Daniela (Tamara Almeida) and her husband Jaime (Jason Diaz) have seen better days. He was once a star athlete but got hurt, so now all he does is play video games and get more depressed while his wife cooks, cleans and makes all the money. He resents her, because she reminds him of the great past that he once had. She wants out so that she can have a future.

While talking with his friend Miguel (Milton Torres Lara), the conversation gets around to what Jaime should do now that it looks like he’s heading for a divorce. His wife has a $500,000 life insurance policy, but when Miguel suggests they kill her, Jaime reminds him how much he loves his wife.

However, one of her fellow nurses and her best friend Rosie (Erica Deutschman) has a crush on Jaime and takes a photo of Dani consoling a cop named Noah (Brett Geddes)who saved her from a homeless man who was attacking people inside the hospital. It isn’t even a romance yet, but it’s already upset Dr. Will (Connor McMahon), who has an infatuation with Dani, and when Miguel sees the photo, he decides that yes, his wife must die.

Miguel decides to pull the job but he gets nervous and struggles with Dani, whose hand is on the gun when it goes off. She has no idea what to do, so she hides the body and calls Noah instead of 911. He reacts so much unlike how she expected, telling her that she’s going to hurt his career. That said, he does help her hide out until she figures out what to do next. As she waits in a trailer, she’s using her house’s cameras to watch what Jaime is doing.

Antonio (David Chinchilla), Miguel’s brother, wants revenge a lot more than Jaime. He decides that he’s going to be the one to kill Dani and get the money. Noah, who falls for women in trouble, wants to help her. Jaime has no idea what he wants. Dani, however, is the kind of heroine who will do whatever she has to do to get away from all of these men and the various things they need from her.

Directed by Lisa Soper (the production designer on Peacemaker, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and The Blackcoat’s Daughter) and written by Huelah Lander (Twisted Neighbor), this film has a wild color palette that feels like people live inside a Mario Bava film, as well as some great character work. Rosie is one of the most horrible, self-centered and awesome villains I’ve seen in a movie in some time. And Dani ends up being stronger than anyone else, making unexpected decisions and pulling herself out of the mess her life has become.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The first time I heard about Sean “Puffy” Combs was in 1991 when he promoted an AIDS fundraiser at the City College of New York following a charity basketball game. The event was oversold and in a rush to get to the stage, nine people died.

From my outside the rap knowledge world — I mean, I love Public Enemy, Black Sheep and random songs — I always some him as a pretender, as someone who tagged along with the superior Notorious B.I.G. and then used his death to get ahead.

The last couple of months have been really wild, to say the least.

This whole thing started in 20017 when Cindy Ruela, a former personal chef for Diddy, filed a lawsuit against in L.A. County Superior Court claiming that the artist sexual harassed her. Then a few years later, his former girlfriend Cassie Ventura accused him of rape, sex trafficking and physical abuse, as well as blowing up her boyfriend Kid Cudi’s car. These suits were paid off, but then there were more cases, including some claiming revenge porn was used as Diddy filmed women and used it as blackmail.

By February of this year, Combs had five lawsuits, including one by Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, a producer who claimed that he was raped by Diddy and forced to have sex with sex workers while others watched and filmed him.

It all led to the March 25 raid of Combs’ homes in Los Angeles, New York and Miami y the Department of Homeland Security. In response, Macy’s pulled all of his clothing and soon, others would follow suit.

As this is written, nothing has been decided in court and much of the charges in this are rumors. But man, when there’s smoke, there’s often fire. If you need caught up on a situation in pop culture fast, these TMZ Tubi Originals will do it for you.

Now where’s the Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake breakdown for us old white people?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Ted Campbell (Final Heist), who co-wrote the script with Richard Pierce, This Never Happened is all about Emily (María José De La Cruz) who is the next in her family’s history of being able to see the dead. After all, her grandmother could as well and that’s why she lived out her days alone in a mental hospital.

Emily goes with her boyfriend Matteo (Javier Dulzaides) to his father’s funeral in Mexico City. Afterward, his mother Melora (Andrea Noli) tells him that the house will be sold in a few days. Matteo’s friends — Olivia (Conny Cambambia), Ale (Juana Serrano) and Nica (Gonzalo Zulueta) — decide that one weekend in their old house would give them closure.

You know what happens next.

I mean, Matteo even says to Emily, “You forgot to take your pills.”

Here are a few words of advice for the characters in this movie but well, they’re all dead so it’s hard to say, right? Don’t go back home with your boyfriend. If his friends all seem like drug addicts and may have put drugs in your drink, don’t trust them. If you can see the dead, maybe leave instead of dealing with that big toothed monster in the swimming pool. And if you buy Tarot cards, make sure they’re not razor sharp, no matter how good the scene is, because you’re going to die.

I think that Less Than Zero properly prepared me for a life of hating rich people. This movie is much the same, as they the thing that never happened is — spoiler warning — a girl being drugged and assaulted by several of them at a party in this same house. Now, her spirit wants revenge and is swimming in the pool, activated by those magic crystals that got thrown into the water. That’s more advice. If you have magic objects, don’t be throwing them into the pool.

Then again, I am all for rich kid comeuppance and this movie delivers on that. Tubi horror has been getting better and I’m hoping that a year from now, we’ll all be amazed at hust how far they’ve grown. Until then, this has a nice budget, an attractive cast and a scene where a blender leaks blood everywhere. Can you really ask more from free?

You can watch this on Tubi.

I usually make fun of the TMZ crew but this episode of their Tubi specials gets into how they fight for the First Amendment. Sure, it’s over the Mel Gibson drunk driving case, but the idea that the LAPD would get a search warrant for all of their phone records to out the source who told TMZ about four pages deleted from the arrest report is insane. It’s even legal to do that now after the Patriot Act.

This time, Hollywood’s biggest lies — yes, it’s right there in the title — are exposed. Like did Kim Kardashian and her mother engineer her sex tape? What happened when Jussie Smollett claimed that he was attacked in a hate crime? Did Milli Vanilli really lipsync their songs? And yes, what really happened with Mel Gibson?

It’s really incredible how much of this cuts through things that are accepted and shows us what really lies beneath Hollywood. Sure, these stories are all rather innocuous when it comes to lies, but the Gibson one, as I mentioned earlier, goes much deeper than I thought it would.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The TMZ crew all gets together and yells at one another about the dumbest celebrity decisions, like how T.I. wanted to be there for his daughter’s gynecologist visits and to be sure she was still a virgin. According to Global News, his daughter said that T.I. had been going with her to these doctor visits since she was 14 or 15 and she “couldn’t have said no” to her dad when he asked to join for the appointments. She also revealed on Instagram that she has harmed herself in the past to deal with her emotions.

Want even dumber? There’s Justin Bieber saying that Anne Frank would have been a “Belieber,” “Live for Now” the Kim Kardashian Pepsi commercial where she solves a protest and police unrest by giving a cop a soda — created by a team of white people and which caused Pepsi to have to write “Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding. Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize. We did not intend to make light of any serious issue. We are removing the content and halting any further rollout. We also apologize for putting Kendall Jenner in this position.” — as well as the celebrity “Imagine” video during the COVID-19 era and Adam Levine cheating with a woman and using his band’s Instagram account to send messages.

Of all of these decisions, the fact that I watch multiple Tubi TMZ shows in a row to write about them on this site may be among the silliest.

That said, this is just like lying on my grandmother’s bed with a stack of National Enquirer, Star, National Examiner and Globe newspapers and tearing through them, learning about Liz Taylor’s sad last days and who was on drugs, who was on the watermelon diet, who was a friend of Dorothy and who was a cheat. Those are some of the best days of my childhood.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Quinn Walker (Susan Ateh) has just returned to detective work after the death of her police officer husband, a man who everyone loved and who she knew as an abuser. She’s kept that a secret from everyone but most essentially from her son Liam, who idolized his dad. She’s become even more of the mean mom that he forced her to be, keeping her son from his interest in detective work and using true crime websites to help others solve crimes.

On the first day back on the job, she nearly shoots a suspect who ends up being an actor in the middle of a scene. It gets her noticed and while some of the press is bad, many see her as a hero for the way she tried to save someone, even if it was on a movie set.

She’s also just been assigned a new partner, Carter (Jay Rincon), a London detective who has come to America to — as we learn later — find the murderer of his father. They don’t get along and she doesn’t trust him, but her son sees him as someone worth knowing.

In the middle of all this drama, there are also murders.

Mia Bailey is the hottest actress in Hollywood and she’s about to star in a movie based on her friend Anna’s (Roisin Browne) script, Blind Items. At the same time, there’s a blind items website that reveals who will die next, from Mia in the place where her career started to her business manager Jason Cohen (Luis Donegan-Brown) and almost everyone connected to Mia and Anna, who came to the city of dreams together, living with a circle of friends, all of whom are either dying or suspects, like Ozzie, a former military veteran and now spiritual healer.

As Quinn tries to deal with her grief, her new partner and being a mother, she starts to depend on her son, who is able to find clues that she never saw and use the internet way better than she ever would be able to. However, this puts him in danger.

I really liked Quinn’s boss, Captain Ellis (Doña Croll), who has a really great scene with Quinn where she explains that she knew that she always had a hard time being the wife of someone that everyone saw as a much better person than he really was.

The strange thing is deciding to have a London detective in the U.S. When does this ever happen? It’s kind of strange, but not enough to put me off the movie.

Director and co-writer — with Daniel Mahler Landman — Nanea Miyata also directed A Party To Die For, another Tubi Original. I liked how whoever is behind the murders goes through some twists and turns, using Quinn’s recent incident in the news against her. And by the end, there’s a moment that makes who the killer is up in the air, as the messages haven’t stopped on the site.

You can watch this on Tubi.

An international co-production of Australia, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates — with all the logos before the movie begins to prove it — Late Night With the Devil takes place on Halloween night 1977 in New York City. Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) has been the host of a show called Night Owls with Jack Delroy for several years and try as he might, he has never come close to the ratings of Johnny Carson, something that numerous people — Joey Bishop, Joan Rivers, Alan Thicke, Les Crane, Bill Dana,  David Brenner, Pat Sajak, Ron Reagan, Dennis Miller, Steve Allen, Arsenio Hall, Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, David Frost, Jerry Lewis and Regis Philbin — all tried to do. The only night that he came close with on the evening when his wife Madeleine Piper (Georgina Haig) came on the show to discuss her brave fight with cancer.

On this night, the sponsors who want to pull out are there, producer Leo Fiske (Josh Quong Tart) is trying to manage the pressure, Jack’s sidekick Gus McConnell (Rhys Auteri) keeps bugging the host and a guest just might finally tip the ratings Jack’s way when he needs it most.

Lilly D’Abo (Ingrid Torelli) is the last survivor of the mass suicide of the followers of Szandor D’Abo (Steve Mouzakis). D’Abo is based on Anton Szandor LaVey, as we see from a documentary within the movie, La Satanisme aux U.S.A. ’71 which is obviously taken from Angeli Bianchi… Angeli Neri AKA Witchcraft ’70.*

Yet Lily — and the parapsychology helping her, Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) — aren’t the only ones experiencing the occult.

There are rumors that Jack is part of The Grove, a highly influential group of rich and powerful men. It’s based on the Bohemian Grove — a two-week encampment of some of the most prominent men in the world where the first Manhattan Project meetings were held and also where a yearly Cremation of Care ceremony in front of a giant owl representing old god Moloch, complete with the voice of Walter Cronkite — and there are whispers that Jack got his show as the result of his membership.

Along with Lily and June, the other guests are psychic medium Christou (Fayssal Bazzi) — whose name may reference philosopher, metaphysician and composer Ianni Christou and who may be inspired by Doris Stokes, a psychic who regularly appeared on the Australian talk show The Don Lane Show, and the look of Australian hypnotist Reveen) and a former magician turned professional psychic debunker and leader of the International Federation of Scientific Investigation into the Paranormal by the name of Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss, playing a character definitely based on “Amazing” James Randi, who called Stokes a liar on the aforementioned Don lane hosted program, at which point Lane said, “You can piss off,” and kicked him out of the studio). Both of these characters are amazing and so well acted; in fact, Bliss wasn’t even the original actor and had been a reader for the film’s auditions.

Plus, they show Haig investigating Amityville and making fun of the Warrens.

As the show starts — complete with monologue — Christou takes the stage and he’s obviously doing cold reading, where you blast out multiple cues to a large audience, such as “Is there someone who is thinking of a name that starts with R?” and “Someone has lost a family heirloom, where are they?” He’s also obviously using someone that interviews all of the guests before the show, which enables him to do his best psychic reading. This again is very similar to how James Randi figured out how televangelist Peter Popoff was knowing all about people in his audience.

Yet Christou must have some psychic power because he’s suddenly overtaken and brings up someone named Minnie, which is Jack’s wife’s secret nickname. Haig questions everything about his methods and at that point, Christou throws up black bile and soon dies in an ambulance, unknown to the studio audience.

Then, we finally meet Lily, who came from a cult that worshipped Abraxas, the ancient god who Epiphanius said was “the cause and first archetype” of everything. Even when not possessed, Lily is disquieting in the way that she speaks to people. Yes, she’s a teenage girl and awkward, but there is something that doesn’t add up. Her eyes are too wild.

She refers to the demon inside her as Mr. Wriggles. Jack wants to see the demon on his show, something that June doesn’t agree with. After all, Satan was big ratings in the 70s, as seen on one of the magazines shown in the film, saying that a movie of the week was entitled Hail Abraxas. Also, Dr. June’s book, Conversations with the Devil, brings to mind Michelle Remembers, another occult paperback that made the talk show circuit (you can learn all about that book in the doc Satan Wants You). The demon makes her levitate, speak in a strange voice, scars her face and everything else you expect from the decade that gave us The Exorcist (there’s even a black and white photo of Lily floating in the sky above an apartment building, just like another 1977 Satanic moment Exorcist II: The Heretic).

Carmichael claims that Jack set all of this up and to prove it, he hypnotizes Gus and the entire audience sees him pulls worms out of his body, something that doesn’t show up on video. Yet when they watch the footage of Iris, they can see the same demonic events and even Jack’s wife’s ghost on the stage — she shows up multiple times in the movie, if you look** — at which point the prophecies in the film about Gus (make your head spin means he dies with his head turned around, Regan-like, after pulling a cross and saying, “The power of Christ compels you.”) and Carmichael (“He’s all wax no wick,” as he burns from the inside out) brutally happen and even Dr. June is killed as revenge for slapping Iris when she revealed that she and Jack have been sleeping together.

Only Jack remains, now trapped within his show, finding out that he has met the demon before at the Grove and that he lost his wife for the show that made him famous. He finds Madeleine dying in the hospital and she begs him to end her pain. He takes a ritual dagger and stabs her, waking only to find that he has killed Lily. Surrounded by dead bodies, he keeps repeating the phrase that brought the audience and Gus out of a trance: “Dreamer, now awake.”

Directed and written by Colin and Cameron Cairnes, this is a movie almost made to appeal to me. I have a huge affection for the talk show celebrity of the late 1970s, as well as the occult decade that eventually fell to the Satanic Panic. And quite frankly, no matter what you think of the movie, David Dastmalchian is incredible. He got the role based on a Fangoria article about his love of regional horror hosts. That’s why there’s a line to references Berwyn, Illinois, which is a shot out to Svengoolie.

One of the major issues people had with this movie is that three of the title cards used AI. There was almost a boycott fo the film, which led to the directors and writers saying. “In conjunction with our amazing graphics and production design team, all of whom worked tirelessly to give this film the 70s aesthetic we had always imagined, we experimented with AI for three still images which we edited further and ultimately appear as very brief interstitials in the film.”

You won’t notice.

Another issue that many had was that this plays fast and loose with it being found footage with so many camera angles backstage. Forcing the film to fit the constraints that nobody has set down betrays a lack of intelligence and creativity, in my opinion. The ending also upsets some, as they see no need for it, but it makes so much sense. After all, the demon of the grove appears as an owl, which explains where Jack got the name of his show from.

This quote by the Cairnes sums up my fascination with this time: “In the ’70s and ’80s there was something slightly dangerous about late-night TV. Talk shows in particular were a window into some strange adult world. We thought combining that charged, live-to-air atmosphere with the supernatural could make for a uniquely frightening film experience.”

This film captures that feeling.

Sure, it’s a lot of the same ideas that were explored in Ghostwatch and the superior WNUF Halloween Special (and its sequel, Out There Halloween Mixtape).

But any movie that starts with a fake documentary that feels like The Killing of America and has “Forever My Queen” by Pentagram playing is going to be hard for me to hate, after all.

*During a ritual, Szandor says, “So it is done.” Those same words replace “End transmission” as the movie ends.

**According to IMDB, “At the end of the prologue explaining Jack Delroy’s backstory, she can be seen (at around 8 mins) in a TV monitor behind Jack when he is leaning on the doorstep. 2. at 19:18 When the psychic is talking to the mother and her child she appears as a ghostly image near jack after an audio glitch. 3. Early on in the film (at around 24 mins) in a mirror backstage just as the crew is about to go back on the air; and again in Carmichael’s pocket watch as it sits on a table on set. 4. She also appears (at around 1h 17 mins) on the stage in one quick shot after Jack asks the producers to step through the playback frame-by-frame, standing behind him with her hand on his shoulder and one minute later also for a quick shot just after lights turned off.”

Directed by Zelda Williams, the daughter of Robin, in her debut, Lisa Frankenstein was written by Diablo Cody, who claims that it takes place in the same universe as Jennifer’s Body, It’s set in 1989 and really feels like a movie made for those who may not have been alive at that time and want to feel a cinematic version of it rather than those who lived through it and saw films that inspired this movie, like Weird Science.

Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton, who was in Big Little Lies, Blockers and Freaky), besides being saddled with that name, has lost her mother to an axe murderer and now has a horrible stepmother Janet (Carla Gugino), who has pretty much taken her father (Joe Chrest) from her. The positive things in her life include her somewhat goofy stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano) and best friend Lori (Jenna Davis, the voice of M3GAN). And oh yes, the cemetery where she sits near an unnamed musician (Cole Sprouse, who was Cody on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody) who had fallen in love with a woman before she left him for another man and he was struck by lightning.

After a boy named Doug (Bryce Romero) tries to assault her at a party, Lisa ends up back at the grave, wishing she could be together in death with the musician. Lightning hits his grave and he comes back from the dead as a zombie who follows her. He’s missing body parts, ones that he soon gains by killing anyone who has wronged Lisa, who uses a tanning bed to fuse their parts with his body before the police start to figure out that everyone dead has a connection to Lisa.

I realize that this film may not be for me as a target audience, but I liked its look and soundtrack. Cody’s dialogue is an acquired taste, as hardly anyone speaks like that in real life, but hey, we’re watching a movie. The leads are charming and if this came out in 1989, when I was 17 and the audience for it, I probably would have loved it way more than I did in 2024 when I am 51.

Everett De Roche also wrote a ton of films that more people should see: Roadgames, Patrick, Harlequin, Link, Razorback, Fortress and more. I can say the same for this film’s director, Brian Trenchard-Smith, who said of his own work, “There is something you always get in a Trenchard-Smith movie: pace, a strong visual sense, and what the movie is actually about told to you very persuasively. Whatever I do, I’ll still be applying a sense of pace: trying to find where the joke is and trying to make the film look a lot bigger than it cost.” I’d recommend his film’s Stunt Rock, Dead-End Drive-In, Turkey Shoot, Night of the Demons 2 and even Megiddo: The Omega Code 2, which is way better than it ever should be.

This was originally to be directed by Russell Hagg, who wrote Trenchard-Smith’s BMX Bandits and was the art director of A Clockwork Orange.

Henry Thomas, Elliot of E.T., plays Cody, an American orphan living in Australia, raising by his guardian Gaza (Tony Barry). He’s a smart kid, intelligent enough to build his own railbike, and also interested in the cryptozoological legends of his adopted home. In Devil’s Knob national park, there are water monsters known as Bunyips, including one called Donkegin. There’s also another creature called the Kurdaitcha Man who is some kind of supernatural judge who comes after those who do harm to one another, murder animals without the need for food and destroy the environment.

Cody decides to explore the bottom of a pond in a diving suit of his own design. He gets stuck and everyone but his friend Wendy (Rachel Friend) thinks he is dead. What he thought was a monster is instead a steam shovel that has been stuck for years. That’s what satisfies the adults; the kids still can see the Kurdaitcha Man as he returns it to the pond.

For a kid’s movie, this is pretty terrifying. But I always think that there should be an element of the fantastic — and frightening — in these films to inspire.

The title refers to an Aboriginal myth. Alternate titles include The Go-Kids in the UK, The Quest in the U.S., The Mystery of the Dark Lake in Italy, The Boy Who Chases Ghosts in Bulgaria, The Spirit Chaser in Germany and Fighting Spirits in Finland.

You can watch this on YouTube.  You can also order it from Kino Lorber.