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Ouija Shark 2 (2022)
Ouija Shark vs. Tarot Gator
You know that addiction to Amityville movies and the demon that cursed me?
I also have one that gave me the Ouija jinx.
Yes, I watched Ouija Shark so of course I watched the sequel.
Like I said, I have a curse.
Directed and written by John Migliore, who also plays the hero Anthony Struggle, who died to stop the Ouija Shark in the last movie. But now, he's beset in the underworld by demonic goggle-wearing apes and bikini women. And oh yes, Master Caldura (Simon Wheeldon) and his even more powerful Ouija Shark. Luckily, he has Dr. Strange-like magic skills and the help of his ex-wife Cressida, (Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith), who was also the mother of Jill (Sabrina Migliore), the heroine of the last movie, along with magic user Illyana (Kylie Gough) and her estranged necomancer mother - yes, that is a thing, I just wrote it - Terra (Lena Montecalvo).
This has it all, if by all you mean puppet sharks, a puppet gator - this was called Ouija Shark vs. Tarot Gator originally and man, I adore that title - dancing bikini girls doing a music number, stock footage mayhem, family dynamics dealt through surrogate mothers and daughters, magic users yelling out their powers like Shaw Brothers fighters declaring their fighting styles, a kaiju battle between stuffed animals, a great title and an even better poster. I'm fascinated by people who give these movies bad reviews on IMDB and Letterboxd, as of course this movie is going to have a low budget and be ridiculous. Why are you dumping Ouija sharks and tarot gators in a barrel and shooting at them? Is your life that boring and small that you gain pleasure from slapping around the slappable?
As for me, I love that I live in a world where I can instantly watch a variety of bootleg Ouija movies that are way better than the official ones despite having the budget of a trip to Costco. Sure, I laughed at this movie, but it was a joyous chuckle and the feeling of being alive, not one of feeling superior to the movie that I was clearly enjoying.
As a contrast, my wife's review: "This movie made you dumber."
Amityville Ripper (2023)
Fun
Amityville Ripper starts with a news segment of people hating Amityville movies, the original house being burned down, an auction of items that were in the house, multiple UFO abductions, the Spider podcast, a commercial for Alien Mingle and another for Steve Martin's (not that one) Video Store. At some point, I was wondering if this was using Pond 5 footage like every other Amityville movie and just trying to pad a runtime with all of this footage, but then as the movie went on, surprise, this actually gets why I watch these movies.
Not just because a demon cursed me to watch all of them and would ruin our web traffic if I stopped.
This takes place in 2000 - the Y2K bug is a thing - and Marianne (Kelsey Ann Baker) and her brother - or step-brother - Nichols (Hunter Redfern) wake up to their parents going away on vacation for New Year's Eve. Marianne - known as M - had something big planned with her best friend Annie (Angel Nichole Bradford). And no, not lesbian stuff, as her brother and his wheelchair bound friend Chapman (Ryan Martel). Instead, she has had the knife of Jack the Ripper sent to her from that auction. And her friend Tony, who is now in Hollywood, said it's real because "he lived that Ripper lifestyle."
What is a Ripper lifestyle?
Also, Marianne has dreams of slow jams playing over stock footage of a jet ski, which makes her even more endearing to me and not just because she's a goth girl with shaved sides of her hair and looks a lot like Rainbow Harvest. She also mentions that she really wanted the clock from the house, but an architect - Jacob Sterling, right? - got it first.
While everyone - including way too nice cheerleader Liz (Anna Clary) - is partying and playing Sugar Ray, Marianne and Annie go up to her room and have a seance with a Ouija board, some tarot cards, Jack the Ripper's knife and plenty of candles. Also: If M is so goth, why is she wearing an N'Sync shirt when the rest of her room is full of Universal Monsters pillows, a black metal poster and a Killer Klowns poster? At least her closest is all full of black shirts.
Director and writer Bobby Canipe Jr. Has obliterated the fourth wall in this movie, as the characters even find the script, not that it keeps all of them alive. Just look at the dialogue:
Annie: Everything that happened in the Amityville house was true. And can you just imagine if this knife of Jack the Ripper's became imbued with the power of the Amityville house? It'd be like we had some sort of Amityville ripper on our hands.
Marianne: True, but I think that's kind of the point. I'm pretty sure that the name of this movie is Amityville Ripper.
Then The Ripper (Josh Allman) comes to life, wearing a Dracula costume, and also aliens.
There's a line that sums up this entire movie, as well as all Amityville sequels.
"Brother, it's an Amityville sequel. ***** different here."
Not all the humor hits perfectly, but who cares? This is way better than nearly any other Amityvlle sequel, which isn't saying much, but it does try. Which is, again, way more than almost every other sequel not made in Canada or by an Italian director.
I Saw What You Did (1988)
Remake
This made for TV movie is based on Out of the Dark by Ursula Curtiss but its title comes from the first movie made from it, the 1965 William Castle directed, Joan Crawford starring I Saw What You Did. Director Fred Walton is going back to familiar territory, as he made When a Stranger Calls, one of the movies that took Black Christmas' idea that the calls are coming from inside the house. He also directed April Fool's Day, The Rosary Murders, When a Stranger Calls Back and The Stepford Husbands. This was written by Cynthia Cidre, who was a showrunner for the 2010s Dallas.
Lisa Harris (Tammy Lauren, Wishmaster) might be popular, but she could care less about school. Kim Fielding (Shawnee Smith, The Blob) is a smart kid who never gets to have fun and is always babysitting her sister Julia (Candace Cameron from Full House). When her father goes out for the night, Kim tries to invite over the more popular Lisa, who just wants a place to meet her boyfriend Louis (Patrick O'Bryan, 976-EVIL). While she's waiting for him, she decides to show Kim and Julia how to be bad and starts prank calling people and talking sexy or saying, "I saw what you did and I know who you are."
One of the people they call is Adrian Lancer (Robert Carradine), who has already killed his girlfriend Robyn (Jo Anderson) and is about to try and set his brother Stephen (David Carradine) on fire. Kim thinks they're flirting but he's trying to find out who she is because he's sure she knows he's a killer. She ends up at his house and things get pretty tense to say the least. And the whole thing ends with Stephen calling Kim and saying, "Kim, I know who you are. You killed my brother." And he seemed so normal.
Originally airing on May 20, 1988 on CBS, this isn't as good as the original - you figured that, right? - and the role that Crawford played is barely in it. But hey, it's pretty decent for a late 80s TV movie.
Black Market Baby (1977)
Black Market Baby!!!
Brut Productions was a film production company that - if the name doesn't clue you in - was part of Fabergé cosmetics. Run by George Barrie - who in addition to creating the Brut fragrance also was nominated for the 1973 Academy Award for Best Original Song with Sammy Cahn for "All That Love Went To Waste" and in 1975 for "Now That We're In Love" - it had Cary Grant on the board of directors and Roger Moore was an ambassador at large.
Their films include Cry for Me, Billy; Night Watch; A Touch of Class; Book of Numbers; Welcome to Arrow Beach; Miracles Still Happen; Hangup; Mean Johnny Barrows; Whiffs; Sweet Hostage; Hedda, Hugo the Hippo; I Will, I Will... for Now; Nasty Habits; Thieves; Fingers; The Class of Miss MacMichael and The Dream Merchants along with this film. Fabergé sold their interest in 17 films in 1982 for an undisclosed amount to Ted Turner.
Directed by Robert Day (She, The Man With Bogart's Face, The Initiation of Sarah) and written by Andrew Peter Marin from the book by Elizabeth Christman, this stars Linda Purl (Visiting Hours) as Anne Macarino, a young woman who falls for Steve Aletti (Desi Arnaz Jr.) and doesn't realize that he's part of a scheme by medical student Herbert Freemont (Bill Bixby) to get an Italian Catholic baby that has some intelligence to replace the child that was lost by Jessica Walter as Joseph and Louise Carmino (David Doyle and Jessica Walter). Everyone is in on this, even the kindly obstetrician Dr. Andrew Brantford (Tom Bosley) who is seemingly helping her. Now, knocked up, she can't tell her good Catholic family that she's with child (Allen Joseph, Mr. X from Eraserhead is her father), Steve is ignoring her and she's trapped in a home for expectant single mothers.
Even a really young Annie Potts shows up, so it has that going for it. It's her first movie. She plays one of the other mothers who reveals that she's selling her child and that's when Anne loses it. Then she stays with the Carminos without knowing that they want her child.
This movie is essential if you think that David Doyle and Tom Bosley are the same person.
Back to that house for mothers. It's owned by Mrs. Krieg, who is played by Lucille Benson, who will forever be Mrs. Elrod from Halloween II.
The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove (1971)
Disney TV
Originally broadcast on NBC as a two-part episode on The Wonderful World of Disney on October 31, and November 7, 1971, The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove is a very live action Disney film in that kids are making a monster, an adult thinks that it's real and a sheriff doesn't want to believe them.
Every year, schoolteacher Henry Meade (Burgess Meredith, not yet Mickey or Satan himself) takes his students out on the lake to be part of nature, but this year, he sees what he thinks is a monster, which scares the kids and gives Mrs. Pringle (Agnes Moorehead) the chance to finally get him fired.
To try and save their favorite teacher's job, Tippy (Annie McEveety) Scott (Jimmy Bracken) and Catfish (Patrick Creamer) make their own sea monster and plan on sending it out on the lake so everyone believes Meade. Except they run into smugglers - yes, this is a lot like Mystery of Dracula's Castle - and that brings in the sheriff (Bill Zuckert).
This being a 70s kid movie, of course Kim Richards is in it.
Based on The Mad Scientist's Club by Bertrand R. Brinley, The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove was directed by Jack Shea, who also directed 110 episodes of The Jeffersons, and written by Herman Groves.
Telethon (1977)
Telethon
Telethons were a big deal in the 1970s. So much so that more than one movie got made about them - besides this, there's Americathon from 1979 - and the Easter Seals and Jerry Lewis MDA telethons were marathon events that we all watched because, well, we didn't have that many channels.
A Las Vegas hospital is running out of money and the chance to have their annual telethon unless they raise $8 million this year. Filmed in and around the Dunes Hotel - which closed January 26, 1993 after a time where it became a shadow of itself and also had a series of arsons - this is like a disaster movie, in that it has a huge cast whose stories are all interconnected, mostly with Marty Rand (Red Buttons), the entertainer who has hosted the event every year being considered too old. His illegitimate daughter is also coming to Vegas to tell him that she's his daughter, Matt Tallman (Lloyd Bridges) saves Elaine Cotton (Janet Leigh) in the midst of a brawl - Vegas seems beyond Sin City here and not the family destination that it became - and you get people like Jimmie Walker, Sugar Ray Robinson and David Burton all playing themselves.
Plus you get Jill St. John, David Selby, Randi Oakes, Polly Bergen, Dick Clark, Eve Plumb in an adult role, Kent McCord, Edd Byrnes and John Marley all in the cast. Yes, the mob is involved and when isn't it in Vegas?
Director David Lowell Rich is one of the kings of the TV movie, as well as the disaster film. After all, he made SST: Death Flight, The Horror at 37,000 Feet, The Runaway Train, Adventures Of the Queen and the theatrical disaster that was The Concorde ... Airport '79. He also directed Satan's School for Girls, That Man Bolt, Scandal Sheet and episodes of Naked City, Route 66, The Twilight Zone, Mannix and Cannon.
It was written by Roger Wilton, who is a one and done writer.
Originally airing on November 6, 1977 on ABC, Telethon is a caught in amber view of what Vegas was like in 1977, a dangerous and violent place where you could win big money or lose it all just as easily.
Mongo's Back in Town (1971)
Great movie
Lieutenant Pete Tolstad, the character played by Telly Savalas in this made for TV movie, feels like the early version of Kojak before that show would air in 1973. Tolstad grew up in the same neighborhood that is now his beat. He's never had a real Christmas. He just does his job.
Directed by Marvin J. Chomsky (Tank, Evel Knievel, Roots) and written by Herman Miller and based on the book by E. Richard Johnson. Johnson was a convicted armed robber and murderer who wrote all eleven of his books from his cell at Stillwater State Prison in Minnesota. He started writing to pass the time in prison and his novel Silver Street won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Award for 1968 and the follow-up, which this movie is based on, was considered an even better book. Despite his success, he got into drugs while in prison. He escaped and went back into crime before being recaptured and stayed in jail until 1991.
Everyone is interested in the reasons why Mongo Nash (Joe Don Baker) is back in town and why he's spending time with a young girl named Vikki (Sally Field) who has just come to town from West Virginia. Is he in town to do a hit for his brother Mike (Charles Cioffi)? Or does he just want left alone?
This has a great cast. Martin Sheen plays Tolstad's partner Mike and Anne Francis is a gangster's moll who Savalas has a flirty scene with. Baker is great and somehow makes a killer into someone that you feel some level of empathy for and the way he treats Vikki. Ah yes. He is a killer. On the way to the brutal ending, we have people get acid thrown in their faces and everyone is fair game for murder including kids.
Originally airing on CBS on December 10, 1971, this is also known as Steel Wreath, which is a strange title and probably one that makes more sense once Johnson and his books were forgotten. Perhaps they didn't want people to think this was a Blazing Saddles sequel, which there was one that is forgotten and was a TV series.
Tales from the Crypt: Mournin' Mess (1991)
GHOULS
Directed and written by Manny Coto, who still writes for American Horror Stories and directed Star Kid, Dr. Giggles and Zenon: The Zequel, "Mournin' Mess" is about Dale Sweeney (Steven Weber), one of those drunken and scummy reporters that movies always have. He works for The Evening Globe who has assigned him to cover the Grateful Homeless, Outcasts, and Unwanteds Layaway Society and the new cemetery they are opening. He has the hots for their spokeswoman Jess Gilchrist (Rita Wilson) and buys int their goal of giving dead people a proper burial.
"Ah, there you are! You're just in time! I'm trying out a few recipes from my new Betty Croaker cookbook. I hope you like shish-ka-bob. Damn! It isn't ready yet! Bob's still moving! Tonight's foul feast will begin with mashed potatoes, then move onto some shrieking duck, and finish with a nice kill-basa. I call this tasty tidbit: "Mournin' Mess.""
The issue is that Dale is a mess. He loses his job and soon meets an unhoused man named Roebuck (Vincent Schiavelli) who tells him that all of the city's poor are being targeted by a serial killer. As it is, Roebuck is the prime suspect, but he claims that if Dale goes to the new cemetery at night, he will discover the truth, which will allow him to get his job back. Dale of course screws all this up and gets Roebuck killed and buried in that same cemetery, as he was too busy sleeping with Jess to meet him. He also loses his house and has to beg his old boss Elaine Tillman (Ally Walker) for his job.
That's when he realizes that the Grateful Homeless, Outcasts, and Unwanteds Layaway Society spells ghouls and they eat his ear as he escapes. He finds Jess and tries to save her, only for her to eat his face.
Oh Dale. If you just stayed in the cemetery and met him Roebuck, you could have had the story that let you expose everything and be a success all over again, Roebuck would clear his name and you'd both be alive. Hope that sex was worth it.
The original story was in Tales from the Crypt #38 and was also called "Mournin' Mess." Written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Graham Ingels.
Search for the Gods (1975)
Astronauts
In 1975, ancient aliens were all people could think about other than the bicentennial. Or so it seemed. Directed by Jud Taylor and written by Herman Miller and Ken Pettus, Search for the Gods was a pilot for a series that was never picked up.
Willie Longfellow (Stephen McHattie), Genera Juantez (Victoria Racimo) and Shan Mullins (Kurt Russell) are looking for parts of a gold tablet that explains how these Erich Von Daniken alien gods came to Earth and inspired our technology. Longfellow meets Lucio (John War Eagle, a Native American who was actually born in England) and gets the first piece from him before he dies, which brings him to Genera, the magic man's granddaughter.
They bring the medallion to Dr. Henderson (Ralph Bellamy) who helps them learn what they have to find next while looking out for the rich men who want it all for themselves. Obviously, this is set to not have an ending as they wanted this to be a series, so the 100 minutes of this show just lead to more that will never come.
Originally airing on March 9, 1975 on ABC, this movie has Russell's character mention how much he wants beer many times. There aren't any effects or aliens, but who knows what the show would have had?
And man, why wasn't Victoria Racimo more of a star?
Mystery in Dracula's Castle (1973)
Benji!
Originally airing on January 7 and 14, 1973 on The Wonderful World of Disney, this live action movie was directed by Robert Totten, who mostly worked in TV, and written by Sue Milburn, who mostly wrote episodic television and made for TV movies.
Marsha Booth (Mariette Hartley) is a single mom who has a deadline to write her new book, which causes her to take a vacation to the beach, bringing along her sons Alfie (Johnny Whitaker) and Leonard (Scott C. Kolden). They occupy themselves by taking over an abandoned lighthouse and making a movie, "Dracula's Castle" with the sheriff's daughter Jean (Maggie Wellman) and a dog named Watson.
What they don't know is that there's a bunch of jewel thieves - Keith (Clu Gulager) and Noah (Mills Watson) - who have found the Daumier diamond necklace in the lighthouse. There's a conspiracy in town and the sheriff (James T. Callahan) - who is Jean's dad - doesn't want to hear these kids and their stories. But maybe, just maybe, he will come around.
If Watson the dog looks familiar, he was played by Higgins, who was also Uncle Joe Carson's dog on Petticoat Junction. A mix of Miniature Poodle, Cocker Spaniel and Schnauzer, Higgins was found by animal trainer Frank Inn found the dog at the Burbank Animal Shelter as a puppy. His most famous role was played when he was already retired, coming back to star in Benji, becoming the first dog actor to have the role.
If you're expecting vampires, this is not the movie for you.
The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver (1977)
Karen Black
Look, I'm a very simple man and if you give me a movie where Karen Black decides to start exploring her wild side by wearing wigs and shopping for clothes, who am I to say no? I dare say that watching Karen Black freak out in a shopping mall is my very definition of a genre of movie that I want there to be more of.
Originally airing on NBC on February 28, 1977, this was directed by Gordon Hessler (Scream, Pretty Peggy) and written by Richard Matheson (more than I can say) and again, you're in the best of hands. Black plays Miriam Oliver, stuck in a controlling marriage with Greg (George Hamilton) until she goes shopping, finds a blonde wig and red top from Gloria LeRoy (Mildred "Boom Boom" Turner on All In the Family) and decides that she will become Sandy. Except that Sandy was a real person that other people knew and start thinking that Miriam is her back from going away. Or, as we learn, died five years ago.
Also: She dreams of her own death constantly.
Greg can't understand why she doesn't want him controlling her and having his babies and why she'd ever want a little house at Crystal Beach. Yet something supernatural is compelling Miriam to be Sandy and we're along for the ride. She doesn't need her glasses any more and it seems like she doesn't need Greg to hold her down, not when a low cut top can make men lose their minds over her instead of responding to her crying and saying, "I had a dream that I died" with "That's a nice dream. Honey."
Except that by the end, we learn that Miriam and Sandy were friends that could be confused with one another and there's no possession, like the end of a Scooby-Doo episode when I get let down again that there's no magic. And then Miriam goes back to her jerk of a husband and becomes repressed again and I have no idea what we're to learn from that.
Speaking of Scooby-Doo, Hessler would make Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park the next year.
The Brotherhood of the Bell (1970)
The Skulls before
Director Paul Wendkos (The Mephisto Waltz) was nominated by the Directors Guild of America for "outstanding directorial achievement in television" because of this film. It was written by David Karp, who also wrote the original novel. It had been made once before as an episode of Studio One in 1958.
A world premiere CBS Thursday Night Movie on September 17, 1970, this arrived just as the seventies began, a decade packed with conspiracy. Professor Andrew Patterson (Glenn Ford) is back at the College of St. George in San Francisco to watch a young man be initiated into the secret society that he joined there, the Brotherhood of the Bell.
After the ritual, one of the leaders - Chad Harmon (Dean Jagger) - gives Patterson an assignment. Stop Dr. Konstantin Horvathy (Eduard Franz) from accepting a deanship at a college of linguistics so that a brother can take that position. Harmon is to blackmail Horvathy with the names of the people who helped him defect. Patterson wonders if this is legal. He's told that he should be happy this is all they're asking of him.
The professor does what he is supposed to do and it causes Horvathy to kill himself. Patterson then does exactly what no brother should do and reveals the truth to his wife Vivian (Rosemary Forsyth) and his father-in-law Harry Masters (Maurice Evans). This causes the Federal Security Services (as conspiracy-filled as this movie is, it doesn't name the FBI; the agent is played by Dabney Coleman) to get involved and his father-in-law to turn him into the Brotherhood and Patterson's father Mike (Will Geer) gets ruined in the process, then has a stroke and dies. Patterson also loses his job, gets humiliated on a talk show by Bart Harris (William Conrad) and is at rock bottom when his former boss Dr. Jerry Fielder (William Smithers) and the man he saw initiated Philip Dunning (Robert Pine) both stand up for him.
Obviously, the makers of The Skulls watched this movie.
The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart (1970)
1970 New York
In The Andy Warhol Diaries, Warhol wrote that the producer of this movie, Martin Poll, approached him about doing making his life story into a movie. Warhol responded that "a wonderful movie had already been made on the sixties, and he should just remake it - The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart." He also said that it was "the quintessential, most truthful studio-made film about the '60s counterculture."
Directed by Leonard Horn (who sadly died young while shooting the pilot for Wonder Woman) and written by Robert T. Westbrook (he also wrote the book this was based on; his novels The Mexican, Insomnia and The Final Cut were also adapted into movies), this is the story of Stanley Sweetheart (Don Johnson), an aspiring filmmaker and college student at Columbia University. After the death of his father, he's moved from Beverly Hills to New York City and is going from being a rich kid to one from a family slowly losing its money. He has no real friends, he's bored with life and he lives in a dump.
The film goes into his many romances, like a hippie friend Barbara (Linda Gillen) who changes her name to Shayne. He has a one night stand with her, but really wants her roommate Andrea (Victoria Racimo). This is a major issue with Stanley, as whatever he has never seems good enough. Even when he scores with the virginal girl of his dreams, Cathy (Dianne Hull), he can't help but either seduce or be seduced by her roommate Fran (Holly Near).
He also meets Danny (Michael Greer), an underground musician who once went to Julliard and who seems to have a worldly bit of advice to give. Or at least lead Stanley to the best parties. And taking his girl, who didn't really want in the first place until she's gone.
Stanley finds happiness with Andrea and Shayne as a triad family of sorts, but even that eventually can't make him happy. Cathy sees him at a happening but he's so high that he barely makes sense. The film ends with him leaving and Andrea telling him she needs him. The film leaves it up to you where he ends up, but it does show you that Danny shot himself behind his mother's house right in front of her.
Speaking of Warhol, The New York Times reported that this movie would have Ultra Violet, Candy Darling (who actually does appear in a wordless cameo), Gerard Malanga, and Warhol as a "freaked-out psychiatrist" in its cast. One Warhol superstar did make it - almost - as Joe Dallesandro was originally cast as Danny. However, he was fired when for being late and causing trouble with the cast and crew.
This film is an interesting document of another time and not just because you can see the World Trade Center get built. It's made at a time when Hollywood was trying to figure out how to get movies made for the counterculture and maybe not always understanding. The era of films avoiding sex and drugs was, obviously, over. It was a brief moment before blockbusters took over and films like this are vital moments out of a past that didn't last long enough.
Young Guns (1988)
Brat Pack
Believe it or not, historian Paul Hutton called Young Guns the most historically accurate of all Billy the Kid films. I mean, John Tunstall is depicted as an older man while he was only 24 when he was murdered and younger than the Regulators. But still, despite combining some people, it's close, or so they say.
Directed by Christopher Cain (The Principal and Dean Cain's dad) and written by John Fusco (Crossroads), this film number one at the US box office and eventually grossed $56 million against an $11 million budget. It and it's sequel were big deals - I mean, Bon Jovi did the theme song "Blaze of Glory" - but somehow, I never saw either.
Lincoln County, New Mexico. Cattleman John Tunstall (Terence Stamp) is trying to civilize the young wayward men in his employ who he calls the Regulators. They are Josiah Gordon "Doc" Scurlock (Kiefer Sutherland), Jose Chavez y Chavez (Lou Diamond Phillips), Richard "Dick" Brewer (Charlie Sheen), Dirty" Steve Stephens (Dermot Mulroney), Charlie Bowdre (Casey Siemaszko) and William H. "Billy the Kid" Bonney (Emilio Estevez). He's in a land war with another rancher, Lawrence Murphy (Jack Palance) and makes the mistakes of hiring one of his men, J. McCloskey (Geoffrey Blake), who sets up a trap to kill him. Lawyer Terry O'Quinn (Alexander McSween) deputizes them, except that Billy is too brutal and hot headed, leading them all to be called outlaws for killing plenty of Murphy's hired guns.
He sends Buckshot Roberts (Brian Keith) after them and he succeeds in killing Doc and splintering the group, as Jose warns them all not to become lost in revenge, which is exactly what Billy goes on to do. It all leads to a huge battle where nearly everyone dies except Chavez, who makes it to California, Doc who marries Murphy's mistress Yen Sun (Alice Carter), Alex's widow Susan McSween (Susan Thomas) becomes a famous cattlewoman, Murphy gets arrested and Billy rides away, only to eventually be killed by Pat Garrett (Patrick Wayne, yes, John's son) years later and buried next to Charlie.
You can see Tom Cruise get shot by Siemaszko at one point as well as Randy Travis shooting a Gatling gun. One of the guys who gets knifed is Jack Palance's son Cody.
Somehow, Siemaszko never knew that Warren G and Nate Dogg sampled his dialogue for "Regulate." "Regulators, We regulate any stealin' of his property. We're damn good too. But you can't be any geek off the street. You gotta be handy with the steel, if you know what I mean. Earn your keep. Regulators, mount up."
Evil Spirits (1991)
Great cast
A shot in ten day film - in a falling to pieces old house that was also a home for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics and was also the setting for Haunting Fear, Spirits, Mind Twister and Witch Academy- this was directed by Gary Graver and written by Mikel Angel, who played Snake in The Black Six and also wrote Lady Cocoa, Psychic Killer, Grotesque and The Candy Tangerine Man. He's also Willie in this.
It's based on the real-life story of Dorthea Puente, a woman who ran a boarding house in Sacramento, CA when she wasn't killing nine of her residents. In this film, Puente is Ella Purdy and she's played by Karen Black, who I seemingly spend days in a row obsessing about as I watch her in direct to video and made for TV movies.
Ella speaks to her dead husband more than most people speak with their living spouses. She's also taking social security checks in exchange for rent and when her boarders die - or get killed - she makes it seem as if they are still alive so she can keep the money rolling in.
A government agent named Potts (Arte Johnson in a role meant for Buck Henry) starts to see through her plan and wonders why these senior citizens are never seen in person. Those elders are made up of some pretty great actors: Martine Beswick as the medium Vanya, Virginia Mayo and Bert Remsen as society types the Wilsons , Deborah Lamb as Ella's mute and always dancing daughter Tina, Michael Berryman as a writer who goes by Balzac and Angel as the drunken Wille. Even Hoke Howell, Robert Quarry and Yvette Vickers, who was the town tramp - I say that in the nicest of ways - in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and whose July 1959 Playboy Playmate of the Month centerfold was shot by Russ Meyer, show up.
Thanks to the incredible Schlock Pit, I learned that it was produced by Sidney Niekerk, who owned the adult video company Cal Vista.
This starts like a haunted house movie, has plenty of Psycho in it and then has a twist ending that I never saw coming. That's success on a very low budget, something Graver always seemed able to perform admirably.
Tales from the Crypt: Undertaking Palor (1991)
Goonies
Directed by Michael Thou (who edited the Donner cut of Superman II, another EC adaption Two-Fisted Tales and Small Soldiers) and written by Ron Finley, this episode finds four boys - Aaron (Aron Eisenberg), Norm (Scott Fults), Jess (Jason Marsden) and Josh (Ke Huy Quan) - discover that the town's pharmacist Nate Grundy (Graham Jarvis) and undertaker Sebastian Esbrook (John Glover) are murdering people and making money off their funerals.
"Quiet on the set! Deathly quiet. Fond felicitations, fiends and welcome to the Crypt. Tonight's sordid saga is about a couple of kids with time to kill. See, they're just dying to get into the horror movie business. And if they're lucky, that's exactly what'll happen to 'em. Lights! Camera! Action!"
This episode is filled with Richard Donner moments, like the boys leaving a theater showing Radio Flyer and a poster for Lethal Weapon being up. It's also quite like another of his films, The Goonies. There's also an element of found footage in this as the kids try to capture the crimes on a video camera after Josh's father is one of the victims of the scheme.
It's based on the story "Undertaking Palor" from Tales From the Crypt #39. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Davis.
Honogurai mizu no soko kara (2002)
Dark Water
Honogurai mizu no soko kara (From the Depths of Dark Water) was directed by Hideo Nakata and written by Yoshihiro Nakamura and Kenichi Suzuki, based on the short story collection by Koji Suzuki. The actual story is Floating Water but they used the name of the book for the movie.
Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) is a single mother trying to see where life takes her next after her divorce. She gets a job as a proofreader and rents a cheap apartment where the roof always leaks. Meanwhile, her daughter Ikuko (Rio Kanno) has to start over again as well, attending a kindergarten close to their new apartment. A young girl named Mitsuko Kawai (Mirei Oguchi) disappeared from their building a year ago and in between keeping her ex-husband from kidnapping their daughter, Yoshimi starts seeing that girl, wearing a yellow raincoat and carrying a red bag.
She believes that the girl died in the water tower above their building and is the reason why everything floods. Yet when Mitsuko comes after her daughter, she has to make a choice to give up everything to save her.
This was the second movie by Sakata to be based on a novel by Suzuki. He previously directed Ring and the sequel Ring 2. As with most Japanese horror, there was an American remake directed by Walter Salles that had Jennifer Connelly in it. At least it has the same doomed ending.
Killer Body Count (2024)
Great!
I usually say things like, "This was good for a Tubi Original," but Killer Body Count is damn good for a slasher, much less one made in 2024.
Cami George (Cassiel Eatock-Winnik) gets caught making out -- beyond that, engaging in mutual masturbation, which she initiates -- with a boy in the storage room of her church. Her father blames the suicide death of her mother (Kira Wilkerson) for how she acts and Father Tim tells him that they will send her to the Beautiful Savior Treatment Center.
This place used to be a retreat for priests and a sleepaway camp where either mushrooms -- or a young priest who went insane and decided to kill young fornicators -- wiped out everyone staying there other than brother and sister Eugene (Bjorn Steinbach) and Tawny (Alex McGregor). They've started this camp to help Catholic boys and girls to grow up with less sin in their heart and that means isolating the sexes, locking them in, throwing away their phones and teaching them Jehoga, which gets rid of all that weird Eastern psychology in yoga.
Cami is now pretty much a captive, living along with Chris, Rob (Ethan Sanders), Bree, Ali (Khosi Ngema), Wyatt (Savana Tardieu), Mia (N'kone Mametja), Bree (Jessie Diepeveen), Riley (Atara Leigh) ,Dan -- who looks like Jesus if he drank kombucha -- and Kevin (Adam Lennox) as they breathe, worship and commit to protecting themselves from their sexual urges.
Except that these are teenagers and they all just want to get laid, so they just keep on doing it, even if whoever orgasms seems to get killed by a devil-masked slasher who lives in the woods. Or a ghost. Or the priest, who has remained there ever since he massacred everyone so long ago.
This is a movie filled with great dialogue, such as "I saw a guy you ****** get murdered by a guy in a devil mask. I'm far from OK." and "He was crushed to death. How is that an accident? God works in mysterious ways." It also doesn't forget that young people today are no longer constrained by heterosexual relationships and never shames them for having urges, even if that's all that Tawny seems to do, including making Cami kneel on rocks or slicing a crucifix into Wyatt's hand.
It's hard to make a slasher in the post-Scream era yet this gets so much right. The kills look incredible, the villains have a great modus operandi even if it's taken from so many giallo movies (no complaints) and the cast is uniformly attractive.
Director Danishka Esterhazy also made the remake of Slumber Party Massacre and The Banana Splits Movie. I enjoyed both of those, but I loved this. It was written by Jessica Landry, who also wrote the Tubi Original Obsessed to Death.
Slasher fans -- don't miss this one.
A Stranger's Child (2024)
Oh baby baby!
Donna Fendyr (Jessica Lowndes, the newer version of 90210) wakes up in the hospital after a deadly car crash with amnesia, her husband Scott (Justin Lacey) dead and a baby named Cleo. Her brother Mason (Brad Harder) is helping her to adjust, but could she have kidnapped the child of Leon (Clayton James) and Amira (Zibby Allen)? Or is something even weirder happening?
This movie boasts a great villain in Leon, who switches back and forth from someone who seems to be looking for answers, just like Donna, to someone using her to kill his unfaithful wife.
Directed by Monika Mitchell and writer Helen Marsh also worked on Deadly Midwife and Deadly Invitations together. Here, they pretty much take a mystery - even to its lead - and make her wonder if the child belongs to her husband, making her deal with not just her grief but now anger that he was cheating on her.
So yes, some of this, you can see coming. Other parts of it surprised me. It's very Lifetime - Tubi feels like the streaming heir to that network, even as I pay for the Lifetime Movie digital channel - but has that ever been something I didn't want to watch? Lowndes is also quite good as the heroine.
The end of this movie, however, is ridiculous and makes me like it even more. We end up at a party at Donna's house, the real parents of Cleo have been revealed and everyone is happy. Donna is excited because a man has agreed to fix her car in exchange for dating her and she opens the door to a POV shot, making us the man she has gotten to go along with this deal. Huh?
Imaginary (2024)
So dark
Directed by Jeff Wadlow (Cry Wolf, Truth or Dare, Kick-Ass 2, Fantasy Island) , who wrote the script with Greg Erb and Jason Oremland, this is exactly the kind of horror movie that comes out these days: produced by Blumhouse, rated PG-13, so dark that I could barely figure out what was going on in some scenes and all about someone coming back to their childhood home and dealing with past trauma, a plot of nearly every new scary film I watch. But I thought, am I being unfair? Possibly. Maybe I need to actually watch this, as the idea - childhood imaginary friends are angry at being abandoned - is a great one.
Jessica (DeWanda Wise) is a successful author of children's books who has married a musician named Max (Tom Payne) and is now the stepmother to his daughters Taylor (Taegen Burns) and Alice (Pyper Braun). She hasn't gotten over her rough upbringing and frequently dreams of her mentally ill father Ben and Simon the spider, who she has made a central character in her work.
Despite these issues, they decide to moves into Jessica's childhood home. Alice finds Chauncey the teddy bear, who becomes her imaginary friend while Jessica meets someone who claims she babysat her named Gloria (Betty Buckley, who is a bright spot), who tells her stories of her upbringing that she has forgotten.
After meeting with chid therapist Dr. Alana Soto (Verónica Falcón) when Alice shows the same issues Jessica once had, they learn that no one can see the teddy bear except Alice and Jessica. Soto has several patients who have all had similar problems with being unable to see the difference between reality and fantasy.
Then, Alice disappears.
Gloria tells Taylor that Chauncey was also Jessica's childhood imaginary friend. It turns out that imaginary friends are real spirits that feed off the imagination of young people and are generally friendly but become ill tempered when they are abandoned.
Gloria, Jessica and Taylor must complete a scavenger hunt, which is a ritual that the imaginary friends use, and enter the Never Ever, the place where these metaphysical being reside. The items include "Something that scares you. Something that you would get in BIG trouble for. Something that makes you MAD. Something that HURTS." This is different from the past, as Jessica was told to bring "Something to paint. Somethin that burns. Something u eat from. Somethin that makes u happee. Some peez of you. Something that makes you mad."
That's because at one point, Jessica tried to leave reality for this place but was saved by her father, who was driven insane by what he saw. That's why he's been in an institution ever since.
The problem is that Gloria wants to stay, as Chauncey has been in contact with her. He promised her all the power of his home if she trapped the women with him, but in the middle of her explaining the magnificent power of the Never Ever, he appears and tears her apart. Jessica responds by stabbing him in the eye. Even when it seems like everyone has escaped, they remain trapped until Chauncey shows his spider form - Stephen King, call for residuals - and Alice sets him on fire. And yes, like so many movies, they burn their house down to escape.
The women try and get a hotel, but when they see a kid playing with his imaginary friend, they leave.
There are shout outs to Labyrinth, A Nightmare on Elm Street - they live on Elm Street - Alice In Wonderland and the whole thing is inspired by Poltergeist, which Wadlow cites by saying, "It perfectly strikes the balance between scares and this benign sense of wonder and excitement and emotion that you get when you have a family that you care about."
My wonder - seeing as how this is all about imagination - is if all of these movies that refer to the past and have similar plots are leading to the well of ideas that the next generation of filmmakers making being further muddied. This is fine, I guess, but when you're paying so much for a movie - whether going to see it in its short theatrical window or watching it at home for a fee - you want more than fine. Maybe I expect too much from escapist summertime movies, but I want to be inspired and wowed and come away thinking of all the ways a movie can expand.
Instead, I just watched the time and wondered when this was over.
Teenage Exorcist (1991)
Love it!
Directed by Grant Austin Waldman and written by Brinke Stevens and Ted Newsom (Time Tracers) from a story by Fred Olen Ray, Teenage Exorcist sat on the shelf until 1994 and then it was released straight to video stores.
Stevens plays Diane, a young woman who dreams of being a college professor. She's moved out of student housing and takes an entire house - which is haunted by Baron DeSade (Hoke Howell) - from a strange realtor (Michael Berryman). Worried by her first night alone, her sister Sally (Elena Sahagun), brother-in-law Mike (Jay Richardson) and boyfriend Jeff (Tom Shell) all come to check on her. She's been possessed by a demon (Oliver Darrow) and has gone from a modest young lady to, well, the kind of role that made me fall in love with Brinke Stevens when I was young.
How to you exorcise a demon? Well, there's no teenage exorcist. But there is Father McFerrin (Robert Quarry, who is on the side of good in this), a man of the cloth who accidentally orders a pizza instead of someone who can help, which brings in Eddie (Eddie Deezen), who is of no help.
If the outside of the house looks familiar, it's because you saw it in Sorority House Massacre II and Evil Toons. I find it incredible that it's literally across the street from the house used in The People Under the Stairs.
I'm pretty easy. I love all possession movies and whenever I see Brinke on screen, my heart beats a little faster. I've watched way worse movies just because she's in them.
The Farmer (1977)
I love this movie
We watched The Farmer on the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature last year and I've been thinking about it ever since. I'd waited years to watch it and it more than was worth it.
This film was never released on home media - not on VHS, Beta, Laserdisc, DVD or any other release outside of theaters - until Scorpion Releasing put it out in 2022. Now, you can easily watch it on Tubi, a movie people waited for years to watch.
Originally written as a vehicle for Clint Eastwood - screenwriter George Fargo had acted with him in Dirty Harry, Play Misty for Me, Paint Your Wagon and Kelly's Heroes - this was sold as a twenty-five page treatment to producer and star Gary Conway, who plays Kyle Martin. Martin is a hero of World War II, but his medals don't help him run his one-man farm. He saves a gangster named Johnny (Michael Dante), who gives him $1,500, but it's not enough. The bank barely pays him attention.
Johnny has no such money issues, especially after he screws over a mobster named Passini (George Memmoli) for $50,000. The boss finds him, kills Johnny's bodyguard and then burns his eyes with acid. The gangster remembers the military man and has his girl Betty (Angel Tompkins) offer Kyle $50,000 to kill everyone. Kyle turns it down until Angel gets assaulted and his friend Gumshoe (Ken Renard) is killed.
And that's when he basically becomes an unkillable slasher, taking out every single gangster one by one.
According to Tompkins, there was an alternate ending where - spoiler warning - the black soldier that Kyle stood up for at the beginning of the movie that has become a mob killer actually kills both of them. As she had never seen the movie, she had no idea that there is a happy ending.
Directed by David Berlatsky (the only movie he directed, but he edited The Deep) and written by Fargo, Janice Eymann, John Carmody and Patrick Regan, this is the kind of tough guy movie that has dialogue like "You made two mistakes: one was getting up and the other was making fun of Shirley Temple." It also has a part for Sonny Shroyer, who would soon be Enos on The Dukes of Hazzard.
Memmoli got injured while making this and was in the hospital for most of the shooting. He only weighs 190 pounds in this, way less than his normal weight, but would get to nearly 500 pounds before his death. That accident also kept him from being in Taxi Driver.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops reviewed this movie and said, "Revenge story of a World War II veteran (Gary Conway) has arty pretensions but not a spark of intelligence. Mechanically directed by David Berlatsky, it is excessively brutal and sexually degrading."
Sounds like a great review.
The Farmer has a song on its soundtrack by the name of "The American Dreamer" by singer-songwriter Gene Clark. How strange that it is from the Dennis Hopper documentary The American Dreamer, which is about the making of The Last Movie.
Conway is totally Rick Dalton. He went from his TV show Land of the Giants to appearing in low budget films and finally making this film, his own, to improve his career. He'd also bring a script he wanted to star in to Cannon and it totally got changed around. That script would end up being Over the Top and Conway would get to act in one Cannon film, playing The Lion in American Ninja 2.
There's just something about this movie. Is it how inscrutable its hero is? How cathartic the violence is? The strange soundtrack by Hugo Montenegro? The fact that it took forever to be seen?
I don't know. But I do know I think about it all the time.
Timesweep (1987)
DTV
Director Dan Diefenderfer only directed this one film, but he also was an electrician on Turbulence. He co-wrote the script with Larry Nordsieck and John Thonen, who wrote for Fangoria and Cinefantastique and also wrote B-Movie Horrors: A Photo-Filled Journey Into the Horror and Sci-Fi Films of Director Don Dohler.
A historical society is exploring the Dunbar film studios which have long been abandoned. As a TV news crew and some students start looking around, they're suddenly pulled into different times and aren't aline, as there's a cop from the 60s and a caveman, both of whom are quite unstable.
Somehow, in the middle of all this craziness, someone finds a print of London After Midnight.
Shot on 16mm in Diefenderfer's own studio, this really throws everything into one movie and hopes that you like some of it. Acid fog, Roman centurions, ghosts, giant roaches, a UFO, zombies...and lots of walking. Lots and lots of walking down hallways.
There's also a ton of gore and characters that you shouldn't get too attached to. This movie hates its characters and they get murdered in various creative ways. There's also a series of posters on the walls - Mondo Teeno (Teenage Rebellion), Tarantula, The Mummy, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula - and characters are named Vincent Hill, Roger Agar, H. G. Lewis, Sam Harcough, Florrie Ackerman and Mike Romero.
I think the more you love movies, the more you might like this. I wasn't bored because just when you think you know what this movie is about, it becomes a completely different movie.
The credits promise Timesweep 2 - The Quesdrov Factor and sadly, we never got that movie.
Behind the Crime: Self Defense or Slaughter (2023)
Tubi
On April 7, 2021, four men made their way to Travis Rudolph's house - a former wide receiver for Florida State and the New York Giants and Miami Dolphins - to confront him about a fight he had with his girlfriend Dominique Jones. It got violent, he grabbed an AR-15 and as they ran, Rudolph fired 39 rounds at them, killing Sebastien Jean-Jacques as he made it to the passenger seat of a black Cadillac.
During the trial, Rudolph asked Judge Jeffrey Gillen to dismiss the case last year because of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, which allows the use of deadly force to protect someone against death or bodily harm.
Gillen denied his request. It was up to the jury to decide if it was self-defense or murder.
During the trial, Rudolph would not back off the idea that he fired those shots in self-defense. Text messages introduced into evidence by his legal team proved that his ex-girlfriend sent text messages to her brother and the others, telling them to go "shoot up" Rudolph's home because he had been cheating on her.
This Tubi special tells the entire story and you can see how the jury decided. It's an interesting case and one everyone needs to consider, especially if they have guns and are ready to use them to defend themselves.
Mean Guns (1997)
Mean Guns
Vincent Moon (Ice-T) has had it with the hundred people - a hundred people! - who have done him wrong. He lures them all to the prison that his crime syndicate has built - yes, this script is insane - and hides $10 million dollars. Only three people will be allowed to survive, as he's also left guns throughout and gives everyone six hours to be the last person standing. If more than three people are alive in six hours, his kill squad will wipe everyone out and if anyone tries to escape, he has snipers ready to shoot them.
Albert Pyun knew how to set up a movie.
In the middle of all this violence, four people come together: killing machines Marcus (Michael Halsey), D (Kimberly Warren) and Lou (Christopher Lambert) as well as Cam (Deborah Van Valkenburgh, The Warriors but yeah, also Too Close for Comfort!), an accountant who tried to do the right thing and tell the police about what Moon's syndicate is doing. Cam is in shock at all the bloodshed, but surrounded by these three stone cold assassins, she may survive.
In the midst of all this chaos, Lou also has a daughter, Lucy (Hunter Doughty), who is waiting in a car. He takes care of her and wants the money to make sure she has a future.
The killers are all as Pyun infused as you hope they would be, played by actors like Yuji Okumoto (Chozen, the best bad guy of all time, from The Karate Kid Part II) and Thom Mathews (The Return of the Living Dead and Tommy Jarvis from Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives). James Mathers, who was Dr. Jekyll in Dr. Jekyll's Dungeon of Death, also is in this.
Shot in Los Angeles' The Twin Towers Correctional Facility - which was empty at the time of filming, due to budget problems (thanks Schlock Pit!) and where Blast was also made by Pyun - this movie looks so much better than its budget would let you believe. It also has, as much Pyun movies do, a cast that makes it work, as Ice-T seems to be having the time of his life as a silver grilled mambo loving maniac.
In case you're wondering why there's hardly any blood while everyone is being killed, well, they couldn't get the prison dirty. And everyone only had one costume for the duration of shooting.
Credit also goes to Andrew Witham's script, which is filled with tough killer dialogue and little bursts of weirdness. Sure, it's The Most Dangerous Game, but this movie is a marvel of low budget magic, as it has so many wild lines, a Three Stooges-style suitcase bomb death and even a line - "You're Now In The Purgatory Network. Audio and Visual surveillance is constant by Lucifer Command." - that can be read that the entire prison is in the afterlife.
Pyun also pulls off some small budget miracle here as while Lambert was paid half the budget, he was only available for a third of the shooting days. Most of his scenes were done in two eleven-hour days and the rest is all clever shots and fake Shemps, as Sam Raimi would credit.
It also looks wild, as Director of Photography George Moordian had secured free film stock by Moordian from Fuji Film and loved how Se7en had bleached the film. He fought to get the same look and it totally works, making this feel like it is inside some strange past future.
All in all, this is a near perfect movie.