“Daddy’s in the dining room,
Sortin’ through the news.
Mama’s at the shopping mall,
Buyin’ new shoes.
Everybody’s got something to do,
Everybody but you.

Come on and dance with me, dance with me
Everybody’s got something to do,
Everybody but you.

Sister’s on the telephone,
Gossipin’ again.
Junior’s at the arcade,
Smokin’ with his friends.
Everybody’s got something to do,
Everybody but you.”

For better or worse, there’s never been another movie quite like Night Train to Terror. And how could there be? This isn’t just one movie — it’s three movies in one. None of these movies felt releasable on their own, so much like Spookies or Fright House, those three movies were all shoveled into one furnace, much like how coal powers the engine.

Unlike those films, which just jams the stories together, the stories here are linked by a framing sequence of a band that’s traveling through the night on, well, a night train to terror. All the while, God (Ferdy Mane, last seen as Count von Krolock from The Fearless Vampire Killers, who felt this movie was so poor that he penned a letter to its director) and Satan (Tony Giorgio, who wasn’t just Bruno Tattaglia  in The Godfather but the Playboy Club’s in-house gambling expert. He’s also the sheriff in another film that may possibly melt your mind, the Bigfoot-centric Cry Wilderness) are just a few cars down, debating whether or not the band will live to see their next destination. Meanwhile, the night porter makes faces at the camera years before single camera shows like The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm made such mugging de rigueur. 

Get to know the band. After all, you’re going to see them between each and every story as they repeat the chorus of the song over and over — and over — again. They only take breaks to ask if they can get some hamburgers and beer, only to learn that there’s no food on this train. And that some call it the Heavenly Express and some call it Satan’s Cannonball, but they do guarantee to deliver every passenger to its right “dest…tin…ation!” Obviously, neither of the things people call the train are as good as Night Train to Terror, but that’s a moot point.

To determine the fate of these breakdancing fools — seriously, being in a band with fifty people has to be the worst ever because you split the door money every which way — the Divine Creator and the First of the Fallen decide to watch three different stories, at least one of which was a totally unfinished movie. 

The confusion stars with the very first story. In some releases, they are in a totally different order. But for those playing at home, we’re going to use the amazing Vinegar Syndrome blu ray release of this film to go from.

In The Case of Harry Billings, John Phillip Law (an angel in Barbarella and forever in my heart Diabolik) has been manipulated into working for the spare body parts black market. You know how it goes, right? This story is packed with nonsensical jump cuts, unnecessary surgery, gratuitous nudity and Richard Moll, who wasn’t even there for most of the scenes, with a double playing most of his action scenes. You can tell because the second version of him has incredibly hairy arms. While this movie wasn’t finished before it was pulled into this film, it was later completed and released on VHS as Scream Your Head Off.

After another band performance — they only have one song yet a near infinite number of band members and dancers — The Case of Gretta Connors is all about a nice young girl who used to work at the carnival. A man visits her booth and pays her to go out with him and before you know it, she’s a porn star. Again, that’s how life goes. 

One day, a college guy sees her on a stag loop and falls in love, eventually finding her and starting a relationship, which leads her old Hollywood producer sugar daddy husband to bring him into a suicide club. This club has a baroness and a guy who looks and acts like Jimi Hendrix, all playing games like letting a giant claymation beetle fly around and sting one of them to death or lie in sleeping bags until a giant ball crushes one of them. Back to Jimi — he’s electrocuted as he yells song lyrics. 

Like the other films, you can see the entire long version of this under many titles, such as The Dark Side of Love, Carnival of Fools, Gretta or Death Wish Club.

Speaking of song lyrics, the band is back and all they decided when they wrote this song, they’d just repeat the chorus. And then do it again. And then yell stuff like, “One more time!” That said, the song “Everybody But You” was really written by Joe Turano, who also has two other songs in this one that I’ll be damned if I can remember, probably because they weren’t repeatedly to pad the movies running time. Four years after he contributed — I should probably use another word like foisted — to this movie, he was a singing voice in The Little Mermaid. Yep. The Disney film.

Let’s get back on the train, because God and Satan have one final bet. The Case of Claire Hansen is about a surgeon who ends up battling a demon who was once a Nazi who is also in conflict with a Holocaust survivor who is best friends with Cameron Mitchell. Additionally, the surgeon is married to Richard Moll — back again with a constantly changing hairstyle and color — who inexplicably was awarded the Nobel Prize for writing a book that proves that God is dead. There’s also a swinging disco, a magical black man who calls out our heroine for America’s history of racism, more claymation scenes in the place of practical special effects because claymation was 1980’s CGI, an ex-priest named Papini who has a 666 tattoo and forced surgery. Somehow, they shrunk a 90-minute movie down into 30 minutes. That said, I’ve seen the full version of this as The Nightmare Never Ends (alternatively known as Cataclysm and Satan’s Supper, a name that sounds like a garage band fronted by a rebellious pimple-faced teen who has just read Anton LaVey for the first time). 

Are you ready to hear the song one more time? Wouldn’t you just love to see the band die in a giant train disaster? Good news — you have your wish granted. Except God has taken their souls up to heaven as we see an animated train choo-chooing up the clouds, where the nameless band will forever sing their song, driving cherubim and seraphim crazy for eternity.

To say Night Train to Terror is a strange movie is to say that Drive-In Asylum sometimes features ads from old horror movies. This is a brutal cocktail of unfinished films and a wraparound sequence that was written by writer Philip Yordan, who won an Oscar for writing the movie Broken Lance. Sound good? Well, the truth is, he was merely a front for blacklisted writers, like that movie’s true scribe, Joseph L. Mankiewicz. 

How can you not love a movie where Satan is credited as being portrayed by Lu Sifer and God by Himself? That said, if you decide to buy a ticket on this train, prepare to never escape the song that plays throughout. I sometimes go for a few days free of its power and then I start laughing about one of the lines in it, start to sing it and it goes on for hours. Hours, I tell you!

“Gonna be a bad boy,
Stayin’ after school.
Principal is workin’ hard,
Makin’ new rules.

Come on and dance with me, dance with me
(repeat 350 times)”

You can watch this on Tubi.

This article originally ran in Drive-In Asylum #14, which you can buy right here.

Wherever exploitation movies break ground, John Saxon is there. When Bruce Lee stars in Enter the Dragon, there he is, backing him up as Roper. As Mario Bava creates a proto-giallo in The Girl Who Knew Too Much, he stars. Early slasher film? Look to Saxon in Black Christmas. Want a Star Wars clone? There he is as the Darth Vader of Battle Beyond the Stars. Eighties horror sequel madness? He’s the big name in A Nightmare on Elm Street. And he’s back as Craven and Argento deconstruct the slasher and giallo genre with New Nightmare and Tenebre. 

Yet for all his work in film, John Saxon only directed one movie: 1988’s Zombie Death House. The original director bowed out at the last minute, so Saxon agreed to both act in and direct this film. He’s since claimed that the producers imposed more car chases and gore than the script asked for, so what ended up on the screen didn’t live up to his true vision. That may be because they only had nine days to write this movie and the producers demanded that it be like The Godfather. 

Who knows what that vision may have been, because what emerges starts as a mob crime drama. Dennis Cole stars as Vietnam vet Derek Keillor, a man who may have won medals in war, but found no opportunities at home. Cole had a decent run as a guest star on plenty of TV shows, but was probably better known for marrying Charlie’s Angels star Jaclyn Smith. He also shows up on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, as his son Joe was shot to death in a crime that remains, well, unsolved. That’s one of my favorite episodes, as Joe was Henry Rollins’ roommate, so it just seems so odd to have a punk icon and Robert Stack on the same show. 

But I digress. Derek can only find one job: limo driver for mafia boss Vic Moretti, played by Anthony Franciosa from Tenebre. Our hero can’t help but fall for Vic’s woman, Genelle. He pays for his impudence by getting set up for her murder — Moretti drowns her in the bathtub, providing an opportunity for nudity — and sent to death row at Townsend State Prison. 

That’s where the real story begins. Government agent Colonel Burgess (Saxon) has taken over the prison from a henpecked warden — his wife literally tells him she plans on dumping him in front of their cherubic daughter and skateboarding son — and begun to subject the prisoners a genetically altered version of a virus called HV8B.

Who would invent such a thing? Oh, just Tanya Kerrington (Tane McClure, the only actress I know who was in both Legally Blonde and Death Spa), who was once a scientist but is now an investigative journalist.TK, as Tanya wants to be known, is here with her cameraman trying to bust the Colonel’s use of prisoners as test subjects. She picked the right day for this, as ten minutes after she arrives, the zombie virus makes everyone go bonkers. 

This is a film of amazing coincidences. Like how Derek is jailed alongside Moretti’s brother Frankie, so he uses him as a hostage to lure Vic into the prison. That’s when the first zombie shows up, using a modified sleeper hold to rip off a guard’s head before being shot hundreds of times. Oh yeah — somehow Ron “Super Fly” O’Neal shows up in this mess, too.

Credit where credit is due — Saxon is awesome here, a total maniac who wants to create an American army that can win wars like Vietnam, so he creates a zombie plague that makes people do insane things. That seems like a good idea, right? And Franciosa chews every bit of scenery he gets near, like the scene where he kills his brother’s jailhouse lover.

All of the maneuverings of the plot do allow for a very Carpenter-like storyline to emerge: everyone in the prison has been infected and therefore quarantined. Can they survive the siege both within and without the prison?
There are some moments of lunacy — a lunch lady zombie hoarding Twinkies in a scene that predates Zombieland by a decade or so and a dream sequence near the end that exists only so we can see TK nude — but things don’t descend to the level of a Nightmare City as you’d hope. 

I do wish Saxon had directed more films, though. And I really wish his script for an Elm Street sequel called How the Nightmare Began had been made. It concerns therapist Frederick Krueger being blamed for a series of murders that have been really committed by the Manson Family. You have no idea how much I wish that movie got made.

Zombie Death House isn’t a movie that many celebrate. I wouldn’t even know about it if Saxon hadn’t directed it. But here I am, at 5 AM, watching it and celebrating the fact that it contains a heroic child skating through a maximum security prison and running across an infected lunch lady feverishly hoarding a stack of Twinkies. I mean, you have to love that someone convinced the Dead Kennedys to give them the rights to “Chemical Warfare,” which plays over the closing credits. And only in the 1980’s would filmmakers figure out a way to get the film’s hard as nails biochemist/investigative journalist heroine naked by the end of the movie. 

If this ever gets rediscovered, celebrated as a hidden gem and released as an expensive blu ray with multiple slipcovers like so many other lost 80’s movies, remember that you heard about it here first.

UPDATE October 21, 2024: Lance was about to record this for Unsung Horrors with Erica and wrote to ask, “I wanted to check in with you and your crazy ways of finding facts about films. Do you happen to know who the original director was that bowed out before Saxon took over? Do you have any insights into the production of the film? I found a few things online but this thing is quite the mystery (which I actually like haha). Thanks!”

This took me down a rabbit hole online and when I realized that Retromedia released it on DVD, I thought that Fred Olen Ray may have something to do with it. I asked Jenn Upton, who edited Fred’s book Hell-bent for Hollywood f he said anything about working with Saxon.

Here’s what Jenn shared:

“John Saxon starred and directed the prison-zombie film, but he just, for some reason, struggled with the finale. They shot the finale three times before someone finally said, “Look, this isn’t working.” They called me, and said, “Could you come down and help us out?” I said, “Okay,” because the producer, Nick Marino, was a friend of mine. I went down and I shot a sequence where the heroes are escaping from this prison and coming out in Bronson Canyon while ziombie-inmates try to kill them.

John Saxon, who I effectively replaced as the director, had to continue on the show as an actor in these scenes and I’ll admit it was very uncomfortable, but he was extremely professional. John and I talked a lot about what we were
going to do.

The writers, producers and director had not prepared any means whatsoever for these people to escape from the prison into Bronson Canyon. They hadn’t even considered how to achieve it.

At lunch time, they handed out sandwiches to the cast and crew that arrived on three-foot-screenlike plastic serving trays.

I asked the caterer, “Can you leave me three or four of those?”

I took them and made a little tunnel exit from three plastic bread trays held together with nothing more than a thin piece of wire, like pipe cleaners. There were enough trays for the top of the tunnel and two sides. We sat it on the ground and the actors crawled out through the three bread trays into the cave.

The shot showed just a little bit of the bread trays, and then you would see the actors crawl out. That’s how they got from the prison into the cave. It probably seemed ridiculous to everyone at the time, but it worked. The audience only sees what the camera shows them.

We shot the end of the movie in Bronson Cave at night while the director of House of Wax, Andre De Toth was visiting. He wore a pirate’s patch because he only had one eye and also had his neck in an impressive-looking brace. He tripped over the generator cables in the dark and took a bad fall right in front of me. I was very concerned for him, but from the state of things I believed this sort of mishap had happened to him many times before.

Andre was around a lot because he was also friends with Nick. He later directed a great portion of Nick’s even lower budgeted Terror Night (1987.) Michelle Bauer told me that Andre directed all of her scenes, even though he vehemently denied ever working on the film.

Nick watched my Death House footage and then, liking what he saw, he decided he needed more action. He concocted a new scene that would shoot in the back alley behind the adult video company, LA Video, the parent company of Camp Video. In the new storyline, LA Video honchos, Salvatore Richichi and Jim Golff played gangsters selling plastic explosives shaped like dashboard Jesus figurines.

A car races down the alley, smashes into them, blows up, and a kung fu fight breaks out with the hero, Dennis Cole. All in a night’s work.

I did that additional scene as well, and at the end of the day I never thought to ask, “Hey, am I getting paid anything for this?”

The answer was no. Three days. I spent three grueling days on that movie and didn’t get a dime. Not a fucking dime and I probably didn’t get any credit either. I don’t remember and I don’t want to.”

Fred also added: “On Moon in Scorpio, Gary Craver did direct and called action and cut but when I got to Death House, I decided that I wasn’t going to go down that route. And I did not let Saxon be involved in the directing at all. He was involved as an actor only and we got along fine, but I did things my way and I called action card. And did the shots the way I wanted them without any input from him at all.”

Make sure that you buy Fred’s book, Hell-Bent for Hollywood, on Amazon.

Thanks to Lance and Erica for asking and Jenn for her help, as this is some movie archaeology that got to the bottom of a fact that people always report and it may not be the whole truth.

What if you combine the director of Jackson County Jail — Michael Miller — and Chuck Norris, America’s favorite karate man, then make Chuck fight the Frankenstein Monster in a movie that’s as if John Wayne wandered into a slasher? Then you’d have 1982’s utterly bizarre Silent Rage (or the 2009 remake, Indestructible).

Seriously — Chuck Noris sidekicks an unstoppable killer. Why you’re reading this and not looking for this movie is beyond me.

Somewhere in Texas, John Kirby (Brian Libby, Floyd from The Shawshank Redemption) kills two of his family members and is stopped by Sheriff Daniel Stevens (Norris) and his deputy Charlie (Stephen Furst, Animal House). Kirby breaks free and is shot several times before being brought back to life by his psychiatrist, Dr. Thomas Halman (Ron Silver!), who is working along with genetics experts Dr. Phillip Spires (Steven Keats, Death Wish) and Dr. Paul Vaughn (William Kinley, the Phantom of Paradise himself!).

Now the killing machine is mute and unkillable and even worse, on the run. Somehow, Sheriff Dan is dating Alison, the sister of Dr. Tom, and Kirby is killing everyone in his way. So Chuck Norris does what he does best — sidekicking. After lots of murder, he sidekicks the monster down a well, where he survives to set up a sequel that never came.

Michael Miller said the film was written with Norris in mind, telling Coming Soon: “You don’t hire Chuck Norris not to do karate. It wasn’t like it was an old John Wayne script that they ended up giving to Chuck. He does his thing. I think the idea was to try and broaden the audience in that it wasn’t a karate movie. In my mind, it was a Frankenstein movie. It was like Frankenstein meets Chuck.” What it wasn’t was inspired by slashers, as Miller wasn’t a fan.

“At the end, the guy is still not dead. But that never happened. I would have liked that. You can see that this guy is not a slasher. He kills people the way Frankenstein’s creature kills people. He throws them and bang,” said Miller.

Meanwhile, Miller worked with most of the crew for this movie and Stephen Furst on another film that came out in 1982, National Lampoon’s Class Reunion. And listen for the song “It’s The Time For Love” on the soundtrack. That’s Peg Bundy, Katey Sagal, singing.

You can watch this on Crackle or on Amazon Prime with Rifftrax commentary.

Why would I be awake at 2:51 AM on a school night watching a movie called Truck Stop Women — as well as Road Angels — when I could just as easily be in bed? Well, some would say it’s a devotion to our readers who demand to know more about mid-70’s truck driving action films. But we all. know it’s because this movie has Claudia Jennings in it and that name is enough to make me say, “Well, I’ll at least watch this for a few minutes.” Before you know it, the sun is coming up and I’ve spent all of my beauty sleep hours watching the dearly departed Ms. Jennings skate roller derby or fight the syndicate or play post-apocalyptic games with David Carradine. Tonight is no different.

What can you say about a movie that starts with two gangsters assassinating a naked couple in a bathtub? You roped me in again, Mark Lester, director of Commando, Firestarter, Class of 1984, Bobbi Joe and the Outlaw, Roller Boogie and so many other movies that have also kept me awake late into the small hours.

Anna (Lieux Dressler, Grave of the Vampire) runs a brothel for truckers — yes, there was once a thing and I bet there probably still is — in New Mexico. He daughter Rose (Jennings) is one of her girls (so is Uschi Digard!) but she’s tired of her mom running her life and dreams of more money, so she starts working with the Eastern Mafia — led by Smith (John Martino, Paulie Gatto from The Godfather) and Rusty (Speed Stearns, Eat My Dust!)  — to take over the racket.

Oddly enough, $15,000 of this film’s budget came from politician Phil Gramm. There were some articles that made a big stink about it being an adult film, but it’s honestly softcore at best.

Look, any movie where Claudia Jennings yells, “Would Jackie Onassis eat chicken fried steak!?” is going to be one that I end up watching. Whether or not you have the same bad taste as me will determine whether or not you should watch this movie.

Does it help if I tell you that the entire movie stops dead for a montage of an 18 wheeler going across the entire country to the tune of “I’m a Truck,” sung from the POV of the truck itself? Because wow, that totally happens. Hey — Dennis Fimple is in it, so maybe you really should stay up all night. I know that I did.

You can watch this on Tubi and Amazon Prime.

Despite being born in Bakersfield, CA, Barry Mahon volunteered to be in Britain’s Royal Air Force in 1941, achieving a record of five confirmed kills, two probables and three damaged planes, which earned him the British Distinguished Flying Cross in 1985. He was shot down in August of 1942, captured and imprisoned at Stalag Luft III. He managed to escape and was recaptured twice before he was finally liberated by Patton’s 3rd Army in 1945. It’s been claimed that Steve McQueen’s role in The Great Escape is based on Mahon.

Upon returning to America, he became the personal pilot and manager of Errol Flynn. This led to producing films like 1957’s Crossed Swords and 1959’s Cuban Rebel Girls, both of which had Flynn in them. The rest of his films, like Rocket Attack U.S.A., Sex Killer and Fanny Hill Meets Dr. Erotico enter the world of exploitation and sexploitation. Further titles include Bunny Yeager’s Nude Camera, Hollywood Nudes Report, Confessions of a Bad Girl, P. P. S. (Prostitutes’ Protective Society), The Girl With the Magic Box and many, many more. And then there are his children’s films, like Santa’s Christmas Elf (Named Calvin), Jack and the Beanstalk and Thumbelina, which is part of one of the oddest movies I’ve ever seen — imagine exactly how much that statement covers — Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny.

An adaption of The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Mahon told The New York Times that he had hired Judy Garland to narrate this movie, which is the ultimate in carnie flim flam.

Mahon’s youngest son Channy, or Chandos Castle Mahon, plays our hero Tip. Yes, Dorothy doesn’t show up, but Glinda, the Tin Woodsman and the Scarecrow all do. However, they’re all embroiled in international intrigue and in-fighting between their kingdoms, I mean cardboard sets that wouldn’t be foreign in a late 60’s nudie-cutie.

Speaking of softcore, all of Jinjur’s Army of Revolt are played by incredibly attractive young women in band uniforms and knee high boots. “Something for daddy,” as they say. Speaking of fathers, there’s also a man with a giant pumpkin for a head that is brought to life and calls Tip dad.

This movie is completely frightening. There’s a papier-mache purple cow, a bug faced man and a scarecrow that looks more like Imhotep than Ray Bolger. You may never get it out of your brain and for that, I am sorry.

You can watch the Rifftrax version on Amazon Prime.

Along with Mike Whitehill and David Briggs, Steven Knight created the game show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? He’s also written plenty of screenplays — he contributed to Eastern Promises and Shutter Island, which this movie feels like the Italian ripoff of — and wrote and directed the films Locke and Hummingbird. None of these things will prepare you for this complete and utter grease fire of a movie.

Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey, who should know better) is a fishing boat captain who lives off the coast of Florida on Plymouth Island, yet all the steering wheels are on the wrong side of the cars. He spends most of his days drunk or out on the ocean, hunting an elusive tuna named Justice.

That all changes when his ex-wife Karen Zariakas (Anne Hathaway, who should know better) shows up and begs him to save their son from her abusive husband Frank (Jason Clarke, who was in Chappaquiddick as Ted Kennedy, another excoriable bit of Hollywood dross), giving hi $10 million dollars to feed the man to the sharks. This seems like an exorbitant figure and an overly elaborate plan, but don’t worry. This film is about to go off the rails in a way that few do.

Seriously, if you felt like watching this movie, you should stop reading right now.

The truth is, DIll — who is really John Mason — was really killed in Iraq and is now a video game character in a game that his son Patrick has designed based on the one memory he has of his father. Now that he’s stuck with a stepfather that beats his mom and attacks him, the game changes to one where Dill or Mason or whatever must kill the new dad. That means that everyone else in town, from Djimon Hounsou’s Duke to Diane Lane’s Constance, are all non-player characters.

Just before virtual dad is about to be killed by the monstrous tuna, the real Patrick stabs his real stepdad with his real dead dad’s knife. He is released into custody before a trial and designs a new game where he just hangs out with his dad.

I made none of that up. This all really happens in this bizarre film noir with people that have no understanding of the genre. Also, if the son designed this game, does he really want to see his dad’s bare ass double digit times? Does he want his virtual dad to get with his virtual mom and sail the seas of mayonnaise on a houseboat together? Who can say!

No matter how bad a movie is, it usually gets millions of dollars’ worth of promotion. The test screenings for this film were so bad that Serenity‘s distributor Aviron canceled a full campaign, even after all of the actors agreed to a full press junket as part of the contracts. According to a Deadline Hollywood article, only nine TV spots aired in the middle of the night in obscure cities, one assumes only to answer some contract or requirements. That means that this movie went up to 2,500 screens with no one knowing a single thing about it.

Aviron said in a statement: “As much as we love this film and still hope it finds its audience, we tested and retested the film — with audiences and critics alike — and sadly, the data demonstrated that the film was not going to be able to perform at our initial expectations, so we adjusted our budget and marketing tactics accordingly.”

I really can’t explain just how bad this movie is, one that starts as a Body Heat style neo-noir and somehow becomes the redneck Matrix while at the same time threatening to become a shark week movie. Compounding the pain, my wife — who had wanted to see this — fell asleep an hour in and that meant that I had to soldier on alone.

If you’re as dumb as me, you can watch this on Amazon Prime.

Roger Corman and Angie Dickinson are still on board for another Big Bad Mama a decade later, bringing on Jim Wynorski as the director. Yes, the writer of Forbidden World, Sorceress and Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time as well as the director of Chopping Mall and so many more. Remember when the Medved brothers decried Dickinson being nude in the first Big Bad Mama? They must have been in full cringe mode for this one, even though Monique Gabrielle was her body double for this sequel effort.

Despite dying at the end of the original, Wilma McClatchie’s (Dickinson) home is foreclosed on, her new man shot and killed and she and her daughters Billie Jean (this time played by Danielle Brisebois, who was in The Premonition, TV’s Archie Bunker’s Place and a member of the band New Radicals) and Polly (Julie McCullough, Playboy February 1986 Playmate of the Month who also appeared in the 1988 remake of The Blob and was on TV’s Growing Pains until being fired once Kirk Saving Christmas Cameron converted to evangelical Christianity) return to a life of crime.

Crispin Glover’s dad Bruce is in this, as are Robert Culp, Charles Cypers (Sheriff Leigh Brackett!) and Lin Shaye in a brief part as a bank teller. It’s nowhere near as good as the originally, which wasn’t all that good to begin with, but when it’s 2:43 AM and you’re up all night with a toothache, you could really do worse, I guess.

You can watch this on Tubi and Amazon Prime.

Jeb Stuart has written or co-written some of the biggest movies ever — Die Hard, Lock Up, The Fugitive, Just Cause and Another 48 Hrs. He also wrote an early draft of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull called Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars.

In 1997, he made his directorial debut with this film, whose negative critical reception led to him semi-retiring from filmmaking for over a decade. In 2010, he wrote, produced and directed Blood Done Sign My Name, adapted from the autobiography of author and historian Timothy Tyson.

Dennis Quaid is Special Agent Frank LaCrosse, who has been tracking the serial killer who took his son to get him off the case. That brings him to Amarillo, where he meets Sheriff Buck Olmstead (R. Lee Ermey) and police chief Jack McGinnis (William Fichtner), who are battling over the election. While all that is going on, Dr. Lane Dixon (Jared Leto) is picked up by Bob Goodall (Danny Glover), a drifter driving a white Cadillac filled with cheesecake photos.

The path to discovering who the killer is takes a long time, but this feels like a movie more concerned with the small things. I love Ermey and Fichtner is just about everything they ever did, but this film adds on to the character actor greatness by giving you Ted Levine, Walton Goggins and Maggie Roswell (Maude Flanders from The Simpsons and Donna from Midnight Madness).

Amazingly, Steven Seagal was almost the lead in this movie, which would have totally changed everything. It was originally called Going West In America, too.

Spoiler: This is only the second movie where I’ve seen Danny Glover as the bad guy. The other is Witness.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime and Tubi.

Don Hulette somehow went from the music to Starhops to directing this, which feels like a glitch in the matrix which is IMDB. Kind of the same feeling one gets realizing that they’re about to watch a trucking movie starring Chuck Norris, who said, “I didn’t know anything when I made that movie. We shot it in just 11 days. But it was amazing, people loved it anyway. It’s a down-home kind of movie. It’s still my dad’s favorite.”

J.D. (Chuck Norris) is a trucker from California who learns that his friend was paralyzed after being beaten by Texas City cops Sergeant Strode and Deputy Boles, who have a history of entrapping truckers and sending them to jail. J.D. warns his brother Billy to stay out of Texas City, the kid doesn’t listen and goes missing.

That brings J.D. to town, winning over single mom waitresses and accidentally killing mechanics, which gets him sentenced to death by Judge Trimmings. Luckily, J.D.’s new hash slinging old lady calls in a convoy of big rigs to save him. Jack Nance is in this, too. Yes, the same Jack Nance who was in Eraserhead. Life’s funny like that.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime.

Steve Carver originally intended to be get invovled in the worlds of cartooning, commercial art and animation before becoming a cameraman for ABC’s Wide World of Sports, shooting St. Louis Cardinals baseball games before he made thirty documentaries while teaching college at the same time.

One of those documentaries got him into the American Film Institute, where he studied under George Stevens, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlton Heston and Gregory Peck, as wel as the opportunity to be the assistant director on Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun.

Carver’s final AFI project was a short based on Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, which brought him to the attention of Roger Corman. He edited 150 trailers for the producer and directed The Arena — which has Joe D’Amoto as director of cinematography — before this film. He’d go on to make two Chuck Norris films, Lone Wolf McQuade and An Eye for An Eye before leaving film for the world of photography, pining for the more fun days of working with Corman.

Texas, 1932. Wilma McClatchie (Angie Dickinson) has taken over her dead man’s bootlegging still, but gets caught by the law. Forced to hand over all her money and even her wedding ring to the sheriff, she decides that she and her daughters Polly (Robbie Lee, Lace from Switchblade Sisters and eventually the voice of Twink on Rainbow Brite; she’s also the goddaughter of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans) and Billy Jean (Susan Sennett, The Candy Snatchers and wife of Graham Nash) are going to live a life of crime. 

While Wilma is at a bank trying to pass a fake check, the girls end up helping Fred Diller (Tom Skerritt) as he knocks over the joint. He and Wilma soon become lovers, but that doesn’t last long before she’s bedding gambler William J. Baxter (William Shatner) and he starts sleeping with both of her daughters, sometimes at the same time because Roger Corman produced this. 

After kidnapping and ransoming the daughter of a millionaire, federal agents and the police finally track down the gang. Baxter gets cuffed and the girls escape while Diller defends them with a hail of Thompson submachine gun fire. But as they drive away, Wilma dies, her bloody arm dragging against the left side of the car as it speeds away. 

Well, or so you’d think, as there was a sequel. And of course, we’ll be covering that soon.

I learned so much about so-called bad movies from the Medved brothers. In their 1986 tome Son of the Golden Turkey Awards, they nominated Dickinson’s role in this film as “The Most Embarrassing Nude Scene in Hollywood History.” Now that I’m older and wiser, I can say that these guys must have been embarrassed themselves as they actually enjoyed this trash. I hate the idea of guilty pleasures; just like what you like.

Oddly enough, Jerry Garcia performed most of the guitar and banjo music in the movie. And if you’re looking for fun actors, Sally Kirkland, Dick Miller and Royal Dano all show up. It’s not the best movie you’ve ever seen, but it’s filled with sin, skin and bullets. What else were you hoping for?

You can watch this on Tubi and Amazon Prime.