The cheesy B-Movie thread

[Futtocks]

An awesome supporting cast though.

Agreed, even if the results didn't reflect the quality of the cast.

[Futtocks]

Alien from L.A. (1988)

An Eighties take on Journey to the Centre of the Earth with a touch of Alice in Wonderland, and supermodel Kathy Ireland's big-screen debut. Kathy plays a frumpy nerd Wanda Saknussemm, by the time-honoured method of sporting large glasses and having bad hair. That might be bearable, but she tops off her portrayal with a voice that sounds like Joe Pasquale on helium. At the beginning of the film, she has just been dumped by her surfer dude boyfriend for being boring.

 

Then she receives a letter from Africa, telling her that her missing archaeologist father has fallen down a 'bottomless hole' he discovered in his basement. Wanda, naturally, falls down the same hole, which turns out not to be bottomless (surprise!) and is actually a portal to the buried city of Atlantis. And a hole which you fall down for a long time without even turning an ankle upon landing.

 

Atlantis is populated by unwanted extras from 'Mad Max III', Duran Duran's 'Wild Boys' video and similar. Being the Eighties, this means lots of big hair, make-up accentuated cheekbones and rotten acting.

 

She is initially aided by a miner with an occasionally Australian accent, but keeps getting kidnapped and dragged off by various Atlanteans, as surface-dwellers (known as 'Aliens') officially don't exist despite their being an official bountry on their heads.

 

At an early point, a steam vent gives her hair a glamorous blow-wave, and her huge glasses are broken, apparently with no effect on her eyesight. Sadly, her voice doesn't change much. Or her acting chops, running the gamut from dull surprise to "eek, help!" and back again.

 

She is later helped by a hunky type called Charmin, who has a very regard for himself, but finally captured by the masters of Atlantis, who argue whether to kill her or not. The Aussie-ish bloke enters the government's HQ with little security in evidence and rescues her and her father, who had also been taken prisoner. They escape to the surface.

 

In the next scene, she wakes and actually does the "oh, Auntie, was it all a dream?" thing, before finding out that it wasn't. Cut to final scene on the beach, where her surfer dude ex-boyfriend double-takes at the sight of her in bikini and sarong, realising that he just dumped a supermodel.

 

Then, inexplicably, Charmin turns up on a Harley and asks her out. She grins weirdly at him for several uncomfortable seconds too long as the screen fades to black.

 

Fin.

[Liverpool Rover]

 There's something out there. That... that witch in the cellar is only part of it. It lives... out in those woods, in the dark... something... something that's come back from the dead.

Bruce CHEESE 'O' RAMA Campbell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unnLg1TPCYM

 

Watched the first episde last night and i can confirm that it was brilliant. They managed to get the mix of comedy annd gore just right.

[Futtocks]

Yor: Hunter of the Future (1983)

In short - Conan meets Flash Gordon.

In long - Yor is played by B-Movie legend Reb Brown ('Space Mutiny', the original 'Captain America'). He's a big ol' blond lump of a man, suited to running awkwardly around in a furry loinloth and, given a guitar, could be mistaken for a member of the very silly metal band Manowar.

 

 

Yor's first appearance sees him saving Ka-Laa (former Bond girl Corinne Clery; very fetching in her furry bikini) and her pudgy dad Pak (less appealing) from a papier-mache dinosaur. Yor and Ka-Laa immediately fall for each other, despite her lack of blondeness. You see, Yor is searching for his people; his only clue being the medallion he wears.

 

The trio are assaulted by cavemen, zombies, monsters etc. every couple of minutes. All of them are after Ka-Laa, and I'm not remotely surprised. At one point, Yor saves the day by hang-gliding into a cave hanging from a dead pterosaur. Pretty much every time Yor gets into a fight, a stonkingly poor Eighties rock song kicks in.

 

Here's some sample lyrics:

Yor's world, he's the man

 

There is a man of future

A man of mystery

 

No track to lead the way

In his search for a yesterday

 

Misty illusions hiding 

His famous destiny

 

He's the saviour of babes

 

Anyhoo, after many unconvincing fights, Yor rescues an acceptably Ayran woman who, more importantly, has a medallion too. She provides some exposition about a mysterious island and makes Ka-Laa jealous, before being killed because she's no longer necessary to the plot and is, anyway, a bit of a drip.

 

They reach the coast and are befriended the villagers there. This is a Very Bad Idea, as every single community that Yor encounters in this film gets destroyed. This village is no exception, but the survivors build the heroes a boat to get to the island. Even after the boat is wrecked, it is worth noting that Ms Clery's hair and makeup stays immaculate. 

 

 

On the island, the caveman stuff is discarded for sci-fi. Yor is captured by 'androids' and taken to the bad guy's HQ. Ka-Laa and Pak are, inevitably contacted by La Resistance and more exposition follows, as the new direction of the film really needs it.

 

Yor discovers that his father originally led the resistance against the Black Hat, who calls himself 'Overlord'. How? His medallion contains home movie footage of his back story, up to when his parents fled the island.

 

Anyhoo, Overlord wants to breed Yor and Ka-Laa (who has now also been captured) with his androids to create a new super-race to enslave the world. There then follows your standard escape, zap-gun battle, trapeze act, sabotage of evil.com's HQ and escape to bring civilisation to the post-apocyptic mainland.

 

Proper Eighties Euro-Cheese, done in exactly the wrong way.

[Futtocks]

I reviewed the Turkish attempt at 'Star Wars' a while back. However, there is also a Turkish 'Star Trek'.

 

Dear God... yes, I watched it.

 

What it really is is an "Omer the Tourist" movie that just happens to be set in the Trekkie universe, gleefully smashing all sorts of copyright law. Omer is a very broad and obvious 'comedy' character, lecherous, drunk and greedy.

 

The Kirk and Spock characters are, shall we say, odd to look at, as they both resemble slightly melted waxworks. Turkey trumps the US of A, though, by giving Spock ears twice the size of the puny Nimoy. He can raise one eyebrow even higher, too, which is pretty much the limit of his thespian chops.

 

This is by no means the same kind of production as the gabblingly incoherent 'Star Wars' knockoff/homage/GBH. There is a plot here, lifted wholesale (apparently) from an original 'Star Trek' episode. Shapeshifting alien kills people by harvesting the salt from their bodies.

 

This is pure Turksploitation, right down to the sound of the Enterprise's doors being very obviously the sound of a man going "shhhh-kt". Mind you, apart from the (naturally illegal) use of the original theme tune, there's some groovy, fuzzed-out Turkish freakbeat music going on at times.

 

 

Its cack, Jim, but not as we know it.

 

And also the first Star Trek movie by several years.

Edited November 19, 2015 by Futtocks

[Futtocks]

Starcrash (1978)

 

Definitely not an Italian cash-in on the Star Wars© craze... Scene 1 - enter a spaceship from top of screen (whoops!).

 

The spaceship immediately gets attacked by the inside of a lava lamp. Extras die theatrically. Three escape pods lift off. I say "lift off" because you can see the stick they are attached to lifting them off the main ship.

 

But never mind all that, because this film stars two-time Bond girl Caroline Munro as Stella Star, in a series of costumes (definitely not rip-offs of Barbarella©) that run from skimpy to transparent and all points in between. Her sidekick Akton, however, looks more dweeby than any human has a right to, so maybe he's an alien from the planet Soppy. He's got an irritating grin and he ain't afraid to use it.

 

Dubbed dialogue is delivered with maximum enthusiasm and minimum skill. Despite being born in Windsor, Ms Munro is dubbed into, er English, by the director's girlfriend.

 

The Bad Guy is called Zarth (definitely not Darth©). And there's a judge who resembles a silver scrotum with a face. And some stop-motion animated robots. Stella is captured and sentenced to working in a radium mine for life, while wearing standard prison garb (knee-length boots, a bikini and a light coating of oil). For some reason, the other, less attractive convicts wear more practical outfits.

 

 

After a bit of shooting, she is suddenly standing on a beach, with no clue given how she got there. A spaceship lands and she steps aboard, to find Thor, the police chief who originally arrested her. He's played by Robert Tessier, who you will recognise when you see him, as he's playing the standard-issue thug he usually plays, only this time he's painted green. His sidekick is a robot, whose accent very suddenly switches from neutral to broad Texan after about 10 minutes of the film. Reasons? You want reasons?

 

Stella is taken to see the Emperor. Oh Lordy, it really is Christopher Plummer! What went wrong, Chris? He informs Stella that Zarth (not Darth©), okay?) has devised a new and deadly weapon (definitely not the Death Star©) and that the galaxy needs saving from it. Oh, and his son is missing, so while you're killing Zarth, keep your eyes peeled for Emperor Junior. They are to look for the three escape pods (remember them?).

 

The name of the first planet visited sounds a bit like Arrakis (but is definitely not Dune©). They are attacked by bikini-clad Amazons on horseback. Cue attractive gals fighting while not wearing much. The robot comes to the rescue and we see some classic running-down-the-same-corridor action. Then they are somehow on the beach again, pursued by a stop-motion giant metal woman. 

 

I'm not making this up.

 

Space battle time! After a few unconvincing explosions, Stella shouts "there's one more", before it cuts to a picture of three enemy ships. Maths isn't her strong point.

 

Planet #2 is snowy (definitely not Hoth©), where the temperature apparently drops "thousands of degrees" at night. Thousands, eh? Thor betrays the mission and reports to not-Darth in the most telegraphed volte-face in cinematic history. Stella and EL (the robot) are stranded and freeze solid. Akton saves the day by killing Thor, but not before the latter delivers the line "no-one can withstand these deadly rays". That's just asking for a totally unexplained immunity to "deadly rays" on the part of his opponent. Stella is revived by some sort of cosmic microwave oven, without the need to peel back the film and stir halfway through. Akton reprises his soppy grin yet again.

 

Sample dialogue from Mister-not-Vader "By sunset, I'll be the new emperor! And I will be the master of the whole universe!"

 

Suddenly, Akton reveals he can see into the future as well as deflect lasers with his hands. These 'Deus ex Machina' moments are a regular occurrence in the film, suggesting that a lot of the plot was written while editing the footage.

 

On the way to planet #3, they are attacked by the lava lamp things again for a couple of minutes, but then they stop and disappear without explanation or apology.

 

Sample dialogue "time for a little robot chauvinism". 

 

EL and Stella are attacked by cavemen. EL is smashed and Stella is taken captive. She is rescued by - GREAT CAESAR'S GHOST! - David Hasselhoff (pre-Knight Rider), wearing a silver monster mask that shoots purple rays at random angles from its eyes. He is Simon, the only survivor of the escape pod crash. Remember the escape pods? There will be a written test, by the way.

 

They are attacked by cavemen again. This time Akton saves then by using what is definitely not a lightsabre©. Honest, Mr Lucas, honest. They infiltrate not-Darth's lair, but are captured. Zarth does some impressive cloak-swishing, while filling in the good guys on all the important details of his eeeeeevil plan. He also laughs maniacally. He leaves them in the care of two stop-motion robots carrying cutlasses. Akton does the laser sword thing (really not a lightsabre©) but is injured, so The Mighty Hoff finishes off the second slow-moving robot.

 

Akton, it turns out, can withstand lasers, but a small cut to his upper arm renders him incapacitated and makes him disappear in a blaze of cheap SFX. But the planet is mined with nuclear bombs. Fear not; Emperor Plummer turns up and utters the deathless line "You know, my son, I wouldn't be Emperor of the Galaxy if I didn't have a few powers at my disposal. Imperial Battleship, halt the flow of time!" Time stops, except for the good guys, and they do a runner before the planet blows up.

 

Oh, and The Hoff turns out to be the missing son of the Emperor. You saw that coming, right?

 

Time for the White Hats to strike back! The same three spaceships are repeatedly launched against a space backdrop that looks like a black wall studded with multicoloured Christmas tree lights. Probably for a very good reason. Zap guns go pew-pew-pew and random things go bang. Zarth emotes in a bad guy way, badly. Some of the henchmen point guns that appear to sport antlers. A window into space is smashed, with no apparent change in atmospheric pressure. D...Zarth shouts "KILL, KILL". 

 

Sample dialogue from Zarth "I want to wipe out the Emperor from the whole of the Universe". Yes, he's arming the Doom Machine (which is in no way affiliated with Death Star Enterprises Inc©). EL the robot is resurrected, surprise surprise, just in time to help avert the impending victory of the baddies.

 

By the way, John Barry did the music for this. He must have been even more desperate than Christopher Plummer.

 

Stella and EL plan to crash a space city into the DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM Machine. In other words, they go ram-raiding. Stella "we must leap through the very heart of the stars".

 

Sample dialogue from the final attack:

Elric (a henchman): My lord!

Zarth: What is it, Elric?

Elric: A floating spaceship is about to crash into us.

Zarth: Destroy the floating spaceship approaching us!

 

Just before impact, Stella and EL bail out and sort of swim through space, the Black Hat HQ is destroyed, many pieces of Lego blow up, Zarth dies while emoting, everything's good. 

 

Emperor Plummer signs off with "Well, it's done. It's happened. The stars are... clear. The planets shine. We've won. Oh. Some dark force, no doubt, will show its... face once more. The wheel will always... turn; but for now it's calm. And for a little time, at least... we can rest." The man's a trouper. God bless him.

 

Edited November 21, 2015 by Futtocks

[Futtocks]

BTW, 'Escape from Galaxy 3' uses many of the same spaceships and shots, but exposes a bit more of the leading lady's flesh. Sadly, however, the fab Ms Munro isn't in this film.

 

But the bad guy looks like a member of Funkadelic, which is a plus.

 

Sample quotes:

Belle Star: After thousands of years our sexual powers have come back to life. And we haven't suffered any harm. On the contrary, we've acquired a powerful new dimension.

Lithan: I don't understand.

 

Lithan: What is that stuff?

Belle Star: It's water, I once saw some in my father's collection of intergalactic minerals.

 

Oraclon: Use the Megamethric Teleprobe and scan the whole Eastern galaxy!

Jemar: Sir!

Oraclon: Wait! Including the Inquidissidrent Conic Tangents.

 

Lithan: The Hydrogen booster units are already at 6000 Mega-degrees.

 

Ceylon: We'll draw up a shield of mega-rays to cover you during lift-off.

Edited November 22, 2015 by Futtocks

[Futtocks]

100 great bad movies. I have only watched 17 of them - there is much work to do!

Edited November 23, 2015 by Futtocks

[C H Calthrop]

100 great bad movies. I have only watched 17 of them - there is much work to do!

38. Although there are a few which are too good for b-dom

[ckn]

38. Although there are a few which are too good for b-dom

14 but I refuse to admit that Death Race 2000 is a b-movie.  It's actually 20 years ahead of its time as a documentary of the ultimate in austerity government's senior citizen care.

[Futtocks]

Oh, I forgot to mention that Mystery Science Theater 3000 is coming back? New host, new Mads, new robot voices, new films.

 

The series creator Joel Hodgson has started a KickStarter project, which has already raised enough for 3 episodes.

 

The final target is a full 12 episode series and, hopefully, being picked up by a broadcaster/streamer for more. 

[C H Calthrop]

Not really a b-movie but rather a sterling effort. The main stars of the show are the merkins that play the part of every beard and the trained crows which are employed as hairlines - 8.16.

[Futtocks]

Oh, I forgot to mention that Mystery Science Theater 3000 is coming back? New host, new Mads, new robot voices, new films.

 

The series creator Joel Hodgson has started a KickStarter project, which has already raised enough for 3 episodes.

 

The final target is a full 12 episode series and, hopefully, being picked up by a broadcaster/streamer for more. 

Today at 5pm (UK time), the latest 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' Turkey Day Marathon. Where to watch it (free): http://mst3k.com/events/turkeyday15/wheretowatch/

 

[Futtocks]

The Turkey Day Marathon lineup.

 

1. Outlaw of Gor (Swords, sorcery and Jack Palance in a silly hat.)

2. EEGAH! (Richard 'Jaws' Kiel is a caveman discovered by odd-faced teen singing 'sensation' Arch Hall Jr.)

3. Gorgo (The British Godzilla.)

4. Teenagers from Outer Space (None of them look teenaged, but it does have giant lobsters.)

5. Danger! Death Ray! (Feeble spy caper "I have perfected a death ray... for peaceful purposes only".)

6. Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (Martians kidnap Santa in order to learn all about the joys of Christmas. With Pia Zadora.)

 

Very satisfying.  

[Futtocks]

A pretty good breakdown of the works of Coleman Francis, possibly the world's worst film-maker.

[Futtocks]

Oh, I forgot to mention that Mystery Science Theater 3000 is coming back? New host, new Mads, new robot voices, new films.

 

The series creator Joel Hodgson has started a KickStarter project, which has already raised enough for 3 episodes.

 

The final target is a full 12 episode series and, hopefully, being picked up by a broadcaster/streamer for more. 

Getting close to the end of the KickStarter project. Guest stars have been announced, including Jack Black, Jerry Seinfeld and Mark Hamill.

[Futtocks]

Oh, I forgot to mention that Mystery Science Theater 3000 is coming back? New host, new Mads, new robot voices, new films.

 

The series creator Joel Hodgson has started a KickStarter project, which has already raised enough for 3 episodes.

 

The final target is a full 12 episode series and, hopefully, being picked up by a broadcaster/streamer for more. 

The KickStarter finished last night. The most successfully crowdfunded TV/Film project in history! Second is nowhere, Veronica Mars!

 

There will be 14 episodes now, released some time in 2016 and I'm very happy.

Edited December 12, 2015 by Futtocks

[Futtocks]

Birdemic: Shock & Terror. Truly terrible. The leading man can't even walk normally on camera, looking like some kind of wooden robot. The leading lady is very pretty, but also turns in a stilted performance. Tippi Hedren was persuaded to appear in this, too. She can't save it...

 

If it wasn't for the RiffTrax treatment, it would be totally unwatchable. Cheap CGI makes the exploding birds even less convincing than the premise as you read it.

 

Here's a sample scene for your delectation. Nathalie complete fails to hide her hilarity, while Rod holds his arm over his mouth at one point, so presumably he was corpsing too.

Edited January 7, 2016 by Futtocks

[Futtocks]

In my ongoing trawl through cinema's glorious gutters, this evening saw 'The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik-Yak' appear on my TV screen.

 

If you think the title is bad, then it is obvious you haven't seen the film. The titular female lead is played (with all the subtlety of a Chopper Harris tackle) by Tawny Kitaen, star of the Tom Hanks flick Bachelor Party and several Whitesnake videos. She was, at the time, married to the lead singer, who obviously included the "wearing fancy knickers and pouting in all me videos, like" clause to the pre-nup.

 

The film's plot splits into three parts:

1. A bad attempt at Romancing the Stone. Kitaen delivers the Basil Exposition and meets her greasy alpha-male leading man.

2. A slightly less bad attempt at Indiana Jones. Having met her inevitable beau, Gwendoline has a couple of dull adventures in jungles and deserts with various menacing critters'n'savages. No R.O.U.S action, though. Then they discover the hidden city and...

3. Breasts! Great Caesar's ghost, so many breasts! As Michael Caine once said of Zulus, "farzands of 'em". There was a bit of story going on at this point about an underground city and a lost Amazon civilisation but a. it was drivel and b. there were breasts getting in the way of my brain cells. In short, breasts.

 

Did I mention the breasts?

 

Here's a collector's item - Ms Kitaen in the last part of the film wearing (some) clothes.

[Futtocks]

Teenage Cave Man (1958), aka Prehistoric World, aka Out of the Darkness, aka Land of Prehistoric Women

 

Laughing at this is as easy as provoking a RU troll. It is, after all, directed by the King of Cheepnis Roger Corman. But what the hell, right?

 

I can sum it up in one sentence: Robert (the Man from U.N.C.L.E.) Vaughn looks neither like a teenager or a caveman.

 

But there's actually a real twist! Not a great one, and one that makes the dinosaur (a crocodile with a big fin glued to its back) footage, which was nicked from another movie, make no sense whatsoever.

 

Not actually the worst film ever made (as claimed by Vaughn), but it takes something pretty stinky for a guy like Roger Corman to claim he never directed it (he did).

[Futtocks]

I may have hit Peak Cheese - the cinematic oeuvre of Andy Sidaris!

 

If you're too young to know about it, this was exactly what the Eighties was like. Things go BANG, breasts go BOING, cars go ZOOM, dialogue is dumber than dirt, hairstyles are huge and if the pace starts to flag, he throws another handful of Playboy centerfolds at the plot.

 

Plus, you get unexpected names on the way down (or sometimes up) starring in them, like Erik (ChiPs) Estrada, Noriyuki (The Karate Kid) Morita and Danny (Machete) Trejo.

 

And, in 'Hard Ticket to Hawaii', there's an assassin with a skateboard and a blow-up sex doll, who gets killed in mid-air with a rocket launcher. The stupidity, it hurts!

[Futtocks]

I just discovered that the Jonestown massacre happened the day after the Star Wars Holiday Special was broadcast. One can't help thinking there's some sort of connection. Hang your head in shame, George Lucas!

[John Rhino]

The series that sticks in my mind is "Scotland Yard" with the creepy Edgar Lustgarten. Always black and white and always about some gruesome murder, so that, at the end Lustgaren could smack his lips in satisfaction in relating that the criminal had paid the ultimate penalty.

 

 

Didn't Edgar Lustgarten eventually take over the branding?

 

I have vague memories of Jaguar police cars with bells ringing driving into extreme close up. This was the classic B movie for me.

[Futtocks]

I may have hit Peak Cheese - the cinematic oeuvre of Andy Sidaris!

 

If you're too young to know about it, this was exactly what the Eighties was like. Things go BANG, breasts go BOING, cars go ZOOM, dialogue is dumber than dirt, hairstyles are huge and if the pace starts to flag, he throws another handful of Playboy centerfolds at the plot.

 

Plus, you get unexpected names on the way down (or sometimes up) starring in them, like Erik (ChiPs) Estrada, Noriyuki (The Karate Kid) Morita and Danny (Machete) Trejo.

 

And, in 'Hard Ticket to Hawaii', there's an assassin with a skateboard and a blow-up sex doll, who gets killed in mid-air with a rocket launcher. The stupidity, it hurts!

I sense that some of you don't believe me. Here's the scene in question. SFW, as even the doll is clothed.

Please not that at no point do I state that this is the most stupid bit of the film. 

Edited January 23, 2016 by Futtocks

[Futtocks]

I forgot to say, the terrible yacht rock theme tune from 'Hard Ticket' is my current earworm. It is bouncing around the inside of my skull like a tasered gerbil.