An explanation

My followers (all 1 of you) probably noticed that even though I started this blog in January, I've only made a total of 3 posts. There's an explanation for that and it's not a particularly good one. Me being sick for 2 weeks last month has something to do with it, me generally having a bit of trouble putting my thoughts in words is another. But the main reasons are this:

1: I really want to do these recap/reviews in video form but I right now I don't have anywhere where I can record audio without someone bothering me so I'm stuck doing them in written form. Let me tell you, it's a lot harder to crack jokes and trash talk crappy movies for the lulz when you have to write multiple paragraphs to sum up something you could explain in a 5 second clip in video form.

2: This is the main reason: I have a serious procrastination problem. No joke, I actually procrastinated writing this explanation.

Don't worry though, I am working on new posts. But I can't promise you when they'll come out and I've gone back and edited out the "i'll post once a week" bit from the introductions post.


Sorry.

Cobra (1986) Recap/Review

I swear to God like 60 % of synthwave videos on YouTube use this as the background image for the video.


(Sorry this took so long, I got sick and didn't feel like writing.)

The now defunct production company Cannon Films cranked out a diverse array of b-movies in the 80's and early 90's, from sex comedies to musicals to science fiction to horror to fantasy. However their bread and butter was over the top action movies like today's film Cobra. The story behind this movie is pretty interesting. You see, Sylvester Stallone was originally offered the lead role of in Paramount's Beverly Hills Cop but he insisted on rewriting the script and changing the movie from a comedy to a gritty Dirty Harry rip-off. The studio balked at this and Sly got taken off the project but that didn't deter him.

No, instead he went to Cannon, took his ideas for Beverly Hills Cop and mixed in story elements from Paula Gostling's novel A Running Duck (enough for her to get a writing credit) to write the script for Cobra. Not only did Stallone write and star in this movie but he directed most of the movie instead of the credited director George P. Cosmatos. When he wasn't fraternizing with co-star and then girlfriend Brigitte Nielson that is.

Stallone's derivative ego trip originally ran for 130 (!) minutes long and featured so much graphic violence that it was edited to both shorten the running time and to avoid the "X" rating. They made the wise decision to cut out 90 % of the character development, backstory and all that other wussy shit to make this 87 minute action extravaganza of batshit insanity.


Recap:

We open with a shot of  someone off-screen holding a gun against a red background. You know, just like the opening of Magnum Force. At least Stallone's being upfront right off the bat about this movie being a blatant Dirty Harry rip-off. Also you gotta love the irony of an anti-due process movie ripping off a movie where vigilante cops are the bad guys.

Then we cut to shots of men in suits standing around clanging axes together in unison inside a drained swimming pool for no reason (get used to this, this movie likes randomly cutting to this.). Not only is this intercut with a silhouetted figure riding a motorcycle but this opening credits sequence feels like it was edited by a schizophrenic, what with all the random and unnecessary camera angle changes and editing tricks (the image even flips upside down at one point).

The motorcycle driver stops in front of a grocery store, walks inside, pulls out a gun and starts unloading on every shopper, milk jug and chip bag in sight. Since this is an 80's action movie, anything he hits tends to explode. The gunman takes everyone hostage and demands a news crew because...I dunno, that's what happens in every other 80's action movie?
 


 Let's see here: foreign, squinty eyed, goateed, always scowling, 1986...yep, he's a bad guy.



The cops don't know how to handle the situation so they send in Lt. Marion "Cobra" Cobretti
played of course by Stallone. And yes, our main character's name really is "Cobra" in case you were under the delusion that this movie would have any degree of subtlety (also "Mario Cobretti" sounds like the name a drag queen would have).

Cobra is part of the LAPD's "Zombie Squad" which is described as "the bottom line in police enforcement". Oddly enough, Cobra is well respected by the chief and he never gets a "You're a loose cannon, you're off the case!" scene from him despite how many clichés this movie uses.


To show off what an expert negotiator he is, Cobra strolls into the store and loudly announces that he'll kill the gunman first chance he gets. Surprisingly the crazed hostage holding, gun toting murderer who raves about "the new world order!" while carrying a bomb on him doesn't take this so well and shoots at him. Luckily there's a display of perfect, delicious, mouth watering, life saving Pepsi to protect him as well as a conveniently placed can of even more perfect, delicious, mouth watering, life saving Coors for him to guzzle down. This is the first 10 minutes of a Cannon Films action movie so as you'd expect Cobra manages to kill the gunman without setting the bomb off, endangering any of the hostages or facing any repercussions more severe than getting bitched at by  Detective Monte (Andrew Robinson).

  This 1 shot gives Mac and Me a run for its money in terms of product placement.


Cobra goes home after all that and this next bit is 1 of the most inexplicable things I've see in any movie and that's saying something comin' from me. Cobra takes out a box of pizza and an egg box from the fridge, grabs a pair of scissors, cuts the tip off of the 1 slice of pizza in the box, opens the egg carton, pulls out cleaning supplies for his gun (which has a cobra painted on the handle, naturally) and turns on the news. Let me repeat this: Cobra watches TV while wearing shades, eating frozen pizza with scissors and cleaning his special cobra gun with supplies he keeps in a egg box. I love this movie.

 "Pizza" pizza, brought to you by the same people behind "Beer" beer!


We learn from the news that a serial killer dubbed "the Night Slasher" (good band name) has murdered his 16th victim and that he's an equal opportunity serial killer: there's no pattern to any of his victims and he just kills people indiscriminately. The Night Slasher (Brian Thompson) is actually the leader of the axe clangers from earlier and they're part of a organization named "the New World" that's dedicated to taking over the world. How they plan to do this by murdering random people in L.A. is a mystery.

1 night the Slasher and his goons are witnessed by model Ingrid Knudsen (Brigitte Nielson) during the scene of a murder. Actually she doesn't witness a damn thing other than Brian Thompson standing on the road and creepily staring at her which is apparently incriminating enough for the Slasher and his henchwoman Lt. Stalk to consider her too dangerous to live. Also really? Her name's Lt. Stalk? Why not name her character something more subtle like "Lt. Scary Von Evilbad"?


 If you're not going to hide your face why wear a mask?

Cobra and his sidekick Sgt. Gonzalez (Reni Santoni) are assigned to the Night Slasher case and we transition to the obligatory 80's action montage.   This is edited even more schizophrenically than the opening, cutting between the axe clangers doing their thing, Brian Thompson sharpening a knife, Gonzalez and Cobra running around the seedy parts of L.A. questioning people (why are there still people on the streets when there's a killer on the loose that's murdered 17 people? Shouldn't there be a curfew or something?) and my personal favorite bit of randomness: Ingrid doing a sexy photo shoot with robots.

 This is still nowhere near as out of left field as the robot from Rocky IV.

After the sexy robot photo shoot wraps up Ingrid and her sleazy photographer are ambushed by the Night Slasher. I'd question how a 6'3 guy with pantyhose on his face carrying an axe could sneak up on anybody but I'm too busy wondering why the Slasher decided to bring 2 goons with him. Like, does he think it'd be too difficult for him to kill an unarmed supermodel by himself? Before the idiot brigade can get her though, they're scared off by the sound of police sirens. Ingrid is taken to the hospital and put into protective custody. She gives Cobra and Gonzalez a description of the Night Slasher and confirms that he has accomplices, 2 things she wouldn't have been able to do if the axe clangers had just left her the hell alone. Cobra tells his superiors that there's more than 1 killer and he theorizes that they're getting info from a police informant but they don't believe him.

Cobra leaves to check something at his apartment, allowing the Night Slasher (sans goons) to sneak into the hospital, kills a janitor and steals his clothes. Somehow nobody notices that the janitor suddenly went from a scrawny Hispanic dude to a hulking 6 foot tall white guy. The Night Slasher attacks Ingrid but she manages to evade him and eventually scare him off with a fire alarm.

 Are you really surprised that the outside of Cobra's apartment has a giant, glowing neon Pepsi sign?



Meanwhile Cobra gets attacked by some of the axe clangers and kills them.  Cobra, Gonzalez and Lt. Stalk try taking Ingrid to a safehouse in another town.  And even though the sole reason they were after Ingrid in the first place is because she saw the Night Slasher's face and could identify him, the Slasher and his goons decide to get into a car chase with Cobra and try to blow him away on the road in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses. Cobra kills the goons and heads back to the station.

Cobra tells the chief what happened and he and Monte still think the idea there's more than 1 killer is utterly ridiculous. Um, who do they think those goons were then? Do they seriously think that the drive-by shooters that chased Cobra around in their car and caused a massive pile-up on the road a day after the Night Slasher attacked is just a coincidence?

 Anyway they decide to stick to the original plan (making the last 2 scenes pointless) so they start driving to the safehouse. I'm gonna level with you here: not much happens for the next 15-20 minutes. Not much worth recapping anyway. There's only 3 things you need to know. 1: Cobra and Ingrid are madly in love and are planning on getting together even though they've known each other for maybe a couple of hours. 2: Cobra starts suspecting Lt. Stalk is up to something and 3: Eventually they end up at a motel.

Stalk formally reveals her true colors as she and 30 other New World goons storm the motel and the town it's in. In broad daylight. In front of dozens of witnesses. When they were so concerned about Ingrid offhandedly glancing at Brian Thompson's face as he was just standing on the side of the road that they made killing her priority # 1. Jesus, the axe clangors are more inept than Fuad Ramses!

 TBH as much as I jokingly refer to the New World as "the axe clangors" we never actually see these guys outside of these insert shots they keep sprinkling randomly throughout the movie.




 Luckily Cobra somehow knew that this was going to happen and stayed up all night to prepare for it (what is he, Batman?). What follows is 1 of the greatest most insane third acts of b-grade action movie history as Cobra massacres so many goons that both Rambo and Robocop would tell him to tone it down a notch. It's glorious. Our main man stabs goons, mows them down with gunfire, blows them up with grenades (where did he get those?) and he even lights a dude on fire. You wanna know how many people he kills in this movie? I counted them all: he slaughters a grand total of 52 people. Which is more kills than Leatherface has in the entire Texas Chainsaw Massacre series. Most of these kills happen during the third act and it's the highlight of the movie.



 Eventually Cobra and Ingrid wind up at the axe clangar's factory after Cobra kills all the goons. The Night Stalker shows up and rambles for a bit. Just marvel at his brilliant dialogue:

The Night Slasher: "Let's bleed pig! I want your eyes pig! I want them! You wanna go to hell? Huh??? Huh pig!? You wanna go to hell with me? Doesn't matter, does it? We are the hunters! We kill the weak so the strong survive! You can't stop the new world. Your filthy society will never get rid of people like us! It's breeding them! We are the future!"


Cobra points his gun at him. Despite the fact that Cobra has brutally slaughtered every single 1 of his goons (he burnt a dude alive!) the Slasher goes on and on in the typical cliché manner about how Cobra won't pull the trigger because he's an officer of the law and"the law is civilized". Cobra's response?

Cobra: "This is where the law stops...and I start...SUCKER".


The two enter their final showdown and Cobra kills the Night Slasher the only way he can: by beating the shit out of him, impaling him on a hook and kicking him into a furnace. I'm surprised he didn't kill him with the refreshing cool taste of Pepsi.

Alls well that ends well. The day is saved, the chief congratulates Cobra on a job well done, Gozalez lives after having accomplished nothing the whole movie,  Cobra punches Monte in the face and Ingrid and Cobra ride on a motorcycle into the sunset. Because only in a movie like this could you kill 52 people, assault a fellow officer and not have to do a single bit of paperwork over it.

Review:

This is 1 of my favorite "so bad it's good" action movies of the 80's. There's a reason this movie has a big cult following and it's not because it's some underrated gem of action cinema. Its dated as all hell, sleazy, nonsensical, cartoonishly over the top and just plain ridiculous from beginning to end. It's like Commando if Commando took itself deathly seriously. Highly recommended.

Rating: 4/4.

Blood Feast (1963) Recap/Review

Nothing so appalling? At least the poster got one thing right.



I was originally going to recap/review Splatter University but I shut that 1 off 30 minutes in when I realized it wasn't going to get anymore interesting after the crotch stab 2 minutes in. No instead I'll be talking about the late great Herschell Gordon Lewis's infamous splatterfest, Blood Feast. Blood Feast holds the distinction of being the first "gore" movie. You see, the nudist camp movies Lewis was making at the time weren't making money anymore so he and his producer got together and made a list of topics they could exploit since the major studios wouldn't touch them. Eventually Herschell decided on "gore" and movie history was made.


True story: I first heard about this movie from my grandma. Not even joking.


Recap: The movie opens with a lady in a bathroom tuning into plot point radio and learning that the latest in a series of murders has occurred. Since this is a slasher movie, she does the only logical thing 1 can do after hearing about a serial killer on the loose: take a bath. After she disrobes (off-screen, of course. Graphic bodily dismemberment is a-ok but nudity? That's just sinful) and gets in the tub she's gets her attacked by the movie's killer, Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold).

After gouging out her eye he cuts her leg off and stuffs it into a bag. This bit is shot & edited really weirdly, he just turns his back to the camera and makes awkward stabbing motions in the air before the leg jump cuts into his hands.  In his heyday Lewis often couldn't afford to shoot that many takes, so jump cuts were common in his filmography and Blood Feast was no exception.


 I had no idea eyeballs were so meaty.



We cut to the only 2 homicide detectives in all of Miami bemoaning the fact that 7 women have been murdered in the past 2 weeks, each of them with body parts or organs removed and the 2 of them haven't found a single clue. Which is probably because they are the dumbest cops in cinema history. Blood Feast is 1 of the most hilarious examples of what Roger Ebert called an "idiot plot" because this flick would be over in 5 minutes if our lead character Pete (William Kerwin) had any brains inside his noggin. Not only does he constantly ignore obvious clues but there's only 1 scene in this movie where he actually does some detective work instead of doing things like sitting on his ass whining or taking time out of solving a murder case just to go on a date (I'm getting ahead of myself here). Ironically he's played by the best actor in the movie.

"My chances of never having a decent career after this movie are THIS BIG!" (Pete's the 1 on the left BTW)


We next see a woman visit a catering store and ask for "something unusual and different" to serve for dinner at her daughter Suzanne's birthday party. The store's run by Fuad and he recommends a "Egyptian feast" that "hasn't been prepared for over 5000 years". Seeing nothing strange about a bug eyed weirdo staring daggers at her and rambling about ancient Egyptian catering in his best Bela Lugosi impression, she agrees. When she leaves Fuad veeeeery slooooowly limps to a secret room in his store. Oh yeah, Fuad's supposed to be an old man. I was wondering why he had all that flour in his hair.

Fuad's secret room contains a bloody altar and a spray painted mannequin statue of the "Egyptian Goddess Ishtar". You see Fuad is killing all these women and harvesting their organs to prepare the titular "Blood Feast", a ritualistic dish that will somehow bring Ishtar to life.  I love how this movie doesn't waste any time with things like "mystery" or "letting the audience figure things out with the characters" but instead tells us everything about the killer upfront before our hero even knows who he is. It's hilarious seeing how long it takes for people to figure out that the obviously evil guy is evil.

Later that same night Fuad attacks a couple making out on a beach, chops off the top of the woman's head and removes her brain with incredible ease (that sure is 1 sharp knife!). The scene is the worst edited in the whole movie-there's so many rapid fire jump cuts that I don't honestly don't know how this girl was murdered.

 Of note: the producer's pet snake got loose during the filming of this scene and Herschell left it in the movie. Good call.


The fuzz arrives at the scene but despite seeing a slow moving elderly man with flour in his hair cut out gooey chunks of his girlfriend's brain, the boyfriend can't describe the killer beyond saying he had grey hair and "glowing" eyes(?) because "It happened so fast!". The editing's so bad the characters can't figure out what's goin' on!
Pete does find out from beach girl's parents that she went to the same book club as bath tub girl but this movie's only 67 minutes long and the teens making out at the drive in are liable to get bored so we cut to Fuad cutting out some lady's tongue in the only good scene in the movie.

Anyway now that we're 20 minutes into the movie let's meet our secondary protagonist!

 This is Suzette. She's played by Connie Mason, who was Playboy's Miss June 1963. Her acting's about what you'd expect from a Playboy playmate.

We meet Suzette, who's talking to her mother. The amount of plot coincidences in these next few scenes is absurd. Suzette not only happens to be interested in Egyptian culture but just so happens to be going to a lecture about Egyptian cults that very night with her boyfriend who just so happens to be Pete. But not only are they going to a lecture about Egyptian cults, the lecture turns out to be about the cult of Ishtar! Small world, ain't it?

 If more lectures contained fantasy re-enactments of gruesome dismemberment I might have actually paid attention to them in school.


After the lecture Pete and Suzette sit in their car and talk to pad out the movie. Ed Wood would be proud of this scene because ala Plan 9 the background constantly shifts from day to night. This is the only scene this even happens in so I don't know what the hell is going on here. The only plot relevant thing that happens here is that Pete tunes into plot point radio and learns that a girl Ramses attacked survived and is at the hospital (3 attacks in 1 night? He's on a roll!). I'd ask why the station didn't inform their lead detective this themselves but seeing the level of intelligence Pete's displayed this whole movie I don't think I would tell him either.

Pete doesn't get much out of the girl other than the word "E-tar" repeated over and over again. Even though he was literally just at a lecture about the blood feasts of Ishtar, he's completely flabbergasted by this so and goes back to the station to whine some more about how much he sucks at his job. In the meantime Ramses gets an order for his book Ancient Weird Religious Rites (this was a book bathtub girl was reading earlier) and sets out to kill her. Yes folks, Ramses has been killing anybody who's ordered his book and the cops still couldn't figure out any kind of connection between the killings.

But wait, it gets better. In yet another startling coincidence, Suzette's friend Trudy was the 1 who ordered the book. Ramses knocks her unconscious on Suzette's porch in broad daylight and carries her back to his place with nobody seeing him doing this. I guess it's not just the cops who are stupid in this movie...then again, it does take place in Miami.

A week later Pete calls up Suzette from the station to tell her they haven't found Trudy yet (no surprises there). Since Suzette's 1 personality trait is "perky" she immediately changes the subject from her friend being kidnapped by a maniac to talk about her party. After telling Pete that Fuad is serving an Egyptian feast for dinner in honor of the goddess Ishtar he's initially oblivious as usual. Then it finally occurs to him "E-TAR SOUNDS KIND OF LIKE ISHTAR!" and starts putting the pieces together. After getting the rest of the force to search the catering store they almost instantly stumble across the secret room and find Trudy's mutilated corpse. In a rare instance of foresight the cops remember Fuad's at Suzette's and race over there.

 "Hey! I ordered my human flesh well done, not medium rare!"


At Suzette's party, Fuad convinces her to lie down on the kitchen table with her eyes closed and say the proper words to offer herself up to Ishtar. Pete and Suzette really do deserve each other, they're both dumb as bricks. Before Ramses can knife her though, Suzette's mother walks in and screams, causing him to stop and limp for his life. What the hell was he expecting when he decided to try and butcher somebody in the kitchen of a crowded house? Oh well, this recap's been going on long enough so let's wrap this up.

Pete and the other cops chase Ramses into a junkyard, he tries to escape in the back of a dump track and gets crashed. Yep, Pete doesn't even stop the villain himself but he does make an overly long speech describing every detail of the detective work used to get there even though that was 10 minutes ago. The end.

 You know it's a special kind of movie when a garbage truck accomplishes more than the main characters.



Review: This is a wonderfully bizarre mess of a movie that couldn't have been made by anybody besides H.G. Lewis. It's got all his trademarks: campy acting, ridiculous dialogue, repetitive music, strange editing & cinematography and a thin plot only there to string all the exploitation elements along. The acting from everybody except Kerwin is terrible all around but what do you expect when most of the people made to say and do this ridiculous stuff weren't even real actors anyway? Mal Arnold's manic performance takes the cake though and makes every scene he's in unintentionally hilarious.

Lets face it though: nobody ever watched Blood Feast for the acting or the story. They watched it for the gore. Even though it's all mannequin parts, stage blood, meat, etc. to me it still works all these years later. Maybe it's how old this film is. Maybe it's because Lewis mixed in real animal organs with the fake stuff. Maybe I'm so pissed off by crappy CGI gore that the DIY nature of the blood 'n guts here looks better by comparison. Whatever the case, the gore's obviously the main attraction here and it's done well.

There's some slow parts of this movie so it's not an all out laugh riot like, say, Troll 2 but it's got enough unintentionally hilarious moments and gross out gore effects to make it a good choice for any bad movie night. Plus it's historically significant too!

Rating: 3/4. Recommended!
　

Introductions

This is a blog dedicated to bad movies and other things I feel like talking about. Right now I'm doing written reviews but at some point I plan on transitioning to video. I have no idea when that'll happen though. In the meantime I'll be posting review and maybe some stuff in between.  Also note that my content here is mostly tongue-in-cheek and not very serious. Anyway here's my ratings system:

1 out of 4:  There's nothing entertaining about this movie, save your money.

2 out of 4 Just ok, nothing special.

3 out of 4: Pretty good, recommended.

4 out of 4: You got to watch this, highly recommended.