Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

Beastmaster III - Dar isn‘t in control of anything

Dar reunites with Seth and his home planet in order to save his bro, but screw everyone else. I need a hero, but could I get someone besides this Dar guy?
So if you're a big fan of Dar, well this one isn't for you. It sure exposes Dar to be a cadre of negatives. He's dumb as dirt. He's a bit of a dick. He only thinks with his dick. He doesn't give much of a crap about his friends or the other citizens of his planet. And lastly and most importantly, he's not even a damn Beastmaster. His friends (the lion (who was a tiger before), the hawk and his two ferret pals) refuse to do as he commands but even past that a damn camel bucks him off. The man who controls beasts gets bucked off a dromedary. Inexcusable. Dar sucks in BM:III.
Outside of Dar's inexplicable ineptitude, BM:III is not the level of fun that the first one is because, well, nothing is. BUT its night and day compared to the second one and for a made-for-tv movie, this is a true gem. It's as dumb as you can make them and is easily one of the most accessible riffer that we've seen. Its safe for all and totally easy to mock.
With its incredibly stupid plot, its ignorance of its own rules and continuity and the bonkers ending with Dar finally finding true love in a guy whose name literally pronounced as "Bae", BM:III is bookended with greatness, much like the series as a whole. You just have to get through that middle part.

Terminal Exposure - HOT TUB LIMO!!!

If the d-bags from Weekend at Bernie's got involved in a mob murder caper... oh wait that's still Weekend at Bernie's. Ok, well imagine if they go on a butt hunt for 15 minutes too.
Terminal Exposure is classified by some as a sex-romp comedy but I frankly don't see it. Maybe I'm desensitized to boobs at this point but the nudity is fairly mild with only one real sex scene (that ranks up there with the grossest of all - despite Hope Marie Carlton being in it). What this to me is a screwball comedy. Its truly in the same vein as Weekend at Bernie's (but not annoying or painfully tedious) or Dumb and Dumber (which shares many of the same plot elements - maybe Dumb and Dumber is also Weekend at Bernie's).
However, for the talent that is here that should deliver a groan-inducing cavalcade of boner jokes, somehow Terminal Exposure just kind of works. At no point was it approaching the stupidity that one would expect. The jokes were solid and well delivered despite being launched at you by relative amateurs. The hijinx were well paced and showcased by a befuddled Joe Estevez (yes, Uncle Joe is a show stealer here). And while the plot makes absolutely no sense and is pretty muddled when finally revealed, it takes a back seat to the chain of events that our two numbnut heroes find themselves stumbling into all in the name of chasing tail. All while failing to find itself in the offensive/rapey tropes that most 80's films about two horny guys go into (looking at you, License to Drive). You're not going to be getting any dirty looks while showing this one to your new girlfriend. Maybe some eyerolls.

Cop and a Half - Never cross the streams, kid?

A believe it or not commercial success, but working more like a confused mess that doesn't know who they want watching it, Burt Reynolds teams up with a precocious scamp to take down a drug ring - because early 90's.
Talk about 90's stereotypes and whatever rules to life. Of course, the kid doesn't have parents - it's 1993! Of course the cops cave to his demands to be a cop despite being 10 - it's 1993! Of course, Burt Reynolds drives over everyone's yards without consequences - its 1993! Pop Rocks for a drug prop? You betcha its 1993!
Its a weird mix of Robocop, Kindergarten Cop and then a ton of crap that people thought worked in 1993 but in the end its just painfully boring and when its not, its painfully uncomfortable. This is a don't.

White Tiger - The Zelchong are coming for you

audio alert - Sam was on his webcam for the first 7 minutes so there is a weird audio shift when he switches to a good mic. Nothing painful to your earholes, just figured we owe you an explaination. Proceed!
Knocking off Beverly Hills Cop while showcasing Gary Daniels as a cheaper JCVD but forgetting that he can't act past his gob being open, White Tiger can't figure out what it is or what it should be so it just manages to be mid-90s karate mush.
Why doesn't the movie work or why did I absolutely wish I'd watched something else? Well I'll tell you who's fault it is. It isn't Cary Tagawa. He's fantastic, of course. And he's allowed to go to 11 so it's not director Richard Martin's fault either. It's not even Gary Daniels fault despite his lack of acting, as the big draw is the fight sequences which he co-choreographed with prolific stunt-man Lauro Chartrand. So whose fault is it that White Tiger is a total boring slog of a film?
Well, I'm blaming the 90's. See all the big stinker makers were out of the biz or out of their prime by 1996. Cannon was done and Carolco was on its way. DTV was on the rise as you could crap out a turd on a budget and distribute globally for a song. So the studios just wanted to start turning fast bucks and having passion for your project wasn't a benefit, it was a hinderance. What business did Richard Martin even have directing a film? Well, he said he could do it and do it fast. That's all it took for it to get a green light. 
The problem with it and say the same film made 5-10 years prior, is there was a hope that if you did a good enough job, if you worked hard enough, if you believed it what you were doing enough the execs in their ties would see you and give you a Brandon Lee shot. Its the American Dream right? Well sorry, but that doesn't exist. So instead you've got no one giving a crap in the writing ("just redo Beverly Hills Cop, again") and no one behind the camera caring either. It's not that anyone screwed up, it just is that no one had the opportunity to screw up either. Which sorry, makes for boring film for our niche AND the big films that go on to win Oscar gold. You must have some spark of passion and care for art. Otherwise, its just a toaster or a '15 Toyota Camry. Your film is now an appliance.

Penitentiary - They ripped off Justin's novel!

A film that rips off Justin's novel 35 years before he wrote it. Its a prison film (obs) that gets fast and loose with the rules of early release - time off for punchin' dudes.
Prepare for a short film review.
I don't like it. It should be fun. It looks like it would be. The scenario lends itself to be fun. Its just not somehow. They get it right in the later films but somehow this just isn't really worth anyone's time.
UNLESS - you're a student of film history, based on its budget, technical ability and how its a part of a larger movement in cinema.

Jungleground - The Magmaknockers were better

Nobody crosses the bridge between Uptown and Jungleground! Except the dope pushers, of course. Oh, and the cops. Well we gotta give 'em a little action every now and then, right? Oh and the Feds, hookers, delivery companies, truckers and constructions workers. Seems like everyone does actually.
What you've got here is fairly standard fair for a mid-90's DTV action movie with a few standout exceptions. Roddy is, of course, great despite his terrible dialogue in the script. The relationship between Roddy's "Jake" and his fiancé(?), Samantha, is unique in that its just a straight-up good relationship with no getting sidetracked in backstory or conflict between them. Even Samantha takes a few departures away from cliché' by supporting his copping, standing up to sexual harassment and not being a helpless damsel. The film also does one thing very well - it never loses focus. Its "get home, Jake, before they kill your love". No pauses in that goal. Even with the addition of a helpful hooker who just wants to start a new life, Jake always keeps moving forward. He doesn't stop to ponder her struggles or drop her off a a clinic and stay to check on her (in fact he drops her off with some construction workers and steals their truck) nor does Jake try to save Jungleground or its people. He just keeps moving toward Samantha.
While the over-the-top action isn't as full as we'd like with a bigger budget, what's there is fun and insane. The Ragnarockers (the gang Jake is hunted by in Jungleground) are excessive in their baddie ways resulting in blowing up entire buildings to kill one guy, putting together elaborate executions that are wasteful and destructive of their own property and never really have a clear plan on how to be bad guys. In fact, most of them are terrible at it. Indoor, open layout farm-to-table markets are about the least scary thing you could have and yet the Ragnarockers love that produce. Their entire system of evil income comes from cocaine storage for the Uptown snobs who've rejected them; not selling of it, just storage and not getting paid for it. In a critical scene, one of the Rockers (the annoying Gameshow) manages to get murdered by none other than gravity and bad decisions, leading to his brother Dragon to declare "I must have revenge!" (against who? Fetal alcohol syndrome?). The ineptitude of the Rockers is what you come for in this movie.
On the whole, it's not a standout stinker. Some may not even spot the difference between other DTVs by Dolph, Jeff Fahey or James Remar. But Jungleground does occasionally get it very right. Sadly, it doesn't do it enough.

Space Truckers - Liquid Beef, cute but not the real thing.

Two truckers (an old hat and a young buck) and a waitress manage to defeat an army of the most unstoppable killing machines, which even the Predator wouldn't stand a chance against, using the rules of the space highway. Honk, honk, pew, pew!
What you've got here is a decent stinker but gets bogged down by how awesome it SHOULD be. It's called Space Truckers. That should be enough to make it amazing. Then Stuart Gordon is directing. I'm no huge lover of Gordon and think most of his projects are just ok, but he's competent enough that he could helm a movie called Space Truckers and not make it not amazing. Tack on Dennis Hopper, who is honestly either great or terrible and either would work here. 
Yet, there's hardly any of the space truckin' that I want. Now there is a large amount of actual "trucking" but not much "truckin' ". You see the difference? There's lots of talk about shipping rates, independent contracting vs employed trucking, fulfillment services, and contract negotiations. Its like watching Mila Kunis go through the DMV in Jupiter Ascending. I don't want that! I want Dennis Hopper climbing on the side of the truck to punch out hijackers. I want him putting together a convoy of other space truckers who use their big rigs to run over an entire space colony. I want the space fuzz trying a road block but he jumps over them in a 0 gravity twist. None of that happens. This is like Die Hard. It's a movie that takes place at Xmas, not an Xmas movie (I'll die on that hill). It's a sci-fi movie that takes place around trucking, not a space truckin' movie. So if you're me and a lover of truckin' films, you're entering this bound for disappointment.
BUT, that doesn't mean there aren't some good things here. Charles Dance is of course brilliant, even with him spending the majority of his screen-time with prosthetics slapped all over him. The killer robots are seriously awesome looking. The gag-gore is fun enough, even though instead of blood someone decided to use bubblegum. There's a few good lines here and there. Which adds up to it still just barely making it a do.
We recommend it as a double-feature with some friends. Maybe put it on the front-end feature before The Ice Pirates? Or maybe Oblivion. But make sure it comes first and never ever ever put it next to an actual truckin' film.

The Forbidden Dance - How we solve global warming

*Warning - Jackie's mic was backwards so her audio isn't perfect. Sorry for any inconvenience.*
Want to save the environment but are only a Brazilian princess? Well, show off your pretend dance craze skills on American Bandstand! So long, climate crisis! The merengue is coming for you.
So what you've got here is a basket of terrible sequences from the minds of Meneham Golen and Greydon Clark. As the pair rushed the film out in just 56 weeks (from concept to release) in order to hedge their bets against Yorum Globus' Lambada (which released on the same day), what was given to the public was exactly what it deserved. See the lambada was no such dance craze as we've been told. It was a made up craze, likely pushed by the Cannon Group boys so that they could sell tickets to, you guessed it, these two movies. You show us evidence of there being a lambada fervor pre-1990 and we'll eat our shoulder-pad shirts. So yeah, suckers, you bought into some baloney dance fad, you get this thinly put together film in return!
However, what The Forbidden Dance actually is, well... it's stinker classic and cult worthy. I can imagine that most might be scared off by the idea of watching a danceical, but as evidenced by Breakin' 2 and The Apple, anyone associated with Cannon Group is capable of blowing your mind with the movie surrounding the often terrible dancing and music (with the exception of 1/3 of the scenes in Breakin' 2). Every sequence in this film could be a highlight reel for Up All Night and Rifftrax. Especially any scene with the atrociously terrible Jeff James (its not totally his fault, his character is a 28 year old man-baby who lives off the teet of mommie's wallet).
Just think about the premise here: an American mega-corporation wants to burn the Amazon down (so they can sell ash?) despite a tribe of "Indians" (you racist bastards! They aren't even in North America!!!) living in their destruction zone. The tribe's princess is the only one who can save them (she speaks English) so she hops a flight to LA to try to convince "the Chairman" (of the Board of Directors?) to stop the burning. He isn't in today so instead she forgets about all that stuff and gets a job as a maid, where she seduces said man-baby with her sexy tribal dance rituals/masturbation. After a brief courting period, they team up to lambada their way onto national TV to bring awareness of the Amazon to children who don't do grocery shopping. The only thing stopping them? The evil corp's main hencher, Richard GD Lynch along with man-baby's ex-girlfriend.
Now try to write a movie around that premise that ISN'T going to be awesome. We'll wait.
From start to finish, The Forbidden Dance is a riffer's paradise and ROFL full. Don't be scared off by the danceical. There's very little dancing in it and when its there, its laughable. It's an absolute blast and a total do from us.

Roar - Joe Exotic's wet dream but our nightmare

Well I guess if you ever wanted to watch a movie where the cast and crew literally get eaten alive by the stars of the movie, well this is that movie. Its horrifying and terrible and likely contributed to the end of the world. I say that without exaggeration.
What Roar is goes beyond anything that Tommy Wiseau, Neil Breen, and M. Knight Shamalyan had ever envisioned for a vanity-piece-gone-awry. There is volumes of material that are all worth reading about for this film, so I'll briefly sum up what you should know. Basically, Tippi Hendren and her husband Noel Marshall hatched an idea to make a film about living in peace with animals that are dangerous but misunderstood. Its about harmony with nature. So what they did was bought a large compound in the California desert and then brought in 150 big cats (and 1 elephant) to live with their family and then shoot a film with the lions, tigers, panthers and jaguars as the stars. Mind you this is all done with Noel and Tippi acting as head trainers, veterinarians and Robert Muldoons of the compound - all without a bit of experience or education on how to do so. So they built a set, hired Jan De Bont as cinematographer and start filming himself and his family getting eaten by their pets. This is hubris to the maximum.
What resulted was a financial disaster despite taking almost a decade to film of nearly $15 million in losses, your daughter (Melanie Griffith) getting her face clawed off and needing plastic surgery, your cinematographer getting the back of his head torn off, your ranch flooding destroying your set and your cages thus freeing the lions resulting in 14 of them drowning or being shot by authorities. This not only inspired the scumbags that are "big cat rescue" buttholes but DIRECTLY resulted in Tiger King (Carol Baskin bought many of her big cats from Tippi Hedren). Unbelievable.
Now for the film itself.
Is it fun? No.
Is it funny? No.
Is it riffable? No.
What Roar is instead is an absolute nightmare. The horror that takes place on screen is what Wes Craven, Blumhouse, and even Alfred Hitchcock (who likely had an indirect hand in causing this disaster) could only dream of. The torture that Noel Marshall put his children through (and were truly forced to do), his complete lack of human compassion as viewed by not yelling "Cut!" and kept rolling as his actors were eaten in front of him, especially when his step-daughter is mauled while his wife desperately tries to pull the lion off her is display of moral absence that has never been caught on film like this. Noel's own on screen performance which can only be described as daffy all with wall-to-wall circus music score is the thing of nightmares.
Should you watch it? Absolutely. This is required viewing. Will I ever watch it again? Hell no. Watch it once and then have your beliefs that maybe mankind's time is done reinforced.

Bare Knuckles - Pizza Hut's Bag o' Pizza for 2

He's a real tough guy, but almost everyone he deals with is just a bit tougher, but not tough enough to out tough his toughness. That was until he meets his weekly nemesis, Cat-Man!
So Zach Kane is a character. He's a total loser. He's a washed up boxer that now is a borderline vigilante who can barely make ends meet. While that seems like a fairly cliche character model for a late 70s action movie, there's a nice twist to Kane's character; he believes he's still one tough guy. He's never come to terms with his loserness, either by denial or just complete lack of context. He keeps getting his butt kicked by life and his own decisions but he's oblivious. Imagine Johnny Lawrence in episode 1 of Cobra Kai but never having any sort of redemption.
While this is mostly considered as an action movie, this is much more of a thriller with the plot centering around a man-hunt for a serial killer. The serial killer himself is quite the character as well. He's a rich kid with some serious mommy issues or at least issues with his mommy being an orgy-loving swinger. So he puts on his trash bag hood and stalks the night as Cat-Man. He literally makes hissing sounds whenever he's in some sort of danger. Little Richard is not exactly Zodiac.
The cast is rounded out by Sherry Jackson's Jennifer. Jennifer also has some serious mental health issues or at least self-destructive tendencies. First, Sherry Jackson is a smoke-show and therefore so is Jennifer. Second, she's a well-to-do gal who appears to have a stable source of income. Third, she's an LA socialite with connections to the upper crust. Yet, she is given a bag of Pizza Hut by a guy in a parking lot and she's now swooning for him. He's covered in dirt and blood every time she's with him and comes and goes as he pleases, yet within two dates she's in love with our boy Zach. Why, Jennifer? Why?!?!?
Bare Knuckles isn't your typical stinker of this vein. It's mildly slow. The action isn't good. There's relatively low amounts of stunts. There's zero shoot-outs and little blood. Yet, the price of admission is whether you can discover the good movie that is buried in the crap that is the narrative and film production. You may find yourself asking yourself where the line is on bounty-hunting and vigilantism. You may find yourself analyzing the motives of the characters. You may find yourself comparing Zach and Richard to Batman and Joker. You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. And you may ask yourself, well why am I watching this?
Its not for everyone, and its not any sort of bad movie show stopper. But it is a very interesting movie with much to be discussed by lovers of bad movies. We say go for it with your other film buddies, but don't bring any rookies in. This is for intermediates.