“Well, it ain’t Barney the purple dinosaur!”

Justin’s rating: This literally gave me a headache. It’s a two-Tylenol film.

Justin’s review: You know what’s something we haven’t talked much about here on Mutant Reviewers? The so-called “mockbuster” — cheap, obvious knock-offs of successful movies that were made not so much for an audience as a confused mom or dad who got this for their kid instead of the real deal. Mockbusters always have this patina of a scam to them, which is why I’ve given them wide berth.

But it is hard to resist what’s been called “The Room of superhero movies.” If The Amazing Bulk is so notoriously bad, does that mean it might loop around to finish the rest of that phrase, “it’s good?”

The Amazing Bulk was made by Lewis Schoenbrun, who got his start doing assistant editing work on Mystic Pizza and — this is true — Weird Al’s UHF. He financed the entire $14,000 project himself, filming it all on a green screen in five days. Clearly, he was going for an Incredible Hulk thing in a time when Marvel’s star was ascendant, hoping to be a leech on Bruce Banner’s backside.

And hey, it’s more than a decade later and people are still talking about this rip-off, so maybe Schoenbrun is getting the last laugh after all.

Hank is your average scientist who’s trying to come up with a formula to make super-people but only seems to make rats explode. So he tests it on himself and swells into a 15-foot hemorrhoid with rage issues. This up-and-coming superhero must pit his great strength against Dr. Werner von Kantlove, a fat mad scientist who wants to blow up the moon. He’s also got to clear his name from a murder and find a ring for his girlfriend.

To achieve his $14K budget, Schoenbrun pulled a ton of stock CGI footage and graphics from the web, slapped a few human actors over them, and then stuffed a small wad of $100 bills into a computer animator to make a lumpy, purple thing that may or may not be our hero. The green screen work looks like those early FMV games from the ’90s, with this misshapen giant stomping (and/or gliding) through scenes.

One thing’s for certain: This movie made me stop taking for granted movies shot on actual sets or real locations. This all looks like some techno-hellscape where human consciousnesses are downloaded for an eternity of torture. Now THAT would be a movie with a better plot than this.

It’s a little harder to get a feel for how much this was intended to be a deliberately bad parody. When you’ve got characters sitting in a car that was drawn around them in MS Paint, people walking in place while the background flows by them, and Robin Hood showing up out of the blue, I can’t believe that this was a sincere effort. This had to be made as intentionally terrible as possible, and that robs a lot of possible enjoyment of it. As we’ve often said here, you can’t force a cult (or a bad) flick — it needs to happen organically.

So no, this is not one of those “so bad it’s good” flick with an intrinsic entertainment value. It’s simply bad and ugly. Move on.

Intermission!

• This even has a knock-off of the Universal logo
• …and Comic Sans font
• If you shoot someone, it leaves behind a paint smear
• “We’re dabbling in God’s backyard.”
• Scientist dudes have long, greasy hair
• BUT IS HE READY TO HAVE KIDS I MUST KNOWWWW
• Scientists have kid-like temper tantrums when their experimental mice dissolve into mist
• This general really hates dust because of the “dust bunnies”
• Behold, the most realistic CGI dog and monkey ever
• These guards have shields and spears and axes? What century is this?
• He blew up the “Institute of German Scientists”
• How many missiles does Kantlove have? He’s blowing up half the world’s icons here.
• You’re thinking about proposing in a subway car?