The first time I saw the poster for this film, it looked like some kind of alien movie that should in no way be playing at the multiplex — where it did a two-day on demand run in my area — so of course, it fascinated me. Let me tell you, this movie lived up to what I wanted it to be, whatever it is.

What can we say about a movie that starts with a PS2-level cut scene of St. Michael the Archangel (Peter Mensah) defeating the rebel angels led by Lucifer (Joe Anderson) and chaining him in a pit. You have to love a movie where Lucifer looks right at the hero and asks, “Is this all necessary?”

Boom, the movie fast forwards to art student Laura Milton (Alice Orr-Ewing) studying the Shroud of Turin when an army led by Liz (Eveline Hall) breaks in, kills the kindly Father Marconi (Joe Doyle) and runs off with the fabric which is said to have an image of Jesus Christ on it. Dying, Marconi begs for the intercession of Archangel Michael who soon takes over his body.

Michael soon is given a prophecy: A wicked woman and a beast of the Earth are to bring a child into our world that will carry the spirit of Lucifer. That child will be the clone of Jesus, made through the DNA in the Shroud, and the blasphemy of the Son of God being used to carry the spirit of the First of the Fallen will bring about another War in Heaven.

Meanwhile, Lauren is taken to a facility where she and three other women — Sophia, Brenda and Mia — are tested to see who can handle the seed of the devil. Of course it’s Lauren, even if she tries to drink bleach to destroy the demonic child inside her. Michael attempts to save her but gets sent to Hell, where he learns that the demons there plan to run wild on Earth. Past sacrfices trapped there help him to find his holy sword and makes it back to the human world, where he lets Lucifer in on the fact that God already had his plan all figured out and Laura’s child is destined to destroy him.

There’s also a wacky ending that totally sets up a sequel that I will not wait for streaming and be in the first seat in the first showing. I mean, this is a movie where the evil devil people have figured out cloning and sell a new version of Michelangelo for ten million euros!

Directed by Nathan Frankowski and written by Ed Alan, this movie reminds me of the days when oddball stuff like Ultraviolet and Priest could show up in multiplexes for a week and then get discovered on cable and video. Sure, they weren’t great movies per se but are also films that were colored outside the lines. Often critically reviled, they’re also the movies I seek out.

I totally thought this was a religious movie, but it has so much gore, profanity and a moment where Laura  swallows all that bleach, straddles Liz and pukes directly into her face. Now that’s cinema.

Also: it has the two most obvious needledrops I’ve ever heard one after the other: INXS playing “Devil Inside” and Real Life’s “Send Me an Angel.” That’s the kind of ridiculousness I approved of.

I really liked Christopher Smith’s Triangle.

I really, really like occult and Catholic-based horror movies.

Consecration feels like it could be a slam dunk, right?

Adding Jena Malone as the lead seems like the icing on the cake.

Yet why did it all feel so unsatisfying?

Malone is Grace, a woman who has just arrived on the Isle of Skye hoping to learn how and why her priest brother has died. Then she learns that he may have been a killer himself and that, well, the church he was stationed at has a history of weirdness just like this.

And the movie starts with a nun putting a gun in her face before going to the credits. Come on! This is going to be awesome, right?

Oh well.

The Mount Saviour Convent where Grace’s brother lived was founded after the Crusades as penance by an order called the Knights of the Morning Star. You know. Like Lucifer. As a once good Catholic, I’m all for this and want to know more.

Sure, there’s an oddball Mother Superior (Janet Suzman) who washed the little crabs off the deceased priest when he was found on the beach and claimed that he was possessed by a demon. And Father Romero (Danny Huston), who is here to return the convent to a holy place through re-consecration.

But then it gets all exposition and flashback and isn’t sure what kind of movie it wants to be. Sure, it looks gorgeous, but it never seems to go as far as it should. It does get the idea of how imposing and strange religious buildings are, but maybe I’m unfairly comparing this film to gritty — and yes, sleazier — religious horror movies that go absolutely berserk like The Devils, The Demons, Alucarda and The Other Hell. Maybe I was expecting it to go deep with its revelations like Dark Waters.

Blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s, Joseph Losey moved to Europe. His exile from Hollywood started when Howard Hughes bought RKO and purged it of people he thought were Leftists. In the book Losey On Losey, he said “I was offered a film called I Married a Communist, which I turned down categorically. I later learned that it was a touchstone for establishing who was a “red”: you offered I Married a Communist to anybody you thought was a Communist, and if they turned it down, they were.” He’d later tell the New York Times that although the blacklist was frightening at first, it ended up making him a better artist: “Without it I would have three Cadillacs, two swimming pools and millions of dollars, and I’d be dead. It was terrifying, it was disgusting, but you can get trapped by money and complacency. A good shaking up never did anyone any harm.”

Losey made The Boy with Green Hair; noir like The Big Night and The Lawless; The Damned for Hammer; Secret Ceremony and Boom! with Elizabeth Taylor; Modesty Blaise and the Palme d’Or winning The Go-Between. He was right. The blacklist didn’t harm him as an artist.

What’s amazing is that this film, screened out of competition at Cannes in 1975, was released in the U.S. by New World. I shouldn’t be surprised, as along with drive-in movies about women in prison and men in cars, Roger Corman championed films by artists like Fellini and Bergman.

Lewis Fielding (Michael Caine) is a pulp novelist who provides for his wife Elizabeth (Glenda Jackson), but she finds their marriage boring. She runs to Germany and into the arms of Thomas (Helmut Berger), a younger and much more exciting lover, but also one who doesn’t have the stability and, well, legal standing of her husband. They never consummate their affair, but when she returns home, he follows. Lewis decides to hire him as his secretary. As you can imagine, being alone in the house with the object of her lust ends with Elizabeth and Thomas canoodling and running back for Germany with gangsters seeking Thomas’ head and Lewis wanting to win his wife’s heart back.

Thomas gives Elizabeth the attention her husband holds back — he doesn’t even react when she walks across their yard nude in front of the neighbors — while his disguise as a fan of the writer’s work feeds Thomas’ needs as well. Whether that attention is carnal or artistic, he’s the person that each wants and needs. The only problem is that Thomas is none of those things. He’s just a con man that screwed up a drug deal and is trying to save his own life. And yet while Thomas holds back the sexual energy his wife demands, he grows angry and resentful of his secretary, knowing that they’re about to have that affair as if he has willed it into existence as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In his biography, Caine said that Losey was so dour that he bet the crew that he could make Losey laugh before the movie wrapped. Caine lost the bet.

New World had already brought The Water Margin to the U.S. as Seven Blows of the Dragon, so they also played the sequel here as Seven Soldiers of Kung Fu, which is I guess thematically a decent sequel title.

Co-directed by Chang Cheh and Wu Ma, this follows up the 108 Bandits having freed second-in-command Lu Jun Yi and being called by their former enemies to stop a rebellious new faction, led by Fang La, and promised a pardon upon the success of that mission.

Where the first film takes time to introduce the viewer to so many characters, All Men Are Brothers is all about action, with gigantic battles taking place on the sprawling Shaw Brothers backlot sets.

If you’ve watched enough Chang Cheh movies, you may have been a bit weirded out when The Water Margin ended and all of the heroes were alive. Don’t worry — he comes back to form on this, which ends with the kind of sacrificial bloody battle that he’s better known for. In fact, this just might be the bloodiest of all Shaw Brothers films. The American cut goes to black and white in some of these moments, one of those tricks that get you an R rating instead of an X.

The early to mid 70s were a magical time for martial arts films, as just about anything could come to America and play drive-ins, grindhouses and even occasionally mainstream movie theaters.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on August 31, 2018.

There are people that say there’s no such thing as a perfect movie. Those people have never seen Death Race 2000, a film that’s packed with pop culture references, ultraviolence, black humor, political commentary and great character moments.

After the “World Crash of ’79”, the United States government declares martial law. To keep the people happy, the Transcontinental Road Race is created. It’s a race across the country — ala Cannonball Run — except that drivers score points for killing people.

This is the twentieth race and each driver has their own character and themed car, including the mysterious champion Frankenstein (David Carradine, Kill Bill) who has been torn apart and rebuilt so many times, no one is sure what parts of him are real any longer; Machine Gun Joe (Sylvester Stallone, Rocky), a Chicago gangster who calls people mashed potato and will even drive over his own pit crew for points; Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov, Night of the Comet), a tough cowgirl; Nero the Hero (Martin Kove, Kreese from the Karate Kid!) and Matilda the Hun (Roberta Collins, Eaten Alive, Caged Heat), a Nazi. They each have a navigator who is also generally their sexual partner.

Covering the race is a parody of network news coverage — that would become even more true in today’s Fox News and CNN climate — which includes loudmouth Junior Bruce (Don Steele, Rockin’ Ricky Rialto from Gremlins), Harold, who is pretty much Howard Cosell and Grace Pander, the gossip columnist who refers to everyone as her close personal friend.

Meanwhile, Thomasina Paine, the great great great great and maybe even great-granddaughter of American Revolutionary Thomas Paine is sabotaging the race to rebel against the President. These revolutionaries have even placed Annie, Thomasina’s granddaughter, into the race as Frankenstein’s new navigator. That said — the government keeps covering up all of the deaths of the racers and blames it all on the French — who have already destroyed the country’s phone system — one of director Paul Bartel’s (Eating Raoul) favorite jokes. In fact, the film was packed with even more silliness before Roger Corman chopped out most of the strangeness that Bartel loved so much.

Everyone but Machine Gun Joe and Frankenstein are left in the race. Before the final day of the race, Annie learns that Frankenstein isn’t even the original man — he was a ward of the state who was raised from birth to compete in the Death Race. When he’s used up, another will take his place. And he’s closer to the spirit of the rebels than Annie would ever think — he plans on using his fake right hand to blow up the President. Of course, that was the plan. But Annie saves Frankenstein using this “hand” grenade in the final battle

Frankenstein is injured, so Annie takes his place and tries to stab the President. But her own grandmother shoots her, as she wants revenge thinking that the champion Death Racer had killed her granddaughter. And this all takes place after the President declares war on the French and appoints Frankenstein to lead his armies!

The real Frankenstein recovers and runs over the President to the roar of the crowd. He becomes President, marries Annie and runs over Junior Bruce as he puts an end to the Death Race.

This film may have been remade (and there are several sequels to that franchise) and Corman finally put out Death Race 2050, his own sequel to the film, in 2017. But do we need anything else when the original is so epic? It’s so much fun, punctuated by moments of sheer lunacy. Viva la Death Race 2000!

Featured image: Kako.

I’m fully aware going in that I’m the worst person to try and watch this movie. Even the first two films, Scream and Scream 2, the ones most people point out as the reasons why they love this series, do beyond nothing for me. The fan service 2022 not a sequel Scream 5? Scream 4? Scream 3?

Yeah. Not a fan.

So why am I writing about this?

Well, I don’t write about movies to talk about how much I hate them. That’d be too easy and, frankly, boring to write about. So here are some nice things about these movies: I think the idea of the first film is admirable, to send up slashers. Sure, it’s a few years too late. My issue comes in that these movies complain about movies more than me. Yes, we get how predictable slashers are. But if you know that, if you make fun of it, then you’re even worse because you know the pitfalls and willfully lead right into them.

Man, I said I was being nice.

So here you go: I liked when Parker Posey playing Courtney Cox in the third film is pretty great. I always thought Dewey was the best character because he was an everyman you could follow through the movie. Neve Campbell makes a great final girl. And I liked that the series beecame meta with the Stab movies remaking the events we had already seen in the Scream series.

The idea that the survivors of the Woodsboro legacy murders movied to New York City and are now in film school is an interesting start to this movie, as is the idea that Samara Weaving — alright, spoilers on — is the first kill, a role that Drew Barrymore started — yes, I know her boyfriend was the first kill and not her, maybe the first on-screen kill is a better choice — and has been continued by Omar Epps and Jada Pinkett in the second film, Kelly Rutherford and Liev Schreiber in the third…you get what I’m saying. As she’s an expert that teachers classes in slasher movies, you’d think there’d be more to her scene, but this movie keeps setting up the idea that it’s going to be very meta and comment on those who make and consumer violent horror and it never goes more than a cursory step in that direction. Instead of actual references and nods, it just has characters say, “That guy was really into Argento,” and we’re to say, “Wow, this movie totally gets it!” when all it gets is throwing a name out that you recognize and going nowhere with it other than that mention.

Anyways…

Sam (Melissa Barrera) and her half-sister Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega) are two of the survivors who have moved away, along with twin sisters Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown), plus Quinn Bailey (Liana Liberato), Anika (Devyn Nekoda) and Ethan (Jack Champion). The hijinks have already begun, as Jason Carvey (Tony Revolori) is the one who lured Samara Weaving’s professor character to her doom and is working with his roommate Greg to finish what Richie and Amber  tried to do in the last movie — they’re fans — before both are murdered by another Ghostface. There’s also a theory in social media that Sam was the real killer.

Quinn’s father Detective Wayne Bailey (Dermot Mulroney) is on the case of these murders and has found Sam’s ID near Jason’s corpse, along with the Ghostface mask used in the last film. There’s also another Ghostface — with a gun, which for some reason excited people in the trailer — who shoots up a bodega named Abe’s Snake — Abe Snake was Wes Craven’s porn making pseudonym — while under the mask from the 2011 Woodsboro killings in Scream 4.

Speaking of that movie, Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere) survived that movie and is now an FBI agent. That’s right about when Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) shows up and has some exposition to let us know that Sidney Prescott won’t be showing up and it’s totally not because the producers didn’t pay Neve Campbell what she’s worth.

Campbell released this quite classy statement: “As a woman I have had to work extremely hard in my career to establish my value, especially when it comes to Scream. I felt the offer that was presented to me did not equate to the value I have brought to the franchise. It’s been a very difficult decision to move on. To all my Scream fans, I love you. You’ve always been so incredibly supportive to me. I’m forever grateful to you and to what this franchise has given me over the past 25 years.”

At the same time, Ghostface — wearing the Scream 5 mask — kills Sam’s therapist and steals her file and shortly after, kills Quinn and Anika while wearing the mask from Scream 2. Wayne is taken off the case but decides to go after Ghostface himself, just as Gale finds a theater that is a shrine to the Ghostfaces of the many Stab movies. She later takes a call where Ghostface kills her boyfriend and nearly murders her before Sam and Tara save the day.

Everyone converges at the theater — after a subway scene where Ghostface walks alongside The Shape and Pinhead costumes *– and that’s where I feel like you should see the end of this movie for yourself, as that level of spoilers would give you no reason to watch. I will say that I liked how Billy Loomis shows up.

Directed by Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett) and written by James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) and Guy Busick, this feels like a sequel that was made because the last movie was a success instead of because it was something people really wanted, like the last film.

The idea of the rules being discussed feel almost tossed in for no reason now, the references to other movies rememberberries at best, the idea that this many people could have all been Ghostface kind of ludicrous and this is from someone who accepts Jason being alive for so long at the bottom of the lake.

I think that if you’re a fan of these films, you’ve already seen it, posted about it, said that it’s not the best in the series and still went and saw it again. I can think of a ton better slashers and even many better meta slashers — don’t get me started on that AV Club list of twenty best — but as I’ve proved in my watches of these movies, they aren’t for me. But I’m trying to find the good in even the things I don’t always want to watch.

*Other costumes include The Babadook, Peachfuzz from Creep, Emerald from Nope, the Tethered from Us, Jason Voorhees, Samara, Kayako, Grace from Ready or Not, Chucky, Pennywise, The Grady Twins and Freddy Krueger.

When Butch Cassidy (Ross Jirgl), The Sundance Kid (Jilon VanOver) and the rest of the Wild Bunch rob a train of big money, the Pinkerton men — led by Detective Siringo (Jeffrey Combs) — assemble to being them in, dead or well, probably not alive.

This film strides a different path than the famous Redford and and Newman film. Butch is quieter and haunted by his past. His father figure, Mike Cassidy, is played by Bruce Dern, adding more star power to the cast of this movie. And Mike’s wife Alice is Dee Wallace, so Butch Cassidy & The Wild Bunch has a lot of my favorites in some strong roles.

There’s another film coming up — Butch vs. Sundance which will also be on Tubi — and this comes from The Asylum. It was directed by Anthony C. Ferrante (Sharknado, Time Pirates) and written by Geoff Meed (The Amityville Haunting; he is also Kid Curry in this movie). Other Wild Bunch members include Elza Lay (Alex Knight), Isom Dart (Josh Horton) and Bob Meeks (Kyle McKeever).

I don’t know who is asking for a new Butch and Sundance movie — well, obviously me — but I love that Tubi is expanding their originals with a western, much less one that will have a follow-up. Plus, Combs showing up in anything will always get me to watch.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Before he moved into making TV movies, Michael Miller made Silent Rage and Class Reunion in the same year, as well as another rough film, Jackson County Jail. Street Girls is more raw than all of them, a movie that seemed to be sleazier than the majority of New World’s catalogue.

Shockingly, it was co-written by Barry Levinson.

Yes, the same person who directed Rainman.

Angel (Christine Souder in the only movie she’d ever make) goes from college girl to exotic dancer to getting hooked on heroin. Her father (Art Burke) decides to go the Hardcore route four years before that movie was made and head out into the filthy streets to find his little girl. At first, he has the help of her co-worker Sally (Carol Case, also in her only movie) until he learns that she was Angel’s lover. Disgusted, he abandons her and continues his search.

This also shows the life that Angel is in, down to a scene where a client brings her a swimming mask so that he can urinate on her. She locks herself in a filthy motel bathroom while he keeps banging on the door, begging for the opportunity to defile her. This scene goes way beyond any small town girl gone wrong movie than any I’ve seen in mainstream movies.

It’s not great, but man, it’s not afraid to show how cheap life can be.

You can watch this on Tubi.

As she hurries to create a new fragrance to impress g a famous fashion icon Amy Song (Jean Yoon, Kim’s Convenience), organic chemist Shay Robson (Katherine Barrell, Star Trek: Discovery, Wynonna Earp) ends up spilling it all over said fashionista’s hot nephew Austin (Patrick Kwok-Choon, who was also on Star Trek: Discovery and Wynonna Earp).

He instantly falls for Shay because of the accidental mixture that she’s made. Or maybe it’s true love. Either way, Shay’s business — run inside a storage unit next to a Dungeons and Dragons play group — and her heart are both in danger, which makes her overanalyzes everything to the point that she almost loses it all.

With the help of her friend Darian Wilson (Tom Hearn), Shay has to solve it all, because there’s no way — at least she thinks — that she could win over such a catch. Can she learn to love herself and see that her ideas have value?

Directed by Robin Dunne (who has mostly directed holiday movies and two robot dog movies about A.R.C.H.I.E.; he also acts and is in this as Jorgenson), who co-wrote it with Arcade Riley (he’s also Rick Shaw, the RPG gamesmaster in this), Making Scents of Love is pretty much exactly like a perfume you buy at Target. It does what it should, it’s maybe a bit more memorable than you thought it would be and it’s affordable. Or, because this is on Tubi, free.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on August 7, 2019.

Steve Carver originally intended to get involved in the worlds of cartooning, commercial art and animation before becoming a cameraman for ABC’s Wide World of Sports, shooting St. Louis Cardinals baseball games before he made thirty documentaries while teaching college at the same time.

One of those documentaries got him into the American Film Institute, where he studied under George Stevens, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlton Heston and Gregory Peck, as wel as the opportunity to be the assistant director on Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun.

Carver’s final AFI project was a short based on Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, which brought him to the attention of Roger Corman. He edited 150 trailers for the producer and directed The Arena — which has Joe D’Amoto as director of cinematography — before this film. He’d go on to make two Chuck Norris films, Lone Wolf McQuade and An Eye for An Eye before leaving film for the world of photography, pining for the more fun days of working with Corman.

Texas, 1932. Wilma McClatchie (Angie Dickinson) has taken over her dead man’s bootlegging still but gets caught by the law. Forced to hand over all her money and even her wedding ring to the sheriff, she decides that she and her daughters Polly (Robbie Lee, Lace from Switchblade Sisters and eventually the voice of Twink on Rainbow Brite; she’s also the goddaughter of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans) and Billy Jean (Susan Sennett, The Candy Snatchers and wife of Graham Nash) are going to live a life of crime.

While Wilma is at a bank trying to pass a fake check, the girls end up helping Fred Diller (Tom Skerritt) as he knocks over the joint. He and Wilma soon become lovers, but that doesn’t last long before she’s bedding gambler William J. Baxter (William Shatner) and he starts sleeping with both of her daughters, sometimes at the same time because Roger Corman produced this.

After kidnapping and ransoming the daughter of a millionaire, federal agents and the police finally track down the gang. Baxter gets cuffed and the girls escape while Diller defends them with a hail of Thompson submachine gun fire. But as they drive away, Wilma dies, her bloody arm dragging against the left side of the car as it speeds away.

Well, or so you’d think, as there was a sequel.

I learned so much about so-called bad movies from the Medved brothers. In their 1986 tome Son of the Golden Turkey Awards, they nominated Dickinson’s role in this film as “The Most Embarrassing Nude Scene in Hollywood History.” Now that I’m older and wiser, I can say that these guys must have been embarrassed themselves as they actually enjoyed this trash. I hate the idea of guilty pleasures; just like what you like.

Oddly enough, Jerry Garcia performed most of the guitar and banjo music in the movie. And if you’re looking for fun actors, Sally Kirkland, Dick Miller and Royal Dano all show up. It’s not the best movie you’ve ever seen, but it’s filled with sin, skin and bullets. What else were you hoping for?

You can watch this on Tubi.