I love non-James Bond spy movies. Here are two of the Bulldog Drummond movies, Deadlier Than the Male and Some Girls Do. You can watch the first on Tubi and the sequel on YouTube.
You can listen to the show on Spotify.
The show is also available on Apple Podcasts, I Heart Radio, Amazon Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
Stephen Hopkins never gets discussed all that much but he directed Dangerous Game, Judgement Night, A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, Lost in Space, The Ghost and the Darkness and Predator 2. Those are some pretty big efforts and he directs TV today but you’d think people would talk more about his films. He worked with writer Jim Birge, who he helped found student comedy clubs at UCLA and University of California at Irvine (UCI) that had Shane Black, Fred Dekker, Ed Solomon and Tom Martin as members. This is the only thing he ever wrote.
“Ah! A corpse by any other name would smell as sweet. Unless of course, it isn’t dead yet! (cackles) Tonight’s tawdry tale is about a man who’s gravely concerned about matters of life and death. Why he’d care about that remains to be seen. (cackles lightly) I call this putrid piece: “Abra Cadaver.””
Carl Fairbanks (Tony Goldwyn) once played a park on his brother Martin (Beau Bridges) that left him permanently weak on one side of his body and paralyzed his hand. Martin is now just a medical researcher while his brother has become a rich surgeon. That’s why Martin heads to Haiti and learns about an experimental drug called Suspensor that gives Carl the feeling of being dead while still being alive. Well, as you can imagine, things don’t work all that well for anyone.
There is a “Danger Will Robinson!” reference to Lost In Space — Hopkins would go on to make the 1998 movie — and Night of the Living Dead, as it opens with Carl and Martin as kids being surrounded by corpses that come back to life in black and white.
Based on the story “Dead Right” from Tales from the Crypt #37, this story was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Davis.
April 12: 412 Day — A movie about Pittsburgh (if you’re not from here that’s our area code). Or maybe one made here. Heck, just write about Striking Distance if you want. Here’s a list.
Kevin Smith made two movies in Pittsburgh, this and Dogma. Well, this is Monroeville, but yeah, Pittsburgh. The director and writer had the idea wince the 90s and wanted it to be a follow up to Chasing Amy. It was almost a series called Hiatus that would have starred Jason Lee as a porn star who came back home. Also: That isn’t the Civic Arena, it’s the Rostraver Ice Garden but is now the cfsbank Event Center but everyone in town is still going to call it by its old name long after it changes its name all over again.
Zack Brown (Seth Rogan) and Miriam “Miri” Linky (Elizabeth Banks) are best friends since first grade, roommates and both work in Monroeville (she’s at the mall, yes, that mall and he’s at a coffee shop which is really a Dairy Queen in real Monroeville life). They have no money and the power gets shut off at their house before their high school reunion, where Miri learns that her crush Bobby Long (Brandon Routh) is dating adult star Brandon St. Randy (Justin Long). When they get home, they also discover that two teenagers shot a video of Miri changing that went viral because she wears bloomers. This gives Zack the idea that they should make an adult movie.
Working with a producer named Delaney (Craig Robinson), they start making a parody, Star Whores, before they get all their equipment stolen. That means that they have to use the surveillance camera at Zack’s work to make their next idea, Swallow My Cockuccino. All of the adult actors have porn sex; Zack and Miri make love, which weirds them out. She also gets upset when he sleeps with another actress, Stacey (Katie Morgan). When it comes time for Miri to do a scene with Lester (Jason Mewes), he tells her he loves her. She says nothing and he disappears.
Of course, Zack never slept with that girl and she never slept with that boy and they get together. But you knew that.
Smith said of the movie, “I was depressed, man. I wanted that movie to do so much better. I’m sitting there thinking, that’s it, that’s it, I’m gone, I’m out. The movie didn’t do well and I killed Seth Rogen’s career! This dude was on a roll until he got in with the likes of me. I’m a career killer! Judd’s going to be pissed, the whole Internet’s going to be pissed because they all like Seth, and the only reason they like me anymore is because I was involved with Seth! And now I fuckin’ ruined that. It was like high school. I was like, “I’m a dead man. I’ll be the laughing stock.”” Supposedly, the Weinstein Company’s lack of selling the movie caused their relationship to end. Smith saw himself as a failure and din’t work for some time after this.
Well, at least it’s very Pittsburgh. Zack plays hockey for the Monroeville Zombies, Tom Savini is in it and one of the adult stars, Bubbles, is played by Traci Lords who is from Steubenville, which is close. Smith has seen a lot of porn, because her scene at the end references one of her last films before it was discovered that Lords was underage, New Wave Hookers.
This week, we’re celebrating both Becca and Bill’s birthday! Join us at 8 PM EST on the Groovy Doom Facebook and YouTube pages.
Our first movie is Waxwork II which you can find on Tubi.
Every week, we watch movies, talk about them, look at the ad campaigns and then have a cocktail that goes with each film. Here’s the first recipe.
Solomon’s Locket
Our second movie is the 1985 TV movie Blackout which you can watch on YouTube.
Here’s the second cocktail.
Crash Course In Plastic Surgery
We can’t wait until Saturday!
Drive-In Asylum #26 contains a great assortment of reviews and features, including another DIA milestone. Bill was finally able to track down Zooey Hall – now going by his real name, David Hall – and talked to him about his acting career, which included such gems as cutting edge prison drama Fortune and Men’s Eyes and Poor Albert & Little Annie. If you don’t recognize that second title, that’s OK, it’s probably because you saw it under its more sensational reissue title I Dismember Mama. Bill does love a good sleazy retitle, but in this case it tends to eclipse the actual nature of the film, a slow burn creeper with a distinctly 70s feel, and with great performances by David, Geri Reischl, and Marlene Tracy.
But there’s a lot more! We’ve also got great interviews with director Gary Sherman (Dead & Buried, Deathline, Vice Squad) and author Paul Talbot (Bronson’s Loose: The Making of the Death Wish Films). A.C. Nicholas discusses the legacy of cult TV variety show Night Flight, J.H. Rood answers the question that so many genre fans are condescendingly asked, “Why do you like bad movies?”, and our crew of film fanatics review Tammy and the T-Rex, The Single Girls and The Slayer.
There are also the usual pages and pages of vintage newsprint ads – oh, and for those of you who were asking for it, DIAZODIAC is back, with more strange vibrations from astrologer Magus Calavera.
Plus! I added an article about a movie I had to hunt for — Miss Leslie’s Dolls.
This is a 72 page fanzine, 8.5″ x 5.5″ black and white with some pages printed on colored paper.
Get it now on Etsy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn
*This Review Contains Spoilers
What it is:
A competently written and directed, well-acted, but overly long derivative prequel to the original Omen trilogy. An American girl, raised in a Catholic orphanage, travels to Rome to become a full nun. She works in an all-girls orphanage/home for unwed mothers. There, she uncovers the conspiracy to birth Damian from the original 1976 film. Along the way, she discovers that she is one of many chosen mothers.
The film slides quite nicely into the events of the original film while setting up a parallel storyline we never knew existed. One in which Damian’s twin sister has been hidden away on Alderaan to keep her safe from the Empire. Um, I mean the evil Catholics trying to assassinate her.
Director Arkasha Stevenson certainly did her homework, which I appreciated. The little musical cues evoking Morricone’s giallo work made me smile. But at times the film feels like an academic essay littered with extended passages from other, better source material.
It’s a movie meal that plucked all its ingredients from a list of high-quality horror and sci-fi films including The Omen, Deep Red, The Devils, Rosemary’s Baby, Possession, Flavia the Heretic, Return of the Jedi, To the Devil A Daughter, Inseminoid, Suspiria, and yes…even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
With a meal like this, you know exactly what you’re getting. The consequences of eating a meal like this are twofold:
The key ingredient missing is the “extraordinary events happening in an ordinary world” approach taken in the original film. There was almost no supernatural hoo-ha in the original Omen. To an outsider in that world, everything that happens could be viewed as simple coincidence or tragedy. This film is loaded with overt supernatural stuff going down and for the most part, it works.
What it isn’t:
What I liked:
What I disliked:
Who is this movie for?
Summary:
It’s a worthy effort considering that most franchise reboots aren’t stellar. It wouldn’t be very fair if I said I love a movie like Paul Naschy’s Exorcismo, which is a blatant rip-off of The Exorcist and then slate this film for doing something similar with a bigger budget. It’s a good film when viewed from that perspective. I liked it better than Omen III: The Final Conflict, but not as much as the 1976 original or Damian: Omen II. It’s a well-made, entertaining film with nothing new to say. A meal that fills you up on a Friday night with your fellow horror fiends.
Remember Jen and Sylvia Soska? Well, they just made a sequel — kinda, sorta — to Night of the Living Dead and its on Tubi. Yes, the very same Soska sisters who made the remake of Rabid and American Mary.
Now, is that a good thing? Was the remake of Rabid a good idea? Have we gotten so many sequels to Romero’s work both from him — good (Dawn, Day) and bad (everything not Dawn and Day) — and from the other creators of the original, good (Return of the Living Dead) and, well, weird (Flesheater) and just plain abysmal (Children of the Living Dead). Then again, isn’t everything after Romero influenced or outright stolen (Zombi) from his work?
Ash (Ashley Moore) and her brother Luke (Shiloh O’Reilly) are the grandchildren of Ben from Night of the Living Dead and even have the gun he used to kill zombies. Their parents have gone away on Ash’s birthday and her friend Iris (Camren Bicondova) offers to watch her brother so that she can go to the Festival of the Living Dead, a concert that is on the same ground where the walking dead first appeared in 1968, with her boyfriend Kevin (Gage Marsh), his brother Ty (Andre Anthony) and sisters Destini (Keana Lyn Bastidas) and Lindsey (Maia Jae Bastidas).
Yes, kind of like Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave. The less said of that, the better.
Written by Miriam Lyapin and Helen Marsh (who also wrote the Tubi Original Deadly Midwife), this kicks up a notch when the concert goers all get in a car accident hitting a zombie and go to the concert to get help. Iris hears that her friend is in danger, so she gets her friend Blaze (Christian Rose) to drive her and Luke to save everyone. Yes, she takes a diabetic child into the heart of the undead.
For some reason, the festival has a giant man to be burned, like Burning Man. Or The Wicker Man. Or Midsommar. None of this has anything to do with the movie you are going to watch and maybe twenty people came to this concert, which feels more like the Gathering of the Juggalos than a concert that is a tribute to people who died. The bands all feel like Warped Tour instead of anything, as if this movie was made in the 2000s for SyFy and was filmed in Eastern Europe just like, yes there it is again, Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave.
I grew up minutes from Evans City and this weird field is not the weird fields in Evans City. Instead, it’s all cash in cheap quick artifice and yeah, I should know better, but I never do. Moore and Bicondova are good actors and do what they can, but they there isn’t much to save.
Also: How did they get Ben’s gun and know he was a hero when he died in a basement and got burned as a zombie? Did we forget, you know, the shocking ending of the movie that started modern horror?
If this movie was just a zombies at a concert film, I’d be fine with it. But by associating itself — literally inserting itself — into the trinity of zombie movies, it commits an unforgivable sin. It’s boring. There’s a great idea in here of a world where the undead have become commonplace and celebrated as tragedies like how 9/11 is a few years away from being another sale day like President’s Day. Instead, it’s content to be a movie with some decent fight scenes, alright gore and nothing else to add to a genre that’s overflowing with movies that added less than nothing.
You can watch this on Tubi.
Keith (Matthew MacCaull) and Kathleen (Elyse Levesque) are taking their kids Jeffrey (Josh Zaharia) and Amy (Amanda Fix) on an RV vacation across the country. While the family eats breakfast, Amy goes off to smoke and two backwoods types appear and are vaguely threatening. You’ve seen it before in, well, nearly every RV horror and rednecks against normal folks movies.
Except this one has a twist.
And I don’t want to reveal it because even though I assumed it was coming, the way it plays out was pretty great.
Directed by Tesh Guttikonda (the writer of Influencer) and Mitch Oliver and written by Al Kaplan (Zombeavers), this places the RV family into the home of Vern (Richard Harmon), Billy (Ben Sullivan), Big Mac (Dayleigh Nelson), Savannah (Brenna Llewellyn) and Juli Ann (Cassandra Sawtell). Their home is isolated far from the closest down and the law, which is Deputy White (Alexander Calvert).
Again, without giving much away, this does a great job of pitting the civilized — a family that barely gets along and use drugs to get by — against who they perceive as the hopeless uncivilized country folk who carry guns everywhere they go. The film also places your sympathy with some characters and then pulls your feet out from under you when the reveals — there are more than one — happen. Toss in some solid comedy that doesn’t diffuse the tension and some grisly gore — look out for that eyeball scene — and you have a slasher that’s way better than what we’ve come to expect from the genre lately.
You can watch this on Tubi.
When a young Army sergeant is murdered, the police can’t find any answers until they learn that the killer could be as close as the dead man’s backyard. By the end of it all, Jeremy Cuellar admitted to working with Kemia Hassel to kill her husband Sgt. Tyrone Hassel III on New Year’s Eve 2018. Cuellar and Kemia were lovers and all three were soldiers stationed at Fort Stewart in Georgia. The killers had planned to collect Army death benefits and life insurance money.
They had started their affair when they were stationed at Camp Casey Korea as part of the 3rd Infantry Division, 1st Combat Brigade. They communicated on Snapchat as they thought that their messages couldn’t be found or traced. The case was broken when an anonymous tip was given to Officer Eric Wolff that revealed “investigators need to look at the victim’s wife … and a boyfriend who serves in her platoon.”
Cuellar told another soldier that he and Kemia wanted to be together and were planning to murder Tyrone while the married couple was on leave. That soldier went to Criminal Investigation Division and told them that he believed Cuellar was the murderer. He killed Tyrone in the driveway of his father’s house while his year-old-son slept inside. He thought he was bringing home a plate of food for his wife and was walking into a trap that she set up.
This Tubi Original tells you the entire story and has family members share their loss. It’s a hard watch, seeing their pain, but does a good job of sharing out this tragedy.
You can watch this on Tubi.
April 11: Get Slimed! — A movie that has slime in it.
Alex (Robert Sabin) and Lori (Mary Huner) have moved into a scummy New York City apartment where horrible people are all around them, like the neighbors who give Alex food and drink that transforms him into a yellow slime creature who goes by Zachary and Nicole (also Mary Humer) who he cheats on when Lori is away. If he wants to be normal, now Alex must start killing people.
Directed and written by Greg Lamberson, this is Street Trash and Brain Damage by way of The Abomination. Zachary is the cult leader who once ran this building and he is still the master of neighbors like Roman (Dennis Embry). Also, Alex works in a video store right down the street and he can’t get there on time, but man, if I worked at a video store near my house, I’d stop all the murder and just watch everything the store has.
If someone offers you cooked Himalayan yogurt, you know not to eat it.
By the end, Greg’s chest has opened up to eat someone, blood and yellow fluid has sprayed all over the screen and a kitchen battle between our once in love couple goes completely out of control with even more yellow scummy ooze spraying everything, everyone and even the camera. Oh yes — this goes for it, with someone’s head slammed repeatedly into pulp and the reveal of Alex’s dripping yellow face costing a sex worker her life as he messily slices into her throat. Seriously, the end battle is almost ten minutes long and it ends with just pieces being left in large puddles.
This is a down and dirty NYC movie shot in the muck and grime where it belongs. Sabin goes from a complete geek to being a beyond insane Satanist who lives to kill. What a transformation and what a revelation this movie is.
You can watch this on Tubi.
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