Don’t Trick-Or-Treat Alone! is written and directed by Dustin Ferguson and is made to look like it’s taped from WXIP-TV Channel 6. So if you saw WNUF Halloween Special, you’re getting something similar if on a much lower budget (or Late Night With the Devil, which was made after both).

The main movie within this forty-minute film is Don’t Trick-or-Treat Alone, an after school special warning kids not to make the mistakes that Cindy (Isabella Alexandra Russo) and her father Henry (Erik Anthony Russo) have made, as when she — you get it — tricks and treats alone, she ends up getting kidnapped by a Satanic gang of cannibals led by Lilith (Brinke Stevens).

There was also a release called WXIP – TV Channel 6 After School Triple Feature, which had Wrong Side of the Tracks, Runway Nightmare and Asylum of the Devil. Plus, I found evidence of a remake of House On Haunted Hill that says, “On October 31st, 1978, the WXIP-TV Channel 6 Team investigated the infamous “Hill House” on Live Television, with dire results. The broadcast was banned and never seen again, until now.”

Throughout the story, it keeps getting interrupted by commercials and news. It begins with the end of an Amityville special, a nice touch, before an ads for a news special called The Satanic Agenda, Dinosaur Park, 1-900-PSY-CHIC, an anti-drug PSA and Bigfoot bananas at WinLo’s Grocers. 

The filter on this makes it look very 1990 even if everything in it feels mid 2020s. That said, the story is fun and Stevens and the young Russo are great in it. There are a ton of commercials, which isn’t a bad thing until they start to repeat. Here’s a breakdown of the ads:

Second block of commercials: Castle of Creeps, Jack’s Pumpkin Patch, 1-900-PSY-CHIC, Breast of the Bird (a place I would certainly eat at), a news report on razors in apples and a commercial for Dr. Lobotomy’s Lunatic Theater playing Rise of the Undead. 

Third block: Ghoul Line 1-900-666-GHOUL, news of a missing child named Becky, Good Buddies mask ad, the same ad for The Satanic Agenda and a movie of the week by the name of Flash Force.

Fourth block: News about a mysterious van and ads for Breast of the Bird, Riverside County Flea Market, 1-900-PSY-CHIC, Mom’s Against Drug Abuse and Bigfoot’s bananas at WinLo’s Grocers.

Fifth block: News on Halloween candy and a weather report, as well as the ads for The Satanic Agenda, Prehistoric Park, Jack’s Pumpkin Patch, Castle of Creeps and Ghoul Line. 

Sixth block are a PSA from Eric and Isabella Russo, Riverside County Flea Market,Bigfoot’s bananas at WinLo’s Grocers, Breast of the Bird, Good Buddies, Flash Force, the Satanic news special, a news report on razor blades, Castle of Creeps, Riverside County Flea Market, Good Buddies, Jack’s Pumpkin Patch and a Halloween message.

Then, the film starts into Dr. Lobotomy’s Lunatic Theater but is cut off.

The commercials are funny, but when they repeat three times in under forty minutes and cut up a film that’s around ten, you wonder why they didn’t just make almost all new commercials for every block. Ferguson is definitely talented — and prolific — enough to do it, even if trailers for his other movies were turned into movie ads.

I didn’t mind my time with this and if you like micro budget horror that is looking to the past, you may enjoy it.

You can order this film from SCS.

Directed by David Thies, this TMZ No BS doc gathers their gossip crew to discuss how Cardi B went from Belcalis Marlenis Cephus in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, joined a gang, became an exotic dancer, then started to become an early social media influencer before becoming popular on the reality show Love & Hip Hop: New York.

In 2015, she made her musical debut on the remix to Shaggy’s “Boom Boom and then covered British rapper Lady Leshurr’s “Queen’s Speech 4” as the song “Cheap Ass Weave.” Within two years, her song “Bodak Yellow” was certified Diamond and won best song of the year from Pitchfork.

She hasn’t looked back.

I really liked how this show didn’t just show the celebrity side, but how she became politically active, using her fame for the right things. She has called attention to Social Security and asking for transparency in how taxes are spent, as well as endorsing Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, who she refuses to endorse again because of his stance on wars.

Today’s rap isn’t something I know much about, so I use these Tubi shows to get up to date. Sure, I’m still behind because I’m old, but they at least help me to know a little bit about things that are rapidly passing me by.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Jacques Rivette hailed Anthony Mann as “one of the four great directors of postwar Hollywood” alongside Nicholas Ray, Richard Brooks and Robert Aldrich. Studied by French film critics, several of whom would be part of the French New Wave, Mann started as Preston Sturges’ assistant director as well as the director of screen tests for movies like Gone With the Wind.

He’s probably best-known for his Westerns, many of which starred Jimmy Stewart like The Naked Spur and Winchester ’73. He was fired from Spartacus by its star, Kirk Douglas, and left his next film, Cimarron, after disagreements about shooting on a sound stage. After all, Mann’s locations are just about characters in themselves. He was right. The good news was that when he made El Cid it was a huge success.

The heroes of the Westerns that Mann made aren’t always heroes at first. In his article “The Last Mann,” Richard Corliss said, “The Mann western hero has learned wariness the hard way, because he usually has something to hide. He is a man with a past: some psychic shadow or criminal activity that has left him gnarled and calcified. Not so long ago he was a raider, a rustler, maybe a killer. If a movie were made of some previous chapter in his life, he’d be the villain, and he might be gunned down before he had the chance at redemption that Mann’s films offer.”

Bounty hunter Morgan Hickman (Henry Fonds) rides into town with a dead body, looking to make his money. He’s treated like evil itself, except by Sheriff Ben Owens (Anthony Perkins), a way too young and innocent man who has become the law because no one else wanted the job.

Ben is in love with Millie Parker (Mary Webster), whose father was the last law in town and she won’t take him as a husband until he quits. Hickman tells him she’s smart because he used to have a star and it ruined his life. That said, he does offer to teach Ben a little about how to stand up for himself.

On the day the town plans on celebrating his 75th birthday, Dr. McCord (John McIntire) is killed by the McGaffey brothers, Ed (Lee Van Cleef) and Zeke (Peter Baldwin). The entire town wants them dead but Ben believes in innocent until proven guilty. He’s willing to stand up for himself and even defeats town bully Bart Bogardus (Neville Brand) by slapping him and then outdrawing him.

As for Morgan, he falls for Nona Mayfield (Betsy Palmer) and becomes a surrogate father to her son Kip (Michel Ray). It’s a nice way to show that he can still be a tender person after years of hiding his humanity. It’s also an interesting inverse comparison to the renter falling for his landlady and helping her son relationship that also shows up in The Shootist.

The Arrow release of Tin Star has extras like brand new audio commentary by film historian Toby Roan, an appreciation of the film by author and critic Neil Sinyard, an interview with Peter Bernstein on her father’s work, a trailer and an image gallery. It all comes inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sam Hadley and also has a double-sided fold-out poster, six postcard-sized reproduction artcards and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Barry Forshaw and original press notes.

You can get the blu ray from MVD.

The TMZ crew gathers yet again — these people love to get together and yell at one another — to discuss drugs in Hollywood, like ayahuasca retreats and ketamine therapy.

I wouldn’t know what ayahuasca was if it wasn’t for Howard Stern and I’m fascinated by a drug that basically makes you shit your pants. This doc even meets the Soul Quest, an Ayahuasca church located in Orlando, Florida, and explains how this drug has followers including  Lindsay Lohan, Jim Carrey, Aaron Rodgers, Jada and Will Smith, Sting, Mike Tyson and Andre 3000.

In case you don’t know what it is, it’s a South American psychoactive drink that came from the Amazon and Orinoco basins and is traditionally part of spiritual ceremonies, divination and healing.

But yeah, it can make you go in your pants.

Drugs have always been a big deal in the tabloids so it’s wild to see one so supportive of drug use, but we also live in a world where marijuana is nearly legal, which I never believed would happen. I mean, I get microdosing ads on Instagram all the time.

Ready to learn how the A list trips balls? Harvey Levin is ready to let you in on all the behind the scenes substances.

You can watch this on Tubi.

In the opening hours of June 11, 1979, I was listening to KDKA AM radio with my dad. In the middle of a show, the national news broke in to say that John Wayne had died.

I started crying because I always thought my grandfather was John Wayne. If the Duke could die, my grandfather could.

It was too much for a six year old child.

I’m glad the young version of me never saw The Shootist.

The last movie that Wayne would be in, this is the tale of sheriff-turned-gunfighter John Bernard “J.B.” Books, a man who has killed more than thirty men and become a legend. The kind of man that people run from rather than even look at, someone who Marshal Walter Thibido (Harry Morgan) hopes he doesn’t have to arrest.

He’s in Carson City to visit one of the only people he trusts, Dr. E.W. “Doc” Hostetler (Jimmy Stewart), the man who once saved his life after a gunfight gone wrong. He doesn’t have the energy he once did and he soon finds out that he has cancer. He has days, maybe weeks left. All he can do is take liquid painkillers and hope for the best.

Until he’s taken, he plans on just living a quiet unknown existence in the home of widow Bond Rogers (Lauren Bacall), a woman who instantly dislikes him and grows to feel differently. He also ends up being a father of sorts to her son Gillom (Ron Howard) who is close to being a criminal.

Once others learn he is in town, killers come to make their names off shooting him but even in the throes of death, Books is too tough to die. He also has no interest in telling his story to reporter Dan Dobkins (Rick Lenz), even if it makes money for one of the only women he ever loved, Serepta (Sheree North).

Realizing the end is near, Books tells Gillom to bring three men to the bar. They are dairy owner Jay Cobb (Bill McKinney), a man who insulted him when he first arrived; Jack Pulford (Hugh O’Brian), a Faro dealer who was once a killing machine who needs to destroy Books to get his name back and Mike Sweeney (Richard Boone), who wants to kill Books in revenge for the death of his brother. Despite being critically wounded, Books kills all three before being shot in the back by a bartender, someone he never even figured on. Gillom takes his gun and shoots the man before throwing the revolver down. As he dies, Books smiles and nods.

Gillom walks away without a sound.

Books lived by the words “I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.”

Paul Newman, George C. Scott, Charles Bronson, Gene Hackman and Clint Eastwood all passed on this movie and it was thought that Wayne — who had his left lung and several ribs removed when he first had cancer — couldn’t handle the role. His breathing and mobility, as well as the altitude of Carson City were challenges he had to fight. When he made Rooster Cogburn a year before, he had pneumonia so bad that he damaged his heart from how much he coughed. A lot of people thought he couldn’t make this movie and his doctors almost stopped filming after he caught the flu.

He changed the ending of the book and the script. Books was supposed to kill his last opponent by shooting him in the back and would be put out of his misery by Gillom after he was shot in by the bartender. Wayne felt that he had never shot a man in the back and would not in this movie either. He also objected to his character being killed by Gillom and added the bartender shooting him in the back because “no one could ever take John Wayne in a fair fight.”

Director Don Siegel told Wayne. “That’s what Clint Eastwood would do.”

Wayne apocryphically replied, “Well I don’t like that, and I didn’t like High Plains Drifter!”

There are also some great moments with Scatman Crothers as a blacksmith and a short role for John Carradine (Wayne, figuring this was his last movie, got several of his friends to act in the film) as an undertaker. Even the horse, Dollar, is Wayne’s horse.

This is also one of only seven movies in which Wayne dies, along with Reap the Wild Wind, The Fighting Seabees, Wake of the Red Witch, Sands of Iwo Jima, The Alamo and The Cowboys.

The father and son relationship between Books and Gillom reminds me of the way that Tin Star takes a man ruined by a hard life and shows how he can be redeemed by how he treats a younger one.

The Arrow blu ray of The Shootist has a new 2K remaster by Arrow Films from the original 35mm camera negative and extras such as a new audio commentary by filmmaker and critic Howard S. Berger, a visual essay by film critic David Cairns, an interview with Western author C. Courtney Joyner, an appreciation of Elmer Bernstein’s score by film historian and composer Neil Brand, a visual essay on Wayne by filmmaker and critic Scout Tafoya and The Shootist: The Legend Lives On, an archival featurette, There is also a trailer and image gallery.

It all comes inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Juan Esteban Rodríguez, as well as even more like a double-sided fold-out poster, six postcard-sized lobby card reproductions and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by film critic Philip Kemp.

You can get this movie from MVD.

The last movie that fight choreographer Sammo Hung made with his mentor director Huang Feng (Lady Whirlwind, Hapkido) before directing The Iron-Fisted Monk, The Shaolin Plot is about Prince Daglen (Chan Sing) who is creating a library of Chinese martial arts manuals and learning each form so he becomes the greatest fighter in the world.

With only two manuals left, he sends a renegade monk (Hung) with two cymbals he uses to chop heads to take the Wu-Tang and Shaolin books. Yet for his plan to happen, Daglen will have to get inside the Shaolin temple, which will see him battle Little Tiger (James Tien) and a warrior monk team (Casanova Wong and Kwan Yung Moon).

I’m such a fool for movies like this, where people need to take all of the knowledge and moves and create their own ultimate style. Anything with the Wu-Tang or Shaolin makes me happy and as long as these movies keep getting re-released, I’m going to never stop watching them and throwing little kicks in the air as I cheer the fights.

As a fat guy who loves martial arts, I just have to say, “Thank you Sammo.” You have made all of us so proud.

The Arrow release of this movie has a 2K restoration from the original film elements by Fortune Star. It also has two commentary tracks, one by martial arts film experts Frank Djeng and Michael Worth and another by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema. Plus, there are trailers, a double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Ilan Sheady, a reversible sleeve with both artwork and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Peter Glagowski.

You can get it from MVD.