#80 Inchon (1981) (Colin)

So what could be worse than a 1hr 51 mins historically inaccurate film about Genghis Khan in which nothing happens the entire movie?  A 2hr 21 mins historically inaccurate film about the Korean war in which nothing happens!

#80 Inchon (1981)

I must admit, I know very little about the Korean war.  Everything that I could possibly learn I thought was covered by the documentary M*A*S*H, which followed a chef during the Korean War and his never ending quest in search of the ultimate potato accompaniment to a dish.  This was very popular and an instant download series called S*M*A*S*H was a hit in the 70's.

I was surprised by my lack of knowledge around the Korean war, which given the recent stand off in the region is a bit unforgivable on my part.   However, a little research tells me that the battle of Inchon is considered a pivotal moment in which the UN and South Korean army, who were losing heavily and being pushed further south by the invading North Korean army, started to turn around their fortunes.  A surprise amphibious assault masterminded by US Marines General Douglas MacArthur ended in the capture of the city of Inchon and subsequently the retaking of Seoul from North Korea.  I will not go into much further detail due to my lack of knowledge, but also because this blog is not supposed to be a history lesson.  Fortunately neither is the film 'Inchon'!

Inchon focuses on General MacArthur and his preparations and planning for the amphibious landing in a drawn out and ludicrously long fashion.  At 141 minutes it really is a numb bum movie, which I would not mind so much if there was enough to keep me occupied.  I remembered watching JFK, which at 189 minutes is too long for some, but I was so engrossed by the wonderful conspiracy theories woven together by Oliver Stone, that I did not notice that I had lost the use of my legs until I got up to leave the cinema.  With Inchon I could feel every strand of hair go numb as nothing after nothing happens very slowly.

MacArthur is played by Sir Laurence Olivier, who you would think as a great actor and thespian would bring some magic to this movie and off course you would be wrong.  The first thing wrong with Olivier is the make up which seems to have been applied with a trowel by my mate Trev who does a bit of DIY.  His skin looks ludicrous and shiny and his hair is died jet black with crude oil.  The overall appearance is that of a shop dummy dipped in varnish and slowly melting.

Like the dummy, his acting is lifeless and unfortunately we have the version of Olivier who very publicly and very honestly admitted that he was in the 'pay check' stage of his life.  Rather than seeking great acting roles he was just earning as much money as he could for his family after his death.  For this reason he was not fussy with some parts he accepted and certainly did not give 100%.  For this reason Olivier gives an awful performance with an awful American accent that must sound to a US citizen how Dick Van Dyke's cockney accent sounds to me.  Gawd Blimey Mary Pawpins, we will launch an amphibious assault, guv.

There are a couple of other famous faces in the movie, Jacqueline Bisset plays Barbara Hallsworth, wife of Major Frank Hallsworth, (Ben Gazzara) who is involved in an incredibly boring sub plot in which she drives some orphaned children to safety in the south.  I personally can feel every stone and bump on the road as she trundles along through the movie.  Her husband is involved in another yawn subplot of having an affair with a local which no one really seems to care about and quite Major Frankly, neither do I.

David Janssen, (not to be confused with David 'Kid' Jenson), is another famous face, particularly if, like me, you were a fan of the 1960's original TV series, The Fugitive, in which he plays Dr. Richard Kimble.  Janssen is journalist, David Feld, who turns up at various press conferences and explains to the rest of the journalist MacArthur's background and the current situation of the war. He seems to be a glorified narrator and subtitles or a voice over would have sufficed.

So distraught was Janssen with the movie that to get out of playing this character any longer, he decided to die.  I wish he had held on because in the final Cinema version his part in the movie was removed along with all references to the other journalists, (subsequently put back in for the TV version).  This would not only have please Janssen but also our old friend and acting powerhouse Rex Reed.

You may remember Rex from #99 on our list, the truly terrible Myra Breckinridge, (check out our reviews if you have not seen this movie and hopefully we will put you off ever having to waste your life on that pile of horse dung).  From IMDb it would seem that Reed has only done 5 movies and 2 have appeared on our list!  For crap choices he's now 2 and 0, but more worryingly, I have discovered in between writing these reviews that Rex is actually a movie critic!  Well I guess he's kind of an expert on what makes a bad movie and if he would ever like to guest review, he is more than welcome!  However, it does feel a little bit like Tony Blair becoming a peace ambassador for the Middle East......

The movie cost $46 million dollars to make and from watching the movie I wonder what they did with the other $45,999,999.  It looks really cheap throughout, and is more like a film you would find on cable channels such as Tru Movies than a cinematic release.  There are some nice explosions and action scenes but unfortunately the action seems to involve the North Korean soldiers spraying bullets into every one they meet.  It is repetitive and used so often that you realise that they use the same bullet ricocheting noise for each bullet fired.  It hits some metal, 'Pyow', a body, 'Pyow', the water, 'Pyow', each and every one the same, but it does not stop there as they appear to use the same sound effect for tank shells!

The indoor sets look shoddy and possibly was made by the same set designers who worked on Prisoner: Cell Block H.  The outdoor sets do not fair better and a typhoon destroyed most of it including a lighthouse they had built which is key to the storyline.  Judging by the build quality of the indoor set, the makers claim it was a typhoon, I suggest it was a strong breeze with drizzle.

The film did go massively over budget and over time resulting in some of the actors having to be paid extra as they were only hired for a short period, (literally large wads of cash were delivered to Olivier to hire him for completion of the movie!).  Most studios would have seen the mounting costs and would have halted the filming in an effort to stop hemorrhaging money.  So why did this studio not do the same?  Well the answer to this is also the answer as to why this shocking piece of cinema was ever made, for you see the whole movie was financed by the Unification Church.

The Unification Church is a religious group who beliefs are based on the bible and was founded by Sun Myung Moon, which has led to the nickname, (although one the Unification Church takes great offence to) of the Moonies.  This is not a blog about religion, so I won't go too deep into their beliefs but they were viewed in the US as a bit of a 'cult', recruiting and brainwashing people into following their beliefs.  Indeed Inchon was supposed to be an advert for their church and MacArthur's religious beliefs, (not Moonie by the way), are really hammed up in order to drive the point home.

Moon himself, used to preach in North Korea, but was imprisoned by the communist North Koreans at the end of the 40's.  Upon release, he fled to South Korean and set up the Unification Church.  This may have had a slight influence on the making of this film as all North Koreans are depicted as sadistic bastards defeated by the mighty bible loving MacArthur and off course God himself, (who is not given a credit at the end, which I think is a bit mean).  In a deleted scene, it is rumoured that Jesus himself makes an appearance on a cloud telling MacArthur and team to fight against the North Koreans.  It sounds like something out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but supposedly true.  Either way I am pleased that the version I watched did not contain this or indeed the other 40 minutes of material which made up the original movie, (which was over 3 hours long!).

The film only made $2 million at the box office and is one of the biggest flops of all time.  Some say that the Unification Church's influence on the movie and potential turning up at movie theatres to recruit, is what turned people away.  I think this is true to an extent, but I suspect the reviews from the original 3 hours showing in Cannes probably put a lot off and the subsequent feedback from those who saw it once it had a full release in the US.

I started the blog by saying that what was worse than a 1 hr 51 mins film about Genghis Khan and the answer being a 2 hrs 21 mins film about the battle of Inchon.  That is not quite right, what was even worse was that the 2 hrs 21 mins is not on DVD, VHS or available for download.  That meant we had to watch this crap over 14 parts x 10 minutes on YouTube!  But this is not bad for you, my bad movie avoiding friends, as it does take a lot of effort to try to watch Inchon, so most of you probably never will.  I just wished I was one of them....

#80 Inchon (Wes)

Inchon

Unlike WW1, WW2 and the Vietnam War, I know barely anything about the Korean War. All of my knowledge comes from the book, TV show and movie M*A*S*H*, so basically I know that there was a never ending poker game, and that surgeons tried to get sent home by wearing dresses. So I when I looked at what Inchon is about, I was happy to watch it with the hope that I may learn a little history at the very least.

Inchon is unsurprisingly a dramatised story about the Beginning of the Korean War and everything that led up to the Battle of Inchon. As the North Korean soldiers invade South Korea, the people who live there, including Barbara Hallsworth (Jacqueline Bisset), flee south towards Seoul. Along the way she picks up five children when they all narrowly escape death after the South Koreans blow up a bridge they’re crossing (to stop it being taken). Meanwhile her husband Major Frank Hallsworth (Ben Gazzara) and Sergeant August Henderson (Richard Roundtree), having heard about the invasion travel north to try to find her. After they’ve tracked her down, Hallsworth becomes an integral part of General Douglas MacArthur‘s (Laurence Olivier) plan for landing the US fleet in Inchon, by turning on a signalling light in a lighthouse. 

This movie was funded by Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church, which is part of the reason why crowds stayed away (they were afraid that this movie was being used to recruit people to the faith – back in the 70s and 80s there was a lot of apprehension surrounding the faith, fuelled by rumours that they brainwashed their followers). The story of Inchon was Moon’s second choice though. At first he wanted to make a film about Jesus (who was to be played by Elvis Presley before he ). I’m sure that if that happened then we’d be watching that movie at some point in this list.

This is probably why this was the hardest film to track down to date and we ended up having to watch it on YouTube. It has never had a VHS or DVD release so whoever uploaded it took it from a VHS recording from the Good Life TV Network. I’m not surprised it’s never had a release, even without the funding controversy, it’s so boring that only the most fanatical collector of war movies would ever want to see it gracing their movie collection.

Somehow this film cost $46 million to make, and the end result just looks like a cheap TV movie. Having said that, there are some nice looking scenes in the film. The part where the South Koreans blow the bridge up is well shot, as is most of the outside cinematography. But it’s the internal shots that really let it down. Every set looks really cheap and unconvincing, and if it’s filmed inside you know you’re going to have to watch otherwise really talented actors perform as though they’re in the worst kind of melodrama.

It’s actually shocking how bad some of the acting is in this film. Laurence Olivier is the campest general that I’ve ever seen. He’s like a strange cross between Dr Smith from Lost in Space and Private Frazer Dad’s Army. He says his lines in the most ridiculous manner flailing his arms wildly, or using his pipe to punctuate every point as though he thought he was playing the lead role in Popeye: The Boardroom Years.

As for Bisset and Gazzara, they seem convinced that this really is just a made for TV movie and act accordingly, both putting in probably the worst performance I’ve seen either of them do. Roundtree, best known for his role as Shaft, has little other to do than drive people around in this movie, hardly a taxing role (more of a taxiing role…. I’ll get my coat).

Not that any of these actors could have done much with such a below par script. Unfortunately the bad writing doesn’t just involve the dialogue, but it means the plot is just awful too. The subplots are just the standard fodder that you get in any weekday afternoon true story movie. Lazily trying to tug on your heartstrings by showing orphans and couples torn apart by the war. A little more time spent on how this was affecting more of the Koreans whose homes had been invaded would have made a much more engaging story. Unfortunately their plight was largely overlooked (unless it was them being shot by the North Koreans – and this seems to be shown every few minutes for the first half of the movie).

Inchon has to be the second most long-winded, pointless war film I’ve ever seen (the worst has to be Pearl Harbour – which I was shocked not to see on this list. Of course I was pleased that I never have to sit through it again though). I’m just thankful that the three-hour Cannes version of this film seems to be lost, as I’m not sure I could have handled another forty minutes of this crap. There are rumours of a scene that was lost from that cut where Jesus appears in a cloud to tell a pilot to bomb some North Koreans. I’ll leave you to decide on whether that’s just plain awful, or potential comedy gold.

William T. Sherman apparently once said to some young cadets “You may think that war is all glory, but it is all hell, boys”. If I didn’t know better I would have sworn he said that after being forced to sit through a screening of Inchon. I think the only thing I learned about the Korean War watching this was that I need a copy of M*A*S*H* on DVD. Thankfully for you, this is one movie that is really easy to avoid.

#81 The Conqueror (Wes)

The Conqueror

I’ve never liked John Wayne. I don’t like his westerns and I don’t like his war movies. I’m sure you can imagine my delight at having to watch a John Wayne movie about the early life of Genghis Khan then. I really hate to judge something before I’ve watched it, but I knew this was going to be terrible even before I pressed play.

John Wayne (played by Marion Morrison) stars as Temujin, a Mongol chief who later becomes known as the warlord Genghis Khan. He falls for Bortai (Susan Heyward), daughter of the Tartar leader, whom he captures in a raid. This starts a war and eventually Bortai is rescued and the Tartars capture Temujin himself. By this point though Bortai has fallen for Temujin and helps him escape. Temujin eventually must overcome his enemies (including the amusingly titled Wang Khan) and become one of the most savage warlords to ever walk the Earth.

So here’s the question I was asking myself throughout this movie: Why couldn’t we have seen a story about his later life? Genghis Khan had a fascinating life. Marching through Central Asia, into Eastern Europe, Russia and the Middle East, he founded the Mongol Empire and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people doing it. This sounds like it would be a much more interesting story than his rise to power. Wouldn’t it?

Well maybe, but Mongol: The Rise to Power of Genghis Khan proved that this story can make a good movie. OK, so the writers apparently went to the Mel Gibson School of Historical Accuracy, but it’s still an entertaining film. Unfortunately The Conqueror just isn’t.

Clocking in at just under two hours watching John Wayne play Temujin in his usual Southern drawl is just painful (almost as embarrassing as Wayne’s Fu Manchu moustache). He seems to have less range than a North Korean nuclear missile. I know that The Simpsons character Troy McClure was based loosely on Doug McClure and Troy Donahue, but watching this movie was like watching a real-life Troy McClure in action.

Of course the dreadful dialogue doesn’t help. How can anyone take a movie seriously that contains the lines “My son has won the world. Still he must conquer that red-headed Jezebel.” and “She is a woman, much woman. Should her perfidy be less than that of other women?” Wayne never was very good at speaking his lines anyway, but give him some cod-Shakespeare and it’s like watching a dog trying to say “sausages’ whilst chewing on a toffee.

The other thing that really stopped me taking this movie seriously, was the choice to film all the outside scenes in Utah. I’ve never been to Mongolia or China, but I’m quite sure that its resemblance to the Mojave Desert is nominal at best. In fact when you’re watching a film about Genghis Khan and all you expect is a tribe of Ute Indians to ride around the corner it becomes slightly off putting. Imagine you were making a new Robin Hood movie and you decided that the Sherwood Forest scenes could easily be filmed in the Amazon rainforest. It really looks that ridiculous.

Now add to this some excruciatingly embarrassing indoors scenes and you have one hell of a bad movie. Susan Heywards sword dance is so clunky that you can’t help but think getting C3PO to dance with a sword would be more erotic. To make matters worse for Heyward, Slyvia Lewis also performs a temple dance that is extremely well done, and makes you think that she would have been a much better leading lady (although like in many movies in which she dances, Lewis is left uncredited).

The love story between Temujin and Bortai lacks any emotional depth, and could have been played better by two Pan Am air stewardesses. In fact I’m sure that the love story between Anakin Skywalker and Padme in Attack of the Clones was based on this, as both feature wooden actors playing opposite otherwise talented actresses who merely seem to be going through the motions.

For an action-adventure movie this seems to lack in both action and adventure. I’ve always had a problem watching overly long westerns (and have no doubts, this is just a western without guns set in Mongolia), as apart from Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy and The Wild Bunch I usually find them hard to concentrate on. This film was no exception and I found my attention waning throughout.

Unlike Genghis Khan this is one movie that never had any chance of world domination. If you ever get asked if you want to watch this, then my best advice would be to run to the hills as though the Mongol hoards really were fast approaching.

#81 The Conqueror (1956) (Colin)

Our next movie stars John Wayne and I'll start this blog with a confession: To my knowledge, I have never sat through an entire John Wayne movie. Now this confession may not shock or even bother you, but it did come as a surprise to my family who have a massive love for all things to do with the 'wild west'.

I grew up on a diet of country and western music such as Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. Many a Sunday afternoon I've spent cringing as Mum sings along to Patsy Cline in our local social club. Every week I would pray for the jukebox to be switched off and for the meat raffle to begin, (meat raffles are a social club thing in which you buy a raffle ticket for cuts of meat the local butcher has to get rid off due to a forthcoming health inspection). 

After the club, whilst dad swore at the oven and used every pot and pan in the house to make dinner, we'd sit down to watch TV. ITV was usually showing a cowboy movie from the 50's and so we'd end up watching it. I must have seen so many Westerns, that I'm sure Mr. Wayne must have appeared in more than one, but a lack of interest on my part means I have no recollection and they've all merged together. 

So, like millions of others, I am aware of the actor John Wayne.  I am aware also, that he made other types of movies than the cowboy films for which he is most famous for. I was not aware, however, he played Mongol chief, Genghis Khan, in a movie. Strangely, neither did my Western obsessed family! This, for me, was a bad sign and the 3.2 score on IMDb seemed to confirm this. When I then found out it was nearly 2 hours long I cried, removed all sharp objects from the house and put The Samaritans on speed dial. I just had a feeling that this was going to be exceptionally bad.

I was right. 

#81 The Conqueror (1956)

Normally when I go to review a movie on our list, I have to remind myself of the plot using Wikipedia or IMDb and then I try to summarise it in a short and concise way.  Usually it is a struggle to try to condense the plot down and at nearly 2 hours long, you would expect a lengthy introduction and many long paragraphs to get over the complexity of the movie. You would be wrong.

Let's take the Wikipedia plot description of our last movie, Mac and Me, for instance.  At 95 minutes, this is an average length movie and Wikipedia uses 633 words to explain the plot, which to be honest is not exactly complex or difficult to explain.  Let's then look at Wikipedia's plot description of The Conqueror.  At 111 minutes, it's a bit lengthy to say the least, so how many words do they need to put over the plot?  800?  1,000?  The answer is 70.  For once I'm going to have to pad out the plot, ironically like the movie.

Wayne takes the lead role as Temujin, (who later becomes Genghis Khan), a mongol chief who falls in love with Bortai, (Susan Hayward).  Whilst most men would buy her a small gift or invite her out to dinner, Temujin kidnaps her.  Her father, leader of the Tartar tribe, is a bit miffed and so sets about going to war with Temujin.  Bortai is then rescued from Temujin during a raid by the Tartar and later they kidnap Temujin. So just as Bortai is nice and safe from the man who held her captive and mistreated her, they then decide put him in the same place as Bortai.  Bortai's dad, surprisingly, missed out on the father of the year 1198 award.

Realising that she likes being kidnapped, slapped around and shouted at, Bortai falls in love with Temujin and helps him to escape.  Temujin then sets out to get his revenge on the Tartars and the Mongol traitors who helped to kidnap him.  Temujin defeats them all, wins the girl and is crowned Genghis Khan.

As you can see the plot is not elaborate, so why does it take 2 hours to tell it? Well there is an awful amount of filler in the movie. For example the prolonged fight scenes that look more like a western than 12th century Mongolia or the floury dialogue that tries to make the movie seem educated and informed but really just add to the naively and ignorance. In one particularly (un)memorable scene, there is a 10 minute belly dance. This just goes on and on and kills the mood of the story which should be building up to a bloody fight between 2 vicious tribes but feels more like an extended special of Britain's Got (No) Talent. 

I briefly mentioned that the fight scenes resembled a western and that really is the crux of the problem with this movie. It IS a western, albeit a western which has stumbled upon a bunch of cowboys going to a 12th century Genghis Khan fancy dress party. There is a disclaimer that this is based on fact but a work of fiction. The 'fact' seems to be that there once was someone called Genghis Khan and that's about as far as the facts go. When it comes to realism and historical accuracy The Batley Townswomen Guild's reenactment of Pearl Harbour from Monty Python is far more authentic. 

Wayne himself seemed to turn up a little unsure as to what was going on. He sticks on a moustache and starts doing an impression of Benny Hill doing an oriental chappy. His portrayal of the younger Khan is flat and one dimensional. Having played the rough all American hero throughout his career, going 8 centuries back and playing someone from Asia really stretches him. Hayward as his support is also bemused as to her character and just turns up for lots of soft focus shots and presumably the pay check. This is what confuses me though, both were hugely successful and didn't need the pay checks. Why they agreed to this pile of unauthentic 12th century horse shit, I don't know.

Fortunately for me, as I have such a small mind, one thing kept me going throughout the whole movie, innuendo! (Tee-hee, in your end doe). Yes some of the names of the characters and tribes sound a bit rude and in a movie which has nothing else happening, this really stands out. Wang, (Thomas Gomez) is a good one and offers twice the innuendo for you money as his surname is Khan, (Wang Khan geddit? Wanker). Gomez's acting is ok and as a baddy he does pull it off.  

Personal favourite is Kumlek, (Ted de Corsia), which sounds like 'Cum lick'. You may think this is crude and leaves a bad taste in your mouth, but I found it funny.  I did do a little wee as Wayne constantly spoke of Cum Lick Wangs and so on, but after 2 hours it does lose its edge. The longer it is, the more it disappoints, (that's my story and I'm sticking to it).

So who is to blame for this disaster of a movie?  Fortunately that takes a lot less time to work out than the actual film itself. The fault goes to the man whose brainchild this piece of crap was, the man who bankrolled it, the man who owned the studio, the producer, Mr Howard Hughes.  Not only was he largely to blame for this stink fest, but it has been argued that he was to blame for John Wayne's death.

Those with a keen sense of geography, indeed anyone who has ever read the Junior Atlas, would probably have spotted that Mongolia looks an awful lot like the Nevada dessert in this picture.  You would be right, although for accuracy, (something that never bothered Hughes), it was about 130 miles away in St George, Utah.  More importantly, it was also around 130 miles away from some hardcore nuclear testing that had taken place a few years earlier.  Yep, Hughes decided to shoot the movie in an area contaminated with some fresh high level radiation!

I personally do not think it can be proven that this caused Wayne's cancer or subsequent death and so to blame Hughes for this is a bit of a leap of faith.  But what I must question is the sanity of a man willing to put people's lives at risk for something that is really not very good.  Reading up on Howard Hughes you will find that he was a massively successful film maker, (until this movie), aviator, inventor and businessman.  The reasons as to why he then took this risk and ploughed on becomes clear: ego and money.

So whether or not he really is responsible for the death of John Wayne, I do not know, but I do know that he is responsible for 2 hours of pure boredom and time I will never get back.  Hughes turned into a recluse and reportedly, having bought the rights to The Conqueror, did not allow it to be broadcast and watched it on loop, naked and alone. He vowed it should never be shown again but unfortunately in our On Demand age, this did not happen. In his honour I hereby pledge I will never watch or show to anyone this movie ever again. After all it is the least I can do as it is a sad end to a life having to watch bad movies non stop. Only an idiot would embark on a project like that. And so maybe he can be forgiven, for anyone who watches this movie more than once clearly is not a well person and deserves our sympathy.

*Sniggers* Wang Khan Kumlek.......

#82 Mac and Me (Wes)

Mac and Me

When I first saw this list I was shocked to see this on there. I loved this movie as a kid and even had it on video. Thinking about it though, I couldn’t remember a single thing that happened in it, so was I looking at my childhood with rose-tinted glasses or did I just have terrible taste when I was little?

Mac (which stands for Mysterious Alien Creature) and his family are happily wandering around on their home planet when a NASA space probe lands to take rock and soil samples. Being curious beings they inspect the probe and somehow get sucked into it. Back on Earth, they escape from the probe and the military base in which it’s being inspected. However Mac gets split from his family and hides in a van with family Eric Cruise (Jade Calegory), his brother Michael (Jonathan Ward) and his mother Janet (Christine Ebersole). After initially causing chaos in their new house, Mac befriends wheelchair bound Eric who then, with the help of his brother and neighbours, proceeds to try to reunite Mac with his family, whilst the FBI pursue them.

Watching this movie as an adult is actually quite shocking. Not because it’s terrible, but because of the worst case of blatant product placement that I’ve ever seen (It actually has more than Back to the Future). Seriously, it’s worse than the toy commercials that passed as cartoons in the eighties, or George Lucas making a different clone trooper for every planet to sell more toys.

You can clearly see several brands throughout the movie (including Gatorade™ and Sears™ - which has possibly the biggest store sign I’ve ever seen), but this is nothing new in movies as many brands sponsor movies to subtly promote themselves. What is bad though is Mac exclusively eats Skittles™ and drinks Coca Cola™. To make things worse, when Eric and his friends find Mac’s family they are dying and they save them by feeding them Coca Cola™.

You may be now thinking that it can’t get any worse, but you can’t quite understand how wrong you are. At one point in the movie, Mac is taken to McDonalds™ by Eric (of course Mac is disguised as a teddy bear, which just reminded me that I've now actually seen The Avengers and life will never seem as bright again). Mac then proceeds to dance on the counter, whilst the customers of the restaurant spontaneously burst into a synchronised dance routine, and the staff happily clap along in the background. Just in case you was unaware by now what a happy place McDonalds™ is, Ronald McDonald™ also appears and joins in. I honestly can’t think of any more obvious advertising since  the Subway™ advert in Happy Gilmore.

As a movie itself, it’s just a second rate rip-off of ET. The story itself bears a lot of similarities, including a young boy befriending the young alien and the FBI and sheriffs department trying to capture the aliens (still at least nobody has gone back and digitally replaced the guns with walkie talkies). At one point they even do the ET healing Elliot’s injury scene (but instead of a cut finger, they actually bring Eric back to life. Beat that Speilberg!). ET even had it's own blatant product placement (although they were never mentioned, you can clearly identify Elliot using Reece's Pieces™ to lure ET back to his home).

The bike chase scene has been replaced by a wheelchair chase (without the flying), but at least I can applaud this. Too many films feature able bodied actors in wheelchairs instead of actually hiring an actual disabled actor (My Left Foot, Born on The Forth of July and Coming home to name a few). Jade Calgory actually used a wheelchair, and took part in many wheelchair races as a pre-teen, so he was well practiced for this part of the movie.

The aliens themselves just look like badly made puppets (correction: They are badly made puppets), and in the tradition of Star Trek are relatively human shaped. Unlike ET, they just aren’t cute though, and you can’t help but think the makers missed a trick with merchandising properties. They look like a permanently whistling Evan Davis, after he's been on a massive Burger King™ binge. There’s one point in the movie where Mac hits the Cruise family cars windscreen and looks like some sort of horrible Plasticine™ roadkill. It’s as though Tony Hart finally tired of Morph and decided to take him out in a hit and run “accident”.

The script itself is run of the mill (except for the blatant advertising, it even contains the line "Why don't you stop by for a Big Mac™?") and so is the acting. Although the obsession with sucking aliens into vacuum cleaners does seem a tad bizarre. I’m not sure that if I suspected an alien was living in my house, that I’d immediately consider getting out the Hoover™ and trying to trap it. I’m sure that my years of watching Scooby Doo cartoons would inspire me to create a trap involving a rug, furniture polish and a dog cage would create a much more effective, and humane trap.

So is it really that bad? Well, it is and it isn’t. I can see why I liked it as a kid. Strange looking aliens, a quite nicely paced film and the sort of humour that I liked when I was little. But watching back as an adult you can’t help but feel this is just a shameless feature length commercial. I’m just thankful that I can see through things like that nowadays. *logs off and drinks a nice ice cold Pepsi™*

#82 Mac and Me (1988) (Colin)

There are many shows I watched when I was young that were absolutely brilliant but which once watched again in adulthood, turn out to be a disappointment. For example, Knight Rider starring everyone's favourite late night drunken cheeseburger eater, David Hasselhoff. I used to absolutely love this show as a kid and dreamt of owning KITT, talking into my watch with my car pal and having a bad perm, (I achieved 1 out of 3). The A Team also had me mesmerised back in the day.  I wanted to drive around in a big van, righting wrongs and firing thousands of bullets which hit no one. Ask any 80's child what they thought of these shows and 9 times out of 10 they'll remember them with fondness and great excitement. Show them an episode now and they'll probably get a feeling that they were not as good as once thought.

It's not the shows fault, these program's were indeed fantastic. It's our mistake to compare how something grabbed our imagination back then and how we view it today.  We should just look back with our rose tinted specs and enjoyed the show for what it was.  The problem when we try to revisit them is that we've had enough time to grow bitter and angry with the world.  When I watched the reruns of Knight Rider, for example, I found it incredibly dated and the futuristic car looks like a museum piece. The A Team; very formulaic and all the episodes are very similar in structure and storyline.  The bottom line is that unfortunately shows from your youth are nearly always not as good as you remember them to be. 

I mention this because of the next movie in our list, Mac and Me (1988). I seem to remember this in my youth, either on someone's VHS recorder or Terrestrial telly and I seem to remember actually enjoying it. It certainly would not have made it into my personal top 100 bad movies. 

So when it came to watching this movie for the first time in 25 years, I had to wonder why was it in this list? Was it really bad? Had my memory from my youth failed me yet again?

Yes, yes it had. 

#82 Mac and Me (1988)

Mac and Me is the story of a young alien whose family is accidentally hoovered up by a NASA probe which is visiting their home planet and they end up being brought back to Earth. Mac and his family look like the bastard sons of channel 4 puppet Pob and BBC1 Muppet Andrew Marr. They are not a pretty bunch but still lookers compared to the cast of TOWIE.  The aliens look like mutants who have survived a Nuclear winter and not lovable little scamps.  In an industry that peddles 'cutesy' to sell merchandise tie ins with their movie, I was a little surprised and from a film that has massive commercialism, (which I will discuss later), this seems like a massive ball dropping moment.

Our ugly new friends, NASA, then lose the aliens and after searching down the back of the sofa and in the fridge, decide to stop being fuckwits and look properly. Mac's mum, dad and sister wander into the desert and Mac jumps into the largest SUV he can find. Inside the SUV are Eric Cruise, (Jade Calegory), who is wheelchair bound, his brother Michael, (Jonathan Ward), and his mother Janet, (Christine Ebersole), who are in the process of moving to Illinois for a new start.

They get stopped by NASA but they don't find Mac. This could be because its dark or he's under a cloth, but more likely it's because the NASA bod waves a torch, looks 1mm either side of the mum and gives up after 1 second. It's no surprise NASA have not found life on other planets when lazy idiots like this bloke can't be arsed to look in a car 2 miles from NASA HQ.

Waved on by a man who probably only thinks of his next pay check and might even wee in his bosses tea, the family drive off to their new home.  Mac, off course, ends up going with them too and it is Eric who first discovers Mac, albeit with half glimpses and discovering foot prints he can not explain.  He manages to capture Mac into a vacuum cleaner using the same suck technique NASA used earlier, (there is a lot of suck in this movie) and so proves to new neighbour friend, Debbie, (Lauren Stanley), and brother Michael, that Mac really does exist.

When FBI agents track Mac down to Eric's, Eric decides that they must get Mac out of the house to protect him.  Therefore they smuggle him out disguised in a Teddy Bear costume and head to McDonald's where Courtney, (Tina Caspary), Debbie's sister, is working.  I think this is totally original and I can not think of another movie when an alien has to be smuggled out of the house by a group of kids to avoid the FBI.

Debbie, who takes it all in her stride that her new neighbour has brought an alien into her place of work, drives them out of town to search for Mac's family.  I'm not sure if this is a mistake in the movie, but the van she drives appears to be overtaken by rather slow galloping horses.  Surely if a horse overtakes your vehicle, you have less than 1 horse power and so it is not really suitable to try to outrun an army of agents in hot pursuit?  It might even be quicker to tie a Yorkshire terrier to a wheelbarrow and shout 'mush' than their chosen method of transport!

Somehow they find Mac's family in a cave in the dessert, but our alien pals are close to death.  Fortunately our gang are all medically trained and know that as well as cleaning blood off a road, dissolving teeth and stripping rust of metal, Coke is a magical elixir that brings aliens back to life.  Mac's family drinks, lives and we all cheer.  Well done to the good people of Coke for bringing this life giving liquid to the masses.

With Mac and his family reunited, they head off back to Eric's.  Along the way they stop at a petrol station and the aliens decide to pop into the nearby supermarket to pick up a 'Twix' and 'Q magazine'.  A security guard who is obviously surprised to see a bunch of aliens in his store, vows not to sniff the oven cleaner again and gets his gun out. Mac's dad somehow gets it, there's a standoff, then there is an explosion and Eric is dead.  I've paraphrased slightly but I will admit my attention had wandered by this point.  I was desperately trying to think of that other film this movie reminded me off.  Or I'd gone for a piss, one or the other.  Or maybe both.

Anyway, I do know that the aliens manage to bring Eric back to life but they do not bother to fix his disability.  For this heroic deed, they are made US citizens, receive a welcome hamper from Wal-Mart and NASA promises not to dissect them. Presumably had they done the job properly, there would have been also have been a cash prize.

So that's the movie and this would normally be the part of my blog where I would start tearing into the cast one by one and pointing out that they were the major cause of the failure of this movie.  For once, this is not true.  The cast may young, but play their parts well.  Throughout this blog I have been avoiding the little alien in the room.  The fact is as obvious as the typos in this blog that this movie is just one massive rip off of ET: The Extra Terrestrial.

Mac and Me is so similar to ET that it does feel like a remake.  For starters, Eric is similar in age to Elliott and both Eric and Elliott have similar aged brothers called Michael.  Debbie is a slightly older version of Gertie but both 'gangs' feel very similar.  Eric, like Elliott, discovers the alien first.  Michael and Debbie, like Michael and Gertie, discover the alien next.  Both Mac and ET are trying to find their family.  Both Mac and ET leave the house dressed in a costume.  Both have government agents hot in pursuit.  Both escape in a van.  Both sets of aliens have healing powers.  Both work with the joke: What is (insert Mac or ET) short for?  He has little legs.  And so on and so on.

The working title for ET was actually ET and me, so not only was plot, casting and situations lifted, but also the name of the movie.  There is one scene when Eric is escaping in his wheelchair from an army of FBI agents who are chasing him, (I say an army of FBI agents, but I actually believe it was an army of Steven Spielberg's lawyers trying to issue a cease and desist!).  Eric has Mac on his lap and making good speed along a road.  The camera pans out to a long shot and all of a sudden you are reminded of the scene of Elliot on his bike with ET in the basket on the front.  For a split second and with much shaking of head, the scene becomes an exact copy and you worry that if Mac all of a sudden gains the power to levitate both himself and Eric, that they will float past a full moon.  Fortunately they don't, unfortunately the rest of the movie does nothing to help us shake the feeling that this is just plagiarism on a major scale.  This is a big annoyance, but there is another and that is the sheer volume of product placement.

In the movie Wayne's World, there is a great scene in which Wayne and Garth, whose TV show has now gone to a network, say that this will not change them and that they will not sell out.  This scene is played out in short cuts between Wayne and Garth and Benjamin.  As the camera goes back to Wayne and Garth they are seen quite clearly wearing branded products like Reebok and the scene ends with Benjamin saying, 'it's your choice' and Wayne saying, 'yes it's my choice and the choice of a new generation' before gulping down a can of Pepsi. This is a funny parody of the problem of blatant product placements in movies and no more is there a real life example of this, than in Mac and Me.

I've already mentioned how Coke saved the day and along with McDonalds and Skittles they must have pumped huge sums into this film to get their products into the movie.  They are on screen continuously and you would think that there are no other brands in the world except for these 3.  Scene after scene the characters gulp coke, chomp skittles and go in and out of McDonald's.  In one particular cringy scene, when Eric and Mac are in McDonald's, Ronald McDonald makes an appearance by dancing with the 'Teddy Bear', Mac in what amounts to a 5 minute commercial.  This part of the movie is what I imagine Hell to be like, evil clowns dancing with Teddy Ruxpin.

I found a review of Mac and Me from 1987 which says whilst we are waiting for ET to come onto VHS, this is a good alternative.  This is a view I can relate to.  In the 80's movies took an age to be released on VHS and ET was 6 years between cinema and it's eventual  VHS release in 1988.  In a world where a film you quite liked was not readily available, then yes, a similar movie would be enjoyable and fun.  Had I lived in a cave in the 20 odd years since, I probably would have still enjoyed this as a family movie about a kid and an alien he has befriended.  But although the place I have lived in for the last 20 years has been stuck in the 80's, the rest of the world did not pass me by.

And so this is where the older me now spoils the movie as I have seen ET numerous times and during the entire movie I was comparing Mac and Me back to this film.  It is hard not to.  Also I am slowly getting wound up by these 'evil' multi-nationals, that I am now aware off, constantly hijacking the movie.  Both of these factors just combine to rile me and in the end I just could not like the movie or even tolerate it.

At the end of the movie the words 'Do not worry, we will be back' appear rather hopefully as Mac and family drive off to start a new life. Now it would be easy to end with 'I fucking hope not' or 'thankfully they never did', but I'll end, however, on a pedantic note and another unfortunate side effect of getting older.  To the person who stole/dreamt up the idea for this movie.....

It's Mac and I.

#83 Catwoman (Wes)

Catwoman

In The Simpsons episode Mr Plow, Homer, Lisa and Bart meet Adam West who shows his disgust at Batman Returns with the classic line “Michelle Pfeiffer? Ha! The only true Catwoman is Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether, or Eartha Kitt”. Personally I loved Batman Returns and thought Pfeiffer was excellent as Catwoman, but I had pretty much the exact same thought as West when I found out that I had to watch Halle Berry in Catwoman.

Halle Berry plays Patience Phillips, a graphic designer for cosmetics company Hedare Beauty. Whilst visiting one of the company’s factories, she overhears Laurel Hedare (Sharon Stone) and scientist Dr Ivan Slavicky (Peter Wingfield) talking about some dangerous side effects of their new skin cream. Patience is caught and killed whilst attempting to escape, but don’t worry dear reader, as some cats bring her back to life. From this point Patience adopts the alter ego of Catwoman and becomes a cat burglar who is also seeking revenge for her death. To make her life more difficult, Catwoman is framed for the murder of company owner George Hedare (Lambert Wilson) by Laurel, who is now running Hedare Beauty. Catwoman finally confronts her and attempts to stop her releasing her deadly skin cream into the market.

That’s right, this is a film about a costumed vigilante fighting to stop a dangerous skin cream from going on sale. Somebody seriously thought this was a good idea for a story. Actually three people thought this was a good idea. Three actual real life people sat around and came up with the story for this together. Not one of them actually turned to the other two and said “isn’t this idea not only stupid, but also incredibly boring?”

It’s a well-known philosophical idea that if you give an infinite number of monkeys and infinite amount of typewriters then they’d eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare just through the process of random key hitting. Of course long before that you’d have to wipe all the excrement off of the sheets of paper (an infinite amount of monkeys would produce an infinite amount of shit flinging), and that infinite pile of monkey dung would actually be the basis for the Catwoman script.

I’m not entirely sure how so many Hollywood writers seem to make such a hash of superhero films. Up until recently most movies based on comic books ranged from average at best, to absolutely dire. There are many exceptions to this of course, but for some reason movie companies historically didn’t understand the potential that these movies could have.

But at first glance Catwoman is a strange one to mess up. Limping out of the 80s Batman franchise seven years after the last movie was made Catwoman probably should have been made much sooner. However, as a character Catwoman has always been very popular in the DC comics and has had her own spin off comic series. In fact she was once ranked 11^th on IGNs “Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time” list.

The fact that she is a powerful female character, who is quite often more than a match for Batman surely should be something that movie houses would celebrate. This could have been a potentially brilliant film, but for some reason it was never allowed to live up to its promise.

Unfortunately not only did the writers come up with the most boring story that’s ever been in a superhero movie, they also produced a script so dull and lifeless that the only decent thing to do with it would have been to take it out to the barn and shoot it in the head before it infected any other nearby screenplays.

It shocks me that this film actually attracted the likes of Halle Berry. Maybe she had such fun playing Storm in X-Men that she wanted to try her hand in other superhero movies? Or perhaps she should really just sack her manager? Whatever the reason, it’s clear than any talent that she has as an actress was so wasted in this movie, that she decided not to bother using the slightest bit of it. Her performance is so poor it makes Madonna’s acting look like it’s nearly good enough to be in one of the Star Wars prequels.

Of course you can’t just blame Berry. Everybody involved in this movie seems to have taken acting lessons from Jake Lloyd. There isn’t a single decent performance in the whole movie, which possibly explains why the director (Pitof – So crap they named him once) decided that everything in this movie needed MORE CGI.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen CGI effects used more often and more pointlessly outside of a George Lucas redux. It’s so bad that pretty much every time Catwoman moves, then you’re watching a computer generated character. Unfortunately, whilst some films are capable of doing this without looking like a character has just been plonked into the middle of the movie with no thought of whether they look like they belong onscreen, this one fails miserably. Catwoman looks about as fake Snooki, and I don’t believe for one second that either one of them could ever actually exist in the real world.

But its not just the actors who get CGIed. The cat that brings Catwoman back to life is also computer generated. I may sound a little old fashioned here, but maybe of they tried using a real life cat then it would have not only looked better, but would have been cheaper too. I’m actually just a little suspicious that they did this at first, but when they realised it out acted all the people in the movie, they decided to save them some embarrassment and animate the cat. I’m not sure they should have bothered.

 

If you really need a Catwoman fix, then you should watch Batman Returns, or catch the old TV show (I wasn’t particularly impressed by Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises either), just avoid this the flea-ridden movie. Like a cat that makes smart arsed comments and steals your lasagne this film is one kitty that nobody would cry over if it were put to sleep.