Category Archives: Movie reviews

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Bigfoot (1970)

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Anthony Cardoza produced some really interesting films. You may call them turkeys. You may also call them…well, you wouldn’t call them works of art. But hey, his movies live on, like The Beast of Yucca Flats, The Hellcats and today’s film, Bigfoot.

Jasper B. Hawks (John Carradine!) and Elmer Briggs (John Mitchum, brother of Robert and the writer of the John Wayne voiced “America, Why I Love Her” that TV stations used to sign off when TV stations still existed and actually signed off) are driving around the forest. And Joi Landis (Joi Lansing, a former MGM contract girl who shows up in the long tracking shot that begins Touch of Evil, in her final role) is a pilot whose plane breaks down. She parachutes into the woods and encounters Bigfoot.

Then there’s Rick (Chris Mitchum, son of Robert and also an actor in films like Jodorowsky’s Tusk and Jess Franco’s Faceless) and his girlfriend Chris, who find a Bigfoot cemetery and get attacked, too.

Of course, the authorities are of no help. Only Jasper will help Rick, and that’s because he wants a Bigfoot for his freak show.

Peggy gets kidnapped by Bigfoot, and we discover that Joi has been taken, too. Upon reaching the lair of the Bigfoots (Bigfeet?), we discover that the creatures we’ve seen are his wives, and the real creature is 200 feet tall. Yes,. You just read that right. And he’s about to fight a bear that’s just as huge.

A gang of bikers gasses Bigfoot, but he escapes the freakshow and then gets blown up by bikers. John Carradine quotes from King Kong (he does throughout the film) and the movie ends.

Along the way, we find Doodles Weaver, whose scene in the completely bonkers The Zodiac Killer may be the most ridiculous scene in what is quite honestly one of the strangest films I’ve ever seen.

And hey, is that Bing Crosby’s son Lindsey? Yes, it is! And the first singing cowboy, Ken Maynard! This movie has actors with much more interesting stories than the film they’re stuck in.

But you know what is interesting? The strange doom funk that plays every time the bikers show up. And keep your eyes open for a quick appearance by Haji, who famously appeared in Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! 

Director Robert F. Slatzer only did two other movies, but one of them was The Hellcats, where Russ Hagen battles a female gang. Leather on the outside…all woman on the inside!

But hey — Bigfoot. Come for the bikers. Stay for the bigfoots. Enjoy the bikinis. But dig this crazy sound, man!

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Big Bad Mama (1974)

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Steve Carver originally intended to get involved in the worlds of cartooning, commercial art and animation before becoming a cameraman for ABC’s Wide World of Sports, shooting St. Louis Cardinals baseball games before he made thirty documentaries while teaching college at the same time.

One of those documentaries got him into the American Film Institute, where he studied under George Stevens, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlton Heston and Gregory Peck. He also had the opportunity to be the assistant director on Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun.

Carver’s final AFI project was a short based on Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, which brought him to the attention of Roger Corman. He edited 150 trailers for the producer and directed The Arena — which has Joe D’Amato as director of cinematography — before this film. He’d go on to make two Chuck Norris films, Lone Wolf McQuade and An Eye for an Eye, before leaving film for the world of photography, pining for the more fun days of working with Corman.

Texas, 1932. Wilma McClatchie (Angie Dickinson) has taken over her dead man’s bootlegging still but gets caught by the law. Forced to hand over all her money and even her wedding ring to the sheriff, she decides that she and her daughters Polly (Robbie Lee, Lace from Switchblade Sisters and eventually the voice of Twink on Rainbow Brite; she’s also the goddaughter of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans) and Billy Jean (Susan Sennett, The Candy Snatchers and wife of Graham Nash) are going to live a life of crime.

While Wilma is at a bank trying to pass a fake check, the girls end up helping Fred Diller (Tom Skerritt) as he knocks over the joint. He and Wilma soon become lovers, but that doesn’t last long before she’s bedding gambler William J. Baxter (William Shatner), and he starts sleeping with both of her daughters, sometimes at the same time, because Roger Corman produced this.

After kidnapping and ransoming the daughter of a millionaire, federal agents and the police finally track down the gang. Baxter gets cuffed, and the girls escape while Diller defends them with a hail of Thompson submachine gun fire. But as they drive away, Wilma dies, her bloody arm dragging against the left side of the car as it speeds away.

Well, or so you’d think, as there was a sequel.

I learned so much about so-called bad movies from the Medved brothers. In their 1986 tome Son of the Golden Turkey Awards, they nominated Dickinson’s role in this film as “The Most Embarrassing Nude Scene in Hollywood History.” Now that I’m older and wiser, I can say that these guys must have been embarrassed themselves as they actually enjoyed this trash. I hate the idea of guilty pleasures; just like what you like.

Oddly enough, Jerry Garcia performed most of the guitar and banjo music in the movie. And if you’re looking for fun actors, Sally Kirkland, Dick Miller and Royal Dano all show up. It’s not the best movie you’ve ever seen, but it’s filled with sin, skin and bullets. What else were you hoping for?

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Beyond Evil (1980)

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Architect Larry Andrews and his new wife, Barbara (horror movie super couple John Saxon and Linda Day George; if these two ever had a child, it would either be a demon or a gleaming golden angel), have moved to a small island off the coast of the Philippines. Del (former minor league baseball player Michael Dante; he’s also in The Farmer and was introduced to acting by John Wayne), Larry’s business partner, had promised them a brand new condo. Instead, they’re moving into Casa Fortuna, the haunted former home of Esteban and Alma Martín (Janice Lynde), who died after a fight started by Alma’s obsession with the occult.

Within what seems like minutes, next door neighbors and psychic surgery experts Dr. Solomon (David Opatoshu) and his wife Leia (Anna Marisse) warn Larry that Alma wants his young bride’s body for her own. At the same time, Barbara is luring Del into the home with promises of sex and then shoving him off the balcony.

You know what this movie needs? An exorcism. Well, it gets it.

Herb Freed is kind of a forgotten king. I mean, the dude made Haunts, Graduation Day and Tomboy, which are three other movies I watch all the time. He wrote the script with producer David Baughn and Paul Ross.

You can watch this on Tubi or order it from Vinegar Syndrome.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Beyond Atlantis (1973)

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I was so loud while watching this movie that my wife had to come to check on me. The sheer delight had overtaken me when East Eddie (Sid Haig) appeared in a film where gigantic-eyed Atlantean people attempted to keep their undersea world alive thanks to a new queen named Syrene (Leigh Christian), who must constantly sire new children, as decreed by her adopted father Nereus (George Nader).

Eddie is part of a group trying to farm pearls for money, which includes what could be the exploitation movies made in the Philippines version of The Avengers: Manuel the Barracuda (Vic Díaz), Logan (John Ashley) and Vic Mathias (Patrick Wayne).

Producer Ashley had the idea that this would be a science fiction version of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which is a big idea, while Wayne would only be in the film if it was a family-friendly movie, but it’s also about rebuilding the DNA of a dying world of interbred bug-eyed merpeople, which is a fun juxtaposition.

The underwater scenes are gorgeous, and this has way better production values than many movies made in the Philippines. Yet if it had more exploitation—a fact that Ashley believed—I think it would be a more exciting movie.

This was released by Dimension Pictures in 1973 and rereleased by 21st Century.

You can watch this on Tubi.

JUNESPLOITATION: One Man’s Justice (1995)

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June 11: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is ‘90s Action!

I’m the biggest fan of Stone Cold, so I hoped this movie would have the same insanity as Brian Bosworth’s more famous action film. Sadly, no.

This time, rogue FBI agent Karl Savak (Bruce Payne) is selling weapons to our enemies and one of his henchmen, Marcus (Jeff Kober) kills the wife (Deborah Worthing) and daughter (Rachel Duncan) of soldier John North (Bosworth). This is also known as One Tough Bastard, which is appropriate because North survives being shot multiple times and gets his own justice.

Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium) started his directing here, even if he was removed and replaced by producer Kurt Anderson, who also directed Martial Law II: Undercover, Martial Outlaw and Dead Cold. This was written by Steve Selling, his only writing credit on IMDB.

There’s also M.C. Hammer as nasty dude Dexter Kane and DeJuan Guy from Candyman as a kid who becomes Boz’s sidekick. Yes, a movie where we want to watch Bosworth kill everyone, and he ends up having a kid help him. This is not what anyone wants to see. As good as Payne and Kober are in this, Bosworth’s fights feel like late-era Dusty Rhodes, standing in the center of the ring while his opponents pinball and feed back into him, taking his slow-motion offense and bionic elbows. It feels like going through the motions when I wanted more.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The Crime Is Mine (2023)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Official synopsis: Paris in the 1930s. Struggling actress Madeleine and her best friend Pauline, an unemployed lawyer, live in debt in a cramped flat. Opportunity knocks after a lascivious theatrical producer who made an inappropriate advance towards Madeleine turns up dead. Adapted from a 1934 play by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil and featuring a murder’s row of a supporting cast.

Every so often, a film comes along that truly reminds me of why I love a certain genre of movies, and even film in general. Director François Ozon’s French comedy The Crime Is Mine (Mon Crime) is just such a work, for both cases. 

The dazzling performances! The witty dialogue! The gorgeous costumes! The sumptuous set design! Director/co-writer Ozon, his co-writer Philippe Piazzo (original playwright Georges Berr also receives a credit), and his cast and crew nail virtually every aspect of creating what is to me a near-perfect film. 

Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) is a young actress hoping for her big break. A famous producer tries the casting couch approach with her and is found murdered shortly after her visit. Thankfully, her friend and roommate Pauline (Rebecca Marder) is a budding lawyer who takes on Madeleine’s court case when the latter is accused of the killing. Though innocent, Madeleine pleads guilty for the publicity. The trial becomes a public sensation followed closely by tabloids on each side of the accused. Not much has changed since Berr’s and Louis Verneuil’s play premiered in 1934, so the theme of women trying to stand up to men in power is still highly relevant.

Tereszkiewicz and Marder are delightful in their lead roles. The Crime Is Mine boasts subplots aplenty, and the supporting players bringing the many interesting characters to cinematic life are all fantastic, though too numerous to mention everyone here. Isabelle Huppert as scheming actress Odette Chaumette, Danny Boon as a kind supporter of Madeleine’s, and Fabrice Luchini as a bumbling judge are three of the main supporting performers.

The pacing of this fun farce is frenetic, and Ozon works in social themes that linger despite the decades that have passed since the play and screen adaptations on which this film is based. The Crime Is Mine is a blast, a respectful throwback to golden age comedies.

The Crime Is Mine, from Music Box Films, is currently screening on OVID. For more information, visit https://www.ovid.tv/.

JUNESPLOITATION: Girl With the Red Lips (1986)

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June 10: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Jess Franco!

I am down to 187 of 206 Jess Franco movies, using this list on Letterboxd. What’s left?

  • Claire
  • Las Tribulaciones de un Buda Bizco
  • Las Chuponas
  • Lola 2000
  • The Tree from Spain
  • Las playas vacias
  • Oro espanol
  • Estampas guipuzcoanas número 2: Pío Baroja
  • El destierro del Cid
  • A Man, Eight Girls
  • El misterio del castillo rojo
  • El huésped de la niebla
  • Voces de muerte
  • Sida, la peste del siglo XX
  • In Pursuit of Barbara
  • El abuelo, la condesa y Escarlata la traviesa
  • Montes de Venus
  • Lascivia

Several of these movies may have never been made. Many could be lost.

That said, Jess Franco sure liked making the same movie over and over again with some variations.

La chica de los labios rojos is in the same world as Kiss Me Monster, Red Lips, Two Undercover Angels, Red Lips, Two Spies In Flowered Panties and Red Silk. There’s either one or two spy girls in these movies, as well as diamond theft. Jess was big on diamonds being stolen. I love him for this.

Terry Morgan (Lina Romay, who else?) is our heroine, Al Pereira (Antonio Mayans) shows up, Jess has a cameo as Professor Karame and yes, there is a Jess Franco cinematic universe. Somehow, only 29 people have seen this on Letterboxd and 56 on IMDB. Can you imagine this? Is it because I had to go to DVD Lady to get this? That’s where my mania is, paying people $12 for low-quality files of Jess and Bruno Mattei movies so I can cross them off my list.

rllr on Mubi said: “Another “Red Lips” sequel, but this time the characters explain the film through non-stop dialogue. Boring exposition from start to finish. Like some other ’80s films from Franco, I can’t really see ANYTHING remotely interesting to ANYONE, but probably some freak “had a good time with it”.”

Yes, I am triggered.

I watch these movies, however, I can get them and at whatever quality they exist in. You can’t get these in pristine 4K — give Severin time — and so you just have to be happy with things you can barely see, but then Lina Romay’s eyes and smile call out to you through the multi-dub haze and tell you it’s all going to be OK. Sure, your 401K is ruined, you’ll work hard until the day you die and not many people will miss what you’ve left behind — thousands of diatribes about movies under a hundred people even care about — but damn it, she and Jess Franco found one another and built a love story around how much he enjoyed zooming his camera into her lady parts and he won a lifetime achievement ward in Spain, which thrills me every time I think about it. Oh you magical ghost of Lina, captured like amber, smiling back at me, saying that for now, it will all be alright. For now, I will watch you hop into beds with strange men and steal diamonds and leave behind notes in lipstick on their mirrors.

TRIBECA FESTIVAL 2025: Lemonade Blessing (2025)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Official synopsis: Freshly tossed into a private Catholic high school by his devout mother, John (Jake Ryan) falls head over heels for a devious classmate ready to push his faith (and morals) to the brink with a series of increasingly uncomfortable actions, all in the name of love. 

You don’t have to have attended Catholic high school to fully appreciate writer/director Chris Merola’s terrific debut feature dramedy Lemonade Blessing. Its awkward, cringe-inducing, heartbreaking, and triumphant themes and scenes are relatable to everyone who has been a teenager or is currently going through those difficult years. 

Jake Ryan is marvelous as John, a freshman at a Catholic high school who lives under the strict rules of his strongly religious mother, Mary (Jeanine Serralles). The poor fella can’t even have a few moments of self-gratification in the tub without his mom hanging outside the door, haranguing him. 

Socially awkward John befriends some male classmates whose ideas of how relationships with girls should be handled come from watching porn videos. He soon falls for Lilith (Skye Alissa Friedman) — you’ll notice a pattern in certain character names — a girl with issues of her own, and whose strong personality John is no match for. She gives him increasingly unnerving tasks to perform to continue dating her, which leads the boy to question his faith, his behavior, and his place in the world.

Merola superbly balances the dramatic elements of John’s existential and philosophical journey with comical sequences — both of which are calculated to make viewers squirm and wince, from awkward makeout scenes filmed close up to blasphemies galore. 

Ryan and Friedman are outstanding as the teen couple navigating their first attempts at romance, and Serralles also shines as John’s struggling mother. The supporting players all give top-notch performances, as well.

Along with all of Lemonade Blessing’s awkwardness and discomfiture, the film boasts a big heart. It’s a truly remarkable coming of age story for today, but one that is highly relatable no matter a viewer’s age.

Lemonade Blessing screens as part of the 2025 Tribeca Festival, which runs June 4–15 in New York City. For more information, visit https://www.tribecafilm.com

Dead, White & Blue (2025)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Exploitation-film historian A.C. Nicholas, who has a sketchy background and hails from parts unknown in Western Pennsylvania, was once a drive-in theater projectionist and disk jockey. In addition to being a writer, editor, podcaster, voice-over artist, and sometime actor and stand-up comedian, he’s a regular guest co-host on the streaming Drive-In Asylum Double Feature and has made multiple appearances on Making Tarantino: The Podcast. He also contributes to the Drive-In Asylum fanzine, the B & S About Movies Podcast, and the Horror and Sons website. His most recent essay, “Of Punks and Stains and Student Films: A Tribute to Night Flight, the 80s Late-Night Cult Sensation,” appeared in Drive-In Asylum #26.

One of my favorite obscure film genres is “films with comedy redubbing,” where filmmakers take existing footage and add a new, comedic soundtrack. Most folks-in-the-know would probably consider What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), as the first of its kind, a film where Woody Allen took a Japanese spy film and redubbed it to hilarious effect. But Jay Ward, the creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle, was there before Allen with his syndicated TV show Fractured Flickers (1963). Ward and his voice-actor cohorts, like Paul Frees, Bill Scott, and June Foray, used footage from silent films and turned Lon Chaney, Sr.’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame into Dinky Dunstan, Boy Cheerleader and Rin Tin Tin into Foam, King of the Mad Dogs. The beloved Ward was a genius, and his show was way ahead of its time. It could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best skits from SNL today. 

Over the years, there have been a few more of these Frankenstein-like creations: J-Men Forever (1979), created by The Firesign Theater, which used old Republic film serials and was a staple of the classic USA Network show Night Flight; Revenge of the Sun Demon, a/k/a What’s Up, Hideous Sun Demon (1983), a riff on The Hideous Sun Demon (1958), with a young Jay Leno voicing the title character; Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection (1985), a syndicated TV series created from public-domain features; and Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002), where comedian Steve Oedekerk, redubbed all the characters and injected himself into a Jimmy Wang Yu movie.* Los Angeles film archivist Mike Davis and his company Stag Films have done Sex Galaxy (2008), with footage from Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968), and President Wolfman (2012), based on The Werewolf of Washington (1973). I recently saw Dead, White & Blue (2025), Davis’s latest film, at the wonderful Babylon Fest at the Babylon Kino in Columbia, South Carolina.

To create the “green movie,” so named because it uses recycled footage, Davis poured over more than 300 public domains films—mostly training and educational films from the U.S. government, military, and law enforcement—to create a zany tale about the KKK’s using a shrink ray (like in The Fantastic Voyage (1966)) in an attempt to retrieve an incriminating bullet from the body of a dead black man who was killed by a racist cop. And that’s just for starters, as the main plot takes various turns and digressions before ending with a hilariously over-the-top “Go Murica” image from some forgotten training film.

The festival audience got a kick out of Dead, White & Blue, as did I, even though it didn’t play in its optimal setting as a midnight movie. (And I’m pretty sure that for many of us in attendance, the ingested substances hadn’t even kicked in.) I can’t imagine how much work it took to find the footage, put it together into a cohesive narrative, and then retcon a funny dub track. (One thing in Davis’s favor was that his “lead actor” was in multiple films.) I suspect that you could make a dozen indie films in the time it took to create this small wonder. Many jokes, both broad and obscure, hit the mark. (I was the only one who laughed at this sly exchange between two characters: “What’s happening now?” “I liked the original better!”) My only quibble with Davis’s stellar editing and joke writing is that, at 87 minutes, the movie is about 15 minutes too long. Some judicious editing of the sluggish sections would put this film in a league with J-Men Forever, the platinum standard for this tiny genre.

Dead, White & Blue is currently on the festival circuit. Check it out. I’m going to seek out the two earlier films by Mike Davis. He’s an amazingly talented guy.

*I’m excluding films like Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982) with Steve Martin and Allen’s Zelig (1983), where actors interact with old footage without a completely new dub track.

TUBI ORIGINAL: The Killing Cove (2025)

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I was starting to get worried. There hadn’t been a new Chris Stokes movie on Tubi for a long time and I wondered, has the well gone dry? I am happy to tell you that The Killing Cove is here and it’s his best one to date. It has the Tubi Movie Recommendations & Reviews Facebook group all over the place- angry, confused, fired up, loving it- and such a mess of emotions.

Sisters Sarah (Precious Way) and Kristen Donald (Madison Epps) have just moved to town with their college professor father, Charles (Tremayne Norris). The first night there, a college party gets out of hand, one of them gets roofied by a jock named Jeffrey  (Bishop Freeman) and now, they want to find out how to get justice. Or revenge. But soon, clouds of smoke start to appear on campus, sending their friends to their deaths, like something out of a krimi movie. Or a giallo! Yes, this is more Black Giallo from Stokes! I’m loving it!

Who could it be with all these red herrings? Friendly guy, lab-loving Wayne (Aaron Bryce Sheats)? Charles trying to get revenge on the girls for their outing him and his date raping ways? Or is it much, much deeper?

This is my 25th Chris Stokes movie, and man, his Tubi work keeps getting better. It’s as if someone who only saw I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream made giallo and krimi without knowing that those essences are inside the DNA of those films, the beating hearts that flow the blood through those filones. They don’t need to know where they come from; they only need to know that they are. Films that have moments where women ingest green gas that makes them bang their heads into walls until they’re dead, allowing a masked villain to get away with no trace. It’s no different than an Edgar Wallace novel, even if it has no idea who that is. The magic of film and of Tubi is that it can unite cultures that would never speak to one another to make something that entertains us.

You can watch this on Tubi.