G-Men from Hell

I get a lot of people who ask me "Why do you watch these movies?". I think that I need to stop telling people what I do with my spare time. If I wasn't an asexual fungus, I might be concerned that I'd frighten away most members of the opposite sex. Its a good thing that I only need to spread a bunch of spores and hope they find the right amount of humidity and a nice dark place to fester!

Well, I'd like to address this question as I begin this next review. You see, Sporefans, every bad little movie I watch is a small piece of entertainment that got made despite the fact that the creators never had a big Hollywood budget, or professional actors, or a studio, equipment, talent, etc., etc... But through perseverance and hard work, and probably through a few deeds better left unmentioned, someone has the drive to push their project though against all odds, only to have the fruit of their labor wind up on the back of the discount movie rack. Now in most cases, this is exactly where a movie belongs, because its a piece of crap. But every once in a while you find a real diamond amidst all the poop.

Now for the last few reviews I've taken it easy by reviewing some of the great Kaiju films of my youth, which is probably how I wound up doing movie reviews in the first place. But this week's all new review is right off the $3.99 shelf from the local Walgreen's. Little did I know that what I held in my hands was a complicated nexus of the B-movie world which seems to have seeped down from the streets of Hollywood through the cracks of time until it came to its final resting place.

On my movie shelf nestled between "Beast of the Yucca flats" and "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger beyond the Moon".















I speak, of course, of the movie from the year 2000 that almost no one has heard of, much less seen; Michael Allred's "G-Men from Hell". This movie is a veritable web of "Hey I know that guy from somewhere" as almost every member of the cast has had a part in a major work in their career. Lets start with William Forsythe as Dean Crept and Tate Donovan as Mike Mattress, the two G-Men in question. Forsythe has had a steady career since the 1980's and Donovan was not only the voice of Disney's "Hercules", but was also in the recent Academy award nominated movie "Good Night and Good Luck".

But wait! There's more!

Not only does this movie sport Forsythe and Donovan as the main characters, it also boasts Gary Busey as, and I quote, "...a sadistic leather master homosexual..."cop, and Robert Goulet as the devil himself. These men are household names, so I don't need to point out the large body of works that each of them has. Busey alone is a complicated nexus of the B-movie world. In a parallel universe people are playing the six degrees of separation game with Gary Busey instead of Kevin Bacon.











A new look for Busey.











Robert Goulet is very disappointed that you didn't see this movie.


Not enough cheese for you? Well there's also Kari Wuhrer as Marete, the G-Men's new and enthusiastic secretary. You may recognize Wuhrer from her role from TV's "Sliders", or as the spider squishing sheriff from the movie "Eight legged freaks". There's also Vanessa Angel as Gloria Lake, the ditzy wife of aging millionaire Greydon Lake (Barry Newman). You might have seen Ms. Angel in some of here more famous movies produced on the Sci-Fi channel, like "Sabertooth", "Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys", and also from the 1996 bowling comedy "Kingpin".
















Mrs. Gloria Lake does... um... stuff...
...
Yeah...
...


Still want some more stars? Well how about Bob "Bobcat" Goldthwait as a petty drug dealer named "Buster" who winds up getting himself shot to death by the G-Men, only to be re-incarnated in the body of a giant pink (well, reddish actually) robot. Comedian Paul Rodriguez also gets some screen time as "Weenie Man", an inept demon sent to Earth to retrieve the G-Men. And how about that Dr. Boifford? Doesn't he look exactly like the Big Lebowski from the movie "The Big Lebowski"? Well that's because he is the Big Lebowski, Lebowski.












No you damn puppet, I'm the big Lebowski!


Now let me show you what happens when you SPORE a stranger in the ass.

Oh, and I saved the best for last. Did I mention that this movie was directed by a Coppola? Yes, Christopher Coppala, nephew of the famous Francis-Ford Coppola and brother of Nicholas Cage. Of course, that means that his cousin was Sofia Coppola, whose movie "Lost in Translation" loses something in translation.











If you don't come back to Hell with me, the devil will make me watch "Lost in Translation" for 10,000 years. Its so UNRESOLVED!!!


Now with all this star power behind it, you'd have to figure that there is something seriously wrong with this movie to wind up on the $3.99 rack. That either the production quality was so bad or the script was so terrible that nothing could save this movie. But as you watch G-Men from Hell, you begin to realize that the script, while cheesy, isn't bad. There are no lines that leave you writhing in pain and no huge, out of paradigm plot holes, just a fun but over the top movie.

The production values are cheap, but there's nothing here that you wouldn't see in an old Roger Corman picture. Sure, hell is a sound stage in Hollywood, but who's to say Hell really isn't a sound stage in Hollywood. You know that Satan: full of irony!










Cheetah man gets a helping hand from an off screen grip. Either that or he's being felt up. Haha, felt get it?
.... (sigh) No love.

In fact, one of the moments that really impressed me about G-Men from Hell was when I realized that the movie not only had a coherent timeline that progressed over the course of 46 hours (48 hours was already taken), but instead of trying to force the time of day in some scenes with blue filters, the crew actually went out at 4-5am in California and shot in the wii hours of the dawn. Pretty impressive when you take into account that setup for those scenes could have started as early as 11 or 12 o'clock the night before.

G-Men from Hell is a movie that could become a cult classic. If you can find a copy out there, be sure to create a cult. Just don't drink the Kool-Aid.