Watching The Projectionist last week and then this, I felt like I was seeing the open and close of director and writer Harry Hurwitz. Now I have to go back and watch his Harry Tampa movies and Safari 3000.

Hosted by Tony Randall, this is a fake doc about the life and films of Max Roeebling (James Coco). It’s very ZAZ in that it keeps throwing jokes at you and unless you’re as obsessed by the history of bad movies as I am, you just might hate this.

But for those of you who want to take the ride…

Adequate Studios has been around since the 1930s and just copies what everyone else is doing. Hollywood epics (but dirty). Shakespeare (in animal costumes). A more violent Three Stooges. And somehow, Bruce Willis, Robert Downey Jr., Stiller and Meara, Sinbad and Robert Townsend show up and we get to see the career of Baby Elroy and Young Hitler (which stars Robert Vaughn!,) which is just Hitler in George Washington’s story.

Not Necessarily the News fans will be happy to see Anne Bloom and Stuart Pankin, Brother Theodore and Professor Irwin Corey appear and Susan Dey sings a folk song and then goes down on someone.

Not all the jokes land. Most people who will review this on Letterboxd will hate it, because they didn’t grow up in a time when all movies weren’t instantly available and you could find this weird late 80’s movie in a video store and wonder, “How can all of these people be in the same movie?” I don’t care how many of the jokes work, I laughed at the We Are the World comedian part and Bob Elroy Meets Frankenstein. If a movie can make you giggle a few times, I say it’s a success.

I mean, Joe Franklin is all over this. That’s worth at least three stars alone.

You can watch this on YouTube.

With that VHS art, I wanted to love this. I thought it was going to be an under the city horror movie, but no, it’s action. John Willis (Doc Dougherty) is a cop that has lost his public standing thanks to an article by reporter Kim Knowles (B.J. Geordan AKA Forbes Riley; Splatter University). Then, they have to find a way to work together to stop attacks on New Yorkers led by the recently escaped mental patient Boris (Lennie Loftin).

Also released as Underground and Juez, Jurado y Ejecutor, this was directed by James McCalmont, whose only other director credit is for Escape from Safehaven. He did shoot American Tickler, The Satisfiers of Alpha Blue, The Rejuvenator and Voodoo Dawn, while also working as a gaffer on Let My Puppets Come, Gums, My Demon Lover and director of photography on Evolver, Fist of the North Star and The Silence of the Hams. That’s what I call a career.

The writer, Brian O’Hara, also wrote Rock ‘n’ Roll Frankenstein.

I wish I could tell you that this was some big find or worth the time to track it down. But it isn’t. If only I could report otherwise.

Look, when a movie has two martial artists named Joey (Tien-Chi Cheng) and Gary (Lu Feng), well, that’s all I need. Except that this movie is really as wild as it can get, a low budget film from Chang Cheh who decides that if he can’t get enough money to make a movie, he’s going to make the film version of some drug that hasn’t been invented yet.

Joey and Gary’s parents — Master Gan (Chang Peng) and Supervisor Zuo (Wong Tak-Sang) — are killed by some poison and palace intrigue. When Joey runs, he somehow ends up in Hell, where Satan Chris (Lee Kin-Sang) offers him the ability to come back upstairs and have the powers of nine demons, as long as the demons are given blood to drink and Joey knows that someday soon, he will also become a demon.

These demons are eight children who dance around and their mother (Wong Gwan), who starts so much of the blood raving. They live as skulls that Joey carries, but he can call on their power whenever he needs it. You know how the martial world works, however, as even when Joey gets revenge, the battles don’t stop and he starts to become the monsters he has been always destined to become.

Three of the Venoms — Chiang Sheng, Lu Feng and Ricky Cheng — are in this, but the reason to watch this is that it’s non-stop fog, neon lights, in-camera magic tricks and the kind of outfits that Chang Cheh likes to see men in: glam rock, but somehow more feminine, with heavy makeup. Also: there’s an ice skating fight and a Buddhist master saves the day with some spells.

I know of no other movie where the fights are called Joey and Gary. It really is something.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Edgar Allan Lovecraft (Steve Westerheit) is the brainy outcast of the hard-partying Delta Epsilon Delta Fraternity and now, he’s invented — you guessed it — a reanimator formula.

In the video store era, the box art and title were all you needed. So if you combine long rental favorites Police Academy and Re-Animator, you get this.

The Delta Epsilon Delta (DED) frat is all about partying. Except for the aforementioned Edgar Allan Lovecraft, who is busy bringing a severed head named Fred back to life, which brings in a local gangster, Mugsy, who wants Edgar to do the same for his girl, Hotlips (executive producer Connier Speer, who was also in Nail Gun Massacre). Things don’t go to plan as the reanimated gangster’s moll starts killing the student body. Can Edgar, Mugsy, his henchman Bruno, and Fred the severed head stop her?

Directed and written by Judith Priest — a one-and-done talent who may or may not be someone else — this was set up by Fred Olen Ray with David DeCoteau (using the name Ellen Cabot, which comes from an episode of Batman) producing. The instructions? “Give a good title and make it 70 minutes and horror.”

Shot on 8mm consumer format with a two-month turnaround from script to final product, it was shot over a weekend. And there was a Super VHS on hand to edit the dailies. It was co-written by Benton Jennings, who was also Bruno.  He’s also in tons of movies and TV shows: Highway to Hell, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Profiler, Dexter, Scrubs, How I Met Your Mother, American Carol, the soap opera Passions, Our Flag Means Death and I Think You Should Leave. He also played Alex Trebek’s dead body on Jimmy Kimmel in addition to Hitler on that show, a role he’d play again in Poolboy: Drowning In Fury. He was also the historical consultant on Frontier: The Decisive Battles and Last of the Mohicans.

This movie has so many talented people making it, including Greg Synodis, who composed the music for this and Highway to Hell, while also making the music videos for “Ice Ice Baby” and “Play That Funky Music” for Vanilla Ice. There’s also JP Black, who shot and starred in Redneck County Fever; as well as assistant director Richard Perrin, who was in Bret McCormick’s Blood On the Badge and Fred Williamson’s Steele’s Law. Plus, you get Fred the Head, who has a list of credits a forehead long. He was in Head, A Bullet to the Head, Sergeant Deadhead, A Hole In the Head, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte. Virginia Leith is his mom, or so he says.

Released to video on February 28, 1992, this was filmed in Fort Worth, Texas — a clue to who the person who made this is, and shows up in the Tomb of Terrors box set along with such other incredible movies as Demon Sex, Granny, Gorno: An American Tragedy, Kill the Scream Queen, The Night Owl, Purvos, Redneck County Fever, Sorority Babes in the Dance-A-Thon of Death and Barely Legal Lesbian Vampires.

Is this made by movie lovers? All I can say is that in the frat house scene, you can see posters for Zachariah, Terror Circus (Barn of the Naked Dead), School Spirit and America 3000.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Tibor Takács made some wild movies, but before that, he was part of the Toronto-area punk and metal scene as the manager and producer for The Viletones and The Cardboard Brains, some of whom end up in this 1978 rock opera. Sure, he makes streaming Christmas movies now, but he once made The Gate and the insane I, Madman.

Written by Stephen Zoller, this feels like The Man Who Fell to Earth meeting The Rocky Horror Picture Show as well as Phantom of the Paradise and The Foreigner, but that’s just me trying to put some handle on this.

Max the Promoter (John-Paul Young, lead singer of The Cardboard Brains) has hired private detective Philip Chandler (Richard Ward Allen) to find The Messiah (David Jensen of the band Kickback), who is preaching to the teens of Anywhere City that rock and roll is filled with sin. Max either wants him to be a star or dead or both, while Violet (Liane Hogan) and the Children of Truth want him hooked on drugs.

The music in this feels early 70s glam rock but that just helps this seem even weirder, as does the Third Reich crowd noises in the final concert, as the Metal Messiah — spoiler warning — because a religious rock star and gets crucified to the cheers of the assembled crowd.

This was a stage play and that makes sense. What doesn’t is how much this movie seems to hate rock and roll while being a rock opera. The evils of music would stay with Takács, as the album The Dark Book would open quite literally The Gate once he learned how to hone his filmmaking.

You can watch this on YouTube.