EDITOR’S NOTE: Forever Evil was on USA Up All Night on May 19, 1990;  December 6, 1991 and February 15, 1992.

Three couples party in a cabin; Holly (Diane Johnson) ends up dead in a shower, her stomach and baby torn out. Marc (Red Mitchell) is the only survivor of the red-eyed zombie and tree which attack the house as if this were Evil Dead. To make things worse, he gets hit by a car and ends up barely alive in a hospital.

There’s a tarot card reader named Brother Magnus, a psychic named Ben who looks just like him, a cop — Leo (Charles L. Trotter) — and a woman — Reggie (Tracey Huffman) — who survived a similar attack. A book entitled The Chronicles of Yog-Kothag and The Necronomicon. Mean dogs. Quasars. A date to The Jet Benny Show. A god trapped on a quasar. Nash (Howard Jacobson) is an evil real estate agent. A woman ripping a baby out of herself. Love confessions. Marc is becoming a zombie but fighting Nash. And by the end, the void and we hear Yog-Kothag.

Directed by Roger Evans, which explains Jet Benny being in this, as he made that movie, and written by Freeman Williams, who was Maggot in The Jet Benny Show and the voice of the preacher in Terror at Tenkiller, this is a delirious mess and I love it for that. It has dialogue like this, when Marc and Reggie try to kill the zombie:

Marc: Get the gas.

Reggie: But I hit it with the fucking car!

Marc: I got hit with the car once, I am still alive! Get the gas!

Shot with no sound and dubbed later, this has a dreamy quality and, because it’s on 16mm, appears grainy and imperfect. Diane Johnson was a close friend of the writer, and she was an exhibitionist, so that’s why she has so many nude scenes before she’s killed. She was fully nude for the close-up death scene, and sure, the camera only showed her from the chest up, but that’s how movies get made.

Shot in Houston, it features a hero who invents a grappling hook wrist device, like an even nerdier Peter Parker, before fighting a string-tie-wearing zombie. This was precisely what I needed today: something I’d never seen, that while kind of familiar, is just strange enough to keep me alive. Forever Evil!

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Howling III was on USA Up All Night on January 19, 1991 and March 6, 1998.

This is the last Howling movie to play in U.S. theaters. Gary Brandner, author of the Howling novels, approved director Philippe Mora’s purchase of the rights to his novels. The credits even claim that this is based on his book The Howling III: Echoes. However, in truth, it has a different setting and primarily features werewolves as sympathetic characters.

Professor Harry Beckmeyer is an Australian anthropologist who has found footage of aborigines sacrificing a deer in 19Aboriginal people. Hearing that a wolf-like wolf has killed a man in Siberia, he tries — and fails — to warn the President of the U.S. about the potential of lycan assaults.

Meanwhile, an abused girl who just might so happen to be a werewolf is running away from home. Her name is Jerboa, and after meeting a young American named Donny Martin, she gets a role in the horror film, Shape Shifters Part 8. She gets into horror movies, and after watching a werewolf film with Donny, she reveals that transformations don’t happen that way. He asks her how she knows, she goes full furry beast, and he responds as we all would, by engaging her in some interspecies aardvarking.

As the movie wraps, strobe lights cause Jerboa to transform. She runs into the night and is hit by a car. When the doctors try to save her, they notice that she is with child and has a marsupial-like pouch on her belly. Holy cow, this movie! I can’t believe that I watched that, much less typed it out for you to read.

There’s also a Russian ballerina that happens to be a werewolf, because I guess if you bark at the moon you have a re,allsuppose,derful artistic abilitie,s as a secondary mutation.

Suffice to say that you should stick with this movie, if only to see Dame Edna out of drag as  Barry Humphries and a pack of werewolves go wild at the cheapest looking Academy Awards outside of The Lonely Lady.

Phillipe Mora has made some out there movies, like The Beast Within, The Howling II, The Return of Captain Invincible, Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills and many more. His films aren’t always great, but they’re never boring.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Blind Date was on USA Up All Night on May 11 and 12 and July 27, 1990 and June 28 and September 14, 1996.

Years ago, when I first started the site, I wrote “Kim Basinger: Professional idiocy, circa 1987 and 1988.”

Here’s a quick summary:

In 1987, Kim Basinger appeared in Blake Edwards’ Blind Date with Bruce Willis.

In 1988, she appeared in Richard Benjamin’s My Stepmother is an Alien with Dan Aykroyd.

In both films, she plays nearly the same role: a woman so devastatingly gorgeous, she decimates the brains of weak-willed men everywhere before settling for a man who is obviously the worst possible mate for her — falling in the kind of love that transforms your life in under 24 hours.

However, she has one downside: she is an utter moron, almost incapable of comprehending how the most basic societal behaviors should be observed. In Blind Date, it’s alcohol that’s to blame. One drink and her character, Nadia, loses control. It’s as if no woman could be both gorgeous and competent, even if she was able to pilot a starship the whole way here.

Despite her foibles, she’s presented as an inherently good person in both films. But in no way do you watch and see her as a real person, someone who can be more than a sexual object, which is probably the whole point of 1980s comedy, one supposes.

Anyways…

Walter Davis (Bruce Willis in his first movie lead) is trying to make a deal with Japanese industrialist Mr. Yakamoto (Sab Shimono). He needs a date for the dinner where they’ll shake hands on it, so his brother Ted (John Larroquette) plans a blind date with his wife Susie’s (Stephanie Faracy) cousin Nadia (Basinger). Simple, right?

Ted and Susie warn Walter not to let Nadia drink alcohol. If he does, she will go crazy. Additionally, she has an ex named Ted (played by Phil Hartman), who is stalking her.

Walter tells Susie that he wanted to be a musician but ended up taking an office job. Oh, if only this movie would give Bruce Willis a chance to sing!

During the party, Nadia turns champagne into an insanity power-up, getting the Japanese mogul’s wife to leave him, abusing a co-worker of Walter for hitting on her and spraying champagne at Walter’s boss. The deal gets called off.. Walter gets fired. This gives Walter license to embarrass her once she sobers up, showing up at a party at her friend’s house acting like a crazy person and even pulling a gun on David, which gets him arrested.

Nadia bails him out and even agrees to marry David if he’ll represent Walter. David’s father, Judge Harold Bedford (William Daniels), basically agrees to letting Walter out if his son moves far away. Nadia leaves Walter a note telling him not to give up on playing the guitar. David replies by sending chocolates with alcohol in them; she goes wild at her wedding and says that she’s in love with someone else, then marries Walter.

This was supposed to star Madonna and Sean Penn.

Oh, Blake Edwards. I’m sure there was a time when I would have liked your movie,s but I grew up watching these ones. I haven’t changed my opinion. This movie makes everyone act like a moron, mostly Basinger, who deserves better. Why would this couple get married?

Directed by Michael Gornick, who was the cinematographer for Romero’s Martin, Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders, Day of the Dead and the original Creepshow, this follow-up is based once again on King stories (but screenwritten by Romero).

Creepshow 2 was originally going to be five stories (Pinfall and Cat from Hell went unfilmed, although Cat does appear in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie), but a lower budget forced the film to only include three tales.

Pinnacle was to be about the rivalry between two bowling teams, with one coming back from the dead to kill the other. It reminds me a lot of the story in Haunt of Fear #19, Foul Play!

Instead of what wasn’t filmed, let’s get into what was: In Dexter, Maine, a delivery truck pulls up and drops off the latest issue of Creepshow, with the driver being the Creep himself!

In Old Chief Wood’nhead, an elderly couple named Ray and Martha Spruce (George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour in her last role) live in an old town on its last legs. No one in the city has money, and soon, the store they own — and their lives — will fade away, too. Chief Whitemoon comes to visit and gives them sacred jewelry to pay back his debt. It’s not money, but the thought is what counts.

As the wise old man leaves, the wooden Indian that stands guard in the store nods to him, which frightens him. It foreshadows what happens next, as that night, the chief’s nephew, with Sam and his gang, rob the store and kill the kindly old couple. Their blood splashes all over the old wooden chief as they depart with the stolen sacred jewels.

The gang plans to go to Hollywood, where Sam thinks his long hair will make him a star. But he and his entire gang are killed, with their scalps and the jewelry left for the old chief.

In The Raft, four teens (one of them is Page Hannah, the sister of Daryl and all of the characters share the surname of the actor playing them) try to go swimming but have to contend with a black blob that wants to kill them all. Again — this is a straightforward tale told well. I’d say it’s the highlight of the film, but the more I write about these, the more I remember how much I genuinely enjoy this movie.

Finally, The Hitchhiker concerns a businesswoman who is trying to get home from a tryst with her lover before her husband notices. Along the way, she hits a man who keeps coming back. And coming back. And coming back. Again, a simple idea, but told really well. Ironically, the hitchhiker is played by Tom Wright, who played the civil rights activist who comes back from the head in Tales from the Hood. It’s an amazingly similar role! Even stranger is that Barbara Eden was to play the woman before her mother’s illness caused her to drop out.

Ed French was the original effects guy for this, but got upset when director Gornick asked Howard Berger for advice, as he wasn’t happy with the look of the creature in The Raft. Greg Nicotero and Berger finished the movie, and they enlisted Tom Savini to play The Creep.

Creepshow 2 doesn’t have the gloss of the original. That doesn’t make it a horrible movie. The longer I’ve been around, the more I’ve come to like this film. Over the past few years, I’ve re-evaluated it and have come away liking it so much more than I did on first watch.

The Arrow Video release of Creepshow 2 has a brand new 4K restoration by Arrow Films from the original negative. Extras include an audio commentary with director Michael Gornick; interviews with screenwriter George A. Romero, actor and make-up artist Tom Savini and actors Daniel Beer and Tom Wright; a special effects featurette; behind-the-scenes footage; an image gallery; Howard Berger discussing Rick Baker; trailers and TV ads; screenplay galleries; Creepshow 2: Pinfall, a limited edition booklet featuring the comic adaptation of the unfilmed Creepshow 2 segment Pinfall by artist Jason Mayoh; an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring writing on the film by festival programmer Michael Blyth and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Mike Saputo. You can order this from MVD.

Terminus, where have you been all my life?

In the year 2037, genetically engineered Mati (Gabriel Damon) has been programmed by an evil doctor (Jürgen Prochnow) to design an AI named Monster, which drives a giant truck in a race for $100 million. Somehow, this brings together its human driver, Gus (Karen Allen) and French Elvis Johnny Hallyday as Stump as they navigate the end of the world.

Directed by Pierre-William Glenn and written by Patrice Duvic, Alain Gillot and Wallace Potts, this is a so out of left field post-apocalyptic cash-in, a film where a truck has a human mouth, where goth kids float in labs, an intro song by  Stan Ridgway from Wall of Voodoo, three parts for Prochnow, Howard Vernon’s voice, a Philip K. Dick license plate, a shout-out to Heavy Metal artist Enki Bilal and despite all the car stunts, it has the core DNA of an art film beating inside what should be a total theft of Australia end of the world cinema.

The MVD releaase of this film has the U.S. and extended French versions of the film, as well as an interview with star Jürgen Prochnow, We All Descend – The Making of Terminus with Vincent Glenn (son of director Pierre-William Glenn), star Julie Glenn (daughter of Pierre-William Glenn) and archival interviews with Pierre-William Glenn, photo gallery, reversible cover artwork, a poster, a trailer and a limited edition slipcover. Get it from MVD.