Hell Hath No Fury (2021).

Directed by Jesse V. Johnson

Written by Katharine Lee McEwan and Romain Serir

Starring Nina Bergman, Timothy V. Murphy, Andrew Bering, and Daniel Bernhardt

The Stage.

Branded a traitor by her countrymen, French national Marie DuJardin is rescued by American soldiers on one condition: to survive, she must lead them to a cache of gold that’s buried in a cemetery. Unfortunately, the Americans aren’t the only ones after the booty.

The Review.

This is an interesting war film. It’s like a low budget, one location version of Three Kings. Right from the start, you know what kind of grimy, bloody ride you’re in for as Marie and a Nazi commander Von Bruckner (played by Daniel Bernhardt) come upon a roadblock that’s set up as an ambush that does not go well for the attackers.

We then fast forward three years and the rest of the film takes place in a German graveyard as a small group of American soldiers tries to find the gold that Marie hid. The American soldiers aren’t particularly interesting, but the setting is neat. As the action unfolds, we’re treated to squibs and practical blood, which was a nice change from the CGI blood seen in so many films today. It really makes a difference. The sound design is quite good as well, and you really feel the gunshots as the World War II-era guns spit hot lead. There’s a knife fight between two soldiers that’s really brutal as well, and you feel the knife slowly entering skin.

Outside of the well done action, Hell Hath No Fury suffers from a weak script. During the graveyard action, we’re shown flashbacks that are to the film’s detriment, particularly a late reveal that’s shot in a way that feels like Jesse V. Johnson wants you to experience as a surprise, but due to what we’ve already seen in the film, you already know exactly what’s coming. Hell, the poster art gives it away. They’re clunky and don’t really add much to the film that couldn’t have been said in dialogue between the characters in present time. That late third-act reveal also leads to an ending that is really quite dumb and kind of left me rolling my eyes.

The End.

Hell Hath No Fury is a low budget, DTV action flick that delivers on what it advertises. It’s not a great movie, but it’s much better than the IMDB rating of 3.3 that this flick currently has. I’m not sure why it’s so low - this feels more like a 5 or a 6. Arbitrary ratings aside, the film is shot well and has some good, pulpy action, so if that’s what you’re in the mood for, this should hit the spot - just don’t expect a story that’s going to blow you away.

Copshop (2021).

Directed by Joe Carnahan

Written by Kurt McLeod and Joe Carnahan

Starring Alexis Louder, Frank Grillo, Gerard Butler and Toby Huss

The Stage.

A con artist intentionally gets himself arrested thinking that it’ll keep him safe from the ruthless hitmen that are on his trail. Unfortunately for him and the cops inside of the station, it won’t.

The Review.

How much cop could a copshop shop if a copshop could shop cop?

I really like Joe Carnahan as a creative. Looking at films like Boss Level and Smokin’ Aces as examples, he films wild, over-the-top action really well and he always combines that with very interesting, flavorful characters, and Copshop is no different.

Like Assault on Precinct 13, we have an African American police officer who’s trying to get people out safely, but unlike most siege films, the participants are all already inside of the building. Alexis Louder plays Valerie Young, the police officer, and she is really great as this confident, smart gunslinger. She has a calm demeanor about her, even while she’s in grave danger that makes her so interesting to watch on-screen. If you’re looking for a film featuring a strong female protagonist, look no further. The con artist locked up in one of the police station cells is Teddy Murretto, the world’s worst shot. He’s interesting in that you really don’t know what his motives are or what he’s capable of until later on in the film, played enigmatically by the always fantastic Frank Grillo. Gerard Butler rounds out the main three as the vicious bulldog Bob Viddick, a man just chomping at the bit for a shot at Teddy’s forehead. I have a big soft spot for Gerard Butler, I don’t know exactly why, but I just love watching him on screen.

The story moves along at a propulsive pace, which can be hard to do in a film that takes place all in one location. I thought it was pretty well written, with the exception of some final third messiness and the familiar action movie trope of people shooting a thousand bullets and somehow not hitting anything but walls and stacks of paper, but those small complaint didn’t ruin anything for me. I thought the tone was like a more mature Smokin’ Aces, but not by much, which I was perfectly fine with. Anthony Lamb, a psychopathic hitman played by Toby Huss was a good source of comedy in the back half of the film. He’s got a few lines that made me laugh out loud while watching this by myself. The violence has a exploitative quality that’s right up my alley while never being gross.

I only really have minor complaints about the film. I didn’t necessarily have a problem with Frank Grillo’s character, but he took to Instagram to both defend Joe Carnahan and to mention that a lot of his character development was cut. I also think that they could have developed the relationship between Valerie and Bob a bit more. Hopefully we can see the Carnahan cut someday, but it sounds like there was some studio meddling. I don’t think that the studio was responsible for the CGI fire though, which looked terrible.

The End.

I enjoyed Copshop. It’s a brisk siege movie with a cool setting, colorful characters, and a fun, exploitative vibe. The last ten minutes weren’t great, and the third act in general could have used some retooling (specifically the last five minutes), but overall I thought it was really fun. I’m looking forward to what Alexis Louder does next, because she was amazing, and Toby Huss is now on my radar as well as he stole every scene he was in as the hilarious balloon man psycho. If you like over-the-top action films or siege movies like Assault on Precinct 13, I think you’ll find this a good sit.

Raging Fire (2021).

Directed by Benny Chan

Written by Benny Chan, Ryan Wai-Chun Ling, and Yaoliang Tang

Starring Donnie Yen, Nicholas Tse, Lan Qin, Angus Yeung, Yuen Ka-Bo and Ben Lam

The Stage.

Cheung Sung-bong is a very respected officer of the Regional Crime Unit - he’s an honest family man who gets the job done. When a pack of ex-officers turned violent criminals ambushes a group of police and kills his boss, Cheung makes it his mission to bring them down.

The Review.

This was Benny Chan’s final film before he tragically died from cancer - and he went out with a bang. From the opening scene, you know you’re watching an epic inspired by Michael Mann’s Heat. Donnie Yen, who’s one of my favorite Hong Kong actors, plays Cheung and he’s good as the stoic, determined police officer looking to avenge his mentor’s death but the real star of this film is Nicholas Tse, who plays Ngo, the leader of his band of cops-turned-criminals. He’s so charismatic in the role that I found myself rooting for him. Certain scenes even felt inspired by Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight, specifically one set inside of a police interrogation room. He’s just so damn cool, like a mixture of Chow Yun Fat’s Tequila and Luke from Bullet in the Head.

Mr. Chan was an extremely competent filmmaker so everything looks great. The action is shot very well (aided by the killer talents of the actors in said fights) and the camera movements are kinetic and draw you into each situation. There’s a little too much noticeable CGI here for my tastes - specifically CGI blood and explosions, but the only piece that was so bad that it was actually distracting was one scene of a motorcycle jumping a guardrail. Overall Raging Fire looks and sounds great.

The story doesn’t provide anything new - you’ve probably seen this kind of thing a million times (there are grey areas in life, police-work isn’t black and white, etc.), and it feels a little long in the tooth at points, but luckily those lulls are broken up by some action scenes and goddamn…they deliver. One particular fight scene involves Cheung battling his way out of a slum neighborhood after he confronts a local drug dealer who’s not ready to go quietly. Cheung takes off his bullet proof vest, wraps it around one arm as a sort of shield, and then heads into battle with tons of goons armed with machetes. The fight heads from the favelas to a sewer and then even into the city streets. You really feel every hit as they beat the hell out of each other. Another involves the first fight I can recall on film while one character is in the driver’s seat of a car and the other participant is driving a motorcycle next to him. It was thrilling and inventive. Finally, there’s a big action set piece at the end of the film that is most definitely inspired by Heat as cops pin the criminals in the middle of traffic and the bullets start flying.

The End.

As the credits roll, we’re treated to a tribute of set photos featuring the late director working amongst his crew. It was a rewarding cap on a solid film, paying homage to the master who had helmed his final project.

Raging Fire might be a familiar tale of cops vs. robbers, but it is engaging and the performances are great, specifically that of Nicholas Tse. Add in the amazing action scenes, and this one becomes an easy film to recommend if you like action movies.

Blades (1989).

“What is this, a goddamn Texas chainsaw massacre?”

Directed by Thomas R. Rondinella

Written by John P. Finnegan, William R. Pace, and Thomas R. Rondinella

Starring Robert North, Victoria Scott, Jeremy Whelan, Holly Stevenson, and a lawnmower

The Stage.

The Tall Grass Country Club is gearing up for its first televised pro-am golf tournament, which could bring in a lot of new members. In order to help their clout, they bring in a new instructor named Roy Kent, a once proud golfer who’s since succumbed to the bottle after bombing during a big professional tournament…but Roy Kent choking in the clutch is the least of Tall Grass’s worries, because a killer runaway lawnmower is literally chewing golfers up and spitting them out.

The Review.

Robert North (in his only acting credit) plays Roy Kent, a washed up alcoholic ex-pro golfer who always has a worried look on his face that begs the question, “Was that fart just a little too wet?” When he’s not putting or dodging a killer lawnmower, he’s dodging the club owner’s wife who wants him to give her the ol’ 9-Iron. Victoria Scott plays his love interest named Kelly Lange, a female golfer who expected to get the job that Roy was given. At first she’s angry, but we know that at some point, they’re going to bone. Her only other acting credit is ‘Unified fund mom’ in the 1996 film Kingpin, so I guess she’s only interested in on-screen roles if the films center around sports that are really fucking boring. Together, these two doofuses drink at work and try to solve the mystery as to why golfers keep ending up mutilated in the sand traps, and once they link up with Deke Slade, an ex-groundskeeper at the club, they go hunting.

The deaths that happen on-screen are few and far between and barely show anything. We get the view from the mower’s point of view - low to the ground, winding through weeds and grass, until we reach the screaming dummy who didn’t just move to the side and then we cut to something else to hear the screams. Although we see the remnants, that part of the film is pretty lackluster. The film tries to be funny to support its absurd premise, but none of the jokes really land. Continuous failed humor attempts include a police chief who constantly holds golf course meetings to assure people everything is fine, an insane redneck mob that is deployed to find the culprit, and Norm, the clueless club owner whose wife is looking for a hole-in-one from Roy.

I will give some credit to the director here - there are some occasional bursts of great imagery here, like the lawnmower silhouetted against the setting sun, and there’s some pretty dynamic camerawork as well. For a first-time filmmaker, he seemed pretty skilled behind the camera. I can’t say the same for the pen game, but who knows who was to blame for the terrible script, seeing as three people have screenwriter credits on this one. How it took three people to write this film is simply beyond my level of comprehension.

The End.

In terms of Jaws ripoffs and parodies, you can do a lot worse than Blades, although this feels less like a parody and more like a reenactment with golf carts. It almost feels a little too grounded in reality - with a plot as bizarre as this, I think it could have been a lot more wild and definitely a lot more fun. As far as goofy horror comedy films are concerned, there are much better entries than this, but it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

Titane (2021).

“Vroom, vroom.”

Directed by Julia Ducournau

Written by Julia Ducournau

Starring Agathe Rousselle, Vincent Lindon, Garance Marillier, and a sexually active fire truck

The Stage.

A young girl is involved in a car accident and a metal plate is inserted into the side of her head. As an adult, she becomes a serial killer who has sex with cars, and that’s only scratching the surface of this bizarre tale of what it means to be family.

The Review.

Titane is an experience. It’s a weird, surreal, challenging film that can be taken so many different ways. Agathe Rousselle plays Alexia, a woman who seemingly hates her father and becomes a vicious serial killer. Her performance as this flawed character is daring yet subdued, as she plays one character who begins to morph into someone else completely. Vincent Lindon plays Vincent, a firefighter who’s also got a flawed past that he cannot move on from, compounded with deep-seated masculinity issues. Fate brings the two together and it’s so interesting to see how everything plays out, even if some of it makes little sense. I cannot say much more without resorting to huge spoilers, so I’ll leave it at that. Both actors were fantastic, even if I didn’t love the character of Alexia. More on that later.

I’ve seen a lot of people online saying that Titane is an exploration of gender fluidity, but it feels like more than that. I think it’s more about finding acceptance and love in others that need that missing puzzle piece, and in this case, it’s familial love. Vincent’s missing puzzle piece is a child, Alexia’s, a father figure. He’s the first person we meet in the film that she doesn’t immediately murder, and even though he doesn’t know exactly who she is, he doesn’t care. A pregnancy in the film can be seen as a stand-in for emotional baggage or rape. Or we can just toss all of the symbolism out of the window and take her being impregnated by a fucking low-rider at face value.

The film is beautifully shot with an atmosphere of pure dread, which is strange because this isn’t really a horror movie as much as it is a familial drama with a light dusting of Cronenberg-esque body horror. I actually thought that the body horror aspect was pretty tame and felt overblown in the marketing campaign, with blurbs from places like Yahoo proclaiming, “Titane is the bonkers body horror movie that's coming for all the Oscars…” It’s not as gross as it could have been, especially towards the end. Scenes like the opening car dance and the firefighting scenes were particularly striking.

As interesting as Titane’s tale is, it didn’t really work for me, and most of that lies in Alexia being the protagonist. She has absolutely no charm and her face is just a blank slate at all times. There was nothing making me want to root for her - she seemed like an annoying kid who turned into a despicable adult, and what we see of her parents on-screen wasn’t that bad. As a filmmaker, you don’t have to make your audience like an anti-hero, but you should give them a reason to root for them. I couldn’t stand her character, so I really felt nothing for her. Vincent was the most interesting character in the film and I liked his arc, even if I didn’t like his character after he went too far with one of his subordinates.

The End.

Titane is like a work of art that I just don’t connect to. It’s a piece that I can admire, but ultimately didn’t like. I think there’s going to be an audience for this film - people who like a good character study that looks gorgeous and want to walk out of the theater talking to people about what the fuck they just saw and what everything stood for.

Halloween Kills (2021).

Directed by David Gordon Green

Written by Danny McBride

Starring a bunch of townspeople who get slaughtered one by one.

The Stage.

Taking place directly after the events of Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills moves the focus from the Strode family to the idiotic townspeople of Haddonfield, Illinois. Led by the survivors from the 1978 attacks, they form a big mob to hunt down Michael Myers, and I’m sure you can figure out how that goes.

The Review.

Just like the 2018 legacy sequel, the film looks great (unless you watch it on Peacock, which for some reason looked like a poor quality Blu-ray on my OLED) - there’s some fantastic imagery on display. David Gordon Green knocks the look out of the park, both of the Halloween setting and Myers himself. The half-burned look is the best Michael Myers has ever looked. I also like the score for the film.

The story actually steals a lot from the unproduced Halloween 4 script written by Carpenter and author Dennis Etchison. That script really had no main character, instead focusing on the town as a whole (including people like Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace), and how the town has been affected by the 40 year old tragedy. The same thing happens here, as the film pushes the Strode women to the background in favor of those who survived the old attacks. The film plays out much differently, but elements of the old script were clearly used - for example, in the script, Myers loses two fingers to a hungry dog. In this series, he lost them to a Laurie Strode shotgun blast. There are a ton of similarities, but that script was absolutely bonkers in the climax, which made Myers a full on supernatural entity who grew his fingers back, and then while being shot, absorbed the power of the bullets and turned into a 12 foot tall behemoth. I feel like they’re going towards a similar thing here by seemingly giving him more strength with the more damage he’s incurred.

The Brain has become The Jock.

The idea of the town banding together to hunt down Myers is intriguing - the hunter becomes the hunted. Unfortunately, they fail, and it’s because they’re all stupid idiots. Chanting, “Evil dies tonight!”, the mob (led by an unrecognizable Anthony Michael Hall) decides that the best way to kill Michael Myers is to stick together…so immediately, they split up. Fragmented, they incur the wrath of Myers one by one, and in particularly brutal fashion. Younger kids and babies are still off-limits, but everyone else is carved up like soft pumpkins, and some of them absolutely deserve it based on the stupid decisions they make. Oh, there’s a masked killer? Let’s go to the old Myers house in a pack of three, only to have the driver say, “Stay here, I got this.” and then get promptly slaughtered as he walks into the home alone. Or the couple who clearly know that there’s a killer in their house, and instead of like…leaving…they decide to stalk whoever is there with the world’s tiniest knives, until they’re both bloody meat sacks. Even when people are in large groups, they follow the Kung Fu film formula of attacking one by one until they’re all fucking dead. Even Karen Strode, who has seen how hard it is to kill this man is guilty of this, as she shoves a pitchfork in his back at one point and then just takes it out and walks away, like Steph Curry chucking up a three and turning his back to the basket.

Aside from a random Jim Cummings appearance in the pointless flashback sequences, the best thing about Halloween Kills are the kills. It’s by far the nastiest of the Halloween films as people are gutted in mean spirited ways like broken fluorescent bulbs to the neck, a knife under the eye and through the brain, a head twisted all the way around, and someone’s face pushed in until their eyes pop straight up into the air.

The End.

The film is gory and stupid, and only really serves as a violent bridge to the final act. While the kills are impressive, the story doesn’t really go anywhere and the people who live in Haddonfield all deserve to have their vacant real estate sold for rock bottom prices.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that Michael Myers just isn’t that interesting as a villain. He’s got no personality, no clear drive, and no rules. He went from a six-year-old kid with a knife to an immortal pea-brained oaf and no one knows how or why. The next installment is called Halloween Ends, and I think that at this point, it needs to.

Halloween (2018).

“I spilled peanut butter on my penis.”

Directed by David Gordon Green

Written by Jeff Fradley

Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, and Michael Myers

The Stage.

40 years after the events of Halloween, Michael Myers escapes yet again and heads after the one who got away, Laurie Strode. This film ignores every sequel up to this point, serving as new canon starting from the 1978 original, but keeping the same title for some stupid reason.

The Review.

I know that some people have this weird affinity to the Halloween series and are very critical of anything that comes to the franchise, like the Rob Zombie remakes that I have not yet seen (which is weird, as the sequels past three were all complete trash)…I am not one of those people. I like the original and I acknowledge it’s importance, but it’s been like most horror franchises in that there have been good Halloween films but the majority of them aren’t good.

Fortunately, there’s a lot to like in this one. The film is very well shot and has some amazing imagery of Michael Myers - as David Gordon Green’s first straight up horror film, I was pretty impressed. Reflections of his mask in the window, the way his various knives glisten, it was all very impressive. A particularly impressive shot of Myers walking down a street during Halloween night forces us to follow him in and out of houses while murdering people. Carpenter updated the score for this picture and I really liked that as well.

Jamie Lee Curtis reprises her role as Laurie Strode, along with two other generations of Strode women. I liked the trickledown of trauma present within the family because of the events of the original - what happened 40 years ago still haunts the elder Strode and that has helped shape their family for many years. Unfortunately, the script isn’t one of the film’s strong suits and we get a pile of unnecessary “teen drama” with Allyson, the youngest Strode, and her friends. All of Allyson’s friends turn out to be scumbags, which seems a little cheap, considering Michael Myers doesn’t need reasons to kill people and we as the audience won’t think that someone deserves to die because they tried to kiss their best friend’s girlfriend anyway. I don’t think that the end of the film gives Laurie Strode the epic showdown that it teases, which is a bit disappointing, and the final battle doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I’m fully expecting some backlash with this next comment, but here goes - I don’t think Michael Myers is a very interesting antagonist, and there’s really nothing that makes him stand out amongst his slow moving, seemingly invincible dummy peers in the slasher genre. I would have liked to see his character evolve over 40 years in the nuthouse. Hear me out - in the first Halloween, a 21 year old Michael Myers gets out and methodically kills people. He lumbers around until finally, he’s bested. 40 years later, he does the exact same thing. What if, over the course of four decades, he learned out to duck, or even run? Imagine how cool it would have been to see an agile, fast Michael Myers, subverting all expectations all of a sudden. As it is, we get the same, slow moving oaf. I also still don’t understand why Myers appears to be invincible. Gunshots don’t seem to phase him, and as far as I know, he’s still just a regular, flesh and blood person. This is where having a quick Myers would have gone a long way.

The kills we see are brutal, but they’re also a mite boring in comparison to other slashers. Myers is a brute with very little variation to his kills aside from stomping, stabbing, and bashing until his victim is dead. It’s believable (of course I say that within the confines of the Haddonfield world), but not flashy. Not necessarily a detractor from the film, more of an observation. He also kills a couple of podcasters, so I feel personally attacked (kidding, they barked up a stupid tree).

The End.

Halloween is a decent slasher that looks great but still suffers from the moments of stupidity that haunt most films in the genre. The third act is kind of wacky, but there are some cool Halloween moments and fans of slashers or the Michael Myers saga in general should be pleased with David Gordon Green’s first outing into straight horror. It’s certainly a lot better than many of the entries in the Halloween series.

The Guilty (2021).

“Broken people save broken people.”

Directed by Antoine Fuqua

Written by (?) Nic Pizzolatto

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and a bunch of people on the phone

The Stage.

A police officer relegated to 911 duty races against the clock to save a kidnapped woman from the confines of his office by using clues from the phone call and his outside resources.

The Review.

If you take The Guilty at face value, it’s a decent thriller with an unexpected twist or two led by a fantastic lead actor in Jake Gyllenhaal. It was filmed during the pandemic and feels claustrophobic, as it was shot in a very limited time and it takes place all in one location.

Gyllenhaal plays Joe Baylor, an intense police officer with a bad attitude and an empty coffee cup. He lashes out at everyone in the call center, and we quickly learn it’s because he doesn’t want to be there. He’s used to being out on the streets and he’s on phone duty because of punishment. He takes a couple of routine phone calls, snickering at some of the downtrodden, before we get to the heart of our story - a woman calls in, she’s been abducted. Joe makes it his mission to track her down. Gyllenhaal is one of my favorite working actors and he definitely gets a chance to shine yet again as he goes from an inconsiderate dickhead to an inconsiderate dickhead who wants people to do things for him, to a blubbering mess. Most of the other characters get minimal screen time, and certain big name actors are relegated to a sentence or two on the phone, like Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano. Easy work, I suppose.

In terms of how the film unfolds, again, if you take the film at face value, it’s probably going to be a pretty tense ride for most people with a rewarding and socially relevant ending. We see Baylor working the phones by looking only at what is in front of him and jumping to conclusions, acting without thinking, mirroring his behavior that we can assume landed him in phone jail to begin with. However, this is a remake of The Guilty, a 2018 Dutch film that I’ve seen and because I have that context, there are some things that really bugged me about this American remake. The fact that Nic Pizzolatto was given a screenplay credit seems a bit funny, considering it’s basically word for word, beat for beat, the same exact film until the last ten minutes, when everyone involved decided that the American version needed to be worse than the original. Like many remakes, they treat The Guilty’s new intended audience like idiots and decided to make the ending fluffier so that we’re nice and relieved as the credits roll.

BIG TIME SPOILERS INCOMING

If you’re still intending to see either of The Guilty films, go ahead and stop reading now. in both versions of the film, we know that our main character has done something pretty bad to get put on desk duty, because a reporter calls to get his side of the story. Angrily, he hangs up with a line about no comment. Cool, we get it. In the Dutch film, that’s all we hear from the reporter. In the American version, we get several calls with the reporter, just in case your dumbass forgot that there was a reporter and that she called him the first time. In the original, we never leave the phone room. In this one, as the police officers pull over a fan, we kind of (?) see the police pulling the van over but the film never commits to leaving the room. It’s only one instance and it’s so absolutely unnecessary, as if the filmmakers were saying, “Look, this is actually happening!”, when it would have been much more effective just to see Gyllenhaal listening to the interaction on his headset.

Now the ending is the most egregious example of making what was once good way worse. In the original film, in order to stop the woman from committing suicide, Asgor Holm tells her what he’s done. He reveals the mystery we’ve all been wondering about to connect with her to stop her from doing what she’s about to do. He killed a man in the line of duty and he knows it was wrong. He admits this out loud in front of his peers, as they watch on in silence. It’s highly effective. In the American version, he tells her in a room by himself, and then after some self-reflection in the bathroom, he calls the reporter and then we get audio over the credit crawl that says he’s plead guilty to manslaughter.

The film also seems to want you to sympathize with cops killing people as in the lead up, it throws a bowl of plot spaghetti at you to see what will tug on your fragile heart strings. Is it the fact that he has asthma something that’ll stick? Because that wasn’t in the original and doesn’t add anything here, even though it continually shows his inhaler. Or maybe the fact that Baylor may have PTSD’ll get ya, since we see him staring longingly at a mental health board through the window on the break room door. Or maybe it’s his beautiful baby girl that he isn’t allowed to talk to that’ll move you. Aw, he’s such a good man though, he told his old partner not to lie on the stand and is going to take responsibility for his actions.

The original ended with both hope and great sadness - sure, Holm stopped the woman from killing herself, but it was a hollow victory as we had found out that she had killed her son. In this film, it went the exact same way…until the end, when we have an officer walk in to tell Baylor that the baby lived after all, and is currently in the ICU. By that point, we had reckoned with the fact that this woman had murdered her child because she’s mentally unstable, we didn’t need the ‘happy’ ending.

The End.

The Guilty is another in a long list of remakes that is far worse than the original. The filmmakers toss all of the trust that the original gave it’s audience into the trash can and then tries to make you sympathize with a cop who unjustly killed a nineteen-year-old kid. Fuck this movie, watch the original instead.

Old Henry (2021).

“You got some balls, I’ll give you that.”

Directed by Potsy Ponciroli

Written by Potsy Ponciroli

Starring Tim Blake Nelson, Stephen Dorff, Scott Haze, and Gavin Lewis

The Stage.

In the old west, an old farmhand named Henry lives a quiet life with his son, Wyatt. While out one morning, Henry finds a man presumed dead with a satchel full of cash nearby and brings them both home with him. Unfortunately, a trio of lawmen are looking for both of those things, and they’re not going to leave Henry’s farm without them.

The Review.

Tim Blake Nelson is a fantastic character actor and I was glad to see him get a starring role here. He’s brilliant as Henry, a crusty old man who really just wants to live the simple life, but has a strained relationship with his teenage son who wants more out of his life. Stephen Dorff is really good as well as Ketchum, a long-winded gruff with a duster and a sheriff’s badge. The verbal exchanges between Ketchum and Henry are the best parts of the film, and that’s saying a lot, because this is a pretty good western overall.

I like violent, rated-R western films, and Old Henry definitely fits the bill. It’s bloody but never gratuitous. The film is a pretty slow build up until it’s climax but it feels well earned and never bored me, although the script is well written when it comes to dialogue, it runs into some predictable, well-worn territory for certain story beats, especially during the final showdown. It’s essentially a dusty siege film that basically all takes place in or around Henry’s house.

I’m not sure if it was the editor or if the film played out as written, but there were some strange choices that I feel hold Old Henry back from being a great western. The mysterious man who’s recovering in their house has some flashbacks to his past that give us glimpses into his relationship with Henry, but they’re totally unnecessary and, along with a newspaper clipping shown on the ground, actively take away from a reveal at the end of the film. I feel like I’m saying this a lot in reviews lately, but it really feels like filmmakers just have no respect or confidence in their audience.

The End.

Old Henry is a strong western that fans of the genre are sure to like. Tim Blake Nelson and the rest of the supporting cast do a really great job and the dialogue is snappy and really brings you into the picture. If Potsy Ponciroli had a little more confidence in his film, I think it could have taken the movie from good to great, but it’s still an easy film to recommend.

VHS 94 (2021).

“What grand design was he planning?”

The Stage.

Not counting the full-length spin-off film SiREN, VHS 94 is the 4th in the VHS anthology series, one which highlights short horror stories which are bound together by a shot on video look. This one features 4 main shorts and a wrap around story that runs throughout the film. Each tale is told through the eyes of a handheld camera lens.

The Review.

Anthology films are a fun way to explore different horror themes in a short amount of time. VHS series mainstay Simon Barrett, who wrote You’re Next and The Guest is back to direct The Empty Wake, Ryan Prows, director of Lowlife (which I still haven’t seen yet but really want to) helms Terror, Indonesian director Timo Tjahjanto, who has directed films like Headshot and Killers is back to direct The Subject, and newcomers Chloe Okuno and Jennifer Reeder direct Storm Drain and the wrap-around story Holy Hell, respectively.

Holy Hell is a strange tale of a pack of SWAT team members descending on what they believe to be a drug ring, but they find something much more sinister. The tension is high as the team moves from room to room, discovering weird shit as they go. I think the tension is drained a bit because this is the story that is supposed to bring everything together, so as things ramp up, we cut to another story and the buildup is deflated, which is unfortunate because the director seems really talented. Lots of eye trauma in this one, so if you’re squeamish, you’re in for a ride.

The first contained short is Storm Drain, which follows a news reporter and her camera man as they lightly investigate a neighborhood urban legend known as the “Rat Man”. The atmosphere is pretty scary in this one as the two go against their better judgement and walk into a storm drain. The creature design is really great and even though you don’t really know what happened in the drain, the payoff is pretty fun and surprising. Hail Ratma.

The second is Simon Barrett’s The Empty Wake. It’s narrative is the weakest in my opinion and after Storm Drain, just feels like more of the same. The effects in this one are really good looking but overall I thought the short lacked surprise and imagination.

The third is The Subject. This is the longest of the four and luckily, it’s the most entertaining. It focuses on experiments being conducted in a bunker by a mad scientist and feels like a mashup of Human Centipede and Tetsuo: The Iron Man. We start by seeing one of his failed experiments and then about halfway through, the police barge in and things get really fucking nuts. The short goes from mechanical body horror to action horror and it is a blood-filled blast. The metal designs are really well done and the gore is off the charts.

The last film is Terror, which invites us into the world of a right-wing domestic terrorist group and their unique plan to destroy an FBI building in Detroit. I thought it was really well done and it was interesting to see two different types of terror presented at the same time - the domestic terrorist which do exist, and another kind of horror that probably does not. There’s also some dark comedy in this one that worked for me as we watch these dumbass “patriots” bungle their plot to the point of no return.

The End.

As with most horror anthologies, there are going to be segments that work for some and don’t for others. The good news though is that there’s enough here that you’ll probably find something that tickles your fancy. The scratchy VHS filter played over the top of the whole movie can get a bit irritating but it’s just trying to put you in 1994 I suppose. Because of this, most of the shorts look muddy and blurry so there’s no real need to watch this on your OLED. There are good creature effects, impressive gore, and a tense atmosphere throughout. If you like films like Creepshow or other installments of the VHS series, I’d recommend this.

Malibu High (1979).

“I may be a hooker, but I’m not a hitgirl.”

Directed by Irvin Berwick

Written by John Buckley and Thomas Singer

Starring Jill Lansing, Jill Lansing’s boobs, and a revolving door of gross men

The Stage.

Kim is flunking out of school and her boyfriend left her for a rich girl. During a night of reflection in which she and her best friend drink and smoke weed, she decides she’s going to turn things around and graduate at the top of her class. Great goals, to be sure, but Kim doesn’t plan on studying.

The Review.

This is a very weird, very dark film. From the cover alone, Malibu High looks like a standard late-70’s/early 80’s teenage high school comedy that could sit in the same lane as Screwballs or Fast Times, but it’s pretty early on in the film when you realize this film is going in a completely different direction as Kim rolls out of bed naked, lights a cigarette, and heads to the breakfast table to call her mom a stupid bitch.

See, Kim isn’t interested in studying to better her grades, no, she’s going to bang her way to the top of the class. To earn some cash, she becomes a hooker, working for a local pimp named Tony who looks like he was plucked from the catalog of Uncle Rico lookalikes, van and all. And this plan works.

Luckily for Kim, everyone that works at her school are scumbags hot for underage women. She bangs her history teacher, her biology teacher, and even gets the principal to her house so that she can try to seduce him, and then it turns into sort of a hitman film when Kim starts working for another pimp who only caters to what he calls “exclusive clients”.

The story is certainly unique but never feels like it really heads anywhere meaningful. Kim’s academic career is fucked because she’s a lazy student, and instead of actually trying to put in a semblance of work, she chooses the path of least resistance for both her grades and literally every penis in Malibu. As the “protagonist” of the story, she’s extremely unlikable. She’s a petty, vengeful sloth with nary a redeeming quality. She mistreats her mother, who is a bit high-strung but is also clearly still grieving after her husband’s suicide two years earlier by telling her point blank that she’s ugly and that’s probably why her dad hung himself. Her ex-boyfriend is a dick, but he’s like 17 years old. Move on and get on with your life. It also never feels like there’s a reason that Kim wants to finish the school year at the top of her class. Clearly she doesn’t care about school and it doesn’t seem like she cares about having a job, so why is this so important to her?

The film is competently shot but the acting is terrible. Standout scenes include some girl standing up in class to explain a part of an Industrial Revolution lesson that looks like she’s never acted before and is reading off of giant cue cards off screen and Kevin’s acting when a woman is shot dead right in front of him and his level of concern barely rivals that of someone who’s chips might be stale after they left the bag open sitting on the counter overnight. The dialogue often feels stilted and weird until Kim is heated. Ironically, that’s when the acting feels the most real. The tone of the film also feels funky, as some scenes, like Kim trying to talk to her all-but-deaf principal, are played as a slapstick comedy and feel like they belong to another film altogether. I should also mention that the music choices are odd, as it starts with a banging Monkees-style song and then has these non-sensical Pac-Man-like sounds when certain scenes transition. Be sure to listen for the insane placement of the People’s Court theme song during the climax of the film.

The End.

After consuming Malibu High, I couldn’t help but wonder who the audience for this film was. Obviously it feels like a kind of grindhouse film, but the violence is all very tame. We never see bullet holes and aside from cutting back to a guy with a gunshot wound, there’s not much blood at all. It’s got nothing appealing for teens of the era either, as the high school hijinks are at a minimum and the nudity, while plentiful, is about as unsexy as nudity in films get north of rape scenes.

Times have obviously changed and I’m sure the film is a lot less fun now. Watching a guy tell her that he’s the only dirty old man she’s going to have to worry about might have been endearing in the 70’s but it will just make your skin crawl now, as will the turn to prostitution which is played off in the film as a very light and airy decision by our leading lady.

On the bright side, at least we get to see some awesome late-70’s fashion and decor, that’s always a treat.

The Card Counter (2021).

“I never imagined myself as someone suited to incarceration.”

Directed by Paul Schrader

Written by Paul Schrader

Starring Oscar Issac, Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan, and some cards here and there

The Stage.

Fresh out of prison, William Tell hits Atlantic City. In the clink, he learned how to count cards, and he’s working casinos for small purses in order to stay under the radar. Bet small, lose small is his motto. When he meets La Linda, a gambling stable runner and Cirk, a lost young man with an abusive past, Tell starts down a path that could lead to redemption or a much darker place.

The Review.

First Reformed was a very interesting film that has definitely stuck with me and his past scripts like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull are considered some of the best films of all time, so I’m always up for a new Paul Schrader film.

I’ll start with the best thing about The Card Counter - Oscar Issac. Issac is such a talented actor and he really conveys so much with his facial expressions alone. He’s fantastic here as the tortured William Tell, a man who never thought he would be conducive to a life behind bars, but now finds himself as a fish out of water faced with the freedom of the outside world. Upon entering a seedy motel room, he efficiently strips the space of anything resembling a ‘home’ and wraps everything in white sheets for a sterile, cold environment. Tye Sheridan plays Cirk, a man on a mission of revenge. He’s also an extremely talented actor and plays well against Issac as a kid along for the ride. Tiffany Haddish, the third part of this trio, just doesn’t have the acting chops to keep up. It always just feels like she’s acting, and being matched up with a master like Issac doesn’t do her any favors. She’s traditionally been typecast as the loud, hilarious part, but here’s she very subdued. Her best moment comes when there’s a bit of disappointment regarding her relationship status with Tell. Schrader mainstay Willem Dafoe is here as well, although he’s on screen for all of three minutes and probably shot his scenes in one day.

Acting aside, I hate to say this, but Schrader’s script and direction seemed kind of weak. I noticed it right in the beginning, as we see some visual overlays on the screen during a game of blackjack and they seemed so plain and boring. I know there’s a better way to show the nuances of a blackjack game on screen. It also seemed a bit weird that the titular card counting didn’t really even come into play past the first twenty minutes, as the rest of the film is centered around poker, in which you’re playing against other players instead of the house.

Cirk offers a chance at redemption for Tell. He takes the young man on the road, from casino to casino in a bid to preoccupy his mind so that he lets go of his thirst for revenge. I thought that part of the film was pretty interesting, even if the relationship didn’t seem quite strong enough to go where the film forced it to in the climax. La Linda and her competing storyline - her attempt to get William into more high profile games, was uninteresting and even completely unnecessary. If her character never entered the frame, it wouldn’t have really made any difference and it would have allowed William to form a greater bond with Cirk. A side plot seemingly pitting William against an annoying Ukrainian poker player dressed in over-the-top United States garb goes nowhere, although I assume that’s the point based on Tell’s experience as a small cog in America’s brutal war machine.

The End.

Despite a powerhouse performance by Oscar Issac, The Card Counter is a tale as forgettable and as unremarkable as a stroll through the casinos in the film are. Haddish feels like she’s in a completely different film, the climax of the movie is confusing in both how it’s shot and what it’s purpose was, and when the credits roll, you realize that none of the characters grew in any meaningful way. It’s a morose character study that has little to do with the card game backdrop, and although I can see some of the reviews are polarizing, I can’t recommend this film when there are so many other better things you can be watching. If you like Oscar Issac, go check out A Most Violent Year instead.

Prince of the City (1981).

“I know the law. The law doesn’t know the streets.”

Directed by Sidney Lumet

Written by Jay Presson Allen and Sidney Lumet

Starring Treat Williams, Jerry Orbach, Richard Foronjy, and 123(!) other speaking parts

The Stage.

Prince of the City is based on the true story of New York police officer Robert Leuci, who was part of an ultra-corrupt special investigative unit for the narcotics bureau before turning federal informant.

The Review.

In 1973, Sidney Lumet directed Serpico, a film about whistleblower Frank Serpico and his struggle to out corruption from within the NYPD, but he always felt that the police in that film were too two-dimensional. This was his attempt to rectify that portrayal with a more nuanced look at people within the New York law enforcement machine.

Treat Williams, a guy I normally think of as the actor who plays the main character in a sequel that they couldn’t get the lead actor back for plays officer Danny Ciello, the SIU team leader despite being the youngest on the squad. He initially balks at the thought of becoming an informant when he’s first approached, but his conscience seems to get the best of him as he ventures out into the pouring rain one night to rob a junkie just to keep one of his other junkie informants straight. As he begins his journey as a rat, he makes one thing clear - he’s not going to work against any of his friends. Inevitably, that request gets more and more important as the investigation gets deeper and the circle of corruption gets smaller and smaller. Treat Williams does a lot of heavy lifting here as the lead. Unfortunately, his performance is highly uneven. When he’s more subdued, he’s actually really great, like in a scene in which he just watches a junkie slap around his lady because she did all of his drugs, knowing that if he butts in, it could mean bad things for his unit. When Danny gets amped up though, Williams overacts, sometimes to the point that it feels like he’s in a parody of a traditional cop film. It feels like he’s trying to do his best Pacino impression but mixed with Mr. Orange bleeding out in the back of a Cadillac. Pacino was the first person approached by Lumet for the lead in this film but turned it down due to it’s glaring similarities to the Serpico role he was nominated for just eight years before.

The rest of the cast is filled with late 70’s character actors and faces that you’re sure to recognize. Jerry Orbach plays Gus, Danny’s teammate and best friend. James Tolkan who you’d definitely recognize from Back to the Future and Top Gun plays George Polito, a bulldog working for the district attorney. He and Orbach have a powerhouse scene together and really displays both of their acting chops as Orbach literally flips a table over. Lance Henriksen is even here as a DA. There are a ton of speaking parts and everyone pulled their weight. Apparently Bruce Willis was an extra in the film but I was looking for him and didn’t see him anywhere.

This film feels epic - both in the time it spans within the story and it’s actual run time. The version I saw was a hair under three hours long, and apparently there was a four hour cut that ran on television in the mid-80’s. That didn’t surprise me - it felt like a TV show that was cut up and run as a movie and I definitely felt like it would be more fleshed out with more time and story to tell. I thought that the film was going to be about Danny’s struggle with becoming a rat or not, but it’s more about the consequences of his actions as time rolls by. It definitely feels like a realistic portrayal of what cops like Robert Leuci and Frank Serpico went through in the 70’s.

Watching Prince of the City in 2021 feels a bit like a game of emotional tug of war. On one hand, you can’t help but feel for the dirty cops who are starting to feel the squeeze, brothers in arms who have now had one of their own turn against them…but we’ve also seen so many examples of police not being held accountable in real life that the film’s message of, “Become a rat and you’re going to lose all of your friends, all of your respect, and might end up dead.” is a tough pill to swallow. And I guess that’s the point - Lumet’s excellent direction paints a picture using shades of grey, and positions each character to be a hero or a villain, depending on where you’re standing. And be forewarned, like many films that came out during this time, it’s filled with blatant racism and a general disregard for anyone who’s not a white male.

The End.

I’m surprised that this film never got more critical acclaim. It was nominated for one Oscar, best adapted screenplay, which it lost to On Golden Pond. It’s an epic that fits right into the same lane as films like Serpico, The Godfather, and Once Upon a Time in America, but for some reason never got the respect that it deserved. I think that anyone into gritty crime thrillers set in the five boroughs should check this film out.

Interestingly enough, the first attempt to tell this story was written by Brian DePalma who was working with Orion pictures. He had planned on having Robert DeNiro in the title role and I bet that if he was, we’d all have had this Blu-ray on our shelves. In an interesting twist of fate, when DePalma left the project, he picked up a little movie called Scarface…which was originally being developed by, you guessed it, Sidney Lumet.

Terminal Island (1973).

Directed by Stephanie Rothman

Written by James Barnett, Charles S. Swartz and Stephanie Rothman

Starring Don Marshall, Phyllis Davis, Tom Selleck, Barbara Lee, and a shit load of denim

The Stage.

California has abolished the death penalty so they chuck all of their worst prisoners onto an island called San Bruno and let them do whatever they want there. The small group of prisoners has split into two factions - one that keeps women as sex slaves, and one that milks goats and has Tom Selleck.

The Review.

Terminal Island is a slice of pure, 70’s exploitation trash. Directed by Stephanie Rothman, it’s less of a women in prison film and more Lord of the Flies. The story starts as a woman named Carmen Simms is dumped onto the island. She’s the audience surrogate, introducing us to the horrors she’s about to encounter as she’s immediately taken into the camp run by Bobby and Monk. There are a few other women there, but they are used as sex slaves, only there to serve the men…so much so that there’s a literal schedule each night for who each woman is assigned to “service”. AJ, a more liberal prisoner, has started his own society with a few other refugees. One night they free the women, leading to an all-out war between the two factions when Bobby and Monk realize their slaves are gone.

This film checks all of the exploitation boxes - the tough talking black guy, the creepy white chauvinist pig who tries to sexually assault someone every thirty minutes, blood that looks like the brightest candy red nail polish you can buy at Sephora, and killer dialogue like “Are you calling me a liar?” “I’d never call you that…I’d call you DEAD.” It’s quite a bit of fun, and although the typical lulls in between the action that were necessary to pad the run-time for low budget flicks are still here, they’re never really boring enough to allow you to get lost in your phone before the next battle begins.

One standout scene includes a woman getting revenge on the creepy rapey guy as she acts like she’s going to seduce him, puts honey on his dick and ass, and then smacks a beehive as he runs away in a panic. It’s like something straight out of an Austin Powers film. Speaking of dumb decisions, another scene has our bad guys pent up in a small hut, shooting at the heroes out of a small crack in the structure. Conventional wisdom says that it would have been easy to just fan out and run around to the other side of the hut, since the shooting radius was very small…but instead, our heroes send a person down straight into the line of fire…and once he’s dead, they send the next one down the same way…and once she’s dead, they send another one down the same way…it felt like a comedy of errors.

The End.

Terminal Island is a fun prison faction flick. If you like films like Ray Liotta’s No Escape or even Escape from New York, you’ll probably like this enough. It’s cheesy and the music sounds like it was peeled off of the floor of a 1970’s Times Square jerk theater, but the dialogue is fun, the violence is bloody, and the nudity is plentiful.

This was a 4K UHD disc from Vinegar Syndrome and it looks great.

My Son (2021).

“You’re on your own, Mr. Murray.”

Directed by Christian Carion

Written by Christian Carion

Starring James McAvoy, Clair Foy, Jamie Michie, and Max Wilson

The Stage.

Divorced parents Edmond and Joan find out that their seven-year-old son has gone missing from the wilderness camp where he was staying for a week with his friends. Edmond makes it his mission to find out what happened to his boy.

The Review.

A few disclosures before I get into this review - first, this is a remake of the same director’s film My Son from 2017 that was made in France with Guillaume Canet and Melanie Laurent playing the parents, so I don’t know how it stacks up to that or if the story is the same, although I assume that it is based on what I read. So if you’ve seen the French film, this might not have as much as an impact on you. Second, I’m a father of a young kid and I think anyone who’s a parent would agree that the thought of a child going missing - just the thought - is among the worst things imaginable, and although I don’t think having a child is necessary to feel the dread that My Son presents, it’ll definitely elevate the experience.

All that being said, My Son is an easy example of how great acting can turn a simple premise into cinematic magic, and James McAvoy deserves most of that credit. McAvoy plays Edmond Murray, a man who works abroad in the oil industry but comes home when he gets the call that his son is missing. During the production of the film, James McAvoy never read the script - all of his lines were improvised while the other actors around him had the screenplay, so his reactions and responses were genuine, in-the-moment judgements based on what an actual father would do and say. There’s a scene in which he’s watching previously recorded clips of his son on a phone and he exerts such a powerful range of emotions that just watching him brought me to tears. Claire Foy is fantastic as the grieving mother as well, but we spend most of the runtime with McAvoy and I can’t imagine a world in which he’s not nominated for an Oscar for this performance.

I don’t want to say much about the story but will say that it’s pretty straight forward. The real hook is that it’s not a Taken kind of film. McAvoy isn’t a trained killer. He’s not a sadistic man. He’s just a father with a missing son, and he makes decisions that many of us would make. He also makes a decision or two that I wouldn’t make, but I totally understand why he made them in the film. The atmosphere is very tense, and the last thirty minutes are riveting because of how suspenseful it was.

The End.

James McAvoy knocked his performance out of the park. My Son is thrilling while never feeling exploitative. The story feels real, completely accomplishing what the filmmaker set out to do with the way it was made. My Son was a memorable experience and I’m glad that it’s over so that I can finally breathe again.

Through the Fire (1988).

“You don’t really believe this voodoo bullshit, do you?”

Directed by Gary Marcum

Written by Gary Marcum and Brad Potter

Starring Tamara Hext, Tom Campitelli, and Randy Strickland

The Stage.

Five weeks after her sister has gone missing, Sandra Curtis comes to town to find her. She enlists the help of a local police officer with nothing better to do named Nick and together, they stumble onto a group of satanic losers who have summoned a demon named Moloch and this may be connected to Sandra’s sister. This Southwestern film was released on VHS as The Gates of Hell Part II.

The Review.

My thoughts exactly.

Through the Fire is Gary Marcum’s only director credit, and it’s easy to see why - after this pile of trash, no one else would give him another shot. Everything about this movie is subpar, so let’s start with the direction. Shots are not composed in interesting ways. From the very first frame, you can tell that this film is going to be a hack job, as a car rolls into frame with the bottom of the tires cut off in a wide shot. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there. Most of the film is framed on very close up shots, done intentionally - not to put you in the action, but to hide the fact that it was probably filmed on a budget of couch cushion change. There’s one shot in particular of two guys ‘rock climbing’ that was probably done in someone’s backyard. As such, the film never feels like it’s giving you room to breathe and doesn’t allow for much of a sense of space. The action is erratically edited and doesn’t make any sense. One scene that features a home invasion is so clumsily edited that during a shotgun blast near the end of it, you’ll never know who fired the shot. There are also a bunch of sloppy POV shots when the ‘monster’ is chasing someone but it looks more like the view of a remote control car.

The actors aren’t given much to work with here in terms of material, and as bad as the words on the page are, they’re even worse when these goofballs are delivering the dialogue out loud. In one scene, Nick nearly has his hand pulled into a garbage disposal. After freeing his hand, he looks at his palm and in complete seriousness, says, “I thought I was going to lose you.” Nick is supposed to be playing this playboy tough guy cop who spouts “I am very badass” lines like, “I read my magazines back to front, but I got more of a loser vibe from him, especially when you watch him stick his finger into a mug of hot coffee and is seemingly surprised that he burns himself or when you see an old plate of dried up mac & cheese sitting on a dry dish rack in the background of his ratty apartment. He gets wrapped up into this mess after he has to escort Sandra home because she’s drunk and getting rowdy at a local watering hole. She calls him the next day and asks him to look for her sister, so he just takes a week off from work and does it. There’s no struggle, no real questions. Late in the film, he adds ‘hijacks an old woman’s car and leaves her on the side of the road’ to the list of reasons why this character sucks. He’s also running with a shotgun in one scene and he almost drops it and then starts swinging it around like he’s trying to wrangle an out of control grocery bag and they just kept the take in the film. This tells us either the editor had nothing else to use or they really wanted us to think of Nick as a complete and utter doofus. Speaking of that running scene, it’s absurdly edited, cutting between Nick and Sandra running and oddly framed shots of the outside of a building.

Your hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Sandra is played by the absolutely stunning Tamara Hext, whose claim to fame was being the 4th runner up in the 1985 Miss Texas pageant. Unfortunately, she’s not an actor, and her reactions to Nick seem more geared towards the intro of a TGIF show than someone whose sister is probably dead. Her two best character traits are that she bugs everyone non-stop and also has clearly seen Die Hard. The villains are a handful of interchangeable dorks who you won’t be able to tell apart aside from one who wears a pocket protector filled with pens and has taped up glasses. They summoned a demon by using a pentagram ouija board. We can only speculate on what they wanted to do that for because a medium named PJ that we’ll instead call ‘exposition dump lady’ tells us that people let the devil in for personal gain like bass boats, stock tips, and sex, the three things every evil mastermind wants. They’re extremely incompetent, the five are bested by Nick, Sandra, and exposition dump lady while they’re sleeping. There’s also a woman in their group and maybe I just dozed off during this part but I never saw her get her comeuppance because she just sort of disappears after the home invasion scene.

Now this is technically a thriller/monster movie, so you probably want to know how the action, gore and monster effects are. Well, not good. As the film was limping toward its inevitable conclusion, I saw a showdown coming inside an abandoned building, and I was pretty excited. “This must be the reason Vinegar Syndrome chose this film”, I thought. Turns out they probably chose this film because it was cheap. The showdown pits the evil goons against a mysterious team we’re introduced to about an hour into the film that “combats evil”, whatever that means. I didn’t really care, but they had guns and one had an eyepatch, so I was on board. Once they get into the building, everyone that dies is killed offscreen. You see a character, it cuts to a wall and you hear a ‘bang’, and then it’s just onto the next scene. One of the bad guys dies and you don’t even know who it was, it just shows their back and three bullet holes in it. I mean, embarrassingly bad. Nearly the entire twenty minute scene feels like no one worked the same day and everyone just shot their scenes separately.

As for the gore, there isn’t much and you don’t see the monster until the last five minutes. Moloch ends up inhabiting the body of what looks like Napoleon Dynamite’s brother Kip and then jumps to the body of one of the Monster Hunters and we get to see an okay transformation scene but it’s cut to hell so that you don’t actually see any of it happening. Other than that there’s really nothing to see here.

The End.

The Losers Club.

Through the Fire is another stinker scraped from the bottom of the 1980’s barrel. It’s bad all around and I cannot find one thing about it that I can recommend. Vinegar Syndrome put way more effort into this release than was probably warranted. The slipcover was the best thing about this Blu-ray. There is a directors commentary that I have not yet listened to but kind of want to, just to hear some of the absurdity explained.

Woodstock ‘99: Peace, Love, and Rage (2021).

“People were rolling around in piss and shit.”

Directed by Garret Price

The Stage(s).

Pictured above, John Scher, a man who takes no responsibility for creating this disastrous event.

This HBO documentary covers the three days of Woodstock ‘99, an event that went from a bunch of angry early third white males rocking out to a bunch of very angry early third white males raping women and burning the festival to the ground.

The Review.

Wonder Bread, as far as the eye can see.

Watching this 22 years after the event happened gave me anxiety. I’m not a music festival person. Even if I like the artists, you have to imagine that the sound quality is going to be shit just based on acoustics alone. And with festival crowds, you have to compete with people who don’t care about the artists you do, a lack of things like food, water, bathrooms, and shade, and from personal experience, large crowds of rowdy people are generally filled with assholes. Woodstock ‘99 had all of those things…and Limp Bizkit.

Now, you find this kind of anger in video game lobbies, but in 1999, they gathered in Rome, New York for the perfect storm of white angst. 400,000 men with their hats on backwards who didn’t give a shit about the original Woodstock, were angry about who knows what and ready to snap…and then they did. The festival infrastructure failed, the security guards just seemed to leave, and these nu-metal loving dickheads tore the place apart, looted the joint, set fire to everything, and sexually assaulted women left and right. It’s a disgusting reminder of what humans really are and it made me feel ashamed.

Limp Bizkit played ‘Break Stuff’, and the crowd happily obeyed.

To this day, the organizers, particularly John Scher, take no responsibility for the events of that weekend. Twenty years later and this clueless fuck is still blaming things on Fred Durst for egging the crowd on while playing Break Stuff. Hyping up a crowd is what Fred Durst was paid to do in 1999. He was the head of one of the biggest rock bands in the world. What the fuck did you think was going to happen when you had him come on stage? The documentary leaves out Durst telling the crowd not to let people get hurt, but did show him supporting the destruction of the scaffolding and structures. I don’t blame Fred Durst. Durst did what he did as the lead singer of Limp Bizkit.

The End.

Way to ‘stick it to the man’, kiddo.

This documentary plays out like a real life horror film, a modern day Lord of the Flies enclosed by a painted “peace wall” and stands selling overpriced water and tomato soup. It displays the white privilege that’s still prevalent today and the unfortunate side of humanity when white people are angry and don’t have a war to direct it at or a red hat directing them towards something to feel mad about.

The shots of the crowd are simply insane, and the director has interviews with many attendees and artists. Most of the musical acts that talk in this doc have one or two lines about their experience. We get a lot more from Moby, who comes across as a bit of a weenie, especially when he’s whining that his name isn’t on a small plywood sign. It’s well put together, flows at a good pace, and tells a solid story, even if some of the drama (namely the stuff about the DMX performance) feels a bit manufactured for the current climate. Woodstock ‘99: Peace, Love, and Rage is a really good documentary and definitely worth your time.

Murder-Rock (1984).

“She’s dead, but we can’t stop dancing, can we?”

Directed by Lucio Fulci

Written by Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino, Roberto Gianviti, and Lucio Fulci

Starring Olga Karlatos, Ray Lovelock, Claudio Cassinelli, Cosimo Cinieri, and spandex

The Stage.

This…is the show…and we’re not gonna change it.

Murder-Rock takes place in the ironically named Arts for the Living Center in New York City. Inside, a high profile choreograph dance troupe develops the best that leotards have to offer, until the dancers start being murdered one by one by a killer who knocks their victims out by using chloroform and then slowly drives a thin needle into their heart. A gruff detective tries to figure out who’s killing the women as macguffin after macguffin is put in his way.

The Review.

Turn, scream, and do nothing else…the easiest way to be killed in a giallo film.

If you can get past the ridiculous premise, Murder-Rock is kind of fun. It’s a very tame giallo film (especially by Lucio Fulci’s standards), basically bloodless and with pretty harmless nudity, but the suspense is built pretty well and it’s got all of the Italian hallmarks you’ve come to expect: quick zooms into people’s faces, shots of eyes just staring back at you, wonderful use of shadows, an unnamed black hand doing all of the dirty deeds, poor dubbing, and elongated shots of people just gasping in different directions. The direction is done well. Shadows are used masterfully, especially in scenes when the school is about to shut down for the night, as a voice comes over the loud speaker to let us know that the electronic locks will engage in fifteen minutes. That triggers a lighting mechanism in which the lights flash on and off. If I were someone who went to the school, I’d find this to be very annoying as you’re trying to get your shit together to leave and the lights keep turning on and off. As a giallo fan, it added a neat lighting element to the scenes.

The film will keep you guessing, as several people could be the killer based on their proximity to the victims. Unfortunately, there aren’t really any good motives for those people, so you’re hoping that it isn’t them as it would feel like a cop-out. Unfortunately when we find out who’s hand the black gloves are on, it’s not the greatest reason to be out killing young women. If you’ve seen a handful of these films, you’ll probably have worked out who the killer is by the time they’re revealed. But you’re not here for the plot, right? You’re here…for the dancing.

Possibly the tamest murder weapon ever put on screen, the hat-pin.

There are plenty of long dancing scenes in Murder-Rock and if I’m being honest, they’re worth the price of admission. It opens and ends with big group dance scenes and there’s a solo dance about thirty minutes in that sees a woman practicing a very intense dance number while water is raining down upon her in a skimpy black leotard that will put you in a trance, even if the whole time you’re watching it, you’re wondering who’s going to clean up all that fucking water once she’s done practicing her routine.

As is the case in most 80’s Italian films, the English dubbing adds a lot of unintentional comedy. After the first girl is murdered, one of the male dancers comes into the dance class and expresses how sickening it is that one of the dancers just died and they’re just dancing away the next day as if nothing happened. The teacher exclaims, “You gotta grit your teeth and dance, even when a friend dies!” There are plenty of moments like this which always give me a laugh.

The End.

In a film full of possible murderers, this person was by far the scariest thing about Murder-Rock.

Murder-Rock is a fun, stupid giallo film set in a dance studio. If the mixture of Flashdance and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage intrigues you, then call this Slashdance, or Blood and Black Leotards. Come for the mystery, stay for the dance sequences.

The Suicide Squad (2021).

“I didn’t pick the team!”

Directed by James Gunn

Written by James Gunn

Starring Idris Elba, Margot Robbie, John Cena, Viola Davis, and the most terrifying starfish you’ve ever seen

The Stage.

The newest iteration of the Suicide Squad is dumped on the island of Corto Maltese. Their mission? Find and destroy the information related to Project Starfish, a secret World War II project still being worked on in the depths of a mysterious tower.

The Review.

About halfway through the first Suicide Squad, I remember thinking, “This is one of the worst movies I’ve seen in years.” The script was terrible, everything seemed forced, certain jokes felt like they were just ADR’d in after the movie was shot, the music felt so ham-fisted, the main characters not named Harley Quinn were lifeless and boring, and it felt neutered. The whole thing was a mess and it’s been a long time since I had walked out of a theater feeling that disappointed. I remember telling my wife, “It seems like they had a movie made, saw the success of Guardians of the Galaxy, and brutalized the cut to make it fit that mold.” which later we found out was basically true. So for the second Suicide Squad film, instead of copying Guardians of the Galaxy, they just hired the director.

The film starts out with several of the characters from the first tale still riding into battle, but James Gunn quickly lets the audience know this is a brand new kind of Suicide Squad with a hard left turn to another team, and let me tell you, this new Suicide Squad is fun as fuck. Harley Quinn is our main returning villain. Idris Elba plays Bloodsport, a master assassin with a fear of rats. Unfortunately for him, Ratcatcher 2 is also on his team, and she can control rats. Daniela Melchior absolutely steals the show in this role. John Cena plays Peacemaker, Bloodsport’s team rival. King Shark is a walking, talking shark just looking for food, and finally, Polka Dot Man rounds out the squad as a villain who throws polka dots and has severe mommy issues. Every character gets their moment to shine, and we actually get to see significant growth in Harley Quinn.

Gunn leans right into the R rating. This movie is bloody as hell and unforgiving. People get smashed, eaten, blown to bits, and chopped to pieces. It also leans heavily into the comedy that the first Suicide Squad failed miserably at, but Gunn is just too talented to miss. There were several laugh out loud moments here and the dialogue was always very quick and witty. The action is plentiful and really fun. Gunn’s script uses the tropy ‘We need to battle a threat that could end the entire world’ motivation, but it never felt that way, which was a nice change for a movie with enormous stakes. The visuals are really great as well, and the way text was used on the screen to convey information was stunning, particularly one shot that used rooftop clutter to let us know where we were headed.

The End.

This is exactly what I’m looking for in a rated-R superhero film. Pack it with great actors who are ready to give us some cheese. Give me fun, unrelenting action. Go for the hard-R rating. Give me some surprising deaths, and give me an interesting villain. Suicide Squad was an absolute blast. If I had to level any complaints, it’s that the script is pretty predictable after the first twenty minutes and it is a little long, but I was never checking my watch.

Here’s to hoping James Gunn directs a sequel with the Weasel.

Killer’s Delight (1978).

Directed by Jeremy Hoenack

Written by Maralyn Thoma

Starring James Luisi, John Karlen, Susan Sullivan, and a xylophone

The Stage.

Only one blowup doll was harmed during the making of this film.

Sergeant Vince De Carlo is hunting a mysterious serial killer who’s kidnapping and murdering young girls in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Review.

Serpico and De Carlo, reporting for duty.

Killer’s Delight (aka Sport Killer aka The Dark Ride) is a story based on the real life serial killers Ted Bundy, Edmund Kemper, and the Zodiac Killer. We follow De Carlo, a man torn between his family life and his mistress, as he discovers body after body with zero leads.

It’s easy pickings for the killer, as he picks naive women up in his windowless van like they grow on trees. John Karlen plays the role to perfection in the limited amount of time we actually see him on screen, as the majority of the time the killer is cloaked in shadows like a version of an American giallo film. His method of killing women isn’t shown on screen, but rather through crime scene photos and it’s pretty brutal - he rapes them and snaps their fingers and arms until their bones are popping out, then dumps them in the Northern California wilderness. When two girls are kidnapped at the same time, we finally see him in action and it’s quite effective.

“Sure, there are a bunch of murders happening, but we’ll take our chances.”

The film is pretty procedural and quite plodding, but I appreciated the police work aspect…until they actually track down the killer. After nearly catching him at the local swimming pool from which he snags most of his victims, De Carlo is almost run down by the killer’s van. As the viewer, you’re wondering how that encounter would lead to the serial killer’s downfall - had De Carlo pulled some kind of evidence from the close call? Had he finally outsmarted the man? Nope. He reluctantly heads to a hypnotist and magically remembers the license plate, which he never really saw in that scene to begin with. In a film that felt grounded, this was ludicrous.

The final twenty minutes of the film wraps up the cat and mouse game with an ill-laid trap and the film ends on quite the downer note.

The movie looks nice, it’s shot quite well, and I’m a sucker for San Francisco period pieces. Being from here, it’s always fun to see what the city looked like 50 years ago. The score sounded very out of place, it was annoyingly composed of odd xylophone sounds as if it were snatched straight from a Scooby Doo episode’s cutting room floor.

The End.

As far as serial killer films go, this one isn’t bad, but it is a little slow. The first half is a rinse-repeat cycle of cops finding dead women without clues before we really get into the plot. The villain thinks of himself as a real smart chap, but his motives and his behavior prove that he’s actually quite dumb. In fact, I think any killer who was caught before the advances in DNA detection had to have been pretty dumb, but that’s a conversation for another day. If you just love serial killer films, this one leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s okay as a grimy 70’s thriller.

The picture looks pretty good and the disc is packed with extras, including a commentary from the director and several interviews.