Shitty Movie Sundays: The Raiders of Atlantis, aka The Atlantis Interceptors, aka I predatori di Atlantide

The Italian invasion continues here at Shitty Movie Sundays. I don’t know who is responsible for either buying or selling the rights to these dogs, but whoever it is, I would like to thank you. It would have been easy to let films like Escape from the Bronx, or today’s flick, The Raiders of Atlantis, fade into total obscurity. But someone, somewhere, signed a deal to make sure flicks like these continue to survive on internet streaming. Whether or not this person is a shitty film lover like myself or a rights holder gathering up pennies, I salute you. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Raiders of Atlantis, aka The Atlantis Interceptors, aka I predatori di Atlantide”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Beyond the Poseidon Adventure

Today Shitty Movie Sundays is featuring another Irwin Allen disaster flick. What makes this one different is that Allen wasn’t just the producer of today’s film. He also directed. It wasn’t his first time in the director’s chair, having helmed a couple of halfway decent sci-fi flicks in the past. But, I don’t think it would have made much difference who was at the helm for this stinker. John Ford could have directed this flick and it still would be packed to the gills with stupid. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Beyond the Poseidon Adventure”

Empty Balcony: Point Break

It’s somewhat amazing, but Point Break, the 1991 action flick from director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter W. Peter Iliff, has become a classic. It’s a film that’s loaded with contemporary action tropes. It’s also one of the flicks that, despite its success, can be pointed to as partly responsible for the downfall of 1980s-style action films. It has aged well over time, but when it came out it was an eye-roller. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Point Break”

Shitty Movie Sundays: The New Gladiators, aka Warriors of the Year 2072, aka I guerrieri dell’anno 2072

Warriors of the Year 2072Television is a tough racket. Just ask the employees of WBS TV. In the future, the year 2072, to be precise, WBS has a hit show on their hands. It’s called The Danger Game, where contestants are hooked up to a machine that pumps visions of bloody torture directly into their brains. If they endure the torture without panicking, they win. It’s a successful show for the discerning TV consumer of the dystopian future, but it’s still getting beaten in the ratings by Kill Bike — a show featuring riders on motorbikes engaging in some poorly filmed jousting.

The mysterious head of WBS, Sam (Giovanni Di Benedetto), has a new idea for a show that should get WBS back on top of the ratings. Essentially, WBS is going to steal the idea of Kill Bike, but WBS will increase the stakes. The contestants will all be convicted murderers, and they will battle to the death in the famed Coliseum of Rome.

The New Gladiators was released in 1984, and is part of the wave of cheap Italian sci-fi that found inspiration following the successes of the Mad Max films and Escape from New York, among many others. This particular film, from famed b-movie auteur Lucio Fulci, borrows from those two films, while still finding enough room to cram in heaping amounts of Rollerball, Blade Runner, and A Clockwork Orange. Most impressively, Fulci was able to reach forward through time and steal ideas from The Running Man (all joking aside, the similarities are enough that I have to think the people behind The Running Man were Fulci fans). Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The New Gladiators, aka Warriors of the Year 2072, aka I guerrieri dell’anno 2072″

Empty Balcony: The Raid 2

Despite how much I liked The Raid, my review of the film ended up being a little thin. That’s because, while there was much to recommend, the film was overwhelmed by its violence. It took all the hard work that went into the sets, the music, the costumes, even the acting of the leads, and rendered it subservient to the majesty of the violence. As it turns out, that’s because the only thing to survive writer/director Gareth Evans sprawling vision of crime, police corruption, and kickass martial arts, was the violence, owing to a budget that precluded any grand scope. The success of The Raid opened the taps more for the follow-up, and allowed Evans to explore in-depth themes that were forced to remain on the periphery in the first film. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: The Raid 2″

Shitty Movie Sundays: Bad Ass

A viewer can tell what writer/director Craig Moss was trying to accomplish with Bad Ass, but the execution just wasn’t there. Inspired by the Epic Beard Man viral video, so much so that one of the production companies for this flick is listed as Amber Lamps, LLC, Bad Ass follows Danny Trejo as Frank Vega, a down on his luck Vietnam vet who kicks the shit out of a couple of skinheads on a Los Angeles bus. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Bad Ass”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Psychomania, aka The Death Wheelers

Tom Latham thinks that life could only get better if he just kills himself. Turns out, he’s right! Tom (Nicky Henson) isn’t suffering from depression, nor is he a deluded youth who is incapable of processing the permanence of death. He’s the leader of an outlaw biker gang called The Living Dead. They get their kicks by driving mildly quickly on the roads of rural England and occasionally tipping over vendor’s carts at the local shopping center. How dreadfully frightful. But Tom has an idea that can make his little band of nihilists even more of a public nuisance. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Psychomania, aka The Death Wheelers”

Trumpland Day 119: What a Week

A review of the last week in the Turdpol Kakistocracy:

  • May 9, Tuesday: President Trump fires FBI Director James Comey. The administration claims the firing is over the Director’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
  • May 10, Wednesday: Trump meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the Unites States Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office and reveals highly classified intel to the Russians.
  • May 11, Thursday: Trump has an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt where he torpedoes all the spin over the Comey firing coming from his own aides, and reveals that he fired Comey because of the ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
  • May 12, Friday: Trump threatens Comey on Twitter, warning him not to leak anything to the press.
  • May 15, Monday: News breaks about Trump revealing the classified intel to the Russians.
  • May 16, Tuesday: Reporting reveals that James Comey kept memos of his interactions with President Trump. One memo describes a meeting in February where Trump asked Comey to end the investigation into disgraced National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia.
  • May 17, Wednesday: The Department of Justice appoints former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special prosecutor to continue the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and possible obstruction of justice.

There’s more, but those are the broad strokes. Without a doubt, this past week has been the most damaging to Trump’s presidency in a long string of weeks with not a lot of good news. Continue reading “Trumpland Day 119: What a Week”

Empty Balcony: The Raid

A million bucks must go a long way in Indonesia. That’s all the money writer/director Gareth Evans had on hand to film The Raid (released in the U.S. as The Raid: Redemption). Despite that tiny budget, Evans constructed a spectacular action flick, packed so full of visual and auditory stimuli that just watching it can make a viewer feel a little drained by the end. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: The Raid”