Category Archives: Movie reviews

JUNESPLOITATION: 12 to Midnight (2024)

Posted on by

Day 7. Free Space!

If you’ve spent any time reading this site, you know the deal. We love a good DTV oddity, and few things are as delightfully “what-the-hell-is-this” as the career of Robert Bronzi. You know him—the Hungarian actor who looks so much like Charles Bronson it’s practically a superpower.

Usually, when you see a title like 12 to Midnight, you’re expecting a gritty, street-level vigilante flick, a direct nod to the Cannon Films era. And for a hot second, you get it. Detective Toth (Bronzi) starts in a convenience store, taking out scum like he’s Manny Cobretti. He’s drowning his sorrows after his wife meets a grizzly end and has lost his badge. But he’s soon back on the beat when a new string of murders starts, and the killer isn’t just a psycho with a knife. He’s got hair, claws, and a serious issue with the lunar cycle.

Yes, the movie decides it’s tired of just being Death Wish and pivots hard into a werewolf movie.

This flick also features UFC legend Tito Ortiz filling a niche here that feels like it was designed for a discount Vin Diesel. But the film really succeeds thanks to its atmospheric vibe, heavily bolstered by the filming locations in Centralia, PA—which is, for all intents and purposes, the real-life Silent Hill.

Is the werewolf costume a bit silly? Sure. Are the practical effects a mixed bag? Always. But that’s the charm of this movie, which finally answers the question I’ve asked a hundred times: What would happen if Charles Bronson got to shoot a werewolf?

This film continues the meta-narrative of the Bronzi Cinematic Universe, where Robert Bronzi essentially recreates the tropes of classic 70s and 80s action cinema through a low-budget, modern horror lens. I want to say, “Thank you, Bronzi.” You already showed us what would happen if Bronson fought Pazuzu in Exorcist Vengeance and a slasher in Cry Havoc. I can only hope we get to see what happens when Bronzi asks aliens, vampires and super villains if they want to meet Jesus.

You can watch this on Tubi.

JUNESPLOITATION: A Public Cemetery Under the Moon (1967)

Posted on by

DAY 6: South Korea!

Wol-ha: The Ghost of the Moon is part of the gwi-sin (ghost) subgenre. The story hits all the classic beats of Joseon-era gothic melodrama: we’ve got Wol-ha, a kisaeng (that’s a Korean geisha) who thinks she’s found a way out of the grind. She didn’t intend to go into this life anyway; she just wanted to get her student activist brother out of jail.

Wol-ha does escape by marrying a wealthy businessman, also caught up in the political upheavals, Han-sul, but here’s the problem: her mother-in-law is a total piece of work. Through a web of lies and orchestrated scandal, along with the machinations of servant Nan-ju — who wants to get into the pants of Han-sul as well as his bank account, Wol-ha and her child are discarded, destroyed and left dead in the dirt. But she isn’t staying there.

What really sets this apart from your standard ghost story, though, is the visual flair. You’re going to notice the Bava vibe almost immediately. The lighting in this thing is gorgeous. We’re talking deep shadows, high-contrast blues and purples and a psychedelic feel. It’s got that lush, saturated Technicolor-style look that makes every frame feel like a painting hanging in a haunted house.

Is the pacing a little sluggish? Sure. If you’re looking for a non-stop slasher, this isn’t it. It takes its time to let the misery soak in, allowing the weight of the betrayal to settle into your bones before the inevitable, satisfying pay-off. But when the haunting finally kicks into high gear, the film leans into its low-budget aesthetic with absolute abandon. It’s graphic, it’s theatrical and it’s got a mean streak a mile wide. We’re talking eye-gouging, acid-throwing, and a scene where the tombstone literally splits open.

There’s a reason this film became a monster hit back in the day and maintains a fervent cult following now. It’s a gut-wrenching look at the horrors inflicted upon women in a rigid society, told through the medium of a vengeful spirit who refuses to play by the rules. It’s sleazy, yet it’s high art. It’s an exercise in 1960s Asian Gothic cinema. It’s rough around the edges, occasionally melodramatic to a fault, but it’s got a heart—well, a spectral, beating heart—full of genuine malice. Sure, it takes time to get there, but when it does…

Cheol-hwi Kwon is one of those directors who built the foundation for the kind of dark, stylish, and deeply atmospheric horror that I love. He also directed the comedy musical Obuja and the historical movie  Nam.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Fathers (2026)

Posted on by

Natalie (Kaiti Wallen) is a young woman who finally resurfaces after being missing for 15 years. She’s shell-shocked, struggling with PTSD and caught in the middle of a nightmare with two men claiming to be her father.

On one side, there’s Calvin (Jerry Hayes), the man she’s returned to. He’s an influential entrepreneur with a big house and a cold, detached aura. On the other side, there’s the man who held her captive for all those years, Bobby Nash (played by the director, Harley Wallen). Bobby is the one who fed her the story that Calvin is a monster and her true protector.

The movie isn’t about the kidnapping. It’s about the mental prison that lingers long after the chains are removed. Is Natalie finally safe, or has she just traded one cage for another?

Watching Fathers is like taking a ride down a back road at midnight. It’s dark, it’s twisty, and you aren’t entirely sure where you’re going to end up. Wallen doesn’t hold your hand; he throws you into the confusion alongside Natalie, using quick, jarring cuts that make you question the reliability of every single memory she has.

Kaiti Wallen does a heavy lift here. Portraying a character whose identity has been systematically dismantled is no easy task, and she captures that fragile, wide-eyed terror perfectly. Harley Wallen playing the kidnapper? It’s a bold move, and he makes Bobby disturbingly charismatic and relatable, which honestly makes the whole thing even harder to watch.

The only downside I have to share is that the ending feels somewhat abrupt, and some of the color balance seems to lean toward the blue side of the color wheel, making things look needlessly washed out. But other than that, for the budget, this movie makes a big swing toward telling a dark tale. It feels real, like something you’d watch on Dateline.

JUNESPLOITATION: After School (1988)

Posted on by

DAY 5. Teenagers!

Is this a teen movie? It’s in Teen Movie Hell, so good enough.

Father Michael McClaren (Sam Bottoms) is what we call a cool priest. Sure, he teaches college in Florida, but he plays basketball, rides a motorcycle and is popular with the kids. The church wants him to debate former priest C.A. Thomas (Robert Lansing, 4D Man, Island Claws, Scalpel), who has written a novel claiming that man created God, on the Dick Cavett Show. Yes, this is a teen sex comedy — well, it’s closer to a relationship drama, but the poster wants you to think it’s a sex comedy — in which Dick Cavett shows up. 

This would all be normal except for two things.

One, it’s not that crazy that a girl named September Lane (Renee Coleman) falls in love with Father Michael. You may know her as left fielder Alice Gaspers from A League of Their Own and the evil leaper Alia on Quantum Leap. Or perhaps as the kidnap victim John Candy is trying to save in Who’s Harry Crumb? Man, her IMDb is awesome, because it contains this: “In 1995, Coleman left the film business and returned to school, where she earned her Mythological Studies doctorate (with an emphasis on Depth Psychology) at Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2002. She currently lives with her husband and their four children in Santa Clarita, California, where she works in a private practice as a certified DreamTender.”

The second thing that makes this strange is that, every once in a while, this movie goes back to caveman times, complete with naked women. That’s why this was originally titled Return to Eden. However, those parts really have next to nothing to do with the rest of the movie.

When Thomas and Father Michael do finally debate with Dick Cavett, Thomas wins, saying that every man has to find his own God. So Michael goes off to look up September, and they turn into naked cave people. The end. Really, that’s how it ends.

Things happen in this movie that make no sense, even more than you’d expect, like a priest randomly being into aerobics, September falling for the holy man, and him saying he loves her. Why? She’s moody and constantly argues with him. I mean, that’s almost every woman I’ve dated, so I think I answered my own question.

This was the first role for Sherrie Rose, who would go on to be in movies like Killer Crocodile, Cy Warrior, American Rickshaw and Guns & Lipstick (which has a totally amazing cast of Sally Kellerman, Jorge Rivero, Wings Hauser, James Hong, Sonny Landham, Joe Estvez, Robert Forster, Cassie Yates and girls-only adult star Felicia). Plus, Page Hannah appears, and she’d go on to be a victim of the oil slick in Creepshow 2.

After School was directed by William Olsen, who also made Rockin’ Road Trip, Getting It On, Southern Belles and Mastering the Theremin. This had four writers: Hugh Parks (the director of Shakma!), Joe Tankersley, John Lind and Rod McBrien, who wrote the music for the movie Club Fed, which I must have cast, as it stars Burt Young, Judy Landers, Sherman Hemsley, Karen Black, Mary Woronov, Lyle Alzado, Wally George, Dee “Queen Kong/Matilda the Hun” Booher, Lance “Proctor” Kinsey and Debbie Lee Carrington. 

I was not ready for this movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.

JUNESPLOITATION: Def by Temptation (1990)

Posted on by

DAY 4. Blaxploitation!

Forget the logo that starts this. Sure, Troma distributed this, but it’s alien to their usual dreck, and it has an actual Screen Actors Guild cast, a gorgeous, smoky, neo-noir aesthetic, a contemporary R&B soundtrack and a mostly Black cast and crew.

Directed, written, produced and starring James Bond III, Def by Temptation is the story of Joel (Bond) and his best friend K (Kadeem Hardison), who will face the temptations — right there in the title! — of the flesh. Joel is a wholesome, clean-cut minister-in-training from North Carolina who is having a crisis of faith. Seeking clarity, he heads to the big, bad streets of New York City to visit his childhood best friend, K, who has become an actor.

K’s favorite place to chill is a local bar where a mysterious, stunningly beautiful woman known only as the Temptress (Cynthia Bond) hangs out. The problem? She’s a literal, soul-sucking succubus. She picks up womanizers, unfaithful husbands and anyone succumbing to the sins of the flesh, takes them home and violently obliterates them. When Joel arrives in town, his pure, virginal, holy aura becomes the ultimate prize for her. What follows is a wild, supernatural clash featuring possessed fortune tellers, holy water cocktails, killer television sets and Bill Nunn as a cop who specializes in supernatural cases. Oh, and Samuel L. Jackson shows up in flashbacks as Joel’s minister father, plus R&B royalty Melba Moore shows up as the doomed Madam Sonya, along with cameos from jazz saxophonist Najee and singer Freddie Jackson.

Def by Temptation operates on its own wavelength. It’s a horror movie, but it’s deeply rooted in the traditions of Black religious melodrama. It treats the power of faith and the threat of damnation with absolute seriousness, even when the special effects get wonderfully absurd. So you get stuff like K being violently sucked into his own television set, followed by an explosion of blood and guts from the screen; demon bartenders driving limousines and a climactic bedroom showdown involving a crucifix and some delightfully gooey practical effects.

Cynthia Bond is absolutely hypnotic as the Temptress. She balances an elegant, icy allure with moments of pure, feral malice. The chemistry between James Bond III and Kadeem Hardison feels incredibly genuine, giving the movie an emotional anchor before the supernatural craziness takes over. And the house it was shot in? It was owned by producer Hanna Moss and her husband, Laurence Fishburne.

Made for just $5 million over four weeks, Def by Temptation is a time capsule of a very specific era of independent filmmaking. It’s got style, a killer soundtrack, a great cast before they hit the stratosphere, and enough weird horror imagery to keep me happy. Why did I take so long to watch it?

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio (1971)

Posted on by

If you’re looking for a fairy tale that trades in moral lessons for, well, other kinds of lessons, The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio is exactly the kind of sleazy, weird and profoundly goofy artifact you seek. Directed by Corey Allen — who, in a bizarre twist of fate, went on to direct episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Murder, She Wrote as well as the Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow movie Avalanche and who appeared in Rebel Without a Cause — this is a softcore sex comedy that makes you wonder what exactly was in the water in 1971. Maybe we should ask writer Chris Warfield, who also played an adult as Billy Thornberg.

Our story begins with Gepetta (Monica Gayle, my beloved Patch from Switchblade Sisters, as well as the titular Nashville Girl), a lonely hippie woodcarver who just wants a companion. Thanks to a visit from a fairy godmother played by the legendary sexploitation icon Dyanne Thorne (who would go on to be the Ilsa of Nazi exploitation fame), her life-sized wooden puppet (Alex Roman, who died after scuba diving into a kelp bed) becomes a real man.

The twist? It’s not his nose that grows when he tells a lie. It’s his other equipment that grows whenever he engages in loveless sex. Naturally, the film turns into a surreal picaresque journey where our wooden protagonist wanders into a life of male prostitution and live sex shows, serving as a biological facsimile of a man who is essentially a puppet for everyone else’s desires.

The cinematography was handled by none other than drive-in hero Ray Dennis Steckler (under his pseudonym, Sven Christian), and his wife, Carolyn Brandt, can even be spotted in the audience of one of the film’s performances. It’s a true family affair if your family happened to be the bedrock of the 70s grindhouse circuit.

This is very softcore, meaning there is very little actual nudity compared to what modern viewers might expect. Instead, you get a lot of strange faces, loud orgasm sounds that resemble a roller coaster malfunction and a narrative that manages to be both deeply cynical and aggressively stupid at the same time.

You also get appearances by Karen Smith (Candi from H.O.T.S.), Debbie Osborne (The Toy Box), Neola Graef (Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death), Sandy Dempsey (A Clock Work Blue), Uschi Digard (my dreams, really the whole movie is worth watching for her to show up; she was also in Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, Fantasm and Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks), Casey Larrain (Nympho Cycler), Barbara Mills (Sinthia: The Devil’s Doll), Ruthann Lott (Zero In and Scream) and Lynn Harris (The Erotic Adventures of Zorro).

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Piranha, Piranha (1972)

Posted on by

Piranha, Piranha isn’t the Joe Dante creature-feature you’re likely thinking of, but rather a sweaty, low-budget Venezuelan adventure. Wildlife photographers Art (Tom Simcox) and his sister Terry (Ahna Capri, Enter the Dragon) head into the Amazon, presumably to capture some stunning shots of nature. They hire Jim Pendrake (Peter Brown), an American guide who presumably knows his way around the bush. However, the travel itinerary goes to hell once they cross paths with Caribe (William Smith), a local hunter who has decided that humans are just as fun to track and kill as the local wildlife.

It’s essentially The Most Dangerous Game set against the backdrop of the rainforest, where the characters have to worry about both the guy with the rifle and the titular flesh-eating fish waiting in the murk.

The film is a curiosity, directed by William Gibson (no, not that techomancer; this is the director’s only movie) and written by Richard Finder (also his only work on IMDb). While these names aren’t exactly household staples in the pantheon of cinema greats, they delivered a flick that serves as a perfect time capsule of 70s grindhouse adventure. The production is a scrappy international affair, filmed on location in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Colombia, giving it an authentic, rough-around-the-edges grit that you just can’t replicate on a soundstage.

You’ve got William Smith, a legendary tough guy of B-movie cinema, chewing the scenery as the villain. He makes every movie better. Pairing him with Peter Brown is a treat for fans of the 1960s show Laredo, where the two played Texas Rangers.

The setup is classic grindhouse comfort food: an expedition gone wrong, deep in the South American jungle. You’ve got the requisite crew of researchers, some high-stakes tension, and, of course, the ever-present threat of being reduced to a skeleton in mere seconds by a swarm of hyper-aggressive, aquatic pests. What makes Piranha, Piranha truly special in that specific, battered-print-from-a-drive-in kind of way is the commitment to the danger of the jungle.

You can watch this on YouTube.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Pracherman (1971)

Posted on by

Shot entirely on location in Monroe, North Carolina, and produced by the local Preacherman Corp, the film is a product of the early 70s Southern Dixie filmmaking boom. Of the seventeen actors on screen, eleven were local Carolinians, lending it a certain authentic regional grit. The whole operation was the brainchild of Albert T. Viola, a Brooklyn-born transplant who decided to write, produce, direct and star as the titular con man, Amos T. Huxley. He clearly had a blast, though he and co-star Ilene Kristen (the future Ryan’s Hope soap star who plays the target, Mary Lou) are essentially the only ones who saw a career beyond these woods.

Huxley is a roving grifter whose primary hobbies are shaking down congregations and seducing farm girls. After getting booted from White Oak County for sleeping with the Sheriff’s daughter, he’s left for dead, only to be scooped up by the dim-witted but well-meaning farmer Judd Crabtree. Huxley immediately sets his sights on Judd’s daughter, Mary Lou, a girl so pathologically eager to please that she’s already juggling four local boyfriends.

Huxley manages to convince the entire family that he is a divine emissary. To keep the father distracted, he sends him on errands to hunt for the angel Leroy, a celestial cover story for when Huxley wants to sneak into the barn or bedroom. The film reaches peak absurdity when Huxley realizes the family’s true business isn’t farming but moonshining. He pivots from a bogus preacher to a bootlegger, convincing the locals, including the corrupt Sheriff Zero Bull, that they should launder their illicit corn whiskey profits through a new, tax-free church operation.

The insanity didn’t stop there, either. Bill Simpson, who played the villainous Sheriff Zero Bull, actually reprised his role in a 1973 sequel, Preacherman Meets Widderwoman. That follow-up, which saw our hero tangling with a five-time widow, never received a national release, languishing instead in the regional Southern drive-in circuit.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Pinball Summer (1980)

Posted on by

Released at the dawn of the 1980s, Pinball Summer (also known as Pick-Up Summer or Flipper Girls in Germany) follows the Crown International beach movies and precedes Porky’s. Most of the action revolves around a place called Pete’s, an arcade hosting a pinball competition and a Miss Pinball pageant, which I really hope was a thing at some point.

As the competition heats up, our group of heroes finds itself in an escalating rivalry with a local biker gang. The conflict, which involves everything from burger joint antics to high-speed amusement park chases, revolves around winning the coveted pinball trophy. While the premise sounds like classic exploitation fare, the film is surprisingly lighthearted, focusing on the harmless hijinks, budding romances and the neon-soaked culture of the era.

Despite being filmed in Quebec, the movie successfully masqueraded as a California-based production, fooling many American audiences at the time. Film Ventures International acquired the film for the U.S. market but was initially nervous about the subject matter. They believed the pinball craze was dying and attempted to rebrand the film to distance it from the arcade theme, unaware that the film would perform quite well regardless of the title change.

Speaking of movies leading to something more, director George Mihalka and cinematographer Rodney Gibbons would make My Bloody Valentine after this, a movie much better remembered than this teen summer comedy revolving around disco, burger joints, amusement parks and hijinks between a biker gang and our heroes over the pinball trophy.

The film acts as a bizarre rehearsal for that horror classic. You’ll see several faces that migrated from the arcade to the coal mines, such as Helene Udy (Sylvia in My Bloody Valentine), Thomas Kovacs (Mike) and Carl Malotte (Dave) all appear in Pinball Summer, providing a strange continuity between this sunny teen comedy and the brutal slasher that followed.

JUNESPLOITATION: Calendar Girl, Cop, Killer? The Bambi Bembenek Story (1992)

Posted on by

DAY 3. Linda Blair!

If you grew up in the early 90s, you remember the headlines. You couldn’t turn on the news or flip through a tabloid without a show about the Playboy Bunny cop who supposedly blew away her husband’s ex-wife and then made a break for it. It was the kind of tawdry, real-life soap opera that television networks couldn’t resist, so naturally, we got Calendar Girl, Cop, Killer? The Bambi Bembenek Story.

Let’s be honest: this isn’t high art. It’s a classic, ripped-from-the-headlines TV movie that feels like it was put together while the ink on the newspaper was still wet.  It’s got that quintessential 90s made-for-TV feel, with lighting just a little too flat, pacing a bit rushed, and the moral ambiguity of the case sanded down to fit into a two-hour time slot.

Lindsay Frost plays Laurie “Bambi” Bembenek, and she does a decent job navigating the impossible tightrope of the role: is she a victim of a corrupt Milwaukee police force or is she the cold-blooded killer everyone in the courtroom thinks she is?

She’s surrounded by a roster of “Hey, it’s that guy!” character actors who make this a fun watch for any pop-culture junkie. Timothy Busfield (fresh off thirtysomething) plays the husband, Fred Schultz, while Linda Blair shows up as Jane Mader. We get the always-menacing Tobin Bell as Dan Cushman, the reliably grizzled Ed Lauter as Lieutenant Driscoll, and Peter Jurasik bringing some credibility to the ensemble. Even the smaller roles are peppered with familiar faces like the late Don S. Davis (General Hammond from Stargate SG-1) and character veteran John Karlen.

Behind the lens, the film was steered by veteran TV director Jerry London (Shogun, Rent-a-Cop). If you grew up watching network television in the 80s and 90s, you’ve seen London’s work. He was a master of the event miniseries and the ripped-from-the-headlines drama. For this script, writers Larry and Paul Barber took on the unenviable task of adapting John Greenya’s book, condensing a massive, messy, multi-year legal circus into a digestible two-hour narrative. They leaned into the tabloid beats, keeping the pacing brisk enough to avoid getting bogged down in the finer points of Wisconsin criminal law.

The film dives headfirst into the sensationalism of the case, exploring the bad marriage, the security job at Marquette, and the eventual prison break that turned her into a folk hero with the “Run, Bambi, Run” slogan.

What elevates this above your average bargain-bin drama is the sheer absurdity of the facts it’s trying to juggle. You have a woman who was a cop, a model, a convict and a fugitive, all in the span of a few years. The movie doesn’t have the budget to be a sprawling crime epic, so it leans into the character study angle, focusing on the media frenzy. It’s a fascinating, if messy, time capsule of a moment in American true crime history.

Is it a masterpiece? No. But like a lot of the best low-budget or TV-movie efforts, it has a weird, earnest energy. It’s convinced that its subject is the most important story in the world, and there’s something undeniably compelling about that.

You can watch this on YouTube.