I know the comic but I have never really read it apart from a few strips long time ago, so can't judge how faithful this movie is to it. As a stand alone movie it's not bad at all. It has a fun, weird and light hearted mood to it and it looks great. So Modesty Blaise, played by Monica Vitti, is this ex cat burglar turned into a secret agent who gets hired by the British secret service to track down some diamonds and the villain Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde) who is trying to steal them. Modesty gets help from his agent buddy Willie Garvin (Terence Stamp) as she goes on this weird adventure. Can't really say much about the plot as I kind of lost interest in it as it didn't make much sense, so I just enjoyed the fun mood of the film. Can't judge whether Monica Vitti's character fit that of the comics or not, but I must say she didn't seem like much of an agent, unless you judge the skills of a secret agent by how fast she can get another dress on and switch her hair style. Terence Stamp and Dirk Bogarde kind of steal the show as their characters are so much wilder than the surprisingly one sided Modesty. There's plenty of comedy in this movie, intentional and unintentional, funnily enough the unintentional comedy turns out to be the better kind. Like those explaining dialogue scenes which probably were intended as those explanation texts of the comics. It's just hilarious how the government people seem to always know exactly what's happening, kind of defeats the purpose of hiring an agent in the first place. But anyway it's all fun and fits the weird mood of the film. And that mood is this movie's strongest point. 71%
Well the story is
about a girl called Nomi (Elizabeth Berkley) coming to Vegas with
nothing more than the clothes she's wearing and a passion to become a
show dancer. She meets Molly (Gina Ravera) who helps her out with a
place to stay until she can get her dancing career going. Soon enough
she's competing for a spot in a show with the biggest star of the
business Cristal (Gina Gershon). Then of course money and greed step
in and things go wrong. Simple and even stupid story, but yet so
familiar from quite a many Hollywood fame and fortune movies, this is
just told with a bit more exploitation. This movie rocked the
Razzie'sin it's days with 13 nominations and 7 wins, but what made it even
better was that Paul Verhoeven himself actually showed up to receive
the awards for worst movie and worst director. And that's something
special right there. It also failed miserably on the box office, even
though it later became the highest grossing NC-17 movie of all time.
But this movie was a huge success on home video, reeling in more than
100 million dollars, that's pretty clear indication that people
rather watch "porn" at home and not at the theaters, even if it's a satire wrapped in softcore sex like this one.
But that's not all this
movie is, it's actually a lot more. Even though there's no goofball
comedy or witty jokes, this movie is a comedy. It's a satire about
the roles of women in many Hollywood movies, the fact that it's done
in an exploitative manner is probably why many people seem to miss
that point. After all most Hollywood movies are male made male
fantasies, they are just politically correctly covered in less
exploitative themes. So when this movie hides nothing and couldn't
care less about being politically correct it's misunderstood, either
intentionally or unintentionally. Those who intentionally
misunderstand it see that this could just as well be any other movie
out there where a woman is trying to earn a living, just replace the
usual romance and comedy with sex and drama and that scares them.
Those who unintentionally misunderstand it just can't see the big
picture behind the tits and asses. The big picture of course is that
satirically every woman in this movie who thrives for success is
nothing more than a sexual object for men and advance through their
career by deceiving other women. Sure many people see that as a flaw
in the character development, but it's the ending which really ties
the satire together. I won't give out any details even though you
can't really spoil a movie like this. When the movie ends with it's
themes of empowerment of women it's just pure comedy brilliance. It's
of course tragic as it makes you realize how similar many other woman
characters in other Hollywood movies are, but still you have to admit
it's also funny as hell.
The acting is from bad to
worse most of the time, though funnily enough the black actors and
actresses gave out by far the best performances. I'm willing to bet
my money on that being deliberate as many from this cast can do and
has done a whole lot better. And that's just another indication of
this being a satire. My only complaint is the running time, at a bit
over two hours this is on the edge of becoming boring at times, but
luckily there's plenty of eye candy to balance out those few moments
when the comedy stalls. This movie is pure camp brilliance and a
great satire, though obviously hugely misunderstood.
When movies like The Warriors (1979), Mad Max (1979)
and Escape from New York (1981)
hit gold at the box office, Italy was soon to answer the call for
“post apocalyptic” movies. Enzo G. Castellari was the one who
brought us this series here for what ever that's worth.
Well this movie is bad,
but it's so bad it's actually not bad as it's so funny. The plot is
pretty much nonsense, the idea is that in the near future, which was
1990, the Bronx has been turned into a free zone for the criminals
where the gangs can roam free and the police rather stay out of
there. One day a woman (Stefania Girolami) escapes from some
corporate conspiracy into Bronx and ends up stirring things into an
all out war between the different gangs. The main gang of this movie
is The Riders, who are supposed to be this motorcycle gang and the
ruling authority down there, but most of them look like your average
office workers dressed in denim and leather. Apparently some of them
were played by the real Hell's Angels and indeed some of the lesser
characters look quite believable, but anyone with a few lines
dialogue is most certainly not. Their leader is Trash (Mark Gregory).
He's supposed to be this fearless leader, but he looks more like a
gay kid who forgot the butt plug from last night still in his ass
which makes him prance around like a fairy. And it didn't really help
that he's also crying like a little girl. The other “gangs” are
just as hilarious. There's the “gentlemen” gang, dressed in fancy
clothing and who seem to be surprisingly wealthy for a slum like
this. There's the roller skating hockey gang, which just leaves you
wondering how do they get around this ruined city with their small
skates. There's a tap dancing gang wearing flashy costumes and makeup
who of course fight with only dance maneuvers. Then there's some pale
faced zombie gang with with nothing but wooden planks as weapons. Not
to forget the all leather wearing police forces in motorcycle helmets
wielding flamethrowers while riding on horses. So yes, it's crazy.
It's cheaply made which shows in many places, but then again that
only adds to the camp values of it all. The acting is from crap to
horrible and the fighting isn't much better. Luckily there were some
nice gore effects to keep the entertainment values up. Even though I
wasn't bored watching this as a campy fun ride, I must say it still
wasn't a good movie. So as a proper post apocalyptic action movie
it's just garbage and as a fun campy trash flick it's just ok.
As the first part seemed
to do a decent business on the box office, Castellari didn't waste
time with the sequel and actually made two of them a year after the
original. Even though the other one wasn't a direct sequel, it's
still in the same category. Anyway, this time it's complete
extermination as the corporate folk decide to clean up the Bronx, by
killing everyone of course. Trash is unfortunately back, though this
time he doesn't seem as feminine as in the first one, but it's not
exactly a great improvement. His parents get killed so he decides to
take revenge by kidnapping the president of the corporation tearing
down the Bronx, in hopes of holding him hostage for the freedom of
the Bronx. He's joined by a pre-school explosives expert and his dad.
The story is ridiculous to say the least, but again that's not the
main thing, it's the campy exploitative fun of it all. I must say the
action was well in hand in this one, the body count must be close to
200 in this movie. So that combined with the horrible acting and the
ridiculous plot ensure that the entertainment values are high with
this one. The music was horribly 80's disco-like electronic beats
which was rather annoying most of the time. Even though this was
worse than the original I still enjoyed this more. Go figure...
This is actually the only
part which is post apocalyptic as in the previous two the
“apocalypse” was merely a decay in the Bronx, but this one it's
an actual nuclear winter aftermath. And to be honest it doesn't have
much to do with the other two, except the general idea of ripping off
these post apocalyptic box office hits. But as it's in The BronxWarriors Trilogy and
done by Castellari, that's why it's here as well. The story in this
one is like from any spaghetti western, the setting are just
futuristic instead of the old west. A group of bandits, called
Templars, are terrorizing the people who are trying to build another
civilization after the nuclear apocalypse. Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete)
is a lone wanderer with a righteous mind who gets mixed up in the
mess and well you basically can guess the rest. But it's the little
things that made me have a constant “what the fuck?” expression
on my face. The costumes are ridiculous with their over the top
shoulder toppings and especially the transparent armors were more
than weird. The Templars, who are all men for obvious reasons, blame
literature for the apocalypse and seemingly just want to kill
everyone still alive. They also seem to be an openly gay society as
raping a woman is not their ball park, but raping a man is a group
event, good for them I guess. The props are just silly, the cars look
like modified golf carts and the laser rifles are standard M-16's
shooting fireballs. So it's clear the budget was small, luckily most
of it went to the explosions and gore effects so the entertainment
values are good. I must say I was quite disappointed in the soundtrack by Claudio Simonetti, usually his name is a guarantee for something good, but this time it was a miss. This movie has tons of unintentionally funny moments
which made me laugh out loud. Especially the not so subtle hint at
the end where the butt raped hero seemingly rejects a woman who
fancies him but instead takes the hand of a young boy left me quite
troubled. I really hope I misunderstood the meaning. I'd say this is
the best out of the three, at least it's the funniest, though that
doesn't mean it's a great movie no matter how you see it.
66%
Like always with
these ripoffs, there's plenty of other unofficial sequels as well,
like Endgame - Bronx lotta finale (1983), Bronx Executioner (1989) and
others as well, but I'll leave those to another time, after all
there's only so much I can take of bad movies at once.
This one from the Hammer Collection is by far the worst Hammer movie I've seen. But it's actually so bad it becomes quite fun. A jungle guide kills a cheetah and gets captured by a tribe of natives who want to sacrifice him. But while the ritual is taking place, the man touches a horn of a sacred rhino and is sent to another world. This world has only women, brunettes who enslave the blondes. Him being the only man, he of course is quite wanted on both sides. This movie is utter nonsense and so badly made it makes it quite campy and fun. The acting is pretty much horrible, the effects are goofy, the story is ridiculous and the ending is something quite confusing in all it's stupidity. So the camp values are high, but it's still not a great bad movie. Even though at parts you can laugh out loud, there's still quite a few scenes that just make you yawn. So it's an average campy fun bad movie. The picture quality on the DVD was ok with no subtitles and only a trailer as an extra. 51%
This classic starring Rudy Ray Moore is one of the first blacksploitation movies I ever saw and one of the reasons I fell in love with this wacky genre. How can you not like a movie about a pimp with a beer belly who uses kung fu (sort of) to chop up the bad guys, takes all the ladies, raps, swears a lot and is a true bad ass. Oh and he also has a small army of women who also do kung fu, or at least something similar. The plot doesn't matter, the idea in this one is Rudy Ray Moore and his character, Dolemite. And we follow him through this campy fun ride. Sure the movie is done badly with tons of mistakes, but they don't matter it's still great fun. The man himself said it best "I'm gonna let 'em know that Dolemite is my name, and fuckin' up motherfuckers is my game!", that sums it up nicely. It's not as good as the absolutely brilliant sequel The Human Tornado (1976) where all the pieces fell together, but more about that movie later. Unfortunately this one has some scenes that drag it on a bit too much, guess they needed to fill the feature length or something, but luckily they are few and far between. All in all well worth watching. 78%
The movie starts with a medieval scene of a guy called the Crimson Executioner being locked into a torture cabin and sealed in there forever. Jump ahead to present day 1965 and a group of trendy people in search of a castle for their photo shoot. They find a castle that looks empty but soon realise that there lives a man in isolation from the world. The man who lives in the castle just with his muscular bodyguards in tight sailor shirts, is not happy to see the visitors. But just as he has told them to leave he takes an interest to one of the women and tells them they can stay. And on we go to the dungeons where there are all sorts of wacky torture appliances which at first are in the liking of the visitors and their shoot. But then comes out the Crimson Executioner dressed in tights, hood and a superhero eye piece to make their lives miserable. One by one the visitors start to get their share of him spiced up with swinging soundtrack. The executioner seems quite obsessed about his body and he lets us know that every time possible. "Mankind is made up of inferior creatures, spiritually and physically deformed, who would have corrupted the harmony of my perfect body" while oiling his body is just one of the brilliant lines he's giving out. There are some absolutely brilliant scenes that you just have to see to believe them. The one involving a woman tied into a spider web while the spider and the rescue both racing to her is something indescribable in brilliance. And the part where the Executioner is running between his victims in various torture appliances giving out lines that are the mind work of a ture genius has to be one of the best I've seen. Haven't laughed this hard for a while. Everything in this movie sucks so bad that you just have to love it. A true camp classic and I would love to give it a 100 percent as it is but the start is so utterly boring before we get to the real juicy parts. 86%
When I began watching this I was expecting a fun campy exploitation flick, but was quite surprised how good the start was. It had an interesting story and held me watching with a good grip, at some points even raising some quite good questions. It was a murder mystery with people going on killing sprees and claiming "God told me to" as their reason. Sure it had that B-movie feel to it right from the start, with horrible acting to boost, but it was still quite interesting. So it set my hopes up for the end quite nicely. Well turned out in the end it went to the campy exploitation I was expecting before the movie. The nice setup and dilemmas set by the start were quite forgotten and it turned into a sci-fi nonsense with alien abductions, virgin births and even a guy with a slimy vagina on his stomach. Like the newspaper guy said; "Anarchy leads to chaos, chaos leads to reason, reason leads to sience" simple, eh? So the beginning worked nice as a proper quite interesting movie and the end worked somewhat ok as campy trash. But as a whole movie, it was just barely ok. 56%
Oh man where do I begin... Harlem is overrun by racist white mafia, who all seem to have a porn star moustache and overly big sunglasses. The citizens found a People's Army to provide some sort of protection against the bad white men. The "army" is more like a group of boyscouts who don't get the job done and just get beat up by the mafia. So they separate a small more militant group to act against the mafia, Black Milita (or Black Gestapo as the title says). These guys are no boyscouts who go door to door selling cookies, they climb up your window and cut your balls out. As the mafia doesn't like this, there's a war naturally. But then all of a sudden the white mafia is gone and the movie turns into a fight between the People's Army and the Black Militia. It loses quite a bit of it's momentun at that point, but luckily the end is still quite hilarious. This movie's world view is so black and white that it's just hilarious. Women are either whores, nurses or lying naked on the bed and the men are all tougher than the other. This really was so bad that it was actually great fun. 75%
When I heard the idea of this movie about a nazi ghost ship hunting for victims in the sea I got quite excited to see this one. Well it turns out it was not exactly what I was expecting. It was low budged and badly made, but not so bad that it would have been a good campy movie which I expected. But actually that didn't matter much as it still did many things right and more surprisingly was even quite scary at points. Just last week I was thinking how nice and original the beginning scenes in Devil (2010) were and then I see the same idea being used in this one, 30 years earlier. So the movie had it's moments like the shower scene and the projector room scene, but it also had a bit too many of those quite bad moments. Was expecting a fun campy exploitation, but got a badly made decent horror movie. Luckily the horror was more of suspense than shock effects. Was worth watching, but don't think I'm going to give it another try. 53%
I finally had the time, or more likely the mood, to watch this one. And oh my god what a movie it turned out to be. All the thousands of bad reviews this movie has got merely scratch the surface. I mean this movie stinks so much it makes shit smell like roses. There's honestly not a single thing in this movie that works. I really got the feeling that everyone who worked on this movie was a disgrace to the art itself. Even thou it has some people in it who have actually made something worth while in the past. Guess stupidity is contagious. It's like the cinematographer had some sort of balance disorder and bad eyesight so every shot had to be somehow tilted and zoomed in tight. Thou then again the closeups were probably intentional as most of the sets looked like they're from some 50's sci-fi b-movie. The composer had to be on crack or something as his take on most of the things seemed to be "oh there's nothing happening on the shot, lets put some grandiloquent music there to boost it up". The actors are completely lost seemingly just improvising some old cliches and they're certainly not getting any help from the director who seems to be lost in his own vision. He makes it quite sure we can fully understand everything he's trying to tell us by using painfully many slow motion shots and echoing all the "important" lines, not once or twice but as much as five times so even the slowest of retards can get it. Oh boy, by now you must be thinking it's better to run away fast from this film. No, don't do that. I highly recommend this movie as it's just something larger than life, you have to see it to believe it. It honestly makes Plan 9 from Outer Space look like a work of art. It truly is so bad that it's brilliant. Here's just a few examples of the greatness. A man talks to a walkie-talkie saying "Five guards from the cell, heavily armed and moving FAST!" while the viewer is shown five guards in slow motion WALKING. You can get a 1000 year old Harrier jet flying and learn to fully use it in a day on a flight simulator. You have never even seen a library, you get a chance to read one book and learn from it what ever you wish, what book do you take? The Declaration of Indepence of course. The Psychlo's, the bad guys, are able to defeat the whole earth in 9 minutes, but can't stop the few humans from destroying almost all of them. Those are just a few of the thousands of superb moments of this film. I have to say this is the best worst movie I have ever seen, simply brilliant. Had the movie ended in a scene of raising a U.S. flag, it would have found it's way straight to the top 10 of my all time favourite movies. But even without it it's cheesy enough to be a gem. It's a must see for everyone, wether to enjoy it's overwhelming badness that reaches levels of greatness or just to see the worst movie ever made so you can enjoy the average pieces of this art form a bit more. 99%
Neil Marshall made a great modern adaptation of a werewolf movie with Dog Soldiers and a tense horror hit The Descent which put him on the top list of modern horror directors in the eyes of every studio. As I liked both of the movies I was really looking forward for his new movie. Well, it turned out to be a breathtaking mix of Mad Max, Escape From New York, Aliens, 28 Days Later and other genre classics. As a movie freak I was excited most of the time with all of the references to other movies, but as a viewer I was put down by a few things. First of all, if an actor has a deep dark voice it still doesn't make him a good actor. The cast was weak at best in this one. Second, the 80's is one era that I'm really glad is in the past and everyone who's trying to revive it should be shot on sight. I mean the punks, the outfits, the music and the sets were mostly just unintentionally hilarious, which took down the mood quite a bit. Third, even thou the plot was paper thin, would have been nice if they would have even tried to keep it in some kind of focus during the movie. People seem to forget the virus thingie and then it's brought back in an awkward way, made it look like the director got carried away by the action and then tries to patch things up later. But there's something good in it too. This movie has a true in-your-face attitude, which I really liked. Also loved the tongue in cheek attitude it has, it doesn't take itself too seriously. The humor is quite good, thou I would have wished there to be more of it. It's bloody, brutal, fast paced, action packed thrill ride back to the 80's action thrillers. Had they took any another era, this would be a classic. Now it's worth one watch, no more. Thou I have a feeling I'll get back to this some time in the future. 70%
A truly scary horror movie is kind of a rarity nowadays. This one is just that, brilliant mood that gives you shivers. The cast could have been better and the characters are quite superficial, but in the end it does what it's supposed to; scare the shit out of you. 80%
This movie was a good injection of adrenalin to a genre people thought had already died. I have to say I personally don't like most of the werewolf movies, dunno why, guess it's not a monster that scares the crap out of me. But this was a fresh take on the subject and somewhat of a classic already. 82%
Oh boy, first there were Snakes on a Plane and now there's zombies running around the cockpit. The camp values of the idea were perfect, but too bad they actually tried to make an entertaining movie out of it, failing miserably. The plot is basically what you can guess from the title, a zombie gets loose on a plane and there's really nothing else to it. The actors are as interesting to watch as paint drying. There's actually one scene where a colonel, a doctor and president's advisor are discussing what to do with the plane which is probably the worst acted, worst dialog scene I've ever seen on any "mainstream" movie. Horrible piece of crap. Before I nail the coffin shut for this one, I do have to say there were a couple of funny scenes in it, like the granny trying to bite a man's hand without teeth, but they don't give this movie the right to exist. 10%
Uwe Boll, the infamous worst director in the world, has turned a pile of shit into a gem. Holy crap this movie was just awesome. I don't know where to start, there's so much greatness in this one. The humor was just brilliant, when it actually worked it was fun of course, but when it didn't work it was so bad it was funny as hell. It's overly violent and everyone get their share of the carnage, mostly women and children thou. That's the point of this movie, things go postal. It has no morale at all and it makes fun of all of the "wrong" things. But then again as everyone gets their share it's actually quite equal in the end. The "actors" can't really act, but you just don't care about that. It's badly made, thou some of the effects are quite good, but that just adds the camp value to it. The first scene with terrorists pondering on how many virgins they get when they die on a suicide mission is just brilliant. One of the best openings I've seen. I don't want to give away too much details, but there's tons really brilliant scenes in it. For example it has the best ending I've seen in ages. Just beautiful. I dare to call it an instant classic. Don't take it too seriously. 96%
So lets look at some of the masterpieces this guy has done before. Haven't seen many of them as they're usually not really enjoyable to watch. I'm not going to spend a lot of time writing much about them as they really don't deserve it. But maybe I have to check out more of them as there might be another gem in there.
Can't write a complete review as I stopped watching after 40 minutes. I'm going to give it ten percent as there might be something awesome in the end that I missed. But I doubt anyone will get that far. 10%
I just feel sorry for some of the quite good actors he has somehow managed to get into this. It's supposed to be full of action, fantasy and horror. The action you get from shifting your position restlesly as the movie bores you to death. The fantasy stayed somewhere in mr. Boll's head. And the horror is probably you counting the minutes you still have to endure it. Still I'm glad I saw this, it makes the usually bad movies feel a bit better. 5%
This was just an insult. The game was quite brilliant with an awesome atmosphere. This movie, well there could be a place for it in film schools as an example of how to not make a movie. Horrible crap. 0%
90 minutes of my life I'm never getting back. It did raise some emotions thou, mostly hate towards the makers of this crap, the theatre for actually showing it and my friend who dragged me to see it. 0%
The starting point was great, I mean zombies and strippers, what's not to like? Well sadly a lot. It's clearly trying to be a B movie, but not in a good way. There's B movies that are so bad that they're funny in all their campy nature. Then there's B movies that are over the top with exploitation or other sleaze, making them quite enjoyable. Then there's also the well-done modern B movie homages. And then there's the B movies that are just so bad that they deserve the spot as a B movie. Sadly this one falls to the last category. It's not really a good movie in any way you see it. Sure there's lots of boobies and gore in it, but there's tons of more campy, funnier, more outrageous movies out there. Some points for the effort, even thou I got quite bored. 30%
Well I decided to make this blog so I can write something about the movies I watch. I'm not going to update all the movies I've seen here as it would take me ages to do that, but the list will grow as we go along. I'm not going to write huge novels about every movie, just what I felt about it, sometimes it can be summed up in few words and sometimes you need more of them. Anyways I hope someone finds this helpful and all feedback is appreciated.
