Guilty Pleasure No. 71: Submerged (dir by Fred Olen Ray)

Posted on October 1, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

THUNDERSTRIKE!

Listen, if you’re going to watch the 2000 film Submerged, you better be a big fan of the term “Thunderstrike,” because it’s repeated so many times that one gets the feeling that the actors just loved saying it.

Thunderstrike is a satellite that was built by western businessman Buck Stevens (Dennis Weaver). He and his daughter (Nicole Eggert) and her sort-of boyfriend (Hannes Jaenicke) are all flying to Hawaii so that they can conduct more tests on the Thunderstrike. However, arms dealer Owen Cantrell (Tim Thomerson) wants the Thunderstrike for himself so he sends a mercenary named Jeff Cort (Coolio. Yes, Coolio.) to steal the plans from the airplane. The plan is to kill the pilot, substitute a new pilot, and then crash the plane into the ocean …. which is pretty much what happens, despite the best efforts of heroic CIA agent, Rex Manning (Maxwell Caulfield).

Actually, wait a minute. Maxwell Caulfield’s character is named Jim Carpenter. Well, I don’t care. He’ll always be Rex Manning to me!

While Special Agent Mack Taylor (Brent Huff) tries to stop Cantrell from stealing the Thunderstrike, Captain Masters (Fred Williamson) tries to figure out a way to bring the plane to the surface.

If this sound familiar, it’s because Submerged has the same plot as Airport ’77.

If it looks familiar, it’s because Submerged lifts a lot of footage from Airport ’77, including the scene where the plane crashes, the scene where the plane settles on the ocean floor, and the scene where the plane is lifted off the ocean floor. Even a scene of water pouring into plane is lifted from Airport ’77, which means that the plane in Submerged suddenly has a staircase that no one apparently noticed before.

Submerged was directed by the wonderful Fred Olen Ray and seriously, how can you not love it? Between the cast and the fact that it features all of the best parts of Airport ’77, this is a film for which the term guilty Ppeasure was invented! It helps that the cast, for whatever reason, appears to be taking the film rather seriously. This film was Dennis Weaver’s final screen appearance and he seems to be having a ball playing a cheerful good old boy who can’t wait to put a dangerous satellite in the sky.

Plus, the film features Rex Manning!

Plus, Jack Deth!

Plus, Black Caesar!

Plus …. THUNDERSTRIKE!

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Skipped, Short Film Review by Case Wright, Dir & Written by Faisal Hashmi

Posted on July 18, 2024 by casewright

Hello Beautiful and Intelligent readers, how do I know you’re so smart and beautiful? You’re reading my stuff!!! You know what’s not good- This short film. Like chlamydia at a Senor Frogs in Cancun, this short will stick with you in the worst way! He writes in his bio that he’s an “award-winning independent filmmaker”, but who is in charge of these awards?! Is it like a certificate of participation? Did they owe Faisal Hashmi money? Did Faisal Hashmi see them commit a brutal crime? Sadly, he kept making “films” after this waste of his iPhone memory, on the bright side, his career didn’t take off because- ya know, he sucks at this!

There are a many ways that this short doesn’t even deserve to be used to clean the bathroom floor at Port Authority on a Friday night, but the two that stick out the most to me are that –

The film makes no sense.
It’s boring!

But Case come on, you always say these sci-fi things don’t make sense, well most of the time I’m right! However, to really pull this piece of trash apart like it deserves, I have to go over the terrible story! It’s like Faisal Hashmi is out to hurt me in every way! Did he give me COVID? Where were you Faisal, December 2020??

The story- an office worker has a boring job, but every time he sneezes he blacks out and all of his work is done; purportedly, he travels in time like my Aunt does after Natural Light and Ambien. This is where the story doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t remember the time he lost. He just moves forward. Let’s just skip over the fact that this sort of time travel is impossible without Ambien. Of course, he abuses this “gift” and eventually becomes old. This is not how special relativity works, but I guess looking things up on Wikipedia is TOO MUNDANE for Faisal!

This brings me to my second issue with this film: it’s boring. I understand that being good at anything is hard, right Faisal? Faisal Hashmi, you’re probably terrible at a lot of things- Film is really just the only one we have a digital record of to prove it. Maybe you also suck at volleyball, buying groceries, or tying your shoes? I can’t speak for those other things, but you’re rebuttably presumed to be awful at those things too, but I’ll just stick to this 4 minute and 26 second slice of hell!

Every plot point was so predictable and obvious, it felt as if a short film became a flip book crap version of “Goodnight, Moon”. I hate you Faisal! You, Marcin Dubinek, and Alex Magana are a cabal of terrible art! You create the unholy trinity of film. I even tagged the horror box for this post because that’s what your film is, but not intentionally! Faisal, stop what you’re doing! Try real estate or work for Ticketmaster!

I did provide a link to this unholy thing, if you feel like slowing your life down and embracing death’s touch.

Something Boring This Way Comes!!!!

You should check out my twitter “x” for my other tweets and work (@casewrites).

Guilty Pleasure No. 70: Face The Truth

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I am so thankful for YouTube.

Seriously, I had forgotten all about the television show, Face The Truth, until I randomly came across a clip of Vivica A. Fox yelling at a guy who she felt was being disrespectful towards “The Truth Panel.” After coming across the clip, I discovered that the Face The Truth YouTube channel still existed, despite the fact that the show hasn’t aired since 2019. I have now watched several clips, all of which reminded me of of the days when I would watch this misbegotten but oddly entertaining show while working in my office.

Produced by Dr. Phil’s production company, Face The Truth dealt with typical talk show issues. Bickering roommates would come on and talk about how messy the apartment was. Bickering parents would come on and complain about their ungrateful children. Ungrateful children would complain about their selfish parents. Ex-lovers would trash each other’s bedroom skills. Ex-business partners would accuse each other of embezzlement. At the end of each show, they would be told to stand in The Circle of Truth and the audience would vote for who they thought was right.

This show’s gimmick was that, instead of just having one host, it had five. The truth panel was made up of actress Vivica Fox and four women who regularly appeared as correspondents and consultants on Dr. Phil. Dr. Judy Ho was a psychiatrist. Rosie Mercado was a plus-sized model. Areva Martin was an attorney who specialized in family law. Scary Mary was an former judge who yelled at everyone and looked like she probably smoked a pack of cigarettes a day.

What made this show a guilty pleasure? I think what really set this talk show apart from others was just how thoroughly ineffectual the Truth Panel was. Dr. Judy occasionally had some good advice but it was obvious that the other three were mostly there to try to convince Dr. Phil to give them a solo show. The panelists talked over each other. Both Rosie and Areva gave long-winded advice that, more often that not, descended into empty psychobabble. As Scary Mary basically glared at everyone as if she personally resented their existence.

The panel rarely had anything to offer beyond the shallowest of cliches and the guests always seemed to not only pick up on this but also to get pissed off about it. It’s amazing how many of the clips on the show’s official YouTube channel features guests essentially telling the Panel to shut up while Areva and Rosie stare on in stunned silence. Just as Scary Mary hated the guests, they all hated her too. The fact that the guest’s retorts were often funnier and more memorable than Scary Mary’s insults did little to help the Truth Panel’s struggle to maintain some semblance of authority.

Who can forget the woman who stormed off set because “that older white woman doesn’t like black people!” (The older white woman was Scary Mary.) Or how about the ill-tempered guy who accused Mary of aggravating him until Mary finally turned his back on him. “You need to respect the panel,” Rosie Mercado yelled.

Or how about the moment that Scary Mary, while trying to broker peace between feuding friends, used herself as an example. “I might not like these other women but I still have to come to work!” Areva, with an awkward laugh, assured the audience that the member of the Panel all loved each other while Scary Mary dramatically rolled her eyes.

Overseeing all of this was Vivica A. Fox, who sometimes yelled and who often cried depending on the story being told and who always seemed like she deserved better than to have to deal with Scary Mary’s temper tantrums and Dr. Judy’s attempts to give earnest advise while the other panelists mugged for the camera. It was The Wrong Talk Show. But it was fascinating in a train-wreck sort of way. You watched to see which panelist would give the worst advise and which guest would be the first to tell Rosie that she didn’t know what she was talking about. It was all so openly ineffectual that Face the Truth felt like a break from talk shows that were always edited (or scripted, in many cases) to make their host look all-knowing and wise. Face the Truth was a complete mess. Indeed, it was so messy that it made me feel less guilty about my own not particular stellar track record when it comes to trying to give good advice.

As with most of the shows that he’s produced, Dr. Phil hyped the Hell out of Face the Truth until it actually premiered and tanked in the ratings. After that, Phil never mentioned the show again. Face The Truth premiered in September of 2018 and it was canceled six months later, avoiding the COVID pandemic by a year. It’s forgotten today …. or it would be if not for YouTube.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 69: Shocking Dark (dir by Bruno Mattei)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1989’s Shocking Dark opens with shots of my favorite Italian city, Venice! Unfortunately, a voice-over informs us that, due to the rising sea levels, Venice will no longer be inhabitable in the near future and instead, most of it will be underwater by the year 2000.

(For the record, everything seemed fine when I was there. I went to Italy the summer after I graduated from high school and I absolutely loved Venice. My first night in Venice, there was a thunderstorm and I can still remember standing underneath an awning while it rained and watching as the lightening was reflected in the waters of the Venice canals.)

Something strange has happened at one of Venice’s undersea labs. The scientists who were working on a top secret project have almost all disappeared and the only known survivor is ranting like a maniac. The Tubular Corporation arranges for a group of Megaforce Marines (seriously, that’s what their called) to enter the lab and discover what has happened. The Megaforce Marines, which include a tough-talking woman from New York and a joke-making hick from down South, claim that there is nothing they haven’t been trained to handle.

The marines may start out cocky but they soon find themselves being attacked by metallic monsters that nest inside of their victims and appear to be unstoppable. The only survivor of the monster’s attack is a young girl named Samantha (Dominica Coulson) who bonds with Sara (Haven Tyler), a member of the expedition. The marines also discover that a member of the expedition is actually a killer robot who has been sent by the Tubular Corporation to protect its interests.

Does all of this sound familiar? Like a lot of Italian horror films, Shocking Dark was released under several different titles. Here’s a few of them: Terminator II, Shocking Dark — Terminator 2, Aliens 2, Alienator, and Contanimator. Shocking Dark sold itself as being a sequel to every successful film that James Cameron had directed up until that point and it did so despite the fact that Cameron had nothing to do with the film. (Indeed, Terminator 2: Judgement Day came out two years after the release of Shocking Dark.) Shocking Dark rips off both Aliens and The Terminator, with the first half of the film being dominated by the tough-talking Marines and the second half being dominated by a relentless cyborg killer. Even by the standards of the Italian film industry, Shocking Dark is utterly shameless in the way it blatantly rips off Cameron’s two previous films.

Not surprisingly the film was directed by Bruno Mattei and written by Claudio Fragasso, a pair who made a very lucrative career out of making cheap versions of expensive American sci-fi and horror films. (Fragasso would go on to achieve his own immortality by directing Troll 2.) As with many of the Mattei/Fragasso collaborations, the dialogue is crude, profane, and fequently nonsensical. (Fragasso’s idea of writing like an American was to have the characters randomly insult and threaten each other.) The plot has an appealingly ramshackle feel. Towards the end of the film, two characters just happen to stumble across a time machine because …. hey, why not!? At least it allowed for a few scenes to be shot in what was then modern-day Venice.

As with many of the Mattei/Fragasso collaborations, the saving grace here is that Bruno Mattei directs with the confident swagger of someone who truly believes that he can rip-off James Cameron with half the budget and come up with something better than either Terminator or Aliens. The fact that Mattei fails to better either of those films is beside the point. What’s important is that Mattei seems to believe that he has. Mattei’s direction is shameless and unapologetic and, as a result, the film is far more watchable than perhaps it should be. It’s a film that the viewer enjoys, even though they might not want to.

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Guilty Pleasure: Blood Harvest (dir by Bill Rebane)

Posted on October 23, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1987’s Blood Harvest, college student Jill Robinson (Itonia Salochek) returns to her hometown in rural Wisconsin and discovers that there have been some changes.

For one thing, the local farmers are struggling and the bank is foreclosing on their land. Since Jill’s father is the president of the bank, people are not particularly happy to see her in town. (One farmer spits at her.) When Jill arrives at her parents home, she discovers insulting graffiti on the exterior and a strawman hanging in the front corridor. Even more upsetting, her parents are nowhere to be found!

Jill goes to see Sheriff Buckley (Frank Benson) about the graffiti but when they go back out to Jill’s house, both the graffiti and the strawman have vanished. The sheriff tells Jill not both him anymore and then leaves her alone at her home. Most people would probably panic about this but not Jill! Instead, Jill hangs out with her childhood friend, Gary (Dean West).

Gary’s has had a tough time of it recently. His parents recently died mysteriously and he now takes care of his brother, Mervon (played by 60s folk singer Tiny Tim). Gary and Mervon are an oddly matched pair of siblings. For one thing, Gary appears to be no older than 20 while Mervon is in his late 60s. Gary looks like a fresh-faced jock. Mervon has long stringy hair, speaks in a falsetto voice, and always wears clown makeup. Mervon, who prefers to be called The Magnificent Merv, also likes to sing about how Gary and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. As for Gary, he is disappointed to hear that Jill not only has a boyfriend at college but that she’s also engaged to him. It doesn’t help that Jill keeps saying stuff like, “If my father hadn’t caught us that time, it could have been you and me getting married!”

While Jill’s parents remain missing, she is visited by her boyfriend (Peter Krause, making his film debut) and her best friend, Sarah (Lori Minnetti). Because Jill isn’t particularly smart, she doesn’t notice when both her boyfriend and her BFF are dragged over to her family’s barn and brutally killed. (Jill does eventually start to worry about the whereabouts of her boyfriend but it’s not like Sheriff Buckley is going to help her….) Who is the person who is not only murdering Jill’s friend but also frequently drugging her and undressing her so he can take pictures? Well, there’s only two suspects and the scare scenes are so clumsily staged that you’ll see the killer’s face long before you were probably meant to.

Blood Harvest was directed by Bill Rebane, the Wisconsin-based filmmaker behind The Giant Spider Invasion and The Demons of Ludlow. (Ludlow even gets a shout-out.) It’s a typical Rebane film, with all of the inconsistent acting and incoherent plotting that he is typically known for. At the same time, it’s also a film that’s a bit more interesting that one might expect just from the plot description. There’s an interesting political subtext to Jill’s father being the banker who is responsible for the decline of Jill’s hometown and one gets the feeling that Rebane shared the anger of the film’s famers when it came to banks foreclosing on people’s land. One could never doubt Rebane’s love of rural Wisconsin and, even though the film itself is a bit grainy, the countryside looks lovely. Finally, I have to admit that I could actually relate to Jill, both in her desire to escape country living and her dislike of wearing pants while at home.

That said, the main attraction for most people will be the very odd screen presence of Tiny Tim, who gives a surprisingly earnest performance as poor old Mervo. Everyone may think Mervo’s crazy because of the makeup he wears but he is a clown who is definitely crying on the inside.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 67: Aerobicide (dir by David A. Prior)

Posted on October 16, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It doesn’t get more 80s than 1987’s Aerobicide, a rather ludicrous slasher film that is also known as Killer Workout.

The clients and the staff at Rhonda’s Work-Out are in danger. People are being murdered inside the gym, left and right. One member of the gym is slashed to death in the showers. Another one is beaten to death with a barbell while his friend is killed with a very large safety pin. One instructors ends up hanging in a closet while another is stabbed to death in a locker room. A group of teens show up to spray graffiti on the outside of the club and they all end up getting murdered as well.

Most people would assume that, with all of those murders going on, that the place would be closed down or, at the very least, people would stop frequenting the gym. But no, the opposite happens. Every murder is followed by an aerobics class, in which the camera shamelessly lingers on the lycra-clad participants, none of whom seem to be particularly concerned about working out at a crime scene. ( If your body’s looking too big, one of the film’s many songs tells us, Like a hippo or a pig/ Gotta workout/ gotta work out….) The gym’s owner, Rhonda Johnson (Marica Karr), doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned about the gym getting a bad reputation as a result of all the murders. Instead, she’s more annoyed with her surviving instructors, snapping at one, “Stop showing off your tits and that tight little ass!” Personally, I would think looking good would be a top priority for someone working at a gym but apparently, Rhonda feels differently.

(Then again, if people were being murdered at my gym, I’d probably cancel my membership, despite the fact that my gym is only a few blocks away from my house and most of the people who go there are relatively cool. That said, the main reason why I signed up for a membership was so my sister could get a discount on her membership fees. Personally, I prefer running.)

Even if Rhonda refuses to close the gym, you would think that Lt. Morgan (David James Campbell) would make sure that the gym had a full-time police presence. Eventually, Morgan does assign one policeman to watch the gym but that’s only after several murders have already occurred and that one policeman’s presence doesn’t really do much good. Then again, Lt. Morgan never comes across as being a particularly good cop. Morgan is spectacularly bad at his job, which wouldn’t be a huge problem if not for the fact that Morgan is also the hero of the film. Eventually, he does figure out that the murders are connected to a tragic tanning bed accident but it’s hard to say how exactly he managed to do that. Rather than actually showing us Lt. Morgan gathering clues and drawing conclusions, the film just has him randomly blurt stuff out.

It’s all pretty ridiculous but, because the film is such a film of it’s time, it’s also rather fascinating. Killer Workout may not have been the only or even the first film to combine Flashdance with slasher chills but it is the first one to feature a song with lyrics like, “It’s the perfect body you’re looking for/it’s aerobocide.” This is one of those films where you come for the big hair and the 80s fashions and the bass-heavy score and you stay for the ludicrous plot twists, the overacting, the overheated dialogue, and the out-of-nowhere plot twists that dominate the film’s final 30 minutes. It’s not necessarily a “good” film but I defy anyone to look away once it begins.

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Guilty Pleasure No.66: Cloverfield (dir Matt Reeves)

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Let’s just be honest, here. In many ways, 2008’s Cloverfield is a remarkably stupid film.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s an entertaining film. It’s a fun film. It’s a film that I’ve seen a few times and I usually enjoy it whenever I see it. But it’s still a film about someone who refuses to stop filming, even in the middle of an alien invasion. It makes sense, of course, that Hud Platt (T.J. Miller) would want to film the going away party that’s being held for his friend Rob (Michael Stahl-David). But why would Hud keep holding onto that camcorder even after the aliens invade and New York starts to explode all around him? There are several moments in the film where it’s obvious that the camera is slowing Hud and his friends down. The easiest thing to do would be to drop the camcorder and run to safety. I mean, it’s not like the destruction of New York by aliens is going to be lost to history if Hud doesn’t film it. But instead, Hud not only keeps filming but, for all the shaky cam effects and the heaving breathing of people running for their lives, Hud still somehow manages to capture every important event on camera.

In many ways, the film epitomizes everything that tends to drive people crazy about the found footage genre but Cloverfield is an undeniably fun movie. I mean, there’s a scene where the head of the Statue of Liberty is literally tossed into the middle of the street. It’s such an over-the-top moment that it’s impossible not to love it and, to be honest, the fact that Hud manages to hold the camera still enough to perfectly capture the image of Lady Liberty’s head crashing to the ground is kind of cool. The film follows a group of friends as they try to make their way across New York City to try to rescue Rob’s girlfriend Beth (Odette Yustman) before then evacuating the city and there’s something rather exciting about the sight of this small group of people continually moving in the opposite direction of the crowd around them. While everyone else runs away from danger, our heroes move straight into it, even though none of them are exactly action heroes. They’re nerdy hipsters on a mission and, even though you know from the start that they’re all doomed, it’s hard not to kind of love them. The film’s final moments carry more an emotional punch than you might normally expect from a found footage alien invasion film.

That said, if the aliens do come and they are literally tearing apart the Statue of Liberty before your very eyes, there’s no shame in putting down the camera and running. In fact, if there’s any lesson to be learned from Cloverfield, it’s that sometimes, it’s best just to run for it.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 65: Invaders From Mars (dir by Tobe Hooper)

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1986 film, Invaders from Mars, opens with a dark and stormy night.

12 year-old David Gardner (Hunter Carson, son of actress Karen Black and filmmaker L.T. Kit Carson), who dreams of growing up to become an astronaut, witnesses something strange happening outside of his bedroom window. He watches as a spaceship lands on a nearby hill and apparently drills itself into the ground. The next morning, David convinces his father (Timothy Bottoms) to go out to the hill and see what he can find. When his father returns, he says that he didn’t see anything strange at the hill. However, he is now acting strangely, no longer showing emotion.

Soon, everyone in the small town is also acting strangely, from David’s mother (Laraine Newman) to his teacher (Louise Fletcher). David notices that everyone has a mysterious mark on the back of their neck. Even more alarmingly, he walks in on his teacher eating a mouse. Investigating the hill himself, David discovers that his father was lying about nothing being there. Instead, there’s a cavernous spaceship that is patrolled by aliens! A creature with a giant brain has taken control of almost everyone in David’s life. David discovers that the hill right outside of his house is now the headquarters of an intergalactic invasion. It’s a war of the worlds and David is stuck right in the middle.

Fortunately, David does have a few allies. The aliens have not managed to take control of everyone. The school nurse (Karen Black) believes David and helps him explore the spaceship. The surprisingly nice General Wilson (James Karen) is not only willing to launch a military operation on the advice of a 12 year-old but he also doesn’t have any problem allowing that 12 year-old to take de facto command of his soldiers. Can David save his community from the Martians?

A remake of the 1953 sci-fi classic, Invaders from Mars was directed by Tobe Hooper, the Texas-born director who was best known for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist. At first, the deliberately campy Invaders from Mars might seem like an unexpected film from Hooper but actually, it has quite a bit in common with Hooper’s other credits. Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it plays out like an increasingly surreal dream, one with an emphasis on isolation. Like Poltergeist, it’s ultimately a satire of suburban and small town conformity. (Indeed, one could argue that Invaders From Mars is Poltergeist without the interference of Steven Spielberg.) If the original Invaders From Mars was about the dangers of communism, the remake is about the danger of losing your childhood imagination and just becoming a mindless drone.

Invaders From Mars is often a deliberately silly film. Sometimes, it’s definitely a bit too silly for its own good, hence the guilty in guilty pleasure. That said, whenever I see it, I can’t help but smile at how quickly General Wilson starts taking orders from David. (James Karen plays the role with such earnestness that General Wilson seems to be less concerned with David’s age but instead just happy that he has someone around who can tell him what he needs to do.) But it makes sense when you consider that the film is meant to be a child’s fantasy of what would happen if there was an alien invasion. Who wouldn’t want to be the one telling the adults how to save the planet? For all the aliens and the mind control, this is a rather innocent film. Featuring entertaining performances from Hunter Carson, Timothy Bottoms, Karen Black, and the great James Karen, Invaders From Mars is an entertaining daydream of interstellar conquest.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 64: Karate Warrior (dir by Fabrizio De Angelis)

Posted on September 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Oh, come on,” I said last week, “this is a perfectly fine film.”

I was saying that because I was watching the 1987 film, Karate Warriors, with a group of friends. They felt that it was a largely pointless film that didn’t really have much of a plot. I felt that it was an interesting piece of history, seeing as how it was an Italian rip-off of The Karate Kid that was made by several associates of Lucio Fulci. And while Fulci himself wasn’t involved with the film, the scene where the lead character, young Anthony Scott (Kim Rossi Stuart), is savagely beaten up with the bad guys is so unnecessarily bloody that it feels like an homage to Fulci if nothing else. The scene, which makes this rip-off of The Karate Kid too graphic for the film’s target audience, really does epitomize everything that made the Italian exploitation industry so memorable.

Teenager Anthony Scott is in the Philippines so he can visit his father (Jared Martin, who starred in Fulci’s Warriors of the Year 2072), a journalist who is apparently in semi-hiding because of a series of articles that he wrote that exposed government corruption. (Don’t worry too much about the father’s backstory because it doesn’t really play any sort of role in the film.) Anthony runs afoul of the local teenage crime lord, Quino (Enrico Torralba). Quino is not only running a protection racket but he’s also the local karate champion. When Anthony stands up to Quino, he gets beaten up and Anthony’s girlfriend, Maria (Janelle Barretto), nearly loses her home when Quino’s gang sets it on fire. The half-dead Anthony is discovered by Master Kimura (Ken Watanabe — no, not that Ken Watanabe). Master Kimura takes Anthony into the forest and teaches him the “Stroke of the Dragon.” One montage later, Anthony is ready to enter the local karate tournament and take on Quino. For some reason, it never occurs to Anthony to let his father know that he’s now living with Master Kimura so, while Anthony is training, his father and his mother (Janet Agren, who co-starred in Fulci’s City of the Living Dead) are desperately searching for him in Manila.

Karate Warrior is only 84 minutes long and, for reasons that are not quite clear, Anthony’s training and the final tournament are all crammed into the film’s final 20 minutes. Before that, the film is a travelogue of Anthony wandering around Manila, getting conned by nearly everyone that he meets, and trying to flirt with Maria. So yes, the film is a bit plotless but I found the film’s meandering spirit to be a bit charming. It’s rare to see a film that’s so honest about only having 20 minutes worth of plot. The English language version also has the extra treat of some really bad dubbing. At one point, it sounds as if a totally different actor took over dubbing Anthony. The cheerful of ineptness of it all was rather likable.

The film was directed by Fabrizio De Angelis, who produced Fulci’s Beyond trilogy. My friends may have disliked it but the film was a big enough of a success in Italy that it led to 6 sequels. I can’t wait to watch every one of them!

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Guilty Pleasure No. 63: Julie and Jack (dir by James Nguyen)

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Sex isn’t the only thing I care about. It’s just that I’ve always imagined myself falling in love with someone …. who’s alive. I know that may sound strange to you, but it’s just the way I was brought up.”

Sometimes, it just takes one line to transform a mere bad movie into a masterpiece of weirdness and that’s certainly what happens in 2003’s Julie and Jack when Jack Livingston (Justin Kunkle) attempts to explain why he’s having trouble with the idea of committing to Julie Romanov (Jenn Gotzon). Jack is a computer chip salesman who has been unlucky in love until he joins CupidMatchmaker.Com and meets Julie Romanov. He quickly falls in love with Julie, despite the fact that she refuses to tell him anything about her past and he never meets her in person. Instead, they spend their time walking around a virtual reality recreation of San Francisco.

Why is Julie so sensitive? Well, Julie is not exactly alive. When she was among the living, she was a brilliant computer programmer but, when she found out she was dying of a brain tumor, she managed to transfer her mind into the Internet. Her body may be dead but her mind and her personality live on, haunting dating websites. When Jack discovers the truth about his new girlfriend, he has to decide if he can be in love with someone with whom he can never have sex.

(It never seems to occur to either Jack or Julie that there also might be issues involved with someone having a relationship in which one person who is no longer among the living and will never age while her partner gets older and closer to his own death.)

It’s pretty dumb but it’s also so earnest and stupidly sincere that it’s kind of hard not to like it. Julie and Jack was the directorial debut of James Nguyen, who went on achieve a certain cinematic infamy with the Birdemic films. Just as the Birdemic films seemed to sincerely believe that they had something important to say about environmentalism, Julie and Jack has similar delusions of grandeur, with the main difference being that the message of Julie and Jack is a bit more heartfelt than Birdemic’s Al Gore-inspired preachiness.

The film has all of the things that we normally associate with James Nguyen’s work. The pointless driving scenes, the meandering travelogue shots of San Francisco, the scenes were everyone in a boardroom applauds, they’re all here with Nguyen’s other trademark obsessions. Because it’s not a Nguyen film without a reference to Hitchcock, Tippi Hedren has a cameo appearance as Julie’s mother and, of course, Nguyen includes a scene in which she talks about how much she loves birds. Do you think Hedren ever got tired of directors telling her to react to birds? I mean, she did make other films. Of course, other than Marnie and Roar, I can’t really think of any of them right now….

Anyway, Julie and Jack is silly and dumb and visually, it looks like a community college student film. At the same time, it’s so sincere and so cheerfully clueless about its inability to be the thought-provoking and mind-bending love story that it wants to be that I can’t help but like it a little. It’s a film that tries very, very hard and it’s difficult not to appreciate, on at least some level, the effort.