This unsold TV pilot — made in 1988 for ABC — tried to take advantage of the boom in all things post-apocalyptic. It was even shot in some of the same places that Max Rockatansky race across, like Bourke-Wilcannia Road, Broken Hills and The Barrier Highway in New South Wales, Australia. And directing it? George Miller.

No, not that George Miller.

The George Miller that directed The Man From Snowy River and The Journey to the Center of the Earth TV mini-series.

That said, this movie also features Hugh Keays-Byrne, who was Toecutter in Mad Max and would one day become Immortan Joe in Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s also got Gus Mercurio (he was in plenty of Australian films like Harlequin and Turkey Shoot), Justin Monjo (who was in the post-apocalyptic The Blood of Heroes), Debra Engle (who played Blanche’s daughter Rebecca on Golden Girls), Caitlin O’Heaney (He Knows You’re Alone) and even Sharon Stone in an early role.

It goes so far to be a Mad Max-style film that they used stunt coordinator Glen Boswell (The Road Warrior, Razorback, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Dead End Drive-In). A lot of the crew — art director Rob Robinson and assistant directors Tony Wellington and Nikki Long — also worked on the end times film Sons of Steel.

It’s all about the aftermath of a severe drought that has pushed America away from the west and made water the most precious resource there is. As settlers move back into the destroyed cities, U.S. Marshalls like Garson MacBeth (Lewis Smith, Perfect Tommy from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai) and his cyborg partner, Rex (Miguel Ferrer, who a year earlier had helped build RoboCop) are there to protect them.

Sure, it’s kind of silly, but I loved the idea of MacBeth being obsessed with the idea of the west that he only knows from old movies and TV shows. And any post-apocalyptic movie that ends with Miguel Ferrer becoming a T-800 style robot and unleashing a barrage of bullets is something that I’m totally going to enjoy. Oh yeah — and it’s written by Rueben Leder, who also wrote A*P*E*!

You can watch this on YouTube.

Threads looked at the hopelessness and outright nightmarishness of The Day After and said, “Hold my warm beer.”

Sure, it has the big picture story of the nuclear war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., but it’s really about the little people of Sheffield as they deal with the riots leading up to the war and then the cold reality of two-thirds of all British homes being destroyed the deaths of 30 million people as nuclear war comes to England.

Unlike the 1950’s duck and cover films, this movie pulls no punches when it comes to what happens next after the bombs fall. Food can barely be grown, people die at a young age from radiation-related diseases, nuclear winter sets in and mankind slides back to the dark ages.

Writer Barry Hines told the website Off the Telly, “Our intention in making Threads was to step aside from the politics and – I hope convincingly – show the actual effects on either side should our best endeavours to prevent nuclear war fail.”

Made under the name Beyond Armageddon, it’s amazing that this even got on the air in England. A previous film, a mock documentary entitled The War Game, was so upsetting to BBC execs that it didn’t air for decades, as they were convinced that it was so upsetting that people would commit suicide after watching it. It aired on July 31, 1985, the fortieth anniversary week of the bombing of Hiroshima, right after a repeat of Threads.

This is absolutely the roughest movie about nuclear war that I’ve ever seen. There is no hope whatsoever and as we’ve seen over the last year, the governments and services of the world are ill-equipped to even survive when the worst happens. It aired in the U.S. on TBS, as Ted Turner thought that it was an important movie that Americans needed to see. When he couldn’t find a sponsor for it, he paid for its airing out of his own pocket.

You know what screws me up? This brutal and uncompromising movie was directed by Mick Jackson, who went on to make The Bodyguard and the Dana Carvey movie Clean Slate.

This was also shot in the same abandoned hospital as Cabaret Voltaire’s video for “Sensoria.”

You can watch this on Tubi. There’s also a blu ray release of this movie from Severin.

In the future of 2097,  Earth’s kaiju all live on Godzilla Island, living under constant watch from the G-Guard. Godzilla, Godzilla Junior, Rodan, Kumasogami, Jigora, American Godzilla, Dogora — who was never even in a Godzilla movie before — Fire Rodan, King Ghidorah, Mecha-King Ghidorah, Mechagodzilla, Mothra, Mothra Leo, Anguirus, Gigan, Hedorah, Destoroyah, Baragon, King Caesar, Moguera, Megalon, Battra, SpaceGodzilla, Gorosaurus, Kamacuras and several versions of Jet Jaguar all reside there.

This show is pretty wild, as it was filmed with Bandai’s Godzilla Island toys with effects much like Robot Chicken to make them seem alive. The stories are crazy too, all told in three-minute episodes with overarching themes.

I mean, a Godzilla show that has The Edge from U2 doing music? It’s pretty out there.

The 22 stories of the show start with the Xiliens bringing Space Godzilla to Godzilla Island before battles ensue with Mecha-King Ghidorah, Godzilla being hypnotized by Space Godzilla, a Neo-Hedorah showing up and a Fire Fighter and Medic Jet Jaguar making appearances.

If you like Gigan, good news. He becomes a good guy over this series. And there’s a new monster named Gororin who is basically a cactus.

While this has never been released in the U.S. and Toho often pulls down any links, some brave folks have made an English dub and posted it on the Internet Archive. It’s silly, but a lot of fun, obviously made by people with a great love for all things kaiju.

Fred Savage was an ebullient teen, someone who seemingly could never do wrong until in this film, he becomes a high school wrestler who gets on the gas and goes bonkers on Candace Cameron. Yes, there comes a time in every actor’s life to do a made-for-TV ripped from the headlines movie. This one is based on the August 23, 1991 murder of Amy Carnevale by her high school boyfriend Jamie Fuller.

There’s also a Lifetime remake that came out in 2018, but we’re dealing with the original.

Man, there’s really nothing like seeing Kevin Arnold tear into D.J. Tanner with full force roid rage, is there? I realize I’m making light of a real problem — women now know to respect themselves and show ape-like men the door — but I’m also in awe of movies where actors just go for it. More often than not, this action happens in TV movies about very important issues.

Everyone just wants to be popular and not rock the boat. Their indifference — one could say that No One Would Tell — leads to Cameron’s character getting treated to a Laura Palmer funeral. I mean, even when these kids get on the stand in a trial, they speak up for the boy, saying that he wouldn’t have had to beat her if she just listened.

Reginald VelJohnson turned down the role of a cop in this movie. IMDB wants me to say that it was because he had scheduling conflicts with Family Matters, but I think VelJohnson was just sick of constantly having to play a cop, a role he did in Die Hard, Die Hard 2, Turner & Hooch, Ghostbusters and Plain Clothes*.

You may wonder, “Why is this movie so scummy?” I’d blame director Noel Nosseck, who made drive-in fare before this like Best Friends and Las Vegas Lady before moving to TV movies.

Also: I absolutely love the fake Guns ‘n Roses playing in the first scene.

*This reminds me of a convention I was at where Michael Dorn was speaking. Someone asked, “Why is Worf your favorite role?” He replied that he was tired of always playing police officers after CHiPs and it was great to be in a role that let him do something different. The person who asked the question then said, “But as a corrections officer, isn’t Worf a cop?” Dorn looked out at the audience, crestfallen, then just slowly walked off the stage early and went back to his room alone.

You can watch this on Tubi.

More power to David DeCoteau for making movies still after decades of directing. Most of his latest output has been a series of The Wrong… movies starring Vivica Fox like The Wrong Valentine, The Wrong Mr. Right, The Wrong Real Estate Agant, The Wrong Stepfather, The Wrong Teacher and so many more.

In this installment, Vivica is Coach Flynn, but the main story is all about one of her cheerleaders named Becky (Cristine Prosperi, who is also in Bring It On: Worldwide and The Wrong Neighbor and The Wrong Prince Charming), who falls for a boy named Rob who ends up trying to possess every moment of her existence.

How did I know that this, of all the movies on the set came from DeCoteau? Because for all the cheerleading girls, the majority of the action is focused on male abs. Hey — the dude knows what he likes and keeps making movies. More power to him.

Want more cheerleader movies? Then grab Lifetime’s new Cheer! Rally! Kill! 5-Film Collection, which features this movie and four others on DVD.

Autumn is a new student in a new school that…yes, has daddy issues and yes…is somehow talented enough to become a top cheerleader with little to no effort. However, she’s also working undercover, as the cheer team needs taken down a peg and the high school newspaper feels like the folk to do the job.

It turns out that all of the cheerleaders take laxatives to stay skinny and then there’s also a mystery maniac stalking all of them. So while the nod to the slasher made me happy, I really wanted more out of this. But hey — it’s a cheerleader movie made in 2019, not something playing a drive-in in 1975.

Could Autumn’s new boyfriend be a killer? Why are girls so mean to one another? And how does dance translate so well to cheering? I have so many questions, which means that I have to keep watching movies like this to increase my knowledge base.

Want more cheerleader movies? Then grab Lifetime’s new Cheer! Rally! Kill! 5-Film Collection, which features this movie and four others on DVD.