Your Stupid Minds

Your Stupid Minds celebrates its 200th episode with a movie we probably should have reviewed already: 1986's Chopping Mall, directed by Jim Wynorski. 80s teens. Killer robots in the mall. Barbara Crampton. What more do you want?

Four young people and their four companions stay in the mall overnight to have a beer-fueled… orgy, I guess, inside of a furniture store. But there's a small problem, a lightening storm has caused the security robots that guard the mall to go crazy and turn into killbots! Also, the mall is completely locked down with steel security doors at night (probably violating local fire codes, as one IMDb trivia writer points out). Will the young people make it out alive? And what of their companions?

Next up in our mini-series of "80s Halloween Movies the Criterion Channel picked for us," it's Paul Schrader's 1982 "remake," of sorts, of the 1942 movie of the same name. It's Cat People!

Orphan Irena (Nastassja Kinski) arrives in New Orleans to be reunited with her long-lost brother Paul (Malcolm McDowell), who is especially affectionate and nuzzly at her arrival. When he disappears for a few days, she finds herself drawn to a black leopard at the zoo. Meanwhile she's falling in love with zookeeper Oliver (John Heard), who coaxed her out of a tree with some canned tuna or something.

Paul returns and continues to try to have sex with his sister. It turns out they both are descended from cat people. They can have sex with each other without consequences, but if they have sex with a person they turn into cats. The only way to turn back into a human is to kill a human. Paul does a very bad job of explaining this.

Will Irena embrace her cat people roots? Will she never love a human? Or will she give in to her desires and have sex with Oliver to bring out her inner cat? You'll have to see for yourself. If it helps, there is a kickin' David Bowie title theme song.

Your Stupid Minds takes advantage of the Criterion Channel doing our curation for us by choosing a spook-em-up in its 80s horror series: another Lucio Fulci movie, it's 1981's The House by the Cemetery!

Dr. Norman Boyle (played by the incredibly Italian Paolo Malco) his wife Lucy (Catriona MacColl) and their cherubic, etherial son Bob (Giovanni Frezza) move temporarily into a creepy New England house so the dad can do research or something.

Over time it turns out this creepy house is, like, really creepy. Bob is clued in by another cherubic, etherial child Mae (Silvia Collatina) warning him against going to the house. A series of gruesome, Fulci-style murders later (not counting the one in the cold open that has nothing to do with anything), and Norman is determined to save his family from this malevolent force.

Your Stupid Minds releases a bonus second episode in two weeks to make up for being a week late last week. In any case, now we're caught up. This time around we review a movie that was basically lost until 2013 when it turned up in a batch of 1,000 pornographic 35mm prints donated to the American Genre Film Archive. It's 1976's (or 1975, depending on who you ask) The Astrologer!

Alexander (played by writer, director, and producer Craig Denney) is a con man at a carnival who goes to Kenya to steal some diamonds with an oil baron and his wife. He gets captured and imprisoned (possibly more than once, it isn't clear), gets out and steals some cursed diamonds.

Eventually he's able to sell them in Tahiti and heads back to Southern California to find his fortune the traditional way: by starting an entertainment empire of a hit movie and six hit television shows all about astrology. Everything starts to unravel eventually and it ends with a quote from King Lear. Also starring Denney's cousin Darrien Earle (named Darrien in the movie), who was also Lee Iacocca's third wife.

It's time to Geostorm! After a one-week delay, we're back covering one of the worst movies about a global weather controlling satellite network of 2017, it's Geostorm, directed by frequent Roland Emmerich collaborator Dean Devlin.

Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) is a world famous satellite designer who is the creator of Dutch Boy, a satellite network tasked with controlling the weather to combat the ravages of climate change. His bad boy ways cause him to get kicked off the project, and his brother Max (Jim Sturgess) is put in charge.

But, Dutch Boy causes series of freak weather occurrences so Max asks his brother to go up to the International Space Station to investigate. It turns out these aren't glitches, but something more sinister. Also starring Andy Garcia as President Andrew Palma, Ed Harris as Secretary of State Leonard Dekkom who is definitely not the bad guy, and Abbie Cornish as Secret Service Agent Sarah Wilson.

Your Stupid Minds covers one of the many movies leaving HBO Max at the end of the month in the platform's effort pre-merger to make their streaming service really bad! This one isn't a huge loss though. It's 2014's Dracula Untold!

Vlad Drăculea (Luke Evans) is Prince of Wallachia and Transylvania and mostly a good dad and leader, despite some light impaling he's done in the past. Sultan Mehmed II is leader of the Ottoman Empire and eyeing his territory, and also wants to take his son Ingeras (Art Parkinson) as a Janissary, so Vlad meets up with a disgusting vampire he met in a cave (Charles Dance) and strikes a deal with him to borrow his vampire powers for three days so he can kill the entire Turkish army and turn back into a human so long as he doesn't feed.

Vlad's wife Mierna (Sarah Gadon) is a little peeved he didn't talk to her first, but eventually is okay with it and he tears through the Turkish army with his bat powers. Can he resist temptation and return to human form, or will he become a vampire forever? Obviously the latter, since Dracula is, like, a thing. So no mystery there.

Note: This episode originally aired May 30, 2016.

Your Stupid Minds finally covers one of the A-listers in the schlock movie pantheon: Andy Sidaris's Hard Ticket to Hawaii. Sidaris was a sports director who decided to jump over to 1980s sexploitation flicks. With muse and former Playmate of the Month Dona Speir, he went on a quest to create the most bonkers action films of the decade.

Donna (Spier) and Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton) are buxom drug agents who stumble on an RC helicopter-based diamond smuggling drug ring. They elicit the help of boyfriend agent Rowdy (Ronn Moss) and Jade (South Florida kickboxing superstar Harold Diamond) to rescue their friend and blow up as many things as possible. There's also a contaminated killer snake, several deaths by Bazooka, a zany handstand skateboarding assassin, and a spiked death frisbee.

Blockade Entertainment went to Sony with a dream. "What if," they said, "we took one of your lesser PS3 exclusive games and used old existing game assets to make a big budget movie?" Sony said "let's do it!" and fished around in their couch cushions for enough money to slap this together on the cheap using a third string Korean animation studio. What we have is 2014's Heavenly Sword, based on the 2007 game that no one remembered even at the time.

Nariko (Anna Torv) is an orphan part of a nomadic group of warriors tasked with protecting the "Heavenly Sword," a powerful sword that is magic or something. But evil King Bohan (Alfred Molina, NOT Andy Serkis as IMDb claims. Serkis voiced him in the game) has made a pact with the Raven God and wants the sword to do evil things.

Bohan attacks the group's base (I thought they were nomadic?) and Nariko is tasked with finding her long lost brother Loki (Thomas Jane), who is the chosen one and can use Heavenly Sword powers to defeat Bohan. Nariko goes on her quest with Kai (Ashleigh Ball) a violent little girl who turns out to be her sister. Also it turns out her dad is the group's leader Master Shen (Nolan North) who hates girls.

After some heavy material about kids in King Arthur's court and 3 ninjas, we decided on a lighter fare this time. What about a serial killer who kills and skins people? And also his actual name is Skinner? It's 1993's Skinner, directed by Ivan Nagy.

Dennis Skinner (Ted Raimi) is a mind-mannered nerd renting a room out to innocent housewife Kerry (Ricki Lake). But he has a horrible secret he's barely able to maintain: he's a serial killer who skins his victims and wears their skin. HIs name is Skinner.

Heidi (Traci Lords) is one of his previous victims who's been hunting him down for five years, which mainly consists of her shooting up old timey 19th century opioids and then following Skinner to a river and mumbling about how much she hates him.

There's also Kerry's jerk husband Geoff (David Warshofsky) and a sleazy flop house owner Eddie (Richard Schiff). Will Heidi kill the killer before he strikes again? If she does, will we the audience even see it since this movie is shot and lit horribly? You'll just have to watch to find out! Also, please don't watch this.

This time, Your Stupid Minds reviews a forgettable 90s family movie that is available on Disney+, 1995's A Kid in King Arthur's Court. A kid travels back in time (or to an alternate universe where King Arthur actually existed) to 6th century England to show medieval people the wonders of Rollerblades and portable CD players.

Calvin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) falls through a crack in the earth after sucking at a baseball game and finds himself in Camelot. He spends most of his time in this extremely strange situation trying to court King Arthur's (Joss Ackland) daughter Princess Katey (Paloma Baeza). But also an evil Lord Belasco (Art Malik) has a nefarious plot to marry the king's other daughter Sarah (Kate Winslet), even though she's in love with the jousting instructor Master Kane (Daniel Craig). Calvin defeats the bad guy mostly though 90s catchphrases and gadgets.