Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

Radical Jack - Jack is not Radical, but the film is!

When you need the toughest of tough guys to play your super agent and lone wolf defender of justice, get that Achy Breaky Heart guy. No man has ever been tougher! But make sure his girlfriend is the one that is the most "radical".
Here's the end result of Radical Jack; Jack is NOT radical, in fact. His most penultimate "action" move to hide under a bed. Not kidding. The film spends the first 3/4 telling us how tough Jack is, what with his smoldering gazes, his Ray-Ban shades, his supreme mullet, his "Renegade" Jeep, his barb-wire tattoo and such. Then we learn he's just not tough at all as he fails to be the catalyst and executor of the climax. It's DeeDee Pfeiffer who is indeed the radical one. "Radical Kate" should be the title of the film.
We just can't understate how poorly put together Radical Jack is. Nothing makes sense, timelines don't add up, Jack builds a shed with no doors, Asahi Guy...on and on and indescribable stupidity abound. This is complemented by it's perfect pacing for lampooning. Get the group together and prepare to have pants filled with pee from laughter. It's like surgery - best that you evacuate before starting.
Despite how awful you think this may look, what with the Billy Ray and all, Radical Jack is an absolute must-do. It's that type of stinker that truly is for everyone. Imagine life without "The Room" and having to try to get your classy friends to start enjoying the perks of crappy movies. Radical Jack is your gateway stinker.  One hit of the Jack and you'll be back! (Copyright!)

Double Down - Tuna fish can do bad things

Neil Breen is back in his directorial debut with this week's trip into the mind of a crazy person. He stars as a double-agent, elite mercenary, computer hacker/security expert, bio-terrorist, cyborg, assassin/vigilante, and just a simple man. It's a Neil showcase into baffling story-telling, yet again.
While Double Down is not near the production that Fateful Findings is, it is still an exceptionally bonkers movie. Nothing makes a lick of sense. It's the type of film that leaves you wondering what the hell is going on throughout. While we have a likely infallible theory on what happens, you'll have to listen to show to find out.
There are some things to know going into this that may make it hard for some listeners and lovers of bad film. About 25% of the film is stock photography. That is A LOT. Another 25% is narration by Breen sometimes over the stock shots and sometimes while he rolls around in dirt in the desert. But let's face it, you're not coming into a Neil Breen movie because you are looking for excitement. You're here for the nonsense and this delivers that in heaps and heaps of bananas.
Double Down is a definite do, but it's recommended you start with Fateful Findings first. This is for the advanced class.
Some things to keep an eye out for: Neil Breen's take on the action star (gently climbing over rocks with difficulty), his technological setup to control the entire world (out of the back of his Mercedes), his balls and his sexual assault on an actress who doesn't want to be there (yes Breen balls), a Canadian Tuxedo as formal military attire, and necrophilia.

Hackers - Making Mark Zuckerberg look cool since 1995!

Once again, we find ourselves "going into the internet" with the incredible speeds of a 28.8k connection. Yet the overt difference here is that there is a wet-t-shirt contest and a mash-up of snowboarder, 'alt' and irreverent fashion trends. It's the clear road-map of not understanding computers, the internet or anyone who surrounded themselves with both of those things. Yipes!
Hackers were never cool. They were never edgy or trendy or care about anything but computers. We were computer nerds in 1995. We only cared about putting Duke Nukem 3D on as many computers as we could find. The characterization of this film is so far from reality and its disconnect from what was actually going on that it's just unfathomable. That's even before we determine how much we hate the characters themselves....
Then there is the complete lack of knowledge of computers themselves. It fits perfectly in with Johnny Mnemonic and The Lawnmower Man in its ineptitude and complete lack of asking someone ANYTHING about computers just one time. However, within the former there is a lot more action that isn't computer-related and the latter has a good sci-fi story buried underneath it's awful film-making and lack of editing. Hackers reigns surpreme in its stupidity.
In the end it's a pretty rough viewing experience and we can only recommend it to a niche market:
You saw it and thought it was good 
You know how dumb it is and you want to share how dumb it is with one of your friends; cuz you're a dick.

Fist of the Vampire - Lay off the presets, Len!

A group of trash vampires waste their immortality so that they can focus on their location-rotating fight club that has less rules than Tyler Durden's. The only thing that can stop them - horrible karate, bullet dodging DEA agents, and post-production effects that are just the presets in Adobe Premiere. Yuck!
Let's get out the disclaimer on this one - it's extremely budget and put together by people who have no experience in film, but hey! They got it done, right? They got their movie finished. So we'll give them that.
The rest of the film though, good night. This is one to steer VERY far away from, fam. It's not necessarily the acting or the "story" or the horrendously bad karate that is the problem. It's the over-editing and after-effects (trademark Adobe), mixed in with the wall-to-wall Nu-Metal. Within 5 minutes, I would argue that 80% of our fandom would abort this within 5 minutes due to it's awful design.
There is also a particular sex-scene that is less sexy than Tommy Wiseau's ass. It's vomit-inducing if you don't like watching ugly people do it. I'm sure they are nice people, but holy hell....
Now, there are some good things sprinkled here and there within. The karate is hilariously bad, the "plot" does move rapidly, and there's some pretty cringe-worthy acting. The plot is unfounded and easily puts these vampires in a bracket of cool below the cave-dwelling dirtballs in John Carpenter's Vampires.
We have to give this one a do not. 

2017 SMABFA Awards

The hottest awards for bad films in 2017 are here and the winners are all set. Listen to the 2017 SMABFA Podcast and check out all the nominees and winners below.
And the Nominees  & Winners are (winner in bold):
Best Bad Movie - The Most Enjoyable Bad Movie
Geostorm
The Great Wall
XXX: Return of Xander Cage
The Space Between Us
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Fan Poll Result - Rings
Worst Bad Movie - The Least Enjoyable Bad Movie
Transformers: The Last Knight
The Mummy
Collateral Beauty
The Snowman
Underworld: Blood Wars
Fan Poll Result - Transformers: The Last Knight
Best Bad Actor - Most Enjoyable Performance by a Male Actor
Gerard Butler - Geostorm
Ice Cube - XXX: Return of Xander Cage
Matt Damon - The Great Wall
Michael Fassbender - The Snowman
Russell Crowe – The Mummy
Fan Poll Result - Russell Crowe - The Mummy
Best Bad Actress - Most Enjoyable Performance by a Female Actor
Abbie Cornish - Geostorm
Tian Jing - The Great Wall
Milla Jovovovich - Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
Nina Dobrev - XXX: Return of Xander Cage
Ellen Page - Flatliners
Fan Poll Result - Abbie Cornish - Geostorm
MST3K Most Riffable - The easiest and most fun to make fun of film while viewing
Geostorm
The Great Wall
Fifty Shades Darker
The Space Between Us
The Dark Tower
Fan Poll Result - Geostorm
Worst Bad Actor - Least Enjoyable Performance by a Male Actor
Tom Cruise - The Mummy
Will Smith - Collateral Beauty
Ethan Hawke - Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
John Depp - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Dane DeHaan - Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Fan Poll Result - Tom Cruise - The Mummy
Worst Bad Actress - Least Enjoyable Performance by a Female Actor
Sofia Boutella - The Mummy
Rhianna - Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Keira Knightly - Collateral Beauty
Helen Mirren - Collateral Beauty
Kim Basinger – Fifty Shades Darker
Fan Poll Result - Sofia Boutella - The Mummy

Last Action Hero - So close to perfection

Click here to see the SMABFA nominations
It was Schwaz' first box office flop and put up the current standard of spending way too much money on film marketing. It ranks high upon the worst returns of all film history. Yet there is a good film here and could have been a hidden gem -- had it not been for Danny and coming into "our world."
You may be among the hordes who avoided Last Action Hero. You should reconsider. It has that stigma of being a horrible film, but if you're a fan of this podcast then you will understand why we put it upon such a high platform with Hell Comes to Frogtown, Joe Vs The Volcano and UHF. While Joe is a far superior production and Hell is a far more efficient production, Last falls into bad movie legend with incredible amounts of money thrown at it, while clearly only going to work with a very small amount of movie goers. It's your classic case of men in ties making horrible decisions.
The primary mistakes the film puts upon its audience is the snivelly Danny (Austin O'Brien). It's not that Austin does a bad job (it's not good either) as a child actor (we've seen FAR worse, looking at you Jake Lloyd), it's just that Danny sucks. This is the last character you want to see in an over-the-top action movie, the whiny child who isn't having fun with us. THEN there is the always awful choice of bringing your fantasy characters through a magic portal into our reality. Our reality sucks. We don't want to be here, and we especially don't want the movie we are escaping our reality from coming into it. Blech. 
Yet every single minute that takes place inside Jack Slater's (Arnold) movie fantasy world is a treat. It's non-stop homage/satire/creation of action films and the characters within them. The stunts are fantastic, the self-deprecating comedy is top-notch, and as always, Arnold delivers non-stop fun and charm. 
Last Action Hero is one our favorite movies and rides that beautiful line between crap and brilliance. Must watch film.
The SMABFA (Stinker Madness Achievments in Bad Film-Making Award) Awards - 2017 Nominations
Best Bad Movie
The Great Wall
Geostorm
Rings
XXX: Return of Xander Cage
The Snowman
The Dark Tower
The Space Between Us
Valerian
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
Worst Bad Movie
The Mummy
Collateral Beauty
Transformers: The Last Knight
The Snowman
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
Geostorm
Flatliners
Underworld: Blood Wars
Fifty Shades Darker
Best Bad Actor
Gerard Butler - Geostorm
Matt Damon - The Great Wall
Shawn Roberts - Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
Vincent D'Onofrio - Rings
Michael Fassbender - The Snowman
Sam Worthington - The Shack
Javier Bardem - Pirates
Ice Cube – XXX
Russell Crow – Mummy
Idris Elba - The Dark Tower
Tom Cruise - The Mummy
Vincent D’Onofrio – Rings
Worst Bad Actor
Dane DeHaan - Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Tom Cruise - The Mummy
Will Smith - Collateral Beauty
John Depp - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Ethan Hawke - Valerian
Val Kilmer – Snowman
Jim Sturgess – Geostorm
Javier Bardem – Pirates
James Dornan (Fifty Shades)
Vin Diesel (xXx)
Matt Damnon (Great Wall)
Best Bad Actress
Astrid Bergès-Frisbey - King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
Nina Dobrev - XXX: Return of Xander Cage
Milla Jovovovich - Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
Tian Jing - The Great Wall
Octavia Spencer - The Shack
Kate Beckinsale - Underworld
Rihanna - Valerian
Britt Robertson - The Space Between Us
Abbie Cornish: Geostorm
Toni Collette – XXX
Deepika Padukone – XXX
 Rebecca Ferguson (The Snowman)
Ellen Page (Flatliners)
Worst Bad Actress
Sofia Boutella - The Mummy
Kate Winslet - Collateral Beauty
Helen Mirren - Collateral Beauty
Dakota Johnson - Fifty Shades Darker
Sofia Boutella - Mummy
Mila Jovovich - Resident Evil
Keira Knightly - Collateral Beauty
Nina Dobrev - XXX
Kim Basinger – Fifty Shades
Laura Haddock – Transformers
Rhianna – Valerian
MST3K Riffibility
Rings
The Great Wall
Geostorm
The Snowman
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
Fifty Shades Darker
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
The Space Between Us
The Mummy
The Dark Tower
Most Nominations
The Mummy - 7
XXX: Return of Xander Cage - 7
Geostorm - 6
The Snowman - 6
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets - 6
The Great Wall - 5
Collateral Beauty - 5
Fifty Shades Darker - 5
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter - 5
Rings - 4
The Dark Tower - 3
The Space Between Us  - 3
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword 111 - 3
Underworld: Blood Wars - 2
Transformers: The Last Knight - 2
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales - 2
The Shack - 2
Flatliners - 2

Simon Sez - Simon never says "Simon Says"

Dennis Rodman returns in the form of a bumble-bee to plant the foundation of the XXX squad, by making Dane Cook the CEO. Its truly in the list of worst action movies ever made and could be the gold standard for enjoyably dumb action movies...if it wasn't for Dane Cook.
Dane Cook blows. You know this, so we aren't going to devote time here to review his schtick - what will do instead is warn you that he is truly at his least formed here, with the most "punch me" act ever captured on celluloid. He's worse than Jar Jar. 
Now the good - it's WAY OVER THE TOP in the action department. Imagine Jackie Chan kung-fu and stunts but performed on screen by people who should be hot dog vendors. Then tack all that on top of Pumaman level of rear projection effects. It's outlandishly fun when you aren't staring down the barrel of an unloaded Dane Cook. He blocks your vision from the good.
Then there is the plot of the film - an oblivious double kidnapping pit the fathers of said kids into a series of scheduling conflicts and interference by Simon's (Rodman) team who have no clue what is even going on. Somehow there is a colonel, a laser that can't work, a villain who may be the reincarnation of Jerry Lewis and thinks the Microsoft Office Paper Clip is the bomb.
So imagine a XXX/Pumaman mashup with no talent, yes less talent than Pumaman. It's so close to brilliance, but sadly in the end the "comedy" troupe here drops it down by three stars to just a barely do.

The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh - There is no giant fish, Jackie

Nothing says "screwball" comedy like professional basketball in the late 70's. So why not have a film about a terrible team that becomes great via the powers of astrology? Toss in Dr. Julius Erwing, Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Meadowlark Lemon and repeat stinker stars like Branscombe Richmond and Julius Carry III and you've got some loonie business that is right up our alley.
On paper this film should be one to steer clear from. Even just watching the trailer is enough to give casual viewers of crummy films the heebie-jeebies. Yet somehow there is a serious level of charm to this film beyond the obvious live-action WB cartoon version that Jonathan Winters was shooting for. There's a seriously well blended volume of comedy of all types that award both fans of basketball and those that loathe all sports.
Everyone loves the Harlem Globetrotters and this film reinforces why that works.
The real stinker in The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh is the music. Imagine music worse (yet more catchy) than Cannon's The Apple. Yes, THAT bad of music. And it is arguably more full of bad music than The Apple as well. Woof.
We thoroughly enjoyed The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh and if you like films like Odds and Evens and Condorman, you're going to enjoy it too.

Cliffhanger - The Hot Tub Party That Changed the World

Stallone gives us further evidence he didn't write Rocky as this screenplay serves us up with some of the worst dialogue and biggest head-slapping action sequences we had in the 90s and THAT's really saying something. Also...there are 0 cliffhangers. 
Somehow critics have been quite pleased with Cliffhanger as evidenced by a 69% on RottenTomatoes and 60 Metacritic score. How that happened is one of the biggest surprises that this film offers up. Don't confuse yourself - this thing is enjoyable for sure but it is as dumb as anything. It's Roadhouse dumb. How any professional film critic could give this a positive review and put it alongside films that try to make statements and be true art and then look themselves in the mirror is confounding. So this falls right into our "Good Movie Debunked" category of film review.
The showcase is the dialog which comes to a head with the team of "expert" criminals. These guys are good enough at burglaring that they heist $100 million from the US Treasury Department. You'd likely get executed for this and at minimum sent to Gitmo and never heard from again. So they must be the best of the best right? Like Ocean's Eleven clever and Hans Grubber organized, right? Well that is clearly not the case. This team is just a bunch of 16 year old boys having a piss contest even if that means they fail in their mission. It's astounding how they even got into the car on the way to their big crime without killing each other. Astounding.
The acting is atrocious, the dialog is hall-of-fame bad, the action is over-the-top dumb, and the idiot plot is in full effect. This one is a true joy to watch for all the wrong reasons.

Zardoz - Utopia is an illusion, dudes

It's Sean Connery in a man-diaper with bullets. It's a genderless Utopia while showcasing knockers. It's a whirlwind of confusion and questionable film-making decisions. It's a serious mess covered in psychedelia while making some heavy, heavy, heavy social commentary. Get ready for your mind to be melted.
Imagine you've got Zardoz in mind and you sit down to write it. "Open on a gun-barfing god's floating head." Then try to go from there. Zardoz is just bizarre in how it decides to get to were it needs to. It may have been John Boorman's intention to distract the viewer with the weirdness so that when he reveals the plot and message to the viewer they weren't prepared for it. Along the way though, wow.... You might have your brain turn into rubber and question the use of your weiner/vaginer.
Connery's Zed is at no point a likable character as he is the deliverer of death and rape to the poor and weak for his entire career, but he is a sympathetic character. Connery is a blast throughout, if you're a fan of leaping around and chucking women across barns all while wearing his infamous bandolier equipped Euro mankini.
Zardoz is easily argued as the best post-apocalyptic movie ever made for what it says about society, culture, religion, truth against power, greed, science vs familiarity, and for possibly making one of the craziest predictions ever - Amazon Alexa. It's excellent and should be praised for what it does on a shoe-string budget, and what it says about ourselves and what we want to become.