18. ALL THUMBS: Picking up a hitchhiker can be risky… lift with your legs, not your back.

Maggie (Hee-Haw‘s Misty Rowe) learns she’s pregnant so she runs away from home. Such begins a movie by Beverly and Fred Sebastian, who also brought is ‘Gator Bait, On the Air with Captain Midnight and Rocktober Blood. 

She then falls in with some hippies who rob people so that they can finance getting a schoolbus to travel the country in. And then there’s a gruesome abotion scene which contrasts the feel good 70s vibe of flashing your panties to get a ride from a truck driver. 

Somewhere in here, there was a good movie, but the Sebastians aren’t the people to make it. I mean, they try and make a socially conscious movie while all we want are frolicking moments of stealing cash from truckers and making it on the road. And then it turns all Manson family, you know? I guess in that way, it is a very realistic film about the seventies.

You can watch this on Tubi.

17. HEADS OFF AT THE PASS: Something with a decapitation in it.

The Aftermath was, I believed, the shining career moment of auteur Steve Barkett, but man I was wrong. So wrong.

I referred to Barkett in that review as someone that “looks like every stepfather in the late 70’s and early 80’s, the kind of guy that takes you fishing even though you don’t really want to go and says stuff like, “I really care about your mother” and “You don’t have to call me dad, unless you want to” while at nights you ball your fists up and sob hot, wet tears while he and your beloved mother act out the next ten pages in Dr. Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex.”

This one takes place nine years later, so just imagine. He’s been your stepdad awhile, things went weird but kind of bonded and now your mom is dead and he still wants to be in your life but has gone full Q-Anon. This would be the hero of this tale, Richard Flynn, who really does have a maybe son in this played by his real son, and it’s all about a woman cucking a demon lord with a detective which doesn’t seem all that smart but there you go, that’s the world of Empire of the Dark. The end of all this is that Angela, the love of our hero’s life, is about to be killed — as is her son — by Godfrey Ho’s multi-xeroxed actor Richard Harrison, so Richard makes the choice, saves the kid and lives with it.

A few years — maybe twenty — later and we have a Demon Slasher on the loose and Angela coming to Richard in his dreams. What follows is pure scum magic, as the grocery store from Cobra gets ripped off, Joe Pilato shows up with his guts unchoked upon and his hair frosted white and his ability to overact still in place, ninja demon Satan worshippers attack at will, every woman wants a mustache ride from our amply proportioned ex-cop bounty hunter stepdad leading man, sword fights and training montages, more women wanting to taste some of that Frito-dust laden poon broom on Richard’s mug, puppet demons, priests blessing guns, headlobbing and all long dead lovers coming back from the other side and you can only imagine what problems that causes for social security and taxes because just changing your married name can be a real handful.

My God, this movie is wonderful. It’s as if in the intervening decade Barkett dreamed of making something dorkier than his first movie and by all that’s bad in movies, he did it. And I love him for it. I wish he made fifty more films, but the two he did get out there still have the power to destroy minds.

You can get this from VCI.

16. VIDEO STORE DAY: This is the big one. Watch something physically rented or bought from an actual video store. If you don’t have access to one of these sacred archival treasures then watch a movie with a video store scene in it at least. #vivaphysicalmedia

When a video store clerk (Kevin Dillon) has learned a horrible secret. His store is renting a black and white 50s science fiction movie that is brand new, was created by aliens and leads to people being brainwashed. Sure, that could happen.

In the hands of anyone other than director and writer Jeff Lieberman (Squirm, Blue Sunshine), this would be a trifle, but this movie gets to the bottom of one of my major issues: sitting in a room all day and watching movies until I can’t stay awake any longer, then watching more movies.

I mean, I wish that Village Video was real, a place where women like Belinda Watson (Deborah Goodrich, April Fool’s Day) would stroll through hoping to find Truffaut’s Stolen Kisses and I guess the only place that would come close is Scarecrow Video, whose challenge this month inspired hunting down this old VHS chestnut that only got a physical release on DVD and blu ray when Liberman got the rights himself and DIY-distributed it.

Man, Kevin Dillon was getting into all kinds of 50s and 60s throwback shenanigans in the 80s, huh? Beyond the fake science fiction alien movie populated by all asian extraterrestrials, he was also in The Blob remake and Heaven Help Us.

So yeah, it’s not all that great — Lieberman claims that the producers ruined it — but any movie that has a murder-causing VHS tape and Jennifer Tilly in it can’t be all that bad.

15. KILLED BY TECHNOLOGY: The gadgets will getcha (<-autocorrect that one, phone).

A modern-day retelling of the classic Frankenstein story set in the 80s — I mean, the movie is also known as Frankenstein 2000 as Frankenstein 80 was already taken and Joe D’Amato didn’t make Frankenstein 2000: Return from Death until 1992 and he wouldn’t care if he stole a movie title — The Vindicator was made in Canada and directed by Jean-Claude Lord (who also directed Visiting Hours as well as Toby McTeague the very same year).

The ARC corporation is trying to make the spacesuit of the future which will have a rage mode that takes over the wearer’s mind when they need to survive a dangerous situation, going pretty much full-on rage mode. Why this would be part of the machine is something that I leave up to you, dear viewer. That’s the same question that scientist Carl Lehman has, particularly after some monkeys die when one of the bosses, Alex Whyte, cranks them monkeys up to eleven and lets God or whatever machine logic that runs our simulation play dice. Dead monkeys lead to dead scientist which leads to Project Frankenstein, which is sort of RoboCop a year early.

I kind of like how filmmakers say they’re doing a modern Frankenstein and instead of being somewhat coy and naming the robot Project Prometheus or Project Shelley, they sledgehammer the point home and just say, “Hey smart guy, it’s just called Project Frankenstein, OK?”

If you wonder, “Will something go wrong, sending monkeys in a rage and burning Carl’s new skin off and him going on a quest to find his wife, who is played by the actress who would be Jill Bennett on Knot’s Landing?,” then the answer is, of course, yes.

But hey — this also has Pam Grier as Hunter, a hitman who needs a challenge and that usually involves liquidating anyone who knows or sees or even thinks about Carl in the suit. He’s never called the Vindicator, but hey I know one other Canadian scientist who got burned alive inside his cyborg suit and that’d be Weapon Alpha or the Guardian or Vindicator from John Byrne’s Alpha Flight and Canadians may be too polite to vindicate but I do not believe they are so polite as not to steal a movie title.

Anyways, there are some cyborg zombie battles and Carl’s colleague Burt trying to cuck him from beyond the grave and umbilical tubes being used to drown people and much like the cover of the VHS, I’m making this all sound way more exciting than it is. But isn’t that what renting movies used to be all about? You see a title like The Vindicator and a flaming cyborg — much less one designed by Stan Winston — and you say, “Gimme that.” Maybe a few hours later you regret your decision, but it was only a 93 minute and $2 investment, so life used to be a lot simpler.

12. CAMPFIRES & FLASHLIGHTS: One where a character tells a scary story and then… flashback.

This challenge was a bit rough, as my goal is to watch movies I’ve never seen before during every Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge, which meant that I couldn’t write about Madman, Friday the 13th, the Friday the 13th remake, Friday the 13th part 2, The Fog, The Howling, Meatballs, The Burning, The Final Terror, Sorority House Massacre, The Prey, Don’t Go in the Woods, The Willies, Blood Sisters, Evil Laugh, Memorial Valley Massacre, Grim Prarie Tales,

I nearly did an overview of Are you Afraid of the Dark?, the Nickelodeon series that was bold enough to name a character after Lucio Fulci (in the 2019 reboot), but the whole show was after my time.

Then I remembered: there’s not just the 1991 Campfire Tales and the 2020 non-sequel remix/remake/ripoff Tales from the Campfire 3, there’s also the 1997 movie with the same title.

And yeah, I know, I’m a beyond confirmed hater of Scream, but for some reason, I tend to like the movies that come after it, like the Urban Legend series. And this fits right in, even if it was made concurrently with Wes Craven’s execrable film.

It starts with the story of the Hook, which has been used in a multitude of movies (it shows up in everything from Meatballs and He Knows You’re Alone to Lovers Lane and Final Exam, but its message of teenage sex equals death is pretty much the engine that powers every slasher ever made). James Marsden and Amy Smart are in this opening, which is something that you’ll notice about Campfire Tales: it’s packed with talent that would have great careers after it was made.

This leads us to the connective story which is — did you guess? — a campfire tale, as Cliff (Jay R. Ferguson, who is now on The Conners) wrecks a van on the way home from a concert, leading his friends Lauren (Christine Taylor, who is probably best known from the Brady Bunch movies), Eric (Christopher Masterson, Malcolm in the Middle) and Alex (Kim Murphy, Houseguest) to light a fire until help passes by. They start telling the stories that form the rest of the movie.

“The Honeymoon” has Ron Livingston (Office Space) and Jennifer Macdonald as a married couple being stalked on their RV wedding vacation. “People Can Lick Too,” which is one of my favorite urban legends, updating it (well, in 1997) to have internet chat rooms. The final story, “The Locket,” is less friend of a friend story and more time travel slasher, with another Roseanne-related actor (the late Glenn Quinn, who was Mark) romancing a mute woman (The Real World star Jacinda Barrett, who is also in Urban Legends: Final Cut) and being chased by her ax-carrying monster of a father.

The film ends dark Wizard of Oz style, as everyone except for Cliff disappears as paramedics attempt to save him. As the camera pulls away from the accident, everyone from the stories plays the roles of the emergency crews and, you guessed it, a hook is on the door of the car, the real cause of the crash.

Campfire Tales was the passion project of writer and co-director Martin Kunert (who would make the MTV horror anthology series Fear) and producer Eric Manes (who wrote and produced 3000 Miles to Graceland; he also produced Phat Beach in case you cared). In fact, this was originally called either Fear or All American Campfire Horror Stories.

The other directors of segments include Matt Cooper and David Semel, whose career has mainly been in TV (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Watchmen, Heroes).

Released by New Line Cinema in 1997, this movie inspired the Bollywood film Darna Mana Hai and while it’s been released on DVD, it’s never made the leap to blu ray.

11. SKINS & NEEDLES: Body art or body harm? When getting the mark leads to all hell breaking loose.

Beyond Bird with the Crystal Plumage, there’s one movie my mother has already brought up that she hated. And that would be this one.

The book that these stories come from has eighteen of them, but Howard B. Kreitsek and Jack Smight picked these three for the film without ever speaking to Ray Bradbury, the author of the book. The tattooed man who appears in the book’s prologue and epilogue would become this film’s main story and be played by Rod Steiger.

The funny thing is that when Steiger takes off his glove to reveal his hand, it’s tattooed and played off as a horrific moment. A half-century after this movie was made, nearly all my friends have this many tattoos.

Carl, the tattooed man, meets Willie and uses his skin illustrations to tell tales throughout time. The ink came from a mysterious woman named Felicia. At the end of the film, Willie sees his death at Carl’s hands in the only bare patch of skin on the Illustrated Man.

The stories that are told include “The Veldt,” which takes place in the future and involves children who study within a virtual version of the African veldt. Soon, the lions will solve this issue of their parents. “The Long Rain” has solar rains* that drive an entire crew to madness in space. And “The Last Night of the World” predates The Mist, with parents who must decide if their children should survive the end of the world.

The final story—and its bleak ending—is exactly why my mom hates this movie. The fact that she may have told me all about it when I was a kid may have given me nightmares.

This movie did poorly critically and financially. Rod Serling, an expert on adapting short stories to film, called it the worst movie ever made.

*Their spaceship is recycled from Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Escape from the Planet of the Apes.