EDITOR’S NOTE: Lovely But Deadly was on the CBS Late Movie on May 24 and December 6, 1985; May 29, 1986 and July 25, 1988.

Mary Ann “Lovely” Lovitt (Lucinda Dooling, The Alchemist, Surf II) has gone back to school to get revenge for the drug overdose death of her brother. Yes, twentysomething teenagers, martial arts, bad drugs and more await in this film directed by David Sheldon, the writer of Grizzly and the director of Devil Times Five. He also co-wrote this with Lawrence David Foldes (Young Warriors) and Patricia Joyce.

Stay for fistfights with cheerleaders in the locker room and an appearance — as one of the bad guys! — by former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rick Moser as drug dealing football player Mantis Managian (he even dates Pamela Jean Bryant from H.O.T.S.). Mel Novak is his boss!

Dooling is great in this and I’ve seen it described as a white girl version of Coffy, which pretty much says it all.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Psycho II was on the CBS Late Movie on April 14, 1989.

Making Psycho II was a thankless task but there’s no reason why this movie is as good as it is.

Author Robert Bloch had already written his sequel, which satirized Hollywood slasher films. Universal didn’t want to film, that, but they did want a sequel. They turned to Road Games director Richard Franklin — a student of Hitchcock — to make this from a script by Tom Holland.

Hilton A. Green, assistant director of the original Psycho, was contacted and asked if he wanted to produce. He wasn’t sure that Hitchcock would have approved the movie, but the director’s daughter Patricia gave her blessing.

As for Anthony Perkins, he turned down the role until he read the script, learning that it was Norman’s story and that he was the hero. Seriously, the entire world is the enemy in this movie, wanting to see Norman become insane again and all he can do is struggle against them.

He just wants to live behind the hotel and work in a diner and allow life to just keep going, finally free from being in a mental institution. But then the calls and notes from mother keep coming and Norman starts lashing out at everyone, thinking that it has to be someone like new hotel clerk Warren Toomey (Dennis Franz) or Lila Loomis (Vera Miles), the sister of the woman he killed so many years ago.

As Norman is locked inside his mother’s room, a female figure keeps killing people throughout town and soon, even in the house. And just how does Mary (Meg Tilly) figure into all of this? Can therapist Dr. Bill Raymond (Robert Loggia) figure it out in time?

I waited for years to watch this as I figured there was no way it could compare. Even when others told me I was wrong, I didn’t believe them. I can admit it. I was very wrong.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Outland was on the CBS Late Movie on July 30, 1986 and December 16, 1988.

Federal Marshal William O’Niel (Sean Connery) has been assigned to the titanium ore mining outpost Con-Am 27, operated by the company Con-Amalgamate on the Jovian moon of Io. It’s rough work in a place where gravity a sixth of Earth’s with no breathable atmosphere and the men are forced to work in heavy spacesuits with hardly any air. But there is money and productivity is up ever since the new manager, Mark Sheppard (Peter Boyle), was hired.

O’Niel is left behind with his wife and son leaving for Jupiter, but he does have a mission. That’s because several miners have died from getting stimulant psychosis and tearing off their suits. That may be because the miners are abusing polydichloric euthimal, a drug that allows them to stay awake for days at a time. The side effect? After ten months, they go insane.

With only one person on his side — Dr. Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen) — O’Niel has to battle the corrupt mining company and their men, many of whom don’t want a chance to their way of life, no matter how wrong it is.

Outland is pretty much a Western in space, directed and written by Peter Hyams, who told Empire, “I wanted to do a Western. Everybody said, “You can’t do a Western; Westerns are dead; nobody will do a Western.” I remember thinking it was weird that this genre that had endured for so long was just gone. But then I woke up and came to the conclusion – obviously after other people – that it was actually alive and well, but in outer space. I wanted to make a film about the frontier. Not the wonder of it or the glamour of it: I wanted to do something about Dodge City and how hard life was. I wrote it and by great fortune Sean Connery wanted to do it. And how many chances do you get to work with Sean Connery?”

If you love this movie, I recommend the comic book adaptation by James Steranko.

The CBS version of Outland features scenes that were cut from the movie to extend parts of the film. This allowed the network to sell more commercial slots to advertisers.

This isn’t the Giuseppe Colizzi-directed, Terence Hill and Bud Spencer-starring Italian Western Dio perdona… io no!

Nor is it the Rick Ross album.

Instead, this is Janaya Black-directed and written film is the latest Tubi original.

Black was behind Surprise, another Tubi film that I’ve received tons of comments on, one that really got under viewers’ skins. This is a similar film in which a good man gets tested and eventually passes the point of no return, becoming someone that he never dreamed that we could become.

Pastor Pete Dawson (Robert Q. Jackson, A Good Man) has created Purposeful Ministries, a social media way of preaching since the beginning of COVID-19. He doesn’t believe in the prosperity Gospel like so many megachurches, but is instead a very real man that preaches the very real Word of God.

Behind every good man is a good woman, but maybe Pastor Pete has a wife that has bigger dreams — at least of power and notice — than he does. Marcy (Ciarah Amaani) is constantly pushing him to do more with his ministry, which is good in some ways, but there are hints that she wants more out of life than just a minister husband who preaches on a live stream. That said, she’s given Pete a great life up until now as well as his son PJ (DJ Burch).

In order to get their church to the next level, Pete has to turn to his best friend from the streets, Brian Snake Miller (Michael Miles), a former criminal who was assaulted in jail which has changed his entire life. Yet he has the cash they need to create the dream of an actual building for their church.

Throughout the movie, I thought that Marcy and Snake would end up hooking up and that would lead to the image that we saw at the beginning of this movie, one that has Snake dead and Pete standing over his wife, ready to kill her. But no — spoilers on — it’s even crazier. PJ had been having issues with Snake, as he pulled him off the basketball court after seeing how he treated other kids, but maybe that past rape in jail made Snake’s mind snap. Because one day, on a day when Marcy is at her highest because she just learned that her husband is about to work with the famous Bishop Harris (Grover McCants) from Faith and Truth Ministries, she comes home to find Snake’s hand down the pants of her son.

Instead of killing him, she realizes that that would cost the church the money it needs to get started. She makes Brian pay $5,000 a month to her, keep funding Purposeful Ministries and stay away from PJ. And then she makes PJ promise to never tell his father that any of this happened. Man, this movie has gone from basic drama to sheer insanity and that’s why I keep watching Tubi Originals.

The problems start piling up, as PJ keeps flipping out and refuses to play basketball. Marcy starts shopping well beyond the means of Pete, who doesn’t care about clothing or looks. And Pete gets robbed by someone outside the church and beaten.

Pete begins to suspect that his wife is sleeping with Snake, as he finds checks from him to her that she claims are from her 401K. And then Snake buys him a gun after the attack outside the church, which just puts the weapon he needs into his hand. After a day of playing with PJ, he finds himself back at the church and catches his wife and Snake arguing about the new church van that he claims the money was for.

That’s when Pastor Pete busts in with a gun and starts speaking the truth to everyone, screaming at his wife about how everything has been a lie. As he puts a gun in his face, he learns that PJ is not his son and Brian ins the father, which…wow, I did not see coming. This movie brings the insanity and the big time acting!

God Forgives, I Don’t is the kind of movie where a child can gun down his own father with a Colt 45 that has no recoil. In Corinthians‬ ‭10:13, it is written “No temptation has overtaken you, except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”*

Pastor Pete is finding out just how true that is.

*I wrote that quote before I saw that the movie has it in the credits!

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Vultures was on the CBS Late Movie on March 19 and August 20, 1986.

When Ramon (Jim Bailey) begins to get close to death, he summons his relatives to his bedside to discuss his will and testament. But then the killings begin, wiping out everyone in the will.

Directed and written by Paul Leder (My Friends Need Killing, I Dismember Mama, A*P*E*), Vultures sets itself up like any murder mystery, but how it’s made points to just how incredibly strange it is.

First off, nearly every murder is incredibly bloody, making this feel more like a slasher than a staid Agatha Christie affair. Then, it has a cast of some of my favorites, including Aldo Ray, Yvonne DeCarlo and Stuart Whitman. And is that Carmen Zapata from the Sister Act movies? Meredith MacRae from Petticoat Junction  (and Leder’s My Friends Need Killing)? Greg Mullavey from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman? And Maria Perschy from The People Who Own the Dark, The Ghost Galleon and Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll? How did that happen?

Yet the strangest and most wonderful thing is that this has an “Introducing Jim Bailey” credit.

Bailey is more than one role in this movie, playing several male and female roles beyond just Ramon. He’s also Richard Garcia, the psychic Esperanza, Virginia Garcia, Olivia Mann and a female impersonator in this. Bailey is a versatile performer and often played Vegas, doing impressions of Garland and Streisand. According to this great interview with Daily Grindhouse, Bailey became “one of the go-to performers for male-to-female characters in Hollywood.” He’s Cleopatra, the lover of Anthony Geary’s Serenghetti in Penitentiary III and also shows up in episodes of Night Couty and Ally Mcbeal as well as in the cast of another strange movie I’m fascinated by, The Surrogate, where you can witness him do his Bette Davis act.

The black sheep of the family, Carl (Stuart Whitman), is the main suspect. There are two gory knife attacks — Aldo Ray doesn’t even make it long past the credits, which video blur out the original title, Vultures In Paradise — and a car gets blown up real good. There are twists and turns, but it makes sense that this aired on the CBS Late Movie, because it really does feel like a TV movie. And I mean that in the best of ways, but also a TV movie that has a drag performer not just as a sideshow act but as a crucial and memorable part of the cast in six different roles.

This is one odd movie and I would not have found it without my friend the CBS Late Movie. It’s the kind of movie that I needed to watch in 2023 and not back in 1986 when it aired, because it had to find me.

David DeCoteau wrote a great remembrance of Leder on one of my favorite sites, The Schlock Pit, and revealed that his movie Dreamaniac was shot in the same house as this movie, which was owned by Bill Norton (Big Bad Mama, Day of the Animals).

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Traveling Executioner was on the CBS Late Movie on January 9, 1974 and April 9 and August 21, 1975.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A.C. Nicholas, who has a sketchy background and hails from parts unknown in Western Pennsylvania, was once a drive-in theater projectionist and disk jockey, Currently, in addition to being a writer, editor, podcaster, and voice-over artist, he contributes to Drive-In Asylum. His first article, “Grindhouse Memories Across the U.S.A.,” was published in issue #23. He’s also written “I Was a Teenage Drive-in Projectionist” and “Emanuelle in Disney World and Other Weird Tales of a Trash Film Lover” for upcoming issues.

One of the classic tropes of American cinema is that of the snake-oil salesman, traveling the South at the turn of the last century in a medicine wagon and touting god-knows-what in a bottle that will cure everything from piles to anemia. The Traveling Executioner, an obscure, oddball film from 1970, subverts that trope into an unforgettable existential character study.

In 1918, Jonas Candide, an ex-carny and ex-con, played by Stacy Keach in the performance of a lifetime, travels the Deep South with his own electric chair. (Don’t question how a portable electric chair without a way to charge its generator would work; just go with it.) Acting as a private executioner, Candide sends convicts to the next life for $100 a pop. Candide is not a bloodthirsty villain but rather a charming rogue whose greatest gift is his ability to put the condemned at ease in their final moments. Before throwing the switch, he spins a story of how he was contacted through a medium by a man he executed who told of how wonderful the afterlife is—fields of Ambrosia. Hearing this story, the condemned pass on with a smile on their face, soon to go to a better life.

Candide is good at what he does, and all is well until one day he learns he’s scheduled to execute a German brother and sister convicted of murder. He falls head over heels in love with the sister played by Drive-In Asylum favorite Marianna Hill. From that moment on, Candide hatches as many schemes as he can in to save his love from his traveling chair. As you can imagine for a movie from the 70s, in E.C Comics fashion, it doesn’t end well.

The Traveling Executioner is one of the oddest, yet most unforgettable movies I’ve ever seen. Everything about it stamps it as a classy production. It was the only screenplay written by 21-year-old University of Southern California film student Garrie Bateson. And while the screenplay has a whiff of film-student earnestness and an ending that you’ll see coming early on, it nonetheless makes a serious impression. Directing with a sure hand was journeyman Jack Smight, who has Frankenstein: The True Story, The Illustrated Man and Damnation Alley among his credits. The dusty, depressing look of the film was the work of ace cinematographer, two-time Oscar nominee Philip Lathrop. Maestro Jerry Goldsmith supplied the score. Adding to the film’s cache are nice early supporting turns by M. Emmet Walsh, as a warden, and Bud Cort, as a mortician and Candide’s assistant. Things look and play like a late-period Western without the gunfights.

But the real joy here is watching the stage actor Stacy Keach giving it his all in an early film role. He’s a sympathetic protagonist even when he resorts to unsavory measures in the name of love. For me, Keach, later to make his mark on TV as the definitive Mike Hammer, has always been an underrated talent. Casting him in this role was a masterstroke.

MGM had no clue how to market The Traveling Executioner, which everybody describes as a “black comedy.” It’s not. At its heart, it’s a serious art film with some exploitation trappings. Indeed, the gauche, heavy-handed ad campaign promising unbridled fun did nothing to sell it to audiences. But then again, I can’t think of how any ad campaign could capture the film’s unique tone. Despite a few good reviews, it had a short, disastrous theatrical release in the fall of 1970. Afterward, apart from a few showings on The CBS Late Movie, it vanished and was almost impossible to see for decades. It finally became available on a DVD burn from Warner Archives in 2011, but it has yet to find its own fields of Ambrosia, a cult following. I wish Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary would feature it on the Video Archives podcast. It’s a great film with a singularly great central performance awaiting rediscovery.

Epilogue. Unbelievably, in 1993, The Traveling Executioner was adapted into a stage musical, The Fields of Ambrosia. Despite some good reviews, the 1996 London show closed after only 23 performances. Déjà vu.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Devil’s Eight was on the CBS Late Movie on June 19 and June 6, 1973; January 29, 1974 and May 13, 1975.

Oh American International Pictures. You knew exactly what the kids wanted. In 1969, they wanted their own version of The Dirty Dozen. Who better to give it to them than you?

Based on a story by AIP story editor Larry Gordon and the first draft was by James Gordon White. It was eventually rewritten in ten days by two of his assistants, John Milius and Willard Huyck. The future director of Conan the Barbarian quipped, “It was called The Devil’s 8 because they didn’t have enough money for a full dozen.”

White wasn’t a fan of the final film. “They took the Southern flavor out of it and I’m from the south, so I know from whereof I talk.” Take it from the writer of Bigfoot, The Mini-Skirt Mob and both movies about a head transplant, The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant and The Thing with Two Heads.

Originally known as Inferno Road, this movie has an all-star cast. And by that, I mean an all-star AIP 1969 cast.

Christopher George (Day of the Animals, City of the Living Dead, Pieces and about a hundred other movies that I love) plays federal agent Ray Faulkner, who starts the movie on a road gang before he breaks the rest of the guys out and forces them on to a helicopter at gunpoint. They are:

• Sonny (Fabian!) is in prison for murder but he’s a great driver. Unfortunately, he has a drinking problem.
• Frank Davis (Ross Hagen, The Sidehackers) used to drive for the mob, but then they murdered his brother.
• Billy Joe (Tom Nardini, Cat Ballou) is a mechanic who just wants to drive.
• Sam (Joseph Turkel, Dr. Eldon Tyrell from Blade Runner and Lloyd from The Shining) loves to get in brawls.
• Henry (Robert DoQuia, the sergeant from the RoboCop movies) is an African-American prisoner who can really handle the wheel.
• Chandler (Larry Bishop, son of Joey, who was in Wild In the Streets) would rather read the Bible than get involved in all this.
• Stewart Martin (Ron Rifkin, L.A. Confidential) is a rookie fed.

After training “The Eight…you’ll either love or hate!” in high-speed driving and throwing bombs, they work their way into Burl’s (Ralph Meeker, who was actually in The Dirty Dozen, as well as Without Warning and The Alpha Incident) illegal moonshine operation. There are all manner of double crosses and not everyone makes it out alive, but Burl’s mistress Cissy (Leslie Parrish) ends up with her real man, Davis.

Let me talk about Leslie Parrish for awhile. She’s led a pretty amazing life, starting under her birth name Marjorie Hellen, which she changed in 1959. While she was a teenager at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music, she started modeling and became a human test pattern for NBC known as Miss Color TV, as they used her skin tones to test how well they’d transmit over the airwaves.

In 1956, she started her contract with MGM and appeared in redneck classic Lil’ Abner as Daisy Mae. In fact, it was director Melvin Frank who convinced her to change her name. She was also in The Manchurian Candidate and a ton of TV shows at this time, as well as being the Associate Producer on Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Part of that job meant caring for the real seagulls and keeping them in her hotel room, as well as being the mediator between her husband, author Richard Bach, and director Hall Bartlett after they stopped talking. Despite all that, her role is only listed as researcher in the credits.

While acting paid the bills, her real job was activism. She was a member of the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, a coalition of women’s peace groups and had private audiences with politicians and led huge public protests. She has also been incredibly involved in environmental activism and even created KVST-TV, which looked pretty much like C-SPAN does today, but all the way back in 1967. Today, she continues to develop and lead the Spring Hill Wildlife Sanctuary on Orcas Island in Washington. And oh yeah — she was also in The Giant Spider Invasion. Check out her official site!

The Devil’s 8 is decent, but as always, I’m on the side of the bootleggers. Don’t make me divide my loyalty by putting Fabian on the side of Johnny Law! Come on, AIP!