Directed by, written by and starring Blake O’Donnell (who also co-directed, co-wrote and co-starred in Bergeron Brothers: Wedding Videographerswith Benjamin Dietels, who is also in this movie), Guerilla Dogs is the story of three soldiers — Runway (O’Donnell), Hedgetrim (Dietels) and Wax (Ryan Lintner) who are struggling to not only keep it together but to keep a hostage named Mr. Money (Seth Gontkovic) in a time of war.
Denied nearly everything and forced to survive in the midst of a thick forest — never have the woods of my beloved Western Pennsylvania felt more like Apocalypse Now — these three feel like more of a danger to themselves than to any other military.
Everything is for the cause, which is never truly defined, yet that seems to be the way war works in the real world, even if you don’t spend it chasing a ball made of torn-apart underpants. Each night, they force Mr. Money to speak highly of the Cause and tell the world that he is being well taken care of.
And then they meet the Effect, who they have to escape being political prisoners of. There’s also some moonshine that very well could be poisonous in a bonding time gone wrong and then things seem to go on a downward trajectory for our boys. Yet if they find themselves adaptable, they’ll survive this war.
Guerrilla Dogs is weird and I mean that with the best of intentions. It’s earned weird. There’s no real description of why or where or how this war is happening, just that we’re in the middle of it and for these guys, it’s Hell. Yet they’re finding some way to survive or at least find the kind of routines that will make them delirious. Honestly, I have a lot of questions and luckily, I can pester Ben the next time I see him at the drive-in.
Also — I love the way this way filmed. The initial chase between the guys has some incredible overhead shots and is really well edited, too. It set up that this was a next level from the already great Bergeron Brothers.
Guerilla Dogs was watched as part of The GenreBlast Film Festival which is from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.
Here are some of the shorts I watched at GenreBlast Fim Festival:
They Call It…Red Cemetery (2022): Director and writer Francisco Lacerda has seen the same Eurowesterns that I have — there’s a line that directly references Cemetery Without Crosses — and he uses it so well in this story of two men who meet in a cemetery for one last standoff. Rolando (Thomas Aske Berg) has a gun wrapped in rosary beads and Jose (Francisco Afonso Lopes) has one good eye, but they both want the treasure that so many have died for.
I have to tell you that I can make it through nearly anything in any horror movie but my real life terror is seeing someone put money in their mouth. This movie has extended scenes of a man eating silver dollars and I nearly threw up while watching it. There’s no way that it will upset you as much as it did me.
This looks and feels like the movies of the 60s that I love so much and it feels like it’s made with love.
We Forgot About the Zombies (2022): Chris McInroy made GUTS, one of the few movies of the last few years to make me physically sick, which is some kind of standing ovation. This one isn’t as intestine churning, but it does have multiple neon-colored liquids inside syringes, formulas that transform people into cake, a zombie ripping off chunks of its arm to appear more pleasing to look at, a clone and, man, I forgot the zombies too. Four minutes, dude. This movie did more in four minutes than some films and their sequel do in four hours.
Sucks to Be the Moon (2022): Creators Tyler March, Eric Paperth and Rob Tanchum have created an animated short in which the moon, tired of being lonely and in the shadow of the sun, decides to escape to meet other planets and falls in which a bad crowd — Pluto — and somehow comes back together to be friends with the Sun, only for both to realize just how important they are — were — to Earth.
This is a movie that has taught me that the universe is basically a club where all the planets hang out.
What have you been up to, Moon? “Hard drugs and crime.”
I’d say this was perfect for kids, but man, in no way should you let your kids watch it.
When You’re Gone (2022): In the midst of heartbreak, a writer-turned-party girl (Kristin Noriega, who also directed and wrote this) learns what it means to face pain, as her issues suddenly become moot when she becomes hunted by a subterranean mother and its horrific progeny. Is what’s happening real? Or is this just how emotional agony can make you feel? Either way, this has so much goop dripping into nearly every frame of its action, as well as a heroine not afraid to get her hands dirty and her teeth bloody by fighting back against whatever these creatures are that have her trapped. The elevator to stairwell transition scenes are dizzying and I feel like this needs to be a full-length to expand on each character and learn more.
Content: The Lo-Fi Man (2023): Brian Lonano, who co-directed this short with Blake Myers and wrote it, just wants to tell you about Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Yet he’s been replaced by the new and improved Brian Lonano (Clarke Williams) who is now a streaming content aggregator and influencer, asking you to smash that like button and ring the bell so you get the updates. Breaking free from the mouse-eared androids that have him locked up, he battles the Content Seeker by, well, kind of becoming Tetsuo and joining up with film revolutionaries Kino, B-Roll and Wild Track.
We live in a strange place now, a reality where you can get almost every movie you want but may not have the time to watch it. Or maybe you do and when you want to break it down and discuss it, you get lost in the machine of likes and shares. I try to keep my mind open to both sides, as sure, it’s nice to have the most perfect quality home media ever, as well as streaming materials and everyone deserves the opportunity to find and appreciate pop culture in their own way. But man, if I see another listicle or YouTube video that posits theories like “maybe all the shot in the Eastern Bloc SyFy sequels in the 90s were high art” or ten slashers you never saw before and #3 is The Burning, well…
It’s a fine line between discourse and gatekeeping, I guess.
Everyone really seems like they were having fun with this and it made me think about how I present what I love about movies with more thought. So…mission accomplished.
Stop Dead (2023): Directed by Emily Greenwood and written by David Scullion, this a short and sweet piece of horror. Detective Samantha Hall (Sarah Soetaert) and her partner Nick Thompson (David Ricardo-Pearce) stop Jennifer (Priya Blackburn) as she walks down a deserted road, telling them that if you stop, you die. Hall stops her with a taser and watches her die in front of her, then her partner, before whatever is in the shadows (James Swanton) emerges and forces her to walk the whole way through the credits, which was an inspired idea.
Gnomes (2022): Joggers have no idea that they’re about to enter the world of murderous sausage making gnomes who lure them in with mysterious glowing mushrooms. This movie has shocking amounts of gore and I say that lovingly; director Ruwan Suresh Heggelman, who wrote this with Jasper ten Hoor and Richard Raaphorst, knows how to keep things moving as fast as possible. We’re here to watch gnomes eat human beings and we get it. Oh do we get it.
These shorts were watched as part of The GenreBlast Film Festival which is from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.
People ask me all the time, “How much do you get paid for doing that website you spend so much time on?”
Nada. Zip. Zilch.
And that’s the way it should be. This is the one thing in my writing career — I pretty much write from when I get up until when I go to bed for people who pay me — that is outside of the man and paying him back for things that I don’t really own.
But hey — if you like the site and would like to support it, I won’t stop you.
I’ve been told, “You should run ads,” and I never listen to anyone. I don’t listen to myself. But if you’d like to be part of the site, here’s how:
There are four ways you can help:
Go to our Ko-Fi site and just donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one a month and even dedicate the post to you.
For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?
You can always click the link below or the one on the left of the page. We already have one member, the fabulous A.C. Nicholas who is probably going to make me write about the films of Cicciolina or The Satisfiers of Alpha Blue. He sent the money in a paper bag and it was all in singles.
Anyways! Thanks for reading and I won’t hit you up all that often. And I promise to spend all the money you send on blu rays and drugs.
All September long, this site will be looking back at part of our teens and twenties. USA Up All Night was a major part of our lives from 1989 to 1998, airing on Friday and Saturday nighst from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. Whether you were stuck at home or just getting back from the bar, there were so many movies that you could watch. In fact, so many of the films that are part of my genre education were watching on this show.
Check out this Letterboxd list to see what I mean. You can also challenge yourself and see how many of them you’ve seen — I’m 288 out of 729 movies — with this quiz.
USA Up All Night started on January 7, 1989, with Gilbert Gottfried hosting on Saturdays from New York City. The first two movies? Cheerleaders Beach Party and Stuck On You! After a few months, the Friday night show was filmed in Los Angeles and hosted by actress/comedian Caroline Schlitt from another USA Network show, Camp Midnite. Both of these shows replaced the beloved Night Flight but only USA Up All Night was worthy of continuing the weirdness that late night USA was known for.
When Schlitt left the program in December of 1990, she was replaced by the iconic Rhonda Shear on Friday nights. She also hosted a Spanish version in 1993 for Latin American audiences!
Sadly, in 1998, USA came under the new management of Barry Diller. He wanted a less strange and more upscale viewership for USA. Many of the long-running series were soon gone, but the USA Up All Night name and imagery continued without Gilbert or Rhonda until 2002. Sadly, the movies shown were mainstream films that you could see anywhere.
From December 1988 to February 1998, there were nine hundred episodes of this program. While many don’t consider this show in the same category of other horror host programs, in truth it had a longer lifespan than many of them and it was on a larger network.
Get ready. I have an entire month planned. And if you have a memory of the show, write to me. I’d love to feature it on the site.
Fat Fleshy Fingers is an anthology film that draws its inspiration from the lyrics of Neutral Milk Hotel’s seminal psychedelic folk album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. It’s made up of all-new segments directed by alumni filmmakers of the Sick ’n’ Wrong Film Festival. The thread that ties it all together is the appearance of “a nasty little sexually transmitted parasite that bestows otherworldly effects on its host.”
Starting with “The King of Carrot Flowers,” directed and written by Sophia Cacciola, interprets the song in quite a strange little way. I mean, it is a song that has the lyrics, “And this is the room / One afternoon I knew I could love you / And from above you, how I sank into your soul / Into that secret place where no one dares to go.” Somehow that involves Michael St. Michaels from The Greasy Strangler telling his dying granddaughter to tell people to go fuck themselves and a mummy.
Other segments include “Oh Comely” directed by Rebecca Daugherty and Anthony Cousins (who also made the quite good Every Time We Meet for Ice Cream Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes), Heather Cunningham’s “The Point When You Let Go,” Some Stranger’s Stomach” by Michael Elliot Dennis, Lauren Flinner’s “We Move to Feel,” Sara Nieminen and Artturi Rostén’s “The Fool,” “Blow Dee Sky Jesus Christ” by director Zach Strum and writer Michah Vassau and Iris Sucres’ “All the Different Ways to Die.”
“So make all your fat fleshy fingers to moving / And pluck all your silly strings and bend all your notes for me,” are the words of one of the many songs that inspired this film. I’d compare it to the latest of the late night Adult Swim with no filter or anything holding anyone back. If you love the album that it comes from or experimental animation or just need your mind exploded, this is ready for you.
Fat Fleshy Fingers was watched as part of The GenreBlast Film Festival which is from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.
The GenreBlast Film Festival is entering its’ sixth year of genre film goodness. It’s a one-of-a-kind film experience created for both filmmakers and film lovers to celebrate genre filmmaking in an approachable environment. Described by Movie Maker Magazine as “summer camp for filmmakers, ” this festival screens the latest in independent, cult, niche and underground films that aren’t easily accessible. Other events include filmmaker Q&A’s, special guests, giveaways, after parties and an awards ceremony.
The GenreBlast team is hard at work creating a destination event that will have the independent film industry talking about it all year long. GenreBlast is a festival for filmmakers, by filmmakers that strives to become one of the best independent film festivals around. They celebrate the finest in true genre cinema and look for the best features, shorts, animation, music videos, and screenplays you have to offer.
This year’s full-length films include:
Cryptids
Murdercise
Livescreamers
Poundcake
Forever Home
The Once and Future Smash
End Zone 2
Love Will Tear Us Apart
Project Eerie
Guerilla Dogs
Crypto Shadows
Fat Fleshy Fingers
Seventy-plus short films
You can see all of the movies on our Letterboxd list. Look for coverage all weekend and into next week!
The GenreBlast Film Festival runs from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.
The first time Nadia Georges (Kyle Kankonde) meets Juliet Gold (Savoy Bailey), they’re both trying out for a ballet role. Nadia tries to be kind to her but Juliet gets in her face and says, “Break a leg. Literally.” And that’s pretty much what happens when Nadia’s mother Salina (April Hernandez Castillo) distracts her and she slips and breaks a metatarsal bone in her foot.
Their next meeting is a bit friendlier. Nadia is struggling to teach dance and suffering through the pain of a bone that wasn’t set properly. Juliet has left dance behind, tired of having to listen to her mother live through her. She’s forced to live on her own with no monetary help, but she has an idea, thanks to her friend Paris (Raquel Antonia). She still dances. It’s a different kind of dance. But still…it’s dance.
Mickey Valle (Rob Figueroa) is their boss at Pandora’s Palace and at first, they seem to be protected. But then he tells her that Paris has left with a man she met in the champagne room. So what seems like a fun way to keep on dancing while earning enough money to pay to live and keep their families taken care of soon spirals out of control — it’s a Tubi movie about exotic dancing, what did you expect? — and soon they’re set up and dancing in the home of organized crime figure “Handsome” Johnny Palermo (Anthony Robert Grasso) and killing made men when they feel like they’re in danger, which puts them in danger that they may not escape. And now, Mickey wants to kill them too.
Directed by Elaine del Valle and written by Cate Holahan (Deadly Estate), Midnight Hustle remembers to empower its leads without descending into the expected exotic dancing downfall for both. Instead, they both gain from the experience, despite the danger they find themselves in.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Nothing gives me greater joy than when our site gets mentioned on my favorite podcast, The Cannon Canon. There are a few movies they’ve covered that I haven’t, so it’s time to fix that.
I am happy to admit that I rented Action Jackson more than a few times. Carl Weathers deserved to be the star of more movies and, well, Vanity was in it. After watching this movie, I realize that I am only two movies away from seeing every film that she was ever in.
It starts unlike any normal action movie you’d expect, as almost supernatural killers, the Invisible Men, come out of nowhere and kill some auto union guys. That’s how you know we’re in Detroit, you know?
Detroit Police Department Detective Sergeant Jericho “Action” Jackson (Weathers) was a star athlete who went to law school and became a hometown hero, but that was before he arrested the son of important businessman Peter Anthony Dellaplane (Craig T. Nelson). He was quickly demoted, divorced and demoralized. He’s at odds with the public and his boss, Captain Earl Armbruster (Bill Duke, always an angry ranked cop) because he won’t stop chasing down Dellaplane, who really is dirty and is too smart to get caught.
Yet there’s hope. Dellaplace’s wife Patrice (Sharon Stone, fated to be the dead bad girl in every movie at this point) gives him info before she’s killed and Dellaplace’s mistress Sydney Ash (Vanity) is set up. Yes, Craig T. Nelson is at near Michael Douglas level here, sleeping with both Sharon Stone and Vanity. Action Jackson also has help from Kid Sable, a local hotel owner and retired professional boxer — this movie is like James Bond with its strange helper characters — played by Chino ‘Fats’ Williams, hairdresser and connected gossip queen Dee (Armelia McQueen), his old partner Detective Kotterwell (Jack Thibeau), bad kid gone good Albert (Stan Foster) and Sydney’s bodyguard Big Edd (Prince A. Hughes).
This is the kind of movie where the bad guys plan on barbecuing our hero and instead he sets them on fire and shoots them with a grenade launcher. It’s beyond over the top but in a way that completely works within its universe.
I love how matter of fact Weathers was about how this movie got made: “A creation that came about when I was doing Predator and talking to Joel Silver, who loved blaxploitation movies. Joel said, “Well, you know, why don’t you put something together?” So during that time of shooting down in Puerto Vallarta, I created this story and came up with this guy – or at least this title – Action Jackson. And Joel found a writer who wrote the screenplay, and that was it. We got it made.” There’s a TV movie Weathers did after, Dangerous Passion, which was called Action Jackson 2 in Germany, but unfortunately there was no sequel. Weathers said that it was because, “Lorimar sold the lot to Sony and sold the library to Warner Bros., and that was that. It never resurfaced again, unfortunately.”
If you love 80s action, this has so many people you know in it. Dennis Hayden, De’voreaux White, Robert Davi, Mary Ellen Trainor and Al Leong were all in Die Hardtogether, while Weathers, Duke and Sonny Landham were in Predator. In a better world, we got a whole bunch of these movies.
This was the first movie — after episodes of The A-Team — of former stunt coordinator Craig R. Baxley, a beyond dependable name because he also directed Stone Cold, Storm of the Century, Rose Red and Kingdom Hospital. It was written by Robert Reneau, one of the writers of Demolition Man.
You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode of Action Jacksonhere.
This Saturday at 8 PM EST on the Groovy Doom Facebook and YouTube channels, Dustin Fallon from Horror and Sons will join us to show two awesome movies!
Every week, we watch two movies, look at the ads for the film and share two drinks. Here’s the first recipe.
Nightmare Bikini Wax
1 oz. white rum
2 oz. vodka
.25 oz. lemon juice
1 tsp. sugar
.5 oz. milk
Shake all the ingredients with ice in a shaker.
Strain into a glass and beware Renard.
Our second movie is a film that played double features along with our first movie for years, Blood of Dracula’s Castle. You can watch it on Plex and YouTube.
Here’s the second recipe.
Blood of Dracula’s Cocktail
2 oz. vodka
1 oz. peach schnapps
.25 oz. lime juice
4 oz. cranberry juice
I want to shake your blood, I mean, ingredients with ice in a shaker.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks to Matthew Hale on Letterboxd, I’ve learned that there are alternate versions of this Mill Creek box set. For the sake of completeness and my obsessive compulsive disorder, here’s this missing movie.
Director Boris Szulzinger is best-known for the Tony Hedra-written science fiction cartoon for adults The Big Bang and Tarzan, Shame of the Jungle, the first foreign animated movie to be rated X in the United States.
A comedic retelling of the myth of Elizabeth Bathory, here known as Mama Dracula and played by Louise Fletcher. This is also written by Hedra, along with Szulzinger, Marc-Henri Wajnberg and Pierre Sterckx. Hedra was probably best known for his work with the National Lampoon, a series of parody magazines (Not the New York Times, Playboy: the Parody, The Irrational Inquirer and Not the Bible), being the editor-in-chief of Spy Magazine and co-creating, co-writing and co-producing Spitting Image. He was also Spinal Tap’s manager Ian Faith. The sad part of his legacy is that he was accused of molestation by his daughter Jessica. That said, the article about it that was published by The New York Times had no proof and was disputed by several people (and supported perhaps by just as many). It’s a stain on his career and life.
Back to the movie.
Professor Van Bloed (Jimmy Schuman) is brought to Transylvania as part of a special conference on blood research hosted by Countess Dracula. She also has twins who run a fashion boutique called Vamp. But the problem that Mama Dracula is having is that there aren’t enough virgin women to keep on bathing in their blood. She wants the scientist to create something to help her. He also falls for a local, Nancy Hawaii, who is played by Maria Schneider, who had survived the PTSD of making Last Tango In Paris, drug abuse and a suicide attempt to finally find some level of happiness by the early 80s, if being in movies with Klaus Kinski can be considered joy.
This movie has a bad reputation, one of it being barely watchable. I can confirm this yet I am amazed that somehow both Fletcher — an Oscar winner! — and Schneider — a sex symbol on the comeback after walking out of her last big role in Caligula and probably that was the right call — are in it.
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