Loosely based on the 1946 novella “Vintage Season” by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, this was the directing debut of David Twohy, who would go on to make The Arrival and Pitch Black. It stars Jeff Daniels and Ariana Richards as Ben and Hillary Willson. They’re renovating their home and coming to terms with loss, as Ben’s wife (and Hillary’s mother) has died, a fact that Ben’s stepfather Judge Caldwell (George Murdock) won’t forgive him for. Blaming the man for his daughter’s death, he takes Hillary away through the courts.

At the same time, a bus filled with travelers that have stamped passports of places through time shows up at his house, looking for a place to stay. These tourists show up to watch disasters at different points in time and have come to this place and time to watch a meteor decimate the town and most of its citizens. As Ben and Hillary tend to the survivors, he realizes that the tourists are still waiting for something else. That would be a gas main explosion that takes Hillary’s life.

What follows is a time travel journey to one day before with the hopes of saving the lives of everyone in the town. At one point, both versions of Ben work to save the life of Hillary without damaging reality.

Also known as Timescape, somehow I never knew that this movie existed. It’s interesting and Daniels makes for a good science fiction lead. I still can’t figure out why I never heard of it, because it’s totally the type of movie that I look for and I was constantly renting movies in 1991.

You can order this Unearthed Classics DVD from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on November 5, 2021 and was written by Benjamin Merrell, who lives in Seattle, WA. You can check out his blog at cestnonunblog.com and follow him on Letterboxd.

Diana ‘TNT’ Jackson (Jeannie Bell), one bad mamma jamma, heads off to Hong Kong to, I guess, tell off her brother, Stag Jackson after he didn’t respond to the letter that she sent him to, um, tell him off. “He asked me to send him some money, instead I sent him a piece of my mind. I just want to know if he got it.” I guess some “Screw you” messages have to be delivered in person. But, unbeknownst to her, brother dearest was actually killed by drug dealers during the opening credits. Now TNT is out for revenge!

…Or something like that. TNT Jackson, the character and the movie, aren’t really overly concerned with things like a logical plot progression or proper character motivations. The movie suffers from a flimsy, paper thin plot about double-crossing drug dealers that feels like it was slapped together and invented solely to give TNT something to do until she discovers which one of the drug dealers killed her brother. It stresses style over substance, but thank God the movie at least has some style.

After leaving the airport TNT takes a cab to the bad part of town. You know it’s bad because the very first thing we see is a woman getting raped in the middle of the street. On the plus side, someone does immediately come to the woman’s rescue, however his ass is swiftly kicked by the rapist, who then leaves, presumably to try and finish what he started. TNT asks around for directions, which goes over about as well as you think it will, and thus she draws the attention of a gang of muggers. TNT isn’t screwing around though. She mops the floor with them pretty easily and even has a fun fight with a mugger who likes showing off his two ridiculously massive butterfly knives.

Conveniently, one of our main characters, Elaine, (a “government agent” working undercover with the drug dealers as leader Sid’s girlfriend) happens to witness the fight and offers TNT a ride, which leads to one of my favorite dialogue interactions of the entire film. Elaine wants to know more about why TNT is in town but TNT, who has thus far only dealt with people who wanted to rape, mug or kill her since she got into town, is having none of it. “Look lady, or whoever you are…I accepted a ride to Joe’s Haven and that’s all you need to know about me.” To which, Elaine simply replies, “Bitch.”

Joe’s Haven is Stag Jackson’s last known address, a nightclub/strip club/dojo owned by Hong Kong local Joe, who TNT very unself-consciously asks, “Who’s ever heard of a Chinaman named Joe? … They call me TNT.” Joe is the one who tells her that Stag never got her “screw you” letter, and then later informs her that Stag was actually killed during the opening credits. Meanwhile, Elaine sends their enforcer Charlie to the club to check TNT out and figure out what her deal is. And since TNT is the only fly black chick with a killer afro on Hong Kong island (her afro is indeed spectacular), he immediately takes a liking to her. Little do either of them know at the time, but Charlie is actually the one who killed TNT’s brother. I’d like to say that was a spoiler, but again, this was the very first thing that happened in the movie.

We never end up finding out why TNT was angry at her brother or what was in the nasty letter she wrote him or even why exactly Charlie wanted to kill him, because the plot immediately shifts its focus to the double-crossing drug dealers. Someone in Sid’s gang is leaking info about their drug buys and stealing their heroin shipments, so everyone naturally assumes it has something to do with TNT, despite the fact that she literally just got there and has no idea who any of these people are. (Sid is played by Ken Metcalfe, who apparently also did some rewrites on the script. Was Ken responsible for making the writing better or worse? We may never know.) Weirder still, they all suspect her of being the rat, when in reality literally half the gang is working behind Sid’s back to betray him.

The other major gang figure we haven’t gotten to yet is Ming, the guy with the hookup with their supplier, whom you’re supposed to suspect is the one stealing the drugs, despite the fact that he may actually be the only loyal soldier in Sid’s gang. But we, the audience, don’t like him, because he doesn’t like how cozy Elaine and Charlie are getting with TNT. And of course to make us really hate him there has to be a scene where Ming and his henchmen corner TNT in her room and threaten her with torture and rape. TNT has to fight them off, topless naturally, clad only in her panties, so we the audience can enjoy some quality slow-motion jiggling, er, fight choreography.

There are actually quite a few fun fights in this movie, especially at the end when everyone starts Kung Fu Fighting like they’re in a Carl Douglas song. The fight choreography in general is pretty well put together, especially considering a lot of the fight scenes were shot over the shoulder, covering up for the fact that most of the Western actors clearly lack any sort of actual prior martial arts experience. Jeannie Bell in particular has a very expressive brand of chopsocky that does a stellar job of selling that TNT is a kung fu master badass, despite Jeannie obviously not having any clue as to what she’s doing.

TNT Jackson isn’t a great film, but fans of blacksploitation and chopsocky kung fu flicks can probably find enough nudity, blood, gore and most importantly fun here to keep them entertained for its blissfully short 74 minute runtime.

TNT Jackson was produced by American International Pictures and directed by Filipino Blacksploitation pioneer Cirio H. Santiago, who is probably best known for 1981’s Firecracker (seriously, check out Firecracker. It’s fantastic.) Written by Dick Miller (yeah, that Dick Miller), with martial arts instruction by J.Lo (unfortunately not that J.Lo).

The last in the New World Pictures nurses movies, Candy Stripe Nurses stars Candice Rialson as Sandy, a nurse determined to cure rock star Owen Boles (Kendrew Lascelles, a playwright and poet for the most part) of his impotence. The other girls include Diane (Robin Mattson, Hot Rod), who wants to be a doctor who ends up getting involved with speed-addicted basketball player Cliff (Rod Haase), and Marisa (Maria Rojo), who has a romance with potential criminal Carlos (Roger Cruz). Rojo was thirty one and playing a juvenile delinquent, which I find absolutely fits into the world of Corman.

Director Alan Holieb said, “I found out they had taken a poll at a local high school. They sent someone out with a list of 30 or so titles and Candy Stripe Nurses got the most votes. They wanted a little social consciousness, a little romance, a little comedy and a little sex. Another requirement was they wanted a sex clinic. I don’t know why!”

He would go on to direct Wizards of the Lost Kingdom without a credit and School Spirit.

Originally shot at the Burbank Community Hospital, the cast and crew were kicked out when the real script was discovered — they had given the administration one that had none of the sex scenes — and Rialson was found hiding naked before shooting one of her scenes.

This is the last and definitely least of the nurse films, as it abandons the social commentary and just goes straight for the sex, with a very odd to 2023 moral center, as guys just push women into sex to the point that it feels like an assault.

1930s Up the River may be the first women in prison movie — feel free to correct me — but between this movie and Jess Franco’s 99 Women, all the things you need to know about WIP that would follow have been set in stone. In fact, Roger Corman thought the genre had already peaked and little did he know how many more movies were to come.

That’s why director and writer Jonathan Demme financed this himself, first calling it Renegade Girls and finding inspiration from the prison movies of the past like White Heat and Caged when it came time to retitle it.

Jacqueline Wilson (Erica Gavin, Vixen!) has been busted for drugs — she’s innocent — and sent to Connorville, where she’s in the care of McQueen (Barbara Steele, forever the queen of evil), a wheelchair-bound repressed warden who seems to live to torture her prisoners. And while Jacqueline first hates Maggie (Juanita Brown, Foxy Brown), they end up busting out with fellow inmate Crazy Alice (Crystin Sinclaire, Ruby, Eaten Alive), robbing a bank and getting so brave that they bust back into the jail to rescue all of their former cell mates, who include Deborah Clearbranch (before she was Desiree Cousteau), Ella Reed, Irene Stokes, Amy Barrett, Cynthia Songe and two of the most important of all 70s female exploitation icons, Roberta Collins and Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith.

This movie stands out from every other WIP ever made because it doesn’t stay in our reality, instead letting us see into the dreams and hopes of the women behind bars, even Steele, who can escape her chair and be part of “The Blue Angel” inside the prison showers. Of course, before we have too much sympathy for her, she’s also sent so many of the women to be experimented upon and get electrical shocks from Dr. Randolph (Warren Miller).

Obviously, Demme would go above and beyond this film with Stop Making Sense, Silence of the Lambs and Something Wild. But it’s in genre films like this where he started and proved that he could make something special even on the smallest of budgets.

Directed by Karen Shakhnazarov, who wrote this with Aleksandr Borodyansky, Tsareubiytsa is about a patient in an asylum named Timofyev (Malcolm McDowell). He claims to be Yakov Yurovsky, the assassin of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, as well as the killer of his grandson Tsar Nicholas II in 1918. This would be impossible, as it would make Timofyev an old man. Yet when the new head of the hospital, Dr. Smirnov (Oleg Yankovskiy), tries to cure Timofeyev of his beliefs, he ends up pulled into time itself, becoming the doomed Tsar Nicholas II as Timofeyev narrates the final days of the Russian Imperial Family.

Shakhnazarov also made Zerograd and if you enjoyed that, this has the same feeling of time and history being something that you can fall into and perhaps not escape. The film was shot simultaneously in English and Russian-language versions on separate 35mm negatives, so this is not as impenetrable as you would be led to believe.

McDowell is great in this, as it is before he was in every horror movie who could use him, becoming the modern Donald Pleasence up to taking over the role of Doctor Loomis for Rob Zombie. He said of this movie, “It was an amazing experience, really, and something I will never forget.  It stands out of all the movies I’ve done as one of the most interesting. I knew by meeting Shakhnazarov I was going to work with him. He was a substantial artist and very passionate about his work. I just knew instantly I was going to work with him.”

Shakhnazarov had intended to make an adaption of Chekov’s Ward No. 6 and the research he did into Russian behavioral health inspired him and Borodyanskiy to create their own story of a Russian asylum haunted by the past. He said, “The subject of the assassination of the Tsar was banned absolutely and we knew very little about it. Any materials concerning this matter only began to appear only at the end of the perestroika period. When I read those materials, articles, books, I was fascinated by the story. The formerly closed archives were open and accessible. Of course, the story of the assassination of the royal family is very dramatic, it’s a tragedy and a very complex subject.”

The Deaf Crocodile and Seagull Films release of The Assassin of the Tsar has a new restoration from original 35mm elements by Mosfilm, a new commentary track by film writer and historian Samm Deighan, a new essay by film critic and historian Walter Chaw and new interviews with Malcolm McDowell and Shakhnazarov. Beyond the English language version, there’s also a Russian language version of the film with a different edit and score, complete with English subtitles. You can order this movie from Deaf Crocodile.

Everything in Gil Renard’s (Robert DeNiro) life is going wrong. His ex-wife Ellen (Patti D’Arbanville) has a restraining order against him. He’s not allowed to see his son Richie (Andrew J. Ferchland). He’s lost his job as a knife salesman at the very company that sells the knives his father created. The only good thing in his existence is the San Francisco Giants and his favorite player Bobby Rayburn (Wesley Snipes), who just signed a $40 million dollar contract.

But now Bobby is in a slump.

And Gil can’t have that.

One of the ways that he helps is by getting Bobby the jersey number he wants, 11, killing rival Juan Primo (Benicio del Toro). That helps his favorite player play better. But he’s lost his love for the game, a fact he reveals to Renard after the strange man saves his son Sean (Brandon Hammond) from drowning. Soon enough, he’s kidnapped the child and will only return him if Bobby hits a home run and dedicates it to him.

Based on The Fan by Peter Abrahams, this was directed by Tony Scott and written by Phoef Sutton. There are also great character roles for John Leguizamo and Ellen Barkin.

Cal Ripkin Jr. was Snipes’ hitting coach for this film and has said that De Niro creeped him out. When they met, he was listening to tapes of Robert Bardo, the man who stalked and killed Rebecca Schaefer. One would imagine that Snipes already knew how to play baseball, as he was Willie Mays Hayes in Major League.

In case you wondered, this is not as good as The Fan with Lauren Bacall and the German groupie madness Der Fan.

You can get the Mill Creek release of The Fan from Deep Discount.

If you grew up loving metal in the 80s, you probably were into the Bay Area thrash scene. This two CD and one DVD set has Megadeth guitarists David Ellefson and Jeff Young, along with Fred Leong and Chaz Aching, as well as an appearance by Megadeth bassist Chris Poland playing some of the best songs from that band.

The CDs include the following songs:

DISC 1

1. Last Rites
2. Rattlehead
3. The Skull Beneath The Skin
4. Good Mourning / Devil’s Island
5. Wake Up Dead
6. 502
7. In My Darkest Hour

DISC 2
1. Orange Light
2. Into The Lungs Of Hell
3. Set The World Afire
4. Killing Is My Business…And Business Is Good
5. Chosen Ones
6. Liar
7. Hook In Mouth
8. Mechanix
9. These Boots Are Made For Walkin’
10. Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?

The live DVD has a set at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go on October 15, 2022 with the band blasting through the following Megadeath tracks:

1. Last Rites
2. Rattlehead
3. The Skull Beneath The Skin
4. Good Mourning / Devil’s Island
5. Wake Up Dead
6. 502
7. In My Darkest Hour
8. Orange Light
9. Into The Lungs Of Hell
10. Set The World Afire
11. Killing Is My Business…And Business Is Good
12. Chosen Ones
13. Liar
14. Hook In Mouth
15. Mechanix
16. These Boots Are Made For Walkin’
17. Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?

Kings of Thrash have been touring and playing Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good! and So Far, So Good… So What! — as well as some of Peace Sells… They’re also recording some of their own original music, which is exciting. If you’re into the music of this era and want to enjoy fast riffs without having to hear Dave Mustaine sing — a bonus for me — then you’ll enjoy this set.

Also, full disclosure, I know that Ellefson has had a controversial moment in 2021 yet it seems all charges were dismissed. Being a metal fan is rough — especially extreme metal — but I figure it should at least be mentioned before I get a bunch of comments about it.

You can learn more about the Kings of Thrash on their official site and buy this from MVD.

Barbara Peeters directed and wrote one of the better of the Corman “occupation” films with this movie, which was produced by Julie Corman. It’s a simple story: three girls leave Iowa for a California summer and we watch the way their lives are changed.

Like Sally (Pat Anderson, Bonnie’s Kids, Fly Me). She came out here to teach photography and misses her fiancee back home, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t date a whole bunch of men like a former rock star who now works in a grocery store because of his food fetish and another teacher who takes her to the Pussycat Theater and then shoots nudes of her. Sally also hooks up with a movie star named John John Lacey who is Michael Greer from Messiah of Evil.

Or Denise (Rhonda Leigh Hopkins). She gets involved in the life of one of her students when he steals a car. Well, she sleeps with him too, so maybe she’s not the best teacher.

The star, however, is Conklin (Candice Rialson, Moonshine County Express). She decides to coach a girl’s football team despite the men’s coach (Dick Miller) standing in her way.

There’s always a trade-off in the Corman occupation films. The best of them — like this one — present a world where women can compete and defeat entrenched male power structures. However, they all are filled with mostly female nudity. That said, in this film, Rialson’s character chooses the man she loves, a geeky teacher many would pass by, and she’s in complete ownership of her body.

Director Billy Hazelrod (Joe Warfield) wants to make a biker movie in a small town where all of the interactions are real. He wants people to live and breathe their roles, but seeing as how the town already distrusts not just bikers but these Hollywood types, he’s basically setting up a horrible tragedy. Or maybe that’s what he intended all along. Why else would he set a sexual assault scene in a church, surrounded by real worshippers? And why is anyone surprised when they stop kneeling and start attacking the bikers — who they think are real — as the cameras keep rolling?

Sue Bernard (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) is the lead actress who starts taking her role too seriously. Andrea Cagan (The Hot Box) is the local girl who gets seduced by the dream factory that has taken over her small town. And John Holmes plays a cop!

The idea of this movie is way more interesting than the film itself. If I write and tell you that an accidental killing in this film becomes part of the movie that is being made within the movie and it’s about art and life intersecting, it comes off that this film is able to turn that storyline into something meaningful. It gets close through it’s very fly on the wall way of being shot. Yet it’s so talky that it feels like it will take a long time to get there. If made by a better filmmaker, it may have.

Speaking of those filmmakers, this was directed and co-written (with Earl Jay) by Gerald Sindell, who also made H.O.T.S., a movie that was on cable seemingly non-stop in the middle of the masturbatory night in my teenage years.