DANGEROUS MEN (1984 / 2005 / 2015)

Filmmaking is the most communal artistic medium there is. The impassioned spend years watching and studying films, then attending film schools, and then striking out on their own and working on guerilla-style film sets just to hone their craft. And when everyone comes together, bringing their own specific expertise--whether it be writing, cinematography, or editing--a film happens, and it's through everyone's combined efforts that such a thing were possible.

The opening credits for Dangerous Men prove that everyone's been doing it wrong, as it proudly displays the names man that helped bring Dangerous Men to fruition:

A John S. Rad film.

Created and written by John Rad.

Original music, songs, & lyrics by John Rad.

Producer: John Rad.

Executive producer: John Rad.

Directed by John Rad.

A joke surely made a hundred times by now, that opening credits list perfectly sums up Dangerous Men: Rad. Rad all over. Rad through and through. Every inch of film, every stick of production design, every B♭on the keyboard is pure, 100%, unfiltered Rad. But you'll somehow realize this before a single Rad ever flashes on screen, because you'll already have witnessed the title--DANGEROUS MEN--roar onto the screen, only to crash into each other and explode. Following this, you will know there was only one man capable of creating what you are about to witness. Neither David Lean, Howard Hawks, nor Martin Scorsese, literally, could have ever made Dangerous Men. 

If you clicked on this review already having heard of Dangerous Men, then you likely know the backstory of the very complicated and unorthodox production. Entirely self-funded, auteur John Rad shot portions of the film when he had the money to do so. When there was no money, there was no film. The shooting just...stopped. As you can imagine, this approach made the shoot last just a little longer than usual--like, 22 years longer.

Do you know what happens over the course of 22 years?

EVERYTHING.

Actors quit; technology upgrades; "plots" can become lost over the haziness of time; calendars (seen prominently in the background) can say 1985 in one scene, and 1994 the next.

Haphazardly rewritten to conform to the changes that occur over time (like, say, a lead actress who quits after becoming injured on set), Dangerous Men's plot makes very little sense. Characters are introduced and then completely forgotten. Other characters are introduced at nearly the end of the film and somehow become essential catalysts to the resolution of the conflict. Even Wikipedia, which knows everything about everything, has no fucking idea how to explain it: "The plot of Dangerous Men is somewhat unclear, and changes abruptly towards the middle of the film."

Dangerous Men has something for everyone: unsexy sex scenes, terrible karate, ageless fathers, wet kissing, buttcrack knives, badly obscured accents, repeated attempted rape, childish/murderous bikers, tedious strangling, the line, "sweet like cake!"; multiple scenes of knee love; a stabbing-murder sequence shot entirely from the point of view of the human ass; an inadvertently sociopathic heroine; endless scenes of a naked British man dancing in the California desert; poor, poor, poor...just, the poorest acting; funky, upbeat, joyful synth scores used for scenes of rape, stabbing, murder, or, you know, whatever; zero-hour appearances of albino villains; inescapable scenes of belly-dancing; near-cunnilingus; and so so so much more.

Dangerous Men is completely incompatible with the art of film criticism. There'd be no point in calling out the horrendous acting, writing, directing, etc., or the numerous continuity errors, when you're dealing with a film that feels like a fever dream. It doesn't matter that shot composition is worrisome, or that the movie is clearly comprised of multiple film grades, when there are literally instances of actors reading their lines from on-screen scripts, or the same punch sound/"agh!" yell is used fifteen times in a row between two different characters during a fight scene, or the avenging heroine is obviously holding a boom mic almost-but-not-quite out of the shot, even pointing it back and forth to whomever is speaking at that moment. Critiquing Dangerous Men is like going to PetSmart and complaining that it's a shitty zoological exhibit. It's like licking the inside of a Chinatown dumpster and wondering why you feel so ill. Dangerous Men aims a nuclear-propelled rocket at a planet called "Merely Satisfactory Filmmaking" and falls short by thirty million light years. Dangerous Men trails in every election poll except the one called "Hilarious Tits and Stabbing." Dangerous Men shows up to your mother's funeral in Crocs and board shorts, but you honestly don't care because you LOVE Dangerous Men. Someone once tried to battle Dangerous Men with nothing but hyperbole, at which point hyperbole was added to science books as an official unit of measurement.

Dangerous Men can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop. Ever. 

Being that Dangerous Men was shot in chunks over the course of 22 years, some portions of footage look better than others. As you can imagine, the look and integrity of the film gradually improves as it plays on, being that it was shot in mostly chronological order. There are also signs of your usual mistreated footage--print damage, marring, speckling, etc. There's even a cigarette burn or two, which will serve as your befuddling reminder that, yeah, this fucker actually played in a theater. Along with that, the audio on this thing...it ain't great. If someone is sitting in a quiet room, dialogue is clean and clear. If someone is outside on the beach, say, getting almost-raped, or stabbed to death, dialogue is likely muffled by exterior elements, like crashing waves or steady winds. In the film's opening scene, set in a restaurant, all audio has been completely removed between dialogue exchanges, which also contain your usual amount of restaurant ambiance. The very very repetitive and tonally inappropriate synth score by (you guessed it) John Rad can also overwhelm dialogue at times. To summarize, Dangerous Men is capable of offering any kind of consistency when it comes to how it looks or sounds, but seriously, who gives a shit? You didn't even know this thing existed until a month ago, and now you're going to complain? 

For years now, people have asked me, "Why do you love bad movies so much? What's the point of watching something bad...on purpose?" Films like Dangerous Men are my answer. And it needs to speak for itself. If you're a bad movie connoisseur, run--don't walk--to the phone in your hand probably right now and order up this bad boy. You will not be at all disappointed.

Dangerous Men is now available on Blu-ray from Drafthouse Films.

SHITTY FLICKS: ZOMBIE NATION

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis.

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

Ulli Lommel is the guy at the party with a length of toilet paper stuck to his shoe, and he's trekking it around behind him like a limp tail, in between trips to the fish tank and the bean dip. Other party goers laugh, getting a kick out of it, and for the rest of the night, no one can take him seriously. Yet, despite this, he keeps getting invited to parties.

This is a perfect allegory for Ulli Lommel’s career. He has never, ever, ever made a good film. Not ever. And this isn’t one of those, “well that’s just your opinion, man” situations. If there was a big book called Opinions That Are Actually Facts, there would be an entire chapter called “Ulli Lommel’s Films Are Literally Shit.”

"Okay, this time, YOU ring the gong,
and I'LL scream MORTAL KOMBAT."

However, there is no denying that the guy is still filling Redbox machines and Netflix servers with his nonsense. He says "action!" and his cameras record stuff and suddenly there are studios out there who want to distribute it. I've seen enough Ulli Lommel films to know that if he can do it, anyone can.

Why not get started with this handy, no-effort recipe?

Ingredients

• 10-15 "actors" picked randomly from a variety of high school and community college drama programs (preferably ones dismissed for utter lack of talent)
• 1 part German wooden lead to stumble through English dialogue
• 1 abandoned warehouse to store all sets (police station with exposed sewage pipes clearly indicating it is shot in boiler room; apartment that looks like Ikea show room; furniture store whose door remains open all times of day despite lack of presence of staff or security team)
• 1/4 gallon of white paint (will not be enough to paint walls within camera range in said warehouse)
• 1 part crew man's accidental and blatant reflection in mirror
• 1 part stolen musical piece from The Exorcist (to be repeatedly used)
• Multiple parts flashback of fat bald man getting spanked
• 1 part clone of Parker Posey (for the mom role)
• 1 part asinine idea that, hey, since people liked Fight Club, let's have a scene where two men fistfight and fall into strategically placed cardboard boxes while surrounding friends and family shout encouragement, only never to mention the scene again

The boys were taken aback by Ulli's raucous laughter
after asking which color the latest script rewrite was in.

•  1/4 teaspoon of black make-up (apply generously; this will encompass ANY/ALL zombie make-up)
• Several parts weird, mood-breaking techno
• 2 cameras; one digital that shoots in good quality, one amateur home video camera that is glaring opposite the previous
• 3 parts lighting equipment to be blatantly captured in shot in every police station scene
• 1 part terribly out of place, unnoticed, non-utilized gong, placed in very fake police station
• 0 parts script supervisor
• 1 part audacity to use Marathon Man homage (in nonsensical way)
• 1 part random businessman that waits out in middle of woods to make business deals via cell phone, only to become fodder for zombie girls (who then steal car)
• 1 part mechanic who takes out penis behind door as zombie girls approach
• 1 part fake bloody penis
• 1 part hope that you won't realize Ulli didn't bother to write out the hero who disappears halfway through the movie due to real-life hospital visit
• 6 parts zombie girls to wear said black make-up under eyes up with no other make-up effects to be seen (except for continuity-be-damned close ups in mirrors)
• Multiple parts suspension of disbelief (cop takes offending woman to warehouse, partner waits outside, cop comes back out sans woman but with giant body-sized duffel bag, partner is not suspicious)
• 1 part completely ludicrous ending
• 0 parts logic

Directions

1. Take all said ingredients and throw haphazardly against wall.
2. Hope it sticks.
3. Look in awe at how movies literally about nothing can be made and sold for mass consumption.
4. Ingest generous portion, swallow with grimace as Ulli Lommel rips money from your pockets and laughs maniacally.

SHITTY FLICKS: BEAR

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis. 

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

If the film Bear has taught me anything, it's this: run, screaming, from bears. For they want nothing more than to trash your minivan, steal your purse, and exacerbate your already strained familial relationships.

Meet Nick. He's 20-something, has a band/girlfriend, and willingly drives a minivan.

His brother is Sam, who might be in his late-20-somethings. You can tell straightaway by his wardrobe that he has never approved of any of Nick's choices.

Nick and Sam and their girlfriends then meet Bear. 

"I don't like the way he's looking at us," says one of the girlfriends about Bear, who seriously looks just adorable. Luckily Sam is there to save the day and shoot Bear something like 37 times.

Nick does not approve of this at all. "That bear was innocent! Now there's one less bear in the world! Thanks a lot!"

In the interim, Sam has just enough time to make an offensive joke about the Chinese before another Bear shows up.

"That's not the same Bear," offers up one of the girlfriends. "This one's got balls."

I honestly don't know if this was intended as a joke or not.

AWWWWWWWW!!

They turn to Sam and his magical gun, but it's empty. They promptly run and flee directly into the van, prepared to leave Jellystone Park forever.

"I don't think so!" says Bear as he pushes the entire fucking minivan over, his strength fueled by his new-found hatred for humans.   

"I'm sorry," Nick says directly to the back of Bear's gigantic fur ass. "I did not mean to invade your home."

In response, Bear lays down next to his fallen cub, looks sad, and has flashbacks to that time this dude named Sam emptied an entire clip into a fucking baby bear.

In the midst of the overturned minivan carnage, all of them offer up legitimately great ideas as to how they can improve their situation:

Girlfriend # 1 picks up a cake box, looks forlornly down at the cake that I guess was for someone's birthday, and thinks, "I wonder if I can fix it."

Sam suggests that Nick get out his guitar and play some music for the bears, in hopes they will sign him to a record deal.

Girlfriend # 2 takes this opportunity to offer up her own pearls of wisdom: "Stop fighting."

Working together, they right the minivan, setting it back on its tires, so that they may continue the minivan's goal of parking its fat ass directly in the express lane and not moving for any fucking reason unless it were to spot a Walmart at the next exit. (And don't forget your Pennsylvania plates, minivan!)

Nick tells Sam he can probably fix the minivan's engine, so he grins as widely as possible for some reason and slips out of the passenger seat. As Nick does all the work, Sam stands over him and continues to berate all of Nick's life choices. According to Sam, Nick's girlfriend is "smokin' hot," but not marriage material, and his career so far has consisted of playing gigs in dive bars for tips. Nick lets all of this roll off his shoulders with ease because he's inhumanly affable. And he LOVES bears.

AWWWWWWWW!!

Meanwhile, inside the van, the girls are getting along famously. "Suck my dick!" one of them says to the other. 

If only.

They quickly forgive each other, though, and trade some secrets, and cry.

Nick manages to fix the van's engine, but then the tire falls off, so it looks like they're walking. 

"I'm getting a really bad vibe like someone's watching us," says Girlfriend # 1.

Cue Bear to stick his head up out of a fucking bush like this is a cartoon. I love it.

Our characters run to a nearby drainpipe and climb inside, which has thankfully been punched full of holes, likely by Bear after a bad day at the mine. This allows Bear to stick his paws in at his convenience and bat around our characters. It's during this moment that Bear becomes not just a vicious animal but also a common thief, as he quite literally steals Girlfriend # 2's purse. I'm not sure why - perhaps it was filled with pic-a-nic foods.

Then they run BACK to the minivan.

HUH????

"Instead of Groundhog Day it's like Grizzly Day where we keep coming back to the same place reliving our terror over and over but instead of the groundhog seeing his shadow it's the bear coming out of the drainpipe trying to kill everybody," says Girlfriend # 1, which is one of the most punchable things anyone has ever said. 

Bear agrees, so he rips her out of the minivan and destroys her. Sad Middle Eastern vocalizations fill the musical score, telling us what has happened is both upsetting AND mystical.

Nick, not quite terribly sure how to confront these new tragic events, runs out of the minivan, cries, and begins to jog in place. Sam hugs him and drags him back to the van, as incensed and disturbed by the jogging-in-place as we all are.

Bear, not satisfied with having taken out Nick's girlfriend, charges the van for Round Two. His adorable, gigantic bear ass can be seen circling the minivan, choosing the weakest spot to attack. 

"I'm going to fucking kill your babies!" Sam shouts at the attacking bear. "I'm going to eat your fucking babies! I am going to skullfuck your fucking face!" he adds, which is not only absurd, but also a bit redundant, but, he's in a really bad place right now, guys.

"He came back for retribution!" Nick offers up. "He came back for his honor! Native Americans believe bears contain a human spirit!"

Then Bear flips over the van. Again.

As our remaining characters root around the van's contents for a potential weapon, it cuts to the bear sitting on top of the van, lounging, one paw awesomely resting on a tire. Memes were invented for this shot.

AWWWWWWWW!!

The back of the DVD case boldly exclaims (including quotation marks) "What makes the film even better is the use of REAL bears, no CGI here, folks," and is credited to exactly no one. And it's true: At no point does the bear seem computer generated or automated. And at no point does the actual footage of the bear suggest it was shot with the same camera as the main action.

Way to go, jack-asses.

Our characters devise a plan to lure the bear inside their van, with the aid of some birthday cake, and then escape the van with enough time to run around the other side and close the door, trapping the bear inside. 

It all goes exactly to plan until Nick gets trapped inside the van with the bear and gets his human ass handed to him. He survives with only a few scratches as the injured bear takes off.

"This is never going to end, is it?" bellows Girlfriend # 2, who is apparently reading my mind.

Sam decides to try and hoof it to their intended destination - a local steakhouse - leaving Sam's girlfriend and Nick behind to openly discuss the affair they had that one time.

"It didn't mean anything to me. You were a good lay, that's all," Nick says, who up until now was supposed to be the likable one.

Girlfriend # 2 begins to sob and the actor playing Nick clearly fucks up his dialogue, but the scene forges ahead, anyway.

Meanwhile, Sam breaks through the shrubbery and finds himself in the parking lot of the steakhouse. And Bear follows, hilariously, right behind him. Sam cowers behind a car for a moment before Bear grabs him and drags him all the fucking way BACK to the van!

Holy shit!

"That bear wants us to suffer," Nick explains. "He brought Sam back because there's unfinished business. That bear knows more about us than we do about ourselves."

"I'm pregnant," adds the girlfriend. (It's Nick's.)

"We Bears are a proud race," adds Bear. (I wish.)

Bear ends in tears, confessions, self-sacrifice, and bears.

The moral of the story is: next time you drive in a minivan with your brother, make sure you're not fucking his wife, or else bears.

SHITTY FLICKS: SAVAGE PLANET

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant, camp-girl penis. 

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

I've seen a lot of dreck. I've seen dreck from low-rent filmmakers, and I've seen dreck made by established directors with access to multi-million budgets. I've sought dreck and gotten quality; and, in turn, I've sought quality, and boy oh boy, did I get dreck. It happens. It's unavoidable. And all during this, Savage Planet comes along - a cinematic equivalent of a really, really bad liar - comes up right behind us all, and says, "Sorry I'm late. I forgot how doors worked.”

Savage Planet is pretty special. Not just because it's "ha ha" bad, and not just because it was made by the Sci-Fi Channel back when their original television movies were bad by accident instead of kitschy bad-on-purpose nonsense like Sharknado, but for a very different and special reason. We'll get to that reason in a bit. I suppose it should be considered a spoiler - not because it will ruin the "plot," but because it would ruin the moment during the film that you would be struck by the sheer stupidity of its "villain" and be so utterly taken aback in joy that I kind of don't want to let the air out of your tires.

But, if you choose to keep reading, that's on you.

The film opens with a group of scientists on another "planet" machetteing their way through a thick wood. The leader takes readings with a gizmo and mentions how the levels of whatever on this planet are better than on Earth. It's really important that the film establish right away that these guys are most def NOT on earth, because what are clearly very plain woodsy areas of Canada should at NO point be mistaken for Planet Earth.

References To Being On Alien Planet And Definitely Not Earth: 1

Lead guy gets his hand hacked off by a machete completely by accident and falls into a hole, where he burns his hand stump in a puddle of radioactive green goo. His hand grows back (kind of), and he is then viciously attacked by a space alien. This poor man's fear is paramount. Never, back on Planet Earth, had he ever encountered such an otherworldly monster, but yet here he is, facing something harvested from his nightmares, something so indescribable and beyond comprehension that H.P. Lovecraft would have needed two volumes and limitless cognac to properly describe every detail. 

On a planet that savage, aliens look like this:

Okay, you got me. It’s bears. And not just plain old bears, but "mutant" alien bears. This is also something they will say over and over to Jedi-mind-trick you into believing you're seeing, like, gigantic mutant bears. But, you're not. Even the DVD packaging goes very far out of the way to avoid dropping the "b" word. The front cover is a picture of a mossy-looking planet, on the back is nary a photo of a bear, and the summary reads:

Earth is declared uninhabitable from years of toxic pollution and ecological damage. A team of scientists are sent to visit an unknown planet in hopes of finding a new, safe, world. But within the lush and verdant landscape of the new planet they find a mutated species that turns their expedition deadly. They expected and needed utopia but instead found something more deadly than what they left behind.  

Bears are what they found. 

They found bears.

Sean Patrick Flannery plays Randall Cain, a sad earthling with a haunted past who has a giant scar across his chest that looks like an even gianter Cronenbergian sex bug. It's off-putting to look at, and even more off-putting to pet. He lives in a "Dystopian" future, which means everything looks exactly the same as it does now, except for the first establishing shot of the city, which is a 3D generation of smoothed-over metallic building blocks probably designed by the guys who made Candy Crush while they were each on their own toilet. 

Cain's vacation of looking sad and lying in a future cot with that weird bug-looking scar thing across his person is interrupted by his superiors and is brought on to be briefed on a very important mission that he apparently has no choice but to endure. There, he is told that a planet nearly identical to Earth (let's just get that established as soon as possible) has been discovered and I guess some dudes and dudettes need to go there and do some science stuff to determine if the people of Earth can go live there. The planet is called Planet Oxygen, which is just as imaginative as the person whosever idea it was to film a movie set on an alien planet in the not-so-alien looking woods of Ontario. (See, because there's a whole bunch more vegetation on this planet, and hence, a whole bunch more oxygen.)

Cain and his rag-tag group of colleagues, including Not Stephen Moyer, Guy Who Looks Like A Grown-Up Baby, Token Black Guy, and Almost Lisa Kudrow are beamed directly onto Planet Oxygen using an invention called DST (standing for distance travel). 

Each time someone is beamed onto the planet, the director is quick to use split screen, so we can see everyone's understandably amazed faces while the person disappears right before their eyes!

If they think that's amazing, wait till they see how LARGE these bears are!

Alien Bear steps on a Lego.

One of the last people to beam through - and also the guy in charge of security - dies during transference. He hilariously makes pain sounds identical to that of a monkey's, his bones disappear, and he crumbles into a pile of thin, blankety, wet man. Carlson says, "We all agree this is a tragedy," without looking all that bothered by it, and then he--

Oh, shit!

References To Being On Alien Planet And Definitely Not Earth: 2

Where were we? 

Oh, right.

So, these scientists, I guess, are about to--

References To Being On Alien Planet And Definitely Not Earth: 3

Jeeze. 

So, the scientists begin their expedition--

References To Being On Alien Planet And Definitely Not Earth: 4

Right.

During their recon, they locate the body of a dead bear.

"What the hell is it?" asks one of the many people claiming to be a scientist.

After an autopsy of sorts, this amazing exchange takes place:

"It's a prehistoric cave bear; been extinct on Earth for over ten thousand years...The most formidable predator in its day." 

"How does an extinct bear come to get on this planet?"

"Somehow its DNA sequence regressed. No modern bear, even full-grown, has claws this big, or a hide this dense...Their only known enemy was man."

Later, everyone has a philosophical conversation about whether or not the lives of those already lost are worth whatever discoveries they might find on Planet Oxygen. If this were real life, of course the lives lost would be deemed irrelevant, but since this is television - brainless, brainless television - these scientists have hearts and decide it's not worth it and everyone wants to go home. Not Carlson, though, because he's the movie's resident money/fame-driven penis head.

"For a scientist, you know a lot about death, but nothing about life," someone says to Carlson, and god damn does he look SHUT DOWN.

(No he doesn't.)

Also:

References To Being On Alien Planet And Definitely Not Earth: 5

One of the scientists decides it would be best to go off on her own. I think her name was Bird Seed(?)

Weird, right?

Then this happens:

It was quite a sight to see!

Cain attempts to take control of the mission, since the whole science part of it seems to have gone out the window and now it's more about survival, which means Carlson can be 100% dick. Bears come and Cain asks Carlson to shoot some of them, but Carlson says "fuck that" and him and his eyebrows peace out of the scene. Cain promptly falls and hits his head on a gigantic rock.

I don't blame him. Maybe he accidentally watched a little bit of his own movie.

As everyone makes plans to spelunk down a cave wall, let's all pause for a moment of out-of-context dialog:

"Okay, here's the plan: I'm gonna go down first, followed by the two girls." 

Day dims, night comes, and it's almost too easy to take out these attacking bears with a shot gun. A perfect juxtaposition of: stock footage of roaring bear, man with shot gun, stock footage of roaring bear calmly lowering from two feet down to all four = man successfully killed bear with a shotgun. 

Movie magic.

After one of the dudes' girlfriends gets dragged from her tent and eaten perfectly in half, the other scientists begin to really doubt their own faith in science. Talk about horror!

- "And in my dreams, the bear and I were one."
- "Okay.”

The bears continue to take out our scientist characters one by one, and shockingly, Token Black Guy is still hanging in. Even Harold Perrineau was bear meat at this point in The Edge. 

Have you seen The Edge? 

It's great.

Anyway, this shit has gotten far too complicated for a killer alien film where the aliens are played by bears. There's something happening now about "life serums" and Planet Oxygen's habitat becoming "increasingly unstable." All I know is: more bears, please. Token Black Guy is still breathing, as is Guy Who Looks Like A Grown-Up Baby.

Whoop. Never mind.

As the bear viciously attacks Token Black Guy and begins tearing apart his innards and ripping off one limb after another, he screams for Cain to shoot him and put him out of his misery. Count how long Cain stands there holding his shot gun with a stupid look on his face before he actually does anything to alleviate Token Black Guy's suffering, and then convert that to Bear Time. 

Rest in peace, Token Black Guy!

Dear god, I've never seen a more boring film where bears play aliens and aliens rip apart really terrible dummies filled with gooey balloons that play the people. My time would've been better spent digging a hole in my backyard and shitting directly into it, and when my one neighbor called the cops and the cops came and asked, "Just what on Earth were you thinking?" I would say, "Well, it was either that or watch Savage Planet," and they would be like, "Say no more, we totally get it. Please shit some more into that hole you dug," and I would say "Thanks, officer," and I might even buy a couple tickets to their Policeman's Ball, even though I'd have no one to go with, because who's gonna go to a ball with someone who shits in the backyard?

No one. :(

Carlson gets his head beared off and things begin to look really dire for our remaining heroes. Almost Lisa Kudrow manages to beam herself back to earth while Cain falls down for something like the hundredth time, and then a large mutant alien bear with regressed DNA, bigger claws, and a denser hide (read: normal bear) attacks Cain before he can beam back to Earth.

The scene cuts to several days (weeks? months?) into the future at a press conference where it's revealed that Cain somehow survived his attack even though I'm pretty sure he was within the snares of a bear and moments away from having his fake head slapped off. I couldn't tell you what happened during this scene because I was already ejecting the disc and dreaming of the fifty cents I'd get for it at MovieStop.

Production is underway on Savage Planet 2: Beary Scary, and it will star Norman Reedus from "The Walking Dead," which is both a stupid joke I just made up and also an excuse to put the words "Norman Reedus" and "The Walking Dead" into this review, just so a bunch of pre-teen girls and lonely moms can find it by accident when Googling the phrases "Norman Reedus no shirt" and "Norman Reedus kiss me" and "Norman Reedus friend bear movie."

Sean Patrick Flannery was in the movie Powder. He played 'Powder.'

Good night.

SHITTY FLICKS: DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis.

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

Horror movies in the late 70’s and early 80’s were really bossy. You weren’t really allowed to go anywhere or do anything.

Don’t Go in the Woods. Don’t Go in the Basement. Don’t Go to Sleep. Don’t Go Near the Park. Don’t Go in the Bedroom. Don't Answer the Phone. Don't Play with your Peeno at Grandmother's.

Preeetty sure you were allowed to go in the house, though.

Don’t Go in the House.

Ah, farts.

Don’t Go in the House is about a man named Donny who is obsessed with fire. So much that he works in a factory whose job is to burn things. One day on the job, Donny tosses a can of something—maybe spray paint— into one of the furnaces just to see it explode. It doesn’t, however, so Donny walks away, disappointed.

And then BOOMO.

The can explodes right in the face of a hapless worker who walked over to do whatever it is these people do to the furnace. Donny watches as the man, covered in flames, twirls around helplessly. People quickly come to his aid as Donny continues to be useless.

“A man goes up in flames and you just stand there like a faggot!” yells his boss later in the locker room.

“I am not a faggot,” Donny says, defending himself, as if one has anything to do with the other. “It covered him up. He wasn’t evil, but it covered it up.”

That’s crazy if you ask me.

“You’re crazy,” agrees the boss. “I always said you were crazy.”

"I think YOU and ME oughta go OUT some time
because we would MAKE a good COUPLE."

Donny, who isn't crazy, thinks fire has thought patterns and seeks out evil to purify it.

But he isn't crazy.

He drives home to his sick mother, as several disembodied thoughts whisper in his mind.

But he isn’t crazy.

Donny prepares chamomile tea for his mother who sleeps softly in the chair. After a few gentle jostles, mother does not stir. Donny fruitlessly tries to wake his sleeping mother, but it’s too late for her. She’s a fucking dead corpse. He paces the room and tries to convince himself that she is merely sleeping and that she will wake up soon.

“I MADE YOU TEA I MADE YOU TEA,” insists Donny at her dead body.

The voices then begin talking to Donny, trying to calm him. They whisper sweet nothings in his ear and promise that things will be okay, that they will take care of him.

“Can I play my music loud?” asks Donny. He then immediately puts on some disco (loud) and begins jumping on chairs and smoking inside the house.

What a life for Donny this is! Adios, dead mother!

A la better movies about sons who had formerly-abusive and now-dead mothers, Donny begins to hear her voice yelling at him. Donny inspects his dead mother and sees that she’s still dead, but the voices tell him that she must be burned to be purified. Donny doesn’t ask too many questions as he gathers up a box of matches. He then has a flashback of the time his mother the asshole flipped out because her husband left them and she blamed Donny for it, telling him he was evil, and she pulled Donny’s little arms over a stove flame.

Think that’s what made Donny crazy about fire?

Me neither.

We're pretty dumb, though.

The next morning, Donny calls out of work and begins to build something in his house. It’s too soon to tell what it is, but knowing Donny, it’s probably a roller rink.

You know. For disco.

Then he runs off to a store to buy a flame-retardant suit complete with overly-dramatic and creepy face mask.

Later, he charms his way into a closed flower store, telling the girl he would like a small arrangement for his sick mother. He pays for the flowers and then hesitantly leaves, looking disappointed at himself in his truck parked outside the store. Whether it was because he didn’t have the balls to ask her out or kill her remains unseen, although, he does manage to coerce her into accepting a ride from him after she misses the bus.

“Why don’t you come inside and say hello to Mother?” Donny asks along the way.

The girl agrees for some reason and off they go.

Back at the house, Donny leaves, telling the flower store woman that he will be right back. Donny disappears momentarily in the kitchen, but then comes back.

“Mother must be upstairs! I’ll be right back!”

Donny runs up the steps excitedly.

“Mother!” he calls, as flower store woman looks nervous, regretting having agreed to come into the house of a man she doesn’t know and who clearly has issues. He then comes out a few moments later looking worried.

“Mother’s even sicker than I thought! I’ve gotta call the doctor!”

Donny, what the fuck is your plan?

After Donny makes a fake phone call to the doctor, flower store woman insists on calling a cab. She begins to make said call before Donny helps her to be asleep with the aid of a blunt instrument.

She groggily awakes, nice and naked and strung up in a strange, metal, windowless room.

Donny, meanwhile, sits in his own room, staring at the box he schlepped home from his night errands. I wonder what it is.

Oh, that’s right—the flame-retardant suit complete with overly-dramatic face mask.

He walks into his new dungeon of sorts, pours a can of gasoline over the naked body of the flower store woman, and then proceeds to blast her with a fucking flame thrower. She screams in bloody agony as she burns to death, which is almost as painful as having to sit through this movie.

Lars von Trier's remake of Schindler's List was
banned almost immediately, but some critics
secretly hailed it as "fucking bad ass."

Donny watches inside his big astronaut suit, pleased with how his burn room is faring.

The next day, Donny pulls up alongside a woman on the side of the road experiencing car trouble.

“Would you like a lift to the next gas station?” he asks innocently enough.

aka

"Would you like to feel my flames on your cheeks?"

The woman gratefully gets in the truck with him.

“Mind if we drop some stuff off at my house? It’s on the way!”

“Sure!” the woman happily obliges.

Later, as her smoking body hangs from chains and hand-shackles, Donny continues to look more and more pleased with himself.

At a nearby convenience store, Donny spies an attractive woman paying for some items. He blocks her attempt to exit by offering such manly services as, “some help” carrying her groceries, as well as “a ride home.”

The woman clearly isn’t interested and brushes past him, as Donny becomes more insistent.

The clerk intervenes, telling Donny that he’s only bothering her.

“You’re right,” Donny exclaims. “I better go apologize!”

Later, Donny carries that woman's body into his mother’s room and he introduces the two of them. Then, despite how things have been going, Donny begins going even crazier, having spotted his mother’s ghost’s reflection in the mirror behind him, which is genuinely creepy thanks to an intrusive music sting.

He then hears all of his burned women, whose skeletons he keeps in rocking chairs in a room in his house, giggling and laughing at him.

“You bitches!” he screams at them, slapping their charred faces. “You think you can laugh at me? Well…no more laughing!”

He then goes downstairs and puts on his music. Loud.

Despite this loudness, he falls asleep and dreams of women grabbing at him from crevices in a blue desert. He shakes himself awake and sees his flaming, green-faced mother at the top of the stairs, bellowing, “I’ll get you, Donald! I’ll get you!”

Boy, asleep or awake, Donny’s life is the pits.

Donny goes to church to steal holy water to ward off his insane mother, I guess, and has a philosophical argument with the priest about evil. Donny makes his confession and then comes home to forgive his mother. He anoints her face with holy water, making the sign of the cross.

There. All better.

Donny almost doubled-back after leaving the house, having
forgotten to turn on the humidifier for his mother, but then he
remembered she was a burnt corpse, and he smiled, relieved.

Donny calls his boyfriend from work and the two make plans to take some girlies to—you guessed it—a disco!

I love the '70s!

Donny goes to buy a shirt, which takes years. Every second he spends on screen not burning naked women makes this movie that many seconds too long.

He goes to the disco to meet his pallies for the evening, and if you can make it through this scene without checking your watch or e-mail, then you’re a stronger person than I am. To say that nothing even remotely interesting happens in this whole scene would be an insult to nothing.

Donny proceeds to sit and watch everyone dance as he looks boring and nervous. When his date for the evening sachets over and tries to yank him to the dance floor, Donny picks up the candle off the table and smashes it into girl’s face, which is a perfectly acceptable way of declining to dance.

He makes his escape and drives home, as the voices in his head whisper that everything is okay, and that he did good.

Then he picks up two giggling girls along the side of the road.

Jesus, Donny. How do you do it? Is the secret to your success setting women on fire?

Because I’m willing to try that…

Donny takes the girls home and they wander around admiring his big house. Then he shoves them into his secret burn room, and introduces them to his fire. However, he grows distracted in his room of bodies and doesn’t finish the job of burning them alive, which disappoints me greatly, because why else am I watching this movie?

Donny’s boyfriend, concerned about his friend’s growing insanity, goes to get the priest, and together they go to Donny’s house. They rescue the sadly unhurt girls, and the priest wanders upstairs to find Donny.

And find Donny he does. Along with Donny’s flamethrower.

Say, what do you get when you set a priest on fire?

The end of this movie, thankfully?

Almost.

Disco Inferno, anyone? ZING!

Donny's collection of burned women get up off their chairs, and in another genuinely creepy scene, slowly creep toward him, their skeleton arms outstretched. If only this movie didn’t have that whole thing called the “beginning” and “middle” to drag it down...

Donny flips shit and burns them—and himself—to death.

The movie ends with a lame attempt at setting up a sequel as a completely unrelated boy gets smacked around by his mother, hears creepy voices in his head, and stares dumbly at the camera.

Cut to Black.

AND DISCO!

SHITTY FLICKS: THE WICKER MAN (2006)

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis. 

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up. 

 

Nicolas Cage's eyes bug wildly out of his head (his trademark expression) as he spins around, wielding his gun. He is surrounded by a group of angry women, intent on putting bees on his face, breaking his legs, and burning him alive inside the grundle of a large man made of wicker.

You bitches!" he screams as they fall on him, applying bees. "Oh my God, they're in my eye!"

The utter terror he is facing isn't the end. It's only the beginning. They lay his legs out over a large tree-trunk and smash his legs.

"Awww, my legs! My legs!" he screams, letting the audience know his legs are being broken. I want to look away but I can't. I am enthralled by this scene. "Killing me won't bring back your GOD DAMNED HONEY!" he suggests, trying to escape their wrath.

Ms. Summersisle, the queen bee of this pack, sports William Wallace-inspired make up as she replies, "but I know it will!"

Oh. Well then.

It's worth it for tasty honey.

The Wicker Man, just one of the many remakes of famous horror movies bombarding audiences, will go down in history as one of the most baffling films in ages. The film produces more questions than stomach pains caused by Hot Pockets.

What evil forces reside on Summersisle?

How many men have fallen victim to the womens' deceit?

Why does Nicolas Cage over-act in one scene, and then barely act in another?

What's with bee-beard girl?

Is this film supposed to be hilarious?

The questions are numerous. The laughs: even more so. The scares: missing in action.

Neil Labute once saw a horror movie on television: The Addams Family.

He was terrified.

He longed to make a film that scary.

He wrote and directed The Wicker Man, utilizing the same scare tactics. He crafted a film so horrifying, he himself has trouble watching it without squirming. I also find his film terrifying. But for different reasons.

The film begins...and Cage is delved into a question wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma. He is also allergic to bees.

Uh-oh.

He goes to Bee Island anyway, at the behest of his runaway ex-fiancé, Willow, to help her find their missing daughter, Rowan. Upon arriving at the island, Cage meets a friendly group of oddball natives who stare at him as he talks, clearly perturbed by his presence. The group holds a wriggling sack that drips a rich amount of blood.

“What’s in the bag? A shark?” Cage asks stupidly, he, himself, unsure if he was even joking or not. The natives ignore him and question how he has made it to their beloved island of bad dialogue and bees. The sack wriggles once again and as Cage almost looks interested it, they dare him to look inside. He approaches the sack, and when it wriggles and shrieks, he decides that he doesn’t have to investigate the sack at all, even though he’s a cop. And then the natives laugh at him.

Method acting led to Nicolas Cage trying to teach children
astronomy. Right around after he taught them that space
was, "huge, bigger than Detroit," he was dismissed by
his chaperon.

Cage goes inside a cabin thing and asks for a drink from the bar maid. He receives said drink, but then instantly offends everyone by killing a bee.

“I’m allergic,” he reminds us, and then turns, holds his badge and tells everyone uninterestingly of the missing girl. The patrons, castrated men, stare at him with a look of bemusement. Cage gives up on trying to make an impact and begins his investigation.

He stops by a classroom to inquire about the missing girl. The teacher reacts to him with suspicion and annoyance. He demands to know her name, and when she responds with “Sister Rose,” he turns to the class and says “Rose, of course! Another plant!” as if the students would be amused and sympathetic to his plight.

All the children claim to not know the missing girl, as Cage walks around holding a picture. When Sister Rose claims she was not one of her students, Cage responds by checking the Teacher Book, which reveals the name of the missing girl.

Upon finding her name, he turns to the class of young girls and snarls, "You...little...liars." Then he turns to Sister Rose and states, "and you...you're the biggest liar of them all."

He begins to search the classroom, and upon doing so, releases a crow that was trapped by the students in an open-top desk. “What?” Cage barely manages as it flaps by his face, in the same manner you might say if I tapped you on the shoulder in a super market and told you, "elephant pie is made of chicken beats and my love for dead men."

Cage continues his investigation, which leads him down by the dock. He sits down and suffers through TWO nightmare sequences in a row, which he punctuates with an over-the-top and completely inappropriate “GOD DAMN IT."

"I'm thinking PANCAKES this morning, my lovelies!"

Cage investigates and comes across an old burned doll that was hastily discarded next to some decrepit foundation. He turns to Willow, holds the doll to her and beckons to know: "HOW'D IT GET BURNED?? HOW'D IT GET BURNED HOW'D IT GET BURNED??"

Later, Cage runs across Sister Rose, riding her stupid bike down the path. She taunts him in her stupid bitchy banner, leading Cage to whip out his gun and demand that she “step away from the bike.” Upon relinquishing the bike, Cage takes it from her, and icily retorts: “Take your STUPID mask.”

Cage flips out and begins to storm each cabin, ripping masks off of all young girls, desperately trying to find his missing daughter.

The investigation leads to the inevitable conclusion that foul play was involved in the disappearance of the girl, and this leads to the best the second best scene in recent cinema history: Cage stares at a very mannish woman named Sister Beech, who relishes in his inability to solve the case of the missing child, and then: WHIPASH! Cage lets loose an admirable left jab to her square face, knocking her down for the count.

But the woman beating isn’t over yet.

Leelee Sobieski, also known as Helen Hunt’s better-chested clone, pops up to feign the idea she is capable of doing anything except feeding my desire for pale boobs, before receiving her own helping of Nicolas Cage: kicks, served cold. Cage’s ratatat karate chopping sends her flying back into the wall, shattering all manner of framed photos before depositing her dumpy ass on the hard ground.

As a joke, Nicolas Cage had slipped some ecstasy
into Ellen Burstyn's tea earlier that morning, but by mid-afternoon,
as the crew stood around, burning daylight, no one was laughing.

Cage shakes it off, picks up the beefy woman’s bear costume that she was to wear in the Summersisle Bullshit Parade and exits.

When Cage meets up with Willow during the parade, he amusingly lifts the mouth flap of the bear head and asks, “Why didn’t you wait for me?”

“I had to come,” she blandly retorts, shutting him up pretty easily.

The parade ends at what looks to be a pyre where - AAAAHHHHH!! - his daughter is lashed to a tree and is mere minutes from GETTING BURNED??? GETTING BURNED GETTING BURNED????

Cage, still in full bear regalia, storms this pyre, and in long shot form, applies a glorious right hook to her face, sending her sprawling down the hill.

Cage attempts to escape with Rowan, but alas, it’s no use. Once the paraders locate their location in the woods, Rowan runs to her mother, Willow, who it seems was in on it the whole time. Oh no, Willow. How could you?

Now, this is when things get interesting: depending on which version you are watching, you have the option to being treated to two magnificent endings:

ENDING # 1:

In the PG-13 cut, we see Cage laid out over a large leg-breaking beam, but we then fade to a montage of parade marchers making their way to the titular man of wicker as you hear audio of bones snapping and Cage screaming, "My legs! MY LEGS!"

ENDING # 2:

In the “unrated” cut, we see Cage again laid out over the large leg-breaking beam, only this time we experience the actual leg breaking, which is so ineptly done that it creates its own amusement. Once the leg smashing is complete, a modified and ancient-looking bird cage is placed over Cage’s face. Once it’s secured, a hatch on the top is opened and BEES are poured liberally in, as Cage bellows: “No, not the bees! Oh my God, they’re in my EYE!”

"Oh, come now; we can surely fit one more.
Fish Man came all the way from New Zealand for this."

The bird cage is removed and we move onward to the finale: Cage is shoved in a wicker man and burned alive as he screams.

I eject the disc and I smile, knowing that no matter how bad life gets, that no matter how much bullshit will rear its head and get me down, I can take solace in the fact that Nicolas Cage will always be just an unsnapping DVD case away, on an island full of women, dressed as a bear, and punching like a Greek god.

Some films test the boundaries of human emotion. Some films haunt our inner psyche. Some films aren't about bees. The Wicker Man is none of these. The Wicker Man is something truly unique. The Wicker Man has to be seen to be believed.

SHITTY FLICKS: SHARKS IN VENICE

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant, camp-girl penis. 

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

I went to Venice once. It was beautiful. The canals smelled of rainwater. Bistros perfumed with the scent of fresh garlic and spicy meat-a-ball-as. 

"Hey-a, Giuseppe!" called the dude operating the gondola. "Ciao, bella!"

It was my favorite day.

And then a shark bit my fucking neck off. 

I was never the same after that.

Because I was neckless.

Of all the sub-genres previously featured on Shitty Flicks, killer shark seems to be leading the pack. Is that because I gravitate toward them, since I find sharks to be genuinely captivating creatures? Or is it because there are so many bad movies made about them?

You might could ask director Danny Lerner, because he's not only made three killer shark movies, he's also made three of the worst killer shark movies of all time.

America's got talent!

Sharks in Venice begins with brilliance; after showing some stock shots of Venice, we cut immediately to Bulgaria, where Bulgarian actors sport the absolute worst Italian accents since Lady and the Tramp. A crew of who-fucking-knows sit behind computer screens in the most archaic looking command center since North Korea's nuclear missile tests. Turns out these dudes are looking for artifacts from the expeditions of Marco Polo (Italian!) within the canals of Venice. They locate some kind of buried plaque, leaving one of the command-center guys to call out "Grazie!" (Italian!) for no reason. Then things go very poorly very quickly.

Before I can wonder if composer John Debney was paid for the use of his score from End of Days, a shark comes up quickly from nowhere and makes all these divers sleep with the fishes.

Cut to: Professor (of diving!) Stephen Baldwin giving a presentation on the S.S. Andrea Doria (Italian!), a real ship that sank in the mid-1900s. When he air-quotes the word "unsinkable," try not to notice how fat he's gotten.

"I miss you, chalupas..."

Because there's never been a scene in a movie before in which an esteemed professor is giving a presentation to his class when he is interrupted by a school official, and must leave the class to confer with this official, well, that happens. The official tells him that is father – one of the divers in the film's intro – has gone missing. Professor Baldwin almost looks like he might react to this news, but then doesn't. He might as well have looked directly into the camera and said, "Well, off to Venice, then."

And off he goes, with his girlfriend who works at the same university and apparently knew the bad news before he did.

In Venice, Professor Baldwin is forced to identify the bodies of the two divers.

"Is either of these men your father?" asks the Bulgtalian police detective, as a coroner insensitively whips off one of the sheets concealing the dead men, which they love to do in movies for some reason, and I have to tell you, if someone did that to me in real life, I would say, "What the fuck kind of horrid monster are you?" and I would probably stick that coroner's head directly into a pile of human man poop, which is probably somewhere in every coroner's office, no matter how well hidden.

Anyway, based on Professor Baldwin's non-reaction, it's hard to say whether or not his father lies upon the corpse bed.

"This was not a propeller accident," he says, stealing a line from a better film about sharks. Music sting. "It was a shark."

We meet some more "Italian" characters, one of whom is named Captain "Bonasera." I shit you not and fucking seriously: his name is Captain "Good Evening."

While speaking with Captain Good Evening, Professor Baldwin asks to help with the investigation. Captain Good Evening agrees, but forbids him from speaking to the press. He also tells him:

"Venice has no sharks. Capisci?"

My ancestry has never been prouder.

If animals were given royalty payments, this specific fucking shark
would be rich, given how many times the SciFi Channel have used him.

At his missing father's flat, Professor Baldwin finds a hidden briefcase that contains a notebook, which brings with it a chorus of soprano voices whenever one looks upon it with immense intrigue. The notebook provides a lot more back story on Italian conflicts than a killer shark movie has ever needed. All you need to know is, one group of Italians sacked another group of Italians, stole a bunch of treasures, and then fucking lost that same treasure instantly. 

Wait a minute – missing father? Venice? Historical conspiracies? Hidden treasure? A father's notebook of clues?

I guess it is time to rip off The Last Crusade.

Professor Baldwin and a couple other prepackaged shark dinners go diving...to locate the treasure, I guess? Or find his missing father? Both?

It doesn't matter, because a shark comes along and says hi to everyone with its teeth. Professor Baldwin survives the attack and finds himself in an underground tunnel, out of the water, and discovers a whole mess of treasures.

AND skeletons!

Professor Baldwin takes a step further into this tunnel and sets off a series of booby-traps that nearly kill him.

Seriously, people – you may have well just called your film Fat Indiana Baldwin and the Last Mysterious Mystery of Marco Polo OMG Sharks.

He finds some kind of handsome rhinestone, gets back in the water, and is instantly attacked by the shark again, and somehow miraculously survives, even though there's no way he could have. Honestly, the only thing that saved his life was the film cutting to the next scene of him waking up in a hospital bed, where even he looks irritated at how cheap this is.

"Someone's in my butt!"

Later, Professor Baldwin and his girlfriend have dinner with Vito Clemenza (yep; Puzo/Ford Coppola were truly honored), and the film is finally blessed with its sole actually-Italian actor playing an Italian. Clemenza offers Professor Baldwin a buttload of money to help him find the rest of the treasure, but he declines, because of pride or something.

Idiots.

Meanwhile, some Bulgarian teens are pretending to be both Italian and drunk...right next to the canal. If you guessed what happened next – an unsurprising shark attack married to the worst CGI you have ever seen – well, no one's proud of you.

Professor Baldwin and his girlfriend walk the streets of "Venice," as the poorest Dean Martin imitation the filmmakers could find croons on the soundtrack and soothes the savage soul. Watch as Girlfriend wears an orange scarf and looks at all the surroundings. Then, watch as Professor Baldwin buys that same orange scarf for her later in the scene. (?)

And then watch as Girlfriend gets kidnapped by Clemenza's henchmen.

Mi amore!

Oh, 49 minutes in and Girlfriend has a name. It's Laura.

Another shark attack occurs in the canal; a poor unfortunate gondola driver is mercilessly attacked by a bunch of Animal Planet footage, and his black-and-white striped pajamas are torn to shreds.

Back with Professor Baldwin, he looks nearly as bored as I feel. As he attempts to sleep, a bunch of dudes in ski masks attack him in his hotel room and try to kill him, but because Professor Baldwin is the hero in this film, he covers his head with his hands and flees down the hotel corridor, bellowing, "He's got a gun!" and a bunch of hotel security lose their lives.

Heroism.

The longest chase scene ever filmed in Bulgaria then unfolds, where Professor Baldwin manages to take out his pursuers one by one. He threatens the last man with a buzz saw into spilling the beans on where Laura has been taken. It works until he is attacked by a bunch of bikers, and even MORE security is killed in the process.

Yo, but P. Baldwin don't care, 'cuz he steals a boat and he's out of there, his man-boobs pressing against his tight shirt as he looks majestic under the Bulgarian moon.

His evasion of Clemenza's men is short-lived, as he's kidnapped a few minutes later.

I'm exhausted.

So, it turns out Clemenza has purposely been putting baby sharks into the canals to keep people from diving there. He wants the treasure THAT badly. 

With Laura still being held hostage, P. Bald has no choice but to dive into the shark-invested waters to recover the treasure he'd earlier discovered. 

It plays out pretty much the way you'd expect: the sharks eat everyone but P. Bald and one of Clemenza's henchmen, who have a slap/punch/gun fight in the treasure room, which is so beyond thrilling that Stephen Baldwin manages to look awake for most of it. Baldwin literally kills the henchman with laughter by telling him several behind-the-scene anecdotes about the filming of Bio-Dome.

P. Bald demands that Clemenza trade Laura for the treasure, which he doesn't go for, and then the police randomly show up, leading to the longest shoot-out ever filmed in Bulgaria. Clemenza falls into the water and gets eaten by sharks, and if you didn't see that coming, I've got a bridge I can sell you.

"I stole this from that fat Goonie."

In full view of everyone, P. Bald takes out a huge piece of stolen treasure and proposes to Laura with it.

"As long as we don't honeymoon in Venice!" she replies.

Might I recommend Bulgaria?