Monthly Archives: May 2020

A Nun’s Curse (2020)

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South Carolina screenwriter and director Tommy Faircloth’s fifth feature is an expertly staged and richly-shot double-homage to the ‘70s European Nunsploitation cycle (Santanico Pandemonium, The Other Hell) and Spain’s Amando de Ossorio’s* early-‘70s “Blind Dead” quartet of films (that ended with Night of the Seagulls). In Ossorio’s universe: sexually promiscuous, road weary travelers are always stumbling into some piece of abandoned, local architecture connected to an urban legend.

Accordingly, we have four requisite dumb travelers—two sisters: one bitchy, one a pseudo-creepy bookworm, and two guys: one a piggish boyfriend and one a hapless dork who wishes he was—who do all the things we expect: losing car keys, looking for shelter from a storm, always having sex on their minds, telling bad dick jokes, toilet humor and, since this is the 21st century: their cellphones have no signals.

Of course, one person in the group—in this case, Ashley-Kae the bookroom (Erika Edwards, an accomplished cinematographer and editor in her own right; she runs Honey Head Films with actress Kristi Ray; who plays her sister Gabby)—knows all the local history about the abandoned brick church they’ve taken a detour at on their way to her family’s vacation home. And she’s haunted-fascinated by her childhood nightmares of nuns—the infamous Sister Monday (Felissa Rose of Sleepaway Camp fame) in particular, who had a penchant for killing inmates of the neighboring prison . . . just on the other side of those woods.

Yep. Just like the de Ossorio films of old, these dumb travelers resurrect the ghost of Sister Monday—complete with a nice, sharp dagger sheathed inside that large, wooden crucifix she hip slings. (And that testicle-removal-by-holy dagger is a pisser!) (I would have enjoyed some prisoner or priest zoms digging themselves out of the church and prison graveyard—but that’s not a problem with the film, just my sick, twisted nostalgia getting in the way.)

Award-winning indie-horror craftsman Tommy Faircloth got his start in the business like most writer/directors (such as Frank Darabont of The Green Mile and The Mist): as a production assistant on mainstream Hollywood films; Faircloth worked on Die Hard 2, the Danny DeVito-starring Renaissance Man, and the James Caan-starring football drama, The Program.

He made his debut proper with the 1996 horror-parody Crinoline Head and followed up with the direct-to-video efforts Generation Ax (2001), the serious-sequel to Crinoline Head: Dollface (2014), and Family Possession (2016; which also stars Felissa Rose and Erika Edwards). A testament to Faircloth’s ever-improving career: A Nun’s Curse won the “Best Writing in a Feature” at last October’s Nightmare Film Festival and Reedy Reels Film Festival for Faircloth’s Horsecreek Productions.

A Nun’s Curse proves Faircloth has a very promising career as a new voice in horror that’s on par with the horror works of the bigger-budgeted studios A24 and Blumhouse. He knows how to move a camera with an Argentoesque atmospheric ease through the dilapidated corridors. I look forward to his next work, will go back to his earlier works, and hope for a sequel on the exploits of Sister Monday.

A Nun’s Curse is available from Uncork’d Entertainment on all online streaming and PPV platforms in the U.S on May 12. If you’d like a DVD copy: all North American Walmart locations will have it in stores on May 19. You can also visit Uncork’d on Facebook for the latest news on their releases and find more specific information about A Nun’s Curse on Facebook.

And we are diggin’ on the end credits’ nu-metal tune by The Lumberjacks!

* Did you hear the story about the debut picture from de Ossorio’s “Blind Dead” series, Tombs of the Blind Dead, being re-edited into a bogus Planet of the Apes sequel? It ran in U.S Drive-Ins in 1978. True story. We reviewed it as part of our “Ape Week.”

Disclaimer: This movie was sent to us by its PR department. As always: you know that has nothing to do with our feelings on the movie.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Basic Training (1985)

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I love that this movie had the working title Up the Pentagon, like the abortive 1980 Mad Magazine movie Up the Academy. It’s the only movie ever directed by Andrew Sugerman, who has executive produced movies like Shopgirl, Death Sentence and Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever.

Ann Dusenberry, Tina the beauty queen from Jaws 2, is Melinda, a newcomer to the Pentagon who is shocked by the way that they sexually harass her. For a few minutes, I was thinking that this 1985 comedy was incredibly woke and ahead of its time.

Then I realized that I was watching a 1985 sex comedy and that Melinda will instead use her sexual wiles to get back at everyone via a campaign of her own harassment and making old men think she’s going to sleep with them.

Angela Aames from Fairy Tales and Chopping Mall — she was also Linda “Boom-Boom” Bangs in H.O.T.S. — and Rhonda Shear of USA’s Up All Night are also in this.

Tying into my love of spy films, Walter Gotell plays a KGB head. This is a role he knew well, what with playing General Anatol Gogol in The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View To a Kill and The Living Daylights. He’s joined by Marty Brill as an American general.

You can watch it on YouTube:

REPOST: Fast Food (1989)

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: This movie, originally reviewed on April 11, 2019, is one of my favorite dumb films ever. I mean, Jim Varney and Traci Lords in one movie? 

Auggie Hamilton is all about making that fast buck. He’s just been kicked out of college for a gambling and drinking party after being there for way longer than four years, as well as trying to sleep with the dean’s daughter. What’s he going to do now?

So when he learns that his friend Samantha (Tracy Griffith, Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland) is about to sell her father’s garage to make way for Wrangler Bob Bundy (Jim Varney, yes, the Ernest P. Worrell playing, Slinky Dog voicing Jim Varney. Trivia note: Blake Clark, who is also in this movie, was friends with Varney and took over the voice of Slinky after Varney’s death) and his constantly growing burger empire.

How do you defeat a megacorporation? Well, you go get some drugs that make people horny and put them in your burgers, that’s how. And if you’re wondering how they get that drug, one of the way they get women in bed is to sneak them into a lab where men suffer from non-stop erections. The girls see all these bald-headed yogurt slingers and the next thing you know, they’re in bed with the guys. Because you know — that’s totally how romance works. Movies like this are why I didn’t get laid until I was 24.

How does the new fast food place get successful? Well, beyond the date rape drugs in the special sauce, they also cater a fancy preppie sorority bash been thrown by Mary Beth Bensen, who is played by the same person who played the grown-up Angela in Sleepaway Camp II and Sleepaway Camp III. That’s Pamela Springsteen and yes, she’s the Boss’s sister.

Stick around — Traci Lords also shows up as an industrial spy, sent by Wrangler Bob to ruin our heroes. And oh yeah — the judge of their big case is played Kevin McCarthy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Michael J. Pollard shows up, too.

This isn’t a movie you’d be proud to talk about with anyone, but who cares? Varney is great, Traci Lords is Traci Lords and burgers cause people to get laid. You could do much worse.

Police Academy 3: Back In Training (1986)

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A PG rated Police Academy? Well, it still made plenty of money and cost next to nothing to make, being shot in Toronto.

Lt. Proctor (Lance Kinsey) and Commandant Mauser (Art Metrano) meet up with former Sergeants Chad Copeland (Scott Thomson) and Kyle Blanks (Brant van Hoffman). Because there are two police academies — how does that happen? — one must be closed. Mauser wants Commandant Lassard (George Gaynes) to fail. Lassard wants to hang out with his fish Birdie. Such are the stories that Police Academy sequels are created to tell.

Lassard gets an idea on how to win: along with Sgt. Jones (Michael Winslow) and Lt. Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook), he calls back Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg), Hooks (Marion Ramsey), Hightower (Bubba Smith) and Tackleberry (David Graf) to help train the new recruits.

The new officers are Sgt. Fackler’s (Bruce Mahler) wife, Violet (Debralee Scott), Karen Adams (Shawn Weatherly, Amityville: It’s About Time), Tackleberry’s brother-in-law Bud (Andrew Paris) and Nagata (Brian Tochi), who of course falls for Callahan.

My favorite recruits are Sweetchuck (Tim Kazurinsky) and Zed (Bobcat Goldthwait), who have come back into the story as enemies who soon become friends.

This movie brings back many of the jokes from the first, like an appearance by Georgina Spelvin and the Blue Oyster. But I didn’t mind at all. Honestly, these movies are like drinking cheap beer. It’s not the best beer, but you know, it’s beer.

Witch Academy (1995)

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Did you watch Evil Toons and say, “I want a movie somehow even worse than this without Madison Stone to make up for the abject boredom that I felt while watching it?”

Good news! Or, well, horrible news.

Mark Thomas McGee, who wrote Equinox, wrote this for director Fred Olen Rey. It has Ruth Collins — yes, Bubbles from Firehouse and Tina from Doom Asylum — in it, as well as Veronica Carothers (who played two different roles in Vice Academy 3 and 4), scream queen Michelle Bauer and Priscilla Barnes, who was once Felix Leiter’s dead wife in Licence to Kill. You may know her from getting killed in Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects. Or maybe you remember her more fondly — and more alive — as Nurse Terri who replaced Suzanne Sommers on Three’s Company.  And oh hell, let’s thrown in Suzanna Agar (Shock ‘Em Dead, Evil Toons).

Playing Satan? Robert Vaughn who, as we all know, deserves better. So did Gary Graver, who shot this a decade after Orson Welles died and so did his dream of making a completed movie with him.

If you want to watch women paddle one another and somehow see what should be something every red blooded American boy — and hey girls too, the world is robust and filled with all manner of people and we love them all — should adore rendered into sheer boredom, then by all means, seek out this fecund steaming pile of trash.

 

Moving Violations (1985)

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After Police Academy and Bachelor Party, Neal Israel and Pat Proft made this film, which has a great cast of 80’s comedy folks. It’s the ultimate hijinks ensue kind of movie, where a bunch of oddballs all lose their licenses and have to go to traffic school. Unbeknownst to them, Judge Nedra Henderson (Sally Kellerman) plans on selling their cars and keeping them from ever driving again.

Deputy Henry “Hank” Halik (John Keach, brother of Stacy) and Deputy Virginia Morris (Lisa Hart Carroll, Patsy from Terms of Endearment) are the tough cops running things.

They’re up against Dana Cannon (instead of just getting anybody to be a Bill Murray ripoff, Moving Violations at least hires his brother John), NASA scientist Amy Hopkins (Jennifer Tilly), teen Scott Greeber (Brian Backer, Rat from Fast Times at Ridgemont High), Where’s the Beef? lady Clara Peller, Wendie Jo Sperber as a hypochondriac, Lust in the Dust’s Nedra Volz, Fred Willard as a card mechanic, Nadine van der Velde from Critters, Don Cheadle in one of his first movies and Dedee Pfieffer from House 3/The Horror Show.

I love that Robert Conrad is in this. He turned down the role of Lassard in the first Police Academy and did this movie because he regretted that decision. And I adore the scene where Willard asks Sperber to get her car up on the rack and she thinks that he means her. It’s totally stupid, but isn’t that why you’re watching this?

Evil River (2020)

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Emma (Margherita Remotti), a professor of history and folklore, travels to the small Northern Italian town of Voghera to study the bizarre, early 1800s myth of Shandra (Marcella Braga), a female peasant accused and executed for witchcraft along the banks of the river of which it’s named.

Emma hires Giulia (Claudia Marasca), a Voghera local who organizes sightseeing tours regarding the legend. En route to the hotel with Daniel (Diego Runko), an investigative reporter well-versed in the legend, Guilia’s car breaks down along the town’s rural outskirts—and they’re murdered by two cowl-masked cult figures. Emma soon discovers her soul is enslaved by a magic spell that wakes her at 4:00 am every morning to repeat the carnage. . . .

Hey, there’s no crime in pushing a J-Horror angle

The craft of film reviews is about time and perspective: the wider one’s film library, the deeper the film references which, in turn, allows for a better analysis of the film at task. And if you have the added perspective of the craft of screenwriting, cinematography, and acting, that only adds to one’s more appreciative set of “creative eyes” when watching a film.

Those rules apply when enjoying the budgetary inventiveness of Evil River, the U.S. streaming reboot of Shanda’s River, an independent Italian neo-giallo crafted for a mere 7500 Euros ($8,000 U.S.) as homage to the classic Italian horror movies of the ‘70s and ‘80s. It’s never about how much is spent on the production, but how the budget is utilized; it’s not the equipment (Reds or Canons vs. iPhone8s), it’s how the equipment is used.

Ah, so very European . . . yeah, this won’t fly in puritanical America

Such is this second feature film by Italian music video director Marco Rosson (his first was the 2012 sci-fi thriller New Order) working with a script by Nicola Pizzi (a cinematographer on Cartoon Network’s Robot Chicken)—a film that some commenters in the American digital ethers narrowly wrote off as “a boring rip-off of Happy Death Day . . . it sucks . . . it’s a time waster.”

The problem with that assessment is:

  • That Blumhouse Production was made for $4.8 million vs. Evil River’s $8,000.
  • Happy Death Day is, if we’re going to flagrant the word, a “rip-off” of both Groundhog Day and Wes Craven’s Scream.
  • Happy Death Day is an ‘80s slasher redux—and those slashers are the Americanized rip-offs of ‘70s Italian giallo films. (Watch Mario Bava’s Twitch of the Death Nerve and Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th—and compare.)
  • If we’re going to be picky: Groundhog Day plagiarized the 1990 Oscar winning short film 12:01 PM (which aired as part of Showtime’s 30-Minute Movie anthology series), itself an adaptation of Richard Lupoff’s short story “12:01 PM” published in December 1973.

But I get it. A younger filmgoer has only seen the digital copies, i.e., Happy Death Day, and not the original celluloids by Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Paolo Cavara, Ruggero Deodato, Riccardo Freda, Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, and Sergio Martino, the Italian forefathers that birthed Blumhouse Productions’ jump-scares oeuvre in the first place; the very forefathers Evil River homages. (Speaking of “time loops”: We’ve been down this critical-scoffing river before with the Australian neo-giallo, Dark Sister.)

Hopefully, U.S audiences will look at Evil River at a deeper level and discover it’s a film of passion and ingenuity—not incompetence. In the end, the proof of quality across all the film disciplines is always in the awards: a mindboggling 23 film festival wins and 6 nominations (IMDb) in 2017 and 2018, with Margherita Remotti, Marco Rosson, Nicola Pizzi, and producer Giorgio Galbiati each walking away with awards.

Theatrically released in Europe in 2018, Wild Eye Releasing acquired Shanda’s River—giving it a new title and artwork—for a U.S. streaming and DVD release in 2019. They’re now offering it in 2020 as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTv along with several other films from their catalog. If you’d prefer an ad-free experience, it’s also streaming on Amazon Prime.

And we’re diggin’ the film’s theme song “Shanda’s River” by the Italian rock band Three Horns (foward to 9:33).

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Disclaimer: This movie was sent to us by its PR department. As always: you know that has nothing to do with our feelings on the movie.

Vice Academy Part 2 (1990)

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In this sequel, Honey Wells (Ginger Lynn) and Didi (Linnea Quigley) are back to battle Spanish Fly, who is about to dose the city with, well, Spanish Fly.

Miss Thelma Louise Devonshire is back as well. She’s played by Jayne Hamil, who was in all of these movies but the third one. The actress would go on to write for The Nanny and Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures, which seems quite far from Vice Academy.

Teagan — yes, the very same Teagan who was Alienator — is in this as BimboCop, who Honey dislikes so much that she blows up the cyborg cop and goes to jail at the end of the movie, just in time for Didi to graduate and leave Vice Academy behind.

Rick Sloane directed this one again. If you haven’t seen these, imagine a 1980s VCA film with all the lead up to the sex and none of the actual sex. It’s the best we could do before the internet, when all we had was USA Up All Night.

You can watch this on Tubi or be brave and grab the Vinegar Syndrome box set.

Summer School (1987)

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Wondering why Summer School is still funny 33 years later and a lot of these Police Academy-style movies are dated? It was directed by Carl Reiner, who knows funny.

It was written by Jeff Franklin, who was also behind Just One of the Guys and created Full House and its Netflix spin-off Fuller House, which he was removed from after #metoo complaints. Oddly enough, he owned 10050 Cielo Drive, which he demolished and replaced with a new house before listing it for sale in 2019.

Phys Ed teacher Freddy Shoop (Mark Harmon) just wants school to be over so that he can go to Hawaii, but when Mr. Dearadorian (Reiner) retires, he gets stuck teaching summer school.

He’s left with the worst kids in school for the best time of being a teacher, which would be summer vacation. There’s Pam (a pre-Melrose Place Courtney Thorne-Smith), male exotic dancer Larry (Ken Olandt, syndicated series Super Force); Kevin the jock (Patrick Labyorteaux brother to Matthew), pregnant Rhonda (Shawnee Smith, The Blob), Alan the nerd (Richard Steven Horvitz, the voice of Alpha 5 in Power Rangers), Jerome (Duane Davis, who was in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master), exchange student Anna-Maria (Fabiana Udenio, Alotta Fagina from Austin Powers), Denise (Kelly Jo Minter, Maria from The Lost Boys) and horror film lovers Dave (Gary Riley, Charlie from Stand by Me) and Chainsaw, who is played by Dean Cameron, who this horror-obsessed fan knows was Ralph in Bad Dreams and Ralph the vampire in Rockula.

Will Freddy get Robin the history teacher (Kirstie Alley) to fall for him? Will the kids all graduate? Will there be an extended viewing of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Will hijinks, as I always say, ensue?

Of course.

This is the only Danny Elfman soundtrack that has never been released. There’s also E.G. Daily’s “Mind Over Matter,” which was originally a Debbie Harry song that she recorded and had some success with.

Ah man. More people should know about this movie. Here’s hoping that my little write-up convinces you to give it a chance.

REPOST: Hamburger: The Motion Picture (1986)

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: This review originally ran on April 8, 2019. Let me tell you, this is a movie that I will never tie of. Where is the blu ray release with all the extras of this, I ask you?

My wife asked me, “Why would anyone watch this movie?” She doesn’t get it. She wasn’t around in the 1980’s, when we had no internet. She wasn’t going through puberty. She’ll never understand staying up until 3:15 AM to catch a movie about a Hamburger University and the joy that it can bring.

Russell Proco (Leigh McCloskey, who improbably is also in Argento’s Inferno) has been kicked out of multiple schools because he can’t stop hooking up. There’s a trust fund waiting for him if he can get a diploma. So he picks the one school he knows he can graduate — Buster Burger University.

You know why the 1980’s were great? Because Dick Butkus could be in a movie and we all knew exactly who his character was. Here, his job is to beat the hell out of the students so they don’t screw up Buster Burger. Everyone has to follow the rules:

  1. Outside consumption of food is prohibited.
  2. All candidates are to stay on the grounds of Buster Burger University until graduation.
  3. Since sex and success make lousy partners, all candidates are not to engage in sex while students.

This is a movie that follows the best formula: just get a bunch of crazy characters together, get them into some insane situations and let the hijinks ensue. Along the way, Russell makes a friend who is obsessed with the CEO’s sexy wife (the pneumatic Randi Brooks, who also is in TerrorVision), a nun who for some reason is going to burger school, a sex-crazed guerilla fighter, a soul singer who was arrested and is at the school on work release and so much more.

Where else other than Buster Burger University can you learn to yell things like “Put those cookies back, motherfucker,” get stuck inside a giant pickle and then have to battle against bikers and cops on your first day of work?

Most amazingly, director Mike Marvin would go on to make a movie that is even less connected to reality, The Wraith.