Richard W. Haines edited Stuck On You! and The Toxic Avenger and directed Class of Nuke ‘Em High, Head Games and this slasher film, which features actress Elizabeth Kaitan (Robin from Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood and Candy from the Vice Academy series) on the poster when she’s not even in the movie!

Years ago, a killer named William Graham escaped from a mental hospital and killed numerous students at Saint Trinian’s College. Years later, new sociology teacher Julie Parker has just started at the college but she can already tell that something just isn’t right. Much like a giallo, this foreigner must become the detective as bodies pile up around her and she becomes the killer’s next potential victim.

This movie was made for around $25,000 and originally called Thou Shall Not Kill. It came at the end of the slasher boom and is a pretty standard stalk and slash, save for a few cool scenes like when Parker discovers her best friend’s body, which has been festering in a locker for several days. It feels all over the place as several of the kills were added after the original running time only came in at 65 minutes, so the padding is evident.

For all of the faults you can find in this movie — the effects aren’t that great, the kills aren’t very spectacular, the characters are pretty much universally annoying — the ending makes up for all of it, transforming what has been a pretty campy affair into pure nihilistic bleakness.

Known as Campus Killings in the UK, this film played double bills with An American Werewolf In London. If you want to see it for yourself, you can grab the blu ray reissue from Vinegar Syndrome or watch it on Amazon Prime.

New Zealand was ready to represent when it came to the slasher boom, thanks to this bonkers entry into the canon. It’s so violent that it was banned in Australia, a country that was originally made up of convicts.

Director David Blyth’s film predates Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste, seem as perhaps the first homegrown Kiwi horror film. Blyth has been called “New Zealand’s master of transgression” by Fangoria and “one of the great mavericks of New Zealand film” by NZ Listener. He also created the movies Angel Mine, Wound, Transfigured Nights and Moonrise, which is also known as Grampire and stars “Grandpa” Al Lewis.

Years ago, Dr. Howell — a mad scientist trying to prolong human life past death — dealt with his harshest critic by mind-controlling that man’s son into shotgun blasting his parents.

Now, Michael Tucker (Michael Hurst, Iolaus from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys) has emerged from seven years in a mental ward. He somehow has acquired a loving girlfriend named Sandy and has taken her on a holiday along with their friends Jeannie and Lucas. However, that sojourn is really a front to get him to the remote island where Dr. Howell’s clinic is located and gain bloody revenge.

What follows is a descent into the caves of the island, where the doctor’s horrible creations live. That’s when the film turns into a strange mix of The Hills Have Eyes and Mad Max packed with an equal mix of nihilism and gore.

I really have no category that easily fits this film. It’s kind of a slasher. It’s somewhat a punk rock biker post-apocalyptic film. And it’s also science fiction. It’s a glorious mess, all over the place and unafraid to have its hero completely fall apart by the end.

If you want to check this out, Severin has recently re-released it in the best quality ever available for home video. It’s packed with trailers, commentaries with Blyth and writer Michael Heath, and an interview with David Letch.

Seven years after the original film, Wes Craven would return to the desert, bringing more folks back into the near apocalyptic territory lorded over by the mutants from the first film. In fact, if you liked that movie, you’re in luck, because clips from it play throughout this one’s running time.

Wes Craven has disowned this movie, which started filming A Nightmare On Elm Street. Though it was released after that film, only two-thirds of it was finished when the studio halted production due to budget issues. Once Freddy Krueger became a household name, that convinced Craven to finish the movie using only the footage that he had in the can. That’s why so much of this film comes from the original, a point I will continually bludgeon throughout this article.

Robert Huston, who played Bobby in the original (and brought Lone Wolf and Cub to American screens) returns, as does Janus Blythe (she’s also great in Eaten Alive). She was Rachel in the first film and now everyone calls her Ruby. They now own a motocross team and have invented a super fuel. The team’s latest race takes them through the same stretch as…yes, I know I keep saying the original film, but this movie keeps referencing it.

Bobby’s psychiatrist wants him to go, but he chickens out with Rachel taking his place along with Beast the dog. Yes, from the first film.

The team — blind Cass (who brings a blind girl motocross racing?), her boyfriend Roy (Kevin Spritas from the Subspecies films and Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood), Harry (Peter Frechette, The Kindred, The Unholy and T-Bird Louis DiMucci in Grease 2), Hulk(John Laughlin, Footloose and The Rock), Foster (Willard E. Pugh, Harpo from The Color Purple), Jane (Colleen Riley, Deadly Blessing) and Sue (Penny Johnson from TV’s Castle and 24) — head off to the desert but get lost.

Harry takes a shortcut through an old bombing range, which Ruby should have protested way more than she does. This leads them to a mining ranch where Pluto (Michael Berryman) comes back — yes, from the first movie — and attacks her. Everyone thinks she’s crazy until he also steals one of their bikes. Roy and Harry give chase but Harry gets killed by a boulder and a new cannibal named Reaper (John Bloom — who isn’t Joe Bob — the Frankenstein’s Monster from Al Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein) knocks out Roy.

Reaper is Papa Jupiter’s older brother and he isn’t here to mess around. Seriously, he wipes out everyone — including Ruby or Rachel or whatever she was calling herself these days — in short order, using spearguns, machetes and improvised traps. However, Craven didn’t like John Bloom’s voice, so he’s dubbed by Nicholas Worth, who we all know as Kirk Smith from Don’t Answer the Phone!

Sadly for Pluto, he’s still no match for a dog and gets dropped off a cliff.

The end of the film gets pretty thrilling, as the survivors use the bus itself as a trap for the gigantic mutant leader. There’s an amazing fire stunt at the end, which made me really happy. And hey — Kane Hodder was one of the stunt people for this!

You can buy this from Arrow Video but keep in mind that it’s limited to 3,000 copies! It’s packed with extras, like brand new audio commentary with The Hysteria Continues and Blood, Sand, and Fire: The Making of The Hills Have Eyes Part II, a new documentary that has interviews with Berryman, Blythe, composer Harry Manfredini and more.

Like everything Arrow puts out, it’s a high quality release well worth your money. And despite being told for years how bad this sequel is — it’s certainly not the dark and brutal classic that it’s forebearer was — it’s entertaining.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by Arrow Video, but we would have bought it anyway. That has no impact on our review.

I thought I knew what bad movies were all about, but I never knew it could be like this. Rhinestone achieves a level of bad movie that even I didn’t know was possible. It’s as if it sets a bar and then continually trips over it, again and again, taking down the talents of Dolly Parton, Sylvester Stallone and Bob Clark in its wake, like an endlessly swirling toilet that has transformed into a black hole where no goodness can escape.

This is the kind of movie that Ed Wood and Claudio Fragrasso would make fun of. In the grand totality of bad movies, this might very well be the worst that I have ever endured. Just imagine that statement — I am someone that has sat through Troll 2 numerous times, has endured multiple Jess Franco movies in one night and has even made it through countless direct to video films that haunted the shelves of Blockbuster and West Coast Video.

How bad can it get? Real fucking bad.

Phil Alden Robinson made his screenwriting debut with this film and luckily, he didn’t quit, as he went on to write All of Me and Fletch before writing and directing Field of Dreams and Sneakers. He was so offended by Stallone’s rewrite that he briefly considered having his name removed from the film’s credits, but was convinced that it would look good on his resume.

Stallone had plenty to say about this film when he spoke to Ain’t It Cool News: “The most fun I ever had on a movie was with Dolly Parton on Rhinestone I must tell everyone right now that originally the director was supposed to be Mike Nichols, that was the intention and it was supposed to be shot in New York, down and dirty with Dolly and I with gutsy mannerisms performed like two antagonists brought together by fate. I wanted the music at that time to be written by people who would give it sort of a bizarre edge. Believe it or not, I contacted Whitesnake’s management and they were ready to write some very interesting songs alongside Dolly’s. But, I was asked to come down to Fox and out steps the director, Bob Clark. Bob is a nice guy, but the film went in a direction that literally shattered my internal corn meter into smithereens. I would have done many things differently. I certainly would’ve steered clear of comedy unless it was dark, Belgian chocolate dark. Silly comedy didn’t work for me. I mean, would anybody pay to see John Wayne in a whimsical farce? Not likely. I would stay more true to who I am and what the audience would prefer rather than trying to stretch out and waste a lot of time and people’s patience.”

Dolly plays Jake Farris, a country singer stuck in a long-term contract performing at The Rhinestone. She gets into an argument with the club’s manager Freddie (Ron Leibman, whose career is one of the highest highs — winning a Tony in 1993 for Angels In America and being in Norma Rae — to the lowest of the lows, being in movies like Michael Winner’s Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood and the abortive Mad Magazine film, Up the Academy), putting five more years of her contract and a night of sex on the line if she can’t turn a regular man off the street into a country star. That said, if she wins, she’s out of her contract.

Freddie gets to pick that man and grabs New York cabbie Nick Martinelli (Stallone), who has no talent and hates country. So she takes him home to Tennessee to teach him how to be country. They constantly argue, which is supposed to remind us of the sparkling dialogue of the 1940’s romantic comedies, but instead just reminds us how little chemistry two of the biggest stars of the 1970;s have with one another.

Tim Thomerson — yes, Jack Deth from Trancers — shows up as Jake’s ex-fiancee Barnett Kale. Richard Farnsworth, who was so magical in Misery and The Straight Story is forced to be in this movie possibly at gunpoint, playing Jake’s dad. Actually, I assume that this movie was some sort of SLA terrorist action where everyone had Stockholm Syndrome and had to make this movie and gradually fell into loving what they were doing.

How else can you explain Stallone turning down Beverly Hills Cop and Romancing the Stone to make this movie? They must have had his family, dog and the turtles from Rocky held at gunpoint.

In her autobiography My Life and Other Unfinished Business, Dolly said tha the soundtrack for Rhinestone is some of the best work that she has dever one. The song “What a Heartache” is a personal favorite of hers, as she’s re-recorded it twice, and the singles “God Won’t Get You” and “Tennessee Homesick Blues” topped the country charts.

That said — this movie also features Stallone singing “Drinkenstein.” I date you to make it through this little number with your sanity intact. Here is just a hint of the lyrics in this, well, song:

“Budweiser you created a monster and they call him Drinkenstein. And the tavern down the street is the labba-tor-eye-ee where he makes the transformation all the time!”

This really happened. This was really filmed. This actually exists.

Dolly also utters a line so mystifying that it had to have been written by an alien race: “Freddie, there are two kinds of people in this world, and you ain’t one of ’em!”

I have no idea how Bob Clark — the same director behind Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, Black Christmas, A Christmas Story, Porky’s and Deathdream — was behind this movie. Relatedly, I can’t even comprehend how Dolly Parton — who I love enough to have seen live on multiple occasions and who has proven herself as an able comedy actress — and Sylvester Stallone — whose movies I’ve spent weeks of this site discussing — could all be pulled into such a nightmare.

I really can’t stop you from watching this movie. In fact, I’ll probably watch it again. If you come to my house, I may even suggest that we watch it together. But I’ve come to realize that I enjoy painful movies. This movie makes the worst regional drive-in movie look like the finest New Hollywood soul searing tearjerker. It makes Manos, The Hands of Fate look like a Frank Capra movie. From here on, when someone asks how bad a movie is, I will use this film as the measuring stick for just how bad it can get.

Roger Corman and Angie Dickinson are still on board for another Big Bad Mama a decade later, bringing on Jim Wynorski as the director. Yes, the writer of Forbidden World, Sorceress and Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time as well as the director of Chopping Mall and so many more. Remember when the Medved brothers decried Dickinson being nude in the first Big Bad Mama? They must have been in full cringe mode for this one, even though Monique Gabrielle was her body double for this sequel effort.

Despite dying at the end of the original, Wilma McClatchie’s (Dickinson) home is foreclosed on, her new man shot and killed and she and her daughters Billie Jean (this time played by Danielle Brisebois, who was in The Premonition, TV’s Archie Bunker’s Place and a member of the band New Radicals) and Polly (Julie McCullough, Playboy February 1986 Playmate of the Month who also appeared in the 1988 remake of The Blob and was on TV’s Growing Pains until being fired once Kirk Saving Christmas Cameron converted to evangelical Christianity) return to a life of crime.

Crispin Glover’s dad Bruce is in this, as are Robert Culp, Charles Cypers (Sheriff Leigh Brackett!) and Lin Shaye in a brief part as a bank teller. It’s nowhere near as good as the originally, which wasn’t all that good to begin with, but when it’s 2:43 AM and you’re up all night with a toothache, you could really do worse, I guess.

You can watch this on Tubi and Amazon Prime.

If there’s a hicksploitation hall of fame, Shelley Winters should probably be in it. She’s in one of the movies that defines so many of the genre’s themes, The Night of the Hunter, as well as some of its best — and most exploitative examples — films, such as Bloody Mama and Poor Pretty Eddie. She also plays a housekeeper Katy who has also had a space baby sometime in the past in the astounding 70s blast of odd called The Visitor.

Somewhere in the Deep South, this is all about barefoot farmer’s daughter Ellie (Sheila Kennedy, Penthouse Pet of the Month for December 1981 and the 1983 Pet of the Year) getting revenge for her father’s murder at the hands of her stepmother (Winters) — who killed the kindly old man while she chowed down on fried chicken.

She only has one weapon. Her body. And she knows how to use it.

George Gobel, Edward Albert and Pat Paulsen all show up, but the main thrill of the film is its rampant nudity. Somehow, this movie is also a version of the Greek myth of Elektra, if you can wrap your mind around that.

Director Peter Wittman was also behind exactly one other movie, Play Dead, where a woman kills with her brain and her dog. It’s not great or even good, but it’s the kind of movie that you stayed up to watch on a Friday night on Cinemax. If you never did that, you’re probably going to hate this. If you did, you have a near limitless capacity for enduring boring films. Not that I would know or anything.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime.