5 Talented Actors Who Just Can't Say No

I know, things are tough all over. Even millionaire actors need to eat. Wait, what? Whatever the reason, some thespians feel the desire to shit on their own legacies from time to time. Or, in the case of these five examples, a lot of the time. Here are five actors that need to fire their agents.

BEN KINGSLEY


So, you're Ghandi. You have memorable roles in Schindler's List and Searching For Bobby Fischer. What's your next move? Play a hapless scientist in alien killer sex-babe clunker Species? Sure, why not? It's all good, you redeem yourself by playing one of the all-time great cinematic assholes, Don Logan, in the criminally underrated and unseen Sexy Beast. Wait, who's on the phone? Oh, it's Uwe Boll. He wants you to star in BloodRayne. You know what? Throw The Love Guru in there too. Jesus, man. Stick with Scorcese (Shutter Island, the upcoming Hugo) from now on.

ROBERT DE NIRO



Holy cannoli, where to start? I guess when you star in two of the greatest films of all time in the same year (Heat and Casino) you lose all ability to choose good roles to play. Seriously, what since Ronin has lived up to anything before it? Rocky & Bullwinkle? Righteous Kill? Parents, Fockers, where does it end? Sad, really.

CHRISTOPHER WALKEN


While Christopher Walken has found a new generation of fans with his stints on Saturday Night Live, his film output hasn't been nearly as impressive; it's funny, but in a "your dog has cancer" way. OK, so it's not really funny at all. Anybody catch Click? Balls Of Fury? Gigli??? Walken tempers his bad choices with occasional great roles (Catch Me If You Can, Kill The Irishman) but the man needs more cowbell, less horseshit.

OWEN WILSON


Wilson and his brother Luke started off evenly with the enjoyable and interesting Bottle Rocket; while Owen didn't end up bloated and doing phone provider commercials, his C.V. reads like a bipolar patient's mood swings. For every Royal Tennenbaums there's a Shanghai Knights, for every Wedding Crashers a rom-com Kate Hudson abomination. The voice of Marmaduke, dude? Was that necessary? Other than a great turn in Woody Allen's recent Midnight In Paris, Owen Wilson looks like he might end up joining his brother in corporate-shill hell.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON


If you have to ask, you'll never know.

October Horror Fest #26: TRICK OR TREAT

Sometimes, a movie can't live up to the coolness of its marketing campaign. Look at that poster; this movie should be badass, right? A rock and roll horror flick with Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osborne? You can't lose! Well, yeah, you can.

What's tragic is that this could have been a horror-metal masterpiece. Caught up in the PRMC-music censorship frenzy of the time, this movie was a middle finger to Tipper Gore & Co. A metal idol, Sammi Curr (basically Blackie Lawless, who was originally set to play the part) dies in a hotel fire. His biggest fan, Eddie, is heartbroken and goes to his DJ buddy (Simmons) for consolation. What he gets is an unreleased Curr record, and when he plays it backwards...party time!



So you have Fastway doing all the original songs, metal legends playing various charcaters, an evil undead metal singer killing everyone off, and Satanic messages coming from the turntable. What could top that? Atrocious acting and lame special effects, that's what. But who cares? This movie is hilarious. Metal fans, especially, will get all the inside jokes and references. (Keep an eye out for the posters on Eddie's bedroom walls.) This is the kind of movie that should be playing during your Halloween house party. It's way out of print on DVD, but that's what eBay is for. Rock out.

October Horror Fest #20: WARLOCK: THE ARMAGEDDON

I didn't think I'd be reviewing any movie worse than Children Of The Living Dead or Pieces, but you can't pass up a golden opportunity like this.

Julian Sands is a bad motherfucker. You can tell, because he has a skullet and a British accent. Oh, and he's also the son of Satan. Apparently, there's a few rocks you gotta play with if you want to bring Papa Beelzebub up out of the basement.



If you want ridiculous, you're in for a treat. Cohesive plot? Nope. Cool special effects? Your iPhone can make better ones. Wearing a stone, looking at the moon and being instantly impregnated by Satan? You bet your sweet ass.



The first Warlock actually isn't that bad a movie. You don't expect much, and it doesn't deliver much. But this is Mystery Science Theater 3000 quality stuff right here. You'd have to get up pretty early in the morning to find someone overacting as hard as Julian Sands does in this movie. Jesus Christ, he's shooting dudes with his finger and spouting Wild West one-liners afterward. And keeping a straight face. Leave it to a Brit to try and make a z-grade sci-fi/horror thriller into Shakespeare.



Yes, this film is terrible. But it's also awesome. It has slipped the mortal coil of this world and passed beyond the "so bad it's bad" purgatory. You will groan with disgust and cry with joy. Watching Warlock: The Armageddon is the closest a guy will ever come to giving birth. Embrace the madness.

October Horror Fest #12: NIGHTMARE CITY

This might not be much of an endorsement, but Nightmare City is by far the best shitty zombie movie ever made. It treads that fine line of cheesy and awesome that a lot of horror movies hover around. To most, it won't seem that much different than any other bad foreign zombie film of the 80s...but it is. There aren't too many plots for this kind of movie; in this case, a plane exposed to radiation gets the undead rolling. Plane lands, zombies attack, city is...nightmarish!


Yes, you'll be laughing through a lot of this, but that doesn't take away from it at all. These zombies run, know kung fu, and can use machine guns. I repeat: kung fu and machine guns. If you have a problem with that, I don't want to know you. They're more like vampires in that they go after blood instead of flesh, and they still have control over most motor skills (One of them manually lowers an office elevator!).

There's extremely little in the way of story or character development once the blood starts flowing. There's a news reporter/doctor couple on the run, and a general's wife holed up in her isolated mansion. Everything else is pretty much "run away from zombies". The zombie makeup is noteworthy for its shitiness: the blood-sucking goons look like they stuck their faces in a pot of hot oatmeal. There's a hint of some kind of social commentary, how there are "monsters creating monsters" or something, but a Romero movie this ain't.

Later films, especially the Dawn Of The Dead remake, would utilize zombies that do more than stagger around, so you could say this was a precursor. But really, these zombies can drive cars, sneak around, pretty much everything but talk, so it's one of a kind. I recommend picking up a 6-pack of Samuel Adams Octoberfest and settling down with Nightmare City. By the end of the last beer, you might love this movie as much as I do.

October Horror Fest #11: PIECES

If you want some horrible acting and ridiculous plot lines, you're in the right place. Pieces tries to be several movies at once and fails pretty miserably at all of them. Chalk this one up to a Bermuda Triangle of shit:

1. Despite being filmed in Boston, half the cast is Spanish and dubbed horribly into English.

2. The lighting is so bad, most of the scenes are awash in shadows and you can't even tell what's happening.

3. Joe D'Amato wrote it.

There's a chainsaw killer loose on campus, and it apparently has something to do with nude jigsaw puzzles and tennis. Don't ask.



There's some full-frontal nudity, a whole lot of blood, and even more incoherent story. It's slightly reminiscent of the Italian giallo horror flicks that Argento was pumping out around the same time, but only because of the killer P.O.V. camera techniques.

I've sat through many a shitty horror movie, and I've been known to love quite a few of them. But Pieces actually takes effort to sit through all of it. If you're up for the challenge, power to you. If not, I understand. Not everyone can be as awesome as me.

October Horror Fest #4: CHILDREN OF THE LIVING DEAD

Being a horror movie fan means sifting through a lot of shit. For every great scary flick that gets made, there's about twenty godawful abominations. I'm not in the habit of recommending bad films, but Children Of The Living Dead needs to be seen, if only so I'm not alone.

I bought this on DVD in a rare moment of impulse; I had never seen in, nor knew anything about it. There were 3 indicators that compelled me to grab it:

1. It's a zombie movie.
2. The cover looked cool.
3. Tom Savini is in it.

How can you go wrong? Well, you can. Horribly, horribly wrong.



Looks cool, right? It starts off promising enough; some grave robbing, a badass main zombie with great makeup effects, and Sex Machine kicking all kinds of undead ass. Then the movie hits the ten minute mark, and it all goes to shit. There's some dumb kids traveling through town in a van, a la The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and you're actually pulling for the zombies to kill them because they're so goddamn unlikeable. The head zombie, an evil preacher or something (hard to tell because the exposition makes no sense) goes from destroying everything in his path to shambling around the rest of the movie. I'm not kidding; there's scenes where it's just this guy staggering through the woods or a field, not doing a damn thing.

This one comes dangerously close to crossing the line from "hilariously bad" to "painfully bad". Some decent action, kills and Tom Savini save it from being a complete failure, but just by a hair. If anything, it can inspire would-be zombie filmmakers. Someone invested money in this pile of shit, so why not yours?

A guide to watching movies from the 80s.

The market for nostalgia has grown exponentially for years now. It's not really a surprise; combine the cyclical nature of popular culture and trends with the great American dream and BAM! Instant marketplace. But lately it seems that a good chunk of this revenue comes from the irony savings account; that is, people wearing clothes and listening to music or watching movies because they think it's funny, and wanting other people to know they do these things because it's funny.

Needless to say, I am not one of these people. Are you? Here's a quick test:

1. Have you worn a classic thrash metal band's t-shirt without actually having ever listened to said band?

2. Do you shop for clothes at Goodwill and/or Salvation Army despite having a trust fund?

3. Do you have a subscription to Fader?

If your answer to any of these is "yes"...

OK, so that's out of the way. If you're still here you're cool with me. So let's move on to a nostalgic subject near and dear to me: the films of my youth, the glorious 1980s. I Love The 80s? Fuck that, I am the 80s.

There are a few things one should know right from the beginning:

Just as an object in motion tends to stay in motion, an 80s film with J.T. Walsh tends to be an 80s film with J.T. Walsh as The Bad Guy.

This actually extends pretty far into the Nineties, too. If you're watching a movie and J.T. Walsh is in it, chances are you know who the bad guy is going to be.

Also, I think it's safe to say most people are intimately familiar with the classic Schwarzenegger/Willis/Gibson flicks from back then. Honestly, if you're an American under 40 and can't quote something from Predator, Die Hard, or Lethal Weapon, I'm inclined to think you may be a clone. Or a robot. Or a robot clone! However, there are other heroes of this decade that might look familiar, but never quite achieved the fame and notoriety of their 80s peers.

Michael Dudikoff


That's right, he is THE American Ninja. Dudikoff was definitely a badass in his time, so much so that he made 3 additional American Ninja movies to show everyone how badass he was. He was also the star of one of the great lost films of the 80s, Avenging Force. The fact that this film doesn't have a major DVD release is a crime.

Jan-Michael Vincent



It was hard to top the awesomeness of Airwolf on TV back in the day. Renegade pilot with a super-advanced battle copter? Suck it, Knight Rider. JMV also found his way into awesomely horrible classics like Defiance, Enemy Territory and, um...Demonstone.

I could write a book about the countless number of horror movies the Eighties pumped out, how new genres were created, how careers were launched, etc. It's been done to the point of exhaustion, so why bother? This is what you need to know: if Barbara Crampton or Linnea Quigley is in the movie, you're almost guaranteed to see them topless.