JUNESPLOITATION: Ringo (1978)

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DAY 16: Free space!

Eight years after the biggest band in the world broke up, their least loved member Ringo Starr — “Ringo wasn’t even the best drummer in The Beatles” is a quote often attributed to John Lennon, but it actually comes from British comedian Jasper Carrott, who said it on Radio Live, a British talk show; John actually said that Ringo was “a damn good drummer” — was probably wondered what to do.

Most of the time, that was to party. He said of his friends and fellow Hollywood Vampires Nilsson and Keith Moon, “We weren’t musicians dabbling in drugs and alcohol; now we were junkies dabbling in music.”

Yet Ringo still had enough cachet in 1978 to turn that existential dread into a prime-time NBC special.

By the time of the filming,  he was miserable and depressed. He’d divorced Maureen Cox three years earlier, and in his outtakes, it’s said that he’s “testy, short-tempered and disinterested in working on the special.”

What a start, huh?

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Welcome to Ringo, a TV movie that sits comfortably in that sweet, strange spot between classic rock vanity project and absolute late-70s insanity. If you ever wondered what happened when the guys behind Police Academy got their hands on a Beatle and a copy of Mark Twain, well, here you go.

The premise is classic Prince and the Pauper, but instead of jolly old England, we’ve got Hollywood grime. Ringo plays himself—bored, pampered and totally over being famous—and he also plays his doppelgänger, Ognir Rrats, which is totally the Alucard trick. Then again, Ringo was in Son of Dracula.

While Ringo is being chauffeured around in limos and dealing with his horrid agent Marty Flesh (John Ritter), Ognir is out there selling maps to the stars’ homes, getting his bike pulverized by city buses and dodging an abusive father, played by Art Carney.

Let’s take a moment and talk about Art Carney. Perhaps best known for being Ed Norton on The Honeymooners, he also has some wild movies in his history. How about St. Helens, an HBO-TV movie with a Goblin soundtrack? Or being in Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson’s video for “Say Say Say?” Or playing Steeler’s owner Art Rooney in Fighting Back: The Story of Rocky Bleier? In 1978 alone, Carney played himself on Alice and was in Ringo and the Star Wars Holiday Special. 

As Norton would say, “Like we say in the sewer, time and tide wait for no man.” 

Anyway, Ringo and Ognir decide to swap lives for a few hours. Because, hey, why not? What could possibly go wrong?

Starr, now masquerading as Rrats, runs into a few 50s greasers (Greg Evigan of TV’s BJ and the Bear and possibly Steve De Jarnatt, who went on to direct Cherry 2000 and Miracle Mile, as well as write Strange Brew) who want to beat him up. But now that he’s Ringo, he has so much money that he can buy their fancy car and drive home instead of taking the bus. That’s when he met Rrats’ girlfriend Marquine (Carrie Fisher), and let me tell you, I broke the third commandment by exclaiming at the screen. 1978 dressed normal, hair down, casual California girl Carrie Fisher may be one of the biggest reasons I’ve found for believing in the Divine and now, I’ve said Her name in vain.

The real problem? Rrats’ father, who beats Ringo as Rrats into submission, right in front of his woman. Also: We’re to believe that Marquine is underage, as Ringo sings “You’re Sixteen” to her. 

Be better, Ringo. Or Rrats.

As for Rrats as Starr, he’s screwing everything up, even passing out before an appearance on The Mike Douglas Show and destroying his drum set, basically showing that he can’t play. Ringo gets so mad that he escapes and is arrested by Sgt. Suzanne “Pepper” Anderson and yes, that’s TV’s favorite police lady, Angie Dickinson. He gets out of jail thanks to Marquine, who takes him to the Ringo Starr concert.

Did I mention that this is narrated by George Harrison, and that he mentions The Ruttles?

Marty enlists the help of Dr. Nancy (that is his first name; he’s Vincent Price), who puts Rrats into a trance to remember that he’s really Ringo. Or Billy Shears, opening this all up to my “Paul Is Dead” belief system when George tries to convince the world that Ognir isn’t Ringo. It all wraps up and Ringo makes Ognir his road manager, but before a Ringo concert with his band, including Elton John’s bassist Dee Murray, Doctor John, Paul Revere and the Raiders member Keith Allison and Lon Van Eaton (who was on Apple Records along with his brother Derrek).

Throughout, Ringo keeps mentioning that “Yesterday” isn’t his song. But he does play versions of “Yellow Submarine,” “With a Little Help from My Friends” (complete with a tripped out ending), “Act Naturally,” “I’m the Greatest,” “A Man Like Me,” “Hard Times” and “Heart’s on My Sleeve.” Ringo comes across as a goofy guy who just happened to spend a long time with the world’s greatest songwriting duo and got to do some cool stuff, leaving him with tons of money to do, well, whatever he wanted.

I don’t think Ringo is untalented or a bad drummer, either. He’s also cool enough to write “Early 1970,” in which he fired back at Paul for flipping out on him, attacking the messenger over trying to figure out the dates that Paul’s solo album and Let It Be would be released after the band’s breakup. 

“Lives on a farm, got plenty of charm, beep, beep,

He’s got no cows, but he’s sure got a whole lotta sheep,

A brand new wife and a family, And when he comes to town I wonder if he’ll play with me.”

Later in the song, when he mentions John, Ringo sings, “And when he comes to town, I know he’s gonna play with me.”

The solo is by Harrison and follows the line, “‘Cause he’s always in town playing for you with me.”

Ringo being Ringo, he ends the song saying, “And when they come to town, I wanna see all three.”

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Ringo is the kind of mid-tier network weirdness that could only come from 1978 and would only be fueled by cocaine. It was once a film broadcast only once, and then buried by time—only to be rescued by YouTube. The fact that Neal Israel and Pat Proft add just one more cherry on a cherry-rich top.

Then the credits.

After everyone’s name was said, the announcer said, “And a special thank-you to dialogue coach Seymour Cassel.” 

What?!? And that announcer? Peter Cullen. Optimus Prime.

This was all directed by Jeff Margolis, whose career includes tons of award shows and weird-out TV experiences like Twilight Time II, in which Leslie Nielsen hosts this, there’s a debate between G. Gordon Liddy and Moon Unit Zappa, and cast members include Dave Thomas, Fred Willard, Don Novello and Mr. T while the Go-Go’s and Toni Basil perform; the Mr. T educational video Be Somebody… or Be Somebody’s Fool!; an episode of Presenting Susan Anton; special for Olivia Newton-John, Perry Como, Captain & Tenille, Beatrice Arthur, Jaleel White and Frank Sinatra; and of course, being second-unit for 46 episodes of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.

Peace and love. Peace and love.

You can watch this on YouTube.

KO-FI SUPPORTER: Marijuana Man (1968)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by Eddie R., who subscribed at the Big B&S’er tier.

Would you like me to write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

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Wow, what a mystery film. Marijuana Man claims to be from 1968. But if you’re a history nerd or just someone who watched a lot of weed documentaries, you’ll know that the Drug Enforcement Administration wasn’t actually established by President Nixon until 1973. Did the filmmakers somehow possess a psychic link to future federal bureaucracy? Did a time-traveling narc fly a 70s chopper back to a 1968 pot farm?

But who cares? This has a wild man just farming his crop and avoiding that helicopter while trying to win over a young lady with his kind bud. And you get some jammy music from a band called Airhead.

They’re not the 1990s band that was also known as Jefferson Airhead. Or the movie.

Marijuana Man — and that’s what I’m calling him — goes ham on a mushroom while sharing a joint with another hirsute individual. By the end of their session, they’re just lying in the grass.

But all good things must end. A woman doing a tarot spread foresees that Marijuana Man is living in a world that just can’t last, up against people he doesn’t even know he’s battling. So yeah, she may have drawn the fool, and he may have found the death card, but maybe he knows that the death draw really represents profound transformation and the natural ending of cycles. This card encourages letting go of what no longer serves you to allow for personal change.

Despite the ending, where the DEA takes him out, I get the feeling that he’ll live on through his crop. The hippie girl passes out his seeds and sends the others out into the world to plant his magic. And wow, they must have used that helicopter for the shot at the end, when everyone walks away and plants the seeds.

Preserved in the digital archives of the Prelinger Collection, Marijuana Man is a fascinating, gritty artifact of late-1960s or early-1970s independent filmmaking. Most likely shot on location in Marin or Sonoma County, this has some great looks at some early hybrids grown back in the old days. The footage itself stems from the collection of John Carlson (1951–2021), a notable San Francisco filmmaker, lighting technician, and educator who taught cinematography at the City College of San Francisco and worked for decades as a chief colorist at legendary Bay Area labs like Monaco Film and Video.

Thanks, Eddie R., for sending this my way. If anyone is reading this knows more about this movie, please reach out!

You can watch this on YouTube.

A24 BLU-RAY RELEASE: Hazbin Hotel Season 1 (2019)

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If you told me five years ago that an indie animated pilot on YouTube would explode into a massive, multi-season Amazon Prime juggernaut backed by A24—yes, that A24, the folks who usually give us arthouse dread—I’d have told you to stop drinking the projection booth fluid. But here we are in 2026, and Charlie Morningstar is ruling the streaming world.

Imagine if Walt Disney dropped acid and decided to stage a Broadway musical in the middle of a literal hellscape. Our main girl is Charlie Morningstar, the bubbly, overly optimistic Princess of Hell. She’s got a heart of gold in a world made of brimstone. Hell has an overpopulation problem, and Heaven’s solution is a yearly extermination—a regular old genocidal purge where bloodthirsty angels called Exorcists, led by a total frat-boy version of the biblical Adam, come down to slaughter sinners.

Charlie thinks there’s a better way. She opens the Hazbin Hotel, a rehabilitation center designed to help demons redeem themselves so they can check out and head upstairs to the Pearly Gates. She’s backed by Vaggie, her fiercely loyal, no-nonsense manager and girlfriend, as well as Angel Dust, a drug-addled, spider-demon adult film star who serves as their incredibly reluctant first patient, and Alastor, The Radio Demon, a terrifying, old-school powerhouse who sounds like he stepped out of a 1930s broadcast. He thinks Charlie’s dream of redemption is a hilarious joke, so he decides to manage the hotel purely for his own twisted amusement.

This show has a manic, hyper-stylized, indie-animation grit that refuses to play by network rules. The dialogue is foul-mouthed, the jokes fly at a mile a minute, and the character designs look wild. But the real secret weapon? The music. Hazbin Hotel delivers showtune after showtune that will get stuck in your head for days. It balances the pitch-black comedy and cartoon ultraviolence with an unbelievable amount of heart. You actually start rooting for these degenerate souls to find a scrap of humanity.

Look, it’s a long way from a Lucio Fulci movie, but Hazbin Hotel shares that same DIY, counter-culture DNA that makes cult cinema so great. It started as a passion project on YouTube, defied the odds and created a massive, devoted universe (including its awesome sister-show Helluva Boss).

If you like your animation loud, profane, beautifully stylized, and packed with catchy tunes and demonic lore, you need to check into the Hazbin. Just watch your back around the Radio Demon.

JUNESPLOITATION: Biohazard 2 (1998)

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DAY 15. George Romero!

As a yinzer, I have seen every Romero movie many, many times. So other than his OJ Simpson documentary and Iron City Asskickers, I had no idea what to do.

Do I go to the George A. Romero Archival Collection at Pitt and write about one of his unproduced scripts like Black Mariah, Cartoon, Chain Letter, Cherubs, Cupie, Dark Secrets, Dark Young Things, Darque Passages, Dead Man’s Catch, Death of Death, Divine Spirit, Dracula, Dreamwalker, Enemies, Figments, Flying Horses, Funky Coven, George Romero’s Scary Tales, Germs, Ghost Town, Gogiro (Loves You), Golem, GPS, Hell, Hell Hotel, Hell Bent, Hot-L Diablo, Honus, House With a Clock In Its Walls, Jack and the Beanstalk, Meatmarkets, Midnight Show, Monster MASH, Moonshadoes, Native Tongue, Night of the Living Dead: The Series, Nuns from Outer Space, Peter and the Wolfman, Scream of Fear, Shop Til You Drop…Dead, The Calling, The Collaboration, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, The Raven or Jacaranda Joe?

How about Welcome to Dead House, an unproduced adaption of the first Goosebumps book that has the dead of Dark Falls become zombies instead of ghouls? Supposedly Tim Burton was to direct and other scripts were written by John Sayles, Mick Garris and Alan Ormsby.

Then I remembered — Bill and I did a talking head doc about Romero’s Resident Evil project and it never got released, so why not use the research I did?

It all started when Romero directed a live-action commercial promoting the video game Resident Evil 2 in Los Angeles. The 30-second advertisement featured the game’s two main characters, Leon S. Kennedy (Brad Renfro) and Claire Redfield (Adrienne Frantz), fighting a horde of zombies while in Raccoon City’s police station. This commercial was only shown in Japan where the game is known as Biohazard 2. 

Trust me — this thing looks great. A million dollar budget for 30 seconds of commercial? Amazing.

Frantz said to Variety: ““It was an honor to work with a legend like Romero,” Frantz said. “All of the zombie TV shows and movies that we see today are because of him. He started an entire horror film revolution.”

That’s true. We wouldn’t even have this video game without him, as so many of the things accepted about zombies come directly from him and his films.

Resident Evil was created by Shinji Mikami and Tokuro Fujiwara and released for the PlayStation in 1996.It is credited for defining the survival horror genre and returning zombies to popular culture. Game design started in 1993 when Capcom’s Tokuro Fujiwara told Shinji Mikami and other co-workers to create a game using elements from Fujiwara’s 1989 game Sweet Home on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Sweet Home was based on a movie that was released around the same time.  The cinematic nature of Sweet Home led to Biohazard.

Capcom was so impressed with Romero’s work, it was strongly indicated that Romero would direct the first Resident Evil film. He declined at first — “I don’t wanna make another film with zombies in it, and I couldn’t make a movie based on something that ain’t mine.” He reconsidered and wrote a script for the first movie. which was eventually rejected in favor of Paul W. S. Anderson’s version.

Romero’s Resident Evil was set in the Spencer Mansion and focused on Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine. It’s a lot more faithful to the game than the Paul W.S. Anderson movies and has giant snakes, man-eating plants and mutant sharks. Barry Burton, Rebecca Chambers, Ada Wong and Albert Wesker were to also appear. Not a gamer, Romero had his assistant Jason play the game for him so he could get a feel for it.

The ending to the film would have been similar to the best ending to the first Resident Evil game. Romero even got Berni Wrightson to do artwork for Tyrant, the villain.

Buts adly, Capcom producer Yoshiki Okamoto bluntly stated at the time: “Romero’s script wasn’t good, so Romero was fired.” There’s also rumor that the movie would have been NC-17 so he wasn’t picked.

Romero also said in an interview with Paul Weedon, “…this guy named Bernd Eichinger, who came in and said “No, this is not what I want.” And that was it. And he had no idea what a video game was. This is the guy that made House of the Spirits and Das Boot and he just had an impression of what he wanted the thing to be, which sort of flew in the face of all of us – Capcom and his own guys. So that was it.”

Alan B. McElroy (Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Wrong Turn) and Jamie Blanks (Valentine, Urban Legend) also were said to work on treatments.

While not a gamer, Romero was smart enough to recognize that they led to the return of zombies. He said, “I do think the popularity of the creature has come from video games, not film. Zombieland was the first zombie film to break $100 million at the box office, and therefore Hollywood got interested. The remake of Dawn of the Dead did about $75 million … But dozens of hugely popular video games have had a bigger impact.”

Luckily, he saw the benefits of this new fame for the walking dead. As Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema says, “Whatever criticism one might want to level against the first Resident Evil movie, it had an undeniably positive effect on the zombie’s fortunes. Dragged into the mainstream by the videogame franchise and Anderson’s blockbuster, the living dead suddenly achieved a degree of respectability they’d never had before. It was as if, after seventy-odd years of being ignored, they’d finally received their invite to the Hollywood party. Within mere weeks of Resident Evil‘s opening came a series of press releases and announcements suggesting that the zombie had finally broken free of its marginal roots: a remake of Dawn of the Dead had received the greenlight, a big-screen adaptation of arcade game The House of the Dead was going into production; and, perhaps most exciting of all, George Romero announced at Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors Convention in August 2002 that he was in serious talks with Twentieth Century Fox to complete the fourth and final installment of his trilogy — provisionally dubbed Land of the Dead, with a $10 million budget and a planned R-rated release.”

You can watch this on YouTube.

Murder, She Wrote S4 E5: The Way to Dusty Death (1987)

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A business tyrant’s sudden death puts Jessica on the trail of several of his suspicious company executives.

Season 4, Episode 4: The Way to Dusty Death (October 25, 1987)

When Jessica and the rest of the corporate bigwigs get the invite to a chairman’s secluded country estate, they think they’re there to fight for the throne. Instead, they find their host stone-cold dead. Turns out, he didn’t just invite them over for cocktails; he brought them all together to reveal he was playing them against each other and just as the knives were coming out, someone decided to stop talking and start killing.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury?

  • Joanna Barnes (Lydia Barnett): A classic face of the 60s and 70s who was in everything from Spartacus to The War Wagon.
  • Richard Beymer (Morgan McCormack): Tony from West Side Story, but genre fans know him from his chilling turn in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.
  • Lynn Carlin (Nicole): Best known for John Cassavetes’ Faces.
  • Nancy Dussault (Kate Dutton): A sitcom staple who brought a lot of charm to the screen during the golden age of TV guest spots. Muriel from Too Close for Comfort!
  • Jenilee Harrison (Serena): She was on Three’s Company and Dallas, but she’s logged enough appearances in TV mysteries to be considered part of the “we’ve seen you die in everything” club.
  • Richard Jaeckel (Dr. Leon Chatsworth): Now here’s a guy. A true character actor who showed up in everything from The Dirty Dozen to the horror-inflected Mako: The Jaws of Death and Grizzly. He fought nature throughout the drive-in era.
  • Andrea Marcovicci (Anne Hathaway): She’s got a resume that spans from high-brow drama to the Larry Cohen classic The Stuff.
  • Sandy McPeak (Spruce Osborne): A reliable heavy in countless 70s and 80s procedurals.
  • Joanna Pettet (Virginia McCormack): Total cult royalty. She was in the Bond spoof Casino Royale, but we know her for her roles in the horror flicks Welcome to Arrow Beach and the killer-house movie The Evil.
  • Lawrence Pressman (Tom Dutton): A veteran of the screen who turned up in The Hellstrom Chronicle and The Man in the Glass Booth.
  • Ray Walston (Q. L. Frubson): A legend. From the alien My Favorite Martian to the ultimate cool-but-mean teacher, Mr. Hand, in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
  • Cornel Wilde (Duncan Barnett): A swashbuckling star of the 40s and 50s who turned into a real master of exploitation and survival horror later in his career. He directed and starred in the gritty, intense The Naked Prey.
  • Jay Robinson (Paddock): He was Caligula in The Robe, but he’s also in The Sword and the Sorcerer, Transylvania Twist and the mutant-mosquito disaster flick Skeeter.

Smaller roles are played by Hank Brandt, Bob Snead, E.R. Davies, Larry Carr, Dotty Ertel, Ben Pollock, Walter Smith and Flo Di Re.

What happens?

Jessica finds herself in the concrete jungle of New York City, trading her quiet life in Cabot Cove for the cold, hard world of high finance. She’s been roped into the board of directors for Barnett Industries, mostly because the chairman, Duncan Barnett, thinks having her name on the letterhead adds some class.

She just wants to make sure her local paper-mill stays open.

Duncan calls for a special weekend retreat at his townhouse on 63rd Street, and the air is thick with ambition. Everyone in the room is sweating, waiting for the news that he’s finally stepping down and handing over the keys to the kingdom.

When Duncan stands up and drops the bombshell—that he’s not going anywhere—the room turns toxic. It’s full-on Macbeth. We’ve got Morgan McCormack and his wife Virginia playing the power-couple, fueled by a cryptic reading from a psychic named Paddock that promises them the crown.

Then, someone decides that waiting for the natural order of succession is for suckers.

The next morning, the board realizes their beloved boss is dead. At first, it looks like a botched poisoning attempt. Morgan and Ginny had already spiked his brandy with digitalis and they scramble to cover their tracks when they realize he didn’t drink it. But J.B. isn’t buying the easy answer. She starts digging, realizing that in a house full of vipers, the person who actually pulled the trigger (or in this case, pushed the appliance) was the one nobody suspected.

Who did it?

The killer is Kate Dutton (was she tired of Cosmic Cow?). While the McCormacks were busy plotting and planting fake evidence, Kate went to Duncan to plead her husband’s case. When Duncan laughed in her face, she didn’t walk away. She pushed the television set right into his bathtub, killing him with a high-voltage jolt.

At the risk of being on a government watch list, this is my favorite way people get murdered in movies.

Kate was caught because she claimed to have heard a noise from another room that, given the layout of the townhouse, would have been physically impossible to hear.

Who made it?

It was directed by Nick Havinga, who directed episodes of Cliffhangers! and the TV movie made from one of the unfinished stories, The Girl Who Saved the World. This was written by Philip Gerson.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?

No. Come on! Jessica doesn’t even have a groove yet, much less is ready to get it back.

Was it any good?

It’s a nice change of pace from small town to big city.

Any trivia?

This was Cornel Wilde’s last role.

The title of this episode is quote from Macbeth:

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

The victims’ names are the same as the play and the character of Anne Hathaway is possibly named for Shakespeare’s wife.

Mrs. McCormack threatens Jessica with libel for something she said. Maybe she means slander.

Give me a reasonable quote:

Paddock: There are times when the forces of life combine to create a power where all things are possible, where a strong man can act with speed and decisiveness. For the timid, a moment never realized. For the bold, a moment that can catapult him to undreamed-of plateaus of personal wealth and power. Your will is extremely powerful, Mr. McCormack. It shall overpower those with whom you compete. And I can tell you, that will be soon, very soon.

What’s next?

Jessica’s British cousin, Emma MacGill is charged with an old flame’s murder. Get ready. This is where the show has her dressing up and acting like an idiot! This is also a British actor from American TV episode, with Christopher Hewett (Mr. Belvedere) and Jane Leeves (tossed salad and scrambled eggs) showing upo. Will Lynn Belvedere get killed or — even better — show Jessica a bit of the business? Or dare I dream of a sapphic tryst with Niles Crane’s love? Hurry back next week!

JUNESPLOITATION: Michael Dudikoff Presents Action Adventure Theater

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DAY 14. Cannon!

Wow, you have no idea how excited I am about this.

I saw VHS art for the movie Urban Warriors and saw something I have never seen before: the Michael Dudikoff Presents Action Adventure Theater line.

If you’ve spent any time looking at the history of the Cannon Group, you know that the company was essentially a house of cards held together by Menahem Golan’s ambition and a lot of pre-sold tape rights. They didn’t even bother starting their own domestic home video label until 1989. By that point, the wheels were already coming off the Go-Go Boys’ wagon and they were slashing their production budgets to the bone.

They needed product to fill the shelves of that new home video arm and they needed it cheap. That’s how they ended up dumpster diving into the international market, picking up some oddball productions.

I went to the source of all things Cannon, Austin Trunick, who already covered this four years ago on the Cannon Film Guide Facebook page, saying “In the late ’80s, Cannon tried to squeeze some money out of several of their older distro titles that hadn’t been fully exploited on the video market. Their idea was to have modern stars introduce the films, which resulted in the “Michael Dudikoff Presents Action Adventure Theater” line of tapes.”

Much like the 22-26 action adventure films that bear the title Sybil Danning’s Adventure Video for the USA Home Video company, this was a way to use an action star to make some money with no risk.

There are only four of these, so why don’t we get into them?

The Bronx Executioner (1989): Welcome to a post-apocalyptic wasteland where humanoids and androids are locked in a nonsensical war for supremacy. These androids bleed human blood, look like guys in leather jackets and apparently spent their entire R&D budget at a RadioShack clearance sale. If one of them had an Italian name, it would be Roberto Batty.

The film follows our rookie deputy, James (Gabriele Gori, Attrazione Pericolosa), who arrives in the Bronx to replace the legendary Sheriff Warren. And here is where the fun begins: Warren is played by the iconic Woody Strode, but every single frame of him is shamelessly recycled from the 1984 movie The Final Executioner.

As for the Bronx itself? It’s a series of mounds of dirt and a derelict country villa that has never seen a New York City zip code in its life. James, fresh from a police academy that apparently consists solely of doing chin-ups on a metal pole, is tasked with policing this chaos. But the movie quickly gets bored with him, and shifts focus to Dakar (Alex Vitale, Jakoda from Strike Commando!), a humanoid leader who spends the better part of the runtime screaming into a walkie-talkie while driving a jeep through the Italian countryside.

When a cyborg goes on a killing spree, you’d expect some stakes, right? Forget it. You won’t get an explanation of who, why or what the hell is happening. The narrative is a patchwork quilt of stock footage, recycled scenes and incoherent voice-overs. As for the big bad, Margie is the quintessential evil android, strutting around in a dog collar and proclaiming, “Violence is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” She’s the heart and soul of this mess. And she’s played by Margie Newton, who got all painted up in Mattei’s Hell of the Living Dead and was Aphrodite in Cozzi’s The Adventures of Hercules.

Director Vanio Amici is an equal-opportunity recycler. Why film a new action scene when you can just use the one you already shot five minutes ago? It saves time and prevents you from having to rewind to watch the faceless extras get blasted again. For a long time, people thought he was Umberto Lenzi, as the name on the credits is Bob Collins. Amici only directed one other movie, Detective Malone, which remixes two of Lenzi’s Black Cobra movies, further muddying the movie waters and making nerds like me wonder who really made it. As for the rest of his credits, he mainly worked as an editor with a resume that includes Black Demons, Karate Warrior 6, Aenigma and many adult films. Perhaps his toughest challenge was being the editor for Troll 2. I wonder how he was able to make it make as much sense as it does.

As for co-writer Piero Regnoli, his IMDb is the kind of magical place I could get lost in. His credits include Voices From Beyond, Penombra, Malabimba, Burial Ground, Patrick Still Lives, Cry of a Prostitute, The Third Eye, The Playgirls and the Vampire, and so many more. He also directed I’ll See You In Hell, Maciste In King Solomon’s Mines, Appuntamento a Dallas and the aforementioned Playgirls and the Vampire.

This has it all and by all, I mean perms, leather jackets, headbands and a finale so dramatically deep that it tries to mimic Blade Runner before hitting a hard freeze-frame.

Dakar: James, can I tell you something?

James: Sure. What?

Dakar: I always envied you. I wanted to be like you.

James: You mean human?

Dakar: It was just… a dream.

It’s a total mess. I loved it!

Cross Mission (1988): Leave it to Alfonso Brescia—working under his Al Bradley alias—to decide that what the jungle combat — Rambsoploitation — genre really needed wasn’t just more stock footage of explosions, but literal demons. What else can we expect from the director of Murder In Blue Light, Iron Warrior, The Beast In Space and an entire series of Star Wars rip-offs?

Cross Mission starts off as your standard, run-of-the-mill exploitation flick. General Romero, played by Antonio Poli, is the iron-fisted ruler of a small Latin American nation. He’s got the whole “I’m a good guy” routine down to a science, publicly torching marijuana fields to impress the U.N. inspectors. Of course, once the inspectors pack up their clipboards and head for the airport, it’s back to the narco-trafficking business as usual.

When a marine named William (Richard Randall, whose only other role is in a TV movie version of A Christmas Carol) decides to investigate the racket alongside a crusading reporter named Helen (Brigitte Porsche, her only role, and no, she’s not an adult star), things spiral into the usual jungle chaos. Do huts explode? Do some of the good guys die and need revenge? Does the hero get ready for the last battle in a montage, putting on a special outfit to show the audience he’s finally done playing nice? Yes to all of these things.

But here is where the movie veers off the tracks and into the territory of the sublime. Just when you think you’ve seen every trope in the book, Brescia hits you with the supernatural. General Romero isn’t just a drug lord; he’s a practitioner of the dark arts. He’s got the ability to summon a diabolical small demon named Astaroth, played by Nelson De La Rosa (the mini Brando of The Island of Dr. Moreau and the titular Rat Man), at will. When he’s shooting blue lightning at people, the movie suddenly shifts from a generic war film to an Italian bit of magic.

Brescia would go on to direct Miami Cops the following year, but Cross Mission remains a singular, bizarre experiment. It doesn’t fully succeed as a war movie, and it doesn’t fully succeed as a supernatural thriller, but for the sheer audacity of blending the two? It’s a more than decent one-time watch. You come for the jungle action, but you stay because you need to see how a magic little guy fits into an exploding helicopter subplot.

Bridge to Hell (1986): I love Umberto Lenzi. Whether its Eurospy (Super Seven Calling Cairo, Kriminal), his films with Carroll Baker (Orgasmo; So Sweet, So Perverse; A Quiet Place to Kill; Knife of Ice), giallo (Spasmo, Eyeball, Seven Bloodstained Orchids), cannibal films (Man From Deep River, Cannibal Ferox, Eaten Alive!), horror (Ghosthouse, Nightmare City), cop violence (Almost Human, The Tough Ones)…the guy knew how to make a movie.

Lt. Bill Rogers (Andy Forrest, also in Massimo Pirri’s The Kiss of the Cobra, Tonino Valerii’s Sicilian Connection, Lenzi’s The House of Witchcraft, Hunt for the Gold Scorpion and, oddly, the Giandomenico Curi-directed Italian Lambada movie and yes, there were two movies with this title in the same year), Sgt. Mario Pazilbo Esposito (Carlo Mucari, Snuff Killer and Obsession: A Taste for Fear) and Blitz (Paki Valente) have broken out of a POV camp. Rogers is an American pilot who trades a POW camp for the Yugoslavian wilderness after getting shot down. Espozi has the nickname Spaghetti because he’s Italian — in an Italian movie — and Blinz is an Austrian deserter who realized his side was losing.

Our motley crew of POWs managed to link up with some partisans and a local Orthodox priest. The partisans are desperate, looking for pilots to take their last two functioning planes and turn those German-held hillsides into a fireworks display. But while they’re busy flying for the resistance, the boys get wind of some serious loot. Vanya (Francesca Ferrè), a nun who traded her habit for a submachine gun, tips them off about a haul of priceless gold chalices stashed away at the St. Basil convent.

According to Andy J. Forrest, Ferrè was functionally blind without her glasses and ended one take by walking directly into a tree.

After pulling off two successful bombing runs, the POWs stop caring about the war effort and start plotting a heist. They leverage their pilot skills to score some hardware, then convince Vanya to lead them to the chapel. She thinks they’re on the level, but these guys are just mercenaries in disguise, ready to double-cross everyone for the gold.

There’s a Fabio Frizzi score, which is nice, and Luigi Ciccarese as cinematographer. He shot plenty of Bruno Mattei’s later movies, especially his SOV 2000s efforts, as well as tons of adult. Along the way, Lenzi stole battle scenes from The Battle of Sutjeska and Partizanska eskadrila.

It’s not the most exciting war movie you’ve seen, but it does have a genuinely impressive train explosion and watching our guys lean out of a biplane to drop bombs by hand is the kind of practical, low-budget ingenuity that makes these films so charming.

Urban Warriors (1987): You know you’re in for a wild ride when the opening act consists of a montage of mushroom clouds followed immediately by stock footage of volcanoes erupting. Then, we meet Brad (Bruno Bilotta), our hero, and his buddies, Maury (Bjorn Hammer) and Stan (Maurice Poli), who are hanging out in an underground lab when the power goes out. When they finally decide to crawl out of their bunker, they discover that the world has ended. And apparently, the end of the world is synonymous with an immediate, city-wide explosion in the local population of leather-clad biker gangs.

Vari’s vision of the future looks suspiciously like a gravel pit and a single abandoned factory. That’s the kind of set design that makes a Cirio Santiago movie look like a Cecil B. DeMille epic.

The mutants here are a special breed. According to Brad—who, again, as you may remember, was just working at a power station and doesn’t seem like a scientist—these guys suffer from a mutation that apparently destroys their inner ear whenever the sun goes down. Before you can say uno, due, tre, quattordici, all these bad ass post-apocalyptic warriors have vertigo.

The aesthetic is exactly what you’d expect if a group of guys raided a discount S&M shop and then realized they needed to re-qualify for their motorcycle licenses. Watching Brad’s buddy Maury emerge from a shack wearing a full-on studded leather helmet and a white scarf—while manning a bike with mounted weapons—is reason enough for the world to end.

Brad’s journey is a masterclass in survival priorities. After watching his buddy Maury get killed—a tragedy clearly caused by failing to stick to a strict vehicle maintenance schedule—Brad doesn’t weep. He gets himself some leather, finds a woman (Rosenda Scharschmidt, Dark Bar) to get busy with and promptly gets attacked because she wants his spinal marrow. At least he defeats the leader of the mutants, played by Alex Vitale, who will always be Jakoda from Strike Commando. Oh yeah — Malisa Longo from Cat In the Brain and the titular star of Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg –– is in this barterdown bootleg too.

This was Giuseppe Vari’s return to the director’s chair after a decade away, and spoiler alert: it was also his final film.

Much like another Michael Dudikoff Presents film, The Bronx Executioner, this takes scenes from The Final Executioner. Even stranger, I have heard Paolo Rustichelli’s theme described as either a cover of “White Lines” or the Art of Noise cover of “Dragnet.”

Good news: Cauldron just released this.

JUNESPLOITATION: Star Time (1992)

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DAY 13: 90s horror!

Henry Pinkle (Michael St. Gerard, Link from Hairspray) is a nobody living in the L.A. sprawl, a guy so hollowed out by the flickering glow of his television that when his favorite show, The Robertson Family, gets canceled, his life effectively ends. He’s ready to jump off a bridge, but he’s interrupted by Sam Bones (John P. Ryan), a guy who might be a guardian angel or just the manifestation of Henry’s own suicidal intrusive thoughts.

From there, it gets real weird, real fast. Sam isn’t here to save Henry’s life; he’s here to make Henry a star. And in the world of this movie, stardom is all about becoming the Baby Mask Killer and murdering all over L.A. But this isn’t just another body-count flick where someone in a mask chases teenagers. It’s a psychological nightmare. There’s a scene where Henry breaks into a house to commit a murder, but he’s so mesmerized by the TV set that he just forgets to kill the guy. It’s a pitch-black, brilliant jab at how we prioritize screen time over real-world connections. 

Now, Henry is lost in a world without his favorite show, a terrifying mentor and a social worker, Wendy (Maureen Teefy), who is his only friend but would never understand why he’s a slasher. 

The way this film ends—with Henry dying on a live broadcast, finally achieving his dream of being on TV even as his life drains away—is brutal and cynical. It’s a perfect, ugly capper to a story about a man who finally understands his place in the ecosystem of the entertainment industry.

As for St. Gerard, he had a spiritual awakening after leading a Sunday School class and retired from acting to focus on religious instruction. He became a pastor at Harlem Square Church in New York City.

Get spooky with DIA!

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This Saturday, there are two haunted house movies waiting for you on the Groovy Doom Facebook and YouTube channels at 8 PM EDT.

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 Amityville 3, which you can watch on Tubi.

Here’s the drink!

Amityville Lemonade

  • 2 oz. Malibu
  • 2 oz. Jack Daniels Blackberry Whiskey
  • 4 oz. lemonade
  1. This is what all the kids in the 11708 are sippin’ on in the 26. It’s simple — just pour it in a shaker, shake it, drink it.
  2. Not responsible for flies or possessive spirits.

Our second movie is Horror Castle which is on Tubi.

Here’s the second drink.

The Punisher

  • 1.5 oz 99 Pickles
  • 1 oz gin
  • .5 oz lime juice
  • A splash of brine from a jar of actual dill pickles
  1. Put the 99 Pickles, gin, lime juice, and that splash of pickle brine into your shaker. Add a generous amount of ice. Shake it like you’re torturing it.
  2. Strain it into a tall, chilled glass. It should look absolutely menacing.

See you soon!

The Carpenters…Space Encounters (1978)

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Welcome to the weird, wild and at times absolutely inexplicable 1970s variety show era. It’s a place where the cocaine budget was likely higher than the GDP of a small nation, and someone in a boardroom said, “You know what goes great with soft rock? Aliens.” Today we’re talking about the 1978 television special The Carpenters…Space Encounters.

If you’ve ever sat back and wondered, “What if Close Encounters of the Third Kind was directed by someone — Bob Henry, who took his skills at directing and producing variety shows and ended up making variety specials for most of his career, including Leif, Feliciano! Very Special, Flip Wilson… Of course, and several specials for the Carpenters — who had only ever heard of sci-fi through a haze of mood lighting and easy-listening radio?”

Well, you’ve found your holy grail.

Richard and Karen Carpenter, that loveable brother and sister duo — are just minding their own business in the studio, cutting tracks and hanging out with legendary comedian Charlie Callas, who plays their agent. Soon — Wam! Bam! Thank you, spaceman! —they’re being scouted by extraterrestrials. Not scary, we’re here to harvest your organs, aliens, but John Davidson and Suzanne Somers, dressed like they’re about to host a space-disco on Saturn.

Yes, of all the people in the world who would portray the most perfect creatures in the universe, they picked the star of TV’s That’s Incredible! and a year into Three’s Company, Somers, who somehow looks better than she ever has before. Seriously, whoever did the makeup on this — great work, Sandy Holland (The Carpenters’ regular hairstylist), Rudy Horvatich and Katherine Kotarakos — earned their money.

It turns out that John and his fellow space-travelers have a major problem: their planet cannot make music. Obviously, the only logical solution to a universal cultural crisis is to kidnap The Carpenters. John teleports into the studio, whip-cracks a hi-tech pocket video screen to show them clips of “Fun Fun Fun,” and proceeds to perform a rendition of “Just the Way You Are” that makes you realize just how far we’ve strayed from the light.

I once saw Davidson star in Oklahoma, and the play was so bad that the entire audience booed the show when Jud, the villain, died. That’s how bad it was.

At this stage, the film then descends into a fitful blend of madness and mid-70s production value. We get a stroll through an old garage for a performance of “Goofus;” Richard sitting at a piano in front of a full orchestra, hammering out a medley of the Close Encounters and Star Wars themes while surrounded by laser lights and chroma key effects. Who gave Richard a phaser pedal?

Then, we achieve the grand finale, where the cast takes the party to the ship’s own nightclub. Karen and Suzanne Somers team up for “Man Smart, Woman Smarter,” followed by a disco-medley that includes “The Hustle” and “Boogie Nights.” If you’ve ever wanted to see the epitome of soft-rock royalty getting down to disco, stop reading and start watching.

The whole thing wraps up with the inevitable performance of “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft”—the song that was practically written for this exact brand of madness—and an instrumental playout of “We’ve Only Just Begun.”

It’s saccharine, it’s bizarre, it’s a time capsule of a network television machine that had a nearly captive audience. Somehow, this had four writers: Bill Larkin, Joseph Neustein (a member of the Match Game staff for 700 episodes), Tom Sawyer and Stephen Spears.

“Calling occupants of interplanetary, quite extraordinary craft / And please come in peace, we beseech you / (Only our love we will teach them) / Our Earth may never survive / (So do come, we beg you).”

May 17, 1978 was a weird time.

Also: I love The Carpenters unironically. I want that to be perfectly clear.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Tales from the Darkside S2 E24: The Casavin Curse (1986)

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Serving as the Season 2 finale, “The Casavin Curse” is a whirlwind of campy melodrama, incestuous undertones and a twist that manages to be both completely predictable and utterly absurd. It all starts with the kind of scene that makes you wonder how the cleaning staff handles the turnover rate at the Casavin Estate. Gina Casavin (Catherine Parks, Vera from Friday the 13th Part III) wakes up in a trance, surrounded by champagne, pills and the butchered remains of her lover, Tyler. The local police, led by the ever-stymied Lt. Wright, are baffled by the crime scene, even though there’s a literal dagger involved.

Enter Dr. Jeffrey Webster (Scott Lincoln), a criminal psychiatrist who seems less interested in medical ethics and more interested in becoming a secondary lead. He spends the hour trying to convince Gina that her family’s legendary curse, which supposedly dates back to a jilted gypsy named Mirabel, is just a psychological crutch used by her cousin, Nicholas (Joe Cortese), to control her.

The dynamic between Nicholas and Gina is, frankly, skin-crawling. Nicholas is the quintessential “I have half the town in my pocket” villain, complete with thinly veiled threats and a disturbing obsession with keeping the Casavin bloodline pure by moving back to Corsica.

The episode leans heavily into the “he’s the killer” red herring, with the maid, Miranda (Julie Ariola), playing the classic role of the disgruntled employee who knows too much. When the police finally bust in to arrest Nicholas, it feels like the natural, albeit boring, conclusion.

But wait! In the final act, the show stops pretending to be a grounded mystery and leans into the supernatural nonsense. Gina undergoes a physical transformation — presumably achieved through some very affordable prosthetic makeup — and goes on a rampage. The final reveal, where the maid confirms she’s the descendant of the original victim, is the exact brand of “wait, what?” storytelling that keeps this show from being a total slog.

If you’re looking for a serious exploration of mental illness or a tight, suspenseful murder mystery, steer clear. But if you want to watch a show that goes from zero to demon-possessed heiress and still has time for commercials, watch it.