The first time I saw Dark Descent, the 2002 direct-to-video feature from writer/director Daniel Knauf, I thought it was one of the worst pieces of garbage I had ever seen. It was showing on the Sci-Fi Channel not too long after its release. By that time I had a long relationship with bad movies, but nothing like the scale and familiarity I have today. I remember a film with awful CGI, cheap and drab sets that would make Roger Corman blush, and a pace that was deathly slow. All this remains true, but in comparison to the bottomfeeders in the Shitty Movie Sundays Watchability Index, this flick is a gem. Continue reading “Dark Descent”
Tag: Sci-Fi Flick
Phobe: The Xenophobic Experiments
Movies tell stories. No shit, right? But, besides the story told up on the screen, there is the story of how a movie gets made, and that story, hidden from the audience, can have its own elements of inspiration and perseverance. That’s the case with today’s flick, Phobe: The Xenophobic Experiments, filmmaker Erica Benedikty’s magnum opus from 1995.
Shot on videotape with a robust budget of 250 bucks Canadian, Phobe follows an interstellar cop or soldier-type who is hunting an escaped alien killing machine in and around the area of Niagara Falls, Ontario. Benedikty, a part-time employee of Cable 10, a local cable access channel, managed to convince her bosses to let her use the channel’s equipment and facilities to make a movie. She enlisted friends and family as cast and crew, convinced local businesses to let her shoot on their properties, and, over the course of a year, made her movie. Continue reading “Phobe: The Xenophobic Experiments”
Alien Outlaw
It’s the overall picture that makes a movie shitty or not. There is never just one thing that earns a flick a spot in the Shitty Movie Sundays Watchability Index. Sometimes, though, there are individual things worth pointing out. Take today’s movie, for instance. Alien Outlaw. It’s right there in the title. Alien Outlaw, singular. One alien who is an outlaw. But, this movie has three outlaw aliens. Why not title the movie Alien Outlaws? Surely the opening credits were made after filming had wrapped. The title wasn’t carved into stone. At some point writer/director Phil Smoot had to have noticed the title on the front page of the script versus the amount of aliens in the movie. Yet, there it is. Singular title, three aliens. Continue reading “Alien Outlaw”
Alien Private Eye
The 1980s are a difficult time to explain to people who weren’t there. For the 20th century, every decade had a distinctive look and feel, right up until the late ’90s when everything cultural started to have a whiff of nostalgia. One can look at only a few seconds of a film from the 20th century and be able to tell which decade it came from. Meanwhile, here in this rotten century, nothing seems to have changed since the early 2000s. Fashion, music, movies…there are new names, but a unique, stylistic identity to the times we live in has been lost.
Back to the ’80s. Then was the culmination of decades of change, and the overarching theme seemed to be garishness. Bright colors everywhere (except in the home, which remained stubbornly brown), music with strange sounding instruments, big hair, and, as today’s movie shows, outfits that are beginning to look as bizarre as powdered wigs and pantaloons.
From 1989 comes Alien Private Eye, written, produced, directed, and edited by Vik Rubenfeld. Shot in 1987, but stuck in a can until it obtained a VHS release, Alien Private Eye is another film rescued from the approaching abyss by Vinegar Syndrome, who cleaned it up and released a Blu-ray in 2022. And it’s good they did. Before they ran this flick through the ringer, the only way to watch it were degraded VHS transfers uploaded to the tubes, and those are barely watchable, with fuzzy picture and muddy sound. Continue reading “Alien Private Eye”
Invasion of the Bee Girls
To give one an idea of the kind of film this is, and the kind of audience it attracts (this reviewer included), the ‘Alternate versions’ section of Invasion of the Bee Girls’ IMDb page contains this gem: “The recent MGM DVD is missing footage. Part of the scene where Beverly Powers…seduces her man is missing, deleting some of her nudity…The MGM version looks the best this low-budget film has ever looked, but the missing footage rankles.” That’s someone who feels robbed. Modern viewers are denied that particular set of breasts, yes, but there are plenty more in this exploitation classic. Continue reading “Invasion of the Bee Girls”
Eve of Destruction (1991)
According to the internet, so it must be true, actress Renée Soutendijk was a star in Europe and the Netherlands in the 1980s. Lithe, athletic, and, most importantly, young and blonde, Soutendijk racked up credit after credit, even playing Eva Braun once. When that mountain is climbed, it’s not uncommon for a star to set their sights on Hollywood. However, whatever dreams of Hollywood stardom or Oscar-winning praise were dancing in her head were shattered by the stark reality of the shitty movie. After this flick, she returned to Europe and never looked back.
Directed by Duncan Gibbins, who had directed many popular music videos, and written by Gibbins and Yale Udoff, Eve of Destruction follows Soutendijk in a dual role. She plays scientist Dr. Eve Simmons, head of a secret government project to develop humanoid robots indistinguishable from the real thing for use in espionage and on the battlefield. Her latest creation is Eve VIII, also played by Soutendijk, a model based on Dr. Simmons herself. It looks like her, talks like her, and has all of Simmons’ memories. Continue reading “Eve of Destruction (1991)”
Urban Warriors, or, The Worst Day at Work Ever
If you, dear reader, are convinced that you’re watching something familiar during Urban Warriors, then congratulations. You are a connoisseur of 1980s Italian Mad Max ripoffs. Only someone with knowledge of this strange subgenre of film would recognize that Urban Warriors, the last film from director Giuseppe Vari, shares much footage with The Final Executioner, released three years earlier in 1984. This flick isn’t the only movie to recycle substantial amounts of footage from The Final Executioner. A couple of years later The Bronx Executioner did the same thing, only in a way that destroyed just about all narrative consistency. Urban Warriors has a plot that one can follow.
Brad, Maury, and Stan (Bruno Bilotta, Bjorn Hammer, and Maurice Poli) are doing computer technician stuff in an underground bunker. Right in the middle of the workday, World War 3 breaks out, spreading nuclear apocalypse over the entire world. The power in the bunker is knocked out, so the trio has to make their way to the surface. It takes them days to find a way out, and when they do reach the surface, Vari shows us the ravages of atomic warfare — a rocky yet pristine hillside, and a small office complex whose glass sides gleam in the sunlight. It’s about as low effort as one will ever see in a post-apocalyptic movie. Continue reading “Urban Warriors, or, The Worst Day at Work Ever”
Deadly Friend
Warner Bros. did Wes Craven dirty. Deadly Friend, from 1986, was Craven’s first feature since A Nightmare on Elm Street, which made a bucketful of money for New Line Cinema. Warners didn’t have the confidence in Craven that his previous success had earned. After a first cut of this film was poorly received by a test audience, producers and studio execs ordered reshoots. Nothing new there, but as originally shot, Deadly Friend was not a horror movie. It was a sci-fi thriller. Craven was forced to change the story, add in blood and gore scenes, and turn his film into something against his and screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin’s intent. Continue reading “Deadly Friend”
Timesweep
Someone out there, somewhere, owns the rights to Timesweep, the 1987 magnum opus from writer/director Dan Diefenderfer (screenplay credits were shared with Larry Nordsieck and John Thonen). As of this writing, Timesweep is nowhere to be found on streaming services, outside of the nooks and crannies where someone has uploaded an old VHS transfer. For shame. This movie is right up Tubi’s alley, and I’m sure whoever owns the rights could use the extra fifty bucks. Anyway…
Timesweep tells the tale of a bunch of mild-mannered 30-something Midwesterners who find themselves trapped in an abandoned building that is hopping through time. Monsters, aliens, zombies, a crazed hermit, killer bugs, and more abound, providing the audience with a surprising amount of gore for so moribund a budget.
The building in question is an old film studio that is slated for demolition. An architecture professor, Vincent Hill (Kevin Brief), a film professor, H.G. Lewis (Frank Vrooman), and students have gathered to explore the old edifice before it’s gone forever. Joining them is a local news anchor covering the story, Angela Markell (Denise Gray), and cameraman Mike Romero (Michael Cornelison). Mike is the rebel of the movie. One can tell because he shows up two minutes late, and he’s rocking a beige jacket. Yeah, there were some wild folks in Kansas City, Missouri in the 1980s. Continue reading “Timesweep”
Cyberjack, aka Virtual Assassin
If there is any formula that has been beaten to death in action flicks, it is the “Die Hard in a…” film. Die Hard on a ship and its sequel, Die Hard on a train; Die Hard on a plane; Die Hard at the White House; Die Hard at a boarding school; Die Hard on a freakin’ bus. It’s such a reliable formula that sometimes an action flick can fall into all the Die Hard tropes as if by accident — like the filmmakers had something else in mind, but the lure of Die Hard was just too powerful to resist.
From 1995 comes Cyberjack, directed by Robert Lee from a script by Eric Poppen.
It’s the near future! A team of computer scientists, led by Dr. Phillip Royce and his daughter, Dr. Alex Royce (Duncan Fraser and Suki Kaiser), have created a new computer virus that acts as an anti-virus, and it lives in biological matter, and it may or may not have some kind of intelligence…it’s not all that clear. The details behind the virus are unimportant. In this movie’s world, the virus is a dangerous commodity that will have worldwide impact should it fall into the wrong hands. Continue reading “Cyberjack, aka Virtual Assassin”