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Episode 169: Super Badass (1999)

Ya know, back in the 70’s super-violent revenge fantasy flicks were all the rage – who’da thought they would make a come-back in the late 1990’s?? Well, maybe not all the way back, but you can’t blame Chales E. Cullen for trying! Yes sir, on the latest episode of Indie Film Cafe, our boys Moody, the MooCow, and special guest co-host Joe Turek are cowfronted by a city (sort of, its Roanoke, VA) awash in crime and scum and violence – and the only way to get rid of it is to become…well, a scummy violent criminal. You gotta join ’em if you wanna beat ’em! This wacky, over-the-top indie has it all, but is it enough to impress the IFC Kids? Well let’s just take a look, shall we?

Uhhh, this does not bode well…what is that???

As you might recall, the cinematic underworld populated by the likes of one Charles E. Cullen,the audacious auteur outta Roanoke, VA, is not unknown to the IFC kids – the MooCow’s arm STILL hurts from where Paige punched it after watching Curse of the Mummy Cat, so expectations were pretty low, I gotst to tell ya. COWever, the MooCow has faith in Mr. Cullen, and he did not disappoint with this whackadoodle crime/revenge flick, wherein, dressed as a mime, he battles the Boogeyman, Bucko the Clown, the Lightbulb, AND has to deal with motorcycle ridin’ skull face Death – whew, that is a day’s work in the crazy town of Roanoke!

Luring young, unsuspecting girls into murder? Just Bucko being Bucko…

Its a crazy, violent shoot-up full of bad taste, child murder, decapitations, rocket launchers, drunken singing, blazing effin’ guns, and moar blood than you cud shake the proverbial stick at – but its also filmed in a fun, stylish manner that surprised some of our IFC kids, and even elevates the material somewhat? I mean if you can enjoy Charles Bronson blowing away some punks cow can you not watch super bounty hunter Super Badass kill some crazy ass villains and clowns. Ughhh, that Bucko the Clown will live in my nightmares! Oh, and there’s a puppet or two as well, because Cullen. AND, dig those 60’s & 70’s swirling colors and that awesome soundtrack! This B moovie is a Queen B!!! :=8D

Time for shootings…

Well, its clear that this flick took some of the IFC kids for a loop, and they were surprised at cow good this moovie was cowpared to Mummy Cat – which is also fun, but in a very different way. Of course, not everyone appreciated the depths of the muck this one goes through: While Moody went with a 6, and the MooCow went with a 3.5, our Joe Turek, who was less than impressed, went with an 8.5, giving Super Badass a Stink Total of 18, which is a Stinky Average of 6.0. On the Ladder of Stink this flick ties with Peter Rottentail, which sounds about right to me. Definitely not one for Just Jenn!

Oh no! Its the Boogeyman!

You can check out the trailer HERE. And you can watch it for free, albeit in low quality and possibly edited, on YOUTUBE. You can buy the DVD at AMAZON, although to my knowledge there is no blu ray, as well as the MVD SHOP.com. You can also pick it up right from the man himself at his EBAY store. Supposedly there is a blu ray copy HERE but I dunno if its legit. Unfortunately there is no Super Badass schwag, and boy howdy there should be, but there is a review from Vitua Virtues which is cool, plus the man himself has his own Youtube channel with loads of stuff to check out. And you know you’ve made it when someone writes a song about you. Where are you Charles E. Cullen, we need you now moar than ever!
:=8O

Uh-oh, looks like Bucko has a surprise for the kiddies… :=8o

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Episode 168: Survival (2006)

Jonathan Moody here back again. This time talking about a movie I was almost in. But I’m getting ahead of myself and will talk about that in a bit before then I wanna mention this was MY last episode of Season 6 and even though this season was a bit chaotic and crazy it was fun to try and pick a movie that no one had either seen or even heard about. So of course I like to torture poor Paul and even poor Joe Turek for some of these final episodes of the season. Joe has been a staple of our show since Season 2. We especially love having him come toward the end when things get a bit worse.

Uhhhh, little help here…

Speaking of worse… the movie we reviewed was called, “Survival”. I remember when they were in pre-production for it. This was back in the MySpace days when I was working at a very famous theme park at the time. The filmmaker Joe Francis (Not the Girls Gone Wild guy) had a MySpace Page for it with updates on what was going on with it. I had been friends with Joe since back in the day of being on the View Askew Web board. He even started his podcast and that helped launch my first podcast, “The Independent Corner” on Blog Talk Radio. Joe was the guy that got me in to B movies by telling me about the book, “Make Your Own Damn Movie” by Lloyd Kaufman. And that really helped get me in to the indie film-making spirit.

Joe one day asked me to be in Survival. He said he wrote a character for me to play as the host of this party that was happening. I originally said sure. Then I couldn’t get the time off from the amusement park job plus I really didn’t want to drive down and do it. This was before acting became more of something I really enjoy doing. Executive Producer Coleman Lannum took my part and he didn’t just play my character he played the character with my name… Jon Moody in it.

I’m not going to lie and say this was a great movie because I know the people: there were a lot of flaws. A lot of which are discussed in the movie and stuff I didn’t even think about when I first watched it. I use to have the movie on a disc that Joe himself sent to me which I was over at a friend’s house showing it to him and it somehow got lost. So this new copy is actually the real deal that you can buy on Amazon. I don’t think the movie will ever come on Blu Ray but I wouldn’t mind buying it if it did.

Ok, I’m not really sure what’s going on, but if you drink this hooch it will get better…

The film had a great cast in it like Vanelle, James Furey, Matt McClure, Ian C. King, Don Prentiss, and Including Filmmaker/Actor Adam Minarovich (we did his film Ankle Biters and have Wiseguys VS Zombies on the list for upcoming B Movies to review) makes a brief cameo in the party scene. Adam and Producer Kevin Woods had worked together for a few films; Kevin Woods was the producer of the film and co writer. He helped Joe with as much as he could. The director of photography was Joe Hamann.

I remember hearing that things were very chaotic on set and you can kind of tell with how nonsensical some of the choices they made for it were. The special effects were done by Ricky Lee Leonard who I had become friends with after this movie got made. He’s a really good special fx guy. If anything you could say some of the FX were the best parts but some of it still looked ridiculous. I just think that Joe had bigger plans thang what his budget may have allowed. But I applaud him for going out and making a movie and getting it done. Joe also has a film he did called, “The Texas Frightmare Massacre” but that one is even harder to find. If anyone has a copy of it please email it to us.

Yeah, here we are, just suvivaling. Pretty much. Yep…

Okay well the scores are in and here they are… I gave it a 9. Paul and Joe both gave it an 8.5 bringing the stink score to be a 26. That’s pretty stinky but could have been hell of a lot worse. That ties it up on the ladder of stink with Disaster Wars and Miami Connection. Not a bad triple feature if you ask me!

Anyway, that’s about it. Sorry it took so long but Paul has two more to do and we are done with Season 6 mooooving on to Season 7. Thank you all for the patience and Season 6 has been a roller coaster. We can’t wait to catch you guys up! Until next one take it away Moo Cow…

Well, this flick is so obscure and crappy that there is no trailer for it, but I did find a section of some of the moost boring mooments, cowplete with a pesky Russian overtalker right HERE. You can see the whole thing for free, if you really want to, on the Tube of You. I believe that is from Producer Kevin Woods channel. You can get the DVD pretty cheap at Amazon, but there is no blu ray of this that I know of. And that is pretty mooch that, folks, no schwag, no tee shirts, no posters, pretty much zippo – the only udder thing the MooCow cud find was a review of the film on Inside Movies Galore, so you can check that out.

Hey, look at me, guys, Imma Girl Gone MILD!

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Episode 167: Curse of the Snake Woman (2013)

Moo everyone! So, who doesn’t wanna watch a moovie with archaeology, evil snake monsters, and strippers – ’cause I sure do!!! :=8D
And that’s just what the MooCow, Moody, and (via Zoom) our buddy Jessa Flux did, and boy howdy were there hisses, skins sheddings, and fangs bared for this one! Check out the latest episode of Indie Film Cafe for all the yappin’ and a’ yammerin’!

AH-HAAA!!! the REAL reason this moovie was made!! ;=8)

Soooo, this dope decides to rob the precious magical snake statue/charm/thingy from the local mooseum, but a fight ensures, he gets wounded, and immediately goes to the hospital to get stitched up. Oooops, I mean immediately heads over to the local strip joint (The Garden of Eden Gentleman’s Club) to get hammered. You know, as you do. Well, during the course of all this hammerin’, dude ends up dead, a stripper ends up being possessed by a snake demon (again, as you do…), and then there is a lot of dancin’, snake bitin’, bewb showins, and udder assorted hijinks that make B moovie just totally worth watching!! Eat that, boring Disney!!! Also known as Snake Club: Revenge of the Snake Woman, because one title was not enough!

So totally NOT from Temu…

Oh David Palmieri, you’ve graced us with B moovie stinkage a-plenty, including the likes of Dark World, Axegrinder, Captain Battle: Legacy War, and of course the previously covered Disaster Wars: Earthquake VS Tsunami, but this one might be the hammiest and cheesiest flick yet! David is a camera guy, director, and cinematographer who has worked on such TV shows as Son of the Beach, Lucifer, The Division, and Grey’s Anatomy, and worked on such films as Scary Movie 2, Mimic 2, Evil Alien Conquerors, and the Devil’s Rejects. So he is well steeped in stinky B moovie production! Joining him in this lark are Penthouse babe Veronica Ricci (Vampire Club, Ouija Nazi, Another Super Hero movie, Nazi Dawn) as Trinity, the stripper who becomes the snake goddess critter; and also Nina Kate (Night of the Chupacabra, Hell’s Kitty, Alpha House) as Crystal, Vanessa Sheri (Alpha House, Bachelor Night, Batman: Anarchy) as Asia, and Tracy Carr (Vertical, Fat Planet, Vampire Club) as Karma. Ever notice there are no strippers named Betty or Gertrude or Patty? There are some dudes in this flick too, but who cares about them, right? ;=8)

I mean, if she looked like that…

Ok, so there is some boobage to view in this, which is odd since snakes are generally not equipped with them, or legs either, but nevermind; the ‘club’ looks like a barber shop with a pole stuck in the middle of it, and the snake/vampire FX don’t look particularly cowvincing, especially the teeth, but who cares this is just good old fashioned stinky b moovie fun! “I love it when a guy sprays all over my face!” was never uttered with such irony. Silly, ridiculous, over the top, and just plain fun!

Ummm, say you’ve got…you got something in yer….ummm…your…nevermind….

Ok, the scores are in, and all in all Curse of the Snake Woman scored pretty well, all things cowsidered: The MooCow went with a 7, Moody a 6, and Ms. Jessa gave it a 2.5, she seemed to really have some fun with this one. Maybe she ran in to a snake or two in her dancing days… Anycow, that’s a Stinky Total of 15.5, and a Stinky Average of 5.1, putting this moovie on the Ladder of Stink right next to Stiff Jobs!

Well, you gotst yer trailerage right HERE. And if you need it in Tamil, we we got THAT too! Also also in Kannada! And Telugu!! In fact, HERE is the whole moovie for free dubbed in Hindi! NOT to be cowfused with an actual Indian snake chick moovie in Hindi called Hiss – and don’t worry, we’ll be covering that one too! ;=8) Or the Snake Girl Chinese moovie which we will also also be covering! Ummm, or the crazy Nigerian Snake Girl moovie, which I hope we will be covering! What can I say, we likes our snake chick moovies here at IFC!

Tricky to find, you can buy a copy from an Italian moovie seller right HERE, but very few udder places. It is on Prime, and also on Tubi, but hardly anywhere to get a physical copy, which is a shame. C’mon Wild Eye, give us our snake moovie!!! :=8O
No schwag for this film, but we did find a review worth checking out from Horror Asylum for the moovie.

Time for snackies!!!
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Episode 166: Amongst Friends (1993)

Jonathan Moody back again after a long hiatus from doing these. I just want to make sure everyone knows I never signed up to write these things. This part was all Paul to begin with but since Paul usually hasn’t seen the flicks that I do with other people he doesn’t generally want to put up the write ups for them and that’s fair. He did the last one for Brett Kelly’s film “The Feral Man” cause I honestly got so busy I just kept forgetting or putting it off. Well now I’ve come back to talk about the episode for this flick…. Amongst Friends. Where Paul, Myself, and special guest Tina Krause chatted about.

Here is the story (from Wikipedia)

“Amongst Friends” is a 1993 Crime drama written and directed by Rob Weiss. The film centers on three childhood friends from an affluent Long Island community- Andy, Trevor, and Billy- Who become entangled in the crime underworld out of boredom and a desire for excitement.

What can be said about Amongst Friends? I first discovered this flick when I was reading about indie films in a book called, “Mike Spike, Slackers, and Dykes”. It had interviews with Kevin Smith and Jon Pierson. There was a whole chapter devoted to “Amongst Friends” sadly it was not the friendliest chapter. They went in to things that I was a bit shocked was talked about. Buy the book if you can to find the whole sordid details. However director Rob Weiss made an indie gangster movie. He got Mira Sorvino in it too – and it was a hit at Sundance.

I know Rob Weiss mainly from the TV Series, “Entourage” but the fact that he got a bunch of people together to make something so low budget and indie and still looked really good made me wish he had stuck to doing that too. Made more indie flicks. He still could if he wanted to. It was neat to see Paul and Tina’s reaction as well because they were not familiar with Weiss or this movie. But the Moo Cow loves Mira Sorvino. And it was awesome to hear terms like “Five Towns” which is a series in the world of “Entourage”. Also the first movie Vince is in, “Queen’s Boulevard” I kind of feel is an homage to “Amongst Friends”.

The three actors who play the childhood friends: Steve Parlavecchio (Andy), Patrick McGaw (Trevor), and Joseph Granda (Billy) are all pretty damn good in the roles. Mira Sorvino (who plays Laura) is probably the most famous of all the actors in it. The characters in this make some really stupid mistakes. But hey what’s the fun of a plot if you can’t make the characters do stupid stuff that gets them in more trouble. I mean boredom can get you in a lot of trouble. Especially when it comes to dealing with the mob.

I honestly hope that one day a boutique blu ray label like Synapse or Kino or someone of that caliber will be able to get their hands on this movie and put it out. Kino did release Laws of Gravity another low budget flick that will be coming to Indie Film Cafe in the near future. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets a better treatment. It is available to watch streaming so that’s better than disappearing in to oblivion.

Speaking of disappearing it’s time to wrap this up. So we here at IFC have a Stinkometer score, a 1-10 stink score: 1 being very good, 10 being very stinky. And I had a feeling when I picked this flick that it was not going to be in the stinky category and I was correct. I gave it a 3. Tina gave it a 3. And Paul well he found a few flaws in it and I think expected it to be a bit better than it was. Though Mira herself should have been reason enough for him to go even lower (but I guess she coudn’t even save it) and he gave it a 5.5. Making it a total stink score of 11.5, and a Stinky Average of 3.8. That puts it up there by itself, the first 11.5 on the Ladder of Stink.

Well that about does it for me. I wanna say thanks to Paul for doing the last one. I will try and get the next one done soon too. We wanna be on to Season 7 fast enough. It’s times like this that I regret telling Paul we need to do more movies. At least next season we are back to 3 movies a month. But before then Paul will take it away and tell ya how to find these movies or merch on them. Take it away, MooCow….

Well, we has our trailer right HERE. They gotst one on Daily Motion too. It is on Amazon Prime if you wanna stream it, and you can pay to watch it via Youtube/MGM. If you want the DVD you can find it on Amazon or via the re-sale market at Ebay, but that seems to be about it. No blu ray release as of yet, and no merch or schwag. But if you dug the soundtrack, which was pretty good, you can listen to it on Spotify. The soundtrack CD is on Amazon too. You can read the 1993 Rolling Stone review HERE. Dennis Schwartz does a review as well. If a blu ray release ever comes out we will update the page to make sure everyone knows!
:=8)

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Episode 165: The Feral Man (2002)

Ya know cow in astrophysics we know about the presence of a black hole in space, not because we can actually see one, but because of the effects it has on udder stars and planets, how it sucks energy and matter and stuff away and towards the hole? That’s kind of this moovie: its a critter moovie that doesn’t actually show a critter, just the effects it has one everyone. In particular, one poor schlub named Danny, played by nun udder than writer/director/producer Brett Kelly (My Dead Girlfriend, Prey for the Beast, Pirates Quest for Snake Island, Jurassic Shark, et al), who ain’t having a nice day, and it gets even worse when…something sorta does something to him at his dad’s funeral. And Danny gets a lil…nutso. He’s becoming a werewolf! Well, only if your definition of ‘werewolf’ involves not actually changing into anything, and just wandering around a yapping a lot. That sort of ‘werewolf’. Naturally, Moody, along with special guest co-hosts Ana Xaden and Mark D. Valenti, had to check it out and yap about it on the newest edition of Indie Film Cafe!

Ummmm, yeah, we needed a lot moore of that!

Now we here at Indie Film Cafe loves us some Brett Kelly moovies, and Canuxploitation in general, but this moovie…there just ain’t much to it. It was only Kelly’s like second moovie, so we can cut him some slack, and the idea might could have been pulled off as a short film – the moovie is kind of short to begin with, and just feels mercilessly padded out – but as a full length…not so much. The acting isn’t so bad, nor even the direction is a real problem, and yes it is a microbudget production, even by Canadian standards (it prolly cost moore to fill up at Timmy Ho’s that day), its just the screenplay doesn’t do nearly enough to keep the audience’s attention. Just need a whole lotta moore!

Oooooh yeah, bath full of blood, never a good sign!

The moovie definitely has a sort of camcorder feel to it, and the FX are fairly cheesy, and one cannot help but thank Kelly that he didn’t try to show a critter ’cause that would have made things even worse – decent critter suits are expensive! The acting is earnest enough and and there is definitely some nice eye candy to look at, one just can’t help but want a hole lot moore claw-claw and blood splatter. Is ok, Director Kelly will be on to bigger and better things down the road; for a young filmmaker’s early attempts you cud do a lot worse than this. Some good, some bad, some meh, not too much of anything.

‘Ware yee mah Canadian pew-pew!

Well the votes are in, and the Indie Film kids gave the Feral Man a total Stink Score of 15 – that’s 4 from Jonathan Moody, a 6 from Ana Xaden, and a 5 from Mark D. Valenti – that’s a Stinky Average of 5.0, which seems to the MooCow to be cow spot on. That score puts it right in the middle of the Ladder of Stink, along with It Waits, Don’s Plum, and a bunch of udders.

You can find the trailer for this flick right HERE. You can find it on Youtube, but only the 49 minute version. The full version is streaming on Prime, and you can pick up the DVD pretty cheaply from Amazon as well as SRS Cinema – the DVD comes with loads of extras, so for you Brett Kelly fans having the physical media is a must-have! It is also streaming on Google Play. It is also out in the re-sale market, especially Ebay. This flick also appears on a double feature special cowllection called Night Creatures which is notoriously difficult to find, but every now and then pops up on Amazon. That one is on Ebay as well. Sorry, there does not seem to be any schwag out there for this moovie, not even a poster, and it is out of print in moost places apart from SRS so go gets yer hooves on a copy from them and check it out!

Please…only you can keep independent moovies alive…unlike me