Add a bit of Gordon Mitchell, who played Colonel Morgan in Endgame, Dr. Frankenstein in Frankenstein ’80 and Igor in Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks.
Grab a recipe for a movie already made. Let’s say, FX. Make it in the Philippines with Jun Gallardo, using the American name John Gale.
Then — and most importantly — add some Linda Blair.
Mitchum plays Steve Baker, a special effects guy who gets drawn into the theft of a million dollars when he gives Doris, a prostitute/secretary for the mob a ride. If you are wonder, “Does Linda play the hooker?” then you’ve been paying attention to her roles in the late 1980’s.
The mob is at war with another mob, with Mitchell’s character Morgan in charge of it all. Well, sooner than you can say, “I saw this already with Bryan Brown,” Steve is using his movie skills to fool the criminals.
Christine Landson (who was in two other movies, Blood Hands and Desert Warrior as Sterraz Amazon, a name which I’m going to scream out loud while I drive home tonight) is in this as Steve’s wife, who gets kidnapped by the mob. They have an amazing sex scene that has her topless while buildings blow up real good all around them, which is pretty much the main reason I loved this movie so much.
There’s also a snake that shoots bullets, a home security system that simulates a haunted house and a tank made out of plywood. The movie ends as it should, with people running around with machine guns killing everyone in sight. Is it spoiling the movie if I tell you it ends sadly, with uplifting synth, but the bad guy gets blown up with a missile? Would it upset you to know that Linda dies 48:10 in?
This cover art is better than the movie.
I wonder what other movies are in the Prestige Collection?
I assure you: SFX Retaliator is a complete piece of shit. And I loved every single frame. Watch it for yourself.
This movie is why I work so hard on this site. The thrill of being awake at 3:26 AM on a school night, knowing I have to work all day tomorrow, but being rewarded with a movie that not only has Linda Blair armed with a crossbow, but also features Richard Lynch, an actor whose work continually elevates every film that he appeared in.
Lynch plays Bishop, a Vietnam vet turned mercenary who has come on board to train a team of college students — led by Blair as a senator’s daughter and Janes Van Patten — as the only people brave enough to rescue their friend from Central American terrorists led by Estoban.
Honestly, this movie would be pointless were it not for Lynch and Blair. He contributes a haunted performance as a man who has seen and done too much, now content to hide in Latin America, playing his flute and taking care of a monkey. No, I didn’t make that up. And Blair rises above the material, as always, showing plenty of feistiness and the ability to make headbands look good.
Plus, she’s on the soundtrack with this song:
Nightforce isn’t going to change your world. But when you can’t sleep, it’s going to be a warm blanket that will reward you with a comfortable journey back to a time and place when Communists could only be defeated by college students.
Oh yeah — Cameron Mitchell plays the senator, so this movie really does check the boxes of actors whose movies I’ll watch no matter what.
Y.K. Kim earned his black belt in taekwondo black belt at thirteen years of age, making him one of the youngest in all of his native Korea. He moved around the world to bring the message of martial arts to the people, from Buenos Aires and New York City to finally Orlando, where he’d set up his fighting empire with his school Martial Arts World and founding the American TaeKwon-Do Federation.
Then Kim met Korean film director Richard Park and they created Miami Connection, a movie that Kim funded with loans, money from friends, his life savings and by mortgaging his school. Sure, he’d never made a film before and had no idea what he was doing. He saw this as another way to get his message out to the people, but every major film distributors and several independent ones basically told him to throw it all away. He responded by spending another $100,000 to continue making the movie perfect.
In August of 1988, the movie opened in eight theaters around Greater Orlando and a few in West Germany, of all places. Even in his adopted hometown, the Orlando Sentinel said that it was the worst film of the year. Kim had thrown $1 million dollars into the film and nearly lost everything.
He continued to be a martial arts teaching success and also learned how to become a motivational speaker, all while ignoring any requests to discuss the film. However, in 2009, Alamo Drafthouse programmer Zack Carlson bought the film on eBay for just $50 and was amazed by what he had purchased. After struggling to connect with Kim — who continually hung up on him — he was finally able to convince him to let the movie play. The rest is history.
It all gets started with a cocaine deal being interrupted by ninjas led by the evil Yashito, who steal the drugs and take it back to Orlando to party it up. Of course, one of them forgets the money and gets killed. Yashito is not to be trifled with.
Meanwhile, Jeff — who leads a gang of scarf and bandana-wearing camouflage loving bikers that are friends with the ninjas — watches his sister Jane play on stage with the band Dragon Sound. He’s not happy.
I have no idea why — Dragon Sound are the coolest 80’s soft rock hair metal funk band that does martial arts to ever exist. Yes, this ethnically diverse group of five men are all best friends — trust me, they wrote a song about it — as well as roommates, University of Central Florida students, Taekwondo masters and, yes, orphans. They are John, who comes from Ireland and plays bass when he’s not falling in love with Jane. Jack is the drummer and he’s from Israel. Jim is half Korean and half African American, but all kick ass and loves to dibble dabble on the keyboards. Tom didn’t get the J naming convention, but he sings, looks like John Oates and comes from Italy. Their father figure is Mark, the Korean rhythm guitarist and Y.K. Kim himself.
Jeff and Mark get into a fight that’s interrupted by another band who are angry that the owner of the club replaced them with Dragon Sound. They are easily defeated. The film that descends into a series of either music videos, fights, training footage or long scenes of people opening their mail. Please don’t take that as a read that I hated this. Quite the contrary.
After Jeff and his gang are all killed by Dragon Sound, Yashito and his ninjas attempt revenge. Jim just wants to get to the airport to meet up with his deadbeat dad, but he’s nearly killed. No worries, though. Dragon Sound easily — and at times messily — kill all of the ninjas, because murder is obviously not a crime in Miami (to be fair, Y.K. Kim was so well-known and beloved in Orlando, the local government and law enforcement allowed him to film anywhere in the city without permits).
Hardly anyone involved ever made a movie again. Which is a shame, because this movie is true innocence, the glory of making something even though you really have no clue. It succeeds in spite of itself and features songs that will get stuck in your head for, well, forever. Songs like “Friends,” “Against the Ninja” and “Tough Guys.” I waited a long time to see this and my life is better from having sat through it.
You can watch this on Amazon Prime with and without riffing by Rifftrax. Plus, you can learn even more of the story with this documentary from Vice.
Set in literally the end of the world, the New York City of Bernard Goetz and daily murder and street crime, Street Trash is pure scum, a movie where bodies melt just as easily as morality is thrown in the garbage.
Writer Roy Frumkes, who also was behind all three of The Substitute movies said, “I wrote it to democratically offend every group on the planet, and as a result the youth market embraced it as a renegade work, and it played midnight shows.”
Before Greenpoint in Brooklyn was the home of hipsters, it was the home of a liquor store where a 60-year-old case of Tenafly Viper is found. Even though it’s gone more than spoiled, hobos want to buy it, even if it causes them to melt. Meanwhile, two brothers try to survive on the streets amongst all the murders and a deranged Vietnam vet named Bronson who is on the loose.
This is the only movie I’ve ever seen where someone plays keep away with a severed penis. And the f word is uttered 128 times. So I guess it has that going for it.
Vic Noto, who played Bronson, was lost as they filmed this. “I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, nor did I ever understand who Bronson was. I did scene by scene not even knowing what the movie was about. I didn’t read the script until three months after it was wrapped. I still don’t know who Bronson was”.
Someone once said that this is the most Troma movie that Troma never made. So if that sounds like your bag of goo, then you should check this out on Shudder with and without commentary by Joe Bob Briggs.
This movie was requested by my friend for life Adam Cicco, the only person I know that could fall asleep during Independence Day, one of the loudest movies I’ve ever seen in a theater. That said, I dozed during an incredibly loud Fantomas show once, so I get it.
The Monster Squad is a pre-teenager club of monster kids who find themselves in the midst of a battle against the very monsters they idolize. It’s everything I wanted to happen in my life before — and after — puberty. It was written by Shane Black and Fred Dekker and directed by Dekker, who was also behind Night of the Creeps.
The Monster Squad is Sean, Patrick, Eugene, Pete the dog and Horace, as well as Sean’s sister Phoebe, who keeps trying to join. I love how their clubhouse has a poster for Fulci’s Zombie!
They find the diary of Van Helsing, but can’t translate it from German until they finally talk to the owner of the scariest house in the neighborhood (Leonardo Cimino, who famously ended the first night of the miniseries V by spraypainting the red logo over the Visitors’ poster).
It turns out that there’s an amulet composed of concentrated good that keeps the monsters from getting too strong. For some reason, one day out of every century, the forces of good and evil reach a balance. That’s when the otherwise indestructible amulet can be destroyed. Also, by coincidence, that is in a few days and the kids are the ones who have to find the amulet and use it to send the monsters to Limbo.
Van Helsing had tried this a hundred years ago, but his old enemy Dracula survived. Van Helsing’s students hid the amulet in the United States, so the monster puts together his team of evil to get it back. There’s the Mummy, a Gillman, three teenage girls that Dracula transforms into his brides and a reanimated Frankenstein’s Monster (Tom Noonan!), all of whom he uses to get the amulet.
The Monster ends up meeting up with Phoebe and becoming a good guy. Even the Wolfman (Jon Gries!) isn’t too into the cause, as he calls the police to try to get them to help when he’s in human form.
The kids eventually go one-on-one with the very monsters they’ve grown up loving. This movie is packed with great special effects and has grown to inspire plenty of movie lovers, the same way that it was inspired by Universal horror movies. In fact, many people feel that this is the best version of Dracula ever.
While not a critical or commercial success, The Monster Squad has become a cult classic. Platinum Dunes was going to remake it at one point, but luckily that never came to pass. The end of this film, where Frankenstein willingly goes into the portal makes me as sad as the end of Son of Kong every single time that I see it.
Bonis: Listen to us talk about this movie after seeing it as the drive-in.
The Kentucky Fried Movie is one of my favorite films of all time. It’s one of my wife’s least. She feels exactly the same way about this spiritual sequel, which is packed with tons of talent doing stupid things stuck in even more stupid situations. Blame the five different directors: Joe Dante, Carl Gottlieb, Peter Horton, John Landis and Robert K. Weiss.
The title of this movie refers to its film-within-a-film, which is a takeoff of the movies Queen of Outer Space, Cat-Women of the Moon, Fire Maidens from Outer Space and Forbidden Planet. The structure of the film is someone watching WIDB-TV (channel 8) as it plays the film, which stars Sybil Danning as the queen of the moon, along with volcanos and giant spiders. That alone is enough to make me love this movie.
Here’s how the movie breaks down:
Mondo Condo: John Landis directed this segment, which has Arsenio Hall having a bad day.
Pethouse Video: This segment, by Carl Gottlieb who wrote the first two Jaws movies, is often cut from TV airings. That’s because it’s wall to wall nudity, courtesy of Monique Gabrielle (who is also in Deathstalker II and Evil Toons). There’s also a version where she’s in lingerie.
Murray in Videoland: Robert K. Weiss co-created the show Sliders and convinced Landis and Aykroyd not to quit The Blues Brothers. Here, he directs as an old man’s new remote takes him through a series of shows. Look for Phil Hartman in this part!
Hospital: This Landis-directed segment is packed with stars, such as Michelle Pfieffer, Peter Horton and Grinnin Dunne.
Hairlooming: This Dante-helmed commercial has Joe Pantoliano in it!
Amazon Women on the Moon: The main segment of this film, this has Steve Forrest (the star of S.W.A.T. and Mommie Dearest‘s Greg Savitt), John Travolta’s older brother Joey, Lana Clarkson (Barbarian Queen and Phil Spector murder victim), the aforementioned Danning (who we can mention as many times as possible) and Forrest J. Ackerman as the President of the United States. If you’ve watched any 1950’s science fiction, you’ll get all of the jokes.
Blacks Without Soul: Three years before In Living Color, David Alan Grier plays Don ‘No Soul’ Simmons, a man who literally has no rhythm.
There’s also Two I.D.s with Rosanna Arquette and Steve Guttenberg, Bullshit or Not with Henry Silva, Critics’ Corner with Joe Dante favorite Belinda Balaski, Groundling Archie Hahn and LA radio personalities Barkley and Lohman, food commercial Silly Pate, the saga of the Video Pirates with Blacula himself, William Marshall and even a takeoff of the Invisible Man with Ed Begley, Jr.
I love the longer sequence where Rip Tayor, Jackie Vernon, Slappy White, Henny Youngman, Charlie Callas and Steve Allen roast the dearly departed Harvey Pitnik. Balaski shows back up, as does a young Bryan Cranston as a paramedic and Robert Picardo. If you notice that several of these names show up often in Joe Dante films, that’s because he was behind this part.
There are also spots for a French Ventriloquist’s Dummy with Dick Miller (again, Dante directing), an Art Sale, a commercial for First Lady of the Evening, the Titan condom company giving an award for the millionth customer (Ralph Bellamy is awesome in this, as is Howard Hesseman and Kelly Preston), a Video Date gone wrong between Marc McClure (Jimmy Olsen from Superman and Marty’s older brother in the Back to the Future movies), Connie Wahl (wife of Ken and a noted Tarot card reader today) and a pre-fame Andrew “Dice” Clay (look for Russ Meyer as the video store owner) and finally, after the credits, there’s a health film about V.D. called Reckless Youth that stars noted character actor Herb Vigran, pro wrestler Mike Mazurki, Carrie Fisher and another man who may be the patron saint of our website, Paul Bartel.
I love this movie. I don’t care that critics — or my wife — hate it. I don’t care that some say that it’s the beginning of the end of Landis’ career. It makes me laugh out loud every single time that I watch it. What other movie would have video pirates steal a bunch of unreleased movies, one of them being Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind years before people discussed that movie or made documentaries about it?
Paul Andolina is back for another movie! His site Wrestling with Film is a lot of fun and he always sends me reviews of movies that I’ve never seen before!
In 2013 I watched Rigor Mortis, a more serious take on the Chinese Hopping Vampire films of the 80’s. Goeng-si are a type of reanimated corpse, dressed in traditional garb that hop around and suck people’s life force out. Discovering this movie had me searching high and low for other movies that featured Goeng-si. Unfortunately, they aren’t the easiest things to find on streaming platforms and most are very expensive on DVD. I did, however, find a movie called The Haunted Cop Shop, although it features a vampire it is not of the hopping variety. I watched it, often thinking about it but not revisiting it until Sam’s horror comedy week was announced.
I decided to re-watch The Haunted Cop Shop on Asian Crush, a streaming service that offers fare from most Asian countries, for horror comedy week because it left such an impression on me. It’s about Kim Macky, and Man Chiu, a pair of non-typical cops who accidentally get a perpetrator killed while he is in their custody. The police station is on the site of a former Japanese clubhouse that was the site of tragedy when the Japanese occupation ended during World War II and a general named Issei and his constituents commit suicide there. Turns out Issei has become a vampire ghost and has come to haunt the station again during the Hungry Ghost Festival when the gates of hell open.
Kim Macky and Man Chiu turn their perp sneaky Ming into a pile of ash after he is bitten by Issei, a vampire ghost dressed in a costume more akin to Dracula than any vampires featured in Chinese folklore. Sneaky Ming is a known thief, to get him to confess that he stole a diamond crucifix the on duty officers stage a fake haunting with Man Chiu as a headless ghost to get Ming to use the crucifix. Their commanding officer does not believe their story about Ming and the ghost and they are given 48 hours to find him.
Most of the comedy in this film is either slapstick, or potty humor, but it really works. It’s not only funny but it is pretty dang spooky as well. The ghosts and vampires in the film are scary looking and the film uses its sets to great effect to create an unsettling atmosphere. This is used extremely effectively during the fake haunting the cops use to scare Ming. The special effects for the vampires are gross as well and I couldn’t help but love the whole feel of the movie.
The interactions between Jacky Cheung who plays Kim Macky and Ricky Hui who plays Man Chiu along with their newly appointed officer, Madam Fanny Ho, played by the attractive actress, Kitty Chan, really bring this film to life. It spawned a sequel which I haven’t been able to purchase yet. It is also of note that this film is an early outing by Wong Kar Wai, a director known for his films Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, here co-writing the script for the film and having a small cameo as a ghost in a sequence with sneaky Ming,
I don’t want to say too much about the movie as I really want you to seek it out for yourself and experience it. It can be watched for free with commercials on Asian Crush’s website or on the streaming app available on most platforms.
Jeremy Capello (Robert Sean Leonard, Dead Poets Society) is a teenager in Houston who may have the attention of the school’s hottest girl, Candy, but he really has a strange crush on band geek Darla. Dude, I get it. I would feel the same way. But he also has a vampire woman named Nora (Cecilia Peck, the daughter of Gregory) who keeps infiltrating his dreams. What is a boy to do?
It turns out that Nora is real and one fateful night, spurred on by the advice of his friend Ralph, he ends up in her bed. She bites him just as vampire hunters Professor Leopold McCarthy (David Warner!) and his assistant Grimsdyke (Paul Willson, one of the Bobs from Office Space) burst in and chase him off. I wonder if the assistant is named for Peter Cushing’s character in Tales from the Crypt?
Soon, Jeremy is a full-fledged vampire, complete with an undead guidance counselor named Modoc (René Auberjonois). He still tries to win over Darla, but between his new condition and constantly being chased by those two vampire hunters, that won’t be all that easy.
I learned from this movie that Whole Foods was big in Houston all the way back in 1987 and also had a section where vampires could buy canned pigs blood, which also comes in a light version, as well as bottled like wine.
Also, Jeremy’s parents instantly jump to the worry that he’s gay and not a vampire. They’re played by Kenneth Kimmins and Fannie Flagg. Kimmins has been on Arrested Development and Curb Your Enthusiasm, but Kimmins career has really soared after being in this movie, as she wrote the book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which of course became a blockbuster film. Another actor that went on to bigger things after this film is Kathy Bates, who shows up in a bit role as Darla’s mom.
This isn’t the best vampire film you’ve ever seen, but it moves quickly and has some laughs. If you’d like to see a vampire try and eat pizza with garlic on it, it’s the movie for you. The director behind this, Jimmy Huston, who also wrote and directed the Halloween ripoff that is Final Exam (1981), got his start with drive-in purveyor Earl Owensby, with a priest on a Death Wish tear in Dark Sunday (1976).
The beauty of 1987’s Dragnet is that you can tell that Dan Aykroyd is having the time of his life. “I’ve had a fascination with Joe Friday since I was a kid. Next to Clouseau, he’s the most famous cop in the world. I’ve studied his speech inflections, his mannerisms, his walk. During filming, I’d listen to tapes of the old shows. I even started dreaming in character. If there was ever a character I’d always wanted to play, it was this. I’m a huge fan of Jack Webb’s. I basically just love everything he did. Dragnet was something I’d always wanted to do, but I never thought the opportunity would come up, because I didn’t know who owned the rights to the idea. When Universal called and said they were interested in doing it, I think I made a deal to write the script the next week.”
A lifelong fan of cops, Aykroyd is a former reserve commander for the Harahan, Louisiana police department. He currently serves as a Reserve Deputy of the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department in Hinds County, Mississippi, who he supports with charitable endeavors.
In the film, he’s playing Joe Friday, the nephew of the original series character played by Jack Webb. Harry Morgan reprises his role from the television series as Bill Gannon, but now he’s the captain. And Friday’s new partner is Pep Streebek, played by Tom Hanks, and there’s no way they can get along.
It turns out some strange things have been stolen — the entire print run of the latest issue of Bait Magazine, published by Jerry Caesar (Dabney Coleman) as well as several animals and the mane of a lion.
Friday and Streebek discover that P.A.G.A.N. (People Against Goodness and Normalcy) is behind it all and Caesar’s limo driver Emil Muzz (Jack O’Halloran, Non from the Superman films) is a member. They follow him to a ritual where a masked leader is about to sacrifice the virgin Connie Swail (Alexandra Paul from TV’s Baywatch), who Friday saves and falls in love with.
However, Police Commissioner Jane Kirkpatrick is taken to the scene of the crime which is completely cleaned up. Our heroes are on thin ice already with a dinner at the Brown Derby leads to Connie accusing Reverend Jonathan Whirley of being the P.A.G.A.N. leader, which gets Joe kicked off the force.
Will Joe get back on the job? Can he save the virgin Connie? Will he and Pep ever get along? All of these questions will be answered with just the facts, ma’am.
The script was written by Dan Aykroyd and Alan Zweibel, who had worked together on Saturday Night Live. Tom Mankiewicz was brought in to direct. He’d previously written movies like Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun, Supermanand Ladyhawke, but this was the first movie he’d ever directed (his only other movie effort was 1991’s Delirious). He was also well known as script doctor and had been credited with saving several films. He was also the creative consultant for TV’s Hart to Hart!
Aykroyd is fabulous in this, with critic Gene Siskel saying that he deserved an Academy Award nomination for his acting. Hanks is, as always, really good. I love the part where he mentioned that Connie’s house looked like it was TV’s Leave It to Beaver, yet it’s his house from The ‘Burbs.
This movie has some ridiculous attention to detail, like Henry Morgan’s desk having the same photo of his wife from TV’s M*A*S*H* and Friday smoking Chesterfield cigarettes, who sponsored the Dragnet radio show. It’s also a total blast.
I always worry and think, “What is left? Have I truly exhausted the bounds of cinema? Have I seen all there is that is left to see? Will nothing ever really surprise and delight me ever again?” Then I watched Iron Warrior and holy shit you guys — this movie is mindblowing.
Alfonso Brescia made a bunch of Star Trek-inspired Star Wars ripoffs in the late 70’s, like Cosmos: War Of the Planets, Battle Of the Stars, War Of the Robots and Star Odyssey. Before that, he was known for working in the peblum genre with entries such as The Magnificent Gladiator and The Conquest of Atlantis. And some maniacs out there may know him from his Star Wars clone cover version of Walerian Borowczyk’s The Beast — complete with the same actress, Sirpa Lane — called The Beast in Space.
Today, though, we’re here to discuss Brescia taking over the reins of Ator from Joe D’Amato after Ator the Fighting Eagle and Ator 2: The Blade Master. I expected another muddy cave dwelling movie livened up only by nukes and hang gliders. What I received was a movie where a frustrated artist was struggling to break free.
This movie goes back to the beginning of Ator’s life, where we discover that his twin brother was taken at a young age. Now, our hero travels to Dragor (really the Isle of Malta) to do battle with a sorceress named Phaedra (Elisabeth Kazaand, who was in the aforementioned The Beast) her unstoppable henchman, the silver skulled, red bandana wearing Trogar (Franco Daddi, who was the stunt coordinator for both Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and The Curse), who is the Iron Master of the Sword.
Princess Janna (Savina Gersak, who was in War Bus Commando) and Ator (the returning Miles O’Keefe) join forces and man, Janna’s makeup and hair is insane. She has what I can only describe as a ponytail mohawk and has makeup that wouldn’t be out of place on the Jem and the Holograms cartoon.
Imagine, if you will, a low budget sword and sorcery film that has MTV style editing, as well as gusts of wind, constant dolly shots and nausea inducing zooms. It’s less a narrative film as it is a collection of images, sword fights and just plain weirdness. Like Deeva (Iris Peynado, who you may remember as Vinya, the girl who hooks up with Fred Williamson in Warriors of the Wasteland) saying that she created both Ator and Trogar to be tools of justice? This movie completely ignores the two that came before — and the one that follows it — and I am completely alright with all of it!
Supposedly, D’Amato hated this movie. Lots of people hate on it online, too. Well, guess what? They’re wrong. This is everything that I love about movies and proved to me that there is still some cinematic magic left in the world to find.
How about this for strange trivia? When they made the Conan the Adventurer series in 1997, Ator’s sword was repainted and used as the Sword of Atlantis!
As far as I know, Iron Warrior has NEVER been released on DVD, much less blu ray. But you can watch a great looking version for free with commercials on VUDU.
UPDATE: RoninFlix has released this. I bought it and forgot to update this post! Thanks to Countess Anya Sanguina on Letterboxd.
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