Reviews

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.

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 (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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

John Duncombe (Anthony Quayle), the British consul in Florence, has come home from his wife's funeral and makes the decision to tell his son Andrea (Stefano Colagrande) that his mother is dead. He hides the truth from his other son, Milo (Simone Giannozzi).

Andrea has to become a grown-up well before he should, while Milo is allowed to be a child and can act has badly as he wants. As for their father, he becomes absent from their lives until it is almost too late.

Director Luigi Comencini understands the time that exists and is so fragile between being a child and an adult. He shows how all three of these men navigate this loss in their own ways. It's a really dramatic film that made me consider how I went from a child to a grown-up and how my father made his journey as well.

This was remade in 1984 as Misunderstood with Gene Hackman in the lead role.

The Dead Girls are a shock rock band whose members are Gina Verelli, who goes by Bertha Beirut and is played by Diana Karanikas (Click: The Calendar Girl Killer); Dana Grant, who is Lucy Lethal and is played by Angela Eads (Fatal Images); Amy is Nancy Napalm and is played by Kay Schaber (Fatal Images); her brother Mark, who is Randy Rot and played by Steven Kyle and Susie Stryker who is Cynthia Slain and is played by Angela Scaglione.

Their manager Artie (Brian Chin) has ideas to make them go mainstream, but the girls realize that they are mainly known for their death-obsessed lyrics more than their abilities. Much like the Stained Class and Ozzy Osbourne lawsuits that inspired this story, the band's fans have been inspired by their lyrics to engage in a mass suicide. The biggest problem for Gina is that her sister Brooke (Ilene Singer) was one of them and barely survived. Now, Aunt Annie (Carol Albright) and Uncle Jim (Robert Morris) - who raised them with good Christian values - think that Gina is to blame.

The band decides to take a two week vacation to a remote cabin, bringing along Brooke, the band's assistant Jeff (Jeff Herbick), Gina's old boyfriend from home Mike (David Chatfield) and a groupie named Karen (Mara Holland). Moments after they depart, Artie is murdered by a masked person. Also along for the ride is a nurse (Deirdre West) who is helping Brooke to recover.

The small place they're staying it is frightening from the beginning. Elmo (David Williams), the developmentally challenged handyman seems to be stalking everyone. And when they send the groupie away, she's soon killed. The murder doesn't stop, as Susie is drowned in the lake by the killer and her body is found by Amy. Her body disappears and the band think that it's a prank, as she has died on stage several times and worked with a magician to learn how to slow her heart and breathing.

If you think that this feels like a giallo, that's no accident. Writer Steven Jarvis was influenced by the Italian genre.

The next morning, Amy find Susie and Jeff's corpses in a barn. Gina runs, trying to stop the nurse who is taking Brooke to the hospital. She doesn't get to her, stranding the group in a place with cut phone lines and a sheriff (Robert Harden) who thinks that they're all pulling a stunt. Dana believes that Amy and Gina are behind the murders and the group begins to battle amongst themselves.

Amy is obsessed with the military - after all her name is Nancy Napalm - and she sets bombs up all over the barn trying to stop the killer. Dana and Gina start to believe that Mark is the killer and while they're discussing that, Amy is dismembered with an axe just as Mark returns with firewood. Gina finds her body and takes her gun, returning to find Dana tied up and Mark holding a pistol.

That's when it all comes out. Dana and Mark wanted to kill Amy and Gina, thinking that they were the murderers. And then, the real killer shows up and slices Dana's throat. Gina runs with the killer following her. Mark kills Elmo and we think that's the end...except...

Spoiler warning...

Mark is the real killer. He's a religious man who thinks that the Dead Girls had to die to end their music and save teenagers. He accidentally steps on a bomb and blows up, just as the nurse returns, finding Gina tied up. Thinking - just like Mark - that they're all evil, she leaves Gina tied up and drives away.

Director Dennis Devine (Things II, Fatal Images) said that the weather and cold temperatures made this the most difficult film of his career. I love the idea that the band is being killed by weapons from their songs. I just wish that they actually had a chance to play their songs. It's so close to being a great metal movie and that would push it over the top.

Richard Zanuck and David Brown paid Jaws writer Peter Benchley $2.15 million for film rights to the novel and a first draft of the screenplay, plus 10 percent of the gross, five percent of the soundtrack sales and approval of all of the crew and the locations.

Needless to say, in 1980, Peter Benchley was a big deal.

Blair Maynard (Michael Caine) is British-born but American, which explains how he could be Michael Caine. Anyways, he used to be in the Navy, now he's a journalist and he's also a dad whose son Justin (Jeffrey Frank) kind of hates him. So he takes him to Florida, supposedly for Disney World, but also to shoot guns and fish and oh yeah, get kidnapped by an unknown colony of French pirates.

For some reason - the last name - everyone thinks that the Maynards are related to the captain who killed Blackbeard, Robert Maynard. So they let them live, making Blair their writer - and he also gets to keep their in-bred gene pool a little less in-bred - and Justin the adopted son of their leader Nau (David Warner).

Director Michael Richie also made the films Smile, Downhill Racer, The Golden Child, Semi-Tough, The Bad News Bears, Fletch, Fletch Lives and wrote Cool Runnings. He also - as Alan Smithee - directed Student Bodies.

The poster promises that this is going to be a horror movie and it's...I don't know. It's kind of Straw Dogs but not as good, despite the high concepts of pirates hanging out on a secret island in the Bermuda Triangle for three centuries. At least Ennio Morricone did the soundtrack (he did thirteen movies in 1980).

Benchley also had The Deep, another pirate story, made into a movie and that made more than Jaws did its first weekend. It also has Jacqueline Bisset in a see-through white t-shirt and this movie didn't have any success or Bisset almost nude.

Man, people were busy in 1980. Richie also made Divine Madness and Caine was in Dressed to Kill.

Così fan tutte comes from Tinto Brass, who started his career as an avant-garde director but is best-known for his erotic cinema like Salon Kitty, The Key and P. O. Box Tinto Brass. He wrote the script with Bernardino Zapponi - who wrote Deep Red with Argento - and Francesco Costa. It's based - somewhat - on the Mozart/da Ponte opera.

The American script and dubbing is by Ted Rusoff, who was the husband of the voice of all your favorite giallo queens, Carolyn De Fonseca.

It stars Claudia Koll, who is almost supernaturally gorgeous, and it's not without reason that every man in this movie wants her. She works in a lingerie shop for Silvio (Renzo Rinaldi), who constantly is trying to make love to her, and is married to the nice yet boring Paolo (Paolo Lanza). She tries to spice up their love life by telling him stories of her being with other men, which he thinks are fantasy, but are all quite true after she gets pushed by her friend Antonietta (Isabella Deiana) and her sister Nadia (Ornella Marcucci).

She becomes obsessed with an antiques dealer named Donatien Alphonse (Franco Branciaroli) who is turn obsessed with her backside - Tinto Brass is living through his characters - and he leaves marks on her that Paolo discovers which places their marriage in jeopardy.

As for Koll, she passed what Brass called his "coin test." The director said, "I have them presented in their skirts and without panties, then I drop a coin on the floor. Depending on what they let me see in the bow, I sense their cinematic potential. Believe me... it's an infallible method."

As you can see, this is a dirty movie. Yet it's filled with sophistication, incredible cinematography and an actual story. And wow - a score by Pino Donaggio.

Yoshie Nomoto (Miyuki Kuwano) is a young and naive woman from the countryside who has come to the big city and fallen for Eiji Kitami (Mikijiro Hira), a young gangster who pushes her into a life of ill repute. But when we first meet her, she's already been living this life for some time and despite Hiroshi Fujii (Keisuke Sonoi) thinking he can save her from it, it seems like she's trapped forever.

Directed by Noburo Nakamura, The Shape of Night is a gorgeous film, one that is filled with the most lush colors and a filmmaking style that makes the heart sing. Speaking of the heart, this proves that love can't stop an unhappy ending, but such is how it works sometimes in the movies.

Yoshie loves Eiji, no matter how harsh the life he has led her into. There's a harrowing scene where his bosses take advantage of her and he must watch. It's not an easy scene to sit through, which is something one can say for the drama of this entire film.

Amelia (Rebecca Liddiard) is an unreliable narrator, if you will. She's just getting over a bad breakup - maybe - with a man who was wrong for her - perhaps - and is trying to improve her mental health. Or stop taking her pills and ignoring every time her mother calls. She's found her way to a rougher part of the city, living with a roommate named Melinda (Camille Stopps) who may have even more issues than she does.

And oh yes. Their house might be haunted.

Deadbolt is directed by Mars Horodyski and written by Michael Rinaldi (Meet the Killer Parents). It has a nice glossy look that doesn't betray its Tubi origins. And it does a great job of making us wonder who is really trying to drive its heroine even madder.

Amelia has to stay on her meds or she starts to hallucinate. This being a potentially haunted house, that's not a good thing. Nor is the fact that her ex-boyfriend Colin (Joey Belfiore) is continually stalking her, while Melinda's addict boyfriend Mark (Thomas Duplessie) keeps crashing on their couch and speaking of Melinda, what's with that rash that's overtaking her face?

There's a bright spot. Amelia meets an artist named David (Jamie Spielchuk) who is very protective of her in the face of everything she's dealing with, like rats in the basement, a fire in the neighborhood and Bruno (Bill MacDonald), a neighbor who seems threatening but is just dealing with dementia.

Sure, this seems like it could be a Lifetime movie, but is that a bad thing?

Directed and written by Jem Gerrard, who also made Slay for Tubi, this starts with Kay (Khosi Ngema) and her friend Riley (Matthew Vey) sneaking into the home of pharma king Pierce Patton (Francis Chouler) and his girlfriend Jessica (Alex McGregor). Much like Parasite, they seemingly live in the spaces where rich people leave behind during the day, remaining hidden and enjoying the comforts of life that their jobs could never afford.

Except there's some way strange things going on in this house.

You can tell that Pierce is insane right from the beginning, as when he sees a photo that a journalist (Grant Ross) has used for his cover story, he instantly reacts like it's the biggest slight ever. It takes Jessica to calm his nerves and make him settle down at his party.

Spoilers from here on out...

When you buy an entire mountain so no one else can be near you, you're probably the kind of maniac that is conducting secret body horror experiments in your basement. That said, I was surprised several times by this movie, as characters aren't what they seem and the lure of power, money or medical innovation start to be more important than being a human being. Only Kay emerges as someone who just wants to escape and tell the world about what she has seen. There's a good chance that no one is going to allow her to be so altruistic.

This is the second movie by Gerrard that I have enjoyed and I hope that Tubi keeps them coming.

The TMZ crew gathers yet again - these people love to get together and yell at one another - to discuss drugs in Hollywood, like ayahuasca retreats and ketamine therapy.

I wouldn't know what ayahuasca was if it wasn't for Howard Stern and I'm fascinated by a drug that basically makes you **** your pants. This doc even meets the Soul Quest, an Ayahuasca church located in Orlando, Florida, and explains how this drug has followers including Lindsay Lohan, Jim Carrey, Aaron Rodgers, Jada and Will Smith, Sting, Mike Tyson and Andre 3000.

In case you don't know what it is, it's a South American psychoactive drink that came from the Amazon and Orinoco basins and is traditionally part of spiritual ceremonies, divination and healing.

But yeah, it can make you go in your pants.

Drugs have always been a big deal in the tabloids so it's wild to see one so supportive of drug use, but we also live in a world where marijuana is nearly legal, which I never believed would happen. I mean, I get microdosing ads on Instagram all the time.

Ready to learn how the A list trips balls? Harvey Levin is ready to let you in on all the behind the scenes substances.

Directed by David Thies, this TMZ No BS doc gathers their gossip crew to discuss how Cardi B went from Belcalis Marlenis Cephus in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, joined a gang, became an exotic dancer, then started to become an early social media influencer before becoming popular on the reality show Love & Hip Hop: New York.

In 2015, she made her musical debut on the remix to Shaggy's "Boom Boom and then covered British rapper Lady Leshurr's "Queen's Speech 4" as the song "Cheap Ass Weave." Within two years, her song "Bodak Yellow" was certified Diamond and won best song of the year from Pitchfork.

She hasn't looked back.

I really liked how this show didn't just show the celebrity side, but how she became politically active, using her fame for the right things. She has called attention to Social Security and asking for transparency in how taxes are spent, as well as endorsing Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, who she refuses to endorse again because of his stance on wars.

Today's rap isn't something I know much about, so I use these Tubi shows to get up to date. Sure, I'm still behind because I'm old, but they at least help me to know a little bit about things that are rapidly passing me by.

Don't Trick-Or-Treat Alone! Is written and directed by Dustin Ferguson and is made to look like it's taped from WXIP-TV Channel 6. So if you saw WNUF Halloween Special, you're getting something similar if on a much lower budget (or Late Night With the Devil, which was made after both).

The main movie within this forty-minute film is Don't Trick-or-Treat Alone, an after school special warning kids not to make the mistakes that Cindy (Isabella Alexandra Russo) and her father Henry (Erik Anthony Russo) have made, as when she - you get it - tricks and treats alone, she ends up getting kidnapped by a Satanic gang of cannibals led by Lilith (Brinke Stevens).

There was also a release called WXIP - TV Channel 6 After School Triple Feature, which had Wrong Side of the Tracks, Runway Nightmare and Asylum of the Devil. Plus, I found evidence of a remake of House On Haunted Hill that says, "On October 31st, 1978, the WXIP-TV Channel 6 Team investigated the infamous "Hill House" on Live Television, with dire results. The broadcast was banned and never seen again, until now."

Throughout the story, it keeps getting interrupted by commercials and news. It begins with the end of an Amityville special, a nice touch, before an ads for a news special called The Satanic Agenda, Dinosaur Park, 1-900-PSY-CHIC, an anti-drug PSA and Bigfoot bananas at WinLo's Grocers.

The filter on this makes it look very 1990 even if everything in it feels mid 2020s. That said, the story is fun and Stevens and the young Russo are great in it. There are a ton of commercials, which isn't a bad thing until they start to repeat. Here's a breakdown of the ads:

Second block of commercials: Castle of Creeps, Jack's Pumpkin Patch, 1-900-PSY-CHIC, Breast of the Bird (a place I would certainly eat at), a news report on razors in apples and a commercial for Dr. Lobotomy's Lunatic Theater playing Rise of the Undead.

Third block: Ghoul Line 1-900-666-GHOUL, news of a missing child named Becky, Good Buddies mask ad, the same ad for The Satanic Agenda and a movie of the week by the name of Flash Force.

Fourth block: News about a mysterious van and ads for Breast of the Bird, Riverside County Flea Market, 1-900-PSY-CHIC, Mom's Against Drug Abuse and Bigfoot's bananas at WinLo's Grocers.

Fifth block: News on Halloween candy and a weather report, as well as the ads for The Satanic Agenda, Prehistoric Park, Jack's Pumpkin Patch, Castle of Creeps and Ghoul Line.

Sixth block are a PSA from Eric and Isabella Russo, Riverside County Flea Market,Bigfoot's bananas at WinLo's Grocers, Breast of the Bird, Good Buddies, Flash Force, the Satanic news special, a news report on razor blades, Castle of Creeps, Riverside County Flea Market, Good Buddies, Jack's Pumpkin Patch and a Halloween message.

Then, the film starts into Dr. Lobotomy's Lunatic Theater but is cut off.

The commercials are funny, but when they repeat three times in under forty minutes and cut up a film that's around ten, you wonder why they didn't just make almost all new commercials for every block. Ferguson is definitely talented - and prolific - enough to do it, even if trailers for his other movies were turned into movie ads.

I didn't mind my time with this and if you like micro budget horror that is looking to the past, you may enjoy it.

Ed on May 9, 2024 by bandsaboutmovies Jacques Rivette hailed Anthony Mann as "one of the four great directors of postwar Hollywood" alongside Nicholas Ray, Richard Brooks and Robert Aldrich. Studied by French film critics, several of whom would be part of the French New Wave, Mann started as Preston Sturges' assistant director as well as the director of screen tests for movies like Gone With the Wind.

He's probably best-known for his Westerns, many of which starred Jimmy Stewart like The Naked Spur and Winchester '73. He was fired from Spartacus by its star, Kirk Douglas, and left his next film, Cimarron, after disagreements about shooting on a sound stage. After all, Mann's locations are just about characters in themselves. He was right. The good news was that when he made El Cid it was a huge success.

The heroes of the Westerns that Mann made aren't always heroes at first. In his article "The Last Mann," Richard Corliss said, "The Mann western hero has learned wariness the hard way, because he usually has something to hide. He is a man with a past: some psychic shadow or criminal activity that has left him gnarled and calcified. Not so long ago he was a raider, a rustler, maybe a killer. If a movie were made of some previous chapter in his life, he'd be the villain, and he might be gunned down before he had the chance at redemption that Mann's films offer."

Bounty hunter Morgan Hickman (Henry Fonds) rides into town with a dead body, looking to make his money. He's treated like evil itself, except by Sheriff Ben Owens (Anthony Perkins), a way too young and innocent man who has become the law because no one else wanted the job.

Ben is in love with Millie Parker (Mary Webster), whose father was the last law in town and she won't take him as a husband until he quits. Hickman tells him she's smart because he used to have a star and it ruined his life. That said, he does offer to teach Ben a little about how to stand up for himself.

On the day the town plans on celebrating his 75th birthday, Dr. McCord (John McIntire) is killed by the McGaffey brothers, Ed (Lee Van Cleef) and Zeke (Peter Baldwin). The entire town wants them dead but Ben believes in innocent until proven guilty. He's willing to stand up for himself and even defeats town bully Bart Bogardus (Neville Brand) by slapping him and then outdrawing him.

As for Morgan, he falls for Nona Mayfield (Betsy Palmer) and becomes a surrogate father to her son Kip (Michel Ray). It's a nice way to show that he can still be a tender person after years of hiding his humanity. It's also an interesting inverse comparison to the renter falling for his landlady and helping her son relationship that also shows up in The Shootist.

This episode is directed by John Harrison, who directed eight episodes of Tales from the Dark Side, the movie of that film, the Dune miniseries on SyFy and oh yeah, wrote the theme for Creepshow. You can learn more about him in this interview we did last year. It was written by Larry Wilson, who wrote five episodes of this show as well as Beetlejuice and The Little Vampire.

"Greetings, art lovers. Vincent van Ghoul here with another morbid masterpiece sure to paint you into a coroner. (cackles) Hmmmmm. Something's not quite right. Ah, yes. (stabs the beating heart next to his fruit bowl) Now that's a still life. (cackles) Tonight's tale concerns a painter who's tired of people giving his work the brush. I call this pestilent portrait of the artist as a young mangler: "Easel Kill Ya.""

Jack Craig (Tim Roth), whose name is a combination of EC Comics artists Jack Davis and Johnny Craig, is a starving artist who drinks and has rage issues that he hopes to solve with a support group, Obsessives Anonymous. That's where he meets Sharon (Roya Megnot) and hopes that she too can save him. Of course, he still gets angry all the time and ends up killing a neighbor, but uses the photo of the crime scene to finally sell his artwork. Malcolm Mayflower (William Atherton) loves gore and he wants more of Craig's art.

Sharon needs an operation, so he keeps killing and selling art. Sadly, the first person he kills is the man who was rushing through a parking lot to get to the hospital to operate on her. Oh EC, your endings.

This story is based on "Easel Kill Ya" from Vault of Horror #31. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Johnny Craig. In the original story, an artist makes money from painting violence but when he's married, he starts to paint beautiful things. When she becomes sick, he brings a painting to his patron and he won't buy it. He kills the man, who ends up being the doctor who could save his wife.

In the opening hours of June 11, 1979, I was listening to KDKA AM radio with my dad. In the middle of a show, the national news broke in to say that John Wayne had died.

I started crying because I always thought my grandfather was John Wayne. If the Duke could die, my grandfather could.

It was too much for a six year old child.

I'm glad the young version of me never saw The Shootist.

The last movie that Wayne would be in, this is the tale of sheriff-turned-gunfighter John Bernard "J. B." Books, a man who has killed more than thirty men and become a legend. The kind of man that people run from rather than even look at, someone who Marshal Walter Thibido (Harry Morgan) hopes he doesn't have to arrest.

He's in Carson City to visit one of the only people he trusts, Dr. E. W. "Doc" Hostetler (Jimmy Stewart), the man who once saved his life after a gunfight gone wrong. He doesn't have the energy he once did and he soon finds out that he has cancer. He has days, maybe weeks left. All he can do is take liquid painkillers and hope for the best.

Until he's taken, he plans on just living a quiet unknown existence in the home of widow Bond Rogers (Lauren Bacall), a woman who instantly dislikes him and grows to feel differently. He also ends up being a father of sorts to her son Gillom (Ron Howard) who is close to being a criminal.

Once others learn he is in town, killers come to make their names off shooting him but even in the throes of death, Books is too tough to die. He also has no interest in telling his story to reporter Dan Dobkins (Rick Lenz), even if it makes money for one of the only women he ever loved, Serepta (Sheree North).

Realizing the end is near, Books tells Gillom to bring three men to the bar. They are dairy owner Jay Cobb (Bill McKinney), a man who insulted him when he first arrived; Jack Pulford (Hugh O'Brian), a Faro dealer who was once a killing machine who needs to destroy Books to get his name back and Mike Sweeney (Richard Boone), who wants to kill Books in revenge for the death of his brother. Despite being critically wounded, Books kills all three before being shot in the back by a bartender, someone he never even figured on. Gillom takes his gun and shoots the man before throwing the revolver down. As he dies, Books smiles and nods.

Gillom walks away without a sound.

Books lived by the words "I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them."

Paul Newman, George C. Scott, Charles Bronson, Gene Hackman and Clint Eastwood all passed on this movie and it was thought that Wayne - who had his left lung and several ribs removed when he first had cancer - couldn't handle the role. His breathing and mobility, as well as the altitude of Carson City were challenges he had to fight. When he made Rooster Cogburn a year before, he had pneumonia so bad that he damaged his heart from how much he coughed. A lot of people thought he couldn't make this movie and his doctors almost stopped filming after he caught the flu.

He changed the ending of the book and the script. Books was supposed to kill his last opponent by shooting him in the back and would be put out of his misery by Gillom after he was shot in by the bartender. Wayne felt that he had never shot a man in the back and would not in this movie either. He also objected to his character being killed by Gillom and added the bartender shooting him in the back because "no one could ever take John Wayne in a fair fight."

Director Don Siegel told Wayne. "That's what Clint Eastwood would do."

Wayne apocryphically replied, "Well I don't like that, and I didn't like High Plains Drifter!"

There are also some great moments with Scatman Crothers as a blacksmith and a short role for John Carradine (Wayne, figuring this was his last movie, got several of his friends to act in the film) as an undertaker. Even the horse, Dollar, is Wayne's horse.

This is also one of only seven movies in which Wayne dies, along with Reap the Wild Wind, The Fighting Seabees, Wake of the Red Witch, Sands of Iwo Jima, The Alamo and The Cowboys.

The father and son relationship between Books and Gillom reminds me of the way that Tin Star takes a man ruined by a hard life and shows how he can be redeemed by how he treats a younger one.

The last movie that fight choreographer Sammo Hung made with his mentor director Huang Feng (Lady Whirlwind, Hapkido) before directing The Iron-Fisted Monk, The Shaolin Plot is about Prince Daglen (Chan Sing) who is creating a library of Chinese martial arts manuals and learning each form so he becomes the greatest fighter in the world.

With only two manuals left, he sends a renegade monk (Hung) with two cymbals he uses to chop heads to take the Wu-Tang and Shaolin books. Yet for his plan to happen, Daglen will have to get inside the Shaolin temple, which will see him battle Little Tiger (James Tien) and a warrior monk team (Casanova Wong and Kwan Yung Moon).

I'm such a fool for movies like this, where people need to take all of the knowledge and moves and create their own ultimate style. Anything with the Wu-Tang or Shaolin makes me happy and as long as these movies keep getting re-released, I'm going to never stop watching them and throwing little kicks in the air as I cheer the fights.

As a fat guy who loves martial arts, I just have to say, "Thank you Sammo." You have made all of us so proud.