Shanghaied by her boyfriend—Blair Witch-style (only with sharp ‘n steady cinematography and no handheld POVs; an intelligently-written script and no actor improv)—Sylvia (screenwriter Anna Shields) leaves Lansing, Michigan, and meets up with Alex (Rachel Finninger), another social media curiosity seeker, to research a series of disappearances—including Sylvia’s friend—in the Adirondacks outside Whitehall, New York. Sylvia soon comes to discover the monster lurking inside Alex is more sinister than any Bigfoot lurking in the woods.
Monstrous is lensed by Bruce Wemple, a New York City-based director, producer, writer, and editor with two indie-features to his credit: After Hours (2016) and LakeArtifact (2019). After Hours was the recipient of Best Picture at the 2017 Philip K. Dick Film Festival, along with the Audience Choice Award at the 2017 Boston SciFi Film Festival, and Best Sci-Fi Picture at the 2017 Buffalo Fantastic Film Festival. Screenwriter and star Anna Shields is a New York-based actor who’s amassed twenty-five screen credits across various indie projects in a short nine years. Rachel Finniger is new to the acting world and most recently appeared on a 2018 episode of Law & Order: SVU.
Each brings a quality to the screen that’s above most of the indie-streaming films available in today’s digital marketplace. It’s appreciated that while the film is spiced with social media plot points in its first act, the proceedings didn’t degrade into just another found footage-POV potboiler about a search for Bigfoot. Since Monstrous is female-driven by two actresses for most of the film, one would think the film to be prefect programming fodder for the female-center Lifetime Network—but this heads above that channel’s usual damsel-in-distress flicks.
You’ll be able to stream or pick up a copy of the DVD of Monstrous on August 11. You can keep abreast of developments on the film at 377 Entertainment’s website and Uncork’d Entertainment’s Facebook page. We’ve since reviewed Bruce Wemple’s latest, the pseudo-sequel, Dawn of the Beast.
Disclaimer: We were provided a screener by the film’s P.R firm. That has no bearing on our review.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies and publishes on Medium.
“The Crisis,” an apocalyptic event, has devastated the Earth and left David (Tim Kaiser) to rely on the backwoods survival skills he learned from his childhood. Living in tent-bound isolation and losing his mind, with only flashbacks of the past to comfort him, Mary (Lulu Dahl) emerges from the woods. The isolation have left both socially maladjusted: he’s immediately suspicious of her and she of him. Together they must learn to work together to avoid “Those Who Walk In Darkness,” heard-but-unseen creatures that may be responsible for or were born out of “The Crisis” event.
While The Tent initially comes across as a thriller with horror overtones, this feature film debut by writer/director Kyle Couch is actually an intelligent, introspective drama made on a well-utlized budget and comes across as a low-budget inversion of the Frank Darabont-directed The Mist — only without the special effect bombast and thespian clutter of superfluous characters in over-the-top dramatic moments.
Michigan-native writer and director Kyle Couch has won awards for his previous shorts and documentaries that led up to this feature film. The work by award-winning cinematographer Robert Skates (with twenty-plus credits across various shorts and indie projects) is exquisite throughout.
Trekkies will recognize Detroit, Michigan, actor Tim Kaiser from his role as Admiral Gardner in the 2016 fan-web series Star Trek: Horizon. Reminding one of Bruce Dern, he’s amassed an impressive 50-plus credit resume across various shorts and web series in a short nine years after beginning his acting career at the age of 56. Kaiser’s co-star, Lulu Dahl, has also embarked on a newly-forged career across several short films, as well as a featured background role in Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Both are excellent in their roles and bigger projects are on the horizon for both in mainstream television series and films.
The Tent is currently on the U.S festival circuit, where it’s won several sets of leaves, and seeking distribution on all of the usual PPV and VOD platforms. You can learn more at the film’s official website and Facebook page.
Disclaimer: We were sent a screener by the film’s P.R firm. That has no bearing on our review.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
The last time we heard from filmmaker Hansi Oppenheimer was her writing and producing debut with the rock-doc Color Me Obsessed: A Film About The Replacements (2011), her musician-fan insightful chronicle on the 12-year career of the Minneapolis punk-pop quartet that issued several beloved college rock gems on Twin Tone and Sire Records. Not exactly a document that screams “mainstream” to the masses.
Now she’s back with another heartfelt tribute to one of America’s non-mainstream writers: Joe R. Lansdale. Okay, yeah, we know you comic book geeks (the B&S staff and probably most of you reading this) know Joe for his work in that field. And there’s no denying that his work on Batman: The Animated Series made that one of the greatest action-animated series of all time — with stories that surpassed the Batman cinematic franchise. His biggest “mainstream” recognition came from the patronage of Don Coscarelli (Phantasm) adapting Joe’s Bram Stoker Award-nominated novella, Bubba Ho-Tep.
Now, we keep putting mainstream in quotes, not as an insult to Joe’s work. But let’s face it: there’s nothing “major studio” about a tale that features Elvis Presley and John F. Kennedy (who goes underground as a surgical-altered African-American . . . maybe) battling a soul-sucking Egyptian mummy in a nursing home. No one but the unconventional master of the Silver Sphere could have brought that to the big screen.
And only Hansi Oppenheimer could bring Joe Lansdale to the big screen — a career that needed to be documented on the big screen. As with her Replacements tribute, you immediately sense Hansi’s heartfelt fandom for her subjects. Documentaries about musicians and filmmakers come and go. This is one that stays and, hopefully, will walk away with some deserving awards on the festival circuit. Fascinating stuff.
You need more Joe than this documentary can give you (and it gives a lot)?
Then surf on over to his official website or his Wikipedia Page, which is extensive. Wanna watch his movies? You can watch Don Coscarelli’s Bubba Ho-Tep on TubiTV. You can find Cold in July on all the usual streaming platforms, including You Tube Movies. There’s no VODs for Christmas with the Dead, but Amazon has the DVDs. We also found a copy of Joe and Don Coscarelli’s premiere episode of the first season of Mick Garris’s Masters of Horror series for Showtime, “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road,” on You Tube.
Currently making the festival rounds, you’ll be able to pick this up on all the usual VOD platforms in the coming months. You can keep up to to date with the latest on the film at Squee Projects via their official website and Facebook page.
Disclaimer: We were sent a screener by the film’s P.R firm. That has no bearing on our review.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Moviesand publishes on Medium.
When David Roberts (Craig Lindquist), a successful man suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s wanders away from home a day before Thanksgiving, his already dysfunctional family, headed by his son Matthew (Kyler Steven Fisher), splintering under the financial and spiritual strain in caring for their patriarch, snaps.
Out on the streets alone, David comes to develop a spiritually-mending friendship with Christine (Shayla McCaffrey), a fatherless, thirteen-year-old homeless girl who saved him after a street beating. Through the faith and selflessness of their “father’s keeper,” the Roberts family comes to restore their own family and faith.
Our Father’s Keeper is admittedly different from the genres of films in the indie marketplace that we normally review here at B&S About Movies. And we know that faith-based films are not palpable subject matter for everyone. And in these current hard times, as we deal with a global pandemic, the last thing anyone wants to watch is a movie about a family struggling with a disease.
But it also the exact time that we need a movie like Our Father’s Keeper in the marketplace to affirm that there is a light at the end of even the darkest tunnels.
This intelligently-written feature film debut by screenwriter Chris Dallimore is directed by Rob Diamond. An award-winning writer and director in his own right, Diamond’s been behind the keyboard and lens since the late ’90s and amassed twenty-plus credits in both disciplines.
Fans of character actor Danny Trejo may already be familiar with Diamond’s work, as Trejo starred in two of his previous films: Justin Time, a 2010 family-adventure, and Propensity, a 2006 dramatic-thriller. Diamond’s forte is, of course, faith-based films and his works in that genre, The Last Straw, starring Corbin Bernsen, and Wayward: The Prodigal Son, won Utah Awards in 2013 and 2015.
Hopefully, based on that production pedigree and the fact that Diamond can bring familiar, quality actors such as Trejo and Bernsen onto his projects, it will encourage one to watch Our Father’s Keeper. Putting the faith-based subject matter aside, Our Father’s Keeper is a well-made film that features stellar performances from its unknown, new-to-the-streaming-screen cast. Craig Lindquist and Shayla McCaffrey, in particular, will each quickly expand their now slight resumes with larger, more mainstream projects. Thread reviewers name drop “Hallmark” in their comments on the film. I feel the subject matter of Our Father’s Keeper is a bit too heavy for that channel’s warm n’ fuzzy rom-com catalog. It is, however, deserving of wider exposure on the family-friendly Up cable channel (which began its broadcast life as Gospel Music Channel and GMC-TV).
Streaming in the online marketplace for several months on Amazon Prime and the You Tube channel of the faith and family-based Encourage TV (which also streams on Roku and Android TV), Our Father’s Keeper made its premiere as a free-with-ads stream this month on TubiTv.
Disclaimer: We weren’t provided an advanced screener or a review request by the film’s PR company, distributor, or director. We discovered this film all on our own via social media and genuinely enjoyed the movie.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Everyone dreams of second chances as they fight their demons of regret over past decisions and time wasted.
This is the quandary facing Nick (Mason Heidger, the upcoming psychological short, Tomorrow Is Yesterday), a loveable “mad scientist” obsessed with the concept of time travel. Now, seven years after his first experiments, his career and finances are in a shambles, his family and friends have abandoned him, and his marriage with Jess (Tori Titmas) has ended in divorce — which exacerbates his resolve to make the hypothetical a scientific reality. If he can make his machine work so he can get a government contract, he can get his life back. . . .
Nick’s fortunes change when a consortium realizes Nick is closer to success than Dr. Kent (Steve Berglund), their own frazzled, chief time travel physicist. Nick will receive the funding needed to finish the project and have a permanent job, provided he travels with Dr. Kent into the past. And it works . . . and the machine blows the home’s fuse box and leaves them stranded seven years in the past, as they wait several hours for the machine to recharge its mainframe.
The temptation to “break the rules of time travel,” i.e., not tampering with the past and altering the present, complicate the trip when Nick discovers he’s surrounded by the friends and family that once shunned him — on the night of his engagement party when he first proposed to Jess, the woman he just divorced.
As the tagline on the theatrical one-sheet states: Making Time was shot in two days. . . .
And the genesis of the film was . . . a home renovation.
Writer-director Grant Pichla and his wife, Lyndsay, were in the process of remodeling their suburban home, so Pichla “seized the day” by using the real life “set” as an opportunity to illustrate time travel. Principal photography of first half of the film — the past, with the house in a shambles — was filmed in “real time” over the course of one day. The second half of the film — the present, with the remodel completed — was film seven months later.
If you’re familiar with the intelligence of Shane Carruth’s low-budget time travel drama Primer and Charlie Kaufman’s (Adaptation) sci-fi romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (both 2004), then you’ll enjoy the character-driven premise of Grant Pichla’s sophomore feature film (his first was 2014’s Niner). If you connected with the scientific wanderlust of the recently released Red Rover, Shane Belcourt’s indie rom-com centered around the Mars One Project, you’ll enjoy this inventive time travel romance.
Making Time is, in fact, the second low-budget time travel movie I’ve watched this year: the other was the sci-fi rom-com Same Boat. And as with that utterly brilliant Chris Roberti-directed film, Making Time is the type of film that inspires mainstream A-List producers to take notice. And as with my prediction that we’ll be seeing more from Chris Roberti: we’ll be seeing more from Grant Pichla. It’s just a matter of time. And the clock will strike sooner, than later.
The same holds true for Michigan-based lead actor Mason Heidger, who’s appeared in an array of shorts and indie features (along with a dayplayer role as Officer Rucka in the Detroit-shot scenes of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice). His co-star, Tori Titmas, recently made her feature film screenwriting debut with the comedy The Girls of Summer.
As I watched Heidger’s performance unfold, I was reminded of the acting brilliance of Jim Parsons in his portrayal of Sheldon Cooper in CBS-TV’s The Big Bang Theory. Heidger’s thespian skills in rattling off scientific expositional dialogue are on equal. Is the “science” of time accurately based in theoretical physics and quantum mechanics? Is it all just a screenwriting trick-of-the-keyboard? No matter. It is written and acted with such conviction by team Pichla-Heidger, that they convinced me — as I ponder what reading materials, besides filmmaking texts, sits on the shelves of Pichla’s remodeled house.
My only quibble (and it’s not a deal breaker) with the film is the time machine itself. In the lo-fi lands of indie film, we’re certainly not expecting a Robert Zemeckis-inspired DeLorean to appear . . . but what “sold” Shane Carruth’s Primer to indie-fans was the inventive construction of his lab and its related props on-a-budget. In Making Time, the time machine does appear, as one thread reviewer pointed out, to be a (black) sheet draped over a cone strung with Christmas lights (and a short stack of DVD decks/cable boxes “hooked” up to an iPad). But hey, actor Peter Fonda rigged up 8-Track players to send (nude) people through time in an underground desert bunker in Idaho Transfer — and Sam and I like that Mill Creek public domain ditty. And I enjoyed Making Time.
After a successful festival run — where it won awards for Best Acting Performance of the Year and Best Supporting Actress at the 2019 LA Actors Awards, and Best Indie Feature at the 2020 Vegas Movie Awards — Making Time began streaming in the online marketplace via Amazon Prime and premiered this month as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTV through Indie Rights Movies. You can learn more about the film at its official Facebook page.
You can learn more about IRM’s roster of films on their official website, along with their Facebook and You Tube pages. Back in March and April, we reviewed two of Indie Rights’ most recent releases: M.O.M: Mother of Monsters (starring Ed Asner of TV’s Lou Grant fame) and the equally intelligent and inventive sci-fi thriller Double Riddle. You can also watch Tori Titmas in The Girls of Summer — directed by . . . wait for it . . . only at B&S About Movies . . . John D. Hancock, the writer-director of the 1971 Drive-In psychological-horror classicLet’s Scare Jessica to Death — via IRM on TubiTV.
Update: April 2022: Persistence and time pays off for Mason Heidger. He booked his first network television gig on NBC-TVs Chicago P.D. with the Season 9: Episode 19 “Fool’s Gold.” You can now stream it online at NBC.com.
Disclaimer: We weren’t provided an advanced screener or a review request by the film’s PR company, distributor, or director. We discovered Making Time on our own via social media and genuinely enjoyed the movie.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes forB&S About Movies.
If you’re a regular reader at our humble, little corner of the web, you know how muchwe admirejourneyman-actor Eric Roberts around this neck of the wilds of Allegheny County. Yes, we will sit through a Lifetime damsel-in-distress movie—their Stalked by My Doctor franchise, now up to part 3—for our Eric Roberts fix. We’ll even watch Hallmark holiday movies (A Husband for Christmas and The Great Halloween Puppy Adventure) for our Eric Roberts blow with a shot of David DeCoteau.
Yes, that love goes even deeper into the celluloid thickets when Eric teams with our favorite directors, such as David DeCoteau (Bigfoot vs. D.B. Cooper, A Talking Cat), along with Mark Polonia (Amityville Death House) and Mark L. Lester (Hitman’s Run, Groupie, and Public Enemies). We even streamed Fred Olen Ray’s Boggy Creek: The Series on series on Amazon Prime just to listen to Eric’s voiceover narration. And Eric worked with Kent Wakeford (Power 98), the cinematographer on Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and the Blaxploitation classic Black Belt Jones.
But how is it that across Eric’s 523 credits — with 60 more films in various stages of filming and pre-and-post production — Fred Olen Ray hasn’t done a live-action film with Eric? Eric’s not only done a Christmas movie with David DeCoteau (again, A Husband For Christmas), he’s made 14 movies with David DeCoteau*. How is it that Eric hasn’t appeared in at least one of Fred’s 11 X-Mas flicks?
Eric Roberts in a Fred Olen Ray movie . . . that would be the best X-Mas for Sam and I — ever. Even that Christmas when I got the Aurora Xcelerator race track. Even that Christmas when Becca gave Sam a Mayhem t-shirt.
However, until that dream Olen Ray-Roberts project comes to fruition, there’s more than enough Eric Roberts flicks to enjoy. These days, Eric’s a journeyman actor who truly enjoys traveling around the country helping helping both established filmmakers (but a bit down-and-out these days) and budding storytellers market their films. Some of the films from those undiscovered filmmakers that we’ve reviewed include The Arrangement, Angels Fallen, Clinton Road, and Lone Star Deception.
I know. I know. Off-the-rails with Eric Roberts love. Get back to the movie.
And to that end: Eric ended up in Asheville, North Carolina, to lend a thespian hand to screenwriter James Blankenfeld and director James Suttles. Blankenfeld is an established production assistant and cameraman (The Apprentice, Project Runway) making his feature film debut as a screenwriter with The Evil Inside Her. James Blankenfeld brings a more established career to the set as a cinematographer with his twenty-credits deep resume on a variety of indie shorts and features, as well as a half-dozen directing credits — with The Evil Inside Her as his third feature film.
Hopefully, based on that production pedigree, ye streamers of the digital divide will be inspired to watch, knowing that you’re getting production values above the usual norms for low-budget streaming movies and Roberts “starring” flicks, in general.
As with most of the films in his mindboggling oeuvre, we go into The Evil Inside Her with the knowledge that Eric’s role will be a small one (and sometimes, a pivotal one; it is, here), while the “lead actors” are unknown, mostly amateurs from the local theatre community who, while they give it their all, offer up the occasional awkward, strained moments.
As you can tell from the theatrical one-sheet, this is another in a long line of “cabin in the woods” thrillers about a group of 20-somethings’ vacation stay gone wrong, ala Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead. And James Blankenfeld knows we’ve been in these foreboding woods before, with its wide array of home invasion sieges-by sexual deviants (Dead by Dawn and Cry for the Bad Man), flat-out demon possession (Reawakened), disturbed J or K-Horror onryōs, shiryō, or yūreis (0.0 Mhz), or their Euroized, yulyeong (hair ghost) counterparts (Evil River). Blankenfeld intelligently bypasses the “from the beyond” hocus pocus or supernatural deus ex machina tomfoolery. There’s no Paul Naschy out-of-left field zombie seige (Horror Rises from the Tomb). There’s no centuries-dead malevolent witch connected to trinkets. No basement-hidden reel-to-reel tape players. No bogus necronomicons. And, most importantly, there’s no “lone survivor” doped up in a hospital bed flashing us back with tortured dreams.
What Blankenfeld gives us, in a refreshing twist-of-the-keyboard, is an ominous, dapper chap that calls himself Clayton: but I like to refer to him as “The Chemist.” Yep, you guessed it: Eric Roberts, in a role that, for me, plays as a sequel, prequel, or sidequel to his ambiguous role as the foreboding “The Pitchman” in The Arrangement (released this month to streaming platforms).
When The Evil Inside Her opens, “it” has already been released: we see a daughter slaughter her elderly father over breakfast, which leads us to the opening titles montage of news clippings about a rash of unexplained domestic violence murders: suddenly for no reason, people snap and murder their friends and family.
The “reason” is The Chemist . . . and he’s using society as his personal lab. His newest lab rat is Vikki (Melissa Kunnap; good here in a spiraling, slow burn), doped-up at the local coffee shop on the way to the cabin: she begins a campaign of self-mutilation that progresses to murder in quick succession. As with The Pitchman in The Arrangement: The Chemist is Hell’s Geppetto, a bizarro Alfred Lord Tennyson pushing a little wonder drug that “helps” man see in the world what he carries in his heart: repressed immorality, anger and rage toward his fellow man. The Chemist removes one’s inhibitions to be their true selves: cold blooded killers.
Why?
Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.
On a release rollout since the spring of 2019 on DVD, VOD, and PPV in the worldwide marketplace, The Evil Inside Her is now available as a free-with-ads stream on TubiTv. You can learn more about the film with this interview from director James Suttles at Scared Stiff Reviews. You can also visit the film’s official website and SuttleFilm.
* For the Roberts-DeCoteau-Roberts completists, the rest of their resume (by the time you read this: it’s ever-expanding):
Bonnie & Clyde: Justified Doc Holliday’s Revenge Evil Exhumed Hansel & Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft Snow White: A Deadly Summer Sorority Slaughterhouse Wolves of Wall Street The Wrong Mommy The Wrong Roommate The Wrong Teacher
Disclaimer: We weren’t provided an advanced screener or a review request by the film’s PR company, distributor, or director. We discovered this film all on our own as we went down an Eric Roberts-IMDb rabbit hole looking for online streams of his films. We genuinely enjoyed the movie.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Phew! We did it! Sam and I set out to spend a week reviewing rock n’ roll flicks for the week of July 19th to the 25th and went overboard – as is the B&S About Movies modus operandi — with 55 films. Things got so nuts — why do I let Sam’s brilliant ideas for “theme weeks” get me into these messes — that we also did a special “Drive-In Saturday” featurette to go with our usual “Drive-In Friday” weekly feature.
And we still didn’t get to them all!
So be on the lookout for our “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week II” rolling out the week of September 20th to the 26th with another 50-plus films.
Drive-In Friday: Movie Punks La Venganza de Los Punks (1987) Ladies and Gentleman, The Fabulous Stains (1982) Return of the Living Dead (1985) Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979)
WHAT? MORE ROCK? Don’t forget that there is a “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week II” to jam on! And there’s a third installment week coming in the last week of August. We’re crazy that way.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Moviesand publishes short stories and music reviews on Medium.
Uh-oh. The studio copywriters are name dropping hit films on the VHS sleeves again. This can’t be good. Wayne’s World? This is Spinal Tap? The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Say what? Bill & Ted’ s Excellent Adventure? The Blues Brothers? Repo Man? Monty friggin’ Python? Surely, you jest, ye stoned public relations copywriter.
Yeah, I fear this is going be Zoo Radio all over again, with its claims of “. . . if you like Porky’s and Animal House. . . .” Yeah, you better strap in, Elwood. This review is going off the friggin’ rails, B&S About Movies style! It’s time for everything you wanted to know about It’s a Complex World . . . but were afraid to ask. . . .
VHS image courtesy of mcknight138/eBay
So, did you know there were two rock ‘n’ roll flicks shot in Providence, Rhode Island? True story.
The first was A Matter of Degrees (1990)—a movie that, courtesy of the oft-seen Prism Video imprint (and Atlantic Records involvement in its production), received decent distribution and was somewhat easy to find on home video shelves. We say “somewhat” because, even with multiple (in my case, three) mom n’ pop video store memberships stuffed in the wallet (and yes, three more from the mega and regional chains of Blockbuster Video, 10,0001 Monster Video, and Video Ave.), most of us didn’t see that beloved (but failed) college radio drama as a rental during its initial year of release—but as an alt-rock artifact excavated by-chance during one of our triangulating-by-phone book home video store excursions on the asphalt rivers. (I eventually came to score two used copies: one I kept; the other was birthday-gifted—along with a CD copy of the soundtrack.)
By then, that John Doe-starring flick (backed by the college rock sounds of Firehose and Miracle Legion) was a forgotten, dusty analog tchotchke stuffed on the shelf of an out-of-way video store sandwiched between a Target and smoothie joint that I happened upon that was having a going-out-business sale. To say I was the proverbial “kid in the candy store” that day is an understatement: I also scored copies of the “No False Metal” classics (but saw them as multiple-rentals) of Hard Rock Zombies, Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare, Rocktober Blood, Shock ‘em Dead, and Terror on Tour—and a copy of the never-seen, second “rock” film shot in Providence: It’s a Complex World.
As with that first Providence-shot flick, It’s a Complex World was a highly coveted rock ‘n’ roll tale lost in a morass of production and distribution snafus; a highly-sought after analog rumored-fable by VHS loving rock dogs (such as myself). Did this movie really exist, or was this another Rock ‘N’ Roll Hotel (1983): just another 3/4” inch tease that was never finished, never made it to home video shelves, and never aired on cable courtesy of USA Network (where all VHS B-Movie schlock went to die) and HBO?
Sadly, this “Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel” fable (okay, it’s a nightclub, but you get the idea) was a rock joint rife with anticipation that, once found, was a letdown (at least for me; some, in other quarters, love it . . . and so it goes).
Instead of those previously mentioned VHS rock ditties that lent themselves to multiple viewings (add The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Cannon’s wacked rock fable, The Apple, and Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise to the list), we ended up with another musical-snoozer ala Playing for Keeps, Scenes from the Goldmine, and Suffering Bastards (all rock club shenanigans flicks). Alas, I didn’t “check-in” to the FM Hilton: this was another Zoo Radio. I wasn’t staying at the hotel Breaking Glass: this was another piss-stained motel Splitz (1984; Robin Johnson from Times Square fronting an all-girl band) . . . or Joey (1985; about the comeback of faux ‘60s rocker Joey King and the Delsonics) or Immortal (1998; boring North Carolina rock-vampire horror). You know what I mean: Allan Moyle’s Pump Up the Volume (1990) was pirate radio gold; Ferd Sebastian’s On the Air Live with Captain Midnight (1979) was a dented, tarnished pewter ale stein crusted in barnacles. . . .
Snork—yes, that’s me yawning; shocking awake to a VCR blue screen, shaking the popcorn dust from my t-shirt and going to take a piss. . . .
Sorry, no offense is intended to the denizens of Providence who have (justified) fond memories of the film’s production and local theatre screenings. For me, It’s a Complex World was one of those chipped VHS Bric-à-bracs that you watch once for the anticipated-curiosity value—fooled into hoping you’re getting an inversion of Allan Arkush’s rock club flick, Get Crazy—and it’s shelved back into the collection as a dust magnet for the next pass of the Swiffer.
So, how did this movie come into being . . . and where did it go wrong?
Well, like most indie movies: out of desperation to make “something.” And it took five cooks to clankin’ the pasta pots. Five writers: screenwriter Dennis Maloney, along with director Jim Wolpaw, club owner Rich Lupo, producer Geoff Adams, and actor-musician-star Stanley Matis each offering their own ingredients to an all-too spicy, starchy pot. And the film had an additional, fifth producer, Charles Thompson, who probably dropped some bardin’ as well.
Anyway, in 1987, Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, a legendary, real life Providence rock club, was in danger of closing (to make way for a condo development). So owner Rich Lupo came up with an idea: let’s make a movie to commemorate the club’s demise and trash the joint!
And as luck would have it: Lupo’s head bartender and club manager, his ex-Brown University roommate, Jim Wolpaw, was a budding filmmaker who received a “Best Documentary, Short Subjects” Oscar nomination for his 1986 short Keats and His Nightingale: A Blind Date (several of his shorts and documentaries have since won prizes at a dozen film festivals worldwide). So the duo organized a benefit concert in July of 1987, booked the Young Adults, filmed it (thus creating their own, original stock footage; take that, Roger Corman!), then scripted “a plot” around the last night shenanigans of a club closing (just like Allan Arkush’s earlier Get Crazy from 1983 commemorating the closing of NYC’s Fillmore East).
The completed film—which took two-and-a-half months to shoot in 1987, then went through two years of post-production, reshoots, and legal wrangling—had an unprecedented four month run at Providence’s Cable Car Theatre, along with a two-month run in Boston and a one week run in New York City—garnering good reviews from the city’s local film critics.
Then its planned, national theatrical distribution with Hemdale (The Who’s Tommy, Escape from the Bronx, Turkey Shoot, River’s Edge, The Terminator, back-to-back Academy Award winners Platoon and The Last Emperor, The Terminator) went sour. While Wolpaw won the case and received a miniscule settlement, the film’s chances for a national release were over.
At that point, the film was turned over to Prism for a home video release. A film that would have programmed nicely amid the USA Network’s “Night Flight” rock programming block alongside Breaking Glass and Ladies and Gentleman: The Fabulous Stains, wasn’t forthcoming—and no HBO or Showtime showings, either. The last public theatre showing of the film was a 20th anniversary screening in 2010 on November 5 and 6 (four sold out showings) for a charity event held at Cable Car Theatre (Carolyn Forest for the Gloria Gemma Breast Cancer Foundation and in the name of producer Charlie Thompson for Advocates in Action). At that point, Wolpaw vanity-pressed a small lot of DVDs (with two cuts of the film; the rough cut and the video/theatrical cut) for sale through a since defunct website (that also benefited the same charities). But that was ten years ago and those limited-run DVDs are long since out of print.
Courtesy of the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame
For years, it was believed that (in the VHS wastelands outside of Providence, natch) the Young Adults were a faux band scripted for the movie; it turned out they were a real band, real enough that—it’s been said in the annals of Young Adults wikidom—at one time TV producer Lorne Michaels had the Rhode Island rock hopefuls on the short-list to be the house band for Saturday Night Live. Other YA factoids: future Talking Heads founder, David Byrne, auditioned for them. And Charles Rocket, who became a Saturday Night Live cast members and starred in the Farrelly’s Dumb and Dumber, was the lead singer in an early ’70s embryonic version of the Young Adults, the Fabulous Motels. And director Jim Wolpaw and the Young Adults worked together before: Showtime aired their 1978 half-hour documentary, Cobra Snake For A Necktie, with the band backing rock ‘n’ roll legend Bo Diddley. The nine-day sold-out stint was recorded on the Heartbreak’s stage during Diddley’s tour for his 1974 album, Big Bad Bo. (Of course it’s on You Tube! Isn’t everything on You Tube?)
Based on the Young Adults wacked out stage wares and the cheeky brand of Catskills-vaudevillian shtick by comically-dubbed co-lead singers Ruby Cheeks and Sport Fisher, it’s easy to believe that SNL rock-factoid. In fact, comparing the Young Adults to the ’70s San Francisco-era, pre-MTV stardom days of Fee Waybill and the Tubes is not far off the mark. One may say, because of the costuming, Adam and the Ants; but the Ants never recorded songs like “Christmas in Japan in July,” “Do the Heimlich,” “I Wanna Throw Up in the Back of a Limo-sine,” “Kill Yourself,” and “Meat Rampage,” did they? The Young Adults’ lone indie album recorded live at Lupo’s, 1987’s Helping Others, served as the film’s pseudo-soundtrack. Sadly, unlike with A Matter of Degrees, there was never an official soundtrack released to also showcase the music of the also appearing Beat Legends, Roomful of Blues, and Stanley Matis.
The plot, such as it is (less narrative story and more a series of variety show-styled vignettes), is another one of those dads-disappointed-with-his-rock-son flicks. In this case, Jeff Burgess is the manager of a Providence rock joint, The Heartbreak Hotel. A disappointment to his conservative, ex-CIA agent father-cum-Senator now running for the Presidency, Robert Burgess feels his son’s rock club will negatively affect his presidential campaign ambitions. (Hey, isn’t that the plot of 2003’s Malibu’s Most Wanted starring Jamie Kennedy?) So the future “Mr. President” hires revolutionaries to stage a terrorist bombing at the club . . . and his son dying in the chaos will garner him the sympathy vote. That’s politics.
Meanwhile, Providence’s corrupt Mayor (Rich Lupo himself), unaware that the Senator has his own nefarious plans, hires a Civil War-obsessed biker gang (led by wrestling legend Captain Lou Albano; the rock n’ wrestling flick Body Slam) to bust up the club and drive it out of business for a land deal. That’s politics.
Then there’s the disenfranchised Morris Brock (Providence comedian-musician Stanley Matis), an angry, disillusioned geeky singer of angry folk songs who desperately wants to get out from under his successful dead brother’s shadow. So he joins up with the terrorists. That’s proving those parents wrong—even if you gotta blow up the joint “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” style.
Hey! Elvis isn’t going to let his namesake rock club be destroyed! So, from beyond the grave (by voice only; he’s not actually in the film, like in Quentin Tarantino’s True Romance; he doesn’t show up like Hendrix did in the the doppelganger Rock ‘N’ Roll Hotel) “The King” reaches out by phone to Beatlegends, a Beatles tribute band on the bill, and discloses some secrets about John Lennon—and warnings of what’s about to happen to the club.
The rock ‘n’ roll is also provided by blues rockers NRBQ (“12 Bar Blues” and their new wave radio hit “Me and the Boys” appear in the film), who do coke in the bathroom (they also appeared on the soundtracks to Tuff Turfand Sean S. Cunningham’s Spring Break). Also appearing on screen and the “soundtrack” are the New England bands (why Providence’s rock denizens love this movie) Roomful of Blues and Beat Legends. And get this: New Jersey neighbors the Smithereens (appeared on the soundtrack to Albert Pyun’s 1987 juvenile delinquency flick Dangerously Close with “Blood and Roses”) worked as extras getting snookered at the bar (but none of their songs are in the film).
VHS image courtesy of mcknight138/eBay
And proving that all actors have to start somewhere: Peter Gerty and Becca Lish, who starred as part of Lou Albano’s biker gang, are still thespin’ in 2020. You’ve seen Gerty as a regular and guest star in Dick Wolf’s NBC-TV productions Homicide: Life on the Street and the Law & Order franchise. HBO and Showtime subscribers seen him as a cast member on The Wire and Brotherhood, and most recently on Ray Donovan (starring Liev Schreiber), but you’ll definitely remember Gerty as Mall Security Chief Brooks from Paul Mart: Mall Cop among his hundred-plus credits. Providence-based actor Becca Lish got her start in A Matter of Degrees and worked her way up to recent roles in TV’s Law & Order, Younger, and the rebooted Murphy Brown, in addition to voice work on several Disney series.
Cinematographer Denis Maloney is also still going strong in 2020; among his hundred-plus credits are the Witchcraft series (based on the 1988 original; remember the witch with six-breasts? Or was it eight!), Cyber Bandits (1995; Adam Ant), Liberty Stands Still (2002; Wesley Snipes), the Farrelly Brother’s There’s Something About Mary, as well as several, recent Lifetime movies (none with our beloved Eric Roberts, at least not yet!).
The Young Adults’ Ruby Cheeks went on to have a cameo in the Farrelly Brothers’ later Rhode Island-based picture, Jim Carrey’s Me, Myself and Irene.
. . . Now, let’s clear up the Seinfeld rumors that one of “George Costanza’s bosses” appeared in the film: it’s true! Daniel von Bargen (Mr. Kruger from Kruger Industrial Smoothing) stars as the terrorist group’s leader, Malcom.
Say what? There’s no freebie online VHS rips? Oh, well. And since those 2010 DVDs are out-of-print and there’s no official streams (not even as a with-ads stream on TubiTV?), all we have to share with you are the trailer, along with the opening title credits sequence and a clip of the Young Adults on stage in the film.
Ugh, this really is Rock ‘N’ Roll Hotel all over again! When will we ever see the full film?
You can learn more about the catalog of the Young Adults on their Discogs page and a wealth of their tunes are preserved on the You Tube page of Flamingo Land. We’ve also found three of Stanley Matis’s “geek folk” tunes: “New Jersey” (which he performed in the film), and three later tunes: “Buster Christ,” “Empire Review,” and “Frugal Duck.” And the Roomful of Blues album that I remember the most—that got some notice on the more adventurous new wave-oriented radio stations—was their second album, 1979’s Let’s Have a Party, which is on You Tube. (Remember Jack Mack and the Heart Attack in Tuff Turf? Well, it’s cool like that.) You can also learn more about the Rhode Island music scene via the Rhode Island Music Hall of FameYou Tube page and website.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Special thanks to Dangerous Minds.net, Dr. Bristol’s Prescription blog, Providence Daily Dose, Providence Monthly Online, Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame, and Spectacle Theatre NY for their efforts in preserving this rock flick obscurity, which assisted in the preparation of this review.
In the ’80s The Knack hit it big . . . and the record companies went looking for the next “My Sharona” . . . and signed the likes of The Plimsouls (“A Million Miles Away”), Translator (“Everywhere That I’m Not”), and Wire Train (“A Chamber of Hellos”). Later on, along came some kid named Kurt Cobain . . . and the record companies searched for instant chart nirvana in the grooves of Bush, Pearl Jam, and Silverchair.
And in between, there was a little ‘ol band out of Ireland called U2. And the record companies gave us the likes of Big Country (remember their guitars “sounded” like bag pipes) from Scotland, along with Ėire Isle’s An Emotional Fish and Hothouse Flowers (both oh, so “Bono”), and Silent Running (imagine Brian Adams writing songs for Bad Company fronted by Bono). But the ones that looked and sounded the most like U2 was a band out of Wales known as The Alarm. Their label, IRS Records (home to another set of U2 hopefuls out of Athens, Georgia, R.E.M), even went as far as booking the Welsh lads on U2’s 1983 groundbreaking “War Tour.” The Irish assist gave the Welsh rockers international success with the songs “The Stand,” “Where Were You Hiding When the Storm Broke?,” “68 Guns,” and “Strength.”
But by the advent of the ’90s — with that kid out of the Pacific Northwest changing the musical landscape — The Alarm was finished. And the record companies wouldn’t give lead vocalist Mike Peters’s new band The Poets Of Justice or his solo endeavors the time of day. He was “too old” and his music was “out of style,” they told him.
So Peters pulled a Milli Vanilli, so to speak.
After writing a new song, “45 RPM,” he recruited an unknown band by the name of the Wayriders to lipsync the song’s promotional video — under the name the Poppy Fields. And the scam worked: the song hit the British Top 30 in 2004 and became the Alarm’s first significant hit in 20 years.
In the frames of this fun, low-budget film loosely based those events, Mike Peters and the Alarm are portrayed by down-on-his luck punk rocker Johnny Jones (Phil Daniels from Breaking Glass and Quadrophenia), the leader of the once glorious Weapons of Happiness. After attending a funeral for one of his old mates, Johnny runs into his old band (as well as Steve Diggle from the Buzzcocks and Peters from the Alarm in cameos) and decides to get the band back together.
. . . And the record companies couldn’t be more disinterested in the “new music” from these ‘ol sods and codgers. So Johnny hires a bunch of fresh-faced youngins to mime his music in a promotional video. The gig — well, jig — is up when the Johnny’s hired guns — the Single Shots — decide they want to be a “real band” and receive more recognition for their work. (Cue Don Kirshner and his Beatles wannabes, the Monkees. Be sure to check out our Exploring: The Movies of Don Kirshner featurette.)
Meanwhile, back in the real world: Mike Peters gave it all up in a Radio 1 interview during a 2004 chart countdown show — and the story was picked up by the international press. After the U.K. and European success of the film and its accompanying soundtrack in 2012, Mike Peters and the Alarm embarked on The Vinyl Tour 2013 to packed venues.
. . . And Peters and the Alarm are still recording. They released their most recent album, Sigma, and its hit single, “Brighter Than the Sun,” in 2019. Ironically, in 2021, the band released the effort, War. You can learn more about that album in this piece by the Los Angeles Daily News.
Yeah, Peters made his point: you’re never too old to rock ‘n’ roll. Amen!
As for director Sara Sugarman — who got her start as an actress in Alex Cox’s Sid and Nancy (1986) and a variety of British television series — she’s been named as the new director of the production beleaguered Midas Man (2023), concerned with the relationship between the Beatles and Brian Epstein. We discuss that film — and thirty-three more — as part of our three-part series regarding speculative biographical flicks on the Beatles, the films using the legend of the “Fab Four” as plot fodder, and the historical sidebars to their careers — both as a band and solo artists.
You can stream Vinyl as a free with ads on TubiTv. If you’d prefer an ad-free experience, you can stream it on You Tube Movies.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Week at B&S About Movies was a smashing success . . . one that can’t be contained in just one Drive In Friday* featurette! So, for this week only, we’ve opened up the Drive In for a special Saturday edition for you old punk codgers n’ sods. You know who you are . . . you were in middle school or high school during the advent of the cable TV boom and a fan of the USA Network’s “Night Flight” Friday night video programming block, channel surfing HBO and, later on, haunting the shelves of your local video store . . . so you’ll remember seeing these four punkumentaries. It’s been years since I’ve watched these gems myself, so this’ll be a fun night for all.
Oi! Hey, ho! Let’s go! All Aboardfor Punk Night!
1. Punk In London (1977)
Director Wolfgang Büld bounced around the Germany film and TV industry since the early ’70s and made his English language debut with this German-produced documentary that accompanied the release of a coffee table book of the same name. The film features live performances — some of the footage and sound is of questionable quality — from some of the scene’s top bands, such as the Adverts, the Boomtown Rats, the Clash, the Lurkers, the Jam, Killjoys, the Sex Pistols, Sham 69, the Stranglers, and X-Ray Spex.
Büld followed up this document on the rise of punk rock with a sequel on “the fall” of punk rock, 1980’s Punk and Its Aftershocks, which featured the rise of the new, more commercial crop of ska, new wave, and mod bands that pushed out the punks, such as Madness, Secret Affair, Selector, and the Specials. As with any old VHS reissued to DVD, the reissues company had to tinker with the sequel and give it a new title (the lame “British Rock”) and edit out some footage from the original cut. Ugh!
The restored DVD digital rip of Punk in London currently streams on a variety of VOD platforms, but you can watch it for free on Flick Vaults’ You Tube channel. You can view a complete track listing of the bands and songs that appear in the film on Discogs.
Büld’s other punk documents include the hour-long 1980 TV document Women in Rock (leftovers not used in Punk In London), which centers on the German tours of British metalers Girlschool, along with Brit punkers the Slits, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Nina Hagen (Cha Cha), along 1978’s with Reggae in Babylon centered on the career of English reggae pioneers Steel Pulse. Büld made his narrative, dramatic debut with the German language (dubbed into English) film debut of Nena (of “99 Luftballoons” fame) in Gib Gas – Ich will Spaß! (Hangin’ Out).
2. The Punk Rock Movie (1978)
And you thought the footage featured in Punk In London was rough . . . the grainy, shaky images and muddy sound of this debut film by British punk scenester and club DJ Don Letts makes Büld’s works look like award winners . . . but we thank Letts for gearing up that Super-8 camera to chronicle those 100 glorious days in 1977 when Neal Street’s fashionable disco The Roxy booked punk bands in the venue where Letts spun records.
The live acts and backstage interviews include Alternative TV, the Clash, Generation X (Billy Idol), Eater, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Slaughter and the Dogs, the Slits, Subway Sect, and X-Ray Spex. So, regardless of its home movie quality, the film serves as a vital document of London’s then burgeoning punk rock scene.
Letts went onto form Big Audio Dynamite with Mick Jones (after his firing from the Clash) and directed a number of short-form music videos (the Clash’s “Rock the Casbah”) and long-form TV and DVD documentaries, such as 2005’s Punk: Attitude (Euro TV/U.S. DVD) and Westway to the World, his 2003 Grammy Award-winning documentary on the Clash.
The Punk Rock Movie is available on a few VOD streaming platforms, such as Amazon Prime (region dependent), but there’s a VHS rip available on You Tube. You can review the film’s full track listing on Discogs.
Intermission: Punktoons!
. . . And Back to the Show!
3. D.O.A (1980)
London-born Polish documentarian Lech Kowalski’s feature film debut (he made a few shorts and TV films) centers around the 16-mm footage he shot during the Sex Pistols’ 1978 seven-city club ‘n’ bars tour of the United States — their only U.S tour — that ended with the band’s demise. The behind-the-scenes interview footage features the now infamous “John and Yoko” bed-inspired interview of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen (You Tube). To fill out the short running time, Kowalski cut in performances and interviews with Iggy Pop, along with the Clash, the Dead Boys, Generation X, the Rich Kids (featuring ex-Pistols bassist Glen Matlock), Sham 69, and X-Ray Spex.
Lech’s other rock documents are 2002’s Hey! Is Dee Dee Home, about the life and times of Ramones bassist Dee Dee Ramone (1952-2002), and 1999’s Born to Loose: The Last Rock ‘n Roll Movie, concerned with the life and career of Johnny Thunders (1952-1991) of the New York Dolls and the Heartbreakers (the second, at one time featured, Richard Hell from Blank Generation). Meanwhile, footage from D.O.A appeared in Julien Temple’s 2000 Sex Pistols document The Filth and the Fury (which I went to see in a U.S art house theatre setting).
This one’s not streaming as VOD, but we found two VHS rips on You Tube HERE and HERE to enjoy. You can view the full track listing of the film on Discogs.
4. Urgh! A Music War (1981)
. . . And we saved the best-produced documentary for last: this one dispenses with the backstage tomfoolery and goes right to the stage with professionally-shot footage compiled from a variety of 1980-era shows held in England, France, and the United States. And there’s a couple of reasons why the Police spearhead Urgh! A Music War: Not only were they the most commercially radio-successful “new wave” band of the groups featured; Derek Burbidge, the director, helmed several videos (the famous “Roxanne”) for the Police (he also did Gary Numan’s “Cars”), while Miles Copeland, the brother of the Police’s drummer, Stewart Copeland, managed the Police and operated IRS Records, which produced the film. The film briefly appeared in U.S. theatres via Filmways Pictures (seen it in an art house theatre, natch), but gained its cult status due to its frequent airings on HBO and the USA Network’s “Night Flight” video block.
Beginning in 2009, Warner Archive (the successor-in-interest to Lorimar Pictures, who co-produced with IRS) released an official DVD-R of the movie — burned on a made-to-order basis. As result, this one’s not available as a cable PPV or VOD online stream and the freebie You Tube and Vimeo rips don’t last long. However, searching “Urgh! A Music War” on You Tube populates numerous concert clips from the film. The bands you know in those clips are the mainstream MTV video bands the Police, Devo, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Go-Go’s, Joan Jett, Gary Numan, Oingo Boingo, Wall of Voodoo, X, and XTC. The lesser known bands featured — that some know and most don’t — include L.A.’s the Alley Cats, the Dead Kennedys (Terminal City Ricochet), Magazine (off-shoot of the Buzzcocks), the Fleshtones (Peter Zaremba hosted IRS: The Cutting Edge for MTV), Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, 999, Pere Ubu, the Surf Punks, and Toyah Wilcox (Breaking Glass).
You can view the film’s full track listing on Discogs while you listen to the soundtrack in its entirety on You Tube: Side A/B and Side C/D.
All images of the ’80s original issue VHS covers — the cover arts I remember when I rented them — are courtesy of Discogs.
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