MSTable movies: H

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HARD BOUNTY (1995) Sunset Films International/Workin' Man Films
I have written papers on westerns, so I couldn't tear myself away from this celluloid enema as much as I wanted to. And believe me, I wanted to quite badly.

I knew I was in for Deep Hurting when I saw McCoy as a Texas Ranger (on the other hand, it wasn't a surprise to see Kelly Le Brock portraying a madam). It really turned up a notch when I saw him rapidly fire seven shots from his revolver without the benefit of reloading. In fact, no one runs out of ammunition until the climax of the movie.

The film revolves around McCoy struggling to emulate a Western accent by speaking around the butt of a cigar, and Le Brock (and her "employees") strutting around in lingerie that is more than seventy years ahead of its time. In fact, the entire wardrobe seems to have been compiled from the cast's real-life closets. Throw in the inability of the writers to focus on a single plot (Unforgiven, Bad Girls, it's all the same!), and you've got a decent (albeit vulgar) MST party.

Phil Lauderdale, number6@comland.com
HARD TARGET (1993) Universal Pictures/Alphaville Films/Renaissance Films
Starring (who else?) Jean-Claude Van Damme. This movie opens with a guy being hunted by another guy using a "gun" which looks a lot ike an M-16, but which fires arrows. (??) The premise is that there is this organization which, for an ungodly amount of money, sets it up so that really rich guys can hunt "the ultimate game", man himself. Van Damme is a drifter with oily hair and a trench coat who, with the help of a bimbo trying to find someone killed in this game, is somehow sucked into it himself. This is not actually a bad idea for a movie, but several things put this movie into the catagory of "so bad I laughed that I might not cry". Chief among these: (1)- Van Damme STANDING on a motorcycle going down the highway, without his hands either on the throttle or even the handlebars, while firing a gun at a van coming straight at him, crashing the bike into the van while vaulting over it and landing on his feet, never mind that he was going fity miles per hour.

(2)- The ridiculous "Western" music that permeates this movie, even though the only scenes which don't happen in a city are at a waterfront or in the Louisiana bayou. (This movies' version of the "bayou" looks a lot like someones overgrown back yard.)

(3)- Wilford Brimley, period, but also because he is wearing Rambo gear and firing a bow and arrow.

The big final showdown takes place in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere filled with what I suppose to be old Mardi Gras floats. This movie, like virtually any of Van Damme's, exhibits what I call the "stone kidney" syndrome. This is where people are kicked and punched so much that the only way that they would ever survive is if their internal organs were made of stone, but all they are doing is bleeding a little from the lip. I personally feel that Van Damme deserves some kind of commendation for being in a dud like this. Here is an actor who truly doesn't need respect from his professional community, because he sure won't get any from anyone who's seen this.

Chris Pollock, c-pollock@onu.edu

Rebuttal

HAWK THE SLAYER (1980) ITC Films/ Marcel/Robertson Productions Limited
A fantasy flick, good brother and evil brother in a war for control of the kingdom sort of thing. Jack Palance plays the evil brother; his acting skills shine compared to the rest of the cast. The good brother looks vaguely like a young Harrison Ford, except no one's told him he's allowed to have facial expressions. The good brother gathers a bunch of friends with different fighting skills, yadda yadda yadda. I think there's a woman being fought over at some point too. A three-bottle movie if I ever saw one.

Best line: (Jack Palance) "Your death will be slow and painful! Like your friend's!"
(Or "friends", I'm not sure which.)

Louann Miller, louannm@post.cis.smu.edu

It simply has to be added that this film features a mysterious mystical magical super guy named... Crow! That alone should be reason to MiST this film.

Demian Katz, katz@netaxs.com
HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN (1987)
The movie can be summed up in one sentence: Rowdy Roddy Piper is on of the last fertile males on earth. The cast is Piper, a bevy of bimbos, and some people dressed in humanoid frog suits. A true classic of bad films.
egyoung@facstaff.wisc.edu

[A] truly superlative movie starring (of all people) wrestling er,um, GREAT "Rowdy" Roddy Piper. Man, can this dude act or *what*?!? It features the ever-fertile Piper as one of the last sperm producing male on earth. His job -- to impregante the last several nubile fertile women before the mutant frogpeople completely take over the world. Hey, when this guy picks a script he goes for quality!!
cmbrenna@naz.edu

Oh boy. I'm feeling the pain just writing about it. Wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper uses the same Oscar caliber acting talent that he utilizes in professional wrestling to unleash this stinker by some director who I don't know, but who probably died of shame right after filming. Ok, here's the plot (what there is of it). Piper is the last man on Earth or the last fertile man, I can't remember which. Either way, it turns out that women WILL sleep with him if he's the last man on Earth. He and a group of brainless bikini babes run around a post apocalyptic world that looks suspiciously like Nevada and shoot at stuntmen dressed up in rubber frog suits. See the frogs rule Earth now. Kind of like Planet of the Apes for the amphibian set. I don't know how easy this is to find on video, but I've seen it twice on USA Up All Night so you might check there.

Chris Griffy, cgriffy@cafes.net
HELLMASTER
Apparently, a college professor from the '60s, who is being accused of offering his students drugs, gets killed in a dramatic shoot-out in the opening scene of the movie. Now like all of your truly bad movies, the teacher is not dead. No, far from. He resurfaces in the '80s with an army of genetic mutants to take revenge on that school where he got shot. What happened you ask? Who knows. I gave up on that peice of trash halfway through. The mutated nun was my favorite. Imagine a mummy, missing bandages on the face (half decomposed, of course) wearing a nun's habit. That's pretty much what it was. This movie had no acting talent, almost no directing (cameras wandered all over the scenes), and is a shining example of that class of movie entitled "Brilliant Idea, Horrid Execution."
VenomX@aol.com
HELLRIDERS (1984)
[S]tarring Adam West, Tina Louise and Rent-a-Gang (actual credit), what else is there to say? Must see! Must MST!
Benjamin Wallach, bwallach@cvdn.com
HERCULES (1983)
This 80s version of the Hercules myth stars Lou Ferrigno as the original god of illegal muscle-expanding drugs. In the role, he twitches muscles in an unpleasant and disturbing way, grunts a fair amount, and battles lots of robots (!) sent after him by the gods. Some of the visual effects are half decent considering this is a low-budget Italian Hercules movie, but the obvious attempts to cash in on the popularity of Star Wars are really out of place in what should be a fantasy movie.
Demian Katz, katz@netaxs.com
HERCULES II (1985)
Lou Ferrigno returned to the role of Hercules for this disaster of a film. This time, Zeus's thunderbolts have been stolen and turned into foes which Hercules must battle. The 1983 Hercules looks like a big-budget hit in comparison to this lame sequel.. In fact, the cheapness of this film boggles the mind. At the end of the film, Hercules battles a variety of foes in space after being turned into a stellar being... In order to represent this spectacular event, we are treated to long, badly rotoscoped (animation made by making line drawings from live action footage) battles. Finally, after defeating a bunch of warriors, Hercules turns into an ape, his foe turns into a T. Rex, and, I swear, the famous fight from King Kong is spliced in (in rotoscoped form, of course). I wonder if such use of existing footage is legal... :) Also, be sure to listen to the amazingly cheesy soundtrack... This whole movie sounds like a game of Space Invaders. Worth seeing if only to share in my disbelief at the use of King Kong footage and laugh at the "plonk" sound made by Zeus' thunderbolts.
Demian Katz, katz@netaxs.com
HERCULES IN NEW YORK (1970) United Films
Rumor has it that Arnold Schwarzenegger has been trying to buy the negative to his film debut and have it destroyed. Donations? A badly dubbed Arnie (billed as "Arnold Strong") leaves Olympus, which looks suspiciously like someone's backyard, for a riotous Earth adventure with a particularly twitchy Arnold Stang. This *must* be 1970: the chariot race which blocks up a major New York street doesn't provoke a drive-by. Watch Arnie become a professional wrestler! Watch Stang sell pretzels and not get mugged! Those were the days . . .
Mike Pinsky, pinsky@chuma.cas.usf.edu
HERCULES VS. KUNG FU (aka SCHIAFFONE E KARATE) (1973)
A mid-seventies attempt to mix the 'My Name is Trinity' series and martial arts features, fails miserably in this almost nil-mythical action extravaganza.

Set in a modern day metropolis, Hercules, the ever immortal and versitial master of guises throughout the ages, takes up construction work with his blonde little buddy who happens to be a real Gymkata kinda fighter.

Set aside from this storyline, in the oriental henchman's palace down the street, is an evil kung-fu master who plots to possess a bowl of enchanted cherries. And so he does in minute-two of this movie. To help him along is his Jet-Lee wanna-be assistant, who is quite masterful at combat, and deadly with discipline with the lowly hoods of the clan. So much so, that he punishes by taking an eye out of each of them for a job not-so-well- done. And they take this form of abuse with little more than a mild irritation. Two for flinching, I guess.

When the Bud Spencer-like Herc and his Terence Hill-like little buddy get mixed-up in plot-B of the movie, what ensues is a pale immitation of every Spencer-Hill comedy ever made. Even pale in comparison to the bad Spencer-Hill comedies. Semi-humorous action with very little opposition by the bad-guys. Sounds familiar, but very little pay-off. Still, lot's of goofy enlitenment, especially if you've never seen a 'Trinity' film.

Frank Lund, w.bate@sk.sympatico.ca
HIGHLANDER (1986) 20th Century Fox
I kinda like this movie. It's got some good stunts and an original idea, but it just looks and sounds terrible. Half the movie is SO dark that you don't even know what's going on. The flashbacks are odd and really don't belong anywhere in the story. (Heather's old woman makeup is amusing- a grey wig and dark circles under the eyes. I was convinced.) Ramirez, Connor's (Lambert) best friend gets killed, but no one seems to be too concerned about that. Possibly the worst part of the movie is Christopher Lambert. He constantly plods around the screen with an expression of slack-jawed apathy, and that stupid accent doesn't help him in any way. He handled the sword he was using like it was a humugous cockroach, and the pointless love scene with the mediocre Roxanne (?) Hart almost made me cry. I liked Kurgan though. He had some of the better lines, and could sorta act. WATCH THE TV SHOW!!!
Joe Shininger, jerm81@webtv.net
HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING (1991) Republic Entertainment
Now here's a movie which truly reeked. I consider it to be the absolute worst sequel ever made. So bad in fact that the following movie was simply called Highlander: The Final Dimension as if not to even acknowledge the existence of this one. Where to begin? First of all, the Original Highlander was about a group of immortals who were chosen people that could be killed only by cutting off their heads. In this one, one finds out that they were actually Aliens (?) exiled from the planet Zeist (no kidding, Zeist!). They'd apparently been exiled five hundere years ago which would be fine for the protagonist who is about that old, but in the first movie the villain was over a thousand years old making me believe that the idiot that wrote this piece of garbage never bothered to see the first one. Furthermore, they'd been exiled for following the protagonst Mcleod in a rebellion against a tyrant. Apparently they not only had long lives but short memories since in the first movie, immortals didnt know each other without introduction any more than two strangers would, though they could sense the presence of another immortal nearby. Even worse, in the flashback scenes of the planet zeist, the two main good guys Mcleod and Ramirez actually had the names Mcleod and Ramirez meaning that wherever this planet Zeist is it apparently had latin and scottish immigrants living there. I have to admit that the set design was intriguing if not altogether believeable, but the plot such as it was consisted of nothing more than the tyrant deciding to come to earth to kill Mcleod (which he could have easily done instead of exiling him). The movie makes a complete waste of Sean Connery's presence, though thats ok since he actually died in the first one the suddenly reappeared without explanation in this one. Oh and yeah, Christopher Lambert is in it.
Cesar Vasquez, vasquezc@fiu.edu

[Editor's note: This was MSTed in a fan production headed by Ryan Johnson (rkj@eskimo.com).]

THE HOBBIT (1978) (TV) Rankin-Bass Productions
Paul Frees and Hans Conreid are the only recognizable names in the cast of this dreadful little adaptation. While the film attempts to remain true to the book by using Tolkein's song lyrics (set to unmemorable tunes), I don't remember the characters spending so much time talking to themselves. Or the wood-elf king's thick Germanic accent. Or there being such a huge amount of nothing going on...
From the editor

Rebuttal

HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS (1988) Camp Video
[...A]bout a detective who tries to rescue some girlie from a bizarre human-sacrificing, chainsaw-worshipping cult. Near the end it spends about ten minutes on 'the dance of the double chainsaws', where some scantily clad lass comes out and attempts to dance while carrying a running chainsaw in either hand. This was amusing for almost 30 seconds, then it went stale. Add to that that she couldn't dance, and hardly anyone in the movie had any notion how to act, and you have one truly excessive waste of celluloid.
Remington, ez064842@catbert.ucdavis.edu
THE HORROR AT 37,000 FEET (1972) (TV)
(William Shatner, Buddy Ebsen)

A 747 carrying stones from an abbey becomes stuck in a headwind holding it motionless in the sky. Shatner's "skydiving" scene at the end is priceless!

Teresa Tutt, tuttt@rpi.edu
HORROR HOUSE ON HIGHWAY 5 (1985)
Here is a truly unusual movie. Not really sure if you'd consider it a failed attempt at a comedy, or a failed attempt at a horror, but it is most definitely a failed attempt at a movie. The plot seems to revolve around a couple of satanists, and a typical collection of teenagers being killed in the not so fine horror tradition.
Robin Stubbings, StubbinR@CompCanada.ab.ca
HOT POTATO (aka BLACK BELT JONES II) (1976) Warner Brothers
This time Jones is workin' for da man and kickin' booty in Asia. Same horrible formula as the first, with less impressive afros.
Dave Barnhart, dbarnhar@vt.edu
HOUSE OF WAX (1953) Warner Bros.
Often hailed a classic by most experts, this feature contains enough of that 3-D mentality and other B-movie elements to push the goofy meter way-way up high. This film comdemned Vincent Price to a life-time of macabre roles, who up and until now played a rather straight-man.

Price is the is the horribly burned and disfigured curator of an eleborate wax museum at around the turn of the century, who hides his ugliness under an elborate mask(decades before Liam Neeson in 'Dark-Man') only to discard it later in the dead of night to seek unsuspecting victims, so as to bring about their demise, and dip their lifeless corpses in huge vats of wax and make them his latest works of art.

Along for the ride, in a premier role, is a young Charles Bronson who plays a mentally challenged assistant, acting as goofy as he can until he can grow a cheesey moustache and corresponding hair-cut for a whole slew of 'Death-Wish' movies.

Some good potential for a MSTing, especially the scene where a professional paddle-ball man( one of those super-vocations that is just clamouring with competition ) rather pretensiously fires his paddle-ball at the 3-D camera. Over and over and over and over and over.....

Frank Lund, w.bate@sk.sympatico.ca
HOWLING IV: THE ORIGINAL NIGHTMARE (1988)
The Howling series has had its ups and downs. This is definitely a down. A writer goes out to the middle of nowhere to recover from a nervous breakdown, and what do you know... she manages to pick the one place full of werewolves. Typical. In any case, she wanders around the town, overacts, finds a friend, and learns about a dead nun who had been in the area shortly before going insane and dying. Everything seems to be moving along in an understandable (but very stupid) manner, when all of a sudden, chaos reigns. Her husband melts, people start growing fangs, and everybody dies.. Or something like that. It's all very confusing.

In any case, the film suffers from a terrible cast, and special effects that, for the most part, only look good if you watch the movie with your eyes half closed (which you will probably be doing anyway, considering the lack of excitement). This might make it to MST3K, but probably not. It's too gory (at least at the end) and, while incredibly bad, isn't very funny. Watch it if you must, but you won't like it.

Demian Katz, katz@netaxs.com
H. P. LOVECRAFT'S NECRONOMICON: BOOK OF THE DEAD (aka NECRONOMICON) (1996) New Line Home Video/Turner Home Entertainment
It starts out with a VERY anglophiliac (maybe it was just me) HP Lovecraft going into some temple to sneak a peak and that accursed tome. So, he asks for the Alchemical dictionary Volume 3 as a ruse to fool the dimwitted monks...And gets away with it easily. He then infiltrates a small metal gate and some lock-thing (?) and manages to get hold of the Necronomicon...Before we proceed, lemme explain to the Lovecraftian impaired... The Necronomicon is a book of near-infinite power detailing a bunch of super-ultra-advanced aliens\gods including, of course, the Great Cthulhu. It is fabled that even GLANCING at it can make one go insane...So what does HP Lovecraft who wrote the book on the thing (literally) do? He cracks it open, sits down beside it, and starts writing stupid stories.

Stories 2 and 3 had nothing to do with the Cthulhu Mythos while Story 1 only had a few references combined with a whole lotta tentacles... The endings were all obviously tacked on at the last minute and 2 and 3 featured mega-cliche endings that could have been pulled straight out of any hoaky campfire story.

Highlights:

Rubbery, fake, flying, sting-ray monsters with big tubes sticking out of their heads sheathing combination knife\straws used to suck bone marrow from humans...It's far more idiotic-looking than it sounds...

A Deep One drops by to Jehovah's Witness for the Great Cthulhu right after one character curses God, he even gives him a free copy of the Necronomicon.

The monks turn out to be aliens and one, using its powers of elasticity, manages to squeeze through the gate leading to Lovecraft.

The dimensional horror Lovecraft unleashes from some gateway turns out to be a flying chunk of slime with teeth.

The psuedo-theological conversation between a pregnant cop and guy who vaguely looks like Woody Allen (in my humble opinion). It's later referred back to when the look-a-like's blind, fat, annoying wife shrieks "There is no God!" as the cop tumbles into a pit of flying, rubbery, sting-rays.

In conclusion, this movie is a disgrace to the Cthulhu Mythos and all things Lovecraftian.

JordanSC@aol.com
HUDSON HAWK (1991) TriStar Pictures
I was *stunned* to see that you've somehow overlooked Hudson Hawk, a woofer from a few years back which starred Bruce Willis. Having rented the video and suffering through as much of it as I could take--again, blessedly, some time back----I am mystified as to how Willis's career survived its release upon an unsuspecting movie-viewing public. Truly, everyone associated with the film should have had the good sense to get into the Federal Witness Protection Program! If you've somehow been spared up to now, you really oughtta have a look at; have a "barf bag" handy!
A. Steinmetz, cts@aristotle.net
HUMONGOUS (1981)
A product of the early-80s slasher boom. This one features a huge, acromegalic killer tearing apart a bunch of annoying teens who have been stranded on his island home. Yes, it's a cross between Friday the 13th and The Elephant Man. Its main feature is that we never really get to see the bad guy, with the possible exception of a look at his burned-up corpse at the end. The first victim's death scream rivals that of the truck driver's in Night of the Lepus as the silliest sounding scream ever.
Brian Reubelt, reub6707@uwwvax.uww.edu
HUMAN EXPERIMENTS (1980)
Ok, i thought this would be a horror film, but it wasn't. Actually, it really had no point, no continuity or anything like that. Basically a woman has a nervous breakdown (or something, its been a while), goes to a special psychiatric hospital, has a lot of nightmares and runs around a lot at night. A doctor there is trying to conduct psychological experiments on some patients. So maybe some of the nightmares are really, but you never know, becasue it isn't explained. I'm sure the director thought he was being really subtle, but it was just really confusing and pointless. Oh, and there is a twist ending which makes no sense and doesn't even fit in with the "storyline"
Tim Patton, guinsu@udel.edu
THE HUNTED (1995) Universal
The Highlander strikes low yet again! Christopher Lambert is in this one, a modern-day samurai/chop-socky story that's so bad it's good. Lambert and Joan Chen (why, WHY, WHY!!!) have an affair; Chen is killed by John Lone (modern-day ninja), and since Lambert witnesses this, he too is Marked For Death. Or at least two hours of stupidity. (Here's one beautiful boner: you know how long it takes to make a samurai sword? Almost a whole year. In this movie, they hand-forge one in half a day. EEEEEEEEE!) One of the few movies I've seen that actually tries to make an effort to recreate Japan on screen to some degree of accuracy and then trashes it completely (and as a Nipponophile, I'm doubly offended). More idiot cliches about Japanese than Rising Sun (which I think deserves its own MISTing as well), and gory swordfights to boot. Dumb as a box of cherry blossom petals.
Serdar, syegul@ix.netcom.com

I saw this at a free screening and seriously considered demanding some money back. Imagine a Master Ninja movie on the big screen. Obviously written as an excuse to let Christopher Lambert near a katana again (the fallout from Highlander is like toxic radiation throughout the film industry), this film is an insult to Japanese culture, treating it as inscrutable and violent. John Lone and Joan Chen (both Chinese, since us ugly Americans can't tell the difference) have nothing much to do. The saving grace of this overpadded bore is a fairly exciting train battle which Lambert doesn't even appear in. They should have let *that* guy star in the movie. Lambert *finally* gets to fight in the climax, after cowering the entire picture, but proves pretty ineffectual even there. Highlander jokes a-plenty.

Mike Pinsky, pinsky@chuma.cas.usf.edu

Petréa Mitchell
pravn@m5p.com