22. HIGHWAY TO HELL: A savage car chase is the vehicle for tonight’s viewing displeasure.

Directed by Eric Valette (the 2008 American remake of One Missed Call), this movie feels like a decade ahead of when it should have been made. It was written by Neal Marshall Stevens, who also writes a lot of movies for Full Moon as Roger Barron.

A shapeshifting car is on the streets of Chicago, going from a black Chevrolet Nova to a red Chevrolet Corvette Z06, luring in would-be criminals and then basically eating them and getting into accidents just to get impounded and murder policemen. It even becomes a 1968 Lincoln Continental with tentacles inside it that drag people into the interior.

The title is good, you know? But this is no Christine. It’s also no The Car, a movie that while one of the dumbest films ever created is one of my favorites and in my opinion, way better than U of M grad Steve King’s car movie.

All you need to know about how this movie was made is that the underground garage where it was shot wasn’t well-ventilated and the entire cast got sick.

You can watch this on Tubi.

20. THE GREAT UNSTREAMBLE: Search all night with all your might, it still ain’t found on any site. Bonus for desert/drought content.

John Henry Brennick (Christopher Lambert), and his wife Karen B. Brennick (Loryn Locklin) have been punished for having a second child. He thinks that she escapes, but he’s been sent to  the Fortress, a private 30-level maximum security prison run by the Men-Tel Corporation (it’s the Australian theme park Warner Bros. Movie World).

Every prisoner has an intestinators inside them which allows the guards to put them in pain or even kill them. Director Poe (Kurtwood Smith) uses a computer called Zed-10 (voiced by Carolyn Purdy-Gordon) to keep everything running and the prisoners working for the good of the company.

John is inside a crowded cell with Abraham (Lincoln Kilpatrick), who is nearly Poe’s slave; D-Day (Jeffrey Combs), a computer expert who knows how to blow things up; Nino Gomez (Clifton Collins Jr.), a teen captive; Stiggs (Tom Towles), a prison bully and his friend Maddox (Vernon Wells). After Stiggs and Maddox try to intimidate him, John gets into a fistfight and Maddox is killed by a security guard. As punishment, John is mindwiped, forgetting that his wife is also a prisoner and that Men-Tel will own his child when it is born. He gives D-Day Maddox’s intestinator before he is captured.

Poe takes Karen as his wife as long as he promises to not punish John after this. She sneaks into a room and reprograms John’s mind while D-Day figures out how to shut down the intestinators. During a riot, the Strike Clones are sent in, but the prisoners soon kill one and take its flamethrower. Soon, he learns that Men-Tel doesn’t negotiate and the full brunt of their security teams come down on the prison, just as his wife starts to give birth. And if that happens, the company will give her a fatal cesarian.

Stuart Gordon was such a dependable genre director, even if he switched from Lovecraft horror to giant robots and even men in ice cream suits. According to Gordon, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a big fan of Re-Animator and was almost in this: “It was Arnold Schwarzenegger that got me the job and it was because of Re-Animator. We used Arnold’s body double in Re-Animator. The first reanimated corpse is a guy named Peter Kent, Arnold’s double. He’s got those big muscles. He got Arnold to see Re-Animator and Arnold liked it so much that he had a screening of it in his home, inviting all of these people, including producer John Davis. John had the rights to Fortress and Arnold was going to do it. For some reason, I’m not sure why, Arnold finally decided that he wasn’t going to do the movie and dropped out. They had a big budget, probably like 60 million, 70 million dollars, which was a huge budget in those days. Now it sounds small. Anyway, he dropped out and the budget went down. They cut the budget to about 15 million dollars.”

Fortress takes the prison film and adds in near-future cyberpunk. I don’t have to tell you how correct the script by Troy Neighbors and Steven Feinberg is today. The U.S. has more people in jail — 565 citizens per every 100,000 — than any other country in the world. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, those in jail only earn 12 cents to 40 cents per hour for jobs serving the prison and 23 cents to $1.15 per hour in Federal Prison Industries factories, which include food processing, shrinkwrapping and packaging product and even have worked in call centers for politicians.

None of them wear intestinators. Stay tuned on that, though.

19. ACCOMPANIED MINERS: Danger! Stay out of mineshafts, ore else!

A plague is killing a village’s citizens, so Dr. Peter Tompson (Brook Williams) asks for help from his mentor Sir James Forbes (André Morell), who brings his daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare), who happens to be a childhood friend of Peter’s wife Alice (Jacqueline Pearce).

Sylvia gets in a ton of trouble while her husband is trying to solve this illness, mostly from some fox hunters. They nearly assault her before she’s saved by Squire Clive Hamilton (John Carson) just in time for her to see a zombie murder Alice.

Alice’s corpse has animal blood on her face and has no sign or rigor mortis. Whoever did this also wants to do the same thing to Sylvia. Yes, voodoo is being used to reanimate the dead to work in a tin mine, which is a pretty wild plot even for Hammer. That said, seeing how this is a Hammer production, everything has to end with a gigantic fire. Those dudes loved them some infernos.

According to Ruth Heholt, Cornwall represents “the non-English within England; the foreign at home.” Hammer also made The Reptile, another film where a disease threatens the region. That movie was also made by this film’s director, John Gilling. In fact, both of those movies as well as Dracula: Prince of Darkness and Rasputin the Mad Monk were all shot on the same stages around the same time.

18. CAN YOU DIG IT?: Archeology turns up the darndest things…

An Aztec mummy (Jeffrey Uhlmann, an American research scientist whose work is concentrated on the linear quadratic estimation; he also wrote this movie) is brought back by a human sacrificed and given a jeweled staff that can control minds thanks to the hallucinogenic powers of Aztec mushrooms. He also has twin witches (Gwenda Perez) to help him dominate humanity.

Jeff Burr shot about two weeks of this film before leaving — he’s credited as Andrew Quint — and the movie was finished by Uhlmann’s fellow University of Missouri professor Chip Gubera.

This movie is so respectful of Mascaras — it says that he has “the mind of a scientist, the soul of an artist, the body of a great athlete, and yet there’s something more about him. Something that separates him from other men.” This also throws everything lucha movies should have against our hero. Beyond just the mummy, we get a robot, vampire women and zombies.

But even better, it has the President of the U.S. be played by Richard Lynch and at that point, this movie had me in its headlock. It tops that by giving us a tag match between El Hijo del Santo and Mil against two rudos that is judged by PJ Soles and Harley Race and then, Mil gets help against the zombies from Blue Demon Jr., Dos Caras, Neutron and Huracán Ramírez, Jr.

This movie is amazing. It doesn’t make fun of its subject and at the same time it doesn’t get ultra serious. It’s a perfect way of making a lucha film that works, even in the 2000s.

17. BORED OF EDUCATION: Stegman says school ain’t just for makin’ money, it’s also a great place for a story to unfold.

Jennifer Baylor  (Lisa Pelikan, Ghoulies) takes care of her father Luke (Jeff Corey), a man obsessed with religion and who can’t cook for himself. When she was seven, she accidentally killed a preacher’s son with the snakes that she can mentally control and has refused to be near them ever again, even if her father begs her again and again to help at his pet store.

Somehow, she goes to Green View School. Everyone else is rich and protected by Mrs. Calley (Nina Foch). As for Jennifer, her only friends are lunchlady Martha (Lillian Randolph) and a teacher by the name of Jeff Reed (Burt Convy) who sees just how horrible of a school this is. Jennifer is targeted by the richest of the rich kids, Sandra Tremayne (Amy Johnston). This includes taking her clothes when she’s naked in the shower and being photographed unclothed and the only other girl who stands up for her, Jane (Louise Hoven), being assaulted by Sandra’s man Dayton (Ray Underwood).

The part where Sandra deserves death — well, she did deserve something, but this is as far as it gets, let me tell you — is when she buys Jannifer’s favorite pet store cat, kills it and leaves it in her locker. Then she kidnaps Jennifer and throws her in a car, then leaves her tied up as cars circle her. At that point, every snake in the city comes to Jennifer’s aid, killing everyone left and right in a scene of cathartic snake revenge right out of a Category III movie. At the end, Mrs. Calley is bit by a snake from her desk and Jennifer and Jane laugh.

Director Brice Mask was a Disney background artist and was produced Ruby. He wasn’t tired of ripping off Carrie, so we got Jennifer. This was written by the same writer, Steve Kranz, who was joined in the scripting by Kay Cousins Johnson, who was an actress before starting as a writer.

16. OZPLOITATION: Maximize your wander with some thunder from down yonder.

Director and writer Ian Barry made this Australian film that has a lot of the cast and crew from Mad Max, including Mel Gibson appearing as a blink and you miss him mechanic* and George Miller serving as associate producer and filming the car chase scenes. They didn’t hide that this movie had ties to that film as the tagline was “Mad Max meets The China Syndrome.”

An earthquake causes a dangerous leak at a nuclear waste plant known as WALDO (Western Atomic Longterm Dumping Organisation). Heinrich Schmidt (Ross Thompson), an engineer near-death after the incident, is trying to warn people that the groundwater will be contaminated. He’s rescued by a married couple on vacation, Larry (Steve Bisley, Jim Goose from Mad Max) and Carmel Stilson (Arna-Maria Winchester).

Toss in an electronic score by Andrew Thomas Wilson and bad guy costumes that look like they came from The Crazies and you have an Australian film perfect for the drive-in.

*Hugh Keays-Byrne, Roger Ward, Tim Burns and David Bracks are also in this.

15. HALLYUWOOD: It’s time to dig up the onggi and watch yourself a South Korean joint, the saltier the better.

Gipeun bam, gapjagi is a South Korean horror film directed by Ko Young-nam. It all starts with Kang Yu-jin (Yoon Il-bong) hiring a new housekeeper, Mi-ok (Lee Ki-seon). They couldn’t be further apart, as he’s a wealthy biology professor conducting a study of butterflies and she’s a simple village girl who is the daughter of a recently dead shaman priestess.

While Kang Yu-jin and his wife Seon-hee (Kim Young-ae) enjoy having the girl in their home, it doesn’t last. Mi-ok keeps a wooden doll with her that has shown up in Seon-hee’s nightmares. She also thinks that she’s having an affair with her husband, which is an even more powerful reason to hate her. When things finally come to blows, the rich woman accidentally kills the maid, then becomes haunted by her.

This is as close as Korean cinema will get to a giallo, as color theory — Seon-hee appears in conservative purples while Mi-ok is in revealing white clothes — while the neon hues scream Bava and some scenes appear to be shot underwater or within a kaleidoscope. It all starts so simply but by the end, the score is literally bashing you in the face while a storm rages throughout the film.

I’m going to watch this so many more times.

You can watch this on Tubi.

14. AKA: The same great show by a name you didn’t know.

I might not be the biggest fan of Scream but I’m going to watch the Bollywood remake.

Directed by Pavan S. Kaul and written by Arshad Ali Syed, this starts just like its American inspiration with two teens — Malini Gujral and Sunny — murdered. The difference is that instead of having a mask that looks like Edvard Munch’s work, it looks like a clown.

Malini’s sister Mahek and her friends Rocky, Gehna, Rajat, Rhea, and Nikhil are all going to Simon College and are stalked by the killer just like her sister. In fact, whoever it is, the clown-faced slasher keeps calling Mahek. There’s also new love, perhaps, from Suraj Rai, who has just moved to campus.

As Mahlek is chased repeatedly by the killer, one of the teachers, Mrs. Roy, is killed inside a bathroom — Scream 2, right? — thinking a man has been staring at the girls there. The bloody tracks left behind have the cops thinking that it’s Rocky but while the foot size is close, the actual print is different. It’s closer to Suraj’s shoes, but by now, Mahek is interested in this stranger but then she discovers that the killer also has the same watch as him.

Everyone decides to get away and go on an island vacation, so this movie becomes I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Nearly everyone gets killed and twist after twist happens, including one taken from Scream and adding on even more family tragedy between the killer and Mahek.

This has tons of kills, some good locations and is filled with songs which pushes it to more than 2 and a half hours. But hey, that’s Bollywood. What’s strange is that it doesn’t refer to any other horror movies and the meta nature of the inspiration is what set it apart. Instead, this is nearly a slasher based on a movie making fun of slashers without any of the comedic elements. The telephone calls aren’t even a part of this movie. Just a mask, a cloak, a similar poster and a heroine who has a single mom. Well, they do get the arguing love interests who may or may not be Ghostface. Or the Joker, as he’s known in this.

You can watch it on YouTube.

13. RELIVOMAX: Do your enigmas need resolving? Don’t wait, talk to an expert to see if Relivomax is right for you. Taking Relivomax may result in flashbacks.

At a mansion on Sunset Boulevard, police officers and gossip photographers find Joe Gillis (William Holden) drowned face down in the swimming pool of Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Joe is kind enough to start telling us how he got here. How he died, too.

It was just a few months ago that Joe couldn’t sell anything. He was dodging repossession men when he ran into the mansion of Desmond, who was once something. Somebody. She learns he can write and has him work on her script about Salome. You know, the one who wanted men so much she cut their heads off.

Norma is in her own plane of reality, one where she’s in love with Joe. The person who really loves her is Max von Mayerling (one of the greatest directors of all time, Erich von Stroheim), the butler who writes all of her fan mail. He even convinces Joe that she’s about to kill herself to finally get him into her bed.

She’ll only talk to Cecil B. Demille (playing Cecil B. Demille) all while undergoing beauty treatments to prepare for her comeback. At the same time Joe is working with Betty (Nancy Olson), a script reader, as he makes his own story. Max knows this and reveals that at one time, he was a director who discovered Norma, guided her to becoming famous and was destroyed by her after their marriage and divorce. Now, he’s her slave.

Norma tries to destroy Joe and Betty’s working relationship, but he’s had enough. He plans on going back to Ohio and forgetting Hollywood and tells her to stop the threats of killing herself. Instead, she shoots him and he falls into the pool where we first began.

As for Norma, Max and the police are directing her as her arrest has become her break with reality and she is finally back in the news. Except in her mind, this is the red carpet.

When director Billy Wilder was growing up in Germany, he dreamed of Hollywood. When he finally got there, all the mansions remained, all with shut-in stars that would never act again. Wilder wondered that now that the world had forgotten them how they lived.

Norma is a mix of so many actresses of that time. Mary Pickford, Pola Negri, Mae Murray, Valeska Surratt, Audrey Munson, Clara Bow and Norma Talmadge. All actresses who were at the top of stardom and then were alone in their huge homes, never to be thought of other than by a few fans who held them in their hearts and stayed awake late to watch them on TV.

Writer Charles Brackett said that the plan was always to have Swanson as Norma. Wilder wanted Mae West, who was offended. She would never be forgotten. She would always be a sex symbol until the day she faded out of our plane of existence.

What is Sunset Boulevard? A dark comedy? A film not? Something unlike nearly every other movie made before or since? It’s astounding that so many people — Buster Keaton, Hedda Hopper, Anna Q. Nilsson — play unflattering versions of themselves. It’s almost the first time Hollywood would recall itself and not in a camp or fun meta way. Everyone knew from the scandal papers — since the 20s — how dangerous and decadent Los Angeles was. But even after that fame fades, it can still kill.