This is why I have insomnia. Because I try to sleep, but then I start worrying about being able to pay the bills and what will I do next and how am I going to take care of my wife and then I realize, “Hey! Fabian made a movie with Marilyn Burns from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Marvin Miller, who was the voice of Robbie the Robot…”

And now I’m awake.

Otherwise known as Revenge of the Zombie, this movie was directed by Patrick Regan, who also wrote the lost slasher movie — seriously, someone help me find it, The Farmer. This is his only directing credit, though he did second unit on a bunch of movies, like The Phantom.

It starts his kids — Nell and Patrick — as Beth and Michael Nicholas, psychic kids who have been homeschooled by their dad, Guy. He runs afoul of some bikers, who kill him, so the kids keep him alive Weekend At Bernie’s style so that the Board of Education employee Nora Dennis (Burns) doesn’t put them in an orphanage. Also — Fabian plays a local sheriff, outdoing his work in Disco Fever. 

Chester Grimes plays the leader of the bikers and if you wanted a biker in the 1980’s, you called Chester. From CHiPs to Electra Glide in Blue, The Rockford Files, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Bosom Buddies, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie and Dragnet, there he is.

And look out! There’s Robert Dryer, who if you watched lots of movies like I do at 4 AM, you’d recognize as Jake from Savage Streets, the titular character in The Borrower and Lord Barak from The Sisterhood.

Is that Jon Cedar from The Manitou as a shady land owner? Yes it is.

Kids that raise dad from the dead, so that he can kill bikers and bury himself in the sand, while Fabian and Sally Hardesty make eyes at one another. Yeah! This movie makes no sense, so I advise you to see it as I did: on a VHS tape uploaded to YouTube with obtrusive Spanish subtitles. Trust me — it makes it all so much better.

We included a second look at Kiss Daddy Goodbye as part of our weekly “Drive-In Friday” featurette with a “Musician Slashers Night.”

Have you already watched this movie? Well, maybe.

Missile to the Moon is an even lower-budget remake — is that possible? — of the low-budget film 1953 film Cat-Women of the Moon.

That movie had 3D going for it, but this one has much younger men in the heroic roles and an army of international beauty contest winners playing the moon maidens. But the dreaded moon spider? Yep. That’s the very same prop from the original film. It was originally built for the movie Tarantula, so here’s to Hollywood for being green years before anyone knew what recycling was.

This film was shot in the Vasquez Rocks, where all cheap films decide to show what the moon or an alien planet looks like. A red gel over the lens of the camera was the attempt to make the sky look different, yet no science was given to the script. How do people explode into flames when there’s no oxygen, after all?

Anyways, two escaped convicts named Gary (Tommy Cook, who is also in HIgh School Hellcats and would go on to write and produce Rollercoaster) and Lon (Gary Clarke, TV’s The Virginian) stowaway on a rocketship that Dirk Green is piloting back to his home satellite, the moon. He’s soon killed by a meteor storm, of course.

Also on board are hunky Steve Dayton and his fiancee June (Cathy Downs, The Amazing Colossal Man), who obviously had no idea what they were getting into. They all soon find themselves up against an underground empire of gorgeous moon women and their evil ruler, Lido (K. T. Stevens, who also shows up in They’re Playing With Fire).

Rock men. Giant spiders. Nina Bara, who was on TV’s Space Patrol. Leslie Parrish, who would go on to pretty much invent C-SPAN and remains an environmental activist. Laurie Mitchell, who plays a very similar role in Queen of Outer Space opposite Zsa Zsa Gabor. Marianne Gaba, the Playboy Playmate of the Month for September 1959, who also plays a robot in Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. These are the menaces and maidens that our convicts must face on…the moon!

This was directed by Richard E. Cunha, whose Frankenstein’s Daughter made the other half of the double bill that this movie appeared on. It was written by H.E. Barrie, who was also behind She Demons and Girl in Room 13 (two other Cunha films), and Vincent Fotre, who wrote Baron Blood.

I have a weakness for movies where female societies have taken over the moon. I blame, of course, Amazon Women on the Moon.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime and Tubi. There’s also two different Rifftrax versions: One has Mike Nelson and Fred Willard (Amazon Prime and Tubi) and the other has the original crew (Tubi). There’s more than enough uploads on You Tube, as well, so there’s no reason not to watch — riffed or unriffed.

This movie threw me for a loop. It starts like a Waiting to Exhale story of a black woman heading to Mexico to find true love and then starts taking on notes from Hollywood execs to reveal that it’s really the tale of a writer trying to sell her script.

As Zoe’s movie slowly becomes whitewashed, we get to watch a better, more realistic movie without stereotypes. The goal of the movie was “portraying a universal humanity rather than categories of difference.”

The end result lives up to that lofty aim. It was written and directed by Jennifer Sharp, who is a talent to watch. You can learn more at Una Great Movie at the official Facebook page.

DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to me by October Coast. It’s still playing festivals, but keep your eyes open for it to be released soon.

You have to admire a movie that was originally filmed five years earlier under the titles Armageddon 1975 and Doomsday Plus Seven before the money stopped rolling in. The rights got sold, a new ending was filmed with totally different actors and plenty of padding got thrown in to make this — along with NASA stock footage and special effects taken from other movies.

Hell, the Astra, the main ship in this, changes its look every few minutes.

Original director Herbert J. Leder also made Fiend Without a Face. The fixed up footage came from Lee Sholem, who directed more than 1,300 episodes of television, as well as the movie Superman and the Mole Men.

Ruta Lee, who was one of the Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, stars in this. She’s joined by Mala Powers (who ran the estate of acting teacher Michael Chekov after his death), Grant Williams (The Incredible Shrinking Man), Henry Wilcoxon (the bishop in Caddyshack), former Tarzan Denny Miller, M*A*S*H* star Mike Farrell and Bobby Van, who hosted eight-year-old Sam’s favorite game show, Make Me Laugh.

You think the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey didn’t make sense? At least it didn’t abruptly end after wiping out most of the cast off-screen and Venusians try to explain the entire movie away via a voice-over.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime or on Tubi, which has a Cinematic Titanic riffed version and another hosted by Elvira. It’s also available on the Internet Archive or you can just watch the YouTube link attached here.

After Superman, the Italian film industry did what it always does best: figure out how to make their own versions of a film. However, the danger of making superhero movies is that. the special effects — particularly after Star Wars and Superman, which was sold on the idea of believing that a man can fly — had to be perfect.

Alberto De Martino knew that Italian trend quite well. When sword and sandal movies were big, he directed The Triumph of Hercules. He made Ringo and Django clones in the spaghetti western craze. And when James Bond got hot, he made several Special Agent 077 movies. Giallo? De Martino turned out the New Mexico-shot The Man with the Icy Eyes, the Telly Savalas-starring The Killer Is On the Phone and the Dirty Harry meets Italian psychosexual horror in Canada romp Strange Shadows In an Empty Room. As The Exorcist and The Omen got hot, the director answered with The Antichrist and Holocaust 2000.

But superheroes? Superheroes nearly broke the man.

In Roberto Curti’s book Diabolika: Supercriminals, Superheroes and the Comic Book Universe in Italian Cinema, De Martino was quite candid about the failure of this movie. The Pumaman “was a production based on the trend of the moment. I had always done it that way and always done well. But regarding this genre of film, there was the audience’s diffidence toward Italian movies featuring special effects. They knew we were not up to the task, and didn’t take us seriously.”

He’d go on to say that it was “the only pic I did wrong in my whole career. When I saw it was a flop, I started asking myself questions. I had made a film I shouldn’t have. However it did well abroad and managed to get the guaranteed minimum back, otherwise I’d have had to sell my house. It did not even gross half a billion lire in Italy.”

Pumaman was played by Walter George Alton, his only film role before he became a medical malpractice attorney in New York City. He’s the ancestor of ancient aliens that gave birth to the Aztecs and entrusted a guardian armed with a golden mask. Ah — superheroes, Erich Von Daniken and Italian cinema? Bellisimo!

The mask is discovered by archaeologist — and the daughter of a Dutch ambassador — named Jane Dobson (Sydne Rome, who grew up near Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio before heading out to Italy to make movies like Man Called Amen and Sergio Martino’s Sex With a Smile). She learns that it can control minds, which pleases her boss Dr. Kobras (Donald Pleasence!) who takes over her brains instantly and then decides to start a Herrod-like campaign to kill Pumaman before the reincarnated hero becomes a threat.

Pumaman ends up being American paleontologist Tony Farms, who learns of his powers after the Native American named Vadinho throws him out a window and he survives the experience. How many people did Vandinho toss before he met the real Pumaman?

Of course, Tony and Jane are destined to fall in love and make the Pumababy, as foretold when the aliens visit Stonehenge and take the golden mask back. Of course.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime and Tubi with riffing from Mystery Science Theater 3000. You’re going to need it, because the man who never said no to a role, Donald Pleasence, stated that this was the worst movie he did in his entire career. Just imagine the depths of that statement.

When I was a kid, WKBN-TV 27 in Youngstown aired a daily movie. I remember that quite often, the aspect ratio — I had no idea what that meant when I was young — made the cowboys seem way too tall at the beginning of their movies. And I vividly remember this movie all about St. George and the dragon, even if I couldn’t recall the title for decades.

Well, it’s The Magic Sword. Or perhaps I saw it under one its many other titles, such as St. George and the Dragon, St. George and the Seven Curses or The Seven Curses of Lodac.

Gary Lockwood — first husband of Stephanie Powers and Frank Poole in 2001: A Space Odyssey (and star of the Mad Max rip, Survival Zone) — plays George, raised by an adoptive sorceress mother (Estelle Winwood, who lived nearly a century and had a career that went from the British stage to American television) and destined to battle not only the two-headed dragon, but the seven curses of the evil Lodac (Basil Rathbone).

He’s also in love with Princess Helene (Anne Helm, Nightmare In Wax) and has six magical knights with which to prove his heroism, which is tested in battles against an ogre, an old hag and a sorceress. The latter two are played by Maila Nurmi, who is much better known Vampira. There’s also the shady side of heroism, exemplified by Sir Branton, who keeps killing off his brother knights left and right.

You can download this movie from The Internet Archive. It’s also available on Amazon Prime. There’s also a Mystery Science Theater 3000 version on Amazon Prime and Tubi, as well as a Rifftrax commentary option on Tubi.

This is a rare movie, in that Tom Servo and Joel had to admit that it was pretty good — for a Bert I. Gordon film.

In 1966, thanks to the TV show, Bat-Mania was sweeping the country. So Jerry Warren decided to make his own movie, ignorant of things like copyright law and good taste. Soon enough, he’d be sued for copyright infringement and this movie got an even better title: She Was a Hippy Vampire. The funny thing is, Warren won the case and still re-released this movie with a different name.

Jerry reached out to one of his favorite leading ladies for the film, Katherine Victor.

She turned him down.

Yes, even the star of Mesa of Lost Women, Teenage Zombies, Creature of the Walking Dead, House of the Black Death, Frankenstein Island and The Cape Canaveral Monsters knew a turd when she saw one.

In Fred Olen Ray’s book The New Poverty Row: Independent Filmmakers as Distributors, Victor said that Warren promised her “large production values, color photography and her own Bat Boat.”

Of course, none of that came true.

She still played Bat Woman in this, even if she had to make her own costume.

Our heroine has several young and lithe Batgirls helping her battle the forces of Rat Fink over an atomic hearing aid. The weapon of Rat Fink’s choice? Bowls of soup with drugs in them.

That’s it. That’s the movie.

For the monsters, Warren just ripped off footage from The Mole People and the 1959 Swedish film No Time to Kill. No, really.

Bruno Ve Sota, who directed Female Jungle, The Brain Eaters and Invasion of the Star Creatures — he also shows up in around fifteen Roger Corman movies like Attack of the Giant Leeches — is in here. Plus, Bob Arbogast — who wrote the shortest-lived TV show ever, Turn-On, has a cameo.

You can watch the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of this on Tubi. Trust me, you’re going to need the help.

Originally called Silent Place, this thriller is all about a family heading off to grandma’s house, only to soon discover that the entire town has been killed by an amphibious monster. Well, before you can say, “Hey wait, weren’t they nice in The Shape of Water?” the family is under attack, too.

Scott Jeffrey, who wrote and directed this movie, directed the recent Cupid that we reviewed, as well as acting as the producer of films like Witches of Amityville Academy (I’m never going to be free of these Amityville movies), Pet Graveyard and House On Elm Lake.

They keep making these movies. And by some whim of fate, I keep watching them. Do you like low budget horror where monsters wipe out families? Good news! The monster is not Gwen Stefani or Tony Kanal, despite the title.

Don’t Speak is available on demand and on DVD March 10 from Uncork’d Entertainment.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR team.

About the Author: Paul Andolina is back to write about a recent theme he’s been watching: puppet films. You can check out his sites Wrestling with Film and Is the Dad Alive?

Is there anything more associated with children and innocence than puppets? Sesame Street, The Muppets, and Fraggle Rock captured the imaginations of children but puppetry also has a flip side. Puppetry with adult themes has been a slowly widening medium over the past twenty years from Crank Yankers, Wonder Showzen, Avenue Q to the most recent, the film The Happy Time Murders which seems to take some heavy cues from 2014’s The Fuzz.

The Fuzz is a crime TV show about puppets and humans that ran for 5 episodes. It was a 2011 film that was turned into a miniseries for Yahoo! Screen in 2014 (it’s also available on Amazon Prime and Vimeo). It was created by Christopher Ford who later went on to write the screenplay for Spider-Man Homecoming. Herbie a puppet cop who along with his newly assigned human partner Sanchez takes on the jelly bean trafficking Rainbow Brown.

Movie watching should never feel like a chore but lately I’ve been having a rough go at actually being able to pay any semblance of attention to anything I have chosen to view. The trailer looked cool enough and once I hit play The Fuzz grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and beckoned, “Behold the puppety goodness we have laid before thee!” 

Herbie is a goody two shoes puppet who won’t even swear, his favorite interjection being, “scrambled eggs”, Sanchez is a down on his luck ex beat cop with an alcohol problem. After a drug deal goes wrong resulting in the death of an innocent puppet janitor, Herbie is thrust onto the new Puppet Crime Task Force along with Sanchez. He is super proud of this and aims to stop crime but the chief views it as nothing but a PR stunt and tells them to keep their noses clean.

Rainbow Brown is a jelly bean dealer who gets mixed up with Jake, a scummy mobster and Jake’s uncle, Sonny. Rainbow really knows how to get the jelly bean trade going and is taken in by Sonny. Rainbow gets hooked on jelly beans after a meeting with the Banana Brothers. Finding much success in the jelly bean game, he finally finds the courage to move in on Sonny’s girl, Roxy. This angers Sonny and Rainbow murders him and starts a war with the human “skinsects” and Jake.

Herbie goes undercover as Flerbie sporting a mustache that hides a wire when he and Sanchez are taken off the case due to an unauthorized stake out of Sonny’s mansion. He ingratiates himself into Rainbow’s gang and gets a little too deep when he starts abusing jelly beans. Herbie, Rainbow, and Jake are on a collision course of epic proportions that concludes with the end of the film.

The Fuzz toes the line extremely well between comedy and crime. I didn’t think that a crime procedural about humans, puppets, and drugs would be super entertaining but this proved my worries were baseless.  The puppets are amazing. I loved the humor and I was drawn into this world where puppets and humans live side by side. It has a bit of crassness but nothing that really goes overboard. It gets close though with Strokey Zooms, a camera puppet who is obsessed with voyeurism. There is a small sex scene as well between Rainbow and Roxy but it’s not done distastefully. 

Some of my favorite supporting characters were Wizo, Rainbow’s yellow right hand man, and an unnamed drug addict puppet near the beginning of the film, who shows up again when he is accused of killing the puppets in the botched jelly bean deal. Sasha, a puppet with a horn on its face is also funny and only communicates with honks.

If you’re a fan of puppetry and crime dramas you should really give this one a shot, I haven’t been able to enjoy a movie for a while but The Fuzz may be the one that finally ends my funk. Don’t be a fluff-head, go to Amazon and check it out now!

Plenty of people know the Mia Farrow movie Rosemary’s Baby, but few know this film, which was based on the book Julia by Peter Straub. It was originally released in the UK as Full Circle, where it bombed before doing poorly in the U.S.

It was directed by Richard Loncraine, who helped make Band of Brothers on HBO and the incredible music film — and another bomb that has been recognized as a great movie years later — Slade In Flame.

Julia Lofting’s (Farrow) life changes in a second: her daughter chokes on breakfast and an emergnecy tracheotomy causes her to bleed to death. This causes her to leave her husband (Keir Dullea) and move into a flat that’s filled with toys which once belonged to a girl named Olivia, a young woman with such a power over the other children that she could make them kill one another.

The movie sat unreleased in the United States until it was discovered, along with the Richard Burton movie Absolution, by a movie fan who worked to get both movies into theaters.

This was on Shudder for a few weeks, but is no longer on the service. It’s not a great film, but it’s interesting. I got my copy at a convention years ago and don’t regret the purchase.