SHOOTING FROM THE HIP: "THE HAMMERER"

SHOOTING FROM THE HIP - EPISODE 2

A famous scene from the low-budget, cult hit "The Hammerer."

http://youtu.be/zkEji6UCheU

Check out our first episode, "Smackin' Cheese!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkEji6UCheU

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (23 OF 100)

"Gymkata" (1985), Dir: Robert Clouse

$8.5 Million in Budget vs. $5,730,596 in Gross

The title alone gives you a pretty good idea what Gymkata is about. I rented it having seen it reviewed by Red Letter Media and was wondering how a ninja/gymnast movie would hold up. I was pleasantly surprised with most of it, and absolutely terrified with some. That's right. I said terrified. All in all, most of what Gymkata offered were a lot of surprises I did not expect, making it a very worthwhile bad movie.

The plot is surprisingly complicated. While watching Gymkata, I almost found it almost impossible to know what was happening. I knew there was a deadly game involved, but wasn't sure why the main character Jonathan Cabot (Kurt Thomas) had any interested. Turns out Johnathon Cabot is a gymnastics champ whose father at one time took part in this deadly game and lost, losing his life as well. The game itself is an endurance test held in a fictional country called Parmistan (which will come up again later), where the contestants avoid obstacles and run from Parmistanian warriors bent on killing them. If a contestant wins, he is granted one wish of his choosing.

So early in the movie, our hero Johnathon is approached by the SIA (Special Intelligence Agency) about entering the tournament so that if he wins, they can use his one wish to set up a satellite monitoring station for the Star Wars Program... Yep. That is what they want to do with his only wish. What assholes. Also, this is also the only non-animated movie I've ever seen where wishes are actually part of the plot-line. But Johnathon also has his own reasons for entering the tournament. If Johnathon wins the game, he will be honoring his father and accomplishing what he could not... Wow. So yes, a lot going on, but is anyone really watching it for the plot? No. So let's see some more Gymkata.

The star Kurt Thomas was an actual Olympic Gymnastics winner. So for an unassuming, nimble little white-boy, he's got some sweet moves and manages to execute them with noticably more grace than JCVD (which takes a bit of the grit out of it). The action sequences in the movie, though low-budget, are competently made. You watch them, ooh'ing and ah'ing as Kurt Thomas gracefully kicks some ass. Is Kurt convincing in that sense? Very much so. Is he an action star? No. No, not at all. It's hard to take an action hero series who oddly looks a lot like Wayne Gretzky and dresses like... well, like a dork. I mean seriously, would you be able to take JCVD seriously if he wore a Christmas sweater? So agility is no question. Kurt does a good job kicking ass, especially in the scene where he fights an entire village using only a pummel horse... But as far as be imtidating, well...

Kurt's presence aside, the location of the movie was the most off-putting thing about it. Fictional countries seem to only work in Perfect Strangers or children's cartoons. I refer you to Genosha in X-Men. But when you create one for a movie, you're fall subject to some problems, such as race, ethnicity, culture, etc. Little things. And yet, when you create a country that doesn't have any of those (minus barbaric gaming), you get the great Parmistan, a country named after a cheese-topping, populated by lazy-eyed extras, and decorated with a mix of Russian, Amish, Islamic, Scottish, and Asian stereotypes. It's pretty much a case of "The East" for those of you not familiar with Orientalism. Simply put: in North America's eyes, whatever isn't the west is the east. (Better examples of this can be found in the Italian Sword & Sandal Films, more specifically involving the dance sequences.)

Another strange aspect of the setting is that the characters need to make it through "The Village of the Crazies," a village populated with deadly lunatics. It's a fifteen minute sequence near the end of the film and is as strange and terrifying as anything David Lynch has ever made. John is forced to do battle with maniac after maniac, each with their own brand of psychotic. I guess mental health is a bit of a grey area in the Parmistanian government. The Village of the Crazies might not be a sequence many will enjoy, but I thought it gave the movie a bit of edge from being just another generically bad action film.

 

Gymkata is a lot of fun and worth seeing for some decent action and a good string of laughs.

For your viewing displeasure, the "Village of The Crazies" sequence in full. 

MOVIE TROPES - DANCING RESOLVES EVERYTHING

 "MOVIES AND THE MYTH OF DANCING"

 
I like to dance. Lots of people like to dance. Men, women, children like to dance. But why do we dance? Is it the florid release of energy, the synchronized movement, or the fact that somehow a single dance number will solve all your worldly problems? Wait! What? That isn't true. I dance alone all time and I'm still balls-deep in debt! How come dancing doesn't make that go away? Have movies been lying to me about the awesome powers of dance my whole life?

Now I don't know where this trope came from, but I'd like to say 80s films like the John Hugh's classic The Breakfast Club. All those disenfranchised high school misfits went from hating each other to bonding over the course of a dance montage, becoming a harmonious unit... It's pretty cheesy, but beats the previous scene where they're all sitting around and f&$@ing crying.

But the myth of the star-studded dance number goes back further than that. One could say as far back as Old Hollywood with movies like Singin' In The Rain, which was a song-and-dance musical about performers in song-and-dance musicals. Typically with these films, the conflict would be resolved with a final dance number, stunning producers and sourpusses alike, marking the big payoff. But what never made sense to me about these films was how one particular dance number seemed to vanquish all dilemmas, but the dozens of others prior (even the more memorable ones) had no affect at all.

This same school of logic was reflected in the Oscar-Eating-Monster The Artist (which is actually a great movie) when the two leads managed to sway their old crotchety producer John Goodman with a starry dance number that would win the old lug's heart, but also serve as nice transition to the film's ending where the leads are on top of the world again.

But that's just something that happens in hokey musicals, right? There's a dance number and all's well that ends well? Not in every musical. West Side Story is an odd exception. In that movie (where all gangs dance and jump on top of each other when they fight) the characters are introduced as using their ability to dance to intimidate people, showing ownership over the neighborhood (but also being the daintiest gang ever). Tony, the leader of The Jets, gets murdered in street and no amount of dancing or singing brings him back. It's actually a surprisingly tragic ending to a musical and has no final dance number to cap things off. 

However, twenty years later, Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsen would do the leather-pants number at the end of Grease and give everyone the happy ending West Side Story never had. Gang feuds are resolved, classic conflicts are washed away, teen pregnancies were, um, gone suddenly, and there was even enough time for a big hooray-hooray before the credits rolled.

In some cases, the movie dance is just a coping mechanism and solves nothing. Take Alex Cox's gritty bio film Sid And Nancy for example. If you can actually stomach this piece of sh%# film, the climax is Sid Vicious stabbing Nancy Spungen to death in a testament to their toxic relationship, and Sid going to jail for being a woman-killer. Once Sid is released, he runs into some rapper kids on the street. They tell him not to not be "so stuck up" and dance with them. He does so, forgetting that he's a f&%$ing murderer for a second. Then a cab pulls up. The door opens and Nancy is inside, alive. Sid gets in and the two drive off into whatever crappy city they live in, excusing Sid of murdering this person and giving us the most condescending happy ending bull$%& I've ever seen... Now, this isn't a dance number per say, but it follows the trope that dancing makes everything okay, and in this case is used very manipulatively. God, I hate this movie so much. As the British would say, pure rubbish.

Personally, I thin dance numbers are their most effective when they cap off a movie in a way that words cannot. For example, Napoleon Dynamite's Jamiroquai dance number won Pedro the election. How? Doesn't matter. The final dance number of Chicago shows that Roxie and Velma have now joined forces and become bigger than they ever were alone. How in reality do a pair of murderesses get so famous? I don't know (ask Sid Vicious), but regardless we accept it.

Then you have a climax like the one to Little Miss Sunshine where it tries to show the family uniting in a way that most dialogue scenes leading up to this could not do. During Olive's semi-stripper dance, the family joins her on stage and supports when the crowd doesn't. Then they all get arrested, but as a family, together. Does that win them Little Miss Sunshine and absolve them of any crimes they have committed? No. Does that resolve their inner dysfunctions? Not really. Does it illustrate a connection that would otherwise be cheesy in words? Yes, it does. Does it make the audience feel good about themselves and laugh? Absolutely, which is exactly the point.

Perhaps the dance number is the comedy/musical answer to the action movie's final fist fight between between good and evil. Neither musicals or comedies usually have villains, so the movies themselves don't really have a visual outlet for what is usually a character's internal struggles. Perhaps the dance number is the answer for those particular genres... but then again, you also have endings like the big dance recital in Staying Alive and realize that sometimes dance numbers a punch in the face might be better.

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (19 OF 100)

"Maximum Overdrive" (1986), Dir: Stephen King

 

$9 million in Budget vs. $7,433,663 in Gross

From the a classic storyteller Stephen King , whom more often than not doesn't translate very well to film, comes the worst Stephen King adaptation ever, one that was made by King himself back in 1986. Based on his short-story "Trucks", Maximum Overdrive opens with Stephen King (one of his few movie cameos) going to use a bank machine which tells him "YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE." King looks to his off-screen wife and says "Hey, honey! Come on over here, sugar buns! This machine just called me an asshole!" Yep. That's the renowned master of horror's directorial debut right there...

In fact, Maximum Overdrive was King's first and last directorial attempt. According to King in an interview with Tony Magistrale, he was "coked out of [his] mind all through its production and really didn't know what [he] was doing." Well... it shows. The story of Maximum Overdrive is that a passing meteor leaves earth caught in its trail of strange radiation, somehow giving machines consciousness and making them attack humans... Yes, that is the best storyline the master of horror could come up with for his first movie.

The film opens by explaining the meteor and then cuts to a mechanical bridge seemingly malfunctioning, crushing and killing dozens. In the aftermath of this chaos - BOOM! - the rock-a-billy AC/DC score kicks in. Now, King has stated in the past that AC/DC is his favorite rock band and that he writes most of his books while listening to their music. And yes, a nice personal touch like that for his first directorial outing is appropriate, but that doesn't make AC/DC's music appropriate for a horror movie (and it isn't)... if a horror movie's even what you want to call this. Also, it should be noted that this opening sequence has some of the best pratfalls in film history.

That bridge scene only really serves to set up that technology has gone haywire. The story actually follows Emilio Estevez, a recently paroled prisoner, now working at the Dixie Boy gas station, a trucker dive owned by the sleazy Mr. Hendershot. As the usual parade of truckers arrive for their daily lunch (with their ridiculous-looking trucks that no sane person would drive), the arcades and cooking equipment in the restaurant suddenly come to life and turn on them. Soon enough, all the trucks in the parking lot are trying to kill them as well. Lucky for Emilio his sleazy boss doesn't just use the Dixie Boy to serve bacon and eggs. He also has a basement in which he pedals machine guns and rocket launchers.

So the impending battle between man and machine begins... and I don't know if it was intended to be funny or not, but it certainly was. This movie has several hilarious moments in it, some border-lining on absurd. There's a little league game that turns into a war zone when a pop machine starts firing cans at kids like a potato gun. At one point, a gattling gun attached to a cart rolls up and machine guns the restaurant, resulting in the most poor and awkward blood squids I've ever seen. And then of course, there is the defining moment of Emilio Estevez's acting career where him and a big truck with a goblin face discuss the situation. The way the scene is played out, Emilio's performance, the stupid goblin-face on the truck, there is nothing here except hilariousness.

All in all, for the master of horror's only movie outing, you won't be scared much (or at all), but you will get some good laughs... but definitely won't be scared.

For you viewing displeasure, King's cameo and the first scene of his directorial debut...

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (18 OF 100)

"Highlander 2: The Quickening" (1991), Dir: Russell Mulcahy

 

$34 million in Budget vs. $15,556,340 in Gross

 
Oh, the cunning Franchise Killer. Yes, the Richard Donner Superman franchise and Tim Burton's Batman franchise were among many of its victims (arguably surviving, just to run the same course again), but some victims of this murderer of artistic merit never even had a chance. The Highlander franchise is definitely one of those victims...

Having aged greatly on my part and seen the first Highlander movie several times now, the most credit I can give the original is that it still holds up as a neat idea. Immortals walking amongst us to do battle in the streets with swords is pretty cool. The rest of the original is a bad 80s special effects film (looking a lot like a Queen/Pink Floyd video) with a soundtrack by Queen (arguably the best part of the movie). But in the end, Connor MacLeod (Christoper Lambert) conquered the bad guys, was granted the ability to live a normal life, and retired to Scotland. How could they ever imagine bringing the character back after all that? Well, they couldn't really, but did anyway, resulting in this giant, unimaginative, steaming pile of stool.

One of the charms of the first Highlander film for me was its narrative simplicity. Early on in the film, we are introduced to MacLeod, learn that he is immortal, and that the Kurgan (the unforgettable Clancy Brown) wants MacLeod's powers for himself. Four hundred years earlier, Ramirez (played by Sean Connery) gives us a quick rundown of the rules of the immortals, so the cards are on the table and we're set to take part in this badass game of elimination. Simple. Effective. To the point. The subsequent sequel, however, had to get fancy and throw all that simplicity out the window for stray cats to nibble on.

Highlander II: The Quickening is set in a future where the ozone layer has evaporated and a force field is the only thing keeping earth alive (invented by Connor MacLeod, who was an antiques dealer in the first movie and never mentioned anything about having a scientific background). Now much older, he is hated by everyone and treated like garbage for saving human existence... Ungrateful jerks. No wonder he's looking forward to dying. But suddenly Connor has a whole whack of problems when the evil immortals from his home planet come to earth to f%$& sh$% up... 

Wait. Let's back up a second. The Highlander is an alien?! Really?! Since when did that happen? The first movie made no point or hint of that. Most audiences would've thought "Wait, isn't the Highlander from Scotland?", hence the name Highlander and most of the first film taking place in Scotland, but no, this Highlander's apparently from Planet Zeist... So yeah, this second movie just slips in some crappy alien origin storyline as if none of us with a working brain would have even noticed. Now, apparently back on Planet Zeist, MacLeod and Ramirez (not the most alien-sounding names) were captured as part of some treacherous rebel group and exiled to be reborn on earth. How they accomplish that God-like feat (not to mention the evil immortals would've had to do the exact same thing for all the other hundreds of immortals who were somehow magically reborn on earth for the first movie) is beyond me. But all that aside, this entire subplot is, well, a rip-off Superman's origins... Yeah, I know. Who cares?

Anyways, led by everyone's go-to-casting-choice-for-a-villain, Michael Ironside, General Katana and these evil immortals somehow manage to penetrate the shield protecting earth's atmosphere. From there, they fail at killing a very tired, very old man, and accidentally restore MacLeod's powers of immortality so he can be young and handsome again. But while MacLeod does the old Highlander electric-light-show song and dance, following the advice he got on Planet Zeist, MacLeod screams out Ramirez's name. Then (somehow) brings his old friend back from the dead... so they can kill people and make hammy jokes about it... and then Ramirez just dies again...

Yeah, this whole movie is just a mess. As well as being one of the elusive Franchise Killer's many victims, it's also early signs of Sean Connery's inability to recognize a bloody awful script from the 1990s (having three of his films from that era on this list). The latter Highlander films aren't much better. From this one, I enjoyed seeing MacLeod as an old man (for fifteen minutes), learning insults of the future ("Hey, cheese-di$%!"), and enjoyed the future battle between Old Man MacLeod and the two meth-head immortals with jet packs. What I didn't enjoy was the lack of coherence for one, the fact that there was no gratuitous Highlander sex scene (as in the first, third, and fourth), and a sore lack of Queen soundtrack.

Two sequels followed this,  a bad TV series and some animated films. The franchise clearly peaked after the first entry and has been in a state of decay ever since. Last year, there was rumors of a reboot with Taylor Lautner  in the works, but those have disappeared, thankfully. I'll stick with my VHS copy of the original, thanks...Wait a minute. This franchise has for the most part sucked ass. Maybe it's ripe for a fixin'... or maybe not and just come up with something original.

And for your viewing displeasure, the opening of the movie including the Planet Ziest storyline, bad voice-over narration, and crappy special effects...

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (17 OF 100)

"The Warriors" (1979), Dir: Walter Hill

 

$7 Million in Budget vs. $22,490,039 in Gross

 
It's funny to watch a movie like The Warriors, laugh my ass off, and then realize that the guy who made actually this has quite a dinstinguished career behind him. On top of this film, Writer-Producer Walter Hill had a hand in all the Alien films (Prometheus included), both of the highly underrated 48 Hours films, Tales from the Crypt (1989-96), the subsequent movies (the good and the bad), the little known Perversions of Science, and notably HBO's Deadwood pilot (as director), as well as Stallone's most recent attempt to prove he's not 67, the box office flounder Bullet to the Head... Not bad, not bad.

 
In its time, The Warriors was not well-received by critics, and there are clear reasons for that. In terms of its acting, yeah, it's pretty bad. The characters talk to each other without the slightest hint of human emotion. And the realism is a bit questionable. I mean, I live in a pretty rough neighborhood myself and I've never seen gangs dressed as both cowboys/Indians (The Warriors), KISS/Roberto Alomar (The Baseball Furies), or Roller Girl/Super Mario Family (The Punks, apparently)... So yeah, not exactly an accurate on the pre-Reagan youth...

 
And for that matter, the social commentary (if any) is a little shallow. I refer you to the subway scene where the gang encounters a bunch of rich kids coming from their prom (I assume). The rich girl looks at the poor girl's shoes and everyone goes silent. It's possibly one of the more empty, awkward, and blatant social commentaries I've seen in a movie and doesn't really create the social landscape as I think Hill intended...
 

So, for all these bad qualities, why even see The Warriors? I tell you. Because the first fifteen minutes of The Warriors deserves to be studied in f&%$ing schools. The topic should be "How To Execute a Perfect Story Set Up And Do It Right!"

The movie opens with a series of flash-cuts of all the city's street gangs informing one another that Cyrus, leader of the Gramercy Riffs (and a very Third Man-esque character), wants all the gangs to meet in Van Cortlandt Park, unarmed. Cyrus proposes a truce amongst the gangs so that they can start working together and take over the city. Swaying the crowd, Cyrus proclaims (in the movie's most quotable moment) "Can you dig it?!" The gangs all cheer Cyrus on as a born leader... that is, until a psychotic little punk named Luther (a young Uncle Jerry from Twin Peaks) shoots Cyrus and kills him..Chaos ensues and Luther and his gang (The Rogues) pin the murder on The Warriors, making them the most hated gang in the city and target of everyone's wrath...

Now that, folks, is what you call "a set-up." Within a small amount of time (exactly 13 minutes and 44 seconds), Mr. Hill makes sure the audience knows who is important (Cyrus), what is at stake (the truce), and what causes that to come crashing down (that asshole Luther); putting our characters in grave peril and smack in the middle of a situation that seems impossible to resolve... Ah, jeez, how they gonna get out of this? Well, if you're asking yourself that question, then Mr. Hill has done his job. Doesn't matter if the film sucks for the next hour or even ends with some stupid musical number, the set-up worked. Like a contractual agreement between the audience and the filmmaker, what was being sold was also purchased, even if it runs the risk of not being completely satisfactory. The potential is more attractive than the reality in the end.

 
The only two other movies I can recall having set-ups as tight as The Warriors are Die Hard and Winter's Bone. From its set-up to its climax, the movie offers some great and not-so-great action sequences, some interesting characters along the way, and most importantly, a constant need to see how these bad actors dressed in Chip 'n' Dale vests get out of this situation. Modern screenwriters could learn a thing or two from 70s cheese like The Warriors.

For your viewing displeasure, an ironic song choice for this sort of movie...

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (16 OF 100)

"Nemisis" (1992), Dir: Albert Ryun

 

Unknown in Budget vs. $2,001,124 in Gross

Sometimes, it's great to be a man. When I first saw the movie Nemesis, I realized that this movie pretty much had everything: action, robots, bewbs, explosions, robots fighting other robots. What more could a horny, raging, adolescent teenager ask for? Well, maybe a touch of story for one... a little less narration telling us the character's inner-feelings... some acting not so bad that literally every line had to be dubbed... a better ending maybe (that isn't exactly like the first Terminator), or even a satisfying one? Yes, these are the things the movie lacks and makes it arguably bad, but for what it offers in terms of overwhelming, action extravaganzas, one has to sacrifice any expectations of intellectual satisfaction to enjoy this film.

Rising from the ashes of the legendary Cannon Group and coming off Cyborg, a very similar film, Albert Pyun's movie opens with our main character Alex bringing back a hooker to his hotel room. The hooker insists on checking him to make sure he's not an undercover. Well, turns out Alex is, popping her one in the face -- BOOM! -- and thus revealing that she is actually a cyborg posing as a woman (awkward!). She then says to Alex, "Goddamn cop!" and Alex rebutts "Goddamn terrorist," quickly finishing her off -- BOOM! And that's how the movie begins. Yes, indeed, the perfect man-movie.

Picking up from that sequence, the title character Alex (Olivier Gruner, the poor man's JCVD) runs from a group of terrorists dressed like 1980s Havana vacationers into probably the most excessive, outlandish action sequence I can recall. The terrorists and Alex exchange endless rounds (which a co-worker pointed out to me that their guns never recoil) and then up the anti with explosives, causing probably more explosions in the first 10 minutes than T2 had entirely (I counted 16 at least). But for all it's awesomeness, I think there's been only six lines of dialogue spoken at this point, or even less, so there's not much story to follow...

I can't really tell you what the story to Nemesis is because it's very confusing. Alex is partly machine, but seems to have come to terms with the fact; so you can't really say it's about man vs. machine, or even a man vs. himself because being part machine is what gives Alex the ability to fight the other cyborgs, and fighting cyborgs is what makes his character so f*&%ing awesome, so we just whatever is thrown at us.

Back to story: So after surviving his battle with the Havana terrorists, Alex goes forth to hunt down the only survivor on their side and guns her down months later... Well, there's another plot-line out the window. What now? Well, what happens next is he quits the LAPD to become a freelance trigger-man, but the LAPD wants him for one last mission: to find and kill a terrorist named Jared. Later, we discover that Jared is actually a woman, and not only a woman, but already dead... except that her memory core survived somehow, so to keep those memories safe, they must be implanted into Alex's cybernetic eye...

 
Okay. Yeah. You know what. Even trying to type out this plot-line confuses me, and it doesn't stop there. If you haven't figured it out yet, the story is not the point. Similarly to other over-stylish 90s action-films, like The Replacement Killers or anything by John Woo, Nemesis' story means nothing. Now, that brand of thinking sounds kinda bad and, yes, the rejection of any form of intellectual stimulation is probably why most modern movies just plain suck ass these days; but in the case of this low-budget, low-brow Terminator knock-off, what really are one's expectations? Simple: action, style, soundtrack, and Mira Sorvino with her bewbs hanging out the whole movie. Shameless, yes, but this is why you watch these movies, to satisfy the simpleton in you, to give a high-five to that former teenager who just wants pure excess and wants it right now.

Unfortunately, that means that most men will probably watch this film alone. Women will have no interest, guaranteed, and especially after the tasteless nude scenes with former USA Beauty Queen Deborah Shelton and Fitl On Film's blog favorite -- you guessed it -- Tom Jane, and not Coolio. So for all the guys, go grab yourself a six pack, go to your local video store (or youtube), get some chips, and let Nemesis just take over your mind.   

And for your mindless viewing pleasure, an opening scene that I don't think any man can say no to... minus the hack voice-over narration...

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (10 OF 100)

 

"Hard Ticket to Hawaii" (1987), Dir: Andy Sidaris
 

Unknown Budget vs. Non-Existent Gross

There are bad movies that make you cringe and then there's the ones that make you rejoice. Watching Hard Ticket to Hawaii, I wonder three things: (1) How did I ever live before seeing this wonderfully horrible film? (2) Why hasn't somebody like Quentin Tarantino tried to remake or capitalize off this gem? (3) I'd better keep my mouth shut so it stays just the way it is. I don't think I could live if someone ever modernized this amazing theme song.

 
Starring a cast of near-porn stars and a giant snake-puppet, the film follows two secret operatives on the down-low. Played by two former playboy playmates -- Hope Marie Carlton in 1985 and Dona Speir in 1984 -- the two are stationed in Hawaii, pretending to be two unassuming female cops, who never wear bras and always manage to find an excuse to be topless. The plot (to my surprise) takes off when the girls are hired to deliver a large venomous snake to the island (for reasons unknown), as well as a married couple on their honeymoon (inevitably snake-lunch). Now I usually avoid movies with snakes of any kind because of a crippling phobia, but this movie is so much fun and the giant snake is so bad-looking, it's, well, just plain unavoidable (kinda like watching Snakes on a Plane and all its stupid C.G.I. snakes).

 
After delivering their cargo, the two girls accidentally stumble upon a secret diamond-exchange, orchestrated by a powerful crime-lord named Mr. Chang. The delivery was meant for one of the island's most vicious criminals named Seth Romero, but after a series of struggles, ends up in the ladies' possession and their non-human cargo is accidentally released.

Amongst many superb qualities, the main villain Seth Romero is one of the film's highlights, probably suffering about as much physical punishment and agony as Jason Voorhees would by the end of a Friday The 13th film In the course of these ludicrous events, Seth gets shot in the face, stabbed with a harpoon gun, falls onto a switch-blade, gets bit by the giant snake on his face (which makes him unknowingly contract snake-cancer... yep), and so on. (There's even a sequence that deliberately rips off Halloween with Seth in the Michael Myers role, only to get punctured like Michael did, suggesting that Seth is... a ghost??? I dunno.) By the end of it all, you just want someone to put the poor guy out of his misery before he does any further damage to himself.

It's actually shocking how enjoyable this film is. Does anyone remember in Boogie Nights how Burt Reynold's character says that he's always wanted to make a real movie, yet still starring porn actors? This is what I picture that movie being. There isn't much I can say without giving away all the best parts, so we'll just sum up the reasons to see it: (1) Boobs, boobs, and bewbs, (2) budgeted yet ridiculous action sequences, (3) porn stars trying to be action stars, and (4) a giant Jim Henson-esque snake that steals the show. Watch this gem movie in all its terrible glory.

Now that's a trailer. And if my review hasn't sold you on this one, perhaps this clip will. For your viewing displeasure, our friend Seth getting further mangled and the famous cancer-snake's greatest scene!

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (9 OF 100)

 

"Mac And Me" (1998), Dir: Stewart Raffill

$13 Million in Budget vs. $6,424,112 in Gross

Watching movies from the 80s, I realize how it easy it was to sell things to children back then, or at least get children to convince their parents to buy it for them. But even back in the 80s, Mac and Me would be a tough sell, to anyone, including its sponsors and McAffiliates who abandoned the project shortly after it's abysmal inception. It's also become a regularly featured joke on Conan O'Brien.

Almost identical in plot and score to E.T., it's about a family of aliens (who get more and more frightening with every scene) that accidentally get sucked into the vacuum system on a probe (which happens more than once), and end up on earth. While on earth, they get separated from their youngest child (nicknamed Mac, I'm assuming after McDonalds because they were a heavy sponsor) as he wanders the country until adopting a human family. Eventually, Michael (Johnathan Ward), a wide-eyed young boy bound to a wheelchair, befriends Mac and decides to help him find his alien family. Sound familiar?

Yeah, well, that about sums up the plot or anything relevant that happens in the movie. The rest is just a string of events that drift from one product placement to another. For example, Mac leaving Coke cans with flowers in them for Michael to find. Subsequently, Michael starts noticing his remote control cars are acting strangely. When they discover Mac, he's ill and the kids have to nurse him back to health using -- you guessed it -- Coke. From there, they then dress him similarly to a Talking Teddy Ruxpin, if you remember those, and this all leads to the birthday party scene... Oh, the birthday party scene... set at the local McDonalds... featuring rappers dancing by the drive-through, Ronald McDonald himself, and a complex choreographed dance (contest) sequence that I'm sure the employees of McDonalds just winged, much like an 80s McDonalds Commercial. It's an appalling sequence that makes you feel... exploited. (As a side note, explain to me how an alien from another planet knows how to do the same f*&%ing dance as everyone else in the restaurant.)

From there, they rip off the famous flying bike sequence in E.T. with a wheelchair instead. This takes them to the Sears where Michael's mom works, and where more remote controlled cars are employed to distract the agents. Losing them, the kids drive Mac to the desert (explain to me how kids can drive a van across states and not be noticed) to find his family. When they do, the family (that looks like relatives of Sloth from The Goonies) are dehydrated and dying. But no worries! They got more Coke! And use it to revive Mac's creepy family... seriously.

**Spoiler Alert** To save you the pain of enduring the last twenty minutes of this giant commercial flop, the movie ends Mac and his alien family (dressed like suburbanites and even more terrifying now) being made into American citizens as appointed by congress and then driving away in a pink caddy with the tag-line appearing, "We'll Be Back." Thank God they never were! We can all just hope that that pink caddy crashed and then someone went to jail for thinking that aliens would somehow know how to drive a human car. 

This movie is worth watching not to remember what it was like being a child, but rather to see how McDonalds, Coca-Cola, and countless toy companies viewed you at that age. And I'll repeat, the aliens are absolutely terrifying. 

Yep. That's the trailer. And for your viewing displeasure, the infamous birthday party scene, which makes me realize now why nobody ever came to my birthday as a child. I didn't have no creepy dancing teddy bear.