According to the internet, so it must be true, Agent Red had an initial shoot of two weeks. Director Damian Lee’s assembly cut was rejected by the producers. One of the producers, prolific shitty movie filmmaker Jim Wynorski, then reshot about forty minutes of the movie in three days. That incredible effort still wasn’t enough to finish the film, so it was then stuffed with footage cut from other movies, including ’90s blockbusters Blown Away and Crimson Tide. I’m pretty sure there’s a sequence from Red Dawn in there, as well. Usually, when such extreme measures are taken to rescue a failed film, the result is an unwatchable mess. This dog actually remains coherent. Amazing. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Agent Red, or, Die Hard on a Submarine”
Tag: Military Flick
Empty Balcony: Top Gun
Beware films made with the full cooperation of the United States’ military. Without fail, such films are heavy on the heroics and jingoism, and do little to portray the full costs of war, and life in the military. Oftentimes, they are little more than recruiting films, pieces of propaganda aimed at high school-aged males full of testosterone and lacking direction in their lives. Also, these movies tend to be weighted heavily against showing the day-to-day drudgery that typifies the life of the average enlisted man or woman, reducing them to background automatons. Rather, such films are usually focused on glorified versions of officers and non-coms, their duties also scrubbed clean of anything resembling work. Even that most foul bane of soldiers and sailors everywhere — chickenshit — is almost nonexistent. But, who wants to see any of that, anyway? The American military has the coolest toys in the world, and it’s nice to see where our tax dollars are being spent once in a while, even if the resulting film has all the depth of a puddle. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Top Gun”
October Horrorshow: Black Ops, aka Deadwater
Lance Henriksen is as old as dirt. He’s so old the primordial soup called him ‘daddy.’ He’s so old his grandkids had to teach him how to program the VCR. He’s so old he can tell the difference between Sarsaparilla and root beer. He’s so old…one gets the idea. In reality, he’s old but not that old. As of this writing, he’s 79. Well into old age, but not a doddering eldster, either. I bring this up because today’s horror flick, Black Ops, originally title Deadwater, was released straight to video in 2008, just a few weeks after the film’s star, Lance Henriksen, turned 68. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Black Ops, aka Deadwater”
Empty Balcony: Renegades, aka American Renegades
The Luc Besson action mill has turned out some of the most successful action flicks of this century, and also some of the genre’s most overwrought messes. Renegades (released in the States as American Renegades) lies somewhere in between. It has the grandiosity one would expect from a Besson-produced action flick, but the end product is something anonymous.
Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Renegades, aka American Renegades”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Alien Warfare
I love that movies like Alien Warfare are still being made. It’s a true action bottom feeder. With the rise of streaming, I had been concerned that the ready availability of good content would leave shitty movies like this without an audience. But, I shouldn’t have underestimated capitalism. Good movies cost more for streaming services to license, and the proliferation of streaming services means that there’s a good chance the movie one wants to watch is on a service to which they do not subscribe. And on top of that, all these streaming services are desperate for content, to make them stand out from each other. All this means there is still a market for cheap schlock. The rights holders’ overprotectiveness and over-monetization of their good properties means the shitty movie lives on. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Alien Warfare”
Giant Monstershow: The Deadly Mantis
The October Horrorshow Giant Monstershow returns to the land of giant insects with today’s flick. From 1957, The Deadly Mantis is an early directorial effort from Nathan Juran, who had an Oscar-winning career as an art director before becoming a director. It was written by Martin Berkeley, who also had a screenwriting credit for the execrable Tarantula. Continue reading “Giant Monstershow: The Deadly Mantis”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Strike Commando
Who wants to watch some bottom-feeding trash? I do! And we all should. Films like Strike Commando, the 1987 shitfest from Italian filmmaker Bruno Mattei, make serious film and art house fodder all the better. How would we be able to gauge excellence were it not for films like Strike Commando giving us a baseline of inferiority? Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Strike Commando”
Empty Balcony: Hacksaw Ridge
Is it okay to watch a Mel Gibson film again? Has he paid enough Hollywood penance for being a drunken, anti-Semitic, Catholic fundamentalist? Because, let’s not forget, the man is an Oscar-winning filmmaker. Gibson’s personal travails matter little to this reviewer. If the idea of watching a film helmed by Mel Gibson still leaves a viewer with a bad taste in their mouth, even though Gibson spent the better part of a decade in the weeds, then just don’t watch it. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Hacksaw Ridge”
October Horrorshow: Below
A ghost story that takes place aboard a World War II submarine. Sometimes I think there are suggestion boxes mounted next to the water cooler at movie studios and once a month the big mogul dips has fat fingers inside to root around for a new idea. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for a movie like Below being greenlit. Luckily for us viewers, just because a movie has kind of a silly idea, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a bad movie.
Film history is scattered throughout with ridiculous premises and outlandish plots that somehow worked. There was Jaws, about the eternal conflict between a fish and people who live on land. Or there is the abundance of superhero flicks. Take just a second to think about how stupid an idea superheroes are. Very fit people dress like professional wrestlers and save the world, repeatedly, from the machinations of megalomaniacs who always seem to lack any coherent reason for their evil. Yet billions of dollars have been made in this genre. What the hell is the matter with us?
So, a ghost story on a submarine? There have been worse ideas. And this film has a pedigree that makes it stand out. Below was directed by David Twohy, who managed to make another stupid idea work in Pitch Black, and was written by Twohy, Lucas Sussman, and Darren Aronofsky(!). That’s right. The dude who made Pi was one of the screenwriters of this flick. According to the internet, Aronofsky was set to direct Below, but left the project to pursue Requiem for a Dream. One of the most cerebral directors working in film today almost directed a studio horror film. I can only imagine how his version would have played out. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Below”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Act of Valor, or, Yvan Eht Nioj, or, Stop Shooting! My Neighbors Are Trying to Sleep!
The Oxford English Dictionary defines propaganda as “chiefly derogatory information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view [emphasis theirs].”
Act of Valor, a United States Navy-sanctioned and aided Hollywood film, that the military has also used for recruitment purposes, meets every part of that definition. It is definitely biased, most assuredly misleading, is used in jingoistic fashion to promote the cause of a particular country, and is, despite this government’s greatest public ambitions towards being otherwise, very derogatory. This movie sucks, too, but as much as I try to raise my liberal hackles at this awful mess, I can’t really give too much of a shit. It’s a recruiting film trying to disguise itself as an action flick, and I do not care. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Act of Valor, or, Yvan Eht Nioj, or, Stop Shooting! My Neighbors Are Trying to Sleep!”