Really Awful Movies: Ep 130 – Crap of the Week: The Last Dragon and Wrong Turn

On this episode of the podcast, our segment, CRAP OF THE WEEK where we spring movies on one another, unplanned and unencumbered by pesky research.

First up, who knew Motown was involved in film production? Barry Gordy was the man behind the scenes for the bizarre The Last Dragon.

Directed by Michael Schultz (Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Cooley High), this martial arts exploitation musical came out in 1985 and stars Taimak and Vanity, two one-named stars a la Cher or Adele, except not famous.

Set in The Big Apple, the movie follows a martial artist named Leroy Green (a/k/a Bruce Leroy), who has dreams of becoming an iconic martial artist like his idol Bruce Lee.

Another martial artist, competitor Sho’nuff (!) sees Leroy as the only obstacle to being the true master of martial arts.

Not surprisingly, this received a critical drubbing. Were they right?

Listen for yourself!

Part II of this discussion features the largely forgettable but well-executed flick Wrong Turn, which has, for some reason, generated numerous sequels.

It’s a typical lost-in-the-woods slasher flick, unique in that Hamilton, Ontario substitutes for the wilds of West Virginia.

Desmond Harrington (Quinn from Dexter) is a doctor who gets in a car accident and finds himself stranded in the backwoods with some cyclists whose vehicle has been disabled. Unfortunately, the woods are inhabited by cannibal inbred hillbilly psychopaths!

Eliza Dushku and Emmanuelle Chriqui co-star.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 97 – Crap of the Week: Island of the Fishmen and Creatures from the Abyss

Two aquatic-themed Italian creature feature horrors. Which is odd, as we didn’t plan it.

In this episode, a regular feature of the Really Awful Movies Podcast we call CRAP OF THE WEEK, we discuss movies one of us has seen and the other hasn’t and vice versa.

Against all odds, two very similar something fishy movies, Island of the Fishmen, a 1979 Italian adventure action horror film directed by Sergio Martino (best known for the notorious The Mountain of the Cannibal God) and 1994’s Creatures from the Abyss, aka Plankton, by Al Passeri. We chat about the former’s similarity to Island of Dr. Moreau, its Voodoo chicken rituals, missing and marooned French soldiers, a subplot involving the Lost City of Atlantis and of course, some nefarious experiments carried out by a diabolical doctor.

Creatures from the Abyss features kids who go missing on a dinghy and hop aboard a research vessel in the open seas, which turns out to be abandoned – its occupants having left in great haste, save for one, a lab assistant frothing at the mouth. They quickly happen upon nefarious experiments (naturally) and boy do things go nuts thereafter.

Two complementary companion pieces, two nutso fish-human hybrid attack movies. Check ’em out.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 85 – Crappy Movies of the Week

Anthrophagus

Anthrophagus is in the Italian cannibal genre, an outputting one to many. Director Joe D’Amato is responsible for this one, as well as many of the Emanuelle exploitation movies.

And he was a busy man. He made 200 films, many of which are…in the adult genre.

Anthrophagus was on the Video Nasties list in the UK, deemed too extreme to release. Does it live up to the hype?

Rituals

Also on the show, a discussion about the James Dickey novel Deliverance, and Rituals, a Canadian variant on the infamous Ned Beatty movie.

Instead of four guys in a Georgia gorge (say that three times fast), Canadian doctors go on a fishing trip. And they face something equally as terrifying in Northern Ontario. Also known as The Creeper, this 1977 production actually features legit actors, notably, the legendary Hal Halbrook.

And it’s not crap! Quite the contrary!