EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, 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.
Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!
Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?
Bambi (Eva Arnez) is a female karate fighter and pro wrestler who no longer loves combat. Barney (Barry Prima) is a martial artist who helps her find the eye of the tiger again. That’s needed because she needs to raise money for an operation to save the life of her brother.
Or maybe not, because 1982’s Jopi Burnama-directed Perempuan Bergairah (Passionate Woman) was remixed by Troma’s Charles Kaufman. If your idea of the height of humor is repeated bathroom jokes, you’ll love this. I must admit that I did laugh when a woman yelled when Bambi wins a fight, “Come see me tonight, I have a vibrator!” and Bambi replies,”Mine has all five speeds!”
Now for the real description of the original from IMDB: “Renny Basuki (Eva Arnaz) is a young woman and a former judo champion who, after her father’s demise, tries to look after her impoverished family. When her younger brother is diagnosed with a deadly disease, she is desperate to afford his surgery costs. One day, Indra (Prima), a professional wrestling manager, offers Renny and her friend Mia (Diana Suarkom) a place in his female wrestling troupe. They agree but Renny’s mother disapproves her wrestling career.”
As much as I love how much pro wrestling this has, not to mention a snake in the bath scene that shot for shot rips off A Nightmare On Elm Streetplus a man’s face being erased by acid and someone else getting blown up with explosive throwing stars and then brass knuckles being used to punch someone’s eyeball out of their head, I am not a fan of Barry Prime being made into Elvis.
Then again, because of this movie, I hunted down the original.
Troma also made Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters Part 2 from another movie with Arnaz in it, Barang Terlarang (Violent Killer).
Dr. Hamílton (Jorge Peres) is a psychiatrist who is having nightmares in which Coffin Joe is taking his wife. He seeks help from filmmaker Jose Mojica Marins, who assures him that he created Coffin Joe, who doesn’t really exist.
There are only 35 minutes of new footage in this movie with the rest coming from censored scenes from past films including Awakening of the Beast, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe and The Strange World of Coffin Joe.
By this point, even though it’s mentioned several times in this movie that Coffin Joe was not real, he has become real. He has become more than an idea and is Brazil’s national boogeyman. He exists in our imagination as real as an actual living being. Kind of like, oh you know, Freddy Kreuger, who took a similar path 16 years later.
It’s also a great way to get out all the strangest stuff that couldn’t be seen in the past. Sure, it’s barely connected, but if you’re looking for a Coffin Joe mixtape to put on with some fuzzed out music for a party, well, this is it.
Arrow Video’s limited edition collection of the movies of Coffin Joe stares into your eyes. Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind has commentary from Marins, editor Nilcemar Leyart, Paulo Duarte and Carlos Primati in Portuguese with English subtitles, You can get this set from MVD.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, 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.
Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!
Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?
The Naked Monster started in 1984 when director Ted Newsom was bet that he couldn’t make a movie for $2,500. He released the original version, Attack of the B-Movie Monster, on VHS a year later. To make it, he “hauled out the old scripts, took gags and lines and did a 25-page script which condensed things to manageable size. That version of the project was designed as a half-hour short that could be shot in about four weekends (plus the time for effects). On that basis, I asked Wayne Berwick to direct Attack of the B-Movie Monster, since I was producing and had drawn the storyboards for both the live action and effects shots.”
In 2005, a new version was made for DVD. If you watched a lot of old 1950s monster movies, you will understand so many of the references. A sheriff (R.G. Wilson), his scientist girlfriend (Brinke Stevens) and a visiting government agent (John Goodwin) discover that the Creaturesaurus erectus is back and destroying California. To help, they call upon Colonel Patrick Hendry (Kenneth Tobey, playing the same role from the original The Thing From Another World), as well as monster experts that include Clete Ferguson (John Agar from Revenge of the Creature), Major Allison (Robert Clarke from Beyond the Time Barrier), Dr. Carrington (Robert O. Cornthwaite, also reprising his The Thing from Another World part), Professor Bradshaw (Robert Shayne from Indestructible Man) and Officer Kelton (Paul Marco from Plan 9 from Outer Space). There are also appearances by Linnea Quigley, Michelle Bauer and Forrest J. Ackerman.
I would advise just understanding that this is a ZAZ Brothers style send-up of 50s monster movies and allow yourself to enjoy the rapid fire jokes and silliness. Not every one lands, but those that do are pretty good.
Directed and co-written (with Rubens Francisco Luchetti) by Jose Mojica Marins — the alter ego of Coffin Joe — Hellish Flesh is the tale of Dr. George Medeiros (Marins) and his wife Rachel (Luely Figueiró). He’s quite the scientist. But he’s neglecting his gorgeous bride over the need for science, so she hooks up with his best friend Oliver (Oswaldo De Souza). Together, they come up with a plan to kill him and take his money. Step one is throwing acid in his face. Step two is spending all his money. Yet he didn’t die during step one, so you better believe that he will come for revenge. Except that when he does come home, he doesn’t seem upset at all. As for Oliver, well, after spending most of his friend’s money, he got stabbed by another lover, leaving Rachel alone.
This is a movie filled with screaming and while strange, it doesn’t enter into the world of the Coffin Joe films. He doesn’t descend a staircase of naked women or go to Hell and learn that he is Satan. But still, it’s a movie where an acid-deformed scientist works on his revenge and even when making a morality story, Marins still can’t make a normal movie.
Arrow Video’s limited edition collection of the movies of Coffin Joe should be owned by every child. Hellish Flesh has extras including an interview with Andrew Leavold on Marins’ place in 60s and 70s Marginal Cinema and a new video essay by Kat Ellinger. You can get this set from MVD.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, 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.
Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!
Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?
The Lightning Bug — voice by DJ Machine Gun Kelly, not the Cleveland waste of time rapper but the host of seven weekly programs who also shows up in The Fifth Floor, Roller Boogie and Voyage of the Rock Aliens — is taking over the world with sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll and five different costumes. Five costumes? That’s because this movie uses footage from Undersea Kingdom, The Fighting Devil Dogs, Mysterious Doctor Satan, Adventures of Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher, Captain America, The Masked Marvel, The Crimson Ghost — someone alert Glenn — as well as The Black Widow and Zombies of the Stratosphere.
Also known as The Day the Earth Got Stoned and The Second World War, this has Firesign Theater members Peter Bergman as The Chief and Philip Proctor as Agent Barton. They explain what’s going on as the J-Men battle evil. Yes, thrill to the adventures of Yank Smellfinger, James Armhole, Buzz Cufflink, Agents Spike, Claire and Lance, Rocket Jock (Commando Cody from Radar Men from the Moon), the Lone Star (Captain America), the Caped Madman (Captain Marvel), Spy Swatter (Spy Smasher), Sleeve Coat, Juicy Withers and Admiral Balzy, who work with the FCC (Federal Culture Control) to battle the evil army of MUSAC (Military Underground Sugared Airwaves Command).
Even if it seems like the J-Men have died, don’t worry. They get out of everything by the end of the movie.
Using music by Budgie, The Tubes, Head East, Billy Preston and Badazz, this movie became a cult favorite thanks to how many times it was shown on USA’s Night Flight. It was directed by Richard Patterson, who made a Western film like this in 1976 titled Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch. He also made documentaries on Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers. It was written by Bergman and Proctor.
Dr. Valerie Cross (Louise Linton, who was in the 2015 remake of Cabin Fever) is one of those people who seemingly does it all. She’s a professor of literature and psychology at Berkeley. The author of two children’s books and two novels about an antihero serial killer named Jason Manson with a third — and a $3 million offer just to write it — on the way. She used to be the lover of her agent Leonard (William Baldwin, once the villain of an American giallo in Sliver, now just content to be the big name in the credits) but after disappearing for two months took up with David (Pierson Fode), the owner of a gym where everyone — Hannah (Christy St. John), Thomas (Quinton Guyton), Tori (Michelle Jubilee Gonzalez) and Angela (Jackie Moore) — are all investigating the Harbinger serial killer.
David seems creepy — he claims he doesn’t have to breathe — and Valerie seems fragile, but things get even stranger when Angela hangs herself after claiming she knows who the killer is. It seems like she suspects David, who she’s also sleeping with — David and Valerie don’t believe in the archaic institution of marriage — and she also has a boyfriend Matthew (David Wachs) who was planning on scamming her to pay back Ian (William McNamara).
As Valerie goes to a cabin in Tahoe — and everyone else at Mixtape Fitness, their gym, quits due to their fear of the killer — she nearly dies when the brakes fail. This brings her into the orbit of Sophia (Joana Metrass), a restaurant owner whose husband died in his sleep. And now Matthew has moved in next door to start scamming them.
Everyone is beautiful but everyone is crazy. If this were the 90s, we’d call this an erotic thriller. If it was the 70s, it would be a giallo. In 2023, it’s a Tubi original.
Directed by Brian Skiba and written by Sean Crayne, this finds Valerie and David being the suspects in the murder of Angela while more girls go missing. Matthew believes that everything that Valerie is writing about in her books is actually the true things that David tells her, proving that he’s the Harbinger. Matthew starts blackmailing them, asking for Bitcoin.
David starts wiping out everyone while they swim and rock climb all while Valerie sighs and hangs out with Sophia at ladies night. She nearly warned Thomas in time, but then David shows up when he starts his car and it blows up real good.
Man, Sophia has a lot of questions, getting out that Vanessa and David met on the Isle of Bondi when she was writing a children’s book. She was kidnapped and nearly murdered and then David saved her, which became the premise for her first Jason Manson book. Let’s take a break for a second here. She’s a best-selling writer and no one was like, “You named your serial killer character Jason Manson. A little on the nose?”
While our female protagonist is flirting with Sophia at the bar and dealing with the blackmailer, David is busy, knifing women. When she gets home, David accuses her of being the person blackmailing them. They argue, she shoves him and he hits his head, bleeding all over the kitchen. As she cleans up, the cops call to tell her that all of her gym team are dead.
Cut to Leo as Valerie calls him for advice on David’s injury. He brings his own doctor (James Moses Black) instead of dealing with a girl who just wrote a book, Confessions of a Cult. David gets stitched up and has a concussion. Also: David is such a sociopath that he chews he pills instead of swallowing them.
David then relates the story of how he had a dog named Luna as a child and instead of giving it back to its rightful owner, he set it on fire and watched it burn. He then tells Valerie that he will never hurt her and kisses her in a way that says, “I am going to set you on fire.”
While all this is happening, Valerie gets with Sophia as Leo comes with the contract for the book deal. Slicing limes for tequila turns into David stabbing Matthew but missing and killing Leo. He’s such a great serial killer that he leaves blood all over the place, then someone knocks out Valerie and duct tapes her arms behind her back. And oh yeah, Sophia did kill her husband.
Nobody in this seems human. Where is the Gregory Dark of today that can make these erotic thrillers and have tension, heat and an actual story? People just arrive, drop exposition or more mystery, and then either have PG-rated makeout scenes or get killed.
Anyhow…
Valerie finds Sophia being hung, just like how Angela got killed. Matt is behind it all and David is poisoned by the tequila that knocked everyone out. Meanwhile, Matt is getting his bitcoin and then Valeria reveals that she and David killed Angela. Somehow, David is able to throw everyone into a rowboat and take them all out onto Lake Tahoe, then toss them overboard with cinderblocks tied to them. How strong is this guy?
David wakes up and everyone goes into the water and we get the closed captioned description “muffled bubbles” which makes me laugh out loud. Val is saved at the last minute by Sophia as David and Matt go down together. Of course, David lives, Jason Manson is dead and the Harbinger is gone as well. There will be a new Jason Manson novel and Sophia is her new inspiration. Val is going to Rome and she invites David to win her back.
Oh man, what a goofy movie. Pretty people doing dumb things and having unsexy sex is a better genre when it has fog, neon and sax solos, as the 90s proved to us all.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, 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.
Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!
Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?
Kung Faux was an action comedy TV series created by Mic Neumann that remixed martial arts movies with popular music and comic book style editing along with video game style visual effects and new storylines that had voice acting featuring contemporary art stars, hip hop personalities and pop culture icons.
Neumann described the creative process as treating the original films like a DJ treats records, “sampling the melting pot of music and demixing pop culture to assemble new collisions of sounds and palettes.” Kung Faux first appeared publicly as a narrative collection of video art film stills derived from the series that exhibited at the original Ace Hotel alongside the works of such artists as Kaws and Shepard Fairey before becoming one of the first shows on FUSE.
As if that’s not enough, the show had music and voiceovers from a diverse array of artists including De La Soul, Guru, Masta Ace, Queen Latifah, Biz Markie, Afrika Bambaataa, Eminem, Kaws, Eli Janney, Craig Wedren, Steve Powers, Aida Ruilova, Mark Ronson, Helena Christensen, Crazy Legs, MF Doom, Quasimoto, Mix Master Mike, Beastie Boys, Petter, Willi Ninja, Information Society, Elephant Man, Jean Grae, Mr. Len, Lord Sear, Roc Raida, Sadat X, Indo G, Ron Van Clief, Harold Hunter, Dimitri from Paris, Above The Law, Grooverider, Stetsasonic, Force MDs, Naughty by Nature, Scribe, P-Money, Curse, Gentleman, Assassin and Fannypack,
Here’s a breakdown of the ten episodes. The descriptions come directly from the listings for the show:
Ill Master: A chronically challenged old homie schools a young gun on the ways of a dunny that has mastered the art of not having to pay protection money.
Boxcutta: A tight cat who exterminates suckas and reps for the real with a style as sharp as a blade until he gets straight gully with a Teflon-don-dadda. Taken from The King of Boxers.
Pinky: Herbs betta recognize a kick-ass kung fu chick named Pinky Jenkins who won’t let anyone stand in the way of a mission to find her M.I.A. master.
Mini Lee: A bi-curious Bruce Lee clone enters the dragon with his own personal psychic hotline which eventually connects him to a whacked-out links lovin’ wanksta. Taken from Bruce Lee We Miss You.
Pimp Stick: Some haters make a move on an original mack’s stack when he breaks north for the annual player’s ball, but his game is tight and the streets is watchin’.
Honey Pie: A good old boy goes on a hunting trip and bags a little more than he bargained for with a sweet backwoods boo & her ill-billy clan. Remixed from Bruce Li in New Guinea.
Dirty Dee: An old school battle cat wrecks shop on the block, forcing the towns #1 break boy to get down on some dirty-deeds done dirt cheap. Original movie: Iron Fisted Warrior.
Funky Bottoms: The hip hop music biz is dog eat dog competition where punks jump up to get beat down, so don’t hate the player, hate the game. The real movie is Amsterdam Connection.
Queenie: From around the way girl to killer queen bee, a local hoodrat has to grow up fast when a Japanese Elvis shakes the family tree with some Jailhouse Rock. The real movie is Life and Death.
Break Boy: Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo lives on in this bizarro style tribute, when a hip hop hating heavy tries to squash the local community center run by an aspiring break master and his #1 pop lockin’ student. This movie is actually Bruce Lee’s Secret.
I’ve also found the soundtrack to the show on Futonrevolution’s YouTube page, which is a wealth of information on this show.
Have you seen this show? What did you think? It doesn’t always work for me but feels like it’d be fun to have on at parties.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, 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.
Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!
Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?
The Firesign Theatre was an American surreal comedy group that first appeared on November 17, 1966, in a live performance on Radio Free Oz on station KPFK FM in Los Angeles. In their career, they produced fifteen record albums and one single and had three nationally syndicated radio programs, The Firesign Theatre Radio Hour Hour, Dear Friends and Let’s Eat!
Created by Peter Bergman, all of their material was conceived, written and performed by Bergman, Philip Proctor, Phil Austin and David Ossman. They have the name as all four were born under the three fire signs of astrology, with Austin being an Aries, Proctor a Leo and Bergman and Ossman both Sagittarius.
The comedy of the group was based on fooling people. Proctor said, “We each independently created our own material and characters and brought them together, not knowing what the others were going to pull. And it was all based on put-ons; that is, we were assuming characters that were assumed to be real by the listeners. No matter how far out we would carry a premise, if we were tied to the phones we discovered the audience would go far ahead of us. We could be as outrageous as we wanted to be and they believed us—which was astonishingly funny and interesting and terrifying to us, because it showed the power of the medium and the gullibility and vulnerability of most people.”
With titles like How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere at All and Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers, their concept albums could be about nothing. Or also about people growing old as they watched TV. They were unlike anything else at the time or since, to be perfectly truthful.
After a break in 1973, the group reformed and went after new targets. Everything You Know Is Wrong attacked the New Age before some people even knew what it was. Ossman referred to it as a “complicated and cinematic record, we were trying to write a radio movie.” Working with Allen Daviau, who would later be the cinematographer of so many Spielberg movies, they used the album as a soundtrack for a film that was released in 1993.
For most of the 70s, the Firesigns were quiet. Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin’s Tandem Productions bought the rights to their character Nick Danger for a TV series that would star George Hamilton and New Line wanted to make a movie from the same stories with Chevy Chase. The group did make five episodes of a show called Nick Danger: The Case of the Missing Shoe for radio, which was pretty much a dying format, and when it wasn’t sold, they released it on an EP.
Proctor and Bergman made J-Men Forever and then Austin and Bergman finally reunited to start performing again. However, when Reagan was in office, the political waters were not safe for the group. They faded, only to reappear later in the 80s. As Bergman said, “I dreamed it back. Sure enough, when we kicked the fascists out of office it was time for the Firesign Theatre to come back.” They lasted until the 2010s and claimed to be the longest surviving group from the classic rock era to still be intact with the original members. Sadly, Bergman would die in 2012 and his memorial would be their last performance. Austin died in 2015.
As for the movies that they worked on, the Western musical Zachariah is one. They were also involved with Tunnel Vision, Americathon and Nick Danger in The Case of the Missing Yolk, which was an interactive video game that became a movie and was shown — just like J-Men Forever — on USA’s Night Flight.
Just like the aforementioned — twice — J-Men Forever, this is a series of old movie serials redubbed into entirely new stories by the Firesigns. Daughters of the Canadian Mounties becomes The Mounties Catch Herpes. Panther Girls of the Congo transforms into Claws II. Spy Smasher presents a world where no one lights up anymore in Revenge of the Non-Smokers. Sperm Bank Hold-Up is The BlackWidow. Nazi Diet Doctors is Darkest Africa. Toy Wars has turned into Manhunt of MysteryIsland. Olympic Confidential transforms into Undersea Kingdom. The Last Handgun On Earth is Radar Men from the Moon. Heaven Is Hell is dubbed and turned into She Demons.
Luckily, we live in a world where you can find this on the internet. The humor is silly but you can see that Mystery Science Theater 3000 was influenced by how the Firesigns dubbed these movies. As someone who loves both serials and stupidity, I loved every moment of this.
On a recent episode of The Cannon Canon, Geoff and Frank mentioned that the hired bad guys in Die Hard had been in so many of their favorite movies. As I was mentioned in regards to having the facts, now I have to live up to it and write this article. That said, this is the kind of thing I love. Who are those goons, who played them and where else have you seen them before? And have any of them been in a Cannon movie?
Hans Gruber (played by Alan Rickman)
Who is he: Hans Gruber is an East German criminal mastermind from who holds the Nakatomi Plaza hostage over the holidays in an attempt to steal $640 million in negotiable bearer bonds. He comes from a family of evil, as his brother Simon (Jeremy Irons) is the main villain of Die Hard with a Vengeance.
At some point in his life, he became part of the Volksfrei, a radical West German terrorist organization. Even this violent group wanted nothing to do with him, as he was kicked for his love of violence and that he was stealing not for the good of the group but for his own personal gain.
Alan Rickman said of the character, “As far as I’m concerned, I’m not playing the villain. I’m just playing somebody who wants certain things in life; has made certain choices, and goes after them.”
This is the same mindset the character was written to have. Steven de Souza, the film’s writer, wrote him as the protagonist. He wrote, “If he had not planned the robbery and put it together, Bruce Willis would have just gone to the party and reconciled or not with his wife. You should sometimes think about looking at your movie through the point of view of the villain who is really driving the narrative.”
According to Hans Buhringer, the German actor who portrayed Fritz, Rickman did an excellent German accent beyond just the basics. Rickman even got the dialect of German English down. When Hans tells Takagi that he enjoyed making models as a boy, he says: “I always enjoyed to make models when I was a boy.” That’s how a German person would speak English.
Where else have you seen Alan Rickman: After Die Hard, Rickman — who made his screen debut in the film — became a bad guy in many films, including the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and the potentially bad Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies. He also played Metatron in Dogma, Alexander Dane in Galaxy Quest and was the voice of Marvin in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, as well as hundreds of stage roles. He sadly died of cancer in 2016.
Karl Vreski (played by Alexander Godunov)
Who is he: Karl Vreski is an East German terrorist and the second-in-command for Hans Gruber. It’s thought that he also was part of the Volksfrei. He and his brother Tony cut the telephone lines — and one assumes the separate internet and alarm lines, which his out-of-control brother almost destroys — to take over Nakatomi Plaza.
He carries a Steyr AUG as his weapon of choice and for much of the movie is obsessed with killing John McClane to get revenge for the death of his brother. John believes that he’s killed him by hanging him with a chain, but Karl has a tremendous desire for revenge which allows him to escape. He nearly kills John and his wife Holly before Sgt. Al Powell is able to use his service weapon to shoot him between the eyes.
In Die Hard With a Vengeance, Simon Gruber also has a henchman named Karl. He is no relation and is played by Sven Toorvald.
Where else have you seen Alexander Godunov: The actor was a Russian ballet dancer who defected to the U.S. in 1979, which was dramatized in the movie Flight 222. Godunov joined American Ballet Theatre and danced as a principal dancer until 1982, when he had a falling out with childhood friend Mikhail Baryshnikov, the director of the company. He’s also in Witness and The Money Pit, but often turned down roles that had dancing or had him recreate his role as Karl. You can also see him as Scarabis in Waxwork II: Lost in Time and as an Amish dad in North (maybe he thought playing Amish again was funny and not typecasting). Sadly, he died at the age of 45, the victim of complications from hepatitis secondary to chronic alcoholism.
Theo (played by Clarence Gilyard Jr.)
Who is he: Theo says early on, “You didn’t bring me along for my charming personality.” That’s true. As you can tell, he uses the muscle of the other criminals — and then jump kicks a dead guard — to get to his job: locking down the building and then opening the security codes that it will take to get to the money that Hans Gruber wants.
He also does surveillance work for the crew, spotting the police vehicle that is blown up with a rocket launcher before yelling, “Oh my god and the quarterback is toast!”
He’s knocked out by Argyle, making him and Kristoff the only two henchmen not to die. He would attack McClane years later with his own gang in the 2020 commercial Die Hard Is Back.
Where else have you seen Clarence Gilyard Jr.: He was Radar Operator Sundown in Top Gun, as well as private investigator Conrad McMasters on Matlock and Texas Ranger Jimmy Trivette on Walker, Texas Ranger. He was also Reverend Bruce Barnes in the Left Behind movies, wrote ten books and was an associate professor in the College of Fine Arts – Department of Theatre at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Franco (played by Bruno Doyon)
Who is he: Franco works mostly with Fritz. They guard the hostages and later heads to the 30th floor where he sees Marco’s body on Sgt. Al Powell’s police car. He’s later killed by McClane machine gunning his knees and then he falls headfirst into a glass window. This scene was stunt-doubled by Steve Picerni.
Where else have you seen Bruno Doyon: His career was brief, as he appeared in the movie The Morning Man, the mini-series Crossing, an episode of a TV series called Le Parc Des Braves and appearing in the industrial movie Head Start: Meeting the Computer Challenge.
Tony Vreski (played by Andreas Wisniewski)
Who is he: After nearly fighting his brother as they cut the phone lines, Tony guards Nakatomi’s head executive Joe Takagi on the 34th floor as Hans asks for the code to the vault. He’s the first villain to be killed by John McClane, who breaks his neck as they fall down the steps. He then writes “Ho ho ho now I have a machine gun” on the killer’s chest. Some think it’s in blood, but I’ve seen other writing that says that it’s in red marker. His death drives his brother Karl to get revenge.
Tony is named for Anton “Little Tony the Red,” the main villain in Roderick Thorp’s novel Nothing Lasts Forever, the book that this movie is made from.
Where else have you seen Andreas Wisniewski: A year before this movie, Wisniewski played the killing machine Necros in The Living Daylights. A former dancer, he also appears in the videos for “Venus” by Bananarma and “Nikita” by Elton John, as well as Gothic, Death Machine and Mission: Impossible.
Alexander (played by Joey Plewa)
Who is he: After Marco’s body is thrown on Sgt. Al Powell’s police car, Alexander fires his M60E3 machine gun but misses the doughnut-loving officer. He is the one who fires the rocket launcher that destroys the police armored vehicle but is killed along with James when McClane throws C4 at them.
Where else have you seen Joey Plewa: After playing one of the Bad Boys in Bruce Willis’ vanity project The Return of Bruno — distributed by HBO/Cannon Home Video — Piewa was also in Roadhouse, three episodes of My Wife and Kids, the movie Bright Day! and despite getting blown up, he returned as Alexander in the Die Hard Is Back commercial. He’s also produced several music videos, including “Tease Me Please Me” by The Scorpions, “Blaze of Glory” by Jon Bon Jovi, “The More Things Change” for Cinderella and “Livin’ La Vida Loca” for Ricky Martin. He was also the voice — alongside Christopher Guest and Bill Murray — for the English version of the French cartoon B.C. Rock.
Marco (played by Lorenzo Caccialanza)
Who is he: Marco’s body is thrown from the 34th floor by John McClane. This brings Sgt. Al Powell into the action.
Where else have you seen Lorenzo Caccialanza: Caccialanza played soccer for several years in the Italian leagues before moving to the United States to pursue an acting career. In 1986, he played for the Hollywood Kickers when they won the Western Soccer Alliance championship.
He’s best known for being on Knot’s Landing, Days of Our Lives and The Bold and the Beautiful. He’s also in Funny About Love, Don Juan DeMarco, Entangled, Just Married and Monster-In-Law.
Kristoff (played by Gérard Bonn)
Who is he: He’s barely in the movie and his fate isn’t even told! He could still be up on the 34th floor for all we know!
Where else have you seen Gérard Bonn: He was in the French movie Vanille fraise, the TV series College, the TV movie Message from Nam and Killing Zoe.
Eddie (played by Dennis Hayden)
Who is he: How is Eddie the next to last bad guy to die? Well, he was originally written to die halfway through the film. Hayden hired the future sister-of-law of writer Steven E. de Souza as his publicist and used that to get Eddie to be killed next-to-last. He’s also not Huey Lewis, even though the singer voiced Eddie in The Cleveland Show episode “Die Semi-Hard.”
Where else have you seen Dennis Hayden: Hayden appears in a Cannon movie! He’s Sonny in Murphy’s Law. He’s also in Action Jackson, Beyond Desire, Another 48 Hrs., Wishmasterand Andrew Divoff’s Night of the Living Dead 3D: Re-Animation.
Uli (played by Al Leong)
Who is he: Despite only saying two lines — “Move it! Come on!” and “Got it!” — Uli is memorable because of his love for candy, eating both Nestle Crunch and Mars candy bars and the fact that he’s played by Al Leong,
Where else have you seen Al Leong: Everywhere. Leong is the king of movie henchmen and his resume is filled with movies where he’s backed up bad guys. An expert at Northern Shaolin Kung Fu, Tae Kwon Do, Kali and Jujutsu, Leong shows up in My Science Project, Big Trouble In Little China (he was also in John Cassavetes’ Big Trouble the same year), Running Scared, Lethal Weapon, Steele Justice, Action Jackson, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, They Live, Black Rain, Cage (a movie with Reb Brown and Lou Ferrigno and I haven’t seen it?), Savage Beach, I Come In Peace, Aftershock, Death Warrant, The Perfect Weapon, Showdown in Little Tokyo, Rapid Fire, Hard Hunted, Last Action Hero, Hot Shots! Part Deux, Beverly Hills Cop III, The Shadow, Double Dragon, Lethal Weapon Part IV, Escape from L.A., The Replacement Killers, Godzilla, Forbidden Warrior, The Scorpion King and that’s before you get into TV work and appearance in the video “Poppin’ Them Thangs” by G-Unit.
Heinrich (played by Gary Roberts)
Who is he: After setting up missiles on the 35th floor, Heinrich sets up the C4 on the roof. He’s killed by John McClane just before Marco is also killed.
Where else have you seen Gary Roberts: He is in two episodes of Falcon Crest, Beach Fever, “The Face” episode of Monsters, as a cop in Point Break and in the films Letters from a Killer, Direct Hit and Alien Intruder.
Fritz (played by Hans Buhringer)
Who is he: Fritz handles the hard work, like telling Karl that his brother is dead and being the one to tell Hans that there’s an intruder. After all that, when he yells, “They’re using artillery on us!” Hans calls him an idiot in front of everyone.
Hans Buhringer wasn’t available the day of his death scene so he’s played by Henry Kingi, who has a wig on.
Where else have you seen Hans Buhringer: This is his only movie. He did direct and wrote a movie, Contract Online, in 2008.
James (played by Wilhelm von Homburg)
Who is he: James is the ponytailed killing machine who is killed along with Alexander when John McClane throws C4 at them.
Where else have you seen Wilhelm von Homburg: A German boxer, wrestler and weight lifter — as well as a baker and policeman who worked at the Buchenwald concentration camp but claimed that he was never a Nazi — Homburg is also in The Last of the Secret Agents?, The Wrecking Crew, The Devil’s Brigade and In the Mouth of Madness. He’s best known for playing Prince Vigo von Homburg Deutschendorf in Ghostbusters II, a role he didn’t know he was going to be dubbed for, only finding out at the premiere.
Homburg’s real life is — charitably — bonkers. He lived a life chasing after excess, retiring from boxing to live in St. Pauli Kiez, a red-light district of Hamburg living a life of crime before coming to America and being part of the Venice Beach weightlifting scene. His life after being in the film Diggstown was one of sadness, as he spent the last years of his life homeless, either sleeping in his van, the YMCA or in friends’ homes until he died of prostate cancer.
Maybe that was his punishment, as this Deadspin account of his life is pretty astounding, telling the story of a man loved the idea that he may have fathered his half-sister.
Well, yippee-ki-yay, Mister Falcon! We did it! Did I miss anything?
This film begins with dancing women, native Brazilian drummers and an old man who chants over a coffin which opens to reveal…begins chanting over a closed coffin. The coffin opens and a man rises. Zé do Caixão! Coffin Joe!
At an isolated inn — “Hospedaria dos Prazeres” (Hostel of Pleasures) — the owner (Jose Mojica Marins, who is also Coffin Joe) turns away some and allows others already in the guest book to stay. Those without a place to stay are enraged, as after all, there’s a storm outside. Yet he has room for hedonistic Hell’s Angels, a couple sneaking out on their respective partners, a man ready to kill himself, gamblers out to bankrupt someone and criminals escaping their last robbery.
When they wake up in the morning, all of the clocks and their watches are set to midnight. That’s because they’re all in Hell and the absence of time is one of the many things they must deal with, as well as having to watch their deaths again and again. The owner warns them all that they don’t want to see his evil side — Coffin Joe.
One of the rich men who argued about getting to stay the night before leads the police to the hotel. In its place is a graveyard, where we eventually see the owner. As the camera zooms in, his face is replaced by a skull with bleeding eye sockets.
This is a Cinema da Boca do Lixo (Mouth of Garbage films), called that because they were made in that downtown neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil. These films — Killed the Family and Went to the Movies, The Red Light Bandit, Awakening of the Beast — are down and dirty exploitation films that are close to American exploitation of the 70s with sex and violence often in equal measure.
This is worth watching just for the opening speech from Coffin Joe: “Live to die or die to live? Is there an answer? No! Only doubts! Only deductions… Only the conviction of emptiness… of loneliness… the desperate search for the whole and the nothing in the vastness of the dark. The unveiling of this enigma would be the end of the mystery. The end of the secret of eternity. The apogee of happiness. The mission is accomplished! Men would be facing his biggest conquest… the awakening of his own origin.”
Arrow Video’s limited edition collection of Coffin Joe walks with you when it is night. The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures has a new interview with Dennison Ramalho (co-writer of Embodiment of Evil), footage of Marins at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and A Blind Date for Coffin Joe, a short film by Raymond “Coffin Ray” Castile.
Here’s the review for that movie.
On Raymond Castile’s website, he posted some photos dressed up like Coffin Joe. They looked incredible.
In April of 2006, he learned that the real Coffin Joe — Jose Mojica Marins — had visited this page and loved it. Even better, in October of that year, Mojica and Dennison Ramalho, assistant director of the upcoming Encarnacao do Demonio asked Castile to be in the movie, playing the younger Ze do Caixao in a scene that would connect the final film in the trilogy with This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse.
Check out Diary do Demonio, his diary about traveling to Sao Paulo, Brazil to play Coffin Joe.
After this, he made The Blind Date of Coffin Joe in which Coffin Joe moves to America and starts his own reality dating show. If you’ve never seen a Coffin Joe movie, you probably won’t get the jokes. If you have, it’s absolutely hilarious with Castile looking, sounding and acting exactly like Ze do Caixao as he faces modern dating, all in the hopes of finding a superior woman to give birth to his child.
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