Yeah, nearly a decade after this movie was released in theaters, it came back out as Raiders of the Treasure of Tayopa because sometimes people get confused at the video store.
Writers Robert Mason and Phillip Michel, as well as director Bob Cawley and most of the actors in this movie, all were one and done with this film as their lone attempt at making it.
Well, they didn’t.
Except for Gilvert Roland, the one-time Cisco Kid, is the narrator. Yet two of the charcacters also narrate the film, which is different. So is having a female lead in a Western. But as three people and one psychopath head to Mexico to take seventeen tons of gold back to America.
You may see the beginning — a cockfight — and think, “This is going to be some watchable sleaze.” But it isn’t. It isn’t even sleaze. It’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre without talent, storytelling, visual appeal or Bogart, but it does have a bad guy who is a man named Sally. One assumes that his father named him that because he knew that he wouldn’t be there to help him along, so he gave him that name and said goodbye, and he knew Sally would have to get tough or die.
Can you imagine renting this and expecting movie serial style action? The box art just screams desperation and disappointment and now, this film lies waiting for you amongst 49 other movies.
A wise man once said, “Marion, don’t look at it. Shut your eyes, Marion. Don’t look at it, no matter what happens.”
First off, I’d like to call out the person who posted the American Playhouse episode “Displaced Person” on YouTube and said that it was The Lazarus Syndrome. Obviously, you’re racist and think that Sam “Detective Sapir” Shaw is Louis Gossett Jr. That said, it was the story of a black kid who grew up and thought he was German and the army unit that saved him which included Matt “Max Headroom” Frewer and it won an Emmy.
This is not the made for TV movie that I was looking for.
I mean, a Kurt Vonnegut Jr. novel adaption? I’m awake all night looking for hard video drugs like Mattei WIP movies and Eastern bloc films about spiders copulating with virginal villagers, not things that are going to teach me how to be a better person.
Now I have to watch The Lazarus Syndrome.
The real The Lazarus Syndrome is a 1979 American made-for-television thriller directed by Jerry Thorpe that launched a weekly ABC series that lasted all of four episodes.
Starring E.G. Marshall as Dr. Mendel and Louis Gossett Jr. as Dr. MacArthur St. Clair, this was written by William Blinn, who also developed the TV shows The Interns, TheRookies, Eight is Enough and Starsky and Hutch. He also wrote Roots for television and Purple Rain, so the guy has a resume and a half, right?
Sadly, it doesn’t show here. The focus is on the then hot news of hospitals becoming big business and nobody wants to be reminded of this today. Man, Mill Creek, you decide to put the weirdest stuff on these sets. Who wanted to see a TV pilot that went nowhere other than me? Am I your target audience?
“Hey, I can’t stop you from watching shark movies any more than I can stop myself.” — Sam Panico, in his review Great White (2021), the latest in a long line of “shark” movies.
We can’t help ourselves.
Yes. The rumors are true: B&S About Movies will watch anystreaming offering with a shark in it, as it is our quest — as with Ouija Boards and Amityville prefixers (and all of the “House/La Casa” and “Demons” sequels) — to watch them all. That shallow water quest began with our “Ten Jaws Ripoffs” feature back in 2018 that capped off our “Bastard Sons of Jaws” week of reviews . . . and the obsession continues with our recent, 2021 catch-up catch bin “Shark Weak” event.
Yes. We’ll even endure Brooke Hogan for our fix of sharks swimming through sand.
Sure, those celluloid chummers had their own, unique entertaining charms. However, this live-action, feature film debut (his first was the 2011 graphic-comic book feature Sex, Dogz, and Rock n Roll; there’s a very nice “file footage” graphic-animation sequence in Sky Sharks, as well) by writer-director Marc Fehse is an instantly engaging, can’t-stop-watching ride (that I’d watch even if not assigned to review it). It joyfully reminds of the equally absurd, Finland-made Iron Sky (2012) colliding with the Norwegian-made Dead Snow (2009) — with a pinch of Chad Ferrin’s uber-fun meshing of the demon possession and airline disaster genres with Exorcism at 60,000 Feet (in Sky Shark’s bonkers-stellar opening set piece).
True to the title, Sky Sharks wastes no time in unleashing (IMO, well-made) over-the-top graphic kills (CGI) as a Wehrmacht of artillery-packed flying sharks manned by Nazi zombies attack a Vancouver-departed flight over Iceland: the latest in a rash of “unexplainable” air crashes.
Yes. The above sentence is real. I typed it.
So, who’s behind this aerial shark mayhem? Richter Technologies via the U.S. Department of the Army’s Department of Investigation of Ancient War Engine. It seems the past — the crew of a long-lost, Antarctica ice-stranded experimental German U-Boat dabbling in “dynamic aquatics” — of Dr. Klaus Richter (Austrian actor Thomas Morris; known to U.S. audiences for Schinder’s List and the Tom Hanks-starring Angels & Demons) has returned to bring the 4th Reich to power. Attacks on New York and London await in the wings . . . or is that fins?
As with any ex-Nazi scientist pushing 100 and keeping young via injections: it wasn’t meant to be this way. It was Dr. Richter’s scientific innovations that made America the world’s foremost superpower to achieve world peace. His work also resulted in the creation of “Project Himmelsfaust.” Based in the development of the K7B youth serum: Old Nazi men never die: they turn into “super soldiers” for the Motherland. Meanwhile, due to its side effects: human females transform into an impervious zombie force — and they’re curvy and stacked.
Yeah, Sky Sharks is awesome: we’ve got air-breathing sharks armed with missile complements under their pectoral fins, hot zombie chicks with blades for hands . . . oh, just watch this movie! Keep your eyes open for the familiar U.S. TV and indie-film faces of Amanda Bearse, Robert LaSardo, Lar Park-Lincoln, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, and the incomparable Tony Todd.
Screening on the overseas festival circuit since 2017 and making its U.S. streaming debut in late 2020 on Amazon, Sky Sharks made its bow this month as a free-with-ads stream on Tubi. For another ad-free experience, it’s now available as a VOD on You Tube Movies. The U.S. issued, MPI Home Video DVDs and Blus (2021) are available at all brick and mortar and online retailers, such as Amazon, Walmart, and Target. Also be sure to sample the trailer for Marc Fehse’s Sex, Dogz and Rock n Roll, on You Tube.
As for you, Sam: I told you I’d fin-up to the greens and raise your Great White. Place your bet, Big Hoss. Toss the chum bucket on the table. I dare you. A “Double Dog,” Farkus.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
“Why is she naked?” “Do you shower with clothes on?” “I don’t. But Mary Rose was not found in her home and she was not nude when they discovered her body.” “Look. Horror fans want certain things in their films.” “Tits?” “Among other things.” — Screenwriter and Producer bickering about the devilish details
We were first exposed to the joint resume of Tupelo, Mississippi-based writer and actor, producer and director Glenn Payne and writer and actress Casey Dillard with their effective, micro-budgeted horror-thriller, Driven (2020). That film went on to win three awards for “Best Feature” at the Jackson Crossroads, Magnolia Independent, and Tupulo Film festivals, along with actor Richard Speight Jr. (CW’s Supernatural) winning the “Best Actor” award at the Nashville Film Festival.
When we learned the horror-comedy Killer Concept, the latest film from Glenn Payne’s Dead Leaf Productions, was newly available for Tubi streaming, we wanted to watch the film, as his previous work, Driven, was impressive. If you haven’t yet seen Driven, do: think Michael Mann’s Collateral starring Tom Cruise — only with demon’s showing up. Trust us, you’ll enjoy the stream. Since then, we’ve also watched Glenn’s early film, Earthrise (2014), an impressive, against-the-budget science fiction piece about three explorers returning home from Mars, for the first time. If you read our reviews for Anton Doiron’s Space Trucker Bruce (2014), Robert Goodrich’s Ares 11, and Monty Light’s Space (2020), you know that when a filmmaker effectively executes the off-Earth/space-centric genre, we’ll champion that film. Add Earthrise to that list.
The usual modus operandi in producing a film about an infamous serial killer: wait for the killer to be caught. Just not in this Hitchcockian cocktail with a twist of wryly lime.
Our auteur, Mark (Glenn Payne), is a cinematographer working with Seth, an aspiring producer (fellow local Mississippi actor Coley Bryant of the 2017 beauty queen-boxing comedy, Fighting Belle) who, like most producers, throws integrity to the wind when it comes to making a hit movie. Mark finds himself talked into a project by Seth and his writer, Holly (Casey Dillard, the lead in Driven), to make a movie about a still-at-large, local serial killer. Hey, they might even solve the crime as they’re making the movie, which will be a great promotional gimmick.
True to form, Seth, again, like most producers, could care less about that pesky “character development” and “plot” nonsense that writers like Holly pride themselves on. He doesn’t want a serious “art” piece about the psyche of what drives a man to kill women. “Get the Freud out of here, Holly!”: Seth wants an ’80s-styled “boobs and blades” job. Scream bloody murder and let slip the gallons of red Karo, says Seth. And fire up that fog machine.
As with Driven before it: Killer Concept, while on a tight budget, doesn’t look “cheap” in the least and comes off as a well-shot film: the camera moves with style and the lighting keeps the proceedings dark and thrilling against the script’s lighter delivery of its dark humor. Sure, it’s a horror-comedy, yes, but the concept isn’t a full-on yuk-yuk fest analogous to Scary Movie: it’s a lighter take on that film’s raison d’etre: Scream, a film that, itself, had its suspenseful moments as the narrative shifts screwed with your concepts as to what is and isn’t real.
I enjoyed the fine writing of Casey Dillard who, again, impressed with her Final Draft skills on Driven. In the frames of Killer Concept, she’s intelligently crafted a Droste effect-styled screenplay: she’s a screenwriter, writing a screenplay about a screenwriter, fed up with the clichés of screenwriting permeating today’s A24 and Blumhouse-driven horror industry. Dillard’s mise en abyme intelligence continues as our director, the somewhat introverted Mark, isn’t the creepy, weird, deformed, ugly serial killer that Seth wants him to be.
Oops. The bag just lost its cat.
I enjoyed the “reality” of Mark as penned by Dillard. You shiver at the thought of guys like Ted Bundy and Dennis Rader: no one saw it coming. And you don’t see it coming, here. Well, Seth and Holly don’t; but you do, now, since I slaughtered the burlapped feline.
Hey, it’s not my fault. You’re the one that reads reviews about movies, written by some “nice guy” hunkered down in a Pittsburgh basement that watched the movie, before you watch the movie. But you wouldn’t have watched the movie if I didn’t write about the movie to make you want to watch the movie. Or something like that.
Anyway, I gotta go. I need to put a few more strokes of paint on my self-portrait before my mom brings my lunch of raw goat livers a nice cup warm cocoa. But wait . . . my mom is dead and I am actually “mother” bring my own livers and cocoa. And “she” is writing a screenplay about “me,” I mean, me about her. . . .
Making its streaming debut earlier this year on Amazon, Killer Concept is now available as a free-with-ads stream on Tubi through Indie Rights Movies. You can learn more about Glenn Payne’s painting and film works at his official website and, again, at his official Facebook page for Dead Leaf Productions. And be sure to learn more about his previous film, Driven, with our review.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.In addition to writing film reviews for B&S About Movies, hepublishes music journalism pieces, as well as short stories based on his screenplays, on Medium.
Jen (Veronika Issa, Devil’s Triangle) is single and doing what so many of us do, date online. I mean, that’s how Becca and I met. She doesn’t have as much luck as the two of us did, as she hooks up with Mike DeVorzon (Alien Conquest) who goes from nice to stalker — in the house — in no time at all. If he can’t have Jen, well, no one can.
The most famous face in this movie is Scout Taylor-Compton, who played Lita Ford in The Runaways and Laurie Strode in the two Rob Zombie Halloweenfilms that have suddenly gotten a lot better for some reason in the last month or so. We most recently reviewed her work in Apache Junction (2021), as well as the 2020 releases of Abducted (as a kick ass cop!), Enteral Code, and Getaway.
More Lifetime than Fangoria, nonetheless this was a quick and painless film about a very painful relationship.
Stalker in the House is available on demand and on DVD from Uncork’d Entertainment.
Based on the book Breakheart Pass by Alistair MacLean, this movie begins with a remote settlement in Eureka, California suffering from a diphtheria epidemic. An express train is dispatched toward the fort, filled with reinforcements and much-needed medical supplies. There are also some important civilians on board, like Nevada Governor Richard Fairchild (Richard Crenna) and his fiancée Marica (Jill Ireland), the daughter of Fort Humboldt’s commander.
Then, the train stops to let on United States Marshal Pearce (Ben Johnson) and his prisoner, John Deakin (Charles Bronson), a notorious outlaw with a price on his head.
The truth is that Deakin is really a Secret Service agent and that anyone who seemed on the side of the law is really using the epidemic as an excuse to send weapons to Native Americans to use against their fellow Americans. Anyone who isn’t part of the conspiracy is being killed one by one.
Beyond boasting other cast members like Sally Kirkland, Charles Durning and Ed Lauter. there’s ultra-heavy bad guy Robert Tessier and an insane fight on a train car in the snow that looks like one of the most dangerous scenes I’ve ever seen filmed. It was performed by stuntmen Howard Curtis (who was doubling Bronson) and Tony Brubaker (who was Archie Moore’s stand-in). It’s the last stunt directed by Yakima Canutt, who directed the chariot race in Ben-Hur and performed the stagecoach drop in Stagecoach that inspired the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones goes under the German truck. He also taught John Wayne how to fall off a horse, as well as inspired how the Duke acted on screen. The drawling, hesitant speech and the hip-rolling walk that made Wayne famous were all how Canutt actually behaved in real life. Along the way, Cannutt got hurt so many times that his injuries seem hyperbole: multiple broken ribs, breaking both legs at the ankles and even having his intestines split in half while doubling for Clark Gable in Boom Town.
In spite of all of those injuries, he lived to be ninety.
Directed by Tom Gries (The Rat Patrol TV series, Earth II), this film has another astounding practical effect. Those aren’t model train cars getting destroyed. They’re full-sized cars bought just to be run into each other.
The new Kino Lorber blu ray of Breakheart Pass has a brand new 2K master, new audio commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson, and reversible cover art. You can order it from Kino Lorber.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally watched and logged this on January 7, 2020. Do you have an opinion on this movie? Let us know! You can also see our thoughts on the sequel here.
The Sultan of Sexploitation! The King of Camp! And as H. Hershey, you directed early 80’s hardcore like Moments of Love. You were scum and I say that with the kind of infection I usually reserve for small animals. I wish you were alive so I could hug you.
How can you not love any movie that starts with two young boys getting repeatedly bitten and killed by an entire pit of angry rattlesnakes after their parents pretty much ignore them for cans of beer?
Soon, the local sheriff has to call on underpaid college professor and herpetologist Dr. Tom Parkinson to learn why the snakes are just so darn aggressive. Of course, Dr. Tom can barely keep his own cobras in their cages.
Parkinson and war photographer Ann Bradley soon learn that the military base has authorized the disposal of a nerve gas called CT3 and it’s causing all this commotion. Colonel Stroud, the guy behind it all, ends up killing the base’s medical officer before the cops close in and gun him down, too. The snakes, presumably, are still on the loose.
Director John McCauley waited nine years to make another movie, 1985’s Deadly Intruder. The movie also features Darwin Joston, who was Napoleon Wilson in Assault on Precinct 13 and Dr. Phibes in The Fog.
You can watch the Cinematic Titanic riffed version of this movie on Tubi.
Honestly, I’d be less embarrassed by that fact than I am to admit that I watched this movie.
Arthur Robinson was the auteur of this whole shebang, as he directed, wrote, art directed, production designed and even decorated the sets and wrote the original play that it was based on Don’t Leave Go of My Hand. This is his deal the whole way out and I’m shocked that he didn’t star in it as well.
The main character is the white-passing son of a light-skinned prostitute sent to live with his grandparents and forever stuck between the worlds of black and white. That sounds very sweet, except that Grandpa assaults Young Boy’s girlfriend, which is not the positive life lesson I was hoping for.
Somehow, this was sold as a blacksploitation movie when it’s closer to that chitlin circuit plays you used to see advertised at 4 AM right before Perspectives.
Then again, I’ve never seen a movie that goes from a sepia funeral to the main character choking his mother to death, so there’s that. Spoiler warning for a film I warn you to not watch.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Benjamin Merrell lives in Seattle, WA. You can check out his blog at cestnonunblog.com and follow him on Letterboxd.
Several Manhattan yuppies escape the city for a nice, relaxing weekend in the hillbilly-infested Appalachian hills of…Upstate New York. Little do they know that their weekend of fun is about to turn deadly…
Recently divorced Marie has a new stockbroker boyfriend who just bought a farmhouse upstate and is in the process of building a boat on the property. So they, along with Marie’s sister and her gay best friend, leave the city to check on the progress of the boat and enjoy a pleasant weekend out in the country. But not long after they arrive at the farmhouse someone puts on the gruesome Halloween mask Marie’s sister bought as a joke and is now killing them all one by one.
The possible suspects are numerous; too many if you ask me. The biggest weakness this movie has is how they handle the mystery of the killer’s identity. The whodunit aspect relies heavily on having way too many red herrings, especially considering there aren’t even that many characters in the movie. They want you to believe that anyone could be the killer, but the overabundance of potential suspects only succeeds in making it more obvious as time goes on who the killer actually is. There’s a scene towards the end where three of the potential suspects are running with weapons through the woods after Marie. They could have built this moment up as a real nail biter of a finale where Marie (and the audience) would have no idea which one of them was the real killer and which was her savior, but unfortunately by that point in the story the killer had already been long revealed, which sapped a good deal of the tension out of what could have been a really great finale set piece for the film.
The two most obvious suspects for the masked killer are Mac, the guy providing lumber for the boat, who is way too comfortable sexually harassing Marie (who, to be fair, hasn’t been doing a particularly great job of showing that she’s not interested) and Otis (played by the always fantastic William Sanderson), whose father was the previous owner of the farmhouse and is currently helping with the construction of the boat. Mac, who gives off his own creeper vibes, tells them a story about how Otis attacked a couple, almost beat the guy to death and then branded his girl with an ‘H’ (for ‘whore’. Otis is not the brightest bulb.) It’s never really clear if there’s any truth to the story or if Mac was just making up the whole story about Otis, but regardless Otis definitely is a creepy motherfucker. Of course, Mac is no saint either. After telling his story he then enjoys the hell out of watching his big city boss step on a fishhook.
They aren’t the only ones the movie casts suspicion on though. Could it be Jay, the gross boat engineer whose hands have been all over Marie’s sister all weekend? Or what about the gay best friend, Nicky? This is the red herring I find the most questionable. Nicky is actually pretty badass at the start of the movie. The first thing he does after they get into town is he tries to order a fancy martini at the local watering hole, much to the confusion of the bartender, who has apparently never heard of a martini before, and the local hicks who don’t take kindly to gay folk in their small backwoods town (despite the fact that they’re both dressed like reject Village People). Nicky has a pretty good grasp of the situation though, and he handily kicks their asses before they get a chance to gang up on him, and he looks pretty cool doing it. But instead of using that to set him up as a character who can take care of himself when the killer eventually shows up, the rest of his character arc quickly becomes a lot more problematic. Some unfortunate gay panic was definitely slipped into the script because from then on he’s portrayed much more like a sexual predator than a potential victim, despite not having really done anything to deserve that portrayal. Everyone in this movie has to be at least a little suspicious though.
Released in the late summer of ‘79 as one of the early proto-Slashers, but shot in 1976, Savage Weekend definitely has more in common with 70’s grindhouse sleaze like The Last House On The Left or Deliverance (both released in 1972) than the more kill-focused slashers of the 80’s. The gore factor might be a little disappointing for an audience raised on 80’s slashers (forget gore, there’s barely any blood), but Savage Weekend actually does a great job of making that violence feel visceral and real, even if they don’t end up showing much. Most of the violence lives, not up on the screen, but in your head long after the scene is over, and much like with Texas Chain Saw Massacre, you’re probably going to walk away from this movie thinking it was a lot gorier than it actually was.
This does make sense, as people were much less obsessed with gore in the mid-70s and much more obsessed with sex, which this movie has in spades. Everyone’s constantly getting naked, or hooking up, or getting naked and hooking up, or watching someone get naked and hooking up. Every aspect of the movie feels constantly sexually charged, which leads you to believe there’s going to be more of a psychosexual aspect to the killer that never really pans out. Horror usually reflects the fears of the era it was produced in and Savage Weekend is no different. Fears of sexual liberation, female empowerment, gay liberation, and divorce all have roots in the themes of this film.
Savage Weekend isn’t perfect. The writing is sloppy and unfocused. It tries to do too much with too little, and the small budget limitations definitely show at times. But it also captures a little magic that not all of its contemporaries can make claim to. There’s a reason Savage Weekend has a cult following. It has a very unique quality to it that’s hard to pin down. It has this odd rhythm to it that really draws you in, so even if the whodunit aspect of it turns out to be a real bust, there’s still a real mystery hanging over its atmosphere that makes this movie a real blast to watch for fans of the genre.
After shooting the racist sheriff in self-defense, Apache Chato (Charles Bronson) heads back home, far away from the affairs of the white men. However, former Confederate Captain Quincey Whitmore (Jack Palance) has put back on his uniform and brought together former soldiers demoralized by the end of the war — look at what year this movie came out and you can see what this movie really is saying — and begins hunting down Chato, who much like the Vietcong knows the land better and is fighting for his family, not for pride or because he’s been peer pressured.
That means he kills every single one of them.
Also, this is when you realize that Michael Winner directed this movie, because not only do four of the posse — Elias (Ralph Waite), Earl (Richard Jordan), Hall (Victor French) and Lansing (William Watson) — gang rape and leave Chato’s wife for dead, they also string up his best friend and set him on fire.
Yes, Michael Winner, the man who brings you the patriarch of The Waltons assaulting a woman.
The first victim afterward is Earl, who is obsessed with Chato’s wife. Like a slasher villain, Bronson’s character dispatches the men one after the other and leaves their bodies to be found. He’s gone full Apache, no longer wearing the clothes of the Europeans and the men begin to turn on one another, even killing Whitmore, who has long become disgusted by their actions.
Still, the odds are against Bronson. Then again, that’s usually how it is.
The first of six movies that Winner would make with Bronson, this was shot on some of the same Spanish sets as Once Upon a Time in the West. Winter would say, in the book Bronson’s Loose, that this was the only of their films that Bronson enjoyed watching.
The new Kino Lorber release of Chato’s Land has a brand new 2K master of the film, as well as new audio commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger and Steve Mitchell, an interview with screenwriter Gerald Wilson and reversible cover art. You can order it from Kino Lorber.
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