Author Archives: bandsaboutmovies

Dark Entities (2023)

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Following a tragic accident in 1977, the three Winters siblings — Vera (Elena Ontiveros), Wes (Brandon McLemore) and Ethan (Jackson Lee Turner) — move into the strange home that they’ve just inherited. At this point, you understand what’s going to happen: dark secrets, odd happenings and total doom.

Directed and written by Brendan McLemore, the Winters family tries to pass off all the strangeness as the result of their collective trauma. But you know that there’s no way that that’s true. But man, I saw the Amazing Kreskin do that fingers touching table moving thing all the while that he told us that there’s no such thing as ghosts.

You know what I’ve learned about being in a haunted house? One: get out. Two: Don’t bother with a seance. Three: If you find a ring and someone tells you that it’s haunted, don’t wear it.

I do love that the family finds an antique dealer named Alfred (Philip Neil Parker) who conveniently has a wife named Jackie (Angela Moore) who just so happens to be a parapsychologist. That’s super convenient and I think an incredible business model. Or a scam where the husband tells you everything is haunted and you have to hire his wife to take away the ghosts or sell them the valuables for a loss.

APRIL MOVIE THON 2: Temptress of a Thousand Faces (1969)

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April 14: Tiger Style — Grab a Shaw Brothers film and write about how great it is.

At once a Shaw Brothers film, a Eurospy action movie and kind of like the Hong Kong Danger Diabolik, Temptress of a Thousand Faces is why I watch movies.

Officer Chi-ying (Tina Chin-Fei) is trying to hunt down the Temptress, who she publically dares to come after her. The Temptress agrees to this by stealing her identity, flirting with an entire club full of men and cleaning out a jewelry store while wearing Chi-ying’s face. Our heroine’s name gets cleared by her photographer boyfriend Inspector Yu (Liang Chen), who ends up being the one in peril when dealing with the titular villainess and her army of henchwomen.

Yes, the Temptress really does have a thousand masks, maybe even more, as well as an unlimited supplies of knockout gas and scantily clad women ready to answer her every command. This is a movie that at once has a strong female heroine and antagonist, but also one that has fan service aplenty, like the Temptress appearing being bathed by her handmaidens and Chi-ying fighting barefoot in a near see-through gown, but the men around them are such morons that they can’t help but shine, no matter how much of the male gaze gets thrown their way.

There’s a bomb that gets deactivated with seven seconds left — just like Goldfinger — as well as a volcano base — just like You Only Live Twice — and even the Bond theme playing just because, well, this movie is a riot and unafraid where it’s taking stuff from. That’s how good it is.

It all ends with Chi-ying battling the Temptress after she wears the face of our heroine and makes love to her man while she’s forced to watch. A twin adversary kung fu spectacle, topped only with our heroine and her reclaimed man shooting near thousands of bullets and wiping out an entire base full of dedicated domina female supertroopers.

I may not have any power over Arrow, but I know another Shawscope box set has to be coming. I dream that this and Infra-Man end up on it, movies that show that the Shaw Brothers made more than just their typically amazing kung fu movies.

You can watch this on YouTube.

APRIL MOVIE THON 2: Hell Has No Boundary (1982)

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April 14: Tiger Style — Grab a Shaw Brothers film and write about how great it is.

Cheng Jung (Derek Yee) and Wong Lai Fen (Leanne Liu) work at the same police station and start dating. One evening, as they camp on an island, she hears a strange noise and investigates, only to discover a strange green light. Somehow, she knows the island despite never being there and the light eventually knocks her out. When she wakes up, she attacks the kids near their camp with a fork and tries to drown one of them.

Yes, things aren’t normal.

May goes back to being a cop and is placed on a serial killer case by Inspector Wong (Hua Yueh). Somehow, May is able to not only catch the criminal, but shoot him with a bullet that reverse course after being fired, which leads reporter Koo (Ken Tong) to think she’s a superhero. Her new reckless attitude gets her taken off the case, but the two cops that replace her end up falling down an empty elevator shaft.

Everyone that ever was in May’s way must now pay. Like the horney superior who she takes disco dancing and then castrates with a crab. Yes, a crab. Or the holy man whose bird is destroyed and whose face is covered with boils before he’s launched down the strairs. Even an attempt at exorcizing May ends up with her drinking vomit from a toilet and sending a knife into the throat of her aunt.

The spirit that is inside her? Well, she died as a child after being sold to another serial killer, who smothered her with a pillow and then tore her insides out, at which point another completely different guy sold her dead body as goat meat.

Director Yang Chuan also made Hou wang da zhan tian bing tian jiang. If you haven’t seen that, well, get ready. This movie — like that one — is packed with bloody murder, insects, worms, slugs, neon lights and fog, death by toilet paper, nurses killed in showers, ghosts riding people in photographs…it packs in so much that by the end, you’ll be exhausted in the best of ways.

Night Gallery season 2 episode 14: The Different Ones/Tell David…/Logoda’s Heads

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The last episode of Night Gallery for 1971, this episode has a story that harkens back to a Twilight Zone episode yet finds — despite the sheer bleakness of this show — to somehow find happiness where that found dread.

“The Different Ones” has a father by the name of Paul Koch (Dana Andrews) dealing with the Federal Conformity Act of 1993, which means that his son Victor (Jon Korkes) — who has a facial deformity — must be sent away to another planet if surgery can’t help him. Directed by John Meredyth Lucas from a script by Rod Serling, it has the happier ending of Victor finding the happiness that eluded him on Earth. I was waiting for darkness to intrude but instead, this only has light.

“Tell David…” is directed by Jeff Corey and is based on a Penelope Wallace script. On a stormy night, Ann Bolt (Sandra Dee) seeks shelter from the future tech abode of David Blessington (Jared Martin) and Pat (Jenny Sullivan). Yet she soon realizes that David is her son from twenty years from now and he tells her the mistakes she’s made that she must not make again. She must not kill her cheating husband Tony (Martin in a second part) and definitely not kill herself in prison. Yet sometimes, the future is going to happen no matter what we try.

“Logota’s Heads” is about a witch doctor (Brock Peters) charged with the murder of an archaeologist. Directed by Jeannot Szwarc and written by Robert Bloch from an August Derleth story, it also has Patrick Macnee in the cast. Unfortunately, the story has an African witch doctor with shrunken heads, which mainly come from northern Peru and eastern Ecuador. Oh well…

I wish this episode didn’t feel all over the place but at least there wasn’t any comedy moments.

APRIL MOVIE THON 2: Dear Murderer (1969)

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April 14: Tiger Style — Grab a Shaw Brothers film and write about how great it is.

Tu Chang (Peter Chen Ho) has a problem.

His boss Yeh Kuang Lung (Liu Kei) thinks so much of him that he’s prepared to give him the ultimate compliment by awarding him his beloved daughter Jenny (Betty Ting Pei, she whose apartment is where Bruce Lee scandalously died within) in marriage.

The problem?

Tu Chang has already made company typist Lan Fen (Pat Ting Hung) pregnant.

Even worse, she promises to tell the boss unless he does the right thing.

That means killing Lan Fen and going all Poe on her, walling her dead body into an abandoned house.

Yet this is a Shaw Brothers movie and the dead never stay quiet in their stories.

Unlike many of their movies, this was directed by a Japanese filmmaker, Shima Koji, and is a remake of his movie Kaidan otoshiana. It’s a bit slow, but it looks gorgeous and man, that poster, right?

The Reaper Man (2023)

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How low was the budget for this movie? Well, director, writer, cinematographer, grip, editor and executive producer Janon Lockridge could only afford to hire a makeup artist and a producer. And that producer, Taylor Gilliland, had to act in the film due to an actress being a no-show during production. To top that, there was so little money that Lockridge was only allowed to visit locations an hour before call time, which meant that he had to block the scenes and change them with little to no time for error.

Joseph (Kenon Walker) and Jessica (Jessica Jai Johnson) thought they had their dream home until someone outbids them. When they get back to their not such a dream home, it’s when some burglars are in the middle of a home invasion and Joseph gets killed. But by the time the cops catch the suspects, they’re already dead.

After a visit to Sheba (Tarsha Gibson), a voodoo priestess, Joseph is no longer the man that Jessica once loved. Now, he’s the Reaper Man. Obviously, many will compare this to Candyman, but for the budget, this works really well and Lockridge shows his skills in the face of hardship, including the death of his father while he was in production.

The Reaper Man is available on digital and on demand from Gravitas Ventures.

TUBI ORIGINAL: A Good Man (2023)

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Ethan Carter (Joel Smith, who in addition to acting has directed and wrote several of his own movies) is trying to get over his ex-wife (Shelby Leigh) of six years who cheated on him. He’s put in the work of therapy — even if his friend and business partner Matt (Robert Q. Jackson) says that black men don’t do therapy and that all he needs is drink therapy and sex therapy — and feels ready to connect with someone in a meaningful relationship. That’s when he meets Arianna (Ebony Tates) at a Hibachi Go (2185 8 Mile Rd, Warren, MI 48091) as her card gets declined. So he pays it forward and gets her food for her. That’s their meet cute, but seeing as how she claims that mean is her middle name — and his mom’s is messed up — things already seem off before they even get to their first date.

Ethan is one of those nice guys that gives everything to their girl, including her own hairstylist business, a new car, a rental property, you name it. I don’t really get that she gives to him. She’s frequently late for dates, yells at him at every opportunity and used to date Kaos (King Wesley) who once nearly got her killed in a drive-by shooting. Or maybe his name is Chaos, because Ari can’t spell either. And she tends to quote Chris Brown in casual conversation.

He thinks she’s fascinating. She thinks he’s a square. Here’s what’s up: her danger is straight-up boner fuel for this sensitive man — Ari refers to him as a soft ass brother (well, she doesn’t use that word) — who  sends flowers after the first date, the second date, every date. He’s the kind of guy that says, “My lower back is killing me,” to quote LL Cool J. He even takes her out on a boat, while she visits his office and gets naked on his desk.

So yeah, it’s working out.

There are red flags all over though. He keeps bringing up her thug dating past while pulling incel moves like giving her big gifts and making her feel guilty. I’ll confess to making this same mistake, as I’ve bought king size beds for at least three women in my life that I never slept in. So when I’m yelling at the screen and calling Ethan all kinds of derogatory names for his perceived weakness as a man, I’m yelling at myself. That said, I never proposed on a boat on the way to Belle Isle.

So we have a man who wants a woman who can be his everything but she’s unsure that she’s even in love with him. That means that when Chaos or Kaos gets out of his stint in jail, he goes right back inside Ari, despite Ethan being a safe guy. She should listen to her friend Mimi (Mica Bivings) who tells her that women bounce back from heartbreak while when you break a man’s heart, you take your life into your own — foreshadowing — hands.

I was pretty shocked that Chaos has no issues just raw dogging his old girl in public, despite the fact that he’s engaged to a new woman (Choo Scott) and has a kid (Italy Monclaire). But you know, when your man is whining about everything and constantly by worried about keeping you happy — yes, again, I am throwing stuff at the screen and remembering every relationship in my 20s, 30s, 40s — maybe you’d rather have your rough ex on top of and behind you. Or as Ari says, “That thug passion hit different. Ethan f*** me like a good guy. But K, he f*** me like a gangster.” She also refers to Ethan’s sex style as “sexually boring ass” and tells Mimi that “I forgot how big he was, girl. I’m sore,” and gets the advice to go soak her thing in the tub and hope that Ethan doesn’t want any for a few days.

Ethan is already feeling like he’s being cheated on and even his friends say he should go back to therapy. But maybe if he tries harder — again, literally screaming at the Tubi — she’ll stop and stay with him. At the same time, Chaos or Kaos or Kevin ends up working for him, renovating the property that he’s buying for Ari and even hiring him as a returning citizen. He looks at Ethan’s desk and sees a picture of his old girl and says, “It’s funny how life works out.”

After another fight — and a heart to heart between Ari and her mother — they decide to take some time off while Ethan goes on a business trip. If you think he’s coming back early and ending up catching his woman getting raw dogged, correct. But man, Ethan has had it and goes full Saw and the movie has twenty minutes left, so it definitely gets wild.

This is director Joe Smith’s first movie, although he wrote 2022’s Diamond Girls, which is also on Tubi. This movie has it all and by all, I mean a played and cucked man having sad sex with his cheating girlfriend, who already has a brutalized beaver, while both cry, him from sheer love and her from being torn up from the floor up. Movie magic is back.

You can watch this on Tubi.

APRIL MOVIE THON 2: Sci-Fighters (1996)

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April 13: Kayfabe Cinema — A movie with a pro wrestler in it.

Billy Drago spent four hours or more getting into makeup every day for this movie but man, Drago was an intimdating guy even without the latex. Here, he’s Adrian Dunn, the former partner of Cameron Grayson (Roddy Piper). He killed Cameron’s wife and was sent to a jail on the moon, because this movie takes place in 2009 and director Peter Svatek and writer Mark Sevi (Scanner Cop II, Class of 1999 II: The Substitute, Dream a Little Dream 2) thought that man would be living there within 13 years. Well, right now it’s 2023 and I am not writing this from the moon.

But man, this movie goes past expectations by starting with Drago fighting another convict with buzz saws, killing that criminal and then ripping some alien virus out of his face and putting it into a hole he’s cut into his arm. He dies, but really he becomes monstrous and is sent back to Earth as a corpse that wakes up and instantly assaults and infects a woman.

Now, every woman that Dunn sees looks like Cameron’s dead wife and he keeps knocking them up with alien virus creatures. Luckily, Dr. Kirbie Younger (Jayne Heltmeyer) is around to help figure out how to stop the virus. She also looks just like — you know it — Cameron’s dead wife.

This is a perfectly fine straight to video science fiction movie that makes good use of Piper. I can always watch more movies with Drago as the bad guy, too.

You can watch this on Tubi.

APRIL MOVIE THON 2: McCinsey’s Island (1998)

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April 13: Kayfabe Cinema — A movie with a pro wrestler in it.

Look, I love Grace Jones more than most members of my extended family. Robert Vaughn? A huge fan. Sam Firstenberg? I’ve bought his movies Revenge of the Ninja, Avenging Force, American Ninja, Ninja 3: The Domination and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo multiple times.

Yet here they are in a movie that stars Hulk Hogan.

Unlike the Rock, John Cena, Dave Batista and even Pat Roach and Hard Boiled Haggerty, Hulk Hogan has never really been able to go from wrestling superstar — trust me, other than maybe Steve Austin, no one in their prime in my lifetime was a bigger deal — to movie star, despite the promise of Rocky 3. Yes, the Vince McMahon No Holds Barred is filled with dookie, quite literally, but there’s really never been a movie where Hogan has ever been anything other than Hogan, the same man who claimed that Darren Aronofsky offered him the lead in The Wrestler, that Andre died a few days after he slammed him at Wrestlemania 3 and not six years later, that he partied with John Belushi four years after his death at the after party for Wrestlemania 2…I can go on. Also, this is the same Hulk Hogan who used a racial slur about a man his daughter was dating while half naked in a sex tape with his best friend’s wife that was being taped by the aforementioned buddy.

This has jet skis and Jeeps yet is not Thunder In Paradise — messing with him is like rolling the dice — nor is it the movie that started that program, Assault On Devil’s Island. Does it have Brutus Beefcake, the one-time Baron Beefcake, The Booty Man, Big Brother Booty, Brother Bruti, Brute Force, The Butcher, The Clipmaster, Dizzy Hogan, Dizzy Golden, The Disciple, Ed Boulder, Ed Golden, Eddie Hogan, The Mariner, The Man With No Name, The Man With No Name, Furface and The Zodiac? Yes and it has The Giant as well. The Hulkster did not have time or the stroke, one assumes, to find parts for Brian Knobbs, Jerry Saggs or Greg Valentine.

That said, The Giant’s name in this is Little Snowflake.

This is a movie that has Hulk Hogan — I mean Joe McGrai — find a treasure map carved into the shell of a turtle. He also has a bird named Willy that he rescues when his house blows up by literally grabbing him in his fist and someone the bird’s bones are destroyed, brother.

This is a movie where Robert Vaughn’s name is spelled Vaughan in the credits and Grace Jones quotes Darth Vader talking to Boba Fett when he said, “He’s no good to me dead.” It ends with Hogan adopting two tiger cubs and if we learned anything from Joe Exotic over quarantine, it’s that anyone can start a sex cult. I mean, no one, most germanely Hulk Hogan, should ever own a tiger cub.

I may still be watching this movie as you read this, because that’s how long the boat chase scene is. It feels like that whole theory of Hell, in that one second in eternal hellfire is a year of our time, so that scene is still going and I’m stuck in it and may never escape.

I looked up Hulk Hogan acting on Google and got this.

After this, Hogan was in Assault on Death Mountain with Martin Kove, Shannon Tweed, Carl Weathers and Lisa Scrage, Mary Lou Maloney herself; The Ultimate Weapon with Beefcake and 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, which has Victor Wong, Loni Anderson and Jim Varney. This is where I mention that 3 Ninjas: Knuckle Up was directed by Shin Sang-ok, who was abducted by Kim Jong-il  and forced to make Pulgasari.

Today, Hulk Hogan sits in his beach store and meets fans. I wonder if Grace Jones ever thinks about this time in her life.

APRIL MOVIE THON 2: Girls Gone Dead (2012)

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April 13: Kayfabe Cinema — A movie with a pro wrestler in it.

Directed by Michael Hoffman Jr. and Aaron T. Wells from a script by Hoffman, Ryan Dee and Meghan Jones, Girls Gone Dead uses borrowed interest to get you to watch this movie that’s really just an 80s slasher.

For the fans of those films, Linnea Quigley plays a bartender. For Howard Stern Show lovers, there’s Sal Governale and Beetlejuice. Do you like hevay metal? Here’s Nicko McBrain, the drummer from Iron Maiden. For, well, anyone who likes adult film hates Ron Jeremy, but he’s in this. Finally, for lovers of pro wrestling, the sheriff is played by Jerry “The King” Lawler.

A bunch of girls head to Daytona Beach for spring break and end up being part of a Girls Gone Wild-style event for Crazy Girls Unlimited. However, there’s a killer in their midst and everyone, every single girl named for characters from Saved By the Bell is in danger.

At over a hundred minutes, this movie somehow proves that naked women can be boring, which is not a sentence that I ever want to write. Jim Wynorski could make this movie so much better just by being near the set, but instead, you get a generic fill in the blank slasher with scenes of women partying on the beach, which may be fun when you’re in your early stages of being able to drink legally but all feels frankly exhausting today.