Originally released as a double feature with The Last Starfighter, I first saw this movie as a VHS rental.

It was directed by Australian Richard Franklin, who also made Fantasm, Patrick, Roadgames and Psycho 2. The writer of the last film was Tom Holland (Fright Night), who wrote this film as well.

This is a remake of The Window, which was based on the Cornell Woolrich story The Boy Who Cried Murder. Another of Woolrich’s stories, It Had to Be Murder, became the Hitchock film Rear Window, which inspired Roadgames. This same story was also made as The Boy Cried Murder and Eyewitness.

Davey Osborne (Henry Thomas, E.T.) wants to be Jack Flack, a daring man of spy derring-do. The only problem is that Jack doesn’t exist in the real world, but his father (Dabney Coleman played both roles) does.

This all changes when his friend Morris (William Forsythe) sends him on an errand to get him a candy bar. Davey and his friend Kim witness a murder and are given a Cloak and Dagger video game by the dying man. Yep — the Jack Flack video game itself, now part of a real world spying mission.

This is pretty much a forgotten movie today, but I really have always loved how the real world and fantastical spy world meet in the middle, with real life death having a dramatic impact on our hero. I don’t want to spoil the twists and turns, but the first time I saw it, there were at least two moments that totally shocked me.

You should find this one, watch it and let me know what you think. I got a copy from a beaten up old Pizza Hut pawnshop for a dollar, which is way more than it is worth.

Sixteen Candles was the directing debut of John Hughes. He wrote this film after asking his agent for headshots of young actresses and was so inspired by Molly Ringwald’s photo that he put it over his desk and wrote this movie over a weekend just for her.

Filmed primarily in and around the Chicago North Shore suburban communities of Evanston, Skokie, and Highland Park, Illinois — where Hughes spent his teen years — with fifteen-year-old leads Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall, this movie would go on to start the Brat Pack, who dominated the theaters, hearts and minds of the mid 1980’s.

Samantha “Sam” Baker wants her sixteenth birthday to be the start of her amazing new life, but everyone has forgotten it. Her sister Ginny is getting married, her grandparents have taken over the house and her dream man, Jake Ryan has no interest she exists.

To make things worse, she must deal with Ted (Hall), the geek of all geeks, who is so in love with her that he tries to take her panties to win floppy disks in a bet.

The actual story of the movie is pretty simple. There’s a dance, a party and the hijinks that ensue as the result. Along the way, Sam and Jake find love, Ted finds Jake’s ex-girlfriend (Haviland Morris, Gremlins 2: The New Batch) and there’s the introduction of one of the most racist Asian carictures of all time, Long Duk Dong.

This movie was also one of the first films for Jami Gertz and John and Joan Cusack. Plus, there are cameos by Zelda Rubenstein (Poltergeist) and Brian Doyle-Murray, which please me to no end.

Much like Revenge of the Nerds, the Caroline/Ted scenes can be seen as rape today. Then again, some think that she’s an example of the upper class being taken down and re-educated by the lower class. Your mileage and upsetness by this scene may vary.

Does this movie exist in the same universe as the other Hughes movies? You bet. My evidence? The same moving shot of the exterior of the high school at the opening of the movie was refilmed — with the same motions — for the end of Weird Science.

If John Hughes was alive, I’d ask him how damaged he was by having his extended family stay in his house. Between the Home Alone films, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and this film, it keeps coming up in his work.

This movie came out when I was 12. As such, I fell in love with Molly Ringwald and wondered why no girls like her existed in my town. The truth was, this perfect person only lived in one place: the Shermer, IL inside John Hughes’ mind.

The new Arrow Video release of this movie is packed with everything you expect from the label. Aside from a new restoration from a 4K scan of the original negative, there are multiple ways to see the movie, like the theatrical and extended versions, as well as the alternated VHS/laserdisc track that had different audio.

It’s also packed with extras, interviewing everyone from the casting and music director of the film to all-new interviews with Gedde Watanabe, Deborah Pollack, John Kapelos, filmmaker Adam Rifkin (who was an extra on the film and shadowed Hughes), camera operator Gary Kibbe and composer Ira Newborn.

There’s also A Very Eighties Fairytale, a video essay written and narrated by writer Soraya Roberts that explores the feminist perspective of the film and an archival documentary, Celebrating Sixteen Candles. Plus, of course, there are trailers, TV and radio ads, new artwork and a collectors’ book on the first printing of this release.

You can order it here.

DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by Arrow Video.

Val Kilmer picked the right debut. This ZAZ — Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker — feature packs in takes on Elvis films, spy movies and World WAR II movies all in one huge package of rapid fire jokes, allowing the star to sing, dance and pretty much act like a maniac. It’s perfect.

He plays Nick Rivers, whose hit song “Skeet Surfin'” takes him to East Germany, which is still Nazi Germany despite the Cold War taking place. Somehow, within the mashup that this film throws together also finds time to pretty much be a pastiche of the 1944 noir The Conspirators.

Unlike past ZAZ films, there aren’t many cameos here, other than Omar Sharif as Agent Cedric and an appearance Peter Cushing playing a Swedish bookstore proprietor who is filmed backward.

While this movie has its fans — Weird Al claims it’s his favorite movie — the studio was upset with its performance. And David Zucker would claim that it may be a funny movie, but it isn’t a very good one.

Me? I kind of love any movie that has the French Resistance still fighting Germany in the 1960’s, a battle that takes them to a Swedish pizza place where Nick can win over the girls with his song “Straighten Out the Rug.”

Sometimes, the story behind a movie takes over the actual story of the movie. I can think of no better example than this film.

The Cottom Club was Robert Evans’ baby. Inspired by a picture-book of the famous nightclub by James Haskins, he was set to produce and direct, with Mario Puzo writing the original screenplay and William Kennedy and Francis Ford Coppola doing re-writes.

But wait? Didn’t Evans and Coppola famously hate one another after two go-arounds making The Godfather films? Didn’t Evans even claim, in his book that influenced everything I write, The Kid Stays In the Picture, that “Francis and I have a perfect record; we disagreed on everything?”

Production designer Richard Sylbert played good cop bad cop with both, telling Evans not to hire Coppola because “he resents being in the commercial, narrative, Hollywood movie business” while at the same time telling Coppola to steer clear because Evans was crazy.

Yet Coppola needed the money. One from the Heart had tanked and he’d done the one thing you should never do — he spent his own money.

Evans needed Coppola too — at least $13 million had already been committed to the film, then Vegas casino kings Ed and Fred Doumanu put another $30 million down, then Adnan Khashoggi — yes, the arms dealer — got involved. And then there’s Roy Radin, who cut a drug dealing associate out of the movie and got killed for it.

Let’s stop this Cotton Club train and get into Roy Radin, who touches all the hot button subject matter that I love so much. Back in 1991, Lydon LaRouche’s Executive Intelligence Review stated that Radin’s murder had been carried out in style. To wit, the murder was conducted in Satanic ritualistic fashion: 13 bullets to the back of the head; a Bible left near the body, opened to a passage from the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 22, which reads in part, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.””

Radin was killed by William Malony Mentzer, who was identified by “Son of Sam”  killer David Berkowitz as Manson II. He was also, at the time, the bodyguard of Larry Flynt and had two dozen similarities with the Zodiac Killer. 

Radin also had ties to the occult underground in New York and Long Island, purchasing much of his cocaine from the group that Maury Terry fingered in The Ultimate Evil as a national Satanic underground that also included the Process Church of the Final Judgement and Charles Manson. Radin was also a member of the Crowley order the Ordo Templi Orientis.

I went to one of their parties once and was shocked how boring it was, as everyone ate guacamole and discussed Debbie Harry for hours. And hours.  Also, of note, the Process successfully sued Terry and had the passage that connected them to Manson removed from future printings.

But I digress.

The budget had ballooned out of control — $65 million by some accounts, which would be $162 million in today’s money. When he became the director, Francis Ford Coppola added to the budgetary issues by firing nearly all of Evans’ crew, which meant large payoffs. Then, a whole new crew went to work, with six hundred people were constantly working at building sets, making costumes and playing music, like some demented Winchester house of a film, costing a quarter million a day as star Gregory Hines claimed that the rehearsals of the film were being filmed as the movie was shot during rehearsals.

At one point, five new scripts were written in 48-hours and at least thirty — if not forty — versions of the screenplay exist. Evans got forced out. The producers began suing one another. And the movie was still far from playing theaters.

Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere) is working with the mob to help his career as a musician, but he’s fallen for Dutch Schultz’s (James Remar) woman Vera (Diane Lane). Meanwhile, Sandman Williams (Heinz) and his brother Lucky (real-life brother Maurice Heinz) start working at the Cotton Club, which is owned by Owney Madden (Bob Hoskins) and policed by his right-hand man, Frenchy Demange (Fred Gwynne!).

Dixie — who is pretty much George Raft — goes off to become a star thanks to Madden, but he pisses off Schultz along the way. Yet his brother remains in Schultz’s gang (and is played by a very, very young Nicholas Cage). And Laurence Fishburne is also in here as a Harlem-based mobster.

This movie again connects so many of my pop culture loves, from Warhol Factory star Joe Dallesandro playing Lucky Luciano to Tom Waits, Woody Strode and Julian Beck (Kane from Poltergeist 2!) having roles in the film.

Roger Ebert said that despite the movie having such a troubled birth, “what difference does that make when the result is so entertaining? Whatever it took to do it, Coppola has extracted a very special film out of the checkered history of this project.”

In 2015, Coppola found an old Betamax video copy of his director’s cut and spent a half million of his own money — oh Francis, you never learn — to restore the film. This new version, called The Cotton Club Encore, debuted at the Telluride Fim Festival.

The Cotton Club Encore has just been released to blu ray. It’s remastered, restored and has musical sequences and never-before-seen scenes that have been added back to the film. You can follow the link to order it.

DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by Lionsgate. This has no impact on our review.

The list of talent involved in Monster Shark should get you pretty excited about the film. It took seven writers to get this movie made, including Lewis Coates, who you’d probably know better as Luigi Cozzi (Starcrash); Martin Dolman, who is really Sergio Martino (All the Colors of the Dark); Gianfranco Clerici (Cannibal Holocaust); Frank Walker, who is truly Vincenzo Mannino (The Last Shark); Hervé Piccini (Rats: Night of Terror); Dardano Sacchetti (who wrote pretty much every Italian horror and science fiction movie worth watching) and finally, John Old Jr.

Perhaps you know his infinitely more talented father, John M. Old. Yes, that’s just a pseudonym for Mario Bava, which means that the John Old Jr. who crafted this thing called Devil Fish, Monster from the Red Ocean, Devouring Waves or Shark: Red in the Ocean is truly Lamberto Bava. Whew. Sometimes watching Italian genre cinema means that you have to play investigatore.

Somewhere in Florida, the tourist trade is being attacked by a mysterious undersea beast. It’s not a shark. That’d be too easy. No, it’s a secret military operation that combines the worst parts of the octopus with the prehistoric Dunkleosteus.

While just a baby devil fish right now — an infant monster shark, a babina monster from red ocean, a toddler octopi — the beast has still broken loose to gnaw on swimmers, sailors and random females. 

It’s up to Peter (Michael Sopkiw, Blastfighter), an electrician and TV repairman whose sole qualification seems to be the amount of beer he can drink; Dr. Bob Hogan, another rampant alcoholic; and dolphin trainer/marine biologist Dr. Stella Dickens (Valentine Monnier, who was also in 2019: After the Fall of New York with Sopkiw) to stop the beast. If you know anything about Luigi Cozzi, you probably realize that amongst his contributions to the script, one of them had to be the name of this character, as he names every female lead in his movies Stella. 

Instead of Sheriff Brody, we get Sheriff Gordon, who is played by John Garko, who is better known as Gianni Garko, and who is better known as Sartana. Other Italian horror stars of note include Cinthia Stewart (actually Cinzia De Ponti, who is the bicyclist that gets eviscerated in the beginning of The New York Ripper as well as the ironically named babysitter Jamie Lee in Fulci’s Manhattan Baby); Iris Peynado from Warriors of the Wasteland and Iron Warrior; and Dagmar Lassander from Hatchet for the Honeymoon and The House by the Cemetery.

This is a movie that needs so much padding that it features not one, but two title sequences, yet features only three adult film-sounding Fabio Frizzi on a Casio created music cues. 

By the end, when Professor Donald West (William Berger, Keoma) solemnly intones that the creature is “A marine monster, almost indestructible. And whose genetic characteristics are as fearsome as the white shark’s. A gigantic octopus with the intelligence of a dolphin, and as monstrous as a prehistoric creature,” you’ll think to yourself that in better hands, Monster Shark could have been a halfway decent affair. 

There is a scene where a botched rescue leads to a man violently losing his legs. And that man was played by an actual amputee, which I guess we should applaud. And whoever decided to this needed spiced up with a subscene where a woman is attacked and electrocuted with a hairdryer? You may not know how to plot, but kudos for trying to keep this plodding affair from being a total snoozefest. And you know how you should never show the monster for the first half of the film? Bava goes one better than that, never clearly showing his titular undersea antagonist for the entire running time.

Lamberto’s Demons films are much better than this, but that’s the kind of bar that you don’t just stumble over, but one that you also stub your toe on. Sopkiw claims that he’s a great director, yet the budget here hampered his talents. I just don’t know how a movie about a giant eyed prehistoric octopus hybrid battling alcoholic flamethrower enthusiasts can be so sleep-inducing. 

This article originally appeared in Drive-In Asylum Special Issue #4, which you can buy here.

The Killing Touch. Olympic Nightmare. These are both great names, but they want with Fatal Games. If you watch this movie and think, is this Graduation Day, good news. You are not alone. Amazingly, this movie — a slasher from the late era of the genre — has never been released on DVD or blu ray. Give it time — everything is getting rediscovered these days.

The seven member gymnastics team of the Falcon Academy of Athletics could make the nationals, but there’s someone wearing a black tracksuit that is killing everyone with a javelin.

This movie has plenty of interesting folks — Sean Masterson (who wrote for nearly every show Drew Carey has worked on), Michael O’Leary (Dr. Rick Bauer on Guiding Light), stuntwoman Spice Williams-Crosby, Sally Kirkland (who was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar and won the Best Actress Golden Globe for Anna) and short moments of Brinke Stevens and Linnea Quigley.

It was created by two children of famous people. Writer Christopher Mankiewicz is the son of writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz and actress Rose Stradner. And Rafael Bunuel is the son of Luis Bunuel. Yes, the sons of the men who created All About Eve and Un Chien Andalou came together to create a slasher that has all of the acting power of a porn without the payoff of hardcore sex.

Also, if you recognize the setting, it was also the same high school used for Jawbreaker, Los Angeles’ University High School.