MY CALL: Nope, nope, nope. This is by far the worst in the franchise so far. MORE MOVIES LIKE Leprechaun in Space: Leprechaun (1993), Leprechaun 2 (1994), Leprechaun 3 (1995) and the further sequels taking Warwick Davis to “da hood.” Normally I’d warn you not to watch Leprechaun: Origins (2014)–terrible even for a direct-to-DVD B-movie–but it was actually better than Part 4. For more horror in space you’d be wise to turn to Event Horizon (1997), Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996) or Jason X (2001).

You should wear a special suit to protect you from this movie.

With sequels, the stakes tend to get bigger with each subsequent story. Whereas Leprechaun (1993) had nothing of the sort, Leprechaun 2 (1994) boasted three wishes granted to a Leprechaun’s captor and his search for a bride, and Leprechaun 3 (1995) offered infectious Leprechaunthropy! How do we up the ante from there? How about going to space…???

Evidently ball-gags happen in space.

The writing is absolutely the worst in the series (so far anyway), not that there’s any surprise about that. This entire movie looks like a space porno parody. Cheap space porno sets, stale space porno acting, wretched space porno special effects, and the Leprechaun even wields a light saber! Parts 2 and 3 were at least enjoyable for their silliness, but this just hurts to watch. It’s far beyond stupid.

A group of colonial marines a la Aliens (1986) prepare to seek and destroy an alien life form responsible for stealing from their employer’s space mine yield. Hmmmm, I wonder who the alien is and what they’re mining…?

When we meet our Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) he is wooing a space princess (Rebecca Carlton; Baywatch) dressed as a belly dancer complete with stripper glitter and a spiked bra. Much classier than our past iterations of this monstrous Irish species, he pulls out champagne and marriage proposals to position himself for a family career in mine management.

After being left for dead by marines, our Leprechaun magically impregnates himself into a man’s crotch, who later gives birth to him through his penis (no gore or latex L ) with just bad enough timing to prevent us from seeing a fine space marine’s (Debbe Dunning; Home Improvement) boobs.

Cheap horror normally offers only two things: boobs and blood. There’s a general shortage of both here–minimal gore and one brief boob flash that is exactly that, a deliberate boob flash by the character. Asinine!

The extent of the special effects is limited to magical sparks, a comically flattened face, three exploding Leprechaun scenes and a rubber monster suit when someone is mutated into an insectoid monster and pretty much steals the show.

As laughable as this sounds, take note that in four years the world has witnessed as many Leprechaun movies! So if we the movie-going people disapprove, we’re not exactly voting that opinion with our movie-buying dollar. I love cheap horror and all, but this has become too destitute to support.

Yup. A giant Leprechaun happens.

Director Brian Trenchard-Smith (Night of the Demons 2, Leprechaun 3) had taken all of the already-shaky-at-best rules of evil Leprechauns and thrown them out the window to bring us the story of a short, ugly, wizard with humbly moderate powers aiming to become a robber baron miner thorugh marriage. In fact, the mutant spider monster felt like more of a menace than the Leprechaun. My how far the franchise has fallen.

Yup. She somehow loses her pants.

The director of one of these fine films once suggested that each Leprechaun movie was about a different Leprechaun, which is the only sensible notion in the entire series considering that we have seen three Leprechauns meet horrible deaths in three states (South Dakota, California and Nevada) and now two solar systems. If only this Leprechaun could have been the last of its mythological species. But alas, such creatures of folklore have yet to befall “da hood” in, YES, a yet 5th installment in this series. I rue the day I have to sit through that!

Oh, how original. Let’s blow him out the air hatch into spaaaaace.
BARF!

Outside of a few pleasantly recognizable faces, among those not yet mentioned were Miguel A. Núñez Jr. (Return of the Living Dead) and Jessica Collins (The Young and the Restless), this movie has no redeeming qualities even in the realm of bad B-movies. Don’t ever watch it!

MY CALL: More like an ill-written soap opera with a few fights than anything resembling an action movie, this flick squandered Cynthia Rothrock’s talents to an appalling degree.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Outside the Law:  Probably any Cynthia Rothrock movie from the 80s or maaaaybe early 90s would be better than this.  However, I strongly recommend NOT watching Night Vision (1997). If you’re in the mood for a proper Bad Movie Tuesday I’d have to recommend you go with Dolph Lundgren, a case of beer and your best bros.  Perhaps The Elementary Stylings of Kindergarten Cop 2 or Dolph Lundgren and the Curse of the Shark Lake.

I recently decided I wanted to watch a bunch of Cynthia Rothrock (China O’Brien, Undefeatable) movies. Well guess what?  That’s surprisingly not easy to do.  As it turns out just about none of her movies are affordable on Amazon to buy except for her late 90s direct-to-video stuff and similarly her older stuff is nowhere to be found on Amazon Video or Netflix.  You can watch Night Vision (1997) for free with Amazon Prime, but I wouldn’t recommend it!  There’s a reason it’s available and her better movies aren’t.

Still in great shape at 45 years old, queen of martial arts Rothrock plays secret agent Julie Cosgrove and the dialogue couldn’t be more rigid. It’s incredibly obvious that this is her last mission because she just won’t shut up about it–blabbing on and on about how she wants to get married and have a regular life with her secret agent partner and his immaculate hair.  The conversation is so smiley and casual you’d think they were on a brunch date and not a covert mission in Colombia.  But no, it’s go time.  And her partner strolls across the sunny South American street in his upper-middle class outfit swinging an assault rifle at his side like he was a British dignitary with a cane.  Not since In the Name of the King 2: Two Worlds (2011) or Night Vision (1997) can I recall even a Bad Movie Tuesday so poorly written.

After watching the first few minutes I had to check and confirm the release date was, in fact, from this century! This felt like something from 1991 like an episode of Silk Stalkings or some made-for-TV drivel of decades past.  But no, it’s from 2002.

Spoiler alert: her partner with the great hair bites it when some sort of double cross transpires…it’s incredibly unclear. When she calls in to whatever nonsense agency she works for, they’re shocked (even upset) that she’s still alive.

The action in this is upsettingly bad in the early fights of the movie. They cast the queen of martial arts, but the remaining cast of goons are so inept in terms of combat choreography that when they fight she is limited to throwing one single simple kick per shot.  So if she hits a guy four times in 16 seconds, expect to see four 4-second cuts ineptly edited together.  We have an ace martial artist capable of so much, yet she looks no better at fighting than an extra from Starsky and Hutch.  These fighting scenes are to Rothrock what a limp dorsal fin is to Shamu; just plain sad.  Kind of like how Dolph Lundgren did zero punching in Shark Lake (2015), which also featured dorsal fins and a completely wasted bad ass action movie star.

Thankfully, later she faces some bad guys who can throw a spin kick of their own. They try to keep things edgy with some chain-fighting, although it’s nothing to Lucy Liu vs Ray Park in Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever (2002).  It remains pretty bad, but a more “acceptable” level of bad loaded with kicks to the face…LOADS of face kicks for everyone!  The fights do seem to improve as the movie progresses.  However, the fights never reach the “90s Van Damme” level of quality.

The lines…wow, sooooo witty. “You read Chinese?//Enough to order take out.”  Loads of bad layer-caked over more bad with bad icing.  The exposition burns my ears as the dialogue explains everything that happens as if you weren’t just watching it happen yourself. And evidently this is serious–you can tell by the “international factor” typical of 80s-90s action flicks.  We go from a double-cross in Colombia to Chinese goods being smuggled into south Florida by the Colombian mob to make some sort of super designer drug.  Of course she just stumbled across this while trying to lay low in a random spot in Florida.  The story is a bit too ambitious and reaches too far too often with no real rationale or payoff.

Director Jorge Montesi (Omen IV and loads of action TV shows) has made a lot of direct-to-TV movies and, as such, has a solid respect for simplicity.  Take this film.  After fleeing Colombia, agent Cosgrave buys a car, a week’s worth of groceries and a dog all at the same place.  Oh, and reconnects with some Colombian cartel shenanigans just down there street from there.  Quite plausible.

There are many familiar faces in this flick. Dan Lauria (The Wonder Years) plays a crooked detective, Stephen Macht (The Monster Squad, Graveyard Shift) and Brad Greenquist (Pet Sematary) are crooked agents, Jeff Wincott (The Invasion, Prom Night) is a criminal, Don Harvey (Die Hard, Taken 3) is a henchman, and James Lew (Traffic, Rush Hour 2) is “the Asian bad guy.”

Bad movies put a lot of stock in “the Asian bad guy.” Just look at Kickboxer, Bloodsport and The Best of the Best—all Asian bad guys!  The first bad guy who can fight in this movie is an Asian henchman–and being Asian, naturally, he had to be a martial artist.  So when James Lew shows up and out kung fu-s the other Asian, we know he’s not the Asian we want to cross.  Rothrock’s fight with Lew is the only remotely redeeming scene in the entire movie featuring a few decent acrobatic stunts.  The only problem is that the director had no idea how to shoot scenes with people who actually knew how to fight.  Way too close-up and way too many cuts.  Shame.  A total waste of talent.

Watch this for a good laugh with a buzz but do not, I repeat DO NOT watch this expecting to see a fun Cynthia Rothrock martial arts movie. For of all the horrible things this movie is, “that” it is not.

MY CALL:  If you like the Evil Dead movies, heavy metal music, or ultra gory horror comedies you will like this.  If you simply have good taste in silly (raunchy and gory) horror, just see this.  MOVIES LIKE Deathgasm:  For more kitschy New Zealand horror comedies try Dead-Alive (1992), Bad Taste (1987), Housebound (2014) and What We Do in the Shadows (2015).  For more solidly gross horror comedy in general try Zombie Strippers (2008), Zombieland (2009), Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009), Piranha 3D (2010), Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010), Final Destination 5 (2011), Piranha 3DD (2012), The Cabin in the Woods (2012), Smothered (2014), Zombeavers (2014), The Voices (2014),  He Never Died (2015), Cooties (2015), Ava’s Possessions (2015), The Final Girls (2015), Krampus (2015; not exactly comedy, but occasionally hilarious), Love in the Time of Monsters (2015) and Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015).

Just a random aside, a shocking number of actors in this were from recent Power Rangers and Spartacus series.  Not a bad thing, not a good thing; just an observation.

Written and directed by Jason Lei Howden (visual artist of The Hobbit movies), this playfully feisty New Zealand horror comedy opens with an almost adorably gross credit sequence complete with the stylings of Adult Swim and a personable narration which reminded me of an old favorite, The Gate (1987).

Not five minutes into this zany little gem (and a GLOWING gem it is) I had lost count of how many times I had laughed out loud at its brilliant execution, sense of humor, and random clip scenes featuring goofy sketches and wicked music video dreamscape sequences that reminded me of “W is for Wish” from ABCs of Death 2 (2014) and everything that was awesome about 80s music videos.  When he used his laser vision to incinerate that chick’s (Kimberley Crossman; Power Rangers Samurai) top, Jeeeesus Chr–… oh… oh, dear, I seem to have gotten carried away.  On with the review!

That is SO METAL!

After being forced to move in with his uncle and insidiously bullying cousin, troubled teen metalhead Brodie (Milo Cawthorne; Power Rangers RPM) quickly unites with a group of social misfits, forms a metal band, and they bite off more than they can chew when they play some devil-worshipping music to summon the king of demons.

Now THAT is METAL!

It’s not so obvious at first, but afterwards all of the adults in town are just…not right.  They’re basically eye-gauged deadites.  Think Ash vs the Evil Dead (2015) meets a zombie apocalypse and that’s kind of looney territory we’ve hit.

I saw a guy do this at a Slayer concert once. No biggie.

The acting is on-point, the editing and direction seem perfect during funny dialogue, and this just enhanced the quick-witted and frequent comedic execution.  This movie is brilliantly hilarious!  The Dungeons and Dragons scene was simple yet precious, but it had nothing on the bit when they’re coming up with the name for their metal band—Cannibal Unicorn, Maggot Sperm, and so many more beautiful combinations of words.  I was also quite fond of the handful of Dungeons and Dragons references sparingly peppered in the script.

I actually really liked the characters in this movie a lot.

Not only is this movie delightfully funny, but it’s brutally gory as well.  This film seizes every opportunity to be gross with the reckless abandon of irritable bowel syndrome.  We have projectile blood vomiting into people’s face, blood enemas, ripping through bodies, splitting heads in half, the honest use of dildos as legitimately effective weapons against the supernatural, ripped out spinal columns, blood geysers, a chainsaw up the butt, coils of sloppy intestines falling out, forced dismemberment, naked bare-dicked zombies getting their dicks weed-whacked, a nude cultist (Delaney Tabron; Power Rangers Megaforce, Spartacus: War of the Damned) stabbing, a tarot card reader (Kate Elliott; Power Rangers Samurai, 30 Days of Night) heart rip, and when his bully cousin finally gets his messy comeuppance the accompanying dialogue with have you in love with this film!

It’s a lot like Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015) crossed with Ash vs the Evil Dead (2015).  Just pure horror comedy bliss.  And be sure to watch ‘til the end of the credits for a bonus scene featuring more grossly awesome band name ideas!

MY CALL:  This is on the better side of the Cynthia Rothrock movie spectrum.  It’s highly stupid, but highly entertaining if you are in a “bad movie” mood.  MOVIES LIKE China O’Brien:  Well, don’t watch Outside the Law (2002) or Night Vision (1997) unless you’re looking for proper Bad Movie Tuesday material.  They are awful!  You might also try the Brazilian remake of China O’Brien called Only the Strong (1993) or the “old white guy” re-imagining Walker, Texas Ranger (1993-2001).  Clearly Rothrock has left her mark in cinema history!

Written and directed by the legendary Robert Clouse (Enter the Dragon, Game of Death, Gymkata), this is far better than the likes of Outside the Law (2002) or Night Vision (1997) but falls far short of a Bruce Lee movie.  Clouse has handled fine martial artists on screen before and understands how to stage tandem techniques (6-12 techniques per cut) to provide an enjoyable action movie experience for martial arts fans and general (bad movie) action fans alike.  But even though Rothrock is capable of some impressive stunts please make no mistake, this absolutely is a Bad Movie Tuesday quality movie! LOL.

After a grown-ass man in a mid-drift belly t-shirt doubts the practical utility of martial arts in front of his karate instructor (Cynthia Rothrock; Night Vision, Outside the Law, Undefeatable) and her class, he challenges China to a back alley fight with five guys.  “You and five guys,” he says.  Is that 5 on 5, her plus 5 against him plus 5… or 5 on her?  Because this sounds vaguely like an invitation to a gang rape.  Well, we never find out what it was meant to be because China (big city police officer by day and martial arts instructor by night) gets ambushed by a gang of random criminals in the alley that evening and, because of an otherwise justified shooting resulting in the death of a minor, China surrenders her badge.

To clear her head China returns to her little home town to stay with her father, the local sheriff.  She’s in town not 10 minutes before accidently offending all the Podunk townies with her nice clothes and big fancy words—clearly “she thinks she’s better than us.”  So a silly bar fight ensues with her in her nice clothes, a man “attacks” her by grabbing her butt, and she kicks down a group of guys like dominoes like something out of a cartoon.  As far as martial arts movies go, this is really campy and the setting feels a bit like Walker, Texas Ranger (1993-2001) meets Walking Tall (1973, 2004) with a dash of Roadhouse (1989).

Now Rothrock is no Jackie Chan.  But she earns her title as the Queen of Martial Arts by executing stunts rarely seen performed by white actors and outside of Hong Kong cinema.  She nails aerial cartwheels from higher ground and does all manner of physics defiant strength maneuvers all the while narrating the names and utility of the techniques like a Shaolin master teaching her pupil in some 1970s Kung Fu Theater flick—which she thankfully stops doing after the opening fight scene.  It’s so corny, but it’s surely enjoyable as long as you weren’t expecting anything serious.  Compared to this, Van Damme is 100% straight-faced serious.  Oh, and evidently Rothrock is a T-800 series Terminator because she never appears to be phased by having someone twice her size punch her in the face!

What’s really “interesting” about the action choreography is that that “characters” are just as good at things as the “actors” are. For example, Rothrock has kicked someone like 10,000 times—so when she kicks someone the kick looks good.  But an actor that hasn’t “been kicked” too often looks like a stuntman school dropout in this movie and, worse yet, an actor who has never strangled someone will offer up the least inspired strangling scene on record.  You basically sit there wishing the strangling assassin would die from his own poor technique.

Nobody panic. It’s just a dead hooker.

This movie also has no sense of pacing. We go from a contemporary Kung Fu theater flick with lots of technical action, to a long run of boring exposition and painful acting, and then find our point of conflict when China’s dad dies in an exploding car assassination and we see her (and her boobs) run and jump in slow motion.  Then the movie shifts to nothing but fights—lots of them.  China didn’t know how long she’d be in town, but now we know she’ll stay until she avenges her father and takes down the local crime lord.

Within days of leaving her big city job China is running for sheriff to replaced her murdered father so she can take on a syndicate of shockingly poorly organized small town criminals.

So what makes this a bad movie?  Here are a few clues:

1. The town is protected by a “seasoned career sheriff” who seems to know nothing about the law. And he’s subsequently replaced by his daughter who constantly breaks the law to enforce it.
2. Slow motion boob running for the sake of slow motion boob running.
3. The sound effect of bowling pins when kicking down five guys at once.
4. Car explosions. Multiple car explosions.  80s and 90s movies loved bad guys who killed people with car bombs.  I’m not sure why.
5. A completely unexplained Australian accent in BFE, Utah. This character Matt (Richard Norton) grew up with China, so he presumably lived in the town since the late 1950s.
6. Crime “lords” that bother with tiny towns. Of course, these criminals seem to really suck at crime.
7. Criminals being deputized the day after being arrested for attempted murder and posting bail (imaged below). And to make up for it, China deputizes a bunch of Matt’s high school gym class students who run around town punching bad guys with deputy badges pinned to their tank tops!
   
8. No explanations whatsoever, for ANYTHING! (see items 1-7…and 9-11)
9. Using the ass-grab technique as a viable bar fight attack. The fight already started and everyone there wants to knock China out.  So, wild haymaker to the face or…perhaps…ass grab?  Good choice.  Ass grab.
10. A one-handed Native American ninja (Dakota) who inexplicably couldn’t fight until he lost his hand—and, speaking of which, I didn’t know that stepping on someone’s hand resulted in amputation! How and where did this guy learn to fight?  And why couldn’t he fight at all before?
11. This is a big one. China’s name “China” is never explained—but I figure it’s to make us associate Rothrock’s character with Asian martial arts.  But she (Rothrock and her character) was born in the late 50s and grew up in a small, ill-educated town that probably lost a lot of men to American wars, and China and America went to war in the early 1950s.  It was kind of a big deal!  So wouldn’t her dad think better of naming her after a rather hated country at the time?

Rothrock actually shares the fighting screen spotlight almost equally with her two martial artist co-stars Richard Norton (Mad Max: Fury Road, Roadhouse 2: Last Call) and Keith Cooke (Mortal Kombat).  The spin kicks are abundant but never awesome, the plot points are idiotic, and there’s nothing wowing to be found here.  You’ll be consistently entertained but you won’t get piss drunk and try to emulate any of it with your friends…like I did after watching Van Damme movies in the 90s.

What is he even doing here!?!?!?!
Setting his stump from stun to kill?

This movie is not good, but it can be really entertaining if you walk into it with the right Bad Movie Tuesday frame of mind.  Keep in mind, nothing is going to make sense in this movie.  So if you can decide ahead of time that something like this would be funny, then you’ll come out of this a winner!  I did!  And I actually expected a totally serious R-rated action movie like the old Jeff Speakman (The Perfect Weapon, Street Knight) and Steven Seagal (Hard to Kill, Under Siege) days.

NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW

NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW

MY CALL:  Perverse, intense, sensual, and just plain weird, this fictionalized historical horror about Mary Shelley and Lord Byron makes for an interesting watch loaded with before-they-were-stars.  MOVIES LIKE Gothic:  Along the Frankensteinian theme one may venture Victor Frankenstein (2015), The Bride (1985), Re-Animator (1985) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994).

I tend not to trust folks who stand in front of their own paintings of themselves.

This tells the fascinating story of how a modern horror legend came to be—in a heavily fictionalized sense, anyway.  As we are introduced to our characters, we find their extravagant lifestyles are punctuated by hedonism, male sexual dominance and the entitlements of severe classist elitism.  They are most extreme in pleasure, manor stricture, and delights.

Before her Sex and the City days.

Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne; End of Days, Stigmata) hosts his guests Shelley (Julian Sands; Warlock, Arachnophobia), the future Mary Shelley (Natasha Richardson; Big Trouble in Little China) and Clair (Myriam Cyr; Species II) along with Byron’s doctor Polidori (Timothy Spall; Sweeney Todd, The Bride).  The cast alone is reason enough to see this perverse film.

Like a vampire, Lord Byron breeds emotional and social intensity, drawing more than an occasional discomfort from his controlled guests.  What’s more is their collective sexual nature.  It’s not homoerotic nor bisexual really, but rather a sort of pansexuality; a pervasive general sensuality.  Think Interview with a Vampire (1994) while being less polite about it.

They gather together and tell ghost stories with perverse tones, speak in poetic seduction of the mind and body, engage in voyeurism and orgy, and lead one another into deep creativity and hysteria.  All manner of nightmare fuel accosts their minds from the ghastly nocturnal homunculus to the blinking eye-nippled woman, perhaps the most iconic scene of the film.  It’s strikingly weird; even other-worldly.

Our guests descend into madness as they mesh polyamory and paranoia, erring on the side of madness.  They envision everything from dead fetuses to animated disembodied heads.

And they crawl around in muddy dungeon filth.

Director Ken Russell (Altered States, The Lair of the White Worm) has a flair for melodrama.  But it is deliberate and perhaps appropriate given his aims to paint our storytellers as creators; creators of their horrors within.

This film tiptoes the line separating ludicrous bad horror and brilliant mania.  I recommend it to general horror fans whose taste spans all manner of quality and style, since this film is a bit hard to classify.

MY CALL:  Perhaps the most boring Italian horror film I’ve ever seen, this alleged sequel to a “haunted house” movie boasts nothing scary or particularly interesting.  MOVIES LIKE Shock:  For more (and decidedly better) Italian horror try The Other Hell (1981; still not so good), Manhattan Baby (1982; utterly senseless but entertaining), The Beyond (1981; awesome), Zombie (1979; awesome), City of the Living Dead (1980; awesome), Aenigma (1987; utterly senseless but entertaining), The Church (1989; utterly senseless but entertaining), Phenomena (1984; utterly senseless but entertaining), Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980) and Mother of Tears (2007). That should get you started!  ALTERNATE TITLE:  Also released as Beyond the Door II.

This film is very, very, very slow.  Not a slowburn, but just plain slow.  It takes us forever to get to the point–which, by the way, I do NOT think is an actual sequel to Beyond the Door (1974).  Perhaps in theme, although that’s it.  But in the mean time we suffer through perhaps the most disastrously poorly scored horror film I’ve seen in a long time–and yes, I’m including synth scores. LOL.

Dora (Daria Nicolodi; Phenomena, Mother of Tears), her young son Marco (David Colin Jr.; Beyond the Door) and his stepfather Bruno (John Steiner; Caligula) move into a new home to find that Marco isn’t handling the transition so well.  He behaves strangely and rather casually threatens to kill his mother.  I think we can all agree that is NOT normal.  Meanwhile Bruno secretly keeps the basement locked, yet somehow Marco keeps getting down there.  I’m guessing we’ll discover some dark family secret down there later.  Way to be subtle.

It turns out Dora had a tortured mental history after the suicide of her drug-addled first husband.  And now it turns out their new home was her old home…where he killed himself!  Bruno somehow doesn’t see how this would pose a problem.  Dora is paranoid and being haunted by her bedroom furniture and spectral boxcutters, young Marco continues to act out, and Bruno is blind to anything out of the ordinary.  Ultimately there is a twist, and I couldn’t care less.

Now I’m no Italian horror expert, but Mario Bava seems to tell a much more organized story than the typically haphazard Dario Argento or Lucio Fulci ever did.  The problem, however, is that his easy-to-follow story has nothing interesting in it!  I criticize Argento and Fulci to no end in my reviews.  But make no mistake, they always manage to entertain me.  This hardly boasts enough to keep my eyes open.

This was Mario Bava’s (Black Sabbath, A Bay of Blood) final feature film, and the only one I’ve seen so far.  The quality presented here doesn’t exactly make me want to venture through his back catalog. I’m not saying this may not have been decent back in 1977, but by my 2016 standards this is awful.  And not like “fun” awful–just plain awful, and dreadfully boring.  My only joy that came from this movie experience has been writing about it.  Sorry, Bava.

MY CALL:  Also senselessly retitled as The Blood of Heroes, this post-apocalyptic Mad Max sports movie makes for an excellent Bad Movie Tuesday with gentle echoes of Gladiator (2000), Rollerball (1975) and even The Matrix (1999).  MOVIES LIKE Salute of the Jugger:  Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), but even more so Mad Max (1979), Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and Rollerball (1975, 2002).

Misinformative posters…there are no red fingernails (left) and I don’t know what’s going on (right).

The 20^th century has come and gone, its technology and more serene times long forgotten, and in its place is The Game…which is played with… a dog skull…!?!?!?!  Did I just read that opening caption right?

Cut to a young boy running and screaming a “Juggers” version of Paul Revere’s “the redcoats are coming” and a Tomboyish Kidda (Joan Chen; Wedlock, The Last Emperor) working in a sandy crop field of this Mad Max-esque post-Apocalyptic wasteland.  And in march the Juggers, a rugged group mixing the aspects of the Sand People and gladiators—and speaking of gladiators, Mbulu (Delroy Lindo; Gone in 60 Seconds, Point Break) might just have been the inspiration for Gladiator’s (2000) Juba (played by Djimon Hounsou). Not just that, but Hauer does the Maximus Gladiator pre-battle sand-hand ritual.  But let’s just pause and appreciate this weirdly eclectic cast in this cult classic, Australian B-movie.  [Are you pausing to reflect…?]

These Juggers are led by Sallow (Rutger Hauer; True Blood, Bleeders) and they stop at a clearing to remove some, yes, “traditionally prepared” dog skulls from a sack before facing their competition.  The scar-faced Big Climber (Anna Katarina; Angels and Demons, Star Trek) and Young Gar (Vincent D’Onofrio; The Salton Sea, Daredevil) arm themselves with wicker shin guards, chain whips, flails and leathers as other scarred warriors don stylish partial face masks. We know a brutal battle this way comes.

The Game resembles a combination of rugby, la Crosse, Rollerball (1975, 2002) and American Gladiators.  Trying to rush a bloody animal skull across a sandy wasteland while being lethally assaulted, this game makes no more sense to me than a barbaric Quidditch match!  I found the action to be entertaining, but not even a little bit “good” technically speaking.

Writer/director David Webb Peoples (writer for Blade Runner, Ladyhawke) has certainly done better.  This film basically opens with a traveling team that plays an away game, loses a player to an injury, then recruits a rookie and trains her with rushing drills.  After 30 min, they’re basically on to their second away game and move on to challenge a pro team from “the League.”  That’s right, this is essentially a minor league misfits sports movie.

So what makes this a bad movie?  Here are a few clues:

1. I’m not really sure how to measure the success of this film. It had a budget of $10 million Australian dollars in 1988, then grossed almost $900K USD in America and under $200K AUD.  Can that be right?
2. Rutger Hauer is in it—he’s made a lot of bad movies in his time.
3. Max Fairchild (Mad Max, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, The Howling III), Richard Norton (China O’Brien, Mad Max: Fury Road) and Hugh Keays-Byrne (Mad Max, Mad Max: Fury Road) make this into a Mad Max reunion.
4. They play a full contact, lethal sport with a dog skull for a ball and keep game time by counting thrown stones. There were no hourglasses in the year 2020???
5. The action really isn’t great. Perhaps up to snuff for the late 80s, but still. You spend a lot of time wondering what these Jugger positions are really meant to accomplish on the field.

Misinformative posters…Joan Chen does NOT dress like a dominatrix (left) and this is not a Vietnam War movie (right).

The movie climaxes when Sallow’s team ventures into an underground city (like a rundown Zion) to play the super tough League team.  But do they stand a chance?  [Shiver]  As if we all don’t already know.

It’s no Hogwart’s or Zion, but the world-building was actually pretty cool; using nuts and bolts as currency, lower castes living above land, this established sports system that’s akin to Rome’s gladiatorial arena to engage the poor and entertain the upper castes, the lawless game that has pre-set/standardized equipment that you (perhaps) make yourself, the completely unexplained dog skull… this world feels credibly lived in despite its somewhat ridiculous premise.

Misinformative posters…this is not a movie about a boyish Asian lady and a leper (left) and, AGAIN, this is not a Vietnam War movie (right).

This movie is really only semi-bad for its time, but pretty bad when viewed today.  Think Robot Jox (1989)… awesome, right? Awesome yet awful…yet not really awful…but maybe really pretty awful.  LOL.  Yeah, it’s like that.  I enjoyed it.

MY CALL:  This very low budget zombedy is to Jurassic World (2015) as Jurassic World (2015) is to Jurassic Park (1993); just rehashing things that we once loved in inferior form.  But it still has some personality and you can tell the cast and crew had fun with it.  MOVIES LIKE Zoombies:  If you’re looking for zombie animals then I’ve got your number.  Love in the Time of Monsters (2015) featured zombie squirrels, moose, trout, geese and raccoons, and then Zombeavers (2014), Victor Frankenstein (2015) and REC 4: Apocalypse (2014) also featured zombie monkeys and baboons.  Other zombedies include Zombie Strippers (2008), Zombieland (2009), Cooties (2015), Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015) and Love in the Time of Monsters (2015).  For more solidly gross and recent horror comedy in general try Zombie Strippers (2008), Zombieland (2009), Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009), Piranha 3D (2010), Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010), Chillerama (2011), Final Destination 5 (2011), Piranha 3DD (2012), The Cabin in the Woods (2012), Smothered (2014), Zombeavers (2014), The Voices (2014), Housebound (2014), He Never Died (2015), Cooties (2015), Ava’s Possessions (2015), Krampus (2015; not exactly comedy, but occasionally hilarious), The Final Girls (2015), Love in the Time of Monsters (2015), Deathgasm (2015), What We Do in the Shadows (2015) and Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015).

On the advice of @cjzisi (his review here) I am, against my better judgment, watching this random movie I’ve never heard of.

Director Glenn Miller (Santa Claws, a kids’ movie) doesn’t have much horror experience, but he does bring a nice touch to this light-hearted, often humorous zombie movie.  The CGI is indicative of a quality similar to a ScyFy Channel movie of the week (e.g., Sharknado 2), which can be disheartening for some.  But the writing and filmmaking care bestowed upon the opening sequence offers a glimmer of promise.  Like an ad for Jurassic World (2015) we are introduced to Eden, a sanctuary for the world’s animals and family-friendly fun education.

But when some infected white-faced monkeys (yes, the Outbreak monkey) are rushed to the veterinary infirmary we know that something is wrong.  In an effort to save a recently deceased monkey ethical lines are crossed and some experimental serum is used to revive it…no clue what such a serum is doing here, by the way.  Now revived, the zombie monkey proceeds to leap onto the vet’s face and throw her eyeballs at his medical savior.  I’d say that sets a pretty strong tone and I don’t think I’m worried about the CGI effects any more, however marginal they may be.

Yes, the effects suck and I don’t mind at all.  I should also note that these actors all seem to really enjoy their roles.  Their script may not be Shakespeare, but they are owning their lines and it’s really refreshing.

Our zoo is modeled after Jurassic World (2015) and you’ll see some direct nods to it (e.g., the design of the headquarters building, the animal tracking screen, the jeeps, and literally making the comparison in the dialogue).  But more like how Jurassic Park (1993) brought some visitors to beta-test and criticize the not yet open to the public facility, here we have college interns starting a pre-opening program.  Our John Hammond is Dr. Ellen Rogers (Kim Nielsen; Amityville Terror).

We find zombie giraffes, capuchins, lions, koalas, gorillas and lemurs.  What we don’t find is quality gore or attacks.  That said, this movie really isn’t “mainstream good” but I also really didn’t hate it.  It was an enjoyable watch.  Although I admittedly won’t ever be watching it again, I wouldn’t warn people away from it either.  It has heart, and for that I look forward to whatever horror Glenn Miller does next.

MY CALL: A perfectly watchable remake that replays the 2002 screenplay and brings nothing new to the table. Basically you’re rewatching an old favorite with a different cast and director. MOVIES LIKE Cabin Fever: Cabin Fever (2002), Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009), Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (2014) and The Ruins (2008).  But true lovers of hilariously gory overkill should also hit Evil Dead (2013), The Cabin in the Woods (2012), Final Destination 5 (2011), Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010), Drag Me to Hell (2009), and of course Evil Dead 2 (1987) and The Evil Dead (1981).

Director Travis Zariwny (Scavengers, Intruder) had never made a feature length horror film before trying to fill some very big shoes by doing a remake of Eli Roth’s 2002 flesh-eating bacteria/virus movie that already has two sequels!  But he seems to be off to one Hell of a great start when he opens with gorgeous shots of the forest and the corpse of a man’s dog—with the cutest name ever (and a throwback to the original): Pancakes—spraying blood into his owners face for no good reason other than making me “squee” with glee.

Now that may sound pretty slapstick-nuts, but this is written by Randy Pearlstein (Cabin Fever, Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever) who acted in Ugly Americans and Chapelle’s Show.  So the sick sense of humor to this movie should come as an expected perk.  And can I just say I loved this seemingly random opening scene with Pancakes’ gore-ravaged cadaver red-misting his owner in the face!

Karen (Gage Golightly; Exeter, Teen Wolf), Jeff (Matthew Daddario; Shadow Hunters: The Mortal Instruments), Bert (Dustin Ingram; True Blood, Paranormal Activity 3), Marcy (Nadine Crocker; Deadgirl) and Paul (Samuel Davis; From Dusk til Dawn: the series, Machete Kills) are college students heading out to a cabin in the woods.  They stop at basically the same gas station as in the original Cabin Fever (2002), someone gets randomly bitten by the same weird kid, they meet the same edgy locals who serve as their troped up harbingers, and it’s introduced almost immediately that no one has any cell service in their cabin.

From spastic kids to waterfront flirting, this feels a lot like the original.

The college kids are pretty clichéd. They get right into the angst, the flirting and the sex.  But they barely have time to get comfortable before Pancakes’ now horrendously infected owner comes begging for help…naturally startled by his flesh-eaten state of decay and his projectile blood vomit, they light him on fire! Yup.  That’s what I do when someone in ill health comes begging for help: light him up.

“Hey, who’s out there?”

“Ewww. It’s a totally gross dying guy! Don’t let him in!”

“He tried to get in! Quick, spray him with lighter fluid!”

“Totally an accident, bro.”

Following suit with the original, some intimacy reveals some infectious gore in naughty spots, they quarantine the first infected girl in the boat shed like an animal, a sex scene re-enacts the back clawmarks scene that was so memorable in 2002, and then they all start turning on each other paranoid of who else might be infected. Suffice to say, there is really nothing inventive about this remake.  It’s an Eli Roth color-by-numbers…scene by scene.  Although I was quite partial to the leg-shaving scene; loved it then, love it now.  Not to mention some quality (but not overly abundant) nudity complete with a gore-slathered infected naked girl.

About an hour in I felt like this wasn’t as gory as its predecessors. But it accelerates accordingly in the third act to please gorehounds.  And speaking of hounds, I love the make-up they did on the infected dog.  What a gory mess.  But that dog had nothing on the brutal mercy kill scene.

Was this original? Not even in the slightest—not even for a remake.  Unlike Carrie (2013) or Evil Dead (2013), this remake brought nothing new to the table…kind of like Poltergeist (2015) except without the horrible suck factor.  This remake is something of a pretty fun ride.  It drags at times in the middle (as we re-live the same old 2002 exposition) and feels inferior to the original and its sequels.  But I don’t regret watching it a bit—it was still fun, funny and gorily satisfying.

Total SIDEBAR: So at the start of the movie Bert buys “the beer” for their weekend and only walks out with two six-packs for five people. Then they have a night of drinking–coming out to 2.4 beers/person.  Later when everything has gone to Hell, one dude grabs two six-packs and leaves the cabin to isolate himself… they were the same two six packs! So what were they drinking before that???

Okay, guys. So the movie is called CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST!
Soooooo… NOT SAFE FOR WORK, right?
Any movie with either CANNIBAL or HOLOCAUST in the title probably means NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

MY CALL:  Yes, this film is every bit as brutal and controversial as you’d expect…but it’s also a brilliantly made, stylistic film that’s way ahead of its time and addresses important aspects of morality.  MOVIES LIKE Cannibal Holocaust:  Cannibal Ferox (1981) and other brutal Italian cannibal movies.  But not Eli Roth’s Green Inferno (2013), which was a less shocking, cheap knockoff.

After a delightfully polite warning from Shudder this Italian cult classic opens with a lovely scored montage of shaky shots of the Amazon, known by its indigenous inhabitants as the Green Inferno (hence Eli Roth’s title Green Inferno).

Alan Yates, Faye Daniels, Jack Anders and Mark had embarked on an expedition to the border of Brazil and Peru to document the jungle tribes.  They followed in the footsteps of explorers who never came back, but they laughed at the amateurs.  After this new group failed to return within two months, a rescue mission was set up to recover them.

Check out their BEFORE and AFTER photos.

Our anthropologist “rescuer” Dr. Monroe teams up with a local roughneck guide and follows the same path as his predecessors marked by the decaying corpse of another jungle guide and Faye’s lighter worn as a charm by a tribesman.

Very early scenes of military machine-gunning through forest natives is campy and bloodless such that you’d think you were watching some PG-13 nonsense.  But don’t be fooled so soon.  Not that I expect a lot of animal lovers to watch this, but you should be warned that real live animals are killed on film—and not even close to mercifully.  I felt so badly for that muskrat (about the 19 min mark).  Later in the film there is an even more disturbing scene involving decapitating a large turtle and then preparing its still-twitching body.  Just brutal, from prying the shell apart to sloppily yanking out its guts.

This all really HAPPENS!

Those are the real guts and the real turtle head. Horrible!

This brutality makes its way to humans as a woman is dragged across the mud completely naked and bound, and forced into some shockingly uncomfortable positions during a sort of torturous rape scene complete with vile genital mutilation.  The violence against women in this film is immense.  But then, so is the general inhumanity overall.

In the past I’ve praised some actresses for what they physically endure on film: Jo Beth Williams (Poltergeist), Jenny Spain (Deadgirl), Isabelle Adjani (Possession), Elma Begovic (Bite), Linda Blair (The Exorcist), the entire cast of The Descent, Monica Belluci (Irreversible), the women of Martyrs, Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist, Nymphomaniac), Alison Lohman (Drag Me to Hell), Danielle Harris (Halloween), Caroline Williams (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), Jane Levy (Evil Dead), the cast of The Human Centipede films, and all actresses from the I Spit on Your Grave films, the women of all other TCM old and new, and Last House on the Left films/remakes/sequels.  Clearly Cannibal Holocaust must now be added to this list.

This film features abundant male and female full frontal nudity, rape and torture, horrible brutality against women and animals, and cannibalism.  It seems that if you are capable of being offended by anything, then this film will have something in it to offend you!  And this all happens in the first 30 minutes!!!

But wait, what ever happened to the original crew of documentarians?  Well, Monroe (and we) get to see their recovered video footage.  Speaking of which, was this (most of the second half anyway) one of the original found footage movies?

What’s really interesting about this stylistic film is that it’s so far ahead of its time.  We see footage from the original documentary crew, then half the movie follows Monroe’s rescue mission and interactions with the tribal people (a mix of normal and docu-reels), and then return to civilization and see the recovered found footage (both as “footage” and as regular scenes) with Monroe’s reactions to them for the second half of the film.

When we consider the title, we imagine that we’d have sympathy for the lost crew and whatever horrible fate had befallen them.  But it turns out they may have very well earned their undoing.

The gore is perhaps a bit more authentic than were used to, apparently consisting largely of whole animal organs in lieu of the standard rubber guts popularized by Romero’s original Zombie Trilogy, the actual brutal executions of some animals (the turtle scene was the worst), and various rape, birth and amputation scenes.

As if making a statement of our own acceptance and desensitization to violence and cruelty, disarmingly pleasant music often scores scenes of cruelty and mayhem.  Monroe calls the original crew out for their inhumanly soulless actions and the target of our sympathy shifts dramatically.

This film has a reputation for being brutal and unsightly.  I guess it is, and it especially was for 1980. But how had I never heard of how stylish and unique and ultimately self-realizingly moral it was?  This movie is really…well…great.  Great in a very non-mainstream, socially unacceptable kind of way, to some. But great, nonetheless!  I think this film is excellent!

NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW
Images of blurred out boobs
NSWF NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW

MY CALL:  If you’re a fan of atrociously bad 80s fantasy B-movies loaded with the worst fight scenes, depictions magic, occasional sexploitation, and creature effects ever—see it.  If you have to ask, this probably isn’t for you.  MOVIES LIKE Thor the Conqueror:  Do you like this 80s fantasy badness?  How about Flash Gordon (1980), Sorceress (1982), Kull the Conqueror (1997), Krull (1983), Conquest (1983), Deathstalker (1983), The Devil’s Sword (1984), The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984) and Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans (1987).  All of these movies are better than Barbarian Queen (1985) in every possible way except for amply breast-filled minutes of screen time. Like all the fantasy but don’t care for all the “bad”?  Then perhaps aim for Legend (1985), Beastmaster (1982), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Conan the Destroyer (1984) or Willow (1988) on for size.

Bad movie posters. There is no bear or elephant in this movie, he doesn’t have short blond hair, she isn’t blond nor does she ever wear a fur bikini.  ALL LIES! LOL

I’m not gonna’ lie.  I bought this on an intoxicated Amazon shopping spree several years ago and have been dreading the day that I finally decide to watch it.  Well, today is that day!  Director Tonino Ricci (Cave of the Sharks, Night of the Sharks) and writer Tino Carpi (Tentacle, Warriors of the Wasteland), who have probably never made anything good between both their careeres, have provided our ultra-classy viewing enjoyment for the evening.

Don’t pretend you don’t see the resemblance.

We start by meeting a barbarian who looks like a caveman Weird Al Yankovic, his wizard companion and his pregnant wife.  After she scurries off into the bushes to give birth they are ambushed and face some of the silliest sword fighting ever.  For real, LARPers are more lethal with foam weapons than these idiotic berserkers.  After the barbarian father is killed by some kind of evil bad guy leader with an arrow through the neck, the wizard casts some spell to magically teleport himself and newborn baby Thor to safety.  Evidently he couldn’t be troubled to try to save the mother or anyone else with his sorcery.  He later demonstrates some magical abilities that could have come in handy in saving Thor’s parents!

Thor (Bruno Minniti; A Man Called Rage, The Porno Killers) is raised by the wizard, who apparently taught him swordsmanship—because wizards are known for that skill set—and not magic.  Go figure.

After a couple destitute action sequences his wizard surrogate dad pulls an Obi-Wan and turns permanently into an owl (for really no reason at all) to oversee Thor attaining his destiny, which apparently involves reclaiming his murdered father’s sword.  I’d again like to point out the power of this wizard and how he could have saved Thor’s family or simply accomplished Thor’s stupid quest on his own with ease.  He was casting spells from the afterlife, so he could have teleported Thor to the sword, and that would be it.  Boom: movie.

On his generally vague journey Thor is charged with fighting some women, escaping a tribe of primitive natives, meeting his hardly-clothed captive-turned-girlfriend Ina (Maria Romano; Violence in a Woman’s Prison, Women’s Prison Massacre), defeating his father’s murderer Gnut (Raf Baldassarre; The Killer Wore Gloves), and presumably engaging is forcefully non-consensual intercourse with two women—at the wizard’s encouragement to completely disregard the women’s rights or choice in the matter!  But hey, there’s consensual sex, too.

For real, her boob is ready to pull a Tara Reid and flop out at any moment throughout the movie.

So what makes this a bad movie?  Here are a few clues:

1. Thor’s first scenes have him speaking like Tarzan. Then later he talks normally.  Then back to “Me, Thor. You bad guy.”  No clue why.
2. His wizard adopted-father basically tells him to “have his way” with a scantily clad woman. “Go on and rape her, son.”  .. classy.
3. There’s violence against women. Thor straight up breaks a warrior woman’s neck while choking her out, then knocks a woman down and fondles her.  I’m so embarrassed to have seen this movie! SMH
4. Your drunk, overweight, Dungeons and Dragons-playing friends who have never been in a fight could stage better fight scenes than I witnessed in this POS movie.
5. A sword turns into a snake…then nothing happens! Apparently, a shot of a snake doing nothing was considered a big deal to the filmmakers.  I just scratched my head, chugged a beer, and tried to get on with my life.
6. Later Thor milks snake venom from a clearly non-venomous snake.
7. This is basically a mild exploitation movie.  And, like in Sorceress (1982), our protagonist has never seen the opposite sex.  Yet when exposed, he knows EXACTLY what to do with bare boobs!
8. Scan through this review and read the parenthetically annotated movies the cast, writer and director have done. Pure drudgery!
9. Needlessly scantily clad women. I’m not complaining, though.
10. The wizard “likes to watch” and boy is it creepy.
11. Thor is given the “first ever” horse in a world that has never witnessed mounted combat. So he rides it “to” the fight, then dismounts. Idiot!

This movie is terrible in so many ways.  But like many bad movies, if you go in knowing what you’re in for, it might be exactly what you wanted.  So sit back, have a few beers, and join a friend in watching one of the worst fantasy flicks of the 80s.

MY CALL:  This was the satisfying result of mixing the ghost from Mama (2013), the mother from The Babadook (2014) and a Springwood, Ohio address for that A Nightmare on Elm Street–iness (1984).  Not original and quite predictable, yet still highly entertaining and creepy.  MOVIES LIKE Lights Out:  Mama (2013), The Babadook (2014) and The Boogeyman (2005).  Even Carrie (2013) if you’re in the mood specifically for batshit crazy moms.

Despite their simplicity, these scenes were creeeeeeeeeeeeepy!

There’s really not much substance to this story.  Martin (Gabriel Bateman; Annabelle) is a little boy living with his clearly mentally ill mother (Maria Bello; Secret Window, Demonic) and…let’s just say that her actions (or inaction, neglect, what have you) leave Martin fearing for his life, deathly afraid of the dark and falling asleep.

Having fled their mother years earlier over similar issues, Martin’s much older adult sister Rebecca (Teresa Palmer; Warm Bodies, Wolf Creek, The Grudge 2) steps in to protect Martin from their mother’s manic neglect and maybe something more.

It turns out that nightmares from Rebecca’s past are being relived by young Martin, who in turn has resurrected their evil’s attention to Rebecca.  And that evil is something vile!

I was very pleased with the acting, good production value, and I thought the effects were everything they needed to be.  Nothing seemed wanting, nor was there any need or desire for gore.  Despite being limited to shadowy figures most of the time, our wicked phantom looked pretty awesomely creepy and, on that note, the creepy atmosphere was pretty effective.

If this movie feels a bit familiar to you, you’re not alone.  I felt like our evil ghost twitched and burped about in the shadows a lot like Mama (2013) doing her best impression of The Grudge (2004) ghost, the mother had a slew of psychological issues like our favorite abusive mom in The Babadook (2014), and those close links between our victims’ fear of the dark reminded me a bit of The Boogeyman (2005) or, since James Wan (The Conjuring 1-2, Insidious 1-2) is this film’s producer, perhaps even Dead Silence (2007) when we see our haggish specter’s face.  You might even feel some echoes of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) in there—there were more than a few parallels.

Playfully renewing our fear of the dark with a series of predictable yet highly enjoyable jump scares, director David F. Sandberg’s (Annabelle 2) first feature length horror film pretty much plays it safe and by the numbers.  But you know what?  Sometimes that’s okay.  Nothing great about this film, but I really enjoyed it.  It was fun and I’d recommend it for a good popcorn horror night or fun scary movie date night.

This director handled his first mainstream horror gig very well, he embraced Wan’s horror influence, and I’m excited to see whatever he does next.

MY CALL:  Looking for tandem jump spin kicks, perpetual muscle flexing, Belgian butt shots and a secret death match martial arts tournament?  Well, look no further!  MOVIES LIKE Bloodsport:  Other Van Damme movies, of course!  But maybe this movie isn’t bad enough for you and you want something a bit more “campy bad.” If that’s the case, try China O’Brien (1990), Outside the Law (2002), Night Vision (1997) or Only the Strong (1993).

So you’re probably wondering “John, this is Van Damme at his best, there are real stars in the cast, he faces an iconic bad guy and the score is awesome!  How could this be a bad movie?”

Fair question.  Well, when it came out I’d say it was epic and into the 90s it was awesome…and it’s still awesome to maybe you, definitely me, and most people who saw it back in the 80s or early 90s.  But, come on.  By today’s standards this is not awesome; not to most 18-year-olds.  This is a once great movie that is sort of now bad.

********************************

This movie opens with a serene sort of martial arts movie perfection. Most 80s martial arts movies open with synth scoring and annoying clichés.  Quite to the contrary we are practically bewitched by the completely exotic East Asian scoring (by Paul Hertzog; Kickboxer) as we enjoy scenes from busy Chinese streets and preparations being made for the legendary underground tournament.

“But hold on, this sounds far too legit.  Didn’t you say this was a Bad Movie Tuesday?”  Well, yeah it is.  You see, mixed in with these insightful shots are two street thug-looking dudes in denim vests (a la Roadhouse) who are meant to protect the world’s most secret martial arts tournament from discovery with their puny biceps and no weapons to be found.

The answer is YES…
He IS ALWAYS flexing.

But I really need to return to the score.  The music is mystical, enchanting even, as we watch martial artists around the world breaking giant ice blocks, sparring and training for the chance to prove they’re the best.

When we meet Captain Frank Dux (Jean-Claude Van Damme; Kickboxer, Double Impact, Time Cop) he’s spin-kicking a speed bag in a unitard, snug around the butt and sweaty biceps glistening for the ladies.  By the way, it seems that everyone and their mother knows who got invited to the “secret” Kumite and that it’s in Hong Kong.  This goes doubly for Dux’s commanding officer, who he slips with the old “I’ll be in office right after I take a shower” gag.  Psych!

Dux is quite stylish—a common trend in JCVD characters, in fact—showing up to his Shidoshi’s (Roy Chiao; Enter the Dragon, Game of Death, The Protector) home in the kind of leather jacket you’d see a wealthy pornographer or 80s Glam Rock band member wearing.  While he waits to pay homage to his master, he reflects…aaaaaand fade to flashback!

This movie might just feature the coolest training montage ever!  It features blindfolded fighting, meditation, music that is simply magical, five tandem ridgehand chops to the stomach, concentration exercises, bare-handed fishing, extreme flexibility, some serious shinai work, the hands-down toughest white belt I’ve ever seen, the most brutal stretching exercise, and blindfolded tea parties.  Beat that, Rocky!

Let’s touch on our supporting cast. Ray Jackson (Donald Gibb; Transylvania 6-5000) is his lovably ignorant American lug and sidekick, reporter Janice (Leah Ayres; The Burning) is the sexy love interest with a nose for a story and trying to sneak her way into the Kumite, the young and pushy Agent Rawlins (Forest Whitaker; Species, Battlefield Earth) and the older calmer Agent Helmer (Norman Burton; American Ninja 5, Deep Space) are hot on Frank’s trail, and then there’s Frank and Ray’s guide Lin (Ken Siu) who’s good for more than a few laughs and some blatant exposition.

I guess it does make a difference if Bruce Springsteen is a Shidoshi because upon arrival to the Kumite, Frank’s round-eyed legitimacy is challenged and to prove himself he must perform the Dim Mak (death touch).  This is among the most famous moments of this movie.  Of course they say “bottom one” when picking bricks from the stack—which was conveniently already set up.  I wonder who else had to do the Dim Mak. And I wonder if Jackson assumed the old master was ordering Frank to get him a fast food value meal.

But would the top one really be so easy?  Think about it.  It’s a stack of five bricks.  To break the top one without affecting the bricks below it would be brutally difficult as well.  Either way, this is amaze-balls-tactic!  But for some reason, Chong Li (Bolo Yeung; Enter the Dragon, Double Impact) is among the audience and he looks like he could care less or maybe simply has indigestion from his large vanilla shake, Double Bacon Dee Mac and fries—he’s the only guy wearing a sweatshirt as if he just returned from a Shoney’s buffet and felt embarrassed about being bloated the day before the Kumite.  Meanwhile, wearing a male stripper tank top and slacks, Dux slams the stack for the absolute best exploding brick scene in movie history.  You should see his face: TOTAL INTENSITY!  It’s like Dux simultaneously explosively sharted and unexpectedly saw boobs for the first time—he actually makes that face several times.  And yet Chong Li is so not impressed, taunting “Very good. But brick not hit back.”  What a doofus!

That face you make when you reeeeeally had to poop.

Well, it’s the day of the Kumite and Frank’s warming up in the hotel.  “That hurts me just lookin’ at it,” says Jackson with a morning beer in his hand. Of course we come across Frank’s two-chair straddling mediation session (not unlike his recent Volvo truck commercial) which made Jackson beg: “You know you better stop doin’ that stuff. You may wanna’ have kids one of these days.”

About now I’d like to pause and assess how we know this is a bad movie:

1. How is this ancient-looking marble-walled and gold-calligraphied temple somehow kept a secret when it’s basically in the basement of a poor tenement building in Hong Kong?
   
2. Donald Gibb is in this. You know?  The big Viking from the Capitol One commercials and the big jock from Revenge of the Nerds (1984).
   
3. The African martial artist prances about like a monkey and karate chops coconuts. Don’t mess with that guy.
4. Was the guy fighting on the beach in maybe Hawaii (I suppose?) just street fighting for cash? His opponent was not impressive.  Some of these fighters aren’t as convincing as the scintillating background music. The smallest Sumo wrestler ever throws a sack and knocks over two little guys—soooooo we’re establishing that his big and strong? FML.
5. Shidoshi Tanaka’s 12-year-old son is his home security system and instead of sounding an alarm he expedites kicks to the stomach.
6. The flashbacks to Frank’s childhood feature the gawkiest actor and the worst lines ever. Based on meeting young Frank, you’d assume he’d never have sex in his life…EVER!
7. If the tournament is held in Hong Kong, an epicenter of Chinese martial arts, why does the Kumite winner receive a Katana, the quintessential Japanese weapon?
8. How did Shingo Tanaka die??? Frank basically claims Shingo’s ticket to the Kumite and we get no explanation!
9. If you pay close attention, you’ll realize that Frank was a white belt for years. But then, presto! He’s a black belt just in time for the Kumite.
10. So is the Kumite a secret or not. Janice calls it a secret and two fighters won’t say a word. Jackson meets a stranger (i.e., Frank Dux) at an arcade game and mentions the Kumite casually in passing like “come see me fight in the Kumite.” The investigators are trying to find the secret location, yet everyone seems to know everyone who’s invited.
    
    
11. The fights feature completely gratuitous tactical rolls (by JCVD), needlessly hurling people out of the ring, the Sumo wrestler gets punched in the nuts by TWO different opponents, the Sumo wrestler also performs TWO back-breaks and no one bats an eye at it (foreshadowing Kickboxer???), and silly grandstanding.
12. The entirety of Bolo Yeung’s lines are: “Very good, but brick not hit back…You are next…You break my record, now I break you like I break your friend…Matte.”
    
13. Dux finishes off Chong Li with four tandem jump skin kicks to the head, which I’m pretty sure would be fatal.
    

The first couple fights are laughably weak.  But then, as if it was the first day in the prison yard, Chong Li straight up kills a clearly inferior opponent for all to see, as if he was just making a point.

For the most part, this is not a movie for technical fight choreography snobs who live for the likes of Tony Jaa (Ong Bak), Scott Adkins (Universal Solder: Day of Reckoning), Michael Jai White (Undisputed 2-3) or Iko Uwais (The Raid: Redemption).  The fights are generally unimpressive by today’s standards, although quite decent outside of Hong Kong cinema in the 80s.  Although, a couple of fights (e.g., the one between two obvious martial artists who had almost no dialogue) were of higher caliber.  And, of course, Van Damme dances about with the sleekest and smoothest choreography in the movie—whereas Yeung enjoys the more brutally abrupt fights.  The style of the music trades between them accordingly.  Already in his 40s when he made this movie, Bolo Yeung brings his “old man strong” game as he busts his opponent’s knee in one of the worst leg breaks.

Now let’s lighten things up…

How about some highlights…?  I just love the playful and quite polite chase scene through the streets of Hong Kong, prancing in the streets and running across chains of small boats to Steal the Night; there’s an obligatory Van Damme butt shot for the ladies after the least action hero-iest “love scene” ever; and Van Damme’s fight against the Sumo wrestler is unforgettable.

This is the movie that established the Van Damme staples: a Belgian butt shot (with the reporter), splits during a fight (vs Sumo), tandem jump spin kicks (vs Chong Li), and a sappy closing scene with the subject of his motivation (with Jackson).

This is one of Van Damme’s best and most rewatchable movies.  What’s odd is that this was the only movie in which Van Damme was totally dominating his final bad guy—until, of course, Chong Li cheated and blinded him.  Typically, Van Damme gets his ass handed to him then suddenly finds mid-fight motivation to save the day like Hulk Hogan back in the early WrestleManias.

In either case, this movie is a spectacle that every man over 30 should own and love.  Buy it, watch it, then join our nostalgia by listening to our Van Damme podcast episode!

MY CALL:  A title like The Abyss (1989) for a movie that marries The Thing (1982), Leviathan (1989), Deep Star Six (1989) and Aliens (1986). MOVIES LIKE The Rift:  Leviathan (1989), Deep Star Six (1989), The Thing (1982), Harbinger Down (2015) and The Abyss (1989).

This movie isn’t trying to hide what it is at all.  Essentially, this flick is competing with Leviathan (1989) and Deep Star Six (1989) to be the Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987) of deep sea sci-horror submarine movies.

Some special ops guys awaken Wick (Jack Scalia; Red Eye) in his flea bag apartment to recruit him to find “his” lost submarine: the Siren-1.  Of course, our hero is jacked, has a raspy voice and is recently divorced (like all late 80s, early 90s antiheroes).

Director and writer Juan Piquer Simón (Pieces, Slugs) has made some cult favorites in horror. But his skills haven’t exactly advanced.  The writing/dialogue are atrocious, Wick looks like Sgt Riggs (Mel Gibson from Lethal Weapon), and it only takes five minutes of running time before Wick is on the rescue vessel the Siren-2.  Oh, and just because The Abyss (1989) did it, Wick’s ex-wife is on the mission and she’s senior in rank.

Crewman Robbins (Ray Wise; Swamp Thing, Cat People, RoboCop, Twin Peaks) is Wick’s closest ally, Captain Phillips (R. Lee Ermey; The Terror Within II, Se7en, The Frighteners) is the hardass military leader helming this mission, and as if to forecast what was going to go wrong, one crewman is an expert in “biogenics” for no good reason at all.

After circumventing deep sea icebergs (if that’s even a thing) at depths of about thirty thousand feet down an “abyss” they encounter the Siren-1’s distress signal in an area surrounded by plants which, evidently, can’t grow down there due to the complete lack of sunlight.  So they take a sample in the name of science.  I feel like “let’s just take a sample for science” is the academic version of investigating a weird noise outside or saying “let’s split it.”

Turbulence is experienced as if aboard the Starship Enterprise complete with shaky cameras and the effects budget is incredibly low.  When their sub is attacked by a giant sea slug this is made readily apparent.  And why are they not making a bigger deal over the GIANT SEA SLUG!?!?!  They just go on with the mission…like that shit didn’t even happen?  They end up in a conveniently pressurized super deep sea subterranean cave system following the distress beacon of the Siren-1.  The atmosphere is toxic and there is evidence of past human occupation.

Playing strongly off of Alien (1979), not only do both movies feature a Kane (Alien) character and an important escape pod scene, but like Aliens (1986) we also we see the crew’s vital stats on a monitor as they are attacked by insectoid monsters in a close quarters cave armed with flood lights and guns.  We watch a digital on-screen schematic of the cavern layout with heat signatures for creatures.

Only now do we get any satisfying semblance of gore…and plenty of it as they attacked by some sort of giant worm, these fly-headed bug monsters, mutant piranha-eel fish and what seems like a mix between a Komodo dragon and a piranha!  There are tentacle assaults and gooey slimy mutant monster fetuses in an egg chamber overseen by a giant mutant starfish plant monster.  It’s senselessly random!  It’s cool and all, but for my money I’d favor Galaxy of Terror (1981) or Forbidden World (1982).

Speaking of Forbidden World (1982), the innocuous plant sample taken on board has grown and infested the lab with crusty xenomorphic webby roots like the brood chamber in Aliens (1986).  It’s all gushy slimy and pulsating, and it spews infectious gobbledy gook that melds (or melts?) to flesh like The Thing (1982).

What’s strange is that Leviathan (1989) and Deep Star Six (1989) came out not only the same year as The Abyss (1989), but they were released in January and March with The Abyss (1989) following in August.  How did that happen when they feel like rip-offs???  Well I guess all of them play off the Aliens (1986) playbook.

And despite being such multi-film sci-horror rip-off, I thought this was every bit as entertaining as all of the other referenced Alien-rips—all of which I enjoy.  It heavily delivers on the cheap gore and creature effects, hits a good level of creature diversity, and has its share of cheeky yet unoriginal plot twists.  I recommend it to any B-movie fan.

MY CALL:  One of the more stylish yet less substantial werewolf movies out there, this movie features two highly memorable transformation scenes worth the price of admission alone.  MOVIES LIKE The Company of Wolves:  The Brothers Grimm (2005), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Return to Oz (1985), and maybe even Deadtime Stories (1986).  Viy: Forbidden Empire (2014) is dark fantasy, but I’d dare not call it good nor would I recommend it for anything but the transformation scene and a few other decent bits.

MORE WEREWOLF MOVIES:  The best werewolf movies would have to be An American Werewolf in London (1981; semi-humorous), Ginger Snaps (2000; metaphoric), Dog Soldiers (2002; unconventional) and The Howling (1981; serious).

If you want another utterly ridiculous werewolf movie, then move on to Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985) and Howling 3: The Marsupials (1987).

However, I’d advise you skip Red Riding Hood (2011), Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004), Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988), Howling V: The Rebirth (1989), Howling VI: The Freaks (1991) and The Howling: Reborn (2011) unless you are a werewolf movie/franchise completist.

And for more stylish werewolf movies Meridian (1990), Cursed (2005; cliché-loaded and contemporary), Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004), Wolf (1994), Wer (2013), The Wolfman (2010), Wolfcop (2014) An American Werewolf in Paris (1997), Late Phases (2014) and the Underworld movies (2003, 2006, 2009, 2012) are also worth a watch.

Waxwork (1988), Trick ‘r Treat (2007), Van Helsing (2004), Monster Squad (1987) and many others also feature werewolves, but not to such centerpiece extent that I’d call them “werewolf movies.”

As if Disney and Grimm had an R-rated lovechild, this film lays on the fairy tale allusions thick with dreams, wicked sisters, animated toys and uber-creepy gingerbread men.

After the tragic loss of her sister (Georgia Slowe) to the wolves of the dark magical woods, young Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson; Snow White) accompanies her grandmother (Angela Lansbury; Murder, She Wrote, The Last Unicorn, Beauty and the Beast) through the woods.  Don’t eat the berries and be wary of the beasts that lurk in the shadows, Granny warns… Never eat a windblown apple, never wander from the path, and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet.  That’s not exactly the kind of advice you’d hear from Confucius…or a grandma!

While knitting Rosaleen a red garment, Granny warns that sometimes a wolf is more than a wolf and that they come in various disguises.  She goes on to spin a “once upon a time” about a unibrowed travelling man (Stephen Rea; Underworld: Awakening, Werewolf: The Beast Among Us) who turns out to be more than he seems.  This story is one of several stories told to and by our Red Riding Hood Rosaleen in this pseudo-anthology which features three transformation scenes—and two of them are your reason to watch this movie!

The first transformation scene begins with a subtle change in eye color to a sharp yellow. He proceeds to tear away chunks from his cheek and his forehead, stretching and yanking flaps from his neck and his chin.  It’s quite deliciously gross.  After tearing away the last of his skin and hair with bony hands he uncovers a fleshless head of sinew from which springs and extends his canine muzzle.  It’s all practical effects, of course, and weirdly off-putting—it actually reminds me of the modern “Bodies” exhibit.  Finally, his neck extends like a turtle’s from its shell as it unsheathes!

This scene may not be as brutally long and painful as An American Werewolf in London (1981) or as grimy and sloppy as The Howling (1981) or its Wolfcop (2014) successor, but it’s quite effectively uncomfortable to watch.

Another transformation scene in the movie feels brief and comical, more akin to Howling 3: The Marsupials (1987).

And a final transformation scene features a gross writhing tongue followed by the emergence of a wolf’s snout from a man’s wide open mouth (as seen on the movie poster) before it tears its way out of his skin as if it wore him as a suit (a more crude version of the “unzipping” werewolves we find in Trick ‘r Treat).

If you love these transformations, you should check out The Best Transformations of Horror.

This film casts an interesting tone.  The mossy, misty woodland scenes will remind you of Labyrinth (1986) and The Dark Crystal (1982)… just without the Henson Muppet creatures.

I have a major soft spot for this movie…perhaps it’s the transformation scenes, perhaps its dark fairy tale nature.  But make no mistake, overall this is rather slow-paced and far from exciting.  This film is more style than substance, and that style would be best-defined as dark, off-color and aloof—but very cool!

MY CALL:  Much hokier than Bloodsport (1988), Kickboxer (1989) or Lionheart (1990), but with “some” better fighting, stunts and martial artists.  MOVIES LIKE The Quest:  Other Van Damme movies, of course!  Especially Bloodsport (1988) and Lionheart (1990), which both feature hush-hush Fight Clubs that can’t keep a secret.  But maybe this movie isn’t bad enough for you and you want something a bit more “campy bad.” If that’s the case, try China O’Brien (1990), Outside the Law (2002), Night Vision (1997) or Only the Strong (1993) for your Bad Movie Tuesday.

Okay, so this was actually written by the real life Frank Dux (the guy whose highly doubted story Bloodsport is based)—in that his “story” was the basis for it—and Jean-Claude Van Damme (Kickboxer, Double Impact, The Expendables 2, Time Cop, Bloodsport).  Somehow I don’t expect much from a movie written by a guy who (by the opinion of many) fabricated a story about winning an invitational secret Kumite tournament, and the Muscles from Brussels who played this potential Kumite tall tale teller.  Essentially, this is a fictionalized retelling of what may have originally been fiction in the first place and it’s directed by Van Damme himself.

In case this Dux-slamming seems mean and unfounded, please understand that since the 1988 movie’s release his story has always been considered a highly probably lie.  Here’s an article (CLICK HERE) from 2015, and another, and another, and another way back from 1988, pointing out the inconsistencies and dubious claims.  Van Damme even doubted its validity while filming Bloodsport.

Well now that you know who wrote it, it should come as no surprise that this opens much as Bloodsport (1988) did, but with neither of the magic nor style, with preparations for the big secret tournament. They form melted gold into a dragon statue and send scrolled invitations in person to their recipient fighters, including interrupting a Sumo wrestler’s bath and a Nazi’s fencing lesson.  He’s not really a Nazi, but for some reason they make him seem despicably mean.

Then we meet street urchin Chris Dubois (Jean-Claude Van Damme), who combines Oliver Twist’s Fagan and Robin Hood as he cares for a group of homeless orphan pickpockets.  Dubois is an acrobatic thief with some pretty decent fighting skills, but he is forced to flee and leave the kids when the consequences of his criminal actions catch up to him.  Of course, he promises the children he’ll be back.

During his escape he sneaks on to a ship and is taken prisoner.  He is rescued by Lord Edgar Dobbs (Roger Moore; A View to a Kill, Octopussy) and his assistant Harry (Jack McGee; Drive Angry), and subsequently ditched halfway around the world in on Muay Thai Island.

So eventually a caption graces the bottom of the screen: “6 months later.”  Not sure how long it takes a small vessel to sail from northeastern America to Thailand or how long he was on Muay Thai Island before his “owner” decided to train him, but in combination it must’ve been 3-4 weeks.  Let’s call it a month—plus “6 months later” is about 7 months from the time the first Ghang-gheng (that’s our Kumite equivalent in this movie) invitations were sent out.  That’s a long time in advance to send out an RSVP.

Revisiting Thailand, Lord Dobbs has made the acquaintance of an attractive young journalist Carrie (Janet Gunn; Carnosaur 3, Silk Stalkings) who is looking for a great story…just like Bloodsport…and they bump into Dubois, who has climbed the ranks and become a feared Muay Thai fighter.  In order to repay Dubois for wronging him, Dobbs is to help him gain the “Golden Dragon” from the tournament in the Lost City where the greatest fighters of the world compete in secret.  And again, just like in Bloodsport, there’s a secret competition that folks know about who weren’t invited!  In this case, it’s Dubois who wasn’t invited to the party. So how did he know?  When his trainer on Muay Thai Island was invited did he have a party to celebrate and announce it to everyone?  Did he tape the invitation on his Thai fighting office communal refrigerator as a reminder?  Does the whole island know?  Or are only their enslaved American fighters afforded such privileged secrecy?

Well now Dobbs, Harry, Carrie and Dubois want to go to the Lost City…but how will they find it?  It is a secret, right?  No problem, after a single phone call Carrie knows that the invited World Champion boxer from America Maxie Devine (James Remar; Tale from the Darkside) is about to arrive right where they are in Thailand en route to the Lost City.  So evidently the first reporter she spoke to in America asking about the secret tournament knew not only that the tournament was happening, but who was invited and that he was on his way and his travel itinerary!  This takes place in 1920.  Even with the internet and phone taps this would be impressive!

So now the plan is for Dobbs, Harry, Carrie and Dubois to pose as Maxie’s hosting entourage to escort him to the Lost City.

Remember the “entering the tournament hall” scene in Bloodsport when everyone doubted the American fighter (now Maxie Devine), Dux did the Dim Mak (now the Mongolian breaking the table) and Chong Li had some words (now the Mongolian’s sneers)?  Yeah, so that all gets replayed here.

So we’re all in the Lost City, whose “secret location” was most definitely aided by the huge German Zepplin flying in and landing on location, and it looks a lot like the Kickboxer (1989) arena with the Bloodsport officials.  This is where we get to meet everyone and Maxie outs Dubois as an imposter, to which the elder officials state that unless he “proves himself a worthy opponent” and wins the first round there will be some pretty serious consequences.  But wait, does this mean that everyone who loses in the first round—half the fighters!!!—is now categorized as “unworthy?”  Seems a bit harsh.  And moreover, now that we know Dubois and his gang are imposters, is no one concerned about Dobbs, Harry or Carrie (the fkn undercover reporter!!!)?  Isn’t this whole thing supposed to be a secret?  I’m beginning to think this is the first year of this tournament!

You’ll notice a lot of these opponents have been in other Van Damme movies.  It seems Van Damme keeps a stable of friends like Adam Sandler, doesn’t he?  There’s the feared Mongolian Khan (Abdel Qissi; Lionheart, The Order), who seems way bigger than 6’2” the way they present him; Phang (Jen Sung; Under Siege 2) the Siamese fighter; another boringly unimpressive Sumo wrestler (Kitao Koji; Wrestlemania VII); the mean Nazi (Habby Heske; Mr. Nice Guy); the French fighter (Takis Triggelis; Legionnaire, Savate); the ripped Turkish guy who only landed one cheap hit and went down in one stupid hit; the sensational Brazilian capoeirista (César Carneiro; Only the Strong); the big Greek guy (Stefanos Miltsakakis; Cyborg, Lionheart, Maximum Risk); the stylish Spanish fighter (Peter Malota; Double Impact, Nowhere to Run, The Order) who looks a little like Antonio Banderas; the African Zulu-esque warrior (Winston Ellis; Operation Condor); that poor Okinawan (Ong Soo Han; Kickboxer, Street Fighter); the lame Russian (Brick Bronsky; Troma movies); the Scotsman (Mike Lambert; Knock Off) who gets it in the balls; and the Chinese five-animal kung fu master (Peter Wong; Bulletproof Monk) who was AMAZING!

About now I’d like to pause and assess how we know this is a bad movie:

1. Van Damme in old man make-up AND in mime make-up. Need I say more?

2. There’s no chase scene, no training splits, no dressing like a male escort, no Belgian butt shot, no splits during a fight, no sex scene, no tandem jump spin kicks…where’s the Van Damme-iness we all came to love? At least his sweaty biceps glistened. But why did Van Damme sub in the Turk for the standard butt shot for the ladies? #BareButtFail
   
   

3. The old “Van Damme slip” escape scene. He does using the shower in Bloodsport (1988) and now he uses a sack of grain with his jacket wrapped around it.  This is some Bugs Bunny cartoon-level work.

4. He is caught as a stowaway on a ship and is forced into servitude…just like in Lionheart (1990). How many of his old movies will he borrow from?

5. After people from around the world visit the Lost City, is it still lost? I mean, these people suck at keeping secrets about secret martial arts tournaments.  So it’s fair to say that once they get back, the world will know.  And if the competition is always held in the Lost City, are we to assume that this was the first batch of competitors who can’t keep a secret?  After all, the invitation came with a map as if no one could ask how to get there.

6. How heavy is the Golden Dragon…well over 1000 pounds, right? Gold is HEAVY! Today gold is about $1400 per ounce!  Can these Lost City monks afford to be giving away so much gold? That’s in the neighborhood of $20 million!

7. They quote Bloodsport with the line: “What kind of a deal?”

8. They steal the Kickboxer (1989) bar fight scene when he sweeps the guy’s hands from leaning on the table.

9. Dubois’ fight against the Spanish fighter looked striking similar to Van Damme’s fight against the same exact actor in maybe the same shirt in Double Impact (1991)!

10. Maxie is basically a replacement for Bloodsport’s Ray Jackson (Donald Gibb; Transylvania 6-5000), only without the ‘Murica-level brain damage. Dobbs and Harry seem analogous to Agent Rawlins (Forest Whitaker; Species, Battlefield Earth) and Agent Helmer (Norman Burton; American Ninja 5, Deep Space), and Carrie is clearly Janice (Leah Ayres; The Burning).

11. This martial arts movie transforms our hero into a serious fighter, yet there is no training montage. In Bloodsport we get a JCVD montage and an opponent training montage! How is there no training montage? #TrainingMontageFail

12. Remember in Bloodsport how through its entirety Bolo Yeung’s lines were: “Very good, but brick not hit back…You are next…You break my record, now I break you like I break your friend…Matte.” Khan the Mongolian says even less! Not one line! And I’m not even kidding. He has zero lines!  Which makes me wonder if Qissi had any lines in Lionheart (1990) when he played Attila.

13. Dubois clutches Phang’s Muay Thai headdress like he did Ray Jackson’s Harley Davidson bandana after the Khan Tong-Po-back-breaks Phang like he did his brother in Kickboxer (1989). Then Dubois wears it, just like in Bloodsport.

14. They show some of the same fighting footage TWICE during Dubois’ fight against China! And then against Khan, they play the same punch combo footage FOUR TIMES!

15. What is it with Van Damme and back breaks? In Bloodsport the Sumo wrestler also performs TWO back-breaks, then Tong Po in Kickboxer, and now Khan does one here.

16. Dux finishes off Chong Li with four tandem jump skin kicks to the head, which is the only time replaying footage is okay. So where are the tandem jump spin kicks in The Quest?  Here we get only one in the final fight. ONE! #VanDammeFail
    
    

For the most part, this is not a movie for technical fight choreography snobs who love Tony Jaa (Ong Bak), Scott Adkins (Universal Solder: Day of Reckoning), Michael Jai White (Undisputed 2-3) or Iko Uwais (The Raid: Redemption).  The fights are generally unimpressive by today’s standards, although quite decent outside of Hong Kong cinema in the 80s.  Although, a couple of fights were of higher caliber.

The opening fights are terrible.  Spain v Russia and Japan v Okinawa are super short.  However, France v Brazil features some seriously cool stunts (especially for an American-made 90s martial arts movie) and China v Korea introduces us to the hands-down best martial artist in the movie, here showcasing snake-style kung fu.  Peter Wong’s opening flare techniques had me rewinding a few times just to figure out what exactly he did with that jump spin kick that included attacks to the front and the rear.  In Brazil v China, he does monkey-style kung fu—also a dazzling splendor of stunts, not to mention a playful monkey punch to a pair of Brazilian balls.

I don’t think Van Damme likes Scotsmen (e.g., Lionheart).  Here the Scottish guy loses to a punch to the balls right under the kilt from the Turk.  In fact, someone always seems to get hit in the nuts (e.g., that Brazilian, Sumo wrestler in Bloodsport).  This Turk, by the way, looks like ripped Hank Azaria from The Birdcage (1996) and he goes down in the best possible stupid way against the Sumo wrestler. I think Van Damme ha a soft spot for Sumo wrestlers because they seem to get the funniest fights in his movies.

Told you!

And oh my God, the Kickboxer (1989) influences!  Khan the Mongolian has Tong Po hair, Phang taught Dubois Muay Thai and then loses to a back break against Mongolian, mathematically speaking Khan = Chong Li + Tong Po, Phang’s master Khao resembles Mr. Xian who trained JCVD in Kickboxer, the guy who played Khan is the brother of the guy who played Tong Po (Michel Qissi; Kickboxer, Bloodsport), and BOTH brothers were in Lionheart (1990)!

I find this to be among the most recent Van Damme movies that I consider rewatchable.  It’s hokier than most, but still a lot of fun and nostalgically satisfying for me—of course, I saw this in theaters when I was 15, so I’m just the right age to love it.

If you enjoy this stuff, buy it, watch it, then join our nostalgia by listening to our Van Damme podcast episode!

MY CALL:  This sequel (to Jason Statham’s 2011 remake of the 1972 Charles Bronson classic) is extremely entertaining…and extremely campy.  Expect top tier stunts, but the dregs of writing.  MOVIES LIKE Mechanic: Resurrection:  I thought The Mechanic (2011) was FAR better (and, in fact, “good”), so I’d start there.  But, to be fair, Mark didn’t love it nearly as much as I did (Mark’s Review CLICK HERE).

This film answers the question on everyone’s mind.
EVERYONE: “Does Statham still look like this?”
THIS MOVIE: “Affirmative!”

We have to start with the writing!  The writing was soooo awful.  This is like 80s action movie awful when Stallone or Schwarzenegger would get a phone call, light a cigar and, the next thing we know, BOOM: they’re in Prague or somewhere else in Eastern Europe killing bad guys by the dozen standing out in the open, raining jingling automatic weapon ammunition to the ground in slow motion while not one of their 86 Communist assailants can aim a gun at a shirtless patriot whose glistening muscles practically make them a glowing target.

But you know what?  JASON STATHAM!  That’s why we’re here isn’t it?  The truth is… we just don’t care.  If you asked anyone waiting in line to buy their movie tickets if they thought the writing would be good, the dialogue convincing or the plot points sound—no one would nod “yes.”  They’d silently pause, look at their date with a smile and make that “pshhht” sound.

And Jason doesn’t care either. Look how happy he was in this interview as he laughed answering the question “Why do you think people like seeing you kick bad guys’ butts?”
He knew this wouldn’t be an Oscar contender.
No. This one’s for the bros!

As it turns out, founder of Movies, Films and Flix, film data analyst and Bad Movie Tuesday expert (Mark) wrote a Movienomics article that accurately predicted 18 months ago that this sequel would suck.  The data suggests his apparel—read to learn why.

However, with this alternate poster, the audience scores might increase.

The opening fight sequence features Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham; Spy, Homefront, Safe, Parker) executing some of the most perfect Matrix-like martial arts ever to cheese up the screen.  His character is every bit as perfect as Statham’s ego is tremendous–very much like his roles in The Transport series (2002, 2005, 2008), Furious 7 (2015) and The Expendables movies (2010, 2012, 2014).

Bishop always knows what to do, his kicks and bullets never miss, their bullets always miss, he always has exactly what he needs or can find it unreasonably fast, and everything works out to plan against astronomically improbably odds…and also with such “yadda yadda” writing that he just seems to teleport across the globe and have the entirety of the knowledge of the world uploaded into his brain for ease of assassination planning.  Bishop is basically the smartest man alive—but he grunts like Jason Statham.

Admittedly, I loved this scene.
He must’ve scienced the shit outta that.

Jessica Alba (Little Fockers, Stretch) has been cast as his completely unconvincing love interest.  Their “sex scene” is innocently clothes-on and uncharacteristically giggly for our gruff hero, she reprises her underwater naughty bikini butt-cam shots from Into the Blue (2005), and her initial placement in this movie is more forcefed than a dog being fed its heartworm pill.  Like the dog we resist and want nothing to do with it, but we accept that we have no choice and swallow.  It didn’t help when Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Sunshine), in her worst role ever, suggested that Arthur save her from some domestic abuse—while for the sake of his own survival he’s trying to lay low as an assassin who’s supposed to be dead and some bad people had just discovered he was alive…and he beat the crap out of them…hence the LOW PROFILE—and then insinuate that they were a “couple” almost immediately.

That’s right, we saw Michelle Yeoh calling us over with our favorite bacon-flavored treat, we saw that evil white medicinal pellet embedded in it, and we let her jam that nonsense down our throat!  Yuck, I feel dirty now.

I guess there are worse things I could have forced upon me.

The bad guy couldn’t be more Eurotrashy slick.  He’s always smug, he demands impossible tasks with unreasonably proximate deadlines, and never ever cares when a dozen of his men get shot in the face during a 2-minute action sequence that should be called “Bishop’s Lackluster Murder Revenge Marathon.”  Don’t these henchmen realize that he doesn’t care about their well-being…like…at all?  They should really listen to our Podcast Episode #43: Advice for Movie Henchman.  It baffles the mind how readily these goons jeopardize their lives against the most impossibly talented assassin their employer knows.

Oh, and keep an eye out for Tommy Lee Jones’ most annoying role ever.
I feel like they told the people in wardrobe:
“Just make him look like an asshole.”

Let’s be clear, folks.  I LOVED The Mechanic (2011).  LOVED IT!  Even though Statham did everything perfectly and was perhaps unreasonably knowledgeable and lucky then as well, we saw him patiently put in the effort and occasionally get frustrated.  The plot points made sense, the antagonist was credible and motivations were clear.  Even if you disagree, you’d have to give me that compared to part 1 these comparisons hold true.

This one features abhorrent writing and a nonsense premise while Statham prances around The Matrix knowing all and never missing. He wakes up and pisses excellence.  In fact, if his urine stream were to cross a bad guy’s neck, he’d surely be decapitated. Resurrection is an excellent fun bad action movie with great action sequences and I highly recommend you see it on the big screen for some bad-yet-awesome-action popcorn fun.  But as a “film” this script should be crumbled fodder for a hobo’s garbage fire.

Just keep expectations low and you’ll be dazzled. Expect the next Mission Impossible plot and you’ll be pissed.  Cheers!

SPOILERS

MY CALL:  If Norman Bates and Leatherface had a telekinetic lovechild with a fondness for mannequins, this lunacy is what you’d have.  It’s not scary or gory, but it trumps the deck in the weird and creepy department.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Tourist Trap:  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), House of Wax (2005) and Psycho (1960, 1998).

Also released as Horror Puppet, this cult classic leaps right into the deep end of its own lunacy.  We’ve barely met our group of victims when one of them, approaching a sleepy and perhaps abandoned gas station (a la The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), wanders into a sort of elaborately rigged funhouse loaded with evil mannequins.  The scares are cheap and numerous, but they should crack a grin.

I have no idea why this poster depicts a naked women (there is no nudity) or why her nipples emit beams of light (that obviously doesn’t happen).
This is a terribly misleading poster.
And while we’re at it, what is with this raunchy poster pose?
It’s oddly similar to Evils of the Night (1985)

The humor may not be entirely deliberate, but I finda sort of sick slapstick nature to it as the mannequins cackle and random objects jettison through the air at our victim.

This may make some horror lightweights a bit uncomfortable.  Writer/director David Schmoeller’s (Puppet Master, Netherworld) first feature length undertaking sets the stage much like its successors The Evil Dead (1981) and The Funhouse (1981).

Now one short, four twenty-somethings remain including Jerry (Jon Van Ness; X-Ray, The Hitcher), the anxious Molly (Jocelyn Jones; The Enforcer), the bold Eileen (Robin Sherwood; Death Wish II, The Love Butcher), and the foxy Becky (Tanya Roberts; The Beastmaster, Sheena).

The classic tropes are on display, that’s for sure.  When our four victims go looking for their missing friend, they go down a road passing a sign with a vulture perched upon it that reads “closed to the public.”  Maybe read between the lines, folks.

This won’t end well.

The friendly backwoods landowner Slausen (Chuck Connors; Soylent Green, Summer Camp Nightmare) catches the girls in his swimming hole and kindly introduces himself, explains the regional history and warns that they leave before dark.  He ran the now out-of-business “local museum” and offers them a ride to pick up some tools to fix their broken down car.

Things get really troped up and really suspicious really fast…and the short shorts get really short.  The phones don’t work, he warns them not to wander around, he gives cryptic answers to simple questions like “who lives in that house” and Slausen wastes no time separating the group.

Random objects break, shatter or shutter about adding little of substance to the haunted house atmosphere.  It feels cheap and desperate.  What does work are the creepy mannequins’ shifting eyes, moving on their own, and blatant nods to a slack-jawed, eerily masked Leatherface-like villain with some Norman Bates issues.

The death scenes are pretty hokey. Scarf strangling by ghost (or telekinesis or something), a projectile pipe stabbing, asphyxiation by plaster…they sadly do not comprise the highlights of this flick.  But it’s charm is instead found in the antagonist’s mania as our murdered victims are added to a creepy mannequin menagerie.

This split-personalitied maniac and his romantic proclivities clearly inspired Motel Hell’s (1980) sympathetic Farmer Vincent character, who also echoed Leatherface and other aspects of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).

For whatever reason or coincidence, this outfit makes out villain look like Tony Clifton!

Tony Clifton is for real gonna’ murder this chick!

I’d recommend this to seasoned horror fans—who have already seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Psycho (1960)—who like digging deep to observe the roots of subsequent horror themes.

Before.

After.

MY CALL:  More of a fun “action” movie than a “martial arts” movie, this is LOADED with cheeky lines and “most” of the JCVD staples. But if you seek jump spin kicks, you should watch his earlier movies instead.  MOVIES LIKE Timecop:  Other Van Damme movies, of course! Especially Bloodsport (1988), Lionheart (1990) and The Quest (1996), which all feature hush-hush Fight Clubs that can’t keep a secret.  But maybe this movie isn’t bad enough for you and you want something a bit more “campy bad.” If that’s the case, try China O’Brien (1990), Outside the Law (2002), Night Vision (1997) or Only the Strong (1993) for your Bad Movie Tuesday.

Timecop boldly opens, challenging its viewers by posing the question: If a bunch of Confederate gold is highjacked by a time traveler during a wagon trail hold-up in 1800s Georgia, does anyone care?  Well, since all that did was remind me of the displaced silliness of laser guns in Cowboys and Aliens (2011), I’m gonna’ say no.  But honestly it was kind of a cool scene that, despite my joking, opened the movie with a bit of integrity.

But now we need to put on our serious faces and explain the “rules of changing the past” to set the urgency of the film.  “What if Saddam Hussein time travels to steal our atomic bomb technology to become a world power” and blah, blah blah, end of mankind, “ripples” in time are bad… And now there’s now been a ripple when some terrorists (present day) were found brokering an arms deal with confederate gold.

Is that a Stargate?

So now it’s time to create the Time Enforcement Commission (TEC) to essentially police time travel…with “time cops.”  From proposal of the TEC to appointing a chairperson takes about 6 minutes tops, making this the fastest act of legislation ever in the history of all things government—even the most insane dictators would think things over (like newly appointed commissions) during the course of a drink. I don’t think John Hancock signed his name in the time it took to convince a table of DC bigwigs that time travel technology was invented (without them knowing anything about it) and it “just happened last week!!!!”

They just nod like “sounds reasonable” after they are informed they “know” the gold is from the 1800s not just because of how it was marked (Property of the Confederacy or whatever), but because they carbon dated the aforementioned highjacked gold.  But wait… Can you carbon date pure gold????  Guess what, writers of Timecop?  You simply cannot carbon date things that don’t have carbon.  You don’t get to waive your hands in the air and say we know “because SCIENCE that’s why!”  As it goes, you can only “carbon” date things that have carbon in them. And since gold is made of…waiiiiit for it…GOLD (Au 79) and not CARBON isotope C-14, you can’t use carbon dating to estimate its age.

But let’s try to forget for a moment that our writers failed their 8^th grade Physical Science midterm and focus on the story.  Our hero is Max Walker (Jean-Claude Van Damme; Bloodsport, The Expendables 2, Universal Solder: Day of Reckoning), a cop with an incredibly American sounding name, an incredibly unexplained Belgian accent, an incredibly beautiful wife and an incredibly unbelievably huge house for his civil servant job in the greater DC metro area.

“Read it.”
“Wolverine…?”
“Between the lines.”
“I should get the Fuck outta here.”

We meet Max playing out some fantasy roleplay in the middle of a mall with his wife (Mia Sara; Legend, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) when he pulls an awesome little scene out of nowhere with a steady kick held in a rollerblading purse snatcher’s face.  Some ostentatiously crooked looking goons oversee the event and seem unimpressed with his obvious glute strength and balance.  It’s a pretty iconic scene—that and the washer/dryer jump split make for some exquisite trailer moments.

Thank you, by the way, to the writers and Mia Sara and Van Damme for acknowledging and playfully mocking Van Damme’s English.  “He read my mind…With your English he didn’t have much choice…Hey, I know all the good words.”

On that note, this movie is loaded with some great 90s action movie lines…

“Is this TEC work dangerous?”
“I don’t bake cookies for a living.”

But Van Damme’s movies are known for more than thick European accents being applied to American characters delivering cheeky lines.  He’s also known for his surprisingly tender love scenes that might just be presented as much for the ladies as the men (e.g., Double Impact, Bloodsport).  JCVD’s Kenny G-scored love scene comes complete with iconic Van Damme bare butt shot for the ladies, some Mia Sara nudity for the bros, and soft lighting for the production geeks.  On top of that, it’s filmed and scored like softcore porn on late night Skinemax.

Director Peter Hyams (A Sound of Thunder, Sudden Death, The Relic) knows how to deliver what Van Damme fans want!  And that does not include a very sound story.  We are rich with clichés as the bad guys kill his wife and needlessly explode his giant house, the time travel portals conveniently appear wherever they are needed and smack of the subsequent show Sliders (1995-2000 Sci-Fi Channel; which may have copied Timecop, in fact), and I don’t even have an explanation for Van Damme’s hair.

When I see her face it reminds me…

of when Quaid wanted Cohaagen to give the people da’ air!

The thing that really makes this highly rewatchable movie work is that Van Damme is clearly having fun with this role—as he often does with his cheeky charm.  This is most evident during his first time travel fight scene in Wall Street.  His cheeky lines, his sudden straddle dodge, his stick strike to the nuts—sometimes I imagine they had to do extra takes because he’d burst out into laughter.  The kicks in the face are numerous, so are the gunfire evasive dive rolls, and I’m happy for Van Damme.  His career never saw paydays like Schwarzenegger or Stallone, but he always seemed to embrace his characters (at least, up until this point in his career).

About now I’d like to pause and assess how we know this is a bad movie (as if it wasn’t yet obvious):

1. How was there not a single jump spin kick in this entire movie!?!?!?! That’s JCVD’s thing!  Also, much to my surprise, there is very little in terms of sweaty biceps shots.  #JumpSpinKickFAIL

2. This takes place in “the future” in 2004. Man, I can’t wait for 2004! The cars may look like Back to the Future’s DeLorean and Total Recall’s Johnny Cab had a mutant baby… but they drive themselves!  And the TV and voicemail in his house are voice-command.

3. There are these two goons with matching death metal hair and giant twin hoop earrings. Shouldn’t goons of high level criminals be more discrete? So was this like a thematic rematch of sorts?

4. After being found guilty of “time travel with the intent to alter the future” a guy is sentenced to death. But the death is carried out by letting him fall from a building in 1929 where he was impersonating a Wall Street investor.  Wouldn’t that alter the future?  When 1929 cops cannot link this supposedly wealthy investor to anyone who actually existed?  Isn’t that sort of a big ripple.  Oh, and he did already buy 100,000 shares of oil stock.  What about those ripples?  Jobs, the economy, increased financial disparity between classes…? Jobs and money affecting if certain parents ever met and had kids…like so the kid who grew up to invent time travel would have never been born because his dad didn’t get “that” job and meet “that” woman at “that” time.

5. The evil presidential hopeful slams his consultant’s head into a car window for giving him bad news. I love this!

6. Watch out for the knife fight in the kitchen fight scene. They replay the same set of attacks/parries 2-4 times back to back really fast as if we wouldn’t notice…just like they replayed the same jump spin kick footage (vs Chong Li) in Bloodsport…just like they replayed the same stunts (vs China) and punch combo (vs Khan) footage in The Quest. This wasn’t the only Timecop offense, the girl’s (Gloria Reuben; Robot, Falling Skies, Silk Stalkings) palm strike and some rainy finale punching were replayed, too.  Was this common in 80s and 90s action movies, or does Van Damme just get too tired to film more moves? Adding insult to injury, the Asian knife fighter outspinkicks Van Damme’s spin kick! #SpinKickFAIL #KnifeFightFAIL #ReplayFAIL

7. Also during that knife fight Van Damme seems to “parry” several attacks in a row by simply holding the knife perfectly still in front of his face as if it was a powerful magnet! LOL. Terrible! #ParryFAIL

8. Evidently if you expose water to 50K volts of electricity, it can hold the charge and electrocute someone several seconds later. #PhysicsFAIL

9. I don’t think their time travel launch car ever hit 88 mph! #BacktotheFutureFAIL

10. Did they rip off the launch car from The Running Man (1987).

11. “Never interrupt me when I’m talking to myself.” An incredibly silly line delivered by the villain with an incredibly straight face.

12. No one can deny that the liquid nitrogen arm shatter scene was a blatant (and playful) rip-off of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Not gonna’ lie, I laughed.

13. Okay, I am now CERTAIN that Van Damme gets the giggles over hitting people in the balls. In The Quest the Chinese fighter monkey punches the Brazilian in the balls and the Scottish guy loses to a punch to the balls right under the kilt from the Turk.  In Bloodsport the Sumo wrestler gets punched in the nuts by the African monkey boy and a Van Damme split testicular uppercut.  And now in Timecop, Van Damme whips a guy in the balls with a stick and then two guys get shot in the balls during the rainy rooftop finale.

14. “The same matter cannot occupy the same space at the same time.” Three times we are informed of this! But at least by the third we got some awful effects as the bad guy ate it and melted into pink ooze.

For the most part, this is not a movie for technical fight choreography snobs who live for the likes of Tony Jaa (Ong Bak), Scott Adkins (Undisputed 2-3, Universal Solder: Day of Reckoning), Michael Jai White (Undisputed 2, Blood and Bone), Jason Statham (Mechanic: Resurrection), or Iko Uwais (The Raid: Redemption).  There’s nothing particularly wowing about the martial arts.  However, a few stunts steal the show.  We mentioned the washer/dryer jump split, he makes good use of a towel and an over-the-arm kick to the face, and the quality of the fights was highly satisfying.  But I’d call these “action movie fights” more than “martial arts movie” fights, if you feel my drift.

Van Damme ends up saving the day by stopping an evil time travelling senator from buying the presidency and, along the way, he hits 3 out of 4 on the Van Damme staples: a Belgian butt shot (with Mia Sara), splits during a fight (x2), tandem jump spin kicks (sadly absent), and a sappy closing scene with the subject of his motivation (his son whom he meets for the first time).

Most of Van Damme’s pre-1995 movies have high rewatchability, and this is no exception.  In fact, this JCVD movie had quite a bit of Schwarzenegger style and appeal to it, making Van Damme feel like a more typical action hero than normal.  I highly recommend it to anyone who ever liked pretty much any Van Damme movie.

If you enjoy this stuff please buy it, watch it, then join our nostalgia by listening to our Van Damme podcast episode!

Some SPOILERS

MY CALL:  I had fun watching this movie. Once it gets going it’s actually quite exciting if you don’t get overly aggravated by its repetitions from 1999’s playbook.  But I also enjoyed it much less after I left the theater and had time to reflect on it.  Sigh.  Take from that what you will.  Felt like a great jumpy popcorn flick to me, but not something for anyone hoping for a satisfying film following up The Blair Witch Project (1999).

Almost 20 years ago, The Blair Witch Project (1999) took theaters by storm in an era before internet hype; before social media minefields of spoiler-rich click bait revealed everything before the opening day of the movie; and, most importantly, before anyone had ever considered found footage to be a subgenre (let alone a subgenre of which they tired).  It was about three film students who vanished after venturing the Maryland woods to film a documentary on the local Blair Witch legend, leaving only their harrowing and turbulent footage behind.  The film powerfully impacted the horror industry and its fans, so naturally followed an under-appreciated sequel.

The 1999 indie film was more than a bit divisive.  Causing shaky camera-induced motion sickness in a sea of viewers, this otherwise impressive film ignited the tidal wave of found footage hatred in its wake about which so many peevish horror fans moan today.

The more mainstream (and not found footage) studio sequel Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) followed a subsequent group of investigators to Burkittsville, Maryland after seeing The Blair Witch Project (1999), herein treated as a “real movie” within the movie.  In this metamovie, our protagonists explored the local mythology only to get caught between mass hysteria or, perhaps, the magical influence of the Blair Witch.  Whereas I enjoyed and highly recommend this sequel, the majority of horror-goers don’t seem to share my opinion.  An obvious consequence of this backlash being that this new 2016 sequel directly follows The Blair Witch Project (1999) while apparently ignoring the events of Book of Shadows (2000).  However, one could thinly argue that both sequel stories transpired and that their constituent investigators simply never crossed paths in person or in research.

Now with this third film upon us the Blair Witch has become a franchise—a brand.  So it came as no surprise that such a stylistic indie filmmaker was chosen for this third Blair Witch film which, for fear of being stoned to death, I dare not call the completion of a “trilogy.”  Director Adam Wingard (The Guest, V/H/S 2 – Phase I Clinical Trials, The ABCs of Death – Q is for Quack, V/H/S – Tape 56, You’re Next) is no stranger to found footage, nor to taking the road less traveled to pursue less mainstream-style horror stories.  He has even taken it upon himself to helm the risky American remakes of Death Note (2006) and I Saw the Devil (2010).  And where we find Wingard, we find writer Simon Barrett, who wrote all of the Wingard projects mentioned above, including the upcoming Americanized remakes.  They make a good team…I have high hopes for this film.  Or should I say, I had high hopes.

Having just left the theater I can comfortably say it was consistent nerve-racking fun…but also rather annoyingly just more of the same, turned up to an “11” and super loud.  If you can enjoy a film simply for its rollercoaster jumpiness and ignore its content altogether, then you could end up loving this completely unoriginal film.  It’s a thrillride and it’s great at being a thrillride, as if we were injected into a fast-play horror videogame towards the end.  But outside of that, this brings nothing new to the table except for a “witch” that looks like a tall lanky monster from a Doom or Resident Evil first person shooter game—and with similar effects.

The original (and Book of Shadows) focused on the characters and their superstition turning them on each other and likewise turning to terror.  Putative supernatural occurrences were suggested but not evidenced back in 1999.  This 2016 film, however, was more akin to sprinting through the woods and an abandoned dilapidated house screaming “WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH IN THE WOODS” with a super shaky camera that captures occasional glimpses of terrors.  Much as The Thing (2011), Star Wars Episode VII (2015), Jurassic World (2015), Cabin Fever (2016) and Ghostbusters (2016), we have yet another film that paints by the numbers of an overly familiar model pattern.  And that model pattern was a successful one the we loved… but did anyone really want to see the investigators get lost, apparently hike a giant circle, and end up back at the campsite again?  Did we need more sprinting while holding a flashlight-lit camera at high speeds in the woods?  Did the creek need to disappear… again?  Did we need to see another person standing in a dark cellar facing the wall?  Probably not.  But, again, despite being a mediocre film (in my opinion), it manages to be a quite entertaining movie experience (for me).

As it turns out, this redundant link is perhaps also the deepest aspect of the film–addressing the aspect of time distortion in the forest.  Lots of theories out there, so we won’t discuss it here other than to say that many think this is the “same event” showing the “same character” in both movies.  Think about it…if time passes differently in those woods, this is maybe possible depending on your rationale.

That’s not to say everything was replayed from what makes me now shutter to call “part 1.” There were new character elements (for otherwise underdeveloped characters), they forced more probable supernatural elements upon us sooner (rather than relying on mystery or possible hysteria for much of the running time), there was a shocking voodoo doll scene (with a back break akin to Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)), a completely disjointed implication of a parasite of some sort (with greater implications that I feel failed), some more clues to the component of time distortion (addressed in the other two films as well), and they made a bigger overblown deal out of the house (which was straight out of a videogame).  But, like I said before, it still smelled of the original, and strongly so.

In the end I had fun watching this movie. It’s actually VERY exciting and entertaining if you don’t get caught up in aggravation—LOL.  But I also enjoyed it much less after I left the theater and had time to reflect on it.  Sigh.

Regardless of one’s enjoyment, I’d struggle to identify anything new that actually contributed to the 1999 story…other than that we got to “see” the Blair Witch and she looks like a starved, gangly-limbed videogame monster that was probably transported back to Earth after the reappearance of the Event Horizon (1997), the wrong turn to Silent Hill, or the incident at Raccoon City.

**********************************************

After seeing this I imagine you’ll want to see more witch movies.  Maybe because you loved this above-discussed 2016 film or because you want a witch movie do-over to make up for that hot mess.  So, now that the Blair Witch discussion has come to an end, here is a little witch movie guidance…

MORE WITCH MOVIES:  Some excellent witch movies that actually feel like witch movies include Warlock (1989), The Witch (2016; podcast discussion) and The Witches of Eastwick (1987).  Beautiful Creatures (2013) and The Woods (2006) may appeal to young adult audiences.  But I would sooner direct you to Hocus Pocus (1993), The Witches (1990) and The Craft (1996).  I’m leaving Harry Potter out of this discussion, by the way. Fantasy sorcery (Willow, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) and wizardry (The Lord of the Rings) is to be considered its own thing entirely.

The campy The Kiss (1988), Spellbinder (1988), Necropolis (1987) and Cherry Tree (2015) are entertaining but bad.  And speaking of campy, Superstition (1982) and The Haunting of Morella (1990) are allegedly witch movies but don’t feel like it. But even if you want a bad movie, definitely skip Witchcraft (1989) and all sequels.

The dark noir Lord of Illusions (1995) is intriguingly edgy and, while more a “magic movie” than a “witch movie,” it hits a lot of the same dark arcane notes.  And, of course, The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) were awesomely stylized in their own unique ways despite never actually showing us a witch.  Check out Pumpkinhead (1988) for a great depiction of a witch, though it’s not a “witch movie.” Meanwhile Deadtime Stories (1986) and The Theater Bizarre (2011) features a pretty cool witch short story, and The Pit and the Pendulum (1991) addresses witch trials.

Witches can come in so many flavors, can’t they?  Lords of Salem (2013) and Mother of Tears (2007) deal with witches’ spirits in the form of dark ritual and possession.  Quite the opposite, Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), The Last Witch Hunter (2015; podcast discussion) and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) offer action and effects-driven popcorn fun—Season of the Witch (2011) attempted this, but failed miserably.  But the witch from The Brothers Grimm (2005) was pretty cool.

**********************************************

Well that concludes today’s witch movie discussion. That is, of course, until they release The Blair Sasquatch!  I totally think the story would make more sense if it was just some bigfoot making crude stick men and eating campers that nosily wander too far from the safety of their trails.  That thing we saw for half a second at a time in the Blair Witch (2016) finale could have easily been an albino sasquatch, rendered almost completely ravenous, hairless and gaunt from the extreme malnutrition of having no campers to eat for 17 years (since 1999)!  I’m just glad that poor crypto-critter finally got to eat something.