After the Police Academy with stunts awesomeness of the first movie, this has four new squad members join the Hong Kong Police Academy to be join the Banshee Squad led by Madam Wu (Sibelle Hu). However, many of them don’t get along with the existing team, like Susanna (Amy Yip), who is so well-endowed that she has to cut holes in the chest of her bulletproof vest. There’s also the male team, the Tiger Squad, who are led by Inspector Kan (Stanley Fung). Just like the original, Wu and Kan have a thin line between love and hate in their relationship.
That said, this time there’s competition for Madam Wu’s affection, as there’s a new antiterrorist trainer, Mr. Lu (Melvin Wong). The majority of this movie is all training until with twenty minutes left, it remembers that they need to bring the Banshee Squad and Tiger Squad back together and have all the good girls and guys stop fighting with one another.
There’s more dancing than fighting in this, more pranks and hijinks than fisticuffs. And you know, I don’t care. I love these movies, with their 80s fashion looks, lovable characters and blasts of action from producer Jackie Chan’s Jackie Chan Stunt Team. There are four of these movies and I will watch every single one of them with a huge grin.
So yeah, nothing happens, but when the first movie was such a success, they rushed this one. Just enjoy it for what it is and that we can watch movies like this in high definition now and not 20th generation VHS tapes that we bought at a convention that tape rot in months.
The 88 Films blu ray release of this movie has a 2K remaster from the original negatives and extras including a new commentary by Frank Djeng, interviews with director Wellson Chin and stuntmen Go Shut Fung and Mars, a trailer, stills gallery and a reversible cover with new artwork by Sean Longmore and the original poster art. You can get it from MVD.
April 30: Teen Movie Hell — Mike McPadden’s other book. List here.
Airing on NBC on February 10, 1985, between when Michael J. Fox was a star on Family Ties and then a huge star after Back to the Future, Poison Ivy was directed by Larry Elikann (who did eighteen ABC Afterschool Specials) and written by Bennett Tramer, who wrote Without Warning and would go on after this to create Saved By the Bell.
If you enjoyed High School U.S.A., well, this will be something else you will probably get into, as Fox and his love interest, Nancy McKeon, were in both and were also NBC stars. Fox is Dennis Baxter, the Bill Murray of this and McKeon is Rhonda Malone, who is studying to be a psychologist. There’s also a Color War — yes, this movie is Meatballs — and it has Robert Klein as the owner of the camp, Cary Guffey from Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a kid that wants to escape camp, Adam Baldwin as one of the bad guys, Joe Wright from Silver Bullet as a camper who runs scams and flams, Thomas Nowell (who was in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives) as a young writer with a crush on Rhonda and Matthew Shugailo as a chubby kid who uses humor to get through the summer’s hijinks.
Oh yeah — Fox and McKeon met on the set of High School U.S.A. and dated for three years.
Set against the backdrop of the Italian Unification in early 19th-century Italy, after the fall of Napoleon, Fulvio (Marcello Mastroianni), an aristocrat who has dedicated his life to the revolution, has become disillusioned.
You will understand why, as the movie starts with Fulvio being released from prison after authorities spread the rumor that he sold out the Master of Sublime Brothers, a secret society of revolutionaries, to be freed. His formers friends put him on trial until they find out that their missing Master committed suicide days earlier. The group disbands and Fulvio finally goes home after decades gone, just as his relatives mourn his death.
His lover Charlotte (Lea Massari) wants to go to Sicily to start another revolution but Fulvio is exhausted by it all. He decides not to tell his fellow revolutionaries that the authorities are coming and most of them die, including Charlotte, moments after they are reunited with their son Massimiliano (Ermanno Taviani). The survivors have no idea that Fulvio has turned against them and think the money his lover left will go to the struggle; he wants to take their son to America.
He manages to nearly convince one of the revolutionaries, Lionello (Claudio Cassinelli), to kill himself before their boat capsides and kills him anyway; he also seduces his lover Francesca (Mimsy Farmer) while using the money to send his son to a boarding school while making it appear as if he were robbed. It all seems to come together, except for the titular Allonsanfàn (Stanko Molnar).
Directors and writers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani were inspired by 19th-century Italian operas, as well as an ill-fated 1857 revolutionary expedition led by Carlo Pisacane. Originally, the movie ended with Fulvio choosing not to betray his companions, but the Tavianis were themselves disillusioned with Italy itself.
It also has a great team working on the soundtrack, as it was composed by Ennio Morricone and directed by Bruno Nicolai.
The Radiance Films blu ray release of this film has a new 2K restoration of the film from the original negative, presented on blu ray for the first time in the world. There’s audio commentary by critic Michael Brooke, an archival interview with the Taviani brothers by critic Gideon Bachmann, a trailer, a reversible sleeve and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Italian cinema expert Robert Lumley and a newly translated contemporary interview with the Taviani brothers. There are only 3000 copies complete with full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving the packaging free of certificates and markings. You can get it from MVD.
April 29: Regional Horror — A regional horror movie. Here’s a list if you need an idea.
Released regionally as False Face in 1977 through United International Pictures (a joint venture of Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures that distributes their films outside the United States and Canada; it started as Cinema International Corporation) and was made on a $400,000 budget in Atlanta and Covington, GA. Most of it is shot in Covington’s antebellum Turner mansion, one of the few Southern mansions spared by General William Tecumseh Sherman during the Civil War.
In 1979, it was re-released by AVCO Embassy, cut to PG and called Scalpel.
Phillip Reynolds (Robert Lansing) is both a plastic surgeon and a sociopath. He’s probably already killed his wife and when he watches his daughter Heather (Judith Chapman) make love to her boyfriend, he becomes so upset that he kills the boy and makes it all look like an accident. Heather runs away, which is inconvenient, as Phillip’s dead wife’s father gives his fortune to her instead of Phillip or Bradley (Arlen Dean Snyder), the old man’s ne’er do well son.
What does one do at this point?
Find an exotic dancer whose face has been beaten into nothingness, train her to be his daughter and collect the estate.
Everyone is convinced of the ruse except Bradley, who is killed while Jane — and Heather, who has returned — watches in horror. Of course, by this point, Phillip is dating his fake daughter, which is another level of strangeness that we expect from regional films. At this point, the women find one another and set upon making things right.
Directed and co-written (with Joseph Weintraub, who usually was an editor) by John Grissmer (who also directed Blood Rage and wrote The Bride, which is so worth watching), this is a slice of Southern Gothic by way of horror but yet made, as all regional greatness is, outside of the traditional system.
John Talbot (Barry Newman, Vanishing Point) shows up in a small Louisiana town and nearly immediately starts a fight with some cops, goes to jail and it’s soon discovered that he is wanted for killing a policeman and robbing a bank. He then escapes, abducting Sarah Ruthven (Suzy Kendall), who just so happens to be the daughter of a millionaire. But nothing in this movie is as it seems.
Directed by Michael Tuchner with stunt sequences coordinated by Carey Loftin (Bullit, The French Connection), Fear Is the Key is really about Talbot faking his way into becoming a criminal in order to find out who killed his wife and son, going the whole way to the depths of the ocean to get the answers and retribution that he craves.
It’s also Ben Kingsley’s first movie, although he would only work on the stage on on TV for a decade until he was in his next movie, Ghandi.
As exciting as the book that this was based on, written by Alistair MacLean, there’s nothing like getting a twenty-minute car chase that features Newman driving a 1972 Ford Gran Torino. Loftin was the king of scenes like this, as well as being the driver of famous car scenes in Duel and Christine. That chase happens at the beginning of the movie, which may seem like a strange way to structure a movie, but sometimes, you give it your best shot right from the starting flag.
The Arrow release of Fear Is the Key has tons of extras, including new audio commentary by filmmaker and critic Howard S. Berger, a visual essay by film critic and author Scout Tafoya, an appreciation of the movie’s composer Roy Budd by film and music historian Neil Brand, a making of, an interview with associate producer Gavrik Losey and a trailer. It’s all inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Nathanael Marsh, along with a double-sided foldout poster and a booklet with new writing by filmmaker and critic Sean Hogan.
Arthur Malcolm (Bo Brundin, who was in Meteor, The Day the Clown Cried and Raise the Titanic) can’t pay the rent — he’s a starving artist, you know? — so he tries to sneak into a woman’s bedroom and steals money off her nightstand. He thinks that she’s sleeping, she thinks he’s a rapist and this comical misunderstanding ends with her popping out his eye with a spoon and knocking him out a window.
Arthur pulls himself back up and decides that he’s going to keep being an artist but to do so, he’s going to kill people and use their eyeballs in his art.
It was produced by porn luminary Henri Pachard and distributed by J.E.R. Pictures as a double feature with The Ghastly Ones. The director and writer? Kent Bateman, who was the father of Jason and Justine, and would one day produce Teen Wolf Too.
Back to that porn connection, it has adult actors Larry Hunter (who was also in The Amazing Transplant with another actress from this movie, Mary Lamay) and Linda Southern. Another actress, Ann Wells, was also in Anything Once, Career Bed and The Detention Girls, was married to Bateman but is not the mother of his famous children.
Don’t be confused by the poster. This is not a movie about eyeballs moving on their own. No, it’s a movie about a man with an eyepatch saying “My eye!” and “I’m twisted!” while plucking other eyeballs out of their sockets. Over and over. Sometimes even in focus. Also: set to music stole from the Cecil Leuter and Georges Teperino albums TV Music 101 and TV Music 102.
This is the kind of movie that as soon as it starts, you’re either going to love or despise it.
Prince Mccoy (director, writer and star Michael Worth) has lost out on all the dreams he once had as he grew up in the small town of Apple Seed. His childhood bank foreclosed on everything his father owned, which he blames for his father’s death. And now, he has no home, no girlfriend and no hope. So he decides to drive across the country in his 1967 Mustang — which is all he owns — and make that bank pay for what they’ve done.
He picks up an old man named Carl Robbins (Rance Howard), a strange senior who has a bucket list on a napkin and a mission to lead Prince on a journey that will change both their lives, meeting a variety of people, like the love that Prince let get away, as they also confront the errors they’ve made in their own lives.
That’s because just like Prince wants to, Carl also robbed a bank. And despite his advanced age, he’s facing a prison sentence that will last for the rest of his life. Is Carl’s past going to be Prince’s future? And what happens when they make it to Apple Seed?
This is the last film that Rance Howard was in, released two years after his death. It also has a role for his son Clint.
There’s also an appearance by Robby Benson that echoes the movie Ode to Billie Joe, based on the song of the same name.
Worth told Diversions LA, “I did a film with Rance in Flagstaff, Arizona and I knew I had to do a film for him. It was just one of those things I wanted to get made. We completed the project just before Rance passed away.”
As I get older, I’ve been thinking of the journey of my life. This movie made me reflect on things and wonder when I will go from Prince to Carl in my experience.
This VCI Entertainment and MVD release has extras like an audio commentary by director and star Michael Worth, an alternate longer cut, a making-of, a short about the movie’s premiere, deleted and extended scenes, and a Rance Howard memorial video.
Julia Sweeney created the character Pat O’Neill Riley for Saturday Night Live but it wasn’t intended to be a mystery as to the character’s gender. Sweeney said, “I’d been an accountant for like five years, and there was one person I worked with in particular who had a lot of mannerisms like Pat. This person sort of drooled and had the kind of body language of Pat. I started trying to do him. I was testing it out on my friends and they were just like, “Yeah, it’s good, but it doesn’t seem like a guy that much.” Like I couldn’t quite pull off being in drag convincingly enough. So then I thought, maybe that’s the joke. I’ll just have one joke in here about how we don’t know if that’s a man or a woman just to sort of cover up for my lack of ability to really play a guy convincingly.”
First appearing on December 1, 1990 and showing up in twelve other episodes, Pat is of another era, a time when non-binary and transgender people were seen mostly as someone to joke about. Let’s be honest, they still are and even worse today. But for a time, Pat was the first character of its type.
Sweeney said about this film — yes, everyone from SNL was getting a movie at this stage — “I wrote It’s Pat with Jim Emerson and Steve Hibbert. We had a great time writing and a lot of fun making the film. The movie didn’t do well at the box office, not by a long shot. In fact, It’s Pat became a popular example of a film so despised that it got a zero percent Rotten Tomatoes rating! I guess in that way, it’s sort of a badge of honor. But I can’t help it, I love this film. It has so many people in it who I love, and loved. Many are dead: Charlie Rocket, who played Kyle, and Julie Hayden who played his wife (who died of cancer a couple of years after the film premiered,) my dad who played the priest who married us, and my brother Mike who had one line at the wedding shower of Pat and Chris. And there are so many good friends in the film too: Kathy Griffin and Dave Foley and Kathy Najimy and Tim Stack and Tim Meadows. And the band Ween! We had so much fun together.”
Yes. Ween is in this. It still makes me laugh that they show up.
Pat (Sweeney) and Chris (Dave Foley, who continually has played women in nearly every show that he’s been part of) have met, found out that they both like to eat and become engaged. Yet Pat can’t get her life together, she has a neighbor (Charles Rocket) obsessed with her and an appearance on America’s Creepiest People turns her into a celebrity, which causes the couple to break off their engagement. The entire free world then becomes obsessed by whether or not Pat is a man or a woman while Pat tries to get Chris back.
Sweeney didn’t want to make the film. She said, “I resisted it completely. I just didn’t know how we could make it last for two hours. But 20th Century Fox was really keen; our producer was really keen. So we thought, OK, we’ll write the script. And after three months, we fell madly in love with the script. Unfortunately, Fox did not.”
This was made by Touchstone Pictures instead of that studio.
It also has an uncredited writer.
Quentin Tarantino.
Playboy: You were hired to do a rewrite of It’s Pat. As one now familar with the perspiring androgyne from Saturday Night Live, is Pat a he or a she?
Tarantino: The androgyny aspect is only a part of Pat’s appeal. What I love about the character is that Pat is so fucking obnoxious. To tell the truth, I don’t know what Pat is. But I know what I want Pat to be: I want Pat to be a girl. There was only one sketch that Julia Sweeney, the actress who plays Pat did on Saturday Night Live that gave a clue to what Pat is. It was the sketch that Pat did with Harvey Keitel. They’re stranded on a deserted island and they have sex — and Harvey still doesn’t know what Pat is. And the thing is, they kissed in it. At one point they were thinking of taking the kiss out of the sketch. But Harvey, being Harvey, demanded they keep it in, that there’d be no integrity without the kiss. So that was the first time we’d seen Pat in an intimate situation — a smooch. There is a certain way that you hold your head, the way you come in for a kiss. And sitting there, watching it, I thought that Pat didn’t kiss like a guy. Pat kissed like a girl.
Sweeney was so upset after this that she never wanted to play the Pat character again. However, she had previously agreed for Pat to be honored as mayor for the day”in West Hollywood on Halloween. She would play Pat one last time on October 31, 1994, but claims that it was “halfhearted and pathetic.”
April 26: Heavy Metal Movies: Pick a movie from Mike McPadden’s great book. RIP. List here.
Also known as The Rejuvenator, this forgotten film was inspired by The Wasp Woman. It was directed and co-written by Brian Thomas Jones, along with Simon Nuchtern (who directed the new sequences for Snuff as well as Savage Dawnand Silent Madness). Steven Mackler, who produced this film, had met Jones after he was impressed with the director’s short movie Overexposed. Mackler had a deal with Sony Video Software to make three movies and sent him the script for a movie called Skin, which was writtem by Nuchtern.
In an interview with Matty Budrewicz, Jones said, “I read the script and, when I finished, I said to myself “I can’t direct this script, but I know how to make this movie. It’s Bride of Frankenstein meets Sunset Boulevard! I pitched the concept to Mackler and he let me rewrite it.”
As for his changes, he stated, I’ve never really been a true fan of blood, guts and gore so when I was writing I tried to weave in all these themes of vanity, addiction, obsession and greed. I really wanted to make it my own movie—something really heartfelt and dramatic.”
Ruth Warren (Jessica Dublin, who was in Trinity Is Still My Name; So Sweet, So Dead; Fragment of Fear; Sex of the Witch; Death Steps In the Dark and much later Troma’s War) is a rich actress who has aged out of leading roles. Dr. Gregory Ashton (John MacKay) has been working for her in an attempt to make her young again. He’s running out of time, as she’s grown frustrated by a lack of results.
His new formula needs testing but she takes it, amazed at the results and becomes a younger woman by the name of Elizabeth Warren (Vivian Lanko). What she didn’t know before she took the formula is that it was based on parts of human brains and she must constantly be given those pieces of mind, so to speak, or she will transform into a monster that is chronically hungry for brains, more brains.
It’s never been released on DVD or blu ray, which is shocking when you think that it’s exactly the kind of movie that Vinegar Syndrome puts out. It’s not just a cheap direct to video film, though. It is filled with heart and characters that you start to care about along with sequences filled with goopy FX that stand up to anything else from the late 80s.
Plus, it has an appearance by the Poison Dollys, an all-female heavy metal band from Long Island. Members Gina Stile, Gail Kenny, Mef Manning and Roulette started as a cover band but added originals as time went on and worked with Kip Winger. One of their songs, “Love Is for Suckers” was recorded by Twisted Sister.
Gina Stile left Poison Dollys to form Envt with her sister Rhonni and was in Vixen from 1997 to 2001. She also played in Ban Animals, a Heart tribute band along with Marco Mendoza, Yngwie Malmsteen drummer John Macaluso and Great White bassist Teddy Cook.
How did I never see Rejuvenatrix until now?
Jones looks back on this movie with some sadness: “I’ve always been quite disappointed it never got the exposure or recognition I feel it deserved, even though it has developed its fans from those lucky enough to have seen it. The reviews and the fact it did OK on video… I probably should let it go but I’ll always hold a grudge for that SVS guy who didn’t understand the genre or its fandom and realize the potential of what he had.”
You can ready Matty’s interview at his amazing site, The Schlock Pit.
April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre in Vandergrift, PA on April 26 and 27, 2024. Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $15 per person. You can buy tickets at the show but get there early and learn more here.
One could be cynical and point to 1981’s Galaxy of Terror as a blatant cash grab, an Alien clone that pushes itself into squeamish territory that its inspiration only hinted at. You could see it as a disgusting piece of exploitation movie making, filled with faded stars. Or you could just realize that life can be a mysterious, amazing, wonderfully rewarding experience and that a movie can start off ripping something off and become its own gloriously weird and magical thing. Obviously, I’m in the latter camp. And if you aren’t, jump off this ride to Morganthus right now, bub!
Written and directed by Bruce D. Clark and produced by Roger Corman for around $700,000, this is no big budget affair. But it’s a film that uses footage from previous Corman efforts, notably Battle Beyond the Stars, to great effect. And it’s also a proving ground for the talent that would lead the science fiction genre throughout the following decade. James Cameron is the art director, providing some intriguing sets and interesting gore replete with maggots. And of all people, the late and oh so lamented Bill Paxton served as the set decorator, previous to his career as an actor.
Galaxy begins by showing the last survivor of a downed ship being tracked down and killed as he tried to run away with what looks to be a car muffler. We learn that this is all part of a game played between Mitri and the Planet Master, who keeps his identity hidden. They speak of plans being set into motion and sending another ship, The Quest, to its doom.
The ship’s crew is led by Captain Trantor (Grace Zabriskie, Sarah Palmer of Twin Peaks, as well as The Grudge and Child’s Play 2), who has survived an epic disaster which has rendered her unstable and quite possibly a danger to her entire crew. This point is hammered home as the moment the ship is close to Morganthus, it crash lands on the planet’s surface.
Also on board are:
Alluma (Erin Moran of TV’s Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi), a psychic sensitive.
Team leader Baelon (Zalman King, who would go behind the camera to steam up the scream with his Red Shoe Diaries series, as well as production (and at times, direction) duties on films such as Two Moon Junction, Wild Orchid and 9 ½ Weeks), who is a complete dick to one and all.
Quuhod, a mute crewmember and master of the throwing crystal (Sid Haig, who may be my real father. Honestly, if you’re on this site and have no idea who Sid Haig is, life has led you down a dark, dismal path. I’d suggest you stop reading now and go watch Spider Baby or House of 1000 Corpses or Coffy or The Big Bird Cage and so on and so on).
Cabren, the film’s hero, who seems to be the coolest head (and best mustachioed) on the ship (Edward Albert, son of Green Acres star Eddie Albert).
Dameia (Taaffe O’Connell, New Year’s Evil), the technical officer.
Commander Ilvar (Bernard Behrens, The Changeling), the overall team leader.
Ranger, a crew member (Robert Englund, again, if you need a lesson on the importance of this fine actor, your priorities need some serious evaluation).
One by one, the team faces their own fears as they explore the planet. Those fears include all manner of gory, horrific deaths. To satisfy the demands of the film’s backers, one of those horrific moments includes a sex scene with the buxom O’Connell, but the results are probably not what any of those backers ever dreamed they wanted. Her fear of sexuality and fantasy of submitting to something more powerful than herself leads to a gigantic maggot having a prolonged, fully nude sex scene complete with simulated intercourse, as she gets covered in slime and enjoys an orgasm so great that it kills her. Seriously — this is either the scene where you wonder aloud about Galaxy of Terror’s sheer lunacy or walk out of the room in disgust. There is no middle ground.
Finally, it’s revealed that this is all a cosmic child’s game and the Master must be replaced by one of the crew. I’ll leave it up to you to watch this film and enjoy the ending for yourself.
It’s worth noting: As Alien gave way to Aliens, an alum of this film, Cameron, would be at the helm. However, there would be no giant maggots or Sid Haig dancing around in a jumpsuit. If you ask me, we’re all the worse for that.
Also known as Planet of Terrors and Mind Warp: An Infinity of Terror, Galaxy demands to be viewed. Be warned – this is exploitation filmmaking at its most exploitative. It’s a scuzzy, scummy film and may not be for all tastes.
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