The Indie Film Cafe Movie Reviews!

And welcome baaaaaack to Indie Film Cafe, Season 5! And we’re hitting the ground running with a cheesy old 80’s chop-socky stinker called Miami Connection, an indie flick soooo stinky it sat on the shelf and fermented fer about 15 years before it finally got released on DVD, Blu-ray, and limited-edition VHS by those nuts over at Drafthouse Films! And thank goodness they did, because this cheeser is all Limburger! :=8P

Join the Indie Film Cafe kids as they are joined by actor, writer, and director James L. Edwards in the latest podcast episode!

Aack, where to begin? Well, we have us a group of fun-lovin’ moolti-cultural friends who FIGHT CRIME, and are also students of a local chop-socky club AND members of a ‘world touring’ 80’s big hair-n-spandex synth-pop band called Dragon Sound, and includes Mark (the Asian guy you can’t udderstand), John (the hopeless base player who somecow has a girlfriend), Jack the drummer (no one cares about the drummer), and Jim, the Token Black keyboardist who REALLY misses his dad. A girl named Jane hangs around and occasionally Linda McCartney’s up on stage with Dragon Sound, but poofs when the script no longer requires her. Also they FIGHT NINJAS!!! COOOOLLLL!!!

Honestly, I am not really certain what the heck happens in this moovie, udder than our friends forever get into fights with a crime lord, some scooter bike ninjas, some moore criminals, some mean guys in a parking lot, some mean guys at a club, and finally some moore ninjas. Because everybody is a ninja! And there are some concert breaks and beach shenanigans in between. Oh, and its moostly filmed in Orlando, not Miami, in case yer cowfused about that. YK Kim (Mark) was a Taekwondo instructor with a vision, and he pretty mooch came up with this idea for a moovie, but no one wanted it. In his own words: “I went to Twentieth Century, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal, you name it. Every single person say, ‘Hey, Y.K. Kim, this is trash, this is trash! Don’t waste your time!’ I don’t even know how many times this movie died. But I went too far, I couldn’t stop. No way! Whenever I wanted to stop I can see my students’ faces. That’s the martial arts spirit. I had promised these students, you know?”

Yeah, we know…

It might have been too cheesy for 1987, but in 2012 the world was ready to wallow in 80’s cheese nostalgia, and so the little crappy flick that cudn’t got a second life as a ‘so bad its good’ moovie, proving once and for all that timing is everything! It was originally directed by Woo-sang Park (Shaolin: Blood Mission, L.A. Streetfighters, Chinatown 2), but Kim was so disappointed with the end result that he re-shot scenes and re-edited it, and Park had left to go back to Korea, and so Kim became the co-director. Moost of the players were not professional actors (really???), and were students at Kim’s dojo, and so naturally filled out the film with moore enthusiasm than skill. But, they were friends forever!

Yeah, we’re not gonna lie folks, this was a stinker! Moody and the MooCow awarded Miami Connection 9.5 and 8.5, respectively, while guest co-host James L. Edwards went with an 8, giving Miami Connection a Stinky Total of 26, which is a Stinky Average of 8.7! On the Ladder of Stink, this flick nestles right between Blood Freak and Jack Frost, at 26.5, and From Hell it Came, at 25.5. Oooof, that’s stinky! :=8D

We gots yer trailer right HERE! And you can check it out for free on Youtube and also Tubi (including the awesome Rifftrax version!). You can also rent/buy it on Google play. Good luck getting the physical medium: the DVD on Amazon is a hefty $200, while the blue ray on Amazon is only slightly cheaper at $166, but at least yer getting both formats. Physical media, as well as posters and udder stuff, can be found on Ebay, but it ain’t cheap! Well, at least you can get the funny RIFFTRAX version for a decent price. At the Drafthouse site you can buy or rent the digital version, but I dunno about getting an actual dvd or blu ray, unfortunately. Redbubble has several kewl posters to decorate your wall, while Amazon has an 8×12 tin plate poster! CineMaterial has several versions too. Git yer Miami Connection tee shirt on at Teepublic, Redbubble, and Cult Collectibles.

And, of course, you NEEDS that Dragon Sound tee shirt too! Miami Connection mugs can be had at Redbubble and Teepublic, while Tee Shirt Palace has a nifty Dragon Soond mug! If you wana hear the soundtrack of the film (god help you!), you can find it on Spotify and SoundCloud. But if u just want the rockin’ Against the Ninja, well…HERE it is, in all its ‘glory’. And what real fan of this stinky moovie can live without Miami Connection SOCKS?? you can get Dragon Sound Stickers and Buttons too!

So yeah, believe the hype: Miami Connection is a fun, silly, stinky slice of 80’s cheese that you just have to experience for yourself, and your life can have a happy ending, just like the moovie!
;=8)

Ok, the MooCow really went above and beyond this time – and Just Jenn may never forgive him! Sooner or later it was inevitable that we would cover the self-proclaimed “Ed Wood of the 90’s”, the one and ONLY David “The Rock” Nelson, the maverick filmmaker from Des Plains, IL, who has been making his “monster movies” for lo some 25 years now – and they are…something to behold. Moost of ’em are quite short, and therefore not subject to our normal Indie Film Cafe boundaries (for moovies less than an hour check out our Short Review Saturdays!) But Moody, the MooCow, and the moost unfortunate Just Jenn did manage to watch a full 2 hours and 45 minutes of Miss Werewolf, and the howls of excruciating pain and anguish were simply legendary! Check out the latest episode of Indie Film Cafe, which also happens to be our Season 4 finale, and behold the torment and suffering and woe!

So, let’s be very clear about a few things here: this is NOT a standard film, at all, and it doesn’t even bother to approach the world like one. For example, because the Rock is loathe to allow empty time on his tapes, he literally fills them up, before and after, with outtakes, trailers, and moostly just random stuff involving him, usually talking on and on about himself, his films, and/or his monster memorabilia cowllection (which is quite impressive!) Which means yer gonna need about 20-25 minutes to wade through this flotsam BEFORE you even get to the moovie itself – in fact, there are a dozen or so times during this period where the Rock himself will show a cue card saying something like “Can we Please Get to the Movie Now!”. Nelson feels your pain, folks, he truly does, he just doesn’t care.

He also doesn’t care about traditional linear storytelling, film-making, or anything else, and so the hot mess he has cobbled together (using what I can only guess is “editing” via two VCRs, where he seems to leave pretty much all takes in the story) unfolds in a way that, the MooCow promises you, you have never seen before – generally because udder directors don’t want you to see such rubbish. But brave artist that he is, the Rock doesn’t care, and he’s gonna show you his monster moovie HIS way, and that just happens to mean lots of yapping, pointless asides, non-sequiturs, muffed takes, random strangers wandering up during the shoot and engaging with the cameraman, etc, etc, etc.

Janet Lynn, long-time girl ‘fiend’ of the Rock, plays…well, herself, who happens to also be Miss Werewolf, a curious creature who will suddenly and without warning ‘transform’ into the vicious killer who will attack wandering drunks, plastic snakes and bats, and even bar patrons. Heck, she even goes after Hillary Clinton at one point! Bet you never saw a Universal monster do that!

Words simply cannot convey the jaw-dropping cheapness of the ‘special’ effects, costumes, acting, cinematography, lighting, script, or pretty mooch everything else in this film. Miss Werewolf is a moovie that is beyond such critiques, and it pretty mooch has broken the Stinkometer – to say nothing of poor Just Jenn’s psyche! At the end of this rambling, incowherent ridiculous mess of a monster moovie, the MooCow was lucky to leave the studio with his fuzzy cow-splotched hide still intact!

COWEVER…it is still a fun flick to check out, and if you like outsider entertainment and fans of the eccentric, the strange, and the just plain weird, like da MooCow, then this is right up your dark, scary alley! The man has out Ed Wooded Ed Wood, and that is an accomplishment that simply moost be admired and appreciated!

The Rock himself is on hand to play…pretty mooch himself, in characters such as Detective Rock, mad scientist Doctor Weirdo, and…ummm…Rocksella, who is the Rock in a dress with, errrr, squarish boobage and a wig. Abandon all hope ye who enter.

Anycow, there is lots of air clawing death all over the Chicago area, loads of folks pretend to get killed on film for the Rock, local newscasters have their words taped over by the Rock to make it seem like their talking about the Miss Werewolf murders, and ummmm…yeah, that’s about 140 minutes or so. Trust me, for some of you out there (looking at you Moody!), this is going to be sheer punishment, the likes of which the Geneva cowvention should probably ban. But if you have some patience, and a wide, wide latitude towards moovies, well…this is the perfect moovie to end an Indie Film Cafe season on, even if yer friends come out of it dazed like a couple of clubbed baby seals. Like moost Christmas gifts, its the thought that cownts!

Yeah. There was no way this flick was gonna get scored by anyone as anything less than 10, so Miss Werewolf immediately shoots up to a 30, and according to Just Jenn (“This is the worst movie ever…EVER!!!”) it should probably be scored MOOCH higher. Toldja, we broke the Stinkometer! So, Miss Werwolf slots in nicely along side Hanuman and the Five Riders, pretty mooch every Neil Breen moovie we ever covered, and a bunch of udder disasters, but the MooCow is here to tell you: NONE of them comes close to Miss Werewolf, a film which is in a class all by itself!

I’m sorry, guys, there is no trailer, no swag, no place on earth you can git yer hooves on a copy of this glorious monstrosity, except through the man himself – fiend him on Facebook, and I am sure he will gladly sell you a copy of Miss Werewolf, and any and all of his udder flicks. Do buy them as the proceeds go towards making moore monster moovies, and the world needs moore of them, now moore than ever! He is on Youtube as well, posting all kinds of videos about all kinds of stuff – its a serious rabbit hole there, but you can spend some fun time checking them all out! Nelson is also friends with the Psychotronic Film Society, which gets name-dropped in Miss Werewolf – I’m not certain it is still an active site at this point (although it should be!), but check it out because u never know, and because there is lots of David the Rock Nelson info there! He also featured on Bleeding Skull, Vice, No Budget Nightmares, and can also be seen on John Stewart! In Chicago he is known as the King of the Creature Feature, and he pops up all the time on Chicago’s super station WGN! The man is living proof of what a love of stinky moovies and dedication can do, if no one stops you!

Well, it was a long, strange season here at Indie Film Cafe, and hopefully there will be many, many moore to come – and a few moore Rock moovies to cover too! In the meantime, welcome to 2022, and let’s try to make it the stinkiest year yet!
:=8D

Well, folks, Indie Film Cafe has really done it this time, a moovie so bad not even the MooCow cud endure it – the following essay is all Mr. Moody:

Hey everyone! Moody here! I’ve decided on episodes that I host that I will step in and talk about them. Decided to start it off with this terrible stinker!  A movie called, “Terror At Bigfoot Pond” Where there isn’t much terror but there is a Bigfoot Pond… er sort of… its more like a Bigfoot Puddle. Or a Bigfoot bath. Not much of a pond. And you will see that in this flick.  Ugh. You will see lots of nudity. Uncomfortable and sometimes sort of comfortable. When ladies are dancing topless and yet one woman wants to cover her breasts the whole time… it leaves you feeling a bit icky. I mean why even put someone in a position like that? Who knows! I don’t think this movie knows either! Apparently there was a script but ehhh you wouldn’t know it because everyone sort of talks and talks about random shit just to pad the time! Yep that pretty much sums up… Terror at Bigfoot Pond…

Check out the latest podcast here… where I chat with my two special guests Leila Toba and Bobby Gonzalez. If you don’t remember the last time I chatted with these two we chatted about the 1991 stinker, “Zombie Cop!” And I never expected them to watch another movie with me again… and then I gave them this to watch… they must feel like I’m torturing them now! 

But let’s get on with the movie… 

Terror at Bigfoot Pond starts out with nudity. Like the first minute or so one of the the actresses flashes the audience. So you sort of know where this will be heading. It starts off making us feel like this is going to be a found footage film. But then it goes from person to person (Each character got their own Go Pros… that’s probably where the budget of this movie went). And then it also has a regular camera taping all of them so it breaks the whole found footage barrier. So just like the rest of the movie you’re feeling kind of weird about it. 

This is David Rambaldi’s first feature narrative film; he did a documentary back in 2013. And he’s produced a few titles as well. However for his first feature horror film he didn’t do the best job. There were issues with the characters just going on and  on about things that didn’t move the plot forward. Characters introduced themselves awkwardly and some couldn’t remember if they went to high school together and that’s how they met. They weren’t too much older than high school so its very confusing. 

This movie could have been really great and have some fun with it but the movie takes itself way too seriously when it definitely shouldn’t. And how can a dude having sex with a woman not notice when the girl has been been killed by Bigfoot and taken away from him… while she’s on top of him? So much just didn’t make any sense and when a film the whole time gets you annoyed like that its hard to watch it.  Also the movie suffered from some stretches of boringness and that is not what you want in a Bigfoot Pond flick! 

Well the Stinkometer scores are in…and we all agreed this was worse than Zombie Cop: at least Zombie Cop had bits that were entertaining. Leila, Bobby, and myself all gave it a 10, making it the second 30 of the year! After a year of not getting any 30s its nice. Though the last one that got one was Killer Biker Chicks and that too was very boring. At least this one was shorter and didn’t feel like you had to keep checking the time to see if it was over yet. So it got a total of 30. With an average of 10. 

YIKES… don’t waste your time on seeking this one out but if you do it is available on Tubi for free to watch! Its also available on You Tube for free on Horror Central. And  if you feel you need to buy a copy its also on Amazon , maybe you feel like you need this in your terrible film collection.

Join us next week for the final episode of the season… we’re finishing off season 4 with a bang!

The title pretty mooch sums up the plot of this one: one “Flesh Gordon” does indeed meet the Cosmic Cheerleaders, all three of them, for about 5 minutes. In between a lot of weird shenanigans goes on, moostly involving cheap potty humor, boob humor, butt humor, penis humor, poo humor, etc. Dale Ardor, Flesh’s fiancé, is kidnapped by Robunda Hooters and the Cheerleaders because their planet’s men have been infected by Evil Presence’s “Impotence Radiation”. They believe Flesh is the possessor of “The Virile Force” and that he alone can stop the ray. EP soon learns this from Master Bator, Presence’s equally-deviant assistant, and so EP decides to kidnap Flesh, replace his penis with Flesh’s, thereby to become the only virile man in the universe.

Ummmmmmmm…..yeah.
:=8/

Check out the latest Indie Film Cafe podcast, wherein Moody and the MooCow are joined by Sarah Adkins, Cody Hancock, and actor G Larry Butler!

There’s about a million udder things going on in this weird, frisky little stinker, which is, strangely, a less adult sequel to a moore adult previous Flesh Gordon X-rated flick from 1974 (ahhh, porn in the 70’s, when everyone was hairy and pizza delivery was an experience!). Clearly moore heart and soul (to say nothing of moolah) went in to this effort because there are loads of cheap, but effective, sets, special effects, creature effects, and just overall weirdness to this one – that, plus the over the top performances of pretty mooch everyone made it a surprisingly fun stinker to watch – just remember to set your brain on “DUH”, and you’ll be just fine. And if you like singing poos….

Howard Ziehm wrote and directed this cowsmic stinker – he’s pretty mooch a porn guy, moost famously known for his sci-fi porn parody Flesh Gordon (check out a future Sexploitation Sleazecast podcast episode for moore of that!), and for silly 70’s porn titles such as Sexteen, Honey Pie, Sweet Cakes, and Hot Cookies, etc. He also wrote a book called Take Your Shame and Shove It, wherein he wallows unrepentedly in his years and years of creating and profiting from dirty filthy slime-and-snot-covered smut – we should all be so lucky! Aside from the bevy of porn stars and adult models, this flick also starred stuntman and kickboxer Vince Murdocco (Kickboxer II, LA Wars, Ring of Fire), William Dennis Hunt (Dr. Giggles, Critters III, Star Trek: Deep Space 9) as Emperor Wang (in BOTH Flesh Gordon moovies!), and Tony Travis (Ghost Warrior, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Hitch) as Flesh’s adventure buddy, Dr. Flexi Jerkoff.

Well, the scores are in, and while moost of the young’uns liked the film overall, Moody and the MooCow went with 8 and 8.5, respectively, while grumpy ol’ G. Larry Butler went charitable and scored it a 5, giving Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders a Stinky Total of 21.6, and that’s a Stinky Average of 7.2! Odoriferous, to be sure, but we’re smelled far worse on this program!

We have a trailer right HERE. Somecow this made it onto Netflix. U can git yer hooves on both the VHS and the DVD from good ol’ Uncle Amazon, but this cow has not seen a Blu Ray offered quite yet. and for you hardcore Flesh Gordon fans you can also get both the original Flesh Gordon and the stinky sequel packaged together on one DVD, with special full color moovie cards, right HERE! Strangely, u can also get this on Walmart. And also Target! You can also grab a copy from Movies Unlimited. On the re-sale market, check out EBAY. Get the moovie poster right HERE, HERE, and HERE. While we cud not find a new Tee shirt, you can get this nifty unused crew sweatshirt to rock from EBAY! Tee Public has the poster on a coffee mug – u know you want it! You can get it on a mouse pad too!

Overall, Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders is a ridiculous stinky sex farce that probably needs to be seen by everybody at least once in their lives, if only for shits n gigs. Check out THIS behind the scenes cowpilation if u can’t get enough Flesh Gordon! Because who doesn’t get a lil kick outta da Flesh Man??
;=8)

Need a lesson in rank disappointment? Behold 2009’s Killer Biker Chicks, a mooovie that shoulda been a whole lotta fun with babes, bikes, beatings, barroom brawls, and perhaps even boobage – but nooooooo, instead we’re talking total snooozefest that drove Moody, the MooCow, and special guest co-host Cayt Feinics (a babe in her own right!) to wailing despair. What a waste!!! Hear the Indie Film Cafe kids moan and groan over the latest podcast episode!

After 99 excruciating minutes the MooCow still doesn’t know what the heck was going on in this film – its like a biker big sister to Ankle Biters in that there are loooong stretches where you can’t hear or see anything clearly, and its way too easy to get lost in the chili sauce because you have no idea what’s happening. Sure, there skeezy, sexy biker babes with guns, but there needs to be moore than that! Plus, why are we spending so mooch time with Sheriff Dumb and Deputy Dumber? Seriously, a moovie with Trent Haaga (Easter Bunny Kill! Kill!, et al) and Sarah French (Zombie Pirates, et al) shoulda been a lot moore fun…

Look, we get it, its fun to do a jerky, unfocused throw-back grindhouse all-chick biker flick, like She-Devils on Wheels, and udder such drive-in fare of the good old stinky B moovie days, but even those were a lot moore interesting and better executed. Ted V. Mikels actually makes an appearance, and it just makes you yearn for some of the older biker/go-go dancer flicks (The Girl in the Gold Boots aside). Regan Redding (who plays Sheriff Dumb) is the writer/producer/director of this feeble flick, and if you don’t know him he was a production assistant on Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest, and….that’s about it.

Well, at least scoring was easy: 10’s from everyone! Just when u thought there would be no 30’s on IFC this year! Yeah, pretty mooch everyone agreed that Killer Biker Chicks was a long, dull slog that was absolutely not worth the effort. While this might tie such Neil Breen classics as Fateful Findings and Twisted Pair, this moovie isn’t nearly as fun or interesting as those.

Trailerage is right HERE. Yo can find the DVD at Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Walmart and good ol’ Uncle Amazon; u can also find a copy in the re-sale market at Ebay. This cow cud not find any moovie-related swag (which is probably a good thing), BUT if yer enamored of the film’s soundtrack you can listen to it (and get your Glam Pussy on!) right HERE. There are a couple of tracks on Spotify too, for whatever reason. It was shot in Las Vegas (of course), and the Sun did a write-up HERE.

With a title like Killer Biker Chicks, we know yer gonna be tempted to git yer hooves all over that DVD, but that’s why the IFC kids are here, folks: watching bad, stinky moovies so you don’t have to! unless, of course, they’re a whole lotta fun! Sadly, this one is not, but proceed at yer own risk – don’t say you weren’t warned!