Author Archives: bandsaboutmovies

Scarlet Warning 666 (1974)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn

I have no idea what I just watched. I do not know what this movie is about despite having watched its London premiere with about 20 other people at The Nickel Cinema in Clerkenwell.

Scarlet Warning 666 is the concept of “random” fully realized on celluloid. Specifically, random in the service of ego. The ego of one Palmer Rockey. The man who performed 7 roles on screen and 47 behind the camera. He also composed and sung all the songs on the soundtrack. One song made me laugh so hard I cried.

In preparation for an art history side-by-side slide exam on Edo period paintings, my professor once said, “If you can’t remember the facts about any of the images, just write about what you see.” This is the only way to write about this film.  I will list what I saw and heard. From here on. I will refer to Palmer Rockey as PR.

Here goes nothing:

  • Several parking lots (one shot lasts only a few frames)
  • PR in a parking lot playing finger guns
  • Ladies in bikinis
  • PR running through a cemetery to his own funk song
  • PR running through a corridor to his own disco song
  • PR shadow boxing and pretending to jump rope to his own funk song
  • PR having a long chat with his St. Bernard puppy, Bernie
  • PR making out with a lady in a bikini to his own love song
  • PR making out and tenderly dry humping a different lady in a tight red shirt
  • PR in a yellow shirt with a black stripe down the front
  • PR with a yellow shirt with a black striped collar
  • PR in a red shirt with a white star on the collar and cowboy hat
  • PR shirtless with upsetting shorts (three times)
  • PR dancing to his own disco song
  • PR woofing down green grapes with a copy of his album prominently on display
  • PR dressed as a hooded scarlet guard
  • PR posing for the camera
  • PR rolling around with a fat guy
  • Fake blood on a baby doll
  • A native America shaker thingy
  • A hand with a flashlight waving the light around onto a plastic skull
  • PR with fake blood on naked, fish belly white back
  • More smash cuts than I could count
  • PR in the “supernatural room” doing some sort of ritual while bikini ladies dance in a circle to bad foley and PR’s songs
  • An actor (Not PR) in a purple outfit with a white belt hanging out behind a bush in a park for DAYS
  • A bunch of feathers dyed and clumped together
  • A black and white sequence in a locker room about PR and his buddy in med school
  • A woman whose twin sister has died dancing around a white coffin.
  • 4 shots of the pavement where the camera man dropped the camera
  • A weird narration (sometimes in falsetto) by PR trying to explain to the audience what the movie is about and why he made certain “genius” and “anti-establishment” aesthetic decisions.
  • An actor (Not PR) reading from his script – twice
  • PR dousing his pits with lime juice from a plastic lime
  • More PR running

Basically, the movie is all Palmer Rockey all the time.

The End.

Thank you, Grindhouse Releasing.

See it.

VISUAL VENGEANCE ON TUBI: Loose Cannon (2023)

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Brent and Blake Cousins are back. Directed and written by Brett and starring Blake, this takes the guys years forward from Slaughter Day to make a new SOV-inspired film in which a cop uncovers a conspiracy to off the leader of the U.S.A. Well, it was shot in the 90s and finished a few years ago and it goes much deeper than that description, as this liquid can turn normal people into terrorists.

The Cousins have not chilled with age, doing wild stunts and crazy camera angles all over again, while using modern FX, supers and dubbing to make it seem like this all goes together when it totally doesn’t. The Vice President wants the President dead, but like an Andy Sidaris movie, this never leaves Hawaii. Why should it? You have 50 minutes? Then you’re ready for Brent and Blake to take you on another ride.

Because the footage sat in a vault for decades, the movie acts as a bizarre temporal rift. You have the brothers as their younger, stunt-crazy selves, but the post-production feels like it was handled by someone who just discovered every filter in Adobe After Effects. I will always be here for that.

You can watch this on Tubi.

VISUAL VENGEANCE ON TUBI: Night of the Flesh Eaters (2008)

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The title of this comes from one of the original Night of the Living Dead titles. That shows where the heart of this film is. It’s the story of a man (James Lemire) who wants to be with the wife (Gia Franzia) of a rich man (David Rosenhaus), who has learned that his beloved spouse has been cheating on him. He hires a killer to wipe them out, but that killer turns out to be our hero, who is also an archaeologist, folklorist, and college professor. It’s a resume that makes Indiana Jones look underachieving. 

What starts as a standard noir betrayal with a jealous husband, a cheating wife, and a hitman with a heart of gold quickly takes a hard left turn into supernatural insanity. Our hero has brought his enemy to a cursed land where Native American dwarf zombies and witch doctors live.

It could happen.

Directed and written by J.R. McGarrity, who also plays one of those evil shamans, this is quick, fun and cheap. But that doesn’t mean it’s without charm. In Germany, this had an even better title, Demon Forest – Sie werden Euch fressen (Demon Forest – They Will Eat You).

There’s also a woman in her bra and panties running around, played by Jessica Alexandra Green. Why is she in the woods almost naked? One would think foreign investors paid for this, but with a budget this low, why are we quibbling? 

You can watch this on Tubi.

Disgusting Spaceworms Eat Everyone (1989)

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A one-and-done SOV by George Keller, this one lives up to the promise of its title: worms from space come to Earth and, well, devour folks. No more, no less.

Or maybe more. This is a noir movie masquerading as SOV, a film where, instead of a black-and-white, rainy, smoky night, we’re seeing downtown LA in VHS-scanline, bright-sun quality, as synth tunes bleat over us. There is something deeply unsettling about seeing cosmic horror occur in a mundane, over-exposed apartment lit only by a sliding glass door. It feels less like a movie and more like a crime scene video captured by a neighbor who happened to have a Panasonic Camcorder. For example, a camcorder saving for posterity mountains of coke getting devoured by space grossness and interstellar maggots that can eat your flesh down to the bone in just moments.

Michael Sonye, who is also Dukey Flyswatter, was in tons of aberrant cinema. The Death Bed: The Bed That Eats remake, Roller Blade Warriors: Taken by Force, The Phantom Empire…the guy was the Imp’s voice in Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama! He also played Irving Klaw in Bettie Page: Dark Angel and was the Clitmaster in both Tales from the Clit movies. But wait — there’s more. He wrote Frozen Scream, Star Slammer, Commando Squad, Blood Diner, Cold Steel and Out on Bail. And he did the music for The Dead Hate the Living!, Cyclone and Nightmare Sisters and was in the Los Angeles glam-punk scene with his band, Haunted Garage.

There’s an actress named Tequilla Mockingbird. I really don’t know how much more this movie could give us.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Tales from the Darkside S2 E8: Distant Signals (1985)

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Lew Feldman (Joe Bova) is on the phone, being a Hollywood agent, when Mr. Smith (Lenny von Dohlen) appears in his office. He tells him that he wants to speak to Gil Hurn (David Margulies) and wants the agent to find him. Feldman says that Hurn is a big writer now and doesn’t want to revisit one of his failures. Smith offers a $35,000 gold bar to find Smith and discuss his one-season-canceled show, Max Paradise.

Smith wants Hurn to write and direct six more episodes of the show, including the ending. He’s willing to pay him $2 million to make it happen, but Hurn is unsure, since he thinks the show was corny. Smith claims that fans are yearning to see how the story ends. To do that, they have to find the star, Van Conway (Darren McGavin), who has given up on acting and, well, life. Smith promises him money, and if he takes the pills he’s brought, he will feel healthy again, as he once did before he started drinking. He even rebuilds the studio where the show was set, with no expense spared, to ensure that a show nobody watched can come back.

Even when Conway walks away, Smith won’t give up, even removing his fear and need to drink. When asked why he’s doing all of this, he replies that he’s Conway’s greatest fan. Conway is amazed by Smith’s belief in him and wonders who the millions of people Smith refers to are who would watch a black-and-white show in modern times. All Smith can say as he watches the show being filmed is that it’s mythic.

It’s never said where Smith is from, but Hurn and Conway decide he’s from space, a place that saw the show years after everyone else and always wondered how it ended. As the Max Paradise theme plays and the cameras roll in that reconstructed void, Hurn and Conway realize they aren’t just filming a cancelled show; they are providing the “ending” for an entire civilization’s mythology. They find their own purpose by becoming the wanderers they once portrayed.

Directed by Bill Travers (his only directing job; he played Senator Boutwell in The Lincoln Conspiracy) and written by Theodore Gershuny (who was married to Mary Woronov) from a story by Andrew Weiner, this is one of my favorite episodes of the entire series. Max Paradise was based on Coronet Blue, which ran for only 11 episodes on CBS in the summer of 1967. Created by Larry Cohen, it was about an amnesia-suffering man (Frank Converse) chased by killers who only knew two words, which were the title of the show. It never returned after those episodes, and the mystery was never resolved.

B & S About Movies podcast Episode 125: Police Academy

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Yes, I did a show about Academysploitation, but part of me wanted to talk about every movie in the series and no one else in my life wants to discuss these movies, so I am ready to share my love for Tackleberry, Zed, Hooks, Hightower and more.

You can listen to the show on Spotify.

The show is also available on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Podcasts, Podchaser and Google Podcasts

Important links:

Theme song: Strip Search by Neal Gardner.

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Trash Humpers (2009)

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The Trash Humpers are running through the streets of Nashville, causing chaos everywhere they go, which mostly means making people eat pancakes covered in soap, choking out baby dolls with plastic bags and killing a poet. They’re also all mostly old men or men wearing old man masks. They are very dada; nothing means anything. Momma (Rachel Korine), the only female member, kidnaps a child to add some meaning to her life, while the man recording all of this, Hervé (Harmony Korine), at least tries to explain to the viewer the ethos of the group.

One night, as he looked at trash cans in the moonlight, Korine remembered a gang of old men peeping toms who would come out at night, referring to them as “the neighborhood boogeymen who worked at Krispy Kreme and would wrap themselves in shrubbery, cover themselves with dirt, and peep through the windows of other neighbors.” Using video — yes, SOV — made the images softer and less sharp, which he was looking for. It was even edited on two VCRs.

The tracking errors and static make the viewer feel like a voyeur watching something they aren’t supposed to see. A snuff film of human dignity, I guess. This feels like the kind of movies we filmed as kids and then realized we’d get arrested if anyone found them.

I’d like to say that when the Trash Humpers scream “Make it, make it don’t fake it!” or cackle while smashing televisions, they aren’t protesting society; they are simply existing outside of it. They’re celerating the discarded: people, formats (VHS) and things. Did I go too A24 with this? Korine said, “I wanted to make a film that looked like it had been found in a bag of trash on the side of the road, or buried in a basement.” 

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

GET WILD WITH DIA!

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This Saturday on the Groovy Doom Facebook and YouTube channels at 8 PM EDT, Bill and I are back.

Want to know what we’ve shown before? Check out this list.

Have a request? Make it here.

Want to see one of the drink recipes from a past show? We have you covered.

Our first movie is The Headless Eyes and it’s on YouTube.

Here’s the first drink recipe.

Irish Eyes

  • 1 oz. Irish whiskey
  • .25 oz. creme de menthe
  • 2 oz. half and half
  1. Shake all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker.
  2. Pour in a glass and watch your eyes.

The second movie is The Curse of Bigfoot which is on Tubi.

Patterson Gimlin

  • 1.5 oz. Ole Smoky® Salty Watermelon Whiskey
  • 3 oz. lemonade .
  • 25 oz. cranberry juice
  • Crushed Lemonheads
  1. Mix over ice.
  2. Stir and savor, but top with Lemonheads first.

See you Saturday!

The Witch’s Sabbath (2005)

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Why yes, I am trying to watch every Jeff Leroy movie.

A coven of witches open a sexy strip club called the Sin and Skin.

That would be enough for some filmmakers.

But no, here Leroy adds the wrinkle that they must kill 666 men by Halloween so that their dark lord can rise and they can maintain their power.

Imagine, if you will, that all these fratboys show up to get laid and just end up dead. I am all for that, especially when you have a cast of actresses that includes Christine Cowden, the sadly deceased Syn DeVil, Gina Valona, adult actress Lisa Sparxxx, April Betts and Annmarie Lynn Gracey. I could do without seeing Ron Jeremy as a Bible salesman, but what can you do?

This could have lost a few minutes of running time, but maybe I was pausing to see some of the actresses more clearly. Yeah, that’s it.

Leroy takes a premise that could have been a 20-minute short and stretches it into a neon-soaked odyssey of digital gore and high-heeled havoc. It’s bloated, but you don’t watch a Leroy film for tight editing; you watch it to see how many CGI explosions he can fit into a scene with a coven of scream queens.

You can watch this on Tubi.