The Screengrab : hulk hogan

Unwatchable #34: “House of the Dead”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. More or less. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice I skipped over #35 on our little countdown to the worst of the worst. My rebuttal is this: What difference does it make now? I’m not going to make it to the top (that is, the bottom) of the list by the time the Screengrab signs off forever, and I had no success tracking down that #35 movie, Santa with Muscles. It doesn’t appear to have warranted a DVD release, and my attempts at tracking it down through unofficial channels have proven fruitless.

I can tell you this much about it: It’s a family-friendly comedy starring Hulk Hogan. Since I’ve already gone through the pain of reviewing such an animal for you – 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, if you’ve already forgotten – I’m not terribly saddened that I couldn’t find Santa with Muscles. However, we can at least take a moment to enjoy the trailer together, no?

Aw, nobody told me Clint Howard was in it! What a shame. Still, there’s no time to linger over what might have been. Let’s move on up to #34, which is, by my count, the third Uwe Boll movie to appear in our festering little festival. First we thrilled to the vampire western BloodRayne 2: Deliverance, adapted from the hit videogame! Then we chilled to the “mighty tedious cacaphony of automatic gunfire and bad special effects” Alone in the Dark, adapted from the hit videogame! And now we have the zombie movie House of the Dead…adapted from the hit videogame!

The difference here is that I’ve actually whiled away an hour or three playing House of the Dead in my time, and I can attest that Mr. Boll’s versions lacks the foreboding mood, in-depth characterizations and ingenious twists of the original. It also lacks a house, which is, strangely enough, the setting of the original House of the Dead. There’s a secret rave being held on the Isle de la Muerte, which is more of an island than a house, although it is crawling with zombies. And, hey – there he is! It’s Clint Howard in a yellow rain slicker, looking like a cross between the guy on the Beach Cliff sardines can and a ferret.

To give Mr. Boll his due, I must admit House of the Dead is a groundbreaking work: it’s the first movie based on a videogame that is actually less entertaining than watching someone else play a videogame for two hours. Boll also finds a clever way to cover up the excessive gore that comes from many, many heads exploding, by utilizing frequent cut-aways from the live-action slaughter of zombies to actual videogame footage of same. Wait, did I say “clever”? I believe I meant “boneheaded.” It’s clear that Boll’s earlier Unwatchable appearances were a mere warm-up; House of the Dead is the real deal.

Previously on Unwatchable:
36. Daddy Day Camp
37. Bad Girls from Valley High
38. Chairman of the Board
39. The Invisible Maniac
40. Son of the Mask

Unwatchable #46: “3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Our unprecedented weeklong survey of Unwatchability comes to a merciful close with what I was astounded to discover is the FOURTH movie in the 3 Ninjas series. These are, after all, movies about kids, the smallest of whom can’t be more than eight years old in High Noon at Mega Mountain. How could they possibly have had three movies worth of adventures already?

Well, for one thing, the three ninjas have been recast for the fourth installment – in fact, two of them have been recast for the second time. It’s the Menudo principle at work, ensuring a long and glorious reign for the 3 Ninjas franchise. Since these kids are no-names, however, we need an actual trio of big stars to headline the picture. I have placed the names of 732,891 members of the Screen Actors Guild into this hat. Please choose three. Let’s see…Loni Anderson…Jim “Ernest” Varney…and Hulk Hogan! Perfect!

Anderson, clad in flattering skintight leather, her face spackled with great greezy globs of makeup, is Medusa, a sad man’s Catwoman. Along with henchman Lothar (Varney), she plans to blackmail the owner of Mega Mountain by taking over the amusement park and sabotaging the rides. Her plan provides a useful opportunity for young children to practice their logic skills, in that it relies on the amusement park having a central control room, from which you can make all the rides do all manner of unsafe things. Would an actual amusement park have such a control room? Discuss.

Another thing you might do if you were the wealthy owner of Mega Mountain is send a few of your employees around the park with signs saying the rides are closed. But no, crowds of people continue to wait in line for rides they can clearly see are running too fast or stopping with their passengers hanging upside down. Please, encourage your children to be skeptical about the events portrayed on the screen. It will only help them later in life.

Anyway, who can stop the dread Medusa? Only the three ninjas: Rocky, Colt and Tum Tum. That’s right, Tum Tum. If you need an explanation, please consult Wikipedia, which has insanely detailed plot descriptions of the first couple of 3 Ninjas movies. All I can tell you is that they were apparently trained in a heavily Three Stooges-influenced form of martial arts by their grandfather, who is Japanese for some reason. They are aided and abetted by martial arts TV star Dave Dragon, played by Hogan in an unfortunate blonde hairpiece/red leotard combo that makes him look like he should be working the door at the Glory Hole.

Cheesy slapstick and corny one-liners ensue, until order is finally restored and little Tum Tum gets his birthday cake. Despite the quote on the poster from Rex Reed proclaiming “The kids will love it!” – and who better than Reed to decide such a thing? – my inner child slept through most of this particular 3 Ninjas adventure. I’m sure the other ones are really good, though.

Previously on Unwatchable:
47. Creepshow 3
48. Cool as Ice
49. Laserblast
50. Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace
51. Simon Sez

Reviews By Request: Bigger, Stronger, Faster* (2008, Chris Bell)

Paul Clark — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

As always, I’ll be polling you folks to determine my next Reviews By Request column. To vote, see the poll at the end of this review.

Watching Chris Bell’s Bigger, Stronger, Faster* (*The Side Effects of Being American), the first thing that I noticed was that Bell didn’t look like the typical documentarian. Of course, there really isn’t a mold for what a nonfiction filmmaker ought to look like, but normally documentary filmmakers tend to look either like intellectuals (Errol Morris, Frederick Wiseman) or self-styled man-of-the-people types (Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock). By contrast, Bell is a good-looking thirtysomething, broad-shouldered and well-muscled, in keeping with his life as a former bodybuilder. But in making this, his first feature, Bell obeyed the first rule of writing- when in doubt, write what you know. Or in Bell’s case, film it.

On one level, Bigger, Stronger, Faster is about steroids. However, considering Bell’s experiences in the world of competitive lifting and bodybuilding, the movie is hardly an anti-steroid screed. Bell knows this world too well to come out against chemical enhancement. For one thing, while he’s against taking steroids himself, his brothers Mike (aka “Mad Dog”) and Mark (“Smelly”) have no such qualms. Mad Dog still harbors his childhood dreams of pro wrestling stardom, while Smelly continues to compete in power-lifting competitions, at one point bench pressing more than 700 pounds. Meanwhile, Chris is working at Gold’s Gym selling gym memberships, and is smaller than both his older and younger brother. Did the drugs make the difference?

For years, health experts have warned athletes about the dangers that steroids can wreak on one’s body. But Bigger, Stronger, Faster presents a dissenting opinion, calmly and surprisingly convincingly. According to the scientists and doctors Bell interviews for the film, the health risks that come from taking steroids are relatively minor, and are generally temporary. But while another director might have taken these findings as evidence in favor of steroid use, Bell is up to something altogether different. He’s dispelling the overblown health-related myths of steroids in order to approach the issue on ethical and sociological grounds.

In Bell’s mind, the use of steroids among athletes is symptomatic of a deep-seated desire not only to succeed, but to come out on top. From a young age, Bell remembers idolizing men (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hulk Hogan) whose success came, according to them, as the result both of their muscular physiques and their hard work. Children are taught that if they dream big and follow their dreams, they can be anything they want to be and escape their humdrum lives. And if it takes chemical enhancement to get the edge one needs to prevail, so be it (this doesn't end with muscle mass either- why would I keep getting e-Mail spam advertising penis enlargment unless someone was buying?). Besides, asks the film, if fighter pilots are required to take amphetamines, and teenagers are prescribed Adderall to get the edge at school, why shouldn’t athletes be allowed to use steroids?

Bigger, Stronger, Faster isn’t an especially distinguished documentary- it’s fairly nuts and bolts from a directing standpoint, and Bell is occasionally prone to digressions that don’t really go anywhere. He occasionally includes a surprising scene such as the one where he interviews Donald Hooten, who famously spoke out against steroids after his steroid-using son killed himself. But he also includes such unnecessary sequences as the one where he decides to make his own energy supplement, hiring a couple of migrant workers to help him prepare the supplement and even staging an ad campaign. More often than not, however, Bell’s points hit home.

One of the key points he addresses is the paradox of modern professional sports- that on one hand we demand our athletes win, while on the other we need them to play fair. During the film, Bell remembers the incident when the hated wrestler The Iron Sheik was arrested for doing drugs with fellow wrestler Hacksaw Jim Duggan, and Bell recalls being shocked less by their actions as he was by the idea that the two were supposed to be mortal enemies. Perhaps this explains much of the outrage stirred up by the Congressional hearings on steroid use in Major League Baseball- that deep down, we still want to believe in our sports heroes as we did when we were young. In a world that’s complicated and difficult to figure out, we need a place where success is easily measured, everything is governed by rules, and there are clear-cut winners and losers. Above all, we need to believe that our dreams are attainable. In one of the last scenes of Bigger, Stronger, Faster, we see Mad Dog, now thirty-six years old and married, putting on a unitard and making an audition video for the WWE. Of course, his chances of making it in professional wrestling are long gone, but he forges on. After all, it’s easier and more comforting than reality.

What’s next for Reviews By Request? I’m still catching up on some 2008 releases, and this week’s choices include a low-budget comedy starring one of the year’s most dependable scene stealers, a spring horror release that received decidedly mixed reviews, two very different documentaries, and finally, the latest film from the Troma team. So, what’ll it be?

What movie should I review next? | BuzzDash polls

Voting closes on Monday night. Remember, the comments section is open for you to talk up your favorites or recommend other titles for future installments. See you in two weeks!

White Elephants on Parade

Paul Clark — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:00:00 GMT

April Fool's Day is traditionally a day for pranks and other oddball behavior, but to Benjamin Lim and his readers, it's all about criticism. Ben, who writes for the site Lucid Screening, is hosting the White Elephant Blogathon for the second time this year. Starting tomorrow morning and continuing throughout the day, writers from all over the blogosphere- including yours truly- will be contributing reviews to the cause.

And not just any reviews, either. The blogathon was inspired by the idea of a white elephant gift exchange, in which the participants exchange crappy gifts for fun. Ben's incarnation is like that, but with movies. In Ben's words, "the intention of the blogathon is that people will suggest really horrible movies which will then be given an overly serious reading by the person it was assigned to."

The impetus behind Ben's brainchild came from his friendship with Andrew Hedden, another of Lucid Screening's writers. Having worked together since high school, they've written a lot of reviews of films both serious and goofy, and according to Ben, "in March of 2006 he and I thought it would be fun to do serious review of silly movies again and we ended up writing about The Garbage Pail Kids Movie and a little known classic called No Retreat, No Surrender. The GPKM review went on to get published in Bright Lights Film Journal and my NRNS review is a popular search result when Googling 'Jean Claude Van Damme' and 'Vagina' together. A year later we decided to do something fun for April fools day again except we wanted to get more people involved. Over the previous winter, I had participated in a white elephant gift exchange while at work and it just hit me one day that the two would work brilliantly together." And like that, the White Elephant Blogathon was born.

So the goal here is basically to write pompously about really terrible movies, right? In Ben's experience, it's not that simple. "The submissions range from movies that most people will agree are pretty awful to some that are generally well respected films that the submitter just hated. It's a pretty fun mixture of films and it might even yield some previously unknown treasures for people that are always on the lookout for a good bad film."

Ben's keeping mum about most of this year's entries except to say that "there are multiple Hulk Hogan films and a Turkish remake of an American classic." But if you'd like to get an idea of what we participants are up against, check out the selection of last year's films. Quite an esoteric mix, if I do say so myself. Ben is especially high on his colleague Andrew's piece on Troll 2, which he says "cemented his place in the pantheon of pretentious criticism of bad films."

Ben's right about the Google thing, by the way. Try it and see!

So what cinematic gift was bestowed upon me by the White Elephant? Tune in tomorrow morning and find out!

Take Five: We Love The '80s

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:30:00 GMT

American moviegoers can't get enough of the 1980s, apparently. Those of us who had to live through it the first time remember it primarily as a time of bad metal, worse sitcoms, and waiting around to see what dumb-ass thing Ronald Reagan would say next, but to the generations that followed, it is a time for richly veined cultural nostalgia. From what we can recollect through the haze of drugs and alcohol that coat our memories of the decade, the hallmark of 1980s cinema was very loud explosions punctuated by the occasional car chase or wise-cracking black transvestite. It's not something we thought anyone would be eager to repeat, and yet there have been, in recent memory, new installments of the Die Hard and Rocky franchises; a new TV series based on The Terminator; an upcoming Indiana Jones picture; and, opening all across the country this Friday, a new Rambo movie. Even the Screengrab is getting into the act, with Gabriel Mckee posting his top ten action heroes who deserve a comeback, many of whom hail from the Decade That Time Refuses To Forget. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em: so says Take Five as we present a fistful of '80s action movies that we. . . well, we don't love, exactly, but we at least look back on with something less than severe brain trauma.

ROCKY III (1982)

Sure, the first movie had heart and soul. And the second movie had a ruthless determination to capitalize on the first movie's heart and soul. But do you know what they didn't have? Do you know what they lacked, which made the third installment unquestionably the best of all the Rocky movies? That's right: MR. T. They didn't have Mr. T, and as such, they suffered, as do all artistic projects not involving Mr. T. Here's a little secret they don't teach you at film school: sure, Citizen Kane might have been the greatest movie of all time — but it would have been even better if it had been able to feature Mr. T yelling at people. And Rocky III, whatever its other faults — and it had hundreds, from its hamhanded TV-movie direction (by Sly himself) to its predictable storyline — at least gave us Mr. T yelling at people in abundance. When his Clubber Lang (a savage, media-loathing brute allegedly inspired by young George Foreman) wasn't yelling at people, he was beating people up, and Rocky III brings us the double pleasure of seeing Sylvester Stallone clobbered by Clubber and Hulk Hogan as "Thunderlips". Just turn it off halfway through.

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986)

If it wasn't the most exciting or accomplished action movie of the 1980s, it was at least probably the most enjoyable: Big Trouble in Little China was brought to us by an uncharacteristically light-hearted John Carpenter, and worked both as a straight-up pseudo-mystical punch-'em-out and as a loopy parody of same. Carried largely on the back of Kurt Russell's endearing performance as antihero "ol' Jack Burton", a trucker who's chock full of bogus wisdom delivered in a ridiculously over-the-top John Wayne accent. Part of the reason it plays so well as both sincere action and goofy action send-up is because the script was written by W.D. Richter, who originally conceived it as a sequel to his own The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension from two years earlier. Legal and financial issues kept the sequel from being made, but Big Trouble features some of its characteristic touches and clever bits of dialogue. It also features swell performances from a young Kim Cattrall and James Hong, everyone's favorite inscrutable Asian. Besides, how can you not love a movie featuring a wizard named Egg Shen?

ACTION JACKSON (1988)
Where is the love for Sgt. Jericho Jackson, we ask you? Where? This compelling saga of America's forgotten black action hero was released in the same month as Bloodsport, making 1988 — which also brought us Die Hard, Above the Law, Red Heat and They Live — a banner year from cheesy guilty-pleasure action movies. This one had it all: a post-Rocky, pre-Arrested Development Carl Weathers playing a tough Detroit cop who was also an all-American track star and a Harvard-educated attorney; former Prince plaything Vanity making hay while the sun shone as a sex kitten; Sharon Stone, doing the thing that she was best known for doing before everyone all of the sudden decided to take her seriously; and villains Craig T. Nelson and Robert Davi overacting like there was no tomorrow. (Which, for Robert Davi at least, there probably wasn't.) Action Jackson had everything you could have wanted out of a 1980s action flick: a wisecracking tough guy hero, naked dead chicks, tons of explosions, people dying in extremely creative ways, egregious use of narcotics, and a protagonist whose name rhymed! Come back, Carl Weathers, all is forgiven.

BLOODSPORT (1988)

Before Jean-Claude Van Damme was a full-time crazy person, he was America's next big martial arts star. Bloodsport was the movie that put the rubber-groined Belgian on the map, portraying real-life martial arts semi-star Frank Dux. The plot of Bloodsport — well, it's giving it a lot more credit than it deserves to even call it a plot, involving (as does every other martial arts movie ever made) a bunch of well-toned Asians out to kick each other in the face. It's not much for memorable acting, either; Van Damme had already, in his first starring role, perfected the self-satisfied smirk that would carry him through the rest of his career, and while the movie does feature a young Forest Whitaker as a federal agent tasked to stand around looking exasperated, it also features Leah Ayres failing to become America's sweetheart, Donald Gibb trying to make the transition from hooligan to lummox, and Bolo Yeung (the former Bruce Lee nemesis known as Yang Tse) putting in the kind of performance only a trunk full of steroids can deliver. But it does feature some stunning martial arts battles, which is really all you can hope for in a movie like this.

ROAD HOUSE (1989)

In all the calls for a revival of action movie heroes like Rocky, Rambo, Ryan, and Indy, where are the legions of fans clamoring for a return of James Dalton? Patrick Swayze desperately needs something to do, people. Believe it or not, there was once a time when women would line up around the block to get a load of this chunk-headed 'King of the Sleepers' with his shirt off, and nowhere was he more chunk-headed or shirtless than in this deleriously zany action flick about a Zen-influenced tough guy ("Pain don't hurt") who is hired, despite his small stature and philosophy degree from NYU, to act as the bouncer at an out-of-control bar. Directed by a former electrician named Rowdy and co-starring Kelly Lynch at the height of her blondeness, Road House transcends its shortcomings by being so completely indifferent to its own craziness that it chugs along on its own energy with nary a look back. Ben Gazzara is the bad guy in this thing, clearly bombed out of his coconut, and it features the immortal line "I used to fuck guys like you in prison".