Tag: action heroes

Really Awful Movies: Ep 30 – Rhinestone

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Can Dolly Parton turn this cabbie, Sly, into an overnight singing sensation?

Sylvester Stallone couldn’t hold a tune if you duct-taped one to his chest. Rhinestone is hilarious and the one film Sly wish he hadn’t made (but we’re glad he did).

An Indecent Proposal crossed with Hee Haw, Rhinestone is a total mess but lots of fun.

Stallone turned down the lead in Beverly Hills Cop as well as Romancing the Stone to appear in this “piece of poo poo.”

Dolly is “Jake,” a singing star in Midtown Manhattan who takes Sly (“Nick”) to Tennessee for a country music boot camp. There’s lots at stake: if she can’t deliver, she can’t get out of her contract and has to sleep with her manager (!?)

There are terrible stereotypes (Italians, Southerners), terrible songs, terrible performances…This is a must-see.

Rhinestone was directed by Bob Clark, who you may have come across if you are a long-time listener of the podcast. He was the brains behind Murder by Decree, an oft-referenced Jack the Ripper imagining starring Christopher Plummer, and indelible Canadian classics like Black Christmas, Porky’s and Porky’s II.

On the Really Awful Movies Podcast, we really love musicals, especially the bizarre ones. And Rhinestone certainly fits the bill.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 28 – RoboCop

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Robocop features the incredible Peter Weller (who has since earned a Ph.D. at UCLA, in Italian Renaissance art history) as the eponymous cyborg crime-fighting machine.

Detroit was once a Midwestern economic powerhouse but went into precipitous decline and became crime-ridden (it’s yet to recover). Whether you blame Reagonomics or the endless succession of Democrat mayors since the 1960s, “the D” is a shell of its former self.

What it is though, is perfect fodder for sci fi action films. And Robocop beautifully showcases a city in decline in this movie classic.

We love Detroit though; and we love Robocop.

Directed by Paul Verhoeven, RoboCop was written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. Alongside Peter Weller, there’s Nancy Allen, Dan O’Herlihy, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer, and Ronny Cox. That’s pretty much a genre movie all star team right there. Ferrer was in Traffic, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. And Cox starred in that stone-cold all-American classic, Deliverance.

Set in the near future, RoboCop centers on police officer Alex Murphy (Weller) who is brutally murdered by a gang of criminals. Really, how other way can you be murdered but brutally? He is subsequently revived by the megacorporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) as a superhuman cyborg law enforcer, from which the movie gets its name.

Themes that make up the film include include media influence, gentrification, corruption, authoritarianism, greed, privatization, capitalism, identity, dystopia, and human nature. It received solid reviews and was cited as one of the best films of 1987, spawning a franchise that included merchandise, two sequels, a television series, a remake, two animated TV series, a television mini-series, video games, and a number of comic book adaptations/crossovers.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 26 – The Warriors

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“I’ll shove that bat up your ass and turn you into a Popsicle.”

The Warriors! Can you dig it?

Indeed we can.

Based on Sol Yurick’s book, which drew inspiration from Anabasis by Zenophon, a pupil of Socrates, Walter Hill’s cult classic is one long chase from the top to the bottom of the New York City subway system.

At a gang conclave in the Bronx, gangsters from all of the New York City boroughs gather to talk strategy.

Cyrus, the de facto uber boss, addresses the thousands in attendance with one of the great speeches in all of moviemaking, including “Can you count, suckers? I say, the future is ours!” And he’d be forgiven for thinking that too. This depiction of NYC features barely any cops, and gangs are running roughshod over the entire population.

When Cyrus is assassinated, rivals claim it was the Warriors, a multi-racial crew from Coney Island, Brooklyn. Of course, our heroes had nothing to do with it, but that doesn’t matter as every other gang in the city thinks it’s true. The Warriors then have to “bop” their way back to Coney Island, their home-base. And they do this on the New York City MTA.

With tonnes of excitement, crazy rival gangs, fisticuffs aplenty, it’s no wonder we LOVE The Warriors.

Find more reviews www.reallyawfulmovies.com.