Now their focus is on the Missouri Monster, better known as Momo. This dark hair-covered, three-toed and foul smelling beast was said to have frightened the people of Star Hill, near Louisiana, Missouri during the summer of 1972.
The beauty of this movie is that it’s told in both narrative and documentary form. The story portions look like a lost drive-in movie from the 70’s, depicting the folklore of MOMO while documentary footage corrects the legend thanks to actual survivors.
The entire movie is hosted by Lyle Blackburn, who wrote the books The Beast of Boggy Creek: The True Story of the Fouke Monster, Beyond Boggy Creek: In Search of the Southern Sasquatch and Momo: The Strange Case of the MissouriMonster. He’s also narrated the previously mentioned Terror In the Skies, as well as The Bray Road Beast and The Mothman of Point Pleasant. You may also remember him from when Joe Bob Briggs played The Legend of Boggy Creek during his first Shudder marathon.
This is the best film I’ve seen from Small Town Monsters and that’s saying something. It’s so much fun — combining a movie that doesn’t really exist with a monster that very well may exist. If you’re a fan of Bigfoot films — this list right here proves that we are — you’re in for a real treat.
MOMO: The Missouri Monster will be available on DVD and video on demand September 20. If you’re in Point Pleasant, WV on that day, you can check it out as part of the annual Mothman Festival.
DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by its PR firm but that has no impact on our review.
Sure, Roddy Piper may have battled aliens in They Live and Jesse “The Body” Ventura fought the Predator, but even pro wrestling couldn’t be silly enough to have aliens get in the ring. Could it?
Yes, that’s right. Even the sacred squared circle is not safe from extraterrestrial invaders. Here are but a few — actually we had to look pretty hard — out of this world grapplers:
Max Moon was the man of a million names when he debuted in 1990. Also known as Maximilian Moves, Relamapago, Latin Fury and The Comet Kid, he was originally lucha superstar Konnan.
This was a completely ridiculous — and awesome — gimmick. I mean, take a look at this photo from WWE.com: Konnan was going to be a real-life giant robot.
Image from wwe.com
Image from wwe.com
Eventually, the man who would one day be known as K-Dawg went back to Mexico and Paul Diamond discovered that the suit fit. The highest Max Moon got on the card was a loss to Intercontinental Champion Shawn Michaels on the debut episode of Monday Night Raw. How do I know he was an alien? He was billed as being from “Outer Space.”
Extraterrestrial Life comes to us from Japan’s small Zipang promotion, where he comes to the ring on a stretcher instead of being taken out on one. He also used to team with Giant Watermelon Head. Ah Japan, you happily bring us the strangest pro wrestling there is.
Speaking of Japan…
This old site — back from the days when the Death Valley Driver message board was the end all, be all of smart wrestling fandom — proves that someone, somewhere (David Bixspan) loved the war between former All Japan star Ryuma Go and a series of, well, space alien Jewish men.
It got to the point that when Weekly Pro Magazine ran a huge all promotion show in 1995, Go’s Go Gundan promotion presented a battle between Go, as the Interplanetary Champion, against Uchu Majin Silver X and an entire team of space monsters (including one that oddly wore overalls and dressed like an American redneck).
Here’s all you need to know: the aliens came out to Gustav Hoist’s “The Planets: Mars: Bringer of War”, Go came out to “Eye of the Tiger” and a dildo was used as a weapon.
To top that, the aliens once battled one another in Yokohama’s Yong Dong Village.
Ryuma Go’s life is pretty tragic. After some initial success as one of the first independent wrestlers in Japan, he was soon overshadowed by Atsushi Onita and his Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling (FMW). Despite a string of money marks and promotions like Pioneer Senshi, Oriental Pro, Go Gundan and Samurai Project — he also wrestled for Tenryu’s WAR — by the end of his life Go was a heavy drinker and was publically derided for appearing in gay pornography and stealing a woman’s purse. After a bicycle accident, he suffered a wrist injury that later became infected and killed him.
Just as sad, the wrestler who was Super Uchu Power, Koichiro Kimura, died of pneumonia in 2014. Beyond wrestling for Dramatic Dream Team, Fighting World of Japan Pro Wrestling and All Japan Pro Wrestling and W*ING, Kimura also did MMA. He lost a high profile match to the legendary Rickson Gracie in the 1995 Vale Tudo Japan. Yes, in the same year he was a space alien, he also battled in this historic encounter.
When you need to know about strange wrestlers, you should always ask the amazing Kurt Brown. He responded with this: “South America ROCKED the alien scene, especially with YOLANKA, with his magic pacifying gun in 1973! Plus he was lowered into the ring in Luba Park on the big October show of that year!”
His LuchaWiki entry claims that this left side working ET “would usually wrestle by the rules, but when rudo got out of control, Yolanka would shoot him with his raygun, that would freeze his opponents, making them unable to move, or even lay down for a pin, taking a win after that.”
LuchaWiki also introduced me to the AAA wrestler named Alliens. He was also the leader of a stable known as Los Alienigenas that also included the gray monster Kriptor, the chameleon-like Mungo and their mini snail-like monster Mandrox, all of whom feuded with Alebrije and Cuije. Supposedly one of those guys was MS-1 and the other was El Verdugo. Alliens is pretty much 100% the wrestler now known as Monster Clown. Regardless, when Antonio Pena died, the aliens all went back to their home planet, which is a shame, because their promos were insane.
Speaking of lucha libre, by the second season of its Americanized-cousin, Lucha Underground, it was revealed that Aerostar was actually an alien with some time travel abilities. That would explain why he can do these things and not die.
A note for lucha fans — before he was Aerostar, this luchador also wrestled as Chiva Rayada II, one of the soccer playing wrestling goats. Yes, that really happens in Mexico.
I’ve also heard of an alien wrestler near Philly that works for PWE named Telepo-1. I’d love to learn more about him — or her — so someone please fill me in!
There’s also “The Alien” Kristen Stadtlander, who has been making some big waves on the indy scene as of late. She recently told 1495 Sports about portraying an alien: “It is a weird extreme version of myself. Most of the greats in wrestling will always say be the best character you can be is one where you take yourself and times it by ten. My whole life I never really fit in anywhere, but I always had something interesting about me not everyone knows. Aliens don’t fit in with humans and there is so much curiosity about them that is so intriguing. That is kind of how I feel.”
There are several instances of aliens battling wrestlers in pop culture, too.
In Sega’s Pro Wrestling for the Master System — based on the arcade game Gokuaku Doumei Dump Matsumoto (released outside Japan as Body Slam), the final hidden bosses are an alien tag team.
Known as M.U.S.C.L.E. in the US, Japan’s Kinnikuman is all about the adventures of Suguru Kinniku, a superhero who must win a wrestling tournament to become the prince of Planet Kinniku. That’s just the start of the story that’s been going on for multiple generations and four decades, even crossing over into the real world at times.
If aliens are coming to Earth and want a battle, who better than the Von Erichs to lead the fight? This blast of pure insanity, published in 1989, posits a place where Kevin, Kerry and Fritz are beamed into space to use Iron Claws and Tornado Punches against bug eyed monsters. You can read more — and you totally have to — right here.
I mean…just look at this page:
If you could Superman as an alien, you can always look back on the time he fought against Antonino Rocca, too.
When it comes to wrestling toys, Mattel released a line of WWE Mutants action figures. Along with a scorpion-looking Sting, a metal John Cena, a demonized Finn Balor, a four-armed Brock Lesnar and an alligator man Bray Wyatt, future AEW boss Cody Rhodes’ character Stardust would become an alien.
Despite how silly this glow in the dark figure is, it’s still cooler than his Star Trek: The Next Generation entrance at All Out.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the alien-filled Champions of the Galaxy game, which has been around since I read PWI in the 1980’s. It’s still available — along with plenty of other cool games — from Filsinger Games.
Want to know about more mat monsters? We’ve already covered:
Somehow, over the last several weeks, I’ve encountered more than three John Herzfeld movies — Switchback, Escape Plan The Extractors, Cannonball (he acted in that Roger Corman produced film) — and now this film.
To get the cast he needed for this movie, Herzfeld started with old friend Sylvester Stallone, who he’s known since the two were roommates at University of Miami. Stallone’s participation led to other actors joining the cast at lower salaries. Herzfeld also brought on another old friend, Danny Aiello, who used the role of Father Paul to recover from the death of his son.
After the founder of Perfect 10 magazine Norman Zada backed out of his investment and sued the filmmakers for a million dollars (I’m not going to say that Zada is a copyright troll because I don’t have the millions to defend myself from libel, but the facts kind of speak for themselves if you look into his thirty lawsuits over the last few years). The film was finally funded via Indiegogo.
Reach Me is all about a self-help book that unites a world full of different characters. It’s based on Herzfeld’s memories of seeing prosperity theology-based televangelist Reverend Ike and reading Napoleon Hill’s self-help book, Think and Grow Rich.
Much like Magnolia or Crash, the story starts as unlinked characters before bringing them all together. There’s Kyra Sedwick as an ex-con, Thomas Jane as an undercover cop, Kelsey Grammer as a mob boss named Angelo AldoBrandini, Nelly as a hip hop star who claims to have written the book, Tom Berenger as the book’s actual author, Terry Crews as one of the author’s friends and even Danny Trejo, Chuck Zito, Tom Sizemore and Cary Elwes.
Stallone paints in the film and the cover of the book was actually painted by him. So there’s that. This is the kind of movie that I endured only because I’ve set the near-impossible goal of watching every single one of his films. Otherwise, I would have never had to suffer through it. If you told me that it was a religious movie, I’d almost believe you.
Here’s the synopsis of this movie from writer/director Stephen Wolfe (Midnight Abyss): “Mark and Kay are out with friends, looking for thrills on Halloween night when a playful ritual takes a turn for the horrific. After unknowingly awakening dozens of possessed baby dolls, their town seems set for destruction and chaos. But with the help of Kay’s brother, Melvin, and angry old man Darius Grumley, the teens must find a way to stop the baby dolls and ward off the evil force of nature that is after their souls.”
There’s a fine line between homage and outright thievery. This film challenges that razorthin border with a copy of the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis straight out of Evil Dead and dolls that feel incredibly close to Dolls and Puppet Master.
That said — the more I stuck with this silly movie, the more I ended up enjoying it, particularly the bad guys, Yegor. By the end of the movie, I was rooting along with the heroes.
There’s plenty of gore of varying quality here and the movie doesn’t take itself all that seriously, which makes it work.
Doll Factory is now available via your favorite streaming platform.
DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR agency, but that has no bearing on this review.
Richard Donner gets a lifetime pass from me for The Omen and Superman, not to mention The Goonies, Scrooged and the Lethal Weapon films. He also directed the original “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” episode of The Twilight Zone. But for all these films, sometimes you must endure some of his misfires, like The Toy and, well, Assassins.
The original spec script was written by The Wachowskis, who sold it for $1 million to producer Joel Silver. He must have been flush with cash at the time, as he also bought their script for The Matrix for a million too. He then offered Donner $10 million to direct the film, but first, he wanted the violence toned down and Stallone’s character made more sympathetic. That means that Brian Helgeland (976-EVIL, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Man On Fire, which he also directed) was brought in to do a rewrite, which led to the Wachowskis trying to get their names off the movie before being refused by the Writers Guild of America.
Robert Rath (Sylvester Stallone) is an assassin who wants to retire. He’s haunted by the memories of killing his mentor and has lost a step, as Miguel Bain (Antonio Banderas) gets to his next mark before he can.
Bain’s goal is to be number one, which means he has to take out Rath. Then they both take on the mission of taking out Electra (Julianne Moore), a computer hacker. All manner of shenanigans ensue, placing both men in one another’s crosshairs repeatedly.
Honestly, I struggled to even get through this one. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve watched thirty Stallone movies in seven days, but I don’t think that’s the problem. This is just boring where it could be so much better, although I love Banderas in the film. He made the actor’s decision to only eat fruit in the movie, which makes no sense, but it’s one hilarious bit of method acting.
There are times in Clownado that — thanks to the patois used by some of the characters, something I can only think is a gangster Kansas City accent — that I thought it was taking place in the 1930’s, not 2019. That said, the modern cars clued me in that this was no period piece.
A gang of circus clowns get cursed and decide to get their vengeance using a tornado, which brings a stripper, a teenage runaway, a black Elvis and an average guy into their vortex.
This movie was written and directed by Todd Sheets, who directed part of the movie Hi-Death that we covered some time back, as well as Dreaming Purple Neon and Bonehill Road. A shot-on-video and released-to-VHS pioneer, his work dates back to Dead Things (1987).
Probably the selling point of this film for most folks would be the Linnea Quigley cameo. She plays Spider, the owner of a strip club that unites our main characters. Supposedly, this is the exact same character that she played in Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama.
And if you know anything of 1970’s adult movies, Autumn Moonspell is played by Jeanne Silver, who was once better known as “Long” Jean Silver. Eileen Dietz, who was the face of the demon in The Exorcist, also is in this.
Not since Mausoleum has a movie had such killer breasts. There’s plenty of gore to be had, but other than a great poster, fun cameos and the name, there’s not much to enjoy here.
Clownado is now available on DVD and streaming. Since its streaming debut, you can now watch it for free if you have an Amazon Prime membership.
DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR team — they even sent a sticker, which was above and beyond the call of duty — and that has no bearing on our review.
Take it from someone who has watched more than forty Sylvester Stallone movies in three weeks. Even I didn’t really want another Escape Plan movie. Yet here we are.
Thanks to foreign markets — while the film went straight to video in the US, it played in theaters in Russia, Italy, United Kingdom, Australia, Turkey and Portugal — this movie was announced even as Stallone was filing Escape Plan 2.
Security expert Ray Breslin (Stallone) is hired to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a Hong Kong tech mogul — who is trying to revitalize small towns in Ohio like Mansfield — and his girlfriend Abigail Ross (Jaime King) from a prison run by the son of Lester Clark Jr. (Devon Sawa, Idle Hands), whose father was the bad guy wat back in the first film.
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and Dave Bautista return for one more mission, one where everything seems shot under a gold filter. There’s really nothing that I liked about this film other than Bautista and Stallone’s interactions.
Director John Herzfeld started his directing career with ABC Afterschool Specials before directing the critically savaged Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta film Two Of A Kind. He also directed The Ryan White Story, The Preppie Murder, Casualties of Love: The Long Island Lolita Story (seriously, the fact that I haven’t covered every single Amy Fisher film that I’ve watched on this site is such a missed opportunity), the Tarantino-influenced 2 Days In the Valley, Don King: Only In America and Reach Me, which also starred Stallone.
In fact, he and Stallone go way back to 1976’s Cannonball, a movie that Herzfeld acted in. He also appears in Cobra as one of the criminals Stallone sets on fire near the end of the movie and directed Inferno: The Making of The Expendables.
Here’s all you need to know about the film, thanks to IMDB: The opening production looks last for 90 seconds and the end credits are almost nine minutes, so 11% of the film is just production info.
Since 2013’s Fruitville Station, Ryan Coogler has seen plenty of artistic and financial success, with films like Black Panther and this one. He’s had a fruitful partnership with Michael B. Jordan, who plays Adonis Creed, the son of original Rocky nemesis, Apollo Creed. It was released on the fortieth anniversary of the original film and earned Sylvester Stallone a nomination for Best Supporting Actor, his first Oscar notice since that very same original movie.
Adonis Johnson is in a Los Angeles youth home after yet another fight when the wife of his father, Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad) takes him in. Much like his father — who he never met — he dreams of being a fighter. However, because Apollo died in the ring thirty years ago, his adoptive mother opposes him ever putting on the gloves.
After being turned down at the Delphi Boxing Academy, which is managed by the son of Apollo’s trainer Tony “Duke” Evers, our hero sets out for Philadelphia and asks Rocky to become his trainer. This is when we learn a very important part of the mythos — the results of the secret fight at the end of Rocky III were that Apollo beat Rocky in their rubber match.
Now known as Hollywood Donnie, Adonis gets a fight team made up of several of Rocky’s friends and a love interest in Bianca. Word gets out that he’s the son of Apollo Creed and that sets up a match with world light heavyweight champion “Pretty” Ricky Conlan (real-life boxer Tony Bellew), who is about to go to prison. Donnie will be his final challenger, as long as he changes his name to Adonis Creed.
By all rights, this movie should not work. Yet impossibly it does, beyond expectations. It’s incredibly emotional, particularly after watching every Rocky Balboa movie over the last few weeks. Seeing the once strong and proud boxer battle against not just non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but the loss of not just Adrian — as shown in Rocky Balboa — but now Paulie as well and his son moving away is almost too much to bear.
I love that Stallone was willing to take a back seat for this film, both in the writing and directing, as well as being the star. It’s probably the most perfect film in the series since the first one. The world that’s been built, from the past to today, feels authentic.
Five years after the original Escape Plan, this sequel was released, bringing back Sylvester Stallone and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson to reprise their roles and Dave Bautista, Huang Xiaoming, Jaime King, Jesse Metcalfe, Titus Welliver and Wes Chatham in as new cast members. While in the U.S. this was a straight-to-DVD release, it came out in theaters in Russia and China. Despite not having a greart box office, it still inspired another sequel, 2019’s Escape Plan: The Extractors.
Stallone, never one to mince words, said on Instagram that this movie was the “most horribly produced film I have ever had the misfortune to be in.”
Ray Breslin (Stallone) continues to operate his security company with senior members Hush (Jackson) and Abigail (Jamie King), along with Shu Ren (Chinese star Xiaoming), Jasper Kimbral (Chatham, who was in The Hunger Games films) and Luke Graves (Metcalfe, who was on Desperate Housewives).
During a hostage rescue mission, Kimbral goes off mission, which leads to a hostage getting killed and Breslin firing him. This leads to him joining the enemy and becoming part of the Hades prison, wher ehe soon imprisons Shu and his cousin Yusheng. He’s now forced to battle other prisoners in a fight club and meeting the warden, Gregor “Zookeeper” Faust (Titus Welliver, who was on Lost), who wants Yusheng’s communications patents in exhange for their release.
Breslin learns that Hades is funded by the same mysterious organization who funded the Tomb — from the first movie — and seeks help from an ex-employee, Trent DeRosa (Dave Bautista). And then Luke is caught and sent to Hades, a place where the layout changes every single night. Of course, Breslin allows himself to be arrested and taken to Hades and our heroes win the day.
This movie was frankly intolerable. Speaking of intolerable, Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy is in this, too. And Stallone is only in this for about fifteen minutes. Really.
Director Steven C. Miller has been part of several Lionsgate films, such as Extraction, Marauders, Arsenal and First Kill. He also directed a remake of Silent Night, Deadly NIghtand almost brought a new version of Motel Hell to the screen.
The funniest part of this movie is this revelation from IMDB, which blows the central conceit of the movie out of the water: “Part of the plot revolves forcing someone to reveal a patent as if it was a secret. Patents are not secret, the point being to make something public to secure protection for commercial use. If something was supposed to be kept secret, then it would be called a secret.”
Despite being approached several times with New York Times reporter Gerald Walker’s 1970 novel Cruising, William Friedkin (The Exorcist, Sorcerer and perhaps not as successfully, Jade) wasn’t interested. He changed his mind after an unsolved series of murders in New York’s leather bars.
Articles by Village Voice journalist Arthur Bell and NYPD officer Randy Jurgensen helped inform this film. The latter went into the same deep cover as this film’s protagonist, Steve Burns. Then, Friedkin learned that Paul Bateson, a doctor’s assistant who appeared in The Exorcist, had been implicated in the crimes while serving a sentence for another murder.
Friedkin did some of his research for the film by attending gay bars dressed in only a jockstrap, but by the time the movie began filming, he had been barred from two of the most oversized bars, the Mine Shaft and Eagle’s Nest, due to the controversy surrounding the movie.
Much like The New York Ripper and God Told Me To, this movie feels like one set at the end of the world — New York City near the close of the 20th century. Someone is picking up gay men, murdering them and leaving their body parts in the Hudson.
Officer Steve Burns (Al Pacino)—exactly the type of man the killer has been after—is on the case. Captain Edelson (Paul Sorvino) has assigned him to infiltrate the foreign world of S&M and leather bars. However, as the case progresses, he begins to lose himself and his relationship with Nancy (Karen Allen).
Soon, he learns of just how brutal the NYPD is to gay men — even if they’re just suspects. And he finds himself growing closer to his neighbor Ted (Don Scardino, Squirm).
By the end, nothing is truly clear. While the killer may be Stuart Richards, a schizophrenic who attacks Burns with a knife in Morningside Park, it could also be Ted’s angry boyfriend Gregory (James Remar). After all, Ted’s mutilated body is discovered while Stuart is in custody. Or the real killer is still out there — perhaps he’s even a patrol cop (Joe Spinell). The truth is never told.
Spinell is incredible in this, which is no surprise. He used his real life for inspiration, as there’s a line about his wife, Jean Jennings, leaving him and moving to Florida with his daughter. His wife had just done exactly that before this movie was shot.
The actual version of this movie may never be released. Friedkin claims it took fifty rounds to get the MPAA to award the film an R rating. Over 40 minutes of footage was cut, which consisted of time spent in gay bars. The director claims that these scenes showed “the most graphic homosexuality with Pacino watching and with the intimation that he may have been participating.”
This footage also creates another suspect — Burns himself may have become a killer.
When Friedkin sought to restore the missing footage for the film’s DVD release, he discovered that United Artists no longer had it and may have even destroyed all the cut footage.
In 2013, James Franco and Travis Mathews released Interior. Leather Bar is a metafictionalized account of the two filmmakers’ attempts to recreate the lost 40 minutes of Cruising.
There’s a disclaimer at the start that says, “This film is not intended as an indictment of the homosexual world. It is set in one small segment of that world, which is not meant to be representative of the whole.” Years later, Friedkin would claim that MPAA and United Artists required this, hoping that it would absolve them of the controversy that had been all over this production.
That’s because protests had started at the urging of gay journalist Arthur Bell, the aforementioned Village Voice writer whose series of articles on the Doodler’s killing of gay men inspired this movie. There were numerous disruptions to the filming, as protesters blasted music and loud noises at all filming locations, leading to hours of ADR to fix the ruined dialogue.
Arrow Video has released a spectacular new Blu-ray of this film. This is no surprise — Arrow always has excellent releases.
This release features a new restoration from a 4K scan of the original camera negative, supervised and approved by writer-director William Friedkin, and audio commentary from the 2007 DVD. The two features from that release, The History of Cruising and Exorcizing Cruising, are also on the disc.
In Sega’s Pro Wrestling for the Master System — based on the arcade game Gokuaku Doumei Dump Matsumoto (released outside Japan as Body Slam), the final hidden bosses are an alien tag team.
If you could Superman as an alien, you can always look back on the time he fought against Antonino Rocca, too.
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