Tag Archives: 1986

Drive-In Friday: Slobs vs. Snobs Comedy Night

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As Robert Freese pointed out in his “Exploring: 80s Comedies” featurette for B&S About Movies, the late ’70s one-two punch of National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) and Meatballs (1979) opened up a cottage industry of comedies featuring snobs vs. slobs, lovable losers, and harmless, misguided man-children behaving badly — with Caddyshack solidifying the genre to carry us through the rest of ’80s . . . and beyond with the likes of American Pie and all of its subsequent knockoffs.

Sadly, for every Easy Money and Revenge of the Nerds . . . well, as Freese points out, there’s was a LOT more swings and misses than hits in the ’80s . . . and we’re scrapin’ the grease pits and threadin’ the reels with four of ’em.

You’ve been warned.

Movie 1: Joysticks (1983)

Oh, man. Movie tough guy Joe Don Baker as a curmudgeonly businessman who wants to shut down the local video arcade? Greydon Clark, who directed The Uninvited, Without Warning, and Wacko, and acted in Satan’s Sadists is behind the beeps n’ boops? Nicholas Josef von Sternberg, the guy who lensed Petey Wheatstraw and Mistress of the Apes, sat behind the camera?

I’m all in.

This movie was such a big deal that Midway allowed the image of Pac-Man to be used, as well as their new game Satan’s Hollow, and the as-yet-unreleased Super Pac-Man during the big showdown at the movie’s end.

What the . . . did I just program both a Greydon Clark and a Nicholas Josef von Sternberg Drive-In Friday tribute nights?

Movie 2: My Chauffeur (1986)

Sigh . . . Deborah Foreman, as Sam pointed out in his review, is our favorite 1980s comedy girl that caused our hearts to weep in the frames of Real Genius, Valley Girl, and April Fools Day. And she was always reliable and dependable on screen. How she never broke though to the A-List in major Hollywood films as the next “Meg Ryan” with her plucky Carole Lombard crossed with early Shirley MacLaine vibe is anyone’s guess.

Well, movies like this certainly didn’t help.

The “golf course” in this one is replaced by the Brentwood Limousine Service run by Howard “Dr. Johnny Fever” Hesseman and owned by E.G Marshall from Creepshow. And, of course, love blooms between Foreman’s commoner driver and E.G’s son played by Sam “Flash Gordon” Jones — on his way to the late ’80s post-apoc slop that is Driving Force and the early ’90s Basic Instinct wannabe that is Night Rhythms.

What the . . . did I just program a Sam Jones Drive-In Friday night?

Intermission! Let’s Eat! You need a Chilly Dilly!

Back to the show!

Movie 3: Hamburger: The Motion Picture (1986)

Not to be confused with Hot Dog: The Movie starring David Naughton (yep, the Dr. Pepper “Making It” from Meatballs American Werewolf guy). And not to be confused for being an actual movie. And no, you’re not confused: writer and director Mike Marvin — yes, the guy who concocted one of the most F’up car flicks ever, The Wraith — is behind both fast food oddities.

So, if you think that any movie that needs to suffix itself with a colon and remind you that it’s a “motion picture” and a “movie” has to be good . . . think again. But, as Sam pointed out in his more complete review: when you’re in a small town with one duplex theater and one quad drive-in back in the ol’ pre-cable TV days with no Internet streaming, you ended up seeing suffix n’ colon’d movies for lack of anything else to do during the summer.

So, if you ever wanted to see a movie where — I am safe enough in my masculinity to admit — the very hot Leigh McCloskey from Dario Argento’s Inferno can’t seem to stop being a hornburger horndog and hooking up with ALL of the girls on campus, this is your movie. And Leigh keeps getting kicked out of schools as result. And his reputation is so bad, Faber College won’t even have him. So he ends up at Buster Burger University run by Dick Butkus in the John Vernon role.

Dude, let’s get the hell out of here and head on down to the Delta House . . . to escape the “The Movie” marathon at the local theater also showing California Girls: The Motion Picture and The Kentucky Fried Movie.

Movie 4: Golfballs! (1999)

We dug up this way-late-to-the-course direct-to-video oddity during our “Police Academy Week” tribute because, well, you think you’re getting a Caddyshack redux, but your really getting a Police Academy rip sans cops and lots of golfballs boobs.

No, it’s not “alright,” when you blatantly steal a whole lot from Caddyshack (right down to a camouflaged Bill Murray clone) and add lots of gratuitous boobs from the likes of Playboy and Howard Stern’s perpetual radio guest Amy Lynn Baxter and adult film star Jennifer Steele. And there’s jokes about blue (golf) balls and bent “wood,” a farting Chihuahua, cussing grannies, and more golf double entendres about “sticks” and “balls,” vaudevillian spit-takes, shower scenes, and public urination.

Maybe if they added a colon and reminded us this was a “motion picture” it would have helped? Nah.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

SLASHER MONTH: Witchboard (1986)

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Back before Hasbro — who now owns Parker Brothers — bought the rights to Ouija and turned it into a movie, it was the kind of game that inspired the possession in The Exorcist as well as turning up in films like Don’t Panic and Spookies. I was warned often as a kid to never play with it as it would unleash demons within me.

My mother would have been better off warning me about redheads — I’ve married two of them — like Tawny Kitaen, who dominated the late 80’s after her appearances in several Whitesnake videos. Those of us who stayed up way too late watching Cinemax also knew her from movies like Bachelor Party, Crystal Heart and, well, this movie.

Written and directed by Kevin S. Tenney, who also made the similar Witchtrap, this is a movie just as much about Ouija* as it is about the friendship — and enemyship — of Brandon Sincalir (Stephen Nichols, who your mom weak in the knees for when he played Patch on Days of Our Lives) and Jim Morar and their dual love for Linda Brewster (Kitaen) as it is about witchboards.

One night at a party, Brandon shows everyone how he has a friendship with a dead ten-year-old boy — not creepy at all, right? — through the divining board, which really seems to get to Linda, whose hair goes from severe to gorgeously windswept, as if she were dancing on the roof of a car*, as the movie goes on.

This movie really does have it all, and by everything I mean a punk rock psychic named Sarah “Zarabeth” Crawford (Kathleen Wilhoite, Private School) who gets her throat slashed by the real ghost Linda is talking to, who is named Carlos Malfeitor, and then tossed out a window on to a sundial.

Watching this movie through the lens of someone 34 years older than when I first saw it, I can tell you that Brandon and Jim really were the ones in love with each other and Linda is just the beard for them both. But it’s hard to quibble with a movie that comes up with the conclusion that the only way to destroy a haunted Ouija board is to shoot it as many times as possible.

You can watch this on Tubi.

*Before lawyers got involved, it was called Ouija. Despite Parker Brothers — the owners at the time — not having the rights to that name, they decided to reshoot any scenes that mentioned it by name or used one of their boards.

**Kitaen did have experience with this look, after all.

Join us as we pay tribute to the late Tawny Kitaen’s career with our exploration of her films.

SLASHER MONTH: City In Panic (1986)

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City In Panic has a poster that looks like a giallo — well, it’s not as gorgeously designed as a traditional Italian poster, but the killer sure looks like he stepped off the set of a movie made in 1973 with an animal-based title — and makes the AIDS crisis a major part of its story, which is pretty woke for 1986. That said, it’s filled with so many homophobic moments and slurs that this will be the last time that I say that this movie has anything to do with being culturally sensitive*.

There aren’t many direct to video Canadian slashers that are willing to rip off — sorry, pay homage — to Fritz Lang while looking cheaper than any made for TV movie you’ve seen. That’s this movie, which was originally titled The AIDS Murders. The Lang steal is because the murderer, much like Peter Lorre, leaves an “M” behind on their victims (notice that I was PC in my pronoun usage, but really, I was trying to not spoil who the killer was).

Unlike every slasher ever, gay men are the targets here, with the first man being killed in the shower of Toronto’s Oak Leaf Steam Bath. Yes, this is a film either brave or foolish enough to start things off by shamelessly aping Hitchcock.

It’s also one of the only slashers I can think of where a slasher is opposed by a final boy, a shock jock who constantly argues on the air with right wingers.

Beyond being somewhere between slasher and giallo — that ending in a mannequin factory almost made me label it the latter — this is also a “based on a true story” movie, as it was inspired by the real-life murders of 14 gay men that all frequented the St. Charles Tavern on Yonge Street in Toronto.

*That said, several of the victims aren’t stereotypically gay, which is refreshing.

2020 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 15: Wired to Kill (1986)

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Editor’s Note: This review originally ran on September 16, 2019, as part of our month-long post-apocalyptic tribute blow out. You can catch up on those reviews with our two-part “Atomic Dust Bin” round ups HERE and HERE.

Day 15: Hell on Four Wheels: Must involve characters in wheelchairs.

No matter how many years pass . . . and how many copies of this VHS non-starter ended up in the dumpsters behind video stores . . . copies of this film keep coming back at me. Every video store rack I’ve browsed. Every Drive-In swap shop I’ve perused. Every Goodwill and Salvation Army, every pawn shop, and every garage sale I’ve visited. Even the weirdo-halitosis tape guy with a cubicle at the local indoor festival flea market . . . there’s yet another friggin’ copy of Wired to Kill staring back at me. Next to the apoc-swill that is America 3000 and Robot Holocaust, this film has to be one of the best-distributed VHS tapes of the video-fringe era. It’s like that copy of Corky Romono stuck to my shoe that I can’t scrape off.

Oh, what the hell? WTF! You’ve got to be friggin’ kidding me!

There I was, at my public library branch’s annual used book sale . . . and there it is, again. I gave up. I plopped down two quarters. I should have went into the recreation center next door to get off on the old broads jazzercising and buy a faux Dr. Pepper (a Mr. Pibb) instead, take home my 10 cent copy of Herman Hesse’s Demian and April Wine’s Harder Faster on cassette . . . and called it a day.

In an utter lack of budget and scripting with a group of drop outs and flunk outs from the Ed Wood School of Thespian Studies starring as the marauding hoards of 1998 (another “future” that looks like our present, only with a couple of flashing-and-bleeping gadgets), this dropping of celluloid borrows (poorly) from the The Road Warrior and the cute and cuddly sci-fi romp Short Circuit, and the family favorite . . . Home Alone!

The two actors that passed Ed’s class on “Octopus Battles” — our heroes Steve and Rebecca — don’t fare much better on their road to Oscar gold as two teens who suffer at the hands of the ubiquitous punk rock rapist survivors (bossed by Merritt Butrick, who went from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to this in four short years?) of the worldwide plague. Turns our little wheelchair-bound Stevie has a pet robot and is quite the computer and electronics whiz — with a knack for setting booby traps (the Home Alone part) and soups up his chair with gadgets (the Short Circuit part) to battle the crazies (the Road Warrior part).

Does a sorely needed Wez (Vernon Wells) from The Road Warrior come crashing through the wall in a cameo appearance like he did in the über cool sci-fi comedy, Weird Science? (You wish.) Does anyone “pull a Chet” and transform into a pile of poopy-goo?

No, but this tape sure does. Yep, renting from the video fringe is like a pile of poop. You never know badly the post-apoc crouch rot is gonna smell. And any film that tells us with a text scroll — accompanied by an annoying David Sanborn jazz saxophone backing track (ripped off from the jazz trumpeter shtick in 2019: After the Fall of New York) — on how we got here, is the first scent of apoc-crouch rot.

And that’s all I am going to say about that. Well, one more thing: don’t be booby trapped by this gem’s alternate VHS title: Booby Trap . . . uh, oh!

. . . Unwanted Film Trivia Alert . . . Unwanted Film Trivia Alert . . . this is not a drill . . . abort all reading . . . log off of B&S Movies . . . this is not a drill . . . too much virtual cyber ink has been giving to this film already . . . abort . . . abort . . .

Emily Longstreth, who stars as Rebecca, worked alongside Johnny Depp in 1985’s Private Resort, was Kate (?) in 1986’s Pretty in Pink, and appeared in (yes!) the Alien-cum-E.T knock off, Star Crystal (1986). But we lads and lassies slumming on the video fringe best remember Emily for her turn in Krishna Shah’s T&A epic, American Drive-In (1985). (Come on, now. You remember Krishna Shah . . . Hard Rock Zombies? I know! The dude was a double-graduate from Yale and UCLA . . . and he made Hard Rock Zombies!)

And I was shocked . . . SHOCKED to see . . . Kim Milford of Laserblast, who deserved better that this mess (the dude was on Broadway in Hair, Rocky Horror, and Jesus Christ Superstar), as one of the thugs, Rooster (check out my admiration for Kim’s music career on Medium).

As for director Francis Schaeffer: He brought us Headhunter (1988; voodoo murder mayhem in Miami starring the always hot Kay Lenz of White Line Fever, along with Wayne Crawford), Rising Storm (1989; a really dopey post-apoc dropping not worth more of a mention beyond this sentence . . . starring Zach Galligan from Gremlins, Spinal Tap’s June Chadwick from Forbidden World, and more Wayne Crawford . . . which, I dare you, Sam, I dare you, to review Rising Storm), and . . .  did you know there’s actually a film based on those ‘80s automotive-suction cup “Baby on Board” signs? Yep, Francis made it: Baby on Board (1992).

Yep. When it comes to the VHS fringes, I am wired in, baby. 

If you must complete your post-apoc shakes, Wired to Kill is on You Tube.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S Movies.

SLASHER MONTH: Dreamaniac (1986)

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A former Wizard Video release, this is a David DeCoteau movie through and through, which you can tell by the fact that a buck naked male ass is one of the first things you see in this movie. It’s all about a heavy metal musician who  gets lucky with women, providing the succubus who gives him his powers get to eat them afterward.

The only performer that you may recognize is Kim McKamy, who would change her stage name to Ashlyn Gere and star in films like Chameleons and The Masseuse. She’s also in DeCocteau’s Creepozoids, Dominick Brascia’s Evil Laugh, Kirk Alex’s Lunch Meat and Tom DeSimone’s Angel III: The Final Chapter.

Speaking of adult video, this was DeCoteau’s first mainstream directing job after making movies like Boys Just Wanna Have Sex and New Waves Hustlers.

There are two movies within this movie, Hemoglobin House on Sorority Row and The Sorority That Dripped Blood. Obviously, you know where those titles came from.

You can watch this on Tubi.

2020 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 4: Evil in the Woods (1986)

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Day 4: Hunkered Down: One with recluses, shut-in or people locked inside their home.

And down another SOV wormhole we go, with a little bit of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead (1981) and, at first it seems, we’re also frolicking down the kiddie-centric, orange-and-yellow candy corn road with Roy Ward Baker’s The Monster Club (1981) and Fred Dekker’s The Monster Squad (1987).

A cross between Raimi and Spielbergian horror? What in the Sam Hell are you on about now, Mr. Francis?

Courtesy of Critical Condition, aka critcononline.com.

Well, look at the ol’ cardboard slipcase artwork. You got the word “Evil” and “Wood” in the title—and a ghoul is reading a book. And that ain’t Hervé Jean-Pierre Villechaize (Come on, dude, Tattoo? Remember?) lookin’ up over that library counter. Ah, should we also blame Wolfgang Petersen for making The NeverEnding Story (1984)?

Nah, there’s no way Wolfie could have known that his English-language film debut would lead to the “spooky” tales of the “Wild-Eye Southern Boys” of Mildew, Georgia.

Noah “Boxey” Hathaway? No, that’s Brian Abent in his only acting role as Billy Hanes.

So, what’s Evil in the Woods all about? And is the book due back on “Friday the 13th,” as well? Yes, as a matter of fact, it is! (Yuk! Yuk!)

But, first . . . how we got here. . . .

“Oh, shite. R.D’s going off the rails on another non sequitur, tangent-strewn frolic,” face squinches Drive-In Asylum‘s Bill Van Ryn. “Can’t you get your writing staff under control, Sam?”

“Just let him be, Bill,” surrenders Sam Panico, B&S About Movies’ proprietor. “I’ll go take a piss. You get the sandwiches ready. By the time our bladders are empty and our stomachs are full, he’ll be done.”

“Ahem,” throat clears R.D. “I’m standing right friggin’ here!”

Anyway, Sam ye by proclaimed, henceforth, that all reviews slots for the month of October would be dedicated to slasher (and, since I break all of the journalism rules, horror) films. And I had Evil in the Woods on my SOV “must reviews” short list, next in line after Curse of the Blue Lights (reviewed for “Vampire Week” that ran September 6 through 12). And I have this savant thing with film credits (and album liner notes). I can’t remember mathematic formulas or load-bearing charts, but . . . anyway, it’s my curse (that Sam puts to good use, so it’s not all in vain). So, during research for my review of the Atlanta, Georgia-shot Those Who Deserve to Die by Kino International’s Bret Wood, I learned of his developing work in the burgeoning field of podcast dramas—and his most recent, iHeartMedia podcast drama, “Mercury: A Broadcast of Hope,” stars local Atlanta (now adult) actress Jennifer Bates.

No, it can’t be. There’s a “Jennifer Bates” starring as little Alieen Pierson in the Atlanta-shot Evil in the Woods. . . .

My pubescent training ground: I kicked ass in this board game based on the ’70s NBC-TV daytime game show/courtesy of boardgamegeek.com.

So, that’s that story. That’s just how the analog-celluloid stars align at B&S About Movies.

“Wow, that actually wasn’t so bad, R.D,” says Bill Van Ryn offering me a turkey-on-rye, with double mayo and mustard.

“Sam, can I have an RC Cola, please.”

“I’ll get Becca right on that. But is an A&W okay?”

And now, back to the movie. . . .

So. . . little Billy Hanes checks out the lone copy of the historical “story book,” Evil in the Woods from his local library. He immediately takes the book home and, as he begins to read . . . anthology movie alert . . . anthology movie alert (well, sorta-kinda) . . . he enters the strange world of Mildew, Georgia (yes, as in the stuff you attack with Dow Scrubbing Bubbles . . . and no, there is no such place, we got Google over here!).

Scrubbing out evil, one spore at a time!

And Billy learns the tale of a low-budget film crew in the year of 1956, as they travel into the Southern wilds of Mildew, Georgia, to shoot their sci-fi horror schlock-a-piece, Bigfoot vs. The Space Killers. And wouldn’t you know it: the Cormanites stumble into Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (wooded, not desert) enclave of an evil witch and her cannibalistic family (aka hunkered down recluses and shut-ins, ahem, Scarecrow overloards) who overlord rural monsters driven by a 3,030 year-old force (do the “666” multiples math) . . . that goes by the name of Ida! (Insert snickers, here). Yes, beware of Ida! Where’s Abby when you her? Seriously? Ida?

So, what we have here—regardless of the ominous music and wooded National Geographic photography of the (effective) opening credits (seen below in sans of a trailer)—not an ominous Raimi romp, but a spoof of low budget “B” movies that is going for “camp classic” status—with awful acting, scripting, props, and cinematography that is either “on purpose” to make it “look bad” and become a cult classic—or a film with awful acting, scripting, props, and cinematography that is so rife with ineptitude that it fails in achieving camp classic status.

And, since we are dealing with a Spielbergian kid reading and telling us “the story” (via a goofy narrator’s voice; I guess Vincent Price was busy filming 1987’s The Whales of August with Bette Davis and Lillian Gish), there’s no “Raimi,” since the film is devoid of sex, swearing, violence, and nudity. But we do get rubbery Spirit Halloween SFX (but, truth be told, some of the “non-violent” low-budget gore isn’t that bad), a scruffy throw rug sasquatch, a rotten corpse, a burnt arm, midgets, aliens and, again, the witch and her cannibal offspring who, I might add: kidnap a kid who runs off into the woods from his camper parents, and he ends boiled into a youth elixir. Oh, and the town sheriff—as is always the case with these backwoods horrors (see Equinox)—is in on the take, so no one ever escapes Ida’s wrath. Oh, and since the book is cursed—yep, you guessed it, the librarian is also in on it—little Billy Hanes turns into a ghoul after he’s done with the book!

Yeah, the curse of Ida is a gift that just keeps on giving with a book that just keeps on adding “chapters.” So much for the Spielbergian Baker-Dekker-Petersen criticisms. To say this SOV’er is completely out-of-left-field, bat-shite, everything-and-the-kitchen sink, crazy-ass bonkers is an understatement. Oh, William J. Oates, how ye wish you wrote and directed another movie.

And, what we want to know, Mr. Oates: Is this a Christian horror movie? Our sources can’t confirm it, but as someone who’s attended his share of “Christian Haunted Houses” at the local fire ‘n brimstone Baptist watering hole of my youth, it sure seems as such. In my kid and teendom, never ever once did I meet a “funny” pastor or bible teacher who could tickle a funny bone with their lame attempts at humor to make the bible palpable to young ears. For there’s nothing worse than a pastor or bible teacher—with an acoustic guitar and a wife who vocal-cracks hunchbacked accompaniment over 88 keys—who sings parody songs about why the Sadducees “were sad.” And, when he offers guitar lessons, teaches you how to play friggin’ “Baby Beluga” and “Michael Rode the Boat Ashore.” (You’d rather a Tobin Bell torture-porn sessions on all accounts, trust me.)

And, what is with all the child abuse-neglect in the films I watched this week? First, it’s Juliet Mills’s utter parental failure of leaving two kids in an open convertible while she goes food shopping in Beyond the Door (1974) (screened a couple weeks ago via another Drive-In Asylum Saturday Night Double Feature Watch Party, thanks Bill!). Now, we have a backpacked-kid wandering the big city streets. I mean, a latchkey kid is sad enough (Queen Crab), but this kid wandering about downtown Atlanta is outright upsetting—goofy, kiddie synth-rock be damned.

What did Billy do to deserve to be turned into a monster-ghoul at the end? As far as I can tell, poor Billy is a latchkey kid whose parents are M.I.A and he has no siblings to pick him up from school (or, if he does, they don’t care and pick on him), so, to fight the loneliness, Billy hides out at the local book repository until dinner time—that is, assuming, his either career-driven parents, divorced-waitress mom, or drunk n’ stoned mom and abusive step-dad are even around to make him dinner.

Poor kid. You didn’t deserve this life or fate, little Billy. You probably get stuck straw-slurping Campbell’s Pea Soup out of can for dinner like little Ken Barrett in Beyond the Door and have to befriend crustaceans like little Melissa in Brett Piper’s Queen Crab.

Ugh. Another You Tube-posted trailer bites the dust.

Amazingly, of all of the “lost” films out there that are not available for streaming or issued on DVD* . . . Evil in the Woods can be, for the low cost of $2.99, courtesy of Full Moon Entertainment on Amazon Prime. And, I would like to extend my formal apologies to our readers in the United Kingdom for this U.S. crapula being offered in your country via Amazon Prime U.K. (You’ve been warned, mate.) And yes, Full Moon also offers it as a DVD—sans a commentary track, which would have really been appreciated, as we’d love to know more about the five-Ws behind this SOV lost boy from the mind of the M.I.A auteur that is William J. Oates.

We, bow to you, Mr. Oates. We bow.

* Be sure to check out our “Ten Movies That Were Never Released on DVD” featurette.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Modern Girls (1986)

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Cece (Cynthia Gibb, Jack’s Back) just lost her job.

Margo (Daphne Zuniga, The Initiation) has a boring telemarketing job.

Kelly (Virginia Madsen, Candyman) sells lots of pets because she’s so good looking.

Over one wild night, they’re going to get dumped, meet a rock legend, face off with a criminal and maybe even fall in love. Just another Friday night, I guess.

Clayton Rohner (I, Madman; April Fool’s Day) has a dual role as the love-starved Clifford and rock star Bruno X. Also look for Josh Richman (who was Tony in River’s Edge; he also directed the videos for Guns ‘n Roses’ “Live and Let Die” and “Don’t Cry (Part 1)” as well as reciting the spoken word section on their cover of “Knocking On Heaven’s Door and managing the band Deadsy), the Boss’ sister Pamela, Mark Holton (Francis from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure) and Stuart Charno (one of the few Camp Crystal Lake counselors to escape Jason).

Director Jerry Kramer also made Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, the video for Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher,” Styx’s “Kilroy Was Here” and Sandahl Bergman’s Body, a video where Sandahl shows how to do aerobics. If you think I’m not hunting that down, you don’t know me all that well.

This female-driven hijinks movie even had the Depeche Mode song “But Not Tonight” promote it in a movie-featuring music video, as well as a soundtrack with The Jesus and Mary Chain, Toni Basil and Icehouse on it.

Modern Girls bombed in theaters, but as often happened in the late 1980’s, it found new life on HBO. Ah, what a time to be alive, staying up too late and wishing you were old enough to try and catch Virginia Madsen’s attention.

Population: 1 (1986)

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Rene Daalder made Massacre at Central High before becoming a pioneer of virtual reality and digital motion picture technologies. He started as a protege of Russ Meyer, even writing an initial script for Who Killed Bambi?, Meyer’s canceled film with the Sex Pistols (a movie that Russ explained to Roger Ebert, who wrote another script, “We can go wild on this. I’ve got a couple of big-titted London girls already in mind.”).

He also innovated what we would one day called music videos alongside Tomata du Plenty and the electropunk band The Screamers. In this film, Tomata is the last survivor of the end of the world, a defense contractor left alone to put together the history of the world.

This is a movie packed with musicians and artists, including El Duce, Carel Struycken (the giant from Twin Peaks, who was a producer and editor on this movie), production designer K.K. Barrett, Penelope Huston from The Avengers, composer and Beck’s father David Campbell, Fluxus artist and Beck’s grandfather Al Hansen, Beck and oh yeah, Maila Nurmi who we all know much better as Vampira.

It’s definitely an art project, but there are moments of real brilliance here, including the floating tools that follow Tomata and groom him for his State of the Union. It’s amazing that the tech in this was so advanced at one point, yet look quaint today. Such is the sadness of the forward progress of time.

Learn more at the official site or watch this on YouTube.

REPOST: NO FALSE METAL MOVIES WEEK: Trick or Treat (1986)

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From the Publisher’s Desk with R.D Francis: We’re sadden to hear that Pete Way, the bassist for UFO, passed away this morning, August 14, at the age of 69. His death was the result of “life threatening injuries” he received in an accident earlier this summer.

Pete Way
August 7, 1951 – August 14, 2020

In addition to help found UFO, Way formed his own self-named project, Waysted, and was the bassist for his longtime friends Ozzy Osbourne and Michael Schenker. He also co-founded Fastway, which provided the music for the ulitmate “No False Metal” god, Sammy Curr, in Trick or Treat.

Way left UFO to collaborate with Fast Eddie Clarke of Motörhead; their brief union became known as Fastway, co-founded with Humble Pie (Peter Frampton’s old band) drummer Jerry Shirley. The band quickly fell apart, with Way forming his namesake, Waysted. Fastway carried on with vocalist Dave King and bassist Charlie McCraken, Shirley’s old bandmate from the Irish power trio Taste that was headed by Rory Gallagher.

Fastway’s then three-album output: Fastway (1982), All Fired Up (1984), and Waiting for the Roar (1986) comprised the soundtrack for Trick or Treat.

Spend a few moments this evening to remember Pete Way and stream some UFO, Waysted, and Fastway. Godspeed, Pete. (You guys blew Cheap Trick off the stage in 1980! Three encores!)

Sadly, this isn’t the first rock-flick veteran we lost in these several months. Be sure to remember Nigel Benjamin, who served as the “voice” of the second greatest “No False Metal God” of rock flicks, Billy Eye Harper. You can read our tribute to Nigel with our “Remembrance of Nigel Benjamin” that reflected on his career with Mott, London with Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue, and his work with the Sebastians on Rocktober Blood.

Here’s UFO at their absolute, bass ass peak in 1975. And enjoy this review of Trick or Treat from Sammy P. that originally ran on July 17, 2017, as part of our “No False Metal Movies Week.” Take it away, Samuel!

The director of A Dolphin’s Tale and A Dolphin’s Tale 2, Skippy from Family Ties and one of the stars of A Chorus Line made the most metal film ever. Let that sink in.

I grew up a fat, bespeckled child in a small town with crushing self esteem issues, a love for gore movies and a sarcastic mind that loved the way people treated me when I started dressing all in black. Every single situation that Eddie Weinbauer (Marc Price, the previously mentioned Skippy) endures in this film…I lived it. If a monster Glenn Danzig (Verotika) could take over shop class and kill my tormentors, I would have gladly welcomed such mayhem and menace.

Eddie is a big fan of Sammi Curr, a superstar who went to the same high school Eddie is in, was tormented and bullied the same way Eddie is, became a big star and then died in a mysterious fire. Radio DJ Nuke (Gene “inventor of the devil horns” Simmons, who played a great transgendered bad guy in Never Too Young to Die while wearing his girlfriend Cher’s clothes) gives Eddie the only vinyl copy of Sammi’s satanic masterwork “Songs in the Key of Death.”

Eddie does exactly what I’d do: he listens to the record and falls asleep. He has a crazy dream about the fire that killed Curr and awakens to the album playing backwards, telling him how to gain revenge on the bullies that torment him.

Eddie chickens out though — he doesn’t want to kill the jocks who have made his life so rough. Sammi takes matters into his own hands, creating an electric surge that allows him to escape the record and come back to our reality. Eddie responds by smashing his stereo. Sammi’s response is as fucking perfect as it gets: “No false metal.”

Sammi’s friend Roger gets involved and unwittingly plays a cassette — fucking metal — at the school dance, causing Sammi to leap out of a guitar amp and take the stage. The crowd goes wild before Sammi starts killing audience members, shooting lightning at them and revealing his burned face. Holy shit — I saw this scene at the drive-in this year and the exuberance of hearing Fastaway blasting from car stereos in the fog at 5 AM is an experience I recommend to every single person reading this.

Can Eddie stop Sammi from being played on the radio and attacking everyone that hears it? Of course. It’s an ’80s horror movie. But man — I’m all from more Sammi Curr (sadly, Tony Fields died of AIDS in 1995).

Oh I forgot – Ozzy is a preacher in this that Sammi attacks. It’s a small cameo, just like Gene Simmons’ role, but that doesn’t stop my DVD cover from claiming they starred in this.

If you’re an 80s metal fan (and if not, man, thanks for reading this far), there are so many band logos and posters to spot in this, from the expected like Anthrax and KISS to the out of left field like Raven, Exciter and Savatage. You’ll also be much more likely to not dismiss this film as a piece of shit.

Me? I quote from this film almost every day. “The bait is you. Let the big fish hook themselves. You’re the bait. The bait is you.”

NEVER BOW TO FALSE METAL!

Black Moon Rising (1986)

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Before Quentin Tarantino*˟ inspired us to run to the movie theatre with anything featuring his name on it — even if he didn’t directed it — there was John Carpenter. For Quentin, the films that took our coin were Natural Born Killers and True Romance. For John Carpenter, we laid the money down for Black Moon Rising and The Eyes of Laura Mars. And the thing about Tarantino and Carpenter: while we love their pens, it’s just not the same without them in the director’s chair. But when you write and direct a blockbuster and you’re churned as Hollywood’s new “flavor of the month,” you easily up-sell those dust bunny-collecting screenplays sitting in the drawer. (Anyone want to read some of my dust bunnies? Yeah, didn’t think so. . . .)

In fact, the Roger Corman-founded New World Pictures made sure Carpenter’s name was front and center in the promotional materials to hook fans of Halloween and Escape from New York*. And toss in Carpenter’s pre-Halloween “modern western” homage Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) that became a cult classic courtesy of its incessant HBO replays in the backwash of EfNY’s success. Did we even care — or knew — that Harley Cokliss, who worked as a second unit director under Irvin Kershner on The Empire Strikes Back and directed New Zealand’s entry in the Max Max road rallies of the ’80s, Battletruck* (1982), directed Black Moon Rising? Nope. Not according to my copies of Starlog and Famous Monsters.

For the Snake Plissken-esque anti-hero of this high-tech crime caper, embodied by Sam Quint, the job was given to the always welcomed and never-not-awesome Tommy Lee Jones, who came into his own as an A-List, major-studio leading man with memorable roles in Jackson County Jail (1976), Rolling Thunder (1977), and Carpenter’s The Eyes of Laura Mars (again; didn’t direct it, natch; the aforementioned Irvin Kershner did). And it’s important to note that, in the same year Black Moon was released, Jones also starred in one of the greatest HBO-exclusive movies of all time, the Canadian-produced Rambo-inversion, The Park Is Mine.

We all know the story behind Escape from New York as it relates to Tommy Lee Jones, right? After blowing the roof off of theatres in 1978 with his Italian Giallo homage (check out our “Exploring: Giallo” featurette) Halloween, Carpenter had the clout to get his long-gestating passion project made (that he tried to get made even before 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13) about a Clint Eastwood-esque anti-hero’s adventures in a futuristic “Wild West” New York. (If Carpenter had gotten it made in the early ’70s during Clint’s “Dirty Harry” days . . . Eastwood going “Charlton Heston” in a post-apoc flick? Damn. I’d see that movie!)

Black Moon Rising was not produced by Cannon but was sold on videotape in the United Kingdom by Cannon Screen Entertainment Limited.

At the time, Carpenter has just worked with Kurt Russell, who starred as “The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” in the 1979 TV movie, Elvis. Carpenter wanted Russell in the lead. Avco Embassy, who initially wanted the admittedly cool-for-the-role-but-too-old Charles Bronson (sorry, Charlie), dug in their collective heels with Tommy Lee Jones (who would have owned Plissken!). Carpenter won the casting war. And Jones ended up being cast as Carpenter’s Plissken-lite, Sam Quint.

In a June 2016 radio interview with Justin Beahm, Carpenter explained that he wrote Black Moon Rising around the time he made Escape from New York (which is why we “see” Snake in Mr. Quint’s squint) as a “my car is stolen and I’m going to get it back” story. And he added that he had “never seen the final film.” And if it all sounds too familiar, like Corvette Summer (1978) familiar, you know Mark Hamill’s first post-Star Wars movie, itself a “my car is stolen and I’m going to get it back” story — without the sci-fi trappings and F.B.I tomfoolery — it probably is. . . . And if the plot of Black Moon Rising sounds familiar, like The Fast and the Furious (franchise) familiar, then it probably is. . . .

Sam Quint is a reformed thief hired by the Feds to steal a computer disc (what’s that?) that holds incriminating evidence against a corrupt Las Vegas-based corporation. After the theft, Quint’s on the run from Marvin Ringer (Lee Ving of Fear; The Decline of Western Civilization), his psycho-former partner, who wants the disc back. But, alas . . . during the course of the chase, Quint stashes the disc inside The Black Moon, a prototype supercar that exceeds speeds of 300 miles per hour — on tap water. (I know, right: the ol’ water-as-fuel sci-fi trope, again. Hey, Keanu! Hey, Val!) Then steps in master car thief Nina (Linda Hamilton in her first post-The Terminator* role), who steals the oh, so The Wraith (1986) sci-fi wagon for stolen car syndicate mogul Ed Ryland (the so-awesome Robert Vaughn as Proteus IV in Demon Seed, and yes . . . we even sat through Starship Invasions, The Lucifer Complex, Hangar 18, and the terminally goofy Battle Beyond the Stars for our Vaughn fixes). Now Quint has to break into The Ryland Towers (thus, the car-busting-through-the-glass-tower artwork of the theatrical one-sheet), where its offices’ operate Ryland’s “legit” businesses — along with a high-tech and high-volume chop shop in the basement-garage bowels.

Of course, the reason we’re writing about this forgotten entry in the John Carpenter canons — in addition to its “Fast and Furiousness,” and the fact that the fine folks at Kino Lorber reissued the film on Blu-ray (a 2K restoration from the original 35 MM interpositives) last May — is because of the 1980 Wingho Concordia II designed by Bernard Beaujardins and Clyde Kwok used in the film. Since only one was made, it was filmed for exterior stunts. Two cast cast-mold copies were made for stunts and interior shots.

The cinematographer behind Harley Cokliss’s vision of John Carpenter’s script is Russian-born Misha Suslov, who lensed the hicksploitation classics (yes, they are classics in the analog hearts of the B&S crew!) Smokey and the Judge and Truckin’ Buddy McCoy**, along with Mark L. Lester’s Public Enemies (with Eric Roberts!), and the “dark” Christmas romp, Prancer. While we lost our inner Suslov-ness over the years, we were happy to discover Suslov is still keepin’ the eye-in-the-glass with the 2020 country-romance The Girls of Summer.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

* Be sure to check out our full list of reviews from our “Apoc Month” blowout of post-apocalyptic ditties from the ’70s and ’80s with our two-part “Atomic Dust Bin” round-ups.

** You need more redneck ragin’ hicksploitation? Then check out our homage to the genre with our “The Top 70 Good Ol’ Boys Film List: 1972 to 1986” featurette.

*˟ You can catch up with all of Quentin Tarantino’s films with our “Exploring: The 8 Films of Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder Pictures” featurette — complete with links to our July 2019 reviews of his films.

Update: We’ve since rolled out a “Cannon Month” of film reviews and took a second look at this film. Type in “Cannon Month” in our search box and you’ll populate all of those reviews.