Bullet Storm – Missile Test

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”

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: 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 “Shitty Movie Sundays: Death Chase”

Shitty Movie Sundays: 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 “Shitty Movie Sundays: Bushwick, or, Ridgewood”