Instant Trash: Mutant Hunt

Sometimes, it's nice to see a familiar face.  Sometimes, it's a nightmare!  In today's case I'm referring to Rick Gianasi.  Don't know him?  I don't blame you.  The guy only made a handful of films in the '80s.  Most famously, he was the lead in Sgt. Kabukkiman N.Y.P.D.  Of course, that's not why I'm upset to see him.  Rick was also the The Occultist.  Shudder in fear, people!  Yes, Rick was 'Waldo Warren'- the man who could fire bullets from his penis!  So yeah, he's in this movie too.  This is also a Tim Kincaid film (as was Occultist).  Like Rick, Tim made a handful of horror/genre films in the 1980s.  Unlike Rick, Tim has a secret: he made gay porn- lots of gay porn.  In fact, he made a bunch of it before making his genre films, took a break (according to a Fangoria interview, he was married) and return to porn in 2002.  Why am I telling you all of this?  Because it's far more interesting than the film itself.  It features robots who are also cyborgs and referred to as 'mutants.'  I don't get it either.  Get out your vague tracking device for my review of...

The film begins with some super-cheesy synth music and a city.  We meet Z, the head of an evil corporation.  His goal: make robots to take over the world.  Well, that and borrow outfits from Sybil Danning.  He brings in a scientist to test the robots- who are just guys with crew cuts.  His test involves them fighting each other and more than a couple of them dying.  Yes, this is a perfect test for things that you're trying to sell!  While the scientist objects, a few of the robots just sort of wander away.  They don't sneak out, but they aren't exactly seen either.  It's only after the fact that Z even notices this!  We jump to a woman in a different lab making schemes involving Z and the robots.  This character is so vaguely-connected to the plot that I barely feel the need to address her.  A young woman meets up with her brother- the scientist- but is forced to flee.  Desperate, she seeks out a man to help her.  Despite being Rick Gianasi in  Kincaid film, he's not Waldo Warren.  On the plus side, no penis bullets.  The guy is first seen sitting in bed with a skanky blonde.  The woman runs in, followed by two of the robots.  They proceed to have one of the worst fight scenes of all time, which eventually ends in one robot-cyborg dead, another wounded and the skanky blonde tossed out the window.  Don't ask me how we got there, please.

With the threat realized, Rick calls in some help on the mission.  This involves going to a strip club, although nobody really gets naked per se.  Like most of the sets, it appears to be a vacant warehouse room with drapes and foil put up.  The point is to recruit a dancer who is also a bounty hunter.  The evil woman from before casually sits next to Rick and the lady as they make their plan and subsequently sends a robot after her.  Despite her being tough a moment ago, she's suddenly scared and weak.  She calls in her Oats-looking friend to help her, who finds her by way of a Game Boy/watch device.  Don't ask me how that works please. They run to the same location with a bridge in the background from The Occultist and proceed to have a bad, martial arts fight.  They make me yearn for a Daniel Bernhardt fight!  Our heroes just sort of walk away as the robot can't follow because...well, he can't.  Our heroes regroup and make a plan: split up and find the remaining robots.  If they don't, they just sort of meander about killing people.  Sure enough, one of them does just that.  A couple sits in the street making out before a Chinese Restaurant employee is attacked by a robot.  He can actually do kung-fu, so, naturally, he's a minor character here.  Oh yeah, Rick takes a break from stopping the killer robots (which actually hadn't started yet) to have sex with the dancer.  Hurray.

Rick shows up after a man gets his head ripped-off (in silhouette, mind you) but does stop one robot.  'Oats' runs into another one, fights it some more and runs off again.  Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.  The fight moves to a new location, where some punks show up to fight the robot...just sort of because.  After they fight, 'Oats' stops hiding and beats the robot- that's totally fair.  Only one robot is left now.  Unfortunately, a silly plot device rears it's ugly head in the form of the mostly-dead robot.  He's sort of alive and is now good...since he's apparently not infected by the drugs.  What drugs?  Well, you see, they infect the robot-cyborgs with drugs to make them crazy, thus turning them into 'mutants.'  No, really.  Z (remember him) explains his plan some more to the scientist, all the while looking at his cue cards.  Good job, Mr. Walken.  The evil woman also has a plan of her own- attack the base with her new model of robot.  This robot is, naturally, someone that looks like a big, muscle-covered guy.  Our heroes take a break to blow up the robot-production facility before showing up for the final fight.  The new model is tough, but eventually goes down to some weak, barely-connecting kicks.  Z dies from a gunshot, finally putting an end to this.  Hurray.

This movie sucks!  The plot is stupid and, more importantly, confusing.  I can deal with dumb plots- and I do- but I can't deal with obtuse ones.  The story involves an evil corporation, a different woman who's evil, renegade robots, a scientist, Gianasi and 'Oats.'  That's not even counting the silliness with the dancer and the bit with infecting robots with drugs.  Mind you, Cyborg Cop III (the unofficial one) features robots filled with insect blood, while Godzilla X Mecha-Godzilla features a robot built around a skeleton (since that apparently makes it more responsive).  So I'm used to confusing science with robots, but this still takes the cake!  The acting is...as bad as you would think.  I mean, this is a Rick Gianasi film.  Do I even need to say any more?  Yeah, I thought not.  This movie is fun for some stupid laughs, but only if you can laugh at terrible acting and bad kung-fu.  Speaking at someone who does both, this one is still barely-watchable.  It's so badly put together that you expect to see the name 'Pinto' on it somewhere.  It's obscure and hard to find- good.

Next up, a famous book series spawns an Italian production.  Urbano is back- this time ripping off Conan and Indiana Jones in one fell swoop!  Stay tuned...
Mutant Hunt [VHS]

Moon Over Miami: The Occultist

Today's Film is The Occultist and it is a learning experience.  Lesson #1 in The Guide of How To Piss Off a Viewer: promise what you have no intent to deliver on.  While I can't necessarily decide who to blame here, the description on Netflix is woefully-inaccurate in regards to the actual film's content.  Did Netflix write this up themselves, realizing that they would have no way to sell this stinker or did they just use what was given?  I don't know, but it doesn't help matters.  I will say this: the poster is pretty much a blatant lie too and I know that Full Moon made that shit!  The film claims to be about a city whose leaders are targeted by naked voodoo-practicing witches, so, to protect themselves, they hire a cyborg bodyguard.  You think that I would be complaining if any of that were true?!?  Seriously though, this is probably the most dull film you could have ever made with this premise- bar none!  Everything about it is dry and uneventful, from the acting to the production values and especially the effects.  In order to compensate, they throw in a few really weird moments that come out of nowhere and never get addressed.  Yes, they made a boring movie and threw in a few 'Big-Lipped Alligator Moments' to distract you from that fact.  Even by Full Moon standards, this is bad.  To get the full-story, you'll have to read on.  Get out your best Hawaiian shirts for my review of...

The film begins with about three minutes of people dancing around and pretending to practice voodoo in a factory.  The 'naked witches' aspect comes in when one of them has PG-13 sex with a guy for no reason.  Thanks- that was necessary.  In some awkward editing, a trio of 'blue-bloods' 'watch' the proceedings, despite appearing to be on the opposite side of the bay from them!  A woman talks to a man she calls The Mayor about the problem with the voodoo worshipers, but he just kills her.  After they off a sacrifice- in this case, a white preppy, guy- the scene ends abruptly.  After the opening credits, we meet our hero- a scrawny guy who apparently runs a security company.  He has a Patrick MacNee wannabe for a mentor and doesn't exactly come off as a professional.  I guess this is meant to be funny, but I'm not really laughing.  What is with Full Moon and failure at comedy anyhow?  In a fairly-unrelated scene, we see a tough-looking guy in a tracksuit fend off a man attempting to attack a woman in a park.  Thanks- that added nothing too.  As it turns out, this guy is the real hero of the picture, but he won't really matter for another twenty minutes or so.  In order to turn his newly-inherited company around and put them in 'the red,' the man takes a job in the island with the voodoo problem.  This should be interesting...but it won't be.

In order to fulfill the mission, our hero must recruit the guy from the earlier scene.  He's an enigmatic gun-for-hire known as 'The Gunman,' which is odd when you can clearly see that he carries no guns with him.  Don't worry, it will make a little sense later.  The guy hangs around a biker bar in an Hawaiian shirt, which is totally inconspicuous.  A random action scene occurs in an alleyway before a woman puts a weird device on another woman's back, which causes her to explode.  See what I meant earlier about the sudden, weird bits?  This apparently convinces him to work with our hero, leading the security at a banquet held by the Mayor and his family.  We are treated to some awkward comedy bits from the secretary character- how utterly pointless.  After some more banter and back-and-forth between the leaders and our heroes, some action finally occurs.  When The Gunman returns from ignoring the security detail, a group of terrorists appear at the top of the floor and start firing.  Good job on the security, by the way- the Mayor is dead now.  We get a red herring in the form of the daughter's supposed-resistance movement, but it could not be more obvious if they wrote 'we are a distraction' on their foreheads!  Things get more tense, however, when we learn that the Mayor's wife used to do voodoo.  She did it so well though!

After over forty minutes of nothing but banal occurrences taking place, this movie is picking up...slightly.  We learn why The Gunman got his name- he can shoot bullets from his hand.  Yes, he does make the 'gun' shape with it when he fires.  In a dramatic twist, we learn that the General was evil all along and that the Mayor was not really dead.  This, however, proves to be pointless as the General just kills him in the next scene.  Sigh.  Spot the fun continuity jump when the wife goes from having frizzy to wet hair in one camera cut- brilliant.  The Gunman proves to have more than just the ability to make finger bangs, however, as all of his appendages prove to be fully-armed.  Yes, even his dick.  The scene where they have it occur is completely-ridiculous, utterly-random and is not ever addressed again.  You can't just skip past that kind of thing, guys!  We've got about 30 more plot twists to go though, including the lead voodoo priestess being the wife's mother and also being evil.  It was all a convoluted scheme involving the Mayor, the 'blue-blood' guys and the voodoo gang- although both of latter betray the former.  We get a final showdown between the General and The Gunman, which attempts to redeem this whole affair by having him shoot the bad guy up through some stairs- from the taint up through the skull!  It's too little, too late, however, as the film fizzles to a clumsy climax.

How can a movie that sounds this awesomely-bad be just...well, bad?!?  The premise sounds hilarious on paper, but falls immensely flat on its face.  The only thing flatter than this movie is Kiera Knightley!  Let's breakdown just how much of the plot comes true.  Are there naked voodoo-practicing witches?  No, yes and no.  One of them is put in silhouette- as I mentioned- but there's nothing salacious here.  Mind you, nudity is not always a cure for a shitty movie- often it can be the cause- but an attempt at anything here would have been appreciated!  Do they hire a cyborg to protect them?  Well, kind of.  The fact that he can fire bullets out of his dick certainly makes him a cyborg of some kind.  The problem is that we never see any actual proof of his transformation.  Would it have been too much to show him get wounded and have sparks come out?  Hell, the cliche of having him show back-first to the camera as he puts his shirt on would have been something.  As it is, it's a case of 'just trust us- you're not missing anything interesting.'  You know what I'm missing?  Quality of writing, good production values, good acting, good action, interesting characters and a plot synopsis that is not a giant lie.  Seriously, you can't just have two silly scenes occur in a dull movie and have me go 'My God, I was wrong the whole time!!!'  You've failed again, Full Moon.  I hope your film about puppets battling Naziis will be better.

Up next, Blockbuster Trash brings you another direct-to-video sequel.  This one is a 'sequel' to a Kevin Bacon film that actually rips off The Dead Zone and The Sixth Sense.  Stay tuned...