1990 Hungarian cyberpunk, so forget the high-tech, neon-drenched luxury of Blade Runner. This is rust-punk, a world of grime, leaking pipes and CRT monitors held together by spit and prayer. It’s a movie that feels like it’s filmed on a dying planet, or at least a dying political system, and every frame is dripping with an atmosphere so thick you’ll need a shower after the credits roll.

In a sprawling, nameless Eastern European industrial wasteland, a bathtub sits in the middle of a cavernous workshop. Inside is Eckermann (nicknamed Little Cloud), a meteorologist who spends more time drifting through his own psychic internal weather patterns than looking at the sky.

He’s joined by two fellow outcasts squatting in the ruins: Berlioz, a wired, restless hedonist looking for the next rush and Vero, the muscle, a silent factory titan who looks like he could punch through a brick wall if it looked at him funny.

The clock is ticking. The military is moving in to shut down the zone, clearing out the human junk to make way for progress (or just more organized decay). But our trio isn’t leaving empty-handed. They’ve got a plan to hack into the system, manipulate the data, and rig a horse race to secure their exit strategy.

This movie has real, decaying Soviet-era industrial sites. The lighting is sickly greens and bruised blues. It moves at a dreamlike, almost lethargic pace that suddenly spikes into moments of eye-popping, mind-boggling visual insanity. It’s a relic of a very specific time and place about people living in the literal guts of a machine that has stopped working.

Just don’t expect a happy ending. In the industrial zone, the forecast is always bleak.

You can watch this on Cultpix.

Jerry Warren made a career out of buying foreign films, hacking them to pieces, and inserting scenes of people sitting in offices talking about what we just saw. But Teenage Zombies is a special vintage of Warren: it’s one of the few he actually sat down and directed himself from start to finish. And by directed, I mean that he pointed a camera at people and hoped for the best.

A quartet of clean-cut teens (Reg, Skip, Julie and Pam) who decide to go water skiing and end up on an island that isn’t on any map. Why? Because it’s the secret HQ of Dr. Myra (Katherine Victor, Mesa of Lost Women), who isn’t just your run-of-the-mill mad scientist. She’s working for an Eastern country to develop a drug that turns Americans into mindless, obedient slaves. Her current test subjects? A man in a gorilla suit — well, it’s supposed to be an ape — and a bearded zombie named Ivan, played by L.A. jazz DJ Chuck Niles, the only jazz DJ to be on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Niles later said his only direction was to walk like Frankenstein and make gurgling noises.

Speaking of people who did much better after this, Brianne Murphy, who played Pam, was for a time married to Warren, who wrote the script to this on their honeymoon. While working on his movies, she worked as a production manager, which saved money. It also gave her experience as a second unit director. She became a trailblazing cinematographer who shattered gender barriers in a male-dominated film industry. Her career gained momentum in 1975 when she took over as script supervisor on Columbo, and in 1980, she became the first female director of photography on a major studio film, Fatso. 

Initially denied entry to her local union by an officer who swore she’d join “over his dead body,” she successfully joined after his passing, eventually becoming the union’s first female executive board member. To bypass systemic bias, she often used the name “Brian” or her initials “G.B.” on applications and even lowered her voice during professional phone calls to secure work.

Murphy is widely remembered as a pivotal figure who fought for women’s rights and visibility in Hollywood. She won an Academy Award for Scientific and Engineering Achievement in 1982 and an Emmy for her work on Highway to Heaven.

Warren wrote this under his favorite pseudonym, Jacques Lecoutier. He used it so often he actually forgot how to spell it, frequently misspelling his own fake name in the credits.

Because the copyright was not actually registered (despite a 1957 claim), this movie entered the public domain immediately. It’s been a staple of 50 Movie Pack DVDs and late-night creature features for decades.

The poster promises “Young Pawns Thrust into Pulsating Cages of Horror,” but what you actually get is a lot of walking, a sheriff who is obviously evil from the second he appears and a climax involving a gorilla that looks like it was stolen from a high school drama department’s dumpster. I loved it, as you can gather.

You can watch this on Cultpix.

Devil’s Due is a musty and Satanic relic from 1973, sitting at the humid intersection where the Golden Age of Adult meets the post-Rosemary’s Baby possession explosion. This isn’t just a skin flick; it’s a mood piece dripping with the era’s specific brand of occult grime. It feels like a film shot in a basement that hasn’t been aired out since the LeVay era began.

The film stars Cindy West as a woman caught in the web of a local coven. While many films of this era used the Satanic cult angle as a thin excuse for low-budget ritual scenes, Devil’s Due leans into the psychological dread of bodily autonomy—or the lack thereof.

Cindy is not having a good day. In fact, she’s having one of the worst first acts in grindhouse history. She’s been drugged and assaulted by Dean Carlson (John Buco), an act of violation that leaves her pregnant. Seeking some semblance of sanctuary, she runs to her mechanic boyfriend, Willie Joe (played by Davey Jones — no, not that one). After a desperate attempt at connection, she tells him he’s the father, only for Willie Joe to dump her on the spot with the coldness of a blown head gasket.

Driven to the edge, she seeks out the only man who has never let her down: her father. Instead of paternal comfort, she finds him balls-deep in her best friend, Barbie (Lisa Grant). The betrayal is so visceral, so absolute, that Cindy screams until she physically breaks. She suffers a miscarriage and literally loses her voice, a heavy-handed but effective metaphor for a woman completely silenced by the men in her life.

Cindy runs again, this time to the big city, where she moves in with Dawn (Before she was “More, More, More”-ing her way onto the disco charts, Andrea True was a staple of these gritty New York productions. She brings a certain star power to the screen, elevating the material. and Nicky (Darby Lloyd Rains), two lesbians who say that she’s the best thing that ever happened to them.

The film wouldn’t have this title if it weren’t for Kampala (Gus Thomas) and his sex cult. In a bizarre twist of “where are they now,” Thomas would eventually leave the world of ritualistic smut to become Mark Suben, the District Attorney of Cortland, New York.

Having been burned by every man she’s ever known, Cindy sees right through Kampala’s mystical posturing. The film takes a sharp turn into a proto-feminist revenge flick as the girls conspire to hijack the cult from within. The cast list here is a “Who’s Who” of 70s adult legends, including Jamie Gillis, Marc Stevens, Georgina Spelvin (the same year she changed the game in The Devil in Miss Jones) and Tina Russell.

This movie rewards us with dialogue like,  “You may find this kind of strange, Cindy, but I work for the Devil!” and “You must kiss the cock of Satan!” Also: Death by poisoned nipples.

Directed by Ernest Danna and written by Gerry Pound, Devil’s Due is heavily influenced by the hyper-stylized Church of Satan photo layouts that haunted the pages of Men’s Digest and Knight magazines in the early 70s. It’s obsessed with the aesthetics of the Black Mass with lots of candles, heavy eyeliner, and a pervasive sense of spiritual decay.

You can watch this on Cultpix.

I love the original Naked Gun movies so much that I knew that no matter what, this probably wouldn’t make me happy. Taking on the mantle of Leslie Nielsen is basically a suicide mission, like trying to out-drink Oliver Reed or out-scream Klaus Kinski. It shouldn’t work and it really doesn’t, but I still had some fun with this.

Liam Neeson steps into the oversized, slapstick-covered shoes of Frank Drebin Jr. He’s investigating the death of a software engineer that smells fishier than a cannery in a heatwave. Along for the ride is Pamela Anderson as Beth Davenport. She honestly handles the deadpan absurdity better than most “serious” actors could (after her Criterion Closet appearance, I love her even more) and Paul Walter Hauser, who is slowly becoming the patron saint of character actors, is decent.

The villain is Richard Cane (Danny Huston), a tech billionaire who wants to use a P.L.O.T. Device to turn humanity back into primal beasts. It’s the kind of high-concept nonsense that would make the Zuckers proud, and it gives the movie an excuse to jump from a threesome with a magical snowman to a chase scene involving an electric car, a swarm of bees, and a replacement windshield.

The thing about the original films—and the short-lived Police Squad!—is that they weren’t just funny; they were relentless. They attacked the frame from every angle. Schaffer (the man who gave us Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, a film I will defend until the day I die and Becca buries me with my Jess Franco blu-rays) understands gags.

Neeson is the secret weapon here. We’ve spent the last twenty years watching him growl into burner phones and punch people’s throats, so watching him use a bank robber as a literal human shield or get airlifted by the spirit of his father—who has manifested as an owl—is fun.

Is it high art? No. Is it as good as the 1988 original? Nothing is. But in a world of elevated horror and meta blockbusters that take themselves way too seriously, seeing a man lose his pants at a Ponzi-scheme.com Arena while trying to save the world is a cinematic palette cleanser.

I love dystopian end-of-the-world movies.

I adore most dangerous game movies.

I heart future game-show movies about violence. 

By all rights, I should love this movie, and no, I didn’t.

It comes close, so close to what I want it to be, but it feels like it can barely get out of its own way.

If you grew up in the 80s, Paul Michael Glaser’s The Running Man was a neon-soaked, Lycra-stretching movie filled with Arnold one-liners and Richard Dawson’s oily charisma. It wasn’t Stephen King. It wasn’t even Richard Bachman. It was a cartoon. It also came several years after the book, as did much better versions of this story, like Endgame, Warriors of the Year 2072, and Death Race 2000.

Edgar Wright—the man who gave us the Cornetto Trilogy—has spent years obsessing over the actual book. He didn’t want sub-zeros and chainsaws; he wanted the grim, soot-stained nihilism of King’s 1982 novel. It also feels weird that they gave him such a huge budget and that he took on a very mainstream film, but we’ll get to that.

In a future that feels uncomfortably like next Tuesday, the U.S. is a bankrupt wasteland ruled by The Network. If you aren’t rich, you’re starving, and the only thing keeping the lights on is the high-def bloodsport of The Running Man.

Glen Powell plays Ben Richards, but forget the tanned, grinning flyboy from Top Gun: Maverick. Here, he’s a desperate, blacklisted union worker in the slums of Co-Op City. His kid is dying of the flu, he’s broke,  and his only option is to sign his life away to executive producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin).

The rules are simple: Survive 30 days. You get a head start, a camcorder and the entire world is encouraged to murder you for cold, hard cash.

Wright and co-writer Michael Bacall turn the hunt into a paranoid, cross-country trek through a decaying America. Along the way, Richards meets a gallery of losers and rebels, including Michael Cera as an ill-fated activist in Derry, Maine (nice King nod there), and William H. Macy as a black-market disguise artist.

The film pulls no punches on the media satire. We get deepfakes, manipulated live feeds, and Colman Domingo as Bobby T, a game-show host who makes modern influencers look like saints. Even Lee Pace shows up as Evan McCone, the lead hunter who is less a gladiator and more a state-sponsored executioner.

Wright ditches his usual stylized editing for a more grounded, gritty approach. Powell does well, carrying the weight of a man who knows he’s already dead. As for Arnold, he shows up on the face of the $100 bill.  And it’s bleak. Really bleak. Audiences in late 2025 apparently weren’t in the mood for a $110 million bummer about the end of the world and the death of truth, which explains why it sank at the box office like a stone. It only clawed back $69 million, making it a certified bomb.

I wonder, beyond the love of the book, why Wright made this. It feels like anyone could have made this movie and not him. It’s missing his style and only retains the needledrops, which are more annoying in this than fitting. It all feels very static, perhaps because it also feels like something I could turn on the news and watch for real. Maybe that’s the beauty of the original film: it has these themes but also realizes that, as a cartoon, the medicine and message go down a lot smoother.

This shot-on-video martial-arts double feature from Joseph Lai and IFD Films unleashes pure 1980s ninja chaos as two unlikely heroes are dragged into a war over stolen germ-warfare secrets. Featuring disappearing ninja assassins, endless waves of thugs, criminal masterminds, insane effects and the mysterious hocus pocus magic fighting style. These are both full-tilt SOV insanity, delivering cult ninja action at maximum volume.

Also: I love that Godfrey Ho movies have songs in them from bands like Clan of Mymox, Jean Michel Jarre, Wendy Carlos, Joy Division and more.

Born a Ninja (some year between 1978 and 1987): Ninjas. “Life means nothing to them,” says Mister Tanaka, a man who shows up in this wearing an outfit like my dad in the mid-80s, a striped red polo and short shorts.

If you ask IFD what this Joe Law-directed and written movie is about, they’d say, “A Japanese scientist tries to conceal a deadly formula, but an undead ace and his ninja devils are determined to use it to cause mischief and mayhem. It is up to Lung, a master of the lost art of Hocus Pocus, to keep evil at bay and prevent mass destruction on a global scale.”

Sure, maybe.

IMDB lists the director as Chi Lo, who used the name Joe Law to make Crippled Masters and Lo Ke to direct Deadly Hands of Kung Fu.  Seeing as how this was produced by Joseph Lai and Betty Chan, all bets are off.

This flick is a Frankenstein of footage. It combines a Taiwanese TV show, another movie, actually called Born a Ninja, and the kind of dialogue that only occurs when a 1980s script is translated from Cantonese to English by someone who primarily speaks “American Action Movie Trailer.” It could also be Silent Killers. It could be Ninja Destroyer. It could be titled Breakfast with a Shuriken, and it would still be impossible to tell you what actually happened.

Let me try.

Mister Tanaka has a secret formula from World War II that could destroy the world. That much is true. Two women want the formula: Becky, who wears a yellow vest and Confederate-flag shorts. Still, I think that means she’s into late 70s and early 80s redneck trends in America a little too late as they move across the globe and this isn’t racist like my neighbor who wears short shorts and threw away all his kids toys after his wife left with the kids and also has a huge Southern Cross up on his garage wall despite being an Italian man in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Also, his fiancée’s last name is Gambino. She backed right into our car, and he came over in just a G-string to see if we were OK.

Did I go on a tangent?

Becky is joined by Brenda. She loves denim so much she’s rocking the full Canadian tuxedo while doing high kicks. They’re joined by Larry, a master of the hocus pocus style. This involves your everyday kung fu, supplemented by the ability to shoot fire from your fingertips. It’s the kind of martial arts I used to try in my backyard until my mom threatened to take away my bang snaps.

As for the bad guy ninja, that’s Meng Fei, who was also in the Ninja Death trilogy, Night Orchid, Everlasting Chivalry, The Sun Moon Legend and Middle Kingdom’s Mark of Blood. He’s pretty amazing in the last fight scene.

Anyways, Mister Tanaka keeps dreaming of dead people that were killed by this secret back in the war, and the secret is a mirrored mustache that you put on a devil mask. Then there’s a white ninja named David. He battles Larry in the woods—because all ninja battles must occur in a public park with visible power lines—before they decide to be best friends. They get a room, drink beer, and eat fried cabbage. Honestly? That’s the most relatable thing I’ve ever seen in an IFD production.

Or maybe that was the last movie? Have years of drinking, substances, and Godfrey Ho movies dulled my reason, and when confronted by this synth-scored shot on video, my mind just wanders between different martial worlds, unsure of all the things I’ve seen, all the ninja deaths I’ve felt as if they were my own? In truth, the only important thing is that ninjas can become straw men and that you can swallow a sword in the middle of a fight and live.

Music in this one includes Jerry Fielding’s soundtrack for The Gauntlet, the Ken Thorne score for The Protector and Roy Budd’s “Fb M15.” Check out the Letterboxd list of IFC music cues here, I’ve commented several times on it.

I do know one thing. When David sees Larry hanging out with the two ladies, he says, “Two chicks? You one animal!” That’s exactly how I felt watching this movie. I was an animal. A confused, beautiful, ninja-obsessed animal.

Commando the Ninja (1983): Also known as American Commando Ninja, IFD claims it was made by Joe Law. Really, who can tell you the truth? Who even knows how many titles this has, how much music it stole or what it’s about? Hocus pocus, as the sensei says at the beginning. It doesn’t have to make sense. Seeing as how this was produced by Joseph Lai and Betty Chan, all bets are off.

Jow Law is also Law Chi AKA Chi Lo, the director of The Crippled Masters, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu (using the name Lo Ke), Girl with Cat’s Eyes and Magic Swords.

This poster has nothing to do with the movie you’re about to watch. Who cares? You’re here, one assumes, for ninjas. Or commandos. Or Commando the Ninja.

In the world of 80s Hong Kong chop-socky cinema, truth is a relative term. Who knows how many titles this has? Who knows how many synth-pop tracks were borrowed from Tangerine Dream? Who even knows what’s going on?

IFD also lets us know what this should be about: “David, an up-coming young master of Ninjitsu, is recruited by his Master to steal the formula for a bacteriological weapon and to free the Japanese scientist who is responsible for developing it. He is pitted against two wily opponents: Mark, a KGB operative, and Martin, who are bent on using the formula in a bid for world domination. The fate of humanity is in the hands of David and a group of four surprisingly acrobatic young fighters.”

Is it? What is the sound of one hand clapping? If a ninja wears a bright neon headband in a forest of green, is he truly invisible?

Allow this koan to expand your reality.

The student asked, “Master, how can the hero fight the villain when they are never in the same frame together?”

The Master replied, “The sword that strikes in Taiwan draws blood in Hong Kong. The bridge between them is not made of stone, but of a 1984 Scotch tape splice.”

Look, all I know is that only a ninja can kill a ninja.

Extras include SD masters from original tape elements, Commando the Ninja commentary with Justin Decloux and Will Sloane of The Important Cinema Club, Born A Ninja commentary by Justin Decloux of The Important Cinema Club, The Essential Godfrey Ho and The Law Chi Touch video essays, an interview with Kwan Chung, an image gallery, trailers, two mini-posters, a reversible sleeve featuring original VHS art, a “Stick Your Own” VHS sticker set, a limited edition O-Card by Uncle Frank, a booklet with essay by ninja movie expert C.J. Lines and a Blu-ray sleeve featuring art by The Dude.

Holy fuck, this is everything. It’s more effort than went into the original filming of the movie, and I am 100% here for it. If you want to see a man in a red polo shirt talk about the futility of life before a white ninja eats fried cabbage, this is your Holy Grail.

I also have to call out how amazing the menus are on these releases. The arcade inspired one on this release is perfect and something few labels would put that much time and effort into making. Just another reason why you need to buy this.

You can get this from MVD.