The cheesy B-Movie thread

[Futtocks]

Action Jackson (1988)

What went so wrong, that this sank faster than Luca Brasi taking a constitutional dip in shark-infested custard?

In the decade when noisy, stupid, fun action flicks ruled the world, this had the following plus-points:
1. Carl Weathers - a recognisable co-star of movies including Eighties action royalty Sly (Rocky) and Ahnoldt (Predator). Generally, a high-profile, charismatic and popular movie star.
2. The budget for loads of action and mahoosive explosions.
3. A director who could do action (see point 2) really damn well.
4. Nudity from the era's breakout sexbomb Sharon Stone and also Prince's latest video star, Vanity.
5. A supporting cast involving recognisable faces from 'Predator' (Bill Duke, Sonny Landham) and other actors who were, if not big names, pretty well known at that point in their careers (Al Leong, Robert Davi, Craig T.Nelson). Plus the guy who played Biff Tannen in 'Back to the Future'.
6. Music by Herbie Hancock and Michael Kamen.

The answer is dialogue. Robert Reneau's script is agonisingly weak. If anyone follows @DailyDorries on Twitter, well, it is almost as bad as that. Almost. Everything, from post-fatality quips to exposition dumps, fatally undermines the rest of the movie.

Plus, Carl Weathers is such a genial side of beef, it is hard to get a sense of menace from his performance, even when he's threatening to kill someone.

Edited July 3, 2022 by Futtocks

[Futtocks]

Big Meat Eater (1982)
Been a while since I logged a viewing. Anyway, Time Out pretty much nutshelled this very enjoyable sci-fi cannibal zombie musical.
https://www.timeout.com/movies/big-meat-eater 

 

Edited May 31, 2022 by Futtocks

[Futtocks]

Just starting the second half of a Tokyo Shock double bill. First up was Tokyo Gore Police, and now The Machine Girl.
Splattery. Very splattery. And as far from any notion of good taste as you could imagine.

[Futtocks]

Hawk Jones (1986)
Hawk's a loner cop with a short fuse, told by his angry, shouty moustachioed chief that he has to team up with a female partner. Working unwillingly together at first, they come to appreciate each other as they try to bring down the city's Mob kingpin.
So far, so unimaginative. The difference is that nobody in the cast of Hawk Jones is over 10 years old. Sample dialogue: "Females are like chocolate chip ice-cream - cold and lumpy!"
While this has been remastered for DVD, you can taste the magnificence for nothing with the somewhat murky VHS rip at: https://archive.org/details/hawkjones1 

[Futtocks]

Michael Flatley's cinematic magnum opus is finally here! And it's as rubbish as everyone expected it to be!

 

[MatthewWoody]

I'm in love with this thread. 

[Futtocks]

Razor Sharpe (2001)
A classic black tank-topped vanity project from Writer/Director/Star/Winner of all Fights/Seducer of the Leading Laydee, Troy N.Ashford.

Ashford plays an aspiring action star, who's held back by jealous movie folks for being just too damn good and handsome and ace and that. He gets framed for a crime that he thought was a scene, and chases down the baddies, having a fight every five minutes or so.

Our hero scores points for being a lousy actor and for his inability to shoot his fight scenes as effectively as his undoubted martial arts moves deserve. 

He loses vanity-project points for actually being ripped and athletic, unlike established (and doughy) genre stars John de Hart, Steve Barkett or Neil Breen.

Other enjoyable bits - one of the baddies has an "English" accent that even Russell Crowe would call a bit iffy. Plus, our hero occasionally drives a custom Chevy Corvette whose rear lights spell out "Pure Hell".

[Futtocks]

Blackbird (2022)
The infamous Michael Flatley vanity project - a "Dancelord Production". If you have eyes, prepare to roll them now.
Enter the phrases "midlife crisis" and "dribbly old ####" into an AI movie generator and you'd get something more watchable than Flatley's screamingly embarrassing attempt to portray himself as a mixture of Rick Blaine and Chuck Norris.
The man has obviously purged his intimate circle (ooh, missus!) of anyone capable of telling him he's making a colossal plonker of himself.

[Futtocks]

Evils of the Night (1985)
In this prescient flick, a teenager played by G.T.Taylor (her only film role), fantasises about "Prince Andrew! Just him and I, on an island all alone, running naked and making love!" I can't verify if Harvey Weinstein was involved in the production, but yikes!
Other than that, it's a forgettably trashy alien abduction flick, with a few unconnected nude scenes Frankensteined in.

[Futtocks]

One Man Force (1989)
John Matuszak (Sloth from The Goonies) is your bog-standard cop who doesn't play by the rules. Also in the cast are the tasty line-up of Ronny Cox, Sam Jones, Charles Napier, Robert Tessier and Richard Lynch, so you know it won't be utterly lame.
Basically, a "cop seeks vengeance on LA drug lords" flick. 
A good old-fashioned beer movie.

 

Edited March 6, 2023 by Futtocks

[Futtocks]

If Father Ted made a martial arts movie, it would... probably be better than this. It is, thankfully, available in full on YouTube.

 

[Futtocks]

Unicorn Wars (2022)

Take story elements from Apocalypse now, Cannibal Holocaust and All quiet on the Western Front, holding absolutely nothing back in showing the dehumanising effects of physical and moral brutality. Let alone the corruption of religion and populist politics.

Then  animate it with the same aesthetic as a Care Bears/My Little Pony movie. Here's the relatively tame trailer.

 

Edited September 18, 2023 by Futtocks

[Futtocks]

Bach ke Zaraa (2008), aka Bollywood Evil Dead
It is absolutely what the alternative title would lead you to believe. Yes, including a song & dance sequence near the start that I suspect was lifted from a higher-budget production.
Furthermore, none of my usual sources for subtitle files of rare/weird movies has turned anything up, so I'm pretty much following the plot on visuals, familiarity with Sam Raimi's work and the occasional random English word or phrase.
https://youtu.be/IYIKjSDv_ME

[Futtocks]

Just heard the word from Wakaliwood - "Who killed Captain Alex 2" is coming soon!

What with that and Neil Breen's latest blockbuster going on sale once he's finished touring it, 2024 in movies is going to make Barbenheimer look about as epic as Liz Truss' time as Prime Minister.

[Futtocks]

I’ve just started To the Limit (1995), starring Anna Nicole Smith and Joey Travolta. Cheap, dumb, eminently riffable apart from the bits where Anna’s bits are the focal (and only) point of a particular scene.
A laughably cheap thriller - it opens on a shot of a terrible fake moustache and soon after, a bad guy’s helicopter gets shot down by an Eighties video-game graphic.
ANS also stumbles over her vows in a scene where her character marries an older man, the one acting task that you’d expect her to take in her stride. Her reaction to the aftermath of a Kill Bill-style attack on the wedding, however, is extraordinary in the best worst way.

[Futtocks]

World gone wild (1987)
The Seven Samurai meets Mad Max, with Bruce Dern, Adam Ant (sounding like Nigel Tufnell, despite actually being from London himself), Michael Paré, Catherine Mary Stuart, Julius J.Carry III (aka Sho’Nuff from The Last Dragon) and Anthony James.
Water is the thing everyone seeks, rather than fuel, as Ant’s Manson Family-inspired cult wants to take the precious resource from Bruce Dern’s hippie colony.
Thanks largely (but not totally) to the cast, this is a better effort than many of the post-apocalyptic flicks of the decade, despite certain clichés abounding like fine ham.

[Futtocks]

Fifty/Fifty (1992), starring Roberts Hays and Peter Weller.
Ted Striker and Robocop play soldiers of fortune in this buddy action comedy. It’s not brilliant, but it’s fun and I like both lead actors.

[Futtocks]

A.P.E.X. (1994)
Time travel! Deadly robots with glitchy lo-rez eyesight! Chunky blokes with really big guns! The Landmaster ATV from 1977’s Damnation Alley! A voiceover by Patrick Swayze’s sister-in-law!
And, admittedly, a bit more spent on props and costumes than this sort of movie usually gets. Either that or they did a lot of creative borrowing from other films.

 

[Futtocks]

The God of Cookery (1996)
It's a Stephen Chow movie, so expect the same cartoonish absurdity as Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle. One of the signature dishes is called "P1$$ing Beef Balls", which I believe Google translates as "Jonathan Gullis".

In truth, it isn't as famous as the other titles I mentioned for good reason. It is a lot of fun, but the pacing is very uneven and you can drift in and out of some sections. But Chow's lead character is as obnoxiously funny as ever and Karen Mok as "Turkey" is another of his signature unhinged, violent but relatable female characters like Qiu Yuen was in KFH.

[Futtocks]

Swing Girls (2004)
A Japanese movie in which a bunch of slacker pupils are press-ganged into being the new school band after they accidentally hospitalise the real musicians. Funny and likeable.

 

Edited October 11, 2024 by Futtocks

[Futtocks]

Vampire's Kiss (1988)
A young Nic Cage goes absolutely, gibberingly tonto in a way that makes his recent "act crazy in lousy movies to pay the debts" look pretty tame and understated.

[Futtocks]

Vampire in Venice (1988)
Christopher Plummer, Klaus Kinski, Donald Pleasance and the awesome backdrop of Venice - it can't be all that bad, can it?

Yes, yes it can.

The Kinski portrayal of Nosferatu that nobody remembers.

[Futtocks]

Knights (1993)
Post-apocalyptic action, with Kathy Long and Gary Daniels (both from Santa's Summer House), the late Kris Kristofferson and Lance Henriksen. Unlike a lot of these movies, the first two names bring some genuine martial arts to the table, while KK adds his genial charm.

I definitely want to see more of Kathy Long, because all her action is dynamic and explosive. Better than the usual examples of the genre.

 

[Futtocks]

Two of the great female Hong Kong action stars, Moon Lee (blue) and Yukari Oshima (black), just battering the absolute snot out of each other.

 

[Futtocks]

Angelfist (1993)
Yet another Cirio Santiago flick, taking advantage of the low costs and tax breaks of the Philippines. It concerns a cop infiltrating a martial arts tournament to find out who killed her sister. Yes, it really is that formulaic.
The lead actor is played by Catya Sassoon, who has multiple proper martial arts titles, but who can’t act, has zero charisma and whose fight scenes are really badly shot.
On the upside, it does have Melissa Moore in it, aka the horny policewoman from Samurai Cop. Her martial arts aren’t great, but as a screen presence, she’s on another level and she can sell the action moves.