#30 The Wild World of Batwoman (Wes)

The Wild World of Batwoman

I was actually aware of our next movie The Wild World of Batwoman purely as I’d seen the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode that riffed it years ago. So knowing how bad this movie was in advance, I was dreading having to watch it without Mike and the Bots to take the edge off of the torture. It turned out though that we couldn’t find a non-riffed version of this movie anywhere, so we watched the MST3K version and had somewhat of a lucky escape…

When one of the Batgirls is bat-drugged in a bat-bar and batnapped, the leader of the Batgirls, Batwoman (Katherine Victor) is called by some other Batgirls (who are listening in to the first Batgirl being batnapped via a bat-wrist-radio) to help. By now Batgirl has been locked in a cage and is being held captive by three villians, Tiger (Mel Oshins), Bruno (Steve Conte) and Professor Neon (George Mitchell), who are all working for the villainous Rat Fink (Richard Banks). When Batwoman goes to rescue her ward, Rat Fink demands that she steals him an atomic hearing aid before he’ll release her. Batwoman manages to foil the incompetent villians though and rescue Batgirl. Batwoman is than asked to guard the atomic hearing aid, but Rat Finks men drug everybody with a happy pill that makes everybody dance (has anyone got any Vera’s? Luvley….) and they get away with it. Can Batwoman defeat Rat Fink and save the bat-day? Why don’t more crimefighters try to locate stolen items via bat-séance (I’m assuming it’s due to all the massively racist spirits)? What on Earth do the monsters from The Mole People have to do with this movie? Find out right now, by reading the rest of this same bat-review on this same bat-blog! (Not really. I never answer these questions, but keep on reading anyway)

Ok firstly there’s some things that came up during researching this movie that I know Colin will cover in his review too (which you read here), but I think they need addressing. Firstly that Batwoman is apparently a vampire in this movie. Did we miss something entirely here? At what point in this film did she show any vampiric qualities at all? The only scene which even mentions vampires is right at the beginning of the film, where three wannabe Batgirls (who are never seen again) drink yogurt and are now suddenly “synthetic vampires”. This throw away scene was added to the movie after it’s name was changed to explain its new title, which brings me to item number two…

The reason Batwoman is supposedly a vampire is because this movie went through a name change to She Was a Hippy Vampire after director Jerry Warren was sued by DC Comics for copyright infringement. Somehow either the judge presiding over the case had never read (or even seen) one of his comics, never seen Batman on TV (even though this was made during it’s height of popularity) or seen one of the 1940s theatrical serials. Either that or they decided that changing the gender of a hero, and making the costume more skimpy was different enough for it not to be a complete rip off and the judge found in Warren’s favour. The crazy thing is, that the fact that it was BatWOMAN and not Batman actually was Warrens defence. I bet he wished he kept Batwoman’s sidekick Thrush in the script after he got away with that one!

Reading an interview with Warren makes the whole thing crazier than it already is though. Because he won the lawsuit, he didn’t legally have to change the title of the movie at all. The reason he did was because by the time the movie was released, four years after it was made, the Batmania was dying down and Warren thought it’d be “ridiculous” to try to cash in on the whole Batcraze. I’m starting to think that the judge that heard the DC Comics vs Warren case was Judge Rummy and DC were being represented by Lionel Hutz…

So the movie itself… Shambolic is a word I don’t use often enough, but think it’s the perfect word to describe this film. Not only does the film rip off the design of Batman, the plot is so absurd it could have been taken from one the Batman episodes of the sixties. However whilst Batman would have handled it with buckets of camp charm, The Wild World of Batwoman is so ham-fisted it just remains ludicrous. That’s not to say that this film doesn’t have its moments of inept charm, for example Batwoman being fed chocolate milk and macaroons by the villians when she goes to rescue the kidnapped Batgirl is a moment of genius, as is some of the Batgirls bizarrely fighting over a horseshoe in the background in one scene, but they are just too few and far between to really make this a worthwhile endeavour.

Batwoman herself is oddly the least wild person in the whole of the swinging sixties. She looks like 80s pop star Toyah was told she had to attend a superhero themed costume party with only 10 minutes notice, so had to put on a facemask and grab the first thing that came out of her wardrobe. She is also completely deadpan, even when saying the most ridiculous lines, which is a nice touch, but ultimately watching someone with the emotional range of a Terminator becomes tiresome (unless you’re actually watching a Terminator movie obviously).

The acting from everybody else in this movie however makes Victor look like she’s in line for an Oscar. It just simply doesn’t exist (with Warren reportedly giving lines to other actors if the person who initially had the line annoyed him, this is hardly surprising). The Batgirls “acting” consists entirely of wearing bikinis and go-go dancing. It’s just a shame that this dancing is less erotic than the Tinman’s dance in The Wizard of Oz.

This is another one of those movies that probably wouldn’t have even been heard of enough to even reach the IMDB bottom 100 if it wasn’t for being in Mystery Science Theatre 3000! As much as I loved that show, I’m starting to resent it for bringing so many just plain terrible movies to the worlds attention. The only redeeming feature I found about The Wild World of Batwoman is that we couldn’t find the whole movie, so I can hardly recommend even the most bored of you out there to watch it. A dull movie, with a plot that’s harder to find than the answer to one of The Riddler’s riddles. Less Batman, more I Wonder Why this Movie was Ever Made Woman.

#30 The Wild World of Batwoman (1966) (MST3K Version) (Colin)

Cast: Katherine Victor, George Mitchell, Steve Brodie, Richard Banks

Director: Jerry Warren

Genre: Action / Comedy / Adventure

The next movie on our list is the rather familiar sounding The Wild World of Batwoman, (1966). Now, the first thing I thought was that this must be a spin-off set in DC’s Batman universe, however, I would be wrong in that assumption.

The Batman comic was very popular by the mid-60’s and the classic camp TV Series had just started. Seeing the popularity of this franchise, director Jerry Warren thought he could capitalise on this by making his own bat-based superhero movie.

Words like ‘copyright’ and ‘intellectual property’ are not in Warren’s vocabulary and so he went off to make his own version using a female superhero imaginatively called Batwoman. DC was obviously a bit miffed by this and took Warren to court claiming plagiarism. The judge was having none of it and believed there was no similarity and that the movie could go ahead. He then promptly collected his white stick, his Labrador and shuffled gingerly out of the courtroom.

And so thanks to that judge, we have this movie on our list but thanks to fate, we could not find a copy of the original, so we had to watch the MST3K version!

As usual when we have to watch the MST3K version, I’ll begin with a short review of that episode.

It’s a Mike episode and includes a short film called ‘Cheating’, which is about a young lad called Johnny, who cheats on his Algebra test at school. It appears 1950’s USA was a tough place to grow up because once Johnny is found cheating, he is completely ostracised from society. No second chances here, he is thrown out of the student council, loses all his friends and dies alone in a crack den with Herpes, (I may have made the last bit up). All in all it does seem a bit harsh for cheating on a worthless Maths test!

The riffing is solid in this episode and good throughout both short and main features although I think it’s during ‘Cheating’ that some of the best gags come out. It’s on YouTube and I recommend you check it out.

Anyway, back to our main feature, The Wild World of Batwoman…..

As the opening credits role, we are now told that this movie is called The Wild Wild World of Batwoman. Less than a minute in and the movie is promising us 1 more ‘wild’ than originally advertised. Surely this is a good omen and we are about to enjoy an action packed thriller of a movie?

Supervillian Rat Fink, (Richard Banks), has decided to steal a hearing aid. This is no ordinary hearing aid however, as it is atomic powered and can listen in on any conversation in the world! The device is made by global idiots ‘Ayjak’ and Rat Fink obviously did not do his research because the device is incredibly unstable due to it’s power source, (Plutonium), (is eavesdropping on someone’s mundane chatterings about The Great British Bake Of really worth slowly frying to death?)

Rat Fink decides to force his arch nemesis and ‘hero’ of the movie, Batwoman, (Katherine Victor), to do the dirty deed for him and so promptly kidnaps one of her crew, (known as Batgirls). Batwoman is in a right old pickle when Ayjak then ask hers to protect their hearing device and to stop Rat Fink in his tracks! (what is a girl who is ripped of from a successful comic book franchise to do?).

There’s also apparently a love story between kidnapped Batgirl, (Suzanne Lodge) and one of Rat Fink’s henchmen, Tiger, (Mel Oshins) and a background story about mad Professor Octavius, (George Mitchell) creating a cave full of monsters. But they appear to be glued into the movie as an afterthought when Warren realised the main story was not up to much…….

Will Batwoman help Rat Fink? Can she save the kidnapped Batgirl? Does Warren rip off anyone else’s work in this movie? Watch The Wild (Wild) World of Batwoman to find out!

In answer to the last question, yes he does. The beginning of the movie is lifted directly from another movie, which explains why you never see those characters again and why the incident is never mentioned, (it doesn’t explain why it’s in the movie, however!). Shots of Professor Octavius’s cave full of monsters are actually scenes from The Mole People (1956). Whilst the ending is a mixture of The Monkees and Scooby-Doo.

It seems Warren is a habitual ideas thief, but he has no idea how to bring other people’s ideas together to make one coherent unit. What we end up with is a poorly made confused mess.

It should come as no surprise to me how bad the acting is, considering how far we are into our list, but I must say I was knocked over by how piss poor the ‘actors’ in this movie were. According to Wikipedia, Batwoman herself, (Victor), said that learning the script was like memorising from a telephone book and her delivery certainly sounded like she was reading one out. I know she had nothing to work with, but at least show some emotion, even if it’s annoyed at being put into such a lame movie!

Prof Octavius is supposed to be from Germany, (I think), but his accent covers Germany, Austria, Eastern Europe, the UK and eventually Pakistan!

IMDb may answer why some of the cast were such bad actors. They claim that the Batgirls were actually recruited from outside a Strip Club which had just burned down. That explains why blonde Batgirl who, to show surprise, opens her mouth, puts her hand in front of her mouth, looks at other Batgirl, closes mouth, then opens her mouth, puts her hand in front of her mouth, looks at other Batgirl, closes mouth and so on about 20 times.

It also explains why the majority of the supporting cast are just asked to wear bikinis and wiggle their bottoms to 60’s surf music, of which there are probably more scenes than our other recent bottom wiggling movie, The Girl in Gold Boots, (see review here).

It doesn’t explain why, during one scene in which an Ayjak representative is chatting to Batwoman, the Batgirls are fighting over a horseshoe! The reason for this is because of crap direction and for that, we can point the blame back at Mr. Idea Thief himself, Warren.

Warren wrote, produced and directed this movie, so he really is the only person who needs to be held accountable. As per the above example, the direction sucked and another example can be found with that same scene. Characters inexplicably move positions between cuts, lighting varies wildly and it’s hard to tell if this is the same day, let alone the same conversation.

There’s also the small matter of the kidnapping at the beginning of the movie, which takes place in a bar, or at least I think it does. One minute one Batgirl is at the bar talking and then the next she is being carried out and the bar behind has been trashed. This may have been a poor edit on the MST3K version, (I don’t think it was), but there appears to be an entire fight scene which was taken out, (and might have made the beginning of the movie at least a little interesting).

As I said earlier, this is a confused mess. Batwoman is actually supposed to be a vampire as well, which was a total surprise to me as I did not clock this during the movie, (I only found out by reading afterwards and learning that the movie would later be re-released as ‘She Was a Hippy Vampire’. Come to think of it, there’s no mention she’s a hippy either!).

If she is a vampire, why on earth does she not just bite Rat Fink and save us the pain of this movie? (Maybe he is just a big clove of garlic under that Balaclava?).

This is a truly awful movie which has no idea of what it is meant to be. It sounds bad, (like it was recorded in a wind tunnel with a sponge), looks bad, (cellotaped scenes from other bad movies) and probably smells bad, (it certainly does stink).

But for all of these faults, I can exclusively reveal that this is not the highest bat-based superhero on our list.

But more on that later……….

#31 Sura (Wes)

Sura

It was going to happen again. We was going to have sub another one of our movies as we couldn’t find a copy of The Tony Blair Witch Project after over a month of searching. I didn’t relish the idea of having to watch an extra movie, so I decided to try and track down some of the other movies we’d had trouble finding before. I ran into many of the same problems as before, but eventually managed to overcome one of these by finding a separate subtitle file for a Tamil language movie that was on Dailymotion: Sura (English: Shark). Was this effort worth it? There was only one way to find out…

The villagers of Yaazh Nagar are worried because one of their fishermen, Sura (Vijay), has been lost at sea. However it isn’t long until Sura is swimming to land, leaping from the water like a dolphin or perhaps an anti-Tom Daley and showing everybody what an amazing guy he is. Soon Sura meets Poormina (Tamannaah) who is distraught over the loss of her dog and wants to commit suicide by drowning. Sura talks her out of it, and they start dating. Whilst all may seem idyllic in Sura’s village, Minister Samuthira Raja (Dev Gill) wants to take the land away from the villagers to build a theme park. Raja will go to any lengths to get the land, including attempting to kill Sura by burning down the village. But Sura, with help from Poormina and his best friend Umbrella (Vadivelu) resist every attempt by the corrupt Raja. Will Sura save the day and rebuild the village? Actually is there anything Sura can’t do? Can anyone actually explain to me why everyone breaks into song and dance at random points in the movie? Does anybody know a good cure for a numb arse?

The main problem with Sura is its length. At nearly three hours long it really struggles to hold your attention. It could have been easily been half the length and still told the same story. Actually the story could have been told in half an hour as so much of the movie is taken up with songs, pointless scenes with Umbrella and scenes that repeatedly show how good and wise Sura is (thrill as Sura takes on corrupt money lenders who are exploiting poor people and allowing them to starve. Marvel as Sura stops Poornima drowning herself. Watch in astonishment as Sura buys pens from a beggar. Bang your head repeatedly against the screen as Vijay’s ego starts to grow so big it actually eclipses the sun and the world is plunged into never-ending darkness). Seriously it takes nearly an hour and a half for the story itself to actually start. Before that it’s mostly a film about wonderful Sura is, and how much everyone loves him.

The plot itself (when it finally appears) doesn’t make much sense to me. The villainous Raja spends a lot of money and effort to obtain the land the village stands on, without seemingly just going to the village and offering the villagers the money to just buy the land from them in the first place. I guess that they may not take his money, as I’m sure the village is where their families have always lived, and they have emotional ties to it, but he doesn’t even try. He reminds me of Dick Dastardly in Wacky Races (and it’s not just his cartoonish villainy). He wastes so much time and energy doing things the hard way, determined to cheat his way to winning, that you just think if he tried the honest way he’d have a lot more success (I know this is off topic, but Dick Dastardly must have had quite a lead in each race to have time to set up each elaborate trap, why not just take that lead and win the race? IT MAKES NO SENSE!).

I actually quite liked the character Sura. He is totally absurd, being like a cross between Jesus, Shaft and Neo from The Matrix, but Vijay plays him with a certain cheeky charm that makes you enjoy his performance. Umbrella seems to be in the movie for nothing more than just to have some completely unrelated comedy scenes, which are all very hit or miss, but Vadivelu again is quite a fun actor which translates well into his character. Dev Gill plays Raja almost like a Disney villain and you begin to suspect that Poormina’s dog was killed and skinned by him to make a very small coat, but ultimately he is entertaining. Lastly Tamannaah as Poormina seems to have little to do in this movie other than look pretty, as she really gets nothing else to do except for fawning over Vijay and occasionally singing.

As for the song and dance numbers, I quite enjoyed them. I have nothing to really compare them too, so can’t judge whether they are good by the usual standards of any Kollywood or Bollywood movies, but for once in our list, the dancers were in time with each other, the choreography was good and the music was fun and upbeat. I was quite confused as to why the songs were even in the film though, as the scenes with them in have nothing to do with the film itself and are just like cheap music videos randomly inserted into the movie.

Even though three hours was a trial to sit through, I actually didn’t mind Sura. I just wouldn’t recommend that anyone ever watch this movie unless they have a penchant for sitting down for three hours to watch not a lot happen (so maybe cricket fans or anyone who thought that Lord of the Rings: Return of the King needed more cut footage added to the end of the movie). Perhaps “Shark” is a bit of a misleading name for this movie though, as it has no real bite and is absurdly long. What’s the Tamil word for “eel”?

#31 Sura (2010) (Colin)

Cast: Vijay, Tamannaah Bhatia, Vadivelu, Dev Gill

Director: S.P. Rajkumar

Genre: Action, Comedy, Romance

It’s time for Colin and Wes Watch 100 Bad Movies to go high brow and international again, as our next movie is direct from India.

Back at #34b, At Long Last Love, (see review here), I mentioned the fact that I hated musicals. Now I didn’t know much about Indian movies but I was led to believe that there is a lot of singing and dancing. Couple this with the fact that it’s subtitled and nearly 3 hours long and you can probably imagine my reaction. I think my exact words rhymed with duck’s bake.

But I had to remind myself, I have not watched an Indian movie before and perhaps my preconceptions were wrong. Therefore I had to approach this with an open mind and several cans of medium strength lager.

So what would I make of my first Indian movie? It’s time to be cultured once more as we head to India for the movie Sura, (2010).

I even put my lager into a glass.

The inhabitants of a small fishing Hamlet called Yaazh Nagar are worried as one of their fisherman, Sura, (Vijay), has gone missing. Loved, adored and considered their leader by the Hamlet, the entire population look out to the ocean in despair as hope appears lost. Fortunately within a couple of minutes, a handsome young man swims to the beach like a dolphin and we find out Sura is alive and well. Hurrah!

I thought this was the end of the movie but when I checked we still had 2hrs 35mins left my heart sank and I realised the story we had just witnessed was in actual fact just the opening credits. It’s no wonder this movie is so long if something which should take 15 seconds takes 15 minutes!

Sura and best friend Umbrella, (Vadivelu), encounter a young lady, Poornima, (Tamannaah Bhatia), who is about to end her life by attempting to drown herself. Sura manages to save her and finds out that Poornima has been driven to suicide by the rejection of her love, Ramesh. Sura is understandably concerned, until he finds out that Ramesh is a dog!

Poornima starts to fall for Sura, (Poor nima? Poor Sura!), but Sura does not seem so keen at first, (after all the daft whatsit has just tried to give herself a lethal bath and all because some mutt has stopped licking her face!).

Meanwhile, evil bastard, Minister Samuthria Raja, (Dev Gill), has hatched a plan to turn Yaazh Nagar into an amusement park. Raja is ruthless and will stop at nothing to get what he wants, (he fixed the election to get voted in, killed the 2 people whose actual idea it was to build the park and gave someone a right good stare when they dared to question him), and he soon realises to get rid of the Hamlet, he must get rid of Sura.

When Raja burns down the huts of Yaazh Nagar, the villagers believe that Sura has been killed. Losing their likeable and influential leader, homeless and desperate, they accept Raja’s offer of R.10,000 and a new home many miles away. But as they are about to leave, Sura emerges from the ashes…….

Can Sura stop the evil Raja? Will Sura fall for Poornima? Will Ramesh stop doing that thing he does on the couch?

Watch the next 2hrs 30mins of Sura to find out!

I have read many reviews which suggests that Sura is a cliché and that everything in this movie has been done before and better. This is hard for me to comment on as this is my first Indian movie. I guess if, like me, you have seen pretty much every Wrestlemania since 1985, then you’re going to think this year’s matches have been ‘done before’ or ‘was better done by so and so’ or ‘offers nothing new’. Likewise if you are watching Wretlemania for the first time, you have no comparison and so probably couldn’t comment on what has come before.

So this is where I find myself, I can only really judge this movie on this movie as it is the first of its genre that I have watched and I have nothing to compare it to.

The story itself is not difficult to understand, which is a great relief if you are having to watch subtitles, tweet and stop a cat trying to climb onto your laptop all at the same time! It’s not a very in-depth story and in truth could have been told in a lot less time than the 3hrs deemed necessary by Rajkumar. In fact it probably could have replaced the opening credits about Sura’s ‘disappearance’ and still had time for the 6 mins song and dance number.

I like the complete opposites of Sura and Raja’s characters. They are Yin and Yang exaggerated for effect. Considering this is a U movie, the method in which Raja dispenses the 2 people who originally came up with the Fair building idea is quite dark, but for most of the time he is a pantomime baddie.

Vijay is obviously good at being the lead role in a Bollywood movie. This was his 50^th movie and so you would hope he knows what he is doing by now, (although Adam Sandler is on his 500^th movie and seems to have less of a Scooby Doo what he is doing now, than he did some 300 movies ago…..).

I guess Sura was very similar to his other lead roles, however, I have to admit his goody two shoes, can do no wrong, kindness did begin to grate on me. If it wasn’t for the fact that his exaggerated niceness was done with a cheeky nod and clearly tongue in cheek at times, then I could have easily found myself cheering Raja on and hoping the fire is the last we’d see of the smug do-gooder.

The reason why Sura is not killed of earlier though is probably due to the rubbish fighting his enemies produce. They are clearly hitting air 3 feet from each other, but slapping noises and punch sounds from a 1970’s stock library tape fill the speakers and we are led to believe that these are all landing crisply. It’s not convincing and if the sound effects were removed it actually looks like the cast are trying to swat a pesky fly.

The support cast is largely background and uninteresting. Umbrella’s character is only there as light relief to the main story and his side stories are generally unfunny and forgettable. Poornima’s character is one-dimensional and only serves as Sura’s love interest and someone to sing the duets with!

The songs themselves did not rile me as much as they did in ‘At Long Last Love’. I think this is because the cast don’t spontaneously burst out into song and dance in that creepy way I don’t like, but rather we seem to cut to the cast and characters who are performing their song and dance. It feels like it is separate to the movie and that I have accidentally sat on the remote and changed TV channel.

Because of this it did not annoy me and also because the songs are not in English, I ended up reading the lyrics, which again, softened the blow of having to put up with musical numbers in the middle of a movie as I was distracted by the reading.

The songs themselves did sound alike to my untrained ear and all seemed to be about Sura being some pure soul with a good heart and the courage of a lion, or something. One song is about inserting a key into a doll, which is just pure filth, (or maybe something just got lost in translation?), but thankfully there are only a handful of songs throughout.

The best thing about the songs were that they served as useful toilet breaks / drink refreshers throughout this very long movie. And it is the length of the film which is my main problem.

JFK is one of my favourite movies, as I love a good conspiracy, but I simply can not concentrate for 3 hrs long. I have never and will never manage to sit through the movie in one sitting; I need a break! The same is true for Lord of the Rings, Ben Hur or Schindler’s List, great movies, but both my brain and bladder can not manage them in one go.

So a subtitled movie in which you have to concentrate for 3 hours was always going to be a challenge to me. The movie itself does have an Intermission around half way, so it appears it is recognised that no-one is expected to sit through the whole movie without stretching their legs at some point. But when you are cramming this into an already busy evening for a crap movie blog read by your mum and a couple of friends, (hi guys, thanks for getting this far down the blog), time is precious and when I am watching something I feel could have been told in half the time, I get a bit annoyed.

So what did I make of my first Indian movie? Well it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. This is hardly a glowing review, I grant you, but I was dreading this movie and was pleasantly surprised when I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would.

The time thing is a big factor, but the movie was easy to follow, the song and dances not too annoying and some light hearted moments made it enjoyable. It was a new experience, which probably made it more interesting and witnessing another culture and their ideas into what makes a movie, held my attention long enough to not get bored.

But giving the time it takes to watch a movie, would I watch another Indian film? I’d like to think so, but it’s not a Sura thing.

#32 The Maize: The Movie AKA Dark Harvest 2 (Wes)

The Maize: The Movie AKA Dark Harvest 2

There’s been a bunch of movies recently that have been extremely hard to find. Many of these are because they are foreign language movies that haven’t had wide releases outside their original country. The Maize: The Movie though was different. It was proving impossible to find until I found out it had been released under the title Dark Harvest 2 and I was lucky enough to find a second hand copy on Amazon. So what made this movie harder to find than the plot to The Barbaric Beast of Boggy Creek 2? We unfortunately was about too find out…

When trick or treaters knock on Shy Walker’s (Bill Cowell) door he gets a physic vision for some reason of two sisters who went missing in a local corn maze the year before. However the disappearance of two young girls doesn’t seem to have bothered anybody or harmed business in any way as the maze is open again this year and Shy’s two daughters (Alyssa Cowell – real life daughter of Bill and another girl, but I couldn't be bothered to learn the characters names) are there at that very moment. Rushing to the maze Shy stumbles around shouting “girls!” in an attempt to find his missing daughters. Whilst they are also wandering the maze, filming their own horror movie, they come across the spirits of the missing girls (who clearly were on their way home from failing to get the part of the Grady daughters in the local school play when they went missing). The spirits have trapped his daughters in the maze and now Shy must find their way out. Will Shy find his daughters? Will he set the spirits of the dead girls free? Who do the mysterious wellington boots we keep seeing belong to? Will I be able to think of any corn related jokes before the end of my review or will I just play it by ear?

Before I mentioned that The Barbaric Beast of Boggy Creek 2 (see here) had no plot, but The Maize: The Movie makes it look like The Usual Suspects in comparison. It’s like a cross between Children of the Corn and Labyrinth, if you take away the gore, the Muppets, the acting, the scares, the pure entertainment and David Bowie’s creepy codpiece. This movie is literally a man walking around a maze for an hour, with occasional not very creepy girls and other pointless bullshit not managing to make any impact on his random wandering, until he finally confronts the murderer. I’ve seen washing powder commercials with a more gripping storyline.

There is something I haven’t mentioned yet that makes the lack of plot even worse. 20 minutes into the movie Cowell’s daughters literally run into him, stand there briefly and then run off, whilst he stands and does nothing. He was in the maze for 6 minutes before he finds them and then just lets them run away for no reason whatsoever (I even took a screenshot with the timer at the bottom to show how stupid this really is). I had to sit through another 80 minutes of this drivel for no discernible reason, and that just fills me with rage. 

  

For a movie that is supposed to be a horror movie, there is less tension than in the viral YouTube video “Charlie Bit My Finger”. At least in that you may worry that Charlie now has a taste for blood, and will go on a murderous rampage. Or perhaps he’s a werewolf, and the poor boy he’s just bitten now will suffer the same curse. The most tense you ever feel whilst watching this movie is when you worry if it’s going to rain any more between shots and how Bill Cowell will ever be able to afford the dry cleaning bill.

In a world full of wannabe independent filmmakers, Bill Cowell is probably the least talented I’ve ever come across. I admire his determination; he not only directed and acted in this mess, but also was responsible for producing, writing and assisting with both the editing and the cinematography. Unfortunately this multi-tasking left nobody to whack his nose with a rolled up newspaper and sternly tell him “No!”

It was surprising to learn this was Cowell’s second movie (his first was called Raindrops) as it really looks as though all the film making experience he had ever had before making this movie was perhaps filming a friends wedding video for them. I say that because he seems to have only just found the special camera effects button in whatever editing program he had found a free trial of. For some reason throughout the movie Cowell keeps inserting multiple angle shots of the same scene in small floating boxes. He seems to love these more than George Lucas loves screen wipes or JJ Abrams loves lens flare. When he isn’t using SFX that not even the makers of workplace health and safety videos use anymore, Cowell decides to randomly insert shots of random objects into the movie (or just shaky shots of corn). It’s like a watching a bizarre game show, “here’s what you could win if you escape from the maze…”

The cinematography itself is so strange that you have to wonder what Cowell could have possibly been thinking (or taking). At one point the camera rotates 360° for no reason whatsoever, and every conceivable angle is used to film Cowell walking (including upside down). The camera also loses focus quite often and nobody on the set has any concept of lighting, as once darkness falls the movie is lit by a single spotlight. This film is basically the least professional thing I’ve ever watched.

Cowell (or editor Robert Imbs) also seems to not have grasped the fact that editing a movie involves cutting pointless scenes. Actually if all the pointless scenes were cut, we’d be watching something little more than a trailer. However they could have least made them shorter as they really are bizarrely long in places. As I mentioned before, much of the movie consists of Cowell wandering around shouting “girls!”, but other extended scenes include long static scenes of the corn field, nearly an entire minute of the camera focusing in on a statue of Jesus, his daughters screaming into a video camera for a few minutes, and Cowell digging for even longer.

I couldn’t tell you which fact I learned about this movie whilst researching it I found more shocking. Firstly that this movie actually won an award! It was named as the Best Feature Film – Suspense at the 2004 New York International Independent Film & Video Festival. I can only imagine that it was the only film entered into that category that year… Or secondly, that Cowell actually made a sequel (The Maize 2: Forever Yours), which at the time of writing has a score of 1.2 on IMDB (thankfully not enough reviews to reach the bottom 100 when our list was compiled though, as really not sure I could bear to watch another couple of hours of Cowell’s handiwork).

Because of it’s many faults, I’m sure this movie could be enjoyed with some good friends and a lot of alcohol, but this is not a movie you want to tackle sober and alone as I did. Not so much The Maize: The Movie, more I’m amazed they dare call this a movie!

#32 Dark Harvest 2: The Maize (2004) (Colin)

Cast: Bill Cowell, Kelleigh Murray, Alyssa Cowell, Elena Pezzino

Director: Bill Cowell

Genre: Horror

The next movie on our list has no idea what it is called. When compiling this list, it was called The Maize: The Movie, (2004), but when I received my DVD, it appears to be called Dark Harvest 2: The Maize.

A little bit of research and I’ve found out that this is a sequel to Dark Harvest in much the same way as Troll 2 is a sequel to Troll, ie, not in any way shape or form, (see review here)! So why on earth they changed the name of the movie at some point, I have no idea, unless it was to capitalise on the success of Dark Harvest.

This then confuses me even more, as Dark Harvest went straight to VHS and was hardly a ‘roaring success’, (in fact a quick read of some reviews and it appears it stunk the big one!). The confusion gets even worse when I then discover that there was a Dark Harvest 3 movie, also released in 2004 and also which has no relation whatsoever to DH1 or DH2!

What on earth was going on at distributor, Lions Gate, in 2004? Was there some kind of brand new super skunk which the executives started smoking? Why buy the rights to 3 separate movies and try to package them as a trilogy?

By this point I felt disorientated and confused, a bit like I was in the middle of a maze, which reminded me, we had a bad movie to watch…..

It’s Halloween and what do kids love to do on Halloween? That’s right, they go and visit their local corn maze!

Keri Walker, (Alyssa Cowell), and her sister, Ali, (Elena Pezzino), decide to do just that, after all, why go trick or treating and get lots of yummy candy bars and chocolate, when you can traipse around a muddy corn maze on a cold October morning?

Their father, Shy Walker, (Bill Cowell), has a psychic vision that his 2 daughters are not going to have the fun fuelled experience you would expect from this activity. Seeing a vision of the 2 girls being murdered, Shy drives down to the maze to try to stop them.

When he gets there, he finds out from his wife, Susan, (Kelleigh Murray), that he is already too late and his daughters are in the maze. In an attempt to stop his vision coming true, Shy goes into the maze to rescue them.

There follows 90 minutes of Shy shouting out to his children, the children shouting back and despite being only 10 feet away from each other, never seeming to find each other or their way out.

Can Shy rescue the girls? Is there really a killer in the maze? And can you pad out an entire movie with a man wandering around a corn maze and doing very little? Watch DH2 to find out!

Or rather, don’t bother, because yes, they really can pad out an entire movie with a man wandering around a corn maze. Cowell could have saved us the trouble of having to watch this film by just tweeting the damn plot. Hell, he would still have enough characters left over to use the hashtag #whatweretheysmokingoveratLionsGate.

I mean seriously, how on earth did this movie ever get made? The conversation between Cowell and Lions Gate must have gone along the lines of:

Lions Gate: So tell me about this movie idea you have.

Bill Cowell: OK, so a man wanders around a maze for 90 minutes.

*Long Pause*

LG: Go on…..

BC: Oh no, that’s it.

LG: Excellent, here’s some money, go and make that shit! *takes big drag from suspicious looking cigarette*

The DVD case for this movie has a scarecrow with a scythe in his hand. I have absolutely no idea why as the scary looking scarecrow is not in this movie and this film is not about a scarecrow going on a murdering rampage, (a cereal killer if you will!).

What we actually have here is a very cheap looking movie. Cowell himself leads a cast of actors (and I am using the word actors in its broadest possible term) and is woefully useless. He is so bad that he is constantly upstaged by the wooden bridge which is in the centre of the maze.

Visually it’s awful and contains constant quick cuts, zooming in and out and special effects found on budget camcorders of the early 80’s. Things are constantly out of focus and blurry and it’s as if Cowell found a bucket of moonshine on his way into the maze and necked the lot before filming.

Cowell being off his nut on fermented corn mash would also explain the continuity, or rather lack of it. One minute it’s mid-afternoon, then it’s early morning, then it’s dusk, then it’s mid-afternoon again. A freak rain storm also appears to be going on during the day as one shot the ground is soaking wet with puddles, then it’s bone dry, then it’s a little damp, then it’s soaking wet with puddles again.

It may sound like I’m solely blaming Cowell for this dire movie and you would be right, I am, and with good reason.

The alarm bells should have started ringing when I realised Cowell stars, writes and directs the movie. It is becoming apparent now as we work our way through the list, that when one person does pretty much everything in a movie, then it’s invariably going to be very bad, (for example Boggy Creek 2, (see review here)). If there’s no one around to advise or suggest that maybe that wonderful idea you had and are now investing time and money on may actually be horse manure, then unfortunately you’ll end up with a lousy film, (but wonderful roses!).

And this movie smacks of someone who was just having a massive ego trip and was not going to be told that his daft movie of a man’s inability to solve a simple maze was utter tosh. I mean he directed this, wrote this, starred in it, produced it, was Executive Producer, (how does that work? Did he consult himself? ‘Is this crap Cowell?’ ‘No Cowell you’re doing a sterling job!’ ‘Thanks Cowell!’), in charge of cinematography and was assistant to the Editor. Who else is there to blame for this?

And so what we have ended up with is a horror movie, which has to be the most dull, lifeless and uninteresting movie I have seen on this list so far. And I’ve seen Swept Away, (see review here)!

This movie is in no way scary at all and the only thing which is scary is that Lions Gate deemed it worthy of distribution.

#33 The Final Sacrifice (Wes)

The Final Sacrifice

Going by my usual method of guessing what an unknown movie will be like judging it by its title, I decided that I would probably enjoy our next move, The Final Sacrifice. Clearly this movie would be a historical epic about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire by Hernán Cortés and his men. Obviously it would have been added to our list in error, with it’s epic battle scenes, beautifully shot vistas and horrifying, but compelling depictions of the human sacrifices the Aztec priests conducted on top of their temples and we’d have a reprieve from the awful movies we’ve had to endure recently. If one thing was for certain, it wouldn’t be a low budget Canadian movie about a young man following a badly drawn treasure map to stop a cult from getting an ancient idol so they can take over the world…

Seven years after his father was shot by cultists, Troy McGreggor (Christian Malcolm) finds a badly drawn treasure map in his attic… Shit.

I’ll start again. When Troy McGreggor finds a treasure map in his attic that looks like it was drawn by a particularly untalented toddler, he automatically assumes that it was made by his father who was murdered by cultists seven years previously (and not that it drawn by himself in kindergarten and was hidden there by his father, who was sentimental, but ultimately ashamed of his sons lack of talent). He assumes this because his father Rover McGreggor, was an archaeologist, and he has clearly never seen the lecture at the start of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Somehow the cult led by Satoris (Shane Marceau) discover that Troy has the map and attempt to take it from him by disguising themselves as door to door chainsaw salesmen. When that cunning plan fails, and Troy escapes on his bike, the cultists chase him in their car, but it seems that nobody in the cult has worked out that a car can easily outpace a bicycle and Troy once again escapes, this time by hiding in the back of a pick up truck owned by the brilliantly named Zap Rowsdower (Bruce J. Mitchell).  Troy helps Rowsdower fix his truck and Rowsdower decides to help Troy follow the map. When they eventually find the house of Troy’s father’s partner, Mike Pipper (Ron Anderson), who has been hiding from the cult for years, they learn the truth about the cult and their connections to the Ziox (a long dead civilization) and the idol itself. Will Troy find the idol before the cult gets their hands on it? What secrets is Rowsdower hiding? Did the makers of this movie find a really good deal on bulk buying balaclavas?

Like Homer Simpson changing his name to Max Power, sometimes somebody just can’t live up to the promise his name gives. Zap Rowsdower is a name that just screams that its owner is the coolest, most heroic person to ever walk on the face of this planet. What we get is a Gareth Hale look-a-like, hockey hair-sporting, horse-riding, gun-toting, dunk denim demon. He’s such an anti-hero cliché, that if this film had a higher budget he’d probably get drunk and punch a moose to show how tough he is, and how little he cares.

Strangely though Rowsdower is the most normal of all the characters in this film. Troy looks like Wil Wheaton was cast as Quark in Deep Space Nine instead of Wesley in Star Trek The Next Generation. Mike Pipper looks like Tom Baker has been stranded on a desert island and found that the only way for him to keep his sanity was by playing Yosemite Sam in a palm tree constructed theatre to an audience of parrots and horseshoe crabs and now he finds that he can't stop doing the voice. As for Satoris, he looks like a Poundstore goth Joaquin Phoenix, but he sounds like an auto-tuned Isaac Hayes.

The Final Sacrifice is a cheap looking movie in every way. There is a reason for this, and that’s because it had a budget of only $1500, which I think actually changes your opinion of the movie a little when you learn this. Even getting the movie made for such a low budget (wedding videographers can charge more than this!) is an impressive feat. However the lack of budget is no excuse for the poor quality of the script, cinematography or acting. Plenty of outstanding movies have been made on a micro budget. El Mariachi ($7000), Primer ($7,000) and Eraserhead ($10,000) still manage to impress greatly and launched the careers of David Lynch, Robert Rodriguez and the still upcoming Shane Carruth.

Director and writer Tjardus Greidanus actually went on to start a successful career as a documentary maker, which is good as his talents really don’t lie in the creative side of movie making (according to IMDB he is currently working on a new feature film though. Just think how many balaclavas a budget of $5,000,000 can buy!).  Less can be said for production designer Bryan Pfhal though (an appropriate name if ever I’ve heard one), who only went on to work for two more productions. As the sole person in the art department he must have been responsible for the map, and I can only imagine that his career in designing maps for children’s placemats in restaurants must have got in the way of his Hollywood ambitions.

Was this the worst thing that Canada has ever produced? In a world that contains Nickleback that would be an extremely hard feat to accomplish and The Final Sacrifice doesn’t even come close. Undoubtedly it’s a terrible movie, but I came away from watching it without a feeling of despair and at this point in our list I class that as a win. A movie that’s this bad, but still remains watchable, deserves a large cult following, just maybe not one that wants to take over the world…

#33 The Final Sacrifice (1990) (Colin)

Cast: Christian Malcolm, Bruce J. Mitchell, Shane Marceau

Director: Tjardus Greidanus

Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, Horror

The next movie on our list has also featured on MST3K, although unfortunately for us, we have managed to find a copy of the original!

In saying that, I thought this was an average episode of MST3K, which relied too heavily on one joke; that the main character’s dad looks a bit like Larry Csonka.  ‘Who?’, I hear most of my UK friends shout, ‘Exactly’, I reply!  Well apparently he was the MVP of Super Bowl VIII, a reference so obscure to me that Mike may as well have said he looks like his cousin, Martin.  I actually think he looks more like Ron Jeremy…….

Anyway, in terms of the story, I don’t remember much, other than it looked very cheap.  Having now done a bit of research I’m not surprised as it cost Can$1,500 to make!

The director, Tjardus Greidanus, was a student who made this movie on a shoestring and basically employed his mates to dick around in front of the camera, a camera, incidentally which they borrowed from their college!

So I actually go into this movie with a bit of an open mind and some sympathy.  A movie which costs so little, is hardly going to compete with multi-million dollar movies such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Or is it?

Thomas McGreggor, (Randy Vasseur), an archaeologist, decides he doesn't want to stay in the movie for long and promptly gets shot.  His killer is the leader of a bunch of cults called Satoris, (Shane Marceau).

7 years later, his son, Troy McGreggor, (Christian Malcolm), finds a map which Thomas drew and supposedly shows the whereabouts of a mysterious lost city which time forgot, (Hull).  Despite the fact it looks like it was scribbled by a toddler, Troy decides to follow it in a bid to find out why his dad was killed, (it looks crap, but it's probably more reliable than Apple maps).

The cultists find out that this map exists and desperate to get their hands on it, pay Troy a visit.  When they ring the door bell using a chainsaw, Troy realises all is not well and scarpers using his bicycle.  The cultists give chase in an American muscle car, but they can not reach the dizzy heights of 8mph and Troy starts to pull away.

Troy jumps into the back of a moving pick-up truck and manages to escape the cultists.  When the truck stops and the driver, Rowsdower, (Bruce J. Mitchell), discovers Troy, instead of telling him to do one, he actually ends up trying to help him.

They somehow follow the map, (seriously, it just looks like a phone pad doodle!), and it leads them to Mike Pipper, a man who has a beard you could lose a fortnight in.  Mike then gives us the back story; the cultists descend from the Ziox, an advanced civilisation who built a great city, but who were wiped out by a vengeful God.  Satoris is trying to raise the city once more in the hope it will restore power to the Ziox, thus making Satoris ruler of the world!

He also casually mentions that it was probably Rowsdower who killed Troy’s father, (awkward!).

Things go from bad to worse as Troy is then captured by Satoris who intends to use Troy as The Final Sacrifice to their God.  Meanwhile, Rowsdower leads a successful mission to rescue Troy by promptly getting captured by Satoris as well!

Will Troy escape?  Will Rowsdower escape? Will I am?

Watch The Final Sacrifice to find out!

Make no mistake, this is a bad movie and it fully deserves it’s place on our list.  The acting is as wooden as the woods which the movie seems to be stuck in.  The sound is so poor you’d think it had contracted tinnitus and the storyline is so scarce, that you would need a second badly drawn map to find it!

But all of this does not mean that I did not enjoy it.  It’s another movie that’s so bad, it’s good.

The characters, for example, are the funniest exaggerated, clichéd, one-dimensional characters ever assembled for a movie.

The lead character, Troy, looks like a cross between Toby Macguire and a rat and spends most of the movie looking for something, (probably the script for Spiderman 3).  Rowsdower looks a lot like Pops from League of Gentleman and I half expected him to open a confectionery outlet and to start calling Troy ‘A Mary Queen’.

Pipper is an odd character who, apart from his wonderfully scruffy grizzly look, appears to have stolen the voice of Rawlf from The Muppet Show.  Satoris, meanwhile, has a voice which runs through auto-pitch and is made a few hundred octaves lower.  However, I believe he won 3^rd place in the Alvin Stardust lookalike contest, (topical!), so all is not lost.

But it’s the unintentionally funny moments throughout which holds my interest and which makes me warm to the movie.

There’s silly little things like when Satoris and Rowsdower are having a fight towards the end of the movie.  Close up, it is most definitely the actors who are playing Satoris and Rowdower, but when the camera pulls out to a long shot, 2 completely different blokes appear to carry on the fight for them.

Then there’s the scene in which one of the cultists uses a chainsaw to cut into the front the door.  I say use, the door has quite clearly already been pre-cut and the chainsaw is merely being pushed through the already made gap.  They could have used a fresh halibut and the effect would have been much the same!

But my favourite unintentionally funny moment is the car chase near the beginning of the movie.  I say car chase, it’s actually an American muscle car chasing Troy on his push bike.  Now, Troy is young and I’m sure fairly fit, but how on earth he manages to continuously out run the American muscle car is beyond me.  Either the car is stuck in 1^st and can’t go over 10mph or Troy has been involved in the kind of cycling program that only Lance Armstrong can be proud off!

So can it compete with multi-million dollar movies such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen?  Of course it can’t, that’s a silly thing for me to suggest.

The low budget is there for all to see, but like I said originally, this was not designed to be a movie blockbuster, this was just a movie made by students in their early film making careers.  For this reason, I can not be too harsh.

I will say one thing, I enjoyed this a lot more than Michael Bay’s multi-million dollar yawnfest!  And yeah, maybe not for the reasons the movie makers intended, but it was enjoyable nevertheless.

Perhaps we’ve been a bit silly and too hard on films made with no money.  Maybe we just need to be sensible and mature adults about movies which have a low budget and appreciate the efforts they make in producing something with nothing.  I’m sure that’s what student directors like Greidanus would want from us, so let’s all grow up.

Tee-Hee his name’s got the word anus in it!

#34b At Long Last Love (Wes)

At Long Last Love

So for our second substitute movie for Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag we had to watch At Long Last Love. I’d never heard of this before, but after a quick look on IMDB I quickly learned that Colin was going to hate this movie as it’s a musical and I know his feelings about them. As for me, I love a good musical. I’ll happily admit that I know all the words to Little Shop of Horrors, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Sweeney Todd, A Nightmare Before Christmas and West Side Story (Ok. I only know the words to West Side Story because of the Schlong album – Punk Side Story, but it still counts!). Since this movie is appearing on our list, even if it is as a sub, I suspected that I wouldn’t be learning the words any time soon though…

Set during the Great Depression, heiress Brooke Carter (Cybill Shepherd), meets an Italian gambler, Johnny Spanish (Duilio Del Prente), at a race track. Meanwhile Playboy millionaire Michael Oliver Pritchard III (Burt Reynolds) falls in love with actress Kitty O'Kelly (Madeline Kahn), after nearly running her over. Kitty and Brooke turn out to be old friends who went to public school together, and the two couples hit the town together, along with Elizabeth (Eileen Brennan) and Rodney (John Hillerman), Pritchard’s butler/chauffeur. As Brooke and Pritchard start to fall for each other, Kitty and Johnny try to make them jealous and Elizabeth tries her best to seduce the staid Rodney. Will anyone find true love? Why is everyone singing when talking to each other works just as well, and doesn’t need to rhyme? Was that a talking canary? Seriously what the fuck? A talking canary? Am I missing something her?

I’ve never had to review a musical before, and honestly I’m not even sure where I should start. All movies are a sum of their parts to a degree, but sometimes if the acting is good enough, or the cinematography is really well done or just if it’s really unique and interesting, then a bad movie can become an ok movie, or an ok movie can become a brilliant movie.

Musicals have this strange uniqueness in the cinematic world though, where as well as the usual things like acting, directing, script, costume/sets, cinematography, editing, SFX etc. you now have to add in the songs, the singing, the dancing and the choreography, which have become even more important than everything else and yet are the things most likely to go wrong for a musical. Unfortunately if you get these wrong then whole thing comes crashing down faster than David Hasselhof at a free bar. At Long Last Love resembles a barman that just left the bottle in this analogy.

The songs were written by one of musical theatre’s greats, Cole Porter, which you would think would give them some sort of pedigree, but it seems that when the songs are put into a movie they just don’t work. To make it worse, there are no huge songs that you find yourself humming at odd times. This film is screaming out for a Singin’ in the Rain or a Time Warp, but it just never delivers, and that leaves you with a sour taste as all musicals should have at least one song that gets lodged in your head for months. In short, At Long Last Love was Porter’s Cut the Crap (by The Clash and one of the worst albums ever by one of the greatest bands ever for all the non punk fans).

To make matters worse, Peter Bodganovich decided to make one of the worst decisions it was possible for him to make, and he had the actors sing their performances live. This may have worked better with more experienced musical actors, but for Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd it sounds like Carpool Karaoke with Rebecca Black and Bob Dylan.

Reynolds and Shepherd are hardly Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, in fact as a singing duo they’re more like Fred West and Mr Rogers. Shepherd can just about hold a tune, but her dancing is so out of time that it would make Doctor Who would look on in awe. As for Reynolds, him and singing mix as well as milk and beer (AKA the “cocktail” known as horse jizz...). He is so out of his depth in this movie that he reminds me of Tom Cruise in a paddling pool. Having said that though, they both have a certain onscreen charm that lifts their performances into the realms of tolerable, as do the majority of the cast.

The sets and the costumes are actually superb. They capture the decadence of the 1930s musicals perfectly and make this a very nice film to look at. The editing is also done brilliantly, as is the cinematography and some of the scenes themselves have a really good whimsical humour that suits the film perfectly. If Bodganovich had concentrated as much on the performances of the songs as he clearly did on the visuals of this movie, it could have been much, much better.

Since this movie was a sub, then it really isn’t anywhere near the levels of cinematic depravity we’ve been sinking to recently, but it is still a pretty poor excuse for a movie. Bogdanovich's decision to record everything live really backfired on him. Whilst it genuinely looks good, the awful singing, dancing and songs killed off all the potential this film had and just makes this an embarrassing addition to musical cinema. Less The Sound of Music and more the sound of Cole Porter rolling over in his grave.