DEAD HEAT, 1988
Starring Joe Piscopo, Treat Williams
PLOT:
Detectives Doug Bigelow (Piscopo) and Roger Mortis (Williams) fight a crime spree perpetrated by an army of indestructible zombies reanimated in some contraption called the "Resurrection Machine" by a mad scientist hell bent on money, power and immortality. After Mortis is killed in the line of duty, his partner desperately tosses him into the machine, transforming him into an unstoppable zombie cop, thus evening the playing field for an epic zombie take down.
MY TAKE:
It's Evil Dead meets Lethal Weapon. It's also a vile, reeking pile of shit. If anyone ever needed an explanation for how the mere utterance of the name Piscopo became a universal punch line, they need look no further than this film. The man was clearly intended as the comic foil to Williams' stoic zombie cop character, yet he doesn't say or do one funny thing in the whole film. Not one. Instead he spends the film standing around with an "I just farted" smirk on his face while tossing out one poorly written throw-away joke after another. Still, there's an oddly satisfying joy to watching a man commit career suicide right in front of your eyes. And while Piscopo lulls us into suicidal thoughts with his un-funniness, Treat Williams slowly rots while shooting at things. Keep your eyes out for appearances by Vincent Price(?!!!), Darren McGavin, and Robert Picardo (the hologram doctor from Star Trek: Voyager)
TROLL 2, 1990
Starring a bunch of random people plucked off the street
PLOT:
In the first example of such a practice that I've ever heard of, a family agrees to a house swap vacation with a hillbilly family out in the sticks. Once settled in on their country vacation in the quaint town of Nilbog (read it backwards), the family falls prey to a mystical conspiracy rife with vegetarian goblins (but oddly no trolls) and other weird shit. Thanks to some sage guidance from the ghost of his recently deceased grandfather, son Joshua is on to the malevolent machinations of the goblins, who aim to turn people into plants so that they can eat them.
MY TAKE:
Some have called this the Citizen Kane of bad movies. I would have to concur. The vid embed below can sum the whole debacle up way better than I ever could.
SLEEPAWAY CAMP, 1983
Starring A bunch of aggro guido kids from Jersey
PLOT:
Rendered extremely shy and near mute after a traumatic childhood tragedy, young and fragile Angela attends summer camp along with her protective cousin, Ricky only to fall prey to the cruel taunts of her fellow campers and the pedophillic advances of the camp cook. Soon, anyone guilty of crossing Angela winds up dead. Are Angela and Ricky exacting revenge on their camp enemies or is there a far more insidious culprit on the loose?
MY TAKE:
While many have written Sleepaway Camp off as a the poor man's Friday The 13th, I can't really see where the comparison comes from. Apart from the two films being about people getting chopped up at summer camps, the similarities end there. So while you don't get any brutish, masked madmen, you do get a bunch of angry guido kids who can't act as well as a meat head camp counselor with an affinity for wearing extremely tight shorts. Much like Troll 2, I feel like they cast this film by pulling into a mall parking lot in a flat bed truck with a sign on it that read: WANNA BE IN A MOVIE? GET IN THE TRUCK! Hilariously bad acting aside, the other part of this flick that makes it worth checking out is the ending, which is one of the most batshit-crazy conclusions that I've ever seen committed to celluloid. Trust me on this one - you NEED to see this ending. If The Sopranos ended like Sleepaway Camp, I guarantee that nobody would've complained.
