All around auteur — he was a writer, director, producer and editor — Charles Vincent began his show-business career in regional theater as a director and stage manager in his native Michigan. He worked for the Yale Repertory and the Negro Ensemble Company before making his cinematic debut in 1971 with the adult film The Appointment. He worked in X-rated film until the mid-1980’s while also dabbling in mainstream fare with films like Summer Camp, Deranged and Hollywood Hot Tubs.

This movie comes late in his career and features Linda Blair and Troy Donahue alongside actors better known for their adult work. Gregory Patrick, who plays the main character, is really Randy Spears. And the villain of the piece, played by Ruth Raymond, is, in reality, Georgina Spelvin, who starred in The Devil In Ms. Jones and also shows up as the hooker in Police Academy (trust me, that’s a pivotal role). Veronica Hart, Vincent’s favorite actress, also makes an appearance.

A young man (Patrick/Spears) finds out that his mother (Raymond/Spelvin) isn’t who he thought she was, but a wealthy artist who lives as a recluse. His parents had taken him and raised him as their own. Meanwhile, his possessive birth mother begins to ruin his life, even poisoning his wife Evie (Blair).

It also might not help that his mother can’t tell the difference between him and his dead father, whose painting of him initiated this whole mess. This makes me worry that I’m going to have to make a Letterboxd list for movies I’ve watched about incest, which is far greater than I’d like to admit to you, dear reader.

This movie is also way better than it would seem that it should be. It aspires to be a movie closer to Misery than outright exploitation without forgetting that it has to deliver the goods. And by goods, I mean mind-bending mother on son assault.

I always wondered: Could Dan Haggerty and Linda Blair be in the same film someday? Happily, I can report that 1989’s The Chilling — also known as Gamma 693 and The Thawing — exists.

Should you watch it? That depends. Have you seen Return of the Living Dead and always wanted someone to make a way worse version of it, but also confuse the plot with the moral dilemma as to whether freezing someone after death is right or wrong? Then good news! This one has you covered!

You have to love a movie that starts with this initial scroll:

Universal Cryogenics is a successful business, freezing the recently dead until science can revive and cure them. The only problem is, once the power goes out in a storm, the frozen dead rise from their coolers and turn into zombies.

Who’s to blame? Dr. Miller (Troy Donahue, yes, the former 1950’s sex symbol who was also Hatchet’s dad from Cry-Baby), who has been harvesting organs and selling them Mexican clients.

Only his secretary (Linda Blair, who seems to play as many secretaries as she wears large thick belts) and client Joseph Davenport can save the day. Or maybe save themselves. Luckily, they have Sergeant Vince Marlow, played by Haggerty, backing them up.

Co-directors Deland Nuse (Return of the Boogeyman) and Jack A. Sunseri (who produced The Dead Pit) really have a lot to answer for. The effects are abysmal. And at the end, it just feels like everyone gives in and this becomes a comedy.

After all, in the closing credits, we learn that Joe Sr. and Blair’s character have gotten married and have a son named Joe Jr., while the thuggish Joe Jr. becomes the leader of the zombies — sorry, cynoids — that live in the Kansas City sewers. Dan Hagerty’s character Vince has a black and white flashback to the death, rebirth and second death of his best friend before moving to the mountains of Colorado with Luke the dog and his pet bear, who we assume is named Ben. And then there’s a shot of a zombie limo driver for no reason before five minutes of long credits.

That said, I never thought I’d see a movie where Troy Donahue uses a sword to cut a zombie’s head off. And there’s one dialogue scene where Haggerty has a conversation with Linda where he laments that he won’t be able to dress up like Freddy Kreuger.

Honestly, watch it for yourself. It’s still not the best movie Dan Haggerty has been in, however. But man, I could talk about Elves all day.

Also known as Bail Out and Wings of Freedom, this movie gives the world what we’d been waiting for. One year after Witchery (also known as La Casa 4), the dream dup of Hasselhoff and Blair are reunited. Sometimes, Amazon Prime just knows what I need. And what I needed was this.

White Bread (Hasselhoff), Blue (stuntman Tony Brubaker) and Bean (Thomas Rosales Jr., Speed and the Paul Weller film Running Scared) are three bounty hunters who’ve been asked to protect Nettie Ridgeway (Blair), a wealthy socialite who just saw Colombia drug runners kill her ex-boyfriend. She’s kidnapped and taken to Mexico, so the boys have to rescue her so she can testify against the cartel.

Director Max Kleven has an interesting set of films he’s directed. While primarily known for stunts and second unit directing, he has the films The Night Stalker (which stars Charles Napier!), Deadly Stranger and Ruckus on his resume. The latter also features Blair and you know I’ll be watching it soon.

John Vernon is on hand to play Blair’s dad and you can look for an improbably young Danny Trejo here. Otherwise, there’s not much for anyone other than Linda Blair completists. Like me.

However, I am pleased to report that this DVD cover was so lazy, it just has a picture of Hasselhoff from Knight Rider.

You can watch this for free on Amazon Prime.

Don’t worry if you never saw Bedroom Eyes. This Chuck Vincent directed film has nothing to do with it. Yes, the characters have the same names, but it’s all different actors. So this insane film can really stand on its own, as it combines a Cinemax After Dark film with a giallo, because if I’ve learned anything from the films of Mr. Vincent, it’s that you have no idea where they’re going.

Harry Ross (Wings Hauser) lives in a world of little to no morals. His business partner gets an inside trading tip that could make them rich from one of his friends with benefits. But when it comes to love, his life is an even bigger mess.

Let me see if I can summarize it for you: His ex-wife JoBeth (adult film star and Vincent’s favorite actress Veronica Hart) tried to kill Harry five years ago and went to prison. Meanwhile, his wife Carolyn (Kathy Shower, Playboy Playmate of the Year 1986) has been all messed up since Harry broke up with one of his girlfriends, Alexandria, who was killed in a hit-and-run accident the very same night that Harry broke up with her.

Things get worse when Harry catches his wife aardvarking with Matthew, a hip young artist. To fix things, our hero — such as it is — decides to get horizontal with Sophie (Blair), an artist. He promises her that his wife can make her famous, but he soon falls for her.

Somehow, Sophie is Alexandria’s sister, there’s some murder and there’s plenty of fishing for kippers. Moistening the Pope. Punching the cow. You know what I mean — sweet, sweet lovemaking. Even after Harry gets stabbed multiple times, he is still able to play some slophockey.

Linda Blair week has brought me down many dark corridors. This is one of them, a movie that takes Wings Hauser through hell and finally jumping across rooftops and beating up cops. That’s what happens when you go in too deep.

Impressed by writer/director Victor Salva (Jeepers Creepers, Powder) short Something in the Basement, Francis Ford Coppola gave him $250,000 to make Clownhouse, gave him the same cameras George Lucas shot American Graffiti with and even allowed him to film it in his Napa Valley home. Clownhouse premiered at the 1989 Sundance Film Festival and believe it or not, it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize in the dramatic category before finally reaching theaters in 1990.

This is where it all goes wrong.

This is a film that has been controversial ever since it was released, as Salva plead guilty to sexually abusing the film’s child star Nathan Forrest Winters, as well as procuring child pornography of said sexual assault. The theatrical release was protested by Winters and his family. This issue came back up when MGM released the movie to DVD before it was pulled from the shelves, making this a hard movie to find.

Casey (Winters) is afraid of clowns and not as brave as his brothers, Geoffrey and Randy (Sam Rockwell!). They drag him along to the circus against his will on the very same night that an insane asylum sends several of its inmates to the very same event, which seems like two of the worst ideas ever. Here’s a third bad idea: seeing a circus fortune teller, who says to Casey, “Beware, beware, in the darkest of dark. Though the flesh is young and the hearts are strong, precious life cannot be long  when darkest death has left its mark.”

Fulfilling those ill portents, three of the most dangerous patients get loose, kill three clowns and take their identities. Those very same clowns follow the boys home, turn off the power to their home and kill them.

It’s hard to say which is creepier: the clowns skulking around the house of the obvious fetishization of the lead, who often appears in his underwear or in a bathtub. I’m not being homophobic — it’s strikingly obvious that this movie was made by someone in love with young boys.

Oddly, the movie ends with these words: “No man can hide from his fears. As they are a part of him, they will always know where he is hiding.”

While this movie isn’t available on DVD, you can get a copy from VHSPS.

Bonus: You can listen to our podcast all about this movie.

Dona and Taryn are back again, this time flying missions as federal drug enforcement agents based in Hawaii. After a successful drug bust, they are asked to fly vaccine from Molokai to Knox Island. However, they soon run afoul of nefarious forces in the Philippine government and some double agents at home looking for a sunken ship from World War II that is loaded with gold.

Meanwhile, a storm forces Donna and Taryn to land their plane on the island where a Japanese soldier and samurai named the warrior still thinks that World War II is going on.

Michael J. Shane shows up as Shane Abilene, the next member of the family to be in a Sidaris film. He’s joined by Teri Weigel (April 1986 Playboy Playmate of the Month, adult film star and victim in Predator 2), Al Leong (an Asian actor who continually shows up in films, including Big Trouble in Little China), Lisa London (H.O.T.S.) and making her last Sidaris film appearance, Patty Duffek (May 1984 Playboy Playmate of the Month) who plays Pattycakes for the third time.

None of this makes any sense at all. Are you watching these movies for them to make sense? No. You are watching them to have fun and probably see naked people in hot tubs at least every three minutes. I won’t cast any shame on you.

If you like Savage Beach, good news. Eventually, Andy Sidaris makes his way back here. I know I’ll be around for that.

You can watch this for free on Tubi or get the new blu ray from Mill Creek!

Brian Yuzna produced Re-Animator, but didn’t direct his own film until this body horror comedy which took three years to be released. It’s blessed with special effects by Japanese FX master Screaming Mad George that are really the star of the film.

Bill Whitney (Billy Warlock, son of the best Michael Myers, Dick Warlock) has a great life. His family is rich, he’s popular, he has a new Jeep and a hot cheerleader girlfriend. Yet he doesn’t feel that he fits into high society. This feeling gets worse when his sister’s ex-boyfriend gives him an audio tape of his family engaging in a murderous sex act.

Meanwhile, he keeps noticing a mysterious girl named Clarissa (she masturbates in front of him at a pep rally in a scene that’s frankly sexual in a mainstream non-sex film) and falls for her, despite her hair eating mother. If you’ve noticed that Society may be a completely insane movie, you’re right.

Of course, it turns out that the rich are aliens and Billy’s family is incestual and all of the most well-to-do folks in town are part of a ritual called the shunting, where they suck the life out of poor people. So how do you beat an alien like that? Well, you fist him and pull his asshole inside out, that’s how.

While some of this was based on a project that Yuzna started with Dan O’Bannon, writer Woody Keith claims to have based it on real people that he knew in the Beverly Hills. Gulp.

For fans of Halloween 2, that’s the exact same hospital that was Haddonfield Memorial. So there’s another reason to watch this again.

Ready to check it out? You can watch Society with and without commentary from Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder. You can also get the Arrow blu ray at Diabolik DVD.

Auggie Hamilton is all about making that fast buck. He’s just been kicked out of college for a gambling and drinking party after being there for way longer than four years, as well as trying to sleep with the dean’s daughter. What’s he going to do now?

So when he learns that his friend Samantha (Tracy Griffith, Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland) is about to sell her father’s garage to make way for Wrangler Bob Bundy (Jim Varney, yes, the Ernest P. Worrell playing, Slinky Dog voicing Jim Varney. Trivia note: Blake Clark, who is also in this movie, was friends with Varney and took over the voice of Slinky after Varney’s death) and his constantly growing burger empire.

How do you defeat a megacorporation? Well, you go get some drugs that make people horny and put them in your burgers, that’s how. And if you’re wondering how they get that drug, one of the way they get women in bed is to sneak them into a lab where men suffer from non-stop erections. The girls see  all these bald-headed yogurt slingers and the next thing you know, they’re in bed with the guys. Because you know — that’s totally how romance works. Movies like this are why I didn’t get laid until I was 24.

How does the new fast food place get successful? Well, beyond the date rape drugs in the special sauce, they also cater a fancy preppie sorority bash been thrown by Mary Beth Bensen, who is played by the same person who played the grown-up Angela in Sleepaway Camp II and Sleepaway Camp III. That’s Pamela Springsteen and yes, she’s the Boss’s sister.

Stick around — Traci Lords also shows up as an industrial spy, sent by Wrangler Bob to ruin our heroes. And oh yeah — the judge of their big case is played Kevin McCarthy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Michael J. Pollard shows up, too.

This isn’t a movie you’d be proud to talk about with anyone, but who cares? Varney is great, Traci Lords is Traci Lords and burgers cause people to get laid. You could do much worse.

Screenwriter Dana Olsen wrote a script called Life in the ‘Burbs that he based on his own childhood. Growing up, he learned that what seemed like a normal life from the outside revealed a world of psychotic people. He said, “As a kid, it was fascinating to think that Mr. Flanagan down the street could turn out to be Jack the Ripper. And where there’s fear, there’s comedy. So I approached The ‘Burbs as Ozzie and Harriet Meet Charles Manson.”

Once the film entered the hands of Joe Dante — who we’ve often written about as someone who deftly skews the American middle-class while planting his feet firmly within it — it got even crazier. He placed the entire film on the Universal Studios backlot and brought it stories he heard all the time of that one house in every neighborhood where you never see people leave, you see the lights on all night long and the grass never gets cut. It’s kind of like that Tom Waits tune — “What’s He Building?”

“What’s he building in there?

What the hell is he building in there?

He has subscriptions to those magazines.

He never waves when he goes by.

He’s hiding something from the rest of us.”

Mayfield Place is one of many identical neighborhoods inside Hinkley Hills, which is one of many identical neighborhoods in Iowa, which is one of so many identical states across the country. It’s also the name of the neighborhood from TV’s Leave It to Beaver, which was also shot on the same lot.

Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks) has a week vacation, which is just enough time to learn that his new neighbor’s, the Klopeks, are at the best strange and at the worst a danger to every house on the block.

After all, that’s what Art Weingartner (Rick Ducommun, Snik from Little Monsters) thinks. And so does military vet Lt. Mark Rumsfield (Bruce Dern!) who watch Hans Klopek (Courtney Gains, Malachai from Children of the Corn) use the family’s car to drive garbage a few feet to the curb. And that’s not all. Soon, the entire family is digging up their backyard with pick-axes in the middle of a torrential rainstorm.

Mark’s wife Bonnie (Dante favorite Wendy Schaal) finds another neighbor, the elderly Walter (Gale Gordon, long the TV sitcom enemy of Lucille Ball and you can see photos of the two of them together all over his house), missing and his dog running loose. All that’s left? His toupee.

Ray’s wife Carol (Carrie Fisher!) tires of this silliness and invites everyone over to the Klopeks. While everyone else meets Dr. Werner (Henry Gibson!) and Uncle Reuben (Brother Theodore!), Ray sneaks to the basement where he finds Walter’s toupee.

Hijinks ensue, as they must in any great movie. This is a film that you can come in on at any point and find something magical and hilarious. Are the Klopeks really killers? Has the entire neighborhood gone insane? Will Ray blow up their house? Just watch it!

Here’s some trivia that I love about this movie:

The structure used as the Peterson home was also used as the home of the character of the virgin Connie Swail in the Tom Hanks film Dragnet.

While they were editing the movie, Dante used Ennio Morricone’s “Se Sei Qualcuno è Colpa Mia” from My Name Is Nobody as the temporary track for the scene where Ray and Art walk up to the Klopeks’ house and ended up falling in love with it. It’s in the film instead of the Jerry Goldsmith score.

Walter’s toy poodle Queenie? That’s the same dog that played Precious in The Silence of the Lambs.

Corey Feldman and Michael Jackson were close friends during the filming and Bubbles the Chimp was a frequent set guest. Unfortunately, the celebrity monkey regularly defecated all over the place, so Dante had to ban him from the set. Yet dog poop was needed throughout the movie, so prop master Mark Jameson made an actor safe version from canned dog food and bean dip that he loaded into caulking guns.

The Klopeks house is filled with TV and movie references. One of the paintings is from Night Gallery. Their dog Landru is named for an alien overlord from Star Trek (or a French serial killer). The sled Rosebud from Citizen Kane is in their basement. But ironically, it isn’t their house that was from The Munsters. Feldman’s character Ricky Butler’s family lives there.

At one point, Ray studies a book called The Theory and Practice of Demonology. That book isn’t real. How do I know? Its author is Julian Karswell, the bad guy from The Curse of the Demon.

Much like every Joe Dante movie, Dick Miller shows up. Here, he’s Vic the garbage man.

Finally — on the subject of Brother Theodore — I first discovered him as a kid when he was a frequent guest on David Letterman’s early shows. These blasts of strangeness still amaze me. I’m shocked that they ever aired on a major network they’re so odd. And if you’re wondering where you’ve heard Theodore before, perhaps it’s in the trailer for Fulci’s The House by the Cemetery.

To get the best possible version of this movie, go for the blu ray from Shout! Factory.

Rospo Pallenberg, the director of this film, is probably better known for the movies that he collaborated on with John Boorman, like Exorcist II: The Heretic, Excalibur and The Emerald Forest. This is the one and only movie he ever directed and sadly, it’s mostly known for being one of Brad Pitt’s first roles.

Brian Woods (Donovan Leitch, son of Donovan, the man who sang about smoking bananas in “Mellow Yellow”) has just been released from a mental hospital after his father was killed suspiciously. He quickly falls in love with Paula (who can blame him, she’s played by Jill Schoelen from Popcorn), but she’s already dating the big jock in town, Dwight (Pitt, who met Schoelen on set and got engaged to her at the end of filming). For some reason, the school’s principal Mr. Dante (Roddy McDowell!) is also in love with her. Once we get that all settled, a bunch of murders start happening and any of Paula’s suitors could be the killer.

I mean, how can you not love a movie where Paula’s district attorney dad (Martin Mull!) gets shot by arrows and spends the entire movie stumbling around and trying to get rescued?

The kills in this movie are ridiculous: one teacher is killed on a Xerox machine and every kid gets a copy of it. Another is having way too good of a time on a trampoline before a flag gets put under it.

It all ends with Dwight’s head in a vice and Brian making him choose between the two men. Paula screams, “Stop fucking with my emotions!” and literally sends a claw hammer into his brains and slicing him in half with a circular saw.

Seriously, this movie is just weird. It has no set tone and usually, that’d make me hate things, but it works here. Also, if you like Wall of Voodoo, they and lead singer Andy Prieboy are all over the soundtrack.

Vinegar Syndrome re-released this film this year, giving this 1989 late era slasher some loving attention. Please reward their efforts and go buy it from them!