Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

Rambo: Last Blood - Better Kill Them Twice

Rambo rides off into the sunset (or dies in a pool of blood) but takes many, many, many people down with him on the way. It's a bloody, sticky, mess that will fall into the either love-it or hate-it folly.
So let's get this out of the way first - Rambo: Last Blood looks like absolute crap. Whomever shot this should be sacked. Very few shots look even as good as most DTV films and each vehicle scene features completely unnecessary rear-projection. Why in the hell does this have to look so awful?
Secondly, it's biggest flaw for Rambo fans is a particular scene that, yes, sets up the plot but is SO far out of character and John's skills and how he's managed all of his strategies that is just so out of place and dumb that may ruin the next twenty minutes of the film for you.
However, if you can get past those two things, this thing is hot crap. At no point does John turn into "I'm getting too old for this" or even a Gran Turinoesque Clint Eastwood. John craves and thrives when there is trouble to be had and it doesn't matter how old he gets. There's some decent dialogue that reinforces how John looks at the world and then how he proceeds to end bad guy's lives. It's a blast. 
It should also be mentioned that Stallone is great here. He's just as action packed as he always has been. He doesn't look like doing this will cause him to spend a week covered in Ben-Gay and at no point does he seem to be a lover of Worther's Originals. When he punches a guy, it seems like it will hurt real bad or possibly cause his fist to enter your body in holes you didn't have before. 
So while it has a few issues, it's still a blast and if you come into a Rambo film expecting to see something else here, we're not sure what you're doing with your life. It's a do.

Baby Geniuses - Parents Just Don't Understand

We all love babies right? Now what if we replaced babies with 6 year old kids with stunted growth and pasted their heads onto the bodies of little people? No? How about some CGI lip-syncing so they can talk? No? Ok, well how about stuffing a child actor into a bin of soiled undies? Yes, please.
So Baby Geniuses and it's followup are two of the lowest rated movies that have ever existed, despite the overwhelming amount of fake 10/10 reviews on IMDB, it still was a box-office smash. Why? Because people love babies! Babies can do no wrong! Even when they are covered in dookie, murdering bums, imitating John Travolta and keeping the secrets of life to themselves out of selfish dickery!
I'm not really sure if people who went to this for love of babies actually paid attention to what these awful children are actually up to.
On the other side of the coin, Kathleen Turner and Christopher Lloyd are evil because we're told their evil even though their actions and motivations are parallels of our "hero adults" Kim Cattrell and Peter MacNicol which only reveals more about these horrific little baby monsters.
While, we can't in good faith say that Baby Geniuses is a do for fans of crappy films, it's so close to being one of the greatest bad movies ever if only it could have stuck with babies doing karate and diving into dumpsters, but sadly tries to put the good-feelers into it's clearly moronic intended audience. Do or don't, what the hell do we care. Our souls have been eroded by dancing babies.

2019 Spooktacular - The Pumpkinhead Reboot

This week on the show we thoroughly review everything important this Halloween with regards to crummy movies. Special guest Tucker comes into the studio and delivers the laughs with his "beardy" style of humor.
We review - 
Pumpkinhead (1988)
The Gate (1987)
C.H.U.D. (1984)
Sometimes They Come Back (1991)
The Lighthouse (2019)
Satanic Panic (2019)
Child's Play (2019)
The Lodgers (2017)
We write up the reboot of Pumpkinhead; "Pumpkinhead Goes to Sturgess", we solve the homeless heating problems, Tucker bans walls, how to lose a pie-eating contest, washed-up pirate ships, and a special Halloween round of "Pop Quiz, Hotshot".
Sit back and enjoy our 2019 Spooktacular episode!

Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Weird Gay Adventure

Freddy is back and this time he lulls us to sleep with whale song and LBGTQ social commentary! It begs the ultimate question - does Freddy actually appear in this movie?
Freddy 2 is an absolute bonkers experience and through-out is a complete and utter-turd. At no point does it make sense that it was a commercial success and likely should have destroyed the Freddy franchise (and thus would have prevented the LOTR trilogy from happening) but somehow was a massive win for New Line and kept the doors open for another ten years. I guess that really states to the allure of Mr. K.
Yet it can only exist in 1 of 2 ways, both of which have problems:
1) It's an allegory for the traumas/dangers of being a closeted homosexual in the homophobia of the 80s drummed up by Reagan's AIDS debacle.2) It's all a dream from start to finish in which Freddy takes 90 minutes to murder one kid.
1 can't be it, because it then opens up a ton of plot holes with Freddy's powers and if he even exists in the movie or not. Was Jesse just using Freddy as a scape-goat for his "villanous" homosexual ways? He's just a copy-cat? But then how is it that he explodes a parakeet? Riddle me that, guys? Then on the other side, if Freddy IS possessing Jesse then how is it he's murdering teens when they're awake?
2 can't be it, because the producers and writers say that is not the case. If we can't trust the people who wrote it then who can we trust? The walls of reality are crumbling!
Maybe this film does break the rules of our universe and now we are all living in Freddy's nightmare? Either way, you should probably check out Freddy 2 and try to help us make some sense out of the damn thing.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Frampton Comes Dead

So it turns out that Peter Frampton sucks - oh you knew that already? The Brothers Gibb surround themselves by people who can't sign and play as well as they do and let everyone else drag them into the depths of garbage. But Barry's hair looks amazing, at least.
Sgt Pepper's on it's face is a "do not do" movie before it even starts - you don't cover The Beatles unless you really are supremely talented, which The Bee Gees completely are, but the problem is that they allowed other people to be involved. You've got George Burns, Steve Martin, Alice Cooper, Peter Nicholas (yeah, who?), Donald Pleasance, Stargard and Frankie Howerd all covering Beatles tracks. Look, only a few people get to do that and none of you are qualified. Stop it! Stop IT!
And leading the "not-good-at-stuff" is the constant O-faced, Peter Frampton. He is the absolute worst. Consistently off-key and when "on" his face is off. His "acting" (he doesn't utter a single line of dialogue) is about as good as his mouth guitar.
As a whole, Sgt. Pepper's is a complete disaster and nothing works within it's pieces. Yet it doesn't have any of the yummy crummy goodness like The Apple, Breakin 2 or Can't Stop the Music. It has its occasional moments but you have to look at Peter Frampton to get to those points so its not really a fair trade-off.

Druids - When do the druids show up?

Christopher Lambert dons the worst hair we've ever seen and leads an uprising against the Romans only to ultimately accomplishing nothing and dies off screen. There's nothing good about this film.
Zzzz....Oh I'm sorry. You caught me napping after watching Druids. What did I miss? Oh, nothing. Absolutely nothing? Ok. I'll move on to something else.
Seriously, this movie sucks. Even for fans of Lambert's nonsense. Nothing happens. It's such a crappy Braveheart knock-off but fails in that it the world has not changed at the end of the movie. He doesn't even give the Romans that much grief. It's about as much grief as buying a $30 worth of lottery scratch tickets and finding 10 of them that are worth $1. Whoa the grievance...
Oh yeah - where the hell are the damn druids?!?! 
Seriously, don't spend a second of your time watching Druids. Go plant a flower. Eat a sandwich. Read a book about Gaul. Do ANYTHING but watch Druids.

Black Dog - The best bad truckin' movie ever

Patrick Swayze says Dalton was a weiner and gifts us the pyschopathic, blood-lusting, and man of the road - Jack Cruise. Along the way Meatloaf delivers his best, but still manages to get Asahi Guy murdered and bankrupts his own villainy scheme before it gets started.
Lets just get this out of the way - Black Dog is fantastic and is one of the few shining examples of perfectly bad in every way. Every bit of it is inept from the music, the casting, the script, the acting, the directing and the editing and has the "it" factor on all those elements for bad movie fans. It's a glorious seam-less mess that you couldn't set out to do such a bad job and have it work so well together. It's stunningly perfect and beautiful and a complete train-wreck.
My next paragraph would like to be - "The best part of Black Dog is..." but I seriously can't say that. As soon as I think of something, say Meatloaf's character Red's seriously flawed villainy scheme (stealing his own stuff, make deal for stuff, rinse, repeat - never make any money) is instantly thrust into competition against say Asahi Guy's lack of steering or braking in the face of impending spolsion death or Jack Cruise showing his family how murder is just a darn good family activity or the wonderfully terrible ATF and FBI agent dynamics. There's no "best part" of this movie because it's ALL best part.
So stop what you're doing, fire this thing up whether alone or with friends (you'll just end up watching it again anyways), try not to fall off the couch with laughter and enjoyment and most importantly - do NOT be like Jack Cruise - I prefer breathing, thank you.

Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo - or How To Save the World

Let's face it - this movie stinks and rules. There's so little happening but no one notices because it's masked by CONSTANT break dancing. It's wall-to-wall. There might be more more dance/musical numbers in this than Caberet and Chicago and Grease combined. Now that might scare off the casual bad-movie goer who is here for movies staring shirtless men with guns, but don't be afraid - this thing is electric dog-poo on fire.
It's really something of a special deal when a movie crams this much non-diegetic, metaphorical story-telling using dance as the device and still manages to contain as much mind-boggling nonsense within those dance sequences. For most of us, we just check out during dance numbers as they are just a showcasing of people's abilities to move their butt around, but this is not that. There's a constant tone of bonkers throughout these numbers and must be watched; especially the surrounding extras.
The acting is hilarious, with two non-leads stealing every scene. The actors who played Lucia and Rhonda were both so bad that they had to be over-dubbed and the dub is absolutely laughable. Try not to fall out of your chair when Lucia helps Turbo bust out of the hospital.
It's an absolute spectacle of ineptitude, all while still being the most competent film Golan and Globus ever put together - and they did it in less than six months.
Breakin 2': Electric Boogaloo is an absolute must do for its historical importance but beyond that - it's just a damn good time.

The Adventures of Pluto Nash - "Adventures" is a strong word

The biggest flop in Hollywood history visits the podcast, eats all our food, backups the sewer system and kidnaps our children and then quietly makes us forget that any of it ever happened. Will it be worse than The Love Guru?
Nope.
The weird thing about Pluto Nash is that is just nothing. It doesn't make you angry. The jokes aren't groan-worthy. The plot doesn't cause your eyes to roll so hard they pop out. It's just a bunch of nothing. There may not be another movie that has ever made us feel so dispassionate towards it. We just don't care about it - not even enough to hate.
Which is likely it's fatal flaw. Don't get us wrong, it's a turd sandwich. But does it belong in the same discussion as other bottom 100 movies? If you gave a Ted Talk about the worst movies of all time, you'd be a jackass because Ted Talks are super narcissistic but you'd also spend zero time talking about the biggest flop in Hollywood history.
"Pluto Nash? Oh yes of course, but lets move on to House of the Dead."
So just don't bother with The Adventures of Pluto Nash. No one else has.

Angel Has Fallen - The Last Banning?

Banning comes back once again to save the President once again from an assassination attempt where not everything is not as it seems once again. It's the number one movie in America, but is it enough to keep the Banning franchise alive?
Make no mistake, Banning 3's plot statement above is the same as the other two but this film is a departure from the other two. Where the other two are a thin plot stuff around ludicrous action scenes and Banning eating the flesh of his enemies, this one mostly has Banning on the defensive and reacting to the violence around him instead of reveling in it. And while the villain is a complete moron (we'll get to that later) there's nothing really stupid that takes place in Banning's world. Let's put it this way - if there were no Banning 1 and 2, Banning 3 wouldn't be on the podcast. It's just a solid (if forgettable) action movie.
Now the villain, played by Danny Huston, keeps this inside the realm of the idiot plot from the bad guys standpoint. Banning of course, doesn't apply to the idiot plot because all he does is kill bad guys so it's not FULL idiot plot. However, wow. This company that Danny Huston's character runs has no chance of ever avoiding subpoena's and Congressional investigations. Like the day their file their incorporation, the company is all sent to Gitmo - because evil and COMPLETELY bad at being a bad guy is a dangerous combo.
It is clear that Gerald Butler has lost a step (he broke his neck in the last one and then got in a motorcycle crash right before this one) and some people might be a little disappointed in that (see Sam) but he's still charming, fun and kick-ass Banning - just a different, less psychopathic version of himself. Yet the real star of the show is Nick Nolte who plays Old Man Banning and is an absolute treat. Usually 2x of your fave action guy sucks, but 2x Banning is wonderful. Nolte completely steals the show and gives arguably the best performance that's ever been in a Banning movie.
For you? Maybe. If you don't love Banning by now, this one isn't going to bring you in to the warm, loving, fun and just darn good people community you sick, soulless bastard. But if you're like the rest of us, it just depends on if you like a "better" Banning movie, but less fun that the others. I for one, loved it and hope that this isn't the last time we see Mike Banning.