If I were writing this review at any time other than 4:40 AM and had more than two hours sleep in the past two days, I wouldn’t be full of hyperbole, pacing through my house, mumbling to myself things like, “Savage Streets is the greatest movie ever made!” and “Why did they make any more movies after this?”

I often discuss movies with my dad and I often describe ones I love as “a piece of shit, but an entertaining piece of shit.” Was I more lucid, that’s probably how I’d describe this film. But seriously, this movie has everything you want to watch in the middle of the night. It is unapologetically 1980’s exploitation filmmaking, a roughie that would never hit the scream today, small or large.

I was trying to suffer through Dude Party Massacre 3 on Shudder. It’s a movie that’s getting a lot of buzz. And I can see why some folks would like it. It’s very Adult Swim in tone, execution and humor. It also reminds me of a Troma movie and my sense of humor is one that enjoys the strangeness that comes from an earnest yet deranged slasher like Don’t Go in the Woods more than something that sets out to be silly for the sake of being silly. To be honest, I was a bit depressed, because I was hoping for something more.

I’ve had Savage Streets in my Amazon Prime queue for some time. It was time for it to rescue me from my doldrums.

Imagine if Pat Benetar’s “Love is a Battlefield” lasted for 93 minutes.  Also, imagine if Pat didn’t use dance to defeat the rival gang, but instead had a crossbow. That is the best summation of this movie that I can give you.

Brenda (Linda Blair, and if I have to tell you what other films Linda has been in, you can never read our site again) and her deaf-mute sister Heather (Linnea Quigley, the only scream queen I know who put out a workout tape) are wild in the streets with their gang the Satins, looking at Playgirl Magazine while dressed as only folks in the 80’s could dress. They keep getting into scuffles with a gang called the Scars, ending with the girls stealing and trashing the gang’s car. Jake, their leader, vows revenge after Brenda goes even further by scratching his face.

Well, he and the gang waste no time. While Brenda is fighting another girl in a locker room brouhaha, the gang isolates her sister and rapes her. You may notice that the gang seems to be more interested in touching one another than touching her sister. Two of them even embrace one another and kiss. These are the kinds of things that you will unexpectantly see in this film. It’s one that rapidly switches tone, going for the darkness of man on woman crime to a wacky scene where the students put drawings of penises on a health room chart. It is a movie that will change that tone on a dime, ensuring that you are never ready for what happens next.

The Scars up the ante by killing Brenda’s soon to be married and pregnant friend Francine (Lisa Freeman, Back to the Future). There’s a Pretty Woman like scene of the girl trying on her wedding dress while everyone watches and again, you aren’t ready for the tonal 180 when the gang throws her off a viaduct.

Meanwhile, policing all of this insanity at the high school is John Vernon as Principal Underwood. He seems like he is barely containing himself from killing every child that is in his educational system.

Earlier in the film, Brenda and her girl gang notice bear traps are on sale. This seems like something that totally makes no sense. Not so. Because when Brenda hunts down the Scars, she uses one of those traps to kill one of the gang members by snapping it onto his neck. Then she takes a crossbow after the rest of the gang.

Sure, Jake escapes. But he really should have stopped when he could have. Brenda douses him in paint and sets him ablaze, just in time for a cop to pull up and watch the guy die. What school do these girls go to?

All of the girls visit Francine’s grave and Brenda comments, “At least we set things right.” Her friend Stevie earnestly looks at her and says, “No Brenda. You set things right.” I almost set my couch on fire in pure joy.

Danny Steinman has few movies on his resume but, chief among them Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, a film I described as “the scummiest, vilest Friday of them all,” as well as The Unseen and this film. And now I’m sad, because I wish he made a hundred movies, ninety-nine of them being sequels to Savage Streets. It also has uncredited direction from Tom DeSimone, who crossed over from porn to make movies like Chatterbox, Hell Night (also with Linda Blair!), Reform School Girls and Angel III: The Final Chapter.

PS – I am loving this long interview with Steinman that you can find right here.

Cherie Curie from the Runaways shot at least one day of footage as the lead in this film before Linda Blair took over, but I can see no one else as Brenda in this movie.

There’s also a subplot that doesn’t matter much at all, with Brenda facing off with cheerleader Cindy over her boyfriend Fadden. Also — Faden owes Jake tons of money for coke.

I really need to let you know how great Robert Dryer is as Jake. He’s pure menace, bringing an edge to this film that shocks you with its brutality.

Also — the dialogue! From the principal yelling, “Go fuck an iceberg!” to Jake intoning ” I am going to cut your heart out and eat it!” and nearly everything Brenda says, this movie is packed with quotable quotables.

This is on Amazon Prime, which is great, because the DVD and blu-ray releases are out of print. It’s the kind of movie that feels so good before the sun comes up. Go Brenda! Shoot those Scars up! Use the beartrap!

UPDATE: Kino Lorber will re-issued Savage Streets on January 5, 2021, with pre-orders generally sent several days in advance of street date. The Blu-ray is loaded with extras featuring audio commentary tracks by actors Robert Dryer, Johnny Venocur, and producer John Strong, along with actors Robert Dryer and Sal Landi discussing the film with cinematographer Stephen L. Posey. In addition, director Danny Steinmann and producer John Strong, along with actors Linda Blair, Linnea Quigley, Robert Dyer, Johnny Venocur, Sal Lindi, and Scott Mayer each offer their own interview segments.

You can also pick up DVDs from RoninFlix! Check out this awesome new cover!

Streets of Fire is no ordinary movie. It is, as the poster promises, “a rock ‘n roll fable.” It also feels like it comes from a reality unlike our own, a place of perpetual night, thanks to a majority of the film being shot on two large sets that were covered in a tarp 1,240 feet long by 220 feet wide. Outside of night shoots in Chicago, it’s basically a soundstage film, which adds to its otherworldly feel.

The Chicago in Streets of Fire is a world where it rains all the time, where neighborhoods have their own color palette and people speak in an exaggerated tough guy language that led Roger Ebert to say that this was the way “really mean guys would have talked in the late 1950s, only with a few words different — as if this world evolved a slightly different language.”

Director and writer Walter Hill (48 Hours, The Warriors) wanted to create a new action hero, something that felt like a comic book that wasn’t based on any existing character, the first in a new franchise of films about a character called The Stranger (who became known as Tom Cody). Oh yeah. It was also going to be a musical.

Hill’s vision was to create a film that had everything he loved as a teenager: “custom cars, kissing in the rain, neon, trains in the night, high-speed pursuit, rumbles, rock stars, motorcycles, jokes in tough situations, leather jackets and questions of honor.”

He had other rules: no one under the age of 30 and because he saw the film as a fairy tale, the violence was to be stylized. No one was to die.

After clashing with Paramount head Michael Eisner over the film feeling similar to an Indiana Jones film (no one would have that argument after seeing the final product), Hill sold the film to Universal. Named for the Bruce Springsteen song, you’d think that Bruce would be included on the soundtrack. Indeed, music is incredibly essential to the final film, so Meatloaf and Alice Cooper co-conspirator Jim Steinman came in to write the song that closes the film, “Tonight is What it Means to Be Young.” The song was so good — it was written in two days, believe it or not — that it led to a $1 million reshoot, as the film had the Springsteen song already shot as the ending.

Again, the final product is just strange. Co-writer Larry Gross (the writer of 48 Hours, True Crime and Prozac Nation)  had a moment late in the production where he realized that “this movie is somewhat weirder than we thought.” He said the failure of the film was because “our commitment to be stylized was thorough and conscious and maybe too extreme for the mainstream audience.”

In another time, another place, in an unnamed city, rock star Ellen Aim (Diane Lane, known to today’s moviegoers as Martha Kent in the DC Comics movies) returns home to put on a show with her band, the Attackers. However, The Bombers, a motorcycle gang led by Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe, The Last Temptation of Christ, 2009’s Antichrist, not the one with the goat licking), kidnaps her.

Reva Cody (Deborah Van Valkenburgh, Mercy from The Warriors) hires her brother Tom (Michael Paré, The Philadelphia Experiment, Eddie and the Cruisers) to rescue Ellen (who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend). He brings in McCoy (Amy Madigan, The Dark Half), a fellow ex-soldier who can drive anything. And Reva brings in Billy Fish (Rick Moranis, Ghostbusters, Strange Brew), Ellen’s manager and boyfriend.

What follows is stylized action with Cody and McCoy breaking into the gang’s base and rescuing Ellen, all while the rock star argues with Cody as to why he saved her. She thinks it was about money and he tells her that at one point in his life, he would have done anything to save her. But now, it’s all changed.

Finally, Cody decides to leave Ellen behind, as he can’t see a future where he can be what she needs him to be. He has a final battle with Raven, which he wins, and Raven is carried away by his gang. After one final goodbye, Cody and McCoy ride off into the neon, rain-soaked night. Basically, the movie ends like Casablanca.

Streets of Fire is packed with great minor characters that populate its strange world. EG Daily (Dottie in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and the voice of Tommy Pickles on Rugrats) plays Baby Doll. Richard Lawson (Sugar Hill, Poltergeist and the stepfather of Beyoncé and Solange Knowles) plays a police officer who tries to keep Cody and Raven apart. Bill Paxton plays a bartender. And Lee Ving from Fear is even in the film (he also played Mr. Boddy in Clue, which is a great trivia question if you ever want to use it). There’s even a fake band, The Sorels, made up of actors Stoney Jackson, Grand Bush (Balrog in Street Fighter), Mykelti Williamson and comedian Robert Townsend.

You can see the influence of Streets of Fire in some interesting places, mainly in the video games and animation of Japan. Capcom’s Final Fight owes a big debt to the film. And the anime Bubblegum Crisis has featured musical sequences and songs that were taken almost 100% from the film. Here’s a great distillation of the Western influences that shaped that anime:

I can’t speak objectively about this movie. I love it. I love that it’s so completely off the rails, that it is not tied to our real world at all, that it’s a musical, that it appears to be based on something but it’s actually an original story. I remember watching it on VHS as a teenager and wishing that everyone in the film was a real person that I could spend more time getting to know.

There were plans to do two more Tom Cody films — The Far City and Cody’s Return, but the failure of the film ended those plans. However, Albert Pyun (The Sword and the Sorcerer, Dollman) directed 2008’s Road to Hell, an unofficial sequel that has Paré as Cody.

Shout! Factory has finally come to the rescue of everyone who wanted this on blu-ray and released what is the definitive version of the film. I suggest that you purchase it immediately, as I need more people to talk about this movie with!

Nelvana was a Canadian animation powerhouse in the 1980’s, producing the Boba Fett cartoon in the Star Wars Holiday Special, Droids, Ewoks and even the live action Whoopi Goldberg movie Burglar. Along the way, Nelvana’s franchises have been shown on over 360 television stations in more 180 countries, in approximately 50 languages. But their first major film was Rock and Rule.

Based heavily on their earlier animated film The Devil and Daniel Mouse, the film took five years to create and used up all of the studio’s resources thanks to its $8 million dollar budget. MGM never promoted the film and it quickly faded from the U.S. box office. If Nelvana hadn’t started working in kid-friendly TV, they would have gone out of business.

In 1983, a nuclear war destroys the human race and mutated street animals populate the Earth.Mok Swagger is a legendary rock musician (voiced by Don Francks, with Lou Reed and Iggy Pop singing his songs) who is hunting for a special voice that will allow him to release a demon. Why? Well, as he’s lost his fame, he just wants to set the world on fire.

Meanwhile, in a nightclub in Mok’s hometown, Ohmtown, Omar (Paul Le Mat voiced him with Robin Zander from Cheap Trick singing), Angel (Susan Roman voice, Debbie Harry singing), Dizzy and Stretch play a show in a small bar. Mok hears Angel sing and knows that he has finally found the voice that he’s been looking for.

Mok invites the band to his mansion outside of town, drugging the band and escaping with Angel. Taking her to Nuke York, he stages a magic ritual as a rock concert, we learn that only one voice, one heart and one song can stop the demon. Yet the evil rock star convinces Omar that Angel is willingly with him before capturing and torturing the band.

Will Omar get it together? Will Mok unleash a demon on the world? Will we get to hear songs by Cheap Trick, Earth Wind & Fire, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Debbie Harry? Yes. Maybe. Yes.

This isn’t a cartoon for kids. It’s packed with drugs, devil worship, some sex and swearing (there was more before MCA demanded cuts). They pretty much dumped the film with only a Night Flight mention and a Marvel tie-in comic. I remembered waiting for the film to come out and it never did.

The book is really gorgeous because instead of original art being created for the comic, it’s a fumetti style book that takes cel art and creates comic book layouts from it.

Taken from https://blogintomystery.com/2011/11/02/the-comic-that-sends-love-through-marvel-super-special-25-rock-rule/

Taken from http://asteriskpix.blogspot.com/2010/08/marvel-super-special-rock-rule.html

This film is like an 80’s rock and roll version of The Apple. There’s a musical couple that is torn apart by evil big business, but way less camel toe — ironic as many of the creatures in the film look like humanoid dromedaries.

The animation is pretty interesting as well, looking Bakshi-like (indeed, Ralph Bakshi is often credited as the director of this, but Clive A. Smith in the true person behind the film). Even though production started as early as 1978, it really reflects the MTV style of the 80’s. It compares favorably with a more well-known animated film from Canada, Heavy Metal.

Rock and Rule played on HBO and Showtime in the U.S., never showing in theaters. It wasn’t released officially on video until 2005 and a new blu-ray from Unearthed Films was released in 2010.

After 1990: The Bronx Warriors, director Enzo G. Castellari created this film, originally entitled The New Barbarians. The title change reflects the name New Line Cinema would use when they released the film in the United States. This movie checks off nearly every box when it comes to what it’ll take to get me to love a film: it’s Italian. It’s a ripoff of Mad Max. It has George Eastman in it. It has a big name (well, in Italy) American star, Fred “The Hammer” Williamson. It’s packed with enough weird quirks that would put off anyone else, but they made me fall in love with it. And oh yeah — Giovanni Frezza (Bob from House by the Cemetery) makes an appearance.

2019. No relation to 2019: After the Fall of New York. But after a nuclear war, a gang called the Templars take it upon themselves to purge the Earth of anyone left alive. The film starts by showing us just one of their attacks, as they take their modified cars and golf carts out for a spin, murdering a convoy of survivors. Normal humans might look ragtag and dirty, but the Templars wear all white battle armor and have punk rock hairdos. The gang is a real family affair, as Shadow (Ennio Girolami) is Castellari’s brother and Mako (Massimo Vanni) is their cousin. Their leader is George Eastman as One.

After murdering everyone they’ve found, One tears a Bible apart and proclaims, “Books. That’s what started the whole apocalypse!” and “The world is dead. It raped itself. But I’ll purify it with blood. No one is innocent. But only we, the Templars, are the ministers of revenge!” Needless to say, George Eastman is doing what he does best here: not only chewing the scenery but taking big bloody bites out of it.

Later, Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete, Escape from the Bronx, Black Belly of the Tarantula) finds the survivors of the attack and fends off some scavengers. He puts one man out of his misery and takes what’s left for himself. We follow him as he meets up with his mechanic — yep, little Bob — who lives in an armored ice cream van, ala the KLF. They have a little gun battle, as you do, just to show that they’re friends. Scorpion needs his gearshift fixed and the problem seems to be that there’s an ear stuck in it. Yep. You read that right.

The Templars are looking for The Signal, the radio station that shows where humanity is still alive. Any car they see, they destroy, including the modified UPS van that Alma is in. They impale the driver and drag him off while she’s saved by Scorpion after being caught and dragged by a net. Scorpion and Shadow have a war of words after our hero spares Mako.

You can’t tell me that Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard didn’t base the look of The Walking Dead character Princess on this film.

Anyways, Scorpion takes Alma to his base where he repairs her shoulder and makes sweet, sweet love to her. Against One’s commands, Mako leads a group of Templars against Scorpion, who is saved by Nadir (Williamson), an arrow wielding, well-dressed badass. No, seriously, let’s all drink in the magic that is Nadir.

While Scorpion uses a car to roll over Mako’s dead body, Nadir shoots one of his arrows directly into a Templar’s neck, blowing his body to bits. Our hero sends Mako’s body back to One as his answer to where he stands. Holy shit, when Nadir talks, saying stuff like, “I enjoyed…your little game…of war!” I lose my mind every single time.

One kills the rest of Mako’s men while studying the fallen man’s dead body. He yells, “We are the Templars. The warriors of vengeance. We are the Templars. The high priests of death. We have been chosen to make others pay for the crime of being alive. We guarantee that all humanity, accomplices and heirs of the nuclear holocaust, will be wiped out once and for all. That the seed of Man will be canceled forever from the face of the earth!” They honor Mako’s dead body, saying that they will take ten thousand lives for his and will now hate and exterminate. But only One will have vengeance on Scorpion.

Our three heroes then meet a caravan of religious people led by Moses who have found The Signal, the aforementioned radio signal which will lead its followers to the last civilization on Earth. Alma and Nadir decide to stay with the caravan. And why would Nadir leave after he finds such perfect companionship with Vinya, a girl with glittery eye makeup, a side ponytail, access to booze and who does the deep concentration service and biorhythmic concentration (but it’s been a while since she’s done it). Let me tell you — the entire scene where she and Nadir talk about the end of the world before he starts making out with her is ridiculous and nonsensical and so perfect.

However, Scorpion claims that “heaven is dead” and that “memories are worth nothing.” Man. He was emo before anyone knew what it meant. He walks in on Nadir, who has obviously just got done making love and says goodbye. The rest of the Templars find him in seconds and take him to One, who reinitiates Scorpion into the Templars by anally raping him. Yes, you read that right. All of the motorcycle helmet wearing dudes watch while hanging around on cars and bikes as One takes it to our hero. Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting that. He gets interrupted by a scout who tells them they’ve found the caravan and that they need to finish off Scorpion while he goes off and murders everyone else.

Luckily, Nadir gets to Scorpion just in time. Not as luckily, doing so means that the caravan gets easily overtaken. He then yells at our hero, “Here lies the great Scorpion, in pain, victim of the big, bad queers, the Templars! All you had to do was ask. Nadir, I need your help. You’re not so great now, Scorpion.” But don’t worry. One training montage later and the mechanic kid — let’s call him little Bob, as that’s what I always call Giovanni Frezza in any movie — and our heroes are back to save everyone.

One smokes some weed while listening to a tape that says, “If you could win the sky, if you could win the sky, I, this evening would have possessed the world. But I don’t want to stain my name with ridicule. Fighting against the world of endless sky. Yet, I feel that soon, I too shall breach the supreme barrier.” What? What the fuck is he listening to! The dude is just totally smoking up while everyone else is out there killing humanity!

This leads to One giving another amazing speech: “Idiots! Dreamers! Don’t you understand? The world is dead! We have all closed our eyes! Even the heavens are silent! You! And you! And you! You are walking dead! Walking corpses! There is nothing left! Nothing. Not even The Signal you think you hear. Nothing. There’s no more soul. There’s no more hope. There’s only one faith. One ecstasy. Death! And death you shall have, you last ugly dregs of humanity! You don’t deserve to live!” A car filled with dead bodies shows up and interrupts, but they realize too late…it’s a trap! Scorpion, Nadir and Bob are here to kill as many Templars as possible and save the day.

One and Scorpion have a stare down. It’s obvious that beyond the rape earlier that these guys were lovers at one point. They have to be for this much pent up hatred. One gets off the first shot, but Scorpion has on clear body armor under his cape. You have to see this shit to believe it!

Meanwhile, Shadow starts taking out people one by one, killing Moses and Wiz. But Scorpion blows him away as Nadir takes out the rest of the Templars. There’s even a scene where Bob saves Nadir, leading to a high five. Then, Scorpion tracks down One before he runs away and impales him in the ass with a drill before blowing his car up.

The survivors gather. Nadir’s woman lived. So did Alma. And one would imagine that they’ll look for The Signal, but that’s it. Scorpion and Bob hold hands as Claudio Simonetti’s synth score blares. All hail Warriors of the Wasteland! Or The New Barbarians!

I wish that Enzo G. Castellari had made ten of these movies. This is exactly why I watch movies — to be entertained, to yell at the screen, to jump up and down in glee. Exploding arrows, heads flying off, cars with domes and saw blades that hack off human heads — this one has it all! Throw in “The Hammer” as a bad ass who could pretty much carry his own movie — he’s honestly way more entertaining than the lead — and you have a winner.

Seriously — with the idea of a religious group versus an evil gay biker army, this movie seems like a Jack Chick tract come to life. Yes, after the fall of man and the rapture, only a radio signal will lead us all to heaven, that is, if you can avoid all the rapes and murder. It goes without saying that this movie has no interest in being politically correct. The fact that it has no real animals were murdered makes it as woke as Italian cinema gets.

You can watch this on Amazon Video. And you should do so right now. Seriously, fuck the rest of your day. This movie is more important than anything else you would be doing anyway.

UPDATE: Blue Underground has just re-released this movie as part of a box set of post-apocalyptic movies, along with 1990: The Bronx Warriors and Escape from the Bronx!

Feed Shark

At one point in this movie, Santa Claus gets shoved down by Billy, our hero, and he yells, “What the hell is wrong with that kid?” And I yelled in defense, “Santa raped his mom, you fucking asshole!”

Merry Christmas, everyone, it’s time to descend into the absolute nadir of scummy movies and watch something that parents were right to worry about their kids watching.

Christmas 1971. Billy Chapman and his family go to see his grandfather in a nursing home. The silent, senile old man just sits there, but when Billy’s parents walk away, he tells him that he should be afraid when Santa comes, because he knows that Billy hasn’t been a good boy. On the way back, Billy’s parents slow down so he can see Santa walk along the road. Billy is already freaked out, but then Santa shoots Billy’s dad before raping and killing his mother — all while Billy and his infant brother Ricky watch.

Christmas 1974. Billy and Ricky celebrate in an orphanage. Well, there’s not much to celebrate. There’s non-stop punishment from Mother Superior and only Sister Margaret and Ricky are there to help Billy. Every holiday, our hero goes insane, drawing pictures of Santa killing his family and punching people dressed like Santa.

Christmas 1984. Sister Margaret gets Billy a job at a toy store, where things seem to be looking up. Billy even gets a love interest, Pamela, who he has wet dreams about that are interrupted by visions of Santa killing his family. Alright, I lied. Nothing is looking up, because Billy’s boss has a new job for him: he has to be Santa for Christmas Eve.

There’s a scene where Billy tells a young girl on his lap that he’s going to punish her — while two moms look on approvingly — that is total insanity. Sister Margaret calls while this is happening to see how Billy is doing, only to learn that he’s doing the one job he never should be doing.

There’s a party in the store and Billy leaves on the Santa suit. The owner tells Billy to keep on drinking and he’ll think he really is Santa Claus. Pamela leaves with Andy, the employee that always gives Andy a hard time. As Billy follows, he sees them making out, but soon Andy starts to rape his love interest. Billy responds in the way that any rational human being would: he hangs Andy with Christmas lights and stabs Pamela while describing how punishment is good.

Billy has followed his boss’ advice: time to do what Santa does on Christmas Eve. Billy’s version of Santa? His job is to kill. Billy lives up to that job description by killing his boss with a hammer and the store manager with a bow and arrow. Seriously, this movie has gone off the rails. Even scenes where people sing carols take on menace and dread.

Billy can’t stop his rampage now. He kills a young couple just for having sex, impaling the girl on a deer’s antlers and throwing the guy out the window. Talk about reindeer games! He then wakes up a little girl in the house and keeps asking her if she was naughty or nice. When she answers nice, he gives her a knife!

Don’t be a bully harassing sled riders in Billy’s neighborhood either, because he’ll chop your head right off.

Sister Margaret turns to the police, who rush to the orphanage. One of the cops screws up on arrival and kills a cop dressed as Santa right in front of a kid. Santa lives matter! He pays for his naughtiness by getting axed by Billy, who makes his way into the building to  confront Mother Superior. She taunts Billy, telling him she doesn’t believe in Santa. Billy goes to kill her and is shot by a cop. Sister Margaret is sad that Billy is dead and tenderly touches his face. Yep, a nun is sad that a serial killing Santa Claus has been stopped from killing another nun. Such is this movie.

Billy dies, but not before telling the kids “You’re safe now, Santa Claus is gone.” Ricky, his brother, looks at Mother Superior and says one word: naughty.

Ricky would return in Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 and Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!  There were also two unconnected sequels, Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation and Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker, as well as 2012 remake, Silent Night.

Originally, this film was released by Tri-Star Pictures. But people weren’t ready for it. Maybe they’re never ready for it. Parents groups demanded that the film be removed from theaters and the ad campaign, which ran during family-friendly shows, scared the seasonal shit out of plenty of kids.

People even protested the film, standing outside and singing Christmas carols. This movie was the Crispus Attucks in the War on Christmas!

Silent Night, Deadly Night was later re-released by Aquarius Films, who obviously gave zero fucks. They’re the folks who re-released Cannibal Ferox with the amazing title Make Them Die Slowly and transformed Zombie Holocaust into Doctor Butcher, M.D.

Critics were…unkind to say the least. Gene Siskel read the names of the crew on At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert to shame them and the LA Times claimed the film was one of the worst of all time. Leonard Maltin also gave the film zero stars. Oh yeah? Bah humbug!

Silent Night, Deadly Night came from Charles Sellier, who also was responsible for TV’s The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, which was based on a book he wrote. According to Wikipedia, “Sellier was born as a Cajun Catholic, later converting to Mormonism and then to evangelical Christianity.” What is a Cajun Catholic?!?

Maybe this is why — other than this film — Sellier was known for creating family-friendly movies and shows with Christian themes, like In Search of Noah’s Ark and In Search of Historic Jesus. To be fair, he also produced some ridiculous conspiracy stuff like Chariots of the Gods, Beyond and Back and 1980’s Hangar 18 (another TV commercial that gave me nightmares), as well as various apocalyptic, Da Vinci Code and far-right Christianity documentaries.

Sellier was a believer in market research and the master of four-walling, a practice where he rented out theaters and kept the profits for himself. This enabled him to, in the words of his IMDB bio, gain “the distinction of having more pictures in the Top 50 independent grossers than any other independent producer in the 1970s.” He also produced The Boogens! Man, I wish Charles Sellier was still alive so I could find out how he came to make a movie as blissfully batshit as this one!

Needless to say, I loved this movie. It’s a gutter crawling piece of pure garbage, perfect for my holiday season. I savored it by literally screaming my throat raw whilst dancing around my living room in pure holiday celebration!

Shout Factory has just re-released this film with plenty of seasonally perfect extras, including an exclusive, limited edition 8″ tall Billy/Killer Santa action figure by NECA. It’s really something to behold!

If I haven’t mentioned it before, I love Joe Dante’s films. They’re all unique and all somehow straddle the line between being mainstream pieces of cinema and anarchic bites against the very hand that feeds them.

Gremlins is a great example. On the surface, it’s a cute film for the kids, complete with a cute lead character (Gizmo the Mogwai), a Christmas setting and plenty of product placement. Bubbling beneath the artifice is a film brimming with darkness and doom, a world of slime-covered monsters, dead fathers in chimneys and a town packed with money woes and depression, a place where even the lead heroine claims that there are some folks who, when “everybody else opens up presents, they’re opening up their wrists.”

Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) is an inventor who has great ideas that work great the first time, then start to fail. “Fantastic ideas for a fantastic world. I make the illogical logical,” he claims, but the majority of his inventions seem like more trouble than they’re worth. Like the Bathroom Buddy, a Swiss Army knife for those that travel often. Or the sound system he’s made from an artichoke. Or the egg smasher, mega juicer and super blender that turn every meal into a mess.

While on one of his many trips to try and sell his products, he goes to Chinatown in the hopes of finding a gift for his son, Billy (Zach Galligan, Waxwork). In a strange store, he discovers a small, furry beast called a mogwai (which is Cantonese for monster, one of the many in-jokes in a film nearly overflowing with them). However, the owner of the store, Mr. Wing (Keye Luke, “Number One Son” in the Charlie Chan films) refuses to sell it to him. However, his grandson has no such qualms, selling it with three rules: no bright lights, never get it wet and never, ever feed it after midnight.

Returning to the idyllic Kingston Falls, the mogwai is given the name Gizmo and becomes best friends with Billy. Billy spends his days working at a bank where his dog Barney (Mushroom the dog, who also was in Pumpkinhead) constantly runs afoul of the evil Mrs. Deagle (Polly Holliday, Flo from TV’s Alice).

One night, while hanging out with his friend Pete (Corey Feldman, The Lost Boys), a glass of water spills on Gizmo, leading to five more mogwai being born — an incident which causes great pain to the cute little creature. Whereas Gizmo is a cute little beast who loves to sing and make people happy, these mogwai are already evil before they eat before midnight — which they accomplish by chewing the power cord to Billy’d alarm clock fooling him into thinking its earlier than it really is.

Once they transform into gremlins, they become even worse. They murder Billy’s high school teacher, Mr. Hanson. Then, they torture Gizmo and come after Billy and his mother.

Pure chaos ensues, with gremlins being blended and destroyed by other methods, as well as gremlins killing townsfolk left and right. Soon, only Stripe is left, but he dives into the pool at the YMCA and creates a whole new army in an awesome sequence filled with smoke, fury and colored light.

Billy and Gizmo rescue his girlfriend, Kate Beringer (1980’s sex symbol Phoebe Cates, she of the rising from the pool in Fast Times at Ridgemont High) from a gremlin attack on a bar, after which she reveals why she hates Christmas: a long speech about her father dying inside the chimney while trying to be Santa Claus. This burst of pure bleakness stands in marked contrast to the comic chaos that populates the film.

Meanwhile, all of the gremlins are in a movie theater. “They’re watching Snow White. And they love it!” Billy exclaims. This is a scene where Dante reveals the true joy of watching a film, as the gremlins begin screaming “Heigh Ho!” the song of the Seven Dwarves. The theater is blown up and only Stripe survives, making his way to a Montgomery Ward where he tries to spawn another army.

However, Gizmo arrives in a toy car and opens the skylights, melting the villain.

Mr. Wing makes his way to Kingston Falls, where he takes Gizmo back, scolding the family that they are too careless and not ready for magic yet. However, he is happy to given the gift of one of Randall’s smokeless ashtrays and hints that Gizmo may return another day.

Gremlins was a spec script by Christopher Columbus, who heard an army of mice every night in his apartment and wondered what they would look like. In its original form, Gremlins was even meaner and darker than it ended up being. Billy’s mother is killed and her head flung down the steps, Barney the dog gets eaten and Gizmo actually becomes the monster, an idea that producer Stephen Spielberg vetoed.

I am always amazed at how many more genre films were released in the 1980’s. Gremlins proves my point — it came out the same weekend as Ghostbusters, but still was able to be the #4 movie of 1984, behind that film, Beverly Hills Cop and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

The dark center of this film, as well as the gore in Temple of Doom, gave birth to the PG-13 rating, which was suggested by Spielberg as a way of dealing with the controversy of these two films. This is referenced in Gremlins 2 when a mother yells at Paul Bartel about the content of the film. During a screening of Gremlins, a mother really did scream at Joe Dante, walking out of the theater during the kitchen gore scene. The daughter ran away from the mother during the argument and hid in the theater for the rest of the film.

This is a film packed with references to other films, a hallmark of Dante:

In one scene where Randall calls home, we can see the Time Machine from the George Pal film disappear in the background while Robby the Robot says, “Sorry miss I was giving myself an oil job. This question is totally without meaning. Pardon me, sir, stuff? Thick and heavy? Would sixty gallons be sufficient? I rarely use it myself, sir. It promotes rust.” This dialogue always makes me laugh my ass off because it makes little to no sense and Robby says it with such gravitas.

The movie theater is showing A Boy’s Life and Watch the Skies, the original titles for E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Eddie Quist’s smiley face from The Howling shows up on the Peltzer’s refrigerator.

There are also cameos from Spielberg, composer Jerry Goldsmith and Looney Tunes creator Chuck Jones.

And man, I almost forgot that Dick Miller shows up in here, as he does in every Dante film!

Gremlins is packed with sheer joy, from its art direction to character design and devotion to showing just how messy the gremlins can get. Sure, it references It’s a Wonderful Life, but it also shows Invasion of the Body Snatchers as another film within the film. It’s a film worth watching any time of the year — in fact, it came out in the summertime despite its holiday setting.

A guy in a Santa suit has sex with a woman in a filthy alley before they’re both killed by a man in a grinning see-through mask. Another Santa has his head impaled by a spear while his daughter watches. And yet another has his face grilled while roasted chestnuts on an open fire.

Scotland Yard inspector Ian Harris (Edmund Purdom, who wrote and directed this film as well as appearing in 2019: After the Fall of New York and Pieces) and detective Powell are perplexed. Plus, Harris just got a gift that says “Don’t Open Till Christmas.” They question Kate, whose father was a killed Santa, and her boyfriend, Cliff.

The next day, Cliff tricks Kate into coming to a porn studio. She storms off and he takes photos of a model dressed as Santa. A pair of police officers spot them shooting nudes in public, so he runs and the killer finds her, but lets her go. Oh yeah — and there’s a reporter named Giles digging around, too.

Things get worse. A strip club attending Santa gets knifed. The police think Cliff is the killer and the paper Giles says he works for has no idea who he is. And another Santa runs into the London Dungeon (yes, the place The Misfits sang about) and gets killed.

Even after undercover officers go after the Santa killer, they can’t find him and are killed themselves. The killer has a stripper who was there on the night he killed the Santa in her club and says that she will be the supreme sacrifice to Christmas evil. And Caroline Munro (!) is on stage in a nightclub when a Santa is chased on stage and stabbed in the face with a machete. Another Santa is castrated soon after.

It turns out that inspector Harris has no birth certificate and has gone on leave, disappearing to a mental asylum where Kate follows.

It turns out that Giles is Harris’ insane brother. Kate finds out first, but she is strangled and stabbed while detective Powell listens. Then, Giles lures him to his doom, as he electrocutes him in a junkyard.

Sherry escapes and Giles chases after her. She knocks him over a railing and he has a flashback of when he went insane: he caught his father, dressed as Santa, having sex with another woman. When his mother found out, Santa shoved her over a railing. But it’s too late for Sherry, as Giles has survived.

Finally, Harris wakes from a bad dream and unwraps his gift, complete with a card from his loving brother. It explodes, killing him and ending the film.

What I have just done is written about this film in a way that will probably make you want to watch it. It’s a slasher that even references Halloween in its opening credits. But it’s no Halloween.

According to tvtropes.com, “this utter sleazefest of a film is quite a jumbled and confused mess, and for good reason. While production began in 1982, the film remained in Development Hell for two years, due to the title of director continually changing hands; first up was Edmund Purdom (who also portrayed Inspector Harris) who walked off the set, prompting at least three or four others to fill in for him, with one only holding Purdom’s former position for a mere two days before being fired.”

Whew. You got better things to do this Christmas. Trust me.

Lucio Fulci wanted to make a giallo. But then Flashdance happened and the producers knew Keith Emerson (yes, the Keith Emerson from Emerson Lake and Palmer) and the result was…Murder Rock! Or Murder-Rock: Dancing Death! Or Slashdance! Or The Demon Is Loose!

We start at the Arts for the Living Center in New York, where Candice (Olga Karlatos, the only actress to be in both Zombi 2 and Purple Rain)  watches Margie (Geretta Giancarlo from Demons) choreograph dancers for an upcoming talent agent visit. Only three girls will be selected, so they all need more perfection.

That night, Susan, one of the dancers, is murdered in the locker room. First, she is chloroformed. Then, as if Fulci has simply waited too long for something violent to happen, a giant hatpin is inserted into her breast. I imagine Lucio sitting in his director’s chair, saying “Why do I have to show all these pretty girls in leotards when everyone just wants to see me rip out one of their eyeballs?”

Lieutenant Borges (Cosimo Cinieri, The New York Ripper) and Professor Davis (Giuseppe Mannajuolo). show up to investigate, choosing Candice, the head of the academy Dick Gibson (Claudio Cassinelli, What Have They Done to Your Daughters?) and Susan’s boyfriend.

We find Candice at her apartment, where Dick shows up to tell her that he isn’t sleeping with any of the students. Anyone that tells you this is pretty much telling you that they totally sleeping with the students. The studio DJ also calls her to update her on the murder.

Back at the school and everyone is back to their routine, which upsets Dick, who tells the cops of the rivalries between the dancers. Later that night –after we see on stage by herself, showing off for the crowd — he shows up at her place, wanting to talk. She finds a photo of him with Susan, but when she turns to find him, he is gone. Worse, her bird is dead, stabbed by a hairpin. And soon, so is she, as a hairpin is thrust into her heart.

But what of Candice? Well, she’s having nightmares of the killer, who she sees chasing her with the long hairpin. She sees his photo on a billboard and tracks him down. The man is George Webb (Ray Lovelock, The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue), who isn’t the handsome model in the ads any longer. He’s now a mess, so she runs from him, leaving her purse in his room.

What would a giallo — or a Fulci movie — be without a red herring? It comes in the form of Bart, a dancer who confesses to the murders because Susan was crazy and Janice was Hispanic (but in a much more racist way). Borges believes that he isn’t the killer, but when George comes to the Academy to return Candice’s purse, Dick tells the cop that that’s their man.

At lunch, Candice tells George about how her dancing career ended after a hit and run accident with a motorcyclist. Now, she can only be a teacher. And she’s not convinced that George is on the up and up, as she learns from a talent agent that George once had an affair with a younger girl who died.

Oh yeah — and Margie attacks Candice just like the killer, but Dick saves her.

The killing doesn’t stop, though. Jill is killed while Molly, a girl in a wheelchair, takes photos of her. Molly tries to take photos, but the killer escapes. Dick tries to run away, but he’s arrested. But again, the killing doesn’t stop. Gloria is murdered in the locker room with the trademark hairpin.

It all leads to Candice going back to George’s hotel room, where she finds the murder weapon. She runs away and George tries to find her, but she’s at the police station, telling the Lieutenant, who agrees to meet her at the Academy.

Ready for the big reveal? When she gets there, she sees a video of every dancer who has died, leaving her screaming their names. George appears with the murder weapon and asks why she set him up. She responds that she knew he was the hit and run driver who cost her so much and that she killed the girls because of her jealousy of them. They had the life she would never know and had to die…and he has to pay for all he has done to her. She grabs the murder weapon and kills herself with it, pushing the weapon into George’s hand. The police arrive, but they already knew she was the killer, thanks to the buttons on the killer’s jacket being on the left side and Candice knowing details about the murders that they never made public.

That’s the plot, but please imagine that there is a leotard-clad dance-off every ten minutes or so.

Murder Rock was part of a planned trilogy entitled “Trilogia della musica” and would have been followed by Killer Samba and Thrilling Blues, but Fulci became ill for two years and abandoned the project.

This film looks gorgeous! It has some stunning shots of the killer coming at the camera and while there is some blood, it isn’t at the expense of the story. I literally expected nothing and was rewarded with some great fun. Your ability to enjoy flashdancing and 80’s outfits may impact your enjoyment of this film, however!