Believe it or not, historian Paul Hutton called Young Guns the most historically accurate of all Billy the Kid films. I mean, John Tunstall is depicted as an older  man while he was only 24 when he was murdered and younger than the Regulators. But still, despite combining some people, it’s close, or so they say.

Directed by Christopher Cain (The Principal and Dean Cain’s dad) and written by John Fusco (Crossroads), this film number one at the US box office and eventually grossed $56 million against an $11 million budget. It and it’s sequel were big deals — I mean, Bon Jovi did the theme song “Blaze of Glory” — but somehow, I never saw either.

Lincoln County, New Mexico. Cattleman John Tunstall (Terence Stamp) is trying to civilize the young wayward men in his employ who he calls the Regulators. They are Josiah Gordon “Doc” Scurlock (Kiefer Sutherland), Jose Chavez y Chavez (Lou Diamond Phillips), Richard “Dick” Brewer (Charlie Sheen), Dirty” Steve Stephens (Dermot Mulroney), Charlie Bowdre (Casey Siemaszko) and William H. “Billy the Kid” Bonney (Emilio Estevez). He’s in a land war with another rancher, Lawrence Murphy (Jack Palance) and makes the mistakes of hiring one of his men, J. McCloskey (Geoffrey Blake), who sets up a trap to kill him. Lawyer Terry O’Quinn (Alexander McSween) deputizes them, except that Billy is too brutal and hot headed, leading them all to be called outlaws for killing plenty of Murphy’s hired guns.

He sends Buckshot Roberts (Brian Keith) after them and he succeeds in killing Doc and splintering the group, as Jose warns them all not to become lost in revenge, which is exactly what Billy goes on to do. It all leads to a huge battle where nearly everyone dies except Chavez, who makes it to California, Doc who marries Murphy’s mistress Yen Sun (Alice Carter), Alex’s widow Susan McSween (Susan Thomas) becomes a famous cattlewoman, Murphy gets arrested and Billy rides away, only to eventually be killed by Pat Garrett (Patrick Wayne, yes, John’s son) years later and buried next to Charlie.

You can see Tom Cruise get shot by Siemaszko at one point as well as Randy Travis shooting a Gatling gun. One of the guys who gets knifed is Jack Palance’s son Cody.

Somehow, Siemaszko never knew that Warren G and Nate Dogg sampled his dialogue for “Regulate.” “Regulators, We regulate any stealin’ of his property. We’re damn good too. But you can’t be any geek off the street. You gotta be handy with the steel, if you know what I mean. Earn your keep. Regulators, mount up.”

The Lionsgate UHD of Wild Guns has audio commentary with Dermot Mulroney, Lou Diamond Phillips and Casey Siemaszko, a making of, a feature on Billy the Kid and trailers. You can get it from Diabolik DVD.

In The Andy Warhol Diaries, Warhol wrote that the producer of this movie, Martin Poll, approached him about doing making his life story into a movie.Warhol responded that “a wonderful movie had already been made on the sixties, and he should just remake it — The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart.” He also said that it was “the quintessential, most truthful studio-made film about the ’60s counterculture.”

Directed by Leonard Horn (who sadly died young while shooting the pilot for Wonder Woman) and written by Robert T. Westbrook (he also wrote the book this was based on; his novels The Mexican, Insomnia and The Final Cut were also adapted into movies), this is the story of Stanley Sweetheart (Don Johnson), an aspiring filmmaker and college student at Columbia University. After the death of his father, he’s moved from Beverly Hills to New York City and is going from being a rich kid to one from a family slowly losing its money. He has no real friends, he’s bored with life and he lives in a dump.

The film goes into his many romances, like a hippie friend Barbara (Linda Gillen) who changes her name to Shayne. He has a one night stand with her, but really wants her roommate Andrea (Victoria Racimo). This is a major issue with Stanley, as whatever he has never seems good enough. Even when he scores with the virginal girl of his dreams, Cathy (Dianne Hull), he can’t help but either seduce or be seduced by her roommate Fran (Holly Near).

He also meets Danny (Michael Greer), an underground musician who once went to Julliard and who seems to have a worldly bit of advice to give. Or at least lead Stanley to the best parties. And taking his girl, who didn’t really want in the first place until she’s gone.

Stanley finds happiness with Andrea and Shayne as a triad family of sorts, but even that eventually can’t make him happy. Cathy sees him at a happening but he’s so high that he barely makes sense. The film ends with him leaving and Andrea telling him she needs him. The film leaves it up to you where he ends up, but it does show you that Danny shot himself behind his mother’s house right in front of her.

Speaking of Warhol, The New York Times reported that this movie would have Ultra Violet, Candy Darling (who actually does appear in a wordless cameo), Gerard Malanga, and Warhol as a “freaked-out psychiatrist” in its cast. One Warhol superstar did make it — almost — as Joe Dallesandro was originally cast as Danny. However, he was fired when for being late and causing trouble with the cast and crew.

This film is an interesting document of another time and not just because you can see the World Trade Center get built. It’s made at a time when Hollywood was trying to figure out how to get movies made for the counterculture and maybe not always understanding. The era of films avoiding sex and drugs was, obviously, over. It was a brief moment before blockbusters took over and films like this are vital moments out of a past that didn’t last long enough.

You can watch this on YouTube.

I usually say things like, “This was good for a Tubi Original,” but Killer Body Count is damn good for a slasher, much less one made in 2024.

Cami George (Cassiel Eatock-Winnik) gets caught making out — beyond that, engaging in mutual masturbation, which she initiates — with a boy in the storage room of her church. Her father blames the suicide death of her mother (Kira Wilkerson) for how she acts and Father Tim tells him that they will send her to the Beautiful Savior Treatment Center.

This place used to be a retreat for priests and a sleepaway camp where either mushrooms — or a young priest who went insane and decided to kill young fornicators — wiped out everyone staying there other than brother and sister Eugene (Bjorn Steinbach) and Tawny (Alex McGregor).  They’ve started this camp to help Catholic boys and girls to grow up with less sin in their heart and that means isolating the sexes, locking them in, throwing away their phones and teaching them Jehoga, which gets rid of all that weird Eastern psychology in yoga.

Cami is now pretty much a captive, living along with Chris, Rob (Ethan Sanders), Bree, Ali (Khosi Ngema), Wyatt (Savana Tardieu), Mia (N’kone Mametja), Bree (Jessie Diepeveen), Riley (Atara Leigh) ,Dan — who looks like Jesus if he drank kombucha — and Kevin (Adam Lennox) as they breathe, worship and commit to protecting themselves from their sexual urges.

Except that these are teenagers and they all just want to get laid, so they just keep on doing it, even if whoever orgasms seems to get killed by a devil-masked slasher who lives in the woods. Or a ghost. Or the priest, who has remained there ever since he massacred everyone so long ago.

This is a movie filled with great dialogue, such as “I saw a guy you fucked get murdered by a guy in a devil mask. I’m far from OK.” and “He was crushed to death. How is that an accident? God works in mysterious ways.” It also doesn’t forget that young people today are no longer constrained by heterosexual relationships and never shames them for having urges, even if that’s all that Tawny seems to do, including making Cami kneel on rocks or slicing a crucifix into Wyatt’s hand.

It’s hard to make a slasher in the post-Scream era yet this gets so much right. The kills look incredible, the villains have a great modus operandi even if it’s taken from so many giallo movies (no complaints) and the cast is uniformly attractive.

Director Danishka Esterhazy also made the remake of Slumber Party Massacre and The Banana Splits Movie. I enjoyed both of those, but I loved this. It was written by Jessica Landry, who also wrote the Tubi Original Obsessed to Death.

Slasher fans — don’t miss this one.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Donna Fendyr (Jessica Lowndes, the newer version of 90210) wakes up in the hospital after a deadly car crash with amnesia, her husband Scott (Justin Lacey) dead and a baby named Cleo. Her brother Mason (Brad Harder) is helping her to adjust, but could she have kidnapped the child of Leon (Clayton James) and Amira (Zibby Allen)? Or is something even weirder happening?

This movie boasts a great villain in Leon, who switches back and forth from someone who seems to be looking for answers, just like Donna, to someone using her to kill his unfaithful wife.

Directed by Monika Mitchell and writer Helen Marsh also worked on Deadly Midwife and Deadly Invitations together. Here, they pretty much take a mystery — even to its lead — and make her wonder if the child belongs to her husband, making her deal with not just her grief but now anger that he was cheating on her.

So yes, some of this, you can see coming. Other parts of it surprised me. It’s very Lifetime — Tubi feels like the streaming heir to that network, even as I pay for the Lifetime Movie digital channel — but has that ever been something I didn’t want to watch? Lowndes is also quite good as the heroine.

The end of this movie, however, is ridiculous and makes me like it even more. We end up at a party at Donna’s house, the real parents of Cleo have been revealed and everyone is happy. Donna is excited because a man has agreed to fix her car in exchange for dating her and she opens the door to a POV shot, making us the man she has gotten to go along with this deal. Huh?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Honogurai mizu no soko kara (From the Depths of Dark Water) was directed by Hideo Nakata and written by Yoshihiro Nakamura and Kenichi Suzuki, based on the short story collection by Koji Suzuki. The actual story is Floating Water but they used the name of the book for the movie.

Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) is a single mother trying to see where life takes her next after her divorce. She gets a job as a proofreader and rents a cheap apartment where the roof always leaks. Meanwhile, her daughter Ikuko (Rio Kanno) has to start over again as well, attending a kindergarten close to their new apartment. A young girl named Mitsuko Kawai (Mirei Oguchi) disappeared from their building a year ago and in between keeping her ex-husband from kidnapping their daughter, Yoshimi starts seeing that girl, wearing a yellow raincoat and carrying a red bag.

She believes that the girl died in the water tower above their building and is the reason why everything floods. Yet when Mitsuko comes after her daughter, she has to make a choice to give up everything to save her.

This was the second movie by Sakata to be based on a novel by Suzuki. He previously directed Ring and the sequel Ring 2. As with most Japanese horror, there was an American remake directed by Walter Salles that had Jennifer Connelly in it. At least it has the same doomed ending.

The Arrow Video release of Dark Water has a 4K Ultra HD blu ray presentation in Dolby Vision, along with extras like interviews with director Hideo Nakata, author Koji Suzuki, cinematographer Junichiro Hayashi, actresses Hitomi Kuroki and Asami Mizukawa, and theme song artist Shikao Suga. There’s also a making of, trailers and TV commercials. All inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter Strain with an illustrated collector’s booklet with writing on the film by David Kalat and Michael Gingold.

You can get Dark Water from MVD.