Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

The Flintstones - Its a yabba dabba don’t time

Good ol' Fred Flintstone gets caught up in a criminal conspiracy to defraud Slate Co's investors and embezzle millions of shells all while risking the lives of his family and destroying his neighbor and best friend's career, home, family and his dignity. Whatta guy!
From the get-go you know something is wrong here. Fred is just a big of piece of toxic garbage. Yes, I know the character was based off Jackie Gleason in the Honeymooners but it is a real experience to go back and watch what a huge POS he was. The guy's entire existence is centered around being "the tough guy" that everyone loves and has only one motivation - being liked and admired. And that's where the movie takes us. Its such a far cry from Homer Simpson whose real sin is being a lazy moron. Inside and past the undigested donuts is a true golden heart. A loving father and faithful husband. But that ain't Fred... at least not until he has an epiphany while on the end of a hangman's noose (yup, you read that right). You might see something similar in other family movies where the guy goes from a great dude to being corrupted by money only to be redeemed in the end. Nope, not our Fred. He's always been a chauvinistic lay-about, with a fragile little ego that makes him ripe for storming the capital. Fred Flintstone is a bad person throughout this whole experience.
Outside of Fred's weakness, the production of this film is second to none. From the casting to the design, costumes to effects (remember its 1994) its a spectacle to the eye of adapting such a unique universe from cells to celluloid. Despite how unfaithful the writing is to the original series, the world itself is about as Bedrockyen as you could do with twice the budget and the effects teams from Pinewood and their fancy computers today. It really is an achievement in production design. BUT.....
I just can't stand it. I despise and loathe this movie. Not because there's really anything terrible wrong with it. Its a fine family comedy. I just absolutely can't stand family comedies. Maybe my soul is black like Fred's and I only want to drink too much and fall asleep in my yard. Whatever it is makes me want to take everything about this movie, collect it in a bag with the nukes of the world and toss it all into the sun.

Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) - I was gone in 20

A tow truck driver decides to make a movie that teaches us a master class on how to boost cars. Someone knows way too much about stealing cars here.
So along the same vein as Miami Connection, Deadbeat by Dawn, and The Room a guy who doesn't have any training or experience making movies uses his dubious personal funds to make his dream project - a movie. That's what H.B. Halecki did here. But he made a movie about what he knew - stealing cars. Ol' H.B. or Tobey by his friends, had a successful tow truck company which to me says he repossessed a lot of vehicles and so made a movie about breaking into cars and moving them without any one knowing. 
Sadly, car thieving instructional videos aren't very exciting. That's the front 5/8s of the film. There's an attempt to church it up a little with a little bit of ADR comedy and you know how that always goes. There was no script for this movie and so that just makes a pile of movie. Its just scenes spliced together in no meaningful or predetermined manner. That's kind of important and there's a reason. If you don't have forethought in your film, you've just got a pile of movie and that doesn't work. Seriously, Tommy Wiseau makes better movies.
However, one can just go to the chase scene that lasts 40 minutes. The stunts are incredible and incredibly dangerous. They're not really stunts when they are real and you're just filming carnage though. But even then, it gets stale. They are long nonsensical sequences of cops getting Eleanor surrounded and then he gets away until the next location where he's surrounded again. I'm sorry but H.B. isn't Hal Needham. You STILL NEED TO HAVE FORETHOUGHT IN YOUR SCENES!!! The Eleanor sequence has a smatter of amazing moments but is stuffed around a bunch of boring. 
I'm sorry to those who think this is great (including our own Sam) but the story of making the movie is way more exciting and interesting than the film itself. Its the most exciting boring movie ever. Like a cocaine Valium.

Cannonball! - Or Belly Flop!

Getting from here to there has never been so dangerous! Dom Delouse wouldn't have survived 30 feet from the start line. So yeah, its a Cannonball run. That's about all it has in common with the Burt Reynolds classic. This isn't much of a laugh goofball screw fest. What we have here is something in between Deathrace 2000 and Cannonball Run. Its not really funny. Its not really that campy. But its not really a race movie either. Its like a little bit of everything. But wow does it have a lot of Hal Needham shenanigans that is missing from most Corman movies. Speaking of Corman, talk about a huge amount of cameos. Corman himself, Don Simpson, Martin Scorsese, Sly Stallone, Paul Bartel and Dick Miller! Wahhoo. I think what Cannonball suffers from is a very bad job explaining what the heck Dick Miller's character, Bennie, is up to. It turns out that he's trying to help his brother Coy win, but it appears up to about 9/10s of the way through that he's trying to kill Coy. So maybe people just couldn't really put together what was going on and that's completely up to the fault of the editor. And there's quite a bit of bad editing here. Carradine's kung fu is quite terrible. The car chases are moderate. And the driving is lack luster. But when it gets to its second climax (this movie has too many of those) it lights up on fire. It's no Deathrace 2000 but this isn't exactly a pile of dook either.

Shakedown - Dirty cops and human meat in NYC

One tough cop and one tough public defender team up to take down the entire NYPD and one guy who owns a sex club and likes illegal street racing. The only thing standing in their way? More grenades.
Do not be mislead by the very positive reviews by the critics here. This has got a 70% on Rottentomatoes. That is absolutely insane. This movie stinks, in a good way, but it stinks and it stinks hard. I mean, what did they see that we didn't? Oh, well there's lots of commentary about racism and corruption within police departments at that time. Yeah we saw that. Well what about the conflict within Roland on choosing money or his passion? Yep saw that too. What about Richie's path to lead him to this point in life? Wait, you're arguing that this is a good movie because his girlfriend waxed her apartment floors and the dog flew out the window because it couldn't stop? THAT'S YOUR ARGUMENT?!?!? He lives in a movie theater because of slippery floors?!?!?
Did you see the part where a cop and public defender chase down a goon on tricycle? Did you see Richie use children at Cooney Island as bullet shields? Did you see the word salad love talk between Roland and the assistant district attorney that is prosecuting Roland's client? Did you see the end that has the quality of Megaforce? This movie stinks and you should have said so, critics! If you'd done your job properly this movie would now be a thing with people like us and it just isn't because of you and how you mistreated it by saying it was good. Boo, shame, shame, hiss, hiss.
This is an undiscovered gem of a stinker. If you can get your hands on a view, its worth it. Do it.

Thrashin’ - Clean up Venice Beach, please

Sure, its just West Side Story with skateboards but its....uh....hmmmm. I guess that's it.
What you've got here is your classic tale of boy wants to win skateboarding competition, boy meets his rival, boy meets girl, girl is rivals sister, boy and rival skateboard joust with bean bags in a burning drainage ditch, boy blames girl, boy beats rival in downhill skateboarding competition, rival and boy become brothers in law and America is united. That ol' joint, you know.
So if you're a skateboarder or someone who enjoys watching skateboarding, you're gonna prefer Gleaming the Cube over Thrashin'. Here the skateboarding is pretty sub-par for a film about a sport (aside from the pool competition that appears to be helmed by Steve Caballero and Tony Hawk). What Thrashin' does right though is ratchet up the corny cheese to about 50. The dialogue is so bafflingly terrible, the "tough" guys are comically fancy, And time after time, the characters make hilariously stupid decisions and then throw hissy fits about their actions. It was not a good look for a budding subculture in sports at the time and very far from what the culture actually was. I mean, nothing is more about fellowship and a communal love than skateboarding. Yet, here comes Tommy Hook and his band of ne'er do wells sabotaging competition because they came onto their turf.
Come on! Skateboarding gangs?!?! And they have turf?!?!? That they presumably acquired from actual gangs....you know...the kind with guns?!?!? Its so preposterous. Whats next? Xanadu skaters conquering Times Square???
Its so incredibly stupid that you can't help but love it and its a pure riffers paradise. Drop in and do it.

200 M.P.H. - Not so fast

When the only way to get revenge for your brother's death is to drive at 200 MPH, don't. Because apparently you don't need to, or can't, or it really wasn't anybody's fault except your brothers. I mean the list goes on and on.
So this is an Asylum movie, which we tend to steer very clear of because of the complete lack of writing that takes place and their usually horrible visuals. Well this makes no exception. The writing is incredibly terrible and the visuals are horrendous. What is hard to clarify is that somehow this one feels different from their other rubbish. There's really not any "boxes of dialogue" in the middle. There's no standing around with quick cuts between characters not really talking about anything but pretending their doing something important. 200 MPH is more just wandering between scenes that may or may not have anything to do with the plot but its too hard to tell because you're never really sure what the plot is exactly. 
Maybe we're so desensitized that we can't see how cringey this thing is but in the parts that are possibly that way, we actually laughed. Its almost Neil Breenesque in how it handles motifs that should be handled by more qualified people. Its so far from reality that you laugh at some pretty gross stuff (see every scene in the strip club for reference). 
I will say that this is viewing for the advanced class only. The students in Bad Cinema 330. Go in at your own risk, but for many of you, 200 MPH is a good time.

The Legend of Billie Jean - She ain’t anybody’s lover

Billie Jean leads a movement of oppressed 80's kids against.....adults? Because she wants that damn $608 and FAIR IS FAIR!
So once upon a hot summer in Corpus Christi, a 14 year old guy named Binx gets his sweet scooter trashed by some older d-bags. His older sister goes to the dad of said punk and demands he repay for the damages. Instead that guy tries to put her on a rape-repayment plan and gets shot by Binx. The kids bolt and become defacto Bonnie and Clyde figures of the day's youth. That's really more than you need to know about this film. I went in completely blind as to what it was and I am so glad that I did. Thanks alot Google for making us have to write up content each time that spoils the movie. Nice algorithm! I should revolt against the man too because fair IS fair.
Anyways, the old d-bags do bad things (usually rape) and get away with it in the 80's is a fairly common theme we come up against on this podcast. See Tomboy, The Wraith, Savage Streets and so many others....I guess just pick any 80's film. Odds are you're gonna have elements of this. But what makes Billie Jean special is how much it veers away from the common tropes of this (for lack of a better word) genre. Instead of the lead going on a path of vengeance, our heroine (Helen Slater's Billie Jean) goes on the lamb and vicariously creates a cult of teenagers who've just had about a damn nuff of these adults being unfair, I guess. I literally have no idea what the cults goal is other than to worship and protect Billie Jean. All ol' BJ wants is the $608 her brother is owed for her scooter. But even that is murky as she exploits her situation to get a new scooter. I guess she just really loves riding on the back of a scooter in skimpy clothes with her younger brother who may or may not have blood in his noggin, definitely not enough that he should be driving that scooter!
The Legend of Billie Jean is another microcosm of 80's film. Its not that there's any one thing you can point to and say THAT is what makes this movie awesomely terrible. Its the entire piece. The theme, the soundtrack, the plot, its all dripped in 80's nacho cheese. The kind that gives you a stomach ache later but man does it taste good on the way down.

Gleaming the Cube - Thrashing the Room

Christian Slater is a skateboarding detective who will stop at nothing to solve the murder of his adopted brother, including using his dead bro's ex, complicity in manslaughter and traffic violations. Traffic violations!!!
So Brian (Christian Slater) is a teenage punk whose only outlet in life is some serious thrashing on his skateboard. When his brother gets fired from his video store job for looking into his boss's medical supply business invoices, he ends up accidentally murdered by a guy choking him with a towel. When THAT guy ends up accidentally murdered, Brian goes on a investigation with the power of his skateboarding. This sounds like its awesome and well....it is. BUTTTTT it takes so long to get going that you're gonna be pretty disappointed for the first 30 minutes. However, once that ball gets rolling - hold on to your trux because things get really awesome at the end.
We're still not really sure what the crime plot is, Steven Bauer stinks pretty hard, and the stunts are fantastic. Gleaming the Cube is a definite do but just be warned the beginning is much like a made for TV after school special.

Volcano: Fire on the Moutain - Cortano!

The 90's most Xtreme dude finds himself on an erupting ski slope. We're gonna shred some gnar over that volcano right? Well....no.
What we've got here is another Zombeavers. You want to talk about a great premise and setup for a fun disaster film that you won't ever forget? This is it. Dan Cortese in the late 90's on the slopes. A volcano surrounded by snow ready to blow. A deadbeat dad that doesn't care if his son is dead. A character named Stan in a volcano movie!!! Yet, Dan doesn't shred the slopes and jump over the volcano. The volcano and snow face off is vague and stupid. When the deadbeat dad gets his justs deserts its unclear if he even dies. And Stan does NOT ever chuck a man. Booooo....
Seriously this could have been as successful as Sharknado (and its 5 sequels) 16 years ahead had they just got away from the Meredith Baxter Burney formula of made-for-tv movies. I guess ABC wasn't willing to put any mustard behind their content back in '97.  Why take a chance with your movie destined to be completely forgotten?
Yeah you can skip Volcano: Fire on the Mountain. 

Moving NOT Movies Episode 8 - The last duel

In our final not movies episode before we get back to normal shenanigans with Jackie, we discuss Matrix Resurrections, The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick, NBA and some followups to our top 10 list from last episode.