Dir - Mark Pirro
Overall: MEH
As dumb as it sounds if not dumber, A Polish Vampire in Burbank is the sophomore effort from writer/director/star Mark Pirro who plays a dweebish undead named Dupah, which is the extent of Polish jokes to be found here, ("Dupah" translates to "ass" BTW). Made with as little money as possible, ($2,500 allegedly), it unfortunately features the least funny man who ever lived Eddie Deezen as Pirro's even bigger dipshit brother Sphincter who spends most of the movie as a talking skeleton. At least some footage of Elvira makes its way into the proceedings to cleanse the pallet. The sub-par production values are serviceable yet impossible to miss and they are also wisely played for laughs, though how "funny" they are is debatable at best. Pirro knows what type of juvenile, pun-heavy, and self-depreciating tone he is going for, cramming his little-movie-that-could with one groan-worthy gag after the other. The meta jokes fare best, (like when the characters chalk up the lazy plot maneuvers to "poetic license"), but several moments are more head-scratching than amusing, like two people doing a Sonny and Cher routine and someone pretending to be an actor in a hot tub, (don't ask).
(1984)
Dir - James Cameron
Overall: GREAT
A solid contender for the most influential and, (arguably), finest 80s action movie ever made, James Cameron's The Terminator was a game-changer for both its personnel and the rest of the decade's testosterone-ridden blockbusters. Since the series would not get convoluted and redundant for another two decades, Cameron and producer/collaborator Gale Anne Hurd's script crosses its Ts and dots its Is here, which would have been a satisfactory one-and-done entry in hindsight if not for how solid the 1991 sequel turned out. Even the best time traveling stories struggle to maintain plausibility, but there is just enough details dished out to hold this one together. Cameron and crew turn a seedy LA and some dystopian war zone flashes into a perfectly gritty landscape for Arnold Schwarzenegger to relentlessly chase Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn around in. The fact that they did it on a barely-sufficient budget is even more impressive, loading the movie with one memorable and intense action sequence after the other, all within a slasher framework that is actually nail-biting. Even if the stop-motion animation and the close-ups of Arnold's animatronic cyborg head have not aged as well as the rest, it remains an iconic and ahead of its time realization of an AI thriller, chase movie, apocalyptic sci-fi, and high-body count shoot-em-up.
(1989)
Dir - John "Bud" Cardos
Overall: WOOF
Overall: WOOF
It may be hyperbolic to proclaim the Gor sequel Outlaw of Gor, (Gor II), as the worst sword and sorcery film ever made, but man, it sure tries hard to earn that mantle. Presumably, the only reason that a second movie was even released is because it was shot concurrently with the first one; the first one being a box office bomb that has continued to live in infamy. So instead of burying this one in a landfill like an E.T. Atari game, Cannon International unceremoniously unleashed it on the masses. It is the same shtick, different bad movie, except with no Oliver Reed to chew some villainous scenery. Instead, we have more Jack Palance than the first round who looks equally bored and miserable collecting a paycheck in something that he probably prayed would be forgotten about as quickly as possible. There is also an evil queen whose dialog is exclusively made up of evil queen cliches, everyone running around half-naked, a relentless keyboard score, some horny schlub who joins Urbano Barberini' "hero" as he returns to the land of misogyny and slaves, ADRed line-readings that are not fooling anybody, and a story line that has nothing to do with John Norman's source material and is somehow even more juvenile.
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