By writing Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time and House IV and directing Sorority House Massacre II, Deathstalker II(which he also wrote), Big Bad Mama II, Ghoulies IV, The Skateboard Kid 2, Body Chemistry IV: Full Exposure, Friend of the Family II, Sorceress II: The Temptress, The Escort III, The Bare Wench Project 2: Scared Topless, The Bare Wench Project 3: Nymphs of Mystery Mountain, The Witches of Breastwick 2, Bare Wench Project Uncensored and Bare Wench: The Final Chapter, Jim Wynorski may be the king of the sequels. Let’s add 976-EVIL II, a movie that somewhat continues the story begun in the Robert Englund 976-EVIL.
Also known as 976-EVIL II: The Astral Factor, this movie is all about Spike, a leather jacket wearing loner from the first film, again played by Patrick O’Bryan, and final girl Robin battling Professor Grubeck, who is in full command of astral powers and a Satanic horoscope phone line.
“Out of the darkness and into the light comes your horrorscope on this dark and stormy night.”
There are two great reasons to watch this. The first is Brigitte Nielsen, who did this movie for scale after losing a pool game bet to Wynorski. And the other is a bravura sequence that combines the two best known public domain movies of all time, Night of the Living Dead and It’s A Wonderful Life, as one of the girls becomes stuck between the two films and ends with Zuzu Bailey transforming into Kyra Schon and stabbing the girl with a trowel. It’s an astounding piece of filmmaking, one that comes out of nowhere (the script had the girl absorbed by a video game and the budget couldn’t handle it) and delivers.
You also get appearances by Philip McKeon (TV’s Alice) and George “Buck” Flower, as well as some great lighting and usage of budget.
This movie is way better than it has any right to be. Seriously, you should check it out right now, because I can’t believe this hasn’t received a high end re-release yet.
DAY 6. POLL PLOT: One that involves elections and/or voting.* Government not required.
While the election is something I try to avoid every single morning, I do have to say that The Election is a movie that continually makes me happy. Sure, it’s a big dumb Hollywood comedy, but it’s filled with just enough abject stupidity to make me laugh. Sometimes, that’s all you need.
Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) is a five-time North Carolina Congressman, running unopposed when he leaves an explicit message for one of his supporters on her family’s answering machine, throwing his candidacy into question. Soon, he has an opponent — Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), who is the tourism director for the town of Hammond. Marty isn’t really made for the political machine, but thanks to the nefarious Motch Brothers (Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow) and their ruthless campaign expert Tim Wattley (Dylan McDermott), soon the race is on.
Cam is a mess, either drunk driving or punching babies while Marty is a hapless fool. At heart, they’re both good men who have been pulled through the political machine, forced to become things that they don’t want to be.
Jay Roach went from films like Austin Powers to this and finally Bombshell, which takes the humor of this and adds it to a true — well, mostly — story. The script, taken from a story by Adam McKay and written by Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell, is on the right side of clever versus stupid, which is continually the finest of barriers.
A native of North Carolina, Galifianakis’ uncle Nick had been a State Representative, yet lost the 1972 Senate election to Jesse Helms. Much of this comedy comes from truth, which is always the right place.
I also find it fascinating that Dan Aykroyd’s career has taken him from playing Louis Winthorpe III to now basically being one of the Duke brothers.
Yeah, I know it’s not a slasher. But it has enough references to them that I’ve decided to bend the rules a bit. It starts with a TV set — mistakenly not sent to the Institute for Paranormal Research — that ends up in a writer’s house. Even when not plugged in, it only plays Zombie Blood Nightmare, a movie that comes to life and kills everyone that watches it. Like that writer. And like pretty much everyone else in this movie.
Despite a kid telling someone that he’s seen Texas Chainsaw Massacrehundreds of times — hence me including this movie in this month of slashers — it won’t save his life. In fact, the only way to fight the zombies is to not fight them, but making them docile instead. What a weird stance for a movie to have.
Writer/director Robert Scott also was the second unit director on Dracula: Dead and Loving It, as well as plenty of TV like House and Heroes. He was set to make a sequel to this. but refused to do it for the same budget as this movie.
Each of the zombies had their own backstories that were only known to the actors playing the roles. Jimmy D. was a star athlete who drowned, yet he misses all the action he got from the ladies. Jack died in a car crash. Ironhead was a serial strangler. And The Bride was murdered on her wedding day. She’s played by Jennifer Miro, who was a member of the punk/new wave/goth band The Nuns. She’s also in the David A. Prior movie Jungle Assault, the No Wave film Red Italy and the Stephen Sayadian/Jerry Stahl (you may know Sayadian better as 80’s adult director Rinse Dream, who made stuff like Party Doll A Go-Go!, Cafe Flesh and Nightdreams, all films that if they didn’t have penetration would be legitimate movies; Stahl has written for ALF, Thirtysomething and Moonlighting as well as the more scummy episodes of CSI; he also wrote Cafe Flesh and Nightdreams) movie Dr. Caligari, a movie that looks like a porn but is really an art film starring Debra De Liso (Slumber Party Massacre), Madeleine Reynal (Jennera from Space Mutiny), Fox Harris (Forbidden World) and Randall William Cook (the effects artist who was also the villain in I, Madman). It does have its roots in adult, as the Mrs. Van Houten character was originally played by Dorothy LeMay in Nightdreams.
How many names can one movie have? A bunch, because this is also known as X-Ray, Be My Valentine Or Else and Ward 13. It’s directed by Boaz Davidson, the man who was behind Lemon Popsicle and its depressing as anything American version The Last American Virgin. That name brought me joy when it was on screen, just as much as seeing the Cannon name before the credits sent me into paroxysms of joy.
Back in 1961, a boy named Harold gave Susan Jeremy a valentine and when she made fun of it with her friend David, he breaks in and hangs her friend from a hatstand.
Susan grew up to be four-time Playboy covergirl Barbi Benton (Deathstalker). Well, that’s who is playing her. She’s just gotten divorced and has to head in for some routine tests at a hospital. Literally, the minute she walks in, an evil doctor laughs while looking at pictures of her as a kid.
Better slashers have started with less.
This is the kind of movie that really uses its environment in the best way possible, as orthopedic saws send heads flying and sinks filled with acid melt faces.
If you recognize the kids from the beginning, they’re Billy Jacoby and Elizabeth Hoy who were the murderous children in Bloody Birthday, which came out the same year as this one.
Day 6: Poll Plot: One that involves elections and/or voting. *government not required.
Author’s Note: This review originally ran on December 6, 2019, as part of our tribute to the film soundtracks of Tangerine Dream. This high-brow, Rambo-esque tale on the plight of war veterans — and the government that ignores them — was a great opportunity to revisit a great TV film. Be sure to visit our “Exploring: 10 Tangerine Dream Film Soundtracks” round up.
The Park Is Mine is a Canadian-American drama based on the 1981 novel of the same name by Stephen Peters and directed by Steven Hilliard Stern. The film focuses on Vietnam War veteran, Mitch (Tommy Lee Jones), who takes forceful control of Central Park to remember those who served and died in the Vietnam War and draw attention to veterans’ issues. As this wonderful book review by Grady Hendrix points out (beware, plot spoilers): You’ll see elements of other “urban blight” dramas, such as Death Wish (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), The Warriors (1979), Al Pacino’s Crusing (1980), and First Blood (1982), which this was obviously made to cash-in on the runaway success of 1985’s Rambo: First Blood Part II.
But make no mistake: ThePark Is Mine is not some cheapjack Rambo rip-off of the Cirio H. Santiago variety (we love you, Cirio!). This Tommy Lee Jones-led film is, quite frankly, one of the best TV Movie of the ’70s and ’80s ever produced, ranking alongside Richard Crenna’s The Case of the Hillside Strangler (Sam review, R.D Francis review) and Michael Gross and David Soul’s In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I Murders.
The soft and hard cover versions of the best-selling source novel.
In addition to featuring New Zealand-born and Canadian-bred singer Gale Garnett (best known to U.S AM radio listeners for her self-penned, 1964 Grammy-winning folk hit, “We’ll Sing in the Sunshine“), the film also features mainstay Canadian actors Lawrence Dane (1976’s The Clown Murders, top-billing with Hal Holbrook in 1977’s Rituals, 1981’s Scanners and Happy Birthday to Me, 1983’s Of Unknown Origin, and 1987’s Rolling Vengeance), as the ulterior motive-driven Commissioner Keller, and Peter Dvorksy (Harlin the cable tech in 1983’s Videodrome and Dardis in The Dead Zone), as Dix, the sniveling Deputy Mayor. Co-starring with Jones are Yaphet Kotto (Alien) and fellow Canux-actor Helen Shaver (the redneck-trucker romp High-Ballin’ and The Amityville Horror).
Mitch attends the funeral of his former war buddy who jumped from the roof of the veteran’s hospital. Returning to his motel room (his wife, played by Gale Garnett, recently kicked him out of their apartment), Mitch discovers that prior to his friend’s suicide, he mailed him a letter containing a key. The key gives Mitch access to a makeshift ammunition dump in a warehouse, then to another ammo dump in an abandoned sewer grate: his friend spent the last year planning to take over Central Park to raise awareness of Veterans’ issues; however, realizing his war-related cancer was too far advanced and he’d be unable to carry out the attack, he killed himself and “recruited” Mitch for the job.
Mitch accepts and an all Rambo-hell breaks loose in New York. If Travis Bickle had access to explosives and the intelligence to wire-up Central Park—and Tommy Lee’s character had driven a cab—you’d have a Michael Bay-styled action film. If Mitch had taken over a bank, you’d have Dog Day Afternoon (1975). One could also say that if John Carpenter directed, you’d have a pseudo-sequel to Assault on Precinct 13 (1976).
Shaver is the persistent, pain-in-the-ass reporter (think Patricia Clarkson’s Samantha Walker from the 1988 Dirty Harry sequel, The Dead Pool) who sneaks into the park for the “exclusive,” regardless of Mitch’s “message,” while Yaphet Kotto’s Eubanks is the sympathetic, ex-war vet S.W.A.T commander who wants to bring Mitch in before two mercenaries sanctioned by the more-concerned-about his-career deputy mayor go into the park to kill Mitch.
Courtesy of Stern’s understated hand, what we do get: a real, humanized version of Rambo that, unlike Rambo, sells its introspective story regarding the plight of America’s Vietnam veterans—and other “voiceless,” forgotten Americans. It’s all about Stern intelligently toning down the Rambo’d cartoon violence and emphasizing the political angle of the story. Thus, we get a Stern-directed story that’s as good as any of those previously mentioned, New York-set “urban blight” tales.
Other works in Stern’s superior TV movie oeuvre (on U.S TV and cable; in Canada, they ran as theatrical features) are the James Brolin-starring The Ambush Murders (1982), the pre-stardom Tom Hanks-starring Mazes and Monsters (1982), and the Ned Beatty-starring (Ed and His Dead Mother) Hostage Flight (1982).
The film was released in 1985 on VHS by Key Video. It had originally been released on DVD overseas, but not in the United States, outside of grey market VHS and DVD imprints. However, on December 13, 2016, Kino Lorber released the first official Blu-ray Disc and DVD. They also released Jones’s Black Moon Rising and The Executioner’s Song, and Stern’s Death Wish-inspired hicksploitation trucker romp, Rolling Vengeance.
You can watch the full film on You Tube. As the lead comment on the video’s comment section declares: “I remember watching this on HBO (and we all do!) back in the ’80s. This has got to be Tommy Lee Jones’s best acting role.”
And as a You Tube commenter pointed out regarding the soundtrack: “. . . One of the best ‘80s soundtracks I’ve ever heard. These guys will always be the kings of electronic music.”
Indeed.
The Park Is Mine is the sixteenth soundtrack album released by Tangerine Dream and their forty-second album, overall. As with The Keep, its release came years later after its recording, not seeing release until 1991. All of the tracks were composed by Edgar Froese, Christoph Franke, and Johannes Schmoelling.
Prior to entering the world of film restoration and distribution as part of the Kino International family and their The Criterion Collection series serving film aficionados, Lorber was part of 20th Century Fox Studios. As Fox Lorber Features, the studio shingle released their debut film, A Matter of Degrees, in 1990.
We sadly lost Peter Dvorsky in March 2019. Steven Hilliard Stern passed away in June of last year.
*Sam and I share a mutual love of Tangerine Dream. Be sure to surf on over to our collaborative reviews of Tangerine Dream’s Top 10 scores with “Exploring: Ten Tangerine Dream Film Soundtracks.” Here’s the link to the full soundtrack of The Park is Mine.
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 Movies.
Made in Charlotte, North Carolina by one and done director/writer/producer/editor/stunt coordinator/casting director Dave A. Adams, this movie isn’t even about David Berkowitz — or whoever was really the Son of Sam — much less a new version of this occult killer. No, instead, it’s about Harvey.
Who is Harvey, you may ask. Well, he’s a killer escaped from a mental hospital in a movie that has moments that seem to be Halloween a year before that even hit theaters. Don’t think that this has any Carpenter directorial highlights or moments of Dean Cundy-esque camera brilliance. The movie tends to pause for several seconds while dialogue just keeps running and the camera seems to be a window into the mind of someone tripping balls while the coolest synths ever play.
Speaking of music, the real star of this show is a lounge singer named Johnny Charro who still plays shows to this day. Oh yeah, there’s also SWAT officers in action, a stuffed dog who seemingly wants to take a shower with his owner and an abortion, because, well, I honestly have no idea why.
Harvey has been killing people because his mom assaulted him as a child. Why did the cops bring her out to try and talk him out of a hostage situation? Seriously, that’s some giallo-level police buffoonery.
You can get this movie on the AGFA blu ray for The Zodiac Killer or watch it on Tubi.
A mother and daughter have decided that a weekend away would be the best way for them to reconnect. So they head off to a house in the woods, unaware that this is a place that attracts only the worst in people.
Basically — never ever take a vacation.
Originally called Fake Flowers, this stars Helene Udy (Amityville Clownhouse, My Bloody Valentine) as the mother and Angela Barajas as the daughter. You’ll see her naked just as often as you see establishing shots of the scenery, which go on so long that they take a life of their own and are no longer establishing shots. Hey — here’s the daughter naked bathed in green light so you forget that!
Then again, the dialogue outright says, “Nobody cares about boobies. This is Oregon.”
There’s also an incestual brother and sister team who have nothing to do with the plot, but such is life in Oregon, one imagines. “Nobody cares about incest. This is Oregon.”
This is the kind of movie that gets things like Lynchian thrown at it in the hopes that you’ll watch it. I’ve already told you that it has basically sixty straight minutes of naked girl in it and if that doesn’t sell you, the fact that it makes no sense and not because of talent won’t get you to watch it either.
Evil Under the Skin is available on demand and on DVD from Midnight Releasing, who were kind enough to send us a copy of this film.
DAY 5. GOING POSTAL: Something involving the postal service or shipping or getting a delivery. #savetheups
Isn’t it amazing that we have to fight to keep our postal service going? Honestly, every day that I wake up in 2020, indignity after indignity piles up until I can’t believe I’m not watching a horrible movie.
Clever segway into…
Speaking of horrible movies, Uwe Boll’s movies make back about 1% of their budget yet he keeps making them. I have no idea who their audience is. During this movie, I started to think that this is what John Waters’ films would have been like if he’d paid attention in school and never did drugs.
According to the director, the German fan club for the video game Postal contacted him, inspiring him to get in touch with Running with Scissors, the company who made the game. Boll started with the second game as his basis for this, but then decided to make the whole movie about his war with his critics — he regularly boxes them to prove that he’s tougher than them, which does not prove he’s a better director, but in the world of Boll I guess that’s a moral victory — and to show how the victims of terrorism are not heroes, but victims. This stance needs a storyteller that understands nuance, not someone who starts his film with terrorists abandoning their hijacking only for the passengers to accidentally send the plane into the World Trade Center. This act alone guaranteed that this movie would play on barely any screens.
How soon is too soon? Pretty much any time, really.
You know how I say that people are often wasted in movies? This movie makes me judge the career choices and whether I even enjoyed any of these actors in the first place, retroactively cancelling nearly everything they’ve ever been in like some backwards in time career nuke.
I mean, I understand that Larry Thomas is only doing conventions — well, was — as the Soup Nazi, but does that make him a good Bin Laden? Did they have a photo of J.K. Simmons having sex with a farm animal to get him into this for under a minute? How did Dave Foley end up here? I mean, I often celebrate actors who went to Italy to make films when their star dimmed, but can a celestial body really grow this dark?
If you ever wanted John Cassavetes to come back from the dead to shake the shit out of someone, make it this time and make it Seymour Cassel, who really should know better. Everyone in this should. I should.
Verne Troyer gets assaulted by 1,000 monkeys to start the end of the world. That’s the TV Guide capsule review of this fecund ball of junk.
As for the challenge today, there’s not really any postal references here, other than the hero being called the Postal Dude, in some attempt to make this similar to the video game.
There are no peaks without valleys. Luckily, I have a new valley to place against all other films, a new absolute zero, a new bottom of the barrel several barrels below the previous barrel that I had once scraped.
You can watch this on Amazon Prime, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I told you to. It’s beyond dreck, the kind of film that I would wipe my ass upon if I could find a physical copy of it. And I’m 1000% ready to do a barbed wire taipei glass death match with Boll if he wants it.
Sometime in the late 1960’s, Professor Jones (John Saxon) was involved in an MK Ultra-style eugenics experiment. Wondering what eugenics is? Our own President refers to it as the “racehorse theory,” which should scare the unholy shit out of you when you realize that eugenics was a major driving force in creating the Master Race of the Third Reich. But hey — isn’t it so funny when hes cutting up and making fun of people?
Sorry for the politics. Let’s just talk about Hellmaster. We’ll all feel better that way.
Jones created The Nietzsche Experiment, which gave its subjects telepathic abilities while also making them violent mental cases. Twenty years later — and armed with an entire gang of deformed mutants (is there any other kind) — he is killing everyone who ever did him wrong and transforming his old college into a slaughterhouse.
Originally called Them and Soulstealer, this made in Detroit regional small wonder — shot in the Clinton Valley Center Hospital, an active-at-the-time mental institution — was re-released at the end of the video rental era. Beyond Saxon, David Emge (Stephen from Dawn of the Dead) makes an appearance as a reporter, who joins with one of the survivors and a psychic who takes the drug in order to destroy its creator once and for all.
This is a movie that looks way better than you’d expect and plays out much more fun than you’d hoped. In a world of direct-to-streaming, the video store classics will forever remain above them, looking down and dripping goopy syrup-smelling blood all over the place.
You can watch this on Tubi or order it from Vinegar Syndrome. Their new release even has the Them cut and commentary for both versions. I love everything they release, as they put the care into these forgotten movies that studios neglect to bestow on their most artistic releases.
Robert A. Burns was the art director* of films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Don’t Go Near the Park and The Howling, all movies that feature grimy and cluttered near-chattel houses filled with carnage. Just think of Eddie Quist’s apartment or the home of the Sawyer family. Burns’ artistic eye made all that happen and this is the one and only film he’d direct** (he also wrote the script).
This film takes place inside a Texas boardinghouse that has the spirit of S.F. Brownrigg hanging heavy over the place. When one of the tenants decides to tease the dog that lives in the basement, he ends up getting bit and the dog is put down. This upsets the quiet editor named Jerry (Terry Evans) who tries to keep his life orderly but keeps getting beaten on by nearly every scumbag that lives in this fleabag rattrap. His only good connections are Sharon, who he shares books with, and the latest renter, a handsome man named Ken. He’s attracted to both of them for different reasons, but it seems like Ken is the one who has his heart. However, Jerry isn’t fully human — more on that in a bit — and even the slightest attention from people sends him spiraling out of control. It doesn’t help that every single other person in this movie is vile, with the worst being Woody (a young Mitch Pileggi).
Jerry was also connected to that dog who died after Toad, one of the more insipid residents, teased its owner Ian about it until the dog gets loose. Jerry also had a major incident where a dog attacked him as a child, so he loses it and Woody guns the mutt down. Our protagonist starts to take on the characteristics of the dog — is he possessed by it? Does he see that he needs its feral nature to augment his shy demeanor? — which gets even worse when a prank goes wrong.
The men are jealous that Ken has just come in and ended up getting the girl of their dreams. So they send him a note that Sharon is waiting for him in bed. He runs to her room, strips and discovers the body of the dead dog dressed in lingerie. Shocked, he falls backward and is electrocuted.
This sends Jerry beyond the edge, his ideal man and the third and perhaps most crucial part of his mental menage a trois relationship deceased, he succumbs to the call of the wild and begins killing everyone one by one, his voice replaced by the raspy, growling sounds of the werewolf (while remaining totally human).
If you’re not excited yet, how about the fact that Aldo Ray runs this whole place?
Thanks to Ryan Clark, I can also discuss that this movie features a Deep Throat pinball machine that was custom made by Burns. This message board had the maker of the Rondo and Bob discussing owning the machine, which also shows up in Future Kill.
This is a slasher by the end — albeit most of the kills coming off camera, but it has plenty of stalking — but almost seems like a stage play concerning the plight of the human condition within this Texas boardinghouse. It takes a long time to get to where it wants to go, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Quite the contrary, it’s a strange piece of filmmaking that would easily find a home in the Vinegar Syndrome re-release catalog.
*Burns also worked on Re-Animator, Mausoleum, Tourist Trap,Play Deadand plenty more movies. It’s astounding how many movies he worked on are held in such high regard by me. He was also a noted genealogist and the world’s foremost expert on Rondo Hatton. Sadly, he killed himself after finding out he had cancer.
**Burns also made an early found footage movie called Scream Test that remains unreleased.
You can watch this on YouTube.
Is that VHS artwork familiar? It should be, if you’re a metal head from the ’80s. It also served as the cover for the Arista Records debut of Ronnie James Dio’s cousin, David Feinstein, who was in The Elves/The Electric Elves with Dio.
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