Frank Henenlotter is an instrumental figure in grindhouse and exploitation film lore. In addition to rescuing many low-budget sexploitation and exploitation films from being destroyed, he made three Basket Case movies and Brain Damage. This is one of the few movies that upsets Becca so much that she refuses to watch it.

Duane Bradley arrives in the grimiest and scummiest New York City with a locked wire basket that contains his formerly conjoined twin, Belial. They were separated against their will and Belial has always resented it, pushing his brother to get revenge on the doctor who cut them apart.

Our hero — well, such as it is — falls in love with a nurse named Sharon, but Belial tries to rape her, can’t perform and kills her instead. Is it any more frightening if I tell you that Belial is basically a rubber glove on Henelotter’s hand? Duane attacks his brother and they fall out of the apartment to their death.

Don’t worry — the brothers survived to make it to the sequel, as well as another film after that where Belial got a powered exo-skeleton. The brothers also show up in the subway in Henenlotter’s Brain Damage.

Critic Rex Reed’s was quoted on the poster for this movie, saying “This is the sickest movie ever made!” He had heard how gross the film was and sought it out. As he left the theater, someone asked him what he thought. He didn’t realize that that person was Henenlotter and as a result, he was furious that he was being used to promote this movie.

The bar scenes were shot in The Hellfire Club, an S&M bar in Manhattan. The crew had to hide all the sex toys and swing, but left behind the buzz saw that killed the boys’ father as a gift. That very same crew was so offended by Sharon’s death scene that they all walked out rather than continue filming it.

The Arrow Video 4K blu ray release of Basket Case has so many extras that I can’t even get my head around it. There’s a 4K restoration from the original 16mm negative by MoMA along with two audio commentaries (writer/director Frank Henenlotter and star Kevin Van Hentenryck and a second with Henenlotter, producer Edgar Ievins, actor Beverly Bonner and filmmaker Scooter McRae).

There’s also a short film, Basket Case 3-1/2: An Interview with Duane Bradley, interviews with Van Hentenryck, Henenlotter, Beverly Bonner, Florence and Maryellen Schultz, producer Ievins, casting person/actor Ilze Balodis, associate producer/special effects artist Ugis Nigals and Belial performer Kika Nigals and even Joe Bob Briggs.

There’s also a feature-length documentary on the entire series, a location feature, a video essay on conjoined twins by Travis Crawford and Slash of the Knife, a Henenlotter short that has much of the same case.

Want more? There are trailers, TV and radio ads and Belial’s Dream, an animated short by Robert Morgan. All inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sara Deck with a double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sara Deck and a collector’s booklet featuring writing on the film by Michael Gingold and a Basket Case comic strip by artist Martin Trafford.

You can get it from MVD.

Directed by Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty, this film remixes newsreels, military training films and other footage made during the Cold War to ease peoples’ minds about the inevitability of nuclear destruction and survivability. I’m so glad to report we no longer — oh, Putin said he’s going to fire nuclear missiles at us, never mind — look, if you grew up in the 80s, you faced nuclear terror and movies like The Day After and Threads every day.

“Viewed from a safe distance, the atomic bomb is one of the most beautiful sights ever seen by man.” Those words are horrifying but this movie is hilarious. Released as Reagan was leading the largest military increases since the Korean War, this is a movie that shows nuclear clouds “harmlessly” blowing over innocent people and soldiers testing themselves to see how much radiation that had been exposed to. Mutually assured destruction was the aim in 1982;  the U.S. had so many nukes that they could inflict end of the world damage on the Soviet Union even after absorbing everything they had, even if no one would survive. And who would want to? Again, have you seen Threads?

Directed by Jayne Loader and Kevin and Pierce Rafferty, this film has no narration, just music from the era and seemingly bombards you with continually more insane and ridiculous notions. Surely, you can just duck and cover when a bomb goes off. All set to an amazing soundtrack, which hammers home just how pointless this nuclear war idea all was and is.

This movie also inspired Michael Moore, who said, “This is the movie that told me that a documentary about a deadly serious subject could be very funny. Then I asked the people who made it to teach me how to do it. They did. That movie became my first – Roger & Me.”

This Bill Hailey and the Comets song on the soundtrack is absolutely deranged, by the way:

“Last night I was dreamin’

Dreamed about the H-Bomb

Well the bomb-a went off and I was caught

I was the only man on the ground

There was-a 13 women and only one man in town”

You can watch this on Tubi.

When the general public thinks of a slasher film with no redeeming value whatsoever, chances are they’re thinking about this movie. It is at the same time the best and worst film you’ve ever watched. But more importantly, it is never ever boring.

Back in 1942, a young boy named Timmy was putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a naked woman. His mother, understandably, is upset and demands he get a garbage bag to throw the puzzle away. Instead, he came back with an axe to her head and then cut her up with a hacksaw. He hides in a closet and the police send him to live with his aunt, as they believe whoever killed his mother had escaped.

This all happens within the first minute of this movie. Yes, Pieces packs more gore and strangeness into sixty records than most movies do in ninety minutes.

Cut to (no pun intended) a girl studying outside, who gets her head chopped off by a chainsaw and stolen. Lt. Bracken (Christopher George, Day of the Animals, City of the Living Dead) and Sgt. Holden (Frank Braña, Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold, If You Shoot…You Live, God Forgives…I Don’t!) start their investigation, meeting the dean (Edmund Purdom, Absurd, 2019: After the Fall of New York) and anatomy Professor Brown (Jack Taylor, Horror of the Zombies, Conan the Barbarian). Rounding out our suspects would be Willard (Paul Smith, Bluto from Altman’s Popeye, one of the first movies that I remember hating as a child), a groundskeeper who is using a chainsaw.

Then, in the library, Kendall gets a note from a girl, telling him to come see her at the pool. The killer reads the note first and chainsaws the girl to, well, pieces. Willard is arrested and the detectives find the chainsaw and the girl’s body…except for her torso (no, not 1973’s Torso).

Meanwhile, Dr. Hennings (Gérard Tichy, Hatchet for the Honeymoon) meets with Kendall to get a profile of the murderer. They also bring in an undercover cop named Mary Riggs (Lynda Day George, TV’s Mission: Impossible, Mortuary), who will be acting as a tennis instructor to try and catch the killer. How the killer is attracted to tennis is never explained. And according to director Juan Piquer Simón, none of the women in the movie knew how to play tennis, despite the fact that they are playing professionals in this movie. They had to hire a tennis coach for the production as a result. Why tennis figures so prominently in Pieces is one of the many mysteries of this film.

The killer then decimates a girl who just finished her dance routine — dance and aerobics are also vital points of this film — and saws her arms off. He also stabs a reporter who is nebbing about — all before the cops arrive on the scene.

One of Mary’s tennis students is then sawed in half while loud music blares on the school’s loudspeakers. The volume of this music drives people completely insane! Mary and Kendall discover the body, as well as the fact that Willard has been released. Before calling the cops, they decide to turn the music down. Bad idea — the killer steals the girl’s legs. Mary then has a nervous breakdown which is, for some, the most memorable part of Pieces.

Kendall wants to be a cop — and why not, the real cops just let college students follow them as they chase murderers — and together with Lt. Holden, they come up with the theory that the killer is on the school’s teaching staff.

Surprise! The dean has changed his name, which used to be Timmy. Mary has figured this out as well, but Timmy/the dean has drugged her and is sawing of her feet to see if they fit into his mother’s shoes. The cops and Kendall arrive to stop him, shooting him the head.

Everyone is joking around, about how Kendall should be a cop now, when a bookshelf is triggered and they discover the human jigsaw puzzle of body parts wearing Timmy’s mother’s dress. It falls on Kendall, who screams his head off and is traumatized.

Finally, as the cops and Kendall leave, the corpse comes back to life and squeezes Kendall’s nuts so hard that blood pours out of his jeans. Why is the body still alive? Why is it after arguably the hero of the movie’s twig and berries? Oh, the questions you will have when you watch Pieces!

Any film with the tagline, “It’s exactly what you think it is!” is going to go for the jugular. This one also goes for the femoral vein, renal artery and the dorsalis pedis artery.

Oh man! I nearly forgot — there’s a cameo by Bruce Lee imitator, Bruce Le, in Pieces that don’t fit into the movie at all! He just shows up and tries to do karate moves on Mary, thinking she is the killer. This is all because producer Dick Randall was simultaneously some kung-fu films in Rome! Here’s an example of just how racist this scene is:

Kendall: Oh, hey, it’s my Kung Fu professor. What’s the story, Chao?

Karate Professor: Oh, I am out jogging and next thing I know I am on ground! Something I eat, bad chop suey. So long!

This film is filled with completely bonkers dialogue. Here is one of my favorite moments:

Lt. Bracken: You’ll be playing so much tennis it’ll be coming out of your ears!

And this exchange:

Female Student 1: Have you ever been laid on a waterbed?

Female Student 2: The most beautiful thing in the world is smoking pot and fucking on a waterbed, at the same time.

Oh man! I can’t forget the scene where Sgt. Holden calls a friend on the force for help and then says, “I’ll send you a box of lollipops,” suggesting that Pieces and Kojak take place in the same universe!

There was another title for this film — The Night Has 1,000 Screams — but I prefer Pieces. It’s a grimy, scummy, goofy, strange film that will find it’s way into your heart so that it can cut it out and stab it several times, then saw it up and throw it in a garbage bag.

You can watch this with and without Joe Bob Briggs’ commentary on Shudder!

Based on Ray Russell’s novel of the same title, Incubus is all about demon rape. There’s really no other way to say it. If you’re looking for the definitive word on the subject, this movie would probably be your best choice. And hey, John Cassavetes is in it!

The film opens in a rock quarry where Mandy and her boyfriend are swimming. More likely, they’re fooling around until an unseen force caves in the dude’s head and attacks her, putting her in the hospital with a ruptured uterus. While all this is going on, Tim Galen, a local teen, dreams of hooded men tying a woman down and torturing her.

Dr. Sam Cordell (Cassavetes) is treating the girl and we soon learn a lot about his life. His wife has recently died, he’s relocated to the town of Galen following a scandal and his daughter, Jenny, doesn’t really get along with him. Oh yeah — and she’s also dating Tim.

Sheriff Hank Walden (John Ireland, whose career stretches from classics like All the King’s Men and I Saw What You Did to Satan’s Cheerleaders) and reporter Laura Kincaid are on the case too, which expands when a librarian is killed and murdered. It turns out that she has red semen inside her body — so much semen that she’s literally been filled up and destroyed by it. If you’re thinking this is a totally scummy storyline, well, buckle up.

The rapes and murders continue and every single time, young Tim is having the dream while they happen, including an attack at a movie theater where he’s gone to try and distract himself. Look for an appearance by a really young Bruce Dickinson singing for his pre-Iron Maiden band Samson in this scene!

What is Dr. Sam doing? Oh, you know, showing Laura photos of his recently deceased second wife — the reason why he left wherever it was he lived before — and she looks exactly like the reporter. She has some news, too. The town of Galen has a long history of Satanic activity and these rape crimes are nothing new.

Is Tim the killer? Was his mother a witch? Or is his family part of a long line of witch hunters? Is the real killer a shapeshifting incubus, which rapes women in their dreams?

We get our answers pretty quickly. Sam tries to induce Tim’s demonic state while Laura takes Jenny up to bed. Tim tries to attack Laura with a witch hunting dagger his grandmother has given him, but Sam stops the boy and kills him. That’s when we learn that Laura had been the incubus all along. As she lovingly holds Sam, he looks to the bed where his dead daughter is bleeding between the legs.

Yes. That’s really the ending. I warned you that this film was rough, didn’t I?

Incubus was directed by John Hough, who was behind one of my favorite movies of all time, Twins of Evil. He also helmed The Legend of Hell House and both of Disney’s Witch Mountain movies. It’s written by Ray Russell, who also wrote plenty of other horror fiction that was made into movies and screenplays, including X the Man with the X-Ray Eyes, Mr. Sarndonicus, Zotz! and Roger Corman’s The Premature Burial.

While this movie moves slow and some subplots go nowhere, the last few minutes are exactly what you want the movie to be and Cassavetes is — as always — better than the material.

Satanic Harassment

• 1 oz. Absolut Citron or citrus vodka
• .75 oz. Midori
• .5 oz. Chambord
• 2 oz. orange juice
• 2 oz. pineapple juice
• 1 oz. margarita mix

1. Shake everything in a shaker with ice.
2. Pour out and be careful at the rock quarry.

The FVI title sequence for Being from Another Planet — AKA Time Walker — uses stock or archival footage of various Egyptian artifacts, bizarrely including what appears to be an image from an MRI cross-section of a mummy. You can also hear two people talking and you have no idea what they are talking about.

California University of the Sciences professor Douglas McCadden (Ben Murphy, the Gemini Man!) is exploring the tomb of Tutankhamun when an earthquake causes a wall to fall down, revealing a mummy that is really an alien kept alive through suspended animation thanks to being covered with a green fungus.

Dr. Ken Melrose (Austin Stoker!) calls a press conference to reveal the mummy, but at some point student named Peter Sharpe (Kevin Brophy, who was in Lucan, so this is really a collection of people who were in failed science fiction shows of the 70s that really only I care about) steals some gems from the body, which keeps getting bathed in radiation, bringing it back to life.

The mummy — who is way faster than your normal wrapped up Egyptian in rags — ends up killing anyone who has the crystals, putting a cop named Lt. Plummer (Darwin Joston, so this movie is also an Assault on Precinct 13 reunion thanks to him and Stoker appearing) on the case.  He thinks it’s a serial killer, but the truth is that the mummy was worshipped like a god and needs the crystals to go back home.

This movie also has James Karen from Return of the Living Dead and Shari Belafonte, who certainly knew that she deserved much better.

Time Walker was produced by Dimitri Villard and Jason Williams. If you recognize that last name, it’s because Williams plated Flesh Gordon. He co-wrote this movie (he also scripted The Danger Zone, Danger Zone II: Reaper’s Revenge, Danger Zone III: Steel Horse War and Nude Bowling Party, which certainly needed some level of wordsmithing) with Tom Friedman and Karen Levitt. It’s director, Tom Kennedy, edited Silent Night, Bloody Night and the American release of Goodbye Uncle Tom. This was the only movie he ever directed.

There’s a “to be continued” at the end of this movie and I have to tell you, I’ve never been so excited that a sequel wasn’t made.

NOTE: Thanks to Andrew Chamen for catching my error and saying Brother from Another Planet.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Sure, at its heart Vigilante is Death Wish, but both of those movies are really just westerns updated to fit the decade that they were created for. Plus, where Bronson’s film at least seems to end with some hope, this movie is a nihilistic, cynical and pessimistic journey into hell, which is really the only three ways to properly describe just such a trip.

Eddie Marino is played by Robert Forster in a rare lead role. You know how I always say that every movie should have William Smith in it? Well, let’s amend that by saying that if William Smith doesn’t want to do it, call Robert Forester. Despite living in the end of the world NYC of 1982, he has a good wife (Rutanya Alda, who between Mommie Dearest, The Stuff, Amityville II: The Possession and Girls Nite Out ends up being in so many of my favorite movies) and a cute little kid.

Sadly, he’s not in some coming of age tale or family drama. No, Eddie Marino has the bad fortune to be the hero of a William Lustig movie. And between scalp-lopping serial killers and zombified cops, every Lustig movie I’ve seen is full of tragedy, despair and a casual disregard for morality and the suffering of its characters.

Eddie’s co-workers, Nick (Fred Williamson, always a more than welcome sight), Burke (Richard Bright, Cut and Run) and Ramon (Joseph Carberry, Short Eyes) are fed up with crime, the cops and the system that keeps criminals out of jail. Now, the neighborhood tells them, instead of the police, who is behind the crimes that happen every day.

Eddie refuses to be a part of this, even when he comes home to find his wife stabbed and his son shot and killed. His wife had helped a gas station attendant who was being abused and that’s all it took for Frederico “Rico” Melendez (Willie Colón, a salsa king when not acting) and his gang to snap.

Assistant District Attorney Mary Fletcher (Carol Lynley*, The Night Stalker) tries to get him put away, but another gang member named Prago (Don Blakely), bribes the Judge Sinclair, allowing his defender Eisenburg (Joe Spinell!) to get him off with a plea bargain. Eddie flips out, attacks the judge and ends up being the one to go to the big house.

After being saved from a jailhouse assault by Rake (Woody Strode, the former pro wrestler who was also in Keoma and Once Upon a Time in the West; as if we need any reinforcement that this movie is a western), our hero does his time and emerges ready to get bloody revenge. His wife has left him, his son is dead and now, he has nothing left to lose.

While Vigilante was successful at the box office, Lustig never saw any profits from the film at all. First, Film Ventures International wanted to rename it Street Gang**. Then, as we all know, producer Edward L. Montoro ran away in 1985 with a million dollars in company money and was never seen again.

*This role was meant for Caroline Munro.

**It played in Detroit, Chicago and Pittsburgh with that title.

You can watch this on Tubi or do yourself a kindness and get the 4K UHD and blu ray set from Blue Underground. It has a 16-bit print from the original 35mm camera negative, with Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos audio, along with three different commentary tracks (Lustig and co-producer Andrew Garroni; Lustig and Robert Forster, Fred Williamson and Frank Pesce; Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson), trailers, TV and radio commercials, interviews with writer Richard Vetere, Rutanya Alda and associate producer/first A.D./actor Randy Jurgensen and a book with plenty of info on the film from Michael Gingold.

This movie is great. This release is even better.

Note: You can read another take on this movie here.

Chuck (Chuck McQuary) has decided Hooter College isn’t for him so he starts managing a band with three of his classmates in it. The Splitz are lead singer Joan (Patti Lee), guitarist Gina (Robin Johnson, making her first movie after the three year Robert Stigwood Organization contract after she made Times Square) and drummer Susie (Barbara Bingham, Beyond Darkness). The Splitz are having a tough time playing dives and Chuck wants to get them onto bigger stages.

Funny thing. One of those dive bars is CBGB.

He also wants Gina, who he takes home one night and meets her mobster father Vito (Raymond Serra) and sex-crazed uncle Vinnie (Dom Irrera).

There’s also a sex comedy plot where Dean Hunta (Shirley Stoler, Martha Beck from The Honeymoon Killers) decides that the Phi Betas will lose their sorority house and works with Sigma Phi’s Lois Scagliani (Forbes Riley, Splatter University) and Delta Phi’s Fern Hymenstein (Tara King) to make it happen. Seeing how the girls are being treated, The Splitz join the Phi Betas.

There are a lot of shenanigans during the three games that the sororities play, including the Phi Betas getting a caveman-like coach named Warwick (Tom McCleister), The Splitz blackmailing the dean’s husband and said dean being hypnotized and nearly stripping on stage before the big show.

The soundtrack is a mix between some interesting 1982 bands and doo wop. So you get “Heart of Glass” and “One Way Or Another by Blondie along with Del Shannon.

Director Domonic Paris also made Dracula’s Last Rites and the mixtape films Film House Fever and Bad Girls In the Movies. He wrote it with Bianca Littlebaum, Harry Azorin and Kelly Van Horn, who went on to produce The Day After Tomorrow and Eight Legged Freaks.

There’s a fun music cameo in this, as a chef is played by Bobby Pickett, who we all know better as Boris, the man who unleashed the “Monster Mash.” It was, as they say, a graveyard smash.

This movie promises to be a sex comedy yet it is rarely sexy and never all that funny. That said, I love the band and want so much better for them.

You can watch this on Tubi.

As part of the films that the zombie shell corporation that was once FVI released on video by sandwiching the actual film between new credits and changing the title, Ator 2: The Blade Master became Cave Dwellers. For the credits for this film, the bottom half of the screen is cut off and a black background is placed over it to show the credits. Within the top half of the screen and within the end credits, footage is shown from the 1963 sword and sandal film Taur, il re della forza bruta. I think Joe D’Amato would be kind of amused by this level of rip-off magic.

Joe D’Amato wanted to make a prehistoric movie like Quest for Fire called Adamo ed Eva that read a lot like 1983’s Adam and Eve vs. The Cannibals. However, once he called in Miles O’Keefe to be in the movie, the actor said that he couldn’t be in the film due to moral and religious reasons. One wonders why he was able to work with Joe D’Amato, a guy who made some of the scummiest films around.

Born Aristide Massaccesi, this man of many names had his paws in everything from being a camera operator on Bava’s Hercules in the Haunted World to cinematography on What Have You Done to Solange? before directing his own films like Death Smiles on a Murderer, Beyond the Darkness, Antropophagus, 2020 Texas Gladiators, Endgame and so many more. He also worked with porn stars like Rocco Siffredi on Tarzan X – Shame of Jane before being an early innovator of porn-based parodies/cover versions of other works of art, such as Shakespeare porn (Othello 2000), mythology (Hercules – A Sex Adventure), famous icons (Scarface, Amadeus Mozart) and, of course, plenty of looks into the deviance of the Roman empire.

This time around, Aristide Massaccesi is known as David Hills, for those keeping score.

Akronos has found the Geometric Nucleus and is keeping its secret safe when Zor (Ariel from Jubilee) and his men attack the castle. The old king begs his daughter Mila (Lisa Foster, who starred in the Cinemax classic Fanny Hill and later became a special effects artist and video game developer) to find his student Ator (O’Keefe).

Mila gets shot with an arrow pretty much right away, but Ator knows how to use palm leaves and dry ice to heal any wound, a scene which nearly made me fall of my couch in fits of giggles. Soon, she joins Ator and Thong as they battle their way back to the castle, dealing with cannibals and snake gods.

Somehow, Ator also knows how to make a modern hang glider and bombs, which he uses to destroy Zor’s army. After they battle, Ator even wants Zor to live, because he’s a progressive barbarian hero, but the bad guy tries to kill him. Luckily, Thong takes him out.

After all that, Akronos gives the Geometric Nucleus to Ator, who also pulls that old chestnut out that his life is too dangerous to share with her. He takes the Nucleus to a distant land and sets off a nuke.

Yes, I just wrote that. Because I just watched that. I love it, because it was shot with no script in order to be made in time to compete with Conan the Destroyer.

Directed by Elliott Hong and written by David B. Randolph and Tim Clawson, They Call Me Bruce? begins with a young Bruce watching his grandfather die and being unable to save him. He tells the boy that there is a beautiful woman in America who will take care of him. Then we see that Bruce (Johnny Yune) has become a chef in the U.S. and is struggling as he works for gangsters.

The gangsters figure that he’d be a great patsy to take their cocaine across the country, telling him that the woman he’s looking for is in New York. They provide him with a limo, a driver named Freddy (Raf Mauro) and places where he has to drop off his Chinese flour across the country. As to why he’s called Bruce, it’s because everyone is racist and thinks he looks like Bruce Lee.

Bruce is followed by Karmen (Margaux Hemingway), who works for a rival gang and wants to ruin his deliveries, as well as federal agent Anita (Pam Huntington), who has already bugged him and placed a tracking device on him.

They Call Me Bruce? was an HBO movie in my youth and by that, I mean it was on HBO all the time. Eight year old me laughed so hard when Bruce went into a telephone booth like Superman and came out dressed like a ninja. Older me, well, I still laughed.

There’s also a karate dojo where Bruce tries to train. The master there is John Fujioka, who was Shinyuki in American Ninja. Bruce barely makes it five minutes before he’s thrown out. That karate dojo would be used again for another movie, as its where Cobra Kai trains in The Karate Kid.

This played in 325 theaters and was a surprising success before going to cable and home video. Unfortunately, the sequel, They Still Call Me Bruce was not as popular.

You can watch this on Tubi.