Archive for the ‘Trash movies’ Category

The King of the Kickboxers (1991)

Posted: 25/10/2012 in Trash movies
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This movie was originally to be a third sequel in the  horrible, horrible Karate Movie franchise No Retreat, No Surrender aka Karate Tiger. The fact that they changed their minds didn’t make this movie a whole lot better anyway.

As with any action film of the 90es era this one is a rip- off of Van Damme’s  Kickboxer and Bloodsport with boosted levels of craziness and sheer idiocy.It is also a combination of Chinese production, horrible American actors and cheap sets on Thailand- and with a combo like that you know you’re doomed from a start!

The movie starts with Jake Donahue and his older brother in Thailand. Jake’s brother is fighting for the Kickboxing title of Thailand and wins his bout defeating a former champion, Manny Pacquiao- looking fellow. Then they leave the areana in some silly car wearing a championship belt but– soon enough they are ambushed by evil Khan and his henchmen. Khan is none other but mighty Billy Blanks. Yeah, the idiotic inventor of  Thai Bo exercise program* (Blanks didn’t learn to read or write ’till he was 40 years old and it shows.) He looks like some kind of steroided up, rag-top wearing Orc more than he resembles a normal human being. Apparently angry with Sean for taking Thai title- don’t know why, he doesn’t look Thai to me, Khan kills him with some silly kick combinations despite holding a machine gun the whole time!!! When a younger brother Jake tries to save him he gets schooled, but left alive despite suffering practically the same hits like his now deceased brother.

Ten years later, Jake is now a undercover police officer, doesn’t look anything like he did when he was young but he’s got a scar from the fight with Khan so it must be him.  He is a notorious lone wolf stooping crime by fighting criminals with kickboxing skills, defeating one mullet wearing baddie at the time. His commanding officer Captain O’Day tells him that there are filmmakers in Thailand who really kill the actors on the sets of their films (???) and that Jake has to travel to Thailand to stop them. Why would an American cop travel to Thailand to do some Interpol stuff is beyond me. In one of his rare moments of sanity Jake refuses but he unfortunately takes the VHS tapes with him anyway. After casually watching them (he had nothing better to do I guess) he notices the guy “who’s kinda good” and then the dude turns and he sees- The Khan. He calls his boss and accepts the assignment with crying voice and then screams his lungs out so we could all know what kind of pussy he really is.

Avedon and Blanks having a moment.

The he travels to Thailand. Decides to beat up some Muay Thai dudes for no reason but to feel good I guess but one of the students from that camp fallows him and kicks his ass to even the score. Humiliated Jack admits he is no match for Khan but a fighter tells him about Prang, a man who is now a drunken recluse living in the wild but was evenly match with Khan in the past. Jake finds Prang who at first rejects his offer but changes his mind when Jack tries to save him from some punks. In the middle of all that Prang’s monkey steals Jack’s passport ,maybe hoping he can use it to get out of the country?

If that wasn’t enough Jack succeeds in befriending ( and soon enough bedding )  idiotic trailer thrash blond Molly who was coincidentally almost raped by Khan only hours ago. I personally believe that there is no audience for love scenes between such ugly individuals but I could be wrong, it’s a strange world we live in after all.

Anyway we are treated with the most imbecilic training montage in history of training montages (which are not the most intelligent dramatic tools as it is)  where we see Avedon being stretched, beaten and stretched some more and the mere glance at a skinny dude blocking three stomps with his elbows will make you laugh until you cry.

After reaching mastery in something that should be Muay Thai Jack challenges a bunch of dudes in the illegal fight circuit, and beats every one of them while at the same time wearing a female shirt?  One of the evil producers sees a potential in him and invites him to the set. Now his wish is granted and he can finally face the Khan and have his revenge!

    HO- MO- SEXUAL!

Obviously there is not a chance in hell he could beat Khan. Even if we presume that their technique is equal (and it’s not) Khan is far bigger and stronger fighter and would naturally tear him apart. Movie doesn’t concert itself with thing like that, you know common sense and  runs into a climactic final fight between Avedon- dressed like a court jester and Billy Blanks- who’s just being himself. The moment in which Khan deduces the identity of Jack  aka “you are… the BROTHER” after Jack throws him the old photograph is pure cinematic gold. And then as if that wasn’t enough he threatens to kill him and make him join his brother in hell- at that moment Jack loses it, yells “I’ve already been there… for 10 years” and then unleashes a girlish scream that would leave many of the ladies from horror movies envious.

                The proper way to evade a punch.

The fight itself is incredible mish- mash of American kickboxing, pro- wrestling,  Chinese wire-fu with some Muay Thai thrown in for good measure and yeah, they succeeded to take all the worst elements of them all and combine them in such God-awful way that the end result (which was indeed physically demanding and hard to accomplish) ends up being nothing short of absurd and laughable.

Cops -as the cliche goes- arrive late and do the only thing they can- START DESTROYING THE CRIME SCENE WITH FREAKIN’ BAZOOKAS! FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, WTF?!

Verdict: If you like kickboxing, Thailand, Ninjas, Blonds with pathetic boobs, training montages, Billy Blanks, random Zen riddles, Savages and monkeys- this is your movie!

PS For additional footage of  Billy Blanks embarrassing himself find any Tai- Bo instructional DVD.

               *???

Slaughter in San Francisco aka Yellow Faced Tiger (1974)

Posted: 16/10/2012 in Trash movies
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As conventional wisdom tells us a Chuck Norris film will always be unwatchable mess and must be avoided at all costs. On the other hand there are couple exceptions to that rule, obvious ones being The Way of the Dragon (that has one of the best one on one fight sequences in the history of cinema, legendary Chuck Norris vs Bruce Lee duel in Colosseum) and Expendables 2 (which uses Norris cameo to the fullest extend even poking fun at “Chuck Norris Facts” phenomena). Then there is the other kind of movies- the hilariously bad ones, and as you can guess we will concentrate on the later- one of those being  the “Slaughter in San Francisco” aka Yellow Faced Tiger aka Karate Cop aka Karate Cop vs Chuck Norris (no,  we haven’t made up any of those!).

The fact is, Lo Wei, a famed Chinese director (Big Boss, Fist of Fury) wanted to film this movie with Bruce Lee  who kept refusing until he unfortunately died. So instead of a real thing they picked up a kinda look- alike and labeled him  a “Next Action Sensation”. To the best of my knowledge Don Wong (aka Wong Tao) didn’t make another movie (as a lead) in his life.

*all scenes featuring Chuck Norris are covered it this trailer

Young police officer Wong and his black partner John arrest to men for attempt of rape of a young girl, of course using their martial arts expertise (who needs guns anyway). Little while later in the police station young girl, named Sylvia denies all charges and explains “it was all fun”. Confusing start and it just gets weirder. One of the would be rapists kidnaps John in broad daylight just to take him to the beach where he is confronted with numerous adversaries. Let the Kung Fu begin! Johns wife calls Wong and our hippie Bruce Lee– wannabe is momentarily on the way. He makes it in time but unfortunately kills one of the assailants and is almost immediately kicked off the force by his Captain Newman and even incarcerated for a year (?) , obviously if you’re Chinese self- defense doesn’t exist as an excuse.

Next thing we know Wong is now a free man and works as a waiter in a Chinese Restaurant. Unexpectedly a Big Bad Boss of Crime (during the whole movie it is never revealed what kind of crime… it’s just crime)  Chuck Norris aka Chuck Slaughter as he’s known here drops by with his goons obviously hungry for some Chinese…  Then after some usual “lets torture the waiter” routine he blatantly offers a job in his empire of crime to Wong. Wong is dumbfounded and he naturally refuses, and of course something like that can only end in tears. Soon enough Chuck threatens to kill Wong, obviously not able to cope with rejection too good.

 

After being obliterated by alcohol with Wong one evening his now ex-partner John head home in predictably slow pace and somewhere in the way witnesses some men running away from a bank robbery. He pursues the robbers and soon confronts them. They seem confused, and seem content to fight with him bare- handed until one of them suddenly remembers he’s got a gun. What proceeds is the worst scene of shooting in a cinematic history.There is no recoil, gun is obviously a toy and a black dude’s reaction is telling me that a mosquito accidentally bit him at the same moment we hear the gunshot. Chinese man doesn’t shoot again, he decides to forget their original plan (escape as far as you can) and decides to pursue John. They eventually catch him in some random backyard and beat him till death (with bare hand of course).

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Next morning the body is found and Newman being a racist that he is throws Mr. Chu and his wive to jail, their only crime being that 01. The murder took place on their property 02. they are Chinese. Wongs swears a vengeance and then randomly beats a lot of people until he finally finds out the horrible truth- Captain Newman is working for Chuck Slaughter!!!! (Que in the dramatic music) Wong kills Newman in the ferocious and somewhat ridiculous fight and then tries to warn Chu’s lawyer but alas it is already too late.

In all that confusion Chu’s only daughter Sylvia (probably the same girl that was not- raped in the beginning- never explained) menages to run of with Slaughter Jr. aka Chuck Norris’s not so evil brother. Well, Chuck “plays the parts he plays- for real” as the trailer said and tries to force his brothers girl to have sex with him. She narrowly escapes, menages to contacts Wong and he bravely marches into Slaughter residence and confronts Big Bad Boss of Crime himself. Why did he have to wait so much to do that -beats me!

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Chow demonstrates his strength and determination by offing some goons and then breaking a shovel- part by part and then Chuck and Chow fight in a obviously non- choreographed or rushedly choreographed scene (typical for Hong Kong movies at the time) and in the middle of  usual punching/kicking combinations they succeed to end up in the fountain, completely wet and already funny fight becomes completely hilarious! Finally Chow beats Chuck and tries to finish him but fashionably late police force stops him (he probably still has them on the payroll) and the movie abruptly ends.

Can new action sensation Don Wong beat the Big Bad Boss of  Crime, Chuck Norris?

Also, there is an important part of this movie that deserves the whole section just for itself  and that’s the incredible and tragic destiny of Mr. Chu.

You see,  Mr. Chu is very old man whose suffering starts right after Chuck Norris’s thugs tossed away a dead body into his backyard. Mr. Chu found a body and called a police. Corrupted cop came in and started interrogation. It looked like the old Mr. Chu was gonna get away (he didn’t do anything anyway, for that matter) but suddenly, without any solid explanation, he went to the backroom with his wife. Following her advice (this was the biggest mistake; never follow woman’s advice) he tried to bribe a cop (?!) with 1000 dollars despite the fact that he is completely innocent. That’s when real hell broke lose. Cop became suspicious and gave him several slaps. After full contact argue with his host, cop placed him under arrest. After coming to jail Mr. Chu had been constantly beaten, insulted, beaten, tortured, beaten, brutally interrogated, discriminated, beaten, deprived of any human rights and beaten some more. One of more ridiculous (and hilarious) moments in the film is scene where Mr. Chu is taken to his cell. When he asked for a phone call cop yelled to him “You are making trouble here!” following with many many many brutal hits into the old man’s belly. With expression of complete confusion on his face Mr Chu threatened with court. With pure hatred  in his eyes cop replied with a stone called face “You won’t live enough to see a court”. We failed to see exact reason for such hate towards poor old man who even tried to bribe a cop despite a fact that he didn’t have to. Movie ends before revealing the final destiny of Mr. Chu so we  can only presume that he is still in jail cell being tortured over and over again…

       Various examples of suffering of poor Mr. Chu

Verdict: this movie is extremely hard to find but it’s absolutely worth the effort! Chuck Norris should have been a deranged villain in every movie he ever made!

Horrible, Horrible Movie Deaths!!!

Posted: 05/10/2012 in Trash movies
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After our newest addition (and immediate champion) became viral the time has obviously come to review some of the most ill conceived and poorly executed movie deaths in cinema history!

05.SHARK ATTACK 3: MEGALODON (2002)

 

Evil white shark from Shark Attack 3 is so freakin’ big that it doesn’t even have to make an effort to eat people, it just appears out of nowhere with it’s jaws wide open and people fall in by themselves!!! Just look at the evil dude at 0:55, he used his epic evil laugh a little too soon… and now he will never use it again.

04.UNDEFEATABLE (1993)

American action cinema always had a thing for impaling (maybe my psychologist friend can explain me a thing or two about that) but this one took that concept and run with it… all the way to the moon! The mere defeating of the opponent was not an option for our heroes, no… they had to spinning back-kick him head first into a hook (he lost an eye in the process) and while the machine that the hook was attached to was dragging him away (still screaming in agony) they had to taunt him with such godawful one- liners as “we’ll keep an eye out for ya” and the immortal ” yeah, see ya”.

03. SNAKE IN THE EAGLE’S SHADOW (1978)

Jackie Chan’s beak-out vehicle  is like most of his later filmography, thing to be avoided at all costs. It has everything going against him including poor production, confusing plots and all the random nonsensical  fight choreography you can take!  Pinnacle is of course young Jackie’s disposing of a bearded westerner made possible by incredible sequence of techniques- clawing the head (while making cat noises) fallowed by a back-flip and a two handed palm strike to the groin… did the said westerner die from the technique or from pure embarrassment we will never know…

02. ENTER THE NINJA (1981)

Beside the fact that the dude’s acting out slow- mo with a fan working in the background at completely normal speed, he  even stops and shrugs  his shoulders as to say “fuck it, I shouldn’t have messed with those Ninjas anyhow” Ninja remains silent (although clearly confused as to what the hell did he just witness).

01.  KARATECI KUZ  (1974)

In this “fabulous” Turkish production of Karate Girl we  find terrible, agonizing and also seemingly never ending death of a strange villain with even strangers mustaches… he took more bullets than Robocop but damn he kept screaming all the way to the grave! Movie immediately ends after his last breath, director rightfully deciding to finish it on high note.

Black Gestapo (1975)

Posted: 30/09/2012 in Trash movies
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As the title suggests Black Gestapo is a Blaxploitation Nazi film… yeah, you heard it right- a film whose protagonists are BLACK NAZIS!!! Hitler would be rolling over in a grave, if he had one… Someone obviously had spare Nazi uniforms and some black actors at his disposal and made the best of it. And boy did he!

    *best opening sequence ever

It all starts kinda slow as we see kinda peaceful Black Panther -like organization “People’s Army” who works to help the community. That includes Black Che aka General Ahmed and his girl- the nurse who work in Detoxification Unit 2 (founded by none other than People’s Army).  But General Ahmed also has an evil Colonel Kojah by his side ( as good people often have a need for an ultimate baddie by their side).

Some white folks in suits with ridiculous mustaches (mafia enforcers) cause some ruckus, attack the nurse chick and beat up some of the panther dudes (almost killing one of them in the process).  After that the good leader decides that enough is enough and allows the evil dude to train dozen of his man to fight , so they can protect the neighborhood better. As you guessed everything goes downhill from there. Interestingly his  girl warned him not to trust the evil dude (even though she was saved of possible rape by that same man).

Soon enough things get going, black people start doing karate and judo and soon enough the new-crowned
General Kojah has his army. Their ranks grow as their expertise and almost peaceful black pride organization morphed into something far more dangerous…  A BLACK GESTAPO!!!

There action start with  brutal vengeance on mafia (including a nasty castration scene) and even though Mafia Boss (ridiculous bold man) tried his best to contra- sabotage them, clever usage of tactics, explosives and some boobs as a bait resulted in horrible death of mob enforcers.

Uschi Digard, one of the legendary Russ Meyer’s Vixens, evil general’s aid- aids the death of some idiotic mafia enforcer

Ahmed royalty menages not to notice the complete change of his organization until it’s too late and when he finally confront Cojah he is beaten half to death by his minions. Somehow he manages to get to the city all the way from the desert and the nurse girlfriend despite their recent disagreements finds the time to nurse him back to health.

Breaking every possible record in modern medicine he gets better in day’s time and then peaceful Ahmed decides to stop being so peaceful and all kind of ass- kicking ensues. He breaks out alone into the the premises of Black Gestapo- taking down soldiers one by one using his soul- brother kung fu skills until there is no- one between him and the evil Kojah. If he showed this kind of fighting expertise before he wouldn’t need an army and this whole mess could be avoided.

Then Ahmed vs Kojah gets going and damn it’s fireworks! Kojah fails to finish captured Ahmed and even menages to kill one of his own troopers- with a freakin’ old school razor-blade none the less!!!  

BE CAREFUL WITH THE RAZOR!!!

Then they start throwing each other, kicking and screaming and destroying everything in their path (some table and chairs I guess) until they end up in the pool… and as we all know when two black persons enter the pool- only one can get out.
We hear a sound of a GUN FIRING UNDER WATER (???) and it’s all done, evil Kojah is dead and less radical leader has won- using radical methods but we won’t really hold it against him!

Verdict: loaded with over the top violence (castration scene and repeated extreme violence against the hooker), sex and all- around craziness Black Gestapo is one of those rare movies that are completely absurd while being absurdly fun every step of the way. “So bad that it’s good” is an category that’s abused left and right these days but if one movie deserves a place in there BLACK GESTAPO is that movie! Hitler might not have approved but WORSE MOVIES approves it all the way!

Knights (1993)

Posted: 13/09/2012 in Trash movies
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This movie has the honor of being the first (and probably the last) Western/Vampire/Cyborg/Kickboxing flick EVER. Our old friend Pyun sure knows how to make them!

The film starts with an old fashion caravan- only they are ambushed by a bunch of… Cyborgs? Hell Yeah!
Who want to drink their blood??? Ok, this is something else. Young Nea runs away with her baby brother in her arms while  the rest of the travelers get massacred  rather quickly. She returns after a while, sees all the  bloodshed and then the flashback ends. Next thing you know, it’s 10/15 years later, Nea now full grown woman (you can tell it’s her because of her silly blond, fluffy hair) is being approached by and old soothsayer who predicts grand things for her but she just shrugs it off. Then out of the blue, an evil Cyborg and some assistants appear and… massacres all the people. Again! Not whole 10 minutes from the last one! Well at least things move pretty fast in this film, different than some of the other garbage that we watched. She somehow survives initial attack, fights a little-  gets hit by an arrow, survives a fall, then survives some silly rant of a Simon the Cyborg (great name!) until a mysterious stranger arrives (cue in the Western sound effects here).
Stranger is non other than famed country musician Kris Kristofferson ( how appropriate). Kristofferson aka The Gabriel (notice the non-subtle Biblical reference there) starts unleashing hell, some dudes fall from a cliff (common theme in this movie) and then he has a showdown with Simon… and Kung Fu Wuxia ispired sword fight!!! This movie pulls no punches, really!

He easily defeats Simon but Simon plays dirty and tries to blow him ’till Kingdom Come with his rocket launcher arm
thingie but Nea interferes  (but why would you human, help a cyborg?) and Simon is no more.After that Nea is in shock that ther’s a good cyborg in this world too but she still fallows him. Soon enough we get to inevitable question and although Gabries claims that “Only Cyborg can kill a Cyborg” he accepts to train her in the ways of Cyborg- killing Martial Arts Mastery. And yeah, and you can only kill cyborgs by shooting/ stabbing them in forehead– whoa, never would have guessed it! Then we have the thing that kinda disappeared from the movies these days and is sorely missed-  A TRAINING MONTAGE!

It’s painfully obvious that Kris Kristofferson is the one who should be a student (he is doubled by a much younger stuntman every few seconds) but he at least looks cool and seems to take this whole movie as a  joke so you can easily sympatise with the dude. Kathy Long seems to be a complete opposite. Despite being a prolific martial artist( Aikido, Kung Fu blackbelt, 5 time World Kickboxing Champ ) Kathy Long can’t act or even speak properly for the life of her! Not one sentence had the conviction or diction to stop my inevitable laughter every time she openes her mouth.
And stereotypical 80s surfer girl look wasn’t helping either. Like I said- you can marvel at her back flips, kicking and takedown combos … and that’s about it. Try to ignore her when she’s not hitting anyone, you’ll enjoy this movie a whole lot more!
Anyway ,she and Gabriel swordfight, stickfight and kickbox trough the desert and everything is fine until she has an emotional outburst witch leaves me completely in shock. I have never witnessed a lack of talent of that magnitude in my life! Why the hell is she trying to express her deep emotions in a film about a cyborg killing cyborgs and girl who eventually kills even more cyborgs? I’m stupified.

In the meantime THE CYBORGS PLAN TO RAID THE LAST GREAT HUMAN CITY- TO MAKE EVEN MORE CYBORGS! The fact that you need even more blood to feed all those fresh additions to the ranks or the funny thing that people obviously serve Cyborgs for years in hope of their mechanical gift and others get it for free seams completely retarded.

Couple minutes later they  finally start putting some hurt on the cyborg asses but Gabriel ends up showing human emotions towards Nea, and that costs him half his body! Interestingly most of the cyborgs wear some Arabic inspired robes that cover all but eyes which lead me to believe that the same five people were killed over and over and over again (congrats to stuntmen for doing all the extra work).

 

Nea continues fight alone, infiltrates the Cyborg Camp, and earns a right to fight for the gift of becoming a cyborg! Oh, yeah, she also finds her long lost brother there- just like that! Somebody refused to  put  any kind of effort when he was scripting the damn thing but that’s how things work in Pyun-land.

Leader of the cyborg camp, Lens Henriksen’s character Job (cyborg with a freakin’ giant robot arm, who looks incredibly like some discarded Moebius sketch) decides that she is worth of the gift… he receives the arrow as a reword. Also, I have to notice that Job is quite fascinating character,  the only special power that he exhibited in the movie is his ability to spit incredible amount of liquid, I mean incredible!  Ok, his mastery with whip is impressive too but you don’t really need any technological advancements to learn to do that.

              I want to suck your bloooood!

So, Kathy proceeds to kick ass and take names, killing about 100 people in the process, combined forces of about 20 cyborgs and their human underlings. They all die in all sort of interesting/ funny/ ridicules ways that will definitely keep you interested. Even the good old Cyborg who kills cyborgs- Gabriel patches himself somehow (by stealing legs from some other poor half- mechanical soul).

Evil mastermind, Master Builder finally appears, does nothing for a while and than steals Nea’s brother. Gabriel and Nea come after him presumably to the fabled Cyborg City, her monologue narrating all the incredible adventures they will have but the movie ended up being a flop and none of the planed sequels ever found their way into production.

Verdict: in the fighting/martial arts department film delivers and delivers with flying colors- and that is main redeeming feature of this film. Also if you like explosions, things explode in abundance here, just wait and see! Cinematography is also actually rather beautiful (thanks to George Mooradian who latter found fame working on TV series like “According to Jim” ), desert of Moab, Utah provided perfect backdrop for this unique kind of adventure. On the flip side acting is atrociously bad, especial miss Long, script doesn’t make any sense and editing is godawful, most of the scenes look cut up and without the natural end.Music sounds like something out of  National Geographic, not  Western/Vampire/Cyborg/Kickboxing movie Knights is. Anyway if you really have nothing better to do with your life , go watch some cyborgs explode, it’s  still better than The Kardashians!

Prophecy (1979)

Posted: 08/09/2012 in Trash movies
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         Run ,it’s the Man-Bear-Pig!

This is one of those movies where you just don’t know where to start, since it’s so damn horrendous from start to end, one can get confused from all it’s messiness and absurdity. Oh well, since we have to start somewhere, let’s first point out that this movie was directed by John Frankenheimer, known for for filming some very good movies, such as Grand Prix, Fixer and Ronin, and started Talia Shire (Godfather, Rocky) in main female lead. Looking back now, almost 35 years later, it’s safe to say this move killed both of their careers…

Anyways, movie kick off as your classic horror flick, where two lumberjacks are mauled to death by “something”, and thus local authorities issued a call to Dr. Robert Verne (Robert Foxworth), and his wife Maggie (Talia Shire), both of them some sort of environmental pollution specialists, since it’s perfectly logical to call them instead of police in these kind of situations.

Our heroes sniff around local paper mill to find out that plant is producing some kind of illegal mercury mutagen that causes birth defects, which the plant spilled into the lake and, naturally, caused all surrounding wildlife to turn into a monstrous abominations bent on killing everything in their site.

Couple of boring minutes later, and movie finally “grace us” with a presence of a mutated bear, with so hilariously horrendous costume, that I’m pretty sure it inspired the infamous “man bear pig” South Park meme. Nevertheless, the bear starts it’s killing rampage by praying on a family who were hiking in the hills. What’s interesting about one of it’s first victims is that it’s actually a young boy, something very unusual for horrors of the time. But, man, the way that boy died… What ensued was  definitely the  “pissed myself laughing” moment of the film, as the poor kid went off in the blaze of glory…  or feathers for that matter…

In the meantime, our heroes meet with the rebellious, but righteous young Indian, played by now legendary Armand Assante (yeah, sure as hell looks like Indian to me too…), and together they agree to stop the bears killing spree.

Can’t argue with that…

Two mutated bear cubs found, and one helicopter malfunction later, and our heroes (along with a  couple of Indians) find themselves deep into manbearpig’s territory, stalked by manbearpig it self! Thus, the game of cat and mouse begins… In the next half of hour or something, we learn that bear is capable of rolling trucks while standing still and showing up out of nowhere in the same time, mercury mutagen makes you breed underwater, and nursing a mutated bear cubs is good for your health! Couple of mauled bodies later and the final showdown commences in the abonded shack. Assante tries fighting bravely with a bow, but gets roflpwned by the manbearpig, thus leaving our main protagonist, Dr. Robert, with no other alternative but to engage the bear into a wrestling faceoff. Couple of wrestling moves later, and arrow finds it self in the manbearpigs eye, ending it’s rampage and this horrible movie.

Heed the advice folks…

In the very end, film abruptly switches to to Dr. Robert and Maggie safely flying home, while another manbearpig shows it self in the forest, hinting at the sequel, which, thankfully, never happened, since this laughing stock of a movie was a commercial and critical flop…

 

Total Reality (1997)

Posted: 07/09/2012 in Trash movies
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200 years in the future. Entire Earth’s population had been wiped out in a rebel war. Human race is in deep shit. And that’s what you are watching in this movie. 90 minutes of pure shit.

David Bradley is staring in another disaster created by Phillip J. Roth. He and his company will try to save the universe by traveling back through time. His company consists of stereotype black man, ugly, ugly, ugly military chick and Brian Faker. But no, they don’t do this because they have noble intentions. It’s their only choice between this and death penalty they’ve been sentenced to. Apparently each and one of them is responsible for real massacre on some planets. Anyway, let me start from the beginning.
First 20 minutes of movie are half-decent space fights between “The Bridges” and rebellions. The bridges are political party that controls all Earth colonies. Later in the movie, we’ll find out that that party got a name by writer of ” The Universal Being” book John Bridges. Apparently that book is responsible for all shit that happened in last 200 years. Space stage of film is ended by some 2 random guys in small space ship going through time warp. So, after 20 minutes of half-decent space fight we got David Bradley and his company to travel to Earth back to 1998 (probably because entire budget has been spent onto previously mentioned fights). Their mission is simple – finding John Bridges and stopping him from writing his book. And to make things even harder they have only 40 hours to do this since nitro implants have been implanted into their necks and will explode after that time. Why 40, why not standard 48 hours, you might ask? So did we. But we got no answer. Anyway, they lost 3 hours after transition to Earth. It’s interesting how despite using all hi-tech gadgets none of them actually knows how to drive a car. One of those gadgets is military chick’s (who gets uglier in every scene) all-purpose calculator. There isn’t a thing which that calculator can’t do. Ok now, back to the plot. Congressman Jerry has to be stopped as well since he used above mentioned book to form a political party which will rule in future with new kind of totalism as new world order thus which will lead to a global war of epic proportions. Also, two FBI members with interesting names (Agent Smith and Agent Wesson; sounds familiar?) have had their part of a role and they did absolutely nothing. We fail to see their exact purpose here. Let’s not forget two guys from the beginning of the movie who also have traveled back to time. First thing they did when they arrived is destroying their space ship so they couldn’t go back (?!). Of course, mission wouldn’t be successful without help of writer’s ex-wife. David Bradley was about to plow her in the end but he got distracted by one tiny little detail – his head got blown up by nitro implant. You have to admit that that’s not really romantic. Long story short, the only person that ended up with a head on it’s shoulders in the end of the movie is ugly, ugly, ugly military chick. She was the only one who managed to live through to see fixed future and Earth existing in some kind of new modern, sterilized order. Makes you wish for war to start all over again.

Misa Koprova aka Ugly, ugly, ugly military chick

Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)

Posted: 05/09/2012 in Trash movies
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Talon, a mercenary with a three- bladed sword born of royal heritage gets recruited to help a princess save her brother and the whole kingdom from the evil tyrant  who conquered their land. Yes, it’s as stupid as it sounds, maybe even more so. Directed by none other than our old friend Albert Pyun (Nemesis, Cyborg) it represents one of the earliest examples of the Barbarian Craze of the 80s, interestingly enough it was released before Conan in the US, but after Conan’s  premiere in Spain.

Too bad the movie doesn’t look this good

So let’s get down to business. Evil king Cromwell  has an evil need to rule one of the neighbor kingdoms too, so he travels to a deserted island to find a corpse of Xusia the evil wizard. He sacrifices  some witch to awaken Xusia from his death and than naturally partners with him to conquer the lands of good but incredibly rich (that goes together right?) King Richard.

With the help of the devilish wizard armies of good are easily defeated, all 15 soldiers (it seems Richard was spending his money elsewhere) are lying dead of the battlefield. Then Cromwell unprovoked decides  to kill (already dead!) wizard who singlehandedly won him the fight by stabbing him and then throwing him down the cliff in one of the more ridiculous scenes in this movie. As you can guess that kind of ungratefulness and pure stupidity will come back to bite him in the ass later.

When his father fails to come back young prince Talon goes after him (with a triple sword none the less). He finds a battle already lost and arrives just in time to witness his father Richard’s execution. Not only does he fails to stop the death of his father, he even managed not to save his Queen mother (it really wasn’t his day). Then, to top it all he almost died himself when Cornwel’s  soldiers came after him, but he narrowly makes his escape and then flees the Kingdom.

“Accurate representation of medieval combat styles”

Some years later Talon returns to former Kingdom of his father but now as a grizzled veteran, a  warrior  and a leader of a wild pack of mercenaries. He also wears a cloak made of wolf- skin which makes him look big and muscular (things he is most certainly not- as we see later in the  “grand” finale of the  film). What happens next is quite confusing. The twins-  rightful heirs to the Throne get attacked and a brother Mikah ends up being kidnapped by military adviser Machelli and his soldiers.  Sisters seeks help and offers the only thing she can- herself to the “handsome” mercenary Talon– who as I remember should be THE TRUE HEIR to the Throne. How the hell are those too claiming the rule of the same kingdom – are they his lost lost brother and sister never menchened until now?!) – apparently not because he accepts the dangerous mission and the sex that will inevitably fallow it!

“Getting ahead of our-self, aren’t we?”

Things of course get a bit complicated, the first plan falls apart and as he frees prince Mikah but his sister Alana ends up captured instead. Talon narrowly escapes as always but he gets to kill a couple of dudes in the process so it’s all good. After that failure he FINALLY gets down to business devises a plan, gets his soldiers (who were hiding in the whorehouse) and ultra- dramatically crashes the weeding of Alana and the Evil Titus Cromwell (he like any other villain with good publicity has to force a girl to marry him). Some over the top battling in the main whole ensues and than the the King runs away with the bride to be- straight into Catacombs (never a smart thing to do) – Macelli intercepts them and  the truth is FINALLY revealed!!!  Military adviser Macelli is in fact even more sinister dead wizard XUSIA! Yeah, he had nothing better to do for freakin’ 11 years than to pretend he is an ally of Cromwell and wait (???) for his revenge. He would probably wait some more (22 years for example) if it hadn’t been for Talon trying to take what’s his.

Instead of acting like a rational human being and fleeing with the girl (he is a master at running away, is he not?) Talon somehow manages to end up in the middle of Cromwell/ Xusia battle, terrible hand drawn effects, glowing fingers and all!

                        On the plus side Princess Alana looks incredibly like Sister Hyde aka Martine Beswick

Although Cromwell tries to fight back he proves to be no match for the sorcerer, but Talon finds himself  able to resist Xusia’s magic just long enough to send one of his trademark projectile sword right into the heart of a demon wizard. Xusia dies for a third time, comes back again for an extremely short period of time before being stricken down by Talon (hopefully really for the LAST TIME). Talon then saves the princess from mutated Boa- Constrictor snake for a good measure and procides to take his reword– and we must agree he earned it fair and square!

Something like that

Mikah has no problem with Talon plowing his sister ’cause he gets the Throne and everyone is happy as  a bunch of pigs in a mud.  Talon leaves with a big smile on his face into some brave new adventures… that we thankfully won’t have to watch.

Verdict: Cheesy as Hell, gets boring after first 20 minutes or so but picks up with a ridiculous ending! Anyway it won’t top The Beastmaster as my main go- to  B Movie Barbarian flick but at least they tried.

Trivia: The film even spawned a short-lived production line of plastic swords in resemblance to Talon’s sword. Yes, you heard it right, somewhere there’s a possibly disturbed individual who played with a three- bladed sword as a child!

The Atomic Brain aka Monstrosity (1964)

Posted: 01/09/2012 in Trash movies
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This movie makes no sense even in 60s when there was so many fresh and crazy ideas floating around. Ok, we know digital technology and other fancy stuff didn’t exist back then but that’s not excuse for putting 0 effort in filming. Follow me now in my step-by-step manual of how to avoid watching this abomination. You’ll thank me later.

It’s about some rich old lady who doesn’t want to give her fortune to anyone so she funded a mad scientist in his research to develop a machine that will be able to transfer her brain into a body of young and hot girl. Scientist had some experiments before that with freshly buried bodies which he has personally stolen. First of those was putting a wolf’s brain into his apprentice so he ended up making some kind of brain damaged werewolf. Oh yes, and he named it Monstrosity. How original. Anyway, being encouraged by that his following experiments are cadavers of 2 young girls. No one explained how so many young women died at all but i guess directors didn’t find it relevant. First girl became a zombie (not an evil zombie unfortunately), and second one became a crippled cat- lady ( her body has been merged with the brain of scientist’s favorite cat). Those two last experiments made scientist to come up with conclusion that cyclotron ( yes, that’s the machine name) is ready for it’s evil use so selection of victim can finally start. To make long story short, one perfect girl had been selected to host a brain of some old geezer.
Now, here is a twist! Are you ready? The chosen girl seduced old lady’s servant named Viktor (as in Viktor von Frankenstein) who is even older than his master and was occasionally used to sexually satisfy the old rich bitch. Oh, did I mention that every single person in this movie had to do same thing (even the Monstrosity; especially the Monstrosity) ? I didn’t ? Oh well, call me a spoiler guy. Viktor got afraid that in case of successful transfer his master won’t require his sexual services no more and that he’s gonna lose his job. So he made a plot with young girl to screw up old lady and share her fortune between themselves. Details of that plot  remained unknown and no one had spoken about it again.
The savior of the day was no one else than scientist himself who decided in very last moment to spare a girl and put a brain of old lady in his already used cat (no point in wasting a perfectly good material). Reasons for this decision also remains the mystery to us so we only can take a guess. Did he fall in love with young girl or he just wanted to do a right thing eventually? It turned out that that wasn’t a smart idea since cat managed to kill him while he was cleaning a cyclotron (?!). The girl ran away followed by a cat with plans of revenge on her mind. How scientist managed to put human brain into cat’s small head is another mystery of this movie. Ah so many mysteries.


Sinister looking cat. DO NOT PAT!!!

Another thing that adds an extra smell onto this garbage is lack of dialog.  Over 80% of movie is a pure narration! As if actors were too dumb to learn a script. Or too ashamed to speak. If  a reason is number 2 then I  can’t blame them at all.

Circle of Iron (1978)

Posted: 31/08/2012 in Trash movies
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*Black Dynamite tells it like it is

The fact of the matter is: In 1971 Bruce Lee pitched in a treatment for a series called  The Warrior,  about a martial artist (Lee himself) in the American Old West. After rejecting his idea with famous “world is not ready for an Asian lead” AKA “we are a bunch of racist fucks” they decided to blatantly steal his idea, name series Kung Fu and instead of a famed and revolutionary martial artist that was Bruce Lee  cast David Carradine who: 01. Is not Asian 02. Closest thing to martial arts he ever did was dancing.*

Without any disrespect to Carradine who proved himself to be a competent actor on  rare occasions when he was cast in a substantial, well written role- he was catastrophic choice for the part of Kwai Chang Caine yet he built his career on that 70es martial arts show (even spawning a sequel series and a movie). So how does he pays tribute to the man he (at least indirectly) screwed over? Well… by buying his unused script for Silent Flute, putting it  into production AKA by screwing the man again (even after his death!). Classy thing to do man, for sure…

What was planed as a first Bruce Lee‘s big American movie, 20th Century Fox’s Silent Flute was to be fascinating, martial arts epic full of Lee’s unique philosophy– touching upon everything from eastern mysticism to personal liberation. Script (or more accurate a draft) was written by Bruce Lee, James Colburn (planed co- star, and a central figure of the movie) and Sterling Silliphant, veteran Hollywood writer and  Lee’s close friend (they collaborated on Silliphant penned Marlowe and Long Street series). 20th Century Fox reluctantly agreed to finance it,  providing that it had to be shot in India. Unfortunately studio and the power trio came into disagreement over the locations of filming and after unsuccessful scouting for locations in India the project fell trough. Bruce would have to wait for Enter the Dragon to see his dream of being the first Asian lead in a American production see the light of day and even that was a bittersweet victory because he died from a brain edema just days before Enter the Dragon premiere.

So, what happened to the script? It ended up in the hands of none other than David Carradine who was incredibly eager to make it a reality. So, Silliphant and  Stanley Mann dusted it off and finished the script and in the process killed some  of the  explicit and most intriguing scenes, be it incredibly brutal fight that has Lee’s character (literally) crushing opponents balls, scenes of tantric sex, fantastic ambiguous ending and even a big chunk of Zen inspired philosophy that underlines our hero’s journey. Name Silent Flute was also scrapped and replaced with bad-ass sounding but meaningful Circle of Iron.They also changed the location from real world  to “a land that never was and always will be” and decided to shoot it in Israel (decision that for a change makes sense because Israel gave the movie an exotic and mystic backdrop that it so desperately needed).

Number of people were approached for the lead role of Cord including ex- karate and kickboxing champion Joe Lewis, (who had trained under Bruce Lee for at least a year) but he declined. He eventually did show up just as they were finishing up the film…  fight scenes ended up being so idiotic that he agreed to shoot some additional martial arts scenes and double the main actor in few instances.

In this version the lead, rebel “martial artist” Cord, (Jeff Cooper – Carradine’s friend who didn’t run away from the role like all the others did) embarks on a quest for the Book of Enlightenment, kept by mysterious and possibly evil Zetan (played by none other than great Christopher Lee) and in his journey is confronted by three trials.

All the trials of course educate him in Zen philosophy and he runs across a string of bizarre character including but not limited to Ah Sahm, a blind flute player, a human- monkey hybrid, Death himself and a leader of a tribe of Gypsies . All are of course played by David Carradine (including almost bare- ass monkey man). It’s always fascinating to see Carradine in action, he has no speed, no muscle and no moves… and even worse he obviously gave some lessons to Cooper because he fallows the same “style” to a T.

“Only thing about me is the way that I walk…”

Anyway, Cord’s trials strange as they are involve combat, riddles or deep conversations- like the one with
a man (Eli Walllach) who has been sitting in a barrel of oil for 10 years in an unusual attempt to remove the lower part of his body, namely his genitals. Ah Sahm helps him often by reciting different wise words (some directly lifted from the original script) but you can hear it in his voice that he doesn’t really understand one word that he’s saying and considers it nothing more than some hippie new- age mambo- jumbo.

“Dissolving in oil I see, how’s that working out for you?”

Eventually Cord passes the tests (including a stupid sex scene and a death of a said girl) and reaches the Zetan.
When he finally opens the book he discovers that each page of the book is a mirror, showing him that the secret to enlightenment was within him all the time. After that he returns to the world, maniacally laughing and credits start rolling with Carradine  playing his flute in his honor.

Remake or should we say a new interpretation, with a post- apocalyptic edge is in works for possible 2013 release date. China’s National Film Capital will co-produce it. For now the only confirmed casting is Gina Carano (ex- Muay Thai and MMA fighter and a friend of Bruce Lee Legacy foundation ) as Tara. The fact  that Tara in the original film did nothing but sleep with the main protagonist and subsequently die because of it (via crucifixion none the less)–  will probably have to be changed a bit. I’ll just have to presume that producers are not imbeciles who would waste world class fighter on a role of a bimbo.

Concept art for a new version of the film

Anyway we’ll have to wait and see will the justice FINALLY be done to the original Bruce Lee’s vision (’cause it’s about time) or is it all just wishful thinking.

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