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When you think of the holidays, you always think of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Maybe you just think of Arnold all the time. Which fits perfectly into the Xmas spirit theme for this film -- don't learn any lessons of Christmas, don't change how you feel about life and commit heinous crimes in the search of consumerism that you fail to accomplish.

Beyond how unbelievably bad it is overtly, I mostly want to talk about its failures for being a Christmas movie (as is tradition for our holiday specials). The primary problem here is that it can't even be an Xmas movie. It's a movie that takes place during Christmas (kiss my ass, all who say Die Hard is a Christmas movie), but it fails to achieve any Spirit of Christmas themes (hell, even The Star Wars Holiday Special manages that). 

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Before he was the US Ambassador to Kim-Jong Un, Dennis Rodman had a dream of being a big Hollywood actor. The path to victory? A movie where he fights tigers, exploding babies, references that aren't related to basketball and U.N.C.L.E. Oh yeah, JCVD is there too.

Double Team is silly in the same vein as any Cannon/Chuck Norris joint. There's a reason that major action movies died for almost 20 years (thanks Fast & Furious franchise) and this movie may have been a huge part of that decline. JCVD led the 90's in super awesome punching bad guy films and here in 1997 film-goers were willing to say "I've had enough of that". A plot that doesn't make any sense, horrific editing, and too too too many basketball related jokes just put them over the edge.

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Here's a fun concept. Let's put together a film with heavy sci-fi elements and themes in the vein of Twilight Zone and mash it together with a poorly motivated romance and have John Travolta stare at trees for the majority of it. That sounds like punishment.

Guess what though? It killed it. The box office loved this film despite the critics apprehensions. Flocks of people wanting to see some feel goodie type jobbers fled to the theater thinking that John Travolta was making a huge comeback (it was over 2 years later) and that he was good at acting as he did great at looking confused in Pulp Fiction. 

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Cat people. It's a movie about cat people. Written by horror master, Stephen King, it's arguably the most comedic horror film ever made. You thought Dreamcatcher was rife with errors...buckle in, folks.

Sleepwalkers is absolutely bananas. We'll just say right now that this is a must-do film for fans of crummy movies. It's a laugh riot. For instance, let's just put it out there that the chief action star of this film is a house cat, named Clovis. Clovis rivals Chuck Norris, Schwaz, Stallone and Van Damme in the pantheon of 90s action stars. I'm not joking.

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Once again we try to "go into the internet" by revisiting a film from the early 90's where people didn't understand how computers worked. This one delivered to us by stinker-staples Jeff Fahey and Pierce Brosnan in this NOT Stephen King adaptation.

The Lawnmower Man when it came out was beloved and believed to be a great film by 12-year-olds. It no longer holds that majesty. This movie stinks. From all angles, most notably the special-effects and its dubious knowledge of how servers work. But notably as well is the acting from Jeff, Pierce and Dean Norris (of Breaking Bad fame and one hell of a Twitter follow).

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Some brainiac from Fox at one point, thought that making a sequel to Speed, take out Keanu, make 1/3 of it about failed marriage proposals, toss in the "idiot plot", and ADR every horrible dad joke you could possibly come up with. Speed 2 is a horrible, terrible, not enjoyable film.

Kids, remember that period of time before Nirvana and post The Clash? Well that period was a dark time we like to call "The Ice Age" and Vanilla Ice, the mind-child of men in ties, led the charge against good art. This film is a horrifying reminder of those awful days.

It should be noted that we are not going to pick on Robert Van Winkle (Ice's real name). Any reference to how dumb Vanilla Ice is, will be reference to how stupid the men behind the image of Vanilla Ice were (record producers, MTV execs, publicists, etc.).

When the people ask for a Top Gun sequel they get it! Only this one has NASCAR instead of fighter jets and Kelly McGillis gets to be replaced by the quite unhappy wife of the lead actor. Replace Tom Skeritt with a Robert Duvall and put him in a foot race with Tom Cruises and you've got Top Gun 2: Days of Thunder.

While it's just a sequel to arguably the buttest of all movies, Days of Thunder is a lot more fun. It's super dumb, of course, and fairly low on action, it's still a whole lot of fun to riff with how piss poor the script is. It's all fun and games here but if you really think about any single event of this movie you can start punching about fifty holes into each scene.

When two men really don't like each other it's time to break the laws of medical science and do a face/off and then a face/on, while facing off. Inspiration demands much wiping of loved ones faces on, in case they get their faces blown off.

So let's start out with the science of said face/swap. Nope, can't work. The movie explicitly tells us that Cage and Travolta's characters (Troy and Archer, respectively) have two different blood types. So the face wouldn't even stay on. The body would reject the swap and then you'd really have a face off....onto the floor. Hey try not to step on your face. Then there's the height difference, hair lines and color, body hair amounts, eye color, dental structure, weight gain/loss, shoe size and the most damning of all differences -- the ding dong. Mrs. Archer must be only boning him when she's lit up like a X-mas tree because she can't tell that he husbands winky has gone from 4 inches and dropping left to 5 inches and constantly erect. Nice.

Welcome to Con Air, your number one airlines if you are super butt. Like Nickelback? You'll love Con Air. Like penis measuring? Con Air is your favorite. Think Jerry Bruckheimer is a good producer, kiss our collective ass. This movie sucks.

The movie is about the impossible. Going to prison for a crime that you wouldn't get charged with, Cage's Alabama accent, his hair, the concept of the prison plane, Colm Meaney having a job, and the lack of geographical understanding. None of it works. The villain's plan doesn't make a lick of sense and the "good" guys plans don't help. Even Nic Cage's "Cameron Poe" breaks his own rules for the sake of "action".

Its one of the worst box office flops that has ever existed and there's a reason for that. This movie stinks! But take some bad acting, bad action, terrible dialogue, and add in the "idiot plot" and you've got a great time ahead. Yo-ho, me scalped hardys!

Let's get the most common complaint about this film - Geena Davis as action lady. Sure, she stinks. She's got no action ability and looks horrendously awful on screen. Her movements aren't fluid and come at you at about the pace of a turtle. Her action is lumpy. There's just no other word, lumpy. She can't get a line right either.

In our FINAL Prelude episode (that's right, you heard it), we pull out all the stops for Cutthroat Island. It's known to be one of the biggest flops of cinema history and a career-ender for everyone involved except for the director who is at fault more than anyone.

The Wild Card from Justin - Pop Quiz, Hotshot (Pirate Edition)

1. Q. Pirates pierced their ears, not to look cool. Why?
   A. Believed precious gems in their ears improved one's eyesight.
2. Q. Why did pirates wear eye patches?
   A. To always have one eye adjusted to darkness to fight below deck in dark
3. Q. Women pirates! Name one.
   A. Anne Bonny stole the REvenge with Jack Rackham and pirated until it was captured.
       Mary Read partnered with Anne Bonny
       Sayyida al Hurra ruled mediterreanean in early 1500s
       Jeanne-Louise de Belleville led three black with red sail ships called the BLack Fleet taking revenge against King Philip VI for killing         her husband.
       Ching Shih captured by pirates in 1801, then married their captain. When he died she took over the fleet of over 300 junks and 40,000       men. Chinese navy lost 63 ships to them.
4. Q. What was a pirates most popular form of crew punishment?
   A. Keelhauling - getting tied to the ship and dragged under, getting your skin torn off AND/OR drowning. Whhheeeee!!!
5. Q. Describe the most deadliest of pirate flags?
   A. Red background with an hourglass on it. Meant give no quarter.

The Wild Card from Sam - The Great Superpower Debate

• The Magneto of Food or Mind Chef - 7/10 stars (with a caveat of Jackie just being grumpy, this is a 10/10 if there ever was one)

The Wild Card from Jackie - Would You Rather?

• Be stabbed the Last Unicorn or eaten by Clifford the Big Red Dog
• Drowning via Loch Ness Monster or Drawn and Quartered by Sasquatch
• Not worth going over.....

About Cutthroat Island - Movie Information

Sam's Boring Bullshit

When it comes to pirate movies, I like my swashbuckling hot and my pirates and pirate ladies hotter. People who wear leather and don’t take baths, covered in sea salt and bird shit. Wait that’s real pirates, who were most certainly gross. Movie pirates though, they have the hots all over. Jon Depp, Orlando Bloom, Matthew Modine… Wait Modine? Really? Do you want a pirate or a middle aged father who doesn’t understand his teenagers?

It's one of the crappiest movies ever to have such vast success. Thanks teenage girls. This movie is a whole lot of visual pain and my brain hurts from knowing how stupid it is. Get ready for some real crummy science!

The science....just one time open a book. Just once! So many explosions in space. So much NASA looking completely stupid. Ugh. Moving on...

This week on the greatest podcast about bad movies, Sam decides to punish us for 2 1/2 hours with both Michael Bay and Bruce Willis' first appearance on the show. It's the "classic" teenage-girl loving mega-hit, Armageddon, in which a rock gets sploded by oil drillers. Prepare for some bad science! 

Streaming Dos and Don'ts

• The Colony - Netflix
• Mazes and Monsters - Amazon Prime
• Space Mutiny - Netflix (MST3K) 

The Wild Card - The Great Superpower Debate

• The Iron Foot - 7.25/10 stars

About Armageddon - Movie Information

Sam's Boring Bullshit

Knock knock?
Who’s there?
Armageddon.
Armageddon Who?
Armageddon on your nerves yet? If not give me another 2 and a half hours.

An endless troupe of soon-to-be-dead invade a protected jungle to achieve their cavalcade of ulterior motives set to the backdrop of civil war. There's also a talking trash-can, lasers, primacide, Reagan's Star Wars program, bad science, missiles, bad management and Ernie Hudson. It's time for some good ol' bonkers business.

Congo from opening shot to final frame is a mass of nonsense. At no point in time does anything feasible or scientifically sound happen throughout. It's like they took the original script, sent it to Bizarro World, then brought it back and used that version. None of it makes any damn sense.

Last year we made a hard decision that the classic Michael Crichton adaptation Congo was a must do for an episode and now we have reached the point where its time for such shenanigans. It's lasers, gorillas and greed and everything you want.

Streaming Do's and Don'ts

• Gantz:O - Netflix
• Supersonic Man - Rifftrax - Amazon Prime
• Super Inframan - Amazon Prime

The Wild Card - The Great Superpower Debate

• Water Freeze Man - 8.75/10 Stars

About Congo - Movie Information

Sam's Boring Bullshit

The novel Congo, written of course, by Michael Crichton in 1980, made a startling number of accurate predictions about future technology. When it came time make the movie, some 15 years later, those behind other Hollywood brain trust decisions, would include only two main technologies for the film version. These would most assuredly be the least intellectually palatable devices; the monkey talk box and, the by 1995 scientifically proven to be implausible laser gun. Another fabulous decision by the film-making team would be putting some hair on a brown trash can and making the declaration that it is a talking ape named Amy.

We all lost a huge part of our show and entertainment in general in the passing of Bill Paxton. He was a one of a kind type of actor and while that may seem cliche to say in the wake of someone's death in Hollywood, we'll stand by it. Bill had a depth that few possess, taking roles as varied as the pyschotic Severen in Near Dark (and is the only reason to watch the movie) to the silly Matt Owens in (Slipstream) to the model for a douche in Simon from True Lies (and steals the comedic show from Arnold and Arnold) to the warm but frightened Fred Haise in Apollo 13. The guy could play anything. 

So with that in mind, we tackle the 1996 disasterooney of Twister. With all its cliches and tropes that run rampant in the disaster genre, can the immensely popular film stand up to 20 years of time since its release? Who is this Helen Hunt lady? How did Phillip Seymour Hoffman become a thing? Is that a flying cow? All this and more revealed in our podcast episode. Listen to it!

We get straight to weezin' the juice as a caveman gets called out for being, well...a caveman. It's that old story of boy meets girl, boy gets frozen in a glacier and then boy meets potheads and learns the wonders of the doobage.

Encino Man is a movie that shouldn't be any fun at all. But it is. End of story. It has that strange ability to be not funny but fun throughout. It's outlandish, ridiculous, and stupid but never stops being a wild ride.

After weeks of pitching a fit, Jackie is subjected to a film she appears to be not much of a fan of. It's the story of a caveman frozen in ice for millennia only to thawed out in early 90's SoCal....what possibly horrors will he (or us) face in Encino Man?!?!

The Stinker Madness Academy Award Special!

We take a look at each of the films and share our meat and two bits with you! That makes this episode a bit on the long side but we had quite a bit to say about this years field. There will be spoilers so be careful!

Our second of back to back "stupid volcano movies from 1997" is the possibly the least disastery of any disaster movies ever created. Spoiler alert - body count is 5 and a tiny hick town gets cleared off the map. It's fine since they were just a bunch of smug buttholes anyways.

So if Volcano should have been named "Lava; Not Volcano Really", then Dante's Peak should have been called "Volcano; No Lava Really". It's a perfect mirror in opposite land. The volcano is HUGE but has very little lava. In fact the only thing that lava kills in this film is some truck tires. Very strange.