WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Joysticks (1983)
Jefferson Bailey (Scott McGinnis, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock) owns the hottest business in 1983: a video arcade. It’s driving local business tycoon Joseph Rutter (Joe Don Baker, a man whose name I screamed into the ear of a sleeping girlfriend once, which is a long story I should really get to sometime) nuts, so […]
WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Joy House (1964)
René Clément, fresh off the success of Purple Noon (another Delon vehicle), opted to shoot iJoy House in lush black-and-white. This choice turned the Mediterranean villa into a labyrinth of shadows. While the plot sounds like a standard potboiler, Clément treats the house itself as a character—a gilded cage where everyone is both predator and […]
WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Johnny Firecloud (1975)
Johnny Firecloud (Victor Mohica, Don’t Answer the Phone) just got back from Vietnam and made his way back home to New Mexico. If he thought it sucked before he left, well, it sucks even more now. Colby (Ralph Meeker) runs the town and has a mad on for Johnny, probably because his daughter June (Christina Hart) […]
WEIRD WEDNESDAY: JDs Revenge (1976)
Much like the Italian western, after so many years and so many movies, the blaxploitation film needed to be more than just comedy or crime. Horror — witness Blacula, Sugar Hill and Abby, as well as Ganja and Hess, Scream Blacula Scream, and Dr. Black and Mr. White — could also be made for black audiences. Isaac “Ike” Hendrix (Glynn Turman, […]
WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Jailbait Babysitter (1977)
I’ve been pretty fascinated by the filmography of John Hayes lately. The man who gave us the atmospheric dread of Garden of the Dead and Grave of the Vampire takes a hard turn here, trading in gothic horror for the neon-and-pavement grit of the exploitation circuit, though he also directed adult films. The story centers […]
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