Prepare for a 90 minute penis measuring contest.

Donkey: There are few relationships that are more interesting than that of the coworker. Much like family, whom you have no choice but to allow a certain level of access into your life merely because somewhere along the line two people shot out of the same woman’s crotch, coworkers are usually uninvited participants in your life that, more often than not, simply don’t deserve the amount of company that you are forced to keep with them. In those very rare best cases they can turn out to be lifelong friends, while in the worst cases, sworn enemies with whom you’ll battle until the end of time. But most of them fall in that broad category of mildly irritating people that you would simply never choose to purposely spend 40 hours of your life with each week. When looking back on their quirks and exploits with the safety of hindsight, they can be a truly hilarious. I’ve met some real classics in my time, like the fellow cook whom on my last day on the job before returning to university thought that the best way to send me off was to try to convince me to go behind the restaurant’s dumpster and smoke crack with him (an interesting side note: I went on to get a degree and last I checked, he’s still actually in that dumpster). But during the time when you’re actually spending all your days with these people, they can make you so blisteringly angry that you strongly consider the merits of a forced sterilization program to be carried out with a dull butter knife strapped to a malfunctioning Weed Whacker. And we’ve all had them, whether it’s that middle aged guy that calls endless meetings that seem to have no other purpose than to show off the fact that he knows how to use PowerPoint, the cocky young fuck who insists on using buzz terms like “leverage”, “synergy”, and “ruptured hemorrhoids”, or that older woman who forgoes any semblance of showering in favor of apparently swimming laps in a pool of perfume every day, making her smell like an outhouse threw up while going down on a fucking garbage truck, giving you the added bonus of making sure that her stench will linger long after she’s actually left the building.

So as we sit back and enjoy Tango & Cash, a tale of two disgruntled coworkers, won’t you join me in recalling all those people that you’ve worked with over the many years with fond regard and just take comfort in one small comfort: Thank God I never had a gun.

The Plot:

Donkey: Despite sounding like a cleverly disguised brothel or possibly the next televised dancing competition serving as an intravenous lifeline to briefly sustain the inevitably terminal social relevance of some obscure celebrities or disgraced Texas Congressmen (CAUTION: Modern science has proven that watching the eye-raping hip gyrations of Tom DeLay for 30 seconds will cause complete testicular ascension and/or nuclear taint explosion. We cannot endorse witnessing this event under any circumstances.), Tango & Cash is actually one of the critical pioneers of yet another action movie cliché of the 80’s: the buddy-cop film. But unlike its more notable forbearers such as Lethal Weapon, 48 Hours, or possibly Cops & Robbersons, this film has the courage to dismiss the successful formula of pairing two completely different character types together that answers the age old question of “what would The Odd Couple be like if they were heavily armed?”. Instead the studio executives involved in this film apparently held a marathon 30 second brainstorming session where they concluded, “Hey, you know what would go with kick ass? An equal or greater amount of kick ass! BRILLIANT!”

Enter Sylvester “Tango” Stallone and Kurt “Cash” Russell. One is a take-no-prisoners cop who breaks all the rules in search of justice, discount sporting goods, and 45 caliber boners, while the other is…um…yeah pretty much the exact same thing. So what is the difference between the two, you ask? The answer is simple: Personal grooming. Stallone is the prissy button-down, banker-looking, possibly gay cop from the rich part of town, while Russell is the blue collar, mullet-sporting, possibly gay cop from the city’s mean streets. But working separately for years, they each become prominent enough to earn not only their own personal pride parade floats, but also the attention of Jack Palance, the haggard figurehead of the LA crime scene. In an attempt to neutralize them, as they’re apparently the only two productive cops in the entire city of LA, our heroes and are set up for a crime that they didn’t commit. Locked in a viper pit of convicts that they themselves arrested in the first place, our heroes become unwilling partners as they must join forces to break out of prison and wreak their unholy vengeance upon those that set them up. It’s all perfectly bad ass as long as you happen to forget that killing people by the boatload when you’re escaped felons isn’t exactly legal.

The Case for Greatness (aka The Lowlights):

Donkey: Unlike most of our adventures into the land of pain and despair captured on film, this entry is polite enough to prepare us for the ordeal ahead by beginning with an ominous warning. Just as the Warner Brothers logo fades away from the screen, the disembodied voice of Sylvester Stallone mutters, “Okay, let’s do it” while in no way sounding like he has a mouthful of goat semen. This might as well have been followed by the sound of rubber gloves snapping onto his hands while he asks me to touch my ankles, because at this point it seems pretty clear to me that I’m going to feel like a finger has been up my ass by the time this movie is done.

Exhibit A: The Good, The Bad, & Unnecessary Self-Promotion

Sure it may seem like he's putting himself in mortal danger, but every truck driver knows that even a rig is no match for the sheer girth of the 1989 Chrysler Le Baron.

As one may expect from any hero-based story, our festivities begin with an introduction to our main characters. And as anyone who has followed along through our exploits thus far would expect, those introductions are goddamn ridiculous. Thus we begin with Stallone, playing the part of Ray Tango. We see him for the first time as he’s chasing a runaway rig down a long desert highway, just as he dismisses his police helicopter backup in favor of a much better tactic: engaging the rig in a high impact game of chicken using goddamn face. Yes, he speeds off past the truck and into the distance before slamming his car to a halt, getting out, and standing in the middle of the damn road. At that point, with either too much courage or too little brain function to acknowledge that he is likely about to become a steroid-filled red blotch to be casually removed by windshield wipers, he calmly pulls his gun and faces the rig as it slowly bears down on him. He fires a few shots into the windshield and front tires as it gets closer, prompting the criminals inside the truck’s cab to declare that “this guy’s crazy!” But instead of putting their heads down, hitting the accelerator, and giving Tango a 90 MPH makeover, the thugs instead decide that the smartest thing to do in this situation is to slam on the breaks, bringing the rig skidding to a halt conveniently within 10 feet of their target. Then after a few awkward seconds, the two thugs suddenly come crashing through the windshield of the truck and land at Tango’s feet, almost making it seem like they didn’t fly out as a result of their sudden stop so much as a sincere and overwhelming desire to hump Stallone’s leg. This, of course, sets him up for his first epic line of the movie:

Stallone: “Glad you could drop in.”

Man, I'm glad we actually came to a stop. That was rough. Say, do you want to go get a coffee? No? Well how about....WAAAHHHHH!!!!!

Once the rest of the police force, including his captain (played by a familiar face that just happens to belong to the dude who was Frank in Double Impact) finally arrives on the scene, they all demand to know what’s going on, claiming that they can’t find anything illegal on the truck. When Tango explains that this truck is running coke, the other cops scoff, dismissing him as “a city guy” and demanding to know who he thinks he is. A “city guy”? How fucking far did he chase this truck? Do cops in the furthest suburbs of LA think their days of ticketing soccer moms give them some kind of hardcore street cred over the downtown forces, or did he actually chase these assholes all the way to Alabama? But before he can respond, another cop chimes in, setting up Stallone’s second epic line and what might be the single greatest moment in the movie:

Random Sans-Mustache-Ergo-He’s-Not-Bad-Ass Cop: “He thinks he’s Rambo.”

Stallone: “Rambo is a pussy.”

But wait…that’s him! Stallone just essentially called himself a pussy! HA! That’s so goddamn meta that it feels like Sly completely broke through the fourth wall just so that he could stab me in the eye with his junk! I haven’t seen that kind of completely unnecessary self promotion since Julia Roberts played Julia Roberts in Ocean’s Twelve, which may be the single biggest moment of ego masturbation in cinematic history. And with everyone standing in stunned silence, Tango pulls out his gun and fires on the truck’s cargo tank, gambling that it’s not actually filled with a flammable substance whose eruption would destroy them all (even though he was told that it was only seconds earlier). But of course, it begins to spout a stream of coke. Take that, other cops! Today we spell redemption T…A…No, seriously, did he just reference his own character from another movie?! Fuck me.

A mullet AND aviators? Goddamn. This guy couldn't be any more 80's cop if his life were soundtracked by Banarama.

While that extreme cornholing of our collective psyches would suffice for most other movies, this film then has the balls to go back for some psychological sloppy seconds, courtesy of Kurt Russell, playing the part of Gabriel Cash. He rolls into the film on his way home from work, accompanied by some surprisingly and rather inappropriately whimsical music. Seriously, the score for this scene sounds like it should be the theme song for a dancing purple dinosaur with questionable motives rather than for a relentless killing machine whose sole function in life is to perform involuntary steel-toed boot lobotomies. After walking into his apartment, looking forward to a quiet evening of red wine, bubble baths, and Brazilian Fart porn, he stands reading the paper in his kitchen when someone bursts out of a closet and shoots him in the chest a couple of times. It seems like it may be the shortest role in action movie history as Kurt is blasted out a window and onto his fire escape, but mere bullets are no match for his glorious mullet powers. Cash quickly fires a gun strapped to his boot, causing his Asian assailant to flee. And since this movie is basically dares you to find any common sense in it, the assailant forgoes the easy route of, say, the front fucking door and instead jumps out a second story window where he bounces of a car, landing with such ease as to suggest that the feat were less physically taxing than an underwater jazzercise session at your local seniors’ home, before hauling ass down the street. In hot pursuit, Cash ends up engaging this Asian bloke in a tired and predictable chase scene, somewhat reminiscent of Big Trouble In Little China, where the two of them run into a parking garage only to have the assailant steal a truck and attempt to hit Cash with it. But after jumping out of the way, rather than just declaring that the son of a bitch must pay, Kurt instead commandeers a vehicle of his own and begins a vehicular game of tag. After a few moments of sheer boredom, the movie tries to get our attention by showing that the chase is causing enough commotion for two people to stop fucking in the back seat of a car long enough to sit up and see what’s going on, giving us a completely unnecessary titty shot. Moments later, the scene finally comes to an end when the Asian aggressor crashes his truck long enough that Cash has the chance to pounce and be arrest him.

Just to prove that our heroes don’t corner the market on abject stupidity, the introduction to the film’s third pivotal player, an aging crime lord played by Mr. Napier himself, Jack Palance, also stumbles onto the screen with all the grace of a three-legged hippopotamus with an inner ear infection. Back on the highway where Tango had brought the rig full of coke to a hilariously retarded stop, we see a limousine pass by the crime scene that police are frantically establishing around the truck. That limousine is hauling Captain Wheezy and his mini-boss subordinates, the heads of two local crime families, James Hong (the Chinese guy who has literally played every Asian guy in every movie made since 1964) and some random dude that is destined to have a bright career in hemorrhoid infomercials. Palance looks out the window at his confiscated shipment of coke and curses the names of Tango and Cash, declaring them the proverbial crotch fungus that itches his balls, and vows to his delegates that he will do something to fix the problem. If you guessed that this is foreshadowing to him finding a way to give them herpes, you’re incorrect, but award yourself 100 bonus points for coming up with a scheme no more fucktarded than his turns out to be.

They say crime never sleeps and that may be true, but judging by these villains, at the very least it takes a break to hit the Early Bird special at the Country Kitchen Buffet.

Exhibit B: Who Could Have Guessed That Being Reckless Dicks Would One Day Backfire?

So young, so naive...before she was raped by the unstoppable handsome of Dean Cain. Damn you, Dean.

With our introductions complete, both cops return to their respective offices, too busy basking in the glow of their own self-satisfaction to notice they’ve becoming entangled in the first threads of a web of deception. It begins at the Beverly Hills office, where Tango takes a break from lecturing his stock broker and then his younger sister (played by Teri Hatcher before anyone knew, forgot, and then remembered who Teri Hatcher was) to quickly chat with his captain. After being asked why a rich wanker who dresses like a banker would bother working as a cop, Tango delivers a single word response: “Action”. Seriously? That might be recorded history’s fourth worst reason to be a cop, falling just behind “free handjobs from hookers”, “penance for all those children buried in my backyard”, and “I’m Batman”. Are there honestly no flags that go up in anyone’s mind when someone in the LAPD says they’re just in it to shoot people? That whole Rodney King thing makes a whole lot more sense every day. But instead of being horrified, Tango’s captain simply shakes his head and tells him about a drug deal that in supposedly going down that night. Tango, mentally cancelling his plans to dress up like Dame Edna, put on some Joan Jett, and dry hump his favorite Popple, declares that he’ll be there. Meanwhile, across town in the slums, Cash arrives back in his police station to a heroes welcome, which when you’re a bad ass from the mean streets means that you’ve earned a reception somewhere between passive indifference and flat out mockery. After acknowledging his greatness by mentally smelling his own armpits while remembering all the times he gave nerds a swirly in a high school toilet, he jumps straight into investigating the case of “who made the reservations for me at Chateau Dirt Nap?” He begins by bursting into the station’s washroom where he finds his Asian attacker is being carefully guarded while taking a piss. Despite being warned that this guy doesn’t speak English, Cash dismisses the other cops for some private time so that he can lay the Asian dude out on the floor and put a chair across his throat, demanding to know who is trying to kill him. But the answers that he gets are in the form of details of a drug deal, which just so happens to be the same drug deal that Tango will be showing up for that night. Call Admiral Akbar and check for an Adam’s apple because I smell a trap!

Had this dude not relented, Cash was prepared to deploy the harshest of interrogation techniques: the Hot Carl.

That fateful night begins at the industrial meat locker/failed discount electronics retail outlet that serves as Jack Palance’s hidden base, where he meets with his two associates to reveal his master plan just before its to be put into motion. He explains that merely killing Tango and Cash would not only be the quick and easy thing to do, but it would be the only solution that actually makes any goddamn sense if you don’t end all your sentences with an ampersand and long, sardine-flavored belch. So naturally, he’s not going to do that. Instead Jack declares that their revenge should be much more diabolically dim-witted. He pulls out two mice to convey his point, stuffing them into a large glass maze while describing his plan as holding “a game that only we can win” before yammering on about a massive shipment of drugs and guns. At this point the details really aren’t that important, as any man that constructs a giant maze for two mice just to explain a very basic plan to two of his subordinates is obviously a few Fruit Rollups short of a molester van.

He's either supposed to have an English or an Australian accent in this movie. It doesn't really matter though, since he just ends up sounding like he's gargling balls the whole time.

With that completely redundant moment of grandiose illustration at an end, the movie then turns to a dark building where we watch the master plan unfold. Tango and Cash arrive on the scene separately, each thinking that they’ll be wading into the darkness to bust up a major drug deal. At this point it’s entirely necessary to point out that apparently neither of them has the common sense of even the most mentally challenged of police officers, who wouldn’t dream of trying to break up so much as a Magic: The Gathering card exchange between two high school students without a full SWAT backup. I mean, there’s being brave and then there’s just being Darwin-award winning stupid. At best – AT BEST – if that drug deal only consisted of two men exchanging two briefcases, they’re still both likely to be armed, which still means that they outnumber and outgun one damn cop. So really, at this point they both deserve to die. Regardless, after catching sight of Jack Palance’s head goon, a man that we’ll simply call Dr. Flint GiggleTrousers, played by the dude from Blade Runner who joined Rutger Hauer on a quest to ask his creator about incept dates and why the hell he was designed without a chin, our heroes begin running around the dark building in futile pursuit. Eventually, after sneaking around just long enough to suck all entertainment value out of the scene, our heroes finally meet face to face with one another. But rather than being happy that they’re not about to meet certain death alone, they immediately start a pissing contest before running off and storming into the room that they suspect the deal is going down in. But rather than the deal, they instead walk in to find a lone dude who happens to be wearing a wire slumped over dead in a chair. And before the two champions of steel can figure out what the hell is going on, cops suddenly flood into the room around them, led by an FBI agent. After establishing that they’re all cops, one of the officers notices a gun on the floor behind our two heroes. When he picks it up, Cash identifies it as his gun, which had been stolen from his locker. This is another one of those situations where actually following the correct procedure and filling out the paperwork saying that your gun was stolen might have actually really helped, rather than just doing the equivalent of screaming “WHO STOLE MY GUN?” at a ham sandwich.

That's right, now you show us yours. Um...yeah...badge. That's what we meant. Badge. Totally. No one said penis.

As Tango and Cash are swiftly arrested on suspicion of murder, their fate is sealed when a doctored audio tape is delivered to the cops by the evil Dr. Flint GiggleTrousers. On it, a fake conversation between Tango, Cash, and the dead dude that was found in the chair details a situation where our heroes were attempting to sell confiscated drugs when they decided to execute the dude instead and, one can only presume, snort about 17 pounds of coke between them. With this damning evidence coming to the light of day, our boys are quickly taken to trial where a lineup of people come out of the woodwork to testify against them, including an audio expert who verifies the authenticity of the tape. With no chance to clear their name in sight, Tango and Cash enter a plea of guilty, hoping to get as little as 18 months in a minimum security prison. But of course, Jack Palance has other plans for them…

Exhibit C: Stop! Or My Ass Will Chafe!

After pleading guilty and bringing their trial to a shocking end, when Cash eloquently says that the entire proceeding fucking sucks, our heroes of glory and ball sweat are sentenced to serve time in their sought after minimum security facility. But of course, this wouldn’t be much of a movie if they spent 18 months sipping 20 year old Scotch while playing croquet with CEO’s caught misappropriating funds, so instead they soon find themselves being unloaded at a maximum security prison. And as their respective captains receive word that they didn’t arrive at the facility they were expected at and begin to search for their whereabouts, Tango and Cash do what all of us would naturally do upon we realizing that we’ve been mistakenly thrown into a cutthroat den of sodomy, and jump straight into the shower. If nothing else this gives us a completely unnecessary ass shot of the two of them, presuming that someone actually wants to see that, before they stand around arguing about who it was that has managed to frame them so successfully. And once they’re finished polishing up their sweet ruby starfishes and spent an unnecessarily long period of time pointing out how small each other’s dicks are, Tango and Cash are finally marched into their cells in general population where they are greeted with a hale of litter and flaming shit. Things don’t get much better once they are finally stuffed into their cells either, as Cash quickly discovers that he is bunking up with a huge black guy who looks like he could forcefully remove a pair of pants from an unwilling victim using no more effort than it would take to crack open a box of Shreddies, while Tango finds himself staring down the face of pure evil in his new cellmate…Clint Howard? What the fuck?

Since jumping directly into the shower was already stupid enough, the boys figure they might as well practice their rendition of Guys And Dolls.

What mousse do you use, because I just can't seem to get that kind of bounce.

Undoubtedly wondering if their days of actually making noise when they fart will soon be coming to an end, T&C settle down for their first night in prison. But the inevitable soon rears its ugly head when they’re both dragged from their cells and tossed down a laundry chute together. They slide down what one has to imagine is at least a couple of stories before finally landing hard, head first, on a cement floor with miraculously few adverse affects only to find themselves surrounded by a room full of thugs. At this point it definitely seems like they are not going to be the only things forcibly thrust into a chute tonight. But just as they try to formulate a futile strategy that they can only hope might result in them being raped the least, Jack Palance calls out from the shadows, unable to resist gloating over the hell that he is subjecting his enemies to while still remaining safely anonymous. Instead they end up facing his henchman, Dr. Flint GiggleTrousers, as he steps in front of Tango and Cash just long enough to wave a straight razor around their throats before setting the pack of drooling sodomites on them. Undaunted, Dance Slippers and Hard Currency start kicking as much ass as they can manage until they’re finally overrun. Hung up with heavy industrial chains over a couple of tubs of water, our heroes are then threatened with electrocution, as an electrical line is waved causally around the water at their feet. But before the villains can finish the job, prison guards suddenly bring the festivities to a halt. And before we can ask why the hell the guards, who were clearly bought off for this trap to have been set up in the first place, would bother to break things up, we learn that the assistant warden is an old friend of Cash.

After their narrow escape from death by severe rectal bleeding, Ballroom and Loose Change meet with their assistant warden ally only to be warned that they have no choice but to escape, as he won’t be able to save their puckered virgin asses for much longer. He ends up showing them blueprints for the prison ventilation system, outlining the one shaft that they could use for their getaway. He promises to leave all the supplies they’ll need just outside its entrance while having the giant fans blocking their path shut down at a certain time, giving them a small window for victory. With those plans in place, Cash visits Tango’s cell just before their scheduled moment of destiny, asking him to come along for garbage detail…wink, wink. But with their freedom almost within their grasps, Tango refuses to go, concluding that this whole scheme is obviously going to be a trap. Being a consummate team player, Cash simply deems Tango to be an idiot and leaves him behind.

Oh hey, shit, there's Waldo!

Quite used to going it alone, like a middle-aged Kinkos night manager with a Babylon 5 t-shirt collection and a waistline expanding faster than a muskrat trying to birth a Buick, Cash attempts to carry on with the slapdash escape plan only to discover that – hey, guess what? – It really is a goddamn trap. He busts into the ventilation system to find the giant fans turned off and the supplies left for him as expected, but with one added surprise: the assistant warden with a throat so sore, courtesy of a hunting knife, that even Robitussin would fail to provide any relief. Or as Cash describes it to Tango, “they cut his throat from ear to ear. Know what I mean?” No, actually, I don’t. What you just said leaves so much room for interpretation. Could you describe that a little less literally, perhaps in the form of a sonnet? And just as guards and prisoners alike come in to spring the trap, the giant fans behind Cash are powered back on, ensuring that there is no escape. But moments later, after nearly falling into the spinning blades of death and being copped into a mullet-sporting pile of coleslaw that would likely have been sprayed all over his fellow inmates, one of the fans suddenly grinds to a stop. Cash looks up in amazement to find Tango on the other side waiting for him. If you, like us, are wondering how the fuck Tango managed to get on the other side of that fan, then be prepared to be screaming at your TV in futility because there’s no answer coming. He just did, motherfuckers, and that’s all you need to know.

In the dark AND the rain? Pfffttt...maybe if you're a pussy. Real men would make this jump while on fire.

The two heroes make their way down the proscribed escape route with guards on their tails, until they finally arrive on a rooftop after scrambling through a random and unnecessary tube and weaving through a small power station that’s spitting sparks in their faces as rain falls around them. Faced with one last obstacle while their freedom stares back at them, Cash gets the most brilliant idea born unto humankind since someone thought to add bacon flavoring to mayonnaise: he runs and leaps off the roof, loops his belt over a power line that’s hanging just far enough away that while physically possible to make the jump, their odds of successfully probably wouldn’t be much worse if they just waited for Falkor the Luck Dragon to swoop down and carry them to safety, and zip lines his way over the prison’s gates where he falls to safety. After watching Cash go first and contemplating whether or not to follow his path of stupidity, Tango is just about to make the leap for himself when an old friend – the driver of the rig that he stopped at the beginning of the movie – pop’s up and stops him. They grapple for a while, fighting both each other and the utter pointlessness of the scene until Tango finally tosses him back into the power station to meet a shocking end, quite literally. With nothing left to stop him, Tango finally takes the Slip-And-Slide routeto safety, joining Cash just beyond the prison walls.

Exhibit D: Wonder Twin Power Activate! Form Of…Tranny!

After successfully pulling off the nearly unheard of feat of breaking out of a maximum security prison using nothing but an intense love of urban gardening and the power of teamwork, our dashing heroes of strength and genital warts do what is obviously the most appropriate course of action and decide to immediately go their separate ways. But before we think that they might die alone, leading hollow and closeted lives while lamenting that they had taken the time to learn how to quit the other, Tango explains that if Cash wants to find him, he just needs to look up his sister, who will in turn lead Cash to him. Meanwhile, back at Chez Palance, Sergent Bronchitis meets with his subordinates via shitty 80’s video conference, assuring them that everything is under control. And…that’s it. But this scene, which takes about 20 seconds, is quite indicative of every damn scene in this movie involving Jack Palance. With very few exceptions, he basically shows up just long enough to rub his nipples in delight over his own genius in front of his two pet crime family bosses while assuring them that everything is going according to plan. They could have shot his entire roll in this movie within a day, which is coincidentally about how long it takes to forget that he was ever in it.

Meeting adjourned, gentlemen. The doors are opening in a few minutes and I have to sell some of these TVs today or this Circuit City will close in a month.

Now that our unbridled heroes are back on the street, they waste no time in beginning the process of cracking skulls while undoubtedly engaging in some inappropriate fondling in search of those that set them up. First Tango visits the FBI agent who led that raiding party that arrested them on that fateful night, whom in turn admits that he was bought off to set them up rather easily before trying to escape, only to climb into the car in his garage and be blown to Receding Hairline Hell by a car bomb. Meanwhile, after visiting Owen, a friend in the crime lab, and loading up with guns, Cash visits the voice analysis expert that testified as to the authenticity of the forged tape that served as damning evidence against them. Within seconds he too admits ridiculously easily that he was paid off and offers a recording of the conversation he had when receiving instructions on how to frame them.

Now before you see some tits, who wants to hear me play Tom Sawyer?

With that incredibly minor amount of detective work done, Cash decides that it’s time to reunite with his begrudging partner in crime, so he journeys to the dance club that Tango’s sister works at. Of course, it turns out that she’s a stripper, so we get to watch Teri Hatcher dance. Or at least I think that’s dancing. Either that or this club has hired Teri Hatcher to do a performance piece on the dangers of epilepsy. Or perhaps she believes that she can fight off HIV with spastic contortions. Who knows? All I know is these Corn Chips are delicious. But just as Cash and Teri make their first eye contact and share a spark that could be due to attractive, recognition, or severe gastrointestinal pain, which is just before she starts playing random giant drums (what kind of fucking strip show is this?!), cops arrive on the scene. Not ready to return to prison and be forced to eat more luke warm cream corn or undercooked mashed potatoes, Cash dodges them by making his way backstage where Teri meets him and introduces herself. Looking for a way to sneak him past the converging cops and get him the hell out of that, she takes him into the stripper change room, giving us gratuitous titty shot numero dos. Moments later, the two of them strolls out of a back door and past a group of officers with Cash dressed in drag and following behind Teri Hatcher, looking less like a woman than George Burns in a cocktail dress. As the two of them climb onto a motorcycle, one of the randoms cops suggests that they have themselves a freaky three way. After getting two cigarettes flipped at him as a response, the cops shakes his head and concludes quite loudly that since these two women didn’t immediately jump at the chance to be disappointed by all two of the weapons in his sexual arsenal, they must be a couple of “dykes on bikes”. Awesome.

All I can think of right now is the female Gremlin from Gremlins 2: The New Batch.

After their successful getaway, Cash and Teri Hatcher end up back at her place where she gives him a back massage. And of course, just as she really gets him moaning in delight, Tango slides in through the front door and immediately thinks that Cash is plowing his sister. But as he sits back and contemplates the moral implications of making a Chinese finger trap out of a family member, he sees the shadow of someone hanging around on the patio. And unlike fucking his sister, loitering is something that he just cannot abide. Swiftly jumping into action, Tango dives through the patio door only to find that it’s Mr. Lahey, his own captain. As Cash and Teri Hatcher come out to see what the hell is going on, the predictable “I can’t believe you’re banging my sister” argument begins on the lawn, only to be interrupted moments later when Tango’s captain informs them that they’ve only got another 24 hours before the whole department is going to be on their ass as the feds have taken over the case of finding them. Realizing that it’s time to get down to business, Cash hands over the tape that he got from the voice analyst, and in return the captain gives them the address of a one Dr. Flint GiggleTrousers. That’s right. Strap in. It’s on now, bitches.

Exhibit E: The Best Revenge Is Living Well. Oh, Except For Maybe Killing Everyone. That’s Kind Of Better. But After That, It’s Living Well.

After a painfully unnecessary and awkward attempt at a bonding moment between brother and sister, Cha Cha and Coin Purse finally get down to the business of exacting their brutal revenge. They arrive on the scene of Dr. Flint GiggleTrousers’ apartment, where Cash bursts in to catch his prey off guard, preferably half way through dropping a deuce. Instead he finds the evil henchmen ready with an ambush of his own and ends up looking down the business end of a gun barrel. But just as all seems lost, Tango pulls the old double whammy and pops up just behind the villain, putting a gun to his head. From there they take the goon up to the roof for interrogation time, hanging Dr. GiggleTrousers over the side of the building by his feet. But when he still refuses to divulge either the identity of Jack Palance, the man who has set them up, or the recipe for his signature spinach dip, our heroes change tactics and instead opt to tie Flint up and strap a grenade to his face while playing the world’s most transparent game of good cop/bad cop. But of course something this simple is enough to make the supposedly hardened criminal not only break, but also piss himself as he finally relents and gives them Palance’s name.

Not wanting to say anything to ruin the tension, Cash suddenly remembered that this was actually his grenade filled with Reese's Pieces.

With the identity of their enemy finally known to them, Macarena and Small Bills decide that it’s time to suit up and kick some ancient, wrinkly, and most likely soiled ass. But before they can do that, they know that for an idiotic job, they’re going to need some idiotic equipment. So with an ideal friend to turn to, they once again visit Owen in the crime lab, cementing his role as this movie’s Down syndrome version of Q from the 007 series. He begrudgingly issues our boys a shitty SUV equipped with ridiculous guns plastered all over it and an onboard computer that would rival the finest Collecovision that you could find in your local flea market. Looking at this monstrosity, one has to hope that Chez Palance is within a 1o mile radius, or these assholes are going to have to gas up about 4 or 5 times. Seriously, that thing looks like it gets about 3 feet to the gallon.

The only way that this truck could possibly make them look like bigger douches: a bumper sticker saying "Honk If You're Horny".

After presumably making those dozen refueling/Skittles and Big Gulp refill stops, Tango and Cash soon find themselves overlooking the Palanace compound, surveying the dangers that lay ahead. With their moment of destiny finally facing them, the boys mount up and launch their assault, thus beginning the epic final battle. After bursting through the front gates and racing around with no discernable pattern or strategy, they end up being chased by random trucks and dune buggies (wait…dune buggies?…yes, dune buggies) in a scene that basically consists of a shitty demolition derby highlighted by an absolutely ridiculous amount of arbitrary explosions. The climax finally comes when our champions eventually come face to face with a goddamn Bigfoot truck, which is just indescribably stupid. Who the fuck actually owns a goddamn Bigfoot truck? And why is that in a crime lord’s compound? Do they actually think that fucking thing is practical, or is Palance just making sure that he’s prepared in the off chance that he has to entertain an arena full of rednecks? At this point Cash reveals that they’re almost out of gas, which makes sense considering that they have been driving around for about 4 minutes. So either my predictions on their fuel economy is dead right, or they were too fucking stupid to actually fill up before arriving on the scene. Regardless, they continue to take out everything around them in a escalating series of giant explosions until they’re suddenly sandwiched on either side by the next entries in the series of fucking ridiculous vehicles that Palance has on his lot, two huge industrial mining trucks. Faced with this opponent, they finally manage to fire off enough brain synaptics to realize that having a Hemi isn’t going to save them, so the dynamic duo bail out the windows of their own truck and instead fight their way into the cabs of the industrials ones. Once at the helm, they finally bring the scene to a close by ramming directly into the largest building on the compound.

Climbing out of the wreckage that they created only to find themselves surrounded by guns and drugs, Achey Breakey and Chedda spring into action, standing back to back so that they can Uzi the shit out of any guards, random goons, hapless janitors, or visiting relatives that manage to wander onto the scene. After finishing with the pawns, they then make their way up to Palance’s office just as we see him start the building’s automated self-destruct countdown sequence, basically ruining any feeble attempts at suspense that may have built around the climax of the film. Not only do we know that Palance plans on dying at this point, but he’s also given us a convenient timeframe in which he plans on doing it. When Tango and Cash finally burst into the room, they end up killing James Hong and the head of the Random Ass Pain family, Palance’s two mini-crime bosses, before coming face to face with the one and only Dr. Flint GiggleTrousers as he holds a knife to Terri Hatcher’s throat. They stand in awkward tension just long enough for another dude to walk into the room, then break off to fight individual battles, at the end of which Tango knocks the random dude out and Cash finally delivers on the promise they made on the rooftop, throwing Dr. GiggleTrousers down a flight of stairs while cuddling an active grenade.

Stop right there boys! Let me tell you about the complete history of the mirror! It all began back in ancient times when...

With all obstacles finally cleared out of the way, Mambo and Bad Cheques make their way into the final room where this time it is now Jack Palance’s turn to hold a gun to Teri Hatcher’s throat while standing in a room of mirrors. So just to interject for a moment to review, this asshole built his an evil fortress equipped with a miniature maze for mice, a self-destruct system, and a room of goddamn mirrors. Fuck, I wish they had fought on further and inevitably found the ball pit room, just past the hallway of compactors and random acid pits, and to the right of the bathroom filled with spitting cobras. Making his last stand against the only two men who would dare to stand in his way, Palance drones on and on about something that nobody gives a shit about while both his opponents sit back, figure out which mirror he’s actually standing behind, and simply shoot him directly in the goddamn forehead. Problem solved! But they’re not quite out of the woods yet, so they grab Terri and run, making it out of the building just in time to give us a diving-away-from-the-explosion shot. Not bothering to ponder how incredibly lucky they are that the timer on the self-destruct sequence wasn’t so much as 30 seconds shorter, the three of them sit in the dirt where Tango and Cash bicker about which one of them is the better cop like two teenagers desperately wanting to ask the other to make out before finally ending the movie with one of the single greatest images you could possible go to credits on: a high five of glory that slowly morphs into a front-page newspaper high five of redemption! FUCK YEAH!

Like any good porn knows, you always end on the money shot.

The Verdict:

Donkey: While stacked with random moments of shitty magnificence, this movie surrounds those gems with deliberate attempts at comedy that fall flat on their ass, stereotypical action that is less exciting to watch than an Alzheimer’s patient repeatedly check his mail for Christmas cards in July, and two main characters lashing at each other with barbed tongues so much that you could easily mistake them for two cats cleaning each other’s assholes, which would be less homoerotic than their relationship, by the way. Seeing as this movie begins by showing us the downfall and resurrection of two supposed Super Cops rather than telling the story of what they actually did to earn those reputations, you can’t help but come away from this movie feeling like you missed the best part of it – a part that isn’t there in the first place. Instead you have two action heroes who are happy to wander around in the shower, bare-assed and quite content to tell you that they know that you like it. I give this movie four one-armed pushups at the Oscars out of five “Hey, I played Rambo!”s.

What We Learned:

Donkey: You know how when some of your favorite bands split up, start mingling, and form so called “Super Groups” that are never as good as their original bands were in the first place? Well that’s not limited to music, my friends.

Don’t forget to check back every Sunday for a new fresh review! Next week shittymovienight.com presents: a classic treat as we wrestle with classic dialogue and Rowdy Roddy Piper in…THEY LIVE.

Back To The Main Page.

Make this year's holidays a time of laughter, joy, and constant dong punches.

Donkey: Like a creepy uncle with a mustache and a seemingly infinite supply of stained jogging pants, the holiday season is once again waiting just around the corner, ready to pounce on the innocent and unsuspecting. But as we come face to face with usual plethora of questions that accompany this time of merriment, like who’s going to make an ass of themselves at the office Christmas party and am I really going to allow my child to sit on the all too eager lap of a man who is likely homeless 11 months of the year, there is one quandary that demands a much higher level of urgency. Call it capitalism gone wild or even the genital warts infecting the undercarriage of generosity, but there is nothing as important during this time of good will towards men as what we intend on buying for others. After all, the consequences of a poorly chosen gift can be disastrous. Sure, it’s been reported that feelings of loneliness and isolation run rampant during the holidays, but the real secret is that poorly chosen gifts are the cause of the season’s astronomically high suicide rate. Hell, Big Mouth Billy Bass has killed more people through the annals of history than polio. So to help you avoid wiping out your entire family with a 10 ton blast of unfortunate judgment, we here at ShittyMovieNight.com have compiled the following guide to help you choose the right gift for everyone on your list. Whether they’re naughty or nice or dried wads of bleeding ass drool, we’ve got you covered. You’re welcome.

For the One You Love

If you're looking for a man to kick the faces of ninjas while performing the perfect dismount, look no further.

We Recommend: Gymkata

When it comes to that special someone in your life, the person with whom you want to share your laughter and your pain, the good times and the bad, and your rather massive collection of Robotech porn in hopes that they won’t laugh you right back into your parents’ basement, nothing but the best will do. Sure you could just play it safe and buy him another gas-powered pube trimmer/deli meat slicer, or her another Martin Mull Signature Mustache Waxing Kit, but perhaps this is the year to truly complete their lives in a way that even you never could, with the single greatest adventure involving a tiny gymnast riding a pommel horse of glory ever told. Featuring Kurt Thomas, the world’s third least likely action hero, in line just behind Phyllis Diller and the frozen corpse of Ted Williams, it’s the story of how diminutive stature, a series of completely unnecessary flips, and a total lack of any killing prowess are the only tools necessary to conquer a contest of strength that no one has survived in over 500 years, all while earning the love of a woman whose standards for men are obviously set so low that she’d probably still fuck a man in the composting stage of leprosy. The showpiece of any DVD collection, this film will provide repeated hours of pulse-pounding entertainment to get your significant other through the long, cold winter ahead, provided that the exposed ass of a random priest doesn’t cause their brain to shit out into their skulls. But trust me when I say that’s a risk worth taking.

But Also Consider: Troll 2, Double Team

If the single greatest gift known to man isn’t enough…well, you’re just being an asshole at this point. That’s like winning the lottery and immediately trying to double it by betting it all on a single hand of Blackjack. That being said, if you’re going to insist on being a reckless turd burglar, there are options that can push any mere mortal to the very brink of sensory overload. But be warned: I’m quite serious when I say that giving a gift that includes any combination of Gymkata, Troll 2, and/or Double Team, creates a force so powerful that it would take the power of 1,000 exploding suns to defeat it. So unless you’re giving the gift to Aquaman, or possibly rock legend Steve Perry, you might want to reconsider.

For the One You Hate

His tender virgin ears won't be ready for this screaming load of premium manseed.

We Recommend: Universal Soldiers

Is there someone in your life that you loathe beyond all comparison, so much so that even the sound of their voice is like nails on a chalkboard, provided that chalkboard is lodged somewhere in your lower colon, between a can of spray cheese and the 1984 Farmers Almanac? Then I beg of you to put down that nail gun, cancel all plans involving a wheat thresher, and consider a far more sinister alternative. Instead of exacting your unholy revenge with savage violence, this yearconsider something more subtly diabolical and give them the gift that keeps on giving. Giving what, you ask? A third degree migraine and seriously depleted faith in humankind for starters. Featuring horrible dialogue spat through the screaming lips of exceptionally untalented faces, a plot that could only be equaled by a Bounty paper towel marketing team given 15 seconds to ramble out a script while their wives are being raped by clowns that are laughing hysterically, and special effects on par with the visual imagery created by your slow cousin having sex with an Etch-A-Sketch, this film will spend what even Timedrax, the Master of Time and Dimension, would call the longest 80 minutes of anyone’s life pissing in the ears of your nemesis with all the unchecked aggression and light asparagus smell that you wish you had the freedom to unleash yourself.

But Also Consider: The American Ninja Quintology, Alien Apocalypse

While Universal Soldiers will leave them permanently crippled, both mentally and emotionally, if you want to truly destroy the mind of that asshole that kicked sand on you at the beach, then don’t bother with any of that Charles Atlas body building bullshit. Instead consider a second gift to pull off the brutal finishing move of your choice: The American Ninja Quintology, which could cause semi-permanent case of face explosion once its blatant inconsistency causes your expressions to contortion more violently than if you shit a live zebra, or Alien Apocalypse, which will pull the warm blanket of a coma over your enemy as he or she basks in its total lack of remarkable qualities.

For the One You’re Trying To Show Your Penis To

The Sears catalogue of the cinematic porn world.

We Recommend: Hard Ticket To Hawaii

Unless your name happens to be Scott Baio, John Stamos, or Lou Gossett Jr, getting laid is never easy. To make matters worse, the odds are pretty high that you’re hung like a squirrel in an ice bath, you’ve got a face that only a mother could love since the alternative would be the realization that she tore herself a ragged vaganus to unleash little more than a walking Chia Pet upon the world, and your skills at pleasuring a lady are about as finely tuned as Helen Keller’s banjo. But that’s not going to stop you, you smooth son of a bitch, because there’s a set of breasts out there with a woman attached to them that’s just begging to be motorboated. So if standing a short distance away, hoping that she’ll notice you posing in a way that makes you look like you’re either flexing or passing a small kidney stone hasn’t worked, you’re going to need all the help you can get to have your all day pass stamped at the gates of the Pleasure Dome, deep in the heart of Flavor Country. To pique the ladies’ interest, go with Hard Ticket To Hawaii, a long series of slow grinding, feathered-hair titty shots featuring starlets barely clinging to the same remote semblance of fame that could only be earned through horse porn, all while tugging off men that wouldn’t meet the IQ prerequisite to work as an underwear mannequin in a Sears display window. She’ll be too busy laughing at the indestructible cancer snake lurking in unsuspecting toilets and the skateboarding hitmen to notice you putting your junk on her thigh.

But Also Consider: Ice Pirates, Cool As Ice

By this point her panties will likely be more flooded than a post-Katrina New Orleans, but if you want to rocket them right off the target of your sweaty lust, you need to seal the deal by showing her how much worse things could get than you. You could either let her bask in the glory of Robert Urich just long enough to realize that while you’re not half the man he is, at least you don’t have space herpes, or you could show her the single biggest failure in personal marketing since Donald Trump unveiled the Donald Trump Kitten Strangler, Cool As Ice. I’m not sure why Vanilla Ice thought that his career could be advanced by forcing us to watch him in a series of dance videos, dance-filled live shows, and public service announcements on the dangers of inappropriate dancing in public streets, all loosely associated to one another with a series of scenes that feature him frozen in a puckered, shit-eating expression that leads one to believe that he’s attempting to suck out a bowel obstruction from the wrong end, but this movie is an immortal testament to how wrong he was.

For the Armchair Quarterback

Domo arigato, Mr Roboto, for wasting 2 hours of my life.

We Recommend: Robot Jox

We all have one of those friends: The kind that screams at UFC matches like they could knock George St. Pierre out cold with a single thrust of their hips, bleat at football games like they have more Superbowl rings than fingers, and yammer on about soccer like they could pull off a top corner strike via bicycle kick on command. And yet, miraculously, most of these men couldn’t kick a Cheetos habit without needing a triple bypass, let alone a game winning field goal. And for those champions by proxy, whose asses are expanding inversely to their ability to actually perform any physical activity outside of pouring melted cheese on their nachos, we heartily recommend Robot Jox. This is a film dedicated to praising men whom train tirelessly to accomplish a task that could probably be performed just as easily by an elderly dementia patient or a particularly clever house cat. They are genetically engineered to be the best of the best at strapping themselves into a giant robot and executing such monumental tasks as firing a gun, walking slowly, and falling over backwards. Finally, a sport that fat guys who would be rendered breathless from simply cramming their heads into a large helmet can compete in!

But Also Consider: Best Of The Best, Over The Top

Though it will satisfy most, this might not be enough in certain cases. Sometimes just the hint of physical activity, even one simple enough to be mastered by an epileptic toddler watching back to back episodes of Pokemon, is enough for our couch jockeys to dismiss it faster than veggie platter. For those people, there’s Best Of The Best and Over The Top. The former will teach you that if the moderately untalented amongst us does enough jumping jacks, they too can lose at an international karate tournament just as fast as a Hollywood superstar like Eric Roberts, while the latter will show that everything in life, whether it’s fame, money, a rig, or the love of your only child, can be won through the majesty of arm wrestling.

For the Video Game Aficionado

For you, the day you watched Street Fighter: The Movie was the worst day of your life. For us...it was Thursday.

We Recommend: Street Fighter: The Movie

Since more and more people are playing video games these days, bringing what was once a shameful hobby enjoyed only by social outcasts to the forefront of popular culture, the odds are pretty good that you know someone whom has traded away their dignity for chance to taunt and tea bag 12-year-olds after cutting them down online with an Energy Sword. In most cases, the safe anonymity of playing with strangers across the world on the Internet brings out the inner douchewelder in most of these people, but since you can’t wrap up a punch in the fucking face and give it as a gift, you might as well choose a metaphorical kick to the balls in the form of a movie based on a video game. There is no shortage of testicle smashing selections in this category, but one of the single greatest examples has to be Street Fighter: The Movie, an unsung hero in the cinematic category of “Completely Missed The Goddamn Point”. The game on which it was based, Street Fighter II, was a global competition of fighting mastery to determine the world’s greatest warrior. The movie, on the other hand, is the light-hearted tale of JCVD defending the world from the whimsical musings and underwhelming demands of a brilliantly comedic dictator. It’s just the size 13’s in the nads that you’re looking for.

But Also Consider: Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, DOA: Dead Or Alive

While Street Fighter: The Movie is the most direct slap to the penis on the market, these two films spread the icing on the Fuck You cake, delivering a follow up flick to the testicles while the recipient is already distracted by extreme dong pain. Witnessing a supposed Chinese god, played by someone who is of course not Chinese, getting a goddamn haircut or basking in the fighting majesty of Eric Roberts when wearing his ultimate weapon of a pair of sunglasses should be enough to make even the most hardened gamer sob like an infant.

For the Fan of Truly Unbridled Awesomeness

JCVD kicks a fucking tiger. Seriously. Do you need any other reason to watch?

We Recommend: Double Team

I like things that are awesome. You like things that are awesome. Apart from fundamentalist Christians and our future Morlock overlords, who doesn’t love things that are awesome? So consider this: Awesome begins with Van Damme and ends with a punch square to the balls while doing the splits. This is simple, irrefutable fact. The challenge therefore, is not finding a gift that will blow someone’s goddamn mind, but one that will maximize that cranial inferno, killing everyone within a 35 mile radius. For this we have to turn to Double Team. When the bathtub-molesting exercise routine and underwater plastic bag strangling majesty of JCVD is combined with not only the unnecessary and inappropriate basketball references of Denis Rodman, but also the apparently limitless invincibility of a Coke machine, the result is a whirlwind of mind-fucking furry that not even a greasy bandit like Mickey Rourke can withstand. This movie will change the way you look at the world.

But Also Consider: Timecop, Double Impact

Trying to pick the highest peek in the mountain range of awesomeness that is the JCVD library can be daunting, so take heart in the fact that you can’t really go wrong. That being said, our alternate suggestions would be the adventures of JCVD rocketing through time, wherein he saves the day just to end up in the private hell of ending up in an alternate reality to find that he has a 10 year old son that he’s supposed to have been around but has never actually met, or the adventures of JCVD through the land of incredibly bad editing, where he and a shadowy double of himself argue over which one of them is gay while secretly wondering and graphically picturing which one of them could sex up a woman better.

For the Office Party Where You Have To Buy Some Goddamn “Secret Santa” Bullshit Gift

Hilarity wears Depends.

We Recommend: The Golden Girls: Season 4

Trying to buy a gift for a coworker you can barely stand is kind of like trying to unblock a septic tank with a grapefruit spoon and the raw suction power of your own lips: it’s likely going to be a painful experience and no matter how well it turns out, you’re going to walk away with a shitty taste in your mouth. To guarantee all the hilarity that a modest budget and minimal effort can buy, I recommend you scrounge through your nearest Wal-Mart discount DVD bin for The Golden Girl: Season 4. With such timeless classics as the episode where Dorothy finally reveals that she’s a tranny, the moment that Sophia gets confused enough to shit in a potted plant, and the one where Blanche discovers that you’re never too old to get HIV, this comedic powerhouse will have something for everyone…

But Also Consider: Doing a lot of drinking.

Don’t forget to check back every Sunday for a new fresh review! Next week shittymovienight.com presents: a much, much needed holiday break. But we’ll return in the new year, recharged and ready for more pain and suffering.

Back To The Main Page.

This poster actually captures the reaction that I have the moment I see a picture of Eric Roberts, particularly with an open shirt: HIGH FIVE, MOTHERFUCKERS!

Donkey: High school is a confusing time for most of us. Between involuntary erections, gym teachers that are far too enthusiastic about watching you shower, and a social structure that looks like it had a paranoid schizophrenic in the dementia stage of syphilis as an architect, the whole ordeal can be about as fun playing table tennis with a paddle made of gorgonzola cheese. And while I’m sure that most of the trials that I experienced were pretty standard fare, the one source of infinite confusion in my life that few others were forced to deal with was directly related to this week’s film.

As I sat in my law class for an hour each day of the final semester of grade 12, I found myself glancing back at the rear wall of the classroom every so often with a furrowed brow at the spectacle that awaited me. That particular teacher, for reasons I’ll never know, decided to decorate the back wall of his classroom not with educational material or faux-inspirational pictures that made you want to stab the person sitting next to you in the jaw with your pencil, but with movie posters. And while I, of all people, can appreciate a good movie poster, these weren’t posters of movies that either had anything to do with law or were even landmark films in some way. No, these were obscure, low budget affairs like Kickboxer 6: King Of The Taco Bell Drive Thru, that quite frankly I’m shocked even warranted a poster of any kind, let alone the conscious decision to purchase one. But the one that really drew my eye was the poster that you see above, advertising the adventure of unbridled failure known as Best Of The Best. At the time, I had no idea what this movie was about, and that poster really doesn’t help: a small picture of Eric Roberts, slapped over the image of two people giving an epic high five, finished off with a title so obscure that it might as well be called Movie: The Movie. What the fuck is that? I couldn’t imagine what the hell Eric Roberts was supposed to be the best of, but he seemed pretty happy about it. Eventually as high school itself began to fade into the rearview mirror of my distant memories, this movie went with it. But as the assault known as Shitty Movie Night continued on our fragile collective grip on reality, this film was once again dredged to the surface, mocking me with its promise of obscurity and the sheer mantastic aura that is Eric Roberts. A more fitting film for our enjoyment I couldn’t imagine.

The Plot:

Donkey: Much like searching for dignity at a Cosplay convention, the plot of Best Of The Best is as short as it is pointless. Eric Roberts, Chris Penn, and several other actors that have absolutely no business pretending to be sandwich artists let alone martial artists, team up with one token Asian guy that actually has an air of legitimacy, forming the US National Karate Team. Guided by the vast karate knowledge of Darth Vader himself, they must navigate their way through countless hours of non-karate related training montages in order to prepare for the ultimate sort-of-karate related tournament that no one has ever heard of, all the while entirely unprepared for the true prize that awaits them: the power of love.

The Case for Greatness (aka The Lowlights):

Donkey: So here we are, finding ourselves once again treading into familiar territory by wrapping ourselves in the warm, ass-kicking comfort blanket of an 80’s martial arts extravaganza. And we’re not dicking around either; we’ve set our sights on the film that quite literally promises to be the best goddamn movie in existence. Not only the best, but the Best Of The Best, such as it were. So forget your Police Academy XII: Mahoney Vs Dragon Ninja, The Ninja Babysitters Club, Surf Ninjas Get Crabs, or any of those other useless imitators spawned in that decade, and strap in for a guided tour of awesome featuring THE Eric Roberts, star of film, stage, and my pants.

Exhibit A: The Unlikables

The movie starts off with a scene that anyone who was able to stomach their way through the American Ninja Quintilogy with us will recognize as mandatory for all 80’s martial arts movies: a large group of people practicing a painfully basic kata simultaneously with all the speed and grace of a kindergarten class doing their post-nap time stretches. This is our first introduction to the killing machine that is the South Korea karate program. From this exceptionally unimpressive display, they choose five of their best fighters, one of whom wears an eye patch, clearly marking him as the most dangerous man alive due to his obviously being a hybrid pirate-ninja. Once their team is chosen, a blood-chilling chant of “Korea” begins, complying with the government regulated cheer and merriment levels.

While our evil (re: not white) combatants gather on one end of the Earth, we’re slowly introduced to the heroes on the other, beginning with the two main characters of the film:

If I didn't know better, I'd swear that someone was trying to make the case that the wrong Roberts was cast as the Pretty Woman.

Eric Roberts: Working an automotive assembly line by day and teaching his son to ride a bike by night while crying like a school girl and wearing a V neck sweater so goddamn inappropriately low cut that you’d think he was applying for the head waitress job at Hooters, Eric Roberts is an aging contender whose bum shoulder is the only thing standing between us and the destruction that his flowing mane would unleash upon the world. After receiving a letter inviting him to try out for the US National Karate Team, the fires of competition deep within his loins begin to rage anew, surpassing the existing fires of Chlamydia. Ready to spray his burning passion all over his opponents’ faces, he gives his mother a heartfelt speech about his need to compete before getting a little tender and turning to the real man of the house. Pouring on sentiment, Eric asks his son for his official permission to try out for the team after warming him up by reading him a bedtime story titled Faded Glory: Your Father’s Only Three Steps Away From A Serious Alcohol Problem.

I may have already won a million dollars?! HELL YEAH!

Tommy Lee: Fresh from hitting the skins for Motley Crüe’s Dr. Feelgood video, our next hero also decides that it’s time to return to the passion of competition, challenging Vince Neil to see who can contract Hepatitis C after plowing through a gaggle of shady groupies the fastest (hint: As Pamela Anderson can tell you, Tommy ends up winning). Oh, wait…wrong Tommy Lee. In this film, he’s a random Asian dude who’s teaching valuable life lessons to a class of very small children in his dojo of smiles and sunshine when he’s delivered the same message asking him to try out for the US National Karate Team. It’s right about at this point, with all this warm and fuzzy bullshit that we really began to reminisce for the days of invitations being delivered in near-fatal shuriken form.

With those initial introductions finished, the movie wastes no time in getting down to business and taking us to the Qualifying Tournament of Fate and Pop Tarts, where we’re introduced to what will become the rest of the US team:

He couldn't look any less like a martial artist if he was wearing a Donald Duck costume.

Chris Penn: Not seen since his quite literally mind-expanding role in Fist Of The North Star, the late Chris Penn makes his triumphant return to Shitty Movie Night playing the role of the unlikely martial artist and fifth degree douche bag. Strolling into the tournament sporting a cowboy hat, a blaring Boombox, and a shit-eating grin, Chris not only looks like the absolute last guy that would take up the discipline of martial arts – or anything that required discipline of any kind, really – but he proudly flaunts a personality that would get him kicked out of any respectable karate club faster than David Duke at the Apollo Theater. In this tournament alone his conduct ranges from blatantly disrespectful to bordering on psychotic, as his most brazen acts include getting in the face of a ref and verbally molesting him after losing a match, then kicking another opponent in the face while he’s bowing to him. Obviously they’re building him up to be the bad-ass rogue fighter, but this is fucking ridiculous. He’d be kicked out of any respectable tournament so fast that he might as well go for the gusto and end every fight by dropping a steaming pile of victory in the middle of the ring before drop kicking a baby.

The Others: The final two characters rounding out the American team are Sonny and Virgil, an Italian and a Buddhist, respectively. They’re such under-developed characters that those single word descriptions quite literally carry them throughout the duration of the film. As a matter of fact, it wouldn’t make either character even slightest bit less interesting if they had been substituted with goddamn houseplants.

Virgil and Sonny. Who? Yep, exactly.

Don't make me Force Choke you, bitches.

The tournament itself, as one would expect, consists of one glorious montage, treating us to the spectacle of our five main characters awkwardly slapping at faceless opponents in a manner that’s supposed to be impressive, provided that your experience witnessing a fight scene of any kind has been limited to watching your kid brother smacking his He-Man dolls into one another for 30 minutes before shitting his pants and breaking down into tears, all set to the greatest 80’s power ballads that K-Tel has to offer. Once the whole thing comes to a disappointing end, the coach of the US Karate Team, played by James Earl Jones, makes his final picks. That’s right: the coach of the national karate team is Darth Vader. While I can appreciate the gravitas that an actor of that caliber brings to your movie, who the fuck honestly thinks that he could be a karate coach? I love the man, but who the hell is he going to teach to fight when his mouth appears to be losing an epic battle to a box of doughnuts at least twice a week? Regardless, he’s visited by an old white man named Jenner, the financial backer of the team to whom he reveals his picks. But when Jenner voices doubts, Darth Cookie Dough assures him that while Jenner’s expertise is business, his is in choosing and training champions. Looking at our main characters, however, I’ve got to call bullshit. Picking Eric Roberts with his gimp shoulder is one thing, but who the fuck would pick Chris Penn for any task more complicated than human speed bump? Jim-E-J describes Chris as being a complete asshole that just happens to be undeniably powerful, which means that sure, he’s your man if you happen to be fighting in a back alley. But in a tournament that’s point-based, where you earn points just from one clean hit regardless of the damage it causes, raw power doesn’t really account for fuck all. So until these assholes are about to take part in Bloodsport, his ability to eat large quantities of soup has about as much relevance.

Little did the contestants know that they were actually kept in the dark to hide the fact that the judging panel consisted of Falco, that kid who played Urkle, a pack of chewing gum, and appropriately enough, Judge Reinhold.

It then comes time to make those selections official, as it cuts back to a ceremony where they announce the names of the five competitors who made the illustrious US National Karate Team, or as I like to call it, Team Rusty Trombone. To no one’s surprise, the five main characters introduced so far are the ones chosen, but what does catch us off guard is the fact that, for reasons I can’t possibly imagine, the ceremony consists of all the competitors sitting in the dark, facing away from the stage. Unless everyone that didn’t make the team is going to be given the consolation prize of a bullet to the back of the head or the celebration following the ceremony is going to involve a lot of KY lube, this seems exceptionally unnecessary. Of course, they attempt to build tension by leaving the announcement of Eric Roberts’ name until the end, and again, I’m not really sure why. As hilariously satisfying as I think it would have been to have followed the trials and tribulations of Eric Roberts thus far just to have him come up short and not end up being picked, only to finish the rest of the movie without him, I don’t’ think anyone would have the balls to attempt that kind of comedy.

After the selections are made, the five champions of might and magic head back to a locker room where after many a high five they get an introductory lecture from the Master of the Dark Side himself, who lays down what I believe are the traditional rules of the Sith: never be late and always function as a team. That only makes sense, as even more than his dual Lightsaber and striking facial tattoos, Darth Maul was famous for his punctuality. James Earl continues his lecture by concluding that “the only objective is to win”. That statement would probably mean a lot more to all of us if he specified winning…what exactly? This isn’t an Olympic team, so it’s entirely unclear as to what exactly they’re competing for, except for perhaps lunch money. But before they sign over their lives to the iron fist of his rule, he tells them that his assistant will be taking them out to a local bar for their last night of fun, encouraging them all to get laid and immediately turning the forecast from stern over to bizarre with a 70 percent chance of creepy. But after leaving his men to undoubtedly lose themselves in another flood of high fives, Jimmy Earl learns of one last addition to his team when he’s met by Old Man Jenner in the hallway. OMJ declares that he’s met someone that he wants the J-Dog to hire onto his team as extra help, describing this person as “a real sensei”. In turn, J.E. Jo’ exclaims that they don’t need any damned sensei, leading me to believe that no one in this movie actually knows what a sensei is. Seriously, this film is portraying a goddamn hot dog eating contest as accurately as any martial art. After all, if the coach of a goddamn karate team isn’t a sensei himself, what exactly does he think he is? A towel boy? A concerned well-wisher?

After further cementing his reputation of being a douche bag by spitting an uncalled for and spectacularly racist impression of an Asian man at Tommy Lee, Chris Penn and the rest of Team Rusty Trombone pair off and check into their assigned dorm rooms to get ready for their night of awkward attempts at debauchery. It begins with Eric Roberts and Tommy Lee as they share a touching conversation about Eric’s kid and totally dead wife before moving on to Sonny and the assistant regaling each other with their respective obsessions, which in the assistant’s case consists of a collection results of every major tournament in the last 5 years as well as statistics on every major fighter in the world, all conveniently stored on about a dozen floppy disks. Wow. With that kind of storage space, I’m going to go ahead and guess that his data on the world’s fighters consists solely of their name and the title of whatever Abba song that they remind him the most of. This grade school slumber party bullshit finally ends with Chris Penn, decked out in his finest ball-clenching cowboy gear, seducing Virgil to give up his meditation and join them at the bar with the promise of sweet poon. Once Virgil agrees, they finally all go out for the evening, ready to paint the town gay. Of course, when you put a gaggle of 80’s martial artists in a room with a bunch of drunken yahoos, particularly when one of them is as big of a taint stain as Chris Penn is in this movie, I don’t think it’s any surprise as to what happens. While the assistant sits at a table, playing on a computer that looks like a TRS-80 without using a monitor of any kind and Eric Roberts makes a call home to talk to his son, Chris Penn starts to dance with a drunken hillbilly’s girlfriend, pawing at her ass like it’s hiding the antidote. Just as Lord Vader himself walks in to witness the scene, the hillbilly defends his honor and throws a punch at Chris, which is easily dodged just in time for it to impact his own girlfriend square in the face. At that point, a full on bar fight naturally ensues, creating a convenient excuse for our heroes to wade through a mass of simpletons, beating them to death with wild abandon while Jimmy Earl watches with a grin. The best part of this scene comes about halfway through when Eric Roberts finally notices the fight and gets off the phone to join in on the badly choreographed action, walking out into the brawl and just nailing the first dude that he comes across right in the face without any kind of provocation or the slightest indication that this guy even wanted to fight in the first place. For all he knew, this poor guy just wanted to get the hell out of there, and now he’s got a shattered jaw to show for it. But once they finally kill or at least mildly inconvenience almost the entire bar, the pudgy Sith Master declares the battle to be over and tells his boys that it’s time to go.

Exhibit B: They Key To Perfecting The Deadly Art Of Karate Lies Somewhere Between Running Laps And Jazz Hands

Had they probed deeper they would have found out that she had only worked as a geisha for the last 12 years, which still would have made her the most qualified martial artist on the coaching staff.

The last character of our dream team is finally introduced back at the training gym the next day when Wade shows up and turns out to be Katherine Wade, one of those funny people that sports a vagina, much to everyone’s horror. After J.E. Jo’ explains that he’s quite reluctant to accept her help, she gives her extensive karate and Eastern philosophy focused background before declaring that without her help, “all his fancy high tech equipment won’t mean shit.” Of course, that sounds like a great argument until you actually watch the rest of the movie and realize that this team uses about as much high tech equipment as the Amish. Sure, they’ve got one punching bag that has a sensor detecting the speed of the appendage impacting it, but that’s about it. The Professor on Gilligan’s Island had more elaborate equipment than these cock swizzles. But of course, Darth Chocoholic relents and bows to her expertise, waiting until the team finishes their first training routines – running laps and doing punching sit ups – to introduce her as the new trainer on the team.

Right about now, it’s time for a set of dueling montages. So while the Americans refine their deadly track running skills, we turn back to the land of evil back rubs to find the Koreans ball-deep in a training routine of their own. They begin on the grounds of an ancient temple, doing such incredible things as switching between basic stances and knuckle push-ups while getting hacked at with a bamboo katana, before kicking it up a notch and running out aimlessly through snow before stopping to karate chop trees with their bare hands while standing shirtless in a blizzard. Not to be outdone, we cut back to the Americans as they practice punches with the refined technique of a drunken frat boy, then jump some rope, and finally top is all off with some yoga. Goddamn it, this is getting to be too much.

What appears to be a very traditional training exercise is actually the Korean team lost in the woods, desperately needing to obtain firewood.

Sure it looks like a display of sheer physical power, but she actually nagged these bricks into finally breaking on their own.

But just as it all comes to a head, the Americans decide it’s time to do some good old fashioned brick breaking, after it’s explained that their upcoming tournament with the Koreans will involve Eastern rules, wherein a tie is settled with a competition of strength and focus, or punching a stack of bricks to be more specific. And as Wade gets up to demonstrate how even a middle aged blonde woman who’s energy is already being sapped by a losing battle with menopause can successfully smash a stack of Styrofoam bricks like a true champion, all I can do is think about what bullshit this is. Only a goddamn American film could suggest that traditional Eastern tournaments are going to involve breaking competitions as an afterthought. That’s so American that they might as well suggest that ancient tradition calls for a tie to be broken by seeing who can chug a dozen Bud Lights before rubbing one out to a Victoria’s Secret catalog the fastest.

To serve as a brief reprieve from the extensive aerobic fat-burning plan that involves just about everything BUT practice their actual fighting techniques, we are forced to sit through another completely unmotivated and entirely useless scene where Chris Penn attacks Tommy Lee’s ethnicity over a shared team meal. So that means we’re about two thirds of the way through the movie now and Chris Penn has still proven to be nothing but an asshole. Why would I be cheering for this guy in the tournament exactly? And from there, we move to a classroom where the gang sits and watches footage of the Korean team in action. As they profile each of the five fighters on the opposing team, they announce which American will be matched against them, imploring them to study their nemesis and prepare to face them. The punch line to this nonsense comes in the fact that Tommy Lee is assigned the task of taking on Dae Han, the leader of the Korean squad and international eye patch model. From his wincing reaction, it’s clear that this news has either affected Tommy deeply, or possibly that he spent the morning slamming fistfuls of expired mayonnaise down his throat, but we’re not exactly sure why. The answer comes later that night as Tommy’s dreams transport him back into the past, returning him to the death of his older brother whom, you guessed it, was fighting Dae Han in a tournament just like he wil soon being doing himself. And while we’re supposed to be digesting the dramatic implications of this obvious plot twist, I can’t help but notice that in his flashback, Tommy’s brother is wearing enough padding while fighting that he could have easily paused from the action and played the back catcher position for the 1975 New York Mets, so it’s actually kind of an amazing feat that he managed to find a way to drop dead in spite of that.

The astute viewer will notice the two guys in the back, whom are never introduced or seen again in this movie. But only the truly elite will understand that they're there solely to infuse the team with unstoppable mustache power.

The next day we get back to the action and are forced to sit through, yep, more goddamn training. After showing the Koreans jogging in slow motion, we’re treated to the film’s title track practically belched out by a faceless 80’s hair band while another American training montage kicks into high gear, this time focusing on weight lifting. Yep, weight lifting. Eventually I think they’re just going to run out of ideas and we’ll see a montage where Chris Penn makes a sandwich. But then for just a brief moment, the movie actually shows something remotely relevant as we find Tommy sparring with Chris Penn, and of course, beating him pretty badly. Never one to miss out on an opportunity to make you hate him even more, Chris Penn graciously accepts defeat by screaming that Tommy’s a chickenshit for not finishing him off. I’m not really sure what kind of a finish he expected when you’re practicing with your own teammates, but I guess that’s proof that even he would rather die than continue on with this monotonous Body Break with Hal Johnson and Joanna McCloud. After being asked what’s wrong by Darth Deepfry, Tommy sulks off and hits a punching bag to the point of exhaustion until we leave this moment of clarity and return to the dense fog of more goddamn training. This time the montage alternates between the Americans taking on the most fearsome opponents they can handle in the form of punching bags while the Koreans shadow box, and then moves on to the boys once again meditating in a field before showing the Koreans praying while standing topless underneath a giant waterfall. And just when I think we can’t possibly take anymore, it ends with a long shot of the Americans jogging down a beach together. In slow motion. FUCK.

Exhibit C: Oh Right, I Guess We Need A Plot, Huh?

His begging was somewhat undermined by Eric's spicy bean burrito-fueled belching.

To finally bring some manner of actual story back into the glorified cardio workout video that we’ve been watching for the last 30 minutes, the movie decides that now’s the time to inject some pointless and shallow drama. It all begins when Eric Roberts gets a phone call that every grown man dreads. No, not the one telling him that he’s HIV positive. And no, not the one telling him that his girlfriend has missed her period. I’m talking about a call informing his that his son has had a terrible accident. Horribly shaken, he approaches Coach Vader to explain that his son has been hit by a car and been hurt quite badly. Pleading to be allowed to go back to stay by his son’s side, he’s resolutely denied by Jimmy Earl, who declares that if Eric leaves, he will never be allowed to return. But as hilariously and unrealistically strict as this seems, Eric naturally ignores him and goes home anyways, saying that he doesn’t have a choice. He ends up staying in the hospital with his son that night, until the kid finally comes out of his coma the next morning. After a weeping bedside scene, Eric Roberts leaves his son in the hands of the professionals and sulks back to Team Rusty Trombone where he begs to be taken back, having been gone for what appears to be a whole day. But showing all the flexibility and compassion of Strom Thurman in a meat locker, JEJ stands his ground, apparently deciding that missing what was probably morning of jumping jacks is unacceptable and reaffirming that Eric is still kicked off the team. But no sooner has he stormed out in anger and disappointment than Eric’s melodrama is immediately upstaged by an even more innocuous conflict. After staring down the business end of a Dark Sith spaz attack for pulling his punches, Tommy responds by letting loose a full power kick which not only destroys their impact detecting pad, but also briefly knocks Virgil, the poor bastard holding it at the time, out cold for a short time. So like Bruce Banner after reverting back to find himself clad only in torn but oddly in tact pants, Tommy flees in the face of his hidden explosive power, leaving them all behind with mouths agape.

As the scene moves outside, Eric catches up with Tommy for some reason, just as he’s getting on his bike, ready to quit Team Rusty Trombone forever. When Eric asks what the hell he’s doing, Tommy cries out that he can’t fight Dae Han, finally sharing pain of the fate that his older brother suffered while doing the exact same thing that he is now faced with. But after incredibly standard advice about not bottling up his issues and living for himself rather than his dead brother, which is so incredibly generic that Eric might as well have just rolled out a TV with Dr. Phil on it and let it do the talking for him, Tommy remains resolute and takes off on his motorcycle. And as he drives off into the distance to do some heavy thinking, everyone who suffered through Cool As Ice with us knows what’s coming: a long montage of random bike riding on a highway to nowhere. While all this is going on, Wade finds convenient plot-moving information and confronts Coach Vader on it, demanding to know how he could send Tommy to fight Dae Han knowing that his brother was killed in the exact same circumstance. In response, Darth Potpie explodes into a lecture about giving your all, saying that Tommy Lee’s brother didn’t take the situation seriously enough and died as a result of it. As he was the coach at the time, Jimmy Earl takes personal responsibility for that failing and declares that he’ll never let it happen again. That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t really answer why he chose Tommy Lee to fight Dae Han specifically, as there are four other men who could have done so just as easily. So yeah, I guess the answer to that question is hhhunnggghhh (POOP)!

I'm so out of here! But before I go, can you tell me if I've got something stuck in my teeth?

Um, coach...seeing as we're just two random dudes and the guy from Footloose, you might want to reconsider taking back the movie's stars.

With their two greatest fighters gone, leaving only the sociopath and the random fodder to carry the team’s load, the remaining three members of Team Rusty Trombone approach Coach Vader, asking if he would please change his mind about Alex, because they clearly need both him and Tommy Lee to win. Well, technically they need those two to even qualify to compete, but why nitpick? Conceding the point and somehow taking that very basic logic as a sign that his men have come together as a team, J.E. Jo’ tracks down Eric back at the dorm. Apparently he agrees to come back onboard, as the movie then skips to the next day where the team is at the airport, ready to depart when Alex walks in to much ovation and half mast Johnsons. Conveniently right around that time, Tommy Lee also has an epiphany at a gas station while taking a break from what is turning out to be a ridiculously long bike trip. He watches an older brother give his ice cream cone to his younger sibling who dropped his own and is so touched by that moment that he races back just in time to catch the team at the airport. Of course, knowing what brothers are like, if he had stuck around for another 30 seconds he probably would have witnessed the older brother changing his mind, punching the younger one in the face, and taking back the ice cream, so we’ll just be thankful that he left when he did. Finally reunited and ready to experience an colossal failure, the great Team Rusty Trombone shares hugs and reach-arounds before getting on the plane and flying to meet their destiny.

Exhibit D: Failure Has Never Tasted So Arbitrary

This is Scott Parkerson reporting to you live from Seoul, South Korea. I have no idea why the fuck I'm here. Back to you, Chuck.

As the movie arrives in Korea, we travel directly to the tournament, where the boys suit up in a locker room while a black announcer sets the stage by narrating the introduction to the tournament, expounding on how Tae Kwan Do is as important to the Koreans as baseball is to Americans before going on even further to explain that this is a tournament that involves a combination of Karate, Kickboxing, Judo, and Tae Kwan Do. What?! This is supposed to be a fucking karate tournament. It doesn’t take a goddamn PhD to realize that those are all completely different martial arts, and as we’ve been told multiple times up to this point, they are the US National Karate team, not the US Every Martial Art You Can Think Of team. Shit, these fuckbuckets can barely learn one martial art, let alone four. But after one final inspirational speech that ends with Darth Tub of Ice Cream telling his men that if they give everything they have in their heart, they can be the best of the best (fuck, I love it when they state the name of the movie in the actual movie itself), the competitors come filing into the arena to face one another in the long, long, long awaited battle.

The tournament officially begins with Sonny, the greasy Italian, facing his chosen opponent. As you’d imagine, he fights with all the grace of a one-legged dog coughing out its death rattle and ends up losing, giving the Korean team an 11 to 7 lead in points after the first match. Next up is Virgil the Buddhist, and he doesn’t fare much better, eventually crawling out of the ring after handing Korean a 20 to 9 lead. And of course, the last of our less than important competitors is Chris Penn, who after all the goddamn training that we had to sit through still fights like he’s quarreling with cousin Jed over the last bar stool. But despite this, he actually manages to become the most successful American to this point, battling his opponent to a tie. And so we move to the previously mentioned brick smashing tie breaker. Mustering all of his racism-fueled might, Chris breaks around 8 Styrofoam bricks, while the much smaller and theoretically weaker Korean dude breaks 9, proving in spades that the supposed raw power that Chris was recruited for came in about as useful as a passionate love for bee keeping. So just to recap, that’s 3 losses out of 5 fights so far and only one of them was even close. I’m not sure who the fuck it is they were referring to when they named this movie Best Of The Best, but it’s extremely apparent that it wasn’t any one of these assclowns. Maybe it was the catering staff…

What makes Chris Penn's loss in this contest even more humiliating is that the other guy used his penis to smash his bricks.

Only seconds before the fist smashed his nose across his face, Eric Roberts finally realizes that he's not auditioning for So You Think You Can Dance Korea.

With the lesser peons quickly out of the way, the movie finally picks up as Eric Roberts makes his way into the ring, even going so far as to show us a random bar in the US where a throng of drunken onlookers are cheering and drinking, proving this to be a monumental occasion for at least a couple of dozen people. It might even be important enough to rival the viewership of last year’s lumberjack championship. Just before the match finally starts, Eric declares that he’s going to kick his opponent’s ass. Really, Eric? I thought you were there to crochet him an ill-fitting sweater out of wool and an undeserved sense of self satisfaction. Once the fight actually begins, Eric starts to close the gap between the teams’ points fairly quickly before things start to even out in the second round. It continues to flow along fairly evenly until Eric gets knocked down and takes an axe kick to the back. It appears to be a fairly unremarkable moment until he crawls back to his corner and reveals that he’s injured that bum shoulder that everyone was warned about. But being a man of steel, brawn, and high fiber content, ignores the calls for him to quit, telling him that it’s over. He knows, just as the announce tells us, that the rules state that if he cannot continue, all the points that he had gained are forfeit, which doesn’t make any goddamn sense, but whatever. Instead Eric begs for someone to pop his shoulder back into place until someone finally does. But it’s not exactly like he’s back to peak physical condition at that point, so rather than letting it hang uselessly at his side, he demands that someone “tape it up” while literally screaming like a girl. They do exactly that, taping his arm to his chest before he heads out for the last 30 seconds of the fight with the use of only one arm. And not only does he manage to survive that time, but he actually manages to fight better than he did with two hands, capping it off by kicking his opponent out of the fucking ring. As his bout comes to an end, we see that the score has narrowed to a mere 29 to 22.

Much to my chagrin, the final match of the tournament is not between a back massager and 1975 Buick Skylark, but is instead, of course, between Tommy Lee and De Han. Tommy is tentative at first, so in return Dae Han starts kicking his ass, scoring three unanswered points before his opponent finally decides to wake up. Fulfilling yet another 80’s martial arts movie stereotype, once the fight actually begins to climax it consists of little more than a lot of needless jumping around and horribly telegraphed kicks. But Tommy Lee finally starts to kick some ass, ending the first round down a measly 6 points instead of a whopping 7. If that’s not fucking progress, I don’t know what is. Just before the second round starts, Darth Pudding reminds Tommy that they need to either make up those points or score a knock out. Alright, at this point this whole plot is pretty blatantly not making any goddamn sense. If he knocks out his opponent, why would that arbitrarily make up the point difference between the two teams? Even if you disregarded points and decided that specific match was a total victory, the Koreans have still won more matches than they have. Honestly, at this point I’m surprised it isn’t stated that they only way the Americans can win is if Tommy Lee performs the infamous Triple Lindy. But the second round starts with a little more spice, as Tommy Lee takes two illegal hits, first to the balls and then to an eye. But that only spurs him on further, as Tommy continues to make up ground closing the gap by hitting Dae Han with a flurry of 5 punches and/or kicks that for some reason only count as 1 point. But after his flurry of pain reduces the point difference to one and leaves Dae Han standing dazed, just begging to be hit with one final killing blow, Tommy has a flashback of his brother’s death and begins to let his anger boil to the surface. Spotting the signs of his coming eruption, Eric and Jimmy Earl start yelling “no” from the sidelines, knowing that Tommy not only intends on murdering his opponent, but also actually believing that he somehow can do just that with a single strike. But rather than somehow proving the incredibly unlikely, Tommy manages to maintain enough control to resist the urge and simply stand there, letting the time run out. When the buzzer finally sounds to bring an end to the match, the Korean team scurries out to drag De Han back to his corner, while a somber Tommy walks back to Captain J.E. Jo’, who tells him that despite standing back and allowing his team to lose by a single point, he actually won that match. So yeah, all that and they lost. Wow. What a massive waste of time this entire ordeal has been.

Don't worry, dude. That asshole would never let me play with his Legos, so we're cool.

The tournament then comes to a glorious close with the traditional medal ceremony, where the two teams stand lined up and facing one another as the Americans are forced to watch the gold medals get hung around the Korean team’s necks. But while his teammates begin to celebrate their victory, De Han limps over to Tommy Lee. Barely containing his sobs, Dae Han tells him that to save a life in defeat is to earn a victory in honor, which we’ll just go ahead and translate into “thanks for not destroying my ass”, before declaring that his brother was a great fighter. He continues to say that he deeply regrets Tommy’s loss, and offers himself as Tommy’s brother, which, again, I’ll just go ahead and translate into “want to build a fort out of some couch cushions?”. In a move of ultimate humble respect, Dae Han then puts his medal around Tommy’s neck while they both bawl like kids flocking out of Transformers: The Movie after watching Optimus Prime die. Finding the ability to forgive somewhere just below his ability to make a delicious quiche, Tommy embraces Dae Han and all is right in the world again. Much like the audience in that stadium, I find this so touching that I’m pretty sure this movie just molested me. The Korean dude that Eric Roberts fought is inspired to honor his lesser opponent as well, walking up to him and saying that he knows everything about him before also putting his medal around his neck. Eric Roberts replies by saying that he knows all he ever wants to know about his opponent, which I think is supposed to be a compliment even though it seems like a really shitty thing to say. The last three Koreans then follow suit as well, only much more quickly and with less fanfare since no one gives a shit before the movie draws to a close with them all stand together, holding each others arms up in the air just before the credits roll. So I guess when you’re not actually the best of the best, you can always hope for sympathy.

That's right folks...in the Special Olympics, everyone's a winner.

The Verdict:

Donkey: Best Of The Best has the truly great quality of not falling completely flat on its face because of a lack of budget or talent, but entirely because of the very premise on which it builds. Eric Roberts is the somewhat leader of the US National Karate team which spends almost no time actually practicing anything that is even close to actual karate while under the watchful eye of a man whom clearly doesn’t even know how to spell karate, before heading over to Korea to fight in a tournament that they never actually explain the point of, where they face off against only one other team and manage to lose quite badly by any reasonable measure. Fuck. This movie really did push me to the very edge of literary skills, as it’s hard to write any kind of coherent exposition on it when the only thought running through my rather stunned mind for an hour and a half was, “BULLSHIT!” But while I applaud it’s aggressively insane plot, the problem is that watching a movie that consists just as much of random exercise montages as anything else gets painfully boring. I have to give this movie three and a half inappropriately low cut sweaters out of five confusingly dead brothers.

What We Learned:

Donkey: People in the 80’s apparently thought you could basically become a full fledged ninja after doing little more than panting your way through the Sweating To The Oldies series.

Don’t forget to check back every Sunday for a new fresh review! Next week shittymovienight.com presents: a break from the pain, as we approach the end of the year in reflection of what we have endured and assist you with the approaching holiday season by delivering…A SHITTY MOVIE BUYER’S GUIDE OF BALL DRAINING GLORY.

Back To The Main Page.

When you're this bad-ass, you're not only surrounded by blondes, but you can shoot a man dead while wiping your brow. Take that, Chuck Norris.

Donkey: There can be no doubt that the single greatest invention in the latter half of the twentieth century, which radically altered the face of human existence forever, was the keytar. Part synthesizer, part guitar, but all rock, that baby demanded that you surrendered to the infectious power of dance while belting out the dopest beats that the human body could endure before knocking the Magnum PI mustache clean off your face. But that being said, until my petition entitled “The Final Countdown To Keytar Armageddon: Funk Me In The Ass” officially changes all records of human history, others will disagree with me and claim that a far bigger revolution has come from the rise in prominence of the Internet. Among many other things, it has changed the way that we socialize, communicate, and digest our news. Hell, without the Internet I’d just be some asshole on a street corner, shouting to anyone who would listen about the soul-saving powers of JCVD’s ball cleavage.

One of the biggest changes that the Internet has facilitated has to do with the availability of porn. I know that the youth of today won’t be able to relate, what with being able to type “gardening tips” into Google Images only to be assaulted with an endless parade of pictures of vagina, but back in my day things were much different. The first time I ever saw a naked woman was in the pages of a ripped up Playboy that had been discarded in a vacant lot just a few blocks from my elementary school. And while we’re on that subject, why was there always at least one porno mag in a field by a school? I’ve asked all kinds of friends around my age who come from all kinds of different cities, and we’ve all had the same experience. Who the fuck was distributing these magazines like some weird Johnny BonerSeed? Well whoever you were, I salute you, you magnificent bastard! And the only other reliable avenue of nudity available for someone too young to actually buy porn was the Friday night skin flick on the movie channel. Every Friday night at 1:00 AM they aired a film that’s plot revolved around little more than finding reasons for random dudes to dry hump topless chicks with a passion that will burn through the ages. And it’s one of those movies that we’re going to examine this week. So come with me, if you will, as we journey back to bygone era of repressed sexual confusion.

The Plot:

Donkey: I have no idea. There’s something about diamonds, deadly snakes, and sex-doll equipped assassins in here, but quite frankly, even after having seen this movie several times, I’m not really sure what it’s actually about. The best way for me to sum it up would be with a single word: tits! Of course, if that’s not enough detail for you, I could go into a little more detail and describe it using two words, which would be: BLLLAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH TITS!!! Just don’t ask me to up the ante to three words please, or the last one will involve me shitting my pants.

The Case for Greatness (aka The Lowlights):

Exhibit A: Is Andy Sidaris Gonna Have To Choke A Bitch?

Only contestants on Fear Factor, laying in a box of bugs while grinning like idiots in the hopes of earning a couple of bucks could possibly understand how she feels.

Donkey: Our escapades this week begin with a surprise bonus, rewarded to us as a result of watching Hard Ticket To Hawaii: SPECIAL EDITION! I know what you’re thinking: “Most ‘special editions’ consists of little more than charging me 10 extra dollars for the feature film and an image gallery of the director eating a sandwich, so what’s so special about this one?” Well it’s pretty much like that, but in this case the sandwich tastes an awful lot like herpes, as the movie starts with a brief introductory retrospective hosted by Andy Sidaris, the producer/director/writer/ball-fondler of this film and Julie Strain, some random porn star that agreed to sit and absorb his mildly creepy attention and horribly patronizing compliments – I’m shitting you negative, he actually compliments her for being able to read and, amazingly, her response isn’t to tell him to go play a round of hide-and-go-fuck-yourself. With all the magic of a prostitute/john relationship, together the two of them reveal that this is the second movie in a 12 part series that Sidaris had produced before giving us the incredible in-depth insight of staring at the movie’s poster while Sidaris points out how much he’d like to awkwardly fondle the people pictured there. I’m not sure who thought that what basically amounts to sitting and listening to your grandfather talk about the people he’d put on the business end of his Viagra-fueled hard-on would be a good idea, but if there’s any justice in this world, they’re strapped to a dentist chair right now having cat piss poured in their eyes while listening to Katrina and The Waves’ Walking On Sunshine on repeat.

Exhibit B: Hello. Have You Seen My Tits Yet?

This is also how she gets out of traffic tickets, buys groceries, and makes collect calls.

With that extra special bonus fart soufflé coming to an end, the movie itself begins with a two part prologue, opening on a yacht called the Malibu Express. Two of our main characters, Dona and Rowdy arbitrarily make out after Rowdy tries to convince Dona to turn down her reassignment to Molokai and instead stay with him on Malibu. Her thoughtful counterargument to his plea is to suddenly rip off her towel, revealing herself in what is the first of many unnecessary titty shots to come and establishing the level of intelligence that we’re going to be dealing with. And once the sounds of hot monkey love subside into the night, the film skips to the second act of our prologue on Molokai where two law enforcement officials walk onto the private property of a family infamous for growing pot, preparing to issue them their annual nominal fine to server as a gentle slap on the wrist before turning a blind eye to their operation. But when they get there, they find a whole new operation set up, run by dudes packing Uzis, the premier weapon of all villains in the 1980’s. Understandably weary, the cops decide to get the hell out of there only to be snagged and pulled up into a tree by a snare, proving this gang of criminals to have all the technological advancements of fucking Ewoks. Left hanging to be discovered like a couple of Wookies in short shorts, they’re shot dead without being asked so much as a single question. As important as all this sounds, the greatest aspect of this scene is that it has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Nothing. Killing these cops has no consequence, and while the crime is briefly mentioned later, it has no direct effect on any single event in this film. So in other words, this film blatantly wasted 5 minutes of our lives. If only this was the only time we could make this claim…

That's right kids: if you have an ink jet printer, a few crates, and a lot of women willing to sell their dignity for coke money, you too can make a film!

Next the movie travels to a small airport hangar run by Molokai Cargo, filled with the finest mustache-sporting laborers that 1987 has to offer as they move around crates that have the opening credits printed on the side of them. Well, to be more specific, they have brown paper printouts of the credits taped onto the side of them. It’s a somewhat clever idea fairly poorly done, which still makes it the most brilliant aspect of this movie by a score of 184 to hotdog. But as that concludes, we bare witness to a forklift driver accidentally severing the metal straps that hold a “contaminated” sign on a very special crate. But just as our imaginations start to get the better of us and we begin shouting out our guesses as to what contaminated material lies within that crate – weapons grade plutonium? The frozen head of Walt Disney? The premier film copy of Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot? – the terrible secret is revealed: it’s a snake. But not just any snake. No, this snake is a deadly, bloodthirsty dispenser of…cancer. Yep, you read that correctly. It will later be revealed that this novelty store, rubber toy of a snake is dangerous because it’s contaminated with cancer. There just isn’t enough deodorant in this world for my taint to handle this.

We're only a backrub away from a much, much better movie.

After being introduced to one venomous reptile, we move on to another as Dona pulls up to a beachfront property to pick up her blonde partner, Taryn. And seeing as this movie is aimed squarely men who are either physically or mentally young enough to still consider the peek of pleasure to be rubbing the sharp cheddar factories that they call their crotch against their Thundercats bedspread, Taryn obviously stops as she runs up from the beach, arbitrarily taking off her bikini top to rinse off underneath an outdoor, tree-mounted showerhead right in front of Dona. At this rate I’m surprised that everyone in this movie doesn’t simply greet one another through an elaborate series of blowjobs. Once Taryn’s dressed, the two of them finally load into the Jeep and head off to work after yammering on about how “The Agency” wants them to be in shape at all times and giving one of history’s most awkward high fives. I have no idea what “The Agency” they’re referring to is, but from what I’ve seen so far, I think it’s fair to assume that they’re talking about an escort agency. Eventually they arrive at the Molokai Cargo hangar where their boss, a slimy middle-aged man named Dixon, assigns them the task of transporting a honeymooning couple and the crated snake via small aircraft. They load up and take off, giving us a series of long flying scenery shots while a horrible Firehouse cover band plays the Hard Ticket To Hawaii theme song. Although from what I’ve seen so far, instead of sharing the move’s title, the song should be called Dripping In My Pants (You Might Want To Get Checked): The Reprise. Eventually the plane lands in what looks to be someone’s back yard before our two blonde heroines guide their passengers down to a beach, telling the couple that they’ll be back to get them tomorrow.

While we try to figure out why in Brian Denehy’s hell a honeymooning couple would hire a cargo company to drop them off in the middle of nowhere, our attention switches to yet another yacht a short distance away, where we’re introduced very momentarily to an organized crime boss named Mr. Chang. Of course, the astute person watching this movie will notice that this man named Chang is actually a blonde white dude, so allow me to explain: he took that name after strangling his first Asian prostitute, giving him both untraceable anonymity and a moniker slightly more suited to organized crime than Chauncey Featherbottom. He stands looking like he’s about to turn on the proverbial chili tap in his tighty whities while an assist begins to fly a small toy helicopter towards the shore, officially beginning either some ill-conceived diabolical plan or the first game of Evil Fun Time.

Next up, carrier pidgeons.

Sometimes it's easy to see the motivation behind someone being a villain. After all, these two look like the get about as much play as a Streisand album at a KKK rally.

Once the small craft actually reaches the island, it ventures into the path of our two blonde heroines, who follow it until it finally lands. Upon further inspection, they find that it is carrying two small packages inside. But before they can open them to discover their contents, two goons appear on the scene. The first is a remarkably fat dude whom we’ll refer to as the Hamsteak Philosopher, while the second is a short, mustache-emblazoned blonde runt in Bermuda shorts that we will hereby dub as the Sodomy Assassin. They burst onto the scene, raising their guns and demanding that the women freeze before just opening fire on them anyways. But our blonde heroines aren’t just wearing their Batman-like utility belts to keep their short-shorts riding so high that the home audience can easily perform a pap smear, so they respond with deadly force of their own. Taryn pulls out a set of nunchuks and throws them at the Sodomy Assassin, which is far enough away from the intended use for nunchuks that she might as well have held up an overripe banana and just wished for her assailant to die from the sheer power of love, while Dona weakly tosses a ninja star that lodges in the chest of the Hamsteak Philosopher, not quite embedding it deeply enough to puncture an artery and cause an eruption of beef gravy. So I guess these chicks are ninjas, huh? The world’s all-time shittiest ninjas, appearing just beneath Mel “The Velvet Fog” Torme on that list, but ninjas nonetheless. In all the commotion, Taryn manages to slip one of the packages into her bra, while the second one drops unnoticed in the grass just before the women flee the scene. They jump back into their plane and take off insanely quickly, apparently content to leave the young honeymooners that they dropped off within walking distance of two cranky thugs without so much as a word of warning. And as those thugs stand helplessly watching the packages they were supposed to receive fly away packed in silicone, they lament the fact that they will soon have to face their boss, Seth, empty handed. On the upside, even a merciless boss has to concede that telling any story that ends with a throwing star in your neck adds instant hilarity, making you the life of any party and giving you charisma that no diamonds could buy.

Exhibit C: Intrigue! Quick, Let’s Pull Out Our Tits!

OOOOHHHHH SHINY!

We catch up with our heroines again moments later, as they once again land their plane in what appears to be someone’s backyard before pulling it into a Denny’s parking lot. Struggling to come to grips with what the hell just happened to them, the duo decide that their best course of action is dump their snake cargo into a nearby hangar before going to the place where they do their deepest contemplating: their Jacuzzi. This is so deeply offensive to women that I’m surprised one of them didn’t remark that she can’t think straight without an anonymous penis shooting brain juice down her throat. But frankly, the entire scene only gets worse as they get into a hot tub completely topless for yet another unnecessary titty shot. Eventually they open the package that they recovered from the toy plane and discover that it contains diamonds. Realizing they’re easily identifiable, being the only women flying around the island, Dona declares that they’re in trouble and need to report to Rowdy, causing them to spring into action and jump right back out of the tub. So just to put that into context, this scene, which lasted all of 20 seconds, consisted of them jumping into a tub for the sole purpose of showing their tits, declaring that they need a man to come save them, and then jump right back out again. You’re welcome, feminists.

While the blonde tragedies tackle the hardest thinking they’ve had to do since their last encounter with a revolving door, the plot begins to thicken at a bar called Edy’s, the local spot where everyone gets together to share Pin Coladas and Valtrex prescriptions. After the brief distraction of Andy Sedaris himself trying to assure some random chick that would never actually sleep with him how much she means to him despite the fact that he tried to rape her last night, the movie finally settles its attention on a vaguely Spanish man whom we discover is the crime boss Seth Romero. When he spots his two henchmen, the Hamsteak Philosopher and the Sodomy Assassin, wandering up to the bar from the beach while looking rather dejected, he demands to know what happened. Upon hearing the story, Seth displays super-human power by somehow managing to resist the urge to laugh hysterically at the entire situation and instead quickly surmises that their skirmish was the two blonde yeast factories from Molokai Cargo. But seeing as these two have proven to be rather useless, he decides to instead send two new assassins to take care of the job.

Douches.

Since our female leads have already declared themselves incapable of handling a dark Hawaiian underworld so vicious that it was turned away by throwing a set of nunchuks at it, it’s time to meet the men of steel that will save them from despair. These two monuments to penile dominance also belong to the ’87 All-Star line-up of the Shitty Character Name League as we begin with Rowdy, whom we met briefly in the prologue, before meeting a dude named Jade who happens to sport one of the greatest ponytails that an 8 year old girl could hope to have. They practice their martial arts on the deck of the Malibu Express, and by ‘practice’ I mean speaking in the most offensive Asian accent that I could possibly imagine while squawking like freshly raped chickens and spouting parodied Confucius sayings that pose as big of a threat to the realm of comedy as a nuclear bomb of Jewish jokes at a Schindler’s List retrospective, proving that obviously neither of them actually know a thing about any martial art. But while they bask in the tepid glow of accomplishing nothing, some dude rolls up the pier on a motorized bike, delivering a sandwich with a note inside. After reading it and declaring that they’ve got trouble in paradise, Rowdy carefully folds the note back up, puts about a quarter of the way back in the sandwich and then light it on fire. The note burns instantly, hurting neither the sandwich or container in the slightest, begging the question of why the fuck they bothered to put it back rather than just burning the note on its own.

Exhibit D: Don’t Ask Me, I’m Just A Girl

Now that's a description of Rowdy's junk that I can believe.

Before our iron giants of masculinity can arrive to save the helpless vixens, however, Seth Romero’s deadly plan begins to take shape. As Taryn shows off her collection of spy movie posters to Dona (fuck, only a man could possibly think that women would be that into spy movies), she points out her newest additions, including the poster for Malibu Express, the previous movie in this very series of Andy Sidaris films. I’ll say that again to really be clear about this; the film contains the movie poster of its prequel directly in the damn film, and it’s not a joke. I’m not quite sure what kind of bizarre meta statement this scene’s trying to achieve, but I’m quite certain it’s far too intellectual for anyone who worked on this movie unless it can be explained via pop-up book. And turning from one ridiculous concept to another, Taryn then asks Dona what Rowdy is like…you know…wink, wink. Psstt…I’m not sure, but I think she’s referring to his raisin scone baking skills. Dona replies by shrugging and saying that he’s only four inches…FROM THE GROUND! Hahaha – that’s not physically possible unless he doesn’t happen to have any fucking legs. But just as they begin to retire for the night, both fully aware that Dona’s blatant exaggeration is obviously covering for a 2 inch MacTavish, assailants cut the home’s phone line and jump each woman, demanding that they hand over the diamonds. This male and female combination is the other duo of Seth goons, whom we’ll refer to as the Nocturnal Emissions of Death, or NEDs. After luring her opposing NED out to the hangar for a brief grappling match that results in nothing more than the deadly cancer snake being freed from its cage while Taryn is held captive by the she-NED putting nunchuks to her throat like they’re a goddamn knife, the two blondes and the NEDs end up back in the house where Taryn ends up finally handing over the diamonds. The goons demand the second box, but before they can discover that the blondes don’t have it, they’re interrupted by the girlish screams of Seth, who happens to be waiting outside when he spots the snake slithering around in the distance. Warning that they’ll be back, the NEDs flee to make sure that their prepubescent boss hasn’t stressed his way into inducing his first period while Dona grabs a gun, runs out after them and fires a single shot, hitting Seth right in the fucking face as they all try to pile into a car. But while that ordeal comes to a hilarious end, our heroines get even more bad news when they head back into the hangar and discover that the snake is gone just moments before getting a call from Dixon, whom explains that they were mistakenly given the one infected with cancer.

Once again deciding that anything beyond baking a batch of delicious cookies or faking enthusiasm while touching their ankles to their ears is too much for them to handle on their own, Dona and Taryn decide to seek help at Edy’s, arriving there and being directed to her private corner booth. Of course, they end up sitting down in front of her at a table in the middle of the goddamn floor, which is neither a corner nor a booth, but whatever. I guess it could have been worse and had they went out and met her in her car. After ordering drinks and inquiring about any information that Edy may have in regards to diamonds or Seth, they head back to her private office together to make a phone call when the scene takes a brief detour through the ghettos of CrazyFuckTown, USA. We head over to another area of the bar where we’re introduced to Jimmy John Jackson, or the J-Cube, a sports caster who sits down with two random football players. After giving them an insanely long speech about random vitamins and their benefits, he crams a fistful of them down his throat and chugs some water while one football player then comments that he loves soul food while the other heartily agrees, even though they aren’t sitting in front of food of any kind. And that’s it. That’s the scene. The icing on the goddamn cake is that if you look in the credits, the name of both these football characters is actually “Soul Food Lover”. That’s just goddamn outstanding.

The dialogue in this movie is so stupid that Michelle didn't notice that instead of the phone she was actually tapping into the weather channel for 45 minutes.

Back in the bar’s office, the three women call Rowdy and Jade, updating them on the situation and getting their assurance that they’ll be there to handle the situation as only manly men of manliness can do, just before we discover two important things. First, a random chick working at the bar named Michelle taps the phone line and listens in on their conversation before calling back to Seth to report her findings, revealing that there’s a hole in the exceptionally tight security of a fucking bar. And secondly, this movie will stop at nothing to manufacture reasons to show you tits. As the three women emerge from the office and go their separate ways, we discover that Taryn either knows the J-Cube or she really is a whore, as she walks over to flirt with him for a moment when it suddenly cuts to the two of them on a beach, drinking champagne before she strips down to only her panties while they make out. What the fuck is going on? That was ridiculously fast. It’s almost like all she had to do was say magic words like, “They’re going into remission”. Of course, since this is soft-core, they two of them don’t actually have sex as much as they just make out for 4 hours topless while dry humping each others’ thighs. What a magical scene. But just when you think that was so completely random that it might as well have been narrated by Brutus The Barber Beefcakes, the end of the scene cuts to a shot of the snake going through random grass for no particular reason before getting back to the two lovebirds, cleaning up after what was assuredly a four hour exercise in disappointment.

Hello, miss, pleased to meet...whoa, hey!

Exhibit E: The Age Old Battle Of Goons VS Useless Bags Of Cocksnot Rages On

The movie returns the next day, where we begin what may be one of the greatest scenes in shitty movie history. Our two soldiers of destiny, Rowdy and Jade, finally arrive on the island, where they load their shit into a Jeep that Edy left for them and drive into the Molokai Wildlife Park for reasons I couldn’t begin to tell you. But as they casually cruise up the desolate road, they suddenly see a dude coming towards them on a skateboard while doing a handstand. They watch him pass, joining the rest of the world in wondering what the fuck that’s all about, until the dude disappears from their sight. And as that dude comes to a stop down the road somewhere behind them, we see it’s actually the Sodomy Assassin, one of Seth’s men from the beginning of the movie. He meets his cohort, the Hamsteak Philosopher, who’s sitting on the side of the road in a small truck. After he jumps in the back, the two of them take off, turning around and eventually speeding past our two heroes who still have no idea what the fuck is going on. Then once they get far enough ahead, the thugs pull over once again, and the Hamsteak Philosopher hands the Sodomy Assassin a rifle and a fucking blow-up sex doll, telling him to go get them. So as it cuts back to our two heroes still driving casually in their Jeep, they once again notice this dude coming at them, this time holding a rifle and a fucking blow up doll. As he gradually gets close, the Sodomy Assassin fires, hitting the Jeep’s tire which somehow causes shrapnel to fly up and hit Jade in the chest, right where his fucking heart would be were he human, rather than a cyborg from the future manufactured out of synthesized awesome. Rowdy asks how bad it is as Jade clutches the instantly bleeding would, to which Jade replies that he’s been better, but he’ll live. Now that would have been insane enough, punching our face right in the vagina with unabashed random hilarity, but it only gets better. Finally annoyed enough to act, our heroes decide to “get that turkey” by backing up their Jeep right into the Sodomy Assassin, who is just spinning in circles on his skateboard a few feet behind them for reasons that are giving me colon cancer just contemplating. And as he flies into the air from the impact of being hit by a Jeep after 6 feet of acceleration, Rowdy somehow has the time to pull out a goddamn rocket launcher and fire, hitting the still hanging Sodomy Assassin in midair and blowing him up in a massive fireball. But as if that level of insanity wasn’t enough, Rowdy then turns and also fires at the blow up doll, which is also flying through the open sky, destroying it with yet another massive explosion and officially raping our throats with the chorus of gut wrenching laughter. When Jade asks why the hell he used a rocket launcher, Rowdy replies that it’s the only gun he can hit a moving target with. Really? The only one? That makes you an exceptionally useless action hero, doesn’t it?

The only way to truly describe the awesome of this scene is in a language that no one but Van Damme can hear.

Taking a break from the journey of random insanity that our heroes find themselves on, the movie checks in with the honeymooning couple left on the island, since any viewer would have forgotten about these entirely pointless characters by now unless they were writing a thesis on this film to get their doctorate in Refined Shit Tasting. As the groom takes Polaroids of his bride in a bikini on the beach, he moves around to get a better angle only to have the snake lunge at him. He screams, realizing his cancerous doom is at hand as the scene cuts away, once again leaving us in amazement that they’d even bother with any of this bullshit.

If you're asking yourself why they bothered to have a tranny in this movie and not just a regular woman spying on them, you're already 50 IQ points ahead and 345 paint chips behind the target audience.

After getting Jade patched up at a nearby doctor’s office, he and Rowdy call back to Edy’s, explaining the ridiculous events they had endured while Michelle once again listens in. Deciding to pick them up herself, Edy emerges from her office and tells Michelle that she’ll be gone for a while before going into the back and getting out of her dress, changing into another outfit and giving us probably the most blatantly unnecessary titty shot yet. Of course, after she leaves Michelle calls back to report to Seth and makes arrangements to follow her, before heading into the back herself and running into a completely random chick that is, of course, topless. But that’s not even as fucking weird as things get, as once that chick leaves Michelle pulls off her wig to reveal that she’s actually a dude named Michael, and an exceptionally balding one at that. Once he’s changed into his dude clothes, Michael runs out front of the bar to meet the previously introduced NEDs in a van. Together they try to cut her off, failing to do so pretty miserably before eventually catching up to her running Edy off the road. Like strangers with candy, they grab her and toss her into the back of their van.

Holy shit. That's a camera? Really? I thought she was packing around a goddamn VCR.

While other members of their team are being attacked by sex doll equipped punks or molested by NEDs in a van, Dona and Taryn take a more low key approach and begin their reconnaissance of Seth Romero’s compound. Hiding a safe distance down the beach, they use binoculars and the shitty Sony Walkman equivalent of a video camera to watch as some random chick runs up to a guard posted on the beach of Seth’s place and begins tossing a Frisbee around with this dude, who doesn’t even bother taking off the machine gun strapped to him for the game. Just to be clear, this random girl isn’t any kind of secret agent, undercover police officer, or animatronic vagina designed by Seth as a way of maintaining goon job satisfaction. This is just a random chick who doesn’t find it the least bit strange to run up and play Frisbee with a guy holding a fucking Uzi. Eventually their attention turns as they notice a chopper landing in Seth’s yard and watch as Seth gets out of it just in time to address Edy, whom is dragged up by his fearsome NEDs and then taken to the house. Dona and Taryn then take off, declaring that they need to find Rowdy and Jade fast. Of course. God forbid you do anything yourselves. After pulling over to use a payphone, Dona reveals to Taryn that not only has she left a message for the boys, but she’s also recognized Michelle as the tranny that she is after seeing spotting him holding Edy back at Seth’s place, explaining that she recognized his cigarette and pinkie ring. From a distance. Through a video camera. Fuck off. After deciding that must be why Edy’s surveillance of Seth wasn’t working, the two girls make one last stop on their way home, driving back to pick up the honeymooners. But as they approach the scene, they make a grisly discovery that, surprisingly, doesn’t prompt them to show off their tits. Seeing the bride’s corpse first, they proceed to find the groom’s body in a patch of long grass along with his camera. Finding a Polaroid stuck inside, they pull it out to discover that it’s a perfectly framed shot of the snake lunging in attack.

Mock all you want, but this glam shot got the snake a three picture deal.

The only way to truly follow up on the unnecessary is with the completely arbitrary, so the movie once again returns to Edy’s bar where Rowdy and Jade receive Dona’s message and head straight to her house after borrowing a car. But seeing as that could have been shot in approximately 7 seconds, the rest of the scene is fleshed out by another appearance by the J-Cube. For some reason he’s doing an interview from a goddamn bar, going live on national TV to once again speak with two other football players. I don’t know what the fuck football has to do with any of this, or why all these goddamn football players are even on the Hawaiian Islands considering they don’t have a football team, but whatever. He asks the two chaps about a certain play, laying it out in a huge, detailed description before trying to penetrate the intellect of the elite jockaucracy by asking what was said to the rest of the team in the huddle before that moment. Their response?

Football Douche Numero Uno: “Well Jimmy John, all I said was niggers go deep and whites keep them out if you can on two.”

Football Douche Numbero Dos: “Jimmy, motherfucker’s crazy but he sure can throw.”

Goddamn it. Why do we have to watch this? If I wanted to watch someone I don’t know fail miserably at a task that I’m not sure why they’re doing, I’d rather just turn on Pimp My Dialysis Machine.

Exhibit F: Grab A Tube Sock, Its Time For The Climax!

Apparently Seth has a penchant for female minions who secretly have testicles.

With all the pleasantries out the door, the movie finally gets down to business, alternating between the heroes and villains as they prepare for an ultimate showdown every bit as epic as a fruitiest dancing competition between the Backstreet Boys and the California Raisins. It begins at Dona’s house, where after a quick shot of the snake crawling into a random pipe in the lawn, reminding us of its continual and highly improbable threat, our heroes finally merge to dip their rancid chunks of uselessness into a giant fondue of failure. After briefly discussing the situation, Dona and Rowdy sneak off to her office so that she can show him the tape of the random girl playing Frisbee with one of Seth’s men, whom Rowdy identifies as a man named Shades. First, nice name, asshole. What kind of dicktip suggests that people call him Shades just because he sports a pair of sweet aviators? Me, actually, from now on. And secondly, why do I care what this dude’s name is in the first place? Are they going to introduce every random henchman before killing him? “This is Burt Saunders. He likes slow dancing, candlelight dinners, and strangling hookers in the park. His turn-ons are vanilla perfume and the feeling of shag carpet on his taint, while his turn-offs include heli-skiing and trigonometry. Oh…and now he’s dead.” But of course, after watching a tape of two retards tossing a Frisbee, the two lovers surrender to temptations of the flesh, making out like tweens while Jade and Taryn wait awkwardly in the living room. But while the heroes prepare, back at Seth’s house the villains continues to interrogate Edy, still searching for the lost diamonds. Suddenly it cuts to the female NED, clad in a nary but a tiny bikini and a lot of cooking oil, doing a muscle-flexing routine with a pair of nunchuks as a prop, making yet another person who is obviously unaware of how they actually work. And as Seth leaves to report back to Mr. Chang, he leaves the she-NED to beat some answers out of Edy. But while she cries out in pain, it intercuts between Edy’s cries of pain and Rowdy crying out in pleasure as Dona appears to be doing little more than leaning on his junk. When it all comes to what is probably quite literally a blistering climax, Dona and Rowdy end up cuddled together naked when she asks what he’s feeling. His epic response?

For everyone who ever wondered why JT had to bring sexy back, it's because these two beat it to death with a fucking tire iron.

Rowdy: “One man’s dream in another man’s lunch.”

Seriously, what the fuck does that even mean? With the proceeds from Rowdy’s junk squishing glee likely running down Dona’s leg, the two of them head back to the living room and join Jade and Taryn, sputtering out some horrible excuse about how they took longer than they thought because they stopped to have something to eat. Taryn jokes that next time perhaps Rowdy shouldn’t chew his food so loud, giving them all an awkward giggle that, had the scene not switched over, would have been the surefire beginning of an 80’s dry humping orgy of immeasurable proportions. But instead it travels back at Seth’s house, ending the scene with him on the phone with Mr. Chang, talking about some kind of deal that they give no details about. It could involve the diamonds, drugs, or Glo Worms. There’s no way of knowing and at this point, frankly we don’t care. Seth remarks that agents are crawling everywhere, to which Mr. Chang ends the scene by calmly advising him to kill them all.

The showdown begins the next day with the four shitheads preparing their arsenal, which includes a fucking Frisbee with razorblades stuck around its edge that looks every bit as shitty as you would imagine if I told you that an unpaid intern made it for the prop department 15 minutes before the scene was to be shot. And the movie doesn’t waste any time putting this item of madness to use as once again we see the random girl running towards Shades, Seth’s machine gun toting guard, for a game of Frisbee when Rowdy suddenly jogs up and joins her. Shades is, of course, suspicious of this random guy, but concedes and allows Rowdy to show him what he can do, because apparently tossing a fucking Frisbee around on a beach is the best street cred these assholes could think of. After tossing it back and forth for a couple of minutes, taking their casual game so seriously that you’d think they had bet the life of their first born on it, Shades decides it’s time to really get down to business and moves to take off his gun. Seeing his opportunity to unleash his dollar store version of the disks from Tron, Rowdy tells the random chick to take off, showing her a gun before tossing her Frisbee away. And just to add more evidence in the mounting case that he’s a complete jackass, he watches the chick walk away for a moment before yelling after her that she has a great ass. Once she’s gone, Rowdy and Shades start tossing a black Frisbee around before Rowdy switches it with his razorblade Frisbee of death. In extra dramatic slow motion, he tosses it at Shades’ waiting face, supposedly cutting off his fingers before slicing his throat. At least that’s what I think red food coloring flying everywhere while Shades holds the Frisbee by his neck is supposed to be. You know, this whole thing seems way too complicated. Why not just save everyone a lot of time a shoot this asshole from a distance? It’s not like there was any benefit to carrying out this farce, save sheer unadulterated comedy.

Dudes who take Frisbee this damn seriously get what they deserve.

With a ridiculous hole punched into the perimeter security of Seth’s compound, Rowdy rejoins Jade and Taryn in a Jeep as Dona sails in on a small motorized hang glider. As the Jeep charges into Seth’s courtyard, Dona drops noise grenades from above, which serves absolutely no purpose beyond announcing their arrival to everyone within a 249 mile radius. Luckily for them the three heroes jump out of the Jeep and start firing at the massive flood of ONE random thug that comes pouring out of Seth’s place, and yet it still somehow takes about a dozen shots to kill that one dude. Once he’s dead, they continue inside while Dona lands from doing nothing to step it up and do even more nothing. Jade enters the building first, carrying what appears to be another goddamn grenade launcher, which might be the least intelligent choice possible when it comes to the close quarters fighting that you’d be doing inside a home, barring some kind of goth teen suicide pact. In the first room he comes to, he’s met by a random dude that’s courteous enough to come up behind him and tell him to freeze. Yes, because criminal organizations, especially when being invaded in their own base of operations, have a habit of showing a remarkable amount of restraint. I’m surprised that this asshole didn’t serve Jade cookies at the same time. But while the two of them stand in uncomfortable confusion, Rowdy awkwardly kicks in the front door before then kicking the gun out of the random dude’s hand while he just stands there, practically begging to be disarmed. But just then Jade declares, “he’s mine”, handing the rocket launcher to Rowdy and prompting for him to continue on. And to begin this colossal battle of obscurity, Jade declares:

Jade: “Life’s a bitch and then you die.”

Seriously? A completely unrelated, clichéd catch phrase? That might just be the laziest fucking writing I’ve ever seen. He might as well have said, “I hate Mondays” or “Give a hoot, don’t pollute”. And after quickly switching to the building’s exterior to show Taryn shooting Michael the Cross-dresser dead, the battle begins as Jade has somehow becomes equipped with metal claws on his hands. Apparently not only will this random thug casually stand by and let you kick the gun out of his hand, but he’ll also patiently wait as you strap on your choice instruments of death. The fight predictably lasts about 20 seconds, ending with Jade using the claws to slash his opponent’s throat just after saying, “and then you die!”, because the only thing better than saying an unrelated catch phrase is half an unrelated catch phrase. He then hurries to catch up with Rowdy, whom has made his way into the room where Edy is tied up. And just as the male-NED enters and begins firing on Rowdy with impunity, Rowdy responds with the rocket launcher. But for some reason hitting the NED from about 10 feet away doesn’t cause a massive explosion that envelopes the entire building, instead simply pushing the dude out a nearby window. After smiling like a jackass, Rowdy is joined by Jade, who finishes the immeasurably idiotic scene by moving to free Edy only after taking a moment to joke about leaving her tied up so that he can get a midget and a whip together for some kinky sex.

Notice that the thug didn't even explode when hit by a rocket. Hey might as well have been pushed through the wall by a stern look.

Back outside, our almost forgotten Hamsteak Philosopher appears on the scene with some random blonde chick that we’ve never seen up to this point, attempting to flee in a helicopter while firing on Rowdy and Dona. But as they try to lift off, Dona takes the rocket launcher from Rowdy and fires, hitting the helicopter and causing a massive explosion. So for those people keeping track, rocket + dude = nothing, but rocket + helicopter = nuclear winter-sized mushroom cloud. And even though it seems like they really haven’t done much of anything, at this point our heroes stop and cheer a job exceptionally badly done before piling into a van, leaving only Dona to head back to her place by herself for some reason. But just as they’re driving away, someone finally notice that no one saw or, more importantly, killed Seth, which means that yes, they accomplished nothing. Seeing the obvious danger to come, Rowdy suddenly bursts out the back of the van on a dirt bike, racing off to catch up with Dona.

"Ferris?"...."Bueller!"...

At this point the movie transforms from late night skin flick to more of a late night infomercial. Sure, you’ve seen what is supposed to be the climax of the film, so how much would you pay to own this cinematic kidney stone forever in Laserdisc or audio book format? How about three easy installments of $49.95 and a piece of your immortal soul! BUT WAIT! Don’t answer yet! Act now and we’ll throw in an additional scene tacked on to the end of the movie, back at Dona’s house: She walks out of her bathroom only to be grabbed by Seth, who demands to be given the diamonds while waving a switchblade around with the ferocity of a newborn puppy in a fitted rain slicker. Unsurprisingly, Dona manages to struggle free from him rather easily before turning the tables. First she blasts Seth in the chest with a harpoon gun and then proceeds to beat on him for good measure, not stopping until he seems to be kind of, sort of, but not actually dead. Then after Dona takes a break to go to the fridge – because yeah, who wouldn’t be a little peckish after having engaged in a life or death struggle only seconds ago – she somehow senses that Seth is waiting around the corner, preparing an ambush while she stands icing her nipples. So Dona engages him again, managing this time to avoid being stabbed in silicone and instead stabbing him in the gut with his own knife. Somehow thinking that a knife to the stomach is immediately fatal, she then leaves the room again, electing this time to hide in the bathroom. And that’s when things get completely insane. As she sits on the floor by the toilet, she goes to flush just as the toilet fucking EXPLODES with light and the snake rises out of it, shattering the bowl like it’s a goddamn egg shell. Screaming, Dona gets the hell out of the bathroom just as Seth gets back up again, thinking that she’s still in there. He grabs the knife out of his gut and goes to finish her off, but once he gets near the door, the snake lunges and FINALLY kills him, apparently proving that a faster method of murder than a harpoon gun, blunt force trauma, or a knife to the stomach is fucking cancer. Alone with the snake in her living room now, Dona grabs a gun and shoots it multiple times directly in the mouth, which somehow manages to do absolutely nothing to it other than perhaps chipping its dental work. But just as all seems lost, Rowdy bursts into the room, smashing through a wall on his motorbike before jumping off and firing his rocket launcher, hitting the snake in the head and blowing up it up in yet another underwhelming explosion. As they cuddle, she explains that it came from the toilet, to which he quips:

Rowdy: “Just when you thought it was safe to take a pee.”

Goddamn. However wrote this doesn’t have the imagination necessary to pump out a menu for IHOP.

Sure the rocket launcher is ridiculous, but why does she have backlighting and dry ice in her toilet?

Damn, I knew I should have paid that extra grand to build a reception area!

I know what you’re thinking. Surely all those unnecessary tits AND an additional bout of snake exploding insanity must be enough to drive the price of any other movie up to six installments of infinite gold, BUT WAIT! There’s more! Act now and Hard Ticket To Hawaii will throw in one last moment of awesomeness free of charge, as the next day our heroes are all loaded into a limo when they arrive at an office and/or apartment building. Ready for action, Rowdy and Dona head up to the penthouse of the building to confront Chang, the evil mastermind that’s so important to the film that he’s had about 28 seconds of screen time. And even though this is supposed to be the head of an organized crime gang, they manage to stroll directly into his ten feet by ten feet office, which has all the class and decorum of a toxic waste facilities broom closet. When the one fucking bodyguard gets up to stop them, Dona slips Rowdy a set of nunchuks, which he promptly uses to beat the dude to death like it’s a fucking club. Alone but not entirely helpless, Chang faces Rowdy and Dona as they whip out guns and pulls the classic “sword in the cane” trick, then takes it to a new level of shitheadedness previously unheard of by throwing it at them like a fucking dart in a Scottish pub. Naturally he misses and in response they simply shoot him in the face, sending him flying straight out the window behind him, plummeting down to the delight of the rest of our heroes waiting on the ground below. And with that, our scene ends.

And with that, our movie finally reaches its conclusion as the Super Friends end up back on the Malibu Express, sipping champagne and discussing their unfortunate moral responsibility of turning in the diamonds. But Taryn points out that unlike the rest of them, she’s technically not a federal agent, so since the owners are all dead, the diamonds belong to her. She says that she’s going to sell them and share the proceeds with her friends. And if those friends had half a brain in their head, they’d realize that the only way that she could move diamonds in that large a quantity, especially ones obtained illegally, would be to sell them exactly as Seth was planning to do, and probably even to the same people. So technically, they should probably just prevent the rise of another criminal mastermind and shoot her in the head right now. But instead, they all toast the undoubtedly illegal activity that their friend is about to engage in before the credits finally roll, or are stuck to boxes, to be accurate.

The Verdict:

Donkey: What can you say about a movie that has a cancerous snake, a skateboarding assassin with a lonely man’s mistress and a Civil War era musket, and more tits than tea time in Caligula’s palace? It’s got it all. The only thing that keeps this from being a truly epic shitty movie is the argument that, as a skin flick, it never really intended to be very good in the first place. It’s kind of like watching an actual porno and wondering why every single plot point involves someone choking on balls. And while that’s true, the undeniable hilarity of this film cannot be ignored. I give it four and a half unnecessarily exposed tits out of five I love soul food! Delicious!

What We Learned:

Donkey: Nunchuks can be used as a knife, club, boomerang, or interpretive dance prop, so long as you’re enough of an idiot to have never seen how their actually meant to be used before in your life. Oh, and BLLLLLAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH TITS!!!

Don’t forget to check back every Sunday for a new fresh review! Next week shittymovienight.com presents: Eric Roberts makes his triumphant return in the movie that was literally name after his majesty…BEST OF THE BEST.

Back To The Main Page.

If a movie could be judged purely on its poster alone, this one would be bad-ass. Unfortunately that all changes the moment you press play.

Donkey: There are a lot of things about growing up that suck. Eating an entire meal consisting of candy is discouraged. Kicking and screaming in a department store until someone buys you a toy will earn you some strange looks, possibly even criminal charges. And in certain countries, coloring outside the lines is punishable by gang rape. But there are certain things that do get better with age, and one of those things is the ability to handle disappointment. When I was a kid, I sat in my bed one Christmas Eve and silently decided that what I wanted most in the world was a Chewbacca action figure. Of course, making that decision on the spot meant that I hadn’t shared that information with my parents, and for some reason I decided that because I had been good that year, if I didn’t get Chewbacca then Santa Clause didn’t exist. Don’t ask me why I had suddenly jogged down that path of reasoning, but nevertheless, there I was. So the next morning when I woke up and there wasn’t a Chewbacca to be found, I truly came to realize that Santa Clause didn’t exist. Of course, if I had paid closer attention, there were actually a lot more telling signs of the truth than that. Like the time that my mother told my younger brother that Santa wasn’t getting him the Play-Do Barbershop set that he wanted because, and I quote, “Santa thinks that’s stupid.” Or even more obviously, if I had bothered to look carefully enough I would have noticed that all the tags on our gifts had “From Santa” written on them in my mother’s handwriting. But regardless, the sting of disappointment is crippling when you’re young and a dream is destroyed.

That’s a sting that I felt again some years later, when I first laid eyes on this week’s movie, Darkman. Having never heard of it when it was in the theaters, which wasn’t surprising as I didn’t go to the theaters much as a child, the first time I laid eyes on it was in a video store. After being enticed by the cover, I read the synopsis on the back of the box and saw a lot of promise, deciding then and there that I had to see this movie. I mean, come on. Look up at that cover. Pretty bad ass, huh? But this was back in the day when video stores were actually really popular and didn’t carry 4,276 copies of most new movies, so getting your hands on a copy took a lot of dedication. But I stuck it out, checking weekend after weekend until I finally managed to finally grasp it in my eager paws and convince my parents to rent it. Needless to say from the tone of this diatribe thus far and the fact that it made an appearance on this site, the movie turned out to be one massive punch in the balls. And while I’ve developed a thick, cynical, yet highly exfoliated skin since that day which would allow me to handle this all too frequent stomach-churning pain, I was undeniably devastated. So before we get started, I’d just like to say from the bottom of my heart: Fuck you, Darkman.

Whew. That feels a little better. But that being said, it’s time to share my disappointment…

The Plot:

Donkey: After becoming unknowingly entangled in the dark underworld of a zoning commission bribery scandal so shocking that it wouldn’t be deemed worthy of even a three sentence blurb next to the tranny escort ad section at the back of a local newspaper, Dr. Peyton Westlake is attacked and left for dead by a gang of ruthless, bloodthirsty thugs, so common in the real estate development world. Horribly burned, mentally unbalanced, and unable to feel pain – which comes in handy not only in battling enemies but also in protecting him from the sting of his own horrible acting – Peyton is fortunate enough that he just happens to be performing research in the field of synthetic skin at the time. Morphing into the shameful lovechild of The Watchmen’s Rorschach and The Saint, Peyton is reborn as Darkman, the masked enigma out for revenge or possibly large quantities of aloe.

The Case for Greatness (aka The Lowlights):

Exhibit A: Evil Rides The Short Bus

I'll see your henchmen and your cars and raise you henchmen IN cars IN a box! Checkmate, motherfucker!

Donkey: The movie begins with an introduction to the story’s dim-witted face of terror, that which is supposed to stand for all things despicable and cruel. So kind of like the Rush Limbaugh of the film, if you will. And filling the role of sheer evil in this case is…the retarded guy from LA Law? I guess Jimmy Smits was too busy rolling his R’s in an attempt to remind people that he has more ethnicity than a tub of vanilla yogurt to take the part. Anyways, this dude plays a criminal mastermind named Durant. After rolling up to a warehouse meeting with what appears to be a group of evil longshoremen, he and his small gang are frisked and stripped of all their weapons, which happens to include brass knuckles and nunchuks. For those of you keeping score, yes, that means that this gang should then consist of a retard leading a 1920’s street hoodlum and a ninja, but sadly that is an image that will have to stay doodled in the notepad that I use during meetings at work as it’s not the case here. Once determined to be clean, they’re taken inside to meet the black businessman leader of the longshoremen who happens to be named – awesomely – Black. He declares that he has no intention of selling his property and kindly offers to remove the gangs’ balls for them. In response, Durant motions to one of his thugs, a man who looks kind of like Jerry Cantrell if Jerry had dedicated his life to the skin-flute rather than the guitar. Jerry in turn pulls the wooden leg off of one of the other thugs and reveals it to be a hidden gun, which he starts firing randomly. After waiting for a dozen or so of his men to be gunned down, Black yells for his crew to “take them down”. Suddenly two cars bust out of massive wooden crates that are just sitting in the middle of the warehouse and starting tearing around the place, driving with no particular purpose as more crusty dockworkers fire Uzis out their windows. So just to be clear, those were just sitting in there the whole time? “Killer and Bonecrusher, you two patrol the perimeter today. Ice and Jawbreaker, you two pull the Chevys into the crates and just…wait.” After an incredibly brief and confusing firefight, all the longshoremen, who clearly outnumbered Durant’s men by over ten times, are dead while not a single man in Durant’s gang is sporting so much as a paper cut. But to end the scene in style, Durant has Black dragged over to him where he proceeds to cut his fingers off one by one with his cigar cutter.

Exhibit B: The Recipe For A Hero, Now With 25 Percent More Ass

Who knew that the same product that you made an imprint of your penis with just to freak out your friends would actually have a scientific use one day?

From there the movie has us sit through a standard roll of introductory credits, which appear over the finest fog that a Hollywood smoke machine budget can buy while a theme song by Danny Elfman reinforces the Batman rip-off image of this film so blatantly that Darkman’s nemesis might as well have been called The Not-Joker. We’re then introduced to the title character, Peyton “Darkman” Westlake, played by Liam Neeson, who for some reason spends the entire movie trying to shed his Irish accent by coupling a ridiculous voice with acting that alternates between animated, manic cheer and spine-shattering rage, almost like Grover with a Meth addiction. He begins in his laboratory where he’s carrying out research on manufactured synthetic skin, producing it with the sweetest unrelated computer displays and holographic technology available in 1990. In other words, he’s spliced together a SNES, a modified version of Sega’s arcade game Time Traveler, and one of those shitty Pin Art toys found in novelty shops to create rubber masks. Thrilling! But his success in creating the skin is short-lived as its cells consistently rupture after 99 minutes causing them to melt like ice near the flaming wreckage of Joey Lawrence’s singing career.

But when you work hard, you’ve got to play hard, so after Peyton and his lab assistant scratch their balls in confusion for long a few moments, the movie jumps straight to that evening where he kicks back and watches a slideshow with his girlfriend Julie, played by Frances McDormand. I’m not exactly sure what would possess two people to voluntarily engage in an activity usually seen as a torture that’s inflicted by visiting relatives who want to share their horribly depressing vacation memories, but somehow it gets the two of them so turned on that they make the semi-passionate yet hip-sensitive love of a bored elderly couple watching the hours slip away in a retirement home. Tasty. But the plot wastes no time in thickening, as the next morning while they get dressed, Julie yammers to someone on the phone about a memo that she found and suspects that she wasn’t supposed to see. And just as is so obviously going to happen, she departs for work and accidentally leaves it by Peyton’s bed, laying on foreshadowing that couldn’t any thicker if the title of that memorandum had been “YOUR ASS WILL GET KILLED FOR HAVING THIS: A 30 Caliber Corporate Report On Capturing Market Share”. Following her out as she tries to catch a cab, Peyton suggests that they get married with as much romantic flare as he would probably use to suggest that they order a pizza or she gets checked for herpes. Understandably unmoved by this, Julie she says she has to think about it, leaving Peyton to continue the streak of abject failure that he’s established so far.

Hold on to your hat, baby. After this we play an erotic game of Bridge.

If being a remarkably shitty movie villain is a crime, even he knows that he should be in jail.

Our tour of Obvious Periltown, USA continues in the next scene as Julie arrives at work and practically begs to be killed by confronting her boss, a slimy little man named Strack, by saying that she had found the memo detailing bribes paid to the zoning commission. As a brief side note, that might just be evidence of the dumbest goddamn crime that I’ve ever seen someone implicated of in a movie. Seriously, I would have preferred if Strack had been a politician accused of gerrymandering, because redistricting your constituency for personal gain couldn’t possibly be any less interesting than this, plus it would give me a more credible reason to use the awesome word “gerrymandering” rather than just sneaking it into a paragraph twice with flimsy justification. Suck it, bitches! But Strack treats this matter as seriously as it deserves by immediately admitting to the crime with less guilt in his voice than if he were detailing how he had extra bacon with his breakfast that morning, asking her to understand that his dream of a massive real estate development down by the city’s old waterfront is worth facilitating with the occasional distasteful act. So in other words, he’s telling her that he’s sucked a lot of dick lately. But rather than just shutting the fuck up and letting the issue drop like any rational person would, Julie insists that doesn’t change the fact that she’s holding the evidence of a crime before going on to let him know that she left it at Peyton’s place. Trying one last time to make her see reason, Strack warns that he’s just trying to protect her from a rival named Durant, a drug dealer/real estate developer, who is competing for the riverfront property and will do anything he can to get it. Of course, if we’re to go by the precedent that Strack has set, this threat probably won’t amount to much more than a strongly worded letter or possibly a motion with City Council, but we’ll just pretend it sounds pretty menacing anyways.

Having established the extremely mild, not entirely noteworthy threat that Peyton has unwittingly stumbled onto a collision course with, the wait for the resulting flaming wreckage turns out to be a relatively brief one. Later that night a mishap with a fuse results in Peyton and his lab assistant discovering that light is the catalyst that is destroying their fake skin. But before they can celebrate their rather modest accomplishment with high fives, awkward glances, and clumsy reach-arounds, Peyton turns to answer a ringing phone and comes face to face with Durant and his gang. Surprisingly, rather than offering to resolve their differences through non-violent conflict mediation as so many villainous gangs in movies are apt to do, the gang instead decides to beat Peyton within an inch of his unremarkable life while demanding that he reveal the location of the memo. But of course, Peyton doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about since he was too busy that morning scrubbing medicated chap-stick and Ben-Gay off his junk to notice the memo that Julie left behind. Eventually they manage to find it on their own anyways, but just like strangling a hooker in the back of a cargo van, once you’ve started the job, you might as well take it all the way. So after attempting to perform a root canal on the lab assistant using a revolver, electrocuting Peyton’s hands with the most glorious claymation I’ve seen since a box of dancing raisins sang Christmas carols to me, and pushing his face into what appears to be a vat of corrosive acid that I can’t imagine any credible reason for having, the gang finally leaves Peyton broken and battered to grapple with a homemade bomb. But just to make things as unnecessarily complicated and unlikely to succeed as possible, the “bomb” in this case is a drinking bird toy that is seconds away from striking a lighter next to a spewing gas tank. As Peyton crawls towards the idiotic apparatus of doom, Julie approaches the building along the street outside, convincing herself to marry this retarded muppet just as a massive explosion rips through the lab above her. She stands in stunned silence, too busy mentally cancelling all the wedding invitations to notice the screaming, flaming form of Peyton that rockets out of the goddamn blaze and lands in the river across the street. I can’t quite describe the hilarity of this moment, but rest assured that we were forced to skip back and watch it several times while laughing our asses off while making the attempt.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!

After employing the most exceptionally mediocre effects that could be found in 1990 to morph Julie from standing before the flaming building to standing in front of Peyton’s grave, the movie briefly glimpses at Peyton’s funeral that quite noticeably does not have a single person in attendance other than her, indicating that Peyton must have been a far bigger taint stain than we had suspected. I mean, shit, even a psychotic pedophile that smelled like burnt cheese is still probably going to be mourned by the guys down at the candy shop and clown costume boutique for having been their best customer. But with that peek into the distinct lack of mourning of his passing, the film turns back to the screaming rocket that was Peyton, bandaged from head to toe and strapped into a rotating bed in a hospital after having been dredged from the river. A young doctor explains to a group of students observing him that Peyton was brought in without any ID and has burns over 40 percent of his body, so to prevent him from screaming constantly or becoming enticed by the Honey Mustard barbeque smell of his own extremities, they have severed strategic sensory connections so that he can longer feel pain or smell deliciously cooked meat. But the doctor continues by discussing some of the side effects of this procedure, warning that a lack of tactile sensation causes the brain to amplify other inputs, resulting in him being susceptible to heightened rage, loneliness, and spurts of adrenaline that give him super strength. So just to be clear, they have decided to bring him back from the brink of death to carry out the rest of his very limited existence as a manic depressive flame-broiled chicken wing on steroids. What a goddamn treat! I guess the best we can hope for is that they washed the KY off their hands from butt-fucking their Hippocratic Oath before they operated on Peyton, or he might also end up with a nasty case of Pink Eye. And just to prove my point, the doctor walks away with her students in tow, joking that she’d “give him a 9 on the buzzard scale”. But that mocking stirs something deep within Peyton, whose eyes snap open to experiences a whacky series of visions, prompting him to break out of his restraints and escape out a nearby hospital window.

Darkman awoke the next morning, not understanding why he spent the entire night dreaming about pissing his pants.

Lost, confused, and doing his best impression of an Egyptian Mummy that has recently attacked a family cookout, Peyton wanders through a torrential downpour, stumbling through an alley where he finds a trench coat that most assuredly smells like a chemical toilet on Undercooked Indian Food Night before walking out onto the street where Julie is very conveniently strolling along by herself. But of course when he stumbles up and grabs her from behind, what was supposed to be a heartwarming reunion that touches our heart more profoundly than the episode of Full House where Uncle Joey teaches the girls about sharing through mullet-fueled mishaps is shattered when she cries out in terror, somehow unable to recognize him through the jacket, bandages, and 11 herbs and spices. Of course, it doesn’t really help that his speech is more slurred than a rabid bulldog with a mouthful of cottage cheese. Dejected, Peyton takes refuge in an alley that night, choosing for some reason to sleep directly beneath a downspout that’s hitting him with so much water that you’d think he was auditioning to be a mesquite scented Slip-N-Slide. I realize that he can’t feel pain, but that’s not going to stop him from choking up a deep-fried lung during a fatal bout of pneumonia.

With the full realization that life as he knew it no longer exists, it’s time for Peyton to transform from an exceptionally underdeveloped and unsympathetic character to the masked crusader of mentally challenged vengeance, Darkman. And to do that, he’ll need to follow the same basic steps that all truly great and exceptionally asstastic heroes abide:

Step 1: Set Up A Base Of Operations, Preferably Outside Of Your Mom’s Basement

After waking up and exploring the ruins of his old lab the next morning, Darkman salvages through scorched equipment that, by right, shouldn’t function in any capacity. Seriously, I’ve accidentally bumped an external hard drive off a two inch drop and had it stop working, so computer equipment that has burn holes in it should fail at every task so badly that it can’t even catch on fire again. Regardless, Darkman loads all of it into a rickety shopping cart, or the Darkmobile, if you will, and hauls it to what appears to be an abandoned industrial factory. With a nod of satisfaction, he begins the process of setting up his shitty version of the Batcave, which we would call…the Darkcave? That’s so fucking stupid that even Aquaman would be ashamed to call it home, which sounds just about right. After managing to get electricity flowing again by throwing a few switches, which is quite a feat since you’d think any power company not run by a team of chimps in business suits and Richard Greco would have stopped supplying power to an abandoned building a long time ago, he attempts to construct a mask of his own face using a damaged photograph. But in order for his machine to complete the mask using the incomplete image, he must replace the damaged section of his face by mirroring the other side, a task that would take a modern computer about two seconds. True to the reality of 1990, his machine tells him that it will take 571 hours to complete the process. Sweet. Just don’t try to check your email while it’s working or that shit will lock up for another 3 months. With nothing but time on his hands, Darkman returns to his research into maintaining the synthetic skin’s integrity in the sunlight as random objects fly around him in the background for no goddamn reason. Apparently Sam Raimi takes the concept of time flying by just a little too literally. But just when we think that life will return to normal for this loveable chemically imbalanced charcoal briquette, he has a little breakdown in the middle of his research when his hand accidentally catches on fire after coming too close to a nearby open flame that he keeps running for reasons I can’t imagine. Looking down at his flame-broiled paws, he begins to blubber about how they took his hands, crying out dramatically. Yikes. If he gets that upset when noticing that his hands have been ravaged by fire, I don’t want to be there when he looks down the front of his pants.

Step 2: REVENGE!

Untalented.

Victim 1 – Nepotism: While spying on Julie, and possibly trying to rub out a batch of baby batter, at an absolutely random formal dress party where she confesses to Strack that the bribe memo that they had discussed earlier was TOTALLY NOT SUSPICIOUSLY destroyed in the fire at Peyton’s place, Darkman notices the presence of Durant and one of his henchmen, played by Ted Raimi. I love Ted Raimi. Without appearing in his brother’s movies, Ted Raimi’s film career would be such a runaway success that he’d have to fight tooth and nail to be stocking feminine hygiene products part-time at a Wal-Mart. But upon seeing the villains again for the first time, Darkman has another brief series of flashbacks of his near death experience. Enraged, he follows as Ted wanders out into an alley alone for some reason, before grabbing him by the face and taking him down into the sewer. Unless Ted’s got a scat fetish or is in fact a Ninja Turtle, things aren’t looking good for him. But even we couldn’t have seen what was coming, as after interrogating him for all the information he can pertaining to Durant’s crew, Darkman smashes Ted’s head up through a manhole, holding his screaming face at street level until he’s eventually hit by a car. Wow. Even if you believe that Darkman could manage to muster the strength to pop off a manhole cover, the force of the impact would smash Ted Raimi’s head as flat as his acting abilities. And here I thought death by drinking bird was as turderiffic as it could possibly get.

Darkman's ultimate revenge: making them all smell his skid marks.

Victim 2 – Generic Fat Guy: Soon after his first successful hit, Darkman witnesses two other members of Durant’s gang swapping a briefcase of money with one another over lunch. It’s confusing enough that they’d be handing money to themselves, but they take it even further and prove to be criminal masterminds by not only exchanging large sums of money in a public place while seated right next to a fucking window, but also compounding their brilliance by discreetly swapping briefcases under the table on the goddamn window side, making it perfectly visible to Darkman as he takes pictures of the exchange using random camera equipment that we have no idea how he managed to get his hands on. Formulating an unnecessarily complicated plane, he focuses in on the recipient of the money specifically, a short fat Telly Savalas-looking motherfucker named Pauly, snapping off enough pictures of him for both the skin replication process and his vigilante scrapbooking seminar. After successfully creating a mask identical to Pauly’s face and sneaking into his apartment to drug him with ether while he sleeps, Darkman then stands by a mirror, taking off his bandages to reveal not only that he looks exactly like Pauly, but also what may be the single biggest flaw with this movie. Even if you overlook the fact that he somehow manages to mirror the voice of his victims perfectly, which is already bullshit on a stick, how does a guy who is 6 foot 4 inches tall put on a simple mask and suddenly have not only the identical face but also body of a fat dude just over 5 feet tall? Regardless, he returns to the same restaurant again and takes part in an identical cash exchange, with no one being the wiser as to his true identity. Naturally, Durant notices some time later that the cash has gone missing, so he breaks into Pauly’s apartment and demands to know where the money is just before finding two first class plane tickets to Rio, registered to Pauly and the already deceased Ted Raimi. Pauly, who wakes up on his bed fully clothed in a leisure suit, of course pleads ignorance before being tossed out the window and falling to his death.

Step 3: Shallow Inflection Followed By Half-Hearted Attempts At Redemption

I like to do my brooding in front of a backdrop from the Wal-Mart photography studio, too.

After an absolutely horribly blue screen shot of Darkman sitting on a rooftop between two gargoyles while reflecting on the monster that he’s becoming, because apparently a basic nighttime roof shot is too goddamn hard to film without the use of shitty special effects, Darkman returns to his lab to continue his research before spazzing at a random stray cat and dancing the most hated-filled jig that he can muster. I would describe this jaw-dropping display as ridiculous, but then I just remember Toby McGuire’s dance scene in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, which is about as painful as being attached by schizophrenic drifter wielding a rusty chainsaw laced with hepatitis C, making this look far more reasonable by comparison. But his Temper Tango does little to sate his bloodlust, so be begins smashing random shit with a pipe, all the while having more flashbacks, until finally reigning himself in long enough to notice that his super computer has finally completed the reconstruction of his own facial image. Finally able to look like himself again, at least for 99 minutes at a time, Darkman immediately seeks out Julie, finding her while she’s visiting his grave. He approaches her, revealing that he’s not dead, and after some initial hesitation, they embrace as he mumbles some incoherent nonsense about needing time. From there they end up sharing a hot cup of insanity at an outdoor café where, using all the power of terrible, terrible acting, Peyton asks what she’d do if the explosion had left him horribly scarred before ignoring the fact that she dodges the question and giggling like he’s watching Hey Vern! It’s Ernest.

If I only had a brain...

Step 4: More Fucking REVENGE!

Whoa, hey...if you're going to do a close up, shoot me from the right. That's my good side.

Victim 3 – Well, Nobody Actually: After that brief romantic interlude that makes a strong case for abstinence, Darkman returns to his quest for blood, once again using methods that really beg an explanation despite not getting one, as he taps into Durant’s home phone line to listen in on a call about collecting on a debt in Chinatown the next day. But rather than just knocking on his door right at that moment and killing Durant with insanity-fueled super strength, it’s time once again for a needlessly complicated plan as the movie cuts to a security camera in a random convenience store that captures Durant clearly identifying himself directly into the camera while robbing the clerk. Predictably, the cops show up at Durant’s door the next day and arrest him while Darkman takes his place, joining the rest of the gang as they visit a man in Chinatown who claims to be unable to pay the money he owes. And while the real Durant finally posts bail and rushes to catch up with the rest of his crew, Darkman sits and listens to this Chinese guy ramble on and on incessantly, unsure of what he should do. By the time the old man finally finishes blabbering, Darkman sits down and simply demands the money by the time he finishes a cigar, cutting it down to a mere nub before holding a the match under his hand and burning himself without flinching. Somehow this convinces the old man, who is standing with his own bodyguards, including the guy who played Professor Sub-Zero in The Running Man, to relent and agree to hand over the cash rather than simply shoot them all in the head. Moments later as the real Durant jumps out of a cab and runs into a revolving door on his way into the meeting, Darkman attempts to exit out of the door at the same time. This leads to a few seconds of comic hilarity that hasn’t been fresh since the silent movie era as the two Durants (or Durant Durant, if you will) look at one another in confused silence before jumping out of the door and grappling in a predictable and stale “don’t shoot me, shoot him” scene. But after slapping down the real Durant and reprimanding the other gang members for not shooting when told to, Darkman’s ruse comes to an end when his stopwatch strikes the 100 minute mark and face begins to melt. With no other choice, he simply runs like hell, vanishing in a crowd and leaving the gang very confused as to what the hell the point of all that was. Fucked if I know.

Worst Double Mint commercial ever.

Step 5: Don’t Forget To Try To Get Laid

How the fuck are we supposed to react to a shot this bad?

At that point the movie turns to a carnival where Darkman is showing Julie a delightful, fun-filled afternoon, provided that you would consider laughing like a lobotomy patient at nothing in particular to be fun. Realizing that the time he has left in his face skin is quickly running out, Darkman declares that he should go to. But for reasons I can’t imagine, Julie begs him to stay, pleading for them to have more time together. But before Darkman even bothers to come up with an excuse as to why he can’t stick around for much longer, he’s distracted by a freak show a short distance away. After some careful inflection, he shifts gears faster than a NASCAR driver with a cocaine addiction, deciding to win her a doll at a nearby carnie game. After knocking down the stack of bottles and asking for a pink elephant as a prize, the carnie shrugs him off, saying that he was disqualified because he wasn’t behind a line painted on the ground. At that moment the scene starts to get abruptly dramatic as Darkman begins to rage internally, like he just walked in on someone raping his mom. And yet the tension that his behavior attempts to build is completely undercut by the carnie’s ridiculously calm dismissal of him, creating this drastic juxtaposition that only highlights how irrational both characters are. But the moment comes to a head seconds later when the carnie calls Darkman a weirdo. This sets off, quite literally, an explosive response inside Darkman, who responds by grabbing the carnie’s hand and breaking his fingers. Or at least that would be what he was doing if it weren’t horribly fucking obviously a rubber hand that he’s simply bending. As he, the carnie, and Julie all scream at the completely uncalled for level of aggression, Darkman finishes his ‘roid rage by tossing the carnie through the back wall of his game shack before ramming a stuffed animal in Julie’s hands and cursing at her for good measure. But before she can react to his clear insanity, he reaches the 100 minute mark of wearing the mask and his face once again begins to melt, prompting him to run off into the crowd while screaming for her to forgive him. Apparently quite willing to enter into an abusive relationship with a smoked turkey bone, Julie chases him all the way back to his factory lair where he runs in blubbering like a school girl who just found out that unicorns aren’t real. And once she enters the building behind him, she finds his equipment and his Peyton mask, looking around desperately for him as Darkman sulks quietly behind a nearby stack of crates. Before giving up her pursuit, she yells that he should have told her, that she could have helped him. Lady, unless you’re into getting punched out by a walking corpse in a clown wig, I’m pretty sure you couldn’t help him.

Oh yes, right. Exactly like this.

Psssttt...I love Right Said Fred.

From there Julie heads straight back to the office where she tells Strack that she can no longer see him as Peyton is now back in her life. This of course, implies that the two of them were seeing one another up to this point, which in turn means that her moral standards were so strict that she couldn’t ignore this dude bribing a zoning commission, but she’d still fuck him despite it. That kind of hypocritical integrity makes me grow a big rubbery one. But as Strack steps away for a moment to answer a phone call, Julie snoops around his desk and finds the cursed memo. Yes, that’s right. The villain in this movie is enough of an intellectual powerhouse that he not only drafted the details or bribery that he was carrying out into memo form, but after having someone killed to retrieve it, he then just left said memo sitting around on his desk despite the fact that he knew damn well what his new girlfriend would think the moment she saw it. Trust me; try to follow the logic necessary to see his motives and you’ll end up shitting your pants while repeatedly singing the chorus of David Lee Roth’s Just A Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody. But to his credit, at least Strack as consistent in not bothering to hide the slightest detail of his scheming, as he once again openly admits to everything, explaining that he had Durant and his men kill Peyton so that word of his bribery would not leak and jeopardize his development project. And to needlessly emphasize his point, he opens a set of retractable blinds covering a huge bay window to reveal the construction of his site, with several skyscrapers almost complete. She looks out in awe like she’s never seen this before, despite the fact that you couldn’t get within several miles of the building that they’re standing in without seeing the construction of multiple skyscrapers a short distance away. With nothing left to say, Julie flees as fast as possible, leaving Strack to call Durant into the room to deliver the news that Julie has discovered their alliance and that Darkman is still alive.

Step 6: No Seriously, Even More Fucking REVENGE!

Victim 4 & 5 – The Random Leftovers: With nowhere else to turn, except for maybe to the police or pretty much anyone else would could actually help, Julie returns to Darkman’s lair, yelling up at him as he watches from a window. But just then, car loads of Durant’s men suddenly surround her as goons start firing up at him. They grab Julie and throw her in a car, taking off as Darkman runs along rooftops trying to keep up. But before he has the chance to undoubtedly fail in his pursuit, Durant shows up in a helicopter, firing a grenade launcher at Darkman, apparently not the least bit concerned that his lack of subtlety should likely draw the attention of every cop not shoving a doughnut down his throat within a 300 mile radius. After managing to outrun explosions for a rather ridiculous amount of time, Darkman finally ducks back inside his factory lair just as two of Durant’s goons come in to get him. He decides to fuck with minds a little bit, running around and laughing at them from the non-shadows that shouldn’t really be able to hide anyone since it’s the middle of the afternoon. Finally he lunges down on one of them, leaving only the Jerry Cantrell wannabe. But as Jerry stands nervously looking around, a man wearing a mask that is I guess is supposed to look like him comes running in his direction. Jerry knocks the mystery dude down and pulls off the mask to reveal what is supposed to be Peyton. But after shooting the supposed Peyton dead, Jerry realizes that this dude is wearing yet another mask. When he pulls it off, he finally sees that it was actually his fellow gang member, bound with duct tape over his mouth. As Jerry stands back up to absorb the situation, Darkman wanders up in yet another Jerry mask, smiling at the real Jerry like a child molester before finally containing him and leaving him to die in a fiery explosion.

Sweet Jesus...is my hair really that tragic?

I'd like to humbly suggest that it would be harder to judge the distance necessary to dangle him in traffic like that than it would be just to fly 10 feet lower and drag his ass along the pavement.

Victim 6 – The King Of The Special Olympics: While all this is going on inside Darkman’s lair, Durant has his pilot land the helicopter and is about to get out when Darkman starts to grapple with him. The helicopter rises back into the air just as Darkman gets kicked off, falling to his doom only to catch a random hook that the helicopter is hauling around at the end of a long cable. I’d ask why the fuck that would possibly be there, but at this point that would be like complaining that the corn inside the shit you’re eating was canned instead of frozen. Anyways, Durant spends the next 10 minutes flying all over the city, making incredibly lackluster attempts to shake Darkman off the hook or ram him into shit. This scene goes way too long and is completely unremarkable until finally they lower the helicopter low enough that Darkman is forced to run along the roof of an truck head towards him in oncoming traffic while Durant begins to fire grenades down at him. But the idiocy comes to a crashing end moments later when Darkman manages to the hook to the trailer of a random truck, just before it’s about to head into a tunnel. With no chance of escape, the helicopter smashes into the entrance of the tunnel as Durant himself meets a fiery end.

Victim 7 – The Real Estate Developer Of Madness: That night a very healthy looking Durant meets with Strack and Julie at the new construction site, heading up to a high, unfinished floor that is nothing more than a steel framework. As they all jump around on steel girders, Strack yanks the mask off of Durant to reveal Darkman before delivering a speech conforming to the exceptionally high level of ridiculousness that we’ve come to expect from the film and then revealing that he brought Darkman up there to recruit him. But of course Darkman’s response is to lunge at Strack, initiating a struggle that only last a few seconds before the one random thug that accompanied them tosses Julie off the side of the building. She falls several floors, but before she can meet her much deserved end, the ropes used to bind her hands together catch on some steel rebar, leaving her dangling like a damsel tied to a set of train tracks. Getting down to business, Darkman takes out the random goon using one of the many random hooks that happens to be hanging on ropes. But as he turns to face Strack, he discovers that Strack has managed to get his hands on a rather massive rivet gun, which he begins firing at Darkman while slowly approaching him. I have such a hard time believing that Strack could actually lift a rivet gun like that, let alone actually fire it without flying off his tenuous footing from the recoil, that he might as well have been firing guinea pigs at Darkman and I wouldn’t have found it to be any more idiotic. But finally as Strack closes the gap, he hits home, riveting one of Darkman’s hands to the Steel beam behind him. But then of course Strack makes the mistake of passing on the opportunity to put a rivet right between Darkman’s eye, opting instead to taunt him about being a freak. And since we know that basic taunting is the trigger that sends Darkman over the edge into a blind rage, he rips his hand free and begins to attack, but is forced to cut his attack short when he’s interrupted by a scream from Julie as her rope binding gives way and she begins to fall. Jumping into action far too slowly to possibly save her, Darkman swings over on another random hook rope just in time to catch her. He then swings back while Strack renews his rivet barrage and kicks Strack in the chest, flipping him backwards and catching him by the foot. As he dangles there by a single Hush Puppy, Strack tries to convince Darkman that he can’t drop him, lest that it make him as bad as he is, which is a fact that Strack doubts that he could like with. Darkman drops him, saying simply that he’s learning to live with a lot of things.

Though he had Darkman at his mercy, Strack hesitates just a moment too long when the smell of smoked meat reminds him that he skipped dinner.

Step 7: Realize That You’re Too Cool For School

Call me...fortunate to have not been in this movie.

With his quest for revenge at an end and his basic purpose on this Earth essentially nullified, Darkman and Julie then share an uncomfortable elevator ride down to the street floor, passing the time with awkward chit chat where she assures him that he’ll perfect the synthetic skin and everything will be alright. But Darkman responds that there’s more to it than that. He’s changed, become a monster. That’s a fact that he can live with, but he doesn’t think anyone else can. She gives him one last hug before he finally walks away and assures her that Peyton is gone. Still not wanting to accept the goddamn obvious, Julie chases after him only to find herself running headlong into a crowd of sidewalk commuter traffic. You know, considering it was pitch black when Darkman dropped Strack to his death, it sure got to be morning awfully fucking fast. Either that’s a much longer elevator ride than I would have ever guessed, or they stopped to play back to back games of Risk and Monopoly to pass some time before coming down. But as she tries in futility to find him in the crowd, we see that Darkman has slipped into a quite random face, looking back before fading away into the crowd. It turns out that he’s a monster alright; He’s Bruce Campbell. But as he makes his exit, Darkman gives one last narration, declaring that he’s everyone and no one, everywhere and nowhere. Call him…Darkman. Or Ash. Or a Fifth Degree DoucheKnuckle. Either way, really, since you’ll never see him again regardless.

The Verdict:

Donkey: Watching this movie again, years after the initial pain, hasn’t done much to lessen the blow. This movie is still one massive disappointment. With a concept that should have been rather interesting and a character that could have had some real depth, this movie delivered on absolutely none of its potential. The story is a Tour de Force of goddamn boring, with villains that range from completely forgettable to ridiculously inappropriate. I mean, a real estate developer? Really? I think that’s giving bloated sacks of a inadequacy like Donald Trump far too much credit. And the hero of the film vaults between completely underdeveloped and intensely dislikable. What did we even know of Peyton before his tragic turn? Was he a wife beater? A drooling child molester? An avid World Of Warcraft gold farmer? Who fucking knows. And while I’m generally a fan of Liam Neeson’s, his portrayal of this part was astounding, acting like a man who was too busy huffing laughing gas to notice that he got his dick caught in his zipper. Overall this movie isn’t good enough to actually enjoy on its own merits and isn’t bad enough to give us too many laughs. I give it two jigs of rage out of five crushed rubber carnie fingers.

What We Learned:

Donkey: Violently insane homeless people might, just might, be super heroes. Think about that the next time they ask you for change.

Don’t forget to check back every Sunday for a new fresh review! Next week shittymovienight.com presents: a week off to pack our bags in preparation for an amazing adventure the following week in a tropical paradise filled with incorrectly-used nunchuks, soft-core porn, and contaminated snakes. But get ready to pay a steep price, as admission only comes with the purchase of a…HARD TICKET TO HAWAII.

Back To The Main Page.

I can feel it, alright. Right in the scrotum.

Donkey: If the movie Twins taught us only one lesson, it’s that surly dwarves guiding over-sized man-children though the pratfalls of day to day existence under the guise of miraculously being closer in relation than an army ant and a line dancing animatronic Billy Ray Cyrus from the future can be mildly amusing. And in the land of Hollywood, that mild amusement somehow translates into consent for the these same two fellows to rape our collective brains with a movie about said over-sized man-child carrying a baby in the horribly muscle-bound death cage that he calls a womb. If it taught us two things, which is kind of a stretch by anyone’s measure, it would be that apart from thanklessly and often needlessly killing things, Arnold Schwarzenegger is only good for laughing at himself, which I have to give him credit for. After all, despite being a horrible flop at the box office, I think Last Action Hero is one of his funniest and overall best movies. But if you had to try to pull a third lesson from its near lifeless claws of comic mediocrity, you could say that it reinforced the notion that twin siblings share a special bond that can never be broken.

Like JCVD, or Jesus herpes if you will, that’s a bond that I’ll never get to experience. Being the middle child of three boys, I can certainly relate to having siblings, but neither of them are as close as a twin; quite the opposite, actually. Unbearably pompous, undeniably loathsome, and unashamed of publicly simmering in a stew of their own droopy old man balls and blatant inadequacy, I prefer to keep my brothers about as close to me a jar of hissing scorpions with AIDS-filled stingers. Can’t wait to see you at Christmas, motherfuckers! But unlike me, some tiny little detail like reality is not going to stop JCVD from unleashing double the Van Dammage upon the Earth. And while a council of top scientists has confirmed that actually having two JCVDs in the world would cause it to collapse upon itself in the inevitable black hole of awesomeness that would be created, poorly executed movie magic is perfect for simulating those disaster conditions. So with that, let’s take a closer look at Double Impact.

(Editor’s note: Since many people are about as good at spotting sarcasm as they are a Sasquatch, I’ll state for the record that everything I said about my brothers was actually a lie. We’re actually quite close. Well, except for the old man balls thing. That’s totally true.)

The Plot:

Donkey: Separated at birth after their parents are betrayed and murdered by a business associate, the twin brothers Van Damme are reunited 25 years later to exact their revenge and claim what’s rightfully theirs. But before they can take on the Hong Kong underworld, they’ll have to find a way to put aside their comically mismatched dong punching differences and collective inability to form a coherent thought to work together as a team.

So in other words, it’s kind of like a buddy-cop film with less Danny Glover and more Van Damme giving himself a high five for two straight hours. If that doesn’t tickle your sense of awesome, then you’ve clearly replaced your ball sack with a hot cheddar cheese pump. And while that might ensure that you’re a hit at the next Superbowl party you go to, eventually the nachos will run out leaving you to realize that you’ve chosen poorly.

The Case for Greatness (aka The Lowlights):

Exhibit A: Betrayal Is A Dish Best Served Phenomenally Confusing

Papa Van Damme (right) laments over how much more money he could have made selling giant novelty scissors for ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

Donkey: Our cinematic adventure this week begins with the motivation behind JCVD’s ball showcasing splits of glory by detailing the epic downfall of his parents. We’re introduced to them at the same time as the movie reveals the object of pure desire that they are betrayed and killed for. But in an epic journey featuring a lethal dose of sweetness such as this, what could possibly stand as a grand enough prize for those involved? A fortune of lost pirates’ gold? The world’s most priceless piece of art? A freight train full of diamonds laced with heroin? Fuck that. This movie steps it up a notch with…a tunnel. That’s right; the central conflict of this movie is going to be based around a public transportation project. Specifically it’s the new Victoria Harbor Tunnel in Hong Kong. After witnessing the ribbon cutting ceremony performed by Papa Van Damme and his business partner, Griffith, we warp to that night as the twin babies of ultimate destruction are being driven home by their parents, who send their family bodyguard, Frank, home for the night. But just after their cars part ways, Papa VD notices that they are being followed. Upon hearing the news, Frank realizes that trouble is afoot and races to catch up to them. But before he can reach them, the family pulls into the driveway of their home to find a group of men waiting for them whom quickly open fire, eventually killing the Papa VD and the Invincible Vagina (so named because popping two JCVDs out of that thing is a task no mortal vagina could handle). But before they can finish the job and assassinate the Wonder Twins in the back of the car, Frank pulls up and opens fire, holding them at bay long enough for the family’s nanny to flee with one of the kids. Grabbing the other child himself, Frank darts through nearby bushes to escape, pausing only momentarily to discover Papa VD’s business partner, Griffith, just hanging around and watching the assassination, because apparently establishing an alibi is for chumps. The prologue ends with the nanny dropping off the one child at an orphanage run by French nuns, giving us a convenient excuse for JCVD’s accent. Meanwhile, apparently uninterested in spending so much as 10 minutes looking for the other child, Frank heads back to the US to raise the one boy himself.

Exhibit B: Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? And Maybe Put Those Goddamn Balls Away?

I don't think it's possible to showcase your balls any better than that.

25 years later, we journey into the synth-pop hustle and bustle of LA in the early 90’s where we discover JCVD 1, or Chad, running a gym/martial arts dojo/gay pride parade planning facility, covering for his obviously flamboyant lifestyle by lecturing women on the importance of stretching while literally doing the splits and bouncing his balls on the floor in front of them in the expressed purpose of impressing them. But as the women drool over the image of what could be the ultimate tea bagging experience, Frank interrupts and asks him to go take care of a problem in one of their karate classes. As he gets up to assure Frank that he’s got everything under control, we get to see that JCVD’s tight pastel blue leotard is giving him fucking ball cleavage, or dude camel toe. I would try to describe to you the horror of this sight, but until human language produces a word that causes both your brain and scrotum to burst upon utterance, I’m afraid I’m destined to fail in any attempt. So instead I can only assure you that I just threw up in my mouth even in merely remembering this scene. But after going in to the karate class kick a new recruit in the face for being a douche and trying to prove how badass he is by beating on fellow class members (which would get you summarily removed from any self-respecting martial arts organization), Chad is called up to the office where Frank has just finished meeting with a private investigator who found the lost twin brother, JCVD 2. Frank then takes the opportunity to reveal that he’s not actually Chad’s uncle, and that while he was raised in France, Chad wasn’t born there (keep in mind he doesn’t give a single reason for raising him in France, other than yet another convenient reason for the accent). But as Chad reels from the information that he probably should have been given years ago, Frank asks simply that Chad trust him, and just like that, they’re off to Hong Kong.

I stand corrected.

Once they land, Frank and Chad don’t bother to fuck around and instead jump straight into a cab heading to a Mahjong Parlor run by the other Van Damme, the twin known as Alex. They arrive shortly after a scene of Chad pointing out random markets and lights that don’t mean much of anything, which you wouldn’t think would impress a guy from LA unless he’s certifiably rubberheaded, and head straight into the joint. Chad, wearing an awesome pastel green shirt and pink short shorts, is immediately mistaken for Alex by everyone around them, including Alex’s girlfriend, Danielle, who seductively invites Chad into the back office for some sweet 80’s loving – which basically means that they’re going to bury their faces in one another’s teased and Debbie Gibson’s signature perfume Electric Youth-scented pubic hair for 7 minutes before lying in bed and watching Dynasty. Complementing his new look, which means that she’s either blind or into walking punch lines, Danielle undoes his pink shorts and grabs inside at his silk underwear, going straight for the goods. He urges her on, reassuring her that he has a big surprise, nay, a huge surprise in there waiting for her. Unless it’s a vagina, I’m going to go ahead and call bullshit on that one. But just as she starts to enter into a thumb wrestling contest with his little Van Dammage, Alex taps Chad on the shoulder, waits until he turns around, and knocks him out with one punch.

Hey there, sexy. Come back and show me how far those ride up.

As Chad begins to slowly regain consciousness, he can hear Alex and Danielle arguing through the haze about her indiscretion with Chad, as she naturally says that it was a harmless mistake since she no one knew Alex had a twin and he indignantly responds that they could never be mistaken for one another because Chad looks like a “faggot”. Wow. We’re not pulling any punches, huh? The only way that could have been better is if Van Damme had proclaimed that while in blackface. But as Chad sits up and remembers where his is, Frank steps in and diffuses the situation, making the highly scientific case that the two brothers are twins by insisting that they just look at each other. Once they finally settle down, he explains that he used to work for their father, whom ran into money trouble half way through building the famous Hong Kong tunnel project. To help him fund the completion of the project, he had brought in Griffith, whom in turn had got his money from the Zhang crime family. Once construction was done, Griffith and Zhang had their parents wiped out so that they could take sole possession. Sole possession…of a tunnel. Frank urges the brothers to work together, take their revenge on Griffith and the Zhang family, and claim what’s rightfully theirs – a goddamn tunnel. Unconvinced that they can accomplish that on their own, Alex offers to show them some “real action” to see what they’re made of.

You couldn't have this look any worse if one of them was bathed in sunlight.

Exhibit C: Wonder Twin Powers, Activate! Form Of…Gratuitous Ego Masturbation!

Yes Chad, you're both pirates. One of you is just a little more literal than the other.

The next day Frank and the brothers find themselves on Alex’s boat in the middle of the Hong Kong harbor, in pursuit of this so called “real action”, which turns out to be smuggling Mercedes cars with trunks full of smokes and shitty VCRs to Chinese buyers. But just as the buy is finishing, the Hong Kong marine police suddenly declare over a bullhorn that they are all under arrest, taking them all by surprise. Of course, I’m not really sure how none of them managed to see them coming a long time ago. After all, they’re in fucking boats in the open water, so it’s pretty hard to sneak up on anyone, even one of JCVD’s famous stealth boats. Accusing Alex of setting them up, the buyers turn their guns on him and the others, causing a melee to ensue. After summarily pitching the random thugs overboard with their combined powers of rad, the brothers turn their attention to fleeing from the swiftly incoming cops. But once they realize that they’re not making a fast enough getaway, Chad and Frank roll the cars off the back of the boat, landing in the water between them and the cops, before shooting in their general direction and somehow causing them to explode, creating a flaming barrier. And of course, rather than just going around them and continuing the pursuit, this rather tiny obstacle is deemed insurmountable by the cops, who simply let the twins escape. Such action! Are we the only ones looking for the socks that this movie just blew off our goddamn feet?

The film then moves to an outdoor café where we’re forced to watch a woman decapitate and gut a live frog before returning to the brothers. Thanks, Double Impact! I was totally looking for something to bum me out just to balance out the incredible high that this film has had me riding. After declaring that the incident in the harbor has established their credentials for being certified bad-asses, or possibly as dental hygienists, Frank asks the brothers what they plan to do about the tunnel. Being the only one in the group who’s not legally retarded, Danielle asks Frank if there’s any record of the twins’ parents owning the tunnel, to which Frank claims that there doesn’t need to be because he was there and has the scars to prove it. But when she naturally points out that bat-shit crazy exposition is inadmissible as evidence in a court of law, Frank gives her an angry lecture on how Zhang only understands one kind of justice, the law of the shotgun. So…he’s from Alabama? Doing what any reasonable person would do in the face of what appears to be the drunken ranting of an insane drifter, Danielle storms off, prompting Frank to ask what her problem is, like SHE’S the one being the insufferable douche bag. Alex reveals that she’s been working for Griffith for 5 years now before chasing after her, assuring her that while the old man is crazy, she should quietly check on what he’s claiming anyways.

The only justice Zhang knows is street justice! That's why we have to assemble a dance crew and make sure he gets served, bi-otch!

Here, put on a coat dear, or you'll catch a cold.

From there Chad gets into a cab alone and goes back to…God knows where, only to be grabbed by a group of mobsters who mistake him for Alex. They throw him into a waiting car with Zhang and his Mini-boss head thug, Bolo Yeung, or as most people know him, Chong Li from Bloodsport. And since this movie doesn’t bother to give him a name, that’s what I’m going to continue to call him. Oh, wait, looked it up on IMDB…his name is Moon? Right, Chong Li it is. Trying his best to look like an evil overlord, Zhang makes a pitch to recruit Chad to sell coke for him rather than smuggle cars for himself while pulling a cigar out of the wooden stogie box that Frank gave JCVD’s father as a gift on the night of his death. Of course, tying to look like an evil overlord might actually work if you had the basic cranial capacity required to remove the monogrammed initials off of the goddamn cigar box you’re carrying. And of course as they arrive at an empty shipping yard, Chad recognizes the initials on the box just before he’s pulled from the car and is given the complete details of a freighter that will be waiting there on Thursday for an impending drug deal. Zhang tells him that all Chad needs to do is pick up the boat and bring it over to his dock. Chad’s elegant response is a simple, “go fuck yourself”. And seeing as this kind of response to a crime boss usually results in someone giving a blowjob to a berretta, it’s no surprise when a crowd a Zhang’s goons gathers around Chad in anticipation, watching eagerly as Chong Li takes the honors of beating Chad into unconsciousness and throwing him into an empty shipping container. That container is then put on a truck, driven into town, and opened just long enough to throw him into the streets.

Once Chad drags his bruised and battered body clad in a ridiculous green suede jacket back into Alex’s place, Frank grills him for what little information he can about the attackers before asking the brothers if they’re finally in or what. With an awesome blue screen image that in no way looks like it was spliced together by a film school dropout using Elmer’s glue while wearing oven mitts, they both proclaim that they’re in. Fuck yeah!

As different as they may seem, ask a basic math question and they'll both give you the same expression.

Exhibit D: Revenge Takes A Back Seat To Picturing My Brother’s Ass

Ouch! Time-out, guys! I landed on my keys!

To prepare for their upcoming war with the Zhang crime family, Alex guides Chad and Frank to their new base of operations, a dilapidated and abandoned hotel on a small island. As they sail along on his garbage barge of a boat, he gets a call from Danielle. She lets him know that while she was snooping around the files in her office, she was interrupted by Griffith’s suspicious muscle-bound female bodyguard, Kara. Alex thinks little of it as he docks the boat and escorts Chad and Frank to the hotel. Later that night they take a moment to prepare their arsenal before carrying out an assault on the drug deal that Zhang had conveniently detailed to Chad. That assault, like the rest of the movie, has about as much substance as an Andy Dick doctoral thesis. The brothers sneak up to the location Metal Gear Solid style before Alex sneaks around and plants plastic explosives while Chad keeps acts as a guard. That is until Chad gets slightly impatient, wanders directly into the midst of the enemies, and kicks the first dude he sees in the face. This, of course, alerts the entire site to their presence and sparks a fire fight of epically underwhelming proportions, featuring Alex rolling around awkwardly on the floor while firing dual pistols at faceless goons while Chad manages to end up at the business end of the laser sight of a thug who literally takes far too long to decide to maybe get around to shooting before he’s taken out by Frank’s sniper rifle. Eventually Alex steals a truck and with Chad hanging off the side of it, they get out range before Frank detonates the bombs and blows the whole thing sky high.

When you had that dude from Cake Boss cater this affair, you didn't explain that's a ship full of drugs, did you?

With the first part of their ham-fisted assault complete, it’s time to go for the gold. After meeting with Danielle and finding out that Griffith will be at a nightclub called the Climax Club that evening, which just happens to be owned by Zhang, the brothers spring into action. The movie transitions to the club that night where we see Griffith and Zhang meeting with the heads of their crime family, toasting a new method of shipping drugs while sitting around what appears to be a massive cake in the shape of a freighter carrying drugs. As Alex wanders into the front door and tells the nearest mullet-sporting goon that he can find that he has the case of booze that Griffith has been asking for, Zhang and Griffith are accuse some poor bastard in their own group of sabotaging the drug deal the previous night before having Kara kill him with a single stab to the chest while flexing her ladyballs. Yeah, you just gave all the details of your drug deal to someone who then turned around and told you to go fuck yourself and it’s this guy who must have fucked you over. With deductive skills like that, I’d be surprised if these two ass clowns could manage to peddle Twinkies in a fat camp. But just after the exceptionally needless killing, Griffith and Zhang are given the case of booze that Alex delivered, prompting them to finally realize that Alex knew about the drugs and demand to have him brought to them. Of course, if they had half a goddamn brain between them, they might suspect at that point that the case of “booze” is actually “a big fucking bomb”, or at the very least think to check it out. But while Alex and Frank wait nervously, blending into the crowd in the club’s main room, Griffith and Zhang’s mullet-clad goon emerges just in time to meet Chad as he wanders in from another entrance with another case. The goon insists that Chad come to the back, but rather than following, Chad hits the deck as Frank detonates the first package, which, even though it’s sitting on a table mere feet away from Zhang and Griffith, manages to explode and not give anyone in the room so much as a splinter. But of course, this causes quite a commotion, so Chad and Alex start focusing their destructive power on a wave of random goons. Then just as they’re about to leave, Zhang and Griffith emerge from the back in time to see both brothers standing together and realize that they’re dealing with twins. As the two groups share an awkward moment, Kara notices the second case sitting on the dance floor and yells a warning, prompting them all to flee the club before it goes off in a massive explosion that’s hilariously disproportionate to the first one. Apparently one box was packed with C4 and the other was a pack of Mentos and some goddamn Diet Coke.

This might be hot if I weren't so sure her balls were bigger than mine.

Seeing as how the brothers have been caught making an attempt on Zhang and Griffith’s lives, it only makes sense that the very next day, Danielle resumes her snooping around Griffith’s records. Of course she’s once again caught by Kara, whom decides to make sure that Danielle isn’t hiding anything by frisking/molesting her. But before we can cheer on some chick rape, Danielle bolts and the scene ends. She immediately calls back to the brothers’ Hidden Fortress of Alternative Lifestyles where she reaches Chad, who’s in the kitchen making a huge batch of plain noodles while Alex and Frank are off chopping wood in the jungle. As Danielle tells him that she’s found a document to support their claim and that she’s in real trouble now, Griffith and Zhang naturally listen in on the conversation from a phone in his office. Assuring her that everything will be okay, Chad tells her to go to Alex’s Mahjong Parlor and they’ll meet her there. He runs outside looking for others, giving up after 8 seconds and taking the boat. He meets Danielle as promised, only to have Kara and a group of thugs invade the Mahjong Parlor moments later, pursuing them through the streets of Hong Kong and over a series of boats until the two heroes dive in the water and make a getaway on Alex’s garbage barge. While all this is going on, Alex somehow knows to call back to his office to talk to the duo, but ends up being hung up on when place is raided. This leads him down the path of jealous rage that is no way completely fucking psychotic.

Two things happen at this point. First, as Chad and Danielle slowly tugboat their way back to the island fortress, Kara proves to be the only person in this movie capable of forming a coherent thought as she jumps into a helicopter and follows the two of them, suspecting which island they may be going to and then having the confirmed when Frank comes wandering out of the hotel to stand like a fucking idiot and stare up at the helicopter as it flies by. And second, after a needless titty scene where Danielle gets changed into fresh clothes, the movie alternates between the Chad and Danielle sailing back in quiet sexual tension and Alex rampaging around the hotel while envisioning a low quality softcore porn scene of his brother having sex with his girlfriend. To really appreciate that, you have to stop and remind yourself that at this point JCVD is now engaging in a long dream sex involving…JCVD. I can’t help but think at this point that if Van Damme was in Burger King and really could have it his way, there wouldn’t be a woman in this scene at all…just two Van Dammes, locked in an embrace of unbridles passion and awesomeness.

Van Damme, thinking about a woman making love to Van Damme, gets so excited that the semen has to come out somewhere.

Eventually, once this ridiculously long scene of JCVD imaging his own ass pounding into his girlfriend is finished, Chad and Danielle finally make it back to the hotel to find Alex completely wasted. He accuses them of fucking, of course. But once the blonde points out that he’s drunk, he drops her with one hard slap. Awesome. So again, just to review, he are now supposed to be cheering for two brothers, one of which is a petty, vicious woman-beater who flies into a violent rage when he simply imagines his girlfriend with another dude. But anyways, Chad kicks him in the face in retaliation, much to our delight, and the single greatest fight of all time begins. It’s JCVD versus JCVD in an all out Battle Royale. But disappointingly, it only last a few moments before Frank comes in a breaks it up. But when Frank dismisses Alex being completely fucking insane as being a mere result of simply being drunk, Alex compounds his position by saying:

Alex: “Maybe I’m drunk. Tomorrow I’ll be sober. But he’ll always be a faggot.”

Wow. Seriously? I’m actually supposed to want this guy to not trip and fall penis first into a wood chipper? Anyways, the scene ends with both brothers huffing and puffing indignantly and in equally retarded fashions before going their separate ways. Alex gives a rant about no one being there for him when he was on the streets while Chad runs into the black of night, swearing that he’s going to swim back to LA.

Exhibit E: Van Dammes! Merge To Become…Useless-Tit-icon!

That's right, Mr. Lehey. Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles are running the trailer park while you're here. What do you think of that?

The next morning both brothers wake up from having slept outside at various distances away from the hotel and look over just in time to see Kara and Zhang sending a battalion of guerilla solders to storm their fortress. But before they can join in the fight, Frank and Danielle are captured and taken away in a helicopter, leaving only a handful of soldiers, or fodder if you will, behind to patrol the area. Of course Chad and Alex make short work of those poor bastards, dealing with them swiftly as the helicopter carrying their captured comrades arrives at a shipping yard. Once they eventually meet, the brothers interrogate the sole survivor of their wrath, grilling him for the location that Zhang has fled to, while Zhang and Griffiths likewise torture Frank by beating on him and blasting him with steam, more for fun than for gathering information of any kind.

With that, we’ve once again reached that very familiar part of the movie, the climactic final battle. It begins with the two JCVD’s sneaking onto the boat where Griffith and Zhang are hiding, stabbing and neck-breaking their way in. They slowly work their way down through the bowels of the freighter, eventually ending up in a firefight that alerts everyone to their presence. With the game now officially afoot, Griffith gets on an intercom and allows them to hear Frank scream like a little girl that they’re being held in the boiler room while being blasted with more steam. And just to up the ante, they go even further and fake shooting Frank over the intercom, which causes Chad to freak out, screaming like he’s just been violated by a hippopotamus before getting on an intercom himself, swearing to Griffiths that he’s dead. A series of very predictable scenes then follows, involving the brothers shooting random dudes before we finally end up with a series of mini-boss battles:

Mini-Boss 1 – Italian Karate Cowboy…Seriously: First up, Alex ends up fighting some this random Italian dude wearing a suit with spurs on his boots. They flip through semi-darkness like a couple of gymnasts on E, doing what I suppose is supposed to be some kind of fighting until finally Alex beats him to death. Short, sweet, pointless.

The not-quite-so-ultimate opponent: a greasy Italian in a cheap suit.

Chong Li's attempts at intimidation might have been taken a little more seriously had someone not told him the world's most hilarious knock knock joke only moments earlier.

Mini-Boss 2 – Bloodsport II: The second fight is a rematch of an epic battle from a previous film, as Chad fights Chong Li. If he beats him after having dust thrown in his eyes again, I might just shit my pants laughing. But instead, the fight begins with Chong Li wasting a lot of energy by throwing heavy barrels at Chad, like some kind of shitty version of Donkey Kong, until Chad finally matches the stupidity by trying to stop a barrel that’s flying at him by kicking it, rather than just stepping out of the way. Chong Li then pins Chad to the ground with a barrel and tries to squish him while smiling like a rapist. Eventually Chad escapes and they slowly make their way into another room where, after ripping Chad’s shirt off, Chong Li takes his own off before giving a dramatically goofy flex pose. They finally begin an actual martial arts battle which at best could be described as very uninspired, before Chad finally unleashes a remarkable 6 straight flying splits kicks, causing Chong Li to fly into an open electrical panel (Looks like Blombo’s been working on that site). But not only is Chong Li is electrocuted, but sparks also fly as he falls to the floor, lighting a random trail of fuel that leads back to barrels of what one has to guess is pure gasoline. Realizing that he’s standing in the middle of this field of barrels, JCVD gives us the classic run and jump slow-mo scene, diving away from the fire even though it should have still enveloped him.

Despite Chong Li trying to sell it like it has already knocked out four teeth, there's no way this kick could actually hit him. And nice junk shot, by the way.

Mini-Boss 3 – She-male Of Doom: After Chad’s explosion rips through the ship, Griffith gets a call advising that no one could have lived through that and that he should leave the ship immediately. Leaving Danielle and Frank alone with Kara and some random thug, he and Zhang do exactly that. But just as they leave, Alex wanders onto the scene, takes out the random thug, before giving his woman-beating tendencies free reign by engaging in a vicious fight against Kara. The greatest moment of the fight comes when at one point Kara, for reasons I’ll never know, grabs him by the cock. She doesn’t punch him in it, mind you. Just grabs it, which means that both female leads in this movie have been forced to touch his junk. And I have to totally believe that was JCVD’s idea when it came to the script. You can almost hear it in your head, can’t you? “Let’s have her touch my dick. No, no reason. I just want her to touch my dick. Now agree with me before I make you touch my dick. That’s what I thought. Hurray for my dick!” But anyways, eventually Alex stabs her with a knife that she produces, killing her just as Chad appears.

Final Bosses – A Battle Against Utter Disappointment: With everyone else dead, Griffith and Zhang try their best to flee the boat while the brothers take off in hot pursuit. As one would guess, since there are two brothers and two villains, they end up splitting up and each following a nemesis of their own. Alex races off after Zhang, for some reason leaving Danielle alone with Chad as they run after Griffith. When they eventually catch up to their prey, the fights involving both brothers are horribly, horribly uninteresting. First, Chad and Danielle follow Griffith into an area tightly packed shipping containers. They lose him, and eventually slowly walk into a small dead end. As they wonder what to do, Griffith fires up a forklift behind them and slowly begins to drive towards them while carrying a cargo container above their heads. With nowhere to go, all Chad can do is stuff Danielle into the one tiny hole between two of the containers that make up a side wall before running away and diving into the water behind him. Griffith then decides that the best thing to do is get down and stand by the water, firing his gun randomly into the water. But even better than this idiocy is that Chad then suddenly appears back at the controls of the forklift behind him. How the fuck he got up there, the movie doesn’t say. We’ll just say that he was picked up and flown there by a unicorn, because it makes as much sense as any other explanation. Just as Griffith turns and realizes his impending doom, Chad delivers on the anticipated disaster by dropping the container on him.

While all this is going on, Zhang and Alex end up at the top of a massive industrial crane, because yeah, why wouldn’t it be a good idea to climb up a couple of stories to an area where you can’t possibly escape when you’re being chased by someone determined to kill you? Once they both arrive at the top, Zhang blows a fire extinguisher in Alex’s face, temporarily blinding him while pulling a sword out of his cane. Remember how I said I’d laugh until I shit if Van Damme got blinded? Well, let’s just say I’ve got some laundry to do. This seems like a guaranteed death of Alex, but those of us who have seen Bloodsport know that JCVD’s no stranger to blind fighting, so no one is surprised when Alex doesn’t so much as hesitate to kick the shit out of Zhang until finally forcing his sword arm into a couple of industrial gears. And while basic brain function would dictate that his arms would be crushed flat or ripped off, this actually does little more than leave him with a bloody appendage. But regardless, it’s enough to neutralize the old man, leaving him to beg Alex to make a deal. The rebuttal, of course, comes in the form of Alex dropping Zhang over the side to his plummeting death.

I can't think of a shot to end the movie on that will haunt my dreams more.

And that, as they say, is that. With all the villains dead and everything right in the world, JCVD and JCVD meet up again, sharing a sweet face to face while forcing the blue screen budget of this movie into overdrive, before locking into a death grip hug of awesomeness that would put a grizzly to shame. Danielle and Frank both join them, of course, and as Alex embraces his girlfriend – a distant second on his romantic priority list behind fondling himself – they all share smiles. But while all this is so sickeningly sweet that it could only be reproduced with a few tons of high-fructose corn syrup, the real icing on the cake comes seconds later when Chad gives Alex the okay sign and it freezes on that to the sound of gunfire. FUCK YEAH.

Once again, I stand corrected.

The Verdict:

Donkey: The very basis for this entire film is astounding. They’re fighting to regain what was stolen from them…and it’s a goddamn tunnel? I don’t think anyone who was involved with making this movie has any idea how public utilities actually work. No private citizen or business can own a goddamn traffic tunnel in a civilized country. That’s simply not possible, or some eccentric CEO could just decide one day to cut off all access for no particular reason other than dancing in his own shit while singing Rebel Yell and proving that he’s goddamn insane. And even if you could actually own a tunnel, who the fuck would want it? Do you know how high the tolls on that motherfucker would have to be before you even made any money back? Those things aren’t exactly cheap to construct, so unless you’re charging $1,000 per car, you’re not going to see a profit for decades. I can’t wait for a sequel, where the brothers Van Damme battle an evil mastermind who has seized control of a municipal sewage processing plant. Everything about this movie is deliciously ridiculous, save the fighting itself which is rather disappointing. None of them felt epic, or able to stand up next to fighting a tiger before blocking an inferno with a Coke machine, if you will. I give this movie four cases of ball cleavage out of five silky junk grabs.

What We Learned:

Donkey: If JCVD were to be forced to imagine it, the only man that he could imagine a woman cheating on him with is him. I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s sounds just about right.

Don’t forget to check back every Sunday for a new fresh review! Next week shittymovienight.com presents: Sam Raimi’s first horrifyingly terrible contribution to the genre of superhero action movies, but certainly not the last, in…DARKMAN.

Back To The Main Page.

Updated cover: Now Available In Discount Bins, Pawn Shops, And Ironic Movie Collections

Donkey: One of the signature cinematic themes of the 80’s and early 90’s, apart from Corey Feldman and Corey Haim competing to see whose career could take a nosedive into an existential vat of taint sweat faster, was the action hero. Larger than life euphemisms for supplement store patrons too enraptured in drug induced rage to notice their shrinking testicles stripping away what little masculinity they once had while in the futile, ham-fistedly pursuit of more, these heroes proved that our society is just as good at objectifying and propping up unattainable standards for men as we are with women. At the height of their popularity, these men of steel were at the top of the Hollywood orgy pile, allowing Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and even Van Damme to make progressively bigger and more violent films whose sole purpose was to give you a boner every time someone was chest-fucked with a sawed-off shotgun. But when potent manseed drips down that clusterfuck, there’s bound to be a few pregnancies. So as is always the case, when these films started to make an obscene amount of money, Hollywood began churning out copycats faster than Madonna could find new ways to share her crabs, saturating the market in an attempt to cash in before the well of rocket launchers and shitty one-liners went dry. And since those highly sought after A-list stars could only appear in so many tragedies per year, the search was on to find lesser men who would attempt to fit the bill.

Those who stepped up to the plate to become action stars (or America’s Next Top Douchenozzle, if you will) typically ranged from mildly inappropriate to epic failures whose tales of retarded glory will ring through the halls of Valhalla forever. Our oft mentioned favorite will always be Kurt Thomas of the timeless masterpiece Gymkata. How someone looked at that wood nymph and thought he’d be credible as anything more than a stand in for Blossom, I’ll never know. But another fine example is the perpetual jock stain that is Brian Bosworth. I know what you’re saying: Brian Bos-what? Exactly. Brian “The Boz” Bosworth is an ex-Seattle Seahawk whom was every bit as notable as a professional football player as he was a thespian. Both careers were short and entirely forgettable. And I can see the logic in plucking a potential symbol of mindless male aggression from the very shallow pool that is professional football, seeing as when they’re not busy slapping each other’s ass, half the men on the field in that sport literally do nothing more than slam into another man as hard as they can and end up doing little more than canceling one another out, but you might want to at least choose one that can read dialogue with more emotion than a clinically depressed fucking Speak N’ Spell. Of course, for our purposes we’re sure glad they didn’t, since that wall-eyed casting selection produced his glorious debut, 1991’s Stone Cold.

The Plot:

Donkey: In the far distant future of 1991, the FBI is faced with a terrifying new foe that has emerged from the cyberpunk-ruled streets: a chubby, dim-witted biker gang, led by the android from Aliens, which is making rather modest and poorly planned moves to expand their drug empire throughout the rest of the US. But those fail in comparison to their true goal of terrible, pointless vengeance. Helpless in the face of this expansive beer swilling ZZ Top cover band, the FBI looks for the one man that will dare to sport a leather vest and fifth degree mullet to stop them…The Boz! Using the considerably modest arsenal of skills at his disposal, he’ll redefine their notion of “blitzing a tight end” and possibly learn a little something about sharing and friendship along the way.

The Case for Greatness (aka The Lowlights):

Exhibit A: It’s Fourth & Down, And We Need To Run The Play Called “Staggering AssFacery”. Send In THE BOZ!

His plan is to defeat the bandits by serving them undercooked pork.

Donkey: After completing decade-long research that will finally produce a hypothesis that explains to the world exactly why Steve Guttenberg was ever paid to appear in films, Future Scientists from the year 20XX will focus all the power of their brains and cybervag-equipped robot lovers to coming up with the exact formula for creating the bullet ejaculating money shot that we’ve come to know as the action hero movie. And while I don’t profess to be any kind of time traveler (yet), I’m pretty sure that their first recommended step will be to open your movie with a scene that holds no other value whatsoever than to showcase how hilariously lethal your main character is. And Stone Cold does exactly that, as the film begins with three armed gunmen storming into a grocery store, randomly firing off their guns into carefully stacked semi-delicious food items while shrieking like an Apache war party that’s mainlining Red Bull. And as they collect what has to be at least $50 from the cash registers mere seconds later, in steps The Boz. With that kind of timing, one must conclude that he’s a Time Bandit who travels through the Sea of Chronology with a troupe of midgets, looking for exceptionally petty crime to stop. As soon as he enters the store, he grabs a cart and starts walking the aisles, striking fear into the criminals by doing some light shopping. As they freak out and split up like they’re being stalked by the Predator, or possibly Sean Young, The Boz helps the first two thugs catch up on their sleep with loving smashes to the fucking head. The last man standing, who holds a teenager hostage who’s wearing braces and headgear that is giving me a flashback to my early teens, starts to freak out and decides to give up and just run. But as he gets to the end of the aisle, he slips on errant liquid cleverly placed by a certain lawman, which for some reason rockets him about 10 feet through the air like he’s been shot out of a cannon, smashing into a stack of cans while The Boz just sits calmly and watches. Job well done, bitches. But showing off our hero’s unlimited killing power isn’t quite enough. The next step is to show how he could have been a moderately unsuccessful stand-up comedian if he wasn’t burdened with this incessant need to shatter skulls. So it is at the exact moment that the last punk falls that the store floods with cops, one of whom is The Boz’s captain. But rather than giving him a high five and a reacharound for a job well done, the Cap’n asks The Boz what he’s got to say for himself, since he’s apparently done all this while still on suspension. His response?

The Boz: “You’ve got a clean up on aisle four.”

SNAP! Nothing says you’re a take-no-prisoners-or-showers rogue cop like basically telling your boss to Hoover the lint out of your ass crack without fear of reprimand.

Exhibit B: Evil Embarks On A Corporate Team Building Retreat

If you miss this one, I'm going to balance the next one on my junk.

The next variable in our equation of awesome is the villain; the yin to the hero’s yang, or the cock sandwich to The Boz’s shit taco. So with that, the movie suddenly transitions us straight to a biker gang rally where we’re introduced to The Brotherhood, an obnoxious gaggle of overweight frat boys who place hygiene about four notches beneath Victorian-era poetry appreciation on their priority chart. As we watch their shitheaded reindeer games, the movie starts to jump all over the place without warning. It begins with the gang taking part in such healthy activities as shooting a beer can off one another’s shoulder and head from about twenty feet away, some random pulling of dudes along the ground behind speeding bikes, followed up with some light brawling in a circle of death. But just as it seems like this group of microbiologists is going to crack the code to the human genome, the intelligence is stepped up a notch further. Ice, the second in command of the gang, played by William Forsythe, uses a fully automatic weapon to shoot another can off the shoulder of a fellow biker named Mudfish. As a brief side note, I love William Forsythe. Although I’ll always remember him from Raising Arizona, that guy has been in everything. As a matter of fact, if you look back through your photo albums, there’s a good chance that he played you at a party once, to much critical acclaim. But anyways, he just unloads the goddamn gun while waving it around like he’s trying to draw a mural on a wall with bullets. Mudfish has the can fly off his shoulder while he stands there for a few seconds, completely dumbfounded, before diving out of the way, remarkably not punctured by the barrage of bullets that proceeds to decimate the car behind him. I guess I was wrong. I guess what I thought was Ice waving his gun around randomly was actually him tracing the exact outline of Mudfish. And here I thought he was just a douche.

But then the movie suddenly cuts away from the idiotic merriment to some random biker named Trouble. Yes, Trouble. He stalks into a small church and fires upon a priest who appears to be performing a wedding, which rockets him through the stained glass window behind him like he got in the way of Godzilla trying to kick a field goal. It then cuts immediately to an incredibly quick court scene where the rest of the gangs curses and swears as Trouble’s convicted of the crime and given a sentence of 45 years. I’m not exactly sure what they expected. It’s not like he pulled off that hit with ninja-like stealth. So you can’t just fart on a cop’s dinner while he’s eating it and then wonder why you get a nightstick across the jaw. And just to finish things off, the scene then cuts to a mansion where the judge who convicted Trouble gets into a boat to go fishing, starts it, and explodes while Ice looks on, giggling from a short distance away. But as disjointed as this entire sequence seems, my hat is off to this movie for being so succinct. Normally a character going on a kill rampage, getting caught, and facing a trial would take, if not an entire film then at least a good portion of it. But Stone Cold has the balls to say fuck that, we’ll do it in a montage.

They actually chose a pet that is cold-blooded because otherwise you'd see its face flushed with embarassment for being seen with this asswipe.

With that sequence leaving us fairly confused and somewhat gassy, the movie turns back to The Boz, hanging out in his ridiculously large apartment that a single cop simply couldn’t afford. He looks over the morning’s paper, pretending that he can read while making a power shake of epic proportions for breakfast. And what kind of rocket fuel does a killing machine require to keep his kung fu grip in the red? It’s none of that fruity, new age healthy stuff. No, we’re talking orange juice, a couple of Snickers bars, half a bag of potato chips, a banana, eggs, and Tabasco sauce just to keep the hair on his balls razor sharp. But just as you think he’s going to actually eat that shit and likely drop dead of a flavor overload, he feeds it to his pet lizard, which apparently he hates and wants to die. Right about then there’s a knock at his front door, which he opens to find Sam McMurray, another dude from Raising Arizona. He identifies himself as Lance, an FBI agent, before asking The Boz to accompany him on a very urgent matter. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that it’s a fashion-related emergency that only the mightiest headband-contained coif can guide them out of. With little argument, The Boz soon ends up meeting Lance’s boss, an FBI agent named Cunningham, in a car. After explaining that they’ve been watching the Brotherhood, who was not only behind the judge’s death but is also planning on extending their drug empire to become the Wal-Mart of black tar heroin and crab-infested hookers, Cunningham explains that since The Boz is responsible for more biker related arrests than anyone else in Alabama, they want him to work undercover and infiltrate the gang for them. Of course, The Boz doesn’t play by the rules, so at first he tries to refuse, only to be threaten to have his three week suspension extended to six months without pay. So as much as he might rage against the machine, that kind of hit to his bankroll would cut pretty deeply into his mousse and hairspray money, leaving The Boz little choice but to agree.

Exhibit C: In Like Flint, Provided That Flint Failed His GED Test 4 Times Too.

Oh God! My eyes are on fire!!!

Risking an extreme bout of déjà vu, the movie then cuts right back to The Boz’s apartment, apparently the next morning where he wakes up once again to find Lance at his door. Only this time, the movie cranks up the homo-erotic insanity to the top of the charts as The Boz lets him in and proceeds to stroll around in ridiculous fucking bikini briefs. Goddamn it, I did not need to see The Boz’s shrunken boss. And just to keep the random idiocy going, Lance saunters into the master bedroom and sits down on the bed while The Boz brushes his teeth in his ensuite bathroom, only to discover a naked woman rustling beneath the sheets. She sits up to give us a completely unnecessary titty shot while not even remotely surprised that a strange man is in the room, and neither she nor The Boz seem to be the slightest bit concerned that Lance is being barraged with a lethal combination of her tits and his package. I smell an awkward, lube-filled proposal in the near future.

William had the choice between this movie and a Theater In The Park production of Weird Science. I think more people would have seen the play.

But rather than showing us what might be the most horrifying threesome in the history of cinema, the movie jumps past that as well as any single moment of the day and goes straight to a random bar where The Boz meets Lance in the parking lot before going inside together and ordering a couple of beers. And of course, just to play up the tired The Odd Couple buddy cop cliché, Lance insists that the bartender give him a glass for his bear, implying that even as a seasoned veteran, being fruitier than a box of Frankenberry is more important to him than actually being even remotely competent as an undercover FBI agent. Meanwhile, The Boz spots Ice upstairs, making out with what appears to be his mom while under the watchful eye of a little rat-like fellow biker named Gut who giggles and rubs himself under the table, so he carries out his ingenious master plan to infiltrate the gang’s ranks: he walks up and asks why the chick that Ice is making out with has been eying his ass all night. Alright…interesting approach. When Ice naturally threatens to skullfuck his corpse, The Boz goes on to declare that he just got out of prison and heard that the Brotherhood were the baddest motherfuckers ever, but he guesses that he heard wrong. Umm…okay. So the secret handshake that gets you into a biker gang is to walk up and slap them across the face with your cock, I guess. But as Ice seriously contemplates raping him, someone calls his name from the floor of the bar, where two dudes hassle a chick to get their money back after being sold what they claim were bad drugs. Following the age old tenet that the customer is always right, Ice and Gut march down and where Ice gives one of them a soccer kick directly to the babymaker, inciting a classic bar fight. But it turns out that Gut is not exactly the most skilled fighter amongst the gang, as he starts to get his ass kicked almost immediately. Seeing a chance to seal the deal with a moment of glory, The Boz steps in and saves him, fighting off the last few fat truckers until the fighting is done. While Ice is rather unimpressed by his actions, Gut jumps at a chance to cradle The Boz’s balls and invites him to a Brotherhood rally that weekend. Seeing his chance to finally slide on his glass slippers and be crowned the belle of the ball, The Boz plays it cool as says he’ll think about it. At night. While touching himself in the shower.

The tired, tired face of the enemy.

Carrying on the movie’s fine tradition of graceless transitioning, it cuts directly to the Brotherhood rally, showing The Boz roll up in a sweet rapist van that’s hauling his Harley behind it. Ready to prove to a throng of douches that he’s as big a burden on society as anyone else, he parks the van,  jumps on his hog, and without any invitation whatsoever, pulls up directly next to Ice at the starting line of a drag race. Without knowing where the hell he’s going or what the hell the point is, he simply steels his jaw as the two of them take off, driving side by side for a while until The Boz wins by what seems to be nothing more than accelerating slightly. Damn, those are some dope moves! I’m guessing he did a lot of practicing on a go kart course before coming here. But The Boz isn’t done there. After all, if you’re going to mark your territory, might as well piss on the biggest dog you can find. So his next stop is another goddamn fighting circle, as apparently these bikers have nothing better to do than break each other’s spine out of sheer boredom. The Boz steps in, sporting the shirtless with jeans combination, a timeless classic that you don’t see outside of playing beach volleyball with Maverick and Goose nearly often enough. While he flails away with the martial skill that only a failed football player could call fighting, the leader of the Brotherhood and Final End Boss of the movie, Lance Henrikson, stalks the perimeter and watches in constipated disinterest. The Boz and his nameless bassist for White Lion opponent trade a ridiculous number of punches directly to the face before The Boz eventually knocks the dude out to a chorus of boos from the crowd. His work done, he strolls back to his van with Gut in tow, still waiting for the chance to cradle the balls and work the shaft, only to find Chains there waiting for him. After a brief introduction, Chains tells The Boz to take his “old lady”, Nancy, and have a good time. But once they’re alone in his van, he refuses her advances, saying that he doesn’t think a woman should be passed around like property. And that, my friends, might be the finest bit of acting that The Boz does in this film. As he steps out and leaves her inside, Ice warns Chains that this dude smells trouble. And moldy bagels.

The movie jumps abruptly once again at that point to what could be later that day, that week, or even six months as we are introduced to the Brotherhood’s compound with some absolutely bizarre imagery. The camera pans along the grounds, passing by random chicks showering out in the open in only semi-enclosed makeshift showers, delivering even more completely unnecessary titty shots before immediately moving on to kids running around, some pushing even younger ones around in strollers. What the fuck is that? That couldn’t be any more confusing for the drooling male masses watching this film than if they had transitioned from chicks making out in a tub of Jell-O to one taking a teeth-gritting, four-coiled dump. Eventually we arrive in a clubhouse building where we find Chains watching the District Attorney give a television interview, swearing that he’s going to appeal Trouble’s sentence until he gets the death penalty. As he and a few of his right hand men debate the merits of pan frying versus slow roasting the DA’s balls and serving them to him, The Boz arrives at the front gates of the compound and says he has a package for Chains. He’s allowed entry and is sent to a pool hall where it’s time for, guess what, another completely unnecessary titty shot as a chick is playing pool topless. What does that add to the scene, you ask? Class, my friends. That’s just classy. Once inside, he finds Chains and gives him the package, which turns out to be a bulletproof vest, saying that he’ll need it when they do business. I guess bringing Chains a picture of his mom and jerking off onto it wouldn’t have been obvious enough. In response, Chains accepts the vest, puts it on The Boz, spins him around, and shoots him right in the chest, sending him flying onto a pool table. The Boz gets back to his feet far too quickly, belying the fact that even with a protective vest on, getting shot in the chest fucking hurts and is restrained by several dudes as he tries to retaliate. What the fuck did you expect to happen? For him to be so deeply thankful that he serves you a hot, buttery croissant? But I guess acting like a dick sore is exactly what a group of assholes is looking for, as Chains then offers The Boz the chance to join the gang, much to Ice’s objection. And when he accepts, The Boz is given his first assignment, which is to carry out a hit. He’s given an earring and told to bring the matching one, worn by the mark, as well as the ear that it’s attached to back to them to show that the job is done.

With a chance for a small break from all this non-stop, ball clenching action, The Boz rolls off to find his prey, giving us a long bike riding montage of glory, set to the musical tragedy of the second worst Foghat cover band they could find. After watching scene after scene of his mullet billowing in the wind for far too long, the movie turns to another night club where The Boz finds the dude he’s looking for. After slamming his face into a crowded bar for all to see, The Boz picks the guy up and hauls him out straight to the FBI where they pull off an elaborate ruse to make it look like The Boz carried out the hit. They take the dude’s earring and a picture of the tattoo that he happens to have over that particular ear, and then have a severed ear tattooed to match. It all seems to be going smoothly until it comes time to dispose of the victim. Rather than holding the greasy thug until the sting is over, they just throw him on a plane and tell him not to come back. Wow. Do you think maybe that will come back to bite you in the ass?

With their nearly cunning scheme complete, The Boz reports back to Chains and delivers the proof of success along with an incredibly witty line:

The Boz: “Let’s just say that I saved the guy a fortune in Q-Tips.”

Such hilarity! Of course, if he’s dead, then he’s not exactly worrying about the mounting costs of a vicious battle against the pesky buildup of ear wax, so that makes no goddamn sense. But still, classic! Impressed with his success, Chains orders him to take Ice’s place on their protection money collection run, sending him with Nancy, another biker named Tool, and his girlfriend. But once he leaves, Ice renews his objections, again warning Chains that he doesn’t trust The Boz. To put the matter to rest, they contact an informant that they have in the police department and ask her to check on The Boz to see if he’s legit. After she promises to call them back with whatever information she can find, Chains hangs up and returns to sharing smoldering looks of barely hidden sexual tension with Ice.

Exhibit D: Thug Life – Far More Boring Than Snoop Dogg Let On

As we catch up with The Boz, he and Nancy part ways with Tool and his girlfriend. Moments later when the other couple comes out of the small business that they’re extorting, an apparent turf war is brought to the forefront as Tool ends up having a grenade tossed at him by a passing mob car, blowing him through a storefront window. Then moments later, Nancy walks out of another business with the money she collected while The Boz just lounges on his motorcycle and the mob comes calling again. A greasy Italian jumps out of their car, roughing up Nancy for about 2 seconds before grabbing the money and jumping straight back in for a quick escape. But as they race off, The Boz use all the power of his two-stroke Weed Whacker of a brain and jumps on the hood of the car, issuing the fierce battle cry;

The Boz: “You picked up the wrong passenger, buddy”.

A friend of mine recently asked me if all shitty movies had blatant homoerotic content. Well friends, unless he's Samantha Fox, I think those jeans give the answer.

Okay, that wasn’t even in the same stratosphere as clever. If clever was a city that line would be Rue McClanahan. Does that make any sense? No. But it’s still infinitely more brilliant than that piece of shit line. And his plan proves to be all the more retarded a second later when the driver pulls out a gun, leaving The Boz no choice but to roll off the hood at a speed high enough that he should be exceptionally fucked up by the experience. But all is not lost as when the car comes out of the alley, it gets hit by a cargo truck. Unharmed by his involuntary pavement floor routine, The Boz runs out to the wreckage and starting wailing on mobsters as they climb out of the car, even going so far as to shatter one opponent’s arm. And yet, when the mob leader, a man named Domicci, puts a gun to The Boz’s head seconds later, instead of blowing unprocessed corn dogs all over the pavement, he just yells freeze and tells The Boz to warn Chains to stay out of mob turf before they all calmly get back into the car and drive away. So just to recap, the mob just fucked up a guy with a grenade who wasn’t posing any kind of threat whatsoever, and then walked away from a guy who was shattering their limbs. Wouldn’t four dead bodies have delivered the message to Chains just as powerfully as smacking The Boz on the bottom and sending him back to cry about it? Once they’re gone, Nancy blubbers about how Chains is going to kill her for losing the protection money, so The Boz gives her the massive $400 that she lost and tells her not to forget where that came from.

Oh, NOW I recognize him.

After an almost entirely pointless and inappropriately whimsical scene where the whole gang visits Tool in the hospital, bringing him pizza, a jacket, and flowers, The Boz meeting with Chains in private, revealing a vial of what he calls P2P. Peer to peer file sharing? So he’s selling Napster in a bottle? Declaring that he’s got someone looking to unload this stuff, most likely to get away from Metallica-lead lawsuits, The Boz tells Chains that all he needs is protection and a buyer. Chains assures him that it’s no problem, that he’ll sell the stuff to the Italians, minus Domicci, of course. Without warning, the movie once again transitions straight from that sentiment to Chains and The Boz walking into a fancy restaurant and to meet with the mob. As the Italians greet them, Chains gives them a large gift box. They open it and pull out a motorcycle helmet which, once the visor is flipped up, turns out to have a disembodied head in it. It’s never expressly stated that it’s Domicci in there, but I think that’s what they’re implying. The problem is that since Domicci was only on the goddamn screen for about 2 minutes in total and that helmet only shows the eyes of the head inside it, there’s no fucking way to know that’s not just the poor restaurant’s valet who parked their bikes for them unless we paused the movie to do a 20 minute analysis of his brow when we first saw him. But regardless, the mob doesn’t seem overly upset by the death of one of their own and the arrangements for the drug deal are made.

I swear to God, do not smile at me like that when you're behind me in that vest.

Now that the stage is set for that The Boz’s high stakes game of idiocy, the movie goes through a series of random scenes that have to strain as hard to maintain any kind of connection as the clasps on Morgana the Kissing Bandit’s bra. First we get an utterly ludicrous and completely hilarious scene where Chains sits in a room by himself and plays fucking beat box with a goddamn recording of the District Attorney’s television interview for no particular reason whatsoever. Then the movie turns to what appears to be his room in the compound where he and Ice argue over the legitimacy of The Boz for the fifteenth fucking time. And then we finally arrive with The Boz as he walks into a public washroom to meet with Lance, who tells him that between the fake hit that they pulled off and collections that The Boz was witness to, they’ve got enough to convict the Brotherhood of racketeering. But that’s not enough for The Boz. He says they can take the Brotherhood and the mob in one shot. All he needs three dozen drums of P2P, transportation, and an agent willing to play the role of his drug mule. And just to sweeten the deal, he also promises a witness: Nancy.

But just when something almost approaches the vicinity of making sense, we get thrust right back into the darkness of the arbitrary as we see a large group of the Brotherhood roll up to a checkpoint created by the DA’s sworn clampdown, where they are greeted by two military men who simply ask to see their papers. I’m not exactly sure how a DA has any kind of authority to be using the military, but then I’m not really sure what the hell papers they’re referring to either. Do you need a permit to be that greasy in this particular state? Of course, rather than cooperate with the most basic of requests, they kidnap the two guys and put them in wooden makeshift coffins back in the compound. Chains then shoots them dead and orders them to be delivered to the DA as a campaign contribution while Nancy freaks out, calling him an asshole. When you’re not only the “bitch” of a biker gang’s leader, but have also been performing extortion scams for him, I’m pretty sure this isn’t the first shitty thing you’ve ever seen him do. But it doesn’t stop there, as after Chains sends Nancy away and declares that he needs a new bitch, Gut then objects as well, saying this isn’t the Brotherhood that he joined and that killing someone in cold blood just ain’t right. Seriously, what the fuck? I have a harder time swallowing the suggestion that these two thought they were in a glee club rather than a hardened douchebag biker gang than I would have chugging a new flavor of McDonald’s milkshake simply named “scabs”. When Gut goes even further and tells Chains that he’s out of line, Chains counters the argument by shoving his hand into the spinning front wheel of a revved up motorbike, which apparently turns it into a makeshift table saw. Touché.

While she gives a heartfelt speech about the burdens of servitude, The Boz stands frozen for 15 minutes trying to figure out how to spell "burden".

Later that night, The Boz returns to the compound to find Nancy standing outside by herself. After telling him all about the previous events of the day, she remarks that she should have left before D-day, the big event that Chains is planning and needs all his money for. Of course, she doesn’t know anything more about it, but when The Boz tries to push her further for details, she asks why he’s asking so many questions. As he stammers out an excuse, she loses interest and says that she’s leaving for good. But since he can’t lose his prime witness, The Boz tells her she shouldn’t go, as she knows all too well that will mean that they’ll hunt her down and kill her. I can’t really see why they’d bother to take the time, but sure, why not? Instead he offers to take her with him when he leaves himself, which for some unknown reason she finds so touching that they start to make out right then and there. And with that, the three men watching this all threw up in their mouths a little. It’s a good thing we weren’t drinking a Mountain Dew at the time, or we could have been killed. Not from the scene, mind you, but just because Mountain Dew is a lethal combination of stomach bile and pig swill.

Later as we see the cops unload the dead bodies delivered to the DA’s house just as Chains had ordered, The Boz takes Nancy to lunch where he receives an urgent message from Lance, who has cleverly disguised himself as a guy who looks like he has no place being their waiter while he hands The Boz a bill with a note scrawled on it. The Boz makes some shitty excuse about having business to take care of and leaves Nancy there to meet Lance in the location requested. But as he leaves the place, Ice sees him and gets suspicious for no discernable reason. A few moments later when The Boz pulls his ridiculously loud Harley into a parking lot where Lance is waiting, which seems like the last thing that you want to be driving when you’re trying to be sneaky, he’s told that because of the dead troopers found, he’s going to be pulled off the case. But that’s no problem for The Boz, the manly man of all men, who simply declares that whether he has permission or not, he swears that he’s going to see this case through to the end. But just then Ice unloads at him and Lance from across the street before tearing off on his bike with cops and The Boz chasing him. Ice easily disposes of the cop with his automatic weapon, leaving only him and The Boz to play a shitty game of douche and mouse. But despite killing faceless cops only moments earlier, Ice somehow manages to miss The Boz when he pulls directly in front of him, about 15 feet away, which is actually quite a feat. They race for what feels like for-goddamn-ever until The Boz pulls up next to Ice and slams into him, causing his opponent to swerve off and run into a fucking car head on at full speed, exploding on impact. And yet, despite the fact that the force of the collision should have throw him like a ragdoll to be brutally battered by the merciless pavement or barbequed to flame-broiled perfection by the substantial explosion if he had somehow managed to stay on his bike, he actually ends up lying peacefully on his back on the ground a short distance away with nothing more than a slightly dirty and bloodied face, even having the wherewithal to curse at The Boz for being a cop before he dies. I’d call bullshit, but I’d just end up shouting my way through the entire movie. Fare thee well, Ice. We hardly knew ye.

Between the explosion and the incredible force of the impact, I think I'm feeling a slight headache coming on. Better have a nap.

Mmmmm...is that mesquite I taste?

As the movie turns back to the compound, Nancy receives the call from the police informant looking to give Chains the results of his query. He’s not there, of course, but since the woman recognizes Nancy’s name, she passes the information to her, telling her that the dude that they inquired about is linked in their systems to a cop named Joe Huff. When The Boz gets back later, she confronts him and accuses him of being a cop. Clearly upset, not as much by the fact that The Boz is a cop as much as the fact that she actually made out with a dude named Joe fucking Huff, Nancy waits until The Boz returns later that day and outright accuses him of being a cop. To his credit, he realizes how limited his own intelligence is, so rather that try to dance around the issue with some half-assed excuse, he flat out admits to it and just walks away. And his gamble seems to pay off, as Nancy still hasn’t ratted him out later that night when the entire gang gathers to put Ice on his bike, hoist him up on a platform, and give him a proper Brotherhood funeral. What is a proper Brotherhood funeral, you ask? Glad you asked. Chains insults him for a little while before getting up on the platform with him to awkwardly make out with his corpse before setting him on fire. And with that, I officially no longer want to be cremated when I die.

Arrggghhh...I'm totally dead.

Later that night, or possibly another night, or likely not set to any given timeline since no one gives the slightest bit of a shit, The Boz meets with Cunningham, Lance, and a random FBI agent named Martinez that has volunteered to work with him on the sting so that they can arrange the drug deal the following night. And after a very brief conversation it apparently cuts directly to the next night where Martinez drops off the truck with The Boz, Chains, and a small contingent of the gang. Just to make things seem even more real, Martinez then plays out the act of demanding more money for the delivery, only for The Boz to gun him down for acting like a punk. Of course, if anyone had taken so much as 2 seconds to notice the distinct lack of blood or holes in his chest, they might have checked his pulse, realized that he was quite alive, and the whole thing would have completely backfired. They get lucky however, as instead they all ride off to make the deal with the Italians. But rather than meeting at the designated place where the FBI are waiting to spring the trap and arrest them all, the band of merry cockmongers ends up guiding The Boz onto an alternate route, stopping at an unknown location where they meet up with Chains and the Italians. Seeing as he obviously has no credible grounds to object to the change in plans, The Boz simply leaves Chains to complete the deal. He gets on his bike, which I’d love to know how it got to this mystery location since he was driving the rig and didn’t know about it, and meets Lance to explain not only how he managed to fuck everything up, but also to warn that someone mentioned something about hitting the DA.

I must stop those drugs before they hurt innocent people. Whoops! I mean even MORE innocent people.

Faced with being responsible for letting 3 dozen drums of illegal downloading onto the streets, The Boz goes back to finds two Italians driving the truck and does the only reasonable thing that a man of action can do. When they refuse to pull over, he shoots the connection between the truck and the trailer, causing them to break away from each other and the trailer to drift into a nearby gas station, causing the entire goddamn thing to go up in a massive fireball. And while the scene ends there, I’d like to take this opportunity to relay a somber message on behalf of The Boz to the family of the old couple who owned that Mom-N-Pop station: fuck you for getting in the way of my extreme justice. Next time trying making sure that you’re not sleeping like idiots in the path of my highly destructive rage. Assholes.

Hey, remember me? The guy that gave you a run for your money in the "Worst Hair In This Movie" competition?

At this point the movie has meandered all over the goddamn place like a one legged man with an inner ear infection for quite long enough, so at last the plot finally begins to set up it’s dramatic conclusion and hopefully get to something that remotely resembles a fucking point. The preparation for the final showdown begins the next day when an ex-military member of the Brotherhood, brilliantly named AWOL, arranges with an old friend in the service to “borrow” a helicopter. And at the same time, The Boz returns to the compound where he’s taken straight to see Chains. At this point it’s obvious that he’s been made as a cop, but rather than discovering that Nancy had squealed on him – because let’s face it, The Boz couldn’t make a woman squeal with an oil tanker of lube and a nuclear powered vibrator – he actually comes face to face with the dude that he claimed to have killed whom had happily returned to Chains to recount the tale of his FBI kidnapping. Of course, Chains shoots the dude dead on the spot anyways, so his loyalty didn’t do him much good. But at that point, Chains decides that instead of killing The Boz, he’d rather break his heart, so he turns and shoots Nancy in the head. Faced with the death of the woman that he spent all of maybe 5 hours alone with and had kissed once, The Boz freaks out only to have Chains puts the gun to his head, pulling the trigger to reveal that it’s empty. Damn. Better luck next time. The gang then reveals that they plan on killing the DA tomorrow as they hold The Boz hostage and prepare a bomb that he will be strapped to for the purposes of creating a diversion that will rain steroid-filled blood, partially digested pork rinds, and a palpable lack of redeemable qualities all over the city.

Exhibit E: All That Build Up For This? Seriously?

It started as a life or death struggle, but when Cat's In The Cradle came on the radio, it became a tearful embrace.

But with that, the time for not quite explaining what the hell is going on properly is over, and the time for action has begun. So the last day of the DA’s appeal to the Supreme Court to have Trouble executed begins, we see Chains disguised as a priest as he sneaks through a checkpoint of the military perimeter guard set up outside of the courthouse. At the same time, AWOL and another biker head towards the area in the helicopter with The Boz and The Bomb secured in the back seat. As they approach, AWOL reveals that the plan is to strap the bomb to him and throw him out when the countdown reaches 20 seconds, creating a distracting explosion. Yes, you heard that correctly. Not only are they starting the countdown on the bomb’s timer before they actually strap it to him, but they’re waiting until there’s only 20 seconds left to do so. That, my friends, might be the dumbest fucking plan that I’ve ever fucking heard. I can’t even fathom how you could possibly think that would actually work as intended. And as even a six month old fetus could tell you would happen, when they reach their destination and the timer gets down to the 20 second mark, The Boz breaks free of his bonds before they have the chance to strap the bomb to him and starts a life or death struggle with the nameless biker that lasts much longer 20 goddamn seconds. Finally The Boz manages to strap the bomb to the dude and kick him out of the helicopter just seconds before it explodes. He then grabs AWOL, and tells him to take him to the courthouse.

While all this drama is taking place in the clouds, the Supreme Court rules in favor of the DA and sentences Trouble to be executed. I would have loved to have heard the legal argument for that, but again, that’s the least of this movie’s problems. Right t that point, after killing Martinez who just happened to be sitting in front of him, Chains stands up in the gallery and pulls out two guns, opening fire on the judges and any random people around him. Naturally at that point, all hell breaks loose and the movie again starts to jump all over the damn place like a humming bird with Attention Deficit Disorder. First a truck tears its way past the military perimeter in the commotion created and unloads a bunch of bikers and their bikes directly into the courthouse. Then it jumps back to Chains, who after killing all the guards, soldiers, and a large number of civilians around him, frees Trouble and turns his attention to the DA. As he begs for his life, Chains replies with a rebuttal that you just know that had been practicing in front of his mirror for the last month before finally shooting him dead:

Chains: “This reminds me of my father’s last words – don’t son, that gun is loaded!”

With the execution carried out, the movie then jumps back to the elite force of bikers, and by elite I mean that they can read at a fourth grade level with crapping themselves and killing a hooker, still riding randomly around the courthouse before cutting to a shot of staggeringly random stupidity. The driver of the truck that dropped them all off runs up and jumps through a plate glass window for no reason particular reason other than perhaps trying out for the Olympic team, landing in an office, only to be shot to death by cops who nail him through the window he just broke. If anyone can tell me a single possible use for that scene, I’d hate to hear it because that means that you’re as insane as the director, so maybe just keep your mouth shut before a squad of men in white coats comes to take you away. Just then the helicopter comes flying at the courthouse as The Boz tries to get AWOL to land, while Chains and Trouble are finally found by the elite bikers, who pick them up and take off again. But once The Boz realizes that none of his threats are going to result in AWOL landing the helicopter any time soon, he simply jumps the fuck out of it, falling about two stories above the roof of the courthouse before smashing through a skylight and falling another two stories to the marble floor. But since this is The goddamn Boz, he immediately gets up and kills a biker who happens to be standing right there, as four stories, glass, and marble aren’t enough to make him break wind, let alone his bones. But now that The Boz has made his way into the building with all the ease of a kidney stone, he wanders around killing random bikers as he goes. The highest profile of these is our old pal Mudfish, who is holding civilians hostage in a room with Gut, who is once again screaming about how this is going too far. Yeah, when you’ve helped to carry out an semi-elaborate plan to kill an innocent public official, that’s completely kosher. But if you happen to knock off a few of his secretaries along the way, you’re a complete turd swizzler. Gut tries to redeem himself, however, throwing himself in the line of fire when Mudfish sees The Boz coming. But that ultimate, selfless sacrifice goes literally without notice, as The Boz ignores him and simply blasts Mudfish right out a window 6 feet behind him like he just hit him with a truck. And just in case you were concerned and wondering if the hostage that Mudfish was holding captive got away, rest assured that she magically disappeared altogether, so it’s kind of a non-issue in a mentally challenged kind of way. But that’s all just a sideshow to the big top event that is the showdown between Chains and The Boz. And as the random bikers swerve around another corner, that’s exactly what we finally get. Perfectly happy to allow the fodder to do its job first, Chains gets off the back of the bike and tells the random biker to go ahead and try to take him out. And when faced with an opponent with an automatic rifle, this intellectual heavyweight decides that the best course of action is simply to charge him with his bike. Fuck, what could possibly go wrong? Oh yeah, right…The Boz simply shoots him and gets out of the way of the passing bike. But what takes this whole exchange from ridiculous to shitterific is that once it sails past him, the bike rockets out a window at the end of the hall and flies outside where it smashes into the helicopter, which AWOL just happens to be hovering in the neighborhood, casually hanging out before he goes up in a massive fireball. Words can’t express the awesome.

Hovering by this window was a way better idea than way up in the sky where no one could see me...OH FUCK!

With the distractions finally out of the way, Chains and The Boz begin their fight, which is admittedly extremely lopsided when you consider that if Lance Henrikson was as old as he looks he would have been dead 10 years ago, while The Boz clearly chugs steroids like he’s doing a keg stand. So after grappling very briefly, Chains is summarily dumped to the floor where he tries to slowly crawl towards his gun. But before he can grab it, The Boz picks him up by the hair and punches him down the large marble staircase at the center of the building. Not quite finished, however, he follows Chains down and picks him up again, puts a gun to his head, pulls the trigger just to find that the gun is empty. Satisfied that the circle of life is complet, The Boz lets Chains go, watching him fall limply down the stairs, clearly turning into a stuntman that looks nothing like Lance Henrikson. And just like the beginning of the movie, it’s at that point that the army and FBI storm in and take control of the building, securing Chains. But anyone who’s ever watched an action movie knows there’s room for at least one more cliché. So as the cops hold Chains in place and try to slap handcuffs on him, he manages to grab a gun from one of them, which he immediately aims towards The Boz. But before he can give us what would have been the perfect ending to this movie, Lance pops up out of nowhere and shoots him dead. As everyone stops to wonder where the fuck he came from, he calmly delivers an absolutely confusing gem:

Fun Fact: Longest uncut shot of a douche in cinematic history.

Lance: “Hey partner. It’s time to turn it on.”

I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean since the action has concluded, but apparently The Boz took that to mean that he should be preheating his stove, as at that moment he suddenly turns and strides away. And as the credits roll, we continue to get a long shot of The Boz exiting the building, walking towards the camera with his shirt open. This goes an insanely long time FOR NO GODDAMN REASON. After ninety hilariously painful seconds, this ends with him stopping just after a crowd of random civilians and just looking off past the camera. You can almost hear his inner monologue: “Wait, which way is my house?”

The Verdict:

Donkey: One of the truly great failing vehicles for a complete failure of a movie star, Stone Cold is as unrelenting in its march towards complete stupidity as it is towards obscurity. After all, now that we’ve looked at the overall story arc, let’s take one last minute to review: An idiot biker decides to blatantly murder a holy man for no reason whatsoever, so the leader of his bike gang decides to pool all of his money and resources into an ultimate revenge scheme, consisting of breaking into a courthouse and killing a district attorney. That’s it. That’s the fucking point of this story. What the hell did Chains plan on happening even if everything went according to plan? Do you think you can kill scores of innocent civilians and government agents and just stroll back to the clubhouse for a nice long vacation? And the best part of the entire affair is that since he didn’t so much as a single person but himself, if The Boz hadn’t been involved in any way whatsoever, Chains would have simply carried out his plan and had his entire gang summarily destroyed regardless. So unless you’ve never heard of someone who’s ever sat next to a guy who’s read a good story, you would have to know that this is goddamn ridiculous. And Brian “The Boz” Bosworth has to be one of the absolute worst action heroes ever to flex his well-oiled man-tits in our direction. The reanimated corpse of Ted Knight stapled to an unwilling Ted McGinley would have combined to make a more charismatic character than this guy. But again, that’s what makes this entire affair so goddamn hilarious. It’s not quite one of the truly elite, but it’s close. I give this movie four and a half stomach turning bikini briefs out of five improbably low-impact head on collisions.

What We Learned:

Donkey: The American legal system apparently works a lot faster than I thought it did, considering that Trouble killed a preacher, was caught, tried, and then convicted all within The Boz’s three week suspension period. That’s rather impressive.

Don’t forget to check back every Sunday for a new fresh review! Next week shittymovienight.com presents: Our sanity, gag reflexes, and ball strength will all be put to the test as we endure the double dong punch of…DOUBLE IMPACT.

Back To The Main Page.

Someone should either be charged with fraud or given a Congressional Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Mindfucking because the actual movie isn’t half as interesting as this cover art.

Donkey: Since the three of us began this epic journey into the Land of Dreams, Magic, and Flying Splits Kicks lo those years ago now, we’ve frequently been asked what kind of effect it’s had on our outlook on movies in general. As you can imagine, the influence of this ordeal has been rather profound, but not quite in the way that most people seem to think. Rather than growing to hate the seamy underbelly of the cinematic experience, more than ever we have come to love the rampant hilarity of a truly shitty movie. That goes without saying; otherwise this exercise would have resulted in a glorious suicide pact involving dynamite, cyanide capsules, or possibly John Tesh albums long ago. But after all we’ve seen and heard there is one kind of movie that drives us into a bloodthirsty rage: the unrelentingly mediocre. You see, a truly great movie, or even a pretty good movie, can pull you in and deliver a spectacular experience for the senses, while the wholesale failure of an epically shitty movie can deliver laughs like no other. But it’s that middle ground, where a movie is neither good enough to be remarkable nor bad enough to be funny that simply manages to suck a couple of hours out of your life without a single reward other than unbridled rage upon realizing what happened. It’s kind of like being tricked into watching someone do a series of unimpressive and uninteresting card tricks for a couple of hours, just to turn around and realize that it was just one big distraction while someone has raped your cat.

As is usually the case, we had to learn the hard way. Much like TMNT III: Turtles In Time gave us an early lesson in how certain categories of movies simply don’t belong in our rotation, seeing as pointing out that the story in a kids’ movie is stupid is about as obvious and therefore relevant as finding that same fault in a porno, Alien Apocalypse taught of that unabashed monotony can destroy an evening faster than a cold sore at a swingers convention. And while this is a trap that we would inevitably fall into again and again since monotony can be hard to spot – I’m looking at you, Hellboy II – this was the movie that truly defined our hatred.

The Plot:

Donkey: Do you remember the movie Planet Of The Apes? And I’m not talking about the Tim Burton remake starring Marky “Pumping cinder blocks and looking perpetually constipated might cover for my lack of discernable talent” Mark, which was a blight on humanity so severe that I’m surprised it didn’t damn near wipe out the Irish. No, I’m referring to the original Charleton Heston feature, one of the most parodied, sub-referenced, and clever films in the history of science fiction. If you take that movie, with its suspense that led to one of the most memorable endings of all time, and replace those elements with Bruce Campbell and bad CG, you’re left with almost the exact plot of Alien Apocalypse and a vacuum which will suck in both your will to live and your faith in humankind.

Bruce Campbell plays Dr. Ivan Hood, the medical officer of a small band of astronauts whom, after Van Winkling their way through a pleasant 50 year cryo-nap in space, return to Earth to find the world has been enslaved by wood-seeking aliens so poorly crafted that it’s hard to believe that they could take over the fry station of a fucking Burger King, let alone an entire planet. It seems that all hope for both humanity and the slightest shred of plausibility is lost. But when fate makes a collect call, Bruce accepts the charges, leading a rebellion against the extraterrestrial overlords that will send them back to the 8-bit plane of existence from whence they came.

The Case for Greatness (aka The Lowlights):

Donkey: The best part of this DVD by far is that it plays the trailers for Evil Dead and Evil Dead II before getting to the title menu, and quite lengthy trailers at that. It’s almost as if the movie itself was trying to give you one last warning that you could be watching something much more entertaining than what’s about to come. Trust me…it’s a warning you should heed. Other than that, there is quite literally nothing in this film that’s noteworthy, so much so that each time it clearly faded in and out for what would have been a commercial break I was hoping that it just wouldn’t bother coming back. So as there are specific points to discuss, I thought it might be more insightful to detail the actual experience of watching it so that you know what you’d be in for should you fall into the same trap. Behold how the horror unfolded:

8:37 PM: Arrive at Blombo’s house. Spirits are high as drinks and snacks are dispersed. Gastro-intestinal stability intact.

8:44 PM: Blombo finishes details of latest conquest. Highly suspect that sharing a couch with him is giving me gonorrhea. Mental note to pick up penicillin tomorrow as we begin evening’s film.

8:47 PM: Bruce Campbell makes triumphant entrance in opening scene, promising clever dialogue and razor sharp delivery. Time to sit back and wait for the hilarity to punch our brains right in the penis.

9:05 PM: Still waiting.

9:10 PM: Mind begins to drift. Check companions to see if they’re actually enjoying this so far. Milobar looks like he’s about to shit out a 4 slice toaster. Blombo looking like he’s not sure where he is. Looks about right. Enjoy a long swig of my delicious Dr. Pepper and remember where I am: Flavor Country.

9:12 PM: Something smells like soup.

Whatever.

9:16 PM: Really try concentrating on the movie. Aliens too badly created to be taken seriously, but not sock puppet level of poor animation that we’ve come to expect. Boredom becoming too intense. Vice-like grip of oblivion slowly wringing will to live out of body. Briefly consider smashing Blombo’s wall in hopes of finding health restoring pot roast inside.

9:20 PM: Bruce talking about something so uninteresting that he might as well be reading phone book. Look down at my tasty Dr. Pepper. Wonder if it’s as tasty as could be. The guy at the 7-11 who sold it to me looked like he was laughing to himself. Coincidence?

9:24 PM: Goddamn there are a lot of dead animals in this room. And who the fuck kills a mountain goat and puts its head on a wall, anyways? Blombo’s dad bragging that he actually thought to eat this thing, or paying homage to his sporting victory in a life or death struggle against an opponent nearly as vicious as a goddamn pony?

9:30 PM: Blombo proclaims that this movie sucks. Milobar assures him, “your mom sucks.” A vote is held. By a margin of 14-1, it’s agreed that Blombo’s mom does in fact suck. Blombo demands a recount, but I assure him that both Milobar and I officially represent 7 people. The motion passes and it enters into official record that Blombo’s mom does in fact suck.

9:37 PM: Something about the President still being alive or some shit like that. Apathy prevents me from retaining sounds and images long enough for my brain to process them. Looking for something, anything to laugh at. Milobar sneezes. I giggle hysterically. Both look at me like I’m insane. Motherfuckers. Don’t they know I’m the Rat King of Extroverted Corduroy? Feeling lightheaded. Steady, champ. Steady. Concentrate.

9:40 PM: Stomach starting to roll. Possible deficit of deliciousness in my Dr. Pepper wreaking havoc on my insides. That dude at the 7-11 has something to do with this, I’m sure. He could see I was in need of genuine refreshment. Saw to it otherwise. That son of a bitch.

If gay was contagious, this actually would induce a fever.

9:43 PM: Spirits continue to sink, nearing rock bottom. I haven’t wanted to cry this badly since Schindler’s List or possibly seeing the cover of that Travolta album.

9:49 PM: Blombo comments on how bored he is. Promptly begins cursing at me for buying this DVD. Milobar assures him that, “your mom’s a DVD.”

9:52 PM: The black pit of nothingness continues to envelope all. Dr. Pepper is almost finished. Putrid bile at this point. That fucking 7-11 guy has prevented both my thirst and my desire for unadulterated deliciousness from being quenched. I’ll burn down that fucking store, dance on his grave.

9:59 PM: Nothing. I feel nothing now. Time has stopped. One moderately clever line is uttered by Bruce when he kills someone, despite their protests of him being a doctor and therefore obligated to care for them, saying, “Your stupidity was terminal. I just cured you.” Too numb to even smile.

10:03 PM: Final battle as epic as two preteens slap fighting over the next turn on Dance Dance Revolution. Pray to Craig T. Nelson that nuclear device destroys entire planet. Stomach churning. Advanced calculus equations tell me that I should probably run to washroom lest a five alarm chili explosion stain Blombo’s couch before the movie finishes. Too lethargic to stand. Can’t seem to bring myself to care.

10:08 PM: Movie finishes. No one speaks. Light slowly seems to filter back into consciousness. What just happened? Did someone slip me a roofie? Check front of pants. All closures seem untouched. No matter. Something deep inside mind has been touched inappropriately, scarring me for life.

The Verdict:

Donkey: Fuck. I’m at a loss for words with this one. Trying to find something in this movie to laugh about couldn’t be much harder if you swapped it for real-time footage of a kidney transplant. It’s so clearly a TV movie in every possible facet of its production values that you might as well be watching three straight episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess, and so boring that it would be a three episode mini-series of Xena tending to a garden to keep her mind off the pending results of an AIDS test. What a waste of Bruce Campbell’s considerable talents. If you want to bathe in the glory of what may be the greatest B-movie actor of all time, I’d recommend watching his brilliant Old Spice commercial on YouTube instead of this garbage. That is unless you always wanted to know what a persistive vegetative state was like, in which case feel free to pop this shit in, hook up a feeding tube, and prepare to shake hands with the Sultan of Dreamland. I give it zero moments of comedy out of five yawning chasms of aggressively overpowering tedium. Sorry Bruce, not even you could save this one. And thanks for reading the site, by the way. That’s mighty swell of you.

What We Learned:

Donkey: Pet Cemetery wasn’t fucking around. Sometimes dead is beddah.

Don’t forget to check back every Sunday for a new fresh review! Next week shittymovienight.com presents: A former football player battles a former android for the title of Most Ridiculous Character Ever Conceived in…STONE COLD.

Back To The Main Page.

Stephen King's literary talent must be spinning in its grave right now.

The Plot:

The Case for Greatness (aka The Lowlights):

Exhibit A: Hasta La Vista, Government Pension

Hey guys, I think I can see my house from here.

Exhibit B: Future Technology – Increasing Your Prison Break Efficiency By 75 Percent

With password security like this, I'm surprised the perimeter fence isn't a series of rotating doors.

Jesus, Arnie, light a fucking match! Thank you!

Exhibit C: Come On Down…You’re The Next Contestant In My Nightmare

Killian didn't know what he was in for when a staff member offered to show him his "Royal Albert", but he learned soon enough.

Even while being attacked, Amber had to see if she could find a reason why anyone in Minnesota voted for this guy.

Just in case the shirt, hat, and sunglasses weren't enough, Arnie also made sure that his trip through security would be quick by eating 5 lbs of baked beans.

Arnie: “Go ahead. It won’t show on this shirt.”

Arnie: “Fuck you.”

ICS presents their most daring show yet: Racial Tension In A Small Room.

Random dancers: every bit as timeless as acid wash jeans.

Arnie: “Don’t forget to send me a copy.”

Maybe if you had laid off the steroids, one of the bulges in that suit might not have been so much smaller than all the others.

Arnie: “Killian…I’ll be back.”

Killian: “Only in a rerun.”

Exhibit D: Mini-Boss 1 – Stick Handling Of Death

Please observe my giant codpiece of doom! Ha ha!

Arnie: “Hey, Killian. Here is Sub-Zero. Now, plain zero.”

While the others were practicing their katana strikes, he was working on his defense and puck protection. Who's laughing now?

Arnie: “Yeah, he was a pain in the neck.”

Exhibit E: Mini-Boss 2 – The Lumberjack And The…What The Fuck Is That?

A relentless killing machine, yes, but Buzzsaw's real passion was for ice sculpture.

I know it's hard to tell, but he's actually lighting a sign that says, "Clap if you love All-You-Can-Eat Buffets".

Seriously, I'll walk away from this fight right now if you just have some Ex-Lax on you.

Buzzsaw: “I love this saw. This saw is part of me. And I’m gonna make it a part of you!”

Arnie: “That’s alright. Keep it.”

Quick, hit him with a red shell!

Amber: “What happened to Buzzsaw?”

Arnie: “He had to split.”

Exhibit F: Mini-boss 3 – More Flaming Than A Rip Taylor Showtunes Party

Flame on, bitches.

Arnie: “How about a light?”

Arnie: “What a hothead.”

Exhibit G: The Final Boss – An Unremarkable Middle-Aged White Guy

SMELL MY FINGERS!!!

It takes a remarkable effort for something in this scene to be more tragic than those leopard print pants she's wearing, but sweet God did he succeed.

Hey...you made it back. Tell him what he's won, Lou. A toaster oven!? FUCK!

Arnie: “Well that hit the spot.”

The Verdict:

What We Learned:

Don’t forget to check back every Sunday for a new fresh review! Next week shittymovienight.com presents: an obscure adventure featuring one of the greatest shitty movie actors of all time in…ALIEN APOCALYPSE.

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The kid on the poster isn't the actual kid in the movie and there isn't a single creature that looks like that anywhere to be found. But they're not kidding when they say that this will haunt you forever. So I guess one out of three ain't bad.

Donkey: I’m sure you’re like me (and reading this back to myself, I realize that I’m TOTALLY like me…how did I know? That’s fucking brilliant) in that when I think of particular movies, music, or games, I often associate them with certain events that were taking place at the time when I first experienced them. That’s the power of a first impression, and that shit can stay with you forever. So when I first heard about this week’s film and it’s staggering stature among those who have made it a cult classic, I was intrigued yet apprehensive. You see, I had seen the first movie, Troll, years earlier at a time that I’ll never forget. My family was visiting relatives when our parents all decided to go out for dinner and leave me and my brothers to spend the night with our cousins under the supervision of our oldest cousin. And to keep us from lighting ourselves on fire in an attempt to stave off oppressing boredom, they had rented two movies for us to watch. Those two movie were, and keep in mind that I was about ten at the time, Youngblood and Troll. For those of you that haven’t seen them, Youngblood is a hockey movie that’s about as close to real hockey as an episode of Three’s Company, and Troll is a horror movie that’s about as enjoyable to endure as lung cancer. I remember very clearly watching those movies and ending the night with the one clear thought: “Who the fuck picked these goddamn movies?” Of course, much later I realized that particular cousin who was watching over us and had chosen the movies was nuttier than a goddamn O Henry bar, so it made a lot more sense. But for years thereafter, all I could remember was how much I hated those movies almost as much as the entire night on which I watched them. So when it came to watching Troll II for the first time, there was an inherent amount of pain involved before we even pressed play. As it turns out, my fears were unfounded, as Troll II does it’s best to make sure that I can’t even remember the first one existed. God bless you, Troll II. You sure can ease the pain.

The Plot:

Donkey: It’s a special kind of sequel that makes no attempt to be even remotely related to the original, but Troll II takes that kind of brave stupidity one step further. Not only is it not related to the first movie in any conceivable manner, but it’s not even related to its own goddamn title. That’s right; there’s not a single fucking troll in the entire movie. Not one. Hell, the word troll isn’t even so much as uttered by accident, even to describe a really boring method of fishing. Instead the movie is about goblins, and while my inner geek might be showing a little too much here, anyone who’s ever read any fantasy can tell you that a troll and a goblin are not the same damn thing. I can only guess that at this rate the third film would be about a young boy’s battle against the local city council to get the proper permits to rezone his parent’s property title to allow them to subdivide…and that planning committee is made up of blood-thirsty ogres!

So what is this crusty bowl of ballsauce actually about, you ask? Well shut the hell up for a minute and I’ll tell you. It’s the tale of a young boy named Joshua and his average nuclear family vacationing in the fictional town of Nilbog, longing for the peaceful and highly inbred lifestyle that you can only find in a populace the size of a professional football team. But their dreams come to an end when Joshua is warned by the ghost of Grandpa Seth, with whom he communes on a regular basis, that trouble is afoot and that they’re walking into a deadly trap.

The Case for Greatness (aka The Lowlights):

Exhibit A: Grandpa Appears In My Room At Night To Tell Me About Monsters…And Touch My Bathing Suit Area

There's something dense about this scene alright, but it ain't the fog.

Donkey: Not bothering to fuck around with pomp, circumstance, or even proper editing, Troll II starts immediately with its first scene and corresponding dialogue literally no more than a second after the roar of the MGM logo, almost tricking you into thinking that you’ve missed a chunk of the movie already. Fear not, as it wouldn’t matter even if you did. The tale opens with an old man named Grandpa Seth telling a bedtime story to his grandson, Joshua. The old timer’s fable is about Peter, a courageous boy of what appears to be about 32, who becomes lost while traveling through the forest due to a dense fog, so thick that it you can barely see it seeing as its undoubtedly made by five crew members blowing cigarette smoke into frame on an otherwise bright, sunny day. Lost and alone, Peter is followed by midgets in burlap sacks and shitty masks that the movie has the audacity to call goblins, until he randomly falls and is knocked out cold. When he awakens some time later, he finds himself faced with a beautiful woman with horribly fake freckles who offers him a shitty green mix of Cool Whip and Jell-O. Once he begins sucking it down without question, he starts to sweat green Kool-Aid or what they call chlorophyll, before turning into a half man and half plant so that the goblins can eat him. The end! Goddamn that’s a great story. And while Joshua tries to digest the unbridled worthlessness of this parable, Grandpa Seth finally gets to the fucking point and explains that goblins are real. This would probably be a more ominous revelation if the goblins didn’t look like complete ass. You might as well have made them out of sock puppets and then hit me with the news that the sock puppets are real. Seriously, how scary can midgets in potato sacks be? But just in case the level of idiocy dropped on us so far wasn’t enough, right about then Josh’s mother steps into his bedroom and asks why he’s still awake. He begins to say that Grandpa Seth was telling him a story when he suddenly slaps a hand over his mouth and we realize that Grandpa Seth was never really there at all. You see, it turns out that Grandpa Seth has been dead for six months despite the fact that Joshua still talks to him on a regular basis.

Before you get to sleep, son, let me ask you something: have I ever told you about that time I killed a drifter and wore him as a jacket?

Why do you keep calling me Hayden Fox?

After settling Josh down for the night, the mother enters the living room where the father is talking about their vacation plans with some unknown dude on the phone. To get back to their settler roots, the family is planning to go to Nilbog, a town with a population of 26, after swapping houses with a local family. But once that riveting conversation ends, the mother turns to the father in all seriousness and asks him who the goblins are. He seems as confused as I am as to why the hell she’d ask him that question, since he hadn’t said a goddamn thing about goblins, but the scene ends before he can ask her what the fuck is wrong with her. I realize this is a very bad attempt to build tension, but it would have made no less sense for her to ask him who framed Roger Rabbit.

I can relate to this. When I'm exercising in the privacy of my bedroom, not only do I wear an outfit that barely contains my balls, but I also wear a weight lifting belt when lifting 15 lbs.

While the parents wrestle with their own idiocy, things prove to be equally mindless back upstairs. After accidentally going to the wrong window and scaring the hell out of Josh, a teenaged boy sneaks into his sister Holly’s room to surprise her while she’s power-lifting in an outfit that’s slowly losing the battle to cover her vagina. Started by the incredibly homely visage of her boyfriend, Elliot, Holly hits the dude square in the nuts, to which he asks if she’s trying to make him a homo. Apparently that’s how they thought people ended up gay in the late 80’s. As he slowly recovers from barely dodging a new love of manchowder, they begin to argue about how much time Elliot spends with his friends, just as his pals conveniently climb up to her window themselves to say hi. At least I think they’re three friends of his. But considering how stupid the idea of three dudes managing to climb up a single ladder at the same time is, it might be that Elliot is friends with a pimply, awkward virgin Hydra. To try to prove to Holly that she’s the only honeypot that he wants to teabag, Elliot offers to come with her and her family on vacation. Of course, he then completely cripples his own point by asking if he could bring his friends, to which she says that he is welcome to join her family in the morning, but if his friends come, she never wants to see him again. I haven’t seen teenage drama this intense since Archie blew off Betty and Veronica to give Jughead a tugjob while he sucked back a dozen hamburgers.

Exhibit B: Fuck Disneyland, Let’s Spend Our Vacation In The Abyss

To once again prove that this movie was edited by a gerbil treating its Attention Deficit Disorder with a cocaine addiction, the movie then suddenly cuts directly to the family van the next day as Holly, Josh, and the parents are driving to Nilbog. Holly’s horrible attempt at crying leads us to believe that Elliot didn’t show up, and this is confirmed a moment later when she and the father begin to argue about how useless he is. To break the tension, the mother demands that Josh must sing that song she likes. After first refusing, he finally begins the mysterious song that she loves so much, treating us to a few bars of…Row Row Row Your Boat. Wow. I guess they’re saving Happy Birthday To You for when they want to kick this party into overdrive. But just when you think things can’t get any worse, they all start singing at once. I’d describe their feeble wailing as being in harmony, but I’m pretty sure the English language would be able to charge me with sexual assault if I did. The scene cuts away from their chorus of insanity to reveal that Elliot and his three friends are trying to catch up in an RV before once again returning to Josh, as he has a nightmare about spouting chlorophyll and turning into a plant as his family are revealed to be goblins. Once he wakes up out of that, the nightmare continues in the real world as the family passes a hitchhiker holding a sign that says “STOP THEM!” Recognizing the mysterious stranger to be Grandpa Seth, Josh convinces his father to stop the van, saying that he’s gotta puke. As soon as they’re stopped, he runs over to get a stern warning from Seth that they’re heading into danger. But before he can provide information that would be in any way useful, the family backs up the van to see what the hell this idiot kid is doing, breaking the spell and allowing Josh to see that he’s actually bantering back and forth with a drifter.

I had a Superman Halloween costume with a plastic mask that was scarier than this.

The family’s journey continues and as they get closer to their destination, the tide of stupidity does little to recede. They pass by Elliot and his friends, who have somehow managed to make it past them and park their RV about fifty feet down an embankment off the side of the road, before finally driving into the vibrant community of Nilbog. Immediately Holly notices that there isn’t a soul to be seen anywhere, but the father assures her that this is normal for a farming community, as everyone is home in bed by this time of night – “This time of night” quite obviously being about 2 PM. They carry on and moments later finally arrive at the house, where the exchange family stands out front waiting for them. They all gather to stand face to face, sizing up the others like they’re about to have a Deathmatch Tug-o-war battle when Josh notices that they all have a scar on them. It’s obviously supposed to be similar, but the only thing that each one has in common is looking like shit. Having little to say, the host family loads into their truck to leave, ignoring Josh’s father as he gives them a sales pitch so awkward that you’d think he was selling harvested baby organs while assuring them that they’ll love his house. But as one last kick in the balls, as the family begins to drive away, the youngest member throws Josh a ball from the back of the truck. Josh catches it and turns it over, revealing green writing that says “eat before we eat you”. Now that makes fucking sense. If I were going to set an elaborate trap to lure in an unsuspecting family into becoming the primary ingredient of my Asshole Casserole, I’d toss out ominous clues that are as subtle as a punch in the babymaker.

Feel free to watch our tv and eat our food, but stay out of our Chinese Fuck Swing!

Now that they’re alone, the Swiss Family Taintstains start to make themselves at home when they discover that a shitty meal has been prepared and left for them. They jump right on it, sitting down to eat so quickly that you’d think they’ve spent the last month fasting, not even bothering to note the fact that every food item, including the drink left for them, is an obnoxious green color. Just then Grandpa Seth appears at nearby window, beckoning Josh over and warning him to stop them from eating anything or they’ll all be killed. So while the family takes an extremely long time to pass the food around without actually eating any, Josh struggles to come up with a plan. To help make things a little easier, Grandpa Seth uses some random power that every ghost apparently has to freeze them all for 30 seconds, with food literally inches from their mouths. At this point I’d like to note that they didn’t have the budget or filming skills to actually freeze the shot of the family while Josh walks around in front of it, so instead the actors do their best to just sit still, failing to do so just enough to make it painfully obvious that no one is actually frozen. After plugging away at his tiny brain while circling them like a vulture, Josh finally comes up with a master plan, climbs up on the table, and pisses on all the food as they snap out of their coma. Of course, I understand how that ruined the food on the table, but I’m not really sure how that managed to stop them from stuffing the food that was less than an inch from their mouths down their throats.

If he had more than 30 seconds to work with, it wouldn't be Josh's piss that was soaking into the food...

You don't piss on hospitality! Generosity, sure, but not hospitality!

With the meal ruined, the father takes Josh upstairs and has delivers an awesome speech, giving a meandering, aimless rant before saying something about a hunger strike. The best line in the whole affair is when he proclaims, “You can’t piss on hospitality…I won’t allow it!” That shit is classic. Left in the bedroom to think about what he’s done or at the very least to ponder why the hell he’d bother saving this gaggle of ass excavators, Josh looks around at the walls to find illustrated pictures of goblins hung everywhere. Again, why the fuck you’d plan an elaborate trap and then put out obvious warnings, I have no idea. Unless that’s goblin porn that the youngest one is spanking it to at night, in which case it makes total sense.

Exhibit C: Buffet Of The Damned

Ouch! This almost broke skin, you sons of bitches!

The movie turns back to the trailer of douches, where Elliot and his three friends are watching a movie that looks so shitty that I MUST know what it is. One of the friends named Arnold decides that he’s had enough and leaves the other three there, going outside the trailer for a cigarette. While I’m sure this is supposed to make him look more mature and badass, when it’s coupled with his “1987 Chess Team Champion” appearance, it actually manages to make him look even fruitier. But in no time at all, he sees a girl in ripped up clothes running through the forest a short distance away, clearly fleeing from danger. Instead of getting help from his other friends, Arnold tears off in pursuit and eventually tackles her. As she explains that she’s been forced to eat something and thinks she’s dying, a group of goblins appears from out of nowhere and approaches them. Not thinking this is bizarre in the slightest, Arnold walks over to them and casually explains that they’ll be in for a world of hurt if they don’t leave. As he walks back to the girl to strut around in his awesomeness, the goblins give him their response in the form of a spear thrown at him, lodging a whole inch into his shoulder. The boys back in the trailer hear his scream, but dismiss it as Arnold getting laid. The only way that’s a fair assumption is if Arnold has a reputation for running into the woods and screaming at the top of his lungs while fucking a pine tree. Otherwise, that’s goddamn retarded.

Back outside, the girl helps Arnold pull the spear out of his shoulder before they wander off deeper into the forest, again because this is a much better fucking idea than going back to the RV and getting the fuck out of there. Moments later they come across a church in the middle of nowhere, entering it to find a bed, a weird alter, and apparently a smoke machine inside. It turns out to be the lair of Creedence Leonore Gielgud, the greatest overactor in the history of cinema and leader of the goblins, who uses a slab of Stonehenge to control the army. Yep, you heard that correctly; Stonehenge. I can’t wait for Spinal Tap and the dancing midgets to show up. Creedence, whom we’ll call CCR out of sheer laziness, welcomes them to her church of, oh let’s say Scientology and offers them a broth to heal their wounds, which consists mostly of dry ice apparently. After they have both sipped the green Kool-Aid, the girl wanders upstairs to a balcony, screaming in agony while Arnold stays below, frozen and watching on. Succumbing to the potion, the girl lies down on the floor and has her entire torso turn into a green slimy cake-like substance. With her transformation now complete, a slew of goblins suddenly appears and begins to feast on her. Well, I think that’s what they’re supposed to be doing. They’re actually just dipping their hands into green slop and smearing it around their unmoving mouths, but who’s keeping score? While watching in what one would assume is supposed to be horror instead of complete boredom, Arnold takes a rather unremarkable line and delivers it at a level of awesomeness that simply cannot be described:

On second thought, those acting lessons might have been a good investment.

Arnold: “They’re eating her. Then they’re going to eat me. Oh my Gooooooddddd!”

Seriously, look that shit up on YouTube and watch it. It shouldn’t be hard to find as it is probably the most referenced line in the movie, but it will take years off your life.

Turning away from that act of unspeakable and apparently unactable horror, we check back in with the family that evening to find Holly in a Garfield nightshirt, performing a fucking ridiculous dance routine in her room to techno music that is about nine intellectual notches beneath a tune that you could produce with a Seiko calculator watch. Unfortunately she gives up shortly, instead entertaining herself by pretending to give Elliot a lecture while staring into her mirror. But just then Grandpa Seth shows up in her mirror, calling for Joshua in a sad attempt to cover for the fact that he was watching in the hopes that she’d take her shirt off. Hearing her scream, the whole family runs up and to investigate. Finding nothing of course, Josh offers to swap rooms with Holly, which she gladly accepts. Once they’re all gone, Josh summons Grandpa Seth in the mirror again, who again warns Joshua that they must leave, revealing that this is the kingdom of the goblins. Yeah, we got that already, asshole. So what’s the point of this scene them, you ask? If you could see that fucking dancing, you’d know. Oh, you’d know.

I'm Batman.

Come on, boy...those short shorts are just begging for it.

With one friend down for the count already, it’s time to pick off the next pawn. So the next day we return to the RV and focus on another one of Elliot’s friends named Drew. He looks in their fridge only to discover that even though the four of them had piled into an RV for a vacation, not one of them was smart enough to bring a single thing to eat or drink. Apparently they were under the impression that their madd skillz with the ladies would allow them to sustain themselves entirely on overflowing buckets of vagina. After being dismissed by a groggy Elliot who’s busy dispelling Holly’s suspicions of his homosexuality by doing some naked spooning with Brent, the fourth friend, Drew decides to literally run into town to pick up some supplies after stopping momentarily to do some light stretching and calisthenics. But his journey isn’t too long, as moments later he gets picked up by the local sheriff, a man named, no shit, Gene Freak. Sheriff Freak offers him a lift into town as well as a bright green fucking Play-Do sandwich, both of which Drew happily accepts without question. After being dropped off at the general store, Drew finds himself faced with a group of hayseeds standing out front, forming a silent gauntlet of inbreeding for him to slink his nervous virgin asshole through. Once he makes it through and enters the store, already sweating the telltale green Kool-Aid of ridiculous doom, he is greeted by the remarkably child molester looking clerk who talks him into accepting a free bottle of Nilbog milk. The clerk begs him to make sure that both he and his friends drink it, in no way confirming that he’s a fucking rapist. With the roofies slowly kicking in, Drew wanders back out of the store and back through the gauntlet elementary school drop outs, who tell him that Arnold left a message for him, asking to meet Drew at the old church. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe the 80’s were a very different time, but if I wanted to get important information to my pal, I wouldn’t assign the biggest group of menacing cornholers the task of spitting a chewing tobacco covered message at him. I might just sashay my ass back to the RV instead, but again, that’s just me.

$50 says that no matter what he's dreaming, it's more coherent than this movie.

But Drew isn’t the only person to visit the thriving metropolis of Nilbog that day. That morning back at the house of shame, the parents discover that they too have nothing to eat or drink, save the several jugs of Nilbog milk sitting in the fridge. However, I’d just like to point out that if you’re going to leave a trap consisting of bottles of milk, hoping that they’ll chug it a succumb to your poison, the milk probably shouldn’t be so thick that it could be mistaken for horse semen. Because apart from possibly the father, I don’t know who the hell would drink that. Eager to prove their meager worth, Josh and the father declare that they’ll make the trek into town for sustenance. They soon arrive at the same corner store, but rather than being greeted by a gauntlet of phonics assassins, they find only a sign saying that the shop is “closed for 20 minutes, back after the sermon is done”. As the father extols the virtue of patience, Josh goes to the sideview mirror on their car and tries to summon Grandpa Seth, only to see a sign in the reflection and realize that “Nilbog” is “Goblin” spelled backwards! How kind-of-not-really clever! He turns back to share this revelation with his father, only to see that he’s completely passed out on a chair by the front door of the corner store. That’s goddamn ridiculous. Narcoleptics don’t slip into an REM state that goddamn quickly. Deciding to take matter into his own hands, Josh rolls off on a $15 skateboard from K-Mart circa 1988.

Someone please explain why the metamorphosis to a plant forces you to hold a fucking mug.

While our hero in Hush Puppies undoubtedly rolls off to get himself killed, we’ll take a quick moment to check in with the other fodder. Back in the church of Scientology, we finally see what became of Arnold as he stands in a pot, slowing growing into a plant while being watered by CCR. The best part of this idiocy is that not only is he a plant himself, but for some reason that I can’t possibly fathom, he’s holding a coffee cup which also has a plant growing out of it. Having learned of the new family in town, CCR decides to take her leave then to deliver a welcome pudding, setting up what has to be one of the most pointless scenes in the movie. She delivers it to the house, introducing herself to the mother just as is Holly is about to head down to the RV to tell Elliot to choose between her or his friends. She drops off the pudding, which is neither eaten nor dismissed as a threat, and then leaves, having learned NOTHING more than she had before she got there. But hey, at least that ate a good ten minutes of film time. Back at the church, Drew wanders in and eventually discovers Arnold’s predicament. He tries to drag his plant pal to freedom by the pot, escaping at glacier like speed. But before he can make it out the door, CCR returns and slaps Drew clear across the room and onto the bed. As punishment for trying to leave, she takes a chainsaw to Arnold, who simply giggles while she does it. Goddamn…I want 30 minutes of my life back.

Let's make this quick. I've got a duet with Barbara Steisand to get to.

With that distraction finished, we return to Josh as he sneaks into a building to find the townspeople listening to a sermon being belted out by a preacher that looks like the bastard lovechild of Barry Gibb and Rowdy Roddy Piper. And because you know how much kids love religion, Josh decides to sneak upstairs and get a closer look, peering down through a hole in the ceiling, about two feet directly above the preacher’s head as the fifth Bee Gee is giving a sermon on the evil meats that people consume, which consists of him naming off a bunch of random foods. Just then Josh’s skateboard falls down from the precarious perch that he left it on. As Josh looks up in surprise, a hand shoots up through the hole in the ceiling and grabs him by the face. He screams, but you can barely hear it above the roar of our laughter. With his cover blown, Josh is taken down to face the mob, who decides that the best course of action is to force-feed him what they call Nilbog ice cream, but what I can Dogsnot Soufflé. But before the goblins can stuff anything into his piehole, Josh’s father, whom has apparently woken up from his little siesta, hears Josh screaming and runs in to interrupt the assault of stupidity. After a couple of tense moments where the father wonders what the hell they were doing while Josh tries to explain to him that these people are actually goblins in disguise, Josh and his father slowly back out of the building like they’re trying not to get mauled by bears. But just to end an idiotic scene with the used diaper smell of the arbitrary, the father and Josh begin driving back to the house and pass by the RV, which for some reason is now about 200 yards down off the road, where they spot Holly arguing with Elliot. The father pulls down and demands that Holly come home. To try to salvage the one opportunity that he might have to get laid that doesn’t involve making the decision to spit or swallow, Elliot decides to join them, leaving behind Brent, the last friend.

It would have been much worse if that hand wasn't Palmolive soft.

Exhibit D: It’s Time To Party Like It’s 1988…And We Just Had Full Frontal Lobotomies

They all arrive back at the house moments later to find the mother is in the company of the entire fucking town. Seriously, how the fuck did all these people manage to make it back to the house before the family did? I realize that the RV has been steadily moving further and further from the road, but unless they had to enter some kind of fucking temporal nexus to get to it, this is preposterous. Regardless, the entire town has decided to throw a surprise welcome party, of course bringing a ton of green fucking food and drinks. The fifth Bee Gee is even there, desperately trying to convince them all to eat the food. But Joshua isn’t falling for anything and tries to warn his family that once they eat, they’ll all be killed horribly and hilariously. His warnings fall on deaf ears, however, as his father sends him straight to his room. Still not ready to let them be killed, no matter how much they all deserve it by now, Josh starts yelling into his mirror, begging for Grandpa Seth’s help. But instead of his face, CCR appears in the mirror for a quick moment before crashing through the glass in goblin form. Umm…okay. But just as that goblin is about to attack Josh, Grandpa Seth appears and chops one of its hands off with his Ghost Hatchet of Justice. Shrieking, the goblin flails itself back into the broken mirror, reforming it and coming out the other side, where CCR lands back in her home with a bloody stump where her hand should be. But this is nothing more than a temporary setback, as she shoves the stump into a fissure of the Stonehenge slab and repairs her hand, screaming the entire time.

Seriously, kid, fuck them all. You set the house on fire, I'll make sure that car doesn't catch fire.

Now that they’re alone, Grandpa Seth grins like an idiot for several awkward seconds before revealing to Josh his plan to save the family, which he doesn’t so much describe as simply suggest by pulling out a Molotov cocktail and a fire extinguisher. But just as the two of them go the house and try to ignite their plan, so to speak, the fifth Bee Gee snatches the Molotov cocktail away and banishes Grandpa Seth back to the netherworld using the power of Jesus. But before Seth goes, he throws his hand forward in desperation, the horrible animation of a lightning bolt flashes on screen, and the preacher suddenly erupts in flames. As he stumbles around, fully engulfed in flames and screaming in a horribly dubbed audio track that sounds like someone recorded a PA in the toilet at the tail end of Enchilada Night, Joshua looks around and confirms that Grandpa Seth is gone. I’m just kidding, by the way. There’s no way this movie had PA’s.

Hearing the explosive commotion, which I’m imaging would sound an awful lot like You Should Be Dancing, everyone begins to pile out of the house. The father uses the fire extinguisher to put out what is now the flaming corpse of the fifth Bee Gee, revealing him in his true goblin form. I guess he’s not… Stayin’ Alive. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!… ha… ha… cough… right, well this is about when the father demands to know what the hell’s going on. But rather than try to explain anything away or cover their tracks, the villagers instead all get pissed about the death of Barry Gibb’s bastard offspring, declaring it’s now the family’s turn to die. And they back up this incredibly ominous threat by standing perfectly still and doing fucking NOTHING while the family just slowly walks backwards through them all and finally running into the house. Sure, why not?

Once inside, the family presses their faces against the windows like autistic blowfish while the villagers turn on the headlights of their car, as I guess it’s fucking nighttime now for some reason. Sheriff Freak proclaims that they’ve got a bag of sandwiches there that will make things easier on the whole family, throwing the fucking bag at the front door of the house with all the grace of a blind gorilla having a fucking seizure. He explains that if they don’t eat the tasty sandwiches, the villagers will have no choice but to kill them violently. Say what you will, it’s pretty neighborly of them to have made sandwiches at this point, rather than just forcing them to eat fistfuls of green slop. Desperate to find a way out, the family finally decides that the best thing to do would be to hold a séance to summon Grandpa Seth.

Exhibit E: This Final Battle’s Not Bad, But It Could Use More Popcorn Fucking

While all this is going on, the movie stops to remind us that there is one last friend of Elliot’s that we have not seen meet with a grizzly demise. So with that in mind, CCR makes her bold and confusing final move, praying to Xenu for all her power, which basically just cures her of the scorching case of mouth herpes that she had been crippled with. Ready to infect an unsuspecting teenager, she travels into the night in search of some premature ejaculation. Meanwhile back in the RV, Brent is watching TV and likely wondering where the fuck everyone is when the TV starts to fuck up. It begins to clear up seconds later, showing him an image of CCR as she approaches the RV with…a cob of corn. She tells him to come outside and see that she’s real, so he does. Finding her exactly where she should be, he takes her back inside where she offers him the corn by shoving it in his face as they sink down into the makeshift bed. He nods, saying that he likes popcorn. She says that’s no problem, they just have to heat it up. And with that, they start to make out with the cob of corn between their mouths. And while this shit goes down, the sound of popcorn popping is heard while crew members throw handfuls of popcorn at them from out of frame. I don’t even know what to say about this. It confuses me on a logical and sexual level to a point that I can’t possibly describe it. Fuck, I need to take a shower.

Oh baby...my dick feels like corn.

Back at the house, they family is performing the séance while the goblins quite literally just stand around outside doing nothing. But calling forth the dead when you don’t really have any experience or direction how to do it isn’t as easy as you might think, so things aren’t exactly progressing as quickly as planned. To help everyone along, Joshua tells the family to “concentrate harder”. Concentrate on what, you ask? I would personally recommend the cover of Neil Diamond’s seminal album, 20 Diamond Hits. I swear the combination of piercing eyes, chest hair, and giant mane could not only summon apparitions on command, but also open a portal directly into the realm of love. But something must have worked, as seconds later the same piss poor animation of lightning flashes across the screen and suddenly Grandpa Seth begins to talk to them all. He declares that he will disappear forever after they destroy the magic stone which gives the goblins their power. He then tells Joshua to concentrate, who in turn puts his head down on the table and passes out. As the mother leans over to check on his, Josh is instantaneously replaced by a goblin, queuing a flood of other goblines into the house. Assuming that they must have been successful, the family abandons their ritual, fleeing upstairs and battling midgets as they go.

Someone get this chick some Valtrex, for God's sake.

We’ll leave them battling the tragically stumpy and instead follow along with Josh who wakes up leaning against an alter in CCR’s church of Scientology, where he prepares to settle the score once and for all. But before he can accomplish much of anything, he is attacked by, go figure, a goblin. But as that goblin tries to strangle Josh, Grandpa Seth shows up and slaps it away before handing Josh a special package, telling him that he can only take out the contents when he really needs it. I’ll tell you what Gramps, you tell me what the hell it is and I might have some context that would allow me to decide when it’s appropriate to use. Having passed on that powerful mystery item of doom, he leads Josh over to the slab of Stonehenge. They touch it, which somehow does something to start a chain of random events. Back at the RV, Brent wakes up in an ocean of popcorn, which is undoubtedly stuck together like caramel corn with cum being the substitute for caramel, just as CCR steps outside and sees her reflection in the sideview mirror and discovers a new outbreak of her scorching case of the herpes. She screams, and that scream travels all the way back to the farmhouse where the family is about to meet their end at the hands of their goblin attackers when they all simply disappear. And not only did her scream summon her goblins, but it also warped them all back to the church of Scientology where they all arrive just after Grandpa Seth disappears again for what is supposed to be the final time. Finding Josh right away, CCR and her goblin army snatch him away, once again ignoring an opportunity to simply kill him in favor of trying to feed him another bowl of green slop. Seeing as this could kind of be interpreted as a dire situation, Josh decides to deploy his secret weapon, delving into the package to produce, as he describes it, a “double-decker balony sandwich”. Stricken with horror and disbelief, seeing as even supernatural creatures realize that no one who has half a brain would actually eat bologna, the goblin horde offer no resistance while he takes chomp after chomp of the sandwich before running back to the stone wall and putting his hands on it once again. But just when it seems like an armada of monsters is about to be destroyed by a dim witted child alone, the family runs in to help, explaning that Grandpa Seth’s voice brought them there. Once they all put their hands on the stone, more shitty lightning flashes across the screen while Josh yells repeatedly for them to concentrate. And with that, the army of half-men begins to wither. CCR starts throwing up green shit, one of them has their eye burst for no reason, and the rest just fall thrashing on the floor with less enthusiasm than a clinical depressive wallowing in melancholy. But as the ordeal finally seems to come to an end, we are left with one final shot where the whole room appears to be empty of both goblins and the family.

Next thing you know, with absolutely no attempt to bridge of the gap whatsoever, we catch up to the family once again as their van pulls into their driveway. Looking like they were just gang raped by a centaur with penis extension, they sit for a moment in quiet reflection before the father declares that he needs to pass by the office. Because in comparison to the massive heap of garbage that they just experienced, paperwork is a fucking pleasure cruise for the soul. Likewise, Elliot and Holly decide to go to his place for no particular reason, leaving Josh and the mother alone at home. Once inside, the mother starts chomping on an apple before going for a shower while Josh goes to his room for a nap. But once he’s there, he hears ominous whispering that he can’t identify. Going to investigate, he returns downstairs just time for another ball to come bouncing downstairs behind him that says “Yummy! Mom is so good!” So I guess that means that a goblin is about to go down on his mom? Horrified at the thought, Josh runs back upstairs to find the shower filled with green shit before running back downstairs to discover that the apple the mother had been eating was filled with the same green shit that we’ve been staring at for the last 90 minutes. He finally turns a corner to discover what we all know is coming; his mother has turned into a green cake corpse with surprisingly conspicuous breasts which is being feasted upon by a group of goblins. Setting up what could be one of the strangest pornos I’ve ever seen, they ask Josh if he’d like a piece of the action. But before the cheesy 70’s music can kick in, the kid screams and the movie ends.

If her flesh turned to cake, did those implants turned to a jelly filling?

It occurred to me while watching what has to be the shortest list of credits in the history of cinema that we never did find out what happened to any of Elliot’s friends. Sure one of them was turning into a plant and being given a chainsaw makeover the last time we saw him, but the others were simply slapped onto a bed and fucked in a vat of popcorn respectively, neither of which are even close to being fatal. So for the sake of finality, lets just say that they opened an unsuccessful pet store together and spent the next two decades trying to sell kittens to goblins. There we go. Now I feel pretty good about this whole affair.

The Verdict:

Donkey: Troll II has achieved legendary status among those of us that love shitty movies, and with good reason. While I wouldn’t call it the greatest shitty movie of all time, as for the moment I would consider Gymkata to be the rightful owner of that title, this is a strong contender. As little as the plot makes sense, and as awesome as it is that it’s completely unrelated to the first film, probably the best part about it is the acting. It’s nearly impossible to describe and you simply MUST see it for yourself. The best way that I can describe it is by saying that the only way that you could reproduce this level of wooden, apathetic, and incompetent delivery would be to hold a kindergarten class at gunpoint and demand that they read your scripts under threat of setting fire to a box of puppies. It’s my sincere pleasure to give this shitfest five villains that are completely unrelated to trolls out of five popcorn orgies.

What We Learned:

Donkey: All those who have stood on both sides of the argument, claiming that homosexuality is either a choice or genetic trait, are wrong. People go queer after getting nailed in the junk, particularly if they sneak into their girlfriend’s room at night. So apparently I dodged a bullet when I was young and my older brother decided to kick me in the balls as hard as he could to test how much it actually hurt, or my passionate love of Tom Jones music is starting to make a lot more sense.

Don’t forget to check back every Sunday for a new fresh review! Next week shittymovienight.com presents: Big money and big prizes as we take a look at the Governator’s…THE RUNNING MAN.

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