Ants (1977)

Construction workers anger a colony of ants, causing them to attack a nearby hotel. In a subplot, a rich jerk attempts to purchase the hotel from the old lady who has owned it forever.

When a young boy becomes covered by sticky, biting, deadly ants after doing some dumpster diving, a doctor declares that he died from a virus. The construction foreman Mr. Carr insists that the ants killed him, but the arrogant doc won't even consider that suggestion as he knows more than someone who works with heavy machinery.

Whenever ants swarm onto someone, they scream for help and fall flat rather than making an attempt to brush off the ants. It's really annoying. Later in the movie, one of the construction workers who gets ants on him screams that his leg has gone numb. It would have been helpful to explain earlier in the film that the ants had a numbing effect on people as it would make it much less irritating when people do nothing to save themselves.

Oddly enough, no one notices the massive swarms of ants advancing on the hotel, leading to the climax when the guests - including a lady in a wheelchair and a girl who gets dizzy from heights - get trapped in the hotel by the big freaking mass of attacking ants.

Scared Stiff (1987)

Psychiatrist David buys an old plantation that used to be owned by an abusive slave owner, George Masterson. The moves his girlfriend Kate a singer who makes music videos, and her son into the home. Kate starts having visions of the former owner and David finds a trunk in the attic which contains the body of a woman and little boy.

As Kate's supernatural experiences increase, David becomes cruel and uncaring, appearing to be possessed by the spirit of Masterson. But are Kate's experiences real or imagined? The question arises due to Kate and David having met when Kate was a patient in the psycho ward. David insists that her mental illness has returned, while Kate becomes frustrated when David will not believe that there is a threat to their safety.

The end of the movie is incredibly lame with Masterson turning into the strange creature pictured on the cover without any explanation.

Beyond the Door II (1977)

When Dora, her new husband, and creepy little son Marco move into a new home, strange things start happening. Dora starts seeing her Carlo (her first husband who committed suicide), Marco somehow gets into the basement even though the door is always locked, and inanimate objects become threatening.

Marco becomes increasingly creepy, telling his mother he is going to kill her. There are also a few scenes which suggest his incestuous interest in Dora. He also seems to have some sort of supernatural power as he pins his pilot stepfathers picture to a swing, which makes the plane go into a nosedive. He also draws picture of his mother holding a knife and his father with his throat cut. The question becomes are the happenings supernatural or is Dora going insane.

Capture of Bigfoot (1979)

Why do all Bigfoot movies from the 1970s have bad sensitive folk music ballads for their theme songs? Just another mystery for Bigfoot fans...

Two trappers capture a baby Bigfoot and are taking it back into town when mama Bigfoot comes calling. The two men are employed by local businessman and lunatic, Mr. Olsen, who is obsessed with having his own Bigfoot so he can make a fortune using the creature as a tourist attraction.

Olsen sends more trappers to look for the poor critter and havoc ensues. Local Ranger Steve Garrett tries to protect the creature, his girlfriends son (who is out roaming around in little Bigfoot country), and the town from Olsen and his brigade of Bigfoot inciting hunters.

The Bigfoot creature looks more like a yeti than the dark haired North American Bigfoot usually depicted in films, what with it's white fur and bad haircut. Like many 1970s Bigfoot films, there is almost no Bigfoot action.

Rambo: First Blood, Part II (1985)

I've spent my life avoiding Rambo movies, but since my friends rented this and wanted to watch it, I figured there was no legitimate reason to maintain my anti-Rambo stance.

John Rambo is dropped off in Vietnam on a secret mission to find out if there are any POWs still alive. He is given a camera (which seems to confuse his war weary brain), and told to take photos if he sees any prisoners. He is not to engage anyone or do any rescue operations.

Of course, this is contrary to Rambo's own moral compass and when he sees prisoners, he grabs one to bring back with him. Unfortunately the mission is a fake and the man in charge leaves Rambo to be captured by the Vietnamese.

As in all 1980s movies, the Russians end up being the bad guys. They torture Rambo until he escapes, kills everyone, and heads back to find the man who left him for dead.

The Alpha Incident (1978)

The opening line of the movie says it all, "This doesn't make any sense!" Scientists transport a virus from Mars via freight train with a biochemist posing as a conductor guarding it. Inevitably a not so bright railroad worker accidentally breaks a vial while investigating the contents of the top secret shipment, and is infected by the virus. When the train stops at a small station, the five railroad employees and the biochemist are quarantined while scientists frantically try to find a cure for the virus.

The small group must stay awake because the virus will kill them if they fall asleep. They ingest amphetamines, but then sit around boring the viewer into a near sleep like state. There isn't any action and the dialogue is not very interesting. The movie has a Night of the Living Dead type of ending.

Dr. Alien (1989)

Oh Dr. Alien, you are so horrible...and yet I find you somehow appealing. Uber-nerd Wesley agrees to help new science teacher Ms. Xenobia with an extra credit research project, unaware that Xenobia is an alien and that he will be her subject.

After Xenobia gives Wesley a shot, he turns into super stud, complete with upturned collar. Every time a mini-tentacle like appendage with lips protrudes from the top of his head, women can't resist him. There's never any explanation of why the girls don't see the creepy thing bobbing around atop his head, but it emits something that makes women throw themselves at him.

This is a bad 1980s teen comedy, whose charm is perhaps due to it's ridiculousness. Make no mistake, this is a horrible movie, but for some unknown reason, I enjoyed it.

Minotaur (2006)

Village youths are sacrificed to a Minotaur who lives in an underground maze beneath a castle. Our hero Theo, who is not supposed to be sacrificed as he will later be chief of the clan, goes along with those who are to be sacrificed as he plans to save his true love, who was taken a few years earlier. Though it is the Iron Age, the youth are mostly stereotypically good looking and have dirt smudges on their overly pretty faces.

Problems arise due to the slow pacing, overly dull exchanges, and the self-titled beast not actually being a minotaur at all. The film begins with an explanation that the minotaur is half man, half beast. But the Minotaur in the film can best be described as the body of a hairless bull with the skull of a bull, which is inexplicably dripping with goo. It's decent CGI, but it does lead one to wonder how this creature gains sustenance by eating the teens since it doesn't seem to have any way to swallow anything it eats.

Feast of Flesh (1967)

aka Deadly Organ

An organ playing fiend in a bad wig, rubber monster hands and rubber mask kidnaps women and renders them useless by using the hypnotic qualities of his keyboard and shooting them up with heroin. While in a trance, the woman willingly get physical with the freaky organist who wears his mask as he gropes them, yeech!! A slow paced film which features a volleyball scene in which the teams play by catching the ball and then throwing it over the net.

Night of the Bloody Apes (1968)

When Dr. Krallman hears that his son Julio has leukemia, he decides to save him by replacing his heart with a gorilla heart. Some nauseating real surgery footage later, his son has a heart which randomly turns him into a massive man with a gorilla-esque face who stalks the night while wearing pajama pants, rapes, and kills women.

In an almost unrelated subplot, a full figured lady wrestler gets in the ring and does her wrestling thing. Turns out her boyfriend is the detective who is investigating the ape man murders. Yup, that's the only connection between the two stories.

Though the title promises bloody apes, there is only one guy in an ape suit, and Julio, who is only sometimes a gorilla man.

Zu Warriors (2001)

Beautifully shot story of a demon in a mountain and the warriors who fight to defeat him. Unfortunately the good versus evil plot line is nothing special and I didn't care about the characters.

Cheerleader Camp (1988)

Alison is haunted by nightmares and hallucinations of death and blood. She joins her cheerleading team for a trip to Camp Hurrah, where there are competitions for the cheerleaders, mascots (who are second class citizens), and queen. There doesn't seem to be any criteria to win the queen competition.

The mascots are excluded from the cheering activities and even have a separate dinner time where they must eat while wearing their massive mascot heads. Why would they think this was okay?

Alison's nightmares continue and her boyfriend Brent, played by Leif Garrett, is a total sleazebag as he hits on other cheerleaders right in front of her, and even pursues the easy girl on their own cheering team. When Alison voices her dismay, Brent apologizes and then dumps her when she has qualms about having sex at camp. What a great guy. Soon cheerleaders are getting killed and Alison's teammates are disappearing.

The film boasts the worst rap I have ever seen, which is done by Brent and Timmy, the two male members of the cheerleading squad. Their role on the team appears to be dancing badly in the background as the girls do some elementary moves. You can't appreciate the awfulness of their rap without seeing it. It is the whitest rap ever.

Watch for the scene in the camp office where there is a copy of Leif Garrett's 1978 "Feel the Need" album sitting on top of the record player and leaning up against the wall.

Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe (1991)

A random woman gives birth - with her pants on - to Tommy, the child of an alien being. The child has the anti-life equation in his head, which is some sort of mathematical formula.

When the child gets into grade school, Secundus returns to take the formula from his head. Abraxas, the good guy, also returns to earth to save Tommy and his mom. Havoc ensues as Abraxas and Secundus fight in slow motion while eighties style soft rock instrumentals underscore the ridiculousness of the scene. Truly horrible.

Omega Doom (1997)

Rutger Hauer is Omega Doom, a robot who wanders into the middle of a robot gang fight in a bombed out town. The two gangs, the Roms and the Droids, are looking for a hidden treasure of guns.

While it might seem like this would be action oriented, it mostly involves lots of talking and a decapitated droid head that gets kicked around a lot and then reattach itself to spare bodies without heads. Omega Doom wears a Russian hat, drinks lots of water, and kills half the robots in town before wandering off, none the worse for wear. Not very exciting, is it.

Creature From Black Lake (1976)

Joe Canton and a friend are checking their traps in the swamp, when a hairy hand reaches up from the water and drags the friend out of the boat. Joe manages to get away and we are treated to a shot of him escaping that is framed by the furry wet crotch of the creature, ewwwwww!!!

Two college students, who are older than your typical college kids, head into town to do research on the stories of the Bigfoot creature. The small town Sheriff warns them not to go round scaring the towns folk with their creature talk, which they proceed to do because they are clueless idiots.

The two end up finding a young man whose parents were killed by the creature and meet up with Joe Canton, whose story has been told outside of town. Joe also lives in a shack with newspaper on it's walls, wears a stained union suit, and drinks from a moonshine jug. But he is a creature believer and thus alright with them.

Any hopes of excitement are dashed as the two students spend most of the movie riding around in their van talking and having run ins with people who don't want there to be any creature talk. In the best Bigfoot scene in the film, the creature rolls their van down a hill and shortly afterwards it bursts into flames. Take that, college boy.

Action Jackson (1988)

Policeman Jericho "Action" Jackson is framed for the murder of a businessman's wife and goes into hiding with the businessman's mistress, played by Vanity, who is a junkie and a singer. Vanity keeps insisting that she needs a fix, yet her withdrawal appears to be nothing more than needing to freshen her makeup and redo her poofy hairstyle.

They stay at a hotel run by Jackson's friend, a former pro boxer who looks like Bo Diddley and has a raspy cartoon character voice. Several of Carl Weather's co-stars in the Predator have roles in this film and Craig T. Nelson is the evil drug dealing businessman who's hair is the same color as his suit. Standard eighties action flick with not much going for it other than Weather's unbelievably cut abdominal muscles and a bad guy minion whose hair is right out of an eighties metal band.

For Safety's Sake (1986)

Gary Coleman works at Safety Central, which appears to be some sort of strange place where he punches buttons, uses a computer to watch kids do dangerous things and then reprimand them.

His targets are Jack and Jill Example, who must be cursed since during the film they manage to be stalked by a pervert, escape a fire, choke on food, and suffer various injuries from doing stupid things. Gary, along with his guest experts, admonishes the kids to stay calm, keep cool, and think.

One of the better sketches is the man who tries to get Jack to open the door by using various excuses, like signing for a package, needing to use the bathroom, and needing to talk to his mom. Jack contemplates letting the creep in, but eventually locks the door and calls a neighbor. In the credits the man is credited as "Letch" so it's a good thing Jack didn't let him in.

Harley Davison and the Marlboro Man (1991)

Harley and Marlboro come up with a great idea to save their friend's bar. They'll rob a bank and use the money to pay the outrageous fee for a five year lease.

Unfortunately they target the wrong Brinks truck and end up with a haul of crystal dream, the newest drug of choice, but whose name keeps reminding me of the drink powder, Crystal Light. As soon as the drugs are stolen, the enforcers show up wearing floor length bullet proof pleather coats which are supposed to make them look intimidating but instead make them look sort of stupid. The lead enforcer is played by Daniel Baldwin.

For some reason Mickey Rourke kept reminding me of Corey Haim, which is not at all a good thing.

Species: The Awakening (2007)

A slimy, naked, alien with a head like a pixie hat kills a bunch of people in a hospital, and then morphs back into her human form, which is a beautiful young woman named Miranda. Her Uncle Tom - whose name can't help but make you laugh - whisks her off to Mexico to search for his former scientist partner, Forbes, who might be able to save niece Miranda as she is the alien seed of their previous experiments.

Yeah that's about as good as it gets. Forbes has let his failed experiments run around the town as they will eventually die. Good move there. His success story walks around town dressed like a nun and sometimes morphing into an alien killing machine.

Forbes tells Uncle Tom that Miranda is at the end of her life span and the only way to keep her alive is to give her blood. So Uncle Tom goes hunting for someone to kill. Yup. It might sound exciting, but it's really not.

When Evil Calls (2006)

When an unpopular high school girl wishes for popularity, a clown shows up in her bedroom and hands her a cell phone with a text message saying she's won a wish. The only stipulation is that she has to pass the message on to two friends.

The next day she is the most popular girl in school. However when others get the message, their wishes turn out badly as only the original wishmaker truly gets their wish. A fat kid wishes to be skinny and is flattened by a bus. An unattractive girl wants to be prettier than the beautiful girl in her class, and the pretty girl immediately gets acid accidentally thrown in her face. Oh evil clown, why do you taunt us so?

Two detectives start investigating the bizarre deaths, although the headmaster doesn't seem to think there is anything odd about many of his students dying.

Each wish segment isn't more than five minutes long and is only tied together by a drunken, raving, filthy janitor narrator who makes bad jokes about the upcoming story.

It doesn't even seem like a movie. And then you realize that it's not. They just took these short films made to be seen on cell phones and tied them all together with the narrator and realeased it as a film. Now that takes a lot of nerve.

It also means you have to put up with seeing that one stupid text message about the wish over and over and over again. Absolutely horrible.

See No Evil (2006)

Co-ed college aged convicts are assigned to clean up an old hotel and in return for three days work, have a month taken off their sentence. The hotel is over eight stories high, so I'm not sure why this task would ever be assigned to around eight convicts with no real supervision.

The group randomly split up and roam around the building, which is going to be converted into a homeless shelter. A couple of the guys have blueprints of the hotel in hopes of finding an old safe which is supposed to house lots of money. But when they stumble across a hobos corpse, one runs away right into the grappling hook of serial killer Jacob Goodnight, who likes to remove the eyes from his victim's heads.

I'm not sure if the young prisoners are supposed to be completely unlikable or if teenagers are supposed to think they're cool because they're total jerks who constantly sass authority figures.

When people start disappearing, one of the characters asks if there is anyone else in the building and is told that they did a sweep of the building before the kids arrived to clean out all the homeless people. Too bad they didn't also make it a priority to clean out the hobo corpses because I find that creepier than living, breathing hobos.

The movie has a million plot holes and the entire premise of prisoners, who wear street clothes, have backpacks, aren't shackled in anyway, are allowed to roam a huge hotel without guards or tracking devices, is completely idiotic.

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

A reality tv show ventures into the hillbilly infested hills to film a Survivor type show. When one of the contestants doesn't show up - having already been dispatched by the inbred hicks during an amazing opening sequence - the producer is called upon to take her place on the show. Henry Rollins is the fatigue clad host of the show and turns out to be one of the more likable characters.

As usual when you put people in the middle of the woods fifty miles from civilization, they turn into complete idiots when faced with hillbilly killers chasing them. The group traipses into a cabin in the middle of nowhere, no phone lines going to it, in an attempt to make a call, never once guessing that it might be inhabited by the very people chasing them.

Also it is never a good idea to hide in the old abandoned mill in hillbilly country, or to run through the woods so as not to be seen on the road. You idiots, these people know the woods like the back of their hands, and the woods are full of bear traps and death of all shapes and sizes. But let's stick to the woods while we try to escape hillbilly death. Basically it's the same movie as Wrong Turn.

Bloodmonkey (2007)

A group of college students go into the African jungle with F. Murray Abraham, a professor who has discovered a previously unknown valley which hold a new breed of primate that has aptly been named a Bloodmonkey. The creature sees in orangey bloodmonkey vision and tears anything that is human limb from limb in a matter of seconds. Hurrah for this new discovery!

The six students believe they will be assisting in base camp, but find themselves going down into the jungle where there are tents set up in this so-called undiscovered land. The group are not as suspicious as they should be, which is unfortunate since the first night there one of their group disappears.

One girl is documenting the trip on video for her college course, which begs the question how she is going to charge her camcorder in the middle of the jungle?

There is not so much Bloodmonkey in the film, but there is a scene in which the characters talk about how heavy the rain is that is hitting the tents while outside you see streams of water which appear to be coming from hoses. Horribly enough it is supposed to be Bloodmonkey's pissing on their tents, which one student claims is common for animals to do when marking their food. What? I've never heard of any animal who pisses on what it is going to eat. Maybe to mark their territory, but not their food. Stupid college kids.

Lobsteroids (1989)

Ultra low budget movie made in Portland, Maine about a mad scientist, his daughter, and giant lobsters on the loose. The film has tons of footage of local bands, with just a few of the more interesting being The Kopterz, The Wild Hearts, Bebe Buell and the Gargoyles, and the Brood.

The best band death scene is probably The Brood's which takes place during a beach party. What more could you ask for than a giant lobster claw taking out the drummer? Nothing, I tell you! Not one thing!

The Breed

One silly cover for one silly premise of a killer dog movie. Brothers John and Matt inherit their uncles home on a private island and decided to fly in with some friends and spend the weekend. The other side of the island used to be rented to a dog training school, which was rumored to be doing genetic engineering.

When an adorable puppy tromps out of the underbrush, the gang adopts him. Later that night when the dog runs out the door, two of the group head out to find him and instead encounter a snarling adult dog who promptly takes a bite out of one of the girls.

When the issue of treating the dog bite and the possibility of rabies comes up, John says he doesn't want to ruin their weekend by flying back to the mainland and suggests Sara can have the bite treated after the weekend. Showing what horribly crappy friends they are, everyone agrees to wait until their planned departure time so that they can spend the weekend partying.

If only they had been decent friends they would have been off the island before the dogs started watching their every move, destroyed their plane, and decided they all must die.

Dragon Wars (2007)

Reporter Ethan is obsessed with Sarah. Coincidentally both are the main players in the dragon battle of good and evil which is waged every five hundred years and Sarah has an orb inside her.

While that might sound in good in theory, the movie is totally forgettable and mostly void of dragons.

Ninja Nightmare (1980)

aka The Last Reunion

In an overly long opening sequence in Japanese occupied Philippines during WWII, a young boy -played by a kid with limited acting ability - sees his parents killed and mother raped by US soldiers.

Thirty two years later, the son is a man who is looking for revenge. Conveniently the military unit is having a reunion. Their reunion mostly consists of drinking, brawling, dancing with women, and hanging out in discos with bad bands. And all of them hate their buddy Steadman, but to be fair, Steadman is an ass.

Leo Fong, who plays the adult son, buys a sword and says he's going to warn the men in obscure ways that he is going to kill them. What this really means is he tells them they are going to die right before he kills them.

Keep an eye out for the D'Hi Octave Band who look like the Philippino version of KC and the Sunshine Band, complete with white jumpsuits with sequined flames. They sing "Zodiac Lady" a song about all the zodiac signs. Oh yeah.

Cyberzone (1995)

I think it's a rule that any title containing the word cyber has to be somewhere between mediocre and terrible.

In the future, Phoenix, AZ marks the west coat of the US. There are spaceships, robot factories, and Los Angeles is an underwater agricultural city.

Jack Ford is a bounty hunter hired to recover four pleasure droids that have been stolen. He is teamed up with Beth, a snooty droid specialist who has never been on the earths surface. Of course this means that her arrogant demeanor is in for a rude awakening in the rough and dirty streets that Ford normally inhabits.

As this is the dirty pathetic future, there are strip clubs with mutants, crime, droids, spaceships, surface dwellers and those who never go to the surface. Yep, it's like every other cyber movie.

Two things to note:
First, they start with four pleasure droids but end up with only three and make some lame excuse that they lost the other somewhere. Huh? Did the fourth girl decide she didn't want to be in the film any more? Did they only have three nun outfits? It just seems like some lame excuse. Couldn't they have come up with something better?

Second, it's always bad to use real technology when doing a future movie. When they plug the big old ribbon cable into the droids neck with connector pins, they have effectively rendered themselves utterly low tech. So much for the cyber future.

Wanted Dead or Alive (1987)

Rutger Hauer is a bountry hunter with a heart of gold. He lives in a warehouse, has a boat where he romances his girlfriend, rides a motorcycle and has a mullet.

Gene Simmons is a creepy evil terrorist who gets into the US by pretending to be a rabbi, then cuts off his fake beard and blows up a movie theater. Way to go, Mr. Terror!

The CIA, who have their secret headquarters inside a Gold's Gym building, know that Hauer is the best bounty hunter around. But they don't play by the rules and neither does Hauer.

Basically this action flick has nothing new in it, but Rutger Hauer and Gene Simmons do a decent job in their roles and there are plenty of ridiculous scenes full of explosives. Oh yes, and there are an abnormal number of men in the film with very high foreheads.

The Corpse Grinders (1972)

Gravedigger Caleb makes extra money by digging up corpses for Landau and Maltby of the Lotus Cat Food Company. When Caleb tells Landau that he'll get no more bodies until he pays him for t he ones already provided, Landau starts killing winos to supplement the dwindling corpse supply.

Landau and Maltby bring the bodies to the company during the night, load them on the conveyor belt to the grinder, and turn them into cat food. The after hours workers are an odd assortment of old scrawny men and a one legged hobbledeehoy called Tessie who looks like Carrot Top. Ew!

Caleb and his wife, who is crazy as a fruitbat and carries around a creepy doll that she feeds soup, are killed by Landau after Caleb refuses to provide him with more of the dead.

Meanwhile Dr. Howard Glass and Nurse Angie Robinson have noticed that all of a sudden many cats are attacking and killing their owners. Sadly enough this is accomplished by the actors holding a poor wriggling cat against themselves, which is supposed to look like an attack but really just looks like what it is - the poor cat is trying to get out of their grip.

Howard and Angie head down to the Lotus Cat Food factory at night so they won't be noticed. But Angie wears a bright red dress and pumps, so she's hardly incognito.

This leads to a match of wits and brawn between the team of Landau and Maltby versus Howard and Angie. No one will be admitted during the cat holding sequence.

Mark of the Astro Zombies (2002)

This shot to video movie features fat alien robots that walk strangely, a shopping mall location, bad acting, and John Carradine's head.

The Astro Zombies, armed with machetes, roam suburban shopping malls killing everyone in their path. The President, the FBI, and a reporter try to figure out how to stop them. Since there are only about a dozen of them, you'd think it would be pretty easy, but apparently bureaucracy has bungled it again, as they rampage on and on and on with their prop machetes.

At one point the President and a group of muckity mucks meet in an office space because the Oval Office is not available. Uhhhhh, if the Oval Office isn't available for the President, than who is using it?!

My favorite part of this movie is the dvd cover. It's reminiscent of the 1960s style artwork, which is appropriate since this movie is based around Ted V. Mikels 1968 movie Astro Zombies, a much better movie shot on film.

Hello. I'm John Carradine's head and I'm proud to be appearing in this movie.

I like Ted V. Mikels movies, but the problem I have with this one is that it doesn't have the charm of his older films. Also shooting on video seems to highlight the short fallings of using tin foil for spaceship walls and rubber masks for alien heads.

Hatchet (2006)

College students go to Mardi Gras in an attempt to distract their friend Ben, who has just been dumped by his girlfriend of eight years. Ben isn't interested in partying or picking up chicks, so he goes off with his pal Marcus in search of a haunted swamp tour.

The swamp tour boat crashes near the reputed cabin of a mutant kid, who was accidentally killed by other kids who were harassing him. Rumors abound that the cabin is haunted, but as it's the only shelter for miles, the group of tourists head towards it.

The mutant shack has lots of implements useful for killing, and unfortunately it also has a mutant, who stumbles out and starts a-slashing anyone it can get it hands on. From here, all the characters fight about how to escape the oncoming mutant death. They discover that one girl is a local looking for her father and brother who disappeared in the swamp. She was smart enough to bring a gun, but not smart enough to bring more than a few bullets - idiot!!

An okay movie with it's middle of the swamp boat crash, no search party, no escape, no more bullets, man eating crocs in the water, killing machine mutant in the woods, oh my god we're all gonna die, haunted swamp ride theme.

Guardian of the Realm (2004)

In the future, there are goth clubs with bad dancing, morphing mutants, fashionably coiffed police, and murder. And they are all boring.

In fact, the future has never been so boring. Characters open their mouths, sending you into a stupor, only to awaken after an undetermined amount of time, dismayed to find that you are still watching this snooze fest.

Witches (1990)

I never had any interest in seeing this movie, but Michelle suggested it and since I'd never seen it, I said okay. I'm not often interested in children's movies, especially after viewing the horrible dreck that passes as entertainment for kids these days. Often it has an alarming lack of plot and intelligence. But this movie was a pleasant surprise.

Based on a book by Roald Dahl, the story is entertaining and the little mice are adorable.Anytime you're dealing with a Dahl story, you know that they filmmakers started off with a good clever story. Thankfully that story and atmosphere also managed to be in the movie.

Luke and his grandmother go on vacation and end up at a hotel that is hosting a convention of witches, who plan to use a potion to change every child in the world into mice, who can then be disposed of accordingly. The special effects and puppeteering are well done (Jim Henson's company is involved).

Luke is the only one who is wise to their plans, having gotten trapped in their meeting room when he was searching for his pet mice. It's up to him to convince his grandmother and try to save himself and Bruno, the gluttonous child turned into a mouse. (He reminded me of Augustus Gloop from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Facatory.)

The Condemned (2007)

Tv producer Breckel decides to broadcast the ultimate reality show in which ten convicted murderers are dropped off on an island and the last one left alive is set free. Doesn't seem like a good idea in any realm of thought, especially since at the end there's going to be a murderer released into society.

Breckel and his overly enthusiastic crew bribe wardens all over the world to get the ten best fighters, and then drop the ten prisoners off on the island. Unfortunately the brainiacs also put their control center on the island, which isn't a good idea when you have ten killers running wild.

As no tv channel will touch the show, Breckel broadcasts it as a pay per view event via the internet. Too bad for Breckel that one of the killers is really undercover special ops Conrad, played by wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin - not to be confused with Colonel Steve Austin, the six million dollar man. Conrad is a good guy so he doesn't want to participate.

The movie portrays the killers as much more likable than the entire film crew and when Conrad heads to the control tower, you're ready for him to kill everyone in sight, which of course he doesn't as he's really a nice little hard working special ops guy who got wrongly imprisoned.

The only thing I can think as Breckel wracks up millions of viewers on his pay per view internet extraveaganza is that his server is going to crash.

Snowboard Academy (1996)

Wow, nothing worse than an unfunny comedy filled with cliches. Corey Haim plays The Wizard, a snowboarder whose older and more responsible brother manages their father's ski slope. The Wizard is such a rebel that he and his friends snowboard down the ski slopes, causing havoc and breaking people's skis over their heads. Yeah, what funny guys.

Dad's ski resort isn't making much money and his estranged wife won't sign the divorce papers unless he gives her half of the value of the resort. The Wizard comes up with an idea to start a snowboarding school, which big brother hates. But Dad okay's the idea as long as it can make a profit and the snowboarders can win a competition against the skiers at the end of two weeks.

In addition to this thrilling plot line, we have the comedy stylings of Rudy James, played to the max by Jim Varney, of Ernest fame. Rudy lands an entertaining job, as well as that of safety inspector, since there isn't enough money to pay two salaries. Not only does he not ski and is a walking accident, he's also a lousy comedian.

Rudy's jokes consist of olde tyme material such as, "My girlfriend is so fat that when we finish making love, she rolls over and smokes a ham." That is as good as it gets, folks, don't hurt yourself heading for the exits.

Ninja Turf (1985)

aka Los Angeles Streetfighter

New kid in school Tony is threatened by Chan, who claims to run the school, and demands protection money. Young, who ironically appears to be in his mid thirties, interrupts the altercation and agrees to fight Chan at night in an alley. After kicking Chan's butt, Young is approached by a couple dressed for a night on the town (complete with rhinestones), who hire Young and his friends to do security. Yes, everyone knows the best security guards are found by checking out high school fights in dark alleys.

After doing several security jobs, including one at a toga party(?!), Young and friends are hired by a rich guy whose party has free drugs for his guests and massive drug deals in an upstairs bedroom. Young observes the deal and decides to steal the drug dealers money filled suitcase while the dealer is having a bubble bath with his girlfriend.

In an even more brilliant move, Young and friends immediately run away, right in the middle of the party, thus making it completely clear that they stole the drug money. Yes, the money is gone and so is the entire security team. Can't be more obvious than that. This brings Superfoot Bill Wallace into play as the man sent to recover the money and teach these punks a lesson.

Contrary to the title, there are no ninjas in the film. The name just capitalizing on the ninja craze of the eighties. The dubbed film feature stilted dialogue, scenes that go nowhere, and many shots that are so dark you can't even tell who is there or what is happening. Sadly, it makes no difference to the plot.

There are subplots about Tony dating Chan's sister Lily, and Young's mother, who appears to be approximately the same age as Young and could pass for his wife. Even though they are supposed to be in high school, most characters look like they are in their late twenties or thirties.

Silliest dialogue:
1. My name is Mario. We heard about the rumble. That's why we came.
2. I run this school.... For starters you pay me $5 or I kick your ass.
3. Kill! Spike 'em! Kill! Spike 'em. (chanted by gang the Spikes)

Oddity of Note:

1. the couple at the high school fight dressed up in a suit and rhinestoned dress
   
2. the drunken leader of the Spikes wears a cut off shirt showing his bloated belly
   
3. Young has a mustache, not something normally seen on high school students
   
4. the toga party needs to hire security
   
5. there is a touching scene where the gang gives Mark a birthday cake
   
6. does this man look like he's a high school student to you?! Well does he??? Young, indeed.

Broken Angel (1988)

Suburbanites Chuck and Cathy Coburn are shocked when their perfect unibrowed daughter Jaime disappears after the prom, where a local gang put a hit on her boyfriend Ron aka Rocket. Turns out Mom and Dad were in the dark about little Jaime, aka Shadow, as she is an active member of LNF, a middle class white gang of suburban kids who deal coke. Rocket is the leader of he gang, and only after the shooting at the prom does Jaime's secret life come to light.

Chuck, played by William Shatner, becomes consumed with finding his little angel, thus continuing the trend of totally ignoring his son Drew, who feels like his family doesn't even like him or care anything about him. During Chuck's search for Jaime, he finds that Drew also has a secret life.

The movie takes a really preachy tone about teen gangs and parents who are too busy for their children and use them as status symbols. Jaime has a horrendous unibrow, which even in a time of unplucked eyebrows, is distracting and disturbing in it's wild abandon.

There is some unintentionally funny dialogue, such as "But everyone's heard the Dragons are packing heavy" or "You're with Rocket! Do you know how many girls would like to trade places with you?!"

Also hilarious is a scene of a bloated Shatner being chased down the street by an Asian gang!

Replikator (1994)

Here's what we're working with:

1. Ludovic aka Ludo - first man cloned, done during an escape when murders were being committed by the police
   
2. John - Ludo's friend who resembles Peter O'Toole
   
3. Kathy - Ludo's ex-girlfriend working on clone project for the evil Scott
   
4. Byron Scott - gel haired evil businessman who wants to clone human flesh
   
5. Victor Valient - honorable police detective, he's not a crooked cop
   
6. Accolina as Tina - celebrity that Scott lusts after while wearing his 3D virtual reality helmet

Scientific whiz kids Kathy and Ludo were developing a replication program, but had a falling out when Ludo was sent to jail. Now each works for a different company trying to develop the program. Each one is attempting to get their project online first, so that they may reap the huge monetary values that will be thrown their way.

Byron Scot is an evil self-centered man in league with killer cops who will stop at nothing to become the first person to unveil the replication machine. Secretly he plans to clone human flesh with it, although he leads Kathy to believe that he is only interested in the scientific aspects, and not ruling the world and stealing all it's money.

Ludo becomes tangled up with Vincent Valient, an honest cop, which is too bad for Vincent since the police are in league with the evil of all evil men, Byron Scott.

After Ludo is cloned during a police murder, Scott has lost his chance to become the first to make a human clone, sending him into even more of a lunatic frenzy.

To make matters completely confusing, Ludo's clone is evil and commits murder. Everyone thinks it's Ludo that is doing the killing, but it's not. It's the evil Ludo and at this point things get really confusing as it's Ludo and Ludo...which is which? Programs. Get your programs here. It's hard to tell the Ludo's without your program.

In a mind numblingly uninspiring ending, the Ludo clone gets a melty face and then explodes.

House (1986)

Author and Vietnam vet Roger Cobb moves into his Aunt's house after she commits suicide. Cobb grew up in the home and his son Jimmy disappeared there while they were visiting. Cobb swore he saw Jimmy floundering in the pool, but wasn't there when he dived in to rescue him. Aunt Elizabeth claimed that the house took Jimmy. Cobb's starlet wife, Sandy, thinks Elizabeth is crazy, as does her neighbor Harold.

After Roger moves in, he hears noises from the upstairs, while ghosts and monsters appear to him. Harold thinks insanity runs in the family as Cobb dresses up in fatigues and insists a monster tried to pull him into the closet. Cobb enlists Harold for help, who has his own run in with a monster.

Cobb sees his dead Aunt, who warns him that she is dead because the house tricked her. He is also visited by a monster who takes the form of his estranged wife Sandy before trying to kill him.

As Cobb investigates further, he is sucked deeper into the houses world of secrets. Does the house have his son or is it just using his memories to trick him like it tricked his Aunt?

A decent big budget horror movie with a really good sense of comedy.

Body Snatchers (1993)

In another body snatching remake, a teenage girl notices strange things happening once her family moves onto an army base while her father makes sure the base follows EPA requirements. There's nothing new in this film, other than lots of teen angst and hunky army pilots. The characters are given a brief introduction and when they die, you really don't care. There is some female nudity which might intrigue teenage boys. The absorption of the human body and the screech of the aliens is creepy. Other than that, there's not much here.

The Adventures of Young Van Helsing (2004)

Michael Harris is a descendant of the infamous vampire hunter, Van Helsing. Yet Michael doesn't know it because his last name has been changed to protect him from the evil that might try to harm him.

Michael is your typical teen - exceedingly awkward, has a crush on a popular girl, and is the lead singer of a yet to be named generic radio friendly rock band. His rival for the girl's affection is brutish Karl, a football player and bully, who beats up Michael before going to his early admission college chemistry class. Karl is an odd looking chap who looks like he's about thirty. It's kind of creepy.

Meanwhile a doltish professor on an archaeology dig revives a creature who searches for Van Helsing's missing scepter and his heir, Michael. The creature manages to find him easily enough, speaks in subtitles, and has huge fake teeth which make him look less spooky and more stupid. The one cool thing is that he also has red eyes.

The props in the movie are far too cheap for something with this type of budget. They look like wood that has been badly spray painted gold.

There are continuity errors in the car chase scene near the end of the movie. When the interior of the car is shown, it is night. Yet when they show the car racing along the road, it is daytime.

The movie has way too much of the band, which Michael ends up naming The Van Helsings. We are then forced to watch them play at the high school in dance in long scene with no real point, other than to promote the generic rock song being played. And the bass player is the worst at faking playing the bass.

There are flashbacks to the original Van Helsing in 1905. He is always out of breath, in a community theater way, and he has a young Hindi sidekick. Unfortunately the sidekick is played by an obviously caucasian child with greasepaint and a turban slapped on his lily white cranium. Very sad, indeed.

This is the type of film that give kid/teen movies a bad name. It's poorly written and doesn't engage the imagination. Scarily enough, it sets itself up for a sequel involving a werewolf.

Larva (2005)

The new vet comes to town and discovers a mystery parasite inhabiting some local cows. Host Tender Meats are testing their scientifically altered genetic feed in town as they wish to increase their profits - and who doesn't. As everyone knows the best place to test questionable new feed is in a cattle town where townsfolk eat their burgers rare.

The Doc figures out there is a parasite problem, but the Ceo of Host Tender Meats doesn't like the Doc's new fangled ideas on food safety. At a town meeting he claims the Doc is a trouble maker who doesn't realize that actually doing something about the life threatening parasite will mean ruining the town's tourism and industry. In other words, the town will lose money.

Jacob, the only cattleman in town who believes the truth, and the Doc find a large beastie running through the rafters of Jacob's barn. The parasites are growing, mutating, evolving, and that's not good. Neither is Doc's method of investigation as he touches the mystery parasite with his bare hands. Geez....

The creepiest things about the movie are the parasite evolves into something that looks like a child size piece of spinach with a spine, and David Selby plays the evil old Ceo of Host Tender Meats.

The Tripper (2006)

I wasn't expecting much from this movie, but I liked it. A group of hippies and their non-drug taking friend (always a bad combination) head off into the woods to go to a music festival. Unfortunately they've picked the one festival with an insane killer in the woods who wears a Ronald Reagan mask and does a bad Reagan imitation. The movie is book ended by some heavy handed political stuff, which will make you comatose. There is also a scene with male frontal nudity.

The Mad (2007)

Billy Zane plays the epitome of deadpan dads by turning in his best Steven Seagal imitation. A family stops in a small town to attend a fair and decides to stay overnight. This turns out to be very unfortunate since the special that night is tainted organic beef from the local farms.

Those who consume the tainted burgers turn into toothpaste drooling zombies in less than an hour. I'm neutral on this movie because there are a few pretty funny things, but the comedy isn't that great and the horror isn't that scary.

However, I will give it some credit as I can't think of any other movie in which a meat pattie disappears on it's own and later takes a bite out of a human. Yup it's the only film I can thin of which features killer meat.

Fido (2006)

When the head of Zomcon moves into the neighborhood, the Robinson's get their own zombie. After the great zombie war, all zombies were relegated to the wild, which is separated from living areas by a chain link fence. But with Zomcon's zombie collar to control their killing ways, zombies have become servants to the Leave It to Beaver world.

Little Timmy Robinson, child outcast, names his family's zombie Fido and makes it his pet. During an outing in the park, Fido eats a busy body neighbor, which causes panic and a zombie outbreak within the confines of society.

An amusing look at the 1950s with zombies, with a sub plot about romantic relationships between zombies and humans. Billy Connolly does a nice job as Fido.

Wolfen (1981)

When a rich couple are killed, Detective Dewey Wilson is assigned to the case. Wilson's investigation takes him in directions he hadn't anticipated as it begins to appear as if the killings were made by some sort of animal. If only it were Bigfoot....

I expected a typical werewolf movie, but this delves into suspense and the supernatural more than straight horror. Albert Finney is excellent as Dewey Wilson and James Edward Olmos delivers a great performance as Eddie.

The cinematography is very nice. Shot in the South Bronx while it was full of abandoned buildings and piles of rubble , the modern ruins are both horrifying and beautiful. The crumbling church is amazing.