Main Menu

RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

Started by M.10rda, November 23, 2023, 07:31:52 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

M.10rda

Huh! Dominique's father wrote a novel based on the case, and that book was turned into a TV mini-series in the 80s... I watched it as a kid but wasn't aware of how close or not close it was to the true story. Ben Gazzara plays her dad (!) and I think he hunts down the boyfriend and shoots him at the end!  :thumbup: 

LilCerberus

#376
Tonight's Stinker
Space Master X 7 (1958)
https://youtu.be/Ed-X_2iyolM?si=ZAb4-p2CExEcb6rf

It's a pretty bad rip, all pixelated & blurry, but not enough that you can't get the gist of what's going on...

So, NASA brings back a sample of some kind of fungus from outer space & gives it to a scientist who takes it home to his private laboratory....
Unfortunately, he arrives home to find his Ex waiting for him... She's remarried & wants custody of their son... She pesters him for days while he's trying to work with a growing & dangerous fungus...
He finally relents, & she leaves, but later that night, the fungus kills him.....
The army destroys his lab, & takes a tape recording of his research... While listening to the tape, they discover the Ex was there... It's up to two agents to find out who she is & where she went....
The next day, she sees a newspaper headline saying the scientist is dead, & she's wanted for questioning...
Assuming she's wanted for murder, she goes underground....

All science-fictiony in the beginning, then gets kinda plodding in the middle, then gets surprisingly riveting...
"Science Fiction & Nostalgia have become the same thing!" - T Bone Burnett
The world runs off money, even for those with a warped sense of what the world is.

zombie no.one

Quote from: M.10rda on January 12, 2025, 06:58:33 PMHuh! Dominique's father wrote a novel based on the case, and that book was turned into a TV mini-series in the 80s... I watched it as a kid but wasn't aware of how close or not close it was to the true story. Ben Gazzara plays her dad (!) and I think he hunts down the boyfriend and shoots him at the end!  :thumbup: 

damn, didn't know that... I think the father did actually move to where the killer lived and started public campaigns against him,  but I'm pretty sure that last part is fictionalised.  :buggedout:

M.10rda

BORDERLANDS (2024):
This catastrophic financial failure was almost universally rejected by fans of its source material, who objected to (among other things) an overabundance of plot and dialogue (!) and - no joke - the omission of talking weapons, which are common in the "Borderlands" video game franchise. That's right, no talking weapons...? No sale! I think I have played maybe 5 of the 6 "Borderlands" games, but none for longer than 30 minutes. Although I like first-person shooters, I find these games mindlessly repetitive and puerile. Therefore I take no issue at face value with injecting more plot, characterization, etc into a BORDERLANDS movie. But, having now watched the thing, I didn't like it either - so if the producers didn't please fans and didn't please non-fans, what the heck they were trying to accomplish?

Well, dig it: Cate Blanchett of all people is a neon-haired intergalactic bounty hunter pursuing a mythical McGuffin through a dayglo futuristic wasteland. Anyone who has ever seen exactly one "space messiah" quest movie will likely be unsurprised to discover that the McGuffin she pursues for 80 minutes ends up of course being herself. Blanchett at least looks great - she could take over playing Black Widow from ScarJo and no one would mind - and I don't begrudge her what I'm sure was a large paycheck. But by the final 20 minutes, when she goes all Super Saiyan or Dark Phoenix, I started to at last feel embarrassed for her.

Anyway, Blanchett accumulates a ragtag (or threadbare) band of miscreants during her adventure. Jamie Lee Curtis is at least amusing as some kind of scientist on the autism spectrum. Kevin Hart, on the other hand, plays a role that could've been played by absolutely any other living performer, which is no insult against Hart, only against his material. Likewise, Jack Black was predictably employed at no small expense to voice a beloved robot character, taking some pains to sound more like "Claptrap" than like himself. Hardcore fans have been enraged about the original voice actor being replaced  :lookingup: so that was another questionable application of resources, I suppose. As I said, there's little I like about the video games, but one thing I do like is the warped little pyromaniac Tiny Tina, so naturally she has been mostly bowdlerized here for a PG-13 rating. Finally, there is an insane ranting masked strongman character played by an unknown actor who makes no impression. I don't know who could've enlivened real humor and pathos into such a role - Dave Bautista, perhaps? Hmm.

As this underwhelming crew unites in triumph at the closing credits, at last my sleepy mind put the pieces together: the producers of BORDERLANDS were trying to recreate the magic of the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY trilogy, only without James Gunn empowered with Marvel money and apparently no oversight. Then the producer credits appeared, and I was aghast to see that the executives behind BORDERLANDS are the producers of GOTG - Avi Arad and Kevin Feige. How unfortunate for them... gentlemen, we know James Gunn... we know James Gunn doesn't need to return your phone calls anymore... and gentlemen, Eli Roth is no James Gunn.

2/5

LilCerberus

Tonight's Stinker
The Flame Barrier (1958)
https://youtu.be/RdCrIlMQOvM?si=uNSo5cZZjXv3ue4l

Dreadfully slow & painful to watch....
It begins with a narrative about a satellite believed to have burned up on re-entry, but a scientist thinks it it landed somewhere in Mexico....
Next, the scientists wife shows up & talks a crabby safari guide & his drunk brother into taking her to find him... Setting the pace for the rest of the movie this bickering trio wonders through the jungle occasionally running into local natives talking about angry gods, & something killing the animals, while some of them die from inexplicable burns...
Science fiction stuff towards the end that left me scratching my head....
"Science Fiction & Nostalgia have become the same thing!" - T Bone Burnett
The world runs off money, even for those with a warped sense of what the world is.

M.10rda

#380
LUST FOR FREEDOM (1987):
I am sincerely going to try to stop watching films I will probably not like, and going to try to spend less time talking about how bad they are. But I kept watching LUST FOR FREEDOM because of its opening sequence, and that opening sequence (as well as some of what follows) may bring legitimate pleasure to someone who reads this - so let's do it.

Following the universal symbol of Bad Movie archness aka the Troma distribution intro, we open on a literally incredible looking woman getting out of her car and meeting her equally improbable looking fiancee. The release date is 1987 but both of these characters look like they could exist no later than 1982 anywhere other than footage from ANCHORMAN III. They're undercover cops in love and they are about to perform a major bust with their partners, both dressed as homeless Chicago Bears fans. Unfortunately one of those guys is an ambitious rookie and chaos ensues, replete with pump shotguns, .44 magnums, squibs, extremely cautious fight choreography, breakaway glass, and, worst of all, the female cop melodramatically removing her truly fabulous fright wig in a moment of anguish.

Okay, got all that? Well never mind because it has nothing to do with the next 80 minutes of the movie. The female lead and the rest of the film for that matter are never the same after she loses that wig. In a state of grief, she drives through the desert but stops to pick up another feather-haired blonde in a cocktail dress running on foot through the brush. Big mistake!

Cue a pretty standard though sufficiently sleazy and vicious WIP entry that is equal parts boring and amusingly incompetent. The prison matron looks like a dowdy Adrienne Barbeau (like, if she played "Maude" and not Maude's hot daughter). One of the chief thugs is played by a big, scary, convincingly despicable indigenous actor, and there's also an extremely tongue-in-cheek warden-slash-mayor who's practically Colonel Sanders w/o a 'stache. If the production had an extra $50,000 they probably could've afforded Charles Napier to play the morally ambivalent Sheriff. As it is the only name in the credits I recognized was Michelle Bauer, who must be one of the naked lesbians. (Nothing against Michelle or this film's nudity, but it wasn't so memorable that I sat up and said "That's Michelle Bauer!")

LUST FOR FREEDOM climaxes with a fair amount of lively if inept mayhem. It also has a running voice-over by its female lead that would seem unnecessary in many films, but actually helps to clarify some sloppy storytelling in this one. I do recommend it to anyone who wants to see a Bad sleazy movie. It's not quite the genuine article - it doesn't have the vision of a MANOS, for instance. But the cast and crew were clearly enthusiastic about this nonsense, and in some shots you get the impression that the actors are self-aware of how bad LUST FOR FREEDOM will be and yet they lean into the badness just a touch. That's the kind of consciously bad filmmaking that was easier to get away with in the 80s, before simply everyone was trying to fabricate their own Bad Movies. It couldn't have hurt that Troma provided both "production and post-production support", suggesting that Papa Lloyd had some influence even while the cameras were rolling and presumably encouraged the director to have fun with this film, instead of taking it seriously. It was the right move. I had a little fun watching LFF and maybe you will, too.

2.5/5

LilCerberus

Tonight's Stinker
Space Probe Taurus (1965)
https://youtu.be/U_R7LoJCR2E?si=9jR8jSGYbe8V-zoT

Plays out like a garbage pile of other sci-fi b-movies....
It begins with a failed mission to see if another planet can support life...
A year later, a newer ship is sent on the same mission...
First order of business is for the commander to express his feelings about having a woman on board, then acknowledge passing a space station, then encounter an alien ship & have to kill the alien on board & blow up his ship... That's, like, the first half hour or so...
From there it's pontificating & dealing with an annoying copilot, then a meteor shower & a malfunction that sends them off course.....
The film has plenty of it's moments, but is more innuendo than action...
"Science Fiction & Nostalgia have become the same thing!" - T Bone Burnett
The world runs off money, even for those with a warped sense of what the world is.

LilCerberus

Tonight's Stinker
The Strange World of Planet X (1958) (AKA Cosmic Monsters)
https://youtu.be/lwFPvvJzQQQ?si=RUo9LD7DL5hl-eSP

A British scientist & his American assistant are working with high powered magnetic waves in hopes of creating a ray gun that will destroy enemy aircraft, but so far, just knocks out televisions.... A recent failure & a high budget brings the prying eyes of the top brass....
A demonstration reveals that the ray doesn't stay in a containment box, & reeks havoc in the town, the local homeless guy starts killing people, & a stranger shows up....
50s sci-fi, British style, so it's mostly talk & innuendo, with mostly darkened out action sequence toward the end with the army duking it out with footage of bugs under a microscope....
"Science Fiction & Nostalgia have become the same thing!" - T Bone Burnett
The world runs off money, even for those with a warped sense of what the world is.

LilCerberus

Tonight's Stinker
The Day the Sky Exploded (1958)
https://youtu.be/E5-ddFsICpQ?si=dTwNf0vQzjq-hd-V

So, Americans & Russians assemble in Australia to send a manned rocket into space, but first it's ten minutes of excitable newsmen & procedural jibber jabber.....
Then, another ten minutes of jibber jabber, then the lab pops the Champaign, then the pilot loses control of the rocket & safely ejects back to earth...
Lots and lots of procedural & scientific jibber jabber throughout the movie, a subplot about the pilots strained relationship with his wife & another about a scientist trying to make the moves on a mathematician....
We eventually learn that the rocket kept going, blew up in an asteroid belt & there's a giant meteor headed towards earth, and it takes about an hour for somebody to realize the most obvious solution....
The movie does start to get pretty intense in the second half.....
"Science Fiction & Nostalgia have become the same thing!" - T Bone Burnett
The world runs off money, even for those with a warped sense of what the world is.

LilCerberus

Tonight's Stinker
GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN (1958)
https://youtu.be/6rCs2VKOb08?si=vxiT32RE99QWqJaq

The film opens with townspeople chattering about a murder that follows recent cattle mutilations... After the local sheriff breaks up the crowd, paleontologist comes into town after three days in the hills.... The paleontologist had a disagreement with the victim a week earlier, so the bullheaded sheriff thinks he's the prime suspect....
Then an archeologist & his daughter pull into town... The paleontologist invites them to dinner, where the archeologist reveals he's looking for the grave a soldier who deserted from a Spanish conquistador....
Pretty talky at the beginning, then get suspenseful, the sorta drags out the last fifteen minutes....
"Science Fiction & Nostalgia have become the same thing!" - T Bone Burnett
The world runs off money, even for those with a warped sense of what the world is.

M.10rda

Now THAT'S a bad movie!
By gosh and by gum, someone had to ask the question: is Bigfoot-slash-the Abominable Snowman still scary if you shave him and put Spanish Conquistador armor on him? SPOILER WARNING: .......No.

LilCerberus

Nap, then groceries, so tonight's Stinker was a short...
The Psychic Parrot - 1977
https://youtu.be/DjtNSNly_i0?si=Wvm-tquDWdxvSq5N
OR https://youtu.be/Dhsg6nNY1yI?si=D3JNjd0jY5f8ZIrZ

A psychic parrot with a pretty good track record predicts the end of the world, so two all American consumers decide to stay home & watch it on television....
"Science Fiction & Nostalgia have become the same thing!" - T Bone Burnett
The world runs off money, even for those with a warped sense of what the world is.