Bloody Flick – Page 11

Shitty Movie Sundays: Legion of Iron

Legion of Iron 1990 movie poster There isn’t much information hurtling around in the tubes about Legion of Iron. There isn’t even a trailer anywhere I can find. The closest is a two-minute long video of this flick’s final scene, posted in multiple places. According to IMDb, this movie did get an actual release near the time it was made, on video, but there’s nothing out there about current ownership or who licenses it for streaming. Of the 26 listed cast members, only 4 have headshots. This appears to be a film that was well on the road to being forgotten, saved from oblivion by the fact streaming companies need content, and lots of it.

From way back in 1990, Legion of Iron comes to us via producer/director Yakov Bentsvi, working from a screenplay by Ruben Gordon. The film tells the tale of high school couple Billy and Alison (Kevin T. Walsh and Camille Carrigan). Billy is the star football player at his school and Alison is the lead cheerleader. One night after a game the two head up into the hills overlooking Yuma, Arizona, for some teenaged necking. There, they are kidnapped by two creepy men dressed as police and whisked off to a secret, underground bunker in the desert. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Legion of Iron”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Robowar

Short of watching a mockbuster from The Asylum or its ilk, one would be hard-pressed to find a film that is more of a ripoff of a big time Hollywood production than Robowar, from Italian auteur Bruno Mattei. The victim in this case is Predator. From characters, to plot, to location, to certain scenes, all the way down to individual lines of dialogue, Mattei squeezed everything he could out of Predator short of being sued into oblivion. The only major change was substituting a rogue bionic soldier for the alien hunter

From 1988, Robowar stars prolific b-movie actor Reb Brown as Major Murphy ‘Kill Zone’ Black, the leader of a squad of commandos called B.A.M., for Big Ass Motherfuckers. For real, that’s the name. Black is the analogue of Dutch from Predator. Others include Max Laurel as Quang, the Billy analogue; Catherine Hickman as Virginia, the Anna analogue; Mel Davidson as Mascher, the Dillon analogue; Jim Gaines as Sonny ‘Blood’ Peel, the Mac analogue; and Massimo Vanni, Romano Puppo, and John P. Dulaney as interchangeable analogues to the remaining main characters in Predator. There’s even a general who gives Black and his men their mission, but he was unlisted in the credits. His only significance is a voice that sounds uncannily like Lee Van Cleef’s. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Robowar”

Shitty Movie Sundays: The Lost Empire

This flick is for the chest men, the boob guys, the fellas that love nothing more than doing a little motorboating or some light mountain climbing. In short, this movie has breasts. Many, many, female breasts, of the bolted-on variety that is so integral to the economy of southern California. It’s not the most breasts one will see in a b-movie, and the majority of them keep nipples hidden away like some rare commodity, but there is a theme to this flick, and it is breasts. And taxes, as it turns out. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Lost Empire”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Equalizer 2000, or, Supergun!

One Mad Max ripoff wasn’t enough for Filipino filmmaker Cirio H. Santiago. After the sublime experience that was Wheels of Fire, Santiago went back to the well in 1987 for Equalizer 2000. It’s a movie about a man, his leather pants, and a bitchin’ gun.

From a story by Frederick Bailey and Joe Mari Avellana (who played the bad guy in Wheels of Fire), Equalizer 2000 follows Max Rockatansky analogue Slade (Richard Norton). Slade is a member of the Ownership, a militia group that is looking to control all of the gravel quarries in the post-apocalypse. They’re the typical baddies of a Mad Max ripoff. They wear black, drive tricked out muscle cars, and are very into pillaging settlements full of honest folk.

This isn’t the best origin for the hero of the story, but he becomes a good guy right about the time the evil Colonel Lawton (William Steis) decides to make a play for control of the Ownership, leaving Slade out to dry during a battle with rebels, and killing Slade’s dear old dad in the process. Slade survives, and vows revenge against Lawton and the Ownership. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Equalizer 2000, or, Supergun!”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Future Kick

What a gloriously stupid movie. Future Kick is a textbook example of a shitty movie of the era. Everything about it is cheap, from its discount action star in Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson, its discount Kirstie Alley in Meg Foster as the female lead, its bargain-basement special effects and sets, and its grainy film stock. There was even producer Roger Corman’s favorite method of saving money on a production: reusing footage from earlier films.

Once upon a time Corman addressed this oft-used technique. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, that back when he started reusing footage and/or sets, there was no such thing as a home video market. He was making films that would show for a week or two at a drive-in, and that was the last anyone would ever see of them. No one would remember when a few months later a different flick would appear reusing footage from the earlier film. Sure, that’s a fine excuse for his Poe films, to which he was referring, but Future Kick was released in 1991, well after the home video market became a thing. Reused footage in this film comes from a duo of space flicks, Galaxy of Terror and Forbidden World, and erotic slasher Stripped to Kill 2, which gives viewers a healthy dose of gratuitous nudity. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Future Kick”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Nemesis (1992)

A true mark of quality in a shitty sci-fi flick from Hollywood in the 1980s and ’90s was use of the Kaiser Steel Mill in Fontana, California, as a shooting location. Just check out this list on IMDb. The more ruinous parts of the mill were a perfect location for a post-apocalyptic or dystopian landscape. Those portions have since been paved over for the Auto Club Speedway, but they live on in films like Robocop, The Running Man, and Nemesis, a 1992 cyberpunk, neo-noir action flick that, somehow, spawned a direct-to-video franchise.

Directed by Albert Pyun from a screenplay by Rebecca Charles, Nemesis stars Olivier Gruner as Alex Rain, a gritty detective in the LAPD. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Nemesis (1992)”

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”

It Came from the Camcorder: Redneck Zombies

According to Lloyd Kaufman, so some of it is probably true, Pericles Lewnes and George Scott wandered into the offices of Troma one day in the late 1980s with a finished movie they wanted Troma to distribute. Kaufman and his business partner Michael Herz agreed, on the condition that Lewnes take on unpaid work at Troma to work off the money Kaufman was sure this movie would lose for the company. And, thus, Redneck Zombies was unleashed upon the world.

Directed by Lewnes from a screenplay that has to be a pseudonym for either he or Scott, Fester Smellman, Redneck Zombies is one of the more ambitious efforts, gore-wise, that has been featured in It Came from the Camcorder. In tone, it fits right into the Troma stable, as Lewnes was very much a fan of their work. As the title implies, this movie is about zombies, who happen to be rednecks. Continue reading “It Came from the Camcorder: Redneck Zombies”

October Horrorshow: Alligator

If one is going to do a Jaws ripoff, this is how it should be done — with tongue planted firmly in cheek, and none of the dour mood that pervades a film like Orca.

Directed by Lewis Teague from a screenplay by the immortal John Sayles, Alligator tells the tale of a mutated alligator that lives in the sewers of Chicago and likes to munch on any hapless person who wanders by.

Following a popular urban legend of the day, a young girl receives a baby alligator as a souvenir from a trip to an alligator farm in Florida and, after the family returns home to Chicago, it is unceremoniously flushed down the toilet, landing unharmed, and probably quite annoyed, in the city sewers. Fast-forward to many years later, and the baby gator is now all grown up, and then some. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Alligator”