Really Awful Movies: Ep 96 – Monkey Shines and Shakma with Scott Drebit from Daily Dead

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Killer monkeys are on the loose. In George A. Romero’s Monkey Shines, it’s a telepathic Capuchin helper monkey, and in Shakma, it’s a rampaging baboon in a university hospital. It’s Old World Vs New World Monkeys in this battle of our closest genetic cousins in the animal world.

We love “animals attack” / “nature run amok” movies and we love having Scott Drebit on the show to talk about them. He’s a regular contributor to the excellent site Daily Dead.

Romero’s Monkey Shines was met with much indifference upon first release, earning a mere 5 million or so at the box office. Did this “experiment in fear” deserve its fate?

Shakma, on the other hand, isn’t as well known. And we’re here to change that.

Check out which one of these films deserves a tuxedo and a cigar and which only made a monkey out of us on this hairy episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 95 – A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge

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It’s quite telling that the film’s tagline is, “the man of your dreams is back,” and that the protagonist is looking at the Springwood Slasher instead of his paramour. Homoerotic subtext abounds in this mediocre sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Five years have gone by since the original Nightmare murders, and Elm street has new occupants in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge.

Teen Jesse is plagued by nightmares about being stuck on a bus alone with two women (not so bad), albeit said bus is in the middle of some kind of hellscape and being driven by Freddy.

His girlfriend Lisa comes over to his place and they find Nancy’s diary, a clue that sheds some light on what’s been happening – a loose tie-in to the Wes Craven classic first film.

Meanwhile, Jesse strikes up a friendship with school chum Grady, with whom he has much more sexual chemistry, and then has a scary dream about his gym teacher who likes to frequent leather bars.

It’s unbelievable that the series recovered from this one, a severe body blow to Craven’s legacy. Luckily, the classic Dream Warriors righted the ship.

But tune in to see what 2 is all about…

Really Awful Movies: Ep 94 – Death Wish 3

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Mental Cannon treatment of a series past its best before date. The first Death Wish is a stone-cold uber classic. By the time Golan and Globus got around to it though, things were really coming off the rails.

Death Wish 3 was written under a pseudonym (understandably) and is the last collaboration between star Charles Bronson and director Michael Winner.

To reduce costs, this turd was filmed predominantly in London rather than The Big Apple.

The film carries out the vigilante justice/high body count motif we’ve come to expect from the series, yet ups the ante considerably. A whopping 83 characters had to be fitted for coffins in this one!. Here, Paul Kersey (Sir Charles) returns to Brooklyn to find his army buddy has been attacked and left for dead.

Paul moves in to his deceased friend’s apartment complex in East New York and begins to lay waste to an assortment of mostly interchangeable goons, in this, the most insane of all the Death Wishes.

Tune in as we chat about…DEATH WISH 3