In October of 2020, food blogger Jeff Blake and his half-brother Andy went on a food tour that had the potential to change their lives.

They were never seen again.

This movie is the footage of their trip.

Bret Lada, who plays Jeff, directed and co-write the film with Dustin Fontaine, who plays Andy. Fontaine summed the film up in a very funny way: “Created by a displaced screen actor, an out-of-work Blue Man, an Australian-based sound engineer, and a first-time female producer; this film is a testament to creation and keeping the artistic spirit alive while the rest of the world was forced into hibernation. Our story is a joyride of laughs, thrills and suspense.”

Jeff is close to getting his own show on the Food Network. He’s just learned about Andy thanks to an ancestry web site because his recently deceased father never told him. They hit it off — at first — but as the trip goes on, Andy’s mental problems reveal themselves. The only problem? Jeff has sent the tapes to Food Network, who wants a show, but Andy has to be a part of it. And Andy’s just been abandoned at a hotel, so Jeff has to apologize. But then things get, well, out of hand.

This is a really interesting idea and the found footage style of the movie makes sense, as Jeff films every moment of his life.

The Andy Baker Tape premieres on the Terror Films YouTube channel August 5 before a wide digital release on August 12 and the Kings of Horror on August 19. You can also watch it on Tubi.

Directed by Rebekah McKendry (All the Creatures Were Stirring) and written by David Ian McKendry, Joshua Hull, and Todd Rigney, this film finds a depressed Wes (Ryan Kwanten) dealing with his breakup by hitting the road. At a rest stop, he gets drunk and burns everything he owns. Heading into the restroom to puke, he finds himself locked inside a stall while the next one over, inside a glory hole, is a voice belonging to J.K. Simmons.

That voice is a cosmic god by the name of Ghat and if Wes wants to save all of reality, he must submit his body to him. But is that really a Lovecraftian monster inside the other toilet? Is Wes really the good person he claims to be? And will two abused children — a hungover human and an Elder God — be able to bond? Are we all doomed?

Glorious has a great concept and would probably be even better as a short than a high concept full-length. That said, I was in no way bored by this movie and you should probably check it out — it’s exclusively on Shudder — and make up your own mind. You’ll never pee in a rest stop the same way again.

Pet shop owners by day and swingers by night, Italian couple Hermes and Betta are still regular people. Director and cinematographer Mauro Russo Rouge was invited into their lives with no moment off-limits, which gives this documentary an honest, sex-positive look at the swinger lifestyle without the normal judgment or exploitation that you would expect.

Rouge said of the filming, “I hope that the audience watches the film with objectivity and without prejudice towards this couple who, despite being unscrupulous and transgressive, also have amazing heart and honesty. Hermes and Betta live an uninhibited but serene sexuality. “We are just like you.” Betta has been repeating this phrase to me for over a year. I can now confirm it is absolutely true!”

The thing I learned about this movie is that setting up all of these encounters with other couples is a lot of work, all to keep emotions out of the way and the right people coming together. Often the single people are simply sex toys for couples to use and move on; yet through all of this, Hermes and Betta share all things, even working together at their pet shop. It’s a level of sharing that many relationships would feel strained by; they seem to have a supportive and loving marriage and this film shines a welcome light on other lifestyles without any need for moralizing.

Bloom Up opens in New York City on August 12 at the Quad Cinema, expanding to the Laemmle Noho in Los Angeles and other markets on August 19 from Kino Lorber.

Alright, I take it back, some found footage is good.

Then again, not all found footage movies are this great.

New York psychiatrist Joe Glazer (Rip Torn) is going through a divorce and has taken on the name of Glassman and rented an apartment. There, he has a video camera behind a mirror that records his love life and his rambling speeches as he goes through an emotional collapse.

It also records his relationships with three women: his ex-mistress Monica (Vivica Lindfors, Creepshow), a former patient named Joann (Sally Kirkland) and Karen (Phoebe Dorin), the wife of one of his best friends.

Coming Apart was shot in a one-room, 15 × 17 foot apartment on a $60,000 budget. Director and writer Milton Moses Ginsberg filmed the entire movie with one static shot to look like a fake documentary. He would later tell Film Comment, “The film was about a psychiatrist encased in his own reflection, using a hidden camera to record his own disintegration. The film was also about the pleasures and price of promiscuity, and about the form and duration of cinema itself — or so I hoped. And to a degree that still embarrasses, it was about me. Appropriate, the title Coming Apart.”

He followed this up with — incredibly — The Werewolf of Washington.

Rip Torn is on camera for this entire movie and he owns every single moment. While the single shot may limit some viewer’s enjoyment, I found this riveting and a movie that I’d been yearning to watch. Luckily, Coming Apart has a new 2K restoration from Kino Lorber and is available to rent or own on all major Digital/VOD platforms including Kino Now.

EDITOR’S NOTE: For another take on this film, click here.

A strange unknown source — just like the Max Headroom signal hijacking in Chicago on the night of November 22, 1987 — takes over America’s airwaves and replaces them with even more sexual shows — in the middle of jiggle TV? — and the President demands that it be fixed.

Directed by Bradley R. Swirnoff (who also directed the similar Tunnel Vision) and written by Swirnoff with  John Baskin (who actually wrote some jiggle TV with Three’s Company), Stephen Feinberg (the proctologist from Tunnel Vision) and Roger Shulman (who created the series Crazy Like a Fox), it includes fake shows like Celebrity Sportsman Presents: The Charles Whitman Invitational, in which celebrities like Warren Oates get to shoot at real people from a tower just like the Texas Tower Sniper; Manny’s Nymphs, a Charlie’s Angels show with heavy set women and a Mamorax commercial that does the “Is it real or is it Memorex” idea with a speech from Hitler.

As you can see, there’s no filter in this movie, as it sees where the line is and steps it over and over again. After all, one of the shows is called The Shitheads and people on the street get buckets of waste put on their heads, as well as American Excess instead of American Express and a frontier gynecologist who performs horseback exams. That should reveal to you the level of sophistication that you’re about to get into.

The cast includes Joanna Cassidy, Fred Dryer, Kinky Friedman, Dick O’Neill, Stephen Furst, Harry Shearer, Art Fleming, vaudevillian Paul “Mousie” Garner and many, many more.

Warner Bros. was the original distributor but found it unreleasable. Cannon Films took over, changed the title from Prime Time and released it as American Raspberry.

Directed by John C. Broderick — who would be the guy who screwed over William Stout on The Warrior and the Sorceress — and Exorcist and Wolfen editor Jordan Leondopoulos, The Swap isn’t really about Robert De Niro no matter what the poster says. Instead, he’s the brother of the protagonist Vito Nicoletti (Anthony Charnota) and is killed in a flashback, ending Vito after the real killers who wanted a porn film that Sam was editing. Thanks to the help of an actress named Vivian (Lisa Blount, Dead and Buried), he tracks them down and takes them out.

As for those scenes, they are re-used shots and out-takes from Broderick and Leondopoulo’s first feature film, Sam’s Song, and were used without De Niro’s knowledge or permission. Things are a bit hard to follow as time keeps shifting and so do the people playing in the film. For example, one of the femme fatales, Erica Moore, is played by two totally different actresses. When the scenes are in 1969, she’s Jennifer Warren (Night Moves, Slap Shot) and in 1979, she’s Sybil Danning. Now, Warren is quite striking, but she’s not Sybil Danning.

Speaking of those 1969 scenes, The Girl with the Hourglass is Factory Girl Viva, who also appears in Forbidden Zone, Flash Gordon and has real intercourse in Warhol’s Blue Movie.

As you can imagine, this movie makes little to no sense. Sam’s Song gets used to create something that kind of is coherent, but you can also see why De Niro was so angry when this movie had his name on the poster as its star.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Alex E. Goitein had already made Cherry Hill High for Cannon, but now he had Chuck Vincent writing his script, the man who would one day be able to boast of making Bedroom Eyes, Hot T-Shirts, American Tickler, Bedroom Eyes II, Sensations, Deranged, Young Nurses in Love and so many more movies.

The cheerleaders of Rambling University — Monica (Elizabeth Loredan), Toni (Jamie Jenson), Sissy (Lynn Hastings, also in Cherry Hill High) and Sheryl (Gloria Upson, who was also in…did you guess Cherry Hill High?) — fight to keep their players from going to another college, which means stealing the van of an opposing coach and putting crabs into the jockstraps of his players. They also destroy — or make it so much better — with some pot-laced brownies.

Animal House then came out the same year and changed how sex comedies went from dirty little drive-in movies to big business.