In the Mill Creek B-Movie Blast box set, you will encounter the only two movies that writer director Lawrence Bassoff made, Weekend Passand this film. It’s not often that you can say that you’ve seen every movie a director has made, so this is a real opportunity. Or perhaps I tell myself that to get through these films.
Where Bedazzled had the devil as Peter Cooke ready to give Dudley Moore seven wishes for his soul — or Elizabeth Hurley and Brendan Fraser in the 2000 remake — in Hunk we have James Coco — he died days before this was released — as Dr. D, the man who tempts this film’s hero with just one wish.
That wish? Well, to be a hunk. What else did you expect?
Bradley Brinkman (Steve Levitt, Last Resort) is a computer programmer who doesn’t yet know that all of the geeks will get rich and he’ll never have to worry about his fiancee who ran off with an aerobics instructor. But hey, it’s 1987 and those years are far away.
Bradley says something about selling his soul to finish a computer program, which means that his next creation, The Yuppie Program, is a huge success. He moves in next door to Chachka (Cynthia Szigeti, who may have appeared in a few films but is best known for her work running The Groundlings and starting the ACME Comedy Theater; she taught plenty of folks, with a short list being Will Forte, Joel McHale, Conan O’Brien, Cheri Oteri, Julia Sweeney and Lisa Kudrow) and immediately all of the yuppies hate him because he doesn’t fit in.
By the way, if you’re reading this and wondering what a yuppie is in the year of 2021, it stood for young urban professional. It went from a demographic term to a pejorative pretty quickly, to the point that my father-in-law uses the term interchangably with socialists and liberals, which isn’t what yuppie means, but I’d need an entire second website to discuss some of these conversations.
The truth is that the program that made Bradley rich was really made by the devil’s agent O’Rourke (Deborah Shelton, who was Miss USA 1970 and runner-up to Miss Universe that year; she was on Dallas and in Bloodtide, as well as DePalma’s Body Double, where he disliked her voice enough to have her redubbed; her second husband was Shuki Levy who wrote the theme songs for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the Mister T cartoon, M.A.S.K. and many, many others, in addition to directing several episodes of the series he helped produce with Saban Entertainment). She makes him a deal that if he wants a new body, he can have it for the summer and he agrees (or else this movie would end about seven minutes or so in to its running time).
He becomes Hunk Golden (John Allen Nelson, Deathstalker from Deathstalker and the Warriors from Helland Dave from Killer Klowns from Outer Space), the ultimate man, a person whose teeth never break, who can eat all the junk food he wants and who is also a martial arts master. I mean, sure, he’s going to burn for all eternity, but the next few years will look pretty great what with all the women he’s sleeping with and fashion trends he’s setting.
The whole reason for this demonic soul bargain is that there’s a shortage of demons, so Dr. D plans on Hunk and O’Brien going through time along with Ivan the Terrible, Jack the Ripper and Benito Mussolini. That’s pretty imaginative, as is the idea that the therapist who has been working with Hunk — Dr. Sunny Graves (Rebecca Bush, who played Florence Henderson in Growing Up Brady) — is really O’Reilly too.
Somewhere in the midst of all of this, a drunk television host named Garrison Gaylord (Robert Morse, who was in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying as well as playing Bertram Cooper on Mad Men; here he is in an 80’s sex comedy which seems like a step down but work is work) nearluy hits them on the beach and Hunk stops the car with just his strenngth. He becomes an instant celebrity while Dr. D worries that Sunny/O’Brien has fallen in love with another client. If she fails again, he promises to return her to her original form.
Instead of helping Dr. D start World War III, Bradley and O’Brien end up cancelling their contracts, with her going back to being a 10th Century princess who sold her soul to avoid an arranged marriage. I mean, now she has centuries of experience and is a great programmer, so I think she’ll be fine.
You’ll also see some familiar faces here. And by familiar faces, I mean the kind of people that maniacs like me shout out loud when they see them, like Avery Schreiber, who was in the Doritos commercials when I was a kid and shows up in Airport ’79 and Silent Scream. He also taught the master improvisation classes at Chicago’s Second City, so the fact that both he and Szigeti are in this is kind of a big deal for comedy nerds. If only Del Close had been in town that day!
Hilary Shepherd, who was in the band American Girls and played Divatox in Power Rangers: Turbo — maybe she met the Saban guys through Shelton? — is in this too. She’s also in Weekend Pass, Scanner Cop, Radioactive Dreams and Theodore Rex, all movies again that none out of a hundred people have seen, but all ones that get obsessed over here.
You’ll also find Melanie Vincz (The Lost Empire), Page Mosely (Edge of the Axe), John Barrett (who did the stunts for Gymkata and Steel Dawn) and Andrea Patrick, who plays a mermaid and was a beauty queen from the town of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, just a half an hour from my home. Her name may not mean much to you, but she’s married to Fabian Forte and we all know just how much Fabian and his films get coverage here.
Yet perhaps the biggest name in this movie barely is in it. Brad Pitt was an extra in this film, making it his very first screen appearance.
Can you write over a thousand words on a forgotten 1980’s sex comedy? Yes. You sure can.
Bud Townsend directed Terror at Red Wolf Inn. For this, we should not make too much light of The Beach Girls, a movie with little to no plot and frequent appearances of the boom microphone. We should also realize that this movie is a lot like other beach films, mostly Malibu Beach, which was also a Crown International Picture.
Sarah (Debra Blee, Savage Streets), Ginger (Val Kline in her only movie) and Ducky (Jeana Keough, now a Real Housewive of Orange County) are staying in a beach house. Ginger and Ducky are pretty much degenerates, but Sarah is a virgin. Suddenly, a whole bunch of marijuana washes up and their house becomes an even bigger party palace.
Uncle Carl, who owns the whole place, is played by Adam Roarke from Frogs and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. So there’s that, you know?
Honestly, I’ve watched a million of these movies and they’re the cinematic equivalent of smoking the sticky green that these girls found on the beach, then eating like seven bowls of cereal. They used to make so many of these movies and I think I watched them all. Now that I’m way older than all of the kids in this movie, I think, “Man, this would have been a fun movie to make.” So maybe you should think thoughts like that instead of thinking how sex comedies are problematic — all exploitation movies are problematic, that’s why they’re exploitation movies — and just inhale.
IndieWire’s review of this movie compared it to Seven, which is not only lazy, but it’s the most basic of all connections: young hotshot white cop teamed with world-weary black cop to find a killer who keeps eluding the police. Except that, you know, Seven* is the kind of movie that will live on in cinema lovers’ minds for, well, ever and this movie won’t stay in your brain longer than it takes to watch it. Hopefully.
Ah, HBO Max. For all the sturm and drang and handwringing given over to your plan to play movies at the same time they make it to theaters. Well, between this and Wonder Woman 1984, they’re exactly zero for two.
The comparisons between the films went the whole way to interviews with writer and director John Lee Hancock, who claimed that he wrote this way before Fincher’s movie forever transformed serial killer procedurals. It was originally to be a Clint Eastwood vehicle and then a Steven Spielberg movie and then, well, it sat around for some time.
This movie is set in 1993, which you’ll know because there’s a No Doubt flyer on the victim’s fridge but not because the lead detective’s house looks like it was built last year. That time incongruity is the least of this film’s problems. In fact, if you told me it was set in 2020, I’d believe you just as quickly as if you’d say 1993.
Joseph “Deke” Deacon (Denzel Washington) is a man whose detective career has ruined his life and the lives of everyone around him, pushing him away from Los Angeles and into the outskirts of town, dealing with crimes as simple minded as the Black Angus Restaurant continually needing to replace the g.
While back in the city to pick up evidence, Deacon comes into the orbit of the man who replaced him, Detective Jim Baxter (Rami Malek). You know how that works, what with people being able to move from county to county on cases, jurisdiction be damned.
There’s a killer painting ip his victims and that killer might be Albert Sparma (Jared Leto), who fits every expectation of what a loner killer should look and act like. But is he guilty? He’s an unreliable suspect who is so obsessed with criminal behavior that he confessed to a crime he could have never committed once before.
So what do two good — we hope they are — men do to put away one bad — we hope he is — man? A lot of nothing, as it turns out.
Far be it from me to condemn movies where nothing happens for long stretches of time. That would pretty much describe 99% of the drive-in and grindhouse movies I love, which feature travelogue footage, unnecessary b-roll and long go nowhere scenes that follow each performer each time they walk anywhere.
This film somehow feels longer than five of them in a row while overdosing on Klonopin.
The thing is, if this were a small budget film with no name actors, it wouldn’t make a blip on the rader. But this feature three acting powerhouses and a well-considered writer and director at the helm. And for all that gasoline in the tank, the car is going nowhere fast. And even worse, the car is not special nor does it possess anything that you haven’t seen in every other car that looks exactly like it.
I realize that not every movie can rock your world. But they should at least try. This has Leto playing, well, Leto. At least I hope that he didn’t send used condoms and dead rodents to Denzel and Malek like he did to his co-stars in Suicide Squad.
Also, and this is a silly complaint, but I couldn’t understand a word Malek said. In Bohemian Rhapsody, I chalked that up to him having to get teeth like Freddie Mercury. I can more easily divine what Bane says than his character in this movie.
Movies can be dumb. They can have plot holes. They can have horrible special effects, bad continuity, laughable performances. But the worst thing a movie can be is boring. And I fear that this entire day has all been a dream and somewhere, I am still watching this movie and will soon find myself waking up to having to watch it all again.
*I know I’m supposed to write this as Se7en but that makes my fingers hurt.
Anyone who watched The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years can tell you that Chris Holmes is the highlight of that film. When we finished watching it, my wife asked when he died. I said, “Believe it or not, Chris Holmes is still alive.”
As the guitarist for W.A.S.P. — if you’ve seen The Dungeonmaster, they’re in it — Holmes was as much a maniac on stage as off. He wasn’t a founding member, as the band rose out of the ashes of Blackie Lawless and Randy Piper’s other band, Circus Circus, along with Rik Fox (who soon left to be in the band Steeler) and Tony Richards (who left the band Dante Fox to join, which became Great White).
By the time the band’s self-titled first album was released, Holmes had joined, also played on The Last Command, the band’s best selling record and one that brought Steve Riley from Keel* and King Kobra bassist Johnny Rod into the lineup.
Although Inside the Electric Circus was a commercial success (and critical failure) and The Headless Children was a critical success (and at the time, a commercial failure), Holmes wouldn’t last. He married Lita Ford and then left the band, saying, that he wanted to “have fun, you know.” Lawless responded by saying, “Some guys want to stay at home and wear aprons.” He would also claim that he was going to play the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, which sounds like a completely ridiculous apocryphal story.
While Holmes would rejoin for a brief period from 1996-2001, he and Lawless were not destined to get along.
The movie finds the guitarist reflecting on a life of the highest highs and lowest lows, as he has lost the publishing rights of his own songs and must start over again with a new band named Mean Man while living with his mother-in-law in Nice, France. Unlike other films like I Am Thor, Holmes doesn’t come across as a buffoon or unaware of his place in the world.
This is a man that weather the storm of the Sunset Strip, of six DUIs, of sex, drugs and rock and roll, yet has remained alive, despite all common sense saying that there’s no way that should be true. Yet here he is, hugging his dog Ugg, enjoying being married and screaming at cars in traffic. It’s too good to be true, but sometimes, that actually happens.
A film that evokes William Fruet’s Funeral Home, along with Dan Curtis’s Burnt Offerings and Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm (via the old Dunsmuir House) gets a fast pass to the top of the streaming stack of films up for review in the B&S About Movies cubicle farm. Yeah, we’re all in on this feature film writing and directing debut by Mauro Iván Ojeda (who got his start with the short films La de Messi and La nueva biblia).
And no: this isn’t a remake the Fruet Canuxploiter. Remember, since that’s a Canadian film, its “polite” so as not to upset the video nasty police. And it’s not so much a funeral home in that movie as it is a haunted country inn that was once a funeral home — with supernatural unrest in its cellar. And while Fruet’s film holds a special place in our ’80s VHS hearts, Ojeda’s debut feature is easily the far superior film.
The U.S. one-sheet/lobby card.
Bernardo is an undertaker who goes through his birth-school-work-death existence like a figurative zombie. While his wife Estela pops pills to deal with her depression, his step-daughter Irina — still mourning the loss of her father — rebels with a teenager’s vigor, frustrated with her mother and stepfather’s surrender to exist in a home with ghosts. They’ve given up: she wants to live . . . with her grandmother, who might be a witch who hates her new daughter-in-law and, it seems, cursed the family; grandma’s disdain carries over to her son Bernardo for taking up with Estela, who had a “history” with her late husband.
While the acting from all quarters is top-notch, the call-out actor of this horror-import is the just-starting-out-in-the-business Camila Vaccarini, as Irina. She’s absolutely stellar in her feature film debut, with only a supporting role in the Argentinian film Paisaje (2018) and a starring role in the Disney Channel Latinoamérica series Bia on her resume. Here’s to hoping Tinseltown calls her up to the major studios, courtesy of Ojeda crafting her an industry calling-card role.
Original overseas one-sheet. Also known as The Undertaker’s Home in other markets.
While this Argentinean import (thankfully subtitled and not dubbed) is as well-shot as any box-office popular A24 (Midsommar) or Blumhouse (You Should Have Left) horror released into the mainstream American marketplace, Ojeda’s debut forgoes the gore and shock scares of those films, instead choosing to utilize set design, sound and shadows, along with (beautiful) cinematography and camera angles to convey the funeral home’s cold, insidious fear.
Unlike its major studio American horror brethren, The Funeral Home is not a film of gloss, but of the atmospherics we recall from our Amicus and Hammer Studios films of old. This is a film of metaphor, as we meet a family as decayed as the decrepit funeral home they reside in; this isn’t a family that’s living: they existing. This is a financially desperate, dysfunctional family of ironic, soul-filled vessels that are as empty and tortured as the (supernatural) spirits that haunt them. When you’re this miserable, shouldering sacks of your own ghosts and skeletons, who needs ghosts of the supernatural variety? Courtesy of the family’s new residence — as depicted in its U.S. artwork — we know this family deals with spirits of both the emotional and supernatural variety — as they come to discover the supernatural ones aren’t from the interred that have passed through their home’s mortuary over the years, but something much deeper that’s buried in their new home’s past.
Disclaimer: We were provided a screener by the film’s P.R firm. That has no bearing on our review.
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.
Bobby Chrystal (Matt Lattanzi, who was in Xanadu where he met his one-time wife Olivia Newton-John) might never graduate high school thanks to his poor French scores. But this being a 1983 movie, all he cares about is losing his virginity, just like his buddies Billy and Jack (a practically all hormone Crispin Hellion Glover).
To help him improve his French, Mr. Chrystal (Invasion of the Body Snatchers star Kevin McCarthy) hires Terry Green (Caren Kaye, who played Jason Bateman’s mom on the one season NBC sitcom It’s Your Move) to teach his son. Well, she sure does, starting with him perving her while she skinny dips in their pool and ending with the predictable motion of the oryctérope.
Of course, dad wanted Terry all for himself and tells his son that she only was there to teach him, with a $10,000 bonus if he passes. He calls her a prostitute, because that’s what being a young incel is all about, before realizing that she taught him so much. Now, he has the ability to ask out his crush Bonnie.
Katt Shea, who would go on to direct both Stripped to Kill movies, as well as Poison Ivy and The Rage: Carrie 2, is in this as a mud wrestler. So are Shelley Taylor Morgan (Malibu Express), Jewel Shepherd (Zapped!, Hollywood Hot Tubs 2: Educating Crystal), Jacqueline Jacobs (who is in pretty much every Crown International winner like Malibu Beach, The Van, The BeachGirls, Weekend Pass, The Patriot and Hunk) and Kitten Natividad (Night Patrol, Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens). If I have to explain to you why any of these women appeared in this movie, you haven’t watched enough 1980’s teen sex comedies.
Yes, there are two movies named Jocks. There’s this one — a ripoff of Revenge of the Nerds down to even having Donald Gibb in the cast — and the Italian disco movie. Guess which one I would have rather watched?
Well anyways, Richard Roundtree is the coach of the wackiest tennis team you’ve ever seen, led by The Kid (Scott Strader, in his last movie), who is the kind of person who would be the villain in any other teen movie. The real star of the team is Jeff (Perry Lang, who became a director).
The team is made up of all manner of madcap characters — can you guess how many Porky’s and Police Academy films and their ripoffs I’ve watched — like Chito (Trinidad Silva), whose entire character is that he’s Mexican and the aforementioned Gibb, who plays Ripper, who is really just Ogre. That said, I don’t think anyone expects Gibb to do anything other than to show up in a sleeveless shirt with iron-on letters and scream unintelligible nonsense at the screen before burping and farting.
Somehow, this maelstrom of a movie catches so many talented people in its wake, like Mariska Hargitay in her third role (she was in Ghoulies and Welcome to 18 before this, but who’s counting?), character actor R.G. Armstrong, Stoney Jackson (that’s right, Phones from Roller Boogie), Tom Shadyac (the director of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective), Katherine Kelly Lang (Evilspeak) and perhaps most improbably, Christopher Lee. Yes, Sir Christopher Lee as a college dean.
Director Steve Carver also made the American parts of The Arena, as well as Big Bad Mama, An Eye for an Eye and Lone Wolf McQuaid. Roundtree, Armstrong and Lee all did this movie as a favor for him, which is nice, but man, that’s asking so much.
“I’m here to teach basketball. Now if you’ve got something else on your minds. . . .” — Coach Rawlings, setting her students . . . straight (no pun intended, well, maybe)
Wow.
And double wow.
Do I remember the days when Cathy Lee Crosby was in competition for my wall space with Farrah Fawcett and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, next to my Runaways poster with a young Sandy West. And the days before James Cameron forever set our Micheal Biehn-memories in stone with Kyle Reese and Corporal Hicks. But here’s Mike, fresh from his first TV bows on the 1977 series James at 16 and Logan’s Run (as a Sandman!), in his first feature film role . . . and on his way to starring in the forgotten (rightfully) twin-cinema ditty that was Hog Wild (1980) — a film that I always confuse with Hot Dog: The Movie (both which need the B&S About Movies once over) that I, in turn, confuse with Hamburger: The Movie.
Why am I confusing Michael Biehn with David Naughton with Leigh McCloskey in first place? Oblivious, my analog cortex is suffering a systems failure . . . but not enough that I can’t remember that Micheal was Johnny Ringo in Tombstone alongside Val Kilmer, so I seem to be functioning well within all VHS parameters.
Geeze . . . the Stallions? Really? Here comes the dumb sex jokes.
In case you haven’t guess by the one-sheet: Coach is a ’70s teensploitation romp produced on a TV movie budget, but made for the drive-ins, by, you guessed it: Crown International Pictures. So, yes. There’s boobs. And there’s gags. And PG-rated sex crossing the R-rated borderline. But this high school isn’t the Delta House and the school’s student body wouldn’t make it into Faber College. Where’s Pee Wee and Ballbricker when you need ’em? Where’s the titillation? Cathy Lee looks great in those shorty gym shorts and white sneakers, but that’s it? I’ll need a bit more than Cathy Lee having an affair with Micheal Biehn’s high school basketball-star student.
So, Cathy Lee is an uber-sexy, natch, ex-Olympic medalist track star hired to coach a high school’s boy basketball team. But, oops! In that ol’ women-with-a-guy’s-name-or-feminine-name-that-can-be-male-truncated screenwriting trope (e.g., Samantha becomes Sam), gruffy ol’ principal Fenton “F.R” Granger, played by ubiquitously gruff actor Keenan Wynn (who made a career out of being ubiquitously gruffy, or crazy; see Laserblast), thought that Randy Rawlings was a man! (Of course, this is a Cathy Lee movie, so ol’ man Granger ain’t around much.) Anyway, he can’t fire her based on her femininity, so he plots to make sure the team loses their games so he can fire her on job performance grounds.
Oh, and B-movie actions fans, take note: Brent Huff, he of epic-beyond-epic Nine Deaths of the Ninja, Armed Response, and Strike Commando 2 is here, in his feature film debut as one of the students. By the way: Brent is still going strong: he’s got four films in post-production for 2021, but you can also see him in a support role as Officer Smitty in the pretty decent, ABC-TV cop procedural, The Rookie.
One of my all time favorite flicks — and one of Sam Elliot’s best, early performances, long before he was amazing us with his trademark, gruffy-scrappy roles in the likes of Road House — was the 1976 coming-of-age-drama, Lifeguard (do seek it out). In that film, Elliot is Rick: a thirty-something, California beach lifeguard who loves his life, but is cajoled by family and successful friends to “become an adult,” while he deals with forbidden love. I can’t help think that, if Paramount Pictures, as with Lifeguard, had backed Coach — instead of Crown International Pictures — Cathy Lee would have had herself an insightful, heartwarming dramatic role about a woman dealing with the same “endless summer” issues of Elliot’s lifeguard; a woman who faces her life’s question: The Olympics are over. Now what?
Instead, she ended up in a Crown-made teensploitation not-so-funny and not-so-titillating (dumb) comedy with no message and nary a plot.
So it goes for TV’s first Wonder Woman — who then ended up in the John “Bud” Cardos disaster that is The Dark, which Roger Ebert (rightfully) referred to as a dumb and inept, maddeningly unsatisfactory thriller. Sam found The Dark as not riveting but entertaining. And I hated it. And Sam will probably hate Coach, which left me entertained but not riveted. But Coach could have been so much better. Like Goldie Hawn’s Wildcats similar better. And Cathy Lee Crosby certainly deserved better than that awful Network “Standards and Practices” costume. Yikes. If only Cathy Lee was in Lynda Carter’s wears!
No, Really! Back in 1974, and before Lynda Carter, Cathy was Wonder Woman for a Warner Bros.-backed ABC-TV movie.
You can watch Coach on You Tube and pick up a copy as part of Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-Film Pack. Oh, and speaking of Wonder Woman . . . ugh, did you see Wonder Woman 1984? Don’t. Go watch an old Jess Franco movie, instead.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
As you stared across the shelves of Prime Time Video — or whatever the mom and pop in your town was called — as closing time grew near, you knew that you had to pick a movie. Cavegirl feels like one of those movies that was always there when you needed a rental.
Take it from someone who has seen enough cave and jungle girl movies to do nearly an entire week of them — this is no Caveman* with Ringo Starr. It is no 10,000 B.C. with Raquel Welch. Hell, it’s not even George Eastman in Ironmaster.
Daniel Roebuck, who always gets parts on Rob Zombie and Don Coscarelli movies, is our hero, such as it is. His name is Rex and he goes back in time “25,000 ago to the Stone Age” even though the Paleolithic period really was 3.3 million years ago. But that’s a minor quibble when this movie has a magic crystal that sends him back to the past. And when he gets there, all he wants to do is aardvark with Eba (Cynthia Thompson, Tomboy, Body Count), the Ayla of our story.
Seriously, that’s it. Instead of worrying about screwing up the history of the world, Rex is trying to teach her how to say, “I want you to sit on my face.” He may be evolved, but his definition of consent isn’t. Also, at this stage of evolution, Rex and Eba bam-bamming in the ham is pretty much bestiality.
Stacey Q is in this movie. Yes, the girl who sang “Two of Hearts.” She contributes a song to the soundtrack, “Synthicide,” which is probably the best reason to watch this, unless you’re a fan of direct to video actresses like Ms. Thompson. Actually, that’s a good reason to watch this, I guess.
Director David Oliver Pfeil made the music video for Steely Dan’s “Aja,” the credits for Knight Rider and made the titles for movies like Star Trek VI, Innerspace and Footloose. This was his one and only full movie and he went all out, writing, producing, doing the cinematography and even the aerial camera work for it. He should have realized he was making a movie for Crown International Pictures, who demanded that he insert the locker room scene in the beginning to ensure that his passion project had enough bare breasts.
*That said, in Spain, this movie is known as Cavegirl: Cavernicola 2, making it seem as if it were a sequel to Caveman.
You can watch this on YouTube as an age-restricted sign in. Yeah, thanks to Mill Creek’s box set repeating, we gave this film a second, fresh take on their Excellent Eighties set.
Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) sightings didn’t start with Kenneth Arnold in 1947. They’ve been part of our history as long as it has been recorded. Yet they’ve always been top secret at best and ridiculed at worst.
As the Pentagon released declassified information and videos about potential alien craft visiting our planet — yes, this happened and it was buried amongst all the other insanity that was 2020 — are we closer to disclosure than ever before?
We had the opportunity to spend some time with Volcanic UFO Mysteries director Darcy Weir and Stephen Bassett to discuss the film, UFOs in pop culture and exactly what Jackie Gleason has to do with alien lifeforms.
B&S ABOUT MOVIES: What was the impetus behind me making this movie?
DARCY WEIR: The subject matter of UFOs showing up around active volcanoes is underrepresented. Furthermore, UFO sightings in Latin America are both pretty prevalent and very much under-represented. I wanted to share that story and bring Stephen in with me to talk about his work on ending the truth embargo and the disclosure of the UFO presence from the government to the public.
I find him to be a fascinating subject. All the work he’s been doing in terms of UFO reporting and journalism for over 40 years is very interesting to me.
B&S: It’s intriguing because you always see footage of UFOs around military bases or nuclear power plants.
DARCY: Let’s take the Pentagon’s release of the videos that came out. They were first revealed through the To The Stars Academy (editor’s note: the group formed by Tom DeLonge, Harold E. Puthoff and Jim Semivan) in 2017. The “Gimbal” video or the “Tic Tac” video, which was fully unclassified and confirmed by the Pentagon in April 2020.
Those videos are recorded on aircraft, you know, state of the art military aircraft, in infrared light, in a light spectrum we can see and they are recorded with state of the art cameras that basically are supposed to track objects that move really, really fast.
When when you see a video like that come out, and you hear pilots say, “That’s not one of ours,” and then eventually the government confirms that suspicion. You look, you listen, you learn and you take it seriously.
With the UFO videos that we’re capturing around volcanoes in Latin America, these volcanoes are active. And you, for example, can see a UFO that flies through an ash cloud slowly,. It just hovers through and then it waits by a volcanic crater as erupting pyroclastic molten lava shoots rocks into the air, with the environment at probably 1000s of degrees Fahrenheit. And this object just flies through it. No civilian or military aircraft that we know of can perform in that environment.
What is it? Is it ours? What’s it doing there? And that’s a really strange mystery.
The UFO phenomenon is just not limited to the United States. But the United States has some of the most incredible cases. I’ve made a documentary about UFOs in space, you know, that NASA has recorded. I’ve made documentaries with events that have happened in Australia, China and Latin America. And I kind of want to tell even more of those stories that people haven’t heard as much here in the United States.
B&S: Stephen, what do you feel the importance of this movie is?
STEPHEN BASSETT: Darcy is what I call a content provider. In the UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon)/E.T./research activist journalism genre, the government has been denying the truth of this issue now for 74 years. And so the people were on their own.
They had to do the research, create and write their own books, magazines, documentaries, podcasts, broadcasts and so forth. In spite of the fact that the government said, “No, there’s nothing to this.”
These content providers have kept the issue alive, expanded public awareness worldwide and helped to ensure that ultimately we will get a confirmation from the government of this E.T. presence.
Darcy, of late, has been quite prolific* creating documentaries. I’ve been wanting to do a documentary for twelve years and I haven’t gotten to it yet. He’s made seven or eight in the last two years.
And so I’m here to support. I’m supporting that and happy to join him. Because these docs are critical to people getting a reasonable understanding of this issue. But also, I should mention — given you are all obviously cinephiles you may or may not know this — but I did a research project in 2013. Essentially, I researched every great high grossing film. In fact, I basically researched the top, I don’t know 5-800 films in terms of their gross international take and then converted that to today’s inflation.
Anyway, the upshot is that the most lucrative genre in all of film — in terms of gross revenue — is films with E.T.s in them. Not just science fiction. Just films with E.T.s in them. That tells you a lot, doesn’t it? Think of all the billions of people that have watched films with extraterrestrials in them over the last 50 years. Obviously, the idea of them existing does not seem particularly striking at all anymore, does it?
B&S: I remember first hearing the theory — probably around the first or second season of The X-Files — that alien-related mass media is all about preparing and opening people’s minds up to eventual contact. How do you feel about that theory?
DARCY: I think that, well, whether it was intended or not all of the sci-fi films about extraterrestrials, in one form or another, have helped to acclimate the world to the idea of extraterrestrials. Plus, as you know, the film’s got better the CGI got better.
These movies, for some time now, all the way back to Star Wars, literally take us out into space. They take us to other planets with strange beings. We’ve all been there. Now it’s being done with virtual reality on Oculus. So yeah, it’s acclimatization.
Was it intentional? I think most of it was Hollywood producers making money.
Again, it’s the most lucrative genre and all of film. You’re going to make lots of these movies and you’re going to spend more and more money on them. In fact, the two top-grossing movies of all time, maybe three are Avatar and the two Avengers movies. So yeah (laughs). You’re gonna make money.
Now, it’s possible that the government has somehow encouraged something. The government has been cooperative on some of these movies. And there’s been a CIA Film Industry Liaison for a long time.
To be honest with you, there have been other efforts in which the government has given this field information, some of which was in fact intended to bump things along and some of it was disinformation. By and large, the acclimation comes from the creative geniuses of Hollywood and the desire to make lots of money.
A lot of Hollywood writers are very in touch with the theories, the sort of conspiracy theories and possible facts that are surrounding this subject. You know, I was talking on another podcast the other day. I was asked, what one documentary or one fictional science fiction film do you think gets the closest to reality?
For sure, Fire In the Sky. It’s based on the book that’s about his encounter. That said, it got turned more into a horror movie with the case of how he was abducted, and them shoving things and stuff into him, strapping him down to a table in the movie version. But in the book and his lectures, none of that happened. He was not dragged by his feet around a dirty alien ship by these monstrous fiendish looking things. They looked like humans, a group of them that he saw, and another group looks like grey aliens.
That’s an example of a real tale that has manifested in Hollywood. Another one is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the French character that is represented as one of the head scientists, hunting down abductees or experiencers, The French character, that scientist is, he’s based on Jacques Vallée. He was doing the real thing for different government groups and NATO trying to figure out the UFO issue.
Noy everything in that film is based on reality. But there are hints and elements here that prove that Steven Spielberg is very interested in the UFO question.
If you look at his film resume, obviously, he’s been gearing for disclosure in some way or another by bringing out so many films that are based on extraterrestrial science fiction.
He’s been in touch with generals and pilots and all kinds of things, met so many different people to have his films be closer to real things that have happened in this history.
Fire in the Sky
STEPHEN: There are no theatrical films — there are documentaries — that are that significant to this subject in my opinion. There’s the Paul Davids’ Roswell: The UFO Cover-Up where there was very little embellishment. It played it straight with history and it got very close. But by and large, the movies that are true to an actual extraterrestrial experience are few.
The reason is — and this is cool — is that the phenomena as it’s been recorded and researched, the truth is that it’s not interesting enough.
In other words, if you made a straight film about a particular case, pick Rendlesham Forest, you would really struggle to make it that kind of compelling, dramatic thing. And so they don’t do it.
There’s this thought with the E.T. issue, they think that everybody is afraid and going to panic when the truth is known. But the real truth is that the fundamental elements and aspects of the actual E.T. reality, including most contact and abductions, is that the truth is not interesting enough or dramatic enough for Hollywood.
So that tells you something, doesn’t it? And another reason why the truth embargo** really has become quite absurd.
B&S: You brought up Spielberg. E.T. started as a much darker script called Night Skies. And the sequel would have been even darker. But for some reason, Spielberg went to the lighter side, telling us that the aliens would be our friends. And that hanged a lot of mass media after that.
DARCY: Yeah, absolutely. E.T. was supposed to be much darker. And there was also going to be a Man In Black that worked for the government who wanted to capture him and his craft.
That’s the biggest secret fact about the UFO issue. We have captured crafts, we have possibly captured entities and found dead bodies. And all of that is Steven Spielberg writing reality.
He’s trying to put that into the cinema because it’s a little-known fact that he wants to expose people to something that’s stranger than fiction. Sometimes that can be fact, you know?
Obviously, he went for the happy family movie, right? You don’t want to make people’s stomachs churn and question reality and not want to go to work the next day after they watch the dark version.
Rick Baker’s abandoned Night Skies alien makeup.
B&S: Speaking of the truth, your documentary is about the truth being unveiled. What do you think the next step is?
DARCY: I’ll leave that one for Mr. Bassett. He has 74 years and thousands of books magazine articles, research reports, hundreds and hundreds of documentaries, hundreds of thousands of millions of websites. And so many articles, probably as many as 40,000 articles in the English language. So he’s got some great insights into where disclosure may go from here.
STEPHEN: I think the truth embargo is about to end.
That’s based upon developments of the last three years which I’m following pretty closely. Let me alert your readers. Watch very carefully for any new developments in the media on the E.T. issue involving politicians and scientists.
The craziness of the last four years is not over yet. After the Trump trial in the Senate is over — that’s going to completely preoccupy the Congress, along with obviously some of the early actions to the Biden administration — I would have expected this to happen already.
I believe the stage has been set in advance now for hearings to finally take place in the U.S. Congress, on the extraterrestrial and UAP issue. And these would be the real thing, not not like the last hearing that we had in 1968 that lasted one day.
These will be extensive hearings and multiple committees, the witnesses will almost exclusively be military, either active or retired personnel, discussing a range of encounters and phenomena, primarily from the context of national security. Once this series has been underway for a while — and they will be viewed by countless millions of people around the world — I think the situation will be such as the President can finally confirm the E.T. presence to the American people and the world.
It is very possible that we’re going to have disclosure and final confirmation of E.T. presence this spring, which I’m pretty sure is going to generate a rather substantial number of scripts pouring into producers all over Hollywood. And we will hit the golden age of extraterrestrial cinema.
When I did that research on the highest-grossing movies, that was just English language movies. I did not include foreign language films related to E.T. subjects. So the total number that these movies have made in profit is billions of dollars.
These films are in the consciousness. Everything is there. And they have been pouring into the human consciousness for pretty much every developed country. Actually, even less developed countries, given the availability of TV and video so forth for decades.
So to me, the idea that people are going to be shocked when they’re told that extraterrestrials exist, that the real ones are here and have been since the beginning, well…it was silly. Now it’s absolutely ludicrous.
It’s time for the people to know.
By the way, let me add that the big shots in Hollywood, particularly the science fiction ones like George Lucas and Christ Carter and Spielberg, they’re the ones that are informed. They have people lined up outside their office all day to tell them things. They mix with high-level politicians.
When Spielberg’s Taken miniseries premiered in 2002, it was at the Ronald Regan Building in Washington, DC. I was there — it was an event with white-gloved waiters and fantastic hors d’oeuvres.
I can say with high confidence that every one of the people I’ve just mentioned and others absolutely know. Now, I’m not suggesting that they were taken to the Pentagon and shown bodies or anything. I’m simply saying they were tipped. But it’s not in their interest to challenge the government’s embargo. But it is in their interest to make movies about the E.T. issue.
One of the reasons that these movies generate so much money is because there are some people who are convinced already that the E.T. presence is real or that it would be cool if it was. So Guardians of the Galaxy comes out and they have to see it.
On the other hand, contrast that with the E.T.-related journalists who have been working so hard for seventy years who make no money doing this and pay a heavy sacrifice. It hasn’t been a picnic for these people. Yet their work has generated a mindset that Hollywood has turned into an industry that makes billions.
How much has Hollywood invested in the disclosure activism? How much have they paid into the cause to end this embargo and bring the truth to the American people? To my knowledge? Nothing.
B&S: I think the first celebrity I ever heard that was interested in it, strangely enough, as Jackie Gleason, who early on was really pushing to learn more from politicians.
STEPHEN: I don’t think he pushed. But it’s a great story. It’s a wonderful story.
He told the story to his wife, who told it to Shirley MacLaine, who told me and put it out in her book.
Gleason was a legend back then and he was a good friend of Nixon. I imagine he supported him politically. I’m not positive, but I think he did. And Nixon was a Florida guy. He would visit Florida all of the time, where Gleason lived and they would play golf together. So one night after they played, he called him up and said, “Hey Jackie. Come with me.” And he picked him up! Nixon is driving, he must have slipped his Secret Service and they went to an Air Force Base*** to see the bodies.
He knew that Jackie had a huge interest on this subject, he had one of the largest private libraries of books on this subject****
It was a way of showing off to his buddy a little bit. He knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t talk about it. And basically, he didn’t, but eventually, it came out.
It’s a fantastic story. So that confirms that Nixon was pretty much briefed. He knew about the E.T. issue. He was probably given substantial inside classified information. And they knew Nixon would never go public, because Dick was a statesman. He was a pure politician as well. The Cold War was still underway. The embargo was in place, primarily because of that Cold War. He had a good relationship with the military. And so he had plenty of things on his plate, China and everything else.
Of course, then he got embroiled in some pretty awful scandals. And so the idea that he would suddenly decide, I think I’m gonna engage the E.T. issue, well, absolutely not. He would have viewed it as another huge negative on his legacy, which he desperately wanted to rebuild.
But as President, he got brief. We know some Presidents got briefed and some didn’t. Some got nothing at all. Some were actually denied and stonewalled information, which by the way, is not Constitutional. It violates the norms of the way our government is supposed to run, but it was all justified on the basis of national security as so much else was.
Footage from Volcanic UFO Mysteries.
B&S: So often conspiracy theory and UFO theories go hand-in-hand just because of the way that the media treats them. We’ve had a crazy last four years where conspiracy has dominated the news. So how do you think people are going to truly react to disclosure? Are they going to believe it? Are they going to think it’s just fake news?
DARCY: That’s a really important question. Because, as you know, we have flat earthers that are now a huge thing. I’ve spoken about this and Steve says, “Leave the flat earthers alone.”
But you know, I believe the flat earthers and Q on those two examples of stupid conspiracies. They are a byproduct of the distrust that’s at an all-time high with the governments of the world and their citizens. People are watching everything that’s going on right now. And they’re saying, you know, I’ve got a story. I think this is more true than what’s going on in reality, but the fact is that there’s too much noise. There’s too much disinformation out there, like Q-Anon.
Don’t get me wrong. People like Jeffrey Epstein are real. They did have their pedophile rings. But Q-Anon extends into this grand and crazy conspiracy. And with flat earth, there are so many things that disprove that.
If UFOs are coming here and are piloted by extraterrestrials, then they have to come from another planet just like ours, another spherical planetoid.
Yet people are super paranoid and these ideas run rampant. They allow their imaginations to get away from them too much.
The truth embargo issue is already enough to deal with. And that requires some imagination for many people. And I think with disclosure, that will actually allow for some trust and an opening for the government to buy back some goodwill.
They’re investing in a future where the public can trust them a bit more . And disclosure is a good starting point. It’s going to be a place where they can say, “Look, we have kept this quiet for a long time. We weren’t sure fully sure about it. But here’s what we can tell you.” And that will be nice, you know, that will vindicate a lot of people out there that have been studying this for their whole lives.
Stephen Bassett, he’s seventy-four years old. I’m thirty-six. And he wants to see this in his lifetime. So do I. I think it’s a hopeful thing.
If it comes from the government, I think it’s going to be something for people to look at, listen and learn about more. So as things develop, as we become a spacefaring nation and as we start going into the stars and trying to colonize other planets in our solar system, we’re going to be learning about what’s actually out there waiting for us. And there’s some hope surrounding that. There are some great advantages to the possible technologies that we will eventually have that will make our lives easier, healthier and safer.
STEPHEN: The last twenty-five years have been interesting to say the least. But there has been a very significant confluence of two very important trends.
One trend has been going on for some time getting all the way back to the 60s. And that’s the erosion of trust in the United States government, which eventually started spreading to other institutions outside of government. It’s reached a point where it’s actually threatening the country, it’s threatening the republic. It’s a real problem.
But then you have the onset of the Internet, and then even bulletin boards and email, and then ultimately, social media. And so the combination of this diminishing trust in government, combined with the ability of virtually everybody in the developed world to interact with everybody else in the developed world in real-time and give their opinion about anything — or create something out of nothing — while operating behind anonymous handles has created the golden age of populist driven — or citizen-driven — propaganda.
We’ve always had corporate propaganda and government propaganda. Now we have a situation where everybody can be a propagandist. And as a result, the internet has become a polluted river.
It’s a massive river of information, which is significantly polluted. And it’s polluted to the point where if you just drink the water and don’t filter it, it’ll kill you. And this is a huge problem, right?
It isn’t going to be solved anytime soon.
But the good news is that the extraterrestrial reality, the truth embargo itself is not a conspiracy. So don’t worry about Q-Anon pushing it. It’s not. It’s simply a legal policy of the United States government, instituted and formulated between 1947 and 1952, and carried forward to this day for national security reasons.
It’s not illegal. So it’s not a conspiracy. I always try to object to this — whenever conspiracy theories are attached to the E.T. issue — I try to correct them that the government conspired with some illegality to fake a moon landing or the moon landings. That would be a conspiracy, though not an awful one. But it would be a conspiracy.
However, that might have been justified by national security, of course. So all I can say is, folks if you want to get away from misinformation, disinformation and a whole lot of nonsense on the internet and focus on the extraterrestrial issue…and the high-end authors, researchers and so forth on this, well, there’s a hell of a lot of truth there. And while there is some silliness to be sure, as things go these days, it’s some of the better water in that river.
B&S: Finally, how much stock should we put into Whitley Strieber?
STEPHEN: I’ll answer that quickly, but his story is a very complex story. Very complex. He’s a brilliant man and he was a highly successful New York Times bestselling author in the genre of, I guess you could say paranormal. And he’s a contactee, of which I have no doubt whatsoever.
So here you have an example, and this is one of the interesting things about the contact phenomenon, of the fact that E.T.s pretty democratic. They directly interact in these encounters we call contacts. And some of those contacts take the form of what people would probably justifiably call abductions.
They don’t take a general. They’ll take a cashier at Denny’s. And they’ll have a politician, a writer, a guy working on a shrimp boat. Whatever their agenda is, it’s fairly democratic. So imagine that you are somebody who is just a basic person, maybe you’re a garage mechanic, and you’ve been taken by E.T.s since you were five years old. Imagine how that might unfold in your life, how it manifests.
Now, imagine if you’re a nuclear physicist.
Now imagine if you’re a brilliant writer, maybe even a fantasy writer. And so one of the things people don’t take into account is that the way it worked the way it manifests and the way then is reported by people who have gone through this.
There is an enormous spectrum of reports and interpretations.
Whitley’s was extremely complex and very literary. And for that reason, a lot of people say, wait a minute, that’s just wildly crazy. I mean, this, this nice waitress that I know is a contactee and she told me a story. And it was pretty basic.
Hey, Whitley is Whitley. So I think you have to respect all contactees in their stories before challenging their veracity. And that Whitley’s, the problem was that his complex accounts of what happened to him, they challenge people. And so they push back.
Now, that doesn’t mean that as a contact that he’s not capable of misinterpreting what happened to him. Remember, these are extraordinary events. In most people, their memories are actually blocked by the E.T.s themselves.
They’re able to do that and suppress it. For many people, they never even know that they were contactees. Something comes out in dreams, sometimes it comes out in flashes or something. And so this idea that they might misinterpret what’s happened to them. Obviously, that could happen. Nothing surprising there. But because of the truth embargo, and the fact that the government has denied, there’s no there there. The contactees have had a rough time. They’ve been ridiculed.
It’s been getting better, but you go back 20-30 years and it was brutal. They’re victims of the government truth embargo. There have been many. So I always defer to their stories and am very respectful. And unless I’m confronted with some really compelling evidence that something’s being made up…
Look, I realize there have been some, they want attention. But until I realize they’re lying — and I’m given compelling evidence that they are — I feel that I have to be very respectful of their stories and I’m prepared to take them at face value.
As for the movie, it features director Weir helping Jaime Maussan to uncover the truth behind a series of UFO sightings at active volcanos throughout Latin America, as well as Mr. Bassett as he works to break through the truth embargo.
This film has some astounding footage of the volcano UFO visitations. It also raises the question if these same interplanetary craft have been visiting and depleting nuclear weapon stockpiles around the globe.
Between the believer side that is Maussan and Bassett’s more political take on the reason why UFOs have remained part of our hidden history, it’s a fascinating watch. And I have to state for the record how truly honored I was to get to speak to both of these experts.
**The “truth embargo” is a term that Stephen Bassett uses to refer to the government silence in regards to extraterrestrial visitation.
***According to the National Enquirer article that came out in 1983, the base would be Homestead Air Force Base. Supposedly, Gleason only told his ex-wife Beverly, who told the tabloid before a planned book, and Larry Warren, who was an eyewitness to the Rendlesham Forest UFO and a subject of some controversy. And even he didn’t spill the beans. Instead, the story started because of Timothy Green Beckley and this article.
****He really did. It’s part of the University of Miami’s Jackie Gleason Collection, which “consists of approximately 1,700 volumes of books, journals, proceedings, pamphlets and publications in the field of parapsychology.”
To watch the movie:
Volcanic UFO Mysteries is available now on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and Video On-Demand.
For more about Stephen Basset and his quest to end the truth embargo, visit Paradigm Research Group and listen to his new podcast The Disclosure Wire. That new show also has a Facebook page that has even more info.
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