Skinned Deep

Cost: £1.09 (Play.com)

Tag-line: Meet the Surgeon General

Sample dialogue: “You are a pathetic manifestation of everything desperate, using violence as a ridiculous speed-bump in the courtesies of daily social graces. I am attraction, lust, courtship, conquest, flirtation, penetration, conception. I am progress. I am inertia. I am strength. Behold… creation!”

I’m going to badly date this review for anyone who stumbles upon it a few months (or even years) down the line, but I want to start by mentioning that Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s much-hyped new sitcom Life’s Too Short premiers tonight on BBC2. It stars Warwick Davis as a version of himself – a famous dwarf actor who gained prominence in worldwide smashes like Return of the Jedi and Willow but has been reduced to prostituting himself out in exploitative dross to try and pay the bills.

That’s a promising premise for a sitcom – which I’m sure is destined to do for Davis what Extras did for Barry from Eastenders – but it’s also not far from the truth. Warwick Davis has done an incredible amount of shit over the years, much of which lands squarely in beermovieguide’s wheel-house.

At the end of the shoot, Warwick was allowed to keep any of the plates he hadn't smashed. He was glad to get them.

In honour of Davis’ new show – which will hopefully close the book on this unfortunate portion of his career – I thought it’d be fun to examine one of these films, Skinned Deep, and his character within it, the psychotic crockery-obsessed killer Plates. As indicated by his name, Plates’ weapon of choice when it comes to dispatching his victims is… um… plates, which he hurls by the dozen with manic glee. But what is the root of this obsession? Happily, the screenwriters took the time to pencil in a grand-standing speech – and boy does Davis lap it up – where Plates outlines his unique perspective on the universe. In case you never actually watch Skinned Deep (and really, in all likelihood, why on Earth would you?), I present the monologue in its entirety below:

“The cherished enamel. The porcelain. It’s like a society. Every molecule an individual. Like me. But, when unified, a structure takes shape. A circular vessel for distributing organic nourishment. We, like this plate, gain strength in numbers. We thrive in a herd environment. We feed off one another, aggressively growing in numbers, until one day…”

He’s unfortunately cut off before he can finish, but I seriously doubt there’ll be anything in Life’s Too Short that can compete with it. Anyway, this all ignores the fact that Davis is neither the star, nor the main antagonist in Skinned Deep. He’s just one member of a whole family of crazed mutant killers. Chief among these is the Surgeon General – a character specifically designed to take his place among the ranks of horror icons such as Pinhead, Freddy and Jason. “Meet the Surgeon General,” screams the tag-line. “Meet the Surgeon General,” says the trailer (more than once). He’s presented as though he’s destined to become a cult hero for a generation… all of which ignores the fact that, in practice, he’s pretty shit.

Which reminds me... I really must remember to Sky Plus the next 'Snog, Marry, Avoid'.

I do not begrudge the film’s marketers making everything they could of this guy, however. He does have kind of a cool look – with the bear-trap for a mouth and all – and if you picked up a copy of the DVD it’s almost certainly because you were drawn in by his image on the cover. However, that image is not entirely representative of the finished film, which is far stranger than the cover implies.

We open on an old man in his car, driving down a lonely road on a dark and stormy night. A pick-up truck races up behind him and look who’s in the back! It’s the Surgeon General, swinging a hook on a chain around his head. He tosses this through the old man’s window and spears him in the leg, causing the car to crash.

There’s something very subdued about all this. It’s probably intended to be incredibly exciting, but something in the editing, the sound design, just the whole way it all comes together, is off. It sort of sits there, flat, on the screen, almost bored with itself. It’s a problem that persists with the rest of the film’s action scenes. There’s no signal of Skinned Deep’s true potential till the camera moves in on the flipped car and the bloodied and bruised old man. As the Surgeon General swaggers in for the killing blow, we cut to a candle-lit bedroom, where an oiled-up muscle man is flexing his muscles. Then back to the Surgeon General. Then – no rhyme or reason – back to the greasy muscle man. Then back to the Surgeon General. Then death. Roll titles.

Okay. This is a kind of crazy I could maybe get on board with.

"Soooo..... You been watching any of that 'True Blood'?"

Our next potential victims are a holidaying family: Turgid bore and Zach Galifianakis look-a-like Dad, his horrible wife, his horrible son and his horrible (but could maybe be hot if she put some effort in) teenage daughter. After ‘accidentally’ blowing a tire on the road the family are invited into the house of an old woman apparently drafted in from a David Lynch movie – along with her creepy over-dubbed voice.

Her home is a carpet-less Steptoe and Son nightmare, bedecked in a junkyard mish-mash of model aeroplanes, work tools, strange old trinkets and – bleh! – wood panel walls. “This is a really nice place you got here,” Zach lies to the woman, before telling his kids: “C’mon, kids! It’s just a normal house,” as though they’re both blind as well as moronic. Presented with a room full of decapitated dolls heads, beads, fairy lights, keys, broken telephones on bits of string and newspaper clippings pasted to the walls, Zach turns to his wife, grins, and says: “See? I told you this place was normal!” Some might unfairly perceive this as the film-makers’ attempts to smack their audience over the head with how ‘in-on-the-joke’ they are, but I take a different view. My own interpretation is that there’s a subtle subtext here, which is that the Dad’s on some kind of pills and currently… ahem… ‘tripping balls’.

"Ironically, the reason I brought us out on this trip is so I could get over the death of my other, secret family!"

The family sit down at the dinner table and are introduced to the rest of the old woman’s clan: The Surgeon General (now wearing that old man’s face as a mask), Plates (who “just loves his little corner”) and Brain, who enters with a tray of raw, human flesh (dinner) and a burlap sack covering his own deformed head. Dad immediately tucks in without the slightest trepidation, confusion or terror regarding anything he has seen and I must say that it is refreshing, in this day and age, to see that kind of tolerance and open-hearted display of friendship. It brought a tear to my eye.

At this point, I was enjoying the interesting route Skinned Deep was taking, and quite prepared to settle in for the story of a man who quite by chance finds himself in the home of a group of sadistic cannibal freaks and, by virtue of his own good manners and eagerness to make friends with others, ends up having a lovely time. It would be a rare treat, it really would. Unfortunately, Zach’s family let him down, starting with his vegetarian daughter Tina (seriously, it’s always the vegetarians who ruin everything), who turns her nose up at the “slop” she’s presented and openly insults her hosts. Zach’s horrible wife then takes out a camera and – without asking permission – begins snapping away at the less than photogenic (and understandably camera-shy) Surgeon General.

He responds to this faux pas in the only way that is proper (as set out in the Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette) by leaping up onto the table and slicing the daft broad’s neck open.

He didn't use the correct knife, but in certain instances it's better just to let these things go.

He then kills Dad (also etiquette) and the boy (slicing him clean in half, long-ways, through his centre parting), but Tina is saved by Brain, who argues that she “must be preserved”. Horny old dog that he is. So she becomes Brain’s prisoner and he sets about seducing her with finger soup, picnics and motorcycle lessons. She in turn tries to manipulate him into helping her escape. In all, there are two clear possible outcomes. Either she joins the family or she kills them all and breaks free. Anyone watching knows where this is all headed, but the film takes its sweet time in getting there.

In the meantime we get to endure encounters with other family members (the Creator, Octo-baby), a bit of full-frontal male nudity and the violent retribution of an elderly biker gang. Every sequence is shot through with an uncanny weirdness. The viewing experience is a kind of discombobulated fugue, and you know you should turn it off and get on with your life, but you can’t bring yourself to turn away from its cheap brand of paint-huffing lunacy, like one of those sweaty fever dreams you can’t wake up from and are too embarrassed to describe to your therapist in the morning. In fact, Skinned Deep is almost designed as a film to watch, forget about and then half remember in ten years time as you wonder to yourself: “Is that a real film or did I dream all that?”

"Now that I've helped murder your entire family I'm guessing you probably want to have sex with me. You slut."

All this craziness, both in terms of the story and the headache-inducing manner in which it’s filmed, are bound to earn the director criticism for ‘trying too hard’ and over-reaching himself, but you know what? Every once in a while it’s nice to see someone trying too hard. It’s a damn sight better watching a film where everyone’s tried too hard than one where nobody’s tried at all.

A hillbilly horror, experimental art-house project and Troma-style gross-out comedy all rolled up into one baffling ball, Skinned Deep plays like Eraserhead retrofitted for beer-swilling idiots (like me). As such, it’s not going to please everyone, and plenty will struggle with the pace, uniformly terrible acting and general incoherence of it all. However, for less than £3 you are guaranteed to find nothing else like it and you never know… maybe it’ll be your kind of crazy too.

Good movie, bad movie or beer movie: Beer movie

[John McNee]

One Man Force

Cost: £2.99 – double feature with Blue Jean Cop (Review here- http://beermovieguide.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/blue-jean-cop-aka-shakedown/ )

Tag line: No one enforces the law…like he does!

Sample dialogue:  “I’m going to blow off your head, and shit in your throat!”

Ah, the 80s cop movie. Where would we be without you? Detectives that don’t play by the rule book, goofy sidekicks, angry police chiefs and Al Leong, are all usually present and correct. In the background there’s a wailing sax and the final fight tends to be in an abandoned warehouse/container ship.

And so it is with One Man Force. Sort of. Al Leong isn’t in it. But for the most part it sticks to the 1980s cop formula.

Not in this film.

Former NFL player John Matuszak plays Jack Swan (when did script writers lose the ability to give their lead characters cool sounding names anyway?), a cop who is trying to bring down a Mexican drug cartel in LA.

The film opens with what looks like the start of a cool action scene at a bar. A masked man enters through the back, and sees a woman and man talking behind the counter. A customer is having an early morning drink.  The masked man announces his presence by shouting “I’m going to kill you sucker!” which, let’s be fair, is not one of the most memorable opening lines to a movie.

Everyone dives for cover as bullets start flying. Each of the participants gets hit…at which point it is revealed that it is just paintballs. The masked man is our hero, and the couple behind the bar are his partner (played by Flash Gordon himself, Sam Jones) and his partner’s wife. They all have a good laugh, while the customer has a heart attack and collapses.

Now this confuses me on a number of levels. Firstly, this is an impromptu paintball match, which leads me to think this is what they do all the time. Secondly, paintballs hurt – surely putting your customers in the crossfire isn’t good for business, unless you advertised yourself as a paintballing pub, of course. Which would actually be amazing, (Take a Shot, Then Take a Shot!) and I have totally copyrighted that idea. The third point is – bottles of spirits are broken in this game.  Flash Gordon doesn’t seem too bothered by this loss of income. But who can blame him when there are bad guys to hunt down?

Swan and Flash meet with their Chief, played with the usual aplomb by acting legend Ronny Cox (Robocop, Total Recall). They want permission to go to a warehouse that they have been tipped off is where the drugs are being smuggled into the city. Of course Ronny Cox, being Ronny Cox, needs more than vague tips. He needs facts goddammit!

This is a perfectly valid point. You can’t have cops running around trying to solve cases on the basis of what some untrustworthy tipster has said. They need evidence, facts. That is the sort of police service I want.

Being that this is not The Wire, Swan and Flash don’t like this, and so go off to the factory anyway. There is a gun fight, and Flash gets shot square in the chest, dying in Swan’s arms. Swan enraged, lifts up a huge refrigerator and crushes the man that killed his partner.

Sorry Brian, but Gordon is most definitely not alive in the film.

(It should be pointed out that John Matuszak was a bear of a man, and not in the sense of Arnie or Sly, with biceps. He was just a bear. A huge man. Not what you would call a traditional action lead. Most of you will never have heard of his name before, but you will be familiar with his greatest role, that of Sloth, in the Richard Donner motion picture The Goonies.)

After crushing one of the henchmen, the leader of the drug cartel (who has a pencil thin moustache and drives a car that comes out of the 1930s) tries to attack our hero, but fails, and escapes.  Swan holds Flash in his arms, and carries him out, in a scene where you expect a romantic tune to start playing. A… ‘Swan-song’, perhaps? (No applause, please.)

Now Swan is without a partner, and is put on leave from the force. He needs to deal with his partner’s son, who is into drugs, and is one of those annoying kids who tries to act like a punk but never pulls it off.  But mostly he wants to bring his version of justice down on the whole criminal system.

While all this is happening the TV announces that a pop star has been kidnapped. The pop star is played by Stacey Q. I wasn’t sure who Stacey Q was, but a look on YouTube and Wikipedia has revealed that this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aINmJ5ieM6Y was her most popular song. I have never heard of it before. Have you? Let us know in the comments section.

Ring any bells to anyone? Anyone?

A man who claims to be Stacey Q’s manager comes to Swan, asking for help to track down his client. Getting a tip-off from his buddies at the force, Swan heads to a nightclub to find out more.

The 1980s Action Movie Nightclub is a weird thing to behold.  You wonder if nightclubs in LA really did resemble the Blue Oyster Bar as seen in the Police Academy series, or if they were what people who took a lot of drugs thought they looked like. This one seems to have been a club for gay men, but then there are some women around, and whips and chains, and what appears to be a cameo from Don Estelle, of It Ain’t Half Hot Mum fame.

Is whipped in this film. I can sense you all going to Amazon to buy the movie now.

This being an 80s cop movie, the whole bar ends up attacking Swan, who uses poor old Estelle by swinging him around on his chain, like a helicopter blade, knocking out the attacking patrons. But he is nearly overwhelmed, until saved by the late, great, Charles Napier, and his pal, a couple of undercover cops. We will be hearing more from them later on.

It turns out that the man claiming to be Stacy Q’s manager, was in fact NOT (gasp), and he is found dead the next day. This movie has layers and layers. Swan is convinced it is all connected to his partner’s death. Cox, again, wants actual evidence to back this up.

A bunch of other stuff then happens (please know, I too am aware of the word count) including a car chase where Swan goes after the informant who tipped them off about the drugs in the first place. As the car crashes, and explodes, Swan spits out the immortal line: “Damn, I forgot to bring my marshmallows!”.

He also teaches his partner’s son to say NO to drugs and trains him to fight the dealers still wanting money off him. The two of them train in a mini-montage sequence, and the whole thing feels disconnected to the main plot, mostly resembling a PSA about how drugs are bad (The best of which was done by Clint Eastwood can be viewed here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cic9djMyVl4 ).

In another memorable scene, Swan is being chased the Mexican gang through a block of flats. He knocks on a door of a woman, asking her to come in because he’s a cop. She instantly agrees to do so. And, more than that, strips off, throws him onto her bed, and answers the door to the drug gang half-naked, telling them to scram. This lady must be very trusting to do all of this, without any evidence or knowledge that Swan is actually a cop. He must just have a trusting face.

We also get to see Swan engage in the art of seduction at an upper-class nightclub. There is not much more disturbing than seeing a 7ft giant of a man, trying to dance in a nightclub, and gyrating with a woman half his height, and one tenth his body weight. But she is into it, so what do I know. LA is an odd town.

Who wouldn't want to see a movie with this guy playing a cop?

Thankfully there is no sex scene as it turns out Swan has been set up. Taken to a ranch where Stacey Q is also being held, he is beaten up, and then put into a box. Why they don’t shoot them before doing so, we never find out.

Swan escapes from this and the film barrels along to its conclusion. Stacey Q, and the lady that fooled Swan end up dead. We find out that Charles Napier and his partners are in a conflict with the drug gangs, and they kidnapped her for leverage. Why Charles Napier is worried about a pop star we never find out.

At the end there is a confrontation in an abandoned warehouse (yay!) where Richard Lynch pops up as the boss. It is also revealed that Ronny Cox is in cahoots with them all. He has big debts in Las Vegas. This teaches me to trust in the law.

There is a big gun fight, with explosions befit for such an occasion. Napier gets electrocuted. Ronny Cox is killed by an explosion throwing him off a platform. Napier’s partner is killed by Swan crushing him with a Pepsi machine. The best death is reserved for Lynch, who is throw from a roof, his leg caught in a rope, and swings in and out of a massive fire, slowly barbecuing. Pretty sweet death scene, it has to be said.

Richard Gere wants his movie back.

One Man Force ticks all the boxes. Yes, everything in this film has been done elsewhere, and better. But that doesn’t matter. It still does things well. John Matuszak is actually insane in the role. His eyes bulge when he shouts. He rants about the drug dealers destroying the lives of kids, and he screams: “YOU…KILLED…MY…PARTNER!!!”

It is a compelling performance. Sadly we were never able to find out what sort of career John Matuszak would have had after this film, as he passed away the year it was released.

Good movie, bad movie or beer movie? Beer movie

[Robert Girvan]

Alienator

Cost: £2.25 (Play.com)

Tag-line: The ultimate terminator.

Sample dialogue: “Yeah! Yes! Yes! Look! Colonel! The net’s created a perpendicular magnetic pole! It’s siphoning off her electrons in alignment with the Earth’s axis!”

You know what I love? A good written intro or ‘opening crawl’ to a film. Alienator has a great one: “In a far off corner of the galaxy, a well-armed rebel battalion ambushes the armies of the Great Tyrant, Baal.”

So far this is all good stuff. It continues: “A massacre ensues. Thousands of innocents perish, and the leader of the rebellion, Kol, is captured and sentenced to die. Today, on a dark prison planet, where no man has ever escaped, the Commanding Executioner prepares to send his prisoner straight to hell.”

I love all that shit. We then open on the Commander himself, Jan Michael Vincent (Airwolf, The Mechanic) who is enthusiastically looking forward to exactly two things – a) executing Kol, and b) sticking it to P.J. Soles. One of these endeavours is more noble than the other.

Swoon...

The Commander is soon joined by a delegate from a non-violent star system who opposes capital punishment and wanders around spouting smug, derisive comments at everyone, like a vegan at a barbecue. Completely by chance, Kol then breaks out and makes a bid for freedom, sparking off a laser battle that develops through various locations within what is meant to be the interior of a space prison, but looks like the interior of a water treatment centre. I should also point out that everyone here is technically an alien, but they all appear recognisably human, with the possible exception of Jan Michael Vincent, who looks like some kind of varnished lizard. I don’t think that’s a make-up job, though.

This whole section is pretty fun in a nostalgic way that makes me pine for the cheap-ass space battles and model work of 70′s-era Dr Who and Blake’s 7. Kol escapes in a cardboard ship and takes off into space, while the Commander launches the ‘Hunter’ to pursue him. For a moment it looks like we’re in for a galaxy spanning space opera, with Kol struggling to stay one step ahead of the Hunter and regroup with his rebellion buddies to launch a final all-or-nothing attack on Baal. But it’s not to be. He immediately crash-lands on planet Earth, circa 1989 and our fun space romp takes a dive into the toilet.

The next batch of scenes introduce us to the various cannon fodder characters we’ll be spending most of the rest of the movie with. Some college kids, the local game warden, a pair of red-neck poachers and the vodka-sozzled Doc Burnside, played by the fantastic Robert Quarry. You might recognise Quarry from any number of great TV shows and films (my own favourite being Dr Phibes Rises Again) but here he is wasted in a thankless and minor role.

He’s not the only genuinely talented actor to be completely underutilised, either. Genre fans might get excited to see Joe Pilato (Day of the Dead) appear, but he doesn’t get anything very interesting to do. Halloween/Carrie alumnus P.J. Soles fairs a little better in the role of Tara, whose boob-emphasising dress is only slightly less revealing than that of the Alienator herself.

Um................ swoon?

I guess this is as good a place as any to talk about the Alienator, or ‘Hunter’ (she’s never referred to as “Alienator” in the film). In the broadest possible spectrum of shitty monsters with shitty costumes – and I’m including the realms of Turkish and Bollywood exploitation in this – the Alienator must be one of the shittiest, almost as though that’s the intention. I find it impossible to believe that anyone designed her outfit – black rubber boots and underwear with a pair of silver dog bowls over the boobs, a silver eye mask and a white, heavy metal wig – with an eye to anything other than the ridiculous. No-one designed that thinking it looked scary or bad-ass. It has to be a joke. But if it is a joke, why is the film around it so po-faced?

There is only one sensation I feel when looking at the Alienator and it’s not dread, amusement or even – God forbid – arousal. It’s embarrassment. That’s the only appropriate response and it never goes away. It never stops being embarrassing. A quick Google-search informs me that the Alienator herself, body-builder Teagan Clive, gave up on her acting career in 1990 (preferring to focus on screen-writing), and I have to assume that this role – and its stupid costume – played a large part in that. I’ve never seen Teagan Clive outside of this film, but I’m sure that she would’ve been a much more imposing threat if they’d let her play the role in the same clothes she showed up to the set in.

First to meet the fabled ‘Hunter’ is the hapless, alcoholic doctor, who thereafter becomes the first to be killed by her. In a welcome, macabre sequence, his burning body continues to writhe in pain and panic, even after his head has been reduced to a charred, flaming skull. And that’s it for Quarry’s involvement, which is a shame for us, but probably just as well for him. He deserved better.

Because the world NEEDS one, that's why!

Anyway, the college kids are travelling in their RV when they run down Kol, who’s just crash-landed in the forest. They take him to the cabin of the game warden, where he revives to inform everyone that he’s an alien renegade being hunted by an unstoppable android foe and they are all in danger. Meanwhile, hill-billy hunters Burt and Harley potter about in the woods, resolutely failing to do anything interesting. None of these characters is exactly likeable, but by far the most excruciating are these two. It would be wrong to suggest that there’s ever any urgency to Alienator, but whenever they are on screen the action slows from a crawl to an ooze. Though they only appear in a few scenes, Burt and Harley must have the most lines in the entire movie, and their interminable back-and-forths (presumably intended to provide some kind of comic relief) are enough to send even the most battle-hardened film-goer reaching for the pill bottle.

“You don’t think that’s Doc Burnside, do you?” Harley asks, on discovering Quarry’s blackened corpse. “He don’t look too well.” “Huh! ‘Well-done’ is more like it,” Burt responds, in one of their mercifully shorter exchanges. Thankfully, after threatening to join up with the game warden and so force us to endure their ‘hilarious’ banter for the rest of the film, the pair are dispatched by the Hunter, becoming her second and third victims out of a total… um… four.

"You're comin' home with me, cowboy. Momma needs lovin'."

That’s not a great body count for any genre movie and a pretty poor show for a supposedly unstoppable harbinger of death. I think the Terminator, in his first film appearance, racked up over thirty kills. The alien, too, in Alien, only had seven crew members to pick from, but managed to nail five of them (we don’t count Ash). You would think the Alienator would at least have to land somewhere between her namesakes, right? 15? Maybe 20? But four’s all we get.

Our ragtag band of survivors, however, have no grasp of how shit Alienator is and so take off into the hills. They also don’t seem to grasp how easily they could all escape their tormentor’s clutches, despite being explicitly told by Kol that she is following the tracking device wrapped around his neck. They could all split up, fleeing in separate directions, and survive. The group could split off from Kol, leaving him to fend for himself, and they’d survive. They could even – as one character suggests – hobble Kol and run. Any of these strategies would guarantee survival, but instead everyone seems happy to hang together, providing human shields for an escaped alien prisoner they just met. It’s almost like they don’t want to live.

Eventually, all this pathetic fleeing leads the group to the cabin of a retired army colonel, who listens to their tale of woe and offers a few words of wisdom. “I think you believe it’s the truth, but it’s common knowledge that UFO’s, little green men and space monsters are figments of the imagination, usually brought on by stress,” he says, before breaking out the elephant gun and land-mines.

On the plus side, the porn parody would require very little in the way of re-writes.

A showdown with the Hunter follows and she is apparently killed several times only to return a few moments later. Eventually, however, she gets what she came for and we head back to the space prison in time for the vegan delegate to reveal his true identity (never trust those vegans) and engage the Commander in a brief, bloody fight over a light-sabre. That’s it. Roll credits.

Which leaves a rather empty feeling for anyone watching at home, as we wonder: “What the hell was the point in all that?” It’s not at all apparent what the makers of Alienator were striving for. A basic B-movie? A parody? An intentionally bad film? I’m fairly certain they never intended to make something that would compete with The Terminator and its ilk, but I’m still pretty fuzzy on what reactions they were hoping for from the audience.

There’s actually something almost endearingly shitty about Alienator, especially in its first ten minutes, that makes me wish it had just a bit more fun and craziness than it does. I’d like to be able to recommend it, but I can’t. We’re looking for beer movies here, “scraping the bottom of the bargain barrel”, as we say, so our standards are not very high. But we do have standards. Alienator does not meet them.

Good movie, bad movie or beer movie: Bad movie

[John McNee]

The Bad Pack

Cost: £1.09 (Play.com)

Tag line: A crack team of elite mercenaries… A deadly group of desperate terrorists… There is only one outcome!

Sample dialogue: “The great turning point in our lives is when we gain the courage to accept our evil as what is best in us.”

Robert Davi does not like you. He does not care about you or whether you have a good time. You may have seen him in ‘Die Hard’, ‘The Goonies’ or ‘Licence to Kill’ and thought to yourself “Hey! This guy’s cool. I like him.” Well he’s not cool and you shouldn’t. He is seriously uncool. Nothing will ever illustrate this more clearly than his participation in a little film called ‘The Bad Pack’.

I don't know. Maybe he's wearing it ironically? Which I guess would make him the first hipster action hero.

The ‘Bad Pack’ in question are a team of seven ‘elite’ mercenaries hired to defend a village of Mexican illegal immigrants from a fanatic militia group who’ve been terrorising them – mostly by riding dirt bikes through their fruit stands.

If you think that sounds suspiciously like the plot to ‘The Magnificent Seven’, you’d be right. If you thought it sounded suspiciously like the plot to ‘Seven Samurai’ or ‘Battle Beyond the Stars’ you’d also be right, but I don’t think the makers of ‘The Bad Pack’ set out to rip off any of these films. In fact, I’d wager they haven’t seen any of these films. If these guys are intentionally ripping off anything it’s the original pilot of ‘The A-Team’. So it’s worse than you might fear. Instead of diluting Kurosawa or John Ford, what we actually get here is a half-assed and generally incompetent riff on Stephen J Cannell.

No offence to the late Mr Cannell (or, as some like to affectionately refer to him, 'God').

Instead of cigar-chomping Hannibal Smith we’re presented with Confederate-hat-wearing James Mcque (Davi), who works at a motorcycle shop and hangs out at a diner that is never more than five minutes from being robbed. When a masked assailant puts a gun in Mcque’s ear and demands he give up his wallet and valuables, he responds: “I don’t mind you taking this stuff. Just leave the sunglasses. They’re my favourite pair.” What follows is a fight scene so woefully inept that it’s depressing more than laughable.

Rowdy Roddy Piper steps into the ‘Face’ role, which might seem odd at first. Given his wrestling persona, you might expect Piper to be more suited to filling the boots of ass-kicker Mr T or ‘Howling Mad’ Murdock, as opposed to a smooth-talking ladies’ man. In the context of ‘The Bad Pack’, however, it makes sense, as he’s the only member of the entire cast to display one ounce of charisma.

As for the Mr T position? Ralf Moeller takes that, while our Murdock surrogate is Latrell Hoffman (Patrick Dollaghan). How much is Hoffman like Murdock? Well, you remember that scene in the original ‘A-Team’ where they had to break Murdock out of a mental hospital? Well if you liked that, you’re going to LOVE the scene in ‘The Bad Pack’ where they have to break Hoffman out of a mental hospital. It’s the same scene, is what I’m trying to say here. Basically, somebody, probably a 10-year-old kid (and not a very bright 10-year-old kid), saw ‘The A-Team’ and thought “I’m going to write that movie”, and so that’s exactly what they did.

The world wouldn't see an A-Team rip-off this shitty till, well... 'The A-Team'.

Anyway, to round out the cast we also have a woman, a black guy and a traitor from the militia side. None of these characters are very interesting, with the possible exception of the Black Guy (Larry B Scott), an acquisitions agent with no field skills who speaks primarily in abbreviated slogans he must immediately explain (“That’s I.N.G.T.H. It’s not going to happen.” “I’m a C.D.M. A can-do man.”), which seems to me to defeat the time-saving point of abbreviations.

He’s also interesting for the way in which other characters relate to him, i.e. pure, seething hatred. This is especially true of the Mexican villagers. When the plane carrying our intrepid band of killers-for-hire arrives at the village, a crowd of farmers and their wives rush to greet them. First out the door is Roddy Piper, who they cheer (as anyone surely would). Next is Ralph Moeller, and again they cheer. Then comes Black Guy, and the crowd fall silent. He steps down from the plane bemused, as the villagers gaze at him, apparently ready to murder him if he so much as opens his mouth. Now, these people don’t know Black Guy. They don’t know how irritating he is. They’ve never met him. They only know that they’re paying him money to save their lives AND that he’s black. That’s it. Apparently that’s enough to hush the hell up and stare him down like he’s a piece of shit on a shoe. I’ve watched this scene a couple of times and there’s simply no valid interpretation other than this – these Mexican villagers are a bunch of racist bastards.

This isn’t limited to one scene, either. It continues at the town meeting where Black Guy tries to lead the audience in a round of applause for Mcque… and they sit and stare daggers at him. They may want to be rescued, these villagers. But not if it’s by a black guy. Seriously, these ungrateful, hypocritical ass-holes are a lynch mob waiting to happen.

NOT PICTURED: The greatest action cast ever assembled.

So the Bad Pack set about gathering together some weapons and putting a plan together to stop the militia, led by professional Kurt Russell look-a-like (and sound-a-like) Marshall R. Teague. All in all, this section of the film takes about 7 to 12 hours. I’m not sure. I wasn’t counting. But that’s what it felt like.

By the way, did you know Vernon Wells (Commando, The Road Warrior) is in this movie? He’s close to unrecognisable, playing a biker militia henchman with about four lines, but I looked it up on imdb. It’s definitely him. Which begs the question: What’s up with that? Vernon Wells is awesome. If I were making an action movie I’d kill to have him play the villain. But here he’s not the villain. He’s not even Henchman #1. Four lines and we never see him again. That’s the kind of behaviour that unfairly raises a person’s hopes and then dashes them. You know who else is in this crap? Clifton Collins Jr.

In the prestigious role of Townsman 1, no less.

Eventually, the Bad Pack storm the militia compound and it is even more tedious than you could possibly have imagined. Every fight seems deliberately choreographed to be as slow and clumsy as possible. Every action sequence is edited so that any hint of excitement or immediacy is removed.

This all builds to a showdown between Davi, armed with a pistol, and Teague, armed with a knife. Forgoing any sense of sportsmanship, Davi shoots Teague in one knee-cap (“That’s for the first amendment”), then the other (“That’s so you never walk on anyone again.”). The whole compound is rigged to explode and Teague has no chance of escape. Davi tells him: “You’ve got two minutes before you’re pixie dust. How fast can you crawl?” He then makes his escape, leaving Teague to his doom.

It’s not much of a showdown, granted, but it’s not as bad as it could have been. But then, with 30 seconds left, Davi reappears over Teague, who I feel I must reiterate is unarmed, crippled and doomed. “One more thing,” he says, “This is because you’re a lousy card player,” and SHOOTS HIM DEAD. Now, first off, that “lousy card player” comment refers to a scene earlier in the film where the two men play one round of Blackjack, Teague ends up on 20 and Davi on 21. That’s not lousy. It’s not a winning hand, but it’s about as close as you can get. Secondly, Davi’d already done his whole quip thing while dooming Teague to death a minute and a half earlier. There was absolutely no need for him to go back. It plays as though he said the bit about pixie dust, ran out of the room, then thought “Oh shit! I know what I should have said. I should’ve called him a lousy card player!” then TURNED BACK and killed him. That’s not cool. That’s lame and pathetic. It’s not even a good quip!

And this is, above all, the greatest crime committed by ‘The Bad Pack’. It’s boring, it rips off ‘The A-Team’, it’s badly directed and poorly acted, but, most importantly, it presents a vision of Robert Davi that the world was not meant to see. Specifically, it is the vision of a man dressed in a pink, long-sleeved shirt, with chinos, white sock and black shoes, sunglasses and a Confederate cap. A man who is described as a mysterious bad-ass, but in practice is a lumbering bore who, when offing his enemy, can’t even come up with a half-decent pun. There are a hundred reasons why every copy of ‘The Bad Pack’ should be confiscated and burned, why it should be erased from the memory of humanity. But this one is the most serious – it is the film which took Robert Davi and turned him shit.

Please note - this film is not fit to lick Con Air's sweaty balls.

Good movie, bad movie or beer movie: Bad movie

[John McNee]

Hemoglobin (AKA Bleeders)

Cost: £1.46 (Play.com)

Tag-Line: It’s in the blood

Sample Dialogue: “And even though she could have sex with herself…”

The DVD cover for Hemoglobin proudly states that it is from the creators of the classic Ridley Scott masterpiece Alien. And indeed the back of the cover reveals the names of Alien producer Ron Shusett, and writer Dan O’Bannon.

Furthermore, Hemoglobin, also called Bleeders, is a very loose adaptation of a HP Lovecraft story entitled “The Lurking Fear”. Which would have been a much better title than Hemoglobin. Actully most words would have made for a better title then Hemoglobin.

With these elements in place you would be led to believe the film might be half decent.

You would be wrong.

The film opens in 17th Century Holland, where a family high in the social elite, called the Van Daams, has begun to engage in sordid, and incestuous, activities. In fear of prosecution, they flee to the New World, and specifically New England, to continue their practises.

Flash-forward to the present day (well, the mid 1990s), and a boat carrying a mysterious man named John Strauss, and his wife, arrives at a remote island. Strauss, an orphan, suffers from a blood disease that is slowly killing him. His only chance for a cure is to trace his relatives whom he believes live on the island.

No, I don't know what is up with his noise either.

At the same time this is happening, the local grave site is being dug up, and the coffins moved elsewhere.

It soon transpires that the grave site was the main food source of the Van Daam family, which has now regressed to a point where they have become a race of mutant midget hermaphrodites. Yes, really.

Using a complex web of underground tunnels these creatures roam the island looking for fresh meat to replenish their dwindling supplies.

Wilderness-era Rutger Hauer turns up as the local Doctor, but the majority of the cast appears to come from Canadian TV and low budget movies.

The director of the film, Peter Svatek is a veteran of straight to DVD movies, most notably the Roddy Piper film, Sci-Fighters, which I am sure we will review in the near future.

After losing out on the role of Yoda, Cecil Harlow was forced into a career starring in B-Movies.

It is no wonder the film carries with it a TV Movie feel for much of its runtime. Characters stand around in rooms, and talk an awful lot. And talk. And talk some more. It doesn’t help that our main hero looks like a cross breed of someone out of Twilight and Tommy Wiseau, of The Room fame.

That said, in the final twenty minutes things start to happen. There are some half decent creature effects for the monsters, and the death toll rises nicely. Even a couple of kids get killed!

It is refreshing to see practical effects done to a higher than average standard, and the final showdown, set around and inside a lighthouse, is actually pretty good. It is just a long slog to get there.

The film also throws in two sex scenes which feel like they were forced in by one of the producers wanting to make sure that they got a return on their investment.

The first, during the prologue, undercuts the voice-over talking about the depravity of the Van Daams, with soft focus lighting, and good looking people having it off. The second occurs near the very end and is utterly baffling.

Our hero, Mr. Strauss, has become ever weaker, and needs help to move. His wife, finding a foetus of one of the mutants in a jar, sets it down on a table and tells him to eat it. Cut to the aftermath of this feast, and her husband has regained his strength. So much so he wants to have sex. His wife complies; obviously not minding what must be a fairly yucky smell coming from his mouth.

The acting is pretty much dire all around, with most of the townspeople giving off an air of an amateur theatre group being given the chance to star in a movie. And I am further sad to report that the usually dependable Hauer looks bored for most of the film’s running time. The one and only highlight I can think of is an elderly actress whose name I have sadly not been able to locate, who knows what this material is, and cuts the ham thick.

The sequel to Hobo With a Shotgun didn't command quite the same budget...

I am not sure what the details are about the involvement of Dan O’Bannon, but his career as a writer was somewhat uneven. Yes, he came up with the concept of Alien, but you compare his script to the substantial re-write that Walter Hill undertook, and you can see clearly which script the film was based on.

His other writing included Dark Star, Return of the Living Dead, Lifeforce and Screamers and range from bad, to ambitious but uneven.

The thing about Hemoglobin is that O’Bannon had already written a much better version of this film, in the 1981 movie Dead and Buried. Again it was set on a remote part of New England, and had a creepy town, and secrets that went back generations. And it was done so much better.

I choose to believe that O’Bannon’s draft of this script was a somewhat different beast (the man was an expert on Lovecraft), and was given re-writes. There is no other way to explain the final lines of this film which are amazingly bad. So bad that even thinking about them makes me laugh.

When all is said and done, Hemoglobin stuck the golden rule about cheap horror films. It doesn’t matter if you bore an audience for the first half of the film, as long as you give them what they want in the second half. And on that basis the film did deliver, albeit sometimes unintentionally.

Good movie, bad movie or beer movie: Beer Movie

[Robert Girvan]

Spiders

Cost: £1.23 from Play.com

Tag-line: Something very hungry’s about to hatch

Sample dialogue: (Agent Gray) “You contradict me in front of your men again, I’ll shoot you on sight. Is that clear?”

When you’re making a movie – especially one about mutant space spiders injected with alien DNA – it’s always important to have a likeable, compelling protagonist. Audiences love having a hero who they can identify with, somebody with that every-man quality that just makes you sympathise with them and want to see them succeed. ‘Spiders’ offers a different, entirely radical take, presenting one of the most dislikeable protagonists I’ve ever seen in a film that wasn’t about the life of Hitler. I am referring to Hamden College newspaper ‘reporter’ Marci Eyre (or ‘Glasses McBoobs’ as she is more commonly known among fellow beer movie aficionados)

In her telling first appearance, Marci is seen reading a beaten-up copy of ‘Conspiracy Theories for Idiots’ or something similar, brow furrowed in deep concentration as she takes in every earth-shattering revelation. She then turns to the chapter on ‘Close Encounters’, and a quote from one Uri Adamski (that’s right, THE Uri Adamski), which says: “Aliens are real, they are here and the Government knows it!” Reading this, McBoob closes the book, smiles thoughtfully and nods.

"Quick! Get me a postcard the size of a football pitch and the biggest glass in the world!"

In an expert piece of film-making which perfectly encapsulates the mantra of ‘show don’t tell’, this silent few seconds informs us of everything we need to know about our heroin: She’s a moron.

She’s also a terrible journalist, with no understanding of news values, who, when ordered to cover a story about a space shuttle mission to test new fertility treatments on spiders (!) declares: “That’s not hard news.” Her own scoop, an interview with a delusional man who believes he’s from another planet is, however, “front page stuff”.

Her kooky fascination with UFOs and Little Green Men is probably meant to be endearing, but in practice she comes off as a selfish, gullible borderline lunatic – a problem attributable both to the scriptwriter (who makes the classic Hollywood mistake of thinking “strong female character” equals “possible lesbian who is pissed off at everyone and probably on her period”) and actress Lana Parrilla, who plays her part with all the charm and nuance of a vending machine wearing lipstick.

A sexy, sexy vending machine...

Anyway, when the mutant spider-infested space shuttle she doesn’t consider newsworthy crash- lands next to the same secret government base Marci’s investigating, she sneaks in for a closer look. With her college buddies Dead and Meat along for the ride (at least I think that’s their names), she infiltrates the base and within a few minutes is battling to survive an outbreak of deadly mutant space spiders AND the heavily armed clean-up crew sent in to eradicate them.

Leading this team is the real star of ‘Spiders’, Agent Gray (Mark Phelan), a government operative so focused on getting the job done that he won’t think twice about killing one of his own men. In fact, he seems to think that’s the best way of getting the job done, as he seems to be executing a subordinate every other scene. This is typical movie bad guy behaviour, of course, often associated with Bond villains and unhinged Nazi generals, but Agent Gray takes it to a whole new level.

Within moments of arriving at the crash site he’s already gunning down his own people, starting with an unarmed doctor who did nothing more than talk back to him. You’ve got to admire that kind of dedication to a strategy. I mean, that doctor probably had years of experience and medical knowledge that could’ve come in handy, not to mention a wife and kids back home who’ll have to be compensated. But when Henchman #1 questions Gray about why he had to shoot him, he simply answers: “Get used to it.” And he ain’t kidding. Gray seemingly answers to nobody, unless its maybe the President himself, who in this universe is almost certainly a homicidal douche-bag (albeit a douche-bag who still pledges funding for manned space missions so, y’know, not all bad).

So for the next hour everyone’s running around in the underground levels of the base getting in and out of various scrapes with arachnid foes. These effects-heavy encounters range from laughable to fairly effective, including one scene where a giant spider crawls up through one victim’s throat and bursts out of his mouth. It is, to be fair, genuinely disgusting.

"All right, Mr Smith, the Doctor will see you nnnwwwWWHATTHEHELLISTHATTHING?!?!?"

Dead and Meat die horrible, horrible deaths. Marci doesn’t seem all that bothered. Agent Gray continues to execute more of his men until it’s just him and Henchman #1 left, at which point Henchman #1 (perhaps sensing the way things are going) teams up with Marci and the pair escape the base in time for a spider the size of house to unleash itself on the city, destroying Hamden College and going on a murderous rampage. I won’t lie – I found this whole section pretty entertaining. Maybe that makes me a retard. I’ll let you decide.

There’s actually a fair amount to like in ‘Spiders’. It’s violent enough, with a few good gross-out moments. The plot is stupid but it at least doesn’t waste any time on character backgrounds or romantic sub-plots (Marci’s too focused on getting her story for any of that). The effects may not always be great, but they’re usually good enough. And there’s Agent Gray, obviously.

In fact, there are enough good elements at play here that with a compelling enough lead this could’ve become a modern B-movie classic. But no. We’re not lucky enough to get Bruce Campbell or Roddy Piper. We get Marci – a woman so arrogant, unpleasant and single-minded that she’s impossible to like even when she’s bouncing around in a wet t-shirt. Throughout her ordeal in the base – during which her only two friends in the world are killed – all she cares about is making it back to the college newspaper to file her story before deadline. She is, of all the characters in the movie, the one who most deserves a violent death by mutated spider. Naturally, this seems to guarantee she is the only character who is never in any danger of getting killed off.

Believe me, I'm just as shocked as you.

Her final words are the most infuriating of all. “Get me down from here,” she yells. “I got a story to write!” By this point her editor is dead, most of her colleagues on the paper are dead, the entire news building has been destroyed and the level of city-wide carnage means every national news service in the country will be swarming upon the scene almost immediately. There is no scoop here. Nobody is printing a damn thing that she has to say. But she’s still “got a story to write”. Moron.

Still, if you’re prepared to put up with her and you need something to watch while you’re on your 15^th, 16^th and 17^th beers, you could do a lot worse than ‘Spiders’.

Good movie, bad movie or beer movie: Beer movie

[John McNee]

Blue Jean Cop (AKA Shakedown)

Cost: £2.99 (In DVD double-pack with ‘One Man Force’)

Tag-line: Whatever you do… don’t call the cops!

Sample dialogue: “You drive, I’ll shoot!”

When George Romero’s ‘Night of the Living Dead’ was released the distributors made an error with the film print which meant (for some crazy reason) that the film wasn’t copyrighted, entered the public domain and, when the time came around, any Tom, Dick or Harry could burn a copy onto a DVD and sell it without consequence.

Now, obviously, that never happened with ‘Blue Jean Cop’ (aka ‘Shakedown’). It’s not in the public domain. But something just as catastrophic must’ve gone down behind the scenes that meant that a film this well made, with a good budget and a cast full of well-known names (not to mention possibly the greatest trailer ever cut – see it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXRalGmRWdk ) should end up languishing in the bottom of bargain buckets in corner shops and all-night petrol stations up and down the country.

The copy I found is double-sided, complemented by ex-American Football star John Matuszak vehicle ‘One Man Force’ in an action double bill, implying the good people at Hollywood DVD believed this is the only way anyone could be persuaded to part with £2.99 for the flick.

"You know what we should've seen? Robocop 3. I hear it's REALLY good."

‘Blue Jean Cop’ deserves better than this. It’s the simple story of Roland Dalton (Peter Weller, who the DVD case informs us was in ‘Robocop’ and ‘Robocop 2′), first seen blending a milk/orange juice/coffee/egg smoothie for breakfast to the strains of Jimi Hendrix. He’s a successful defence attorney, one week away from leaving criminal litigation and joining his girlfriend’s father’s law firm. Before that, though, he has to take care of just one last case (ain’t it always the way?) in the form of Richard Brooks, a crack dealer who shot and killed a cop in Central Park. The prosecution say it was murder, but Brooks says the dead man was a ‘Blue Jean Cop’ (an officer who robs drug dealers) and he was acting in self-defence.

Sam Elliott plays a renegade detective – introduced sleeping off the night before’s brown-bag booze binge in the cinema-cum-crack den he calls home – who day-by-day is growing more uncomfortable with the corruption he sees all around him in the department.

Together the unconventional lawyer and the plays-by-his-own-rules cop find themselves teaming up to take down an alliance of drug pushers and dirty cops led by kingpin Antonio Fargas and smarmy detective Larry Joshua (who we all know is evil before he opens his mouth because of his mullet).

This is all great fun. Things explode, cars get chased, women take their clothes off and people die in a variety of entertaining ways – my particular favourites include the bondage freak being electrocuted by his own hand-cuffs and the poor guy flying into the night on a runaway roller-coaster.

Every so often we have to check back in at the court to see how the case is going and these scenes certainly slow things down (as do the scenes focusing on Weller’s hectic love life), but Weller is always fun to watch. Everyone, in fact, does a great job, and the cast is peppered with even more familiar faces including Jude Ciccolella (24), David Proval (The Sopranos) and the almost-obligatory John C McGinley (Scrubs).

"I'm in EVERYTHING!"

It all looks great too, with director James Glickenhaus making the most of New York’s sleaziest locations, including neon-lit brothels, rain-slick shanty towns and one nightclub where nice white college kids drink, watch snuff films and prostitute themselves for cocaine, while Huggy Bear counts his money in the back room. It’s all very well put together.

That is to say… maybe 89 minutes are well put together. For some reason that I can’t hope to comprehend, it all falls apart right at the climax. Right at one of the most pivotal moments of the film, at what should be one of the best stunts, it all collapses on its arse.

I’m not kidding about this. It really needs to be seen to be believed, but there is a single effects-heavy minute right at the very end that nearly sinks the entire film in just how shockingly, appallingly shoddy it looks.

As the villains of the piece prepare to make their getaway on a private jet bound for Costa Rica, Weller and Elliott speed onto the runway in a red Porsche convertible, top down. In a sequence that deserves its place in the Hall of 80′s Action Movie Legend, the Porsche races after the jet and, just as it begins to take off, Elliott leaps out and grabs onto the landing gear. So far, everything’s shot for real, exciting as hell and looking good, good, good.

Then… BAD! BAD! BAD! And suddenly Sam Elliot is dangling from a fake wheel in a studio somewhere as New York bounces around on a rear-projector behind him. As if that weren’t bad enough, we then cut to some cut-and-paste hack job that sees the jet awkwardly winging its way towards the North Tower of the World Trade Centre and narrowly avoiding a collision – a shot now cringe-inducing thanks to certain historical events, as well as because of how lousy it looks.

"I'm going to ask this one more time... Nobody else thinks this looks stupid?"

And yet, as laugh-out-loud mind-bogglingly awful as those few seconds are, they are not enough to ruin this film for me and they shouldn’t be for you.

This is the film where Sam Elliott rides a motorcycle while Peter Weller fires a .45 hand-cannon from the back seat. That’s always going to be worth at least  £2.99.

"Don't you dare judge us..."

Good movie, bad movie or beer movie: Good movie

[John McNee]