merde

Now, I've seen a lot of bad movies. I like bad movies. Especially bad action movies. I've seen (and enjoyed) all of Jean-Claude Van Damme's movies, including the one where he's his own clone, both of the ones where he plays twins, and all three where he's a cyborg. I actually own the one where he plays a fashion designer and has a fight in a truck full of durians. (Hey, if nothing else, he's got a great ass and you almost always get to see it. With DVD, you can even pause and zoom in!) That's why you can trust me when I say that this movie is so bad, it makes Plan 9 look like Citizen Kane.

Everything about Snake Eater is bad. The plot is bad. The script is bad. The sets are bad. The fights are bad. The stunts are bad. The FX are bad. The acting is spectacularly, earth-time-bendingly bad, very probably showcasing the worst performance of every so-called actor in the cast, including Lorenzo Lamas, and that's really saying something. And I'd be willing to bet everyone involved with this movie is lousy in bed, to boot. ESPECIALLY Lorenzo Lamas.

It does manage to be unintentionally funny, so it's not a total loss. However, I recommend that you watch this movie only if you are either a congenital idiot or very, very stoned. I was able to sit through it myself because I needed to watch something to distract me from rinsing cat urine out of my laundry.

It didn't help much, but it was better than nothing. One point for Ron Palillo's cameo as a gay arsonist.

This movie is hilariously awful. Everyone who had anything to do with it should be ashamed of themselves. Ashamed! (Especially Ice-T, who doesn't just embarrass himself, but actually disgraces his entire bloodline.)

You got your bad acting. You got your ridiculous costumes. You got your gratuitous (and I mean really, really gratuitous) boobs. You got your completely incoherent script. You got your totally random mutant Frankenstein's monster type thing. In one scene, our heroes load up on firepower; in the next, they have to fight bad guys hand to hand; two minutes later, they're armed and dangerous again. The plot hangs together about as tightly as a group of divas forced to share a dressing room. And my god, the exposition!

You got your tragic heroes, of course. A guy whose wife and daughter were murdered by the bad guys and spends a lot of time brooding about it. Another guy whose brother is murdered before his eyes by the bad guys in one of the early scenes and spends about five minutes throwing a tantrum before apparently forgetting all about it in the heady rush of beating dudes up. And I especially like how these two stumble across the female lead just lying there under a tree. They roll her over, she wakes up, and what do you know, it turns out the bad guys killed her sister! Coincidence... or conspiracy?

And of course, there's also a scientist whose family is being held prisoner by the bad guys. Because I guess they ran out of fake blood or something.

You will laugh uncontrollably at -- well, pretty much everything, actually. "Lucifer," the big bad guy? Top-notch comedy. Seriously. You'll love his minion, too. This movie is so preposterous, even stupid ignorant people will find mistakes to laugh at. I won't ruin it for you, but just wait till you hear what Alexis says about the syringe of her sister's blood.

I will, however, ask if anybody -- anybody -- can explain to me why there was whalesong playing in the Death Valley scene. Anyone? Bueller?

I laughed so hard I got a headache. I think I would rather chew off my own arm than watch this movie again.

I give it two thumbs up the ass. Highly, highly recommended.

Film adaptations of novels are a mixed bag at best, and The Dark Wind, allegedly based on Tony Hillerman's novel of the same name, isn't one of the best. The screenwriters took several unnecessary liberties with the storyline and characters, including stealing details from other Hillerman novels and dropping Captain Largo entirely in favor of Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn. Fans of Hillerman's novels won't like the portrayal of Jim Chee as an awkward, barely-competent rookie, either.

It's hard to tell whether Lou Diamond Phillips is just failing to portray Jim Chee as he's intended to be, or whether he just didn't bother to read the book and find out. Having replaced Captain Largo's character with Fred Ward as Joe Leaphorn, the script doesn't take advantage of either character's personality, but at least they didn't turn him into one of those generic shouting police captains we see so much of in the movies.

Despite all of this, it's a fairly likeable movie. The film was shot on location in and around the Navajo reservation in Arizona and New Mexico. The scenery is magnificent, and judging from the names in the cast and crew, the producers took advantage of local talent to fill in some of the smaller roles, which adds a good bit of authenticity. If you close one eye and pretend it has nothing to do with a Tony Hillerman novel, you'll probably enjoy it.