worst movies ever made – Horror Ghouls

The Amazing Bulk (2012)

Posted on March 12, 2024September 9, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

By looking at the poster, you’d expect this to be one of the numerous mockbusters from The Asylum. But The Amazing Bulk is so much, much worse and not something you can fully be prepared for witnessing, even with your own eyes. Imagine if Sin City was written by Tommy Wiseau and directed by Neil Breen with the cheapest-looking green screen background effects from some Nintendo 64 games. There you have it. So yeah, this is a doozy one.

The plot goes like this: The young scientist, Henry Howard, is developing some kind of amazing purple serum for the government. The plan is that this serum will cure the world of famine and turn anyone who injects it into superhumans. Henry is also a grumpy-pants who mostly wears a frown which I honestly thought James Rolfe had trade marked. Anyway, Henry is in love with Hannah and wants to marry her. The problem is that Hannah also happens to be the daughter of General Darwin, who refuses Henry to marry her until after he has the serum ready.

All odds seem to be against poor Henry, and after being robbed on his way home after a date with Hannah, he’s had enough and decides to try the serum. Since there’s no budget here, don’t expect much of a transformation scene. Some dark CGI clouds covers the screen until it fades away and in front of us we have The Not So Amazing Bulk: a purple, retarded, babyface-looking, dickless stock cartoon monster with only one or two animations. He stomps at thugs and bad guys, but when he’s confronted by the only two lousy police officers in the city, he runs like a soy-filled bitch as if he’s crapped his pants.

And in a castle somewhere where it’s dark and gloomy and bats are flying everywhere, we meet Dr. Werner von Kantlove and his braindead cute-as-a-poodle wife Lolita. Dr. Kantlove is a wobbling super villain who looks like a cross of Javier Milei’s wig and a shady Nickelodeon producer who likes to sniff the bare feet of little girls. So, what’s his agenda? Just to blow up the moon. The Bulk now has a nemesis to take care of, but there’s more. Much more. The Amazing Bulk is a treasure chamber of ineptitude awesomeness, and when you think you’ve seen the worst, you’ll be surprised.

The film is directed by Lewis Schoenbrun and the only post on his trivia section says that he’s a fan of Stanley Kubrick. Who isn’t. His short Wikipedia page can tell us that he was born in 1958, has worked in the film industry since the 1970s and made his magnum opus The Amazing Bulk at the age of 52. Having that in mind, it’s almost impossible to even suggest that this was made with even the smallest nugget of seriousness. Well…

There’s a rare interview of the man where one can already tell by his picture that he’s certainly that kind of guy who’d make a film like this bad on purpose. The intention was to make a film in the same spirit as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Speed Racer, and clearly Sin City with some elements of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He bought a whole package of digital stock effects of figures, backgrounds, foregrounds, everything for 2,000 dollars, while a group of amateur actors used a treadmill to give us the illusion that they are walking in the environment as the background scrolls behind them. The whole thing took only five days to shoot in a garage in California with a complete budget of 14.000 dollars. 14.000 spent on what? God knows. Every single scene here is green screen filled with the shittiest cartoon backgrounds you can imagine. It looks worse than a YouTube skit from 2006.

After the film got the reaction it clearly deserved, with people almost dying from laughing, director Shoenburn decided to pull a Tommy Wiseau to say that the film was actually meant to be a comedy, you dummy. I would believe him, if it wasn’t for his Jupiter-sized ego getting in the way of commenting about the negative reviews. Because, in his mind, people are just jealous of not being a film director like him. Uhm, okay. Someone please pull his head out of his ass before he suffocates. During the past twelve years, he’s been retired from directing and has since worked at the International Academy of Film and Television as a teacher in the Philippines. Good for him.

The film gets ~~better~~ worse and more batshit as it goes on with scenes and logic that could only come from the brain of a six-year-old. So we thought. Two grown-ups actually wrote the script. One of my favorite moments is the chase scene between the Bulk and the two police officers as they run through a completely empty and lifeless city. I can’t describe how mindbogglingly horrendous the effects are, but we have a classic moment where the Bulk makes a car swirl in the air and lands on one of the officers. And the size of the car is the same, if not smaller, than the person. Top tier filmmaking, where everyone should take notes. Some of the effects looks like they were made in MS Paint while others are in such low resolution that the only thing we see is a blurry mess. The Amazing Bulk is a demented trainwreck of a shitshow that I can’t recommend enough if you like funny-bad movies. Truly a masterpiece in its category.

The film is available on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing and can be streamed on Tubi.

Director: Lewis Schoenbrun
Writers: Keith Schaffner, Jeremiah Campbell
Country & year: US, 2012
Actors: Terence Lording, Shevaun Kastl, Randal Malone, Juliette Angeli, Jed Rowen, Deirdre V. Lyons, Mark E. Fletcher, Mike Toto, Meghan Falcone
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1788453/

Troll 2 (1990)

Posted on January 16, 2024November 1, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

– Troll 2 is a film that examines many serious and important issues. Like eating, living and dying. – Director Claudio Fragasso

And speaking of dying, dear grandpa Seth is dead. RIP. Even though it’s been six months after his funeral, the ten-year-old kid Joshua has regular meetings with his ghost in his room before bedtime. Grandpa Seth sits in a rocking chair as he tells goodnight stories about goblins and witches who turn people into trees, bushes and everything green.

Because you see, once upon a time there were goblins who were vegetarians, and the only way for them to eat was to turn people into everything green. But this is actually not any fairytale. Oh no, these goblins actually exist. So beware. Now, sleep tight and have a good night.

The brilliant idea of vegetarian goblins came from Rossella Drudi, the wife of Claudio Fragasso, who co-wrote the script. Here’s a quote from Best Worst Movie, a documentary from 2009 about the making of Troll 2:

– I didn’t want to write your typical horror movie. So, I came up with a story about troll (goblins) who were vegetarians. Because at that point in my life, I had many friends who’d all become vegetarians, and it pissed me off. So I had the idea of replacing the vampires in the vampire story with vegetarians (like Duckula). –

Only Joshua can see grandpa Seth (of course) and no one believes him. His mother has grown tired of him talking to his ghost and has a quick, serious conversation with him:

Banish him, you hear, boy? And yes, this is the actual piece of dialogue that was written which Josh’s mom says to him with the most dead and soulless eyes ever, as if she was straight from The Westboro Baptist Church. Good night and sweet dreams. Brrr! I prefer the ghost of grandpa Seth, thank you very much. With a script written like this, also by two Italians with very little to no knowledge of the English language, one would assume that the whole script was written in Italian and roughly Google-translated with no corrections. In reality, the script was written in such broken English that even the actors suggested to director Claudio Fragasso that they should at least ad-lib the lines to prevent the dialogues from sounding as retarded as it did on paper. Fragasso, the maestro that he is with an ego bigger than Jupiter, flat-out refused as his script was set in stone and perfect as it was.

But this little flavor of absurdity we just saw here is only the very top of the iceberg of this incompetent circus of a horror movie. It gets really batshit, to say the least, and it’s the reason why Troll 2 is praised by the same audiences who almost died from laughing at modern so-bad-it’s-good-classics like The Room, Birdemic: Shock and Terror and all the films of Neil Breen.

Back to the film: Josh’ parents are taking him and their teen daughter Holly on a summer vacation trip to a small country, hillbilly town in the state of Utah, called … Nilbog. And the place looks like a complete ghost town which has seen better days. Grandpa Seth is still here, though, watching over Josh’s shoulders. They swap houses with a family that welcomes them with a ready dinner table. Talk about hospitality. But that’s not real food, Grandpa Seth tells Josh. It’s Goblin food which will turn anyone who eats it into vegetables – the favorite food of the goblins! Grandpa Seth displays some of his magic ghost force to stop the time for a brief moment, so Josh can prevent them eating the food. He has only ten seconds. The tension and suspense is unbearable. Josh stands on the table while the rest of the family is frozen-out, opens his zipper and – you guessed it – pisses on the food.

Or in Claudio Fragasso’s own frustrating words while trying to explain to a confused ten-year-old who didn’t understand the context of the scene, and who the hell could blame him: – You don’t worry, you jump on table, you unzip zipper, we cut, piss on table! –

Aha, okey then…

His dad, Michael (played by Aaron Eckhart’s doppelganger, George Hardy), gets furious and carries Josh up to his room where he delivers his famous line:

And yes, this is the actual dialogue. This is also the line that George Hardy used in his audition for the film. In full seriousness, he shouted You can’t piss on hospitality in front of nine cigar-smoking Italian casting agents. And they didn’t understand a word he was saying. The only reason he got the part was because they liked his energy.

Like in the original film, we get introduced to a witch by the name Creedence Leonore Gielgud. And this one is from the west and as evil as a Saturday Morning Cartoon character. She lives in a small church where she brews a green, magic, toxic potion that turns people into vegetables, so she can feed her goblins.

Alice Cooper was apparently busy feeding his Frankenstein, so the role of the witch went to Deborah Reed. And ‘boy, her performance is a trip. I have not before or after Troll 2 seen overacting on such an absurd animated level, as we see here. It’s all up to eleven and beyond, and I bet she must have burned some calories after reading her goofy lines the way she did. I’d love to se her audition reel and the reactions of the nine cigar-smoking Italians. Reed died last year due to cancer at age 73, but she will always be remembered in her iconic role. RIP.

The Oh My God clip is the most flawless piece of cinema put together. The way that the music is synchronized with his delayed scream is just perfection, not to mention the fly on the guy’s forehead. That’s Stanley Kubrick-level of perfectionism right there when it comes to subtle details with hidden meanings.

Then we have the creature designs, or the goblin costumes, the pure definition of schlock that even makes the creatures from the original film look like something from Stan Winston.

Troll 2 was filmed during thirty chaotic hot summer days in Utah where all the cast and crew were Italians who, of course, didn’t speak English. The actors were local amateurs, the one worse than the other, and all of whom auditioned to star as extras, but somehow instead ended up in the main roles. That also explains one thing or two. Michael Paul Stephenson, who plays the annoying kid Josh, already had the (un)pleasure of starring in another film by Claudio Fragasso, with Beyond the Darknes (a.k.a La Casa 5), released the same year as Troll 2. He also made the documentary Best Worst Movie.

The original title was Goblin, but was released as Troll 2, because that’s what Italian distributors always do to shamelessly cash in on the success of other films.

Troll 2 was one of the lost gems, also called The Holy Grail of bad movies, that were rediscovered many years after its release. It wasn’t until the comedy theatre group Upright Citizens Brigade started to screen the film at their base in Los Angeles that the phenomena that was Troll 2 spread throughout the United States like a turkey on fire, and soon after globally. Then the now legendary Oh My God clip was shared on YouTube and the rest is movie history.

Director Claudio Fragasso was also curious about the buzz and how the Americans had finally rediscovered his masterpiece, and flew to the states with his wife to get a sense of the phenomenon. Too bad he seems to have zero sense of irony. I’d earlier had an assumption that the guy was a first-class troll (no pun intended), like Birdemic director James Nguyen, but after re-watching some clips from the documentary Best Worst Movie, I’m not so sure. The clown really believes deep down that he made a genuine solid piece of cinema with Troll 2, and during an awkward Q&A after a screening of the film he looks completely lost, confused and irritated, and is about to implode. People were laughing too much at his film, even at parts that weren’t meant to be funny. Uh-oh! And he didn’t like that. His spicy narcissism and true colors really shine at the end of the documentary where he gets jealous of the actors’ popularity, giving them the death stare and even calling them dogs and liars. Classy.

There are many factors why Troll 2 ended up like it did for all the wrong hilarious reasons, but the main one is on none other than Claudio Fragasso, or the pseudonym of Drake Floyd he was credited as here. It’s the typical Ed Wood syndrome, just with an even more bloated ego, pompous arrogance, insanity and a head stuffed so far in one’s own delusional fantasy-butthole while refusing to hear a single input than your own bubbling farts. And to be fair, Fragasso hardly directed the film, costume designer Laura Gemser did, the one and only on the crew that spoke English fluently and translated the director’s directions to the actors. He also looked down on having any assistance from any English-speaking crew or cast because he was too lazy to learn some of the language himself. Mamma mia. Working on the set of Troll 2 must have been such a pleasant experience. I would like to see a biopic about the making of this turkey, like The Disaster Artist. Leonardo DiCaprio would be a great fit to play Fragasso.

There’s far worse movies than Troll 2, surprisingly enough, and at the end of the day, Claudio Fragasso has unintentionally managed to put together one of the best unhinged horror comedies of all time (if not the best) with not a single boring moment followed by a whole notebook of quote worthy lines. That’s a great skill and an achievement in itself. And that the guy to this day seems to be ultra-bitter about the films’ cult status and never seems to come to peace with it, is a bit sad. But that’s what happens when your ego becomes your own worst enemy.

There wasn’t made a Troll 3… or maybe it kinda was if we use our imagination a bit. We actually have two titles that were released with a.k.a Troll 3. The first one is Quest for the Mighty Sword (1990), an Italian fantasy film by Joe D’Amato. If the alternative titles wasn’t head-scratching already, this one is also known as The Hobgoblin and Ator III: The Hobgoblin. The other one is The Crawlers (1993), also a Joe D’Amato production about killing plants and was also filmed in the same area in Utah where Troll 2 was filmed.

Director: Claudio Fragasso
Writers: Rossella Drudi, Claudio Fragasso
Country & year: US, Nilbog, 1990
Actors: Michael Paul Stephenson, George Hardy, Margo Prey, Connie Young, Robert Ormsby, Deborah Reed, Jason Wright, Darren Ewing, Jason Steadman, David McConnell, Gary Carlston, Mike Hamil
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0105643/

Hobgoblins (1988)

Posted on September 19, 2023June 13, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Writer, producer, editor and director Rick Sloane is a true independent auteur, no one can at least take that away from him. He’s made 16 movies over the course of the decades since the early 80’s, and we all should know about his Vice Academy films, a spoof of Police Academy which spawned five whole sequels. Yet he’s known for one movie and one movie only: Hobgoblins – one of the most, if not the most, sour fart-smelling and cringe-inducing cheese fests from the 1980s that got its place on the Worst Films Ever Made list and became a cult-classic of so-bad-it’s-good-movies.

The film starts in some old movie studio where the young nightguard, Dennis, have been strictly told by his older co-worker McCreedy to stay far away from the vault. Of course he won’t. And when he enters it, he’s suddenly on a stage in his own fantasy land where he’s a rock star. Shortly after he grabs the mike and does some silly movements, and ends up getting killed, off screen. A new young guy gets hired with the same warnings to stay away from the vault. Pffft, yeah right. One night when he opens it, a group of fluffy Mogwai/Critter hybrid creatures escape from the vault and drive away in a golf cart.

To quote the back of the Blu-ray; as bodycounts starts to rise, Kevin, with help of his friends, decide to track down the deadly creatures before they wreak havok on the city.

There’s only one (yes 1) bodycount in the entire film though, and that’s the guy we saw in the beginning, and the film is as tame as a newborn kitten. We learn that the creatures came from space in the 1950s in a small shuttle that crashlanded near the movie studio where McCreedy was a nightguard. He has since then kept them trapped in the vault, since anyone who encounters them will have their fantasy wishes come true, only until they get killed by the creatures. And guess what: they also get attracted to very bright lights. Rick Sloane claims that he wrote the script for Hobgoblins several years before Gremlins, by the way, so don’t you even dare to think otherwise.

There’s no more plot to break down from here ’cause there isn’t any. We have a string of nonsensical scenes where our group of protagonists keeps bullshitting around Kevin’s house. We have some rivalry between Mike and some Rambo wannabe who fights with rakes, because…just because. Later that night, they have a party where the creatures finally stop by to get the plot going forward. We eventually end up in some sleazy nightclub where it just gets more crazy and weird.

Hobgoblins is a real stink bomb in every aspect with the production value of an episode of ALF. The direction, the acting, the story (if there is any), the characters, the pacing, the effects, everything falls completely on its face. The attempt to be a comedy is like … I can’t even put a word on it. It’s something else. Holy moly macaroni. Even though the actors are a group of young and fresh graduates from the prestigious Troll 2 School of Acting, Troll 2 is Citizen Kane compared to this one, and you have to lower your bar to the lowest to sit through Hobgoblins.

There are no effects here. No blood, nothing. The only kill we get happens offscreen because its budget of $15,000 obviously couldn’t afford a single effect artist. What we have left is actors who do an impossible job to make us believe they are in danger while they wiggle around with lifeless puppets in the purest Ed Wood style. Picture Bela Lugosi with the octopus and there you have it. When we see the puppets moving around, they’re being operated by a woman who has just been released from a mental hospital. No shame in that. Sometimes crazy people need a job too.

The film is also sprinkled with goofs, but the one who caught my eye was the sequence with the car during where a hand visibly rocks the stationary car, and you can see it as clear as day. Then we have the grenades of the Rambo-wannabe-dude which he throws around the nightclub that does zero damage. A grenade gets thrown in one direction but explodes in a completely different direction. Like Ed Wood famously said: Filmmaking is not about the tiny details. It’s about the big picture.

Some trivia: The film was shot without permits and in a single week. The film studio was in a parking lot that was deserted at night, next to a crackhouse. McCreedy’s gun was actually a cap pistol, purchased from a toy store for five dollars. Only the eyes for the hobgoblins were going to be seen in an earlier draft of the script. A pit bull’s growl was used for the voice of the hobgoblins. Rick Sloane initially planned on making a sequel in 1990 and had even written a screenplay for it, but it wasn’t made until 2009 as Hobgoblins 2.

Hobgoblins was also mocked by Mystery Science Theater 3000, an episode which Rick Sloane got shocked by when he himself was mercilessly mocked over the film’s end credits. In an interview with Dead Central in 2009, he was asked about the movie’s position on the IMDb Bottom 100. He said he was “surprised it slipped down to #25 as it at sometime was the 2nd spot, right behind Gigli. As for now, it’s on #35. It’s also on a Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack from Vinegar Syndrome.

Writer and director: Rick Sloane
Country & year: US, 1988
Actors: Tom Bartlett, Paige Sullivan, Steven Boggs, Kelley Palmer, Billy Frank, Tamara Clatterbuck, Duane Whitaker, James R. Sweeney, Kevin Kildow, Daran Norris, James Mayberry
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0089280/

The Swarm (1978)

Posted on June 20, 2023June 14, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

With titles such as Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973), Killer Bees (1974), The Savage Bees (1976), The Bees (1978) and Terror Out of the Sky (1978), we can fairly say that the 1970s was also the decade of the killer bees. While most of them were obscure TV movies, it was The Swarm that stood out, mainly because this was a big Hollywood studio film with as many Oscar winners as possible on the cast list, fronted by Michael Caine. And before Roland Emmerich and his Independence Day, which revived the disaster-film genre in the mid 90s, there was Irwin Allen. “Master of Disaster“ he was called in positive terms for the success of producing blockbusters like The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974) which is regarded as the very first disaster-film. He also directed numerous TV series. So, in 1978, it was time to not only to produce, but also direct his first disaster feature with a big star cast and the most notable of all: 20 million bees!

The plot centers around Texas where a large legion of African killer bees have invaded the state. While the bees spread further into the country and starts terrorizing cities and leaving thousands of body counts, the scientist Dr. Bradford Crane (Michael Caine) is constantly on track to figure out a plan to stop them while fighting against the government. With him he has his trustworthy Dr. Walter Krim (Henry Fonda) to develop an antidote to the bee venom. We quickly learn that these bees are not to be underestimated as they’re capable of attacking military helicopters and plunging them to the ground in an explosion. A sight you don’t see everyday. So yeah, these bees are pissed as hell. We have a picnic scene where a young boy witnesses his parents getting swarmed right before his eyes. He isolates himself in the car, wipes the thick layer of bees on the front windshield and manages to escape by driving off to the nearest town. He later makes matters worse by going back to the area with some friends to throw molotovs at the swarm. It all escalates to the point where cities have to evacuate, which also leads to an infamous scene with a train and a chaotic climax with doomsday mayhem which includes flamethrowers and explosions.

And the question is: is this really as bad as its reputation, even being on the list of “worst films ever made“? Nah. On the technical aspects, the film is, for the most part, pretty solid although it has its stains. The script, however, and if not the pacing of its runtime of 156 minutes (judging Warner Archive’s Blu-ray), has a lot of issues. We have boring subplots with love affairs that go nowhere. Some people come and go and are never to be seen again. There’s some eye-rolling and wonky dialogue here as well, some of which are delivered as if this was an Adam West Batman movie. There’s a bunch of dry science talk, a lot of filler-scenes, which makes the film look more dated, clunky and overall an unfocused mess. The scenes where the stung victims hallucinate and see a big bee hoovering right in front of them looks just goofy, out-of-place and -again- dated like a public-domain 50s monster movie, while the film takes itself dead seriously. Not a masterpiece in any shape or form, but the bees alone makes it worth a watch.

Then we have Michael Caine’s character, who comes across like a stone-cold psychopath who would fit more as a sinister villain in a James Bond film. He always bears a duper-delight and smirks in the most inappropriate moments. His off-putting demeanor may be linked with the fact that this was one of Caine’s notorious list of “paycheck movies“ and he later claimed that it was the worst film he ever starred in. A-ha… He never saw Jaws: The Revenge, another paycheck, so that film doesn’t count. Sir Caine turned 90 recently, by the way. Cheers.

But the real stars of the film is the 20 million bees that got used and sacrificed. God bless and no wonder why they’re furious. Today all would be CGI, no question about it, but here we actually have sets with thousand of bees that swarms around actors and crew as they do their best to not have their mouth open. While there are some dated edges here, the scenes with the bee attacks looks as real as they can get and are quite spectacular, highly ambitiously made and is an unnerving sight. Even though 800,000 of them got their stingers removed, they couldn’t avoid to mix them with those who had the stingers intact which caused several actors to get stung. How anyone would sign up for something like this is beyond me. And the amount of children that’s involved must have parents that really hates them. We always hear about difficult filming conditions, especially from the pre-CGI era where most of the effects had to be shot on set but bruh… I refuse to believe that anyone involved would look back and say; yeah, being in that bee movie was such a fun time and I would do that again. You couldn’t even pay me a million. Mr. Not-The-Bees himself would agree (that meme just had to be shoved in here).

The Swarm was a massive flop and was ridiculed by the few critics that saw it. Producer and director Irwin Allen was so devastated by all the money he lost on the film that he refused to ever mention the film in future interviews. And besides the short 22-minutes making-of documentary on the Blu-ray there isn’t much insight to behold. At least the trivia section on IMDb can tell us that actor Michael Caine stated in an interview that during filming he thought the little yellow spots left by the bees on his clothing was honey, so he began to eat them, entirely unaware that what he was eating was actually bee feces. In other words: honey and bee poop tastes the same. Yummy.

Director: Irwin Allen
Writers: Arthur Herzog III, Stirling Silliphant
Country & year: USA, 1978
Actors: Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant, José Ferrer, Patty Duke, Henry Fonda & 20 million bees
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0078350/

Die Hard Dracula (1998)

Posted on July 8, 2021September 9, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Die Hard Dracula. How can it go wrong with a title like this?

The film opens with quick a prologue we’ve heard thousand times about Vlad The Impaler and his battle against the Turks, as we see images of people literally sitting on poles in their underwear with no blood, no gore, nothing. Not a single attempt to make us believe that we’re looking at tortured and impaled people in a dark middle ages scenario. You’re just a few seconds in, and you already ask why the hell this movie was made and why it even exists. The visuals are just flat out dreadful, and calling it amateurish doesn’t do it justice, it’s even far beyond that. It’s almost a cliché thing to say, but it’s really hard to put words on how ridiculously bad this is. And this is just the first ten seconds or so.

And after 300 years, Dracula has finally had it with Romania and its God-fearing whining people. As he lies in his coffin, we hear his first lines in the distinct Romanian accent: “No more pray! Three hundred years I listened to this awful praying and boOolshit. I can’t stand it no more.” We then get a scene where his casket flies over the European landscape (yes, with Dracula in it) with the tune of Ride Of The Valkyries playing. What really is there to say … It’s pure movie magic. He lands in his new castle in Moravia, Czech Republic.

After the opening we jump over to sunny California, where we meet the young couple Julia and Steven, who have fun with water skiing. But tragedy suddenly strikes when Julia loses the grip and disappears into the sea and assumingly drowns. One night Steven and his father see a shooting star, and Steven says “I wish Julia was alive.” His dad then follows up with this line: “You know the old saying … see a falling star, a wish may come true.” Steven responds with a blank stare like if he was a lobotomized mental patient : “Yeah … I wish … I really wish ….” No tears, no emotions. He’s probably the worst actor in this film. Anyway, the shooting star hits a random coffin some place in Moravia that resurrects a young, recently deceased woman back to life, who Steven ends up imagining is Julia. Yes, seriously. After the shooting star incident, he then jumps on a plane to Prague and goes from pub to pub, only to get more and more drunk and disappointed. A lot of nonsensical bullshits happens, but he eventually ends up in a tavern where he meets this girl, who then gets kidnapped by Dracula. Van Helsing finally pops up from nowhere, just in time, who teams up with Steven to kill Dracula and save the girl.

Van Helsing is played by Bruce Glover (father of Crispin Glover), and he acts more like a confused half-drunk uncle you just want to put to bed with wishes of a better tomorrow. Most of the “ actors “ seem to be either drunk, or just on something. I would be too, if I was acting in a film like this. We see Dracula in several shapes, played by several actors, one worse that the other. We see him as a big, fat slob that looks like Jabba The Hut and a rotten potato with a wig, and his regular shape where he looks more like Meat Loaf in a porn spoof (just without the porn), to mention some examples.

Dracula also shows off some display of magic powers by throwing fireballs, and shooting lightning from his fingers as he acts like a mental lunatic who tries his best not to impersonate Emperor Palpatine. Several of Dracula’s dialogues were dubbed with the most stiff and lifeless voiceacting that you could’ve heard from a discarded PS1 game. Dracula is the funniest part in this demented madhouse of a movie, for sure, and has a lot of laughable dialogues. And we get the most retarded sex scene with the tune of the the Nutcracker playing. Merry Christmas.

The effects and set-design is a whole another level of absurdness, if not lazyness. While a castle somewhere in Czech Republic was used as the exterior for Dracula’s Castle, the interior set-design is just a room, covered with white cow wallpaper, or whatever it is. It’s something straight out of an elementary school play. The Dracula costume was probably bought at Walmart. The ending puts the level of stupidity all up to eleven which gives a clear indication that we would never see the sequel Die Hard Dracula With a Vengeance, directed by Tommy Wiseau, as much I would have loved to see that one.

And that was Die Hard Dracula. Pure mentally retarded trash from start to finish where someone just picked up a camcorder, a mic and goofed around with friends during a long weekend. And God knows what went through their heads. They probably had the time of their lives making this, like they where some teens making their first movie in someone’s backyard, but the result is something even their mothers would struggle to give legit compliments to. Especially considering that the writer, producer and director Peter Horak was at whopping 55 years old when he made this, after working as a stuntman in Hollywood for two decades. At least he got to see his masterpiece become full circle when it finally got released on DVD from Alpha Home Entertainment before he died in 2017.

Director: Peter Horak
Country & year: USA, Czech Republic, 1998
Actors: Bruce Glover, Denny Sachen, Kerry Dustin, Ernest M. Garcia, Chaba Hrotko, Thomas McGowan, Talia Botone, Nathalie Huot, Peter Horak, John Slavik, Robert Coppola, Eddie Eisele, Paul Lackey, Joseph Miksovsky, Margie Windish
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0162930/

Robot Monster (1953)

Posted on January 30, 2021July 4, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

We are in a distant future where the world’s population has been completely annihilated by Ro-man’s Death-Ray. Ro-man who? He’s an evil alien in a gorilla suit, face covered with a diving helmet with two antennas attached to it. But there are eight survivors left, a family which Ro-man is able to communicate with through a … bubble machine. And he wants their location so Ro-man can finish his mission. Or else …

And no, this is not an Ed Wood movie, by the way, which it easily could have been. Phil Tucker was a young, fresh independent film-maker in his mid-twenties who was about to make his second film, with a script from Wyott Ordung and distributed by Astor Pictures. Robot Monster was shot in only four (yes, 4), quick days outside of Hollywood, with the entrance of the famous Bronson Canyon as the main location and a shameless use of stock footage from several other sci-fi movies as effects. Tucker hired a friend to play Ro-Man who also made his own gorilla suit, while he was dubbed with a deep, baritone voice (not by James Earl Jones). And The result , of its short runtime of 62 minutes, is an ultra-cheap, lazy and utterly ridiculous turkey of a campy schlock-fest, in which none other than Phil Tucker took seriously.

Despite the film getting panned and mocked, just as it deserved, it actually managed to make money and gross a million at the box-office, more than 62 times its original budget of $16,000. I bet Ed Wood must have been jealous. But this wasn’t any win for Phil Tucker, however, as Astor Pictures refused to pay him. The combination of being totally fucked over by the distributor and Tucker being mocked by critics due to Robot Monster, and not being able to make his breakthrough into Hollywood, he tried to end his life by blowing his brains out. But in pure Phil Tucker fashion, he missed, and continued to work in the movie industry with low-budget films until his death in 1985.

The star of this film is Ro-Man himself with his cheesy gorilla-suit, diving-helmet and his absurd bubble-machine. He also has some really great quote-worthy lines such as: “What are you doing alone, girl-child?”, “You sound like a hu-man, not a Ro-Man“, “The hu-man-woman is the bringer of hu-man life, there must be an end to your race“, “Now I will kill you“… And that deep and serious, misplaced tone of Ro-Man just amplifies the goofyness up to eleven. It’s something straight out from Spaceballs, really. And you’re able to see the actor’s face behind that helmet. The only redeeming quality here, is the pompous soundtrack by Elmer Bernestein, who later scored films such as The Ten Commandments, Airplane!, Ghostbusters, Heavy Metal and numerous others. Robot Monster was originally planned to be filmed in 3-D, which is pretty hard to believe. But now you can at least enjoy it in its full glory and intriguing 2-D.

Director: Phil Tucker
Country & year: USA, 1953
Actors: George Nader, Claudia Barrett, Selena Royle, John Mylong, Gregory Moffett, Pamela Paulson, George Barrows
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046248/

Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

Posted on January 7, 2021June 22, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

In the summer of 1966 in El Paso, Texas, something really magical happened: Manos: The Hands of Fate was made. A movie so hilariously, mind-boggling bad that hardly any words from this universe would make it justice. But I’ll try. Harold P. Warren was a middle-aged man who worked as a fertilizer salesman for a living, but had a certain passion for film and was also a member of the local theatre. But while the passion was there, the talent was not. Yeah, we’re talking about an Ed Wood here. Anyway, one day he had a coffee with a screenwriter where he claimed that it wasn’t so hard to make a horror film, and made a bet with the screenwriter that he could make en entire film on his own. After the bet was official, Mr. Warren had no time to waste and scribbled the outline for his horror film on a napkin, a film in which he would write, direct, produce and be the star in. He then gathered some amateur actors, a budget of $19,000 and a 16 millimeter camera from the stone-age that could take only 32 seconds of footage at a time. And forget about any sound, all dialogues were horribly dubbed, assumingly in his henhouse or something, by three persons in post-production.

A family of three, the husband Mike, wife Margaret, their daughter Debbie her little dog (which of course is soon to be killed) is on a road-trip on a desert place where they seem to be lost. As they continue to drive through the deserted countryside, in a driving-segment that seems to last forever while the soundtrack is consisting of elevator music, they arrives to a place which is guarded by Torgo. He’s half-human and half-satyr, with big knees and dressed as a homeless man from a western movie. And one can see right away that this man has some serious issues as he’s twitching, barely able to walk, completely zoned-out and disorientated with a hopeless expression on his face that screams: Kill me now, please! Well, he wasn’t acting, more on that sad story later.

While they have some kind of a staring contest, Torgo finally delivers one of the greatest lines in the history of cinema: “I am TORGO! I take CARE of the place, while the MASTER is away!“ And he then says “But the CHILD, I’m not sure the MASTER would approve, or the dog. The master doesn’t like children“. He also has his own theme. Anyway, they ask him for some directions, but Torgo says that there isn’t any way out of here, and it will be dark soon. Torgo lets them stay for the night, even though he gives a warning with “The MASTER would be very DISTURBED!“ As they settles in they see a painting of the master, who looks more like a Mexican drug lord. The wife finds the painting very unsettling and says with the most monotone-dubbed voice: “He looks so sinister… oh, Mike, I’m scared…he has the meanest look…” And most of all, as Torgo said, he doesn’t like children. But we soon learn that he loves beautiful women and The Master wants her. But since The Master already has a dozen of wives in his harem, Torgo wants her for himself. Alright, time to get the fuck away. Too late.

Here’s a drinking game: take a shot for every technical flaw and fuck-up that pops on screen, and you’ll be dead of alcohol poisoning just after the ten first minutes or less. Where to even begin… the fact that the film was shot with a rotten potato of a camera that was able to just film 32 seconds at a time, is just the top of it. There’s so much eye-rolling and what-the-fuck-moments here that it is hard to keep track. The editing and pacing is completely off the rails, the acting is completely absurd with lines that hardly could be written by a sober person. It’s so incompetent in every single aspect, from the first frame to the last, in such a unique way you’ve probably never seen before. Actors look awkwardly right into the camera with obviously zero instructions from the director as the camera just rolls. There’s a cat-fight scene between the Master’s frustrated wives which is so bad that words are just too hard to find, as pretty much the rest of Manos: The Hands of Fate – or “Hands: The Hands of Fate” which is the accurate translation since Manos is the Spanish word for hands.

Manos: The Hands of Fate became a big deal in El Paso when the film had its premiere at the local theatre, where even the city major was among the audience. The actors came with limousine and all dressed up as it was a big Hollywood-film event, but little did they know as the cast and crew hadn’t seen a single clip from the film, and didn’t know what a disastrous, humiliating shitshow that awaited them. The only one who saw some of the raw footage, was Jackie Neyman Jones, who plays the family’s daughter, who could tell that this didn’t look like real filmmaking after seeing some Hollywood movies. Harold then said “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it in the lab“. And she then thought to herself: wow, movies really ARE magic. The premiere can maybe be described as a “The Room scenario” where the audience begun to laugh and scream at the movie in such way that the cast and crew snuck shamefully out of the theatre and was never seen again. John Reyonolds, who played Torgo, blew his brains out after struggling with drug problems, which is on full display in the film. Nothing would stop Hal Warren, however, and shortly afterwards he wrote a script for his second film, with the title Wild Desert Bikers, but no producer would touch it. So, Manos became his first and final film.

After some screenings at some drive-ins, the film quickly disappeared into obscurity, and it wasn’t until the film was picked up by the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 some years later, that it was brought back to life. It has since gathered a solid fanbase and cult-following, and has grown into one of the greatest so bad, it’s good movies. An obscure prequel titled Manos: The Rise of Torgo was made in 2018 and the sequel Manos Returns where Tom Neyuman, The Master himself, would reprise his role. Unfortunately he died during the filming at the age of 80. And as a goldmine of trivia Manos: The Hands of Fate is, also check out the short documentary Hotel Torgo.

Director: Harold P. Warren
Country & year: USA, 1966
Actors: Tom Neyman, John Reynolds, Diane Adelson, Harold P. Warren, Stephanie Nielson, Sherry Proctor, Robin Redd, Jackey Neyman Jones, Bernie Rosenblum, Joyce Molleur, William Bryan Jennings
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060666/

Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

Posted on July 18, 2020January 15, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Birdemic: Shock and Terror is a a romantic thriller, according to writer, producer and director James Nguyen. Calling this an amateur film is a pretty big understatement. Just take a look at the movie poster. That really says it all. And this is not Sharknado-level of bad, which is a cinematic masterpiece, along with the rest from Asylum films, compared to this one. Because going into this movie without knowing anything about the circumstances around it, one could quickly get the assumption that this is made by some young amateurs for shits n’ giggles with a budget of a monthly salary from Walmart. Instead, we get to watch the result from a full-grown, batshit crazy dude in his mid-forties, which in all seriousness believes he’s made “pure cinema” with “a Hollywood-style to it”. I’m not kidding, this is his own quotes from his own mouth. So, colleagues such as Tommy Wiseau, Neil Breen and Lewis Schoenbrun should just sit down, take some notes and learn from the great master himself.

In Birdemic: Shock and Terror we get the pleasure to meet Rod (Alan Bagh), which is a young, successful software salesman from Silicon Valley. He randomly meets his old classmate Nathalie (Whitney Moore) in a restaurant, and they start to date. And suddenly, out of nowhere, eagles and vultures start to attack and kill people. And how and why, you may ask? Because of global warming. And people needs to be punished and taught a lesson to live more climate-friendly. And as the tagline says: Who will survive?

James Nguyen is really careful to use precisely the first half of the movie to give Rod and Nathalie some solid character development before all hell breaks loose. We get a series of date scenes that really should convince us that these two are in love with each other, with a chemistry that is as electric as a public fart in an elevator. The level of cringe and awkwardness is quite astonishing, where the dialogues could as well have been written by an alien who just assumes how earthlings talk and interact. The acting skills by Alan Bagh is especially worth mentioning – which is so stiff (as a Rod), totally emotionless and so robotic that he comes more across as a classic psychopathic serial killer in sheep’s clothing, just graduated from the University of Ted Bundy. I digress. Whether he is a bad actor, or acts bad on purpose, as if he was fully aware of the kind of film he has messed himself into, is not easy to say. The only one here who barely manages to behave like a normal, functioning human being is Withney Moore, although there are several scenes where she seems to really struggle not to laugh. I can’t really blame her for that. I can’t really blame no one for their bad acting, or for acting badly on purpose for that matter, in a film like this. I would do it myself, if I got the chance, really.

But the most important aspect of Birdemic: Shock and Terror is of course the deep and important message behind it. Huh? Birdemic has a message? Here’s a drinking game: take a shot for every time James Nguyen says “global warning” in the DVD’s commentary track, and you’ll be dead by alcohol poisoning way before the end credits. There’s a scene with a hippie climate activist with some really crazy eyes, who gives a preach and shows our protagonists how climate-friendly he lives by building a small treehouse, which some ten-year-olds could have done better. And to emphasize that he has lived in the wild nature for many years, he has a ridiculous wig with a ponytail that doesn’t look fake at all. The conversation ends abruptly when he says “I hear a mountain lion! I gotta get back to my house and you better get to your car!” Okay, whatever. There’s also a scene that, according to Mr. Nguyen, pays a tribute to John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Bed-Ins for Peace”, just to squeeze in a quick anti-war statement. And the scene is, as the rest of the movie, horribly shot with murky image quality, making it look more like something straight out of a home-made amateur porn.

Criticizing the technical aspects is as meaningless as judging something that could have been shown on America’s Funniest Home Videos in the 90s. There’s really no point, it’s just that bad. But, ok: The CGI effects look like some unused layers from a discarded Nintendo 64 game, and I guess it all was filmed on a cheap camcorder, edited in Windows Movie Maker, and audio mixed with a hair dryer. Since there is a lot of driving in Birdemic, I would assume that the entire budget on 10.000 dollars went to gasoline, and the rest to God knows what. Most of the film was shot without permit (guerrilla-style) in crowded areas, and Mr. Nguyen actually had the nerves to yell at some joggers during a scene to not get into the frame. He and the crew also ended up getting kicked out of some areas. Well, making “pure cinema” with a “Hollywood-style to it” isn’t easy, it seems.

Anyway, one thing I would give Mr. Nguyen credit for, is the way he promoted the film after getting rejected by Sundance. In haste and desperation he got the brilliant idea of driving around in a van, decorated by stuffed birds, fake blood, the sounds of screeching birds out of the speakers, and with a paper sign that read “BIDEMIC.COM”. Yes, in pure James Nguyen fashion he spelled his own movie title wrong. However, this excellent pr-stunt got people to notice it to such a degree that it blew up everywhere, even in the mainstream news globally. Vice also made a mini documenatry that covered some of the circus and insanity that followed. Mr. Nguyen spent two years touring the film around the states where the people couldn’t get enough of Birdemic: Shock and Terror, and it became a real cult hit. But what James Nguyen was not aware of at all, and probably never will be, is that probably 99 percent of the people who flocked to the theatres were from the same audience that laughed themselves to tears by The Room. A prime example of being celebrated on all of the wrong reasons. So the last laugh is on James Nguyen, even though it seemed the guy really had the time of his life and enjoyed the party as long it lasted.

A sequel came two years later, called Birdemic 2: Resurrection, which is more or less the first film all over again where several of the same actors amazingly repeated their roles. The film received a worse reception than the first, maybe because people expected something different than a remake that only refers to itself from the first film. A far clearer and polished image quality didn’t help much either, as it came and went. A third film was planned with the title Birdemic 3: Sea Eagle to end this as a trilogy, and in 2016 he started an indiegogo campaign in the hope of raising half a million dollars. No more than 596 came stumbling in before the campaign ended. Oof. Both Birdemic: Shock and Terror and Birdemic 2: The Ressurection are available on amazon.com, and it’s still a fun experience to watch back-to-back, with the right mind-set… and some booze.

Director: James Nguyen
Country & year: USA, 2010
Actors: Alan Bagh, Whitney Moore, Tippi Hedren, Janae Caster, Colton Osborne, Adam Sessa, Catherine Batcha, Patsy van Ettinger, Damien Carter, Rick Camp, Stephen Gustavson, Danny Webber, Mona Lisa Moon, Joe Teixeira, John Grant
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1316037/