Inara, the Jungle Girl (2012)

Directed by: Patrick Desmarattes

Writer: Patrick Desmarattes

This film opens with some idiot rambling incoherently on and on and on about something before some other guy mercifully shoots him down, and it all takes place in some kind of jungle. Then we have the opening credits where most of the names look as if taken straight from a porno movie. Cali Danger? Madison Kitten? Sam SEXTON? I mean what the hell? Basically, at this point you're probably already aware that you're in deep trouble, but if you still have some doubts (hopeless optimist, eh?), the following few minutes will effectively shoot them down.

 

First we have an emo song (played in entirety, like three or four minutes) which introduces our lead character Inara, who's the daughter of some soldier who died recently. During that crappy song she mourns him and at the same time brings a whole new meaning to the words "bad acting". Then she talks to her father's superior officer (I forgot what was his rank exactly) and that useless conversation is quickly followed by yet another "song" during which Inara gets wasted with alcohol and then gets in fight with some military assholes whom she easily beats because her father taught her how to fight and other cool stuff.

 

This is only the first 10-12 minutes. Long story short - she agrees to go on a mission to some remote island, hoping to find clues about her father's death. The purpose of the mission is to get some precious material from the jungle that's swarming with hostile natives. But lo and behold! - the plane crashes, Inara survives and is taken hostage by the natives, who happen to be an all-female tribe (!) Yippeeee! You won't believe what happens next - there's a female bonding, our heroine learns the badness of the ways of the white man, joins the female team, becomes their queen and they kick ass! Eat that, James Cameron!

 

Every single scene in this movie is a mini-torture in itself. The entire budget of approximately 12 dollars obviously went to the pockets of mega stars like Cali Danger and Madison Kitten, so there was nothing left for less important things like special effects, military uniforms, locations, things like that. I won't even go into the sheer beauty of the screenplay and those passionate dialogues that make your heart (and the content of your stomach) want to jump out. Or how our heroine bonded with the natives (it was something like this: "We hate you and we'll kill you... OK, we're bonded"). The fight scene at the end is the most unconvincing thing ever (it's less realistic than the scenes of total destruction from Roland Emmerich's 2012). Quite simply put - there's not a single thing in this movie that's not the worst ever.

 

The only way this could possibly have worked is if all females were naked all the time, which they aren't. The tribe members sport nice two part swimsuits that successfully bring pain and misery to any viewer. If you imagine the worst possible softcore film by Jim Wynorski or Fred Olen Ray and take out all the nudity, you'll end up with something that looks like Godfather when compared with this one. Patrick Desmarattes, I really have nothing against you, I know it's a wonderful thing to make a movie, but please don't make a career out of this.

The Evil Below (1988)

Directed by: Jean-Claude Dubois

Writer: Art Payne

Sunken ships! Lost treasures! Curses! Underwater sequences! Mysterious deaths! Wayne Crawford! June Chadwick! If this doesn't sound like the best thing ever (not counting the Yoshihiro Nishimura films, of course), I don't know what does. Unfortunately, The Evil Below hardly lives up to its potential. While the leads are perfectly fine, both the screenwriting and the directing are beyond pale, which all abounds to something that probably won't bore you to death, but also won't feel much more stimulating than staring at a blank wall.

 

Wayne Crawford plays Max Cash, the captain of a small boat that's about to be confiscated by the bank or something, because Cash hasn't paid it off yet, and he doesn't have any cash (notice the striking irony of his name in relation to his financial status). The salvation apparently comes in the (beautiful) body of June Chadwick, who rents his boat to find a mysterious sunken Spanish galleon called El diablo, which was supposedly packed to the brim with various kinds of stolen treasure.

 

Of course, any kind of sunken old ship with lost treasure would simply suck without an appropriate curse to go with it, so the people on the island suddenly start turning up dead, including Max Cash's father. It doesn't take Isaac Newton to observe that everyone who died was somehow involved with the hunt for the treasure and, as our heroes investigate further, it becomes more and more obvious that the origin of all the fishy things that happen is supernatural in nature. Heh, this almost sounds like a contradiction in terms.

 

This story is a great starting point and could have been made into a really good B-movie, hadn't the authors (almost on purpose, it seems) avoided everything that would made things more interesting. For example, they never bothered to bring an element of danger for the lead characters in the treasure hunt. The underwater scenes are okay, but it's because underwater scenes are cool by default and not because there's anything special about them here. There aren't any real elements of danger like, say, failed oxygen bottles or giant octopuses or megalodons or... well, you get the idea. The movie even lacks the almost obligatory scene where one of the heroes is kidnapped and the other one forced to go and get something from some shark infested waters.

 

The murder scenes are obviously not the main focus here because they are next to non-existent. We see a supporting character alone somewhere, then he or she hears something (some of them also see a shadow of something that looks like a man with a hat), then he or she sees something (but we don't) and screams and the next day he or she is dead. Where's the blood spewing, where are the cut arteries, chopped off limbs, ripped-out hearts, bellies cut open? Well, they are in Yoshihiro Nishimura movies, one of which I'm going to see tonight, but they're certainly not here.

 

With all this left out, the only thing left to focus on are the lead characters and their relationship. The motive of a ship captain (or, more often, a private detective) and his client falling for each other despite (or exactly because of) their totally conflicting characters has been done to death before and it calls for some witty dialogue, arguments, fighting, things to liven up the relationship a bit. Unfortunately, in this movie, even though Crawford and Chadwick look good together, they are given only the most boring and generic lines. What a waste of good actors :-(

 

The Evil Below is, despite my good will, a movie that's hard to recommend. You can find better underwater sequences elsewhere and you can most definitely find movies where Wayne Crawford and June Chadwick are put to better use. Try for example Forbidden World, or a more recent Art Payne - Wayne Crawford collaboration Snake Island.

A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (1990)

Directed by: Brett Piper

Writer: Brett Piper

 

I don’t care what everyone says, A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell is a piece of crap! Okay, everyone DOES say it’s a piece of crap, but that’s not the point. The point is - A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell is a piece of crap.

The main problem with A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell is that nothing really happens in it. There’s this girl, the aforementioned “nymphoid” barbarian (whatever that might be), who’s job is to constantly run away from other people, some bizarre half-human creatures and various dinosaurs in what’s supposed to be a post-apocalyptic world where prehistoric and prepubescent meet (don’t hit me, I didn’t come up with that, it’s from the trailer). If this doesn’t make any sense to you, remember that this is a Troma film – not making sense is not only allowed, it’s highly recommended.

Anyway, she runs, gets in trouble here and there, punches someone in the face, runs again, gets into trouble, this guy saves her, she runs, someone captures her, she runs away, then some mutants are fighting, then she runs, then she’s attacked by someone or something and just when you think they’re gonna get her, this guy appears and saves her and then she runs away, but (you won’t believe it) a DINOSAUR appears (!) and this guy saves her from the dinosaur but then some mutants appear and try to catch her so she punches them in the face and runs away (why didn’t she stay with that guy the whole time I don’t remember, I probably overslept) and after that she gets into trouble because there’s this guy (not that guy who saves her, but some other guy) who wants to capture her so she runs away but she’s finally captured but then a dinoaur appears and this guy (not that guy who captured her, but the guy who constantly saves her) fights the dinosaur and she runs away and then some mutants are fighting and...

You probably see where this is going. Due to the lack of dialogue, lack of actors (I wouldn’t really call that piece of wood that plays the main role “an actress”) and the direction that is deep below any acceptable level, all this gets boring after ten minutes or so – after a full hour and a half, you’ll feel like you just got out of a washing machine.

For better or for worse, A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell has a truly great trailer (?!) that looks like one of those faux trailers, made only for fun, that never actually get turned into full movies. Unfortunately, this one did.

 

The Ice Pirates (1984)

Directed by: Stuart Raffill

Writers: Stuart Raffill, Stanford Sherman

Some movies are hard to describe, because their quality doesn’t lie in any particular segment that you can analyze, measure and put on paper (or screen). If I had to describe why this movie, without a shadow of a doubt, absolutely rules, I’d simply say – it has SOUL. And if that’s not enough for you, then go watch Lars von Trier or something and leave me alone.

Okay, let me elaborate this just a little bit: The Ice Pirates is a wacky space adventure with enormous quantity of... stuff. Stuff that happens, I mean. You have people dressed as pirates, swordfighting (for no apparent reason, powerful futuristic weapons are rarely used!), cheap sex jokes (so cheap, in fact, that they work), talking severed head, a frog woman, main music theme that’s an obvious rip-off of the Star Trek theme, Mad Max-like desert car chases, random alien parasites, unicorns, eunuchs, Templars, politically incorrect (without being offensive!) racial jokes that you’d never see in a today’s movie etc. etc. etc.

Of course, all this would have been a horrible mess if it weren’t for the glue to, well, glue it all together. And in this case, I’d say that glue are the surprisingly likeable characters, especially the main hero (Mel Brooks, take note!), played by Robert Urich, who really nails it down. He reminds me of John Terlesky in Jim Wynorski’s Deathstalker II, or, if you want a more mainstream comparison – Bruce Campbell’s Ash from the Evil Dead series. Take for example an otherwise amazing film like Spaceballs, being slightly less amazing than it could have been, due to Bill Pullman’s uninspired performance. Exactly the opposite happens here.

The main hero’s space crew is also great and it includes Anjelica Huston and Ron Perlman. So it’s really great to watch this characters going from one adventure into another, being completely aware of the tongue-in-cheek nature of the film. Although its inspirations are obvious (Star Trek, Star Wars, old pirate movies, to name a few), The Ice Pirates is not a direct parody of any particular movie or genre. It doesn’t try to pack jokes into every single frame, it lets itself breathe (so to speak) so it will never make you tired – and when something works (and that’s very often), it really does WORK!

 

My favorites here are the running joke with malfunctioning robots and an absolutely hilarious fight sequence near the end, where everyone ages rapidly during some weird time-space phenomenon. I allmost fell on the floor laughing during this one. Add to all this the special effects and set design that are way above the movie’s low budget and you have a clear winner. I know tastes are different, but if you don’t like The Ice Pirates, something is wrong with you and you need to see a psychiatrist.