Some movies are born bad. Others trip over the script on their way to mediocrity. Gotcha!? This one crawled out of a frat house basement, covered in cheap beer, wrapped in Cold War cosplay, and shouted “YOLO” before faceplanting into a pile of Reagan-era clichés and adolescent fantasies. This is what happens when a studio … Read More “Gotcha! (1985): Spy Games for Horny Morons” »
There are movies that inspire. Movies that make you believe in the human spirit, the triumph of will, the poetry of perseverance. Vision Quest is not one of those movies. No, Vision Quest is what happens when a high school wrestler decides his midlife crisis showed up 30 years early, and everyone around him just … Read More “Vision Quest (1985): Mat Rats, Meatheads, and One Smoking Hot Fiorentino” »
1000 Words of Regret, Snow, and Softcore Stupidity You ever drink a warm beer at a frat party where no one knows your name and someone just puked in the only bathroom? That’s Hot Dog… The Movie. It’s not just dumb. Dumb can be charming. This is brain-cell genocide wrapped in neon ski gear and … Read More “Hot Dog… The Movie (1984): A Limp Noodle on the Slopes” »
The Setup: Man vs. Beast. Spoiler: We’re the Real Animals. Let me paint you a picture: Peter Weller plays a yuppie with a slick haircut, a swanky Manhattan brownstone, and a rat problem. That’s the movie. That’s the whole damn thing. It’s supposed to be a psychological thriller, a descent into madness, a metaphor for… … Read More “Of Unknown Origin (1983): A Rat, a Man, and a Script That Chewed Itself to Death” »
Directed by Otto Preminger | Starring John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Patricia Neal They should’ve called this one In Harm’s Way Too Long. Clocking in at nearly three hours, In Harm’s Way is less a World War II epic and more of a slow-moving naval parade where every boat takes a detour through soap opera waters … Read More “In Harm’s Way (1965): All the Boats and None of the Buoyancy” »
Directed by Peter Carter | Starring Jeff East, Rod Steiger, Angie Dickinson, and a bunch of snow There are two kinds of fever you can get from spending too long in the wilderness: one is hypothermia, the other is Klondike Fever—and I’m still not sure which one’s worse. One kills you quickly. The other drags … Read More “Klondike Fever (1979): Gold, Cold, and a Whole Lotta Old” »
Directed by Claude Chabrol | Starring Isabelle Huppert, Stéphane Audran, Jean Carmet Claude Chabrol’s Violette is the cinematic equivalent of a poisoned macaron: it looks classy, smells vaguely French, and might kill you slowly from the inside. Based on the real-life case of Violette Nozière—France’s most notorious teenage parricide—this 1978 film serves up murder with … Read More “Violette (1978): Mommie Dearest, with Arsenic and Lace” »
Directed by Claude Chabrol | Starring Donald Sutherland, Aude Landry, Lisa Langlois Oh, Blood Relatives. A film so quiet, so somber, so Canadian that you could practically hear the apologetic rustle of a maple leaf every time someone died. Directed by the French master of moral ambiguity Claude Chabrol—here slumming it in English—and starring a … Read More “Blood Relatives (1978): Incest, Raincoats, and the Soft Murmur of Cinematic Drowsiness” »
Directed by Jim Wynorski | Starring Traci Lords, Arthur Roberts, Ace Mask Every few decades, someone decides to remake a 1950s sci-fi film, strip it down to its bare essentials, and then somehow remove even those. In walks Not of This Earth (1988), a Roger Corman-produced “remake” of his own 1957 cheapie, now repackaged with … Read More “Not of This Earth (1988): Roger Corman’s Latex-Fueled Misfire, Featuring Traci Lords and an Alien Who Forgot His Lines” »
Directed by Jim Wynorski | Starring Angie Dickinson, Robert Culp, Danielle Brisebois Ah, the glorious 1980s—an era where sequels were churned out with the care and finesse of a cafeteria meatloaf. And right there, flopped on your plastic tray, slathered in Corman-produced gravy, is Big Bad Mama II. It’s got shootouts. It’s got boobs. It’s … Read More “Big Bad Mama II (1987): A Sequel Nobody Asked For, Starring a Machine Gun and Angie Dickinson’s Brass Nerve” »
