Tales from the Darkside S2 E8: Distant Signals (1985)

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Lew Feldman (Joe Bova) is on the phone, being a Hollywood agent, when Mr. Smith (Lenny von Dohlen) appears in his office. He tells him that he wants to speak to Gil Hurn (David Margulies) and wants the agent to find him. Feldman says that Hurn is a big writer now and doesn’t want to revisit one of his failures. Smith offers a $35,000 gold bar to find Smith and discuss his one-season-canceled show, Max Paradise.

Smith wants Hurn to write and direct six more episodes of the show, including the ending. He’s willing to pay him $2 million to make it happen, but Hurn is unsure, since he thinks the show was corny. Smith claims that fans are yearning to see how the story ends. To do that, they have to find the star, Van Conway (Darren McGavin), who has given up on acting and, well, life. Smith promises him money, and if he takes the pills he’s brought, he will feel healthy again, as he once did before he started drinking. He even rebuilds the studio where the show was set, with no expense spared, to ensure that a show nobody watched can come back.

Even when Conway walks away, Smith won’t give up, even removing his fear and need to drink. When asked why he’s doing all of this, he replies that he’s Conway’s greatest fan. Conway is amazed by Smith’s belief in him and wonders who the millions of people Smith refers to are who would watch a black-and-white show in modern times. All Smith can say as he watches the show being filmed is that it’s mythic.

It’s never said where Smith is from, but Hurn and Conway decide he’s from space, a place that saw the show years after everyone else and always wondered how it ended. As the Max Paradise theme plays and the cameras roll in that reconstructed void, Hurn and Conway realize they aren’t just filming a cancelled show; they are providing the “ending” for an entire civilization’s mythology. They find their own purpose by becoming the wanderers they once portrayed.

Directed by Bill Travers (his only directing job; he played Senator Boutwell in The Lincoln Conspiracy) and written by Theodore Gershuny (who was married to Mary Woronov) from a story by Andrew Weiner, this is one of my favorite episodes of the entire series. Max Paradise was based on Coronet Blue, which ran for only 11 episodes on CBS in the summer of 1967. Created by Larry Cohen, it was about an amnesia-suffering man (Frank Converse) chased by killers who only knew two words, which were the title of the show. It never returned after those episodes, and the mystery was never resolved.

B & S About Movies podcast Episode 125: Police Academy

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Yes, I did a show about Academysploitation, but part of me wanted to talk about every movie in the series and no one else in my life wants to discuss these movies, so I am ready to share my love for Tackleberry, Zed, Hooks, Hightower and more.

You can listen to the show on Spotify.

The show is also available on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Podcasts, Podchaser and Google Podcasts

Important links:

Theme song: Strip Search by Neal Gardner.

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Trash Humpers (2009)

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The Trash Humpers are running through the streets of Nashville, causing chaos everywhere they go, which mostly means making people eat pancakes covered in soap, choking out baby dolls with plastic bags and killing a poet. They’re also all mostly old men or men wearing old man masks. They are very dada; nothing means anything. Momma (Rachel Korine), the only female member, kidnaps a child to add some meaning to her life, while the man recording all of this, Hervé (Harmony Korine), at least tries to explain to the viewer the ethos of the group.

One night, as he looked at trash cans in the moonlight, Korine remembered a gang of old men peeping toms who would come out at night, referring to them as “the neighborhood boogeymen who worked at Krispy Kreme and would wrap themselves in shrubbery, cover themselves with dirt, and peep through the windows of other neighbors.” Using video — yes, SOV — made the images softer and less sharp, which he was looking for. It was even edited on two VCRs.

The tracking errors and static make the viewer feel like a voyeur watching something they aren’t supposed to see. A snuff film of human dignity, I guess. This feels like the kind of movies we filmed as kids and then realized we’d get arrested if anyone found them.

I’d like to say that when the Trash Humpers scream “Make it, make it don’t fake it!” or cackle while smashing televisions, they aren’t protesting society; they are simply existing outside of it. They’re celerating the discarded: people, formats (VHS) and things. Did I go too A24 with this? Korine said, “I wanted to make a film that looked like it had been found in a bag of trash on the side of the road, or buried in a basement.” 

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

GET WILD WITH DIA!

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This Saturday on the Groovy Doom Facebook and YouTube channels at 8 PM EDT, Bill and I are back.

Want to know what we’ve shown before? Check out this list.

Have a request? Make it here.

Want to see one of the drink recipes from a past show? We have you covered.

Our first movie is The Headless Eyes and it’s on YouTube.

Here’s the first drink recipe.

Irish Eyes

  • 1 oz. Irish whiskey
  • .25 oz. creme de menthe
  • 2 oz. half and half
  1. Shake all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker.
  2. Pour in a glass and watch your eyes.

The second movie is The Curse of Bigfoot which is on Tubi.

Patterson Gimlin

  • 1.5 oz. Ole Smoky® Salty Watermelon Whiskey
  • 3 oz. lemonade .
  • 25 oz. cranberry juice
  • Crushed Lemonheads
  1. Mix over ice.
  2. Stir and savor, but top with Lemonheads first.

See you Saturday!

The Witch’s Sabbath (2005)

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Why yes, I am trying to watch every Jeff Leroy movie.

A coven of witches open a sexy strip club called the Sin and Skin.

That would be enough for some filmmakers.

But no, here Leroy adds the wrinkle that they must kill 666 men by Halloween so that their dark lord can rise and they can maintain their power.

Imagine, if you will, that all these fratboys show up to get laid and just end up dead. I am all for that, especially when you have a cast of actresses that includes Christine Cowden, the sadly deceased Syn DeVil, Gina Valona, adult actress Lisa Sparxxx, April Betts and Annmarie Lynn Gracey. I could do without seeing Ron Jeremy as a Bible salesman, but what can you do?

This could have lost a few minutes of running time, but maybe I was pausing to see some of the actresses more clearly. Yeah, that’s it.

Leroy takes a premise that could have been a 20-minute short and stretches it into a neon-soaked odyssey of digital gore and high-heeled havoc. It’s bloated, but you don’t watch a Leroy film for tight editing; you watch it to see how many CGI explosions he can fit into a scene with a coven of scream queens.

You can watch this on Tubi.

VISUAL VENGEANCE ON TUBI: Eat Your Heart Out (2008)

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New York City is a concrete jungle where the neon lights don’t reach the shadows and the shadows have teeth. Something is stalking the midnight streets, leaving a trail of shredded suits and empty veins behind. The NYPD is baffled, the morgues are overflowing, and the local news is calling it a massacre.

The victims? All are looking for a little company. Want to party?

In this world, we have Jeffrey (Jack Dillon), a nobody in a city of millions. He’s a sad sack with a dead-end job and a heart full of dusty dreams who has gone incel to the point that he spends money on lovemaking instead of dating. But then he falls in love with Pandora (Melissa Bacelar), a sex worker who finally does pay attention to him, at least when she isn’t luring other men to their deaths, seemingly lulling them into unconsciousness while she chomps big bites right out of their skin. 

Also known as Skinned Alive, this was directed by James Adam Tucker and written by Joshua Nelson. This is an interesting take not just on relationships, but on women, as we wonder whether Pandora is a vampire, a cannibal, a zombie, or just a normal person with a taste for earth pig.

Jeffrey represents a specific brand of modern isolation. He isn’t just lonely; he’s hollow. By bypassing the work of dating for the transaction of sex, he’s already treating human connection as a commodity. Pandora is his perfect mirror. She takes people’s consumption literally. While Jeffrey wants to consume her time and body for emotional validation, she wants to consume his literal vitality.

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Daughter: I, a Woman Part III (1970)

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Directed by Mac Ahlberg and written by Peer Guldbrandsen, this film promises, “NOW the sexual revolution is complete.”

We start in another dimension, as an upside-down woman writhes, and then we get an erotic snake scene, and part of me was like, “Yes, this is what I was looking for,” all before such an inconvenience as a plot rears its ugly head.

Siv (Gun Falk) is dtf as the kids say, and I don’t mean Danish Talking to Fjords. Her daughter, Birthe (Inger Sundh), is shocked, just absolutely gobsmacked by her mom’s antics, such as the toys she’s been gifted by Dr. Leo Smith (Klaus Pagh), which pushes her between the thighs of erotic dancer Lisa (Ellen Faison) and then Lisa’s brother Stephen (Tom Scott).

Come for the sex, try not to leave for the endless hippies smoking pot and fighting bikers scenes.

Ahlberg is still a cinematographer to this day, working on Full Moon movies, as well as being behind the camera for films like Innocent Blood, Striking Distance, the first three House movies and Re-Animator. He also directed Nana, Fanny Hill, Around the World with Fanny Hill and the other two movies in this series.

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Human Tornado (1976)

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After coming off yet another successful comedy tour, Dolemite (Rudy Ray Moore, a cultural force) has a party at his mansion that soon gets gate-crashed by the fuzz. They’re racist, they’re angry, they’re reactionary: they’re cops. They also want to kill Dolemite for sleeping with the sheriff’s wife, so they shoot her just in time for him to kill a deputy. He did not shoot the sheriff, so to speak.

The story changes up to have Dolemite head out to save Queen Bee (Lady Reed) from a pimp named Cavaletti (Herb Graham), all while the sheriff (J.B. Baron) pins the murder of his wife on our hero.

Like many of Moore’s films, this was directed by Cliff Roquemore and written by Jerry Jones, Moore and Jimmy Lynch, who is Mr. Motion in the film. A young Ernie Hudson appears, as does the Bronson Cave, the same place Batman lives. Watch this and know: no permits were necessary. Rudy Ray Moore famously operated on Dolemite Time, which meant filming until the cops showed up or the money ran out.

Like a deranged Tom Jones, scenes of male-on-female oral sex are intercut with fried chicken eating, as well as moments when Dolemite services a woman so effectively that the entire house falls down around the bed. Dolemite breaks the fourth wall, pausing and rewinding the action, and there are evil female torturers with witch makeup. This feels like the product of the stickiest of the icky, and I would have it no other way.

There’s an anachronistic moment where Dolemite screams at an effeminate man, played by Doug Senior, who appeared on our live stream this weekend. Doug may not enjoy this part, as it’s really homophobic, but he had great things to say about Dolemite, who he said was soft spoken and kind when the cameras were off, but barking and wild when he needed to be.

This scene is part of the hyper-masculine, often reactionary tropes found in 1970s street comedy. However, the contrast between Moore’s onscreen persona and his off-screen kindness is a well-documented part of his legacy. He was a savvy businessman who played a character to empower a specific demographic, even if that character carried the prejudices of its time.

Made for $150,000, this made back $4.5 million. Talk about return on investment.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: How Come Nobody’s on Our Side? (1974)

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Directed by Richard Michaels (Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean) and penned by Leigh Chapman, the former actress turned screenwriter who wrote the Chuck Norris cult hit The Octagon, this film is a strange cocktail of industry cynicism and low-budget grit.

The film stars Adam Roarke as Person and Larry Bishop as Brandy. If those names sound familiar, they should; both were staples of the leather-and-chrome biker circuit (Hells Angels on Wheels, The Savage Seven). Here, they play two stuntmen who have finally had enough of the shallow Tinseltown grind. Trading the movie set for the open road, they decide to pivot into the high-stakes world of international narcotics. Joined by Person’s sister Brigitte, played by the ethereal Alexandra Hay (Skidoo), the trio heads south of the border to move weight across Mexico.

There’s no real story to speak of, but it does feature early roles for Penny Marshall and Rob Reiner as the couple the bikers are buying drugs from. Despite being filmed in 1971, it sat on a shelf for three years. When it finally emerged, it felt less like a hard-hitting crime drama and more like a nihilistic, 84-minute sitcom episode where the punchlines are replaced by dust and desperation.

There isn’t a traditional story to cling to. Instead, the film functions as a vibe-heavy road movie. It’s a hazy journey through the desert that feels exactly like the era it was born in—unfiltered, aimless, and slightly hungover. Whether that’s your jam or a total drag depends entirely on how much you value vibe over plot. As they say, your mileage may vary.