April 23: Off Field On Screen — Draft a film that has a sports figure as its star. Bonus points if it’s not a biography of themselves!
Also known as Blackout, this is all about John Gray (Brian Bosworth), a banker who loses his memory after he’s hit by a car. John’s recovery is anything but peaceful. He’s haunted by fragmented, visceral flashbacks of a life filled with blood, chrome and chaos. These images don’t fit the suit-and-tie world he currently inhabits. When he returns home only to witness his wife’s brutal murder, the mystery turns into a desperate race for survival.
Directed by Allan A. Goldstein (2001: A Space Travesty, Death Wish V) and written by Ruben Gordon and Steve Schoenberg (Legion of Iron), we learn that John was once part of a gang led by Thomas Payne (Brad Dourif) and that they may have robbed a bank at some point or another. John’s real name? Wayne Garret. So he’s John/Wayne.
This won’t be the best movie you’ve ever seen. It won’t be the best Boz movie you’ve ever seen, as that would be Stone Cold. It is, however, like a great cheap Chinese meal. It’s filling for a bit, it’s not that bad and you won’t remember it.
April 22: Earth Day Ends Here — Instead of celebrating a holiday created by a murderer, share an end of the world disaster movie with us. You can also take care of the planet while you’re writing.
Los Angeles has finally had the “Big One,” but it’s not the San Andreas Fault. It’s a series of dirty bombs that have turned the city of angels into a gray, ashen purgatory. Brad (Rory Cochrane) is a struggling musician who stays home while his wife Lexi (Mary McCormack) heads to work. When the clouds of toxic dust start rolling through the suburbs, Brad does exactly what the radio tells him to do: seal the house.
When Lexi returns covered in the very dust that the radio says will kill everyone, the movie stops being a thriller and becomes a gut-wrenching moral play. Do you open the door for the person you love if it means you both die?
Without spoiling the ending for the uninitiated, let’s just say Gorak pulls the rug out from under you in a way that feels like a punch to the solar plexus. Brad thinks he’s saving himself, but the very safety he’s built becomes a petri dish for something much worse.
Directed by Chris Gorak (who spent years as an art director for guys like Fincher and the Gilliam brothers), this flick takes the post-9/11 duct-tape-and-plastic-sheeting paranoia and turns it into a nihilistic nightmare. This was a good movie, but not a fun watch.
April 21: Gone Legitimate — A movie featuring an adult film actor in a mainstream role.
Directed and co-written by Francis Creighton (who also played Rev. Fakkar), this isn’t your daddy’s Dracula, and it certainly isn’t your sister’sTwilight. This is a neon-soaked, high-fructose corn syrup nightmare that feels like someone dropped a tab of acid at a 1960s beach party and forgot to come down for thirty years.
We start with the titular vampires. Are they lurking in gothic castles? Nope. They’re clad in neon bikinis, in the sun and shaking it on the Malibu sands to the strains of “Beach Blanket Bingo.” Then, we discover three heroes, I guess, who all have issues:
Colonel Oliver West (Rod Sweitzer): A Marine who looks like he’s lost his way to a GI Joe convention, who is Ollie North.
Congressman Terry Upstart (Marcus Frieshman): Your typical greasy politician.
Reverend Tim Fakker (Creighton): A televangelist working alongside Pammy Faye (Gretchen House) and—I am not making this up—a troupe of tap dancers.
Here in this movie, a vampire bite doesn’t turn you into a creature of the night; it turns you into an honest person. Once bitten, our three leads lose the ability to lie, which absolutely wrecks their careers in the military, politics and the pulpit.
The vampires include Kelly Galindo as the chairperson, Christina Walker as the vice-president, Mimi Spivak as a vampire in charge of our country’s money, Anet Anatelle as a “wanna-be Cher,” Cherie Romans as “girl who failed her SAT,” Yvette Buchanan — Baby Doll from Night Eyes — as a rocket scientist, adult actress Jeannie Pepper as a brain surgeon, Becky LeBeau as a census taker and even Angelyne as a Barbara Bush impersonator.
I can definitely say that this movie is not good in any way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. You can listen to her podcast at https://thecinemajunction.com.
April 20: Regional Horror — A regional horror movie. Here’s a list if you need an idea.
An ambitious regional horror movie that asks two good questions. “What if the little Zuni fetish warrior doll from Trilogy of Terrorcame from a tribe of hundreds more rampaging dolls?” And, “What if some survivors of a sunken ship got stranded on an island inhabited by the little blighters?”
It doesn’t matter that the island is in the North Atlantic instead of a country in Africa. It’s entirely plausible that these industrious creatures could have built themselves a boat and explored the world, establishing tiny populations wherever they could find enough food. They even have their own religion. These are just some of the reasons I love this film.
Other reasons include:
Tiny wooden dolls with glowing eyes swinging on vines.
Tiny wooden dolls with glowing eyes biting right through a castaway’s trousers to the soft, chewy center of the calf.
Tiny wooden dolls praying to their wooden doll deity.
Castaway getting his face melted off trying to drink from an acid pond.
A body picked clean to the bones.
Shot in Connecticut on a miniscule budget, the director cleverly shows the sinking of the 1920s pleasure cruiser and subsequent journey to the island in quick cuts during the opening credits. This leaves plenty of time for the characters to walk around in the woods, pick berries and argue with zeal. Yes, there’s a lot of walking in this movie.
We even get a know-it-all character very similar to Harry Cooper in Night of the Living Dead. Then we have Ginger, Mary-Ann, Gilligan….Oh. Wait. To be honest, I can’t remember any of the castaways’ names in this movie. I was too blown away by the puppetry and special effects. The puppets are the stars. The filmmakers truly did make something out of nothing here. It’s a lot of fun.
The attack scenes make this movie. The first attack starts at approximately 32 minutes into the film. The monsters wait until our group is fast asleep by the campfire. Cathy takes first watch. She notices a pair of glowing eyes in the darkness. Then another…and another…. until there are too many to count. A very effective sequence. By the time she calls for help, it’s too late.
The monsters launch their hunting party into action. Needle-like fangs sink into shoulders, necks and asses. I watched this scene 3 times before writing this review and it gets better every time. My favorite shot features one creature swinging down on a vine while two others cross into the foreground in front of him. Excellent stuff.
The next day, the monsters push the castaways’ boat out to sea and execute a series of daylight attacks. They patter through the underbrush, scale trees and leap onto their prey until most of the humans are picked off. Along the way, the beasties lose a few of their own, but it never slows them down.
They stop their hunting activities just long enough to pray to their totem god. Likely paying homage to their fallen comrades and giving thanks for their delicious bounty.
The fact that we see some of their culture showcases the filmmakers’ enthusiasm. I was fascinated by this scene. I wanted to see more of their daily lives on the island. Do they live in little huts? Do they have hunting strategy meetings around a tiny wooden table? Answering all my questions would be giving too much of the mystery away and cost too much.
In the end, two of the castaways escape the island when a rowboat with two men passes by. I was hoping for an aquatic attack but that would be too ambitious even for this film.
One of the men asks, “What were those things?” We are given no answer. I’d like to think the tiny creatures made their way back to the other bodies and finished feasting.
In later years, these valiant hunters would be revered in their tribe. When future generations of beast creatures tucked their offspring into their beds at night, they’d tell them about, “The Great Hunt.”
Vinegar Syndrome released a restored Blu Ray version, or you can watch the full movie here. I’ve cued it to the first attack scene. I’m totally in love with these little guys. Enjoy!
April 20: Regional Horror — A regional horror movie. Here’s a list if you need an idea.
Do you think Jessica Harper ever wonders, “Could I not be in a cult movie?”
In The Evictors, Harper brings that signature wide-eyed vulnerability to the humid, claustrophobic world of 1940s Louisiana. She plays Ruth Watkins, the wife of Ben (Michael Parks). They’ve just learned that every couple who has ever lived in their new home has been killed since the Monroes had a shootout all the way back in 1928. Every time Ben goes away on business, his wife is threatened by a shadowy figure who turns out to be one of the Monroes. In fact, everyone ends up being one, including their real estate agent, Jake Rudd (Vic Morrow).
Despite teaching Ruth how to shoot, Ben may have taught her a little too well, as she thinks he’s the man who has been bothering her. She shoots and kills him just as she learns that Jake is Todd Monroe and that he’s been reselling the Monroe house over and over again to unsuspecting young couples, while his sister-in-law Anna/Olie e befriends the new tenants to learn more about them, and their brother Dwayne Monroe (Dennis Fimple) does the killing. Then Jake buys the house back, splits the money with his family and it all starts over again. But during an argument, Dwayne murders Olie and then goes after Ruth. Jake kills him.
In the bleakest of turns, the film skips forward five years to find Ruth hasn’t just survived. She’s been assimilated. Now insane and living as Jake’s wife, she’s become a willing gear in the Monroe family’s murderous machine.
Director Charles B. Pierce was the king of drive-in docudrama. While he’s best known for The Legend of Boggy Creek and The Town That Dreaded Sundown, this shows a more polished, albeit cynical, side of his filmmaking. Unlike Hollywood slashers, Pierce’s films feel lived-in. The sweat, the heavy Southern air, and the period-accurate 1940s costuming give it a grit that feels more like a True Crime magazine come to life than a standard horror flick. That may be because he was inspired to make this after reading a detective magazine article about a Kansas family who murdered somebody trying to evict them.
This was one of the final gasps for American International Pictures, the legendary studio that fueled the drive-ins. Its financial failure signaled the beginning of the end of an era for independent regional distribution.
Pierce considered it his most downbeat film and told Fangoria that it had a dark ending because “I probably just didn’t have any other way to end it.”
April 19: What Happened to Jayne — A movie starring Jayne Mansfield.
I’ve seen almost every movie that Jayne had a major role in, so I’ve been making my way through her early roles. In Illegal, she plays Angel O’Hara, a singer whose testimony is crucial to the movie’s conclusion.
The main star is Edward G. Robinson, who plays Victor Scott, a district attorney who has risen from the slums to become a courtroom star. He was mentored by an older man who made him promise to watch over his daughter, attorney Ellen Miles (Nina Foch). She’s in love with him, he’s in love with the job and therefore encourages her to marry another man, Ray Borden (Hugh Marlowe).
When his spectacular courtroom abilities lead to an innocent man named Edwqard Clary (DeForest Kelley!) being put to death, he decides to give up the law and hits the bottle. While in court for a public drunkenness charge, he saves a man accused of murder by knocking out a witness, Mr. Taylor (Henry Kulky), who claimed that he couldn’t be taken out by a man the size of the accused. Now a civil lawyer, Victor ends up working for one of his former enemies, Frank Garland (Albert Dekker), a mob boss. Somehow, Garland keeps getting out of every case and it seems like there’s a leak. Spoiler — Ray isn’t the nice guy he seems to be and nearly kills Ellen, who shoots him in self-defense. However, everyone thinks she’s the leak, so Victor has to defend the woman he’s always been in love with.
Robinson owned an amazing contemporary art collection used to decorate this film, including impressionist works by Gauguin, Degas, Duran and Gladys Lloyd. He was being investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee at the time. Robinson had been graylisted, meaning that while not officially banned, major studios were hesitant to hire him. This is why a titan of cinema was working for a smaller budget at Warner Bros.
Based on the play The Mouthpiece by Frank J. Collins, this was directed by Lewis Allen, best known for the classic ghost story The Uninvited. It was written by W.R. Burnett and James R. Webb. Burnett wrote the novel Little Caesar, which made Robinson a star in 1931. Having them reunite for Illegal was a poetic, full-circle moment for the film noir genre.
If you’re someone like me who enjoys seeing props from other movies show up in a film, keep an eye out for the Maltest Falcon. You can see it on a bookcase when Victor enters the office of DA Ralph Ford.
While Jayne Mansfield’s role as Angel O’Hara is relatively brief, it was a calculated career move. At this point, she was being groomed by Warner Bros. as a blonde bombshell alternative to Marilyn Monroe. Her performance of “Too Close for Comfort” (though dubbed by Bonnie Lou Williams) served as her screen test for the world. It proved she could command the screen with the same va-va-voom energy that would make her a household name a year later in The Girl Can’t Help It. Seeing her play a canary (mob slang for a singer/witness) against a gritty veteran like Robinson creates a striking tonal shift in the film, moving from the dark, smoky corners of a courtroom drama to the glitzy, dangerous world of the nightclub.
April 18: King Yourself! — Pick a movie released by Crown International Pictures. Here’s a list!
Created and produced by Hisao Masuda and financed by The Arthur Davis Company, this film explores a range of Japanese martial arts and the abilities of some of the most famous martial arts masters of the time.
We kick things off with a terrifyingly efficient demo of the Japanese sword. It’s sleek, it’s sharp and yet Okinawan farmers learned how to stop them. These guys didn’t have katanas, so they turned their pitchforks and gardening tools into instruments of absolute destruction. We meet Teruo Hayashi, the Karate-do legend, who shows us how this Okinawan weaponry was used before Fujimoto, the Human Sledgehammer, fought a train and karate-chopped beer bottles. Then, Suzuki shows off his nunchaku skills.
We go from judo to the elegant but lethal Naginata-do. Often associated with female practitioners, it’s a master class in reach and timing. We also meet the legendary Gozo Shioda, the founder of Yoshinkan Aikido; watch Shinto practitioners fire walking and see sumo stable training with Takamiyama.
Then, we head back into the world of Teruo Hayashi, who’s here to remind us that kata isn’t just a synchronized dance for a trophy. It’s a rehearsal for a funeral. The narrator, who sounds like he’s seen a few things he can’t forget, doesn’t mince words: Karate is severe and cruel.
The film takes a detour into the connection between Zen Buddhism and Budo as we watch Shuji Matsushita sitting in zazen when—WHACK—he takes a strike from an abbot’s kyosaku, the encouragement stick. It’s a wake-up call for the soul that’ll make you glad you’re just watching from your couch. Then, Taizaburo Nakamura steps up for the film’s absolute highlight. Using slow-motion footage that feels like it belongs in a Peckinpah flick, the movie shows how fast a sword cut is.
Before the credits roll, we get a peek at the forge of Amada Akitsugu, a national living treasure. Seeing a nihonto sword born from fire and a hammer is a reminder that these aren’t just weapons. They’re masterpieces.
If you have any interest in fighting, this is a movie for you.
April 17: Fake Bat Appreciation Day —Watch a movie with a fake bat in it.
It’s Fake Bat Appreciation Day, a holiday I just made up to celebrate the kind of cinema where the strings are visible, the wings are made of felt and the actors have to pretend they aren’t being pelted with a taxidermy project gone wrong. I wish I could watch A Lizard In a Woman’s Skin again so I could delight in the bats in it, but this starts with an animated bat and has a bat-on-a-string moment that lasts an eternity.
I’ve heard a lot of people say some bad things about this movie, and man, I realize I have no taste because I loved every single moment of it. I could go back right now and watch it again, which I can’t say I’ve done for any movie in a long time.
Billy the Kid (Chuck Courtney, who played the Lone Ranger’s nephew Dan Reid on TV) has gone straight. He’s moved to a mining town to find a good woman and settle down. Well, he actually stole a good woman and made her his fiancée. He’s efficient like that.
That girl is Betty Bentley (Melinda Plowman), and she’s a catch: she’s cute, she knows how to work a Winchester and her family owns the local mine. She’s also caught the eye of Count Dracula, played by the legendary John Carradine. I love Skinny Dracula, which is what I call any Carradine Dracula. This one is dumb enough to hide out in a silver mine when silver can kill him. What are you thinking? Then again, this Dracula also walks around during the day, so who are we to put limits on him?
Dracula decides to pose as Betty’s uncle to get close to her, but he’s got competition. Not just Billy, but also Dan “Red” Thorpe (Bing Russell, father of Kurt!), the man Billy cucked to get Betty. Red is so blinded by rage that he doesn’t even care that a vampire is snooping around his Western hometown; he just wants Billy dead.
This was shot at the same time as the movie it played double features with, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter, both directed by William Beaudine as his last films. It took eight days to film both.
Carradine said of this movie: “I have worked in a dozen of the greatest, and I have worked in a dozen of the worst. I only regret Billy the Kid Versus Dracula. Otherwise, I regret nothing.”
April 16: Dead Fad — Find a fad, look for a movie about it and share.
Before it was a standardized extreme sport with professional leagues, paintball was part of a larger, slightly more chaotic campus fad called The Assassination Game. Students would stalk each other through dorm halls and libraries with suction-cup darts or water pistols. Gotcha! took this localized craze and elevated it into a Cold War spy thriller, suggesting that if you could navigate a UCLA library without getting hit by a paint pellet, you were basically halfway to being a CIA operative.
Jonathan Moore (Anthony Edwards) is a veterinary student at UCLA and an expert at Gotcha, a game where students hunt down one another with paintball guns. Look for the LJN tie-in line of Entertech line of paintball and water guns and the NES game, Gotcha! The Sport, which wouldn’t come out until 1987 and is only the paintball tournament from the beginning of this, but yes, it is a tie-in game.
Jonathan and his roommate, Manolo (Nick Corri), travel to Paris during spring break, where Jonathan meets Sasha Banicek (Linda Fiorentino) and loses his virginity. I mean, that’s a big jump from nerdy paintball-playing virgin to aggressive cuddling with the star of The Last Seduction, but good for him. Of course, there are all sorts of complications, as she’s being tracked by Russian spies. Turns out she’s a CIA agent from Pittsburgh.
Shout-out to this movie for featuring “Two Tribes” and “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood on the soundtrack.
Gotcha! was directed by Jeff Kanew, who also filmed V.I. Warshawski, Tough Guys, Troop Beverly Hills and Revenge of the Nerds. It was written by Dan Gordon (Tank, Let There Be Light, Passenger 57).
I definitely rented this from 7-11 off a spinner rack as a kid and was shocked by how much I liked it. Maybe I, too, dreamed of being a nerd spy, which never happened.
April 15: TV to Movies — Let’s decry the lack of originality in Hollywood. But first, let’s write about a movie that started as a TV show.
The movie version of the on-again-off-again OG of movie riffing TV shows. It’s shorter than any single episode and features human Mike Nelson, robots Crow T. Robot, Tom Servo and Gypsy all stuck on The Satellite of Love forced to watch “bad movies” for an evil scientist named Dr. Clayton Forrester. Yes, he’s named after the scientist is War of the Worlds. Which is one of the reasons I fell in love with the show.
I’m probably not the best writer to write objectively about this film because I have been a huge fan of the show since around 1994 when I discovered it at midnight on Comedy Central. I worked evenings and nights for better part of the e1990s and 2000s and the first 10 seasons of this show felt like it was written for me.
A girl brought up on Curse of the Werewolf, Curse of Bigfoot and Track of the Moon Beast. I never have and do not think of many of the films riffed on MST3K as “bad.” I have great affection for the 1960s Gamera and Godzilla films and all the other films they riffed. However, I do acknowledge that is not typical audience thinking. I’m a cult movie hound and MST3K’s reference-dropping humor got me through more hard times than I care to divulge here. Life if just too short to take any movie too seriously.
MST3K: The Movie answers the question, “…if you’re wondering how he eats and breathes and other science facts…” within the first five minutes on the SOL’s bigger budget version of the bridge. The first time I saw Tom Servo hover float down into the frame using his hover skirt, it felt almost as magical as that moment in The Muppet Movie when a whole generation of kids got to finally feast their eyes on Kermit’s fully functional legs.
This time, Dr. Forrester (minus his sidekick Frank) sends his subjects This Island Earth. I love this movie, riffed or unriffed and I do not consider it an insult to point out that the aliens have foreheads that “grow like the mighty oak.” They do!
The boys’ riff on This Island Earth does not quite measure up to the show’s best episodes, but it is a worthwhile entry in the canon for fans and new viewers alike. Some of the references feel a bit dated in 2026 but the Top Gun reference was fresh as ever. My favorite riffs all involve Mike doing Rex Reason’s voice. “Joe! I’m in one of these boxes! FIND ME!!!”
This movie disappeared quickly. I don’t even remember it playing in L.A. in the summer of ’96. The show’s fanbase has resurrected this show no fewer than 3 times and we’re about to get new episodes from the Sci-Fi Channel era. My personal favorite.
The movie is available streaming on Amazon, Apple and of course, you can find it on DVD so you physical media folks can watch it on your home-built interocitor. Here’s how you build one:
Welp….I’m off to the local Head-Butt Days festival to meet up with Brak. Peace out.
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