What if we took zombies, Michael Jai White, Halo suits, greenscreen, Starship Troopers, Resident Evil, more zombies, a title that’s been used before, Iron Man visor graphics and Jeff Fahey and threw them all into a blender? Well, it would taste pretty good, to be honest. I loved Dead Zone because it’s the exact kind of movie I’d have rented as a 5 for $5 for 5 nights mom and pop video store pick, along with probably I Come In Peace, The Hidden, Class of 1999 and The Eliminators.

Danner (Tarkan Dospi), Ton (Antuone Torber), Sinclair (J. Michael Weiss) and Boss (Michael Jai White) are the soldiers who must enter the Dead Zone, a place where humans become the undead, to find what could be the cure. And while Boss is his name, he answers to Master Chief Callahan (Jeff Fahey). They’re given their new suits and joined by their inventor, Ajax (Chad Michael Collins).

The suits serve the purpose of both looking cool and allowing stuntmen or other actors to do some of the action as we see the faces of the soldiers all lit up inside their helmets. It’s fine, though, because this movie is packed with action and even has a giant rubbery monster man, which I appreciate.

There’s just one thing missing: a kick-butt female team member. Good news. Goodman (Whitney Nielsen) signs up once they get to her lab.

Somehow better than G.I. Joe while using similar cyber suits, you can’t help but love any movie in which Michael Jai White says, “Side effects may include fuck you.”

Directed by Hank Braxtan (Snake Outta Compton, Jurassic Hunt) from a script by international distribution masterminds Jeffrey Giles and Michael Lurie from a story by Michael Klug, I would watch as many sequels as they feel like making for this movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Chase Brown plays a kid named Robin Hoode, so you know that he has to live up to that and be the one that steals from the head of the school board (Jon Lovitz) when he finds out that that fatcat is stealing money from the fundraisers he and his friends worked so hard to get. 

It’s kind of amazing that this is an Asylum movie to me, because there are no bad CGI monsters or warehouses. Well done.

Directed by Dylan Vox (who has moved into directing but was once in Showgirls 2) from a script by Anna Rasmussen and Ryan Ebert (the team that wrote the upcoming Shark Side of the Moon), this is an innocuous comedy about smart kids and dumb adults. Don’t go in expecting Woody Allen or Bergman or whatever fancypants name you want me to come up with.

I’m just glad Lovitz is getting work. I doubt anyone from the latest cast of SNL will be doing direct to streaming movies in thirty years.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Howard High School become the lowest-ranked school in the state and there’s nothing that former honor role graduate Frank King (Brian White) can figure out to save it. Then he learns that the Performing Arts Music program has truly talented kids. So that means it’s time to put on a show and save the school.

Chris Stokes, who directed and wrote this movie, also wrote You Got Served, which it’s very similar to. From what I can tell, this started as a series and has been turned into the movie that’s currently playing on Tubi.

You know how I can tell every giallo apart and comment on their quality? I can’t with teen movies because they all seem the same to me and I get all emotional when plucky kids save their school, so I end up crying and realizing that I’m closer to 80 than 20 and can never dance to save my high school, which I hated. Man, why would I want to save it?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Stacia Crawford from a script by Joyful Drake and Scotty Mullen, this movie has a familiar face or maybe I’m watching too many Tubi originals. Simone is played by Crystal Lee Naomi, who was Alicia in Twisted House Sitter.

She and her friends Parker (Brittany S. Hall) and Bailey (Tanisha Long) have decided to take a break and head out for a girl’s only weekend for Parker’s birthday. But as the title warns you, things aren’t going to go well.

Soon they learn that one of their friends, Kate Alessa (Rebecca Galarza) has taken a header off of the balcony of the hotel. Parker had just been flirting with Kate’s boyfriend, but then again, that man — Antonio (Donny Boaz) — is married to Elizabeth (Sunny Mabrey), the owner of the hotel. Oh man, this thing is complicated and it hasn’t even started yet.

There’s also a ton of social media one-upmanship, our heroic leads getting drugged and blamed for the crime and, of course, a late dramatic reveal of who the real killer is. If you like those Lifetime movies, good news. Tubi has you covered.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Steven R. Monroe has several movies up as Tubi Originals — First Person Shooter, Unborn and Teardrop — and he’s best known for the remake of I Spit on Your Grave and the sequel.

Along with co-writer John Thaddeus, he’s telling the story of The Spirit Chasers, a reality show team of ghost hunters made up of Jeanie (Camille Sullivan), Evan (Dion Johnstone), Gilroy (Jeremy Walmsley) and Zeke (Jonathan Lawrence), as they try to find the perfect ending to their season.

They find Harland Manor. Seeing as how this place once was home to so many murders and illegal abortions, you can only imagine the orbs floating around. This is also the kind of haunted environment filled with ghosts, like the infernal Harland himself as well as a young specter named Sarah (Summer H. Howell) who is with child. The child of Satan!

Perhaps a haunted underground abortion clinic is not the best place for Jeanie, who just miscarried the child of one of her fellow Spirit Chasers the night before, but look. I know better than to chase after evil. I’m content with sitting on my couch and not needing to have any paranormal adventures, thank you very much.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Colleen (Rebecca Chambers), Bonnie (Lori Jo Hendrix), Audrey (Kena Land) and Michelle (Gilya Stern)were happy just riding their van through Europe scream singing “Oh Susanna” and hanging out in Greece when they decide to go to Turkey and never saw Midnight Express. Before you can say Ilsa, they’ve had cocaine planted on them and end up in prison, which as you can expect is everything a WIP movie entails, like a long shower scene, brutal guards, assault from male and female tormentors, a tough butch woman abusing them all by the name of Hellena (Toni Naples, Deathstalker II) and a warden named Saladeen (Uri Gavriel) who brands women and sells them into slavery.

Do you think Menahem Golan looked at what Cannon was making after he left and hung his head? Do you think he worried that Joel Silberg had gone from making Breakin‘ and Rappin’ to just making a very by the numbers prison movie? Or did he spit on the ground when he thought of Silberg, angry that he had the gall to direct Lambada for Yoram?

Regardless, this movie does have one great line of dialogue. Before Bonnie cuts off the balls of the warden, she says, “Some people like soft tobacco pouches. Me, I just want a coin purse.” Then the girls get back in the van and sing “Oh Susanna” again, but this time, it has a certain sadness to it.

A remake of director Gary Graver’s 1984 adult film Trinity Brown, which starred John Leslie and Sharon Kelly — and had Jamie Gillis and Robert Kerman in the cast — Roots of Evil starts with Brenda (Jillian Kesner, who is in one of my favorite movies, Firecracker) and Jake (Alex Cord, Chosen Survivors) looking for Johnny Malone (Randall Brady), who is their top suspect in the death of mob boss Tony (Paul Grayber). However, he claims that he spent the night with scream queen Candy, played by real-life scream queen Brinke Stevens as an alibi, but the truth is that he’s kidnapped her kid. Or maybe she had a relationship with Tony’s wife Marissa (Deanna Lund, the mom from Elves!) and they both wanted him out of the way. I mean, somehow they need to work a girl on girl love scene into this movie so we can watch it on Friday at 2:07 AM on Cinemax, right? It also helps that Jewel Shepard and Donna Spangler (Hugs Huggins from Guns!) are in this too.

Getting away from the remake of that aforementioned XXX movie, this adds a subplot where a serial killer is taking out strippers and sex workers. Using a prostitute named Monica (Delia Sheppard) as bait, the cops try and find out who is doing all the slashing.

Jake may be more messed up than the criminals he’s arresting, because a decade ago someone shot his wife and blasted her and their kid through a plate glass window, so all he does is drink in strip clubs when he isn’t sleeping with his partner or remembering that he once dated Brinke Stevens, which doesn’t seem to be the kind of thing that you forget.

Everyone in this movie is quite dumb and that’s how we want them. There’s also a cut and uncut version. I have no idea if you’ve already decided to watch a softcore cop movie why you’d want to see anything trimmed out, but you do things your way.

Imagine an unholy union between Night of the Creeps and Carrie and you’re getting close to Baby Fever, a short that begins with a young couple making love in a lab amongst the pickled punks and not getting any less gross from that point; a girl gets a full face of vomited blood before the opening title card.

Director and co-writer (with Alex Hartwig) Hannah May Cumming does more with 25 minutes than most horror movies this year will do with 90. This is a cotton candy-hued freakout and I savored every single frame, a film that at once has the drama of teen pregnancy mixed with what we’re really here for, a prom dancefloor filled with killer slugs.

Helena Berens (I Need You Dead!) plays Donna Hartman, a girl who just wants to go all the way with her dumb jock boyfriend. Except that nature — well, perhaps the supernatural — wants to destroy any chance she has of making high school a normal experience. I’ve also never seen anything like the biology class scene in this movie. It’s legitimately one of the grossest and most amazing things I’ve witnessed in years of watching horror.

I want this to be a full movie and I want it on a double feature with Prom Night 2.

I watched this at the North Bend Film Festival, which you can learn more about on their official site. You can also learn more about Baby Fever on its official webpage.