Twin Dragon Encounter (1986)

Oh, man, where to begin? Martin and Michael McNamara are twins and founders of the real-life Twin Dragons Kung Fu Club. Despite looking like a godforsaken mix of Yanni, Chuck Norris, Robert Reed, Kenny Loggins, Geraldo Rivera and that guy who played Matt Houston, they decided they needed to be in the movies. But because there’s no market for goofy-looking Canadian boneheads who do karate, they had to make their own. One of them is Twin Dragon Encounter — a too-close Encounter of the unkind.

The brothers basically play themselves (which makes me feel sorry for anyone who has to live and/or interact with them) and they’re quite full of themselves, as an opening credit crawl informs us that they are “the country’s most renowned martial artists,” yet every Canadian I’ve asked has never heard of them. Cue the pure-‘80s hair-rock theme song (“Fight for Your Right to Fight,” by one Billy Butt) and montage of shirtless men exercising and hitting each other playfully like kittens.

After this brutal, near-endless workout, the brothers pack their identical vans to go “on holiday” with their nondescript rail-thin girlfriends, whom they delight in kicking around and putting down at every opportunity. Following several insufferable driving sequences, they finally arrive at “Twin Island,” the boys’ own slice o’ paradise on the lake. At the dock, however, they’re immediately menaced by a gang of “weekend warriors,” whom they take down in a ridiculous slow-motion fight.

These bad guys — led by a cigar-chomping near-albino with huge facial pores and a Mohawk — vow revenge and spend the weekend plotting to harass the McNamaras, who are too busy sawing and chopping firewood in the middle of summer and ignoring their beards to notice. But when the bad guys bust in their cabin and take the girls, the twins plot revenge. One has to question their motives, as when they enter their dishelveled cabin, the first thing they say is a panicked “Our poster’s gone!” Girls schmirls!

These McNamara boys fail cinematically, so I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to watch anything they produce. —Rod Lott

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Lipstick (1976)

How can you tell Lipstick was made in the ’70s? Two out of the three credited experts are male. Back then, you could make a movie about rape and still barely consider the female point of view. This probably explains why it’s best remembered today as a lurid melodrama, and not the call to social action some of those involved clearly wanted it to be.

In the film, Margaux Hemingway plays a model whose life is torn apart when she is raped by a psychotic music teacher (Chris Sarandon). When the jury buys his lawyer’s argument that she was asking for it by having a vagina, she is suddenly unemployable and ready to leave town after her last photo shoot.

Tragically, however, Sarandon is in the same building as the shoot and decides to attack Margaux’s adolescent sister (her real-life sibling, Mariel). Knowing the law isn’t on her side, Margaux decides to grab a shotgun and ensure Sarandon never hurts anyone else ever again (by shooting him in the balls).

Lipstick ends with the jury exonerating Margaux via an obviously last-minute voiceover. Apparently, the irony that she might go to prison after her attacker was freed was too much for audiences to take, and the producers decided to go with a happier ending. This irony might have gone a long way toward justifying the film’s long middle stretch of interminable courtroom scenes, but we’ll never know. Instead, the end result is a mostly terrible movie with a handful of effectively gripping scenes that can only be recommended to die-hard fans of the rape-revenge genre. —Allan Mott

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Out Cold (2001)

I fear Out Cold was made just because some Hollywood exec read an article about how “the kids dig snowboarding.” Even worse, I fear that somewhere, out there, one of those snowboarding kids thinks Out Cold is, like, “the funniest fuckin’ movie ever made, brah.”

It’s certainly one of the stupidest, making Extreme Ops look like high art. Destroying the last shred of credibility he had left from Dazed and Confused, Jason London stars as ski resort worker in Alaska. He has a perpetually stoned look, a ridiculous soul patch (redundant) and a torch in his heart for some girl he balled on spring break. London and his friends — any of whom, Zach Galifianakis excepted, could be played by Ashton Kutcher — treat work like a playground and play pranks on each other, like salting up one passed-out guy’s penis so that he can awake to getting blown by a polar bear.

Enter Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors, now with a marquee value of about six cents (give or take). He’s the stereotypical evil rich guy who wants to buy the resort and turn it into a highly commercial tourist attraction. But the boys aren’t going to stand for that! No, they’re going to tell him off, destroy his property, shred powder, smoke weed, listen to Sum 41 and poop in a cup intended for a urine sample! Kids be so slammin’!

I hated everyone in this movie, except maybe Playboy Playmate Victoria Silvstedt. Every ski movie must have a Playmate, but I ended up not liking her either, because she never gets naked. Why? This is a teen comedy set at a ski resort. Have we learned nothing from Hot Dog?

The best part of the movie is the footage during the end credits, where many cast members are shown wiping out violently in the snow. I hope many ribs and hips were fractured. —Rod Lott

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How to Make a Monster (2001)

In 1994, writer/director George Huang turned his experience working as an executive assistant in Hollywood into the excellent dark comedy Swimming With Sharks, and it seemed like he was well on his way to bigger and better things. Unfortunately, his teen comedy follow-up, Trojan War, went straight to video, and it was all he could do to get a gig remaking a 1958 AIP flick for Showtime’s short-lived Creature Features film series.

Assigned with How to Make a Monster, he completely jettisoned the original’s plot, instead telling the tale of a group of video game programmers who end up being stalked by their own virtual monster.

Deliberately cartoony, the movie makes no attempt at all to depict the authentic realities of game production, which wouldn’t be a problem if Huang hadn’t decided to rip himself off and use the film to re-tell the same story he told in his first and much, much, much better picture. By the time Monster ends with a newly jaded Clea DuVall (in the Frank Whaley role) schooling a new intern in the cold, cruel realities of the world, it becomes agonizingly clear that by his third film, Huang had already shot his entire creative wad, leaving him with nothing else to say.

That said, the movie isn’t a complete waste of time, assuming you’re a fan of B-movie bombshell Julie Strain, who gifts the picture with a completely gratuitous nude scene (that you can probably find somewhere online). —Allan Mott

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Death Race 2 (2011)

How did that metal-masked Frankenstein become Frankenstein? Where’d he get that modified Ford Mustang? How did the high-octane event even start? Did they find Joan Allen through LinkedIn or something? Odds are, you weren’t even asking such things at the end of 2008’s Death Race remake, but Death Race 2 arrives to answer them anyway. Despite the numeral, it’s a prequel. It’s also near its equal.

On the aptly named Terminal Island reside hardened felons in a near-future prison run not by the state, but a corporation. Yeah, yeah, same as before, but this movie isn’t just the same ol’ thing. Before the prison’s sultry PR queen (Lauren Cohan of TV’s Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries) invents the Death Race, she garners huge TV ratings by having the prisoners engage in bare-knuckle, life-or-death, gladiatorial-style games, in which pathway access to lethal weapons is triggered by ground sensors.

She proposes “a race: wicked, epic,” which begets the Death Race we all know and love. One of its instant superstars is Terminal Island’s newest residents, Carl Lucas (Luke Goss of Hellboy II), thanks to an ill-fated bank robbery-cum-cop murder spree. Other participants include Danny Trejo (Machete), Robin Shou (Mortal Kombat) and a hillbilly (mountain rape).

If you weren’t told this was a direct-to-DVD effort, you wouldn’t know it. Taking the reins from Paul W.S. Anderson (who contributed the story), director Roel Reiné (The Lost Tribe) keeps the proceedings consistent in look, tone and feel — i.e. big, dumb and wonderfully violent — and the film ends precisely where Anderson’s began. Goss is more Desmond Harrington than Jason Statham, but he’s a good anchor for the flick, even if he keeps his pants on while humping his driving partner (Tanit Phoenix, Lost Boys: The Thirst). If you liked the first one, schedule some room for some more vroom-vroom. —Rod Lott

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