A few years ago, I interviewed Quinn Armstrong, the director and writer of a movie called Survival Skills.

He said of this movie, “That’s why Surviving Edged Weapons is so fascinating. It’s like a police department gave some kid like fresh out of film school $30,000 and this kid was like, “I’m gonna make a masterpiece.” I swear to God, so it opens with two cavemen in an argument, and one of the cavemen takes a sharp rock and stabs the other and then the narrator comes in and says, “Since the dawn of time, men have been using edged weapons to kill each other.” It’s so weird. It’s so profoundly weird. I can’t get over it.”

No matter how much he prepared me for it, I wasn’t ready.

According to Calibre Press’ website, director Dennis Anderson and author Charles Remsberg published Street Survival: Tactics for Armed Encounters in 1980. They claim that “this book changed the law enforcement landscape by introducing new tactics, personal stories, and real scenarios.  Within a year of its publication, the Street Survival Seminar was born and quickly grew to become the most popular and respected resource for officer tactical training in the country.”

While they no longer sell this video on their site, they do have a course entitled “Advanced Leadership in a Police Reform Era” that uses children’s building blocks to spell the word “defund.” There’s another called “Surviving Hidden Weapons” that uses a lipstick tube with a blade. I obviously need to see that.

But first, let me explain Surviving Edged Weapons. 

I’ve heard that this was made in Canada and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, even though Calibre is based in Glen Ellyn, IL. They also sell a koozie that says, “One drink away from telling everyone exactly what I think.” Keep in mind that everything else on this site is about police response.

Narrated by Ronald Rolland, this has the production quality of Unsolved Mysteries and I mean that as a compliment. And yes, this begins with a Cain and Abel murder that explains that edged weapons have been with us forever. Then, your jaw will drop as this alternates between police officers showing off their scars and discussing how they’ve been stabbed — including an astounding ending where a cop is brought to tears by the memory and cries the thickest, deepest, saddest tears I have ever seen in my entire existence — and being an action movie, to the point that stuntman Dan Inosanto (who shows up in Game of Death, Sharky’s Machine and Out for Justice) is in it.

So yes, Officer James Phillips may say, “In my mind, I’m never gonna die in no ghetto. Absolutely never. A man turns around and punches me in the head, the fight’s on. If he cuts me, the fight’s on. If I’m shot, the fight is on. I’m not losing no fight to no scumbag out there in no ghetto, period. That’s it. No son of a bitch out there is gonna get me. The only way he gets me is cut my head off, and I mean that. I’ll fight you til I got a breath left in me. I don’t think any of those animals in that street can beat me. I’ve been going that way for eighteen years of street service, street duty, and that’s the way I’m gonna keep on going. You don’t lose the fight.” But you also get a Black Mass being interrupted by the police, a domestic disturbance turning into a meatcleaver going directly into someone’s head and a series of wounds closing with a full-on uncut dead cock on camera.

You will learn how criminals place knives in their jeans so they cut up cops hands, discover how the streets are non-stop terror and hear a man say, “Fuck me? Fuck you!” in a way that Bob Odenkirk had to have heard it. The VHS cover of Halloween is shown as part of our country’s knife culture and the narration says it “glorifies the blade.” A man in a Corvette with the license plate KILME stabbing himself. This is at once so much better than it needed to be and more reactionary than you’d expect a cop training video to be, even one made nearly forty years ago.

I’m saying this with no hyperbole. This is one of the most fascinating movies I’ve ever seen and if you come to my house and want to watch movies with me, there’s a really good chance I’m going to suggest we watch it. It’s like the unmade Death Wish 6 but on a smaller scale, shown to real people to prepare them for the thankless job of protecting the lambs from the wolves. It makes me reflect on how liberal real life me is and how jingoistic and needing for carnage movie watching me is, a juxtaposition that sometimes throws me into panic, but there you go. This movie will make you confront things, like how you might not like the fact that we live in a police state, but you certainly don’t want to do that job, and you even step away with some level of respect. Or worry. I can’t figure it out, but I’ll get back to you when I watch this four or five more times.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Directed and written by Ron Ford, this movie sends Trace (Tyrone Wade), the greatest alien fighter of all time, to Earth, where a million alien souls — the worst ones — have been unleashed. He’s to protect Sandy (Roxanne Coyne) and if the first two letters of her name didn’t give it away, she’s Sarah Connor. He’s, well, I guess a Terminator but one of the good ones, working for the ruler of the galaxy, who is Omnipresent Praxima, who is really Burt Ward, who was once Robin.

Does this movie maybe feel like it’s about Scientology? Sure. But it’s also filled with the kind of things that Wild Cat Line callers on Coast to Coast AM would scream about at 4:09 in the morning.

This also has a bad guy named Gorek (Mark Sawyer), who can jump from body to body, so it’s also The Hidden.

I say none of this in a mean way. This is precisely what I choose to watch when I don’t have to review movies that people ask me to or go upstairs where murder porn plays all day and night. A Temu JCVD is in this and he punches a latex masked gray alien in the face. I have always wanted to punch a gray alien in the face, so this is wish fulfillment on the greatest of scales.

Speaking of Coast to Coast and Art Bell, he once had an Anti-Christ Line and asked people to call in but only if they were the Son of Satan. Tons of people called, but the next time they tried this, the actual Anti-Christ was said to have called and he claimed that he was from Pittsburgh. I’m telling you this because I miss that show and being up in the middle of the night either laughing or frightened. More movies should have that energy and be like this, and more people who write about movies online should recognize that not everything has to be perfect.

Directed by Adam Meyer, this film claims that Scream was based on the real serial killer Danny Rolling, also known as the Gainesville Ripper, who murdered Florida college students Christina P. Powell, Sonya Larson, Christa Leight Hoyt, Tracy Inez Paules and Manuel R. Toboda during a four-day period in 1990. He decapitated one and set the bodies up for people to find much like a slasher villain.

Kevin Williamson, the writer of Wes Craven’s movie,  watched an episode of ABC News’ Turning Point and wrote Woodsboro Murders, which changed its name to the title we know these days.

Rolling may have had multiple personalities, which were the result of abuse from his police officer father. He carried that abuse to his wife and son before getting divorced, being arrested for raping a woman who looked just like his ex-wife and going to jail numerous times for robbery. By the 90s, he’d go on to kill Julie Grissom, her eight-year-old nephew and her 55-year-old father before shooting his own father in the stomach and head. Somehow, his dad lived, but lost an eye.

After killing five women and abusing their bodies in August 1990, he was arrested for robbing a Winn-Dixie. Cops found him in jail, identified by one of his teeth that had been extracted while incarcerated. He pled not guilty and even wrote a book with his future fiancee, journalist Sondra London, titled The Making of a Serial Killer.

By 1994, however, he pled guilty and was executed in 2006, not before singing to the 47 people who came to watch him die. They cut his mic off and then his life.

How much of Williamson and Craven’s film comes from this? It was more an inspiration. But hey — we have a Tubi Original about it, so you can watch that.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Traci Hayes (Blood, Sweat and Cheers) and written by Sarah Eisenberg and Becky Wangberg (who have primarily worked in cartoons), On the Run is set up years ago when bikers Vince (William Mark McCullough) and Rick (K.C. Clyde) end their friendship over a drug deal. Vince goes to jail and the moment he gets out, he comes after Rick, who has a new life with his wife Laurie (Kara Luiz) and daughters Kayla (Sofia Masson) and Paige (Taylor Geare). It’s no spoiler to tell you that Paige is Vince’s daughter and wants her back as much as he wants everyone dead.

Rick and the girls are on the run—yes, Mom dies, there’s another spoiler—but there’s also the woman they think is their aunt, Steph (Pamela Rose Rodriguez), who is the witness protection agent who has been protecting them for years.

One daughter is the good girl, the other is kind of bad, their dad used to be a criminal biker, and their mom is dead. There’s everything you want in a young girl on the run movie. It’s not life-changing, but like most Tubi Originals, it’s a competent film other than, you know, cops never acting like cops really act, such as calling for backup, not taking innocent people into dangerous situations and not indiscriminately shooting everyone around them.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Chris Stokes makes a Tubi movie every month, but this time, they’re stretching their wings and going from romantic thrillers to a spy epic. In it, Kasey (Samantha A. Smith) goes from being a bad girl acting out after her dad dies to being part of a home invasion and being pulled into a conspiracy, getting arrested and going on the run from government agents along with her mother Latisha (Apryl Jones).

Luckily, her mother knows Victoria (Lateria Hope), who turns out to be even more connected to this conspiracy. She has a secret device that can start and steal any car, for example, and she just may be able to get this family out of this alive. I can’t tell you how surprised I was by this one, which yes, has a scene where a man makes a big deal out of making hot chocolate, but also is about government conspiracies, secret agent killing machines and a mother and daughter trying to deal with grief.

Shout out to Stokes for switching up how he films things and getting a ton out of his budget, making this look completely different from anything I’ve seen. This also seems to set up a sequel and as always, I’m here for it. I’m also trying to manifest my dream of a Stokes Cinematic Universe crossover between his series. Come on, Footage Films and Tubi.

You can watch this on Tubi.