Quint

This 80's actioner, described by critics at the time as one of the most stupid films of all time, could be succinctly described as a kind of Dances with Wolves on steroids with a Russian accent. This anti-communist agitprop by director Joseph Zito (a renowned specialist in killing communists in films) is still mentioned in political books today because of the controversy surrounding its financing – a notorious Republican lobbyist who was later jailed for corruption. The uniqueness of Red Scorpion lies in the fact that its main character is a Russian defector, and it’s also set in the African desert, not exactly a common setting in action films. Dolph Lundgren plays a Soviet special commando with a penchant for killing, drinking vodka and burping. His mission is to eliminate an African leader of anti-communist rebels, but after two days in the desert with a scrawny Bushman, he sobers up and begins to question his mission. And then, one day when his bushman friend, who looks like Xixao from The Gods Must Be Crazy, makes him sandals, he realizes he's kicking for the wrong team. He throws away his dog tags and clothes and decides to kick his Soviet, Cuban and Czech (!) comrades out of Africa. I first saw the film in the 90s on videotape with a wonderfully wacky Czech dubbing that took the experience to an even higher level. Again, Lundgren wasn't afforded much dialogue or much clothing (they didn't skimp on the baby oil, though). His minimalist acting fits perfectly with the role of a cold, brainwashed soldier with a ghostly gaze that occasionally flashes hints of awakening mental processes. In fact, the funniest thing about the film is his interactions with the other characters (especially the five-head-smaller bushman and the perpetually cursing American journalist). Lundgren here, one could say, follows his role as the juiced-up Soviet boxer Ivan Drago from Rocky IV, who crosses over to the other side and turns into an angry Rambo action hero. While Stallone had Rambo, Schwarzenegger Commando and Norris Missing in Action, Lundgren had Red Scorpion.

Masters of the Universe is pure B-movie brilliance that has ruined many an actor's career and that rips off other films as much as it can. Yet it doesn't stick to its premise for financial reasons. The story begins on the planet Eternia after a big battle that we don't get to see for financial reasons. At the beginning of the film, He-Man and his buddies flee from the megalomaniacal Skeletor and his gang to another, randomly chosen planet, which for financial reasons is Earth. The film has little in common with the source material (He-Man uses a laser pistol instead of his huge sword). The most important attribute of the He-Man action figures was that they had muscles and almost no clothes, the animated series and comics were basically just advertisements for them and didn't bring much depth to their world. The characters in the movie are basically just animated versions of these action figures, but their costumes look extremely ridiculous in live-action form (the actors can often barely move in them). He-Man's identity is purely his musculature (his masculinity is accented twice in his name – “he” and “man” for good measure). And I actually can't think of a more suitable actor for the role than Dolph Lundgren. His eccentric comic-book visage, complete with leather underpants and bondage belts, will forever be etched in your memory. Lundgren wasn't too proud to play He-Man. While his Swedish accent wasn't ultimately dubbed over as originally planned, it's used here at most as a tacky mountain of muscle that occasionally says something. Still, this is the first role in which he utters more than four sentences. The best lines here, however, are delivered by He-Man's adversary Skeletor, whose character as a spoiled brat who must have all the toys to himself is summed up by his memorable line, “I must possess all, or I possess nothing!” So he must have the most epic set piece in the entire film, his throne. Character actor Frank Langella downright relishes the role of the maniacal bad guy, uttering diabolically stupid monologues with Shakespearean earnestness and managing to deliver a solid performance despite the rubber mask that covers most of his facial expressions.

Conan the Destroyer is the absolute pinnacle of stupid entertainment without a single weak spot. While Conan the Barbarian is dark and deadly serious fantasy for adults, Conan the Destroyer is a boyishly naive tween fable that doesn't take itself the least bit seriously. Forget the grim atmosphere, brutal violence and sexual orgy of the first film (not that we'd expect anything like that from a screenwriter who has written gems like My Little Pony). The second film doesn't try to convey any philosophical ideas like “what doesn't kill you makes you stronger”. Conan has already gone through a painful and traumatic transformation that has made him a stronger person. But he's also a little dumber. In his second outing, he's no longer the thoughtful warrior of the first, but a naive beefcake who rushes into battle unprepared. This time, instead of fights between experienced warriors, we see brawls reminiscent of wrestling matches, with Conan posing with his sword like a bodybuilding contest. While for the first film Arnold had to lose a few pounds of muscle to look less bodybuilder-like, for the sequel he has regained muscle mass, and he's fitter than ever before and since. Director Richard Fleischer clearly tried to sell his muscularity as much as possible, dressing him only in leather underpants while the other actors wear multiple layers of fur. Conan is helped this time by a motley crew of assorted characters. An annoying little thief who eats stolen gems to keep them from being stolen. A grumpy magician who has a face like he's constipated when he casts a spell. A lively tomboy played by singer Grace Jones, who took her role so seriously that she sent two stuntmen to the hospital in the heat of the moment. And a delightfully bratty princess with perfectly coiffed hair whose virginity is guarded by the thundering Bombaata, ironically portrayed by basketball player Wilt Chamberlain, who became famous for allegedly seducing and bedding 20,000 women. Fleischer's fantastical adventure is straightforward fun, filmed with a fresh, childlike verve. The film wastes no time with lengthy exposition or character development, but is instead filled with comically exaggerated action, pugilism with strange monsters (played by famous wrestlers) and memorably absurd magic fights. Also a source of fun are the plankish acting performances (the scene with a drunken Conan is a highlight) and the hilariously stupid dialogue that would be the envy of any sitcom. The film's B-credentials are elevated by the cinematography of the legendary Jack Cardiff, who can make even the shoddy sets look quite good, and the epic musical score by Basil Poledouris.

Roar is a film curiosity shrouded in so many crazy stories that I just had to watch it. The film was supposedly 11 years in the making. Actress Tippi Hedren (who apparently didn’t have enough with the grueling filming of the horror film The Birds) declared that it was probably the most dangerous shoot of all time and wrote a book about it. Reportedly, 70 crew members were injured during the filming of this animal “horror” movie. Why so many? Because when someone got hurt, they didn't see them on set the next day, so they had to replace them with someone else. All this was used to promote the film (whose trailer, for example, boasts about how many stitches and fractures the various actors sustained on set), but it didn't help its success and it was completely forgotten for many years. Now, distributor Drafthouse Films has rediscovered it and will release it on Blu-ray in the fall, and word is starting to get around again. This is not a good film by any means. The script has makes no sense, and the direction is rather chaotic. It's basically a high-budget, homemade amateur dream project by Hollywood agent Noel Marshall, who dragged (and nearly killed) his entire family (including wife Tippi Hedren and his stepdaughter, a then-unknown Melanie Griffith) into it. At the center of the simple story is a family that returns to Africa to visit the head of the family, a zookeeper (played by Noel Marshall himself) who lives in a wooden house with dozens of lions, tigers, panthers, and cheetahs that like to pounce on people for fun. The family arrives just as the father is gone, and the entire film is practically about the other family members running and hiding from his pets, because (until the end of the film) they have no idea that they're actually cute animals who just want to play. The film was made in support of African wildlife and is apparently meant to show how animals can coexist (despite, for example, scalping cinematographer Jan de Bont). The whole thing comes across as an incredibly bizarre amalgamation of grotesque action scenes, with actors and animals running around uncontrollably and getting into wild confrontations. At the same time, it's not entirely clear whether this is supposed to be slapstick or horror. And we are not worried about the characters, but rather the actors who play them, since what takes place in the film looks really VERY dangerous (the animals were not trained) and it's a wonder they all survived. For example, you'll see a huge number of lions jumping on a man, a tiger sinking a boat, while another boat gets crushed by an elephant and then Tippi Hedren sent flying (really) and breaks her leg – nothing was staged. It’s hard to know how many stars to give it. In any case, it's a fascinating spectacle that I'll happily repeat when I want to show something wonderfully obscure to a visitor.

The TV is full of police procedurals, and most of them differ from each other only by a different name, a different setting and different characters. Personally, I tend to avoid them because they rarely come up with anything out of the ordinary. But the creators of Fortitude have done that. For one thing, the story has an unconventional setting in the remote Arctic, which makes for a chilling atmosphere with impressive visuals. Moreover, this is not a pure crime drama. In fact, over time, a hidden line of horror begins to surface very subtly and slowly. At first, it's not easy to navigate the seemingly complicated plot with its many characters, but eventually it all comes together and works perfectly. The quality of the seasons, however, is unfortunately downhill. The first is excellent, the last almost unwatchable.

Sword and sorcery fantasy directed by the master of hallucinatory gore horror Lucio Fulci is not really sword and sorcery, because there are no swords. Overall, the film breaks quite a bit from the established conventions of its subgenre, and is well worth recommending for that reason. Fulci wouldn't be Fulci if he didn't make it all his own. Conquest may be just as silly as most Italian Conan knockoffs from the 80s, but thanks to Fulci's direction it doesn't lack for distinctive visuals. It's unusually bleak, brutal and surreal for a fantasy film. Most of it takes place in dark swamps and caves where smoke machines run at full blast. The entire film is literally bathed in a thick fog and is shot entirely in strong backlighting through heavily softening filters, which dissolves the footage to the point of abstraction. Some viewers will appreciate the extremely hazy visuals, some will find them cheap. Either way, it's a great way to disguise bad visual effects.

One of the many B-grade sword and sorcery films of the 80s, but one that (unlike the first Deathstalker) doesn't take itself seriously at all. Well-known B-movie maker Jim Wynorski obviously realized the very limited possibilities of an extremely low budget, so he took it all in stride with humor and an attempt to make the silliest and most absurd film possible. Thus, the poor acting and shoddy production design (which only remotely resembles Boris Vallejo's eye-catching posters) play into his hands, and the result is an entertaining romp that quite successfully parodies many genre clichés.

Much better than last year's thematically similar Grizzly. But Backcountry does without the well-known actors and the perfectly trained bear Bart (who can play even the most subtle nuances of expression). While the central bear doesn't look all that menacing on the surface, can't even stand on its hind legs properly, and is even noticeably artificial in some close-ups, he's still much more frightening by acting quite authentically. It's not an unconvincingly intelligent monster that takes revenge and systematically murders people, as in the aforementioned Grizzly, but a normal hungry animal roaming the woods that scares with its unpredictability. The first half is tedious and it's a shame the film doesn't start building tension much earlier. The bear attack, which is visible in only a few shots, is relatively brief but all the more believable. And I imagine that's probably how it would have played out in reality. The whole tent scene, by the way, reminded me of a similarly chilling moment in Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man.

I can't think of another show that could keep me continuously entertained until its 12th season. In fact, I can't remember another show that I could even watch for that long (except maybe The Simpsons). It's incredible how long the sitcom Two and a Half Men managed to successfully capitalize on virtually the same situations, based on a simple concept of two completely different characters living together under the same roof. With its cheeky humour, it often pushed itself to the limit of what could be afforded on prime-time television. With his relentless meta-humour, it’s not afraid to hit even the personal lives of its own actors, and it was able to cope with the firing of his main star with self-irony (ironically because he led a similarly wild life to the character he played).

Italian director Antonio Margheriti never missed any exploitative subgenre that could be invented. Nor was he shy about combining several of them together. So why not use costumes and props from older sci-fi and post-apocalyptic films in a prehistoric adventure film. This amusingly nonsensical cross between Conan and Flash Gordon is a 90-minute version of an originally four-hour Italian-Turkish miniseries. Apparently because of this, it literally rockets along at a breakneck pace and there's hardly a dead spot in it. It's so packed to bursting with wonderfully absurd moments, featuring barbarians with blown-out wigs, papier-mâché dinosaurs in every conceivable guise, villains in furry monkey costumes, mummies, androids, spaceships and, of course, the flawlessly stupid Golden Raspberry Award-winning disco theme song.