Jake Speed (1986)

Jake Speed (1986)

Directed by: Andrew Lane

Starring: Wayne Crawford, Dennis Christopher, Karen Kopins

What could make a shitty 80’s action movie even more intolerable? Let’s make it about a guy who sensationalizes his own adventures into how those movies actually are, then CONSTANTLY TALK ABOUT HOW FUNNY THAT IS! FUCK YOU!

Sorry, I’m apparently in a screamy mood today. Anyway, Jake Speed is about this woman who hires a character from a series of action books (which are supposedly based on his real adventures) to help find her sister, who was kidnapped by white slavers in France, who eventually turn out to be led by John Hurt.

That’s all I need to go into, because you already know the rest. Everything is terrible and a cliche, and John Hurt turns in probably the worst performance of his career. He’s chewing scenery like an ill-trained dog and just acting like a maniac. If they wanted Gary Oldman, they would’ve gotten him, John.

Aliens in the Wild, Wild West (1999)

Aliens in the Wild, Wild West (1999)

Directed by: George Erschbamer

Starring: Taylor Locke, Carly Pope, Barna Moricz

Yes, I am watching this film to pregame Jon Favreau’s upcoming Cowboys & Aliens, before you ask. I figure they’re basically about the same things, so by watching this shitty 90’s kids movie,  I should have a pretty good idea of what the other movie’s going to be like. I didn’t realize there would be so many bigfoots in the movie.

Two teens from the 90’s find a terribly spraypainted plastic device beneath the floorboards of the sheriff’s office in a ghost town which transports them back in time to the old west. Once there, they see a UFO and one of its passengers, a tiny horrifying hairy monster thing that talks like Elmo. Some bad guys caught this thing’s mother, and have locked it up in the jail until they sell it to a circus for $10,000 (in 1880? Isn’t that an insane amount of money? I gotta go catch me an alien bigfoot). The kids, of course, save the mom and the aliens go back home and the bad guys are run out of town. Also, the kids learn to appreciate long, boring road trips with their parents. This is obviously science fiction.

This movie demonstrates one of the reasons I hate time travel (one of many, many reasons). Throughout the film, the teens insist on communicating in almost nothing but pop culture references that the “kids of today” would get, and that the cowboys wouldn’t, thus creating the funny situation of these people not knowing what Nintendo is. HILARIOUS! PLEASE DO THIS FOR THE ENTIRE FILM, OR AT LEAST UNTIL I SLICE OFF MY OWN HEAD WITH THIS GARROTE!!

Milk & Money (1996)

Milk & Money (1996)

Directed by: Michael Bergmann

Starring: Robert Petkoff, Sarah Winkler, Denise Faye

I don’t know who said this, but I remember hearing somewhere that people don’t like a character who always has things go right for him, unless it’s wrong for him to have gone right. Well, whoever that was, I completely agree, and I’ll use Milk & Money as an objective example.

Our main character is this rich kid who decides to drop out of medical school (which he tells us several unnecessary times), and on that day he meets a woman who asks him to hold a box for her, and a woman with a rich uncle who hires him to vaguely work on a movie with her. He helps the uncle with a cow situation, sleeps with a nymphomaniac adultress and her friends, and falls in love with the uncle’s mistress, played by the world’s most famous praying mantic, Calista Flockhart! Also, there’s a special appearance by Peter Boyle as the homeless cow-transfer-paperwork expert.

If I made any of that sound funny at all, it’s because I managed to extract the thick coating of syrupy smarm that pervaded every minute of this movie. There’s no conflict in this film except for “oh no, I had sex with these two women who want me, and there’s another one who also wants me but I haven’t had sex with her yet, but I’m in love with this prostitute!” And everyone is always okay with any handling of any situation, everyone starts happy and ends happy… It’s just this ego-stroking masturbation on the part of writer/director Michael Bergmann, and I don’t want to see it, and neither does anyone else.