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My mother used to always tell me "If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all."  Well, that’s not entirely true -- she didn’t say that all the time. In fact, now that I come to think of it, I don’t recall her ever saying that to me even once. Then again I have to have some kind of a hook for this intro, and nothing she really used to say to me would work.

After all, it’s not as if I could spin an intro out of strange parental insistences that the dish you’ve just expressed extreme distaste for is actually one of your favourites, despite the fact that the last dozen times the dish has been made you’ve made the very same protestation. I mean, how many times do I have to say "I can’t stand this horrible train wreck of a meal you’re trying to foist off as Swiss steak" before it sinks in, and I won’t be obliged to try and force the vile concoction down my throat, knowing full well that the next time you congeal it together and I express aversion, you’ll fire back with your tired old mantra "Well, you loved it the last time I made it."?

Um, I seem to have strayed from my point a bit, so let’s get back on track: My mother didn’t listen to me while I was growing up, and it turned me into the bitter pedant you see before you today.

Actually, I was looking over my Bad Movie collection the other day, casually noting the large number of titles I had which, while honestly Bad, wouldn’t provide the right material for a full blown review (20k+ words or so). Many are simply run of the mill direct to video schlock-fests. What could you say about, for instance, Children of the Corn 4 which wouldn’t suggest itself by mention of the title alone? Others get their Badness not from a joyous spring of goofosity in the plot or acting, but rather a soul-crushing dullness of the type which defies accurate (or even coherent) description in the same way that the Antarctic defies vast forests of mango trees springing up. Two fantastic examples of this latter : Killjoy and Jonathan Livingston S****** (or as I like to call it, The Film Which Shall Not Be Named).

I’d given thought to a simple listing of these films, perhaps with a few words of commentary. But to take a slightly different spin (and to justify a gimmicky intro gone horribly wrong), I’ve decided that I will try and point out some of the good things about these really Bad movies.

In no particular order.

 

 

Summary : Lep goes to Vegas

Comments : Though not quite as over-the-top ridiculous as Leprechaun 4 (i.e. no bare breasted death sentences) this film does have a goofosity level to be reckoned with. Lep is awakened in a pawn shop in Las Vegas by a Hindu shopkeeper (who sounds about as Hindu as Jocko the Energizer battery guy from the 80’s) and runs amok in Sin City, once again trying to recover his gold. As you might expect, we run into busty showgirls, scheming illusionists and Elvis impersonators all along the way. For an added treat, we also get to hear fakey accents every bit as off-putting as Julia Robert’s from Mary Reilly.

The Good: The history of the Leprechaun race is revealed – they’re a strange breed of lycanthropes with a predilection for potatoes and pogo sticks.

Summary : Naked chicks in a kiddie pool full of milk

Comments : The summary pretty much lets you know why the film was made, period end. Oh, there’s some to-do about aliens and breeding experiments and chases through old tunnels and what-not, but it’s all just a vehicle to support the ending scene where some naked women vamp about languidly in an ‘alien breeding nest’ (cough). Also, if you’d ever wondered what the Control Data Institute did with their old computers, you get to have that mystery solved. Loads of 80’s-era bodies in various stages of undress, a doctor who says she’d like to "kill every man ever born", and a few alien rape scenes tossed in make this a heart-warming film for the whole family.

The Good : We learn that being ‘horribly scarred’ turns out to be little more than having some blueberry jam gloped on the side of your cheek.

Creepozoids

Summary : Linnea Quigley and pals take refuge in the wrong Sooper Sekrit Guvmint bio-somethingorother lab in a post-apocalyptic future

Comments : A great film, either for fans of the always-stellar Ms. Quigley, or for aspiring film makers wondering what could be done with a warehouse, a TRS-80 computer and a rubber monster left over from a few hundred Roger Corman films. A group of Army deserters in The Future™ hide out from both the authorities and acid rain inside a bunker. Said bunker quite naturally turns out to be a bio- somethingorother lab (aren’t they all), and our cast only shower a few times before trying to solve the mystery of all the dead/missing lab technicians. Lighting is non-existent, set dressings are minimal and the dialogue is precisely what you’d expect. A few of the cast seem earnestly to try and act, which makes the whole thing that much more laughable. But in a good, brainlessly fun sort of way.

The Good : The overly dark sets keep you from noticing that the sets really aren’t worth seeing in the first place.

Summary : The ‘failure to communicate’ guy changes Starbuck into a snake. Rikki Tikki Tavi and Yor, the Hunter From the Future guest star

Comments : A typically mad scientist cum-snake handler slowly changes an unsuspecting college student cum-lab assistant into a king cobra by means of injections (how 50’s of him). What I don’t understand is, quite simply, why? I mean, other than the obvious chick-magnet factor, what does the scientist get out of turning a man into a normal sized snake? Ken opined to me in correspondence once that he thought he remembered some vague allusions to longevity, etc, but frankly I haven’t the stomach to watch this film again with the attention needed to sort it all out. And for those of you who thought you’d have to live your whole life without ever seeing Yor the Hunter From the Future do a dance of death with a snake in his shower, despair not, for this movie has you covered! Don’t blink during the last reel or you’ll miss the end of the film – it’s another one of those ‘not so much end as just stop happening’ deals. Oddly enough, IMDB says that this film was actually banned in Finland, though I can’t seem to find out why. My respect for the Finns has just gone up a notch or two.

The Good : Maybe Boomer will get some more screen time now that Captain Narcissist has been transmogrified into a reptile.

Summary : More mutants run amok, this time the ultimate predator – slightly-larger than average slugs. Neil Tennant makes a cameo appearance (sort of)

Comments : While not "the worst," this is quite possibly the most unskilled work in my collection. Putting aside for the moment the inane idea of making 7-inch long slugs the menace for the film, everything else about this picture fails. The music is grossly inappropriate, sounding more like the soundtrack to a Mentos commercial or a Dow Chemical corporate promo film from the 70’s. The dialogue is simply a hoot, exemplified by this little gem uttered during a heated argument between the chief of public works and a health inspector: "You don’t have the authority to declare happy birthday!" (Certainly would put me in my place.) The local high school is attended by people too old to be in college and taught by someone too young to drive. They even managed to botch one of the sex scenes by outfitting an attractive young woman in a combination of lingerie which, while individually appealing, goes about as well together as a nice Maine lobster tail smothered in grilled onions and hot fudge. And of course we have to wonder how low down on the food chain one needs to be in order to have slugs present a serious threat to one’s life. Keep a close watch for the world’s most counterintuitive way of removing a slug from out of the gardening glove you’re wearing.

The Good : The sound mixing is so poor that quite often you’ll be spared having to hear anything going on.

Chilling, The

Summary : A lightning storm re-animates the bodies at a cryogenic storage unit, with wacky results

Comments : So you’re casting your pseudo-zombie film, and you’ve already gotten Linda Blair signed on. Whom do you go after next? Why, Dan Haggerty, of course! An entirely forgettable film at every level, with makeup effects sub-par even for the lower tier of zombie pictures. We’re not even tossed any gratuitous nudity as reward for bothering to sit through the film.

The Good: Linda seems to have remembered her foundation garments for this film (qv Exorcist II).

Jonathan Livingston S******

Summary: No, go away

Comments: I mean it, leave me alone

The Good :  Where’d I put my medication? …..

Summary: Marxism by way of Mulder and Scully

Comments: It turns out that the very rich elite of society aren’t just our social betters, they’re an entirely different species capable of shape-shifting and feeding on the lower classes like cattle. It’s like someone tossed a schlock horror film and a copy of The Communist Manifesto into a telepod and hit the ‘on’ switch. Combine the heavy-handedness of the message with the wonderful world of makeup effects when the joys of latex had just been discovered, and you’ve got a cinematic treat … if you happen to like that sort of thing. Which I don’t.

The Good: It serves as a welcome reminder that the era of the ‘wet latex’ look in makeup effects has happily passed.

Summary: Army nerds land on an island filled with bikini chicks and leftover dinosaur effects

Comments: This film is special to me for two reasons. First, the uncharted pacific island the Army plane supposedly crash-lands on is in reality Leo Carillo beach right here in Southern California, the exact place a young Douglas Milroy hit for more high school and college beach parties than he can even begin to count (kind of blowing the immersion-factor for me). Second, a friend of mine actually worked on the film. Check out the credits for "Head Dino Wrangler" for an old buddy of Yours Truly. Other than that, it's what you’d expect from a cheap 90s direct-to-video spin on the old Queen of Outer Space theme – broadly sketched archetypes (the by-the-book guy, the clown, the smart guy, etc.) meet up with some sexy natives and have to overcome the mistrust of their queen. Then they all get down to the more serious business of bumping uglies. The LaserDisc version sports some neat extras and director’s commentary, all from back when such bonuses were rare even for good films. It's always a treat to listen to commentary by people who have no illusions about the kinds of films they’re making.

The Good: If you’re a fan of either tan lines, forced perspective camera work or Santa Monica, you won’t be disappointed as you see lots of all three.

Summary: An alien crashes his ship in some medieval land where everyone is dubbed … except for Harvey Keitel !

Comments: Okay, this one bugs me. I mean it really just burrows under my skin and sits there being all itchy and sore. It's obviously a cheap Spanish production, and almost 100% of the dialogue was looped in, except for Harvey Keitel who sports a ‘yondah lies da castle of mah faddah’ accent. What really cheeses me off even more is that Klaus Kinski is in the film, and just when I was preparing myself to be soothed by the nasal buzzing of his distinct voice, I get assaulted by the velvet tones of some cough-syrup voice-over. They dubbed Kinski but not Keitel!? It simply has to be heard to be believed. One also wonders which "Legitimate Italian Businessman" Keitel owed a favour to in order to have been roped into this mess. Also frustrating is the fact that the jacket of the film paints a description of a modern day tale, even though the film is set in one of those faux-medieval periods slightly less authentic looking than the Safety Dance video.

The Good: In a stark (and welcomed) break with tradition, Mr. Keitel does not go full frontal on us.

Summary: Clint Howard! David Naughton! Sandahl Bergman! Steve Garvey! Olivia Hussey! Jan-Michael Vincent! That announcer guy from The People’s Court! And the list doesn’t end there.

Comments: This is one to see, just for the cast alone. Clint Howard plays against type as a creepy guy, this time a deranged purveyor of ice cream (which is chock full of dead body parts). As a youngin’ he was witness to the brutal (if never properly explained) gangland slaying of the ice cream man for his neighbourhood, and took up that same mantel upon his release from a mental institution. Of course, being Clint Howard, he’s up to no good. Thrill as a pod of young model rocket enthusiasts thwart Clint’s plan to … do ... ah, something. One of the aforementioned children was given the name Tuna for no reason other than to set up a particularly flat joke toward the end. Some of the more subtle humour runs along the lines of Clint’s character bemoaning the fact that "not every day is a happy happy day".

The Good: You get a year’s worth of second- and third-tier actors in one neat little package.

Summary: To combat the bio- somethingorother’ed menace running rampant in their research station, a couple rather fetching young ladies decide to get naked. A lot.

Comments: Roger Corman – my oh my. A space-faring bounty-hunter/trouble shooter is called in to help at a research station where an experiment has gone Horribly Wrong. Seems this new substance called Proto-B has mutated into a beastie who’s taken to reducing the research team into puddles of simple biotic mass as a ready to eat treat. The ‘robot’ which looks suspiciously like knock-off Storm Trooper armour painted dull grey and the inexplicable scene at the end where the two remaining female researchers decide to deal with the crisis by taking an extended naked shower together before trying to communicate with the creature are just some of the finer points the viewer will have to ponder after the lights have come up. This was later loosely ‘remade’ as Dead Space, and unwisely traded repeated displays of naughty bits for repeated displays of Marc Singer, so you can guess which of the two I own a copy of.

The Good: If you missed Battle Beyond the Stars, this is one of only 7,312 films which recycle the exterior special effects shots, giving you another chance to drink in their magic.

Summary: The super-advanced submarine Siren I has met an uncertain fate, and it's up to the devil-may-care civilian designer to save the day.

Comments: R. Lee Ermey slums it as the commander of an international team of mariners assigned to the Siren II, tasked with finding out wha happa to the Siren I. Of course it turns out that The Guvmint has been doing some nasty bio-somethingorother research in a cave thousands of feet below the sea, and has sent a conspirator to thwart the Siren II’s mission. To say that the implausibility level is rather high here would be rather like saying Jerry Garcia might have inhaled once or twice. From the wide open rooms decked out in tile floors and free-rolling officer chairs aboard a tiny submarine, to the Apple ][-like graphics displays, to the poofiest hairdo I’ve seen on a man since Eraserhead, there’s a whole heck of a lot of things to throw a Penalty Flag™ at. On a serious side note, though, I have to give a tip of the hat to R. Lee. It’s a crap film, and he clearly knows it, but by golly the man still puts his all into it with no trace of self-effacing irony in his performance. Ray Wise tries to rise above the material, but something in him died that first trip inside the Black Lodge, so he can’t quite cut it.

The Good: The more annoying and fakey the accent, the faster its owner is dispatched. Justice is served at last.

Summary: At the deathbed urgings of his scientist-mother, a young doctor returns to his childhood home to clean up a few things Mum left cooking in the oven.

Comments: Genetic engineering run amok. Again. Can’t we at least have a break with a nice retro-style atomic mutation once in a while? Son has to go back and clean up the mess Mum made, and loads of extraneous friends tag along. Somewhere between the alluring Amanda Pays and the scenery-chewing Rod Steiger is a razor thin line, a point of complete stillness. Only by finding this balance point can you make it through the film with your sanity intact. Chances are this balance point is nowhere near that damned watermelon (you’ll know what I mean when you see it).

The Good: Rod Steiger dies in the end (though he does not go gently into that good night).


Divine Enforcer

Summary: A precognitive, psychic, vigilante ninja-priest (who converses with angels) is hot on the trail the mysterious Vampire Killer, his crucifix-inlaid .45 pistol at his side. Jan-Michael Vincent and Ponch also star as men of the cloth of a less militant cast.

Comments: The contest for Absolute Worst Film By General Standards In My Collection© is a neck and neck race between Hellgate and this abomination. Beyond what I mentioned in the summary, here’s what else it brings to the table : Jim Brown, Robert Z’Dar, a rape scene, a rape/torture/murder scene, a Landers sister, and a pointless/befuddling final 30 seconds. I normally steer clear of Bad action films as being too pedestrian, but the trailer got me hook, line and sinker. A dramatic voice over breathily intones "In one hand he holds a Bible … in the other … A GUN!", which is followed by a close-up of the main character delivering the line : "God forgives you … but I don’t!". How could I say no?

The Good: It's clear the film makers didn’t harangue poor Jan-Michael, and just let him come to his call in whatever shape or state of mind he happened to be each day.

Summary: A prehistoric talking slug-like creature takes over a woman and makes her do real nutty things in that special French way.

Comments: I know it's fashionable to bash the French, but let’s call a spade a spade and admit that, politics aside, they make some really goofy-*ssed movies, okay? A prehistoric glop crawls, quite literally, up inside this woman’s … er … ‘place’ … at a circus, and starts speaking to her. Murder, mayhem and a whole lot of very French moments ensue. Loads of blood and violence, and some very unhealthy attitudes on the relationship between man and woman keep us company on our sullen trip through the film. Toward the end the poor gap-toothed host to the critter just sort of goes along with it all, her talks with the creature inside her taking on a strange philosophical bent that would make you wonder if you weren’t watching Mindwalk, were it not for all the nudity and blood and the fact that I don’t recall Sam Waterston being so presumptuous as to deliver his musings from inside that particular part of a woman’s anatomy. I’ve read reviews which praise some of the innovative deaths in the film, but to me a hateful little man who wears a funny and unique hat when he goes into the street to kick kittens is still a hateful little man at the end of the day – the hat doesn’t change that. Don’t even think of checking this one out unless you’re quite secure with your place in the world, and aren’t prone to bouts of suicidal nihilism.

The Good: The American version of the film is heavily cut and comes in at just over an hour or thereabouts, so there’s not quite as much to loathe.

Summary: Miners on a distant planet uncover a hibernating monster which begins to blahblahblahblah …

Comments: Imagine a really bad Space:1999 episode with a heavy sexual undercurrent and some gratuitous extended nudity. In addition to a quirky little ‘control room’ which looks to be a few computery-looking wall units suspended in a black void, the film also sports some of the least competent astronauts (or whatever the hell they are) to be found. I was particularly fond of the scene where one hapless lass caught her ankle in some debris just outside the airlock. Since the outer door is open, no one inside can come out to rescue her and rather than fend for herself, she whines and pleads for one of the men inside to come out and save her. When they don’t (because they can’t), she unhooks her air hose from her suit and sticks it directly into her mouth (not sure why), then proceeds to SAW OFF HER TRAPPED FOOT WITH A POWER SAW! I wonder when they taught that particular lesson at space camp? I came very close to finding a Nut O’ Fun™ in a marvellous little device referred to as a "touch burner", but it was featured just a bit too prominently. As an unfortunate side effect, staring at the details of the sets got me to thinking at any moment now I’d see a Dalek coming round the corner. Alas, it was not to be …

The Good: Someone who owned a disused meat packing plant got to make some money by renting it out to the makers of this film as their principal location.

Summary: … <deep breath> … The son of Pumpkinhead returns to wreak vengeance on the kids (who also happen to be the children of the people who killed the son of Pumpkinhead many years ago) who killed the mother of Pumpkinhead, after one of the kids who killed Pumpkinhead’s mother happens to read aloud a demon summoning passage from Pumpkinhead’s mother’s Book of Magic Stuff and thus summons the son Pumpkinhead. I think.

Comments: Talk about a flimsy connection to the original. I’m not entirely clear (and there is no way I’m going to watch this again to find out), but what I THINK happened is this – prior to the main timeframe of the movie there was a deformed boy named Tommy. One day a Stephen King-style band of Mean Teenagers decide to kill Tommy and toss his body down a well. Flash forward to the present day. Since being mean is genetic, the children of the teens who offed Tommy are some ne’er do wells themselves who one night run over and nearly kill an old woman who turns out to be Tommy’s mother. She’s also a witch of some sorts, and the teeners decide it might be fun to read from her Book of Magic Stuff thus summoning Pumpkinhead. But in later events of the film it turns out that Pumpkinhead is really Tommy himself come back for revenge. Now mind you, none of this is even remotely connected to Ed Harley (Lance Henrickson), the main character of the first film who became the ‘new’ Pumpkinhead at its end. I know this explanation is a mess, but it's fitting because that’s what the film is too. Having Andrew Robinson give an eerily Shatnerian read of the Pumpkinhead poem while in extreme close-up provides (albeit unintentionally) some of the humour the cameo appearance of Roger Clinton as the town mayor does not. If you shut off the tape in disgust and refuse to watch any more, make sure it's not until after the scene with the world’s most inappropriate use of a country/western song ever.

The Good: Linnea Quigley shows up for 91 seconds and is partially nekkid for 47 of them.

Summary: A demon wandered onto the set of NYPD Blue one day, and they just kept the cameras rolling.

Aside: This one has personal meaning for me. When it hit the theaters, my ex-wife and I wanted to see both it and another film which came out at the same time. The trouble was that we couldn’t agree on which one to see first. In the end I relented and we saw Fallen. Never one to let an opportunity to be petty pass by, I held the film’s Badness over my ex-wife’s head for the better part of a year. As a result, we never ended up seeing the other film (the one I wanted to see first) until it hit video. That other film was Phantoms, so as you can imagine I abruptly shut the heck up about Fallen.

Comments: Despite the presence of a demon, this is NOT a horror movie – it’s a cop drama, plain and simple. The fact that the main foe is of supernatural origin is incidental. This is a conclusion I reached long before I looked into the past credits of director Gregory Hoblit, which only reinforced this view. The concept of the film is that a fallen angel (named Azazel) has the ability to hop from person to person simply by touching them. He gains a perverse joy out of taking over innocent people and ruining their lives, then hopping into someone else to do it some more. As with films from the more light hearted "body-swapping" sub-genre of comedies, a primary fault of this film is the lack of apparent continuity from the various hosts. Other than singing the same tired Rolling Stones song to cue us in to their possessified state, very little of the individual actor’s performances make you think you’re seeing Azazel at their helm. No idiosyncrasies, no physical mannerisms or modes of speech. You only know someone is Azazel when they start belting out his theme song. Anyone who’s ever played my "Poltergeist Trilogy Carol-Anne Drinking Game" (patent pending) will find a fun alternate version in this film by taking a swig whenever anyone utters the line "Put down the G*d d*mned gun!". If you’re not well and truly sozzled during the final 20 minutes then you simply must be cheating.

The Good: Well, at least it turned out to be better than Phantoms.

Summary : The movie’s tagline says it best -- "Not all aliens come from outer space"

Comments : In a move which makes Sadaam Hussein seem like a strategic genius by comparison, the US Navy decides to install ICBMs on the ocean floor without even the benefit of a silo. As one would expect, all this aquatic activity draws the attention of a random-killer-something which lives under the water. Interestingly enough, most of the deaths in the film come not directly from the critter itself, but rather from incidental accidents and some unintentional malfeasance by Miguel "Albert" Ferrer. Its debatable whether this film was better than it's sister ‘aliens underwater’ film, Leviathan (doing my best not to let the presence of Amada Pays in Leviathan subvert my objectivity here). Neither one is a tremendous film, but Deepstar Six is saddled with a bit more in the "this makes no sense" department. As with other films in this tier, a solid performance by one actor (Ferrer in this case) only serves to highlight how just plain Bad the rest of the production is.

The Good : In the humble opinion of Yours Truly, Albert can do no wrong.

Summary : Have I mentioned my fondness for Linnea Quigley yet … ?

Comments : For reasons that are not at all exploitative or gratuitous, Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer have to get their panty-clad bottoms paddled by their would-be sorority sisters before showering together to remove the excess whipped cream covering them. As part of the cool-down process from this they are sent to a closed-for-the-night shopping mall to steal a bowling trophy. As luck would have it, nicking the trophy serves to release the mischievous imp imprisoned inside. In ‘gratitude’ for freeing him, said imp gives out 1 wish each to his benefactors. Since none of the cast have ever played Dungeons and Dragons, they proceed to make wishes which are quite easily corrupted into scenarios bringing woe rather than weal . As one might expect, copious partial nudity is the most frequent result. A fine example of the "doesn’t take itself too seriously" school of film making.

The Good : If you can’t figure this one out on your own …

-by Douglas Milroy