Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

Angels' Brigade - Or is it Revenge?

A super-elite team of hot ladies formulate to take down all of the drugs in the US. Instead they get a high school teacher kidnapped, a teenager shot and possibly killed, ruin a man's salesman career, and watch a man get eaten by a dog all so they can take down roving tampon salesman. Seven From Heaven indeed!
Man, when you line up movies from the late 70s this is strikes all the bells. A hot van with rockets, machine guns and a dirt bike with machine guns on it in the back - check. Busty ladies with no bras kicking ass - check. Drunk Peter Lawford - check. A winded Jack Palance chasing Darby Hinton over patios - check. Explosions, explosions, explosions - check! So why isn't this in the top 10 greatest bad movies ever?
Well...a its PG...weirdly. The opening shootout is like a GI JOE episode; hot lead is flying everywhere but not one person manages to get shot or sploded. There's little left to the imagination with the chests due to very loose shirts and no bras, but there is 0 nudity. Then there's plenty of "comedy" foley work when people jump or punch guys. A little live-action cartooning that we all hate so much. Why did they choose to shoot for PG in a drive-thru movie? The PGness doesn't fit and drops it down a couple stars for sure.
Then there is 2 absolutely unnecessary and boring scenes that account for about 20 minutes (the Nazis and the beach scene). Those are eyeroll-heavy and unfortunate.
Outside of those factors, this thing is hot trash. For its problems, there is a ton more good here to make up for them. It's faults keep it out of the greatest bad movies ever, but it's strengths would have got it in the discussion at least. So this is a must-do from us.

Hard Cash - Hard Pass

When you must put your slowly dieing career into the dumpster forever, the fast path is to team up with Christian Slater in a crime-caper. A band of bozos get caught in an dirty FBI sting and must steal all the gold for themselves...and they only thing stopping them is their own idiocy.
We'll start by saying that this ALMOST has something. There's bookends of banana business but that squishy look-warm middle bit drags it back into the depths of quite not interesting. Despite it having the worst produced car chases, worse than SNL rear-projection, Verne Troyer in a toilet with a dart-gun, Val Kilmer giving his belief in his characters one last try, and Bill Forysthe in a washing machine, there's just not enough fun here to put it in the do column.
It's almost like it doesn't know what it wants to be - either a screwball bumbling crime gang movie or a hard-boiled heist movie with lots of betrayal and twists. 
And then there is Jose. At 3 points in time, an apparent unrelated passerby becomes either "comedy" or a very strange and unclear metaphor. If someone could explain Jose to us, we'd be grateful.
Sadly, we must say - do not.

Batman Forever - More butts and nipples!

It's raining bats! Hallelujah! Nothing needs a little sexy sprinkled into it like Batman. Joel Schumacher decides that what the masses want to see are a bunch of butts in spandex. Now with nipples!
Batman Forever is a bit of a pill to swallow. Going from the very pale and stark Tim Burton films to this is a complete 180 shift. It's bright, vivid, colorful, loud, and filled with butts. It's like Ricky Martin was a technical adviser. Some might have a serious issue with this.
But I ask you one thing to consider upon revisit - is Batman: The Movie not much the same? We see this more of a sequel to the Adam West Batman than anything that Tim Burton or DC Comics had put before it. Under that perspective it's really hard to decide if Schumacher failed there.
Is it dumb? Oh yeah. Is it poorly acted? Somewhat, it's a 50/50 split between the good guys and bad guys. Is the writing atrocious? You betcha. But is it generally fun? Is it a fast 2 hours? Does it have Batman (see Batman Returns) - yes, yes and yes this is a Batman movie!
Whether it stinks or not is up for debate, but that really is for you to decide for yourself. It walks a very tight rope between being a crummy movie or a wild experiment that succeeds in its goals. We tend to lean towards not stinking.

I Believe in Santa Claus - I don't believe this movie, though

"When the leader of the African rebels starts to interrogate Santa Claus and his fairy friend - " is the start of a sentence that someone must say after watching this film. Shortly afterwards it's "then his kids grab some guns to free Santa from the rebels". WTF?
I Believe in Santa Claus (or J'ai rencontré le Père Noël in the original French) is a baffling film that turns out is just a vehicle for soundtrack sales that led to a Milli Vanilli situation - so possibly story took a pretty big back seat. Little can be said about it that will do the viewing experience justice. It's absolutely insane AND a Christmas movie. 
What we find with it, is that it could easily be your next annual Xmas movie. It's fun, it's stupid, its crazy, and there's a little something for everyone - including you Dad. This is must see viewing for any fan of bad movies during the usually unviewable Christmas movie season.

Deck the Halls - Your dick is out

When it comes to the Christmas Flop, there's not too many floppier than 2006's Deck the Halls. I could be the groan-inducing jokes, the two one-time (and future) A-listers with their careers on the skids, or the really cliche and played plot. But mostly it's just that you hate the characters and want them to explode in a ball of fire.
Both of these men are horrible people. Which works great in a forum like Always Sunny but not so much in the yearly family outing at the movie theater with the cousins from Des Moines. Both Steve and Buddy are completely unlikable from the start - frame 1. You can't do that. When you have this plot (Dads take things too far!) you need at least your protagonist to be both likable and identifiable so that when the dads shake hands and treat each other with respect at the end, you have a location to return your character to with the viewer. This doesn't have it. Steve's a dick at the beginning and middle and end.
Aside from your disgust with the two people you have to watch for the next hour and half, the gags are awful and the jokes are poorly presented and delivered. Nothing is funny (aside from one unintentional laugh brought to you by a different movie playing in one scene). So there's nothing good here guys. Steer clear.

Batman Returns - Without Batman!

Well if Die Hard is an Xmas Movie well so is this turd. Batman makes his debut on the show, yet manages to avoid being in the Batman movie. Catwoman is the un-sexy. Walkan doesn't Walkan out and Danny Devito gets thrown under the bus. Everything people think about this film is wrong.
First off, and here's you breaking point - BATMAN ISN'T IN THE BATMAN MOVIE!!! At the 1 hour mark, Batman has only been in the "Batman" movie for 123 seconds. 
Second off, Catwoman is sold hard to be sexy. But she's really really not. I mean there's a certain level of crazy that people will put up with if it's hot stuff but her nuttiness is over-the-top. She's boner-reducing. (see the "sexy" cat bath scene and then really analyze your definition of sexy)
Then there's the penguins. The Penguin himself has very dubious motivations (end game is to murder all the children? Then what?). He's literally a penguin, man when he never needs to be. He gets a Jungle Book like origin story except take Mowgli out of the jungle, put him under the zoo in the sewers and change his parents from wolves to penguins?!?! And you people don't question this?!?!? Why are there thousands of penguins living in the sewer?!?
Despite all the stupidity and poor decisions, Batman Returns is just kinda boring. There's far too much unnecessary dialogue, inter-personal drama exposition, origin stories, "crime" meetings, poopy-faces and penguin meetups. Take your 80% on Rotten Tomatoes and shove it. You're wrong.

The Happening - No One Knows

The film that puts you directly into the mind of the characters and the writer/director at the same time - you'll feel confusion and without direction. By the end you'll be giving the same answer as the movie - "I don't know!"
Not even M. Knight can say what this movie is directly about. Ask him 6 different times and you'll get 6 different answers. One could put this into the sub-genre of disaster movies, but please, someone tell us definitively what the disaster is. The best that can be done is "The trees take revenge on man for invading their environment" but that just opens up more questions that can only be answered with "I don't know!" The on-screen scientists can only say "I don't know". Wahlburg never figures out what's going on and repeatedly says "I don't know". We don't know!
Despite a few glimmers of ridiculousness, the film is pretty damn boring and consists mostly of people walking while no one has a clue what is going on. There's dialogue piled upon other dialogue just there to tell us "See! These are real Earth people." There's nothing happening that moves the story forward, only reinforcing that Shyamalyan had no clue what to do with this pile of crap.
Steer clear. There's just nothing here.
Streaming Do's and Don'ts
Mindwarp - Amazon Prime
Maniac - Amazon Prime
Merlin: The Return - Amazon Prime

Howard the Duck - Are duck-boobs rated R?

It's been a long time coming and it's now finally time to delve into the complexities of the dark comedy/action thriller about a duck, man. George Lucas puts on his producer hat and then proceeds to lose all the money.
Howard the Duck is one of the hardest films we've ever had to review. Not because its that hard to watch (although it's chock full of groan worthy moments), but just because it's so hard to determine what the heck it is. Is it a kids movie? Is it a comedy? What's the moral or the point, really? It's just very hard to define and that makes ones expectations pretty hard to narrow down. I've tried to use our blog tag system to give some single words as to what it is - yet the only thing I can come up with is that it's an 80's movie.
The effects, the audio, Tim Robbins, and the animatronics are all top-tier performances but they disappear behind Munchie-levels of hyjinx. Once again the word comes to haunt a film and put it into the realms of the bottom 100 films. Just when you're finally about to relax and stop screaming at the idiocy before you, Howard gets into yet another series of buffoonery that make you want to break your remote between your teeth.
Yet, on the grand scale of things it's really not that bad - but it's not very good either. The main obstacle or barrier to entry is that this film is truly for no one. There's no one we can recommend this film to. Nobody. It's not that you're going to be bored or even that annoyed, it's just who the hell is this for????
Streaming Do's and Don'ts
Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child
Puppetmaster 3: Toulon's Revenge

The Charles Bronson Unspectacular

Justin and Sam fly solo with Jackie being served Brundle-Steak in St. Louis. Instead of bumping Sam's segment week after week, he's getting his own show to discuss 15 Charles Bronson movies - hope you like guys that don't act!
Bronson Reviews - ALL on Amazon Prime
Farewell, Friend
Rider in the Rain
The Mechanic
Mr. Majestyk
Death Wish (again)
Love and Bullets
Death Wish II (again)
10 to Midnight
The Evil That Men Do
Death Wish 3 (again)
Death Wish 4: The Crackdown
Streaming Do's and Don'ts
Skyscraper - Rental Services
The Escape Plan 2 - Netflix
Martial Law - Amazon Prime
Martial Law II - Amazon Prime

Howling II: Wait..hold on. MY Sister's a Werewolf?

Buckle up for banana business as were-monkey-wolves try to throw a killer birthday party. Every body is invited. Leave your head at the door. It'll be a bloody good time. Ok..well unless Christopher Lee and some townies are party-crashers. Then you'll get shot up pretty good.
When you put Reb Brown next to Sir Christopher Lee, and then have a bunch of guys in Planet of the Apes costumes pretend (or not?) be werewolves, you're destined to have a mind-boggling mess on your hands. This thing is bafflingly bad. The events that transpire are sorta clear, but why they happen is absolutely nonsense. Best we can determine is that a lady's birthday orgy gets interrupted because he brother shows up.
It's gory as hell, hilarious from the opening frames, chock full of nudity, awful one-liners (from the forever wooden Reb), 80's new wave, insanely uncomfortable costumes and plenty of terrible acting and dialogue. Howling II is exactly what one signs up for in enjoying bad movies.