The Hall of Infamy

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Has this Hall totally warped my brain? Because I ended up, dare I say, enjoying Trog a lot more than I expected to.
I felt the same way. I think that after how insufferable Going Overboard was, everything else just seems better.



My DVD player keeps trying to save me from God's Not Dead. Okay, really what's happening is that there's probably a smudge or scratch on the DVD, but literally he went to launch into his second lecture in the class and my DVD player was like, "Hey, why don't we just skip ahead half a minute?"



God's Not Dead
But he wishes he were!

I kid, I kid.
This is not a bad movie. It is quite entertaining and due to my ultra religious childhood, I was ready to drink the Kool-Aid.
The premise is that Christians are under fire from atheistic philosophy professors and our hero must stick up for God. Spoilers Ahead:
The professor gives the Christian kid three twenty minute sections of his class time. This from a professor who doesn't want to argue the case. Go figure. The argument sections are quite good except of course they are stacked in God's favor. All the philosophy professor does is bring out a pretty limp quote from Stephen Hawking. "See a smart guy is an atheist, so there." The kid gets in the professor's face when he realizes that the prof is a lapsed Christian. And we find that that the prof is not so much an atheist as an anti-theist. I find this a lot with my ex-Catholic friends. They have more of an axe to grind with their old faith than I do with mine. His mom died when he was young thus the universe is godless. We find that all his intellect is in service to his childhood trauma. After the kid convinces all but one other kid in the classroom that God exists, the philosophy professor is mowed down by an automobile, and has a deathbed conversion. Despite this fatuous and smug ending, I enjoyed the film. This is way better than the fire and brimstone, end of days movies I saw as a kid.



No more spoilers: This movie has good production values except for a script that has only one (somewhat) fleshed out character, the professor. The music is likable pop rock. Kevin Sorbo does a good job as the professor, The other actors are okay, not good, but serviceable. All in all not a terrible movie. I suppose its infamy for the person who chose it lies in its smugness.




American Flatulators (Barry & Liz Hirschberg, 1996)

This is certainly not good at all but I'm honestly surprised that there was as much production value as there was. That isn't saying much but they actually had like, a few sets, a decent amount of extras, some fun (I guess) video toaster effects. Now the actual show set could have been better, or you know, lit to some extent but I would rather the "events" have at least made sense if they weren't going to be the slightest bit fun. What prevents this from really being a disaster is just the formatting. Like the events drag but at least they'll cut to a commercial or a contestants backstory, which are the, let's say, marginally less bad parts and, even though its always the same joke, just changing the scenery up somewhat often makes it so much more tolerable. Well, that and it only being 50 minutes. Yeah this sucks and its dumb but its like, too dumb to get mad at.





God's Not Dead, 2014

So you admit you killed those ducks!

College freshman Josh (Shane Harper) arrives to college only to run up against a philosophy professor, Radisson (Kevin Sorbo) who insists that all of his students agree that "God is dead". When Josh refuses, Radisson challenges him to prove his faith in a series of three lectures. As Josh goes through this experience, we see how issues of faith impact many other people, including Radisson's wife, a liberal blogger, an Islamic student, a Chinese exchange student, and a wealthy man whose mother has dementia.

There are a lot of ways that this film is underwhelming and kind of dumb. Obviously the worst aspect of it is that it's preachy in a way that is lacking any subtlety.

I think that there's, frustratingly, a neat story that could be told with this premise, even leaning heavily on the point of view of someone with strong religious beliefs. The problem with Radisson isn't that he's an atheist---the problem with Radisson is that he's a terrible teacher. Teaching isn't about making people parrot your beliefs, and it certainly isn't about humiliating the people over whom you have power. Anyone who steps over that line deserves to be vilified. (Recently a student settled with her school system after she was harassed for not saying the pledge of allegiance, was then ~*~conveniently~*~ given an assignment to write out the pledge, and then He required that Oliver and her classmates write out the Pledge of Allegiance, and when Oliver refused, he told her: “What you’ve done is leave me no option but to give you a zero, and you can have all the beliefs and resentment and animosity that you want.".) Believer or non-believer, no one has the right to make people make personal declarations. (Gosh, these Christians sure do take exception at the idea of someone taking away choices about your personal life! *cough* *cough*)

But the movie can't help but center this as a question of belief, not just awful practices. Thus we end up with a "jury trial" of someone "proving" the existence of god. To me, faith isn't about proof, it's about belief. And the idea of proving the existence of a god is just silly. Josh's elaborate powerpoints and his ultimate conclusion that "science proves the existence of god!" also feel wrong-headed.

The film also can't help but show faith as the answer to everyone's problems: it empowers the Chinese student to become a believer; it allows a woman to leave her abusive husband; it brings acceptance to a woman who is dying; it literally makes a car start. A woman who has dementia becomes magically lucid just long enough to eloquently explain why her son should believe.

Plot stuff aside, there's some fiddly garbage going on. Sometimes the movie looks pretty good, but other times it's like there was a less well funded B-crew. For example, the scene where the blogger confronts the Robertsons looks particularly bad. Also: the prominent featuring of non-actors like the Robertsons (two different cameos--TWO!) and the Newboys does the film no favors. The writing of some of the characters is just really awful, the blogger being the main example, but also the really thin characterization of the oppressed Islamic student who . . . is oppressed and supposed to practice Islam and that's all we learn about her. I had to laugh at the line "What happened here tonight is cause for celebration", delivered by a character just moments after he watched a man get mowed down and die in the street. (Sidenote: I had to love that he took one look at the man and said "His ribs are shattered and his lungs are filling with blood." It's truly amazing that he can make such a diagnosis barely having looked at the guy!).

I'm sure that for the intended audience, this was a very affirming story about the power of faith. For everyone else, kind of a slog. At least the theme song is kind of catchy? (Though my students LOVE that song, so I'm a bit worn out on it.)



Infamy: 1/2



Registered User


God's Not Dead, 2014

So you admit you killed those ducks!

College freshman Josh (Shane Harper) arrives to college only to run up against a philosophy professor, Radisson (Kevin Sorbo) who insists that all of his students agree that "God is dead". When Josh refuses, Radisson challenges him to prove his faith in a series of three lectures. As Josh goes through this experience, we see how issues of faith impact many other people, including Radisson's wife, a liberal blogger, an Islamic student, a Chinese exchange student, and a wealthy man whose mother has dementia.

There are a lot of ways that this film is underwhelming and kind of dumb. Obviously the worst aspect of it is that it's preachy in a way that is lacking any subtlety.

I think that there's, frustratingly, a neat story that could be told with this premise, even leaning heavily on the point of view of someone with strong religious beliefs. The problem with Radisson isn't that he's an atheist---the problem with Radisson is that he's a terrible teacher. Teaching isn't about making people parrot your beliefs, and it certainly isn't about humiliating the people over whom you have power. Anyone who steps over that line deserves to be vilified. (Recently a student settled with her school system after she was harassed for not saying the pledge of allegiance, was then ~*~conveniently~*~ given an assignment to write out the pledge, and then He required that Oliver and her classmates write out the Pledge of Allegiance, and when Oliver refused, he told her: “What you’ve done is leave me no option but to give you a zero, and you can have all the beliefs and resentment and animosity that you want.".) Believer or non-believer, no one has the right to make people make personal declarations. (Gosh, these Christians sure do take exception at the idea of someone taking away choices about your personal life! *cough* contraception *cough* gay marriage *cough*)

But the movie can't help but center this as a question of belief, not just awful practices. Thus we end up with a "jury trial" of someone "proving" the existence of god. To me, faith isn't about proof, it's about belief. And the idea of proving the existence of a god is just silly. Josh's elaborate powerpoints and his ultimate conclusion that "science proves the existence of god!" also feel wrong-headed.

The film also can't help but show faith as the answer to everyone's problems: it empowers the Chinese student to become a believer; it allows a woman to leave her abusive husband; it brings acceptance to a woman who is dying; it literally makes a car start. A woman who has dementia becomes magically lucid just long enough to eloquently explain why her son should believe.

Plot stuff aside, there's some fiddly garbage going on. Sometimes the movie looks pretty good, but other times it's like there was a less well funded B-crew. For example, the scene where the blogger confronts the Robertsons looks particularly bad. Also: the prominent featuring of non-actors like the Robertsons (two different cameos--TWO!) and the Newboys does the film no favors. The writing of some of the characters is just really awful, the blogger being the main example, but also the really thin characterization of the oppressed Islamic student who . . . is oppressed and supposed to practice Islam and that's all we learn about her. I had to laugh at the line "What happened here tonight is cause for celebration", delivered by a character just moments after he watched a man get mowed down and die in the street. (Sidenote: I had to love that he took one look at the man and said "His ribs are shattered and his lungs are filling with blood." It's truly amazing that he can make such a diagnosis barely having looked at the guy!).

I'm sure that for the intended audience, this was a very affirming story about the power of faith. For everyone else, kind of a slog. At least the theme song is kind of catchy? (Though my students LOVE that song, so I'm a bit worn out on it.)



Infamy: 1/2
Given that the movie was made as propaganda, what do you expect?
I admit, I am not feeling kindly toward evangelical Chrisntianty today, since it has been clear in the past few weeks, many of them seem intent on shoving their beliefs down our throats, whether we want it or not.



Registered User
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/3624


MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE

Man, I dig the Master's muumuu the most!
Definitely worth the price of admission.
I have seen worse shot movies, but never worse acted, worse written, or worse edited. Did they just not bother to edit it? Did it have to be a certain length? What? Why are we subjected to these enormous pauses?
Lucky for me, I saw a Rifftrax edit so at least it occasionally made me laugh.
Well at least most of the cast was good-looking...even Torgo. Though what was with the his pants being padded in the thigh area. Were they trying to make him look like he had goat legs?
I also enjoyed the wives tussling with each other that was pretty funny.
Definitely worse than my pick Trog. But my pick is a professional movie and this is completely amateur so what was Trog's excuse?
Is the Rifftrax version a lot different then the MST3K version?
I have the MST3K version on DVD as part of an MST3K set, and, of course, the RIFFTRAX is pretty much the MST3K gang reunited.
ANd I guess I am lucky, becuase I have NEVER seen a worse shot, worse made movie that was released as an allegedly professional piece of film making. I am convicned that a student in any decent film school submitted this as a project, it would get an F.



Is the Rifftrax version a lot different then the MST3K version?
.
I don't know. I have never seen the MST3K version. This is my first and last viewing of Manos. I hope.



Given that the movie was made as propaganda, what do you expect?
I admit, I am not feeling kindly toward evangelical Chrisntianty today, since it has been clear in the past few weeks, many of them seem intent on shoving their beliefs down our throats, whether we want it or not.
I mean, the protagonist bellowing "You have to give them a choice!" is certainly . . . a moment.

Overall the whole thing displays a lack of any kind of self-awareness. I mean, isn't it terrible how an Islamic family will shame and kick out a child for not sharing their beliefs? Something that a Christian family would never, ever do. And surely a Christian household would never be home to an angry man berating his wife for not living up to his expected servile role.

Also, I think it's kind of funny that despite working really hard to have a racially diverse cast, the film never bothered to give the Black preacher a name, and I know this because over 45 minutes into the movie, the subtitles were still referring to him as "Out of town preacher".

It was what I expected, but I was surprised at how many opportunities it had to do something more nuanced and interesting and then just didn't.



Given that the movie was made as propaganda, what do you expect.
I mean, this is the Hall of Infamy, so I don't know that anyone here has high expectations towards any of the nominations.
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I mean, this is the Hall of Infamy, so I don't know that anyone here has high expectations towards any of the nominations.
I expected all the films to be masterpieces that I would love! I'm so mad that these movies are bad!



I expected all the films to be masterpieces that I would love! I'm so mad that these movies are bad!
Yeah, I don't know why everyone nominated films with such low ratings. That's not going to help some of these films potentially become a new favorite.



Yeah, I don't know why everyone nominated films with such low ratings. That's not going to help some of these films potentially become a new favorite.
None of them are on the Movie Forums lists to check off.

You're telling me Trog isn't best of the 1970s?!



Trying to watch American Flatulators. I think I need a break from bad movies.
I found a fun fact about God's Not Dead. The Chinese student is speaking Cantonese while his father is speaking Mandarin. Part of the whole myopia of other cultures in that film.



I forgot the opening line.
Is the Rifftrax version a lot different then the MST3K version?
I have the MST3K version on DVD as part of an MST3K set, and, of course, the RIFFTRAX is pretty much the MST3K gang reunited.
ANd I guess I am lucky, becuase I have NEVER seen a worse shot, worse made movie that was released as an allegedly professional piece of film making. I am convicned that a student in any decent film school submitted this as a project, it would get an F.
While reading up on Manos I noticed that apparently the MST3K version and the Rifftrax versions are different. I've only ever seen the MST3K version and the stand-alone version, so don't quote me on that.
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Latest Review : Le Circle Rouge (1970)



I forgot the opening line.


R.O.T.O.R. - (1987)

Directed by Cullen Blaine

Written by Cullen Blaine & Budd Lewis

Starring Richard Gesswein, Margaret Trigg, Jayne Smith
& Stan Moore

"We're not knocking over tin cans here. This is reality!"

It would be easy for me to slip inter hyperbole describing R.O.T.O.R. It's a film that's full of incompetence, and it's obvious that many aspects of filmmaking here being handled by amateurs who did not know their craft, but at times a joke or moment works - and above all, it contains a large amount of very strange elements that don't mesh. I have to emphasize the word 'strange' - R.O.T.O.R. stands as a very unique kind of film, and one I really have no other to reference it with. It was released in 1987, and very much wants to model itself on The Terminator, but was filmed well before production on Robocop ever started, although that film's inception in story terms goes back to the early 80s - I don't think this film was modelled on Paul Verhoeven's classic, despite the similarity. R.O.T.O.R. seems aware of it's own limitations, but all the same, attempts to be a serious action film first, and comedy second.

The plot is very simple, and starts with a couple driving through the country coming across a bruised and bleeding man, and a comatose woman, after observing an explosion in the distance. The man is taken to police headquarters where he tells his story - his name is Barrett Coldyron (Richard Gesswein) and he was head of a police division experimenting in robotics, and the construction of the first robotic police officer - geared for what is predicted to be a very combative future. When he refused to fast-forward plans to finalize all of the testing and deliver this robot, R.O.T.O.R., he was fired, and subsequently the new people in charge accidentally set a chain of events in motion which culminated in R.O.T.O.R. waking up, taking to the streets, and gunning down citizens. As R.O.T.O.R. chases a young woman he failed to kill, Coldyron and scientist Dr. Coren Steele (Jayne Smith) eventually took to the streets to try and bring the violence to an end.

There are some aspects to R.O.T.O.R. that are charming, for instance Willard the Robot, who exists as a sentient-type character in the film, and has most (if not all) of the genuinely funny lines. At one stage, over the phone, as the carnage that has been unleashed first becomes clear, the robot starts to tender his resignation before Coldyron hangs up on it. But as always, the film seems to want to balance that out by having a character like Shoe Boogie. Shoe Boogie appears to be a white person with brown make-up on pretending to be black, but further muddies that up by stating that he's actually Native American. Added to this blatantly racist moment in R.O.T.O.R. is the strange way Boogie mixes up what a "blood eagle" is, getting not only that wrong, but also the fact that a "blood eagle" is a Scandinavian mode of execution, and not Native American. This moment in film history becomes all the more strange when you factor in that people have been looking for the actor who played this part for over a decade. He's not in the credits, and to this day, has never been found.

If you want more unusual facts about this film, they're not in short supply. Take for example the scene where Coldyron conducts a robotics presentation before characters named after members of The Beach Boys. In the dialogue, Beach Boys song titles are awkwardly shoe-horned in as if the screenwriter, director or actors are playing some kind of game*. When writing to a friend once, who was familiar with R.O.T.O.R. I pointed this out after discovering it, and he mentioned how unusual it was to be still noticing these things after so much time. As if it was an enigma and we were still peeling back layers. I ended up forwarding the info to the trivia section of the IMDb, but must admit to feeling a little ashamed to be spending so much of my time on this. A film that never had a theatrical release, and went straight to video. When I first read a review, and decided it was strange enough to have a look at, I remembered unknowingly seeing that video cover around - it had wide enough coverage even just on VHS, and I'll never stop thinking about people who hired it in good faith, expecting a proper movie instead of what they ended up getting.

The acting is most always sub-par to godawful, and the dubbing just rubbed that aspect of the film into the dirt, especially as far as Richard Gesswein and Coldyron is concerned. Gesswein is one of the 'only ever one credit' personalities you find from time to time, and at one stage the dubbing seems to have been accidentally left out, with shocking results. The film also has it's own soundtrack, which is predictably poor and includes some banal, bad, but functional songs such as 'Hideaway' and 'What You Do To Me' and a little number called 'Changing The Channel' by Larry's Dad - and by that I'm assuming it's a band name, and not literally someone's Dad who produced it, but with R.O.T.O.R. who knows. Horrifyingly, the cinematographer was Glenn Roland, who was the director of photography on the notorious film Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS. Despite having experience, there were still quite a few shots that felt off. Everything in this film is off, either slightly, or by a long way.

Story-wise, there are moments of peak absurdity which I love - such as when Coldyron tells a woman being pursued by the deadly machine to run for her life, and try to keep ahead and not be killed. Does he rush to her aid? Call for backup? No, he goes to the airport, meets his associate, and then they both casually and sedately drive to a hotel to get a room and slowly check in her baggage. They're doing all this as that poor lady is desperately running and fighting for her life - and all we need is for the pair to have a laid-back breakfast before coming to her aid for the picture to be complete. I'm always thinking, "what about that lady?" Screenwriter Budd Lewis forcefully came out to advertise the fact his original script was left in the ditch, and the film deviates so far from it that he has basically no responsibility for what happened with the film. Although director Cullen Blaine has an IMDb page, with birth and death dates, I've heard it intimated that Cullen Blaine is just another derivation of Alan Smithee.

Some of the unintentionally funny lines are great, and I always seem to have a new favourite. Some of the intentionally funny stuff is just plain weird - for example, a diner's cook who has obviously fake, huge, buck teeth. He tries to attack the police officer with a knife, for no obvious reason (seems unlikely) and then has his face pushed onto the hot grill he's working on - completely negating any fun those comical buck teeth were meant to represent. The science in the film is also bizarrely strange. R.O.T.O.R. has the ability to recall past events in any location he cares to visit - pushing sci-fi to limits beyond Star Trek. Fortunately though, he has a weakness, and loud noises can temporarily disable him. So I suppose it all evens out. There's something a little wrong with everything - from the somewhat anti-climactic battle which at times occurs in the background of other shots, to that memorable heavy who tears his own singlet off to signify his fighting credentials.

Any misogyny must be balanced out by having one of the good guys in this be a beefed up lady (Dr. Steele) and one scene where a damsel in distress turns around and starts disabling her attackers with expert Judo. As far as masculinity goes, our robot is not being played by an Arnold Schwarzenegger type, but a fairly nondescript average-build man with a mustache. He doesn't inspire terror, and the most he does to signify his unstoppable intent is push a few plastic chairs out of the way when he wakes up. His voice as been distorted to sound robotic, but unfortunately that has made it unintelligible. As the film wraps up, a R.O.T.O.R. II is promised to us, but was never delivered. In fact, it took well over a decade for the film to be discovered by aficionados of camp and golden turkeys. Since then it's name has become much more widely known, but there are still so many mysteries surrounding it.

R.O.T.O.R. aims to be an 80s sci-fi/action film, and both falls short while at the same time very much being it's own strange beast. It's a shoddy product, and when it came to promotion that whole aspect of the film was front and center - because obviously the film's poster had been semi-plagiarized from the one for Mad Max in the previous decade. I guess you could stretch that to 'homage' - and as you can see below, it was changed just enough to avoid any claims on it :


"You look like you've got both eyes comin' out of the same hole" - that might be a common saying in Dallas, or of it's time, but I've never heard it. Everyone talks a bit like that in R.O.T.O.R. - in a language all of their own. Not only literally, but figuratively, this film speaks it's own language, and will only have things on it's own terms - no matter how amateur, how bad, or how cheap. Even the film's title insists on being awkward and strange. That old adage about something being like aliens came down to Earth and tried to simulate something humans do, but get everything just that bit wrong and show themselves up. That's R.O.T.O.R. to a tee. There have been worse films made (very few, but a few) and stranger films made (again, few compared to this) but here is one genre piece with it's own identity which has been picked up on slowly but steadily down the years, becoming that little bit more famous, and gaining popularity in festivals from Germany ('SchleFaZ') to Spain ('Peor Imposible'.) Robotic Officer Tactical Operation Research - somebody actually thought that up, and then decided "yes" - that they'd go with that. I can't think of anything more hard to fathom.



* Some of the lines go : "...is there some good vibrations to it's molecular tonality..."
"....I get around but I've never seen anything like this."
"God only knows this is spectacular..."
"Who are we who creates such a thing. Heroes and villains?
"What are you planning? Hi tech rock 'n' roll to the rescue of civil law and order?"



I forgot the opening line.
To finish, I need someone to send me a link for Krampus: The Christmas Devil which I can't find anywhere...



To finish, I need someone to send me a link for Krampus: The Christmas Devil which I can't find anywhere...
Not sure if you're in the US (I know streaming can be different in different places), but it's streaming on Tubi and on Vudu's free service.