EDITOR’S NOTE: In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro was on the CBS Late Movie on May 3 and September 26, 1988.

The only movie directed by producer Raju Patel, this is the story of Jack Ringtree (Timothy Bottoms) and Chris Tucker (John Rhys-Davies) in Namanga, Kenya as they try to figure out a tribe of baboons that are capturing and killing people.

The film has this in the credits: “The film you have just seen is a fictionalized account of a true incident which took place in Africa during the serious drought in 1984. The producers wish to make it known that not a single animal was mistreated during the making of this motion picture. On completion of filming the Baboons were rehabilitated to their natural surroundings. The Baboons were captured under the supervision of the Kenyan Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife from the areas where they had been a nuisance to the local population.”

This is kind of like a zombie movie except, you know, with baboons. I wish I could say it was more exciting and wonder how a movie filled with human eating baboons can be slow, but there you have it. At least it has Irene Miracle from Inferno and Night Train Murders in it.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Lovely But Deadly was on the CBS Late Movie on May 24 and December 6, 1985; May 29, 1986 and July 25, 1988.

Mary Ann “Lovely” Lovitt (Lucinda Dooling, The Alchemist, Surf II) has gone back to school to get revenge for the drug overdose death of her brother. Yes, twentysomething teenagers, martial arts, bad drugs and more await in this film directed by David Sheldon, the writer of Grizzly and the director of Devil Times Five. He also co-wrote this with Lawrence David Foldes (Young Warriors) and Patricia Joyce.

Stay for fistfights with cheerleaders in the locker room and an appearance — as one of the bad guys! — by former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rick Moser as drug dealing football player Mantis Managian (he even dates Pamela Jean Bryant from H.O.T.S.). Mel Novak is his boss!

Dooling is great in this and I’ve seen it described as a white girl version of Coffy, which pretty much says it all.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Psycho II was on the CBS Late Movie on April 14, 1989.

Making Psycho II was a thankless task but there’s no reason why this movie is as good as it is.

Author Robert Bloch had already written his sequel, which satirized Hollywood slasher films. Universal didn’t want to film, that, but they did want a sequel. They turned to Road Games director Richard Franklin — a student of Hitchcock — to make this from a script by Tom Holland.

Hilton A. Green, assistant director of the original Psycho, was contacted and asked if he wanted to produce. He wasn’t sure that Hitchcock would have approved the movie, but the director’s daughter Patricia gave her blessing.

As for Anthony Perkins, he turned down the role until he read the script, learning that it was Norman’s story and that he was the hero. Seriously, the entire world is the enemy in this movie, wanting to see Norman become insane again and all he can do is struggle against them.

He just wants to live behind the hotel and work in a diner and allow life to just keep going, finally free from being in a mental institution. But then the calls and notes from mother keep coming and Norman starts lashing out at everyone, thinking that it has to be someone like new hotel clerk Warren Toomey (Dennis Franz) or Lila Loomis (Vera Miles), the sister of the woman he killed so many years ago.

As Norman is locked inside his mother’s room, a female figure keeps killing people throughout town and soon, even in the house. And just how does Mary (Meg Tilly) figure into all of this? Can therapist Dr. Bill Raymond (Robert Loggia) figure it out in time?

I waited for years to watch this as I figured there was no way it could compare. Even when others told me I was wrong, I didn’t believe them. I can admit it. I was very wrong.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Outland was on the CBS Late Movie on July 30, 1986 and December 16, 1988.

Federal Marshal William O’Niel (Sean Connery) has been assigned to the titanium ore mining outpost Con-Am 27, operated by the company Con-Amalgamate on the Jovian moon of Io. It’s rough work in a place where gravity a sixth of Earth’s with no breathable atmosphere and the men are forced to work in heavy spacesuits with hardly any air. But there is money and productivity is up ever since the new manager, Mark Sheppard (Peter Boyle), was hired.

O’Niel is left behind with his wife and son leaving for Jupiter, but he does have a mission. That’s because several miners have died from getting stimulant psychosis and tearing off their suits. That may be because the miners are abusing polydichloric euthimal, a drug that allows them to stay awake for days at a time. The side effect? After ten months, they go insane.

With only one person on his side — Dr. Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen) — O’Niel has to battle the corrupt mining company and their men, many of whom don’t want a chance to their way of life, no matter how wrong it is.

Outland is pretty much a Western in space, directed and written by Peter Hyams, who told Empire, “I wanted to do a Western. Everybody said, “You can’t do a Western; Westerns are dead; nobody will do a Western.” I remember thinking it was weird that this genre that had endured for so long was just gone. But then I woke up and came to the conclusion – obviously after other people – that it was actually alive and well, but in outer space. I wanted to make a film about the frontier. Not the wonder of it or the glamour of it: I wanted to do something about Dodge City and how hard life was. I wrote it and by great fortune Sean Connery wanted to do it. And how many chances do you get to work with Sean Connery?”

If you love this movie, I recommend the comic book adaptation by James Steranko.

The CBS version of Outland features scenes that were cut from the movie to extend parts of the film. This allowed the network to sell more commercial slots to advertisers.

This isn’t the Giuseppe Colizzi-directed, Terence Hill and Bud Spencer-starring Italian Western Dio perdona… io no!

Nor is it the Rick Ross album.

Instead, this is Janaya Black-directed and written film is the latest Tubi original.

Black was behind Surprise, another Tubi film that I’ve received tons of comments on, one that really got under viewers’ skins. This is a similar film in which a good man gets tested and eventually passes the point of no return, becoming someone that he never dreamed that we could become.

Pastor Pete Dawson (Robert Q. Jackson, A Good Man) has created Purposeful Ministries, a social media way of preaching since the beginning of COVID-19. He doesn’t believe in the prosperity Gospel like so many megachurches, but is instead a very real man that preaches the very real Word of God.

Behind every good man is a good woman, but maybe Pastor Pete has a wife that has bigger dreams — at least of power and notice — than he does. Marcy (Ciarah Amaani) is constantly pushing him to do more with his ministry, which is good in some ways, but there are hints that she wants more out of life than just a minister husband who preaches on a live stream. That said, she’s given Pete a great life up until now as well as his son PJ (DJ Burch).

In order to get their church to the next level, Pete has to turn to his best friend from the streets, Brian Snake Miller (Michael Miles), a former criminal who was assaulted in jail which has changed his entire life. Yet he has the cash they need to create the dream of an actual building for their church.

Throughout the movie, I thought that Marcy and Snake would end up hooking up and that would lead to the image that we saw at the beginning of this movie, one that has Snake dead and Pete standing over his wife, ready to kill her. But no — spoilers on — it’s even crazier. PJ had been having issues with Snake, as he pulled him off the basketball court after seeing how he treated other kids, but maybe that past rape in jail made Snake’s mind snap. Because one day, on a day when Marcy is at her highest because she just learned that her husband is about to work with the famous Bishop Harris (Grover McCants) from Faith and Truth Ministries, she comes home to find Snake’s hand down the pants of her son.

Instead of killing him, she realizes that that would cost the church the money it needs to get started. She makes Brian pay $5,000 a month to her, keep funding Purposeful Ministries and stay away from PJ. And then she makes PJ promise to never tell his father that any of this happened. Man, this movie has gone from basic drama to sheer insanity and that’s why I keep watching Tubi Originals.

The problems start piling up, as PJ keeps flipping out and refuses to play basketball. Marcy starts shopping well beyond the means of Pete, who doesn’t care about clothing or looks. And Pete gets robbed by someone outside the church and beaten.

Pete begins to suspect that his wife is sleeping with Snake, as he finds checks from him to her that she claims are from her 401K. And then Snake buys him a gun after the attack outside the church, which just puts the weapon he needs into his hand. After a day of playing with PJ, he finds himself back at the church and catches his wife and Snake arguing about the new church van that he claims the money was for.

That’s when Pastor Pete busts in with a gun and starts speaking the truth to everyone, screaming at his wife about how everything has been a lie. As he puts a gun in his face, he learns that PJ is not his son and Brian ins the father, which…wow, I did not see coming. This movie brings the insanity and the big time acting!

God Forgives, I Don’t is the kind of movie where a child can gun down his own father with a Colt 45 that has no recoil. In Corinthians‬ ‭10:13, it is written “No temptation has overtaken you, except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”*

Pastor Pete is finding out just how true that is.

*I wrote that quote before I saw that the movie has it in the credits!

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Vultures was on the CBS Late Movie on March 19 and August 20, 1986.

When Ramon (Jim Bailey) begins to get close to death, he summons his relatives to his bedside to discuss his will and testament. But then the killings begin, wiping out everyone in the will.

Directed and written by Paul Leder (My Friends Need Killing, I Dismember Mama, A*P*E*), Vultures sets itself up like any murder mystery, but how it’s made points to just how incredibly strange it is.

First off, nearly every murder is incredibly bloody, making this feel more like a slasher than a staid Agatha Christie affair. Then, it has a cast of some of my favorites, including Aldo Ray, Yvonne DeCarlo and Stuart Whitman. And is that Carmen Zapata from the Sister Act movies? Meredith MacRae from Petticoat Junction  (and Leder’s My Friends Need Killing)? Greg Mullavey from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman? And Maria Perschy from The People Who Own the Dark, The Ghost Galleon and Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll? How did that happen?

Yet the strangest and most wonderful thing is that this has an “Introducing Jim Bailey” credit.

Bailey is more than one role in this movie, playing several male and female roles beyond just Ramon. He’s also Richard Garcia, the psychic Esperanza, Virginia Garcia, Olivia Mann and a female impersonator in this. Bailey is a versatile performer and often played Vegas, doing impressions of Garland and Streisand. According to this great interview with Daily Grindhouse, Bailey became “one of the go-to performers for male-to-female characters in Hollywood.” He’s Cleopatra, the lover of Anthony Geary’s Serenghetti in Penitentiary III and also shows up in episodes of Night Couty and Ally Mcbeal as well as in the cast of another strange movie I’m fascinated by, The Surrogate, where you can witness him do his Bette Davis act.

The black sheep of the family, Carl (Stuart Whitman), is the main suspect. There are two gory knife attacks — Aldo Ray doesn’t even make it long past the credits, which video blur out the original title, Vultures In Paradise — and a car gets blown up real good. There are twists and turns, but it makes sense that this aired on the CBS Late Movie, because it really does feel like a TV movie. And I mean that in the best of ways, but also a TV movie that has a drag performer not just as a sideshow act but as a crucial and memorable part of the cast in six different roles.

This is one odd movie and I would not have found it without my friend the CBS Late Movie. It’s the kind of movie that I needed to watch in 2023 and not back in 1986 when it aired, because it had to find me.

David DeCoteau wrote a great remembrance of Leder on one of my favorite sites, The Schlock Pit, and revealed that his movie Dreamaniac was shot in the same house as this movie, which was owned by Bill Norton (Big Bad Mama, Day of the Animals).