So bad they're good movies

[VinylGuy]

Action Jackson is one of my favs action movies from all time!! from all timeee!!

[BurtReynolds]

Starring Lana Clarkson (RIP), this movie has two modes: fightin' and rapin'. Probably holds the record for earliest rape scene. Lots of sex, but I don't think any of it was consensual. Practically soft porn, but at least it lives up to the promise of the box art.

This has surprisingly good production values considering the trash quality of the script. The costumes look pretty good and the cameras look like real ones. And the girls were sourced from the finest strip clubs in 80s LA.

The only real interesting bit was when a creepy torturer guy tries to sexually assault the Queen, but he didn't count on her incredibly powerful... um ... snatch. She puts his dong in a death grip until he unlocks her chains and then she throws him into some acid.

5 crushed dongs out of 10.

Now I have to watch Barbarian Queen 2.

[BurtReynolds]

Skipping ahead all the way to 2018!



I didn't know they still made movies where idiots ride motorcycles around in the desert and pretend its a post-apocalyptic wasteland. This movie sucks!



- I assumed this was one of those tax scam movies. It's directed by James Franco and some other guy. Maybe Franco called in a lot of favors to make this turgid shit.

- Starring James Franco, Mila Jovovich, Snoop Dogg, Method Man, and Lucy Liu. Oh and it stars some nobody brown guy (son of Lucy Liu, somehow). Lucy Liu gets paid to lie in bed. I think she has maybe three lines. Method Man is a glorified extra. Snoop Dogg is there for a minute.

- Franco loves his lens flares! There is one in every other shot. Not sure if this was a style choice, or he just couldn't figure out how to get rid of them. Some truly terrible day-for-night scenes as well. There are a few shots where they get blood on the camera, too. No hacky trick is left unused. Very cool.

-Franco adds a lot of wannabe Terrence Malick "I'm a real artist!" scenes, too. Good lord he sucks.

- This movie feels like it was written by a really religious guy, maybe a Mormon. Someone who has never actually been in a strip club, and who thinks gangsters say things like "Go kick rocks!" Is Franco religious? There is an extended scene where the robot girl learns about sin, souls and praying. Drugs are bad as well. But then again, the robot girl is a lesbian, so I dunno.

- Franco hams it up in every scene, but this mostly consists of laughing and saying bitch a lot. It's not entertaining. Jovovich is even more hammy, but not any more enjoyable.

- The hero guy wants to go to "Paradise Beach" to find a cure for his mom (Lucy Liu, no relation). Do you guys want to guess if Paradise Beach is real? Anyway, he asks a random passerby how to get there, and he's told. Then the random guy gives him a gun and some bullets! This is probably the only functional gun left in existence, and this guy just randomly gives the most valuable thing in the world to a stranger. This should give you an idea of the writing quality.

- I get the sense that James Franco is indeed a very bad person. On the other hand, he does have a promising career making schlock. I need to seek out his other movies now.

3 lesbo sexbots out of ten.

[E.H. Ruddock]

Yeah I've seen that one. Pretty bad.

[bart]

Burt you should check out a movie called Iced, they just released it on Blu-ray although it still looks like a vhs picture quality-wise. Stars a bunch of random people plus the woman who played Wednesday Adams in the 60s Addams fam.

[BurtReynolds]

Burt you should check out a movie called Iced, they just released it on Blu-ray although it still looks like a vhs picture quality-wise. Stars a bunch of random people plus the woman who played Wednesday Adams in the 60s Addams fam.

looks good.

[BurtReynolds]

- Basically a slasher flick, but weirdly g-rated. Barely anyone dies, and when they do, they get disintegrated a la Star Trek.

- I know its a trope to cast older actors as teens, but these people look like they are in their 40s. One of the girls has a smoker voice.

- Big husky girl playing the space terminator woman. Would hit. She is, of course, terrible.



- here's the everyday outfit of one of the prison guard administrative staff



- hoo boy did Jan-Michael Vincent show up drunk as hell. He seems legitimately angry and mean, and he slurs his lines. He constantly berates and insults the woman above, and then sexually harasses her in a way that was obviously villainous even by 80s standards, but turns out to be the good guy? What a twist!

It's very dumb. 6.5 big women to make snu snu with out of 10.

[Matters]

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes which by some miracle has a direct connection to Pearl Jam.

[BurtReynolds]

Cool poster. Meh movie.

Ever wanted to see a cyberpunk Roger Corman movie? Here's your chance.

You know it's cyberpunk because it's dark and rainy and there is neon everywhere. The trucks have neon. The pool tables are neon. The pool cues are neon. It's actually not that terrible looking. At least the shadows hide the cheapness.

Did I mention Sherilyn Fenn (and her boobs) is in this?

The hero guy is straight out of late 80's cool guy school. All he's missing is the shades and fingerless gloves. His name is Bone.

David Carradine is in this too. Surprisingly, he seems sober. He was a producer on this one so I guess he decided to give a shit. Crazy how he rapidly aged to like 60 years old, then just stayed that age for 30 years.

Probably too competent to be that enjoyable. I wanted to like it, but there is something missing. Others might enjoy it more. Maybe I'm just tired.

2 Fenn boobs out of 5.

[BurtReynolds]

I think I'm being too harsh here. It's supremely 80s. It's fine. Just coulda used something a little extra.

Gonna up my rating to 3 Fennboobs.

[BurtReynolds]

Starring some big hunk of stupid named Reb Brown, this is an entertainingly terrible clone of Rambo 2 or 3. It's pretty funny watching this guy try to ape Sylvester Stallone.

About what you'd expect of a movie directed by an Italian shot in the Philippines.

The director likes his distant shots that reveal that the hero and the bad guys are just a few feet from each other. It's hilarious. Reminds me of the Hot Shots movies.

The voiceover in this is terrible. For some reason they added a lot of unnecessary lines to the hero guy, only the voice isn't close and he sounds like a huge redneck. Totally changes his character.

Surprisingly epic. Covers the entire Vietnam war and aftermath. 4 or 5 different movies in one.

The bad guy looks like an older version of the hero. Very distracting. I had to look them up and see if they were related, but they aren't.

Fantastic ending. I got some real Invasion USA vibes.

[wease]

Reb Brown? He was Captain America!

[BurtReynolds]

Oh yeah. I thought he looked familiar.

[BurtReynolds]

Terminus (1987)

(Not to be confused with a shitty boring movie with the same name that was made in the 2010s, also streaming on Amazon. I almost watched the wrong movie.)

Starring Karen Allen (sort of), a French pop star from the 60s turned grizzled bad 80s actor, the always reliable Jürgen Prochnow, and the kid from Robocop 2.

This seems to be hastily edited together from 2 or 3 failed attempts at making movies. There is barely a plot, but from what I gather there is some sort of game where someone drives an armored RV across some land. If they succeed, they win some gold. And there is another plot about a boy and a couple of evil scientists...you know what? it doesn't matter.

Notes:

- The RV truck thing has AI, but it can't do much besides cruise control and GPS, and it can make popcorn and coffee. No weapons or anything. A driver has to do everything else. It also has lips. Yes, lips.


- A bra-less Karen Allen plays "Gus". You'd think she is the star, playing a tank girl/girlboss type character. But about 20 minutes in, she gets out of the truck to show some thugs who the real boss is, and then gets the shit kicked out of her by the first guy. I laughed my fucking ass off. Then she dies a short time later and fucks right out of the movie.

Seconds before getting her ass kicked and dying:


- She is replaced by a guy named Stump, played by Frenchman Johnny Halladay, who sucks. He has a metal hand.

- The bad guys are no threat. Their vehicles constantly crash into each other and explode despite the hero just driving straight. They are also too small to do anything.

- There is a brief scene inside one of the evil vehicles with some mutated clone children, similar to that scene in Alien 4. The effects are surprisingly great. But then the bad guy decides to blow them up. No real reason.

- Jürgen Prochnow plays 3 roles. They might be brothers, or they might not. It's just three bad guys. One is an evil scientist, the other is sort of a diseased Ronald McDonald or Ziggy Stardust, and an evil driver. The evil driver shows up only near the end, and gets knocked out. The other two just kinda leave, and are never seen again.


- The movie just sort of ends. The hero drives a truck through a wall to get into an abandoned underground base (?) to rescue a boy, and then we cut to the credits. catchy theme song, though.

9 big-lipped AIs out of 11

[BurtReynolds]

oh, and the director hates chickens. Pretty sure many chickens were ran over in the making of this film.

[bada]

Why did bad movies in the 80s get better posters than good movies today? Another example of shitification in action.