Review 12 - Rollergator (1996)

     Oh boy, two reviews in one day! Also, I know that Rifftrax have already covered both of the movies I've reviewed, but I've seen them both without riffing, so I decided to do my own reviews of them. But anways, "Rollergator". What a mess. This movie embodies physical pain into a form of cinema. It also has an all star cast - Joe Estevez (Werewolf, Soultaker) and Conrad Brooks of Ed Wood films, who's lines were removed for whatever reason on the print I viewed. Without further a do, lets summarize the dysfunctional plot of this madman Barney film/

     So basically, it's about a girl who saves a talking and RAPPING cOoOl and waAacky purple alligator from evil carnies Joe Estevez and his son, so she can return it to Conrad Brooks. On paper that doesn't seem like a bad idea for a movie. Expect for Joe Estevez - that should be last resort for a movie. Anyways, Estevez sends some really menacing ninja ladies after the duo to try to steal our radical, reptilious rapper, and as expected, hi-jinks ensue!

      After a lot of painful slapstick, our leading lady PJ and the alligator meet a karate instructor who was sent by Estevez to capture it, but instead teaches PJ how to defends herself, which ends up being completely pointless, as soon after she meets a girl named Slingshot, who uses - you guessed it- nun-chucks. No, of course she uses a slingshot. Eventually, the alligator and Brooks reunite, and Brooks puts some kind of curse on Estevez that turns him into an alligator. Truly a suitable punishment.

     Unlike "Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny", I don't recommend this one by any means. Its utterly painful for both the hardcore movie watcher and your everyday Joes. Please don't watch it. You can do better things with your li- what are ya Chromecasting there? WHAT DID I JUS TELL Y-

My rating : 1,5/10

Review 11 - Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)

     Whoa nelly, this movie is a real doozie!

      Yes, I have returned, mainly because I believe this movie deserves a review. I mean, holy hell, this movie is great for all the wrong reason! I see it as a bit of a surrealist masterpiece, because of its absurd "Storyline", its somewhat underwhelming performances from the cast, and its eerie atmosphere. So, lets start by summarizing the plot.

       The movie starts with the elves singing, or should I say screeching about how Santa isn't at the workshop, and that they should resume swinging around hammers, kissing dolls, and continue to scream at the top of their lungs, most likely scaring the shit out of the poor stock footage reindeer. It then cuts to Santa "stuck" in like 2 cm of sand on a beach in Florida, which could easily escape if he actually got his fat ass out the sleigh. We then get a high budget and truly enthralling musical number about Santa feeling sorry about himself and wondering if his friends can get him out of this predicament. During this, we got footage of children doing rather questionable things, including and not limited to a child jumping off a roof with an umbrella, and two kids beating the crap out of each other.

    After this song number, Santa decides its time to snooze his sadness away, but at the same time he is calling the kids one by one telepathically (I guess?). And yes, you have to sit through all the kids getting their names called. Its without a doubt a gripping moment. Once all the children get there, they decide they want to help Santa by running away, and grabbing their pets so they can try to pull the sleigh. Some of these pets include a GROWN MAN in a gorilla suit, a pig, a cow, a horse, and a sheep, to which Santa comments "Oh, this just ISN'T going to work!". Santa then tells a inspirational story, that depending on what copy of the film the viewer has, is either "Thumbelina" or "Jack and the Beanstalk". Both of these go on for about an hour, so they take up basically all the movie.

    I've only seen the version with "Thumbelina", but as expected, it is a disappointment. It starts with a lonely lady asking a witch to make her a daughter, and she does, but shes tiny. She lives a happy life until she gets kidnapped by some filthy fuckin' frogs, who force her to marry one of them. She fortunately runs away, and spends the winter of Ms. Mole, who also makes her marry another mole named Mr. Driller. She then flies away on a bird she nursed back to help, to a land with other people her size, where she is - you guessed it- forced to get married. Wow, I summarized this whole hour segment in 4 sentences, which proves that they drag it for too long and in all honestly, it shouldn't exist.

    After the excruciating Thumbelina segment, we cut back to the Florida beach Santa is stuck on. The kids then run away again, and Santa just kind of loafs around for awhile, making great observations and developing his character with such remarks as "Wow, look at that Sun!" (That line was repeated three times in the movie!). The kids then return with the Ice Cream Bunny, who is coming to save the day in his little fire engine. Also, you can tell that the kids are supposed to be singing, but the crew probably lost the audio, so they just replaced it with a fire engine alarm and a dog barking. And nothing else. Stellar. 

     So, after like 5 minutes of driving footage, they finally arrive, and at that point the movie loses its mind at a visual level. It sounds like they added the audio after they shot the scenes, so there's dialogue of Santa talking about how happy he is to see his old friend, random and downright frightening closeups of the fluffy abomination, and weird footage of the kids nodding their head ferociously and moving their mouths like goldfish. It ends on that note.

      In all honestly, I highly recommend this movie to anyone looking for some ridiculously bad obscure movies. It's a great movie to have the family watch together! If you hate your family!

My rating: 1/10     

Review 10- Tentacolino (AKA In search of the Titanic-2004)

    You thought there was only one insulting Titanic animated movie? No, the one I reviewed spawned a sequel, and there's one from a different crew called "Titanic- The Legend Goes On...". But believe it or not, this one is WORSE. Yes, this is worst than a Titanic movie that says nobody dies. Now. without further ado, let's review "Tentacolino".


   The movie starts off with scenes from the first movie (I guess they just like to recycle animation), ending with the text "Tre anni dopo" which is three years later in Italian. Our protagonists are then seen in a bathysphere. In 1915. It wasn't invented until the 30s! We find out they're looking for the Titanic. No reason why, i'm guessing just for nostalgia. Also, its worth mentioning that only one voice actor from the first movie is in this one. The dog, Smile (Who can talk...), spots some sharks in prison suits. One of them says that they're going to tell their leader Razor teeth.

    We then hear the worst rap song put to film. A shark told Razor tooth, and he's only angry because he doesn't like yellow.

Review 9- Monster a- Go Go (1965)

    Oh god, "Monster a-Go Go". More like "Monster A-No No!". This is officially the worst movie I've ever seen. And I use the term "seen" very lightly, because you can barely see anything in this movie. In matter of fact, Joel Hodgson said this is the worst movie he ever had to sit through, and the hardest to make skits about, so none of the host segments were related to the movie in their episode they riffed this on. Now, its time to tackle the big one, "Monster A- Go Go".


    The movie starts off with a really confusing shot of a man's dangling legs in space. Is he walking in space? Is he hanging out of a rocket ship's window? What is going on!?!?!? Then we see our opening credits, set to a song called "Monster A Go Go" that sounds like it was recorded with a cheese grater. The movie than officially starts with police officers looking up in the sky, at a person in a helicopter, with a narrator. Too bad I cant hear what the narrator is saying, but the sound is so terrible in this movie.

  Based on the research I did on this movie (I had to do research, because I couldn't hear the dialogue), the plot is about an astronaut named Frank Douglas (Henry Hite), who disappears from the sky. He is either turned into or been replaced with a monster that looks like a guy covered in band-aids. The military tries to capture him, but fails. They supposedly did, but their budget was too small to shoot that scene apparently. They get a telegram, saying Douglass is alive, which makes the entire movie pointless! We then hear the narrator rambling on about what the monster possibly could be, and we get the same confusing footage from the beginning.

   The directors Bill Rebane and Herschell Gordon Lewis should be ashamed. Even Lewis was smart enough to be uncredited. This was a painful experience I would never put myself through ever again. Terrible camerawork and terrible sound make this movie unbearable. I mean, I would've thought higher of this movie if I knew what was going on. Now, how about we follow the worst horror movie I ever seen with the worst ANIMATED movie I've ever seen?

My rating: 1/10  IMDB Rating: 2.4/10  Next Review: Tentacolino (2004)

Review 8- Zaat! (AKA Blood Waters of Dr.Z- 1971)

 


    Boy, this movie is a hard one to talk about. Nothing really happens in this movie, and when something does, the movie finds a way to do it wrong. This movie isn't even so bad it's good, its just bad. This movie is even worse than "The Legend of the Titanic" and "The Creeping Terror" combined. Well, without anymore stalling (God knows I want to keep stalling, but the review must go on), let's talk about "Zaat!".

    The movie starts off with the best way to start off a movie - a title screen with no sound! Yes, we only get a terribly hand-drawn pair of eyes, with the movies alternate title "Blood Waters of Dr.Z" over them. Yes, this movie is an obvious overachiever. Then we get our soon to be fishman Dr. Kurt Leopold (Marshall Grauer) spurting out phrases such as "And just at the right moment, ATTACK!", and "I love you, Sargassum fish" over stock footage of ocean animals, that look just about as confused as the viewer is. Leopold is then seen wandering around like he doesn't know where he's going, with the soundtrack of a terrible folk song about the upcoming events of the movie.

   He enters his laboratory, which looks more like someone's basement, and describes his formula "Z sub A sub A sub T". Then he does something nobody wanted to see, he strips down to his underwear. He then ejects himself, or rather poorly make it look like he ejected himself, with a strange yellow liquid. He then pushes a button, which makes the blood water from the title of the movie shoot out in his inside pool (because most laboratories have those). The doctor then puts himself in a harness, and almost falls off in the process, to emerge himself in the food coloring that's suppose to be blood.

   After raising himself from the pool again, we see that he turned into one of the worst movie monsters I've ever seen. He's suppose to look like a catfish, but to me he looks like a mix between Trumpy from "Pod People" and the Grinch. He announces how beautiful he is, then he looks at his wheel to decide who is the first to be fish food. In the beginning of the movie, he said he was going to take over the universe. Well, he's going to take over the universe one person at at time.

   We then see two cliche characters- a sheriff who can't act in the slightest (Paul Galloway) and his assistant...? The scene doesn't really go anywhere, it's just there to introduce these bland characters. We then see him stalking a girl (Fish can be perverts too), which he kidnaps the next morning, constantly tripping on the way. The Zaat tries to turn her into a Zaat too, but since she's pushing up daisies, it doesn't work.

   After more killing scenes, bland dialogue from biologists, sheriffs, and agents alike, the Zaat breaks in to a department store and throws everything all over the place. We then see more of the agents and sheriff, investigating the murders, and not until 20 minutes from the end, sheriff remembers the doctor, and says hes probably behind it. He then captures the girl agent, Marsha (Sanna Ringhaver, and by the way, I had to look up these character's names, because they are barely mentioned), and her friends have to save her. They find Zaat in the laboratory, and he kills the sheriff, and nearly kills Rex (Gerald Cruse). Marsha gets ejected with Zaat, but is saved by Rex before she can get put in the food coloring..... I mean blood water.

  The monster than runs like a chicken (Or chickenfish) with canisters of the formula with him. Marsha follows him to the ocean, both to supposedly to never be heard from again. The movie then ends, and this is when everybody lets out a sigh of relief.

   This movie is the absolute meaning of awful. It barely has a plot, bland characters, terrible acting, a god awful costume, and unprofessional camera work (The cameraman kept a shot of nothing happening for a whole minute). But this is nothing compared to what's next.

My rating: 2/10  IMDB rating: 2.5/10 Next review: Monster A- Go Go (1965)

Review 7- Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla

   This is a movie that stars one of the horror movie greats, Bela Lugosi. But on the downside, it is easily one of the worst films he's ever been in. And to put a cherry on the crap sundae, it was directed by William "One Shot" Beaudine, who brought us such other masterpieces including "Billy the Kid Versus Dracula" and "Jesse James meets Frankenstein's Daughter". So, let's jump into "Bela Lugosi meets a Brooklyn Gorilla".

   The movie starts off with a narrator describing the wonders of the jungle, over stock footage of animals that don't live in the jungle, and live mostly in savanna (Including lions and hyenas). It then cuts to the stars of our film (You thought that Bela would be the star? Well you're way off!), Duke Mitchell (A Dean Martin ripoff) and Sammy Petrillo (Jerry Lewis ripoff). They are lost on this island, and are looking for the way off. The Natives decide to let them stay in their village, and are friendly to the ripoff duo. Dean... I mean Duke falls in love with the Native Nona, who assists Dr. Zabor (Bela Lugosi), and she thinks he could help them get out.

     The duo and Bela meet, and after telling a few terrible jokes, become terrible enemies. He explains that he is creating a way to turn men into apes. After more unfunny jokes with a chimpanzee, they decide to stay at his hut.

     Jealous that Duke is closer to Nona then he is, he decides to turn him into a gorilla. But we don't see this happen until the LAST 10 MINUTES OF THE MOVIE. Meanwhile, we get some bad songs, terrible dialogue, and even worst jokes. Once he finally turns into a gorilla, Jerry... I mean Sammy finds him, and tries to figure out a way to set him free. Once they do, Bela finds and shoots him. I'm not kidding.

   But, it ended up it was all a dream! Yes, this is probably the most cliche way to end the movie. And it ended up they were about to be late for their routine. And on the way to the stage, he runs into all the people he saw in his dream- Nona, Chula (Bela's servant), Saloma, and even Bela himself.

  This is the worst movie I've ever seen Bela in, without a doubt. Worst than "Bride of the Monster" and "Glen or Glenda?" combined. Also, Sammy and Duke were sued at the time of this release by Martin/Lewis for stealing their act. So, this was a big flop either way.

My rating: 2/10 IMDB rating: 2.9 Next Review: Zaat! (1971)

Review 6- Santa with Muscles (1996)

      Yes, I know I said I would review "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla" next, but I found the perfect movie to review. This movie has a way of finding two things people like- Christmas movies and Hulk Hogan- finding the worst of the two, and putting them in a movie. Without further ado, this is John Murlowski's "Santa with Muscles".

    We see Hulk Hogan, playing the character Blake, who is going out to play paintball with his friends. But first, we'll have to throw out the first of many fight scenes in this movie. Ya, there will be a lot of them in this movie. We see Hulk's employees (chefs, butlers, etc.) attacking him from every side, until they said his time was 4:23. Displeased, he walks into his mansion to get ready for his friends to come over.

    After the game starts, he drives like a lunatic, and gets caught by a police officer, who thinks that he is a terrorist. Because, that makes sense. He then requests for backup, and he almost gets caught. But, good thing Hulk is clever, because he shoots his paintball gun at an officer's window. He says out loud, in an open roof car, that he would hide in a mall.

   It appears that the mall desperately needs a Santa, because the mob of little kids are getting angry from waiting too long. But luckily, Hulk finds a Santa suit, that he decides to hide in, so he doesn't get caught. But after having a bad encounter with a little kid, and seeing a part of Hulk's old clothes, they figure out its him. He hides in a vent where the garbage is thrown, and he gets hit in the head with a ceramic Santa.

     He is then found by Lenny (Don Stark), who is happy, because his boss said she would give $50 to the person who finds a Santa. He is also happy, because after looking through his wallet, it has enough money to pay back to our antagonist Ebner Frost (Ed Begley Jr.). Hulk wakes up from his amnesia, and Lenny tells him he is really Santa.

     After meeting some kids in a terribly unfunny sequence, he overhears two guys who were stealing money from a donation bowl fighting with a little girl. He beats the crap out of them both in a hilarious fight scene, and gets an applaud from the audience. He then sees the scene for the orphanage the donations were for, and decides to go over there to help. Lenny didn't exactly go along with the plan, but decided to go with him.

     The orphanage has a problem- they are constantly being harassed by Dr. Blight (Steve Valentine) and his cast of bufoon scientists Dr. Vial (Kai Ephron), Dr. Watt (Diane Robin), and Dr. Flint (Kevin West). And to give you an idea of how ridiculous these villains are, here's a picture:

     After destroying the orphanage's statue, they get into another fighting scene with Hulk Hogan. They then welcome Hulk and Lenny to stay,  and they agree. They are then harassed by the scientists once again, and one of the orphans tries to slingshot Frost's mansion. Hulk stops him, and the scene ends. Was there any point to that scene? Nope.

    Hulk then finds out about a secret clubhouse, Hulk manages to break open the door, and they discover that it leads to a cave, covered with expensive crystals that make electricity. The scientists find out they discovered it, and capture Lenny, who is told to betray his friends. He does so, because after another fight scene, Hulk Hogan gets his memory back, and is back home. And when he comes back to the orphanage, he finds out that Lenny let them take over, and that Frost is making the kids mine for the crystal.

    Following many more pointless fight scenes, we find out that Hulk Hogan himself was a former resident of the orphanage, and that Frost used to be his best friend. They have a final battle, and then one of the crystals explode the entire orphanage. Yep, everything that the cast fought for in the movie was gone. That's good payback for the hour and a half I wasted watching this!

    The movie ends with Hulk getting an idea, by letting all the kids stay at Frost's old mansion. The movie then ends with throwing the Santa hat on the bush, possibly symbolic of throwing away a possibly good idea for a good Christmas movie.

This movie wasn't that bad. but wasn't all that great either. It had over the top acting, fight scenes galore, god awful effects, and a bad plot. But still, it was nowhere near as bad as many of the others movies I've reviewed up to this point.

My Rating: 5/10 IMDB rating: 2.3/10 Next Review; Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952)