You’ve probably heard of MGM and United Artists, but what about the very lovely Cannon Films? It was a studio that took on the Hollywood big boys in the 1980s. For a glorious, plate-spinning few years it became the world’s largest independent movie production company, cranking out up to six low-budget pictures a month. How […]
Fucked-Up Films #6: Romper Stomper (1992)
June 13, 2022 by
Film Title
Romper StomperSynopsis
Heil Crowe!
Director
Geoffrey WrightCast
Russell Crowe
Daniel Pollock
Jacqueline McKenzie
Alex Scott
What are these sick bastards doing? Worshipping the Third Reich, threatening to chop people’s legs off with an ax, mourning decapitated mothers, and terrorizing the Vietnamese in a Melbournian suburb. Is the villain any good? The heavily tattooed, permanently unshaven Hando (Crowe) is a neo-Nazi so committed to white supremacy that he attacks a Jap-made […]
Starring debuts #18: Mark Hamill & Harrison Ford in Star Wars (1977)
June 12, 2022 by
Film Title
Star WarsSynopsis
Cinema changes forever
Director
George LucasCast
Mark Hamill
Harrison Ford
Carrie Fisher
Peter Cushing
Alec Guinness
Star Wars remains the dog’s bollocks, a bona fide pop culture phenomenon, and an astonishing exercise in world-building with its fucking cool light sabers, eye-melting hyperspace travel, hokey Jedi mind tricks, planet annihilation, and lovable stormtroopers, none of whom are capable of hitting a cow’s ass with a banjo. Only a retard can fail to […]
Fucked-Up Films #7: 10 To Midnight (1983)
June 2, 2022 by
Film Title
10 To MidnightSynopsis
Nudey nutter knifes nurses
Director
J. Lee ThompsonCast
Charles Bronson
Gene Davis
Andrew Stevens
Lisa Eilbacher
Geoffrey Lewis
Wilford Brimley
What are these sick bastards doing? Celibacy makes you kill people. Sex gets you killed. Christ, what’s a person s’posed to do? Is the villain any good? I once went up to an attractive lady in a bar and said: “You are a woman and, as such, you will do my bidding.” Later, after I’d […]
Starring debuts #19: Joe Spinell in Maniac (1980)
May 28, 2022 by
Film Title
ManiacSynopsis
A New York gent practices an interesting cure for dandruff
Director
William LustigCast
Joe Spinell
Caroline Munroe
Gail Lawrence
Joe Spinell was a hemophiliac who bled to death in 1989 in his early fifties. Throughout his 17-year film career, he overwhelmingly played bit parts, but had an extraordinary knack for picking the right projects. We’re talking the first two Godfather and Rocky movies, as well as Taxi Driver, Sorcerer, and Cruising. Pretty good, huh? […]
Tina! Bring Me The Axe!
May 20, 2022 by
Cinema is littered with ridiculous turns, most of them delivered by Nic Cage. Talented as he is at scenery chewing (as anyone who’s seen Con Air or The Wicker Man remake will attest) I still don’t think his frequent hammy excesses can ever reach the level of Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest. This 1981 travesty […]
Fucked-Up Films #5: Wolf Creek (2005)
May 17, 2022 by
Film Title
Wolf CreekSynopsis
Australia. The outback. And you thought venomous snakes were scary.
Director
Greg McLeanCast
John Jarratt
Nathan Phillips
Cassandra Magrath
Kestie Morassi
What are these sick bastards doing? Actually, Ben, Kristy and Liz aren’t sick bastards. They’re lovely guys partying on the Western Australian coast who are about to undertake an eleven-hour drive inland to see the world’s second biggest meteorite crater. One of Wolf Creek’s great strengths is the steady way it builds up these three […]
Ridiculous Deaths
May 15, 2022 by
We’re all gonna die. It’s a sobering thought, but we cling to the hope it’ll be relatively painless and perhaps even dignified. But what if it isn’t? What happens if you end up like one of those Pan Am passengers in the 1988 Lockerbie Bombing perched atop a Scottish roof still strapped into a seat […]
Starring debuts #17: Gene Wilder in The Producers (1967)
May 13, 2022 by
Film Title
The ProducersSynopsis
A movie that shows ‘the true Hitler, the Hitler with a song in his heart’
Director
Mel BrooksCast
Gene Wilder
Zero Mostel
Kenneth Mars
Dick Shawn
Christopher Hewett
Comedians often suck when they try their luck on the big screen. They might be established stand-ups able to sell out 3,000-seater venues or a much-loved part of Saturday Night Live, but something invariably starts to stink during their feature-length stuff. To be fair, it’s very difficult for any performer to make consistently funny flicks. […]
Imaginative Bursts of Sadism
May 11, 2022 by
Do you ever do that thing, perhaps while life hasn’t been treating you too brilliantly, when you start reading up on sicko Nazi and serial killer shit? You don’t mean to (perhaps you’ve got a spare half-hour between charity commitments) but somehow you’re disappearing into the bowels of the internet consuming blood-drenched pages about medieval […]
