Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

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.

Beastmaster 2 - Dar hails a taxi

"Let's take the barbarian guy out of his world of fantasy and put him in our world of taxes and endless advertising," said a man in a tie once or twice. Unfortunately, for said tie guy, no fan of film has ever said, "Yes I want that." Yet this travesty of the genre still attempted to woo audiences by sending the Beastmaster into Los Angeles so we can watch what happens when he wants to get pizza. Hooray!
While the premise of this film is one that typically infuriates fans (see Masters of the Universe and Jason Takes Manhattan), Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time pleases from end to end. It has some sort of charm that doesn't make sense. The jokes are total crap. The acting is painful. There's no boobs. Yet somehow it all adds up to shenanigans that simple entertain lovers o' the stupid.
The true highlight is Wings Hauser's Arklon, who is arguably the lowest IQ villain in cinema history. His plan is seriously to blow up his world. He has already conquered the world, yet he thinks blowing it up will give him more power. There isn't some mystical element that blowing the world up turns him into a god or anything. He just wants a neutron bomb to blow the whole damn thing up, including himself. Ok, let's put that aside. In order to accomplish his goal of suicide and world-ending destruction, he decides to enlist the unwilling support of LA Girl, Jackie (Kari Wuhrer) who knows nothing of nuclear weapons but knows a lot about 90's fashion. Standing right next to Arklon is the witch Lyranna (Sarah Douglas) who has a great rack, wants to bang him, rule the world at his side, has superpowers, knows where the bomb is, has the means to get there and continually helps him without getting a single utterance of "thank you". Arklon's moronic antics culminate when he falls into a lake of fire and shouts his victory at Dar - and then burns up to death. Yup, you sure won buddy.
Beastmaster 2 is a breed of a different cat (or painted black tiger) from the first one in all sense. It should suck, but is a true majestic triumph of crap. Do it.

Steel - We'd rather have you just slam it, Shaq

He's a blue-collar Batman, that comes loaded with super-strength and a compassionate, pacifistic outlook. Slap on a bunch of not-bulletproof metal armor and give him a hammer/gun and Oracle (from Batman) and you've got Shaq looking pretty doofy.
So it stinks, sure. But we think this film is abused a little too much. It's currently at a 2.8 on IMDB and a 1.4 on Letterboxd. That puts it below Batman & Robin, and Catwoman. It's not even close to that bad. By your standard movie goer rating scale, this is just a 4. By our standards, it's a little higher than that. We make no claim that it's awesome but in no way is as awful as Catwoman. It's just a shitty movie.
However, it does have it's moments. The action is filled with dumbness. Steel's powers and weapons look terrible on screen. Shaq himself, in Steel Armor, looks like he belongs in Flash Gordon and he's just too damn big to be taken seriously. It appears the film-makers may have realized this and crammed this jobber with loads of camp. 
For some odd reason, someone thought it would be a great idea to draw a lot of attention to Shaq's dong. He continually gets shot by future weapons in the weiner, the camera hovers around it, and there's some pretty serious innuendo about size and his pelvic area. Yet it clearly should be targeted towards children - the movie, not Shaq's junk. Very strange decisions made.
It's a close call but we think Steel is a 2/3 do.

Christmas Evil - I Saw Mommy get Santa's Beard on Her Knee

 When your mom has a beard on her knee from a man who may or may not be your dad or Santa, you're best option is to obsess over Christmas until you're in your thirties and then you go all Buffalo Bob so that you can become the actual Santa. Not just copy cat. Actually Santa.
Christmas Evil is arguably one of the strangest Xmas films ever created. It was made a time when horror movies tried to play on any holiday and the jingly time was no different. See (but don't watch) such films as Santa's Slay, Santa Claws, Don't Open til Christmas, Black Christmas, etc... However there's a complete banana-factor to this feature.
Unfortunately to get to that banana-factor you have to go through a fairly uneventful montage of a man going all Santa. The performances are all solid and the cinematography is competent especially considering this is a drive-thru film. So that leaves you with an hour of not really having much to do. It's quiet, slow-moving and leaves not much room for riffing. I wouldn't call it boring, per se, but if you're coming for a mover-this ain't the one.
However, in the end, you've been left with one of the most clear, "Wait, what?" moments in any genre of film, let alone a holiday film. We won't go into the final 10 seconds of Christmas Evil here, but it makes the whole experience worth it. 
Happy Holidays, Stinker Family!
Streaming Do's and Don'ts
I Believe in Santa Claus w/ Rifftrax on Amazon Prime
Christmas Dragon - Amazon Prime
Ator: The Fighting Eagle - Amazon Prime
Tarzan - TV Series on Amazon Prime

Jingle All the Way - Booster Sucks, yo!

When you think of the holidays, you always think of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Maybe you just think of Arnold all the time. Which fits perfectly into the Xmas spirit theme for this film -- don't learn any lessons of Christmas, don't change how you feel about life and commit heinous crimes in the search of consumerism that you fail to accomplish.
Beyond how unbelievably bad it is overtly, I mostly want to talk about its failures for being a Christmas movie (as is tradition for our holiday specials). The primary problem here is that it can't even be an Xmas movie. It's a movie that takes place during Christmas (kiss my ass, all who say Die Hard is a Christmas movie), but it fails to achieve any Spirit of Christmas themes (hell, even The Star Wars Holiday Special manages that). 
Here's where people will say it makes a Christmas movie:
It takes place during Xmas 
Howard (Arnold's character) restores his relationship with his son via Christmas
It shows the consumerism of Christmas and man's greed during the holiday season but Howard finds a way to be better than that.
Here's the rub in order:
1. So what? Troll 2 is about eating food, does that mean it's a Thanksgiving movie? This line of logic that says "A film takes place on X time so therefore it's a holiday film because a major holiday is shown within it" is garbage.
2. Howard does NOT restore his relationship with his son via Christmas because this is clearly not the first time their relationship has been damaged/repaired within the same day. It's quite clear that this crap happens all the time. It's just Tuesday.... and also happens to be Christmas. In order to make this message, the time of Christmas and all its "holly jolly - be nice to your neighbors and family" stuff must be the vehicle for learning your lesson, not just the backdrop of this weeks poor fathering/becoming a good father debacle.
3. Sure, it does show people being manic during the holiday season. However, Howard doesn't rise above it or even partake in it for the resolution of the movie. The film can't even make the (bad) statement that if you buy toys for your kids, they'll have a good Christmas. Because Howard doesn't even buy the toy. He falls bass-ackwards into the toy. Basically, someone mistakenly hands it to him and he hands it to his son and takes all the credit for getting it. Completely not the spirit of Christmas (even the cynical take of it's another corporate holiday). Bleh.
It stinks, really, really, really bad. It's cringe-worthy in points. The written jokes are terrible. The effects are worse than PumaMan. But it's a must do for all. It's a staple in holiday films and the one you can always go to when you're tired of all the traditional movies and the staples of the season. Watch this and try to hide your own cynicism from your grandma. Screw her. She's a blatant racist.

Double Team - Baby Grenades Ahead

Before he was the US Ambassador to Kim-Jong Un, Dennis Rodman had a dream of being a big Hollywood actor. The path to victory? A movie where he fights tigers, exploding babies, references that aren't related to basketball and U.N.C.L.E. Oh yeah, JCVD is there too.
Double Team is silly in the same vein as any Cannon/Chuck Norris joint. There's a reason that major action movies died for almost 20 years (thanks Fast & Furious franchise) and this movie may have been a huge part of that decline. JCVD led the 90s in super awesome punching bad guy films and here in 1997 film-goers were willing to say "I've had enough of that". A plot that doesn't make any sense, horrific editing, and too too too many basketball related jokes just put them over the edge.
The action sequences are about as "over the top" as you can get. There's truck jumping, tiger's packing heat, exploding babies, foot knives, a machine-gun toting, horse-mounted loon, Belloq as head of CONTROL, under-water lasers, combustible swimming pools, human basketballs, and death nannies. Its crammed pack with so much bonkers action that its hard to keep up.
Come for the "plot", stay for the bananas action. It's a 7 pointer!

Lady in the Water - M. Knight's "The Room"

Spectacularly over-rated director M. Knight Shyamalan gives us his vanity piece in the vein of Neil Breen and Tommy Wiseau and not only shows us he stinks at film as badly as they do, but that he's a giant, narcissistic, arrogant, terrible person. Good job!
So it's a fairy tale that involves water people called Narfs, who want to help mankind solve their problems. Standing in the way is their lack of sense of meeting people and a solo grass dog, but also the rules of being eaten by one of Gandalf's eagles. Ok... Now we know that if you look too deeply into most fairy tales, you'll find plenty of problems within the logic and that's fine. However, that is not what this jackass is trying to get us to not do. He tries to put forward some moral about man's desire to destroy itself without some sort of altruistic outside influence as a vehicle to change. What he succeeds in, is to say that he is the greatest story-teller ever to live and if you feel differently you should be eaten by a monster green monster.
Then there's his martyrdom. He plays a character in the film who is the object of the Narf's musing. This person will change the world via his book. It will be read by the future leader of the world, thus inspiring him to make mankind peaceful and prosperous. Yet at no point does he make an attempt to declare what is contained within his "The Cookbook". His only reference to its content is "Its got things about leaders and governments and society and stuff". THIS is the words of the greatest storyteller according to himself. What an asshole.
Aside from his giant ego and his complete hatred for anyone that critiques his work and doesn't worship it, this movie is crap. It's shot poorly, breaks its own rules constantly, has a terrible performance by Paul Giamatti, and conflicting character motivations. It also has a mermaid who has no pants, Ariel's treasure cave, gorilla/ent hybrids, and an apartment complex that was built next to Sherwood without a parking lot. Despite all that lunacy it's terribly boring, hugely unfunny and well worth avoiding.