It’s as if Cannon took a look at all that sweet G-rated money — well, this was rated PG that Sunn Classics was raking in four walling theaters and said, “Let’s send a family into the woods and watch them nearly die.”
Also released in 1974 as Year of the Caribou, Don, Elaine and Fred Meader join Linda Johnson and Jay Russell as they battle the elements and nature, spending an entire year living off the land with no modern tools or luxuries.
You know, except for the camera.
Yes, there is a bear attack, in case that was what you were looking for.
The basic cable of today is the exploitation cinema of yesterday.
If you want the fake version, there’s an entire series about The Adventures of the Wilderness Family.
This film follows the journey of Dylan Brady, who is played for most of the film by director and writer Shane Brady (Ballers, Dr. Sleep) and Owen Atlas when he is young, a man who is struggling to achieve his first year of sobriety.
It goes deep, not just showing his journey, but how his extended family deals with him, which is all caused by the death of his father (John D’Aquino) when he was young. As Christmas approaches and he’s cut off from his family — they had to finally give him the tough love that it took to make him reach out for help — and must go through this next stage of his recovery alone.
June Carryl, who plays Dylan’s mother, is incredible in this, a woman striving to keep her adopted family together despite years of hardship. The love that she has for her son shines through even when it’s impossible to feel anything for him. Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead, who made The Endless and Spring, also do great voice work as some of the characters that live inside Dylan’s head.
The rest of the strong cast includes Katelyn Nacon (The Walking Dead), Augie Duke (Spring), Brittney Escalante, Jim O’Heir (Parks and Recreation) and even NHL Hall of Famer Phil Esposito, who plays the future that Dylan could become. Hockey — and magic — have a major role in this movie, so seeing Esposito be the perfect older Dylan is a great idea.
Breathing Happy takes you on a journey that’s not always comfortable, but the filmmakers were committed to telling what this story is truly like, for good and bad.
“Fanga” is the Icelandic for prisoner. And that’s what Belle is, as this is a new take on Beauty and the Beast, but one in which Belle remains trapped in toxic relationships. She’s the only person taking care of her family after the death of her mother. And now, to heal her father, she has become trapped by the Beast, who knows how to heal the sick older man with a rose.
Director and writer Max Gold has created a visually stunning film — credit also due to cinematographer Nico Navia — that updates a classic fairy tale that already has Le Bete and the Disney version burned into the minds of film lovers. It’s definitely a bold take, one that has every frame looking like a work of art, as well as a beast that remains truly horrifying.
I saw Fanga at Popcorn Frights. When there’s a way to watch it outside of fests, I will update this post.
Robert Guralnick directed, wrote, produced and edited this documentary about the Mustang Ranch, which became Nevada’s first licensed brothel in 1971 under the ownership of Joe Conforte.
Just 20 miles east of Reno, the ranch was basically a trailer park, but if you wanted legal lovemaking, well, it was the place to be in the U.S. Guralnick spent months there before filming — certainly for research purposes only — so the owners and the girls would be comfortable with him as he used his handheld camera to shoot this movie.
Conforte left the U.S to go to Brazil and escape tax evasion charges a few years after this, leaving behind his prison yard-esque paradise, which is still open today after being sold by the U.S. government which is pretty wild when you think about it. He also was involved in the 1976 murder of Oscar Bonavena, a former friend who may have had an affair with his wife. He was shot dead at the ranch by Conforte’s bodyguard.
It seems like literally the unsexiest and saddest place on Earth, so here’s to the maniacs that can go there and still get it up. Then again, I feel that legal sex work would solve a lot of our nation’s mental issues.
“She served her country… the only way she knew how!”
Lynn Redgrave? Out.
Joey Heatherton? In.
World-famous prostitute Xaviera Hollander is called to testify in front of the United States Congress for an indecency trial, which means that we’re about to get tons of cameos as senators, like Phil Foster from Laverne and Shirley as Senator Krause, David White from Bewitched as Senator Rawlings, Ray Walston as Senator Sturges and Jack Carter as Senator Caruso. Really, this movie was cast by the 70s, as Billy Barty, George Hamilton, Rip Taylor, Joe E. Ross, Harold “Oddjob” Sakata, Edy Williams and Larry Storch are all in the cast. So is Cisse Cameron, the wife of Reb Brown!
What are we to say to Sydney Lassick and Louisa Moritz, who just two years before were both in the Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and now were together again in a softcore sex comedy? That’s Hollywood?
Miami Connection will play Popcorn Frights on Sunday, August 21 at 9 p.m. followed by a live commentary by the Popcorn Gallery featuring Miami comics Elli Scharlin and Orlando Gonzalez. You can also buy this movie from Vinegar Syndrome.
Y.K. Kim earned his black belt in taekwondo black belt at thirteen years of age, making him one of the youngest in all of his native Korea. He moved around the world to bring the message of martial arts to the people, from Buenos Aires and New York City to finally Orlando, where he’d set up his fighting empire with his school Martial Arts World and founding the American TaeKwon-Do Federation.
Then Kim met Korean film director Richard Park and they created Miami Connection, a movie that Kim funded with loans, money from friends, his life savings and by mortgaging his school. Sure, he’d never made a film before and had no idea what he was doing. He saw this as another way to get his message out to the people, but every major film distributors and several independent ones basically told him to throw it all away. He responded by spending another $100,000 to continue making the movie perfect.
In August of 1988, the movie opened in eight theaters around Greater Orlando and a few in West Germany, of all places. Even in his adopted hometown, the Orlando Sentinel said that it was the worst film of the year. Kim had thrown $1 million dollars into the film and nearly lost everything.
He continued to be a martial arts teaching success and also learned how to become a motivational speaker, all while ignoring any requests to discuss the film. However, in 2009, Alamo Drafthouse programmer Zack Carlson bought the film on eBay for just $50 and was amazed by what he had purchased. After struggling to connect with Kim — who continually hung up on him — he was finally able to convince him to let the movie play. The rest is history.
It all gets started with a cocaine deal being interrupted by ninjas led by the evil Yashito, who steal the drugs and take it back to Orlando to party it up. Of course, one of them forgets the money and gets killed. Yashito is not to be trifled with.
Meanwhile, Jeff — who leads a gang of scarf and bandana-wearing camouflage loving bikers that are friends with the ninjas — watches his sister Jane play on stage with the band Dragon Sound. He’s not happy.
I have no idea why — Dragon Sound are the coolest 80’s soft rock hair metal funk band that does martial arts to ever exist. Yes, this ethnically diverse group of five men are all best friends — trust me, they wrote a song about it — as well as roommates, University of Central Florida students, Taekwondo masters and, yes, orphans. They are John, who comes from Ireland and plays bass when he’s not falling in love with Jane. Jack is the drummer and he’s from Israel. Jim is half Korean and half African American, but all kick ass and loves to dibble dabble on the keyboards. Tom didn’t get the J naming convention, but he sings, looks like John Oates and comes from Italy. Their father figure is Mark, the Korean rhythm guitarist and Y.K. Kim himself.
Jeff and Mark get into a fight that’s interrupted by another band who are angry that the owner of the club replaced them with Dragon Sound. They are easily defeated. The film that descends into a series of either music videos, fights, training footage or long scenes of people opening their mail. Please don’t take that as a read that I hated this. Quite the contrary.
After Jeff and his gang are all killed by Dragon Sound, Yashito and his ninjas attempt revenge. Jim just wants to get to the airport to meet up with his deadbeat dad, but he’s nearly killed. No worries, though. Dragon Sound easily — and at times messily — kill all of the ninjas, because murder is obviously not a crime in Miami (to be fair, Y.K. Kim was so well-known and beloved in Orlando, the local government and law enforcement allowed him to film anywhere in the city without permits).
Hardly anyone involved ever made a movie again. Which is a shame, because this movie is true innocence, the glory of making something even though you really have no clue. It succeeds in spite of itself and features songs that will get stuck in your head for, well, forever. Songs like “Friends,” “Against the Ninja” and “Tough Guys.” I waited a long time to see this and my life is better from having sat through it.
Check out even more of the story with this documentary from Vice.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’ve watched this movie at several fests and consider this a MUST WATCH that you can see at Popcorn Frights today at 2 PM EST.
The Langoliers may be at the bottom of Stephen King adaptions, but if The Timekeepers of Eternity has any say in things, we’ve been misjudging Tom Holland’s 1995 TV miniseries.
Animator Aristotelis Maragkos has printed every frame of that movie and used collage animation to reconstruct, remix and retell the story in an entirely new way, compressing 180 minutes into 64 and taking Bronson Pinchot’s character of Craig Toomey and making him the lead character and not the villain.
This film takes something we’ve seen before and deliriously recreates it as something bold, brave and fresh.
Beyond just a film, now that The Langoliers has moved into the world of paper, it can make comic book-like movements where multiple characters and angles can appear at the same time while the emotions can come out as darker shapes and jagged lines emitted from the actors. Even the ending moves from King, changing the source material in a way that makes this movie its own piece of art nearly separate from where it was sourced.
In the original film, the CGI Langoliers have been selected on so many worst special effects lists, so imagine my joy when they appear to merely be torn chunks of paper that tear through the reality of this story.
Maragkos spent years making this, but trust me, it was beyond worth the effort.
After leaving New York after a mental breakdown, Jennifer (Jenna Lyng Adams) learns from her friend Sam (Alexandria DeBerry) that at least her business life is going well, as billionaire David (Dave Vacis) wants them to work on the design of his new product. He invites her to his private yacht, but that’s when she starts being confronted with visions of violence. Is she possessed? Is this how her anxiety shows itself? And is anyone safe from her?
Director Christian Schultz, who wrote the script with Peter Ambrosio, embraces the form of giallo that is not as much about black gloved killers. Instead, it’s the film in which a female protagonist doubts every single thing in her reality, as she’s an unreliable narrator to herself. Jennifer dreams of being stalked by a shadowy figure that never quite reveals itself; she often awakens to situations that she’s escalated but can’t control.
With just minutes left, a character says, “You look like you have a lot of questions. I’d like to provide you with some answers.” The answers that we get may not solve the mystery of this movie, but the idea that our perception of the world is at odds with what others experience is a universal one; this movie pushes that idea to the limit.
Pregnant restaurateur Eula Baek (Chantelle Han) is in trouble. The pandemic has ruined the money she was making at her restaurant Peppergrass. But she does know that Captain Reuben Lom (Michael Copeman) has several precious truffles that she and her friend Morris (Charles Boyland) could make money from. So they head out of their empty restaurants and try to convince him to give them up.
Directed by Steven Garbas and Han from a script by Garbas and Phillip Irwin, there’s a lot of character building, conversation and wandering in the woods before the movie gets down to the concept that Reuben is dangerous and Morris is greedy.
The main issue? It’s hard to spend so much time with characters that are this unlikeable. But give this movie some credit; it’s anything if predictable.
Director Alex E. Goitein made two movies: this one and Cheerleaders Beach Party. Well, he knew what worked for him, you know? Writers William Shears and Wylie White only wrote this one movie. And that was it — a small space in history when these three men came together and made a softcore sex comedy and Cannon got it into drive-ins and grindhouses.
Just like Cannon’s Slumber Party ’57, this movie is all about girls losing their virginity. Except in this movie, Kippy, Sarah (Nina Carson), Michelle, Peaches (Gloria Upson, also in Goitein’s other film) and Alison (Stephanie Lawlor, Hot T-Shirts) do it over a two-week bicycle vacation. One of the men they meet, Vintner, is played by Richard Young, the man who gave Indiana Jones his fedora in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Molly Malone, using the name Joan Summer, did plenty of adult (and, again, the other film Goitein directed). And Mary Mendum, often using the stage name Rebecca Brooke, did tons of adult including several movies for Joe Sarno.
There’s a shark named Hustler, a game show where sex happens and a haunted house. I have no idea why Vinegar Syndrome hasn’t released this in a multiple slipcase blu ray set yet.
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