The Disney live action world of the 1970s is the kind of place where a Yugoslavian goat can come to America, get a job in the California Atoms NFL franchise and interact with owner Hank Cooper (Ed Asner) and Coach Venner (Don Knotts) and not a single person mentions how completely on drugs the entire thing is.

I also love that the NFL helped make this movie and Asner’s character is so in debt from gambling that he makes a deal with bookies Charles Gwynn (Harold Gould) and Cal Wilson (Dick Van Patten). If the Atoms win the Super Bowl, all gambling debts will be forgiven. If they lose, the crooks will take ownership of the team.

Originally, Gus was just going to perform in the halftime show, But Coach Venner puts him in a game and that venerable rule of movies shows up: there’s no rule in the books that says your kicker has to be human!

Also — the fact that a kicker can help win footabll games is a weird concept, as field goals only get three points, so basing the entire offense around an animal that can only get half the score of a touchdown seems kind of shortsighted. I mean, if the rule books are so illogical, why not have a gorilla on the defensive line?

At this point I wondered, how can this movie get any better? Could it also have two 70s comedy stars as gangsters? The mouse heard my prayers and rewarded me with Crankcase (Tim Conway) and Spinner (Tom Bosley), whose scheming cause the Atoms to lose two games.

Look, any movie that unites Bob Crane, Johnny Unitas and Dick Butkis is going to be something I’ll watch. I have a strange weakness for movies that make an utter mockery of the game of football, to be frank.

Director Vincent McEveety was all over the 70s Disney map, making everything from The Castaway Cowboy to The Strongest Man in the World, Superdad and two Herbie movies. His last directing job was a TV movie that united Markie Post and Robert Urich called Stranger at My Door, which is completely the kind of movie that I spend weeks tracking down.

Between Mega Shark, Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus, Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus, Mega Shark Versus Mecha Shark and the rumored Mega Shark Versus Moby Dick, The Asylum has really gotten plenty of nautical miles out of the Mega Shark story.

Yet how can we explain the fact that Illeana Douglas appears in this movie as Dr. Alison Gray? I mean, Douglas is an incredible actress, but I guess everyone needs work. And yet she brings such gravitas to her role that you wonder, does she realize that she’s in a movie where an unearthed Cold War Russian giant robot battles a monstrous shark?

This was directed by Christopher Ray, who is also Christopher Douglas-Olen Ray, who is Fred’s son and now it all makes so much more sense. Hey — I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I wish there were more movies where soldiers fought to free mechanical monsters who can pick up a megalodon and throw it at a satellite that’s shooting a laser.

If you like your jetfighters as stock footage, your monsters rubbery yet made in CGI and great posters, well, this movie is for you. Actually, it’s for me, because this is exactly the kind of movie I revel in. If only we couldn’t find a secret Italian lab that has the robotic form of Bruno Mattei hidden away so that he could make so many more of these shark movies. Let’s Go Fund that!

You can watch this on Tubi.

The second sequel to The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, after Now You See Him, Now You Don’t, The Strongest Man in the World continues the story of Dexter Riley and the students of Medfield College.

Dean Higgins (Joe Flynn, who sadly died from drowning after filming was complete; the Youngstown native had also completed voicing over The Rescuers and was a major advocate for more equitable distribution of TV residual payments) is about to be fired for financial mismanagement due to the extreme overspending by Prof. Quigley’s science class. Higgins fires the professor and threatens to have his entire class kicked out of school, but when he slams the door on the classroom, he knocks Dexter’s experiment into another student’s vitamin cereal. Then the cow — which cost so much money in the first place — eats the cereal, Dexter drinks the milk and then we have Kurt Russell gaining super strength.

This movie had to have been cast by me in a past life. Can we get Eve Arden? How about Phil Silvers? Can Cesar Romero come back? How about Dick Van Patten as the main villain?

Director Vincent McEveety was a Disney directing mainstay, making stuff like Gus, Superdad, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo.

After struggling to have a child, Eric and Makayla have hired a witch doctor named Ola to help. She moves into their home and concocts a series of magical rituals and ceremonies to bring a child into their lives. If you truly want something so badly, are you willing to take it, even if it brings something not quite human into your life? That’s the question behind Blood Born.

Writer and director Reed Shusterman was inspired by the upcoming birth of his child: “I started development on Blood Born right when my wife and I had just decided to start having a baby. And, in a very literal interpretation of “write what you know,” I wrote about that.

On one level this movie is about the general fears of pregnancy and parenthood, like what happens to you/your partner’s body and the physical space the baby will take up. But what really scared me into making this movie was how much a baby would change me. I’d no longer be the most important person in my wife’s life. Hell, I wouldn’t be the most important person in my own life. In a certain way, I’d be giving up myself, my being.”

Look, when a magic user comes into your home and tells you that she’s helped people with hysterectomies have babies and promises that you’ll have a child in a month, maybe things aren’t going to go well. Then again, I come from a mindset where I’m always looking for the neighbors offering tannis root.

How badly do Eric and Makayla want children? Enough to sacrifice animals? And what will they do when the child needs blood more than milk? I’m asking way more questions than the film’s protagonists, obviously.

Blood Born is available on demand from Terror Films.

Written, produced and directed by Johnny Sweet, Last Call: The Shutdown of NYC Bars takes you within the many neighborhoods of New York City and the local establishments that define them, places that suddenly found themselves closed in the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic.

As bars and restaurants are ordered to close during the pandemic, thousands of hospitality workers are left without work yet have an uncertain future. This film explores how they adapt to their new world, find a place in the new normal and attempt to fill their days with the things they missed during the busier times.

Concentrating on the Sparrow Tavern — and bartender Jena Ellenwood — you get the real idea of what the pandemic has cost us: the ability to connect and share in person with one another. There’s just something about the conversation and moments within a bar that we can’t when we’re drinking alone.

https://vimeo.com/533150856

Last Call: The Shutdown of NYC Bars is available in virtual theaters on July 16 — you can find it at Laemmle virtual theaters — and on demand August 13.

Based on the 1981 novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf, this movie is from a time before crossovers and meta-based films like the latest Space Jam and Ready: Player One. It was incredibly mindblowing as a teen to watch this movie on the big screen and see Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse actually having a conversation.

What’s even better is that it has a film noir mystery at its center with Bob Hoskins as Eddie Valiant*, a down on his luck private investigator dealing with his hate of animated characters known as Toons which actually exist in this alternate universe.

At the time, this was the most expensive animated film ever made, but Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg believed that live-action and animation together would save the cartoon department at Disney.

Plus, the studio brought in executive producer Steven Spielberg and his production company, Amblin Entertainment, who would get creative control and most of the box office, leaving Disney to keep merchandising rights.

Spielberg went to work getting other studios to lend their characters to the film, getting most of the Warner Brothers characters to appear but sadly failing to get Popeye, Tom and Jerry, Casper the Friendly Ghost or any of the Terrytoons.

With live action directed by Robert Zemeckis and animation by Richard Williams — along with the skills of Dean Cundy as cinematographer, Arthur Schmidt as editor and hundreds of artists making all the animation** — this film stands out as nearly the final chapter on traditional animation***.

Eisner and Roy E. Disney, vice chairman of The Walt Disney Company, felt the film was too sexual, but Zemeckis had final cut privileges (and Williams disliked Disney so much that he based his animation studio in England so they could not interfere). That’s why this was a Touchstone Pictures release instead of Disney.

Even today, Zemeckis claims that Disney will never make any of the proposed sequels, telling Den of Geek, “The current corporate Disney culture has no interest in Roger, and they certainly don’t like Jessica at all.” He also claimed that a sequel**** wouldn’t be on Disney+ as there are no princesses in it. There were, however, some animated shorts that came out after the film: Tummy Trouble proceeded Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Roller Coaster Rabbit played before Dick Tracy and Trail Mix-Up was in front of A Far Off Place.

Instead of a detailed summary of the plot of this film, I suggest you view it for yourself. However, I will share that I absolutely love Joanna Cassidy as Eddie’s strong and capable love Dolores and Christopher Lloyd is beyond outstanding as Judge Doom. And I think it’s amazing that early versions of the script had The Toon Patrol weasels as Stupid, Smart Ass, Greasy, Wheezy and Psycho, created to be inversions of Snow White’s Seven Dwarves Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey).

Charles Fleischer was so dedicated to his role as Roger that he dressed up on set and did his lines. And man, has any voice ever been better for a cartoon noir girl than Kathleen Turner (and Amy Irving for the singing voice)? And any movie where a cartoon baby gruffly says, “I got a thirty-year-old lust and a three-year-old dinky…”

One last fact: When Eddie takes Roger Rabbit into the back room at the bar and Dolores is sawing their handcuffs, the lamp on the ceiling bumps and swings. That’s all animation that was added to give the scene something extra. All of those shadows were drawn. That’s why the phrase “bump the lamp” is used at Disney even today when people say they need to go the extra mile to make something special, even if no one notices it.

*Test footage has Peter Renaday as Eddie Valiant, Paul Reubens as Roger Rabbit and Russi Taylor as Jessica Rabbit. Other actors who were almost Eddie include Harrison Ford, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Ed Harris, Charles Grodin, Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Sylvester Stallone, Wallace Shawn and Don Lane.

**Post-production lasted 14 months and all of the animation was made with cel art and optical tricks instead of CGI.

***It’s also the last time Mel Blanc would voice Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, and Sylvester the Cat.

****You have no idea how badly I want to see Roger Rabbit: The Toon Platoon, a movie where Roger would have entered World War II and met his real father, Bugs Bunny.

Based on the Michael Innes novel Christmas at Candleshoe, this live action Disney movie is all about con artist Harry Bundage, who is looking for lost pirate treasure inside Candleshoe, the country estate of Lady St. Edmund (Helen Hayes in her last role). He gets street-smart American orphan Casey Brown (Jodie Foster) to pretend that she’s the rich lady’s granddaughter, who has been missing since she was four years old. The estate is actually barely holding on, except that its lone servant Priory (David Niven) and four foster kids have been hustling to pay the bills. Of course, our heroine will figure out that she really belongs at Candleshoe and stay in England, but the treasure hunt is still pretty fun.

Director Norman Tokar made plenty of Disney movies like The Happiest Millionaire, The Ugly Dachsund, The Apple Dumpling Gang The Cat from Space and No Deposit, No Return, which also has Niven in the film).

Foster passed up Pretty Baby to make this movie, only getting a few days off after finishing Freaky Friday.