Tag: Bloody Flick

Pharaoh’s War, aka Pharaoh’s Expedition, aka Pharaoh’s Campaign, aka Desert Strike, aka Hamlet Pheroun

An action flick starring Mike Tyson?! Sign me up! An action flick featuring Mike Tyson in a small supporting role, but he still kicks a little ass? Sure, I’m game for that, too.

Pharaoh’s War, one of the many loose translations of the film’s Arabic title, Hamlet Pheroun, is a straight Egyptian flick. There’s a good chance that it wasn’t ever meant to be seen in the West, but the inspired casting of Tyson, and strongman Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, most familiar to viewers as one of the actors who portrayed Grogor Clegane in Game of Thrones, opened up new possibilities for sales, so here we are.

Tyson appears early in the movie, as a good guy mercenary leading refugees out of a war torn city in Syria. But, he is intercepted by warlord Frank (Björnsson), who forces all the refugees to become his hostages. That’s an adequate setup for a shitty action flick, but it’s also the last we’ll see of Tyson for a bit. Continue reading “Pharaoh’s War, aka Pharaoh’s Expedition, aka Pharaoh’s Campaign, aka Desert Strike, aka Hamlet Pheroun”

Terminator II, aka Shocking Dark

There isn’t a successful Italian film director from the 20th century that doesn’t have at least one Hollywood ripoff in their filmography. It was practically de rigueur over there. But, no filmmaker did it with quite the shamelessness of Bruno Mattei, and none of his movies approached the level of outright thievery seen in Terminator II.

Trademark law is obviously looser in Italy. Over there, production companies can market and release a movie as a sequel to an unrelated production. This movie is not a sequel to The Terminator, James Cameron’s blockbuster from 1984. But it was marketed as such, down to a poster that evokes Arnold Scwarzenegger’s menacing, uncanny cyborg face. Everyone involved, including producer Franco Gaudenzi, knew how disingenuous it all was, because this flick wasn’t released in the United States until 2018, and then under the title Shocking Dark. Continue reading “Terminator II, aka Shocking Dark”

Zone Drifter

As with many films featured in Shitty Movie Sundays, Zone Drifter started with an outsider dreaming of becoming a filmmaker. For most, there is no future at Cannes or under the starry lights of Hollywood. There are no sympathetic juries at Sundance, and no standing ovation at Tribeca. But, it has never been cheaper to film a movie, with most of us carrying around HD cameras in our pockets. And, an internet with a voracious appetite for content means that making one’s film available has never had fewer hurdles. A low-budget, anonymous film has more of a chance of being a signal lost in the noise, yet that’s still better than the days when a handful of VHS tapes were the best a filmmaker could hope for. Continue reading “Zone Drifter”

The Brave Platoon, aka American Force: The Brave Platoon

There are some bad movies out there. I should know. I’ve made a list. Some offer vast reserves of entertainment. Some, not so much. Others, like The Brave Platoon, a Hong Kong production filmed in the Philippines, never let things slow down too much, but sacrifice everything for the sake of pace. It’s the anti-film — hostile to art, hostile to storytelling, hostile to technique, and convinced that anyone who would bother to watch a movie like this doesn’t deserve any better. They might be right.

From director Phillip Ko, working from a screenplay by Godfrey Ho, The Brave Platoon, also released as American Force: The Brave Platoon, tells the story of a communist insurgency in Luzon, and the government’s effort to squash it. Really, that’s the story. It’s big time stuff for a small time movie. The American Force of the alternate title is a group of three commandos: Randy, Billy, and The Duke, who are tasked by American military advisors in the Philippines to track down and kill Soviet officer Kalashnikov, who is hidden in the jungles of Luzon funneling arms to insurgents. I would love to list who played these characters, but the film’s credits don’t say, and even the internet offers no clues. Continue reading “The Brave Platoon, aka American Force: The Brave Platoon”

Mutant Hunt

Writer/director Tim Kincaid’s Mutant Hunt, from way back in 1987, was never meant to look as good as it does now. Sure, it was shot on 35mm film, but it was a direct-to-video release. For most of its history, Mutant Hunt was seen by viewers in 480p, formatted for CRT televisions, and that is the version available on streaming platforms. But, the folks over at Vinegar Syndrome came to the rescue yet again, having released a high def Blu-ray in 2022. That means that for the first time, except for some lucky folks who saw a limited theatrical run in Europe, viewers get to see the silliness that is Mutant Hunt in all its glory. Continue reading “Mutant Hunt”

Diamond Dogs (2007)

Dolph Lundgren may be a favorite here at Shitty Movie Sundays, but it is not uncommon to watch one of his films and come away feeling like everyone, from the producers all the way down to the caterers, were mailing it in. Such is the case with 2007’s Diamond Dogs, which Lundgren co-directed with Shimon Dotan.

A treasure hunting movie, Diamond Dogs follows Lundgren as Xander Ronson, a former American special forces soldier who had his entire platoon wiped out in some war somewhere, and who is now an underground bare knuckle fighter in Inner Mongolia. It’s a typical down and out backstory for a Lundgren character, as is the debt he owes to shady characters all over town. Salvation seems to come in the form of Chambers (William Shriver), who has come to Inner Mongolia with his stepdaughter, Anika (Yu Nan), in search of a jewel-encrusted Buddhist tapestry estimated to be worth some twenty million bucks. Chambers hires Ronson as guide and security, and the small group, with a couple other hangers on for fodder, set off in search of the lost tapestry and the tomb where it lays. Continue reading “Diamond Dogs (2007)”

Strike Commando 2, aka Trappola diabolica

It’s the utter shamelessness of Bruno Mattei’s films that have made him a Shitty Movie Sundays All-Star. There was no iconic scene from a Hollywood blockbuster that he could not find a home for in one of his movies. Strike Commando 2 (Italian: Diabolical trap), his 1988 followup to the incredible Reb Brown vehicle from a year earlier, steals scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Lethal Weapon, but doesn’t lift plot from those movies. And when I write that Mattei steals scenes, I do not mean thematically. I mean there are scenes in this movie that could have gotten Mattei and producer Franco Gaudenzi sued for plagiarism. Continue reading “Strike Commando 2, aka Trappola diabolica”

Angels of the City

Angels of the City VHS box1989 was a banner year for producers Richard Pepin and Joseph Merhi. After a falling out with Ronald Gilchrist at City Lights Entertainment, the two formed PM Entertainment and began cranking out wonderfully inept direct-to-video movies. They released seven movies that first year, and distributed two more. Three of those movies were ersatz neo-noir Los Angeles thrillers featuring Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, whom older readers will remember as Freddie ‘Boom Boom’ Washington from Welcome Back, Kotter. The relationship with Hilton-Jacobs was so worthwhile, in fact, that PM tapped him to direct. Written alongside Raymond Martino and Merhi, Hilton-Jacobs helmed Angels of the City, the story of a sorority initiation gone wrong.

Kelly Galindo and Cynthia Cheston star as Cathy and Wendy, a pair of college students at an unnamed Los Angeles university that looks suspiciously like the University of Southern California. One of their professors has given the class a sort of urban anthropological assignment. Over the weekend, they are to interview someone familiar with the streets, whether that be a bus driver, a homeless person, a bartender, etc.

The girls’ spoiled boyfriends, Mick and Richie (Brian Ochse and Rusty Gray), decide to go with a street hooker, to mixed results. More on that later. The girls, meanwhile, push their task to the side, because it’s time for their sorority initiation. In order to gain admission, they have to dress up like hookers and get a hundred bucks from a John. They don’t have to seal the deal, but they do have to get the money. It’s a silly idea in a movie full of them. They could have just disappeared from campus for a couple of hours and withdrawn money from an ATM, but then we wouldn’t have a movie. Continue reading “Angels of the City”

Lockout (2012)

The Luc Besson action grist mill turns them out like few others. Objective quality is hit and miss, but the movies he produces are flashy, in the same way the McDonald’s in Times Square is flashy. They enjoy a proximity to top tier glamor and glitz, but, in the end, it’s just fast food.

From 2012 comes Lockout, a film that so resembles Escape from New York that Besson and company were successfully sued for plagiarism. Co-directors and co-writers James Mather and Steve Saint Leger (Besson was also credited with a writing and story credit) might have been done dirty by that lawsuit. The analogues to Escape are many, but if John Carpenter could claim plagiarism for this flick, then the entire horror and sci-fi movie industry should operate under the constant threat of litigation. Anyway… Continue reading “Lockout (2012)”

Alien Sniperess

The internet is a ruthless killer. Its convenience has strangled retail, shoved a dagger through the heart of newspapers, put a bullet through the brain of the recording industry…et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The internet has even done a number on the movie business. Hollywood spent a long time consolidating releases into megaplexes, crowding out older theaters and independent distributors in the process. The megaplex killed both the drive-in, and its greatest contributor, regional cinema.

But, lo and behold, it is the internet, normally such a destructive force for prior forms of business, that has saved regional cinema. It’s possible now to shoot a movie digitally and get it onto a streaming platform, bypassing big Hollywood gatekeeping. Low budget b-filmmakers from the furthest reaches of the country are back, just like when they were polluting drive-in and grindhouse screens back in the 20th century. Which brings us to Alien Sniperess. Continue reading “Alien Sniperess”