RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Hearts And Armour (1983)
https://youtu.be/6rEYz-vJX-0?si=7pPEewIGdtuVesKH

Italian knights this time...
As Christians & moors prepare for war, a young woman gets a prophecy that she will fall for a moor prince, but a Christian knight will kill him... She's then, rescued from a gang by a knight who gives her a magic set of armor... Later on she rescues a moor princess, but doesn't reveal her identity until after she meets the Christian knight, whom it turns out, is already in love with the princess...
Meanwhile, the moor prince sets out to rescue his sister, where we find out he & another woman are already in love...

As love & war, this movie gets very convoluted, with lots of long drawn out fight scenes that could've used some of that '80s synth music that dominates the soundtrack....

[M.10rda]

3 FROM HELL (2019):
If you'd told me back in 2003 when I emerged from the movie theater after watching HOUSE OF 1K CORPSES that it would spawn not one but two sequels I would've emitted a hard guffaw, and then if you'd told me that HO1KC would be easily the best of those three films, I would've whistled in derision. I think HO1KC is a terrible film but Sid Haig makes a big impression playing the hilarious Captain Spaulding, who really has nothing to do w/ the original film's story whatsoever, which is probably why his performance is such a welcome relief. DEVIL'S REJECTS has a lot more Sid Haig, but he plays a vicious ignorant old creep who calls himself Captain Spaulding yet doesn't act anything like the character from the previous movie, and also everything else about DEVIL'S REJECTS makes my stomach turn with equal parts revulsion and boredom. 

Oddly, 3 FROM HELL surprised my expectations by being superior to REJECTS, in part because (rather counterintuitively) the late Haig is only onscreen for a couple of minutes and therefore his character doesn't overstay his welcome, like nearly everything else about this characteristically gratuitous (2+ hours!) and trashy Rob Zombie joint. A previously unknown dirtbag Firefly brother with no character definition whatsoever replaces Spaulding, and Bill Mosely and S-M Zombie's despicable characters from the previous movies return. Mosely, who was great once upon a time in that radio station scene in TCM2, is totally on cruise control, happy to take Rob's money while barely even inflecting his line delivery. Perhaps unintentionally on Mosely's part, this helps make the main characters less intolerably loathsome than they were previously. It does occasionally seem like it dawned on Zombie that he might try to soften the Firefly family's edges and allow normal viewers who are not potentially violent sociopaths to follow their adventures and not constantly want to puke in antipathy. Even S-M gives a nearly competent performance (...16 years in the making...).

It's still complete garbage, however. Zombie exhausts his plot after 75 minutes but instead of having the decency or mercy to end the film, he takes the action to Mexico for a completely unrelated storyline for another 50 minutes. Blech! The one good thing about REJECTS is it appeared to kill off these characters at the end, which cannot be said for 3FH. Let it die, Zombie!

1.5/5
Why did I even watch this? Because it was there, I suppose. 

[M.10rda]

KILLER VS. KILLER (1985):
Now this is what I call a good Bad Movie! We're only seconds out of the opening credits when a preposterous-looking 80s goofball w/ a dumb moustache and a Richard Simmons perm casually approaches a legitimately tough thug, sticks his finger in the thug's face, and complains because the thug killed two people with a grenade in his presence. Shortly thereafter a different thug shoots a guy on rollerskates and punches an apparently pregnant woman in the stomach - she responds by removing the thug's hand with a pair of metal shears. Okay, KILLER VS. KILLER, you have my attention!

Unfortunately KVK plays out more like OCEANS FIVE for its entire first half. Edmund Purdom (from PIECES, ATHROPOPHAGUS 2: ABSURD, and others) plays a villainous corporatist named "His Majesty" who wants some kind of special formula stolen from a chemical plant and also wants the plant blown up. To get the job done, he enlists a snarky fat guy to Assemble The Squad! The Squad includes "Ferrari", the ridiculous-looking goofball w/ the perm and bad 'stache; a safecracker who looks like Larry David and pays women to dance naked in his apartment; and the apparently pregnant woman, who wasn't actually pregnant and probably never will be, in spite of Ferrari's lustful attentions. I say this 'cause - between her pronounced Adam's Apple, the fact that she's taller than all the guys in the Squad, and the fact she looks like Amanda Lear - I was pretty sure she was a very 80's-looking trans woman. (In fact she's played by Dalila DiLazzaro, who was in Argento's PHENOMENA and apparently was born female.) 

The fourth member of the Squad is Henry Silva as a wealthy hitman with a private zoo (!) on the grounds of his mansion. After the Squad delivers on their contract, His Majesty of course decides to double-cross them and have them eliminated. Need I tell you that it's a very bad idea to double-cross Henry Silva? The thing about Henry Silva (at least in this movie) is you never know if he's unhappy with you because his expression never, ever, ever changes. You'll know he's unhappy, however, when he sics his pet leopard on your henchmen and then picks off individual flunkies with a bazooka (which even the least temperate among us must admit is overdoing it!).

This was politziotecchi director Fernando DiLeo's final film and his fans seem a little defensive or apologetic about it, but I'm not complaining. When Silva and the other surviving characters are inexplicably teleported from Silva's palatial estate to an empty field for the final mano-a-escape car faceoff, I just shrugged, 'cause that's what I expect and kind of demand from a good ol' Bad Movie! And I always love it when an Italian film ends abruptly/ridiculously on a freeze-frame and the obligatory block letters of capitulation: "FINE". Okay, the movie's over already, fine!!!

2.5/5
The English opening credits on this print include Ray Lovelock from BREAKFAST AT MANCHESTER MORGUE and many DiLeo cop films. Alas Ray Lovelock isn't in this movie! Too bad - he would've made a much better second male lead and foil to Silva than the wet wimpy tool who plays "Ferrari"!

[zombie no.one]

hmm never heard of that one... tried to investigate Fernando Di Leo's stuff but found his films by and large too expensive / rare to get hold of on physical

aside from being in one of my all time favs PIECES Edward Purdom also directed the craptastic DON'T OPEN TILL XMAS

[zombie no.one]

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT (2004)

One of those perpetual "shall I watch this one?.... ermmm... nah", which finally turned into an "erghhh.... okay may as well watch this and get it over with". aka the joy and wonder of cinema

I suppose you reach a period in your life where anything after that period will forever be either 'new', or 'new-ish' in your brain... that period is somewhere around 1997 /98 /99 ish for me. So it's quite weird to think this movie is over 20 yrs old

I was in a charity shop yesterday and some girl pointed at this dress and said to her friend "oh wow, that dress is soooo 2017!". I had a good mind to exclaim "my word young lady, 2017 was a mere 2 weeks ago, you utterly ridiculous yet oddly charming creature!". but I didn't. I just stood there and stewed in my oldness.

Oh yeah, the film.

Ashton Kutcher collects butterflies. He runs around catching them in his butterfly net, and nails them to a plank of wood until they confess where they've hidden the diamonds. but they never do. "cat got your tongue or something eh?" he yells at them. "giving me the silent treatment eh? well two can play at that game... and I'm gonna call that game, THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT game"

The rest of the film plays out in total silence with Kutcher striking weird poses and flirting with the camera. Disappointing.

[M.10rda]

.......I saw THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT in the mid-00s but yes, that is essentially how I recall it!

[zombie no.one]

yeah that's my experimental 'artists impression' of the film, glad it resonated!

(not to get too tin-foil-hat but I've read some pretty dodgy alleged stuff about the lad Kutcher recently, can't say I was really a fan of him anyway though)

[zombie no.one]

TAKEN 3

The 2nd one was one of the most nondescript films I think I've ever seen, this one is a bit more engaging. The initial set-up scenes are actually very watchable, to the point that it's almost disappointing when the inevitable action / chasing starts. The completely implausible action. The way Liam Neeson escapes his first 'tricky situation' is so ridiculous it's like a bad comedy sketch. Then the music score goes into overdrive and we also get a very weirdly placed soppy love song in an otherwise 'tense' chasey bit... weird.

TEKKEN 3 > TAKEN 3

5.5 Liam Neesons out of 10.

[lester1/2jr]

trivia: Ashton Kutcher appears in my all time least favorite movie poster/ cover

[zombie no.one]

yeah that's cringe...

"cameron & ashton", what is it a film or a doc? 

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Late August at the Hotel Ozone (1967)
https://youtu.be/__t2ChNpfao?si=eMS1lLrjWAbGFSzu

Made in Czechoslovakia during the cold war, fifty years after world war 3, an elderly woman leads a group of younger women around the country side looking for whatever they can use, & ways to try & break the monotony....
Then, about forty five minutes in, they find & kill a cow (pretty graphic scene).... The noise attracts the attention of an elderly man, who takes them back to a hotel, where he has everything they need, but no other men...

[Rev. Powell]

Tonight's Stinker
Late August at the Hotel Ozone (1967)
https://youtu.be/__t2ChNpfao?si=eMS1lLrjWAbGFSzu

Made in Czechoslovakia during the cold war, fifty years after world war 3, an elderly woman leads a group of younger women around the country side looking for whatever they can use, & ways to try & break the monotony....
Then, about forty five minutes in, they find & kill a cow (pretty graphic scene).... The noise attracts the attention of an elderly man, who takes them back to a hotel, where he has everything they need, but no other men...

That's been on my list to check out for a while. It's not really known as a "bad" film, though.

Here's a REALLY bad one:

JACKER (1993): Shot-on-video zero budget flick about a supposed New Jersey carjacker who's really more of a serial killer and mostly just kind of a dick. No production value, terrible acting, ugly videography, a senseless script that was basically written in a weekend--yes, they deserve credit for making a movie, but come on, you have to be a masochist to watch this. So little sense in the script. Jacker Mike drugs his girlfriend by dropping sleeping pills in her beer--whole pills, he doesn't even crush them up, then pours it into a glass! He swears revenge on the investigating detective--because he's offended that the cop asked him if he killed his girlfriend, which of course he happily did. No one thinks to check the handwriting on the suicide note Mike fakes. Takes the cops a while to figure out who killed the detective's sister, despite Mike actually threatening to do it the day before it happens. Not much stage blood, either, except for the best scene where psycho Mike, for no real reason, cuts open his hand and mixes blood with his shredded wheat! I think they must have known this was bad when they were making it. 1/5, but fairly watchable; if you really want to see a genuinely bad movie, this is one.

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
A Dream Come True (1963)
https://youtu.be/DQyK62liJ-M?si=sUHwMjEAQjYSKqVE

Soviet sci-fi....
A narrator introduces the cosmonauts that will be in the story.... Then one of them plays a song for his girlfriend, which somehow makes it across space to a group of aliens, who decide it's reason enough to fly to earth & check us out.... But, right around Mars, they crash....
The aliens manage to send a distress call to Earth, & they decide to step up production on a new space ship, & another song ensues.....

The ending is pretty confusing....
Fans will recognize various elements recycled for Queen Of Blood (1966)
Due to the short runtime, I was gonna try & make it a twofer, but this one was exhausting enough, Then again, an infected tooth makes everything pretty exhausting....

[Dr. Whom]

KILLER VS. KILLER (1985):
 (In fact she's played by Dalila DiLazzaro, who was in Argento's PHENOMENA and apparently was born female.) 

Dalila Di Lazzaro was a bona fide glamour model/actress in the 80s. If you bought Italian car magazines at the time, you could come across her in various states of undress (that is at least how I remember her)

[M.10rda]

That's cool. Good for her! She's a lovely lady. VERY TALL.