Booker T. Mattison is an associate professor in the Department of Entertainment and Media Studies at Grady College and the director and writer of this movie, as well as The Gilded Six Bits and The Sound of Christmas.

Marija Juliette Abney (who was one of Black Panther’s personal bodyguards, the Dora Milaje, in the MCU movies) is Yolanda Carver or, as her TV fans refer to her, Dr. Yo. She’s an empiricist and claims that she handles marriages based on what she can see, not her opinions, and that she follows the scientific method.

She may also be — as the title spoils — twisted.

Liam (Pha’rez Lass) and Armeka Jasper (Jennifer Sears) are in the middle of a marriage that isn’t working for either of them. She wants children and he has no idea what he wants, suffering from PTSD from two tours of duty yet unable to communicate with anyone just how emotional he is.

This movie is everything I want in a Tubi original. Seemingly throughout the movie, everyone wants to get with Armeka, including her work friend Ivy (Jackie Dallas), who offers hugs on the regular, and Dr. Yo, who already has a down low relationship with her producer Tonya (Bree Webber).

Meanwhile, she keeps sneaking up on Liam — even when he’s trying to have sex with his wife — and tells everyone that her husband died in Afghanistan, yet Liam discovers a secret ladies only therapy session in which she states that he came home, had PTSD and attacked her. So what is it? And just who was getting stabbed in the beginning when he was getting ridden by another woman?

The scam that Dr. Yo has is amazing. She picks out attractive women in the audience of her show and give them free marriage counseling that gets their husband killed. The wild thing is that Armeka literally looks like she’s going to freak out at any minute, no matter what happens, in every single scene. That’s the kind of acting I appreciate.

But Dr. Yo calling the cops on Liam? And of course, white cops? Man, Twisted Marriage Therapist goes there. Then when Dr. Yo can’t convert Armeka? It’s time for zipties, ground and pound and 50 Shades of Gray red ribbon restraints while Liam is locked up in a co-ed asylum that she runs.

I’m so glad that this set up a sequel. Let’s see one now, Tubi.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Home from Afghanistan, a Spect Ops Marine named Jessica (Jet Jandreau) learns that the suburbs may be just as dangerous as a DMZ when her thirteen-year-old sister Aimee (Jamie M Timmons) is abducted by sex traffickers.

Director Lee Whittaker is better known for his stunt work in more than a hundred movies, such as Sound of Freedom (which this film has a lot in common with), Captain Marvel, The Spy Next Door, The Replacement Killers and he has assistant directed around twenty films. This is his fourth directed effort and he co-wrote the script along with Kara Myers.

That stunt experience comes in handy here as the last ten minutes of this film have several exhilarating hand-to-hand fights, including one between Jessica and a female kidnapper named Carmen (Laur Allen) that goes through multiple rooms and walls.

When the cops can’t do anything to save her sister, Jessica turns to her military training and military friend Dan (Eric Pierce) who creates software that allows her to find out exactly where the traffickers are. The major issue is that the PTSD that ended her military career happens to emerge at the worst times and the film does a strong job of visualizing it.

Whittaker and team have been working on this since before the pandemic and the results are really strong. It’s another good choice for Tubi as one of their original films.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Student Affairs aired on USA Up All Night on November 1, 1996 and September 20, 1997.

Directed by Chuck Vincent, who co-wrote the script with Craig Horrall, Student Affairs is about the making of a movie with the same name, so any write-up that says that this is a 50s movie like Porky’s is missing that part of the overall story.

It’s also got a pretty strong cast playing the cast within, well, a cast. Louie Bonanno, Jim Abele and Beth Broderick are joined by adult stars Tracey Adams and Veronica Hart — who always has great roles in Vincent’s movies — to play the young and hopefuls. I like that Vincent always found roles for adult actors and didn’t just have them playing nude extras. Adams also shows up in The Lost Empire and Vincent’s Wimps (as does Bonanno and Hart). As for Ms. Hart, you can find her in plenty of mainstream movies — often under the name Jane Hamilton — like Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh, Bedroom Eyes II and many, many more. At 67 years of age as of this writing, she’s still showing up in non-sex roles in several adult films to this day.

The director of the movie in this movie, Ron Sullivan, is really Henri Pachard, who knows a thing or two about directing. He made over 360 adult films in his career. And the character of Mr. Evans is David F. Friedman, who partnered to make several nudie cuties with Herschell Gordon Lewis like The Adventures of Lucky Pierre and Goldilocks and the Three Bares before pretty much inventing the roughie with Scum of the Earth and the gore movie with Blood Feast, Color Me Blood Red and Two Thousand Maniacs!, again along with Lewis. He also produced, co-wrote and even acted in movies like A Smell of Honey, a Swallow of Brine and The Erotic Adventures of Zorro. As hardcore overtook the adult film, he left the industry, coming back in the early 2000s to work with Lewis again.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Return of the Killer Tomatoes aired on USA Up All Night on June 10 and October 28, 1989; March 30 and 31, 1990; March 23 and October 21, 1991 and May 26, 1992.

Directed by John De Bello, who co-wrote the script with Costa Dillon and Stephen Andrich. De Bello, Dillon and J. Stephen Peace started making movies together in high school and worked together not only on this movie, but on the original short and movie versions of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, as well as Killer Tomatoes Strike Back!, Killer Tomatoes Eat France! and the animated series, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. In fact, in the 90s, Mattel released an entire line of toys based on the cartoon series. There were even two video games!

Set ten years after Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, which characters refer to as the Great Tomato War, we find that tomatoes have been outlawed in the United States. Wilbur Finletter (Steve Peace) — who was in the first movie — is a hero of the Great Tomato War and now owns the tomato-less Finletter’s Pizzeria, employing his nephew Chad Finletter (Anthony Starke) and Chris’ roommate Matt Stevens (George Clooney).

Professor Mortimer Gangreen (ohn Astin) and his assistant Igor (Steve Lundquist) were the ones who started the last Tomato War and they’re back for another one. Barely defeated by the song “Puberty Love,” he vows that this time, music will be part of his plot for revenge. That means that he is making Miami Vice tomato people, Michael Jackson pomme d’amour and seductive female tomate, as well as an army of rock music-obsessed tomatillos. His big goal is to break out Jim Richardson (Rick Rockwell) and make him the new President.

There’s also a female tomato human named Tara (Karen Mistal) who falls for Chad just at the point that movie runs out of money and breaks the fourth wall, adding product placement to every scene. Tara is also hiding a mutated tomato named FT — Fuzzy Tomato — that she keeps like a pet. In a world that hates and fears tomatoes — not to mention the carrot soldiers on the rise — can their love survive?

In the scenes with Clooney and the Playboy Playmates, look for Teri Weigel. She was the Playboy Playmate for April 1986. She was also only the second Playmate to appear in Penthouse — after Ursula Buchfellner who was in Jess Franco’s Devil Hunter and Sadomania — appearing in the November 1985 issue. After working at the Bunny Ranch Nevada and a car accident that broke her neck and back ruined her family’s finances, she became one of the first Playmates to openly do adult films and trade on her popularity from the magazine. She was also in plenty of mainstream movies, like Cheerleader Camp, Savage Beach, Night Visitor, Marked for Death and perhaps most famously, in the beginning of Predator 2.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Night Shift aired on USA Up All Night on February 17, 1995.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Eldon Glen is a horror fanatic/part-time reviewer.

Two sisters, Celeste (Felice Jankell) and Isa (Erica Midfjäll), tried to change their lives with a self-help record from the 70s that was supposed to stop stress and create a calming sense of self thanks to self-hypnosis. The problem is that it creates a doppelganger of the listener that grows strong enough that it eventually replaces the person who let it into the world. Only one person can save Celeste and Isa: hypnotist Lena Carlsson (Christina Lindberg!), the voice of the album who created it with her father, who worked at the Stockholm Institute for Magnetic Research and who believed that magnetism is the only way for people to reach their full potential.

Directed by Adrian Garcia Bogliano (Here Comes the Devil, Late Phases), Black Circle is a movie that I have been waiting to watch for some time. I loved the look of this movie, one that tries to mess with your senses from the very beginning and continues playing with time and space as the record overtakes minds.

I could have maybe done without the straight-up X-Men expansion of the story with telepathic psychics Victor (Johan Palm) and Selma (Hanna Asp) who have been sent by The Supreme to help destroy the doppelgangers. What I did love was the idea of the darkness that is coming for Celeste and Isa, one of their own making, because when it seems like it’s so simple to fix your life, it may only be the way to make it much worse.

Also: Christina Lindberg needs to be in more movies. I’m so excited to see her in this, a film deserving of the queen of They Call Her One Eye. My time spent counting the days until I could see this were worth it.

The Synapse blu ray release of Black Circle comes with the soundtrack on compact disc, audio commentary with director Adrian Garcia Bogliano, the teaser trailer, a short entitled Don’t Open Your Eyes, an interview with Adrian Garcia Bogliano and Christina Lindberg, a behind the scenes feature and a stills gallery.

You can get this from MVD.

Prefect Cesare Mori (Giuliano Gemma, A Pistol for Ringo) has been given special legal powers thanks to Mussolini to fight organized crime in Palermo.  Working with Officer Francesco Spanò (Stefano Satta Flores), he walks right into the home of boss Antonio Capecelatro (Rik Battaglia) and shoots him in the head before going so far as to cause the suicide of Don Calogero Albanese (Francisco Rabal), a man who escaped the police for four decades.

Based on the true story of Cesare Mori, a man whose attacks on organized crime found it moving to America and back to Sicily after the end of World War II. He arrested and convicted thousands of criminals before he was made a senator. Some say because he went after highly-ranked government officials and they needed him to leave town before they were implicated. Mori spoke up against Mussolini working with Hitler and found himself removed from power afterward.

Directed by Pasquale Squitieri, who wrote this with Arrigo Petacco and Ugo Pirro, this film also boasts an appearance by Claudia Cardinale and a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. It has the alternate title I Am the Law, which seems like it inspired a certain judge from Mega City One.

The Radiance Films blu ray of The Iron Prefect comes with an archival interview with director Pasquale Squitieri and star Giuliano Gemma, a new interview with the biographer Domenico Monetti, an appreciation of Giuliano Gemma and the film by filmmaker Alex Cox — yes, the director of Repo Man — as well as the original trailer, a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Italian cinema expert Guido Bonsaver and an original article on the real-life Cesare Mori and his Mafia raid as depicted within the film.

You can get this from MVD.

Radiance has released this set that has three crime movies starring Franco Nero and directed by Damiano Damiani. As a proud Italian-American, I must remind you that there is no organized crime syndicate known as the Mafia currently active in the United States.

The Day of the Owl: Franco Nero is Captain Bellodi, who starts this investigating the death of truck driver Salvatore Colasberna, a man murdered while delivering cement to a construction project. The only witness may be Rosa Nicolosi (Claudia Cardinale), a woman of somewhat loose morals. Either her husband caught her with Colasberna or the trucker was killed by a corrupt group of manufacturers under the orders of Don Mariano Arena (Lee J. Cobb).

This was one of the first of a wave of organized crime based films. The trend started when the Leonardo Sciascia’s novel To Each His Own was adapted as We Still Kill the Old Way. Day of the Owl was based on another Sciascia novel which was the first book he’d written about organized crime in Sicily.

Written by director Damiano Damiani and Ugo Pirro, who also wrote We Still Kill the Old Way, this differs from the book that it’s based on. Piro said, “To me, the book is a hint: I must try and preserve its message by using a different language.”

The Case Is Closed: Forget It: Based on the Leros Pittoni book Tante Sbarre, this has Franco Nero on the wrong side of the law as Vanzi, a man jailed for a hit and run misdemeanor and learning just how bad it is inside Italy’s prison system. That’s because organized crime runs everything even inside.

Vanzi tries not to get involved with the others, but soon is helped by an elderly prisoner by the name of Campoloni (Georges Wilson) and hindered by Biro (John Steiner), a killer who is barely able to keep himself under control. When Vanzi is moved into a cell with Pesenti (Riccardo Cucciolla), he learns that his new roommate is about to testify against Salvatore Rosa (Claudio Nicastro), which gets him killed right in front of Vanzi, who can either get out of prison if he says nothing or die if he reveals that the suicide was truly a murder.

This isn’t like any other role I’ve seen Franco Nero in and the ending is a gut punch. Expected, but still it’s a rough indictment.

How to Kill a Judge: Franco Nero plays filmmaker Giacomo Solaris, whose latest film, Inquest at the Courthouse, is based on the real-life corruption of a judge named Alberto Traini-Luiz (Marco Guglielmi). That movie ends with that man’s ties to organized crime causing him to be killed and when the actual judge seizes the film, he’s killed as well.

Solaris feels that he is responsible, but soon finds himself in a world filled with conspiracy and the murder of everyone close to him, as well as a relationship with the judge’s widow Antonia (Françoise Fabian).

This movie is just as tough on director Damiani, as it was inspired by the actual murder of a judge who he had based a character on in his movie Confessions of a Police Captain.

This set from Radiance has tons of amazing extras to go with the new 2K restorations of the films.

There are new and archival interviews with Nero for all three films, as well as filmmaker and Italian crime cinema expert Mike Malloy discussing The Day of the Owl, a video essay by filmmaker Howard S. Berger looking at actor Lee J. Cobb’s career transition from Hollywood to Italy, an interview with Claudia Cardinale, a making-of for The Case is Closed: Forget It; a visual essay on the career of Damiani Damiani by critic Rachael Nisbet; interview with Alberto Pezzotta, author of Regia Damiano Damiani, who discusses Damiani’s contribution to the crime genre, a new video essay on How to Kill a Judge by filmmaker David Cairns; trailers for all three movies, a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters for each film and — most awesomely, I may add — a limited edition 120-page book featuring new and archival writing on the films by experts on the genre including Andrew Nette, Piero Garofalo, Paul A. J. Lewis , Shelley O’Brien, Nathaniel Thompson, Marco Natoli and Cullen Gallagher.

You can get this incredible set from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Killer Klowns from Outer Space aired on USA Up All Night on October 18, 1997.

How did it take so long for this movie to make it to our site? Has there ever been a better high concept — alien clowns coming from space to eat humans? How did this movie even get made? Man, I have questions. Let’s get some answers.

It’s the only movie to be written, produced and directed by the Chiodo Brothers. These insane masters created the puppets and effects for films such as Critters, Ernest Scared Stupid, Team America: World Police, Large Marge for Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and the mouse artwork in Dinner for Schmucks. A sequel to this has been in development forever; if I had my way, these guys would make movies all of the time.

On a lover’s lane in Crescent Cove, Mike Tobacco (Grant Cramer, New Year’s Evil) and his girlfriend Debbie Stone (Suzanne Snyder, Weird Science, Night of the Creeps) are parked when a strange object falls to Earth.

Meanwhile, farmer Gene Green (Royal Dano, Gramps from House II) and his dog — who my wife knows is named Pooh Bear without even needing to look it up — track the comet and discover the crash site looks more like a circus tent.

Mike and Debbie find the same strange tent and discover the farmer trapped in a cotton candy-like cocoon as a Klown appears to shoot popcorn at them. They’re chased away by more Klowns and a balloon animal dog, because this movie is ready to tear out your brain, stomp on it and laugh the entire time.

They make their way to the police station where Debbie’s ex-boyfriend, Deputy Dave Hanson (John Allen Nelson, Deathstalker from the third version of that film, Deathstalker III: The Warriors from Hell), and mean-spirited Deputy Curtis Mooney (John Vernon!). Seriously, John Vernon should be in every movie, because he’s majestic in this, treating every single person with oodles of contempt.

The Klowns make their way to the town and start blasting people with lasers, punching people’s heads clean off and shrinking people down and putting them into bags of popcorn. There are also scenes of Klowns drinking people with crazy straws and a giant Klownzilla that attacks the town. Obviously, the reality went right of the window with this one. It resembles the Topps Mars Attacks! cards, with episodic encounters of the goofball Klowns running wild.

This movie frightened my wife worse than any of the many, many films that she watched in her childhood. She was already afraid of clowns, so these Klowns ended up infiltrating her dreams. Yet she still watched it all of the time. She also wanted Debbie’s jumper-tastic wardrobe, which makes a lot of sense when you see her fashion sense today.

While the Chiodos were able to get The Dickies for the soundtrack, they couldn’t convince producers to pay the money to have Soupy Sales — the king of getting pies thrown in his face — appear as a security guard.

This is the kind of movie that I’m glad exists. I return to it time and time again whenever life seems meaningless because the fact that a movie about giant Klowns attacking a small town for food makes me feel better, knowing that somehow a studio bought this and allowed it to happen.