April 13: Kayfabe Cinema — A movie with a pro wrestler in it.

Look, I love Grace Jones more than most members of my extended family. Robert Vaughn? A huge fan. Sam Firstenberg? I’ve bought his movies Revenge of the Ninja, Avenging Force, American Ninja, Ninja 3: The Domination and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo multiple times.

Yet here they are in a movie that stars Hulk Hogan.

Unlike the Rock, John Cena, Dave Batista and even Pat Roach and Hard Boiled Haggerty, Hulk Hogan has never really been able to go from wrestling superstar — trust me, other than maybe Steve Austin, no one in their prime in my lifetime was a bigger deal — to movie star, despite the promise of Rocky 3. Yes, the Vince McMahon No Holds Barred is filled with dookie, quite literally, but there’s really never been a movie where Hogan has ever been anything other than Hogan, the same man who claimed that Darren Aronofsky offered him the lead in The Wrestler, that Andre died a few days after he slammed him at Wrestlemania 3 and not six years later, that he partied with John Belushi four years after his death at the after party for Wrestlemania 2…I can go on. Also, this is the same Hulk Hogan who used a racial slur about a man his daughter was dating while half naked in a sex tape with his best friend’s wife that was being taped by the aforementioned buddy.

This has jet skis and Jeeps yet is not Thunder In Paradise — messing with him is like rolling the dice — nor is it the movie that started that program, Assault On Devil’s Island. Does it have Brutus Beefcake, the one-time Baron Beefcake, The Booty Man, Big Brother Booty, Brother Bruti, Brute Force, The Butcher, The Clipmaster, Dizzy Hogan, Dizzy Golden, The Disciple, Ed Boulder, Ed Golden, Eddie Hogan, The Mariner, The Man With No Name, The Man With No Name, Furface and The Zodiac? Yes and it has The Giant as well. The Hulkster did not have time or the stroke, one assumes, to find parts for Brian Knobbs, Jerry Saggs or Greg Valentine.

That said, The Giant’s name in this is Little Snowflake.

This is a movie that has Hulk Hogan — I mean Joe McGrai — find a treasure map carved into the shell of a turtle. He also has a bird named Willy that he rescues when his house blows up by literally grabbing him in his fist and someone the bird’s bones are destroyed, brother.

This is a movie where Robert Vaughn’s name is spelled Vaughan in the credits and Grace Jones quotes Darth Vader talking to Boba Fett when he said, “He’s no good to me dead.” It ends with Hogan adopting two tiger cubs and if we learned anything from Joe Exotic over quarantine, it’s that anyone can start a sex cult. I mean, no one, most germanely Hulk Hogan, should ever own a tiger cub.

I may still be watching this movie as you read this, because that’s how long the boat chase scene is. It feels like that whole theory of Hell, in that one second in eternal hellfire is a year of our time, so that scene is still going and I’m stuck in it and may never escape.

I looked up Hulk Hogan acting on Google and got this.

After this, Hogan was in Assault on Death Mountain with Martin Kove, Shannon Tweed, Carl Weathers and Lisa Scrage, Mary Lou Maloney herself; The Ultimate Weapon with Beefcake and 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, which has Victor Wong, Loni Anderson and Jim Varney. This is where I mention that 3 Ninjas: Knuckle Up was directed by Shin Sang-ok, who was abducted by Kim Jong-il  and forced to make Pulgasari.

Today, Hulk Hogan sits in his beach store and meets fans. I wonder if Grace Jones ever thinks about this time in her life.

April 13: Kayfabe Cinema — A movie with a pro wrestler in it.

Directed by Michael Hoffman Jr. and Aaron T. Wells from a script by Hoffman, Ryan Dee and Meghan Jones, Girls Gone Dead uses borrowed interest to get you to watch this movie that’s really just an 80s slasher.

For the fans of those films, Linnea Quigley plays a bartender. For Howard Stern Show lovers, there’s Sal Governale and Beetlejuice. Do you like hevay metal? Here’s Nicko McBrain, the drummer from Iron Maiden. For, well, anyone who likes adult film hates Ron Jeremy, but he’s in this. Finally, for lovers of pro wrestling, the sheriff is played by Jerry “The King” Lawler.

A bunch of girls head to Daytona Beach for spring break and end up being part of a Girls Gone Wild-style event for Crazy Girls Unlimited. However, there’s a killer in their midst and everyone, every single girl named for characters from Saved By the Bell is in danger.

At over a hundred minutes, this movie somehow proves that naked women can be boring, which is not a sentence that I ever want to write. Jim Wynorski could make this movie so much better just by being near the set, but instead, you get a generic fill in the blank slasher with scenes of women partying on the beach, which may be fun when you’re in your early stages of being able to drink legally but all feels frankly exhausting today.

April 12: 412 Day — A movie about Pittsburgh (if you’re not from here that’s our area code). Or maybe one made here. Heck, just write about Striking Distance if you want.

Mike Justus — yes, that’s his real name — is played by Marc Singer and he’s a Pittsburgh undercover cop hanging out at the old Metro Pizza up on Shiloh Street when he beats a rapist (Clint Howard, no name for his character, just rapist) nearly to death after catching him in a dumpster. As he loses his badge, he drowns his sorrows in a Yinzer bar — I mean, not only is everyone drinking Iron City and IC Lite, someone literally says, “Jeet jet?” to him — and tells his friends that he’s leaving for Los Angeles. An incredulous bartender speaks to Mike — and not because his last name is Justus, let me bring that up again — when she learns that he’s going to take over his dead aunt’s house on the West Coast and says, “You mean you’re moving to California? Hollywood? Where thet make movies?” She seems so incredulous that this could happen, but this is very realistic, because she’s from Pittsburgh and how dare you move out to where those lunatics live when you could just move to somewhere nice like Ben Avon or Fox Chapel.

https://moviocrity.com/2015/07/11/i-live-tweeted-street-corner-justice-and-i-may-never-recover/

At this point, as the movie goes to Eagle Rock, California — where I’ve been told the doughnut shop still remains — and I thought I would check out, but things get practically insane. Like, Paul Kersey insane without the custom handguns.

Speaking of that doughnut shop, its owner Kwong Chuck Lee (Soon-Tek Oh, Steele Justice) is just trying to make the doughnuts when a Latino street gang — if you think this movie isn’t going to be super racist, you weren’t renting low tier action movies in 1996 — attacks him. He beats up one of them, then they break his window and literally take a whizz all over his pastries.

On his very first day in the neighborhood, Mike Justus remembers he’s a cop busted for brutality and wipes the concrete with them, a fact that doesn’t win him many fans with the real cops, led by Sergeant Ryan Freeborn (Steve Railsback). You know, I don’t trust many cops, but I never trust a movie cop who once played Charles Manson.

To make matters worse, the city itself sues Kwong Chuck Lee — the names in this movie never stop — because he hasn’t bought security or surveillance equipment. Mike’s already getting close to another business owner named Jenny Connor and he’s smart, not only because it’s Kim Lankford (Malibu Beach, Ginger Ward on Knots Landing) but because she runs a video store. He gathers all the business owners and a priest played by Bryan Cranston with the worst Irish accent ever and the name — the names here, again, the names — of Father Brophy. There’s also a Jewish jeweler named Lou Wisceman (Harvey Jason) and an Asian grocer named Li Chen (Raymond Ma) to round out the stereotypes in this beset mini-mall. Anyways, Mike Justus literally says, “There’s no justice, there’s just us.” Or maybe he says “Justus,” as he’s the only one who can really fight after an entire movie where he refuses to help their group, Take Norwood Back, and remembers who he really is: an ex-cop busted for brutality.

Do you know what you have to do to get busted for police brutality in Pittsburgh? And the guy he was fighting wasn’t just a rapist, it was Clint Howard playing not just a rapist but a Satanic rapist.

It takes Jenny getting knocked out with a big weapon to get him to fight, so he looks up an old friend he once arrested named Angel (Tiny Lister!) and a local sex worker named Willie Gee (Beverly Leech, who looks kind of like a hot sitcom best friend yet dressed in spandex and hose and often kicks dudes right in the dick, so guess who my favorite character in this movie was) to dress up as their own gang and rob and attack the guys messing with the mini-mall.

We meet Willie when she’s repeatedly kicking a muscular man in the balls — over and over — in a no-tell motel that has a black man wearing lingerie in the lobby. And oh yeah — Angel has found God, so Mike tells him the gang hates Jesus.

Also: Mike Justus gets kicked in the scrote in this as well.

What I don’t understand is that this is a movie where the hero leads a man who has found God into killing someone and going against his code, going back to jail and realizing that he has forsaken the Lord, while the sex worker is the only one who realizes this and gets drunk just in time to hear an answering machine message that puts it all together. Plus, Kim Lankford sings two songs, “Every Now and Then” and “Points,” which I assume she did not get on this movie.

The video store Vidiots, which closed in Santa Monica in 2017, opened the Eagle Theatre in 2022 as a combination 250-seat movie theater and video store in Eagle Rock, finally finding a home for Vidiots’ collection of more than 50,000 titles on DVD, blu ray and VHS. They’re literally on the same street as the video store in this movie. Here’s hoping they don’t need to join Take Norwood Back or at the very least, Mike Justus is still hanging around.

Street Corner Justice was directed by Pittsburgh’s Chuck Bail, who also made Black Samson, Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold, The Gumball Rally and four episodes of Baywatch Nights. He also did stunts in Hells Angels On Wheels, The Devil’s 8, Werewolves on Wheels, The Last Movie and was thee double for Max Baer Jr. on The Beverly Hillbillies.

Speaking of stunts, this was written by Gary Kent, who had an entire documentary about his life, Danger God, and who was one of the inspirations for Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time In…Hollywood. He did stunts in everything from Satan’s Sadists to Freebie and the Bean and Bubba Ho-Tep. He also shows up in tons of Al Adamson movies. He worked on the script with Bail and Stan Berkowitz, who sure, wrote tons of episodes of the outstanding Batman the Animated Series, Superman the Animated Series and T.J. Hooker, but is also the husband of Teagan Clive, who is the much beloved BimboCop from Vice Academy 2 and The Alienator in The Alienator. Oh man! She’s also in the Cannon Sinbad and one of my favorite giallo, Obsession: A Taste for Fear. Way to go Stan!

I found this movie on a Roku channel called Popstar and let me tell you, there’s a wealth of movies soon to be on the site from this channel. I feel like I discovered a bodega that’s fallen into disrepair that still rents out VHS in 2023.

April 12: 412 Day — A movie about Pittsburgh (if you’re not from here that’s our area code). Or maybe one made here. Heck, just write about Striking Distance if you want.

I found Blanc de Blanc on Tubi and was shocked that most of it was shot a block from my brother’s house in Shadyside. It was directed by Lucas McNelly and written by McNelly, Jennifer Byler and Jason Kirsch as part of 2wkfilm, a friendly Twitter challenge among filmmakers. Filmed in a little over four days, it used equipment donated by a local church and the now gone Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

A man (Kirsch) moves to Pittsburgh and falls for a woman (Rachel Shaw) he meets on the street. Romance is hard, however, as he has a past that won’t stop haunting him.

From that garage across from Girasole to Plum over by Kelly’s — how that bar didn’t end up in this I have no idea — to the streets and avenues of Pittsburgh’s suburbs, this was the kind of movie that I end up watching to see if one of my friends randomly walks into the shot.

That said, this cost $970 to make and has all improvised dialogue, so knowing that and it’s hard to be let down by this. Consider this a time capsule of Shadyside when bars like the Harris were still around, in the days before we had ride sharing and people were landlocked into their neighborhoods and small places could still be around.

April 12: 412 Day — A movie about Pittsburgh (if you’re not from here that’s our area code). Or maybe one made here. Heck, just write about Striking Distance if you want.

This movie is so close to being a Yinzer giallo. So, so close.

The rules:

• The movie must be true to its Pittsburgh roots, meaning that the movie must be filmed here while speaking directly to the experience of growing up in the city. Well, there’s a scene where they discuss the many serial killers in town (tahn) in neighborhoods like Mount Washington and Homestead.
• If it’s filmed here, it must reference Pittsburgh and not have the city stand-in for another town. That’s true, as there’s even a fight scene inside the Incline.
• It must feel authentic, which helps several films on this list as they are movies with moments that only make sense when you’re a lifelong Pittsburgher. Honestly, the movie could be filmed anywhere and they’d adjust some neighborhoods and be fine, but it’s still nice to see that it’s made here.
• Bonus points for featuring Pittsburgh landmarks, Steelers jerseys and local brands. Trust me, seeing a can or bottle of Iron City in a yinzer giallo is like a J&B bottle in a traditional example. Well, there’s a scene shot at the LeMont up in Mount Washington (a fancy place that working class types use as a reference toward eating something fancy; using it in a sentence: “What yinz millionaires and gonna eat at LeMont?”), Steeler Rocky Bleier playing himself and, just when I was wondering, “Will Bingo O’Malley show up in this?” he ends up playing a bad guy at a construction site.

Unfortunately, while it is a murder mystery that plays on family dynamics and past crimes, it lacks a black gloved killer — not to say that numerous people aren’t killed but mostly with a gun — and any psychosexual or fashion-centric moments. So, neither a giallo or Yinzer giallo.

But how is it as a movie?

It stars Linda Kozlowski from the Crocodile Dundee movies as Keri Finnegan, a tough Yinzer PI whose father was a bad cop, a fact that Captain Giarusso (Paul Sorvino) never lets her forget. Or any of the other cops, as the only one who seems to like her is her ex-boyfriend Nick Donovan (John Shea), who she still sleeps with (this is Kozlowski’s first nude scene; she was also naked in Zorn, made the same year, then retired after 1995’s Village of the Damned and the 1996 TV movie Shaughnessy until making 2001’s Crocodile Dundee In Los Angeles). She also has a father and daughter relationship with Nick’s stepfather, District Attorney Steve Donovan (Hector Elizondo).

Kozlowski proves herself a formidable action heroine in this, giving her all in some rough and tumble fight scenes. And hey, maybe this is a giallo as the real killer ends up being the person least likely to be the murderer.

If I were the Pittsburgh Police, I’d start looking into all the dirty cops, though. Between this movie, Striking Distance, Street Corner Justice and Alone in the Neon Jungle, the boys in blue, black and yellow are not faring well on film. If you want to see some actual cops working on the streets of the Steel City, check out season 3, episode 23 of cops where someone tries to jump off a bridge, just like Jimmy Detillo.

I really love that this film’s heroine is based in McKees Rocks, which if you’re looking for a rough neighborhood for a hardscrabble lead in Pittsburgh, well, you can’t really do better. Tammy Grimes shows up as Keri’s mother and Vivica Lindfors (Creepshow) plays an older woman who has evidence important to Finnegan’s case and her father’s supposed crimes.

You can tell this was made in 1994 because of this dialogue, said by the heroine, no less, to her black friend: ““Where the hell were you anyway? What did you do, pass a watermelon stand you couldn’t resist?” He answers, “Colonel Sanders.” Come on, beyond how racist this is, if he was a real Yinzer, he would have replying, “I was at George Aiken.”

Director and writer Chris McIntyre (Gang Warz, Hell to Pay) was at least smart enough to hire Tom Savini to do the special makeup effects. Also, I am sure that former Mayor Sophie Masloff is in that dinner scene, which would make a lot of sense as she held the office from 1988 until the year this was made.

You can watch this on Tubi.

April 12: 412 Day — A movie about Pittsburgh (if you’re not from here that’s our area code). Or maybe one made here. Heck, just write about Striking Distance if you want.

While Desperate Measures is set and partially shot in San Francisco, the Allegheny County Jail in downtown Pittsburgh is the setting for the first part of this tense film, in which widowed police detective Frank Conner (Andy Garcia) finds out that his nemesis Peter McCabe (Pittsburgh native Michael Keaton) is a perfect bone donor match for his leukemia-suffering son Matt (Joseph Cross).

Based on the novel by David Klaas, who also wrote the script, this was directed by Barbet Schroeder, who also directed Barfly and Single White Female. It also has Marcia Gay Harden as the doctor who is to get the bone marrow, Brian Cox as Captain Jeremiah Cassidy and Richard Riehle as Warden Ed Fayne.

You know going in that McCabe is going to escape, but the surprise is how far Conner is going to go to save his son, even costing fellow cops their lives. And hey — there’s Tracey Walter — Bob the Goon — as a criminal!

Pittsburgh works for this movie, as Grant Street is a brick road like many in San Francisco. The. hospital is actually One Mellon Bank Center, in case you’re trying to figure out which UPMC or Allegheny Health Network building it is.

This was made the same year as Jack Frost, with Keaton playing the father who comes back as Jack Frost after he passes on and Cross as his son Charlie.

April 11: Upsetting — What movie upsets you? Write about it and share it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn

There’s a moment in Spasms where Oliver Reed twitches and spits like a snake in a yellow cardigan sweater. It’s a quick cut at 1:07:50 and it’s why I love this movie. That and the design of the creature – an ancient, one-of-a-kind blue snake referred to by locals as “the serpent.” It’s pretty damn cool. 

Spasms was produced in Canada. It’s based on a book with two main heroes. The first, millionaire Jason Kincaid (Reed) whose brother was killed by said snake on a past hunting trip to Micronesia. The snake bit Jason as well, but instead of dying, he lived and, it appears, formed a telepathic connection with the animal as a result of the venom’s mutation of the brain cells responsible for extrasensory awareness. 

Kincaid pays a low-rent-Indiana-Jones-style poacher to capture the snake and bring it to his estate because he is plagued by images of the serpent continuing to kill people. Kincaid lives with his hot niece, Suzanne played by Kerrie Keane from The Incubus (1982.) I never thought I’d see Oliver Reed play a creepy uncle, but it’s the second reason I love this film. It’s pretty obvious he’s in love with her.

Kincaid seeks out the film’s second hero – ESP researcher and psychiatrist Tom Brasilian (Peter Fonda) in the hopes that he can assist him in permanently cutting off the unwanted psychic contact. Kincaid offers to finance all of Brasilian’s ongoing research in exchange. 

Suzanne falls for Tom. Who wouldn’t with lines like, “You shouldn’t say ‘crap.” It’s not lady-like.” Poor Kincaid is left alone with nothing but blue snake on his mind. Meanwhile, a snake-worshipping cult sends a heavy out to capture and bring them their god. Turns out he’s not so heavy compared to the snake. 

Of course, the snake gets out of its crate and starts killing people. Its venom is so strong that everyone bitten blows up like a balloon and then decomposes very quickly following death. 

 The shots of the snake are fast, few and far between, but the point-of-view sequences are pretty good, especially the shower kill and the greenhouse chase. 

It’s not a bad movie at all, although probably not exactly what people thought they were going to get when they first saw the trailer back in 1983. It’s a must-see for Canuck horror fans, Oliver Reed fans or snake film enthusiasts. I kind of felt bad for the creatures. There he was just chilling out in the jungle, the last of his kind, and all of sudden he’s in America in unfamiliar surroundings. I’d be pissed off, too! TSST!!!! 

You can watch the entire film here on YouTube.

April 11: Upsetting — What movie upsets you? Write about it and share it.

I think that I’m unshockable and then I watch something like Ren she da zhan and man, I had no idea what being shocked was.

Directed by Chi Chiang (who was also the choregrapher for Bruce Lee: The Man, the Myth and directed China Heat and Bruce Lee’s Deadly Kung Fu), who wrote it with Kang-Nien Li and Kuo Jung Tsai, this is a movie that people who hate snaked will be horrified by and those that love them will be destroyed by, so there’s really no one who won’t be brutalized by what these guys put together. I’m not exaggerating when I say that tens of thousands of snakes appear and also not making anything up when I tell you that just as many snakes are murdered on screen, for real, in a movie that looks at Cannibal Holocaust and scoffs, “People are mad that you killed a turtle? Here, hold my San Miguel.”

This Hong Kong/Taiwan film (there’s also a South Korean version called War Between Man and Snakes that has five more minutes and alternate footage filmed in that country) starts with real estate boss Francis Chang ordering his men to kill all the snakes around his new luxury apartment building. What follows is a near-mondo orgy of human-on-snake violence as snakes are chopped, sliced and smashed by excavators and dumped into huge snake graves. This is not CGI, so turn back now, because no one visited this set to see if a movie called Calamity of Snakes was snake-friendly. It’s kind of like all those Italian cannibal movies that show man’s inhumanity to man that were made by being inhumane to man, which seems like, you guessed it, a snake eating its own tail, which is about the only bit of snake violence this movie doesn’t have.

After all that, you’ll hardly be mad that this steals music from Maniac and the same cues as Dawn of the Dead. There’s also some Alan Parsons Project and Keith Emerson, because we all know progressive rock is prime snake murder music. Taking music is the least of this movie’s sins.

It does have snakes run over, destroyed by a mongoose, gassed, hit with rocks, sliced apart with swords and even a giant snake participates in a kung fu battle against a man who lives inside a box of snakes, even keeping one inside his mouth and the snake makes the same sound effects as Godzilla.

What does work is that snakes non-stop kill humans, showing up in bathtubs, when people are making love, when folks are playing mahjong, whenever people do, well, anything. Snakes will show up — the big snake might even be psychic — wherever people are trying to just live their lives, including a moment where they spill forth from an elevator in the exact same way that blood spills out in The Shining.

Footage from this movie was edited into The Serpent Warriors, a movie that stars Earth Kitt, Christopher Mitchum and was the last role for Clint Walker. It was also released in Pakistan as Revenge of the Snakes — thanks Daily Grindhouse — with artwork that rips off The Beyond and let me tell you, I can’t love that enough.

For all the meanness toward reptiles, this movie does not treat its humans any better, as there are numerous scenes of people covered by snakes, snakes are thrown at them, snakes are in their faces and at the end, someone does a burn stunt that in no way looks safe or something that someone survived.

Does it make you feel better that some of the snakes were eaten afterward and not wasted? Yeah, me neither. That said, good for Unearthed Films, who are giving a percentage of all profits from Calamity of the Snakes in all formats to Save the Snakes in continuation of their mission to protect snake populations around the world.

The Unearthed Films blu ray of Calamity of Snakes has the best looking version of this movie ever in three versions: theatrical release, cruelty-free and the absolutely uncensored version. It also has From Shaw To Snakes: The Venom And Violence Of Early Chinese Language Horror, an interview with Chui-Yi Chung and commentary from Nathan Hamilton and Brad Slaton. You can get this from MVD.

April 11: Upsetting — What movie upsets you? Write about it and share it.

While I was watching this movie, my wife came downstairs, upset about our neighbor and the way he leaves garbage all over the street. In the middle of being upset that I don’t want to fight the guy, she looked at the screen and saw a moment of this movie and yelled, “Why are you watching something like that?”

I answered, “You know, I have no idea.”

He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) make love as their child climbs out of a window and falls to his death. She goes to pieces and he thinks that as a therapist, he can do a better job of healing her than all the doctors and takes her to a cabin called Eden, because she’s afraid of nature and he’s into exposure therapy and man, minutes into this movie I’m already upset between the fox tearing itself apart yelling “Chaos reigns!” and the deer with a stillborn baby sticking out of it.

Well, it’s going to get worse.

He and she have violent sex at the base of a tree after he learns that she thinks all women are evil and her greatest fear is Satan. Oh yeah — she’d also been putting their son’s shoes on the wrong feet to make him deformed, which she follows up by dropping a wood block right on He’s cock then — spoilers for those of delicate constitutions — jerks him off until he sprays blood, then bolts his leg into a grindstone. She follows that up by burying him and — are you still here? — cutting off her clitoris, which was the exact moment my wife decided to look at this movie.

Lars Von Trier started writing this when he was hospitalized for depression and obviously, he was working through some horrifying things. I mean, when people are visited by despair, grief and pain before a husband strangles his wife, burns her and then is faced by hundreds of women with blurred faces, there’s a lot there. Also: he has converted to being Catholic and man, these are the kind of images that being part of the church can give you.

John Waters had the best review of this movie: “If Ingmar Bergman had committed suicide, gone to hell, and come back to earth to direct an exploitation/art film for drive-ins, this is the movie he would have made.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

April 11: Upsetting — What movie upsets you? Write about it and share it.

Enter the Void was director and co-writer (with Lucile Hadzihalilovic) Gaspar Noé’s dream project for  years and made possible after the commercial success of his just as upsetting — if not more so — movie Irréversible.

Drug dealer Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) and exotic dancer Linda (Paz de la Huerta) are siblings who have pledged to remain together after the deaths of their parents. After tripping out in a bar called The Void — after discussing the Tibetian Book of the Dead, Oscar is gunned down by cops and has to use his spirit to go through reality to live up to his promise to never leave Linda. As he floats through life, he experiences everthing from seeing how he was set up, how his parents died and oh yeah, what it’s like to both have sex with his sister and to be his sister having sex and then be a sperm that fertilizes her and being born again, living this life as an endless loop.

In his early twenties and totally out of his mind on mushrooms, Noé’ saw the first person movie Lady in the Lake and came to the decision that if he ever made a film about the afterlife, he would make it like that film. While he took ayahuasca to prepare for this movie, most of the cast didn’t have the same drug experiences, so he had to find media that explained the feelings of being high to them.

Why is this film upsetting? Well, as a kid, I never slept because when I closed my eyes, I felt like I would die and I couldn’t imagine it, even if I often planned my funeral in my head all the time. Maybe I was a goth before anyone knew what that was. But this movie would have sent my younger brain into absolute panic mode, starting with those buzzing aand throbbing credits.

You can watch this on Tubi.