EDITOR’S NOTE: Barbarian Queen was on USA Up All Night on February 1 and 2, September 27 and December 28, 1991; April 27, 1992; August 20, 1993; March 5 and October 8, 1994.

After co-starring in the first Deathstalker film, Lana Clarkson would return to star in this Roger Corman-produced schlockfest. Sadly, despite comedic turns in films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High (she’s Vincent Schiavelli’s wife in a quick scene) and Amazon Women on the Moon, as well as other action films like Vice Girls. Her career stalled by the early 2000’s. Sure, she did comic conventions and sold autographed memorabilia on her web site, but she was subsidizing her nascent stand-up career — her dream was to be a comedic actress — with a part-time job at the West Hollywood House of Blues.

A month later, she followed famous music producer and noted lunatic Phil Spector back to his mansion and “kissed his gun” in his words. A major trial ended with 19 years of jail time for the creator of the Wall of Sound. But let’s not dwell on the sadness of Clarkson’s end. Let’s celebrate her starring role in a movie that somehow is at once a feminist adventure epic and a misogynistic wallow in the muck.

A peaceful barbarian village — is there any other kind — is all in a tizzy about the wedding of Queen Amethea (Clarkson) to Prince Argan (Frank Zagarino, Tan Zan: The Ultimate Mission). But look out! Lord Aarkur and his men attack, taking Argan and Taramis (Dawn Dunlap, Forbidden World) captive.

You may be thinking — oh cool, this movie is woke and the man is the captive in peril, not the woman, who is the hero — but this is a Roger Corman sword and sorcery movie. So even through Amethea, Estrild (Katt Shea, who went on to direct Stripped to Kill, Poison Ivy and The Rage: Carrie 2) and Tiniara are going to fight and kill lots of evil creatures and baddies, they’re also going to get naked, tortured and me too’d for pretty much the entire film.

I was going to write, “I don’t know the audience for a movie that wants to see barbarian women get raped,” but I totally know the audience.

Let’s try and get past it. Actually, you can’t get past it. But maybe you can get revenge.

By the end of the movie, Estrild is a harem girl, Tiniara has been killed, Taramis becomes Arrakur’s concubine and our main heroine, Amethea, has been tortured repeatedly but comes out on top, tossing the interrogator into a pit of acid after using “her feminine strength to squeeze his manhood painfully” as per Wikipedia. Yes, this is a woman where a woman literally kills with her vagina.

So there’s that, I guess.

Amethea, Argan and the rebels join with a bunch of gladiators in the attack to fight Arrakur’s army. Man, that’s a lot of alliteration. Anyways, our hero fights the big bad and is disarmed and nearly killed before Taramis stabs him in the back and kills him. So even in her moment of triumph, a Corman film reveals that women need treachery to win, not outright skill.

The first film from Corman’s Concorde company, Barbarian Queen was directed by Héctor Olivera as part of a nine-picture deal. Corman wanted low-budget sword-and-sorcery films. Olivera wanted to create more personal film projects. This union led to this film, as well as Cocaine Wars, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom, Two to Tango and Play Murder for Me.  I think Corman’s vision won out, sadly.

There’s an in-name-only sequel and Clarkson played a character called Amethea in Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II who has nothing to do with this character. There was also a third film planned.

In later years, Corman has claimed that this movie inspired Xena: Warrior Princess. I must have missed all those episodes where Xena was tied up for most of the story and repeatedly diddled. Seriously, Corman’s movies are more and more troublesome the further we get away from them. I’m all for sleaze and shock, but not when they’re presented to me as empowerment.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Loch Ness Horror was on USA Up All Night on January 19, 1990.

You can get this sticker from Exploitation-Vocation on Tee Public.

Shot in Lake Tahoe, California which is supposed to be Scotland and featuring the Nessie puppet that would return to the screen to play Jack the Ripper in the “Bullshit or Not?” section of Amazon Women on the Moon, this Larry Buchanan movie is, well, complete junk and I say that in the best of ways.

The Loch Ness Monster is wilding out on swimmers while waiting for her egg to hatch, all while a World War II German bomber lies beneath the freshwater loch and Scottish scientist George Sanderson (Sandy Kenyon) and American sonic expert Spencer Dean (Larry’s son Barry) hunt it down. Also: Jack Stuart (Doc Livingston), the person to first take a photo of the monster and he’s not George Spicer, who did that in our reality, has a daughter named Kathleen (Miki McKenzie) who Spencer falls in love with. And yes, Professor Pratt (Stuart Lancaster) and his team are looking for the German bomber, finds the egg and every one of Pratt’s crew gets eaten by the monster. Pratt won’t give the egg back and soon kidnaps Kathleen.

Every time the monster shows up it’s awe-inspiring just how bad it looks, which makes me love this movie even more. I can’t believe how cheap this movie is, that the creature bites necks and that it’s set in the 40s and yet no pains were taken to make it look that way. Well done all around.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Black Roses was on USA Up All Night on February 17 and September 11, 1990 and May 18, 1991.

Growing up, two things both saved and damned me: heavy metal and horror movies. They go together like guitar and bass, guns and roses, beer and weed, leather and denim. Off the top of my head, I can name plenty of bands for whom horror movies are a central element: Electric Wizard, Hooded Menace, The Misfits, Acid Witch, Mortician, Uncle Acid . . . seriously, I could name bands all day long.

But what movies meet the metal grade? Which ones would you be able to put on the back of your battle vest? Also — a tip of the horns to Mike “McBeardo” McPadden’s evil and doom filled tome, Heavy Metal Movies.

You probably remember Black Roses more for its garish VHS case than the actual movie. A 3D standout on rental shelves everywhere, it’s a favorite of many 80s horror fans. Believe it or not, I’d never seen the movie until this year. I was inspired by Acid Witch covering the song “Soldiers of the Night” on their Midnight Movies EP and had to look up the film that goes with it.

The small town of Mill Basin is about to become the first place where the band Black Roses will ever play a show. Up until now, they’ve only been a studio band. And parents are concerned because these guys have taken over the hearts and souls of the town’s kids. But do you blame the kids? Mill Basin reminds me of where I grew up — there’s nothing to do but fuck and do recreational drugs. And if you have bad self-esteem issues, you’re gonna just stay in your room reading comic books, playing guitar, drawing pictures of Leatherface and staring at your Traci Lords poster while listening to Among the Living on repeat. Oh wait — I was wallowing in the past.

There’s one teacher who cares — Matthew Moorhouse, who several of the students believe is having an affair with goody two shoes Julie. He’s stuck in a loveless relationship with an ice queen named Priscilla (Carla Ferrigno, yep, Lou’s wife). And the parents remain up in arms about Black Roses until the mayor calms them, reminding them that their parents hated rock and roll, too. The parents decide to be open-minded and go see the concert, which is the lightest, softest hair ballad cheese that you can ever imagine . . . until they leave and the real Black Roses starts playing and zombifying the crowd.

The kids come back at their parents with knives, just like Charley claimed they would, like a patricide by stereo (Vincent Pastore of The Sopranos), a mother killed by a car, another kid shooting his dad in the face and one watching while her best friend humps her father to death (one of these deaths is not like the other). Even virginal Julie goes astray, killing her lecherous stepfather and Moorhouse’s ex-girlfriend before transforming into a creature that I can only describe as a snaggletoothed fetal pig that makes cat noises.

This leads him to the band’s final concert, where lead singer Damian doffs his hair and shows off his demon dome. Moorhouse responds by setting the demon on fire, killing it. Wait a second — a demon that can be killed by fire? That just seems like poor planning.

So often, if you meet me in person, I get evangelical about movies, selling everyone on how amazing they are. I realize I often make bad movies sound way better than they really are. And when people are not ready for the onslaught of offal that I so often enjoy, they wonder, “Is Sam insane?”

Yes, I am. And if I were to be sitting next to you in person, I’d tell you that this movie is awesome because the lead singer turns crowd members into skeletons and purple zombies. That little dinosaur people that sound like kittens come out of speakers to kill fat dads. That my real dad, Carmine Appice, is in this movie, because his band King Kobra did most of the Black Roses music and that his name in this movie is Vinny Apache, which is the best name maybe ever, except for Sheriff Gene Freak. That Julie Adams from The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Dennis Hopper’s insane The Last Movie is in it.

But then you’d watch it and be like, why should I be cheering for the obvious pedophile teacher with a sweater who is trying to set all the kids on fire with gasoline? Why are the creature effects so fucking weirdly bad? Is the film on the side of the parents or the kids? Why is the biggest band in the world playing such a small town shithole? How did they survive to play Madison Square Garden two weeks later and everyone is like, “Oh well” like it means nothing to them?

I should really start sharing disclaimers when I get all excited about movies. But yeah. Purple zombies. Dinosaur cats. Plenty of nudity. Metal lifers playing ridiculous songs (Carmine Appice was also in the solo bands of Ozzy Osbourne, Paul Stanley, Ted Nugent and Rod Stewart, which has to help you in a trivia contest someday). And you know, kids rising up to kill their parents. You can forgive a bad movie for a lot when it has all of these elements.

You can watch it over at the Internet Archive for free.

Director Philip Barantini is known for the British TV show Boiling Point. Here, he’s made one of the best Tubi originals I’ve seen, a tense thriller that feels like it could be happening right now.

Harri (Chaneil Kular) leaves London to dog-sit the family dog Flynn when his parents go on vacation. He doesn’t pay attention to much — he’s an animator so he devotes his mind to one thing at a time — and is shocked when a friend calls to tell him he nearly missed a bombed on the tube. When a camera image of the suspect who set the bomb goes viral, even Harri’s girlfriend jokes that it looks like him. Even worse, an old school friend posts a message that she feels proves that Harri is the terrorist.

This is how easily this happens. Harri isn’t a foreigner. He’s lived in London his whole life. He just looks different.

And it gets worse.

Harry is a British citizen of South Asian descent, but he’s brown. To anyone watching him — even neighbors of his parents who have known him his whole life — he’s the other, an enemy, someone to fear. The tension builds as every message Harri reads paints him as a criminal. Even calls to the police and visits to a kindly old lady next door become nightmarish mirror sides of real life. Then the vigilantes come for him and invade his parent’s home.

Writers Barnaby Boulton and James Cummings have crafted a fable of how far paranoia and the bubble of doing your own research and “I’m just saying, but…” can go when pointed at a target. Kular is really great in this, an everyman faced with a night of terror that not every man would have to live through.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare was on USA Up All Night on December 29, 1990; August 23, 1991; March 14, May 29 and September 4, 1992 and June 18 and October 15, 1993.

I’m 2:25 into this movie and I’m already screaming at the TV in glee. A farmhouse, somewhere that feels like Canada, with a mother — who has hair that feels like the 80s — is making eggs and calling everyone to eat. Then, a scream, to which her husband replies with all the intensity of someone answering a telemarketer. He opens the stove to a skull-faced demon and screams as his son watches.

Cue the credits — it’s time for Rock ‘n Roll Nightmare! This film stars Jon Mikl Thor, who Wikipedia tells us is “the first Canadian to win both the Mr. Canada and Mr. USA titles. During his bodybuilding career, he has achieved over 40 titles around the world. As a musician, he is the frontman for the heavy metal band Thor, billing himself as “The Legendary Rock Warrior.” Thor used to appear in the back pages of 80s metal mags like Hit Parader and Circus, but no one I knew had ever heard any of his albums (here’s the video for 1977’s “Keep the Dogs Away“). You may know him from this insane clip of him dancing and singing that the Found Footage Festival has uncovered:

Getting back to the movie, the credits sequence ranks among the longest and worst shot credits I’ve ever seen in my entire life. It’s even worse than the credits in fellow Canadians Bob and Doug McKenzie’s Mutants of 2051 A.D. It’s shot after shot of pre-Go Pro footage of a camera racing along a dark house, as if we are to find some terror in the accouterments and candles and bric a brac.

What follows next can only be described as fetishistic shots of a white custom van — complete with DUCKER license plate — as it grooves and grinds and rocks its way down the highways and byways of Canada, complete with the ever beefy Thor at the wheel. I’m writing this at 5 AM and my reality is always a bit skewed, but these shots go through more than one song, which is like a wrestling match lasting three commercial breaks. It just isn’t done. If the director’s intent was to show us how remote the farmhouse they’re traveling to is, he succeeded with three and a half minutes of watching a white van slowly drive. I’m shocked we didn’t get a slow-motion scene of turn signals going on and off or break lights slowly being depressed. These are the moments in genre films where you wonder: am I watching an auteur or a complete hack…and do I even know the difference any longer?

Just when you think that this will be an entire film of all establishing shots, the band emerges from the van to learn that they’ll be staying at this farmhouse for 5 weeks of recording. It has gas. It has electric. It doesn’t have a phone or TV…but it does have a 24 track recording studio! The band has grown soft in the city and needs Toronto to make it happen — no hot tubs or Dynasty! After a “comedic” sequence about what bands have been to the farmhouse, I have been led to wonder if this is what life is always like in Canada. Keep in mind — my brief time in the Great White North has not debased me of my belief that everything and everyone is from SCTV and Kids in the Hall.

You know how in most films, they’ll do a brief cut to something ominous to change the tone? This film has these cuts lasting two to three minutes — dark skies, Omen-like choirs, more dark skies and wind. These scenes stretch off into eternity.

Rod, Max, Stig and Thor — and their respective lady friends — have a meal with awkward toasts as we get to know all about them. But now, it’s time for them to tune their weapons and play us a song. Also — their manager has cooked from them and is wearing a paper burger hat (he also had on a sweet Archies leather jacket earlier, so for some reason he’s the 1950s element of the band).

Instead of the band playing, as would normally follow such a setup, we’re presented with the manager and girls doing a synchronized dishwashing scene. Thor emerges outside to tell them they’re almost ready. For some reason, he’s changed into his stage clothes, exposing his pecs in a costume that can only be compared to the High Energy garb of Canuck superstar Owen Hart.

If you loved the long musical sequences in, oh, let’s say Son of Dracula, you’re in for a treat here. “We Live to Rock” is played in its entirety while band groupies get angry, a band wife sews and a weird flesh/sockpuppet pukes in a cup of coffee. A broken drumstick later and manager Phil has to go to the basement to get more. Phil is like if Harry Anderson wore pork pie hats and did competitive improv. Lynn, Stig’s groupie, meets him and comes on to him.

Lynn takes her top off in the most awkward, unsexy manner that I’ve ever seen in a film. Seriously, she gets he outfit stuck and it takes a really long time for her to get it off. One wonders if perhaps a second take would have improved this scene. The chemistry between her and Phil can only be described as impalpable. She takes a huge bite out of his shoulder and Phil’s gone. So’s the van. It looks like Triton is totally trapped in Toronto!

The band retires to their bedrooms. Thor’s girl can’t get him to stop reading lyrics. The keyboard player comes to talk to the guitarist. but he passes out on her. The married couple is making out. And Stig rawdogs Lynn, yelling “As usual, the best!” before going to “drain the dragon, baby! Yeah! I’ll be back!” He then goes to the bathroom where he speaks in a combination of Arnold and Australian, making me yearn for his death. I’m rewarded as a blood puking zombie gives him a clawhold, which possesses him and makes him a better lover. Zombie Stig goes back and the noises of their lovemaking wake up the whole house.

Just then, groupies arrive to the strains of a ripoff of the theme to Phantasm. They’re let into the farmhouse by Phil, who we all thought was dead. He tells them that the band is tired from all the cocaine, but it’s 2 AM and they’ll be down in twenty minutes, so it’s time for them to “whip out those breasts, girls.” He yells at them that they need to cut the cocaine, scream in the crowd and keep the clothes looking good — there are positions to fill! They run off into the b roll night as we slowly — ever so slowly — pan to Phil’s zombified hand. To quote Jack Chick, “HAW! HAW! HAW!”

The married couple is washing dishes, but they’re quickly taken by a zombie. I was thinking, would this director be so bold and/or stupid to have the zombie’s hand come back in frame to shut off a boom box? I was rewarded with a hearty fuck yes, he would.

The first 44 minutes of this movie feel like 44 weeks. Would another music video performance help speed things up? Of course not. Allow me to share the lyrics for the song “Energy” with you:

I live by one simple rule I don’t let nothing get by I sometimes act like a fool But that has kept me alive

I set my goals and I pace myself I land out of all of my needs And when I’m ready to just give You give something I need

YOU GIVE ME ENERGY THAT’S WHAT YOU DO YOU GIVE ME ENERGY YOU GET ME STARTED EVERYDAY

Have you ever seen a couple and thought, “I hope that I never have to watch these people have sex?” Prepare to say that again, times three, as the various couples break off as yet another Thor tune blares onto the soundtrack. Seriously, for those of you who love Thor — I know that at least one of you found the hidden SEO/SEM codes I wrote in here — this is your boner fuel of a movie.

Stig and Lynn go to a very private part of the lake, where a demon claw emerges from his stomach, just as she quickly gets naked and instantly covers up. Too late — that claw grabs a knocker and she’s a goner. Then, the keyboardist and guitar player have a romp that’s about as sexy as eating a Pop Tart. Seriously, this makes the Showgirls hot tub scene look like Last Tango in Paris by comparison. Thor’s woman also gets him to take a shower with her to the strains of Thor’s “Somewhere Rises the Moon.” Thor makes love like some kind of lizard man — he kisses with the tip of his tongue, not his lips. He also moves like some kind of robot. And not the sexy fembot kind of robot. No, like a 1950s Robot Monster kind of robot. Meanwhile — in the midst of the sex scene — the camera moves to give us a clear three second shot of the shower head. No sex — just a showerhead doing its job. I have no idea what the fuck kind of directorial choice that was, to be honest.

Hey! Remember that little kid from the beginning? Me either. He’s back, though and breaks up a romantic moment between the guitar and keyboard couple. For some reason, pan flutes start playing louder than the dialogue at this point. Oh man — just what this movie needs. A precocious child. Actually, he’s another demon, which the couple finds out after giving chase. Man. Thor’s gonna need a new band at this rate. Only he and his girl are left, as nobody else shows up for dinner.

Just because the script says that Thor is going to do the dishes does not mean we need to see him do the dishes. But that said — the next scene is Thor doing the dishes for nearly a minute. Narrative flow doesn’t mean shit in the world of Rock ‘n Roll Nightmare.  Thor also acts like someone who constantly reminds you they are acting. When he needs a Coke in a scene, he says, out loud, “I need a Coke. Gotta get a Coke. Yeah. A Coke.” Meanwhile, a piece of chicken comes to life and tries to bite his hand. Luckily, he’s so focused on that Coke!

He sits down to write lyrics while his girl is attacked upstairs, but he’s got his own problems. A penis-like monster with an eyeball where the peehole should be is stalking him (look — I can write mellifluous prose and use my vocabulary and come off as well educated at times, but when a penis demon looks like a penis demon and when it has an eyeball in its peehole, you have to call a penis demon a penis demon). Another demon, this one looking like a plucked bird, attacks just in time for Thor to drop his pen. Somehow, this movie has gone from horror to slapstick. Finally, his girl comes back to tell them that everyone is dead in a demon voice. HOLY SHIT! Now she’s a demon! And she commands an army of penis demons!

Here’s where this movie decides to blow my mind. Thor keeps ignoring the demon, calling him bub, then starts telling him all of his real names. Turns out that no one else in this movie was real, that his entire band and the girls were all shadows that Thor created, based on horror movies, to draw out Beelzebub. “I AM THE INTERCESSOR!” yells Thor, revealing his full stage majesty, all chain, a cape and bare chest and wind machine aided hair. He then makes the same faces I do when I’ve eaten a lot of cheese and can’t properly go number two. “I AM TRITON THE ARCHANGEL!”

Have you ever wanted to see a claymation demon battle a jacked up dude in a metal bikini? Then have I got the movie for you!

Thor defeats the demon, who leaves when a roman candle goes off in front of him. He then goes to a graveyard, where he says, “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. If you’ve died in vain — I, His messenger — have avenged your deaths.” We then cut to a totally different house as weird music plays. Roll the credits.

Wow.

I was wondering, what kind of maniac makes this movie? John Fasano, that’s who. He also made Black Roses, along with writing things as diverse as one of Tom Selleck’s Jesse Stone movies and Another 48 Hours. Well, this is a veritable masterpiece. I daresay you’ve never seen a film quite like this. Watch it and be forever changed.

PS – There’s a sequel called Intercessor: Another Rock ‘N’ Roll Nightmare. I’m not sure that I’m ready to watch it yet, but I will.

PSS – You should just watch the end of the movie for yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPbzOKF55xE  

William Girder died in a helicopter crash while scouting locations in 1978. If that hadn’t ended his life, who knows the heights of lunacy he would have achieved?

In just six years, he directed nine feature films — Asylum of Satan, The Get Man, Three on a Meathook, The Manitou, Sheba Baby, Project: Kill, the astonishing Abby, Grizzly and this movie.

This had to have been the first movie about the loss of Earth’s ozone layer. Who knew that it would drive everyone nuts, including animals? Certainly not the hikers in this tale who turn against one another and try to survive all of the animal assaults.

Steve Buckner (Christopher George, who is fighting with Michael Pataki and George Eastman for most appearances on this site) has a dozen or so hikers who are about to go to Sugar Meadow for a nature hike, even though Ranger Chico Tucker (former NFL player Walt Barnes) tells him that the animals have been acting strangely.

Along for this nature trail to hell are anthropologist Professor MacGregor (Richard Jaeckel, Grizzly), a married couple named Frank and Mandy Young (Jon Cedar, who in addition to being a recurring Nazi on Hogan’s Heroes was also the co-star, co-screenwriter and associate producer of The Manitou and Susan Backlinie, the first victim in Jaws), rich Shirley Goodwyn (Ruth Roman from The Baby!), her son Johnny, teenage lovers Bob Dennins (Andrew Stevens, who was in the Night Eyes films) and Beth Hughes, a former pro football player dealing with cancer named Roy Moore, a magical Native American guide named Daniel Santee (Michael Ansara, Killer Kane from the 1980’s Buck Rodgers series as well as the voice of Mr. Freeze), a television reporter named Terry Marsh (Lynda Day George, always ready to scream “BASTARDS!”) and finally, a frenzied Leslie Neilsen in the role of his career as Paul Jenson, an ad executive who acts like every account guy I’ve ever had to deal with in my 24-year-long ad career.

Before you know it, wolves are attacking people in sleeping bags, vultures circle overhead, hawks knock women off cliffs, Leslie Nielsen goes beyond bonkers and kills a dude with a walking stick and threatens to assault women before wrestling a bear and getting his neck torn out, rats attack the sheriff who decides to eat before trying to figure out how to deal with this emergency, dogs turn on the people they loved, rattlesnakes bite people and the military dons hazmats suits to deal with all of it.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, this movie is stupid. And awesome. It’s stupid awesome. And if you only know Nielsen from his later comedic roles, take a look at him in this movie. I love this movie. I don’t care what you think of me.

Here’s the drink I’ll be bringing to the drive-in.

Tentacle Painkiller

• 2 oz. Kraken spiced rum
• 4 oz. pineapple juice
• 1 oz. orange juice
• 1 oz. cream of coconut
• Dash of nutmeg
• Pinch of salt

1. Pour rum, pineapple juice, orange juice and cream of coconut into a cocktail shaker with ice. Mix it up.
2. Pour into a glass filled with ice. Drop in salt to give it the taste of the ocean and then top with nutmeg.

Can’t make it to the drive-in? You can watch this on Tubi or get the blu ray from Severin.

If there’s one thing that’s been sure this year, it’s that every few weeks I get to watch a new Chris Stokes movie. The director, working again on the script with Marques Houston, is set to deliver another thriller that plays on one of the biggest fears of married women: a husband who has an affair.

Kenneth (Robert Ri’chard) and Skyler (Annie Ilonzeh) have the dream marriage. However, her best friend Camilla (La’Myia Good) has lost the love of her life, Lance, who has started sleeping with his much older boss. Of course she can live with the couple until she gets on her feet, right?

Can you see where this is already going wrong?

There’s also a friend named Kim played by exotic dancer, socialite and social media personality Blac Chyna, who I only knew from Kardashian gossip. My hatred for that show knows no bounds and somehow, my wife has convinced me to watch so many seasons of it that I can discuss the storylines with some level of intelligence. I mean, as much intelligence as that entails.

Seeing how Kenneth treats Skyler, Camilla starts thinking that maybe she could get some of that. When her best friend is felled by kidney stones, she gets in the marriage bed and makes it happen. But this film at least pushes things where Kenneth wants nothing to do with her and honestly feels contrite, but she forces him again and again to make love to her, using the power that she has to destroy him and his marriage.

The character of the woman who goes mental once she makes love to you seemingly will never go away and this is just one more example of a Fatal Attraction movie, albeit one with a smaller budget. That said, it’s entertaining, as all of Chris Stokes’ films are.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This weekend is the Drive-In Super Monster-Rama! Get more info at the official Drive-In Super Monster-Rama Facebook page and get your tickets at the Riverside Drive-In’s webpage.

Piranha almost never made it to the theater. Universal Studios had considered obtaining an injunction to prevent it from being released, particularly as they had Jaws 2 out that year, but the lawsuit was called off after Steven Spielberg himself gave the film a positive comment (he also called the film the “best of the Jaws ripoffs”).

Joe Dante is my favorite type of filmmaker. Even when you think you know what to expect, he zigs and zags, giving you genuine surprises and fun at every turn.

The action starts with two teens swimming in the waters of an abandoned military base — as you do. Of course, they’re instantly obliterated by an unseen creature.

Skiptracer Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies, who beyond being the wife of Robert Urich was Louisa Con Trapp in The Sound of Music and even appeared in an August 1973 Playboy pictorial entitled “Tender Trapp”) is looking for those missing teens and she’s hired Paul Grogran (Bradford Dillman, who battled many an ecological horror in Bug, The Swarm and Lords of the Deep) for help. He’s a drunk and surly mountain man, which in the 1970s makes you a sex symbol.

Why is Grogan so multi-layered? It turns out that Bradford Dillman wasn’t pleased with how flat his character originally was, so he asked writer John Sayles why. The response was that producer Roger Corman never hired good actors, so he rarely wrote nuanced characters. However, Dillman offered Sayles the opportunity to do something deeper, if you’ll pardon the pun.

They discover the abandoned compound where the teens died and discover that it’s a militarized fish hatchery. Maggie drains the outside pool and discovers too late that she’s released Operation: Razorteeth, a strain of piranha made to survive the cold North Vietnamese rivers and win the war in Southeast Asia.

That’s when Grogan realizes that if the local dam is somehow opened, the piranha will attack the Lost River water park and the camp where his daughter is spending the summer. Everybody pays the price for the piranha, like their now crazed creator Dr. Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers). Soon, the military is involved and our heroes are on the run, trying to warn the media and anyone that will listen that these killer fish are on their way. Nothing will stop them, not even the poison that Colonel Waxman and Dr. Mengers (Barbara Steele!) think will do the job.

Of course, the fish survive and attack the summer camp, wiping out nearly everyone but Suzie thanks to her fear of water. Now, they’re on their way to Buck Gordon’s (Dick Miller, perfect as always) waterpark, where they end up killing Waxman.

Grogan and Maggie come up with a totally ridiculous plan: to use the hazardous waste from the smelting plant to kill off the fish before they spread into the ocean. Our hero, such as he is, must go deep underwater to make this happen and he barely survives, left in a catatonic state at the end of the film.

Dr. Mengers gives the government’s side of the story, downplaying the danger of the piranha and saying there’s nothing left to fear, but as we see another beach, we now hear the sound of the deadly school of fish.

Beyond Dick Miller, this film features plenty of actors that Dante would work with again and again, like Belinda Balaski, the film’s writer John Sayles and the always welcome Paul Bartel. Plus, Francis Xavier Aloysius James Jeremiah Keenan Wynn shows up, but we all know him better as his stage name, Keenan Wynn. And another Invasion of the Body Snatchers alum, Richard Deacon, is here as well.

Piranha is the rarest of films — one that rises above being a simple ripoff and comes close to eclipsing the source material. It’s quick, bloody and fun as hell, with awesome effects from Phil Tippett and the debuting Rob Bottin, who was only 17 at the time.

Can’t make it to the drive-in? You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Miracle Beach was on USA Up All Night on March 10 and October 7, 1995; December 21, 1996 and September 19, 1997.

Scotty McKay (Dean Cameron) is a beach bum who used to be rich. Then he finds a lamp and a genie named, well, Jeannie (Ami Dolenz). Thanks to her, he’s pretty much rich again and has Jeannie to do everything he wants, even win over a supermodel named Dana (Felicity Waterman, Vanessa Hunt from Knots Landing). Except that Jeannie isn’t allowed to assist her master with love and why would she? She’s the one in love with him.

Sometimes I get down on myself. Then I think about Vincent Schiavelli. He was seriously talented and yet here he is, playing a mystic in Miracle Beach when he should have been acting in way better movies. Yet he always showed up and worked hard. Martin Mull, too, who is in this as the stock bad guy. Pat Morita and Alexis Arquette are also in the cast.

This movie was made in PG, R and unrated editions. So the family could watch one version and another could be on USA Up All Night. Oh yeah! Monique Gabrielle shows up! And it was called Miracle Beach: Hard Bodies II in Australia.

Director Skott Snyder directed a whole bunch of Playboy videos and writer Scott Bindley wrote the cartoon The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature as well as Cop and a Half: New Recruit and Cats & Dogs 3: Paws Unite. That totally all makes sense.

You can watch this on Tubi.