Perversions of Science E4: The Exile (1997)

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In a future where murders are sporadic, a sadistic serial killer — and scientist — by the name of 50557 (Jeffrey Combs) tests the theory of Dr. Nordhoff (David Warner) that everybody can be rehabilitated. Maybe they can get even worse. Even the advice of 40132 (Ron Perlman), a rehabilitated killer, isn’t enough. So what else can they do but send him to a world that he can do little to damage.

As he’s sent down, a tech asks, “What about the inhabitants of the planet?”

Dr Nordhoff says, “I wouldn’t worry. He’s just one man. How much damage could he possibly do?”

Cue the Hitler speech.

This episode is based on “The Exile” from Weird Fantasy #14, written by William Gaines and Al Feldstein and drawn by Wally Wood, in which it’s revealed that yes, the Führer was a space alien.

This episode was directed by William Malone, who also made Scared to Death, Creature, House on Haunted Hill, Feardotcom and the “Only Skin Deep” episode of Tales from the Crypt. It was written by David J. Schow.

Also: Did you know Chrome the robot wants to have sex? She’s to bad sex puns as The Cryptkeeper was to horror ones, except, you know, most people love that guy. No one likes Chrome.

You can download all of the episodes here or watch this episode on YouTube.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Checkmate (2025)

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Brittany (Lovely Joyce Glenn) accidentally shot a hostage, which means that, like every cop should, she’s going to therapy with a doctor named Stephanie (Sarah Pribis). But her boss, Captain Sommers (an unrecognizable Lorenzo Lamas, the Snake Eater himself), wants her back on the streets to help solve the case of a killer who shoves chess pieces into the mouths of his or her victims. In the middle of her PTSD, she’s also trying to rebuild her relationship with her father, Marcus (Dorien Hill), a former chess grand master and judge.

Directed by Jamal Hill and written by Patrice Escoto, this has a killer going for revenge against the men who she feels set her father up. It also has Brittany running out to stop them when she figures out the real killer — you may in minutes — and her cigar-smoking cop boss says, “No, Brittany. Wait for backup,” with all the urgency of a bus driver announcing the next stop. I like the idea that the killer smashes out teeth to jam chess pieces in the mouths of victims, but after that, this gets slow. A lot of sitting at computers and no one is yelling, “Enhance. Enhance! ENHANCE!” Come on. Don’t we still do that?

Someone took the time to share this quote on IMDB: Captain Sommers: There’s been another murder.

Someone else reviewed it there and said, “I am not sure if I like this movie or not.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: The Ultimate Vendetta (2025)

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Directed by Rockey Black (Surprise 2, Surprise 3) and written by Denise Mone’t (Killer Zaddy, Black Santa), this is a home invasion film ala Tubi: the acting and filming may not be up to the standards you expect, but everyone is going for it. Shot in 6 days, Tubi Originals are nearly the last gasp of the direct-to-video movies we all miss and so many people aren’t watching these. I’m here to tell you that you’re missing something.

There are enough twists and turns in this to fill multiple movies, along with a final one that seemingly sets up a sequel, which would make the name The Ultimate Vendetta kind of an oxymoron if the next one is The Ultimate Vendetta 2.

This is a movie made for yelling at the screen during. For going wild and cheering, for just forgetting that we live in a pretty horrible time, but you can always escape to watch people make the dumbest mistakes and trust the wrong people. Tubi Originals forever.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993)

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Aug 11-17 Whoopi Goldberg Week: She’s become a corny tv lady these days, but let’s not forget that at her peak Whoopi was one of the funniest people alive.

Directed by Bill Duke — that’s right, Sgt. Mac Eliot from Predator — Sister Act 2: Back In the Habit was in theaters just a year after the first movie. Loosely based on the life of Crenshaw High School choir instructor Iris Stevenson, it finds Deloris Van Cartier (Whoopi Goldberg) now a success in Vegas when the sisters she befriended — Mary Robert (Wendy Makkena), Mary Patrick (Kathy Najimy) and Mary Lazarus (Mary Wickes) — visit and tell her that they’re now teaching in the same inner city school she attended. And the kids are, well, wild. They need her help.

Father Maurice (Barnard Hughes) seems nice, but the administrator, Mr. Crisp (James Coburn), just wants to retire. But if the nuns can get a choir together, well…

Rita Louise Watson (Lauryn Hill!) is the star singer, but has to lie to get in, as her mother (Sheryl Lee Ralph) hates music, as her husband and Rita’s father failed and ruined their lives. But you know, all ends well.

Reviewers at the time hated it, but Bill Duke was able to see this movie become a hit with audiences. He said, “The reviewers at that time could not really be linked to our communities or the message. As you know, the faces of the reviewers were very different than the viewers. So I was surprised, but not shocked, because they didn’t get us at the time. They didn’t get the message and did not relate on an emotional level.” It also helped that Hill and Jennifer Love Hewitt became big stars and this movie showed them before they became huge. Stars like Harry Styles, Katy Perry, Colbie Caillat and others were inspired by this movie — and Hill — to become singers.

Goldberg said, “For me, I thought the first movie was just stupid and this one wasn’t much better. When they asked me to do this one, I laughed. But when they agreed to fund Sarafina, I thought, “What the hell, I’ll make some more money off ’em.” But I think it’s fun, I think people like one and two, because they’re kind of the same film but very different.”

TUBI ORIGINAL: TKO (2025)

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Chris Stokes goes for something different here in his latest Tubi Original, going away from the world of psychosexual crime and sequels to explore the inner city world that fuels boxing.

Sean (Robert Ri’chard), a former boxer, comes back into his sons’ lives to face his most formidable challenge. Fatherhood. With his oldest son, Sean Jr. (Akheem Cheatam), who is starting to compete in professional boxing, the father must step up to guide him not just in the ring, but in life.

Sean and his family’s enemy is Big Phil (Benzino, joining the Stokes acting group), who has had it in for the father for years. His son also wants to be a boxer, and he does everything he can to make him a winner. Of course, the final boxing battle will be between the two of them, with Sean’s mother appearing as a ghost to get him to his feet once he’s knocked out.

The boxing on this feels like either dancing or video games, but who cares? The only question I have is, “Why does this movie have to be 2 hours and 25 minutes long?”I get that Stokes wanted to make a boxing epic, but his films have always been lean. That choice aside, he makes the most of his budget to make the crowd scenes look full and the fights feel exciting. At least Stokes sets up a sequel at the end with the promise of a street fight with a $25,000 buy-in. If he makes it and it’s on Tubi, I’m there.

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Corpse Grinders (1971)

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Ted V. Mikels lived the kind of life that most teenage boys dream of. He lived in a house that looked like a castle, made exploitation movies and lived with gorgeous women who wanted to be filmmakers that he referred to as Castle Ladies.

When the Lotus Cat Food Company finds itself going out of business, its owners, Landau (Sanford Mitchell) and Maltby (J. Byron Foster), decide to start using dead bodies from a graveyard for the source of their cat food. The cats then have a taste for man and start killing. Only veterinarian Howard Glass (Sean Kenney) and nurse Angie Robinson (Monika Kelly) can stop the wild cats.

Not only was this written by Arch Hall Sr. — the father of Arch Hall Jr. — the script was touched up by Joe Cranston — the father of Bryan Cranston.

This film had quite a life. It played triple features with The Embalmer and The Undertaker and His Pals, double features in the UK with Horror Hospital and played drive-ins from 1980 to 1985 as The Flesh Grinders. It was also part of the legendary 5 Deranged Features lineup, playing as Night of the Howling Beast along with Dracula vs. Frankenstein under the title They’re Coming to Get You, The Wizard of Gore as House of Torture, Creature from Black Lake and Shriek of the Mutilated. House of Schlock has a great article about this.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Cop Killers (1977)

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Tucson, Arizona. The insane killer Ray (Jason Williams, Flesh Gordon) and the whiny sad guy Alex (Bill Osco, The Being) get five kilos of cocaine, run into some police, kill those officers — the title is a spoiler — before they steal a frozen lemonade truck, shotgun blast another policeman, murder a gas station worker, ice another guy and kidnap his girl, Karen (Diane Keller, one and done). Then, they hide out in a motel in the hopes that everything blows over.

Alex gives Karen some coke, they ball, then they sell the drugs to Collins (Michael D. White) and his girlfriends Lena (Donna Stubbert) and Becky (Judy Ross) before things go straight to Hell.

Almost everyone other than Flesh Gordon and Bill Osco are one and done, even director Walter R. Cichy. The biggest star out of this movie would be Rick Baker, who went directly from this movie to Star Wars, changing it from a grimy 16mm drive-in film where you can see the crew in the back of the car at one stage.

This cost $50,000, money that was raised by Ted Dye, a Texas-based owner of X-rated theaters looking to make something mainstream. Another reason? Flesh Gordon had been confiscated in a police bust, so its producer, Cichy, needed money. He got Williams to make this. The director of that film, Howard Ziehm, wrote the story for Cop Killers with Osco and Cichy, who finished the screenplay.

You can watch this on YouTube.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Cool It Carol (1970)

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According to the opening credits, “this story is true, but actual names and places are fictitious.” That’s because Pete Walker read a story in the tabloid News of the World and got inspired. And unlike movies of this era like Permissive and More, the degenerate lifestyle he envisioned wasn’t tragic.

Joe (Robin Askwith, the Confessions of… series) and Carol (Janet Lynn*, Twins of Evil) have left behind their small town for swinging London, where Joe struggles to find work and she quickly becomes a model.

Before you can open the newspaper to Page 3, Carol’s involved in the scummier side of entertainment — the photoshoot for a dirty magazine was shot in Mayfair photographer Philip O. Stearn’s studio and the stills were in the July 1970 issue — with dirty old men all wanting a piece of our heroine.

There’s some great casting here, with Stubby Kaye (the owner of Acme in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?), Harry Baird (The Four of the Apocalypse), Chris Sandford (who was also in Walker’s Die Screaming, Marianne), radio DJ Pete Murray, Carry On star Eric Barker, Pearl Hackney (who was in four Walker films, including Four Dimensions of Greta, Tiffany Jones and Schizo) and Martin Wyldeck (Walker really liked using the same actors, as he also was in several of his movies).

This never gets as dirty as the American title — The Dirtiest Girl I Ever Met — promises. It exists in a different time of sexuality, where Robin Askwith’s butt and innuendos are enough. But man, all those scenes of old men licking their lips in slow motion make me realize that Walker really was created to be a horror director.

*Susan George was initially considered for this movie.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Convention Girls (1978)

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Directed and co-written — with T. Gertler — by Joseph Adler, who also made Sex and the College Girl and Scream Baby Scream, Convention Girls is a movie that I can’t find. The Alamo Drafthouse refers to it as a “Florida-shot indie obscurity — a super rare 35mm print of a movie never released on DVD or video!”

They went on to describe this movie as a “Nashville-inspired multi-character drama set in a Miami Beach hotel during a weekend-long toy manufacturers convention. The smart screenplay by Trudy Gertler uses the handful of prostitutes working the convention as a structural device to tie together the various subplots and character arcs. Originally titled Conventions, this offbeat regional indie pic — more slice-of-life than sexploitation — was acquired by producer/distributor M.A. Ripps, the huckster responsible for the notorious ’60s shocker Poor White Trash, who retitled it Convention Girls and gave it a full-blown exploitation makeover. After playing the drive-in circuit for half a dozen years, the film pretty much vanished, rarely (if ever) showing on TV and never receiving a home video release.”

This seems like a sex movie, but from all accounts, it’s actually the story of a toymaker trying to keep from being a sellout. There’s also a sex worker falling into a depression and self-directed death in a bathtub, affairs, horrible male-to-female behavior and the dirty side of the toy industry.

Actors include Nancy Lawson (God’s Bloody Acre), Anne Seward in her debut, Roberta White, Carol Linden, Robert Gallo, Naomi Fink (also in Adler’s Sammy Somebody), Clarence Thomas (not that one) and William Kerwin. I think legally, you couldn’t make a low budget movie in Florida without him.

Does anyone know how I can see this?