After a shipwreck, two Spanish sisters (Helen Garret and Flavia Mayans) and their teacher, Miss Muro (Lina Romay), find themselves alone on an island. Or they thought they were, as an old man was also there, living in a cave filled with the gold of the many ships that had wrecked into this place.

Based on 1945’s Los últimos de Filipinas, Jess Franco iso making his Blue Lagoon, except there’s a chimpanzee, and the girls’ clothes get stolen pretty early on. That means while this feels as close as Franco ever gets to a Disney TV adventure movie, it also has nudity from characters who are supposed to be in their early teens.

There’s also a talking parrot and Franco’s voice, as usual.

What a strange and fascinating movie, one that makes us consider what if Franco had never learned how to zoom into vaginas and instead madelow-stakess family adventure films that also have young girls becoming women and falling in love with fishermen, while the old man in the cave becomes the teacher’s husband and they swear their vows on a book by Kant. His movies fascinate me because they just can’t be expected; even if you give Jess a creative brief, you’ll get precisely whatever he wants to make, along with an opening that’s stock footage and fog.

Directed by Brian Taylor (who made Crank, Gamer and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance with Mark Neveldine and also directed the comic book adaption Happy! and Mom and Dad) and written by Taylor, Christopher Golden and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, this is the second reboot of the franchise and one I was wondering if we even needed. And then I watched it and was hooked — this may not have the budget of the originals, yet it’s the closest movies have come to capturing the wild zeal of the comic book.

B.P.R.D. agents Hellboy (Jack Kesy) and Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) — a new character not from the comics — are riding a train, taking a supernatural spider back to headquarters for study when it escapes, causing the train to wreck and leaving them stranded in the Appalachian Mountains. The spider went wild because they’re surrounded by great evil, something that Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White) has returned home to stop.

Years ago, thanks to Effie Kolb (Leah McNamara), he messed with magic and left behind his true love, Cora Fisher (Hannah Margetson), when the Crooked Man (Martin Bassindale) came after him. He was left with a lucky bone that has allowed him to survive for years, but now he must put the supernatural menace in the grave forever with the help of Hellboy, who learns more about his origins and who his mother was.

This story is based on issues 33-35 of the comic book series. Even the ending, with the witch wearing the bridle that turns her into a horse, comes from the story. This gets the folk horror aspect of Hellboy right, something that didn’t really get to be part of Hellboy, Hellboy II: The Golden Army or the 2019 Hellboy. There are moments when characters explain the deep occult stories behind things or how witchballs are made, moments that could break the film for some but made it for me. I went in expecting to hate this movie and loved even a second, wanting more of how it tells its story.

Don’t be like I was and dismiss this because it doesn’t feel like the big-budget original films. Allow it to be a weird $20 million direct-to-streaming blast of weirdness, a film that has more in common with The Legend of Hillbilly John than a Marvel blockbuster.

When I was a kid, my dad told me, “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?” It’s always stuck with me, and no, I wouldn’t jump, too. However, viral challenges often come close to that idea, asking people to eat a spoonful of cinnamon or have ice water dumped on them. Those are the simple and safer ones. But as we go further, we get into more dangerous challenges, like the hot chip challenges or reckless stunts like falling off milk crates, and that’s when people start getting hurt.

Enter TMZ, which has made a documentary that warns us about the dangers of these viral challenges, even though their entire channel revolves around viral content. It feels like pearl-clutching, filled with “think of the children” panic, as if social media platforms should be responsible for policing foolish behavior instead of letting natural consequences take their course. Seeing people climbing milk crates like they’re mountains or allowing friends to choke them out is baffling. Meanwhile, you have Harvey Levin expressing concern while profiting off the chaos he condemns. TMZ is a site built on the spectacle of people behaving poorly for the entertainment of the masses.

Let’s not overlook the more significant issues, like rights being stripped away or how some people can express extreme racist views openly now. Meanwhile, someone else is simply eating cinnamon and getting a stomachache!

I ended up watching the whole thing, of course.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I can hear you thinking—if you even care about Jess Franco’s very late period shot on digital video in a hotel room era—”Didn’t you already talk about La cripta de las condenadas?” Yes, I did. Yes, I referred to The Crypt of the Damned as “Jess Franco in one or two rooms watching women writhe around and zoom in and out of their curves for 90 minutes or so.”

This has the same cast: writer and cinematographer Fata Morgana (she also made Montes de Venus with Franco), Carmen Montes from Snakewoman, Eva Palmer from Jess Franco’s Perversion and actresses whose careers were in these two movies: Marta Simoes, Olivia Deveraux and María Traven.

This is supposed to be a hundred years after the first movie, but it’s the same idea other than images of a cemetery. Was Jess learning from 1990s VCA who would take one movie — Party Doll-A-Go-Go, for example — and break it down into two parts, even though it didn’t need to be?

There’s music by Daniel J. White, alongside Bach and Ravel. This is basically Jess getting to film nude women and then crawling all over his apartment, then selling it,t probably based on his name. But who are we to deny him the ability to see and film women, much less get the most out of the zoom feature? Are we to do as we always do and add to the blank slate that is a Jess Franco movie and find some meaning, some profound lesson here? I don’t think this is for getting off. It’s too slow, too moody, too strange. But hey, whatever gets you there, I guess. Some old people make home movies of their grandchildren, Jess Franco studies labias. Such is life. Is it a bad time to watch women kiss? If that’s boring to you, perhaps Franco’s entire work — point to the sign: you must watch every Franco movie to understand Franco — is not for you.

Charlie Bailey (Eric Tabach) hosts the Paranormalcy podcast, and he’s struggling to get noticed as a crowded white guy with a podcast space. I can relate. Then, he meets Duncan Slayback (Gabriel Rush), who tells him he can prove that ghosts don’t exist. After all, his fiancee died and has never come back to him. To further prove his point while Charlie is recording him, he shoots himself in the head before claiming that he won’t haunt our protagonist.

Except that Duncan does come back from the dead.

He becomes the show’s co-host, using his ghostly powers to find missing things and get into peoples’ heads. Soon, Charlie succeeds and has the money to support himself and his pregnant girlfriend, Brie (Kaikane). Yet when Duncan starts to ask too much, including getting revenge on the man who he claimed killed his fiancee, all as a rival podcast, Jasper (Charlie Saxton, tries to reveal how Charlie can do so many ghostly things.

Maybe Charlie shouldn’t have trusted Duncan. Yet once he’s too deep, well, he’s stuck. He can’t escape the call of doing his show, the rush of getting followers, the need to be part of something. Again, I understand. This hit very close to me. And it’s a really intriguing film in which its lead is unlikeable, yet you want him to grow and get past it until, yet again, it’s too late.

Dean Alioto directed and wrote this film, marking his return to genre films after a long hiatus since creating The McPherson Tape. Featuring cameos from Dave Foley and “Master of Horror” Mick Garris, this movie exceeded my expectations. It has surprising twists and turns that I never saw coming. If you have the chance to watch it, I highly recommend you do!

It blows me away that John Sayles wrote this. Yes, a Dolph Lundgren movie. It has him as Nick Gunar, a merc who assembles a team of mercenaries to take an island. When they get there, he learns that they’ll be working for his old nemesis Keefer (Trevor Goddard, who has been showing up in so many movies I watch) and The Colonel (Kevin Tighe).

The mercs include Jamaal (Tom Wright), Jimmy G (Tony Denison), Blades (Tiny Lister), Ocker (Tim Guinee), Nolan (Don Harvey) and Grace Lashield (Catherine Bell), who get away from a trumped up murder charge when Nick allows Keefer to kick his ass, then go upriver where they meet the natives, starting with Po (B.D. Wong), who is pissing in the river. My military friends, this is the man who has screwed up every single one of Dr. John Hammond’s theme parks. Watch him closely.

Nick’s men Nolan and Jimmy want to wipe out the natives and take their treasure, but he stops them and kicks out anyone who isn’t on his side. This is what happens when you work for the man — businessmen Warren (Thomas Gibson) and Lyle (Perry King, who directed) — instead of following your heart, which is what he wants to do from here on out. I mean, you’d probably feel the same way if you hooked up with Loki (Charlotte Lewis from the beloved Dial: Help).

Eventually, everyone has to battle and of course Nick gets his revenge when he fights Keefer to the death. All of this over bat guano, which can create treasure. I can now say I watched a movie where Dolph fights Kano over poop. Also: Tiny Lister just launches some children as if he has no care for their lives and I love him for that.

This was rewritten by Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris (Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight). Viola explained how that happened to The Cincinati Enquirer: “It was actually an old Sayles script that some producers bought and wanted to make for action star Dolph Lundgren! The Sayles script needed to be brought up to date a little, more action scenes added and, most importantly, had to be made into an ensemble movie because the producers were worried that Dolph just couldn’t carry the movie that John Sayles originally wrote. And that an audience wouldn’t sit still to watch Lundgren tackle all those great John Sayles monologues. We were actually pretty deferential to Sayles’ original script and the finished movie is actually quite a good little action flick. Probably the only time we’ll ever get a chance to rewrite John Sayles.”

I’m a big fan of movies where killing machines end up meeting native children — who call them G.I. Joe — and end up saving their villages. Or, if you watch Strike Commando, getting them killed and having a long monologue about Disneyland, magic genies and climbing trees to get popcorn.

The MVD Rewind Collection release of Men of War has extras such as an introduction by director Perry Lang, a making-of feature, dailies and raw footage, a photo gallery, a trailer, a collectible mini-poster and a limited edition slipcover. You can get this release from MVD.

Dean Baker (William Berger) is a depressed American writer whose wife Shirley (Muriel Montossé) has just left him and who has been considering suicide. Then he falls for the much younger Jill (Analia Ivars) at a dance club, which leads to five criminals (Ricardo Palacios, Antonio Mayans, Luis Barboo, Juan Soler and Alfredo Kier) chasing him through Casablanca — he was drunk during a poker game and told one of the card players that they could kill him and take all of his money he just won — just when he’s found a reason to live again.

One of ten movies Jess Franco directed in 1985, this was written by Santiago Moncada (Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Swamp of the Ravens, Voodoo Black Exorcist, A Bell from Hell, All the Colors of the Dark) and made once before as Ace of Hearts (Juego sucio en Panamá) by director Tulio Demicheli (thanks Kino Detour).

This feels personal for Franco, telling the story of an artist on the wrong side of life when most of it is over instead of begun, drinking himself into oblivion as love fails him and lust leads him into dangerous places. I’m on the downside of that hill and drinking on a work night, writing what I’ve wanted to write all day instead of what I had to write all day. These are the things I think of as I watch a Jess Franco movie, but luckily, Lina Romay showed up looking for an autograph in this and just seeing her eyes and smile makes me forget that life is often about just trying to make it through.

Wedding planner Vanessa (Virginia Ma) and her assistant Anthony (Luke Nieves) come to the island of a groom only to discover that they must follow the whims of super-rich Terrance Bruckner (Maxwell Almono) or he will kill every guest at the destination nuptials of Vanessa’s best friend Rachel (Meghan Carrasquillo) — the ex-girlfriend of this movie’s final boss. Now, Vanessa has an earpiece and must follow the tech billionaire’s instructions, or her friend will die.

Directed by Nick Lyon (Titanic 666) and written by Chris Watts, this reminds me of how stressful my first wedding was, what with the cops getting called, the property damage and the delayed honeymoon. I still don’t feel like telling that whole story, but I’m not sure I can legally. What I can say is that my wedding planner didn’t have to bury the bodies that a past lover was killing. Why is Vanessa doing that for a guy whom she hates? What went on between her, Terrance and Rachel in college?

This has taught me never to have a wedding on an island that no one can get to, never to date members of the oligarchy, never to hire a wedding planner, and just to stay home and watch Tubi.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Parrot Head is a monster that seeks to kill and can pass on its curse through the bite of its beak, transforming its victims when they’re sober. That means this movie lives up to the lyrics of its inspiration: “It was too much tequila, or not quite enough.”

I watched this because I thought it was Stage Fright, but instead of an owl, it was a Buffet-obsessed killer and not a parrot.

Paul Dale, who wrote this with Dylan McGovern, also directed Killer Kites and Sewer Gators. I wonder if he feels like I do about Buffet — I don’t want to disparage the dead, RIP — but I fucking hate the man’s music. This is 50 minutes long and 10 minutes of joke-laden credits if that’s what you’re wondering. You can’t fill two hours of a movie with a captain’s hat-wearing parrot-murdering machine. But damn, Paul Dale, I want to see you try.

That said, this is about as good as you think it’s going to be, and if you’re watching it just based on the name — and not the pessimistic assumption that you’re watching a Giallo about the son of the son of a sailor — it’s done its job. As the director says on Letterboxd, “If you go into this expecting something other than pure silliness, you’re going to have a bad time.”

This movie also has an opera-singing shark. How about that? Just the title alone is an accomplishment, then you throw in a wereparrot and a shark who can sing Pagliacci.

You can watch this on Tubi or buy it from the BY THE HORNS site.

Oliver (José Llamas) and Mary (Karin Dior) just wanted to go on a honeymoon. Still, their guides, Mark (José Miguel García) and Marco (Diego Porta) lead them to the lizard god-worshipping Tobonga tribe, who also eat people. Conchita gets lashed to a sacrificial altar just in time for this story to end, and we find a trio of martial arts students led by Lina Romay. I never knew how badly I needed to see Candy Coster in a karate gi. They decide to visit the Tobongas and steal their diamonds, in case you were wondering whether or not this was a Jess Franco movie. Finally, the karate instructors kill Sylvia, the wife of the jungle guide (Mabel Escaño); Lina Romay joins forces with Oliver to rescue his wife.

That parrot that talks? That’s Jess Franco.

This movie makes no logical sense, despite what I tried to figure out above. Why is Lina with the evil drug pusher karate instructors? Is she an undercover cop? Why does she decide to help Oliver? How did Jess Franco make a movie with nearly no sex? Was he trying to make an Indiana Jones movie infused with this love of pulp? Santiago Moncada wrote this ten years before, and one day, did Jess just think, “Sure, I can make that.”

Look, I know this objectively isn’t good, but I feel better watching these movies. They make me happy, something that’s in short supply in this world. Yes, what makes me feel good is ultra-low-budget movies that make no sense, but just look at Lina dressed for karate action and tell me if you’re not moved.