“Can love survive the fall of paradise?” That’s what writer and director Frank E. Flowers tried to answer in this film, which saw a limited release in U.S. theaters in 2006.
It tells the story of Carl Ridley (Bill Paxton), who has run from his crimes to the Cayman Islands and taken his 18-year-old daughter Pippa (Agnes Bruckner, who played Kris Jenner in The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Anna Nicole Smith in The Anna Nicole Story) along to her extreme displeasure. Her dalliances with the seedy teens of the island end up getting her father in even more danger than he was back in Miami.
Meanwhile — yes, this is a parallel story and the movie was produced by the same people who made Crash — a man named Shy (Orlando Bloom) has fallen for Andrea (Zoë Saldaña), who is the daughter of his boss. However, her brother Hammer (Anthony Mackie, The Falcon from the Marvel Universe) hates that he’s taken her virginity, so he throws acid in Shy’s face.
All of these lives will intersect and no one will be the same again after one party on one night, which just so happens to take place on Friday the 13th. This movie is shot really well and if you’re looking for a spiraling soap opera narrative, it’s worth checking out.
You can purchase this on blu ray from the folks at MVD, who were kind enough to send us a review copy. It’s also available on Tubi.
After putting their bodies on the line for countless years, the Van Strasser family of professional wrestlers is looking for a brand new way to satisfy an impeccable bloodlust. And that way involves demons and quite possibly the end of the world.
This film is the sequel of sorts to 2016’s Witch Hunters and if you love pro wrestling, you’ll enjoy how crazy this all gets.
An entity known as The Holiness (voiced by Jake “The Snake” Roberts) is speaking to the father of the clan, leading him to greater heights of mayhem.
There’s plenty of violence on hand, with nipples being sliced off and devoured, as well as a razor blade dildo being used exactly how you always hoped that it wouldn’t.
There are more ideas than budget on screen here, but I walked away admiring director Richard Chandler for how much he tried to get out there. This is a movie that starts small and ends huge. It’s ridiculous, but that’s part of the charm.
Parts Unknown is available on demand and on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing, who were kind enough to send us a copy.
Every day for decades, Walter Mercado — the iconic, gender non-conforming astrologer — mesmerized 120 million Latino viewers with his extravagance and positivity. And then he was gone.
In the film, Mercado defines himself as androgynous and insists that the primary relationship of his life is with his fans; he also jokes about being a virgin even in his advanced age. But man — what a magical world he created. His intros and his voice and his beyond Liberace outfits stand out in the macho world of Mexican television, a Puerto Rican performer just seamless fitting in while standing out at the same time.
For as big a star as Lin-Manuel Miranda is, you can tell how humbled he is upon meeting Mercado. That human moment made this entire movie for me. It’s exclusively on Netflix and well worth checking out.
Man, I keep watching these Blumhouse movies and I keep getting depressed by figuring out their plots minutes into them and I keep doing it to myself.
This would be a giallo, except it doesn’t have any great fashion, good music, cool camera work, leather-gloved killers, trippy colors, weird plot movements or…actually it’s not anything near a giallo. Because it kinda sucks.
Also, I realized part of the way through that I was watching House of Leaves, but a really bad version of it. I wasn’t alone. Author Mark Z. Danielewski said, “Thanks everyone for bringing to our attention this measuring scene in YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT. If it isn’t theft, can anyone point to a scene of a man measuring the inside of his house against the outside of his house in any work other than HOUSE OF LEAVES?”
Yeah.
David Koepp is the ninth-highest ranked — money-wise — screenwriter of all time. He wrote I Come In Peace, so I’ll give him a pass. Then again, he also wrote The Shadow, Secret Window, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and directed Mortdecai. Some people just keep getting chances in Hollywood. He also wrote Stir of Echoes, so maybe his work is just all over the place. He based the movie on the book You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann.
This would have been in theaters for a weekend if it wasn’t for COVID-19. Man, I’ve been a downer on this one. Sorry. I just can’t quit these glossy and disappointing films.
Yes, the man once known for “Achy Breaky Heart,” a song that was released a year before as “Don’t Tell My Heart” by The Marcy Brothers, and then known more for his daughter’s music once ruled the pop culture world for a very limited time. This is the outgrowth. Or afterbirth. Or painful reminder.
Ever since his wife died on a mission, CIA agent and former Navy SEAL Jack Reynolds (Cyrus) has lost interest in life. Seriously — do you know how hard it is to do either of those jobs? Jack — Radical Jack to you and me — did both.
Now he’s in Vermont, where he’s gone undercover at a local bar, where he battles George “Buck” Flowers because, well, look I watch way too many movies. There’s a great emptiness in my heart sometimes and I try and fill it with films in the hope that I find some level of inspiration within them. Why I chose a Billy Ray Cyrus vehicle made 17 minutes into his 15 minutes of fame is beyond me. God, if He exists, they say, works in mysterious ways. Perhaps this is where I would find my moment. The dream that I’ve been searching for. The answer.
No.
Dedee Pfeiffer, the younger sister of Michelle, is the love interest. Perhaps you remember her from The Allnighter, a teen comedy that everyone went to see in case Susanna Hoffs would show some skin and then they realized that her mother directed it. I’ll forgive you if you never saw it.
I really don’t have anything else to say at this point.
Directed by Mario Bava under the name John M. Old, this film — known as What! and Night Is the Phantom in the U.S. — was removed from Italian theaters due to its BDSM themes, with censors claiming “several sequences refer to degenerations and anomalies of sexual life.”
It was written by Ernesto Gastaldi (billed as Julian Berry), Ugo Guerra (Robert Hugo) and Luciano Martino (Martin Hardy), after Gastaldi was shown The Pit and the Pendulum.
Within an isolated castle, the prodigal son Kurt (Christopher Lee) has returned. He once pledged to marry Nevenka (Daliah Lavi, Some Girls Do), but had an affair with Tania, the daughter of their servant which ended in her suicide. He left in disgrace while his fiancee instead married Cristiano (Tony Kendall, who was in the Kommissar X movies), the younger son of the Menliff family.
Supposedly, Kurt is back to celebrate their marriage, but really he’s just here to take Nevenka to the beach where he whips her. And here’s the part that upset people. She loves it.
Kurt is soon killed by the same knife that his illicit lover used to take her own life. But then his ghost remains, ready to ruin the lives of everyone in the crumbling manor.
Lee had hoped to work with Bava on another movie, but their busy schedules kept them from ever working together again. Upon seeing A Bay of Blood, he was so upset by its gore that he left the theater.
Phew! We did it! Sam and I set out to spend a week reviewing rock n’ roll flicks for the week of July 19th to the 25th and went overboard – as is the B&S About Movies modus operandi — with 55 films. Things got so nuts — why do I let Sam’s brilliant ideas for “theme weeks” get me into these messes — that we also did a special “Drive-In Saturday” featurette to go with our usual “Drive-In Friday” weekly feature.
And we still didn’t get to them all!
So be on the lookout for our “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week II” rolling out the week of September 20th to the 26th with another 50-plus films.
Drive-In Friday: Movie Punks La Venganza de Los Punks (1987) Ladies and Gentleman, The Fabulous Stains (1982) Return of the Living Dead (1985) Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979)
WHAT? MORE ROCK? Don’t forget that there is a “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week II” to jam on! And there’s a third installment week coming in the last week of August. We’re crazy that way.
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 short stories and music reviews on Medium.
Is it better that a band that was supposed to be big never made it — often via their own drunken design — and instead inspired everyone else, never really getting to the point that people thought they started to sell out and suck? That’s the romantic ideal, I guess. I mean, most bands would kill to get on Saturday Night Live. The Replacements got in a fistfight on stage and were banned.
Beyond the fans that still love them, this movie features Hüsker Dü, the Goo Goo Dolls, the Hold Steady, the Gaslight Anthem and more, all bands that pretty much take their heart and soul from the Minneapolis group.
Director Gorman Bechard also made Psychos In Love and Cemetery High. He took over the project after Hansi Oppenheimer started the movie. He used none of her footage and started over again, keeping only the film’s name concept of fans telling the story.
There is no music, photos or clips of the band. Bechard wanted none in the film, instead creating a music doc without music that is really about how the right band can change your life.
Uh-oh. The studio copywriters are name dropping hit films on the VHS sleeves again. This can’t be good. Wayne’s World? This is Spinal Tap? The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Say what? Bill & Ted’ s Excellent Adventure? The Blues Brothers? Repo Man? Monty friggin’ Python? Surely, you jest, ye stoned public relations copywriter.
Yeah, I fear this is going be Zoo Radio all over again, with its claims of “. . . if you like Porky’s and Animal House. . . .” Yeah, you better strap in, Elwood. This review is going off the friggin’ rails, B&S About Movies style! It’s time for everything you wanted to know about It’s a Complex World . . . but were afraid to ask. . . .
VHS image courtesy of mcknight138/eBay
So, did you know there were two rock ‘n’ roll flicks shot in Providence, Rhode Island? True story.
The first was A Matter of Degrees (1990)—a movie that, courtesy of the oft-seen Prism Video imprint (and Atlantic Records involvement in its production), received decent distribution and was somewhat easy to find on home video shelves. We say “somewhat” because, even with multiple (in my case, three) mom n’ pop video store memberships stuffed in the wallet (and yes, three more from the mega and regional chains of Blockbuster Video, 10,0001 Monster Video, and Video Ave.), most of us didn’t see that beloved (but failed) college radio drama as a rental during its initial year of release—but as an alt-rock artifact excavated by-chance during one of our triangulating-by-phone book home video store excursions on the asphalt rivers. (I eventually came to score two used copies: one I kept; the other was birthday-gifted—along with a CD copy of the soundtrack.)
By then, that John Doe-starring flick (backed by the college rock sounds of Firehose and Miracle Legion) was a forgotten, dusty analog tchotchke stuffed on the shelf of an out-of-way video store sandwiched between a Target and smoothie joint that I happened upon that was having a going-out-business sale. To say I was the proverbial “kid in the candy store” that day is an understatement: I also scored copies of the “No False Metal” classics (but saw them as multiple-rentals) of Hard Rock Zombies, Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare, Rocktober Blood, Shock ‘em Dead, and Terror on Tour—and a copy of the never-seen, second “rock” film shot in Providence: It’s a Complex World.
As with that first Providence-shot flick, It’s a Complex World was a highly coveted rock ‘n’ roll tale lost in a morass of production and distribution snafus; a highly-sought after analog rumored-fable by VHS loving rock dogs (such as myself). Did this movie really exist, or was this another Rock ‘N’ Roll Hotel (1983): just another 3/4” inch tease that was never finished, never made it to home video shelves, and never aired on cable courtesy of USA Network (where all VHS B-Movie schlock went to die) and HBO?
Sadly, this “Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel” fable (okay, it’s a nightclub, but you get the idea) was a rock joint rife with anticipation that, once found, was a letdown (at least for me; some, in other quarters, love it . . . and so it goes).
Instead of those previously mentioned VHS rock ditties that lent themselves to multiple viewings (add The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Cannon’s wacked rock fable, The Apple, and Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise to the list), we ended up with another musical-snoozer ala Playing for Keeps, Scenes from the Goldmine, and Suffering Bastards (all rock club shenanigans flicks). Alas, I didn’t “check-in” to the FM Hilton: this was another Zoo Radio. I wasn’t staying at the hotel Breaking Glass: this was another piss-stained motel Splitz (1984; Robin Johnson from Times Square fronting an all-girl band) . . . or Joey (1985; about the comeback of faux ‘60s rocker Joey King and the Delsonics) or Immortal (1998; boring North Carolina rock-vampire horror). You know what I mean: Allan Moyle’s Pump Up the Volume (1990) was pirate radio gold; Ferd Sebastian’s On the Air Live with Captain Midnight (1979) was a dented, tarnished pewter ale stein crusted in barnacles. . . .
Snork—yes, that’s me yawning; shocking awake to a VCR blue screen, shaking the popcorn dust from my t-shirt and going to take a piss. . . .
Sorry, no offense is intended to the denizens of Providence who have (justified) fond memories of the film’s production and local theatre screenings. For me, It’s a Complex World was one of those chipped VHS Bric-à-bracs that you watch once for the anticipated-curiosity value—fooled into hoping you’re getting an inversion of Allan Arkush’s rock club flick, Get Crazy—and it’s shelved back into the collection as a dust magnet for the next pass of the Swiffer.
So, how did this movie come into being . . . and where did it go wrong?
Well, like most indie movies: out of desperation to make “something.” And it took five cooks to clankin’ the pasta pots. Five writers: screenwriter Dennis Maloney, along with director Jim Wolpaw, club owner Rich Lupo, producer Geoff Adams, and actor-musician-star Stanley Matis each offering their own ingredients to an all-too spicy, starchy pot. And the film had an additional, fifth producer, Charles Thompson, who probably dropped some bardin’ as well.
Anyway, in 1987, Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, a legendary, real life Providence rock club, was in danger of closing (to make way for a condo development). So owner Rich Lupo came up with an idea: let’s make a movie to commemorate the club’s demise and trash the joint!
And as luck would have it: Lupo’s head bartender and club manager, his ex-Brown University roommate, Jim Wolpaw, was a budding filmmaker who received a “Best Documentary, Short Subjects” Oscar nomination for his 1986 short Keats and His Nightingale: A Blind Date (several of his shorts and documentaries have since won prizes at a dozen film festivals worldwide). So the duo organized a benefit concert in July of 1987, booked the Young Adults, filmed it (thus creating their own, original stock footage; take that, Roger Corman!), then scripted “a plot” around the last night shenanigans of a club closing (just like Allan Arkush’s earlier Get Crazy from 1983 commemorating the closing of NYC’s Fillmore East).
The completed film—which took two-and-a-half months to shoot in 1987, then went through two years of post-production, reshoots, and legal wrangling—had an unprecedented four month run at Providence’s Cable Car Theatre, along with a two-month run in Boston and a one week run in New York City—garnering good reviews from the city’s local film critics.
Then its planned, national theatrical distribution with Hemdale (The Who’s Tommy, Escape from the Bronx, Turkey Shoot, River’s Edge, The Terminator, back-to-back Academy Award winners Platoon and The Last Emperor, The Terminator) went sour. While Wolpaw won the case and received a miniscule settlement, the film’s chances for a national release were over.
At that point, the film was turned over to Prism for a home video release. A film that would have programmed nicely amid the USA Network’s “Night Flight” rock programming block alongside Breaking Glass and Ladies and Gentleman: The Fabulous Stains, wasn’t forthcoming—and no HBO or Showtime showings, either. The last public theatre showing of the film was a 20th anniversary screening in 2010 on November 5 and 6 (four sold out showings) for a charity event held at Cable Car Theatre (Carolyn Forest for the Gloria Gemma Breast Cancer Foundation and in the name of producer Charlie Thompson for Advocates in Action). At that point, Wolpaw vanity-pressed a small lot of DVDs (with two cuts of the film; the rough cut and the video/theatrical cut) for sale through a since defunct website (that also benefited the same charities). But that was ten years ago and those limited-run DVDs are long since out of print.
Courtesy of the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame
For years, it was believed that (in the VHS wastelands outside of Providence, natch) the Young Adults were a faux band scripted for the movie; it turned out they were a real band, real enough that—it’s been said in the annals of Young Adults wikidom—at one time TV producer Lorne Michaels had the Rhode Island rock hopefuls on the short-list to be the house band for Saturday Night Live. Other YA factoids: future Talking Heads founder, David Byrne, auditioned for them. And Charles Rocket, who became a Saturday Night Live cast members and starred in the Farrelly’s Dumb and Dumber, was the lead singer in an early ’70s embryonic version of the Young Adults, the Fabulous Motels. And director Jim Wolpaw and the Young Adults worked together before: Showtime aired their 1978 half-hour documentary, Cobra Snake For A Necktie, with the band backing rock ‘n’ roll legend Bo Diddley. The nine-day sold-out stint was recorded on the Heartbreak’s stage during Diddley’s tour for his 1974 album, Big Bad Bo. (Of course it’s on You Tube! Isn’t everything on You Tube?)
Based on the Young Adults wacked out stage wares and the cheeky brand of Catskills-vaudevillian shtick by comically-dubbed co-lead singers Ruby Cheeks and Sport Fisher, it’s easy to believe that SNL rock-factoid. In fact, comparing the Young Adults to the ’70s San Francisco-era, pre-MTV stardom days of Fee Waybill and the Tubes is not far off the mark. One may say, because of the costuming, Adam and the Ants; but the Ants never recorded songs like “Christmas in Japan in July,” “Do the Heimlich,” “I Wanna Throw Up in the Back of a Limo-sine,” “Kill Yourself,” and “Meat Rampage,” did they? The Young Adults’ lone indie album recorded live at Lupo’s, 1987’s Helping Others, served as the film’s pseudo-soundtrack. Sadly, unlike with A Matter of Degrees, there was never an official soundtrack released to also showcase the music of the also appearing Beat Legends, Roomful of Blues, and Stanley Matis.
The plot, such as it is (less narrative story and more a series of variety show-styled vignettes), is another one of those dads-disappointed-with-his-rock-son flicks. In this case, Jeff Burgess is the manager of a Providence rock joint, The Heartbreak Hotel. A disappointment to his conservative, ex-CIA agent father-cum-Senator now running for the Presidency, Robert Burgess feels his son’s rock club will negatively affect his presidential campaign ambitions. (Hey, isn’t that the plot of 2003’s Malibu’s Most Wanted starring Jamie Kennedy?) So the future “Mr. President” hires revolutionaries to stage a terrorist bombing at the club . . . and his son dying in the chaos will garner him the sympathy vote. That’s politics.
Meanwhile, Providence’s corrupt Mayor (Rich Lupo himself), unaware that the Senator has his own nefarious plans, hires a Civil War-obsessed biker gang (led by wrestling legend Captain Lou Albano; the rock n’ wrestling flick Body Slam) to bust up the club and drive it out of business for a land deal. That’s politics.
Then there’s the disenfranchised Morris Brock (Providence comedian-musician Stanley Matis), an angry, disillusioned geeky singer of angry folk songs who desperately wants to get out from under his successful dead brother’s shadow. So he joins up with the terrorists. That’s proving those parents wrong—even if you gotta blow up the joint “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” style.
Hey! Elvis isn’t going to let his namesake rock club be destroyed! So, from beyond the grave (by voice only; he’s not actually in the film, like in Quentin Tarantino’s True Romance; he doesn’t show up like Hendrix did in the the doppelganger Rock ‘N’ Roll Hotel) “The King” reaches out by phone to Beatlegends, a Beatles tribute band on the bill, and discloses some secrets about John Lennon—and warnings of what’s about to happen to the club.
The rock ‘n’ roll is also provided by blues rockers NRBQ (“12 Bar Blues” and their new wave radio hit “Me and the Boys” appear in the film), who do coke in the bathroom (they also appeared on the soundtracks to Tuff Turfand Sean S. Cunningham’s Spring Break). Also appearing on screen and the “soundtrack” are the New England bands (why Providence’s rock denizens love this movie) Roomful of Blues and Beat Legends. And get this: New Jersey neighbors the Smithereens (appeared on the soundtrack to Albert Pyun’s 1987 juvenile delinquency flick Dangerously Close with “Blood and Roses”) worked as extras getting snookered at the bar (but none of their songs are in the film).
VHS image courtesy of mcknight138/eBay
And proving that all actors have to start somewhere: Peter Gerty and Becca Lish, who starred as part of Lou Albano’s biker gang, are still thespin’ in 2020. You’ve seen Gerty as a regular and guest star in Dick Wolf’s NBC-TV productions Homicide: Life on the Street and the Law & Order franchise. HBO and Showtime subscribers seen him as a cast member on The Wire and Brotherhood, and most recently on Ray Donovan (starring Liev Schreiber), but you’ll definitely remember Gerty as Mall Security Chief Brooks from Paul Mart: Mall Cop among his hundred-plus credits. Providence-based actor Becca Lish got her start in A Matter of Degrees and worked her way up to recent roles in TV’s Law & Order, Younger, and the rebooted Murphy Brown, in addition to voice work on several Disney series.
Cinematographer Denis Maloney is also still going strong in 2020; among his hundred-plus credits are the Witchcraft series (based on the 1988 original; remember the witch with six-breasts? Or was it eight!), Cyber Bandits (1995; Adam Ant), Liberty Stands Still (2002; Wesley Snipes), the Farrelly Brother’s There’s Something About Mary, as well as several, recent Lifetime movies (none with our beloved Eric Roberts, at least not yet!).
The Young Adults’ Ruby Cheeks went on to have a cameo in the Farrelly Brothers’ later Rhode Island-based picture, Jim Carrey’s Me, Myself and Irene.
. . . Now, let’s clear up the Seinfeld rumors that one of “George Costanza’s bosses” appeared in the film: it’s true! Daniel von Bargen (Mr. Kruger from Kruger Industrial Smoothing) stars as the terrorist group’s leader, Malcom.
Say what? There’s no freebie online VHS rips? Oh, well. And since those 2010 DVDs are out-of-print and there’s no official streams (not even as a with-ads stream on TubiTV?), all we have to share with you are the trailer, along with the opening title credits sequence and a clip of the Young Adults on stage in the film.
Ugh, this really is Rock ‘N’ Roll Hotel all over again! When will we ever see the full film?
You can learn more about the catalog of the Young Adults on their Discogs page and a wealth of their tunes are preserved on the You Tube page of Flamingo Land. We’ve also found three of Stanley Matis’s “geek folk” tunes: “New Jersey” (which he performed in the film), and three later tunes: “Buster Christ,” “Empire Review,” and “Frugal Duck.” And the Roomful of Blues album that I remember the most—that got some notice on the more adventurous new wave-oriented radio stations—was their second album, 1979’s Let’s Have a Party, which is on You Tube. (Remember Jack Mack and the Heart Attack in Tuff Turf? Well, it’s cool like that.) You can also learn more about the Rhode Island music scene via the Rhode Island Music Hall of FameYou Tube page and website.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Special thanks to Dangerous Minds.net, Dr. Bristol’s Prescription blog, Providence Daily Dose, Providence Monthly Online, Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame, and Spectacle Theatre NY for their efforts in preserving this rock flick obscurity, which assisted in the preparation of this review.
After the death of GG Allin — covered in Hated — what happened to his brother Merle? And did he leave behind any family? How would you feel if you were the mother of the rocker who left behind a trail of feces, blood, vomit and noise? Originally airing on Showtime, this documentary by Sami Saif attempts to answer that question.
This is probably. the most heartwarming story I’ve ever seen that has a scene here someone takes a dump and uses it as paint.
The strangest thing for me was seeing the life of GG, as he grew up and was in young bands. The image burned into my mind of him is his almost inhuman visage by the time of Hated, distorted by multiple VHS bootlegs, to the point where he almost seems like a demon. To see what he looked like before all the self-destruction and to hear his mother’s pain is pretty intense.
By the way, GG’s mom’s best male friend just hanging out and being supportive is my favorite part. I can only imagine the stories that that poor man has had to listen to.
You can watch this on Tubi. You can also buy it from MVD.
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