Author Archives: bandsaboutmovies

2016 (2010)

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Directed by Samuel K. Nkansah — AKA Ninja — 2016 is the kind of movie that doesn’t just bring you xenomorphs and Predators, it also throws in some Terminators. I’m frankly shocked that Chucky didn’t show up.

These xenomorphs are way smarter than any we’ve seen in the Aliens series. They’re here to colonize Earth, starting with Accra, the capital city of Ghana. Mostly that means wandering alleys and killing humans in violent PS1 CGI ways. They want to colonize the Earth by 2016 — that’s the title figured out — and they also fly in the Enterprise, because if you’ve violated this many copyrights, violate all the copyrights. I mean, they also took the story from Independence Day but that movie didn’t go as far as having an alien dropkick a baby.

Most of the good parts are in the trailer. Then again, that’s true for most movies. Most movies don’t have an alien throw a poorly drawn CGI convertible at a screaming woman and turn her into pixilated liquid.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The Doll (2016)

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Directed by Rocky Soraya, who wrote the film with Riheam Junianti, The Doll starts when Daniel (Denny Sumargo) and his wife Anya (Shandy Aulia) move to a new city thanks to his new job. The first person Anya meets is Niken (Vitta Mariana Barrazza), who believes in the supernatural. She also gets a doll from her husband’s new job after he destroys a sacred tree — I guess that’s some kind of benefit — but said doll is connected to the occult power that Niken feels and wants revenge. Also — both Niken and Daniel have dealt with the doll before, a strange toy that once belonged to a little girl named Uci. She and her family was killed in a robbery and now her spirit is inside her former doll.

There are some not bad CGI crows, some fun gore and sadly, a plot that goes on way too long. But hey, the scene where the doll attacks Anya while she’s trying to take a bath is pretty scary, which is more than you’d get from an American movie trying to be Child’s Play. Or Annabelle.

The Doll had a sequel in 2017 and 2022. It’s a mark of how much I liked this that I wouldn’t mind watching either of those.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Blind Waters (2023)

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Blind Waters wastes no time, having two people swim off a yacht and get devoured by a shark with no explanation. Do I need one? After all, I’m watching a shark movie by The Asylum at one in the morning.

I guess this at least has some shark movie pedigree, as it was directed and written by Anthony C. Ferrante, the same guy who directed every Sharknado movie.

Valentina Armas (Meghan Carrasquillo) and Weston Dern (Noam Sigler) are on a beach vacation when her purse gets stolen while he’s ordering some bad tasting drinks. They kiss under the fireworks and all is forgiven as we wake up to drone footage of the surf at daybreak.

Meanwhile, Chris Burman (Chris Cleveland), his wife Larisa (Becki Hayes) and their daughter Eliza (Patty Cruz) are trying to get a boat for a fishing trip. They’re all warned that there’s a storm coming through. And as the Coast Guard leaves. Gabe (Francisco Angelini)  — the guy they paid for the boat — hotwires it and cranks up some sub-Chili Peppers. Within moments, he throws a bloody knife in the water. That brings out a shark that kills Chris and Larisa before we even get to know them, other than that they bet over things. Well, they both lost.

Valentina and Weston get a boat — from the guy who Chris tried to pay double for the rental — and go out to go SCUBA diving. You know, alone. Because that’s totally safe.

Once the storm kicks up, one of the Coast Guard, Margo (Jhey Castles) decides to go on patrol.

And now, everyone is set up to fight the shark. The first time that Valentine and Weston see the shark, it seems like he’s running from it, leaving her alone. But in truth, he was setting up his proposal but never thought that a shark would ruin his big moment of getting down on one knee in his wetsuit. The shark then cock blocks Weston by repeatedly ramming the boat while he’s trying to propose.

Well, this shark is pretty ruthless. He knocks out Valentina and she goes blind, then it drags Weston under and takes a bite out of his leg while he unheroically screams. They barely escape, despite getting in touch with the Coast Guard, before getting stranded on an island with a strange man who claims that his family was destroyed by the shark. That man ends up being Gabe, who has the dead body of Charlie and wants to use it as bait to escape the devil fish.

But would you be shocked to know that Gabe stole Valentina’s purse? And that she finds the ring Weston wants to give her just as the shark makes a meal of the villain? And no spoilers, but not everyone is getting out of this shark movie alive.

This entire movie reminded me why I will never go on an island or beach vacation. Also: How does Ferrante go from the insane time travel of the last Sharknado to this, perhaps one of the most basic shark movies I’ve seen? Do the bills really need paid that much?

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Echo Base (2023)

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Skylar Reagan (Alicia Ziegler) is having some problems. She failed her last training exercise, one where she was asked to fire nuclear warheads on London after butting heads with her deputy — and one-time lover — Malik Wheeler (Chris Jones). When he commanding officer Kathleen Wolff (Carolyn Hennesy) remarks that she needs people who will follow orders — as most of her soldiers believe in Q-Anon-style conspiracy theories and ask to be paid in crypto — for what’s coming.

The next day, Reagan plans on breaking off her military team with Wheeler and leaving him behind for good. And just minutes after picking up Smith (Brian Gilleece) and Diaz (Matias Ponce), as well as meeting up with security detail Chelsea Lin (Nina Yang), a routine check of a warhead — well, it is a warhead being protested by people open carrying submachine guns — leads to a mysterious attack that may be from another world and which requires Reagan and Wheeler to do what their last training mission proved they couldn’t: launch a nuclear weapon at a friendly target. This one isn’t in London, though. It’s in America.

Directed by Craig Goldstein and written by Mark Keavey, Echo Base was a movie announced several months ago that I’ve been anxiously awaiting on Tubi. This really plays off the uncertainty of our time with no one believing what they are seeing, chemtrails getting discussed, people doing their own research and even other soldiers putting family and religion above duty when they believe that they are in Armageddon.

It also takes from The Outer Limits episode “The Architects Of Fear,” but I bet the filmmakers thought that they were ripping off Watchmen.

There’s plenty of stock footage, some dodgy CGI and nuclear tension the likes of which you haven’t seen since the Cold War. The slick way that this plays with the anxiety in which I now navigate a world in which the conspiracies that I once looked at as fun and now being espoused by people who can’t comprehend a seventy-year-old rich person never caring for them or needing them other than to fuel his need for power, well, that kind of made me really on edge the whole time I watched this. I think someone could watch this and say. “See? They admit it. It is true.” And then someone else shouts, “Disinfo!” And then someone says something super racist. You know how it goes.

Someday soon, someone is going to make a MAGA anti-trans zombies movie with this line: “In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you, Barbara, and I’m just standing in their way.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

POPCORN FRIGHTS 2023: Blood Feast (1963)

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I’m proud to say that Herschell Gordon Lewis was born in the same town as me, Pittsburgh, PA. He was lured from a career as an educator into being a radio station manager and then, well, advertising got him. I can relate. I’ve spent the better part of 25 years doing the same. But then Lewis got smart. He learned how to make money.

He began making movies with David F. Friedman, starting with Living Venus. Their nudie cuties would be innocent today, but showed way more skin than mainstream films. These weren’t high art. They were made to turn a profit and they sure did, from movies like Boin-n-g! and The Adventures of Lucky Pierre to the world’s first — and probably only — nudist camp musical, Goldilocks and the Three Bares.

Once nudie movies got boring, Lewis needed another tactic. He found it. Oh wow, did he find it. Gore. Blood everywhere, guts all over the screen and no limits to the depravity that he’d fester on drive-in screens nationwide. It all started with Blood Feast.

This is a pretty simple film: Faud Ramses wants to make sacrifices to the Egyptian goddess Ishtar to resurrect her, so he kills beautiful young socialites when he’s not catering their coming out parties. He’s also wiping out anyone that requests a copy of his book, Ancient Weird Religious Rites.

Shot in Miami, Florida — where life is cheap! — in just four days for just $24,000, Blood Feast used all local ingredients for the gore, except for a sheep’s tongue that came from Tampa Bay. Friedman was a genius at publicity, helping the film succeed, giving out vomit bags at screenings and even applying to get an injunction against his own movie in Sarasota so that it couldn’t be shown.

Lewis and Friedman didn’t stray too far from their sexy roots, bringing in June 1963 Playmate of the Month Connie Mason to star in the film. She would come back for Lewis’ even more astounding Two Thousand Maniacs!

As for Lewis, he left filmmaking in the 1970’s, served some jail time for fraud and then began copywriting his way to even greater success, a second — maybe even third or fourth career — later in life. He wrote and published over twenty books, including The Businessman’s Guide to Advertising and Sales Promotion, Direct Mail Copy That Sells! and The Advertising Age Handbook of Advertising. His books were all over the place at my first agency job and I was shocked to discover that the author of these books — one of the godfathers of direct mail and eblasts — was also the American godfather of gore. Sometimes. life makes sense.

In 2016, Arrow Video released a huge boxset of his films and the man whose work was often in grimy drive-ins and Something Weird video cassettes finally began to be appreciated as an auteur. Funny, as he was the man who said, “I see filmmaking as a business and pity anyone who regards it as an art form.”

You know those movies that they warn you about and tell you that they’ll warp your mind and make you a maniac, how you’ll never be the same again? This is that movie. You should probably watch it right now.

Blood Feast was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

POPCORN FRIGHTS 2023: Friday the 13th Part III 3D (1982)

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With Amy Steel uninterested in returning to the series, the filmmakers had to reboot and figure out what made Jason tick. And that ticking was a hockey mask — three movies into the series. The original plan was that Ginny would be confined to a psychiatric hospital and he would track her down, then murder the staff and other patients at the hospital. If this sounds kind of like Halloween 2 to you, well surprise. This is not a movie series known for its originality.

He starts the film by killing a store owner and his wife just for clothes. Then, he goes after the friends of Chris Higgins: Debbie (Tracie Savage, who played the younger Lizzie in the awesome made-for-TV movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden), Andy, Shelley, Vera (Catherine Parks, Weekend at Bernie’s), Rick, Chuck and Chili. They run afoul of bikers Ali, Fox and Loco, who follow them back to their vacation home.

Jason starts killing quick, but he’s already mentally scarred Chris, as she survived an attack from him two years ago. This has left her with serious trauma and an inability to enjoy intimacy (which, come to think of it, comes in handy in these movies).

Jason takes the mask from the dead body of prankster Shelley and it’s on, with speargun bolts to the eye, heads chopped in half with machetes, knives through chests, electrocutions, hot pokers impaling stoners and even someone’s skull getting crushed by Jason’s supernaturally powerful hands.

Of course, it ends up with Final Girl Chris against Jason, who she kills by hitting him in the head with an ax before falling asleep on a canoe and having a nightmare of Jason killing her. It’s OK. Don’t worry. We see that all is right in the world and the killer’s body is at the bottom of the lake.

Here’s some trivia: To prevent the film’s plot being leaked (I could tell you the plot in less than a sentence, so this seems like bullshit), the production used the David Bowie song “Crystal Japan” as the title of the movie. They’d use Bowie songs as working titles during several of the other films.

Friday the 13th Part III 3D played in 3D at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

POPCORN FRIGHTS 2023: Subject (2022)

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Instead of going to jail, Willem (Stephen Phillips) takes a different sentence, in which he has to stay all alone in an isolated facility. Phillips takes on so much in this, because he’s largely on screen all by himself for the entire run time.

While watching the monster, Willem reflects on his life, like how everything went downhill after the death of his wife Carrie (Cecilia Low), a return to heroin and the loss of his two daughters. We also actually see his memories in the form of what looks like actual home movies.

However, Willem isn’t alone. There’s some kind of creature, one that he’s sure is just in his head, that is watching him. Is it his past pain come to life? Is it how he sees his addiction? Is it going to shred him when he goes to sleep? And why do the government agents keep asking so many questions, none of them about this monster, and shock him when he lies?

Directed by Tristan Barr (who also plays Dalesky) and written by Vincent Befi, this is a movie that puts its lead through hell yet so much of that is of his own making. This is unlike any movie I’ve seen and worth your time.

Subject was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

POPCORN FRIGHTS 2023: Sorry, Charlie (2023)

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Charlie (Kathleen Kenny) is a remote helpline volunteer who comes into the grip of The Gentleman, a sinister being that uses the sound of a crying baby to lure people into his destructive embrace. One night, while home alone, she realizes that she is anything but when she hears an infant outside her home.

Directed by Colton Tran and written by Luke Genton — who also worked on the horror film Snow Falls together — Sorry, Charlie was based on a true story of a man who used recordings of children to get women to leave their houses.

Nearly nine months ago, Charlie was raped by someone — on Halloween — who left her pregnant. Now, she tries to help others from her home, a place she rarely leaves if only to go to the doctor and to tend to her garden. As for the house, it was her grandmother’s and her pregnancy doesn’t leave her much energy to fix it up any further than she got before the attack. But for now, she’s surviving. Then the calls start, calls that sound so much like the man who assaulted her. And then, The Gentleman shows up.

Sorry, Charlie may seem to be made in the cloak of the slasher, but it’s more about grief, adjusting after a horrific event and trying to move past it. We don’t all get to so violently deal with our trauma, but Charlie sure does.

Sorry, Charlie was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

Anak ng dilim (1997)

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Anak ng dilim (Child of Darkness) proves that director Nick Lizaso and writer Bong Ramos know that if you’re going to copy, copy from the best. Based on Carrie, this Philippines-shot horror movie is pretty much the same story. A young girl named Adela (Gladys Reyes) tries to go to public school and all the cool kids pick on her, yet she gets no love at home from her aunt Magda (Amy Austria).

“Pagtatawanan ka nilang lahat,” you know?

Where this differs from the Carrie we know and love is that there’s also a grandmother named Lola Pura (Gina Pareno) who is locked in the attic by the evil aunt and at the end, as Magda tries to strangle Adela with a chain, the old woman drags her evil daughter into hell and we get a happy ending.

Yes, Adela just got pig’s blood all over her and destroyed the school.

We still get a happy ending. Not as many split screens, though.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Vahset Kasirgasi (1985)

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Vahset Kasirgasi (Brutal Storm) was directed and written by Kadir Akgün and is the story of Naide (Nur Incegül) and Cahide (Leyla Akin), two sisters who own the Gul Hotel in a beautiful tourist town in the South of Turkey. I don’t know what type of guests the sisters were expecting, but the loose moral fiber of their lodgers really starts to get to Naide and Cahide (more Naide, to be honest) and Hale, a nude sunbather, is shoved down the steps and impaled on a statue. To dispose of the body, the girls slice it up, cook it and serve it to the rest of the vacationers.

Soon enough, Nalan shows up looking for her dead friend and won’t give up. She gets a room just as more murders happen, like the always drunk and frequently loud Dilek, who make as lesbian pass at Naide who responds by stabbing her and Songül, who dares to be a single mother. Nalan gets kicked out for asking too many questions, but soon brings her friend Kaya as her fiancee and moves back in.

In case you didn’t guess, this movie is at times a shot for shot remake of It Happened at Nightmare Inn AKA A Candle For The Devil and I’m surprised as you that a 1970s Spanish horror movie by Eugenio Martin was remade in the 1980s in Turkey.

The other big star of this movie is the soundtrack which is literally a K-Tel Records best of your favorite horror soundtracks, lifting the disco theme from Friday the 13th Part 3, the drums from Cannibal Holocaust and pieces of Rambo: First Blood Part II, Suspiria, Deep Red and a dance party set to the theme from Ghostbusters.

You can watch this on YouTube.