French Quarter

French Quarter 1978 movie posterIn a recent article about the film Passages receiving an NC-17 rating from the censors at the MPAA, Slate columnist Sam Adams writes:

 

The online discourse about sex scenes often focuses on whether or not they’re “necessary.” Do they advance the plot? Do they tell us something about the characters we don’t otherwise know? Or are they just there to gratify the audience’s voyeuristic urges?

I’d…argue, though, that “is it necessary?” isn’t the right question, or at least the only one. Part of what makes movies (and art more generally) important is that they serve as an implicit rebuke to a strictly utilitarian view of the world, the spiritual parsimony that says that the only necessary things are the ones we can’t live without. We don’t need movies the way we need food or water, but we need them to remind us that being alive is more than drawing breath.

Amen. One of the greatest areas of cognitive dissonance in how we watch films has always been the embrace of violent imagery, while heavily censoring sexual imagery. It’s a reversal of a person’s real-world experiences. Despite how many pearls are clutched or how many angry harangues there are from the pulpit, your children will be having sex at some point during their lives. The continual expansion of the human population on Earth points to it being far less likely that they will ever kill someone, or be killed at the hands of another person. Yes, it happens, but if one were to watch movies as their sole basis of understanding the human condition, one would think that life entailed navigating a maze of explosions and flying bullets. Continue reading “French Quarter”

Detention (2003), or, Die Hard at a High School

Yep, it’s another low-budget Die Hard at a… flick, something that Dolph Lundgren has excelled at during his long and prolific career in shitty movies. Some are bad, some are awful, some are passable. I have yet to see a Die Hard at a… flick from Dolph that is excellent. But, the man has a lane, and he stays in it.

Released direct-to-video in 2003, Detention follows Dolph as Sam Decker, a former soldier who got fed up with soldiering after he witnessed American bombs destroy a building full of bad guys and child hostages in Bosnia. Now, ten years on, he’s a teacher at a rough and tumble inner city high school. He’s fed up with that gig, too, and hands in his resignation early one morning. Because he is leaving his principal in the lurch, Decker is assigned to supervise after school detention on his last day. Continue reading “Detention (2003), or, Die Hard at a High School”

Endgame (1983)

According to the internet, so it must be true, Endgame, from writer (alongside Aldo Florio), director, and producer Joe D’Amato, was the favorite of all the films he made. Endgame was just one of seven productions in 1983 in which he received a director credit, and his IMDb page lists 199, most of those smut. The man was prolific. And when he looked back upon his extensive oeuvre, Endgame, a mashup of post-apocalyptic sci-fi tropes, was the movie that made him smile the widest. Well, okay then.

It’s the future! 2025! Sometime in the ’80s or ’90s, nuclear war devastated the planet. Now, civilization is being rebuilt. A new fascist regime has arisen, ruling the rubble with an iron fist, and exterminating mutants that have been born due to all the radioactive fallout from the nukes. These aren’t ghastly creatures with extra limbs or Marvel-type superpowers. These are just regular folks, whose mutation makes them psychic. They are the next step of human evolution. There is also an unfortunate class of mutants who are devolving into lower forms of life, but the hell with them. The good guys dislike them as much as the fascists do. Continue reading “Endgame (1983)”

Triassic Hunt

Triassic Hunt box artOnce 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.

Their mockbusters have production values that are amongst the worst in film, with talent and story to match. They have mastered a paint-by-numbers approach to cheap filmmaking, to the point that their movies are indistinguishable from each other, once one gets past the surface features. Continue reading “Triassic Hunt”

Space Mutiny

What a gloriously stupid movie. I’m pretty sure that writer, director, and producer David Winters didn’t set out to make one of the greatest shitty movies in the annals of shitty movies, but, that’s exactly what he did. Mission accomplished. Take a bow. Revel in the applause.

But, wait, there’s more.

Winters had to leave the set just prior to filming due to bereavement, so the bulk of this flick was directed by Neal Sundstrom, who had been hired as assistant director. And yet, there’s still more!

After Sundstrom delivered a cut, the movie was deemed too short. There needed to be more movie. So, David A. Prior, who has an unimpeachable CV in b-movies, was brought in, uncredited, to shoot some scenes featuring writhing space witches that are totally unconnected to the rest of the movie, just to push this dog’s running time to the 90-minute mark. As much as I appreciate Prior, I’m an even bigger fan of a movie having no superfluous fluff, and if that means an 80-minute running time, then all the better. Oh, if that were the only flaw in this movie. Continue reading “Space Mutiny”

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 “Territory 8”

Driving Force, or, Dance of the Tow Trucks

Regular readers of Shitty Movie Sundays will know that there is something of a cottage industry in Mad Max ripoffs. Mostly, these flicks aren’t ripping off the first Mad Max film, but the second, where filmmaker George Miller refined the look and feel of his post-apocalyptic vision. Driving Force, from 1989, is a Mad Max ripoff, but it hews closer to the original film, which was dystopian rather than post-apocalyptic, and throws in a little of Peter Weir’s The Cars That Ate Paris for good measure.

It’s sometime in the near future. The United States hasn’t collapsed, but it does appear to be on its last legs. The middle class is gone, with society divided between the rich few and the many poor. Picture in one’s head a third world country, and one gets an idea of this film’s setting. Continue reading “Driving Force, or, Dance of the Tow Trucks”