Dak Rambo is...THE ULTRA WARRIOR

Here at CF, we're aficionados of many things cheesy and cult, but few genres hold sway over us in the way that cheesy post-apocalyptic movies of the '80s and early '90s can. There's just some lure to punks running around in gravel pits with laughable "futuristic" attire and cars or dune buggies modified with ridiculous fins and pieces of metal welded all over them.

I thought I had a pretty good grasp of this genre and its dubious cinematic offerings, having collected and watched almost every Italian, Filipino and American Mad Max clone. There I was, perusing records at a local music store when I happened upon Ultra Warrior, a previously unknown and later entry in the canon. The box cover pulled me in, and I assembled $1 from the change in my pocket and purchased the tape.

With cult cinema, you tend to get drastically downgraded returns with each film that plunges you further into the regrettable depths of a sub genre. In the post-apocalyptic cycle, you have your creme de la creme, Road Warrior and Escape From New York, followed by flicks like 2019: After the Fall of New York and Raiders of Atlantis that you revel in for their delirious excesses, hackneyed though they may be. Then you descend into the still enjoyable but wholly indefensible, your Warrior of the Lost Worlds or Endgames, until you finally hit the absolute dregs, questioning the value of your life while you're watching Bronx Executioner. Ultra Warrior inhabits that middle ground - it's bad, to be certain, but it still has certain endearing elements and a high enough entertainment value to warrant a recommendation to die hard aficionados. It also has the benefit / detriment of being a Roger Corman production and release, and boy does it ever show!

We kick off with the standard ominous title crawl over stock footage of an atomic bomb exploding, and we're introduced to our hero, Kenner (Dack Rambo - NOT his real name!), who is your cookie-cutter post-apocalyptic badass. He is triumphant in a competition which is mysteriously reminiscent of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. After his victory, his "reward" is being charged with heading out into the desolate wasteland to try to secure more of the civilization's fuel source, which, naturally, is dwindling. The wasteland is in the eastern half of the former United States, but it doesn't matter, because it looks just like Arizona in the end. Dack Rambo spends much of the movie mumbling his lines and taking part in post-apocalyptic activities like watching bizarre punk bands and battling biker gangs with Mohawks and the obligatory dune buggies that everyone in the eighties assumed we would be using after the fall of civilization.

What follows are some totally out of left field space battle scenes meant elevate the movie over what is at heart just another 9th-rate Mad Max clone. These sequences would be more impressive had they not been stolen from about two or three other earlier Roger Corman productions; Battle Beyond the Stars is easily identifiable for those who have seen the movie. This footage is of a much higher quality than the original stuff they filmed for Ultra Warrior. It should be no surprise that co-director Kevin Tent went on to become a A-list editor; I suspect it was his job to raid Corman’s library for footage they could steal and edit into the movie. The obvious giveaway comes when you see George Peppard (Hannibal from the A-Team) for a split second, but it's actually his character from Battle Beyond the Stars. Peppard himself was probably nowhere near the actual set of this one! There's also a whole lot of random stock footage liberally distributed throughout to pad out running time and reduce budget costs, but you've got to laud Roger for his thriftiness. Few directors / producers were able to get so many nutty projects onto the screen. If the rehashed footage isn't enough tediousness for you, there are also several badly-lit, Skinemax-esque sex scenes between Dack Rambo and his love interest that go on way too long.

In researching this bizarre cinematic experience, I discovered that Rambo is indeed the star's true family name, although he "upgraded" to "Dack" from "Norman," a far wimpier birth name. He was known mostly for replacing Jack Dempsey as Bobby Ewing in the last seasons of Dallas that no one watched. His presence is one of the top selling points of the film on the box, so you know you're in for a treat.

Is this movie worth your $2?:

Well, that depends on just how serious are you about watching bad movies. If you are a fan of post-apocalyptic cinema who absolutely must see it all, then yes, it does get worse than this, and Ultra Warrior will hold your attention. Casual fans can stick to the tried-and-true favorites.

The Happening / The Crappening

Writing a CF review of this Hollywood cash and burn is kinda like picking on the retarded kid at school. Aside from John Boorman (Zardoz, The Exorcist II), I can think of no other Hollywood director that has gone from being considered a brilliant new voice to out-of-his-mind in such a short span of time. Sure, lots of brilliant directors have made bad films, but Shyamalan has made two in a row. In fact, The Happening takes things a step down to the lows dredged by Lady in the Water.

The plot is ludicrous, but on paper, it actually sounds as though it would make a pretty cool low-grade science fiction movie, like the ones they cranked out back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. People mysteriously go into trances and begin killing themselves in major East Coast cities. Is it biological terrorism? Urban nihilism? A covert government test? Unfortunately, the cause isn’t nearly as interesting as any of those scenarios – it’s (ludicrously) the trees and plants, which have suddenly decided that they hate humans and have evolved ways to get rid of us.

Mark Wahlberg, who is not necessarily a bad actor, is our everyman, and even he doesn’t really seem to know what to do with the material he’s offered. The opening scene with him playing a high school science teacher is painful, and I wondered if they hadn’t slipped in some rehearsal footage by mistake. His brother will come off looking cooler in front of a half-empty stadium during the New Kids on the Block reunion tour.

It’s not all Marky Mark’s fault. The dialogue is such that Knight basically sent his actors down the road in a car with square wheels. What we have is a clear violation of screenwriting rule #1 – “show, don’t tell.” One scene, for instance, has a group of people being shot, and we see Wahlberg close his eyes and tell himself, “Think you’re a scientist, look at the variables…”

You expect straight-to-video movies to be bad, but it’s rare when a major Hollywood director ends up making something as Mystery Science Theater-worthy as The Happening turns out to be. This movie is so poorly-directed and acted that if you took all of the scenes that actually worked and combined them, you may get a minute and a half of running time. Shyamalan’s first mistake was believing in his heart when the whole world told him he was brilliant. Yes, The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are well-made films, but Knight’s hubris clearly got the better of him, and one wonders whether he even passes his scripts off to editors any more. When the public began to get skeptical of his films, Knight got a bit snarky. Disney turned this one down after reading the script, and it has been reported that his own assistant was not confident in the script.
Towards the end of the film, the plot veers into gothic horror territory. Wahlberg, Deschanel and the kid with them stumble across a decrepit farmhouse that time forgot, complete with the standard crazy doll-collecting caretaker who may or may not have something to hide.
Unfortunately, Shyamalan’s stilted dialogue and inept scene structuring ruin what could have been a few effective scares. The set piece really doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the movie; I actually wonder if Shyamalan was having difficulty stretching the killer trees and weeds plot into a feature film, then added this sequence as an afterthought.

Is this movie worth your $2?: The Happening is one of those that really should be viewed for its monumental flameout value, if nothing else. You almost wish Shyamalan would have checked himself before he wrecked himself, because only the most mean-spirited among us would really want to see him fail. It is certainly not good, nor is it entertaining or interesting enough to be bad-good. Masochists need apply.

Avenging Force: Dudikoff vs. Nazis

Among ‘80s action films, Avenging Force is a rare creature, indeed – It’s a movie teaming up Michael Dudikoff and Steve James that isn’t an American Ninja movie, AND, even more oddly, it eschews the rightwing jingoistic “soldier for American” storyline that so many Reagan-era action movies embraced. Of course, it still endorses vigilantism and macho posturing with dollops of homoerotic subtext, but in a welcome change of pace, the heroes are battling an underground conservative conspiracy. Perhaps the strangest thing is that this one came out of Cannon Films, the studio responsible for the bulk of conservative ‘80s action, including Invasion USA and the Missing in Action movies. In an even odder twist on rightwing action themes, it is implied that the CIA are the bad guys!

Helming this one is Sam Firstenberg, the ‘80s action director responsible for the two best Sho Kosugi ninja outings and the first two American Ninja movies. Michael Dudikoff, putting his patented “wooden to wooden” acting range on display, is ex-CIA agent Matt Hunter, who retired to a quiet ranching life after his parents were murdered. Cannon vet Steve James is Larry Richards, an altruistic politician from New Orleans running for the Senate. On a routine “catching-up” visit, Hunter ends up in the middle of a botched attempt on his friend’s life at a Mardi Gras Parade, during which Richards’ young son is killed. It turns out that the underground extreme rightwing racist “Pentangle,” led by Glastenbury (John P. Ryan - It’s Alive, Class of 1999, in another great over-the-top performance) has set their sites on ensuring that Richards doesn’t make it to Washington.

Avenging Force kicks off with a great action set piece, where members of the Pentangle wear weird masks (there’s even a leather gimp outfit for good measure) and hunt a couple of guys Most Dangerous Game-style through one of Louisiana’s back bayous. Like most Cannon films, the plot merely exists to hang action scenes on, and this one stands out from much of their other fare in being more colorful and interesting. There’s a gory Mardi Gras shootout, an above-average car chase, an escape from a burning house, another bayou hunt in the pouring rain, a fight involving medieval weaponry, and more. It still has that trashy, slapped-together feel that every Cannon production has, but Avenging Force doesn’t quite suffer from the pacing problems that drag down some of their more famous films.

Steve James and John P. Ryan are always lots of fun to watch, and this time around is no exception. I’ve always wondered why James never got top-billing in any of the movies he was in. He’s certainly far ahead of Dudikoff in the charisma, entertainment and sheer energy department – watch American Ninja 2 for another prime example of this. Ryan gives a grimacing, overacting performance as the slimy racist demagogue. Whether he’s ranting and raving about how “Hitler was right,” or chortling as he shoots an associate in the gut and leaves him to bleed to death, he manages to dominate every time he’s on-screen.

This being a low-budget Cannon production, there are still many problems with the movie. The dialogue is just atrocious, and there are sloppy filmmaking gaffes and plot holes. The ending is also unresolved and anti-climactic. Perhaps they planned an Avenging Force 2, but the world was deprived when it got overshadowed by the latest Chuck Norris feature.

Is this movie worth your $2?
Avenging Force is an overlooked but highly entertaining low-budget action take on Most Dangerous Game plot elements, which have long since become cliché. Any bad action and Cannon buffs owe it to themselves to see this one.

Heroes of the east: Kungfu war of the roses

AKA: Challenge of the Ninja

One of the greatest teams in martial arts films has been the director and star of the classic martial arts film 36^th chamber of shoalin. Director Lau Kar Leung and Gordan Liu (two roles in Kill Bill) have teamed up for several of the most classic kung fu films of the shaw brothers era. Eight diagram pole fighter, executioners from shoalin, legendary weapons of china and one of their best team ups is Heroes of the east.

While this team had mistakenly taken on too much comedy in legendary weapons and the the 36^th chamber sequels here the comedy all in the first half actually works. Gordon Liu plays a wigged(one of the few movies where he askews the Skinhead look) martial artist whose father arranges a marriage to a beautiful Japanese woman. At first he’s against it but he concedes and soon discovers his wife is a well rounded Japanese martial artist.

The first problem this marriage has is that Liu’s new wife is a nationalist all about the superiority of Japan’s martial skills. One time after another her very sensitive husband stomps on her puny Japanese skills until she runs home to the waiting arms of a hunky ninja expert played by Yasuaki Kurata. Kurata by the way is best known to modern audiences for his small but important role going toe to toe with a much younger Jet Li in Fist of Legend.

So in strange attempt to save the marriage Liu sends his estranged wife a challenge for a duel claiming that if she can best him once in 10 challenges he will concede that Japanese martial arts are superior. Nothing says love like a 10 level challenge.

This letter is intercepted by our ninja expert and a whole group Japan’s finest experts are so offended that they travel to China to challenge Liu. Ok So as you would expect the Chinese guy takes them on one at a time and you can imagine this would not play in Japan any better than Rambo II would in Vietnam. There is a whole sub-genre of ‘Chinese martial arts are better than Japanese martial arts’ films. My favorite Kung Fu movie of all time is Duel to the Death a 1982 spin on the theme by Chinese ghost story director Ching siu Tung.

The fights are great but you really have to dig movie martial arts challenges because after the plot is established in the first hour the second is just non stop fights. They are good fights and the Ninja expert played Kurata almost steals the show with his dirty Ninja tricks. His crab style fighting is also really cool to watch. You dig it. What separates Heores from the east from other ‘Chinese martial arts are better than Japanese martial arts’ films is the PC ending. Liu gives this speech that is supposed restore the honor of the defeated Japanese in what looks like a lame attempt at soothing the egos of Japan’s movie goers. I’m sure that makes them feel better after one Chinese dude ina wig beats all their countries experts.

Is it worth your two dollars:

Fans of old school martial arts movies should consider this crucial viewing. Certainly fans of the Kill Bill movies would benefit from seeing Gordon Liu and finding out why QT gave him not one but two roles. YES!

Shadow Whip: Whips n' swords, and it's NOT a fetish movie!

Devotees to classic Shaw Brothers films are already aware of Pei-Pei Cheng and her work in Kung Fu epics such as Come Drink With Me and Golden Swallow, where she played the titular character. It was released in the seventies in the U.S., dubbed and tagged with the weird title The Girl With the Thunderbolt Kick. Golden Swallow served as one of Director Chang Cheh's bloodiest films, but balances a love story along with the trail of bodies. However, it was her performance as Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that Americans are probably most familiar with.

Pei-Pei also starred in an unusual Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movie called The Shadow Whip. Directed by Lo Wei, who went on to direct the Bruce Lee classic Chinese Connection (or Fist of Fury, depending on who you ask). The film starts off at a snail's pace, and I admit I was about to shut it off after fifteen minutes, which consisted mostly of some strange guy signing as the characters travel on a wagon train across a snow-blanketed Chinese frontier.

Slow start aside, I'm glad I stuck it out. The plot isn't all that important - basically, Pei-Pei and her uncle fight huge groups of sword-wielding bandits with whips, and unconventional weapon in these sorts of movies for sure. There is early wire-fu, which is pretty well done and goes beyond the hidden trampoline backwards filming so common during the era.

According to a brief glance at the IMDB page, Summo Hung was in this, but it must have been a brief cameo, as I didn't notice him.

Is it worth your $2?
Yes - if you've got a hankering for a movie that combines whips and swords (the best of both worlds!), then this may be one of the few that satisfies you. I found it good enough, but if that doesn't cut it, watch Pei-Pei in Golden Swallow, which is really much better.

Super Infra-Man - He has see-through eyes!

We at CF were treated to a rare a wonderful thing a chance to see a bad movie classic on the big screen. This one was barely able to sneak onto American screens, even when it was originally released in 1976. In a well-made and respectable foreign film, we often consider dubbing to be nothing short of annoying on a level that could only be matched by Britney Spears' acting or Jar Jar Binks. Nails on a chalkboard, etc. That being said, the English dubbing in Super Infra-man is not only acceptable, but preferred - only a few movies I can think of benefit from English dubbing. See also: Story of Riki.

Ripping off Ultraman and pre-dating the Power Rangers, Infra-Man is a schlock classic, ranking with the best of the bygone rubber monster craze. Starring a baby-faced Danny Lee years before The Killer made him famous when he went down in a blaze of glory with Chow Yun Fat. He was off to an embarrassing start in the seventies, wearing the tight red rubber Infra-Man suit that also sports antennae.

When a volcano explodes and spits out the secret headquarters of Princess Dragon Mom, a blonde-haired Chinese woman who cracks a giant whip and wants to control the earth, the world's greatest scientific minds leap into action, creating a superhero with see-through eyes (according to the trailer). We know they're scientists because they all wear white coats and hang out in a futuristic-looking room full of randomly-blinking lights, as every B sci-fi scientist seemed to.

Princess Dragon Mom commands a legion of guys wearing bike helmets with skulls painted on them, as well as half a dozen rubber-suited monsters. They also have speedboats and go around tearing down power lines and brainwashing people - EEEEEEVVVVVILLLLL! The story is incredibly simplistic, and really just shuttles Infra-Man from one confrontation to the next. There's a strange scene with the professor and his daughter that's good for some unintentional laughs, and lots of great stuff with PDM hamming it up in her sekrit base.

This movie is a lot of mindless monster fun, but it's got some pacing problems, especially if you try to watch it with subtitles. It's best enjoyed auf English, as the Germans would say, with a big group of acquaintances with senses of humor.

Is this movie worth your $2?

No doubt! The English-dubbed version has enough laughs to leave any fan of bad movies happy. The more people to share the laughter will only amplify your enjoyment of this film!

Burial Ground: This cloth smells like death

At this juncture in time, even non-horror fans can be remotely familiar with parts of the Italian zombie canon, thanks to the wide availability of this stuff on DVD. At the very least, you shouldn't be surprised to talk to the "normal" people who can remember seeing that distinct giant box for Fulci's Zombi 2 (AKA Zombie) turning white on a video store shelf of a bygone rental store.

If you really want to test an Italo-schlock fan's mettle in a contest of "yes, but have you seen this," you'd do well to bring up Andrea Bianchi's Burial Ground, a considerably lesser-known Italian horror clunker from that glorious year of 1981. The '80s truly was the decade that proved to be the swansong for anti-PC tax write-offs that were dumped straight to the shelves of video stores, but, thanks to DVD, we can enjoy films like Burial Ground until the apocalypse.

The story begins with some guy (we later learn he's a "professor") wearing a glued-on beard chipping away at a bunch of dirt. He's been hard at work studying some mysterious runes, which look more like Internet emoticons (seriously – look carefully - there's a smiley face carved onto the tablet!). Lo and behold, zombies emerge from the wall. Before they start munching on him, he tries to reason with them, screaming, "No! I'm you're friend." This would be stupid enough, but the bad dubbing that plagues the rest of the movie just makes it that much better.

Next up, you get your typical cast of ugly Italian zombie fodder driving up to the mansion where the professor was conducting his studies. The credit sequence is accompanied by some of the worst nu-jazz this side of Kenny G / pornography. The acting is awful, and the dialogue is so unbelievably bad that you can rest assured not a soul on the set spoke a lick of English. Actually, this pushes the movie even higher, as the characters deliver one howler after another. It truly is magical.

The vacation party is there to frolic, and they do just that for a good chunk of running time. I've seen reviews level the charge of "boring" on these sections of the movie, but I really have to question what they're doing watching bad Italian zombie films if they're there solely for the mayhem. Slow down, smell the roses, appreciate the finer points of bad filmmaking – we get hilarious dialogue between characters, sleazy, uncomfortable sex scenes, and totally laughable editing. The centerpiece of the movie turns out to be this weird "child" named Michael. You see, for the purposes of the script, he's supposed to be around the age of ten, but due to the unavailability of a real kid (pesky laws), the director opted to cast what appears to be a thirty-year-old man with some kind of dwarf condition, and then had him dubbed by a guy attempting a falsetto. He has to be one of the scariest, most bizarre things I've ever seen in a horror movie – and it's completely unintentional!

Michael's overall creepiness is compounded by the fact that he has a strange Oedipal fixation on his mother. At one point, she rebukes an advance from him, and he responds, "What's wrong?! I'm your son!" You can see where this is going. I'm not sure who urged this subplot be added to the "script," but you will not soon forget it.

The zombies in the movie look cheap, but simultaneously effective. I can certainly appreciate a director who works with the effects he's got. Bianchi's living dead, clad in moldy cloaks and covered with green pus and maggots, are the "smarter" breed of zombie that are able to use tools; this is the only zombie film I can think of where we see the undead teaming up to knock down a door with a battering ram. Thankfully, they're not modern athletic zombies like those found in 28 Days Later or the Dawn of the Dead remake. This doesn't matter, though, because the characters in the movie are so incredibly stupid when faced with their impending doom that they sit in one place and wait to get eaten. There are some memorable yet cheap gore scenes, including one obviously inspired by the eye impalement scene in Zombi 2, and another involving the creepy "kid" that will remain with you for the rest of your life.

Burial Ground is a terrible movie. Entry-level film school students would have a field day picking apart the inconsistencies and moviemaking rules that are violated, but that's precisely why it's so easy to love. The pace moves along at a fast clip, and the stupidity hits monumental levels.

Is this movie worth your $2?:

Yes – if you're a zombie movie or Italian trash cinema fan, Burial Ground is absolutely worth a rental. I recommend ownership – it ranks with classics like Riki-Oh, Robocop, Commando and Bad Taste as one of my favorite "party movies." Throw it on, and then watch your friends clear out of the room or question your sanity!

Sidekicks: Because dreams DO come true

The final installment in our glorious "Chuck Norris Family Film Night" was 1992's Sidekicks. By this point, Top Dog had melted my brain, and I think I had drool sliding down my chin as I gawked at the images dancing around on the sceen. My comprehension facilities had taken a permanent backseat to the terrible films at hand. It reminded me of those all-day video game marathons my friends and I used to have as kids – at the end, we thought we had gone cross-eyed. Such is the mental toll exacted up on us so that we can bring you terrible film reviews.

Before I get started, I have a confession to make – I saw Sidekicks during its initial theatrical run. I don't remember what appealed to me about it and allowed Kerasotes Theaters to pry hard-earned allowance out of my sweaty palms. It might have been my love for bad action movies, or just that my friends and I were bored hanging around the mall one weekend. The fact remains that I was one of ten other people in the United States who viewed Sidekicks on a big screen.

Barry Gabrewski (the departed Jonathan Brandeis of Seaquest fame) is a scrawny, weak, asthmatic high school kid who spends his days drifting off in class and dreaming about Chuck Norris – more specifically, he fantasizes about starring alongside Chuck in classic bad action fare like Missing in Action and The Octagon. These fantasy asides are amazing in their stupidity; he and Norris battle everything from ninjas to Vietcong to cheesy '80s punk gangs. In a way, this could almost make Sidekicks into a post-modern '80s action film that takes its cheese and homoerotic subtexts with a self-aware grain of salt.

As one can expect, Barry's fantasies lead him to the receiving end of some ole'-fashioned bullying from his peers. It's not too surprising, considering that "Barry-Warry" is prone to calling out for his hero in the middle of class lectures. He tries to enroll in Joe Piscopo's karate class, only to be turned down due to his weakness and his affinity for all things Norris. Actually, this leads to one of the best scenes in the film – Piscopo, who looks like a vein is about to break out of his gigantic neck, rants and raves against Chuck in a grandiose spectacle of scenery-chewing.

Barry's life begins to change when his teacher (Rambo's girlfriend from First Blood Part II, whose English seems to me MUCH improved on this go-round) introduces him to her grandfather (Mako, the mystical wizard from Conan), who is your typical wise Asian stereotype. The plot is predictable - under his tutelage, Barry is able to learn elite karate skills that allow him to stand up to the bullies at school, impress his R. Lee Ermey-esque gym teacher (Bull from Night Court) and woo Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years. Sidekicks culminates in a major karate tournament where Chuck Norris conveniently joins Barry's team to fulfill the necessary quote of competitors. Oh, and he also beats up Joe Piscopo.

Sidekicks is one of scads of kids' films that takes a plot, tweaks it slightly, then passes it off as a new movie, hoping its audience are too young and / or stupid to notice. Keep in mind that this movie was released about a decade before remakes became accepted practice in Hollywood, so they had to be slyer about their reusing back then. It's got the same hoary, tired tropes – work hard to persevere, dreams can come true, fantasy has its place in life, the nerd gets the girl. What really separates it from the pack is that this one features Chuck Norris and Joe Piscopo's inhuman neck veins, which should receive billing unto themselves.

Is this movie work your $2?:
If you're a dedicated bad action movie / Chuck Norris fan, if you wonder what became of Rambo's girlfriend and Winnie Cooper, or if you are one of the few who have childhood memories of it, then Sidekicks is for you.

Top Dog: Chuck Norris Family Night grinds us down

Chuck Norris teams up with big shaggy dog. Fights some hessian Nazis in San Diego. It's as bad as it sounds.

Forest Warrior - Norris goes Seagal

Why do you watch bad movies? If you watch them because you like seeing grown adults make fools of themselves, then today we've got the film for you! The pitch is simple and irresistible for bad movie fans - Chuck Norris is out to kick logger ass for mother Earth. This one would make an appropriate double feature with Seagal's two eco-revenge films, On Deadly Ground and Fire Down Below. Nonetheless, we choose to view it as a part of a three film endurance test we called "Chuck Norris Family Film Night," which also included Top Dog and Sidekicks. All three films films were directed by Chuck's brother, Arron Norris, who never learned the art of pacing in film school.

I'm assuming that this film was on a direct route to Blockbuster video shelves, as it was a follow-up to career-low Top Dog, a film where the biggest crime was making high school chess tournaments and televised bowling look exciting. How did the brothers Norris make up for this lapse in judgment? Did they make Delta Force 3? Missing in Action IV? The much-needed and never realized Invasion USA sequel? Nope - Forest Warrior.

We at Cinematic Feces are aware that in real-life, Norris is indeed a true martial arts master, so this next career move seems even stranger. Freshly-mulleted and wearing a "white man at the pow-wow" leather suit complete with tassels, it is nearly impossible to watch Norris in this film without laughter. At the same time, Forest Warrior offers us more than just a family film starring one of cinema's greatest white badasses - it is also an Earth First eco-defense training video!

The main characters are Oregon kids in the fictional town of Tanglewood, who have formed what basically amounts to an Earth-worshiping cult, complete with a bizarre pagan idol that would be at home in one of those Italian Indiana Jones rip-offs. All hell breaks loose when they camp on the mountain, and the loggers decide to shoot a baby bear they have made friends with as well as dynamite the kids' tree house (?!) . The kids go on to commit acts of economic sabotage and come close to murdering the head of a local timber company.

Help against the loggers comes from mountain man Jebediah McKenna (whatta name), played by Norris. At one point, an eagle flies down from the sky into the face of a hapless logger, then morphs into a mid-jump kick Norris, who finishes up by kicking him in the teeth. A pretty convoluted and boring flashback explains that Chuck's spirit protects the mountain - ah, if only every mountain had its own Norris. Oh, yes - he can also morph into a giant brown bear.

The cast features an array of crappy character actors. Most notable is Michael Beck (The Warriors, Megaforce and Xanadu), who tortures us with his portrayal of a drunk deadbeat dad (does he see the error of his ways at the end of the movie? Take a wild guess). We also get plastic surgery disaster Lorreta Swift, who is best remembered as Hot Lips from Mash (now she should be called "Weird Lips"), and William Sanderson from Newhart, Blade Runner and Fight For Your Life.

Is this worth your $2?:
Sweet mother of god, yes - there's a ton of excellence here for bad movie fans. Filmed outside of Portland, this is a strangely subversive, cheesy kids' film that is an unsung Norris classic.

Zeder - Watch out for those "K Zones"

Pupi Avati is one of the most underrated directors of Italian horror, largely due to the fact that he only has a handful of horror movies in his oeuvre, and many of them are difficult to find in the United States. His 1976 film The House With Laughing Windows, which happens to be my favorite giallo after the Fulci / Argento entries, was given a very brief DVD release by Image. Zeder did not fare much better in the U.S., although it at least saw a cut release on VHS under the misleading title Revenge of the Dead during the 1980s. If one were to believe the box, the movie could reasonably be expected to be an Italian zombie bloodbath in the spirit of Zombi 2 or Burial Ground. Avati, however, is not that kind of a director; having worked primarily in the art house realm, his horror movies are unsettling, slow and fraught with paranoid developments, rewarding patient viewers long after those with ADD weaned on MTV-style modern horror will have tuned out.

The story begins in France in 1956, where cops are turning up mangled bodies and attempting to solve the crimes by digging around basements for corpses. Paolo Zeder has discovered a way to defeat death, and to prove his theory, he buries himself in one of his "K Zones," or areas where the natural laws of death don't apply and bodies will resurrect.

We then flash forward to Italy, where a struggling writer everyman Stefano gets a typewriter as a gift from his wife. It doesn't take him long to find information on Zeder's research still imprinted on the ribbon, piquing his curiosity and leading him into a mystery that will open doors which we all know he will regret having opened by the end of the movie. Despite pleas from his wife and warnings from other parties, Stefano's investigations become obsessive; dogged by a shady government society bent on continuing Zeder's research, he discovers a link involving a former priest with a mysteriously empty tomb and an abandoned vacation camp surrounded by electric fences in the Italian countryside.

As in The House With Laughing Windows, Avati uses atmosphere and mystery, telling rather than showing, to build his horror methodically until everything comes to a boil in the final fifteen minutes of film. The ultimate horror is once again concealed in a creepy rural location, and the protagonist exists for little reason other than to move the plot along by uncovering strange secrets. Avati is good at using shadows and desolate locations to convey mystery and unease. Riz Ortolani (Cannibal Holocaust) composed the soundtrack, which sounds like a mix between something Goblin would have done for Romero or Argento and the theme from Psycho.

Unfortunately, Zeder's main drawback is that its events are very similar to Stephen King's Pet Sematary, published the same year that the movie came out. Although the similarities are undoubtedly a coincidence, this movie will attract savvy horror fans who have already seen and / or read King's work, making some of the events in Zeder fairly predictable and drastically reducing the shocks that the movie should be delivering.

Is this movie worth your $2?:

The House With Laughing Windows is much stronger (and ends on more over-the-top note), but Zeder is definitely worth checking out for fans of Italian horror and intelligent, underrated, creepy movies. Steer clear of the unwatchable U.S. DVD and check out the European disc instead. Avati returned to the horror genre in 2007 with The Hideout, which I have yet to see.

The complete Rambo Saga!

Ramb-athon

In honor of the return of a cinematic feces favorite John J. Rambo, we have decided to write an epic review of all four films. This is not just a return, but a return to the big screen, no less.

Rambo began life in the amazing novel First Blood. Don’t let Rambo’s fate of crawling through the cinematic sewer fool you; he is trained to survive such conditions.

The David Morrell novel is actually a high-class political thriller about generation gap, patriarchal abandonment and the Vietnam War coming home. According to Morrell’s site, Stephen King used it as one of only two texts in a fiction-writing course that he taught at the University of Maine. The first film, while a weaksauce version of the novel, is still underrated and mocked by the general public. Morrell didn’t bother with making Rambo sympathetic; the point was to display the demon that Rambo had become as a result of his horrific wartime experiences - the curse he could not escape. I’m not saying that the filmmakers made a bad choice in making Rambo a figure for the audience to sympathize with, but it changes the dynamic of the excellent novel.

Sly, who can act when he cares to, actually delivers an intense performance. For instance, after the redneck sheriff, played well by master thespian Brian Dennehey, harasses Rambo early in the film, we get to see Sly flex his acting muscles with almost no dialogue, letting facial expressions speak for themselves. Without words, he plays the first part of the film brilliantly. It might have been considered flawless, if not for the laughable breakdown Rambo has with Colonel Troutman at the end. Once the mayhem starts, Rambo kicks ass and is left alone with a personal war. You can’t help but feel sorry for him - an aspect completely lost in the first two sequels.

The Bo Returned in First Blood Part II. The movie starts with a random explosion in Rambo’s prison, where he's serving a hard labor sentence, breaking rocks for no apparent reason. While trying hard to stay close to the themes of the first film balanced with creating the Bo's cold warrior legacy, the movie emerges as the complete turd that everyone remembers. One can love this movie - just for different reasons than the first film.

Screenplay credit was shared by Stallone and James Cameron, the man who wrote two of the best sequels ever in Aliens and Terminator 2, so you’d expect that he could give this film a little class. Nope - the writers tried hard, but no panache is to be found.

So what makes part two such a delicious bad movie? There's absolutely no concern here for a sympathetic hero or any character development. First, Rambo's fighting the evil Vietnamese to free American hostages - until he realizes that they're working in collusion with the Russians, and then he just ends up fighting them both with equal fervor. Rambo takes out commies like Wal-Mart does local businesses. The movie's ultimate bloodbath follows a suiting-up for war scene designed for the masturbatory fantasies of closeted Soldier of Fortune subscribers. Add to the mix Cold War racist and nationalist stereotypes of Vietnamese and Russian targets, and you've got an offensive '80s action bomb! The stereotyping doesn’t just victimize the enemy - even Rambo’s love interest (who later starred opposite Chuck Norris in Sidekicks and Walker: Texas Ranger) has some of the most painful-sounding broken English dialogue ever put to screen. This is best highlighted when she and Rambo have a heart-to-heart where the Bo explains to her “what mean expendable.”

Politically, the film is mind-bogglingly confusing. At moments, it seems to be a Cold War propaganda fest, and at other moments we see that Rambo is getting fucked over again by his country that sent him on a doomed mission. The confusion is summed up by a tired and frustrated Rambo at the end. He tries to explain his feelings to Colonel Troutman, but it only leaves him speechless. I’m sure he was just trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about. Come on now - give the Bo a break. He had just single handedly re-written history by defeating two nations. I’m sure when he had time to reflect on it, he had it all sorted out.

So, Rambo III, you ask? Well, this film's greatest contribution to cinema is inspiring the sequel to Hot Shots. It wasn’t good like First Blood, and it wasn't bad-good like First Blood Part Two. The film finds the Bo slumming in a Van Damme plot, stick fighting in a tournament on the kickboxer set in Thailand. That might be perfect for Van Damme, but it seems below the Bol, who we've always expected more of.

It gets worse when you know that the first credited screenwriter was Van Damme’s writer Sheldon Lettich, who wrote gems like Lionheart and Double Impact. Was it this man, or Sly who decided that a mulleted Bo finding peace at a monastery was good idea? Rambo may be keeping the monks in rice by stick fighting, but still doesn’t appear to be a place that John J. could call home. When Troutman shows up with a diplomat played (Kurtwood Smith of Robocop and That '70’s Show), Rambo doesn't buy it - for once, he knows not to trust the CIA.

Troutman decided to soldier on alone, and therein enters my first big problem with the third Bo entry. Colonel Troutman, the man who trained Rambo to kill and eat food that would make a billy goat puke, seems neutered and lobotomized in this film. A man of his knowledge and skill would have known better than to take this mission, and he certainly wouldn’t stand like a deer caught in headlights while the Russians captured him. I believe that if you dropped him in ancient Mongolia with a survival knife and a rubber band, he would have the Khan's head on a stake in a week.

From there, Rambo spends way to long pushing stones around the sand with future members of Al-Qaeda. Rambo fighting alongside the Taliban should be more interesting than this movie turned out to be. Novelist David Morrell, who had an early version of the script to write his novelization from, said that the early drafts were like a Rambo of Arabia. I’m down, but what happened before the finished product? Studio tampering is my guess.

It is interesting to consider Rambo’s allies in the third film. I’m sure the team on the fourth film considered cashing in on the post 9/11 hysteria surrounding "Islamofascism." They must have thought better of it. They could have called it Rambo: Blowback. A sequel about the consequences of Rambo’s support of the men who would later become the Taliban would make a bold and brave film. Imagine one of the young boys that Rambo helped in Part III being part of a hijacking or a London bombing, then escaping back to Tora Bora. Actually that would make a great Rambo novel, but I’m not sure Morrell would do it. He has our permission to run with it if he would!

So yes -- Rambo IV is out now. The CF team went to see the film on opening night out of general principle. It felt great saying “one for Rambo please.” For this film, Sly got good with math and he figured out a simple equation - 1+2 = 4. Forgetting the embarrassing mistakes of Part III, he balanced the character strengths of First Blood with the over the top ultra violence of part two. Thus, he made the strongest Rambo Film to date.

Sly is doing Rambo fans the same favor he did in Rocky Balboa - giving Rambo a last film with dignity. He also was able to give the Bo a chance to reflect on the things he did. This older Rambo is not giving speeches about wanting his country to love him as much as he loves it. No, this is a jaded, cynical Rambo who simply says, “Fuck the world.” He means it, too.

One of the lessons Sly learned from the reaction to Rocky Balboa was to let the character grow old. The jaded Rambo is still having nightmares about who and what he is. A serious oversight on the last two films, Stallone remembered this time what a cruel and fucked up life Rambo has had.
I’m not sure who at Lions Gate performed sexual favors for the MPAA ratings board, but the fact that this film got an "R" rating is miracle. This film is brutal, an adjective that all too often gets overused, but this time, it’s true. I saw people getting up and walking out in disgust - the same people who paid nine bucks knowing they were going to see Rambo.

In this installment, we see a hard-luck Rambo laying low in Asia, wrangling cobras and ferrying people down the river for change. The plot kicks off when Christian missionaries ask Rambo to take them into Burma (shades of Apocalypse Now) so that they can administer aid to the tormented population. It doesn't take long for them to get captured by the local junta and the Bo to do some sweaty soul-searching before he heads back upriver to save the group. Stallone wanted the viewer to understand how completely messed-up things are in Burma, and he doesn't offer a second of sugarcoating. Perhaps he forgot to mention the drug trade and Western consumers of the drugs, but that may cut down on some of the carnage. This is a brave and intelligent (ed. note: as much as can be expected, anyway) action film that is drenched in symbolism as well as blood and guts. That’s warfare, and there is nothing comic book about the warfare in this one. Bodies explode, bullets turn people into hamburger, and one unlucky guy is even eaten alive by a pig. The critics have cried "exploitive," which, to an extent, it is, but Rambo can be construed as a reflection of our violent times.

While I wouldn't mind another Rambo novel, I would be really happy if Stallone let die right here - on the top of his game. I’m just sad that Col. Troutman wasn’t there for Rambo to return to at the end.

Space Hunter: Rednecks in Space

The full title, while long enough to be a Fallout Boy song title, is Space Hunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. This is a truly underrated B sci-fi film that marked one of the more impressive attempts at 3-D in the 1980s. It sure was a hell of a lot better than Jaws 3-D, at least. Produced by Ivan Reitman, it may be most important for introducing the Stripes director to Ernie Hudson, who a year later would fulfill the same wisecracking black sidekick role for him in Ghostbusters.

To be fair, Reitman didn’t direct it - it was done by Lamont Johnson, whose most famous directorial roles were Twilight Zone episodes - but he was involved enough to recruit Harold Ramis to perform a voiceover cameo. This cameo is crucial, as it introduces Wolff, the film's low-rent Han Solo. For those keeping count, we also have skid row Han Solos in Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars and, of course, Spaceballs. A space cruise ship ejects three rich Earth women in escape pods, and they end up crashing on a set that looks to be leftover from Road Warrior. It's up to our anti-hero to earn enough cash to pay off his alimony payments by rescuing the Earth women.

At this point, you can smell the character arc like a twice-shat dirty diaper. We've seen this before - in the beginning, he only cares about the money, but in time, his heart is won over to the cause of righteous freedom. Once on the planet, Wolff loses his female robot to a stray bullet, but fortunately, since this is a wacky space adventure flick, there are plenty of eccentric sidekicks waiting to team up with him along the way. Before he hooks up with Ernie Hudson (fulfilling the Lando role so hard that he may as well be repeating dialogue verbatim), we meet Nikki, played by a teenage Molly Ringwald in perhaps her most annoying role. This is the fault of the script, as well as her distinct one-note acting.

The nuttiness of Wolff's travelling companiosn provides all kinds of great B-movie stuff, including a giant ocean ship pulling a crew of mutants down a random train track, cool futuristic motorcycles, a room full of giant slimy monsters with cottage cheese asses, AND, top top that off, they have an awesome fighting dome overseen by none other than Michael Ironside; this was a full year before the Mad Max legacy would be sullied by Beyond Thunderdome!

Thus, we come to our ultimate highlight. To mainstream movie fans, Michael Ironside is one of those “oh yeah - it's that guy” personalities. To cult and B-movies freaks like us, Ironside is the Brad Pitt or Matt Damon of the movie. His scenery-chewing panache has brought us laughs and tears in Total Recall, The Machinest, V: The Final Battle, McBain, Starship Troopers and in David Cronenberg’s Scanners, which may well be his most memorable roll. You may remember him as the crazy guy who made the other guy's head explode like a ripe tomato near the beginning of the movie.

In Space Hunter, Ironside has one of his finest moments - playing the dictator of the forbidden zone, who is known simply as "Overdog." Why a man as powerful as him would choose the name "Overdog" presents an interesting character study. We quickly learn this guy just doesn't give a fuck - his Zombified bald head sits atop a very heavy-looking futuristic suit, which includes some awesome giant pincer arms. Overdog looks awesome, and matched with Ironside’s voice, he steals the entire movie out from under the forgettable Han Solo wannabe.

Is this movie worth your $2?:

Oh yes. Overdog alone is a crucial part of Ironside’s career, and must be seen to be believed. The vehicles alone give this film a "rednecks in space" feel, and it's just another sterling example of those tax write-off, shamelessly derivative, yet massively entertaining flicks that don't get made any more.

Megaforce: A whole lot of word; not a lot of deeds

If you ask Twentieth Century Fox what the biggest bomb of the last century was, it had nothing to do with Hiroshima, but everything to do with the film Megaforce. I witnessed this travesty firsthand upon its theatrical release when I was in the second grade, and I believed firmly at the time that even I could have done a better job writing it. The budget was huge, and the movie was accompanied by a whirlwind merchandising campaign; the toys were sold even before the movie was released! In hindsight, this was a good idea, as no kid could possibly have thought these toys were "cool" after they had seen the movie.

The Matchbox cars boldly stated on the packaging that the toys were inspired by the upcoming "blockbuster." Megaforce was directed by Hal Needham, legendary stunt man and auteur behind film experiences like the Smokey and the Bandit trilogy and the Cannonball Run films. Hal and Burt were like Scorsese and De Niro, or Mifune and Kurosawa - inseparable. The fact that Burt Reynolds dodged a role in this turd despite his obviously close relationship with the director should have been Fox's first sign to call off the project. Had a Sharky’s Machine-style Burt played Ace Hunter (awesome 80s action hero name, by the way), it might have given the film a tough edge. Instead, they cast wussbag Brian Bostwick, known by modern audiences as the bumbling mayor of Spin City.

The Megaforce is an elite, diverse group of guys who defend the world from...uhhh..."stuff," all the while dressed in snazzy yellow spandex. It is also a requirement to have that spandex open halfway down the front at all times to reveal your hairy chest. They drive around in heavily-armored dune buggy super cars. Needham spent a lot of dough on building this fleet, which he claims the military was studying. I don't know about you, but I think the U.S. military sure would look great zipping around Baghdad in these things. I wonder how they hold up to roadside bombs, although Megaforce could, in and of itself, be classified as a "roadside bomb."

Cool vehicles aside, there is one major problem with Megaforce. The movie has four human beings who were given credit for having worked on the screenplay. Apparently, all four forgot along the way that you are supposed to have things happen in movies, especially in action movies. At the beginning, we are introduced to Knight Rider vet Edward Mulhare, who plays a generic international diplomat, on the scene to witness the power of the Megaforce. Forty-five minutes later, Ace Hunter reveals that their enemy, a general played by cult classic actor Henry Silva, was an old friend. During that forty-five minutes, a whole lot of nothing happens.

Silva, the star of Cinematic Feces-approved Eurotrash classics like Almost Human and Escape From the Bronx and, more recently, Ghost Dog, is a rogue dictator / generalissimo. He has an army of tanks in the desert for some unclear reason. For an even murkier reason, the Megaforce is the only team that can stop him. The confusing plot takes more than an hour to unfold, and when the dune buggies attack, it’s another twenty minutes of circling, blowing up dust, and still almost nothing happens. Another notable appearance is Michael Beck of The Warriors, who went on to damage his career with roller skating musical Xanadu and the Mad Max-inspired cheese stick Warlords of the 21st Century. The cast members, who do an admirable job not looking too embarrassed, do not save this movie

Is this movie worth your $2?:
This is tough, because this movie does need to be experienced, but you must steel yourself for a painful affair. You will simultaneously laugh and be bored-to-tears by the utter lack of attention to pacing. Smokey and the Bandit was not far from a masterpiece, but it at least functioned as an action film. Be prepared to fidget and get up for another drink a lot.

However, Ace Hunter’s triumphant escape from the final battle is worth every minute of agonized boredom along the way. I don’t want to give it away, but let's just say that it is one of the worst special effects shots ever set to film, and worth the whole experience. The finale gives the word "goofy" a new meaning.