The Indie Film Cafe Movie Reviews!

Crawling out of the dark, jingoistic Regan years is this mootivational MMA cum-American flag orgasm known to all as No Retreat, No Surrender, and if ever a message of bold defiance was sent to those nasty commie Rooskies, cowplete with cheesy 80’s hair metal AND a plethora of training montages, this was it!  Starring a very young Kurt McKinney (The Guiding Light) in his first ever role, and featuring the Muscles from Brussels himself, Jean-Claude van Damme (also his first significant feature), this cheesy 80’s relic is long on the brawn, and somewhat short on the writing, story, and verisimilitude.  And the horrific, nightmare-inducing rap and break dancing scenes by Token Black Sidekick RJ almoost qualifies this film as a horror moovie, but in reality it is a brie-filled martial arts actioner all the way.  Se what Indie Film Cafe , along with special guest Joe Turek, has to say about it on their latest PODCAST!

Cheese aside, this Corey Yuen flick pulled in a modest 5 million bucks in the box office – peanuts cowpared the earlier 80’s action moovies it ripped off (such as Karate Kid), but a princely sum for an indie.  Yuen came from the Hong Kong chop-socky scene where he honed his craft as an actor, director, and stunt man, and clearly he and Martial Arts Coordinator Hoi Meng know cow to film in the classic Hong Kong style – ok, it may not be a Shaw Brothers production, but NRNS clearly has one foot in America and one in Hong Kong.  The fight scenes are very well choreographed, and the action is definitely fun and over the top – the problems come when the fists and feet aren’t flying, and we have to suffer though these characters as people. No matter cow silly.

Fortunately, Bruce Lee’s ghost (Kim Tai-Chong, clearly an actor who doesn’t look like him) teaches Jason cow to fight and be a man, and he is able to beat the irredeemably and one-dimentionally evil Karl/Ivan, and thus save America’s pride.  All this mindless rah-rah nationalism is typical of many action flicks of the era, and they all look seriously dated and cringe-worthy.  Tai-Chong was also a veteran of many Chinese Martial Arts films in the 70’s (such as Game of Death 1 & 2), but this was his final role before he returned home to Korea.

Moody and special Guest Joe scored 6 and 6.5, respectively, on the Stinkometer, for this flick, while the MooCow was a bit harsher, awarding it an 8, giving No Retreat, No Surrender a total Stink Score of 20.5, and a Stink Average score of 6.8 – a fairly decent stink bouquet, but far from the stinkiest flick of Season 2!

Check out the 1986 trailer from Seasonal Corporation HERE.  See the cowplete film in glorious HD on the Tube of You, at least until they take it down.  And to watch the cheesy moosic video that someone made, check it out HERE. and an-udder one HERE, ’cause you can’t just watch one cheesy moosic vid.  Git yer hooves on the blu ray from AMAZON, or the DVD HERE.  And, of course, Rifftrax covered this flick and you can get it right from the SOURCE.  For those of you who can’t get enough of this moovie, Film School Rejects has an interesting overview HERE.  Get the Tee Shirt and wear it proudly.  Get the poster and stick it on your wall – you know you love it!

So if yer looking for some of that wacky 80’s nostalgia, need a decent Martial Arts action fix, or just want a slice of some serious cheese, do check out No Retreat, No Surrender, and maybe the ghost of Bruce Lee will visit you and teach you cow to kick a bag of sand – from RUSSIA!
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Oh No!!!  its the evil space crickets from HELL!!!

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Well, that’s what this ridiculous, sci-fi stinker SHOULD have been called, either that or Bugs and Bickering.  In which a group of unpleasant, irritating semi-characters take refuge in a ‘snowy’ cabin in the woods from a ‘storm’, and then fall prey to some of the worst creature fx you will ever see.  They fight the bugs, bicker and argue endlessly among themselves, and finally everything blows up in the end, and we can calk off an-udder hour and a half of the MooCow’s life that he desperately wants back.  Poor James is back for an-udder colossal stinker from the Indie Film Cafe crew – check out the latest PODCAST episode and witness all the groans and moans of excruciating pain.

Poor writing, poor direction, poor editing, poor special effects, and scenes that drone on and on and go nowhere, Blood Predator is moore  constitution test than an actual moovie.  Writer/Director Paul Gagne‘s ‘artistic vision’ is clearly hampered by a severe lack of Benjamins (to say nothing of actual SNOW), and it tantamount to an appalling disaster of biblical proportions the likes of which even the veterans of such stinkers at Indie Film Cafe have barely survived.  But its when James says “That was the worst move I have ever seen in my life” that the MooCow finally cracks a knowing smile…

In addition to our old friend Jump Scare Puma we also have Red Herring Cat and Stock Footage Wolf to keep us company as the dreary parade of bickering non-characters pretend to be frightened and killed off by a bunch of balding, toothy, poorly drawn cgi bugs.  Egads.  No wonder our beleaguered guest James awarded it a 10 on the Stinkometer!  Not to be outdone, the MooCow awarded the film a 9, while Moody went with a 9.5, giving Blood Predator an overall Stink Score of 28.5, and an Stink Average of 9.5!!!  WOW, that is some stinky bug moovie!!!  :=8D

If you REALLY want to see a trailer of this mess, HERE you go, but don’t say you weren’t warned.  If you want you can actually buy this piece of dreck, the Widescreen DVD version, so you can watch every tiny drop of goodness, from Amazon, but trust the MooCow it will be the worst 30 bucks you’ll ever spend.  Kindly (or perhaps not so much) Film Gorillas has put this up for free on Daily Motion.  Barnes & Noble has it too on DVD, and there’s always someone on Ebay looking for a sucker….errr, I mean buyer.

We’re not gonna lie, folks, as cheapy alien mootant bug moovies go, this one is seriously craptastic.  But if yer looking for a way to torment your friends (and who isn’t?), this flick is pretty moooch guaranteed to provide nothing but pain and suffering for a long, long time, and it is IFC-recowmended!
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Snow shark snow shark, snow shark snow shark

Snow shark big ol’ shark of snow;

He’ll bite off your legs, he’ll bite off yer face,

And he’ll hide in two inches of snoooooooowwww…..

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Yep, 2019 is gonna be one snarky sharky year here at Indie Film Cafe, and we start off the stinky shark moovie hunt with Snow Shark, a wacky chum bucket of awful shark goodness from director/writer/actor/camera man Sam Qualiana (The Legend of Six Fingers, Post Apocalyptic Commando Shark), and financed by Indigogo!  The moovie is about  group of people from a small town (not unlike that UDDER famous shark moovie) who are terrorized by a hungry, hungry shark – but unlike Amityville, this shark is able to swim around in snow, even just the bare dusting is enough to hide this toothy critter, until he is able to burst out and devour whatever happens to be nearby.

Special Guest Johnny Johnson, director of such luminaries as the Skeleton Key series and Plan 9, joined the Indie Film Cafe folks at the Darkstone Entertainment house as they moaned and groaned their way through a food frenzy of stink – check out our latest PODCAST for all the gory details!

Well, in addition to writer/director Sam Qualiana, Snow Shark stars…well, I have no idea who these folks are, apart from the always lovely Jackey Hall.  Well, at least it wasn’t Bigfoot Wars…  Overall the acting as some issues, but nothing worse than your usual microbudget flick.  Some of the practical effects are kind of kewl, and some are…well, special.  And what is with all the bricabrac??  Clearly these guys had lot of fun making this moovie, and you will too if you just sit back and let it happen.

Well, the Stink Scores are in, and it appears that Snow Shark definitely has a palpable bouquet of stink!  Moody gave the film an 8.5, while the MooCow awarded a 7.5, and special guest Johnny Johnson went with a solid 8 – that is a total of 24, and Stinky Average of 8.0!  That’s one stinky shark moovie!
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We’ve got trailerage right HERE.  And a longer one HERE.  Watch it on the Tube of You HERE,  And on Amazon HERE.  Beware, this is not the 2013 moovie of the same name.  Too git yer hooves on the physical media, go to Amazon for the DVD, or try Barnes and Noble.  A copy even pops up on Ebay from time to time.  For funsies check out Sam Q’s newest hit single, but be aware that it is a little sideways.  Bloodbath and Beyond does a decent video review HERE.

So while the wacky folks at Indie Film Cafe will be swimming in some seriously bad shark moovie infested waters this year, you can start off with this little indie chomper to put you in the mood.  And watch out for those snow sharks!
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Well folks, if you’ve been waiting your whole lives to watch a killer tongue moovie (and who hasn’t?), yer in luck ’cause this bad boy just landed!  From the deranged mind of Spanish director Alberto Sciamma (Black Plague, Blood Trap) comes this weird wacka-doodle horror-com, cowplete with evil alien tongue, convenience store nuns, alien tongue/human interbreeding, species-transitioning poodles, and oh yeah, Freddie Kruger too!

Poor Candy (Melinda Clarke): she’s just made off with a huge heist with her great love Johnny, having gotten rid of their wacko partners Vic and Chip; unfortunately, Johnny gets pinched, and she has to hide in a gas station nunnery while he does his time in a depraved prison run by sicko Warden Robert Englund,  While she waits, she accidentally eats a bowl of soup that has a meteor in it, and a killer alien tongue takes over her body, transforming her into a hot latex goth princess – and her fluffy poodles get turned into campy transvestites with wayyyyy too much make-up (including The Tudor’s Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Rudolph!).  Candy is not overjoyed by this.  This get even moore cowplicated when she discovers that the tongue has made her pregnant, and cowplete wackiness ensues.  Oh, and Doug Bradley (Pinhead from the Hellraiser moovies) plays Wig, Johnny’s prison pal.

Friends, this is a rare one, but if you can git your hooves on a copy of this flick you simply must – check out the Indie Film Cafe’s discussion HERE to see what all the fuss is about!  Just seeing these stars of so many indie and non-indie horror films working together make it worth your purchase price alone, to say nothing of the weird death scenes.  And if that weren’t enough the soundtrack was cowtributed to by the weird 90’s Euro-synth band Fangoria!

Killer Tongue definitely has some stink to it, but not nearly as mooch as some flicks on this podcast, that is for sure!  The MooCow awarded Killer Tongue a 4.5 on the Stinkometer, while Moody chipped in with a 6 – but Miss Lenore cud not hold back her disdain, and awarded it a 9.5, which rates the film overall as a Stink Total of 20, and 6.7 Average Stink Score.

Git yer trailerage right HERE.  its expensive, but you can pick up a copy of your very own from AMAZON – you know you want to!  You can also find it at Alibris.  if this moovie ever comes out on Blu Ray, and we all hope it does, Blu-Ray.com will let you know.  If yer really lucky you can find it packages with udder stinkers at such places like Bull Moose and Oldies.com.  And apparently Wally World.  And for the truly desperate, vhs copies still exist.  Spike Magazine had a great preview of the film when it went to Cannes (yes, it did!!), where it ‘went down like a storm’ – of course it did!  Get the kewl Japanese moovie poster HERE.

Once you’ve ironed out a copy for yourself, we here at Indie Film Cafe promise you will enjoy every lick of this strange Spanish flick!

Check it out, boys and girls, Charlie’s got a mysterious new game system, and boy i he in for one heck of a game!  From the writers who brought you Hey, Stop Stabbing Me!, and the directors of Dorm Daze and Transylmania comes this fun little indie about , going deep, deep, deep into the gaming world, quite literally!  Its a topic covered many times before, sometimes successfully (Arcade), udder times not so much (Nightmares), but this little gem stars Nate Richert and the lovely Danielle Fishel, and a bunch of pixily, monkey-hopping, demented ninja zombies.  The Indie Film Cafe folks yak it up on their latest podcast debating the pluses and minuses

So this is the epic story of cow Charlie (Richert) got his groove back by going into a decidedly dangerous video game that takes over his brain, saving the girl (Fishel), and being the first person to actually defeat the game by finishing it.  The game sinks its teeth into Charlie by populating itself with characters based on people from Charlie’s real life, including his sadly deceased girlfriend, Kate – hence the reason Charles is on a major bummer.  BUT, hold everything, because the game ALSO makes the main bad guy the cop who was responsible for Kate’s death, and things get very, very cowplicated.  But its not easy, and the game nearly kills Charlie several times, and only manages to defeat it with the help and influence of Princess (Kate’s clone).  Charlie beats his funk, finds a nice new girl suspiciously similar to Princess, and lives a happy life – while dropping a little surprise for the evil real life cop!

The game progresses from a grungy Grand Theft Auto-type universe to a weird hopping ninja-verse, to, I dunno, Walking Dead Wannabe World?  The graphics have not aged well, but fortunately the story is much better than the graphics, and the solid acting overall makes this one a fairly stink-free indie!  The MooCow gave a tiny 1.5 for his Stink Score, which is a record low!  Moody presented a 2, and special guest Joe Turek from Sick Flick Productions chipped in with a 2.5, giving Gmebow 1.0 a total Stink Score of 6, and an average stink of 2.0!  That’s pretty schweeeet!  :=8D

As usual, we have trailerage right HERE.  And some kind soul made a sweet Charlie/Princess hair ballad video right HERE.  You can stream it or git yer hooves on a copy at AMAZON.  And apparently you can buy/stream it on Vudu, whatever the heck that it.  Directors Dave and Scott Hillenbrand do an interesting interview HERE for those who would like to know moore about the moovie.

So if you need a break from all the serious stinky flicks the Indie Film Cafe folks have been serving you up lately, then we promise you Gamebox 1.0 is a breath of fresh air that will make you smile.
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