Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

Love Potion No. 9

Once again, the 80s/90s rom-com genre falls into that horrible disgusting trap of "if you think about this very much you'll want to wash your eyes out with soap" because very unforgivable things happen to the people around the main characters. Both of the people on the cover belong in jail.
There is a serious warning content-wise here but this needs to be said - Love Potion No. 9 is about 1 thing - rape. It steers very clear of the song where it turns the drinker into a raging boner, this love potion causes anyone of the opposite sex to become a mindless zombie and you can make them do whatever you want. So what do the leads do? Well Paul (Tate Donovan) rapes an entire sorority and Diane (Sandra Bullock) makes the Prince of England propose to her forever changing the landscape of the British Monarchy. Wow, what charming, awesome, quirky people? No! Both belong in prison. 
There's only one thing you should do with Love Potion No 8 (#9 isn't good but its not quite as villainous #8) - destroy it. That's the only thing a good person would do with it. It's the most dangerous single chemical that has ever existed in mankind's history and if you do ANYTHING with it but destroy it, you are taking a risk that someone else gets their hands on it. Imagine if the KGB had Love Potion No 8 or if Kim Jong Un (he's not our friend, MAGA) had this. The world would have literally days left before the whole thing is kaboom.
Aside from the nastiness of the mains, there's little else to come for here unless you're out for some nostalgia. There is one sequence involving a horny little chimpanzee that it is absolutely hilarious. But that's it. Anything else is a bit of a waste of time and likely will just want you to rethink every decision that has brought you to this moment in life.

Diggstown - The Greatest Trick the Devil Pulled

Diggstown delivers the ultimate sleight-of-hand hustle to the viewer, by tricking everyone into thinking this is a great "con-job" movie. Look over here, guys and don't pay attention to the paper-thin plot and how the big con is just betting on unsanctioned boxing.
Let's just get this out of the way - this isn't a TERRIBLE movie, but it's pretty crummy stacked next to how good its telling us it is. The whole thing is a giant ruse. Maybe someone can take that as a sign of how well edited it is, but we can't. Our job is to breakdown stories and judge them and this story is ludicrously empty - it's borderline "idiot plot" except one of the requirements is that just ONE person has to show a sign of intelligence to prevent the whole movie - but even if there was one person who could show such intelligence wouldn't prevent anything BECAUSE NOTHING HAPPENS!
The plot is so thin it can be put to this: A retired professional boxer gets put into a bet to fight 10 men, one after the other.
Actually that sounds alright. Well what actually happens is that he only fights one boxer and 9 townies in an underground boxing ring where the rules sometimes matter and other times don't, fights 5 men in a row on separate days, to the backdrop of two guys betting on how much they can cheat each other. So the only plot is a guy beats up townies and his old boxing nemesis. There's no great con, guys. James Woods' Caine is NOT Danny Ocean or even Bret Maverick. He just cheats at boxing - the least noble thing one can do. He cheats at underground boxing, the most scummy and rookie crap a scumbag can do.
Then the resolution - Diggstown is now owned by an foreign (Florida IS a different country) convict now, instead of a local. What a deal! Why does anyone still live in Diggstown?
Diggstown is for those that like to get tricked only. The people who think Last Boy Scout is a great movie. But for the rest of us, it's just too thin on plot and outside of that there's not enough popcorn-eating to work with.

Pass Thru - The Ditch Folk are Taking Over

The Breen goes down one of his strangest rabbit holes (which is saying a lot) yet when he plays an AI from the future who has to come to Earth and clean up mankind. Neil is starting to frighten us.
Pass Thru is what happens with a director's typical 4th movie. Neil spends far too much of the film "honing his craft" and using up precious film space so that he can practice how to use camera's. So unfortunately, Pass Thru isn't crammed full of nonsense; where Fateful Findings is 100% bananas, this is about 50%. So the viewer spends a lot of time staring at Breen looking stoic from various angles, which makes for a very boring journey.
The most frightening part of the film is where Neil is going mentally. I'm worried about his well-being. He might be going to a place that we can't follow. His anger is clearly boiling over and in this film endorses Thanos' "snap" but with less compassion. Yes, Neil Breen has less compassion than Thanos. 
So in the end, Pass Thru is a tough one to get through. There's quite a bit of traditional Breen banana business but for each fun moment there's two atrociously boring or bland sequences. It's a don't from us but for everyone that is a Breen fan.

Gas-s-s-s! - or - The Baby Boomers are hypocrites

When you cut in some psychedelia in the editing booth, your film isn't psychedelic, you just have a movie pile. Gas-s-s-s! misses the mark by about a mile, unless your goal was to one day have proof that the Baby Boomers were completely up their own asses and should never talk about other generations again.
The setup of the film is an interesting idea with the apocalypse coming and the meek inheriting the Earth - with one major problem, the meek are anyone under 25 and goosed on pot, free love and ego. From there you follow a group of bohemians travelling across Texas to a final destination of Barter Town.
Either Corman wanted to make statements about how awful the young Baby Boomers were or was clueless on how awful his antagonists were. This group of hippies we are stuck with rival the St. Elmo's kids as for being terrible people. They're racists, rapists, and only care about themselves, yet are presented as the ones that are going to change the world for the better, ie "break the wheel" ala Khalessi. Yet at no point are their terrible attributes addressed in anyway other than comedically. So prepared to be angry.
Sadly, the movie is pretty horrible - but still must be viewed. It's like having to watch a snuff film so that you can have evidence in a murder trial. Yes it is soul-crushing to view, but it must be done. This is an important film that changed the landscape of budget movies that still is in place today. But try not to throw your remote through the TV.

The Jackie is Gone so Sam can Talk about MCU and Star Wars Not Special

While Jackie is away the boys come out to say stupid things. Sam and Justin give a deep slap across Endgame's face, a thorough look at the current state of the Star Wars universe, some mild Game of Thrones talk and reviews of Bumblebee, The Concorde Affaire '79 and Sorceress.
We discuss the problems with time travel, the snap undo, Cap made out with his daughter, Capt. Chrome serves no purpose, the benefits of George Lucas, how light speed sucks, how to close the too many doors you've opened in Westeros and Jack B gives us a full review on Pet Semetary 2019.

Men of War - It's batshit, literally

 Sometimes a studio puts too much talent behind a terribly stupid movie. Sometimes there's some subtle social commentary that sneaks into the script and then has the competency behind the camera to accurately capture those topics. Then you have action guys who just like to blow everything up. Welcome to Men of War.
I absolutely adore this movie. It suffers from the Idiot Plot, yet has some level of emotion behind everything it tries to achieve. It's like a mashup of Forrest Gump/Platoon and Deadly Prey. Everything is shot well, the location is fantastic, the dialogue is sharp.... until Dolph gets to deliver some one-liners.
Without spoiling much, I have to say that the plot revolves around a couple of corporate dorks hire ex-mercenary Nick Gunar to invade an island, get the natives to sign a legal document or else kill all of them and then.... profit? After learning what their business model is (they aren't selling widgets) Gunar decides they are idiots and isn't going to murder a bunch of women and children for their soon to be bankrupt business partnership. Then insanity ensues.
It's an up and down ride from start to finish with Dolph splitting his time with kicking ass, falling in love with the island and it's people, dealing with the Idiot Corporation, his rival mercenary Keefer (played by the always at an 11 Trevor Goddard) getting some Charlotte Lewis naked playtime and shooting people in the face with a rocket launcher. All of it is a blast (get it?) and is constantly throwing you new curveballs of questionable story-telling. 
This is a must do.

Bubba Ho-Tep - The plot has left the building

Elvis and JFK team up to take down a butt-sucking undead SOB in a nursing home. OR Elvis ends up in a horrible nursing home and struggles to find a reason to keep living. Pick one. You can't have both without muddying up the other. 
While Bubba Ho-Tep should absolutely be praised for accomplishing what it does on only $500,000, it must also be dissed for its non-budget related flaws. Chiefly its duality but also in its production. If you read the back story on this movie, you'll learn that they had a mismatch with the cameras and the level of knowledge on how to run them. So what should have taken 15 days to shoot took 30. That made a lot of stuff in the screenplay that needed to be in film, end up on the floor and a lot of stretching of what was available (which isn't much). This is one of the lowest on content movies we've ever reviewed.
Sadly, this is exceptional work by Bruce Campbell. He is putting everything he's got in the role and is clearly attached to the part, but the horrendous production (lighting, cinematography, makeup, script and plot) get completely in his way and drag everything he does down. Ozzie Davis is great (of course) but he suffers from the same tragedy. It's a shame that both have to lose their skills to a mountain of problems not related to them.
Frankly, at the end of the day, the film is just ruined by it's lack of focus on what it's trying to do. Halfway through, it loses the themes and look it tried to establish in the first half, and the isn't setup to have the second plot work in anyway and thus becomes a lackluster conclusion to something you can't be attached to. 
Some will disagree with us (this is beloved - but likely because people are trying to will it to be good) but this is a straight-up do not from us.

Year 5 in Review: Part 2

Each year we recount the creme' de la crappe, and discuss our very favorite 10 films (each) from the previous year in podcasting. These are the films that are the most important to see. This episode is like a cornucopia of terribly awesome stinkers. Stop what you're doing and watch these movies. Here are numbers 4-1 plus our very favorite movies that were released in 2018.

Year 5 in Review - Part 1

Each year we recount the creme' de la crappe, and discuss our very favorite 10 films (each) from the previous year in podcasting. These are the films that are the most important to see. This episode is like a cornucopia of terribly awesome stinkers. Stop what you're doing and watch these movies. Here are numbers 10-5.

Dune - You gotta keep the angel dust flowing!

A guy with unrealistically great hair, stands atop a giant earthworm (who isn't even wearing a costume) and uses his Alexa-style hand laser to be less effective in combat than just going and buying a regular laser gun. It's Dune and arguably one of our most controversial choices to lampoon.
Dune is that unique mix of "well, that looked really good" and "this is a really accurate representation of the novels (sorta)" on one side while also being complete nonsensical crap and horribly cheesy effects and acting on the other side. Is it a stinker? Probably. Is it also passionately made art? Probably. Its not only a head-scratcher on how you want to label it, its a head-scratcher within its content.
What are the damn rules of the Dune universe? I mean seriously. It's nonsense. There's a space guild that is also a little guy with a vagina mouth that acts as a Mass Relay (see Mass Effect games). There's a telepathic witch guild that gets mad if you have a male child because it won't fulfill the prophecy even though the male child CLEARLY is the prophecy? Also they are bald, because..... There's a guy just puts corks into people's chests or is it ALL the people that live on his planet, like a social security card. The universe's most important commodity is literally just angel dust but if you do enough of it you can bend space and time to your will. I mean duh phuq? 
Aside from all that, it's a pretty basic plot though - these guys are bad and they killed the Duke, so the son is going to get some revengeance and end up as Neo. So try not to get too hung up in the details.
The film is a complete mess. It's disorganized, incoherent, sloppy and too long and rambling. But there is a sort of wonder in its problems. It's the weird kind of stinker that you enjoy, not because it's unintentionally funny, but because it's unintentionally so confusing. Whether you love it or hate it, it's a must watch and must riff movie.