Samantha Connelly (Erica Tazel, Justified) is a single mom and a career woman who feels that she’s missing out on life. Then she meets Giselle Christophe (Natasha Marc), who is everything she isn’t: confident, outspoken and sexually up front. In just a few weeks, Sam has stopped hanging out with her old confidant Kiki (Tanya Chisholm) and is out every night and living it up, just as her firm gives her the opportunity to defend football star Jaden Turk (Blue Kimble) from a scandalous divorce. But then someone with a carnival mask starts showing up outside her door, Giselle starts getting scary and things get all Lifetime but on Tubi, which of course means that the sex gets amped up a bit.

https://villainous-beauties.fandom.com/wiki/Kiki_(The_Deadliest_Lie)

Do you like junk food? Well, this is a salty snack for your eyes and mushy brain. Seriously, this is a movie that starts in a legal office and ends with its main character holding a rifle on two women who want to be her best friend no matter what.

One night, Sam and Kiki go to a bar and that’s where Sam decides to stop being so chaste and hooks up with Clay Davis, who ends up assaulting her outside the bar. Giselle ends up saving her by beating the man unmercifully, leaving him bleeding in an alley. And that’s how friendships in Lifetime movies — and Tubi originals — get their start.

Things get so much better for Sam, as she gets a new man named Miles (Stephen Wesley Green). This causes her to distance herself from Giselle, who may be a wild hang, but is an exhausting full-time friend. Giselle responds by showing up at Sam’s house at odd hours, flirting with Sam’s son Tony (Zuri Soyinka) and even taking a job in Sam’s office as the assistant to her boss Monty (Douglas Dickerman).

The final straw in the friendship between the two women happens at an Eyes Wide Shut nightclub sponsored by Party City. Does Sam end up making out with her athlete client? Do the photos of their steamy dry humping end up being shown in the divorce deposition? Does Miles end up dead potentially at the hands of Giselle? Will Jaden get killed too and it looks like Sam did it? Which bad friend will be the worst one?

The Deadliest Lie was directed by Ruth Du and written by Mitchell Altieri, who made The Hamiltons, the remake of April Fool’s Day and The Nightwatchmen. This movie is exactly as trashy as you would hope that it would be, a film full of people acting badly and props being as cheap as possible, all building to a conclusion to can see coming. But come on, it’s like eating the best Chex Mix ever and having a bowl that keeps getting filled over and over again.

You can watch this on Tubi.

A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die is also known as Massacre at Fort Holman. At the time that it was made, Italian westerns had begun to copy themselves, as this was shot on the same set as The Deserter, in the same Almería, Spain locations as Leone’s films — you can see the homestead from Once Upon a Time In the West and the fort in this film was also used in El Condor — and even takes songs directly from Day of Anger.

It goes even further into Xerox territory by doing what several other Italian westerns had done: take an existing property and make it a cowboy film. This time, that movie is The Dirty Dozen.

Is it any wonder this was released by K-Tel?

What it has over most of its competitors is star power with James Coburn, Telly Savalas and Bud Spencer in the cast.

Disgraced Union Colonel Pembroke (Coburn) — reduced to looting a church — is arrested and tries to commute his sentence by saying that he has a plan to recapture Fort Holman, which he had previously surrendered to Major Ward (Savalas) and the Confederate army without firing a shot. He assembles the army which will help him take it back out of prisoners, including a deserter named McIver (Guy Mairesse, a murderer — of his commanding officer — and rapist — of his commanding officer’s wife — named Pickett (Benito Stefanelli), Fred the horse thief Fred (Ugo Fangareggi), medicine thief and black marketeer Will (Adolfo Lastretti), half Native American — and killer of his fellow soldiers for selling alcohol to the Apache — Jeremy (Joe Pollini, who was also the assistant director), Sergeant Brent (Reinhard Kolldehoff) — who somehow is wearing the cross of Pembroke’s dead wife — and a looter named Eli Sampson (Spencer). Only one of the group refuses, a religious pacifist agitator, who doesn’t want this strange opportunity for freedom and would rather the certainty of the gallows.

Pembroke tells them that there’s gold inside and that he’s a convict just like them. The truth is that he only gave up the fort because Ward had taken his son and promised he’d be returned if he complied. He did and his son was killed.

By the end, everyone — save Pembroke and Sampson — is dead. War is bloody and ruthless and unforgiving, but so is revenge. Blake lies dead, killed with his own sword. Probably the same sword that killed Pembroke’s son. But even if he has vengeance, he’ll never have his boy back.

Director Tonino Valerii also made Day of Anger, My Dear Killer, My Name Is Nobody and the JFK assassination in the west film Price of Power. He’s pretty good, even if his name doesn’t come up much in the conversation on Italian directors. This was written by Rafael Azcona and Ernesto Gastadi, whose list of credits could fill our entire site.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Find a Place to Die is a remake of the American western Garden of Evil. After a long fight with a gang of killers led by Chanto (Mario Dardanelli), Lisa (Pascale Petit) escapes with her life while her husband does not. She hires a former Confederate officer named Joe Collins (Jeffrey Hunter) and another gang to gain revenge. But all that gold that Lisa and her husband had found — plus her beauty — put everyone against each other.

There’s also the crazy character of Reverend Riley, a man of the cloth who doesn’t deny himself the pleasures of the flesh. Played by Alfredo Lastretti, he’s the best part of this movie.

Director Giuliano Carnimeo made Light the Fuse… Sartana Is Coming, Have a Nice Funeral on Me, Amigo… Sartana, Sartana’s Here… Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin and I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death under the name Anthony Ascott, as well as They Call Him Cemetery, The Case of the Bloody Iris and Ratman. He co-wrote the film with Lamberto Benvenuti, who made The Legacy of Caine.

Sadly, a year after this movie, Hunter was injured in an explosion gone wrong making the crime movie Cry Chicago (¡Viva América!). On his way back to the U.S., he went into shock and couldn’t speak or move. Doctors could only find a displaced vertebra and a concussion, yet within seven months, he would suffer an intracranial hemorrhage while walking down the stairs at his home, crack his skull and die after brain surgery was not successful. He was only 42.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Luke Barrett (Antonio Sabato) wakes up next to a dead man and no memory of how he arrived at this point. The bullet meant to kill him just grazed him, giving him a concussion and amnesia. He rides into town and learns that he and his partner Donovan were just about to kill his brother Victor (Klaus Kinski) for cash. How did he get here? And what happens after?

Twice a Judas was shot by Aristide Massaccesi, who we all know and love, and features Claudia Rivelli as Luke’s wife. She’s Ornella Muti’s sister in real life.

The strangest thing about this movie is that the bank that is trying to remove Victor is presented as being for the people, which we all know in no way can be true. Maybe they’re just a little less horrible than Victor, a land owner who wants his land, he wants it farmed and then he wants everyone else’s land too.

Director Nando Cicero mostly made comedies, while writer Jaime Jesús Balcázar wrote The Devil’s Honey, Jess Franco’s The Castle of Fu Manchu and Goldface, the Fantastic Superman.

You can read another take on this movie as part of Drive-In Friday: Kinski Spaghetti Westerns.

Directed and written by Scott Eggleston (who directed the TV series Midnyte and two shorts, Invader and Collection Day) before this. He’s also the creator of the YouTube channel The Frugal Filmmaker.

Russ (Chris Levine) and his wife Jennifer (Maddison Bullock) have just moved into a house that’s a definite fixer-upper, so they probably had to deal with a lot of back and forth with their lender, probably not having a traditional mortgage but instead an FHA 203(k) loan, which covers a home that needs repairs up to the tear-down as long as the foundation remains in place. I don’t know, maybe they got a HomeStyle loan, which is Fannie Mae conventional loan that limits the renovation amount to 50% of the as-completed value (the difference is that the 203(k) has no maximum as long as the After Repair Value is under the FHA maximum loan amount.

I’m telling you all of these mortgage and loan facts because in case you ever wondered why no one leaves a home that they know is haunted, in 2022 it’s very simple. Once you buy a home, you’re pledging your future to that property. This is really true with any loans that cover a home that needs construction or renovation. After all, if you abandon the home — you can’t tell prospective buyers about the ghosts — you’re about to lose everything. I mean, yes, you also might die or be possessed, but money is tight.

Russ is also a paranormal researcher, so you’d think he’d have some kind of demonic home inspection, but perhaps he was just too excited about the property. There’s one major reason why: Jennifer has a terminal illness and he thinks the house can cure her.

Who cares if the last owners just disappeared?

Seeing as how this comes from someone who calls himself The Frugal Filmmaker, you already know that the budget is less than a tank of gas, but then again, that tanks of gas could pay for Heaven’s Gate by the end of this year.

Instead of big budget CGI, there are two great performances by the leads, as they have to carry so much of this movie. It does have some pages from an alchemist’s notebook and if I’ve learned anything, it’s to never read notes from scientists or magicians that you find in a new house. While this movie doesn’t have anyone from a reel to reel tape, you shouldn’t play that either. Just be fine with not knowing and not dealing with demons.

There are some fun twists in this and it does a lot that works despite its budget instead of worrying about what won’t work with the budget. After all, ideas don’t cost anything and this movie has a really intriguing premise. It also spends plenty of time letting us get to know the leads and care about them before the horrific moments happen.

You can watch the entire movie on YouTube and learn more about Bad Bones on the official Facebook page and official web site.

Spencer Bradford (Jacob Blair), the creative head of a video game development company — who is more protagonist than hero, because he’s a complete jerk — just wants to get their new game through the crunch. Yet when a Redditor who claims that Spencer stole his game begins to hack into the lives of everyone that works at the company.

Yes, a slasher about social media and video games.

Director Steven R. Monroe also made Teardrop, Unborn and Harland Manor, all of which are Tubi exclusives. He’s probably best known for the I Spit on Your Grave remake. Writer George Olson’s experience is limited to a short and a web series, Surreal Estate.

There’s a scene where a new employee waxes on and on about what a life-changing experience it is to work on the game while his boss literally urinates in front of him, the boss’ bartender girlfriend destroying numerous dudes at a bar with her caustic customer service, an office where real weapons hang on the walls and get passed around in conference rooms, a sex scene followed by the male character being completely crushed by the women afterward and an explosion in a parking lot that looks worse than anything in any first person shooter I’ve played going back to GoldenEye. Oh yeah — and a little button on the ending with dudes in Christmas sweaters beyond excited to play the game and finding out that it’s…well, you’ll see.

This was filmed in Winnipeg and when I realized how Canadian it all was, it answered so many of my questions.

You can watch this on Tubi.