.

Say what you like about the Soviets, they could design some cool looking hardware.

[zombie no.one]

EYE OF THE TIGER (1986)

Gary Busey is... a man. He is seeking.... revenge. after thugs do bad things to his wife. Mediocre action ensues.

Survivor - Eye Of The Tiger is the theme tune and title of the film for no apparent reason. Didn't ROCKY already use that? I refuse to watch ROCKY, but I believe it does 

FINAL SCORE (also from 1986) does this exact set up about 50000 times more badass-ly.

[M.10rda]

MESA OF LOST WOMEN (1953):
WOW, wotta' movie...!

Ed Wood-veteran Lyle Talbot delivers an entirely Woodian voice-over to unnecessarily comment on a completely self-evident prologue in which a man and woman wandering in the desert are rescued by two prospectors and taken to a nearby hospital, where the man recovers from heatstroke just enough to promise to explain their terrifying adventures in flashback. We then get a flashback, but it's not that guy's flashback, it's a flashback that belongs to "Dr. Masterson", a sourpussed middle-aged white guy who travels into the desert (yeah, we're going back into the desert now, keep up) to find the secret laboratory of "Dr. Arana", a total weirdo who figured out how to turn normal tarantulas into giant smart tarantulas and then figured out how to turn giant smart tarantulas into men of small stature and normal sized women, but who won't be satisfied until he turns those little men and average-sized women into giant tarantulas (again) who can help him take over the world. All of this is such a shock to Masterson's system that he goes insane and (Talbot tells us in V.O.) is committed to an asylum, but then he immediately escapes the asylum and travels to Mexico, where he acts bizarrely in a bar, watches a tarantula woman perform an exotic dance before trying to murder her, befriends and then takes hostage a rather mismatched newlywed couple, and commandeers a rugged pilot to take everyone up into the air. Then they crash in a jungle (?!) and the pilot and the newlywed bride (who are the lost folks from the prologue) make eyes at each other and everyone wanders around in the jungle for a solid 10-15 minutes while the little men and normal-sized spider women stalk them but don't do anything else to them. I think I nodded off around this part, woke up and everyone was back in Arana's laboratory, and then the film very abruptly ends in a non-climax. Don't quote me on any of this.

Alas, MESA OF LOST WOMEN isn't Just As God Made it but instead was the product of rewrites, reshoots, and two directors: one of them was a nobody who'd claimed to be the ghost director of multiple old Lubitsch and Von Sternberg pictures, and the other one was the Teenage Strangler himself, Ron freaking Ormond, who got tagged in to pad the running time and (in doing so) reportedly added ALL the violence and lewd dancing. Although there's precious little of either, it's still pretty funny to know Ormond was less than two decades away from a career in right wing Christian cinema. Jackie Coogan plays Doctor Arana, a scientist so mad he makes Uncle Fester look like a chartered public accountant. Masterson is apparently played by one actor, Harmon Stevens, though I would've sworn the role was recast mid-film. After Masterson escapes from the asylum and shows up in Mexico, he looks like an altogether different guy from the Masterson in the first part of the film. Maybe Stevens lost weight and got a haircut before the reshoots, but he also gives a 180-degree different performance, grinning like a loon as he waves a handgun and utters serene crypticisms. (If they remade MESA today, they'd cast Ray Wise as Masterson.) Anyway, if it's just one guy playing Masterson here, good job.

Jerry Warren's favorite leading lady Katherine Victor has a brief, silent cameo early on. Angelo Rossito and Talbot's fellow Wood co-star Delores Fuller play members of Coogan's spiderperson retinue. I might as well add that casting Rossito and people who look like Rossito as mutant freaks is one kind of insensitivity, and casting hirsute, dark skinned Tandra Quinn as the chief tarantula woman (as well as other ethnic-looking ladies) is a whole 'nother kind. In spite of this, there's reasonable evidence (among Coogan's performance, the Masterson character, and otherwise) to think the people who made this were actually trying to make a weird movie - and in that they succeeded!

2.5/5
Almost more interesting to read the Wiki than to watch the film. There's an MST3K and/or Rifftrack, I think - perhaps that's the smart way to swallow this one.

[Jim H]

WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE (1986)

Rutger Hauer is a bounty hunter. Gene Simmons is a bad guy. Too low-key and generic cut-price '80s action' to be interesting, lot of very quiet talking and slow sequences. My fav trashy straight-to-vid Rutget Hauer film is WEDLOCK

Fun fact, you'd never know it but this is actually essentially sequel to the 1950s Steve McQueen TV western of the same name.  My mom was a fan of it and didn't even realize they were related they feel so different and I'm not sure if the movie ever mentions it.  Hauer is McQueen's descendent, presumably a grandson or great grandson based on the timeline.  Just a modern day bounty hunter than a Wild West era one.

I always remembered the TV show for the very cool Mare's Leg sawed off rifle he uses in a swivel holster.

[zombie no.one]

Fun fact, you'd never know it but this is actually essentially sequel to the 1950s Steve McQueen TV western of the same name. 

no, wasn't aware (I mean that is a very generic title!). Rutger Hauer's presence makes it more interesting than a lot of actors could've, but still found it a bit dull all round tbh...

[claws]

Mountaintop Motel Massacre (1983)

A disturbed owner of a motel kills her guests. Other than that, nothing much happens in this cheaply made slasher with a supernatural touch that rips off Psycho. It does deliver on the cheesy thrills, and the setting is pretty decent. But yeah, it is baaad. 1.5 / 5.0

This was filmed in 1982, and released to theaters in 1983 as Mountaintop Motel. It had a re-release in 1984 as Horrors at Mountaintop Motel. The film was eventually purchased by Roger Corman's New World Pictures in 1985. They added a new gorier ending, and released it to theaters in 1986 as Mountaintop Motel Massacre.

[zombie no.one]

ICE SHARKS (2016)

To my knowledge the first time I've watched an Asylum movie since MEGA SHARK VS GIANT OCTOPUS (2009), which is the only other one I've seen.

Was expecting zany goofball antics and snarky quips, but the tone is actually quite downbeat and the cast play it cool.

The CGI is so bad they almost try and disguise it by only showing brief glimpses, but you can still tell it's barely one step up from BIRDEMIC level.

Soon deteriorates into the inevitable 'cast is huddled up in confined space and being stalked by the monster from outside' type thing, but overall surprisingly un-annoying.

[zombie no.one]

FIRE DOWN BELOW (1997)

peak Seagal, he's still got it here... in one scene he's served groceries by these twin sisters and he says "a couple of gorgeous twins like you, it gets a man thinking.". smooth

love the way he can effortlessly and single handedly disarm a room full of gun-toting rednecks, then kick all their faces in one by one.  this happens about 5 times.

his main love interest here (not including every other female in the world) is played by Marg Helenburger, about whom Seagal had this to say:

"While I don't think she's a physical, spectacular, drop dead gorgeous woman, at the same time she's a spectacular actress"

.... what a charmer.

8 barstools re-purposed as weapons out of 10

[zombie no.one]

JEEPERS CREEPERS 3 (2017)

stayed away from watching this thanks to the director being a massive bunty man / shrub rocketeer, but it was cheap and I was bored. Not as bad as the IMDb reviews are making out. In fact this is almost pretty good. The baddie person/thing has a cool deathmobile with a big retracting spike. I've seen way worse recent horrors tbh. 5.5/10

[M.10rda]

Now in the right section![/u] LEECH WIZARD (1981):
Last year I set two new rules for myself during October: 1.) Watch only horror movies (unless Madame twists my arm); 2.) Review everything I watch (which, believe it or not, isn't actually my usual practice on here). It's a nice celebration of one of my favorite holidays, but it's a double-edged blade - for me and for you - 'cause this week I watched LEECH WIZARD and now I get to tell you all about it. Okay, just a little about it.

This is one of those 70s-80s Indonesian no-budget horrors that substitutes real animal and human cruelty in place of special effects. I'm sure there are much more appalling examples - I've heard of them but haven't seen them. In this case, the aptly named "Leech Wizard" terrorizes the innocent with... plagues of leeches! Real leeches fall upon actors, crawl on their bodies, get poured into the open mouths of actors, etc etc etc. There is some very poor FX work where it (barely) looks like the leeches are underneath people's skin. And uh... that's it! Or that's about 8 minutes or so of a 90 minute film. The rest is mostly broad Bollywood-style comedy where characters run around yelling and gesticulating excitedly, comically "afraid" of the Leech Wizard but really just acting foolishly. Okay, I admit my copy had no subtitles so I honestly can't claim to know what the heck is happening in this film. But based on the visual storytelling and outsized performances, my best guess is: Not Much.

Near the end of the film, another magic man fights back against the Leech Wizard. Objects don't really fly around his hut... instead they look like they're feebly tossed at him by an offscreen P.A. Some of those objects ding him up a bit, and then his floor kind of collapses, and Leech Wizard falls in, and then the rest of the hut kind of collapses in on top of him. I'm pretty sure the actor climbed in a trench and then the crew just pushed all his furniture on top of him. That sounds awesome, right?    Probably not fair to call this the worst film I've seen all year, but unless someone proves to me that the Indonesian dialogue was written by Harold Pinter or Tom Stoppard.......

0/0    I'd been on a winning streak of great ones lately and was bound to finally pull a stinker.