RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Mission Stardust (1967)
https://youtu.be/Poi-qvJ-9mY?si=FxISyJ4IqKmrglZq

Astronauts are sent to the moon, but a drug lord has some insider information on the mission....
Upon reaching the moon, the rocket is attacked, it's rover is destroyed, and the astronauts find an alien spaceship, where they meet an incredibly stuck up female alien & her dying companion...
The aliens take the humans to Africa to find a doctor who can save the old man, which ticks off a regional warlord with the drug lord right behind....
At one point, the drug lord's henchmen are wearing red baseball caps....

Predictable in many ways, but delightfully corny...

[M.10rda]

ONCE BITTEN (1985):
I've been in peak workaholism mode and haven't watched a complete movie in 2 weeks but Madame started watching this old chestnut and I surrendered to join her. This is unquestionably a bad movie but has plenty of entertainment value as it is 80s as hell - maybe more 80s than TEEN WITCH or BREAKIN' 2. I don't think the director was insightful enough or creative enough that he was stretching to emphasize the 80s kitsch - he just happened to be in the right places at the right time w/ the right set designers and costume designers and actors who were very much living in 1985. Boy, were they!

The director certainly wasn't getting much else right - I've rarely seen more painstaking set-ups for tiny punchline payoffs. Nearly the entire supporting cast is dire, too. That said, anyone's only still watching ONCE BITTEN for Jim Carrey, and here, too, the film maintains both historical value and inherent cred. Young Carrey more or less performs the role of a human being (and an affable one at that), only dialing up his physical clowning when the script seems to call for it, and then to great effect. It's easy to imagine this Jim Carrey becoming a successful screen actor - this is recognizably the same Jim Carrey from ETERNAL SUNSHINE, for instance. (Whoever played Ace Venture is a depressing imposter.)

Carrey's authentic gifts are on such good display here that he's the majority of the show - most of the rest of it being Lauren Hutton's palatable sex appeal and nearly R-rated outfits. Cleavon Little (!) is terrific but tragically underutilized as Hutton's Renfield. Carrey's human sweetheart is played by an agreeable if bland unknown named Karen Kopins, who at least has great legs and can really use 'em. The highlight of this silly film is a high school Halloween dance-off where Kopins and Hutton throw down for Carrey's heart. Carrey gets involved and a legit choreographer was involved too and for four minutes ONCE BITTEN turns into an actual event.

2.5/5

But where were the faculty chaperones/who let an underdressed 40(0)-something woman into the high school dance?

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Hollywood in the Atomic Age - Monsters! Martians! Mad Scientists! (2021)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13977508/
https://youtu.be/YvqSIl7umlM?si=ASTGeaPGD0mMAeGy

Rather dry & meandering documentary that starts off by touching on how Roswell more or less started the alien genre, then wonders into rubber suit monster & the guys who made them, then just wonders off....
About halfway through, the audio & video become unsynched....

[Jim H]

The Rift, AKA Endless Descent (1990) - I'm pretty sure I rented this on VHS in the mid 90s, but I have zero memory of it.  Unfortunately.  This is a real pile of crap.  It's the story of a vaguely explained mission to recover some sub's black box, and it turns out there's more going on than they know.  Whatever.  It's poorly written, mostly badly acted, poorly structured...  The first 45 minutes is excruciatingly boring, the main sub set sucks, it feels like it's 2 hours even though it's 80 minutes minus credits.  The good thing, for about a half hour there's some pretty good gore and creature effects sporadically, including a quite good head explosion.  R. Lee Ermey si the sub captain, and is pretty good, better than the film deserves.  Ray Wise is in this too, being smarmy as usual.  3/10.

[zombie no.one]

The Rift, AKA Endless Descent (1990) - I'm pretty sure I rented this on VHS in the mid 90s, but I have zero memory of it.  Unfortunately.  This is a real pile of crap.  It's the story of a vaguely explained mission to recover some sub's black box, and it turns out there's more going on than they know.  Whatever.  It's poorly written, mostly badly acted, poorly structured...  The first 45 minutes is excruciatingly boring, the main sub set sucks, it feels like it's 2 hours even though it's 80 minutes minus credits.  The good thing, for about a half hour there's some pretty good gore and creature effects sporadically, including a quite good head explosion.  R. Lee Ermey si the sub captain, and is pretty good, better than the film deserves.  Ray Wise is in this too, being smarmy as usual.  3/10.

yes, a sadly lacklustre movie from the guy who directed the awesome PIECES (and the bad/good SLUGS)... Was really disappointed when I saw it, was expecting at least some kind of entertainment factor

[M.10rda]

Yeah it's terrible, but Ermey and Wise are great consolation prizes. "Smarmy as usual"? Naturally! No one does smarmy like Ray Wise!