Category Archives: Movie reviews

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Magic Christmas Tree (1964)

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Much like The Wizard of Oz, The Magic Christmas Tree believes reality is in black and white, while dreams are in color. Both films have a witch. Both movies have wishes. But only one of them had a budget. And only one of them is a classic beloved by families for generations.

Sorry, Richard C. Parish. Your one-and-done directorial effort isn’t getting a 4K re-release this year. Or any year, really.

In the black-and-white real world, three boys are walking home from school on Halloween. One of them, Mark, helps a witch get her cat Lucifer out of a tree. The moment someone told me I had to climb a tree to save a demonic cat, I would honestly be out of there, but Mark instead falls out of the tree and gets knocked out.

When he wakes up, the witch gives him a magic ring, as well as some magic seeds that need to be planted. On Thanksgiving, while everyone else is sleeping off the turkey, Mark is combining the turkey wishbone with the magic seeds, the magic words and the magic ring to grow the magic Christmas tree. His turtle Ichabod just watches in terror as Mark engages in a rite of eroto-comatose lucidity.

This tree that grows is unkillable, even when Mark’s dad cuts the grass in the middle of November. I guess we should assume that they live in California. Also — Mark’s dad is played by the director, and his dialogue appears to appear as if by magic. In fact, this entire film appears dubbed even when it isn’t.

While Ichabod the turtle eats the grass, Dad has a wacky grass-cutting session that ends with the mower in flames and him acting drunk. The way he talks to his wife gives you a good idea of how he really treats her. This film cuts deeply into the dark underbelly of post-war America. The dream is dead. The power mower is in flames. The Christmas tree is alive.

That’s right. On Christmas Eve, the Magic Tree comes to life and can talk. It grants Mark three wishes. The Magic Christmas Tree also speaks with all the snark and pomp of Charles Nelson Reilly. Seriously, it’s as if the tree has seen it all and is bored with this charade. He’s merely indulging Mark.

Now, Mark’s a smart kid, so he wishes for an hour of absolute power, which he promptly is corrupted by absolutely. That said, he’s not that smart, because why wish for only an hour? Just wish for absolute power. Don’t put any limits on it, Mark. And don’t talk to trees.

What does Mark do with all that power? He makes flowers appear and disappear. Mark has obviously not gone through puberty, because if I had a magic power in 1964, I would have used the entire hour with Barbara Steele. Or Mamie Van Doren. Or Bardeau. Ah, you get the picture, even if Mark doesn’t.

Instead, he makes people run all over the place and throw pies in one another’s faces, but the camera is so far away you may wonder exactly what’s happening. It’s all kind of like Benny Hill, but terrifying instead of madcap. Firemen get pies in their faces while their antique engines careen out of control. Happy holidays, La Verne, California. Hope you survive the experience.

Yes, the same town where the wedding scene in The Graduate was shot (and Wayne’s World 2) is subject to the Magic Christmas Tree, gifting Mark with the power to be a complete jerk.

Mark’s second wish is to have Santa Claus all to himself. He couldn’t think of any other wishes. I mean, you have any power in the world, and you can’t think of a wish?

Santa really seems like he’s senile. He also seems like he can’t stand up from the chair he’s stuck in.

This wish makes every other child in the world very sad, so Mark uses his third wish to send Santa back to the children. That’s because he’s sent to a pocket dimension where his selfishness leads him to meet the very embodiment of Greed. The giant man yells, “You are my little boy!” and offers him a mountain of cake and toys to stay.

Greed is played by Pittsburgh native Robert “Big Buck” Maffei, who uses his 7’1″ frame to his advantage, playing monsters and aliens in a ton of television shows and movies, including a creature (actually a Taurus II anthropoid) in “The Galileo Seven” episode of Star Trek and the giant cyclops on Lost In Space. His last movie appearance was in Cheech and Chong’s Nice Dreams.

Mark gives Santa back to the children. But of course, it was all a dream. A horrible, horrible dream. Mark may have learned something. Maybe we all did.

The bastards at Goodtimes released this on VHS in 1992, pairing it with Rene Cardona’s Santa Claus. I can’t imagine a more horrifying double feature ever — the battle of Santa and Patch directed by the man who brought you Night of the Bloody Apes, paired with this film that feels like it was shot on one of those Price Is Right Showcase Showdown sets with all of the lights turned out.

You can watch this for free on The Internet Archive and Tubi. I would advise you to avoid it and ensure that your Christmas Day isn’t filled with relentless horror.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Mad Dog Morgan (1976)

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Before he made The Beast Within and Howling II, Philipe Mora made this movie about Dan Morgan, who roamed the New South Wales bush under a revolving door of aliases, including Billy the Native, Warrigal and Down-the-River Jack.

Dan Morgan didn’t just walk through the New South Wales bush; he haunted it. Operating under a revolving door of aliases like Billy the Native, Warrigal and Down-the-River Jack, he was less a man with a grudge and more a one-man insurgency against the Crown.

By August 1863, the authorities had reached their breaking point after Morgan plugged police magistrate Henry Baylis during a high-stakes shootout. As his rap sheet grew longer and his methods bloodier, the government placed a bounty on his head that eventually ballooned to £1,000, which was a fortune at the time. By March 1865, he was officially declared an outlaw under the Felons Apprehension Act, making him “fair game” for any citizen with a rifle.

His reign of terror ended abruptly a month later at Peechelba Station in Victoria. While Morgan was busy holding up the homestead, a stockman crept through the shadows and shot him in the back.

History has painted Morgan as a Mad Dog, a bloodthirsty, erratic lunatic who probably didn’t need much of a reason to pull the trigger. But here’s the thing that makes for a great movie: despite being a total headcase, he was a wizard in the woods. His bushcraft skills and horsemanship were legendary and he had a network of sympathizers who kept him hidden from the law for two years. He was a folk hero to some and a monster to others, which is exactly why he fits right in here.

Based on the book Morgan: The Bold Bushranger by Margaret Frances Carnegie, the film drips with authenticity. Carnegie actually assisted Mora in scouting the real-life locations where Morgan’s crimes took place, lending the movie a haunting, topographical realism.

The narrative kicks off with Dan Morgan (played with unhinged intensity by Dennis Hopper) witnessing a horrific massacre of Chinese immigrants on the goldfields. This trauma, followed by a brutal prison sentence where he is victimized and broken, serves as the catalyst for his transformation. He doesn’t just decide to rob people; he decides to declare war on a world that offered him no mercy.

If the onscreen performance feels volatile, it’s because the offscreen reality was just as chaotic. Dennis Hopper was at the height of his lost years, fueled by substances and a total commitment to the role.

At teh end of the shoot, Mora claims that Hopper lived up to being, well, Dennis Hopper: “Rode off in costume, poured a bottle of O.P. rum into the real Morgan’s grave in front of my mother Mirka Mora, drank one himself, got arrested and deported the next day, with a blood-alcohol reading that said he should have been clinically dead, according to the judge studying his alcohol tests.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 15: Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (1996)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. You can listen to her podcast at https://thecinemajunction.com. Her latest book is Japanese Cult Cinema: Best of the Second Golden Age. She writes for Horror & Sons and Drive-in Asylum. She has also appeared on the podcasts Japan on Film, Making Tarantino, Making Scorsese, The Rad Revivalhouse and contributes to Cinemaforce. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or follow her on Instagram @jennxlondon. 

April 15: TV to Movies — Let’s decry the lack of originality in Hollywood. But first, let’s write about a movie that started as a TV show.

The movie version of the on-again-off-again OG of movie riffing TV shows. It’s shorter than any single episode and features human Mike Nelson, robots Crow T. Robot, Tom Servo and Gypsy all stuck on The Satellite of Love forced to watch “bad movies” for an evil scientist named Dr. Clayton Forrester. Yes, he’s named after the scientist is War of the Worlds. Which is one of the reasons I fell in love with the show. 

I’m probably not the best writer to write objectively about this film because I have been a huge fan of the show since around 1994 when I discovered it at midnight on Comedy Central. I worked evenings and nights for better part of the e1990s and 2000s and the first 10 seasons of this show felt like it was written for me. 

A girl brought up on Curse of the Werewolf, Curse of Bigfoot and Track of the Moon Beast. I never have and do not think of many of the films riffed on MST3K as “bad.” I have great affection for the 1960s Gamera and Godzilla films and all the other films they riffed. However, I do acknowledge that is not typical audience thinking. I’m a cult movie hound and MST3K’s reference-dropping humor got me through more hard times than I care to divulge here. Life if just too short to take any movie too seriously. 

MST3K: The Movie answers the question, “…if you’re wondering how he eats and breathes and other science facts…”  within the first five minutes on the SOL’s bigger budget version of the bridge. The first time I saw Tom Servo hover float down into the frame using his hover skirt, it felt almost as magical as that moment in The Muppet Movie when a whole generation of kids got to finally feast their eyes on Kermit’s fully functional legs. 

This time, Dr. Forrester (minus his sidekick Frank) sends his subjects This Island Earth. I love this movie, riffed or unriffed and I do not consider it an insult to point out that the aliens have foreheads that “grow like the mighty oak.” They do! 

The boys’ riff on This Island Earth does not quite measure up to the show’s best episodes, but it is a worthwhile entry in the canon for fans and new viewers alike. Some of the references feel a bit dated in 2026 but the Top Gun reference was fresh as ever. My favorite riffs all involve Mike doing Rex Reason’s voice. “Joe! I’m in one of these boxes! FIND ME!!!” 

This movie disappeared quickly. I don’t even remember it playing in L.A. in the summer of ’96. The show’s fanbase has resurrected this show no fewer than 3 times and we’re about to get new episodes from the Sci-Fi Channel era. My personal favorite. 

The movie is available streaming on Amazon, Apple and of course, you can find it on DVD so you physical media folks can watch it on your home-built interocitor.  Here’s how you build one: 

Welp….I’m off to the local Head-Butt Days festival to meet up with Brak. Peace out. 

APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 15: Head (1968)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey. His April Movie Thon list is here.

April 15: TV to Movies — Let’s decry the lack of originality in Hollywood. But first, let’s write about a movie that started as a TV show.

“Pleasure, the inevitable byproduct of our civilization. A new world where our only preoccupation will be…how to amuse itself. The tragedy of your times, my young friends, is that you might get exactly what you want.”–some random guy leading The Monkees through some sort of factory. Was this the factory where The Monkees were initially manufactured?

I was a huge fan of The Monkees during their, thanks to MTV rerunning their television show, resurgence in the mid 1980s. I quickly scooped up any cassette tape I could find. On a road trip back to Louisiana from Ohio, I subjected my poor aunt to their debut record on a loop. Looking back, I’m surprised that she didn’t intentionally drive off into a ditch after the seventh time hearing Davy Jones warble I Wanna Be Free.

I did not have any idea that The Monkees were considered a prefabricated cash in on Beatlemania. Even after purchasing a replica magazine originally published in the 1960s, where the group was dubbed The Pre-Fab Four, it never occurred to me that The Monkees could possibly be seen as subpar artists.

My love for The Monkees did not die out when their second wave of fame ended perhaps prematurely after more intra-band disputes (turns out the relationships among the members were often volatile). As a teenager, I was an avid VHS collector. I loved receiving those catalogs in the mail from Movies Unlimited. And it was through one of those catalogs that I discovered The Monkees starred in a major motion picture (co-written by Jack Nicholson no less) entitled Head. The VHS was a striking yellow. The members of The Monkees seemingly suspended in mid-air, with some sort of spiral in the background. I immediately mailed in my order form, anxiously awaiting this tape to be sent to me.

After watching Head, I instantly began gaslighting myself into thinking that the film was good. Great even. Sure, it was different from any other film I had seen up to that point. There was no plot. The songs were not as poppy as I was accustomed to. But this film had to be great, right? I tried to get my friends to watch it and like it. They were less than interested, not making it more than 10 minutes before insisting that I turn it off. Eventually, I began to come to the realization that I was simply fooling myself–Head was a flop.

Fast forward many years. Once I had kids of my own, I did what any good parent does–indoctinate them. Force them to like the things I liked when I was their age (not just The Monkees, but also Family Ties, Masters of the Universe and Jem and the Holograms). It worked! My daughter loved The Monkees as much as I did, only with a major crush on Davy Jones that I never had (I was more of a Peter Tork kind of guy).

And then, the unthinkable happened. Criterion released Head as part of their BBS: America Lost and Found boxset. And if it was worthy of inclusion in The Criterion Collection, surely that meant that the film was indeed the cinematic masterpiece I always deep down inside knew that it was.

After we watched all of the episodes of The Monkees, my daughter and I watched Head. I warned her that it was a bit surreal and did not have much of a plot. She said she enjoyed parts of it, particularly the scene between Davy Jones and Toni Basil, set to Daddy’s Song, an upbeat tune about a deadbeat father. That scene was always a favorite of mine too when I was younger.

But as I watched the film, I was awestruck. Everything was right there in front of me the whole time. Head was The Monkees suicide attempt. A chance to unshackle themselves from their teenage girl fanbase and embrace the counterculture. To be seen as more than four guys brought together by a television producer. They were true artists and musicians. The songs were perhaps the best songs in their entire catalog. But what should have been their opportunity to burst out of the literal and figurative box turned out to be a financial failure. The Beatles could go to India and return changed people, but The Monkees would forever be a band who did not play their own instruments on their records (even though they later did. And nobody seems to care that The Beach Boys (minus Brian Wilson) hardly played instruments on Pet Sounds).

Watching Head today, I realized how much of the film entered my daily vernacular. There are so many lines from the film I say quite often: “That song is pretty white” (Frank Zappa’s retort to Davy Jones after Daddy’s Song), “And the same thing goes for Christmas” (Michael Nesmith’s response after berating surprise birthday parties), “Nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humor” (Peter’s advice to Davy in the bathroom where Davy is experiencing issues with a psychedelic mirror). 

Am I probably still overrating Head all these years later? Maybe. Am I crazy for preferring this soundtrack album over anything The Beatles produced? Definitely. At any rate, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will remain a joke until The Monkees are inducted. My playlist will remain jam packed with plenty of tunes from The Monkees. And if I ever need to reach for a comfort movie that features the assassination of a Viet Cong officer, I need to long no further.

APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 15: The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning (2007)

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April 15: TV to Movies — Let’s decry the lack of originality in Hollywood. But first, let’s write about a movie that started as a TV show.

The 2007 prequel The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning is a curious artifact of the mid-2000s direct-to-video boom, arriving just two years after the big-budget Johnny Knoxville/Seann William Scott theatrical film. While the 2005 version felt like a glossy Hollywood blockbuster, The Beginning leans hard into the “teen sex comedy” trope that defined the post-American Pie era (which also got its own endless series of direct-to-video sequels).

When mischievous teenage cousins Bo (Jonathan Bennett, Mean Girls and so many holiday movies) and Luke Duke (Randy Wayne, Hellraiser: Judgment) are put in the care of their Uncle Jesse (Willis Nelson) to work on his farm. But they soon learn that their uncle makes the best moonshine anywhere, and Boss Hogg (Christopher McDonald) plans to close down their family farm. Along with Cooter (Joel David Moore, Norm from the Avatar series) and their cousin Daisy (April Scott), they’ll save the day.

Directed by Robert Berlinger, whose career is mostly in TV, and written by Shane Morris (one of the writers of Frozen), this gets in everyone you want from the series, like Roscoe (Harland Williams), Enos (Adam Shulman), Lulu Hogg (Sherilynn Fenn) and even Gary Cole taking over for Waylon Jennings as the Balladeer. Originally airing on ABC Family, there were also R-rated and unrated versions.

Common Sense Media adds, “Parents need to know that this comedy has all the raunch of the American Pie movies and all the sexism of There’s Something About Mary. It encourages girls to base their worth on how they look and to use their appearance to manipulate men. It may also lead teen boys to drive recklessly. The film also says that General Robert E. Lee, who led the South in the Civil War, was “the greatest general,” which may disturb families of color. The film shows teens drinking and implies that teens have sex.”

Somehow, this has a Drive-By Truckers song on the soundtrack.

Otherwise, this is not my Dukes of Hazzard, which is probably so problematic now I shouldn’t have written that. I didn’t like that Daisy went from a nerd to a woman who learned that only through her beauty could she get what she wanted.

If you expect nothing from a direct-to-video and cable prequel/sequel to a failed reboot, you will be rewarded in abundance.

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Lunch Wagon (1981)

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What was in the water in the late 70s and early 80s that we got so many movies about attractive women upsetting the balance of power in the food truck, gas station and restaurant industries? See: Swap Meet, Starhops, The Car Hops, Gas Pump Girls….

Directed by Ernest Pintoff (the director of Jaguar Lives!) and written by Marshall Harvey, Terrie Frankel and Leon Phillips, this has three ladies — Marcy (Pamela Jean Bryant, Don’t Answer the Phone), Shannon (Rosanne Katon, The Swinging Cheerleaders) and Diedre (Candy Moore) — working at Andy’s (George Memmoli) gas station. He’s a peeper, he’s a creep, and soon they inherit a food truck from Dick Van Patten, uncredited as Bernie Simmons, but he’s probably there to see his kids, Nels and James, who were in the cast. They rename it Love Bites, and hijinks ensue.

This has horrible stand-up and the Missing Persons (who are also U.S. Drag on the soundtrack, which has “Mental Hopscotch” and “I Like Boys”) showing up throughout. Rose Marie from Dick Van Dyke? She’s here, too. So is Louisa Moritz, who was Myra in Death Race 2000, Carmela in The Last American Virgin, Chi Chi in Hot Chili and Bubbles in Chained Heat. 

In honor of the film’s opening, Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley proclaimed September 11, 1981, to be Lunch Wagon Day, which included a parade of eighty lunch wagons. But it was more than just trucks; it was a full-scale Hollywood event. Starting at Hollywood and La Brea, the parade featured the Hollywood High School cheerleaders, stuntmen, the film’s star  and even Playboy Bunnies riding in a Mercedes 450 SL, handing out t-shirts. 

The gimmicks didn’t stop there. During the premiere, promoters reportedly gave out Smell-O-Vision cards to crowds waiting in line.

Also known as Come and Get It, this fits into a very specific window where independent producers realized that scrappy women vs. the system was a goldmine. It takes the male-dominated, grease-stained environment, adds a trio of charismatic leads and lets them outsmart everyone while upbeat synth-pop plays. I’m not sad for the time I spent watching.

You can watch this on YouTube.

APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 14: Oltretomba (Beyond) (1987)

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April 14: Viva Italian Horror — Pick an Italian horror movie and get gross.

The restoration and release of Fabio Salerno’s work by Blazing Skull—specifically within the collection The Other Dimension and the Films of Fabio Salerno—has finally shone a light on a corner of Italian underground cinema that was nearly lost to time. Blazing Skull’s assessment of Salerno is bold but fitting: they position him as the “missing link between Dario Argento and George & Mike Kuchar.”

In just over 15 minutes, Salerno’s short The Other Dimension (1987) explores the hubris of a man obsessed with the afterlife. Like a no-budget version of Flatliners, the protagonist seeks to pierce the veil by undergoing a temporary, controlled death. Obsessed with seeing the other side, he wants to link his mind with a dying man and follow him into the dimension of the dead. To achieve this, he identifies a target, a wicked man who is a thief or a drug user, believing this will lead him to the most interesting parts of Hell.

He finds the unconscious individual in a derelict building and uses a syringe to inject himself with a substance meant to induce a death-like trance. As the drug takes effect, he attempts to focus his mind on the dying stranger to bridge the gap between life and the beyond. He describes falling into a trance but finds that nothing served and realizes too late that the dose he took was bad stuff. There’s also a sink filled with worms that he eats out of, because of course he should.

Sadly, Saserno would die just six years after making this. He also made The Harpies, another movie even more indebted to Argento’s movies.

You can watch this on YouTube.

ARROW VIDEO 4K UHD and BLU-RAY RELEASE: The Birthday (2004)

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Is there anything more stressful than meeting your girlfriend’s father for the first time? How about doing it at a lavish, Kafkaesque hotel where everyone looks like they walked out of a 1940s noir and a doomsday cult is busy prepping for the arrival of a cosmic god?

The Birthday premiered at Sitges in 2004, blew the minds of everyone who saw it (including Quentin Tarantino, who reportedly loved it), and then… nothing. It vanished into a black hole of distribution hell for nearly twenty years. But thanks to the psychotronic archaeologists at Arrow Video, Eugenio Mira’s nightmare-fueled screwball comedy has been resurrected.

Corey Feldman stars as Norman Forrester. Now, let’s talk about Corey. We grew up with him as Mouth, Edgar Frog, and Vic from Stand By Me, but you have never seen him like this. Norman is a man of pure, jittery anxiety. He’s a high-pitched, stuttering mess who just wants to propose to his girlfriend, Alison (Erica Prior). He’s playing against type so hard he practically invents a new type.

The film takes place in real-time at the Grand Hotel, a sprawling, opulent set that feels like the Overlook’s more claustrophobic cousin. Norman is trying to navigate the social minefield of Alison’s wealthy father, played by the legendary Jack Taylor. If you’re a fan of Eurotrash and cult cinema, you know Taylor. He was in everything from Jess Franco’s Count Dracula to Conan the Barbarian and Pieces. Seeing him go toe-to-toe with a manic Feldman is the cinematic crossover I didn’t know I needed.

As the night progresses, the screwball half of the movie begins to bleed into the cosmic horror half. The hotel staff is a little too polite. The guests are a little too strange. And there’s the matter of the sect that believes tonight is the night their god, Fu-Manchu-style deity or otherwise, is finally going to be born.

Director Eugenio Mira, who would go on to direct Grand Piano, is a technician of the highest order. The camera moves here are insane. We’re talking long, sweeping takes, split-screens, and a sense of geography that makes you feel like you’re trapped in the hotel right along with Norman. It’s a movie that feels like it’s vibrating at a different frequency than anything else released in the early 2000s.

Why did this sit on a shelf for two decades? Maybe it was too weird for the mainstream. Maybe the world wasn’t ready for a prestige Corey Feldman performance in a Spanish-produced English-language occult comedy. But the wait was worth it.

The limited edition Arrow Video 4K UHD and Blu-ray releases include a 4K restoration from the original negative; audio commentary by actor Corey Feldman and co-writer/director Eugenio Mira; a new interview with Mira, shot exclusively for this release; an in-depth breakdown of a scene from the film by Mira, featuring archival behind-the-scenes footage, storyboards and rushes; a 2024 Q&A with Feldman and Mira from the film’s 20th anniversary screening at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas; the original and 20th anniversary trailers; an image gallery; a reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options and a collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Bryan Reesman. You can get this on 4K UHD or Blu-ray from MVD.

APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 13: Gui wu xiao jing (1990)

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April 13: (Evil) Plant Appreciation Day — It ain’t easy being green. Pay tribute to all the plants with a movie starring one of them.

Also known as Haunted House Elf, this Hong Kong/Taiwan crossover has a rich Hong Kong family move to a new home in Taiwan, where poor kid Wang Chi-Chiang convinces Shiao-Ming (Lin Hsiao Lan) and her brother Shiao Tai that the new place is haunted. He’s not kidding, as Tong-Tong, a jiangshi, is hopping around in the basement, stuck there for three hundred years. Then, as if that’s not enough, Shiao-Ming and Chi-Chiang decide to jump into a comic book and battle jungle monsters — A real tiger! A real swamp! Intelligent vines! — and cannibals to rescue a princess. Then, they battle a witch doctor (Wu Ma!) who can transform into a stone idol that spits out skeletons, a tiger, a rat, a dog, a witch, the Monkey King, Dracula and even Jesus, at which point the kids chase him with a cross, yelling “We’ll crucify him!” in total joy.

No, I did not make that up.

There’s also Tong-Tong’s vampire parents, who somehow have finally found him across decades of time.

Lin Hsiao Lan was in a ton of these films — Kung Fu Wonderchild, Magic of Spell — usually as a little boy. She gets to play a little girl this time, even though she was in her 20s when it was filmed. I’m on the side of Chi-Chiang in this, an impoverished half-orphan stuck with a gentrifying neighborhood and rich kids who have it all instead of what he has, which is a drunk dad. So he does what any of us would: he bullies them with tales of the undead.

A movie that steals the theme from The Shining, most of the third Mr. Vampire movie and so many other films to basically jump all over the place and often forget where it’s going. No notes, 10/10.

You can watch this on YouTube.

SRS BLU-RAY RELEASE: Death-scort Service: Trinity (2015, 2017,

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In a dark and twisted tale set in Las Vegas, a deranged slasher targets a group of aspiring young escorts. As the body count rises, the women band together, using their wits and determination to confront the killer. Will they survive the night, or will the slasher claim them as his next victims?

Death-scort Service (2015): The setup is classic grindhouse: a group of working girls in Sin City finds themselves in the crosshairs of a serial killer who isn’t just looking for a thrill. He’s looking to turn the desert red. This isn’t a whodunit with a library and a pipe; it’s a who ’s-gonna-survive with a blade and a grudge.

Director Sean Donohue assembles a rogue’s gallery of indie horror stalwarts and adult film crossovers to populate his slaughterhouse. Krystal Pixie Adams (Michelle), Amethist Young (Gwen) and Ashley Lynn Caputo (Missy) lead the pack. Caputo, in particular, is a veteran of this kind of low-budget mayhem, having appeared in everything from Night of the Living Dead: Genesis to The Uh-oh Show!. And in a move straight out of the 1970s playbook, the film features a big star doing a cameo in Evan Stone. I mean, he’s a big star according to my hidden browser history.

That said, if you’re offended by, well, just about anything, this movie is ready to gross you out. It truly has some repellent death scenes, and if that’s what gets you going, good news! This is for you.

Death-Scort Service Part 2: The Naked Dead (2017): Sean Donahue returns with a sequel in which Michelle (Krystal “Pixie” Adams) is left behind to start over and forget her black past. There’s a new killer in Las Vegas out to see that that never happens.

Well, guess what? She’s dead in a few seconds, killed in a bubble bath, and we move on to new victims. Spoiler, huh? What if I told you someone’s ladybits have to deal with an electric carving knife?

This is an unapologetic exploitation flick. If the first movie was a peek behind the curtain, this one rips the curtain down. There is an absolute mountain of nudity on display here. Give it up for Bob Glazier. In the first film, he famously gave us a sack-tastic cameo, but here? He goes full-frontal. He’s bricked up, on display and apparently very proud of it.

This also goes totally Boogeyman II to show us most of the first film. Respect.

Taste Me: Death-Scort Service Part 3 (2018): The girls at the Tasty Chicks escort service are having a rough week. There’s a serial strangler stalking the streets, turning their colleagues into headlines and the police are—as usual—three steps behind. Defund the giallo police, defund the slasher police.

Enter our protagonist: a mysterious drifter who steps in to save a girl from an abusive john. He takes a bullet for his trouble, but in the world of these movies, no good deed goes unpunished or unrewarded with a stay in a brothel.

The drifter gets hauled back to the Tasty Chicks HQ and as the girls nurse him back to health, they realize they’ve got a potential pit bull on their hands. They offer him a job: stay in the house, keep your eyes peeled, and keep the Strangler from getting through the front door.

As our drifter recovers, he starts noticing that the Tasty Chicks are keeping some secrets of their own. It’s not just a killer outside; there’s something rotten and possibly cult-like happening inside the walls, like eating people. Whoops, spoiled again.

This one was produced by Sean Donohue, who did not direct or write. Instead, Chris Woods took over.

Extras on this SRS release include commentary tracks, photo galleries, trailers and behind-the-scenes for all three movies; FX footage; short films, a mini-documentary and more. You can get it from MVD.