Can you guess what movie or TV show we’re watching? We’ve turned on subtitles (when available) not to give you a clue, but to enhance that WTF effect! Leave your best guess in the comments to prove your true Flick Attackosity!
All posts by Rod Lott
The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption (2012)
Call me old-fashioned, but I remember the days when a Scorpion King movie showed live scorpions. No such luck in The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption, so director Roel Reiné (Death Race 2) offers something new in exchange: a scene in which a fat sidekick named Olaf pees into the river, out of which pops — in slow-motion, mind you — a ninja who kicks him in the testes mid-stream.
The Mummy spin-off series now numbers as many flicks as its source material, to the point where no connection between the two can be felt. Like 2008’s The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior, this one was made for the direct-to-DVD market, but so awful are these franchise-bleeding efforts that I find them awfully fun. Where else can you find elephants, hair extensions and MMA fighter Kimbo Slice all in one spot?
This Mathayus (Sands of Oblivion‘s Victor Webster, taking over from Michael Copon, who took over from The Rock), looking not unlike John Travolta in Battlefield Earth, travels with the aforementioned Olaf (Bostin Christopher, Otis), who loudly belches four times as they seek the Book of the Dead. Oh, that ol’ thing?
Reiné turns this bungle in the jungle (and occasional CGI dunes) into a slick, but sitcomy entry in the sword-and-sorcery genre, flush with anachronistic punch lines like “Well, I’ll be dipped in donkey dung!” However simplistic the Thai-lensed prequel sequel is, one element struck me as particularly difficult: whether Ron Perlman or Billy Zane loses more credibility here. Perlman’s basically playing the same long-haired goof as he did in the Conan the Barbarian reboot, but Zane’s king offers that he has “palace monkeys to wipe my bottom,” prompting a mental image I can’t unsee, so advantage: Zane. His brand of acting — dubbed “bowel-movement face” — would take that cake every time. —Rod Lott
Skyjacked (1972)
In what is not officially an Airport sequel, but let’s not kid ourselves, because it may as well be, a Boeing 707 commercial jet en route to Minneapolis encounters some turbulence — in the form of James Brolin as a whacked-out Vietnam vet, mind you. Unbeknownst to the crew until Susan Dey happens upon it, Brolin’s character scrawls a message in lipstick on the lavatory mirror that states a bomb is on the plane and demands the flight be diverted to Anchorage, pronto.
When this is not done right away, said message is passed on to sexy stew Yvette Mimieux via napkin. Then the crew’s all like, “Holy shit, a paper product? This guy must be for real.” Directed by master of disaster John Guillermin (The Towering Inferno, 1976’s King Kong), Skyjacked stars Charlton Heston as the clenched-teeth hero pilot, Capt. Hank O’Hara, who you know isn’t gonna take this crap. On the ground, Claude Akins tries to help: “Trust your soul to God, captain, because your ass belongs to me.” (I don’t think he was making a pass, but with Sheriff Lobo, you never know.)
As was de rigueur for the all-star disaster genre, this one’s rife with subplots, such as Mariette Hartley about to give birth, or Walter Pidgeon’s senator trying not to appear like an out-of-touch D.C. asshole by rapping with Rosey Grier about such alien concepts as “rock” and “jazz.”
Both as engaging and lasting as a complimentary package of dry-roasted peanuts, Skyjacked clearly comes from a different era. The clear giveaways include:
• The token black guy’s name? Why, Mr. Brown, of course.
• Heston smokes a pipe in the cockpit.
• When the plane’s passengers board, they look relaxed and prepped for fun. —Rod Lott
Three… Extremes (2004)
Three brand-name directors from Asia each tell a story in Three… Extremes, an anthology as odd as its title’s punctuation. It begins with “Dumplings,” by Fruit Chan (Don’t Look Up), in which an aging actress (Miriam Yeung) eats dumplings prepared by Bai Ling (Crank: High Voltage) that reverse the ravages of time on one’s skin. The secret? High-gluten flour. Oh, and finely chopped aborted babies.
Next up, “Cut,” a movie-set piece about an actor (Won-hie Lim) taking revenge on his director (Byung-hun Lee, I Saw the Devil) by Park Chan-wook. Although it gets points for injections of black comedy that actually work, “Cut” isn’t as strong a tale as one would expect, coming from the man who made the bee’s knees of all vengeance pictures, Oldboy.
In fact, given the level of directorial talent involved, this entire project should be better than it is. Visually, it’s superb across the board, but when I see the word “extreme,” I don’t think “tone poems,” which is really what I’d peg the final story as. Directed by Takashi Miike (Audition), “The Box” illustrates why it’s not nice to lock a human being into one. The segment drags. Actually, they all do — at roughly 40 minutes, each is too long.
Not so strangely, a sequel exists, 3 Extremes II. Strangely, it actually predates this one by a couple of years. They do things differently on the other side of the world. Like boiling fetuses with cabbage, which Chan needlessly expanded into a full feature all its own, Dumplings, later that year. —Rod Lott
The Flesh Eaters (1964)
Decades before the flesh-eating virus jumped from science fiction to science fact, there was The Flesh Eaters, the only film from director Jack Curtis (better known as the voice of Speed Racer‘s Pops) and screenwriter Arnold Drake (better known as the DC Comics creator of Deadman and Doom Patrol).
In the prologue, a guy toys with woman by tearing off her bikini top, for which he’s punished by succumbing to flesh eaters of the title. But it’s really about a for-hire pilot (Byron Sanders) whose plane and passengers become stranded on an unprotected island. Their first night marooned, he tells his fare — an alcoholic actress (Rita Morley) and her comely assistant (Barbara Wilkin, who looks fantastic in a bra) — “I can assure you, we are in for a good pounding.”
And how! Their horrors begins by finding a whole human skeleton on the beach, grasping that aforementioned bikini top. Then there’s the glowing fish bones. It’s all due to the “silver stuff” in the water that results in some nifty, surprisingly gory effects on the skin it touches. A beatnik (Ray Tudor) wearing rope sandals doesn’t heed their warnings at first: “Where’s the love, Max? Don’t tell me about that ugly jazz!”
If you think the Nazis may have something to do with it, apply now for your Flick Attack gold star! The person behind it all explains as much when he contracts diarrhea of the mouth. The movie’s 87 minutes spew just as quickly, and the sicko in me wishes the thing were in bloody color. —Rod Lott