EDITOR’S NOTE: Echoes was on USA Up All Night on March 30, 1990.

Michael Durant (Richard Alfieri) has always dreamed of a man who is trying to kill him. Spoiler: It’s his twin brother who died in the womb. Now, that man wants to possess him, which mostly means that he gets mean to his girlfriend Christine (Nathalie Nell).

That said, this movie is quite interesting because it presents a supernatural idea, but treats dream possession as if it were a fact of life, and everyone just moves on. It’s also the last movie for Gale Sondergaard, Mercedes McCambridge (who played Pazuzu), and Ruth Roman, who plays Michael’s mom.

It’s nearly an Alfieri vanity project, as he co-wrote it with Richard J. Anthony and sings one of the songs on the soundtrack. It’s directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman, who also directed Alfieri’s script for Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks. I know him from his first movie, Hercules in New York. He also directed I Think I’m Having a Baby, Strange Voices, the Cannon movie Rescue Me as well as several movies that Alfieri acting in, such as Macbeth, Children of Rage, an episode of Magnum P.I. by the title “I Never Wanted to Go to Paris, Anyway” and a Trapper John, M.D. episode titled “In the Eyes of the Beholder.” In fact, the only film Alfieri acted in that Seidelman didn’t direct was In Search of Historic Jesus.

You’ll probably hate the protagonist, as he’s a jerk to everyone even before he gets possessed. I wanted this to be better because it has the right idea. It just isn’t great.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The Last Horror Movie reunites the wacky lovebirds Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro, who previously starred in Starcrash and Maniac, and makes another appearance for Joe on the Video Nasty Section 3 list.

Director David Winters was one of the few stage actors and dancers in West Side Story to be in the film version. He then became a choreographer and was the first to choreograph the Watusi, as well as the originator of the Freddie. He also helped Elvis and Ann-Margaret dance in Viva Las Vegas. His first directorial effort was the Alice Cooper film Welcome to My Nightmare, and he produced everything from Linda Lovelace for President to Young Lady Chatterley, Killer Workout and owned Action International Pictures. He also dated Lovelace after she divorced Chuck Traynor. She credited him for introducing her to culture. The guy did so much! He directed Racquet, did the choreography for Roller Boogie, made Mission Kill with Robert Ginty and oh yeah, also directed Thrashin’!

Anyways, both Spinell and Munro are two people who make me love life the moment I see them. The blonde highlights in her hair in this movie got me through the rest of a tough week. This film is very 1982, and therefore, it is perfect.

Spinell is Vinny, a cab driver who lives with his mother (Filomena Spagnuolo, Spinell’s real mother, who ends the movie by asking if she can take a hit off his joint; that’s also Spinell’s real apartment) but dreams of making a horror movie with scream queen Jana Bates (Munro), who is going to be at Cannes to promote her latest film Scream along with her manager and ex-husband Bret Bates (Glenn Jacobson) and producer and current boyfriend Alan Cunningham (Judd Hamilton). She gets a note that says, “You’ve made your last horror film. Goodbye,” and finds Bret murdered, but the body disappears when the police come to investigate. This turns into more of a whodunnit than a slasher, but I mean, Spinell still gets to chainsaw someone to death.

Just like the movie within this movie, this was shot with no permits at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. If you think it’s not realistic for an actress in a horror movie to win an award, that same year Isabelle Adjani won the Best Actress award for Possession.

The Tromatic Special Edition of The Last Horror Film has an introduction by Lloyd Kaufman, “new” audio commentaries and interviews, the short Mr. Robbie, highlights from the Tromadance Film Festival and a full episode of Kabukiman’s Cocktail Corner. You can get this from MVD.

I just want to know why Depeche Mode is so highly billed and why Lloyd is on this, but what do I know?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters, Part 2 was on USA Up All Night on August 17, 1991; February 21, 1992 and January 9, 1993.

Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters was 1982’s Jopi Burnama-directed Perempuan Bergairah (Passionate Woman), which was remixed by Troma’s Charles Kaufman. This is another movie starring Eva Arnaz, the Indonesian female action queen of movies like Barang Terlarang (Violent Killer), AKA I Want to Get Even, Violent Killer, Lady Exterminator and Violent Assassin. Also: Once the wife of Barry Prima.

Directed by Arizal (who made I Can’t Hold It and I Can Hold It Long, two movies that feel part of a longer story, plus Special Silencers, a film in which “red pills are obtained from a forest-dwelling mystic, which aid in meditation. However, if used by the untrained, they cause a huge tree to grow in the stomach and burst its way through the skin. This is sold by Troma as “They’re back and they’re more ferocious than ever!  Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters 2! This is the story of women. Women shattered by violence.  Women left alone, the sole survivors of slaughtered families. Women are sold into a vicious and brutal international crime syndicate. Women subjected to poverty, horror and brutal sex. Experience a secret glimpse into the erotic realm of the Asian underworld, where women are a high-priced commodity and anything is available… for a price.

Pushed to the farthest limits of sanity and battered beyond ordinary human capacity, there is one woman who decides to fight against her destiny. She’s tougher than a rabid canine! Braver than a battalion of Bruce Lees! With vengeance pulsing through her veins, she journeys back into her past, kicking anything that gets in her way, settling the ultimate score… swiftly and permanently! Her task is to terminate the misery and sexual torture of her soul-sisters in slavery. She and her fighting female friends are out to topple the power pyramids of the Asian underworld! Fighting ferociously with fists and feet flying, these females are out for revenge!”

Breathless, huh?

Starting with a totally different aspect ratio, this turns into an Indonesian They Call Her One Eye as Arnaz goes from a college girl with a boyfriend out of town to a kidnapped and turned out sex worker who starts to learn how to get revenge. But does that movie have flaming snakes, black magic, a fight scene where its heroine holds a baby the entire time and a soundtrack that is both disco and Indonesian country?

It must be the Troma name, horrible dub, and poor quality of the transfer that are keeping more people from losing their minds over this movie. Let’s fix that. This was beyond entertaining.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Beach Girls was on USA Up All Night on February 19, October 14, 1991 and July 14, 1995.

Bud Townsend directed Terror at Red Wolf Inn. For this, we should not make too much light of The Beach Girls, a movie with little to no plot and frequent appearances of the boom microphone. We should also realize that this movie is a lot like other beach films, mostly Malibu Beach, which was also a Crown International Picture.

Sarah (Debra Blee, Savage Streets), Ginger (Val Kline in her only movie) and Ducky (Jeana Keough, now a Real Housewife of Orange County) are staying in a beach house. Ginger and Ducky are pretty much degenerates, but Sarah is a virgin. Suddenly, a whole bunch of marijuana washes up and their house becomes an even bigger party palace.

Uncle Carl, who owns the whole place, is played by Adam Roarke from Frogs and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. So there’s that, you know?

Honestly, I’ve watched a million of these movies and they’re the cinematic equivalent of smoking the sticky green that these girls found on the beach, then eating like seven bowls of cereal. They used to make so many of these movies and I think I watched them all. Now that I’m way older than all of the kids in this movie, I think, “Man, this would have been a fun movie to make.” So maybe you should think thoughts like that instead of thinking how sex comedies are problematic — all exploitation movies are problematic, that’s why they’re exploitation movies — and just inhale.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Burned at the Stake was on the CBS Late Movie as The Coming on September 16, 1987 and March 3 and July 6, 1988.

Also known as The Coming, this movie starts in the late 1600s in Salem, as Ann Putnam (Susan Swift) is caught experimenting with black magic. To protect herself, she turns over the names of those who were also involved, sending Reverend Samuel Parris (John Peters) on an orgy of stake burnings to not only destroy all of the witches but to bring back the fear of the Lord in his worshippers. Meanwhile, in 1982, Loreen Graham (also Susan Swift) is possessed by Ann’s spirit.

By 1982, Bert I. Gordon had given up on giant animals after Empire of the Ants and would go on to make movies like Let’s Do It, The Big Bet, Secrets of a Psychopath and Satan’s Princess. That said, along the way, he’d made Picture Mommy Dead and Necromancy, so he was about more than Costco-sized vermin.

Ann Putnam is a real person who, at the end of her life, tried to atone for all the people who died at her hands — well, as the result of her identifying them — and said that they were innocent. As for Gordon, making this near the end of a long career, he’s put together a movie that can’t decide if it wants to be supernatural or a dream. He’s still making an occult movie that could play as a made-for-TV film minus all the profanity and gore the genre had embraced by 1982.

In this film. Putnam can only save a young girl by changing history and bringing someone back in time to fix it. It honestly makes no sense, but it had enough eerie visuals to keep me watching. There’s a skeleton-handed killer who the movie never really explains and we wonder who the protagonist is, who the villain is and how we’ll get the story all figured out. I wonder if Gordon ever divined it himself.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Fast-Walking was on the CBS Late Movie on June 19 and November 16, 1987.

Frank “Fast-Walking” Miniver (James Woods) is a prison guard making money on the side selling drugs and engaging in the transport of sex workers. His cousin, Wasco (Tom McIntire), is in the same jail and gets an entire business turned over to him by Frank after he intimidates Bullet (Timothy Carey).

In return, Wasco has his girl Moke (Kay Lenz) seduce his cousin. But things won’t be perfect forever, as when Frank develops feelings, Wasco becomes enraged. They also come to a head about the murder of Galliot (Robert Hooks), a political prisoner. Galliot pays Frank $50,000 to get him out alive. He didn’t count on how good a shot Moke is.

Director, writer and producer James B. Harris read Ernest Brawley’s The Rap and was inspired to make it into a movie. Shot in the Montana State Prison building in Deer Lodge, Montana, it feels real.

I can’t imagine how much was cut for the CBS Late Movie, as Lenz is volcanic in her nude and love scenes, while this also has M. Emmett Walsh full frontal. Plus, Susan Tyrrell is in it? Wow.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The World According to Garp was on the CBS Late Movie on September 11 and November 27, 1987.

For some reason, my parents let me watch this when I was ten and between someone losing their penis in the mouth of a lover when their car is hit from behind and the tragic ending, I was changed. In fact, the end upset me so much, as it made me realize that I too would die, that I didn’t sleep for days.

Directed by George Roy Hill (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Great Waldo Pepper, Slap Shot, Slaughterhouse-Five, Funny Farm) and written by Steve Tesich (Breaking Away), this was based on the book by Clifford Irving.

T.S. Garp (Robin Williams) was born after his mother, Jenny Fields (Glenn Close), took advantage of a brain-dead tailgunner, injured in combat during World War II. She mounted him, he got her pregnant, he died, Garp was born. Jenny writes Sexual Suspect, the story of her life, and becomes a feminist icon, while Garp marries Helen (Mary Beth Hurt), has two boys named Duncan and Walt, and becomes a fiction writer.

A girl named Ellen James (Amanda Plummer) has been assaulted and her tongue cut out. The women who gather around Garp’s mother all begin to cut out their own tongues, despite Ellen telling them not to. Helen cheats on Garp; he rams into the car where she is going down on one of her students, causing the death of their son, Walt and Duncan to lose an eye. His mother is killed by an assassin, and he can’t even go to her funeral until transgender football player Roberta Muldoon (John Lithgow) sneaks him in.

Speaking of Roberta, she’s why Irving wouldn’t write the script: “It was the early 1980s when George Roy Hill asked me if I would write the screenplay for Garp, but I knew we didn’t see eye to eye about Roberta. George was a World War II guy; he couldn’t see past the comedic part of a transgender woman who’d been an NFL player. A pity, because John Lithgow, who was cast as Roberta in the film, could have played her as I wrote her. Roberta is a force of normality in an otherwise extreme world; she is the only character who loves Garp and his mother equally, the only character who isn’t in a rage about someone or something. I declined to write the Garp script because George wouldn’t do Roberta my way.”

At the end, Garp is shot and is airlifted to the hospital and maybe Heaven as he remembers his mom throwing him in the air as “When I’m 64” plays. I had loved that song as a kid, so hearing it in this way horrified me.

I still don’t know how I feel about this movie.