EDITOR’S NOTE: I love this movie so much. So much that I have a pull quote on the back of the Severin blu ray. 21st Century re-released this in 1980 and their poster says “a congressman lies rotting in the corpses of the jungle” which totally is to remind you of Jonestown, adding even more scum to this already somewhat odd movie. This was first on the site on August 2, 2017.

Whenever someone asks — and they often do — “What’s the craziest movie you’ve ever seen?” I usually respond with Suicide Cult. I’ve never had to pick my jaw off the floor more, as watching it felt like the little people I am certain live in my TV were putting on a magical play just for me, using the things I love best. The 1970s. Carnivals. Satanism. Biorhythms. Astrology. Government conspiracies. Religion. This is one film that honestly has it all — and then some.

Man, let me see if I can sum it up:

A government organization called INTERZOD, led by Alexei Abernal, uses technology and astrology to discover threats to the world. One of them is the cult leader Kajerste, who is wanted for crimes in three different countries. And how do they find these people? By determining their individual zodiacal potential for response to environmental situations and stimuli, that’s how.

The movie smash cuts into a ton of locations and ideas within the first ten minutes, spinning your head, before we meet Alexei’s wife, Kate (Monica Tidwell, the November 1973 Playboy Playmate of the Month who was the first Playmate to be younger than Playboy magazine itself), who sees her adviser Mother Bogarde, surely based on Madame Blavatsky. The young girl is possessed, so she must be stripped and put in a robe. Alright — we also learn that she doesn’t even know her own birthday or may have had it changed at Alexei’s command. Seems he’s a crazy husband — he has security watching her, she isn’t allowed to leave all that often, he doesn’t introduce her to anyone and he lies about what he does. They’ve been married for five months and haven’t had sex! But it turns out that she might be the new Virgin Mary, which makes perfect sense once you start watching this. Turns out she even had an Immaculate Conception at one point and gave her baby to the Catholic Church.

Now, INTERZOD wants to kill off Kajerste with tranquilizers and videotapes and doubles and the help of a Congressman — who gets killed by the cult and this movie came out three years before Jonestown, so imagine. In fact, the cult wipes everyone out and everyone else close to Kate.

But hold on…I want to warn you now. This movie is pretty much all talk about religion and the zodiac. It introduces some insane ideas that could be awesome and then does absolutely nothing about it. In fact, just when it seems like there might be some resolution to the film’s many plots, it just ends with no resolution!

Can a film be both boring and not boring all at the same time, packed with ideas but so frustrating because you wish you could see the movie that it could have been? Oh yes, that would be Suicide Cult. It’s a movie that could have only been made in 1975. I wonder, if you take enough mind-altering substances, will this film make sense? I am willing to go into a sensory deprivation tank with just this film to find out, Ken Russell directing me.

This film is also called The Astrologer, but there’s another film with the same title that could be even stranger. Made by director, producer, psychic to the stars and actor Craig Denney, it’s a movie about an astrologer who goes on an adventure to find jewels, then becomes a major star so big that he makes a movie about himself called The Astrologer that he watches within the film The Astrologer, then he goes into diamond smuggling, finance and killing people. The entire soundtrack was stolen from the Moody Blues, who get credited for the film! And it’s only been released on VHS and played once on the CBS Late Movie but it’s out there on the web and well worth hunting for.

People also ask me, what movies are you excited about this summer? I always answer, “NONE OF THEM!” Not when bursts of pure unknown crazy can still be unearthed from four decades in the past about psychic killers or astrologers who become giant stars that murder people! I beg you Hollywood! Let maniacs take over your films again!

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on May 28, 2022 and I almost did it myself for Cannon Month, but nobody knows Fred Olen Ray movies better than Jenn.

Take a look at that catalog from 21st Century. What a year of pure wild cinema!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn

Fred Olen Ray’s women’s prison in space movie. Sandy Brooke plays Taura, a miner who gets sent to the big house…or rather big ship…after crossing paths with Bantor (Ross Hagen in his first appearance in Ray joint), on the planet Arous. Once onboard the “Vehemence”, it’s pretty standard stuff in terms of the women’s prison genre minus the obligatory shower scene. We have a sadistic warden, and her flunky lesbian head guard, played by Marya Gant and an eye-patched Dawn Wildsmith, respectively. We also have a group of tough female convicts with names like Mike and Squeaker who are, at first, wary of Taura but ultimately learn to trust her so they can band together to escape when the opportunity presents itself.

Produced for $200,000 at Roger Corman’s New World studios in Venice Beach, California, Star Slammer gives you a lot of bang for the buck. The prison sets were built using abandoned egg flats and carpet remnants, but they’re lit so well that you can’t tell. Eagle-eyed viewers will also notice that the villains’ costumes came from Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983) and the prison guard uniforms are from Galaxy of Terror (1981.) There’s also the land rover from the TV reboot of Logan’s Run, the monster from Ted Bohus’s The Deadly Spawn, footage from John Carpenter’s Dark Star (1974), and spaceship effects from Battle Beyond the Stars (1980). Waste not, want not!

I assumed the most impressive effect of all was Sandy Brooke’s boob job, but an expert has since counseled me that they are more than likely natural. A rare thing indeed in the 1980s. Star Slammer is not a film that takes itself seriously and it looks like it was a helluva lotta fun to make. The scene with the prisoner grooving out playing the harmonica in her cell is hilarious. It’s so funny, it even made the trailer. Throw in cameos from John Carradine and Aldo Ray as “The Judge” and the “Inquisitor” and a cute little robot voiced by the director and you’ve got a lot of laughs.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As I finish out Cannon month, I’m looking into the films of 21st Century before Menahem Golan took it over.

Sugar Bowman (Phyllis Davis, who was Susan Lake in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) has taken a deal to serve two years working on Dr. John’s (Angus Duncan) sugarcane plantation rather than be in prison for a crime she didn’t commit. When she’s not out in the fields cutting crops with a machete all day, she and the other inmates get drugs tested on them by Dr. John who also is into assaulting the younger of his prisoners.

The female inmates have this scam where they are hiding Simone’s man, Mojo, but the guards catch and kill him by burning him at the stake. The women respond by setting the fields on fire and teaming up with the guards to escape. Dr. John claims to be immortal, so Simmone tests this theory by blowing up her jeep, killing both of them so Sugar can escape.

Director Michel Levesque was an art director on Russ Meyer’s Up!, Supervixens and Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, as well as The Incredible Melting Man, Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks and Savage Journey. He also did the same for Silk Stalkings, so if that show seemed kind of filthy, well, there you go. He also directed Werewolves on Wheels. It was written by Don Spencer (The Big Doll House) and R.Z. Samuel.

I can’t think of a WIP film that has orgasm-inducing drugs or voodoo, so for that, Sweet Sugar is more than worth a watch.

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

Yes, somehow this remake of the 1962 original totally got past me until I got an ad for it on Instagram. I wondered, why would someone make this movie again, but now that I’ve watched it, I think I have my answer.

The filmmakers say right on their site that this “is a surprisingly loving and faithful adaptation, utilizing much of the original film’s characters, scenes and dialogue.” That’s true — it’s incredibly close with some additional scenes that add plenty of humor to the film.

Bill (Patrick D. Green) is working in the lab with his father William (David Withers) and fiancee Jan (Rachael Perrell Fosket) when a patient dies on the table. Bill demands to work on the body and brings the man back to life.

Meanwhile, at the family cabin, Bill has been experimenting with his assistant Kurt (Jason Reynolds) on a variety of test subjects. Jan dies on the way there and soon, her head has been removed and kept alive, all while Bill remembers that he was once a man about town and uses his lothatio ways to seduce exotic dancers and use their bodies to give his fiancee hers back.

While bring a shot-for-shot remake of the original, this adds in scenes of Bill being overpowered by one of the sex workers he tries to knock out, lesbians sitting with him watching exotic dancers and commenting on how they have a better chance than him to get one of the girls and a revised ending — that uses the original titles — that shows us what happens after the lab burns.

Directed by Derek Carl and written by Hank Huffman from the original script by Joseph Green and Rex Carlton, this even has a music scene inspired by The Man With Two Brains.

Man — Joseph Green! He owned Joseph Green Pictures, a company so small that it was just him answering the phones and distributing a wild mix of movies which included everything from Jess Franco’s Kiss Me Monster and Two Undercover Angels to Claude Chabrol’s Pleasure Party, the kung fu movie From Bangkok with Orders to Kill, Something Creeping in the Dark, Death Knocks Twice, The Sicilian Connection, Luciano Ercoli’s Killer Cop and his own film, The Perils of P.K. What a crazy list of movies!

But anyways — this is a fun restaging of a public domain movie that you’ve probably watched more than once and probably on Mystery Science Theater 3000. I’ve always disliked that so many people make fun of it, because it has such a dark story at its heart of a man who causes a woman to lose her entire body yet she uses everything she has to get her revenge once he removes any physical agency that she had. There’s definitely so much subtext that it becomes text there. This flew by and entertained me. Isn’t that what movies are for?

You can watch this for free on Plex. You can learn more on the official webpage and Facebook page.

The anthology horror film used to mean a lot more, as Amicus used to make movies that stuck together as a narrative whole instead of just jamming together multiple shorts into one movie and putting them out for content. At least How Dark They Prey has an interesting handheld shot demonic beginning to get us started.

What helps is that this was made by only two directors, Adam Ambrosio, who made the “Encounter Nightly” story and Jamison M. LoCascio, who made the “Harrowing,” “Blood Beach,” and “Nelly” chapters. That allows this to have more narrative cohesion than the average — or below-average — horror portmanteau you find streaming online.

“Encounter Nightly” has a paranormal TV show meeting a woman who has seen aliens. And her husband may know a bit more about them than anyone they’ve ever encountered. “Harrowing” has two U.S. soldiers pinned down by German forces before things get really strange. “Blood Beach” — that’s perhaps a title that could have been changed so it doesn’t force comparisons to the original film — explores the Lovecraftian side of fishing. And “Nelly” has a goofy cop and the woman he’s trying to ask out get abducted by two men wearing masks from The Flintstones who are armed with chainsaws.

To be positive, I did like how the last story reconnects to the framing story, which rarely happens in modern anthology films.

How Dark They Prey is now available on Amazon Prime and will be on the Watch Movies Now YouTube channel for free soon.

EDITOR’S NOTES: 21st Century imported this Italian movie which you may know as Sexorcist, The Tormented, Devil Obsession, L’Ossessa, Enter the Devil or its post Rocky Horror title, The Eerie Midnight Horror Show. It’s one of my favorite movies — it’s also total junk in the best of ways — and I originally wrote about it on October 20, 2017.

This movie is literally the center of the Venn Diagram that would be made of the movies that I love the most.

Italian ripoff of a successful film — This movie is obviously trying to be The Exorcist.

Satanism — This film has some of the goofiest and most awesome devil tricks of any of I’ve seen.

Exploitation — No one in this film acts like a normal human being and reality has been supplanted by insanity before the demons even get involved.

Multiple titles — This film is also known as Sexorcist, The Tormented, Devil Obsession, L’Ossessa and was later re-released post-Rocky Horror midnight movie success in 1977 as The Eerie Midnight Horror Show.

And the title card that comes up before the movie begins: THIS FILM IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY.

Daniela is an art student in Italy who is so respected by her teachers that she gets to join them as they acquire religious sculptures from a church due to be torn down. That church was deconsecrated way back in the 1700’s because the priests and nuns decided that they would turn against God and start having orgies in the church. And one of the statues, an incredibly lifelike display of one of the thieves crucified next to Jesus, catches Daniela’s eye. She is told that it was pulled directly from a tree, that it was already inside the wood and all the sculptor had to do was bring out the details. However, many tourists have had mental breakdowns just looking at this sculpture.

Daniela’s life is weird even before the crazy gets started. Her rich parents throw a party and we learn that her mother isn’t just cheating on her husband, she’s doing it pretty much in public. Yep — Daniela catches her mother getting whipped by the thorns of a rose — a scene that Becca just randomly walked into and asked, “What are you watching?!?”

Our heroine leaves for her studio at the university. As she paints, the sculpture comes off the cross in a scene that can only come from the deranged mind of Italian exploitation filmmaking (director Mario Gariazzo wrote Sister Emanuelle and directed Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind). Of course, that revived religious icon then has sex with her, sex that appears to be a dream as she runs from the studio.

Later that night, as Daniela climbs the stairs to her family’s apartment, she keeps thinking she is alone, but the sounds of her footsteps don’t match up. She hears a demon whisper her name and she runs in fear before the demon overcomes her, forcing her into a state of sexual mania and a dream where she is crucified. She spends the rest of the movie trying to get anyone to have sex with her while stigmata appears on her hands and she does all of the tropes of exorcism rip-offs.

And then Ivan Rassimov (All the Colors of the Dark, Shock/Beyond the Door II, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key ) shows up as Satan, giving Daniela her beauty back so that she can work with him to tempt all of the priests, like Father Xeno (Luigi Pistilli, Oliviero from Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key). She tries to seduce him, so to forget that she has tempted him he self-flagellates.

The priest dies and the girl is saved, after she pukes out the demon. But you knew that, right? You’ve seen this film repeated before. But that doesn’t mean that this film isn’t great. And by great, I mean the scummiest version of everything you love about films like this. No matter title you refer to it by, it is everything you want to see.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I went into this movie totally blind with no idea that the band — SM6 — in it was an actual real band. Originally known as Smart Monkeys, they’re an entire family — George, Isabel, Adam, Emily, Eliana, and Jack Jones — from Geneva, Illinois. They’ve built their name over TikTok, which is probably why I had no idea who they were and if you told me they were from Geneva, Switzerland, I would have believed that as I got strong Dollydots vibes from this movie.

In case you don’t know them, they were an unknown in the U.S. yet loved in the Netherlands band that starred in the Cannon film Dutch Treat.

So now that I’ve established who SM6 are, it’s time to discuss the movie they made. Better than you learning halfway through the movie why this band sounds so good like me.

Time Pirates is a Tubi Original in which the band plays themselves. Yet we don’t see them right away. Instead, it begins with Captain Cooper (Jack Pearson) battling the dreaded Blackbeard (Richard Grieco, which when you think about it, is an inspired bit of Pirates of the Caribbean meta casting). As Blackbeard reads the tattoo on Cooper’s arm in the middle of a swordfight, they’re claimed by magical waves.

That’s when I realized that this was an Asylum film, as that level — this is not a compliment — of special effects can’t be mistaken. This was directed by Anthony C. Ferrante, who directed all of the Sharknado films, and written by Marc Gottlieb (Planet of the Sharks, Jungle Run, Top Gunner: Danger Zone — which is an incredible exploitation mockbuster movie name).

Years later, in modern Los Angeles, Cooper’s ship the Red Queen is a tourist attraction in Los Angeles and the setting for SM6’s new music video. When the band finds the treasure map and turns it into new lyrics for a song, it ends up sending them into the past, where they must find Blackbeard and get back to 2022.

To do that, they must find famous female pirates Anne Bonny (Angela Cola) and Beckett (Anna Telfer, who was in Planet Dune and Aquarium of the Dead) and, of course, single multiple songs and get a magic spell from The Crone (Dee Wallace!).

Maybe because I watched this at 2 in the morning I had more youthful joy in my heart as I really liked the pop energy of the songs. Is it what I would listen to? No, but you know, the fact that people are still making movies around bands makes me happy. It’s bubblegum goofiness, but it made me laugh a few times — mainly at the bad looking effects — and it’s an interesting way to promote SM6.

You can learn more about SM6 on their official site, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.

You can watch this movie on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Before Menahem Golan took over 21st Century in 1989, it had existed since the mid 70s, as Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer formed the company as a film production company and distributor. It also owned most of Dimension Pictures’ films when that company went into bankruptcy in 1981. 21st Century also released many films on home video on their own label Planet Video as well as Continental Video. The first movie they released in theaters was an import, The Three Fantastic Supermen, before putting together some of their own movies. As I finish out the second — but by no means the final — Cannon Month, I’ll be covering some of 21st Century’s most interesting movies. This was originally on the site on January 22, 2020.

Also known as The Devil Master, Master of Evil and Coven, this movie purported to tell you the whole truth — finally — about demons. It seems that demons are kind of like the kids left behind in my small hometown, stuck drinking in bars, doing drugs and balling because there’s nothing else to do but rot.

It comes from the team of Donald Jackson — yes, he of the Roller Blade, Rollergator and Hell Come to Frogtown fame — and Jerry Younkins, who only made this film. It was shot close to my wife’s hometown in Jackson, Michigan.

MIT graduate students Jeff Kreines and his girlfriend Joel DeMott, along with soundman Mark Ranc, shot a video diary while filming this movie, entitled Demon Lover Diary. It details the film falling apart as its being filmed. However, it’s been alleged that the incompetence and infighting shown in this video were all made up to get publicity for the film. But who can say? Any movie that ends with Ted Nugent’s guns being fired directly at the filmmakers is totally worth a watch. Kreines and DeMott would go on to co-direct the documentary Seventeen while Kreines would be a cinematographer on the documentary Depeche Mode: 101.

As for the actual film The Demon Lover, it’s all about a group of teenagers hanging around a cemetery that gets involved with a Satanic priest named Lavall (Younkins) who conjures up a demon from hell that looks like an ape that kills all of them. That’s pretty much the entire movie, right there, minus some scenes of the upper class dabbling with the occult that go absolutely nowhere. Oh yeah — there are also disco, nude sex slave and kung fu scenes just to ensure that this regional wonder got to play on some screen, somewhere.

Also — Younkins severed a finger at work to pony up the $8,000 to make this movie, so that pretty much explains why he got to do pretty much anything he wanted. He’d go on to write Combat and Survival Knives: A User’s Guide and wears a black glove throughout to hide his missing digit.

According to L.A. Weekly, the filmmakers so loved The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that they “initially consulted director Tobe Hooper for info on film stock, hired Chain Saw cinematographer Daniel Pearl until their money ran out, solicited original Leatherface Gunnar Hansen for a two-day top-billed cameo, and eventually played the Lyric Theater on 42nd Street in New York City, whose marquee can be glimpsed sporting the Chain Saw title in a famous shot from Taxi Driver.”

Damian Kaluta, one of the protagonists of the film, is played by Val Mayerik, who is also one of the creators of Howard the Duck. I’d assume that’s his art on the poster as well. The name of his character Kaluta comes from 1970’s comic book artist Michael W. Kaluta and many of the names in the film are also derived from comic and horror icons of that era, like Detective Tom Frazetta (painter Frank Frazetta, who designed most of Fire and Ice), Officer Lester Gould (Chester Gould, creator of Dick Tracy perhaps?), Profesor Peckinpah (director Sam Peckinpah), Elaine Ormsby (Alan Ormsby of Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things), Alex Redondo (Filipino Swamp Thing artist Nestor Redondo), Susan Ackerman (Forest Ackerman, of course), Charles Wrightson (Berni Wrightson, who drew the comic for Creepshow), Jane Corben (Richard Corben, who created Den from the Heavy Metal magazine and movie, as well as the painter of the poster for Spookies), Garrett Adams (Neal Adams), Janis Romero (George Romero) and Pamela Kirby (Jack Kirby).

This movie also features early special effects work by Dennis and Robert Skotak, who would go on to work on movies like Escape from New York, Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Mars Attacks!, Galaxy of Terror and so many more.

While this movie is junk — enjoyable junk that I will force people to watch — there’s a lot to be learned from it. Isn’t that what loving movies is all about? Actually, it’s also what the occult is all about too: the secret messages lurking behind the veneer of what seems like nothing.

You can watch this for free on Tubi or just check out the highlights below.

TMZ has launched a new series on Tubi called No BS in which they’ll present stories of some of the biggest names in pop culture.

Hosted by Harvey Levin, Charles Latibeaudiere and guest TMZ contributors, the docuseries will feature never-before-seen stories and fresh reporting that provides an eye-opening look at people who have been widely covered but never really understood, including Jennifer Lopez, Conor McGregor and Wildest Celebrity Arrests.

Ther is this moment in Popstar where Will Arnett, Eric Andre and Chelsea Peretti do a more than perfect scene of TMZ reporters laughing at celebrities while realizing that they have no lives, all while Andre’s cup keeps getting bigger. It makes me laugh every single time, but worse, it’s ruined every single time that I watch TMZ reports, because it was so true that the parody has surplanted reality.

I find it very strange that everyone on this show is so on Britney’s side when they’ve spent years contributing to her declining mental health. It really made watching this a bit strange if not upsetting. I mean, I’m not blameless, I’ve been reading the National Enquirer since Elvis died, but I’d like to think that I’m not one of the people chasing celebrities to their mental breakdowns.

But yeah — if you like TMZ and you think their shtick isn’t disingenuous, well, there’s this. I mean, it totally is disingenuous but here it still is.

You can watch this on Tubi.