"These are - the eyes of a man possessed! - by the greatest power in the universe!"
It's the brain from planet Arous, not "Planet Arouse" - yes, I made that mistake, too. There's nothing sexy about this movie.
By far the scariest thing in this trailer (and in the movie) are that guy's eyes. They're the first thing you'll see:
Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
"It drops the bottom out of the world you know and understand!"
A lot of you may be familiar with this movie, or at least the seven or eight episodes of The Magic School Bus that it inspired. By the 1960s there had already been science fiction movies that took us on journeys into space, to the bottom of the sea, and the center of the Earth. Fantastic Voyage, however, was the first movie to send Raquel Welch on a journey through a man's small intestine.
In case the theatrical trailer wasn't psychedelic enough for you, we present a SPECIAL TRAILER TRASH BONUS: The Original 1960s TV Spot:
"Four men and a beautiful girl, off on a FANTASTIC voyage!" Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
"Where the chicks are on the make, the cops are on the take, and the welcoming committee is a sawed-off shotgun!"
In the same tradition as Bubba Smith, Jim Brown, O.J. Simpson, Rosey Grier and soon (shudder) Michael Strahan, Fred Williamson was a star football player who traded in his cleats for, um, acting shoes. One of the most prolific of the bunch, Fred Williamson's had more than 100 screen appearances over his 40-year career.
The bulk of Fred's body work includes some of the best-known blaxploitation flicks of the 1970s. Bucktown puts him on screen with blaxploitation legend Pam Grier.
Be prepared for some trailer-rapping:
For more examples of the awesome art of trailer-rapping, see former Trailer Trash subjects Dolemite and Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde.
"They're the greatest black attack pack you'll ever see!" Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
"Straaaaaaaaaaange Behaviooooooor... a movie of mystery, horror, and suspense!"
Even good writers can write bad movies. Bill Condon won an Academy Award for his Gods and Monsters script in 1999; he would later receive another nomination for his adaptation of Chicago. This is the same guy who wrote Kinsey and Dreamgirls, which were certainly nothing to sneeze at. But let's look back two decades, all the way to a year known as 1981... What was Condon up to?
A barely-comprehensible little flick called Strange Behavior.
The trailer makes about as much sense as the movie itself, if you're wondering.
Fellow young writers: you know that weird little horror/sci-fi script you're working on now? There's a good chance it'll look pretty embarrassing in 20 years, when you're accepting an Oscar for your heartbreaking drama.
Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
"It all started like an ordinary record hop... had the only known the black monster waiting outside..."
Oh, do I love me a good ol' record hop!
Back in the days before CGI, if you wanted to stick Nicolas Cage's head into a basket full of bees, you either had to get creative or find yourself a basket of bees. If you needed a giant monster, however, you just needed to find a regular-sized critter and drop it onto a pile of Hot Wheels. Splice that into some footage of people standing next to cars, pointing at the sky and screaming, and boom! You've got yourself a movie.
Not the Micro Machines! Anything but the Microooo Machiiiiiiines!!!!
"Devouring people... like they were flies!"
Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
There's too much pollution! Nature fights back! Hollywood had already run out of ideas by 1972!
My favorite thing about this trailer is how it's practically all shots of people looking at harmless-looking critters and screaming their lungs out. Aaaaagh!! It's a toad! It's over there! On the bookshelf! AUUUGGGH IT'S KILLING MEEEEEEEEE
Really, this is more of the "Same shit, different animal" variety of films that brought us films like The Birds, Squirm, Night of a Thousand Cats and about a million other animals-strike-back movies. This time it's frogs. (And birds, and snakes, and spiders... they couldn't even stick to the movie's title all that well.)
Take a second, long look at that poster. At first glance, most people (myself included) assume that we're looking at a giant frog, judging by the human hand hanging out of it's mouth. But, notice those blades of grass next to the frog? Yes, that's just a normal frog, eating the world's tiniest human.
"What if nature threw a war, and all the animals came?" Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
"You've made your mother proud!" Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: Even these guys got their movie made... so can you! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
"From a million years back... Horror explodes into today!"
(You know a movie is going to be poorly written when even the poster's tagline barely makes sense...)
This week's movie is most notable for starring Academy Award-winner Joan Crawford in her final movie role. Oh, how the mighty can fall... (Ben Kingsley, I'm looking at you.)
The other big highlight of this movie is that it features one of the dumbest-looking b-movie monsters to ever appear on the silver screen. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Trog:
I mean, seriously! Trog looks like a guy who forgot to put on the bottom of his Chewbacca costume. I understand Joan Crawford probably didn't come cheap. But, damn. Did they not have enough money left in the budget to buy their monster a pair of pants?
At 0:08 - Do you think this is the kind of stuff Syd Barret would see whenever he closed his eyes? At 0:44 - Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!! At 0:56 - Jurassic Park has nothin' on this. At 1:09 - How many times are they going to superimpose that face? At 1:18 - Now? GAH! At 1:20 - Does anyone know if underwear is considered proper spelunking gear? At 1:28 - Chewbacca, no! At 2:12 - "You may want to forget what you see..." - Does he mean the cavediver in his underwear? At 2:25 - Aaaaaand back to Syd Barret-vision.
Wow. I mean, just wow, right? After the bizarre cave-exploring interlude at the beginning of the trailer, it's all just a man in half a gorilla costume chasing people around. Though, I suppose I'd run from that, too...
"...with the strength of 20 demons!" Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: Even Rob Schneider can get a movie made... so can you! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
"Do you have anything you can tattoo around my sphincter to make it less attractive?"
Good God. Somehow, SOMEHOW I missed the DIRECTORIAL DEBUT of Rob Schneider. Maybe it's because I'm of at least moderate intelligence and don't require a handler to spoon-feed me my meals. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back a bit:
The DIRECTORIAL DEBUT of ROB SCHNEIDER. What the f*ck??
Speaking as a young screenwriter, more often than not bad movies give me a feeling of hope; if a terrible script can be made, then my better-written one has a chance, right? But Big Stan inspires no such good feelings.
Big Stan proves to me that there is no God in Hollywood. Watching the trailer makes me believe the entire film industry is actually a practical joke made at my expense.
The premise for the movie: Rob Schneider goes to prison and must protect himself from being raped. It's like whoever came up with the idea for Big Stan was watching HBO's Oz on DVD, and thought the horrible things that happen in prison would be absolutely hi-larious if they were played for laughs.
I always hoped that that Hollywood had some sort of protection mechanism that would prevent a "prison rape movie directed and produced by Rob Schneider, starring Rob Schneider" - but there evidently isn't. Somebody also put about $10 million dollars into this movie. If it didn't all come from Rob Schneider's own pocket, I'll give up the whole Hollywood dream right here, right now.
I feel a sense of shame putting this trailer up here. I really do. So I'll apologize here. If knowledge of this film's existence managed to escape you until this point, I'm sorry I ever brought it to your attention. If you really must watch it, feel free to stop after the first 20 seconds. The first 20 seconds of this trailer are easily among the most repugnant seconds ever committed to film.
I'll give you a couple minutes to clear the bile from your mouth.
My sole comfort in this film's existence is knowing that despite wrapping its filming in summer of '06, it was only finally released straight-to-DVD almost a full three years later. That just tells me that someone out there didn't want to unleash Big Stan on the world. (Except in Russia, where this apparently got a theatrical release.) I see that person as our guardian angel.
"That's a nice top. Would you mind lowering it a bit?"
Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: Even Rob Schneider can get a movie made... so can you! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
"Warning! The sexual transformation of a man into a woman will actually take place before your very eyes!"
Why are there so many horrible, b-movie takes on Dr. Jekyll? It's a favorite sub-sub-sub-genre of mine here on Trailer Trash, and you can go back and check out my entries on the classic schlocker Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde, or the even worse Daughter of Dr. Jekyll. Is it because they're not all that hard to come up with? You really only need to fill in one little piece of the equation:
Dr. Jekyll + potion = ______.
Just fill in your noun of choice. That blank spot can really be whatever you want. You could choose, say... "monster". But you wouldn't be very creative. Or "cat". Then you'd have a movie about a guy who turns into a cat. A pretty kick-ass choice would be "dinosaur" or "cyborg". Hell, even "kickboxer" would be sweet. If you filled in the blank with the word "unicorn", well, thank you for reading my blog, little girl.
See? It's easy!
In most b-movies of the 1970s, directors would choose to fill that blank with the words "black man". But not today's movie. Today's feature is about a doctor who takes a dangerous, experimental potion that turns him into a woman.
So shocking it's rated PG!
You've got to love a movie poster that tells you EXACTLY what you're going to see in the film:
For those of you whose clicking-fingers are broken and can't blow up the movie poster to read it, here's the text. (I'm guessing you can already read the word "shock"):
"This film is filled with SHOCK... victim after victim dies in throat-cutting orgy! After SHOCK... unnatural laboratory experiments performed behind barred doors! After SHOCK... once again he will change sexes and kill, kill, kill!"
Until next week, kids!
"You will deny... what you see... but you will never be sure... when you see... Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde!"
Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
"One man dared to take a stand against this evil! One man dared to hurl a challenge of cold steel against the terror of the undead! He was Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter!"
Many men NEVER dare to hurl a challenge of cold steel against anything. They're barely men at all.
In the late 19th Century, Mark Twain (nee Samuel Clemens) penned several of the most treasured American novels. Nearly 100 years later, his ancestor Brian Clemens tipped the scales back in the favor of terrible by writing and directing the Hammer b-film Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter.
At 0:10 - Why are so many beautiful maidens taking that shortcut through Vampire Forest? I try not to question B-movie logic, but damn. At 0:21 - O.J.-vision! At 0:55 - "Just brushing my hair in front of the mirror... in the middle of Vampire Forest..." At 1:16 - Bitten on the mouth??!?
"You see? He's been bitten on the mouth!" Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
"The world is amazed by Godzilla and Rodan, but it will be knocked for a ghoul by Varan!"
Right off the bat: what the hell does that tagline even mean? Knocked for a ghoul? Huh?
Whatever. What can you really expect from a generic Godzilla ripoff when your monster looks like this?
Let's narrate that scene. For fun, whenever you read the name of the film's titular character, draw the pronunciation out a bit, like "Varaaaaaaan, the unnnnnbelieeeeeeeeevable!"
FADE IN:
EXT. JAPANESE HARBOR - DAY
Sounds of SCREAMING as VARAN THE UNBELIEVABLE emerges from the cold water.
SAILOR 1 AGGGGGHHH! It's... Varan the Unbelievable! I... I can't believe him!
WOMAN It looks like some kind of flying squirrel.
SAILOR 1 BUT HE'S GOT A LIZARD FAAAAACE!!!!
WOMAN I still say squirrel.
They are eaten by the Varan the Unbelievable.
(Ed. Note: If anyone knows a way to properly indent screenplay formatting in blogger, please shoot me an e-mail.)
Anyways, on to the trailer trash:
It seems like whoever edited that trailer was aware how silly Varan looked, and made sure not to show more than the top of his head or a single foot at a time.
Yeesh.
"So AWESOME it will shock you to the core!" Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
"Some fight for money. Some fight for glory. He's fighting for his son's love."
From the producer of Desert Kickboxer and American Cyborg: Steel Warrior comes a movie where Sylvester Stallone is a trucker who arm-wrestles his way into his son's heart.
[Ed. note: One of the best posters ever.]
Ladies and gentlemen, Over the Top:
Hey, did anyone think this movie looks a little... heh... OVER THE TOP???
.snort.
Heh, heh... heh... hahaahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HA HA HA
Ha, ha.... ugh.
Sorry, you saw that one coming, didn't you?
This movie had some of the best marketing to ever grace this Trailer Trash column:
Check out that VHS cover blurb!
"Rocky, Rambo, Cobra. And now Hawk, in the biggest fight of his life."
Three of those are names of iconic Stallone characters. Pick which one doesn't belong. (Hint: It's the one they put in bold type.)
Between this tagline and the one on the poster at the top of this column, it seems like the thing the filmmakers were most proud of was coming up with the name "Hawk".
"His name is Hawk. He's fighting for his son."
Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
"The clowns... The clowns, Randy... they're here..."
Fear of clowns is a pretty common phenomena that can be easily explained: clowns are f***ing scary. Clownhouse is a movie that UNDERSTANDS that. If you want to scare someone, you don't necessarily need a good script, believable actors or haunting set pieces. All you need is clowns.
Everyone falls into one of these four categories: 1) People who don't mind clowns, but don't seek them out. 2) People who would rather be dead than be locked in a room with a clown. 3) Juggalos. 4) Clowns.
Which one are you?
"All this clowning around is about to come to an end!"
Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
If I've learned anything from bad action movies (and I mean anything!), it's that one in ten strippers is secretly a CIA Super-Commando. (See Doll Squad or the even sweeter Hell Squad.)
This is one of those trailers that I just have to let speak for itself. It's got EVERYTHING - from bad kung fu to bad special effects to bad acting. Hell, two guys just straight up explode in this trailer. Have at you:
At 0:20 - Is that supposed to be fire? At 0:35 - "Every class of society" in this movie pretty much means strippers and karate teachers only. At 0:55 - "Brilliantly portrayed" may be a bit of a stretch. At 1:10 - HOLY SHIT THAT GUY JUST BLEW THE HELL UP!?? At 1:12 - OH SHIT THAT GUY JUST BLEW UP TOO!!?? At 1:18 - Lightning powers! Use that Force!
I just noticed how many people get capped in this movie. Damn. The Doll Squad is just shooting EVERYBODY.
At 2:28 - Are they getting shot, or slipping on banana peels? At 3:03 - This narrator's not afraid of hyperbole.
Yeah, wow. Twenty-three people are shot and/or exploded on-camera in this trailer alone. That has to be SOME sort of record.
"They work - and kill - for Uncle Sam!"
Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
"The tortured ghost who claimed vengeance in the bride's bedroom!"
Quick summary: Ex-wife dies in freak accident. Man takes new wife to site of the accident on their honeymoon. (Worst. Honeymoon. Ever.) New wife is haunted by ghost of dead wife. Or is she? That's The Screaming Skull in a nutshell.
If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.
... which, in turn, makes me think of a much scarier version of this movie, where it's just shots of various skulls backed by a soundtrack of people screaming at the top of their lungs. That'd make me jump, at least the first few times.
You know, you could make any movie at least a bit scary with random quick cuts to skulls and screaming. (Something like this old YouTube video, actually.) This would even work for old movies. Take Casablanca:
Rick: If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your -
Did people usually die during scary movies in the 50s? I'm curious if anyone was ever able to cash in on that free burial. And I'm glad they specify that the death had to be from fright. I'd hate to think very old, stingy people would go see it to save a few dollars on funerals.
1950s Guy #1: "Have you heard of that movie Screaming Skull?" 1950s Guy #2: "Yeah, I think so. Isn't that movie where old people go to die?"
I wonder if that offer still stands? Is there an expiration date? I can't see anyone dying of fright during this movie in this day and age, but I wouldn't rule out Death by Boredom.
"See! The revisionization of a woman scorned! See! The vengeful violence of the undead!"
Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
At severe risk of losing all of my awesome cred, I'm going to go out and admit that I'm a mild anime fan. I've seen all of the Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon films. I've probably seen Akira a dozen times since I was 12. Patlabor, Excel Saga, Ghost in the Shell. I've watched all of Neon Genesis Evangelion three times. But that's about it.
(Okay, I probably deserve my wedgie, but hear me out.)
That's a lot of anime. But that's just the low end of the spectrum; if you ever had a passing interest in Japanese animation, most of those are the movies you probably would have seen first. More eager anime fans have usually seen a lot more (as there's a LOT of it out there) and would scoff at the list I made above. And hardcore anime fans? I won't even go there.
In case you haven't seen one, this is what a hardcore anime fan looks like:
Why did I feel the need to distinguish? Because the guy pictured above is probably the most excited about this week's Trailer Trash subject: Dragonball Evolution.
This movie hasn't come out yet, so you're all getting an extra-special glimpse at what Shit will look like in the future. (For more Future Shit, check out our examination of Fast & Furious.)
Dragonball Evolution is a live-action adaptation of a long-running and very popular anime series about a guy traveling around collecting magic balls. This is what ball-collecting looks like with live actors:
Chow Yun-Fat: WHHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY??? (Are you in this??) Are you that hard up for a paycheck? YOU ARE ONE OF THE WORLD'S ULTIMATE BADASSES, SO ACT LIKE IT ALREADY! Gah.
Is it just me, or does every location in that trailer look like the backdrop for a Mortal Kombat level?
"With this glow-in-the-dark bowling ball, I take my vengeance upon the Earth."
Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
"In an age of innocence, before the dawn of fear, two special people found each other."
The above quote says more about the movie Ator than I ever could. The word "special" is only ever used to describe two kinds of people: children and those with the, um, minds of children. In the trailer you're about to watch it's used to describe two Conan-style barbarians. Is that a flub? Nah. These two barbarians ARE special.
Caution: This trailer moves quick. Blink and you might miss the tarantula, several swordfights, a bathing beauty, deer, a bear, multiple explosions, a man in gold eyeshadow, or a dude who just straight-up explodes.
At 0:01 - Deer! At 0:03 - Bear! At 0:08 - Ator had his hair done by Motley Crue's stylist. At 0:18 - Boom! At 0:22 - THAT GUY JUST EXPLODED THE HELL UP
The movie itself even more ridiculous, managing to work all kinds of wacky flourishes (from incest, to witches, to zombies!) into one 98-minute PG-rated film. For an exhaustive, in-depth plot analysis, check out Cool Cinema Trash's rundown. (It's better than actually seeing the movie!)
"The birth of a new legend, a new hero, a true heroine: AAAAAAAAATOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRR!"
Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
Every now and then, an actor just needs to take home a pay check. Even great actors, like Ben "Bloodrayne, Love Guru" Kingsley. Late in his career, even Orson Welles had to dial a few in.
A wicked necromancer controls an entire town, forcing its residents to make the special "toys" he needs to cast his evil spells. This horror outing follows what happens when the dastardly wizard, hoping to revivify his dead son by stealing the soul of another, sets his sights on the wife of his new employee.
Orson Welles plays the wicked necromancer, of course. Ze trailah:
At 0:04 - Campbells' Psychedelic-flavored Soup. At 0:10 - Santa Clause? Jerry Garcia?? Orson Welles! At 0:31 - That's the easiest-to-read Tarot I've ever seen. At 0:34 - Was she falling at us? At 0:57 - Gratuitous, unnecessary nudity for the win. At 1:10 - "Excuse me while I set up Satan's hookah." At 1:15 - WTF? Was that a squirrel?
Trivia: The film was originally released as "Necromancy" in a PG-rated cut. When the flick hit home video in the 1980s, they added more nude scenes and retitled it "The Witching". So, word to the young directors: If your movie turns out to be bad, adding naked people isn't going to make it any worse.
"Everyone... wants to be happy."
Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
The tagline for this movie describes a lot of the dates Cake Man's brought back to League Headquarters. (Except "monster" would be a nicer word than he'd use for them.)
I'll forgo any long intro here. This is a monster movie from the 1950s that isn't titled Creature from the Black Lagoon, so you can be 99% sure it's a cheesy mess.
At 0:05 - The monster looks like the Crypt Keeper in a Dee Snider wig. At 0:45 - Alright, kids, remember those names - there'll be a test on them later. At 1:23 - Was that the narrator slipping into his 'scary voice'? At 1:27 - OK, he threw the molotov, but look in his other hand. Is Touch Connors drinking a beer?
Voodoo Land? No fortune in gold or diamonds would get me to go to a place called Voodoo Land. I mean, just the name alone lets you know it's a terrible, dangerous place. It's like Stabbytown, or Murderopolis. Or Youngstown, Ohio. Why would you ever go to a place call Voodoo Land, gold or no?
"A blond captive in the darkness... of Voodoo Land!"
Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.
The Screenwriters League is a collective of NYC-based writers sharing their experiences as they build their careers from the ground up, and hoping to impart any knowledge they gain along the way.
"These are - the eyes of a man possessed! - by the greatest power in the universe!"
