EDITOR’S NOTE: The Boy from Hell aired on USA Up All Night on June 7, 1991, January 2, 1992 and September 1, 1993.
Also known as Bloodspell, this is all about Daniel (Anthony Jenkins), who has been sent to Saint Boniface, a home for troubled teens by his mother Jane to protect him from his father Luther who is — surprise! — a demon who just wants to use his son’s body to kill people and add souls to Hell. Will anyone believe another resident, Charlie (Aarin Teich) who knows exactly what is happening?
Of all the things I love about this movie — I mean it ends with God hitting Luther with lightning — the music over the credits feels like it could come from the schmaltziest of 80s comedies where we all learned a life lesson about our parents and not that they can be demons who possess us.
Maybe Jenny Marlowe (who is played by Twink Caplan, which is an awesome name) and Tony Montana — yes, that’s the character’s name in this, you’d think they’d maybe think that over — who is played by Edward Dloughy can save everyone.
Director Deryn Warren also made Black Magic Woman and Dead of Night, which gets watched in this movie to add a little meta without hurting the budget. This was written by the same writer as those films, Gerry Daly, who also wrote Witchcraft III and Crystal Force. Also: I never watched 7th Heaven but I have been told that’s the house from that show in the beginning of this movie. Also also: Woodchipper finger terror.
Livescreamers is the sequel to 2020’s Livescream and is about the Janus Gaming team. This diverse team of eight content creators and video game players are super popular online. As they play through the latest horror game together, they’re trapped in a surreal caste that goes after their darkest and most hidden secrets. The only way they can all get out alive is by putting their trust in one another, which is easier said than done.
With game design inspired by Resident Evil, Outlast, Until Dawn and Dead by Daylight that was created on the Unreal Engine, this movie goes beyond found footage to become a “screenlife” found footage slasher.
Directed, written and produced by Michelle Iannantuono, the Janus Gaming team is led by Mitch (Ryan LaPlante) and includes Jon (Christopher Trindade), Taylor (Coby C. Oram), Zelda (Anna Lin), Gwen (Sarah Callahan Black), Lucy (Neoma Sanchez), Dice (Maddox Julien Slide), Davey (Evan Michael Pearce) and Nemo (Michael Smallwood, Marcus from Halloween Kills), a gamer who is afraid of the audience who is constantly watching the team.
The movie gets into not only the toxicity in the gaming industry, but also in the communities that grow around it online. Yet for these players, they’re doing more than dealing with hurt feelings and ruined online experiences. Each injury their characters endure causes damage in the real world.
Livecreamers is interesting. I spend all day in a virtual office and I’m unsure that I wish to spend my free time in a similar setting, but I enjoyed the film.
Livescreamers was watched as part of The GenreBlast Film Festival which is from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.
Poundcake is a slasher killer who hunts white cis men and quite literally pounds them to death. As we see the Greek chorus of podcasters comment throughout the film, no one really cares that white straight men are being killed, much less the fact that they’re chained around the throat and sexually assaulted. And then Poundcake moves on to those very same men as a target, but ones that are woke, and yet the lack of caring seems to continue.
You know how it seems like every comedian has a podcast? Well, it feels like almost every character in this movie has one, too.
Either you’re going to absolutely love Onur Tukel’s (That Cold Dead Look In Your Eyes) film or you’re going to hate almost every moment of its running time. At once, it asks you to be enraged about the bad deeds of white men of power while also tearing at every single other group, as if being equally offensive makes up for the offensive ideas like, oh, rape can be funny.
It’s also about Asian women being anti-black, woke white men becoming too weak, dudes who want to be gay but want to do it with their wives around so that it’s not as gay, bad standup and then the fact that we should all just try and get along.
The actual slasher part is just a small portion of the movie. The podcasts and reaction are the rest and some parts work — everyone wants to be connected to the killings, even if it’s by the smallest of ways — and others don’t, as you start to lose track of who all these people are and if they even matter because, after some time, they don’t.
This is one of those movies that people will get upset and say, “You just don’t get it.”
Well, I did, it wasn’t as smart as it thought it was and where it could have really been incendiary, it came off as a prankster child so smugly sure of its own success that you don’t want to agree with any of it.
Poundcake was watched as part of The GenreBlast Film Festival which is from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Adventures In Babysitting aired on USA Up All Night on October 14, 1995 and August 23, 1996. I’m kind of windblown that this more family-friendly movie played the show, doubling with Summer Job and Wild Malibu Weekend.
The directing debut of Christopher Columbus, this stars Elisabeth Shue as Chris Parker, a 17-year-old who is forced to babysit the neighbor, Sarah Anderson (Maia Brewton) when her friend Brenda (Penelope Ann Miller) runs away from home and calls in a panic from the bus station. That means that Chris, Sarah, her brother Brad (Keith Coogan) and his friend Daryl Coopersmith (Anthony Rapp) must all head downtown to rescue her. But after a flat on the road, their two truck driver “Handsome” John Pruitt (John Ford Noonan) driving them to confront his cheating wife and being part of grand theft auto of a Cadillac thanks to car thief Joe Gipp (Calvin Levels), this is anything but a normal night.
And it’s just getting started, because soon a mob boss (John Chandler) and his henchman (Ron Canada) is after them too.
This is a movie packed with people, like Bradley Whitford, Lolita Davidovich and Vincent D’Onofrio, all in small roles. It’s also one of the first appearances of Thor, long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as Sara wants to be the God of Thunder. Columbus had wanted to draw comics before getting into movies.
Or maybe it’s for another reason.
According to Jon Mikl Thor — yes, the star of Rock ‘n Roll Nightmare — in an interview with Vice, “Years ago, I got a part in Adventures In Babysitting. Then the part was taken away from me at the last moment and given to Vincent D’Onofrio, who played Gomer Pyle in Full Metal Jacket. They paid me off and everything, but I would’ve rather have had that mainstream shot in movies.”Screenrant also dug up the fact that the Thor love in this movie was originally for He-Man and Teela, but it was changed by Columbus to be about Marvel, which wasn’t as big a deal back in 1987.
Jon Mikl also told Angry Metal Guy that “Stan Lee wanted to make a Thor movie so my management company set up a meeting and I entered Stan Lee’s office at Marvel Productions in NYC blowing up a hot water bottle. Then the bottle exploded, knocking all these books and comics off his shelves and then he shouted out “Excelsior! You are more Thor than Thor himself!””
In case you wonder why get to see Halloween on the TV in one scene, other than being a great mnemonic for a joke, it’s because this was produced by Debra Hill.
EDITOR’S NOTE: 976-EVIL II aired on USA Up All Night on February 22 and April 26, 1997.
By writing Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time and House IV and directing Sorority House Massacre II, Deathstalker II(which he also wrote), Big Bad Mama II, Ghoulies IV, The Skateboard Kid 2, Body Chemistry IV: Full Exposure, Friend of the Family II, Sorceress II: The Temptress, The Escort III, The Bare Wench Project 2: Scared Topless, The Bare Wench Project 3: Nymphs of Mystery Mountain, The Witches of Breastwick 2, Bare Wench Project Uncensored and Bare Wench: The Final Chapter, Jim Wynorski may be the king of the sequels. Let’s add 976-EVIL II, a movie that somewhat continues the story begun in the Robert Englund 976-EVIL.
Also known as 976-EVIL II: The Astral Factor, this movie is all about Spike, a leather jacket-wearing loner from the first film, again played by Patrick O’Bryan, and final girl Robin battling Professor Grubeck, who is in full command of astral powers and a Satanic horoscope phone line.
“Out of the darkness and into the light comes your horrorscope on this dark and stormy night.”
There are two great reasons to watch this. The first is Brigitte Nielsen, who did this movie for scale after losing a pool game bet to Wynorski. And the other is a bravura sequence that combines the two best-known public domain movies of all time, Night of the Living Dead and It’s A Wonderful Life, as one of the girls becomes stuck between the two films and ends with Zuzu Bailey transforming into Kyra Schon and stabbing the girl with a trowel. It’s an astounding piece of filmmaking, one that comes out of nowhere (the script had the girl absorbed by a video game and the budget couldn’t handle it) and delivers.
You also get appearances by Philip McKeon (TV’s Alice) and George “Buck” Flower, as well as some great lighting and usage of budget.
This movie is way better than it has any right to be. Seriously, you should check it out right now, because I can’t believe this hasn’t received a high end re-release yet.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Caged Fury aired on USA Up All Night on December 18, 1992; February 13 and November 26, 1993 and August 13, 1994. This movie is by request of Mike Justice, who said, “Please tell me you’re gonna cover that one. I caught that one night, and for years I’d describe it to people (girls escape from prison and find out they were being held under Hollywood blvd) and nobody believed me. I literally thought I’d made it up.”
At one point in this movie, the female inmates begin to fight and Crazy Daisy (Tiffany Million, once a GLOW girl and later an adult star) says, “I seen this in Chained Heat!”
Yes, you sure did.
While Cirio H. Santiago also made a movie called Caged Fury just six years earlier, this one — directed and written by Bill Milling (who also wrote Silent Madness and Savage Dawn; he also directed adult films under the name Philip Drexler Jr. (A Scent of Heather), G.W. Hunter (Heart Throbs), Craig Ashwood (All American Girls), William J. Haddington Jr. (When A Woman Calls), Chiang (The Vixens of Kung Fu (A Tale of Yin Yang), Jim Hunter (Up Up and Away), Luis F. Antonero (Temptations) and Bill or Dexter Eagle (Virgin Snow).
Wikipedia claims that Fernando Fonseca (The Unholy) and one of my obsessions, Philip Yordan, wrote this, but I see no other evidence anywhere. Fonseca only wrote one other film, South Beach Dreams, and Yordan and Cannon never worked together, which is a fact that still makes me sad.
Kat Collins (Roxanna Michaels) is living out the first stanza of Poison’s “Fallen Angel:”
“She stepped off the bus out into the city streets
Just a small town girl with her whole life
Packed in a suitcase by her feet
But somehow the lights didn’t shine as bright as they did
On her mama’s TV screen
And the work seemed harder
And the days seemed longer
Than she ever thought they’d be”
After kissing her daddy (Michael Parks) goodbye and leaving Utah for Hollywood, she meets Rhonda Wallace (April Dawn Dollarhide) who gets her work with a photographer named Buck (Blake Lewis). After posing, the girls head off for the Sunset Strip and get into it with some bikers, which seeing as how this is a 1990 direct-to-video movie gets rapey and then they get saved by good guy bike enthusiast Victor (Erik Estrada) and American Combat Karate school leader Dirk (Richard Barathy).
Buck then introduces the ladies to a porn director, but that ends up setting them up as prostitutes and sent off to Honeywell Prison, which is where this movie really gets going. You know exactly all of the women in prison moments you’re going to receive and the guards are as bad as you’d think they’d be. They’re led by Spyder (Gregory Scott Cummins, former San Diego Chargers punter) and include Pizzaface (Ron Jeremy), Paul Smith remembering everything he once did years ago in a similar role in Midnight Express and Mindi Miller (Sugar from Penitentiary III) as Warden Sybil Thorn, an S&M catsuit wearing evildoer named for two WIP legends: Sybil Danning from Caged Heatand Dyanne Thorne, who forever will be Ilsa.
So while Roxanne is getting indoctrinated into white slavery, her sister Tracy (Elena Sahagun) figures that the best plan is to do the exact same things her sister did and get put in the same prison. She’s also helped by giallo-level policework from Detective Randall Stoner (James Hong). Of course, Estrada and Barathy have to rescue her, but Estrada catches a bullet, so the white kung fu expert has to fight his way out of this lingerie hell, which magically releases them right in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater.
This movie is also replete with adult stars as prisoners, including Kascha using her more mainstream name Alison LePriol, Janine Lindemulder — who knows a little something about the big house after serving a six-month federal prison sentence for tax evasion — as Lulu (you may recognize her, if you didn’t watch adult movies, as being on the cover of Blink 182’s Enema of the State album cover or for her relationship with Jesse James) and Julia Parton (yes, a relative of Dolly and once the publisher of High Society).
As for the bad guys putting this all together, there’s Jack Carter as the big bad Mr. Castaglia, as well as Beano, who you may remember from Deathrow Gameshow, as Tony “Two A Day” Tarentino. This movie feels like it knows way too much about the dark side of Los Angeles, what with Jeremy in the cast and Big G being played by Bill Gazzarri.
So Gazzari’s…
The three hundred feet or so on Sunset Boulevard that started at Gazzarri’s and ended at the Rainbow and the Roxy Theatre was where rock and roll lived in the 90s (although the place was hot from the 60s on, with The Doors being a house band and the Miss Gazzarri’s Dancers counting Catherine Bach and Barbi Benton as alumni). When Gazzarri died in 1991 and the club closed down in 1993, it was damaged in an earthquake and went through many name changes before becoming the nightclub 1 Oak. If you want to see the club, I recommend The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years. Nearly every major metal band played Gazzarri’s, including longtime house band Van Halen, Ratt, Cinderella, Quiet Riot, Mötley Crüe, Poison, Guns N’ Roses, Warrant and Faster Pussycat, as well as bands you may not know if you didn’t read Hit Parader and Rip! like Shark Island, Hurricane and, if you saw the aforementioned Decline, Odin.
This movie is pure sleaze. I mean, it’s a women in prison movie. Would you want it any other way? Why are you watching it if you’re just going to judge me? You’ve read this far. You’re complicit.
EDITOR’S NOTE: 976-EVIL aired on USA Up All Night on November 21, 1992; May 7 and October 29, 1993; January 26 and August 17, 1996.
Spike and Hoax (Stephen Geoffreys from Fright Night) are cousins who live under the overly watchful eye of Hoax’s super religious mother Lucy (Sandy Dennis, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, God Told Me To). They couldn’t be more different. Hoax is a nerd afraid of everyone while Spike is a motorcycle-riding bad boy with the girl of his cousin’s dreams, Suzie (Lezlie Deane, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare).
Both boys start using the novelty phone number 976-EVIL, which reads them creepy-themed fortunes for a few dollars. The real truth is quite sinister: Satan uses the line to find people to give them what they want in exchange for their souls. There’s a great scene here where a religious investigator goes to the home of 976-EVIL, After Dark, Inc. There is room after room of people, Santas, phone sex women and so much more, but in one dusty, cobwebbed closet lies the machine that powers this foul enterprise.
By the end of this movie, the cousins’ power dynamic has shifted and the literal gateway to Hell appears in front of their home. The way there is littered with 80’s cliches and a tone that is never sure if it fully wants to be comedic or horrific.
Still, this movie is not without its charms. The Deftones wrote the song “Diamond Eyes” about the film and it was popular enough to bring Spike back for the direct-to-video sequel 976-EVIL II: The Astral Factor. And England met his wife, set decorator Nancy Booth, while directing this movie. She would sneak R+N into the backgrounds of scenes that he would discover each day while watching the dailies. And hey, how many movies have uber religious old women get devoured by cats?
As a child, Wakaba (Sayu Kubota) had to deal with a bully of a father and even more negative treatment in school. Perhaps that why she always protected Koki, a boy who was treated the worst of everyone by the bullies. That stopped, however, when two of the boys were found dead and Koki killed himself some years later.
Years later, Wakaba is all grown up and on the way to a vacation to the woods with some girls and a musician that she has always been a fan of, Kohei Shirasaki. Yet like a trip to a slasher camp, everyone that interacts with her is murdered by a killing machine with a mechanical mask. In fact, only she and one other person survive the attacks. As Kamiyama, a police officer who was also the father of a girl who was killed, investigates, people close to Wakaba continue to get murdered in horrific ways. Has Koki never gone away?
Until now, I had only seen short films from Kenichi Ugana like Vierailijatand Extraneous Matter Complete Edition. This is even stranger than those films, if that’s even possible, because it’s somehow a sweet romance, a hilarious bit of comedy and a slasher, sometimes all at the very same time. It also feels odder and way more transgressive than the feeble stabs at strange that people rave over in Western elevated horror. This is no navel gazing but instead somewhat inspired levels of sustained weirdness.
Love Will Tear Us Apart was watched as part of The GenreBlast Film Festival which is from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.
Pheobe (Kansas Bowling) is cast in an aerobics video but she’s unhappy with how everyone is acting. Isn’t this a serious workout video? Then why is everyone acting so sexy on camera, like Candy (Jessica Flux), Nikki (Adriana Uchishiba), Monique (Victoria Dementieva) and Cassandra (Krystal Shay)? Oh Pheobe, don’t you realize you’re in a movie that started with a shower scene and a murder?
The whole video is the brainchild of Dominica Stromboli (Ginger Lynn!) and her husband Frankie (Josh Parks), who are making the video to find something to keep their daughter Isabella (Nina Lanee Kent) out of trouble. But when Candy pushes Phoebe too far, heads — and all manner of other body parts — are going to roll.
Murdercise might not replace Killer Workout and Death Spa in your rotation of 80s workout slashers but if it was made in 1986, it would have definitely played USA Up All Night. That’s a compliment. But this is an indie movie on a small budget, albeit one made by people obviously having a blast making it. That said, if you watched late night cable horror or rented every slasher that came out on the mid 80s, well, you’ll love every wacky minute of this.
Murdercise was watched as part of The GenreBlast Film Festival which is from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.
With segments from directors Johnny Lektrik, Mark Kiazyk, Ken Brewer and John Ward, Zombie Rage gives you more zombie action than two or three movies all in one. It starts with “CKX News,” in which reporter Nelson Bighammer (Nelson Mayer) discovers that all of the crime that’s been happening in Winnepeg has been caused by the walking dead. Well, that and a little kid who is downtown for some drugs.
Speaking of drugs, “Two Stoners and a Zombie” has Tom (Tyler Ulrich) and Jerry (Keith Johnson) completely miss the fact that zombies walk the Earth, going so far as to even bring a bitten man named Brian (Lawrence Waller) back home, which endangers the girls — Brenda (Brandi Krueger), Tanya (Meghann Rose Pino) and Nicole (Dominique Langford Rousseau) — who hang out with them.
In “Flesh Attack,” a thief played by Andriana Garbiso uses the zombie attacks to rob even more houses, but leaves the door way too open for the shambling horde. “Veronica’s Bachelorette Party” seems like a time for Veronica (Traci Burr) to celebrate the last guy she’ll ever get to have sex with before marriage before learning that the dancer (Doug Waugh) has been bit at a convenience store. The last story, “A Walk In the Park,” has the goings on in a sexed-up park get stopped by, you guessed it, the living dead.
For a low budget movie, the effects are pretty strong in this movie and you can tell that the filmmakers have a real love for the genre of zombie movies. I wish there was some connectedness to the stories, but as it stands, this is definitely a fun time at the streaming movies.
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