killjoy217

AR-0071: The very first time I cover one of the low budget "mockbusters" made by infamous film studio The Asylum on this show, AVH was typical of early-era Asylum content - threadbare quality in just about every aspect of technical and storytelling field you can think of. What's particularly interesting about this particular film is that the credited director apparently wasn't actually doing his job on the shoot, which definitely gives some insight into the film's utter lack of quality. An alien monster crash-lands into the woods of California, causing quite a bit of a ruckus by devouring the local townsfolk, prompting a [woefully inept and unprepared] group of survivors to attempt to hunt down the monster, but another alien arrives, hot on the first alien's tail and not exactly friendly to the locals... I have seen plenty of Asylum movies in my time, and for their 2000s catalogue, this one's the worst from that decade. My Grade: D- [Atrocious] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0070: One of the worst examples of the long run of 1990s DTV [direct-to-video] B-grade synthetica [killer robot movies], this legendary piece of hitsa was actually made in 1994, the year this genre hit its peak [I should know because I lived through it], but not released until 1997 when the genre began to run out of batteries. Daniel Bernhardt [the bloke from those "Bloodsport" sequels], plays a human slave to some time-travelling cyborg slave traders who escapes his master's and lands in 1990s Los Angeles, desperate to make a new life for himself... ...but the cyborgs want him back, so they come after him, along with their pet dinosaurs which they use as hunting dogs... Extremely low budget, having visual effects that make the term "bargain basement" feel like an understatement, and some seriously sloppy writing, this crapola makes for a killer heckling session for MST3K enthusiasts and masochists will find this to be quite a fix, but mere mortals should stick with their synthetica sourced from the likes of Eyres, Pepin and Pyun. My Grade: D- [Atrocious] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0069: The first of a number of remakes of the cult classic 1985 George A Romero zombie masterpiece [& one of my favourite films], this 2008 piece of zombie hitsa is a remake in name only as it plays even looser with the thenatics of the original than what the legendary 2004 remake of "Dawn of The Dead" did. A small town in Colorado is hit by a bioweapon with military connections [does this remind you of anything?], turning its victims into some seriously turbocharged undead flesheaters that can even climb on walls. A small group of survivors try to escape the horror by hiding out in the Nike missile silo near the town [& before you ask, no the Nike company did not build that facility - the Nike name stands for something else - we're talking nuclear ICBMs here, not shoes made for sneaking]. An awful movie that was an utter insult to the name of Romero. My Grade: D- [Atrocious] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0068: One of the last Italian "Mad Mario" movies [Italian knockoffs of "Mad Max 2"] to be made during the 1980s, this is substantially lesser quality than the early Mad Mario movies were. A trio of military scientists serving in an underground military facility survive the outbreak of WW3, only to emerge about a week or so later and find their city annihilated, with the only survivors being mutants who cannot stay outdoors after dusk and who need human spinal fluid to survive [how did the writers come with that?]. Only one of the scientists has the survival skills to survive this nightmare... Although it cannot match the enjoyment factor of early '80s Mad Marios, "Urban Warriors" does have some passable action and it makes for a reasonable time killer, although the best audience for this are professional Bad Movie Masochists. This doesn't seem to have had a DVD release, but it was issued on VHS in the States by Cannon Films [yes, THOSE guys] as part of a very short-lived range of DTV [direct-to-video] features called "Action Adventure Theatre" which all came with introductions made by Michael Dudikoff. My Grade: D+ [Disappointing] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0067: From the master of schlocky pint-sized horror flicks such as "Leprechaun", comes this acerbic piece of nasty DTV [direct-to-video] junk about a pair of incestuous psychopathic siblings and their [could be living but that is debatable] ventriloquist dummy with a sunny personality who carve out their own take on "Natural Born Killers", except without the commentary. Mark Jones is known for his horror schlocky but this is possibly his worst film, his script having no boundaries and without any clear rules to follow, not to mention some particularly unlikeable characters, this piece of trash falls into flames, although it isn't an entirely unwatchable movie. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0066: The four-man comedy troupe "Os Trapalhoes" were Brazil's very successful local children's television show version of the Three Stooges, their comedy TV show lasting from the 1970s all the way up to 1993. Believe it or not, but these guys also made a parody of Star Wars that was a surprise hit in Brazil, cracking Brazil's Top Ten for 1978. Plot-wise, the movie has Os Trapalhoes [loosely translates as "The Tramps", although you can also derive "The Bunglers" or "The Bunglers" from this] spending the night in the bush after getting into a bit of trouble with some local toughs, only to find themselves being called upon by an alien prince [The Brazilian Luke Skywalker] and his sidekick The Brazilian Chewbacca [who looks funky] to rescue his love The Brazilian Princess Leia from The Brazilian Darth Vader and his army of what could possibly be Death Troopers [a good forty or so years before "Rogue One" came out!]. What ensues are some loosely connected slapstick gags and some crazy fights, along with a disco club scene, because hey, this is in 1978 and disco still rules, baby! To be honest, the movie is better suited for children under the age of seven, because anyone older than seven is gonna think this movie sucks Goanna eggs. Watching this beast requires some serious masochism on the part of the viewer, but otherwise the movie is better than it seems as the jokes are pretty funny. I watched this with both English subtitles and without and while understanding the dialogue is a matter of choice, in reality you don't need to understand Portuguese to get this film, as watching this in its native state makes it quite a trip. BTW the movie was shot on video then transferred to film, giving it an awesome bootleg look. My Grade: D+ [Disappointing] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0065: We return to the utterly unholy hackwork of notorious German New Wave hackmeister Ulli Lommel with his semi-fictional thesis on the nasty crimewave and spree of killings of random women in the US-Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez back in the 2000s, Lommel's take being that it was possibly the work of a trio of sadistic serial killers. An awful movie shot on cheap Digital camcorders that nevertheless has some peculiar interest to fans of SOV [shot-on-video] style horror, plus this is perfect for a prank if you were to record this movie on a VHS tape, remove the credits and trick your friends into believing this being a real-life snuff movie... My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0064: A typically flat example of the janky B-grade espionage thrillers that were a dime-a-dozen during the 1970s, this low-grade part-Italian production has an Italian mercenary getting hired by the spooks over at Mossad to help them intercept a shipment of yellowcake uranium [in case you don't know, that is a loose-fill type of uranium ore used in chemical fertilizers, paint and other legitimate industrial uses... But can also be enriched to provide fuel for nukes] that is being shipped to what could potentially be a hostile enemy power. Completely unexceptional in just about every way, this film also shows the ugly consequences of mounting an espionage mission without grounding it in ethics, as the mission here becomes something of a mess despite being ultimately successful. The film is known in international release as "The Uranium Conspiracy" but it's original title translated into English is "Agents Do Not Know Tears". My Grade: D+ [Disappointing] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0063: The very first time I cover an Uwe Boll film here [BTW the correct way to pronounce this bloke's first name is "Oo-va" , as in "Hoover" without the H. Makes perfect sense as in many countries Hoover is a common euphemism for vacuum cleaner and Boll's movies act just like vacuum cleaners - they SUCK!], here we check out the third of Boll's Unholy Trilogy of videogame adaptations and in my view the worst one I've seen. Former Terminator Kristanna Loken plays the titular damphir [human-vampire hybrid], who makes a bloody escape from the circus troupe that has been keeping her prisoner, to hunt down the vampire who raped her mother and thus conceived her - none other than Kagan, King of the Vampires [Ben Kingsley in a bad wig and zero attempt at acting conviction]. This movie sucks harder than the showroom at your local Godfreys [Aussie vacuum cleaner retailer - which unfortunately had gone defunct a few weeks before this video was uploaded], and as an adaptation of the cult classic PS2 game it sucks even harder, but it is indeed good for a laugh if you're a masochist up for some fix with a serious bite... My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0062: An extremely strange concept - a family-friendly juvie thriller - that was mounted from a script so old the writer was already long dead by the time it was filmed, made by a director whose bread-&-butter features comprised of skin flicks. Tired of being ignored by his hen-pecked father, a young juvenile delinquent decides to break out of his detention facility along with some friends to rob the armoured car his father's company uses to transfer cash and be back in the facility by sundown. The plan works but as it turns out, somebody else is secretly manipulating the operation to cause trouble... A very strange experience to watch, not the kind of thing drive-in patrons tend to expect back in the late 1970s... My Grade: D+ [Disappointing] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video. Dedicated to my old friend Yul Marbuo.

AR-0061: The middle part of the "Rick Bota Trilogy" of bad DTV [direct-to-video] sequels for the Hellraiser franchise that were made by Neo Art & Logic, an offshoot studio of Dimension Films that were employed to make cheap sequels for the DTV market, this shot-in-the-dregs-of-Eastern-Europe piece of junk has a masochistic underground tabloid journalist investigate a mysterious cult comprised of zombie masochists led by a member of the family who invented the Lament Configuration [the iconic puzzle box] and who is trying to start a turf war with the Cenobites. Let's just say Pinhead ain't too happy with this going down so he puts his own counter plan into action and that involves using the reporter as a pawn... Not entirely an awful film [it is seriously bad, make no mistake] with an interesting spin on things, but ultimately it is still obvious that the script is just a non-Hellraiser script modified to feature the Cenobites in it and as such it proves sorely inappropriate for this franchise. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0060: Psychotronic cinema legend Ted V. Mikels mounts one of his earliest 21st Century DTV [direct-to-video] efforts with this sequel to his centrepiece 1971 el sleazo drive-in schlock classic, where the nephews of the two founders of the Lotus Cat Food Company ["Food For Cats Who Love People"] restart the cat food cannery and again resort to their long-dead uncles' modus operandi of using human corpses for the cat food. The only new change is to source freshly-dead corpses by making back-alley deals with the local undertakers and funeral homes, which actually comes in handy when representatives of an alien race of cat-people who are busy playing the "Ukrainian-Russian Military Poker Game" [if you get my topical pun], are running short on food stocks and the US Government is happy to siphon off some food to feed them, resulting in the Lotus Boys scoring the contract and winning the jackpot. The 1971 original was pretty rough stuff, but this el crapola sequel is a prime example of the pitfalls of being a Ted V. Mikels film. Slow as hell, a lack of gore or nudity, an obscene amount of padding [this is because of Mikels' scattershot writing style] and visual effects rougher than your average James Rolfe AVGN video from the good old days of the 2000s, all making this movie something of an unholy beast lurking in the bowels of the corpse of your local video store... My Grade: D- [Atrocious] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0059: In the 1970s, two of the most popular film genres were Blaxploitation and Kung Fu flicks. Well, Roger Corman tried to combine those two genres into one film with this failed effort that nevertheless earned a certain cult reputation for its spectacularly sloppy martial arts fights and an infamous scene involving the female protagonist doing some Kung Fu in a dark room while almost completely in her birthday suit. Playboy Playmate Jeannie Bell stars as Diana "TNT" Jackson, an ex-con with an impressive martial arts skill that goes well with her volatile temper and serious attitude problem, who heads to Hong Kong [in reality Manila] to track down her brother who is being employed as a pusher for the local big boss drug lord. Upon discovering some b@st@rd turned her bro into garden manure over some stolen drugs, TNT decides to take her revenge, in the process unintentionally disrupting not only the plan of an international law enforcement operation to take down the Big Man, but also the brother's killer's attempt to usurp control of The Syndicate for himself... Stupid, sleazy and at times badly put together but the movie's surprisingly quick [just barely over an hour long] and the Kung Fu fighting is hilarious to watch. That Topless Kung Fu in the dark room scene is a classic laugh riot. My Grade: D+ [Disappointing] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0058: I believe you horror fans out there would be familiar with "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City", right? Well, what if I told you that the hack who made that piece of bullhitsa was actually very well experienced in B-grade schlock since the early 2000s? You're going to be surprised by that. Johannes Roberts had started out making bad horror junkola in his native Britain and the film I'm covering here is his 2004 supernatural thriller "Darkhunters", about a female forensic shrink who has the ability to see dead people, only those lost souls are the result of routine accounting errors in the afterlife, so routine that it happens just as often as "getting a gherkin in your burger when you ordered one without". Our protagonist lady shrink has to beat two bounty hunters [one who dresses up like a 1940s private eye and has scary fingernails worse than Da Hip Hop Witch; the other being a demon who has crappy CGI flames superimposed over his face & who speaks in [subtitled for our convenience] demonese] to a lost soul. The movie actually also features a topless female angel who can scare the crap out of you if you're not careful and a pretty decent for the budget opening credit animation sequence, although the ending credits are WAY too long. Only recommended for Masochists. My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0057: The first of a total of precisely four reviews I will do based on one of the schlocky films that infamous Eurojank director Jess Franco made, this particular review is of his 1971 erotic horror revenge thriller starring Soledad Miranda as the vengeful piece-of-@ss wife of a nasty doctor involved in seriously unethical research who later kills himself after being rightfully deregistered from the profession, who tracks down each of the professors involved in her hubby's downfall and seduces them right before living up to this film's title. You know, for the first half of this film, Franco actually [somewhat inadvertently] makes a good case for the medical community needing to weed out the shysters who conduct evil experiments, but the second half of the film goes back on that case by having Miranda's killer floozy viciously take revenge on the four heroes who saved humanity from an absolute monster of a medical deviant. Not exactly the horror movie some people make it out to be, but it does venture into that genre at times. The film is below average at best, but is not entirely uninteresting... My Grade: D+ [Disappointing] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0056: Ubiquitous 1990s DTV [direct-to-video] label Full Moon Pictures hit a noticeable slump once the 2000s arrived, so much so the studio's quality took a nosedive. In this particular example we have one of those "supernatural hitsa taking place during the making of a reality show" plots that were briefly popular on the B-movie market back then [oh, the horror!], with a shifty TV reality show showrunner mounting some crap precursor to the real-life "Fear Factor" but with the intention of rigging it so his girlfriend whom he recruited as a contestant will win the cash moolah prize, only to be unaware that the local abandoned asylum with a nasty reputation he chose as the locale for this asinine show is indeed haunted... A pretty stupid movie typical of early-2000s el cheapo shot-on-a-camcorder jank that was VERY common back then, with an eye to be marketed to the teenagers and young adults of the day [essentially my generation] and while "Hell Asylum" doesn't have any nudity to speak of, it does have some seriously half-@ssed gore effects that look like the director decided to take the cheapest off-cuts he could get from his trip to the local butcher's... My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

KEP-3/6: This is the sixth [& last] level in the 2003 PC-based first person shooter made by Jesse Petrilla [and also itself a remake of Petrilla's previous game "Quest For Hussein"] designed to be a humorous exercise in American patriotism. The Soldier [player protagonist] has finally cornered Saddam and is about to make an assault on the Iraqi despot's hidden bunker. First, he has to mop up the last of Saddam's Tabuk-wielding mooks. The Killjoy: Mile Sipka Remember My Advice: Don't Be A Masochist, Winners Use Cheats [only in single-player games] CAUTION: Due to the nature of the recording software used, expect some sound distortion to be present. Oh and by the way, in case you're wondering, Tabuk assault rifles were licensed copies of Yugoslav Zastava Kalashnikov-pattern assault rifles. The Kalashnikov Concern considers Tabuk rifles to be the worst AK clones ever made...

AR-0055: The title for this film is actually "Sarth Efrikan" [South African] slang for a narcotics crop, nothing to do with occultism of any kind. A private eye returns from the United States on a mission to liberate his old family farm from some shifty cousins who have been using the homestead to cultivate their own "Satan's Harvest" of marijuana and heroin. A seriously daft South African thriller that features plenty of half-hearted effort and also the most retarded gunfight I have ever seen! In addition to reviewing this Sarth Efrikan butt nugget, I also take the time to explain an interesting story about the druggies over in Zimbabwe and what they are into... My Grade: D+ [Disappointing] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

KEP-3/5: This is the fifth level in the 2003 PC first person shooter game developed by Jesse Petrilla as a means of providing humourous support for the then-current Iraq War and was itself a remake of Petrilla's second game, a Build Engine mod called "Quest for Hussein". The Soldier [player protagonist] is now on the verge of tracking down Saddam Hussein's hidden bunker but he needs to cross a desert filled with Iraqi soldiers, including an observation tower and a mobile SCUD launcher... The Killjoy: Mile Sipka Remember My Advice: Don't Be A Masochist, Winners Use Cheats [only in single-player games] CAUTION: Due to the nature of the recording software used, some sound distortion may be present.

This is the last episode of the original series of "Apatros Action 52 Masochist" [there will be a sequel series focusing on the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive remake but that will be done in an intermittent fashion] and for this episode I check out the infamous sequel that was never completed and remains to this day in prototype form, although a patch that overhauled the game's code, improving the graphics, fixing the many bugs and even allowing the final two levels to be played was released and my analysis here is constrained to the patched version as I consider that to be the definitive version of this game. Once the patch is applied, "Cheetahmen II" becomes a surprisingly enjoyable game with the difficulty only causing headaches on the first two levels, the latter four levels proving to be much easier and thus more enjoyable. You don't exactly need to be a masochist gamer to enjoy this game, but it certainly helps a fair bit. My Grade: B [Solid] (only applicable to the patched version) Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0054: For my first birthday on Rumble, I have decided to just review the next item on my schedule and that just so happens to be this ultra-low-budget pre-DTV-Golden-Age [DTV is my acronym for "direct-to-video" so please remember that] B-grade vampire actioner [possibly the very first for the 1990s, before "Blade" and even before that "Night Hunter" flick where Don "The Dragon" Wilson hunts down vampires] about a trio of medical research interns out to stop a vampire version of Klaus Schwab and his own vaccine that turns people into vampire slaves. If you think my take of that plot sounds silly, well just watch the film if you can find it and you'll notice the similarities too... ...You know, the real Schwab could be a vampire or some sort of demonic entity... Anyhoo, the majority of this film is shot on the streets at night and with the cramped action scenes the film suffers greatly. While it is by no means a good film, it does have an interesting storyline and it would honestly make for a decent film if given a more polished presentation one day. You can find this on public domain DVD operator DVDs, my archive copy derived from the Brentwood "Blood Thirst" four-film-set which in turn was done off a VHS master. By the way, the American VHS artwork would prove useful for Rule 34 enthusiasts with that just-barely-obscured nude female vampire, one that can be achieved with surprisingly little effort... My Grade: D [Bad] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

KEP-3/4: This is the fourth level in the 2003 parody first person shooter made by Jesse Petrilla, a remake of his second game "Quest For Hussein", and which was made as a means to provide a humourous propaganda exercise for those concerned about the then-current Iraq War. The Soldier [the player protagonist] has crashed his jeep in the Iraqi desert and now must make his way to a nearby Iraqi military installation, dealing with firing squads, tight corridors and non-smoking signs... The Killjoy: Mile Sipka Remember My Advice: Don't Be A Masochist, Winners Use Cheats [Only in single-player games] CAUTION: Due to the nature of the recording software used, some sound distortion may be present.

The most infamous game on the infamous original NES multicart of Action 52, this was originally supposed to be a skill challenge based on the hardest levels from random games on the multicart [something that actually saw use on the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive remake], but it was then decided to create a rival franchise to the then-extremely popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, the result being the trio of superheroic mutant cheetahs known as the Cheetahmen - Aries, Hercules and Apollo. The resulting game is plagued with bad design choices, poor character handling and an absolute onslaught of instakill enemies that will now you down [you only have about three or four HP tops, and start the game with only four lives - the standard complement for most Action 52 games on the NES multicart]. By all respects this should be the worst game on the multicart... But as it turns out, this game does have a strange allure to it that proves interesting, as the weird game design choices offer up some real surprises. There are three hidden warps [one for each character] that provides a free 1UP, some beautiful 8-bit water sprites and the boss battles are surprisingly easy to beat if you figure out precisely where the safe zone is located. This game is best played on an emulator [which ironically is how most play it these days], with aggressive use of save stating strongly recommended. A real gem of 8-bit masochism... My Grade: AD- [So Bad It Is Passable] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

AR-0053: All of us have our own personal favourite Christmas movies but in this episode we check out the notorious Bad Movie Classic that was originally a cheap piece of children's festive programming using bargain basement production values and a cast entirely ripped from the Broadway circuit, only to gain a reputation as The Perfect Christmas Movie for Bad Movie Masochists. It is a safe bet that whomever wrote the daft but cheerful screenplay about Santa Claus getting abducted by Martians so he can create the first Christmas on Mars was on some kind of mind-altering substance... My Grade: D+ [Disappointing] Any questions, comments or associated trivia for this review subject, please leave in the comments for this particular video.

KEP-3/3: This is the third level of the 2003 PC First Person Shooter made by Jesse Petrilla, who remade his previous game "Quest for Hussein" in a customised 3D game engine and which was intended to promote American patriotism and also provide some humour to alleviate Americans worried about the then-current Iraq War as well as provide motivational support. The Soldier [the player protagonist] has now reached an outpost which appears to have served as a facility for storing [implied to be French-made] nerve gas [probably extra-smelly cheese...] and possibly also an execution area. There is a hidden tunnel in a storage room behind the boxes that can help The Soldier get a surprise drop on his foes... The Killjoy: Mile Sipka Remember My Advice: Don't Be A Masochist, Winners Use Cheats [only in single-player games]. CAUTION: Due to the nature of the recording software used, some sound distortion may be present.