Baller Blockin' (2000)

I'm not sure exactly how this movie fell into our laps. I know my buddy got it, and I believe it was a gift from his brother. That's not necessarily so important. What is important is just how big this movie became amongst my friends. It may only be an hour long, but it's packed with more memorable moments than your average full length Nicolas Cage feature.

Baller Blockin' was an attempt by New Orleans Hip Hop impresarios the Cash Money Millionaires to make a film. Juvenile stars as a young man in his twenties, struggling with the memories of his dad's violent death when he was very young; and with the decision of whether or not he should leave his life in the gang he runs with with the other Cash Money Millionaires to settle down with his nice girlfriend. At the same time, the crooked New Orleans cop Curly is trying to muscle in on the gang's turf. This brings Curly in direct conflict with Beatrice (pronounced BE-ah-TRICE, played by Brian "Baby" WIlliams, or Birdman) who runs the gang. Will Juvenile live long enough to end his life of crime? Will Curly get what's coming to him? Will Lil' Wayne make any sense? We never know, because the movie ends only an hour in with a "To Be Continued". I'm not kidding.



It's very obvious from the finished product that the Cash Money Millionaires found out just how much goes into making a movie, and they got tired of it. It's not just the abrupt "To Be Continued", but in people messing up lines without doing second takes, and in characters who were dead a scene ago coming back to shoot people. With that said, I think my friend put it best when he remarked: "this movie is perfect."

I don't know where to begin. Maybe the scene at the start when a young Juvenile watches his dad die after he didn't have the money for Gar, the crime lord of that time. The dad's funny, Gar's funny, and even funnier, Gar comes back later in the film, and hasn't aged a day in the fifteen some-odd years since he killed Juvenile's dad. And his death scene is even better. Let's just say Birdman had a hooker "bake a cake" for him.



The dude who played the crackhead in Friday steals the show in this as Curly the bad cop's partner. He has a few moments early on that give you a taste of what he can do, and then showcases his total repertoire in the memorable Interrogation Scene. I'll just quote some of the better lines "I'ma shoot you in your fuckin' tongue!" "Did he just say [inaudible]? You're fucked up? You know that?" and who can forget "It's not in his ass, we already checked!" You haven't lived until you've seen the Interrogation Scene in Baller Blockin', and my friends and I have made sure many people have enjoyed it.

There's a mailman who's killed, not for not passing the welfare checks on time, but for giving Birdman and Turk (another Cash Money Millionaire, if you're not in the know) lip when Birdman tells him to "Pass them fuckin' checks out on time, bitch." The mailman responds to them with: "Fuck you, and fuck you." So they shoot him. Why not? That scene alone garnered myriad playbacks. Who kills a mailman? The Cash Money Millionaires do, apparently.



That's just the tip of the iceberg. You have the All The Time Guy (a guy who responds to everything with "All the Time"), Lil' Wayne hiding from the cops in an ice cream cooler at a local grocery store, a ridiculous party that ends in a hail of gunfire, and the perfect soundtrack done in all Cash Money Millionaires songs. Oh yeah, and it's to be continued. Words can't give this film justice. It must be seen to be believed.

I have a lot of friends that're into bad movies, and only a certain segment of them really enjoy this one the way I do. We've tried our best to share this joy with others, but they don't always find it as fun. That's why I'm recommending this, but with a huge caution: it's not for everybody. Don't buy this and after watching it say: "this is crap, what was the DTVC thinking?" If you can rent it first, do so, or buy it on VHS for like $2. It's extremely ridiculous, and I want everyone to experience it once, but I'd feel bad if anyone bought it after my review and didn't find it as amusing as I do, and in the process wasted $20.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0315253/

Bloodfist VIII: Trained to Kill or Hard Way Out (1996)

In seeing this on Spike recently, I had another case of bad movie deja vu. You know what I'm talking about: you think for sure you've never seen a certain movie before, but halfway through it, things look familiar, and it's more than just bad movie cliches. Then it dawns on you that yes, in fact, you have seen it, and you just didn't remember. With this film, it turned out I'd seen it a while ago, probably at a time when digital cable guides didn't exist, so I watched it without even knowing what it was. In my mind, the only thing worse than watching a bad movie once, is watching it twice because I didn't remember the pain I'd suffered the fist time. I guess as a connoisseur of bad cinema, I should probably get a journal like wine people do, so I can recall what it was like: film had bold explosions and potential with great actors, but horrible after taste with unoriginal plot. Also smelled bad once it had a chance to open up.

Bloodfist VIII, aka The Ocho, takes the overused Bloodfist premise of Don "The Dragon" Wilson against the world, and moves it to Ireland. I guess LA told Roger Corman that seven Bloodfists was really pushing it, and if he wanted to make an eight, he'd have to take his business elsewhere. Anyway, D "The D" Dubs is a former CIA agent turned high school teacher trying to raise his erstwhile estranged son. Someone puts a hit on him for killing a dude in Italy, and in order to clear his name, the trail takes him to Dublin. The CIA follows him there, because they want to kill ol' Donny too. As in every Bloodfist, he prevails against all odds.



Wanna talk about pulling blood from a stone. They were scraping the bottom of the barrel when they put this one together. I can't lie, with the extreme success of Bloodfist VII: Manhunt, I probably would've greenlighted an eight too. It's not like any of the actors had anything better to do, I'm sure. Why not take a paid vacation to Ireland? I bet Donny hadn't been before they shot this.

Speaking of Donny, he really gives this the ol' college try. He's having trouble making the same stale storyline not so stale. I bet he's the guy you have as a roommate that saves every scrap of food because he thinks he can make a taco bake or something out of it. I'm that guy too, and I know sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet and throw that stuff out. And then you gotta bite the bullet again and buy some new food at the grocery store.



I guess that's the issue with the Bloodfist series: they never did anything new. There was nothing that I could discern from the earlier movies that said explicitly that movies IV through VIII absolutely had to have a guy that was some sort of fugitive with everyone against him with no one he could trust. The first two weren't like that, and the third was only sorta kinda like that. Why they felt compelled to make the others essentially the same film is beyond me. I know after this they really tried to mix it up with Bloodfist: 2050, but that doesn't do anything for me here with number VIII, which is what I'm reviewing.

This may be one of the most nondescript films I've ever done for the DTVC. Other than Donny, there's nothing in it that makes it memorable at all. I've had trouble grinding out more than four or five paragraphs. It's not extremely bad; but on the other hand, if it was, it might be more entertaining. Instead it's just a big pile of blah. The only way I'd recommend watching it is if you're suffering from insomnia or up late typing a paper, and this is on at 2 AM, and it's your only option. Otherwise skip it. It's not worth any money you spend on it, no matter how small; and it's not worth any time you could spend doing something else, like watching another movie, or reading a book.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115711/

Submerged (2005)

It's looking like a forgone conclusion that Steven Seagal will have his ticket to the DTVC Hall of Fame punched this October when we induct our new members. After seeing Mercenary for Justice, I wasn't so sure the selection committee (which includes myself) made the right decision. But here, with this film, I felt we had a great opportunity for the big fella (not a pun on his weight at all) to redeem himself in the eyes of the DTVC. In the opening credits, when I saw this co-starred not only English great Vinnie Jones, but also one of my personal faves, Gary Daniels, I felt Seagal's shot at redemption was all but certain.

Submerged, despite its title, spends very little time aboard a sub. It's more about some Army dudes (including Daniels) who were subjected by a mad scientist to some kind of mind control procedure. Since the US can't use the Army to take him down (because they're mind-controlled), they need to call in merc Seagal, and his merc boys, one of which is Vinnie Jones. They commandeer a sub, try to recapture the soldiers, but have to kill them on board the sub when they try to kill Seagal and his crew. Seagal then follows the bad guy to a South American country, where a businessman is buying his services. Seagal saves the day in very Seagalian fashion.



I dug this. It had everything you'd want in a bad action flick. The fighting was nice, the explosions were great, there were solid car chase scenes, and the lead, played by Seagal, was everything you'd want a Seagal to be. The addition of Vinnie Jones was perfect, and as a connoisseur of the bad action genre, Gary Daniels was a nice familiar face.

Whereas in Mercenary for Justice, Seagal was omnipotent, here he was just the action hero. We knew he was going to win eventually, but at least he had to try. At the very end, when this big dude comes out of the elevator to confront him, I was like "this'll be good". Their fight was a little short for my taste, but it was fulfilling nonetheless. His performance here did everything to confirm mine and the other members of the selection committee in putting Seagal through to the Hall of Fame.



The rest of the Seagal factor was in full effect here as well. He was definitely heavier, and when you first see him come in in shackles, you see that extra poundage. I'm just not sure why he's so self-conscious about it. You never saw Samo Hung worrying about it when he was acting opposite Arsenio Hall. I also love Seagal's new use of Ebonics in his acting. It was truly off the hook in Today You Die, and in this it was even better. I hope he continues to employ this speech in his future roles. It's too ridiculous not to.

If I had one issue with this film, it was the use of Gary Daniels. In my mind he was wasted. He was only in it for the first half, and he barely fought Seagal. For a man of his exceptional skill, I'd have liked to seen more. Don "The Dragon" Wilson and Daniels had a great end of movie fight in Bloodfist IV. Considering that movie came out way before this one, you'd think the film makers would see the potential for a extended scene between Seagal and Daniels, because for us who've seen enough of these films, that's what we were looking for, and we were sorely let down.

One of my favorite scenes involved the hot chic slash tough chic whose Seagal's old friend. In order to drive home to us the viewer that she's more than just a pretty face, we're introduced to her as she's beating a man much larger than her at arm wrestling. Her wrists and arms couldn't be much more than your average super model's, so I'm not sure where the muscle comes from to pull that off. I'm not sure the film makers did either.



A quick paragraph on Vinnie Jones. He's sweet in this. He does exactly what you want Vinnie Jones to do. His best scene comes when he sneaks up on a mind-controlled sniper. The fight the two have is great, but when Jones finally gains the upper hand, he beats the guy to death with the butt end of his gun. With anyone else, I'd say that's obsessive, but it's Vinnie Jones. I guess the only thing better night have been him beating the guy to death by slamming his head repeatedly in a car door.

When you and your friends are having a bad movie watching night, this is the kind of movie you rent. It works for rookies and old pros; it works on its own, or after a couple other ones; and there's plenty to mock in this. It doesn't take itself that seriously, but it's serious enough that it's not in on the joke. Well worth the price of a rental.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416243/

The Hard Easy (2005)

I, like most people, rent my movies based on their potential. Who's in it? Who directed it? What did so-and-so say about it? In the case of this film, it seemed to be oozing with potential. Sure, the cover listed a bunch of actors I have no time for like Nick Lachey or David Blahblahblah from Angel; but it also listed two DTVC Hall of Famers in Peter Weller and Gary Busey. Now that's potential.

The Hard Easy is a 90 minute film consisting of 50 minutes of fade-outs. When it's not fading out, the plot involves David Blahblahblah and the guy from ET (who was also in Psycho IV) as two fellas from two totally different situations who need cash bad. The guy from ET has mad gambling debts, so his friend Gary Busey hooks him up with the not-as-cool-as-the-movie-makes-him-out-to-be Bruce Dern, who, with the chick from The Departed, are planning a jewel heist. David Blahblahblah works with Nick Lachey, and his boss Peter Weller has gotten them all in hot water with some junk bonds or whatever. You guessed it: P Dubs has also planned a diamond heist, and it's at the same diamond shop the guy from ET's hitting. They're on a collision course to wackiness.



This film had two things going for it: Busey and Weller. That's it. Whenever the two of them are on screen (and they're never on together, unfortunately), they hoist the film on their shoulders and carry it to a level beyond what the poor film makers could possibly hope to achieve with this complete and utter lack of imagination and creativity they're calling a movie. After Busey and P Dubs, this is simply a low-rent Tarentino knock-off.

And even worse, Busey wasn't in it much. It's one thing to make a movie bad, it's another to go light on the Abuse. If I see the name Gary Busey on the cover, I want it to be as Abusive as possible. Hit me with it, damn it. Haven't these people ever seen Point Break? The worst irony of this movie is that the film makers probably think they're above a classic like Point Break, and they're wrong, so wrong.



Peter Weller is sweet in this, but his character becomes a monster that's just too big for the amateurs who made this sack-of-asscrack to handle. His death is a totally played-up-for-laughs yet very unfunny scene where he loads up his weapons in a stand-off, gets ready to go out guns blazing, and is felled with a single shot in the heart by a police officer. It was a travesty that they'd kill off Weller's character like that, after all he did to elevate their fried shite of a film to something resembling respectability. The best thing these people could've done was see the movie Styx. Those people knew what to do with a too sweet Weller character.

The overuse of the fade out gave me a headache. Nothing spells amateur like not being able to transition from one scene to the next. I'd expect something like that from a horrible Star Trek movie some Finnish kids put up on YouTube that my friends might make me watch; but from film makers that were able to cast Busey and Weller, it's just unacceptable. My friends and I got bored saying "Next week on The Hard Easy" or "When The Hard Easy returns", which is kind of a tradition whenever a film employs a fade-out.



I don't get Bruce Dern in this. He was great in The 'burbs, but here we're supposed to believe he's some kind of criminal mastermind that's hardcore and really cool. He'll kill you if he gets the chance or something. Even worse, we're supposed to buy that he's anywhere near as cool as a Weller, when he's not even in the ballpark. My favorite scene is where Busey's telling the guy from ET about him, and he recalls some heist Dern pulls off dressed in clown clothes. I think the clown part is supposed to be funny and irreverent, but instead it's overused and cliched. The funny thing for me was how Bruce Dern kills his partners in the heist. Who does that? This happens again and again in movies, where the bad guy kills the people he does business with. Why do people keep working with him? And if this film's supposed to be so smart and different, why do they fall back on the same bad movie plot devices?

This is almost worth renting if you're as huge a Petter Weller guy as I am. If you cut out his death scene, it's sweet. On the other hand, you have to sit through another crummy Tarentino knock off that spends as much time as possible telling you how smart it is, when in reality, it's dumber than BloodRayne. If you're not a Weller guy, don't even consider this sack-of-asscrack.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425087/

Cobra Verde (1987)

In reviewing this film for the DTVC, I'm taking a slight departure from the usual fare. This definitely was a film that was overlooked when Klaus Kinski and Werner Hezrog collaborated to make it back in 1987, so it's not like I'm covering a huge foreign classic like La Strada or Seven Samurai. On the other hand, this isn't just a bad movie, but a fairly sophisticated film told within the constructs of the West African Slave trade in the mid-19th century.

Cobra Verde is about a man, Klaus Kinski in the eponymous lead, who loses his farm living in Brazil, and is forced to become a bandit, terrorizing the local countryside in order to make ends meet. He's hired by a plantation owner, and quickly he impregnates the man's young daughters. In an effort to rid himself of Kinski, he ships him over to West Africa to oversee his slave trade. There, Kinski is imprisoned by the local king, rescued by the king's brother, leads an army of women against the king, and establishes a successful trade in African slaves. When Brazil joins the rest of the world in outlawing slavery, things fall apart quickly for our hero. The movie ends in an amazing death scene where Kinski struggles to pull his beached boat into the water.



This movie is fantastic. It deals with slavery in a very different connotation, where instead of the film being about slavery, it's told within the constructs of a world with that as it's reality. For me, I think that makes horror that was the African slave trade even starker than a film that's centered around it as its main subject. It's a very risky way to make a movie, because it doesn't come right out and say slavery is bad, which may offend some; but I feel it's pretty obvious from the lines of men marched in appalling conditions or women in pits waiting to be used for sex that there was nothing advocating or attempting to diminish the inhumanity of slavery in Herzog telling of the story.

If the solid storytelling doesn't grab you, then you've got Kinski, who's at his crazy best in this. For me it's one of his best performances. When he flips out as the king's men take him into custody, it's beyond fantastic. Even better, when he's taken away, his captors fill a gourd with water and stick one of his feet in it. So as he's carried into the king's court, he's got this gourd dangling from his foot. It's a testament to his ability as an actor that Kinski can pull that off.



Kinski's death scene was amazing. For those who find him ridiculous and love to laugh at him, there was plenty there as he wallowed in the surf allowing the waves to engulf him. For those who find him fascinating and love the method in his madness, it was sheer brilliance to watch his futile attempt to pull this over-sized boat from the beach into the water. For me, I'm one who likes both aspects of Kinski, so the scene had it all. In addition to the amazing Kinski-ness, Herzog included in the background a man he met who was stricken with polio. His legs have severely atrophied, and he's forced to walk on his hands.

There were other great tidbits in this, too. The king's brother constantly gives Kinski the Runaway Bride stare. Every time he was on screen, he elicited laughs from me and my friends. Seeing Kinski in the sailor's outfit, complete with the hat, was beautiful too. Earlier he walks around with no shoes, and a woman asks him why he's barefoot. He tells her he doesn't trust shoes. That's one of the best lines ever in cinema.



If you have the time and you're watching this on DVD, catch some of the audio commentary with Werner Herzog. I didn't get a chance to see all of it, but what I did see, especially in regards to Kinski, was entertaining. In one instance, the moderator asks him why a section of dialog was somebody other than Kinski's voice. Herzog tells him that Kinski wanted $5 million dollars to go back and loop the audio parts where his voice was off. That wasn't a joke. Most surprising to me was at the end, when Herzog tells the moderator that Kinski overdid his acting, and he gave the character an element of mania that Herzog didn't intend.

If you're a bad movie watcher, I'd give this a shot, even if it isn't exactly a bad movie. There's plenty to joke about, especially with Kinski being Kinski. It is in German with English subtitles, which I know turns some people off. I'm as huge a foreign film guy as I am a bad movie guy, so I never notice it, but I figured I'd put out the warning for those that don't like to read while watching a movie (or put the warning out for those that are illegally downloading it that you'll need a subtitle file).

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094888/

Adrenalin: Fear the Rush (1996)

Many readers have e-mailed me asking why I don't give as much attention to bad movie directors as I do bad movie actors and actresses. I must admit that this is a serious lack of sound judgment on my part, and I am now, starting with this blog, attempting to remedy that issue.

It came to my attention that Albert Pyun has directed multiple films which the DTVC reviewed. Not only that, but he's responsible for a couple classics like Cyborg and MST3K's Alien From LA. When I went to imdb to look up info for the film I'm reviewing here, I saw his name and thought: "That sounds really familiar". As it turns out, he's something of a Direct to Video Martin Scorsese... or maybe Paul Verhoeven.



Adrenalin: Fear the Rush takes place in a future that's now the past (i.e. 2007), where a bunch of people are infected with a virus, and those that aren't have walled themselves in. Our story is set in Boston or Bucharest (it's not really clear) in one of the zones outside the walled in area. Some mutant that looks like a dude from The Hills Have Eyes is killing people, and beat cop Natasha Henstridge is called in to save the day. She sucks, her partner's killed, so now DTVC Hall of Famer Christopher Lambert is called in with some other people (one of whom is the android that gets his head knocked off in Omega Doom-- also a Pyun film, go figure). They don't do much better, until the very end, when they finally use their guns and shoot him.

Between the title and cover, one might get the impression that this film is pretty silly. I'm here to tell you that the movie delivers. It's that silly. The biggest issue for me was the "is it Boston or Bucharest" thing. The police cars are marked "Policias", and everyone has what looks to be Romanian flags on their shoulders. By the same token, the film is adamant that we're in Boston in 2007 AD.



That's another thing I love about the futuristic bad movie: when they put the date up as being whatever time AD. As opposed to what, BC? I've always wondered if they feel it adds a level of sophistication to their otherwise lackluster film. For me it's more of a sign post that lets me know what direction the movie's taking me, and that I should buckle up, because it could be a bumpy ride.

Natasha Henstridge plays a cop who for some reason doesn't shoot the mutant thing when she has a chance in the first twenty minutes of the film. She had a gun, and he didn't, and she had a clean shot at him. I understand that Pyun didn't want her to kill the baddie in the opening moments, because there'd be no film left after that. Just the same, I need a better reason for a trained cop to not a shoot a mutant that's just killed and mutilated a baker's dozen's worth of people beyond simply "if you kill him now, we'd have no more movie".



Lambert is great in this. It may not be his best effort, but his voice is in full effect, and he looks hilarious in this shielded riot helmet thing. In the immortal words of Shakespeare "What, is my beaver easier than it was?" (King Richard III). In your case, Lambert, it was sillier than it was, and it made up for the fact that you didn't have the great hair you had in Beowulf and Druids. Even better, at the end, he survives something like seven gunshots to his torso. Don't ask me how.

This film is twenty kinds of silly, despite being a tad on the brutal side in terms of violence. I wouldn't recommend buying it unless you're a Lambert completist (which I'm not). Your best bet is to rent it whenever your local video store has a two-for-one deal. I did it recently with Steven Seagal's Submerged, and I felt like I got my money's worth with both. So did my friends.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115471/

Brain Damage (1988)

In high school a friend who was rather new to watching bad movies thought the whole thing was a novel idea, and he planned some big MST3K-like night for us to rent a bunch and make fun of them. The rest of us didn't have the heart to tell him we'd been doing the same thing for years before that, so we just went along for it. I mean, how can you pass up a night of bad movies, right? Well, anyway, another buddy, who like me, was something of a bad movie pro, picked out Bad Taste that night, and the rest was history. It became our favorite movie.

The problem was, the friend who hosted us was jealous that my buddy garnered so many accolades for Bad Taste, that he felt he needed to one up him. It's pretty silly, I know. He rented and showed us this film in his futile attempt at one-upsmanship.

Brain Damage is about a dude, played by a soap opera actor, living in an apartment with his brother. One night he's accosted by a parasite named Aylmer. Aylmer needs to eat brains, and he has the ability to shoot Cool Mint Listerine into the soap star's brain stem, which makes him high and gives him Predator vision. While high, he brings Aylmer into contact with humans, so Aylmer can eat their brains. His life spirals downwards as he becomes addicted to the Listerine, and his girlfriend starts doing his brother. Then the old couple who originally had Aylmer come for him, because they're going through withdrawals. The whole thing ends with the soap star getting too much cool mint Listerine to the head, causing it to burst open in a flash of light, much like the Adam Bomb Garbage Pail Kid.



Needless to say, this was no Bad Taste, and that friend was slowly phased out of our bad movie watching sessions. Bad movie watching is about the camaraderie, not who can find the best flick. And when you try too hard to find the perfect bad film, you get Brain Damage, not Bad Taste. Like I always say, the key to finding a bad movie is to let the video store tell you what to buy; don't go in there expecting anything.

Watching Brain Damage many years later, I find that I was just put off by our friend's behavior, and in fact didn't give this thing a chance. It's actually not that bad. The Aylmer thing was pretty funny: he sounded kind of like Hanna-Barbera's Purple Hippo; I dug the Cool Mint Listerine everywhere: it made for great easy puns; and the scene where Aylmer jumps out of the soap star's fly to kill a potential fellator (is that a word? one who gives fellatio?) was memorbale to say the least. It wasn't anything great, but in a large group there was plenty to laugh at.



Difficult to handle was the withdrawal sequence. As the soap star tries to remove himself from Aylmer's grasp, he goes cold turkey from the Listerine injections in the brain stem.
They live in what looks like a gas station bathroom for who knows how long, with the soap star in a wife beater and tighty whities, all stained and gross. Who thought this was a good idea? Brain eating, ears falling off, all that I can handle. But sweaty soap stars in stained undergarments is beyond my sensibilities.

For fans of bad horror, there's an homage to Basket Case in a subway scene. That's just what I want in my bad horror, allusions to other ones. It's like going to the dentist, and while you're suffering through that, he or she reminds you of the last visit and how painful that was. I felt a shudder move through me as the memory passed in my head of Basket Case, and my friends saw this and asked if I was OK.



This isn't a bad deal if you've got a bunch of people over and want to rent something silly. We had a mixed group when we watched it recently, which included people who avoid movies like this like the plague. I found they were more laughing at the fact that we were watching it than actually enjoying the movie. It was like: "Those silly guys and gals, what're we gonna do with them?" For me that's a much better reaction than: "Eww, why do you guys watch stuff like this? That's disgusting, I'm out of here."

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094793/