The magic of a Mark Lester movie is that they start with a typical set-up — Lou Diamond Philips is a young cop who becomes part of a vigilante unit — but ends up being way better than it seems like it could ever really be.

Think movies getting delayed are a COVID-19 thing? The LA riots kept this out of theaters and it finally debuted on HBO all the way back in 1993.

The best thing about Lester’s films is that he knows how to cast. Sure, he’s pretty much remaking Magnum Force, but in addition to Phillips, he’s got a berserk Scott Glenn talking to a photo of his dead wife while pointing a gun at it, Yaphet Kotto dressing in what I can only assume are his own sartorial choices, former Solid Gold dancer and Teela actress Chelsea Field (yes, she’s also in Lester’s Commando, as well as Prison, Death Spa, Dust Devil and Sleeping Dogs Lie, a movie that dares to team the drummer of Rage Against the Machine with Ed Asner), Andrew Divoff (The Djinn from Wishmaster!), Stephen Root (one of my all-time favorite character actors) and Ed Lauter (Death Wish 3).

According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, the producers of this movie were the subject of intense surveillance by the Special Investigation Section during the making of the film. They used a real cop bar and the real logo of the cop group, but the SIS continues to earn a high-profile arrest record without incidents like this movie.

In any other movie, Phillips and Glenn’s battle would be the dramatic close, but here it’s out of control, with Glenn coldcocking our hero’s wife before getting launched through a plate glass window. I screamed at the TV I was so excited. You may do the same.

This was Bob Shaye’s — and New Line Cinema’s — first full-length production after a decade as a pure distribution company. Director Mark Lester would tell The Pink Smoke, “They were distributing Truck Stop Women to college campuses and they already had a script, so I was hired to direct it. We hired Robert Forster because he had done Medium Cool. Don Stroud was supposed to star in it but he got into a motorcycle accident the night before shooting.”

The film starts with the death of one of Greg Wilson, one of its stuntmen, who was set up. His brother Glen (Forster) arrives on the set, along with B.J. Parswell (Fiona Lewis!), a reporter who wants to write about the danger of the stunt game. The minute Glen gets there he gets hit on by the producer’s wife (Candice Rialson, in one of her last roles; she’s also great in pretty much everything she ever did, like Chatterbox, Hollywood Boulevard and Moonshine County Express).

Glen joins the stunt team of the film, who all promise one another that if anyone gets hurt, they’ll always pull the plug for one another, predating Dr. Kevorkian by several years. Screw the law. We’re stuntmen!

One of the people that have to get the plug pulled on them is Chuck, played by Bruce Glover, always a welcome sight. He’s married to Joanna Cassidy, who is — again, you’re going to get this a lot with this cast — astounding in everything I’ve ever seen her in. In this one, more than aardvarking with Crispin’s dad in a waterbed in the back of a custom van, she’s punching the faces of an entire bar of rednecks.

The death keeps coming, as Paul (Ray Sharkey? This is like a B&S About Movies dream cast and it gets even better) gets trapped in a burning building. That means that our hero has to finish the film, figure out who the killer is and get some revenge.

Former pro wrestler Hard Boiled Haggerty shows up, as does Richard Lynch. And you know how I feel about Mr. Lynch and the fact that he can make any movie better just by walking on set. Suffice to say he does way more than saunter on here.

This is why we’re doing an entire week of Mark Lester’s films. He knows how to get a story told, gather the right people to help tell it and get out of the way. He’s never let me down yet.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime or YouTube.

“When does a dream become a nightmare?
When do we learn to live with fear?
When we cry out for some salvation?
Why is it no one seems to hear?”

When your movie has an Alice Cooper theme song and exudes punk rock menace, you get my attention. Mark Lester’s 1982 kids against teachers drive-in epic boasts a Tom Holland story (he co-scripted as well) and a truly no future mindset.

Andrew Norris (Perry King) has come to a new school to teach music, but he’ll soon learn that this is a war. That fact is continually taught to him by Terry Corrigan (Roddy McDowall, always perfect), an older teacher who carries a gun.

The teachers are more babysitters and cops than educators. When they’re up against the gang led by Peter Stegman (Timothy Van Patten), there’s really no way that they can win.

These kids are absolutely the worst human beings ever, like movie serial villains in punk fashions. Things reach a climax when Terry’s beloved animals are murdered, sending him into a suicidal rage. And then, somehow that is topped when the gang assaults Andrew’s wife and places a polaroid of it on his podium right before a band concert. Can it get more insane? Sure. Terry and Peter fistfight on the roof, ending with the offending young person goes crashing through a window, being hung as the entire band concert watches.

Let me explain how crazy that is in real life, because the wife who gets so abused is played by Merrie Lynn Ross, Lester’s wife.

This movie is packed with stars. And by stars, I mean people only I care about like Stefan Arngrim from Fear No Evil, Keith Knight from Meatballs and My Bloody Valentine and Lisa Langlois from Happy Birthday to Me and Deadly Eyes. Oh yeah. Some guy named Michael J. Fox is in this too.

By the way, if the police station seems familiar, that’s because it was the same one as Black Christmas. And Van Patten was a renaissance man on this movie, as he wrote the concerto his character performs and even made Drugstore’s graffiti-covered shirt. He still is, as he’s the director making the new Perry Mason series on HBO.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime and Tubi.

We talked about Álex de la Iglesia and his film Day of the Beast here before. Now, we have another of us films, based on the 1992 Barry Gifford novel 59° and Raining: The Story of Perdita Durango. It also takes inspiration from Magdalena Solís, the so-called “High Priestess of Blood,” who was hired by Santos and Cayetano Hernandez to be an Incan princess as part of their cult that was fooling villagers into becoming slaves for them. The power went to her head and she took over, starting a series of drug-fueled blood drinking and murder rituals.

Perdita Durango (Rosie Perez) is trying to scatter the ashes of her sister when she meets Romeo Dolorosa (Javier Bardem), whose police blotter includes crimes like bank robbery, drug dealing and pretending to be a Santeria priest, which mainly involves doing coke and hacking up corpses. Now, he’s refrigerating human fetuses and taking them to Vegas for Mr. Santos (Don Stroud, The Amityville Horror).

Perdita decides that they should capture and eat someone, so they kidnap two geeky college kids, assault both of them and then just before the ceremony to sacrifice the girl, another gang attacks. They go on the run, kids in tow, all the way to their destiny in Vegas.

James Gandolfini shows up as agent Woody Dumas, who continually gets hit by cars and survives.

Perdita also appears in another Gifford novel — and the movie it inspired — Wild at Heart, where she was essayed by Isabella Rossellini.

During the Santeria scenes — which are much closer to Santa Muerte — look for Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, one of the most important figures in the history of rock ‘n roll.

This movie was a dividing line in De La Iglesia’s career. Spanish-speaking fans felt that he sold out by having the movie in English and featuring big stars, while American audiences were frightened off by all the sex, drugs and violence.

As for me. I was stunned by how the end of the film transforms into the 1954 Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper film Vera Cruz.

You can watch this on Tubi. Supposedly, Severin is releasing a new version of this on blu ray this year.

This film is based on the life of ascetic 5th-century Syrian saint Simeon Stylites, who lived for nearly 40 years on top of a column. It was directed by Luis Buñuel after he had to take his second exile in Mexico, as his movies were lambasted by the government and the Vatican.

Along with Viridiana and The Exterminating Angel, these movies form a trilogy of films that are critical of religion and star Silvia Pinal and Claudio Brook.

Simón has lived for 6 years, 6 weeks and 6 days in the midst of the desert atop a pillar, praying for spirital purification. Then, an assemblage of priests and townspeople offer him a new pillar and a chance at priesthood. He claims that he is unworthy before climbing up to his new perch.

But first, an amputee asks him to give him back his hands. As soon as Simón heals the man, he slaps his child and says that he is unimpressed with the religious man. He then either judges or ignores the other people who come to him.

Interestingly enough, that man is Buñuel.

Then, Satan (Silvia Pinal) visits him three times. First, as a cursing girl, hen as Jesus and finally as himself. Time and again he begs our protagonist to come down from the pole before finally moving him to a nightclub in our time, as a dancefloor begins doing the Radioactive Flash. Simón just wants to go home, but Satan says he must stay.

While this film was to be much longer, budget cuts gave it the short run time and what some may see as an abrupt ending. I really enjoyed it, as it feels like some strange parable sent to us from another dimension.

Mario and Fernando Almada are brothers that ended up in the same movie, with Mario as Sheriff Bob (BOB!) and Fernando as the equally epically titled Roy. They had another brother named Horacio who stayed home, far away from this movie that’s pretty much a cop movie that turns into a Mexican giallo. No puedo creerlo!

Speaking of family, this was directed by the father and grandson team of Pedro Galindo and Pedro Galindo III. The elder Pedro was an actor, producer and musician. His song “Malaguena Salerosa” is on the soundtracks for Kill Bill and Once Upon a Time In Mexico. Meanwhile, Pedro III made the crowd pleasing Vacaciones del Terror 2 and Trampa Infernal.

Anyways, there’s a killer loose cane with a sword in it and a giant dog that helps him murder, paying back that mutt who used to talk to Berkowitz.

This has one of the best kills I’ve ever seen in an exploitation movie, where a dead man is thrown through a glass window and on to the stage of a strip club, where his lifeless form collides with a fully nude dancer.

A movie that skirts the edge between slasher and giallo, which is a thin one when you think about it hard enough. This is dark and scummy, which is pretty much exactly what you’d hope it would be.

There’s also a sequel, Massacre In Rio Grande, that I’ve been trying to hunt down. If you can find it, let me know. I’ll be your mejor amigo!

There haven’t been many movies that we cover that have been made into operas. In 2016, this became one of them.

A surrealist film, Buñuel left it up to his audiences to decide what the story — a group of rich people cannot leave a party — is really about. Roger Ebert said, “The dinner guests represent the ruling class in Franco’s Spain. Having set a banquet table for themselves by defeating the workers in the Spanish Civil War, they sit down for a feast, only to find it never ends. They’re trapped in their own bourgeois cul-de-sac. Increasingly resentful at being shut off from the world outside, they grow mean and restless; their worst tendencies are revealed.”

During a formal dinner party at the lavish mansion of Señor Edmundo Nóbile and his wife Lucía, the servants all leave but the guests cannot. As the days past, some die, some commit suicide and nearly all of them go mad.

Only when they recreate the party — after failed mystic rituals and the attempted slaughter of their host — can they leave. Yet after attending a religious service to give thanks, they remain trapped again and disappear, along with the priests, as riots break out in the streets.

In Russia, the idea of people not being allowed to “leave a party” was considered offensive and anti-government, so the film was banned. And Buñuel himself believed that between the budget and the conditions in Mexico, the film was a failure. He wishes that it had been more extreme.