Tag Archives: 1985

Night Caller (1985)

Posted on by

Directed and written by Philip Chan, this is about Detective Steve Chan (Phillip Chan! Hey — you’re doing it all!) and his new partner, Porky (Patricia Ha), who are looking for Detective Bobby Wong (Melvin Wong), Chan’s old partner, who has been taken by a serial killer.

Yet what’s exciting about this is that it begins with a black-gloved murderer who wouldn’t be out of place in a 1970s Giallo. That murdered model, Jessica, leaves behind a six-year-old daughter who watched her mother die from a closet and has since lost her ability to speak. 

Chan was a former police inspector, so at some point, we move away from the yellow influence, and it becomes a procedural drama. 

If, like me, you make strange lists of one on Letterboxd, this could fit into “Movies with a Chuck E Cheese location outside of the United States” and “Giallo movies with “Mickey” by Toni Basil on the soundtrack.” It also has movie trivia as a detective skill, and it’s a holiday movie too.

Between this and He Lives By Night, I think Hong Kong really loved Tenebre. I wish this had stayed Giallo, but it’s still a decent movie.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

Tales from the Darkside S2 E3: Ring Around the Redhead (1985)

Posted on by

Theodore Gershuny wrote 2 episodes of Monsters and 6 of this series, as well as directing and writing Silent Night, Deadly Night. Also: I will be jealous of him forever, as he was married to Mary Woronov.

This episode has some star power, as John Heard plays death-row inmate Billy Malone, who tells the story of how he opened a portal to another dimension using a silver hoop he found in his basement. Out of that opening walks Keena (Penelope Ann Miller in her first part), whom he falls in love with, only for Jimbo (Greg Thornton) to nearly ruin it all by getting him busted for murder after using the silver ring to steal anything he wants.

The reviews online are divided between those who love the romance and those who think it’s the worst episode of the series. I tend more toward the former. 

 

Murder, She Wrote S3 E6: Dead Man’s Gold (1985)

Posted on by

A group of young treasure hunters comes to Cabot Cove looking for sunken treasure, and one of them ends up dead.

Season 3, Episode 6: Dead Man’s Gold (November 9, 1985)

When a former boyfriend, David Everett (Leslie Nielsen), turns up in Cabot Cove on an expedition for long-lost gold, JB finds that more lies beneath the surface than simply sunken treasure. Jessica will need to ignore her old feelings, her secret garden and the passion between her New England thighs to solve this.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury (and Leslie Nielsen)?

Sheriff Amos Tupper? You know that’s Tom Bosley. William Windom is also back as Dr. Seth Hazlitt.

Larry Gaynes is played by Grant Goodeve, who also played David Bradford on Eight Is Enough.

Robert Hogan plays Dr. Wylie Graham, the first of four appearances on the show.

Susan Ainsley is played by Wendy Kilbourne.

Bill Ainsley is played by John Laughlin.

Ross Barber is Sean McClory. He was in Them!

Alexandra Bell is played by Julia Montgomery, who played Betty Childs from Revenge of the Nerds.

Coby Russell is played by J. Eddie Peck.

Gregory Small is Ian Ruskin.

What happens?

Jessica is surprised to see David sail into town. She felt a flutter for him 35 years ago, but she was married to Frank. Now Frank is in Heaven — we hope — and he’s looking down on his wife and wondering, will the man who played Frank Drebin show her his naked gun?

Meanwhile, retired Navy seaman Dr. Wylie Graham takes his yacht to hang out in Cabot Cove with Dr. Seth, and I one hundred percent believe Jessica is Dr. Seth’s ally, which is the PC way of saying it, but you knew I’d use euphemisms like Goldilocks or flame dame.

As for David, he’s working with four young people who have discovered an 18th-century treasure ship. Things go, well, all Murder, She Wrote as Bill Ainsley, the diver, has his equipment screwed with and nearly dies. Alexandra gets drunk and gets into a fight with Coby, which leads to him dropping her off with cab fare, just in time to get run over. It turns out she really died from a blow to the skull, and everyone thinks David, in deep with loan sharks, did it to get her money.

Who did it?

Susan, who was treated as an airhead by everyone else, killed Alex and framed Coby. Her husband is shocked, shocked, I tell you, that all this name-calling would lead to murder.

Who made it?

This was directed by Seymour Robbie and written by Robert Van Scoyk. Cinematographer Emil Oster did the camera on The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?

No. At the end, David sails away but promises to send her a postcard.

This inspired me to write a song.

Jessica (set to the tune of “Brandy” by Looking Glass

There’s a mystery in a harbor town,

Typewriters type when the sun goes down

JB’s got that knowing smile,

Eyes that say she’s cracked the case a long time ago.

They gather round at Dixon’s Diner,

Sheriff Amos and Dr. Seth.

They wonder why every time she meets someone

Somebody ends up dead

Cabot Cove says Jessica, you’re a clever girl

What a deadly wife you would be

Yeah, you could pick out who killed me

JB wears a jogging suit

For her morning run

Then she writes murder books

That bears her husband’s name

He came on a warm summer’s day

Chasing legends, sunken gold

But the look in his eyes said he couldn’t stay

And the part was Leslie Nielsen’s to play

Cabot Cove says Jessica, you’re a clever girl

What a deadly wife you would be

Yeah, you could pick out who killed me

Yeah, Jessica used to watch his eyes when he told his killer’s story

She could feel the alibi fade away, no worry

These killers never say to the truth, never an honest man

And JB solves all the cases that she can

In the morning, when the alarm sounds

Jessica jogs through a New England town

And loves a man who’s not around

That’s because her husband is dead.

She hears him say, “Jessica, you’re a clever girl.”

“What a good wife you would be.”

“But my life, my love, and my lady killed me.”

Was it any good?

Sure. Not great, but good.

Any trivia?

We learn that Jessica has sisters and that her maiden name is McGill.

Dr. Wylie Graham in season 3, episode 9.

Give me a reasonable quote:

David Everett: Jessie MacGill, goodbye… Perhaps I’ll drop you a postcard from time to time.

Jessica Fletcher: Seems you’re always sailing away.

David Everett: I never said I was smart.

What’s next?

A veteran reporter who suffered a heart attack says his best medicine would be the removal of his publisher, who ends up dead.

Tales from the Darkside S2 E2: Lifebomb (1985)

Posted on by

Frank De Palma directed eight episodes of this series, and Michael Kube-McDowell wrote four; this time, they’re telling the story of Ben Martin (Bill Macy, Maude’s husband), a man whose workaholic nature is soon putting his life in danger. Insurance salesman Harry Harris (Robert Riesel) offers him a device called the Lifebomb, which will keep him alive despite the fact that he could have a heart attack at any moment. Ben’s wife, Lianne (Samantha Harper, who was married to Macy at the time), thinks this will lead him to take a look at his life and fix things. Instead, it just makes him work harder.

By the end, Ben keeps having heart attacks and his wife leaves him, but the Lifebomb keeps him alive, as he’s stuck with needles and filled with drugs and covered by wires and tubes. What kind of life is that? Well, he’s going to figure it out because it looks like he can’t die.

I’ve seen some negative reviews of this episode, and it makes me think: This show is 20 minutes long. What do you lose when an episode isn’t that great? Not much time, and at least it has an interesting idea at the heart of it.

Tales from the Darkside S2E1: The Impressionist

Posted on by

Thanks to everyone who voted on what horror anthology I should get to next. I only finished the first season of Tales from the Darkside, so that seems to be a good one to cover. 

Let’s just say that the U.S. government has taken Hoffgosh (Claudia Templeton, whose career is a mix of acting in low-budget movies and being an accountant on them), an alien who holds the secret to nuclear fusion and can’t communicate with him. Who would you get? How about nightclub impressionist Spiffy Remo (Chuck McCann)?

The interesting part of this episode is that, after failing so many times to impersonate the alien’s language and build a bond, Spiffy finally does. That comes at the cost of caring about his stage material, as after you meet an alien and pull off a miracle, doing hack jokes for drunk gamblers just isn’t the same.

Jack Andreozzi, Tony from Lady In White, is in this as nightclub owner Pudgy; Bobby Di Cicco and Gene Borkan play the government scientists. This was directed by Armand Mastroianni (The Clairvoyant, He Knows You’re Alone, The Supernaturals) and written by Haskell Barkin (who was on this, Monsters and the 1980s Twilight Zone) and was based on a story by M. Coleman Easton.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Evils of the Night (1985)

Posted on by

What happens when you mix a teen sex comedy with a gore film? It’s kind of like chocolate and peanut butter, one would think, but the results don’t always taste as good. Witness 1985’s Evils of the Night.

Three vampire aliens, Dr. Zarma (Julie Numar, who of course is the Catwoman, but is also a writer, real estate mogul and lingerie inventor), Cora (Tina Louise, who is of course Ginger from TV’s Gilligan’s Island) and Dr. Kozmar (John Carradine, who is of course skinny Dracula), have come to a college town to get the blood of young co-eds, which keeps them young.

There’s also Neville Brand (Al Capone from TV’s The Untouchables) and Aldo Ray (whose career trajectory goes from the highest of heights to the lowest of lows) as two old mechanics that are helping the aliens. As for the teens, we’ve got Tony O’Dell (Ferdy in Chopping Mall), Karrie Emerson (who was also in Chopping Mall), 80’s adult movie queen Amber Lynn and “Raw Talent” Jerry Butler, who was also a well-known adult film star.

Director Mardi Rustam (who wrote and produced Psychic Killer and Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive) is the person to blame for all of this. If you’re used to sex in the woods looking fake and feeling gratuitous, then this film will decimate your sensibilities. It feels like porn sex could literally break out at any minute, but the only penetration is when one of the girls gets drilled. With a drill. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Along the way, there are lesbian aliens, spaceships, axe murders, the Millenium Falcon on the poster for the movie, rings that shoot lasers, John Carradine in a space suit and more.

You can also blame Aquarius Releasing for this one, the fine (well, maybe not fine) folks who brought Dr. Butcher, M.D., Zaat, Deep Throat, Make Them Die Slowly (Cannibal Ferox) and Silent Night, Deadly Night to 42nd Street. They also released The Beyond as Seven Doors of Death, cutting out plenty of gore along the way to get an R rating.

Look, this movie is terrible. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t entertaining. The pathos at the end when one of the mechanics laments his dead friend are poignant. You could find a worse movie at 4 AM to watch.

You can watch this on Tubi.

THE IMPORTANT CINEMA CLUB’S SUPER SCARY MOVIE CHALLENGE DAY 23: Grim (1985)

Posted on by

23. An Experimental Horror Film That’s Not In English

Takashi Ito’s father wouldn’t allow him to seer kaiju films like all his friends. But he finally allowed him to see Daimajin and Gamera vs. Barugon; his elation “worried his parents.” He began to draw manga and went on to Kyushu Institute of Design; he almost quit before experimental filmmaker Toshio Matsumoto came to the school.

Grim was made after he graduated and uses long exposure photography and empty spaces to create a sense of fear. Ito said, “With this work, I developed/fleshed out the idea I had when making Ghost of peeling only the skin from various objects in the room, floating the skins in midair and then sticking them on different objects. This film was also shot entirely frame-by-frame with long-exposures. Along with Grim, its meaning is “as if to do forever.””

How frightening is just a hand? How scary is a change in music or color? Ito takes the most basic moments and gets the most horrifying energy from them, making you nearly afraid to watch.

You can watch this on YouTube.

2025 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 2: Zuma (1985)

Posted on by

2. FANGS FOR WATCHING: Charm your senses with an anguine flick.

Zuma is a comic book movie, but no worries if you’re burned out on those. It’s also super weird.

Phillip (Mark Gil) and Isabel (Dang Cecilio) are archaeologists exploring a temple who discover a sarcophagus filled with snakes. Soon, Zuma (Max Laurel) is unleashing, walking the streets with a giant snake on his shoulder. Don’t get the idea that Zuma is the hero here. He’s a servant of the Mayan god Kukulkan — or the Aztec snake god, depending on where you get the information — and loves finding virginal women to defoul, doing things like sending snakes to bite boyfriends to death while enslaving women like Galela (Raquel Montesa). He also has a daughter, Galema (Snooky Serna), who has snakes in her hair instead of on her shoulders like her dad.

This is way too long — over two hours — but I haven’t watched many Filipino horror films. Just for the idea of a snake god that eats hearts and spoils virgins being made into a movie, well, I had to watch it. I’ll watch the sequel,  Zuma II: Hell Serpent, too.

Just look at this Wikipedia entry about Zuma: “After his revival, he goes to the modern world in a killing rage, slaughtering particularly virgin women, whose hearts are ripped out and consumed, which gives Zuma his strength and vigor. Aside from using his two-headed snake as a weapon, Zuma’s powers include invulnerability (specifically, bulletproof) and the ability to control snakes. In later versions, Zuma can heal people. His weakness is the venom from his daughter, Galema, who is also his archenemy. Galema’s mother is a humawhomat Zuma has taken as his bride. Galema grew with foster parents that made her to be a good person. Zuma also beget another child named Dino who has a head of a dinosaur and a body of a human. Dino initially allied with his father, but he later abandoned him because Dino fell in love with a human.”

Never change, the Philippines.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

USA UP ALL NIGHT: When Nature Calls (1985)

Posted on by

EDITOR’S NOTE: Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold was on USA Up All Night on January 12, March 4 and September 8, 1989.

Directed by Charles Kaufman, who wrote it with Straw Weisman, this is a movie that follows a family — led by father Greg Van Waspishes — as they retreat to nature to escape the city. It’s an excuse for a scattershot comedy with tons of cameos, including Willie Mays, Morey Amsterdam, G. Gordon Liddy, Gates McFadden, William Smith, James Eckhouse and professional wrestler Fred Blassie, who goes from lawyer to maniac in no time at all.

I shouldn’t be surprised that I liked this so much. After all, Charles also directed Mother’s Day. So you get trailers for movies like Baby Bullets, Martin Snoreseasy’s Raging Bullshit and Gena’s Story, a stop-motion intermission that turns into a hot dog cocaine orgy, David Strathairn playing a Native American and a marquee that has Deep Throat on it, even if this was shot in 1982, ten years into that movie’s run.

Also: Daughter Bambi (Tina Marie Staino) goes from teddy bear to assaulting a real bear.

This is way better than any of the many Kentucky Fried Movie rip-offs. In fact, I laughed a few times.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: The Compleat Al (1985)

Posted on by

Sept 15-21 Mockumentary Week: “Ladies and gentlemen, by way of introduction, this is a film about trickery – and fraud. About lies. Tell it by the fireside, in a marketplace, or in a movie. Almost any story is almost certainly some kind of lie. But not this time. No, this is a promise. During the next hour, everything you hear from us is really *true* and based on solid facts.”

This was produced by Weird Al Yankovic’s manager Jay Levey, his friend Hamilton Cloud, and Robert K. Weiss, who had previously produced The Kentucky Fried Movie and The Blues Brothers. This is the life story of Al, mixed with moments that cross over with his videos, like “Ricky,” “I Love Rocky Road,” “Like a Surgeon”, “I Lost On Jeopardy,” “Dare to Be Stupid”, “Midnite Star,” and “One More Minute.”

At one point, Al goes to Michael Jackson’s house, which is the House on Haunted Hill. And hey, Al TV clips!

I was waiting in the express lane
With my twelve items or less
At the checkout counter at the local grocery store
I was only passin’ by

But a paper caught my eye
And I learned a few things
I never knew before
It said

Your pet may be an extra-terrestrial
It said The ghost of Elvis is living in my den
You can learn to cope with stress
And you can beat the IRS

And the Incredible Frog Boy is on the loose again
Ohhh Midnight Star
It’s in the weekly Midnight Star
Aliens from outer space are sleeping in my car
Midnight Star, I wanna know, I wanna know!”

As you can expect, Weird Al is very important to me.

Dick Clark and Rick Derringer were in this. Yes, the man who wrote the entrance music for Demolition.

The world needs more Weird Al. As well as Dr. Demento.

You can watch this on Tubi.