Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

Wish Upon - Hope you like Teen Witch

Most will see this as a Monkey's Paw retell but it's really and truly just a recut of Teen Witch but without all the singing and dancing and then they made it so much crappier...crappier than Teen Witch. Yup.
Some movies are prime for knocking off, right? See the endless list of Jaws and Conan movies from late 70s and 80s. See any Roger Corman movie post-Star Wars. Sure, you won't work very hard on it and make just a few bucks but hey, that's easy money. 
So why in the hell does someone say let's mash up the tone of Final Destination 72 with the story line of an 80's movie with a cult status only with fans of bad movie podcasts? I mean who the hell are they kidding? This is just Teen Witch. One of the damn wishes Claire makes is literally "I want to be the most popular girl!" And of course, at the same point in the film, she gets it all taken away from her and has a feeling of desperation for her life without her magical powers. I mean, WTF? Teen Witch?!?! Who the hell asked for that? Or were you just that lazy? 
"Well I gotta rip of something since I'm clearly not capable of writing my own story so I'll rip off a movie that no one remembers except for a handful of people that only like terrible movies." GTH.
Past that, you've got the clear influence of the Final Destination series. The deaths that are paid for the "blood price" of the monkey's paw, I mean wish box, are overly elaborate with many red herrings in the Rube Goldberg style death sequences. Sadly, while the FD manner of this is frequently fun the ones in Wish Upon leave much to be desired with only the death of Sherilynn Fenn coming within the ballpark of sadistic fun that we hoped for.
Wish Upon is a true turd that doesn't have anything of redemption that makes it a do on our end. Avoid.

The Rift - Literally in an octopus' garden

A NATO team of the least qualified sea-men (giggle) take the Beatle's submarine down to the depths of the sea and find some icky monsters, hungry starfish and love. Of course they do.
So some might call the Rift a Leviathan and Deep Star Six knockoff, but we see this as much more of an Aliens knockoff, which becomes its fatal flaw. The plot is just so familiar and could take place in space just as easily as it does it under the sea. You've got the expedition into tunnels with an unknown monster patrol ahead. You've got the "military wants the monster for biological warfare" yadda, yadda. You've got the ship breaking down due to sabotage, yadda yadda. It gets tedious just watching Aliens again.
Yet, the effects are a blast with much gore and goop. The monsters are unbelievably inappropriate including the star(fish) of the show. Legs come off, heads get sploded, and Ray Wise gets a face full of slime by the hands of R. Lee Ermey and Jack Scalia's hair explodes throughout the whole movie.
It's not anything special, but The Rift is still a do from us.

Tango & Cash - Stinker Madness Rerun

Two cops find love in each other's egos, while attempting to clear their names from a villainous plot to take over the world's salted caramel industry. Stallone and Russell team up for one of the raddest buddy cop dumb-dumb rollercoaster. It's shenanigans.
 
This episode originally aired in January of 2017.

Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding - worst revenge plan ever

An old villain from Mitch's past comes back to enact revenge by.... having him get married to his one true love? With a cast of Baywatchers this size, and a plot as dumb as it is, this has got to be one wild ride, right? Well....
Sato (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) comes back from season 2 of the Baywatch TV series, to get revenge against Mitch and Hobie for getting him arrested. That's all fine and good. The issue lies in how he decides to get it. He gets his girlfriend to have Face-Off style surgery to look just like former show member and off/on again Mitch love interest, Stephanie Holden. Then she must seduce Mitch, bone-down with him repeatedly, get him to propose and then get him to agree to have the wedding on a volcano island so that Sato can put his friends in James Bond style death traps and let Mitch save them. Lots of moving parts in this diabolical-ness.
While Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding is VERY Baywatchesque - it's just too much like a 2 hour TV Episode and not enough like a movie. Yes it has the tone and pace of an episode from the height and stinker quality of the peak of Baywatch. Yes it's the greatest cast in the history of the show. Yes its a great close to the show after the horrendously uninteresting Baywatch Hawaii. But this is a major missed opportunity for the team. We needed a lot more "movie" in it. Car chases, stuntmen on fire, exploding choppers, various stink-eyes given and much more karate fights.
Even if they'd gone with just generic film tropes and did nothing imaginative here, Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding could have gone down as a cult classic. But what it is can only really appeal to people who love the show and at this point, those people are few and far between. It's a sad way to end.

Coronasode 14 - Will they ever end?

This week we dive into the Le Petit Huey/Starlight candy debate, a welcome to Patreon supporter Clauzy and his watch recommendations, Sam gives Jackie "the hook" and then takes on soap (again?), reviews of Phantasm II & III, Journey 2, Return to Oz, the final Tales of the Baywatch, and El Chupacabra.
Check out Teen Samurai's YouTube channel for some rad music based on your favorite stinkers: Teen Samurai

The Last Dragon - Stinker Madness Rerun

A flashback to 2016 when we were all so much less wildfired. It's a movie that we all gave a "do" on and an special Sam choice about obsession, music, and of course, karate. You'll enjoy this rerun if you missed it the first time, so enjoy!

National Treasure - The Pipe is Mightier than the Sword

Nic Cage goes on a deep quest to prevent his own hiring decision from ruining his plans to get super-rich. Along the way he confuses us with poorly written treasure clues, crazy eyebrows, word-association and flaunting Jerry Bruckheimer's watch.
National Treasure is arguably the most "blockbuster" movie ever made. It's filled with EVERY trick in the book for film-making that puts the butts in the movie seats. It's more crap that's ever been put in one burrito. The problem is that every single one of these tricks is as safe and risk free as can be. So yes, it's filled with stuff, but no is it anything you haven't seen 1000 times in other movies. 
So likely, you've already seen this as it was a massive success and right in the sweet box for DVD, so you might be thinking of a revisit. I say thee NAY...tional Treasure 2. You're just not going to garner anything new on a repeat view unless you saw this when you were 9 and thought it was the best movie ever and want to have another helping of disappointment as an adult.
So yes, it's still fun, but it's just barely fun enough for us to give a recommendation but only for first-time viewers and if you've got nothing else going on.

Templar Nation - needs to be a big deal

A team of undeclared researchers go on a dig in the middle of the desert only to discover a secret tunnel that leads to America's greatest secret. But if they'd only gone through the IKEA, they could have saved a bunch of time.Truly bad film's greatest secret itself.
Templar Nation is the true underappreciated and under served bad movie in the bad movie genre. While it should be on the same pedestals as The Room, Birdemic, and Fateful Findings, it sadly sits on Amazon Prime Video, buried in the midst of Asylum-like movies waiting for someone to please just take a chance on it. Sure, it doesn't have the behind-the-scenes "charisma" that say Tommy or Neil have, but the horrendously terrible job that Joseph James does to portray himself as a real-life LARPer stands as high as a vanity-piece gone awry as the other three.
Go through the checklist of needs to rival "the bigs" in bad cinema: atrocious acting, scenery chewing leads, bad action sequences, terrible set design, the idiot-plot, unintelligible line delivery, baffling villainy, and a climax that is setup to have the audience be stunned but is instead in stitches with laughter. This is Hall of Fame stuff here, fam.
Ya know, the big three took quite a while to gain some notoriety. And maybe because Templar Nation is from 2013, it hasn't had its chance in the sun yet. So I challenge you, dear listener and reader, make this movie a thing. It truly deserves it.

Outcast - Winner of the worst wig award

Two former Knights Templars (however the plural of that works) roam "The Far East" in a vague period of time bust up a usurpation of the kingdom by moping, doing opium, terrible battle plans and becoming Caribbean pirates. Tempyarr!!!
What you want to come here for is the bad acting and the incredibly stupid character decisions. As one could predict, Hayden Christensen is not good. Surprisingly, he's far from the worst. Unsurprisingly, that award goes to Nic Coppola. Look, here's on set for about 3 days. At some point, he went into his trailer for 30 minutes, came back out and then told the director that his character should transition into a voodoo pirate. Well even if one could agree to those terms, Nicolas couldn't because his Yarrr! pirate fades in and out even within the same set of dialogue. Outcast has to rank as one of the worst Cage has even given us and the number one reason to show up to watch this film.
Secondly - why the hell is everyone so stupid? From important characters blowing themselves up, villains challenging strangers to honor duels, giving your enemies a smoke screen, and saying "I didn't see those guards" after getting captured by them when your one job was to look out for guards. Its befuddling how many actions by characters are made in complete and utter moronisy. 
Sadly, upon rewatching, Outcast doesn't hold up to the first viewing. For us it was a surprise stinker the first time we saw it and so we made it a little darling. It's pretty tedious and pouty on the front-end and when you finally get to the goods, you're already 3/4 through the movie. So if you've already seen it, Outcast is a one and done watch. If you haven't then give it a go, but don't expect too much fireworks until Pirate Cage makes his return.

Thank God it's Friday - Club Zoo needs a better bouncer

It's disco fever time and the hottest club in LA manages to be one of the lamest clubs in LA at the same time. It's Jeff Goldblum, Donna Summer, Debra Winger and the Commodores giving us a 90 minute infomercial about disco life.
While Sam manages to be correct that this film doesn't have a plot, he's wrong in that it isn't any fun. Sure, it's not going to be for everyone - pretty much if you won't even admit that there was any decent songs during the disco era (I say screw you) you're not going to like any of this. Not because it's chock full of disco (it's mostly funk music) but because disco was so content-free and so is this film.
With that in mind, if you are a fan of American Graffiti, you aren't at least adverse to this type of project.
We'll be honest with ourselves though. We think that this could be right on the fence of a do or don't, until Marv Gomez, "The Leatherman" has his big scene. Once he proclaims that everything besides dancing is "bullshit" the film gets a much needed injection of nonsense. From there on out, you're in for a good time and it becomes a definite do.
So put on your all-cotton shirt and your leather pants and enjoy some disco bologna. We certainly did.