Stinker Madness - The Bad Movie Podcast

This week on the show we thoroughly review everything important this Halloween with regards to crummy movies. Special guest Tucker comes into the studio and delivers the laughs with his "beardy" style of humor. We review -  Pumpkinhead (1988) The Gate (1987) C.H.U.D. (1984) Sometimes They Come Back (1991) The Lighthouse (2019) Satanic Panic (2019) Child's Play (2019) The Lodgers (2017) We write up the reboot of Pumpkinhead; "Pumpkinhead Goes to Sturgess", we solve the homeless heating problems, Tucker bans walls, how to lose a pie-eating contest, washed-up pirate ships, and a special Halloween round of "Pop Quiz, Hotshot". Sit back and enjoy our 2019 Spooktacular episode!

Freddy is back and this time he lulls us to sleep with whale song and LBGTQ social commentary! It begs the ultimate question - does Freddy actually appear in this movie? Freddy 2 is an absolute bonkers experience and through-out is a complete and utter-turd. At no point does it make sense that it was a commercial success and likely should have destroyed the Freddy franchise (and thus would have prevented the LOTR trilogy from happening) but somehow was a massive win for New Line and kept the doors open for another ten years. I guess that really states to the allure of Mr. K. Yet it can only exist in 1 of 2 ways, both of which have problems: 1) It's an allegory for the traumas/dangers of being a closeted homosexual in the homophobia of the 80s drummed up by Reagan's AIDS debacle.2) It's all a dream from start to finish in which Freddy takes 90 minutes to murder one kid. 1 can't be it, because it then opens up a ton of plot holes with Freddy's powers and if he even exists in the movie or not. Was Jesse just

So it turns out that Peter Frampton sucks - oh you knew that already? The Brothers Gibb surround themselves by people who can't sign and play as well as they do and let everyone else drag them into the depths of garbage. But Barry's hair looks amazing, at least. Sgt Pepper's on it's face is a "do not do" movie before it even starts - you don't cover The Beatles unless you really are supremely talented, which The Bee Gees completely are, but the problem is that they allowed other people to be involved. You've got George Burns, Steve Martin, Alice Cooper, Peter Nicholas (yeah, who?), Donald Pleasance, Stargard and Frankie Howerd all covering Beatles tracks. Look, only a few people get to do that and none of you are qualified. Stop it! Stop IT! And leading the "not-good-at-stuff" is the constant O-faced, Peter Frampton. He is the absolute worst. Consistently off-key and when "on" his face is off. His "acting" (he doesn't utter a single line of dialogue) is about as good as his mouth guitar. As a whole, S

Christopher Lambert dons the worst hair we've ever seen and leads an uprising against the Romans only to ultimately accomplishing nothing and dies off screen. There's nothing good about this film. Zzzz....Oh I'm sorry. You caught me napping after watching Druids. What did I miss? Oh, nothing. Absolutely nothing? Ok. I'll move on to something else. Seriously, this movie sucks. Even for fans of Lambert's nonsense. Nothing happens. It's such a crappy Braveheart knock-off but fails in that it the world has not changed at the end of the movie. He doesn't even give the Romans that much grief. It's about as much grief as buying a $30 worth of lottery scratch tickets and finding 10 of them that are worth $1. Whoa the grievance... Oh yeah - where the hell are the damn druids?!?!  Seriously, don't spend a second of your time watching Druids. Go plant a flower. Eat a sandwich. Read a book about Gaul. Do ANYTHING but watch Druids.

Patrick Swayze says Dalton was a weiner and gifts us the pyschopathic, blood-lusting, and man of the road - Jack Cruise. Along the way Meatloaf delivers his best, but still manages to get Asahi Guy murdered and bankrupts his own villainy scheme before it gets started. Lets just get this out of the way - Black Dog is fantastic and is one of the few shining examples of perfectly bad in every way. Every bit of it is inept from the music, the casting, the script, the acting, the directing and the editing and has the "it" factor on all those elements for bad movie fans. It's a glorious seam-less mess that you couldn't set out to do such a bad job and have it work so well together. It's stunningly perfect and beautiful and a complete train-wreck. My next paragraph would like to be - "The best part of Black Dog is..." but I seriously can't say that. As soon as I think of something, say Meatloaf's character Red's seriously flawed villainy scheme (stealing his own stuff, make deal for stuff, rinse, repeat

Shabadoo, Boogaloo Shrimp and a cast of break dancers team-up with Golan and Globus, pump out a movie in a handful of months and leave us with one of the most important and culturally infamous bad movies of all time. Hope you like break-dancing! Let's face it - this movie stinks and rules. There's so little happening but no one notices because it's masked by CONSTANT break dancing. It's wall-to-wall. There might be more more dance/musical numbers in this than Caberet and Chicago and Grease combined. Now that might scare off the casual bad-movie goer who is here for movies staring shirtless men with guns, but don't be afraid - this thing is electric dog-poo on fire. It's really something of a special deal when a movie crams this much non-diegetic, metaphorical story-telling using dance as the device and still manages to contain as much mind-boggling nonsense within those dance sequences. For most of us, we just check out during dance numbers as they are just a showcasing of people's abilities

The biggest flop in Hollywood history visits the podcast, eats all our food, backups the sewer system and kidnaps our children and then quietly makes us forget that any of it ever happened. Will it be worse than The Love Guru? Nope. The weird thing about Pluto Nash is that is just nothing. It doesn't make you angry. The jokes aren't groan-worthy. The plot doesn't cause your eyes to roll so hard they pop out. It's just a bunch of nothing. There may not be another movie that has ever made us feel so dispassionate towards it. We just don't care about it - not even enough to hate. Which is likely it's fatal flaw. Don't get us wrong, it's a turd sandwich. But does it belong in the same discussion as other bottom 100 movies? If you gave a Ted Talk about the worst movies of all time, you'd be a jackass because Ted Talks are super narcissistic but you'd also spend zero time talking about the biggest flop in Hollywood history. "Pluto Nash? Oh yes of course, but lets move on to House of the Dead." S

Banning comes back once again to save the President once again from an assassination attempt where not everything is not as it seems once again. It's the number one movie in America, but is it enough to keep the Banning franchise alive? Make no mistake, Banning 3's plot statement above is the same as the other two but this film is a departure from the other two. Where the other two are a thin plot stuff around ludicrous action scenes and Banning eating the flesh of his enemies, this one mostly has Banning on the defensive and reacting to the violence around him instead of reveling in it. And while the villain is a complete moron (we'll get to that later) there's nothing really stupid that takes place in Banning's world. Let's put it this way - if there were no Banning 1 and 2, Banning 3 wouldn't be on the podcast. It's just a solid (if forgettable) action movie. Now the villain, played by Danny Huston, keeps this inside the realm of the idiot plot from the bad guys standpoint. Banning of course, doesn't app

The bald bros are back minus the biggest bald bro, so the bald bro stock is down! The 2/3 of the bald bros are forced to team-up to stop Thanos from killing everyone while learning about super-powered villains, love and friendship and forget about family, Vin Diesel and cars. While there is a myriad of problems with Universal's fingers in their big franchise (of which there is many fingers) the team behind the action do a great job. This film is shot well, very well choreographed, has some genuinely funny cameos (that normally would have sucked ass), and some great film-making contrasting the two leads. That's where the good stops. The rest is a hot mess. The plot is absolutely stupid. The villains clearly have no clue on what there doing and just making one different movie negates the entire movie and gives them everything they want. The Idiot Plot has appeared again. The movie looses focus on what its trying to achieve a third of the way through. It tries to shift away from the Torreto side of the F&

All of the truckers team up to drive down the road hauling goods and.... freedom? Let's try that again. A bunch of cops chase a bunch of truckers down the highway because of their flagrant....trucking? Ok, ok, ok. Got it - Truckers Truck! Seriously the plot of Convoy is one of the most dubious we've ever reviewed. One might argue that about 20 minutes of the movie actually has a plot of outrunning the law who wants to kill a fellow trucker because of abuse of power and racism, but that plot lasts for only a brief period. Within minutes of that plot being put together, the film shifts into Forrest Gump running across the US with people joining him because they think he's got all the answers. At no point, does anyone have a clue why they've joined a mega-convoy of truckers and why anyone cares about them. Sadly, while the plot is absolutely bonkers the fun stops there. In such a film that had the budget and comes hot off the heels of Smokey & The Bandit, there's pretty tame stunts and not enough

Well hello, Mary Lou. So good of you to drop in and see me. Wait what are you doing??? Why do you have the powers of all the X-Men combined? Are you like an evil ghost Rogue? How do you work and what is your reason for existence???? Argghghgghghg.....gurgle, gurgle. The above is a perfect summation of what each character should be asking the spooky-ghost or spooky-demon or spooky-ghost-demon that is Mary Lou, a 1950s prom queen who got burnt up like Freddy and lives in a suitcase for 30 years only to return and enact dubious revenge upon various 80s teenagers whom had nothing to do with her death. Why Mary Lou chooses to do anything she does is beyond us and where she got her spooky-powers is another problem. Lastly, we really can't even begin to decipher the ending in which Mary Lou gets (what the movie tries to tell us) everything she wants, only to pull a Jason and not be dead so that she can take a road-trip with the kiddies. This movie fits in perfectly with any of the other nonsensical movies we've re

Dolph disguises a buddy-cop movie as an terminator movie. Inside you'll learn that the most deadliest weapon in space are compact discs and all aliens have male-pattern-baldness. Dark Angel AKA I Come in Peace is absolutely bananas. It's so full of action sequences, explosions, aliens chasing each other, one-liners, and a crazy plot where people's brains are drugs in space. It's riddled with buddy-cop cliches, the new partner that does this by the book, an ex-girlfriend that also works in the same circles, the chief that wants his badge, etc... all while giant alien guys are exploding everything in the city with mega-weapons. It's fantastic. There's only so much early 90's nostalgia that you can cram into a movie and somehow this movie manages to blast through that barrier. It's not just the world's deadliest weapon (the compact disc), it's the music, the obligatory cops-at-a-strip-club-scene, it's the hair, the clothes, the cars, and the one-liners. While some people would have made this a dark and g

Chuck Norris launches his career by kicking lots of people in the chest and calling in his truckin' buddies to run a town over - yes the entire town. It's about as weird movie as you can get and hilarious throughout. Come on back, big rigger! Now you can probably guess how much trucking vs. karate there is in the film and how silly the the combo of the two working together looks on screen. So let's go past that and talk solely about the villainy. The plot revolves around this town that has gone off the deep-end and has essentially declared independence from the state of California. Fine. What their deepest flaw is that they have no idea how to be bad guys. Their evil plot is to hijack truckers, steal their tv dinners, eat the tv dinners, crush the $80,000 truck in a crusher, sell the metal for $200, make moonshine, dump the moonshine on the ground, drink Wild Turkey instead and operate their legal system in the same manner as The Spanish Inquisition. There's no way that a band of truckers are going to run yo

The 80's eats far too much pixi-dust and barfs out the worst of it right into our faces. It's Pia Zedora showing off why a millionaire had to pay for her to act and Craig Scheffer giving poopy face for 90 minutes. If you want to make sure you've seen the worst musical, you can't miss this pile of no talent. The deal with Voyage of the Rock Aliens is that it's a failed project before it even gets started. Originally it was supposed to be more like UHF instead it's more like Grease 2. You've got Pia Zedora attempting to launch her career by dancing like she's in a blender. On the opposite side of the obligatory love relationship is Craig Scheffer (yes Craig Scheffer from Nightbreed and A River Runs Through It) whose entire thing is to lip-sync over Jermaine Jackson and making poopy-face over and over and over and over again. Believe it or not, the movie has a myriad of other terrible set pieces and acting. Each and every musical number (with the exception of the the Jermaine

Dolph grabs onto a couple of nukes and uses them to turn his shirt into a sleeveless job. It's The Rock all over again with better acting, better stunts and better action sequences - and it still stinks.  We won't dig too much into the plot here because it's legit just The Rock within a missile silo. What we want to talk about is the incredible amount of stinker staples delivered. There's no sploding chopper but there's pretty much everything else. Dolph's 1-liners and overflowing from his cup and they are all A+ cheesy goodness. The amount of stunts and the level of production put into these stunts while wrapped around a really close example of the idiot plot is astounding. The production design is a blend of surprising and terrible. The script is bonkers bad. There's a little here for everyone. While it slows down for about 5 minutes in the middle, this is pretty hot from start to finish. It never makes sense and gives you plenty to riff on. This isn't just a great sunday movie, this could

The toughest of the tough guys teams up with a 15-28 year old kid to take down the entire Black Tiger gang using only every gun from the 80's and sweet guitar riffs. No one can touch this guy - mostly because he's covered in sweat and their hands just slip off. When it comes to butt movies, Steele Justice is possibly the most butt. Imagine every 80's tough guy staple and you've got it here. Epic guitar riff score, training montages, sweaty chest hair, perms, headbands, pastel sweaters, cut-off sleeves, big guns, atrocious dialogue and just being generally butt to everyone around you. Martin Kove has got "it" if "it" is super-butt. There is plenty of stuff for bad movie fans here. There's nary a scene that isn't perfect for riffing and when you're not making jokes Martin Kove's attire will pickup the rest of the comedy for you. There's nothing you haven't seen before here but the totality of it's stinker staples will give you plenty of enjoyment if you like super cheesy 80's action movies. It's not Commando,

Once again, the 80s/90s rom-com genre falls into that horrible disgusting trap of "if you think about this very much you'll want to wash your eyes out with soap" because very unforgivable things happen to the people around the main characters. Both of the people on the cover belong in jail. There is a serious warning content-wise here but this needs to be said - Love Potion No. 9 is about 1 thing - rape. It steers very clear of the song where it turns the drinker into a raging boner, this love potion causes anyone of the opposite sex to become a mindless zombie and you can make them do whatever you want. So what do the leads do? Well Paul (Tate Donovan) rapes an entire sorority and Diane (Sandra Bullock) makes the Prince of England propose to her forever changing the landscape of the British Monarchy. Wow, what charming, awesome, quirky people? No! Both belong in prison.  There's only one thing you should do with Love Potion No 8 (#9 isn't good but its not quite as villainous #8) - destroy it. That's t

Diggstown delivers the ultimate sleight-of-hand hustle to the viewer, by tricking everyone into thinking this is a great "con-job" movie. Look over here, guys and don't pay attention to the paper-thin plot and how the big con is just betting on unsanctioned boxing. Let's just get this out of the way - this isn't a TERRIBLE movie, but it's pretty crummy stacked next to how good its telling us it is. The whole thing is a giant ruse. Maybe someone can take that as a sign of how well edited it is, but we can't. Our job is to breakdown stories and judge them and this story is ludicrously empty - it's borderline "idiot plot" except one of the requirements is that just ONE person has to show a sign of intelligence to prevent the whole movie - but even if there was one person who could show such intelligence wouldn't prevent anything BECAUSE NOTHING HAPPENS! The plot is so thin it can be put to this: A retired professional boxer gets put into a bet to fight 10 men, one after the other. Actually that sounds alright

The Breen goes down one of his strangest rabbit holes (which is saying a lot) yet when he plays an AI from the future who has to come to Earth and clean up mankind. Neil is starting to frighten us. Pass Thru is what happens with a director's typical 4th movie. Neil spends far too much of the film "honing his craft" and using up precious film space so that he can practice how to use camera's. So unfortunately, Pass Thru isn't crammed full of nonsense; where Fateful Findings is 100% bananas, this is about 50%. So the viewer spends a lot of time staring at Breen looking stoic from various angles, which makes for a very boring journey. The most frightening part of the film is where Neil is going mentally. I'm worried about his well-being. He might be going to a place that we can't follow. His anger is clearly boiling over and in this film endorses Thanos' "snap" but with less compassion. Yes, Neil Breen has less compassion than Thanos.  So in the end, Pass Thru is a tough one to get through. There's quite

When you cut in some psychedelia in the editing booth, your film isn't psychedelic, you just have a movie pile. Gas-s-s-s! misses the mark by about a mile, unless your goal was to one day have proof that the Baby Boomers were completely up their own asses and should never talk about other generations again. The setup of the film is an interesting idea with the apocalypse coming and the meek inheriting the Earth - with one major problem, the meek are anyone under 25 and goosed on pot, free love and ego. From there you follow a group of bohemians travelling across Texas to a final destination of Barter Town. Either Corman wanted to make statements about how awful the young Baby Boomers were or was clueless on how awful his antagonists were. This group of hippies we are stuck with rival the St. Elmo's kids as for being terrible people. They're racists, rapists, and only care about themselves, yet are presented as the ones that are going to change the world for the better, ie "break the wheel" ala Khalessi. Yet