Stinker Madness - The Bad Movie Podcast

• War of the Worlds (2025) - Man....COVID really really sucked.

  If you ever needed a reminder that some remakes shouldn’t exist, 2025’s War of the Worlds delivers it in spades. This is not just a bad movie—it’s the kind of cinematic faceplant that makes you wonder how anyone signed off on it. The acting is flat-out terrible, with Ice Cube headlining in a role that feels less like a performance and more like someone wandered onto set after being told he was shooting a different movie. The whole thing reeks of miscasting, misdirection, and missed opportunities. The real insult, though, is how aggressively this film relies on the “Idiot Plot”, a story that only moves forward because every single character makes the dumbest possible choice at every possible moment. Characters stand around waiting to get vaporized, make suicidal detours for no reason, and never once act like actual human beings dealing with an alien apocalypse. It’s not suspenseful, it’s not dramatic—it’s just aggravating to sit through. Visually and tonally, the film is stuck in a post-COVID hangover haze. The world feels small, tired, and drained of life, not in a gritty, artistic way, but in a “we shot this at our desks because we couldn't go outside” kind of way. The whole thing becomes an unintentional time capsule of how much the pandemic gutted creativity and ambition. Watching it is like staring into the ghost of an industry still trying to find its footing—and tripping over itself at every step. Ultimately, 2025’s War of the Worlds isn’t just a bad remake, it’s a sad reminder of what happens when you try to drag a classic into the present without talent, vision, or even basic competence. It’s noisy without being exciting, dumb without being fun, and joyless to the core. If the aliens really wanted to wipe us out, the fastest method would have been just screening this movie to humanity on loop.

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• Wanted: Dead or Alive - Making Bon Jovi look like Mozart

  Rutger Hauer and Gene Simmons squaring off sounds like the recipe for a wild cult classic, but Wanted: Dead or Alive (1987) ends up being more lukewarm than explosive. On paper, it’s a hybrid of gritty crime thriller and high-octane action flick, but the way those genres are handled here creates a constant tug-of-war. The crime elements are played too straight, dragging the pacing down, while the action beats aren’t stylish or kinetic enough to pull the film into popcorn territory. The end result sits uncomfortably in the middle—not pulpy enough for “so bad it’s good” status, but not sharp enough to be genuinely gripping. The script is one of the biggest culprits. Dialogue is so flat and mundane that Hauer, who could carry almost anything with his screen presence, is forced to chew scenery just to keep viewers from nodding off. You can practically see him straining to inject some life into lines that might as well have been lifted from a TV procedural. Meanwhile, Simmons as the villain brings his usual menace, but the writing undercuts him—his terrorist mastermind never feels threatening so much as silly, especially when the movie leans on his boneheaded schemes. That said, there are flashes of entertainment value if you squint hard enough. The movie indulges in one of the purest forms of “Idiot Plot” with the villain’s bizarre tactic of stuffing henchmen into barrels and honking a horn to unleash them like evil jack-in-the-boxes. It’s laughable, but at least it breaks up the monotony with something memorable. A few of the action sequences manage to land simply because Hauer sells the physicality, even if the staging is clunky. In the end, though, Wanted: Dead or Alive is a middling watch. It doesn’t embarrass itself enough to be a riot, nor does it have the chops to rise above its B-movie roots. Instead, it drifts in no-man’s-land—a serviceable but unremarkable relic of the late ’80s action-crime craze. Hauer fans might find a few scraps of fun, but anyone else will likely forget it by the next morning.

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• Crash Landing - Look out atoll!

  Fasten your seatbelts and stow your disbelief, because “Crash Landing” (2005) is Wynorski at cruising altitude—never aiming for art, but always ready to drop the landing gear on your funny bone. This is the kind of movie where gravity is optional, logic is banned from the cabin, and an entire cargo hold of explosions—many borrowed from other, possibly better, movies—are always just a nervous copilot away from erupting. If you’re a Wynorski fan, you know exactly what kind of clearance you’re in for: low, turbulent, and unapologetically entertaining. Antonio Sabato Jr. takes the stick as the world’s most reluctant action hero, trying to land a plane full of rich snotty college kids who end up in a kidnapping plot - over the Pacific Ocean. The acting, if you can call it that, ranges from “midday soap” to “community theater hostage situation.” The villains are less “Die Hard” and more “Weekend at Bernie’s,” bumbling their way through a hijacking plot so dumb you almost wish they’d succeed, just for the novelty. Special mention must go to the action set pieces—chiefly the endless parade of stock explosions and crash footage Frankensteined from the vaults of late-90s action movies. The airplane’s physics seem to exist in a separate reality where turbulence is whatever the camera operator can shake into frame, and gunfights happen in slow motion, possibly to save money on blanks. Add in the kind of CGI that would embarrass a 2001 Weather Channel forecast and you’ve got a recipe for a beautiful, cheesy mess. “Crash Landing” isn’t trying to fool anyone. It knows it’s ridiculous, it revels in being ridiculous, and, best of all, it delivers the kind of brainless, late-night fun that Wynorski made his name on. If you’re here for believable drama, you’ve boarded the wrong flight. But if you want to laugh, riff, and marvel at how many ways one movie can break the rules of both Hollywood and aerodynamics, this is your ticket to so-bad-it’s-good bliss.

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• Final Destination 2: But this time, death is going in reverse. Diabolical!

  Final Destination 2 is a symphony of stupidity—and I mean that as a compliment. It’s the kind of gloriously dumb horror sequel that knows exactly what it is, knows exactly what you came for, and wastes not a single moment trying to be anything more. This is 90 minutes of elaborate, Rube Goldberg murder machines soaked in blood and irony, gleefully cooked up for maximum squirm, scream, and laugh-out-loud shock value. It’s dumb, it’s low-brow, and it’s absolutely perfect at being both. The movie wastes no time setting the tone: a now-iconic highway pile-up that feels like someone gave Michael Bay a box of Hot Wheels and told him to film a snuff film. From there, the film doesn’t bother with character development beyond “this one’s kind of a jerk” and “that one’s probably doomed” because it has better things to do—namely, assembling ludicrous, overly complex death scenes like it’s competing in a sadistic engineering contest. The real star isn’t any of the humans, it’s the absurd chain reactions involving ladders, air bags, barbed wire, and a spaghetti of fate that could only exist in this series. What sets Final Destination 2 apart from other gore-porn offerings is its laser focus. It has a mission—deliver karmic, over-the-top death scenes wrapped in a thick coating of schlock—and it executes (pun intended). There’s no meandering subplot, no slow-burn psychological twists. It’s pure horror junk food: bloody, crunchy, and instantly satisfying. The movie also dials up the black comedy with every scene, letting the audience lean into the absurdity. It knows you’re laughing at it, and it wants you to laugh harder. And let’s talk karma—because this sequel adds an extra little spice to the kills. Everyone who gets got sort of had it coming, and the movie leans into this with a smug wink, giving the audience permission to cackle through the carnage. There’s something almost therapeutic about watching these characters try to outmaneuver Death while it patiently flexes its Final Destination “gotcha” muscles. It’s a greasy, gory good time, and unlike many horror sequels, it actually delivers what it promises—nothing more, but certainly nothing less.

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• Nightbreed - These monsters need a new prophecy

  Clive Barker’s Nightbreed is the cinematic equivalent of an overstuffed trunk at a goth rave—wildly imaginative, beautifully adorned, and totally incapable of deciding what it wants to be. Packed with jaw-dropping creature designs, luscious makeup work, and a thrilling Danny Elfman score that pulses with dark fantasy energy, Nightbreed sets the table for a full-course horror feast. Unfortunately, the meal comes out half-cooked thanks to tonal confusion and a protagonist who drifts through the story like a half-deflated pool float. Adapted from Barker’s novella Cabal, the film tells the story of Boone, a tormented man drawn to the subterranean world of Midian—a hidden city of monsters, outcasts, and literal night-breed. It wants to be a dark fairytale, a slasher, and a misunderstood superhero origin story all at once. And it kind of is... but not in a good way. Serial killer subplots rub awkwardly against messianic chosen-one arcs, while police shootouts interrupt poetic monster mythology. It’s like watching Hellraiser crash into X-Men, then take a wrong turn through Copland. Still, if you’re a fan of practical effects and monster lore, Nightbreed is a visual banquet. The creature makeup is top-tier—each Nightbreed has their own unique look and feel, some terrifying, some oddly beautiful, all memorable. The world of Midian is fascinating in concept, with real potential to launch a whole franchise of supernatural antiheroes (which it almost did). But anchoring all of this is Boone—a man so passive and charisma-deprived it’s a wonder the monsters didn’t just vote for someone else. His transformation from haunted man to reluctant savior is so subdued it barely registers, making it hard to care when the bullets start flying and Midian burns. Nightbreed deserves credit for aiming high, but its soaring ambitions are clipped by structural chaos and a limp lead. Watch it for the monsters, the mood, and the Elfman score—but don’t expect a satisfying story to match the spectacle.

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