Tag: Bad CGI

Shitty Movie Sundays: Triassic Hunt

Once upon a time, Roger Corman held the title of most shameless filmmaker in Hollywood. It seemed there wasn’t any low to which he would stoop in order to make a buck, often at the expense of his movies. But, there was still liveliness in his productions. Corman could make a good movie, and he had an eye for talent. The young, hungry filmmakers he had in his stable could be relied upon to repair much of the damage caused by Corman’s ruthless frugality.

The Asylum is the current champion of shamelessness. Their business model of piggybacking off of the success of better films is nothing new in Hollywood. Ripoffs are just part of the economy of film. It’s the efficiency with which they capitalize on trends that makes them unique. Their mockbusters are often released before the big studio material they are ripping off, and they have titles designed to rope in unsuspecting, or undiscerning, viewers. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Triassic Hunt”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Territory 8

Yikes. We want to make it clear here at Missile Test: we will never shit on someone for making a movie. It’s one of the most difficult creative endeavors one can embark upon, and finishing production is something that any filmmaker should be proud of. We, as a culture, need more movies, not less. That said, sometimes a movie isn’t just shitty. Sometimes it’s bad, bad, bad.

From 2013, Territory 8 comes to us via writer, director, and producer Kelly Schwarze. It follows a pair of research scientists, Dr. Eli Dolton and Dr. Tao Xing (Michael Tushaus and Heung Wong), as they try to find a cure to a biological weapon that was accidentally released in the area. The weapon, a virus, was developed by Xing, and he’s got a case of the guilts. As he should, because he’s also been doing a little spying for the Chinese, who are holding his brother hostage in exchange for his secret research. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Territory 8″

Shitty Movie Sundays: Agent Red, or, Die Hard on a Submarine

According to the internet, so it must be true, Agent Red had an initial shoot of two weeks. Director Damian Lee’s assembly cut was rejected by the producers. One of the producers, prolific shitty movie filmmaker Jim Wynorski, then reshot about forty minutes of the movie in three days. That incredible effort still wasn’t enough to finish the film, so it was then stuffed with footage cut from other movies, including ’90s blockbusters Blown Away and Crimson Tide. I’m pretty sure there’s a sequence from Red Dawn in there, as well. Usually, when such extreme measures are taken to rescue a failed film, the result is an unwatchable mess. This dog actually remains coherent. Amazing. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Agent Red, or, Die Hard on a Submarine”

Shitty Movie Sundays: The Last Sentinel (2007)

Here’s some bottom of the barrel sci-fi, folks — slow-cooked to perfection and braised in poor CGI, limited locations, convoluted backstory, wooden performances, and lots of ridiculous gunfights.

From writer/director Jesse V. Johnson comes post-apocalyptic extravaganza The Last Sentinel. It’s the future! Who knows when? After crime and general nonconformity swept the United States, police officers were replaced with genetically engineered drone soldiers — living men stripped of reason and emotion, useful only as black-clad hammers in search of criminal nails. The drones eventually decided that taking over from the humans would be the best way forward, and destroyed most of human civilization. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Last Sentinel (2007)”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Drive Angry

Saint Nic returns to Shitty Movie Sundays! It’s been just over a year since a film featuring Missile Test’s favorite actor graced these pages. Today’s film is Drive Angry, which is the only over-the-top Nic Cage film I can think of in which Nic Cage is not the most absurd thing on screen.

From way back in 2011, Drive Angry comes to us via director Patrick Lussier, from a screenplay by Lussier and Todd Farmer. At first glance, Drive Angry looks like it’s going to be a car flick. The trailer gives audiences the full muscle car treatment. A Buick Riviera, a Dodge Charger, a Chevy Chevelle, and more, including a female lead in Daisy Dukes. It’s a car flick, right? Nope. There are not nearly enough decent car chases for this to be a car flick. This is a revenge flick. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Drive Angry”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Retrograde

Dolph Lundgren has been in some low down dirty dogs in his time in the film business. We’re talking the kind of action movies so underfunded that most of the ‘action’ consists of exposition in barely-dressed sets, or whose plot involves a whole lot of walking in the desert. Often, Dolph is the only member of the cast with an extensive list of credits behind his name, telling a viewer just about all they need to know about a flick’s objective quality. But, fine objective quality is not what we’re after here at Shitty Movie Sundays. Dolph Lundgren is a prolific b-movie actor, and even the worst movie in which he’s ever appeared has something for the devoted connoisseur of substandard cinema. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Retrograde”

It Came from the Camcorder: Ozone

By 1993, when Ozone was released, J.R. Bookwalter had already established himself as Akron, Ohio’s finest filmmaker. That’s not a knock on Jim Jarmusch, just an acknowledgment that Bookwalter actually shot his movies in Akron.

The filmmaker behind such trash horror classics as The Dead Next Door and Robot Ninja, Bookwalter began his movie career shooting on film, before making the switch to video for Kingdom of the Vampire in 1991. After a string of shorter movies, Ozone returned Bookwalter to full feature length production. Continue reading “It Came from the Camcorder: Ozone”

October Horrorshow: Night’s End

It’s tough watching a movie lose it in the final act. Whereas a film that shows little promise at the start, but then builds and builds to something special at the end, is always a pleasant surprise, a film that stumbles to the finish after a strong start can’t help but be a disappointment. Much hard work, good acting, and fine storytelling is, if not wasted by a poor ending, at least squandered somewhat. I can’t say that Jennifer Reeder and company should have just packed it all in if this was the best ending they could come up with, but I would like to see what they could have done given another chance, and maybe a couple extra bucks in the effects budget. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Night’s End”

October Horrorshow: Boa, aka New Alcatraz

Behold! Another early 21st century bag of shit from producer T.J. Sakasegawa and actor Dean Cain. This isn’t to say they were a team, working together to conceive, execute, and then release these dogs on the public. There were many more people involved, but in the early 2000s, if one of these men was on a project, then, more than likely, so was the other.

Boa, a direct-to-video sci-fi/horror flick also released as New Alcatraz, comes to us via director Phillip J. Roth and screenwriter Terri Neish, with Roth also getting a story credit. It tells the tale of a gigantic snake terrorizing guards and prisoners at a secret prison in the Antarctic. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Boa, aka New Alcatraz”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Ice Twisters

Ice Twisters movie posterSyFy has been performing a valuable service for the shitty movie fan for decades, now. They have been willing to purchase and show the absolute worst dogs that the 21st century has to offer, making them the inheritors of the legacy of drive-in movie theaters. Since SyFy is commercial television, these flicks are light on gore and devoid of gratuitous nudity — staples of the drive-in — but they make up for that by featuring movies with outrageous premises, and the type of shoddy production values that are near and dear to we many denizens of the darker realms of cinema. There are true believers at work at that network.

From screenwriter Andrew C. Erin and director Steven R. Monroe comes Ice Twisters, which is exactly what is sounds like. It’s a movie that rips off the blockbuster disaster flick Twister, upping the stakes by making tornadoes icy cold, freezing everything they pass over or fling into the sky.

There are even character analogues to the earlier film. Whereas Twister had Bill Paxton, Ice Twisters has Mark Moses as Charlie Price, a former scientist turned popular science fiction author. Twister had Helen Hunt, while Ice Twisters has veteran Canadian television actress Camille Sullivan as Joanne Dyson, who is heading an experiment where drones are flung into the sky, not to study tornadoes, but to create and control weather systems. She even has a passel of assistants and minor characters to assist her, just like in Twister. Unlike in Twister, there are no future Oscar-winners amongst them. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Ice Twisters”