Last movie watched...

[JamesC]

The 80's were a bit of a Straight to Video golden age but after that it all went down hill.

The first Mad Max film was pretty much straight to video - I certainly don't know anyone that got the opportunity to see it at the cinema.

I'd say that The Asylum bear more resemblance to Troma than anything else (at least their products do).

[HdE]

Can't stand The Expendables. Only saw the first one - against my will - and thought it was complete and utter shite. Reminded me more of awful 1990s straight to video action films than actually good action films.

Pretty much what I was left thinking after having the movie foisted on me.

The action is unexciting, the characters - who should be the most important focus of a movie that touts such a star studded cast - were dull and underdeveloped, and the story progression is strictly by the numbers.

There's just no way, objectovely speaking, that the movie deserves the praise it has garnered, and it certainly doesn't warrant two sequels. The only redeeming feature I could see was that it put Charisma Carpenter back on my TV for a few minutes!

[Professor Bear]

The 80's were a bit of a Straight to Video golden age but after that it all went down hill.

The first Mad Max film was pretty much straight to video - I certainly don't know anyone that got the opportunity to see it at the cinema.

I'd say that The Asylum bear more resemblance to Troma than anything else (at least their products do).

Troma did have the odd theatrical release, though, and their output was almost entirely mockbuster-free, but yeah, lots of movies made their cash from STV after never getting a cinema release, like Transformers The Movie, Dog Soldiers, Black Dynamite, Watcher in the Woods, Bad Taste, Boondock Saints, and of course Leprechaun in the Hood, while a lot of outright shite that shouldn't have been in cinemas got a theatrical release - much as I love Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Battlestar Galactica, they weren't cinema material.

Straight to video is still very healthy, it's just changed form to accommodate technology, which is appropriate given that STV was just the VHS version of the b-movie cinema market.  Netflix and SyFy buy Asylum movies sight unseen much as video stores bought movies that starred Van Damme, Norris, Seagal, and so on without seeing a single frame of film or even knowing what they were about.  The times have changed, but the logic behind how the low-budget movie market works is largely the same - it's just a matter of filling the metaphorical shelves with content and giving it a flashy cover image and people will either rent or they won't, though by that point the films have already made their money back.

The thing I lament most about the change in the market is the loss of those lurid painted VHS covers.  I rented Q The Winged Serpent based on the cover alone - it's amazing.  The film is merely okay.

You've done little to change my opinion.

gullible or ignorant

Heh.

[JamesC]

Transformers The Movie definitely got a cinema release because I went to see it. Pretty sure Dog Soldiers did too.

[Professor Bear]

Lucky bastard - I know men still lamenting to this day they never saw Transformers in the cinema.  Dog Soldiers premiered well on SciFi, I think that's why it got a limited cinema release.  I'm probably wrong, though.

[JOE SOAP]

Transformers The Movie definitely got a cinema release because I went to see it.

You got the Touch!

I remember well seeing the poster for Transformers in the titular comic...never made it across the water.

[Jim_Campbell]

I'm paraphrasing, but one apt quote was something like "Terminator 2 is a very successful action movie that has yet to turn a profit, but not one of my movies has made a loss."

That's a touch disingenuous on the part of the interviewee, surely? The failure of films like T2 and Aliens to 'turn a profit' is much more the result of weaselly accounting techniques by the studios to avoid paying out to actors, writers and directors with a profit share in their contracts than it is a failure of those movies to actually make money.

Cheers

Jim

[Professor Bear]

Much as I hate to defend a homophobic child-bully, Norris' point is largely sound, though someone in his position as a b-reel mainstay is hardly likely to praise mainstream Hollywood anyway.

[Recrewt]

Ahhhhh the good old days of going down the video rental shop and picking up some action movie you had never heard of starring chuck/van damme/dolph/etc.  Picked up some real classics that way. 

All this talk of Chuck and not a single Chuck Norris fact......

'Chuck Norris was once bitten by a cobra. After five days of agonizing pain, the cobra finally died.'*

*Chuck Norris, Expendables 2, 2012

[Charlie boy]

Isn't there a famous Chuck Norris story, about him serving in the Vietnam war and he ran out of ammunition so he took on an entire platoon using his hand-to-hand combat skills? If nobody else has heard this story and it turns out it's just an amazing film idea I've got at the back of my mind and the heat is making me mistake it for apparent reality, I'll be disappointed if anybody here gets the screenplay finished before I do.
I don't think I get the child-bullying mention (I think it was Bear that mentioned it), unless it's something I vaguely remember hearing about him saying children shouldn't be allowed in the scouts if they're homosexual? Me thinks I'm soon to Google "Chuck Norris" + "child bullying" for this.

[Frank]

This is not to denigrate Quarry Warriors in any way, or its lower-budget sequels Empty Warehouse Arena and Some Offices At Night Fighters.

Can everyone else try to be as gullible and ignorant as Pro Bear, please? Me and my brother rented the fantastically bloodthirsty Q The Winged Serpent for exactly the reasons described above, and we and our cousins managed to be traumatised by the still oddly creepy XTRO because they had asked my Auntie to get them something like ET from the video store. I say video store, I mean a pet shop with a rack of tapes at the back.

I also managed to see a bunch of films purporting to star actors called Bruce Li, Bruce Ley, or Bruce Lai, despite my Dad patiently explaining every time we chose one of those that Bruce Lee had only made a handful of films before he died and that the box I had in my hand, with a cover showing motorbike stunts and explosions, would undoubtedly contain a disappointing low budget knock-off.

Those two extremes of experience seem to sum up the pleasures and the pitfalls of taking a punt on something which isn't endorsed with the stamp of a brand name director or star, or the reassuring knowledge that men in suits have spent the GDP of a small country to get the film onto Asda's Two Films For £10 shelf, via a prestigious cinema release and tons of ruinously expensive promotion.

[radiator]

Transformers The Movie, Dog Soldiers, Black Dynamite, Watcher in the Woods, Bad Taste, Boondock Saints, and of course Leprechaun in the Hood

Transformers definitely got a cinema release - though it did so badly theatrically it ensured that G.I. Joe: The Movie went straight to video. 99% certain Dog Soldiers got at least a UK cinema run, and Black Dynamite a US run if not UK.

[Buttonman]

Totally shite British zombie film World of the dead followed by John Wayne as Genghis Khan in the laughable The Conqueror.

[Ghost MacRoth]

Can't stand The Expendables. Only saw the first one - against my will - and thought it was complete and utter shite. Reminded me more of awful 1990s straight to video action films than actually good action films.

There's more to a good action movie than just blood and explosions, believe it or not.

I so agree.  Although I did see the second one too.  Just as bad as the first really.  'Bullet to the head' was far more my line of brainless action movie.

[Hawkmumbler]

Expendables 2 > Expendables >>>>>> Bullet to the Head