Tickles the Clown (2021)

As the war between what is left of humanity and the demonic Illuminati continues, it turns out that only the blood of criminal Tickles the Clown (voiced by Bill Oberst Jr.) can make an antidote to a virus created by the beasts that come from Hell. But to get it, he wants to see the breasts of Commander Kali, something that she doesn’t tell Bigfoot or her sort-of boyfriend Van Helsing.

The next part of BC Fourteen’s digitally animated space saga, this movie is mostly Tickles sexually harassing Kali and I think the third time that I remember Van Helsing getting killed. I guess that can happen with clones.

It is kind of weird to have this animated clown in a space jail propositioning a space commander and it’s all the same animation repeating itself with voiceover. I’ve watched all of the movies in this series so far and am used to it, but I’m just warning you.

You can watch this on Tubi.

SUPPORTER DAY: Circle of Death (2023)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by CK Fortune, who has graciously become a Big B&S’er, a monthly supporter of the site and got to pick an entire week of movies. His idea this time was for a series on movies that started as one film and were dubbed into something else.

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Circle of Death is an anthology horror film that is hosted by late night podcaster Deadman Dave (Mark Ricche), who takes his listeners through four macabre tales of obsession, madness and murder. It’s written by Christian Bareford and BC Fourteen, with segments directed by Fourteen, the Bareford Brothers and Scott Vangrootenbruel. The DJ Deadman Dave connecting sequences were directed by Mark Ricchie and were written by Christian Bareford and BC Fourteen. They don’t just quote classic stories, but also a Geto Boys song.

The first of these stories is “3 To Go,” directed by Scott Vangrootenbruel and written by Christian Bareford. Four acquaintences reunite once a year to compare tales of the fantastic. They are Erving Rosseau (Erik Thompson), Miranda (Delaney Hathaway), Dr. Bartholomew Chambers (Olav Carter) and their host, Dante Beaumont (Bill McLaughlin). They each draw numbers from a chest, which must be part of their story. Dr. Bartholomew tells about a patient named Mitch Ermer (BC Fourteen), who had an abdominal tumor and died in a surgical accident. Beaumont then tells the story of a small town named Cyril and the McMullen family and how they died in a fire. Miranada tells of Michael Williamson, a single man and sports columnist who was killed as he looked for the darker side of love. Erving is last, filling everyone’s glass before he tells the story of a wanderer, a woman who was in a car crash. Yet Erving has the darkest secret story of them all and the connection to all that we have just heard. This feels like the story was shortened to fit into the running time and I feel would be a much better full-length story with more time to breath, as there are some good ideas in this.

The second story of obsessive madness, starting with the words of the “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. “The Heart and the Hunted” is directed and written by BC Fourteen. It has Del (Jason Bareford) in a hunting stand with a crossbow, then having a rough night dreaming of running through a field before screaming at someone unseen and repeatedly firing his handgun. As he drives in the day, we find Mary (Jennifer DiBlasio) getting out of the shower and getting ready for an evening on the town that ends with Del and her getting together, only for her to wake up bound with her mouth covered with duct tape. He’s in the tree stand, waiting to shoot her if she tries to get away, leaving her in the woods all night while he watches. He’s been waiting for a monster known as The Thing (Michael Kolence) and is using her as bait. This looks really great at the end and the creature design is so fun. It reminded me a lot of Humanoids from the Deep and again, as I said after the first story, I would have loved to have seen this as a full-length movie.

“The Dirty Hands Man” is directed by the Bareford Brothers and stars Mark Sebetch as that character, who was created bt Christian. A day at a house on the egde of the lake becomes a waking nightmare for a young man named Jakob (Logan Monaco) who discovers more about himself, as well as her legal guardian Catarina (Reagan DeFazio) and her family and friends. She looks down on Jakob so much that she won’t even let him go to the bathroom inside the house, which may seem weird to you, but I had a girlfriend — who I dated for years — whose mother wouldn’t allow me to use their bathroom because I was low class. Once Jakob is allowed to use the toilet, Katarina follows him and makes him wash his hands again. She also meets Robert (Erik Thompson) and Ashleigh (Brittany Stoler), the rest of her family. But because this all starts with him being questioned by the police — Boggs (Boomer Payne) and Merkle (Jason Bareford) — you know this all isn’t going to work out.

As they sit around the fire, Robert and Ashleigh explain their life story to Jakob, including how they lost their parents in a car wreck that left her with pins in his leg. They also learn that Catarina had a child that she gave away, all in time for the Dirty Hands Man to appear out of the woods and murderer everyone and knock out Jakob. Or so he’d like the cops to believe. There’s a big reveal in this and again, I wish the story had time to breathe because the conversations between the characters feel real and I was just starting to get into it when it was time to move quickly to the resolution.

The last story is “Perfect” and it was directed by BC Fourteen. He also wrote the story with Josh Garrell. A plastic surgeon Clay Smith (Andrew Hopper) meets Patricia (Laura Leigh) and tells her about his friend Peter (Lance Arthur Smith), whose emails brought them together for what seems like a blind date, even if she’s been dating Peter. Clay is someone who operates on several movie stars and is known from gossip magazines. Worried about Peter, she brings him to meet him in person and to possibly speak to him about what he’s been doing. When Clay gets there, he learns that Peter is operating on brains and covered in blood. This entry has some dark imagery and really effective lighting throughout that really adds to the darkness within this episode.

The Circle of Death has some interesting stories within it. It’s definitely worth exploring to scratch your anthology film itch and it’s great to see a movie made around Pittsburgh with this level of quality. I’d love to either see these movies expand or another collection of them, as it was a fun watch. You can watch it on Amazon Prime.

Bigfoot vs Megalodon 2 (2023)

Many of the bad guys in this series of movies — Crosscoe the Werewolf, Bartholomew the Man-Made Monster, Tickles the Clown and Megalodon — are going crazy and it falls to our hero Bigfoot, as always, to pick himself up and defend what’s left of humanity. Luckily, he has a new look and actually seems to look more like a Bigfoot than an ape. So there’s that.

Meanwhile, new commander Grace Sherwood comes into the forest and runs into a witch version of herself, ending this on a cliffhanger, there’s a Dr. Frankenstein playing both sides of the war, a new astronaut partner named Holmes and finally, Bigfoot and Megalodon fight for real, even if it takes the entire movie to get there. That said, it’s only an hour long, so it won’t ruin your plans for the day.

If you ever wanted to watch a movie where an evil clown flies a spaceship, I mean, there are several of these for you to watch. I’m nearing the end of all of them and I’m hoping that director and writer BC Fourteen has like three more to unleash on Tubi or I’m going to have to start watching Criterion movies or something.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Bigfoot Goes to Hell (2023)

Bigfoot is burned out from all the battles in space after Bigfoot vs. Megalodon and Bigfoot vs. Krampus. He’s takes a vacation just in time for Earth to get nuked for the third or fourth time in this series, while Lucifer sends Baphomet to create even more madness in the universe as well as eliminate the last humans. Bigfoot tries to stop him but gets blown up and sent to Hell, where he believes that he’s in some kind of mall and wanders around looking for a meat lover’s pizza.

Director and writer BC Fourteen has kept making this series of films and in each one, weirder and wilder things keep happening, like Lucifer lecturing the viewer, telling you that there’s no God and that at the end, you just end up in Hell serving him.

I’m still in love with the strange way that Bigfoot walks and how every long speech in this is illustrated by stock photography like how an ad agency would pitch new business. So much of this is the same animation and everyone looks like they come from Halo, except for Lucifer in a wheelchair and the swaying arms of Bigfoot as he lumbers into the scene.

If BC Fourteen makes thirty of these, I’ll watch them all.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Trump vs. the Illuminati (2020)

In 2044, advanced AI finally drains the last of Earth’s natural resources. Humanity escapes at the last minute, along with a Chinese clone of President Donald Trump who spends a thousand years on Mars with a slowly draining AI robot, racing around on a rover.

Now, he’s been brought into a battle between what is left of humanity and the Illuminati, who are based in Hell and have Satan, Anubis and Aleister Crowley among their troops. Along with a clone of Van Helsing, Commander Kali and Dr. Jekyll, all characters that would go on to appear in the rest of BC Fourteen’s movies.

A lot of people say this looks like a video game cutscene and yeah, it does. But I kind of love these movies for that. I miss they were an actual video game where you could take Donald — not the Donald, a Donald — into Hell and fight Satan hand to small hand.

Somehow, these movies get even weirder after this and I would advise that you watch all of them. A clown who is Hannibal Lecter that flies a spaceship? A werewolf in space? A pumpkin headed bad guy? It does all of that and more, including a reptile Anton LaVey.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Realityville (2023)

Directed and written by Bakeeba Ruffin, who is also known as rapper Tef Kaluminati or Cinematic Ref, has also made Savage Genesis and The Day After 19. He also appears as a character named Teflon in this, the lead character, a gangster from a small town who only has one friend named Prince (Joshua Bullock).

Shot in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, as well as Raleigh, Princeville, Whitakers and outside a Marriott in Tampa, Florida, this is about the twists and turns of life on the streets and the fact that whatever you’ve done in the past is never really over and can never be erased.

All movies are miracles and it’s incredible that this movie has the opportunity to be seen on streaming platforms. A lot of it looks to be shot like Curb Your Enthusiasm and the actors are improv reading their lines. Sometimes, that makes it seem like simple conversations go forever. That said, the end of the movie has a huge gun battle that seems like it was so much fun to shoot, even if the computer-added flashes take away from it. I assume this was shot with no permits and guerilla style, which is pretty great.

This feels pretty authentic to me, but hey, I’m a white kid from a small town in Pennsylvania, so what do I know? I was entertained.

You can learn more about this movie at the official Facebook page.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Prince Fatal Secrets (2022)

This TMZ documentary is directed by David Thies and tells what happened to Prince on April 21, 2016 as he died from a drug overdose. He had been dealing with the flu but may have overdosed another time a week before.

His loss was a major shift to the world, a loss that I never thought would happen. Prince always just was a force in my life since I was young and always someone that I knew would be releasing music and making contributions to culture. His loss changed the world for me.

What I didn’t like about this documentary is how they sensationalized his drug use. He was in pain most of his life from performing. Aren’t rock stars supposed to do drugs? No one at TMZ has ever had an addiction? It all comes off as very wrong to me.

I think it’s so weird that the pills that ended Prince’s life came from Walgreens. It seems so normal and generic and not a rock and roll thing. I guess it proves that anyone can have an addiction and it can be something as simple as you pick up at your pharmacy.

When I was young, Prince — unlike every other performer — scared people. Who was this small black man singing in a high pitch and combining sex and religion? I loved his edge and how he seemed to cultivate a secret world around himself. I wish he was still here.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Mysteries from the Grave: Titanic (2022)

 

The voyage of the RMS Titanic only lasted five days and over a century later interest in the disaster still exists. This documentary takes viewers into the depths of the ocean and shows what happened to the 1,500 people who died in the ship that was said to be unsinkable.

They found descendents of passengers to be in this and also people who are still blaming Captain Edward Smith 110 years later. In the same way I debate Italian movies, I bet there are people obsessed with the Titanic that are screaming during this.

I once had to do ads for a charity that was a married couple who built their entire house to look like the dining hall of the Titanic and would have charity events that served the last meal on the ship. Every idea we showed them, they grew upset and said, “Why are you making the Titanic into a joke?” I’m not the one that lived in the Titanic 24/7 so maybe I wasn’t so understanding. I also worked on a Titanic sequel in Pittsburgh that had the sinking filmed in a wave pool and I was told that their CGI was going to make it look great. My response? “Is your CGI better than James Cameron?”

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Gone Before Her Time: When the Music Stopped (2022)

Aaliyah, Amy Winehouse, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes and Selena all died way too young. Why?

Aaliyah, an R&B singer and star of Romeo Must Die and Queen of the Damned was killed in an airplane accident in the Bahamas along when the overloaded aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff. The pilot had drugs and alcohol in his blood and was not qualified to fly the aircraft.

Amy Winehouse released one of the best-selling albums in UK chart history, Back to Black. She struggled with substance abuse, mental illness, bulimia and addiction, dying of alcohol poisoning at the age of 27. After her death, her album became the UK’s best-selling album of the 21st century.

Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was a member of TLC along with Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas. She was infamous for setting Andre Rison’s home on fire before she died in a car crash in Roma, Jutiapa, Honduras, while volunteering at a children’s development center. Days before, her assistant had accidentally killed a young boy, Bayron Isaul Fuentes Lopez, and she believed that a spirit that followed her choose him instead of her.

Selena was the Queen of Tejano Music and becoming a crossover star in America. She is still one of the most influential Latin artists of all time even after she was shot and killed in 1995 by Yolanda Saldívar, her friend and the former manager of her Selena Etc. boutiques.

This documentary takes you through the lives, the successes and challenges of these women, as well as what happened to all of them. Each of their lives ended way before they could have done more and is a tragedy in its own way.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Queen of Crypto (2023)

Ruja Plamenova Ignatova is the founder of a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme known as OneCoin, which was called “one of the biggest scams in history.” Since 2017, she has been hiding from various international law enforcement agencies and has been charged by U.S. authorities for wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering. She was added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted List in 2022.

This documentary shows how she was part of several multi-level marketing cons before getting into OneCoin. She built a $4 billion dollar Bitcoin empire that was all based on lies. When the law closed in, she went on the run. There was a report that she was murdered on the orders drug lord Hristoforos Amanatidis but the FBI is still investigating and believes that she is alive.

What is bitcoin? It’s a virtual currency designed to be a form of payment outside the control of any one person, group or entity. This takes away any need for third-party involvement in financial transactions. It’s part of a blockchain and the network required to power it. So what’s a blockchain? It’s a ledger or database that stores transactions, secured by encryption. When a transaction happens, information from the previous block is copied to a new block with the new data. This is encrypted and the transaction is verified by miners in the network. A new block is opened, a Bitcoin is created and it is given as a reward to the miners who can use, hold or sell the Bitcoin.

Even writing it, it doesn’t make any sense to me.

You can watch this on Tubi.