You would think that a movie based on a harum-scarum comic book series, taking advantage of the punk-rock aesthetic would be an interesting premise. The titular hero is played by Lori Petty who up to that point was known for playing Geena Davis's annoying kid sister in A League of Their Own (1992). Here she's a zany post-apocalyptic scavenger, turned western-style avenger. After her commune is massacred by W&P, a pseudo-fascist corporation of ill-repute, she and fellow survivor Sam (Stacy Linn Ramsower) are captured, separated and tortured. Tank Girl escapes the clutches of the evil Kesslee (played in full check-collecting mode by Malcolm McDowell) and tries to save the young Sam with the help of Jet Girl (Naomi Watts), Sub Girl (Ann Cusack) and The Rippers who are basically mutant kangaroos led by Ice-T in heavy makeup.
Now granted the collection and subsequent bastardization of Tank Girl IP was followed by the movie licencing of The Mask (1994) a property similar in aesthetic and humor. Similarly the source material was watered down but what The Mask lost in macabre bite, it more than made up for in cogent storytelling. Let's not forget that the editing in Tank Girl is sloppy and slow, the cinematography reaches the slumping capstone of a sub-par music video and the art design, while lovingly anarchic can't help but feel lo-fi, and not in a good way. It's just a garish, slowly paced, sophomoric and pointless film that could have been something but is plagued with half-measures.
Originally titled Rat Fink and Boo Boo, the filmmaker Ray Dennis Steckler discovered the misspelled title animation and left it that way because, shrug, he didn't care anymore. If you come into this film with the exact same attitude you may just come out of it with a modicum of joy. The film follows three greaser youths Linc (George Caldwell), Hammer (Mike Kannon) and Benjie (James Bowie) as they stir trouble around the neighborhood. They abduct a young lady (Carolyn Brandt) the girlfriend to rock n roll star Lonnie Lord (Ron Haydock). When hearing the news Lonnie and his janitor pal (Titus Moede) run into a room and burst out moments later as makeshift heroes Rat Pfink and Boo Boo. The rest of the film is largely padded with goofy fight sequences, park side tumbling and a slap-dashed side story involving an escaped gorilla.
Rat Pfink a Boo Boo feels like an improv game gone horribly off the rails. Our two heroes at first act like your average B-movie players but as soon as they come out of the room in costume, the consequences of everything simply melts away in a puff of cartoony smoke. The movie reaches full-charged silliness with the appearance of the gorilla which is laughingly played by a guy in a rented costume. I will give this movie one thing; at 72 minutes, at least it's energetic. Kind of like a group of screaming children playing in a sandbox.
Oh boo, hiss, yes I know! "Don't mess with my childhood," I hear so many of you ape in unison like teenage fans at a rock concert. When was the last time you actually watched Mighty Morphin Power Rangers? When was the last time you actually tried to understand the group dynamics, the intricacies of the plot and the villain's head-scratching plot for world domination?
The movie begins with a prolonged skydiving sequence (which granted was cool when you were six but looks silly now). After slapstick bulwarks Bulk (Paul Schrier) and Skull (Jason Narvy) land in a construction site, they discover an alien looking egg which alerts Power Rangers leader Zordon (Nicholas Bell). The Rangers are dispatched to recover the egg but perennial villain Repulsa (Julia Cortez) gets to it first and unleashes Ivan Ooze (Paul Freeman), a powerful inter-dimensional wizard capable of usurping untold amounts of energy. He neutralizes the Rangers, forcing them to travel to a far-away planet to find more power I guess. Meanwhile Ivan dolls out his ooze to the masses gaining control of a hypnotized slave workforce to recover his Titan robots. The Rangers return in time for the ultimate battle, suiting up in snazzy new costumes and inexplicably appropriately themed mega-robots.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie upon repeated viewings feels like an overt cash grab, complete with brand-spanking-new animal themed robots meant to sell toys. Everything from the acting to the story is so flaccid, boring and phoned-in that it's borderline insulting watching it as an adult. And lest we forget, even if you forgive all it's faults, there's still the cheap special-effects. While as a young child such ineptitude was forgivable, today the Power Rangers' chintzy miniatures and vapid monster v robot setup conjures memories of Post-Mothra Godzilla (1954) movies.
Not to be confused with Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Captain America is a cheaply made adaptation of the now famous Avenger, executive produced by the actual Stan Lee. Given a limited release years after it was initially made, Captain America is about the titular hero's (Matt Salinger) early years fighting the Germans and Italians during WWII. After attempting to sabotage Nazi rocket experiments, spearheaded by arch-nemesis The Red Skull (Scott Paulin), Cap is put on ice and is unfrozen in 1990s. He then is caught up in an assassination plot involving the American President (Ronny Cox).
Let's face it, the only reason The Crow (1994) was ever a marginal hit at the box office is because of the death cult surrounding Brandon Lee's untimely death. The film itself was okay but certainly not deserving of a sequel. Yet in 1996, The Crow: City of Angels limped into theaters and was quietly beaten in the back of many a late show viewing like a card shark owing money.
Vincent Perez thanklessly takes over the Crow moniker, this time as formerly dispatched father Ashe Corven. The Crow avenges his own murder and that of his son against a local city kingpin (Richard Brooks) and his partner Curve (Iggy Pop who makes a second appearance on this list). Returning character (but not returning actress) Sarah (Mia Kirshner) is the only link between the two movies and fills us in on the legend of the Crow and other unnecessary exposition.
5. The Spirit (2008)
The Spirit...good lord The Spirit; talk about an irredeemable mess of a film. Made with the sole intention of cashing in on the Frank Miller led success of Sin City (2005), The Spirit is an ugly, sophomoric and downright bizarre answer to the question what would Samuel L. Jackson do for a paycheck. Based on a long-running newsprint comic turned pulpy graphic novel, The Spirit is actually a masked vigilante who seems to be in a constant battle with The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) for the heart of Central City. There's a story about a stolen serum, some garbled garbage involving a bevy of femme fatales and various on-the-nose references to Greek mythology.
As for the Spirit, Gabriel Macht, previously known for his performance as "the guy that died first" in Behind Enemy Lines (2001) is easily the most bland graphic novel hero ever committed to film. The man is but a wisp in comparison to Samuel L. Jackson who goes full diva complete with a constantly changing wardrobe that includes the level subtlety of a Nazi SS uniform.
It's all pretty standard as far as cloying movies go but what sets it apart is the drab set design, fanatically over-the-top performances and ludicrously thin noir pastiche job. It's as if the makers of this film were trying to meld divergent parts of The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Tom and Jerry (1940-1958) without bothering to capture the spirit of either. Grotesque, confusing and garish, the film story-wise is just bland and forgettable.
Before superhero films became guaranteed box office successes; before they became the huge monoliths of mass media; before they were considered the zenith of popular culture, so many of them varied widely in quality, thus failing to gain traction. The only 90's exception to the rule was Batman, the masked vigilante that prowled the streets of Gotham. In the early nineties, noted filmmaker Tim Burton took a stab at the property, changing the campy aesthetic of the 60's TV series into something a little more contemporary, darker and a little more brooding. Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) still stand as bastions of the era despite their dated special effects. Then, in 1995 something went terribly wrong.
Batman & Robin concerns Batman (now played by George Cloney) and Robin's (Chris O'Donnell) quest to track down and stop Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) from being a singularly obnoxious ne'er-do-well. Meanwhile in South America, Dr. Pamela Isley (Uma Thurman) experiments with a strength serum which turns people into super-soldiers. Something goes horribly wrong, turning her and a diminutive prisoner into Poison Ivy and Bane (Robert Swenson) respectively. They make their way to Gotham, team up with Mr. Freeze and plan to destroy the world to create a botanical utopia.
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| ...Also Bat-nips... |
So with all that said, what's even more inept and crude than the famously horrible Batman & Robin? Can it truly it truly get worse? Oh my yes. While all the films listed above are awful, if pressed I would watch them again. Not so much for the bottom three films on this list. I would rather put a razor to my tongue than have to live through these films ever again. These films include:
If ever there was a more hated comic book adaptation than this Halle Berry helm mess, please point it out to me. And there are a truckload of reasons why this movie is considered such an abysmal flick. Let's first start with the story which is not only idiotic and lazily rendered but takes nothing from the source character. Catwoman has been around since the 1940's, building a long and detailed history of which there is a lot to choose from. So when Warner Bros. decided to green light the film, they subsequently threw all that out the window and replaced it with a plot that resembles The Devil Wears Prada (2006) mixed with Monkey Business (1952). Though, don't worry there's some Egyptian cat God mumbo-jumbo wedged in to make the action make cursory sense.
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| Yup, that's what you want to wear when you're fighting crime! |
Let's assume you know nothing about Catwoman and thus don't care that the story of the film is almost offensively derivative from the source material. The film is still a jumbled mess of overt plot holes, conspicuously broad characterizations and a particularly fearless performance from Halle Berry who doesn't quite yet know she's about to be put down. Her performance is so emotionally invested in the story and physically over-the-top that you can't help but feel bad for her. Truly, this film is a disaster for all involved.
2. The Pumaman (1980)
Thousands of years in the past, an alien visits Earth and becomes a God to the reverent Aztecs. The alien then fathers a son with cat-like reflexes and (inexplicably) the ability to fly. We then fast-forward to modern times where an Aztec ceremonial mask has been unearthed and allows the wearer mind-control abilities. Dr. Kobras (Donald Pleasence) wants to use the mask for evil purposes and wears it to create an army of mindless slaves. The only man who can stop him is Pumaman, the son of the original Aztec God now disguised as a mild-mannered paleontologist named Tony (Wlater George Alton).
The Pumaman is a low-budget Italian action fantasy that quite frankly has no reason to exist. It's dubious production value, phoned-in acting and unfathomable storytelling leads one to believe that the film may have been created as a money-laundering scheme of some kind. Such ludicrous examples of filmmaking laziness includes using Greek ruins as an Aztec temple and hoping no one would notice, the villains inexplicable plan to flush out Pumaman by throwing random men off of constructions sites and extended flying sequences that likely inspired Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010).
What's worse is, despite some inspired moments of sheer filmmaking stupidity, the film is ultimately too boring to even recommend as Z-grade midnight screening fodder. There's nothing tethering the separate, unequal parts of this film to a larger whole. It's all so put together at the last minute and too ugly to really look at for too long. In the words of one of the supporting characters, "You are the worst I have ever seen, but you are the Pumaman."
1. The Wild World of Batwoman (1966)
The film stars Katherine Victor as the titular Batwoman, a bubbly crime-fighter who teams up with a gaggle of fellow batwomen dressed in elaborate costumes. The plot (if you could call it that) revolves around the batwomen trying to track down a plutonium powered espionage device that's being sold to Batwoman's arch-enemy Rat Fink (Richard Banks). In reality, the film largely takes place on one dingy back-lot with the costumed women trying and failing to battle a host of barely discernible baddies.
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| Hurray for the 60's! |
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