Film Review - Miami Connection

I have found the holy grail of low budget eighties action, and it is called Miami Connection. A wonderfully cheesy Tae Kwon Do kicking, eighties rocking, ninja biking masterpiece. It's the great, forgotten eighties b-movie. It's been years since I've seen a movie that I loved this much on so many levels. I can honestly call this one of my new favorite movies.

It's not your typical bad movie. It's charm isn't out of it's stupidity or the staggering ineptitude of the people making it. In fact, I'd say that for what it is, it's well made. The action sequences are well shot and it's obvious that most of the actors at least know how to fight. For example, the film's writer/director/star, Y.K. Kim runs a martial arts school in Orlando and one of the co-stars, Maurice Smith is a kickboxing champion. The acting isn't horrible. It's not good by any means, but it's serviceable. This is surprising since the only two actors in the main cast with more than one credit to their name are Vincent Hirsch, who has one other acting credit and the aforementioned Maurice Smith, who had a handful of other credits for small parts in low budget martial arts movies. This complete lack of acting experience from the cast would convince you that the acting would be a lot worse than it is.

The most prolific people involved in this movie are Y.K. Kim's co-director, Woo-Sang Park, a Korean director of 20 films and composer, Jon McCallum, who's other credits include Surf Nazis Must Die and Soultaker, another pair of classic b-movies of the era, the latter of which was made famous on Mystery Science Theater. This movie should be a lot less competent than it is.

The charm doesn't come out of it's stupidity either. And the movie is stupid. It's about a martial arts rock band that fights crime, and the last ten minutes or so has them fighting biker ninjas.

The charm is because of the film's sincerity. There's nothing about this movie that convinces me that Y.K. Kim knew it was stupid. There's also nothing convincing me that Kim thought it was anything more than it was - a martial arts movie with some ham fisted themes about peace and friendship. But those themes aren't shoved down your throat. The moments that are supposed to be taken seriously can't be taken seriously, but you also can't make fun of them because there's an obvious heart to them. This movie is a sincere labor of love on Kim's part, and the rest of the cast seems to have been in on that. You don't get that sort of sincere feeling from a b-movie save for maybe the films of Ed Wood, but in Wood's case, he's the only person that wanted to make those movies. Here, everyone seems to want to be there, and is putting actual effort in and having fun.

The movie also has an awesomely cheesy eighties soundtrack featuring such awesomely bad songs as Against The Ninja and Friends Forever. Both are worth checking out. They're horrible, but they're charming. I included the audio only version of Friends Forever, because the audio quality on the video versions was very poor, and there's a dialogue break during it. Friends Forever was featured in the soundtrack to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, which is another reason I need to play that game.

If I'm not convincing you, watch the trailer. That's what got me to watch the movie. After watching it ten times in a row, I found it streaming on Netflix and made an evening out of it.

Seriously, do yourself a favor and watch this movie. It'll change your life for the better. It's not just one of my favorite b-movies. It might be one of my favorite movies ever. I haven't enjoyed a movie this much in years. Trust me on this - you need to see Miami Connection. Watch it on Netflix. If you like it enough, do what I intend to do and give the people who dug it up and distributed it money for an actual copy of the film, and some cool merch. They deserve it. Give them money to keep them funded so they can keep digging up more movies like this and distributing them to the populace.

There's a link to the distributor's page for this film below. Click on that and consider buying something after you watch it on Netflix. Companies like this need your money to stay afloat, and they deserve to stay afloat. They're people who love these kinds of movies as much as the people they sell them to. That's worth something to me. I'm considering just getting the standard DVD for the film and maybe the poster. The seven inch vinyl single is unfortunately sold out, but the VHS is still there if you want the authentic experience.

http://drafthousefilms.com/film/miami-connection

I beseech you, Draft House Films. Take it. You've earned it.

Shitty Film Review - Las Vegas Blood Bath

There have only been a handful of times when I called a movie “the worst movie I’ve ever seen.” There are even fewer times when I honestly meant it. It has to be something truly awful – to the point where it dethrones the previous title holder. Las Vegas Bloodbath currently has that dubious honor. Let me put this into perspective – I seek out bad movies. I’ve seen Ax ‘Em. I’ve seen Manos: The Hands of Fate without Mystery Science Theater’s riffing (a bit of trivia – Manos is Spanish for hands. So, the actual title for that film is Hands: The Hands of Fate.) I sat through Superman 4, for Christ’s sake. And this is the worse than any of those.

There are movies out there worse than this that aren't Superman 3. Be afraid.

The movie stars a guy named Sam. Sam looks a lot like Nicolas Cage, so I will address him as such. Nic Cage catches his wife having sex with a cop, or a mall security guard, or a stripper in a police uniform. I don’t know which one and I honestly don’t care. We’re “lucky” enough to see the sex scene with the cop and the Whitesnake groupie that plays Nic Cage’s wife. He shoots the two of them in bed with the cop’s gun… A gun that wasn’t loaded with blanks. He just jerks the gun up a little to simulate recoil and a bang noise is edited in. At this point, any intelligent human being knows to turn off this dreck and watch Leaving Las Vegas instead. I soldier on. Why? Because I’m an idiot, that’s why.

Nicolas Cage's long lost twin? Or just a guy in a shitty movie? You decide!

So, Nic Cage picks up a hooker and proceeds to drink himself to death because I decided to watch Leaving Las Vegas anyway.

Watch this instead. It's really damn good. I swear.

When I’m done, I go back to Las Vegas Bloodbath and our Nic Cage look alike picks up a hooker in broad daylight (Really? It’s the middle of the day and street prostitution isn’t legal in Vegas or any other part of Nevada, so she’s running a real risk of getting arrested… I assume that this movie cares about details like that.) and she proceeds to give Rick Santoro directions to where they can get some alone time. We watch this for several minutes. Thankfully, there’s plenty of riveting dialogue where Castor Troy calls the hooker mean names and acts like a violent lunatic. Any smart street walker would get out of the car and run – heck, any incredibly stupid street walker would do the same. This one doesn’t, because this movie needs a body count, not intelligence. So, Big Daddy makes her kiss a mannequin head that we’re supposed to believe is his wife’s severed head, because the director thinks that people are stupid and/or blind enough to buy that cheap effect. He ties her leg to the bumper of his car and drives off, taking off her leg. Again, the effect is horrible. Whoever did the effects in this movie isn’t going to be Tom Savini, but all I’m asking for is a little competence, and do I get it? No. I get Las Vegas Bloodbath.

Watch Viva Las Vegas. It's really fun. I swear. Don't watch Las Vegas Bloodbath.

Next, Cameron Poe goes to a bar and shoots a bartender because… I don’t know. It’s really never explained, and I’m fine with this because an explanation would probably add a few minutes to the film’s running time. Later, he’s spying on a baby shower. Apparently the women at the shower are oil wrestlers, because this movie is about as classy as you’d expect a movie called Las Vegas Bloodbath to be.

It's not as classy as Nic Cage in a tuxedo, at least.

They turn on the TV to watch one of their matches where they roll around on garbage bags with other groupies for bands such as Great White, Warrant and Winger. Later, they order a pizza, play poker and whenever the pregnant girl isn’t there, they call her a whore. I’m not kidding you when I say that this takes up about half the movie. An endless stream of pointless, mindless banter from “actresses” who were likely paid with beer and pot later and FUCKING FINALLY, Charlie/Donald Kaufman comes in, ties them up, butchers and kills them. As for the pregnant girl, he rips out her fetus. Of course. What the hell did I expect?
 

Nicolas Cage approves of this grisly massacre.

Roll credits. My ordeal is over, but not before hearing a song called “Sammy Gets So Dirty” that was written for this movie, because Sam is a character who clearly needed his own theme song.

I can’t adequately describe how horrendous this movie is without actually showing clips, and I don’t want to subject anyone to that. It’s poorly written, horrendously acted, shot with a cheap home video camera and there’s about 40 or so minutes of morons at a baby shower. The only mercy that this movie has is that it’s only 78 minutes long, and it’s the last movie that writer/director David Schwartz ever made. Unfortunately, he made one before this called American Revenge. It has a slightly lower score on IMDB at the moment. This terrifies me.

I really don't know how to end this. I mean, what can I say? This movie is horrendous. Here's a gif image of Nicolas Cage looking as disgusted as I am about this sad excuse for a movie that dared to cast a guy who looked sort of like him as the lead.

Watch Vampire's Kiss. It actually has Nic Cage in it.