EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by Eddie R., who subscribed at the Big B&S’er tier.

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4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. Every month, if you’d like.

Wow, what a mystery film. Marijuana Man claims to be from 1968. But if you’re a history nerd or just someone who watched a lot of weed documentaries, you’ll know that the Drug Enforcement Administration wasn’t actually established by President Nixon until 1973. Did the filmmakers somehow possess a psychic link to future federal bureaucracy? Did a time-traveling narc fly a 70s chopper back to a 1968 pot farm?

But who cares? This has a wild man just farming his crop and avoiding that helicopter while trying to win over a young lady with his kind bud. And you get some jammy music from a band called Airhead.

They’re not the 1990s band that was also known as Jefferson Airhead. Or the movie.

Marijuana Man — and that’s what I’m calling him — goes ham on a mushroom while sharing a joint with another hirsute individual. By the end of their session, they’re just lying in the grass.

But all good things must end. A woman doing a tarot spread foresees that Marijuana Man is living in a world that just can’t last, up against people he doesn’t even know he’s battling. So yeah, she may have drawn the fool, and he may have found the death card, but maybe he knows that the death draw really represents profound transformation and the natural ending of cycles. This card encourages letting go of what no longer serves you to allow for personal change.

Despite the ending, where the DEA takes him out, I get the feeling that he’ll live on through his crop. The hippie girl passes out his seeds and sends the others out into the world to plant his magic. And wow, they must have used that helicopter for the shot at the end, when everyone walks away and plants the seeds.

Preserved in the digital archives of the Prelinger Collection, Marijuana Man is a fascinating, gritty artifact of late-1960s or early-1970s independent filmmaking. Most likely shot on location in Marin or Sonoma County, this has some great looks at some early hybrids grown back in the old days. The footage itself stems from the collection of John Carlson (1951–2021), a notable San Francisco filmmaker, lighting technician, and educator who taught cinematography at the City College of San Francisco and worked for decades as a chief colorist at legendary Bay Area labs like Monaco Film and Video.

Thanks, Eddie R., for sending this my way. If anyone is reading this knows more about this movie, please reach out!

You can watch this on YouTube.

A creature is turning a small town into a buffet, and the local authorities are hilariously incompetent. They always are. A fed-up civilian gathers his bravest (or perhaps just most bored) friends to form a vigilante posse. They head straight for Bronson Canyon, the most overused filming location in Hollywood history (seen in everything from Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the Batman ’66 Batcave to Army of Darkness, The Phantom Empire, The Lost Empire, the original Flash Gordon serial, Robot Monster, Demonoid, and so many more movies).

The titular Zorgon is a triumph of whatever we found in the garage special effects. While the title promises an H-Bomb Beast, the actual creature usually ends up looking like a man in a wrinkled rubber suit with perhaps a few too many fins. The H-Bomb element is mostly handled through dialogue, with characters insisting the creature is radioactive despite it looking suspiciously like a damp carpet.

According to a YouTube comment, “The costume for ZORGON was actually made up of parts from the monster suits in Octaman and Schlock, with a great new mask created especially for ZORGON. fun, interesting little film. They should put it on DVD.”

The cast is the real highlight. There’s Ace Mask, who shows up in movies like Chopping Mall and Not of This Earth; Susan Turner, who did effects for 1941, Ghost Story, Dreamscape and more; stop motion and matte artist Jim Danforth, who worked on Prince of Darkness, Flesh Gordon and more; effects wizard David Allen, who directed The Primevals; Mark Thomas McGee, the co-writer and co-director of Equinox, as well as the writer of Hard to Die and Witch Academy; Jon Berg, who did effects for Star Wars and Dragonslayer; Bill Hedge, who worked on Species and did the puppet work for Night Train to Terror; Rick Baker (do I have to tell you who he is?) and director Kevin Fernan, making this as his student project for Pasadena City College.

He got an A-.

You can watch this on Cultpix.

“Hi! I’m dead! Well, actually, my name is Jill, well, it is, or it was or whatever! Anyway, I’m dead but you know what I mean! I’m Jill!” 

When a movie starts like that, I’ll watch the whole thing.

Felipe is introduced as a high school hero whose team just won a big game. Seeking to look cool and prepare for the college life he imagines, he smokes marijuana and drinks beer, noting that his old man does the same. His story ends abruptly when he gets behind the wheel of a convertible, drives recklessly and crashes, killing himself and his friend. 

Jill’s story begins at a house party where she meets a boy named Craig (who wears way too much cologne). He introduces her to cocaine, claiming it makes everything easy. Her addiction spirals quickly; she ends up trading her most prized possession, a necklace given to her by her grandmother, to a dealer for an eight-ball, then overdoses alone in her room.

Eddie is a bright, science-loving kid who gets pressured by an older friend to try crack cocaine, being told it turns the inside of your head into a video game. After just a few uses, Eddie collapses. The narrator reveals that Eddie had an undiagnosed congenital heart defect, and the crack cured it in the most macabre sense possible.

Directed by Traci Wald Donat, the daughter of Helen Reddy, and written by Robert Bucci and George Larrimore, this is a remnant of the just say no era, a war on drugs that kept people in prison for decades for marijuana possession, but also allowed the CIA to put crack into black neighborhoods. 

Speaking of drugs, Raymond Cruz, who played Felipe, would go on to be Tuco Salamanca on Breaking Bad.

Did I do drugs during my review? Of course I did. I’m Sam. Anyways, I’m dead, but I’m Sam!

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by Eddie R., who subscribed at the Big B&S’er tier.

Would you like me to write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Visit Ko-Fi.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. Every month, if you’d like.

Telephone is a 27‑minute short film written, directed, and produced by Eric Red in 1986, in which an emotionally distraught and suicidal woman (Laurie Latham, whose voice is in Reservoir Dogs) dials random numbers, hoping to connect with someone. She ends up reaching a man (Bud Cort, RIP, star of Harold and Maude), telling him that she plans to kill herself in a minute unless he can talk her out of it.

He doesn’t know her. He’s never met her. But suddenly, he has sixty seconds to save a life. The film captures a grueling, intimate power dynamic: while he hangs upside down in inversion boots trying to relax, he is forced into a psychological chess match where the stakes are literal life and death.

Eric Red, a Pittsburgh native, used this short as a calling card for his visceral, high-concept style. You can see the seeds of his later work here—the same DNA that made The Hitcher and Near Dark cult classics. Red has a gift for taking a simple, claustrophobic premise and ratcheting up the tension until it’s unbearable. He would go on to direct Cohen and Tate, Body Parts and Bad Moon, as well as write one of my favorite American giallo films — and one of the first DVDs I ever got — Blue Steel.

Filmed on location in Hollywood in 16 mm, the short is visually striking. The images of the woman’s apartment bathed in neon, and the hazy skyline behind her, are gorgeous. They evoke a mood similar to the famous scenes in Tokyo Decadence, which is impressive considering Telephone predates it by nearly a decade.

For younger viewers, Telephone serves as a time capsule. This was an era before caller ID or “star 69.” When the phone rang, you had no idea who was on the other end. It could be a friend, a telemarketer or—as in this film—a total stranger inviting you into their darkest moment. Red captures the terrifying intimacy of the old rotary phone system. As Latham’s character notes, the connection they share in that half-hour is “more intimate than if we’d fucked.”

The film deals with suicide in a way that feels raw and unpolished. In the mid-80s, these conversations happened in the shadows, and Red brings that isolation to the forefront. Despite the setup, the film’s closing remains a genuine surprise. While some critics argue it could be tighter, the deliberate tempo allows the audience to feel the same exhaustion and emotional depletion as the characters. You really start to feel for Cort’s character. Maybe it’s because as film nerds, we inherently love Cort and want him to succeed.

You can watch this on the director’s YouTube page.

Aurora Productions, which made this, is really The Family International, an American new religious movement founded in 1968 by David Brandt Berg. They also went under the names The Children of God, Teens for Christ, The Family of Love and The Family. It’s the cult that Rose McGowan, River, and Joaquin Phoenix were born into. Berg mainly communicated by letter until he died in 1984. That’s when his wife, Karen Zerby, became the Queen and Prophetess.

According to Wikipedia, she “… married Steve Kelly (also known as Peter Amsterdam), an assistant of Berg’s whom Berg had handpicked as her “consort”. Kelly took the title of “King Peter” and became the face of TFI, speaking in public more often than either Berg or Zerby. There have been multiple allegations of child sexual abuse made by past members, including against Zerby.”

The music, however…

Take it from the copy on the box: “A startling new music video! It will send you racing one footstep ahead of danger and death! One heartbeat away from your wildest dream of love! A music video that will take your imagination by storm! It will plunge you into the dwelling place of the damned, then thrust you into a dimension beautiful beyond description!”

There’s a song about a green door in this that goes from fun to fear so quickly, as well as “Watch Out for 666.” This is the kind of insanity that the Catholic Church could never provide me as a child, and if they did make stuff like this, I would have never lapsed. a

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

Todd (LeJohn, President Skullgore on NPRmageddon) has a job interview that starts with a handwritten sign that says, “Take a seat, we’ll be right back,” and continues with an AI, Athena 2.0 (Dawna Lee Heising), conducting the interview. She’s a human resources interface designed to make him more comfortable and to maximize his interview experience. 

That means a series of tarot cards that help her to evaluate his mental fitness for employment. We don’t even know what the job is, while Athena 42.0 knows so much about Todd.

Directed by Craig Railsback, who co-wrote it with Dr. Heather Joseph-Witham, this is about how the work for Todd will help him find purpose. He yells back that he’s not an algorithm that needs to be optimized. His answer? Pick three cards.

Instead of learning about the job, Todd is confronted by the pain of his life, the things that he’s lived through, flashbacks that are so intense that they bring him to tears. “The tower burns because its foundation is false,” states the AI.

“The cards are not answers. They are mirrors,” she says, before asking for another card to be revealed. He must learn if he can be redeemed, as long as he dares to reach it. At the end, Todd says, “I know what I want now,” before unplugging the room. 

The Job has great lighting that really makes such a small space work for this quick film. The original score and AI special effects are composed by Dr. Renah Wolzinger, and they both contribute to the story, making this a swift and efficient short that both looks and feels good. Even the credits are unique in this, I love how they were animated!

At one time, in the Tokyo theme park Sanrio Puroland, this Godzilla movie appeared as part of a ride. It was made with costumes and props from the Heisei Godzilla movies (WikiZilla says they’re the “RadoGoji Godzilla suit and Rodan puppet from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, and the Mothra imago puppet from Godzilla vs. Mothra” and the launching area for the space ship comes from Bye-Bye Jupiter), with Megumi Odaka (Princess from the Moon, Miki in Godzilla vs. Biolante) appearing in the beginning as Miki, Koichi Kawakita doing the special effects and Akira Ifukube music.

This footage comes from the Japan-only Godzilla Final Box release. During the original ride, as Godzilla battles Rodan and Mothra, General Hello Kitty saves the day. For copyright reasons, this was edited out.

But what riders got was a 4D 70mm face-to-face showdown with Godzilla. And you could even smell the kaiju. What was their scent? I wonder. According to this article, the team that made it initially made Godzilla smell like alligators. 

This site explains it all: “You can enter a Virtual Reality world with Godzilla, at the amusement park Sanrio Puroland in Tokyo. Battle with Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra as you try to help defend Japan.

Your adventure begins in the prep room, where you wait while the group ahead of you enjoys the film. In the prep room, several video monitors display a lengthy Godzilla trivia quiz. Then your hostess, played by Megumi Odaka, and her sidekick friend, Hello Kitty, explain your mission. Your UNGCC fighter craft is demonstrated by your pilot. With your 3D glasses in your hand, you are asked to enter the theater. Once safe and secure in your seats, the show begins.”

Directed by Kôichi Kawakita and written by Marie Terunuma, this is a rare modern Godzilla film featuring all the classic monsters. A spaceship called Earth has been sent to a monster planet where all the kaiju now live. It spots the other ship, Planet, and saves it by shooting at Godzilla. However, a dimensional portal opens, sending everyone to Japan, where the kaiju rampage through the streets (even destroying Tokyo Station, where Sanrio’s competition has their offices) before being sent back home in bubbles. 

Those kaiju and their bubbles. Gets them every single time.

You can watch this on YouTube (and fast-forward to 10:30 for the Godzilla live action).