TUBI ORIGINAL: Vicious Murder (2024)

Another winner from director Chris Stokes, who wrote this with Marques Houston; this somehow gets together crypto, affairs and murders into a delectable stew of sex and murder. In short — when crypto moneymaker Nathan Maywood (Tremayne Norris) finds his business losing money — he decides to kill his wife Riley (Drew Sidora), who he thinks is cheating on him, and get the insurance money. Nothing works out right, though.

She seems to be sleeping with his financial advisor, Kevin (Francis Nouvi), whose lousy advice has caused the $250 million dollars Nathan has in the bank to suddenly be worth nothing because no one understands cryptocurrency, and I certainly don’t, so I’m not the person to make sense of it for you. Sorry. But anyway, Nathan decides to get ex-con Jesse (Stephen Barrington) to start sleeping with Riley and eventually kill her.

Jesse falls in love with her, so they hatch a plan where Riley will get her husband back in her bed — instead of between his mistress’ thighs — and as they’re reconnecting, a masked man breaks in who we’d think was Jesse, but no, it’s Kevin, who Nathan shoots and kills. Riley calls the police and claims that her husband has just shot and killed her lover, but what she hasn’t figured out is that he has friends in high places and gets out, visiting her and Jesse in bed where he beats his one-time henchman and now quicker about the head before killing his wife in self-defense.

Where’s the crypto cash? Look, I really have no clue.

Just about everyone in this movie is both gorgeous and horrible. Chris Stokes will make more movies this year than some directors make in their lives, and somehow, he will make so many that I will remember and actually enjoy. Well done.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Killer Nurses (2024)

A serial killer is on the loose, targeting nurses, despite the movie’s title. The hospital, where traveling nurses Drew (Mia Challis) and Jade (Jonetta Kaiser) are working, seems oblivious to the danger and more interested in partying. When their roommate Gigi (Kabby Borders) becomes a victim, Drew and Jade, amidst their busy rounds, embark on a suspenseful journey to unmask the killer.

 

Directed by Haylie Duff (remember her as Summer in Napoleon Dynamite?) and written by Danielle Dominique Nelson and Mary Risk, this film follows Drew and Jade as they uncover the truth about Dr. Lawrence C. Hartsen (Rob Mayes). Despite the serious theme, the movie’s medical realism has been criticized in many reviews. But let’s be real: You’re watching a Tubi Original called Killer Nurses. It’s not about perfect medical facts; it’s about the thrill of the chase.

Yes, I may have revealed a significant plot twist, and if you were planning to watch this, I apologize. But fear not, it won’t spoil your viewing experience. This low-demand movie is perfect for a lazy afternoon, whether you’re hungover or battling the flu. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the casual viewing experience unless your need for realism overshadows the fun of just watching something.

Also: If you were showing up for nurses as killers, this title is a liar.

You can watch this on Tubi.

For the Plasma (2014)

Directed by Bingham Bryant and Kyle Molzan, this has a wild concept: Helen (Rosalie Lowe) has been hired to sit in a home and watch CCTV footage of the forest of Maine to ensure that no fires happen. Yet, she can tell when economic shifts will occur when she shifts her focus. She brings in her friend Charlie (Annabelle Lemieux) to reconnect. Still, they have issues when Charlie wonders why so many of the monetary elite keep calling and visiting and demanding that Helen explain to them what the stock market’s future will bring.

Why are there frames in the forest? What’s the deal with the lighthouse keeper Herbert (Tom Lloyd)? Is it way too arty by having so much of Kobo Abe’s The Ark Sakura in it? Is there a ghost in the house? Is one of the girls dating the ex-boyfriend of the other? How about that soundtrack by Keiichi Suzuki?

This is either something you will hate with all of your heart or love in equal opposition. It’s a slow-moving, shot-in Super 16mm movie that has me obsessed. I know exactly who would love this, and I’ll tell them about it, and who will hate it, so I’ll make sure to not inform them. As for me, I’ll probably end up watching it at least two more times. What a strange concept and an even odder way of bringing it to life. There’s a review on IMDB that says, “This is terrible, you should watch it!” I wouldn’t go that far, but you should challenge yourself with it.

You can buy this from Vinegar Syndrome and watch it on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Tempted (2025)

Julie (Dominique Toney) is an artist married to Rick (Sterling Sulieman). They’ve been together for a while. Things seem to be at a lull in the bedroom, and when Lottie (Samantha Neyland Trumbo) comes into their lives, it adds some excitement. Yes, before too long, she becomes their unicorn and what should just be for one night ends up turning into a regular thing, even when Rick wants to break things off. She even shows up at Julie’s art class, posing nude, tempting her into getting even more involved.

Get ready for the most all-over-the-place twisty Tubi Original.

Directed by Lindsay Hartley (Romeo and Juliet Killers) and written by Maggie Mock (Fit for Murder), this ends up being more about getting to own a childhood home than destroying a couple and all the friends in their social circle. That means it happens along the way, but everyone is collateral damage.

Yet another movie that says this about three ways: once men have the fantasy, they’re cool with it and seemingly have checked it off their list, while for women, it unlocks a bottomless sapphic need to throw away their lives with psychotic killing machines. Maybe people should be more honest about their open marriages, you know? That’s how you get into being stalked, at least in the world of Tubi Original erotic thrillers.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: No Voltees (2024)

Alejandro Hidalgo also made The Exorcism of God, which was an intriguing movie. It’s always cool to see new Spanish horror, and it’s great that Tubi is adding movies like this to its Originals.

Aurora (Paulette Hernandez) and her twin brother Martin (Alan Alarcón) have come back home after something happens to their mother, Cleotilde (Lucero Trejo). You know how it is. Never come back home. Never reconnect with your estranged family. But no one listens, and they return to find supernatural horror.

Martin watched their father die when he was a child, so coming home is rough. It doesn’t help that their mother may be fine, but the man who ran errands for her has died in the house. It turns out that she’s slipping into dementia, so they start to look for a home to watch her. However, she thinks that her husband is still alive — her abusive partner that Martin saw die all those years ago — and she may be turning to black magic to make it happen.

This film has an edge and darkness that makes it stand out among the normal Blumhouse-style cash-ins that horror has become today. One terrifying scene has a character waking up to the mother feasting on their toes. It’s also filmed with style; while there are some predictable moments, there’s plenty to enjoy.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Kiss of the Damned (2012)

Directed and written by Xan Cassavetes, the daughter of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, Kiss of the Vampire is a simple story told beyond well. Djuna (Josephine de La Baume) is a vampire who translates for a living and only drinks animal blood. She tries to stay away from humans, but movie writer Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia) falls for her when he sees her in a video store. He can’t stay away, no matter how much she pushes him away, so when she reveals her vampire side to him, he quickly is turned and becomes part of her world.

The bad news? Her world includes her sister Mimi (Roxane Mesquida), who quickly ruins the vampiric high society led by actress Xenia (Anna Mouglalis) as she murders humans without a thought and seducing both Paolo with her body and Xenia by offering her a fan of hers (Riley Keough).

The good news? Vampire familiars always take care of things. In this case, Irene (Ching Valdes-Aran) watches Mimi explode in the sunlight and lights a cigarette from her.

I liked how this movie presents a world where vampires are part of society. Most of all, I loved that this is closer to 70s Eurohorror — if this had a grandfather clock or a scene on a foggy beach with a pirate ship, I’d think it was a Jean Rollin movie — than anything Hollywood has to say about the living dead. Sure, it’s arty and even overly full of itself, but it has a hot redhead vampire who watches movies by Bunuel and De Sica, not to mention a great soundtrack. I’m sure that so many people watched this for artistic reasons, but if you watch it because it’s actually sleazy, filled with pretty people and has so much sex in it, I won’t be upset.

As always, the line between the arthouse and grindhouse is thin.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Fit for Murder (2024)

Craig Titus and Kelly Ryan were fitness celebrities. Titus often finished in the top ten of International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation competitions and met his wife Kelly through these events. Before that, he’d been arrested for selling ecstasy and then violated his probation by doing steroids, but he had turned things around. Then, he and his wife hired Melissa James as a live-in personal assistant, but things went wrong.

Directed by Jodi Binstock (Prisoner of Love) and written by Maggie Mock (Tempted), this film casts Brock Yurich as Titus, Tory Trowbridge as Kelly and Paris Smith as Melissa. It tries to show each person’s point of view but quickly gets to the dark ending where the couple kills and burns Melissa in the back of a car.

In this movie, it’s difficult to tell if Craig ever loved Melissa, as he treats her horribly and then calls her right back, telling her that she’s perfect and that he needs her. What version of the story is telling this? Maybe he was all over the place, but his character is hard to pin down. Perhaps that was what it was like and why Melissa stayed around. Bonus points for a scene where she gets all coked up in a dance studio and starts doing multiple dance routines while calling him and screaming into the phone while she’s jamming out. His exasperation made me laugh as he shaved his chest in the shower.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Hustlers Take All (2024)

An underground casino run by Priscilla (Adrienne Barbeau) recruits Nina (Kyla Burke), a girl who grew up as nearly an orphan and whose parents were connected to this life. She uses her business degree to try and grow the place and make it safer for the girls who work there, but there are dangerous men — murderous ones — who want to stay ahead in the gambling game.

Directed by Dylan Vox (Deadly DILF) and written by Ellen Huggins (Good Wife’s Guide to Murder) and Jeremy M. Inman (Sinister Squad), this gives you what you expect from casino movies: gambling scenes, double crosses, murder and plenty of gorgeous women like Carole Davis, Lilian Wouters, Brooke Maroon, Savoy Bailey and Sarah Buxton.

It’s also not the worst movie that I’ve watched just because Adrienne Barbeau was in it. I’ve gotten old and gray and she still looks beautiful. I really liked her in this, as the older woman who is trapped by this life and trying to keep the other girls out of it. Sure, there’s nothing new in this, but most Tubi Originals are great movies for rainy weekend afternoons that allow you to fall asleep and wake up whenever and keep watching. There’s not much demand on you. That’s nice.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

A student in her class asks Marianne (Noémie Merlant) a question. She wants to know about one of her works, Portrait de la Jeune fille en feu. This takes her back to the past when she was hired to paint the portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), who had been taken out of a convent to marry a Milanese nobleman after her sister’s suicide. The rich girl does not know that she is being painted, so Marianne acts as the hired help as she memorizes her features and creates the piece in secret.

As she finishes the painting, Marianne feels terrible that she lied, so she shares it with Héloïse, who thinks it doesn’t capture her. After destroying the painting, the artist is about to be let go when Héloïse says she will sit for a new portrait. After just five days, she begins a new picture, but this time is filled with them falling in love as the girl’s mother (Valeria Golino) leaves the house. They debate the meaning of Orpheus and Eurydice; they dance around a fire, help a servant get an abortion and make love. Then, after the portrait has been approved, Marianne must leave.

In her life, Marianne would only see her two more times, both in secret, as she saw a painting of Héloïse with a child but holding a book that had page 28 being revealed. This is the page where the artist drew a nude sketch of her. Then, many years later, she spies her crying and smiling as an orchestra plays Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, music that she had introduced the noblewoman to so many decades before.

Voted the 30th greatest film of all time in the Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time 2022, the highest of films released in the 2010s, this movie may not remind many of Jean Rollin, but its languid pace and the running down the beach reminded me of the times I have spent watching his syrup soft, slow-moving vampires emerge from grandfather clocks on French sands. Director and writer Céline Sciamma created a meditation on love, which made me sadder when I learned that she and Adèle Haenel had broken up before filming.

SYNAPSE BLU-RAY RELEASE: Killers (1996)

Years ago, Odessa (Dave Larsen) and Kyle James (David Gunn) killed their parents and became media darlings. But when they escape death row and break into the Ryan family’s home, they have no idea what they’re in for.

Sure, dad Charles (Burke Morgan) is weird and we expect him to be be a horrible person, but mother Rea (Damian Hoffer) is a murderous sex worker and daughters Jami (Nanette Bianchi) and Jenny (Renee Cohen) also have even more secrets. They may even be quite attracted to the James brothers.

And while we’re exploring hidden things, we must ask, what’s in the basement?

This is somehow Natural Born Killers mixed with a bit of The People Under the Stairs, but that gives away so many of the twists in this. Parts of it are clunky, the acting isn’t perfect and it seems like it wants to be edgelord Tarantino — do you remember the post-Reservoir Dogs 90s? — but that gives this a charm that won me over. There was once a time when movies like this were available at your video store and you’d wonder exactly what you were about to watch when you brought that blind rental home. I miss those opportunities and if you do as well, good news. Killers is easier to find now, thanks to its Synapse release. Unless you were in Germany reading this and then, you probably already know all about it.

This Synapse release features audio commentary with director Mike Mendez and horror scholar Michael Gingold, trailers, liner notes booklet by critic/writer Heather Drain and an alternate ending. You can get it from MVD.