If you’ve been following the Unwatchable chronicles, lo these many years, you’re familiar with an issue I’ve encountered more than a few times in the course of my very important work. Many of the entries on the IMDb Bottom 100 list were also featured on the robots-chuckling-at-bad-movies show Mystery Science Theater 3000, which creates a sort of chicken-and-the-egg condundrum. Did people know these movies were terrible before they appeared on MST3K, or did the MST3K seal of disapproval convince IMDb users to vote films into the Bottom 100 that never would have made it otherwise? In most cases, I believe the latter to be true, and there’s no more open-and-shut case than Manos: The Hands of Fate, the long-forgotten 1966 horror movie that became the basis of perhaps the most famous Mystery Science Theater episode of all.

There can’t be any dispute about the fact that MST3K is solely responsible for the elevation of Manos to cult status as one of the worst movies ever made, mainly because almost nobody had seen the movie before the ‘bots got their hands on it. And since that particular episode is so well-known and beloved, it seems pointless for me to attempt any kind of review of Manos. Although I watched the non-MST3K version in preparation for this entry, I have seen the MST3K episode, so I know all the best jokes have already been taken. I mean, how can I top “Every frame of this movie looks like someone’s last known photograph”?

I could use this space to tell you the bizarre tale of the making of the film, its disastrous premiere in El Paso, and the fate of its cast of crew, but those stories have been told many times, most notably by Richard Brandt in the fanzine Mimosa and Dalton Ross in Entertainment Weekly. (Note that Ross claims Manos is ranked #1 on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. While that’s undoubtedly true sometimes, remember that the list is ever-changing based on user votes, which is why it appears at #23 here.) Some enterprising souls even made a 30-minute documentary on Manos called Hotel Torgo, in which Brandt (billed as a “Manos historian”) and sole surviving cast and crew member Bernie Rosemblum tell behind-the-scenes stories and visit the remains of the sets.

So maybe I should use the rest of this entry to discuss the other, less-heralded films of fertilizer-salesman-turned-auteur Hal Warren. Sadly, however, there aren’t any. This leaves me at something of a loss. Sure, I could tell you all about the horrible dubbing, out-of-focus camera work, and ear-searing free-jazz score. Of course, I’d be delighted to describe the 10-minute catfight in loving detail, and attempt to explain the inexplicably disturbing Torgo, and ponder the significance of the young couple found making out in their car on the roadside, any time of the day or night. But it’s been done. Really, all I can do is give you the opportunity to see it for yourself, which is easily done, as YouTube has both the untainted original and the MST3K version available for viewing. Choose whichever you prefer. I won’t judge.

Previously on Unwatchable:

24. Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow
25. Santa Claus
26. Going Overboard
27. Bottoms Up
28. Seven Mummies

It’s been six months since the last installment of Unwatchable, and while I could try to come up with some legitimate excuse for my prolonged absence – say, that I’ve been busy negotiating with HBO over the television rights to this blog – the truth is, I just sort of forgot. When I finally did stop to think, “Gee, I haven’t done Unwatchable in a while,” it turned out I couldn’t find any trace of the movie that was ranked number 24 on the list when I started this project back in the halcyon days of the late, lamented Screengrab. That would be 1997′s Glam, described thusly by the IMDb: “Traveling from the backwoods to Los Angeles to visit his cousin, a writer discovers a world of sex, drugs, crime and violence revolving around a beautiful young woman and her mobster boyfriend.” It stars Frank Whaley, Natasha Gregson Warner and Tony Danza (!), was rated NC-17 for “a scene of explicit sexuality and some sexual dialogue,” and is truly a movie the ’90s forgot, as all existing copies appear to have been wiped from the face of the earth.

This has happened a time or two before, and as is my custom in such instances, I have made a substitution by consulting the current version of the Bottom 100 and selecting the first available movie that does not also appear on the list I’ve been using all along. As you’re already well aware, the lucky winner is the seventh installment in the rollicking Police Academy series, Mission to Moscow. This selection presented some challenges of its own, in that I was not fully up to speed on the dense and intricate Police Academy mythology when I sat down to take in their Moscow mission. Sure, I saw the original Police Academy back in high school, and if I’m remembering correctly, I may even have had some fondness for the wacky adventures of Steve Guttenberg, Kim Cattrall, Bubba Smith, and that guy who makes noises with his mouth. Unlikely as it seems now, I must have also seen Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, because I’m certain this franchise served as my introduction to Bobcat Goldthwait, and he wasn’t in the first movie.

But even if I could recall both those films with the crystal clarity of a Marcel Proust, that would still leave Police Academy 3: Back in Training, Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol, Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach, and Police Academy 6: City Under Siege all unseen by me. What life-altering experiences had befallen Officer Eugene Tackleberry, Officer Moses Hightower and Officer Guy Who Makes Noises With His Mouth since last I’d checked in with them? Given that many of the original characters are absent from Mission to Moscow, I can only assume that they were tragically killed in the line of duty along the way. The only other explanation I can come up with is that Steve Guttenberg, Kim Cattrall and Bubba Smith had better things to do with their time, and of course, that’s ridiculous.

Whatever the case, you may rest assured that the guy who makes noises with his mouth is still around to undertake this mission to Moscow. That much I remember. Unfortunately, it’s been a few weeks since I watched Police Academy 7, and much to my chagrin, I seem to have misplaced my notes. I think I may have left them in my former car, which broke down a few weeks ago, and which I sold for parts to a mechanic who may even now be poring over those very notes, wondering what kind of sick maniac sold him this automobile and its mysterious contents. I do know that the plot concerns the Russian government calling on the staff of an American police academy to take on a mob boss (Ron Perlman) who plans to hack into all the world’s computers with a worm implanted on a popular videogame. The movie must have supplied a very good reason for the Russian government to do this, but without my notes, I can’t tell you what it is. We’ll just have to trust that the makers of Police Academy 7 knew what they were doing.

Other things I vaguely remember: Commandant Eric Lassard (George Gaynes) somehow gets lost on the way to the mission and ends up spending the entire movie with a poor Russian family; a boring cadet (Charlie Schlatter) has a boring romance with an attractive but boring translator (Claire Forlani); the guy who makes noises with his mouth makes some noises with his mouth. There are also several ostensibly amusing references to borscht. Well, I can’t blame them for that. Borscht is always funny, and there’s no point making a comedy set in Moscow and leaving out the borscht jokes.

I wish I could tell you more, but in the absence of my notes, the only way I’d be able to do that would be to watch Police Academy 7 again. And that’s just not going to happen in this lifetime or any other.

Previously on Unwatchable:

25. Santa Claus
26. Going Overboard
27. Bottoms Up
28. Seven Mummies
29. Seed

Halloween and Election Day are both behind us, which must mean it’s Christmas season again, which in turn must mean it’s time to revisit a beloved, perennial Yuletide classic. No, not It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol or even the Star Wars Holiday Special (which has still not gotten the digitally restored 3D re-release it so richly deserves – and some people still think George Lucas is a genius!). You can have your Christmas stories and your polar expresses and your miracles on 34th street; when I’m relaxing in front of the fireplace, nursing an egg nog and wearing nothing but my “Jingle Balls” thong, there’s only one movie that truly summons the spirit of the season for me, and it’s simply called Santa Claus.

Many words can be used to describe this 1959 film – made in Mexico but shaped into its enduring, indelible form by “King of the Kiddie Matinee” K. Gordon Murray – but “unwatchable” isn’t one of them. The IMDb users who voted Santa Claus the 25th worst movie of all time are clearly joyless, miserable scrooges every one, deserving of nothing but stockings full of coal. People hate what they fear, so perhaps the film’s many detractors are frightened of the dark truths it exposes about jolly ol’ Saint Nick. Of course, every movie about Father Christmas tinkers with the Claus mythos in some way, but few dare to go as far as Santa Claus, which reimagines the traditional Christmas Eve journey as some kind of creepy cross between Ocean’s 11 and The Exorcist.

Forget everything you thought you knew about Santa, the elves, the North Pole, the reindeer and all the other visions of sugarplums dancing in your head. This Santa dwells way above the North Pole, far out in space, on a cloud. You know, a space cloud. They have those, right? They’re called nebulas or some shit. What am I, an astronomer? He just lives on a space cloud, okay? In a cosmic observatory! Staffed with child slave labor! No kidding, in lieu of elves, Santa has a virtual United Nations of wee helpers, from Africa, Mexico, China and “The Orient,” among others. (He claims to have American children working for him, too, but the U.S. contingent’s rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” sure doesn’t sound American to me.) Some of these toddlers are walking around in nothing but loincloths, which is very disturbing. I don’t know exactly how cold it is on a space cloud hovering far over the North Pole, but come on, it’s got to be freezing. Can’t we get Amnesty International involved somehow?

Anyway, Santa’s getting ready for the big night, spying on kids with a giant telescope, eavesdropping on them with a Rocky Horror-lipped machine, and even conducting surveillance on their dreams, decades before Leonardo DiCaprio invented Inception. This is not really behavior I would ever categorize as “jolly,” I have to say. This is some kind of diabolical J. Edgar Hoover character here, and he’s definitely not someone I want sliding down my chimney in the middle of the night. I don’t need that Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle that badly! And yet, Santa is supposed to be the good guy here, as we learn when the movie introduces his nemesis from the pits of Hell, Mr. Pitch.

Yep, that’s him, all right. Lucifer has sent Pitch to the surface in order to spread his evil influence and make sure all the children end up on Santa’s naughty list. That includes Lupita, a poor little girl who only wants a dolly for Christmas, as well as three brothers who, quite honestly, were already annoying little punks before the devil showed up. Meanwhile, Santa is still making the preparations for his annual earthly visitation. As any decent ringleader plotting a caper would do, Papa Noel has assembled a team of experts, including the Safecracker (a hairy, shirtless ginger who prepares a special key that will open any door) and the Chemist (in this case, Merlin the wizard, visiting from an entirely different mythology and concocting sleeping potions for the boss. What, you thought Santa was above drugging children?). And then, of course, there’s Santa’s wheelmen, those eight tiny reindeer – in this case, white, robotic, wind-up reindeer. (I mean, come on, we all know reindeer can fly, but in space? That would be too crazy.)

There are some cult movies that sound like weird, crazy can’t-miss stuff when described, but turn out to be much less interesting when you actually sit down to watch them. Santa Claus isn’t one of them – it really is this weird and crazy. But I don’t want to give the impression that it’s some kind of runaway freight train of insanity, either; there’s plenty of dead air and annoyingly repetitive action, and the momentum does not exactly build to a pulse-pounding climax (Santa gets trapped in a tree and uses a wind-up cat to chase away the dog that’s menacing him). But it does boast a startling twist ending, at least if I’m interpreting it correctly. After Santa has completed his rounds for another year (and even poor little Lupita finally gets her dolly), a title card appears on screen: “Blessed are they who believe, for they shall see God.” Wait – what? So all this time, God has been Santa Claus? I mean, I knew there was some resemblance, but…man. Now this movie is even more disturbing than I remember.

Previously on Unwatchable:

26. Going Overboard
27. Bottoms Up
28. Seven Mummies
29. Seed
30. Alien From L.A.

When Adam Sandler’s latest comedy Grown Ups was released earlier this summer, it was largely derided as an essentially plotless (and pointless) paid vacation for him and his comedian pals. What many pundits didn’t realize is that Sandler had actually come full circle. I don’t think he talks about it much in interviews, but Sandler’s feature debut was, to quote IMDb, “shot entirely on a cruise ship going from New Orleans to Cancun.” Not only that, but this love boat was crammed to the rafters with beauty queens en route to the Miss Universe pageant, many of whom make bikini-clad appearances in the film. Not a bad first gig if you can get it, but as Steven Soderbergh once noted, having fun making a movie does not necessarily translate into making a good movie. (Quoth Soderbergh: “That shouldn’t matter. If that meant anything then Cannonball Run would be a great movie, because I’m sure it was fun to make.” Ironic words coming from the man who went on to make Ocean’s 12 and 13.)

In this case, I’m not even sure everyone involved with Going Overboard even knew they were making a movie; the whole thing looks more like a tax shelter than anything that should have ever been released in theaters (which may or may not have happened). The 1989 comedy begins on a topical note with General Manuel Noriega (Rocky’s brother-in-law Burt Young) sifting through a pile of porn VHS tapes. Among them he finds a tape labeled The Unsinkable Shecky Moskowitz, which savvy viewers will deduce was the original title of the movie they are watching. That this joke loses what meager laugh potential it once possessed when the title is changed to Going Overboard is something that perhaps should have been considered early in the planning stages, given the unlikelihood of a movie being released under the title The Unsinkable Shecky Moskowitz, but we’ll give the filmmakers a pass for the moment because, as we are about to learn, this is a very low-budget movie.

How do we know this? Shecky Moskowitz himself informs us, in the first of his many wall-breaking, Ferris Bueller-emulating addresses to the camera. As embodied by an unknown Adam Sandler…wait, can we just take a moment to savor the phrase “an unknown Adam Sandler”? I know a lot of people have forgiven the Sand-Man for his crimes against cinema since he delivered acclaimed performances in Punch-Drunk Love and (to a lesser extent) Funny People, but to that I say: “Really? We’re going to let him off that easily?” Because let’s remember, it’s not only the rancid comedies Sandler has starred in – you know, the likes of Little Nicky, Anger Management and I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry – that he must bear responsibility for. He must also be held accountable for all the crap produced under the Happy Madison banner, which is to say: All the Rob Schneider! All the David Spade! Grandma’s Boy! Paul Blart Fucking Mall Cop! I’m a forgiving person (NOTE: not really), but Mr. Sandler still has a long way to go in my book.

Anyway, back to the piece of crap at hand (which you can actually watch in its entirety here – thanks, YouTube!). Shecky Moskowitz is a cruise ship waiter with dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian. Unfortunately, the ship is already equipped with comic Dickie Diamond (Scott LaRose), a scrawny, hairy-chested glob of grease whose hostile act is a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen. Shecky tries to badger Dickie into letting him perform as his opening act, a proposal Dickie quite rudely (albeit sensibly) dismisses. Since Shecky is our ostensible rooting interest, you might be under the impression that he’s been working hard at his craft, honing a stand-up set to perfection in hopes of getting his big break. In fact, he has no routine, and barely has any jokes (“She told me ‘you’re an eight,’ so I pissed on her shoes. Urinate!”), so I guess we’re supposed to root for him just because he has show-biz ambitions. At one point Shecky addresses the camera again thusly: “Is it me? Do I have no idea what makes people laugh? Do I know nothing about the art of comedy?” To comment on this would be akin to shooting fish in a barrel full of already dead fish.

Meanwhile, General Noriega is still watching the movie in progress, in which Miss Australia at one point insults him out of the blue, prompting the despot to send two goons to whack her. (Yes, he’s sending underlings to kill someone in a movie he’s watching. Weird, huh?) This subplot becomes tiresome in a hurry, but fortunately there are several celebrity cameos to ease us through to the grand finale. Billy Zane makes a nearly amusing appearance as King Neptune, a then-unknown Billy Bob Thornton foreshadows Bad Santa as a profane heckler, Unwatchable commenter Adam Rifkin (director of #39, The Invisible Maniac) plays a rock star/walking STD, and most startling of all, Milton Berle appears as himself (mysteriously accompanied by a laugh track), offering Shecky a selection of jokes to perform. (Sample: “Her boobs were so small, she had to carry her nipples in her pocket.”) I can only assume the superannuated Uncle Miltie was under the impression he was guest-starring on an episode of The Love Boat.

At least Going Overboard is honestly lazy; the movie is continually apologizing for itself, from Sandler’s opening comments about the lack of budget to his shrugged introduction of a bikini montage. Legend has it (or at least, IMDb and Wikipedia both have it) that a box of camera equipment was left behind when the cruise ship set sail, and thus the cinematographer was forced to work with the wrong lenses. I find no reason to doubt this, and yet, I can’t say the movie really suffers from it. There’s not a single second of Going Overboard that would have been improved by the correct F-stop.

Previously on Unwatchable:

27. Bottoms Up
28. Seven Mummies
29. Seed
30. Alien From L.A.
31. Snowboard Academy

If Uwe Boll is the king of Unwatchable, it’s quickly (or, more accurately given my recent pace at this project, very, very slowly) becoming apparent that Paris Hilton is the queen. I think this is not so much due to her acting (which is bad) or her choice of projects (which is worse). It’s just that people hate her. People who probably haven’t seen her work in the likes of Nine Lives and House of Wax nevertheless feel the need to pull up her IMDb page and cast negative votes against these films, because that’s the only way these otherwise powerless individuals can make it clear to the world that, whatever it is Paris Hilton stands for, they’re agin it. I suppose that’s admirable in a way, but what of the collateral damage? And by collateral damage, I of course mean – what about me? I’m the guy who decided it would be a good idea to watch the Bottom 100 movies and write about them as a means of entertaining you, and this is how you repay me?

Well, fine. If that’s how it has to be, then I’ve got one more trick up my sleeve. You see, I’ve decided right this moment not to hate Paris Hilton. Ha! You heard me! I LIKE PARIS HILTON! I like her permanent pouty face! I like her skadillions of dollars! I even like her ridiculous Carl’s Jr. commercial!

Or was that her sex tape? I can never tell them apart. Anyway, Bottoms Up is the latest of Ms. Hilton’s forays into thespianism to joins the Unwatchable ranks, and in a strange way it seems tailor-made to convince the Hilton haters they’ve been wrong all along. Paris plays Lisa Mancini, princess daughter of a high-powered Hollywood mogul, club scene fixture, and frequent paparazzi target. Like Paris, Lisa has one facial expression, fixed somewhere betwixt sultry come-on and “Who farted?” And presumably just like Paris, Lisa spends most of her spare time ladling soup down at the homeless shelter. I mean, that’s what I always assumed, and here co-writer/director Erik MacArthur (Life Makes Sense If You’re Famous) confirms it.

But Bottoms Up is not really Lisa’s story. Our true hero is Minnesota mixologist Owen Peadman (Jason Mewes), who journeys to Hollywood not to find fame in the movies, but to enter a bartending competition in hopes of winning the $10,000 prize that will allow him to bail out his father’s failing restaurant. The contest is rigged and Owen loses, but the outcome is less notable than the execution, a cluster-fuck of montage editing that would have Eisenstein rolling down the Odessa steps to his grave, in which he would then also roll around. MacArthur and his editing team make a valiant attempt at assembling disparate shots of hands, bottles, crowd reactions, and close-ups of Mewes and his competitors into a highlight from Cocktail 2: Electric Boogaloo, but the results are even less convincing than Hilton’s collagen-plumped lips.

Hilton’s Lisa Mancini enters the picture when a dejected Owen takes a job with his uncle’s TV crew shooting footage for an Access Hollywood-style gossip show and Lisa nearly drives over him with a golf cart. (I think this is yet another sly reference to events from Hilton’s real life, but I’m not willing to scour her Wikipedia page to be sure.) Although she’s dating flavor-of-the-minute actor Hayden Field (Brian Hallisay), romance eventually blossoms between Owen and Lisa, who are clearly meant for each other since they’re the two most affectless people on the planet. Their monotone love affair takes place against the backdrop of a mostly harmless spoof of TMZ-era Hollywood, complete with sex tapes, jacuzzi orgies, punched paparazzi and Kevin Smith cameos. (Smith plays Owen’s buddy back home as a favor to his Jay and Silent Bob running buddy Mewes, and it’s got to be his ideal role, as most of his scenes require him to lounge around in his bathrobe cracking jokes about alien anal probes.)

I say “mostly harmless” because Bottoms Up has a wince-inducing homophobic streak embodied by David Keith in a most unfortunate performance as Owen’s Uncle Earl, a flaming queen who mistakenly believes he’s in the closet. I don’t blame Keith; even though he swishes it up like he’s in a Three’s Company episode from 1978, he manages to make Uncle Earl the most endearing character onscreen. It’s not his fault the director seems to find campy mincing to be the height of hilarity.

Previously on Unwatchable:

28. Seven Mummies
29. Seed
30. Alien From L.A.
31. Snowboard Academy
32. Car 54, Where Are You?

As those of you who check this blog on an hourly basis are all too aware, I was forced to skip #35 on our little countdown because I could not come up with a copy of the 1996 Hulk Hogan rarity Santa With Muscles at the time. But in this wondrous age of ours, YouTube always comes through eventually, and I knew it was only a matter of time before some Hogan completist posted the movie in excruciating 10-minute increments. As it turned out, the impetus for making this lost Christmas classic available was the release of a similar “wrestler-turned-actor plays beloved childhood icon” feature earlier this year: The Tooth Fairy starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Yes, The Rock’s latest ill-advised career choice made this column possible. There’s nothing left to do now but look in the mirror and ask ourselves: Was it truly worth it?

At the time, I’m sure Mr. Hogan thought this noxious yule log was the logical follow-up to his family-friendly roles in Suburban Commando and Mr. Nanny. The Hulkster stars as Blake Thorne, a rich prick who made his name as a professional wrestler (you don’t say!) and his fortune by plastering his face on the labels of Blake’s Way protein powder and salad dressing. He amuses himself by breaking into his own compound and having his butlers and chefs attack him with rakes and rolling pins, as well as engaging in paintball battles on the public thoroughfares. This doesn’t sit well with Deputy Hinkley (Unwatchable mainstay Clint Howard), who engages Blake’s Hummer in hot pursuit. Blake goes into hiding at a nearby mall, where the Santa on duty has recently gone missing. Blake dons the red suit as a disguise, then clunks his head, falls down a trash chute, and wakes up with a case of amnesia.

Lenny the Elf (Don Stark channeling Joe Pesci) steals his wallet, then leads him to Santa’s throne (or whatever it is Santa sits on at the mall; surely he’s deserving of a throne) to take requests from the kiddies, but when a pair of lowlifes attempt to steal a charity donation bowl, Blake becomes Ass-Kickin’ Mall Santa! He quickly wins over all the kids who have no idea what an asshole he really is, including a cute band of orphans…wait, is that li’l Mila Kunis? Why, yes it is! Goodness, that’s awkward. Anyway, the kiddies recruit Blake to help save their orphanage from the evil Ebner Frost (Ed Begley, Jr.), who wants to demolish it in order to gain access to the electrified quartz crystals in the caves beneath. (If Begley took this role in order to promote the idea of finding alternate energy sources, he really didn’t think this through.)

Really, what is there to say about a movie in which it’s understood that the use of rocket launchers to enforce traffic misdemeanors is authorized by the local law enforcement? We could dissect Hogan’s performance, I guess; he does make an attempt at cultivating some “rich guy” mannerisms, but these just make him seem gay, which I don’t think was the intention. (This impression is magnified when he later dons a modified costume that makes him look like the Village People’s Santa Claus.)

I don’t think there’s anything else you need to know about Santa With Muscles, except that Garrett Morris is in it for some reason. And, you know, it has a wonderful Christmas message about not being a big ol’ prick just because you’re rich. That’s worth something, I guess.

Previously on Unwatchable:

28. Seven Mummies
29. Seed
30. Alien From L.A.
31. Snowboard Academy
32. Car 54, Where Are You?

Long before I accepted my calling in life as your faithful movie janitor, it was my plan to write terrible movies instead of writing about them. I’m joking, of course – nobody sets out to write terrible movies, not even Seven Mummies screenwriter Thadd Turner – but I did spend my younger days toiling in the trenches of indie film, with limited success. One of my closest calls with fame and fortune came back in the late ‘90s, when some friends in the Austin independent film scene mentioned that a producer of their acquaintance was looking for a low-budget, action-oriented script that could be shot in Luck, Texas. You won’t find Luck on Google Maps; it’s a Western town set that was built on Willie Nelson’s property outside of Austin for the filming of Red-Headed Stranger.

Without giving away too much about the script I feverishly churned out, the basic gist involved a gang of modern-day criminals who hole up in a Texas ghost town and end up battling with zombies from the Old West. (It’s called Deadsville! The rights are available! Contact me, makers of straight-to-DVD horror!) I signed a cocktail napkin deal at the Broken Spoke with the producer and his shady British partner, they drew up a business plan and budget, Willie Nelson was allegedly on board for a supporting role…but it never came to be. (But it still can! Zombies are hot, right? Shoot me an email, shady producers of schlock!) Why am I telling you this? Because today’s Unwatchable entry concerns a gang of modern-day criminals who hole up in a ghost town and end up battling zombies from the Old West. I least, I think they’re zombies. They may be vampires. Despite the title, however, I don’t think they’re mummies.

Not that I’m accusing Mr. Thadd Turner of plagiarism…although I could swear I glimpsed a cameo appearance by Mr. Willie Nelson, or at least a Willie-alike. Whereas my modern-day criminals were bank robbers fresh from a job, the motley crew in Seven Mummies is comprised of prison escapees, most of them hulking and brutish, with the odd man out being scrawny character actor Max Perlich (Homicide’s Brodie). The convicts have taken a hostage in Lacy, a guard who is soon stripped of her uniform top in order that we might better appreciate her attributes. For if there is one thing I can say for Seven Mummies director Nick Quested, it’s that he certainly has an eye for large-breasted women. Russ Meyer would nod approvingly at the titty quotient herein.

Anyway, the convicts wander through the desert for a while until they stumble upon Danny Trejo sitting outside his shack, roasting up some rattlesnakes. Trejo relates the legend of a lost treasure of gold once guarded by seven Jesuit priests, but now waiting to be claimed in a nearby ghost town by anyone possessing the missing seventh medallion. Luckily, one of the escapees happened to find the medallion while digging for water. Unluckily, the town is still heavily populated by miners, gunslingers and whores with really, really enormous breasts.

Why is this unlucky, you ask? Well, when the sun goes down, the townspeople are transformed into…whatever it is they’re transformed into. Let’s just call them zombie-vampires. Or maybe they’re some variety of werewolf. Were-zombies? Vamp-wolves? It doesn’t matter, I guess; they’re creatures with a taste for human flesh, as Max Perlich learns when his tongue is eaten. Eventually the few surviving cons find the crypt of gold and use the medallion to open it, but their glee is short-lived as, finally, with ten minutes left in the movie, we have mummies. They aren’t particularly scary mummies, but I can’t say I’ve ever found mummies to be especially frightening, so I won’t hold that against the filmmakers. Everything else, though, right down to the Old West making-whoopie montage scored to an obnoxious hip-hop track, is all their fault.

But what I’ll remember most about Seven Mummies isn’t the vampires or zombies or mummies or even the large-breasted women…okay, maybe it is the large-breasted women, but the second thing I’ll remember is Danny Trejo laughing. You see, after sending the convicts to meet their fate, Trejo laughs for a long time. I mean, a really long time. He laughs for so long that the movie actually dissolves between a scene of Trejo laughing and a scene of Trejo still laughing…and then dissolves again to a scene of Trejo still laughing. That’s a shitload of laughing, but it’s still not enough, because after the movie has seemingly ended and the mummies have done whatever it is mummies do, right before cutting to the credits, Seven Mummies dissolves back to Danny Trejo, and yes, he’s still laughing. Dude, it’s just not that funny. Really, I wish it was that funny. Nothing has ever been that funny. But I guess there’s not much to laugh at when you spend most of your time squatting in the desert roasting rattlesnakes.

Previously on Unwatchable:

29. Seed
30. Alien From L.A.
31. Snowboard Academy
32. Car 54, Where Are You?
33. Glitter

Spring has sprung, baseball’s opening day has come and gone, and it’s time to get back to the business of counting down the worst of the worst. Yes, it’s been a long, cold winter for fans of Unwatchable, but after a rigorous course of psychotherapy and an aggressive regimen of mood-stabilizing medication, I’m finally ready to finish off the job I started…holy crap, almost two years ago. Of course, this means the Bottom 100 list I’m working with is now hopelessly outdated, what with all the new eye-gougingly awful films made in the interim – Uwe Boll alone has churned out another half-dozen atrocities since I started – but we can’t worry about that. A deal is a deal, and I promised to finish this grueling task…although you could help make it just a little less grueling by hitting the “Donate” button at the bottom of the page and sending me your spare change via Paypal. Just sayin’.

Speaking of Uwe Boll, I do believe that Seed is the fourth of the master of disaster’s films to make our countdown, and by far the most deserving to date. Boll wastes no time letting us know we’re in for something special; he starts right in with extremely graphic footage of actual animal torture in order to “set the tone” for the lighthearted romp to follow. (The footage was acquired from PETA in exchange for a promise of “two percent of the profits” accrued by Seed. Assuming Boll adhered to the usual Hollywood accounting standards, let’s hope PETA wasn’t counting on that money to pay for their latest naked Khloe Kardashian billboard.) I think we can all agree that nothing sets a mood quite like dogs being skinned alive. Something to keep in mind when you’re planning your next bachelor party.

Anyway, this jaunty prelude is followed by a title card informing us of a dubious state law by which any condemned prisoner who survives three jolts from the electric chair is to be immediately set free. This is good news for serial killer Max Seed, on death row after committing 666 murders between 1973 and 1979. Seed is a hulking, overall-clad maniac in the Leatherface vein, with the same penchant for keeping his face hidden (he’s being held in one of those prisons where the authorities have no problem with him wearing a burlap sack on his head). Flashbacks to Seed’s dimly-lit capture by the authorities alternate with scenes of Detective Matt Bishop inexplicably watching video footage of atrocities from the killer’s crawlspace. (And if you haven’t caught Atrocities from the Killer’s Crawlspace on FOX Reality, you’re really missing out.) For many minutes on end, we weep along with Detective Bishop as he watches dead babies decompose in footage I’m hoping wasn’t supplied by PETA.

Finally it’s time for Seed to pay for his crimes, but alas, the first two attempts at electrocuting him to death fail, despite his head bursting into flames and all the resulting geysers of blood. Rather than taking any chances on the third attempt failing, the authorities decide to box him up and bury him alive. Great idea, but perhaps not as great an idea as, say, shooting him in the head and burying him dead. Sure enough, Seed is soon clawing his way out of his coffin, bent on revenge. The resulting killing spree is largely incoherent, but it does provide what may be the most memorable scene in the entire Boll filmography (or maybe not, since I still haven’t seen Postal): an unrelentingly brutal, five-minute single take in which Seed beats a woman about the head with a hatchet until there’s nothing left but unrecognizable pulp, at which point he triumphantly sniffs the bloody stump of her neck. (Obviously it’s not really a single take – there are some poorly disguised jump-cuts along the way – but it’s still the closest thing to a tour-de-force I’ve seen in Boll’s oeuvre, repulsive though it may be.)

Assuming you survive this sequence with your humanity intact, Boll has a cheerfully upbeat ending in store for you, in which (spoiler alert) a little girl ends up trapped in a cell with her father, who has just blown his own brains out. It’s not just any movie that makes you yearn for the breezy effervescence of the Saw series, but Seed does the trick.

30. Alien From L.A.
31. Snowboard Academy
32. Car 54, Where Are You?
33. Glitter
34. House of the Dead

Back at the former home of Unwatchable, the late, lamented Screengrab, the venerable Leonard Pierce was moved to pen a tribute to Albert Pyun, perhaps our most underrated terrible director. “Both in his ridiculously prolific output and his utter lack of talent and shame, Albert Pyun leaves Uwe Boll in the dust,” Pierce boldly proclaimed. Urban Menace, Brain Smasher…A Love Story and Captain America were among the Pyun titles cited by my esteemed colleague, but somehow this early effort got off without so much as a warning. The time has come to correct this egregious oversight.

In fairness to Leonard, it’s entirely possible that Alien from L.A. isn’t in the same league of crapulence as the likes of Brain Smasher (which has, so far at least, astoundingly not made an appearance in our survey of the Unwatchable). In fact, I would go so far as to speculate that there is one overriding factor responsible for this particular Pyn picture’s appearance on the Bottom 100 list..but we’ll get to that.

Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Kathy Ireland makes her motion picture debut as the mellifluously named Wanda Saknussemm, a mousy, nerdy L.A. gal with thick glasses and a squeaky voice. Soon after being dumped by her surfer boyfriend for being such a nervous Nellie, Wanda learns that her archaeologist father has passed away in Africa. Summoning all her courage, Wanda flies to the site of his latest dig, where she discovers that he has not died after all, but merely fallen into a bottomless pit. Wanda herself then falls into the pit, which turns out not to be entirely bottomless, in that she reaches the bottom. She soon discovers she has arrived in the lost land of Atlantis, where the men are sweaty and speak with thick Australian accents.

Wanda has now become the titular alien from L.A., and with the help of gruff miner Gus (William R. Moses), she attempts to find her father while evading the local authorities who believe her to be a spy from the surface world. In order to accomplish this goal, she must navigate her way through a world that looks like The Road Warrior by way of a Duran Duran video, as Pyun’s Atlantis is your typical ‘80s industrial-neon new wave mishmash of a sci-fi civilization.

Actually, “typical ‘80s mishmash” pretty much sums up Alien from L.A. It’s a junkyard retread of better movies, with no particular wit or flair of its own (aside from the highly disturbing long pink eyelashes of its chief villain played by Deep Roy, later to achieve some fame as the Oompa Loompas in Tim Burton’s Chocolate Factory), but it probably would never have found its way onto this list if not for the nails-on-chalkboard performance of Kathy Ireland. Her previous acting experience in the pivotal role of “Woman in Line” in a 1985 episode of Charles in Charge apparently did not prepare her for the rigors of carrying a motion picture, but Pyun is to blame for allowing – for all we know, even encouraging – Ireland to squeak out all of her lines like a six-year-old. He’s also to blame for never showcasing her primary talent – filling out a bikini – until the movie’s final minute; clearly he still had a lot to learn about exploitation filmmaking.

The most stunning thing I learned about Alien from L.A. after the fact is that it actually has a sequel of sorts. Golan and Globus, the producers of this epic, later launched a big-screen remake of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. After only a few days of filming, however, the production was shut down and director Rusty Lemorande (who wrote Captain EO and Electric Dreams) was replaced by Pyun, who somehow re-jiggered the story to include the return of Wanda Saknussemm. On the IMDb forum, Lemorande writes: “Only the approximately first 8 minutes of the film were written or directed by me. The remainder of the film is actually the sequel to Alien in LA which was tacked on and renamed Journey to the Center of the Earth in order to fulfill contractual commitments by the production company to foreign distributors. The remainder of the footage I shot (my film) has never been seen by the public (and few others) due to the lack of funds at the time to shoot and insert the many special effects shots required.”

Yes, it’s another bizarre but true tale from the realm of…the Unwatchable.

Previously on Unwatchable:
31. Snowboard Academy
32. Car 54, Where Are You?
33. Glitter
34. House of the Dead
35. Santa With Muscles (unseen)

When I wrote about Meatballs 4 a few months ago, I offered the following advice free of charge: “Note to aspiring filmmakers: if the success of your movie is dependent on the audience perceiving a character played by Corey Feldman as ‘the cool guy,’ you have already failed.” It should go without saying that the same rule of thumb applies to Corey Haim, but if the makers of Snowboard Academy know this, they learned it too late.

In many ways, Snowboard Academy is like a remake of Meatballs 4 on ice. (This is the sort of knowledge you can only get from someone watching the 100 worst movies of all time or from a member of the Two Coreys Fan Club, and I’m only confessing to one of those crimes.) Joe Flaherty is the beleaguered owner of a ski resort in financial crisis, Haim is his rebellious son stoked to bring snowboarding to the resort, Brigitte Nielsen is his estranged, scheming wife, and the late Jim Varney is the resort’s new entertainer/safety engineer Rudy James.

Lest you confuse the bumbling, pratfall-prone Rudy with Varney’s signature character Ernest P. Worrell, the actor has chosen to wear an earring and a selection of wigs from the Anton Chigurh collection. (At least, I hope they were wigs – it did dawn on me toward the end that this follicular folly might actually be Varney’s idea of a cool haircut.) Rest assured, however, there’s bumbling aplenty!

Anyway, Corey and his kewl pals convince Flaherty to allow snowboarding on the trails, a move that turns the resort’s financial fortunes around despite the protests of Flaherty’s other son, Paul. Having recently been appointed manager of the resort, the straight-laced Paul wants the snowboarders gone, so he challenges them to a competition – boarders vs. skiers, and if the skiers win, the boarders gotta go. Of course, this makes no sense. At least in Meatballs 4, the competition took place between rival camps; here it’s already been established that the snowboarders have saved the resort from financial ruination, yet Flaherty agrees to a pointless competition that could put him out of business. It’s sort of hard to root for him at this point, because really, doesn’t he deserve to fail? You might hope this plot development would at least result in some awesome snowboard shreddage, but the action is decidedly non-gnarly.

Director John Shepphird (Teenage Bonnie and Klepto Clyde) and writers Rudy Rupak and James Salisko (She’s Too Tall) are apparently unfamiliar with the unwritten rules of comedy, so allow me to offer a little free advice. When you have a character make a bad joke, and then everyone else makes a face indicating that the joke was really bad, and this happens over and over again, scene after scene, this means you are actually writing nothing but bad jokes. Acknowledging this fact does not make the jokes funny, it just makes you look like talentless dipshits.

Previously on Unwatchable:
32. Car 54, Where Are You?
33. Glitter
34. House of the Dead
35. Santa With Muscles (unseen)
36. Daddy Day Camp