Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

Pet Sematary - Lotta history in that film, yeah

"Don't do down that path, yah", the strange drunk man with dubious ambitions said to the new residents. Later he would take them on a wondrous adventure to bury a kitty-cat that he himself murdered. It was the strangest thing that week until the dead son came back as Little Lord Fauntleroy with super-powers.
Pet Sematary is just another in a long line of Stephen King movies that raked in the cash but not one theater attendee bothered to pay attention to what was happening on screen. The entire plot is bananas (and falls squarely into "the idiot plot") but that's the least biggest draw for fans of our show. It's all the elements around the plot, ie. the truckers who are clearly trying to break speed records, the undead cat that is just like any other cat, Gage acquiring super-powers upon being reanimated and that the family never asks "Who the hell is this Judd Crandall guy anyways?"
It's a beautiful disaster and truly pushes the boundaries of bad movie laugh-ability with horrific tragedy. I mean, think about it. You are laughing at a child getting ran over - the worst possible thing that could ever happen. Yet the movie is so bad and the production is so crap that you are laughing.... during the worst thing ever. That is one hell of an achievement in bad film-making. Hell even Tommy Wiseau didn't do that.
Brain ghosts, strange accents, random maid suicide, magical beaver dams, open areas that echo with magic briefly, funeral fist-fights, The Ramones, evil dead babies who like "Puttin' on the Ritz" and zombies who just knock over things. This is a top-tier stinker.

Phenomenon - Sure Ain't That

Here's a fun concept. Let's put together a film with heavy sci-fi elements and themes in the vein of Twilight Zone and mash it together with a poorly motivated romance and have John Travolta stare at trees for the majority of it. That sounds like punishment.
Guess what though? It killed it. The box office loved this film despite the critics apprehensions. Flocks of people wanting to see some feel goodie type jobbers fled to the theater thinking that John Travolta was making a huge comeback (it was over 2 years later) and that he was good at acting as he did great at looking confused in Pulp Fiction. 
That's neat and all but here's the deal with this film. It's a continuous set of missed opportunities to be something truly good. It seems that a writer had a fantastic concept in a man given super-powers and then can accomplish nothing with them but have his life ruined by them and a pariah to his former neighbors. That's good stuff. However, the studio clearly stuck their damn noses in and said, "Well we need to have an hour of it be taken up by a romance. That'll get the ladies involved." In this case they were right when it came to cash, but relegates this film to the folks at Stinker Madness to expose it's flaws.
So now you've got this romance crammed into a sci-fi film in post-writing. Now I just saw Passengers (Pratt, Lawrence - 2016) and it is very much a love-story set against a sci-fi space travel story and it's quite well done. Romance/sci-fi mashups CAN happen and be good. However, it needs to be part of the concept and writing from the start. This didn't happen here and this romance starts to fall apart before it even gets going. Their relationship does not have a point B in it. There's A) where she is not interested and then C) she loves him. When did that happen? Oh yeah we were trying to tell a different story during the usual B). 
Beyond that, the film is quite stupid and falls victim to the idiot plot thanks to Travolta's George being a true idiot and Robert Duvall's Doctor of Town not ever looking at a medical chart. Then there's the reveal of the source of his super-powers and completely defeats the entire moral that the film has tried to establish beforehand. 
It's not good and not worth revisiting. Stay clear of all but the most bold.

Friday the 13th V - WTF is this?

We wrap up our Spooktober with a staple from a staple franchise and one of the strangest big box office horror films ever made. This is just a strange film starring "Jason" with lots of head choppins, boobs and a cast of some pretty unusual characters.
So Jason V is one weird film and frankly astounds that it ever frightened anyone...even children. It's seriously gentle in its horror, the plot is not frightening, Jason is not intimidating, and the gore is pretty mild. The MPAA really didn't help out this film at all as it's seriously cut down.
None of it lines up, of course, with any one who cares about continuity or character motivations. The killer doesn't know how revenge works. The hero doesn't know how idolatry works. The film-makers don't know how enchiladas work. It's stunny how little anything works.
BUUUUTTT....that's not why you come to a Jason movie, right? You come for the gore and boobs. Well there's boobs in this one...but the gore is incredibly mild. Most of the deaths occur off-screen and there are only a couple not-worthy ones that still fail to execute fully. So its disappointing there.
However, there's still enough here that isn't part of the Jason staples to show up for. The entire plot and setting is super weird. The cast of characters is simply mind-bending and the single greatest scene in the Friday franchise appears here...in a metal shitbox.
Not great, but still a good revisit.

Sleepwalkers - Starring Clovis, Attack Cat

Cat people. It's a movie about cat people. Written by horror master, Stephen King, it's arguably the most comedic horror film ever made. You thought Dreamcatcher was rife with errors...buckle in, folks.
Sleepwalkers is absolutely bananas. We'll just say right now that this is a must-do film for fans of crummy movies. It's a laugh riot. For instance, let's just put it out there that the chief action star of this film is a house cat, named Clovis. Clovis rivals Chuck Norris, Schwaz, Stallone and Van Damme in the pantheon of 90s action stars. I'm not joking.
So the film is basically about these cat people-- Ancient Egyptian people that have no origin but all of the superpowers (teleportation, telekinesis, invisibility, shape-shifting, invulnerability, immortality) and one of the most dumb weakness of all, allergic to cats. They are cat-people (half-people, half-cat) and their one weakness is cats?!?! Right. So if you've got a plague of cat-people in your town, if you don't have a Clovis, supercop, you're screwed I guess.
So the plot's dumb. Check! Then there's the elements. The makeup is awful. The action is ludicrous (see Clovis). The cameos are constant. The dialogue is atrocious (Perlman - "It's a Polish Fire Drill!" when someone steps in a bear trap). And the effects are... well... a clinic on how not to do effects (with the exception of one great morph effect when the Mustang transforms into a Trans Am). Also, that Trans Am is seriously bitchin'.
It's one of Jackie's best picks of the entire series of our show. Sleepwalkers is a MUST-DO film. Fantastic.
Streaming Do's and Don'ts
Curse of Chucky - Netflix
Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master - $2.99 on Amazon Prime
Ghoulies - Epix 

Geostorm - Where are the Geos?

It's a film that really can't figure out what it is trying to accomplish, other than showing some weather-related destruction and Gerard Butler talking out the side of his mouth. It's arguably the most anticipated stinker of 2017, does it hold up?
*Spoiler Alert - There are no Geo Storms in this film or geostorms*
As you can guess, science goes completely out the window in this one. The very first we see is that a weather controlling space net launches missiles into a storm above New York. Missiles. So the destruction of NYC by missiles is worse than the storm. Nice work. Follow that with space station hallways that are made of doors that only lead to space, frozen people who don't thaw out in the sun, wasting an entire shuttle launch to send 1 guy into space, the list goes on and on.
While this thing is VERY hot once it gets going, the initial 30 minutes do drag a little. It isn't until the movie's title is uttered does this thing turn into electric shit. So be warned on the beginning.
Once things turn into banana town, it's incredibly awesomely stupid. The disasters are so fantastic and complete bullshit that even Roland Emmerich is stunned. Then there is the entire plot (which qualifies as the idiot plot) and Ed Harris lack of understanding of geography. Supplement that with Mike Banning being played by (HOT!!!) Abbie Cornish, Mark Ruffalo's little brother's imposter, President Andy Garcia, Executive powers that include teleportation and tracking device bypassing and the last hour of Geostorm are an absolute absurd blast. 
Well done Dean Devlin and Gerard Butler. For us at Stinker Madness, we want more!

Saw - Happy 300th Episode to Us...

It was one of the biggest horror movies of the 2000s and created an entire style of film-making on the cheap for such studios as The Asylum and Blumhouse. So that should mean its good, right? Wrong. Saw stinks on ice. Happy 300th episode to us, I guess.
Where to begin with the problems of the film? Well lets actually start with a compliment. It only cost $1.2 million. Could they have used the money more wisely to make a better film and still raked in the cash? Absolutely. 
First there is Cary Elwes, who astounds at his lack of nomination in the Razzie awards. Rest assured, when we get our time machine built and right the wrongs of crappy movie award history, Mr. Wesley will be getting a big ol' SMABFA for either best or worst bad actor. He stinks. Then you've got Danny Glover working in mostly ADR in his usual befuddled whisper talk. It's a shame the two didn't get more screen time together because wow...So the acting is atrocious.
Then there is the story. Oh wait. Sorry. I mean the concept. There is no story. Just a concept of two guys stuck in an icky bathroom with a mystery to solve and limited tools to do so. That sounds nice in concept but then you've got to write something around it, otherwise you'll little film will be only 15 minutes long. However, what they packed around this thing is pure garbage. The killer's only motivation is.... nothing. Truly nothing. He has brain cancer and Cary Elwes character told him about it. So even if he had done so without bedside manner, why the hell did he murder all those other people who have no connection to anything. I'll tell you the connection. Why bother writing consistently when you can crank it out in an hour and not have the majority of people notice. Then there's the worst cop ever in Danny Glover's Tapp. If police of the world were like this, crime would run rampant as there would be no judge in the world that would allow any evidence this moron collects to be admissible. Then he ends up getting overpowered by a feeble hospital orderly who weighs 1/2 as much, is a foot shorter, just got whipped by a suburban mom and has a damn pair of scissors in his leg. WTF?
Lastly and most painfully, the film is impossibly boring. There is so much flashback and broken narrative to try to establish some context to the concept that gets mixed up, jumps timelines, has no perspective and still doesn't make any sense which is common in crappy films but this one delivers its inane ramblings via jumpy camera work, shakey editting, Rob Zombie style editing and the general post production distraction dumpy studios try to make to hide their awful film.
Not a good movie
Made the worst style of horror telling for the next 10 years
Painfully boring
Yup, this box office smash stinks.
Check out the trailer for the new Jigsaw film and let us know what you think of the music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcb68kAOvt4
Streaming Do's and Don'ts
The Bermuda Triangle w/ Rifftrax - Amazon Prime
Cult of Chucky - Netflix
The Worst Witch - YouTube

Belly of the Beast - Yup, there's a wizard

A baked potato (and Fox News Russian Expert) puts on a bunch of stupid shirts and tries to sell us how much of an action-man he is by having a body double fill in for the entire movie. Also there is a wizard who helps fight terrorism and monks? We don't know.
Belly of the Beast is arguably among the worst of the action genre. What's the 1 thing you need to get right in an action movie? Well that one thing goes quite askew here. The fight scenes are so laughably bad. And yet as bad as the action is (and by bad we mean GREAT!) it isn't the only reason to show up here. 
Its such a strange production. Take this, the film skirts around nudity for 95% as if its PG-13 yet has incredibly gratuitous nudity in one topless scene where it appears a topless woman has a disappearing ink treasure map on her chest. And no, there is no treasure in this movie. So weird.
The dubiousness of putting a wizard into a Steven Seagal movie is one of the strangest decisions we have seen. It just doesn't fit at all and culminates in one of the greatest dumb climaxes in DTV film. 

The Barbarians - The Jersey Shore Invades Conan

Imagine a film where the biggest idiot you could ever find is the lead, make him do a ton of steroids, be a general dickbag to his co-workers and then DOUBLE HIM!!!
In typical Cannon Group tradition, this movie is what you call, "not good", yet also "completely unbelievable". It is beyond the realm of standard imagination and can only come from breaking through the doors of perception, AKA doing a ton of coke. From concept to final cut, there's no way you can do a good job here. And that falls fully on the muscly shoulders of the Barbarian Brothers.
These two idiots... I can't even describe them. I'm empty on words. I guess the best that can be done is that the Jersey Shore invades a swords and sandals movie. They are terribly unlikable in either form or character. However, if you can get past how much you hate these two and appreciate them for being the worst pair in cinematic history, well... you're in for a good time.
There's terrible effects and practicals, lead by a penis-dragon that doesn't just appear to be a penis but also behaves like one, the dangerous stunts, lead by getting ran over by horses, the silly costumes and hair, lead by a donut hair cut, and the nonsensical plot. At no point does it work but put together as a whole (insert donut joke) it's pure stinker magic.

The Lawnmower Man - Drugs and VR make you a genius

Once again we try to "go into the internet" by revisiting a film from the early 90's where people didn't understand how computers worked. This one delivered to us by stinker-staples Jeff Fahey and Pierce Brosnan in this NOT Stephen King adaptation.
The Lawnmower Man when it came out was beloved and believed to be a great film by 12-year-olds. It no longer holds that majesty. This movie stinks. From all angles, most notably the special-effects and its dubious knowledge of how servers work. But notably as well is the acting from Jeff, Pierce and Dean Norris (of Breaking Bad fame and one hell of a Twitter follow).
The plot (as usual with Stephen King related business) is pretty all over the place and doesn't make any sense. Toss in that it's not based on Stephen King's work at all and you've got people just trying to say a thousand different things and trying to achieve a thousand different film motifs. You've got cybernetic super-chimp Universal Soldiers, playing God with science, bullies, omnipotence, super-powers, magic just being a form of science, corporate greed, and war for profit. All those items get bungled together with the completely dumb story-telling. So nice try guys.
While we cannot in good conscience recommend the "Director's Cut" version that we watched, we definitely recommend a riff-session with the original cut of The Lawnmower man. It's got too much banana-business and incredibly dumb points that it's a great revisit....when it's 108 minutes.
Streaming Do's and Don'ts
No Retreat, No Surrender w/ Rifftrax - Amazon Prime
Krampus - HBO Now
Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II w/ MST3K - Netflix

Maniac Cop - Or Gross Face II

With a deep stinker cast and the classic script-writing of Larry Cohen, we've got all the elements for an amazingly awesome bad movie. Robert Z'Dar becomes a murderous Frankenstein in pretty nonsensical plot with lots of action and bad acting to boot.
In a double plot of framing another cop for murders (without any evidence) and trying to kill the Mayor (who doesn't have a role) and the Commissioner (Richard Roundtree), Maniac Cop fails to achieve both of these things. It also fails to tell a full story. If a story consists of a beginning, a middle and an end, this film appears to be only the middle. The beginning of the story is only told briefly in exposition and a tiny flashback of hardly any new knowledge and then the end of the film appears to be a setup for just the next scene...that doesn't come.
It's also pretty difficult to define exactly what Maniac Cop is, not the movie but the character. Is he undead? Or is he just so brain-damaged that he's immune to death? If he's undead, is he a zombie? What the hell is he? Well we figure it out but we're gonna make you listen to the podcast to find out what Maniac Cop actually is.
Laurene Landon paves the way as the best bad actress of the year as she struggles to deliver a single line. It's not really her thing though...the acting. So we'll forgive her as she's arguably the biggest riff opportunity of the film.
It's got ups and its got downs, slow pacing and fast action. Which may not work for all (one reviewer, Sam, barely gave it a do) but its loaded with enough stinky goodness for all.