April 24: Do You Like Tubi Originals? — I do. You should find one and write about it. Here’s a list to help.
Griselda Blanco Restrepo was known as the Black Widow. She was a member of the Medellín Cartel and moved into power within the dangerous New York City cocaine game in the 1970s and her sons soon moved into the business. She fled to Columbia when nearly caught and then moved to Miami, where she was part of some of the most violent crime in the history of our country. In fact, she may be responsible for more murders than several serial killers put together.
Directed by Victoria Duley (Tubi originals Sins of the Father: The Green River Killerand Suburban Nightmare: The Mendenze Brothers; he also produced Gone Before Her Time: Brittany Murphy, Scariest Monsters In America, Killing Diana and several more Tubi originals) and writer Chip Selby (Branded & Brainwashed: Inside Nxivm), this has a lot of info in it, including an appearance by one of Blanco’s sons who was nearly killed by one of her commands. I’ve seen a lot of people complain that the narrator sounds like a voice from TikTok and not what you would expect from a bloody tale of the drug dealer who got Pablo Escobar started, but that’s what they decided on.
If you haven’t seen Cocaine Cowboys or any of the many documentaries about Miami’s drug scene, this would be a good start.
April 23: Regional Horror — A regional horror movie. Here’s a list if you need an idea.
I’m so obsessed and delighted by the movies of Earl Owensby, who produced 18 movies with his own studio, including the Elvis death cash-in starring his last girlfriend Ginger Alden Living Legend: The King of Rock and Roll, Christian slasher — yes, really — Day of Judgement, the anthology with a doubled up title Tales of the Third Dimension in 3-D and religious retribution movie Dark Sunday. Man, he even made Lady Gray, a movie with David Allen Coe as the star. He even loaned out his studio to other films, like The Order of the Black Eagle and The Abyss. He also had that Cannon idea down before they did: his E.O. Studios’ success was due to never spending more than a million dollars on a movie and never signing a distribution deal that made him less than eight million in profit.
Owensby made movies in Shelby, North Carolina and they played drive-ins in towns just like it. He knew his audience and what they wanted. And for this, well, they wanted 3-D dogs.
Also known as Rottweiler 3-D, this was the first of six movies from E.O. Studios that required special glasses to watch. The others — in case you’re like me and want to watch all of them — are Hot Heir, Chain Gang, Hyperspace, Hit the Road Running and Tales of the Third Dimension in 3-D.
Director Worth Keeter also made several movies for Owensby — how many times can I say Tales of the Third Dimension in 3-D in this — and went on to direct episodes of Power Rangers and Silk Stalkings. And the aforementioned The Order of the Black Eagle plus Sybil Danning in L.A. Bounty. Writer Thom McIntyre directed, well, you guessed it, Tales of the Third Dimension in 3-D, and wrote several of Owensby’s other movies under names like Lynelle Grey and Grey Lynellee.
Up at Fort Bragg, the military is trying to replace soldiers with dogs. As you can imagine, things get out of control. This is a welcome event, as the town of Lake Lure isn’t the most exciting place to be. Owensby plays the sheriff; the town has a vibrant mud wrestling scene; somehow fashion models show up there and get torn to pieces in the woods in 3-D by the dogs.
Released months after Cujo — that’s how you do it! — this has a dog’s head blow up real good, an effect created by Fred Olen Ray. I mean, the dogs are driven insane by the military-industrial complex, but I do hate to see dogs be the victims in movies.
I have no idea why Earl Owensby’s movies aren’t more available. Let’s make that happen, boutique labels.
April 23: Regional Horror — A regional horror movie. Here’s a list if you need an idea.
Back before he and his wife Linda made Designing Women and were a major part of the Clinton political machine, Harry Thomason was just a high school science teacher and football coach who started making movies.
His first movie that got noticed was Encounter with the Unknown, an uneven — and I like the movie, so keep that in mind — anthology film that combines horror with urban legend before people really discussed what urban legend was. He also made The Great Lester Boggs, Revenge of Bigfoot and The Day It Cane to Earth. And oh yeah — this movie.
It starts with Frederick (Dean Jagger, whose career started in 1929 with The Woman from Hell and ended in 1987 with Evil Town) picking up his niece Gloria (Lori Saunders, Bobbie Jo Bradley from Petticoat Junction; she also made Frasier, the Sensuous Lion the same year) from a sanitarium. She’s been there since watching her father die. Now, she’s ready to assume his estate and become a pampered rich girl just in time to quickly meet, marry and move into a mansion with Chris (Robert Ginnaven, White Lightning), a writer who doesn’t seem to care that this place once housed a series of axe murders nor that his young wife has tripped out reveries where she is haunted by something. You know, the rich.
Written by Marshall Riggen (who was also the writer of the bizarre Six Hundred and Sixty-Six and Cry for Poor Wally) from a story by Thomson, producer Joe Glass and Mike Varner, this was shot at the same time as Encounter with the Unknown with much of the same crew and was originally called Visions of Evil and Visions of Doom. It was this vibe that fits into a lot of early 70s exploitation cinema, movies in which young women come of sexual age while also experiencing trauma or believing they that they are a murderer. Like, well, Axe, a film this feels so much like, but that has to be an accident, because Axe is one of many pieces and parts edited into a film, a miracle that barely happened. And, well, this. came out a year before and that was made in California and this in the Ozark Mountain region of Arkansas, so the collective unconsciousness connected two disparate film productions in the wilds of regional exploitation.
This was sold with the tagline of “The romance of Love Story — the terror of Psycho!” and you know how much I simply am obsessed with movies referencing other movies in their ads. When it played around Little Rock, it had a local phone number you could call on the ads and when the phone picked up, all you heard was Gloria screaming and then the line went dead. Again, I am all for that.
A killer in a Tor Johnson mask, strange repressed memories and not just one but two twist endings — along with long stretches of nothing happening and extended cute dating montages (oh yeah, that Love Story reference) — make this a movie that may test those that don’t partake of the deep well of regional filmmaking. But for those that get high off this supply, drink deep.
April 23: Regional Horror — A regional horror movie. Here’s a list if you need an idea.
Also known as Any Body…Any Way, this movie was exactly what I wanted it to be: fucking weird.
When Terry Wilson (Joyce Danner) and Ann Henderson (Eve Reeves) go to the middle of nowhere for a barn party, Ann is nearly raped but saved by the middle-aged, British and oh-so-strange Mr. Bradley (Daniel Garth). They ditch the party and Ann’s man, but then run out of gas because otherwise we wouldn’t have a movie.
In the middle of nowhere, they walk up to a house — on the suggestion of a drifter (Ivan Agar, Laughing Crow from Shriek of the Mutilated) who is more than he seems — that just so happens to belong to Mr. Bradley and his sister Ida (Irene Lawrence). They have no phone and their car isn’t working either, so they stay for dinner and a bed for the evening. Ida needs the company. She’s been there for two years, ever since her mortician brother retired.
So why are there bars on the windows? Why did their door lock behind them? Why are the closest filled with women’s clothing of all sizes? Why would Terry pick this exact and terrifying time to finally get sapphic with her office buddy?
The Bradleys wake them up and let them know that they’re in control and must play their demented games with them or end up like all the embalmed bodies in the basement. Mr. Bradley just wants to discover the perfect way to make love, so if he has to tie up women and then kill them, that’s how his laboratory of libido operates.
I mean, this is a movie that starts with fifteen minutes of go go dancing in a barn — I played in a band that practiced in a barn and it’s hard to sing when all you can smell is shit, so I can’t even imagine go go dancing while smelling cow feces — and ends with that same barn and Ann going off with the guy who tried to rape her and Terry finding another young lady to enjoy a game of flats with. Yes, I used a 17th century term — lesbian sex was thought to look like two playing cards rubbing together — in this article. I bring you quality euphemisms, my friend.
Did you not see the signature of Harry Novak hanging above this? Behind Locked Doors came from director and co-writer Charles Romine, who would go on to make Mysteries of the Gods, while producer and uncredited co-writer Stanley H. Brassloff made one of the most upsetting of all softcore movies, Toys Are Not for Children.
This movie looks way better than it should with great lighting and bright colors and a room full of gorgeous and very dead women — or are they? — posed seductively, along with an off the rails room destroying catfight and an ending that blew my mind, as deceased denizens of the strange mansion come back for one last dance with brother and sister into the inferno. This is the kind of movie that makes you stay for all that barn dancing and you wonder, “When does it get weird, Sam promised me it would get there” and when it does, you’ll text me and say, “I can’t believe that this is a real movie.” Well, it is, pal. It sure is.
April 23: Regional Horror — A regional horror movie. Here’s a list if you need an idea.
Director, writer and editor Jon Killough made this cheap — and I mean that with kindness — film about a family led by Crawdaddy (Mary Jackson, yes, Evelyn from Terror House) that makes leather goods from the skins of the people they murder. Her kids, Violet (Susan Rothacker) and Phink (Scott Spiegel) are just as crazy as she is. And man, Spiegel is swinging for the upper decks with his scene chewing. But that and the goofy humor made this fun for me.
This was produced by J.R. Bookwalter, whose Tempe Video released many a small town film years ago. I’ve read so many reviews online that outright disliked this movie to the point I wondered if it did something to their mother. I mean, you’ve seen worse. But you have also seen better.
In case you ever wonder what life is for and why you’re here and get depressed or anxious, worry not. You live in the reality that produced Linnea Quigley and whatever made this all should be thanked. I’m not really religious but if I were to ever start a church, it would probably be one where we all watched this video and just stared at the tracking lines growing around this VHS wonder, a workout tape punctuated by jokes, zombies and synth. I mean, if you want to believe in God, just stare into the eyes of Linnea Quigley, listen to her bubbly voice and watch her kick here legs over her head while working out in a studded bra.
Ken Hall, who directed and wrote this, also made Evil Spawn and The Halfway House. He also made creatures for Critters, Ghoulies, the Bio-Monster in Biohazard, Carnosaur, the creatures in Willy’s Wonderlandand wrote Dr. Alien and Nightmare Sisters. He’s not in the Criterion Collection but belongs somewhere more important, in the video store shelves of our wildest and fondest dreams.
Nobody watches this to work out. I mean, what other exercise video has its host murder every single other woman in it and then threaten you for jerking off to her films? I mean, this starts with a shower scene and ends with Linnea cooking human parts while dressed in lingerie that Frederick’s of Hollywood would say is too ridiculous.
Linnea shot this in her parent’s house and man, if you don’t love her after that, what is wrong with you? Get this NOW from Terror Vision.
You can also get the soundtrack on LP or cassette.
Santa Claws (1996):John Russo lives in Glassport, which I can see from my house, and he wrote the idea that became Night of the Living Dead, which would probably be enough, but he also helped make Return of the Living Deadhappen. And he also made Midnight and The Majorettes, two movies that fall into that strange genre that can only come from Pittsburgh, the yinzer giallo. He also was the publisher and managing editor of Scream Queens Illustrated, which figures into this movie.
Raven Quinn (Debbie Rochon) used to be a scream queen but ever since she had two children with a scream queen magazine publisher who would rather take nude photos of models than work on his marriage. Luckily, she has Wayne (Grant Cramer), a neighbor who once watched his mommy do more than kiss Santa Claus, lost his mind and killed them both. So perhaps she is not quite so fortunate.
Beyond getting to see Night stars like Marilyn Eastman, who played Helen Cooper, Karl Hardman, who played her husband Harry, and first zombie — and the director of The Majorettes and FleshEater— S. William Hinzman, you can pretty much see this as an American Night Killer. They’re both set at Christmas, they both deal with broken marriages and they’re both absolutely berserk movies seemingly made by maniacs.
Waste not, want not, as Russo edited this into Scream Queens Naked Christmas.
Yinzer bonus: Numerous scenes of characters wandering Market Square before anyone went there, back when George Aiken was still making the best-fried chicken ever, when National Record Mart still had that huge store and G.W. Murphy’s was still open. I mean, the killer runs into the Oyster House for a second and I was awash with 90s dahntahn memories, like Honus Wagner, the smell of Hare Krishna’s t-shirts, Candyrama and so much more.
In short, a killer that uses a garden cultivator as a weapon, like a total South Hills Blood and Black Lace, all with softcore dancing that makes me wistful for dollar pizza at Anthony’s and the old sign that was painted on the wall at the Cricket and hey, John Russo wrote two songs for this, “Christmas by Myself” and “Brand New Christmas.”
If you remember that old store Novelties in Market Square that never seemed to sell anything and was put out of business for a Dunkin’ Donuts, well, I want you to know that this movie has the killer buy his Santa Claus suit in that very store.
Welcome to the yinzer giallo list, Santa Claws. Meet us under the Kaufmann’s clock for your framed certificate.
Scream Queens Naked Christmas (1996): Available as an extra on the new Terror Vision blu ray of Santa Claws, Scream Queens’ Naked Christmas is such an oddity in our overly saturated by pornography world of 2022. It’s dirty, kind of, but not really in any way as much as it’s women taking their clothes off which seems perfectly chaste today. It ends up here, a combination movie for this week of Pittsburgh movies and holiday classics — classics may be stretching things but it is the season of giving — directed by John Russo, who was also the publisher and managing editor of Scream Queens Illustrated, a magazine that chronicled horror movie actresses — and showed their boobs, let’s be frank — in a time when getting on the internet often involved needing to be at a university or the slowest dial up ever.
As a kid, I often fantasized about what it would be like going to the Edison Hotel and what was waiting for me inside. I should have been shown this film because the dancing in it is about as sexy as any so-called Pittsburgh adult club I’ve ever been in. At least the Tennyson Lounge used to let you get up on stage and sing, The Cricket was cheap to drink at and you could get dollar slices at Anthony’s when that was still a place. In fact, I’ve always liked the aura of sin in clubs of ill repute more than experiencing the sin because it’s just a transaction and the sooner you realize you’re just a mark, the quicker you can just hang back and soak it all up. The robotic dancing in this, the faraway eyes — just imagine it darker, smelling like more perfume and if you dumb glitter all over yourself and burn your money, you too can have an authentic experience.
With Wayne (Grant Kramer) from Santa Claws hosting, basically this video is John Russo and Bill Hinzman videotaping women and getting them naked for the yule season. Sue Ellen White only did this movie, but Lisa Delien (using the stage name Lisa Duvaul) was also in Eyes Are Upon You and Amanda Madison (using the name Christine Cavalier) appeared in other movies like Psycho Dance, Psycho Vampire, Slaughter Secretaries…yes, all Wave Productions. She’s also in Donald Farmer’s Red Lips.
The main star is, of course, Debbie Rochon, whose career took her everywhere from getting a scar on the streets of Vancouver at the age of 14 and being an extra in Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains to buiding her legacy as a scream queen in movies like Lurkers, Tromeo and Juliet and so many more, being picked as Draculina magazine’s Scream Queen of the Decade (1990–1999). She’s still making movies today, shrugging off setbacks like nearly losing four fingers of her right hand to a prop machete. She’s also one of those people who appear so perfect that you wonder if they’re some kind of android. I hope she never stops making movies ever.
This movie is ridiculous but I’m also strangely happy that it exists. If you saw Santa Claws, you’ve seen it already, but I respect that Russo is out to make money off you more than once for the same exact product.
You can get these movies together on the Terror Vision blu ray of Santa Claws.
I grew up directly between Youngstown, OH and Pittsburgh, PA, which meant that growing up, I got to see UHF channels from Cleveland, Wheeling, Stuebenville and everywhere in between. There are still local jingles that I know by heart — Youngstown’s Remnant Room — and when I see the staticky look of this ancient television, it warms my heart beyond belief. Beyond Superhost and Chilly Billy, I can remember characters like Barnaby and the local news teams that had no hope of ever working for the networks.
The WNUF Halloween Special could have been horrible, but I get the feeling that its creator Chris LaMartina grew up watching plenty of Baltimore TV* (he probably knew Captain Pitt as Captain Chesapeake on WBUF (but we both may have not known that he was also Ghost Host), because this is so authentic that I thought that I went back in time.
A home recording of WNUF’s Halloween special that aired on October 31, 1987, this tells the story of Frank Stewart’s investigation of the Webber House, the site of the Spirit Board Murders. He’s brought along a priest and Louis and Claire Berger, psychic investigators who use a cat named Shadow to speak to the dead.
By the end of the night, the evil inside the house will show itself. And no one is safe.
The story may have been told before, but it’s the entire package that is perfect. There are references to Dust Devil, R.O.T.O.R. and so many more movies, plus it captures that strange moment of the pre 90s when UHF stations would air just about anything, when major bloopers happened almost every day and something like a series of occult murders could happen live while you watched.
If you want to own something amazing, you need to own the Terror Vision blu ray.
*Producer Jimmy George confirmed that WNUF TV28 was inspired by Baltimore’s WNUV TV54, a similar TV station that was independently owned until the mid-90s.
April 22: Terror Vision — Write about a movie released by Terror Vision. Here’s the list.
Video Violence (1987): Writer and director Gary Cohen was working in a video store and noticed that no one was renting any of the classic films that he loved. They were all renting slashers.
One day, a mother asked him if I Dismember Mama had any sex in it. He told her that it didn’t, but it had plenty of graphic violence. She told him that if it didn’t have sex, it was find for her kids. This scene is in the movie, except they are discussing the movie Blood Cult.
Steve and Rachel have just moved to a new town, setting up a mom and pop rental shop that seems to exclusively rent out slashers. One of their customers — probably Howard and Eli, whose sports store seems to be a front for mayhem — accidentally returns a video tape of one of their murders, which soon reveals that everyone in this sleepy little SOV town is a killer.
If you look closely on this box, it has J.R. Bob Dobbs of the Church of the Subgenius on it, claiming that he has approved this movie. Your tolerance for SOV horror will determine how much you like this yourself.
Video Violence 2 (1988): At some point after the events of the first movie, Eli and Howard have decided to start broadcasting a public access show from their basement, one that has viewers from home sending in their own kills as if this was America’s Bloodiest Home Videos.
It has an electric chair, a gang of woman seducing a pizza guy until deciding to repeatedly stab him, a commerical for some killing implements and a live guest becoming, well, a dead one. And where the first film starts to make you wonder if you’re just as bad as the killers for loving their work, this one decides to go full Herschell Gordon Lewis and make the whole thing a ridiculous, if not blood spraying, laugh fest.
Either that’s going to work for you — I love it — or you’re going to feel like this whole thing is a poorly acted waste of time, which is a sad state for you to be in. You have to love a film that has The Shape, Freddy and Norman Bates all show up and bother the same girl in the same shower.
Hurry up and get the set of both of these movies from Terror Vision. Last time I looked, there were only 2 left.
April 21: Gone Legitimate — A movie featuring an adult film actor in a mainstream role.
Marco Ferreri is probably best known for his film La Grande Bouffe. Here, he sets a film in an end-of-the-world-feeling New York City, a place of only the strange and the rats, a place where Gerard Lafayette (Gérard Depardieu) lives in the basement of Andreas Flaxman’s (James Coco) wax museum, which is all about the Roman Empire.
He also volunteers at an all-female theater group, which has Mimsy Farmer, Francesca De Sapio (The Godfather Part II) and Stefania Casini (Sara from Suspiria) as members. Their latest play is about how women could easily overpower men and rape them. To prove their theory, Gerard is knocked out with a bottle of Coke and Angelica (adult actress Abigail Clayton, billed as Gail Lawrence; she was in 7 Into Snowy, Sexworld and Alex de Renzy’s Femmes de Sade. After going into legitimate movies, she played Rita in Maniac) volunteers to be the one to take him.
Meanwhile, in Battery Park, Gerard finds a baby monkey in the arms of a King Kong sculpture — or is it Kong, fallen from the Twin Towers? — and a group of eccentrics led by Luigi (Marcello Mastroianni). He takes his new simian child home but Andreas tells him that the baby will destroy his dreams. Angelica moves in as she’s pregnant, possibly with their child of rape, but when he doesn’t care about their child being born, she leaves and while the baby ape is alone, the rats eat him.
Gerard responds by breaking into the wax museum and causing a fire that kills both he and Andreas, while Angelica sits on the shore with her new child.
Ferreri wrote this with Gerard Brach (Wonderwall, Frantic, Repulsion, The Tenant) and Rafael Azcona. It has some interesting imagery — Kong washed up on the beach — but ultimately goes nowhere. Still, just the idea it was made is somewhat intriguing. Also, the baby is named for Cornelius from Beneath the Planet of the Apes.
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