There’s a Trim Season comic book that came out in 2022, which was based on an original concept from Megan Sutherland, Sean E DeMott and Cullen Poythress. They were inspired by the story of several women who went missing in Humboldt County, CA during a marijuana harvest. That turned into a screenplay, written by David Blair and Ariel Vida, and then the comic book by writer Jake Hearns, pencils and inks by Mara Mendez Garcia and colors by Lorenzo Palombo.
Directed by Ariel Vida, Trim Season is about Emma (Bethlehem Million) and Julia (Alex Essoe), who get recruited by James (Marc Senter) to head up into Northern California for trim season and make $5,000 cash. They’re joined by Harriet (Ally Ioannides), Dusty (Bex Taylor-Klaus) and Lex (Juliette Kenn De Balinthazy) and when they get there, things already seem odd. There are guns everywhere carried by masked men. None of those men join them, because the only trimmers are women.
Then they meet their boss, Mona (Jane Badler, still terrifying me ever since she ate a rat in V), who looks like the kind of female villain that would once have battled and bedded James Bond. And as they work 16 hours days, they start to learn that this isn’t the job they were promised, what with Mona having some kind of magical powers thanks to a strain that only he can inhale and survive.
Somehow folk horror meets Suspiria meets body horror, Trim Season exceeded any expectations I had for it. Balder owns every moment she has on screen and man, how many costume changes did she get? As many as she wanted, that’s how many.
The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook,Twitterand Instagram.
Directed and written by its star, Matt Farley, Local Legends is a black and white loose adaption of, well, Matt Farley’s life. It’s probably the best explanation for why the films of Farley and Charlie Roxburgh work so well.
How can one man have seventy bands, make a movie or two a year, release 23,000 songs as of February 2022 and get so much done? Focus and drive.
This film features songs by Farley’s bands Moes Haven. The Toilet Bowl Cleaners, The Guy Who Sings Your Name Over and Over, The Hungry Food Band and Papa Razzi and the Photogs while the film takes a near commercial sell for everything Matt has made and will make. You get to watch him play basketball and impersonate famous players (and yes, he really did have someone do statistics for his one on one games). You see him walk all over town and interact with his friends, many of whom play his friends — and enemies — in his films. And you get real slices of life, like someone who wants to critique his movies and has better ideas, yet has never made a film of their own. Or the girl who has every Billy Joel album, but really just the greatest hits.
Look, Matt would rather have made some movies than had some cars. He walks just about everywhere, when you think about it.
I found this movie utterly charming and inspirational. I love when people are out there in the world making things and no one makes more things than Matt. He’s also willing to place his phone number into movies, so when I texted him mid-movie and we started chatting, it added a strange metatextual experience that I will never ever get from any other movie or filmmaker ever.
That blows my mind.
Just watch it on YouTube for yourself. And check out the interview with Farley that came out of those texts. And buy this from Gold Ninja!
The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook,Twitterand Instagram.
Neil (Mike Colter, who played Luke Cage on the Marvel show) is a disgraced cop who finds himself exactly where he never wanted to be: working for Ash (Stephanie Sigman), a ruthless drug kingpin. But if he wants to save his father’s life — hey, that’s Antonio Fargas, Bunky from Shaft, Link from Foxy Brown, Doodlebug from Cleopatra Jones — by paying off his debts. At stake? His wife Molly (Medina Senghore) and son Trevor (Isaiah C. Morgan).
Directed by Michael D. Olmos (Filly Brown, episodes of S.W.A.T. and Mayans M.C.) and written by Will Simmons, this has Neil continually being there for his father, even taking a drug rap when a deal his old man set up turns out to be a DEA operation. Agent Manny (Rhys Coiro) offers to reduce Neil’s father’s sentence if he agrees to be a snitch. But Ash, well…she doesn’t take too kindly to being crossed.
Tubi continues to offer plenty for viewers of all identities, including this crime film, which is part of their Black Noir lineup. If you’re into tense battles between those on both sides of the law — and in-between, too — this is right up your alley.
Director Adam Mason said that this film is “a love letter to the kind of books and movies I grew up loving, particularly the Stephen King novels that I loved so much as a teenager. It felt like no one was making those kinds of films for the YA market, and the teenage me would be really missing out today. That’s why I wanted to make Baby Blue.”
A group of teens has discovered the story of Baby Blue, a serial killer who killed himself rather than be caught. But now, years later, his murders have never stopped. Is he killing from beyond? And wouldn’t that be a great story for their true crime show?
Nothing bad is going to happen, right?
Mason also wrote Play Dead, which just started. on Tubi last week, as well as the films Pig and Songbird. He co-wrote this script with Simon Boyes, who has teamed with Mason on several other projects.
Baby Blue (Dylan Sprayberry) looks a lot like Bill Paxton in Near Dark and he acts a lot like a direct-to-video Freddy rip-off, so think 976-Evil. Except he doesn’t have to torture anyone while they’re asleep. He can do it while they’re awake, so many of his victims — after his death — have been seen on video, Cecil Hotel-style, murdering themselves while his spirit is conveniently unseen.
I’m going to give the true crime podcasters of the world some advice. If you are invited into the home of the mother of a serial killer — Mama (Ellen Karsten) — and things start getting weird, like say she starts describing how she has to break down her fecal matter by hand because their plumbing is bad, you should just leave the house while you still can. Or you can always end up there tied to a bed and having her spray rancid milk out of her three breasts all over your face.
Oh yeah, if that isn’t enough, this also has a cursed found footage video that keeps the killing going, in case anyone was hoping that this could unite Elm Street with The Ring and both of them had an intimate threeway with Barbarian.
The baby will be the inevitable sequel.
There are a lot of people complaining about the acting in this movie, so I ask you, fellow movie watchers, tell me you didn’t rent tons of direct-to-video horror in the 90s without telling me. Keep on bringing me goofy stuff, Tubi.
If you’ve been this far down the Small Town Monsters path, you won’t be surprised to know that there are wolves that walk like men. In the state of Texas alone, dozens of reports of werewolf encounters have happened over the past few years. Many of these accounts all take place within a seven-hundred-plus square mile area called the Texas Dogman Triangle.
Aaron Deese, who wrote the book The Texas Dogman Triangle and researcher Shannon LeGro are the ones who will lead you into the deepest, darkest heart of dogman country in this new movie.
Director Seth Breedlove also brings in Ken Gerhard, Lyle Blackburn and Nick Redfern to explain their theories. Your enjoyment of this film really depends on how much you believe in these creatures and how much stock you’re willing to put into eyewitness accounts and fuzzy smartphone recordings than actual evidence of the creatures. You know, some people need to actually see these creatures for real while others will believe anything and everything. As for me, I’ve gone on record saying that I would rather remain blissfully unaware of their existence, as just like magic, I’d like to know that things are possible versus absolute.
For more information, check out the official Small Town Monsters Facebook page or their official website.
The Dogman Triangle is available on iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, and FandangoNOW from 1091 Pictures. You can also watch it on Tubi.
June 29: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Free Space! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
No matter what you or I think or believe, Glenn Danzig is making exactly the kind of movies that he wants to make.
Following Verotika, he decided that the next film he’d make would not just be a Western, but a Spaghetti vampire Western and the minute I read that, I realized that Danzig is making the movies that I want to see as well.
Despite saying that he’s watched a lot of Bava and Fulci, it feels like Danzig has made the kind of movie an Italian director that not many people discuss in the U.S. would have made. The closest comparison I can think of is the work of Alvaro Passeri, who is somehow at once sub-Bruno Mattei level in directorial skill but has ideas and a lack of anyone telling him no, which leads to absolutely aberrant cinema like The Mummy Theme Park and Plankton.
More likely, I think that Danzig wanted to hang out with his friends and a bunch of adult stars while cosplaying as both vampires and characters straight out of a Giulio Questi or Tonino Valerii while someone filmed the lost weekend. After spending a few million, his account called and said, “Glenn, I know you want my skull, but seriously, we need to recoup some investment. Can you call Cleopatra Records? I mean, yes, they used to release weird cover tribute CDs that had Electric Hellfire Club played KISS songs, but now they’re releasing movies.” And then Glenn howled and said, “Yea.”
The Death Rider (Devon Sawa) has just arrived at the Vampire Sanctuary (there is no irony in the cinematic universe of Danzig, things are named what they are) and has the admission fee: one naked virgin (Tasha Reign). He asks for sanctuary — yes, from the Vampire Sanctuary, I get it — from its owner, Count Holiday (Julian Sands, R.I.P.).
The Vampire Sanctuary (I swear, I am not getting paid every time I use those two words) is more like a saloon from an old cowboy movie, filled with working girls like Carmilla Joe (Pittsburgh native Kim Director, who was on The Deuce and in Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows) and her assistant Mina Belle (Ashley Wisdom, Verotika) and gunslingers like Kid Vlad (Victor DiMattia, Timmy Timmons from The Sandlot), Drac Cassidy (Eli Roth, yes, that Eli Roth), and Bad Bathory (Danzig himself and when his name flashed up on scream I cheered even if I was home alone).
So yes, Danzig wears a cowboy hat in this, but he really wears all the hats: director, writer, producer, composer, cinematographer and editor. The choices are, well, big choices. The kind of choices that only could have been made by Glenn Danzig.
If takes as long to get to the Vampire Sanctuary (cha-ching!) and past the opening credits as it does for Jan-Mikl Thor to drive a van to a suburban house in Rock ‘n Roll Nightmare, that was the vision of Glenn Allen Anzalone.
If Danny Trejo is going to show up as Bela Latigo, well, that’s 100% from the brains and balls of Lodi’s favorite son.
And if there’s no real plot other than random gunfights, naken women, vampires biting naked women and gunfights around naked women with vampires shooting silver bullets at one another, then you guessed it. This is all the vision of the man who wrote, “devil on the left / angel on the right / there’s no mistake / who’ll I be with tonight.”
But how many movies are going to just throw Lee Ving at you as a bartender service Sean Waltman a drink while the Soska sisters look on and the camera zooms more often than three Italian movies and two jess Franco films all added up?
Actually, I think that Danzig has had the same Saturday late nights as me, watching three Franco movies in a row until all the endless scenes of dialogue just pound your brain into a druggy haze. He delivers this same drone goodness as we spend what seems like days watching Death Rider do what he’s been named for: ride. Ride that horse over that Danzig-sung theme song! Ride into the night! Ride past the villains that survive!
Ride into our hearts.
I hate that anyone would call this so bad it’s good or even watch it in any way other than with sheer joy. These are kinds of movies that get inside my heart and make me so protective.
The last of the five William Nigh-directed, Boris Karloff-starring Mr. Wong movies, this one starts when Cyrus P. Wentworth (Melvin Lang), the head of a shipping company, is killed by Dick Fleming (William Stelling), the son of his rival. He had wanted to marry Wentworth’s daughter Cynthia (Catherine Craig), but her father refused. Now, she wants Mr. Wong to prove that Dick is innocent.
The Wentworth family has been dealing with another tragedy as one of their ships, the Wentworth Castle, caught fire and sank with all 400 of the passengers and crew. That footage is real and is the burning of the SS Morro Castle, which caught fire on September 8, 1934 during a trip from Havana to New York City.
Mr. Wong has contacts within the tongs, Chinese secret societies, which help him find out the truth. He also, as always, has help from Capt. William Street (Grant Withers) and Roberta Logan (Marjorie Reynolds).
I’m kind of sad to come to the end of these five movies. But hey — now that I have the set, I can always go back and watch them all over again.
The Kino Lorber blu ray release of the Mr. Wong Collection has new HD masters of each of the five films — with a 2K scan of the fine grains — and this comes with audio commentary for Mr. Wong, Detective by Tom Weaver and Larry Blamire. You can get it from Kino Lorber.
The body of policeman Dan Grady has been pulled out of San Francisco Bay and his friend Captain Street (Grant Withers) is overwhelmed by the loss. He asks his girlfriend, journalist Bobbie Logan (Marjorie Reynolds), and James Lee Wong (Boris Karloff) to solve the mystery.
It turns out that Dan was investigating some smugglers of precious gems, which puts jeweler Frank Belden (Hooper Atchley), smuggler Harry Lockett (Frank Puglia) and Tanya Serova (Lita Chevret) into the role of suspects, but before long, everyone gets rubbed out and only Serova’s boyfriend — and Frank’s son — Frank Jr. (Craig Reynolds) is the last one standing and perhaps the real killer. Or maybe not, if Wong’s suspicions are correct.
The radio in this movie was a Philco Mystery Control and yes, there was a remote control radio in 1940. The rotary dial could pick one of eight preset stations, turn the volume up or down and turn the radio off. It couldn’t turn it on, though. It cost $159.50, which today would be $3,465.
The Kino Lorber blu ray release of the Mr. Wong Collection has new HD masters of each of the five films — with a 2K scan of the fine grains — and this comes with audio commentary for Mr. Wong, Detective by Tom Weaver and Larry Blamire. You can get it from Kino Lorber.
Carla (Millie Valdes) and Dean (Ernesto Reyes) have left behind the hustle and bustle for the quiet of the woods. Except that they’re living next to a cult whose leader is able to telepathically communicate with The Spirit, which is a lot like Bigfoot.
Directed and written by Jon Garcia and co-written by Zach Carter, the movie has Carla and Dean coming to terms with a miscarriage, which may be why they’re missing so many of the signs that perhaps their new home is not safe. Or maybe all that depression might make them perfect candidates to join Arlo’s (Jesse Tayeh) growing collection of worshippers.
I’ve always said that I would have never survived the seventies, because I would have totally either led or been in something like the Process. Even I see the dangers of picking Bigfoot as the person to worship. Did you see Night of the Demon? Bigfoot will straight up tear your dick off.
The Oregon woods in this look amazing and I’d just like to be The Spirit, wondering them and hoping that all the humans would leave.
The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook,Twitterand Instagram.
Gwen (Samantha Westervelt) and James (Amanda Drexton, who co-directed this with Michael A. Drexton and co-wrote this with him and Westervelt) are going nowhere and doing nothing but still have to get to a baby shower for Gwen’s sister where the only gift left on the registry is Baby’s First Wellness Kit, complete with essential oils and tarot cards.
Except it’s $150.
And they have nowhere near that kind of money.
The journey to get the money will take them through Los Angeles and into the heart of glittery darkness. Gwen wants to show her family that she can be a success — or at least not a major foul up — and arrive with the gift. But when there are cult leaders (Corey Feldman), a thrift store called Twin Sneaks, Reggie Watts, the liberation of succulents, a cockroach gathering and a shrine to Nicholas Cage. And oh yeah, neon smoke farts that will revolutionize the online sex industry.
Gwen and James feel like the kind of people who have been friends forever and might be holy terrors when you see them in a bar or they show up at your party, but when everyone is telling stories about them, they realize that they kind of love them afterward even if in being in their orbit can be a hurricane.
I’m a sucker for comedies where friends are oblivious to the world and defeat it just by being themselves.
The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook,Twitterand Instagram.
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