Deadly Embrace (1989).

Directed by David DoCoteau

Written by

Starring

The Stage.

Chris gets a job as a pool boy for the summer at the home of Stewart and Charlotte, a wealthy couple in an unhappy marriage. It doesn’t take long before you realize not all is as it seems, and when Chris’s girlfriend Michelle gets involved, it becomes a tangled web of sexual, deadly intrigue.

The Review.

This is a decent erotic thriller that just happens to meander a little bit too much. The film starts with Chris being interrogated by a detective, who’s trying to crack some kind of case. These scenes were definitely added in post, because it literally only shows their hands the whole time and both voices are a product of ADR. My first thought was that they probably just wanted a better way to frame the story, but after seeing the film, it actually feels more like they edited the film and only had a 45 minute movie, so in order to get another 45 minutes of footage, they added ten minutes of these stupid interrogation scenes and 35 minutes of the lead actresses standing around naked in front of a poorly lit backdrop, and I’m not even exaggerating.

The first time we get one of these inserts is when Chris arrives at the house - after he unpacks his stuff (which consists of like…a t-shirt, a big framed picture of his girlfriend, and a giant answering machine, he heads to bed and starts to play with himself. Then we see this vision of Linnea Quigley, teasing us and undressing in a low, blue light. It’s understandable, he’s fantasizing. That shortly then changes to Charlotte, one of the homeowners. Again, understandable. What’s not understandable is how those same visions are played CONSTANTLY throughout the film.

The movie only really has four characters - Stewart, (played by Jan Michael Vincent), a philanderer who wants to divorce his wife Charlotte but is concerned that if he does, she’ll take half of what he owns. We know this because his lawyer asks if he signed a prenup and he responds, “A pre what?” Charlotte, his wife, is obsessed with Chris and has an old school video camera hidden so that she can peek into the guest house. It doesn’t take long to turn the seemingly faithful Chris into her own personal fuck boy. Chris is a kind of naive college kid who has almost no personality and looks like my friend Ray. Then there’s Michelle, his girlfriend who aspires to be an actress and spends most of the movie on the other end of a phone. At about fifty minutes, she arrives at the house to visit, and you can see the jealousy of Charlotte starting to shine through, but the treachery really only kicks off when there’s like fifteen minutes left in the film.

The End.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that wasn’t rated X with this many sex scenes in it, and they’re long…like ten minutes each kind of long. Way too long. This film is easily a short without the dumb exposition cop scenes and the elongated sex scenes, and because of that it’s actually really boring and I found myself wanting to fast forward a lot of the second half of it. You’d expect that since the violence was restrained until the last few minutes of the movie that it would end with a bang, but it ends up fizzling out in an uninspired, corny way. It’s an easy skip.

Murder Weapon (1989).

Directed by David DeCoteau

Written by Ross A. Perron

Starring Linnea Quigley, Karen Russell, and a bunch of frat boys

“Bad things only happen to good people.”

The Stage.

Two women who coerce their way out of a mental institution hold a party to reunite with their old boyfriends, but a mysterious killer starts knocking the boys off one by one. Will the killer be unmasked before it’s too late?

The Review.

David DeCoteau is a really interesting filmmaker from the school of Roger Corman. He’s prolific, having over 170 director credits since his debut in 1984, ranging from suntan oil soaked trash like Beach Babes from Beyond and Revenge of the Babes, the 1313 series which I have never seen but appear to be direct to video dreck (there are 14 films in that series!), to a series of television films that all start with the phrase, “The Wrong”…like The Wrong Crush, The Wrong Boy Next Door, The Wrong Prince Charming (and there are 26 films in that series, yes, 26!), to a gaggle of Lifetime Christmas films. This film was made to bolster his video distribution company back in ‘89.

Murder Weapon starts with an absolutely bizarre opening scene as Dawn, played by Linnea Quigley, walks around a neighborhood and then into her house with the style and grace of a twelve year old who happens to look 30. She grabs a big glass of milk and then looks out the window at a supermodel who’s tanning in the backyard. The editing of this overlong scene is awful, as we watch the model apply tanning oil to the same places about a dozen times. At the same time she’s lubing up, this creepy guy wearing what appears to be a Christmas sweater is snooping around the backyard like he’s in an episode of Scooby Doo. He sneaks up on her and…kisses her. It was a swerve! He’s not a killer, he’s the boyfriend! The two go into the house and make love, but unbeknownst to them, Dawn is watching with the curiosity of someone who’s never seen the act of sex before. When Mr. Cosby Sweater heads to the bathroom to take a shower, Dawn grabs a knife, murders the woman, and then gets into the shower with the dude and kills him too. Cut to, a mental hospital where we get a ten minute scene of Dawn trying to coax her way to freedom, and moments later, she and her friend Amy, played by the stunning Karen Russell, are poolside somewhere planning a party.

The party consists of the two ladies and six dudes, one of whom is weirdly obsessed with Moosehead beer which I can only assume was some weird product placement as he wears a Moosehead shirt and says, “We’re bailing if I don’t have a Moosehead in my hands” when he gets there. One of them men walks in as Amy is taking a shower and holds up a razor and shaving cream, as if he brought them to the party and then he sensually shaves her legs for a few minutes while we cut between his and her smiles, before it’s cut short by one of Amy’s death dreams. See, every time she dozes off, she has visions of herself being killed by these guys in various gruesome ways. We also learn here that both Amy and Dawn’s dads are mobsters who apparently have photo albums on their coffee table that has polaroids of all the men they’ve killed. Once Eric, a heavy metal singer who looks like he walked straight of band practice with Jesse and the Rippers shows up, the party really gets going and two of the guys start throwing a football around in the front yard while listening to instrumental rock and roll…you know, the telltale signs of any great bash.

And then we get our first glimpse of the black gloved, giallo inspired killer. I wasn’t expecting much from the kills and the first one doesn’t even happen until 45 minutes in, but it involves a sledge hammer to the skull and holy shit did it deliver. We see the hammer hit multiple times as the head just turns to mush and blood goes everywhere. It was that point in the film that I perked up a bit because I knew that the second half of the film wasn’t just going to be stilted, odd conversations anymore…it was going to be stilted, odd conversations with some great kills. I do want to take a second to talk about the dialogue in this film because it’s so unnatural and weird. Dawn and one of her ex-boyfriends go to the store for beer, and when they get back, Amy walks out and says, “Well, you guys made it back.”…like…what? And Bart and Kevin are wondering where Mr. Sledgehammer-To-The-Head went - Kevin says, “He’s probably just looking around.”, to which Bart replies, “Figures.”…remember, he just met the guy like thirty minutes ago, and then Kevin follows up with, “Well, I’m not his mom, it’s just his bad luck.” Again…what?

Anyway, as the night progresses, more people have sex and more people die in gruesome ways, some that make absolutely no sense but it doesn’t even matter because they’re so awesome. One guy is laying on a bed and a black gloved hand comes up through his chest like the chest burster in Alien and feeds him his own heart. Another guy gets a broken champagne bottle through the neck. The effects, while cheap, are really fun. Hats off to David Barton who did the gore effects in this one.

I can’t say the same about whoever scored the film, however. The dramatic music is laughable and the “sexy” jazz riff that plays during intimate scenes sounds like it’s straight out of an episode of Rugrats. The editing is also extremely poor, often times ping-ponging between to close ups during conversations to the point of dizziness and cutting away from people as their mouth starts saying something but the character then says nothing. Once we start getting into the thick of things, the film inexplicably switches to a flashback off Amy at the hospital which brings all of the film’s momentum to a grinding halt.

The End.

I thought Murder Weapon was terribly made but extremely fun. The film was shot in just six days, and you can definitely tell, but there’s something oddly charming about it. It features two beautiful women with lots of nudity, seems to have something to say about female equality (although that’s not at all explored outside of the hospital interrogation room flashbacks), great gore, and dialogue that’s so weird that you can’t help but be entertained. The screenwriter tries to zig and zag with who the murderer is, but you’ll probably know who it is because the film kind of tips it’s hand ten minutes in, but it’s fun enough anyway.

The Vinegar Syndrome disc looks pretty good, they did a complete restoration on the picture, but I actually thought the sound on this disc was terrible. Specifically the levels of dialogue to backgroud music. I ended up turning subtitles on because a lot of what was being said was garbled by the mix. Not sure what happened there. The extras on the disc include a commentary track by Ms. Quigley and the director, as well as a two minute introduction to the film by the director. The commentary track is unfortunately very poorly done - DeCoteau doesn’t seem like he prepared anything at all and straight up states he hasn’t seen the movie since it’s release. There’s a lot of stammering and a lot of things repeated. It also sounds like he’s distracted and looking at his phone or something at times. Quigley tries to keep DeCoteau on track and focused, but his thoughts are just too scattered to enjoy it. Hell, at one point, he actually takes a cellphone call during the viewing.

The Allnighter (1987).

I have all of my physical media in a deep closet that I’ve repurposed as my own little film vault. When I moved into the house, I built some custom shelves, put up a Steelbook wall, and some movie posters, and honestly it’s one of my favorite little rooms in the house. But…it’s filling up, and that leaves me with two choices…either I stop buying movies altogether, or…I purge those that might not deserve a spot in the Kleeberg movie library. So I’ve began an exercise in watching those films in my collection that I have never seen so that I can decide if they deserve to stay in the closet or get put on eBay and going in alphabetical order, first up was 1987’s The Allnighter. This ended up in my collection because Kino Lorber, who put the disc out, always has a few sales during the year when everything is extremely discounted and I picked it up as a blind buy during one of those sales.

The Stage.

Five students from the fictional Southern California Pacifica College are about to graduate, but as they prepare for one final party and pass into the official world of adulthood, emotions run wild.

The Review.

The Allnighter is one of about a thousand Southern California student beach comedies that came out in the eighties, although this one is much more harmless than films like Hardbodies and The Beach Girls as it’s rated PG-13 and runs slight on risqué situations and certainly on language.

The story focuses on five students. Gina, who is documenting the final days of school with her enormous Olympus video camera. Molly, the beautiful class valedictorian who’s wrestling with whether or not to tell her crush about her true feelings. Val, who’s engaged to be married and is questioning if she’s making the right decision, and finally, Killer and his friend CJ, two surfer meatheads who only care about catching women and waves.

The standout in the cast is Susanna Hoffs, who plays Molly. The film was written and directed by Hoffs’s mother Tamar Simon Hoffs and was probably intended as a starring vehicle to transition Susanna Hoffs from music to the big screen, as she was the lead singer of the Bangles at the time. If that was the intent, unfortunately it didn’t translate into much as she didn’t do much else in the film world aside from bit roles in Austin Powers films which were directed by her husband Jay Roach. She has one of the bigger emotional lifts here and gets to show off her acting skills. Although she’s not perfect, she’s serviceable and miles ahead of anyone else in the cast. Joan Cusack is also here as Gina, the group film nerd who I definitely identified with. Unfortunately she doesn’t get much screen time.

The film is listed as a comedy but it doesn’t feel like there are any deliberately comedic situations until a gag about an hour in in which the some of the girls are mistaken for hookers by some overly vigilant staff members at the prestigious Hotel Playa Del Mar, which leads to a bunch of miscommunications, an arrest, and the best moment in the movie when Pam Grier shows up as a police officer. Even then, the payoffs aren’t as good as they could have been with a stronger script and more comedically gifted actors.

The End.

The Allnighter is a cute, harmless 80’s romp that could have been a whole lot better if every character was smarter. As is, I don’t know what Pacifica College was teaching people because everyone on screen is dumb as hell. The movie doesn’t bring anything new to the table, but I still had a decent time with it simply because of how charming Susanna Hoffs was. The music is pretty good throughout the film, a perfect 80’s time capsule (although it’s curiously missing anything from the Bangles), but the film score, produced by Charles Bernstein (who’s a very capable composer, having done the scores for classics like Nightmare on Elm Street and Cujo) is absolutely terrible.

The purpose of watching this was, as previously stated, to see if it deserves a place in the great Kleeberg film vault, and the verdict is - this one is going up on eBay. It’s just not a film I see myself watching again and it’s not important or memorable enough to want to show my kid later.

What Are Friends For? (1980)

The Stage.

A girl who’s parents are going through a divorce moves in with her mother and befriends a very damaged tween named Michelle Mudd.

The Review.

I was up really late one night this past week playing Rocket League, and normally when I’m on there I’ll listen to music or a podcast, but for some reason I just wanted to watch something on my laptop on the side, so I jumped on YouTube. Recently I’ve been listening to the Made for TV Mayhem Podcast, which is an awesome show that is obviously about stuff that was made for TV, and they did one about After School Specials a while back that really stuck with me so I typed in ‘ABC After School Special’ and just hit play on the first one that came up.

For those unfamiliar with ABC After School Specials, I’ll give you just a little backstory. These short films ran from 1972 until 1997 and were basically 45 minute dramas based on hot button issues that were affecting kids at the time, and most of the time were targeted towards teenagers. They were essentially warnings that were intended to be watched as a family to foster constructive conversation afterward about things like teenage pregnancy, alcohol and drunk driving, drugs, hell, even the dangers of hitchhiking. Growing up, I really never watched these because no one else was home when my brother and I got home from school, and I’ll be damned if I was going to let specials like ‘The Day My Kid Went Punk’ or ‘My Dad Lives In A Downtown Hotel’ get in the way of watching The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

So I hit play on What Are Friends For?, and I’m almost instantly hooked. Like, put the controller down, this has my complete attention, because the opening shot feels like the opening of a late 70’s horror film. We see various creepy dolls being placed in frame for closeups, and when I say creepy, I mean it. These things are dreadful. The dolls are part of Amy Warner’s collection - she’s a twelve year old girl who’s in the process of unpacking them as she and her mother just moved into an apartment because of a divorce. Amy hates her dad because of it, even though her mother continuously explains that the divorce had nothing to do with her and she should still talk to her father, who has since moved on to a woman who has three kids of her own. Fortunately for Amy, she’s not the only tween in the apartment complex. Unfortunately for Amy, the first one that she befriends is Michelle Mudd. At first glance, Michelle is kind of an odd kid, someone who marches to the beat of her own drum. She and Amy bond over the one thing they have in common, divorced parents - something that was more rare in 1980 than it is today. The other girls who live in the complex, like Nora and Barbara, warn Amy about being friends with Michelle. In Barbara’s twelve year old words, her mother didn’t think Michelle was a proper playmate. Let’s just say Barbara’s mother was right.

On a trip to the beach, Michelle ponders if there was a way to get Amy’s dad’s new family to disappear, and then we cut to the movies first black magic scene. Yes, we get a fucking black magic scene, a Tibetan seance during which Michelle makes Amy promise her loyalty, ending with Michelle saying, “You realize if you break our bond of friendship, you’ll probably die.” It turns out she’s got a morbid fascination with loyalty, and loyalty for her means never being friends with anyone else. If this sounds weird, it only gets fucking weirder. Turns out Michelle has serious emotional issues that we can imply came from her parents’ divorce. She’s a compulsive liar, continuously pretends to be sick, and has a habit of stealing things. And when her father announces he’s getting remarried during Michelle’s birthday dinner, she goes off the deep end. Amy walks into her apartment hearing some of that Tibetan chanting and walks into the bathroom, where Michelle is on her knees in full ghost white Kabuki makeup and robe, in front of a symbol painted on the wall in red, drowning a doll that looks like her father’s new fiance in a bathtub full of what appears to be blood. This reveal is scary as shit and I can only imagine how many twelve year olds were scarred by this when it aired. Later on, Michelle sneaks into Amy’s house and drops off a package wrapped in a newspaper, and I swear to god I thought it was going to be Barbara’s dead dog. Fortunately, the reveal was much more innocuous than that.

Now, most of these ABC After School Specials had a message to them. Don’t drink and drive, don’t hitchhike, don’t get knocked up, that sort of thing. About thirty minutes in, I seriously thought that the message here was going to be don’t get caught up in the occult, and that people would start spontaneously bursting into flames. I was wrong, of course, but the message was no less heavy for kids. The message is that sometimes, relationships aren’t worth salvaging for some people. Amy kicks Michelle’s crazy ass to the curb, and in doing so, learns that just because her mom and dad couldn’t salvage their relationship, it didn’t mean that she and her dad couldn’t have one. Of course it wraps up in a pretty neat bow, because of the audience it was intended for…no murders, just words.

These ABC Specials helped launch the career for many actors over the years, including people like Jodi Foster, Rob Lowe, Jennifer Grey, Michelle Pfieffer, Ben Affleck, and Sarah Jessica Parker. There are a few familiar faces here as well - the character of Amy was played by Melora Hardin, who has had a long career in movies and on TV but is probably best known for playing Jan Levinson on The Office. I actually thought she did a pretty good job here as a clueless kid. Her psychotic friend was played by Dana Hill, who had a long voice acting career in Hollywood and played Audrey Griswold in European Vacation.

The End.

As far as After School Specials go, I thought this was highly entertaining with some really creepy shots and the character of Michelle Mudd is one that I won’t soon forget. It was available on disc as part of an After School Specials set, but is long since out of print, so if you want to catch it, it’s available on YouTube in pretty decent quality, which is linked below, and I suggest that you watch it just to see how screwed up these forty-five minute time capsules could be.

Little Monsters (1989).

The Stage.

After moving into a new house, a twelve-year old discovers a world of monsters under his bed that has no rules…but while pulling pranks all night might seem like fun at first, things quickly get out of control.

The Review.

I’m continuing to comb through my physical media shelves to weed out those discs that don’t deserve a spot in my library. My wife wanted to watch something this night, so I pulled out a few unwatched discs and we landed on Little Monsters from Lionsgate’s Vestron disc line. So, why is this on my shelf? Well, I actually bought this disc by accident because I was stoned one night and thought I was buying the Shane Black/Fred Dekker classic The Monster Squad…but I wasn’t about to return it, because the cover had Fred Savage and a big blue monster on it, and if there’s one thing that you can put money on, it’s that kids movies in the late 80’s were always way more fucked up than they should have been, so I had to check it out.

In short, this is a combination of Monster Inc. and Drop Dead Fred, and if that sounds terrifying, it is. The film starts with a moving truck being unloaded as the Stevenson family moves into their new place in the suburbs. Fred Savage plays Brian, a twelve year old kid who is really taking the move hard. He misses his friends, his school, and his old house. He’s having trouble making friends in his new town, which honestly isn’t too surprising when you see him sneak out of bed to make himself a peanut butter and raw onion sandwich for a midnight snack. His brother, Eric, is played by his real life brother, Ben Savage in his first role. The dad is played by Daniel Stern, who coincidentally played the older, narrator version of Fred Savage’s Kevin Arnold in The Wonder Years, and his wife in the film is played by Margaret Whitton, who had a pretty good run on TV shows and in the first two Major League films.

Long story short, there’s some monkey business going on in the Stevenson household, and Brian finds out that the mischief is being caused by a monster who crawls out from under the bed at night. His name is Maurice, played by Howie Mandell. He’s blue, has horns, and wears a leather vest. He convinces Brian to come check out his world, which is every kid’s dream. It’s like Outback Steakhouse down there - no rules, just right. You want pizza? Grab a slice. You want to play video games all night? Go for it. You want to climb up into someone’s room and ruin their fucking life? More on that later. There’s one catch though - if you’re in the monster world when the sun rises, you’re trapped below and become a monster yourself, and the world isn’t as great as it might seem, because we find out that it’s run by a terrifying weirdo simply named “The Boy”.

I mentioned before that PG movies in the late 80’s were always kind of twisted and this movie does not disappoint. The creature designs are really creepy. Maurice has sharp teeth and looks pretty unsettling but once Brian is dragged into the underworld, there are all kinds of frightening creatures. One even has his face melted off at one point, revealing a green Krang looking thing behind the skin. It’s genuinely disturbing. There are also some deep themes here, including a kidnapping, and since it was an 80’s kids movie, divorce. And the language, oh, the language. After encountering the underworld boss’s number one enforcer, Maurice says, “Once he grew that hunchback he became a real bitch.” We also get a few holy shits, a dick, and a ton of hells and a lot of damns. To be clear, I’m not offended by language, but it amazes me that I could have rented this when I was 8 years old and it would have been just fine. It really extends it’s PG rating.

The End.

There’s a lot to like about Little Monsters. I thought it dealt with really heavy issues in a pretty mature way. The kids weren’t stupid and get themselves out of jams (that felt like they had actual stakes) by using their brains. I also thought the relationships seemed genuine, which can be hard to get right in a kids movie. And the creature designs were great. The weak link here is really tough to overlook though, and that’s the character of Maurice. He’s a Beetlejuice knockoff, but Howie Mandell doesn’t have the chops to handle the role in a way that gives him any personality outside of just being really annoying (even his character design was annoying because he had so much metal shit hanging off of his face and jacket that it was constantly jingling and jangling), and he never felt like a monster you’d want to trust no matter how close the script wanted he and Brian to be. The detriment is very clear during a moment at the end of the film that could have been a real tearjerker with a better actor in the role. Robin Williams would have been amazing.

I also think I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if it didn’t seem so mean spirited. Part of this has to do with Fred Savage just kind of always portraying his character as smug and smarmy - he’s just not cute enough to pull off the sympathy needed, but the other part is because Brian and Maurice cause a lot of damage and it’s not just innocent fun. There’s a scene in which they sneak into a girls room and because of the film’s uneven tone and Maurice’s hints at a sexual appetite, I was kind of nervous about the threat of sexual assault - luckily it didn’t go that route. It does, however, feature a scene in which Maurice and Brian sneak into Buzz from Home Alone’s kitchen and replace his apple juice with fresh, warm piss, a stunt that strayed from being amusing to being outright vile. This felony and those like it are played for laughs of course, culminating with a scene of kids being yelled at by their furious parents, but I just felt sorry for them. Some of these kids were probably shipped off to military school, for God’s sake. It doesn’t help that neither of the actual culprits ever have to own up to the damage they’ve done and it’s just kind of chocked up to mischief.

So, the thirteen dollar question here - does this belong in the collection? You know what? I’m going to hang onto this one. This is a nasty fever dream straight from the bottom of Oscar the Grouch’s trash can that was made during an age in which kids films trusted kids to deal with stuff that was kind of dark and pretty scary. I think parents these days have become weenies, but I’m proudly putting myself in that camp. It’s compelling enough to make me want to show my kid, but that won’t happen until he’s like fifteen - just because kids movies were able to scar me as a child doesn’t mean I want my kid to be scarred by them.

The Vestron disc looks really good and has a surprising amount of special features, including new interviews, vintage interviews, and a feature length commentary. The highlight is an interview with an eight-year-old Ben Savage that takes place outside of an abandoned cement factory. He was just cute as a button back then and talks about how his brother helped him out on-set.

Alien Private Eye (1987).

The Stage.

Aliens from a planet called Sticks have taken up residence in Los Angeles, but they blend in because the only thing different about them is that they have pointy ears that they hide under hats. Some of the bad aliens have introduced a new, super addictive drug to the community that is wreaking havoc, and it’s up to a smitten alien private investigator named Lemric to stop the madness.

The Review.

There was a pretty good TV show in the late 90’s called Early Edition; it starred Kyle Chandler as a guy who would get the next day’s paper every morning that would essentially give him 24 hours to stop whatever bad stuff he found in it. One of the creators of that show was Vik Rubenfeld, and he’s used his clout from that show to teach others how to write for the screen. He now calls himself “The Suspense Guru”, and there’s even a little TM sign after it, which means he’s trademarked the moniker. It’s odd, considering he’s never written anything else aside from that show…except for one little gem from 1987 called Alien Private Investigator, which also happens to be the only thing he’s ever directed. So let’s see what we can learn from the Suspense Guru by diving into his sci-fi, noir mashup.

He wrote an article called “How to make the audience care about your protagonist”, and gives a tip that “the main character has something sad or even tragic that happens to them soon after the story starts, or some time before the story started.” None of that here. There’s nothing to like about Lemro, the titular dick. He’s an alien from a planet called Sticks and is vacationing on Earth to get to know human beings. He dresses like he sprinted through a Michael Jackson cosplay store and just kept whatever stuck to him from the racks and lacks any kind of interpersonal skills. He refers to women’s breasts as “major league yabbos” and has one friend, a surfer named Rob. He does, however, know karate, and also spontaneously breaks into dance when he enters his apartment, so if you’re into that kind of thing, I suppose Lemro is a catch.

He’s played by Nico Hill who was in a few z-grade action films after this with meaty roles like Thug #3 and Karate Guy. I looked him up on IMDB and his profile is kind of bizarre and refreshingly honest - it reads, “Nico grew up in a home where addictions, the occult, violence, betrayals, physical and mental abuse were normal. He began drinking at an early age to numb the pain and fill the hole in his heart, spirit and soul. He went on to become one of the pioneers of cage fighting, and fought in Russia and Brazil. He then went into acting and acted in over 30 action movies. As his fame and finances grew his addiction to alcohol, became an addiction to pornography, sex, adrenaline, power, and drugs lasting roughly 15 years. Because of a bad lifestyle he had dropped down to 130 pounds, stuttered as he tried to speak while his hands shook uncontrollably.” Seems he’s a minister now, which I can only assume he’s better at than acting.

I do want to take a second and give a shoutout to Lemro’s friend Rob. He just kind of pops in here and there and adds nothing to the story, but he’s doing his best Jeff Spiccoli impression and looked like he was just having the best time. He’s played by some guy named Nur Nur Cummings, yes, Nur Nur, and if I had to guess, I’d say he probably got paid for his work on the film with a couple of nickels and a six-pack of Heineken.

Anyway, some bad aliens from Sticks come down and introduce the most addictive drug known to man. According to Lemro, if you shoot the stuff five times, you’re addicted for life and if you try to quit, you DIE. He knows who the bad guys are though, so he’s going to try to stop them. The aliens in this look just like humans, save for their ears, which are pointy - nothing a zoot suit hat or some big hair can’t hide. The rest of the movie sees the bad guys looking for the other half of a Macguffin disc and Lemro and a few other alien pals trying to keep his new girlfriend safe. At one point, her brother and Lemro are introduced to the drug without their consent and we get to watch them try to shake it cold turkey for a bit near the end of the film. The big bad has a gold skull and crossbones adhered to his front tooth and it shoots acid. Definitely an interesting, although very unsafe weapon that I don’t think I’ve seen before in a film.

The movie has a charming cheapness to it - everything was clearly done on a shoestring budget and it definitely shows. There’s a particularly amusing car chase as a car driving all alone on a four lane street just decides to drive straight into the back of a parked car so it can blow up. We also get some amusing laser blasts near the end of the movie that are really poorly done, but again, this adds to the low budget passion project charm.

The End.

After seeing Alien Private Eye, I probably wouldn’t trust Vik Rubenfeld to teach me how to write for the screen, but I would definitely watch it again with a few friends who were ready to laugh and have a good time. As inept as the entire movie is, it’s also a blast. It’s so bad that it’s never boring, and right when you stop laughing from Lemro doing his best Billie Jean dance moves, something else absurd takes it’s place, like the least passionate sex scene you might ever see on screen, which is followed by the woman saying, in the most bored cadence imaginable, “I’ve never felt anything like that.”, making you feel sorry for the young lass.

This Vinegar Syndrome release is Alien Private Eye’s first disc release ever as the film long languished solely on VHS until now. It’s a 4K scan of the original negative and features a commentary track from the director that I need to check out and interviews with the director, the cinematographer, and Lemro himself, Nico Hill.

A Low Down Dirty Shame (1994).

The Stage.

A private eye is hired to find the only woman who can testify against a ruthless crime lord…his ex-lover.

When this came out I was 13 and I remember wanting to see it so badly. Eventually a kid down the street got it on VHS and watching it repeatedly became a summer vacation staple that year. I hadn’t seen it since then, and didn’t remember anything about it, but saw recently that the Rotten Tomatoes score was a measly 5% and thought it had to be better than that…right?

The Review.

Andre Shame was a Los Angeles detective who somehow led an assault against a drug dealer named Ernesto Mendoza in Mexico. Unfortunately, Shame and another officer, Sonny Rothmiller, were the only two people to escape the raid alive. Shame was fired from the force and became a private investigator. In the very first scene of this film, we start to understand why the Mexican raid was unsuccessful - Shame is terrible at project planning and, even more troubling, executing that plan. The cold open involves he and his secretary, Peaches, infiltrating a mob diamond handoff. This scene feels like it was written by a twelve year old version of me, with a bag of diamonds that looks like someone bought a package of jewels for bedazzling and dropped it in a stereotypical velvet bag. Shane gets into the room by hiding in a giant false container built into a maid’s cart and Peaches just rolls him in with her master key. Inside the room are four armed men. After surprising them by popping out of the cart like a stripper from a very clean cake, he dual wields and asks Peaches to leave, even as she offers to help hold the men at bay and here’s where my first question comes in…why bring Peaches in the first place? Clearly this puts her in danger. It’s not like they had to knock on the door, since she conveniently had a master key. Just leave her out of it. He tells her to go bring the car around, but we find out shortly after that she’s not even driving the car, she’s sitting in a limo with the clients who hired Shame to nab the diamonds. As the scene plays out, Shame delivers a series of wisecracks and eventually gets into a gun battle because he’s an idiot and clearly does not understand combat tactics. He never attempts to take the guns from the men in the room, and once he has his hands on the diamonds, he just turns his back and runs as if he knows he’s going to get blasted. He’s also failed to devise any kind of escape plan and in all honesty, should have died right there…but no matter how much danger he’s in, he’ll always try to find a quiet moment to crack a joke.

As an action comedy, his ineptitude could have been part of the movie’s charm if it was played up as a character flaw. Instead, it’s implied that Shame always gets his man, which leaves you wondering how he’s struggling to pay his bills, especially when he’s putting himself in these incredibly dangerous situations. It seems that, in addition to his inability to plan and execute a job safely, he’s also an awful businessman. His financial troubles are just told to us, not shown, as he drives a really cool convertible, wears a nice suit, and has a wall full of guns in his nice Los Angeles office.

Keenan Ivory Wayans, who also wrote and directed the movie, infuses Shame with the personality of a water-logged catchers mitt. His one-liners were clearly meant to make theater audiences howl with laughter but instead, reminded me of that kid in class who thinks he’s a jokester but everyone else just wants him to shut up. His antics, like acting homosexual or posing as a radio DJ on the phone, feel like they could have been left on In Living Color’s cutting room floor. The jokes and situations that were supposed to be funny feel dated, either because of the more accepting world we have worked to create or because of its continuous reliance on 1994’s pop culture references. The two gay characters in the film are solely there to be used as punchlines and overact to the point that one might think they were pulled straight from the Men on Film skits. One particular scene that highlights both the unfunny nature and idiocy of the script sees Shame trying to extort information from a hispanic goon named Luis. Asking nicely for Mendoza’s whereabouts doesn’t work, so instead of imposing some interrogation tactics upon the gentleman, Shame just leaves. Joke’s on Luis though, because right next door there’s a white power Nazi rally going on. Luis interrupts the rally by walking on stage and asking where the exit is, apparently completely deaf to the fact that as he made his way to the stage, the men were chanting “White power!” This, of course, followed by a scene in which the Nazis are chasing him down the street with bats and chains, while Shame slowly drives next to him in an empty Los Angeles with the promise of a ride and a way out of this situation if he can only get Mendoza’s location. As Luis is swarmed by the mob, surely about to die, we hear him scream, “Can’t we all just get along?”

There are two bright spots in the cast. The first, and loudest, is Jada Pinkett-Smith’s role as Peaches. She’s like a live action version of Scrappy Doo. She’s cocksure, brash, and brings a much needed jolt of electricity to the film every time she’s on screen. She’s obsessed with soap operas to the point that she commits assault because of it and for some reason, likes Shame. In a rare nice touch within the set dressing, we see three name plates on her desk - one that has just her name, one that says Peaches Jordan: Secretary, and another that says Peaches Jordan: Executive Secretary. Unfortunately Wayans didn’t really know what to do with her so most of the time she’s shelved for one reason or another until the next time she’s absolutely necessary to move the plot forward. During the main showdown with the villain, she simply says, “I guess I should go wait in the car, huh?” and then leaves, instead of, I don’t know…picking up a gun and shooting the bad guy. The other is Charles S. Dutton as Rothmiller. In one particular scene, a frustrated Rothmiller has a little “Don’t you know who I am?” moment that’s really great and feels like a precursor to Denzel’s nervous rant in Training Day. Unfortunately, the more he’s on screen, the stupider he gets, leading to a fight with Peaches that has several Home Alone-style moments that make you wonder how he ever became a DEA agent in the first place.

The End.

A Low Down Dirty Shame fails on so many levels. It’s not fun, it’s poorly made, the script is nonsense, and there’s no real reason that anyone would be rooting for Andre Shame to succeed. As a character, he doesn’t grow or change at all - in fact, no one really does. The film either needed to have a harder edge and could have leaned into Shame’s deficiencies, starting with thinking he’s cooler than he actually is, or it needed to go full blown comedy since it has some moments that felt like that’s what it wanted to be. In his review for the film, Roger Ebert wrote, “Take away the guns and this would be a movie about too many characters and no way to get rid of them.”, and that about sums it up. And 5% on Rotten Tomatoes? Yeah, that’s about right.

Ambulance (2022).

“We don’t stop.”

Directed by Michael Bay

Written by Chris Fedak

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Eiza Gonzalez

The Stage.

In this remake of the 2005 Danish film of the same name, two brothers find themselves trapped in an ambulance in a high speed pursuit after a bank robbery gone wrong. A tough EMT and a cop who’s bleeding out are also onboard.

The Review.

I have not seen the original film from 2005, so your enjoyment may hinge on that if you’re a big fan. I don’t know. I used to play a lot of Grand Theft Auto V, and when friend of the show Moose and I would get together, we’d pass the controller back and forth looking to see who could survive the longest with a five or six star wanted level - you basically cause as much carnage as possible and then play a game of trying to stay alive while law enforcement tried everything they could to put you in a wooden box. Ambulance is like the film version of that. It’s an extremely dumb, goofy, corny, two hour adrenaline shot featuring frenetic camera work, a boatload of wrecked vehicles, and Jake Gyllenhaal chewing scenery.

I love…LOVE a good car chase. During The Rock, there’s a great car chase between a Lamborghini and a Hummer and this feels like two hours of that. There’s also an interesting dynamic inside the ambulance. Gyllenhaal plays Danny, a man who has apparently robbed 38 banks in the last decade. Shouldn’t one or two banks be enough? That’s like four a year. His brother Will, an ex-military man who’s having trouble with his insurance company finds himself along for the ride with the promise of a big payday that would surely get his wife an operation that she needs. Yeah, it’s that kind of movie. Also in the cab are Cam, an EMT who treats her job as just that - a job. She doesn’t care about the patients after they’re out of her care, but she’s going to do her best to keep them alive from point A to the emergency room. And finally, there’s Zach, a rookie cop who’s bleeding out from multiple gunshot wounds, a situation that has everyone in the rig working together so that he doesn’t die on their watch. As they speed through Los Angeles looking for a way out of this jam, Captain Munroe, a special investigation unit leader and an FBI agent are using every tactic in the book to slow them down and bring the brothers to justice without risking the officer’s life. The film rarely gives you a chance to breathe, it’s full speed ahead from the beginning of the film to the end.

Gyllenhaal is really fun as Danny, a supposed criminal mastermind who knows the inner-workings of the FBI, but honestly never actually seems smart. He consistently makes the wrong decisions and is continuously bailed out by others. Danny is always very wide-eyed and high strung, leading to some hilarious moments. There are some one-liners during the ride that got big laughs out of me and my wife. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays his brother Will, the “sympathetic” character on board. I think the goal was to make us root for him, but I’ll be honest, he was really stupid and deserved to go to jail for a thousand years. He also makes some really dumb decisions in the name of ‘honor’, but you’re in a massive car chase that has definitely taken the lives of many, you can’t be sympathetic at that point. They should have just made both brothers kind of evil from the start and just made Eiza Gonzalez’s character the hero, but that’s just my opinion. They live in the shadow of their father, a bank robbery legend who was apparently just as brutal as he was greedy.

The film is shot well and uses a ton of drone shots - I mean an exhausting amount. It feels like we see the same, “Drone goes up the side of a building, does a spin, and arcs down to see the chase” shot ten times, but a lot of the shots feel really kinetic and fun. I’m stunned that this only had a 40m budget. It looks way more expensive than that. In addition to tons of cars getting absolutely decimated, we get explosions, shootouts, helicopters, a grenade launcher, and a bank robbery that seems to go on forever. I think the initial robbery could have been edited a bit differently to give us a better sense of space because once the shit goes down, it’s tough to understand where people were in relation to each other, but it was still really exciting.

The End.

I am one of those few people who still gets really excited for Michael Bay films. I’m not a ‘stan’ by any means - he has made a lot of films that I don’t like, but he really just makes films designed to entertain the widest possible audience. In terms of action films, I’ve always thought that The Rock and Bad Boys were his best - both of which are referenced to in this film - and while Ambulance doesn’t top those, it’s still a really entertaining time at the movies. I think there are two kinds of people who are going to like this; the first are people who don’t care if movies are dumb, as long as they’re entertaining, because if you look at this in the context of realism and plot holes, you’re going to have a field day, and the second are people who love Jake Gyllenhaal. I must say that I’m really looking forward to the Blu-ray because I’m anticipating some typical Bay special features that explain how they did some of the things they did.

X (2022).

The Stage.

It’s 1979. A group of people rent a side house on a farm on the outskirts of Houston with the intent of filming an independent pornographic film, but when one of the elderly hosts catches them in the act, the crew finds themself in a world of pain.

The Review.

Ti West is a really interesting filmmaker. He jumped into the horror movie scene in 2009 with The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers in 2011, and then just kind of left mainstream big screen horror for a while. He directed some television and an underrated western in 2016, but when I heard he was coming back to his horror roots, I was excited.

X does a lot of things right. First, it gives us time to get to know the protagonists. It shows us different sides to them. The filmmaker isn’t just a filmmaker, he’s also an insecure, protective kid. The producer isn’t just a producer - he’s a businessman with big dreams and very liberal ideas. The porn actors are more than just that - they all have legitimate hopes and dreams. We get to know all of this because Ti gives us the chance to just hang out with them. The first kill doesn’t happen until just after an hour in, and because of that, you really do care about the film crew. There are a few standouts in the cast, most surprising of which was rapper Kid Cudi. He plays Jackson, a porn actor who did two tours in ‘Nam. He’s just a guy who believes he was born for the screen, but he’s always ready to help a fellow Marine. There’s a scene in which he opens the front door while naked at night and you just see his giant, floppy dingus swinging in the wind. Brilliant. The ladies are all really fantastic but I’ll be damned if I didn’t leave this film with a huge crush on Brittany Snow, who plays Bobby-Lynne. She’s like the motherly figure of the bunch, someone who completely understands the business she’s in and really just treats it like a job.

The villains are really interesting as well, and I’m not going to reveal who it is or what their motivation is, but it seemed oddly sweet at first. That feeling fades pretty fast, because the antagonists are unbelievably fucked up. The overall theme of X seems to be the juxtaposition of sexuality in film vs. what it looks like in real life. The beautiful bodies we see in the act of passion live off screen as well, in a world where there are jealous benefactors and at some point, the beauty - and ability to even have sex - fades. I also liked that the villains weren’t unstoppable killing machines and the way some of them are dealt with is riotous.

The filmmaking is top notch. The very first shot is framed by a square window as we see what appears to be a peaceful farm house. As we pull in through the window, we begin to see things we couldn’t - police cars parked on both the right and left, bodies, blood. It’s a really effective way to get us right into the action and the craft remains exquisite throughout. The score by Tyler Bates and Chelsea Wolfe is unnerving and adds to the tension.

The End.

X checks all kinds of boxes I’m looking for in a horror film. It’s horny, it’s gory, it’s smart, it’s got interesting protagonists, and it’s got equally interesting antagonists. If you’re a student of horror films, Ti West is the class president, and you’ll definitely be rewarded for your studies, as this feels like a spiritual sequel to Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the films inspired by it. Right now, this might be my favorite film of 2022. If you like horror films, this is extremely recommended.

Jackass Forever (2022).

Directed by Jeff Tremaine

Starring Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Erhen McGhehey, scorpions, bulls, and bears

The Stage.

Most of the original Jackass crew (and some newcomers) come back for one final round of psychotic self-inflicted pain.

The Review.

I started watching Jackass when it first aired on MTV in the early 00’s, and instantly fell in love with the group. It wasn’t the ridiculous stunts they were performing, like being hit by bulls or kicking each other in the nuts, it was the camaraderie they had with each other. It just genuinely looked like they were having a good time, and even after they took an unexpected soccer ball to the face, they helped each other up and applauded the resolve. The series started with pretty crude stunts, like sitting in a metal shopping cart and being rocketed into a curb, sending the participant tumbling into bushes, but as the gang got more popular, the budgets went up, leading to more elaborate, expensive stunts like shooting people out of cannons or letting a large alligator loose in Bam Margera’s parent’s home. The popularity explosion eventually led to a series of movies, seemingly culminating with Jackass 3D in 2010.

From that point, people seemed to just go in different directions. Johnny Knoxville, the face of Jackass, was becoming a legitimate movie star, cast as the comic relief in vehicles opposite The Rock and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steve-O got clean and started doing standup, Ryan Dunn died in a drunk driving incident, and Bam Margera spiraled into alcoholism and legal troubles (troubles that ultimately ended up keeping him out of this film). Now, twenty years after the release of Jackass: The Movie, the boys are back to put themselves through unexplainable amounts of pain, and as usual, they’ve brought along a few celebrity guests along the way.

It’s tough to review a Jackass movie, because if you like the Jackass style, you’ll probably have some fun here. It’s the same stuff that you’ve seen a million times before, but it seems to hurt a little more knowing that the guys are like fifty years old. Several times I felt myself questioning why a man with a wife, three kids, and millions of dollars in the bank would be flying out of cannons and getting hit by bulls, and that’s probably why I felt different watching this one than the previous ones. I thought to myself, “Maybe I’ve just grown out of Jackass.” When I watched Knoxville doing insane stunts at 28 years old, I was 18. They appeared to be the way I felt - invincible, untouchable, incapable of feeling pain. I didn’t do a whole lot of dumb shit when I was younger, but I’d be lying if I said Knoxville’s penchant for laughing off pain wasn’t an inspiration for my own backyard wrestling exploits during my LWA championship run of 2001. I’m forty. I’ve aged to the point that if I tried to wrestle now, I’d feel it for days afterward. If I twist the wrong way and haven’t fully stretched for the day, my back might go out. I also know how concussions feel and what the long term effects are. Finally, I know what it’s like having human beings that actually rely on you for a lot, each and every day. I’ve become…slightly responsible.

There are basically two kinds of Jackass stunts - those that inflict immense amounts of pain, and those pranks that are funny from an observational level, like Knoxville’s Irving Zisman old man character who ended up getting his own feature film called Bad Grandpa in 2013. I enjoy the situational pranks much more than I do the stunts simply designed to inflict physical pain. Unfortunately physical pain is the main feature in this film, and most of it is designed to smash the dick and/or balls, which has always been my least favorite staple of Jackass but seems to be one of their favorites. These include an elaborate opening featuring a painted green Dickzilla, and a cup check, which involves Erhen McGhehey getting punched in the dick by a heavyweight boxer, getting a softball chucked at it by a world class softball pitcher, and getting a hockey puck shot at it, among others. The celebrity cameos are some of my favorite stunts, since you know they’re going to go relatively easy on them when compared to their normal crew who’s used to the madness. People like Eric Andre, Machine Gun Kelly, and Tyler the Creator all appear in pretty amusing moments.

The End.

Jackass is what it always has been, and I think where you’re at in life might dictate how much you like it. While I can’t say that I left this movie particularly enjoying most of the painful moments, I will admit that it was just kind of nice seeing all of these guys together again. It honestly felt like reuniting and having a beer with old friends for a few hours. Knoxville looks strangely hot with a head of gray hair, Steve-O has never looked better, hell, Bunny the Lifeguard makes an appearance. There was even a touching Ryan Dunn tribute during the credits. I was a little sad that Bam couldn’t get his shit together to appear, but it was still a nostalgic trip down memory lane. That being said, after the inevitable Jackass 4.5 bonus Blu-ray, I honestly hope I never see these guys in this show again and they’re able to finally ride off into the sunset. Frankly, I’m glad they all made it out of this film alive.

All The Old Knives (2022).

“I made a choice, and I chose you.”

Directed by Janus Metz

Written by Olen Steinhauer

Starring Chris Pine, Thandiwe Newton, Jonathan Pryce, and Lawrence Fishburne

The Stage.

Eight years ago, hijackers blew up Turkish Airlines Flight 127, killing everyone on board. Now, the file has been reopened, as new information has come to light - there was someone on the inside feeding the terrorists information. Veteran interrogator Henry Pelham is assigned to interview those involved, including his old boss and his ex-lover.

The Review.

All The Old Knives is based on a novel of the same name by Olen Steinhauer. It’s a lean political thriller, giving us only a few subjects to focus on; we know at least one person in our very small cast was involved - no one with clear motives, but each with moments for opportunity. The story unfolds over a night of dinner and drinks between Henry, played by Chris Pine, and Celia, played by Thandiwe Newton. There’s a bit of an edge to the reunion, as Henry and Celia were once lovers. Initially, we’re not sure why the relationship broke down, but as the interview is conducted over dinner and wine, we see things happening in flashbacks that add context.

The cast is great - Pryce and Fishburne play pretty limited roles, but make an impact nonetheless (as you might expect). Pryce is particularly brilliant during an interrogation scene at a pub. Newton and Pine impressed me as well and seemed to have genuine chemistry, something that was absolutely necessary in a film like this, lending believability to the rekindling of an old flame. The film flashes back to a sex scene shared eight years ago that I thought was particularly hot and a little surprising in these generally un-sexy times, and if you’re a fan of Chris Pine’s physique - which we should ALL be - you get a healthy side of cheek meat to go with your merlot.

At first the film feels like we, the audience, know a lot more than the Henry, and for the first two thirds it felt a little bit stale…but like all good political thriller, there are several twists and turns that present themselves that I genuinely did not see coming. As with real politics, there are grey areas, and you’ll probably leave the film feeling bad for some of the participants. Sure, the beats themselves are familiar, but I’ll admit that I kind of miss the sub-two-hour political thriller and this just found an itch that needed scratching. The film has a solid script and is also really well shot. It’s a very technically proficient affair, even giving us the engaging angles within the wine bar to portray the emotion lingering at the table.

The End.

This felt like a throwback to a bygone era, helped, no doubt, by having such a small scale overall that it could be filmed during COVID. I can see people arguing that it’s slow, or that it’s very “terrorist bad, CIA good”, but sometimes you want an adult story that cares about the details and highlights the skills of Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton, and on those fronts, All The Old Knives delivers. If you’re a fan of Tom Clancy books or the chatty parts of the old Harrison Ford Jack Ryan movies, this might be right up your alley. I had a good time with it. I’ll probably have forgotten I’d seen it in three months, but I liked it.

Ghost Riders (1987).

“May your soul never rest.”

The Stage.

In 1888, a band of outlaws is sentenced to death by hanging in a small town. Before he takes the big trip, the leader of the pack, Frank Clements, puts a hex on the land. Fast forward to 1988 - the outlaws have emerged from the ground, eager to kill the descendants of the reverend who put them down a century ago.

The Review.

I’m going to spoil Ghost Riders in this review, so if you really want to see it, I wouldn’t read any further. For the record, which I will explain later in the review, I don’t recommend you see it…but if you want to, it’s probably best to steer clear.

Our story in the present mostly follows three people - a grizzled Vietnam vet who still wears his Army clothes because he has either forgotten to change in the last decade or he has no other character traits, Pam, a woman who’s interested in the history of the Clements gang, and the grandson of the reverend. The ghost gang members ride horses and are armed with their guns of old, live ammo and all. The logistics of things are never really explained, but then again, it’s a movie about ghost cowboys so who really cares.

It’s directed by Alan Stewart who only directed one other thing - his DTV followup to this called Ghettoblaster in 1989, which I’ve always wanted to see but it hasn’t been available on disc. He also helped produce the incredible Action USA, which is one of the reasons this film piqued my interest. The other reason is that the premise is intriguing - I’m a sucker for genre mashups and mixing a western film with a ghost/slasher style story is a concoction I should love. Hell, one of the first comic book projects I ever wrote was for a western vampire movie, so the log line here is right up my alley. The question, of course, is how these three yokels are going to stop a pack of five ghosts and get out of dodge alive. as the back of the Blu-ray says…”You can’t kill what’s already dead!”

The 80’s were filled with low budget horror outings and I’m sad to say that this is one of the least interesting I’ve seen in a long time. This was made in Texas for $50,000 and it looks like only a tenth of that was actually spent. We don’t really get into the thick of things until about 45 minutes in, and I’ll be honest, I had lost interest far before that. I’m not watching Ghost Rider for people pontificating about life, I’m here for the skeleton cowboy ghosts on the box art. Honestly, if I wasn’t provided a copy for review, I might not have finished it at all. Aside from a nasty headshot someone takes in the first scene, there’s very little gore and the set pieces are quite boring. As with many of these films, the actors are largely unknowns and don’t bring much to the table. The ghost outlaws have no personality and don’t speak, and the poster, much like in the case of R.O.T.O.R. is about as misleading as it gets. It portrays three skeleton cowboys walking down a street with guns cocked. There were no skeletons. The ghost cowboys look exactly as they did before they took the last ride. Hell, there weren’t even streets, because everything takes place in the Texas woods aside from a late film showdown at a house. The action is uninteresting and there’s never any real tension, even during the climax of the film.

To answer the question I posed earlier, how do these three yokels stop a pack of five ghost cowboys, the solution may surprise and disappoint you - good old fashioned bullets. You can shoot them and they bleed just like men of flesh and blood, but then they get up and are generally annoying again. At the end of the film, two of our heroes are cornered, on the ground, nowhere to go with five ghosts walking towards them guns drawn. All hope appears to be lost, this is the tension that movies are supposed to present. How will these two get out of this perilous situation? Pam pulls out a sawed-off double barrel shotgun and aims it at the spirits. Now, I know what you’re thinking - it’s five gunslinger apparitions against two shotgun shells, so the clear advantage goes to the gang…and then she pulls a Michael Scott. “If I was in a room with Hitler, Bin Laden, and Frank Clements and had a gun with two bullets,, I’d shoot Frank twice.” Frank falls down and then the gang just walks away and disappears into thin air like a fart in a Saharan sand storm. Why? Who cares, I was happy because the movie was ending.

The End.

Ghost Riders reminded me of my prom night - an exercise in slow burn disappointment. After seeing this, I’m a little weary about finally seeing Ghettoblaster. It’s rare that I find a film that I feel has no redeeming qualities, so instead, I’ll talk a bit about the disc, because Verdugo did put together an impressive package.

The film looks about as good as it could - the new 4K scan was taken straight from the 16mm A & B negative. The picture is clear and crisp - aside from seeing it in 1988, this is probably the best it’ll ever look. The sound is not as good as the picture, although I’m guessing based on what they were able to produce that it’s even better than the elements they were given to work with. The mono soundtrack has a bit of a background hiss to it and the dialogue feels muffled and muddy.

In terms of special features, the list is impressive. We start with an audio commentary by cinematographer-producer Thomas L. Calloway, writer-producer James Desmarais, and moderator Steve Latshaw. There are two mini-documentaries, one that was filmed for this release called “Bringing Out The Ghosts: The Making of Ghost Riders”, which sticks Calloway and Desmarais in a room to talk about some aspects of the production. The archived documentary which was produced by Baylor University in 1987 is titled, “Low Budget Films: On the Set of “Ghostriders”. This is more about low budget films in general but is a nice companion. A few trailers round out the disc. In short, I do not recommend Ghost Riders, but if you’re a fan for some reason, Verdugo’s done a nice job with the presentation.

Turning Red (2022)

Directed by Domee Shi

Written by Domee Shi, Julia Cho, and Sarah Streicher

Starring Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, and Hyein Park

“My panda, MY CHOICE!”

The Stage.

A thirteen-year-old girl wakes up one morning and realizes that she turns into a giant red panda when she’s stressed out.

The Review.

The lead up to the release of Turning Red has been something else. There’s been backlash because the film was not offered a theatrical release, playing solely on Disney+ (just as Soul was) and then the talk was all about how Pixar had made a ‘getting your first period’ movie, but that’s not necessarily true, and then finally, there were reviews that posited that if you weren’t a minority woman, it would be impossible to connect with it. At its core, Turning Red is a movie about growing up and finding your place, about becoming a woman, and generational trauma. It’s a tale as old as time, but here it’s presented with a new twist on visual representation alongside fantastic animation.

Mei is a typical teenage girl living in Toronto’s Chinatown - she plays an instrument, is discovering boys, and loves the boy band 4 Town. After school, she helps run a Chinese temple, a local tourist attraction owned by her family. After a tense fight with her overprotective, conservative mother, she wakes up in the form of an oversized red panda. Almost instantly, she realizes that if she can keep calm, she’ll turn back into a human…easy enough, right? Except she runs into stress at school almost instantly. As the film progresses, Mei has to both deal with her newfound inconvenience, as well as her mother, finding out that the more they grow apart, the more they actually have in common…culminating with an exciting sequence at Toronto’s Skydome.

This film is unique in that all of the department leads were women, which makes the story and characters feel true to life. It was directed by Domee Shi and was her first feature. Previously, she’d worked for Pixar as a storyboard artist on films like Toy Story 4 and Incredibles 2, and directed the really great Pixar short Bao. Par for the course, the animation looks fantastic and the art style is pretty unique; it has a very ‘anime’ vibe to it in terms of movement and facial expressions, including some ‘super saiyan’ kinds of battle sequences as the film progresses. It almost felt like Scott Pilgrim if told from the view of a thirteen-year-old girl. There’s also a delicious nightmare sequence that’s really well constructed, one that my three-year-old thought was pretty scary. The story structure is also pretty unique - you might think that the film is leading up to a ritual sequence, the only way to get rid of this “panda curse”, and of course that ritual happens…but it does so at the end of the second act, leaving a whole third of the story still to come.

The End.

Turning Red doesn’t feel like it was made for me, which is totally fine, but I still found it really entertaining. That being said, if you connect with the family structure or identify with the characters, you’ll get even more out of it. It’s a gorgeous coming of age picture about dealing with puberty - a time that’s uncomfortable for everyone - finally becoming mature enough to develop your own interests while still trying to be the person your parents want you to be, and all the shit that comes along with it.

Wolfpack (1987).

Directed by Bill Milling

Written by Bill Milling and Fred Sharkey Jr.

Starring a bunch of adults masquerading as teens

“This isn’t football. This is gang warfare.”

The Stage.

When Sam Adams transferred to New Jersey’s Wave High School, he had dreams of playing tight end for the Wave Wolfpack, improving his social studies grades, and an eventual Princeton scholarship. Instead, he found himself in the thick of a fascist school takeover.

The Review.

I had no idea what I was getting into with Vinegar Syndrome’s Wolfpack. Based on the title and year alone, I was expecting a high school werewolf movie. This, however, went in a completely different direction. The film kicks off mid-game as the Wolfpack is on the business end of a 35-0 shellacking on their home field. The coach’s son, Ralph, is under center, even though the guy could barely throw a tantrum…and this is where Jack Butkowski’s plan comes in. With four minutes left, the offensive line turns on young Ralph. I thought we’d get an intentionally missed block, like when the Detroit Lions Lomas Brown set Scott Mitchell up to die…instead, we get the offensive lineman literally tackling his own quarterback with a late hit and then another teammate just steps on his back. Ralph leaves the game half-dead and everyone just acts like this is normal.

Soon after, Sam Adams, a kid named after a mid-tier beer and his mom come into town. He’s played by TV journeyman actor Jim Abele, who was 25 at the time this was filmed and looks every year of it. They’re staying with Pudge Purdy, an old guy who uses the auto shop at the school to tinker around. He’s like the creepy parts of Joe Biden, like getting too close to young women, mixed with the cool parts of Dennis Hopper, like owning a Delorean. On Sam’s first day, he runs into Myra Abbot and the two start dating shortly after. It’s a romance that is never given the attention it needed to feel special and if you cut the character of Myra out completely, the movie would have been exactly the same, but with a reduced hug count.

Aside from Myra, the school is filled with nothing but white assholes. Seriously, aside from one or two shots of black football players on the squad, there’s no representation here. Wave, is however, packed with the stereotypes of typical mid-80’s ‘this school is bad’ punk characters and jocks, and both groups hate each other. In the first clash we see, one of the punks is just being an asshole and throws a popsicle stick on the ground and Wedge, the offensive lineman who trashed Ralph, tells him to pick it up. Myra steps in and tells Wedge off, but I have to be honest, I was on Wedge’s side here. Fuck anyone who litters. Turns out Butkowski is trying to rid the school of undesirables - purity and power, as he says, with a football team full of guys named Wedge, Frame, and Stick ready to enforce the school rules by brute force, if necessary. Of course, Wave high school isn’t the world, as Sam rebuts, but it is, as Jack Boot says, “…a part of the world.” The fascist undertones are not subtle, especially in moments where Jack addresses crowds of likeminded nut jobs, but then again, in an age in which Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office for four years, I guess fascist subtlety is dead. As Sam attempts to distance himself from the Wolfpack, we can see everything heading towards a bombastic clash during the climax. That, unfortunately, never comes. The most intense drama we get in the film is during on-stage debates for class president spots that only really seem to matter in movies.

The film was directed by Bill Milling, a prolific porn director of such films as Virgin Snow and Blonde in Black Silk under pseudonyms like Dexter Eagle, Phillip Drexler Jr., and Craig Ashwood. It appears that Wolfpack was his attempt to get into more serious filmmaking, as this movie doesn’t have a semblance of sexuality, but after this, two middling sex comedies, and the women in prison film Caged Fury, his career behind the camera was all but over. It’s unsurprising. The lack of skill behind the camera is apparent. Shots are static and have almost no visual style outside of a cool but poorly done shot of a pack of men in wolf masks and a surprisingly stylish shot of Pudge and Sam sharing a bag of tortilla chips. Everything about the craft feels amateurish. The writer, Fred Sharkey Jr., was never credited as writing anything after this. Maybe it’s because this film has a few striking similarities to a 1981 ABC made-for-TV film in which a teacher starts an experiment in fascism that goes too far, perhaps coincidentally titled The Wave…or maybe it’s just because this film was a bore.

The End.

Wolfpack was an exercise in the underwhelming. There are a few things that would have made the film a lot better, and in today’s age, it feels like a good remake could be an easy creation. First, it feels like no one making the film had ever seen or played football. Butkowski is supposed to be some star quarterback but he looks more like Chris Everett than Jim Everett. In one scene, he throws a bomb to his new star tight end and the ball has the rotation of a fucking punt. Watch in another scene as an opposing team’s Jared Lorenzen slowly runs toward Wedge, who apparently plays both ways, and gets clotheslined in a scene that looks straight out of The Waterboy. In summation, the football action has to feel like actual football. Second, the on-field brutality needs to be shown. We’re kind of told these guys are real bad dudes but none of the action looks like it would hurt very much. And finally, if you really want to sell the Nazi overtones, there have to be some people of color in the picture.

The Vinegar Syndrome disc looks good but has some noticeable print scratches here and there. There are also some weird out of focus shots looking up at the players in the huddle, but that’s probably not Vinegar Syndrome’s fault as much as it was a problem with a poorly trained camera operator. There’s an interview on the disc with the director, but disappointingly there’s no commentary track.

Too Beautiful to Die (1988).

The Stage.

A woman is raped at a party and then killed shortly after she leaves. Later, people who were at the party are being knocked off one-by-one. Is it the dead model, back from the grave and looking for revenge? Is it the mysterious new girl who took the dead model’s place? One thing is for sure…in Too Beautiful to Die, no one is too beautiful to die.

The Review.

This film was titled Sotto il Vestito Niente II in Italy, making it a sequel in name only to the 1985 film Nothing Underneath. Whereas that film tackled a murder mystery in the Milan fashion industry, this one takes place in the then-budding world of the music video. A sleazeball named Alex runs the talent agency supplying the girls for a Frankie Goes to Hollywood Mad-Max themed video shoot, and when the girls head back to his house for a party, a powerful old dude (who somehow has the other girls wrapped around his fingers) uses his brigade of models to hold one girl captive in a jacuzzi while he rapes her. This party is ridiculous, by the way, and looks like what someone would fantasize an all-female model get together might look like - naked models, lounging in a hot tub, laughing and playing with each other’s hair. Understandably, the victim leaves in a haste, which interrupts Alex’s computer game, simply titled “Porno Game”, and is a screen with NES-level graphics of pink cartoons fucking each other. Three hours later, the girl is found dead with a bullet in her head inside of an exploded car, and that’s where our giallo kicks off.

Didn’t even need cheat codes to get a high score.

The rest of the film features the other people who were at the party being killed in deadly but disappointingly tame ways. The murder weapon is a prop from the Mad Max set and it’s got like 4 big blades on it; for as cool as it looks and with the promise of being such a devastating instrument of death, it never actually does much damage to bodies on screen. We see some slashes, some pokes, and some swipes, but the amount of red stuff is pretty tame here. Like most giallos, the film takes all kinds of narrative twists and turns as you try to figure out who the black gloved killer is, but when the maestro is finally revealed, the explanation is pretty weak and poorly explained, par for the course for lower-tier films of the genre. Unfortunately, a lot of the film drags every time we cut back to the detective on the case - he’s an uninteresting character who seems to lack basic investigative skills and lucks into finding actual information more often than Shaggy and Scooby-Doo.

It’s not a film without its merits though. The director, Dario Piana, was a prolific television commercial director and his style and panache catering to short attention spans really shines through here with some really well constructed shots and a lot of interesting camera work. The film starts off in the space of a music video shoot but the entire movie kind of feels like one long music video. The music choices are also stellar - I’ve never seen a giallo movie with a Huey Lewis and the News song in it, and there’s a sex scene set to the Toto piano ballad “I Won’t Hold You Back” that was brilliant and left the song stuck in my head for the remainder of the day. What the film lacks in pacing and blood, it sure as hell makes up for with style. The late-80’s decor is another visual treat, with things like enormous novelty phones and plastic blowup chairs used as actual serious furniture rear their ugly but amusing heads. The set gaffes that made it into the final film only add to the charm for me, the best being a winch pulley or counterweight from the actors harness that we see enter the corner of the screen as they fall to their death.

The End.

While Too Beautiful to Die was a decent enough watch, it’s hard to feel good recommending it to anyone outside of hardcore giallo superfans. While most of the film is visually arresting, the kills are not, and the acting and story feel like they were written by aliens who had only seen music videos and attempted to recreate one that was an hour and a half long. This can be frustrating, but can also be amusing, like a short montage of two girls who just became roommates and interact with the gusto of two eight year olds who just became best friends. I honestly thought we’d see a pillow fight at some point.

The Vinegar Syndrome disc, which shares a box with its spiritual sister film Nothing Underneath, looks nice, both being restored in 4K from the 35mm original negatives. It doesn’t have many special features, but does have a commentary track that I’m hoping to dig into soon as well as an interview with the director and some storyboards of some deleted scenes and the alternate ending.

The Last Duel (2021).

Directed by Ridley Scott

Written by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Nicole Holofcener

Starring Jodie Comer, Matt Damon, Adam Driver, and Ben Affleck

“The truth does not matter.”

The Stage.

This Rashomon style story explores the relationships between Jean de Carrouges, Jacques Le Gris, and Marguerite de Carrouges in medieval France from different points of view.

The Truth According to Jason Kleeberg.

The Last Duel is based on a 2004 book of the same name, and I feel obligated to start this review by saying that I have not read the book nor did I go into this film knowing anything about the documented history of the parties involved.

The film starts as the titular last duel gets underway, but quickly cuts from it to give us two hours of context around it. We end up seeing three sides to the story with subtle differences between each narrator. Although the differences aren’t immense, they are effective - one instance, for example, shows de Carrouges and Le Gris reuniting after quite some time, and in each story, the same words are said by a different person based on whose point of view we’re seeing.

Jean de Carrouges’s story is that of a man who feels he’s been continuously wronged by Count Pierre and his main squire, Jacques Le Gris. Played by Matt Damon, he’s got a ridiculous haircut and a brave ferocity to him, one that continuously leads him into battle for the French. When he marries Marguerite, things go from bad to worse for him, leading him towards his battle against Le Gris.

Le Gris’s story is that of a Lothario who finds himself grounded by a knight’s beautiful, intelligent wife. Played by Adam Driver, he’s got a long flowing mane and a reputation for getting around. He’s Count Pierre’s numbers guy, and it’s a position that’s served him well. When he falls in love with Marguerite, things go from good to bad for him, leading him towards his battle against de Carrouge.

And then of course, there’s Marguerite…an intelligent but naive woman who finds herself in the middle of the battle between de Carrouge and Le Gris. She’s played by Jodie Comer who is absolutely magnificent in the role. Side characters include Ben Affleck’s, delightfully bitchy drunk with another bad hairdo, interested in fun personalities and taking care of those around him. Another standout side character is that of King Charles VI, played by Alex Lawther. He does an absolutely tremendous job of portraying this young, excited dummy, who by all real life accounts, was a terrible king.

The film is extremely well made, and I’m pretty surprised it didn’t gain any Academy Award nominations for either costume or production design. Every detail looks fantastic, from the castles and settings to the dresses and armor. And while this isn’t necessarily a film about battles on the field as much as it is emotional battles, it all leads to a climactic last duel, illustrating both the final showdown between the two men and one of the last judicial duels to the death, as by 1386, these were not illegal but highly uncommon. The success of the film really hinges on the strength of the last battle after so much build up and the opening shot tease, and I’m happy to say that it does not disappoint. Ridley Scott knows how to shoot action. The fight is brutal, tense, and due to the way the film plays out, there’s an extra layer added to spice things up that is very effective.

The End.

I thought The Last Duel was a very good film. It’s a well told medieval soap opera cut with short, brutal battle scenes until it explodes in one final, extremely satisfying face off. I’ve heard people complain in reviews that the three stories just aren’t different enough to warrant three different points of view…but I actually disagree. They’re wildly different, just in extremely light ways. A smile in one person’s truth is a stoic look in another’s. A playful laugh in one person’s truth is a dreadful cry for help in another’s. It’s an extremely effective way to tell the story that will most likely reward subsequent viewings.

By all accounts, this film was considered a box-office bomb making back just 30m on a 100m budget. Ridley Scott blamed modern audiences' lack of interest in intellectual films over comic-book movies and millennials for being addicted to their cellphones. To that end, I’m not sure I agree with him. This is a 2 1/2 hour medieval film about an extremely gritty topic, released in theaters during a pandemic.

Death Ride to Osaka (1983).

Directed by Jonathan Kaplan

Written by Carole and Michael Raschella

Starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ann Jillian, Mako, and Richard Narita

The Stage.

A Los Angeles waitress who aspires to be a singer answers an ad for opportunities in the Orient. After she makes the trip, she realizes she’s being strong-armed into a prostitution ring led by the Yakuza.

The Review.

Made-for-TV films are an interesting time capsule which we just don’t have anymore due to streaming services and the death of traditional television. From as far back as the 60’s through the early 90’s, made-for-TV movies were a big deal - event viewings that people made sure they had couch time set aside for. Unlike today’s television environment, if you missed it, you may never have the chance to see them again. Most made-for-TV films were shown twice on network television, and in the case of this film, only once. These needed to be interesting stories that had to rely on tight storytelling without leaning on sex, violence, and language that you could get away with in theaters and they had to be done on a budget of what I’d estimate was about a million bucks or so.

Some people have a certain stigma around films made for TV, as if they’re inherently of a lower quality or went straight to TV because they weren’t good enough for the big screen, which is isn’t exactly true. These aren’t like direct to video DVD releases. Big time directors like Steven Spielberg and Edward Zwick have worked on productions made for TV with Duel (1971) and Special Bulletin (1983). Made-for-TV films like The Night Stalker and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark were amazing horror films, the latter even being remade in 2010 backed by Guillermo Del Toro.

Death Ride to Osaka, originally released on TV as Girls of the White Orchid, originally aired in late November, 1983 and was produced by NBC’s Hill/Mandelker Films, which produced 10 different NBC made-for-TV films between 1981-1984, many focusing on specific audiences and this one was clearly geared towards the female crowd. It was released on a Monday night opposing Monday Night Football, so if you weren’t interested in Dan Marino shellacking the Bengals, this was your counter-programming that evening. It stars Jennifer Jason Leigh in her last made-for-TV role. I was surprised that she was in this, considering she had a big role in the amazing comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High just a year before this released, but it was common back then to bounce between features and other made-for-TV films before making the jump to theatrical features. She had been in The Killing of Randy Webster (1981) and The First Time (1982) and continued to make some ABC After School Specials and telefilms throughout her career. Interestingly, the events of the film are based on the true story of Tom Allard’s girlfriend. Allard was an actor with bit parts in some films and played Shung in the 1991 TV show Land of the Lost and shows up as a newspaper salesman here.

Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the ultra-naive Carol Heath, a waitress in Los Angeles who aspires to be a singer and answers a talent ad in the paper that advertised opportunities in the Orient. Unfortunately, when she gets there, she realizes that the gig at the White Orchid club isn’t exactly what she thought it would be. Sure, she’s singing - and the film features some songs actually sung by Jennifer Jason Leigh, but she’s also expected to cozy up with the local Japanese men, many of whom are Yakuza, with the expectation of sharing more than just a sweet, sweet voice. When girls brought to the White Orchid don’t play ball, they’re sent to the lower end clubs in Osaka, where dreams…and girls…die, hence the alternate title of the film. Also in the mix is Don, Carol’s boyfriend who’s in the Navy. When he’s discharged, he comes looking for her and finds some trouble for himself overseas.

The film is a pretty grounded look at the nature of prostitution trafficking in the early 80’s. Watching this, it’s easy to understand how young hopefuls would get caught up in this kind of scheme. It’s scary to think that thousands of young girls probably answered ads just like the one in this film, only to find themselves stuck in a foreign land with no way out. There are a few other threads in the film - one featuring the other girls at the club - including a few that end tragically - and one featuring the Yakuza boss’s son which didn’t feel realistic, considering what he’d probably done up that point. The film stays on a pretty realistic course until the end, where it unfortunately steers into the realm of the preposterous and felt rushed - especially the climax, which features an elderly Yakuza boss using Kung fu with the speed of a man stuck in quick sand, and of course ending on a happy note for those slipping off to bed at 11pm on a work night. Looking at the limitations of films like this, there are short bursts of violence that are pretty tame and there was no foul language, which was par for the course on cable TV. I was, however, surprised that there was a bit of nudity in the film - at least four different scenes, including one featuring Jennifer Jason Leigh and one that kind of mirrors a naked, sleazy Flashdance style scene in a shitty Osaka bar that feels like it was filmed for a different film. For a made-for-TV film, I was not expecting naked women. Now, I was two when this film came out, so I can only imagine that the version shown on NBC did not show the nudity and that it was filmed in conjunction with either a European release or under the assumption that it would be on video store shelves within a few years.

The End.

Death Ride to Osaka is a decent enough film and an interesting cautionary tale that I’m sure was effective for couch surfers in 1983. As a stand alone experience now, it’s tough to recommend to anyone outside of Jennifer Jason Leigh completionists, because she’s the best thing about the film - she acts her ass off here and shows why she’d be the star that she was. While the film works as a decent melodrama, it’s chock full of cheap tropes and packed with what I’ve heard referred to as ‘yellow fear’, and in an age where we’ve had enough fear mongering over what idiots have dubbed the “China Virus”, this can be a tough pill to swallow. Still, for something that was probably expected to be seen only once, there is something to be said for the craft used to make the film. Jonathan Kaplan was an extremely competent director. The film is interestingly lit, well shot, and also features some bitching music.

This was released as part of Fun City Editions Primetime Panic set, alongside two other made-for-TV films Freedom (1981) and Dreams Don’t Die (1982). The picture looks good although there’s some noticeable grain. The disc contains some interviews, including one with the director Jonathan Kaplan, as well as a commentary by the incredibly informed film programmer Lars Nilsen.

The Spine of Night (2021).

The Stage.

An epic ancient saga about a rare blue flower born from the Gods called “The Bloom” that one man used it to become a frightening god amongst men, and those that attempt to stop him from destroying their world.

The Review.

This film is an epic that spans many timeframes. We start on Tzod, the high priestess of a bog called Bastal, as she makes her way to the top of a mountain adorned with a giant skull. Inside the skull is a single, glowing blue flower called Bloom and a guardian assigned to protect it. Instead of simply cutting her down with his steel, he listens to her reason for arriving, a tale that is both terrifying and exciting.

See, years ago, the Bloom was plentiful. Tzod was able to use it as a great source of power. She’s captured by the vain Lord Pyrantin, along with a scholar named Ghal-Sur. He sees the true abilities of the Bloom as Tzod first burns the Lord’s face off and then uses her power to blast out of the prison. Ghal-Sur’s greed gets the best of him, however, and he double crosses Tzod and takes the Bloom for himself.

The rest of the story illustrates Ghal-Sur’s rise to man-god - a ruthless son of a bitch who will stop at nothing to rule the world. This involves massacring anyone in his way - entire villages, decimated, his power only strengthened by the blood spilled. And blood…is…spilled. Heads and other extremities are chopped off, people are split in half, guts gush to the floor. Ghal-Sur’s attacks are swift and brutal. We run through a gamut of themes, including greed, ego, death, and the desire to leave things behind for the rest of mankind.

This is a rotoscoped animated film. The animation looks a lot more crude and less detailed than animation you’ll see from say, Disney, but it also feels a lot more lifelike. Movements look natural and facial expressions really match each syllable. It harkens back to Ralph Bakshi animated classics like Fire and Ice or the animated Lord of the Rings film from 1978. There’s something jarring about it but it’s beautiful. The colors used are gorgeous and the lack of warmth really makes the blood stand out while it’s spilled on screen. A flashback to the early days of the Gods looks really striking, with all of the figures cloaked in black against different colored backgrounds.

The End.

At only ninety-minutes, this is an easy film to recommend, especially if you’re into animation. The movie looks great and moves at a breakneck pace, packing a lot of lore into its runtime. If you’re squeamish with animation or nudity, you might want to shy away as there is a lot of it, but for the rest of you, this is a lot of fun.

The Farmer (1977).

Directed by David Berlatsky

Written by John Carmody, Janice Eymann, and George Fargo

Starring Gary Conway, Angel Tompkins, Michael Dante, and Ken Renard

“I don’t get mad…I get even.”

The Stage.

Kyle Martin returns from World War II determined to get his farm back up and running. Unfortunately, the bank is ready to repossess it. When a gambler offers to pay Kyle $50,000 to kill the gangsters that blinded him, he originally declines…until the gangsters make things personal.

The Review.

I’d heard a ton of hype about The Farmer because on some Blu-ray sites I frequent, this was continuously brought up in conversations about the best films that hadn’t yet been brought to disc. Hell, as far as I can tell, it was never even released on VHS. After its original run as either The Farmer or Blazing Revenge, it simply disappeared from the public eye. It was written by a trio that really hasn’t written anything since and was directed by a long time editor named David Berlatsky who never directed a film again. After what I assume were years full of legal battles, seeing as Bill from Code Red had advertised a DVD as early as 2006 and had recently taken down a bootlegged VHS rip that was slapped up on YouTube with a copyright strike, Scorpion Releasing must have bought the rights from Cod Red and finally got The Farmer out to the masses.

We start with Kyle, in uniform, on a train with a bunch of other servicemen. When the train bartender refuses to serve a black soldier, Kyle raises an exception and there’s a brawl. Eventually they throw Kyle from the train and he walks his ass back to his farm in rural Georgia. When he gets there, we find out why he defended the man’s honor as his farmhand, named Gumshoe, is also African American. Only a short time later, Kyle finds himself mixed up in all kinds of malarky, including rescuing a degenerate gambler after he crashes on the farm, banging the gambler’s girlfriend, and finding himself on the wrong end of the mob, a position that costs Kyle dearly.

As a revenge story, the film is nothing we haven’t seen before. Gary Conway plays Kyle, a cigar-chomping, sunglass wearing no-nonsense soldier. The rest of the characters feel like cardboard cutouts of archetypes we’ve seen a million times. The camera work feels lifeless, the story moves - at least at first - at the speed of molasses, and the entire production just seems to lack zip. The film was advertised as being so violent that it barely escaped an X rating, but I was a little let down in that respect. When there are moments of violence, they’re pretty well done, giving us the red paint blood that so many 70’s movies were soaked with, but nothing really felt groundbreaking. There is one particularly effective headshot as Kyle puts a revolver to a guy’s lips and blows the back of his head out and another in which a guy gets blasted with a shotgun that slides him across the pavement which was probably my favorite kill in the flick. There’s a long, disturbing sexual assault scene that’s supposed to be impactful, but the relationship between the victim and the farmer wasn’t really fleshed out and the bizarre music choice definitely lessened the wallop that it was designed to have.

The End.

The real question with a film like The Farmer is, “was it worth the wait?” As someone who hadn’t seen the film and had only heard the hype around it, I think I did a pretty decent job of tempering my expectations. As a revenge film, The Farmer was alright, but films like Taxi Driver and Rolling Thunder are easily better than this, and I admit that I’m a little confused why there’s so much fanfare around it. I suppose it’s just one of those deals where because the film was nearly impossible to find for all of these years, there was just some hazy mysticism built up around it. The saga surrounding the rights was probably more entertaining to me than the film was.

The Blu-ray looks pretty good, the picture scanned from the original negative. Disappointingly, there are no special features outside of a trailer.

Fistful of Vengeance (2022).

2/24/2022

Directed by Roel Reiné

Written by Cameron Litvack and Yalun Tu

Starring Iko Uwais, Lewis Tan, and Lawrence Kao

The Stage.

In Bangkok, Thailand, Kai, Lu Xin, and former triad member Tommy are on a new quest for revenge. Unfortunately, their journey intersects with the plans of Ku An Qi, a supernatural being trying to resurrect Pan Gu, the first man, and reshape the world in her own image.

The Review.

First, I should mention that I watched this with zero knowledge that it continued the events to the Netflix show Wu Assassins. I have not seen that show and can only assume that if you’re a fan, you’ll get more out of this movie. As such, I cannot comment on how the tone or style mirrors that of the show. I turned it on because Iko Uwais, the star of two of the 2010’s best action films (The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2) is featured on the poster. He’s one of my favorite action stars and I’ll pretty much watch anything he’s in.

The story here is about as thin as it gets. The plot is really only here to manufacture reasons for more action, and there is a lot of it. The first big fight scene starts in a hotel, careens into a parking garage, spills into a car chase which ends in a market, leading to another fight scene, and finally ends with a boat chase. If that sounds wild, it is, but it could have been so much better.

The fight scenes here feel like a mystical version of The Raid: Light, which unfortunately isn’t a compliment. Let’s take the first big fight scene, which splits our characters up in a hotel so that we can see the five of them use their unique talents. Iko’s character Kai finds himself up against a bunch of bad guys in a hotel hallway and uses some of the exact same moves that he uses in the hallway scene in The Raid, except without the force that The Raid put forth and definitely less pure violence. The fight scenes are cut to hell and the majority of the blood was added in post which feels really disappointing. There are endless streams of adversaries, who all wear black and remain faceless, nameless, and apparently talentless as they all have some kind of weapon and hit absolutely nothing. Whether they’re swinging machetes or firing machine guns, every single one of the underlings are completely inept, and due to the poor fight choreography, you often see people just standing around waiting for their turn to jump in while their friends are being obliterated. Because everyone seems so stupid, it definitely lessens the impact of the battle scenes.

Other than the fight scenes, there’s really not much else to dive into here.

The End.

There are a number of interesting things in play - the vampiric soul-sucking Shang Tsung villains seemed like a cool idea that are, I’m sure, carried over from the show, but their powers are only used when it’s convenient or something needs to look “showy”. Some of the camera work is interesting (including a drone shot that moves from the parking garage, over to the roof of the hotel, back down to the parking garage), but there are other times when more dynamic camera work would have hidden some of the cracks in the production value. Ultimately, there’s just not enough meat here to recommend this one, even for hardcore fight film enthusiasts.