Author Archives: bandsaboutmovies

GENRE BLAST IS COMING!

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GenreBlast Film Fest has announced its lineup for the ninth year of its international independent genre film festival. The three day in-person event will feature eleven feature films and roughly ninety short films from around the world as well as the results of their annual screenplay competition.

Emanating from the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia, GenreBlast continues to champion truly independent genre cinema and this year features an eclectic lineup of cross-genre films.

With horror, science fiction and fantasy, action, and offbeat cult and transgressive midnight offerings, the fest prides itself on being an eccentric mixtape of genres and filmmakers.

Of the eleven features selected this year, there are five world premieres, one international premiere, one North American premiere, one east coast premiere, one regional premiere, one Virginia premiere and a special advance screening.

Ricky Umberger’s latest found footage horror film, The Man With the Black Umbrella, makes its world premiere at GenreBlast IX. Other world premieres include Brian K. Williams and Scott Schirmer’s psychosexual horror/thriller Gush, along with local sci-fi flick Inter-State, directed by Sam Gorman. The world premieres are rounded out by Michael Smallwood’s end times sci-fi drama Tonight and Maybe Tomorrow and Michelle Iannantuono’s experimental meta comedy First Draft: The Outcasts.

Becca Kozak’s splatterpunk gut punch Sugar Rot will be an international premiere outside of Canada, and Mark Beal’s practical FX-heavy folk horror nightmare Marginalia screens as a North American premiere. UK pulp thriller Burnt Flowers, directed by Michael Fausti, is an East Coast premiere.

Meat Machine, Jeffrey Garcia’s whacked-out midnight movie sleazefest, has a regional premiere, and Izzy Lee’s trauma horror tour-de-force House of Ashes is a Virginia premiere.

A special advance screening of Cranked Up Films’ vampire action western noir Blood and Rust, directed by Jeremy Herbert, screens Saturday night, August 30th30th.

The fest runs from Friday, August 29th through Sunday, August 31st at the Alamo Winchester, concluding with a livestreamed awards ceremony followed by the GB Aftermath After Party.

Script table reads and a live comedy show will also be on the schedule during the fest. Weekend passes are now on sale at the Alamo Winchester website.

Additional information can be found at the fest’s official website.

CHATTANOOGA FILM FESTIVAL: The Misadventures of Vince & Hick (2025)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Apologies for how late this is — catching up on so much work!

Hick Dunn (Chase Cargill) is just out of prison, can’t get a job and has promised to make it to his daughter’s birthday even if he has no clue how to make it happen. Soon, he meets Vince Campbell (Heston Horwin) and they form a friendship — as much as one can exist between these two guys — of one ex-con who fights his way out of everything and a con who is out to work everyone.

Starting as a web series in 2021, this is now a full movie, directed by Trevor Stevens and written by Horwin. It feels like a comic book universe that allowed Tarantino and all the 90s neo-noir that cashed in on his success to replace superheroes. With 24 hours to steal a car and take it to New Mexico, this is a buddy film that aims for more than its low-budget origins and succeeds beyond expectation.

The Odd Job (1978)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Official synopsis: Graham Chapman stars as happily married Arthur Harris, who becomes suicidal when his wife suddenly up and leaves him. Trying and failing miserably to do the deed himself, when a peculiar handyman (BAFTA-winner Sir David Jason) turns up on his doorstep to offer his services, he enlists the help of this strange stranger to kill him instead, with shockingly hilarious results.

As a decades-long fan of Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the various projects with which the members of its troupe have been involved, I was keen on checking out director Peter Medak’s 1978 feature The Odd Job starring Graham Chapman. Cowritten by Chapman and Bernard McKenna, the film is one of those comedies where you can tell what was meant to be funny, but the humor just doesn’t land successfully enough to garner many actual laughs. 

Although the performances are generally fine — Richard O’Brien as the leather queen henchman of a gangster is a scene stealer — characters are often written or portrayed broadly, or seemingly just there for convenience, whether it be for attempts at laughs or to try to make the plot more absurd. Questions abound, such as why Harris would continue to want to commit suicide when a neighbor in his building attempts to seduce him the very night his wife left him, and why, after Harris’s wife returns home, he doesn’t simply try to let his would-be murderer know that the plan is off.

As a curiosity, The Odd Job is certainly worth a watch, as it is interesting to see what Chapman, McKenna, and Medak were attempting to pull off. Monty Python and Graham Chapman completists will definitely want to give it a look.

Chapman and McKenna were a bit more successful with 1983’s Yellowbeard, which saw Peter Cook join the duo as a co-writer.

Severin Films releases The Odd Job in its worldwide Blu-ray premiere on 25 August 2025, and the film will also be available on digital on Amazon Prime on the same date. The film is now scanned in 2K from director Peter Medak’s personal 35mm print and comes complete with a slew of special features. It’s available to pre-order now at https://severinfilms.co.uk/.

Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival 2025: The Metal Band’s Guide to the Black Hole (2025)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Apologies for how late this is — catching up on so much work!

During a fiery highlight performance by the metal band Iron Puppy, the lead vocalist and bassist Jeong-cheol’s long hair caught fire. How does a metal band continue with a short-haired singer? The fans have left, no one cares, so metal god  O.G. Osborune (Xavier Liaudet) guides the band to a black hole and reveals a divine mission: to find hair from a virgin ghost and perform with it, therefore returning to all that is metal fame.

Directed and written by JEON Ah-hyun, this South Korean short combines loud music, video games, Japanese pop culture and so much more into quite the stew. It also made me very protective of my hair and thankful that it has stayed with me for so many decades.

Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival 2025: Chain Reactions (2024)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Apologies for how late this is — catching up on so much work!

Lynch/Oz. Doc of the Dead. The People vs. George Lucas. 78/52.

Director and writer Alexandre O. Philippe has made so many good movies about movies and this — which explains the influence of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre — is just as good, if not better. Patton Oswalt, Takashi Miike, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Stephen King and Karyn Kusama all speak to what makes the film special to them, why it’s stuck in their heads and inspired their own work.

Many reviews of this film seem to make light of the fact that Chainsaw isn’t a critical darling. What do you expect of a movie with the tagline, “Who will survive and what will be left of them?” For me, it’s the reason I found my way into marketing, as the idea of those words sparked something in me that I couldn’t forget. That’s been my goal my whole career: to write words that talked others into things in the same way. The economy of that sentence, the images and ideas that it plays before your mind’s eye…it’s perfect.

A file stolen by organized crime, a movie that mainly played grindhouses and drive-ins for almost a decade, a film more frightening and bloody in the descriptions people had of it than what they really watched. A film made in the sun, in the heat of Texas, a movie where no one made money — other than that mob mentioned — for a decade or more. A film that maybe Tobe Hooper couldn’t live up to because he kind of made a Citizen Kane first time out.

Other reviews call out that Roger Ebert only gave Chainsaw two stars, or that people looked down on it and still do. Good. It’s the kind of movie that shouldn’t be safe. It’s a bastard: a grimy descent into the worst man can be, yet Leatherface basically just wants to work and be with his family. His evil isn’t evil; maybe the Sawyer family isn’t horrible, despite what they do. We just don’t understand their ways and should never try to be part of the strange, dark hallways of the world in which they live.

What do I know? I’ve seen Chainsaw so many times. I dressed as Leatherface for every haunted house my high school art club put on. I was fascinated by this documentary, which, instead of mixing up the talking heads, just gives you long conversations with each of them. This is like a good talk about a film you love with people who share your passion. What else did you expect?

Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival 2025: Babanba Banban Vampire (2025)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Apologies for how late this is — catching up on so much work!

Based on the manga by Hiromasa Okujima and anime series by Itsuro Kawasaki, this is the tale of 450-year-old vampire Ranmaru (Ryo Yoshizawa).

He works at the family-run Koi Bathhouse, where he nearly died ten years ago while in the sun, being saved by the son of the owner, Rihito (Rihito Itagaki). Despite a long history of being a vampire lord, Ranmaru has been keeping the place clean as a janitor. But the truth is, he’s waiting for Rihito to grow up so he can feast on him, except that now his big meal is about to lose his virginity — which would ruin the taste — to his girlfriend Aoi.

Directed by Shinji Hamasaki, this was fun. Sure, I’ve never read the manga or seen the anime, so I bet if I had and were I obsessed with those things, I’d have something to quibble with. But this felt like a live-action cartoon and entertained me every step of the way.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Blade: Trinity (2004)

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Aug 25-31 Natasha Lyonne Week: There’s a new season of her weirdo mystery of the week coming out (I can’t remember the name rn, you can look it up) and she’s been steadily delivering chuckles for decades now.

Blade: Trinity is so weird.

Wesley Snipes was unhappy with the film’s script and the original director’s choice. David S. Goyer, who wrote all of the movies in this franchise, replaced the director of the film, which Snipes also hated. Snipes then refused — allegedly — to film some scenes, so that’s not even him in the movie, but instead a stand-in or CGI. And really, this is a Blade movie more about Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel) than Blade. Hell, we get to watch Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) die yet again, Blade get his ass kicked numerous times and have to get through the origin of Dracula (Dominic Purcell) more than see Wesley Snipes kick ass.

Patton Oswalt — yes, he’s in this — told the AV Club that Snipes “was just fucking crazy in a hilarious way” and “wouldn’t come out of his trailer” and only came to the set for close-ups. “Everything else was done by his stand-in. And he tried to strangle the director, David Goyer. We went out that night to some strip club, and we were all drinking. And there were a bunch of bikers there, so David says to them, “I’ll pay for all your drinks if you show up to set tomorrow and pretend to be my security.” Wesley freaked out and went back to his trailer. And the next day, Wesley sat down with David and was like, “I think you need to quit. You’re detrimental to this movie.” And David was like, “Why don’t you quit? We’ve got all your close-ups, and we could shoot the rest with your stand-in.” And that freaked Wesley out so much that, for the rest of the production, he would only communicate with the director through Post-it notes. And he would sign each Post-it note “From Blade.””

Goyer told The Hollywood Reporter, “Let’s just say I have tremendous respect for Wesley as an actor. He used to be a friend. We’re not friends anymore. I am friends with Patton and I worked with Patton since so … I don’t think anyone involved in that film had a good experience on that film, certainly I didn’t. I don’t think anybody involved with that film is happy with the results. It was a very tortured production.”

In 2020, Snipes told The Guardian, “Let me tell you one thing. If I had tried to strangle David Goyer, you probably wouldn’t be talking to me now. A Black guy with muscles strangling the director of a movie is going to jail, I guarantee you. This is part of the challenges that we as African Americans face here in America — these microaggressions. The presumption that one white guy can make a statement and that statement stands as true! Why would people believe his version is true? Because they are predisposed to believing the Black guy is always the problem.

And all it takes is one person, Mr. Oswalt, who I really don’t know. I can barely remember him on the set, but it’s fascinating that his statement alone was enough to make people go: “Yeah, you know Snipes has got a problem.”

I remind you that I was one of the executive producers of the project. I had contractual director approval. I was not just the actor for hire. I had au-thor-i-ty to say, to dictate, to decide. This was a hard concept for a lot of people to wrap their heads around.”

Also: Snipes sued New Line Cinema and Goyer, “claiming that the studio did not pay his full salary, that he was intentionally cut out of casting decisions and the filmmaking process, despite being one of the producers, and that his character’s screen time was reduced in favor of co-stars Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel.”

In turn, “Snipes was sued by United Talent Agency for allegedly failing to fulfill agreements to pay commission to the agency on his earnings.”

Anyways, this movie has Parker Posey and Billy Tallent — I mean Callum Keith Rennie — as twin vampires Danica and Asher Talos, who frame Blade for murder and kill Whistler, taking him off the board until he’s rescued by the Nightstalkers, who are Hannibal King (Reynolds), Abigail Whistler (Biel), Sommerfield (Natasha Lyonne, yes really) and Hedges (Patton Oswalt). They’ve created sunlight bullets and a weapon called the Daystar that can wipe out all vampires.

Somehow, this is a movie that has Kristofferson, Lyonne, Françoise Yip, Triple H, Eric Bogosian, John Michael Higgins, James Remar and sometimes Wesley Snipes in a film about genetically removing vampires from the face of the Earth. It’s also filled with scenes in Esperanto, including the movie Incubus being viewed. Huh?

This was followed by a Blade TV series that had Sticky Fingaz from Onyx as Blade, which I love the concept of, and plans for a Deacon Frost prequel and an Underworld crossover that both got cancelled because Blade is now part of the MCU, even if we only heard his voice in The Eternals and by the time he was in Deadpool and Wolverine, Snipes being Blade again proved that “There’s only one Blade.”

Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival 2025: V/H/S Beyond (2024)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Apologies for how late this is — catching up on so much work!

The seventh installment in the V/H/S franchise, this has a framing device with director Jay Cheel receiving an anonymous email with footage of actual aliens, similar to the Canadian urban legend of Farrington House.

“Stork” is directed by Jordan Downey, who wrote it with Kevin Stewart. Based on artwork by Oleg Vdovenko, it has a police group known as W.A.R.D.E.N. fighting an alien creature that looks like a stork and eats brains and then baby birds them into infants’ mouths.

“Dream Girl”, directed by Virat Pal — and co-written with Evan Dickson, has two paparazzi tring to get photos of superstar Tara, a Bollywood actress who ends up being an android who can take faces and body parts and wants to “rule as a commoner.”

“Live and Let Dive” by Justin Martinez, who wrote it with Ben Turner, is pretty harrowing, as aliens interrupt skydiving, turning a birthday celebration into a violent first-person shooter. I loved this part, as it feels absolutely insane and never lets up.

“Fur Babies” by Christian and Justin Long feels like the kind of shock ending made by people who only watch the HBO Tales from the Crypt and never read the comic book or saw the Amicus films. A bunch of animal activists literally go to the dogs when a taxidermy expert transforms them into human puppy hybrids. Oh, Justin Long, you can’t stop loving getting turned into animals, can you?

“Stowaway” is directed by Kate Siegel and written by Mike Flanagan. It tells the story of a woman who stows away on an alien ship and finds herself on a trip across the galaxy, where she is healed by nanites that enter her body.

Every franchise eventually goes to space. At least this one — for the most part — does a great job of it.

Murder, She Wrote S2 E8: Dead Heat (1985)

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Jessica goes to the races to watch her niece ride the winning horse, but then the horse’s disagreeable owner is murdered after a dispute.

Season 2, Episode 8: Dead Heat (November 24, 1985)

Tonight on Murder, She Wrote…

Jessica has the difficult task of proving that her niece was framed for the murder of a horse breeder. We can all relate to that kind of rich people’s life, right?

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury, and were they in any exploitation movies?

Vicky Gallagos is played by Priscilla Barnes, who replaced Suzanne Somers on Three’s Company and also shows up in The Devil’s Rejects. She was also in Lords of the Deep, Stepfather 3 and Tintorera. Her husband, Carlos, is played by Bert Rosario.

Ramon Bieri played Pat Phillips, the first of three times he’d be on this show.

Jack Cart,– the mayor from Alligat,— is Cliff Carpenter. Playing his wife Christine is Carole Cook, a student of Lucille Ball.

Jack Bowen is played by Lonny Chapman from The Birds, The Witch Who Came from the Sea and plenty of TV.

Vince Shackman is Norman Fell, and I wonder if he and Priscilla Barnes gossiped between takes.

Jessica’s niece, Tracy, is played by Linda Grovenor, and in the same year she made this episode, she was in Wheels of Fire. Life’s crazy.

Is that Clu Gulager? Yep. You know it. He was in three episodes of this show.

Roy Thinnes, who was on The Invaders and The Norliss Tapes, plays Lt. Ted Misko.

Im smaller roles, Cookie Milford is Derrel Maury, Erine is Tom Dreesen, Mr. P is Robert Ellenstein, Alex Rebar plays a gunman, Freddye Chapman is a nurse, Don Matheson is the chief steward, Stu Gilliam is a cab driver, Tony Ballen and Richard Paradise (those sound like porn names) are bookies, Faith Burton, George Sasaki, Walter Spear and Ken Clayton are watches the horse races, Mel Gold is a trainer and Joe Faust is a guard.

What happens?

Jessica goes to watch her niece, Tracy, race on the very day she gets promoted to ride Jack Bowen’s prize horse, Anchors Away. For some reason, everyone is betting on this race, from the wife of its jockey — who had to go to the emergency room — Viky, some mob guys and a husband and wife who are at the track every day. Tracy wins, the owner is killed, and the cops appear to arrest Tracy on suspicion of fixing the race.

Good thing Jessica showed up.

Another good reason is that Tracy is the suspect in the murder of the owner, which is fantastic to be able to get promoted, win a race and kill your boss all in the same day. Tracy’s LinkedIn has to be incredible.

What follows is the mob wanting to know what happened, Jessica using a carrot to test a horse, a horse nearly trampling Jessica and finally, a second fake Anchors Away.

Who did it?

The wife of the jockey, Vicky.

Who made it?

This episode was directed by Peter Crane and written by J. Miyoko and Steven Hensley, who also scripted the TV Movies Finder of Lost Loves, Can You Feel Me Dancing?, Remo Williams: The Prophecy and episodes of Magnum, P.I.

Does Jessica get some?

No.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid?

No.

Was it any good?

It’d be better if Jessica dressed silly and got some dick.

Any trivia?

This is one of the few episodes to mention Jessica’s brother, Martin.

Jessica says that she’s a Pisces, so her birthday is between February 19 and March 20. In real life, Angela Lansbury was a Libra, born on October 16, 1925.

Give me a reasonable quote:

Bookie #1: Separately, it’s peanuts, Vince. Put it together, and we’re chokin’.

Bookie #2: How did we know Mike Gann was bettin’ all over town?

Vince Shackman: I can add.

What’s next?

Jessica visits a women’s prison and is held captive when an uprising occurs because of abuse and murder at the facility. This episode is a Sam dream cast: Eve Plumb, Vera Miles, Yvonna De Carlo, Adrienne Barbeau and Mary Woronov.

Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival 2025: Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants (2025)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Apologies for how late this is — catching up on so much work!

Guo Jing may have wandered the martial world honing his skills, but he has learned to appreciate the time he spends with his lover, Huang Rong. However, his tranquility goes away when he learns that Huang Rong’s father is the man who has killed his masters. Yet he has gone to anger too quickly, as it was all a misunderstanding and now, he may have lost her love forever. He must also come to terms with the man who raised him, Genghis Khan, and choose between family loyalty and justice.

Based on chapters 34 through 40 of Jin Yong’s legendary martial arts novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes and directed by the legendary Tsui Hark, this brings back the feeling of large-scale Shaw Brothers wuxia films. Hark has already made two other adaptations of the book, Swordsman and Swordsman II.

I loved the end of this film, where Guo Jing pushes through thousands of soldiers to have an audience with Genghis Khan and speaks to him of heroism and the responsibility of protecting one’s own people.

Currently the highest-grossing wuxia movie in Chinese cinema, this has a perfect use of its leads, Xiao Zhan and Tony Leung Ka-fai (Big Tony, not Tony Leung Chiu-wai, who is Little Tony).