Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

Battleship - Not a good plan - W/ Special Guest, Joe Fulgham!

Special Guest - Joe Fulgham (Caustic Soda, The Dreaming, Onlightened) returns after our American Ninja episode and brings his Canadian goodness to the podcast with all his wit! Find Joe and all he does:
You can find more on Joe and his projects at MoteofDust.com and follow him on Twitter @joefulgham
When you are completely out of original ideas and need to have your own extended universe (because the other guy's have one), just take whatever licensed property you have and make a movie about it. Don't worry about whether the movie is a good idea or not, or if people will even care. Just make it. Worry 'bout all that stuff later.
WRONG!
Battleship is arguably one of the worst decisions made by men is ties. Deciding to make a movie based off one of the most boring board games (the kind that makes you quite playing all board games) and THEN chuck $200 million at it, will not pay off. With the stupid concept aside, Battleship is really poorly done. The plot is awful, the motivations are awful and the acting is especially terrible. The lead (Tayler Kitsch) is not only a terrible character but he can't get a line right. Then you've got all the non-actors surrounding them that make Rihanna look like she's Meryl Streep.Beyond that the primary problem with Battleship is that the front-end is atrociously un-entertaining. The entire first half of this film is just establishing how much of a butthole that Tayler Kitsch's character is. Seriously. The aliens that do battle with ships, don't show up on Earth until minute 54! Minute Freaking 54! Then the game of Battleship doesn't even begin until 1 hour and 30 minutes! Blech.So with that, the last 45 minutes is a lot of fun and if the film had just been that stuff, we might have really enjoyed this film. Yet, unfortunately, that is not the case - the front half ruins this film completely and we have to give it a very tough - do not.

Red Sonja - More like Bed Sonja...zzz

Conan rides through your screen once again but this time he's named Kalidor and he's not the main character. Instead, a non-action star shows us what non-action looks like in the least adventurous adventure movie ever made. Swords & Sandals? Check. Visual Valium? You betcha.
I don't know how this movie stinks so bad. It has your typical lady-hero plot of sword & sandal genre staples. Revenge for burning down the village. Ok. Wait, the villain burned down the village for subtle lesbian motivations? Wow, that sounds super hot. Well....it's not.
This is "walking around" the movie. Look, Frodo & Samwise walk to Mordor for a vacation from paradise and you can't take your eyes off it. Here, the entire world is about to be destroyed by cracking apart (again because of a jilted lesbian) and you can't keep awake.
For the most part, this is the fault of two people: 1) Dino De Laurentiss and 2) Brigidette Nielsen. Dino edited forced this turd out because he apparently couldn't get anything made that didn't involve Conan. And then Nielsen's terrible line delivery and even worse sword-fighting. The entire time she looks like she's afraid of the script (with good reason) and her sword hitting her in the face. This is not an action lady, folks. See Geena Davis in Cutthroat Island for more realistic stunts. Blech.
So long story short, this is just folks walking around. At best this is fun only because of the incredibly dubious plot, the fantastic matte-work, and the bonkers costumes and set design. Hope you don't like things happening in a film!

Speed Zone - Come for the comedy - Revel in the stunts

When you really need to make a sequel to the worst sequel ever made (Cannonball Run II) you better not call it Cannonball Run III. Instead call it Cannonball Fever (where you legally can), get the folks from SCTV and let Jamie Farr make an appearance. Add fast cars and hijinks. Shake and then serve. The primary reason you want to come into this film is for the fast cars and ridiculous shenanigans when you mix cars and comedy. Well, this one delivers that in spades. From the very get go there are banana-stunts with cars all set to a comedic backdrop. See a Countach skip across a lake, see a BMW 5 series jump 30 feet, see a Jaguar XJS fly - really, really fly. We'll save the most insane stunt for the viewers at home but it involves a commercial airliner. While there are some serious duds for jokes here and there, there is legitimately good comedy here. The SCTV folks knew how to script a great joke about society and morals. You can see the difference between the chauvinism and grab ass comedy of the Burt Reynolds/Dom Deluise vision of the Great Gumball Rally to the mild, awkward comedy of John Candy and Eugene Levy. Speed Zone is a true gem of using a tight budget and spending it very wisely. This seems like they had $10 million to spend but in reality it was closer to $1 million. A great cast, lots of cameos, ridiculous stunts and laugh after laugh makes the illegitimate child of the Cannonball Run franchise a great view. Do it!

Gwendoline - Loses her clothes in the Land of Bananas

A French director, named Just Jaeckin, gives us a serious boobie movie with Tawny Kitaen, Brent Huff, and Zabou in which they find the land of the Yik Yak, an underground future society of topless women. Its got our record for the highest boob count to date! Well imagine a movie where there's about 100 different topless women. So I know you can just stop and be happy with that. But there's so much more to this film than a cavalcade of hot cans. Brent Huff plays a rogue named Willard (more of the name of a local weatherman, than a movie hero), who is a supreme butthole. This guy is pretty hard to like as a person. If you've listened to the episodes of the show for Tom Boy or Teen Witch, you'll understand the level of douche the 80's pervade. Willard takes the cake. What a complete and total horrible human that we are later told by the film that he's just got a rough surface. Oof. Then there's Tawny. She is gloriously awful in this movie. She can't act her way out of a paper bag. And her character is also your typical 80's lady archetype were said douche, Willard, does awful things to her and she thinks he's dreamy. Yet then there's her action and her topless scenes. Wait what? Tawny Kitaen is topless in this? Oh yeah and it's worth the 30 year wait I had to endure to have a good look and that lady on top of that car in "Here I Go Again". Zabou and the surrounding cast are all fantastic with endless silly scenes. Then surround them with one of the most outlandish settings, WTF plot, banana dialogue, and horrendously hokey action sequences (see Human Chariot Races). We loved it and you will too!

9 Deaths of the Ninja - Love murder? Join DART!

Sho Kosugi makes his return for a second week in another oddball ninja movie where Sho plays a guy named "Ninja" but doesn't actually operate as a ninja. Instead he's a member of an elite force of anti-terrorism and drug trafficking controllers alongside Brent Huff and Emilia Crow. Hope you enjoy murder! While still technically a ninja film, this is basically a buddy-cop movie with super agents instead of cops. The dynamic between the three members of DART (especially Kosugi and Brent Huff) is one of having a great time killing bad guys and seducing women. Lots of winks & guns and head shaking while the other struggles to dispatch villains. The chemistry works (despite all voices being dubbed) and is good for a laugh at each point. Imagine Andy Sidaris directing a ninja film (even though he kind of did). Then there is the team of outlandish villains showcased by Blackie Dammett (fun fact: the father of Anthony Kiedis, yes THAT Anthony Kiedis) and Colonel HoneyHump (Regina Richardson). Blackie's Alby the Cruel is one of the silliest and neurotic nazi ever portrayed in film and is hilarious. Next to him stands HoneyHump who appears to be the toughest hot mercenary leader of a Hell Squadesque all female troupe of short-pants wearers. Recruited about halfway through the film comes in Rahji (Sonny Erang) who is part-caveman, part Jaws of James Bond fame and only has one line, "Heh heh heh". All three are completely ridiculous and make for show-stealers. We could have got a lot more of all of them. The action is bananas, Sho's cadre of ninja weapons are bonkers, their methods of defeating baddies is ludicrous (including tearing off bikini tops and seducing hookers), and the general-having-a-good-timing of the DART team make this one of Sho Kosugi's best films despite the outright fact that all of them are brilliant.

Rage of Honor - Clearly NOT a ninja movie...not

When you want to have a freelance cop go outside of his jurisdiction to take down a drug-lord, you better make sure he's a ninja. Just make sure you never address how he became a ninja or address him as such. Its not fair to the other DEA agents to have a ninja in their ranks.
If you're down with a cop/ninja killing lots and lots of people without determining if they are a) bad, b) part of the plot or c) posing any threat to life or property, well this is a film for you. If you're down with various forms and iterations of any cliche' bad guy ever, this film is for you. If you like your lead to speak in unintelligible mumbles and your villain to pronounce words and names in a form you can't understand, this film is for you.
Let's face it, this film is for you.
This film is one of the most over-the-top action movies we've ever reviewed. Some highlights: sticking a gun in someone's butt, physics defying shuriken, flips over bad guys, using your friend as a explosion shield, ninja-twins, indigenous people genocide, grappling hook bridges, arrow catching, bamboo-booby-traps, saw blades, rusty nails, commando-ninjas, teamsters, farmers, and tons of bonkers killings.
We love this movie and think it's core Sho Kosugi movie magic and a must do for lovers of silly films.  

Cool as Ice - Oh god, the early 90s stunk

Kids, remember that period of time before Nirvana and post The Clash? Well that period was a dark time we like to call "The Ice Age" and Vanilla Ice, the mind-child of men in ties, led the charge against good art. This film is a horrifying reminder of those awful days. It should be noted that we are not going to pick on Robert Van Winkle (Ice's real name). Any reference to how dumb Vanilla Ice is, will be reference to how stupid the men behind the image of Vanilla Ice were (record producers, MTV execs, publicists, etc.). During this film, we are told that Vanilla Ice is a street tough, ripped with muscles, knows what we call "Ice-Qwon-Do", and the ladies love him. In reality, he might weight 150lbs, has a farmer's tan, is a misogynist, doesn't know martial arts and he likes to hump people while rapping, man OR woman. You know, I don't think I can buy into this guy. While being a horrible pile of corporate garbage attempting to sell Vanilla Ice as a serious tough guy, Cool as Ice is just so dumb and hokey that it makes for a pretty enjoyable time. There are periods of hard to viewing, but they are few and far between. Even hard to view spots are deadly reminders of the historical mistakes humankind has made and therefore are required viewing. This is the film that must be preserved for history, lest we doom ourselves to repeat it. The plot is confusing, the misogyny is offensive but pretty unbelievable, the "Ice-Qwon-Do" is bonkers and the film-making is laughable. It's a pretty great time and shouldn't be missed by any fan of bad movies. It truly belongs in the IMDB Bottom 100.

Days of Thunder

When the people ask for a Top Gun sequel they get it! Only this one has NASCAR instead of fighter jets and Kelly McGillis gets to be replaced by the quite unhappy wife of the lead actor. Replace Tom Skeritt with a Robert Duvall and put him in a foot race with Tom Cruises and you've got Top Gun 2: Days of Thunder. While it's just a sequel to arguably the buttest of all movies, Days of Thunder is a lot more fun. It's super dumb, of course, and fairly low on action, it's still a whole lot of fun to riff with how piss poor the script is. It's all fun and games here but if you really think about any single event of this movie you can start punching about fifty holes into each scene. So while it stars Tom Cruises, who is despicable in 99% of his films, and Jerry Bruckheimer produced it (with Don Simpson), it's still a pretty fun time on the revisit. I would suggest getting some good riffers around you though when you do so. It's not great, but its clearly the best Jerry Bruckheimer movie we've reviewed.

Face/Off - It's more Face/On

When two men really don't like each other it's time to break the laws of medical science and do a face/off and then a face/on, while facing off. Inspiration demands much wiping of loved ones faces on, in case they get their faces blown off. So let's start out with the science of said face/swap. Nope, can't work. The movie explicitly tells us that Cage and Travolta's characters (Troy and Archer, respectively) have two different blood types. So the face wouldn't even stay on. The body would reject the swap and then you'd really have a face off....onto the floor. Hey try not to step on your face. Then there's the height difference, hair lines and color, body hair amounts, eye color, dental structure, weight gain/loss, shoe size and the most damning of all differences -- the ding dong. Mrs. Archer must be only boning him when she's lit up like a X-mas tree because she can't tell that he husbands winky has gone from 4 inches and dropping left to 5 inches and constantly erect. Nice. The sad thing about Face/Off is that there is really not as much action as people remember. There's only two sequences that are really actioney and they bookend an hour and half of not much happening action-wise. Good thing for the viewer is that during these slow points, Cage and Travolta are delivering some of the most outlandish acting we've seen this side of Wicker Man or Troll 2. They make a GREAT bad acting duo as they try to out over-the-top each other. It's chemistry, yes, and is the real draw for this film. While the action is too few and far between, the plot is so stupid and the acting is so terrible that Face/Off is a definite revisit champion. It's riffable, its hilarious on its own. It's a blast....off.

Shanghai Surprise - No surprises here, its stinks

Madonna and Sean Penn take a romantic honeymoon for their doomed marriage by filming a doomed movie. Imagine Raiders of the Lost Ark without any adventure and Romancing the Stone without any romance. Now if one can come up with the plot thesis of this one, I'll give them a trophy. None of it makes a lick of sense. Character's motivations are dubious. Everyone's end game is devoid of existence. The best hypothesis we could make about this films plot doesn't work by the film's own rules. It's unfathomable. Sean Penn and Madonna were a good match. They both stink at acting. It's obvious that Madonna is terrible but hey guess what! Academy Award winning actor Sean Penn stinks just as bad. Don't misjudge me, that Mystic River is damn fine, but how this guy got a role after Shanghai Surprise is...well...a surprise. It's supremely offensive with arguably the worst sex scene that's ever happened. How you ask? Well it's double rape, plus sex bribery followed by love because of said rape and sex bribery. What? Holy crap that's offensive. Blech. Lots of wandering around, talking to various people for no reason and a lack of any adventure make this one a do not.