TUBI ORIGINAL: TMZ No BS: Viral Superstars (2024)

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Justin Bieber was in a talent contest and posted a series of clips from a local competition in Stratford, Ontario. Scooter Braun actually clicked on one by accident while looking for a different singer. The viral aspect worked because it felt intimate, like you were discovering a talented younger brother before the industry polished him up.

Viral videos have changed the world of celebrities, and hey, here’s TMZ to tell us more.

This TMZ show goes into Danielle Bregoli (Bad Babie), who was on The Dr. Phil Show, as well as Doja Cat, who dressed as a cow and danced to a novelty song called “Mooo!,” which was the definition of a calculated viral moment. She made it in a day as a joke, but the absurdist humor of stuffing fries in her nose while dressed as a cow proved she understood internet culture better than most PR firms. It turned her from an underground rapper into a household name.

Kate Upton doing the dougie at a Clippers game took her from a model to a big name. Like Bieber, The Weeknd is a Canadian music star who rose to prominence online and went on to have the biggest-selling single ever. To be fair, he took a much darker, more mysterious route. In 2010, he uploaded tracks to YouTube under the name The Weeknd, without any photos of himself. The anonymity created a massive underground buzz that forced the mainstream to pay attention. and Rebecca Black, who sang “Friday,” in which I learned the words “partying, partying.”

In the Classic Hollywood era, studios like MGM or Warner Bros. literally owned their stars. They picked their clothes, their dates, and their names. Today, the audience acts as the studio. We vote for stars with likes and shares. The watercooler moment is dead because everyone has a different watercooler, whether that’s TikTok, YouTube or Twitch. We no longer wait for a scout to find talent. We wait for the algorithm to serve it to us.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Tales from the Darkside S2 E10: Ursa Minor (1985)

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Will I ever get over the fact that Theodore Gershuny, who directed and wrote this episode, was married to Mary Woronov? Am I really that jealous of a person? Yes.

Based on a story by John Sladek, a former tech writer who was also the author of The New Apocrypha: A Guide to Strange Science and Occult Beliefs, in which he examined the supernatural from a materialist lens, this is the story of Susie (Jamie Ohar), who gets a stuffed bear from her parents (Marilyn Jones and Timothy Carhart). But is it just a teddy bear, or is it something more?

But did her parents even buy it? Neither of them remembers, and soon, bear marks are all over the house and anything that goes wrong is blamed on the bear. Basically: Kids are insane people who live in your house who are ready to kill you at any time. That’s what I learned from this. That and the fact that evil can be inside very small things, and perhaps you should just leave it alone unless you want to end up holding your child as a big bear breaks its way through a door.

The parents spend half the episode debating the logic of the bear’s existence. That’s because in Sladek’s world, the bear isn’t necessarily a demon; it’s a physical object that is simply wrong. The horror isn’t spiritual. It’s a failure of the physical world to behave in the way we want it to.

Plus, the bear acts as a surrogate for Susie’s own burgeoning agency and perhaps her resentment. More than her blaming the bear and trying to get away with it, she’s also in a psychodrama with her parents, as they are actually terrified of the idea that their daughter might be the one marking the house. The bear is just the medium for the chaos kids naturally bring into a sanitized adult world.

B & S About Movies podcast Episode 127: Bigfoot

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A whole bunch of Bigfoot this week: Night of the Demon, The Werewolf and the Yeti, The Geek, Bigfoot vs. D.B. Cooper, Manbeast! and Bigfoot, UFOs and Jesus. You will believe.

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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TUBI ORIGINAL: R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead (2025)

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When his brother Finn (Seth Isaac Johnson) disappears and everyone forgets that he existed, Sam (Bean Reid) must unravel the mystery before his sibling is lost for all time. Directed and written by Jem Garrard (Slay, which a character watches in this movie, as well as Takeout and Invasive) and based on the R.L. Stine short story of the same name from Nightmare Hour, which was also adapted as part of The Haunting Hour TV series, R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead is a Tubi Original with a lot going for it.

The town of Redhaven is presented as a slice of heaven where the harvest never ends. However, this prosperity is built on a dark foundation. The secret horror of the child-stealing curse is psychological as much as it is supernatural; when a child is taken by the curse, they aren’t just physically gone. They are erased from the community’s collective memory, leaving only a few to live with the truth.

Sam and his family have just moved to Redhaven and know nothing of its secrets. The child-stealing ritual coincides with Mr. Palmer’s Harvest Festival, which is when the old farmer opens up his farm to everyone. There, as Sam is acting out, he steals a prize pumpkin. Finn brings it back for his brother under the sheriff’s order and is taken. Soon, no one but Sam remembers his brother, except for a girl named Becka (Adeline Lo), who will introduce our hero to the lore and legacy of her town.

I really liked this. It’s inspired by Stine but not slavish to his work. However, it gets the feel right. It’s a gateway horror movie, even if the ending may leave some kids upset, confused and disappointed. That’s why you watch films with them, so you can talk through the things that happened and see what you can learn from it.

The Palmer Farm is filmed on the same location as Pa Kent’s farmhouse on the WB series Smallville. 

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: A Mother’s Confession (2025)

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Directed by Maya Table and written by the duo of Donna Christopher and LisaBeth Willis, the movie centers on a tragedy that strikes at the heart of a family when a gang shooting leaves young Nathan (James Jay Alexander) — the son of Faith (Ciera Angelia) 00 fighting for his life in a coma.

The film sets up a high-stakes investigation led by a detective who admits the shooting is likely gang-related, but Faith has little confidence in working with the police. As the plot unravels, her internal conflict shifts from as she goes from a grieving mother to a woman seeking her own brand of justice.

Benny (Raymond Seay) leads the gang who shot Nathan, and he makes his henchmen follow a code of silence, betting on the fact that nobody’s going to talk. The film takes a surprising turn toward religious themes. While it begins as a standard urban thriller or revenge flick, the closing acts lean heavily into the spiritual battle Faith faces.

This was the top movie on Tubi for a few weeks, and you can see why: it tells a story people want to see, with an incredibly dramatic performance by its lead actress. 

You can watch this on Tubi.

SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2026: The Human, Will (2026)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Official synopsis: Marine Cargo Insurance Claims Adjuster William J. Sterbenz, a creature of habit worn down by the daily grind and lonely suburban living, feels helpless against his fate of climbing the corporate ladder. But when a sudden brush with death lights a fire under his ass, Will realizes that he has free will and decides to finally use it, charting a new course for himself as he meanders through new experiences, from Bigfoot hunting to out-of-body time travel – and even coming face to face with his personal guardian angel.

 Writer/director/editor Edward Bursch’s episodic dramedy series The Human, Will is a gentle, philosophical, quirky character study of everyman Will (William J. Sterbenz), who asks for a job demotion and tries to get the most out of life after the sudden unexpected death of his pet fish. He is guided on his journey by his guardian angel (slow-talking comedian Joe Pera, perfectly cast in a mostly narration performance).

The pacing is leisurely, and even unanticipated from-out-of-nowhere occurrences startle in a subtle manner. The comedy is often whimsical, and goes for knowing nods with a smile rather than for belly-laughs. 

The emotional factor is high, though. An episode in which a young Will confronts the adult Will hit me where it counts and caused a pensive trip down nostalgia lane. Another episode involving the hunt for a skunk ape appealed to my cryptozoology interests in a decidedly more fun manner.

Bursch and company deliver a fine series with The Human, Will. Go along with Will on his existential journey and you’ll be treated to an offbeat exploration of what some might consider normalcy.

The first episode of The Human, Will screened at Slamdance, which ran February 24–March 6, 2026 in Los Angeles. 

TUBI ORIGINAL: President Down (2025)

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When the President of the United States (Gayle O’Grady) collapses during a historic peace accord with Russian President Kasparov (Jason Piette), all hell breaks loose. Yes, terrorists have hacked her pacemaker, threatening not only her life but also global stability as she attempts to negotiate peace with Russia. Now, a team of fearless agents — led by Jacob Pike (Jesse Kove) — must figure it out before either the President’s heart stops or she stops peace from finally happening.

Between Lorenzo Lamas and David Chokachi playing the security detail to the hacker terrorists known as the Patriot Front, this is packed with action, romance (of course,, the agent is dating the President’s daughter, Amelia, played by Gina Vitori), airplane derring-do and so much more. Sure, it’s a movie by The Asylum, but I had fun. Paul Logan as Agent Breacher and G. Anthony Joseph as the main bad guy also make this way better than it has any right to be. Give it up for director Nick Lyon and writers Geoff Mead and Kenny Zinn. 

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Joysticks (1983)

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Jefferson Bailey (Scott McGinnis, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock) owns the hottest business in 1983: a video arcade. It’s driving local business tycoon Joseph Rutter (Joe Don Baker, a man whose name I screamed into the ear of a sleeping girlfriend once, which is a long story I should really get to sometime) nuts, so he gets his two nephews and plans on shutting down the arcade. Mean! Unfair! No!

Bailey’s too smart for Rutter and has two pals named Eugene Groebe (Leif Green, Davey Jaworski from the legendary bomb Grease 2) — who is molested by swimsuit girls before he even gets to the arcade — and McDorfus, who are ready to deal with this affront.

This movie was such a big deal that Midway allowed the image of Pac-Man, their new game Satan’s Hollow, and the as-yet-unreleased Super Pac-Man to be used during the big showdown at the movie’s end.

Corinne Bohrer, who is pretty much teen movie royalty thanks to appearances in films like Surf II, Zapped! and Stewardess School, shows up, as does John Voldstad, who played “my other brother Daryl” on TV’s Newhart.

There are two real reasons to watch this movie. One is the theme song, which has beeps, boops and promises “video to the max” and “totally awesome video games!” This song will infiltrate your mind and not leave, trust me.

The other big reason is John Gries, who completely owns every scene he appears in as King Vidiot, a punk rock maniac surrounded by punker girls who communicate only in video game noises when they’re not all riding miniature motorcycles. In a more perfect world, King Vidiot would be the star of the film. Every other person pales in comparison to his greatness. Gries would go on to steal the show in plenty of other films, including Real Genius, Napoleon Dynamite, Fright Night, The Monster Squad, and TerrorVision.

This all comes from Greydon Clark, who directed The Uninvited — a movie where George Kennedy does battle with a house cat — Without Warning and Wacko, as well as appearing in movies like Satan’s Sadists.

The saddest part of this movie was that, even though the good guys won, arcades would be dead by the mid-1980s. So really, the bad guys did win. King Vidiot? Well, no one knows what happened to him.

 

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Joy House (1964)

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René Clément, fresh off the success of Purple Noon (another Delon vehicle), opted to shoot iJoy House in lush black-and-white. This choice turned the Mediterranean villa into a labyrinth of shadows. While the plot sounds like a standard potboiler, Clément treats the house itself as a character—a gilded cage where everyone is both predator and prey. Clément also wrote the script with Pascal Jardin and Charles Williams, which was based on the book Joy House by Day Keene.

Marc (Alain Delon) is a gambler on the run, not too many steps ahead of gangsters who want him for sleeping with their boss’s wife. He ends up getting work for Barbara (Lola Albright, Peter Gunn‘s girlfriend) as a driver. Of course, her young niece Melinda (Jane Fonda) becomes attracted to the roguish man, but soon they learn that Barbara is hiding another man, Vincent (André Oumansky), in her house, keeping him almost as a slave after he killed her husband for her. They plan on killing Marc and using his passport to get away from the police. Marc and Barbara are also sleeping together, so Vincent kills her, and the gangsters mistake him for Marc and kill him. Whew!

That’s not the end of things. Melinda helps Marc get rid of the bodies, but when she figures out that he’s leaving town, she calls the police and keeps him, just like she learned from Barbara. Fonda’s performance is pivotal. She starts as the ingénue, but the film tracks her evolution from a curious girl to a cold-blooded successor. By the end, she isn’t just saving Marc; she’s collecting him. The cycle of the house remains unbroken; only the warden has changed.

A few years ago, Fonda revealed that Clément tried to have sex with her, but she refused. He was 51 at the time, while she was only 27. He wasn’t the only one who tried this; she was asked by Delon as well. Clément’s move was that “he wanted to do it because her character had to have an orgasm in the movie and he needed to see what Fonda’s orgasms were like.” Afterward, he was kind for the rest of filming and never asked again. As for Delon, he was at the height of his “most beautiful man in the world” fame. His off-screen reputation for being difficult and predatory often bled into his roles, making his portrayal of the desperate Marc feel uncomfortably authentic.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Johnny Firecloud (1975)

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Johnny Firecloud (Victor Mohica, Don’t Answer the Phone) just got back from Vietnam and made his way back home to New Mexico. If he thought it sucked before he left, well, it sucks even more now. Colby (Ralph Meeker) runs the town and has a mad on for Johnny, probably because his daughter June (Christina Hart) lost her virginity to him and never got over the Native American getting drafted. The cops, like Sheriff Jesse (David Canary), are bought and paid for. So when the one person who believes in Johnny, his drunken grandfather and tribal chief White Eagle (Frank DeKova) is killed by the cops and some alcoholic rich punks and then the virginal teacher Nenya (Sacheen Littlefeather, who accepted the Oscar for Brando) gets assaulted in a way too long scene, well, Johnny is going to take everything he learned in the white man’s army and go nuts. 

Imagine: Billy Jack and Paul Kersey with no budget or restraint.

Produced by David Friedman, directed by William Allen Castleman (Bummer) and written by Wilton Denmark, this is a movie filled with wild moments like Johnny scalping people, slicing their eyelids off so they fry in the son, burying a dude neck deep and letting snakes crawl around him, putting George Buck Flower’s head inside a sack filled with poisonous snakes, blowing up trailers and plenty of bar fights. There’s also a bad guy who threatens, “One of these days, you and me gonna tangle assholes,” and I have no idea how to answer that.

I would 200% play this in a fancy art theater as a double feature with The Farmer, and that’s why no smart movie place should ever give me a chance.

You can watch this on YouTube.