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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.
From Fly Girl on In Living Color to being a diva whose name got shortened because it is so iconic, J. Lo has been a major force in entertainment since the 90s. Her first starring roles in Selena, Anaconda, Out of Sight and The Cell showed that she had a good eye for picking movies and yes, perhaps her career suffered after Gigli, but she’s always found a way to come back, whether its in music, television or films, as 2019’s Hustlers showed that she still was a solid actress.
If you’re a fan, you’ll know all this TMZ show has to tell you about her. But that’s what these Tubi TMZ shows are for, an overview on a star and their life. J. Lo has so much to get into, from her career to her many loves and how she’s owned herself throughout every twist. Even someone like me who barely watches popular movies can point several of her movies that I’ve seen. I mean, I have watched Enough so many times alone. If I even mention her to my wife, that means that I will have to watch it again. Some say she’s the Elizabeth Taylor of our era. Watch this and decide for yourself.
Embracing the socially conscious — yet still exploitative — black humor and tongue in cheek style of the Brazilian Mouth of Garbage Cinema (Boca do Lixo), the man known as Coffin Joe — José Mojica Marins — directed co-wrote (with Rubens Francisco Luchetti) and stars in this story of a man named Finis Hominis who rises naked from the ocean and walks through the streets of the city, changing the world.
After helping a woman in a wheelchair to walk, protecting a woman and her child from a gang and then being given the finest in clothing, he walks to a church where he drinks Holy Water and is proclaimed Finis Hominis, the end of man. He brings the dead back to life, gathers followers and upsets the leaders of the world until he announces that he must return home. And that is an insane asylum. And this has happened before.
A messiah and an insane person may be the same. That seems like what Marins is saying in a film that avoids his traditional horror look, feel and main character and instead, trips out.
Arrow Video’s limited edition collection for Coffin Joe is perfect. The End of Man has commentary with Marins, Paulo Duarte and Carlos Primati in Portuguese with English subtitles. You can get this set from MVD.
In the middle of a fire, the online world of the Citizen App spills into Los Angeles, which has been ignited in more ways than one as the calls on the app turn into a vigilante mob looking for someone who may not even be a suspect.
Directed by Paula Neudorf, who worked on the series Cyberwar, this VICE News show has someone who worked at the company saying, “If your app protects the world, you know, and you hurt one person, maybe it’s not the biggest deal.”
Using leaked Slack chats, company information and interviews with sources, this is all about how Citizen’s CEO Andrew Frame put a $30,000 bounty on information that would lead to the capture of an arsonist who started a fire in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighborhood. While police were looking for the same individual, they were innocent. Another person was arrested. A Citizen spokesperson called the incident “a mistake we are taking very seriously.”
Founded in 2016, Citizen is the first app to combine location information with 911 intelligence to keep you and your loved ones safe. The app was originally Vigilante and released in New York City. The ads for the app encouraged user vigilantism, as well as racial profiling and harassment. It was pulled from the Apple App Store within 2 days.
Citizen also released the subscription security feature Protect, the first paid feature. USA Today says that this feature “lets users contact virtual agents for help if they feel they’re in danger.” As of January 26, 2022, Protect had over 100,000 subscribers.
The idea of America becoming even more of a police state where people gain money because of turning each other in is yet another nightmare in this rapidly declining state that we live in. If this doesn’t scare you, you aren’t paying attention.
José Mojica Marins directed movies for six years before making At Midnight I’ll Take YourSoul, the first appearance of Brazil’s national boogeyman, Zé do Caixão, or Coffin Joe.
Joe is a man with no morals but a devotion to Nietzschian philosophies and absolute hatred for religion with the goal of achieving immortality through the birth of a perfect son. And while he does not believe in the supernatural, he often finds himself walking through visions of the otherworld.
Coffin Joe came to Marins — the man who would often be referred to as the character interchangeably — in a very magic way. “In a dream saw a figure dragging me to a cemetery. Soon he left me in front of a headstone, there were two dates of my birth and my death. People at home were very frightened, called a priest because they thought I was possessed. I woke up screaming, and at that time decided to do a movie unlike anything I had done. He was born at that moment the character would become a legend: Coffin Joe. The character began to take shape in my mind and in my life. The cemetery gave me the name, completed the costume of Joe the cover of voodoo and black hat, which was the symbol of a classic brand of cigarettes. He would be a mortician.”
Awakening of the Beast begins in black and white, as a series of vignettes of the ways that drug users debase themselves are shown in lurid, sweaty detail. A TV panel debates the idea that sexual perversion is caused by the use of illegal drugs, with more stories that illustrate this point. The TV show needs an expert on depravity, so they ask Marins to appear on the show.
Afterward, the doctor who conducted the experiment doses four volunteers and asks for them to stare at a poster of The Strange World of Coffin Joe. Supposedly Marins didn’t know much about using drugs, but he intended this movie to speak against the fact that the uses of drugs are treated worse than the suppliers and that the Brazilian film industry saw him as no better than a long-nailed drug dealer.
The acid trip that follows is highlighted by Coffin Joe, ranting against anyone and everyone. Of course, this film was banned by the very establishment it rails against. So basically, Coffin Joe is a self-fulfilling prophecy; the maniac attacking belief structures created by an artist who only believes in the power of film.
“My world is strange, but it’s worthy to all those who want to accept it, and never corrupt as some want to portray it. Because it’s made up, my friend, of strange people, though none are stranger than you!”
Arrow Video’s limited edition collection of the movies of Coffin Joe will own your soul. Awakening of the Beast has commentary with Marins, Paulo Duarte and Carlos Primati in Portuguese with English subtitles. There’s also a new interview with Guy Adams on Marins’ esoteric aspects, a new video essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas on the gender politics of Marins’ films and alternate opening titles. You can get this set from MVD.
On August 13, 1988, a pregnant Shannan Watts disappeared along with her two daughters, four-year-old Bella and three-year-old Celeste. Her husband Christopher Watts went on television to plead for their safe return knowing that he had already murdered his wife and dumped her in a shallow grave and jammed his children into an oil tank in the hopes that he could start a new life with his girlfriend.
Written by Vince Sherry, this brings in friends, family, reporters and experts to discuss the case. At this point, if you’re watching this, you’ve probably already seen this story on several shows and watched American Murder: The Family Next Door on Netflix. I know I’ve seen this before and I just listen to these shows while I work on the site because my wife runs the TV and I just try and think about a world not filled with family annihilators. But that said, if you can’t get enough true crime, here is this show for you to watch and learn how a family fell apart, how Shanann kept using social media to present a perfect family and how her husband found a really attractive new girl and took her sand surfing.
Fresh Meat: Jeffrey Dahmer (2021): Directed by Kevin Barry. this Tubi original documentary has drawn some ire online for featuring podcasters in the place of actual experts as well as several inaccuracies, including it claiming that Dahmer lived in the Oxford Apartments in 1988 when he didn’t move in until May 1990; that he accidentally took Halcion when he killed Steven Tuomi in 1987, but this actually happened in May of 1990 as well. They also are three years off on the Konerak Sinthasimphone incident which happened on May 27, 1991, not September 26, 1988. Thanks to IMDB user corbettc-23259 for pointing this out.
It also talks as much about other cannibals and killers like Ed Gein and Luka Magnotta when most are watching this to learn more about Dahmer. Then again, if you are watching this, you probably have already seen so many other documentaries all about him and will be upset by how little this gets into his homelife and reasons for killing, much less how much it gets wrong. Like how Ed Gein is from Plainfield, WI. Not Plainville. This is a simple editing issue that should have been caught and yet, like so much of this documentary, so much is just plain incorrect.
Unlike the first Fresh Meat on Dahmer and how he was arrested, this is more about how he became a victim himself within the walls of Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin when he was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver. Through interviews — you know, as always in these Tubi docs, podcast experts but I guess that’s where journalism is — and dramatized re-enactments, this tries to get to the bottom and tell the truth of just how the most famous killer could be murdered when he should have been guarded.
Directed and written by Raul Lopez Echeverria, this is — as the title tells us — the story of Domingo (Eduardo Covarrubias), who lives in a poor neighborhood in Guadalajara. He has lost his wife to divorce and only has work in his life until he learns that his passion for announcing soccer matches can change his entire neighborhood.
While soccer may not be as popular here in America — it’s making strides and the World Cup is a big deal here no as well — you can substitute any sport for what Domingo loves. The idea that he sits on the sidelines of a barely complete pitch and is as passionate about the games as anyone commenting on the biggest matches in the world is why everyone loves him.
I like that Tubi is getting these foreign movies and giving people in our country a chance to see what the rest of the world is like. I may not be a soccer fan but I can feel the passion within this movie and the joy that the characters feel.
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