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!