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!
The People That Time Forgot (1977)
Following 1975’s hit Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation of The Land That Time Forgot, the sequel, The People That Time Forgot, is markedly better, with more action, more adventure, more dinosaurs and the added bonus of snakes, spiders and genuine cavegirl jiggle! Also based on a Burroughs work, it opens with an expedition headed to the land that time forgot in order to save Doug McClure’s ass. Heading up the search party is his pal, Patrick Wayne (son of John Wayne, and star of Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger), and Superman II’s Sarah Douglas is a photographer along for the ride.
They enter the land not via sub, but biplane, which is immediately attacked by a pterodactyl. After landing, Douglas plays a cruel trick on Wayne that’ll leave you hoping the bitch gets eaten first. Then, in the jungle, they meet a curvy cavegirl (Dana Gillespie, Hammer’s The Lost Continent) whose outfit tests the bounds of the PG rating. Among all of The People That Time Forgot, hers is the cleavage I’ll never forget.
Soon they stumble upon McClure, pulling a Chuck Heston-style cameo in a subplot with a distinct Planet of the Apes vibe, as our heroes are menaced by an army of masked missing links with swords on horseback and who live in a mountaintop cave shaped like a giant skull.
Yeah, it ends with another run-from-the-lava finale, but People isn’t the same movie as Land. With very little setup required, it sprints through 90 minutes with imagination, fun and chest-baring eye candy. —Rod Lott
I Eat Your Skin (1971)
A real ladies’ man of an author (William Joyce) is convinced by his publisher to hop a flight from Miami to the Caribbean isle of Voodoo, because he thinks the stories of human sacrifices there might make good research for a rip-roarin’ adventure novel. Our writer is not convinced, however, until he hears of the island’s 5-to-1 girl-guy ratio, and he’s all, like, “Homina homina homina!”
Armed with a litany of sleazy pick-up lines (ranging from “What part of heaven did you fly out from?” to the less subtle “We’ve got some dictation to do!”), he soon scores with a blonde bombshell (Heather Hewitt), whose father is a scientist who feeds radiated snake venom to natives, turning them into crusty-faced, bug-eyed zombies. Although our hero quickly dispatches one with a tiki torch to the face, a random Mexican isn’t so lucky, losing his head to a zombie-slung machete.
I Eat Your Skin was directed by Del Tenney, the guy who gave us the legendarily awful Horror of Party Beach, and it shows. You get to see a tube shoved down the throat of a live snake, and when an alarm goes off, you also get to hear someone saying “Whoop!” repeatedly on the soundtrack. Certainly a cheapie like this can’t be scary, but it’s definitely charming in its own Playboy After Dark meets Revolt of the Zombies kinda way. —Rod Lott
Duel of the Brave Ones (1980)
Duel of the Brave Ones refers to two rival street gangs duking it out while a police sergeant searches for a missing piece of jade. Sounds serious, but it’s not; just how serious can you take a gang in which one member wears a shirt with all the colors of Mork from Ork’s suspenders and another one’s T reads, unthreateningly, “Sail”?
I never could tell exactly who was on whose side, but it didn’t hamper my enjoyment, especially when one fight involved a crate of oranges, an overweight bra vendor and music destined for inclusion on a NOW That’s What I Call Kooky compilation disc. (Later fights are all about flower pots, sawhorses and barbecue grilling accessories, with the end brawl taking place on a moving public bus.)
Duel is also noted for a large amount of nudity — and not just any nudity, mind you, but nudity with uncharacteristically large breasts for an Asian film. There’s about a 30-minute stretch where five minutes don’t go by without some woman either taking her clothes off or getting them ripped off. I especially enjoyed the sex scene intercut with some random guy riding a carousel. One gag has a comically cross-eyed janitor believing a woman has four boobs, and as he continues to watch her copulate, he penetrates his mouth with his own finger. Because he can.
I love the broken-English box copy on the DVD I have in hand — one that misspells Duel as Dual — even if it seems to describe a different movie: “These fighters pray for victory from the God of War, but who is the best? Their fists and kicks will decide. You are getting action on the Master Level!!” Do not argue with two exclamation points, because you will never win. —Rod Lott
Exorcist: The Beginning (2004)
Few films have had such a long and troubled history as Exorcist: The Beginning, the fourth (or technically, fifth) film in the not-so-lucrative franchise. The Reader’s Digest version: Execs so hated Paul Schrader’s cut, that rather than salvage it in editing, they opted to start from scratch with a whole new script and cast. For this, they logically hired Renny Harlin, because apparently, making two movies with Sly Stallone (Cliffhanger and Driven) qualifies you as the go-to guy for psychological horror. And the end result? Not as interesting as that explanation. Mind you, this prequel is not a hoot-and-holler laughfest that was Exorcist II: The Heretic. But neither is it the woefully underrated thriller that is Exorcist III.
Stellan Skarsgård (The Avengers) stars as Father Merrin (Max von Sydow’s character from the 1973 original), in a story about his first face-to-face showdown with the devil. It’s the 1940s, and following a test of faith which he feels he’s failed, he’s no longer a man of the cloth, but a freelance archaeologist. He’s hired to go to East Africa to locate a valuable artifact, being the demon Pazuzu. While there, he finds a Catholic church buried beneath the sand that’s not on any historical record of the Vatican. And buried beneath that? An evil cave!
That’s when all the CGI creatures start attacking. Sadly, Harlin’s idea of a scare is to suddenly make one of these — a crow, a bat, a fly — suddenly appear, accompanied by a loud musical cue. It’ll make you jump all right, but only because your ears have been rendered deaf. A pack of hyenas get the most screen time, but unfortunately, they look as fake as the dog in the Scooby-Doo live-action movies. Just as forced is Merrin’s burgeoning romance with the village’s hottie doctor, played by Izabella Scorupco (GoldenEye). Having forsaken the almighty, Merrin makes a valiant pass for her pants. But no sooner have they locked lips when the bed of a sleeping kid mere feet away suddenly jumps across the floor and shakes violently. Lemme tell you, it’s an erection killer.
I was really only intrigued by the finale, which has Merrin regaining his Jesus powers and using them against a supporting character who’s all Sataned out, looking not coincidentally like Linda Blair’s possessed Regan. But that’s, what, 10 minutes out of nearly two hours? Granted, a few more scenes keep The Beginning from being a total loss:
• Lucifer snaps the bones of various local tribesmen attempting some voodoo-magic exorcism.
• A villager gives birth to a bloody baby covered in live maggots.
• Izabella takes a shower and you see half a booby. —Rod Lott