The fourth film in the Scanners series and the first film in the Scanner Cop series, this movie is all about rookie LAPD cop Sam Staziak (Daniel Quinn), a scanner who has been brought onto the force to use his telekinetic and telepathic abilities to stop crime.

When a series of murders target the police, Sam begins to lose it, with his powers going into overdrive and his mind potentially betraying him as he hunts the killer.

In all honestly, this movie is hundreds of times better than it has any right to be. You have to admire the sheer balls it takes to grab the Scanners idea, throw it into a straight police movie and just go with it. Even better, Richard Lynch, the bad guy of all bad guys, shows up and does his thing.

This was directed, produced and written by Pierre David and was the first film he directed. He executive produced Scanners, Videodrome and The Brood. He may have only directed one other movie, Serial Killer, but he has 216 production credits, mainly TV movies like She Is Not Your Daughter, My Daughter’s Psycho Friend, Murdered at 17 and My Life as a Dead Girl.

I still can’t believe how much I loved this movie.

Directed by Christian Duguay and written by B.J. Nelson — the same team that did Scanners 2, as well as some of the same actors — this film is not related at all to that movie.

It’s also way better than that movie.

Helena Monet (Liliana Komorowska, Screamers) is a scanner who constantly deals with the horrifying side effects of those powers until her adoptive father’s experimental Eph-3 drug drowns out the voices, but also causes her to lose all of her morals. She kills that father figure, takes over his drug company and also starts to take over all of the world’s entertainment.

Meanwhile, her adopted brother and fellow scanner Alex has been raised in a monastery where he’d have no outside voices bothering him, but now he must come back to a world he doesn’t know to stop his sister.

So yeah — amazingly, the third Scanners film is not all that bad. Even more incredibly, Scanner Cop blows this away.

You can watch this on Tubi. You can also get this movie and Scanners 2 from Shout! Factory.

Media Home Entertainment knew what was up. We wanted more Scanners and we didn’t care where we got it. Christian Duguay, who would direct the third film in this series and Screamers, took over for David Cronenberg and suddenly, we had a whole new story to watch.

David Hewlett plays David Kellum, a veterinary student that gains the power to hear thoughts. Soon, this becomes overwhelming. Yet when he stops a robbery by exploding the head of a criminal, police chief John Forrester offers him a job tracking down criminals, like a man who is putting strychnine in milk containers, making this movie in the poisoned milk genre along with The Cat O’Nine Tails, The Two Mrs. Carrolls, Impulse, The Woods, Confessions, Edge of Darkness and Revenge of the Living Dead Girls.

Of course, Forrester just wants to take over the city and is using another Scanner named Drak to murder the mayor and to kill our hero’s parents. Well, adoptive parents, as his real mom and dad are Cameron Vale and Kim Obrist from the first movie. He has a sister who leads him to a secret place filled with captive Scanners and a final battle with Drak.

This movie is so Canadian that Aldo Nova plays over the final credits.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Morgan J. Freeman is not Morgan Freeman. He directed this movie, then went on to produce Laguna Beach, 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom.

But this movie…

I had no idea that there was a sequel to American Psycho, much less that the movie wasn’t originally intended to even be a sequel. It was a script titled The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die and it wasn’t until production began that the film’s script was altered with the incorporation of Patrick Bateman.

In fact, Bret Easton Ellis – the author of the book — claimed that Lions Gate wanted to include a serial killer subplot in their adaption of his book The Rules of Attraction and he turned them down, so this was the movie that resulted.

So yeah, remember that Patrick Bateman? The guy who we were left wondering is he or isn’t he a serial killer? Well, this movie forgets all that nonsense by starting with him on a date with lead character Rachael Newman’s (Mila Kunis) babysitter. While the 12-year-old is in the other room, Bateman kills her and dissects her. But Rachael turns the tables by stabbing him with an icepick.

Now, she’s nearly all grown up and studying criminology in the class of former FBI agent Professor Starkman. That’s part of her insanely obsessive path to becoming an agent herself. And he’s played by William Shatner and our protagonist is in love with him, so if the idea of a 71-year-old Kirk being pursued by a 19-year-old Jackie, well then this is the movie for you.

Kunis attempted to stop production of American Psycho III, saying in an interview, “Please — somebody stop this. Write a petition. When I did the second one, I didn’t know it would be American Psycho II. It was supposed to be a different project, and it was re-edited, but, ooh..”

It’s astounding that this exists, that it has at least two well-known actors and that so few people are talking about it. Also, it has a cat get microwaved and despite how much I usually enjoy Kunis, I struggled through this one.

Yeah, I get it, the original Poltergeist is incredible and the real enemy is the greed of the Reagan 80s, but that movie has real skeletons in a swimming pool and this one has H.R. Giger-designed monsters and a villain in Rev. Henry Kane that still frightens me because he could be real — well, you know, before he became a ghost — as he led his entire apocalyptic cult into a cave and sealed them inside to die at his side rather than face his end times prophecy being incorrect.

Supposedly, the first time Heather O’Rourke saw Kane, she burst into tears.

Whether he’s singing “God is in His Holy Temple! Earthly thoughts be silent now!” or screaming at an entire horrified family “You’re gonna die in there! All of you! YOU ARE GONNA DIE!” Kane is everything perfect and awesome and unholy about horror movie villains all wrapped up in the sinister form of a preacher. He was played by Julian Beck, the co-founder and director of The Living Theatre, which seems to be pretty highbrow origins for a scary movie bad guy. Then again, he was influenced by Antonin Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty, much like Lucio Fulci. Sadly, Beck died of stomach cancer before this movie even came out; his real life persona was not a holy man, as he was charged dozen times on three continents for crimes including disorderly conduct, indecent exposure, possession of narcotics and failing to participate in a civil defense drill.

The Freelings family are all back — Diane (Jo Beth Williams), Steve (Craig T. Nelson), Robbie (Oliver Robbins) and Carol Anne (O’Rourke) — except for their daughter Dana, as sadly Dominique Dunne was murdered shortly after the first movie played theaters. It’s said that she is away at college.

Kane comes into the story when it turns out that Carol Anne is one of the few living beings who has been to the world of the dead and came back. Kane wants to use her to come into our world, where he can show up for limited periods, doing absolutely terrifying things* such as calling people on toy phones and making Steve throw up a gigantic worm, which is played by Noble Craig, a Vietnam vet who lost lose both of his legs, his right arm and most of the sight in his right eye. He turned that horrible moment in his life into the ability to become a living and breathing special effect in Sssssss, the remake of The Blob, Bride of the Re-Animator, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and Big Trouble In Little China.

Luckily, they have some help this time from Will Sampson from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a magical Native American, a returning Zelda Rubenstein as Tangina Barrons and Geraldine Fitzgerald as the recently passed Grandma Jess.

As for that supposed curse, well, Sampson also died from open heart surgery not long after this movie. Supposedly, he came in late at night and did an exorcism on the set after some film was ruined.

We can agree or disagree on that film legend, but nobody at all debates who made this one: Brian Gibson.

This movie by all rights should be horrible, but I can watch it again and again. It just hits the right notes and has one of the ultimate in horror film villains. If you haven’t seen it, don’t let the number after the name hold you back.

*He also sings “Leaning on Jesus,” the same song Robert Mitchum sings in The Night of the Hunter.

It took eight years for a sequel to Caddyshack to get made, perhaps the greatest “hijinks ensue” movie ever made. I say that phrase because it’s such a simple concept: a quick statement like “A day in the life of a golf course…and hijinks ensue.”

The beauty of the original film is that despite the out there characters like Chevy Chase’s Ty Webb and Rodney Dangerfield’s Al Czervik, the story is really about the struggles of Danny Noonan (Michael O’Keefe), a working-class kid forced to follow the whims of the incredibly rich in the hopes that he can work toward a better life. It also comes from actual life, as writer Brian Doyle-Murray, his brothers Bill and John, too — was a caddie at Indian Hill Club in Winnetka, Illinois. His brothers Bill and John Murray, and director Harold Ramis had all been in Danny’s caddy shoes at one point. Most of the people in the movie were all based on actual members of the clubs that they had worked at.

Ramis told the A.V. Club that he went in with the right intentions: “They said, “Hey, we’ve got a great idea: The Shack is Back! And I said, “No, I don’t think so.” But they said that Rodney really wanted to do it, and we could build it around Rodney. Rodney said, “Come on, do it.” Then the classic argument came up which says that if you don’t do it, someone will, and it will be really bad. So I worked on a script with my partner Peter Torokvei, consulting with Rodney all the time. Then Rodney got into a fight with the studio and backed out. We had some success with Back to School, which I produced and wrote, and we were working with the same director, Alan Metter. When Rodney pulled out, I pulled out, and then they fired Alan and got someone else. I got a call from [co-producer] Jon Peters saying, “Come with us to New York; we’re going to see Jackie Mason!” I said, “Ooh, don’t do this. Why don’t we let it die?” And he said, “No, it’ll be great.” But I didn’t go, and they got other writers to finish it. I tried to take my name off that one, but they said if I took my name off, it would come out in the trades and I would hurt the film.”

This moment of wondering why this movie is being made and feeling is that it’s the wrong idea? That will come up throughout the discussion of this movie.

So instead of Rodney, we get Jackie Mason. Sure, they’re both older Jewish comedians who married much younger women late in their lives, but that’s about all they have in common. Rodney’s character was an everyman who seemed to be using the audience as his therapist, bemoaning the way he was treated with lines like “I know I’m ugly. I said to a bartender, “Make me a zombie.’ He told me that God beat him to it.” To me, Mason always felt like he was lecturing the audience, somewhat above it*.

Dan Aykroyd is one of my favorite actors, but he’s basically coming on to be Bill Murray. And while Jonathan Silverman and Michael O’Keefe are somewhat interchangeable, there’s a large divide between Robert Stack and Ted Knight. And that’s no slight to any of these actors, but when you’re placed in the same exact role as a movie that is beloved, you’re going to get compared. After all, Ted Knight is my favorite villain in any movie. He’s perfect in his role. And while I love Robert Stack, I can only see him in heroic roles or parts that make fun of his heroic nature.

I mean, I love Randy Quaid, but his role was written for Sam Kinison, who would have destroyed audiences with that part.

To be fair, Dangerfield was to be in this, but a month before production, he bailed, realizing that it wouldn’t work. He kept adding to his contract, demanding final cut and royalties and getting everything he wanted, except to be released from the film. This all ended up with him facing a $10 million dollar lawsuit.

But there still needed to be a movie.

As for director Allan Arkush, he told Sports Illustrated “I should have never made this movie! What was I thinking?” He told us — in an interview we were honored to get to conduct — “You should never make a movie for the wrong reasons. You should only make movies about something where you know no one else can make it better than you.”

So what’s it all about, you may ask.

Kate Hartounian (Jessica Lundy, who was in Bright Lights, Big City and Vampire’s Kiss the same year this was released), the daughter of real estate developer and working man Jack (Mason), seeks to improve her social status by following the advice of her friend Miffy Young (Chynna Phillips) and asks her dad to join the Bushwood Country Club.

Of course, seeing as how her dad builds housing that normal people can afford, he doesn’t fit in with club members like Chandler Young (Stack), his wife Cynthia (Dina Merrill, Operation Petticoat) and Mr. Jamison (an always welcome Paul Bartel).

Sure, hijinks ensue, but it’s hard to get behind the blustering Mason, who strangely attracts Diane Cannon, making this into something of a science fiction movie. The gopher can now talk (someone get Frank Welker in the booth stat!) and Chevy Chase shows up for all of five minutes, most of which consists of him being a sexist boor to scare off multiple women in a scene that may have seemed funny in 1988 but seems beyond gross in 2021 (I know, I know — let’s not place our modern values on movies from the past; I’m also the guy who brings you all sorts of aberrant Italian and Spanish gut-churning filth, right?!? But maybe I just agree with the “medium talent” assessment of Chase).

The hardest thing to deal with in this movie that it’s made by incredibly talented people placed into a thankless struggle to make something halfway decent. I mean, Harold Ramis and PJ Torokvei (who wrote Armed and Dangerous, Back to School, WKRP in Cincinnati and Real Genius) wrote the script with rewrites by Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman, who wrote Who Framed Roger Rabbit together**.

The thing that really sticks out to me is that Caddyshack works whether or not you play golf, but if you love the game, you can see the nuances and enjoyment of the sport within the movie. In the sequel, golf just seems to be something in the background, other than the miniature golf course finale that closes the movie.

I guess you should add the phrase, “Don’t remake Caddyshack” to other important lessons like “Never fight a land war in Asia” and “Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.”

In our aforementioned chat with the director, this movie was summed up quite simply:

B&S: So why Caddyshack II?

ALLAN: Yes, exactly. Why Caddyshack II? There are no more questions to be answered.

*Indeed, Arkush said –after seeing Mason perform two nights in a row — “I started to get a very different impression of him. The thing that occurred to me was that he didn’t connect with the audience in any sort of personal way. That’s not necessarily a good thing for someone who’s supposed to be your lead. At least when Rodney says, “I get no respect,” there’s an empathy that he evokes from the audience.”

**To be fair, they also wrote Wild Wild West and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, so perhaps…

2-4-5 Trioxin gas is the U.S. Army’s greatest weapon and will create nearly unkillable fighting machines, a fact that Curt Reynolds (J. Trevor Edmond, who is also in Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings and Meatballs 4) and his girlfriend Julie Walker (Melinda Clarke, Lady Heather from CSI and Jessica Priest in Spawn) learn as they snoop around the military base which is commanded by Curt’s father.

A SNAFU in the lab causes Curt’s military dad to be demoted and they need to move, but his son refuses and only wants to be with his girlfriend, who grabs his crotch while they’re riding a motorcycle and just like The Devil’s Honey, bad things happen.

Unlike that Fulci erotic madness, Julie is reanimated as a zombie and just when you think this movie is going to get silly, well, it gets pretty great. She’s consumed by ravenous hunger and is continually upset by the idea that she can no longer feel her heart beating inside her body. How does a sequel to a reimagining of another franchise end up doing the best job of explaining what it’s like to be the undead of any other film I’ve seen?

To keep the hunger at bay, she begins skewering herself with metal, leading to a fetishistic zombie dream — nightmare? — look, which totally makes this movie work. Plus, you have a cast with people like Kent McCord from Adam 12, James T. Callahan (Walter Powell from Charles in Charge), Sarah Douglas (Ursa from Superman), November 1988 Playboy Playmate of the Month Pia Reyes and Waxwork director Alex Hickox as a doctor killed in the bloody opening.

Man, Brian Yuzna has had some decent films. There’s Society, Bride of Re-Animator, Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation, The Dentist, Faust, Necronomicon, Beyond Re-Animator, The Dentist 2 and he also wrote From Beyond, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker. Writer John Penney also did the scripts for The Power, The Kindred and directed and wrote the baffling Zyzzyx Rd.

Zombies with exoskeletons, doomed romance, movie punks, a lead heroine who hates who she has become and the military being as ineffective as ever. Man, this one has it all. It’s that rare sequel, the one that’s so much better than it has any right to be.