SHOOTING FROM THE HIP - "GOING GREEN"

SHOOTING FROM THE HIP - EPISODE 3

There are many ways to go green!

http://youtu.be/g_-70wZJYKA

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (29 OF 100)

"Last Action Hero" (1993), Dir: John McTiernan

$70,000,000 in Budget vs. $49,946,994 in Gross

I used to watch this movie all the time. Re-watching it, I can't remember why. When the original writers of Last Action Hero couldn't properly imitate Shane Black's witty writing style, what started out as a spoof of Shane Black action movies (Lethal Weapon & The Last Boyscout) actually became a Shane Black action movie. That and Shane Black and John McTiernan (Die Hard & Predator) were in need of work, so why not spoof the genre they made famous? And make it for kids!

The movie opens as your typical 80s Schwarzenegger film. There's a hostage situation with children in the hands of an axe-wielding psychopath. (That's how they all were, right?) Suddenly, the scene goes completely out of focus and turns out to be a being played in a rundown, near-empty movie theater.....Stealing the plot-line from The NeverEnding Story, Last Action Hero is about an inner city kid who through f@$%ing magic gets sucked into an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie. Its an appealing idea, but much darker than expected for a kids' movie.

Its first ten minutes takes place in the bleak reality of Danny's world where he spends most of his days in a dingy movie theater. Danny has no friends, no father, and is a constant disappointment to his overworked mother. And to emphasize how crappy Danny's life is, they even have a scene where he gets robbed at knife-point. The robber handcuffs Danny to the toilet and forces him to go fishing for the key... Now, how is this a kid's movie? The first fifteen minutes is the stuff of urban nightmares: psychotic murderers, crime-ridden neighborhoods, heart-wrenching poverty... Sweet Jesus. Is Danny addicted to heroine too?

So after a visit to the police station, Danny neglects the detective's advise to go straight home and wait for his mother, and goes to the theater instead to see the new Jack Slater movie (Arnie's character). There, he is bestowed by Nick, the old projectionist, with a magic ticket... Now, let's discuss the magic ticket for a second. Danny is regaled with the story of how Houdini gave Nick this ticket back when Nick was a child, and Houdini claimed to get it from "the best magician in India, and [that] he got it from the best magician in Tibet."

Harry Houdini was an active magician between the years 1891 - 1926. The first ever Indian film released was Shree pundalik, a silent film made in 1912. But, prior to forming The Indian Cinematograph Enquiry Committee in 1927, the few Indian production companies there were only produced on average ten films a year (and most weren't over 30 minutes long). So Indian film probably wasn't recognized internationally yet. Also, there is no mention of Harry Houdini having traveled to India when he was actively performing magic. This doesn't disprove that an Indian Magician gave Harry Houdini the ticket, just that it could not have been a ticket for an Indian film being as their industry was barely in existence yet. Also, Harry Houdini would have already been dead by a year by 1927.

So the ticket must be for an American movie. The first public exhibition of a moving photographic image was at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City in April in 1896, meaning movies were playing by time Harry Houdini was actively performing magic and prior to his death. So it's plausible that Harry Houdini might have seen a movie or several movies in his time, but due to the inherent racism of the era, I doubt any Indian Magicians would have been in an American theater with him. Also, Harry Houdini was a Jew, so his chances of seeing a matinee weren't so great either. But hypothetically, say that this Indian Magician and Harry Houdini got turned away at the door for the same movie. That might prompt the Indian Magician to give Harry Houdini his unused ticket... But to what purpose I am not sure...

Then there's this so-called Tibetan Magician. As far as the Tibetan Film Industry goes, try looking it up on wikipedia. You'll come up with nothing. The ticket would not have been for a Tibetan movie because there are and never have been any theaters in Tibet. And the Tibetan Magician probably would never have seen a movie theater before in his life, so would he even know what it is?

Then, of course, the Tibetan Magician would have to buy a ticket, not use it, then give it to the Indian Magician, who would not use it, then give it Harry Houdini, who would also not use it... You know what? I don't think Shane Black did any research into this claim. I think he just said "Hey, Houdini did magic and India sounds magical. How about we just put those two together? Then audiences will buy it! And for good measure, throw some Tibet in there too. It's mysterious." As Chief Wiggum said, "Magic Ticket my ass." Magic Ticket my ass indeed, Shane. Shoulda stopped at "I got the ticket from Harry Houdini. That's it."

Anyways, in the film's film-within-a-film, Jack Slater is caught in the middle of two powerful mobsters joining forces. First thing they do is kill Jack's favorite second-cousin Larry. Then a hit squad comes for Jack, throwing dynamite from a moving car. One of the TNT bundles comes straight off the screen and rolls down the theater aisle towards Danny. Questioning his reality, Danny runs for it - KA-BOOM!

 Suddenly, Danny finds himself smack in the middle of the Jack Slater movie, experiencing all the action and AC/DC soundtrack close-up. (Click here for another gem with an AC/DC soundtrack.) But, from Jack's perspective, Danny has unexplainable knowledge about his world and personal life and becomes an asset to Jack and his current situation. Well, that settles it then. Jack's angry police makes Danny Jack's partner... Yep. That's realistic. It worked in Dick Tracy.

The intentions with this movie are very clear, just misguided. The producers wanted to tap the Arnold Schwarzenegger who had made audiences laugh with the hit comedy Twins, but thought it would be funny to spoof the hard-nosed action career that made him famous. Unfortunately, they didn't realize comedy wasn't a natural thing for Arnold. When Arnold killed somebody, slipped in a one-liner, and managed to get some laughs, was it because the audience actually thought he was funny? What was funny about Arnold's one-off's was how wrong they were. Murdering someone and making a joke about it is funny, but not for a kids movie. Imagine if PeeWee's Big Adventure suddenly turned into Natural Born Killers... Actually, that would be pretty great. 

But it all just raises the question again of who this movie is really for? When you got a kids going to see a self-referential Arnie movie, in which Arnold kills lots of people, in a cartoonish PG fashion, and you got a whole lot of cameos (Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, Pam Anderson, Odd Job, Jim Belushi, MC Hammer, Little Richard, JCVD, Tom Noonan) for movies that were rated R, and that kids couldn't even get into the theater to see, who is this movie really for? I've deduced that it's a film for kids who managed to watch movies they shouldn't have seen. We all were those kids, but Last Action Hero waters down the violence and grit to the point of losing the guilty pleasure action movies give the audience. And just because you add an animated cat in the movie voiced by Danny Devito in the mix doesn't make it a kids movie. Cool World had animated characters too.

That all said, some of the adult humor is quite funny. The most clever scene in the movie takes place in a Blockbuster Video where Danny questions the logic of movie phone numbers and how they all seem to start with 555. "How can everyone have a phone number with 555 in it?" Arnie brings up the crippling point, "That's why we have area codes." That was pretty funny, but kids won't get that. Neither will they get the joke when the real Arnie is at the Jack Slater premiere and his former wife Maria Shriver tells him not to plug his restaurant. That was pretty funny too, but I actually went to Planet Hollywood and that was no joke.

With a running time of over two hours, this movie is far too long, definitely losing steam by time the villains enter the real world and Danny and Jack go after them. Why the villains would even want to leave their fantastical movie world for a bleak, depressing reality I'm not sure. The villain Benedict says that he could open gates for other movie villains to enter the real world, but wouldn't he have already done that by now? 

The movie was nominated for several Razzie Awards, but won none of them. It's not terrible. It kind of just falls into that era of Family Friend Arnold Schwarzenegger followed by Junior and Jingle All The Way. Of all those movies, this is probably the best one or maybe the least embarrassing. For those reasons, it's worth watching.  

For your viewing displeasure, Danny's entrance into Jack Slater's world...

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (26 OF 100)

"Masters of the Universe" (1987), Dir: Gary Goddard

$22 Million in Budget vs. $17,336,370 in Gross

Another from the illustrious Cannon library, Masters of The Universe is a movie based on a toy franchise from Mattel. The movie pretty much rips off Stars Wars, but oddly has polarizing evolutions from that franchise. Whereas as Star Wars was a series of movies that eventually became designed just to sell toys, Masters of the Universe started out as toys that eventually became a movie designed to sell fried chicken... I'm not kidding. Several scenes of this movie feature fried chicken.

We open with a smudgy, out-of-focus matte painting of Castle Gray Skull and a very monotone voice-over (from no character in the film) explaining the ongoing war happening in the planet of Eternia... Yeah, it's not a very good opening. Very drab, very dull-looking. Then the opening credits start rolling, which look and are scored just like the credits to Superman. Seeming like a deliberate rip-off, the better name for it would be "a deliberate recycling" since The Cannon Group became the heads of the Superman franchise and murdered it with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

Production values for this film are a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, the sets are decent as far as the interior of Castle Gray Skull goes. But as soon as Skeletor (Frank Langella) appears in his cheap-looking skeleton make-up, looking nothing like the Skeletor we knew as children and more like Red Skull's gay cousin just visiting from Nazi Germany, it's laughable at best. Also, the costuming of the characters (or in the lead's case, lack-there-of) resemble either the Goodwill Donations from the Star Wars franchise or the veritable slingshot-wear from the Hercules movies.

The mullet-toting He-Man is played by good old Dolph Lundgren in probably his most off-putting role. The general public knows Dolph mainly for his role in Rocky IV as the giant Russian boxer, or better yet as The Punisher in the most terrifying performance of his career. Seeing Dolph being noble or heroic or caring all seems a bit strange, however, there's no shortage of obligatory chest-shots during his battle scenes. At one point in the film, Courtney Cox has just escaped Skeletor's Mercenaries, a very incompetent bunch with make-up effects that look like they came out of Rick Baker's stool. Courtney manages to run into He-Man, who assures her that everything will be alright and he will protect her... But from there, I actually expected Dolph to suddenly snap Courtney's neck and masturbate to her dead corpse or something. Sorry. I know it's a horrible thing to visualize, but that's just what I have come to expect of Dolph.

With our introduction to He-Man, we also meet his friends Man-At-Arms (Jon Cypher) and Theela (Chelsea Field), also part of the battle against Skeletor. The group encounters Gwildor, a troll-like inventor who they saved from being captured by Skeletor's army... I don't know exactly why they call him "Gwildor." Might as well call him Yoda. Played by Razzie-Winner Billy Barty, Yod-- I mean, Gwildor is part of an alien race called Thenorians who look like a mix between The Leprechaun and the lady with ovaries on her face in Eraserhead. When Gwildor invites his new friends into his house, it oddly resembles Yoda's digs from Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi (with less snakes and more 80s futuristic technology). 
 

Anyways, Skeletor is after Gwildor for something he invented called "The Cosmic Key", a device that can open portals to other dimensions. But just as Gwildor unveils this to He-Man, Skeletor's army (The Black Storm Troopers) find their hide-out and attempt to break down the door. Our heroes escape through a portal and somehow end up in 1980s Earth -- Whoa, dude! -- pretty much spending the rest of the movie there rather than some cool alien planet that kids from the 80s hadn't seen before and didn't resemble their usual route to the local arcade.

Following her Bruce Spingsteen music video "Dancer In The Dark" (skip to 2:30), Courtney Cox plays Julie, a small town waitress at a fried chicken and ribs joint. A much younger and hotter Courtney than the one from Friends, we discover that her parents died in a plane crash and that this is her last night in town, and subsequently her last night with her boyfriend Kevin, played by Robert Duncan McNeill. And if you watch the film, no, there was no plans of making this last night special. Their plans were to meet up, eat fried chicken, go to Kevin's sound check, and then go to the airport to part ways forever... Yep. No sex. None at all. Not even a hint.

As they visit Julie's parents' grave for the last time, Kevin comes upon The Cosmic Key that somehow got lost on Hercules' -- I mean, He-Man's journey between Earth and Eternia. Kevin, being a musician, assumes it's a synthesizer. When fiddling around with it, he accidentally opens the gateway to Eternia for Skeletor's army to invade Earth. Suddenly, Julie's last night in, well, Small Town Wherever turns into a intergalactic war between good and evil... which encapsulates He-Man and Skeletor destroying a couple of barren, unpopulated urban streets and goes completely unnoticed by anyone living in that town, except the movie's principal characters.

The plot of this movie is not terrible. It probably has more thought put into it than many Adam Sandler films or even the recent Star Wars movies. But it probably would have been a much better film if it all stayed in Eternia, a much more fantastical place than 1980s middle-America. I'm assuming budgetary problems were why they had to go the Star Trek IV: A Voyage Home route, making the characters look kinda stupid running around in their Star Wars garb, stealing fried chicken and busting up music stores. But then again, being budgeted at $22 million, that was double the budget of the first Stars Wars and that movie took us all around the galaxy, not just back and forth between some small town neighborhood and the interior of Castle Gray Skull.

There are definitely things that make this movie worth seeing. The action is very reminiscent of Star Wars and fun. Dolph kicks a lot of ass, and I mean a lot of ass. His scene where he is riding around on the flying discs is pretty cool, even if the effects don't look quite so good. But for all Dolph's ass-kicking, it inevitably leads to He-Man proclaiming "I-have-the-power," which is He-Man's famous tagline, but after he says it accomplishes nothing. Seems like they just threw that one in there for the kids. One thing I couldn't help but notice was that there was an extensive amount of damage done to music equipment in the film. When Skeletor's Muppet Show Mercenaries go after Julie, they shoot up a stage and tons of amplifiers that Kevin's band would have performed on later that evening. And one of the biggest, most memorable set pieces of the film takes place in a music store where tons of musical equipment gets blown up for the sake of action... I mean, did the folks at Cannon have something against 80s music? Who didn't like Lover Boy? 

Overall, there has been a lot of Star Wars knock-offs over the years, but this one is definitely not the worst I've ever seen (I refer you to Ice Pirates). It's never not entertaining, didn't leave me quite resenting it like Super Mario Bros did, but I also never quite felt it was the Masters of The Universe film I expected having grown up with the toys and TV shows. Seemed like Cannon just took the framework and made an action film out of it... but it's still a decent action film. 

And for your viewing displeasure, Skeletor becomes an utterly fabulous God!

 


 

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. 

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (22 OF 100)

"Hercules And The Captive Women" (1961),
Dir: Vittorio Cottafavi

$$$ Unknown Budget vs. Unknown Gross $$$

I once wrote a whole 25 page essay on this movie... and no, I'm not kidding, and no, this one will not be twenty-five pages. To understand this film, one must be familiar with the Italian Peplum (or "Sword & Sandal Films" or "T & A Films") films that were popular genre through the late-1960s, even giving Arnold Schwarzenegger his first role in Hercules In New York. In terms of cinematic history, the Italians made hundreds of these cheap, Neo-Mythogical films, capitalizing on the popularity of biblical films like Ben-Hur and The Robe, but appealing to the drive-in movie crowd through through skimpy costuming and absurdist humor. One could go on for months breaking down what possible importance these films could have or you could simply watch Hercules And The Captive Women and pretty much sum up the main points... and maybe The Colossus of Rhodes, starring Rory Calhoun for kicks.

Firstly, I love this film. Maybe it's because I had to watch months of this schlock for a film course and this installment was at least the best of the worst. I won't even go into the grim details of how bad some were (Hercules Against The Moon Men), whereas this one nails all that was good about them in one movie. Depending on what version you see (I prefer the American), the film opens with a bar fight. Hercules and his entourage of skimpily dressed young men and a midget are overwhelmed by angry drunks. Meanwhile, Hercules (Reg Park, the most awkward and hilarious of bodybuilders to play Hercules) continues to enjoy his meal. Once finished, he casually pushes aside a group of men coming at him with a battering ram and leaves the bar with his friends, completely unscathed.

Upon their leave, they encounter a bright red... something. It's honestly very unclear what they are looking at in the scene, but it's very red, makes the sun shrink, and forewarns them of a dangerous army coming, that could destroy their beloved Thebes. Androcles, King of Thebes, brings this problem to the counsel and neigboring cities, but none can agree to help the king. Worried for his kingdom while he is gone, Androcles asks Hercules who will take care of his throne. Hercules rips the thrown off the floor and smashes it, proclaiming that the people shall build Androcles a newer, better thrown upon his return.

Now, the counsel scene is probably the only real "intelligent" part in the movie. A lot of the humor and farce falls upon being a reflection of the constant incongruity of Italian politics. Historically, the Italians have never had a working government. An example can be found with the good old Red Brigade right here. The country is so fragmented between north and south, struggling with class conflicts, language barriers, extremist political parties that these problems are generally reflected in their movies. In this case, this scene does it very comically, alluding to a fragmented government that cannot work together to stop a looming threat that could destroy them all. For further insight, you can read about The Christian Democrats and it just might make this sequence even funnier.

So with no one else to join them on their journey into the unknown, Hercules and Androcles are forced to go alone. But then, after a talk with his formidable wife, Hercules decides not to go with Androcles either and stay at home and rest. Without any support or fleet to join him, Androcles is forced to drug and kidnap Hercules to take him on their journey. When Hercules awakes on a ship at sea, he completely forgets telling Androcles that he would not be going, assumes everything is going according to plan, and takes a nap... It should be noted that Hercules actually spends the majority of the film unconscious. If not because he is drugged, because he is simply lazy. If not because he is simply lazy, because the task at hand is beneath him. One could argue that Hercules is a very apathetic hero, if not actually hero at all...

In fact, one could argue that Hercules is simply a device of destruction that one transports place to place and is only to be used when absolutely necessary. There are even more direct references this notion later on, but we'll get to that. Back to political references for now and the is littered with them. Logically, it's doubtful that many would have thought these films to be particularly political-driven given their nature, but Italian films are generally very political in their nature. This film in particular has tons of political allegories, but they don't all necessarily add up. For example, Hercules finds himself in the Lost City of Atlantis (when it was above water), which has a population of slaves, female sacrifices to the Gods, and a lot of subecjts diseased from some strange energy source...

Hmm. They wouldn't be in Atomic Age America, would they? No, no. They couldn't be. Because the superhuman guards dressed in black armor (that are also all identical) are clearly a reference to Nazi Germany... So does that mean that the filmmakers are trying to say America is the new Nazi Germany. Maybe. But that wouldn't make sense because at the end of the movie, when Hercules ignites the volcano and blows up Atlantis, that destructive imagery suggests that that must be a reference Hiroshima, Japan (or Nagasaki), which the Americans bombed, meaning that... meaning that...? Ah, f&%$ it.

The only commonality here is pretty much everything Hercules touches gets destroy and any heroics he performs just end in mass destruction, but he is still the film's hero. Whether or not the Italians were trying to make a bold statement about the United States, or Nazi Germany, or the events that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nothing is more bold than wearing those costumes and managing to keep a straight-face.

You really have to enjoy your bad movies to like this one. One of the film's highlights is when Hercules fights the shape-changing monster Proteus. The clip below is the closest thing I could find for a trailer and goes under one of the film's many names, "Hercules Conquers Atlantis."

For your viewing displeasure, Hercules vs. Proteus!

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...