Tag: Shitty Gold

The Demon’s Rook

Had The Demon’s Rook been made in the 1980s or 1990s, it would have been shot on videotape. This is very much kin to the kinds of movies the Polonia brothers or Andreas Schnaas were making back then. All the bona fides are there. It was the passion project of an aspiring filmmaker and an amateur cast and crew. It’s very bloody and gory, yet the effects are inexpensive. And it took a long time to shoot, with this particular flick eating up weekends for two years, if the internet is to be believed.

Released in 2013, the driving force of The Demon’s Rook is filmmaker James Sizemore, who wrote (with Akom Tidwell), produced (with Tim Reis), directed, and starred. Reis contributed further as editor and cinematographer.  The Demon’s Rook tells the story of Roscoe (Sizemore), who, when he was a young boy (played by Emmett Eckert), was recruited by a demon, Dimwos (John Chatham), to become an apprentice in demonic magic. The price is high, as Roscoe not only has to abandon his life, but his parents become blood sacrifices, and Roscoe is held prisoner well into his adulthood in a separate dimension. Continue reading “The Demon’s Rook”

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”

The Super Cops

What a gloriously stupid movie. The Super Cops, an adaptation of a nonfiction book titled The Super Cops: The True Story of the Cops Called Batman and Robin by L.H. Whittemore, follows officers Dave Greenberg (Ron Leibman) and Robert Hantz (David Selby) as they tear through the criminal element of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. At no point does director Gordon Parks go for realism. Greenberg and Hantz, aka Batman and Robin, throw themselves at suspects with abandon and total lack of skill. They yell, flail about, fall, punch, jump, leap, climb, roll, bash, karate chop, kick, knee, shoot their pistols, and look like total idiots doing it. Remember, these guys are supposed to be super cops, but they’re really a pair of clowns. Continue reading “The Super Cops”

Hard Ticket to Hawaii

What a gloriously stupid movie. Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Andy Sidaris’s magnum opus from 1987, is not the most watchable shitty movie of all time, but it is a contender for the ‘so bad it’s good’ championship belt. It’s a subtle distinction, I know. But, if boxing can have dozens of belts, why deny such granular categorization to misfit movies?

Written and directed by Sidaris, Hard Ticket is very self-aware. There are no pretensions of narrative weight, or, since this is an action flick, realistic violence. This is a bloody flick, to be sure, but it’s how the blood is spilt that is hooey (see, skateboard scene, frisbee scene). Continue reading “Hard Ticket to Hawaii”

Alien Private Eye

Alien Private Eye VHS boxThe 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”

Empire of the Dark

Empire of the Dark movie posterAspiring auteur Steve Barkett made but two movies during his life, which is two more than most of us. The first, The Aftermath, from way back in 1982, was a passion project that took him years to complete. His followup from 1991, Empire of the Dark, saw Barkett inject the same energy and persistence he displayed in his first movie, and the same anachronistic tendencies.

He directed, he wrote, he starred, he edited, he performed his own stunts, and he, dream of dreams, cast his own son as his co-star. A filmmaker with deficiencies in storytelling ability, acting, physicality, and much else required to make a film, Barkett’s movies are a testament to his force of will. Barkett also drew influences from 1950’s sci-fi and monster flicks, and shot his films like something from the early ’70s. Makeup and latex mask effects swing from b-movie quality to off-the-rack Halloween store fare. Mannequins take bullets to the head with red corn syrupy splatter. Creature effects are a mix of amateur puppetry and stop motion, including what looks like repurposed action figures. At some point in his life, Barkett became interested in broadsword fighting, and incorporated this new skill into his movie. Whatever doubts he may have harbored while making his film, and all artists are plagued by doubts, he cast aside and plowed through. Add Barkett to one’s mental list of perseverance personified, all you aspiring filmmakers. He made shit, but it’s fun shit. Continue reading “Empire of the Dark”

Alienator

Prolific filmmaker Fred Olen Ray is a Shitty Movie Sundays All-Star. He’s on the list for his lifetime achievement in the art of b-movies. Sometimes pumping out half a dozen shitty movies in a year, Ray’s career is one worthy of study for the mutant connoisseur. But, had his career consisted of just this one movie, he would still have a place in this amateur reviewer’s heart.

Alienator, from 1990 (screenplay by Paul Garson), sounds just like what it is: an alien who is a terminator. The titular character is about all the relation this flick has to James Cameron’s classic, though. There is no time travel, there is no apocalyptic artificial intelligence, and there is no unborn savior of the future. What there is, is a large, unstoppable space bounty hunter, played by bodybuilder Teagan Clive, in a hair metal-perfect costume. Continue reading “Alienator”

Mutant Hunt

Writer/director Tim Kincaid’s Mutant Hunt, from way back in 1987, was never meant to look as good as it does now. Sure, it was shot on 35mm film, but it was a direct-to-video release. For most of its history, Mutant Hunt was seen by viewers in 480p, formatted for CRT televisions, and that is the version available on streaming platforms. But, the folks over at Vinegar Syndrome came to the rescue yet again, having released a high def Blu-ray in 2022. That means that for the first time, except for some lucky folks who saw a limited theatrical run in Europe, viewers get to see the silliness that is Mutant Hunt in all its glory. Continue reading “Mutant Hunt”

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 “Strike Commando 2, aka Trappola diabolica”