Gwen (Samantha Westervelt) and James (Amanda Drexton, who co-directed this with Michael A. Drexton and co-wrote this with him and Westervelt) are going nowhere and doing nothing. They still have to get to a baby shower for Gwen’s sister, where the only gift left on the registry is Baby’s First Wellness Kit, complete with essential oils and tarot cards.
Except it’s $150.
And they have nowhere near that kind of money.
The journey to get the money will take them through Los Angeles and into the heart of glittery darkness. Gwen wants to show her family that she can be a success — or at least not a major foul-up — and arrive with the gift. But when there are cult leaders (Corey Feldman), a thrift store called Twin Sneaks, Reggie Watts, the liberation of succulents, a cockroach gathering and a shrine to Nicholas Cage. And oh yeah, neon smoke farts that will revolutionize the online sex industry.
Gwen and James feel like the kind of people who have been friends forever. They might be holy terrors when you see them in a bar or they show up at your party, but when everyone is telling stories about them, they realize that they kind of love them afterward, even if being in their orbit can be a hurricane.
I’m a sucker for comedies where friends are oblivious to the world and defeat it just by being themselves.
The Anchor Bay release of Sour Party has a commentary track with writer/director/star Amanda Drexton, writer/director Michael Drexton, star Samantha Westervelt and cinematographer Steven Moreno. There’s also a video yearbook.
This movie is so perfect for me. Just imagine, a more well-thought-out Midsommar that has actually seen The Wicker Man — and on drugs, mind you — but also knows about collecting records, the joy of finding lost media and understands the allure of strangeness like the Arica, Source Family/Father Yod/Ya Ho Wa 13 and the Process Church and how today’s youth only gets the cool veneer of these lost groups — well, The Process is now kinda sorta Best Friends Animal Shelter — and not the at-times harsh reality. It’s easy to love black metal for its aura of kvlt, yet I doubt you’d participate in the burning of a stave church.
Made for the price of a used car, this movie finds Pater Noster and his band/church lying low after recording several albums in the distant past, one found by Max (Adara Starr), a record store employee that probably only is there to get the discount and build up her own collection of albums. Store owner Sam (Shaley Renew), co-worker Abby (Sanethia Dresch), Gretchen (Shelby Lois Guinn), and Jay Sin (Josh Outzen) get obsessed with the songs. When an invitation to visit the actual Pater Noster compound comes to Max, they all decide to go. Armed with info from cult podcaster Dennis Waverly (Tim Cappello, not playing a sax), they think this is going to be a laugh.
Maybe they haven’t watched the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis or I Drink Your Blood.
Meeting Pater Noster (Mike Amason) may be the last thing they do.
Even crazier is how perfect the music is for this film, featuring The Restoration, Brandy & the Butcher, Turbo Gatto, EZ Shakes, Stagbriar, Ass/Bastard, In/Humanity, Transonics, Hot Lava Monster, Marshall Brown and Larb as well as Tim Cappello playing that sax.
Here’s how the movie was sold on Indiegogo: “The movies we make are punk rock demo tapes. We operate outside of Hollywood and traditional distribution routes. We make movies for people looking for something different, not defined by focus groups and corporate interests. You won’t find this movie in a Walmart because it doesn’t belong in a Walmart.”
That couldn’t be more true. This feels truer to the insane spirit of drive-in movies that you wonder, “Who is this for, other than me?” than any movie I’ve seen in years. Yet it feels real, lived in, authentic. This is, quite literally, the actual shit. A movie where you feel for the victims just as much as for the victimizers, a place where you think that you too could be trapped, because as much as I love the cults of the 70s, I know I would never survive.
A near-perfect film. Find it and live in it now.
You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles and updating my Letterboxd list of watches.
If there was one movie that was hard to rent at my neighborhood mom and pop video store, this would be it.*
Leonard Maltin gave this movie his dreaded BOMB review, comparing it to 1950s car races and 1970s roller disco movies. Yeah, Leonard. Wondering why everyone liked it so much?
Shot in Alberta, Canada — look for a young Robin Bougie from Cinema Sewer — this movie may have failed in theaters. But like I said above, it was a top rental film for what seems like forever.
Cru Jones has two choices: take the SAT to attend college or race Helltrack, which could mean $100,000, a new Chevrolet Corvette and fame. His mom, Talia Shire, whines so much that you wish Stanley Kubrick would arrive to cause PTSD to take her out of this film, but no, she just cries that he’s throwing away his future. As a 53-year-old, I can tell you she’s right, but have you seen Helltrack?
The thing I never understood about this movie was how Mongoose could have allowed themselves to be portrayed in such a negative light. They were such a big BMX company, and in nearly every scene, their owner, Duke Best, is out to get Cru and to push his own rider, Bart Taylor.
Before she went to jail for that college scam, Lori Loughlin played the tough tom with whom the hero fell in with. Here, she’s Christian Hollings and she BMX bike dances with Cru, setting hearts aflutter. For more Laughlin roles like this, see Secret Admirer and Back to the Beach.
The evil Reynolds twins, who try to destroy Cru on Helltrack, grew up to be Chad and Carey Hayes, the writers of the remake of House of Wax and The Conjuring movies.
Man, this movie still leaves me with so many questions. How could the town raise $50,000 so quick for Cru? How does he have the money to sign up Bart when he gets kicked off the Mongoose team? Why did my grandparents buy me a Schwinn that weighed as much as a Harley when all I wanted was a BMX bike?
Also, look for pro wrestler Hard Boiled Haggerty, who yells to our hero, “Go balls out!” before the Helltrack** race. That was the film’s original title.
*Other movies that fit this bill are Thashin’, The Dirt Bike Kid and The Toxic Avenger.
**None of the stunt racers could complete a lap of Helltrack, with major worries about the giant hill that starts the race. The entire scene took two weeks to film.
The Mill Creek Blu-ray release of Rad includes the feature-length A Rad Documentary, a featurette on Hal Needham in the 1980s, archival interviews with the cast and crew, the “Break the Ice” music video and more.
I fear sounding like a broken record, but Larry Cohen’s films contain themes that remain timeless, regardless of when they were released. Take The Stuff, for example—consumerism, corporate greed, celebrity culture, junk food—none of the themes in this film have gone away. If anything, they’ve only increased in importance.
The Stuff — a yogurt-like white dessert — is discovered coming out of the ground like black gold to Jed Clampett. It’s sweet and addictive and quickly gets sold like ice cream. It’s all natural with no calories and incredibly filling, so it helps people lose weight. Of course, sales go through the roof and destroy the ice cream industry. Along with junk food mogul Charles W. “Chocolate Chip Charley” Hobbs, these purveyors of sugar hire David “Mo” Rutherford (Michael Moriarty, who also appears in Cohen’s Q) to get to the bottom of The Stuff and then destroy it.
The more he learns about the product, the more horrified he becomes. The Stuff is actually a parasite that takes over whoever eats it, taking over their brain and gradually transforming them into zombies as it consumes them from the inside out — the very inverse of how people consume products.
A young boy named Jason is learning the same lesson the hard way. It’s ruined his family, so he destroys a supermarket display.
David also meets Nicole, the ad exec, who learns that the campaign that she created for The Stuff has only led to death and destruction. As someone who has worked in the ad industry for over twenty years, the battle between craft and commerce has never been so beautifully illustrated as it is here. The film is packed with fake commercials of celebrities hawking The Stuff, including Wendy’s pitchwoman, Clara, “Where’s the beef?” Peller, who yells, “Where’s The Stuff?” to Abe Vigoda.
Everyone who consumes The Stuff eventually turns into a gooey white substance, and those under it do everything they can to kill our heroes (Nicole and David are lovers; they rescue Jason just as the police arrest him). The corporation that makes The Stuff claims it is trying to rid the world of hunger, but the possibly extraterrestrial substance is being created to take over the world.
They work together with retired United States Army Col. Malcolm Grommett Spears (a perfectly cast Paul Sorvino, Goodfellas) to destroy the zombies and a lake of The Stuff before sending a civil defense message to the country—the only way to destroy The Stuff is to burn it with fire.
David then visits the leader of The Stuff Company, Mr. Fletcher, who reveals that they haven’t destroyed all of the ways they can get the product. Now, they’re working with the ice cream industry, including Mr. Vickers, who originally hired David to make The Taste, a product that is 88% ice cream and 12%. Initially, they believe that it will be much safer and still as addictive. However, David brings in Jason and the two force the CEOs to eat The Stuff at gunpoint. David asks, “Are you eating it or is it eating you?” as the cops arrive to arrest the corporate con men.
You know how you should never leave the credits during a Marvel movie? Cohen was again ahead of his time here, as the final crawl also has moments showing smugglers selling The Stuff on the black market and a woman in a bathrobe saying, “Enough is never enough” while holding a container of The Stuff.
From its inventive gore and special effects to its wry social commentary, The Stuff is sheer delight. It moves fast, it’s packed with action, and it has plenty to make you laugh. It may even make you avoid ice cream for a while.
The Arrow Video 4K UHD release of The Stuff contains so much, all within a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Chris Barnes.
First, you get an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring Joel Harley’s writing on the film and a new essay by Daniel Burnett.
Disc 1 has a new 4K restoration by Arrow Films from the original camera negative and two commentary tracks, one by Larry Cohen and the other by writers and critics David Flint and Adrian Smith. There’s also a feature-length documentary, 42nd Street Memories: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Notorious Street, a documentary on the making of this movie, trailers, TV commercials and an image gallery.
The second disc has an early, pre-release cut of the film featuring over 30 minutes of additional footage and a different music score, exclusively remastered by Arrow Films.
June 16-22 SNL Week: Saturday Night Live is celebrating 50 years on the air, can NBC last for another 50 years?
Howard Deutch directed two other films for John Hughes — who wrote this — Pretty In Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful. He also came from advertising before movies; he also directed the videos for “Flesh for Fantasy” by Billy Idol, Billy Joel’s “Keeping the Faith” and the movies Grumpier Old Men, The Odd Couple II, and a movie playing on cable right now as you read this, The Replacements. I also am forever jealous of him, as he’s married to Lea Thompson.
Chester “Chet” Ripley (John Candy) has brought his wife Connie (Stephanie Faracy) and son Buck (Chris Young), and Benny (Ian Giatti) is taking a break and heading off to their cabin in Pechoggin, Wisconsin. Chet doesn’t realize that he’s sharing it with his wife’s brother, Roman Craig (Dan Aykroyd), his wife Kate (Annette Bening) and their twin daughters Cara and Mara (Hilary and Rebecca Gordon). Chet hates Roman, who is always selling something, always has an angle and looks down on his working-class life. Why have hot dogs when you can have lobster? That’s how Roman looks at it.
This is a hijinks ensue movie. You don’t need to know much more of the plot other than you can turn this on during a lazy Sunday and your favorite part will be moments away, like The ’96er Steak Challenge, the legend of Jody the Bald-Headed Bear, the talking racoons and so much more. It’s dependable.
The funny thing is that the girls were almost abducted by a giant fish, which was built but didn’t work, so the bear was the substitute.
The audience first saw Roman, Chet and Buck in She’s Having a Babywhen they appeared in character trying to come up with a name for the titular child.
June 22: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Teenagers!
Stephanie Fondue, who stars in this as Jeannie, had an even more incredible real name. Enid Finnbogason. She was in Hollywood from Winnipeg, got hit up at lunch to try out for this movie and got it. She’d never been a cheerleader. She was twenty. Also: A nude model, so disrobing during the audition was no big whoop.
In the film, Amarosa High School is the kind of high stakes place where lives depend on football games. Along with Jeannie, Bonnie (Jovita Bush), Debbie (Brandy Woods) and head cheerleader Claudia (Denise Dillaway, who eventually did the makeup for 2000s reality specials Exposed! Pro Wrestling’s Greatest Secrets and Breaking the Magician’s Code: Magic’s Biggest Secrets as well as the VHS release of Party Games for Adults Only), the girls try and help the men win. Except that Claudia is catty and is trying to get Jeannie deflowered by the end of the season. It’s a backward teen sex comedy bet.
But hey, everyone goes to see I Drink Your Blood at one point. So there’s that.
Director and co-writer Paul Glicker also made Running Scared (the one with Ken Wahl) and adult movies Parlor Games and Hot Circuit. Other writers were Richard Lerner, Tad Richards and Ace Baandige, a name for someone who claims to have been a Presidential scriptwriter named David. David Gergen seems too clean for this, David Shipley is too young and David Frum was 11 when this came out. I am looking at Presidential writers and comparing them to someone who made a sex film.
Speaking of sex films, Suzie is played by Sandy Evans, but that’s Clair Dia, who was in Lucifer’s Women and 3 A.M. — the only porn with an Orson Welles-edited scene — and directed Screwples and The Health Spa. Patty, played by Kim Stanton, who is also Kimberly Hyde, was also in The Young Nurses and Candy Stripe Nurses. There were a lot of nurse movies. There are even sequels to this one: The Swinging Cheerleaders, Revenge of the Cheerleaders and Cheerleaders’ Wild Weekend.
Directed and written by Alberto Sedano — who produced Jess Franco’s 2010 Paula-Paula — Severin goes deep into Spanish cinema — well, at least the kind we all want to watch — with this doc. Here’s what they have to say for themselves: “Under the Franco dictatorship, Spain’s rigid censorship laws had repressed any form of sexuality outside of Catholic marriage. But following Franco’s death and the consolidation of democracy, Clasificada “S” films–restricted to those over 18 years old, with the warning that their content may offend the sensibilities of the viewer–embodied a period in Spanish history when sex went from being a sin to becoming a cinematic expression of political freedom.”
This film “…explores the history behind the rating, the battles it fought, and the distinctive dramas, thrillers and horror shockers that subverted the values of the former dictatorship. Narrated by Iggy Pop, featuring revealing interviews with actors, directors and historians, and showcasing clips from films by Jess Franco, José Ramón Larraz, Ignacio Iquino, Eloy de la Iglesia and many more, Exorcismo tells the incredible true story of a film movement that rocked Spanish culture, changed the face of genre films, and left its transgressive mark on global cinema forever.”
If the names of any of those directors got you all hot and bothered — look, I’m cuckoo for Franco and lunatic for Larraz — this is for you. And even if you have no idea who they are, there’s a lot to learn here about how sometimes extreme cinema can have a lot to say about the world that it escapes from.
As much as I love Italy, and it will always have my perverted movie heart, Spain has been neglected too long. Italy’s violent films of the 1970s often were reactions to Anni di Piombo. Spain was finally emerging from a time when everything was forbidden, when two versions of nearly every movie had to be filmed—one for Spain, where women were nearly fully clothed, and where violence was held back, and another for the rest of the world.
Where this film really sings is when it allows the talking heads to expand on movies that they love from Spain—Bloody Sex, Beyond Terror, Satan’s Blood, Morbus, Mad Foxes—and three of the country’s most unique directors, José Ramón Larraz, Ignacio F. Iquino and Jess Franco.
Maybe you won’t feel like you’re seeing uncles you haven’t heard from in too long when Jack Taylor and Antonio Mayans show up to speak, but if you do, again — this was made for you. You will also come back with a list of movies you need to check out. Mine are Poppers, Morbus and Dimorphic.
Also: Holding back from showing Jess Franco until an hour and forty-four minutes in is the very definition of edging.
You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles and updating my Letterboxd list of watches.
Leng Rushuang (Shih Szu) is hunting for a criminal, Chief Jiao Tianhao (Lo Lieh), who was once the security for a convoy. Yet the Forest’s Four Evil Spirits gang have kidnapped his son, as well as framed him for rape and murder. Sure, Leng thinks he could be innocent, but she’s also looking to get him back in custody no matter what it takes.
We get promised a flaming dagger technique that I’d love to see more of, but hey — I’m all for the Shaw Brothers movies where a female fighter is the lead. I wish she were in it more, but at the end, she does a high wire fight, and it’s incredible. I wish this had more of that! At least there’s a scene where she fights an entire harem packed with warrior women, so I can’t say that I wasn’t entertained!
Both Stanley Siu Wing and Shen Chiang are credited for this film, which may have been finished as early as 1971 and Shaw Brothers hung on to it for some time.
The 88 Films release of Lady of the Law has a commentary track by David West, a stills gallery and new artwork by Rob Bruno. You can get it from MVD.
Directed by actress Kao Pao-shu, this finds Feng Fei Fei (Lily Ho) facing a challenge. She wants revenge on the three men who killed her sister and almost ended her nephew. Getting that bloody payment isn’t the hardest thing in the world for her, as she’s the fiercest swordsperson in perhaps all of the martial world.
The problem is that one of the killers appears to be Chin Lien Pai, the man to whom she has been promised. All the fighting skills in the world can’t get past family obligations and love.
I love that this had a female director. After this, she started her own company with her husband, making this the only film she would direct for Shaw Brothers.
This wasn’t dubbed when it was released in the U.S., instead appearing with subtitles, which wasn’t usually the way these movies came out here. I wish they’d given it a better title.
The 88 Films release of Lady With a Sword has awesome new art by R.P. “Kung Fu Bob” O’Brien, as well as commentary by David West and a stills gallery. You can get it from MVD.
One of the last films produced at Hong Kong’s legendary Shaw Brothers studio, this is the story of a poet named Yu (Patricia Ha, Nomad) who refuses to comply with the way that ladies should behave in the conservative time that she has been born into. She becomes a Taoist priestess so that she can do whatever she wishes, but can society allow her to love nomadic warrior Tsui Pok Hau (Alex Man) and her maid Lu Chiao (Lam Hoi-Ling)?
Directed by Eddie Ling-Ching Fong, this is more of an art film than exploitation, regardless of the title. It’s based on the life of Tang Dynasty poet Yu Xuanji and was Fong’s first film, with the original cut said to be almost three hours long.
Once she leaves the convent, Yu expands on how she feels about free love and falls for a rich man, Yung (Poon Chun-Wai). Yet Tsui Pok Hau is never far behind. Her love for him could doom them both.
I wasn’t expecting anything with this film and was really knocked out by its scope and just how incredible it looks. It’s definitely nothing like anything that Shaw Brothers put out. Well worth seeking out.
The 88 Films release of this film comes with four art cards, commentary by David West, a stills gallery, a trailer and a gorgeous slipcover with art by Justin Coffee. You can order it from MVD.
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