I have no one to blame but myself.

Why would I think a romantic comedy with Murray Langston — The Unknown Comic — as an unhoused man falling for an undercover reporter played by Linda Blair be any good?

It gets even worse.

I’ve been looking for this movie for about six years.

Yes, I waited and waited to see a movie directed by Bob Logan, who gave us not only Repossessed and Meatballs 4, but was so in the Linda Blair business that he made How to Get…Revenge, that I almost bought a very expensive VHS of this.

I just spent a week with normal people, and I could see them start to stare whenever I deviated from the expected path of loving movies. None of them needed to know how many Linda Blair movies I’ve seen — this is 39 of 74 — or how I immediately recognized Bob Zany and Ruth Buzzi in this. Do they need to know about movie drugs?

You just keep chasing the dragon and sometimes the dragon chases you. Here, reporter Vicky Adderly (Blair) decides to go all Street Smart and get the real story on street people who are very much like the fun people who help Angel. At least in this movie. Except that this is more like the last two Angel movies than the first two. If you understand that, you’re as messed up as I am.

Somehow, the heavy-set guy in this, Sonny Griffith (Bob Zany), keeps getting nearly killed and is almost wiped out by a giallo-style murderer. This is a comedy, so keep reminding yourself, and it has the typical third act where everyone finds out that Vicky really isn’t homeless.

Also: Yakov Smirnoff.

Also also: Without the paper bag, The Unknown Comic looks like a shitty John Ritter or a Temu Ron Silver.

Keep in mind that I have learned nothing from this, and I have so many other movies that I am hunting down, only to be either disappointed or have a Road to Damascus moment.

You can watch this on YouTube.

When a scientific experiment to create an oversized nutria goes awry, a mutant creature is born.

What’s a nutria?

According to Wikipedia, it’s “a herbivorous, semiaquatic rodent from South America. The nutria lives in burrows alongside stretches of water and feeds on the stems of river plants. Originally native to subtropical and temperate South America, it was introduced to North America, Europe and Asia, primarily by fur farmers. Although it is still hunted and trapped for its fur in some regions, its destructive burrowing and feeding habits often bring it into conflict with humans, and it is considered an invasive species in the United States.”

Why would they want to make a giant nutria? To help the fur industry.

Oh. Yeah.

Now there’s a Nutria-man on the loose in Louisiana’s Copsaw Swamp, killing everyone he meets. What this ends up being is a Bigfoot movie, but you know, with a giant rat that has orange teeth. That makes sense, more than the original title,  Nutriaman: The Copasaw Creature. More people are going to see Terror In the Swamp.

This was directed by Joe Catalanotto, who worked on every movie that came to New Orleans, like Live and Let Die and Mandingo. According to this incredible interview with his daughter, he met Charles Pierce and became his right-hand man. That influence is all over this movie. His credits are fantastic, by the way: key grip on Bootleggers and Winterhawk, gaffer and special effects on The Town That Dreaded Sundown, gaffer on The Beyond, camera loader on Avenging Force, an electrician on The Unholy, special effects on The Shadow of the Hawk, even acting in Pretty Baby. He also directed French Quarter Undercover, also known as Anti-Terror-Force, which was released on video in the UK by Cannon.

Game wardens, rednecks, a military expert — they’re all after the nutria. You know, I’m on the side of the nutria, if only because they never get into movies. At once a regional movie, a Bigfoot-ish film, and rednecksploitation, this is what I was looking for on my first day back to work. A film that took me away from all this and threw me ass-first into a menacing swamp.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Donald Farmer is still out there, still making movies, and when you call one of those efforts Bigfoot Exorcist, you know I’m going to watch.

Co-directing and writing this with Newt Wallen, Farmer gives us the adventures of Claude (Claude D. Miles), who is bitten by a Bigfoot after it is incarnated by an occult ceremony and yes, Bigfoot bites can turn you into one if we’ve learned anything from the seminal — and semenal — Bigfoot vs. D.B. Cooper.

This is the kind of movie that features a Sasquatch that resembles a gray alien or those rough drawings of the Chupacabra, and it’s great because it continually rips off arms and eats intestines, and everything looks very Spirit Store-like, yet I applaud this choice. There’s also plenty of Bigfoot baby drama, and yes, a woman at the end, Xtro-style — or a demented Mom and Dad — gives birth to a hybrid child. Spoiler? You need to see it.

Also, the girl from the new Crazy Fat Ethel, Dixie Gers, is a nun fighting the church because she wants to exorcise the monster. Jessa Flux and Kasper Meltedhair are also in this to either be mean to Claude, be nice to him or show off their breasts. You know it’s mostly the latter, right?

Bigfoot is a demon; people can have Bigfoot babies in 24 hours. This only takes an hour to tell you, and it’s filled with gore. You can hate on Wild Eye’s movies, but that just makes you a mean person. Can you just give in and celebrate movies where skunk apes lay waste to humanity and people chant Satanic stuff? Because I need more of this. I want another. Is it too much to ask to send this alien Bigfoot to Amityville?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Seijun Suzuki (Branded to Kill, Gate of Flesh) — his first CinemaScope movie and the first time he’d use that name — this Japanese noir has Miyamoto (Michitarô Mizushima), newly released from prison, looking to return stolen diamonds to former crime boss Oyane (Shinsuke Ashida), make some money and escape the life he was once a part of. As you can figure, that won’t be simple, even if his goal — to give the money to his crippled partner Mihara (Toru Abe) — is a good one.

The criminals want the money for themselves and nearly kill Miyamoto and Mihara swallows the treasure before he dies. Now, Miyamoto and the dead man’s wild sister Akiko (Mari Shiraki) must figure out how to evade both the police and the gangsters to get back the diamonds.

The Radiance Films Blu-ray of this movie has a new 4K restoration of the film by Nikkatsu Corporation, a new interview with critic Mizuki Kodama, another Seijun Suzuki movie, Love Letter, with audio commentary by Suzuki biographer William Carroll, trailers, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by critic Claudia Siefen-Leitich and an archival review of the film. You can get it from MVD.

Director Howard Hawks said of this movie that it was about “three old-fashioned hot love stories about these racers and their girls. They have their own code. They kid about danger. They aren’t tough guys, but they talk awful rough. The picture will have something of a wartime feeling: on Friday night, a girl doesn’t know if a boy will still be alive on Saturday night.”

He worked to find six new actors—Gail Hire, Mariana Hill, Laura Devon, James Ward, John Crawford and James Caan—and also had appearances by Carol Connors, George Takei, Teri Garr, Charlene Holt and Norman Alden.

He later told the Los Angeles Times, “Newcomers are good when you have competent people to hold them up. That’s why I wouldn’t try Red Line 7000 again. It’s always been a habit of mine to put new people with pros. It holds them together, gives them a key to tempo. There was nobody for them to take a cue from in Red Line.”

Pat Kazarian (Norman Alden) has a racing team made up of Mike Marsh (James Caan) and Jim Loomis (Anthony Rogers). Jim dies in a crash, which brings on two new team members, Ned Arp (John Robert Crawford) and Dan McCall (Skip Ward), who may have a girl — Gabrielle Queneau (Marianna Hill) — but is falling for Loomis’ girlfriend, Holly McGregor (Gail Hire).

Ned loses his hand, and Mike tries to kill Dan by running him off the track, but he ends up with Gabrielle. I mean, he’s the winner. Have you seen 1965 Marianna Hill? Or any Marianna Hill?

The Arrow Video Blu-ray of Redline 7000 has extras including audio commentary by Julie Kirgo and Nick Redman, an interview with assistant director Bruce Kessler, visual essays by Howard S. Berger and Kat Ellinger, an image gallery of posters, lobby cards, and stills, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sam Hadley, a double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sam Hadley and an illustrated collector’s booklet containing new writing by film critic Martyn Conterio. You can get it from MVD.

Midnight Cabaret (1990): Directed and co-written by Pece Dingo, this movie has the kind of cast that I look for, which includes former member of Detective and MacGyver enemy Michael Des Barres and Thom Mathews (Tommy Jarvis!).

This is a musical, strange theatrical play, a Satanic movie, an erotic thriller and a giallo-adjacent — you know, the Italian movies where you have no idea what else to call them, so you say that they’re giallo — film all thrown into a shaker with ice, then covered with bongwater and grain alcohol.

It’s Euro-trash but made at home; like how tariffs will someday soon cause the finest in Euroscum movies to cost too much, except we can never make them at home this good. That said, this tries and often looks like an old music video while it’s throwing vampires with straight razors, a cult that wants to impregnate an actress with the Antichrist and moments that feel sexually ambiguous. It’s something. Whether that something is good is up to you.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Midnight Cabaret (2012): As I was looking for the former movie, I discovered this on YouTube and was so far into it before I realized it was a different movie that I just went with things.

Directed by Donna R. Clark, who wrote it with Peter C. Foster, this is the story of Adam (Brad Hilton), a young man struggling to find acceptance and definitely not getting help in his hometown, where he remembers being bullied at home and at school, his mother killing herself and his brother Todd (Jason Mac) going to prison. Now, he becomes inspired by a drag queen named Eve (Elexius Kelly) and becomes a performer at the Midnight Cabaret, finding a world of drugs, crime and who he is inside.

There’s something in this, a movie that feels trapped in digital video but wanting to break free. I don’t know who it’s for, as there are so many gay slurs that it may turn off those it needs to reach most. But otherwise, it wasn’t an unwelcome watch.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Misawa (Rentaro Mikuni) is a post-war success. He works at a big ad agency and lives in a massive home with his wife (Masumi Harukawa) and their son. But then, two criminals — Kawanishi (Ko Nishimura) and Sabu (Hideo Murota) — show up and want to bring him into their plan, as they have kidnapped the baby of cancer researcher Dr. Sakata (Ken Mitsuda).

Directed by Kinji Fukasaku, this film arrives decades before home invasion movies were supposedly invented. It also has Misawa be no hero, instead a man who deals with the attempted assault of his wife by doing the same to her later. He’s living on credit, giving his life over to the foreign enemy who dropped two nukes on his countrymen. Maybe he’s as much a criminal as the bad guys. He definitely has less of a code to live by.

Fukasaku Kinji would go on to make Yakuza Graveyard and more famously, Battles Without Honor and Humanity and Battle Royale. Oh yeah — he also directed Message from Space!

The Arrow Video Blu-ray release of The Threat — available for the first time outside of Japan — has extras including audio commentary by Japanese film expert Tom Mes; Warning Warning Danger Danger, a brand new 20-minute video appreciation by critic and Japanese film specialist Mark Schilling; the original theatrical trailer; an image gallery; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella; an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring writing on the film by Hayley Scanlon and a double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella. You can order it from MVD.