September Drive-In Super Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre, September 19 and 20, 2025. Two big nights with four feature films each night include:

• Friday, September 19: Mark of the Devil, The Sentinel, The Devil’s Rain and Devil Times Five
• September 20: The Omega Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Grindhouse Releasing 4K restoration drive-in premiere of S.F. Brownrigg’s Scum of the Earth and Eaten Alive

Admission is $15 per person each night (children 12 and under – accompanied by an adult guardian – are admitted free). Overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $20 a person per night. Advance online tickets (highly recommended) for both movies and camping here: https://www.riversidedrivein.com/shop/

Originally known as Death is a Family Affair and perhaps better known as Poor White Trash Part II, this S.F. Brownrigg movie belongs squarely within the genre of hicksploitation or redneck films. After Don’t Look In the Basement, where else can he go? Downward, it seems, as this movie is awash in, well, scum, while still finding some compassion for even its most depraved characters.

Helen and her new husband, Paul, have barely unpacked at the cottage where they’ll spend their honeymoon when he’s killed with an axe to the chest. She runs through the woods looking for help. She runs into Odis Pickett, whose dismal shack is the only shelter for miles.

Somehow, Odis convinces Helen to stay for the night, promising that he has a phone. Soon, she’s in the middle of his family, which includes his mentally challenged son Bo, his pregnant wife Emmy and his daughter Sarah. And of course, that killer isn’t going to be happy with just one murder.

The Texas Film Commission somehow gave this production $200 a week to get made. Who knows what they thought when they said this sweaty, seamy, deep Southern fried movie made by and for maniacs.

This is the kind of movie that you feel like you have to take a shower after you watch it. It feels like you are there, in the dank woods, dealing with this backwoods family, who may be more dangerous to themselves and our heroine than the murderer wandering outside their door. It also proves that the city folks are just as mentally deranged and can have just as confusing relationships as their country relatives. They just hide it much better.

I don’t even know what to classify this movie as. It’s not horror, but it has those elements. It’s also somewhat reminiscent of a stage play, with everyone confined to one room and slowly driving one another insane. It feels like someone could snap and either fight or fuck everything around them. For a movie that promises such sex from the poster, it only pays you back in complete contempt for your prurient needs. A masterpiece.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Good Girls Don’t was on USA Up All Night on November 26, 1993; July 22, 1994; March 11 and September 9, 1995; March 2 and October 4, 1996; June 21 and December 5, 1997.

Outside of Chuck Vincent, Rick Sloane may be the perfect USA Up All Night director. Sure, his movies promise sin, but really, they’re comedic blasts of happiness, more innocent than you’d expect.

This was made directly in the middle of the Vice Academy series and feels like it’s in the same cinematic universe. Jeannie (Renée Estevez, sister of Charlie, Emilio and Ramon; she’s also in Intruder) is an innocent secretary. Betina (Julia Parton, yes, the cousin of Dolly, who also did adult under this name as well as Rachel Weis, Julia Jartouer, Rachel Welles, June Bauer and Nina Alexander; she was the “publisher” of High Society and is in Vice Academy 3 and 4; you’re never going to see Dolly’s sweater meat without a sweater, so the thrill is gettign close. That said, she’s a good singer and a fun actress!) is the exotic dancer who has seen it all.

Jeannie’s boss wants her to hire a stripper, so she goes to the club where Betina works, and at first, they have no common ground. The boss doesn’t pay Betina for dancing, Jeannie fights him over his salary, then he ends up dead, and the two of them are the suspects.

Jeannie’s ex is a cop named Montana (Christopher Knight?!?) who starts chasing the two. There’s also Wilamena (Mary Woronov!) and her henchmen, one of whom is Rico Constantino, who was on American Gladiators and would go on to be Rico in WWE.

Can this get any better? What is Elizabeth Kaitan was a TV announcer?

You may wonder…will Jeannie fall for Cody (Dan Wildman), the good cop? Will Julia Parton sing? Will her hair look amazing? How many times will her top explode off and reveal her chest unfettered? How loud did I yell when Jayne Hamil showed up, basically playing Miss Thelma Louise Devonshire? Tamara Clatterbuck and Honey Lauren are also in this, so it’s either a meta shout-out for the Vice Academy fans or more likely they filmed this at the same time as one of those movies.

Look — life has not been fun lately. Rick Sloane made these cartoony and sexy movies as time capsules to return us to our youth when we were closer to the cradle than the grave. We owe him thanks. We owe everyone in his movies thanks.

You can watch this on Tubi.

September Drive-In Super Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre, September 19 and 20, 2025. Two big nights with four feature films each night include:

• Friday, September 19: Mark of the Devil, The Sentinel, The Devil’s Rain and Devil Times Five
• September 20: The Omega Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Grindhouse Releasing 4K restoration drive-in premiere of S.F. Brownrigg’s Scum of the Earth and Eaten Alive

Admission is $15 per person each night (children 12 and under – accompanied by an adult guardian – are admitted free). Overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $20 a person per night. Advance online tickets (highly recommended) for both movies and camping here: https://www.riversidedrivein.com/shop/

Every generation gets the Invasion of the Body Snatchers it deserves.

The fifties got the McCarthy referencing pod people.

The nineties got alienation and a bleak final scene.

And I guess the 2000s got The Invasion.

But the seventies?

The pre-millennial tension and end of the world coming soon seventies got director Phillip Kaufman’s blast of pure dread, working with talents like cinematographer Michael Chapman (who ran the camera on The Godfather and Jaws before creating the look of movies like Raging Bull, The Fugitive and directing All the Right Moves and The Clan of the Cave Bear) and sound designer Ben Burtt, the man who gave Star Wars all its well-remembered noises. As for the effects, as many of them as possible were done in camera.

A species has made its way to Earth and one of the first people to notice is Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams), who wakes to find her husband Dr. Geoffrey Howell (Art Hindle) is no longer the man that she’s spent so many days and nights with. The species — do I have to spoil it for you — takes over humans and assimilates them.

A co-worker, Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland), wants to introduce Elizabeth to self-help author Dr. David Kibner (Leonard Nimoy) as a way of helping her handle this strange situation. Still, on the way, a man runs through the street screaming, “They’re coming! You’ll be next!” before being chased by a crowd and killed by a car.

That mystery man is Kevin McCarthy, the star of the original film, who, one supposes, has been running through America since the end of the last film. Even before the movie was finished, McCarthy told Kaufman that this movie was better than the one he was in. You can also see original director Don Siegel as a taxi driver later in the film.

The seventies were the me decade. So David believes that people behaving so differently is their response to stress, while Elizabeth just thinks this is how she’s being told her relationship is over. The truth is so much weirder as people begin to find partially formed doppelgangers of themselves and their friends.

By the end of the film, children are being taken for duplication, strange priests (Robert Duvall) swing as the world ends, dogs appear with human heads, women disintegrate in their lovers’ arms — the film takes the basic ideas of the original and makes them as horrifyingly real and unreal as they can be at the very same time.

Plus, there’s Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright, who, between this and Alien, really were at the forefront of late 20th-century science fiction movies.

While Pauline Kael said that this “may be the best film of its kind ever made” and Variety wrote that it “validates the entire concept of remake,” Roger Ebert derided Kael’s love for the remake. However, over time, this has become the epitome of a sequel that surpasses the original in so many ways.

The true terror of this movie lies in its ending, which upset me utterly as a child. I’d never seen a movie end this way. Only Kaufman, writer W.D. Richter and Donald Sutherland knew how the film was going to end, so when Sutherland screams at Veronica Cartwright, her reaction is genuine. The hopeful ending that was scripted was never shot because Kaufman knew that if the studio had the option, they’d pick that, just like they did with the first version of this story.

September Drive-In Super Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre, September 19 and 20, 2025. Two big nights with four feature films each night include:

• Friday, September 19: Mark of the Devil, The Sentinel, The Devil’s Rain and Devil Times Five
• September 20: The Omega Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Grindhouse Releasing 4K restoration drive-in premiere of S.F. Brownrigg’s Scum of the Earth and Eaten Alive

Admission is $15 per person each night (children 12 and under – accompanied by an adult guardian – are admitted free). Overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $20 a person per night. Advance online tickets (highly recommended) for both movies and camping here: https://www.riversidedrivein.com/shop/

Charlton Heston is such a complex person. He’s the patron saint of apocalyptic movies, appearing in Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green and this movie. He was also in so many religious movies, including The Ten Commandments as Moses, as well as Ben-Hur and The Greatest Story Ever Told.

He could march with Martin Luther King. Jr. in 1963, while being the President of the NRA from 1998 to 2003, saying that the government could only take away his guns if they took them from his cold, dead hands. He was a liberal from 1955 to 1961 and endorsed liberal candidates until 1972. However, he also served as President of the Screen Actors’ Guild from 1965 to 1971, a position that clashed with the liberal views of Ed Asner. After the death of the Kennedys, he worked to push gun control laws. But by 1972, he rejected the liberalism of George McGovern and supported Nixon. But at one stage in his life, the Democratic Party asked him to run for the Senate against George Murphy.

By the 1980s, he would say,  “I didn’t change. The Democratic Party changed.” He also had a huge speech, “Fighting the Cultural War,” in which he said. “The Constitution was handed down to guide us by a bunch of wise old dead white guys who invented our country! Now, some flinch when I say that. Why! It’s true … they were white guys! So were most of the guys who died in Lincoln’s name opposing slavery in the 1860s. So why should I be ashamed of white guys? Why is “Hispanic Pride” or “Black Pride” a good thing, while “White Pride” conjures shaven heads and white hoods? Why was the Million Man March on Washington celebrated by many as a sign of progress, while the Promise Keepers March on Washington was greeted with suspicion and ridicule? I’ll tell you why: Cultural warfare!”

He was complicated. Unlike many today, he was non-binary and not in sexuality. In the way he saw things, but by the end, he could also be frustrating.

Speaking of the end…

The Omega Man is the second movie — after The Last Man On Earth — based on Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend. Unlike the book, humanity has died off because of biological warfare, not a plague. U.S. Army Col. Robert Neville, M.D. (Heston) is one of the few survivors, figuring out a vaccine to the plague, which turns humans into vampire-like monsters. The Family, as they are called, is led by former anchorman Jonathan Matthias (Anthony Zerbe) and is at war with Neville.

Neville soon learns that others, like Lisa (Rosalind Cash) and Dutch (Paul Koslo), have survived. He’s able to give Lisa’s brother, Richie (Eric Laneuville), the vaccine, and the young man wants to save the lives of The Family, too. Instead, they kill him, which leads to a mutually exclusive battle of destruction, made even more horrible for the hero because Lisa, the woman he loves, has fallen victim to the plague and sells him out.

Director Boris Sagal died while filming another end-of-the-world movie, the TV miniseries World War 3, walking into the blades of a helicopter by accident. This was written by the husband-and-wife writing team of John and Joyce H. Corrington.

This has one of the first interracial kisses in cinema (but not the first). Rosalind Cash said to Heston, “It’s a spooky feeling to screw Moses.” He discussed this on Whoopi Goldberg’s TV show, and she was finishing the interview by saying that she wished that society could get past interracial relationships being an issue. He agreed and then gave her a huge kiss.

You know who wasn’t happy about this film? Or really didn’t care? Richard Matheson, who said, “The Omega Man was so removed from my book that it didn’t even bother me.” He said of The Last Man On Earth, “I was disappointed in The Last Man on Earth, even though they more or less followed my story. I think Vincent Price, whom I love in every one of his pictures that I wrote, was miscast. I also felt the direction was kind of poor.” Before the Will Smith remake, I Am Legend, started filming, he said, “I don’t know why Hollywood is fascinated by my book when they never care to film it as I wrote it.”

Supposedly, the scene in which Heston’s character watches Woodstock inspired Joel Hodgson to create Mystery Science Theater 3000. I want to think that that is true.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Blondes Have More Guns was on USA Up All Night on February 15, 1997.

Yes, a Troma Naked Gun. Such is the dichotomy of my life: I love USA Up All Night and hate Troma, despite most USA Up All Night movies coming from Troma. I love parties, but I hate gatherings.

Detective Harry Bates, his partner Dick Smoker and his dog, who is a man in a suit, get screwed up with two half-sisters, Montana Beaver-Shotz (Elizabeth Key) and Dakota Beaver (Gloria Lusak).

The only film of director George Merriweather, who wrote this with Dan Goodman (the composer of Evil Come Evil Go and the cinematographer of Brother and Sister — in which a man discovers his half-sister is Rene Bond and you know what happens after that — as well as Bob Chinn’s Panama Red — a PG rated movie with Rene Bond and John Holmes in it — and Return Fire) and Mary Guthrie, this was way better than expected.

You can watch this on Tubi.

About the Author: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. Her latest book is Japanese Cult Cinema: Best of the Second Golden Age. She runs the podcast Cinema Junction and writes for Horror & Sons and Drive-in Asylum. She regularly appears on the podcasts Japan on Film, Making Tarantino, Making Scorsese, The Rad Revivalhouse and contributes essays to Cinemaforce. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or follow her on Instagram @jennxlondon. 

There was an intimacy about this film that felt familiar, having volunteered for a few years in a London music charity shop run by a retired punk star. I have witnessed firsthand the conversations about gear and chord progressions between old guys wearing leopard print shirts and eyeliner. I have seen men in their 70s hit on women in their 20s. I have heard the passive-aggressive slights and accusations of events long passed – “I still owe the manager money for a limo ride I took in 1978.” 

I have even been asked for a long rope to tie around an aging guitarist’s waist to “keep him from wandering off before the gig.”  Therefore, everything in Spinal Tap 2 felt real to me, but not real enough. More like a subdued version of reality created by comfortable people living comfortable lives in Los Angeles who have completely lost touch with what it means to be in an aging band that enjoyed only marginal success in their heyday. 

Perhaps if Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer had visited the little shop in Camden, the trio would have had better material for this movie. Nigel’s cheese shop was cute, but none of the three men had turned into the absolute lunatics they probably should have. None of them did a stint in rehab? Really? None of them had a younger trophy wife whose face is pulled taut from too much plastic surgery?  A Jane’s Addiction-style shoving match? Not a single failed reality show between the three? This film was filled with missed opportunities like that. All perfect fodder was ignored in favor of a safer, cozier movie. 

It’s a pleasant 82 minutes, to be sure. But, in no way does this film measure up to the greatness of its predecessor. Anyone who has seen their favorite band in their twilight years will know that the very act of buying a ticket to Spinal Tap 2 perfectly captures what it means to be an aging fan of an aging band. Or to be an aging fan of an aging comedy troupe playing an aging band. It really doesn’t matter what they do, so long as they play the hits. Our love for these characters, along with the film’s charm and warmth, is based on the feelings we all have for the original film. Nothing they can do at this point, short of killing one off, would ruin their legacy. 

The plot revolves around a one-off reunion gig to take place in New Orleans. They find a new drummer and begin rehearsals. The reunion gig ends in disaster, as one would expect, brought about by yet another small technical detail overlooked. That’s pretty much it. The film’s success rests solely on the shoulders of the cast, who slip back into these characters easily, sprinkling in a few new great lines, such as “Is he coming toward us?” following the Blue Man’s drummer audition. 

The celebrity cameos by Lars Ulrich, Chad Smith and Sir Paul McCartney felt wasted, while Sir Elton John brought the film its biggest laugh. He genuinely looked like he was enjoying himself, while it felt like Lars had slotted in his Zoom call between his daily Starbucks run and sending out copyright violations to fans sharing his music online. 

I could never fully accept that Spinal Tap was a Rob Reiner film; instead, I choose to judge that and this film within the canon of Christopher Guest’s mockumentary body of work. Spinal Tap 2 will not be revered in the way Spinal Tap, Best in Show or Waiting For Guffman all are. Those films are classics—the building blocks of just about every television comedy that aired in the 2000s. But Tap 2 is still a lot better than For Your Consideration, a film I found profoundly bitter and unfunny.

Go see Spinal Tap 2 if you are a fan. Otherwise, wait for streaming and watch it while you’re waiting in the online queue for your favorite band’s latest reunion gig to kill the time.