Action Flick – Missile Test

Shitty Movie Sundays: Savage Hunt, aka Condor’s Run

Savage Hunt VHS box Once upon a time, sunny Greece, one of the jewels of the Mediterranean, and the historical home of critical thinking, was ruled by a military junta. From 1967 to 1974, Greece was not a free country, its citizens politically isolated from the emerging European Union. That all ended when, after a number of disastrous mistakes both domestically and internationally, the Regime of the Colonels was overthrown. This left an indelible mark on Greece, and gave low rent Italian filmmaker Romano Scavolini an idea for a story.

George Ayer stars as Adam, a professional photographer from the United States, who is carrying on an affair with Irene (Mary Hronopoulou), an aging lounge singer with a tobacco-forged voice. She is the toast of the Athens social scene, taking Adam around to fetes attended by all the big luminaries. She even has him take their pictures…with her camera. Unbeknownst to Adam, he’s being used. The same roll of film with all those VIP pictures also includes photos taken at a torture session, where those same VIPs, along with some American embassy staff and CIA agents, watched while a dissident had very bad things done to him. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Savage Hunt, aka Condor’s Run”

October Horrorshow: Zombie Cop

J.R. Bookwalter, Akron’s finest filmmaker, strikes again. Zombie Cop, his third feature, is something of a redheaded stepchild in his oeuvre. According to Bookwalter, he was in an unhappy place with his filmmaking at the time. He had been contracted to shoot six movies in seven months for distributor Cinema Home Video (prolific b-auteur David DeCoteau, owner of CHV, executive produced), and that experience left him so burnt out he almost left the business for good. It’s no wonder, then, that he has mixed feelings about Zombie Cop. The word ‘disowned’ appears here and there in the tubes, but that seems to be an exaggeration. He may not like the final product all that much, but his name is still on Zombie Cop, warts and all. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Zombie Cop”

Shitty Movie Sundays: 4GOT10, aka The Good, the Bad, and the Dead

Kudos to screenwriter Sean Ryan. The writer, whose oeuvre is full of projects found in DVD bargain bins, penned a very interesting story in the awkwardly-titled 4GOT10. Why it wasn’t titled Forgotten, I don’t know.

The movie takes many notes from Cormac McCarthy, along with various other neo-noir flicks of the era, but cribbing is no sin. Many, many low-budget action and thriller movies have passed before these eyes, and most of those don’t have as interesting a plot. Ryan does make the mistake of piling on a twist on top of a twist at the end, but I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Without spoiling anything, it’s such a bad storytelling decision that it had to have come from a producer. Only someone counting beans could see an emotional punch to the gut and then discard it thirty seconds later for bland, crowd pleasing chaff. Anyway… Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: 4GOT10, aka The Good, the Bad, and the Dead”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Savage Dawn

As of this writing, Lance Henriksen has 269 acting credits on IMDb. He’s one of the most recognizable character actors in Hollywood history, and his steady work is well-deserved. But, he hasn’t often gotten the chance to stretch his legs as a leading man. He’s a fine and talented actor, limited in range, but he makes up for that with steely charisma. He didn’t receive top billing in 1985’s Savage Dawn, but he was the main hero that audiences were supposed to root for and look up to.

Written and produced by Bill Milling (co-produced with Gerald Feil, who also shot the movie), with direction from Simon Nuchtern, Savage Dawn is a biker gang flick whose plot is taken from Hollywood westerns. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Savage Dawn”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Caged Heat 3000, or, Nudity Is the New Black

Caged Heat 3000 VHS box Who doesn’t want a little sleaze in their life? If the dearth of this kind of movie in the 21st century is any indication, the answer is: not many people.

Existing halfway between some R-rated titillation and outright smut, Caged Heat 3000 is of a type that has little place in popular culture these days. It’s too raunchy for regular release, but not explicit enough to live on those websites we all pretend we don’t visit. Erotic direct-to-video releases are a victim of forty years of increasing social conservatism here in the States, and the internet, which can offer straight porn on demand. What an interesting dichotomy. Movies are becoming more prudish, while smut is more readily available than ever before, leaving the middle ground a barren wasteland for new content. That’s an oversimplification, but there is a lively debate online about the subject of nudity in film.

There’s no debate here at Shitty Movie Sundays. Gratuitous nudity is an important facet of the shitty movie experience, just as much as nonsensical plots, cheap sets, poor effects, bad acting, and all the other things that give the shitty movie fan their fix. We can gaze upon the lazy eroticism and shameless misogyny of a flick like Caged Heat 3000 and laugh. It also brings to mind the days before we were flooded with content, when Caged Heat 3000 might have been the best, or only, option available for a viewer looking to see a little skin. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Caged Heat 3000, or, Nudity Is the New Black”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Colonials

Science fiction movies in the 21st century don’t get much more bargain basement than Colonials, from writer (with Cyrus Cheek), director (with Andrew Balek), and producer (with far too many people to name) Joe Bland. That’s Bland as in, I shit you not, Bland Productions. That’s the name of his company. Lean into it, Joe.

Using techniques pioneered by George Lucas, Bland didn’t need any fancy sets, or even a full complement of actors. Like the worst sequences in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Colonials uses CGI for just about everything. Spaceships and their interiors. Space stations and their interiors. Ground level in a destroyed megalopolis. A moon base. An earth base. Random hallways and rooms. Even the movie’s bad guy. It takes a full twenty-two minutes of running time before any member of the cast is shown in real surroundings, and that’s just a small location somewhere in the hills of Los Angeles. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Colonials”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Neon City

According to the internet, so it must be true, screenwriter Ann Lewis Hamilton, in penning Neon City, was crafting an updated telling of Stagecoach, set in a time and place similar to Mad Max. George Miller’s epic dystopian/post-apocalyptic films are big hits here at Missile Test, so much so that any Mad Max ripoff, from any source, will get a viewing. Truth be told, they’re all basically westerns with combustion engines instead of horses. Even Mad Max 2, the best of Miller’s bunch, and the one that gets ripped off the most, has more in common with a classic western than its own source material.

It’s the future! 2053! Environmental devastation has led to the collapse of civilization. The world has been rendered mostly desert, subject to random extreme events that kill those caught in them. There are something called Xander clouds, which are areas of noxious gas, and Brights, which is when particulates in the atmosphere focus, rather than scatter, the sun’s rays, cooking anything in sight. As if that’s not bad enough, roving bands of Skins, savages clad in animal hides, attack all travelers, and occasionally lay siege to humanity’s remaining outposts. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Neon City”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Deadly Reactor

Action International Pictures and producer David Winters have done it again. Of late, whenever I’ve been in the mood for a truly shitty action flick from the 1980s or early ’90s, Action International has been there. It’s not all flicks directed by David A. Prior, or starring William Zipp, either. Today’s movie is 1989’s Deadly Reactor, written, starring, and directed by David Heavener, who has an unimpeachable CV as a b-filmmaker.

It’s the near future. Earth has been rendered a post-apocalyptic wasteland by nuclear war. Society consists of roving gangs of thugs, and small outposts of regular folk who are just trying to get by. Heavener plays Cody, a preacher in the Agopy religious sect, which are portrayed as something akin to the Amish or Mennonites, only without the bonnets or the chin straps. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Deadly Reactor”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Rapid Fire (1989)

Prolific b-action auteur David A. Prior graces the pages of Shitty Movie Sundays once again, with 1989’s Rapid Fire, a direct-to-video shoot-em-up that barely makes sense. But, that’s okay. That’s just how we like them.

A daring jailbreak has occurred. The most dangerous terrorist in the world, Mustapha (Del Zamora), has been captured and is being held aboard a battleship (played by the USS Alabama, moored as a museum ship in Mobile). A very bad man, Eddy Williams (Michael Wayne), has boarded the ship disguised as a naval officer. He is toting a rather large and slapdash supergun in a case, which he breaks out and uses to free Mustapha. Check out the poster. That’s a weapon to rival that found in Equalizer 2000.

Agent Hansen (Joe Spinell, in his last film role), from some…agency…has to find Mustapha before he commits another unspeakable atrocity. Since Hansen is not the hero of the movie, he calls in Mike Thompson (Ron Waldron) to track down Mustapha, because Mike has an old beef with Williams.

The two were soldiers together during the Vietnam War, and they did not get along. So much so that Williams left Mike wounded for dead after a battle, and, to add insult to injury, stole the supergun. Mike has been dreaming of revenge ever since. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Rapid Fire (1989)”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Castle Falls

Dolph Lundgren is amongst the most reliable action movie stars to grace the pages of Shitty Movie Sundays. Nary a year has gone by since the 1990s when he hasn’t starred in some low budget b-action fare. Sometimes, he even directs.

Castle Falls, from 2021, sees Lundgren helm a screenplay from Andrew Knauer, whose biggest splash in Hollywood was penning Arnold Schwarzeneggar’s comeback film, The Last Stand.

Lundgren takes the rare second billing in this flick, playing a prison guard named Richard Ericson. Top billing goes to Scott Adkins, playing an MMA fighter named Mike Wade, who has aged out of the sport, and is left dead broke and homeless in Alabama. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Castle Falls”