Ninja Death II

I return! Much like the film of today it is random and without common sense. Okay actually it was a fairly long film broken up into three films. I told you I would return to it. You were warned. Okay, feel free to run for the hills if the continuation of said movie is not your fancy. For those masochistic few, welcome. This is Ninja Death II.

Cold waters turn Tiger into cub. Shrinkage!

We recap with Tiger (Alexander Rei Lo of Kung Fu Commandos, Shaolin vs Ninja, Shaolin vs Lama, Mafia vs Ninja, Shadow Killers Tiger Force and Ninja: The Final Duel). We last we knew, Master and the old Blind warrior were in fact uncles to Tiger and they were each instructing him in different forms of martial arts. Also the princess was still alive. Tiger must still do battle with the Grand Master, who also happens to be Tiger's uncle. Christ, Kurosawa couldn't follow this plot.

We open our flick with an assortment of back flips in ninja gear because...it looked cool? Um it was the 80s and there were metric tons of cocaine?

We have tons of wire work, so Anime levels of leaping, also they under-cranked the film so it could be sped up in play. Now it looks like speedsters with blades. What should be the opening credits ends up looking like a martial arts expo. I mean I really cannot think of anything else an orange backdrop would be used for beyond that. Yet again, no credits. Could be potential audition tapes for Hand recruiters.

Grand Master is so proud of being such because it only took him 80 years. Wait whaaaaat? So your brother had Tiger when he was 50? Tiger and Master continue training because...furthering the plot. Tiger is told by Master, the impending invaders from Japan are coming for them both and they must be ready. Mind and body must be as one. Heart, courage and skill.

No! It is I who has fabulous pjs!

Did I mention Master is constantly high? Yeah he is a fan of cannabis. Toking and training goes hand-in-hand...apparently. I mean I have heard of Drunken Masters but Higher than a Georgia Pine Master, well that's a new one. Master goes on to explain to explain the cadre of ninja that is after them was trained for only one mission. Yup, we got another per-ordained or destiny story line.

He could have also been high and paranoid. Methinks opioids got rubbed into his spliffs.

We are back to piss poor English dubbing. Ranging from American slang to the Queen's English. So yes it gets a tad confusing. Also the brother and sister from the brothel are back.

Sister (again I still don't know her name) still has the hots for Tiger and they knock boots. Apparently having her in servitude creeps him out. Guess not everyone is capable of having a sex slave/woman warrior at their beck and call. In their off hours, Master and Tiger seem to like cosplay. Master is almost always decked out as Hobo Gandalf and Tiger looks like a newsie complete with flat cap. What frickin' time period is this? I lost track. I see 80s era dressed folk accidentally put in the film (NO PERMITS) so is this a period piece? Modern day conflict throughout the ages? What in the sam scratch is going on??!!!

Meditation or long drawn out poop?

With the wacky montage of Grand Master either whipping the monkey shit out of his ninjas I mean training them or his master playing a flute; to the standing around Tiger and Master seem to do in quite a few scenes, this film's pace is all over the place.

Blind Master is...zany. I mean his scenes are and it's clever that he gets to whack folk in the head with his cane while performing snap kicks and windmill kicks. I still don't know what in the nine hells is going on and I am watching the damn thing!!!

Will Tiger and Grand Master have their showdown? Does it bother Tiger he is fighting an 80 year old guy? What the hell is going on?

Congratulations Ninja Death II, you made Master Ninja TV mini-series turned TV movie make more sense. I'd love to tell you that all the questions I had from the previous flick were answered BUT THEY WEREN'T!!!! Better luck with Part III or should I just give this a rest? Yes there's still titty in this stink burger of a flick. 

Dom DeLuise is the Last Samurai.

Shark Week: Sharknado

Welcome back my readers to the absurd collection of tripe that is Shark Week.  For those just tuning in I am not referring to the informative and entertaining Discovery Channel week.  Oh no, this is the bottom rung of cinema shark movies that have such a farfetched plot device that you need a rod and reel to haul it back to some sense of reality.  But hey buck up!  They can’t all be THAT bad.   So grab yourself some goobers, a savory soft drink and relax in the easy chair.   This is Sharknado.

Hehe hides my woody.

Spoilers be in the water. Our spoilers.

From the collective asshats of Asylum Pictures (Transmorphers, The Terminators, Almighty Thor, Sherlock Holmes) comes a preposterous notion of a hurricane and from the CGI standing has to be a class 4 or 5, scoops up a wide variety of sharks from the sea and somehow hurls them about L.A.   SUSPEND DISBELIEF AND SCREW PHYSICS!!!!!   Now for those of you that may feel we are off to a very rocky start…well we are.  The Mockbusters have been difficult for me to digest as they take popular movies and make an even worse one. 

Do not bring your evil here.

Our movie opens with a shark fin soup connoisseur (Marcus Choi of Enchanted, Make Yourself at Home, Raising Hope, 40 Days and Nights and Graceland) and salty dog Captain Santtiago (Israel Saez de Miguel of Venom, Five, Green Card, Black Rice and Rise of the Dinosaurs) conclude a million dollar purchase of sharks as a giant hurricane (not a tornado) that proceeds to gobble up different species of shark and chuck them at 150 mph off the coast of Mexico and into Southern California.  Sharks come tumbling in buildings, bars, homes and around regions of Santa Monica without killing them outright from the sheer impact, speed and velocity they were traveling at.  SCREW PHYSICS!!!!!!

Eat it boy, eat it!

Our would be hero  surfer and bar owner Fin (Ian Ziering of Beverly Hills, 90210) whose Zen philosophy has him totally in tune with the waves points out the fast paced weather is not normal in that regards.  Like the calm seas and clear skies going suddenly cloudy and storm brewing.  Fin’s main earner Nova (Cassie Scerbo of Bring It On: In It to Win It, Dance Revolution, Make It or Break It and Teen Spirit) hold a secret loathing for sharks and her gill shaped scar indicates.  Looks like she was getting a wax with a cheese grater but no other portion of her leg or body had scar damage.  Oops.  One such homeowner is startled by the arrival of said shark April (Tara Reid of The Big Lebowski, American Pie, Van Wilder and Alone in the Dark) gets her living room up to about 4 feet of water and yet the swells managed to miss her front porch/ parking garage. Hmmm… oh right I forgot.  SUSPEND DISBELIEF!!!!

Tara over me? As if.

Okay just a few side notes on the film.  Given how laid back the Southern Californian is I had a bit of a difficult time buying them rallying and beating back the sharks.   Tossing a bomb from a helicopter to stop a hurricane seems logical too.  Oh did I mention John Heard (On the Yard, Heart Beat, Cutter’s Way, Home Alone and In the Line of Fire) in this as well?  Playing a rummy former surfer he belches his lines and sways.  

Oh weather is calm for a matter of 3 frames per second and then the skies darken like Gozer the Sumerian had arrived.  Continuity was not a big issue for this flick as streets varies on being bone dry one minute and then flooded the next. Oh and apparently Santa Monica beach houses have their own gyroscopic mounts or anti-gravity units because I didn’t see a single swell wipe them out…

Shark Week: Super Shark

Hello one and all and welcome to Shark Week: Bad Cinema Style.   This week will be reviewing the particular conglomerate of straight-to-DVD movies.  We will laugh, cry, curse and praise God that they are finally over and go out for a sensible meal.   So with that in mind let’s get this rodeo started from the title alone we are in for a world of hurt.  So grab your oxygen tank, prep your M-1 Garand and tell that fishy to smile you sonvua… This is Super Shark.

 

Screw you, physics!

Spoilers fly!!!

From the warped mind of Jiggly Girl exploitation be it sci-fi, horror or creature feature; Roger Corman’s protégé Fred Olen Ray (Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Venomous, Tomb of the Werewolf, The Bikini Escort, Solar Flare and Dire Wolf) dregs up from the salty depths of the ocean, YET ANOTHER prehistoric shark known primarily as the Megalodon due YET ANOTHER underwater oil rig drilling platform and releases and/or disturbs this ancient eating machine the size of two blue whales into a killing frenzy.   Relatively certain sonar would have picked that particular beasty up but hey we don’t need crazy things like logic and physics in our shark movie.

    

Think green ya jerks!

After ruthless Lex Luthor archetype Roger Wade (John Schneider of Dukes of Hazzard, Loving, Smallville, Lake Placid 2, Shark Swarm and Return of the Killer Schrews) finds his oil rig in tatters he gets violent and belligerent to all around him including his hapless comedic sidekick Stewart (Jerry Lacy of As the World Turns, The Young and the Restless, Dark Shadows, Play It Again, Sam, Chicken Soup for the Soul and Hatfields and McCoys: Bad Blood) screaming about the millions tied up in the investments and blah blah blah.    Meanwhile Marine Biologist Kat Carmichael (Sarah Lieving of The Hitchhiker remake, Cult, Carbon Copy, Lakeview Terrace, The Dunwich Horror and Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus) notices some vicious sea creature attacks in her findings that are previously unrecorded.  She will be our Matt Hooper archetype and try not to ignore her or she may swim up and bite you on the ass.  

Pretty sure my boy Clark will have this under wraps.

Of course this all takes place during a Fourth of July weekend so the beaches are packed with tourists, students and in general drunken yahoos.   Now come and suspend disbelief with me when we find out this shark can battle the humans on the land, the sea and even…the air.   Super Shark was not dropped in a self contained space ark created by Marlon Brando but appears to be a mutation or dare we say evolution in the species.   You will believe a shark can fly!!!  Well actually you will be more like myself in the many WTF moments this film projects.   Nigh invulnerable to bullets, bombs and other CGI vehicles this reign of terror shows no end in sight during the “Queen of the Beach” wrap party.   Oh and feel free to slap the DJ Dynamite Stevens (J.J. Walker of Good Times, Airplane, At Ease, Water and The Guyver) just for being in this turkey.  

The CGI is appalling with the exception of the underwater scenes,  our flying shark effects made me cough and choke on my sandwich as I viewed it and frankly the performances look very laxed.   Again if we were expecting anything but cheesy from a Fred Olen Ray film; then we clearly need to hang around more to the evolutionary bell curve and develop thumbs and brain cells.  Truly a Mystery Science Theater 3000 worthy material for mocking but do not view this film directly or you will have the IQ of a state senator or quite possibly a fairly smart cocker spaniel.

Git in ma belly!!!

Death Factory...Hmm must be Kenner

Yup the title says it all…Death Factory.   Now if you look at it from philosophical point of view you could say the manufactory of guns, tanks, bombs and jets could be viewed as this and have endless debates about peace vs. war.   Well alas extensionalists, that ain’t the case.   Ten to one teens are involved.  So grab your guy or girl, get some drugs and booze, this is Death Factory.

There a few spoilers ahead.  You know the drill.

The genius at work on this cinema feature is Brad Sykes (which is a rude name in the Newcomer language of Alien Nation) writer and director of such films as: (Camp Blood, Camp Blood 2, Goth and Plaguers) in 2002 under the blessing of Brain Damage Films (Apt name) comes this story…such as it is.  With 5 million in the kitty, the film was created and the magic happened…no wait that was Escape from New York.   Our story unfolds with a couple making out in the grass near the “factory” and they decided it would be a great idea to explore the factory and not each other.  Gee, I wonder what is going to happen.  No sooner than nitwits one and two wander in they are killed off.   Boy, who would have seen that one coming.  

This piece of sputum was shot on Digital Video.  I mean lower than the Panasonic.  A flip cam would have gotten better shots.   The pace of this movie is at the speed of curdled milk.  Okay how do I put this in polite terms?  Heck I will give it a shot.  The resonate sounds of the factory walls disrupts the actors’ dialogue.  5 million in the kitty and nobody were miked at all.  You hear lots of echoing in this vast empty warehouse that is allegedly a factory.   The only thing more wooden than the frame around the warehouse was the lines that felt less than natural to say.  The actors themselves look baffled when they should be terrified or they appear ambivalent when they should be serious.  They look like they could be doing anything else and just got roped into this gig.

 Our ensemble cast rounds off with Rachel (Lisa Jay of Two and a Half Men, Creepies and Tuesday), Luisa (Karla Zamudio of The Shield, Hard as Nails, Shakedown and The Mexican Dream) the sassy one, Troy (Jason Flowers of The Brink, Papa Zeus and The Lost Girl) The musing metal head, Derek (The Brink, Creepies and Tuesday) Dopey frat boy, Francis (David Kalamus of Alien 3000 a.k.a. The Unseen Evil 2 and In the Closet) and his girlfriend Letica (Rhonda Jordan of Urban Playground, The Mummy’s Kiss, Galaxy Hunter and Bad Penny) are the token black couple.  I swear this need to pair people off like that.  Cubby and Roy couldn’t attend.  

Our gathering of MENSA members were all supposed to party at Francis’ house when his folks went away for a trip but they canceled at the last minute.  Hmm where to get our groove on now?  Why, how about that abandoned factory on the other edge of town that even the cops don’t patrol?   Brilliant!    There are no subplots or perhaps a good flashback sequence that would explain what happened here or why it was truly abandoned but some meek word of mouth rumors/urban legends which sounded more preposterous than a vengeful leprechaun in da hood.   I assume the ridiculous banter which was to be hip and amusingly ironic was NOT supposed to fall flat on its butt and sound just plain snarky.    The main cliché’ of course is booze, drugs and sex.  Now I get that these youngsters have no clubhouse or apartment to use but my God an old couch exposed to elements of weather, insects and rodents?  Oh baby take me right here on the pile of rat droppings.  If the creature doesn’t get them the chigger bites should.

Best part is there is a bed in one room with fresh sheets.  The monster turned down the bed for them.  Isn’t that thoughtful?  The warehouse er um high tech facility has a few strewn papers calling it Dyson Chemicals and without any background in biochemistry the plucky younglings figure out that experiments went awry and caused one of the workers to go completely crackers, mutate and start mauling her fellow employees, I mean this was a bloodbath that somehow was kept out of the papers and TV.  Forget local; that would have been national news.  Suffice to say this had nothing new to bring to the table.  You have blood and boobs folks.  Heck why don’t we just do a series of those films and call it a day.  Blood and Boobs Part 3: Silicone and Slaughter!  Wow my cheesy made up title was better than this whole flick. Seriously, go read a book, sort your sock drawer or give an old friend a phone call.