Maradonia: The Shadow Empire

 

vlcsnap-2016-10-10-18h47m46s964It’s here. The wait is over. On October 7th, 2016, the Maradonia movie was finally posted in its entirety on YouTube…with a watermark…and by the account, “Americas Top Stripper”, which is a little ironic considering Gloria Tesch’s chosen career.

I’ve written about the tortuous, five-and-a-half-year production debacle that was this movie before, so I don’t need to recap everything. Between their cinematographers calling them out for shady business practices, multiple people getting fed up with and quitting the project, their IndieGoGo campaign which raised 8% of their goal, the torturously bad 9-minute trailer – there’s honestly enough there to fill a small book.

Over the years, I’ve had email correspondence with a couple people who were involved with the production of this movie, and if their accounts are reliable – and I have no reason to believe they are not – Gloria’s father Dr. Gerry Tesch who “directed” this movie, squandered the majority of the family’s money financing the film. The fallout resulted in his wife leaving them and the Tesches being evicted from their house. Which is honestly a little depressing, even more so because the end result was this absolutely stunning god-awful piece of shit movie.

I actually enjoy bad movies, I have an entire shelf of some of the worst things ever committed to celluloid. Stuff like The Room, or Birdemic, the masterpieces by Neil Breen, or anything directed by Uwe Boll. And I can say with confidence that Maradonia: The Shadow Empire blows them out of the water.

So let’s get to it!

  25 Responses to “Maradonia: The Shadow Empire”

  1. I live in Europe but I have read most of yoiur sporks. You make great job and you can really amuse me. I wondered that in the other countries are also ‘sporkers ‘. In Poland we have many sites with sporks of poor-written books. ‘Eragon’ and Grey were also sporked in our country:-)

  2. RORSCHACH IS BACK! Where you been? We’ve missed you.

  3. I saw the movie on Youtube and I immediately thought of you.

    Can you believe that her father actually went into hock to create the cinematic equivalent of smallpox?

  4. Yay, you’re back! I can’t wait to dive into this post. It looks amazing

  5. Damn! It’s October 13th and the movie has already been taken down.

  6. SHE DID IT
    SHE ACTUALLY DID IT
    THE ABSOLUTE MADWOMAN

  7. Wow, she did it! I must watch this perfect turd at once

  8. OH by the gods this is real…I never EVER thought they’d make it past the trailer…ever. (Apparently they didn’t? The movie just seems, by your description, to be one long book trailer rather than a film) It’s already down but, I hope somebody mirrored it somewhere. This train wreck has to be seen to be believed; nearly 20 minutes and the movie hasn’t started yet? You, sir, must have a will of steel.

    From what you’ve shown here, it’s also clear that the Team Tesch doesn’t understand what ‘adaptation’ means. Is this movie like…seven hours long? (One for every bridge, maybe?)

  9. This is absolutely not an alternative link and you should not follow it: https://youtu.be/o8Q0BZsZ8ns

  10. THANKS BRO! You are a life-saver.

  11. With the leak of this film, Tommy Wiseau and Uwe Boll have officially been elevated to the Pantheon of Fairly Okay Directors.

    …because Dr. Gerry is the new king of so-bad-it’s-so-good, and with this tour-de-force, I don’t think he can be gotten under-performinated in quite a while.

  12. Rorscach is back! This means he’s going to finish the Ruin Mist series!

  13. I really love your sporks, can’t believe I didn’t notice you did this until now.

  14. next part please

  15. All in all, this movie was pretty amazing. Now, the first half was much more interesting than the second half. The first half was shock full of wonders of bad acting, terrible dialogue, and horrid sets. But the second half was just a succession of… events. It got so incredibly boring that I just totally disconnected from it at some point. But finally I did see the sacrifice scene, their rescue, and then the end credits and the “to be continued” screen. Yea right…

  16. That was my reaction right now.

  17. “Gloria’s father Dr. Gerry Tesch who “directed” this movie, squandered
    the majority of the family’s money financing the film. The fallout
    resulted in his wife leaving them and the Tesches being evicted from
    their house.”

    That’s…really awful. This whole saga seems like something that might show up as a really jaw-dropping documentary in a few years’ time.

  18. The fallout resulted in his wife leaving them and the Tesches being evicted from their house

    THIS. According to some forums, the personal life of the Tesches was stuff for a documentary. It would explain a lot of things.

  19. There is a film worse than this. No, really. And this is where to watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0qwuSOk6aY

    Info and some reviews at IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2903902/

    One persists in watching this…thing…out of sheer fascinated horror that any film could be so bad. At least the Maradonia mess has a story…sort of. Enjoy !

  20. “there’s honestly enough there to fill a small book.”
    Maybe someone SHOULD write a book about it.

  21. I was reading your book sporking and found the link for the movie in one of the comments sections. My roommate and I have a tradition of sneaking into a room with a projector and watching bad movies on Friday nights, and so I decided to suggest it.
    It was probably the worst one we’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something because a few weeks prior
    we’d watched “Foodfight!”, and then I promised I’d show it to another friend, so I’m
    going to be reliving it. Yay.

    Anyway, now that I’ve seen it, I can’t wait to read your spork!

  22. Does anybody have a link to this film? I can’t see to find it online since the teaches took it down and I must preserve this hilarity for the future generation

  23. @disqus_IlAxdEKa7G:disqus posted a link to the movie further up the page. I just clicked on it and can confirm it still works.

  24. I’m so mad I just only saw this now, but definitely gonna check all of this out. Love this site, hope we get more Maradonia so we get some more sporks and whatnot. ^_^