RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[zombie no.one]

so where does the whole 'An American X in Y' thing originally stem from then? because AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON was obviously a few years after AAHII... any examples prior to that one?  (or isn't it a 'thing'?)

[M.10rda]

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951)

Also "A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court" by Mark Twain, I suppose.

I dunno, anyone got any other precedents?

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Beyond the Moon (1954)
https://youtu.be/3y8TV2XHbPc?si=s2ASbq5BWRvIOCt1

Edited from the Rocky Jones, Space Ranger television series....
Rocky & his copilot Winky find out a professor friend of theirs has defected to an enemy race, but they smell a rat, they go to outer space to the enemy planet to see what's really up....
Meanwhile, there's a spy at Space Ranger Headquarters, and the aliens have used some kind of hypno-ray on the professor & his son...
There's also the addition of a female navigator & translator, who gets her share of the predictable misogynistic quips from Rocky....
Some of the sound effects are kinda grating, but they don't last long....

[M.10rda]

THE SNOW CREATURE (1954):
Perhaps I should stop second-guessing why I revisit bad films I've already seen and didn't much like the first time. I was too mentally exhausted to concentrate on anything novel and had found this old DVD copy that claimed to be "the most complete" version available of this, possibly the first Yeti or Bigfoot movie. So, hey! 

No matter that I found THE SNOW CREATURE to be laborious and somnolent the first time (it still is); no matter that it's xenophobic or borderline racist (the Tibetan sherpas speak Japanese and are persistently condescended to as if they're children by the smug lead white guy); no matter that the film is so damn cheap that they shot ONE (and, as I recalled, ONLY one) shot of the shadowy Yeti approaching the camera, then use it literally 15-20 times, sometimes reversing the footage so it looks like the Yeti is stepping away into the shadows instead of emerging....... what am I talking about, all of those things matter and all of those things make THE SNOW CREATURE a terrible movie.

...However... perhaps as a testimonial to how low my standards for cryptohominid horror truly are... I endured (and sometimes FF'd through) the crummy, slow first hour and surrendered to the looooooong final act, where patrolmen methodically scan the pitch-black tunnels of a SoCal system of storm drains with big flash-lanterns (in a sequence which, I admit, is rather hypnotic and occasionally beautiful in a Ridley Scott's Nostromo kinda' way)... and then reached the finale, where I discovered something I didn't remember from my first viewing (and, who knows, might've been deleted from whatever print I watched):

Near the very end, the Yeti starts reaching out of alcoves and grabbing cops, and at the very very end, about half a dozen cops wrestle the damn thing, and thus you really see the Yeti in (dimly lit) wide shot, and - that Yeti is legit huge, like 2+ feet bigger than the actors playing the cops, and for a few brief shots, THE SNOW CREATURE is quite arresting and impressive. You couldn't fake that kinda' thing in 1954, and indeed the (uncredited) actor who played the Yeti was the one-and-only Lock Martin, the 7'7" gentleman who also played Gort in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and the main alien in INVADERS FROM MARS. This final scuffle is such pure screen magic that one cannot fathom why the filmmakers had to repeat that single stoopid shot of the Yeti advancing and reversing over and over and over again through the rest of the movie. Oh right, they only wanted to pay Lock Martin for a day's work for the climax, I guess. 

The brainiac responsible for THE SNOW CREATURE was "W. Lee Wilder", sometimes credited as "William Wilder", who is best known for directing KILLERS FROM SPACE  and was the more famous director Billy Wilder's actual brother... Billy would routinely disavow any relation to W. Lee but acknowledged him in at least one interview as a "real dull son of a b***h". What a family dynamic!

2/5

If I live another decade or more I'm positive I'll end up watching this again...

[M.10rda]

PEACOCK KING (1988):
Everything about this late 80s HK fantasy/horror/martial arts/adventure flick seemed poorly translated to me, from its typically nonsensical subtitles to its English title (which seems to combine the names of the antagonist and one of the protagonists for no clear reason) and even the visual quality of the dub I watched, which was cropped and muddy and chintzy and might likely have looked a lot better in many moments on a crisp blu-ray or something... though....... maybe not! Maybe PEACOCK KING is just goofy trash that briefly (late in the game) offers a couple of cool genre thrills.

If classic HK kung fu stars were the Rat Pack, Yuen Biao would obviously be Sammy to Jackie Chan's Frank and Sammo Hung's Dean....... though, we should allow, Sammy Davis Jr. actually did a lot of stuff without and after Frank and Dean, whereas Yuen Biao did... this movie, I guess! He co-directs and co-stars as "Peacock", a generally carefree "ghost buster" forced to work with "Lucky Fruit", a no-nonsense apprentice monk played by Hiroshi Mikami, who weirdly gets a lot more screentime than top-billed Yuen. Together they try to romance and/or save a couple of girls from the "Hell King", who is... pretty much what he sounds like, really. Gordon Liu appears for a bit among a supporting cast that is pretty non-distinct only a couple of days after I watched this.

I like HK action and horror movies, but there's a certain brand of 80s/early-90s HK flick that wears on my nerves - the frenetic potpourri that switches up genres and tones every 5-10 minutes in an attempt to satisfy any/every viewer. That's what kind of movie PEACOCK KING is. In theory I like a diverse blend of stuff in my movies, but PEACOCK KING  never feels like it's making any sincere attempt to excel at being any one kind of movie - it's just hyperactively lurching from genre to genre.

There are a couple of passages that are both exceptions to and proof of this rule: the first is a pair of appearances by a truly alarming stop motion/claymation body horror monstrosity with a toothy skull that could be straight out of Carpenter's THE THING, and the other is the protagonists' entrance into "Hell King's" lair, a cavernous Giger-esque palace where the enormous final form of the bad guy resides... though after his stirring reveal, the rest of the climactic confrontation is pretty underwhelming. Both instances demonstrate that PEACOCK KING could've been entirely cool, if the filmmakers would have just exercised a little discipline.

2.5/5
Yuen's co-director was Simon Naam aka Ngai Choi Lam, the director behind STORY OF RIKKI OH (among others), another movie that I find to be more incredible in parts than in toto.

[lester1/2jr]

Robowar aka Battle Bots (2018) - There are a few levels to how bad this is so let me try and lay it out here...

1. The Battle Bots are not only low quality CGI, they aren't even really part of the plot. The movie goes and then every 20 minutes or so there's a robot battle.

2. The actors deliver their lines as if they have never even read, much less practiced them before. In their defense, very little thought was put into the script or the plot.

3. One guy dies, then is blatantly playing another role but with half a mask, but you can tell it's him.

4. It's produced by Mark Polonia of Polonia brothers quasi fame.

Okay, now you know what kind of thing we're dealing with. As I watched, I mostly wondered "What is this FOR?" The best answer I could come up with is that the people involved wanted to be in a sci fi action movie and do those sort of scenes because they like watching those kind of movies. My other guess is that they were all involved in some kind of Adult Education course on film making and this was a project. Maybe it's a combination of those two.

At its very best, it kind of resembles a particularly cheap Dr Who episode.

1/5 still not as bad as Marina Monster, but I can't fairly recommend this in any sort of way. 

[zombie no.one]

KICKBOXER: RETALIATION (2018)

as clinical and soulless as it gets.  endless series of random fight clips that look like they're from some new computer game. JCVD is in it but might as well not be.

bloody hell this thing is awful 

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Teenagers Battle the Thing (1958)
https://youtu.be/iCrn9x54Q2g?si=5zSacnWvOLgVjQvj
(Or at https://youtu.be/33CeRPUyh38?si=11D84_HV12k2GHld )

A high school teacher takes some of his students on an archeological dig.... One of them finds a rock that turns out to be a tool....
They climb a mountain & find a tablet glued to the ground real tight... They pull it out & find a hole with smoke coming out of it.... Naturally, they go inside, where they find a clay mummy & take it home...
Later that night, an unconvincing ape man with a face like a drunk werewolf busts out...

At only 0:59 minutes, It's really slow & plodding even at the last ten minutes, with an ending so abrupt, it feels anticlimactic!

[M.10rda]

TEENAGERS BATTLE THE THING is even way more poorly/cheaply made than THE SNOW CREATURE... but it has a monstrous apeman so I looooooooooooove it.

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Swamp of the Lost Monsters
https://youtu.be/dmFZbu8OxNI?si=uzzpHN18wXk6ZuhS

Had a hard time finding out more about this movie, (other than an assumption on my part that this was cobbled from some TV series) but the opening credits mention K Gordon Murray, a "producer" who imported some of the worst matinees that Mexico had to offer....
Also, this was a gosh awful VHS rip from TV of some guys weekend movie show, who cuts in with corny jokes...

So, a Mexican rancher dies, then disappears from his coffin... His brother sends for an American detective, but is murdered along the way...
Add on some guy in a cheesy sea monster costume who can't swim very well & wears an air tank...
Mostly a corny kid friendly detective story.... One scene, the hero gets in a gun fight, only to end it with nobody getting hurt (So I guess they were just shooting to scare each other)...

[zombie no.one]

THE ART OF WAR (2000)

directed by the same guy who did the amazing SCANNERS 3, but this was just a mess of dashing around and random fighting. another Wesley Snipes movie to tick off the list.

TEENAGERS BATTLE THE THING is even way more poorly/cheaply made than THE SNOW CREATURE... but it has a monstrous apeman so I looooooooooooove it.

recently purchased both the 1977 and 2010 'SNOW BEAST's, both reasonably good fun in their own way.

[zombie no.one]

ROMEO MUST DIE (2000)

Remember a bit of hype about this when it came out, first time watch however... Everything about this made me feel roughly 103 years old. A lot of dorky teen humour, banter, and implausible fight sequences which I'm guessing were influenced by THE MATRIX - although I switched that film off after the first fight sequence...
 Aaliyah is stunningly beautiful (feel like an old perv saying that). Hardly demonstrating great acting here, but would surely have gone on to a massive music / acting career... :(

Who is Jet Li? his entire career seems to have somehow passed me by, to the extent that I wasn't sure exactly which guy he is here. lol 

6/10 weak overall but servicable.

[M.10rda]

Never saw RMD but I presumed that Jet Li was Romeo?

I have a TBTT disc like the one you speak of but w/ only the '77 BEAST on it. It's amusing but the Yeti appears onscreen even far less than he does in SNOW CREATURE!    Only in a couple of brief extreme close-ups. Otherwise the whole thing is like a FPS or found-footage movie shot entirely by the Yati!  There were no 7-foot actors hanging around Hollywood in '77?

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Demon of Paradise (1987)
https://youtu.be/sZ_saM3D2fs?si=o2NcSjmywhrQYn1N

Must mention that it's part of somebody else's weekend movie podcast... So, Anyway...

Takes place in Hawaii, Opens with some potty-mouthed dynamite fishermen & their equally potty-mouthed dynamite suppliers who become one of the subplots... After the salesmen take off, a guy in a fish suit shows up, the boats rocks & they drop the dynamite & everybody gets killed....
The local natives are complaining about a shortage of fish, & an elder talks about a demon... They do a hula dance to get rid of the monster, but a local fisherman ticks it off....
There's also a female scientist who believes the beast is real, and a local sheriff whom, no thanks to a sleezy reporter, we learn he lost his last job because he couldn't catch a serial killer...
Meanwhile, the owner of a hotel that's about to go under teams up with the down on his luck reporter to turn the monster into an advertising gimmick, which works, but with predictable consequence....

Lot's of that cheesy '80s midi-synth muzak, and a situation towards the end involving a helicopter that made me laugh out loud....

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
MST3K 517: Beginning of the End (1957)
http://www.badmovies.org/movies/beginend/
https://youtu.be/E8kc3Z7Dxok?si=qBfkZ7g1IEJ5c35L

A small Illinois town is destroyed, & all the residents disappear... A well known reporterette smells a story & decides to investigate....
After getting some pictures, both she & the national guard are stumped, until someone mentions a grain silo that collapsed a few months earlier...
Instead of going strait to the silo, the reporterette stops at an agricultural scientists laboratory to ask for directions... He takes her to the wrecked silos, where they discover giant man-eating locusts...

Must admit, I've seen the first half of this stinker several times, but for one reason or another, wasn't able to watch the end... Mike & the Bots jabs tend to produce some amusing one liners...