Really Awful Movies: Ep 320 – Mine’s Bigger Than Yours! A new action movie book

On this week’s episode of the podcast, a new book for action movie enthusiasts: Mine’s Bigger Than Yours! The 100 Wackiest Action Movies.

If you’re a fan of any of the following…Steven Seagal, Cannon Films, Chuck Norris, JCVD, Reb Brown, Brian Bosworth or the films Miami Connection, Dangerous Men, Road House or Gymkata, we have a Christmas gift for you.

On this episode of the podcast, how we came to our love of terrible action movies, genre clichés like the inevitable abandoned warehouse shoot-em-up, why goons always attack one at a time instead of all at once,  and how it is that Cameron Mitchell seems to appear in so many of these crappy efforts.

Also, how we came to work with Brian Trenchard-Smith, the Aussie director who wrote our book foreword and directed Strike of the Panther; the glacial, barrel-shaped Steven Seagal and his direct-to-video Euro-oeuvre and how it influenced this tome; and the Golden Era of the muscle-bound taciturn action hero.

Finally, we explore less-than-stellar super hero movies, and how the genre has come to particular prominence now, courtesy The Avengers, but how back in the day…all people had at multiplexes was the dismal Pumaman, but also a made-for-TV pile of dung Captain America II: Death Too Soon.

Grab your bandolier, your hunting knife, another pal (especially if you’re a cop as you need a cop buddy for many of these movies) and get ready for an incredibly restorative action movie training montage as you go head-to-head with an international heroin dealer holed up on an island. With choppers. And machine guns.

The book is available in physical retailers November 18, in the United States, Canada, the UK, and Australia (that we know of. Much like the action genre, it probably spans the globe with a particular presence in The Philippines for all we know).

 

 

 

Really Awful Movies: Ep 319 – Zombie aka Zombi 2

Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, aka Zombi 2 (and a whole whack of other things) is a 1979 Italian zombie film adapted from an original screenplay by Dardano Sacchetti to serve as some kind of sequel to George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), though it strays pretty far from that source material.

Zombie stars Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch, and Richard Johnson, and features a score by frequent Fulci collaborator and dynamite horror scorer Fabio Frizzi.

The film features a boat mysteriously abandoned and drifting around lower Manhattan. When NYPD tries to board, they’re met with a disgusting, desiccated undead thing.

How that thing got there, is how McCulloch gets involved, portraying journalist Peter West.

The vessel is registered to a guy traced back to the island of Matul, somewhere in the Caribbean.

What was he doing there? What nefarious goings on were taking place? How did that gross creature end up in New York? These and a whole host of other questions are answered this week, as the Really Awful Movies Podcast takes you to Italian horror territory and this classic gut-muncher, Zombi 2.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 318 – Haunt

Haunt is a 2019 American slasher film written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the writing duo behind A Quiet Place.

It’s set in one of those haunted house Halloween attractions. And surprisingly, this is one of the better films set on Halloween, along with John Carpenter’s Halloween, House of 1,000 Corpses, Sinister, and Murder Party, which we podcasted not long ago.

The premise: a bunch of college co-eds are out and about in small town Illinois, a bit like the Michael Myers classic. They’re bar-hopping, and after growing weary of it, hop in their vehicle in search of one of those spooky haunted houses.

They drive up to what is not so much a house, but more of a haunted warehouse. And the doorman is a creepy clown, holding out two hands to choose their own adventure inside, in a way.

Haunt is creepy as hell. There are two extraordinarily intense scenes, and it’s quiet, eschewing cheap jump scares.

The performances are dynamite too, and there’s some nice backstory for the lead.

In the podcast, contextualizing the Halloween haunted house experience, Tobe Hooper’s Funhouse, Hell Fest, and Toronto’s Casa Loma Halloween experience.