This week, Holocaust 2000 puts Hollywood royalty through hell and Hex gets weird. Also: Lots of explosions and screams.
You can listen to the show on Spotify.
The show is also available on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Podcasts, Podchaser and Google Podcasts
When Walter (George Newbern) can’t handle the grief of losing his wife because of an intruder — despite having Dr. Joyce Brothers as a therapist — an ex-NASA scientist, Dr. Kurt Rotwang (Vincent Schiavelli), sends him to other realities where Ruth (Elizabeth Berkley!) could still be alive with his Probability Engine. None of those are what he wants, and if there’s a lesson in this, it’s that sometimes you have to take the hand that the world has dealt you.
Directed by Russel Mulcahy (Highlander, Razorback) and written by Peter Atkins (Hellraiser II, Hellraiser III, Fist of the North Star, Wishmaster, Prisoners of the Sun), this is one of the better episodes of this show. Oddly enough, Meadow Soprano is watching this one in The Sopranos episode “I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano.”
This episode is based on “Planely Possible” from Weird Fantasy #21, written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Kamen. Unlike many episodes of this show, this one is actually close to the original story, including the moment when Walter’s alternate reality self is put into an incinerator and tries to assume his place, which sets off a series of events that only worsen from there. You’ll see where this time loop is going, but that’s part of why this works so well.
You can download all of the episodes here or watch this episode on YouTube.
Canadian picnics are weird, that’s what I took from this movie. They concern pouring Molson on your lover, having your sibling watch you get it on and having a seance in the middle of a graveyard, which is a bad idea. That’s because the best part of this, the first few minutes, have a body being brought back from the dead. And you know, once you see that, it’s like Chekov’s Zombie. It must show up again and it must kill.
This was directed by Donald R. Passmore and Klaus Vetter and written by Lawrence Zazelenchuk, who raised the money — well, $36,000, which seems like an inflated amount — by working in a mine and owning Sudbury’s 69 Drive-In. He was also a teenager. He also did the effects here, which may or may not be special, depending on your definition of the word.
Zazelenchuk wanted John Carradine to be in this and couldn’t afford it. Let’s think about what that means. That’s insane, that’s what that is.
He got paid $5,000 for it and eventually closed his drive-in, moving to Florida and drinking himself to death. Some say that’s because the movie disappeared, sold as a tax write-off. If only he’d held on, as it was eventually released with a lot missing as a lost movie.
If you liked Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things but wish it was inept, good news!
I kid. I kind of love this goofy movie. I love it for what it could be, as the early promise is there. Also, I will probably never go to a Canadian picnic, but if I did, I would bring a bag of All Dressed Yum Yum chips and some back bacon, because all of Canada is SCTV to me. Thank you.
Directed and co-written (with Geoff Meed) by Anthony C. Ferrante (Blind Waters and, of course, Sharknado), this has Gia Shah (Angela Cole) diving in the Florida Keys for the first time since the death of her husband. She finds cocaine that belongs to drug kingpin Mr. Reverend (Steve Hanks). It was lost after the last set of his goons were eaten by sharks.
The mob lord sends Jareth Danzo (Johnny Ramey), Lee (Michelle Ng Mini), and Charlotte Harlow (Ashton Leigh) to recover his stash and eliminate the sharks (and anyone else). Somehow, someway, that means that Gia has to go to the ocean floor and get the coke while avoiding tons of sharks.
Should you watch it? Well, it’s a movie by The Asylum about sharks. It’s on Tubi. It’s free. Somewhere in the middle of all those things and the demands I have put on myself to watch every Tubi Original and most shark movies, I made the choice to check it out. It’s not anything you haven’t seen, but if you’re looking for a movie where bikini-clad girls fight one another and are threatened by a series of sharks, why are you on my site?
You can watch this on Tubi.
Destry Allyn Spielberg is the youngest biological child of director Steven Spielberg and his second wife, actress Kate Capshaw. She’s been a model, an actress and grew up on film sets, which is how she was inspired to become a director. This is her first full-length movie.
I kind of love this “Parents Need to Know” from Common Sense Media: “Parents need to know that the horror film Please Don’t Feed the Children stars Michelle Dockery and contains significant violence and jump scares as well as swearing. Variations on “f–k,” “s–t,” “ass,” and “bitch” are used throughout. A virus is turning adults into cannibals, while child carriers are being hunted down and killed. Characters are chased, captured, drugged, tortured, and killed. They experience fear and witness the cold-blooded killings of their loved ones, including younger siblings. People are stabbed, shocked via a collar, shot at close range, and killed. The movie has themes of cannibalism and lots of blood. Wounds are shown in close-up. Two young people kiss, and people are glimpsed in their underwear.”
All the cannibalism is fine. It’s the underwear we need to be concerned about!
Mary (Zoe Colletti) is trying to escape the government officials who are trapping and killing kids, the carriers of a virus that turns people into cannibals. She joins up with Vicky (Regan Aliyah), Ben (Andrew Liner), Seth (Josh Melnick), Jeffy (Dean Scott Vazquez), and Crystal (Emma Meisel), who are trying to get as far away as possible and attempt to cross the border into Mexico. After some injuries, they seek safety at Clara’s (Michelle Dockery) house. She claims to be a nurse and even offers to make them cookies, but the truth is much more sinister. Not everyone will survive, obviously.
No one can trust each other, but when you live in a world where the government is killing adults, blaming children and locking down the world, well…would you? Mary just wants the kids to herself to replace her kids, who died as a result of the virus. She’s helped by a cop named Fitz (Giancarlo Esposito) whose loyalties seem to shift between helping and harming the group.
Spoiler: This is another movie that concludes with a young girl setting a house on fire.
Written by Paul Bertino, this film was allowed to continue filming during the SAG-AFTRA strike last year because it was not tied to a studio. It also had some issues with funding and paying its cast, but that’s how low-budget films go.,
You can watch this on Tubi.
Aug 25-31 Natasha Lyonne Week: There’s a new season of her weirdo mystery of the week coming out (I can’t remember the name rn, you can look it up), and she’s been steadily delivering chuckles for decades now.
Directed by Chris Miller and written by Pam Brady (who has worked with Trey Parker and Matt Stone on their projects going back to Cannibal: The Musical), The Smurfs is the sixth full-length movie for the cartoon characters created by Peyo.
Rhianna is Smurfette, following Katy Perry and Demi Lovato, while John Goodman is Papa Smurf. This is the kind of movie that has Dan Levy, Kurt Russell, Marshmello, Nick Kroll, Alex Winter, Amy Sedaris, Nick Offerman, Jimmy Kimmel, Natasha Lyonne and more, all to tell the story of how the Intergalactic Evil Wizard Alliance once battled the smurf force of Papa Smurf, his brother Ken and the best smurf ever, Ron for magical supremacy until Papa decided to run following a defeat and hide, occasionally battling Gargamel but rarely getting involved in the world of magic — until No Name Smurf tries to find what his talent is, tries the occult and leads Gargamel’s brother Razamel to Smurf Village where he takes nearly every one of them, doing what his brother never could.
Many reviewers said it was tedious, dull and unfunny. Me, I liked it, but I watched so much Smurfs as a kid that I know who Johan and Peewit are.
I could do without James Corden being a voice in these movies, though. There’s also no Frank Welker in this. Come on, what the smurf?
After visiting a house in Amityville, real estate agent Keith (Chris Lohman) finds himself in another dimension within the home. He is trapped, constantly finding himself in the same room, no matter which door he takes.
What are backrooms?
Between 2011 and 2018, a photograph of a large, carpeted room with fluorescent lights and dividing walls circulated on 4chan, and it just felt off. An anonymous user desribed this space like this: “If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.”
It’s actually a photo of the second floor of what was once Rohner’s Home Furnishings in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, that has been converted into a HobbyTown. Now, that strange image is the home to an RC racing area, Revolution Racing.
Also known as liminal space, backrooms often are “a place or state of change or transition; this may be physical (a doorway) or psychological (the period of a olescence). Liminal space imagery often depicts this sense of “in between,” capturing transitional places (such as stairwells, roads, corridors, or hotels) unsettlingly devoid of people.”
As for this movie, you will feel like you’re in a liminal space that never ends, as it takes 68 minutes for an Amityville movie set in California to unfold, with one person screaming and talking to himself while TV news fills the gaps, or, as we say, pads the film.
Also: That dude takes a piss at one point.
You can watch this on Tubi.
Daredevil — there’s the title! — Paul Tunney (George Montgomery) gets blamed for another stunt driver’s death and finds himself making a living by running drugs and dealing with some kind of bad mojo put on him by that driver’s sister, Carol (Gay Perkins). Oh yeah — he’s also making sweet love to his one-armed mechanic Huck’s (Bill Kelly) wife Julie (Terry Moore) because, look, Paul’s a jerk. He deserves everything that happened to him.
Montgomery went from a stuntman at Republic to leading man status at 20th Centiry Fox, taking over roles meant for Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda during the war before he was drafted into working for the U.S. Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit, appearing in documentaries and training films. As his leading man status waned, he appeared in movies like Hallucination Generation, Satan’s Harvest (which he directed) and Django the Condemned.
Moore was married five times but has claimed that she was with Howard Hughes from 1949 to 1976. She’s been acting since 1940 — and has two movies coming soon, according to IMDB — and starred in Mighty Joe Young, as well as appearing in Hellhole, Beverly Hills Brats and many more films. She was even on the cover of Playboy in August 1984 at the age of 55.
By 1972, however, they were both in movies like The Daredevil.
Director Robert W. Stringer was usually a composer for movies, and this is his only directing credit. Writer Robert Walsh also scripted Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws. They made a movie that combines the rednecksploitation that drive-ins were looking for with the downer ending that was of the time. It’s not great, but it’s perfect for a second drive-in feature; a make-out and barely watch the movie movie, if you will.
You can watch this on the Cave of Forgotten Films.
Marc Lawrence had a career filled with playing the heavies, mostly gangland types. In fact, his autobiography was entitled Long Time No See: Confessions of a Hollywood Gangster.
Lawrence found himself under scrutiny for his political leanings. He was the son of Polish and Russian parents and was married to Odessa-born novelist and screenwriter Fanya Foss. Once called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he admitted he had once been a member of the Communist Party and named Sterling Hayden, Lionel Stander, Anne Revere, Larry Parks, Karen Morley and Jeff Corey as fellow Communists. Blacklisted, he continued to make films in Europe before returning to America.
He’s probably best known for playing gangsters in Diamonds Are Forever and The Man With the Golden Gun, but he also shows up in plenty of genre films like From Dusk Till Dawn and Dream No Evil. He directed several episodes of TV shows before helming Nightmare in the Sun, which was written by his wife and stars Ursula Andress and Aldo Ray. This was the only other film that he’d direct. He also wrote the movie, and it stars his daughter Toni. It’s also one of the strangest movies you’ll find.
Also known by many, many names — The 13th Pig, Daddy’s Deadly Darling, Horror Farm, Daddy’s Girl, The Strange Exorcism of Lynn Hart, The Strange Love Exorcist and Roadside Torture Chamber — Pigs is all about Lynn Webster (Toni Lawrence), who has escaped a sanitarium and hides out in the diner owned by Zambrini (Marc Lawrence).
Behind the diner lies a pigpen of swine that have been taught to eat human flesh. Zambrini soon has a partner in murder as Lynn begins to kill any man who reminds her of the father who assaulted her. She kills him and she’ll kill anyone else who gets in her way.
This movie is pretty much the 70s — complete insanity and murderous intent, capped off with off-kilter camera angles. Suffice to say, I loved every single moment of it.
Toni Lawrence would go on to appear in several TV shows and the Final Destination inspiration Sole Survivor. She was also, once married to Billy Bob Thornton, who honestly has some amazing taste in ladies.
Jesse Vint plays the sheriff who tries to see the good in everyone. He shows up in plenty of redneck cinema with appearances in movies like Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw, Black Oak Conspiracy, the Walking Tall TV series and Macon County Line. He also stars in the absolutely incredible science fiction weirdo film Forbidden World.
Marc Lawrence’s original cut of the film is the one released as The 13th Pig. However, there are two additional versions. The Love Exorcist / Blood Pen titled versions begin with another actress playing the role of Lynn Webster, who runs away from an attempted exorcism. The Daddy’s Girl version, which was released on VHS, started with Lynn’s father attacking her. She stabs him to death, ends up in the asylum, but escapes when a nurse takes off her uniform to make love to a doctor. She wears those clothes, takes that amorous caregiver’s keys and runs away. Multiple actresses play Lynn in these scenes, and all wear completely bonkers wigs.
Check out Bill Van Ryn from Drive-In Asylum as he breaks down the advertising history of Pigs with a collection of newsprint images for this film.
I don’t trust the media. I mean, tonight, my YouTube was all about how bad Cuba is and I kind of distrust it now.
Anyways, this is Kill Castro or Cuba Crossing, a 1980 movie in which Hud (Robert Vaughn) holds a grudge since the Bay of Pigs and wants to kill Castro. Using bar owner, boat captain Tony (Stuart Whitman), and funded by Mr. Bell (Raymond St. Jacques) and Rossellini (Michael V. Gazzo), this isn’t going to end well, because the money men just want to move drugs.
This is the kind of movie that has Robert Vaughn on a beach shouting, “Damn you, Kennedy!” It’s also the kind of release that has many alternate titles, such as The Mercenaries, Key West Crossing, and Sweet Dirty Tony.
A drag queen sings “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” Sybil Danning shows up, as does Woody Strode and Albert Salmi, man-eating turtles, a homoerotic wrestling match (spoiler: all wrestling is homoerotic), a shark attack, a fake Marilyn Monroe singing “I Wanna Be Loved by You,” iguanas getting involved in a bar fight and, well, it’s way more boring than this paragraph would lead you to think. Oh yeah — Caren Kaye, who was the mom on the sitcom It’s Your Move and was the attractive mom in My Tutor, she’s in this. She seduces Stuart Whitman. Yes, it’s a man’s world.
IMDB BS ALERT: “Captain Tony’s Saloon is a real bar in Key West, FL, and was owned by the real Captain Tony, who was also mayor of Key West for a time. He appears in the film as a watcher on horseback in one of the scenes when “Tony” visits the Cuban coast.” Actually, it’s real and here’s the website.
Director Chuck Workman used to edit all the Oscar montages. How did he make such a messy movie? The script, maybe? It was written by Robin Swicord, who get this, went on to write the 1994 Little Women, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Practical Magic and Memoirs of a Geisha. That’s right — she wrote all of your wife’s favorite films. Producer and co-writer Peter Barton went on to Reading Rainbow and man, I’m out of facts.
Thanks to Through the Shattered Lens, I can share the long — and hilarious — opening titles with you:
“From 1961, the year of the Bay of Pigs to today, the Government of the United States has been embroiled in a series of events which have continually led our nation to crisis after crisis and to the brink of war.
ASSIGNMENT — KILL CASTRO, a true story is one of the most confusing and frustrating historical events that might have led to a world power showdown. It happened yesterday! It happened today! It can happen again!
Names of persons and places have been changed to protect the individuals who were called upon to aid their country and in doing so placed their lives in jeopardy.
“I WILL GIVE ALL FOR THE LOVE OF MY COUNTRY … RIGHT OR WRONG! — G.W. Bell, Chief of Caribbean Operations, Central Intelligence Agency”
This motion picture is dedicated to all people who desire to live in a free democratic society.”
You can watch this on YouTube.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.