The Dead Girls are a shock rock band whose members are Gina Verelli, who goes by Bertha Beirut and is played by Diana Karanikas (Click: The Calendar Girl Killer); Dana Grant, who is Lucy Lethal and is played by Angela Eads (Fatal Images); Amy is Nancy Napalm and is played by Kay Schaber (Fatal Images);  her brother Mark, who is Randy Rot and played by Steven Kyle and Susie Stryker who is Cynthia Slain and is played by Angela Scaglione.

Their manager Artie (Brian Chin) has ideas to make them go mainstream, but the girls realize that they are mainly known for their death-obsessed lyrics more than their abilities. Much like the Stained Class and Ozzy Osbourne lawsuits that inspired this story, the band’s fans have been inspired by their lyrics to engage in a mass suicide. The biggest problem for Gina is that her sister Brooke (Ilene Singer) was one of them and barely survived. Now, Aunt Annie (Carol Albright) and Uncle Jim (Robert Morris) — who raised them with good Christian values — think that Gina is to blame.

The band decides to take a two week vacation to a remote cabin, bringing along Brooke, the band’s assistant Jeff (Jeff Herbick), Gina’s old boyfriend from home Mike (David Chatfield) and a groupie named Karen (Mara Holland). Moments after they depart, Artie is murdered by a masked person. Also along for the ride is a nurse (Deirdre West) who is helping Brooke to recover.

The small place they’re staying it is frightening from the beginning. Elmo (David Williams), the developmentally challenged handyman seems to be stalking everyone. And when they send the groupie away, she’s soon killed. The murder doesn’t stop, as Susie is drowned in the lake by the killer and her body is found by Amy. Her body disappears and the band think that it’s a prank, as she has died on stage several times and worked with a magician to learn how to slow her heart and breathing.

If you think that this feels like a giallo, that’s no accident. Writer Steven Jarvis was influenced by the Italian genre.

The next morning, Amy find Susie and Jeff’s corpses in a barn. Gina runs, trying to stop the nurse who is taking Brooke to the hospital. She doesn’t get to her, stranding the group in a place with cut phone lines and a sheriff (Robert Harden) who thinks that they’re all pulling a stunt. Dana believes that Amy and Gina are behind the murders and the group begins to battle amongst themselves.

Amy is obsessed with the military — after all her name is Nancy Napalm — and she sets bombs up all over the barn trying to stop the killer. Dana and Gina start to believe that Mark is the killer and while they’re discussing that, Amy is dismembered with an axe just as Mark returns with firewood. Gina finds her body and takes her gun, returning to find Dana tied up and Mark holding a pistol.

That’s when it all comes out. Dana and Mark wanted to kill Amy and Gina, thinking that they were the murderers. And then, the real killer shows up and slices Dana’s throat.  Gina runs with the killer following her. Mark kills Elmo and we think that’s the end…except…

Spoiler warning…

Mark is the real killer. He’s a religious man who thinks that the Dead Girls had to die to end their music and save teenagers. He accidentally steps on a bomb and blows up, just as the nurse returns, finding Gina tied up. Thinking — just like Mark — that they’re all evil, she leaves Gina tied up and drives away.

Director Dennis Devine (Things II, Fatal Images) said that the weather and cold temperatures made this the most difficult film of his career. I love the idea that the band is being killed by weapons from their songs. I just wish that they actually had a chance to play their songs. It’s so close to being a great metal movie and that would push it over the top.

John Duncombe (Anthony Quayle), the British consul in Florence, has come home from his wife’s funeral and makes the decision to tell his son Andrea (Stefano Colagrande) that his mother is dead. He hides the truth from his other son, Milo (Simone Giannozzi). 

Andrea has to become a grown-up well before he should, while Milo is allowed to be a child and can act has badly as he wants. As for their father, he becomes absent from their lives until it is almost too late.

Director Luigi Comencini understands the time that exists and is so fragile between being a child and an adult. He shows how all three of these men navigate this loss in their own ways. It’s a really dramatic film that made me consider how I went from a child to a grown-up and how my father made his journey as well.

This was remade in 1984 as Misunderstood with Gene Hackman in the lead role.

The Radiance Films blu ray of Misunderstood has a 2K restoration from the original negative, as well as extras such as interviews with co-screenwriter Piero De Bernardi, Cristina Comencini and Michel Ciment; a visual essay by David Cairns on Comencini and the filmmaker’s affinity for childhood stories and a trailer. This limited edition of 3000 copies is presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings. There’s also a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original promotional materials and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by critic Manuela Lazic and a newly translated archival interview with Comencini.

You can get it from MVD.

Vincent Moon (Ice-T) has had it with the hundred people — a hundred people! — who have done him wrong. He lures them all to the prison that his crime syndicate has built — yes, this script is insane — and hides $10 million dollars. Only three people will be allowed to survive, as he’s also left guns throughout and gives everyone six hours to be the last person standing. If more than three people are alive in six hours, his kill squad will wipe everyone out and if anyone tries to escape, he has snipers ready to shoot them.

Albert Pyun knew how to set up a movie.

In the middle of all this violence, four people come together: killing machines Marcus (Michael Halsey), D (Kimberly Warren) and Lou (Christopher Lambert) as well as Cam (Deborah Van Valkenburgh, The Warriors but yeah, also Too Close for Comfort!), an accountant who tried to do the right thing and tell the police about what Moon’s syndicate is doing. Cam is in shock at all the bloodshed, but surrounded by these three stone cold assassins, she may survive.

In the midst of all this chaos, Lou also has a daughter, Lucy (Hunter Doughty), who is waiting in a car. He takes care of her and wants the money to make sure she has a future.

The killers are all as Pyun infused as you hope they would be, played by actors like Yuji Okumoto (Chozen, the best bad guy of all time, from The Karate Kid Part II) and Thom Mathews (The Return of the Living Dead and Tommy Jarvis from Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives). James Mathers, who was Dr. Jekyll in Dr. Jekyll’s Dungeon of Death, also is in this.

Shot in Los Angeles’ The Twin Towers Correctional Facility — which was empty at the time of filming, due to budget problems (thanks Schlock Pit!) and where Blast was also made by Pyun — this movie looks so much better than its budget would let you believe. It also has, as much Pyun movies do, a cast that makes it work, as Ice-T seems to be having the time of his life as a silver grilled mambo loving maniac.

In case you’re wondering why there’s hardly any blood while everyone is being killed, well, they couldn’t get the prison dirty. And everyone only had one costume for the duration of shooting.

Credit also goes to Andrew Witham’s script, which is filled with tough killer dialogue and little bursts of weirdness. Sure, it’s The Most Dangerous Game, but this movie is a marvel of low budget magic, as it has so many wild lines, a Three Stooges-style suitcase bomb death and even a line — “You’re Now In The Purgatory Network. Audio and Visual surveillance is constant by Lucifer Command.” — that can be read that the entire prison is in the afterlife.

Pyun also pulls off some small budget miracle here as while Lambert was paid half the budget, he was only available for a third of the shooting days. Most of his scenes were done in two eleven-hour days and the rest is all clever shots and fake Shemps, as Sam Raimi would credit.

It also looks wild, as Director of Photography George Moordian had secured free film stock by Moordian from Fuji Film and loved how Se7en had bleached the film. He fought to get the same look and it totally works, making this feel like it is inside some strange past future.

All in all, this is a near perfect movie.

The MVD blu ray of Mean Guns has an introduction and commentary by Pyun along with new interviews with producer Gary Schmoeller, executive producer Paul Rosenblum and compose Anthony Riparetti as well as a trailer. It all comes in a limited edition slipcover along with reversible art and a collectible mino-poster.

You can get Mean Guns from MVD.

On April 7, 2021, four men made their way to Travis Rudolph’s house — a former wide receiver for Florida State and the New York Giants and Miami Dolphins — to confront him about a fight he had with his girlfriend Dominique Jones. It got violent, he grabbed an AR-15 and as they ran, Rudolph fired 39 rounds at them, killing Sebastien Jean-Jacques as he made it to the passenger seat of a black Cadillac.

During the trial, Rudolph asked Judge Jeffrey Gillen to dismiss the case last year because of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which allows the use of deadly force to protect someone against death or bodily harm.

Gillen denied his request. It was up to the jury to decide if it was self-defense or murder.

During the trial, Rudolph would not back off the idea that he fired those shots in self-defense. Text messages introduced into evidence by his legal team proved that his ex-girlfriend sent text messages to her brother and the others, telling them to go “shoot up” Rudolph’s home because he had been cheating on her.

This Tubi special tells the entire story and you can see how the jury decided. It’s an interesting case and one everyone needs to consider, especially if they have guns and are ready to use them to defend themselves.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Alex (Natalie Brown) and her problem child daughter Nicole (Lola Flanery) have moved to a new town to get over the death of Alex’s husband (and Nicole’s father). Nicole is also — was also? — a famous social media influencer who ended up with a bad drug habit in the wake of that tragedy and needs to be watched like a hawk by her mother.

Then, as you can tell by the images of the poster, this turns Spirit store Eyes Wide Shut and a bit giallo as there’s a secret party in this town that determines who will be rich and famous. Everyone’s dying to get in, everyone wears masks and somehow, it all ties to the real reason that Alex has moved here: the bridge that cost her husband his life that keeps claiming innocent people with the reason supposedly being that everyone who dies there is a suicide.

It all looks much nicer than its budget suggests and yes, everyone acts like a moron and gets in way over their heads, but isn’t that what movies like this are made for?

Directed by Monika Mitchell (Deadly Midwife) and written by Miriam Lyapin and Helen Marsh (who wrote Festival of the Living Dead as a team), this is certainly much better than Lyapin and Marsh’s zombie failure. I’m all for more of Mitchell’s films, as they have no issue with being absurd and I use that word with the best possible feelings.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed and written by Jem Gerrard, who also made Slay for Tubi, this starts with Kay (Khosi Ngema) and her friend Riley (Matthew Vey) sneaking into the home of pharma king Pierce Patton (Francis Chouler) and his girlfriend Jessica (Alex McGregor). Much like Parasite, they seemingly live in the spaces where rich people leave behind during the day, remaining hidden and enjoying the comforts of life that their jobs could never afford.

Except there’s some way strange things going on in this house.

You can tell that Pierce is insane right from the beginning, as when he sees a photo that a journalist (Grant Ross) has used for his cover story, he instantly reacts like it’s the biggest slight ever. It takes Jessica to calm his nerves and make him settle down at his party.

Spoilers from here on out…

When you buy an entire mountain so no one else can be near you, you’re probably the kind of maniac that is conducting secret body horror experiments in your basement. That said, I was surprised several times by this movie, as characters aren’t what they seem and the lure of power, money or medical innovation start to be more important than being a human being. Only Kay emerges as someone who just wants to escape and tell the world about what she has seen. There’s a good chance that no one is going to allow her to be so altruistic.

This is the second movie by Gerrard that I have enjoyed and I hope that Tubi keeps them coming.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Don’t Trick-Or-Treat Alone! is written and directed by Dustin Ferguson and is made to look like it’s taped from WXIP-TV Channel 6. So if you saw WNUF Halloween Special, you’re getting something similar if on a much lower budget (or Late Night With the Devil, which was made after both).

The main movie within this forty-minute film is Don’t Trick-or-Treat Alone, an after school special warning kids not to make the mistakes that Cindy (Isabella Alexandra Russo) and her father Henry (Erik Anthony Russo) have made, as when she — you get it — tricks and treats alone, she ends up getting kidnapped by a Satanic gang of cannibals led by Lilith (Brinke Stevens).

There was also a release called WXIP – TV Channel 6 After School Triple Feature, which had Wrong Side of the Tracks, Runway Nightmare and Asylum of the Devil. Plus, I found evidence of a remake of House On Haunted Hill that says, “On October 31st, 1978, the WXIP-TV Channel 6 Team investigated the infamous “Hill House” on Live Television, with dire results. The broadcast was banned and never seen again, until now.”

Throughout the story, it keeps getting interrupted by commercials and news. It begins with the end of an Amityville special, a nice touch, before an ads for a news special called The Satanic Agenda, Dinosaur Park, 1-900-PSY-CHIC, an anti-drug PSA and Bigfoot bananas at WinLo’s Grocers. 

The filter on this makes it look very 1990 even if everything in it feels mid 2020s. That said, the story is fun and Stevens and the young Russo are great in it. There are a ton of commercials, which isn’t a bad thing until they start to repeat. Here’s a breakdown of the ads:

Second block of commercials: Castle of Creeps, Jack’s Pumpkin Patch, 1-900-PSY-CHIC, Breast of the Bird (a place I would certainly eat at), a news report on razors in apples and a commercial for Dr. Lobotomy’s Lunatic Theater playing Rise of the Undead. 

Third block: Ghoul Line 1-900-666-GHOUL, news of a missing child named Becky, Good Buddies mask ad, the same ad for The Satanic Agenda and a movie of the week by the name of Flash Force.

Fourth block: News about a mysterious van and ads for Breast of the Bird, Riverside County Flea Market, 1-900-PSY-CHIC, Mom’s Against Drug Abuse and Bigfoot’s bananas at WinLo’s Grocers.

Fifth block: News on Halloween candy and a weather report, as well as the ads for The Satanic Agenda, Prehistoric Park, Jack’s Pumpkin Patch, Castle of Creeps and Ghoul Line. 

Sixth block are a PSA from Eric and Isabella Russo, Riverside County Flea Market,Bigfoot’s bananas at WinLo’s Grocers, Breast of the Bird, Good Buddies, Flash Force, the Satanic news special, a news report on razor blades, Castle of Creeps, Riverside County Flea Market, Good Buddies, Jack’s Pumpkin Patch and a Halloween message.

Then, the film starts into Dr. Lobotomy’s Lunatic Theater but is cut off.

The commercials are funny, but when they repeat three times in under forty minutes and cut up a film that’s around ten, you wonder why they didn’t just make almost all new commercials for every block. Ferguson is definitely talented — and prolific — enough to do it, even if trailers for his other movies were turned into movie ads.

I didn’t mind my time with this and if you like micro budget horror that is looking to the past, you may enjoy it.

You can order this film from SCS.

Directed by David Thies, this TMZ No BS doc gathers their gossip crew to discuss how Cardi B went from Belcalis Marlenis Cephus in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, joined a gang, became an exotic dancer, then started to become an early social media influencer before becoming popular on the reality show Love & Hip Hop: New York.

In 2015, she made her musical debut on the remix to Shaggy’s “Boom Boom and then covered British rapper Lady Leshurr’s “Queen’s Speech 4” as the song “Cheap Ass Weave.” Within two years, her song “Bodak Yellow” was certified Diamond and won best song of the year from Pitchfork.

She hasn’t looked back.

I really liked how this show didn’t just show the celebrity side, but how she became politically active, using her fame for the right things. She has called attention to Social Security and asking for transparency in how taxes are spent, as well as endorsing Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, who she refuses to endorse again because of his stance on wars.

Today’s rap isn’t something I know much about, so I use these Tubi shows to get up to date. Sure, I’m still behind because I’m old, but they at least help me to know a little bit about things that are rapidly passing me by.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Jacques Rivette hailed Anthony Mann as “one of the four great directors of postwar Hollywood” alongside Nicholas Ray, Richard Brooks and Robert Aldrich. Studied by French film critics, several of whom would be part of the French New Wave, Mann started as Preston Sturges’ assistant director as well as the director of screen tests for movies like Gone With the Wind.

He’s probably best-known for his Westerns, many of which starred Jimmy Stewart like The Naked Spur and Winchester ’73. He was fired from Spartacus by its star, Kirk Douglas, and left his next film, Cimarron, after disagreements about shooting on a sound stage. After all, Mann’s locations are just about characters in themselves. He was right. The good news was that when he made El Cid it was a huge success.

The heroes of the Westerns that Mann made aren’t always heroes at first. In his article “The Last Mann,” Richard Corliss said, “The Mann western hero has learned wariness the hard way, because he usually has something to hide. He is a man with a past: some psychic shadow or criminal activity that has left him gnarled and calcified. Not so long ago he was a raider, a rustler, maybe a killer. If a movie were made of some previous chapter in his life, he’d be the villain, and he might be gunned down before he had the chance at redemption that Mann’s films offer.”

Bounty hunter Morgan Hickman (Henry Fonds) rides into town with a dead body, looking to make his money. He’s treated like evil itself, except by Sheriff Ben Owens (Anthony Perkins), a way too young and innocent man who has become the law because no one else wanted the job.

Ben is in love with Millie Parker (Mary Webster), whose father was the last law in town and she won’t take him as a husband until he quits. Hickman tells him she’s smart because he used to have a star and it ruined his life. That said, he does offer to teach Ben a little about how to stand up for himself.

On the day the town plans on celebrating his 75th birthday, Dr. McCord (John McIntire) is killed by the McGaffey brothers, Ed (Lee Van Cleef) and Zeke (Peter Baldwin). The entire town wants them dead but Ben believes in innocent until proven guilty. He’s willing to stand up for himself and even defeats town bully Bart Bogardus (Neville Brand) by slapping him and then outdrawing him.

As for Morgan, he falls for Nona Mayfield (Betsy Palmer) and becomes a surrogate father to her son Kip (Michel Ray). It’s a nice way to show that he can still be a tender person after years of hiding his humanity. It’s also an interesting inverse comparison to the renter falling for his landlady and helping her son relationship that also shows up in The Shootist.

The Arrow release of Tin Star has extras like brand new audio commentary by film historian Toby Roan, an appreciation of the film by author and critic Neil Sinyard, an interview with Peter Bernstein on her father’s work, a trailer and an image gallery. It all comes inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sam Hadley and also has a double-sided fold-out poster, six postcard-sized reproduction artcards and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Barry Forshaw and original press notes.

You can get the blu ray from MVD.

The TMZ crew gathers yet again — these people love to get together and yell at one another — to discuss drugs in Hollywood, like ayahuasca retreats and ketamine therapy.

I wouldn’t know what ayahuasca was if it wasn’t for Howard Stern and I’m fascinated by a drug that basically makes you shit your pants. This doc even meets the Soul Quest, an Ayahuasca church located in Orlando, Florida, and explains how this drug has followers including  Lindsay Lohan, Jim Carrey, Aaron Rodgers, Jada and Will Smith, Sting, Mike Tyson and Andre 3000.

In case you don’t know what it is, it’s a South American psychoactive drink that came from the Amazon and Orinoco basins and is traditionally part of spiritual ceremonies, divination and healing.

But yeah, it can make you go in your pants.

Drugs have always been a big deal in the tabloids so it’s wild to see one so supportive of drug use, but we also live in a world where marijuana is nearly legal, which I never believed would happen. I mean, I get microdosing ads on Instagram all the time.

Ready to learn how the A list trips balls? Harvey Levin is ready to let you in on all the behind the scenes substances.

You can watch this on Tubi.