Posts Tagged ‘Sandra Hess’

Gargoyle aka Gargoyle’s Revenge aka Gargoyle: The Wings of Darkness (2004)

Posted: 29/09/2016 in Trash movies
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Now, this one was on my mind for so long it may very well be one of the reasons why the whole WM page started. It’s one of those magical movies where nothing makes sense whatsoever, and you’re left wondering about many things including of course “why did I watch this in the first place?”.

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Movie starts with a flashback: Carpatia- Vassaria. And you can right away notice that there’s no direct contact with the monster like in those monster movies from the 50’s where they used super primitive stop- motion. Speaking of it- even stop motion beats these TV quality CGI effects. But it’s extremely entertaining seeing Romanian women carrying crossbows, probably not historically accurate but still awesome! Of course the beast gets subdued aka sealed in a tomb via the magic of priest’s blood on the arrow. Never knew that was a thing- need to check with our local priest?

We flash foreword to today, Romania– first with a kidnapping rescue operation lead by CIA agents Sandra Hess (Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD) and has been (great)  Michael Pare (Streets  of Fire, The Philadelphia Experiment ). Operation goes awry as one of the suspect misterously desapears from the top of the building just to be found spiked on a top of a Church.

Now, the next thing  we notice is a pair of Catholic Priests, old one and his future replacement arguing in a freakin’ Orthodox Christian Church! Why? I have no idea. I mean if you only had this church available why not make local priests Orthodox? Black robe and a (long) beard and you’re pretty much done. I mean if you’re making a movie with religious overtones (no mater how low-fi the movie is) you could have done your due diligence.

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Our heroes, Michael Pare and his agent Scully- Sandra  join the scene soon enough seeing that their suspect is impaled on the said church. Also same of the local archeologist that work on the church mysteriously disappear too. Sparks start flying between Pare and a young chief archeologist  Dr. Christina Durant as the bodies starts piling up. The actress Kate Orsini looks incredibly like Maggie from The Walking Dead just with eyes too far apart.mary-tyler-less

Bodies like random woman taking semi- professional photos in Zoo. Somehow the place gets empty and night comes and she’s still taking pictures (presumably some 12 hours later ’cause it was obviously around noon when she started). Strangely trend of sudden (and illogical) day/ night shift continues later on too. Anyway, what’s wrong with this woman? We never get to find out because the Gargoyle shows up and just like that we have another victim.

Their logical suspect is a local vampire sect that turns out to be a Dance Vampire Sect! I kid you not. Never heard of something like that but man was I missing out! Their leader Lex (Tim Abell) performs the ritual with half- naked vampire chicks and then when you expect the grand finale dance music kick in and party gets going.

Now I  must say- this dude is my hero! He is dangerous gangsta yet he also owns a dance club and in his free time he does these vampiric performances with hot chicks. And it seems the writers and director like him too because he doesn’t get to die like the rest of them and instead just looses his mind.

As the investigation gets weirder and weirder Pare and Orsini  head out to the “abandoned” monastery  to find clues in the old fresco- paintings. Old man shows up and finally explains them the curse of the Gargoyle. Also, I think he mixed up Dragons and Gargoyles but what are you gonna do- there’s not much mythology about gargoyles out there. Also Gargoyle decides to interrupt them while there’s still time and it all evolves into a super hilarious chase scene that again reminds us how cheap and ridiculous CGI is in this movie.

The finale of the movie is a sight to behold as two priests get into a fistfight  while the army of gargoyles is hatching! Also with the evil priest kidnaps pretty Dr. Durant too.  CIA agents backed up with a SWAT team breaks in and start shooting at everything and anything. Strangely, time of day rapidly changes from noon when they get into the Gargoyle cave (in the back of Church of all places) to the middle of the night as they come out 2 minutes later- to the early morning couple moments after that.

They also have the next case before the movie ends- in Russia! Unfortunately we never got to see it, but I’ll chose to imagine it superior and more grand than the first one, something like Del Toro’s Blade II!

Verdicts: Veteran genre director Jim Wynorski (under the alias of Jay Andrews) had many highs and lows in his career and you can honestly say that this one manages to simultaneously be both. It’s like a car crash, it’s really, really horrible but you just can’t look away!

WARNING! If we didn’t discourage you from watching this film, and you still want to see it- please find a proper DVD. Some horrid person on the internet found a way to make the movie even worse by splicing the footage with Vinnie Pooh cartoons- stay away from that god awful Youtube version if you value your sanity even one bit! 

Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1998)

Posted: 09/09/2014 in Trash movies
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For a months this movie was waiting to be reviewed mostly because it is so awful that none of us wanted to write about it. And partly because of insufficient mental strength (‘cough’ wussiness) of the rest of Worsemovies crew. Then recently I have decided that world has to be warned and reminded about this poor excuse for cinematography attempt so it would never happen again! Ladies and gentlemen (Who am I kidding? Just gentlemen) I have this nauseous duty to present you the worst “Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” screen version ever!

In a movie put together by blind people, the one-eyed man will be like a God. Or so you would think. Such expectation falls in water when you see that one-eyed man is none other than David Hasselhoff. Now, apart of being white and having a brown hair, David doesn’t look like Nick Fury at all. Nor acts like him. He doesn’t look grizzled, he doesn’t look tough, he certainly doesn’t look smart, he sometimes wears an eyepatch on the wrong eye and I really doubt that real Nick Fury would spend most of his on-duty time being half-drunk (tho, credits for this probably go to David Hasselhoff himself and his cheerful personality). He is over the top all the way and so much that you have no other choice than to sit back, watch and laugh your ass out. Or to turn off the TV if you are not cliches fan.

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The cliches keep coming when the evil Nazi terrorist organization Hydra attacks a S.H.I.E.L.D. base, under the leadership of Andrea Von Strucker aka Lady Viper (played by Sandra Hess) and her dimwitted younger brother Werner (played by Scott Heindl),
and makes off with the body of their father Baron von Strucker (played by Campbell Lane), the man responsible for Nick losing his left eye. Oh and they had killed Nick’s good friend Clay Quantermain (played by Adrian Hughes) in process. That’s a solid
reason for Nick to came back from retirement, don’t you think? The plan is that he, his ex-girlfriend Contessa Valentina (played by Lisa Rinna), agent Pierce (played by Neil Roberts) and mind-reading agent Kate Naville (played by Tracy Waterhouse) go to meeting with Interpol agent Gayle Runsador (who I had pinpointed to be a traitor the moment I saw him) in a secret safe-house in Berlin? Surprised? The director of agency General Pincer played by Tom McBeath) wants to have Kate read the mind of former Nazi scientist Dr. Zola (played by Peter Hayworth) and see just what he and his cohorts are up to. As it later turns out, this whole scheme to get Zola to open up his mind and talk, was a plot hatched by Hydra in order to locate and rescue him from S.H.I.E.L.D. And yeah, I was right. Agent Runsador is none other than the evil and murderous Viper. Surprised now? He even had managed to infect Nick with South American Yellow Dart Frog venom that will end his miserable life in 48 hours. So now it’s a race against time while Nick and his happy bunch try to find out just where Hydra is planing to unleash this deadly virus called “Death Head” (really creative name). To make things worse agency’s top scientist Gabriel Jones (played by Ron Canada) comes up with a possible antidote that can save Nick’s life. Why worse you might wonder? Well this antidote has to be developed and drawn from the blood of the person who put Nick into this condition in the first place, the only person on the Earth immune from it – Viper. Wow what a twist! No one ever would see that coming! Anyway, that’s the point from which Nick starts showing his true face. You see, Nick knows that he doesn’t have long to live so why should he care about anyone else, like those working with him? It is much easier not to think about consequences of his actions. If he succeeds  then great. If not, well, at least he will pull many other lives down with him. So drunk-looking Nick starts screwing up everything that he touches and almost getting his fellow S.H.I.E.L.D agents killed due to his mindless self-serving and suicidal behavior. Despite his inept and clumsy actions Nick manages to prevent Hydra from destroying downtown Manhattan with a battery or “Death Head” virus loaded rockets. And he does that by getting the code to abort their mission with the help of mind reading agent Neville (Kate seems to be the only capable agent here) from none other than the evil Viper, who was previously captured, and also getting a sample of her blood to save his life (which turns to be much more important than saving entire civilization). The ending has Viper again escaping from Nick (meh who cares, as long as he is alive) together with her frozen stiff and dead father, now alive and well, with her threatening both the world and audience that we haven’t seen last of them. We might consider ourselves lucky that David Hasselhoff for sure will not be in shape to star in the next movie if ever comes to it.

 

Conclusion: In the 1990’s Marvel Comics was in something of a financial strain, and to help themselves out, they would lease the movie and television rights to their characters to whoever had cash on hand right at that moment. This resulted in some tough times for the film adventures of the Marvel characters; Captain America and Punisher got direct to video adventures, the Fantastic Four film never saw the light of day (until couple of months ago), and Nick Fury and Generation X (X-Men spin off) were optioned for series by FOX. But this just can’t be an excuse for this half-ass job. I would bet that people in charge of this haven’t read about S.H.I.E.L.D. at all. True, script writer David Goyer (Blade trilogy, Dark Knight trilogy, Man of Steel) did read this and he even wrote some comics but he keeps spirit of S.H.I.E.L.D. based on ’60s. The CGI looks pretty terrible, even for 1998, and the physical sets aren’t much better. The action scenes are actually pretty standard for a b-movie: not completely terrible, but not very good either. The film’s version of Hydra is a contradiction of itself, seemingly important events are totally forgotten about, and there are great gaps in logic. For example, S.H.I.E.L.D. can keep their HQ hovering in the sky, yet they keep Von Strucker’s body in a relatively undefended base on the ground. There are many other gaps like this one but I have had my share of writing down them. If you want to see them by yourself then you will have to watch this movie which I strongly don’t recommend!

The actor worthy of Nick Fury’s personality