Tag: Schlock

Memorial Double Feature: Roddy Piper

RoddyPiperAs widely reported, 80’s icon “Rowdy” Roddy Piper [IMDB] died peacefully in his sleep on July 31st at the age of 61. Roderick George “Roddy” Toombs was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan on April 17, 1954 to parents of Scottish and Irish descent. He left home at a young age after a dispute with his father and ended up doing gopher work for professional wrestlers.

He received the stage name “Roddy Piper” when he made his wrestling debut at the age of 15 in Winnipeg. He approached the ring playing the bagpipes, a gimmick that would become his trademark. The announcer gave his name as “Roddy the Piper”, but fans heard “Roddy Piper” and the name stuck.

Piper had numerous acting credits across a long, interesting career, but I’m going to focus on two of his earliest and, for me, most fondly remembered.

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Movie Review: Must Love Death

IMDB, Must Love Death“Must Love Death” on IMDB

Romance/Horror, 90 Minutes, 2009:

You know what the torture porn genre needs? More romantic comedy! At least that’s what somebody had to say to get this movie made. Actually they had walk into a meeting – probably several – and convince a whole room full of people that the winning combination has got to be horror-romantic-torture-thriller-comedy. Or maybe it was thriller-romantic-torture-comedy-horror. Or maybe…

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Movie Review: Return of the Killer Shrews

IMDB, Return of the Killer Shrews“Return of the Killer Shrews” on IMDB

Horror, 84 Minutes, 2012

There’s a long, ignoble tradition of terrible movies taking advantage of good – or at least popular – movies. A movie really can’t be considered a success unless a loosely veiled B-version (and at least one even less loosely veiled porn parody) are available within two months of release. This may be the first one to try take advantage of a mostly forgotten horrible movie.

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Movie Review: Raptor Ranch

IMDB, Raptor Ranch“Raptor Ranch” on IMDB

Horror, 90 Minutes, 2013

This is the simple story of a small-town hottie, three friends who run out of gas, a gay soul singer and his entourage all being eaten by dinosaurs grown in silos by a crazy old man.
I think it’s based on a Dickens novella. Or maybe a morphine dream. Whatever it is it’s certainly not “Jurassic” or any kind of park.

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Turkey Day Movies!

What was Thanksgiving made for if not watching terrible movies with loved ones while eating way too much of way too much? We tried out some new turkeys this year, here are our impressions.

IMDB, Thankskilling“Thankskilling” on IMDB

Horror/Comedy, 70 Minutes, 2009

The first movie we have is holiday-appropriate but not family appropriate. We still watched it, but we did not feel good about it.  As promised by the poster there are “boobs in the first second” (for those that care, they are, in fact, the only boobs but that’s probably beside the point).

Anyway, an ancient Indian shaman summoned a demonic turkey to kill all the pilgrims and now he return every 505 years (except the movie actually takes place 400-some-odd-years after the intro) to kill the first batch of white people he finds.

The movie is a hell of lot of fun. Terribly acted, terribly realized, raunchy, family-unfriendly fun. There’s actually some clever, introspective gags here. The cast can’t deliver them but you’ll laugh at them trying either way.

IMDB, Axe Giant

“Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan” on IMDB

Horror, 90 Minutes, 2013

The first scenes of this movie, set in the 1800’s, had me worried. We do see a monster-killer with an ax and he’s… maybe, 5′ 10″? The word “giant” didn’t really come to mind. But it’s okay! Turns out he was just a little baby Bunyan back then. He was afflicted with a terrible disease, you see. One that let him live for hundreds of years and grow into an invincible giant. Terrible, it was!

So now it’s 2013 and a bunch of attractive teens are in the woods. They find the remains of Bunyan’s best friend, the blue ox Babe, and steal one of his horns. This angers Bunyan. He approaches the group and shares his feelings of violation and sadness. They apologize and return the horn.  They then help the sobbing giant to rebuild his makeshift monument as modernized, but respectful, rendition of  Minnie Riperton’s classic, “Loving You” plays out the scene.

Nah, I’m just fucking with you. He axes them all. He axes them good.

IMDB, Mancation“Mancation” on IMDB

Comedy, 95 Minutes, 2013

The wife decided that all the killing wasn’t in keeping with the the spirit of a holiday celebrating the start of a genocide, so we moved on to a comedy. Or, more specifically, we thought we did. If you never laugh – I mean ever – does it still count as a comedy?

Honestly we only had this in our queue because it popped up when we saw Danica McKellar [IMDB] in the differently terrible “Tasmanian Devils” [Our Review]. Sue us, we still like her! Just because her career has ended with movies like this doesn’t mean she’s a bad person or anything!

The movie blows. It tries to be a raunchy, bromance romp but ends up just raunchy and gross for the sake of being gross . It’s slow, scattered and joyless. But, Danica, we’re still rooting for you!

IMDB, Thankskilling 3“Thankskilling 3” on IMDB

Comedy, 99 Minutes, 2012

For our last turkey we decided to give this a shot. The first one was awful but the non-existent budget and terrible acting made it exactly the kind of terrible that you share with those you love. This one isn’t.

I don’t what the fuck this was. Imagine enough mescaline to drown congress. Now imagine doing all of it while watching “Pee Wee’s Playhouse”. Now imagine that, while you’re doing that, somebody is periodically hitting you in the face with a hatchet while reading “War and Peace” in Hebrew. Now, just for shits and giggles, imagine what kind of singing voice a fax-machine made of jelly-beans would have.

It’s kind of like that. Not at all good and not bad enough to be fun. There might be drugs that would make this movie great – the people that made it clearly had them – but I’m not sure what they might be and I have no desire to experiment.

So, as we wrap up, I think we have to give the non-existent “Golden Turkey” award to the original “Thankskilling”. The sequel was a huge disappointment, but the original was a hell of a lot of stupid fun.

Movie Review: Android Insurrection

IMDB, Android Insurrection“Android Insurrection” on IMDB

Sci-fi, 90 Minutes, 2012

This a terrible movie full of terrible things.  But it is damn funny.  It’s not meant to be funny, but it’s damn funny.  Hard to watch, harder to follow and ridiculously difficult to take seriously, but damn funny.

It has all the problems of z-budget sci-fi.  Terrible sets, terrible green screen and terrible integration of the, honestly, actually pretty good CGI.  The whole movie gives the impression that one guy got pretty good at making robots on the computer and his dumbass friends decided that they would make such an awesome movie!

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