There are two movies named Red Heat. One has Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jim Belushi in it. The other has Sylvia Kristel abusing Linda Blair. If you can guess which one ended up on our website, thank you for being a reader.

Linda plays Christine Carlson, an American college student who travels to West Germany to visit her fiance Mike. She wants to get married, he wants to re-enlist in the army. She gets upset and walks away one night, but this is Germany in the 1980’s. Things don’t work out the way she hopes — at all.

By this point in Linda Blair’s career, I look at her like a pro wrestler going from territory to territory as a top babyface working the best heels in the world. She’s already had an epic battle with Sybil Danning in Chained Heat. Now, it’s time for her to face off with Emmanuelle and Lady Chatterley herself, Sylvia Kristel. I wonder if she and Linda discussed their shared history of being in the Airport films, with Blair being in Airport 1975 and Sylvia appearing in the scummiest of those films, The Concorde … Airport ’79.

After being upset by her boyfriend going back into the military. Christine takes a late night walk where she gets kidnapped and jailed by the East German Stasi, charged with spying and thrown into prison.

Sofia (Kristel) is the top bad girl there and takes pride in her non-stop abuse of the others. She annihilates Christine at every turn before finally, our heroine can take no more, beating her in a brawl.

Meanwhile, Mike spends the movie convincing the army and West Germans to help him free his fiance. She gets out at the end, escaping a prison where nearly every woman has a facial tattoo, but you get the idea that she’s not the same as she was when she went in.

Director Robert Collector would later make the first adaption of George R.R. Martin’s Nightflyers. Here, he’s made a lurid potboiler that hits all the beats of the WIP genre while taking it much further inside the Iron Curtain. And hey — dig that amazing Tangerine Dream score, which seems like it was destined for a much higher class film!

Savage Island is less of a movie and more a remix of two other women in prison films directed by Edoardo Mulargia, Hotel Paradise and Escape from Hell. The result is a near-incoherent mess of a film that has the same actors playing different roles and appearing and reappearing randomly through the redubbed story. It’s mind numbing to say the least.

The real draw, for American VHS and grindhouse audiences, is Linda Blair. To her credit, she didn’t want to deceive her fans with this movie, as she’s basically only in it for ten minutes. She told the Los Angeles Times that she had it stipulated in her contract that her name could not be above the movie title, nor in bigger print than anybody else’s.

That didn’t happen. She’s on the poster art in high heels, tearing her way out of the poster — and her clothes — clutching a machine gun.

The plot — such as it is — involves women prisoners jailed on a remote island (some would say a Savage Islane) being forced to mine emeralds when they’re not engaging in catfights and taking showers.

Meanwhile, Daly (Blair) tells their sordid tale when she’s not shooting Penn Jillette in the head or menacing the fat man (Leon Askin, General Burkhalter from Hogan’s Heroes) behind it all with her Uzi. These new sequences are directed by Ted Nicolaou (Bad Channels, TerrorVision).

You may think I’m talking down on this scuzzy, grubby, shoddy and scummy affair. Quite the contrary. I watched the whole thing, amazed at the audacity of producer Charles Band and shocked that anyone could release this as an actual film that played in theaters. So to be honest, I kind of loved it. That said, if anyone else was strutting around an LA office with an Uzi other than Linda Blair, the results may have been different.

You watch this for free on Amazon Prime or order the DVD from Full Moon.

As if the first two Andy Sidaris movies I watched this week weren’t enough, here comes a third! Hard Ticket to Hawaii isn’t directly connected at all to the others, but I doubt anyone was watching these movies for a tightly constructed continuity. That said, Rowdy Abilene here is the brother of Cody from Malibu Express.

When two drug enforcement agents are killed on a private island, two special agents named Donna (Dona Speir, Playboy Playmate of the Month, March 1984, in the first of her many Andy Sidaris movie appearances) and Taryn (Playboy Playmate of the Month for July 1985 Hope Marie Carlton) get pulled in to the hijinks. They accidentally intercept a delivery of diamonds intended for a drug lord, who tries to kill them and everyone connected with our heroic duo. There’s also a snake made even more deadly after being bitten by toxic cancer-infested rats.

Yes, I actually just wrote that. I didn’t even get to the part where a skateboarding maniac armed with an inflatable sex doll is dealt by being run over, thrown into the air, shot with a bazooka and blown up real good. Then his blow up doll gets blown up too. Can this movie top all that? Well, there’s also a scene with frisbee homicide.

In a perfect world, Cinemax would still air this every night at 3 AM. That’s the perfect time to savor Hard Ticket to Hawaii for its true intent: mindless fun. Even the title is awesome. In fact, every Andy Sidaris title is great and makes me want to yell out loud at people: “Hey you! Hard Ticket to Hawaii!”

You can watch this on Tubi or grab the new re-release from Mill Creek Entertainment, which is a new transfer to blu ray. It goes well with their other release of Sidaris’ Malibu Express. It was great of them to send both our way but trust me, we would have bought them anyway.

Sadly, Andy never got the chance to make BattleZone Hawaii, a sequel to this film that he claimed would have “all the usual ingredients; many exotic locations, fabulous explosions, extraordinarily beautiful Playboy Playmates and Penthouse Pets, extremely handsome men; some of whom can’t shoot straight but their hearts are in the right place and, most importantly, the snake that was killed in Hard Ticket to Hawaii, laid an egg prior to its death. This egg is hatched and just like its mother, this huge, cancerous-infected python is mad as hell!”

I hope that in Heaven, as we speak, Andy has a bunch of angels nude on a cloud, all ready to get into a hot tub as that snake sneaks ever closer.

Radioactive Toilet Snake

• 1 oz. Kraken
• 1 oz. Hurricane Proof Rum
• 1 1/2 oz. lime juice
• 1 1/2 oz. orange juice
• 1 1/2 oz. passion fruit syrup (or juice, I mean, I’m in Pittsburgh so good luck finding this)
• 3 oz. seltzer

1. Shake all ingredients with crushed ice and several ice cubes.
2. Pour in a glass and close the lid.

Back in 1985, there was no internet. If you wanted something racy, you stayed up until 2:15 AM and turned on HBO or Cinemax, where chances were that that something racy was going to be Malibu Express. It’s a cultural touchstone that still instantly bonds you with anyone who watched this way back in those analog days.

Cody Abilene — even the name makes me tear up a little — is a wealthy playboy/private-investigator.  Think Thomas Magnum with worse aim, more money and the opportunity to actually get laid by a bevy of women, unlike that TV show. He’s played by Darby Hinton, who started his career on the Disney Daniel Boone TV show before going to high school in Los Angeles and Switzerland then attending college on a cruise ship. Really, he did — it’s called the World Campus Afloat Institute for Shipboard Education and it went around the world to study various cultures.

The plot concerns hacking computers for the Russians, a topic that was as hot in 1985 as it is in 2019, as well as sex and shenanigans amongst the very rich. Other than being a detective, Cody spends the majority of this film’s running time following the three f’s — fighting, fleeing and well, that third of the three f’s — with a bevy of beauties including Playboy Playmates Kimberly McArthur (she’s in Easy Money), Barbara Edwards, Lorraine Michaels, and Lynda Wiesmeier, who shows up in Joysticks and Cirio H. Santiago’s Wheels of Fire.

Cody’s main girl may be police officer Beverly Mcafee, but let’s face facts. Sybil Danning’s Contessa Luciana is the whole reason why I’ve seen this movie more times than I can count on my body parts. I’m not even going to try to apologize for thirteen-year-old me and my raging hormones. It’s Sybil Danning, a reason to believe in the existence of a Higher Power.

This entire movie is basically a remake of Sidaris’ first film, Stacey. It doesn’t matter. There’s less of a plot than gunplay, car chases, sex scenes and bikinis. Andy didn’t make movies to make you question the human condition or ponder the infinite abyss. He made movies to entertain you at 2:45 AM.

While many think of this movie as the initial “L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies” or “Girls with Guns” film, no major characters or cast members appear in the other movies. That said, in Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Cody’s brother Rowdy shows up.

You can watch this on Tubi or grab the amazing new blu ray from Mill Creek Entertainment. They previously put out an entire set of Andy Sidaris films, but this new release has a cleaned up presentation and extras. I love Mill Creek — not just because they sent me this for review — but because they get hard to find films and release them into places like Walmart!

Herbert West is amazing from the moment he walks into this movie. That’s all due to Jeffrey Combs, who owns every movie I’ve ever seen him in, like Castle Freak and The Frighteners.

Back when he was at the University of Zurich Institute of Medicin, he brought his dead professor, Dr. Hans Gruber (yes, the same name as Die Hard) back to life. However, the dose was too big and there were horrible side effects, he had to kill him, yelling, “I gave him life!”

He’s figured out a formula that can re-animate the dead and now he needs bodies which he can get thanks to his medical classmate Dan (Bruce Abbott, Bad Dreams). Of course, nothing is going to end up going well for anyone.

That’s because Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale) is in love with Dan’s girl, who is played by the always amazing and forever young Barbara Crampton (who is also incredibly great in Castle Freak, Chopping Mall, Channel Zero: The Dream Door, We Are Still Here and more).

Miskatonic University is not ready for the sheer amount of gore and shenanigans that West is about to let loose. And when Rufus, Dan’s cat, is killed, well, why not bring him back to life and leave a note to explain?

You should totally buy this from https://cavitycolors.com/products/cat-dead-patch

As a result of this experiment, West and Dan get banned from the school, so they start breaking into morgues and injecting corpses with glowing liquid. Soon, the dead are violently rising to life and one of them ends up killing Megan’s dad, Dr. Halsey. So of course, they have to bring him back from the dead.

Dr. Hill ends up learning that our heroes — such as it is — have brought the dead back to life and he tries to take the formula. West will have none of that and lops off the evil scientist’s head with a shovel, then bringing his head and body back from the dead.

Bad idea number, well, I’ve lost track. That’s because for some reason, the undead Dr. Hill can control the other zombies and now, he’s taken Megan for his own. If you think it’s disgusting that a zombie body places his own head in a pan between a naked woman’s legs so that he can go down on her, perhaps you should skip this.

Seriously: when David Gale’s wife first saw this scene, she stormed out shouting “David, how could you?!” They divorced soon after. For what it’s worth, Gale said that he felt “spiritually bereft” after filming the scene.

The film ends with West fighting Hill’s zombie intestines and Dan trying to bring Megan back from the dead. If you’re thinking sequel, so was everyone else, thanks to the 1990 follow-up, Bride of Re-Animator and 2003’s Beyond Re-Animator.

This whole movie is the result of a party conversation. Director Stuart Gordon was complaining that he’d seen too many Dracula and not enough Frankenstein movies, so someone asked if he had read the H.P. Lovecraft story that this movie was eventually based on. He hadn’t, he did and the rest is history. Bloody, bloody history.

Want to watch it for yourself? It’s on Shudder with and without commentary by Joe Bob Briggs.

I was lucky enough to have some teachers that cared back in high school. One of them was the only teacher who gave me a D in my entire history and believe it or not, I should thank him for it.

By ninth grade, I didn’t care at all about school. I went through the motions, I knew that I wanted to be an artist or something creative, and I couldn’t wait to escape my small town. Every decision felt like something I was committed to and just did to fit in or fulfill some set role: marching band being a major one of these decisions. One of my few joys was the computer club, where Mr. Brown would allow students to learn how to program at night, watch movies that he selected or just hang out. It’s where I first heard a dubbed tape of Metallica’s song “Orion,” which put me on a path to the music I enjoyed. And it’s where I watched two movies that I can remember — My Science Project and this film.

Mitch Taylor is 15 and already in college. He’s been fast-tracked to Pacific Technical University where the best and brightest minds develop weapons — unbeknownst to them — for slimy Professor Jerry Hathaway (all-time all-star asshole William Atherton).

Chris Knight (Val Kilmer, never better) was once like Mitch but has now become burned out on academics and would rather party. Hathaway assigns Mitch to lead his laser research team because he has fresh ideas, but he’s also hoping that he’ll kick Chris in the butt and remind him how he used to be.

The bad kids of the college — such as it is, they’re all nerds in this movie — try to beat on MItch, but Chris rallies to his aid and explains why he is like he is. There was once a student named Lazlo who was devoted to his experiments until he learned they were all being used for weapons research. He went insane and now he lives inside the walls of the college. Chris didn’t want the same thing to happen to him, so he now enjoys life more than college.

Chris and Mitch get on the same page and they form a team to get things done. Lazlo even shows up to help. Mitch even gets a girlfriend, Jordan (Michelle Meyrink, who soon left acting to be a Zen Buddhist), who became pretty much every girl I looked for from that moment on. Then I learned the truth: there aren’t many genius geek girls that look and act like Michelle Meyrink.

Hijinks ensue — as they should — with the team taking down Hathaway, including taking his assistant Kent’s car apart and rebuilding it inside his dorm room, then placing a radio receiver inside his teeth so he thinks he can hear the voice of God, which ends up being Chris. Also: the prank at the end with the laser exploding Jiffy Pop inside Hathaway’s house is truly the prank of all movie pranks.

That’s what I love about this movie — the heroes may be put upon, but never emerge as mean spirited or hurtful in their revenge. They’ve been treated badly but there’s no reason to perpetuate the pain. They just want to have fun.

This movie is packed with talent. There’s Yuji Okumoto, a few years removed from his amazing heel work in The Karate Kid Part 2. Lazlo, the man in the walls who ends up entering tons of contests and becomes rich, is another cameo star turn by the always surprising Jonathan Gries. Warhol girl Patti D’Arbanville shows up (interestingly enough, she was the inspiration for two Cat Stevens songs, “Lady D’Arbanville” and “Wild World”). Severn Darden – Kolp from the last two Planet of the Apes films — plays a professor. Dean Devlin — who would go on to write Universal Soldier, Stargate and Independence Day) — acts in this. And the Valley Girl herself, Deborah Foreman, shows up.

By the way — Lazlo’s multiple Frito-Lay contest entries is more than just a funny scene in this movie. It’s based on reality. In 1974, Caltech students Steve Klein, Dave Novikoff and Barry Megdal did the same thing to win a McDonald’s contest. They sent in around 20% of the total entries and walked away with a station wagon, $3,000 in cash and $1,500 in food gift certificates.

I also love that Lazlo has left this quote inside his tunnels: “Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain,” a translation of a quote from the German poet Friedrich Schiller. Seriously, what a strange and well-rounded character, but that’s the genius of this movie (and Jon Gries).

Between Valley Girl, National Lampoon’s Joy of Sex and this movie, Martha Coolidge sure had a great teen movie run in the 80’s. She went on to make the critically acclaimed Rambling Rose and still works today in TV.

Back to that D. Mr. Brown — that same computer club teacher — was the one who gave it to me. I was taking a programming class and didn’t study and thought because he was so friendly to us he’d cut me a break. He didn’t.

At first I felt betrayed and angry. But as I realized that I had coasted and not lived up to my full potential — and spent 6 weeks grounded with no computer and had to apply myself — I realized that he was right.

From then on, I changed out my classes so that I would take classes that would prepare me to be an artist and writer. I dropped out of band and even went to school in the summer so that I could take more electives. That D changed my life. It’s funny because I was one person away from graduating with honors and part of me could be mad about it, because I had worked so hard. But I wasn’t in the National Honor Society or graduating with the smart kids because of that D. And that was fine — I refused to peak in high school. Better things were on the way. I learned that thanks to that class, that teacher and yes, this movie.

Girls Just Want to Have Fun is named for the Cyndi Lauper song, but it doesn’t even have the original song in the movie. If that fact upsets you, perhaps this isn’t the film for you.

What it does have is plenty of star power before they were famous. Sarah Jessica Parker, Helen Hunt and Shannen Doherty appear here way before anyone knew who they were. It’s a fun little bit of fluff all about Parker’s character getting to be on the show Dance TV.

Parker’s dance partner for the show is played by Lee Montgomery, who is practically royalty around these parts. After all, he played the kid in Burnt Offerings, the rat loving Ben in the movie of the same name, the undead Bobby in the TV movie Dead of Night and he also stars in the fantastic TV movie musical The Midnight Hour.

I love how completely off the wall Helen Hunt’s outfits are here. There’s also an astounding scene where punk rockers and bodybuilders infiltrate a sweet sixteen party that had me laughing out loud.

This is a movie that knows how to cast people. Parker’s rival’s dad is played by Morgan Woodward who played the frightening Boss Godfrey in Cool Hand Luke. There’s a lot of suggestion here that he’s in love with his daughter in all of the wrong ways. Or maybe it’s just that she treats him like a sugar daddy. Oh yeah — Parker’s dad is played by Ed Lauter of Death Wish 3 and so many more films!

One of the actors in the film, Terry McGovern, has a pretty interesting career. He invented the term Wookie while filming THX-1138 with George Lucas. He was the voice of Launchpad McQuack and was also Dan Stevens, the fake announcer for the NFL2K series of games.

When it comes to the kids dancing, there are even more people who would go on to greatness. One of the dancers is Robin Antin, who was the creative force behind the Pussycat Dolls as well as a noted choreographer. Plus, other dancers are noted film programmer Bruce Goldstein and Gina Gershon.

Hank Azaria has an uncredited role here and so does Cyndi Lauper, which kind of makes me laugh that she’s in the movie and her song isn’t.

The final dance-off is astounding, with the evil girl doing dives off the set. I think more movies should have a final dance-off. It makes it way more interesting. Now I have to go think of how to work them into other films.

In the 1960’s, Don Dohler created an underground comic book called WILD that had contributors like Jay Lynch, Art Spiegelman, Skip Williamson and even R. Crumb. He went on to create the zine Cinemagic, which was written to help filmmakers learn how to make movies, that ran for 11 issues until Starlog bought it. He also published several books on moviemaking and directed the films The Alien Factor, Nightbeast, Blood Massacre and Fiend. After a decade plus of a self-imposed break, he returned to moviemaking along with actor/police officer Don Ripple. Together, they made Alien Rampage, Harvesters, Stakes, Vampire Sisters, Crawler and Dead Hunt.

The Galaxy Invader was made before that break. Get ready.

In Baltimore, Don Dohler’s hometown, a meteor crashes down to Earth. A young couple goes to see what happened and that’s when they meet the Galaxy Invader, a green rubber-suited monster that’s a mix between Bigfoot and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Of course, they get killed.

Locals soon gather to hunt the creature and try to make money from it. Most of the movie is about the Montague family, including father Joe, who is often drunk, abusive and carrying around guns. George Stover shows up, showing that there’s at least one connection between Dohler and Baltimore’s favorite son, or at least weirdest, John Waters.

If you’re looking for rednecks running through the woods hunting one another and a giant green alien, well, good news. This movie was made for you. You may remember some of the beginning, too. That’s because the effects were used without permission for the movie Pod People.

You can watch this movie with Rifftrax commentary on Amazon Prime.

Thanks to my friend Adam Cicco for suggesting this movie. It’s one of Becca’s favorites, so she was really happy that we watched it. She’s loved the soundtrack and knows pretty much every word.

Interestingly enough, the role of the Countess was written for Elvira and screenwriter Jeffrey Hause wanted Michael J. Fox to star in the film, but executive producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr. was convinced that Fox wasn’t a big screen star. Whoops.

The eternally youthful Countess (Lauren Hutton) is immortal but must consume the blood of a virgin man three times every Halloween to stay that way. That’s getting harder and harder to do these days — virgins are in short supply.

Mark Kendall might look thirty (Jim Carrey, in his first major film role, was 23 at the time of its release), but he’s your normal horny teenager. However, his girlfriend Robin won’t put out. So he and his friends Jamie and Russ decide to go to a Hollywood singles bar. That’s where Mark’s seduced by the Countess and bitten for the first time. Now, she has him under her spell and it’s up to Robin and his friends to bring him back to the side of the living.

The Countess has an entire army of vampires (one of whom is Camilla More, one-half of the Terry and Tina twins in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter) and her assistant Sebastian to help her in her aims. Sebastian is played by Cleavon Little, who was in Vanishing Point but may be best known as playing Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles. He was selected for the role after Warner Brothers rejected Richard Pryor, who co-wrote the script, due to his reputation for drug use and unpredictable behavior. He’d also go on to co-star with Pryor in Greased Lightning. Also: if you need a good trivia question to stump people, he’s the brother of singer DeEtta Little, who sang the vocals with Nelson Pigford on “Gonna Fly Now,” the theme from Rocky.

Megan Mullally also shows up in a small role, years before she’d become better known on TV’s Will and Grace.

I just love the alternate titles that this movie has in other countries: Seduction Has Teeth, Vampires Forever, Virgin Boy Wanted, I Love a Vampire, Just One Bite and Kiss Princess.

It’s kind of strange watching this movie in 2019, but any movie over thirty years old really needs to be considered as of the time it was made. For example, the shower scene where Jamie and Russ try to find out of Mark has a bite on his thigh and are confronted by homophobic slurs may seem pretty rough today. And it is. However, this scene was based on a personal experience of co-writer Jeffrey Hause. And the Sebastian character is very much how gay men were perceived at the time. Luckily, we’ve grown — well, I hope we have — since then.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime.