If there’s one thing that’s been sure this year, it’s that every few weeks I get to watch a new Chris Stokes movie. The director, working again on the script with Marques Houston, is set to deliver another thriller that plays on one of the biggest fears of married women: a husband who has an affair.
Kenneth (Robert Ri’chard) and Skyler (Annie Ilonzeh) have the dream marriage. However, her best friend Camilla (La’Myia Good) has lost the love of her life, Lance, who has started sleeping with his much older boss. Of course she can live with the couple until she gets on her feet, right?
Can you see where this is already going wrong?
There’s also a friend named Kim played by exotic dancer, socialite and social media personality Blac Chyna, who I only knew from Kardashian gossip. My hatred for that show knows no bounds and somehow, my wife has convinced me to watch so many seasons of it that I can discuss the storylines with some level of intelligence. I mean, as much intelligence as that entails.
Seeing how Kenneth treats Skyler, Camilla starts thinking that maybe she could get some of that. When her best friend is felled by kidney stones, she gets in the marriage bed and makes it happen. But this film at least pushes things where Kenneth wants nothing to do with her and honestly feels contrite, but she forces him again and again to make love to her, using the power that she has to destroy him and his marriage.
The character of the woman who goes mental once she makes love to you seemingly will never go away and this is just one more example of a Fatal Attraction movie, albeit one with a smaller budget. That said, it’s entertaining, as all of Chris Stokes’ films are.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This weekend is the Drive-In Super Monster-Rama! Get more info at the official Drive-In Super Monster-Rama Facebook page and get your tickets at the Riverside Drive-In’s webpage.
Piranha almost never made it to the theater. Universal Studios had considered obtaining an injunction to prevent it from being released, particularly as they had Jaws 2 out that year, but the lawsuit was called off after Steven Spielberg himself gave the film a positive comment (he also called the film the “best of the Jaws ripoffs”).
Joe Dante is my favorite type of filmmaker. Even when you think you know what to expect, he zigs and zags, giving you genuine surprises and fun at every turn.
The action starts with two teens swimming in the waters of an abandoned military base — as you do. Of course, they’re instantly obliterated by an unseen creature.
Skiptracer Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies, who beyond being the wife of Robert Urich was Louisa Con Trapp in The Sound of Music and even appeared in an August 1973 Playboy pictorial entitled “Tender Trapp”) is looking for those missing teens and she’s hired Paul Grogran (Bradford Dillman, who battled many an ecological horror in Bug, The Swarmand Lords of the Deep) for help. He’s a drunk and surly mountain man, which in the 1970s makes you a sex symbol.
Why is Grogan so multi-layered? It turns out that Bradford Dillman wasn’t pleased with how flat his character originally was, so he asked writer John Sayles why. The response was that producer Roger Corman never hired good actors, so he rarely wrote nuanced characters. However, Dillman offered Sayles the opportunity to do something deeper, if you’ll pardon the pun.
They discover the abandoned compound where the teens died and discover that it’s a militarized fish hatchery. Maggie drains the outside pool and discovers too late that she’s released Operation: Razorteeth, a strain of piranha made to survive the cold North Vietnamese rivers and win the war in Southeast Asia.
That’s when Grogan realizes that if the local dam is somehow opened, the piranha will attack the Lost River water park and the camp where his daughter is spending the summer. Everybody pays the price for the piranha, like their now crazed creator Dr. Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers). Soon, the military is involved and our heroes are on the run, trying to warn the media and anyone that will listen that these killer fish are on their way. Nothing will stop them, not even the poison that Colonel Waxman and Dr. Mengers (Barbara Steele!) think will do the job.
Of course, the fish survive and attack the summer camp, wiping out nearly everyone but Suzie thanks to her fear of water. Now, they’re on their way to Buck Gordon’s (Dick Miller, perfect as always) waterpark, where they end up killing Waxman.
Grogan and Maggie come up with a totally ridiculous plan: to use the hazardous waste from the smelting plant to kill off the fish before they spread into the ocean. Our hero, such as he is, must go deep underwater to make this happen and he barely survives, left in a catatonic state at the end of the film.
Dr. Mengers gives the government’s side of the story, downplaying the danger of the piranha and saying there’s nothing left to fear, but as we see another beach, we now hear the sound of the deadly school of fish.
Beyond Dick Miller, this film features plenty of actors that Dante would work with again and again, like Belinda Balaski, the film’s writer John Sayles and the always welcome Paul Bartel. Plus, Francis Xavier Aloysius James Jeremiah Keenan Wynn shows up, but we all know him better as his stage name, Keenan Wynn. And another Invasion of the Body Snatchers alum, Richard Deacon, is here as well.
Piranha is the rarest of films — one that rises above being a simple ripoff and comes close to eclipsing the source material. It’s quick, bloody and fun as hell, with awesome effects from Phil Tippett and the debuting Rob Bottin, who was only 17 at the time.
Can’t make it to the drive-in? You can watch this on Tubi.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Miracle Beach was on USA Up All Night on March 10 and October 7, 1995; December 21, 1996 and September 19, 1997.
Scotty McKay (Dean Cameron) is a beach bum who used to be rich. Then he finds a lamp and a genie named, well, Jeannie (Ami Dolenz). Thanks to her, he’s pretty much rich again and has Jeannie to do everything he wants, even win over a supermodel named Dana (Felicity Waterman, Vanessa Hunt from Knots Landing). Except that Jeannie isn’t allowed to assist her master with love and why would she? She’s the one in love with him.
Sometimes I get down on myself. Then I think about Vincent Schiavelli. He was seriously talented and yet here he is, playing a mystic in Miracle Beach when he should have been acting in way better movies. Yet he always showed up and worked hard. Martin Mull, too, who is in this as the stock bad guy. Pat Morita and Alexis Arquette are also in the cast.
This movie was made in PG, R and unrated editions. So the family could watch one version and another could be on USA Up All Night. Oh yeah! Monique Gabrielle shows up! And it was called Miracle Beach: Hard Bodies II in Australia.
Director Skott Snyder directed a whole bunch of Playboy videos and writer Scott Bindley wrote the cartoon The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature as well as Cop and a Half: New Recruit and Cats & Dogs 3: Paws Unite. That totally all makes sense.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Roller Blade Warriors: Taken By Force was on USA Up All Night on March 29 and 30 and November 9, 1991; April 3 and October 9, 1992 and February 6, 1993.
Donald Jackson is the same man who brought us Hell Comes to Frogtown as well as forty more movies, including The Demon Lover, I Like to Hurt People, an entire series of roller blade-themed movies that includes the movie I’m going to talk about now, as well as Roller Blade, The Roller Blade Seven, Legend of the Roller Blade, Return of the Roller Blade Seven, Rollergatorand Hawk Warriors of the Wheelzone and an entire series of sequels in Frogtown like Frogtown 2, Toad Warrior, Max Hell Frog Warrior and Max Hell Frog Warrior: A Zen Rough Cut.
Donald Jackson’s movies started weird and stayed that way.
Gretchen Hope (Elizabeth Kaitan!) is traveling the wasteland protected by a nun from The Cosmic Order of the Roller Blade named Karin Cross (Kathleen Kinmont). Except that Karin gets hit with a rock and some mutants drag Gretchen to be sacrificed.
This also has Rory Calhoun in it, which kind of blows my mind, and Suzanne Solari played Sharon Cross, the same character she was in Roller Blade.
I have so many questions, like how do people roller blade in the desert and how can a movie with half-naked women warriors on roller blades actually be boring, but this movie figure that out I guess.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Hamburger: The Motion Picture was on USA Up All Night on November 9, 1990; May 31 and June 1, 1991 and February 1 and September 18, 1992.
My wife asked me, “Why would anyone watch this movie?” She doesn’t get it. She wasn’t around in the 1980s, when we had no internet. She wasn’t going through puberty. She’ll never understand staying up until 3:15 AM to catch a movie about Hamburger University and the joy that it can bring.
Russell Proco (Leigh McCloskey, who improbably is also in Argento’s Inferno) has been kicked out of multiple schools because he can’t stop hooking up. There’s a trust fund waiting for him if he can get a diploma. So he picks the one school he knows he can graduate from — Buster Burger University.
You know why the 1980s were great? Because Dick Butkus could be in a movie and we all knew exactly who his character was. Here, his job is to beat the hell out of the students so they don’t screw up Buster Burger. Everyone has to follow the rules:
Outside consumption of food is prohibited.
All candidates are to stay on the grounds of Buster Burger University until graduation.
Since sex and success make lousy partners, all candidates are not to engage in sex while students.
This is a movie that follows the best formula: just get a bunch of crazy characters together, get them into some insane situations and let the hijinks ensue. Along the way, Russell makes a friend who is obsessed with the CEO’s sexy wife (the pneumatic Randi Brooks, who is also in TerrorVision), a nun who for some reason is going to burger school, a sex-crazed guerilla fighter, a soul singer who was arrested and is at the school on work release and so much more.
Where else other than Buster Burger University can you learn to yell things like “Put those cookies back, motherfucker,” get stuck inside a giant pickle and then have to battle against bikers and cops on your first day of work?
Most amazingly, director Mike Marvin would go on to make a movie that is even less connected to reality, The Wraith.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Tomboy was on USA Up All Night on February 4 and September 11, 1994; March 3 and November 4, 1995; May 10 and December 21, 1996 and July 18, 1997.
Tomasina “Tommy” Boyd isn’t like the other girls. No, she’s not sneaking into school and switching her gender like Terri/Terry Griffith. But unlike all her friends, she’s more into fixing and racing cars than boys. This is presented as something completely out of the sphere of reality, as if she were some mutant.
Herb Freed, who directed Tomboy, has a pretty fun resume, with movies like Beyond Evil, Haunts and Graduation Dayto his credit.
For some reason, this confident woman has a crush on a total jerk, racecar driver and male chauvinist Randy Starr (Gerard Christopher, Superboy), who doesn’t take her seriously because, you know, she’s a girl.
Certainly, the main reason to see this is because Betsy Russell has the lead. Modern folks may know her from the Saw movies, but for my generation, she was much better known for starring as Molly “Angel” Stewart in Avenging Angel, as well as appearances in Private School, Cheerleader Camp and Camp Fear, which steals its poster art from Body Count.
I love that someone once asked about Russell how the trailer for this movie positions Tomasina as a strong woman and then cuts to her in the shower. The actress replied, “I’ve never really paid attention to that. I guess strong females still have to take showers. They still like to feel sexy, so I don’t think there’s one thing that should stop someone from feeling sexy and showing their body if that’s what they choose to do. I don’t think it makes any difference in the world.”
Kristi Summers from Savage Streets and Hell Comes to Frogtown plays our heroine’s friends, who cares more about boys than cars and she’s normal, of course. Plus, Cynthia Thompson — Cavegirl! — and scream queen Michelle Bauer also show up.
If this movie came out in 2020, it would be decimated on social media and rightly so. I mean, can you imagine a movie that purports to being female empowerment coming out today where the main character only proves herself by repeatedly showing off her breasts?
EDITOR’S NOTE: This weekend is the Drive-In Super Monster-Rama! Get more info at the official Drive-In Super Monster-Rama Facebook page and get your tickets at the Riverside Drive-In’s webpage.
From 1972 to 1978, William Girder directed nine feature films and would have probably never stopped, were it not for the helicopter crash that took his life while scouting the Philippines filming locations. From Asylum of Satan and Three on a Meathook to The Manitou, Sheba Baby and Project: Kill, his films may have been derivative but they made money.
Here’s the best example. Around these parts, Girder is celebrated for Abby, a movie that was removed from theaters because of its similarity (let’s say total ripoff) of The Exorcist. That brings us to Grizzly, which is essentiallyJaws on dry land. With a bear. A grizzly bear.
Grizzly found its inspiration when its producer and writer, Harvey Flaxman, came face to face with a bear during a camping trip. Co-producer and co-writer David Sheldon thought about how they could make a bear version of Jaws and they wrote a script that Girdler discovered and offered to finance, as long as he could direct.
Grizzly begins with military vet and helicopter pilot Don Stober (Andrew Prine, The Town that Dreaded Sundown, The Eliminators, Amityville II: The Possession) flying over a national park and explaining how the woods remain untouched, much like they were in when Native Americans made their homes here.
The first two attacks happen quickly — in bear POV no less — when two female hikers are dismembered by the ursus arctos horribilis villain of this story. That brings in park ranger Michael Kelly (Christopher George, Gates of Hell/City of the Living Dead, Day of the Animals,Mortuary, Pieces) and photographer Allison Corwin (Joan McCall, who besides being in Devil Times Five is also married to the film’s writer, Sheldon) in on the case.
At the hospital, a doctor tells the park ranger that a bear killed the girls, but the park’s supervisor blames the ranger and naturalist Arthur Scott (Richard Jaeckel, The Dark, Mako: The Jaws of Death and TV’s Salvage 1) for the girls’ deaths. And guess what? Just like Jaws, there’s no way the park is getting closed before tourist season.
The rangers all decide to search the mountain for the grizzly, which isn’t accounted for in their census of animals in the park. One of the rangers — of course — decides to get nude in a waterfall because that’s what you do when you’re hunting a killer bear and gets murked for her stupidity.
Kelly and Stober think they have found the bear from the air, yet it’s just naturalist Scott wearing an animal pelt and tracking the bear himself. Scott tells them that this bear is actually a prehistoric version of the grizzly that stands 15 feet tall and weighs at least 2,000 pounds.
No matter how many people the grizzly kills, no one will close the park. So when the story becomes national news, the owners of the park — a national park can have owners? — allow amateur hunters to shoot the shark (this has nothing to do with the very same thing happening in Jaws, right?). Those hunters are pretty much the worst people ever, as they use a bear cub as bait, thinking the grizzly will protect its young. Nope — it eats that baby bear and keeps on coming.
The grizzly literally shreds his way through the park and nobody closes it down until it murders a young mother and mutilates her child. And get this — the grizzly is so smart, it knows how to bury the naturalist in the ground and then waits for him to wake up so it can kill him. Can a bear be a slasher killer? Well, we already know that Bigfoot can be, thanks to Night of the Demon.
The grizzly kills every hero in this movie other than Kelly the photographer, who magically finds a bazooka in the wrecked helicopter and remembers the end of every shark movie: you must blow this beast up real good. She does and that’s the end of Grizzly.
An interesting personal note: I was telling my dad about this movie and he remembered that it has played on a bus that took he and my mother on a casino trip. That’s right — at 1 AM, pitch blackness, the TV on their bus blared this gorefest as loudly as possible. “I couldn’t wait for that movie to end,” was my mother’s review. My father’s was a bit kinder.
Warner Brothers originally wanted to finance Grizzly, but were furious that Edward L. Montoro and Film Ventures International (FVI) had taken the project. That’s because a year before, the studio sued both of these companies for copyright infringement when they released Beyond the Doorin the US.
Sadly, while Grizzly was one of 1976’s best-performing films, earning $39 million worldwide (adjusted for inflation, that’s around $177 million in 2018 dollars), its distributor Edward L. Montoro and Film Ventures International kept all the profits. Girdler and Harvey Flaxman and David Sheldon (the film’s screenwriters/producers) had to sue to get their share.
Even after all that, Girdler still directed Day of the Animals, a spiritual sequel to Grizzly, for Montoro. While this film added Leslie Nielsen and Lynda Day George to the returning cast of Christopher George and Richard Jaeckel, it wasn’t as successful.
Grizzly just seems like a movie that’s buried in legal shenanigans. A sequel, Grizzly II: The Predator (also known as Grizzly II: The Concert, a title that would assuredly guarantee that I would buy this film) was made in 1983.
Filmed in Hungary by André Szöts and written by Sheldon, the co-producer and writer of the original, it was never released. The film had Louise Fletcher, John Rhys-Davies and unknowns but about to be big stars like Charlie Sheen (who took this movie over the lead in Karate Kid), George Clooney and Laura Dern in the cast, as well as live performances (hence Grizzly II: The Concert) by musicians like Toto Coelo (who had one song I can name, “I Eat Cannibals Part 1”) and Landscape III.
The movie was such a mess that the film’s caterer ended up rewriting it. And while the main filming was completed, special effects and all of the actual bear footage wasn’t. That’s because the film’s executive producer Joseph Proctor had disappeared with the money (and may have even been already jailed when filming began). While a mechanical bear was to be used, there was still footage shot of a live bear attacking concert-goers filmed (!). There’s a bootleg workprint, but the full film has ever emerged. This New York Post article has even more amazing info about Grizzly 2. Now that film has been released, if you’d like to see it.
Finally, a trivia note for comic book fans. The amazing poster for this movie? Neal Adams did the art.
And in the universe of Tarantino, Don Stober was played by Rick Dalton, not Andrew Prine.
Here’s the recipe I’ll be bringing.
Honey Bear
1 oz. bourbon
2 oz. apple cider
1/2 oz. Cointreau
1 oz. honey, orange and sage syrup
Sliced orange
Pre-work: To make the syrup use the following ingredients:
1 cup water
1/3 cup honey
3 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. ground sage
2 orange slices
1 tsp. orange zest
Heat a small pan on high, then heat up all ingredients to boiling.
Simmer for 3 minutes and let cool. Store in refrigerator for up to a week.
To make the drink:
Pour bourbon and honey, orange and sage syrup in an ice-filled glass.
Top with apple cider.
You can watch this on Tubi or get it from Severin.
• Watch at least 1 movie per day during the month of October in whatever order suits you.
• Must fall within the psychotronic definition.
• Have fun and get weird.
• If you see something, say something! Post your watches on social media and make sure to tag them with #SCVpsychochallenge. @scarecrowvideo (Letterboxd, Twitter/X, Facebook) @scarecrow.video.official (Instagram) @scarecrow.video (Tiktok)
• Want to be part of B&S About Movies’ Scarecrow entries? Just reply or email me at bandsaboutmovies@gmail.com
1. DIRECTOR’S FIRST FILM: Starting off with an easy one for you. Make it especially cool by choosing a director not particularly known for making psychotronic stuff.
2. THEY WERE IN THAT?: One with a then unknown actor who is now very known.
3. TWILIGHT YEARS IN THEIR CAREERS: An aging American actor in an overseas production.
4. WORKING REMOTELY: One that takes place out in the cut somewhere.
5. ENJOY YOUR STAY: Park your keister for a single location flick.
6. THE TORN TICKET: You guessed it, films/scenes that take place in a movie theater.
7. “META” MILITIA: Be on the lookout for any one of an enemy squadron of self aware films operating in your area. Report if seen…
8. IN YOUR DREAMS: Heavy on the dream sequence, Jack.
9. PASSES LIKE MOLASSES: One with a looooong death/dying sequence.
10. “I GOT YOU, BABY GIRL”: A post-apocalyptic film with some emotional heft.
11. ⬆⬆⬇⬇⬅➡⬅➡🅱🅰: Select and start a movie based on a video game.
12. GUERILLAS IN THE MIDST: One involving soldiers or set during a war.
13. RELIVOMAX: Do your enigmas need resolving? Don’t wait, talk to an expert to see if Relivomax is right for you. Taking Relivomax may result in flashbacks.
14. AKA: The same great show by a name you didn’t know.
15. HALLYUWOOD: It’s time to dig up the onggi and watch yourself a South Korean joint, the saltier the better.
16. OZPLOITATION: Maximize your wander with some thunder from down yonder.
17. BORED OF EDUCATION: Stegman says school ain’t just for makin’ money, it’s also a great place for a story to unfold.
18. CAN YOU DIG IT?: Archeology turns up the darndest things…
19. ACCOMPANIED MINERS: Danger! Stay out of mineshafts, ore else!
20. THE GREAT UNSTREAMBLE: Search all night with all your might, it still ain’t found on any site. Bonus for desert/drought content.
21. VIDEO STORE DAY: This is the big one. Watch something physically rented or bought from an actual video store. If you live in a place that is unfortunate enough not to have one of these archival treasures then watch a movie with a video store scene in it at least. #vivaphysicalmedia
22. HIGHWAY TO HELL: A savage car chase is the vehicle for tonight’s viewing displeasure.
23. VACANCY: Road weary are we? Pull over for one that’s set at a hotel or a motel. Goodnight?
24. STOP AND CHOP: The supermarket just became a shop of horrors! Cleanup on aisle 24.
25. FROM THE NIGHT OF: Any movie with “NIGHT OF” or “FROM THE” in its title.
26. ANY WITCH WAY YOU CAN: Cast your eyes upon a spellbinder.
27. MONSTERS… ALL?: Dracula, Frankenstein and Wolfman are (universal)ly adored. It’s time we start seeing other “people”.
28. THE BIG TAKEOVER: An A.I.’er that goes haywire.
29. PHANTOM LIMB: Severed or not is optional but this extension of will has to have a different energy pushing it.
30. CAMPOTRONIC: A summer camp that puts the zing in blazing inferno, the spice in hospice, the fest in infestation, the fun in funeral. Go and have yourself a time.
31. “THE FINAL CHAPTER”: Last in a series… Get it?
EDITOR’S NOTE: This weekend is the Drive-In Super Monster-Rama! Get more info at the official Drive-In Super Monster-Rama Facebook page and get your tickets at the Riverside Drive-In’s webpage.
Did Roger Corman sit in a room screaming, “Make me more amphibian monster movies NOW!” into the telephone? Because this week, that’s the feeling that I’m getting. This time, Barbara Peeters got the call (Joe Dante turned this one down), although the final film was nothing like she wanted it to be and she tried — and failed — to get her name removed from the credits.
Fishermen catch what looks like a monster. Then, the son of one of them is dragged under the waves by an unseen beast. Another fisherman fires a flare gun that sets the whole boat on fire, killing everyone. Pre-credits, this movie is already meaner and better than most of what we’ve watched this week.
Jim Hill (Doug McClure, TV’s The Virginian) and his wife Carol (Cindy Weintraub, The Prowler) see the boat blow up and then their dog gets eaten (and his remains thrown up on their porch). So yeah. Things are off to quite the start.
Meanwhile, Jerry and Peggy (Lynn Schiller, Without Warning) are swimming and fooling around, but Jerry ends up torn apart and a fishman rapes the girl, causing the director to want to leave the picture. Seriously — they kept her name on the film. Time’s up, Roger Corman.
That scene is repeated with Billy (future ventriloquist David Strassman) and Becky, with yet another fish on female rape. All manner of folks are attacked, but Peggy somehow survives.
Meanwhile, Canco is opening their new canning operation in town. It turns out that the monsters that are fucking everyone to death are the result of Canco using HGH on salmon that were in turn eaten by larger fish who then turned into humanoids. From the deep? Yes. Humanoids from the Deep.
Luckily, Jim and Dr. Susan Drake are on the case. Their big plan? At the town’s fish fest, when the beasts attack, they dump gasoline in the lake and set it on fire. So not only is there no safe zone for women, fuck the environment, too. While all this is going on, Carol is attacked by two monsters but survives. Oh yeah! Vic Morrow is in this mess, too. And if you think Peggy is going to give birth to a fish baby, then you haven’t been watching this film.
Actress Ann Turkel chose to do this film — originally titled Beneath the Darkness — because: “It was an intelligent suspenseful science-fiction story with a basis in fact and no sex.” She was enraged as well at what the final film ended up being.
Corman remade this film for Showtime in 1996, with the sex and violence scaled down. That said, he of course reused the Salmon Festival footage for the remake. Why actually shoot something new?
Well, if you’re looking for a grimy, fishy film, this is it.
Won’t be at the drive-in? You can watch it on Tubi.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Basic Training was on USA Up All Night on March 4, August 5 and December 8, 1989; June 29 and 30, 1990; January 4 and August 31, 1991 and May 15, 1992.
I love that this movie had the working title Up the Pentagon, like the abortive 1980 Mad Magazine movie Up the Academy. It’s the only movie ever directed by Andrew Sugerman, who has executive produced movies like Shopgirl, Death Sentence and Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever.
Ann Dusenberry, Tina — the beauty queen from Jaws 2 — is Melinda, a newcomer to the Pentagon who is shocked by the way that they sexually harass her. For a few minutes, I was thinking that this 1985 comedy was incredibly woke and ahead of its time.
Then I realized that I was watching a 1985 sex comedy and that Melinda will instead use her sexual wiles to get back at everyone via a campaign of her own harassment and making old men think she’s going to sleep with them.
Angela Aames from Fairy Tales and Chopping Mall— she was also Linda “Boom-Boom” Bangs in H.O.T.S. — and Rhonda Shear of USA’s Up All Night are also in this.
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