Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

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.

The Nest - The Bug-A-Whack Festival goes as expected

Bugs, bugs, bugs!!! This movie is chock full o' bugs! Large bugs, small bugs, bugs as big as your head - hell bugs that are MADE of your head. Heads that are made of bugs. I got bugs under my skin and bugs on my brain. Hope you like bugs.
The Nest falls into the "body horror" genre as far from being a body horror film as one can be. This should fall into the "its JAWS but bugs are super cheap to work with" genre. Its just the JAWS plot but with bugs. Yes there is a smidgeon of body horror but its not exactly From Beyond. However, there is a lot of good here.
You can see the touch of director Terrence Winkless breaking from the script and making some of the residents of Tiny Bug Town have horrendous and hilarious deaths. When the diner-side of the unnecessary love triangle meets her doom, she goes full-Ash on a pile of cockroaches using the methods she's most adept at - waitressing. It's hilarious.
While the front-end is a little uneventful, there's still enough to carry you through to the good stuff. Keep an eye out for how stupid everyone looks, the weird dialogue, a very uninhibited trailer, how little the sheriff gets done right up to when we meet the very weird Dr. Hubbard. Then the bugs and goop begins and the rest of the film is a solid stinker. It's not a masterpiece but it's still a good Sunday funtime.

Condorman - Stinker Madness Rerun

A likely candidate for favorite movie ever when you were 8 years old, this classic episode features the live action Disney superhero movie that lead the way to the MCU (no, no it did not). Condorman stars Michael Crawford, Oliver Reed, Barbara Carrera and James Hampton. Enjoy!

Artemis Fowl - Bad way to start the decade

The faerie folk who may or may not be all leprechauns have been living peacefully in the center of earth (or Middle Earth as some may call it) while a smug little kid who needs to be punted says he wants to team up with them but ends up shooting all of them. Get to the Time Portal, Uter!
Artermis Fowl is a giant piece of crap. With or without, the departures from the book series, this is a giant piece of crap. It's bad from top to bottom. Every single person failed at their job (with the exception of Colin Farrell who doesn't have time to screw it up). From the effects, to the writing, to the directing, to the editing, to the acting, to the sound design, to the props department. Failure. I'm surprised this team isn't in charge of the Covid-19 response. Yikes.
The plot doesn't exist. This is what Sam calls "table-setting" for the later films that won't ever come because of how awful this crap is. Literally nothing happens here. We're not even sure where the climax is. Hell we're not even sure when the movie starts. It's unfathomable.
Then there's the casting/acting. The kid is awful. He's a kid so we can't pick on his skills too much and I'm sure he was just doing what he was told to do but hey, so did the guards at Auschwitz. There's no excuse. Then there's the people who should have known f-ing better: Dame Judi Dench and Josh Gad - both of whom who are doing their worst Bat-voice which isn't good but then failing on top of their failure. 
Lastly, the effects. Wow. Just six months ago, we were grabbing our torches and pitchforks for the effects of Cats and these guys pushed those people off their bad effects pedestal and then spiked the football. There's this damn centaur who's body's don't match, laser guns that suck, dubious wings on faeries, and then the time vortex. Wow, the time vortex.
Artemis Fowl is the worst movie of 2020 thus far and its just one more thing that Covid-19 has robbed from us. We should have been able to view this in the theater and then watch the box office returns not come in. Damn you, COVID!!!! 

Coronasode #13!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This special episode we discuss the number 13, loads of Tales from The Baywatch, Stay Tuned, Mega-Shark vs Giant Octopus, My Spy, Cut and Run, Sam takes on Email, and Jackie gives us her most entangled Spookie yet out of Romania.
Have some gratuitous exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Track of the Moon Beast - Brain clouds are better than moon brain

Paul, the dubiously employed dirt digger, gets a case of moon brain causing him to become a "were-gorn" and eventually goes to critical mass all while his new girlfriend keeps him away from doctors and his buddy just wants him dead because its dinner-time.
Track of the Moon Beast is iconic drive-in/MST3K type material. You're sadly not going to find any surprises here. Just imagine Joel, Crow and Tom sitting down and whatever you can imagine to happen on screen will likely happen. There's just nothing new here for anybody. It falls into the same vein and suffering that Ssssssss does (and sadly last weeks Girl in Gold Boots). There's a smattering of good here but for the most part its 90 minutes of milk-toast.
While the makeup and costumes might be some of the worst, what this film does "well" for bad-movie fans is the absolutely terrible script. Its lunacy. Its nonsensical. But again, it's draggy and too few and far between to get to the good stuff. 
Sadly, there just isn't much to say here but avoid this without MST3K.

Girl in Gold Boots - Don't go to haunted house dance clubs

In a stunning display of some of the worst dancing ever beheld by the eyes of civilization, Michelle really just wants to be the #1 Go-Go dancer in all the world. Standing in her way is two dudes who just want to kiss her at beaches and her own ability to dance like a flopping fish.
This movie falls into a very strange category of recommendation. It's truly about as good as other MST3K classics such a Secret Agent, Super Dragon, The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies, or Eegah!. It's your usual terrible writing about youth out of the psychedelia era, it's got lead characters with dubious idioms and of course strange nonsensical dialogue. Yet there's some weird enjoyment that comes along with it as well. It could be that it's a super-star when it comes to riffing. It could come from the characters being absolutely unlikable and the antithesis of what we expect in theatrics character archetypes.
Everything is a weird choice stemming from the opening scene, the locations, the weird 6-wheeler sequence, Buz' casting choice, the "heist" sequence, the lamest party ever, on and on it goes. There's a little something for everyone here, it's just a matter if you can riff your way past the other sections to get to the stuff that fits your idea of ironic film watching.
We say it's a borderline do if you are in the advanced class for bad movie watching. Otherwise do it with the MST3K.

Carry On Columbus - Britain's Worst Film is Way Better than the US's

Voted Britain's Worst Movie Ever (by some blokes who must not have a very deep pool to chose from) Carry On Columbus becomes our first foray into the Carry On franchise. I think we can all agree; it's funnier than ACTUAL Columbus.
We've entered into this in a very unconventional way. We imagine most viewers of the Carry On franchise have a few of their higher quality films under their belt before watching this - which is obviously going to be inferior. So likely, in those viewing specifications will lead many to absolutely loathe this movie. We don't fall into that camp. This ONLY made us to want to watch even more Carry On. Because if this is the worst, well the others have gotta be pretty good.
Sure, it's corny. Sure, it's got some groaners. But there's some generally funny jokes in this. I'd say we laughed out loud about 10 times, which is pretty damn solid. Consider such ducks that we crap out in the US, looking at you Tom Green and Eddie Murphy. When it comes to bad comedy we hold the world crown here in the US. Britain, you need to start making much crappier films before you can start thinking Carry On Columbus is true garbage.
Don't expect Caddyshack. Don't even expect Caddyshack II. But this is FAR from Pluto Nash. Despite it's gawdawful reputation we still think this is a good time and worth a watch - start with this one. You'll only want more Carry On.