EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks to Matthew Hale on Letterboxd, I’ve learned that there are alternate versions of this Mill Creek box set. For the sake of completeness and my obsessive compulsive disorder, here’s this missing movie.

Slasher film coincidences: five friends visit a crippled uncle, a taxidermist who lives next to a movie set, and they all start dying just like the movie that’s being made.

This was all we needed in 1988, you know?

Also, this movie had the tagline “Ken Sagos, the kid who survived Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is back!” I mean, that’s better than “Ken Sagos, the kid who Freddy killed in Nightmare on Elm Street 4 is back!”

I mean, how many movies have a cursed screenplay to blame? And how many have a metal band — The Dirty Dogs — play a song called “When the Axe Comes Down” and then blow a dude’s head up real good? And dude — thanks to the website We Are Cursed to Live In Interesting Times, I can tell you that the songs in Death by Dialogue were produced by Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion and founder of Epitaph Records.

There’s also a girl taking off someone’s head with a scarf.

Death by Dialogue is way too long, but how can a movie get better when a woman sets a man ablaze with a flamethrower? That said, this is a movie not aware of its own stupidity, which is really how it should be, and it just keeps piling on the inanity and sometimes, you just let a goofball slasher and Ken Sagos star vehicle fill your slasher addict veins with sweet movie drugs.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks to Matthew Hale on Letterboxd, I’ve learned that there are alternate versions of this Mill Creek box set. For the sake of completeness and my obsessive compulsive disorder, here’s this missing movie.

The site just covered Tenebrae but this is the American version which appears on some copies of the Mill Creek Drive-In Movie Classics DVD box set.

Unsane is the American title, which was thought to make more sense — and maybe be easier to pronounce, anyway — than Tenebrae.

Obviously, there’s a new title card that appears right when the book goes into the fire.

The pages from that book are also now in English, which looks to be filmed for this release.

Throughout, some shots are slightly longer, like when Elsa is shoplifting. However, the tracking shots in the American version as the camera goes over the house in that incredible scene are cut down. That’s just one of the many things that angered Argento.

Much of the gore is removed, such as the beach girl being knifed more than once and Jane’s death, which is really trimmed.

Another change that disturbed the director was the inclusion of “Take Me Tonight” by Kim Wilde over the closing credits.

Overall, the film has less dialogue and cleaner kills. You can find it on the Arrow and Synapse releases. It’s hard for us today to think that a celebrated director like Argento would have his film treated like this, but in 1982, the world was much different.

Sources

1. Movie Censorship: Tenebrae

EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks to Matthew Hale on Letterboxd, I’ve learned that there are alternate versions of this Mill Creek box set. For the sake of completeness and my obsessive compulsive disorder, here’s this missing movie.

If you’re depressed and home alone with COVID-19, I advise you in no way should you watch the 1980 Japanese movie Fukkatsu no Hi (Day of Resurrection). Directed by Kinji Fukasaku (Battles Without Honor or Humanity, Message from Space, Battle Royale) and taken from the book by Sakyo Komatsu. Two of that writer’s other books, Japan Sinks and Sayonara Jupiter became the movies Submersion of Japan and Bye Bye Jupiter.

Fukasaku took a Japan that had already dealt with the loss of World War II and being the only country to ever be nuked — twice — and created post-apocalyptic disaster films that allowed them to see the rest of the world deal with terrors like they did. It’s exploitation but in some ways, it also had to feel cathartic.

As I sniffle on the couch today, the victim of a plague in its who knows how many mutations, I don’t feel all that good about watching a movie about how a plague destroys humanity.

In 1982, East German scientist Dr. Krause and a group of Americans exchange MM88, a deadly virus that amplifies any virus or bacteria that it meets. It had been stolen from the U.S. and as it is being returned, the place crashes and causes a pandemic called the Italian Flu. This in no way feels like our life for the past few years.

Seven months is all it takes for the world to end. As President Richardson (Glenn Ford) and Senator Barkley (Robert Vaughn) die, they realize that the only way America can live is to move its authority to the sub-zero Palmer Station in Antarctica, a place where the cold has kept the virus from infecting the scientists from many countries who live there.

In a few years, Palmer Station becomes a melting pot of sorts where women consensually sleep with as many men as possible to repopulate the Earth. The only problem is that the Automated Reaction System designed by General Garland (Henry Silva) is set to nuke anyone that attacks the U.S., even if it’s an earthquake, so their little hidden paradise is about to be blown into space. That said, it seems as if a cure for the virus has been found.

The women and children and several hundred of the men are sent to safety aboard an icebreaker while Dr. Yoshizumi (Masao Kusakari) and Major Carter (Bo Svenson) take a sub to shut down the ARS after taking the experimental vaccine. In Washington, D.C., Carter dies in the rubble of a bunker where the missile system is. Yoshizumi contacts the Nereid and tells them to try to save themselves. He does say that the vaccine seems to have worked, “If that still matters.” “At this point in time, life still matters,” the captain replies.

The bombs hit and this is where the movie has different versions. In America, the screen goes to black and then credits. But in Japan, well, they still have hope. Yoshizumi survives the blast and walks back to Antarctica, taking years to get there, but finding the survivors and true love. He then says, “Life is wonderful.”

As every disaster movie should, this has a huge cast. More than those we named, there’s also Sonny Chiba, Kensaku Morita, Toshiyuki Nagashima, George Kennedy as the leader of Palmer Station, Chuck Connors, Olivia Hussey, Isao Natsuyagi, Edward James Olmos, Stuart Gillard and more.

Producer Haruki Kadokawa was the heir to a publishing empire. He entered the film business in the mid 70s with some high-profile features and thought that this movie would break his company into the international film marketplace. That’s why so many American stars are in it and it was called Virus. It was a huge flop and only played limited dates before being sold directly to cable. It was the most expensive Japanese film at the time it was made (a record that Fukasaku may have already had with Message from Space).

My favorite part in the entire movie is when Japan is falling into sickness and naked people are still in a disco, dancing and throwing up. That’s how you do the end of it all. I would have loved another movie that has the four-year walk that Yoshizumi takes from America to Antarctica.

The director’s cut on Tubi is massive and comes in at two hours and thirty-six depressing minutes. Every moment, I wonder if my throat will close and this virus will end me, and then I remember that it’s supposedly weaker now and I’m on meds, but man, MM88 is rough.

If this is my epitaph, let it be known that it was Guns ‘n Roses that finally killed me.

You can watch this on Tubi.

A loose remake of The Day of the Jackal, this was Sidney Poitier’s last movie, which makes me sad, as well as a movie that has an absolutely hilarious scene where Bruce Willis uses a remote controlled machine gun to turn Jack Black into hamburger.

You know who wasn’t pleased by this remake? Just about everyone involved with the original movie, including director Fred Zinnemann, author Frederick Forsyth, actor Edward Fox and producer John Woolf. They hated it so much that they filed an injunction to prevent Universal from using the original name and made the film use an “inspired by” credit.

I mean, how often how we wondered who would win in a fight, Willis or Richard Gere? But seriously, Willis is The Jackal, a killing machine, and Gere is Declan Joseph Mulqueen, an IRA sniper who may be the only man deadlier as an assassin.

Geeks like me went to see this movie because Gere’s lover Isabella Celia Zancona was played by Mathilda May from Lifeforce. Well, I also really liked Michael Caton-Jones’ Scandal, so that brought me in, same as when he made Basic Instinct 2. The script came from Chuck Pfarrer, who wrote Navy SEALs, Darkman, Hard Target and Barb Wire. All of those movies are more entertaining than this.

When Gere first appears, he has a mustache and goatee. He wanted to switch up his look, which upset  Universal, so that’s why there’s a scene where Gere asks for a razor after accepting the job. This is the absolute dumbest thing I’ve written in some time and I blame this movie.

The Mill Creek Epic Showdowns – 4 Action Movies set includes Kull the Conqueror, The Cowboy Way and End of Days. You can get it from Deep Discount.

Rodeo riders and ropers Pepper Lewis (Woody Harrelson) and Sonny Gilstrap (Kiefer Sutherland) have traveled from New Mexico to New York City looking for their friend Nacho Salazar (Joaquín Martínez) and staying to find his killer along with police officer Sam “Mad Dog” Shaw (Ernie Hudson).

Directed by Gregg Champion and written by Robert C. Thompson and William D. Wittliff (Legends of the Fall, The Perfect Storm, Lonesome Dove‘s TV script), this reminds me of the 90s when high concept buddy movies kept coming out. “So Woody and Kiefer are from Texas and come to the big city and stuff happens! We’ll even have Woody order a steak, you know, because he’s vegan! It’s kind of like Crocodile Dundee.”

Bad guy John Stark (Dylan McDermott) is the reason they’re in town, as Nacho was coming to buy his daughter Teresa’s (Cara Buono) freedom. The outcome is never in doubt, but there is a nice bit of character work as Hudson really wants to be a cowboy, which is supposed to be funny because the movie assumes audiences believe there were no black cowboys when history informs us that up to 25% of all cowboys in the settling days of the west were African American.

The Mill Creek Epic Showdowns – 4 Action Movies set includes  Kull the Conqueror, The Jackal and End of Days. You can get it from Deep Discount.