Bad-Movies

Jack’s Bad Movies: The Amazing Spider-Man (1977)

IMDB’s description:

With the powers given by the bite of a radioactive spider, a young man fights crime as a wall-crawling superhero.

The Amazing Spider-Man

At the stroke of 10:45:00am, a doctor examining a patient suddenly walks out. Then a business man giving a presentation walks out. We see them in a car, and the business man takes out a gas mask and smoke grenade. He deliberately handles both of them in a way to make sure the audience sees exactly what he is doing. he places them in a briefcase. Then the camera zooms in on a jacket pin of a circle with two lines in it. These guys are being mind controlled into robbing a bank, then as soon as the heist is done, they forget everything.

Now we’re in J. Jonah Jameson’s (David White) office, he is turning down Peter Parker’s (Nicholas Hammond) random photos. Probably a good call, as they are just random pictures with no stories connected to them. Jameson suspects something is up with the recent bank-robbery. And then the radio announces there is a bad guy holding the city ransom to the tune of $50 million dollars. That guy takes responsibility for the robbery. Peter says he doesn’t know anything about mind control, but he knows it is real and that it works.

Read more

September: A Month of Bad Movies

September will feature at least four Jack’s Bad Movies (each separated by a week or so). The reason? Fanx Salt Lake Comic Convention (Sep. 8-10) has a panel titled “A Different Kind of Marvelous: The First Live Action (Made for Television) Marvel Cinematic Universe:”

Long before Iron Man and The Hulk started the Marvel Cinematic Universe on a course against Thanos, and even before Ang Lee’s Hulk, Raimi’s Spider-Man or Ben Affleck’s Daredevil, Marvel Comics struggled gloriously on screens, big and small, to bring big ideas and heroes with heart to life, subject of course to budgetary limitations and commercial breaks. In the 1970s and 1980s, Captain America, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, The Hulk, Daredevil, and Thor all made live action appearances, often with catchy, disco infused theme songs, custom vans, feathered hair, and exciting special effects (you will believe a man can slowly scramble down a wall). Our panel will visually explore the better and lesser appreciated entries in the early Marvel television oeuvre, discuss the successes and limitations of the television films and series in context, and discuss how these enthusiastic early entries opened the door for Marvel movies in the 1990s, and ultimately to the modern MCU. Excelsior!

As it happens, I will be participating on that panel. In preparation, I’ve been watching the older Marvel related properties. Against all odds, most of these appear to be quite bad. At the suggestions of Himarm and CreationEdge, I decided to post them to coincide with the panel I’ll be participating on and spread them out over the whole month.

Jack’s Bad Movies: 5 Headed Shark Attack

IMDB’s Description:

Shaped like a demented starfish, a monster 5-headed shark terrorizes the open ocean before invading the beaches of Puerto Rico, endangering the once peaceful island paradise.

5 Headed Shark Attack
You will never see this depicted creature in the movie.

This movie is apparently the third in what is at least four ‘X Headed Shark Attack’ movies, the first being 2 Headed Shark Attack, and the second being 3 Headed Shark Attack, produced by the SyFy Network. Now I firmly believe there should be a hyphen in that title between the number and headed, but whatever. I haven’t see the first two movies, but because we jumped from 2 to 5 heads in three movies, I expect this movie to be at least 2.5 times better than the original.

The movie opens on a boat somewhere near Puerto Rico. Two men are photographing 4 moderately attractive women, presumably as some sort of photo shoot (but possible to just get some sexy-times). None of these characters names are important, as you will soon learn. After wasting about five minutes on pointless closeups of girls in bikinis, one of the girls notices a disturbance out on the water. This isn’t Jaws (as much as this movie wants to be), where the movie spends most of its time eluding to the monster to have a big reveal near the end. Instead, the movie immediately shows us a great white shark, and then a four-headed shark (that number is correct) eats it. The main photographer gets all excited and starts clicking away on his camera as all six people stand on the stern looking at the large shark fin. Then the four-headed shark rears out of the water and with four mouths instantly consumes six people.

Read more

Jack’s Bad Movies: Spectral (2016)

IMDB’s description:

A sci-fi/thriller story centered on a special-ops team that is dispatched to fight supernatural beings.

Nettflix’s description:

When an otherworldly force wreaks havoc on a war-torn European city, an engineer teams up with an elite Special Ops unit to stop it.

This movie opens with a special ops team clearing a bombed out building in some Eastern European country (Moldova). They find a few bodies, and then one of them separates from the group (like all good special ops teams, they fight alone). He is wearing special goggles and there is some anomaly on his display. This thing promptly kills him.

Read more

%d bloggers like this: