I’m not going to describe the particular abomination in question because some things should be experienced in their full, unanticipated splendour. Let’s just say that Lucas and Spielberg have opened their bladder over the Indiana Jones of yore and should both be arrested for a display of public immorality that even Binks rose above. Yes, you heard it right: Phantom Menace was better. Indy IV is a leaden, dull, dimwitted, tiring piece of cinematic Scheiss. If you are on the fence about seeing it, please don’t go. Do not reward their sorry arses.

So, what are the worst Martial Arts films available on Netflix?

It was not the worst movie I’ve ever seen.

Let’s be clear: this movie is a ball of crap that’s been deep fried in a pool of vomit. It has a wretched plot — an uppity Texas girl meets a laid-back party guy during a Spring Break in Florida. It has a wretched cast — neither Justin Guarini nor Kelly Clarkson can act, not really (including her SNL sketches). It has an absolutely wretched, horrible and evil choreographer, who should never, ever be allowed to do anything with dance again, EVER. Don’t believe me? Watch this, suckas.

Sigh. OK, so let me sum up the “plot.” Kelly, playing a shy-but-determined Texas girl named, er, Kelly, is suckered into going to Florida for spring break by her two friends, who subsequently ditch her and relentlessly attempt to sabotage her relationships. Justin Guarini, meanwhile, plays an entrepreneur named “Justin” who earns his college tuition by hosting spring break bacchanalia with his loser friends, one of which is a pathetic womanizer partyboy and the other is the caricature of a parody of a computer geez. Hilarity ensues! Justin is immediately in deep smit with Kelly, who in turn gives Justin her phone number. He immediately loses said number and Kelly’s bitchy betrayer of a friend gives Justin her number instead, telling him that it’s Kelly. The entire back-and-forth between them consists of a bizarre texting relationship between Justin and Kelly’s friend, punctuated by occasional real-life escapades between the two where they try to overcome their differences. Oh, and they lip-sync a lot.

In true stupid spring break movie form, every character must be in a relationship, and so Kelly’s bitchy friends each pursue love; one (the token black character) falls in love with a local busboy and literally ruins his life. Likewise, Justin’s friends desperately seek a party and love. Will they ever find happiness?!?!!?

Who cares. There’s not an ounce of chemistry between any of the characters; Justin and Kelly have the romantic attraction of a house spider and the sole of my shoe. They were clearly coerced into making this mess of a movie and hate every minute of it. Fortunately, the director, writer, set designer and stylist also hate what they are doing, because the film is poorly shot, makes no sense, looks God-awful and Kelly’s hair goes from hum-drum to a full-on WTF!! dreadlock/cornrow one-two hair punch in the face.

So, both Kelly and Justin can sing — American Idol showed us that both have relative talent in that field. But talent in one arena does not justify a crime against society like this misfire of a musical. At times during the filming I wondered whether this was a deliberate attempt, almost Prince-like, to escape from under an onerous record label contract by putting out the worst possible product. Kim Fuller, the writer, is also responsible for Spice World and various S Club 7 fiasco movies. Robert Iscove, the director, has put out a whole legacy of sub-par movies, from Firestarter 2 to the Freddie Prinze, Jr. masterpiece She’s All That. Travis Payne, the choreographer, also befouled the dancing of Coyote Ugly. In other words, folks From Justin to Kelly is a perfect storm of crapitude.

Worst musical I’ve ever seen? Yes. It was terrible. Eye-gouging, scream-at-the-TV terrible. From Clarkson’s soul-sucking rendition of “Vacation” at the beginning to the ensemble’s pathetically soulless version of “That’s the Way I Like It,” the movie was an awful corporate-America pukefest. It was just catchy enough to linger in my mind for days afterwards, and I will never forgive you for it.

Viewing SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 is not on that list. If it were on the list, it would be near the bottom, along with performing Cast Away style dentistry and having a Silkwood shower. This is the worst one I’ve had to watch so far, people. I know I say that every review, but this time I mean it: I really hate each one of you with all my heart. I mean, just look at that poster.

This film was far smellier than my twins’ diapers.

Where to begin with this film? I suppose we can start with the cinematic enigma which is Jon Voight. Voight, an Academy Award-winning actor and star in such films as Midnight Cowboy, Deliverance, Catch-22 and Mission: Impossible, nonetheless continues to amaze and astound audiences by starring and stinking in some serious b-movies (witness the soon-to-stink epic, September Dawn). Voight, who produced the first Baby Geniuses, here stars as the villainous Bill Biscane, an evil (regular) genius who plans on launching a mind-control satellite TV network aimed at kids, because of course “kids are the future!” Clearly he’s taking Whitney Houston a bit too seriously.

Standing as the front line of defense against Biscane’s nefarious plot is the freak mutant abortion known as Kahuna, the chief Baby Genius in question. Kahuna (played by triplets) has super-strength, talks like an adult and drives some sort of super-scooter. Guzzling some sort of radioactive isotope drink from a baby bottle (cute!), he then proceeds to dish out some retarded toddler moves on the inept henchmen repeatedly sent by Biscane, in wire-work that would make Yuen Wo-Ping garrote himself.

In his pursuit of Biscane, Kahuna befriends some kids in a local daycare run by Vanessa Angel and Scott Baio, who share one brain between the two of them. Scott Baio is particularly disappointing in light of his brilliance as Bob Loblaw on Arrested Development. Scott, from hell’s heart I stab at thee! Anyways, the nascent superbabies are a microcosm of all there is great in America: there’s a Jewish kid, a latina diva, a token african-american toddler, and one regular dumb baby. The kids are just as retarded as the adults, and Kahuna helps all of them unlock their inner superbabies to resist the infamous Biscane.

Oh, and Kahuna and Biscane have been enemies since just after WWII. In a sense, SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 is just like Lost: multiple flashbacks to various locations treat us to the characters’ rich and deep backstory. Except here, it’s completely stupid. Want me to spoil it? OK!

————-SPOILER——————-
Kahuna the Infant Freak and Biscane are brothers. YES! I know! I was shocked as well. Kahuna accidentally drank some of his father’s mutant baby formula and is trapped in a child’s body forever, except that he has adult and sometimes super-strength. And so Biscane naturally thinks his brother is a complete abomination; he shuns his brother, joins the post-WWII Nazi movement, and vows to control all children everywhere. Naturally.
———–END SPOILER—————–

Enough of the plot itself. Here’s the creepiest thing: the talking babies. Everyone already knows this is wrong, unnatural anmd a sin against nature. But in SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2, this crime is elevated to an evil art: inept CGI slows down their mouths and alters their lips to match the children’s natural blabbering to the voiceovers. The result is a bunch of babies that appear slightly drunken. It’s pitiful.

In summary, this was a complete waste of time and a horrible movie that I’d like to forget but can’t because it was so awful. Oh, and it stars Justin Chatwin, who was Tom Cruise’s suicidal son in War of the Worlds. And that’s all I have to say about SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2. Screw off, people. You’ve hurt me this time — deeply.

You’ve been warned.

Many people are to be pitied for their role in A Sound of Thunder: Ed Burns, who was good in Saving Private Ryan and NOTHING ELSE EVER, Ben Kingsley, who is really good in just about everything (Sexy Beast!), and Ray Bradbury, who has written great stories that translate (with the exception of 2001: A Space Odyssey) into cinematic shite.

The logic behind A Sound of Thunder is the now yawn-inducing notion of the Butterfly Effect, whereby if you kill a butterfly in prehistoric times we all turn into monkeylizards in the present day. Here, scientists have figured out a method of time-travel and use it –naturally– for prehistoric safaris, via a company with the catchy name “Time Safari.” One of the hunters kills (sigh) a butterfly, and so the monkeylizards start showing up. In a bizarre and utterly nonsensical notion, changes in the past do not immediately affect the future. No, you fool. As any scientist will tell you, changes to the present occur via Time Waves, which look like clearish versions of regular waves, affecting the evolutionary chain from the simplest to the most complex organisms, in that order. So, first you get killer vines and bugs, then later the monkeylizards. Anyhow, I liked it better when Homer Simpson did it with the toaster.

So there are a few things you need to know about A Sound of Thunder. First, if you want to travel back in time you will need to dress like Master Chief from Halo. Second, you need to know that despite near-total changes in the timeline, the time machine you left in the present day will still work. Third, you need to know that everything is done with CGI. Why mention CGI in the context of a sci-fi movie, where CGI is de rigeur? Because it is rare that CGI is this awful, this obvious and this absurd. In one particular scene, Ed Burns is walking down the street in futuristic Chicago, and is so obviously walking in place over a greenscreen that it makes Spaceballs look high-tech.

The script is nondescript genre hackery suckitude, with cheeseball nonsensical lines like “While I was a physics major in college, we studied something called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It proves that there is no such thing as zero tolerance.” Um, did they even google the term? Characters are wafer-thin and the whole movie consists of utterly forgettable chase-and-escape sequences. The result is a sci-fi movie about the future that still manages to feel dated, tired and slow as molasses. It is worse than your average Original Sci-Fi Channel Movie. I would travel back in time and kill the frères Lumière for ever pioneering narrative cinematography in the first place, but the thought of those monkeylizards makes me think twice.

And then I watched the movie.

Uwe (pronounced “oova”) Boll (pronounced “crap”) is the esteemed director of Alone in the Dark, Bloodrayne, and other video game adaptation films. He is noteworthy because his German production company finances Boll’s own films for him. This fact will become important later in the review.

Some background to the movie may be of use to you: House of the Dead is a famous arcade game, in which you shoot zombies with a light gun as you stroll through a haunted house. Carnage, surprise and thrills ensue. There is a threadbare shell of a plot to the game, as the wikipedia notes:

In the year 1998, AMS agents Thomas Rogan and “G” are sent on an assignment to investigate a panicked phone call and a series of disappearances at a mansion inhabited by Dr. Curien, a mad scientist. Curien was known for dangerous, inhumane experiments. The result of the experiments are apparent the moment they arrive – biologically engineered zombies, murderous and thirsty for blood.

Ahhhhhh, tapping from the well of genetic zombie experiments! What could possibly go wrong in a movie version of such a horn of bloody plenty? After all, the game itself has several iterations, including a typing tutor version. Only those who confuse this film with the Dostoevsky novel of the same name would be disappointed. Right?

Ah, well, yes, as a matter of fact, you’d be disappointed no matter how you approach this particular zombiefartbomb. The “plot” of the film has nothing to do with the “plot” of the movie: a group of kids go that infamous isolated Puget Sound island, Isla del Muerte, for a “rave,” only to discover that something truly HORRIBLE!! has happened on the island. The rave itself consists of a topless woman and 15 people in front of a Sega banner, but let’s leave that for a moment to discuss a few initial oddities. First, the captain of the boat that takes them to the island is named Captain Kirk, a fact which is played to HILARIOUS! effect. Second, the captain is played by Jurgen Prochnow of Das Boot fame, who is so obviously self-loathing for being involved in such a complete turdball of a film that his looks scream “kill me” even before his character does. Finally, his first mate is played by B-movie celeb Clint Howard, who clearly has been hitting the tranya a little hard, again to HILARIOUS! effect.

As you can tell, I’m circling around the review itself, because the film itself was so stench-ridden and loathesome. OK, here it is. Once the kids get to the island and we’re done with the obligatory semi-comedic T&A, and we actually get to see the zombies in all their terror, it’s supremely underwhelming. The makeup is bad — a fact you only notice peripherally because the zombies are busy jumping over hedges on trampolines and flying towards the camera via zombie catapults. I’m not joking – they have stunt catapults, intended to hurl the stuntmen zombies in frightening ways, but typically you don’t see the actual trampolines or catapults, complete with LED control screen, RIGHT THERE at the bottom of the screen.

As viewer, however, you might not notice even the zombipults, because your brain will be busy trying to understand why clips of the ACTUAL GAME are interspersed during the movie. Yes, you’ll be watching a scene where the actors are shooting zombies, then all of a sudden you’ll see this pixellated clip of the videogame, with the screen showing high score, “RELOAD!” and everything. Apparently this was a deliberate act on Boll’s part.

Also apparently deliberate was the decision to purchase some Matrix-style freezecam technology, and use it OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER again during one 12-minute scene, freezing the action when nothing in particular is happening at all. Add to the list of deliberate crimes the invention of some sort of turntable-like camera platform, which does 360-degree style shots of a scene but without the cool Matrix effect. A fact that will astonish and dismay you: House of the Dead featured a $12 million production budget. WHERE DID IT ALL GO?

Perhaps it went to the oppressive German techno soundtrack that blaringly invades during any action sequence. Or to the actual “House” of the Dead, where something like 10 minutes of the film takes place, and which is little more than a shack. Or to the AMAZING B&W flashback sequence set in times of yore when the Spanish conquistadors first came to the Puget Sound, evil immortal priests in tow. Sigh. It certainly didn’t go towards actual acting or effects: you never see anyone actually killed by the zombies. NOT ONCE. At each killing the camera flashes away with a scream in the background, as if it is just too horrible to be shown on film. George Romero is featured on the DVD extras, presumably as a striking counterpoint on how to make a zombie movie. Why, George, why??

Still, I suppose I should be grateful that there is plenty of poorly-crafted and shoddily edited action in House of the Dead; it spares us from the completely stupid dialogue which otherwise inhabits the film. For example:

Rudy: You did all this to become immortal. Why?
Castillo: To live forever!

I found an excellent interview online with Uwe Boll; I recommend you read it in its entirety, as it is an exceptional glimpse into the mind of madness. But I shall leave you with a quote, in case you’re too lazy to read the interview yourself:

Let’s be realistic, what is House of the Dead? House of the Dead is a brainless shooter, where you shoot zombies into pieces. So what are you expecting from the movie, Schindler’s List?… I think I made a perfect House of the Dead movie, because it really shows how the game is. It’s a lot of fun, it’s over-the-top action – it’s not 28 Days Later, because the reality is that House of the Dead is about how it’s a lot of fun to shoot zombies… It’s cheesy entertainment with a lot of gore and a lot of violence, and it’s super-fast.

I hate you, Uwe. I HATE YOU.

Movies that involve the Greek gods are always problematic. Clash of the Titans, Troy, you name it — they’re all fairly mediocre. Hercules In New York, a 1969 masterpiece and Arnold Schwartzenegger’s first feature film, seems to recognize this problem and confronts things head-on — by deliberately making the film as terrible as possible from the onset.

Some of you may recall the movie Scanners, in which people with telekinetic abilities make other people’s heads explode. Upon viewing Hercules in New York, I have become convinced that either Schwartzenegger or the film’s producer, Aubrey Wisberg, are in fact Scanners themselves, planted among us to snare the unsuspecting and make their heads asplode.

Having walked through the fires of MXP and The Pirate Movie, I felt prepared to withstand the firey blasts of Hercules. How foolish I was. As Arnold himself tells us (repeatedly), “I am Herkooolies!”

I should have realized this.

Schwartzenegger, billed inexplicably in the film as “Arnold Strong,” plays his role with relish and speaks as if he came straight from Mount Olympoooos (if such a mountain exists somewhere in the Austrian Alps). He is basically incomprehensible, which oddly suits this meandering bizarro-film, which is little more than cinematic pretext for Ahnold to take off his shirt and wrestle.

Plot? Why, the title alone gives you all the plot you need, my friend. Herkooolies tires of Zeus’ company and decides to go play around in the Big Apple. He befriends an INCREDIBLY IRRITATING pretzel salesman (named “Pretzi,” of course) and gets a gig as a wrestler. Sigh. Meanwhile Zeus is enraged at Herkoolies’ insolence and sends Nemesis to punish him, and…. oh, I have no clue. Barrels are involved somehow. And a bear. I really can’t tell you more than that, because it passed by me as if in a dream. This is laudanum in digital form, folks. Were I a modern Coleridge, I would set the film on repeat and compose Kubla Khan after Kubla Khan.

Let me share with you two clips of the film that I feel are representative of the work as a whole. First is the most wonderful bear-suit wrestling match that celluloid has ever witnessed. The second clip shows a pivotal moment when Herkoolies becomes enraged at a movie version of himself, and takes of his shirt in typical protest. Do you hear balalikas playing in both these clips? Yes, you do — because the ENTIRE MOVIE is full of them, as if the sound editing booth was in the back of some truck that sells gyros.

Sigh. Let’s move on, shall we? My eyes — the goggles do nothing! Help me, Herkoolies!