Directed by Dylan Vox (Tales of a Fifth Grade Robin Hood) and written by Scotty Mullen (Killer Coworker, Girls Getaway Gone Wrong), this film, with its intriguing title ‘Deadly DILF ‘, immediately piques curiosity. This Tubi original’s unique blend of drama, romance, and suspense sets it apart from other films.

I love saying its title. Deadly DILF.

Deadly DILF follows the story of Rio (Curtis Hamilton), a man who feels infantilized by his second wife, Tori (Naomi Walley). They’ve just moved into a gorgeous new house when they meet Elysium (Sofia Bryant), a young girl from next door. She soon finds her way into working at Tori’s gym, babysitting Rio’s son Gunnar, studying with Rio, and working her way into his bed. This sets off a chain of events that will change their lives forever.

Elysium barely survived a stalker who shot her father in front of her, so she has some issues. One of those would be looking for a new daddy, so to speak, and when one night of passion with Rio finally occurs, she thinks they will be together forever. Yet he’s in love with his wife, or maybe he is just comfortable with his lifestyle. Before it’s over, she will cost him his marriage, brother Jack (Zach Sowers), son and maybe even his life. The film masterfully portrays the weight of Rio’s decisions, making you feel the consequences of his actions.

This movie is another reminder that fantasy should remain as something in your head because it’s probably not worth it when it becomes physical and people start getting hurt. That night ruined everyone’s life, and I’m not being a puritan here. It’s just that Rio is a moron who thought he knew it all, and he ends the movie crying in the street, the one who ruined everything for everyone. Elysium emerges relatively unscathed, except she seems to blame her behavior for missing her father. Then she eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich next to his tomb in a mausoleum, an ending that will leave you pondering long after the movie ends.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: UFO: Target Earth was on the CBS Late Movie on January 9, 1976. You can find another review of the movie here.

I kind of love that this movie starts with accurate eyewitnesses before telling the tale of Alan Grimes (Nick Plakias), an electronics expert who is trying to figure out where strange signals are coming from, along with a psychic named Vivian (Cynthia Cline) and two experts from the college named Dan Rivers (Tom Arcuragi) and Dr. Mansfield (LaVerne Light). There’s been a formless alien waiting inside a lake for a thousand years, afraid of assuming the shapes that humans force it into. He claims that only three other humans have embraced alien nature and ascended, which Alan embraces, getting rapidly aged and walking into a lake. Oh man, the sheer smell of dank 70s grass is all over this movie, which ends with a quote from Revelations and ties in UFOs to New Age religion and old-fashioned Biblical prophecy.

Despite being shot in Atlanta with minimal resources, director and writer Alessandro De Gaetano managed to create a series of films, including Haunted, Scoring, Bloodbath In Psycho Town, Project: Metalbeast, and Butch Camp, which featured Judy Tenuda.

The end of this movie is filled with words, ideas, video effects and, quite literally, lo-fi magic. It’s the most BS of all non-Hollywood UFO cash-in mania, and I loved it. It reminded me of the days when I’d eat those UFO candies that had info from Project Blue Book inside them, as well as watch Battlestar Galactica with its wild square-up reel at the end about how aliens might be real and then stay awake all night, hoping that tonight would finally be the one where I got abducted.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Before Tom DeSimone made Hell Night, Reform School Girls and Savage Streets, he made “The First Real Adult Film in 3D!”

It’s definitely in 3D but softcore, so you could share it with your dad while you can’t show it to your mom. I don’t know. What I do know is that it goes straight for women in prison movie convention by starting in the shower where Gertie (Annik Borel, the Werewolf Woman) attempts to get with Cindy (Uschi Digard!) but gets foiled when the other girls show up and say that Dr. Reinhardt is letting them go into the general population of the real world for two days as part of their rehabilitation.

None of it goes well because the world outside is just as challenging as a prison. But you do get to see Candy Samples get her body painted, and it’s in 3D. The other ladies are Kay Rivers (Jacqueline Giroux, Linda from Trick or Treats as well as appearances in Drive-In Massacre and Cinderella 2000), Toni (Tracy Handfuss, A Clock Work Blue, Psyched by the 4D Witch), Joyce (Maria Arnold, Fantasm, Meatcleaver Massacre and Wam Bam Thank You Space Man) and Melba (Liz Wolfe, Fantasm Comes Again). Plus Linda York (Auditions, A Scream In the Streets), Marsha Jordan (Teen-Age Jail Bait), Neola Graef (Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death),  Peggy Church (The Pig Keeper’s Daughter) and Susan Landis (Blood Sabbath).

It’s less a movie than a series of lovemaking scenes. One could argue that The Stewardesses was a 3D adult movie three years before, but look, the fact that Kino Lorber made this look so good is a tribute to the fact that some amazing stuff is coming out on physical media that we had no idea that we’d ever get, much less have it in 3D.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray of Prison Girls 3D has been meticulously remastered in three sensational dimensions by 3-D Film Archive. It also features commentary by James G. Chandler and Ash Hamilton, a deleted scene, a trailer and versions of the movie in 2D, BD3D polarized and anaglyphic (Red/Cyan) 3-D. You also get a pair of anaglyphic 3D glasses with the movie. You can order it from Kino Lorber.

The sequel to What the Waters Left Behind takes place in the bizarre city of Epecuén. Director Nicolás Onetti (who made the original with his brother Luciano, who composed the film’s music; they also made Abrakadabra, Francesca and The 100 Candles Game together) and writer Camilo Zaffora founded the rock band The Ravens.

Drummer Billy Bob (Matías Desiderio) is the one they all can’t stand, and he’s already slept with a groupie named Carla (Magui Bravi), who asks for a ride home and promises a barbecue. Singer and bassist Jane (Clara Kovacic), guitarist Mark (Juan Pablo Bishel, his girlfriend Sophie (Eugenia Rigón) and their manager Javi (Agustin Olcese) are already sick of their bandmate, but follow him and, as you can imagine, this becomes another cover version of the Sawyer Family’s Greatest Hits. The tension within the band is palpable, adding an intriguing layer to the narrative.

Like the first movie, the real star is Epecuén, a former spa that spent thirty years submerged before the waters rolled back and left a desert in their wake. It looks like the end of the world and makes the movie feel way more significant than it is.

Carla has a grandfather named Tadeo (Mario Alarcón), who makes the best barbecue. However, it’s for him and his family — Antonio (Germán Baudino), Chimango (Chucho Fernández) and Tito (David Michigan)—and it’s going to be anything but locally sourced. Instead, the Ravens are on the menu and may never escape the final stop on their tour.

The first movie seemed to be trying to remake Tobe Hooper’s classic, and this one is more of the same. But hey—it’s got a great location, loud and proud of its gore, and has an intriguing idea of an arguing virus that passes through the band and the family. I believe the Onettis have something great in them someday soon. Their potential is evident, leaving me hopeful for their future projects.

You can get this blu ray of this movie from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Legend of Lylah Clare was on the CBS Late Movie on March 15, 1976.

The Legend of Lylah Clare was based on a 1963 DuPont Show of the Week co-written by Robert Thom (Wild In the Streets). It’s about Elsa Brinkmann (Kim Novak), an actress who looks and sounds exactly like Lylah Clare, a star who fell to her death twenty years ago. Agent Bart Langner (Milton Selzer) gets Lylah’s ex-husband, Lewis Zarkan (Peter Finch), to meet her. Once he’s won over, they convince studio boss Barney Sheean (Ernest Borgnine) to make a movie with Elsa becoming Lylah as they make the movie of her life.

As the movie’s shooting begins, Lylah takes on the role to almost a Method degree while dealing with Hollywood’s pressures. She sleeps — and falls in love — with her director, battles gossip columnist Molly Luther (Coral Browne) and avoids the attention of her acting coach, Rossella (Rossella Falk). As filming continues, her identification with her role gets more intense.

She has become the role by the end, doing things Lylah would do, such as sleeping with a landscaper (Gabriele Tinti, who did the best out of anyone in this movie by marrying Laura Gemser) and making sure that she’s caught to make Zarkan jealous and finally killing herself by falling, again, from a high wire. That makes her a star all over again, but amid her newfound posthumous fame, her would-be lover Rossella murders Zarkan.

Here’s where the film gets audacious. The entire movie stops for a dog food commercial, a deliberate and unexpected break from the narrative that serves as a commentary on the commercialization of Hollywood. I’m sure people who saw it then were enraged at director Robert Aldrich. It’s the best thing in the entire movie, which is overwrought at times and ridiculous at others, but I love Aldrich and his work. Some moments in this made me laugh out loud because they’re so melodramatic.

I also have to confess that I’m a sucker for old Hollywood and glamour, so when Novak shines in this movie or stands in the cement footprints of a long-dead actress, she embodies the essence of classic Hollywood. Her performance and the film’s nostalgic elements evoke a sense of reverence for the golden age of cinema, and I’m definitely loving this movie.

The director had announced that he would make this movie five years before as part of a $14 million production program of eight films from his new company Associates and Aldrich, including Cross of Iron, Whatever Happened to Cousin Charlotte? (which became Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte), The Tsar’s Bride, Brouhaha, Paper Eagle, Genghis Khan’s Bicycle, and There Really Was a Gold Mine (a sequel to Vera Cruz). He had also planned to make Now We Know, Vengeance Is Mine, Potluck for Pomeroy, The Strong Are Lonely, Pursuit of Happiness, a TV series called The Man and Too Late the Hero.

Before making those movies, he had to direct The Flight of the Phoenix and The Dirty Dozen. In between, he worked on the script with Hugo Butler and Jean Rouverol before saying, “It got terribly disjointed, and the big problem was to make it legitimately disjointed and not arty-crafty disjointed.”

Kim Novak was signed on to star. She hadn’t been in a movie since Eye of the Devil, in which she was injured in a riding accident during a crucial scene. This accident led to a significant delay in production and may have contributed to the film’s lukewarm reception. This, coupled with a series of personal setbacks, including a divorce and financial losses, had taken a toll on her.

He saw Novak as a gamble and dealt with the well-regarded original in which Tuesday Weld played Marilyn Monroe.

The movie was poorly reviewed and did poorly in theaters. In the years that followed, Aldrich reflected on it several times, blaming Novak’s performance and bad editing for its failure.

He was pretty diplomatic when he spoke to Film Comment in 1972, “I was about to bum rap Kim Novak when we were talking about this the other day, and then I realized that would be pretty unfair. Because people forget that Novak can act. I really didn’t do her justice. However, some stars have a motion picture image so firmly and deeply rooted in the public’s mind that an audience enters a movie with a pre-conception about that person. And that pre-conception makes “reality” or any myth contrary to their pre-conceived reality impossible. To make this picture work, to make Lylah work, you had to be carried along into that myth. And we didn’t accomplish that. You can blame it on a lot of things, but I’m the producer, and I’m the director. I’m responsible for not communicating that to the audience. I just didn’t do it.”

Five years later, Aldrich took full responsibility for the film’s failure, acknowledging that, as the director, he bore the ultimate blame.

As for Novak, she regretted her decision to make the movie, calling it ‘a weird little picture.’ Her distress was evident when she discovered that Aldrich had Hildegard Knef dub her in some scenes. She candidly confessed to The Washington Post, “God, it was so humiliating.”

This would be her last starring role in an American film.

Sources

The Legend of Lylah Clare – Rotten Tomatoes. https://bioincubator.iitm.ac.in/pdffile/journal/1h2xw0r.php?a76bee=the-legend-of-lylah-clare-rotten-tomatoes

Robert Aldrich – Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Aldrich

Oscar Actors: Kennedy, George (Cool Hand Luke) Dies at 91. https://emanuellevy.com/oscar/oscar-actor-george-kennedy-cool-hand-luke-dies-at-91/

The Legend of Lylah Clare. https://www.torinofilmfest.org/en/24-torino-film-festival/film/the-legend-of-lylah-clare/7897/

The Legend of Lylah Clare 1968 – The Last Drive In. https://thelastdrivein.com/category/1960s/the-legend-of-lylah-clare-1968/

Rock ‘n roller Samuel Allen (Max Ehrich) finds himself in jail, a consequence of his anger-filled youth and disdain for organized religion. However, a moment of divine intervention occurs when a judge dismisses the drug charges against him because Samuel shares his story with local schools and churches. This marks the beginning of a transformative journey from rebellion to redemption.

Given a second chance, Samuel embarks on a journey to follow in his father’s footsteps. He overcomes the influence of an influential church leader who has a vendetta against his father, Pastor Joe (Gary Weeks). Despite the challenges, he decides to become a preacher, a testament to the power of second chances. He also wins Julie’s heart (Katelyn Nacon).

Directed and written by Jeffrey A. Smith, who plays Pastor Clayborn, this faith-based movie set in the 1960s doesn’t deny that staying on the right side is filled with temptation. Samuel Allen, Dream Church’s founder, walked the path shown in Southern Gospel. There’s even a tragic drowning, the idea that electric guitars are tools of Satan and the idea that the church elders fight more to keep their power than to help save sinners.

I don’t love many faith-based movies—outside of the films of Ron Ormond and Donald W. Thompson—but even I can recognize the lessons in this one.

You can order Southern Gospel from Deep Discount.

Source

Southern Gospel | About. http://southerngospel.film/about

EDITOR’S NOTE: Signpost to Murder was on the CBS Late Movie on February 23, June 22, 1972, and July 20, 1973.

“Are we all potential killers?” What a great tagline! That idea is the basis for this film, directed by George Englund (A Christmas to Remember, Zachariah, The Vegas Strip War) and written by Sally Benson (Viva Las Vegas, The Singing Nun) and Monte Doyle.

Alex Forrester (Stuart Whitman) is a mental patient who killed his wife ten years ago and has been rehabilitated in an asylum. He feels that way, at least, but no one else does. So he takes matters into his own hands, unmercifully beats his therapist, Dr. Fleming (Edward Mulhare), and runs into the foggy night. Maybe that doctor shouldn’t have told him about an old law that gives a new trial to escapees who elude capture for two weeks.

Who would come up with such a law?

He goes to the house he’s stared at for ten years from his cell and hides there as Molly Thomas (Joanne Woodward) waits for her husband to return from a business trip.

He easily kidnaps the woman but is shocked by what he finds outside the house: a dead body, throat slit, stuck in the water wheel. Who killed this man? Was it him? Why can’t he remember? And when the body disappears, who took it?

Even as the police and the local clergyman (Alan Napier, Alfred from TV’s Batman) come to the house to search for Molly’s husband’s body or comfort her, she starts to fall for Alex. As you can imagine, this movie is utterly ridiculous in the best of ways and throws twists and turns at the viewer.

Do you know who loved it? India. While the movie started as a stage play, they re-adapted it into another stage play, Dhummas, which was made into three different movies — in Gujarati, Marathi and Hindi — all starring Sarita Joshi. It was also made as Ittefaq in 1969 and was remade as Ittefaq in 2017.

MGM also released this as a Psycho-Rama double feature with Hysteria. The poster for it makes me want to watch both movies again.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Santee was on the CBS Late Movie on October 16, 1975 and January 5, 1977.

Here’s some trivia you can use on your friends. Santee was one of the first motion pictures to be shot electronically on videotape, a groundbreaking technique at the time. This was achieved using Norelco PCP-70 portable NTSC cameras and portable Ampex VR-3000 2″ VTRs, marking a significant shift in film production technology.

Director Gary Nelson mainly worked in TV before this, but he has some interesting films to his credit, like the original Freaky Friday, The Black Hole and the Mike Hammer TV movies.

Jody’s long-awaited reunion with his father takes a dramatic turn when he discovers that his father is an outlaw on the run from a relentless bounty hunter named Santee (Glenn Ford). The story takes an unexpected twist when the two adversaries, Jody and Santee, find themselves forming an unlikely bond, realizing that they share a deeper connection than they could have ever imagined.

Santee boasts a diverse and intriguing cast, including Dana Wynter (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), Jay Silverheels (Tonto himself, who for some reason has been showing up in nearly every movie I’ve watched lately), Robert Donner (who also is in Nelson’s Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold), Dark Brothers repertory actor Jack Baker, X Brands (the oddly named actor who may have been of German descent and from Kansas City, but always played Native Americans), Chuck Courtney (who played Daniel Reid Jr. on The Lone Ranger, the character who would grow up to be the father of The Green Hornet) and Lindsay Crosby (Bigfoot).

Edward Platt, the Chief on Get Smart, produced this film and played a crucial role in financing it. Platt raised the money to buy the video cameras, a significant contribution to the film’s production. One can only assume that his involvement also led to Nelson’s directorial role in the TV movie Get Smart, Again.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Clones was on the CBS Late Movie on November 7, 1975, and April 18, 1977.

Dr. Gerald Appleby (Michael Greene) finds himself in a perplexing situation. He believes he’s been cloned. His conviction stems from a near-fatal escape from his lab’s explosion and the unsettling reports of his sightings in places he’s never been. This sets the stage for a gripping narrative as he goes on the run, pursued not only by the deranged scientist Carl Swafford (Stanley Adams, Cyrano Jones from the original Star Trek) but also by the ruthless thugs Sawyer (Otis Young, Blood Beach) and Nemo (Gregory Sierra, a stark contrast to his usual role as the virtuous Det. Sgt. Chano Amenguale on Barney Miller).

Directed by Paul Hunt (he also directed Twisted Nightmare and produced Demon Wind) and Lamar Card (who directed Supervan and Jukebox AKA Disco Fever, as well as the producer of Nashville Girl, Savage Harvest and Project: Metalbeast), who co-wrote the film with Steve Fisher, who started writing movies back in 1938 with Nurse from Brooklyn. He also wrote the novel and screenplay for I Wake Up Screaming, Hell’s Half Acre, Johnny Angel and episodes of Peter Gunn, McMillan & Wife, Cannon and Fantasy Island.

Most people will watch this movie and see a slow-moving film that goes nowhere, filled with fish-eye lens-addled drug scenes and an overwhelming sense of conspiracy doom. As for me, I read that sentence and only see the positives. Young and Sierra are having a blast; the ending is as cynical as it gets, and a lot of the ending takes place inside an amusement park that runs itself. It’s a movie that came out on VHS, has had no major DVD release and has never come out on Blu-ray.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Night of the Lepus was on the CBS Late Movie on September 13, 1974; October 17, 1975 and June 13 and August 24, 1976.

Based upon Russell Braddon’s 1964 science fiction novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit, this movie pits mankind against mutant rabbits and, well, if you can get past that idea, you’re probably going to love this movie.

Director William F. Claxton and producer A. C. Lyles came from Westerns, which explains the cast of this movie, which includes Stuart Whitman, Rory Calhoun and DeForest Kelley being in the cast as well as the shooting location, the Old Tucson Studios. It does not explain the effects, which are a combination of regular-size rabbits on miniature sets and people dressed in rabbit costumes.

Janet Leigh, who is also in this, told Starlog, “No one put a gun to my head and said I had to do it. What no one realized was that, no matter what you do, a bunny rabbit is a bunny rabbit. A rat, that can be menacing — so can a frog. Spiders or scorpions or alligators, they could all work in that situation, and they have. But a bunny rabbit?! How can you make a bunny rabbit menacing?”

Rancher Cole Hillman (Calhoun) seeks the help of college president Elgin Clark (Kelley) when thousands of rabbits invade his farm after their natural predators, coyotes, are killed off. Roy and Gerry Bennett (Whitman and Leigh) are brought in and they work on using hormones to disrupt the rabbits’ reproduction cycles but their daughter falls in love with the bunny and switches it out; the mutant bunny runs away and pretty much declares war on humanity.

The towns of Galanos and Ajo are eaten by the giant rabbits before the strange team of a drive-in audience and the National Guard trap the gigantic hares in an electrified field that kills all of them. And good news, because regular rabbits — and the coyotes — are back at the end of the movie.

They tried to hide the rabbits on the poster — even changing the title from Rabbits — and then changed their mind at the last minute and gave away rabbit’s feet with the film’s logo on it.

Check out this ad for the CBS Late Movie show from Bill Van Ryn of Groovy Doom and Drive-In Asylum!