B Movie Breakdown

Sorry we’re a day late this week – mama got sick in Biloxi. That and our time machine broke down on our way back from 1993 where we watched Jean-Claude Van Damme and John Woo’s American film debut: Hard Target. Cajun hobo/vigilante ex-Merchant Marine Van Damme decides to help Yancy Butler find and avenge her father in exchange for the $217 he needs to buy his way back into the Seaman’s Union. (No, really.) Unfortunately, they run afoul of Lance Henriksen and Arnold Vosloo’s multi-million dollar hobo hunting industry and are forced to fight for their lives, but an army of highly trained, heavily armed goons is no match for Van Damme’s endless supply of bullets and roundhouse kicks!

ButterCreamers never say die, right boys? Oh wait, that was a different, much better movie than the one we watched this week – 1992’s The ButterCream Gang, from Christian-y production house Feature Films for Families. Triple F-Bomb Pictures here does for the gang membership problem what Fireproof did for marital strife, which is to say not very much. Pete, Scott, Lanny and Eldon are part of a small town good ol’ boys’ “gang” where they play doctor, sheriff, errand boy and all-around whipped little bitch for their town’s dumbest and most enfeebled residents.

We hope you like big fake boobies, because that’s about all Pamela Anderson brings to the table this week in 1996’s futuristic action romp Barb Wire. In the film that narrowly lost the Razzie Award for Worst Picture 1996, disenfranchised mercenary Barb “Wire” Kopetski tries to eke out a living in the embattled city of Steel Harbor. Barb’s world is one part Mad Max, one part Johnny Mnemonic, one part Casablanca and ALL camp, as the constant barrage of strip teases, overblown gun fights and sexual torture will demonstrate. Sadly, big boobs (or abs and a baby face) alone do not an action hero make, and Pam’s performance is more wooden than her male admirers’ members after the opening scene.

Well, look what the rat puked up! Our teen/young adult nostalgia for WCW takes almost as many shots to the nuts as are delivered in this week’s pick, 2000’s comedy “classic,” Ready To Rumble! Gordie and Sean are two twenty-something losers who escape the drudgery of their job pumping port-a-potties by living vicariously through fictional wrestler Jimmy King. When their tickets to WCW’s “Monday Night Nitro” buy them a front row seat to the King’s dethroning, our boys take to cross-country hitchhiking and cyber-stalking to find their fallen idol and force him back into title contention against Diamond Dallas Page and scumbag promoter Joe Pantoliano.

It takes a very special movie to weave rape, sexual torture, genital mutilation and infanticide into a light-hearted “family” comedy, and did we ever find one this week with 1991’s Meet the Applegates! We’re not sure if this is an example of militant environmentalism or a parody of the same, but this family of genocidal giant mantises masquerading as humans makes our past broken B movie families look like The Brady Bunch.

join us this week as we witness true manly heroics with John Steele in 1987’s Steele Justice! The Karate Kid’s Martin Kove turns in a wonderfully wooden performance as the shellshocked Vietnam vet who gives no fucks about the laws of God or man, has a deadly pet snake named 3 Step and trains by doing squats with an unweighted broomstick. When John’s backstabbing nemesis from ‘Nam resurfaces and murders his old war buddy, Steele springs into action. But he isn’t being recruited – he’s being UNLEASHED! (That’s an actual line from the movie! Fucking fantastic!) The resulting chaos is a mashup of every 80s action movie cliché, but taken to a ridiculous, poorly executed extreme. Epic 80s action songs, a music video, and explosions for no reason, plus the added racism of every Asian person knowing martial arts and being evil. After slaughtering all his Asian enemies, Steele is able to ride off into the sunset, shrugging off the laundry list of felonies he’s committed to achieve his victory.

We’re warping back to 1997 with Lerigot’s magical key to fight alongside the Power Rangers in their second big screen adventure, Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie. Joining us this week is our old podcasting partner in crime, Dino Punk Nicky Tyranno. This film was a disappointment to anyone with half a brain cell, as Power Rangers’ writers decided to take everything that worked in the first film and flush it down the toilet to give us the most watered-down, pussified non-violent movie about violent superheroes ever. Want to see something awesome like the Oozemen fight?

Well, to anybody that watched 1985’s The Rape of Richard Beck – we’re sorry. Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear gives you shit dick. To call Richard Beck insensitive would be a massive understatement. A hardened homicide detective who acts like a TV cop and believes rape victims deserve their abuse, Beck’s callous release of a rape suspect ironically gets him reassigned to Seattle’s sex crimes division.

Is YOUR marriage fireproof? We hope not, because we’d hate for anyone to have a relationship as dysfunctional and antagonistic as Kirk Cameron and Erin Bethea have in this Christian melodrama. This week we’re tackling 2008’s Fireproof, an indie morality tale that shows that you don’t have to have good acting, chemistry or a compelling romance to clean up at the box office – as long as you have a religious “message” to preach to the choir.

This episode is brought to you by Cyagra™ – giving you that porn size & endurance you yearn for! This week we take a ride in a van with a stranger with 2012’s Creep Van, and the results are surprisingly okay. After failing as a male gigolo and a pizza delivery guy, happy-go-lucky loser Campbell gets a job at a car wash and tries to game his coworker Amy, who may or may not be a ball-busting bitch. When all his new endeavors are thwarted by not having his own ride, Campbell tries to buy a shitty van from a mysterious Creep who did not at all need to be mysterious.