Bob Morgan — someone I never knew before watching this — is a second-generation Kentucky artist and LGBTQ activist who learned art from his mom and “honed his creative identity under the influence of his mentor and gay dad Henry Faulkner and his gay mom Sweet Evening Breeze.” He may have started as a drag performer, but he now feels that he is telling his story and the tales of others through his photos and mixed media artwork.
I love this line about the movie: “Bob’s just going to tell some stories–about art and garbage, sex and drugs, subversion, AIDS grief, queer joy, and being an outsider turned community icon.”
Directed by Grayson Tyler Johnson and Tom Marksbury, this shows why Bob not only collects all the things he finds, but also the stories. I used to feel like when we escaped the Reagan 80s that life was going to get better and the negativity about gay people or any marginalized people just seems like it won’t die, huh? Life would be gray without all of thee colors and yet, here we are. I’d rather just hear Bob go on and on.
You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles and updating my Letterboxd list of watches.
This is my first film at Chattanooga Film Fest 2025, and wow, it’s already a winner. Abigail Before Beatrice defines slow burn, and that’s not a bad thing here. It parcels out the info that you need in just the right way, gradually revealing who people are, what they’ve been through and how—and if—they can move on.
The second full-length film from director and writer Cassie Keet, this concentrates on Beatrice (Olivia Taylor Dudley), a woman who lives so far removed from the world that at times she feels like a feral child. She has a barely working phone, steals strawberries to make jam and works several at-home jobs where she never has to physically meet another human being. Yet there was a time that she belonged — even if it was to a cult — and when she reconnects to fellow survivor Abigail (Riley Dandy), who has moved on to create a podcast that details all she went through, she still feels love for her. And yet we soon learn that Beatrice can’t move on to a reality outside of the religious nightmare that she endured for so long.
Now that their leader, Grayson (Shayne Herndon), is being released from prison, Abigail is preparing to defend herself. As for Beatrice, reconnecting with that man will send her into a spiral that has been coming for so long.
My only quibble with this film is that the moments that start it off, about how Beatrice connects with Will (Jordan Lane Shappell) and his daughter Jillie (Andersyn Van Kuren), seem forgotten until the finale, which I’m still not sure is happening or just another fantasy in its lead’s head.
So often, when people experience true crime through documentaries and podcasts, they seem to place a distance between themselves and what they watch. “I would never do that.” “How stupid these women are.” “Who could believe these stories?” Yet, the women in this story have each come to Grayson for different reasons, one he could see and use against them, as even years later, they still argue over who his favorite was, as if that matters any longer. But to answer those questions true crime watchers have, or the way they don’t get it, they aren’t living through the cult experience. They have no idea how it can prey upon your innate need to be adored, to be told you matter, to feel like you have a purpose. It’s so simple and trite to question an abusive relationship until you’ve been the one locking yourself in a bathroom. This movie tries to get in that room, to get inside that head, to show you that yes, people can be trapped by these silver-tongued words, and the worst part is what comes after. Can you heal? I don’t know the answer.
You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles and updating my Letterboxd list of watches.
While many may know him as the lead on the CW series Roswell, New Mexico, Michael Vlamis has always been shooting and writing his own films. This full-length debut, which he also stars in and co-wrote, is something else—something that comes from real pain. As he told Deadline, “I’m interested in exploring the guilt and grief that haunted me following a tragic accident I experienced a few years back. If you don’t try to face your feelings, they’ll eventually consume you.”
Tessa (Aurora Perrineau) and James (Vlamis) came together over the crossword. They challenged each other with it. They raced to see who could do it first. Even their wedding proposal was inside one. They had a daughter, Lily, who died in a drowning accident, and since then, their lives have changed. She’s become a famous writer of children’s books, starting with Lily Learns. He’s retreated into…mostly grief. She suggests he get back to the crossword as part of his therapy.
The clues for each day seem way too close to his life. Every coincidence can’t be one. A boorish houseguest playing hide-and-seek gives way to James having an emotional outburst. He starts to believe that maybe Tessa now has everything she wants. Could she have watched their daughter die? Or was it because he was more concerned with his crossword and not watching her in the pool?
Every frame of this drips with grief and hard work. Harvey Guillén from What We Do In the Shadows shines in a small role as a magazine interviewer who has no warning that he’s stepped into a house filled with conflict. Both leads shine and play off each other so well. And yet while the ambiguous ending may frustrate some, I’m not sure it could end any other way.
You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles and updating my Letterboxd list of watches.
June 16-22 SNL Week: Saturday Night Live is celebrating 50 years on the air, can NBC last for another 50 years??
I hate saying people are nepo babies to the point that, of course, I did it right in the first sentence. But yeah, Please Don’t Destroy are Ben Marshall, John Higgins and Martin Herlihy and of them, only Marshall doesn’t have famous parents. Higgins’ dad is Steve Higgins, producer of SNL and Jimmy Fallon’s announcer, as well as the nephew of Chris Elliot and actor David Anthony Higgins. Herlihy is the son of Tim, Adam Sandler’s longtime writing partner and a former SNL producer. They got together in 2017 and, within just four years, ended up as writers on SNL, writing digital shorts. She’s not the only person with a family history at the show, as Jane Wickline’s mother, Marcy Hardart, was Lorne Michaels’ assistant, and her father, Matt, was a writer on Letterman and In Living Color.
I mean, I guess you can come from anywhere and be funny. Whether or not SNL is funny is up to you.
Ben, John and Martin are the names the guys use in this, and they’re all growing away from one another. Ben is taking over Trout Plus, the family store, from his father (Conan O’Brien). At the same time, Martin has found religion and a girlfriend who goes by Amy (Nichole Sakura). John is about to be left behind, so he decides to make a break to Foggy Mountain to find a treasure — Jean Pierre La Roche’s bust of Marie Antoinette — that everyone is looking for, like park rangers Lisa (Megan Stalter) and Taylor (X Mayo) and the cult of Deetch Nordwind (Bowen Yang), who have been looking for it for perhaps a decade.
Funny moments:
Gaten Matarazzo of Stranger Things is killed by a cult
Martin goes full-on action hero and has a weird Italian accent.
The fact that the music seems trapped in the mid-2000s.
The non-nepo baby is the fictional nepo baby.
Truly, this is the kind of movie that people who think I should watch something would send me, and I’m not being elitist here. I mean, I watch SNL every week knowing it sucks, so what taste do I have? I mean, I like the Lonely Island movies and these guys feel like, well, the kids who watched Lonely Island on YouTube and decided to do i. Still, alsoo they had rich dads, like the dude I used to work for whose son works in his company who hated the sons of people who owned companies when he was young and now he’s old and his son is a wash out and barely wants to work, but he’s his son, dammit. What do I know? My son is a 3-pound dog that I hope outlives me, and I can’t teach him how to be a writer. Comedy feels half ass today and I’m saying that as someone who finds the dumbest and worst teen sex comedies uproarious. The bar is low, and this is fine. It’s fine. I’m trying to convince myself, not you. You can do whatever you want.
I mean, is a Soulja Boy needledrop so funny that you have to do it three times really that funny?
Directed by Thomas E. Sanders (his only directing job; he was the production designer on several films, including Crimson Peak) and written by AL Katz and Gilbert Adler, this episode has Reverend Jonathan (Anthony Andrews) learning that despite being a holy man, he has twin daughters not from his wife: the gorgeous Angelica and the not quite as good looking Leah (both played by Anna Friel). They were born in secret by his maid Emma (Emma Bird) without the knowledge of his wife Sarah (Imelda Staunton). Sarah has had it, of course, as Jonathan is anything but pious. He’s still sleeping with his young assistants and secretaries, after all.
“My ghoul thinks I’m a vampire, so she eats garlic just in case. Man, she smells! Yeah, my ghoul thinks I’m a vampire. Laughs at me when we embrace. I said, “Babe, I’m no bloodsucker.” Wiped that smile right off her face. Yeah! Thank you. Thank you very much. Now, I’d like to play for you another little rhythm and booze decomposition of mine. It’s about a man who’s about to make a gored progression of his own in a nasty five fiver hack-cercise I call “About Face.””
This has the kind of reveal that EC Comics was good at. A spoiler? Here it is. The sisters are actually conjoined. They even did covers of these accidents of birth. Siamese twins — not politically correct anymore — were big sales for EC. This time, one sister is an angel and the other is the devil. And when you abandon your twins after their mother dies giving birth to them, even the Bible may not save you.
This episode is based on “About Face!” from Vault of Horror #20. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Johnny Craig. It’s nothing like this story, as it has a scarred lion tamer using witchcraft to move the wounds on her face to the girlfriend of her chauffeur.
June 20: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Exploitation Auteurs!
At one point during this movie, I put my head in my hands and took the Lord’s name in vain because, well, I was actually thanking God for the fact that I lived in the same reality that produced Russ Meyer.
This is his last film — whatever it is, I guess a film will describe it — after Meyer’s Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. From 1979 to his death in 2004, it was a time of announced and never-filmed or unfinished projects. As porn entered the video store and bedrooms, Russ — who had battle censorship for so long — was rich and lived off the sales of the movies he’d already directed. In Jimmy McDonough’s Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film, Meyer said, “I got all the money I’ll ever need. You gotta be hungry to make a movie. I don’t have the desire, the urge.” You could call him and he’d answer the phone himself, ready to sell you a movie. He didn’t have to make Mondo Topless, Too or the color remake of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Reading about Blitzen, Vixen and Harry makes me wistful. So does The Jaws of Lorna AKA The Jaws of Vixen AKA The Bra of God, Up the Valley of the Beyond. Russ was selling old movies for $79.50, way more than other VHS, but he was the only person selling them. No more new films. No more fire, I guess.
Well, there was The Breast of Russ Meyer. Somehow, for the usual money watching Meyer, this cost $2 million dollars and went around the world to find the most incredible breasts Russ had ever seen. It seemed like a vision in his rapidly declining brain, mixing profiles of Meyer vixens who were doomed to later in life back problems, biographical moments of his Army service and even Kitten Natividad and Russ making love on screen. It was 12 hours long at one point and most of it was given to the Museum of Modern Art.
Other than some footage that aired on Johnathan Ross’ Incredible Film Show, the only way to see all this weirdness—just moments of it—is in Pandora Peaks, a movie that Russ shot throughout the 90s, keeping the actress—born Stephanie Schick—on a $9,000 a week retainer. She claims in this that she worked in a bank and had several businesses before making herself her business, expanding her measurements to 72HHH-22-36.
Russ keeps showing up to talk about his life and his past movies. Just when you think you may learn something, we’re back to Peaks dancing or a German girl named Tundi — who may have the Dr. Ruth voice you hear talking of sex throughout and who McDonough referred to as “truly freakish…a nineteen-year-old Hungarian who spoke no English and resembled a giant triangle made flesh” — as well as another cantilevered specimen named Leosha — that was a Russ word, as is gravity-defying — and Candy Samples, relating how much she likes using her breasts.
Another movie starring Meyer’s then-partner, Melissa Mounds, was supposed to be made as well. Supposedly, longtime collaborator Jim Ryan oversaw this movie. The end of Russ’ life makes me sad — him losing the only person he cared about, his dog Harry; being physically abused by Mounds; the emotional loss of friends he served in the war with. He was a man abandoned by his lawman father, who never mentioned the mental illness his mother and sister battled or his worries that he had it. Instead, he invented himself. So if this movie feels all of the place, strange and perhaps a bit too overenthused by sweater meat, know that’s how its creator wanted it. He did it his way, even when it didn’t make sense.
June 16-22 SNL Week: Saturday Night Live is celebrating 50 years on the air, can NBC last for another 50 years??
Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer are Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins and Derek Smalls, but they’re also Alan Barrows, Jerry Palter and Mark/Marta Shubb. They first appeared on Saturday Night Live’s Season 10, episode 4, on November 3, 1984, when Guest and Shearer were in the cast and McKeen was hosting. I have no idea why Shearer would come back to SNL, as no one is more ruthless about the show in the Live from New York book.
Here’s a good Shearer quote: “I grew to quite loathe the producer of the show. The first words he said to me were, “I never hired a male Jew for the show before.” And knowing that he was Jewish gave it an extra tang.”
Anyways, that sketch — Shearer came back post-Lorne Michaels, I get it — “The Folksmen Reunion” was all about how America was into old folk musicians getting back together. The band also shows up in The Return of Spinal Tap and actually opened for itself, kind of, as The Folksmen opened for Spinal Tap, which didn’t always work out well, if you ask Guest, who told Wired, “One time, we had The Folksmen open for Spinal Tap because we always wanted to do a culmination of our entirely different personas. So there we were in caps playing folk music, opening for Spinal Tap, and the audience looked completely bewildered, like “What the fuck is going on here?” It was great. My son was at the show, and asked, “Mom, when are the old guys getting off and loud guys coming on?” That may have been a moment of weirdness for some people, but so what?”
They also played an actual folk festival alongside Arlo Guthrie, Joni Mitchell and Peter, Paul & Mary.
Anyway, The Folksmen started at The Twobadors, as Shubb and Barrows met at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont—or did all three members go to Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio—and met Palter in Greenwich Village. After their single “Old Joe’s Place,” they somehow released five albums in 26 months before breaking up, forever known as “the group who were too popular to be purist and too purist to be popular.”
At some point, Mark became Mary — saying “After that concert (the one in this movie) I realized I want to spend as much of the rest of my life as possible playing folk music with these gentlemen. And I want to spend all of it as a woman. I came to a realization that I was, and am, a blonde, female folk singer trapped in the body of a bald, male folk singer, and I had to let me out or I would die.” — and they really did become Peter, Paul and Mary. Or Marta.
Sometimes, the silliest jokes are the best.
As for the movie, when their manager Irving Steinbloom dies, The Folksmen join up with The New Main Street Singers — led by George Menschell (Paul Dooley), who can’t play the guitar he carries, along with Terry Bohner (John Michael Higgins), his wife and former adult star, now a witch named Laurie (Jane Lynch) and Sissy Know (Parker Posey — and the folk duo Mitch (Eugene Levy) and Mickey (Catherine O’Hara) for a memorial concert.
Directed by Guest, who co-wrote it with Levy, this movie has almost everyone—well, not George Menschell—play their own instruments. Levy even learned to play guitar just for the film.
While not my favorite of the Guest mockumentaries, I still laughed throughout this movie. Maybe it’s because my heart is in metal, and I strongly feel these lyrics: “Working on a sex farm / Trying to raise some hard love / Getting out my pitchfork / Poking your hay.”
June 19: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Free Space!
Director Robert Michael Ingria directed one movie.
You’re reading about it.
Manny Diaz worked as a dialogue coach on and wrote The Seven Minutes, was an assistant on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and wrote the 1989 AIDS movie The Victims.
Somehow, they made a pro wrestling movie.
Hammerhead Jones is the champion of the American Council of Professional Wrestling, based in Miami, the literal heart of all wrestling in this real world. Kayfabe isn’t even a thing because all of the violence really happens to people. Hammerhead is played by Ted Vernon.
Vernon was a professional wrestler and manager for NWA Florida, D1PW and Future of Wrestling (all Florida-based promotions), but he’s done so much more. Let him tell you, in his own words, from his car dealership website, South Beach Classics:
“Ted Vernon has established worldwide recognition as an actor, writer and executive producer, since he played the title role in his own screenplay of Hammerhead Jones, which was released worldwide and still frequents HBO. Ted was the executive producer of the major motion picture of John Carpenter’s Village of the Damned with Universal Films starring Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley and Linda Kozlowski. Ted Vernon’s credits as star, actor and executive producer are in the all time cult famous film Scarecrows as Lead Role of Corbin, Mercenary. As an actor, Vernon filmed South Beach with Peter Fonda, Gary Busey, Fred Williamson; “Silent Hunter” with Fred Williamson and Miles Okeefe; The Unholy with Ben Cross and Trevor Howard; The Victims he played Arnold Cutter, Real Estate Mogul and Tough Guy; Deadly Rivals with Andrew Stevens and Margot Hemmingway; Played Kojak for Kojak Series Commercials on Channel 4 WTVJ; starred in commercial for Arequipena Beer.Vernon also appeared in the popular teen series S Club Seven, as the hilarious bodyguard wearing a dress. (Ted still insists he had the best legs in the group!) Vernon was also executive producer of a horror film shot in South Florida called Angel of Death.
Theatrical Performances include: Twice starring as The King in The King and I, Twice in Annie as Oliver Warbucks; Best Little Whorehouse in Texas as C.J. Scruggs;.Vernon’s additional ventures include two films by Accord Productions; Special Angelz and Death Print, both directed by Aiden Dillard, starring Ted Vernon. And of course, we can’t forget the worldwide hit SOUTH BEACH CLASSICS. Seasons 2,3 and 4 are available on Amazon Prime.
In addition, Vernon has done numerous music videos including “My Blue Angel” with Aaron Tippin; Miami High Boy Music video with Don Johnson and Andrew Hugger and has had his own Rock and Roll Music Band for many years and was lead singer of Ted Vernon and the Bulldogs, The Chromatics and The Autotones. Miami also followed Vernon back in his days of wrestling and boxing. As a boxer, he had a record of 21:1.”
Anyways, this movie.
Numbers Cooper (Anthony Albarino) has inherited the promotion from his kindly father. You know, like that kid in New York. He gets the idea to make all of his fights death matches where people fight with no referee until someone can’t move. Hammerhead retires instead of fighting in matches like that and supports an orphanage until his friend Mark Coleman (Joe Mascaro, the wrestling consultant; he’s also in Invasion U.S.A. and Dutch Treat, two Cannon movies) is put in a wheelchair. And now he has to fight. You’ve seen underground fight ring movies before, right?
The problem is that there aren’t many known wrestlers in this. Hammerhead is built like a car dealer who used to box when he was young because, well, that’s who he really is. But there are some real workers:
Rusty Brooks is in this. He had his own wrestling school and did enhancement matches for the WWF as well as wrestling as Super Duper Mario. Despite being born in Denton, Texas, the home of World Class Championship Wrestling, he was trained by “Gentleman” Jim Isler and Boris Malenko, spending most of his career in Florida.
Ricky Hunter is Butcher Block Barnes, a masked wrestler who wrestled under that name and as The Gladiator (I wonder if he gave that name to Florida wrestler Michael Lee Alfonoso, who wrestled as Mike Awesome in the U.S. and The Gladiator in Japan).
Joe Mirto was a lineman for the University of Miami Hurricanes, lettering from 1965 to 1967, and was a pro wrestler mainly known for doing jobs on WWF TV. He’s a tag team wrestler in this, along with Jim Young, who also appeared on WWF TV in a similar role. Crusher O’Brian is CWF wrestler Big Jim Haley; Joe ‘The Undertaker’ Markowitz is Bryan Carreiro, a former Mr. Jr. Florida who wrestled as The Terminator and The Thing.
Yet final boss Zarek is a very famous wrestler. It’s “Uncle Fred,” Fred Ottman, who wrestled as Tugboat and Typhoon in the WWF before leaving for WCW to become The Shockmaster. He fell face-first during the interview that introduced him, ruining everything. He also wrestled as Sigfried the Giant, Big Bubba and Big Steel Man. Today, he’s a WWE Hall of Famer along with Earthquake, his tag team partner as the Natural Disasters.
What amazes me most — look, I know you take any job — but this was edited by Angelo Ross, whose entertainment career started in the 30s as the dance partner of Rita Hayworth before he became an editor. Beyond this movie, he also worked as the music editor on The Hustler and edited Who Killed Teddy Bear, The Cross and the Switchblade, Smokey and the Bandit (he was Academy Award nominated for this!), Mr. No Legs, Jaguar Lives!, Masterblaster and King Frat.
Hammerhead Jones loves orphans and is prayed for by nuns, but if he wants to be seen as a man, he’s going to have to do a death match. Kids show up at these death matches — the credit “child at death match” is incredible — and this is the most carny wrestling movie ever, made by guys who would never make the big time, so they’re creating their own. A film where Rusty Brooks has better promos than the hero and little kids love him so much that they buy bald caps at the merchandise table so they can look like him. I bet Hammerhead is making all of that money and if he’s old school enough, he’s sharing a bit with the heel who puts him over strong.
You can watch this on the Crud Buddies YouTube channel.
Official synopsis: In Kazuya Shiraishi’s action-packed epic, ten convicts are promised freedom in exchange for defending a small town in feudal Japan. Tasked with holding a fortress against encroaching government forces, they fight with the desperation of men with nothing to lose. But when the officials who recruited them renege on their promise, the warriors realize they’ve been used as pawns in a larger scheme. Betrayed and outnumbered, they must forge their own fate or die trying.
Director Kazuya Shiraishi finds an excellent balance of gripping period drama and violent action in his samurai vs. criminals epic 11 Rebels (11 no zokugun). The result is a superb feature that is sheer captivating entertainment.
The amount of characters is practically Shakespearean, and the cast members all acquit themselves strongly. Standouts among the leads include Takayuki Yamada as Masa, a man sentenced to death for killing the samurai who raped his wife; Taiga Nakano as local army member Washio Heishiro; and Sadao Abe as Mizoguchi Takumi, a heel army leader.
Jun’ya Ikegami’s screenplay has an interesting backstory, as it is based on a screenplay written by Kazuo Kasahara (Battles Without Honor and Humanity; Yakuza Graveyard) in the 1960s. Ikegami’s version and Shiraishi’s realization of the source material are absolutely current cinematic takes, including the severed limbs that fly throughout the film. The historical set designs are marvelous, and cinematographer Naoya Ikeda captures everything beautifully.
Carnage, court intrigue, allegiances and betrayals: 11 Rebels has all this and more. Highly recommended for aficionados of samurai films, period dramas, and Japanese cinema in general.
11 Rebels debuted on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD on June 10 from Well Go USA Entertainment.
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