Yearly Archives: 2020

Mill Creek Sci-Fi Invasion: Escape from Galaxy 3 (1981)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Freese contributes to many different magazines, zines and websites such as Videoscope, Rue Morgue, Drive-in Asylum, Grindhouse Purgatory, Horror and Sons and Lunchmeat VHS. (His most recent piece, about the 80’s video distributor Super Video, can be found here). He also co-hosts the Two Librarians Walk into a Shelf podcast so he has an excuse to expose library patrons to ninja and slasher films. 

Depending on what copy of the movie you are watching, the title is either the really cool sounding Escape from Galaxy 3, or it is a fake looking title card blocking out that title with Starcrash II superimposed over it, in classic Commodore 64 font.

Our movie starts with a space attack. Almost immediately we don’t so much as feel like we’ve seen this all before, but we know for a fact that we have seen this all before because we are watching special effects outtakes from Luigi Cozzi’s 1979 sci-fi-adventure flick Starcrash. You may be tempted to take the disc out to check it to make sure you put in the correct movie, but rest assured, you did.

Cosmic radar has picked up an unidentified space craft in the galaxy. It is Oraclon, the King of the Night and possibly a member of some intergalactic glam-rock Village People cover band. He has big eyes and a glittery beard.

Oraclon wants to claim King Ceylon’s planet for his own. Ceylon’s hot to trot daughter, Princess Belle Star, wears half a dress and a glitter pastie in the shape of a star over her single uncovered breast. She is ordered to get into an escape ship with Captain Lithan and collect the King’s allies before Oraclon can make his next move. (This is “Plan Epsilon,” for whatever reason. Seems like a good old fashion retreat to me.)

When Ceylon refuses to surrender to Oraclon, the Studio 54 disco-reject puts a hurting on Ceylon’s space station and blows up the king’s home planet of Exalon.

Belle Star and Lithan manage to get away from the battle that is just as exciting as it was the first time we watched it in Starcrash. Oraclon, enraged, screams, “You galactic idiots! Imbeciles! We are not returning to the base until I have their heads at my feet!”

After rocketing through space, Belle Star and Lithan discover a strange planet, third from a sun, populated by savages. They crash land and damage their ship. These savage men and women, although cleanly shaven, live in huts and perceive the visitors to be enemies. The atmosphere of the earth enables the Captain and the Princess to display superhuman powers. Naturally, they are quickly sentenced to death.

In a moment before being condemned, Lithan saves a young boy from falling to his death, and then the primitive Earth people love him and the princess and welcome them to live in their village. While living among the cleanly shaven primitives, Belle Star and Lithan spy a young couple partaking in some nookie in the woods. This is odd to them, as physical contact between people is not allowed where they’re from. They are curious. It looks like fun. They decide to try kissing.

Never before has the screen exploded in such raw, non-passionate making of the love. I mean, these two kids kiss like they are sharing the same stick of gum. It is painful to watch, like watching your mom and dad kiss. Later, after a nude swim under a waterfall, one of the savages loves up Belle Star and she is enthusiastic for Lithan to try it. He can’t seem to get into the spirit of her experimentations. Just then, a trio of young people, two girls and a guy, come walking by and Belle Star suggests they basically engage in some group lovin’. Everyone is for it but before they can bang a gong and get it on, Oraclon learns where they are and announces he is coming for them. They try to decide what to do and finally feel it is best to leave once the final repairs on their ship are completed.

That night, at the Festival of Love, young men battle in odd, elementary school “Field Day” type competitions to win the opportunity to bed down and make the intercourse with any female they desire. The winner takes Belle Star. She looks longingly at Lithan. Lithan feels jealous and takes a young lady to his bed for a passionless coupling.

Both Belle Star and Lithan imagine the other’s head on the bodies of the people they are shagging. (I think it is safe to say that the similar scene of Tom Hanks imagining different peoples’ heads on Monique Gabrielle’s body in Bachelor Party (1984) drew quite a bit of inspiration from this scene.)

When Oraclon finally attacks Earth, they flee. While on the spaceship and drifting through space, they become bored, so they make sweet, sweet intergalactic nookie. Disgusted, Oraclon watches from a sensor screen and exclaims, “What are they doing?! I don’t understand!!!”

Like a jealous 13-year-old who hangs out with two friends, another guy, and a girl, and love suddenly connects the other guy and the girl, Oraclon vows to destroy Lithan and take Belle Star as his slave. He’ll show them! He has captured all the remaining kings of the different galaxy worlds to bare witness to his cosmic hissy fit. Belle Star tells her soon to be master, “After thousands of years, our sexual powers have come back to life and we haven’t suffered any harm. On the contrary. We’ve acquired a powerful new dimension.”

Aghast, Oraclon and his giant eyes and weird glittery glam beard look at the princess like she has lost her damn mind and wails again, “I don’t understand!”

At last, Belle Star surrenders to Oraclon. He declares that she will be his slave. Captain Lithan is condemned to slave labor, per Oraclon, “For the rest of his cosmic life!”

Belle Star and Lithan kiss, profess their love for one another, and then accept their fate as they stare longingly into each other’s glazed eyes.

In this one moment, Oraclon appears to honestly feel bad for being such an evil jerk. It’s as if he wants to say something, release these two crazy kids so they can experience a life of love and happiness, but his pride and his glitter glam beard keep him from saying anything. Surprisingly, this is a character of great depth, far from perfect, in constant conflict with his true self. (Just possibly, there is a piece of Oraclon in all of us.)

Belle Star goes to Oraclon, accepting her fate, and kisses him. At that precise moment, Lithan shoots eye beams into Belle Star, which pulse through her body and electrocute Oraclon, rendering him into little more than a smoldering pile of charcoal briquettes. They free the kings, set Oraclon’s ship to self-destruct and escape back to Earth, where they can be free and happy and enjoy the making of the savage love of the primitives. It ends with a nude midnight beach frolic, as the strange cosmic lovers embrace, and the passion squirts out of them as they seemingly share one last stick of gum.

Somehow, I missed this movie back when I was teenager. I mention this only because, as a grown up, I realize what a piece of garbage this movie is, but, as a forever 14-year-old, I really enjoyed the straight Star Wars rip-off plot mixed with a teen sex comedy. I mean, this is like Star Wars meshed with Porky’s.

I can’t say that I can recall too many Star Wars rip-offs that ever had such an emphasis on bedroom space antics. Still, it is not nearly as sleazy as it could have been in the hands of, say, Joe D’Amato. (Oh, my!) It has a juvenile charm. It is not as horrible as many movies I can call to mind.

The reason most people seek this one out is that inappropriate and unfotunated AKA, Starcrash II. Luigi Cozzi’s Starcrash was a hit for New World Pictures and for years various sequels were promised. Several attempts at following it up were made, by many different people. This film claims to be a sequel, but in no way should it ever be considered a sequel, even if Cozzi is sometimes mentioned as a co-director. It seems confusing, but when I had an opportunity to ask Cozzi about it, he cleared it up for me.

According to Cozzi, the Italian executive producer of Starcrash, Luigi Nannerini, was given the rights for Italian distribution. Nannerini thought he could utilize unedited model shots of the spaceships and space footage for an entirely new, low budget science fiction film. Early on, Cozzi said he was interested in making that movie for Nannerini, but the producer refused to give him any money for more optical effects. The only effects would be the unused, unedited footage from Starcrash.

Realizing a movie could not be made like this, Cozzi walked away from the project. Nannerini then hired Adalberto “Bitto” Albertini to put the film together. Released in Italy, the film was a flop. Nannerini went back and inserted hardcore sex scenes into it, only for the film to flop in the hardcore Italian market. (I don’t have any other information on this alternate version, so I don’t know what graphic scenes, if any, were added.) In the end, Nannerini admitted to Cozzi that he had been correct. The film really needed new special effects to make it successful for the science fiction crowd.

When I asked Cozzi if fans of Starcrash should consider Escape from Galaxy 3 a real sequel or continuation to his beloved sci-fi adventure, he did not mince words in his response, saying, “Absolutely not. Escape from Galaxy 3 has nothing to do with me [or] with Starcrash. It’s just a kind of [an] extremely bastard son, a rip-off, a giant theft. A shame. I’d never been able to do such a piece of shit.”

I can certainly understand where Cozzi is coming from with wanting to distance this film with his. But from a certain point of view, Escape from Galaxy 3 has a brain damaged charm that is hard to resist. I mean, if someone said, “Hey, do you want to watch a Star Wars rip-off with a lot of nudity?” What is the possibility that you would pass on watching such a film? Well, Escape from Galaxy 3 is that film.

Now, some bare flesh doesn’t a great flick make. And please don’t think I’m trying to convince you that Escape from Galaxy 3 is some kind of lost “drive-in” classic, because it most certainly is not. It’s a throwaway junk flick made to be watched and forgotten as you go to the next movie on the double bill. For those among us who like their entertainment skewered with weirdness, I don’t believe too many would argue that this film is worth a watch. It is so bizarre, like it was directed with the kiddie market that flocked to Star Wars and Starcrash in mind, but then someone said, “Do you know how many tickets we’ll sell if we show the princess naked?” This is one of those wonderfully weird discoveries within a 50-pack of misfit movies that rises above most in the set to deliver unexpected and surprising entertainment value, especially when you were figuring it was going to be just another Italian Star Wars rip-off. When one considers some of those run of the mill Italian “Sons of Star Wars,” Escape from Galaxy 3 is far from the worst of its ilk.

Don’t forget: We take another look at this film on December 19, 2019, as part of our “Star Wars Month” blow out of films that inspired and were inspired by the vision of George Lucas.

Mill Creek Sci-Fi Invasion: Hyper Sapien (1986)

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“In the tradition of E.T.,” they say. Well, they aren’t talking about Leeza Gibbons and Mary Hart!

This is the next to last movie* directed by Peter R. Hunt, the venerable filmmaker who brought us the Bond films Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. It was originally going to be directed by Michael Wadleigh (Woodstock, Wolfen), but he dropped out.

Three people are credited with the story: Christopher Adcock, Christopher Blue and Marnie Page. None of them ever made another film again, either so happy with this experience that they didn’t wish to sully it or so depressed by it they never came back. Or they were aliens and this is their story, then they went back to their homeworlds many lightyears away to make further movies that some strange life being is writing about as part of a box set of holocrons of movies that failed many life circuits — what you humans call years — ago.

The jury is, as they say, out.

Robyn (Sydney Penny from The Bold and the Beautiful and All My Children), Tavy (who was in the BBC series Holby City) and a furry beast named Kirbi are aliens that have left the planet Taros to visit Earth, where they befriend a boy named Dirt (Ricky Paull Goldin, who had the trunk full of class rings in the remake of The Blob).

Dirt decides to introduce the aliens to his grandfather (Keenan Wynn in his last role), who allows Kirbi to drink gasoline and join him as they shoot Coors cans. Then grandpa brings the alien to meet a Senator, and, well…things don’t go so well.

Talia Shire shows up in this, probably to get another name another than Wynn’s to sell this to foreign audiences.

So yeah. This is the kind of movie parents rented in the 80’s and put their kids in front of it, not knowing that it has an alien that looks like how women’s private parts did before shaving and waxing came into fashion. I mean, it’s supposed to be cute and it’s The Thing-level terrifying.

*The last one was the Bronson movie Assassination.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Bullets of Justice (2019)

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Bullets of Justice starts with a flyover of a post-apocalyptic city, followed by a pigman crapping his pants before being shot directly between the eyes. Now that’s how you get my interest.

Pig men? Well, back during World War 3, which has to be coming to 2020 any day now, the U.S. government started a secret project that was codenamed Army Bacon. Yes, that sounds like something out of Alex Jones, but here we are. Now, a quarter of a century later, the Muzzles have become the top of the food chain, replacing humans, and only a few humans remain.

Directed by Valeri Milev, who did Wrong Turn 6 and second unit on Van Damme’s We Die Young and written by Timur Turisbekov, who also plays hero Rob Justice, this film plays as a send-up of pretty mich every post-Mad Max movie that I love. No, really. I made a Letterboxd list just to track all the end of the world movies I’ve watched.

To get this on the shelves of WalMart, Danny Trejo shows up as Gravedigger, the father of our hero who returns as a ghost to help him. Really, Danny Trejo against pig men is all the review I need to give this and people will want to watch it, much less telling you that there’s a scene where a jet pack flying pig man gets decapitated and its bloody head drops right into the spread eagle crotch of a female bounty hunter, which slow dissolves into a lovemaking scene.

Seriously, Trejo is in twenty or thirty movies a month — he and Nicolas Cage must have a running bet — but this is probably the best one you’ll see him in this year, even if his part is incredibly minor. It’s also full of absolutely ludircous stunts, dirt all over everything, a near-obscene level of gore and a hero who has lost so many girlfriends that he has a shrine to all of them in his car.

There’s also a bad guy named Benedict Asshole and our hero’s new girl, who is also his sister, who has a mustache. And plenty of male frontal nudity. Of course, it’s also all acted phoentically in English, has all the directoral chops of The Asylum and doesn’t have a coherent plot.

The best of times. The worst of times. A lot blows up. I tried not to think too hard. Also this is a movie that taught me that bullets are birds of justice made of lead and if you don’t want them to kill you, they won’t. That literally made me laugh for five minutes, which is enough to say that this is a success.

This movie makes me think that Bulgaria and Kazakhstan got together and said, “Why the hell do Italy and the Philippines get to make all of the great Road Warrior rip-offs?”

Bullets of Justice is currently available on demand. Let me know what you think.

They Reach (2020)

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In 1979, a science nerd named Jessica (Mary Madaline Roe) stumbles upon a possessed tape player, which has kept a demon inside a reel to reel tape. After she lets that demon loose on her hometown of Clarkston, she must ask her friends Sam (Morgan Chandler) and Cheddar (Eden Campbell), who is always eating a corndog, to help save the day.

While They Reach aspires to be a kid-friendly comedy ala The Monster Squad — or more to the point Stranger Things — it has more scares and gore than the former and feels much more like the latter.

Written by Bry Troyer and Sylas Dall, who also directed, this definitely has a nostalgia feel for the 80’s. The idea of a haunted tape containing an attempt at an exorcism is pretty cool and if you have some room in your heart for another attempt to mine the past with precocious kids battling supernatural evil while riding their bikes around a small town, then this movie is ready to serve it up for you. Just be warned — again — if you bring the kids, this has some face peeling and blood spewing special effects in store.

It also has a pair of cops named Jay and Bob that seem like they belong to a decade ahead of this, but why quibble?

You can find this on demand and on DVD from Uncork’d Entertainment. You can also learn more at the official Facebook page.

Call Me Brother (2018)

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Lisa (Christina Parrish, who wrote the script) and Tony (Andrew Dismukes, who is a writer on Saturday Night Live) are siblings who have been separated for years. Now, they’ve been brought back together for a summer weekend where they discover that the feelings they have for one another are more than just because they’re family.

You know, I’ve said it before — so much of the horror fiction of the 1970’s was incestual in nature. And for some weird reason, this trend — and yes, I realize that it’s been a thing since 1980’s Taboo — is a big deal in adult films. But can it work in a romantic comedy?

Our heroes haven’t seen one another since they were young children. Lisa went to live with her mother and Tony grew up with their father,who has since remarried and is in a very sexual marriage. Now that their mother is about to be remarried as well, Lisa is brought back into the life of her brother.

Honestly, this movie could have been a prurient mess, but this is a really funny movie, punctuated with tons of profane language and acts, yet it has its perverted little heart in the right place. If you can get your mind around the idea that the two main characters are destined to be together without getting nauseated, then you understand the type of funny this is aiming for.

Can a movie be both charming and upsetting? Somehow, this covers both. Despite moments of cringe, it has a heart that pushes through and makes you want to root for its characters (even when they’re pooping in a tub while another couple makes out feet away).

This is the first film for director David Howe, who does a great job keeping the story moving while giving it an interesting visual style.

You can see this movie in the following drive-ins, theaters and virtual cinemas:

  • Los Angeles/New York/San Fran/Chicago/Atlanta/Detroit and more – LAEMMLE THEATERS VIRTUAL
  • Texas/Austin – BLUELITE STARLITE DRIVE-IN (with sneaks on November 5)
  • Texas/Austin – GALAXY HIGHLAND-10 Theater
  • Texas/Austin – VIOLET CROWN
  • Louisana/New Orleans – THE BROAD THEATER
  • Mississippi/Oxford – Oxford Film Fest (VIRTUAL RELEASE)
  • Texas/Austin : AUSTIN FILM SOCIETY CINEMA (from 11/13)

Mill Creek Sci-Fi Invasion: The Alien Factor (1978)

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You know how we root for the self-made filmmaker at B&S About Movies, with backyard guys like Andy Milligan and Don Dohler. (Without their 16-to-35mm drive-in romps, there’d be no SOV ’80s*, so I always lump them into that brick and mortar store era, especially when the first time most seen Dohler’s work — or Milligan’s for that matter — was on home video.) So while stuffy Leonard Maltin-styled critics catalog their filmpedia scoffs at Dohler’s “gripping sci-fi terror from beyond,” we, the staff of B&S About Movies appreciate Dohler’s debut film for what it is: a fun retro-romp from the ’50s “Golden Age of Horror.”

Considering Dohler began as an underground magazine publisher in the early ’60s at the age of 15 with the Mad Magazine-inspired WILD and the mid-60s filmmaking magazine Cinemagic (that was bought out by Starlog in 1979), his transitioning into producing his own films was a logical, natural progression.

Upon first watching the opening scene of two people in car in a remote, rural area being attacked by an alien creature, it’s obvious George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is a sign post in Dohler’s creation. However, with only $3,500 to spend, Dohler couldn’t afford to shoot in graveyards and create zombie hoards: so he gave us a tale inspired by ’50s sci-fi films, such as The Thing from Another World.

If you’ve seen — or read our previous reviews for Dohler’s third and fourth films (the zombie-slasher hybrid Fiend from 1980 was his second) — Nightbeast and The Galaxy Invader, you know that an insect-esque monster is on the loose in “Perry Hill” (natch). The mayhem is triggered when a (character expositional) spaceship containing specimens for an intergalactic zoo crashes on Earth and lets loose its galactic menagerie: an Inferbyce (the aforementioned insect alien), a Zagatile (a giant furry beast with funky legs) and a Lemmoid (a ghostly like lizard that sucks energy from other creatures).

Baltimore’s’ favorite alien is back in the 2001 sequel.

And I ask you: Did Speilberg watch this? I wonder, because we have a local sheriff besieged by the backwood (in lieu of sandy Amity Island) town mayor to find what’s causing the killings (not a shark) and to “keep a lid on it” because it’ll jeopardize the nearby construction of a multimillion-dollar amusement park that’ll boost the local economy.

The reference to Romero’s zombie classic — and our calling out a minor influence of Jack H. Harris’s Equinox — isn’t a critical misnomer (especially when you watch the ending and recall Duane Jones’s sad fate in Romero’s tale). While this Dohler debut received a widespread theatrical released in the post-Alien/Star Wars/Close Encounters of the Third Kind marketplace in May 1978, The Alien Factor was completed in 1972 — and had a slight, regional drive-in release around the Baltimore area in 1976.

For a film shot for under $4,000 bucks with local talent, a limited crew, backyard without-permit locales, and admittedly pretty decent process shots and practical in-camera effect, this — as with any Dohler flick — is worth the watch. You can watch The Alien Factor on You Tube and enjoy it as part of the Mill Creek Sci-Fi Invasion Box Set.

And did you know there’s a rock ‘n’ roll connection to this Dohler bit o’ nostalgia? Yep! Be sure to check out Sam’s take as he reviewed the film for the 24th “At the Gig” day of the 2020 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge.

* Click through to our SOV tag to populate our ever-growing list of shot-on-video movies.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Mill Creek Sci-Fi Invasion: Invaders from Space (1965)

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A bunch of salamander men from the planet Kulimon in the Moffit Galaxy plan on taking over Earth by unleashing a lethal plague on mankind (maybe not what you want to watch right now). It’s up to Starman from the Emerald Planet to save the human race.

I always wondered why these movies didn’t make any sense when I was a kid. 

That’s because they were all part of a much larger story that we had no idea about. We’re coming into the middle of a movie serial called Kōtetsu no Kyojin (Giant of Steel). To be more exact, we’re watching episodes 3 and 4, which were called The Mysterious Spacemen’s Demonic Castle and Earth on the Verge of Destruction. 

That’s because Walter Manley Enterprises and Medallion Films bought these movies from Japan and then did pretty much whatever they wanted with them. While the original films are 48 and 39 minutes long, they jammed them together, took out 9 minutes and used library music and dubbed dialogue.

While the American version refers to the bad guys as salamanders, those that love Japanese crytozology will recognize them as kappas, the dreaded frog-like beasts that haunt rivers and lakes. They also have a doctor who can hypnotize people, a witch and their leader, who is able to change the rotation of the planet.

Starman predates both Ultraman and the sendai ranger shows, but he’s very similar. He tends yo leap off things and do tons of backflips. A lesser hero would get dizzy and puke from the acrobatics that he does, but that’s why he’s such a winner, I guess.

Walter Manley Enterprises also brought the Jayne Mansfield-starring The Loves of Hercules, Invasion of the Neptune Men, Curse of the Blood Ghouls, Giants of Rome, Cavalier in Devil’s Castle and Revenge of the Black Eagle to America, amongst other films. 

They also made three more Starman movies. It all begins in Atomic Rulers of the World, which is Super Giant and Super Giant Continues; Attack from Space which is The Artificial Satellite and the Destruction of Humanity and The Spaceship and the Clash of the Artificial Satellite; and finally Evil Brain from Outer Space, which took the full color films The Space Mutant Appears, The Devil’s Incarnation and Kingdom of the Poison Moth and made them black and white. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

Director Teruo Ishii, known as “The King of Cult,” made tons of movies. He directed 10 of the 18 A Man from Abashiri Prison films, all eight of the Joys of Torture series, Horrors of Malformed Men, Sonny Chiba’s The Street Fighter’s Last Revenge, some Pinky violence films, a few biker movies, two Yoshiharu Tsuge manga adaptions (Master of the Gensenkan Inn and Wind-Up Type) and so many more. In all, he made 83 films and numerous shows for TV.

Ishii left the series after the sixth movie, as he learned that a child had imitated Super Giant, dressing up like the hero and jumping out of a window to the street below. This is why Japanese superhero shows began airing a disclaimer before every show, warning kids to not imitate the things they saw on screen. 

I would hope that no one copied any of the Yakuza and erotic torture that he’d be in charge of in his later films.

Seriously, I love this movie. It’s kind of goofy looking compared to the CGI superheroics that we have today, but it has a charm that none of them do.

You can watch this on YouTube and download it for free on the Internet Archive.

Pitch Black (2000)

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David Twohy started his time in Hollywood as a writer on films like Warlock, Timescape and Critters 2: The Main Course before graduating to big budget films like The Fugitive, The Arrival, Waterworld and G.I. Jane. He started directing with the aforementioned Timescape and then really kicked his directing career into high gear with this sleeper of a movie.

The first of four appearances of the Riddick character* — which launched the career of Vin Diesel — this movie owes plenty to the Alien franchise but comes into its own thanks to plenty of suspense and great effects.

The ship Hunter-Gratzner is transporting passengers as they sleep, including a Muslim preacher named Abu ‘Imam’ al-Walid (Keith David) and his three sons, an arms dealer named Paris, a teenager named Jack (keep in mind the gender neutrality of the name), some settlers named Zeke and Shazza, as well as a bounty hunter named William J. John (Cole Hauser, the son of Wings) who is transporting a Furyan alien who can see in the dark named Riddick. Meteors bring their ship down on a planet of near-constant daylight — or so it seems — yet when underground creatures attack Riddick is offer amnesty if he can help everyone get out alive.

That wouldn’t be easy even if the planet wasn’t headed for an apocalypse that will allow the photo-sensitive monsters to run wild anything and everywhere they want to go.

The intriguing part of this movie is the journey that pilot Carolyn Fry (Radha Mitchell, the …Has Fallen movies) makes from someone willing to jettison the passengers to save her own life to someone who convinces Riddick to stay behind and help others, despite his criminal nature.

Originally, this was a stand-alone movie and Riddick was supposed to die, but Vin Diesel and the cast and crew fell in love with the character and saw the potential for more. In the original Nightfall script, Riddick wasn’t even a guy; she was called Tara Krieg.

PS: If you want to see the wreck of the Hunter-Gratzner, it’s still in the Australian desert and visible on Google maps. This is also the same area where The Blood of Heroes and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome were made.

PPS: The Robert Heinlein story Tunnel in the Sky has characters marooned on a planet threatened by a once-a-year danger and a character named Jack who is really female. Luckily, Heinlein wrote that and not Harlan Ellison.

The new Arrow Video release of Pitch Black is absolutely overloaded with all the extras you expect from this great company. It starts with a brand new 4K restoration by Arrow Films of the Theatrical and Director’s Cuts of the film, which were approved by director David Twohy. Then, you get two sets of archival commentary, a newly filmed making-of documentary, as well as new interviews with Rhiana Griffith, cinematographer David Eggby, visual effects supervisor Peter Chian and composer Graeme Revell. Plus, there’s behind the scenes footage, special effects tests, an introduction by Twohy, a Chronicles of Riddick Visual Encyclopedia, a short prequel narrated by Cole Hauser telling the tale of his character’s hunt for Riddick, the Dark Fury animated short (as well as the bonus features from that release), the Slam City motion comic, the Into Pitch Black TV special with further information of what happened before and after the events of the movie, a dance event that promoted Pitch Black and trailers for all of the sequels and video games.

You can get this from Arrow, who was kind enough to send us a review copy.

*The others are The Chronicles of Riddick, Riddick and the animated The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury (you can also count the shorts Pitch Black: Slam City and Riddick: Blindsided, as well as the video games The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. As stated above, all of these are shown on this incredible release.

Blind (2019)

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Faye (Sarah French, who has also worked under the stage name Scarlet Salem) was once an actress, but laser eye surgery has made her blind. She’s attempting to get her life back together as she lives in a dream home high up in the Hollywood Hills. However, just when she starts to open up, she learnes that a masked stranger named Pretty Boy (Jed Rowen, Sluggo from The Ghastly Love of Johnny X) is stalking her.

Horror fans will be happy to see Caroline Williams (Stretch from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, as well as appearances in movies such as Stepfather 2, Leprechaun 3, Hatchet III and Verotika) in this as Faye’s supportive friend Sophia. She runs a support group that helps our heroine, as well as introduces her to her love interest Luke (Tyler Gallant), a mute personal trainer who can only communicate via phone.

However, Pretty Boy has created an idealized version of Faye that he will kill to keep true within his head. Originally content to stay within his colorful hideout and dance with a doll that he pretends is our heroine, he soon ventures out into our reality and begins taking out everyone close to her. Of course, she can’t see that the white suited and masked killer is just within her reach.

By the time this all starts coming together, we get a post-credit reveal that this is just part one, something that has seemingly upset many of the critics of this film. Well, it looks pretty, I can say that much. Williams does a great job in her role, as always. And I liked the design of Pretty Boy, which is in sharp contast to the grunge and filth look of most slasher killers.

This was directed by Marcel Walz, who made the 2016 version of Blood Feast and  Rootwood. 

Blind is available on demand and on DVD from Uncork’d Entertainment.

Mill Creek Sci-Fi Invasion: Star Knight (1985)

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“Sam, Star Knight is mine.”

“Yeah, I know. Klaus Kinski. Already penciled you in. But no Seinfeld sidebars, please.”

“I can’t make that promise. That’d be like you admitting you liked Six Days and Seven Nights and Just Go With It all for the love of Becca.”

“Point taken. But this was shot in Spain with native actors, so I doubt there’s any connection to an American sitcom.”

“Well, in Season 8: Episode 21: “The Muffin Tops” Newman does a parody of Harvey Keitel’s The Cleaner from Pulp Fiction, as he helps Elaine get rid of the errant muffin tops from the bakery she opened.

“Review the damn movie, R.D.”

When the home video boom hit in the ’80, West Hollywood-based Chicago Teleproductions decided to get out of the TV business and into the film business as Cine Tel Films, which still exists to this day.

One of their first acquisitions was this Spain-produced sci-fi adventure that owes it’s life more to Superman ’78 (with dashes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and a soupçon E.T.) than Star Wars, as was the case with most of the ’80’s star junk that was coming out of Italy and Spain, such as the Richard “Jaws” Keil and Barbara Bach-starring The Humanoid and Luigi Cozzi’s Star Crash. And as with those two precursors, Star Knight (aka El caballero del dragón, aka The Knight of the Dragon), thanks to Cine Tel Films, ended up at my local duplex in 1986, back in the days when you’d get a new Euro-space oddity once a week.

Of course, not all of those Star Wars droppings starred Harvey Keitel (Saturn 3) and Klaus Kinksi (Creature). And before there was an Eric Roberts, there was a Fernando Rey, who, across his 150-plus credits, went from international acclaim through his ’60s works with surrealist director Luis Buñuel (Simon of the Desert) and domestic stardom with William Friedkin’s The French Connection — to this.

And what is it? Well, it’s a Lois Lane loves Superman romance with a love-struck Lex Luthor.

Keitel is Klever, the kingdom’s top knight who aspires for full knighthood; Kinski is Boetius, the faithful alchemist who aspires for the secrets to turn lead into gold; and Rey is the king’s nefarious court priest, who believes Alba is possessed by the Devil (and probably wants to “Mark of the Devil” it out of her).

Of course, Kinski’s off his usual nut, drawing incantation-scawled pentagrams on the floor and “praying for an angel to come” to bestow him the secrets to turn lead into gold. And his prayer is answered — in the form of an an “adult”-starring film vehicle for Spanish musician and ex-teen idol Miguel Bosé (a huge star throughout Italy, Spain, Southern Europe and Latin America) as “The Star Knight,” aka, the speechless IX.

Of course, as is the case with all ancient astronauts of the Erich von Daniken variety, the Ezekielian space ship is a “dragon from the sky” that lives in the lake and whisked away Princess Alba, along with an assortment of goats and chickens, because, well XI’s on a long, lone mission to catalog the galaxy’s flora and fauna. And the citizen’s refuse to pay their taxes until the “dragon” is slain. And Keitel’s “straight out of Brooklyn” knight is dispatched to kill the dragon, restore order, and collect those taxes.

But since XI has been without female companionship for some time, he finds an unspoken love with Alba. So Keitel and Rey plot to “kill the devil” so Keitel can win back Alba’s heart. Kinski, meanwhile, is the good guy this time (?), who protects XI and assures love conquers all.

Unlike the utterly inept (but loved) Escape from Galaxy 3, the other Ezekielian ancient astronaut romp on this Mill Creek set, Star Knight has excellent production values in its sets and costuming (especially XI’s Kryptonian spaceship interiors and space suit) and the acting from the mostly Spanish they’re-somebody-over-there-and-nobody-to-us-here-to-us-yanks cast is above par.

You have two choices to watch Star Knight on You Tube HERE and HERE. Of course, you can also own it as part of the Mill Creek Sci-Fi Invasion Box Set. And yes . . . this is so awesome, that Sam stepped in with a second take because, well, you just can’t talk about a Klaus Kinski film, once. Especially with Harvey Keitel as a co-star.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.