Podcast: The House by the Cemetery (1981)

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Your Stupid Minds takes advantage of the Criterion Channel doing our curation for us by choosing a spook-em-up in its 80s horror series: another Lucio Fulci movie, it’s 1981’s The House by the Cemetery!

Dr. Norman Boyle (played by the incredibly Italian Paolo Malco) his wife Lucy (Catriona MacColl) and their cherubic, etherial son Bob (Giovanni Frezza) move temporarily into a creepy New England house so the dad can do research or something.

Over time it turns out this creepy house is, like, really creepy. Bob is clued in by another cherubic, etherial child Mae (Silvia Collatina) warning him against going to the house. A series of gruesome, Fulci-style murders later (not counting the one in the cold open that has nothing to do with anything), and Norman is determined to save his family from this malevolent force.

Some Notes:

• Available on the Criterion Channel.
• See our last episode on Fulci, City of the Living Dead.

Podcast: The Astrologer (1976)

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Your Stupid Minds releases a bonus second episode in two weeks to make up for being a week late last week. In any case, now we’re caught up. This time around we review a movie that was basically lost until 2013 when it turned up in a batch of 1,000 pornographic 35mm prints donated to the American Genre Film Archive. It’s 1976’s (or 1975, depending on who you ask) The Astrologer!

Alexander (played by writer, director, and producer Craig Denney) is a con man at a carnival who goes to Kenya to steal some diamonds with an oil baron and his wife. He gets captured and imprisoned (possibly more than once, it isn’t clear), gets out and steals some cursed diamonds.

Eventually he’s able to sell them in Tahiti and heads back to Southern California to find his fortune the traditional way: by starting an entertainment empire of a hit movie and six hit television shows all about astrology. Everything starts to unravel eventually and it ends with a quote from King Lear. Also starring Denney’s cousin Darrien Earle (named Darrien in the movie), who was also Lee Iacocca’s third wife.

Some Notes:

• This movie never got a home release because it has a number of unlicensed music (mostly from the Moody Blues) they never got the rights to. And also because the movie is really bad. Paramount took it down from YouTube, but it's on archive.org for the time being. 
• I could provide an avalanche of trivia in this section, but you'd be better off reading the history of this film on Paste and Matchbox Cine. These are some excellent write-ups for this truly bizarre piece of vanity outsider art.
• Not to be confused with James Glickenhaus's The Astrologer, the also low budget movie released around the same time.
• Watch the purely insane dinner scene and tell me you don't want to watch this.

Podcast: Geostorm (2017)

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It's time to Geostorm! After a one-week delay, we're back covering one of the worst movies about a global weather controlling satellite network of 2017, it's Geostorm, directed by frequent Roland Emmerich collaborator Dean Devlin.

Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) is a world famous satellite designer who is the creator of Dutch Boy, a satellite network tasked with controlling the weather to combat the ravages of climate change. His bad boy ways cause him to get kicked off the project, and his brother Max (Jim Sturgess) is put in charge.

But, Dutch Boy causes series of freak weather occurrences so Max asks his brother to go up to the International Space Station to investigate. It turns out these aren't glitches, but something more sinister. Also starring Andy Garcia as President Andrew Palma, Ed Harris as Secretary of State Leonard Dekkom who is definitely not the bad guy, and Abbie Cornish as Secret Service Agent Sarah Wilson.

Podcast: Dracula Untold (2014)

Your Stupid Minds covers one of the many movies leaving HBO Max at the end of the month in the platform’s effort pre-merger to make their streaming service really bad! This one isn't a huge loss though. It’s 2014’s Dracula Untold!

Vlad Drăculea (Luke Evans) is Prince of Wallachia and Transylvania and mostly a good dad and leader, despite some light impaling he’s done in the past. Sultan Mehmed II is leader of the Ottoman Empire and eyeing his territory, and also wants to take his son Ingeras (Art Parkinson) as a Janissary, so Vlad meets up with a disgusting vampire he met in a cave (Charles Dance) and strikes a deal with him to borrow his vampire powers for three days so he can kill the entire Turkish army and turn back into a human so long as he doesn’t feed.

Vlad’s wife Mierna (Sarah Gadon) is a little peeved he didn’t talk to her first, but eventually is okay with it and he tears through the Turkish army with his bat powers. Can he resist temptation and return to human form, or will he become a vampire forever? Obviously the latter, since Dracula is, like, a thing. So no mystery there.

YSM Classics: Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987)

 

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In honor of Nick being in Hawaii this week, we're doing another YSM Classics with our May 30, 2016 episode Hard Ticket to Hawaii.

If you want to read the original show notes, you can go to the original post. Aloha!

Podcast: Heavenly Sword (2014)

 

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Blockade Entertainment went to Sony with a dream. “What if,” they said, “we took one of your lesser PS3 exclusive games and used old existing game assets to make a big budget movie?” Sony said “let’s do it!” and fished around in their couch cushions for enough money to slap this together on the cheap using a third string Korean animation studio. What we have is 2014’s Heavenly Sword, based on the 2007 game that no one remembered even at the time.

Nariko (Anna Torv) is an orphan part of a nomadic group of warriors tasked with protecting the “Heavenly Sword,” a powerful sword that is magic or something. But evil King Bohan (Alfred Molina, NOT Andy Serkis as IMDb claims. Serkis voiced him in the game) has made a pact with the Raven God and wants the sword to do evil things.

Bohan attacks the group’s base (I thought they were nomadic?) and Nariko is tasked with finding her long lost brother Loki (Thomas Jane), who is the chosen one and can use Heavenly Sword powers to defeat Bohan. Nariko goes on her quest with Kai (Ashleigh Ball) a violent little girl who turns out to be her sister. Also it turns out her dad is the group’s leader Master Shen (Nolan North) who hates girls.

Podcast: Skinner (1993)

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After some heavy material about kids in King Arthur’s court and 3 ninjas, we decided on a lighter fare this time. What about a serial killer who kills and skins people? And also his actual name is Skinner? It’s 1993’s Skinner, directed by Ivan Navy.

Dennis Skinner (Ted Raimi) is a mind-mannered nerd renting a room out to innocent housewife Kerry (Ricki Lake). But he has a horrible secret he’s barely able to maintain: he’s a serial killer who skins his victims and wears their skin. His name is Skinner.

Heidi (Traci Lords) is one of his previous victims who’s been hunting him down for five years, which mainly consists of her shooting up old timey 19th century opioids and then following Skinner to a river and mumbling about how much she hates him.

There’s also Kerry’s jerk husband Geoff (David Warshofsky) and a sleazy flop house owner Eddie (Richard Schiff). Will Heidi kill the killer before he strikes again? If she does, will we the audience even see it since this movie is shot and lit horribly? You’ll just have to watch to find out! Also, please don’t watch this.