Directed by Jeff Wadlow (Cry Wolf, Truth or Dare, Kick-Ass 2, Fantasy Island) , who wrote the script with Greg Erb and Jason Oremland, this is exactly the kind of horror movie that comes out these days: produced by Blumhouse, rated PG-13, so dark that I could barely figure out what was going on in some scenes and all about someone coming back to their childhood home and dealing with past trauma, a plot of nearly every new scary film I watch. But I thought, am I being unfair? Possibly. Maybe I need to actually watch this, as the idea — childhood imaginary friends are angry at being abandoned — is a great one.

Jessica (DeWanda Wise) is a successful author of children’s books who has married a musician named Max (Tom Payne) and is now the stepmother to his daughters Taylor (Taegen Burns) and Alice (Pyper Braun). She hasn’t gotten over her rough upbringing and frequently dreams of her mentally ill father Ben and Simon the spider, who she has made a central character in her work.

Despite these issues, they decide to moves into Jessica’s childhood home. Alice finds Chauncey the teddy bear, who becomes her imaginary friend while Jessica meets someone who claims she babysat her named Gloria (Betty Buckley, who is a bright spot), who tells her stories of her upbringing that she has forgotten.

After meeting with chid therapist Dr. Alana Soto (Verónica Falcón) when Alice shows the same issues Jessica once had, they learn that no one can see the teddy bear except Alice and Jessica. Soto has several patients who have all had similar problems with being unable to see the difference between reality and fantasy.

Then, Alice disappears.

Gloria tells Taylor that Chauncey was also Jessica’s childhood imaginary friend. It turns out that imaginary friends are real spirits that feed off the imagination of young people and are generally friendly but become ill tempered when they are abandoned.

Gloria, Jessica and Taylor must complete a scavenger hunt, which is a ritual that the imaginary friends use, and enter the Never Ever, the place where these metaphysical being reside. The items include “Something that scares you. Something that you would get in BIG trouble for. Something that makes you MAD. Something that HURTS.” This is different from the past, as Jessica was told to bring “Something to paint. Somethin that burns. Something u eat from. Somethin that makes u happee. Some peez of you. Something that makes you mad.”

That’s because at one point, Jessica tried to leave reality for this place but was saved by her father, who was driven insane by what he saw. That’s why he’s been in an institution ever since.

The problem is that Gloria wants to stay, as Chauncey has been in contact with her. He promised her all the power of his home if she trapped the women with him, but in the middle of her explaining the magnificent power of the Never Ever, he appears and tears her apart. Jessica responds by stabbing him in the eye. Even when it seems like everyone has escaped, they remain trapped until Chauncey shows his spider form — Stephen King, call for residuals — and Alice sets him on fire. And yes, like so many movies, they burn their house down to escape.

The women try and get a hotel, but when they see a kid playing with his imaginary friend, they leave.

There are shout outs to  Labyrinth, A Nightmare on Elm Street — they live on Elm Street — Alice In Wonderland and the whole thing is inspired by Poltergeist, which Wadlow cites by saying, “It perfectly strikes the balance between scares and this benign sense of wonder and excitement and emotion that you get when you have a family that you care about.”

My wonder — seeing as how this is all about imagination — is if all of these movies that refer to the past and have similar plots are leading to the well of ideas that the next generation of filmmakers making being further muddied. This is fine, I guess, but when you’re paying so much for a movie — whether going to see it in its short theatrical window or watching it at home for a fee — you want more than fine. Maybe I expect too much from escapist summertime movies, but I want to be inspired and wowed and come away thinking of all the ways a movie can expand.

Instead, I just watched the time and wondered when this was over.

Directed by Grant Austin Waldman and written by Brinke Stevens and Ted Newsom (Time Tracers) from a story by Fred Olen Ray, Teenage Exorcist sat on the shelf until 1994 and then it was released straight to video stores.

Stevens plays Diane, a young woman who dreams of being a college professor. She’s moved out of student housing and takes an entire house — which is haunted by Baron DeSade (Hoke Howell) — from a strange realtor (Michael Berryman). Worried by her first night alone, her sister Sally (Elena Sahagun), brother-in-law Mike (Jay Richardson) and  boyfriend Jeff (Tom Shell) all come to check on her. She’s been possessed by a demon (Oliver Darrow) and has gone from a modest young lady to, well, the kind of role that made me fall in love with Brinke Stevens when I was young.

How to you exorcise a demon? Well, there’s no teenage exorcist. But there is Father McFerrin (Robert Quarry, who is on the side of good in this), a man of the cloth who accidentally orders a pizza instead of someone who can help, which brings in Eddie (Eddie Deezen), who is of no help.

If the outside of the house looks familiar, it’s because you saw it in Sorority House Massacre II and Evil Toons. I find it incredible that it’s literally across the street from the house used in The People Under the Stairs.

I’m pretty easy. I love all possession movies and whenever I see Brinke on screen, my heart beats a little faster. I’ve watched way worse movies just because she’s in them.

You can watch this on Tubi.

We watched The Farmer on the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature last year and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I’d waited years to watch it and it more than was worth it.

This film was never released on home media — not on VHS, Beta, Laserdisc, DVD or any other release outside of theaters — until Scorpion Releasing put it out in 2022. Now, you can easily watch it on Tubi, a movie people waited for years to watch.

Originally written as a vehicle for Clint Eastwood — screenwriter George Fargo had acted with him in Dirty Harry, Play Misty for Me, Paint Your Wagon and Kelly’s Heroes — this was sold as a twenty-five page treatment to producer and star Gary Conway, who plays Kyle Martin. Martin is a hero of World War II, but his medals don’t help him run his one-man farm. He saves a gangster named Johnny (Michael Dante), who gives him $1,500, but it’s not enough. The bank barely pays him attention.

Johnny has no such money issues, especially after he screws over a mobster named Passini (George Memmoli) for $50,000. The boss finds him, kills Johnny’s bodyguard and then burns his eyes with acid. The gangster remembers the military man and has his girl Betty (Angel Tompkins) offer Kyle $50,000 to kill everyone. Kyle turns it down until Angel gets assaulted and his friend Gumshoe (Ken Renard) is killed.

And that’s when he basically becomes an unkillable slasher, taking out every single gangster one by one.

According to Tompkins, there was an alternate ending where — spoiler warning — the black soldier that Kyle stood up for at the beginning of the movie that has become a mob killer actually kills both of them. As she had never seen the movie, she had no idea that there is a happy ending.

Directed by David Berlatsky (the only movie he directed, but he edited The Deep) and written by Fargo, Janice Eymann, John Carmody and Patrick Regan, this is the kind of tough guy movie that has dialogue like “You made two mistakes: one was getting up and the other was making fun of Shirley Temple.” It also has a part for Sonny Shroyer, who would soon be Enos on The Dukes of Hazzard.

Memmoli got injured while making this and was in the hospital for most of the shooting. He only weighs 190 pounds in this, way less than his normal weight, but would get to nearly 500 pounds before his death. That accident also kept him from being in Taxi Driver.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops reviewed this movie and said, “Revenge story of a World War II veteran (Gary Conway) has arty pretensions but not a spark of intelligence. Mechanically directed by David Berlatsky, it is excessively brutal and sexually degrading.”

Sounds like a great review.

The Farmer has a song on its soundtrack by the name of “The American Dreamer” by singer-songwriter Gene Clark. How strange that it is from the Dennis Hopper documentary The American Dreamer, which is about the making of The Last Movie.

Conway is totally Rick Dalton. He went from his TV show Land of the Giants to appearing in low budget films and finally making this film, his own, to improve his career. He’d also bring a script he wanted to star in to Cannon and it totally got changed around. That script would end up being Over the Top and Conway would get to act in one Cannon film, playing The Lion in American Ninja 2.

There’s just something about this movie. Is it how inscrutable its hero is? How cathartic the violence is? The strange soundtrack by Hugo Montenegro? The fact that it took forever to be seen?

I don’t know. But I do know I think about it all the time.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Here’s a recipe to drink while you watch this movie.

Director Dan Diefenderfer only directed this one film, but he also was an electrician on Turbulence. He co-wrote the script with Larry Nordsieck and John Thonen, who wrote for Fangoria and Cinefantastique and also wrote B-Movie Horrors: A Photo-Filled Journey Into the Horror and Sci-Fi Films of Director Don Dohler.

A historical society is exploring the Dunbar film studios which have long been abandoned. As a TV news crew and some students start looking around, they’re suddenly pulled into different times and aren’t aline, as there’s a cop from the 60s and a caveman, both of whom are quite unstable.

Somehow, in the middle of all this craziness, someone finds a print of London After Midnight.

Shot on 16mm in Diefenderfer’s own studio, this really throws everything into one movie and hopes that you like some of it. Acid fog, Roman centurions, ghosts, giant roaches, a UFO, zombies…and lots of walking. Lots and lots of walking down hallways.

There’s also a ton of gore and characters that you shouldn’t get too attached to. This movie hates its characters and they get murdered in various creative ways. There’s also a series of posters on the walls — Mondo Teeno (Teenage Rebellion), Tarantula, The Mummy, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula — and characters are named Vincent Hill, Roger Agar, H.G. Lewis, Sam Harcough, Florrie Ackerman and Mike Romero.

I think the more you love movies, the more you might like this. I wasn’t bored because just when you think you know what this movie is about, it becomes a completely different movie.

The credits promise Timesweep 2 – The Quesdrov Factor and sadly, we never got that movie.

You can watch this on the amazing Crud Buddies channel on YouTube.

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

And oh yes. Their house might be haunted.

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

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

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

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

You can watch this on Tubi.

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

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

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

This limited edition of 3,000 Radiance Films release comes with a isual essay on the artistic upheavals at Shochiku studios during the 1960s by Tom Mes, a trailer, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow, a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Chuck Stephens and it’s all presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings.

You can get it from MVD.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cult Epics blu ray release of this movie has a ew 4K transfer and restoration from the original negative. Plus, it has audio commentary by Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth, trailers, an interview with Brass, outtakes, a phoro gallery, a double-sided sleeve with original uncensored Italian poster art, a 20-page illustrated booklet with liner notes by Eugenio Ercolani and Domenico Monetti and a slipcase to hold it all.

You can get it from MVD.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spoiler warning…

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

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