Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

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.

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.