RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[LilCerberus]

Cerberus - do you ever watch good movies?

Why would I do that?
Everybody's already seen 'em!

[lester1/2jr]

good point

[Rev. Powell]

NINJA TERMINATOR (1986): In Movie A, ninjas fight over three pieces of a golden statue that will make them invulnerable; in Movie B, a lone hero takes instructions from characters in Movie A (via teleconference on a Garfield phone) who then fights a triad gang that has captured a female who is made integral to the plot of movie A through the magic of dubbing. This is probably Godfrey Ho's most "beloved" cut-n-paste ninja movie; it's necessarily confusing but actually easier to follow than most of the others, the fight scenes are good, and there's absurdity aplenty. The ninjas wear more eyeliner than JD Vance! 4/5 for a bad movie, 1.5/5 on a mainstream movie scale.

[M.10rda]

CAPTIVE WOMEN 4 aka FRAULEIN KITTY (1977):
Archival WW2 footage is followed by a parade of credits that will be suspiciously familiar to anyone who's seen a few Eurocine productions. I was positive for a while that this was either a Jess Franco film or an Erwin C. Dietrich film, but research reveals it is not, and indeed CW4/FK is so competently - and frankly tastefully - directed that late 70s participation of Franco or Dietrich seems impossible. Yes, there's a leather thighboot-wearing female officer named "Elsa"  who is tasked to run a locomotive brothel for the pleasure of the SS; yes, there's an obligatory (though oddly lifeless) "inspecting the recruits" sequence; yes, ugly men in German uniforms get grinded upon by topless and or naked ladies, in sub-softcore fashion (hence I didn't review this in "Is It Porn?"). But there's also a lot of plot and character development. Who slipped all this content in our Nazi sexploitation flick?!

I ain't exactly complaining about the lack of sleaze or relative thoughtfulness of this project, though it does confuse me. Malisa Longo (who was in Tinto Brass' SALON KITTY) is a more complex and (imho) sexier She-Wolf than Dyanne Thorne. Patrizia Gori is the sweet young thing in Longo's crosshairs and plays the role with a lot of aplomb. Then there's a guy named Oliver Mathot who looks a bit like Sam Waterston and plays the central male Nazi, who (of course) is highly conflicted about being a Nazi and really would shift to the side of the angels if that was ever a realistic possibility. Mathot was an extra in real movie NIGHT OF THE GENERALS and also appeared in tons of Franco/Eurocine sleaze. The entire idea of his character offends me as apologist propaganda, but Mathot has lots of decent dialogue (including long soliloquys!) to back him up, and he throws himself at the role with such commitment and gusto you'd think his agent was buying Oscar Consideration ads in Variety or something.

The fact that I can't think of another Nazi "sex" film w/ three performances as strong as those in CW4/FK only underlines the overall indifference I felt towards the film at the end. It's reasonably well-made, but it's a Nazi "sex" film - maybe I just don't like Nazi "sex" films that much! 

2.5/5
I could only think of two previous films with the words "Captive Women" in the title and neither were Nazi movies, so I googled "Captive Women" 1, 2, and 3, and none of those were the two films with the words "Captive Women" in the title I was thinking of and none of the three were Nazi flicks either. WTF...

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Ghost Planet (2024)
https://youtu.be/4z_XODtkWqA?si=BkI0mhOeufxB6SYd

Shot on video, the CGI sets & backgrounds, and the practical sets are pretty decent....
One of the characters narrates, starting with a back story about how mankind found technology from an extinct alien race, & learned to use it....
So anyway, these three siblings find a planet with more of this tech, but hafta split when the realize it orbits a ball of radiation, & lose the coordinates....
A year later, all three of them are in dire straits, & things go sideways one night... The next day, they get an offer from a corporate raider who makes them an offer they can't refuse.... They find the planet again, but in what they find out is a stolen ship... And the owners have tracked the ship & plan to beat them to the claim...

The acting is pretty stiff at first, but gets better, & the pacing is pretty decent...
For low budget shot on video, I found it to be a pretty fun little gem...

[M.10rda]

Cerberus, I dare to say you may have accidentally watched and reviewed a good movie.......

I, however, didn't.

THE SEXTERMINATORS (1970):
In spite of its title, Not Porn, not even close. Following a choppily edited opening credits footchase, two guys in black suits corner and then gun down their prey, who looks a bit like a hippie Ray Dennis Steckler (though isn't) and who overemotes before he dies. Okay, I thought, it's the softcore take-off of THE KILLERS. But no. We never learn anything else about the dead hippie RDS and instead start to watch the endless la ronde misadventures of an average-looking middle-aged white guy as he meets and acts indifferently towards various nice-looking dames, they fall for him, he makes out with them topless in bed, then rinses and repeats. Meanwhile the two guys in black suits (who apparently are law enforcement, not hitmen) are on the schlub's tail.

You'll see more nudity and sex in the average episode of HBO Max shows like GIRLS, GoT, or EUPHORIA than you will in THE SEXTERMINATORS. You'll also see no further violence after that first shooting. What you will see is one more brief footchase at the very end of the movie before the schlub surrenders and is taken into custody. So what was his crime? Okay, SPOILER warning, but also Screw This Stoopid Movie and it's dumb twist....... although the setting looks like SoCal circa 1970, it's actually The Dystopian Future TM, where the government assigns/approves sex partners and Schlub has Broken All The Rules w/ his free-lovin' ways. In the final scene, they strap him to a gurney and escort him into surgery for imminent castration!    So, uhhh... maybe THE SEXTERMINATORS was ahead of its time w/ its Atwoodian vision of the future. But BTW you'll also see a lot more nudity and sex in the average episode of THE HANDMAID'S TALE, not to mention legit thoughtful writing, good acting, and quality filmmaking.

0.5/5 AVOID!   

[LilCerberus]

Cerberus, I dare to say you may have accidentally watched and reviewed a good movie.......

Maybe so, but then, I was probably the only person in the world who liked Timbo Hines' War Of The Worlds, and I've always been told Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) was a good film, but I was really disappointed.....

[lester1/2jr]

" The acting is pretty stiff at first, but gets better" I've noticed this in many low budget films