Braddock has been in the news a lot lately, being the adopted home of John Fetterman. Yet for years, Tony Buba has been there, making documentaries about the former steeltown where he was born and continued to live, all while working in movies, doing sound for George Romero films and showing up with his brother Pasquale as drug dealers in Martin and bikers in Dawn of the Dead.

Lightning Over Braddock: A Rustbowl Fantasy takes place at the end of the eighties, a time when so much of America gave up on Pittsburgh and its surrounding mill towns. Where once Braddock was Pittsburgh’s shopping center with seven movie theaters, by the time of this movie it was falling to pieces — it would get worse — as the mills in Homestead were being closed by U.S. Steel, who said they were in the business of making money, not steel.

I grew up directly between Pittsburgh and Youngstown with a grandfather who spent his whole life in the blast furnace after liberating concentration camps. He used to tell me about getting frostbite on one side of his body and a suntan on the other as he worked at J&L in Aliquippa and would come home covered in dirt and grime in the small hours of the day, sleeping when everyone else was awake and then going back the very next day and doing it all over again.

Buba plays himself, trying to make a movie with Sal Caru, a local character who was also in one of his shorts Sweet Sal. Except that Sal thinks that just because Werner Herzog liked the movie, Tony is going to leave Braddock behind, just like the steelworkers did when they started making money. He’s ready to battle everyone in his way, leaving rambling explentative-filled answering machine messages demanding an audience.

There’s a moment before his confession that Tony looks at an animated card of Jesus and times when he thinks about how expensive Hollywood things are, how the rich men running the mills spend as much in a day as people in Braddock make in a year and how he can’t waste anything. He feels guilty about things like wanting to leave his hometown behind for Hollywood before realizing this is where he belongs.

While I’m a transplant to the greater Pittsburgh area, living in Mount Oliver, Edgewood, Allentown, Homestead, Dravosburg, West Mifflin, McKeesport and now Monongahela in my life, I feel such an emotional tug to this place. You can look at the Waterfront shopping area built on the top of the dead Carrie 6 furnace and see that even though this town is now about tech, we haven’t forgotten the past. I still miss Alexander Graham Bell’s bar on 8th, a place in Homestead where every table had a telephone and you could call table to table. I’ve hunted down where the old drive-ins were, the defunct movie theaters, the places that Pittsburgh used to be.

The struggles within this film of the steelworkers are long gone. So many of us have forgotten them, so many are gone now to be honest. My grandfather has been dead twenty years by now and I miss him and those stories every day. But Pittsburgh trudges on, even as one of the few mills still open is right down the street from my house now, the Clairton works, making the air itself the worst in the state. It smells like eggs on a foggy day, but once you couldn’t wash your clothes outside if you lived above the mills and Homestead ceremony is filled with the bodies of union men and the Pinkertons who got off boats to try and break their line, one of the largest instances of armed warfare inside our country.

I came away from this knowing why Tony Buba loves Pittsburgh because I think sure, we might complain about it, we might wish it were different, but we love everything about this town. We’re lifers. I couldn’t imagine caring about anywhere else.

You can buy this from Kino Lorber.

Writer Jesse Andrews was born in Pittsburgh and his family home in Point Breeze was used as lead character Greg’s (Thomas Mann) house in the film, while Rachel’s (Olivia Cooke) house is in Squirrel Hill and Earl’s (RJ Cyler) house is in Braddock. This film actually gives a pretty good tour of the city, as the old Schenley High School, The Warhol, Copacetic Comics and Oakland all show up.

I first watched this because it was directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, who did such a phenomenal job on the reimagined The Town That Dreaded Sundown.

Greg’s parents — Nick Offerman and Connie Britton — force him to spend time with Rachel, who is suffering from leukemia and not attending school. As she grows sicker and loses her hair, Greg assures us that she does not die in the end. To keep her spirits up, he shares the film parodies that he creates with his co-worker — he is afraid to say friend about anyone — Earl.

Greg begins to neglect school — and even a popular girl named Madison (Katherine C. Hughes) as he struggles to stay positive as Rachel gets worse. He even loses his friendship with his collaborator as they finish making a movie to try and help her spirits.

I can’t think about this movie without tearing up  Gomez-Rejon made it in the attempt to create a more personal movie and deal with the loss of his father. It really says something about growing up and the people we gain and lose as we stumble through life. I recommend it highly.

Available as an extra on the new Terror Vision blu ray of Santa Claws, Scream Queens’ Naked Christmas is such an oddity in our overly saturated by pornography world of 2022. It’s dirty, kind of, but not really in any way as much as it’s women taking their clothes off which seems perfectly chaste today. It ends up here, a combination movie for this week of Pittsburgh movies and holiday classics — classics may be stretching things but it is the season of giving — directed by John Russo, who was also the publisher and managing editor of Scream Queens Illustrated, a magazine that chronicled horror movie actresses — and showed their boobs, let’s be frank — in a time when getting on the internet often involved needing to be at a university or the slowest dial up ever.

As a kid, I often fantasized about what it would be like going to the Edison Hotel and what was waiting for me inside. I should have been shown this film because the dancing in it is about as sexy as any so-called Pittsburgh adult club I’ve ever been in. At least the Tennyson Lounge used to let you get up on stage and sing, The Cricket was cheap to drink at and you could get dollar slices at Anthony’s when that was still a place. In fact, I’ve always liked the aura of sin in clubs of ill repute more than experiencing the sin because it’s just a transaction and the sooner you realize you’re just a mark, the quicker you can just hang back and soak it all up. The robotic dancing in this, the faraway eyes — just imagine it darker, smelling like more perfume and if you dumb glitter all over yourself and burn your money, you too can have an authentic experience.

With Wayne (Grant Kramer) from Santa Claws hosting, basically this video is John Russo and Bill Hinzman videotaping women and getting them naked for the yule season. Sue Ellen White only did this movie, but Lisa Delien (using the stage name Lisa Duvaul) was also in Eyes Are Upon You and Amanda Madison (using the name Christine Cavalier) appeared in other movies like Psycho Dance, Psycho Vampire, Slaughter Secretaries…yes, all Wave Productions. She’s also in Donald Farmer’s Red Lips.

The main star is, of course, Debbie Rochon, whose career took her everywhere from getting a scar on the streets of Vancouver at the age of 14 and being an extra in Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains to buiding her legacy as a scream queen in movies like Lurkers, Tromeo and Juliet and so many more, being picked as Draculina magazine’s Scream Queen of the Decade (1990–1999). She’s still making movies today, shrugging off setbacks like nearly losing four fingers of her right hand to a prop machete. She’s also one of those people who appear so perfect that you wonder if they’re some kind of android. I hope she never stops making movies ever.

This movie is ridiculous but I’m also strangely happy that it exists. If you saw Santa Claws, you’ve seen it already, but I respect that Russo is out to make money off you more than once for the same exact product.

Swedish directors Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein also directed Underworld: Awakening, but today we’re here to discuss this Pittsburgh-shot movie that is packed with City of Bridges locations such as downtown Pittsburgh, the Fort Pitt Tunnel, East Liberty Presbyterian Church, the Community College of Allegheny County, the now-closed Spin Bartini and Ultra Lounge in Shadyside, the Braddock Carnegie Library where I saw Earth in concert one magical night, the home of Mayor John Fetterman, houses in Schenley Farms, the Collier maintenance yard and — most importantly — Ritter’s Diner in Bloomfield.

Writer Michael Cooney also was behind Jack Frost and its sequel Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman and this movie is as absolutely dumb as those movies. Dr. Cara Harding (Julianne Moore) is recovering from the death of her husband when her father introduces her to Adam (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a patient who can do more than switch personalities, he can also change physical characteristics with each different side of his brain. Like how one of those forms, David Burnberg, requires a wheelchair.

Cara learns that the real David was killed many years ago and when she brings the man’s mother to met Adam, he tells her something so upsetting that she screams that he is evil.

Meanwhile, Cara sees no issue letting Adam play with her daughter Sammy (Brooklynn Proulx), who has given up on God after the deatah of her father. I mean, she already knows that Adam is also taking on the aspects of a metal singer who killed himself named Wes — not Sammie Curr — and his house is filled with Satanic paraphenelia and a dead body in the bathtub.

After Adam is arrested, Cara meets a witch doctor who shows him how she does psychic surgery and can move souls into containers. This is followed by a story about a faithless priest who told people in town that they didn’t need vaccines and still got his daughters shots. The people killed those two girls and the witch doctor sucked out his soul and filled his body with mud so that it would roam forever. I would assume this is supposed to be Washington County which track. Tarentum would also work.

So yeah — Adam isn’t Adam, he’s the soul of all that priest in a new body, the real Adam is dead and Sammy is the one that he really wants. Whew — I went into this hoping for another Yinzer Giallo film, but it’s so filled with the supernatural that it just doesn’t work.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Sure, this is set in Pittsburgh, but mainly it was shot in Vancouver and Los Angeles, with Pittsburgh only being used for some establishing shots. Let me tell you, there’s no goth clubs like thee one where Frankie Paige (Patricia Arquette) has a freakout and imagines wearing a crown of thorns. I mean, we had Metropol — in the Strip and on the edge — but it never looked that cool, trust me.

All that sigmata — the wounds of Jesus bleeding on the hands, feet and head of a mortal — show up because Frankie’s mother sends her the stolen rosary of dead priest Father Paulo Alameida. Father Andrew Kiernan (Gabriel Byrne) is dispatched by the Vatican to see if her wounds are actually divine.

The whole reason this is happening is that the dead priest had found something like the Gospel of Thomas. The Catholic Church wants it kept quiet because it claims that the Kingdom of God is inside all of us and not a building, which would ruin the little empire they’ve set up.

Amazingly, director Rupert Wainwright followed the movie Blank Check with this, then went on to remake The Fog. This is a Pittsburgh movie that I just can’t deal with as hardly any of the city that I love so much is in this, either in feeling or actually seen. If it was set here, that whole subway scene would be way different, because the T — sorry, the Pittsburgh Regional Transit — doesn’t go all that many places.

Kenneth Easterday was born with sacral agenesis, a congenital disorder in which the fetal development of the lower spine is abnormal. The first amputation surgery used his shin bones to replace his missing spinal column. They held off on the second surgery as he wasn’t expected to live, but then his second surgery improved his mobility by amputating the rest of his remaining legs at the hips.

This didn’t stop Kenny, as you can see in the movie, as he got around on a skateboard.

Directed and written by Claude Gagnon, this film is about a documentary crew trying to see what Kenny’s life is, living in the mill town of Aliquippa with a large family. Funded by Bandai Entertainment Inc. and Toho and staffed by a Japanese crew — Gagnon often worked between Canada and Japan — this film has a great cast as well, including Pittsburgh native Caitlin Clarke (Dragonslayer), Liane Curtis (whose father was the voice of Pops Racer and directed The Flesh Eaters; she’s in Sixteen Candles and Critters 2: The Main Course), Zach Grenier (he was Ed Norton’s boss in Fight Club), the man considered Pittsburgh’s finest actor Bingo O’Malley and Kenny’s real-life brother and sister Jess and Karen.

What’s amazing in this film is that it never gets overly dramatic. Kenny is actually pretty much fine with the hand that life is dealt him, laughing that the documentary crew wants to ramp up his pain and refusing the fake legs that everyone thinks will make him feel normal. It’s also a wonderful opportunity to see the old Market Square that I miss so much, giving you a view of George Aiken’s so perfect that you can smell the fried chicken.

This is now available on blu ray from Canadian International Pictures, a Vinegar Syndrome partner label.

In The Jew In American Cinema, Patricia Erens calls out this made in Pittsburgh low budget film as one with “perhaps the oldest Jewish husband in crisis” and says, “Despite the amateur acting and a rather unsavory depiction of contemporary Jewish life, The Devil and Sam Silverstein delivers one overriding message. Unlike their Christian neighbors, the Jews are incorruptible and unconvertible. Thus, despite the temptation, the Jew manages to beat the devil — no easy task.”

It was directed and written — from a story by Sanford Robinson and Stan Cohen — by Russell Streiner, who most know best as Johnny in Night of the Living Dead. Maniacs like me also recognize him as the assistant director of the beer commercial in There’s Always Vanilla and the preacher in The Majorettes.

The Devil (Owen Hollander, who was in The Happy Hooker and Christmas Evil)  is upset that his son — Devil Jr. (Robert Trow, who was a DJ in town, as well as Ralph in There’s Always Vanilla, Detective Mills in Season of the Witch and was probably best known outside of Pittsburgh for playing Bob Dog on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood) — might never be good enough to take over the family business. If the Devil Sr. sounds like Brando in The Godfather, well, at least you recognize the impression.

The Lord of Lies wants his boy to corrupt Sam Silverstein (Allan Pinsker, who like many a Yinzer actor is also in Sudden Death), a senior citizen Jewish husband who says — to quote this film’s other title — My Wife Cut Me Off Forty Years Ago. First, El Hijo del Diablo wants him to embrace Christianity, then sell his soul for some young lust. Every time he’s close, things blow up, even when he’s picked to be in an adult film or is stuck washing off blackface next to a gorgeous dancer, one assumes at the old Edison.

Other actors who show up before Sam goes back to his wife Bessie include prank artist Alan Abel (who once got Buck Henry on TV as the president of the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals and also the PR for this movie; he promoted the film by persuading Allan Pinsker to become a candidate for president under the name Sam Silverstein and getting him on the news with Walter Cronkite),David Emge (Stephen from Dawn of the Dead) and George Kosana (Sheriff McClelland from Night of the Living Dead and My Uncle John Is a Zombie, who famously says, “Yeah, they’re dead. They’re all messed up,” “Boy, somebody had a cookout here” and “Put that thing all the way on the fire.”).

I’m always interested in the non-zombie films of the Night of the Living Dead crew. This may be PG but feels a lot like the early 60s nudie cuties that were once so scandalous and now seem so chaste.

Most of Bringing Down the House — directed by Adam Shankman and written by Jason Filardi — is shot in Los Angeles, but some of it was in Pittsburgh and I guess that’s good enough to be included in this week of Pittsburgh-shot movies. There’s also an appearance by the LA headquarters of Mellon Bank, so maybe that’s a little more yinzer in this.

Peter Sanderson (Steve Martin) is seperated from his wife Kate (Jean Smart) and ends up chatting with Charlene (Queen Latifah), a woman who he’s surprised to learn is an escaped convict. And oh yeah, black. If that upsets you, this movie has plenty more race related humor and gets some of its few funny moments from having Eugene Levy say black slang as he woos Latifah. Kimberly J. Brown from the Halloweentown movies and Angus T. Jones from Two and a Half Men play the kids, Betty White is the next door neighbor and Missi Pyle has a decent fight scene with Latifah.

If anyone knows where in Pittsburgh this was filmed, let me know.

Shot in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Lebanon, Ohio, Milk Money is set in the fake Pennsylvania suburb Middleton. There, three kids — Brad (Adam LaVorgna), Frank (Michael Patrick Carter) and Kevin (Brian Christopher) — pay V (Melanie Griffith) to see her nude in the hopes that it gives them an advantage when dealing with girls. She ends up driving them home and staying when her car breaks down, living in Frank’s treehouse and acting like his math tutor and romancing his father (Ed Harris).

While all this is going on, her pimp Cash (Casey Siemaszko) is caught stealing from his boss Waltzer (Malcolm McDowell) who is also stealing from his boss Jerry “The Pope” (Philip Bosco). Cash tells Waltzer that V stole the money before he’s shot, sending the bosses after her with only a warning from fellow sex worker. Betty (Anne Heche) to get out of town.

Directed by Richard Benjamin and written by John Mattson, this is a movie that my wife has liked since she was a kid. I asked her why and she said, “Ed Harris is a sexy beast.” Sometimes, it’s better not knowing.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on December 23, 2019.

During the day Paola is an ordinary primary school teacher, but at night, she turns into…The Christmas Witch, a magical creature who brings gifts to the good kids.

That said, what is a Christmas Witch? Well, she doesn’t even come on Christmas! In Italian folklore, Befana is an old woman who delivers gifts throughout Italy on Little Christmas, which is called Epiphany Eve (the night of January 5), the night before the Catholic Church celebrates the manifestation of the divinity.

Some suggest that Befana is descended from the Sabine/Roman goddess named Strenia. Regardless, each year, she visits all the children of Italy to fill their socks with candy and presents if they are good, or a lump of coal,  dark candy or a stick (if they live in Sicily) if they are bad. She also will sweep the house, which is symbolic of sweeping away the problems of last year.

So wait…why are we covering this on our site? Stay tuned after the trailer.

So why did we watch it?

The director is Michele Soavi.

You read that right. The same man who made Cemetery Man, Stagefright, La Secta and The Church.

This is his first theatrical film since 2008’s Blood of the Losers.

Yes, let that sink in. The dude in the metal mask from Demons made a Christmas movie for kids.

Don’t worry — it’s pretty crazy, even if his visual style is a bit muted here.

The plot concerns Paola being kidnapped by Mr. Johnny, a cruel toymaker who got his childhood ruined by the Witch and is now seeking revenge. Six brave kids all learn the teacher’s secret and work together to save Christmas from commercialism.

So yeah. Merry Christmas early, everyone. You may have wanted something filled with gore and all manner of insanity like a rabbit that learns how to use a TV remote, but hey, you can’t pick what’s under your tree. Just enjoy this one, which you can find for free on Tubi and Amazon Prime.