Editor’s Note: We jammed on this sharkster back in 2018 for our “Bastard Pups of Jaws” week. Well, when Mill Creek boxes ’em up, you watch it again, for another take. Hey, Treat Williams stars and makes everything watchable, twice.

How is it that Mill Creek hasn’t done an all-shark disc set of every Jaws ripoff out there? Well, no worries. We love our Jaws ripoffs at B&S About Movies and included this obscurity as part of our “Bastard Pups of Jaws Week” on December 19, 2018. And we love our shark flicks so much, we rolled out a “Bastard Sons of Jaws Week.” Like we said: we love our shark flicks. And to the Italian, Spaniard, and Mexican filmmakers that make them: we thank you. And while we’d rather Micheal Sopkiw as our “Brody,” we get the very cool and always game Treat Williams in the bargain.

And a great poster. And the better the poster, the badder the film. And when we say bad, we mean “bad,” as in awful, and not “so bad it’s good.”

Treat, Treat, Treat. I get it, work is work. But when you have a contract slide over to your chair on a conference table at your agent’s office and it clearly shows the project is a joint Italian-Spanish-Mexican production . . . maybe just eat Campbell’s Tomato Soup and Cheese Sandwiches for a just a bit longer until a network TV guest spot pops up (you were great as ex-football star Jake Stanton on “Spiraling Down” for Law and Order: SVU, by the way). But there’s mortgages to pay and taxes to cover. Plus . . . you get a really nice vacation on a producer’s dime in the Dominican Republic (that’s doubling for Miami, Florida, and Cancun, Mexico, here).

Sure, other actors have done a lot worse than Night of the Sharks for just those reasons: but political intrigue, diamond theft, and man-eating pet sharks?

So we meet David Ziegler (Treat Williams; we’ve reviewed several of his films; we love ’em ‘ere at B&S), a ne’er-do-well beach bum who makes his way as a shark hunter with his buddy and business partner, Paco (Holy Crap! Antonio “Huggy Bear” Fargas from Starsky and Hutch!). Oh, and they have a “Cyclops” — their pet man-eating shark.

Then we meet David’s film-flaming brother James (Italian actor Carlo Mucari as the Americanized Charles Mucary); he’s got a corrupt businessman (John Steiner, aka Overlord, from Yor, Hunter from the Future) — with connections to the President of the United States — on the hook, so he decided to extort $2 million in diamonds. And James runs to David for help and upsets his peaceful, beach bum existence. And along comes the assassins. And David’s ex-wife (Janet Agren from City of the Living Dead, Eaten Alive!, and Hands of Steel), of course, gets involved to screw David for the diamonds that he took from James’s dead hand.

Or something like that. Yawn. When does the action start? When do get to the “We need a bigger boat” part?

Anyway, David decides to kick ass like a gunless-MacGyver — using only his martial arts skills, an array of blades — and his shark buddy. And along the way, Christopher Connelly from Atlantis Interceptors shows up as a priest because, well, it’s an Italian film and all Neapolitan ripoffs must have a priest in them, regardless of genre.

The twist of this mess is that it’s not even a shark movie: it’s a political intrigue-cum-diamond heist-cum mobster movie that figured a nice big shark on the theatrical one-sheet would sucker people to see the movie. And it worked. And don’t let it work on you. But it’s the always likeable Treat Williams — who always reminds me of Kurt Russell and vise-verse and how they never played brothers in a movie is beyond me.

Sure, you can stream Night of the Sharks on Amazon Prime with a subscription, but why? We found a freebie stream on You Tube.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

This is one assignment that I enjoy and don’t mind re-reviewing, even though we reviewed it before, back on April 19. 2019, as well as including it as part of our “Drive-In Friday: Slobs vs. Snobs Comedy Night” feature.

Why?

Because we love Deborah Foreman as much as we love innocuous ’80s comedies. So, for its inclusion on its first Mill Creek set, in this case, their Excellent Eighties set, we’re taking another crack at it. Granted, it’s not all very good, but it’s better than most of the lost ’80s comedies of the Mill Creek sets we’ve unpacked this February.

Not only have we watched My Chauffeur more than once — the same goes for Deborah’s work in Valley Girl, April Fool’s Day and Waxwork. Again, swoon, Deborah Foreman. She recently popped back up in 2020’s Grizzly II: The Revenge. And they should have given her a bigger part — beyond a walk on — in the abysmal 2020 Valley Girl remake — which should not exist. And now that’s she back, Lifetime and The Hallmark Channel needs to put Deborah on the shortlist for their films. I can attest for Sam, as well as myself, that we would watch everyone of them. Yes, even the Hallmark ones. All for the love of Deborah Foreman.

Look, women wearing a man’s suit — going back to Diane Keaton setting the tone in Woody Allen movies — is hot. So our hormones run a wee-bit hot when Deborah Foreman slips into a tux and heels. For she really was the “New Wave Carole Lombard crossed with Shirley MacLaine.” And she never broke through. And instead, we got Jennifer Anniston, who is only Jennifer Anniston by way of her celebrity marriage to Brad. If not for that, Jen would be in Courtney Cox land with the rest of the who-cares Friends cast. At least Deborah Foreman can stand tall on talent alone.

Anyway, Deb is Casey Meadows, who comes to work as a limo driver for Brentwood Limo Services. Brentwood is the “golf course,” if you will — since all ’80s comedies lead back to Caddyshack. Howard “Dr. Johnny Fever” Hesseman runs and E.G Marshall from Creepshow owns Brentwood. And Hesseman’s McBrider hates Casey. The other drivers hate Casey, since, well, driving is a “man’s job.” They even set her up for failure with a troublesome rockstar — and she pulls though and makes the client happy.

Along the way, love blooms between Foreman’s commoner driver and E.G’s son played by Sam “Flash Gordon” Jones — on his way to the late ’80s post-apoc slop that is Driving Force and the early ’90s Basic Instinct wannabe that is Night Rhythms. Penn and Teller show up. Linnea Quigley (still at it in The Good Things Devil’s Do) shows up. Oh, and there’s some shenanigans with an oil shriek that gets Casey fired. And all the loose ends between all of the characters ties up nicely, even though how everyone is “connected” is a wee-bit incestuous. But that was “comedy” in the ’80s.

It’s not the greatest comedy. It’s not Caddyshack. But it’s alright (yuk, yuk!). And you can watch it on Tubi and Vudu for free. Here’s the trailer and a scene clip to sample.

We’ve since taken a deep dive into the career of this film’s writer-director, David Beaird, with a review of his much loved, second feature film, The Party Animal.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Okay, ye purveyor of B-Trash, let’s unpack the caveats:

1. While that looks like a rendering of Michael Sopkiw on the one-sheet, this isn’t a repack of Blastfighter made to look like a First Blood/Rambo sequel — although that film was inspired by the adventures of Rambo.
2. While it looks like it’s a Mark Gregory War movie — of which he made four, plus three Thunder movies — themselves each inspired by Rambo — this isn’t a repack of any of those movies. (We break those flicks down as part of our “Mark Gregory Week” tribute.)
3. Do not do what I did and confuse this with Jim Goldman, aka John Gale, aka Filipina Jun Gallardo’s Mad Max apoc-poo Desert Warrior starring Lou Ferrigno.
4. No, this isn’t a Stallone Rambo foreign repack with bad art work.
5. Yes, as incredible as it may seem, the Mark Harmon in the credits — in lieu of Michael Sopkiw or Mark Gregory (!) that should be starring — is the same Mark Harmon you’re now watching in reruns from CBS-TV’s NCIS.
6. This is, in fact, a Enzo G. Castellari’s production, aka The Desert Warrior, aka Tuareg: The Desert Warrior, aka Rambo of the Desert Warrior, which makes no sense. Why not Rambo, the Desert Warrior or Rambo: Desert Blood?

Now, when you see the dependable name of Enzo G. Castellari — the man who gave us Inglorious Bastards, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Escape from the Bronx, and Warriors of the Wasteland, you know you’re getting intriguing action, and a bag o’ chips.

In a desolate section of the Libyan-Algerian Sahara once ruled by the French, Gacel Sayah (Mark Harmon), a Tuareg tribal leader (in tanning make-up and blue contacts), offers refuge to two government fugitives. When soldiers from the newly-installed Arab regime demand the “war criminals” be turned over to them, our desert Rambo refuses, based on the region’s ancient, scared laws. When the soldiers murder one and kidnap the other war criminal, Sayah mounts a bloody campaign to rescue his charge, for so says “the law.”

If you’ve watched any of Enzo’s westerns — A Few Dollars for Django and One Dollar Too Many — then you’ll know that Enzo was into desert-based mayhem long before Stallone came on the scene, so what you get with this much HBO-aired ditty is a war-modernized Spaghetti Western. And be it western, poliziotteschi, or post-apocalypse, Castellari never disappoints, non-A-List Hollywood budgets be damned.

By the time Harmon went all spaghetti-Rambo in the joint, he got his start with guest shots as cops on Adam-12 and its ’70s sister show, Emergency (which I’ve seen these past months as Antenna TV reruns). Harmon also starred in two, failed one-season series with the cop procedural-dramas Sam (1977) and (the one I remember watching first-run) 240-Robert (1979). He was one season deep into his breakthrough role as Dr. Robert Caldwell in the NBC-TV medical drama St. Elsewhere when Tuareg: The Desert Warrior was released. But I have a feeling Harmon probably filmed this Italian romp long before production on the series began — with Enzo holding back the film (due to creative or cash flow issues), then realized he had a “star” in his film. As for Harmon: when it came to crossing over to a theatrical career, he went for comedy instead of action, with the (date night) flops Summer School and Worth Winning (both utter awful) and some military drama with Sean Connery (that I am too lazy to research, but also sucked) and eventually, like David Caruso before him, came back to television.

When you think that Harmon is the guy from TV’s NCIS . . . made-up to look Middle Eastern . . . makes this spaghetti Rambo an even more fascinating watch. And you can watch this Mill Creek box set public domain ditty on You Tube or get your own copy as part of their Excellent Eighties 50-Movie Pack.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Ah, Sam knows my Bigas Luna fandom*, as I gushed my philosophical wax over the majesty of Luna in our review of Anguish. Gracias, mi amigo: your X-Mas gift of film is enjoyed.

What saddens me: that this, Bigas’s fourth directing effort — and his first English-language film (the second was Anguish) — ends up on a Mill Creek box set. No offense to the executives of Mill Creek, as we devour your box sets like a serial killer with a chest ripped-out heart on a Valentine’s Day murder spree . . . but wow, you’d think, with Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider) and Micheal Moriatry (The Stuff) on the marquee, Reborn would have not fallen into the public domain and received a proper digital reissue. Sadly, a deserved John Carpenter, Sean S. Cunningham, or Wes Craven-like success was not in the cards for Luna. As with Anguish, Reborn bombed at the U.S. box-office (as result of a poorly-received limited release) for which it was intended. What we really need is a double disc restore with Reborn packed with Anguish in honor of Bigas Luna. Now.

Okay. Enough with the ranting. Let me a have nice, warm cup of Ovaltine (Well, Roundtine, because, as Jerry Seinfeld pointed out: the cup is round and the jar is round. . . .) and finish this review. (Sorry, Sam. It can’t be done.)

It’s no mystery that Reborn, like Anguish before it, is beyond the bizarre — even for Satan’s tomfoolery — only this first English-language film for Luna is a bit more low-key than the eye-ball carving and snail fetishisms of Anguish. Luna’s eye for set design is on fire, natch, oozing with style and substance that’s punctuated by his usual taste for the erotic mixed with the spiritual: it’s a religious fantasy piece that questions faith, explores Luna’s Catholicism, and the mysteries of one’s acquiring healing powers. And, if those powers are real (they are, in this case), how does the one blessed (or cursed) used them? And, if that person is with child (she is, here), then will that child inherit the mother’s powers of stigmata and healing?

The story concerns Giacomo (Francesco Rabal, the real “leading man,” here), who discovers his Holy Ghost-hearing girlfriend (Antonella Murgia, the real “leading lady,” here) is a “stigmata”: someone whose hands and feet mysteriously bleed in the same places where Jesus Christ was crucified. (At the risk of getting into a religious debate: It is said Christ was crucified through his achilles (the back of the foot, above the heel) and his wrists; anyone “bleeding” from their palms and insteps are phonies, because, there’s no way nails can be driven through those parts of the body without shattering bones . . . then hang from those wound-points without ripping through the flesh and shattered bones, and falling off the crucifix. So read your Roman history before committing religious fraud, preacher man.) Of course, no surprise, Dennis Hooper is the maniacal Rev. Tom Hartley, an American televangelist-head of a racketeering “revivalist” church** — and he exploits the situation for his own, greedy purposes. Moriarty is Mark, Hopper’s kidnapping sidekick, sent to Italy to “recruit” the girl — they fall in love; he impregnates her — is his usual, off-the-chain self in a role that rises to his work in Q: The Winged Serpent.

The reason why we are here: Mill Creek Entertainment features this Bigas Luna classic on their Excellent Eighties 50-Movie Pack. There’s (awful, with muddy images and distorted audio) steaming copies at Amazon Prime and You Tube, but emptor those caveats, ye streamer: both platforms stream the 92-minute, shorter U.S.-version — when, what we really want, is the extra 13 minutes of the 105-minute original version. And trust me: those lost minutes are why so many detract this Luna masterpiece as “confusing junk.” And these bad prints aren’t helping matters, leaving you think you’re watching a knockoff of Giulio Paradisi’s confusing mess-of-a-mess The Exorcist knockoff that is the The Visitor — and Reborn is not that bad, for it is so, so much better. And it has nothing to do with exorcism.

MGM currently holds the copyright on Reborn, with Park Circus/Arts Alliance as its TV/Home Video distributor. Again, we need a restore on this one, so help us out MGM and Park Circus! We found two trailer-clips on You Tube HERE and HERE to enjoy.

* You can learn more about Bigas Luna with his 2013 obituary at Variety.
** Beth B’s dark comedy, Salvation!, starring Exene Cervenka, tackles the same material.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Editor’s Note: Sam took a swat at this best-forgotten ’80s comedy back on February 2, 2021, as part of its inclusion on Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-film pack. If there’s a film that doesn’t deserve as a second, fresh take, it’s Cavegirl. But here we are, as the film is also part of Mill Creek’s The Excellent Eighties 50-film pack.

Update: Cavegirl will be re-issued on hard media by Dark Force Entertainment. Learn more with their Facebook announcement.

I’ve been a fan of Daniel Roebuck ever since his chilling portrayal of Sampson Tollet in the juvenile delinquent classic River’s Edge. But in proof that all actors must start somewhere on their journey to becoming a stock player in Rob Zombie’s retro-celluloid house of horrors or picking up work in cool Don Coscarelli flicks, Roebuck made his feature film debut with this caveman-cum-jungle girl comedy. And at the risk of offending an actor I respect: this movie is as stone cold dumb as it looks. Can we blame this film’s inspiration on Ringo Starr’s Caveman? Eh, probably: In Europe, where everything is a sequel to something (the House and Demons “franchises” come to mind), distributors tried passing this off as a sequel to that Ringo joint.

In one of the most-unlikely “high school students” committed to film, Roebuck stars as the way-too-old and oafy-dopey Rex, the type of guy that loves bones — as well as boners for unattainable girls — who gets a shot at the (cave) babe of his dreams. However, unlike Pauly Shore’s Encino Man from 1992, where the hot cave person comes to the present, Rex transports back to The Stone Age.

But how?

Ugh. Don’t you know your innocuous and implausible comedies, such as 1976’s Freaky Friday or 1988’s Vice Versa? A magic trinket does the job. In this case: Rex discoveres a cave wall-encrusted magic crystal. There he meets a cavebabe, Eba (Cynthia Thompson, who made her debut in Tomboy and ended up, in all places, a Ruggero Deodato flick, Body Count). And while Rex tries to get under her skimpy animal skins, he helps her tribe fend off a warring cannibal tribe. The end.

Now, if the character of “Brenda” looks familiar to you — but the actress name Stacey Swain does not — that’s because it’s Stacey Q! Yes, she the ’80s pop queen who made it into the U.S. Top Ten with “Two of Hearts” in 1986. Her song “Synthicide,” which was the debut single by SSQ, which cracked the U.S. Top Fifty back in 1983, appears on the soundtrack. That song, along with “Big Electronic Beat” and “Clockwork,” from SSQ’s lone album on Enigma Records (also home to the very-similar Berlin lead by ’70s actress Terry Nunn), also appears on the soundtrack to 1984’s Hardbodies (that, shockingly, hasn’t been “Mill Creek’d,” at least not yet). If you’re a punker and you love your zombies, you’ve heard Stacey’s soundtrack work before, on, of all places, The Return of the the Living Dead. Remember when Linnea Quigley stripped for Trash in the graveyard? Well, the song “Tonight (We’ll Make Love Until We Die)” blaring over the boombox is Stacey fronting SSQ.

Yeah, when the backstory on the soundtrack is more interesting than the movie, you know you’ve got narrative issues with your film.

This ended up being the only feature film writing and directing debut for rock video director David Oliver Pfeil, in which he also served as his own producer and cinematographer. It’s certain he had higher hopes for his passion project. But when you’re backed by Crown International, boobs rule over one’s artistic passions. But no worries: Pfeil went onto become a prolific opening credits designer for features films and television series. One his many credits was the opening titles for the film and series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century — which is the best part of that decrepit, plastic Star Wars knockoff.

You can watch Cavegirl on YouTube.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Sam, the Bossman, gave this a Compass International release a run through back in November 2018, just because, well, we are obsessed with Compass flicks as much as Crown’s crap o’ reels. When this film was included on Mill Creek’s Sci-Fi Invasion set, Dustin Fallon from Horror and Sons came on board for his take on the film in November 2020.

Sigh. But Mill Creek has to “go green” and recycle. So I now have the job of doing a third take for their Excellent Eighties box set. The joy. But it’s not so bad. Again, this is a Compass International flick directed by John “Bud” Cardos and produced by Charles Band. Compass was the distributor for John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1978, and producer Charles Band’s Tourist Trap in 1979, in case you didn’t know.

This is movie is not even close to being as good as either of those films. But John “Bud” Cardos is still the man.

Look at that short — but hit-packed director’s resume: Kingdom of the Spiders. The Dark. Mutant. Gor II: Outlaw of Gor. Well, they’re “hits” for the B&S About Movies lover in your life. Then there’s Bud’s cable and VHS potboilers starring Ernest Borginine, Robert Vaughn, Oliver Reed, and Herbert Lom — in the same movie: Skeleton Coast (1988). Then there’s Act of Piracy (1988) with Gary Busey and Ray Sharkey. Then there’s Bud’s acting resume with Al Adamson and the films Hells Angels on Wheels (1967), Psych-Out (1968), The Road Hustlers (1968), The Savage Seven (1968), Killers Three (1968), Blood of Dracula’s Castle (1969), Satan’s Sadists (1969), Five Bloody Graves (1969), and Hell’s Bloody Devils (1970).

After entering the annals of Bikerdom with his third acting gig in Hells Angels on Wheels (he had support roles in 1965’s Deadwood ’76 and Run Home, Slow), and paying attention on all of those Al Adamson sets and Roger Corman AIP productions, Bud Cardos transitioned behind the lens for the blaxploitation-spaghetti western with The Red, White, and the Blue, aka Soul Soldier (1970).

Then he hooked up with Charles Band. And you thought Compass International’s Catholicism Aliens was nutso. Now we’ve got a hippy-dippy Eco-friendly film about aliens and solar power. It’s Laserblast and End of the World rolled into one . . . uh, a film that exists. Yeah, David Schmoeller (the director of Tourist Trap and the Puppet Master franchise) and Ted Nicolaou (Terrorvision and the Subspecies franchise) are on board to help out, so all is well.

Well, not really. Let the extraterrestrial shenanigans, begin.

Jim Davis, who probably expected his stardom on TV’s nighttime drama Dallas to net him better film roles, stars as Grant, the patriarch of the Williams family. He’s moved them lock, stock and barrel to the desert to get away from it all. Grant’s wife, Ana, is Dorothy Malone, who won a Best Supporting Actress for Written on the Wind . . . then was so hard up, she had to take a Corman car flick, The Fast and the Furious. Their son is Chris Mitchum, who probably sees this as a career high point — after the like of The Serpent Warriors. Then there’s his Ed Wood School of Awful Acting wife Beth, and their equally annoying kids, Steve and Jenny — who we wished ended up as xenomorph vittles in the first act to “wrap them” and get them the fuck off the set because they’re interfering with the Jim Danforth and Dave Allen SFX that we came for in the first place.

So . . . back to the plot:

The world is enthralled by an expositional, deep space, triple-super supernova.

Said supernova opens a black hole.

Aliens and UFOs — of all shapes and sizes — and stop-motion lizards — all of it stocked out of other Band boondoggles, such as Laserblast and End of the World, show up. But some of it is new — again, Jim Danforth and Dave Allen made them. So, all is well (not really).

There’s “atmospheric interference” and “electrical storms” and the car won’t star to get the Williams family out of there.

Then, we go into our “Night of the Living Dead” phase as everyone hides in the barn. Only with aliens and not zombies.

The family is “beamed up” to a UFO. They time travel to the future. They’re going to live in a domed city on some alien world because “time ended” back on Earth. Or something.

Yeah, you can order it from Full Moon, which issued it as Blu-ray in 2019. But why buy the cow when we found the milk for free, over on You Tube.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook.