Toni (Tristan Cunningham) is being abused by her husband Marcus (Tarek Zohdy), and to find out how to get away, she sneaks away and attends Destiny’s (Meyon Jacobs) “Take It Back” empowerment seminar. After all, if Destiny could heal herself and fight back after a sexual assault, maybe she could teach Toni how to survive.

The problem for Destiny is that she’s not in all that great of a marriage either. Kendall (Leah Pipes), her wife, wants her to go corporate instead of helping women. These ladies could benefit from a Strangers On a Train-style path out of their bad relationships, which is exactly what happens. The problem is when Toni fulfills her end, and Destiny doesn’t exactly live up to her end of the deal.

Destiny also has a sister named Faith (Paigion Walker) who plans on marrying Senator James Hawthorne (Matt Marshall), while Kendall has eyes for Destiny’s assistant, Sufe (Emily Morales-Cabrera). When Toni learns that Destiny’s entire empire is based on her not exactly telling the truth, she decides that if her husband isn’t going to die, Destiny’s reputation will.

Directed by Dylan Vox (who also made Deadly DILF for Tubi) and written by Jeremy M. Inman (who wrote Sinister Squad and Avengers Grimm: Time Wars, as well as Hustlers Take All for Vox), this isn’t as good as even Throw Mama from the Train, but let’s hear it for it having a same-sex couple and gender swapping the story. The first part has the crazy energy I wanted this entire movie to have. I just wish it could have kept up the wildness.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Loulou (Lina Romay), Fifi (Brigitte Monnin), Gigi (Anna Gladysek), Mimi (Maria Mancini), Simone (Monica Swinn) and Coco (Pamela Stanford) — an all-star team of Jess Franco’s actresses — work at a brothel where they protect the rebels and their leader Carlos Ribas (Fred Williams). But when the government comes back into power, they arrest these women and plan on using them as a joy division for their troops until they escape and live in a convent.

As you can imagine, these ladies of loose morals get into some shenanigans. I wrote that sentence as if it were a one-line review in the TV Guide.

There’s a statement in this about government authoritarianism, but really, Line Romay, Pamela Stanford and Monica Swinn were all I needed to read to make me watch it. Also, if you looked at Maria Mancini’s name and wondered if she’s Carla’s sister, I want to thank you for making me not feel alone in my complete nerdiness. She’s also in Giallo in Venice and Seven Women for Satan.

No nuns in my childhood looked like Lina Romay, but I don’t think that ever existed outside of this movie.

A Roger Ebert “Dog of the Week” also known as The Great American Girl Robbery, Bus 17 Is Missing and Cheerleaders’ Naughty Weekend, Cheerleader’s Wild Weekend finds a bus filled with twentysomething teenagers — three teams of cheerleaders, including Kristine DeBell (Alice from the adult Alice In Wonderland and a former Ford model; she’s in so many movies that it’s hard to just pick a few, but let’s say The Big Brawl and Tag: The Assassination Game), Wally Ann Wharton (who has plenty of non-sex adult roles and is also in Last Resort), Leslie King (who would go on to write 1988’s To Die For), Lachelle Chamberlain (whose IMDB roles include Miss Teenage U.S.A., a young girl and pretty girl), Marilyn Joi (Cleopatra Schwartz!) and Lenka Novak (one of the Catholic High School Girls In Trouble) — getting kidnapped by the National American Army of Freedom, who are made up of ex-football players and one butch woman. They call their demands into DJ Joyful Jerome (Leon Isaac Kennedy) while Jason Williams from Flesh Gordon and Robert Houston from The Hills Have Eyes attempt to save them.

This is a scummy movie, but at least one of the sexual assault scenes was so dark it didn’t end up in the movie. When you look at the poster art, you’ll say, “This looks like a sex comedy.” But no. No, it’s kind of like if the SLA kidnapped the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. Look at how dark this IMDB trivia is: “A brunette actress broke her left arm during production, and they avoided filming her left side through the remainder of the film.” We don’t even know her name.

When you see Bill Osco and Chuck Russell’s names on this, you know what you’re getting into.

It was directed by Jeff Werner and written by D.W. Gilbert and Williams, who conveniently wrote himself into the good guy role and got the girl at the end. These guys also made a movie in which women use striptease to keep their captives from killing them. But hey, you know the movies I like. This fits right in.

The MVD Rewind Collection release of this movie — what a great release for such a scuzzy movie and I applaud them for that! — has extras like two commentary tracks, one by director Jeff Werner, actress Marilyn Joi and editor Gregory McClatchy and the other with Kristine DeBell; interviews with DeBell. Joi, Jason Williams and Leon Isaac Kennedy; a photo gallery; an alternate title card; a trailer and a collectible mini-poster. You can get this from MVD.

1963: During the Cold War, CIA agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) teams with KGB officer Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) to thwart a criminal organization. They must find Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander), daughter of nuclear scientist Dr. Udo Teller (Christian Berkel) and defeat Nazis who want to bring about the Fourth Reich.

Based on the TV series, this is an OK action movie, but it makes a mistake similar to so many remakes: Do we want the origin story? Or do we want to see Solo and Kuryakin already working together as part of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement? It’s cool when Hugh Grant shows up as Alexander Waverly, but for those who love the original show, will they love this? And for those who don’t know it, is this a spy film that is different enough?

I didn’t dislike what I watched, but the original show was a phenomenon. Yet, for a movie that took over a decade to happen, does it mean anything to anyone other than its small fanbase that’s still left, who may not enjoy the changes? Maybe I should stop worrying and enjoy watching Richie’s work, as this all looks nice.

The Arrow Video release of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. has plenty of extras, including new audio commentary by critics Bryan Reesman and Max Evry; new interviews with co-writer/producer Lionel Wigram and Luca Calvani; Legacy of U.N.C.L.E., a new featurette celebrating the original 1960s TV series and its influence on the 2015 movie, featuring Helen McCarthy, David Flint and Vic Pratt; a featurette on Guy Ritchie’s films; archival features on the making of the movie; a trailer; an image gallery; a double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Dare Creative; an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Barry Forshaw and a reprinted article from CODEX Magazine on the film’s cinematography and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Dare Creative. You can order it from MVD in 4K UHD or Blu-ray.

No, this is not Eugenie (AKA  Philosophy in the Bedroom). It’s also not Eugénie de Sade (AKA DeSade 2000). This is 1980’s Eugenie (Historia de una perversión), but yes, it’s another Jess Franco movie. It is a remake of the 1970 movie listed above and is also known as Erotismo. Franco danced with this subject many times, also making How to Seduce a Virgin.

Alberto de Rosa (Antonio Mayans, a Franco stock member) wants the young Eugenie (Katja Bienert, El tesoro de la diosa blanca), so he gets his sister Alba (Mabel Escano) to help by seducing her father and talking him into letting brother and sister take his daughter for, well, you can only guess.

Bienert is fine in this, but she’s also dealing with Maria Rohm and Soledad Miranda to live up to in Franco’s first two attempts. That’s not fair to her to be compared to them. She was also underage when this was made, which is something that would never happen today or at least we’d like to believe that.

This also has Lina Romay barking and behaving like a dog, so there’s that.

In Germany, most of the plot and character pieces are thrown away to make way for inserts from Triangle of Venus. For these Teutonic perverts, Jess Franco was simply not dirty enough.

Despite being approached several times with New York Times reporter Gerald Walker’s 1970 novel Cruising, William Friedkin (The Exorcist, Sorcerer and perhaps not as successfully, Jade) wasn’t interested. He changed his mind after an unsolved series of murders in New York’s leather bars.

Articles by Village Voice journalist Arthur Bell and NYPD officer Randy Jurgensen helped inform this film. The latter went into the same deep cover as this film’s protagonist, Steve Burns. Then, Friedkin learned that Paul Bateson, a doctor’s assistant who appeared in The Exorcist, had been implicated in the crimes while serving a sentence for another murder.

Friedkin did some of his research for the film by attending gay bars dressed in only a jockstrap, but by the time the movie began filming, he had been barred from two of the most oversized bars, the Mine Shaft and Eagle’s Nest, due to the controversy surrounding the movie.

Much like The New York Ripper and God Told Me To, this movie feels like one set at the end of the world — New York City near the close of the 20th century. Someone is picking up gay men, murdering them and leaving their body parts in the Hudson.

Officer Steve Burns (Al Pacino)—exactly the type of man the killer has been after—is on the case. Captain Edelson (Paul Sorvino) has assigned him to infiltrate the foreign world of S&M and leather bars. However, as the case progresses, he loses himself and his relationship with Nancy (Karen Allen).

Soon, he learns of just how brutal the NYPD is to gay men — even if they’re just suspects. And he finds himself growing closer to his neighbor Ted (Don Scardino, Squirm).

By the end, nothing is truly clear. While the killer may be Stuart Richards, a schizophrenic who attacks Burns with a knife in Morningside Park, it could also be Ted’s angry boyfriend Gregory (James Remar). After all, Ted’s mutilated body is discovered while Stuart is in custody. Or the real killer is still out there — perhaps he’s even a patrol cop (Joe Spinell). The truth is never told.

Spinell is incredible in this, which is no surprise. He used his real life for inspiration, as there’s a line about his wife, Jean Jennings, leaving him and moving to Florida with his daughter. His wife had just done exactly that before this movie was shot.

The actual version of this movie may never be released. Friedkin claims it took fifty rounds to get the MPAA to award the film an R rating. Over 40 minutes of footage was cut, which consisted of time spent in gay bars. The director claims that these scenes showed “the most graphic homosexuality with Pacino watching and with the intimation that he may have been participating.”

This footage also creates another suspect — Burns himself may have become a killer.

When Friedkin sought to restore the missing footage for the film’s DVD release, he discovered that United Artists no longer had it and may have even destroyed all the cut footage.

In 2013, James Franco and Travis Mathews released Interior. Leather Bar is a metafictionalized account of the two filmmakers’ attempts to recreate the lost 40 minutes of Cruising.

There’s a disclaimer at the start that says, “This film is not intended as an indictment of the homosexual world. It is set in one small segment of that world, which is not meant to be representative of the whole.” Years later, Friedkin would claim that MPAA and United Artists required this, hoping that it would absolve them of the controversy that had been all over this production.

That’s because protests had started at the urging of gay journalist Arthur Bell, the aforementioned Village Voice writer whose series of articles on the Doodler’s killing of gay men inspired this movie. There were numerous disruptions to the filming, as protesters blasted music and loud noises at all filming locations, leading to hours of ADR to fix the ruined dialogue.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD release of Cruising features a brand-new restoration from a 4K scan of the original camera negative, supervised and approved by writer-director William Friedkin. It also includes a Friedkin-approved newly remastered 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio mix of the film. The release also includes archival featurettes and two commentaries by Friedkin.

There’s also new commentary featuring the original musicians involved with the soundtrack; Heavy Leather, an alternate musical score by Pentagram Home Video; deleted scenes and alternative footage; on-set audio featuring the club scenes and protest coverage; censored material reels; a theatrical trailer, teasers and TV commercials; interviews with Karen Allen, film consultant and former police detective Randy Jurgensen, editor Bud S. Smith, Jay Acovone, Mike Starr, Mark Zecca and Wally Wallace, former manager of the Mineshaft; Breaking the Codes, a visual essay surrounding the hanky-codes featuring actor and writer David McGillivray; Stop the Movie, a short film by Jim Hubbard capturing the Cruising protests; archival featurettes; William Friedkin’s BeyondFest 2022 Q&A at the American Cinematheque and an extensive image gallery featuring international promotional material, on-set sketches, and more.

It also has a 120-page perfect-bound collector’s book featuring articles from The Village Voice and The New York Times, essays from the film’s extras cast, an introduction from William Friedkin and an archive interview with Al Pacino. The set is enclosed in a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sister Hyde.

You can get it from MVD.

Alfred Sole was an architect who dreamed of making movies. His first film, 1972’s Deep Sleep, which starred Deep Throat‘s Harry Reems and The Devil In Ms. Jones‘ Georgina Spelvin, was made for only $25,000. However, it was ruled obscene and pulled from theaters. His second film — the one we’re about to cover — may not have done well at first thanks to spotty distribution, but thanks to Brooke Shields’ popularity and multiple re-releases under multiple titles, like Holy Terror, Communion and The Mask Murders.

Sole wrote the film with his neighbor Rosemary Ritvo, an English professor with whom he often discussed films. A Catholic herself, they would talk at length about the church in between discussing theater and horror films. Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now was a huge influence, as is evident by the yellow raincoat worn by the film’s villain.

The film is set in 1961 in Paterson, New Jersey, the director’s hometown; as such, much of it was based on his childhood. In fact, Mrs. Tredoni is directly based on a woman who lived next door to his grandmother, who would look after the priests.

While Sole claims he had never seen any Giallo before he made this, Alice, Sweet Alice is perhaps the most giallo of all American films before DePalma would make Dressed to Kill.

The film begins with Catherine Spages (Linda Miller, the daughter of Jackie Gleason and the mother of Jason Patric) visiting Father Tom with her two daughters, nine-year-old Karen (Shields) and twelve-year-old Alice (the astounding Paula Sheppard), who are students of St. Michael’s Parish Girls’ School. Father Tom gives Karen his mother’s crucifix as a gift for her first communion, making Alice jealous.

Alice is a wild child, her hair barely tied back, constantly in trouble for all manner of mischief. Is she a bad girl or just a misunderstood little girl dealing with the specter of her parent’s divorce in 1961, a time when this rarely happened and in a heavily Catholic neighborhood where this would indeed be judged? Her antics include wearing a clear mask and repeatedly frightening and threatening her sister.

This all ends on the day of Karen’s first communion, when someone in the same school raincoat and mask as Alice kidnaps the young girl, strangles her, rips the crucifix from her neck and then sets her body on fire inside a church pew. This is insanely brutal and lets the viewer know that this movie is unprepared to take it easy on you.

At the same time, Alice enters the room and attempts to receive communion while wearing her sister’s veil. It’s never really established where she found it or whether or not she knew it belonged to her sister. There are no easy answers here.

Catherine’s ex-husband Dominick (Niles McMaster, Bloodsucking Freaks) returns for the funeral and fulfills the Giallo role of a stranger pushed into becoming the detective. Furthering the giallo narrative, the ineffective Detective Spina takes over the case, pursuing the lead that Alice is the killer thanks to Catherine’s sister Annie’s suspicions. This lead seems even more apparent after the killer attacks Annie, and Alice is found at the scene, wearing the same clothes.

Alice is sent to a psychiatric institution where it’s revealed that she’s been in trouble numerous times in school, a fact that Father Tom has concealed as he believed he could solve her problems.

The killer tightens her noose around Alice’s neck by luring her father to an abandoned building,g where she gets the jump on him, beating him with a brick, binding his body and pushing him off a ledge. Before he dies, he’s able to swallow the crucifix that the killer had stolen from his daughter. That’s also when we learn who the killer is, way before the film is over: it’s Tredoni, who sees Dominick and Catherine — and by extension, their children — as sinners due to their premarital sex and divorce.

Alice may have been eliminated as a person of interest, but the danger remains. On a visit to Father Tom, Catherine learns that Tredoni lost a daughter on the day of her first communion, which taught her that children pay for the sins of their parents. In her grief, she gives herself over to the church. Her feelings about her calling are confirmed when Father Tom misunderstands her confession.

Finally, Alice’s scheme to leave cockroaches all over, frightening landlord Mr. Alphons,o neatly ties into Tredoni sneaking in to kill either her, Catherine or both of them. Alphonso is stabbed, and the mad older woman runs to the church. Father Todd assures the police he can handle her, but even his mercy and the church’s teachings fail in the face of mania.

The end of this movie shocked me out of my theater seat. It’s visceral in its intensity, and the ending—where Alice walks away—is even more harrowing.

It’s rare to find a movie that completely destroys an audience. Alice, Sweet Alice did that when it played here to a packed house as part of a Drive-In Asylum night of film.

In these modern times, Alice takes on a whole new light. Nearly every male in the movie treats her blossoming womanhood as an invitation, from the lie detector operator who says that when he bound her breasts with the machine, it looked like she wanted it to the guard at the children’s home who silently watches her as she meets with her parents. Perhaps even more disquieting is that Sheppard was 19 when this was made. Her only other film appearance is in the equally bizarre Liquid Sky, which is a shame, as she was incredible in both of these equally strange movies.

Alphonso DeNoble, who plays the grotesque Mr. Alphonso, also appeared in Bloodsucking Freaks. While his main career was as a bouncer at a gay bar, as his side hustle, Alphonso would dress up as a priest and hang around cemeteries, where widows would ask for a blessing, and he’d indulge them for a monetary donation.

This film truly lives up to the ninth Satanic Statement: Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years! And the Satanic Sin of Herd Mentality is obvious. From the actual church, “…only fools follow along with the herd, letting an impersonal entity dictate to you.”

Also, Alice posits that even the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church of 1961 was finding itself ill-equipped to understand the modern world and that people—from the old like Tredoni to the young like Alice—would suffer. It’s women who do most of that suffering, constantly propping up the male members yet never able to ascend to the power of the clergy unless they want to be second-best sisters.

Even 43 years after its debut, Alice Sweet Alice has the power to destroy. It’s a near-perfect film that demands introspection and multiple viewings.

BONUS CONTENT:

This article by Bill Van Ryn of Groovy Doom and the horror and exploitation fanzine Drive-In Asylum provides an even better look at this film.

I also had the opportunity to discuss this film with Alfred Sole’s cousin, Dante Tomaselli, the maker of the astounding Desecration.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD release of Alice, Sweet Alice has a brand new 4K restoration by Arrow Films from the original camera negative, as well as three cuts: Communion; Alice, Sweet Alice and Holy Terror. There’s new commentary by Richard Harland Smith and archival commentary by co-writer/director Alfred Sole and editor M. Edward Salier; interviews with composer Stephen Lawrence and actor Niles McMaster; First Communion: Alfred Sole Remembers Alice, Sweet Alice; Sweet Memories: Dante Tomaselli on Alice, Sweet Alice; a location tour with Michael Gingold; deleted scenes; a split-screen version comparison; a trailer and TV commercial; an image gallery, including the original screenplay; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx and an illustrated collectors booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Blyth. You can get it from MVD.

A passion project of stop-motion master David Allen, it was unfinished due to his cancer death. In 2023, Full Moon and former Allen associate Chris Endicott finished the movie, which is filled with “100% hand-rendered, stop-motion special effects.”

This started as Raiders of the Stone Ring, a movie developed more than sixty years ago by Allen, Dennis Muren and Jim Danforth. That was almost bought by Hammer, as was another film the trio wanted to make, Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyl. Years later, Allen wanted to make this with writer Mark McGee as either The Glacial Empire or Primordium: The Arctic World. Settling on the name The Primevals, it was finally bought by Charles Band after special effects artist Steve Neill shared it during the making of Laserblast.

If you ever saw any Empire Pictures coming soon ads, The Primevals were always in them. Then, when Full Moon started, it got filmed, and the hard work of animation began, even as money woes hurt the studio. In 1999, when he died, Allen left Endicott the film elements, storyboards, stop-motion puppets and all of his equipment.

Luckily, this was finally finished in 2023, and now, after a theatrical run, it’s on DVD.

Deep in the Himalayas, a gigantic creature has been killed,d and Dr. Claire Collier (Juliet Mills) thinks that it is a yeti. Wanting to see one of them alive, she goes on an expedition with Matt Connor (Richard Joseph Paul) and big-game hunter Rondo Montana (Leon Russom) to get the truth. That said, this has caused so many wild things to happen — Who operated on the brain of the yeti? What technology is hidden in the mountain? Are those lizard people? — that you’ll love it. Trust me. Get over the fact that stop-motion looks jerky in a world of CGI. Shut your brain off, and enjoy something unironically for once.

I’ve wanted to see this movie since it was always in magazines—Cinefantastique had it on the cover! — and now that it’s in my house, in my collection, and I can watch it at any time? Sometimes life isn’t so bad. Man, those lizard men are great. Where are the toys for this movie?

You can get this from MVD.

I think about Jess Franco and Lina Romay a lot. I’d like to feel that they had a great relationship — they were together for years — and they lived up to the title of this movie, The Voyeur and the Exhibitionist. Working together on this as co-directors, Lina sits in an apartment, in front of posters of Mick Jagger and Lou Reed, and for 54 minutes, she gets horizontal with Mari Carmen G. Alonso (who performed as Rossy Pussy in this and another Franco movie, Para las nenas, leche calentita) and another man while the exhibitionist watches and makes a mess of himself.

An early Spanish X film — Franco and Romay made ten really fast to get ahead of the censorship ending — this has no real story other than someone likes to watch and someone likes to be watched. Lina says, “Maybe I look like a maniac, but it’s a game that amuses me.” She’s the power bottom, the real one in control, as the male gaze only can see when she performs for it.

This is the magic of Jess Franco, that he can cause people to write long and hopefully poetic write-ups on movies that are really just dirty sex. Do we want them to be more than they are or are they more than they are I can’t answer, but like always, I think about Jess and Lina growing old together, two perverts who found each other’s yum in a world where that rarely happens.

American Gigolo was always fascinating to me as a kid as my mother wouldn’t let me in the room when it was on. As a result, knowing that it was “dirty” made me want to see it even more.

Directed and written by Paul Schrader, it’s about Julian Kay (Richard Gere), an escort for rich older women. Now, we know this is a fantasy and I’m sure that affluent elderly ladies like to have a man, but I think we all know that most male escorts are for other men. But let’s get over that and explore the movie.

Along the way, he starts to fall for a senator’s wife, Michelle Stratton (Lauren Hutton), but soon finds himself being hired for a job he never does: BDSM sex with Mr. Rheiman’s (Tom Stewart) wife Judy (Patti Carr) while the old man watches. Julian tells fellow sex worker Leon (Bill Duke) that he never wants another call like that; Leon tells him that when he ages, these rich old ladies won’t want him any longer.

Meanwhile, as Julian satisfies Lisa Williams (K Callan), Mrs. Rheiman is murdered. Detective Sunday (Héctor Elizondo) believes that Julian did it, but his alibi — sleeping with another man’s wife — puts his sense of morality to the test. He refuses to say where he was and at each turn, evidence is planted and he starts to realize that he’s being set up.

I love this quote from Schrader: “The character in Taxi Driver was compulsively nonsexual. The character in American Gigolo is compulsively sexual. He is a man who receives his identity by giving sexual pleasure but has no concept of receiving sexual pleasure.” Indeed, one scene — in which Julian is full frontal nude, a rarity even today — he goes on about how being able to please women is the one thing that he knows makes him worthwhile. Schrader would revisit the themes of male sex workers in 2007’s The Walker.

The main reason I wanted to see this as a child was the music. Giorgio Moroder and “Call Me” by Blondie? Amazing. This also set the tone for style for the new decade, as Gere’s Giorgio Armani suits and Hutton’s Aldo Ferrante outfits established the look that so many would emulate.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD and Blu-ray release of American Gigolo has a 4K remaster from the original negative by Arrow Films, plus extras such as commentary with film critic Adrian Martin; interviews with Paul Schrader, Héctor Elizondo, Bill Duke, editor Richard Halsey, camera operator King Baggot, music supervisor and KCRW DJ Dan Wilcox and Professor Jennifer Clark; a trailer; an image gallery and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tommy Pocket. You can order it from MVD.