RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[M.10rda]

Okay, but now you have to do ...N THE HOOD.

[zombie no.one]

Okay, but now you have to do ...N THE HOOD.

pretty sure that's the only one I have seen... a somewhat demeaning endeavour for all involved, especially me.

[M.10rda]

TRILOGIA DE TERROR (1968):
...Not to be remotely confused w/ Dan Curtis' TRILOGY OF TERROR, the one w/ the killer doll et al. This is a Brazilian anthology by three different directors, only one of whom (Coffin Joe) I am familiar with. This is "horror", but, uhh - well, it's Brazilian horror from the 60s, and that seems important to acknowledge in some way. In undergrad the intro theory professor made us watch the 1967 Cuban film THE ADVENTURES OF JUAN QUIN QUIN. Some of my hipper or more progressive fellow students went along w/ our hippie professor and insisted that JUAN QUIN QUIN was just the coolest movie ever, but I didn't get it then and I probably wouldn't get it now, either. The only difference is that now I realize it's a product of the specific culture and framework within which it was made, one which I don't have a ton of awareness about. Likewise, probably, TRILOGIA DE TERROR: I didn't find it scary or well-made or compelling, but, maybe that's just me bein' White.

The first (and longest) installment initially seems like a period "western", though gradually it reveals that it may be taking place in the contemporary 1960s, though maybe not. Some poor rural folks are embroiled in dark shenanigans involving forced prostitution and a murder plot and some gunslinger/outlaw-types. Then after about 25 minutes it's revealed that there's also a Manson Family-type sex cult living in a cave in the woods, up to more dark shenanigans. That said, this was made in '68 and no one knew about the Manson Family until after the Tate-LaBianca murders in '69, so again, my interpretation is purely spurious. To confuse this viewer further, a Jesus-type peasant occasionally wanders through the village, and then at the very end of the installment it's revealed that he is actually Jesus.......  ...Even w/ subtitles, this made little sense to me and did little for me. There's some nudity and a little blood but nothing worth writing home about.

The second installment made more sense to me: a moderate/mainstream Dad in a small town has nightmares that his adolescent son will be indoctrinated into and brainwashed by a violent leftist militia.  Okay, I personally would welcome a modern American leftist militia w/ open arms, but in the language of this short, the bad guys are pro-gun extremists who want to kidnap kids and kill their parents, so - I can relate to that being a scary idea. I still didn't find this one scary in execution, but at least it tracks in theory.

The third installment is the Coffin Joe one. That'll be worth the wait, right?  So, this one is (again, theoretically) universal in theme: a dude afraid of being buried alive. He has nightmares of enormous snakes (yuck!) - which I guess, indeed, could be underground in your coffin were you buried alive. Then, to spice up the proceedings, the dude's girlfriend gets gang-r***d in front of him. There's no explicit nudity or thrusting - mostly just a bunch of dudes piled on the actress, and then close-ups of her agonized face, and cut-ins of the dudes sniffing her various pieces of clothing.  But it is edited fairly... vigorously? So it feels more violent and graphic than it is.  Then at the end (?SPOILER?) the dude is buried... alive... of course. His friends dig him up quickly. Somehow during the brief duration he's underground, he's had cheap Halloween make-up applied to his face and eyes.  The End. Honestly, besides the vigorous r@pe editing, Coffin Joe isn't a good filmmaker.

2/5    Maybe Brazilians dig it!

[M.10rda]

Oh boy, I'm really pickin' 'em poorly this month...

KING OF KONG ISLAND (1968):
Neither a prequel to KING OF KONG or KONG: SKULL ISLAND nor in any way related to any KING KONG movies... there are only a couple of shambling upright "gorillas" of human dimension and controlled by a mad scientist. There's also a Sheena-style jungle girl whose hair usually covers her breasts, as would happen in these bad Euro-flicks. However, there is no giant ape. 

The ubiquitous Brad Harris is some kind of mercenary in Africa who is double-crossed by a partner but survives to seek revenge. In a wholly unrelated plot, he's also friends w/ a rich guy whose kids have gotten in trouble on safari w/ the mad scientist and the shabby-looking apemen. Following a lot of nature doc cut-ins, Harris meets the Jungle Girl and she sort of helps him out, though not much. The apemen only see action in a couple scenes. 

KING OF KONG ISLAND has major characters named "Turk", "Burt", "Albert", and "Robert". No, this isn't a Lenny/Teddy/Sammy/Jimmy/Dodd type of situation, nor a Veronica/Ronnie/Nicki situation - it's just bad writing and it's confusing when none of the characters are compelling.

Marc Lawrence plays "Albert" the Mad Scientist. I know him best for his (somewhat impressive) dual role in NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR, but he was in lots of movies. He's maybe best known for the movies he was supposed to be in - RESERVOIR DOGS (as Joe) and BLADE RUNNER (as M. Emmett Walsh's character). If he auditioned for Tarantino and Scott like he acts here, I understand why he wouldn't get those roles!

The Jungle Girl doesn't do much for me but the other two actresses are redheads - a MILFy one and then a nubile teenager. They fight near the end.  The teenager learns that her brother is dead and watches her father get murdered in front of her - then 5 minutes later she's riding off into the sunset w/ Brad Harris, all smiles. 

What a dumb movie.    1.5/5    There is a super-cute moment where the teen redhead spots a lion cub and a baby leopard wrestling and cuddling. That's adorable but equally unlikely as everything else in this movie.

[Dr. Whom]

The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967)

aka The Blood Demon, The Snake Pit and the Pendulum, Blood of the Virgins and Castle of the Walking Dead. No idea why it has so many English titles. The German orginal is Die Schlangengrube und das Pendulum, which translates to 'the snake pit and the pendulum'.

This is a German answer to the Hammer movies. It even has Christopher Lee as 'Count Regula', who seeks immortality by absorbing the blood of virgins. He is executed but comes back for revenge.
I liked it better than a regular Hammer. The action is very tame, even more so than in a Hammer movie. Lex Barker mostly stands about looking manly and dashing. It does have a lot more atmosphere. For one thing, it is actually filmed in Central Europe and they make good use of picturesque locations. I can imagine if you see this at an impressionable age, it can become a childhood favourite.
The count certainly didn't hold back when it came to installing portcullises in his castle.

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Doctor Syn(1937)
https://youtu.be/KVekeUEbrzc?si=GpdHKM5bmGDiabca

The film opens with a group of pirates marooning a guy in blackface for his betrayal of Captain Clegg....
Twenty years later, there's a grave with his name on it outside a church run by Dr. Syn.... During a Sunday service, one of the parishioners gets a signal that revenuers are coming, & the service closes....
The revenuer is Capt. Collyer, who's been ordered to find smugglers.... He gets to chatting with the town's drunken doctor, who claims to have seen evil spirits around the marsh... Locals dismiss this as just the doctor being drunk, but the Captain believes these are the smugglers....
Dr. Syn & his gang must hastily change road signs to fool the soldiers..,.. But that's only the first problem.... The guy in blackface returns... The town's schoolteacher is the accountant for the gang, and starts getting nervous, while his least favorite student starts getting nosey....

This film is not very well lit in places, & the rapid fire English vernacular is kinda hard to keep up with... Still, it's an interesting take compared to the Disney version...

[M.10rda]

I watched TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM @ some point in the past decade and enjoyed it. Lex Barker was blessed w/ a good chin.  It took him until the third installment of his "Old Shatterhand" trilogy to learn how to throw a credible punch, but producers must have only cared about his chin!

[Dr. Whom]

I watched TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM @ some point in the past decade and enjoyed it. Lex Barker was blessed w/ a good chin.  It took him until the third installment of his "Old Shatterhand" trilogy to learn how to throw a credible punch, but producers must have only cared about his chin!

Well Lex Barker looks the part, that much is certain. He doesn't do much else. Tossing a cross on an alchemical installation is about as strenuous as it gets.
This movie is more about creating memorable visuals (the vultures are a nice touch) rather than creating narrative suspense, and on the whole it succeeds. It is just that the coach ride to the castle takes forever. They nearly lost me there.

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
High Treason(1929)
https://youtu.be/Vuh8E73GWrk?si=caSyelSf1ByQITZz

In the not to distant future of 1940, the Earth is mostly united under two governments...
At a border checkpoint, a pair of bootleggers are allowed through by the European side, but the soldiers on the Atlantic side want to search the vehicle.... The bootleggers try to make a break for it, but an Atlantic soldier stops them with a grenade, then a European soldier shoots him, and a gun battle erupts..... The world is now on the brink of war, and the world's arms dealers (who are funding the trouble) are salivating at the money they'll make... Meanwhile, a young military officer on the European side romances the daughter of a top official for The World Peace League....
The arms dealers organize a terror attack, declarations of war are quickly made, and the soldier must set about the business of war, while the father & daughter of the Peace league set out to prevent the war from starting...

Very preachy.... Everyone recites their lines very slowly & deliberately.... Lots of stock footage, but the sets & miniatures are pretty decent for the era....

[Jim H]

Okay, but now you have to do ...N THE HOOD.

I just saw this one.  I know it has a bit of a cult following, but it didn't gel with me at all.  There's a couple decent gags in the opening, but then it mostly just lost me.  I dunno.  It's still better than the first one though, at least it's not boring.

[M.10rda]

Thank you for your sacrifice, Jim! 

[Dr. Whom]

Kronos (1957)

Starring Jeff Morrow, who would go on that same year to battle the Giant Claw, also by reversing the polarity.

This is a typical mid-50s alien invasion movie. The aliens land, and there are only about four people on hand to stop them. As these things go, it is not a particularly bad one. The plot, while strictly by the numbers, isn't as ludicrous as some. What really lets it down, are the production values. They do their best, they use stock footage intelligently, have some mass scenes and even a helicopter (which gets a lot of screen time). But at the end of the day, it is just a handful of people in some basic sets. Also, for a movie of about 78 minutes, there is a lot of padding. This feels like a script for a TV episode, stretched out to film length.

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Running from the Guns(1987)
https://youtu.be/y4PbqQCInbQ?si=bNEafK9-Vo_GaQDK (Mislabeled)

A pair of young crooks pick up a container.... Without realizing it, a group of punks in mohawks start chasing them, but the driver is a maniac who nearly gets them all killed, several times, and in the first five minutes....
Meanwhile, some gangsters have received an identical container, & discover the containers were switched....

Aussie style dark comedy, ping-pongs between slapstick humor & serious crime drama.... Watchable with a decent soundtrack....
What annoys me, is how this is posted as a different movie, with the opening & closing credits chopped off, and I spent about an hour trying to find the REAL title of this movie.....

[M.10rda]

THE MADS ARE BACK: PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES (1955):
Boy howdy, this is one of those 50s genre flicks that really makes you appreciate the flavorful if imperfect qualities of a BRAIN-EATERS and especially the wildly creative and entertaining (if batpoop wonky) stylings of Ed Wood's 50s horror flicks. PHANTOM FROM 10K LEAGUES is dull as the dishwater that characters frequently die in. Okay, they're in a big lake or something, not a kitchen sink, yet the water is murkier than this film's screenplay.

Ubiquitous genre stuffed-shirt Kent Taylor wanders around a beach at night, discovers a dead body, and then follows another dude to his cabin... in long slooow wide-shots. This is the first few minutes of PHANTOM, and - brace yourself - the best part of the movie! Its hypnotic pace and lack of expository dialogue (plus suit-wearing Taylor looking out-of-place on a beach at night) reminded me of a David Lynch movie or of John Hayes' extremely cool and creepy '68 flick HELP WANTED FEMALE. Alas, it's all downstream from there...

Yes, there's an absurd-looking sea monster in the lake, and you see him (barely) wrestle characters on a few occasions, but most of the running time is dedicated to a hopelessly convoluted intrigue/espionage plot involving way too many boring human characters, most of whom never appear w/ the monster. I had no idea what was going on on-land after about 20 minutes, and couldn't care less!

I watched "The Mads" version. The earlier stretch of their rifftrack is hilarious (naturally), and they still hit some out of the park thereafter, but even Frank and Trace admit that PHANTOM's badness wore them down after a while. It's grueling and I wouldn't revisit this one...    2/5

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Adiós Amigo(1975)
https://youtu.be/HXhB5Ht4JHg?si=UbS5eXeBWkp9Jqaf

Blaxploitation western with disco music....
Fred Williamson get in a fight with four drunks.... A land grabber hires the drunks to steal his horses, but Williamson shoots one of them.... He shows up at the land grabbers hotel room wanting reimbursement for the horses, but a shootout occurs & he gets framed....
He has to travel by stagecoach to the nearest town with a jail, but the stagecoach gets held up by Richard Prior... Prior forces the driver to set Williamson free, but then leaves him there.... Williamson catches up to Prior in the next town.... Prior has swindled a few people at a boxing match, then says Williamson is the fighter, then makes a break for it.... The same thing happens at the next town, then the pair get separated....
Williamson take a job at a farm, where the flirtatious daughter gets him in trouble.... Prior loses the money in a card game, then tries to swindle a small town in a phony land deal....
Then they reunite, only to get in trouble again....

Very poor cinematography, & probably clipped to death in aspect ratio changes.... No real plot, & terribly paced.... Prior get in a lot of ad libs, setting the stage for the likes of Eddie Murphy or Will Smith movies.... Makes for an interesting footnote in the careers of two future stars, but that's it...