With segments from directors Johnny Lektrik, Mark Kiazyk, Ken Brewer and John Ward, Zombie Rage gives you more zombie action than two or three movies all in one. It starts with “CKX News,” in which reporter Nelson Bighammer (Nelson Mayer) discovers that all of the crime that’s been happening in Winnepeg has been caused by the walking dead. Well, that and a little kid who is downtown for some drugs.

Speaking of drugs, “Two Stoners and a Zombie” has Tom (Tyler Ulrich) and Jerry (Keith Johnson) completely miss the fact that zombies walk the Earth, going so far as to even bring a bitten man named  Brian (Lawrence Waller) back home, which endangers the girls — Brenda (Brandi Krueger), Tanya (Meghann Rose Pino) and Nicole (Dominique Langford Rousseau) — who hang out with them.

In “Flesh Attack,” a thief played by Andriana Garbiso uses the zombie attacks to rob even more houses, but leaves the door way too open for the shambling horde. “Veronica’s Bachelorette Party” seems like a time for Veronica (Traci Burr) to celebrate the last guy she’ll ever get to have sex with before marriage before learning that the dancer (Doug Waugh) has been bit at a convenience store. The last story, “A Walk In the Park,” has the goings on in a sexed-up park get stopped by, you guessed it, the living dead.

For a low budget movie, the effects are pretty strong in this movie and you can tell that the filmmakers have a real love for the genre of zombie movies. I wish there was some connectedness to the stories, but as it stands, this is definitely a fun time at the streaming movies.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Night Patrol aired on USA Up All Night on August 25 and 26, 1989; January 5, June 30 and December 14, 1990; July 6, 1991; April 25 and July 18, 1992.

If you learn anything today, know that Linda Blair and Murray Langston, AKA The Unknown Comic, made two movies together: the romantic comedy Up Your Alley and this film, which takes Police Academy to an even filthier and more ridiculous level.

Jackie Kong directed four movies: The Being, The Underachievers, Blood Diner and this one, all with Bill Osco. Osco started his career producing adult films and would go on to star in The Being under the name Rexx Coltrane before starting to direct his own projects, starting with the comedy special The Unknown Comedy Show, a vehicle for Langston. Seeing as how two of his directing efforts are The Art of Nude Bowling and Cat Fight Wrestling, you’ll get an idea of where this film is heading.

Officer Melvin White (Langston) wants to be a stand-up comic, so to hide from his boss Captain Lewis (Billy Barty!), he becomes The Unknown Comic. At the very same time, a man with a paper bag over his head — and here I am assuming anyone in 2019 knows who The Unknown Comic is or what he looks like — is committing crimes.

Linda Blair comes in as Officer Sue Perman, who operates the switchboard for the police. Then there’s comedian and perennial Presidential candidate Pat Paulsen as Melvin’s partner, Officer Kent Lane. Pat Morita also shows up as a sexual assault victim and there’s an ongoing joke with Sydney Lassick (Charlie from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) as a peeping tom.

Jack Riley, who played Bob Newhart’s patient Elliot Carlin has graduated from patient to doctor, here playing Murray’s therapist Dr. Zieglar. Throw in comedians Johnny Dark, Bill Kirchenbauer and Vic Dunlop, as well as Jaye P. Morgan, disc jockey Machine Gun Kelly (who is also in Roller Boogie and Voyage of the Rock Aliens) and an incredibly young Andrew Dice Clay.

There really isn’t any story here, but you do get Billy Barty farting throughout the film and the heroes donning blackface to solve a crime. There’s also a gay copy team, so this movie goes out of its way to offend nearly everyone. That said, it does have Linda punching a really obnoxious rich girl, which makes the movie.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cool World aired on USA Up All Night on February 14, 1998.

“History is written by winners, baby. So let’s make a little of our own tonight. If you’re thinkin’ my idea of fun is a drag, then you’ve never been to paradise. Do my kisses burn? Do they take your breath? You’ve got a lesson to learn, now. I’m the kiss of death.”

There was a time in the mid-90s when My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult was showing up in movies all over the place. Hey look — that’s them playing “After the Flesh” in The Crow! Oh wow, they’re on the soundtrack of Showgirls! That’s “Hit & Run Holiday” in The Flintstones! Heck, they’re even on the soundtrack of BASEketball! And they’re all over Cool World, too.

Between “The Devil Does Drugs”, “Holli’s Groove”, “Sex on Wheelz”, “Her Sassy Kiss” and “Sedusa,” TKK makes up a good chunk of this film, which is kinda like the band we’re talking about — a mix of the past, the imagined future, sex, violence, drugs and danger.

Cool World is the first movie Ralph Bakshi made after Fire and Ice. He’d been developing plenty of films, including an adaption of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and an animal version of Sherlock Holmes. He also turned down directing Something Wicked This Way Comes and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which he passed on to Ridley Scott who turned it into Blade Runner. After an attempt to film J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, he actually got the opportunity to speak to the mysterious author, who told him that the novel was unfilmable. This led to Bakshi’s brief retirement (he still ended up working with Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi on the Rolling Stone’s “Harlem Shuffle” video and TV’s Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures) before getting excited about Cool World.

In its original pitch, a cartoon and human give birth to a hybrid child who visits the real world to find and kill the father who abandoned him. Bakshi had longed to create a film that looked like a living, breathing painting that people could physically walk through. Designer Barry Jackson helped bring these worlds to life, which were created as gigantic paintings and the animation was to look like a mix of Fleischer Studios and Terrytoons.

Yet even as the expensive sets were being built, Paramount producer Frank Mancuso Jr. secretly had a new screenplay written and demanded that Bakshi direct the film, under threat of lawsuit (Bakshi punching him in the face may have had something to do with that). Even casting was changed, with Holli Would’s role switching from Drew Barrymore to Kim Basinger.

It got to the point that even Basinger was rewriting the script, because she wanted to show it to sick kids in hospitals. As for Bakshi, he just told his animators to do whatever they thought was funny.

So what ended up on screen?

Las Vegas, 1945. World War II vet Frank Harris (Brad Pitt) takes his mother on a motorcycle ride that ends in tragedy when a drunk driver hits them. He retreats to an animated alternate dimension called “Cool World” to deal with the loss.

Cut to 1992. Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) might have killed his wife after catching her in bed with her lover, but he’s also created a comic book called Cool World. In truth, he’s really just tapping into the other world. And inside that world, Holli Would (Kim Basinger) has kept trying to visit the real world but is continually denied by Frank, who is now a detective who keeps people from crossing over between dimensions.

Once he gets out of jail, Jack finds his way back to Cool World and meets up with Holli and Frank. Frank warns him that this world has existed way before he was even alive and that for years, noids from the human world have tried to have sex with doodles, or Cool World inhabitants. It’s never really stated, but something horrible will happen if this occurs.

Holli, of course, seduces Jack and becomes a human. This is in direct contrast to Frank, who has a rough relationship with a doodle named Lonette. His partner, Nails, doesn’t tell him about Holli’s crime so that Frank can try and patch up his latest fight with his girl. Unfortunately, Holli murders him and crosses over to our world.

Holli goes wild in the real world, performing onstage with Frank Sinatra Jr. and consuming every vice she can get her hands on. Yet she and Jack are now stuck between worlds unless they find the Spike of Power, a magic object that a doodle in the real world has left behind. She unleashes Cool World on our world, but Jack succeeds in stopping her. Holli kills Frank, but because she was a doodle in our world — who decides on these laws? — he can now be reborn as a doodle in Cool World, to the delight of his girlfriend. Plus, Holli and Jack end up as a toon couple.

Cool World feels like it wants to be an adult Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which was how it was sold. They don’t explain much, but I feel like Cool World is where the imagination of our world ends up living (as symbolized by the sketches that show up out of nowhere). It feels like there is plenty of potential, but knowing what we know today, studio interference took the heart and soul out of the film.

Interestingly, Paramount Pictures created a publicity uproar by placing a huge cut-out of Holli Would on the D of the Hollywood sign. All they had to do was make a donation of $27,000 to the sign’s maintenance fund, another $27,000 to the Rebuild L.A. fund and the salary for two park rangers to guard the sign. Local residents were enraged, however, and demanded that the ad be taken down.

Back to My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult. Even if you don’t enjoy the film, you’ll probably love the soundtrack. It also boasts songs by David Bowie, Thompson Twins, Electronic, The Future Sound of London, Ministry, The Cult, Moby, Brian Eno and others. It’s totally a time capsule of 1992 and worth listening to.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Amazons aired on USA Up All Night on May 25 and 26 and November 10, 1990; June 14, 1991; January 18 and September 19, 1992; April 2, 1993 and February 26, 1994.

Sword and sorcery was a big part of the films that Roger Corman released in the 1980’s. To be fair, different sword and sorcery cycles — peblum to Conan ripoff — have always been part of Corman’s films.

Amazons is from Argentina and is based on the Charles R. Saunders story Agbewe’s Sword. Saunders was born in Elizabeth, PA, about fifteen minutes from where we live. He settled in Nova Scotia where he worked for a local newspaper and wrote several well-received short stories about the African-American community there. He also, in his spare time, created the world of Imaro and became one of the first writers to create African-American-centric sword and sorcery stories*.

Based on the real-life female warriors of the West African Kingdom of Dahomey, Amazons tells the story of several female warriors, like Dyala (Mindi Miller, Caged Fury), Tashi (Penelope Reed), Tashinge (Danitza Kingsley, Blackout) and Vishiti (Maria Fournery, Deathstalker).

What is not based on reality is that there’s a woman in this movie who can transform into a lion. So know that going in. Neither is the Sword of Azundati, which the trailer seems to think is Excalibur. But hey, who cares about reality? There are Amazon fights galore, including one battle between one of the women and a giant snake. That’s really why I watch movies.

You can watch this on Tubi.

*He also wrote Stormquest, another movie that was made with Sessa directing. It’s all about a female-dominated society coming to realize that they may be wrong by excluding men. It’s one of the last of ten Argentinan barbarian movies that Corman would produce.

Directed and written by Albert Band, this was the last Ghoulies movie to have any involvement from Charles Band, who sold the rights to Vestron Pictures to save Empire Pictures.

The ghoulies hit the road in this one, hiding in a truck that’s carrying a dark ride for a carnival. If Satan’s Den doesn’t start bringing in some cash, the carnival is going to close. So Larry (Damon Martin), his drunken Uncle Ned (Royal Dano) and a Shakespeare quoting smaller man named Sig Nigel (Phil Fondacaro) are going to give it all they’ve got. What they don’t know is that the scares are being created by actual demons. Or ghoulies. You know what I mean.

Shot on a soundstage in Rome’s Empire Studios, this was the only Ghoulies movie to play in theaters. I kind of love that W.A.S.P. has “Scream Until You Like It” on the soundtrack. What was it with W.A.S.P. and Empire Pictures movies? Their song “Tormentor” is also in The Dungeonmaster (and Ghost Warrior, which is not an Empire film).

This movie believes in viewer feedback. After many people complained that no one was killed on a toilet in the first Ghoulies, this was fixed here.

Also: This movie got me to make a Letterboxd list of 80s horror and science fiction movies where Royal Dano plays a drunk. And a list of movies where W.A.S.P. shows up, too.

The MVD blu ray release of this movie has a 2K scan of the interpositive overseen by MG and has an introduction by and an interview with screenwriter Dennis Paoli, a making of featurette, deleted scenes, a photo gallery and a theatrical trailer. You can get it from MVD.

I remember seeing the cover to Ghoulies at Prime Time Video and like some kind of snobbery moron, I never rented it. What was I thinking? Did I think it was a ripoff of Gremlins and not worth watching? I was half right, because it is, but it’s way better than it has any right to be.

I mean, does this movie know me? It starts with a Satanic ceremony in which Malcolm Graves (Michael Des Barres, once of the band Detective) tries to sacrifice a child. Instead, he kills his mother Anastasia (Victoria Catlin, Maniac Cop) and sends him away with an assistant named Wolfgang (Jack Nance). Twenty-five years later, the child grows up to be Jonathan (Peter Liapis) and he inherits his father’s estate.

He decides to invite his girlfriend Rebecca (Lisa Pelikan, Jennifer) and friends to explore the mansion. They find an entire basement of occult books and supplies, so they decide to perform a ritual. You know, as you do. They leave when nothing happens but as soon as they walk away, a small creature shows up and before you know it, the ghost of Malcolm has taken over Jonathan and he’s unleashing several ghoulies and the dwarves Grizzel and Greedigut (Tamara De Treaux, who played one of the creatures in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and was one of several actors who played E.T.).

As Malcolm begins to grow in power, all of their friends — Mike (Scott Thompson, Fast Times At Ridgemont High), Donna (Mariska Hargitay), Toad Boy (Ralph Seymour), Dick (Keith Joe Dick) and Eddie (David Dayan) — are all toast. Luckily, the man who saved him once before, Wolfgang, comes back and battles the evil sorcerer, everyone gets revived and they drive into the sunset with a ghoulie in the backseat.

Directed by Luca Bercovici (who also made Rockula for Cannon) and written by Jefery Levy, this was produced by Charles Band. It was actually started before Gremlins but there was a time when the production ran out of money, which is why it came out after. It was shot at the Wattles Mansion, near the park where Jim Wynorski shot The Lost Empire.

The real stars are the ghoulies, which were created by John Carl Buechler, who did effects for some of the coolest looking 80s and 90s horror films, including Prison, Dolls, The Eliminators and more. The ones that show up in this movie are fish ghoulie, cat ghoulie, rat ghoulie, flying ghoulie and clown doll ghoulie.

The MVD blu ray release of Ghoulies has the 2023 HD Restoration of the film presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio along with archival 2015 audio commentary with director Luca Bercovici, a second archival 2016 audio commentary by Bercovici moderated by Jason Andreasen of Terror Transmission, an introduction by Bercovici, interviews with Bercovici, Ted Nicolau and Scott Thomson, a making of feature, a photo gallery, a trailer, 4 TV ads and a collectible poster. You can get it from MVD, who also has a 4K UHD version.

Here’s hoping they make all four films!