Meta didn’t seem to be a think when Back to the Beach came out. And while on the surface this seems to be a simple parody of beach party movies — it even uses the same character names from many of them — it has a heart of weirdness that makes it rise above what it could be, like the very best beach movies always do.
Director Lyndall Hobbs should have done more than this one film — she also worked in television — because I had such a blast watching this.
Frankie and Annette live far from the beach in Ohio, far from when he was the Big Kahuna and their love burned hot. Now he struggles to sell cars and she deals with her pain by charging shopping sprees and their son Bobby is in open rebellion.
On the way to a vacation in Hawaii, they stop to visit their daughter Sandi (Lori Laughlin, always ready to be the love interest in quasi-sport films like this and Rad) who is in love with a surfer. Hijinks, as I always say, ensue, leading to one last big beach movie.
Somehow, this is a movie that can have O.J. Simpson and Stevie Ray Vaughn in it, most of the Cleaver family from Leave It to Beaver along with Fishbone (who were in seemingly every late 80’s movie that needed a band that the Chili Peppers turned down*). I mean, Fishbone sings with Annette!
Plus, you get appearances from Don Adams, Dick Dale, Connie Stevens, Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., Edd Byrnes and Pee-Wee Herman, who sings “Surfin’ Bird.”
Sadly, this would be Annette’s last film, as she was diagnosed with MS while making the movie. She asked that no one be told and completed her work.
*Fishbone is in Tapeheads, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, The Mask and The Tripper, while the Red Hot Chili Peppers were in Tough Guys, but man, it seemed like they were everywhere in 1986.
Leave it to Turkish filmmakers to not only completely rip off E.T., but also make the alien gay and lost in 70’s Turkey.
Written, directed and starring Müjdat Gezen, this is the second Turkish Xerox of that Spielberg blockbuster that I know. The other, Badi, has an alien that is frightening instead of loveable. The movie poster also features the USS Enterprise, which is not in the movie*. Such is the country for which we have been exploring all week.
I love that someone spent the time to write a research paper on this movie. I guess if you’re going to spend the time and energy to make a movie where a big butt alien comes down to our planet and helps us explore the ways that LGBT people dealt with the opression of 1970’s Turkey, as well as exploring tabloid culture, this would be the movie to write about.
This is why when people at work ask, “What movies has everyone been watching?” I hope that someone else answers, because then I have to explain that one, there’s a Turkish version of E.T., two that it has a gay alien and three that it had no subtitles and therefore I was forced to watch it and make up the dialogue inside my own head.
*The makers of Evils of the Night, which features a hot pants wearing teen being menaced by zombie hands while the Millenium Falcon zooms overhead, had to have been paying attention.
Two vampire movies came out in 1987.* One became a celebrated big-budget film that launched the careers of the Coreys and Kiefer Sutherland, with songs that people still sing, shirtless saxophonists and quotable dialogue about why there’s no need for a TV when you have TV Guide. The other movie was in and out of theaters in the time it took to read the last sentence and has stuck in my mind forever since.
Kathryn Bigelow had never directed a movie before. She was given five days to succeed or be replaced. She wanted to make a Western, but they weren’t popular. So she combined the vampire genre — the word is never mentioned — and hired three of the actors from her future husband James Cameron’s recently completed Aliens, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton and Jenette Goldstein.
Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar) falls for the mysterious Mae (Jenny Wright, who is another beyond cult horror film that few discuss, I, Madman) but then learns her family — Severen (Paxton), Jesse Hooker (Henriksen), Diamondback (Goldstein) and Homer (Joshua John Miller) — are a roving band of RV driving maniacs given to acts of merciless terror.
The only problem that I’ve ever had with this film is that I have always seen the normal people in the world as the real monsters, despite the hints that Jesse and Severen set the Great Chicago Fire. The blood transfusions that save the beautiful people seem way too easy of a way out of the hell that the gang promises.
Biglow would go on to make the equally well-made Blue Steel. Most of the cast went on to fame, at least in the circles of people who read our site. And if you look close enough, there’s a picture of a torn-apart Severen on my fridge.
If you’d like to learn more about the films scored by the band who gave this movie its unique soundtrack, check out our article Exploring: 10 Tangerine Dream Soundtracks.
*We know that A Return to Salem’s Lot and My Best Friend Is a Vampire also came out in 1987. For the sake of poetic license, we hope you understand why we juxtaposed these two films. Ironically, both movies have a son of The Exorcist star Jason Miller in their casts, with Joshua John Miller is in Near Dark and his half-brother Jason Patric in The Lost Boys.
BONUS: You can hear Becca and Sam discuss this movie on our podcast.
If Harry Hope, who combined disco and hicksploitation in Smokey and the Judge were here, he’d say” “So why not Spaghetti Westerns and R&B. I can see the tagline now: ‘The first R&B Western . . . Blazing Saddles with a beat to move your feet.’”
“Oh, yeah? Not if I produce it first, Hopie.”
“Harry Tampa? Hey, at least I use my real last name as a screen credit, ‘Mr. Hurwitz.’ Whaddya gonna do, another disco-vampire flick with Nai Bonet?”
“I like it. Sorta like the old Kolchak: The Night Stalker TV movies-series — only with a cop instead of a reporter.”
“You call Christopher Lee. I’ll give Eastwood’s people a ring.”
“You think they’ll do it?
“Tampy, baby. You roped John Carradine into Nocturna. Never give up hope.”
Shame on you, Mr. Distributor! “Adapted to a ‘Stephen King’ style,” indeed.
Okay, so Harry Hope and Harry Tampa didn’t co-produce this Magnum n’ Fangs romp. But Jason Williams did.
Yes. That Jason Williams: Flesh Gordon himself.
Flesh Gordon, their sexploitation, sci-fi porno spoof of Universal Pictures’ 1930 serials, was the first of four films Williams starred in for producer Bill Osco, he the king of the “erotic art film” (aka, porn) that launched the “Golden Age of Porn” (we devle into it with our review of Spine) and unleashed the likes of Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat and Marilyn “Rabid” Chambers in Behind the Green Door. Together, team Osco-Williams also made Alice in Wonderland (1976; a porn-musical), Cop Killers (1977; Williams as a hippie serial killer), and the drive-in T&A romp, Cheerleaders Wild Weekend (1979, aka the less offensive aka The Great American Girl Robbery).
Here, Williams went it alone, with Tom Friedman (who produced the Williams writing-directing efforts Flush, Time Walker (the best-distributed; with Ben Murphy), The Danger Zone, and Zone’s sequels). For their director — in his debut — the Friedman-Williams celluloid collective chose experienced producer Gregory McClatchy (most noted for the 1984 horror documentary Terror in the Aisles) — who didn’t sit behind the lens again until the 2008 TV movie Soccer Mom for, of all networks, The Disney Channel.
As with any grizzled cop romp, Vampire at Midnight is set in Los Angeles as nine victims, over the course of several months, have turned up with the blood drained from their bodies. Of course, the “it bleeds it leads” press have dubbed the vic as “The Vampire Killer.” On the case is our not-so-Dirty Harry: Homicide Detective Roger Sutter (Jason Williams). Clues come by the way of his attractive neighbor-squeeze (natch) Jenny Carleton (Lesley Milne, who quit the business after), a concert pianist under the care of self-help guru-cum-hypnotherapist Victor Radikoff (who worked his way up to guest starring roles on TV’s Murder, She Wrote; then back down again to Texas Vampire Massacre). Is Radikoff a real Transylvania vamp or just a creepy shrink with a blood fetish who, sans fangs, hypnotizes his victims, then slices and drains them?
Is this dull to the point of yawn. Yeah, sorry to say that it is.
Jason Williams isn’t a bad actor. And Gregory McClatchy isn’t a bad director. And Daniel Yarussi (Christopher George’s Graduation Day and Betsy Russell’s (!) Tomboy) isn’t a bad cinematographer. However, when compared against Dirty Harry’s pursuit of “Scorpio” or Charles Bronson’s Leo Kessler’s pursuit of his office equipment repairman-serial killer in 1983’s 10 to Midnight (or, dare I say, Stallone’s pursuit of “The Night Slasher” in 1986’s Cobra), this vamp feast is lost somewhere in the between the Moon and New York City. Perhaps if Cannon Films produced it and J. Lee Thompson directed it, and Eastwood (okay, not Clint, but Michael Dudikoff or Oliver Gruner) and Christopher Lee starred . . . and let’s face it: Lee was already doing junk like Howling II, Honeymoon Academy, Gremlins 2, Curse III, and A Feast at Midnight, so playing a hypnotherapist with a blood jones isn’t exactly a step down for Sire Chris.
Hey . . . you know who would have classed this up: Klaus Kinski as Radikoff. That’s my “Devil’s Advocate” remake of Vampire at Midnight: Michael Dudikoff and Klaus Kinski. Now, THAT’S a vampire vs. copy flick. That would have banked. What? Kinski said go “F” ourselves? Okay, call Angus Scrimm.
What the . . . how can there be NO freebie online rips? You Tube, TubiTv, and The Internet Archive.org . . . have you let us down? VHS copies (on Fox’s Key Video imprint) are hard to find and the DVDs look like grey market rips to these analog-sloshed eyeballs. What? This isn’t in the public domain either, Mill Creek? Denied! So, if you want a copy, look for the DVDs issued by Code Red Releasing under the “Maria’s B-Movie Mayhem” banner, so at least you know that it’s sourced from the master and not some cheap-jack VHS rip. The bonus with the Code Red-version: it offers a commentary track with Jason Williams and Greg McClatchy. The negative: your stuck with WWE star (and singer and actress) Maria Kanellis in wraparound segments as a cut-rate Elvira in Wonder Woman-spandex fitted with a set of plastic fangs.
There’s a couple of VHS-washed out excerpts HERE and HERE to revisit Vampire at Midnight, just another one of those “what might have beens” from the VHS dung heaps lost somewhere beyond the midnight horizons.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
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. But in truth, it has a different setting and really only has werewolves as sympathetic characters.
Professor Harry Beckmeyer is an Australian anthropologist who has found footage of aborigines sacrificing a wolf creature in 1905. After hearing that a werewolf 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 really wonderful artistic abilities as a bonus 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.
After waiting two decades for a sequel, in 1987 Franco Nero and director Nello Rossati (Alien Terminator) finally delivered the sequel that Italian Western fans had been craving (and had kind of received with thirty unofficial sequels).
Where was Sergio Corbucci, the director of the original, who had co-written the sequel and had initially agreed to direct it? Well, Django Strikes Again was dreamed up and produced in parallel with Duccio Tessari’s Tex and the Lord of the Deep. The hope was that this would lead to a revival of the Western in Italy. But when Ted failed, Corbucci bowed out, possibly not wanting to soil the legacy of what is probably his best-loved film.
Nero had already entered in El Topo territory in Keoma. This feels like a similar tone — at least at first — as Django has left behind the life of the gunfighter — indeed, the movie starts by mentioning all of the cowboys that are dead (that’s William Berger in a cameo) — to become a monk. Yet when he learns from an old lover that he has a daughter that he has never met and that she has become a prisoner of El Diablo Orlowsky (Christopher Connelly in his last role), he has to pick up his guns one more time.
I’ll be blunt. This movie is a pale shadow of the original. That said, there are moments of greatness here, like El Diablo’s butterfly obsession, Django burying his machinegun in a grave with his name on it, Rodrigo Obregón from the Andy Sidaris movies as a henchman, a small role for Donald Pleasence and Nero acting like Stallone as he single-handledly blazes away an entire army with that gigantic gun.
Oh well. At least the ending, where Connelly is ripped to shreds by the slaves he’s treated so wrong rise up and tear him apart as if they were zombies, is pretty great.
How weird is it that I can point to at least two fake Django films that are way better than this, though?
We’ve mentioned this VHS potboiler in passing during our reviews of Rocktober Blood and Larry Buchanan’sDown on Us (you know how it works: we’ll get to that tidbit, later). Thanks to Sam dreaming up a “Fast and Furious Tribute Week” — and his excavating the Jim Drake 1989 VHS uber-obscurity, Speed Zone — we finally have an excuse to give this grandfather to the The Fast and the Furious franchise a review proper: a fictional film based on the real life problem of “Banzai Runners” speeding along the desert asphalt strip of the I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
As you can tell from the box, ubiquitous TV actor Dean Stockwell stars in this direct-to-video romp. But don’t be copywriter-duped. In no way is this comparable to his work in the superior films noted under his name. And while modern audience will recognized Stockwell for his later TV work in the series Quantum Leap, JAG, and SyFy’s Battlestar Galactica reboot, we, the B&S crew, will always remember Stockwell for his work in the Jack Nicholson-starring counterculture flick, Psych-Out (1968), and his starring with Sandra Dee in The Dunwich Horror (1970).
Stockwell’s greatest strength is not only how easily he transitions from TV to film and back again, but how he can take the lead in (and inspire us to rent) a low-budget actioner, then show up in smaller roles in A-List films for Francis Ford Coppola (Gardens of Stone and The Rainmaker), William Freidkin (To Live and Die in L.A.), David Lynch (Dune, Blue Velvet), and Wolfgang Peterson (Air Force One). He is, simply put: Eric Roberts before Eric Roberts. Hell, he’s Bruce Campbell before Bruce Campbell. He’s the good actor you put in a bad movie — and he still gives us his all and “sells the role” to the home video masses.
Banzai Runner, while a commendable attempt to chronicle a factual event wrapped in a fictional tale (as with illegal street racing in The Fast and the Furious), failed in the home video market as result of its ambition-over budget. It became the only feature film writing credit for animation-scripter Phil Harnage, who is a “shooting fish in a barrel” type of writer when it comes to cartoons. You haven’t not seen his art work, which dates all the way back to Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert, along with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, The Adventures of Super Mario, G.I Joe, The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, and Double Dragon. In the producer and director’s chair is John G. Thomas, whose slight resume gave us not only Banzai Runner, but Dean Stockwell’s brother-in-arms, Michael Parks (Kill Bill: Vol. 1), in Arizona Heat (1988), starring alongside his cop-buddy Denise “Tasha Yar” Crosby (American Satan).
That’s how it goes in the B&S About Movies universe. Not everyone is destined for a television-to-theatrical career.
So Stockwell is Highway Patrolman Billy Baxter. And he’s worn out dealing with the rebel-rousing drunk gamblers on his Nevada stretch of highway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. But what really pisses him off is that the brass turned down his request to modify his police cruiser so he can keep up with the so called “Banzai Runners”: the unapprehendable, rich elitists who zip by him in their supercharged, high-powered Ferraris and Lamborghinis. Ah, but those speed demons aren’t speeding for kicks: they’re running drugs for Syszek — played by requisite screen villain Billy Drago (Hunter’s Blood, Invasion U.S.A).
Baxter eventually goes “Mad Max” when Syszek kills his brother and orphans his nephew, now in his care. So his mechanic buddy upgrades his cruiser (courtesy of the only other notable actor in the cast, Charles Dierkop, aka Det. Pete Royster from TV’s Police Woman; but remembered best for his work in Angels Hard as They Come, The Hot Box, Messiah of Evil, and Silent Night, Deadly Night). When the brass has enough and strips Baxter of his badge, he’s ripe for DEA recruitment to go undercover in the dark world of the “Banzai Runners” and take his revenge os Syszek. (Have you ever notice villains have cool, Euro-ethnic names with lots of consonants of the w, x, y, z variety? I guess Billy Drago as “Sam Miller” or “Joe Smith” doesn’t “ring true,” does it?)
Oh, by the way: This is the type of film where the cars don’t speed on the roads in real time: they acquire their “speed” in post-production via speeding up the film.
Yes. They’re fast and furious, indeed.
“Hey, wait! What about the trivia about Rocktober Blood and Down on Us?”
Oh, yeah, thanks for reminding me. So, Riba Meryl (passed away in 2007) stars here Donna, one of the film’s minor characters. Part of the Sunset Strip’s ’80s hair-metal scene, she came to co-write the faux-rock epic “Rainbow Eyes” with Sorcery’s Richard Taylor for Rocktober Blood — and was cast aside for fellow Las Vegas transplant Susie Rose Major to vocalize the tune as Lynn Staring. Prior to her second and final acting gig in Bonzai Runner — as result of her session work with Randy Nicklaus and Jerry Riopelle on the film’s never released soundtrack — she portrayed Janis Joplin in the speculative 1984 rock flick, Down on Us.
The soundtrack for Bonzai Runner features songs written and performed by Randy Nicklaus, who’s engineered records for Alias, Blondie, Contraband (aka Michael Schenker), INXS, Motley Crue, Vixen, and Yes; he also placed songs on the soundtracks to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and The Wraith. Detroit-born Jerry Riopelle and his band members, Joel Goldsmith and Kevin Dukes, have placed songs in projects as diverse as Crystal Heart, Hollywood Hot Tubs, and Paramedics. Sadly, we lost Jerry Riopelle in 2018. Goldsmith scores can be heard in Moon 44, Laserblast, and The Rift, and, most recently in the Stargate TV-universe.
You can watch — the one lone copy — of Banzai Runner for free on You Tube . . . and keep your eyes open for those 50 mph cars film-sped to 200 mph in the Arizona heat. Why yes, you can watch Arizona Heat on You Tube, and here’s the trailer to get you started, if you dare!
Ugh. A great soundtrack, but here’s only one tune isolated from the film on You Tube: “It’s Everything” by Jerry Riopelle. You can listen to more of his work on his You Tube page. There’s also a wealth of Randy Nicklaus’s work on You Tube.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes forB&S About Movies.
Sometimes, your quest for Mexican gold is fruitful. Other times, you discover movies like this, which translates as Night Killer. If you’re thinking — I bet this is a lot like a giallo, you’d be right. But it’s not all that great, I hate to report.
Actually, I take some of that back. Once you get past the cops — who are the most boring parts of any giallo, so director Fernado Duran Rojas gets that right. He also gets the blasting synth parts and lots of gruesome murders correct as well. Yes, that’s right. The same guy who made El Extrano Hijo del Sheriff, which is nuanced by comparison to this.
Edna Bolkan — who was Olivia, the heroine of Grave Robbers and also Don’t Panic right around the same time this was made — is the final girl. Actually, she played Olivia in Cemetery of Terror, too.
That said — if you’re getting into Mexican horror, I can think of a few better films. Same as if you’re looking for a giallo. Let me make the mistakes so you don’t have to.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This movie originally appeared on our site on October 29, 2018. As we’re covering Mexican films all week long, I feel like this is the perfect time to remind everyone how perfect and wonderful and special this little oddball film is.
The sequel to 1980’s Intrepidos Punks, this one ups the ante from the very first five minutes. After Tarzan (luchador El Fantasma, father to NXT star El Hijo del Fantasma) is freed from prison, he instantly gets revenge on the man who put him away, Marco (Juan Valentin) by interrupting the cop’s daughter’s quinceanera. His gang proceeds to rape and kill every single person there, leaving Marco alive so that he can be tormented by his loss.
Let me sum this up the best way I can: Tarzan and his gang look like the best Italian post-apocalyptic movie ever, if a Mexican wrestler led a gang that’s mostly made up of Japanese women wrestlers circa the Crush Girls era that had constant Satanic orgies. Tarzan even yells, “Long live death, cocaine, marijuana and alcohol!” at one point, sending me into ecstatic bliss.
Marco’s partner says that “We are all guilty. We are all accomplices. All of us!” Probably no one listened to the police chief when he claimed that the gang was only the tip of the iceberg at the end of the last film. Now, Marco is getting kicked off the force, slowly eating soup and planning his horrible vengeance on the gang.
This movie quite literally comes from inside my brain. It’s the only place where luchadors can lead Satanist drug gangs against an ex-cop willing to take things so far that he pours acid on people, all whilst a surf punk band jams out and curvy dancers gyrate to their completely offbeat (and off beat) performance. Everybody has aluminum foil on their spikes or metallic hair or is naked or has a bad dye job or looks likes the random dudes you beat up in Final Fight. Throw in a black mass where a goat is beheaded and devoured and you have the feel good movie of 1987!
The only thing I don’t like about this movie is its ending, which Roberto Ewing explains away the entire movie as one bad dream. Fuck that. If you just stop the movie right before that, all will be much better with your world. I also want there to be more movies in this series and am willing to Kickstart anything that attempts to make this happen.
Not to be confused with Beaks: The Novel, this movie is also known as El Ataque de los Pajaros (The Attack of the Birds), Birds of Prey,Evil Birds and Beaks: The Birds 2, which is some Bruno Mattei-level skullduggery.
It was directed by Rene Cardona Jr., who made King of the Gorillasafter King Kong, Tintorera after Jaws and Survive! after an Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes Mountain and ate one another. So what you need to know is that this is a filmmaker who only cares about entertaining you, not lawyers or the sensibilities of average folk. This is a guy who had so much fun making a film with cannibalism in it that he went back and did it again with Cyclone and got some Hollywood stars to go along for the ride.
Rene, I love your whole family. I love your father and his films. I love your son and his movies. And man, you know what’s up. I have no idea what you were trying to do here, but as a friend, I’m going to sit through it.
Michelle Johnson started her acting career leaving modelling behind and needing to meet with a judge before appearing topless at age 17 in Blame It On Rio. The rest of her career was spent in movies that I can instantly point to her being in, like Waxwork, Blood Ties, Dr. Giggles and the Andrew Stevens-directed Illicit Dreams.
She’s starring with another actor who got famous getting naked on a beach in some form of explotation magic kismet. Christopher Atkins was all of 19 when he appeared alongside Brooke Shields in The Blue Lagoon, playing cousins shipwrecked on an island who are destined to aggressively cuddle because it was 1980 and incest was seemingly everywhere (a cursory look at Pornhub says, nope, it hasn’t gone anywhere).
They both ended up on Dallas as well, with Johnson showing up in the TV movie Dallas: War of the Ewings and the rebooted 2000’s version, while Atkins played camp counselor Peter Richards for the 1983 season. He also had a singing career — “How Can I Live Without Her” peaked at #71 on the Billboard charts — and appeared in movies like Shakma, Mortuary Academyand The Little Unicorn before becoming a luxury pool builder and fishing lure inventor.
Here, the twosome play Vanessa, a television reporter, and Pete, her cameraman. They’re investigating stories of farmers being attacked by their chickens and then go to Spain to meet the survivors of similar attacks thirty years ago.
You have to give it to Cardona, because he realizes, “¡Hola, no soy Hitchcock!” and goes full gonzo, having children decimated by birds at a birthday party and a farmer and his wife killed by doves, the very symbol of peace.
Why are the birds doing this? Because they’re had enough with men and this time, it’s personal. As it always is, really.
Gabriele Tinti, who usually is in Joe D’Amato stuff like The Crawlers and Endgame, shows up here, uniting two of my favorite scummy movie worlds. Aldo Sambrell is also here, probably telling everyone at catering how many Sergio Leone movies he was in. I kid! They didn’t have a catering budget.
This movie still isn’t as bad as the Rick Rosenthal-directed The Birds II: Land’s End. That is such a small bar to trip over, however.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.