Reviews

This is one of the strangest and certainly the most convoluted episode of Perry Mason I've ever seen. Always known for intricate plot lines and snappy dialogue, this one just didn't make the grade, for me.

Millie Cornwall is an accountant, unhappily married to former baseball player Herbie, who is a failing insole salesman. When Herbie drops into her office to invite her to dinner, she declines, saying she has to work late and Herbie grabs his sales case and leaves. He goes to the bar with an associate, Charlie Parks, (Steve Ihnat) where he sees her enter and take a table with A.K. Dudley (David Lewis), her company's owner. Herbie goes home and angrily throws his sales case across the room, where it pops open to reveal $72,000 inside. He realizes that he has picked up someone else's case and that same someone is stealing money from Millie's employer. Herbie returns to his office to try and find out whose case it is and Charlie, suddenly and for no apparent reason, says to him "Here, Herbie, $25 worth of free samples!" while handing him a stack of insoles.

Herbie returns home and confronts Millie. They argue and he pushes her against the wall. The next thing we know, their home is full of cops and Millie is dead. Herbie is the prime suspect and Paul Drake appears and calls Perry to help his friend Herbie.

Herbie is charged with Millie's murder and we go to the courtroom. Perry knows that the same person who was stealing the $72,000 is the murderer. In his usual style, Perry cross-examines (read:grills) Millie's co-workers and it comes out that she was playing mattress hockey with ALL of them while conspiring with her boss, Ernest Hill (Herb Voland), to steal the money. She double-crossed Mr. Hill and while he admits to doctoring the books to hide the $72,000 theft, he denies killing her. In the end it is revealed that Charlie Parks killed her for the missing money, and that Millie had been fooling around with everyone in the cast except Perry, Paul, Della and the Judge (Douglass Dumbrille),and I'm not so sure about the Judge.

As said earlier, a convoluted plot, difficult to follow and inane dialogue made this episode one of my least favorite.

Barry Bostwick as Captain Ahab? I don't have any personal beef with Mr. Bostwick, mind you, but his acting chops will never cause him to be mistaken for Sir Olivier. And, casting him as the central character in a classic such as this is really an insult to the story and the author. Hence, my apology.

We have all seen The Asylum do some very, very naughty things and call them "movies", but this, this is an abomination. I was blissfully unaware that this, uh, "movie" even existed until I stumbled across it late-night on the SyFy Channel. Curse you, insomnia! For hates sake, I spit my last breath at thee! And that goes for you too, Global Asylum, you should all be ashamed of yourselves.

We all know that Mario Van Peebles will never be mistaken for DeNiro, but he reaches new lows for acting in this awful mess. A cardboard cutout of a Naval officer would have had the same impact on screen. Of course, he had no script, no plot and no supporting actors either, so his only fault may have been accepting the role in this piece of junk.

Director Thunder Levin should never be allowed near a movie set again. In fact, him calling himself a director is like me calling myself the dictator of a small South American country. I am nothing of the sort but, neither is he.

I did pick up some interesting info while watching this crapfest, though, such as: When a US Navy ships Captain rescues one of his female officers from under a piece of armor plating, they then roll around on the deck and make out a lot. When in battle, a US Navy ships crew does virtually nothing except stand around on deck, waving their arms and shouting "YAY!". There is always a five foot long piece of two-inch iron pipe lying around on the deck of a US Navy battleship, in case you have to stop a rolling 16 inch artillery shell from crushing you. Carl Weathers would be better off spending his time at the horse track, eating sardine sandwiches and betting 50 cent trifectas.

There is nothing redeeming about this, uh, "movie". The acting is wooden, the CGI is so amateurish it's laughable, and the plot is ridiculous. Next time, I'll paint a wall and just sit watching it dry, my time would be better spent.

Peter Fonda is a famous astrophysicist who discovers that the sun is about to explode so he does what anyone would do - runs off to the Maldives to drink, eat lobster and sleep with some blonde barmaid. Luke Perry is his colleague whose wife and daughter are being pursued by an escaped serial killer as he gallivants about the countryside with Tia Carrere who is a turncoat federal agent while the earth is being destroyed by fireballs emanating from the sun. Fireballs which, by the way, have the accuracy of laser guided bombs as demonstrated when Fonda's beach hut is destroyed, killing him and blondie, while the immediately surrounding flora is left completely unscathed.

Had enough yet? No? Okay, Luke ultimately saves the world by discovering that Peter's original formula was missing a minus sign and, with that news, the sun immediately stops hurling fireballs and decides to behave like a good little sun, the worldwide rioting and looting stops, entire cities which were destroyed are now deemed "just a scratch", Luke's wife shoots and kills the serial-killer bad guy, and the rain comes to put out all the fires. All is right in the world once again, so Luke and his wife and daughter go to the beach to build sand castles and have a barbecue.

Why have I told you all this? To save you from wasting 3 hours of your life by watching this abominable piece of garbage - that's why. You can thank me later.

This is just awful. Where to start? The moon has a crack in it which is causing horrific storms on earth and meteors crashing to earth as well. Some genius decides to fly the space shuttle to the moon and drop nuclear explosives in the crack to make it implode and seal itself. There's your plot.

Dirk Benedict plays the formulaic snide, condescending administrator (with a direct line to the president) pretty well. The rest of the cast is nondescript except our old pal, Stephen Baldwin. Stephen is the demolition expert. Oh, Stephen, what hath thou wrought? I have to admit, Stephen Baldwin makes me nuts. This is just another in a long line of roles that he was totally suited for. He looks like a man who is uncomfortable in his own skin and that doesn't translate well to the screen. Well, neither does this movie.

The whole thing is just foolish. I mean, I had no idea that you could fly the space shuttle to the moon. I also didn't know that the shuttle cockpit was finished in sheetrock with little hex-shaped portholes, no less. And those portholes have nice windowsills where you could put a potted plant, or your chia pet! Also, you can apparently walk around inside the shuttle while in space, as if you were walking around in your living room, amazing!

This movie is a joke. Totally appropriate for Mr. Baldwin's acting chops. Which is to say - don't bother. 1/10.

I think I can now safely say that I've seen the worst movie ever made. This piece of dreck from The Asylum takes the cake for the worst FX, incredibly bad acting, inane dialog and stupid premise.

An alien craft descends from space to hover over Los Angeles and begins destroying buildings. Four fighter jets which have no jet exhaust and are piloted by wooden indians, attack it, only to be destroyed. More fighters are scrambled from an airbase which is a bumpy dirt road and is commanded by an old guy with a gravelly voice who stands in the window of a ramshackle garden shed shouting into a microphone at his pilots about his 'beloved planes'. A smaller alien spacecraft flies in and destroys the planes while the old gravelly voice guy stands on the runway and fires a chrome six-shooter at it, ala George C. Scott in 'Patton'. This is all in the first 20 minutes. It's either ridiculous, or funny. It's not funny.

The debacle continues and along the way we are introduced to a female ninja military person who destroys alien spacecraft with her katana, a pilot from 1942 (complete with vintage fighter plane and leather helmet) who got lost for 68 years, an alien prisoner whose head looks like a greasy coconut, and a spaceship which was "JFK's idea" and is successfully piloted by a soldier who never saw the ship before, yet flies it with his mind.

The stupidity concludes when our heroes enter the mother ship and battle a huge snake-like creature with a gaping maw full of blue stalactites - the alien commander. They drop a grenade down it's throat and the mother ship crashes into the wreckage strewn suburbs of LA. The End.

I love bad movies but the SyFy channel has sunk to an all time low with this piece of junk. There is nothing to love here. Don't waste your time. 1/10

Remember the old Alka Seltzer commercials where the guy is moaning and rubbing his stomach while saying, "I can't believe I ate the whole thing"? Well, I can't believe I watched the whole thing! This was truly awful.

First off, Antonio Sabato Jr. is not a very good actor and I sincerely hope those tattoos aren't real. How many men have 'tramp stamp' lower back tats? You've gotta' be kidding me. Traci Lords appears as The Princess and, let me tell you, she looks none too happy about it. She wears one expression throughout the entire movie - that of a really angry former porn queen who can't believe she's been reduced to this, just to make a buck.

The costumes appear to be left over from some gladiator movie and the makeup consists of some really bad masks. I'm talking Halloween here. They were that bad. So bad, in fact, throughout the movie I had to resist the urge to jump out of my seat and shout "Trick or Treat"!

The dialogue appears to have been written by a 12 year-old refugee from a Dungeons and Dragons club and the plot, well, I can't comment about the plot because even after sitting through the whole movie I have no idea what the plot was.

I love bad movies and can usually find something that merits recognition even if it's only comedic value. This piece of dreck, on the other hand, has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Avoid it at all cost and don't say I didn't warn you.

What a horrible, horrible thing they have done! The producers of this piece of trash, I mean. A ridiculous plot, amateurish FX and easily the worst acting I've seen in a long while. Let's be honest here, Stephen Baldwin can't act to save his life. I've seen more emotion from a block of wood than he displays at any time during this entire debacle. The only mildly redeeming part of this whole mess is Jayne Heitmeyer, who is not only a more skilled actor than Baldwin, but is not bad looking, either.

The FX are, as stated, amateurish at best. A giant multi-headed fake snake likes to eat people. What's worse, it likes to pick them up by their legs and then the other heads join in, having a tug of war with the hapless prey until the screaming victim is ripped in half, then everyone gets a piece. Or, sometimes it picks them up and tosses them into the air in a complete flip before catching them and swallowing them in one gulp. If that isn't ridiculous enough, how about a remote tribe of natives who wear nothing but loincloths and pointy straw hats but whose chief speaks English like a Harvard grad? The Brazilian jungle scenes are striking but I've got to believe that the rest of the one million dollar budget for this stinker was spent on craft service. My only regret (beside actually watching this crapfest), is that I can't give it a lower rating than 1/10.

The plot revolves around a bacteria from space which eats metal and has the power to animate said metal objects. The bacteria came from a satellite that crashed to earth and was sold for scrap by the central character, Jake, and his brother, Ethan. I know the summary written by IMDb editors says it was a meteorite, but it is identified early on that it's a satellite as Jake points out to his brother that parts of the wreckage have Russian writing on them (I guess the eds missed that).

Anyway, the bacteria spreads to an 18 foot tall scrap metal 'Golem' figure which was built by the scrap yard owner as a display for some local event. The scrap metal giant then comes to life and proceeds to wander about the town (very slowly, mind you. Scrap metal can't walk very fast), killing everyone it comes into contact with.

As said, it wasn't as bad as I expected. The sets were authentic looking and the acting passable. The main problem I had was with the camera work. In the scene where Jake meets his old love interest in a parking lot, it appears as if the cameraman has developed a sudden case of advanced Parkinson's disease. The camera shakes around so much, I was almost left feeling dizzy.

I won't reveal the ending but let's just say that the movie's final message seemed to be that almost any problem can be overcome by applying copious amounts of alcohol. I give it 3/10.

Since you've got the plot by now, we'll go right to the cast and special effects. There are a slew of old TV stars in this thing and some have aged better than others. Boxleitner has held up pretty well, although his acting is still what it always was, which isn't much. George Koenig (Chekov from the original Star Trek) makes a cameo as the coroner and does his usual capable job. Veronica Hamel looks ghastly! A once beautiful woman, her face could pass for the Nazca Desert in Peru. William Katt's (Greatest American Hero TV series of the 70's) once bright red hair is completely white and he is barely recognizable as the "simple country doctor". The cast also lists Gil Gerard (TV's Buck Rogers), but I'll be danged if I saw him. Unknown Clara Bryant appears as the sheriff's daughter and displays her two magnificent talents. Jesse Janzen plays her love interest, much to the sheriffs disdain. I suspect the sheriff doesn't like him because his eyebrows are just too freaky looking.

Special effects, you ask? Two words - highly amusing. The Bone Eater looks like a much larger, bonier and angrier "Crow" of MST3000 fame. He (it?) never really eats any bones, or anything else. He just swipes at his victims and they scream, then disappear in a cloud of dust. I must admit that this is the first movie I've ever seen where 82 people are murdered, yet there is only one sign of blood and that is from a knife fight between the sheriff and an angry Indian.

The best, and funniest, effect is when the Bone Eater waves his hands (phalanges, actually) and conjures up a horse made out of dust, then rides his dusty steed to a soundtrack of some really cheesy western style music. Hilarity ensues.

All in all, a real bomb. But I give it 2/10 for making me laugh on an otherwise uneventful Saturday afternoon. If you're bored and need a tickle, this one's for you.

I am almost sorry to say that I was able to watch the World Premiere of this bizarre flick on SyFy last night. Where to begin? The preposterous plot? The God-awful CGI? The stomach churning "acting" of the two, uh, "stars"? We'll go right to the uh, stars.

Tiffany has not aged well, to say the least. At best, she looks like a middle-aged housefrau with enormous boobs that are threatening to unleash themselves from their captivity at any given moment. Normally, this would add an element of titillation (pun intended) to the proceedings but, in this case, the thought of those two over-sized melons flopping around on the screen was almost as horrifying as her acting.

Debbie, (oops!) DEBORAH, on the other hand, is so thin she looks as if a good wind would blow her right into the swamp. She looks downright anorexic. It's not funny, it's true. Also, her nose is so strangely shaped that I could not focus on anything else. That odd proboscis commands total attention anytime it is on screen. It should be named Olivier. I can't take my eyes off of it. It's hypnotic. The fact that she delivers all of her lines looking straight into the camera further enhances the raw, scenery-chewing power of that nose.

All in all, another ridiculous entry from The Asylum. All of this said, I get the joke and since I love bad movies I must admit that it's nice to escape from reality sometimes and watch something so outrageous and nonsensical. I give it a solid 2/10.