Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

Year 3 in Review: Part 1

Its our third year anniversary and we are cranking out another episode where we recap the best bad movies we've seen in the last year. So happy anniversary to us and we look forward to another year of fine film choosing. This episode we each countdown our 10-5 picks.
Streaming Do's and Don'ts
Reptilicus - MST3K Season 12 - Netflix

Cutthroat Island - The Idiot Pirate Caper

Its one of the worst box office flops that has ever existed and there's a reason for that. This movie stinks! But take some bad acting, bad action, terrible dialogue, and add in the "idiot plot" and you've got a great time ahead. Yo-ho, me scalped hardys!
Let's get the most common complaint about this film - Geena Davis as action lady. Sure, she stinks. She's got no action ability and looks horrendously awful on screen. Her movements aren't fluid and come at you at about the pace of a turtle. Her action is lumpy. There's just no other word, lumpy. She can't get a line right either.
But here's the deal...she didn't have a lot to work with here. The script is unbelievable. It's filled with cheesy one-liners, more than we've ever come across. It has more terrible one-liners than any Chuck Norris movie. Honestly. Then there's her (at the time) husband's direction. Michael Bay can do a better and more believable job. The action is so poorly put together and each shot has at least one glaring flaw in it. 
Yes, it flopped. Yes you maybe haven't seen it. But here's the deal. This is a classic. It easily qualifies in "the so bad its good" metric. Not many films at this chock full of dumb fun and we all loved it. Stop what you're doing and go watch this. Great for first timers or revisiters.

Prelude to Cutthroat Island

In our FINAL Prelude episode (that's right, you heard it), we pull out all the stops for Cutthroat Island. It's known to be one of the biggest flops of cinema history and a career-ender for everyone involved except for the director who is at fault more than anyone.
The Wild Card from Justin - Pop Quiz, Hotshot (Pirate Edition)
Q. Pirates pierced their ears, not to look cool. Why?A. Believed precious gems in their ears improved one's eyesight.
Q. Why did pirates wear eye patches?A. To always have one eye adjusted to darkness to fight below deck in dark
Q. Women pirates! Name one.A. Anne Bonny stole the REvenge with Jack Rackham and pirated until it was captured.    Mary Read partnered with Anne Bonny    Sayyida al Hurra ruled mediterreanean in early 1500s    Jeanne-Louise de Belleville led three black with red sail ships called the BLack Fleet taking revenge against King Philip VI for killing         her husband.    Ching Shih captured by pirates in 1801, then married their captain. When he died she took over the fleet of over 300 junks and 40,000       men. Chinese navy lost 63 ships to them.
Q. What was a pirates most popular form of crew punishment?A. Keelhauling - getting tied to the ship and dragged under, getting your skin torn off AND/OR drowning. Whhheeeee!!!
Q. Describe the most deadliest of pirate flags?A. Red background with an hourglass on it. Meant give no quarter.
The Wild Card from Sam - The Great Superpower Debate
The Magneto of Food or Mind Chef - 7/10 stars (with a caveat of Jackie just being grumpy, this is a 10/10 if there ever was one)
The Wild Card from Jackie - Would You Rather?
Be stabbed the Last Unicorn or eaten by Clifford the Big Red Dog
Drowning via Loch Ness Monster or Drawn and Quartered by Sasquatch
Not worth going over.....
Well that's it folks. Thank you for the years of listening to our prelude episodes. We'll still be doing the weekly main episodes with a few tweaks, but this will be better for you and us. We hope you enjoyed all the cold opens, the Wild Cards, the Sam's Boring Bullshits, the Streaming Do's and Don'ts and all the laughs along the way.

Armageddon - Bad science is eclipsed by grossness

It's one of the crappiest movies ever to have such vast success. Thanks teenage girls. This movie is a whole lot of visual pain and my brain hurts from knowing how stupid it is. Get ready for some real crummy science!
The science....just one time open a book. Just once! So many explosions in space. So much NASA looking completely stupid. Ugh. Moving on...
Despite how bad the science is, it's really the most forgivable part of this turd. This film suffers from "The Idiot Plot", in which the plot of the movie can only exist if everyone in the story is a complete and total moron. NASA makes the big mistake of sending a cadre of morons into space instead of their astronauts, don't bother to come up with plan B, spend all their time dinking around with driller training, and also being in charge of all life on Earth. Nice. Then there's Bruce Willy and team, who we can forgive because, well....they're idiots. They shouldn't even be up there!
Lastly, there's the acting and the dialogue. It's shit-inducing. Ben Affleck and Liv Taylor are the most nausea promoting couple that's ever existed. They drip with cheese and both deserve to be punched square in the mouth. Send these two into space and leave them there place. Bruce Willis isn't much better but it's hard to compete with the vomit couple. 
Too long, too stupid, and too cheesy gross to view. A truly joyless experience. Steer clear.

Prelude to Armageddon

This week on the greatest podcast about bad movies, Sam decides to punish us for 2 1/2 hours with both Michael Bay and Bruce Willis' first appearance on the show. It's the "classic" teenage-girl loving mega-hit, Armageddon, in which a rock gets sploded by oil drillers. Prepare for some bad science! 
Streaming Dos and Don'ts
The Colony - Netflix
Mazes and Monsters - Amazon Prime
Space Mutiny - Netflix (MST3K) 
The Wild Card - The Great Superpower Debate
The Iron Foot - 7.25/10 stars

Congo - Diamonds are a trashcan's worst friend

An endless troupe of soon-to-be-dead invade a protected jungle to achieve their cavalcade of ulterior motives set to the backdrop of civil war. There's also a talking trash-can, lasers, primacide, Reagan's Star Wars program, bad science, missiles, bad management and Ernie Hudson. It's time for some good ol' bonkers business.
Congo from opening shot to final frame is a mass of nonsense. At no point in time does anything feasible or scientifically sound happen throughout. It's like they took the original script, sent it to Bizarro World, then brought it back and used that version. None of it makes any damn sense.
Now, the biggie...Amy the gorilla. She stinks, I'm sorry Stan Winston. This is a talking trashcan or at best one of the members of the Chuck E. Cheese band. But she's probably the most likeable character in the film, so you got that going for you.
Then there's the big three, Tim Curry, Joe Don Baker and Ernie Hudson. All are way over the top, like WAY over. Tim's "evil" is laughable, Joe Don's slobbering CEO is hilarious, and Ernie's crappy Lando Calrissian is fall out of your seat terrible. The rest of the rounders casting make ever less sense the plot. Dylan Walsh over Bruce Campbell? What?
Congo is one hell of a dumb/fun time and we highly recommend it for the first time or a revisit. 

Prelude to Congo

Last year we made a hard decision that the classic Michael Crichton adaptation Congo was a must do for an episode and now we have reached the point where its time for such shenanigans. It's lasers, gorillas and greed and everything you want.
Streaming Do's and Don'ts
Gantz:O - Netflix
Supersonic Man - Rifftrax - Amazon Prime
Super Inframan - Amazon Prime
The Wild Card - The Great Superpower Debate
Water Freeze Man - 8.75/10 Stars

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers - Bloody Hilarious

When it comes to making a title that is indicative of the plot, well this one nails it. Take 33% LA noir detective business, 33% chainsaw murders and 33 1/3% dancing topless hookers and you've got one of Fred Olen Ray's masterpieces. Hard to not love this blast o' laughs.
HCH (to save time) is hilarious...and quite intentionally. It's the opinion of this writer that Fred Olen Ray could have easily linked up with the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrahams. If only he had been involved during Jane Austen's Mafia. It may have not been the turd that it was. There's plenty of slapstick and parody that keep the viewer focused on the jokes more than the huge boobs (which is quite the achievement).
Then there's the cast. Wowie. Its a cavalcade of silly performances mixed with killer comedic timing that really take this movie about boobs from a late-night wankfest into a 90% on Rottentomatoes.com. Linnea Quigley, John H. Richardson, Michelle Bauer, and Dukey Flyswatter (Michael Sonye) kill in front of the camera and put on a clinic of how to make a low-budget movie one heck of of a great time. It should also be noted that friend of the program, Christopher Olen Ray, appears as Kid at Bar, who gives the lead quite the snark while enjoying a fancy martini in a dingy "get stabbed" strip joint. Standing ovation.
HCH cannot be missed by any fan of the genre and shouldn't be missed by the majority of film fans. It's up there with Hell Comes to Frogtown in low budget and exceptional pieces of art. Bravo Fred. 

Prelude to Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers

Jackie brings in the first Fred Olen Ray film in that old tale of hookers on a hellbent rampage with some nasty chainsaws and lots of boobies.
Streaming Do's and Don'ts
Deathrace 2050 - Netflix
The Pumaman - MST3K - Netflix or YouTube OR without MST3K on YouTube
The Wild Card - Good Neighbor, Bad Neighbor Couple's Edition
Tarzan and Jane
Barney and Betty Rubble
Joker and Harley Quinn

The Great Wall - Bad Movie Field Trip

Matt Damon and Oberyn Martell find themselves in the middle of the Battle for Helm's Deep with an Elven army posing as Chinese on one side and an horde of Orcs posing as aliens on the other. Yep...aliens. Our front runner for dumbest film ever made.
The plot of The Great Wall is easily the most poorly thought out plot since....well ever. Its dumber than Reign of Fire. It's dumber than Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. It's dumber than After Earth AND Lady in the Water AND The Happening combined. It can't be understated how dumb this film's plot is. The only way you can argue the logistics of this "war" between the Chinese and space dog-lizards is that both sides are complete morons.
The entire thing goes that these space monsters flew across the expanse of space atop an asteroid that crashed into Earth. So their nasty and want to eat people...sorta. Well the Chinese aren't down with getting turned into poop so they built a 5,500 mile wall to keep these little bastards out. Out of what is yet to be determined.
Now the other plot elements one must know: 
There's gajillizions of these monsters.
There is no global damage to the Earth from the asteroid.
They have three types of aliens: 1) Foot soldiers who are about the size of a great dane 2) Umbrella phalanx who use their head to make a shield and 3) the Queen who is about the size of an elephant. There's only 1 queen and she's the mothership from Independence Day, controlling the minds of all the other critters.
The Great Wall is a 1,000 feet tall.
There's plenty of people living on the alien side o' the wall.
The bug-dogs only come out of their mountain cave once every 60 years.
Once you find out about the existence of monsters you can never leave the Great Wall.
The monster cave is just right over there from the main force of the Chinese Elven Army.
Now...
If the monsters fell to Earth on an asteroid and no damage was done to the Earth, we must infer that the monsters were either protoplasm and then evolved into this horde of gajillions OR only a few lived on the asteroid and the Queen is one hell of a breeder. BUT the movie tells us that this HUGE mass of gajillions came on the asteroid. Where did they fit? How did they survive entry into the atmosphere? How did they survive the impact? How did the Earth survive?
Why would you want the monsters to be a closely held secret? Wouldn't you be like "Hey, uh...Europe...uh we got this problem..." Instead you can never tell. What the fuck?
What the fuck are the aliens doing the rest of the time? What do they got going on for 60 years? And if they go dormant for 60 years, why wouldn't you walk down to their monster cave (that's also just right over there) and start murdering the shit out of them!
And if they are just right over there and isolated to one geographical location, why in the FUCK didn't you just build the Wall in a circle around them?!?!?
And because you're a moron and didn't trap them or murder them while they slept or bred or whatever the fuck it is they are doing inside their monster cave for 60 years, why wouldn't the lizard-bug-dogs just go down the wall a little ways, jump up (because they can I guess as must be inferred by one "action sequence") then run down the wall from either side of the Elven army and eat them while they are having some delicious General Tso 's chicken?
Why in the hell are the monsters so interested in getting over the damn wall? I know that the film tells us that the Chinese myths say that they were sent to rid the world of man's greed and so they must eat the Chinese Emperor.... But really? There's tons of guys on their side of the wall. I'm sure some of them are greedy. Eat them!
Aside from how dumb the plot is this film is well worth it for the incredibly bad action sequences, the horrendous dialogue and the wooden and confused performance from Matt Damon sporting a sometimes there Irish accent. It will have you cowering in your seat, while you giggle yourself to embarrassment at how awful it is. This flaming pile of lizard-dog crap is going to be tough to beat for Best Bad Movie of 2017.