Double Feature: Masters of the Universe and Cyborg.

It might not seem like it to the casual viewer, but He-man was a film with sequel ambitions. Cannon was under financial duress while producing both this and Superman 4 simultaneously, but their hope was the revenue from these two films would propel their finances in the right direction. Unfortunately that did not happen, and production on the He-man sequel was scrapped. But that turned out to be a windfall for Albert Pyun, as the production for Cyborg was able to cannibalize all the unused sets!


Masters of the Universe:

In an attempt to revitalize the fading popularity of He-Man, Mattel teamed up with Cannon and to make this amazingly weird train-wreck of a movie. The cast features a young new-to-English-speaking Dolph Lundgren as He-Man, Frank Langella as Skeletor, Meg Foster as Evil-Lyn and Billy Barty plays a character called Gwildor as a substitution for Orko. There are some fun effects, great set pieces, some interesting designs elements (likely lifted from Jodorowsky's mock up for Dune) and a RIDICULOUS plot that sends He-Man and his crew to modern-day L.A.. (This movie might be bad, but it's also relentlessly entertaining.) Despite their financial instability at the time, Cannon had high hopes for Masters, and not only did they give this production one of their biggest budgets to date, they started working on a sequel before it was released. Tough break for He-man, good news for Cyborg!


Cyborg:

What do you do when you have already sunk a tons of money building sets, props and costumes for a movie you can't afford to make? You call Albert Pyun of course! Pyun quickly wrote a script that  incorporate these elements into a fun post apocalyptic cyborg movie and cast a young Jean Claude Van Damme in the lead. Pyun can make most any movie into something fun, but this is one of our favorites from his cannon.



Why this makes a good double feature: Not only are these movies tied together by production elements, they also each star a foreign actor on the cusp of stardom before they were able to speak English fluently.

Double Feature: Over the Top and Cobra.

Something in particular about the head's of Cannon films might explain thier movies' unique strangeness. Cannon was run by two Israeli cousins (Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus) trying to make what they considered "American" movies. But that's a hard task when you've not grown up in Amarican culture causing their definition of an "American" movie to be wonderflly skued. Over the Top and Cobra are glowing examples of this.

Over the Top:

Take a big name to star and make his character a cross country truck driver/deadbeat dad who arm wrestles in tournaments around the country to make his real living and what do you get? One of the most amazingly over the top Stallone movies of the 80s...

Cobra:

With crime gone completely out of control the city has lost all regard for the law. Lieutenant Marion 'Cobra' Cobretti (Stallone) is going to put an end to it using any means necessary. Stallone-er Cobra oozes tough guy badass by driving a sweet car, swilling cans of Coors, wielding big guns while blowing people away, and cutting the ends off his cold pizza.




Why this is a great double feature: These are two gems from the Stallone heydays!

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Have you ever wanted to watch a movie that didn't come close to completing principal photography but was made into a movie anyway? I'm sure there are plenty of 50's b-movies that fall under this heading (and loads of Corman or Wood movies) but Journey to the Center of the Earth is a special case. Some of the “stars” listed on the VHS box aren't on screen more than 30 seconds and don't speak a word, the first 10 mins of the movie were shot for an entirely different script with a completely different director, the film takes place in the Lost City of Atlantis under Hawaii, and is the sequel to a movie that took place in that same Lost City when it was under northern Africa. If you're looking for some cinematic pain, some deep hurting as it were, look no further than this sequel to Alien from L.A....

The plot unfolds something like this: [Ok, I've not had synopsis this challenging since FEAR NO EVIL... here goes...] Crystina is being fired from her last nanny job. She doesn't want to quit being a nanny, she loves it! But even she must admit she's bad at it. When her employer asks what she'll do next, Crystina muses she'll probably teach karate. But lucky for her, she won't have to take any pesky karate lessons, fellow Brit and fading rock star Billy Foul needs a nanny to meet him in Hawaii ASAP! Crystina's got one last chance to be the nanny she hopes she can be. However, none of that will come back into play after the 20 min mark of this film... Meanwhile, a trio of siblings are venturing to their favorite cave on the Hawaiian islands. For reasons too taxing to mention here, Crystina joins up with this trio and together they chase the youngest sibling, and a dog, through caverns that eventually lead to the Lost City of Atlantis. And that's when the real confusion starts...

The top billed stars: Emo Philips (on screen for the count of ten, says nothing), and Kathy Ireland (still images of her are used many times throughout the film, but she is otherwise not in this movie).

The Big Cringe: This whole movie is one long cringe, but if you watched it with enough people it might actually be entertaining (unlike FEAR NO EVIL), but it takes a toll for sure.

Things to watch for: This is a movie to poke fun at all the way through, there are scenes that are clearly b-roll from the Alien from L.A., every asinine situation lead to even more asinine situation, characters are written out of the story with voiceover instructing them to “get help”, or sometimes departing characters shout that they'll “come back with help”, but they never do come back...

But is it good?: It's bad, it's really really really bad. But it's so bad, it folds over on it's self and gets good.

What we learned: Sometimes deep hurting is exactly what you need in a movie.

The uncredited director: Albert Pyun is notorious for having movie after movie taken from him in the editing process (or worse) leaving each of his finished films no more his own work than an Alan Smithee work. And it's a shame, not unlike Jackie Kong he appeared on our radar as not only a force of bad movie making to be reckoned with, but also as a director of color. There are too few non-white male film directors even now but to find one who is responsible for some epic fun from they heyday of video is usually exciting followed by a sad story of some kind. Albert Pyun still makes movies today, and is working on finishing a few more but his health is declining. Our hope is that he gets to make a few movies his way before he has to stop all together.

Further reading: Albert Pyun interview.

Double Feature: Texas Chainsaw 2 and Invaders from Mars.

Tobe Hooper went from working with Spielberg to working with Cannon in three years. That's a progression that usually moves in the other direction... But, in 1982 Polterguiest came out under Hooper's direction (and Spielberg's supervision) and in '85 and '86 he cranked out Lifeforce, Texas Chainsaw 2, and Invaders from Mars for Cannon. If you haven't checked out Lifeforce, please do, but in the meantime here's a suggestion for the most polarizing horror double feature from a single director we can think of.

Texas Chainsaw 2:

12 years after making Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper gives us a look into what Leatherface and crew are up to. This stallment in the TCM series could be considered the most playful of the series partially due to Dennis Hoppers crazed as the Texas Marshall and Bill Moseleys as the iconic Chop-Top. Aditionally, the Massacre family competes in chili cook offs, kidnaps radio hosts, and live in an abandoned amusement park. If you ever wondered where Rob Zombie got most of his influence from, this is it!


Invaders from Mars:

An 80's remake of a 50's B-movie, Invaders from Mars successfully retains the fun of campy horror while delivering really great special effects. Basically it's equal part's Invasion of the Body Snatchers and creature movie, with a script co-written by Dan O'Bannon and starring the ever wonderful Karen Black!




Why this makes a good double feature: These two movies cover two very different tones of horror, and are directed by the same guy. It's a pretty great illustration of how wide the genre and fandom can range.

July Clue #3

Third clue: This month's movie features one our favorite Minnesota-native “that guys” James Hong.

Tape Freaks Presents: Mystery Movie! Theatres at Mall of America, Thursday, July 16th at 7:30pm, only $5!

Double Feature: Exterminator 2 and Captain America (1990)

One of these movies is better than the other, and you may be wrong about which is which.

Exterminator 2: Oh the splendid pain that is Exterminator 2. How it's a sequel is puzzling as it has little to do with the first installment aside from featuring the same flame-throwing vigilante. But, it does feature some excellent deep hurting delivered by Mario Van Peebles and Robert Ginty, allowing Frankie Faison to effortlessly steal every scene he's in. There's also some seriously insane stuff involving the Exterminator's love interest... But, you'll won't learn any of that from watching the trailer!

Captain America (1990): That's right, there was Captain America movie in the 90s. We watched it on the 4th of July this year and it caught us off guard. We thought we were in for a doozie, but it never got truly bad. There are some fun action sequences, an enjoyable villain, surprising make-up effects, and the bad guy from Robocop is the good-guy president! But it's far from flawless, the story gets really muddy and Captain is far too old for the part for starters. Over all though, it's a pretty valiant effort from Albert Pyun considering the constraints he was likely faced with.

Why this makes a good double feature: After Exterminator 2 this Captain America will seem as good as Winter Solder. 

July Clue #2

Second clue: This movie inspired us and our friends to come up with a spin-off sitcom to this month's movie called Up the Pole where this month's protagonist and her day-job co-workers get themselves into wacky situations.

Tape Freaks Presents: Mystery Movie! Theatres at Mall of America, Thursday, July 16th at 7:30pm, only $5!

Young Warriors

We don't always watch movies that are amazingly bad. Sometimes we watch movies that are mostly bad. This movie fell into the later category sadly, though it has some redeeming qualities (and it could play well as a MST3K with large chunks edited out ) the painful-to-watch parts overrode any fun qualities this film had to offer.

The plot unfolds something like this: A tight knit group of high school boys are preparing to throw themselves into collage life, Animal House style. But nothing could prepare them for the tragic reality that crashes in on them when one of their sisters is violently murdered by a roaming biker gang. Faced with their first taste of the frustrating reality of the slow processes of the legal system, they decide to take matters into their own hands. Together they'll take on crime in every corner of their crime ridden city, making enemies on the force as well as in the criminal underworld. Can they tough it out long enough avenge the death of their friend, or will they fall apart at the seams?

The interesting parts of this flick: This is the first movie we've seen that's attempted to blend the tone of Animal House with the tones of Deliverance and Deathwish. And although they don't pull it off, it still made the movie far more interesting than it could have been. There's also very strong undertones of vigilantism being the polar extreme of crime rather than the only solution to crime. Most “men take the law into their own hands” movies are weighted to the “this is the only way to get justice” end of the scale, where this film weighs in with more of a “you might be as bad as the bad guys if you dole out 'justice' without due process” ideal.

Reasons not to watch: There as so many scenes that don't makes sense in this movie, but the one that lost us was excessively violent to the only women in the cast. We fast-forwarded through a sexual-assault scene that the filmmakers chose to cut back to at least 4 times. It was excessively long to say the least, but it was also totally unnecessary. Sexual violence scenes are almost always unnecessary, but especially if they're added to pad out nudity rather than to make cometary. And unfortunately, justifying boobies shots seemed to be what this movie was after. (That, or they were trying to drive home how bad guys were really, really bad and the good guys were really, really motivated, which is equally distasteful and will turn us off from a movie just as quick.)

Things that almost won us back: The main frat boy manages to find time to animate multiple short films. That's in addition to taking on the bad guys at night and attending normal classes during the day. And though we absolutely don't buy that this character was creative in any way, the animations are pretty great and are worth watching on their own. There's also the ridiculousness that every time the vigilante frat goes out to fight crime, they find it. Like instantly. There seems to be people committing crime every five feet in this town, but there's hardly a cop to be seen.

That's right that's: Ernest Borgnine and Richard Roundtree teamed up as the detectives on the case. Actually they might be the only detectives in the whole town...

What we learned: If your friend takes a shotgun blast to the chest, don't take him back the frat house to discuss the happenings of the last few weeks. Just take him to the hospital, otherwise he'll probably die on your bed right before you blow your frat up with a box of grenades...

Dangerously Close

Not without it's charm, this movie didn't have any of the overly crazy elements many other Cannon movies embrace. Actually, this one's ending caught me off guard because it was sort of reasonable...

The plot unfolds something like this: A group of rich boys have taken it upon themselves to rid their beloved school of a recent rash of petty crimes. Acting on the unfounded idea that the poorer students are responsible for said crime, the gang tracks down some of these less fortunate classmates and literally terrorize them. (Of course, the irony that they're "fighting" crime with terrorism is totally lost on them.) Meanwhile, students have been going missing and the whole school believes the vigilantes to be responsible. But are they really responsible, or are they just the victims of vicious-rich boy stereotyping?

Things to watch for: A twist ending you can likely see coming but plays pretty well anyway, with a twist reveal that you couldn't possibly see coming. Loads of dudes too old to play high schoolers playing high schoolers anyway. The main antagonist/co-writer obviously writing some choice scenes for himself. Some nice commentary on the fine line between vigilantes and criminals.

Things to look away for: Some step-sibling incest/sexual-assault scenes (that thankfully stop short of nudity).

“That Guy!” moment with: Miguel A. Nunez Jr. (The Return of the Living Dead, Action Jackson, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning)

What we learned: Filming your acts of terrorism against your fellow classmates might not be the best idea if you want to keep those acts of terrorism secret...

Invasion USA

There are some pretty excellent reasons to watch Invasion USA, though not many of them have to do with Chuck Norris. He stalks the halls of an empty office building, he skulks around a plucky reporter, he makes wry comments at the bad guys. Generally speaking there are fantastic action sequences peppered with epic explosions, but all those scenes are intercut with stone-wall molasses Chuck walkin' around.

The plot unfolds something like this: An invasion is being planned on the shores of Florida by communist terrorists on a quest to do something... and they will stop at nothing to blow up a few houses in the suburbs, drive through a mall, and blow up a house on the bayou to prove... I can't even remember. What does the plot matter when they are laying waste to much of what makes the childhood of suburbanite kids dull and uninspired?

Explosions!: There's not much to say about this movie because most of the amazing parts are when stuff is blowing up. But they actually got to blow up real structures making this film's action especially wonderful. The filmmakers had access to a housing development that was being demolished, a mall that was re-modeling, a shack in the bayou and many other structures they inevitably level. It adds something to the action that's hard (or expensive) to get in a movie using models or CGI, and it's worth all the Wooden Chuck in the world to see them!

Reasons to watch: The aforementioned blowing up of lots of stuff. A car chase scene through a mall! The opportunity to make fun of Boring Chuck over and over. A cute scene with an armadillo. Billy Drago! Chuck Norris might be a “one man army” but there's an actual army in the final scene that also has an enjoyable hand in the blowing up of stuff. Did I mention that EVERYTHING is unequivocally destroyed?!?

Cringe moments: When a boat full of unarmed people get's mowed down, it starts to feel like excessive “these guys are really really bad guys” fodder. Also, Chuck gives Jack Bower and Dirty Harry a run for their money on the “one man army” and “laws smaws” fronts.

Siblings of the stars: Aaron Norris, brother of Chuck, is not only co-credited with writing the screen play for Invasion USA, he is also the stunt coordinator.

What we learned: If any other action star from this time period stared in Invasion USA, this would be a must watch classic. However, if someone other than Chuck had starred, someone different would have likely been the stunt coordinator and the action wouldn't have been as good. This might be our official selection for Catch-22 Action Flick of the 20th century.

Weird stuff I know after researching Invasion USA: This movie has a novelization. I found a lovely review of said novel at Glorious Trash.