Lt. Drucilla Dread and Sgt. Elke Mantooth are back in their third “Bad Movie Police” casefile: the hypnotically bad “Humanoids from Atlantis”—a movie notorious for being shot in two days, with nearly 40 minutes of its script tossed out due to inclement and uncooperative Ohio weather. The production boasts horrendous acting and direction and a completely desperate adlibbed ending where the movie is revealed to be a movie. And then not. As for “Humanoids”, there is only one on screen—the box art had been created and shipped to distributors months before the film was shot—and the monster—a pseudo Sleestack—who can’t get into the water thanks to the cold.
J.R. Bookwalter, who produced both the original film and the “Bad Movie Police” series, should be commended for his sense of humor, if nothing else. He considers his bank of movies produced for the thankfully defunct Cinema Home Entertainment among the worst ever made (he may be right), but recycling them for the series is a brilliant and often hilarious idea.
The opening segment at the “Bad Movie Policestation” is by far the highlight of the disk (which, of course, is the point). Albright and Stabs have created cult characters in their own right as the hard-hitting, dominatrix-style officers and these segments are particularly well-put together. The tongue-in-cheek style helps to bolster the joke that these movies are so bad that there really should be a unit in charge of arresting the guilty parties.
If you’re going to jump into this series—and it is recommended, particularly for budding filmmakers who should learn right off the bat what not to do—it’s recommended that you leave the commentary on for all three films. Bookwalter and company lead rousing and entertaining discussions about the horrific mistakes made for the sake of a desperate buck. What’s better, they drown out the actual on-screen acting and dialogue.
For those of you who love the “so bad its good” genre of movie, here is a series that will truly test your endurance. But at least the filmmakers can laugh at themselves.
