A lot of people talk down on Renny Harlin. But with his films — Prison, A Nightmare on Elm Street part 4: The Dream Master, Die Hard 2, The Long Kiss Goodnight and more — you know exactly what you’re getting. A popcorn movie with no brain ready to entertain you until you can’t take it any more.

Witness his take on shark movies. He gets what works and then makes the movie fly so it doesn’t feel like even half of its 1 hour, 45-minute length. This is lean, mean and ready to bite.

Shot in the same tanks that James Cameron used for Titanic, the idea of this movie is absolutely ridiculous. In a deep sea facility, a team of scientists is using mako sharks to reactivate dead brain cells within patients with Alzheimer’s disease. One of those sharks has already escaped and attacked a boat full of partying teens, so the company behind it all sends Russell Franklin (Samuel Jackson) to investigate.

Doctors Susan McAlester and Jim Whitlock (Saffron Burrows and Stellan Skarsgård) prove their research to Franklin by removing protein complexes from the brain of their biggest shark. Bad idea — one shark is all it takes to mess everything up. It eats up Whitlock’s arm and as he’s being evacuated, inclement weather fouls up everything. His stretcher goes into the shark pen and as one of the sharks grabs it, it pulls the helicopter into the tower, killing anyone who could get the word out that things have gone wrong.

Susan, Russell, shark wrangler Carter Blake (Thomas Jane), marine biologist Janice Higgins and engineer Tom Scoggins (Michael Rapaport) then watch a shark use that very same stretcher to smash its way into the lab, flooding the entire base. Susan then confesses that she and Jim had genetically engineered the brain size of the sharks, which let them harvest more protein. It also made them smarter and deadlier. This is why this movie is wonderful; dumb lapses in science and logic that are glossed over so that more people can be devoured by sharks.

Meanwhile, cook Sherman “Preacher” Dudley (LL Cool J) may have lost his parrot to a shark and almost got cooked in an oven, but he knows the shark’s natural movie predator: explosions. He blows one shark up real good and goes to find the rest of the crew.

When we find the crew, they’re arguing and Russell gives a speech about how everyone has to work together. In any other movie, this is where people would pull it through. Here, a shark emerges and decimates the executive. It’s a moment that will make you stand up on your couch and scream your head off in glee.

What I love about this one is that no one is safe. The people you expect to survive — and the ones you don’t — get killed horribly. If you love watching sharks eat people, good news. This one has it all.

There are a lot of cues to Jaws here: the license plate they find in a shark’s mouth is the same as that movie. And the ways the three sharks are killed — blown up, electrocuted and incinerated — exactly play back the way the shark is killed in Jaws, Jaws 2 and Jaws 3D.

You should totally check this one out. I was actually surprised by how much I loved it. That’s after more than twenty shark movies in a few weeks, so that’s really saying something.

PS: The song LL Cool J does in this film, “Deepest Blue (Shark Fin)” is absolutely insipid. I love it. Do yourself a favor and look up the lyrics.

The Arrow Video release of this movie has a brand new 4K restoration of the film from the original camera negatives by Arrow Films approved by director Renny Harlin. There are two new commentaries — one by screenwriter Duncan Kennedy and another by filmmaker and critic Rebekah McKendry — as well as an archival audio commentary by director Renny Harlin and star Samuel L. Jackson. There is also a new interview with production designer William Sandell, a visual essay by film critic Trace Thurman, making of and shark featurettes, deleted scenes with optional audio commentary by director Renny Harlin, a trailer and an image gallery. It all comes inside a reversible sleeve with original and newly commissioned artwork by Luke Preece, a 60-page perfect bound collector’s book containing new writing by film critics Josh Hurtado, Jennie Kermode and Murray Leeder, plus previously unseen production art and designs, a double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Luke Preece and postcards from Aquatica. You can get it from MVD.

Do you know why I’ve never done acid? This movie right here. After all, it has an “inspired by true events” square up in the end credits.

After a series of seemingly unconnected murders in Los Angeles, only one link keeps coming up: every single person took the same strain of LSD called Blue Sunshine. The sins of the past decade are ready to come back and destroy the “Me” decade.

Zalman King — yes, the same man who got your mom all tingly after you were put in bed and she watched Showtime’s Red Shoe Diaries — plays Jerry Zipkin, a man accused of the murders who — in true giallo-style — must clear his name. That’s because he was at a party where the murders may have started, complete with a screaming Brion James and Billy Crystal’s brother singing Frank Sinatra songs before he starts throwing women into the fireplace.

If it turns out that you took Blue Sunshine, chances are that you’re about to lose all your hair, go crazy, and start killing everyone in your path. Of course, no one knew this ten years ago when they were all dosing on it back in college. Chromosomal damage can be a real b, you know?

How can you not love a movie whose title is spoken by a parrot? One that has a climactic disco shootout? Or is it so 1970s that it ends up speaking for pretty much the entire decade?

The self-medicating Dr. David Blume, the hard-drinking and hair losing John O’Malley, and Ed Flemming (Mark Goddard, Major Don West from Lost In Space) are all caught up in the grip of the bad trip. The effects sum up Flemming’s political campaign: “In the 1960s, Ed Flemming and his generation shook up the system. Now he’s working within it.” He has become the system. It’s as if the children in Manson’s famous quote- “These children that come at you with knives- they are your children. You taught them. I didn’t teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.” — are even more dangerous when fully grown.

Goddard isn’t the only TV star that shows up, as Alice Ghostly (Esmerelda from Bewitched) makes an appearance.

Writer and director Berman would lend his strange style to other films such as Squirm, Remote Control, Just Before Dawn, and the odd true crime TV show Love You to Death, which starred John Waters as a Grim Reaper attending weddings of partners who would soon kill one another.

The director claims that two major TV networks expressed interest in purchasing the film as a “movie of the week.” The opportunity to get double the budget was appealing. Still, after seeing the edits that the movie would need to be able to play on network TV, Lieberman decided to produce this for theaters.

The Synapse release of this movie comes in a gorgeous box, overstuffed with extras. It starts with a 4K restoration of the original 35mm camera negative mastered in Dolby Vision that has a new surround sound mix supervised by director Jeff Lieberman; two audio commentaries with Lieberman, who also contributes an introduction; an archival 2003 interview with director Lieberman; “Lieberman on Lieberman” video interview; Channel Z “Fantasy Film Festival” interview with “Master of Horror” Mick Garris and Jeff Lieberman; Fantasia Film Festival 4K Premiere Q&A with moderator Michael Gingold and director Jeff Lieberman; two anti-drug scare films, LSD-25 and LSD: Insight or Insanity?, courtesy of the American Genre Film Archive; Jeff Lieberman’s first film The Ringer (remastered in 4K by Synapse Films from the original camera negative); trailers; a stills gallery; liner notes booklet by Lieberman, featuring a chapter on the making of Blue Sunshine from his book Day of the Living Me: Adventures of a Subversive Cult Filmmaker from the Golden Age; a limited edition fold-out poster and limited edition remastered CD soundtrack.

Order it ASAP from MVD.

Seriously, what drugs is this movie on? How can we return in time and get them, and how great will the high be?

International criminal Jacques Müller (real-life maniac Klaus Kinski) and his lover Louise Andrews (Susan George) kidnap Philip Hopkins (Lance Holcomb), the grandson of hotel chain owner and great white hunter Howard Anderson (Sterling Hayden). It’s easy — Louise works as a maid, seduces chauffeur Dave Averconnelly (Oliver Reed), and gets him into the team without ever thinking through the psychosexual dynamics of the triad that she’s created.

The problem — well, one of many — is that Phillip meant to bring his snake and grabbed a black mamba ready to kill anything and everything. Still, toxicologist Dr. Marion Stowe (Sarah Miles) was late, the switch was off and well, now we have a deadly snake that bites Louise’s face until she dies, leaving the cucker and the cucked to deal with the emotional fallout, as well as Dave just blasting cops when he gets too nervous.

Commander William Bulloch (Nicol Williamson) arrives- you can’t shoot a cop in England without this happening, go figure- and Müller demands a million in different bills and transportation. At the same time, Dr. Stowe brings a case of anti-venom she just whipped up.

That snake wipes out all the bad guys, and the end, well, it bites Müller repeatedly, then they both get shot so many times that you’d think they were a black criminal trying to outrace a white cop on foot, then they both fall off the building. Truly a death that was earned by Kinski.

As you can imagine, Kinski and Reed measured dicks this entire film, constantly trying to outdo each other. This was going to be a Tobe Hooper movie, which is blowing my mind right now, before he was replaced by Piers Haggard, who made The Blood On Satan’s Claw.

Haggard told Fangoria, “I took over that at very short notice. Tobe Hooper had been directing it, and they had stopped for whatever reason. It hadn’t been working. I did see some of his stuff,f and it didn’t look particularly goo.dPlus,s he also had some sort of nervous breakdown or something. So anyway, they stopped shooting and offered it to me. Unfortunately, I had commitments; I had some commercials to shoot. But anyway, I took it over with barely ten days of preparation – which shows. It doesn’t become my picture, it’s a bit in between. . . Oliver Reed was scary at first because he was always testing you all the time. Difficult but not as difficult as Klaus Kinski. Because Oliver actually had a sense of humor. I was rather fond of him; he could be tricky, but he was quite warm, really. He just played games and was rather macho and so on. Klaus Kinski was very cold. The main problem with the film was that the two didn’t get on, and they fought like cats. Kinski, of course, is a fabulous film actor, and he’s good in the part; the part suits him very well. They were both well-cast, but it was a very unhappy film. I think Klaus was the problem, but then Oliver spent half the movie just trying to rub him up, pulling his leg all the way. There were shouting matches because Oliver just wouldn’t let up. None of this is about art. All the things that you’re trying to concentrate on tend to slip. So it was not a happy period.”

Once, at a party at Elaine’s, Kinski bragged about how he and other cast members and crew ganged up on Hooper a couple of weeks into the shoot to get him fired. It must have been a horrific set, as cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond quit simultaneously, and Haggard claimed that the Black Mamba was the nicest person on set.

And oh yeah — Kinski took this movie instead of Raiders of the Lost Ark, telling Spielberg that his script was “moronically shitty.”

As for Susan George, after a career of being menaced by ninjas in the movie that kicked off the craze Enter the Ninja, sharks in Tintorera (while enjoyed a throuple), the locals of Straw Dogs, the dark ending of Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, The House Where Evil Dwells, the babysitting nightmare Fright and so many other wonderful roles, well, she’s earned our love.

The Blue Underground Ultra HD Blu-ray and HD Blu-ray release of this movie is slithering with extras, such as two audio commentaries (one with director Piers Haggard and the other with film historians Troy Howarth, Nathaniel Thompson and Eugenio Ercolani); new interviews with editor/second unit director Michael Bradsell, makeup Artist Nick Dudman, author and critic Kim Newman and The Dark Side’s Allan Bryce; trailers; TV commercials; a poster and still gallery and a collectible booklet with an essay by Michael Gingold.

You can order it from MVD.

Fairy tales are alike in many countries. This film is based on “The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids” from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which Russian kids known as “Волк и семеро козлят” (“The Wolf and the Seven Kids”) and Romanian young ones know as “Capra cu trei iezi” (“The Goat and Her Three Kids”). So yes, there are five kids in this, but that feels like splitting the difference.

Directed by Elisabeta Bostan, this was filmed in three languages — Romanian, Russian and English — and features performers from the Moscow Circus, the Moscow Circus on Ice and the Bolshoi Ballet.

It’s also way weird.

Rada (Lyudmila Gurchenko, who was awarded People’s Artist of the USSR in 1983) is gathering fruit in the woods, leaving her children home. She’s watched by Petrika the donkey (George Mihaita), Rassul the lynx (Valentin Manokhin), a young wolf (Savely Kramarov) and leader Titi Suru (Mikhail Boyarsky), who listen to her singing and begin plotting on taking her family from her.

Matei (Petya Degryarov), the oldest child, runs away from home to the fair while Titi Suru keeps trying to sing Rada’s song to the children, convincing them that he is their mother. They are too smart for him — keep in mind, this guy looks like a glam rock werewolf — but when their mother’s voice gets sore from calling for her lost son, they no longer recognize her. Everyone gets kidnapped by Titu Suru and his gang, except that Rada is too smart for him, ice skating with him until he falls into the cold water, only saving him when she has her children safe.

Now, re-read that and get this in your head: the big bad wolf is sexy, always smoking a pipe and looking kind of like Phil Lynott if he were, you know, a wolf. The goat mother — a single mom, mind you — Rada is also quite attractive and every time the two get together, sparks fly. They’re going to get it on. You know it. They know it. But the wolf is a wolf and he wants to steal her children, because for all he protests how much people treat wolves so badly and have preconceived notions of them, he’s also, well, a wolf.

Sure, all the songs sound pretty much the same — I can hear you now, “It’s a leitmotif, you moron!” — but who cares? It’s the 70s and everyone is wearing makeup and everyone has glitter all over them and this is what the children of the world of The Apple are put in front of to be babysat while their parents go do mad coke at Mr. Boogalow’s latest record release.

These songs will get stuck inside your head but you won’t feel bad about that.

There’s also a parrot that is a human with a gigantic rainbow pompadour. The whole world of Ma-Ma feels like no other place on Earth, even starting with all of the actors getting into their costumes together. This will both delight and terrify your child.

You can watch this on YouTube.

“This is the first release of Stubios, a fan-fueled studio for aspiring filmmakers and their fans. In addition to welcoming creatives from varied backgrounds into Hollywood, Stubios puts the power to greenlight content in the hands of the viewer. This program is an evolution of an expansive content strategy that is built on viewer-driven trends underpinning the need to build new pathways for creatives to find success in Hollywood and for fans to find more stories they can see themselves in.”

You can learn more about Stubios here.

This is the first original comedy special for Tubi, with 15-minute sets from up-and-coming comics Cris Sosa, Danielle Mora and Grant Moore. All three have really strong material and I really enjoyed this; I’ve been loving stand-up on cable since the early HBO specials and Evening at the Improv. I’m excited that Tubi is doing this and I hope that there is more stand-up on the way. I’d recommend following all three of these comedians and checking out their acts, as I laughed more than once, which is good for modern stand-up.

You can watch this on Tubi.

According to Glowstream, “Forty percent of all missing persons are people of color, according to the Black and Missing Foundation. However, only 13 percent of the US population is African American. The stark contrast between the amount of people of color missing in the US and the population number is why the state of California created the Ebony Alert system, a resource available to law enforcement to alert the public about suspicious and unexplained disappearances of Black people.”

This movie opened my eyes about this.

This documentary focuses on Brittany Clardy, Shamari Brantley and Krystal Anderson, three Black women who were killed after their status as being missing was botched. Often, police believe that women of color have just run off with their boyfriend and make excuses, while white women become national news stories.

Hearing the pain of the family members is hard, but knowing that they’re doing something is inspiring. The family of Clardy has been working with Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar and New Jersey representative Bonnie Watson Coleman to establish an Office for Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls within the Department of Justice.

Black women are murdered at a 300% higher rate than white women and make up 40% of missing persons cases, “a disproportionately high number relative to population size,” according to Teen Vogue.

I’d never heard of White Girl Missing Syndrome until this, and again, this entire doc by Jan Hendrik Hinzel, Alexis Johnson and Arlissa Norman is so informative. I’m glad it’s on a free streaming service like Tubi, as I feel it must be seen.

You can watch this on Tubi.

What if there were two — well, for now — Mickey Mouse public domain slashers both set in arcades?

Once called Mickey’s Mouse Trap, the film was announced on January 1, 2024, the same day Mickey’s Steamboat Willie version went into the public domain.

Rebecca (Mackenzie Mills) is the only survivor of a mouse massacre. She starts to tell her story to some cops in the framing device and we learn that her boss Tim Collins (Simon Phillips) got possessed by watching Steamboat Willie and killed all of her friends, including Alex (Sophie McIntosh), who gets a surprise birthday party in the arcade where she works. Let me tell you, workplace birthday parties are the worst, because you spend your whole life there anyway and suddenly, a place that gives you trauma is supposed to be a source of fun.

This was filmed in Funhaven in Ottawa, which has Ottawa’s only roller coaster.

For some reason, the evil Mickey can teleport and is afraid of light. A lot of this movie feels like it was barely edited together and they keep going back to the police station scenes to cover things, which kills the slasher vibe. If you expected nothing, The Mouse Trap is ready to award you with abundance.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Why do I do this to myself?

Once called The Mouse Experiment, this even has a dumb logline: “The film follows a group of friends stuck at a fairground amusement park hunted down by a mutated rat – Steamboat Willie.”

Yes, Steamboat Willie is in the public domain, so we will get stuff like this instead of making Amityville movies. And Screamboat. And The Mouse Trap. And Mouseboat Massacre. And The Mouse Trap: Welcome to The Mickeyverse.

I swear I will not watch all of these movies, like Amityville and Ouija, and keep posting them.

I’m lying and hate myself because I’ve already watched two of these.

Directed by Brendan Petrizzo and written by Harry Boxley (Popeye’s Revenge) and Marc Gottlieb (Snow White and the Seven Samurai), this has Dr. Rupert (Chris Lines) creating killers like the well-named The Killer (Lewis Santer), who looks like a Spirit Store version of Mickey by way of Hot Topic. There’s also The Bear (Stephen Staley), wearing the same mask as the killer from Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, and the two have to compete to see who can get the most body parts.

Is Pooh in the same universe as Mickey now? How many Mickey universes will there be? For all the people watching it, how many other than me picked it because Michelle Bauer and Geretta Geretta have voice cameos? Why is this set in a video game place (Knightly’s Fun Park Towyn, North Wales’ premier holiday entertainment complex)- other than it’s trying to be Five Nights at Freddy’s too while it’s stealing so much- when it has nothing to do with the plot? And murderous jellyfish? And somewhat good gore? Why did Mickey act like Art the Clown? Why would Dr. Rupert be using women’s bodies to make a bride for each of his murderers?

The ending makes no sense, and the sound quality is as good as a second wave of black metal record. I’m being kind to the sound design as that makes it seem lood. But hey- a killer mouse who is public domain. When do we get Amityville Mickey? Am I going to have to film it?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Aisha Osagie (Letitia Wright, Black Panther) is a Nigerian girl seeking asylum in Ireland. As you can imagine, she’s not treated well by anyone and is seen as less than nothing. Luckily, she has a good lawyer in Peter Flood (Loran Cranitch) and starts a friendship with Conor Healy (Josh O’Connor, Challengers).

Aisha may have a sad existence, but it’s better than the violence that she’s left behind, as her father and brother were both killed, and her mom has gone into hiding. She, much like so many of the asylum seekers that she befriends, can be taken away at any time, which means their lives start to feel almost meaningless.

Director and writer Frank Berry has put together a good movie that has flown under the radar and ended up on Tubi. It has so much to say about the world- the country, if you’re in the U.S.- that we’re living in today. It ends in a totally anticlimactic way, but even that makes so much sense, and it seems like it has to be that way.

You can watch this on Tubi.