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 readingShitty Movie Sundays: Alien Warfare”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Damnation Alley, or, RVing the Apocalypse

Jan-Michael Vincent is dead. He passed mostly unnoticed on February 10th, his death remaining unknown to the media for almost a month. He was, once upon a time, a middling star. His looks were better than his talent, but that’s just what Hollywood wants. His career was derailed by age and substance abuse, as happens to so many in the entertainment industry. He had many roles in mainstream films, but I will always remember him for his contributions to shitty cinema and television. In remembrance of Jan-Michael Vincent, here’s a review for a Vincent star vehicle, that also happened to be a pretty good shitty movie. Continue readingShitty Movie Sundays: Damnation Alley, or, RVing the Apocalypse”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Project Moonbase

Project MoonbaseProject Moonbase, the 1953 film from Lippert Pictures, is among the worst movies I’ve ever seen. That wouldn’t be surprising considering it’s from the Lippert stable, but this flick was written by Robert A. Heinlein, who used to hoover up Hugo Awards for his writing. Indeed, Heinlein threw in some smart stuff, but I’m not letting him off the hook for the rest of the garbage in this screenplay. Lest Heinlein take all the blame, Richard Talmadge was in the director’s chair, and he contributed much to this film’s failure.

It’s the future! 1970! Humankind is on its way to conquering the stars. But first, it must conquer the moon. An orbital mission of the moon is launched. Its objective is to survey the surface of the moon to locate suitable sites for a base. Leading the mission is Donna Martell as Colonel Briteis (pronounced ‘bright eyes’). Her second in command is Major Bill Moore (Ross Ford). Rounding out the crew is Dr. Wernher (Larry Johns), who is in charge of the actual surveying, as Briteis and Moore’s primary roles are as pilots.

Briteis may be commanding the mission, but this is a b-movie from the 1950s. While the filmmakers took the progressive step of making a woman the mission commander, they couldn’t quite escape the gender roles of the day. Briteis is whiny and emotional, and passes responsibility down to Major Moore with ease whenever it’s time for a man to make a decision. I’ve written many times in reviews about how it’s folly to impose changing social mores on the past, but this flick is outrageous. What a relic. Continue readingShitty Movie Sundays: Project Moonbase”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Cyborg X, or, Press the Damn Button Already!

Cyborg X movie posterThis shitty flick is a bit of a throwback. If it had not been for the bargain basement CGI, this flick could be mistaken by the shitty movie fan for something from the 1980s or the early 1990s. It has that feel.

From writer/director Kevin King, Cyborg X takes place in the aftermath of a war in which a sentient AI has wiped out most of the people on the planet. Think the Terminator movies, if all the scenes took place in the future and there was none of that time travel nonsense. In fact, this movie lives and dies on the ideas that it ripped from James Cameron, and that’s just fine. The first shot of this film is of such low-quality CGI that it lets the viewer know to dismiss any positive expectations they might have had. Who cares if the rest of it is a ripoff?

Eve Mauro plays Lieutenant Spears, part of a small group of soldiers trying to scrape by a year after the outbreak of the war. She’s joined by Adam Johnson as Colonel Shaw, the leader of the little troop; Angie Papanikolas as Lieutenant Lopez; and Danny Trejo as Captain Machine Gun (I have a feeling he picked out this character’s name himself). These are the featured players, and not one of them can act a lick. Sure, everybody loves Danny Trejo, this reviewer included, but while acting is his profession, it’s definitely not his trade. Continue readingShitty Movie Sundays: Cyborg X, or, Press the Damn Button Already!”

Empty Balcony: Alien Uprising, aka U.F.O.

One of the worst things that a filmmaker can do is fill their movie with vapid people. If there is any moment after these characters are introduced that requires audience empathy, the filmmaker might find that they have, instead, exhausted the patience of viewers. Such is the case with Alien Uprising, a film that showed a lot of promise, but ended up being just out of reach of its writer/director, Dominic Burns. Continue readingEmpty Balcony: Alien Uprising, aka U.F.O.”

Empty Balcony: Officer Downe

Not all comic book adaptations feature superheroes and supervillains chasing down the one mysterious MacGuffin that can either save or destroy the universe. Sometimes, all a comic book hero wants to do is clean up the streets of the big city.

Part Robocop, part drive-in homage, and part splatterfest, Officer Downe is the cinematic adaptation of the comic of the same name from writer Joe Casey and artist Chris Burnham. Casey also penned the screenplay for Officer Downe, while directing duties were handled by Shawn Crahan. If that name is familiar to some of the Loyal Seven readers, that’s because Crahan’s day job is as a member of heavy metal group Slipknot. Other members of the band get in on the fun as extras and minor characters. Continue readingEmpty Balcony: Officer Downe”

Giant Monstershow: Monsters

And so we’ve reached the end of the October Horrorshow Giant Monstershow. For the last month, we’ve seen giant apes, giant dinosaurs, giant insects, giant arachnids, giant men, giant lizards, giant gelatinous masses, giant leeches, giant rats, giant rabbits, giant birds, and even giant shrews. We’ve seen so many giant creatures of so many shapes and forms that the word ‘giant’ has become subject to semantic satiation. It’s become a mere shape in the text, devoid of all but intrinsic meaning. Still, we soldier on until the job is finished. Continue readingGiant Monstershow: Monsters”

Giant Monstershow: The Host (2006)

The October Horrorshow Giant Monstershow is nearing its end. The featured films have been reviewed in chronological order. After a glut of films from the 1950s, it only took another ten flicks to get us to 2006, when today’s film was released. The ’50s were the golden era for giant monsters. Hardly a week went by without a giant monster flick in the theaters, if the movies I’ve watched for this month have been any indication. Giant monsters still show up in theaters every few years, but the pace has slowed. Continue readingGiant Monstershow: The Host (2006)”

Giant Monstershow: King Kong Lives

What a gloriously stupid movie. Today’s movie is the movie I was looking forward to seeing the most for the October Horrorshow Giant Monstershow. It’s a movie of such shitty grandiosity that I was, in fact, giddy at the prospect. It’s not the easiest movie to find for viewing, either. As of this writing, none of the popular streaming services has it for rent or purchase. The only bootleg streams I could find were not in English, and even trying to find a torrent was fruitless. In the end, I had to buy a used DVD from eBay. It cost thirty-five bucks. That’s a lot of money for a shitty movie. Alas, it was worth every penny. Continue readingGiant Monstershow: King Kong Lives”

Giant Monstershow: Empire of the Ants

It’s a melancholy day for the October Horrorshow Giant Monstershow, for this is the last film of the month from giant monster auteur Bert I. Gordon. His peak days as a filmmaker were in the 1950s, but while Gordon’s pace of work slowed, he never went more than a few years without directing something. In 1977, that something was Empire of the Ants, also written by Gordon, loosely adapting the H.G. Wells story of the same name. Something of a follow-up to Gordon’s Food of the Gods, Empire of the Ants tells the story of a Florida real estate pitch gone wrong. Continue readingGiant Monstershow: Empire of the Ants”