Around the late 70s Cannon Inc. had hit serious financial difficulties, and naturally previous owners sold Cannon as fast as they could. Cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus bought Canon for whooping price of 500,000 dollars! The two cousins than forged a “magnificent” business model which consisted of buying bottom-barrel scripts that lingered (seemingly for all times) in development hell and putting them rapidly into production. Of course they paired an (at best) third rate script with a second rate director, ridiculous budget and a STAR, by that I mean: ( INCREDIBLY old) Charles Bronson/ Chuck Norris and/or Michael Dudikoff.
At certain point (at the time of filming of Masters of the Universe with Dolph Lundgren) they had about 84 movies in development- to put things into perspective the most films any other studio had in production was Warner Brothers and they had 6 movies!!! They also held the rights for Spiderman movie until the late 80s but the movie was never produced (and we can all agree it was for the best).
By the beginning of the 90s their “perfect” system FINALLY came crashing down and they called it a day with a Albert Pyun’s Cyborg (staring young Van Damme) made on the sets of failed Masters sequel. MGM of course came to offer an assistance and a merger of studios ensued but MGM couldn’t really help themselves let alone anybody else.
*In late 2011 it was revealed that Australian director Mark Hartley is working on a documentary about Cannon Films called Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films.”
After a complete disaster of an American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt, directors have somehow managed to convince the franchise veteran Michael Dudikoff to come back for one more sequel. Oh ,how delusional were they. Not only did he fail at raising the quality of the picture but the movie turned out to be even worse than it’s prequel. And how could he have saved this picture anyway? He is not much of an actor (tho in this part he did put the most effort since the beginning of the franchise). His feeble attempts to play a role of martial arts master had been heavily crippled by the fact that he doesn’t know anything about martial arts, fighting and generally acting overall. The only successful fighting scenes were the ones when he was wearing a mask which made me think that some poor stunt-double had to work extra hard that day.
The less being said about the other roles the better. Bradley is decent enough of a lead (he is at least a real martial artist for a change) but he gets captured fairly easily in the first quoter of a film ( by a giant net nevertheless) and mostly does nothing but shows off his pecs while being tied or tortured. Main love interest (?) doesn’t do anything but smile/ or scream, and a default black sidekick doesn’t do even that. Villains are cartoonish as it gets- we have a dictator who enjoys torturing people and can’t decide is he attracted to young boys or older women, his partner, an Islamic fundamentalist (with the Russian accent for some reason) who threatens to punish “the infidels” and has immortal lines like “Take me to Mekka” while he flees the scene in a helicopter.
There’s also this Mexican Wrestler- looking dude in there somewhere, what’s his connection with the Ninjas or the South African background we can only guess.
I am not sure if this was originally in the script but I could swear that the crew of this movie accidentally crashed into the filming set of “Mad Max” (possibly the Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior ) at one point since a bunch of savage motorcycle gang members suddenly appeared without any descent explanation.
There are a LOT of things wrong with this picture but I won’t waste any more time- yours or mine- on this garbage! This is a part where I leave you to marvel at the many deaths of many ninjas… a main by-product of this horrible picture.
To this day I can not understand how this blasphemy managed to win an award (if there is still anyone who counts Emmy as award) and be nominated for Golden Globe. This version of a wonderful and extremely interesting Homer Epic had started wrong from the very beginning. First mistake – Armand Assante as Odyssey. I don’t know who came up with idea of casting a Italo-Irish man to play a Greek hero but I do know that that person should bear consequences for his actions. Assante’s accent combined with his attempt to sound Greek turned out to be a failure of epic proportions. In 85% of the movie Assante is totally incoherent and people who ought to understand anything are forced to turn on their speakers to a maximum and then press ears onto it (tho, due to the awful script they still won’t be able to understand a thing).
Anyway, let’s continue. Odyssey’s wife, Penelope, gave a birth to a baby in a record time of 2 minutes.Also there wasn’t any fluid, blood, umbilical cord or any other thing which are present at any normal giving birth to a human being. Also, the fact that the baby didn’t cry after being born is very disturbing and confusing.
Can’t argue with that…
Next one of many, many, many wrong things in this movie is representation of Hermes who is messenger of the Gods and son of Zeus. His appearance in this movie had implemented a new, until now never seen category – A FLYING FAGGOT! I don’t know where the urge to represent the son of supreme Greek god as nothing else than a plain homo came from. Someone in the crew had some strange issues.
Next, the vampire effect. Odyssey had spent 20 years on the sea and during that time almost all the characters look the same. Neither Penelope, nor her mother, nor her wooers who invaded her house aren’t getting any older. Apart of their son, who had grew up a bit. Penelope look exactly the same, with no wrinkle on her face. She still refuses wooers who are now using her house as a some kind of bordel from hell. Her dedication to remain loyal to Odyssey is really impressing due to fact that he already cheated on her some 2500 times by my account.
Screwing up some of the adventures Odyssey had. Cyclops event more looks more like a comedy than a danger. Assante had friendly conversation with a Cyclops, talking and laughing and such. Then Cyclops without any reason eats a half of a member of the Odyssey’s crew. Next 2 seconds are followed by screaming and disbelief just to see everything turning back to normal a mere moment later. Odyssey continues his friendly and nonchalant chit-chat with the Cyclops. The rest you can see above.
Next two and a half hours are followed by “nothing happens” and “something almost happened”, until the moment Odyssey come home and slaughter literally everyone who happened to be there. Strange thing is that not a single drop of blood had been spilled in all of that massacre.
Conclusion: My advice – Don’t watch this garbage. Better read a book.
*you can see the below mentioned rampage in the video
Lets get one thing straight- first one didn’t make much sense… or any sense for that matter. Your parents are killed by a dude in the Santa Clause costume, you end up in an orphanage run by an devious nun and you naturally grow up to be a killer in a Santa Clause suit too? I mean come on! But those were the 80s, people did a lot of coke and you can forgive them for wanting to see some blood and some boobs.
So after a (kinda) success of the first one, they decided to make a Part 2. How can you make a part two you say when a main hero (well, a villain) is all kinds of dead you might ask. Not a problem! He had a brother! No he didn’t you say… Yes he did! And that’s final!
Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 just plays almost a whole footage of a first movie interrupted by a police psychologist’s interview and they also splice the original footage with some random footage of a baby brother. He was a baby when his parent died but it doesn’t matter. If you survive a traumatic experience youHAVE TObecomea CRAZED KILLER! Some thing are just written in stone… or something. So, little Ricky grows up in the orphanage under an evil Mother Superior, gets out, gets incredibly big and muscle bound- in about a years time ( I guess anabolic steroids where popular thing these days too) and naturally starts killing people. At some point he finds himself a nice blond girl to settle down with and starts acting normally but that doesn’t last too long and soon enough he losses his mind again (because he ran into moronic ex- boyfriend of the said girl ) and than Ricky does what Ricky does best- goes on the murdering rampageof EPIC proportions!* Immortal “Garbage day” moment is of course a part of this rampage 🙂
What fascinates me the most is the way men act in this movie. We are portrayed as animals, obiasly unable to control our urges… I mean you see a dude who was in relationship with a woman for 5 years or something who after being gently rejected starts tearing girls shirt and soon enough tries to rape her? He got his punishment of course (Ricky run him over with a tractor I believe) but that kind of behavior is common theme in this movie, men just randomly rip apart girls clothing, some breasts are exposed as a result and than they pay the ultimate price. Truly fascinating…
Anyway, The Verdict- this movie is truly terrible by all accounts, but it’s also the most fun we had in ages so if you want to watch just one terrible film ever- Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 is your movie!
Trivia: The director on the commentary track claims they tried to find Eric Freeman (Ricky) to participate for the commentary track, but the director claims he is untraceable. Freeman’s current whereabouts remain a mystery.
Baking cookies has never been deadlier!!! Severed fingers, risk of being slaughtered or burned alive…There are countless dangers awaiting you in the kitchen. The only person that can prevent this (by plain eating- you!) is always psychotic Gary Busey. Evil never tasted this good! Or this bad? Anyway, bon appétit.
Prepare to be transported to the ancient times, times of swords and powerful sorcery, times when muscle bound warriors ruled the lands with their savage might , times known only as the- 80es! Obviously in the 80s everybody wanted to be new Arnold Schwarzenegger. As we all know there can be only one Arnie so people mostly embarrassed themselves by varying degrees. Barbarian brothers (also known as the Paul brothers) managed to be twice as big and (combined) almost half as smart! They even got to French-kiss each other for no apparent reason- but more on that later.
The least gay cover of this film, coincidentally a German one!
Film starts with young, scrawny orphans Kutchek and Gore accepted by Retniks, a strange tribe consisting of clowns, jugglers and your general village idiots. Also they soon adopt one more orphan, a small girl called Kyra. Their leader was beautiful (we’re told) Queen Canary that wears the magic stone in her bellybutton. Retnik, supposedly people with safe passage everywhere end up attacked by a gang od savages and then ambushed by devious King Kedar (played by B-movie alumni Richard Lynch). Kedar has the desire to put them all in their place which he expresses mostly by random killing of the Retniks. When he threatens the orphans he finally breaks Canary’s spirit and she accepts to be his slave.Twins are spared but not treated very kindly, in fact they are thrown to the ruthless Dirtmaster (always fantastic Michael Berryman) to work long hours in “The Pit” and train to fight as Gladiators. For years they are kept separate and thought to hate the person with the iron/ brass helmet, not knowing that one day they will face one another wearing those same helmets. Of course they grow up to be extremely muscled up, to the point of absurdity (but on the other hand I can’t think of a one thing not bordering absurdity in this film).
One day the evil Sorceress claims that it’s finally time for brothers to slay one another. Canary (who haven’t aged a day i a decade or so) protest but Kedar claims that he is keeping his promise by making them kill one another thus not technically participating. Brothers fight as only muscleman can ( clumsy enough to chop off some random dude’s hand) and when they finally loose the helmets one of them gets furious. He yells “what your doing with my face?” About as sharp as a marble that one! Kutchak, a less dumb one tries to calm him down and convince him that they’re brothers but almost dies in the process. Finally when Gor hears the Canary scream he comes to his senses and teams up with his brother for an escape. That produces the screaming/ laughing agony with Dirtmaster( but to be fair it seems that almost anything can produce that reaction with Dirtmaster).
He is just so Goddamn awesome!
Barbarian brothers ride into the forest and menage to fool their pursuers but they run into a captured girl with big 80es hair. She tries to get them to help her and they oblige, but only by striking some silly bodybuilding poses. Than they figure out that they she is held captive by remaining Retniks. What left of the tribe fronted by the ugliest man alive appears and Gor answers with angry “Abar, what da hell is goin’ on” in your strongest Brooklyn accent. I would have to search far and wide to find one single worse line delivery in the history of cinema.Retniks capture them with a simple net and then decide to hang them just for the fun of it. To be truthful I would do the same. Unfortunately they are so big (?) that the rope breaks in both their cases and after making absolute imbeciles out of themselves they prove that they wear the mark of the tribe and are in fact the long gone orphans. They seek weapons for their rescue mission (they did leave Canary behind) but the Retniks admit that have nothing to offer. Than the captured thief girl Lemon offers her assistance and strangely they accept.Finaly their EPIC quest begins! They are suspicious but the girl guaranties that everything they need can be found in fantastically named) Bucket of Blood! Full of pirates and ugly belly dancers it seems like the right place. Brothers gamble everything on game of arm wrestling with certain Jakko and predictably escalates into the idiotic bar fight (how could we live without one those)!Girl probably got some information because they set out to infiltrate the Castle straight afterwards. At this point brothers have to kiss one another to fool the guard roaming the area, of course guards we’re disgusted by the scene and practically run away. Level of stupidity of this is astounding. Also they menage to bump into some orgies and make funny faces.
They also produce noises resembling the noises seals produce when they are hungry…
They menage to infiltrate the king’s harem but Canary doesn’t want to go. She sends them to find the magical belly stone obviously hidden all this time in the lime tree in the forbidden land. So their next stop is The Tomb of the Ancient King (sounds familiar) where they can find the sacred weapon necessary to defeat the mighty Dragon that guards the said lime tree (seriously how are they making up shit like that). Then just as they were about to go, Gor finally loses his restraint and start an orgy of his own with all the Kedar’s wives that he neglected because of Canary- yes the same Canary his adopted mother who had no choice but to watch that orgy being in a cage and all. Anyway they finish up by the morning, reunited with the now angry thief girl and head out for forbidden lands but the evil sorcerers figures out what happened and goes after him, accompanied by The Dirtmaster.
Barbarians find the secret cave and the tomb of the ancient king incredibly easy but the thief- girl Lemone. gets captured by incredibly large Werewolf creature. On the other hand Gor proves so strong that he easily rips the creature’s arm out.
I am officially terrified of their sense of humor!
Evil sorcerers finds the ruby stone before the Barbarians but most of her escort pays the ultimate price, the get eaten by Alien/ Gill- Man hybrids. King Kadar himself joins them and tries to fight the approaching Dragon but to little avail and they are forced to withdraw. Despite being the incompetent fools that they are with Lemon’s help they trap the dragon in the cave entrance and stab him to death. Then exploring his corpse they find the Evil Sorceres partially eaten but still holding the ruby- and all problems solved! Well, not quite yet.
Oh, no the Dragon!
King Kedar finally confronts Canary after a decade of her bullshit. She tries to confuse him with her magic and almost succeeds but then gets stabbed through the chest. In the meantime Lemon reaches the Retniks guided by the glowing belly stone. The leader of the Retnicks, also the ugliest man alive* then tries the stone on all the females to find the successor for doomed Canary. It “shockingly” turns out that Lemon herself is the new prophesied Retnik leader… and she’s also the orphan girl that they adopted at the same time as Barbarian Brothers.
*just look at him!
What a coincidence?!Finally Barbarians confront Kedar and not even his horse and crossbow prove enough parry the brothers savage sword throwing abilities.He ends up dead in the dirt double stabbed to death. Retnik’s join the Barbarian brothers and end this abomination with another one of their trademark jokes that aren’t funny to the 3 year olds.
Verdict: Fascinating thing about this movie is that the fact that it doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously doesn’t make it any better!!! Hell it somehow menages to make it even worse! Serious scenes fail enough to get a good laugh or two, yes- but those envisioned to be funny end up being just plain imbecilic. Combination of Italian hack director (that pretty much sums up all of their directors not named Leone or Argente), stupid/ possibly mentally disturbed muscleman and accursed Cannon Inc (see Cannon) proved a little bit too much even for us.
The Deadly Trio!
Trivia: Some sources claim that this movie was in fact a tax write off, which sounds like a reasonable explanation for its existence if I ever heard one.
Also the actress who played Lemon/Kyra Eva LaRua can be later be found in only slightly less horrible CSI: Miami as Agent Natalia Boa Vista.
When man’s breasts are your main selling point instead of female ones it means that you’re doing the whole B- Movie thing wrong!
This is the movie about evil time-traveling robot. Enough said.
“We recently mentioned on the official Youtube blog that we were enabling auto-captioning for all Youtube videos. This new technology takes advantage of Google’s speech-to-text algorithms to add captions to videos with spoken English content.”
Viewing experience of an 90s cyborg flick made drastically better with the clever usage of Youtube’s caption options.
WARNING: The washroom scene is a dramatic representation. Combining sodium and water may cause serious injury. Do not attempt it!!!
Probably the worst SF/Horror movie of all times ( yes, maybe even worse than “Plan 9 From The Outer Space” ). Here, the huge artificial brain got loose and went on a killing spree, eating people in one bite. Despite the fact it moves with speed of a drunken snail it is UNSTOPPABLE. It’s only weak spot is anti-freeze or bleach (?!). This movie makes you appreciate that you have ordinary, regular sized brain. After watching this garbage we had none.
The movie that taught us that computers can make REAL LIVING girls (through their pure 80s magic) and that perfect woman can only look like Kelly LeBrock.
Ninjas – Now in all colors and sizes
Worsemovies 