In the tradition of Curse of the Blue Lights, Manchurian Avenger, Mind Killer, Night Vision, and The Spirits of Jupiter, here’s another, early ’80s homegrown effort from the wilds of Denver, Colorado. Sure, there are other, obscure Mile Highers to review, such as Savage Water (1979), Lansky’s Road (1985), and Back Street Jane (1989), but good luck locating vintage VHS copies of those Rocky Mountain low budgeters, and there are no — unlike The Jar — freebie or with-ads online streams of those home growners to share.

Yeah, there’s nothing like a reputation among horror fans as “being the worst film ever made” to have a film transition — not by a reissues imprint (Arrow, Severin, Kino), mind you, but by the film’s fans — out of the analog snow drifts of the brick and mortar old to the digital streams of today. And when those same fans shout for a DVD/Blu restore . . . well, there must be something in those frames, right?

Outside of a brief, local theatrical release on April 16, 1984, The Jar is purely a direct-to-video effort (a genre lumped-in with shot-on-video films intended for direct-to-video release) that received its first, widespread distribution in 1987 via the Magnum Entertainment imprint. As result, we have a film that passes the James Whitcomb Riley SOV-duck test — and lands as a buckshot-filled mallard on our SOV stacks.

Well, eh, maybe.

While the proceedings aren’t exactly blowing off the lid off any canisters, The Jar is not that bad.

It’s hard to believe this lone effort by screenwriter George Bradley and director Bruce Toscano — an effort clearly influenced by Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case (1982), with a soupçon of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981), and a dash of Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm (1979) — was shot in Techniscope Anamorphic at a 2.35:1 aspect ratio (if we are to believe the IMDb). Sure, video tapes uploaded to video sharing sites suffer from repetitive, brick and mortar wear n’ tear renting and, regardless of what format a film is shot in, you’ll experience a VHS-wash out, but shot in 35mm? This film? The fuzzy, color-hazing duck a l’orange aromas of the S-VHS and U-Matic recording format of broadcast-news ENG cameras and 3/4-inch U-Matic videotape using Ikegami cameras, permeates the nostrils.

Regardless of the film’s rumored $200,000 price tag — keeping in mind the “Midnight Movie” and VHS rental classics of The Evil Dead shot for $375,000, Phantasm for $300,000, and Basket Case for $35,000 — The Jar comes across as a much cheaper production. In fact, while The Jar more closely resembles a Don Dohler 16mm-to-35mm backyard effort (his debut, The Alien Factor, shot for $3,500; his sophmore effort, Fiend, shot for $6,000), Bruce Toscano’s efforts — however valiant — are void of the against-the-budget Dohler charms we’ve come to adore. The Jar is a perpetually grainy and dark film where the framing is non-existent and the dubbing out-of-sync. It simply does not look like — regardless of its impressive-against-the-budget “Vietnam flashback,” complete with a helicopter; a rental which probably chewed up much of the budget — a $200,000 movie.

The Jar is a film with no middle critical ground: Those who love it, love it. And the haters are as cunning as they are cruel. There is, however, a sliver of middle ground when it comes to the film’s score: everyone agrees the ambient, Goblinesque keyboards by a one-and-done artist, Obscure Sighs (actually director Bruce Toscano and cinematographer Cameron MacLeod), is better than the film deserves. It’s those cherish, Italian-giallo Goblin memories that lend the few to name drop Dario Argento. True, Argento may drift into bizarre, disjointed narratives with out-of-nowhere twists in his works, but a soundtrack alone does not an Argento film, make. What everyone on both sides of the critical fence agree on: all of the respective film disciplines — in front and behind the cameras — took one hell of swing for fences, but instead, struck out.

This critic concurs.

The soundtrack is engaging. The film — in its technical aspects of cinematography, lighting, editing, and sound — is not. There is, however, something to appreciate in writer George Bradley’s insightful and inventive, religious-inspired chronicle. This reviewer sees an influence from The Holy Bible’s synoptic gospels narrative of the Temptation of Christ: the film’s lead character of Paul, our faux-Jesus, is sent off into “the wilderness” to be tempted by the jar’s inhabitant, our faux Satan.

“What the hell, R.D? Are you nuts? Did you watch the same film we did?” Bill Van Ryn bewilderingly drags his cigar. “First, it’s Ingmar Bergman, Brigadoon, Inca death masks and incestuous ghosts with The House That Vanished. Now you’re turning a best-forgotten, SOV piece of junk into a Jesus parable? Sam,” Bill chair swivels. “What the fuck is it with this guy? And tell him to stop featuring me in his rambling, half-assed reviews.”

“I know, Bill. I know. I’ll talk to him. Just leave him be for the moment. He’s quiet and happy in his corner. Besides, we have a Groovy Doom double feature to plan,” dismisses Sam the Bossman.

“Fuck those bastards,” R.D leans into and frantically fingers his laptop. “Here’s some Fellini and Ambrose Bierce references to frost your ass.”

When the final frame of the film’s end credits rolled, a single world appeared: Carrion, which was the film’s shooting title. From the Latin, caro, meaning “meat,” it refers to dead, rotting flesh — animal and human. Another of the film’s alternates titles — if we believe the IMDb — is Charon, the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly dead across the river Styx.

You’ll recall that the powers at New Line Cinema retitled Sam Raimi’s Book of the Dead as The Evil Dead, due to reasoning that “you don’t want movie goers thinking they’ll have to read when seeing a movie.” If one takes a viewing of the script for The Jar — originally released in 1984 as Carrion — in that context, it seems screenwriter George Bradley brought a much more profound narrative, one that expands beyond our assumed, previously mentioned, VHS-horror rental inspirations.

In addition to a definite, Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits (1965) inspiration, there’s also an Ambrose Bierce An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890) vibe in Bradley’s pages. It is that Bierce connection — as result of our protagonist’s war flashbacks — that led some fans to opine The Jar reminds of the later-released Jacob’s Ladder (1990). That exquisite, Bruce Joel Rubin work is, itself, an afterlife amalgamation of the Genesis parable of Jacob’s Ladder, Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, tales from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and Bierce’s short story.

Yes, I’ll debate you on this fact: That level of intelligence, as well as impressionistic ambiguity, is in the frames of The Jar.

Is the jar’s occupant, in fact, Charon itself? Is it a coincidence that many a Greek lekythos, that is, a vessel or canister, used to carry anointing oils for funerary rites, are decorated with artistic Charons and found in tombs? Is the jar of our film, in fact, a lekythos meant to anoint the dead? Is Paul, our protagonist, already dead, going through a series of tribulations on his trip through purgatory before reaching Heaven?

The visual craftsmanship of that intelligence, however, as we’ll come to discover, is not in the frames. The Jar is case of — well, a jar of — a film where noble ambitions, it seems, exceeded the skill sets involved. However, director Bruce Bradley and his cinematographer, Cameron MacLoed, are not two morons running around with a camera making a movie. The Jar certainly has its WTF moments of Euro-cinema ambiguity — which is my personal, celluloid jam — pitter-pattering afoot.

The most enjoyable aspect of reviewing lost tapes from the VHS fringes in our now, digital age is that the actors involved with the film are able to offer their experiences on social media, in this case, the IMDb: Gary Wallace, who portrayed the lead, Paul, confirmed the “amateur” aspects of the film.

Wallace tells us the film was shot for $200,000, in two stretches of two weeks: the first was shot in the fall, while the second shot in the spring, with pickup shots in the summer. No only were rehearsals non-existent during the shoot: all of the dialog was dubbed. The cast would shoot from 5 to 6 am until dark. Then return to the studio and dub until 1 to 2 am that morning. The process then repeated the next day, etc. Wallace also tells us that director Bruce Toscano — a photographer by trade — decided he “didn’t want the 60 Hz” signal so he could sync the recorded voices to the film. Toscano and his assistant [sound recording Ronnie Cramer, we assume] ended up cutting little pieces of tape and splicing them together to at least try to make the sound match the movie.

“I think he [Bruce Toscano] and the script writer [George Bradley] had a vision of what they wanted the movie to be,” recalls actor Gary Wallace. “If I remember correctly, they were trying to portray various incidents of inhumanity and how [that] inhumanity could pass from one person to the next.”

That’s what the Jar — or at least the occupant of the Jar, is: a mystical, otherworldly canister/creature that tests the humanity of its possessor and, it seems, in order to save their own “humanity,” they have to pass the canister and its (forget the VHS cover) blue, demonic occupant (that looks a Ghoulies (1985) outcast) to another person. Or the Jar, after if finishes draining a soul, and prior to its host’s death, inspires its passing to another soul.

Now, here’s were the dark photography and poor framing we previously spoke of, comes in: but since we are low-budget cheating, here, it makes — from a creative standpoint — sense. Just not from a narrative one. Did Paul hit another car? Did a car hit him? Did he hit the old man? Did he just run off into a ditch and find the old man? Was the old man hitchhiking or just laying on the roadside? Did the Occupant of the Jar set a trap and make Paul drive off the road to find the old man, so the Jar could be passed on? (I personally think it’s the latter. It’s also obvious: The “accident” was shot — as with the nighttime car scenes for The Evil Dead, as well as Reggie’s ice cream truck wreck in Phantasm — on a darkened soundstage, well, an ad-hoc’d warehouse.)

Anyway, after an “automotive accident,” Paul picks up a crazed, old “hitchhiker” (as some critics have stated) obsessed with a jar he carries in a crumpled paper bag. After taking the man to his apartment — instead of the hospital (so goes the Jar’s power to do its will, IMO) — the man disappears (goes to Heaven or some afterlife, IMO): but leaves behind the Jar. Paul opens the Jar. And no matter how many times Paul gets rid of the Jar, it — with its fetus-like occupant (that never actually comes out of the jar to crawl around) — returns.

So starts off the film’s Coscarelliesque surrealism meets David Lynch symbolism (think Eraserhead) — only with none of either filmmaker’s level of non-linear style or viewer engagement. Paul’s disjointed hallucinations and/or dreams where reality meshes with illusion take him from watching his own birth in a blood-filled bathtub (my interpretation of who the teen in the bathtub, is), seeing himself crucified (as he looks down, deep inside a back alley dumpster), a black & white flashback when he interacts with his younger self (again, my interpretation), and a creepy little, Stephen King-type girl walking with a balloon in a park (Is it his dead daughter or little sister? I’m lost . . .), as well as a group of cloaked monks out in the rocky desert (carrying the cross to Paul’s crucifixion).

So — at the risk of plot spoiling — does Paul kill his pretty, romantically-inclined neighbor when she appears to him . . . as the old man who cursed him with the Jar? Does Paul eventually pass off the Jar to his boss to rid himself of the evil? Should we directly pass “Go” on the celluloid Monopoly board and go straight to the Aylmer in Frank Henenlotter’s Brain Damage (1988) to suck our brains dry? Have we gazed deeper, down inside The Jar than it probably deserved to be? Is it really better than most critics have opined?

No matter.

We know you’ll open The Jar because, you, like us, enjoy out-trashing the last trashy mess we just watched. Take comfort in knowing there’s at least a contingent that enjoy The Jar (including moi). The same can’t be said for the abysmal remake of Jacob’s Ladder. Yes, there was a remake released in 2019: everyone hated it. (Ditto for the 2019 remake swipe at David Cronenberg’s Rabid. Just why? Why? Oh, why!)

You can watch The Jar on You Tube (the Magnum version) and You Tube (the Antoniana version). The soundtrack also has its fans, as you’ll listen from the You Tube clips HERE, HERE and HERE. The second two are fan remixes that make it sound more Tangerine Dream than Goblin, however. But that’s not a bad thing.

Perhaps those remixes could be used in a remake? The story for a great film, is there.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Fate is a bitch.

Fate is you surfing around the various movie-centric pages you’ve “liked” on your social media platforms — and having the cover of Todd Sheets’s ode to sorority babes on Paul Zamarelli’s VHSCollector.com group starring back at you.

Fate also means you have to review that movie of your youth for the future analog generations of snowy n’ white noised video horndogs — regardless of that film’s actual lack of horns, hooters, and dogs.

Sheets is part of the ’80s SOV vanguard inspired by the self-made, 16mm exploits of New Jersey’s Don Dohler who gave us charming, ’70s drive-in schlock such as Fiend. It was the efforts of Dohler that paved the way for the shot-on-video and released straight-to-VHS purveyances of Dennis Devine, Donald Farmer, Jon McBride, Brett Piper, and Mark Polonia — each who we’ve gone on about at the site, to your ad nauseam chagrin.

The resume of “Kansas City’s Prince of Gore” dates back to Blood of the Dead, issued as two, two-part shorts in 1985. The Karo syrup and Spirit Gum mayhem got really interesting with his energetic, sixth production — which became Sheets’s most successful rental — Dead Things (1986). While many SOV’ers are long since done and gone (Justin Simonds of Spine fame, vanished; Farmer and Polonia are still spinnin’ the sprockets) — Sheets is still at it (and on film #51) with his most recent offerings of Hi-Death (2018) and Clownado (2019).

Now, you are most likely questioning our raving about these camcordered efforts and their makers. You must understand that we, the Allegheny cubicle farmers of B&S About Movies — as our buds over at Wild Eye Entertainment complemented us — are doing our part to hold up the old guard of the genre-writing filled zines of the ’80s that first covered this then new sub-genre of shot-on-video films. So we give SOVs a break — a very wide berth (see Nigel the Psychopath, as an example) — that we would never give to the direct-to-streaming horror that gets released today . . . well, unless that 21st century DTS’er is from one of the ’80s old guard, such as Donald Farmer — who got his start with Cannibal Hookers (1987) and most recently released Shark Exorcist (2015) and Bigfoot Exorcist (2021) — and Mark Polonia — who recently released Noah’s Shark (2021) that’s written by fellow, digital SOV-rebooter, John Oak Dalton.

While the video box claims this fifteenth production from Sheets is a “sequel” to David DeCoteau’s USA Network cable-run Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1988), in reality — outside of DeCoteau producing the film and the title similarity — it’s not.

DeCoteau, if you’re not familiar with his works, is also part of that ’80s SOV vanguard: only he, unlike his analog brethren, was able to transition out of the shot-on-video realms to produce actual “films” distributed by indie shingles (Wizard Video and Empire Pictures) with the likes of Dreamaniac (1986) and Creepozoids (1987) — both which, like Sorority Babes, not only became top home video rentals but also oft-programmed cable television favorites. And double-D, as with Donald Farmer and Mark Polonia, is still making movies, only more successfully: Decoteau just released his 25th “Wrong” movie for the female-centric Lifetime channel, The Wrong Valentine (2021).

So, with most of the adult film-centric cast from the real “sequel” to Prehistoric Bimbos in Armageddon City (1991), Sheets weaves this tale about five well-endowed bimbos of the down-and-out Kappa Beta sorority given a chance to join the more fashionable and popular Felta Delta house. The “death” comes in the form of their initiation: spending the night in an abandoned and rumored-to-be-haunted college. Complicating matters is that the girls screwed with an antique crystal ball during a seance (between their floor games of Twister) that unleashed a force trapped inside. And the entity is pissed and follows them to the abandoned college. Also along for the ride are two, pizza-delivering frat nerds trying to score and two crusty antique dealers who’ve tracked down the ball and only they can reseal the demon back inside.

Again, we give these camcorder, brick and mortar-released SOV flicks a lot of critical wiggle room, but man: this one really is a mess and it has none of the charms of the cheaper and less skilled Nigel the Psychopath. The frames are perpetually soft focused, the “acting” is non-existent to the point of bimbettes reading off-camera cue cards, the juvenile sex jokes don’t land, the effects are cheap ‘n’ fake (a self eyeball removal; a 2×4 shoved down the throat), and regardless of sleeve’s promise: there’s little-to-none of boobs and blood we came for. Hey, it’s only 70 minutes of your time and a forefather to today’s direct-to-streaming horror films. So view it as a historical, celluloid artifact to file away in your grey-mattered trivia banks to amaze your friends with your film knowledge. You know, like I am doing to you, the three people who read this review (okay, one: namely me).

In the end, this wasn’t bloody and trashy enough for me back then or now during this second go around — not after the joys of renting Sheets’s two-part Blood of the Dead and Dead Things all those snowy n’ white noised years ago. And here I am, all these digital years later, lamenting my Todd memories (to myself) and getting free on-the-job screeners of his latest flick, the aforementioned-linked, Clownado. So, while the circle completes . . . the circle should really be broken because I am too old for this SOV shite. . . .

“Get that motherf**king VHS tape out of my motherf**king VCR!”

You can learn more about and continue to follow the career of Todd Sheets through his Extreme Entertainment website and Facebook. Be sure to check out our exclusive interview with Todd from October 2022 as he talks about his career and his Video Vengeance reissue shingle. During the last two weeks of January 2022 we had another, another “SOV Week” blow out and reviewed another of Todd’s films, Nightmare Asylum (1992). In fact, we’ve reviewed quite a few of his films and this link will populate what we’ve done, thus far.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Editor’s Note, July 2022 Update: Thanks to our readers for quickly making this one of our most-visited reviews, with Denverites contacting us to discuss their memories of this mostly-never seen theatrically, hard-to-find film on grey-VHS. Even the director himself, Russel Kern, discovered our review — and his July 2022 memories of the production now end this review. Yes, the positivity of the Internet is real. Now, let’s sit back with a filling Denver Sandwich and a cold Colorado Bulldog and enjoy the show!

Update: July 2023: The Spirits of Jupiter: Uncut is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime and we have all the details, here.

Okay . . . now here’s what we had to say about the film in November 2021, as part of an “Apoc Films” theme week.

“Jupiter is in the house of Aries . . . the great one will cool his sword in blood.”
— The Roman god of Jupiter, or is that the Greek god of Zeus, over the opening credits, warning of man’s end

“Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania. Neptune, Titan, Stars can frighten.”
— Syd Barrett

Denver on Film

After enjoying my revisiting with Micheal Krueger’s Denver, Colorado, shot-and-released SOV’ers Mind Killer and Night Vision (1987)*, my analog memories drifted back to this comic book shop renter: an unidentified flying oddball if there ever was one. Okay, The Spirits of Jupiter isn’t an official SOV, as it’s analogous to Don Dohler’s Fiend: a drive-in production shot on 16mm and blown up to 35mm. But you know how we feel about the 16 to 35 flicks: they walk and quack like an SOV duck, more so when our first exposure to those films wasn’t in a drive-in, but as a home video renter.

And with a cover like the one on the left, you can’t not rent it on the 5-5-5 or one-day .49 cent plan. As for the bogus cover on the right: it in no way represents the movie under the slipcover. The one on the left, however, ever so sadly, does.

Who’s Russell Kern?

Prior to making his directing debut within The Spirits of Jupiter, self-made Colorado filmmaker Russell Kern, in his scripting debut, cast go-to old codger TV western actor Sunshine Parker** in the G-rated family film, Spittin’ Image (1982). I vaguely remember that film spin spinnin’ on a lazy, UHF-TV afternoon, right around the same time I was first exposed to the likes of the not-really-kid-flicks The Little Dragons, Mystery Mansion, and the old man pedo-alien non-starter, The Force on Thunder Mountain. I have no interest in remembering anymore than that — or give it a review proper, seeing Sunshine Parker in another film, be damned.

At that point, Russell Kern vanished, only to return as the producer and director of the never-heard-of-or-seen drama Pools of Anger (1992), about a man who dedicates his life to suicide prevention. Is it a Christploitation flick? It appears on various lists, based on one’s opinion as such, but there’s no information on the web regarding the plot to verify if it is, in fact, a Christian-slanted tale. (Speaking of which: check out our “Exploring: ’70s Christian Cinema” feature, it’s loaded with films to check out.)

Anyway, let’s pop in a copy of the lone film by Russel Kern that I know all too well: the George Romero rip that is The Spirits of Jupiter . . . but we must emptor our caveats before we get started. . . .

Is this as bad as the Canadian in-the-woods-talking SOV apoc-romp Survival: 1990? Eh, er . . . an on-the-fence “No” to that question. Is it any better than the Gary Lockwood-starring South America-doubling-for-Texas apoc slop that is Survival Zone? Definitely a “No,” to that one, as that movie stinks but Lockwood’s presence makes it watchable. Did this all need a touch of David A. Prior? God help me, but a resounding “Yes!” Where was David A. Prior when we needed him with his fleet of post-apoc Jeep Cherokees from Future Force and Future Zone. Maybe if Cornell Wilde made this back in the ’70s and he had some planetary, gravitational pull junk science bring down the fall of man in his apoc-opus, No Blade of Grass. . . .

Instead, we got the production savvy-common sense of Prior’s celluloid partner-in-crime David Winters’s concrete-blocked wall space ships complete with PCs on folding tables from Space Mutiny.

Yes, for you are about to be Def-Conned, as well as Def-Fucked, 1.

The Review . . . with Plot Spoilers

If you’re a fan of Cirio H. Santiago’s Equalizer 2000 and Anthony Maharaj’s Return of the Kickboxer (1987), Rex Cutter, Richard Norton’s co-star in both of those films (as Dixon and Col. Ted Ryan, respectively), stars here (and Executive Produces, as this is his vanity affair). Speaking of Kern’s debut film, Spittin’ Image: that film served as Cutter’s feature film debut, after getting his start as a background actor on several episode of Battlestar Galactica — as a Cylon Warrior. As is the case with most self-financed, regional-made flicks: the rest of the cast is one-and-gone, sans one: Chopper Bernet, who makes his acting debut, here. The ‘Chop is still crazy after all these years, with a lot of video game voice work on his resume for the G.I Joe, Marvel, and Star Wars franchises.

Okay, enough with the trivia. Let’s get into the “Romero Connection” of it all.

Hell, forget about the Romero premise. Look at the box: you’ve got a John Wayne lookalike (the hero), a CHiPs motorcycle cop (the villain), a racing Piper Cub, a helicopter, what looks like robed monks on horseback (that never show up in the film), a wayward couple on the run (to be rescued) — and Jupiter aligned with a bunch of planets. So what’s not to rent, here?

This film’s raison d’etre, however, isn’t just George Romero’s The Night of the Living Dead, well, more to the point, The Crazies. This time, instead of an errant chemical spill or crashed space probe, it’s the Jupiter Effect: an effect that fueled many of the speculative documentaries of the 1970s regarding humanity’s demise, as well as various Christploition apoc flicks.

Don’t laugh, ye reader: for the fear — as with the biblical-assured The Rapture — of the scientifically-predicted Jupiter Effect, was real.

Grade school and middle schoolers were chilled to the bone, via the pages of Scholastic magazine in our English classes and the pages of Popular Mechanics in our Industrial Arts classes. When you turned on TBN – The Trinity Broadcasting Network, Hal Lindsay, he of the bible prophecy document The Late Great Planet Earth, had all of the bible passages collated and correlated to “The Jupiter Effect” at the ready: for by March of 1982, the door would be opened for the rise of The Antichrist.

The “fear” began with the worldwide, international best seller, The Jupiter Effect (1974), written by John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann. They advised that, on March 10, 1982, when Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto were aligned on the far side of the Sun, a multitude of catastrophes would befall the Earth, including a great quake along the San Andreas Fault; a devastating quake that would “snap” South California off the North American continent and plunge into the Pacific.

Well, er, ah . . . California is still here, so?

The duo wrote a second, lesser-selling (natch) book, The Jupiter Effect Reconsidered. Now, according to their new prediction: The Jupiter Effect actually happened, only two years earlier — and it triggered the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State, on May 18, 1980.

Well, at least we got a movie out of it, with an honorable mention to Hal Lindsay, but a HUGE thanks to George Romero . . . we think. Yeah, let’s blame Georgie Boy.

In George Romero’s Pittsburgh in 1968: an errant military chemical spill triggered a worldwide zombie plague (meanwhile, in Jean Rollin’s La Morte Vivante, U.S aka’in as The Living Dead Girl*˟, a chemical spill over a coffin in a family crypt vamps (or zombifies) a too-soon-dead young woman; she triggers a plague, natch). In Russell Kern’s Denver in 1980: Jupiter’s “increased gravitational pull” affects the human brain (since it’s mostly made of water) — especially people with “certain blood types” — in higher elevations. And since the state of Colorado’s elevation runs between 10,000 to 12,000 feet, residents in the Rocky Mountains (especially in the highest point of the fictional Canon City) start acting irrationally (e.g., the town sheriff airs out the ol’ doggers on his desk — then shoots off his toes; implied, not shown, as we cutaway to Jupiter, again), then transform into flesh-hungry (on-a-budget, of course) zombies (i.e., people running around, growling, sans Fulci guacamole or Mattei grease paints; you know, just like a Rollin Spirit gummed-corn flakes n’ Karo Syrup and Red Dye #5 joint).

However, unlike a Romero joint: the local Denver acting troupe cavorting amid the frames stinks like the rotted, porcine non-thespin’ that it is. The effects — which take a snail’s pace to get to — are a bunch of cutaway-not-gory, clumsy rubber-misses. Our hero looses an eye in a (darkly shot) dog attack: end scene. Next scene: he’s sportin’ an eye patch. A butcher lops-off a customer’s hand (in a cost-effective wide shot): End scene. Next scene: there’s a rubber hand on the counter. A shovel-growling mob take a man to task, again, in a wide shot, for another SFX denial.

So, what about the plot?

That’s just it: we’re 40-plus minutes into this and there still isn’t one. There’s zero gore, for it’s all cost-effectively implied. And there’s not that much crazy. People are just unruly: men smack their wives and hold a knife to the throat, a bar fight breaks out, people rant at invisible people, and a woman threatens suicide — by jumping off a sidewalk. Of course, every time someone has an episode, there’s that pesky cutaway to Jupiter — so we know that Jupiter is at fault, here, and that the people of Denver aren’t just behaving at the usual, human status quo. Too bad we can’t blame all of 2020’s protests and CHOP n’ CHAZ zones shenanigans on gravitational shifts caused by a gas giant. (Oh, Jupiter, ye god of the skies and thunder: Did you organize the Kyrie Irving protest at the Brooklyn Barclay Center? I hope the heavenly collection plates cleaned up on the Nets losing their home opener loss to the Charlotte Hornets.)

Anyway, the lone unaffected here is our faux-John Wayne/Rooster Cogburn, aka Big Jim Diller, aka our fair Rex Cutter. And why isn’t Big Jim going nuts? Oh, you must have fast-forwarded though that plot-point: a midget Indian shaman who runs a desert junkyard warns Big Jim to wear a gold plate under his ten-gallon hat.

Finally, it took us an hour, but we’ve gotten to the apocalypse. And it ain’t all that apoc, natch.

Big Jim’s finally made it back to his hometown from his remote silver mine — now under a klaxon-echoing, car-carass and street fire-strewn apocalypse, complete with law enforcement vs. military machine gun fire (the only action-driven SFX in this borealypse) — to rescue his son and daughter, which he comes to discover, have been kidnapped by the town sheriff.

Ugh. Not this worn out apoc-plot, again.

Remember the apoc-slopper The Survivalist, where Marjoe Gortner makes it his life’s mission to bring Steve Railsback to justice — apoc fallouts, be damned? Well, our infected town Sheriff, who, before the plague broke out, suspected Big Jim of hiring illegal aliens (i.e. “undocumented workers”) to work his silver mine. And our sheriff will bring Big Jim to justice, Jupiter Effect fallouts — and racism — be damned.

Eventually, at the 70-minute mark — and we still have 40, yes 40 minutes to go — Big Jim hooks up with a group of scientists holed up in an abandoned mine that was secret-converted to a bomb shelter during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And be grateful they did: their junk science-babble about the moon, the Earth’s tides, and man’s body is 90% water, the brain is mainly water, etc., really helps along (not) the film’s exposition-heavy plot of all talk and no action. . . .

Now, moi, referring back to our Syd Barrett quote: I’d have scripted a conspiracy that Syd Barrett “Eddie Wilson’d” his own death and he converted the mine into a home (converting missile silos, bunkers, and other abandoned government installations is an architectural reality) and the ex-Pink Floyd leader solves the mystery: for “Astronomy Domine” foretold it all. But alas, Russell Kern, and not your fair R.D Francis, has the funds to fiance his own screenplays. So we end up with Rooster Cogburn, and not a faux-Syd Barrett, saving Denver from an apocalypse.

Yes. The Duke of Denver will save you. Where’s Issac Hayes when we need ’em? Or Sunshine Parker. Or Ernest Borgnine. . . . Hey, know your Escape from New York actors, buddy.

Wrapping It Up . . . with Some Zom-intel

In the end, Russell Kern’s The Spirits of Jupiter isn’t a horror film. It’s a not science fiction film. It is, however, a sometimes (very bad) comedy. It’s not a western, but in a Mad Maxian sense — courtesy of Cutter’s John Wayne-cum-Max Rockatansky — it is. And it takes us one hour fifty minutes to get there. Yes. Not 80. Not 90. But a snooze-inducing 110 minutes. A valiant effort? Sure. No one sets out to make a bad film . . . but this time, for this reviewer, this almost-forty year and forgotten grey-market apoc’er ain’t cutting it in my beloved apoc sweepstakes. No offenses to any of the hard-working cast and crew, intended. And I am not the only reviewer who expressed these same concerns. . . .

Ah, on the upside, let’s give Mr. Kern (some) credit where it is due:

If you know your zombie history: English romantic poet Robert Southy wrote a book, The History of Brazil (1819), and gave us the first use of the word “zombie” in the English language. Ah, but Southy pinched the term from Thomas Lindley, who used the West African-Kongo language term fourteen years earlier, in his Narrative of a Voyage to Brazil (1805). Back then, “zombie” referred to a “soulless corpse revived by witchcraft,” as well as a West African-Haiti voodoo serpent-deity. Then, once W.B Seabrook published his account of his travels in Haiti with The Magic Island (1929) — with a tale of freshly-dug bodies revived by sorcery — all clichéd Hell let let loose in Hollywood. And yes, you watched that book as the Bela Lugosi-starring White Zombie (1932).

Since then, the U.S., Italian and Spanish film industries, once the Tinseltown sprockets tired of the voodoo angle and the “when hell became full” inversion, gave us zombies via space probe crashes, by priest suicide, by secret government chemicals and warfare, and the corker, courtesy of Jorge Grau: by ultrasonic radiation to kill insects: yes, an insect killing machine, in The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974).

So, to Russell Kern one-upping Grau’s bug-machine zombies with new-and-improved Jupiter Effect-zombies: we thank you . . . well, just a little. . . .

As with Will MacMillan’s vanity SOV’er Cards of Death (which I friggin’ love to death), after a quick-and-gone local release, The Spirits of Jupiter, never seen a full-scale U.S. release and never made it out on video. While MacMillan’s vanity affair made it back to U.S. shores as a grey-market VHS out of Japan, Rex Cutter’s vanity effort crossed the ocean from the ports of the Netherlands and Poland as a U.S. grey marketer. The later, Euro-titled greys as Planet Gone Mad ain’t helping, either, as it leads you believe you’ve been duped with a repack of another apoc-sloppy non-starter, World Gone Wild (1987). And you wish you were duped with that Adam Ant-starring mess. And we thought Steve Barkett’s vanity apoc’er The Aftermath (1982) was a mind-trying watch. Well, Russell Kern topped it, or bottomed out, depending one’s celluloid masochistic perspective.

In the end, that’s what is all about at B&S About Movies: we may rip these old, ’80s VHS’ers now and again, but man: we love these films from the VHS shelves of grey-market yore. In fact, some commenters on the IMDb, Letterbox, and various VHS message boards have mentioned that they got their copies of The Spirits of Jupiter from VSOM, Video Search of Miami’s catalog (this Tap Talk thread will get you get you up to speed on that beloved, catalog-order shingle). That’s how dedicated we ’80s video junkies are to analog trench-warriors like Russell Kern. It’s guys like Kern that made comic book video store renting all-the-sweeter.

So, should you skip The Spirits of Jupiter . . . and stick with the small-town-gone-wild shenanigans of Bud Cardos with Mutant (1984) and Nico Mastorakis’s Nightmare at Noon (1988) for your eh-it’s-not-a-Romero-chemical-spill-joint-but-why-not-I’m-desperate-for-entertainment apoc fix? Opinions vary.

You can watch The Spirits of Jupiter on You Tube . . . then again, this 11 minute highlight reel should be enough to wet your whistle, padre. Eh, that may be too much too belly up to the bar for, Big Hoss. So toss back this two-minute reel of the “madness” scenes to diminish your own snow-drifting, analog madness.

Insights from Director Russell Kern in July 2022

“Well, I did enjoy your review, and little did you know: you reviewed the bootlegged, early version of Spirits of Jupiter. By the way: the equally-stolen Planet Gone Mad (the 2nd DVD cover in your nicely written piece) is a horrid, bootleg dub off the preview VHS [that was] further dubbed down to remove all our hard fought-for action. For instance: the deputies and sheriff blast the miner from the rooftop (our stuntman, Dave Ross, killed so many times in the movie because our 2nd stuntman, John was injured early on in a motorcycle stunt that was unusable in any version of the film). Though many have cited various influences on the story, I had this script [completed] from the late 1970s and never saw [George Romero’s] The Crazies. It was sold as, originally Zombie Hunters, as just a legalized, zombie extermination-extension from Romero’s idea. But we got a producer on board whose family had recently suffered a terrible tragedy; he was insistent we cut back the really good stuff, that is: the little girl seen earlier in the cemetery was to be drinking the shot fellow’s blood, as it dripped from the roof edge.

“I would argue that early on, in our final 75-minute version [again, we’ve reviewed the 110-minute bootlegged version], you get the ‘Prophesy’ special effects sequence, a headless restaurant customer, the murder of Happy the Miner (shot at least 20 times with dozens of effects squibs); the death by pistol and shotgun (more effects squibs) and subsequent fall of Dave Ross; Chief Switcher shooting off his toe, the airplane duel when the Chief tries to stop him on the runway, and the flight to the mine all in the first reel, roughly 12 to 15 minutes. In the next ten minutes: the miners attack and chop up the wonderful [actor] Walt Jaschek; one gets impaled on a forklift, another by pitchfork, and some good action as Drill gets to the plane of which propeller chops off the head of yet another miner during the escape, then Jaschek gets chopped up by shovels, then Drill kills two more from the air (an excellent shot). By the way, these were some good effects done by Sam Peckinpah’s SFX-guy who kindly came out for the fun of burning down a city on camera, Peter Chesney. Body Count Score: 15 minutes: 8 or 10, dead.

“And then it gets weird. . . .

“Steve Flanigan, my producing partner [who relays the same production issues in a 2013-review and interview of the film at Video Junkie.org], when we ran Producers Group Studios, did a fantastic job shooting Spirits of Jupiter worth mentioning in any review. [He completed] beautiful, wide screen camerawork from one of the two helicopters we [acquired] for the movie, as well as the Piper Cub-hero airplane. I think it wasn’t that the acting that was so bad . . . as the lack of judicious editing, hastily assembled into the version [you’ve reviewed] as we solicited a distributor. I take credit there, I’m afraid.

“Rex told us not to send out anything until it’s ready, but at the same time: he suffered from an urgent need for income, and the early rough cut, which was intended for us to trim down, is what most folks have seen [and you reviewed]. Tragically, the Los Angeles attorney handling the distribution, passed away, and his entire estate went into [legal] limbo. Pieces leaked out years later . . . and have now become the two examples you happen to have seen. That’s the bad part.

“The good part: we worked hard on that movie, put far more into it than we were paid, and shot it in two weeks in some of the most beautiful, as well as a few eerie locations, we have here in Colorado. We continue to enjoy working in Colorado. Thanks so much for looking at Spirits of Jupiter.”

Thanks much to Russell for being a good sport regarding our review and reaching out, contributing to the review. It is much appreciated. One day, hopefully, an official DVD or Blu-ray would be possible of the intended, 75-minute version. To that end, Russ: I’ve been planting seeds at a couple reissue shingles. Fingers crossed! Hey, if Delirium, UFO: Target Earth and Calamity of Snakes can be reissued, why not your movie?

* Other Denver-shot films we’ve reviewed include Curse of the Blue Lights, The Jar, and Manchurian Avenger. Other other, obscure Mile Highers indies we’d like to review, but there’s no copies to be had, are Savage Water (1979), Lansky’s Road (1985), and Back Street Jane (1989). And you thought the Pittsburghese the B&S staff spews is weird: turns out Coloradoans have their own regional colloquialisms. Bone-up before you hit the “303” and fit in. Don’t yinz embarrass us.

You can learn more about the major studio films shot in Colorado at Uncover Denver, 303 Magazine, and Colorado.com. Googling “films made in Colorado” will uncover more articles.

** Sunshine Parker’s career dates to Gunsmoke in the ’60s, with his best-known, recurring TV role in the ’70s on Little House on the Prairie. On the big screen, you know Parker best as Emmet: Dalton’s farm-loft landlord in Road House.

*˟Remade — or was it ripped, or sequeled — by Jean Rollin himself, as Revenge of the Living Dead Girls?

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.