SHOOTING FROM THE HIP - "GOING GREEN"

SHOOTING FROM THE HIP - EPISODE 3

There are many ways to go green!

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

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 (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!

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 (15 OF 100)

"Batman & Robin" (1997), Dir: Joel Schmacher

 

$125,000,000 in Budget vs. $107,285,004 in Gross

It's time, my friends. Time to ask where Batman went so wrong? Why did such a beloved character deserve such a hateful artistic stoning? And even worse, why is Chris O'Donnell still alive? Why, why, why?

With the release of Batman & Robin came a number of career casualties: Joel Schumacher made an apology to Batman fans for killing the franchise. The public has sorta forgiven George Clooney for being the worst Batman since, well, Batmite. Chris O'Donnell should have been made a sacrifice to the vengeful theater-going Gods for such florid blasphemy. 90s hottie Alicia Silverstone got downgraded to D-Movie Hot Girl. Uma Thurman should just be ashamed of herself. The laughable Bane got a badass makeover in Chris Nolan's Dark Knight Rises, even though neither reflect the character from the comics. And no amount of Arnie's action movie puns could save this train wreck.

I remember going to see Batman & Robin with my entire family, which I shortly realized was exactly what Warner Brothers wanted out of this new franchise installment. Since infancy, I've lived and breathed Batman religiously. He is still my favorite fictional character, and it's doubtful that will change.

At the time, though, and under the false impression that Batman Forever had actually been a good movie, (mainly because of Jim Carrey's performance as The Riddler) the next film was to feature Mr. Freeze as the main villain and I was very excited. Bringing probably as much pathos and sympathy to the Batman Universe as the title character himself, Mr. Freeze is Batman's only reluctant villain. His goal has always been to save his dying wife Nora, a sympathetic one but alas one that also makes him very dangerous too. With a varied but fascinating history in comics and television, it seemed like a great choice... then they cast Arnold Schwarzenneger in the role.

A grave misstep, yes, but could Arnold really be blamed for the entire movie falling apart? With three feature films and an animated series all in one decade, I think Batman was getting a little played out in the public eye, (Did you guys hear that Ben Affleck's gonna be the next Batman?) and nobody wanted the same old song.

Prior to the movie's production, I picture the Warner Brothers' executive board having a catered lunch and trying to decide what needs to change with this fourth Batman installment to keep the franchise fresh (and probably used the same school of thinking as Lucasfilm did with Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull). "Guys, we need to make Batman something the whole family can enjoy. Husbands, wives, kids, grandmas, grandpas! So let's go ahead and lose the whole depressing witnessing-his-parents-being-murdered thing. I'm sure he'd be over that by now. Get rid of all the gritty urban futurism and replace that with neon lights and C.G.I. instead, and as far as the Tim Burton's movies go, f&%$ 'em and his little Frankenweenie too."

Now, I'm pretty 50/50 with the Burton films, (in fact, pretty 50/50 with all Batman films), but at least Burton knew to steer clear from the campy Adam West series and stick with the darker, moodier settings and villains the comic books had. But alas, we ended up revisiting the Adam West Days and added Schumacher's stamp of gay culture to the iconic characters' mythology as well (I refer you to the bat nipples). I have no problem with gay culture, but I think most gay men would probably agree with me that they'd rather see pretty boy Zachary Quinto from Heroes being a psychotic, badass Demi-God than another flash of Clooney's blatant plastic package...

Bat nipples and bat crotch aside, the film's also just plain stupid, from Mr. Freeze's singing hockey team to the f*&%ing Bat Credit Card, to Bane reduced from a super-genius to mindless idiot, to the climatic giant freeze gun (no one saw that coming), and finally appearance by Fitl On Film's blog favorite -- that's right -- Coolio himself! Do any of these ideas sound... good... to anyone? Maybe the studio stopped making Batman films for eight years for a very good reason.

At that point, I was pretty much done with these movies. I didn't like Batman Begins, but Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises swayed my return. But now that Mr. Affleck and Legend Killer Zack Snyder have taken over the franchise, I feel as if we are entering another West/Clooney Era. Eight years from now when they reboot the franchise again, this will be known as The Affleck Era, and then shortly renamed The West/Clooney/Affleck Syndrome. Hm... See you again in eight years.

 And for your viewing displeasure, Honest Trailers takes a biting stab at this mess.

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (14 OF 100)

"Tammy And The T-Rex" (1994), Dir: Stewart Raffill
 

$$ Something in Budget vs. Nothing in Gross $$

Most filmmakers walk into a project with an intention. They usually have an idea what kind of movie they are trying to make or at least what audience they are aiming towards. But with the sci-comedy-disaster Tammy And The T-Rex, I don't think Director Stewart Raffill could even answer those questions. Coming off his screaming success Mac And Me (that was sarcasm by the way), Raffill brings us a movie that embodies three very distinctively genres, but fails at achieving anyone of them.

Firstly, Tammy And The T-Rex is supposed to be a teen comedy. The majority of the cast are 90s teen actors with the lovely (but talentless) Denise Richards playing Tammy and Fast & Furious' own Paul Walker playing her goofy boyfriend Michael. Immediately we learn that Tammy fears for Michael's life when her psychotic ex-boyfriend Billy won't leave her alone. Michael tells Tammy that he is not afraid of Billy and confronts him. The two proceed to grab each other's balls in probably one of the funniest teen movie confrontations I've ever seen ("What we got here is one of them testicular stand-offs!").

But from there, Billy and his cronies kidnap Michael and drop him off at a zoo to be lion-lunch. And surely enough, Michael is mauled and killed by a lion... This is where the film takes a sudden turn, casually becoming a teen-comedy that also happens to be revenge-film...? Hmm. So Paul Walker dies (in a very funny hospital sequence), but his brain is left in tact, even if his body is not. Meanwhile, a mad scientist named Dr. Wachenstein (played by Weekend at Bernie's own Terry Kiser) has built a giant robotic Tyrannosaurus Rex... for whatever reason. All it needs to be functional is an unsullied brain, making Paul Walker's now useless brain the perfect suitor. And yes, this is all the same movie...

So the mad scientist steals Paul Walkers's brain (in a lab sequence that looks a lot like Simpsons Treehouse of Horror II) and transplants it into the robot dinosaur. And within a few seconds of becoming a robot dinosaur, Paul Walker sets out to exact revenge by viciously slaughtering Billy and his gang in some rather gory PG-13 moments. So essentially, at this point, this so-called teen-comedy that just recently became a revenge-film now also features sci-fi special effects of about the caliber your see in the picture below.

Ridiculous plot aside, the most off-putting thing about Tammy And The T-Rex is the blatant disregard for human life that the film tries to treat humorously. There's a sequence where Denise Richards and her super-gay friend Byron (Theo Forsett) go to the morgue and start picking through corpses to find Michael's potential replacement body. Leaning the bodies against the window so the giant robot dinosaur can see them, Tammy rejects one because apparently his c$%k is too big for her... Yup. She's not that kinda girl, but is the type that will desecrate a corpse.

Now I know this is an attempt at humor, but the popular brand of 90s dark humor (typically found in era classics such as Pulp Fiction) doesn't work here. Especially not when paralleled with some imitation 80s bubble gum schlock. They do try comedy with the dinosaur like having it trying to make a phone call, but this weird playfulness seems out of place when just moments ago the T-Rex ripped a guy's guts out and crushed him in front of an old lady.

As a director, I think Raffill deserves study. His career includes two films that attempt to tap the youth market of a particular time without having any idea what that market wants or why they even exist... Or maybe it's as simple as Raffill wanted to make a movie about a T-Rex (in light of Jurassic Park's success the previous year) and the name Tammy just happened to start with a "T." Wow! Marketing genius at its finest!

The only thing that makes Tammy And The T-Rex worth seeing is Denise Richards. Simply put, she's young and gorgeous. And I assume the striptease she performs for the camera at the end was the filmmakers half-assed way of apologizing for making the audience put up with whatever the hell this was, while also exploiting Denise Richards for being very attractive at the same time. Poor Denise... She may never have had much in the way of acting talent (even slightly), but the Charlie Sheen years really look as if they took a toll on her pretty face and that's a real shame.

Enjoy this movie for the few laughs it has (mostly among the human characters surprisingly) and to see Denise in a better place, even if that better place is a world where Paul Walker's brain can be kept in salad bowl so that he can enjoy a daily striptease from Tammy. 

And for your viewing displeasure, the off-putting violence I was speaking of, accompanied by some really, really bad special effects.