The Manipulator (1971)

The Manipulator is a cheerful little story starring Mickey Rooney. Mickey stars as B.J. Lang, a down on his luck movie makeup artist who befriends a rising starlet. Together in his old studio lot they film B.J.'s movie and through this gain a friendship that will last a lifetime.

Kind of...

The Manipulator is actually about B.J. Lang a makeup artist who kidnaps a rising young starlet and forces her to make his movie, mostly while she's tied to a wheelchair.

Imagine being in an abandoned warehouse full of movie props with Mickey Rooney... also you've both just dropped enough acid to kill Timothy Leary. That's The Manipulator.

This movie is incredibly odd. This is certainly Mickey Rooney as you've never seen him before. I picture Mickey as a jovial fun to be around kind of guy, always laughing... that is when I don't picture him as his role on The Simpsons.

Now I picture him as this:

Mrs. Goritry?

The Manipulator is full of moments where you'll wonder to yourself "What exactly did I just see?" One moment Mickey may be on some sort of crazy tirade about God knows what and the next he might be in the middle of some sort of orgy with Mickey Rooney and hippies.

Did you think I was kidding?

This movie makes very little sense... shocking, I know. There's talky bits mixed in with the nonsensical bits but they all really make very little sense. I watched the movie and I couldn't tell you why Mickey kidnaps this girl... or frankly what any of the movie is about beside the basic plot.

It's a bad movie that makes very little sense... but not everything is bad about it. Mickey Rooney actually gives a very good performance, and despite it being completely out of character you find it hard to believe that this was once Andy Hardy. And while he gives a very good performance it totally doesn't make up for this acid trip of a movie.

The ten minute mark really sums up what you're in for. For about five minutes you're treated to a scene of insanity. It involves an elderly naked man and woman, painted white, dancing around in front of a strobe light while Mickey Rooney moves in front of the camera making crazy faces. Occasionally the man and woman are standing in front of a bush that Mickey prunes and sometimes they just standing in cobwebs. Sometimes they're dressed, sometimes they are not.

And sometimes this happens.

Instead of watching this movie save yourself some time and just drop acid and watch It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.

5 Crazy Birthday Fish out of 5.

Trauma (1978)

So here we go again. A foreign movie dubbed into English. This time it's an on the edge of your seat, thrill ride of a roller coaster called Trauma, or Enigma Rosso, or Red Ring of Fear, or Virgin Killer, and the list keeps going... Frankly I'd go with Virgin Killer, mostly because it shares the name with a Scorpion's album with a very inappropriate album cover.

Trauma wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be. Don't get me wrong it's still pretty bad, but I guess it could have been a lot worse. Mostly it's kind of an ordinary movie with weird subplots that seem to go nowhere. Like the main character is a detective, who happens to be dating a woman who's a kleptomaniac. Why is she a kleptomaniac? No real reason, she just likes to steal things... it adds absolutely nothing to the story. Though it doesn't really matter because about half way through the movie she leaves him for no real reason. He goes to leave and she says that when he gets back she wont be there, and that's that. What does that have to do with the story? Nothing at goddamn all. There's several little things like this throughout the movie... they don't do anything for the story, and in some places actually just seem to hurt it.

What does this picture have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing, but it's awesome.

That guy up there? That's our detective friend. He's investigating the murder of a sixteen year old girl. You know, when he's not having to deal with his shoplifting girlfriend. So while looking into this girls murder he discovers two things:

1) The girl goes to an all girl boarding school, along with her and her friends they have a secret little club called The Inseparables. All the sudden this movie got a lot more sexy.

2) The dead girl has a sister who's creepy. I'm not sure if she's meant to be, but I'll be damned if she doesn't seem that way.

Either way the dead girl's sister (who by the way doesn't seem all the broken up over the death of her sister, though neither does her mother) pops in occasionally throughout the movie with little hints and help for the detective. Because I hope that if a detective is looking into my murder he's doing so with the help of a ten year old... I hope it's a lot like Cop and a Half.

But don't worry, our detective doesn't rely solely on the help of a ten year old to solve crimes... oh no! You see, the detective is a loose cannon with unorthodox interrogation techniques! And by that I mean he takes one of the people he's trying to get information out of on a roller coaster ride. That's not a metaphor or anything, he literally takes him on a roller coaster ride. That's what gets the guy to talk. Seriously, I've seen Jack Bauer do things that are banned by the Geneva Convention... and this guy takes his suspects to the carnival. Maybe if he doesn't talk he takes them on the tilt a whirl.

Dammit, I get results!

Either way the story is kind of crappy. The plot is confusing with way too many subplots and unexplained things to make it even somewhat decent and the characters seem to do things that defy explanation. Maybe I got an edited version, or maybe it just didn't translate well to English. All I know is I got done with the movie and I know who killed the girl... I think... but I'm not sure how or why, and those things are kind of important in a murder mystery. It's like it started out well and then about halfway through the writers decided to get lunch. From about halfway through till the end just seemed like a convoluted mess.

Is it worth wasting 84 minutes of your life on? Probably not, but what else are you going to do?


3 Birthday Fish out of 5


Squid

Cindy and Donna (1970)

Needed something new so I switched over to the Drive-In Cult Classic DVD pack. Basically every movie in this pack is a bad sexploitation movie from the '70s. Every movie on it generally has to deal with someone wanting to have sex with a mother, a stepmother, a nanny, a sister, two sisters... you get the point. And Cindy and Donna is no different.

I learned two things from Cindy and Donna:

1) The '70s was an awesome time when you could use the word "groovy" in all seriousness.

2) Pot turn women into nymphomaniacs.

I can tell you that number two is false, if it were true my high school life would have been a hell of a lot more interesting.

The tagline for Cindy and Donna says it all: A story of two sisters. Cindy... so anxious to grow up. Donna... who grew up too fast! That's basically it, you have the sweet, innocent Cindy who wants to be like her big sister Donna, who's basically a pot smoking whore. I would strive to achieve that as well.


Also it has the greatest opening theme ever.

That's it. That's pretty much the whole movie. Seriously. The movie is just an excuse to get Cindy, Donna, Cindy's friend Karen, and Alice the stripper naked... all while leading up to one of the most hilarious endings I've ever seen. And frankly I'm okay with that.

Sure there are other "plots" in the movie but mostly they go nowhere. The father in the movie likes to have sex with a stripper... and that's pretty much all there is to that subplot. As far as I can tell it's only there to show the stripper naked. I'm starting to see a trend. Then there's the mother. She's an alcoholic. That's her subplot. She also has an accent that seems to randomly change throughout sentences.

The funny thing about this movie is that it's all about nudity and sex and drugs. It's sexploitation at its finest... and yet if you take all of that away you have almost a morality tale. This film is basically about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.

You have Donna who will do anything for weed. Sex in a car for a joint? Oh yeah. Have two creepy guys take naked pictures of you and then have sex with you? Oh she'll do it all for some sweet, sweet mary jane. Pot will do this to you. It's evil.

Then you have sweet, innocent Cindy. She wants to go farther with her boyfriend but just isn't sure that she's ready. But the second that joint touches her young, virginal lips? Well all the sudden her and Karen are going at it like lesbianism is going out of style.

But you have this odd message seemingly hidden under tons and tons of titties. So imagine an after school special about the dangers of drugs but where everyone is naked and having sex with random people.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Spare Parts (1979)

Going in to Spare Parts I expected something horrible. We're talking about a '70s made for TV move that was shot in German and then dubbed into English. That's pretty much a recipe for disaster right there.

But Spare Parts surprised me... no, not because it was a great movie. Hell it wasn't even all that good of a movie, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be. It had its ups and downs but overall came out fairly well.

Spare Parts is about a man and woman, Bill and Monica, who stay at the Honeymoon Motel for their... Honeymoon. First off let me say that I wish there were still motels that cost $7.50 a night... or maybe I don't, I'm not sure. Back to the movie though. Despite the fact that the desk clerk is the creepiest woman ever, the newlyweds decide to stick around and do newlywed kind of stuff (sex) and watch the sun set in a field.

This was their first mistake.

You see, as they're sitting in the field watching the sun set an ambulance drives up to them. Now most people would quizzically wonder what the hell an ambulance is doing in the middle of a field, and in fact that's exactly what Bill does. Monica on the other hand has the complete opposite reaction, she runs away screaming like a mad woman.

Bill should have listened to her.

Bill is kidnapped by the two men in the ambulance and carted away to god knows where, all the while Monica continues running away screaming. Though I can't blame her, the two men in the ambulance did have comically large guns. Either way she takes her screaming all the way to highway where she's promptly picked up by a friendly trucker. I can never decide if that's a good idea. On the one hand she's a hot twenty something blond wearing nothing but a white tank top and short shorts. On the other hand she's disheveled and crazy looking. Kind of a toss up about what's going to happen.

So this is what cataracts are like.

Luckily Trucker Mike is a nice guy who decided to help out our poor, crazy Monica. And I don't mean just a little bit of helping out, I mean going far beyond the call of duty on this one. He's devising plans on how to help her get her fiance back.

The whole movie involves Trucker Mike and Monica devising a plan that would allow them to find out who kidnapped Bill and how they can stop these people. So they pretend to be newlyweds and go back to the same motel that this started in in hopes of having the exact same thing happen again. And luckily for them it does! They manage to extract the information from the ambulance drivers and find out what they want with the people they're kidnapping. Spare parts of course! You see, there's a group that kidnaps people so they can harvest their organs. Seems like it would be easier to target say, homeless people as opposed to normal everyday people off the street who may have families that will miss them... but I guess that doesn't make as compelling of a movie.

The last half of the movie is where it starts to somewhat go downhill for me. It's not that the movie gets bad it's just that it's when it seems to start dragging on. The first half of the movie was generally pretty good, but the last half just seemed kind of odd and a almost like a different movie. The first part was a pretty good horror/thriller movie but the last half just turned out weird. It involved Trucker Mike and Monica going undercover in the group to find out who is behind the whole body harvesting scheme... and then get help from a very unlikely source to bring it down. The last half isn't bad, it just feels kind of off to me.

Like I said, it's not bad and it's not good. The story isn't bad but tends to drag on in places. The characters tend to do things that I don't think normal people would do, but that tends to happen in a lot in movies. The acting isn't bad when, again, you consider it was a made for TV movie from the '70s.

Spare Parts falls into a weird category for Bad Transfer Reviews, because while it's not bad I certainly wouldn't sing it's praises. It's just kind of there. It's better than a lot of the things I've had to watch, but I wouldn't really suggest that everyone rush out and see it.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

T.N.T. Jackson (1974)

Blaxploitation? Check.
Karate? Check.
Funk music? Awwww yeah.
Bad plot? Check.
Topless karate scene? You bet your honkey ass.

I love cheesy movies. I think it's because of this that I love blaxploitation movies so much. I don't necessarily like what the stand for, but I do for the most part enjoy the genre as a whole.

T.N.T. Jackson is awesome. You have a woman seeking revenge, karate, nudity, bad '70s music all rolled into one awful and cheesy plot. Diane "T.N.T." Jackson is searching for the man who killed her brother in Hong Kong. Did I mention she knows karate? Oh yeah, she knows karate. EVERYONE knows karate. Teamed with Dynamite Wong (played by a dude named Chiquito... that's his full name, like Cher) they battle the underworld crime bosses... At least I think they do.

Of course Chiquito knows karate

To be honest the plot seems to jump all over the place. TNT Jackson seems to be working with, though possibly somewhat against the crime bosses. The whole issue of who killed her brother? I guess it was resolved, though I wasn't 100% sure who even did it in the first place. Also there's a whole subplot about heroin and undercover cops that seems to somewhat take center stage about halfway through the movie.

There's a problem with watching the Mill Creek Entertainment version of movies. They tend to not only have horrible transfers but also have a tendency to be edited versions. Maybe they cut out parts that made T.N.T. Jackson make sense. Maybe there's a scene that would have made me understand everything... but that's not what I saw, I saw the version that was completely batshit insane, but still somehow awesome.

The karate in this movie is hilarious. When the people who it appears actually know karate go to attack T.N.T. you can tell they slow down their movements so that she can block them. And occasionally her movements are super sped up, which is not only horribly noticeable it's also super hilarious. I unfortunately can't seem to put you at a certain time in embedded youtube video but skip to 1:00 into this video and watch about two and half minutes of the video for an amazing display of martial arts.


It's like when I first saw Citizen Kane

Even though its plot is confusing and garbled it still manages to be awesome to watch (though I will say I wish there was more action and less plot... not often I say that). Everything about this movie reeks of cheesiness, from the bad acting to the bad fight scenes. Sure it's not the best blaxploitation movie I've ever seen, but it's certainly worth a watch... even if it's just for the topless karate scene.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Death by Dialogue (1988)

At some point in time a person sat down and wrote a movie, he decided that "Death by Dialogue" was a good title. At some other point in time he pitched that movie to some studio executives and they too decided that it was a good name. Somehow none of these people decided that "Death by Dialogue" might be the most boring name ever.

Death by Flames is a much more awesome name.

Have you ever thought the idea of a killer movie script sounded interesting? Yeah, me either. Though apparently someone did because that's what Death by Dialogue is about.

Our story starts out with a man reading said script, and not soon after he's lit on fire by a woman wearing garters and carrying a flamethrower. And yet somehow this movie makes that really kind of boring. I'm not sure how you manage that but it does. After that you're instantly cut to a scene with some bad 80's music where you meet the characters in the story who might actually matter: Lenny and his friends.

Lenny and his four friends decide to visit Lenny's uncle, though I'm not entirely sure why. I'm not even really sure if it's specified in the movie why they do this... I mean besides to advance the plot. It just strikes me as odd that a bunch of people in their mid-20s would decide to vacation at one of the dude's uncle's house. I would think the beach would be a lot more exciting... and rarely do you run into any demonic movie scripts at the beach.

Either way Lenny's friend Shelly stumbles across the movie script and that's when shit starts to hit the fan. Kind of. Mostly it's after that when it starts getting kind of confusing... and stupid.

While Shelly is reading the script what she's reading is actually happening, or at least there's little hints to that. And yet when she reads about her friends dying she doesn't seem all that concerned when they're missing the next day. I would like to think that if I found a script that oddly had my friend's names in it, described the location where you were at, and then when I read that they died in the script it just so happens that they're missing the next day I might at least mention it to someone else. Apparently not Shelly though.

Maybe I'm wrong about the movie though... maybe that's not what happened. I can't tell you because this movie has parts in it that make absolutely no sense. Like the two friends who go missing that I mentioned up above. It all starts off with a sex scene where at the end the woman gets blown out a window and disappears. The man runs off into the forest looking for her only to find... an '80s hair band rocking out in the middle of the forest. I have no idea why. I'm not sure it's ever really explained. This is a total Birthday Fish moment. There's several of these kinds of moments throughout the movie. It's very difficult to make sense of a movie that has a habit of making no sense.

There were roaming gangs of hair bands in the '80s

So after a few more deaths our characters finally figure out that it's the evil script. I can't remember if they figured it out or the uncle told them... because he knew about it all along. You know, I don't think if I had a problem with "killer manuscripts" running rampant I would let my nephew and his four friends come out to my house to hang out like lambs to the slaughter. Then again, I'm not a dick.

So after they figure out it's the script killing everyone they have figure out a way to stop it. Just writing that sentence I feel stupid. They wrote a movie about it. Either way the ending is... well horrible. It contains demons and fire and... dirt bikes. Also a whole lot of confusion. It's one of those things you kind of have to see for yourself, but I wouldn't suggest it. It's as bad as it sounds.

All and all the movie was pretty terrible, had a lot of rather confusing parts to it, and also had the worst name I could possibly think of. Also a movie about a killer script is pretty lame.

One thing I would like to point out though. Look up at the top, that's a poster for this movie. I'm not sure if you can read what it says so here it is "Ken Sagoes, the kid who survived Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is back!". That was their big selling point... now you know what you're getting yourself into.

3 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Legacy of Blood (1971)

I'm pretty sure I saw this plot on Scooby Doo. So a rich old man dies but instead of leaving money to each one of his kids he's a dick. According to his will his four kids must spend the night in his mansion and whoever is left in the morning will receive or split his fortune. Guess what! Things go wrong and people start dying! Seriously if the house had been haunted this would have been a Scooby Doo episode. I'm sure the cast of Gilligan's Island would have showed up at some point.

Hackneyed plot aside this movie is awesome, and by that I mean terrible. Sorry apparently watching this movie has made me just as retarded as the people who were in it.

Before I talk about the movie let me ask you something. If someone said that you would get millions of dollars if you could sleep in a house overnight wouldn't you be at all suspicious? I mean, I sleep in a house every night and I've yet receive any sort of payment for it. Yet no one seems to wonder what the catch is and seemed somewhat surprised when shit went bad.

Do you remember The Surreal Life on VH1? Basically they got a lot of D List stars who had tons of personal problems and threw them in a house together? Shockingly crazy people do crazy stuff. Legacy of Blood is kind of like The Surreal Life, but instead of booze and STDs you have incest and LSD.

Seriously, only one of this man's four kids turned out even sort of normal. Not a great batting average there. Let's see you have Laura, the normal one. She spends most her time doing boring things with her equally boring husband. Than you have Johnny, he's the brother who I'm pretty sure slept with his sister Leslie... the movie was a little vague in that department, also he's completely crazy in an overacting kind of way. Than you have Veronica, I guess she's kind of normal too but also somewhat manipulative and bitchy. And finally you have Leslie, I can't tell you if she's normal because she slept through about 90% of the movie. Either way she was hot, they should have fleshed out that part of her story more.

On top of that you also have the spouses and the help. The only one worth talking about is Leslie's husband. He was a psychiatrist and sleazebag. While he didn't sleep with everyone who was at the house I think given the opportunity he would have. Than there's the help. Apparently if you have a crazy family you have to hire crazy ass help. We'll start off with the driver Frank. I think if I hired a driver who's room looked like it was decorated by Hermann Göring I might consider getting a new one.



Now granted all of that is from Nazi's he killed during WWII not that he was one... still I like to think that when someone you employ has a lamp made of the skull and skin of a Nazi he killed he may not be the most stable of people. Moving on you have Elga, apparently she's the creepy nanny who raised the kids. Which would explain why none of them turned out. Finally you have Igor, yes Igor. I'm not really sure what his job is other than to look like a muscular Mel Brooks and have a creepy relationship with Elga.

I loved you in Spaceballs. Now please put your shirt back on.

There's one more character, Sheriff Dan Garcia. He's the first to die so he's not all that important. He comes over to the house, only to end up as a severed head in the fridge. I only bring this up because it seems weird to include it in the movie. Seriously, no one notices that the town sheriff goes on a call and than doesn't come back for hours? I didn't know this mansion was in Mayberry.

After the Sheriff's untimely death, members of the family start turning up dead. As they wonder who is killing them off one by one you're treated to a look into the family's lurid past via flashbacks or perhaps acid trips. Really, the flashbacks are like looking at the world through Hunter S. Thompson's eyes.

Makes sense to me.

So slowly over the course of the night more and more of the family members are killed in more and more gruesome ways... and yet no one just leaves. Maybe this is some sort of metaphor for our power and money hungry lives. That these people are willing to die or witness their family die all for the almighty dollar. On the other hand it could be that the entire family is just retarded. Yeah, I'm going with that one.

3 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Katie's Passion (1975)

Katie's Passion. The title sounds kind of like a porn movie, hell even the plot sounds kind of like a porn movie. A young woman trying to find a better life moves to turn of the century Amsterdam with her family. Instead what they find is the same thing, bad working and living conditions. Eventually Katie's new life leads her to a job in prostitution. Also Rutger Hauer.

But it's not a porno! It's actually a period drama... brought to you by the director who gave the world Showgirls and Starship Troopers, two of the greatest comedies of the '90s.

I'm going to let you in a little writing secret. I've just spent the last 15 minutes staring at the screen wondering what to write about this movie. It's not great, but it certainly wasn't a bad movie. I'm just not sure what to say about a period drama that was good. I could make fun of the fact that Rutger Hauer is in it, but I already have. The fact that Paul Verhoeven directed this and some other awesomely bad movies? Check. So I've run out of cards.

Katie's Passion wasn't a bad movie, but if you're not interested in period pieces it's not going to bring something to the table that's going to make you want to watch it. It seems to be acted well, but since it's a foreign film that's dubbed it's kind of hard to gauge. Overall it was an okay movie that didn't really do anything to stand out, but certainly wasn't awful in any way.

I'm just not sure what to say about this movie, at the end of the day it was decent. Not necessarily my cup of tea, but generally better than anything else I've watched in the recent past. This movie isn't good because it falls into the "so bad it's good" category like some of the other movies I've watched, it's actually just a good. So if you're into period pieces go for it.

Sorry this review is kind of short and maybe light on chuckles, but I'm really at a loss for anyway to remedy that. So I'll just leave you with parting shot of Rutger Hauer:

You're Welcome.

1 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Dont Open Till Christmas (1984)

How good can a movie be when it forgets the apostrophe in the title card? The answer? Not very. Don't Open Till Christmas isn't exactly a bad movie, but it's certainly not a good movie. It's just there.

It's nearing Christmas and a lunatic is killing everyone in a Santa suit! Okay, I'll give you that there's going to be people who have to wear Santa suits for jobs and what not, but here's a simple way to not get killed: stop wearing it after your job is done, and don't walk down a dark alley while wearing one. Apparently no one in this movie is smart enough to realize this so you're treated to many badly dressed Santas being butchered over and over again.

Like this poor bastard

Have no fear there's a crack team of detectives from Scotland Yard on the case... and by crack team I mean they seem to kind of just be there in the background and instead the movie decides to focus on two people. Kate, her dad was the second person killed by the Santa Clause Killer and... Sherry? Cheryl? I didn't catch her name and in the credits I believe she's only credited as Experience Girl. She's a stripper* who is kidnapped by the Santa Clause Killer.

*I say stripper because I have no idea what to call her job. She sits behind glass and men pay to see her do things like get naked. I'm not really sure what that's called... but I doubt there's a job fair for that sort of thing

Neither of their stories are very compelling and are actually kind of jumbled and boring. I found Kate kind of annoying and her part seemed kind of forced and the story seemed to focus a lot on her boyfriend for no real apparent reason. While Experience Girl's part just seemed rather unneeded, it didn't really add anything to the movie. And when the detectives showed up in the movie they felt like they were just kind of there. They had a fairly big part in the movie, but most of it just felt kind of like filler.

There's nothing really wrong with this movie other than it's just kind of there. It's forgettable. I had no interest in it, and at the end of the day I don't have a lot of say about it because it was just kind of "meh".

Don't Open Till Christmas probably isn't worth your time. I went into it hoping for some kind of cheesy Christmas themed slasher that would fall into that "so bad it's good category" and would be a fun/funny movie to watch at Christmas time. Instead I got a really boring movie with a really average/boring plot. While I think that it could have been a decent slasher movie, in the end it falls flat and instead you get something that feels like it could have been better.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Treasure of Tayopa (1974)

Treasure of Tayopa. I'm not sure exactly what to say about this movie other than it's awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. That's four awfuls just in case you weren't clear on how I truly felt.

Treasure of Tayopa starts off with a cock fight. When I say starts off with a cock fight I mean that the first frame you see in this movie is about halfway through a cock fight. No fade in from black, no title, no credits. Cock fight. That's four cock fights just because it's a funny word. Finally we meet three of the four people you'll be seeing in this movie, all on horses talking about the treasure and the boss that they're going to meet. Finally the boss arrives by plane and... get ready for this... it's a woman! Oh ho ho that will throw a monkey wrench in the plans! I guess.

After the title you're than treated to about two minutes of various scenes overlayed over each other but all showing very uninteresting things.



See that? Actually three different shots going on there. One of just a landscape, one of the four stars riding on horses and one of... lens flare. Hopefully you enjoy watching that kind of scene because you're going to see it a lot. Especially the lens flare.

Let's talk about the six people you'll be seeing in this movie:

Kathryn Delgadillo: She's the boss. Her father told her where to find the treasure of Tayopa (I'm not sure if it's explained why he never went and got it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it never was). She's a tough woman working in a man's world of (badly) treasure hunting.

Sally: He's the crazy one. That's right, he. Maybe it's a boy named Sue kind of thing. All you need to know is that he's crazy... for no real reason. Also if I'm planning on finding hidden treasure that would be worth millions you know the first guy I bring along? The mentally unstable guy. The kind of guy who brings a crossbow along for no reason. Yeah, I want him on my team.

Tom Stoddard: He's some guy. Really, he has very little purpose and you learn almost nothing about him. Good times.

Felipe Estrada: He's the translator. He has very little purpose and you learn almost nothing about him.

Then there's some mexican dude who follows them around for the entire movie (more on him in a moment). I'm sure they might have given his name, but I sure didn't hear it.

And then there's the banditos. The banditos are only there for (bad) plot reasons. Also all of them appear to have taken fashion advice from Speedy Gonzales.

Also there's a narrator. One you see. He comes in twice and explains about the history of Tayopa a bit and that's pretty much his two scenes.

So Kathryn, Sally, Tom and Felipe are on their way to Tayopa when they come across the banditos and our mystery mexican dude. The banditos proceed to hassle the bunch... and by hassle I mean they kind of ride around them yipping and yelping before letting them pass about 15 seconds later. But that's enough to put Sally in a whiny rage. He's complains to Tom that he wants to go back and see what they're up to because of three reasons:

1) Because of what they did to Kathryn.
2) They pulled his hair.
3) They pushed his horse.

What they did to Kathryn is... well nothing. Mostly got in her way and yipped and yelped. And you never actually see 2 or 3 happen. I suppose it all happened off screen or something.

Anyway Sally and Felipe head back to check out the banditos and their leader, the mystery mexican dude(or MMD as he'll be known from now on). The MMD leaves just before Sally and Felipe arrive so the banditos think this is a good time to drink tequila and shoot a rifle into the air. While they're doing this Sally kills them all. Because he's crazy. Also they pushed his horse and pulled his hair. I would kill six people because of this as well. So Sally and Felipe head back to camp (Felipe doesn't tell anyone what happens because... I don't know) and the MMD finds his whole bandit camp slain and decides to follow the four stars for the rest of the movie. At about the midpoint in the movie he cuts the ropes and lets their horses free. They walk and buy new horses. So he follows them some more. This guy is horrible at revenge.

So eventually they get to where Tayopa supposedly is and you learn more about our four stars... and by learn about them I mean you find that the reason they brought Sally is because he's really good at working a metal detector. Apparently they couldn't find a non-psychopath who could also work a metal detector.

All the while Sally is going more and more crazy for no real reason. From here on in this review there's major spoilers. Trust me, it doesn't matter. You don't want to see this movie anyway.

So Sally finds the treasure and proceeds to try and rape Kathryn but I guess midway decides it's better to hit her with his belt a couple times which leaves her close to death. He then proceeds to shoot Tom with a crossbow and Felipe with a real gun. That's another thing, at the first of this movie they gave Sally a gun. Again, you're just asking for trouble when you give the crazy crossbow dude a gun.

Kathryn isn't dead from her five belt lashes and proceeds to smash Sally's head in with a rock. Then she wanders around the desert, kills a rattle snake and eats it raw, finds a dry well and appears to die. Then a priest comes by and gives her water. Cut directly to a narrator who talks a little bit about Tayopa some more. Fin. That's it. The priest is never explained. Frankly I was just happy it was over.

This movie is absolutely awful. Don't watch it. It's not worth the 90 minutes of your life. It doesn't even fall into the "so bad it's good" category. It falls into the "so bad it's awful" category.

5 Birthday Fish out of 5. It's awful.

Squid.

God Bless You Mill Creek Entertainment

Ever pass one of those bins that have DVDs for a dollar in them and wonder if the movies are any good? Or have you seen the 20 or 50 movie packs for $15 and wonder just how awful all those movies are? My favorite are the ones that advertise some big move star being in them; yes Robert De Niro is in The Swap, but there's probably a reason you've never heard of it. Me too.

I assume these movies are bad... but how bad? So bad they're good, or just so bad that there's no redeeming qualities at all. Every time I see these DVDs I always wonder.

I watch a lot of movies. I have a rather large DVD collection, and part of it is made up by these dollar DVDs. I always have a tendency to buy them because who wouldn't want to see a movie called Santa Clause Conquers the Martians? Or Mama Dracula. The problem is, I always buy these movies... but I never watch them. I have at least three of these 50 movies packs and probably thirty random dollar DVDs, but I would say I've watch maybe five of the movies. That's all going to change. That's right, I'm going to sit down and watch these movies and comment on every single one of them.

So get a comfy chair, grab some popcorn, and get ready for a whole lot of bad movies.

Squid.