Editor’s Note: This review previous ran on May 14, 2020.
Writer and director Damian Lee also did Ski School, which I assume preps you for making science fiction action movies starring two of Arnold’s pals, Jesse “The Body” Ventura and Sven-Ole Thorsen. Plus, best of all — no, actually best doesn’t apply here — Jim Belushi shows up.
Abraxas (Ventura) and Secundus (Thorsen) are Space Cops called Finders who live for thousands of years and use an Answer Box to scan and communicate in the field. It’s also a weapon, as if a subject doesn’t contain the Anti-Life Equation, they are disintegrated.
If you just read that and got angry that Jack Kirby’s concepts were ripped off for this movie, good news. For me, at least. Because I thought I was going crazy.
Secundus goes bad, because he wants to live forever and needs to figure out that Anti-Life Equation to do so. His plan? Knock up the first woman he finds by rubbing his hand over her belly. That woman is Sonia Murray (Marjorie Bransfield, who was married to Belushi at the time, so that explains that) and she has a baby named Tommy in seconds. But Tommy is going to grow up to be the Culminator and solve that equation. Abraxas is supposed to kill the child and the mother, but he’s too nice and let’s her live. Her parents get mad that she had a baby and toss her out into the streets, except that you know, she somehow got pregnant and had the child in the very same day.
Five years later, Tommy is a mute child with superpowers. Well, his one power is the ability to make bullies piss their pants. So I guess that’s a power. And his principal at school is Jim Belushi, who brings back his role of Rick Latimer because we all demanded that. You know, I give Jim a lot of guff and the dude voted for Obama and has a pop-up cannabis shop, so maybe he’s not as bad as I’ve been led to believe.
What is bad is Abraxas, a movie that is kinda sorta The Terminator with no time travel. You can watch it for free on Amazon Prime and Tubi. Or, if you need some help, the Rifftrax version is also on Amazon Prime and Tubi, too.
Vinegar Syndrome has just released this set, of which they’ve said, “With the giallo at its peak in the early 70s, it seemed that every filmmaker working in Italy was vying to make one and put their unique creative stamp on this highly popular genre. Presented here are a trio of early 70s gialli, all directed by filmmakers who had never made one before — or after — and all presenting wildly different approaches to the genre’s most prevalent trappings, ranging from deliriously sleazy, to high camp, to unwaveringly grim and somber. All three films are presented in brand new and exclusive restorations of their original, uncensored, 35mm camera negatives. Vinegar Syndrome is proud to present the second entry in their Forgotten Gialli series.”
There are three movies on this set and we’ve already covered all of them. Click through any of the hyperlinks to read our full articles on each film!
The Girl in Room 2A: Mitchell Hillman wrote a great guest review for this, in which he said, “Both times I’ve watched this I thought this would be an amazing film to reboot, there’s much more of a horror aspect to it than the usual gore laden bloodbath. It’s got a great story at the heart of it and I’d just love to see it treated to a decent budget. Everyone is creepy,it seems that only Margaret and Jack are on the level, but you can never be sure about anything.”
The French Sex Murders: “Rosabeli Neri (Lady Frankenstein), Anita Eckberg (Screaming Mimi) and Barbara Bouchet (Don’t Torture A Duckling) all in the same film? What did I do to deserve this, giallo gods? I realize this isn’t a great film. But it’s certainly not boring, what with hooded figures running around a brothel, decapitations and falls off important French landmarks.”
My Dear Killer: “An unsolved case of kidnapping and murder has led to a series of seemingly unconnected deaths that Inspector Peretti (Hilton) must put together. All he has to go by is a drawing that a little girl made, but giallo films have been solved with less clues. While this movie stays more on the police side of the equation than many giallo, it still has some kill scenes that stand out, such as a grisly circular saw murder.” Strangely enough, this was written by the same person who wrote Jodoworsky’s Santa Sangre, Roberto Leoni.
If you’ve been following along this week, you know exactly how much we love the films of William Gréfe. So this documentary — originally released by Ballyhoo Motion Pictures as a limited edition double disk (you can get it at Diabolik DVD) — is exactly the kind of thing that we devour, absorb and now, share with you.
Honestly, if you have the smallest interest in exploitation film or if you’re an absolute maniac who thrills at the very mention of names like Barry Mahon and Crown International Pictures, then you absolutely must own this. Luckily, if you buy the new He Came from the Swamp set, you get this film along with several of Gréfe’s films.
“If there were rules to making a movie, one indie director would break them all!” These are the kind of taglines that make me beyond overjoyed to watch a documentary and trust me, this one delivers.
As a Miami-based regional filmmaker, Gréfe transformed the Everglades into his own personal studio. This doc has everyone from Ross Hagen, Frank Henelotter, David F. Friedman and Fred Olen Ray to William Shatner, Herschell Gordon Lewis and many of the actors that worked with Gréfe on his many films all speaking about what it was like to be part of this magical time in low budget filmmaking.
If you’re the kind of person who obsesses about the extras on a DVD, then you’ve probably seen the work of director Daniel Griffith. It’s a real joy to see him expand his work to a full-length feature on one fascinating subject. I can’t wait to see his next movie, Celluloid Wizards in the Video Wasteland: The Saga of Empire Pictures.
The Arrow Video He Came from the Swamp box set is available at Diabolik DVD or from MVD. You can also learn more at the official site for the film.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Man, are we doing re-runs as much as Carson in the late 90’s? No, we just wanted to make sure to include all the William Grefe movies we’ve seen in this week of his movies. This one was originally posted on October 20, 2020.
Bill (Christopher George, taking a vacation from his wife, who is in nearly every movie with him), Jamie, Dan (Preston Pierce, Angels’ Wild Women) and Diana (Roberta Collins, Matilda the Hun from Death Race 2000) are on a treasure hunt deep in the Southern backwoods, seeking an inheritance of prices Civil War rifles. Sure, why not?
After thirty minutes of more of travelogue and dirt bike footage, you may wonder, “Has slasher month gone to Sam’s head? When are we going to get to the senseless violence?” Patience, slashawan.
The deeper into the South our protagonists find themselves, the less hospitality they get from the locals, but hey, there’s plenty of money on the other side of the rainbow on Whiskey Mountain, right? Well, there’s also a drug operation that runs everything around, even the cops, all headed up by Rudy (John Davis Chandler, probably the only actor I know that appeared in both Adventures In Babysitting and High Plains Drifter).
This is a movie that has all real marijuana as props and a soundtrack by the Charlie Daniels Band, along with the exact kind of horrors you know await them yankees when they ask too many questions and push too hard. It’s also filled with Peckinpah-esque slow-motion — most effectively when George is double firing shotguns — to go with a brutal scene where we only hear the assault on the girls and see still evidence as it develops on Polaroids. Also — it’s 1977 and technically a motorcycle movie. so that means that it also has a potential downer ending freeze frame.
I tell you what, William Grefé has never let me down. You can get this as part of the He Came from the Swamp box set that Arrow Video has just released. Diabolik DVD is a great bet to find a copy.
William Grefe’s roughie The Devil’s Sisters was lost for some time, but luckily, we can all watch it (and know how it ends, as eight minutes of the last reel are missing and not even Gréfe can find one of the 34 other prints that were made of the film, other than the one he got from a German collector).
Teresa leaves behind her cop boyfriend who only cares about the carnal and heads to Tijuana for a job as a maid, which of course means that she ends up locked up on the bedroom of the evil Rita, serving her male customers and shedding her virginal past. How poetic — or horrid — is it when her man shows up and he calls her a whore instead of trying to save her?
Now that the law knows that she’s been taken, our heroine is taken to The Ranch, a place where pregnant streetwalkers are kept behind bars and the barbed wire Royal Marriage Bed is used to punish those foolhardy enough to try and escape.
Also known as Sisters of the Devil, this film has some real-life ties. It’s loosely based on the story of Las Poquianchis, in which Delfina and María de Jesús González used help wanted ads to find young women, got them hooked on drugs and then tricked them out.
I really enjoyed hearing Gréfe talk over the storyboards and wish the whole film had been done this way!
Sisters of the Devil is available on Arrow Video’s He Came from the Swamp box set. Diabolik DVD should have it in stock.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Herbert P. Caine is the pseudonym of a frustrated academic and genre movie fan in Pennsylvania.
Before beginning this review, I should warn readers: Nothing that happens in the film Death Machines is remotely as cool as the film’s poster, which features an ominous metal pyramid with evil-looking faces glaring out of it. The poster suggests an epic science-fiction / action film. While Death Machines is a lot of fun, it nowhere near that memorable.
The film revolves around a multi-racial team of martial artists who have been drugged/brainwashed into becoming nigh-invincible assassins. (The film never makes it entirely clear how this process took place, or why it renders them all but immune to bullets.) The evil Madame Lee, played by Japanese actress Mari Honjo even though Lee is usually a Chinese or Korean name, uses her dangerous slaves to take over the underworld. The result is lots of gangsters dying in at times creative ways.
Death Machines’ biggest selling point is its frequent action scenes, which keep the viewer’s interest through an often-predictable plot. In one particular standout, the Death Machines take on an entire karate school, massacring the hapless students with fists, feet, swords, and electrocution. Other killings have an amusing element, particularly as the gangsters they target seem oblivious to their obviously impending dooms. Not one, but two mafiosos fail to notice vehicles rushing towards them, even as other people scramble out of the way. The film could easily have been subtitled “A Parable on Situational Awareness.”
The movie suffers from very basic filmmaking flaws, some of which suggest a troubled production. For example, in the film’s prologue, a bearded man is introduced as the creator and true controller of the Death Machines, with the implication that he may clash with Madame Lee. He never appears again. Furthermore, the film never settles on a protagonist. Some might carp that this is a silly consideration for a genre film, but to really get invested in a story, you need to care about at least one character. First, it looks like it will be the paperwork-averse police detective investigating the killings, but he fades into the background two-thirds of the way through the film, with the focus shifting to the sole survivor of the karate school massacre, who want revenge for the Death Machines amputating his hand. The Death Machines themselves might be considered villain protagonists, but they have so little characterization that IMDB lists them by their race. (They even dress alike through most of the film.) The constant shifting of focus and outright vanishing of certain characters lead one to wonder whether the production ran out of funds to pay actors.
The acting is passable, with Ron Ackerman, who plays the detective, being the most charismatic. However, Mari Honjo gives a weak performance hampered by her strong accent and apparent poor knowledge of English. At some points, her dialogue is difficult to follow, and at times she even seems to be working out her lines phonetically. This immediately takes you out of the story.
Even so, Death Machines is an effective time-waster for a boring Saturday afternoon. The action sequences come often enough to keep your attention, and there’s enough unintentional humor for a few chuckles. It’s not worth going out and buying, but can easily be found on Tubi and YouTube. The YouTube version is a higher quality print, but has been slightly edited for violence and nudity.
A beautiful twenty-year old dancer with a secret named Roobha has fallen for the much older Anthony. Each of them finds an escape within the passion they have for one another. However, once their families discover their secret love, their worlds fall apart.
Born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka and raised in Toronto, Canada, this is the third film by director Lenin M. Sivam, who wrote this along with Jesuthasan Antonythasan (who also plays Anthony).
The secret is that Roobha is transgender and her conservative family does noy understand her. Finding work on the streets of Toronto, she has endured ridicule and assault before falling with Anthony, whose poor health and family life make a happy ending untenable.
This isn’t a happy story, but an interesting one. You can find it on demand from IndieCan Entertainment.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We already posted this back on December 12, 2018.As this is William Grefe week, we figured we should fish it back up — groan — and repost it.
The Florida-based director William Grefe has brought many swamp-tinged bits of exploitation goodness — or badness — to the screen, such as Alligator Alley, The Wild Rebels, The Hooked Generation and so many more. As one of the first films made to take advantage of the shark craze in the way of Spielberg’s success, this film’s sympathetic view of sharks as victims is a pretty unique take on the genre.
Marine salvager Sonny Stein (Richard Jaeckel, who pretty much had a one-man war against nature with him battling bats in Chosen Survivors, bears in Grizzly and, well, any and all beasts with a chip on their shoulder in Day of the Animals) is given a medallion that allows him to communicate with sharks. He becomes increasingly disconnected from humanity — easy to do, everyone in this movie is scum — and uses his sharks to take out those who go against his beliefs.
One of those people is an incredibly chubby club owner who is using high-frequency sound to train his sharks, as well as kind of pimping out his wife Karen (Jennifer Bishop, Bigfoot) to get Sonny on their side. Have you ever seen a movie where strippers have been trained to swim with sharks? Who would want to see that? This movie provides the what, if not the why.
Another is a shady shark researcher that murders a shark and her pups. You will stare unbelieving at the screen while Jaeckel overly emotes as he clutches a dead baby shark in his mitts. Oh yeah — Harold “Oddjob” Sakata is also in this.
The stunt footage is pretty amazing and even gets a mention before the movie even begins. Other than the weird premise and a few good scenes, you can nap through most of this and not feel bad.
You can get this as part of the He Came from the Swamp box set that Arrow Video has just released. Diabolik DVD has it for sale now.
We’ve already taken a look at Double D’s best-promoted and best-known film — via the back of pulpy, ’80s monster mags — Dead Girls, and his latest, 30th film, Camp Blood 8 — each part of our respective “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week II” and October “All Slasher Month” tributes. And, the best part: Dennis is a D-Town brother: he was born and raised in Detroit and graduated from Eastern Michigan University before heading to Los Angeles, graduating from Loyola Marymount University’s film school, and forming DJD Productions.
So, for this Drive-In Friday, lets load the projector with four more of Dennis Devine films. And not all of them are the horror films you expect them to be.
Next to Dear Girls, this debut feature — produced for $10,000 and shot-on-Beta with Dead Girls’ Steve Jarvis — is my favorite of the Devine canons and the Cinematrix imprint.
Starring Kay Schaber, Angela Eads, and Brian Chin from the later Dead Girls, they’re three of several people victimized by a Satanist-worshipping photographer-cum-serial killer who — instead of sealing his body in a doll, ala Chucky in Child’s Play (1988; 2019), Devine’s writing cohort, Mike Bowler (Hell Spa, Things, Things II, Club Dead, Amazon Warrior, Chain of Souls, Haunted), who spins an inventive change-up to the spiritual hocus pocus — commits suicide before the police can catch him, and seals his body inside a camera.
Years later, Amy Stuart (Lane Coyle who, in typical Devine fashion, never appeared in another film), an aspiring photographer who works for the town’s newspaper, purchases the vintage camera from a pawn shop staffed with a creepy, ulterior motive shopkeep — and everyone she photographs is tracked down and murdered by the killer’s spirit.
You can watch Fatal Images as a free stream on You Tube. Do you need a more expansive, second look? Then check out Sam’s review of Fatal Images. It’s true! We love this film and Mr. Devine.
Movie 2: Things (1993)
“A horrific and sexy romp in the dark.” — Joe Bob Briggs
Now, if that tag from the guru of Drive-In fodder on the VHS “big-box” doesn’t make you want to mail order this third effort from Dennis Devine, then nothing will. And yes . . . multiple titles alert . . . here are two movies carrying the “Things” title: the first is the infamous Canuxploitation-North of the Border Horror, Things (1989). And the three sequels from 1998 and 2017 to Devine’s film have nothing to do with the Canux one — or with each other — for that matter.
This “Things” is an anthology-portmanteau film in three parts: “The Box” directed and written by Devine,” “Thing in a Jar” written by Steve Jarvis and directed by Jay Woelfel, and the wrap-around/linking segment written by Mike Bowler and directed by Eugene James. All are film school friends and DJD cohorts, natch.
The segments come together as a woman kidnaps her husband’s mistress and tells the mistress two horror stories involving “evil things” — that’s all converged in a related, twist ending. And unlike the classic Amicus and Hammer omnibus flicks it homages, Things dispenses with the atmospheric-gothic angle of its Brit forefathers and goes straight for — the bountiful — guts n’ gore. The first tale concerns hookers who meet their fate to a cursed creature kept in a box; the second is about a woman haunted by is-it-real-or-nightmares “things” concerning her abusive husband.
You can watch Things on TubiTV. There’s no online copies of 2 or 3 (aka Deadly Tales, aka, Old Things) currently streaming online, but you can watch Things 4 on TubiTV. And again, DO NOT confuse this with the “North of the Border Horror” Things from 1989 . . . as that is a whole other “thing” to watch.
Uh, oh. As we rolled out another “SOV Week,” well, two, during the last two weeks of January 2023, we reviewed Dennis’s sequel, Things II.
INTERMISSION: Short Film Time!
The Things about Things Sidebar: Battlestar Galactica fans know Jay Woelfel as the director of Richard Hatch’s failed 1999 BSG theatrical reboot with the short “pitch film” Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming that Universal rejected in lieu of the eventual SyFy Channel series. You can watch Hatch and Woelfel’s vision on You Tube. As you’ll see the, concept of “evolved Cylons” and the new Raiders design for the series was pinched from this version — and the most popular characters and actors returned. Woelfel is still at it: he recently edited Art of the Dead (2019). We also reviewed his debut effort, Beyond Death’s Door, as part of our “Regional Horror Week.”
And back to the show . . .
Movie 3: Curse of Pirate Death (2006)
It’s more goofy, ne’er-do-well college kids of the Scooby Doo variety heading off — not into the Norwegian Slasher Wood (as in Camp Blood 8) — but the ocean, Pirate’s Point in particular, as they research the myth of a centuries old killer, Abraham LeVoy, aka Pirate Death. And if they find his legendary treasure along the way, all the better for Shaggy and the Mystery Machine gang.
You’ve got — even though some are cut-a-ways or off-camera (ugh, damn budget) — a high kill count and lots of zombie-ghost pirate fighting that reminds of the great Amando de Ossorio’s third entry in his “Blind Dead” series, The Ghost Galleon (1974; the one with the living corpses of the Satan-worshiping Knights Templar hunting for human victims trapped on a 16th century galleon), but it’s definitely not as good as a de Ossorio flick (and what film is). Yeah, this one’s suffering from its ultra-low-budget that lends to sketchy cinematography and strained acting in places, but this has the usual Devine heart n’ soul with a mix of dark humor and horror that lends to its fun, snappy pace. Bottom line: If you want to see porn-provocateur Ron Jeremy (Boondock Saints/Overnight; also of Devine’s Night of the Dead from 2012) get a (cut-a-way) sword in the gut, this is your movie. If you want to see girls dressed as a sexy cop and German Beer Wench (Get that Bud Light chick outta ‘ere, I want a St. Pauli Girl!) stranded on an island dispatched by a dead pirate with guacamole smeared on his face, this is you movie.
One of the few Devine movies available through the service, you can rental-stream Curse of Pirate Death for a $1.99 on Amazon Prime. The DVD has a director-actor commentary track, along with a making of, gag reel, and meet the cast vignettes. The Amazon Prime stream offers a clip sample and You Tube offers a trailer via the film’s distributor, Brain Damage Films.
Movie 4: Get the Girl (2009)
Dennis Devine makes the jump from the pulpy lands of back-of-a-monster magazine-mail order SOVs to the streaming world of Netflix in this pretty obvious Judd Apatow-influencer. It concerns a geek (Adam Salandra of Devine’s Don’t Look in the Cellar) who masters Guitar Master (aka a chintzy Guitar Hero knock-off) to impress a sexy-brainless co-worker, much to the chagrin of his dowdy, co-worker gal pal. Guess which girl he gets. (Yeah, I’d want to “get the girl” with the ponytail and eye glasses, too.)
You can watch Get the Girl as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTV. Other films in the Devine comedy canons include Kid Racer (2010; yep, go-carts), Dewitt & Maria (2010; a rom-com), Fat Planet (2013; aliens into food), and Baker & Dunn (2017; that also works as mystery thriller).
For you Devineites (Or is that Devineheads?) check out his TubiTV page to watch the horrors Don’t Look in the Cellar (2008), The Haunting of La Llorona (2019), and the comedy Fat Planet (2013).
We wanted to do Devine’s Vampires of Sorority Row (1999), Vampires on Sorority Row II (2000), and his campy-vamp comedy Vamps in the City (2010) for our recent “Vampire Week,” but were unable to locate online streaming copies for you to enjoy — free or otherwise. The same goes for the Reggie “Phantasm” Bannister-starring Sawblade (2010) for our “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week II,” about an extreme-metal band a trapped-in-a-haunted house-for-a-video shoot tale (i.e., Blood Tracks and Monster Dog).
You need more Dennis Devine? Check out this Spotify podcast (that streams on all apps, and browser PCs and Laps) courtesy of Inside Movies Galore in promotion of Devine’s latest film, Camp Blood 8. You can also catch the podcast on streaming provider, Anchor.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Moviesand publishes on Medium.
A little Terminator, some Judge Dredd, some RoboCop— throw them all together and you get ROTOR, which really means Robotic Officer of the Tactical Operations Research/Reserve Unit. Far from defunind the police, this future cop is the dream of Captain J.B. Coldyron, a scientist who runs the police robotics lab. He also manages a ranch, because, well, I have no idea how he can afford that on a police scientist salary, but here we are in the said future.
Anyways, Earl G. Buglar, Coldyron’s commander in the police department, has been stealing money for the ROTOR project and now has to have something to show to corrupt senator Donald D. Douglas — who sounds like a Stan Lee character name — before election time. Seeing as how all J.B. has to show for himself is a goofball prototype and a ripoff of Johnny 5*.
That’s when ROTOR gets activated and goes on the loose, killing off fiancees and stalking their women. J.B. finds the woman who made the chassis of this killing machine and together, they try to stop him. You know what his weakness is? Loud noises. So how does he fire his gun or use his car’s siren?
This movie pretty much has a Mad Max ripoff poster going for it and not much else. Seriously, even for someone like me that can smile through the worst Italian cinema has to offer can find little joy within this movie, especially when one of the robotic advancements is a TOMY toy made five years before this movie.
*That robot is named Willard and was played by APD2, a robot purchased in 1986 by the police department of Addision, Texas. Other than the IMDB notice that APD2 led the Christmas parade that year, there’s no mention anywhere of him on the web, a curious thing when you think that a police department had an actual robot in its employ and no one talks about it. Also, Texas is the first state to use a bomb carrying robot to kill a criminal. On July 8, 2016, that robot ended a standoff with a heavily armed suspect following the shooting of several Dallas police officers at a protest march.
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