SNOWMAGEDDON -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 11/7/12

 

There seems to be an entire category of movies on the SyFy Channel in which small Canadian towns double as small Northwestern towns in the USA which are menaced by some kind of supernatural (or super-natural) force, which resides or has its origin in a nearby mountain.  Bad CGI comes as a standard feature; giant tentacles are optional. 

One of the latest entries in this curious little sub-genre is SNOWMAGEDDON (2011), a movie whose title pretty much lets us know what kind of movie we're in for.  This time, a rustic burg in Alaska gets hammered by a series of unnatural disasters such as a storm cloud that shoots ice torpedoes which shatter into deadly shrapnel, gaping fissures bisecting city streets and gushing flames, and huge pointy things shooting up out of the ground to spear moving vehicles like shish-kabobs. 

The reason for all this is kept from us at first, lending the film an air of supernatural mystery that's mildly intriguing--until, that is, we find out that the secret behind it all is pretty freakin' dumb.  Suffice it to say that there's this kid named Rudy who plays a role-playing game about dragons and wizards, and he anonymously receives a strange snowglobe for Christmas with a tiny repica of the town in it, and whenever he winds it up, something bad happens.  Somehow, all of this is related to that RPG that he plays.  Why?  Don't ask me.

The destruction is depicted with some pretty good practical effects--the picturesque little town is trashed quite nicely--along with the usual fair-to-awful CGI.  Once the slush hits the fan, the action is split into different little suspense situations of varying interest, including two hapless shlubs trapped in a bus covered with downed power lines, stranded snowboarders who picked the wrong mountain to board, and a mother-daughter duo in a crashed helicopter. 

Good editing helps jazz things up a bit, but it's all just standard time-waster stuff that helps cheapo flicks like this fill in the space between the opening and closing credits. 

Once the kid finally convinces the grownups that his evil snowglobe is causing all the trouble--which, admittedly, might be a bit hard to swallow at first--they follow his sage advice on how to combat the supernatural menace.  Which means two things: one, they've really run out of ideas.  And two, his dad, John Miller (David Cubitt), must make a trek up the now-volcanic peak in order to do what the hero in the game does to stop the evil. 

The acting is about as good as you'd expect from this sort of thing, with Laura Harris (of the late, lamented "Defying Gravity") deserving better as Rudy's plucky mom, Beth.  The dialogue isn't any better or worse than required, save for the occasional eye-rolling exchange such as this:

LARRY: "That thing's straight from Hell itself."
FRED: "Calm down, Larry."
LARRY: "You calm down, Fred."

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby 5.1 sound and subtitles in English and Spanish.  No extras.

Really, I can't add any more to this than you can already figure out from the title.  If the word SNOWMAGEDDON doesn't tell you exactly what this movie is all about and whether or not you'll enjoy it, nothing will.  Bottom line: it's a passable, tolerable time-waster.

SNOWMAGEDDON -- DVD Review by Porfle

THE RED GREEN SHOW: THE DELINQUENT YEARS -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 3/21/11

 

Making its TV debut at about the same time as Tim Allen's "Home Improvement", the similarly-themed Canadian comedy "The Red Green Show" (1991-2006) follows the adventures of a not-so-handyman who broadcasts a live-audience TV show from the rustic Possum Lodge somewhere in the Great White North.  But where Tim Allen's character was addicted to shiny, high-tech gadgetry with "more power", Red Green's forte is to fashion elaborately worthless contraptions out of scrap parts and duct tape ("the handyman's secret weapon"). 

Acorn Media's THE RED GREEN SHOW: THE DELINQUENT YEARS contains seasons 7-9 (1997-1999) of the popular show on nine discs and is more unabashedly-goofy fun than you can shake a hockey stick at.  Co-creator Steve Smith plays the gray-bearded Red with a low-key charm and a way with both deadpan one-liners and folksy words of wisdom.  A laidback lug in flannel shirt and suspenders who revels in his "guy-ness", Red is so perversely ingenious with his money and labor-saving inventions that they often go beyond the ridiculous to the downright dangerous. 

He gets this DVD collection off to a good start by duct-taping two junk cars together to create his own budget-priced Hummer.  In another episode, Red turns a full-sized city bus into a cigarette car by putting the steering wheel in the back and sawing off the roof to create a really long hood. 

Transforming his garage into a car wash or turning a washing machine into a homemade bread maker are child's play for this guy.  As the seasons progress, the writers keep topping themselves by coming up with wilder and more mind-boggling inventions, some of which, God help us, actually work if they don't explode first.

Red's co-host is his incredibly nebbishy nephew, Harold, who wields a keytar-like instrument with which he directs the show.  It took an episode or two for me to get used to Patrick McKenna's over-the-top portrayal, but I eventually realized that this guy is a scream and is the perfect foil for the down-to-earth Red.
 


Sort of a cross between Jerry Lewis and Pee-Wee Herman (with a big nod to Robert Carradine in REVENGE OF THE NERDS), the bucktoothed, bespectacled Harold is often the squeaky voice of reason in the face of Red's outlandish schemes but usually ends up getting caught in the backfire.  Harold helps run the lodge meetings that we see during each episode's closing credits and emcees many of the show's various segments such as "Possum Lodge Word Game" and "Ask the Experts."  His dream girl is Sandra Bullock, but in the meantime he'd settle for any girl.  

Each episode begins in the Possum Lodge and contains some basic storyline upon which to hang a series of recurring comedy sketches.  Whether it's a fishing tournament against a rival lodge, an attempt by Red to turn the lodge into a tax-exempt religion, or an effort to purify the rancid Possum Lake by having each lodge member drink 47 gallons of it in three weeks, the subplots help keep the show moving but rarely get in the way of the random dumb fun. 

Among the many supporting characters are familiar actor Graham Greene (THE GREEN MILE, DANCES WITH WOLVES) as amateur explosives enthusiast Edgar K.B. "Ka-Boom" Montrose, Gordon Pinsent (BLACULA, COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT) as habitual liar Hap Shaughnessy, Bob Bainborough (THE LOVE GURU, DEAD RINGERS) as the grumpy Dalton Humphrey, and Wayne Robson (WRONG TURN, SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD) as cheerful, diminutive ex-con Mike Hamar, who just can't seem to stay out of legal trouble.  Comic Jerry Schaefer plays the extremely nervous animal control officer Ed Frid.



Co-creator Rick Green is hilarious in the "Adventures With Bill" segments, which are pure silent-movie slapstick with the accident-prone Bill engaging in delightfully wrongheaded and hazardous pursuits as Red looks on in awe.  Two things always happen during an adventure with Bill--one, Bill gets seriously injured (but bounces back like a cartoon character), and two, he always manages to knock the mirrors off Red's Possum Van. 

Besides Bill, my favorite supporting character is the deceptively normal-looking Ranger Gord.  Gord has spent several years alone in a firewatch tower, which has warped his mind in a variety of ways.  His emotional relationships with the forest animals and even the trees themselves are creepy enough to have even Red and Harold squirming in their seats during one of his bizarre personal accounts.  During the 1999 season Gord starts making his own public service cartoons which are a real hoot.  Playing Ranger Gord is Peter Keleghan, known from such films as SCREWBALLS and COOPERS' CHRISTMAS, along with the "Non-Fat Yogurt" episode of "Seinfeld."

Unfortunately, both Patrick McKenna and Rick Green left the show at the start of the 1999 season and, while some of the lesser characters were promoted to help fill in the gap, the absence of these two key performers is keenly felt.  McKenna makes frequent guest appearances during segments in which Red visits Harold in his new job as an accountant in Port Asbestos, but it just isn't the same. 

The nine-disc, 47-episode collection from Acorn Media is in 4:3 full screen and Dolby Digital stereo.  Each season comes in its own three-disc keepcase.  Extras consist of text biographies of Red and Harold, plus Steve Smith's production notes on the show--these appear in all three sets, with season three containing some additional bios of other characters. 

One of the reasons I like THE RED GREEN SHOW: THE DELINQUENT YEARS so much is that it's like a skewed adult version of some of my favorite kids' shows such as "It's Howdy Doody Time" and "Captain Kangaroo", by way of "The Uncle Floyd Show" and "Pee-Wee's Playhouse."  The main difference, besides the lack of talking animals, is that Red isn't concerned with being a good example or teaching us sensible life lessons--he's happy just to cheer us up, make us feel a little better about getting older, and allow us to vicariously revel in the joys of being totally irresponsible.

THE RED GREEN SHOW: THE DELINQUENT YEARS -- DVD Review by Porfle

IN THE NAME OF THE KING 2: TWO WORLDS -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 12/2/11

 

Confession time again: this is my first Uwe Boll movie.  Of course, I've heard a lot about the widely-reviled director on IMDb and other film-related forums, and have been curious to see a sample of his work that's supposed to be so inept.  So now that I've watched IN THE NAME OF THE KING 2: TWO WORLDS (2011), I have to say--yeah, it's pretty bad.  But this sword-and-sorcery yarn is bearable as a mildly entertaining direct-to-DVD time waster if you watch it with absolutely no expectations whatsoever.

I'm still not exactly sure what it's about, but a 21st-century Dolph Lundgren (as ex-soldier "Granger") gets yanked through a time vortex into the Medieval era and is tasked by a young king (Lochlyn Munro) to kill an evil, plague-spreading sorceress known as "The Holy Mother" because, somehow, he is "The Chosen One."  And destiny, and fate, and yadda-yadda-yadda. 

Dubious Dolph sets off through the (Canadian) forest medieval with a pretty female doctor named Manhatten (Natassia Malthe) and the even more dubious king's guardsman Allard (Aleks Paunovic), who thinks Dolph's fulla beans, and discovers along the way that all is not what it seems and his fate-decreed task has taken a twisted turn.



The opening sequence is the most accomplished part of the film, with a sorceress from the past named Elianna (Natalia Guslistaya) being pursued through the woods by black-garbed assassins before turning on her heel and making short work of them with knives, an old-school grenade, and some slightly anachronistic kung fu moves.  At the end of this nicely-done vignette she bursts out of the forest whereupon the camera pans around to find her running toward the skyline of modern-day Vancouver.  The sequence is well-directed and looks good, and viewers should savor it while they can because it's pretty much the last time that those terms will apply.

The rest of IN THE NAME OF THE KING 2: TWO WORLDS is done in the same markedly uninspired "point 'n' shoot" style my Dad used to use making 8mm home movies of us when we were kids, with a constant jiggling motion that makes even the quieter dialogue scenes more annoying.  You know an action scene is underway because the camera bobbles and whips around even worse, although the action is so blandly directed that this is probably for the best. 

The low-budget sets--a modest walled-in fortress, an encampment or two--are adequate, while a lack of extras makes the film look underpopulated.  Dolph's quest to find something called "The Catalyst" leads him face-to-face with a winged, fire-breathing CGI dragon which is pretty well-rendered, in a better-than-usual SyFy Channel sort of way.  This belligerent beastie's fiery attack on the king's fortress is one of the better sequences in the film, livening things up after a number of rather dull stretches in which the plot and dialogue are less than scintillating.



The screenplay fails to exploit the "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" possibilities inherent in the situation, although we do get a number of mild verbal gags (Dolph puzzles his medieval hosts by saying things such as "You mean I'm going in there with zero intel?" and using words like "screwed").  Aside from basic fighting prowess, his character doesn't do anything particularly modern in battling the bad guys or use any advanced ingenuity to solve problems.  He doesn't even have a boomstick!

Familiar actor Lochlyn Munro (UNFORGIVEN, SCARY MOVIE) is kind of fun to watch as the callow King--whose motives we're never sure of at first--as is Natassia Malthe as Manhatten, who naturally falls for our beefy hero.  Aleks Paunovic as brave Allard and Heather Doerksen as Dunyana, a noble, strong-willed woman Dolph encounters along the way, acquit themselves well.  Probably the best performance is given by Christina Jastrzemska (as "The Holy Mother"), an older actress with enough skill and experience to make her dumb dialogue sound like it almost makes sense. 

As for Dolph, he's a solid performer in the right kind of role and I always enjoy watching him.  But after an early scene in which he wistfully toasts his fallen battlefield comrades on the anniversary of their death, he spends the rest of the film looking like he's one step away from hitting the craft services table or hopping into the nearest jacuzzi.

The DVD from 20th-Century Fox Home Entertainment is widescreen with Dolby 5.1 sound and subtitles in English and Spanish.  Extras include director and writer commentaries plus two featurettes on the making of and writing of the film.  Special mention goes to composer Jessica de Rooij, whose bombastic, almost Albert Glasser-like score makes the film seem more exciting than it is.

IN THE NAME OF THE KING 2: TWO WORLDS returns to the present day for its finale, but by then it's too late to make us care very much about what happens.  While okay for frittering away an hour-an-a-half in an offhand way, you'd be better off getting your "modern guy in medieval times" jollies by digging out an old copy of ARMY OF DARKNESS.

IN THE NAME OF THE KING 2: TWO WORLDS -- DVD Review by Porfle

SCREWBALLS -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

 

Originally posted on 9/11/09

 

 

 

Legendary schlock producer Roger Corman charged Jim Wynorski and Linda Shayne to write a low-budget teen sex comedy that would cash in on the then-current craze exemplified by highly-profitable crap like PORKY'S and THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN. The movie they came up with, SCREWBALLS (1983), is an even wilder, crappier, and more bizarre goof on such films that actually turned out to be some kind of trash classic.

Shamelessly stupid, cheerfully nonsensical, and aggressively inept, SCREWBALLS doesn't even make the slightest effort to take itself as seriously as those other two stupid movies that I mentioned or most of the others like them. In fact, it has more in common with the spoofy spirit of NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE than any of its contemporaries. It might also fit comfortably on a double bill with ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL as long as it's on the bottom.

Wynorski and Shayne were told by Corman to watch some other films of this genre, pick out the elements that made them work, and throw them all together into one mindless melange. Thus, the story takes place at a wacky high school (Taft Adams, or "T & A") filled with horny teen stereotypes and teachers who are either cartoonishly tight-assed or wantonly oversexed. There's also an abundance of hot cheerleaders and other babes who have trouble keeping their tops on, including the comically cute Shayne as "Bootsie Goodhead." Rest assured, the booby count in this movie is sky high.

Five hormonally-hyper guys--Rick the jock, Brent the rich kid, Tim the shy one, Howie the nerd, and Melvin Jerkovski, the chronic masturbator--are obsessed with the school's last remaining virgin, the beautiful Purity Busch (Linda Speciale), devising all sorts of devious methods to try and see her naked. A nocturnal visit to Purity's house finds her humping her teddy bear in her sleep while in the next room, Purity's sexually-frustrated mother implores her impotent husband with: "Ward, I'm worried about the beaver."

Brainy nerd Howie uses his vast intellect to come up with ingenious methods of looking up girls' skirts or hypnotizing them into wanting to have sex with him, which invariably backfire in strange ways. The latter episode climaxes with a gym class full of bikini-clad girls lurching toward him en masse like robots and then trying to kill him.

Meanwhile, Rick the jock manages to cop plenty of feels by posing as a doctor on "Breast Exam Day" and a female dressmaking teacher measuring her students' bust sizes. Not so successful is Melvin's scheme to have himself buried under the same patch of sand where Purity sunbathes every day and peer at her cleavage through a soda-can periscope.

I don't know why, but my favorite sequence is the part where the guys and the girls challenge each other to a game of "Strip Bowling." It's just a bunch of high-spirited nonsense that's as stupid as it sounds and ends with a bowling ball being lodged on part of Howie's anatomy. Another highlight is a visit to a strip club that features generously-endowed guest star Raven De La Croix doing an old-fashioned burlesque routine. Everything comes to a head on the night of the big homecoming dance, where Howie unleashes his last-ditch attempt to scientifically remove Purity's clothing once and for all.

The DVD is in 1.66:1 widescreen with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. Transferred from the best available print, the film looks about the way it might if you caught it on late-night television. Bonus features include a commentary by director Rafal Zielinski, deleted and alternate scenes, a theatrical trailer, and interviews with Zielinski, Shayne and Wynorski, star Kent Deuters (Brent), and SPFX artist Gerald Lukaniuk. Canuxsploitation scholar Paul Corupe discusses the film in the context of Canada's teen sex film boom of the 80s, while "Mr. Skin" and "McBeardo" of internet fame wax enthusiastic about SCREWBALLS' contribution to the cause of onscreen boobage.

SCREWBALLS is so harmlessly dumb that the main characters come off as much more likable than the leering lechers and salacious sluts trying to out-raunch each other in PORKY'S and other such films. It's just the kind of flick you'd expect to see on USA's "Up All Night" back in the good old days (Rhonda Shear would fit right in) along with other low-rent Canadian sex romps like HEAVY METAL SUMMER (aka STATE PARK), MEATBALLS III, and the rest of the illustrious "Balls" series--but with all the nudity gloriously intact. While containing the same basic elements as the smuttier, filthier, and lewder teen flicks of its era, SCREWBALLS is just too blithely stupid to be anything but good-natured fun.

Read our review of the sequel LOOSE SCREWS: SCREWBALLS II

 

SCREWBALLS -- DVD Review by Porfle

DON'T MOVE! DON'T MOVE! The Mad Artist From "PLAYGIRL KILLER" (1967) (video)

 

Bill Kerwin plays a kook who thinks he's an artist.

But can't stand it when his models move.

So he kills them and freezes them!

But when a power failure shuts off the freezing unit...

Just remember: "Don't move! DON'T MOVE!"


(spoilers)

I neither own nor claim any rights to this material.  Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!

DON'T MOVE! DON'T MOVE! The Mad Artist From "PLAYGIRL KILLER" (1967) (video)

Neil Sedaka Seduced By Sexy Stripper In "PLAYGIRL KILLER" (1967) (video)

 

Two words: Neil Sedaka.

Two more words: sexy stripper.

One word with an exclamation point: Seduced!

Be there. Aloha.


I neither own nor claim any rights to this material.  Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!

Neil Sedaka Seduced By Sexy Stripper In "PLAYGIRL KILLER" (1967) (video)

Neil Sedaka Leaves Bikini Babe Half-Oiled In "PLAYGIRL KILLER" (1967) (video)

 

Two words: Neil Sedaka.

Two more words: bikini babe.

Two more words separated by a hypen: half-oiled.

Be there. Aloha.



I neither own nor claim any rights to this material.  Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!

Neil Sedaka Leaves Bikini Babe Half-Oiled In "PLAYGIRL KILLER" (1967) (video)