Bloody Flick – Page 10

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 “Caged Heat 3000, or, Nudity Is the New Black”

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 “Neon City”

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 “Deadly Reactor”

Death Chase

Filmmaker David A. Prior has become a favorite here at Shitty Movie Sundays. Whenever we see his name pop up in the credits of some cheapie action flick the air shimmers with excitement. Low rent. Joyous and lacking all shame. Gloriously stupid. Prior, sadly lost in 2015, had an innate sense of what made action flicks of the 1980s work. He could never muster the technical skill to push these flicks into a higher tier of objective quality, but he knew that keeping things light and preposterous was the starting point for successful action at the time.

Death Chase, which Prior directed from a screenplay by James Hennessy, Craig L. Hyde, and himself, is a take on battle royale/most dangerous game tropes, wherein a deadly game of tag is being played on the mean streets of Los Angeles. The marker for who is ‘it’ in the game is a silver pistol. Whoever holds it must defend themselves from other players of the game. Whichever player still has the pistol after all the other players are dead, wins the game and a sizable cash prize.

The game is being overseen by a board of rich white dudes, led by The Chairman (C.T. Collins). Running the game on their behalf is Steele (Paul L. Smith), who appears like a deus ex referee whenever the game, and the movie, needs a kick in the pants to start moving again. Continue reading “Death Chase”

Pound of Flesh

Pound of Flesh, the 2015 Jean-Claude Van Damme action thriller from screenwriter Joshua Todd James and director Ernie Barbarash, may as well have been called Boilerplate. It’s a movie unconcerned with breaking any new ground, or stretching the talents of its star. It’s as interesting and engaging as the music in a doctor’s office waiting room. It captures one’s attention like whatever sports talk show is on the television hanging over the bar on a Tuesday afternoon. It’s a painting of a lighthouse amongst an entire crate of lighthouse paintings at the local flea market. It’s inoffensive, predictable, and reliable. Because of that, no matter how much ass gets kicked, it’s pretty dull. Continue reading “Pound of Flesh”

Road House (2024)

Road House, the original from 1989, occupies hallowed ground here at Shitty Movie Sundays, in the top spot of the Watchability Index. It’s an unassailable movie, the embodiment of SMS’s informal slogan, “All bad movies are shitty, but not all shitty movies are bad.” From beginning to end, it’s an absurdist romp into the excesses of contemporary Hollywood action, the purest expression of the golden age of the genre that was the 1980s. There was little possibility that the 2024 remake would be better or more engaging, so I’m not going to hold it to the original’s standards.

Released just a couple of weeks ago after a decade of development hell, Road House comes to us from screenwriters Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry, and was helmed by Doug Liman. Continue reading “Road House (2024)”

Missionary Man

What joy for Missile Test, as today we feature another film that b-movie action hero extraordinaire Dolph Lundgren not only starred in, but also wrote (with Frank Valdez), and directed. The writing couldn’t have been too taxing, though, as Missionary Man is a contemporary retelling of Pale Rider, the 1985 Clint Eastwood western.

Lundgren stars as Ryder, a mysterious biker who has a penchant for tequila and bible verses. He rides into a small town in southern Texas (played to effect by the city of Waxahachie) in time for the funeral of JJ (never seen on screen), a Native American tribal council member who was killed by the dastardly John Reno (Matthew Tompkins). Continue reading “Missionary Man”

Bushwick, or, Ridgewood

I can picture an evening, sometime back in 2015 or so, when filmmakers Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott could have been enjoying some drinks at Pearl’s on St. Nicholas in Bushwick, Brooklyn. They’ve been talking politics and batting ideas around for their next feature film and, in a moment of rampant creativity, one says to the other, “What if, like, there was a war…in this neighborhood…and we, like, filmed it right outside.”

I don’t know if that’s how it happened. The genesis of ideas is often random, with no causal event or logical trigger whatsoever. Maybe they weren’t in the neighborhood. Maybe they weren’t even in the city or the state. However the idea for this movie came about, Cary and Jon did indeed come up with a story about a war in Bushwick, and they made a movie about it. Continue reading “Bushwick, or, Ridgewood”

Wrecker (2022)

Wrecker 2022 DVD box Outsider filmmakers with a dream are the best kinds of filmmakers. These are the folks who get it into their heads to make a movie regardless of massive obstacles. All the things that make filmmaking difficult are mere challenges to overcome, annoyances to bypass. What requires a small army to get done in Hollywood, they do themselves. Of course, the final product betrays the humble nature of these movies, even when they are 127 minutes of bombastic insanity.

Bryan Brooks had a very limited career in film before 2022’s Wrecker, appearing in a handful of shorts and doing some work as a grip. If the internet is to be believed, Brooks had an epiphany while he was pinned beneath an 800-pound crab pot on a boat in the Bering Sea. After his shipmates lifted the cage and his lungs took in precious lifegiving air, Brooks took stock of his life and decided that filmmaking was his life’s calling. What followed was a decade of painstaking study of the craft of film before he unleashed his talents on the moviegoing public. It’s almost a superhero origin story. I don’t care if any of it is true. A little mythmaking in the b-movie movie industry never hurt anyone. Continue reading “Wrecker (2022)”

Money Plane

One would think that professional wrestlers are tailormade action stars. They are athletic, charismatic, decent at improv, and willing to do just about anything to put on a good show. Also, one of the most important weapons in a wrestler’s arsenal is the ability to play a character. These men and women spend months or years crafting characters to which roaring crowds respond, either favorably, in the case of faces, or with gleeful jeers, in the case of heels. These are people who know how to work crowds, but remove the crowds, leaving nothing but cameras and crew, and the vast majority of wrestlers turned actor seem a bit lost. Continue reading “Money Plane”