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 (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.

SHOOTIN' FROM THE HIP - "THE EDITOR & THE UMBILICAL CORD"

Last Tuesday, a good friend came into my apartment and took my baby away from me...

Well, technically, it was his baby. He was the director-producer and I was just the editor. But after two years of editing while my friend was out shooting and producing content, I was the one probably closest to the material itself. It stayed in the same room I slept in, taking up more space than just two hard drives. It became my baby after a while, and that experience has led me to think of the editor's role as that of a surrogate parent or nanny, raising the child while daddy is out conducting business. And of course, once those ties are made, it becomes very hard in the end to simply let go.

Like a child's birth, the footage arrives to you a raw, bloody, screaming, confused mess. And like a good career-minded father, the director has no time for this; so he leaves it with you and simply says "Fix this." Hmm. Right... The first few months of this faux parenthood are rough, as I imagine real parenthood is. The unrealized film screams and spikes in your eardrums like a teething newborn in the middle of the night. And of course, there's definitely sh%$ to be cleaned up. Lots and lots of sh&^%.

But unlike the nurturing mother, the editing process isn't about nurturing. No, not at all. You gotta take this baby and cut that kid up. Oh yeah. Trim that flab, tone the muscles. In actuality, you're probably more like Geppetto shaping Pinocchio than say Sarah Connor raising her child to be a badass. It's a different kind of paternal relationship: sculpting as opposed to teaching.

And with time, once that little film starts realizing what it is (or developing "a spine" as the first editor I worked with called it). You teach it how to walk (through story motions at first), then run (so our bladders can keep up), but inevitably realize that there's only so much you can do. A film shouldn't just be edited well. An editor needs to identify the holes in his own work so that they might be smoothed over at a later date.... by someone else. That all takes time. And by time you're near picture-lock, even the slightest adjustment changes the course of your child's destiny, no matter how small. Your baby is barely recognizable by that point. Definitely not what showed on your doorstep in a basket.

 
And so comes that fateful day where there is literally nothing left for you to do; where whatever is left is beyond your abilities. That is the day you are done and, like some bad TV drama, father's coming to collect his child... And he's not even taking your baby back home! Oh no. He's taking him to some place where groups of men will poke and prod, and tinker, and toy with him until your baby is ready for the world to see. Oh yeah. All the clothes you bought him and the haircuts you gave him aren't good enough. This baby needs to be like a Baby Charlie Chaplan, or Annie, or Beauty Pageant Kid, prepped and ready for the spotlight for millions to see like a f*&%ing puppet show... That's exactly how it feels.

Either way, as soon as those drives and USB sticks leave the editing suite, that's that. Your role as editor/surrogate parent is over. Now what do you do? I suppose real parents ask themselves the same  when their kids go off to college. Working on another film might be easier than up and having another kid... I think I'll do that instead.

BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (13 OF 100)

"Orgy of the Dead" (1959), Dir: Stephen C. Apostolof
 

$$ Unknown Budget vs. Non-Existent Gross $$

Regardless that the credits claim this movie was directed by Stephen C. Apostolof, a veteran in the exploitation realm, this film through-and-through belongs to Mr. Edward Wood Jr. Most cinephile's familiarity with Mr. Ed Wood extends as far as Plan 9 From Outer Space or the Tim Burton biopic film, typically claiming him to be the worst director ever. (Clearly, these people have never seen a Michael Bay film.) But Ed Wood gets a bad rap in my opinion. Plan 9 is not nearly as bad as people say. Glen Or Glenda is not that bad either. If David Lynch made a feature in 1953, it would probably look a lot like Glen Or Glenda. But 1959's Orgy of the Dead is a bad movie, but as the headline of these articles states, worth seeing at least.

Opening with your typical Ed Wood introduction, Criswell (an Ed Wood regular) seems pretty drunk as he describes the limbo the film takes place in, slurring his nonsensical monologue. From there, the film follows a husband named Bob (played by Williams Gates, who only ever appeared in two films and looks a lot like Rock Hudson) and his wife Shirley (played by Pat Barrington, no stranger to the horror-smut realm). The married couple survive a car crash only to end up in a strange cemetery somewhere between the realm of the living and the land of the dead. At this place, they meet Criswell, known to his awkwardly comedic minions as The Emperor of the Night, who calls upon the spirits of the dead for "the orgy."

And that's the entire plot. Fawn Silver fills in for Ed Wood regular Vampira, but really nothing much happens outside of that. To save you some disappointment from the film's misleading title, there isn't an orgy. Aside some nudity, probably the most naughty thing that happens in the film is Fawn Silver unbuttoning Shirley's shirt as knife-point (with the fakest knife ever) and then buttoning it back up (oh la la). The rest is pretty much just a series of topless go-go dancers, who all perform the exact same dance for the Emperor, to music that isn't very cryptic or even sexy for that matter. As the happy couple are forced to watch the most boring orgy in the history of the act, a mummy and a wolfman provide laughs (I guess) for dialogue-interludes between dances. One of these interludes results in the greatest movie lines of all time: "Torture! Torture! It pleasures me!" Other than that, nudity is the only thing this movie has going for it and I own dirtier Sears catalogues than this.

It's a good movie to have on at a party, where no one is paying much attention to it, and everyone is extremely drunk. For those few moments you do turn your attention back to the screen, it'll be worth the laugh or two if you can even find it. Happy hunting. No trailer for this film was available, so here is the infamous drunken monologue by Criswell.

And for your viewing displeasure, pretty much anything else that happens in Orgy of the Dead that isn't some mindless go-go ghoul doing the same dance the last girl did. Watch for the great one-liner "Torture! Torture!"