It seems like the strategy of many Linda Blair vehicles has been to pair her with someone else and then make me wonder, “What would it be like if Linda Blair battled Sybil Danning?” Or Sylvia Kristel. Or Julie Strain. Or here, as the case may be, Sam J. Jones, nearly a half-decade removed from the role he’s known best for, Flash Gordon.
Here’s the truth: all you had to do was say Sam J. Jones and Linda Blair in the same sentence and my movie sense would be alerted. In fact, if you have a DVD of this movie, there’s a good chance I’ll materialize in your living room to watch it with you.
An evil criminal leader named Kendrick (Gustav Vintas, who played the prison warden in Madonna’s video for “Express Yourself”) has kidnapped Dr. London (Bill Erwin a character actor who you’ll recognize when you see him; he was the original voice of Grandpa Longneck in the Land Before Time movies. Curiously, his IMDB bio informs us that he loved county fairs and was cremated, which I guess is nice to know), a biochemist who he orders to make a biological superweapon.
Only LA cop Sam Kettle (Jones) and martial arts master Jun Kim can stop the villain and his army of ninjas. Also: Mako (The Wizard from Conan the Barbarian) shows up. And for those of you that enjoy the Gor films — I see you hiding out there — Talena from those movies, Rebecca Ferratti, is also in Silent Assassins. And while we’re piling on the stars of movies that are only stars to maniacs like me, Phillip Rhea — Tommy Lee from the Best of the Best series — also makes an appearance.
So where does Linda Blair fit in? She’s Sara, Sam’s girlfriend who he’s either bickering with or trying to protect. Both she and Jones are prominently featured on the poster, but she’s barely in the film.
Just so you know, the top review for this on Amazon says, “Suppose if you are a Blair completist who HAS to have every movie she’s ever been in, this will be of use. Otherwise, avoid.” Guess what, buddy? I did anything but avoid this movie.
Following the success of Ghostbusters, Ivan Reitman produced and directed this buddy comedy that starts with the most simple of what if ideas: what if Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger were twin brothers? That ridiculous premise fuels the entire enterprise.
The big winners of this film — beyond the audience — were its two stars. Schwarzenegger and DeVito both agreed o take 20% of the film’s box office returns instead of an actual salary. Seeing that this movie made around $216 million at the box office, they did really well — around $35 million each.
Supposedly, Schwarzenegger and DeVito were given the option of doing this movie or Suburban Commando. The stars chose this film instead, so Hulk Hogan and Christopher Lloyd did that film. Interviews say that the cast would have switched movies otherwise, but I’d ascribe that to Hogan’s carny BS interview skills.
But hey — let’s get to the movie already. Julius (Schwarzenegger) and Vincent (DeVito) Benedict are the twin result of a genetics experiment to create the perfect child. Julius is all of the good and Vincent pretty much all the bad. Whereas Julius is raised pretty much exactly like Doc Savage, his brother grows up in an orphanage where he seduces nuns and learns how to be a hustler.
As they say, hijinks ensue when the two finally meet, including love with sisters played by Kelly Preston and Chloe Webb. There’s also a car that has an advanced fuel injection system that’s wanted by industrialist Beetroot McKinley and the supremely evil driver and killing machine Mr. Webster (Marshall Bell, the human host for Kuato in Total Recall).
Keep your eyes peeled for a young David Caruso, as well as Jeff Beck and Tony Bozzio as band members in a bar scene.
Sven-Ole Thorsen — who played Thorgrim in Conan the Barbarian and who shows up in nearly every Arnold movie — is in this as one of the Klane brothers. His resume is all over the place in awesome ways. He’s the demon in the Bruce Lee bio Dragon, he’s La Fours in Mallrats and along with playing numerous thugs and henchmen, has been in an open relationship with Grace Jones since 1990.
Other notables in Twins — well, at least to this site — include Shang Tsung actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Elizabeth Kaitan (Robin from Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood and Candy from the Vice Academy series of movies), Criterion Collection co-founder Joe Medjuck, singer Nicolette Larson (who briefly dated Weird Al) and Robert Harper, who is in The Crate part of Creepshow.
There’s been talk of a sequel called Triplets that would team Schwarzenegger and DeVito with Eddie Murphy as their long lost brother. Here’s hoping that happens as this is a fun little film that is continually enjoyable to revisit.
If there’s anything the late 80’s were known for, it was pre-millennial tension. Well, that and Demi Moore being a star. This one concerns a series of phenomena that seem to be the signs of the apocalypse, including sea life being boiled in Haiti and the Middle East freezing. Each time, a mysterious man opens a sealed envelope, unlocking the seals of the end of all things. What does Bruce Willis’ wife — at the time — have to do with all of this?
The Vatican asks Father Lucci to investigate these strange happenings, as they believe that they’re hoaxes or have some simple explanation. Meanwhile, Abby Quinn (Moore) is struggling through a difficult pregnancy. Hee husband Russell (Michael Biehn, forever Kyle Reese and Hicks) is in the midst of representing a boy with Down syndrome who murdered his incestuous parents because of what God taught him. And oh yeah — a man named David Bannon (Jurgen Prochnow, Sutter Cane from In the Mouth of Madness) has come to live with them and she instantly has visions of him being beaten down by a soldier who asks, “Would you die for him?”
Abby learns from David that God’s grace is empty and soon, no new souls will remain to be given to babies. So she does what any of us would do and stabs him, but he “cannot die again” because he’s the Second Coming of Jesus and she’s been having dreams of the last time she saw him die, back when she was Seraphia, the woman who offered Jesus water. It turns out that Father Lucci was Cartaphilus, one of Pontious Pilate’s men who struck the Son of God, and he’s been cursed to walk the Earth until Jesus returns to judge the human race. He wants the end of the world to happen so he can be free of that curse.
Abby is unable to stop the fifth sign — the tortured death of a martyr for God’s cause — which is her husband’s client being executed. Lucci kills the boy and wounds Abby, which leads to an eclipse and earthquake. In the hospital, her baby is stillborn — the seventh sign, the birth of a soulless child — until she remembers her past life and reaches out to give her own life to her child. And that’s the happy ending, but man, it sure doesn’t feel that way. Jesus appears in the hospital to tell her husband that Abby’s sacrifice has refilled the Hall of Souls, saving the world.
My wife loves this movie and put it on during a Sunday afternoon where I was exhausted and struggled through it, leading to some absolutely horrific napping dreams. I’d recommend you’re fully awake for this instead of making my mistake.
Killing is an art form. That’s what the Professor — returning from Sidaris’ film Seven— says before giving our heroes a ton of weapons. They’re gonna need them after double agent Picasso Trigger is assassinated in Paris by even more duplicitous big bad Miguel Ortiz (Rodrigo Obregon, who shows up in plenty more Andy Sidaris films). Now, he’s after anyone who worked for the Agency in the wake of his brother’s death.
Sadly, there’s no Cody or Rowdy Abeline around. Travis, another relative, appears. However, Donna (Dona Speir), Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton) and Edy (Cynthia Brimhall) are back, joined by November 1984 Playmate of the Month Roberta Vasquez as Pantera, Guich Koock as L.G. Abilene, Bruce Penhall from CHiPs as Hondo, Patty Duffek as Pattycakes and Kym Malin as Kym (hey, they can’t all be crazy names).
It’s an Andy Sidaris film, so none of the good guys can shoot a gun to save their lives, there’s a cane that shoots both shotgun and mortar rounds, exploding boomerangs and RC cars, as well as more showers than anyone has ever taken in 99 minutes.
They don’t make movies like this anymore. I’m not sure who else — other than probably me — wants to see James Bond-esque spy adventure with wacky gizmos while everyone is in Speedos and spandex. I know it’s silly and yet I love this film as one does a childhood friend who has never grown up and moved out of their mother’s house. Actually, more films today should look to be as entertaining as this.
Plus, how great of a title is Picasso Trigger? It just begs you to watch whatever it is.
Somebody, somewhere, probably in South Africa where this was made, thought that Space Mutiny was a good idea. Certainly, it has an all-star cast (well, for me). It has great special effects (stolen from Battlestar Galactica). And it has…well, nothing else going for it. I really can’t even fathom how anyone looked at the final results and said, “Cut. Print. Magic.”
This entire movie takes place on the Southern Sun, a generation ship that carries a large number of families on their way to colonize a new world. For over thirteen generations, it has seen people live and die who will never leave the walls of the ship until it reaches its destination.
The fact that he’ll never leave the ship and see another planet doesn’t feel right to Elijah Kalgan (Danger: Diabolik star John Philip Law!). Along with the ship’s Chief Engineer and some space pirates, he uses the ship’s police group, the Enforcers, to hijack the Southern Sun and take it toward another system. Hence, a Space Mutiny.
As all of this is happening, an important professor is about to visit the ship. He dies as his shuttle lands, but his pilot, Dave Ryder (Reb Brown, who is Yor, Hunter from the Future!) survives. For weeks, Kalgan takes over the ship while the flight deck is sealed off. But Commander Jansen (Cameron Mitchell!) has a plan. Ruder and Jansen’s daughter Dr. Lea Jansen (Cisse Cameron, whose first movie was Billy Jack) will take back the ship.
Yes, this is a Star Wars ripoff bold enough to call a female character Lea and have her look pretty much exactly like Debbie Reynolds. It’s also rife with errors, supposedly because its original director, Dave Winters, was called away because of a death in the family. Winters also directed the filmed concert of Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare, The Last Horror Film with Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro and, of course, Thrashin’, a movie that was constantly checked out of my local video store.
For example, the engineering areas of the ship were filmed in an industrial building with very 1980’s looking brick walls and concrete floors. The bridge? That should look high tech, right? Nope. It literally looks like an office cubicle farm. And while the guys wear silver or white jumpsuits, the ladies for some reason all get to wear spandex camel toe creations.
Why should we be upset that one of the officers, Lt. Lemont, is dramatically killed off in a scene when she shows up just fine in the very next one? And be on the look out for that Lorne Greene cameo via a stock shot of the bridge! Truly, Space Mutiny is a movie above such concerns. I mean, how do you can explain a ship that is in space, but the windows show blue skies outside?
Cameron Mitchell made this one a family affair, with his daughter Camille Mitchell doing the voice for an alien named Jennara and his son Chip is in this as Blake, a mustachioed member of Kalgan’s gang.
You have to see Space Mutiny to believe it. You can watch it on Amazon Prime, or choose to see it with either Mystery Science Theater 3000or Rifftrax commentary.
Everybody got really excited about Horror Comedy Week and had plenty of requests, so many that I’ve worked on this second week of films. This one was requested by Adam Cicco, who I’ve been friends with a long time and was on our World Series of Pop Culture team when we tried out for the VH1 show. That’s a story for another time.
Joe Piscopo was a big deal in the 1980’s. He and Eddie Murphy were the only two members of the 1980 cast of Saturday Night Live to stay on after Dick Ebersol took it over. His impressions of Frank Sinatra were his calling card and even the Chairman of the Board loved what Joe did with him. Supposedly, he got so into the character that he’d refuse to do certain sketches, saying “Frank wouldn’t do that.”
After leaving in 1984, he had a comedy special, released an album and started appearing in movies, notably as Danny Vermin in Johnny Dangerously and Moe Dickstein in Wise Guys. Dead Heat comes near the end of him being a movie star, although he’s appeared in several more in the past few decades. He now supports Donald Trump and has a radio show in New York City.
But let’s talk about Dead Heat, a movie that horror fans truly don’t remember.
Detectives Roger Mortis (Treat Williams) and Doug Bigelow (Piscopo) start the film in the midst of a violent jewel robbery. For some reason, the criminals take bullet after bullet and survive, which means that the guys have to go extreme to defeat them. After a trip to the morgue, they learn that the criminals already had autopsy scars and records. There’s also a harrowing trip to a Chinatown butcher shop where barbecued corpses of animals come back to violent life. Look for pro wrestler Professor Toru Tanaka in this scene!
The detectives meet with the PR person of Dante Laboratories, Randi James, and get a tour of the labs. As Doug encounters a reanimated biker, Roger is knocked into a decompression room (used to humanely kill animals used in testing) and dies. One of the doctors in the lab, Doctor Rebecca Smythers, and Doug use the machine to bring Roger back from the dead.
Now, our hero has no heartbeat, his skin is cold to the touch and he’ll be a puddle of gore in 12 hours. Plenty of time to close this case.
Roger goes to Randi’s house where two thugs attack them. She explains to him that she’s the daughter of a rich industrialist, Arthur P. Laudermilk (Vincent Price!). After learning that he can either save his life or solve the crime, Roger goes to get more clues. At Laudermilk’s tomb, Randi reveals that she isn’t really his daughter, but his protege.
When they get back to Randi’s home, Doug has been killed, drowned upside down in a fishbowl. This movie suddenly has taken a super dark turn that surprised me, but it’s not done yet. Randi looks at Roger as she begins to decompose, as she was one of the first experiments. Seriously, this scene totally took me by surprise. I didn’t expect two of the main characters to violently be destroyed like this. It’s not pretty and it really breaks what had been a funny buddy cop movie with supernatural elements up until this point.
Roger confronts the head coroner Dr. Ernest McNab (Darren McGavin!) who ends up getting the upper hand on our hero and locking him in an ambulance with Dr. Rebecca’s dead body. Man, everyone is getting killed! Our hero emerges from this trap looking like a scarred up zombie.
He makes his way to the hospital, where McNab and a resurrected Laudermilk are auctioning off the resurrection machine to the highest bidder. Almost everyone dies, but McNab reveals his final boss: a reanimated Doug, who is now an obedient zombie. Roger somehow restores his memory and they hook up McNab to the machine and he promptly explodes. Laudermilk begs them to use the machine to stay alive forever, but they destroy it and wonder if they’ll be reincarnated in the dark conclusion.
Writer Terry Black, who created the Red Steel video games, was approached by New World Pictures to write a sequel, but he wondered how, as everyone was dead. They responded, “You’ve got a resurrection machine… you figure it out.” No sequel has been made.
Director Mark Goldblatt would go on to direct the Dolph Lundgren The Punisher in 1989 before moving on to be an editor. He’s worked on everything from the Terminator movies, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Chappie, Pearl Harbor, Showgirls and True Lies.
Dead Heat is a weird movie. It’s funny in parts, shocking in others and isn’t afraid to hit you with plenty of gore. There are lots of cool cameos too, like Martha Quinn as a reporter, Linnea Quigley as a zombie stripper, Shane Black as a cop, pro wrestler “Judo” Gene LeBell as a guard, Dick Miller as another security guard, Keye Luke as a Chinatown gangster, Robert Picardo as a lieutenant and Mel Stewart from All in the Family as the police captain.
I’m kind of obsessed with young James Spader. Let’s face it, in movies like The New Kidsand Tuff Turf he exuded either a coked-up menace or hardscrabble heart that’s hard to beat. Here, he plays two roles. First, he’s a young doctor that becomes a suspect in a series of Jack the Ripper copycat murders. But then he dies — and his twin brother may or may not be the true killer.
Written and directed by Pittsburgh native Rowdy Herrington (Roadhouse, Striking Distance), this film also stars Cynthia Gibb (the TV version of Fame), Jim Haynie (the dockmaster from The Fog), character actor Robert Picardo and Rod Loomis (Zed from The Beastmaster).
Herrington wanted the movie to be titled Red Rain and for the Peter Gabriel song to be in the film. However, this was his low budget debut, he couldn’t get the rights, so he had a song composed called “Red Harvest,” which sounds exactly like the Gabriel ditty. However, the studio felt that the title had nothing to do with the movie, so they renamed it.
The story isn’t any great shakes: the good twin has found one of the victims before becoming one himself, while the troubled brother becomes the prime suspect. It’s also one of those movies packed with red herrings and endings that aren’t endings. So it’s kinda sorta an American giallo — minus the black gloves, inventive camerawork, fashion and neon colors. But the story — where a protagonist is dragged into a situation that he must investigate himself — comes off that way. And despite all the things I’ve said above, I ended up enjoying this one.
Spader is great — he always is — and you have to wonder about Cynthia Gibb’s character. It seems weird for the same woman to be involved with two brothers, but I guess identical twins makes that a little easier, if no less creepy.
After Easy Money, Saturday Night Live veteran James Signorelli directed one more film. This one — starring Cassandra Peterson as her Elvira character.
In 1981, six years after Sinister Seymour, the producers of LA’s Fright Night decided to do another show and asked Vampira — Maila Nurmi — to help them with the project. There were creative differences — supposedly Nurmi wanted Lola Falana to play Vampira — and soon the station just did the show themselves (for her side of the story, please watch Vampira and Me).
Peterson had already lived a crazy life before she auditioned and won the role of the new horror host. She was a Vegas showgirl at 17, briefly dated Elvis, played a showgirl in Diamonds Are Forever, posed for men’s magazines like High Society, tried out to be Ginger in a new Gilligan’s Island, was on the cover of Tom Waits’ album (she claims that she doesn’t remember but it totally could be her), played in rock bands in Italy, ended up in Fellini’s Roma, joined the improv group The Groundlings and then ended up as a DQ on KROQ.
Is this Elvira?
Anyways, back to Elvira. The station allowing her to create the image of her character. Originally, she wanted to look like Sharon Tate in The Fearless Vampire Killers, but ended up with the punky and busty look we’ve all come to know and love.
Before the first episode even aired, Normi sued, claiming that Elvira was too close to her character. I’ll leave it up to you, dear reader, but they are quite similar. However, her Valley Girl delivery and sarcastic tone was a real difference and Elvira went from local star to pop icon. That all led to this, her first movie.
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark quits her job in LA after the station’s new owner has a #metoo moment with her. She wants to start an act in Vegas, but needs $50,000. Luckily, her great aunt Morgana has just died and she has to travel to Fallwell, Massachusetts to claim the inheritance.
So what does she get? A mansion, a recipe book and Morgana’s pet poodle, Algonquin. But once she’s in town, she learns that no one is allowed to have fun and she sets out to change everyone’s grey demeanor. Oh yeah — and her uncle Vincent just wants the cookbook — which is a book of spells — and he also wants to sacrifice her so that he can take over the world. Thus, magic battles ensue, Algonquin becomes a rat at one point and the town’s morality club gets hit with a sex spell that gets them all arrested for indecent exposure.
Fellow Groundling Edie McClurg shows up as one of the villains, as does former Grease and Taxi heartthrob Jeff Conaway. Other Groundlings in the film are Lynne Marie Stewart, Deryl Carroll, Joseph Arias, Tress MacNeille and John Paragon.
Scripted by Sam Egan and Paragon, who is better known as Jambi and Pterri from his Pee-Wee’s Playhouse days, along with Peterson, this movie’s entertainment level will depend on how much you love puns and Elvira.
Peter Plunkett is the owner of an Irish castle that’s seen better days. However, it’s the only employment for many of the local villagers. But now, he’s in debt to an Irish-American businessman named Brogan, so Plunkett has one last plan: to transform it into the most haunted castle in Europe. That means making ghost costumes for everyone that works there, but the truth is that the castle is more spectrally challenged than Plunkett could have ever dreamed.
The guests that come to stay, like Jack (Steve Guttenberg), Sharon (Beverly D’Angelo), get to meet the real ghosts of Castle Plunkett: Mary Plunkett (Daryl Hannah) and Martin Brogan (Liam Neeson). Even more, Mary and Jack fall for one another, as do Martin and Sharon.
Sean Connery was originally going to star in this but dropped out and his role as Plunkett was replaced with Peter O’Toole, who is perfectly cast.
Writer and director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) was excluded from the editing process of the final cut and insists that his version of the film has never seen the light of day. What did emerge is a strange film, which at times is comedic and at others — like when the sea monster attacks on stage — can be quite horrifying.
If all Frank LaLoggia had made was the utterly bizarre Fear No Evil, he’d still be a filmmaker to celebrate. Luckily, he also gifted us with this film, a ghost story that bombed on initial release but has gone on to be a celebrated film, one that’s just as much about growing up as it is about murder.
Horror author Franklin “Frankie” Scarlatti (as an adult, he’s played by the director, but in the film itself, it’s Lukas Haas) is on his way back to Willowpoint Falls and relates the story of how way back in 1962, over Halloween, he was attacked and nearly strangled to death by a mysterious figure in black. Even more frightening, he witnesses the death of a young redhead girl, who has ties to the mysterious lady in white, an urban legend that all of the schoolboys live in fear of.
The police arrest the school’s black janitor, Harold “Willy” Williams, for the killings and the way the town reacts to this forms the moral backbone of the film. There’s also a lot about family, with father Angelo (a welcome Alex Rocco), his adopted brother and the near comical shenanigans of Frankie’s grandparents.
Along the way, Frankie becomes obsessed with bringing closure to the redhead girl’s ghost, solving her murder and bringing her back to her mother. There’s also the matter of the real or unreal lady in white (Katherine Helmond from TV’s Who’s the Boss?).
The film has a really great scene where the killer reveals himself within the foggy woods as the lighting in the scene progressively grows darker, a really interesting camera trick that is all but forgotten in our CGI era. In fact, all of the night scenes in the woods almost feel like an otherworldly affair, as if shot just outside our reality.
LaLoggia wrote, directed, produced and scored this film, which was based on the legend of the Lady in White,a woman who roams Durand-Eastman Park in Rochester, New York searching for her daughter. It’s a place hat the auteur knows well, as he grew up there and filmed much of the movie on location.
It’s a shame that LaLoggia didn’t get to make more films, because of the two I’ve seen, he is able to tell a simple story that still feels intensely personal and nuanced. He’s teased several projects over the years, including being attached to the Cannon Spider-Man movie that never got off the ground. Here’s to another film coming from him, someday, someway.
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