Mark of the Scorpion (1986)

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Producer Augusto Caminito is at it again! The man who brought us the most famous Italian Indiana Jones clone ever to use a longshoreman’s hook in The Mines of Kilimanjaro rents some caves in Tunisia to dramatize the legendary quest for Cleopatra’s lost treasure in Mark of the Scorpion!

If you’ve never heard of Cleopatra’s lost treasure, don’t feel like a moron for letting your subscription to Sports Illustrated For Treasure Hunters lapse because her goodies turn out to be a mostly empty trunk with an ancient scroll and a few ugly gold trinkets in it! Continue reading “Mark of the Scorpion (1986)” →

Goliath and the Barbarians (1959)

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Made very early in the sword and sandal cycle of the late 1950s and early to mid 1960s, Goliath and the Barbarians attempts to get by solely on the fact that the biggest name in the genre, Steve Reeves, is the featured player. The movie fails to rise above “forgettable strongman epic” but the fault in no way lies with big Steve.

Steve and his Goliath-sized guns grunt and groan mightily in an effort to heave this movie into something approaching interesting, but even his mammoth chest, no matter how much it’s glistening with hunk-sweat, can’t overcome the dull story of barbarians harassing Steve’s lower class village. Continue reading “Goliath and the Barbarians (1959)” →

The Letter (1940)

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Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) is the wife of a guy who runs a rubber plantation in Malaysia and if you know anything about life on a rubber plantation in Malaysia like I do, there isn’t much more to do than your husband’s best friend. And even though this all went down in Malaysia, it still turns out that you just can’t go around killing secret boyfriends because they dump you! You can’t really blame Leslie though. How can anyone be expected to know the intricacies of Malaysian homicide laws? Continue reading “The Letter (1940)” →

Blue Angel Cafe (1989)

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I don’t think that Richard really wanted to be governor all that badly. Sure, he was giving interviews, holding court in his fancy office shuffling files while advising his secretary he was not to be disturbed, and having cocktail party receptions, but I don’t think his heart was in it. And I sure know his dingus wasn’t in it either! Because it kept getting into his stripper/singer girlfriend when his old lady was out of town at her mother’s! Continue reading “Blue Angel Cafe (1989)” →

The Last Match (1991)

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As I watched it unfold, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it about a hundred times before. It seems so obvious in retrospect. A loved one gets framed up in some nameless banana republic on drug charges. A father can’t get any help from the impotent American embassy. His daughter is facing years behind bars in such a tough prison that the warden has the father beaten during visiting hours! There’s no one left to turn to for help! Except the teammates on his professional football team! Admit it, you just got goosebumps! Continue reading “The Last Match (1991)” →

The Opponent (1988)

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In life nothing is more pure than the sweet science of effortlessly bad Italian filmmaking! Relentlessly pummeling the viewer with its English-as-a-third-or-fourth-language level dialogue, jabbing with its cast of faded legends, has beens, bimbos, and talentless dudes vaguely recognized from other horrid Roman roundups before finally delivering the knockout blow with a deadly combination of awful songs, punch-drunk plot, and laughably over-the-top action, movies like The Opponent easily fill the undercard of your pointless life. Continue reading “The Opponent (1988)” →