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 “Shitty Movie Sundays: Zone Drifter”
Tag: Bullet Storm
Shitty Movie Sundays: 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 “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Brave Platoon, aka American Force: The Brave Platoon”
Shitty Movie Sundays: 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 “Shitty Movie Sundays: Diamond Dogs (2007)”
Shitty Movie Sundays: 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 “Shitty Movie Sundays: Strike Commando 2, aka Trappola diabolica”
Shitty Movie Sundays: The Last of the Finest
Many, many spoilers in this trailer. Be forewarned
Ah, Orion Pictures. Before they went bankrupt in the mid-1990s, they would roll out a dozen movies a year of varying quality. The winners were flicks like The Silence of the Lambs, Bull Durham, Caddyshack, and many others. But they also sated the appetites of the shitty movie fan, giving us Cherry 2000, Malone, Remo Williams, Navy SEALs, and today’s film, alongside Davis Entertainment, The Last of the Finest. For the last thirty years the company has been a shell of itself — just another brand in the MGM/Amazon conglomerate. Never forget, though. Movie studios are temporary. Cinematic ineptitude is forever.
1990 was right around peak time for action flicks, and buddy cop flicks in particular. The formula was perfected and standardized by the Lethal Weapon films, and much of those films’ DNA is present in The Last of the Finest. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Last of the Finest”
Shitty Movie Sundays: 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 “Shitty Movie Sundays: Alien Sniperess”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Body Count (1995), aka Codename: Silencer
What a strange buddy cop flick. From a story by David A. Prior (screenplay by Henry Madden), and produced by David Winters, two of the founders of Action International Pictures, one of Shitty Movie Sundays’ favorite production companies, Body Count is a collaboration with Toei, one of the giants of Japanese cinema. The film even features one of Japan’s biggest movie stars, Sonny Chiba, as the villain. I don’t know what the suits in Japan were expecting, but I have a feeling it wasn’t a direct-to-video b-action flick where one of the most bankable stars in Japan’s history plays the bad guy opposite a pair of character actors in rare starring roles. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Body Count (1995), aka Codename: Silencer”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Larceny (2017)
Dolph Lundgren is a Shitty Movie Sundays All-Star. Hardly a year has gone by since the 1980s when he hasn’t starred or featured prominently in multiple b-action or sci-fi flicks. His most notable hiatus was 2020, when he was busy battling terminal cancer that was first diagnosed in 2015. The man is a worker, and the shitty movie fan’s experience is better for it. Oh, by the way, he’s cancer free as of 2023.
Larceny, a joint Mexican-American production from 2017, fits right into this difficult era in his oeuvre. He looks aged, is definitely slow, and has a hard time carrying an action scene. We at Missile Test were unaware of his health issues, attributing the decline in his athleticism to mere aging. Well, let us eat some crow. Any shit we’ve given him for mailing it in for the last nine years is unjustified. Anyway… Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Larceny (2017)”
October Horrorshow: Alien Swamp Beast
The spirit of shot-on-video horror is alive and well in this digital age. The technology has changed, but the lack of resources, and the ambitions of independent filmmakers, has not.
Writer, director, and producer Robert Elkins, hailing from the Commonwealth of Virginia, began making movies back in 2007, and his highest rated on IMDb is a short that currently scores a 5.5. That’s not good on a site where scores skew towards favorable, regardless of a film’s quality. So, when today’s movie, Alien Swamp Beast, holds a 3.1 rating, one can be sure that the movie is a load of crap. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Alien Swamp Beast”
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”