Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

Dirty Dancing Part 1 - Lawrence Welk's Church and Prostitution Camp

The autobiographical story of how a teenage girl breaks her dad's "no banging guys who knock up other ladies and then get them terrible abortion doctors" rule over the summer at a sex-trafficking church camp for rich hypocrites.
Yes, I know this is your mom's favorite movie. There's strike number one.
What Dirty Dancing is (besides a cultural phenomenon) is a non-movie. A series of events without what we in the biz like to call a plot is not a movie. No, the plot isn't "Baby falls in love" - that is over within the first 1/3 of the movie. No, the plot isn't "Baby learns to dance and wins the competition" - that happens halfway through. Best we can do is the plot is "Father learns daughter's summer love didn't impregnate a grown woman". That's not really something to put 100 minutes around.
Secondly, there's the icky. This movie is dripping with icky. No, it's not the dancing. The dancing viewed through modern lenses is quite wholesome. The icky is the glorification of statutory rape. Baby is 17. Johnny is 25. That's rape, period. Yes it wasn't illegal in NY in 1963. That doesn't make it ok. Stop making exceptions for having sex with children. Its not ok. But wait, there's more ick. The entire setting of this film is a sex-trafficking and forced prostitution resort. The wait staff's job is to bang the daughters of the rich customers and the entertainment staff's job is to bang the lonely wives of the rich customers - whether you want to or not and bitch better have my money. Its gross.
With that in mind, should you view this movie? Nope - and not because of the ick. The ick doesn't mean this movie should be censored or "cancelled" as dumb Ohio wrestling coaches gone US Congressmen wish we were saying. The ick just needs to stop being glorified. No, just don't watch this movie because it sucks and is bereft of actual content that makes up a story.

End of Days - The Devil IS the Reject

Its Schwazenator vs Y2k fears! The epic battle begins! Meanwhile, Gabriel Byrne gets a handful.
So what we've got here is that Satan wants to ensure that the Anti-Christ's mom is gonna be good to go when she's old enough for a rogering. The PROBLEM is that it takes about 15 views to understand that. The film is mostly just nonsense action sequences that could very well be just unconnected events if one isn't taking notes on the dialogue (or listening to a podcast discussing this all).
The late 90's...why did you have to ruin every silly movie with your dark pre-apocalyptic tones?!?! End of Days is a cheesy Arnold movie that would have been a classic if it had been made 10 years earlier. But the damn 90's ruined it. You can expect common fair such as jump scares, choppy editing, a hero that hates his life outside the events of the film, and trench coats. Change these things to big hair, exploding choppers and electronic drum kits while leaving every thing else the same we've got a classic stinker. Argh.
The action is silly, the plot is nonsense, none of the movie's rules get followed, the one-liners are solid, the dialogue is atrocious and Robin Tunney's top is off. That's enough to pay for the price of admission - but just expect to deal with going through a Se7en wannabe, just like every other movie from this time period.

Stay Tuned - or Just Listen Now

If 1980's Hollywood was obsessed with water shortages, the 90s was obsessed with evil cable TV. Here a husband and wife get sucked into a hellscape of television also known as CBS Primetime.
So what we've got here is that John Ritter's Roy is obsessed with watching TV and ignores his responsibilities, his kids and his wife. Pam Dobber as Helen seeks for a way to get him off the tube but that problem works itself out when both are sucked into a Devil's Gambit that sends them through various television parodies and tropes. If that wasn't the setup for 90's comedy gold...let's chuck $25 million at it!
When you've got parodies like "The Napper Crapper" and "Golden Ghouls", you HAVE to spend $25 million on it! I mean it's got John Ritter and Pam Dobber in it! $25 million! Where everything went right in UHF (even though it was a flop too) very rarely does anything go right here. It's a series of hammy Full House style jokes and groan inducing one-liners. It comes off as a compilation of SNL's worst sketches with the writer's dropping the mic after you vomit.
This can be skipped by anyone with anything else to do. Just go watch UHF again.

The Ice Pirates - Don't pirate the movie

Perhaps it was your favorite movie when you were 9. Maybe you should watch it again as an adult - it might still be your favorite movie.
Some movies that have production failures on the level of The Ice Pirates go into the barrel of cinematic toxic waste. The list is so long that we have only started to scratch the surface of such turds. Yet The Ice Pirates is a spectacle. Its failures never detract from what it was attempting to be and accomplish.
Usually when you have a Hall of Fame worthy film, it's because of it being misunderstood by a mass audience or falls into the "its so bad, it's good" style. However, The Ice Pirates is what it is - a cheesy great time. There's no hidden commentary. There's no laughing at it ironically. It's just a movie that could never have been "good" by its nature and still manages to be great.
The cast is fantastic. The jokes are solid. The set pieces are iconic. And the end is absolutely spectacular. There is a reason so many great writers borrow from The Ice Pirates. If you haven't seen it - watch it. If you have - watch it again. You'll thank us later.

Steel Dawn - Where does all the meat come from?

Its a straight-up western, but because its from 1987 it has to be set in a post-apocalyptic world and instead of cowboy hats, we get hair-spray helmets. Despite everything there might be a good movie buried in the sands.
So its Shane, Once upon in the West, Star Wars and Fallout 4. Ok, maybe Fallout 4 is Steel Dawn. Clearly, Fallout 76 is Steel Dawn. Anyways, this is a hot mess. 
The music doesn't fit. The world doesn't make any damn sense. The plot doesn't make much sense. The hair makes no sense. The action is ludicrous. The Stranger's one-liners are silly. It's just a pile of not doing a good job and yet...somehow it feels like there's something good here.
The tone of the whole movie is a fairly conventional western theme. A lone wanderer with a dark past shuffles into town, where he meets a widow and her son along with their jealous and lonely foreman, and has to defend the farm from a rival who wants their resources. That's about as western (or Japanese samurai, of which most spaghetti westerns are imitations of) as a movie gets. Atop of that is solid camera work that highlights this tone and story. It seems like there's a good movie buried here.
Yet because its a PA film, you've got a bunch of nonsense; like sand-people, cool looking but useless weapons, crappy and dirty sets and future cars that mostly suck. You've got characters who don't make sense and motivations that are dubious at best. Sprinkle in some scenes that are bonkers like the romance in the dirt, the party crashers at "the gathering", inept henchmen and why they live in the wasteland in the first place makes this an absolute must do and likely a favorite for many a viewer.

Krull - Gun Swords, NOPE!

Its one of those iconic 80's swords and sandals/science fiction blend movies and beloved by many. We can understand why, but this was a massive failure that likely cost the genre decades of great movies until the LOTR Trilogy.
So Krull is one of the most expensive movies of the 80s and fails on so many levels. You've got the classic inaction in action (nothing happens during action sequences), the choreography was done by Stevie Wonder, and the effects and sets are so overly impossible to do that they end up looking like 2nd grade paper Mache. The wire work is only worse in Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark. The costumes are atrocious and prevent the actors from actually engaging with each other or the scene itself. Its a mess.
While all of that may sound like Red Sonja or Dune, Krull falls more into the Flash Gordon's of bad movies. Its loved because of the cheese and the failures. Add in wizards living with kids in rocks, a doofer for a hero, forgetting to use The Glaive, the cyclops who can see less than the blind guy, plot advancing by "I know a guy who knows a guy", Star Wars similarities and the rules of the universe make this a classic stinker. Krull is one of those unique films that is too long but if you cut it down it'd only be worse. It's not anywhere near a Hall of Fame discussion but shouldn't be missed by anyone except people who have stuff to do, like laundry.

Night Hunter - How vampires went extinct

It ain't Blade. It's 90s Anne Rice with unattractive people and inept opponents. And it all could have been avoided by drinking tea together.
At least everyone is evenly matched. Don's Jack Cutter is way ill equipped and ill prepared to be taking down even lower level vampires. Guns don't work, bud. A sword seriously would have been cheaper and more effective than his shotgun and M1911s. Or a hammer. Use a damn hammer! Why a hammer against vampires? Because the vampires have spines that are made of glass. Well big deal right? Nope that's the only way you can kill them. By breaking their incredibly fragile spine. Huh...
And so the idiot plot begins. This entire movie is about vampires fight vampire hunters - all because the vampire hunters want to kill them. Why do the vampire hunters want to kill them? Because the vampires want to kill them. Not because they are abominations. Not because they are eating people. Not because their tired of their goth attire. Nope. Its just a blood feud. So all this could have been avoided if they'd just walked away and the vampires could have used their immortality to benefit the world via medicine, music and exploration, By blood feuding, the vampire hunters are denying the planet a utopian future.
Look, it's not great. It's got the feeling and tone of a million other 90s DTV movies (usually staring Jeff Fahey or James Remar) and drags here and there. But the idiot plot, the horrible casting, the stupid karate and the LOL ending all put this in the DO column.

Messenger of Death - BLOOD FEUD!!!!!!!

Charlie Bronson goes to Colorado to deal with that same ol' blood feud when two Mormon bros. branch out into some pretty wild dogma all while Charlie walks around and does some really bad reporting.
Bronson's Smith is arguably the worst reporter I've ever seen (Chris Cilliza at least says something even if its moronic) and I don't understand how anything happens in this film around him. We've got your classic idiot plot here. The villains yell out "Hey it's us, look at us! We're the water company! Arrest us!" while the surrounding cast of characters look at a silent Smith for all the answers. Usually Bronson is a blank slate in Cannon movies but I really can't blame him for this one. Smith is just that slow.
As for what's going on here... well, it's just Chinatown. These water companies are apparently a real problem and probably require some federal regulation, at least oversight. Yet, somehow the villain's plot just doesn't work. Starting a blood feud to gain access to an artesian water source to inflate company profits for a company that you don't own but plan on buying once its worth a whole bunch doesn't seem like a foolproof plan.
While the film isn't your usually Cannon/Bronson banana business, I still think it's a good time. The acting is ridiculous and some of the set pieces are so incredibly stupid (one has a great driving stunt) as well as watching Charlie mumble through his marks makes for a good watch. Don't expect fireworks but do expect some Cannon buffoonery. 

Squeeze Play - Its a pickle

A town of MAGA boys get a parade each time they win a baseball game and the ladies have had enough of their bull. Sadly, their anger lasts about 24 hours. This is why we can't get anything done in this country.
According to Lloyd Kaufman, this is a women's liberation movie. I think he might have decided that way after the fact and the ties to women's lib are behind  boobie movie king, Andy Sidaris saying the same thing. Sure, its got women in leads who want to be treated equally to men, but these are straight up bimbos. Where Andy's ladies were strong and smarter than their male counterparts (also usually topless), Lloyd's lady baseball team are mostly only in it so they can either get their boyfriends back or make the boys fall in love with them.
Sadly, the movie never asks the ladies, "Why in the hell would you even want anything to do with these tools?" If it had, the answer would likely be, "Because we also suck."
Now, there are little flights of fun here - the over hammering the ridiculousness of their softball league - mattress workers vs appliance manufacturers. The Howard Cosell imitating announcer/narrator. Dick Koch's whos on first. But outside of these little bits, the film suffers from massive tedium, groan inducing jokes, garbled dialogue and people needing to be punted into the ditch.
I want to like this movie, but just can't. You can skip it.

Joysticks - The Friar Tuck addiction story

Totally awesome video game! Jeff tries to save the community center that doubles as a video arcade with the help from his friends against the dubiously motivated Joe Don Baker who wants to shut it all down. Will Billy Jack win the ski competition to save the school from the rival break-dancers?Joysticks is arguably Greydon Clark's magnum opus. Its all of it. He threw every cheesy bad movie trope he could think of. Amazingly bad/awesome theme song? Check. Not so subtle phallic worship? Check. A nerd with a heart of gold who may or may not be packing heat? Check. Joe Don? Check. Boobs and then boobs on top of boobs? Check. Uncle Rico? Check. Valley girls who just love video games? Check. Filming without permits? Check. Everything is here.While the plot is a fairly loose save the community center plot, there's just so much more here than that. Its a hodge-podge of 80's cheesy personalities with a flair of nothing matters but helping each other out He-Man morals. One might get sidetracked by the holy moly amounts of topless women but try to focus here. There's a ton more going on than some knockers. In fact, there is so much going on that you might have to watch this twice to really get all of it.It's a mega-do from us and shouldn't be missed by anyone.