Stinker Madness - The Bad Movie Podcast

Stinker Madness
  • 4.0 (42)
  • TV & Film
  • Updated Weekly

Stinker Madness is a bad movie podcast that loves horrible films that might actually be wonderful little gems. Or they could suck. Cult, budget and "bad" movies twice a week.

  1. Jul 13

    Riding the Bullet - But please don't

    The only way that the plot can work is if the entire movie didn't actually happen. Monster A-Go-Go, anyone? Riding the Bullet isn't so much a movie as it is an argument against outlining your screenplay. The only way any of this can possibly make sense is if Alan climbed into his bathtub at the beginning of the film, took enough PCP to tranquilize a rhinoceros, hallucinated the next ninety minutes, eventually sobered up, got a job, lived an aggressively ordinary life, and then, decades later, turned to the camera for a Forrest Gump-style epilogue. That's the only version of events that even remotely holds together. Otherwise, you're left trying to connect scenes that appear to have been shuffled like a deck of cards before filming. The movie lurches from supernatural horror to psychological drama to roadside ghost story without ever committing to what it's actually about. Characters drift in and out, bizarre encounters pile up without consequence, and every revelation somehow raises more questions than it answers. Rather than building mystery, it simply abandons the idea that events should have causes or effects. Watching Riding the Bullet feels less like unraveling a puzzle and more like trying to remember a dream someone else had after taking expired cold medicine. Then comes the finale, which somehow manages to make everything even worse. Alan spends years living a completely mundane life before asking the audience, "When it's your time, will you ride the bullet?" That's... not a philosophical question. It's literally asking whether, when it's time for you to die, you'll die. Well... yes. We all will. It's not an optional side quest. The film spends nearly two hours building toward what it thinks is a profound meditation on mortality, only to land on the cinematic equivalent of asking, "When you get hungry, will you eat food?" That may actually make Riding the Bullet unique. It's the rare rhetorical movie. Not a movie that asks rhetorical questions—a movie whose entire existence is rhetorical. It's constructed as though it's supposed to provoke an emotional response, but not one you're actually capable of having because none of it means anything. The plot doesn't exist, the message doesn't exist, and by the time the credits roll, you're left wondering if you imagined the whole thing. Frankly, that breaks my cardinal rule of movie - if you made me watch your 90+ minute boreathon and then tell me it didn't actually happen, you get 0 stars because you're not a movie. BOO!!!

  2. Jun 29

    Maximum Overdrive - Coach should've kept his eye on the can

    So does the Little League team fire back up next year or are they suited up for the game this weekend? Maximum Overdrive is one of those movies that feels like two completely different films stitched together. Half the time it's practically a comedy, gleefully embracing the absurdity of its premise as every machine on Earth suddenly decides humans have to go. An angry arcade cabinet zapping Giancarlo Esposito, a Little League kid getting flattened by a steamroller, and the gloriously smug Green Goblin-faced truck all suggest everyone involved knows how ridiculous this is and is having a blast. Then the movie abruptly shifts gears and tries to become a slow-burn, Romero-esque siege horror. The survivors barricade themselves inside a truck stop while the machines patiently surround them, waiting for starvation to do the work. It's a respectable idea on paper, but the film never earns the tension because the premise is simply too goofy to sustain that level of seriousness. Every attempt at suspense is undercut by the fact that the villains are semi-trucks and lawnmowers. That tonal tug-of-war is what ultimately holds Maximum Overdrive back. When it's leaning into its B-movie insanity, it's a delight filled with memorable kills, quotable dialogue, and AC/DC blasting over every chase scene. When it tries to elevate itself into genuine horror, the pacing slows to a crawl and the cracks in the screenplay become impossible to ignore. Emilio Estevez and the cast do what they can, but they're trapped between parody and earnest horror. Even so, there's an undeniable charm to the whole experience. Stephen King's only directing effort is messy, overlong, and often nonsensical, but it's rarely boring. The practical effects, explosive action, and commitment to such a ludicrous concept make it an easy recommendation for fans of cheesy creature features and killer-object movies. It just never quite figures out what kind of movie it wants to be.

  3. Jun 8

    Death Run - Looks like meats back on the menu, boys!

    Death Run (1987) / Mutant City (1987) is the kind of movie that makes you wonder if everyone involved had a completely different copy of the script. It's a post-apocalyptic adventure assembled from spare parts, pocket change, and what appears to be an unlimited supply of confidence. Somehow, despite operating on a budget that probably wouldn't cover catering on most productions, the film often looks surprisingly respectable. The costumes are passable, the locations work, and the camera operators generally manage to point the lens in the right direction. That's already several steps ahead of many direct-to-video wasteland adventures from the era. Unfortunately, once the plot starts moving, all bets are off. The story lurches from event to event with a remarkable disregard for cause and effect. Characters make decisions that seem specifically designed to sabotage their own survival. Entire scenes feel as though critical pages of exposition were lost on the drive to set. The result is a movie where you stop asking "Why are they doing that?" and instead begin admiring the sheer audacity required to keep marching forward without answers. Every new development feels less like storytelling and more like a random encounter table being rolled in real time. What truly elevates Death Run into so-bad-it's-good territory, however, is its action. The stunt choreography is breathtakingly awful. Fights frequently resemble people attempting to remember moves they learned fifteen minutes earlier. Punches miss by feet, combatants patiently wait their turn to fall down, and chases unfold with all the urgency of a Sunday stroll. There are moments where you can practically see performers negotiating who is supposed to lose the fight while the cameras are rolling. It's not merely bad action—it's action that seems to reject the basic concept of physical momentum. Yet that's exactly why the movie works as cult entertainment. There's an undeniable earnestness behind every scene. Nobody involved appears to be phoning it in. The filmmakers clearly wanted to create an exciting post-apocalyptic epic and, against all odds, they assembled something watchable from almost nothing. The competence of the production values constantly clashes with the baffling storytelling and hilariously inept action, creating a perfect storm of unintentional comedy. Death Run may not be a good movie by any conventional measure, but for fans of cinematic train wrecks, it's a fascinating and frequently hilarious journey through a wasteland where logic was the first casualty.

  4. May 26

    Final Destination: Bloodlines - Leaning Tower of Street Pizza

    After spending the better part of two decades turning Rube Goldberg murder machines into an art form, the Final Destination Bloodlines series finally does something unexpected: it evolves. Bloodlines still delivers the franchise’s trademark chaos—people getting folded, exploded, liquefied and generally punished for existing near household objects—but this time there’s an actual emotional hook underneath the carnage. Shockingly, it works. Instead of drowning the audience in endless conversations about “death’s design” and convoluted cosmic bookkeeping, the movie streamlines the setup and gets right to the fun while adding a family-centered angle that gives the victims more personality than “future corpse #4.” The family aspect is the smartest thing the franchise has done in years. Watching the curse ripple through generations gives the film a different energy from the usual disposable group-of-teens formula. There’s tension not just in who dies, but in how these characters relate to one another before death inevitably hurls an air conditioner through somebody’s sternum. The script wisely understands that audiences came for inventive disaster sequences, not a TED Talk from Ali Landry explaining metaphysical loopholes for the ninth time. Bloodlines trims the mythology down to its essentials and benefits immensely from it. It also absolutely nails its comedic timing. The Final Destination films have always flirted with dark comedy, but this one embraces it with confidence. The setup-payoff rhythm during the death sequences is wickedly funny, milking every fake-out and every suspiciously placed kitchen utensil for maximum audience anxiety. You can practically feel crowds bracing themselves for catastrophe while the movie toys with them. When the kills finally happen, they land with a perfect mix of shock, absurdity, and “you’ve got to be kidding me” escalation. It’s the closest the series has come to recapturing the mischievous energy that made the early entries such crowd-pleasers. The visual effects team deserves serious credit here. The large-scale destruction sequences are polished, detailed, and satisfyingly vicious without looking weightless or cartoonish. There’s a craftsmanship to the mayhem that elevates the material beyond simple splatter gags. That said, the movie occasionally leans a little too hard into melodrama, especially during some of the family conflict scenes. Whether that works will depend on what you want out of the experience. If you’re only showing up to watch fate turn landscaping equipment into instruments of death, the emotional beats may feel a touch overwrought. But for a franchise six movies deep, Bloodlines deserves praise for at least trying to give the audience something fresh while still delivering the gleeful mayhem everybody bought a ticket for.

  5. Apr 28

    Year in Review - Year 11!

    This special episode we go through our favorite bad and cult movies from our 11th year in podcasting. We'll also give our favorite 3 movies from the year 2025.

  6. Apr 13

    Wu Tang Vs. Ninja - So moon blood CAN turn you into a walking boner! I knew it!

    When martial artists desire to be "the most popular girl" - Top That! There are ninja movies, and then there’s Wu Tang Vs Ninja—a film that feels like it was assembled from a fever dream involving late-night cable, a kung fu catalog, and someone half-remembering Star Wars after watching Teen Witch. It’s baffling, chaotic, and completely committed to whatever bizarre wavelength it’s operating on. And honestly, that commitment is what makes it such a blast. The plot is less a coherent narrative and more a mystical scavenger hunt through pure nonsense. There are chosen ones, shadowy clans, vague rivalries, and an almost cosmic understanding of ninja hierarchy that somehow coexists with the strangest supernatural rules imaginable. It really does feel like someone mashed together Jedi mythology with teen wizard empowerment tropes and then filtered it all through low-budget ninja cinema. Trying to make sense of it is pointless—just let it wash over you like a neon-colored smoke bomb. And oh, the ninja insanity delivers. You’ve got all the classics: tunneling assassins popping out of nowhere, color-coded factions flipping through trees, and enough smoke bombs to fog an entire county. But then it escalates into full-on madness—energy-draining techniques tied to… let’s call it “vital essence,” ninjas transforming into flying curtains (yes, really), and wild “finger blast” attacks that feel like someone imagined super-powers five minutes before filming. It’s the kind of movie where every scene dares the next one to be even weirder, and it rarely disappoints. That said, this isn’t a casual watch. The fight sequences are relentless, sometimes to the point of exhaustion, and the pacing can feel like it’s sprinting through a dozen ideas at once. But for the true ninja aficionado—the kind who lives for unhinged creativity, maximalist action, and filmmakers throwing everything they’ve got at the screen—this is a gem. It’s strange, it’s messy, and it absolutely earns its place in the “so bad it loops back to good” ninja section of the hall of fame.

  7. Mar 30

    The Concorde... Airport '79 - 79 Airport movies is a LOT

    Everything you want in a cheesy disaster...disaster. If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if a disaster movie inhaled a gallon of jet fuel, ignored every known law of physics, and then sprinted straight into absurdity with a grin, The Concorde... Airport '79 is your answer. This is high “so bad it’s good” cinema - a movie so committed to escalating nonsense that it becomes a kind of accidental masterpiece. It doesn’t just jump the shark; it straps the shark to the Concorde and fires it into international airspace. The effects are gloriously, unapologetically cheesy. Miniatures wobble, explosions bloom like overcooked popcorn, and the Concorde itself seems to operate on a proprietary fuel source called “plot convenience.” Missiles zigzag like confused bottle rockets, fighter jets materialize only to be obliterated moments later, and physics as a concept is treated less like a rulebook and more like a vague suggestion. The sheer number of McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs that get blown out of the sky “just because” is almost impressive - like the movie is trying to win a bulk discount on destruction. Then there’s Robert Wagner as the villain, a man so dedicated to covering up his crimes that he creates exponentially worse problems at every turn. It’s like watching someone try to put out a grease fire with dynamite. His master plan hinges on an evil corporation deploying what may be the least effective missile system ever conceived - an instrument so catastrophically unreliable that it becomes the film’s secret comedic MVP. Every time it fires, you’re less worried about the Concorde and more curious about what unintended target it’ll embarrassingly fail to destroy next. And presiding over this carnival of chaos is George Kennedy, reprising his role with the energy of a genial battering ram. He doesn’t so much act as he exists - a walking, talking, reassuringly friendly phallus of authority who blusters through scenes with unwavering confidence and zero concern for plausibility. It’s oddly comforting. In a movie where nothing makes sense and everything explodes, Kennedy is the human equivalent of a thumbs-up. All told, The Concorde... Airport ’79 is less a film and more a spectacle of glorious incompetence. The stakes are absurd, the logic is nonexistent, and the execution is delightfully misguided. But that’s exactly why it works. It’s a beautiful disaster - loud, ridiculous, and endlessly entertaining for anyone who appreciates their cinema served with a heavy side of unintentional comedy.

  8. Mar 16

    Final Destination 5 - Trying something new? Nope? Ok.

    Final Destination 5 arrives with the same promise every installment in the franchise makes: elaborate Rube Goldberg death traps, a group of attractive but personality-free victims, and the vague hope that maybe—just maybe—this time they’ll do something different with the concept. Instead, the film dutifully clocks in for another round of “Death’s master plan,” delivering exactly what you expect and little else. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a factory resetting itself every ninety minutes. By the fifth go-around, the plot mechanics have become painfully transparent. A premonition saves a handful of people from a spectacular disaster, they try to cheat Death, and then the universe conspires to kill them one by one using household items, loose bolts, and questionable workplace safety standards. The film acts as if it’s revealing some grand mystery about Death’s rules, but if you’ve seen even one previous entry you can practically write the script yourself. The series has settled into a rut where the only innovation is how absurdly complicated the next fatal accident can become. And even that’s starting to feel tired. The elaborate death sequences still have a certain morbid creativity, but the tension is diluted by the endless fake-outs—every loose screw, dripping liquid, or falling object telegraphs a possible kill before the movie finally decides which one it wants. When the highlight of the film is watching characters stand around while the camera lingers on potential hazards, you start to realize the movie has mistaken suspense for stalling. What really sinks Final Destination 5 is the sludge of dialogue in between these moments. Characters exist solely to explain the rules or panic about them, and the performances rarely rise above that thin material. The result is a sequel that trudges through the same narrative mud the franchise has been stuck in for years. The deaths might be bigger and dumber, but by this point even those feel oddly unfulfilling—like watching the same carnival trick repeated until the novelty finally wears off.

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4
out of 5
42 Ratings

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Stinker Madness is a bad movie podcast that loves horrible films that might actually be wonderful little gems. Or they could suck. Cult, budget and "bad" movies twice a week.

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