Quite possibly one of the most random of the awful movies we've seen, it's 1987's MIAMI CONNECTION! It's like The Warriors, but with ninjas, new wave bands, unhappy 40 year old orphans and lots of shitty music. Guests include comedians Seth Lazear, Corbett Cummins and a secret special guest!
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None of these people or these things are in this movie.
This might be the most out-right scandalous post on TEC yet to date, Enemaniacs! I know some shit and I'm calling people out. Turns out, there exists an even shittier take on the story that is 1996'sJERRY MAGUIRE which means that Cameron Crowe may have ripped off the entire idea for that Oscar-winning film from whoever wrote 1986'sBODY SLAM! This might be fact but probably not! BODY SLAM which stars not Tom Cruise, but Faceman from the A-Team also known as a guy named Dirk Benedict and tells the story of a douchebag agent who owes some angry people a lot of money and is constantly looking for anything he can promote in order to make the money back, but of course in truly movie-like style, he fails several times in alleged humorous ways, finds a beautiful girl that believes in him for no reason and eventually realizes the clients he's cared the least about save him in the end. See! It's totally that other movie! The trailer itself isn't online, but it is attached to a string of trailers at the end of some VHS movie someone posted on YouTube, so enjoy the BODY SLAM trailer along with a bunch of other gripping trailers by CBS Home Video below!
"You had me at purple suit."
The possible plagiarism by a better movie is the least thing wrong with this movie though. First of all, the VHS cover is totally misleading. There are no naked boobs in this movie nor is there "sex" or "rock n' roll". What this tag line incorrectly refers to is the fact that the main douchey agent character, M. Harry Smilac eventually stars to rep for a couple of pro wrestlers, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and another dude. When both the shitty band he works for and the wrestlers are barely making money, he comes up with the idea of "Rock n' Roll Wrestling" which just means he has the shitty band, The Kicks, play their shitty music during wrestling matches and the kids go nuts for it!
A Down and Out in Beverly Hills rip off. CLEVER!
In the end, the clients who believe in Harry even though he doesn't give a shit about them end up saving his ass and he starts to appreciate them. I assume this anyway, I didn't get to the end. The jokes were stupid, the stereotypes weren't even amusing and most importantly, there was no SEX or ROCK N' ROLL. There was barely any wrestling and Rowdy Roddy keep his rowdiness to a minimum. BORING. If I had seen the film's poster, I probably could have figured out the sleazy Hollywood 80's comedy turd this was and avoided it all together. Which you, dear reader, absolutely should.
"...You can talk the talk, but can you SHRED the walk?"
Ski movies. Whether they're comedies involving bungling teenage ski instructors just trying to touch a tit or shady mob-like drug dealers trying to to sabotage chair lifts in order to take over ski lodges (I'm pretty sure that even happened in a Jem episode), they're almost always a good time. I mean, how could snow settings not be chock full of wackiness and intrigue! Especially when ski resorts are involved, I mean they're already rich and white. Clearly crime, coke and sex on animal skin is bound to happen!
"Hold on Kelly, my cabin doesn't look aloof enough yet!"
1991's RED SNOW tells the story of a ski instructor named James Palmer (played by some ugly dude) who happens upon a robbery of the ski resort he works for. The thieves/conspirators murder James and frame him for the robbery. The town tries to forget about this awkward situation until along comes blond-haired, blue-eyed, smooth talking Kyle Lewis (played by some slightly less ugly dude), the brand new snow board instructor who will stop at nothing to find out what happened to James and to fuck James' pre-dead girlfriend. But why does this dude Kyle give a shit about what happened to James? Could it be Kyle was his secret best friend? His secret brother? His secret son? Or maybe he thinks this will further him along into widowed girlfriend's ski pants? Check out some spine tingling/snow shredding clips here.
Benton goes in for the kiss.
Come to find out, the owner of the ski resort, Frank, is obviously behind the conspiracy to rob his own resort and the murder/frame up of James. It's not that much of spoiler really. It's really obvious when this character is introduced that he is the bad guy. The movie clues you in on this fact by showing how evil he is in 6 ways.
1. European Accent
Everyone knows, you hear smarmy Euro-accent in an action movie, some shits going to blow up or a girl is going to get killed. Why? Because European equals French which equals asshole or German or something like German and Germans equal Nazis. This is known as the general American thought process.
2. He Smokes Cigars
Cigars are symbols for two things, the mafia and penises. Both things scare people. Put those things in a Nazi's mouth and you've got yourself a corn-fed American nightmare.
3. Snake-skin Boots
There is a metaphor here. I'm not sure what it is exactly, but it's possibly biblical in nature and applies serpentine type qualities to the bearer. Watch out for this guy. He lives by no rules.
4. Gigantic Ugly-Faced Henchman
Frank employs two all-in-one henchmen. The first is Benton, a pock-marked angry and violent small dude that besides his general bad-ass hobbies of skiing and snow angels, works on bikes and babes. He is the thinker of the two so by default, the more evil one. The most important to no-one member of this duo is Werner, a giant-sized Nordic cave-man that has one of the most unfortunate faces I've ever seen. I couldn't find a good picture of him, but he's the giant Swede on the video cover. Hench on, dude.
5. Blond Hanger-on
"Another blowjob? But I just washed my hair."
Thankfully Frank will never want for vagina because Nicki/Angela/Shannon is always there and always available. Her only purpose is to stay skinny, never speak, eat things he hand-feeds her, laugh at his maniacal laugh and keep her hair clean. Pretty easy job. Too bad I don't like blowing people in front of their friends, otherwise I apparently could have had it made. Damn you brown hair and sexual prudence!
6. He Kills People
Frank kills people and he doesn't care that he kills people nor does he feel any remorse about killing people. Now if this doesn't give him away as the antagonist of the film, I don't know what does.
"Jesus, I can't take this guy anywhere."
There are pretty much three plots to this movie. The first involves Kyle trying really shittily to find out who killed James while also trying to make coitus with James' girlfriend, Kelly who by now has turned into a more naive mostly drunk person. The second involves a conspiracy by Frank, Benton and I guess Werner to keep James' murder and the embezzlement under wraps which causes distrust and within the group that eventually leads to Frank sicking Stacey/Jennifer/Carol on Benton. This leads to a really awkward chones on scene where they air hump on his bike. The third plot is about the lesser known ages long battle between skiers and snowboarders. This is the most boring of the three.
Murder/Mystery/Romantic/Comedy sub-plot aside, what RED SNOW is REALLY about is sick snowboarding tricks. 70% of the movie is dedicated to long montages of skiers and snowboarders attempting aerial maneuvers and downhill movement. The best part of this is, the stunts usually end in wipe outs. I'm not sure if the director just couldn't afford the time or film for stunt people to try the tricks again and actually land on not their ass or if he just decided however they ended, the shit was SICK. This is debatable. What is for certain, is there is a shit load of ridiculous over dubbed sound effects every time a skier jumps in the air or a snowboarder whips their board. It is the unmistakable crack of a bullwhip and it's used over and over and over again.
Everything about this movie was fairly predictable. What did surprise me about this movie is despite it's wooden acting, lines like,
Random Friend:"...If there's any woman on this mountain you want to avoid now, it's her." Kyle:"...Does she have Herpes?"
It's use of the same exterior ski resort shot used over and over and the not so clever switch of an obviously different interior as the set and to top it all off a B-movie shot on video and only a tiny glimpse of a side boob throughout, I give RED SNOW a resounding TEC stamp of Enematic approval! There are loud headbands, giant Swedes, skiers carrying shot guns, explosions, blatant Roadhouse rip-offs, unnecessary deaths and the aforementioned side boob! It takes a minute to give a shit, but ultimately, it's worth it.
Fake Whip Sound Effects: 62 Maniacal Laughs: 1 Skiing While Gun Wielding: 4 Guys Exploding: 2 USA Hats: 1 Is That A Face?: 1 Loud Hats: 2 Snowboarding/Skiing Montage: 12 Butt Chins: 3 Mountain Shots: 15 Uni-brows: 1 Sex On Motorcycles: 1 Leopard Skin Scarf Arm Sling: 1 Red Snow: 1/2
One time there was this guy. His name was Billy Blanks. Billy Blanks was a paladin, a warrior and a demi-god who wanted to save attractive people from drug abuse, stop crime with karate kicks and help fat people punch harder. Thankfully for us here at TEC and you dear reader, he was also an accomplished thespian. Thus I give you the best of the sweaty/slimey facial expressions, slightly racist character naming and VHS cover art badassery that is the B-Movie Ballad of Sir Billy Blanks.
Bloodfist (1989)
Genre: Action/Martial Arts Codename: Black Rose Notable Co-stars: Don "The Dragon" Wilson
If you haven't already surmised, Bloodfist is a shitty rip-off of Bloodsport. The "Muscles from Brussels""The Dragon" is a retired kick-boxer that enters an underground kick-boxing tournament in Hong Kong Manila in order to find his brother's murderer and avenge his death with his feet and stuff. Oh yeah, and Billy Blanks. He plays an evil fighter by the name of "Black Rose." It's pretty much Bloodsport without the splits or the Van Damage.
Talons of the Eagle (1992)
Genre: Action Codename: Tyler Wilson Notable Co-stars: James "Lo Pan" Hong
After the notorious (I guess) Mr. Li (James Hong) kills a few DEA agents in Toronto (random), martial arts champion Tyler Wilson (BB) is sent to investigate (for some reason). Oh wait, never mind. The bad guys are participating in an underground martial arts tournament. Wilson goes undercover and be-friends the nefarious Li in order to get the dibs on some shit and hopes to eventually not die while doing so. I probably should have warned you that shit gets pretty intense from here. Especially involving Billy's shirtless action posing VHS covers. Look at that shine! You can almost taste his funk. Almost...
Back in Action (1993)
Genre: Action/Drama?
Codename: Billy?
Notable Co-Stars: "Rowdy" Roddy Piper
This action-packed, buddy-cop romp stars Billy asBilly, the high-kicking ex-Green Beret older brother of some dumb ass girl who sleeps with a drug-dealer. When the drug dealer is murdered, the sister is the only witness and the killers try to track her down. Billy makes an "unlikely union" (not really) with a ballsy plain-clothed cop named Frank (Piper) who sometimes pile drives his perps. There is not as much fire in this movie as the VHS cover suggests, but other than, it's pretty much exactly what it looks like. Guns, pecks, high-waisted jeans, one-liners and Billy even cries a little, although you can't really tell when his face is always sweaty.
TC 2000 (1993)
Genre: Action/Sci-fi
Codename: Jason Storm
Notable Co-stars: Bolo "Chinese Hercules" Yeung
In case you thought this would be a shitty RoboCop rip off, it is. Unfortunately though, instead of cheap metal body implants (which I had crossed my fingers for) they pretty much imply they have robotically re-wired someone and then use some awful static screen as robo-vision for said robotically re-wired individual. Oh and even though they lack metal parts, the robo-person can totally kick and punch really hard and do back flips, because as most of us know, robots are known for their grace and flexibility. Anyhow, according to TC 2000 lore, by the year 2000, hippies have failed and "environmental overkill had come." The surface of the Earth is gross so rich people started the Underworld colonies and poor people were left on the surface to start gangs. You know, kind of like now. Underworld enforcer Mason Storm Jason Storm (Blanks) finds out about a conspiracy by all the rich assholes in the underworld to kill off the surface people who are totally bringing their property values down. He thinks this is janky so he goes rogue and in the process his hot blond partner is killed and becomes the robo-blond who back flips I mentioned before. Thankfully, Bolo shows up and helps Storm to stop the Underworld killers before they go all *Ghetto Blaster on the surface. Everyone wins. Except for the people that died.
*Referring to the 1989 action/urban warfare film about a middle-aged white dude that decides to kill and or maim all the Latino gang members in his parents neighborhood. And yes, it is PAINFULLY racist. Old white people boners commence.
Quite possibly one of the most random of the awful movies we've seen, it's 1987's MIAMI CONNECTION! It's like The Warriors, but with ninjas, new wave bands, unhappy 40 year old orphans and lots of shitty music. Guests include comedians Seth Lazear, Corbett Cummins and a secret special guest!
