Quint

The trailer suggests a typical scary genre film, but the reality is different. In monster horror, the monsters are usually the focus of the action, while the surrounding characters and the relationships between them are just colorless gravy. But here, the dramatic relationship between believably portrayed and convincingly acted characters is at the forefront, and the horror storyline plays out only in the background. The monster (purely anonymous – we don't know who it is or where it came from) merely reflects the troubled relationship between an alcoholic mother and her troubled teenage daughter, and serves purely as a catalyst for both characters to realize how they feel about each other. And while the development of the relationship of the main characters works just fine, their reactions to the events around them are a bit dodgy. A monster that can be fought off with a mere flashlight tries to lure the attention in an unnecessarily complicated manner only to undergo the desired emotional development. Thus, the horror line itself doesn't feel very convincing, lacking an idea, more tension and logic. Still, the film maintains a decent atmosphere throughout. Moreover, old-fashioned horror fans will be pleased by the comeback of the “guy in the rubber suit” (meaning no CGI), which adds to the film's authenticity in places, but only when the monster is only seen in glimpses; when they show it more, it's noticeably rubbery. And it looks pretty old-school (kind of like the horned dog Sigourney Weaver turns into in Ghostbusters).

Kickboxer with Van Damme was stupid but fun. Kickboxer: Vengeance is stupid (even though it pretends not to be) and not fun. A pointless reboot that tries in vain to update its 80’s predecessor for contemporary audiences. They apparently figured that Kickboxer's stupidly unrealistic plot sucked, so they cut it down to the bare minimum (yet still stick to it so as not to offend fans) and filled in the remaining gaps with longer action sequences, in an obvious attempt to make it less stupid (which it isn't) and more kickass (which it also isn't). Everything happens fast, with no tension or foreplay, to leave as much time as possible for action. Nothing against it, though, if the action wasn't so dull. Oh well, the underwater bike ride involving draft oxen as part of the training was cool in a bizarre way, but other than that, nothing stuck in my mind at all. The film is supposedly full of famous fighters I've never heard of, so it has absolutely no meaning to me (and quite possibly most other viewers). So the attempt at a poorer version of The Expendables (see also the poster) didn't really work out. Van Damme returns, but unfortunately in a different role. Plus, he's partly dubbed by someone trying to imitate his French accent. I was surprised that the film was directed by John Stockwell, an actor (e.g. from Top Gun) who kicked off his directing career with the positively received drama Crazy/Beautiful. With this, he completely drowned it in the deepest B-movie sewers.

A cynical and very brutal variation on Terminator for those who consider Terminator to be a children's bedtime story. After Sarah Connor comes another heroine who must face off against a dangerous robot. After she starts making a statue of it in her apartment from its broken parts found in the desert, thinking it was a harmless maintenance robot, the machine reactivates itself and tries to attack the heroine with its iron penis. In reality, it is a military robot designed to sterilise women in an overpopulated world. We won't go into any psychoanalysis here and let's get straight to the rating. Hardware rips off a number of well-known sci-fi classics (from Blade Runner to Alien), but there are a few unorthodox elements. While most post-apocalyptic films take place mostly outdoors, here we spend most of our time in a claustrophobically small apartment. Still, thanks to the eye-catching production design and cinematography (as well as the handsome lead actress), the film is a stunning visual treat. The production designers managed to get creative with a small budget and made impressive sets out of just old junk. Music video director Richard Stanley does a decent job with atmosphere, and with the help of background sounds, he manages to give the feeling that there is a vast living world outside. However, he can't break free from his music video roots and the feature length runtime is too long for him. As a result, the film feels like an unnecessarily drawn-out short (the robot is defeated and repeatedly revived) and, like the central robot, is pieced together from various elements into a somewhat disparate whole. The result, in short, is what I would describe as a “gothic cyberpunk MTV art giallo on acid” – an interesting but chaotic pastiche. The action scenes are often jumbled together from video clips without much coherence. The robot is well-designed and looks quite scary in the gloomily lit apartment, but moves too slowly and clumsily to be dangerous. Still, the distinctive visuals make this cult film an unforgettable experience. After a second viewing (on Blu-ray, where you can properly enjoy its extremely saturated colors), I even liked it a bit more than the first time. And who knows, maybe the third time I'll discover its hidden genius.

A frantic parade of the most clichéd action movies from the 1980s. This film has absolutely no story and everything that happens in it happens just because it's cool. The whole thing gives the impression that a couple of film fans with no talent whatsoever, but with a huge amount of enthusiasm, made a film into which they've crammed the coolest stuff they've seen in action movies. To make matters worse, they made everything a thousand times more exaggerated and a million times harder, and beyond what mainstream action movies could afford. Deadly Prey has absolutely no mercy for any of its characters, and most of the fights are pushed to an extreme, even a comic book extreme (the biggest highlight being the moment when the protagonist cuts off his opponent's arm and bludgeons him with it). The film manages to suck you in from the very first shot, in which the protagonist (a well-oiled ninja in shorts with a mullet) walks in front of the camera, strikes a He-Man pose and, for no reason at all, raises his rifle triumphantly above his head, whereupon the film's title appears. The main driving force is the boisterous performance of the film's director's brother Ted Prior, who delivers all his lines with a raspy, menacing voice that trumps even Christian Bale's Batman. Even the clumsy stunts (soldiers gingerly falling to the ground seconds after a grenade explodes, etc.), which are filmed with super-seriousness, are amusing. A must for fans of Zetko cult films. This film was a hard-to-find rarity for a long time, as it was never released on DVD. But now it's finally available on Blu-ray, albeit not in true HD quality. It's a transfer from an SD source, so you won't miss the nostalgic analog VHS feel.

Roger Corman once again reaches for the classics. He had already ripped-off Kurosawa without being sued (Seven Samurai in Battle Beyond the Stars), so why not try it a second time. Thus came the retarded fantasy version of Yojimbo. Most of the scenes are copy-paste with only a few cosmetic changes. If you always thought Kurosawa's films were short on mutants and telepathic lizards, you've come to the right place. The Warrior and the Sorceress is one of a series of sword and sorcery films that Corman's company shot in Argentina (the best of which is Deathstalker II). In this case, however, the cheap locations and cheap labor there didn't make the film look like it had twice the budget. The sets are visibly cardboard. There is fencing (David Carradine was never very good at it, but he did a pretty decent job of it after having broken his arm hitting a wall during an argument with his girlfriend before filming), but there's no magic. The titular witch doesn't cast spells and is only there to show her breasts. All the female characters are actually there to show their breasts, one of them even has four breasts (the film’s poster alludes to this) – that was also missing in Yojimbo. So instead of a “sword and sorcery” movie, it's more of a “sword and boobs” movie – at least they saved on costumes. They also made sure that male viewers wouldn't accidentally fall asleep during the film, and I believe that it will work for many (seeing this as a teenager, I wouldn’t take my eyes off the screen). Anyway, it's one of the sexiest movies I've ever seen. I probably don't need to mention that it's not a work that belongs in the Hall of Fame of world cinema, but unfortunately it's not even grotesquely bad trash either. It is surprisingly quite slow and dreamy for an exploitation flick (the director probably had some higher ambitions) and is only entertaining in its weirdness.

During the video revolution in the 1980s, small Hong Kong production companies started churning out a bunch of English-language fight films with second-rate Western actors, shot for a few bucks in two or three weeks in cheap locations like Thailand. Most of these were movies with fairly similar titles or, conversely, movies distributed to different parts of the world under many different names, so it's not exactly easy to navigate through them. However, Karate Tiger IV (which has nothing to do with the previous installments of the series) has not been forgotten by the fans. This is mainly thanks to the over-the-top final fight in a large bamboo dome (reminiscent of the Thunderdome from the third Mad Max), where kickboxers fight on platforms built over a moat full of sharp poles. Khan, the main villain, is unforgettable, crushing everything in his path, and Billy Blanks plays him with the utmost verve. He roars incessantly, menacingly rolls his bulging eyes and swollen veins, and knocks his opponents down with an unforgettable combo of extremely absurd kicks. Blanks's Khan is such a visually distinctive character that he was the inspiration for the wrestler Dee Jay in the Street Fighter video games, which are far more famous than this film. The film takes itself terribly seriously on the one hand, but also surprises with unexpected self-irony at times. Loren Avedon, for example, watches Karate Tiger III, in which he also played the lead role, and in the process says that it’s like a Bruce Lee movie, only without Bruce Lee. Sometimes it even turns into unintentional self-parody, when Avedon reacts to being offered the lead role in the film by saying he’s not an actor but a fighter, an apt assessment of his own performance. The film, which was in every video store in its day but is now a hard-to-find rarity, could be briefly described as a cross between Kickboxer and 8MM. While it rips off Kickboxer, it also outdoes it with better and tougher fight scenes. Like the John Holmes porn movies, it's all about the action and everything in between is unintentionally comic filler. Avedon here plays Jake Donahue, an undercover cop who consistently sends the SWAT team to the wrong places during arrests so he can kick the criminals' ass himself. Because he's the best cop far and wide, Interpol sends him to Thailand to stop mobsters producing kickboxing snuff films starring the feared kickboxer Khan, who once accidentally killed his brother. Donahue's overconfidence takes a beating on his first day in Thailand when he gets his ass kicked by a local rank-and-file kickboxer. In order to beat Khan, he has to work harder and undergo one of the most bizarre trainings in cinema history, which involves his teacher hanging him upside down from a tree and dropping giant logs on his head. The whole film is extremely far-fetched. Everyone here is kickboxing and crime scenes are blown up with rocket launchers (probably to keep the police from doing lengthy paperwork), in comparison Bloodsport and Kickboxer keep their feet firmly in the ground. While Avedon's career as an action star went downhill after Lorenzo Lamas broke his nose while filming a self-defense video course, Blanks' career sadly ended the moment he went soft and preferred this. Shame about the wasted talent.

The second Corman film starring David Carradine, which pretends to be a sequel to the successful B-movie Death Race 2000. In reality, however, it was just a marketing gimmick and the two films have only Carradine and the sport of motorcycle gladiators in a dystopian future in common. This time, instead of cars, there are armored motorcycles with laser cannons, fought by desert “Jedi” with big disappearing flashlights, while cannibal mutants with ping pong balls for eyes watch everything. Deathsport is the pinnacle of what Corman could cram in front of the camera and pass it off as a movie. The same gimmicky shots are recycled over and over again (mostly a staggering amount of gratuitous explosions). Alongside this, the film tries to impress with weird sci-fi sounds that accompany even the most mundane movements (from opening doors to swinging swords), and avant-garde editing that masks the actors' inability to fence with ridiculously huge swords during action scenes. The whole thing sounds like great fun. The problem is that while Death Race 2000 was a hilarious satire, Deathsport takes itself dryly serious and lacks the slightest bit of charm and wit. The actors reportedly drank and smoked a lot of weed during filming, but not enough to save the whole thing. The only thing that can't be denied about this forgotten trash flick is that it basically predates the famous Road Warrior with its crazy bikers in the post-apocalyptic desert.

One of the most famous arena brawlers of the 1980 that got a whole generation of teenagers going to the gym and training martial arts. Blood Sport is the first independent low-budget film Jean-Claude Van Damme made with production company Cannon Films, and it marks the first time the famed Brussels leg-breaker showcases his signature means of expression: exaggerated movement routines with constant clenched muscles and insane facial expressions accompanied by indescribable roars as he punches in slow motion. In addition to his signature mid-air strut and splits during meditations, here he also uses for the first time his trademark 360-degree spinning kick. It reportedly landed him the lead role in this film after he performed it inches in front of producer Menahem Golan's head when he happened to meet him in a restaurant. Golan, however, did not like the resulting film and refused to release it for distribution. After significant editing, he was finally persuaded to let the film go through, and Blood Sport did make it to cinema screens two years after it was made, where it was a huge success and influenced many other films and video games. Van Damme portrayed the real-life ninjutsu master Frank Dux, who rose to fame thanks to his incredible stories (I recommend watching the documentary about him), especially by winning an illegal Kumite tournament. However, after the film premiered, it was revealed that Dux had made the whole thing up and bought the winning trophy from a sports medal shop. There are a lot of crazy behind-the-scenes stories circulating around Blood Sport, the veracity of which is quite questionable, as its main names (Van Damme, Dux and screenwriter Lettich) accuse each other of making things up. Dux's main cinematic antagonist, Chong Li, is probably the best role of Hong Kong muscle-man Bolo Yeung, who has etched himself into audiences' consciousness thanks to his big pectoral muscles, which he can move with bravado. Yeung is often shot from extreme angles to make him look like Godzilla compared to the others. He doesn't speak at all, but he relishes his non-verbal acting all the more, which is full of memorable threatening gestures, maniacal grins, or pokes at cheering spectators whom he tries to dazzle by finishing off his immobilized opponents. If Van Damme was the inspiration for the Johnny Cage character in the popular Mortal Kombat video game series, then Chong Li's finishing moves may well have been the inspiration for one of the main elements of those video games – the final finish of defeated opponents called fatalities. Overall, the film gives the impression of an animated streetfighter video game. It's basically one fight after another, with roughly sketched characters with different fighting styles beating each other up just for the sake of beating each other up. Their only motivation is to kick as much ass as possible and be the best. In the process, the cinematography and sounds revel in what hard punches do to the human body. Real fighters were cast instead of actors, so none of them needed stunt doubles. Most of the tournament scenes are done in long wordless montages, so that almost none of them have to speak, let alone act (except Van Damme, who is visibly unsure in dialogue but at home in the ring). The only real actor among the wrestlers was Donald Gibb as Jackson (who looks a bit like director Peter Jackson's tougher brother). He was also the only one of the actors who had no martial arts skills, and so his fighting style consists only of walking up to his opponent and punching him. Blood Sport is predictable from start to finish and only lives up to your expectations. But it is made with such sincerity, energy and boyish zeal that its target audience will find it hard to resist. Despite how naive, stupid and artless it is.

A superb caricature of 1980's guy movies with five Golden Raspberry nominations, it often tops the best guilty pleasure film lists. Road House is essentially a kind of modern macho western with kung fu action, combining Western culture with Eastern philosophy and containing so many memorably absurd moments that it's impossible to be bored for a moment. Patrick Swayze plays a world-famous bar bouncer and Zen warrior with a PhD in philosophy whose life's work includes philosophizing, making out, smoking, practicing Tai Chi, and, for that matter, kicking ass and ripping bites out of necks. Swayze's character is tasked with bringing order not only to one wild bar, but to an entire town that is controlled by a gang of local rich guys. With a stoic expression, he at first tries to resist the unnecessary violence, but in a world dominated by testosterone and toxic masculinity, that can't last long. Road House is entertaining for its simple black and white, maddening stupidity and complete disconnect from reality. It's set in a world where characters beat each other up, blow up their houses without the police ever showing up, and where drunks smash up an entire bar every night that's as good as new the next day. The local hangout, where bands have to play behind an iron fence to avoid being hit by flying shards and pieces of furniture, must have been the inspiration for the vampire hangout Titty Twister in Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn (both films, incidentally, feature the band Tito & Tarantula). As in every 1980s actioner, there is the mandatory batch of unwanted homoerotic undertones. Swayze doesn't waste a single opportunity to take his shirt off, while his fully-clothed adversaries never take their eyes off him. The film is reportedly shown to New York police officers as part of their training, apparently because of the main character's moral code of even if someone calls you a dick, be nice.

One of the first movies I brought back from the video store as a kid, along with Dune. While I didn't understand the big-budget Dune at the time and was bored to death by its scope, I was absolutely enthralled by the cheesy trash film Warriors of Atlantis. Thanks to the frantic pace (a new monster every ten minutes), there's no way to be bored with it, and the 90 minutes passes by like water, which is in abundance. It takes place under the sea. An octopus puppet drags the ship's crew to the seabed, where they find a magnificent rendering of the vast Atlantis, whose inhabitants are not very friendly. Here, soldiers with tin helmets covering their entire faces (it's not very clear how they can see through them) enslave shipwrecked sailors who grow gills in the local conditions (despite not living directly in the water). Meanwhile, levitating aliens with weird hairstyles brainwash the chosen people by projecting footage of Nazis. And in between, everyone is attacked by rear projections of assorted rubber monsters (dinosaurs, octopuses, giant eels, mud mutants and flying fish), most of which move so slowly that you have to wait a while before they eat you. You can find just about anything you can think of that might be there in Atlantis. This overwrought variation on Verne is the culmination of a series of fantastic Kevin Connor films. It's an overstuffed hodgepodge of everything from Connor's previous films and a whole lot more. The film's plot is cleverly set in the Victorian era, when people could still believe in the existence of lost worlds, and its old-fashioned naivety and childlike innocence will playfully take you back to when you were twelve. You'll then enjoy a non-stop parade of spectacularly bad visual effects, guys in rubber costumes and failed attempts at humour that are hilarious in their unfunnyness. What more could you ask for on a Sunday afternoon?