Stinker Madness - The Podcast for Bad Movie Lovers

Dante's Peak - Just leave Grandma, please.

Our second of back to back "stupid volcano movies from 1997" is the possibly the least disastery of any disaster movies ever created. Spoiler alert - body count is 5 and a tiny hick town gets cleared off the map. It's fine since they were just a bunch of smug buttholes anyways.
So if Volcano should have been named "Lava; Not Volcano Really", then Dante's Peak should have been called "Volcano; No Lava Really". It's a perfect mirror in opposite land. The volcano is HUGE but has very little lava. In fact the only thing that lava kills in this film is some truck tires. Very strange.
In the film Volcano, the disaster is at least disastrous, somewhat. In Dante's Peak its very not that way. A town of about 3000 people gets wiped out but only 4 people die due to the volcano; 3 of them didn't even live there and one was an insane old bitch that NO ONE liked. It's pretty not disastrous; quite unlike the structure of this sentence.
Some notable features - the stupidest robot in a movie, an old hag who wants to bang a mountain, bad character naming (Harry and Terry), a mayor/coffee barista/horrible mom/town bicycle/news anchor, a chopper pilot who doesn't understand how choppers work, a pyroclastic cloud, some awful Mayor Wando vision, human soup, a splitting headache, and multiple climaxes. 
It's really stupid, horribly cliche, looks terrible, poorly written, and fairly uneventful. But somehow it makes for a ton of fun, IF and ONLY IF you have a great group of riffers sitting next to you. The film is just to boring to do by yourself, but because so little happens when something should be happening it's possibly the easiest movie to mock while viewing we've seen in quite some time (possibly since Q: The Winged Serpent). Its so riffable that we are going to add a new ratings category just for Riffability - 5/5. 

Prelude to Dante's Peak

Hey remember that OTHER volcano movie from 1997? Well its here on Stinker Madness to finally help us answer that age old question: which 1997 volcano movie is the most stupid? Dante's Peak stars Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton.
Roman's Do's and Don'ts
Ninja Busters - 
Dangerous Men - $3.99 on 
The Barbarians - 
The Wild Card - The Great Superpower Debate
Extreme resistance to extreme heat but only from above - 3/10 stars

Volcano - What's a movie?!

Tommy and Anne face off against some hot magma ("What's Magma?") in the first of two 1997 volcano movies. This one features a lead character who should be fired and never hired for his job, a slew of disaster movie cliches (Dog never dies, anyone?) and Stan, the Man-Chucking Man in possibly the stupidest movie we've ever seen on this show.
Let's start off by declaring how incredibly dumb this movie is. Every single bit of "science" is telegraphed to the audience because "Hey! They're stupid!" such as the definition of tectonic activity, gravity and magma. The volcano has a mind of its own and has Tommy Lee Jones sense meaning if Tommy is coming its sneaky and hides from him. The government officials of LA have no clue how things should work and it seems Tommy's Roark is the mayor as everyone calls him or reports to him daily even before the eruption. The Chief of Police even calls to obligatorily yell at someone, even if its completely unrelated to Emergency Management of which Roark is the director of. I can in no way define how stupid this movie is because in order to define something you must possess some semblance of intelligence. That would be a slap in the face of this movies lack thereof.
Then there's the effects. Too many people over use the "effects that don't stand up to time" but this thing never had a chance to stand up at all. I specifically talk about "the building" (and why there is a character to just set up that a building exists is beyond me). At one point, the cast stands in front of a large photo of the building as if they are there. Usually when someone looks at something fake they are looking at a painting that's supposed to be real but this time it's a photo....that's out of focus. Seriously.
"Hey I went a took a picture of that building you wanted for a backdrop", says the studio photog. "I used my camera phone and also my finger is over the lense a little. Do you want me to do it again?"
"Nope" says the director as he pencils in more exposition about what a volcano is to the masses of morons who never passed the 3rd grade who are watching this.

Prelude to Volcano

Surprise! Volcano! Tommy Lee Jones comes in to ask what magma is and see if his volcano movie of 1997 can be the dumber of the year. We all know its stupid, but how stupid can it be?
Roman's Do's and Don'ts
Lust for Freedom (1987) - YouTube
Furious (1984) - IMDB
The Zero Boys (1986) - IMDB
Wild Card - The Great Superpower Debate
Electro-magnetic Telekinesis - 3.5 stars

License to Drive - Like a trip to the DMV

The Corey's team up to help Haim get his drivers license and bang a girl. Along the way, they go on a slew of crimes mostly involving reckless endangerment but also sexual assault and child pornography in a showcase of how horrible the 80s were. Not even Heather Graham and Carol Kane can save this.
This film is a pukefest of 80s trends, stupidity, and selfishness. It's a perfect capsule of something that is horrible. So yes, it captures the essence of the decade but the decade sucks and so does this film. Sorry lovers of Aquanet. 
Feldman is passable and the least annoying of the two but that's not saying much. Corey Haim's performance and character are awful and within 20 minutes you just want Les (Haim) to crash the car and explode or just get grounded and actually follow the punishment by staying in his room for the duration of the film. Heather Graham's Mercedes Lane is a testament of how bad this film stinks. They've made an 18 year old, arguably the hottest woman in Hollywood look like a circus clown in an insane asylum. Her character is supposed to be this dream girl, but she's a trainwreck and soon to be buying a bus ticket to former porn star town. She's not a nice girl.
The film is filled with groin-inducing hijinks and hamfisted sequences that fail to achieve either a level of excitement or humor. This is a film for creepo's that either like high school girls or want to go back and do their life over again because their current existence sucks ass. The three of us hated this film and wanted it to be over after the first 5 minutes. Stay clear and just watch The Lost Boys instead.

Prelude to License to Drive

The "Coreys" make their official first appearance on the show with the 80's cheesefest about teenagers getting driver's licenses. This sounds like a recipe for disaster as the 80's sucked, teenagers suck and drivers training sucks the worst! At least Heather Graham is easy on the eye-balls.
Streaming Roman Do's and Don'ts
Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor (1990) - IMDB
Hired to Kill (1990) - IMDB
Steele Justice (1987) - IMDB
Wild Card - The Great Superpower Debate
Spit! The Acne Cure - 7 out of 10
Special Guest - Jackson Murphy
Jackson from the Lights Camera Jackson film review blog stops in and shares with us his picks for the first half of 2016 for the SMABFA awards. He's also doing an incredible charity promotion for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. We urge all of you to contribute and follow Jackson through his fundraiser and his career. He's a great guy.

Rambo III - Genocidal Team-Up!

John Rambo comes to us in the third installment of the First Blood/Rambo franchise in the pinnacle of 80's over the top action. It's fun, it's stupid, its violent, and ridiculous. But in the year 2016 and how much we don't really care for ethnic cleansing, it's also a little offensive.
Bullets and fire are allergic to Rambo, he has teleportation powers, and he's suddenly an expert horseman. He can fly choppers, drive tanks, use booby traps and shows how deadly glow sticks are. It's loads of stupid fun.
Never letting off the stupid, the film continues to climb into an incredibly stupid climax that involves a game of chicken between two things that should never be used to do such a thing.
Rambo III is a classic stinker and makes all the right/wrong moves. It's too much fun to be missed. Just try to leave your loathing of horrible bad men at the credits.

Prelude to Rambo III

Carolco decides its destiny by spending too much on a ridiculous film that involves a man causes fire and bullets to steer clear. It's the Stallord's one jillionth appearance on the show and we haven't even gotten to Tango & Cash, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot or Cliffhanger!
Streaming Do's and Don'ts
Reign of Fire - Starz
Down n' Dirty - Amazon Prime 
The Wild Card - Who would win in a knife fight?
John Rambo (First Blood) vs John Rambo (First Blood: Part 2)

Troll 2 - Best Worst Movie? Damn close.

Troll 2 has been widely hailed as one of the best bad movies ever made what with its documentary called "Best Worst Movie" and also topping the IMDB Bottom 100. Sometimes though a film can be overpraised in its horrendousness. Will Troll 2 stand up to the critical analysis that has debunked such films as Gigli and Mommie Dearest?
The short answer? No. No this movie is one of the worst ever made.
The long answer is that Troll 2 is undoubtedly an incredible film. Each time you watch this film, you catch something new in its delirium. Its a wonderful treat upon each viewing. Its so crammed with crumminess that when you stop laughing maniacally you find just another terrible thing to laugh at in the next second. You can't stop laughing and it's brilliant. This movie is why we do what we do.

Prelude to Troll 2

Finally, we hit one of the most notorious bad movies of all time. At one point, Troll 2 was the #1 lowest rated movie on IMDB.com until people realized it's freaking awesome. Praised by many and loved by tons, it's a treasure of a film and we can't wait to dive into it.
Streaming Do's and Don'ts
Darkman II: The Return of Durant - Starz
Keoma - YouTube
The Day the Clown Cried Edit - Youtube