René Cardona Jr. didn’t stop with making a softcore porn shark movie with Tintorera…Tiger Sharkor the utterly baffling Bermuda Triangle. Now, he’s back to shock you senseless with the kind of true retelling of the Jonestown Massacre, Guyana: Cult of the Damned. He’s no stranger to strangeness — after all, his father made Santa Claus vs. The Devil.
Reverend James Johnson — just pretend they say Jim Jones — the fanatic and paranoid leader of the Johnson Temple — again, let’s just say People’s Temple — is about to move his 1,000 followers from San Francisco to Johnstown — Jonestown — in the jungle of Guyana, all so he can create a utopia that’s far away from the sins of the rest of th world.
If you know anything of the real tale, Johnson soons gets out of control, inflicting brutal punishment on anyone that dares go against him. He becomes convinced that a conspiracy — the same one that killed both Kennedys, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X — is ready to take him out.
That’s when Congressman Lee O’Brien — Leo Ryan — goes on a fact finding mission and discovers that it’s more like a slave colony than heaven on Earth. And if they don’t get the people out now, they’ll soon go to Russia. By the end of the film, Johnson has unleashed hit squads on the Congressman, the reporters he’s brought along and the defectors they’re saving from Johnson. And that’s when everyone starts drinking the Kool-Aid (for the sake of fact, it may have either been that brand or the generic Flavor Aid, which they camp also had in its supplies; the flavor was grape, in case you’re wondering).
This movie is rife with historical fallacies, but what can you expect from a Mexican grindhouse movie that was released 14 months after the actual incident? You may notice that most of Johnstown was white in this film, while the reality is that most of the People’s Temple members were black. Also, Susan Ames — Susan Amos — is murdered in this movie by a man with a knife, but the truth is that she killed her two youngest children and then herself with a butcher knife and asked her daugher Liane to kill her, then kill herself.
There are two cuts of this, with the Mexican cut adding 8 more minutes of torture and gore, if you’re looking for that kind of thing. I mean, if you’re reading this far, you probably are.
Stuart Whitman (the boxing priest from Demonoid) owns this movie as the Reverend. He’s just chewing the screen up, as he totally should, giving huge speeches and being a maniac. This is like a dream scum movie role and Whitman grips it and wrings all he can out of it. It’s pretty much as perfect casting as you can get.
Gene Barry plays the Congressman, Bradford Dillman (Piranha) plays the doctor of Johnstown, Yvonne De Carlo plays Susan and you even get a special guest appearance by Joesph Cotten! And look out for Hugo Stiglitz from Nightmare City and Nadiuska, who played Conan the Barbarian‘s mom!
There was a later TV movie, Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, which won Powers Boothe the 1980 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or a Special. But for my money, I always go with the grindhouse version of things. This is a sordid, grim affair and that’s pretty much why you’re going to watch it.
I have night terrors. Every few evenings, I wake Becca up as I start screaming. Usually, the dream that causes this to happen is one where I’m looking at the sky and suddenly see a UFO which begins to follow me. I’ve had this dream since I was a kid, when Battlestar Galactica ended with that disclaimer about Project Blue Book. I was convinced from them on that I was about to be abducted.
Strange other-worldly sounds are being heard echoing all over the Earth, so a group of researchers, led by expert ufologist Lorraine Gardner (Angela Cole, White Boy Rick), start tracking down the sounds to their point of origin and come face to, well, whatever face an alien grey has.
There are two scenes in here that are going to totally fuel the night terrors I mentioned before. First, a scene where the main characters sit in the grass and stare at the sky as a UFO fades away, hoping that it doesn’t come back. And then there’s an Emergency Broadcast System alert of an Unidentified Flying Object landing and its inhabitants attacking people. It feels real.
Otherwise, there’s a lot of screaming and teenagers in peril, facing off against Adobe After Effects powered spaceships and rubber suited aliens. That’s not a bad thing. I had fun with this and if you enjoy abduction or alien tales, you probably will too.
Fighting the Sky beams up to digital and DVD on February 5.
NOTE: The movie’s PR team sent this our way, but that doesn’t have any impact on our review.
This movie crushed me as a child. I had always loved Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, watching their thirty-six films on Sunday mornings, right after Ma and Pa Kettle films. Seriously, weekends in Pittsburgh in the 70s and 80s were amazing. You stayed up all night watching Chiller Theater and then woke up late and took in some Abbott and Costello. Ah, memories.
That said, when this aired on November 15, 1978, I excitedly watched it from my parent’s black and white kitchen TV, ready to have fun reliving my favorite memories of the comedy duo. I wasn’t ready to learn how much they hated one another and their foibles. Cut me some slack — I was six.
Abbott and Costello are played by Buddy Hackett and Harvey Korman. Interestingly, Hackett and Hugh O’Brian replaced the team when Costello’s health forced them to drop out of 1954’s Fireman Save My Child.
The team came together when Abbott’s original partner was ill and it gelled pretty quickly. The film hints that Bud used to date Lou’s wife — this is unproven — but as we’ve learned from tabloid-style films, facts are rarely important. For example, while they did debut on The Kate Smith Hour on February 3, 1938, they didn’t do the “Who’s On First?” routine until a month later and they had developed their distinctive voices (audiences initially thought they sounded alike until Costello came up with his high-pitched, childish affect).
They debuted their own show, The Abbott and Costello Show, as Fred Allen’s summer replacement in 1940 before joining Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on The Chase and Sanborn Hour in 1941. That was also the year that their first two films — Buck Privates and Hold That Ghost — debuted (they made their actual first film appearance in 1940’s One Night in the Tropics, essentially playing their greatest hits from burlesque on screen).
By 1942, they were the top box office stars in the country, earning over $789,000 ($12 million in today’s money) that year alone. To show how big of stars they were, a 35-day War Bonds tour in the summer of 1942 earned $85 million dollars ($1,299,767,105 today!) in war bonds purchases. This is important — because soon, the government would come calling for this money and forget all about this. That’s a major part of the film.
Here come the bad parts. Abbott had epilepsy, which in the film just means you have to sit down every once in a while, as well as drink way too much. Costello got rheumatic fever from a military base tour and was bedridden for the rest of 1942 and into ’43, when he returned to radio after a year layoff. That very same day, his infant son drowned in the family’s pool and the comedian was never the same. He was quick to anger and constantly vindictive to the point that a major rift happened when In 1945 a rift developed when Abbott hired a servant who Costello had fired. That led to Costello refusing to speak to his partner except when performing. From them on, they would play separate characters in films, rather than be a team. This led to their loss in popularity when faced with other teams like Martin and Lewis.
Abbott resolved the rift when he suggested naming Costello’s charity the “Lou Costello Jr. Youth Foundation.” Finally some good news — this charity still helps underprivileged youth in the Boyle Heights district of Los Angeles.
Despite their dip in popularity, they still starred in several films with the Universal monsters and hosted The Colgate Comedy Hour. From 1952 to 54, Costello created, owned and syndicated The Abbott and Costello Show, paying Abbott a salary, a point this movie hammers home as proof that any reconciliation was only on one man’s part. That said, the movie totally ignores that this show was a success and aired in reruns for a long time.
The film never gets into the point that the duo was overexposed and worried about creating new material, which is one of the reasons why Universal couldn’t reach a contract with them. They were forced to sell all of their assets to the IRS to pay taxes, a point the movie definitely makes.
After one last film, Dance with Me, Henry and Lou appearing on This Is Your Life, the duo split for good in 1957. Errol Flynn claimed in his autobiography that he was the reason. At a party he had invited Bud, Lou and their families to, he showed hardcore pornography and Bud and Lou both blamed the other. This is skipped by the movie, because how would you explain that on TV in 1978?
The movie makes it seem that Costello died quickly after the pair split, but he lived until 1959, after ten appearances on The Steve Allen Show doing old routines without his partner. He died shortly after finishing his last film, The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock.
In 1960, Abbott formed a team with Candy Candido, a voice actor in Disney films. He also did his own voice for the Hanna-Barbera Abbott and Costello cartoons. He died of cancer in 1974.
Let’s go back to me being a kid. I always thought that Lou was the nice one, with Bud being the mean adult, always grumpy with him. Little did I know the truth — or what passes for it in this movie. I remember crying my eyes out during the last scene where Lou dies.
This whole movie is based on the book by Hollywood correspondent Bob Thomas and trust me, it’s as over the top and ridiculous as you hope it is. It’s been said that Thomas got most of his gossip from Eddie Sherman, Abbott and Costello’s longtime manager who had been fired by the duo, so obviously there was a reason why it’s so venomous. It’s also remarkably unfunny in the comedy segments, which is weird when you consider who is starring in it. Arte Johnson and Robert Reed also show up, just to remind you this is a made for TV movie.
Both the book and movie upset Lou’s daughter Chris so much that she wrote the book Lou’s on First to refute many of its claims.
I’m not the only one obsessed by this film. On his podcast, Gilbert Gottfried has brought the death scene at the end up several times. I wasn’t the only one shattered by it, I guess.
I guess if you want to catch up on memories, you should skip TV movies and go right back to the real movies. But as you may have learned by now, I love junk.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Bud and Lou was on the CBS Late Movie on December 25, 1984 (Merry Christmas!) and June 3, 1987.
This movie crushed me as a child. I had always loved Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, watching their thirty-six films on Sunday mornings after Ma and Pa Kettle films. Seriously, weekends in Pittsburgh in the 70s and 80s were amazing. You stayed up all Night watching Chiller Theater, then woke up late and took in some Abbott and Costello. Ah, memories.
That said, when this aired on November 15, 1978, I excitedly watched it from my parent’s black and white kitchen TV, ready to have fun reliving my favorite memories of the comedy duo. I wasn’t prepared to learn how much they hated one another and their foibles. Cut me some slack — I was six.
Buddy Hackett and Harvey Korman play Abbott and Costello. Interestingly, Hackett and Hugh O’Brian replaced the team when Costello’s health forced them to drop out of 1954’s Fireman Save My Child.
The team came together when Abbott’s original partner was ill, and it gelled pretty quickly. The film hints that Bud used to date Lou’s wife — this is unproven — but as we’ve learned from tabloid-style films, facts are rarely necessary. For example, while they did debut on The Kate Smith Hour on February 3, 1938, they didn’t do the “Who’s On First?” routine until a month later, and they had developed their distinctive voices (audiences initially thought they sounded alike until Costello came up with his high-pitched, childish effect).
They debuted The Abbott and Costello Show as Fred Allen’s summer replacement in 1940 before joining Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on The Chase and Sanborn Hour in 1941. That was also the year that their first two films — Buck Privates and Hold That Ghost — debuted (they made their first film appearance in 1940’s One Night in the Tropics, essentially playing their greatest hits from burlesque on screen).
By 1942, they were the top box office stars in the country, earning over $789,000 ($12 million in today’s money) that year alone. A 35-day War Bonds tour in the summer of 1942 earned $85 million ($1,299,767,105 today!) in war bond purchases to show how big of a star they were. This is important because the government would soon call for this money and forget all about it. That’s a significant part of the film.
Here come the bad parts. Abbott had epilepsy, which in the film means you have to sit down every once in a while, as well as drink way too much. Costello got rheumatic fever from a military base tour and was bedridden for the rest of 1942 and into ’43 when he returned to radio after a year layoff. That very same day, his infant son drowned in the family’s pool, and the comedian was never the same. He was quick to anger and constantly vindictive to the point that a significant rift happened.
In 1945, Abbott hired a servant whom Costello had fired. That led to Costello refusing to speak to his partner except when performing. Then, they would play separate characters in films rather than work together, which led to their loss of popularity when faced with other teams like Martin and Lewis.
Abbott resolved the rift by suggesting naming Costello’s charity the Lou Costello Jr. Youth Foundation. Finally, some good news: this charity still helps underprivileged youth in the Boyle Heights district of Los Angeles.
Despite their dip in popularity, they still starred in several films with the Universal Monsters and hosted The Colgate Comedy Hour. From 1952 to 54, Costello created, owned and syndicated The Abbott and Costello Show, paying Abbott a salary, a point this movie hammers home as proof that any reconciliation was only on one man’s part. That said, the film ignores that this show was successful and aired in reruns for a long time.
The film never gets to the point that the duo is overexposed and worried about creating new material, which is one reason Universal couldn’t reach a contract with them. The movie definitely makes the point that they were forced to sell all their assets to the IRS to pay taxes.
After one last film, Dance with Me, Henry, and Lou appeared on This Is Your Life, the duo split for good in 1957. Errol Flynn claimed in his autobiography that he was the reason. At a party he had invited Bud, Lou and their families to, he showed hardcore pornography and Bud and Lou both blamed the other. The movie skipped this because how would you explain that on TV in 1978?
The movie makes it seem that Costello died quickly after the pair split, but he lived until 1959 after ten appearances on The Steve Allen Show doing old routines without his partner. He died shortly after finishing his last film, The 30-Foot Bride of Candy Rock.
In 1960, Abbott formed a team with Candy Candido, a voice actor in Disney films. He also did his voice for the Hanna-Barbera Abbott and Costello cartoons. He died of cancer in 1974.
Let’s go back to when I was a kid. I always thought Lou was the nice one, and Bud was the mean adult who was always grumpy with him. Little did I know the truth—or what passes for it in this movie. I remember crying my eyes out during the last scene when Lou dies.
This movie is based on the book by Hollywood correspondent Bob Thomas, and trust me, it’s as over the top and ridiculous as you hope it is. It’s been said that Thomas got most of his gossip from Eddie Sherman, Abbott and Costello’s longtime manager, who the duo had fired, so obviously, there was a reason why it’s so venomous. It’s also remarkably unfunny in the comedy segments, which is weird when considering who is starring. Arte Johnson and Robert Reed also showed up; to remind you, this is a made-for-TV movie.
The book and movie upset Lou’s daughter, Chris, so much that she wrote Lou’s On First to refute many of its claims.
I’m not the only one obsessed with this film. Gilbert Gottfried repeatedly mentions the death scene at the end of his podcast, and I wasn’t the only one shattered by it.
Remember when Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction made their initial splash for Quentin Tarantino and studios rushed to get their own chopped up narrative films in theaters? Killing Zoe, 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, 2 Days in the Valley, Smoking Aces and plenty more, it seemed like everyone was trying to make a movie that didn’t follow a linear track, had overly erudite killers with a skewed moral code and plenty of strange MacGuffins. As if 1992 was back again, I threw Bad Times at the El Royale into our blu ray player and sat back to watch.
One night in 1969, on the California/Nevada border, seven strangers all spend the night in a shady hotel — the El Royale itself. The hotel — which has seen better days — is split in half between the two states and is pretty much a “pervert hotel” now, although once it was home to the Rat Pack when they weren’t in Reno or Las Vegas (the hotel is based on the Cal Neva Resort and Casino that was once owned by Sinatra).
Catholic priest Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo, the best part of this movie), vacuum salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm) and Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson) all arrive and wait for the hotel’s only worker, Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman).
Much like Tarantino, each section of the story overlaps and features title cards. It starts with the reveal that Sullivan is really an FBI agent who was sent to remove listening devices in one of the rooms. After finding double digits worth of them, he also discovers a tunnel filled with one-way mirrors and cameras that film everything in each room. Although he witnesses what he thinks is a kidnapping in Emily’s room, he is told by no less than J. Edgar Hoover himself to not interfere and to sabotage all of the vehicles so that no one can leave until he finds a critical piece of film. However, he can’t stop himself from trying to rescue Emily’s captive, who ends up being her sister, Rose (Cailee Spaeny). Emily ends up blowing him away with a shotgun.
Meanwhile…
Father Flynn and Sweet have dinner at the hotel’s automat diner. She notices him spiking her drink, so she knocks him out and tries to escape. As she watches Emily murder Sullivan, he recovers and discovers the hidden hallway and Miles confesses that the management of the hotel has asked him to film incriminating moments. However, he has kept one film that incriminates a recently killed public figure. As Miles watches the hostage situation in Emily’s room, he catches buckshot from her killing Sullivan right in the face.
Sweet tries to escape, but the cars have all been played with. Father Flynn gets into her car and reveals that he’s really a criminal who has spent the last ten years in jail only to learn that he has dementia. He knows that his brother (Nick Offerman) has hidden money in the hotel, but he has no idea which room it’s in. He offers to split the money if she’ll let him in her room. As she sings (this scene took over twenty takes of live singing), he finds the money.
Emily and Rose discover the tunnel and start to question Miles, who somehow survived. The older sister has removed the other from a cult run by Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth, who even has his own Hairdresser to Mr. Hemsworth employee in the credits), a Manson-esque figure who is responsible for the killings we keep seeing on the TV in the hotel’s bar. Even worse — he’s on his way to the El Royale.
The killer and his cult arrive, playing a brutal game of roulette with the lives of the survivors. After a Mexican standoff — yes, another Quentin trope — lives are lost, people are absolved and a few people survive.
This is 2 hours and 21 minutes long and the last act feels like forever, with near glacial pacing. At first, I defended it to my wife that everything was leading to this. However, it went on. And on. And then on some more.
This movie was written, produced and directed by Drew Goddard, who also directed The Cabin in the Woods as wrote Cloverfieldand adapted World War Z for the screen. He was also part of Deadpool 2and will be working on the next sequel, X-Force.
TV lovers will enjoy seeing William B. David (the Cigarette Smoking Man from The X-Files) show up as a judge and Jim O’Heir (Jerry from Parks and Recreation) as Reno host. These are simply cameos, but still nice to see these actors in a major movie.
Some may enjoy this film, but the more I thought of those unremarkable wannabe Tarantinos, the more this film felt like it fit right in. It’s certainly not a bad film, but it’s not one that you need to go out of your way to see. It just is. With time so limited these days, I feel like things have to be better than just fine.
If you’re the kind of person who sees Vivica A. Fox and Daniel Baldwin on the cover of a science fiction movie and instantly gets excited, I have some good news. You’re my kind of movie watcher. I’ve got the movie for you. After all, in the world of streaming video, the recognizable stars of the 80’s and 90’s have become much like the American stars of Italian or Japanese exploitation films.
In the near future, the President of the United States has hired a team of cybertronic military commandoes to retrieve an alien bio-weapon from a top-secret research facility that’s spinning around our planet. Of course, the cargo escapes and all hell breaks loose, pitting cyborg against alien in a battle to the finish.
I loved that the cyborgs in this basically have pieces of machinery stuck to their faces. I really got a Shocking Dark vibe from this — without people constantly being thrown off high places or anyone as cool as Geretta Geretta being in the movie. There are shout outs to Timecopand Predator in the movie, so it’s 80’s feel is no accident.
Interestingly enough, the original press release published by The Hollywood Reporter went viral within hours of its publication when it was cited that Vivica A. Fox would be portraying the first cinematic African-American Female President. This role was teased in the latest Sharknado film, The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time, when Vivica A. Fox’s character Skye was seen in a political ad and someone yells how she will be President some day. Even better, her character, Ellen Henricksen, is named for a certain actor we all love.
Speaking of the 80’s, Vernon Wells is in this. Let off some steam, Bennett! If you want to see someone that knows how to always be working, you should totally check out his IMDB page.
If you’re in the mood for low budget silliness where robotic dudes high five one another and shoot machine guns at aliens, well, Crossbreed has you covered. This movie arrives on demand and digital HD February 5, 2019. You can pre-order it from iTunes right here.
NOTE: We were sent this film by its PR team, but that has no impact on our review.
How do you make a movie about Britney Spears when you have none of her music available to you? Well, you get someone who looks nothing like her, you play loose and fast with the ways things happen and you air it on Lifetime.
Kevin Federline is played by a guy named Clayton Chitty, a name that I have fun yelling out loud because it’s such a great stage name (it’s actually his birth name). That’s probably the nicest thing I can say about this film, one that looks and feels like a Saturday Night Live sketch stretched out to way too long of a running time.
Again, the only songs that are in this are her cover songs, like the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” and The Arrows’ “I Love Rock ‘n Roll.” Sure, they reference her MTV Video Music Award performance, like when she had a snake during “I’m a Slave 4 U.” But man, I know that the 1990’s and 2000’s were cheesy, but were they really this bad?
Not mentioned is the fact that Britney’s video “From the Bottom of My Broken Heart” was directed by former adult director Gregory Dark, whose Dark Brothers team created such 1980’s classics as New Wave Hookers and White Bun Busters. He’d go on to direct See No Evil, a slasher that starred WWE superstar Kane.
If you want to watch this — and you’re partially bonkers like me — just grab the Lifetime Movie Club app. It’s on there.
Directed by producer and star Jamie Bernadette, who co-wrote the film with Letia Clouston, this supernatural slasher film is the story of six college best friends celebrating their own graduation party only to see it go to hell — literally — when an uninvited guest arrives. Five years later, the girls get together again, obviously having learned nothing, and endure an even more horrifying night.
Bernadette also appears in I Spit on Your Grave: Déjà Vu, the fifth sequel to the original and the only one in continuity (it’s also the return of director Meir Zarchi and actress Camille Keaton). This movie is a personal project that she’s lived with for some time.
It all starts with a party that gets way out of hand as Tyler shows up with acid and a skull mask. A mysterious event happens, there’s plenty of blood and police questions, and when they get back together five years later, everyone mentions seeing Tyler, but has no idea how he’s still alive.
Dominique Swain from the remake of Lolita and Face/Off is in this, adding some star power playing, well, a star actress. Gradually, all hell breaks loose and the killer reveals himself in the woods, strangling and stabbing and murdering the kills one by one. It takes awhile to get there and it’s pretty talky, but once the killing starts, it’s good and bloody with plenty of twists and turns.
The 6th Friend will open theatrically January 11, 2019 via TheAsylum in Los Angeles, Kansas City, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Sacramento, Austin and Seattle.
NOTE: We were sent this movie by its PR agency, but that didn’t impact our review.
How did Mary Harron go from movies like I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page to find herself making this movie? She’s currently making an adaption of Legs McNeil’s Please Kill Me, but seriously, how the hell did this happen?
My friend Jim asked me the other day, “Why do you waste time watching such horrible movies when there are so many great movies out there?” I figure that there’s gold in all that crap. But I wasn’t finding it here.
Throughout this movie, Anna sees her past and future selves as she lives her crazy life. And this thing is packed with stars! I mean, in my world Martin Landau was a pretty big name and here he’s playing Anna’s ancient daddy figure, J. Howard Marshall. Adam Goldberg has been in a ton of things and here, he’s in a borderline comedy playing Howard K. Stern. And is that Cary Elwes as E. Pierce Marshall? Yep. It is. Virginia Madsen is in this too.
That said, this is never sure if it wants to descend into parody. And it always portrays Anna in the best possible light no matter how bad the decisions she makes. The real story of Anna Nicole feels like the zeitgeist embracing and discarding a living and breathing human being who wanted so badly to feel that spotlight and would do anything to claw her way back. Watching her E! show now feels harrowing, not funny or fun.
Teen punks, on the run from the cops and hiding out in the woods, face off against the local authority– an unhinged park ranger with an axe to grind. I’ve been wanting to see this movie for awhile — how can you not want to see a film with this tagline? “Each year, millions visit our national parks. Not everyone gets to leave.”
After the police raid their favorite club — and one of them stabs a cop — a gang of punks decide to hide out at Chelsea’s (Chloe Levine, The Defenders) dead uncle’s cabin. There’s an initial confrontation The Ranger (Jeremy Holm, Mr. Robot, House of Cards) who is kind to our heroine (a flashback shows him cutting off the crusts of a sandwich for her and asking to be remembered as the cops arrive), yet in the face of everyone else.
This is Jenn Wexler’s debut feature and it totally has the punk rock feel of Return of the Living Dead, which is a huge compliment. Plus, in this interview, music supervisor Middagh Goodwin talked about just how important it was to have a great soundtrack that would lead to viewers discovering some great punk bands.
That same park ranger who helped Chelsea years ago has now gone completely off the rails and is ready to stop these punks from vandalizing his park, much less blasting loud music and tossing their beer cans everywhere. It’s not like he didn’t warn them from the beginning.
Holm is just great in this, a true joy to watch. It’s interesting to see a slasher villain who isn’t tormented or disfigured or conflicted about what he does. He tells one of his victims that he’s sorry that things had to be this way, but he has a job to do keeping these woods clean — and then he heartily chuckles.
A lot of the story has to do with what exactly happened between Chelsea, her uncle and The Ranger. Did she shoot him? Was he killed by wolves? Can she even trust herself with all the junk in her system and the way her memories have been hidden?
I really dug this one. It’s a film that throws it back to the slasher 80’s but certainly could have fit within it. It’s a bit smarter than your average slasher was, but has no shortage of gore along the way.
You can grab The Ranger at Redbox now, pre-order the DVD or blu ray at the official site or just wait until it shows up on Shudder later this year.
Jonathan Davenport is dealing with the recent death of his father and trying to figure out whether or not he can handle his wide-reaching media empire that he has inherited. His journey of discovery leads him to the Peruvian Amazon seeking a reclusive artist living in rebel occupation. The mission ends up being much more than that. Instead, it’s a harbinger of something dark and ominous rooted deep within Jonathan.
Directed by Harry Locke IV, who has also been a colorist and post-production supervisor on numerous blockbusters, and featuring stars like Vernon Wells (Bennett from Commando, Wes from The Road Warrior and Lord General from Weird Science, amongst other roles), Christopher Atkins (The Blue Lagoon) and Branscombe Richmond (Saving Sarah Marshall), this is a film that takes us from the boardroom to the deep jungle in search of El Dorado.
Jonathan’s entire family is dealing with masochistic and self-destructive tendencies — it even drives his father to suicide. After being ruled unfit to run his family’s company, Jonathan reconnects with his ex-girlfriend Elisabeth Carlisle and goes with her to find an artist. The trip turns bad quick — the art collector sponsoring it has hired mercenaries, the artist is in the middle of a warzone and Peru unlocks the true demons inside our hero’s mind.
There are some long stretches here that the budget demanded be animated like video game cutscenes. It may take some out of the film. I understood why they had to use them to keep the story moving. This aspires to be an Indiana Jones high adventure and doesn’t completely hit the mark, but the scenery looks great and it certainly has some lofty aspirations.
City of Gold is available on VOD and DVD.
NOTE: We were sent this movie by a PR company. That has nothing to do with our thoughts on the final product.
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