USA UP ALL NIGHT MONTH: Return of the Killer Tomatoes (1988)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Return of the Killer Tomatoes aired on USA Up All Night on June 10 and October 28, 1989; March 30 and 31, 1990; March 23 and October 21, 1991 and May 26, 1992.

Directed by John De Bello, who co-wrote the script with Costa Dillon and Stephen Andrich. De Bello, Dillon and J. Stephen Peace started making movies together in high school and worked together not only on this movie, but on the original short and movie versions of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, as well as Killer Tomatoes Strike Back!Killer Tomatoes Eat France! and the animated series, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. In fact, in the 90s, Mattel released an entire line of toys based on the cartoon series. There were even two video games!

Set ten years after Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, which characters refer to as the Great Tomato War, we find that tomatoes have been outlawed in the United States. Wilbur Finletter (Steve Peace) — who was in the first movie — is a hero of the Great Tomato War and now owns the tomato-less Finletter’s Pizzeria, employing his nephew Chad Finletter (Anthony Starke) and Chris’ roommate Matt Stevens (George Clooney).

Professor Mortimer Gangreen (ohn Astin) and his assistant Igor (Steve Lundquist) were the ones who started the last Tomato War and they’re back for another one. Barely defeated by the song “Puberty Love,” he vows that this time, music will be part of his plot for revenge. That means that he is making Miami Vice tomato people, Michael Jackson pomme d’amour and seductive female tomate, as well as an army of rock music-obsessed tomatillos. His big goal is to break out Jim Richardson (Rick Rockwell) and make him the new President.

There’s also a female tomato human named Tara (Karen Mistal) who falls for Chad just at the point that movie runs out of money and breaks the fourth wall, adding product placement to every scene. Tara is also hiding a mutated tomato named FT — Fuzzy Tomato — that she keeps like a pet. In a world that hates and fears tomatoes — not to mention the carrot soldiers on the rise — can their love survive?

In the scenes with Clooney and the Playboy Playmates, look for Teri Weigel. She was the Playboy Playmate for April 1986. She was also only the second Playmate to appear in Penthouse — after Ursula Buchfellner who was in Jess Franco’s Devil Hunter and Sadomania — appearing in the November 1985 issue. After working at the Bunny Ranch Nevada and a car accident that broke her neck and back ruined her family’s finances, she became one of the first Playmates to openly do adult films and trade on her popularity from the magazine. She was also in plenty of mainstream movies, like Cheerleader CampSavage Beach, Night Visitor, Marked for Death and perhaps most famously, in the beginning of Predator 2.

You can watch this on Tubi.

USA UP ALL NIGHT MONTH: Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Killer Klowns from Outer Space aired on USA Up All Night on October 18, 1997.

How did it take so long for this movie to make it to our site? Has there ever been a better high concept — alien clowns coming from space to eat humans? How did this movie even get made? Man, I have questions. Let’s get some answers.

It’s the only movie to be written, produced and directed by the Chiodo Brothers. These insane masters created the puppets and effects for films such as Critters, Ernest Scared StupidTeam America: World Police, Large Marge for Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and the mouse artwork in Dinner for Schmucks. A sequel to this has been in development forever; if I had my way, these guys would make movies all of the time.

On a lover’s lane in Crescent Cove, Mike Tobacco (Grant Cramer, New Year’s Evil) and his girlfriend Debbie Stone (Suzanne Snyder, Weird ScienceNight of the Creeps) are parked when a strange object falls to Earth.

Meanwhile, farmer Gene Green (Royal Dano, Gramps from House II) and his dog — who my wife knows is named Pooh Bear without even needing to look it up — track the comet and discover the crash site looks more like a circus tent.

Mike and Debbie find the same strange tent and discover the farmer trapped in a cotton candy-like cocoon as a Klown appears to shoot popcorn at them. They’re chased away by more Klowns and a balloon animal dog, because this movie is ready to tear out your brain, stomp on it and laugh the entire time.

They make their way to the police station where Debbie’s ex-boyfriend, Deputy Dave Hanson (John Allen Nelson, Deathstalker from the third version of that film, Deathstalker III: The Warriors from Hell), and mean-spirited Deputy Curtis Mooney (John Vernon!). Seriously, John Vernon should be in every movie, because he’s majestic in this, treating every single person with oodles of contempt.

The Klowns make their way to the town and start blasting people with lasers, punching people’s heads clean off and shrinking people down and putting them into bags of popcorn. There are also scenes of Klowns drinking people with crazy straws and a giant Klownzilla that attacks the town. Obviously, the reality went right of the window with this one. It resembles the Topps Mars Attacks! cards, with episodic encounters of the goofball Klowns running wild.

This movie frightened my wife worse than any of the many, many films that she watched in her childhood. She was already afraid of clowns, so these Klowns ended up infiltrating her dreams. Yet she still watched it all of the time. She also wanted Debbie’s jumper-tastic wardrobe, which makes a lot of sense when you see her fashion sense today.

While the Chiodos were able to get The Dickies for the soundtrack, they couldn’t convince producers to pay the money to have Soupy Sales — the king of getting pies thrown in his face — appear as a security guard.

This is the kind of movie that I’m glad exists. I return to it time and time again whenever life seems meaningless because the fact that a movie about giant Klowns attacking a small town for food makes me feel better, knowing that somehow a studio bought this and allowed it to happen.

USA UP ALL NIGHT MONTH: Grotesque (1988)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Grotesque aired on USA Up All Night on January 12, 1989; April 21, 1990 and June 29, 1991.

Sometimes, you encounter things on Amazon Prime that you feel were made for just you. Take this 1988 forgotten horror movie, which stars Linda Blair and Tab Hunter as family members at war with a gang of street punks while something even more terrifying waits in the wings.

An insane woman tells a deformed man that he has two choices: to kill her or make love to her. He then bites her neck, murdering her as we soon learn that this is all a movie within a movie, the latest from horror special effects master Orville Kruger (Guy Stockwell, younger brother of Dean).

After finishing the movie, Orville plans a family get-together in the San Bernardino Mountains with his wife, daughter Lisa (Blair, the main reason I picked this movie) and her friend Kathy (Donna Wilkes, Angel herself!). His brother, Rod (Hunter), will join them later. But before any of hat can happen, Lisa and Kathy run afoul of a gang of punks led by Scratch, who are coming back from Nevada where their last home invasion led to them killing off an entire family.

Lisa asks her mom her Patrick is. Her mother cryptically mentions that he has good and bad days, then later mentions feeding him.

The movie then gives us jump scares galore, as Orville frightens Kathy with a sea creature and a series of his props. He wonders if she’s able to tell the difference between his effects and reality.

Lisa and Kelly go to bed, only to awaken to the punk gang arriving and holding everyone hostage with threats of rape, torture and worse. They’re convinced that Orville is hiding a fortune in the house, but when he tells them he doesn’t have one, they beat him to death. We notice two eyes watching everything.

The girls escape, but Lisa’s mother isn’t so lucky. The gang catches up to Kathy, who is stabbed by a female member of the gang that thinks that she’s in La Venganza de los Punks. Lisa jumps through a window to escape, running through the snow, as the deformed man appears, takes out most of the gang and saves Lisa.

The police soon arrive, as does Uncle Rod. They start looking for suspects and come upon the deformed man attacking Scratch and Shelley, the last two punks. The police shoot first and don’t really ask questions later, killing the mystery man and taking the gang members into custody.

This is where — in a normal film — we’d be close to the conclusion. But not here. Nope. Lisa has a blood clot and a 50/50 chance of survival, but ends up on the bad half and dies. Since she was the only witness, Scratch and Shelley are due to be released. That’s when Uncle Rod explains that the deformed man was named Patrick (is he Australian?) and that he was an abandoned child that the Krugers raised as their own son.

Rod takes the law into his own hand, forcing Scratch and Shelley back to the Kruger home and explaining how he has the same facial deformities as Patrick because (dramatic music) he’s his father! This Tourist Trap twist kind of makes sense, if only for the meta reason that Chuck Connors and Tab Hunter were both cowboy actors who did horror movies at the end of their careers. It turns out that Orville created the special effects that allowed him to live in normal society. But now, even Rod’s horrifying face is beautiful compared to what he’s done to the two villains.

You’d think that this twist is also where the film ends, but nope. Yes, in a movie of pre-meta meta, this has all been another movie. But that’s still not the end. No, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolfman are in the projectionist booth, arguing over the film. The lycanthrope states his case that the film doesn’t accurately depict monsters by smashing the projector while Dr. Frankenstein’s greatest creation gives this one 8 out of 10. They agree to disagree and attack everyone watching the movie because after all, they’re the best.

I’m not certain that the makers of this movie had any clue what they were doing at any moment in its production, but that’s OK. The end result is so totally strange that you can’t help but adore just how off the rails it goes by the end. There’s no way you can sum this one up in a sentence. It really is a movie that not only jumps mood but also main characters and even genre by the end of the film.

USA UP ALL NIGHT MONTH: Cemetery High (1988)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cemetery High aired on USA Up All Night on May 10 and October 5, 1991; July 25, 1992 and January 29, 1993.

Gorman Bechard can always be counted on to give you a movie that’s not expected, like his undervalued slasher Disconnected.

So what happened here?

Co-written with Carmine Capobianco, Cemetery High is every woman on man revengeomatic that you’ve seen, except that there’s a horn when nudity happens and a ring when violence is about to befall someone. So yes — a rape revenge comedy, if that can be a thing. Maybe in 1988, right?

Produced by Charles Band, this had the title Assault on Killer Bimbos which was taken for the movie we know that as today. And the dark movie that Bechard made was not the comedy that this was turned into.

Back in 2009, the director wrote on IMDB, “I detest this film.

Long story short: it was originally called Assault of the Killer Bimbos. It was a black comedy. We filmed it as written. Charlie Band, who ran Empire, called me the day after we wrapped and said he just read the script and it was too dark for his liking. He was taking away the title (because I had gotten such great publicity, including People Magazine), and keeping only half of what I shot. He was having his staff write some back story.

Thus my story about girls who offed scum bags just because they knew they could…now became a story about girls who were abused, etc. and so on. But it was the film that was ultimately abused (and I’m using a nice word) by Band.

I talk about this at length on the commentary of the new Psychos In Love DVD release. (Of course, if I had seen what they did to Galactic Gigolo in post prior to filming this, I would have never made a second film for Band.)

Rent Psychos. Avoid this piece of crap.

And if you’re a filmmaker, and an idiot with money tries to tell you what to do with your film…I don’t care how badly you want it…WALK AWAY.”

Anyways, the cast has Debi Thibeault, who shows up in both versions of Assault of the Killer Bimbos, as well as Galactic Gigolo, Psychos In Love and Death Collector, the only film in her resume not connected to Bechard. It also has Karen Nelson, Simone Reyes (who is the girl reading Popular Science in the Beastie Boys’ “(You Gott) Fight for Your Right (to Party!), Lisa Schmidt and Ruth Collins, who is also in Witch AcademyHellrollerLurkers, Blood Sisters, Prime EvilDoom AsylumFirehouse and Joe D’Amato’s Eleven Days, Eleven Nights 2. She’s also the lead dancer in the Beastie Boys video for “No Sleep till Brooklyn.” I wonder what the connection with all the New York exploration talent and Beastie Boys videos is? That last one also has Vic Noto, Bronson from Street Trash, in it.

So yeah. The movie stinks. But maybe having Rhonda Shear as hostess made it go down better.

,You can watch this on Tubi.

USA UP ALL NIGHT MONTH: The Boy from Hell (1988)

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Boy from Hell aired on USA Up All Night on June 7, 1991, January 2, 1992 and September 1, 1993.

Also known as Bloodspell, this is all about Daniel (Anthony Jenkins), who has been sent to Saint Boniface, a home for troubled teens by his mother Jane to protect him from his father Luther who is — surprise! — a demon who just wants to use his son’s body to kill people and add souls to Hell. Will anyone believe another resident, Charlie (Aarin Teich) who knows exactly what is happening?

Of all the things I love about this movie — I mean it ends with God hitting Luther with lightning — the music over the credits feels like it could come from the schmaltziest of 80s comedies where we all learned a life lesson about our parents and not that they can be demons who possess us.

Maybe Jenny Marlowe (who is played by Twink Caplan, which is an awesome name) and Tony Montana — yes, that’s the character’s name in this, you’d think they’d maybe think that over — who is played by Edward Dloughy can save everyone.

Director Deryn Warren also made Black Magic Woman and Dead of Night, which gets watched in this movie to add a little meta without hurting the budget. This was written by the same writer as those films, Gerry Daly, who also wrote Witchcraft III and Crystal Force. Also: I never watched 7th Heaven but I have been told that’s the house from that show in the beginning of this movie. Also also: Woodchipper finger terror.

You can watch this on YouTube.

USA UP ALL NIGHT MONTH: 976-EVIL (1988)

EDITOR’S NOTE: 976-EVIL aired on USA Up All Night on November 21, 1992; May 7 and October 29, 1993; January 26 and August 17, 1996.

Spike and Hoax (Stephen Geoffreys from Fright Night) are cousins who live under the overly watchful eye of Hoax’s super religious mother Lucy (Sandy Dennis, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, God Told Me To). They couldn’t be more different. Hoax is a nerd afraid of everyone while Spike is a motorcycle-riding bad boy with the girl of his cousin’s dreams, Suzie (Lezlie Deane, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare).

Both boys start using the novelty phone number 976-EVIL, which reads them creepy-themed fortunes for a few dollars. The real truth is quite sinister: Satan uses the line to find people to give them what they want in exchange for their souls. There’s a great scene here where a religious investigator goes to the home of 976-EVIL, After Dark, Inc. There is room after room of people, Santas, phone sex women and so much more, but in one dusty, cobwebbed closet lies the machine that powers this foul enterprise.

By the end of this movie, the cousins’ power dynamic has shifted and the literal gateway to Hell appears in front of their home. The way there is littered with 80’s cliches and a tone that is never sure if it fully wants to be comedic or horrific.

Still, this movie is not without its charms. The Deftones wrote the song “Diamond Eyes” about the film and it was popular enough to bring Spike back for the direct-to-video sequel 976-EVIL II: The Astral Factor. And England met his wife, set decorator Nancy Booth, while directing this movie. She would sneak R+N into the backgrounds of scenes that he would discover each day while watching the dailies. And hey, how many movies have uber religious old women get devoured by cats?

PS – There’s an entire chapter about this film in the book Satanic Panic: Pop Culture Paranoia in the 1980’s that is must reading.

CANNON CANON CATCH-UP: Action Jackson (1988)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nothing gives me greater joy than when our site gets mentioned on my favorite podcast, The Cannon Canon. There are a few movies they’ve covered that I haven’t, so it’s time to fix that.

I am happy to admit that I rented Action Jackson more than a few times. Carl Weathers deserved to be the star of more movies and, well, Vanity was in it. After watching this movie, I realize that I am only two movies away from seeing every film that she was ever in.

It starts unlike any normal action movie you’d expect, as almost supernatural killers, the Invisible Men, come out of nowhere and kill some auto union guys. That’s how you know we’re in Detroit, you know?

Detroit Police Department Detective Sergeant Jericho “Action” Jackson (Weathers) was a star athlete who went to law school and became a hometown hero, but that was before he arrested the son of important businessman Peter Anthony Dellaplane (Craig T. Nelson). He was quickly demoted, divorced and demoralized. He’s at odds with the public and his boss, Captain Earl Armbruster (Bill Duke, always an angry ranked cop) because he won’t stop chasing down Dellaplane, who really is dirty and is too smart to get caught.

Yet there’s hope. Dellaplace’s wife Patrice (Sharon Stone, fated to be the dead bad girl in every movie at this point) gives him info before she’s killed and Dellaplace’s mistress Sydney Ash (Vanity) is set up. Yes, Craig T. Nelson is at near Michael Douglas level here, sleeping with both Sharon Stone and Vanity. Action Jackson also has help from Kid Sable, a local hotel owner and retired professional boxer — this movie is like James Bond with its strange helper characters — played by Chino ‘Fats’ Williams, hairdresser and connected gossip queen Dee (Armelia McQueen), his old partner Detective Kotterwell (Jack Thibeau), bad kid gone good Albert (Stan Foster) and Sydney’s bodyguard Big Edd (Prince A. Hughes).

This is the kind of movie where the bad guys plan on barbecuing our hero and instead he sets them on fire and shoots them with a grenade launcher. It’s beyond over the top but in a way that completely works within its universe.

I love how matter of fact Weathers was about how this movie got made: “A creation that came about when I was doing Predator and talking to Joel Silver, who loved blaxploitation movies. Joel said, “Well, you know, why don’t you put something together?” So during that time of shooting down in Puerto Vallarta, I created this story and came up with this guy – or at least this title – Action Jackson. And Joel found a writer who wrote the screenplay, and that was it. We got it made.” There’s a TV movie Weathers did after, Dangerous Passion, which was called Action Jackson 2 in Germany, but unfortunately there was no sequel. Weathers said that it was because, “Lorimar sold the lot to Sony and sold the library to Warner Bros., and that was that. It never resurfaced again, unfortunately.”

If you love 80s action, this has so many people you know in it. Dennis Hayden, De’voreaux White, Robert Davi, Mary Ellen Trainor and Al Leong were all in Die Hard together, while Weathers, Duke and Sonny Landham were in Predator. In a better world, we got a whole bunch of these movies.

This was the first movie — after episodes of The A-Team — of former stunt coordinator Craig R. Baxley, a beyond dependable name because he also directed Stone ColdStorm of the CenturyRose Red and Kingdom Hospital. It was written by Robert Reneau, one of the writers of Demolition Man.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode of Action Jackson here.

DRIVE-IN MOVIE CLASSICS MONTH: Death by Dialogue (1988)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks to Matthew Hale on Letterboxd, I’ve learned that there are alternate versions of this Mill Creek box set. For the sake of completeness and my obsessive compulsive disorder, here’s this missing movie.

Slasher film coincidences: five friends visit a crippled uncle, a taxidermist who lives next to a movie set, and they all start dying just like the movie that’s being made.

This was all we needed in 1988, you know?

Also, this movie had the tagline “Ken Sagos, the kid who survived Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is back!” I mean, that’s better than “Ken Sagos, the kid who Freddy killed in Nightmare on Elm Street 4 is back!”

I mean, how many movies have a cursed screenplay to blame? And how many have a metal band — The Dirty Dogs — play a song called “When the Axe Comes Down” and then blow a dude’s head up real good? And dude — thanks to the website We Are Cursed to Live In Interesting Times, I can tell you that the songs in Death by Dialogue were produced by Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion and founder of Epitaph Records.

There’s also a girl taking off someone’s head with a scarf.

Death by Dialogue is way too long, but how can a movie get better when a woman sets a man ablaze with a flamethrower? That said, this is a movie not aware of its own stupidity, which is really how it should be, and it just keeps piling on the inanity and sometimes, you just let a goofball slasher and Ken Sagos star vehicle fill your slasher addict veins with sweet movie drugs.

CANNON CANON CATCH-UP: Above The Law (1988)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nothing gives me greater joy than when our site gets mentioned on my favorite podcast, The Cannon Canon. There are a few movies they’ve covered that I haven’t, so it’s time to fix that.

Steven Segal has barely been on our site and that’s for a reason.

I don’t get it.

I’ve known plenty of action movie lovers that were obsessed with him. I dated a girl who would always rent his movies when given the option. And yes, I am old, we rented video cassettes from a mom and pop store and made out while watching Steven Segal movies.

This is Segal’s first movie. Now, finding the exact facts about the man’s life is tricky, but here’s what I think is true. He was born in Lansing, Michigan to an Irish medical technician mother and Jewish math teacher father. I have no idea where the Italian and Asian mystic parts of him come from. Confounding me further is the fact that his grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants with some Yakut and Buryat heritage.

Seagal is the Hulk Hogan of action movies and by that, I don’t mean he’s orange and on steroids. He has the same propensity for lying and his nontruths are easily proven wrong. Like how Seagal was a student of the founder of aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, yet Ueshiba died in 1969 when Seagal was 17 and Seagal didn’t move to Japan until the of 22, to allegedly avoid the draft by marrying a Japanese national named Miyako Fujitani.

Fujitani doesn’t mince words about her ex-husband. In an infamous article that got Spy Magazine sued, she said that the actor worked in her family’s aikido school and received his degree under dubious circumstances: The only reason Steven was awarded the black belt was because the judge, who was famous for his laziness, fell asleep during Steven’s presentation. The judge just gave him the black belt.” He told her “I never will betray you”, right before he took all her savings and moved back to America. She claims that she “scrimped and saved for years, even denying herself and her children necessities, to help pay his way home.”

Without seeking a divorce, Seagal went ahead and married Adrienne La Russa in 1984, followed by actress Kelly LeBrock. La Russa told Spy that she couldn’t say much, “Because I am afraid of Steven and his friends.”

That’s because for years, Seagal has claimed underworld and black ops ties. Seagal told People early in his career, “They saw my abilities, both with martial arts and with the language. You could say that I became an advisor to several CIA agents in the field, and through my friends in the CIA, I met many powerful people and did special works and favors.”

After opening a dojo with stuntman Craig Dunn in New Mexico, he also started the Aikido Ten Shin Dojo in Hollywood with his senior student Haruo Matsuoka. That’s where he trained Michael Ovitz, at the time the biggest agent in the business.

“Michael and I are very close–we love each other,” Seagal said. “I’m like a guru to him.”

As for Ovitz, it was claimed that he believed that he could make anyone a movie star.

Now, Above the Law is before all the blues records, the TV reality show that has him teaching cops, the horrifying SNL appearance, the lawsuits, the collusion with Russia — I have no idea how anyone can still be a fan of him. Actually, I totally do, because if anyone symbolizes the MAGA side of action movies — even more than Bronson or Norris — it’s Steven Seagal.  He can do interviews where he says that Vladimir Putin is “one of the great living world leaders,” teach cops how to shoot guns, be against athletes protesting before games and writing the novel The Way of the Shadow Wolves: The Deep State And The Hijacking Of America. Let’s go further. He’s been shown in photos with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, been referred to as the “brother” of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and celebrated his birthday in Russian with pro-Kremlin friends as the invasion of Ukraine was happening.

Oh man, Steven Seagal.

I didn’t even mention that the double entendre — actually, it was just outright being a jerk — he made to a production assistant who he caught brushing her teeth.

Man, I don’t even want to talk about this movie.

I’ll try.

I mean, he’s prohibited from promoting bitcoin at this point. Or that he broke Sean Connery’s wrist on the set of Never Say Never Again. Or that he has been known for brutalizing stuntmen who appeared in movies with him.

Ah, OK. Let’s just get to the movie.

Sergeant Nico Toscani is exactly the person that Steven Seagal wants us to believe that he is. A tough Chicago vice cop who can trace his roots to Palermo, Sicily, he moved to Japan was a young man to study martial arts and was recruited by the CIA and assigned to covert operations on the Vietnamese-Cambodian border during the Vietnam War. He left the CIA when he refused to be part of torture, moved back to the U.S. and started being a cop.

Working with Detective Delores “Jacks” Jackson (Pam Grier) are on the trail of drug dealers and suddenly ordered off the case, as those scumbags are working with the very same CIA boss that caused Nico to leave the agency, Kurt Zagon (Henry Silva). Also, to make this even better, Seagal — sorry, Nico — is married to the gorgeous Sara (Sharon Stone) and when she’s threatened, he has to go…above the law.

At least they put together a great cast and crew for this movie. Director Andrew Davis would also direct The Final TerrorCode of SilenceUnder Siege and was the cinematographer on Private PartsMansion of the Doomed and the DP on Angel. He worked on the story of this movie with Seagal and then polished the script with Steven Pressfield (King Kong LivesFreejack) and Ronald Shusett, who has big league credits like AlienAliensTotal RecallPhobia and Dead & Buried.

Seagal looks and moves like no one else in movies. I don’t know, maybe Ovitz was right in that he could plug anyone into an action movie and make him a star. Since this movie, Seagal has been in around sixty movies. That’s pretty good staying power for just being anyone. And despite all his controversies, he made a film as recently as 2019’s Beyond the Law.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode of Above the Law here.

Thunder of Gigantic Serpent (1988)

This movie is why I keep on writing.

Take King of Snake, also known as Da She Wang, a movie directed by Yu-Lung Hsu and starring Danny Lee — Infra-Man! — as Dr. Ling, an inventor who makes R19, a drug that can transform organic matter into gigantic things. Maybe that would be a good idea for fruit or vegetables.

But then a snake gets into it.

Yet in this version, remixed and remade by Godfrey Ho, there’s also a hardass government agent named Ted Fast (Pierre Kirby) who is tracking down some terrorists while the world explodes all around him as a gigantic snake named Moser and his human friend Tingting just try and be a snake and his little girl, except he gets too big and starts killing hundreds if not thousands of people.

As Ted Fast comes after his enemy Bob Solomon (Edowan Bersma), who wants to use the formula to grow giant food and take over the world’s need for groceries, he has only the losest of ties to the reality of the other movie, as always united through one conversation over the telephone.

There’s a moment at the end of this, as Moser lies dying — it breaks my heart just as much here as it does in King of Snake — Tingting loses her mind and starts shrieking at the military about killing her snake. Oh Tingting. Your snake just killed an entire city and some people will never recover from this and most of it is your fault.

As with all movies directed by Godfrey Ho, the soundtrack to this is so much of the reason to watch. There’s “Isadora,” “Catedral de Sal” and “The Night” by Azul y Negro; “Never Land” by Sisters of Mercy; “Sister Surprise” by Gary Numan; “Dance II” by the Duretti Column; “Phaedra,” “Kiew Mission,” “Logos (Part 1)” and “Rubycon (Part 1)” by Tangerine Dream; “Let It Rock” by Bon Jovi; “Better and Better” by A Flock of Seagulls; Richard Band’s Re-Animator soundtrack; “Heartbeat” by Chris and Cosey; “Rendez Vous V” by Jean Michel Jarre; “Agonized by Love” and “Lorretine” by Clan of Xymox; “Witches’ Multiplication Table” by Holger Czukay; “Part 1 (Alien)” by Don Preston and Michael Mantler; The Human Vapor soundtrack by Kunio Miyauchi; a song from Miyauchi Kunio’s Ultra Q soundtrack and part of the Starman score by Jack Nitzsche.

There are reviews of this that talk about how bad it is, how cheap it is and how they wasted time watching it. Anyone who wrote one of those is someone you never want to be friends with. They have a lack of vision, an inability to love life and just are robots sleepwalking through life.

Open your heart and let Moser inside.

You can watch this on YouTube.