Punk rocker Kat Oden (Liv Roush) doesn’t do much, other than get high with her lover Nick (John Enick). Then one night, a masked man (James Parks) takes her, chains her to a bad and prepares to do…something. Detective Charles Dobson (Ralph Garman) is trying to find her but she may end up loving being kidnapped a little better than real life.
Directed and written by Josh Roush, who has made several films about Kevin Smith, this was made for almost no money and yet has a solid cast — Daniel Roebuck, David Koechner, Harley Quinn Smith, Donita Sparks from L7, Vernon Wells and Smith — who are all really fun in their roles.
Wrong Reasons has deleted Scenes, outtakes, a Q & A, commentary by director Josh Roush, co-producer Matt Rowbottom, composer Cam Mosavian and star Liv Roush as well as another commentary with Roush and executive producer Kevin Smith, an introduction by Smith, a trailer and more. You can get it from MVD.
This Japanese stop-motion animated science fiction film was directed and written by Takehide Hori. It has 140,000 stop-motion shots and Hori did it all — voices, sculpting puppets, lighting, camera operating, editing and the music — by himself.
In the future, man can live forever but can longer create life. As they go into decline, Parton goes underground to visit the Magarins, who provide the power that the humans need. Unlike their elite masters, they can keep making new versions of themselves. An explosion kills Parton, but his mind goes into a series of robot bodies which makes him see more of the side of the workers than those benefitting from them.
If you love strange films, science fiction or handmade animation, you need to watch Junk Head.
You can get Junk Head from MVD. It also has The Making Of Junk Head which is really great.
Leung Chang (Yuen Biao) has been studying kung fu without any hard work. That means that when he fights people and defeats them, it’s because his wealthy father has given money to his servant Yee Tung-choi (Chan Yung) which he uses to pay off his opponents.
Three of Chang’s friends go to see the Lok Fung Lin Chinese Opera troupe. One of them asks out the lead actress and is turned down. He gets insistent and she reveals that she is a man, Leung Yee-tai (Lam Ching-ying). The friends try to attack him, but he’s a Wing Chun expert. Chang, thinking that he’s a great fighter, wants to avenge his friend. Yee Tung-choi tries to bribe Yee-tai, but that fails and Chang discovers just how bad of a battler he is.
Chang asks Yee-tai to teach him Wing Chun but he wisely refuses, as the rich kid would just use it the wrong way. Chang’s father buys the Lok Fung Lin troupe and gives his son a job as Yee-tai’s personal assistant. Now, he follows him everywhere and begs to be taught. And by the end, another prodigal son — Ngai Fei (Frankie Chan) — will teach Chang where he was wrong.
Directed by Sammo Hung, who wrote the movie with Barry Wong, The Prodigal Son is a martial arts movie that actually has a lesson to be learned. I loved it.
The Arrow Video blu ray of this movie has so much! Start with the 2K restorations from the original elements by Fortune Star of both the original HK theatrical and home cuts, then get into extras like two commentary tracks — one by martial arts cinema expert Frank Djeng and actor Bobby Samuels and the other with action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema — as well as featurettes on Wing Chun and Sammo Hung, as well as a double-sided poster, trailers, a reversible sleeve with art by Joe Kim and an illustrated book. You can buy it from MVD.
Directed by Ida Lupino — who co-wrote the script, along with producer Malvin Wald and her husband at the time Collier Young — this was the second post-Code Hollywood film to deal with the issue of rape. The other is after Johnny Belinda.
Ann Walton (Mala Powers) is ready to marry Jim Owens (Robert Clark) when a man who works near her starts following her, finally attacking her. All she can remember of him is a scar. Everyone is supportive, but she feels that Jim will never see her the same way again, so she runs.
She runs again when the bus she is on has a radio message play about her parents looking for her. That’s when she’s rescued by Rev. Bruce Ferguson (Tod Andrews). They start to grow close, but when another man kisses her at a carnival, she attacks him with a wrench. That’s when the reverend learns of her past and helps her to not go to jail.
Instead of giving in to her love, he sends her back home to Jim in an attempt to get back to her old life.
While the word rape could never be said in this movie, Lupino uses that to her advantage. The sad part of this is that a movie made seven decades ago still shows men to be the same as they are today, either wanting to control, own or foul any woman at any opportunity.
The Kino Lorber blu ray of Outrage has a new Paramount Pictures 4K scan and audio commentary by film historian Sara Smith.
Moriah (Karen Obilom) is in a super secret love affair with a famous basketball player for the Demon Dogs named George Carson (Sterling Sulieman). Of course, this being a Tubi movie, things probably won’t work out all that great for her.
She goes to his house for a party with her friend Rachel (Brianna Butler) and as she’s trying to find the bathroom, he tries to make out with her, right after talking about his wife and charity. Moriah decides that she should concentrate on work but all she can think about is getting slam dunked.
She signs the NDA he asks for and their affair starts, just in time for a man (David Andrew Nash) to ask where his daughter Kesha is. Bodyguard Bruno (Laith Wallschleger) gets them out of the drama and they’re off to a hotel deck to bang down low and, as the title says, go out of bounds. But is that George’s wife stalking them and getting photos from Bruno?
Oh yes. Crystal (Maxie McClintock) catches up with her in a clothing store and takes her to lunch. It seems friendly yet is laced with anger. As you can only imagine, by the end, she’s getting screwed up by drug-filled orange juice and husband and wife are into some swinging weirdness. That’s why I come to Tubi movies. For this.
While Nazis deport the Danish Jews to extermination camps, the Danish people decide to fight them. One of the people in danger, Lillian Stein (Jane Seymour), wants to leave but her father (Ebbe Rode) wants to remain. Yet there comes a time when they must leave and it will take selling everything important to them and people giving their lives to get them away from this horror.
Directed by Bent Christensen and written by John Gould, this was Seymour’s first film and wasn’t available in the U.S. It’s a great lesson in the past and one that we should keep in mind for now, because I always believed that these things couldn’t happen any longer and today, I think that they could happen at any time. We need to study the past so that we avoid the future that is coming.
Originally, this movie was going to be promoted by director, writer, actor and producer Fred Vogel leaving VHS tapes of this movie in random locations around the United States, such as parks and playgrounds. I have no idea what people would think when they saw this.
When he went to Canada to attend the Rue Morgue Festival of Fear in Toronto, Vogel was arrested, pending charges of transporting obscene materials into Canada for having copies of this movie.
That should tell you what you’re getting into.
Peter and his cameraman have a woman named Laura in his basement and they take their time killing her in a found footage kind of way that is never properly framed or filmed, which makes it seem real. There is no joy in what you watch, just a realistic version of what a serial killer’s footage would look like.
Sure, there’s a tour of Roadside America, one of the lost and sadly department parts of Pennsylvania kitsch history, but that’s just a short break before sodomy and hammers to the head dance as partners. Is it for you? I mean, is it for anyone? It definitely feels as real as it gets and I don’t know if that’s something I need to see.
You could also be an edgelord and be like, “I’m cooler than you because I endured this.”
This Unearthed Films blu ray release has extras including an audio commentary by actor/director Fred Vogel and Ulta Violent Magazine‘s Art Ettinger, 10 Questions with Fred Vogel, TOETAG Masterclass: From Storyboard To Screen, an interview with Vogel, three commentary tracks — Vogel, Vogel with Aaron and Ben LeBonte and one by the Killer — a location tour, a photo gallery, trailers and much more. You can get it from MVD.
Roch Siffredi (Alain Delon) — and yes, this is where the porn star got his name — is out of the big house and looking for his lover Lola (Catherine Rouvel). She’s now with François Capella (Jean-Paul Belmondo), another criminal, and while they fight at first they soon become partners.
Rinaldi, a lawyer who works for Marello (Arnoldo Foà) and Poli (André Bollet), helps them take over the fish market, which is fine by the rules of organized crime, but when they take over the meat market, it’s revenge time, They kill Poli, but Rinaldi is murdered by a killing machine called The Dancer. Before it’s all over, Siffredi and Capella are the new kings, but when Capella tries to leave it all behind, he’s killed. Finally, Siffredi decides that his friend had the right plan and gets out of town.
This movie happened because Delon wanted to make a movie with Jean-Paul Belmondo. By the time he was promoting the movie, he wasn’t so high on working with the actor, saying “We are still what you in America call pals or buddies. But we are not friends. There is a difference. He was my guest in the film but still he complained. I like him as an actor but as a person, he’s a bit different. I think his reaction was a stupid reaction… almost like a female reaction. But I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
That’s because they had a deal to have their names as equals, yet Delon’s production credit came up first. There was even an agreement to split the number of close-ups.
As for the movie, Delon’s inspiration was the crime team of French gangsters Carbone and Spirito. There was an idea to have it be about them, but they were worried about using real gangsters.
The title comes from the company who made the fedoras that gangsters wore, Borsalino. Of course, when the movie was released, there was a revival of these hats.
The Arrow blu ray release of this movie has new audio commentary by film scholar Josh Nelson, features on the music, the costumes and Belmondo, a trailer, an image gallery, an illustrated book, a double-sided poster, and six art cards. You can get it from MVD.
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.
Today’s theme: Germany
Also known as The Gorilla of Soho, this is one of Rialto Film’s many krimi adaptions of the works of Edgar Wallace. Now, you may get confused — I do — as to whether these are giallo or not, what with Wallace also being one of the main inspirations for those Italian psychosexual movies. I guess the rule I always use is that in krimi, the cops seem to have a better idea of what they’re doing and the bad guys often have the wildest ways to kill people. You know, like a gorilla.
A gorilla is murdering rich men who have nothing in common other than the fact that they have money, all of which goes to the Love and Peace Foundation after their deaths and helps to support St. Mary’s Home for Wayward Girls.
After finding an African doll on one of the bodies, Scotland Yard Inspector Perkins (Horst Tappert) hires Susan (Uschi Glas), an interpreter who can do more than just tell him what the African doll had to say. She can also go undercover at St. Mary’s.
Maybe cops putting innocent people into danger like this is just an Edgar Wallace thing,
She learns that there’s a gang called the Gorillas that has ties to St. Mary’s, which seems to be the dumbest group of crooks ever as they can barely hide their tracks. There’s also a muta African girl named Dorothy (Catana Cayetano) and she’s part of the scheme, forced to help the evil Sister Elizabeth (Hilde Sessak) kill the millionaires. She’s the one who left the doll on the body to try and get help.
As if that’s not enough, the head of the Love and Peace Foundation, Henry Parker (Albert Lieven, is blackmailed by Sugar (Herbert Fux) and his brother’s widow Cora (Beate Hasenau). She’s fallen on hard times and becomes a sex worker. And oh yeah — Susan inherits a ton of money from the father she never knew, so now the nuns want to toss her in the Thames.
It turns out that Mother Superior (Inge Langen) and Parker are running this scam. They want to take the money from the rich and give it to the poor and by that, I mean themselves. They even have a henchman named Pepper (Uwe Friedrichsen) who wears the gorilla suit, which seems to be a bit of icing on the cake that already has icing on it.
If you say, “Have I seen this before?” the answer may be yes, provided that you have seen either the 1939 or 1961 versions of Dead Eyes of London. It has a very similar plot except, you guessed it, this one has a gorilla in it. And sleaze.
If Alfred Vohrer was going to direct the same movie again, it seems like he was going to add lots of topless women, exotic dance clubs and houses of ill repute. It’s so filled with sex that the head of Scotland Yard, Sir Arthur (Hubert von Meyerinck) has a girl in his closet who keeps emerging at the exact wrong time as if he were the krimi Commandant Lassard.
The effects for The Evil Dead were created by Tom Sullivan. He’d been friends since college with Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert. This movie tells the story, including Super 8mm film footage, Hi8, VHS and vintage audio tapes and photographs. Beyond all this behind the scenes footage, you also get location visits and interviews with Campbell, Ted Raimi, Josh Becker, Danny Hicks, Hal Delrich, Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker, Theresa Tilly and more.
Beyond his work on that movie, Sullivan also worked on the Call of Cthulu games and shows off plenty of his incredible art. The tours — what is left of the original cabin, the cellar, the home where everyone lived and the theater where it premiered — are also really great.
If you’re someone who does a deep dive into the people who make the movies look so wild, this is totally for you. You’ll learn just how much work went into such an important movie.
The Synapse blu ray release of this movie also has Other Men’s Careers, which is about Josh Becker, a vintage Tom Savini interview, two of Ryan Meade’s short movies Bong Fly and Cosmos Lovos, extended interviews and new slipcover art by Joel Robinson. You can get it from MVD.
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