Vanity projects

[jamiefairlie]

That was "Star Trek Continues", and the star was Vic Mignona, who is probably better known for being one of the main voices in...Dragonball? One of those shows, anyway. And also for being a sex pest who sued a bunch of people for firing him after the allegations first surfaced and lost.

Grant Imahara off of "Mythbusters" was Sulu in it, and to be polite he was never really an actor. Chris "son of James" Doohan, blessed with a similarity to his father but not any acting ability, too. Have a gander at the Wikipedia page for a list of the folks who Mignona got to be in it. They also used a script which was actually written for the real original series.

Up to relatively recently you could go and tour the set (which was built to TOS blueprints and looks exactly the same), but I think they sold it a while ago. It's much better than you'd expect it to be. 

I ended up watching this whole series on YT, it's actually really good. Colin Baker's in one too!

[Stigdu]

Battlefield Earth with John Travolta is supposed to be one of the worst films ever made in terms of expensive vanity projects. I haven't actually seen it, mind. Didn't Michael Jackson's Moonwalker sell about 13 tickets? Still, it's not like he needed the fame or money.

[The Ombudsman]

Was that the Angelle pop video? As I understand it, her boyfriend owned several shopping channels at the arse end of Sky's EPG and had a spare channel for a while. So he used it to show her pop video and another PR video about her on rotation for several months.

Single never got anywhere and neither did her pop career, but she ended up marrying him and apparently works with him in one of his companies.

Yes, I think this is what I was half remembering.

[Poobum]

Battlefield Earth with John Travolta is supposed to be one of the worst films ever made in terms of expensive vanity projects. I haven't actually seen it, mind.

Is nauseating in the literal sense as its filmed entirely in Dutch angles.

[phantom_power]

Is nauseating in the literal sense as its filmed entirely in Dutch angles.

And everything is shot with weird, jaundiced filters

[jonbob]

I think characters in films are allowed to say and do things that real people aren't

allegedly the script to Django Unchained makes pretty liberal use of the word in the stage directions...

[Famous Mortimer]

Fight Of Fury

This looks incredible. The trailer, the thing that you're hoping to use to encourage people to pay to see your movie, has a scene where a goon stares off camera for a few seconds before moving, obviously waiting for the nod to start the scene; and there's a climactic fight that takes place in a nice front yard, about 5 yards from busy traffic.

It feels like a much cheaper, much worse "Miami Connection", and I'm excited to see it.


The Match Stick Flame

Actor/writer/producer/director Craig Robert Bruss brings us a thriller about a cop on the edge, trying to track down a recently released crime boss, who's also (I think) his father. The dad is Mel Novak, one of those people who you'd expect to see in a "look at the weirdos on the bottom rung of the the Hollywood ladder" documentary, only extra sad because he's 70, can't act for shit, and looks like he had very bad plastic surgery at some point.

The trailer features a long scene where Match Stick (Novak) has lunch in an empty restaurant, and another long scene of a poorly choreographed fight on a beach. Strong choice!

Can't wait to explore both these universes.

[George White]

Just reminded of the work of David Heavener.
A D-list country singer who managed to get a job as an actor in an Asian kung fu film, and then became an auteur of his own action films
 Often with familiar faces (Tony Curtis in Prime Target, Isaac Hayes, Stuart Whitman, Charlene Tilton, Samantha Eggar).
 I've only seen Prime Target.He's a charisma-free meld of Clint Eastwood, Uri Geller and BA Robertson.
 RLM covered his Lethal Ninja

[Famous Mortimer]

Just reminded of the work of David Heavener.
A D-list country singer who managed to get a job as an actor in an Asian kung fu film, and then became an auteur of his own action films
 Often with familiar faces (Tony Curtis in Prime Target, Isaac Hayes, Stuart Whitman, Charlene Tilton, Samantha Eggar).
 I've only seen Prime Target.He's a charisma-free meld of Clint Eastwood, Uri Geller and BA Robertson.
 RLM covered his Lethal Ninja

I have, apparently (thanks Letterboxd) seen "Outlaw Force", "Kill Kill Overkill", "Deadly Reactor", "Massacre", and at least one of the Scott Shaw movies he was in.  Your analysis is entirely correct, but his movies look much more like normal ones than most of the vanity project people, just really fucking boring.

Also, he's a far-right religious fundamentalist these days. His Youtube channel has videos with delightful titles such as "Transgender to TransHuman. The Queer Agenda. Who's Behind It!" and his latest thing is "End Times Investigations: Bible Prophecy Meets Current Events" and he's trying to sell a movie where Bibles are made illegal or some shit.

[Kankurette]

That Michael Flatley film.

[George White]

Yes, I forgot to mention the religious/anti-trans podcast thing.

There's also Danny Fendley, who's basically Shakin' Heavener.
A Southern property tycoon who decided to become an even lower-rent action star. Often working with shot-on-video veteran Donald Farmer, he did a film called Compelling Evidence costarring Brigitte Nielsen where he plays a STallone-esque action star whose wife is murdered.

[Bad Ambassador]

The Match Stick Flame

Actor/writer/producer/director Craig Robert Bruss brings us a thriller about a cop on the edge, trying to track down a recently released crime boss, who's also (I think) his father. The dad is Mel Novak, one of those people who you'd expect to see in a "look at the weirdos on the bottom rung of the the Hollywood ladder" documentary, only extra sad because he's 70, can't act for shit, and looks like he had very bad plastic surgery at some point.

The trailer features a long scene where Match Stick (Novak) has lunch in an empty restaurant, and another long scene of a poorly choreographed fight on a beach. Strong choice!

An edition of RLM-adjacent podcast No Such Thing as a Bad Movie covered it, but has since been pulled, leading me to think he's overly litigious.

[Famous Mortimer]

Yes, I forgot to mention the religious/anti-trans podcast thing.

There's also Danny Fendley, who's basically Shakin' Heavener.
A Southern property tycoon who decided to become an even lower-rent action star. Often working with shot-on-video veteran Donald Farmer, he did a film called Compelling Evidence costarring Brigitte Nielsen where he plays a STallone-esque action star whose wife is murdered.

I'm mates with Farmer, he's a good lad, even if his films are absolute rubbish. Fendley last bothered a TV screen some years ago on one of those Judge Judy-esque shows after some bother with his wife (or ex-wife, details are a little vague).

[George White]

Anyone else know the work of Damon Packard?

Reflections of Evil is kind of indescribable. It's about an overweight lad (Packard) who lives on the streets of LA, while his dead sister who died as a teen wanders around as a ghost. 2 and a half hours long, with plenty of clips from old TV movies, TV ads and a redubbed introduction from Tony Curtis introducing a cheap UK DVD of a Bronson movie, and like me, clearly has a hard-on for the Universal backlot.

It's genius.

His other films are equally odd.
I've only seen his two hour-long efforts aside from Reflections.
Spacedisco One - which is a disco sci-fi tribute that is also an unauthorised sequel to both Logan's Run and 1984.
And Foxfur - a  paranoid psychedelic odyssey  where one of the main characters is David Icke (played by a bearded older American with a sporadically convincing accent).

[Famous Mortimer]

I just found a new one, which is quite exciting.

All Babes Want To Kill Me

Written by, directed by, and starring the same person, one Colin Kaye, whose most recent work appears to be some sort of photo slideshow which he managed to get an IMDB page for, called "Puppy's Cozy Halloween".

Anyway, this is about a bloke who eats paint chips, which causes him to emit some chemical that makes babes want to kill him. Chock full of good old fashioned homophobia, racism and suchlike, too. All the positive reviews on IMDB are from 3 years before the movie was released - just a coincidence, I'm sure. I shall make a very weak attempt to track it down and report back.

[George White]

Has Zeus the crime Killer been mentioned here? By a Greek ex-trapeze artist, George Pan Andreas (who did some minor bits in things like Kojak) and resembles a kebab shop owner who fancies himself both Shakin' Stevens and Jean Paul Belmondo...