Writer and director Damian Lee also did Ski School, which I assume preps you for making science fiction action movies starring two of Arnold’s pals, Jesse “The Body” Ventura and Sven-Ole Thorsen. Plus, best of all — no, actually best doesn’t apply here — Jim Belushi shows up.
Abraxas (Ventura) and Secundus (Thorsen) are Space Cops called Finders who live for thousands of years and use an Answer Box to scan and communicate in the field. It’s also a weapon, as if a subject doesn’t contain the Anti-Life Equation, they are disintegrated.
If you just read that and got angry that Jack Kirby’s concepts were ripped off for this movie, good news. For me, at least. Because I thought I was going crazy.
Secundus goes bad, because he wants to live forever and needs to figure out that Anti-Life Equation to do so. His plan? Knock up the first woman he finds by rubbing his hand over her belly. That woman is Sonia Murray (Marjorie Bransfield, who was married to Belushi at the time, so that explains that) and she has a baby named Tommy in seconds. But Tommy is going to grow up to be the Culminator and solve that equation. Abraxas is supposed to kill the child and the mother, but he’s too nice and let’s her live. Her parents get mad that she had a baby and toss her out into the streets, except that you know, she somehow got pregnant and had the child in the very same day.
Five years later, Tommy is a mute child with superpowers. Well, his one power is the ability to make bullies piss their pants. So I guess that’s a power. And his principal at school is Jim Belushi, who brings back his role of Rick Latimer because we all demanded that. You know, I give Jim a lot of guff and the dude voted for Obama and has a pop-up cannabis shop, so maybe he’s not as bad as I’ve been led to believe.
What is bad is Abraxas, a movie that is kinda sorta The Terminator with no time travel. You can watch it for free on Amazon Prime and Tubi. Or, if you need some help, the Rifftrax version is also on Amazon Prime and Tubi, too.
Rich Correll was Richard Rickover on Leave It to Beaver and helped Harold Lloyd preserve his film as a teen, a role he still works on. He’s directed tons of TV, like a hundred episodes of Hanna Montana. He also produced the Police Squad! TV series and worked with Police Academy‘s Paul Maslansky to make this somewhat forgotten 1990 teen comedy.
Ray Walston and Martin Mull are the grown-up good and bad guys in this story of a ski lodge being sold to make a mall, because in 1990 malls and avarice were things, not that they aren’t things right now.
George Lopez and Paul Feig — yes, the very same man who would make Freaks and Geeks and less famously, the 2016 Ghostbusters — make early appearances.
This was released the same year as Ski School, which got a sequel, while this movie had none of its planned follow-ups.
There’s a wacky guy who has multiple faces thanks to a mask that allows him to continually talk to himself. That’s pretty much the highlight of this film. I’d like to say that these are a genre in and out of themselves, but seeing as how this is posted during a week of Police Academy-ripoffs, I can tell you that they are basically beach movies, which are the same thing as Porky’s movies, which are the same thing as Meatballs ripoffs, which are also all really Animal House ripoffs.
In this sequel, Honey Wells (Ginger Lynn) and Didi (Linnea Quigley) are back to battle Spanish Fly, who is about to dose the city with, well, Spanish Fly.
Miss Thelma Louise Devonshire is back as well. She’s played by Jayne Hamil, who was in all of these movies but the third one. The actress would go on to write for The Nanny and Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures, which seems quite far from Vice Academy.
Teagan — yes, the very same Teagan who was Alienator — is in this as BimboCop, who Honey dislikes so much that she blows up the cyborg cop and goes to jail at the end of the movie, just in time for Didi to graduate and leave Vice Academy behind.
Rick Sloane directed this one again. If you haven’t seen these, imagine a 1980s VCA film with all the lead up to the sex and none of the actual sex. It’s the best we could do before the internet, when all we had was USA Up All Night.
You can watch this on Tubi or be brave and grab the Vinegar Syndrome box set.
Warren Beatty wanted to make this movie all the way back in 1975. In 1980, United Artists became interested in financing and distributing the movie, getting James Bond and Superman writer Tom Mankiewicz to start the script. However, the deal fell through when Chester Gould, creator of the comic strip, pushed for a heavy hand in financial and creative matters.
Spielberg and John Landis were considered to direct at one point at Universal, with Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Tom Selleck and Mel Gibson all considered for the starring role.
After the incident on the set of The Twilight Zone: The Movie, Landis left the project and Walter Hill came on with Joel Silver producing. They approached Beatty to be the star. Sets were even built, but Beatty had creative issues with Hill, who wanted a violent and realistic film. However, the star was a big fan of the comic strip and wanted a stylized version of a comic book, plus a $5 million dollar salary and 15% of the gross.
Beatty finally got a deal with Disney that enabled him to produce, direct and star in the film. Disney greenlit Dick Tracy in 1988 with the rules that Beatty — who was notorious for going overbudget — stay within a $25 million dollar budget.
That didn’t happen, as once filming started, costs went up to $46.5 million and an additional $48.1 million in advertising. The movie made back $162.7 million, so it did make back the investment.
This is one of the last American blockbusters to use no CGI. Instead, the design team of production designer Richard Sylbert, set decorator Rick Simpson, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, visual effects supervisors Michael Lloyd and Harrison Ellenshaw, prosthetic makeup designers John Caglione, Jr. and Doug Drexler, and costume designer Milena Canonero used a combination of matte paintings and incredibly detailed makeup. They also limited themselves to just seven colors and never move the camera. Everything is in frame, as if it’s a comic book panel. Plus, it features some of the most elaborate scene paintings ever made.
That said — it’s the first movie to use digital audio.
As for the film itself, it’s nearly a spot the actor game just as much as it is a story. Tracy (Beatty) is up against “Big Boy” Caprice (Al Pacino), a crime boss who our hero has been after for years, as well as an army of all of Tracy’s bad guys from the strip.
Plus, there’s Breathless Mahoney (Madonna), who keeps coming between Tracy and his true love, the unironically named Tess Trueheart. Oh yeah — and then there’s The Kid, a child who no one wants and that Tracy starts taking care of.
If you love character actors, this movie is for you. There’ Seymour Cassel as Sam Catchem, Michael J. Pollard as Big Bailey, Charles Durning as the chief, Dick Van Dyke as the district attorney and even Kathy Bates as a court stenographer. Even Mary Woronov shows up as a child welfare agent!
The bad guys are Dustin Hoffman as Mumbles, William Forsythe as Flattop, Ed O’Ross as Itchy, Mandy Patinkin as 88 Keys, James Tolkan as Numbers, Henry Silva as Influence, Paul Sorvino as Lips Manlis, R.G. Armstrong as Pruneface, James Caan as Spud Spaldoni and there are quite literally so many other bad guys that I’ve forgotten over the years that Catherine O’Hara plays Texie Garcia.
There’s also The Blank, a mysterious villain who looks like something right out of Blood and Black Lace.
Disney had hoped that Dick Tracy would become a successful franchise, but its disappointing box office performance halted those plans. It made money — but not enough money for the effort.
As these things happen, lawsuits followed. Executive producers Art Linson and Floyd Mutrux sued Beatty shortly after the release of the film, as they claimed that they were owed profit participation.
Beatty was the person who had actually purchased the Dick Tracy film and television rights in 1985 from Tribune Media Services before taking the project to Disney. According to Beatty, in 2002, Tribune attempted to reclaim the rights and notified Disney. They just never told him or followed their agreement.
To lock up the rights even further, Beatty hired cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and film critic Leonard Maltin to make the 2008 Dick Tracy TV Special for Turner Classic Movies. This bonkers effort features Beatty as Tracy in a retrospective interview with Maltin. That’s right — Beatty is in character for the entire special. When asked if Beatty will make a sequel, Dick Tracy tells Maltin to ask him himself.
Even stranger, this special has only aired once, as if it were a legal announcement. Well, that’s because it was.
I love this movie. It’s completely unlike any other film ever made and just looks so strange as a result. Beatty is also crazy — this has been confirmed by many people who worked on this, like Danny Elfman — but the results are so good.
Critics didn’t care for Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi warm up to Universal Soldier (1992), Stargate (1994), and Independence Day, but I’ve always enjoyed this galactic cocktail that pours one part Escape from New York (a disgruntled ex-soldier/anti-hero Felix “Don’t call me Snake” Stone) and two equal parts of Outland and Alien into a Roger Corman New World Pictures commemorative tumbler that’s shaken and poured over Blade Runner.
Toto? We’re not on LV 426 anymore. I think this is “the dark side” of Moon 44!
In the year 2038, in the wake of all of Earth’s natural resources being depleted, multinational corporations—as in Creature (1985)—have taken control of the galaxy and battle each other for mining rights. The two leading companies, Pyrite Defense and Galactic Mining, are in a current battle over a grouping of moons—46, 47, and 51—in a remote region of space known as the Outer Zone. Pyrite has already taken control of the moons and stole two of Galactic Mining’s mineral shuttles—and they’re on their way to take Moon 44.
So Galactic Mining hires Stone (Michael Pare of Eddie and the Cruisers andStreets of Fire) who, to get out of his contract, must take an undercover mission—as a prisoner, along with other prisoners that’ll be granted full pardons for flying a fleet of Airwolf meets Blue Thunder hybrid battle-choppers to protect the mining operation. While there, Stone mixes it up with fellow prisoner O’Neal (Brian Thompson, who made his debut in Sly Stallone’s Cobra) and the crooked mining operation defense officers played by Malcolm McDowell (Rob Zombie’s Halloween reboot, American Satan, FOX News mogul Rupert Murdoch in 2019’s Bombshell) and Leon Rippy (General West in Stargate, HBO’s Deadwood).
So, is Moon 44 galactic flotsam and jetsam for the Death Star’s trash compactors? Eh, for a $15 million budgeted B-Movie shot in West Germany, Moon 44 certainly looks great, thanks to cinematographer Karl Walter Linderlaub (who shot Universal Soldier, Stargate, and Independence Day), and the up-against-the-budget production designs by Oliver Scholl and Sven Hass. (While Hass faded from the business, Scholl pressed onward, working on Edge of Tomorrow, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Suicide Squad.)
Moon 44 served as the final mainstream film of actor Stephen Geoffreys, who portrayed Cookie, a drug-dealing military flight navigator. After starting out with memorable roles in the ‘80s hits Heaven Help Us, Fraternity Vacation, Fright Night (as Evil Ed), and 976-Evil, he left Hollywood to work in gay porn—under the names Larry Bent and Sam Ritter. And it was also the last acting gig for Dean “I’m not John Cryer” Devlin, who rose through the ranks of Hollywood as a writer and producer, most recently with Geostorm (2017).
Originally intended for an American theatrical release, the producers eventually realized the film’s shortcoming as a weak competitor to the films from where it pinched all of its ideas, so it became a popular direct-to-video rental (marketed as “The Most Thrilling Adventure Since Star Wars,” and “The Most Suspenseful Journey Since Aliens”) and was part of a “Moon” TV syndication package that aired on American UHF-TV alongside The Dark Side of the Moon (1990) and Moontrap (1989).
Free VHS rips of Moon 44 come and go — and the two decent uploads we once had linked are now gone from You Tube. It was also on Amazon Prime — and that upload is gone as well. So Google and You Tube at your leisure to see if you find a streaming upload.
And while we’re on the subject of cool, little sci-fi films such as Moon 44, The Dark Side of the Moon, and Creature, be sure to check out our reviews for two clever, ultra-low budgeted sci-fi films filled with more heart and soul than most big-budget studio romps: Space Trucker Bruce and Ares 11. You’ll be glad that you did.
Who does a Top Cop battle? Well, after he loses his partner, he goes up against a drug kingpin and his goons. There’s too much corruption. There’s too much strife. And way too many trans fat oils if this is what a top cop looked like in 1990.
Vic Malone, the top cop of the title, blows up eateries and saves women and pretty much gives his life for our entertainment, if home movies can be considered at such a high level. As the star, stunt coordinator, associate producer and special effects for this movie, Stephen P. Sides took on many roles. He did all of them probably as well as he could. Ah, Crown International, what magical BS you weave before my eyeballs giving these movies money and then somehow, decades later, they end up in my living room.
The director, Mark L. Maness, has the nickname of Chunky. He’s the kind of affable dude who wears a t-shirt under a blazer and is given to quotes like, “Dreams are the fabric from which we can weave our reality.”
If by fabric, you mean Cottonnelle, then yes, fabric.
Somehow, Leonard Maltin said that this was the best erotic thriller of 1990. So, if this movie teaches you anything, it’s that even Leonard Maltin can be swayed by blow, both in the occupation and the noun forms of the word.
Much like so many of the movies we’re watching this week, this is available on the Mill Creek Explosive Cinema set. If you’re feeling as sadomasochistic as me, it’s the best movie that I’ve ever seen set in Arkansas about drug-fighting cops with type 2 diabetes.
In the year 2022 the maintenance ship SpaceCore 1 is dispatched to repair a Moon-orbital weapons platform and ends up adrift over the galactic-path of Earth’s The Bermuda Triangle—and on a collision course with a paranormal mirror of the geographical anomaly on the Moon. Running out of fuel and oxygen, the crew boards a 20th century NASA space shuttle—believed lost during an emergency ocean landing off the Florida coast—with the hopes of salvaging supplies. Then, one by one, the crew is possessed and killed by a spiritual presence that’s linked to the triangle, the dark side of the moon—and Satan.
Yes. This movie is that celluloid Titchener-moment you couldn’t quite place when you watched the multi-million dollar major-studio failures of Paul W.S Anderson’s (Mortal Kombat) Event Horizon (1997) and Walter Hill’s (Streets of Fire) Supernova (2008).
While this low-budget variant of Ridley Scott’s Alien—which traded out the usual gooey xenomorph (see William Malone’s 1985 Creature) with Satan—was a direct-to-video release, we fondly remember seeing it as part of an early ‘90s UHF-TV Saturday afternoon syndication package with 1989’s Moontrap (starring Star Trek’s Walter Koenig and Evil Dead’s Bruce Campbell) and Roland Emmerich’s pre-Stargate offering, 1990’s Moon 44.
Granted, SpaceCore 1’s crew isn’t as scruffy as the USCSS Nostromo’s. And its interiors aren’t as dazzling as Roger Corman’s slightly-more-expensive Morgantus-bound The Quest from Galaxy of Terror (repurposed from Corman’s even-more-expensive Battle Beyond the Stars . . . and has an innermost-fears-that-kill plot instead of biblical demons). Yeah, SpaceCore 1’s “Mother” computer reimaged as a human-looking leather dominatrix robot is a bit silly—in a Galaxina kind-of-way. But there’s no denying The Dark Side of the Moon is charming (like Ed Hunt’s crazy-fun Starship Invasions) and more engrossing than most of today’s CGI-modern space romps (e.g., the 2009 rip-off of 1973’s The Star Lost: Pandorum; the 2016 rip-off of 1997’s The Titanic: Passengers), with its where-is-this-going-kitchen-sink-plotting rife with biblical references, and making Satan—and not ancient astronauts—responsible for The Bermuda Triangle.
It’s unfortunate The Dark Side of the Moon served as the lone theatrical-directing effort by music video purveyor D.J Webster (best known for ‘Til Tuesday’s 1985 MTV hit “Voices Carry”), as he’s skilled at working against an economical budget and showed a-video-to-feature film-transitional promise. However, the screenwriting brother-duo of Carey and Chad Hayes, who made their debut with this film, climbed the Hollywood ladder to worldwide success with James Wan’s The Conjuring franchise. Their latest effort is the in-production sixth installment of the Die Hard franchise, McClane. And proving that everyone in Hollywood has to start somewhere, Carey and Chad Hayes started in the business as actors in the never-released-to-DVD classic, Rad (1985), while Chad appeared in the how-in-the-hell-did-this-ever-get-made gem, Death Spa (1989).
From Rad to McClane? That’s awesome . . . and a bag of chips.
Fans of Joe Turkel, who portrayed Lloyd the Bartender in The Shining and Dr. Eldon Tyrell in Blade Runner (but we remember him best for American International Picture’s The Dirty Dozen rip-off The Devil’s Eight), will want to watch, as this served as his final film before his retirement. Leading man Will Bledsoe, who made his feature film debut in 1984’s Up the Creek (remember the Cheap Trick song?), also made this his final film. Rounding out the cast of familiar TV faces is Alan Blumenfeld (but you remember him best as Mr. Liggett; his wife “reproduced asexually” in WarGames), John Diehl (TV’s Miami Vice, Stargate, City Limits), and Camilla More (Tina in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter) as Lesli, the ship’s silky-smooth, human-looking A.I—complete with ruby-red lipstick and a dominatrix-leather uniform. And, sadly, we have to raise a cold one for Robert Sampson, who we lost this past January. With TV credits that date back to the late ‘50s, you remember him best as Dean Halsey in Re-Animator and Commission Jamison in Charles Band and Stuart Gordon’s Robot Jox.
Not only is The Dark Side of the Moon fondly remembered in the states, it has a rabid international fan base as well. The German black metal band Nargaroth samples the German-language dub of the film (the dialog of Alan Blumenfeld’s demon-possessed character) in their homage track “The Dark Side of the Moon” from 2004’s Prosatanica Shooting Angels. Swedish death metallers Crypt of Kerberos use those same Blumenfeld-samples (in English) on their 1991 track, “Devastator.”
Now that’s the true sign of a successful movie: no one is sampling dialog from Event Horizon or Supernova anytime soon.
This past June Unearthed Films restored The Dark Side of the Moon to Blu-ray with an audio commentary track by producers Paul White (the ‘80s rental favs The Unamable, Bride of Re-Animator) and Stephen Biro (2010’s A Serbian Film, 2019’s Beneath the Black Veil), along with an interview featuring “Satan” himself, actor Alan Blumenfeld.
Be sure to catch up on all of the Alien knockoffs and rip-offs with our explorations “Ten Movies that Rip-off Alien” and “A Whole Bunch of Alien Rip-offs all at Once.” And there’s more celluloid déjà vu of the Event Horizon and Supernova variety afoot with 2020’s Underwater. And, finally, since there’s always a pinch of Star Wars in all post-1977 sci-fi films, you can catch up with all of the George Lucas-inspired rip-offs with our “Star Wars Droppings” week. There’s more to check out with our “Movies in Outer Space Week.”
But make no mistake: The Dark Side of the Moon isn’t an Alien rip-off or a Star Wars dropping: D.J Webster and the Hayes brothers gave us an intelligent-against-the-budget film with a unique twist on the glut of science fiction films produced in the wake of both of those blockbusters.
Simply put: The Dark Side of the Moon deserves your attention.
You can watch a rip of the old Vidmark Entertainment VHS on You Tube or you can watch a cleaner digital stream on TubiTv.
About the Author: You can read the music and film criticisms of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S Movies.
Take it from someone who was there, 1990 belonged to Andrew “Dice” Clay.
That year, he became the first comedian to sell out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row. His albums sold hundreds of thousands of copies, a fact that would never be possible in today’s streaming world. His controversial episode of Saturday Night Light was the fourth highest-rated show of the season and caused cast member Nora Dunn and music guest Sinead O’Connor to not appear on the show.
You kind of had to be there.
Yet how has a movie so critically reviled in its homeland been so well-received overseas?
The Adventures of Ford Fairlane will leave you with many questions.
Ford Fairlane (Clay) is smoking on a beach. He smokes for most of the movie, as so much of Clay’s Diceman routine — which started as just part of his act and grew and, well, grew — was about smoking.
He flashes back to how he got here, as Bobby Black (Vince Neil, who deserves a similar fate after murderously screwing up Hanoi Rocks) collapses on stage and dies. Ford is hired by shock jock Howard…no, Johnny Crunch (Gilbert Gottfried) to find out what happened and what groupie Zuzu Petals (Maddie Corman, who went from movies like this and Beer League to playing Lady Aberlin in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood) had to do with it.
Crunch is electrocuted on the air and now our detective must deal with all manner of rogues, from former disco cop Lt. Amos (Ed O’Neill, always wonderful), Smiley the hitman (Robert England), numerous ex-girlfriends who want him dead and a record executive named Julian Grendel (Wayne Newton!) who is bootlegging his own label’s music when he isn’t blowing up Fairlane’s beloved car and home up real good.
There’s also a koala bear. And Lauren Holly as Ford’s assistant, Jazz. And an orphan named The Kid, played by Brandon Call from Step by Step.
Along the way, you get David Patrick Kelly (Luther from The Warriors, as well as T-Bird from The Crow and the fan from Penn & Teller Get Killed), Morris Day, William Shockley (the stuntman who played the first person dispatched by RoboCop), Lala Zappa (who keeps showing up in movies I’ve been watching like this and Amityville: A New Generation), Kari Wuhrer (oh man, whatever happened to her? If anyone deserved to be in 1990’s neon giallo films, who else? Also, she is in Beastmaster 2, Thinner, Anaconda and Berserker), Sheila E., showgirl Delia Sheppard (Penthouse Pet of the Month for April 1988 who is in Gregory Dark’s soft core movie Night Rhythms), Priscilla Presley, Kurt Loder and Tone Loc.
The music for this film is perhaps way better than the film, led by Billy Idol’s “Cradle of Love,” which had an awesome video directed by David Fincher. The Black Plague band that starts the film features not just Neil on vocals, but also former Ozzy bassist Phil Soussan, Quiet Riot’s Carlos Cavazzo on guitar and Randy Castillo, who was in Ozzy’s band and played for some time in Motley Crüe before his death.
Somehow, this movie made $1 million more than it cost — $20 million if you were wondering — and was the big winner at the 1990 Golden Raspberry Awards, winning Worst Actor (Clay), tying with Blake Edwards’ Ghosts Can’t Do It for Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay.
Speaking of that screenplay, the movie’s writers all went on to bigger and better things. Well, kind of. David Arnott wrote The Last Action Hero. James Cappe wrote for the Poltergeist: The Legacy TV show. And Dan Walters followed this up with Hudson Hawk(he also wrote Batman Returns and Demolition Man, so it’s not all bad). The characters came from Rex Weiner, who has the astounding title of creative consultant for Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!(spoiler warning: he wrote it under the pen name Carlos Lazlo). He originally wrote tales of Ford Fairlane in The New York Rocker and L.A. Weekly.
Somehow, Renny Darlin just kept getting handed millions by Hollywood to make movies. Cutthroat Island? Deep Blue Sea? Exorcist: The Beginning? Oh Renny — what photos do you have and why do you keep using your blackmail to make these movies?
That said, I love this movie for this exchange:
Ford Fairlane: Hey, look. Write down my number: 555-6321 Got it?
Twin Club Girl: Yeah. Wait a minute. 555 is not a real number. They only use that in the movies.
Ford Fairlane: No shit, honey. What do you think this is? Real life?
You also have to love any movie that features fake bands like Ellen Aim and the Attackers (obviously from Streets of Fire), Brain of the Scarecrow, Alba Varden (the cruise ship from Lethal Weapon 2), Heather, Corey, Heather Cory and Young (a reference to the many Cory and Heather actors in the 90’s), Todd Times Two, 5000 Schizophrenics (10,000 Maniacs), Hot Tub Johnny and his Feline Friends, Mamma Waters Sings the Blues, Nine Sisters, Horses on Fire, The Silver Belles, Fred and Ethyl (I Love Lucy), The Professor and Mary-Ann (Gilligan’s Island), The Nakatomi Boys Choir (Die Hard), The Doctor Bellows Funk Machine (I Dream of Jeannie) and The Redheaded Gardner and his Flower.
Even better, Black Plague’s song titles are listed, such as “Hon, I Screwed the Kids,” “Polanski Nursery” and “I Love You.”
Also — as I know Joe Bob Briggs worries about these kinds of things, but the actual 1957 Fore Fairlane in the film was not actually blown up. That was a fiberglass replica.
So wait — remember what I said about this movie actually being a success in some places?
In post-communist Hungary, that’s where.
Pirated copies — featuring the voice of Hungarian singer and comedian Fero Nagy — became so popular that Hungarian youths would quote the film and the profanity filled lines Nagy added.
The film was also a big deal in Norway and in Spain, where it was dubbed by singer, actor and comedian Pablo Carbonell. I kind of dig the film’s title in Peru, which translates to Ford Fairlane: World Rock Police.
There was even a DC Comic book of this movie! Gerard Jones wrote it! I bought every issue!
Arrow Video put out José Ramón Larraz’s Edge of the Axe earlier this year and I loved every minute of it. While Deadly Manor isn’t quite as good, it’s still plenty strange. Just when you’re lulled into near-sleep by the numbers slasher plot, something absolutely and wonderfully bizarre happens, like the flashback to the bikers causing the accident or shocking nude photos of living, dead and perhaps not so dead people that show up throughout the film. Seriously, if nudity bothers you, this is not the movie for you.
On their way to a lake that no one can pronounce, some kids pick up a drifter with a dark past — don’t they all have those — and head to an abandoned mansion that has a car shrine up front, coffins in the basement and a closet full of scalps. And oh yeah — the same gorgeous yet evil woman has a photo up every few inches.
Everybody is soon about to be snuffed, but you knew that just from the first few seconds of the movie.
Greg Rhodes is in this movie and Ghosthouse, which would make a great movie to pair this up with if you’re looking for a fun evening. Jerry Kernion, who is Peter, has had a pretty nice career after this debut. And Jennifer Delora, who is pretty fun as the killer, was the second woman in Miss America history to be dethroned after her nude scenes in Bad Girls Dormitory became fodder for those easily upset. She’s also in all manner of genre favorites like Robot Holocaust, Suburban Commando, Bedroom Eyes II and Frankenhooker.
Seriously — hang out for the first hour or so of this movie. You’ll be rewarded with something really special when it comes to the final girl and the last twenty minutes or so.
As always, Arrow has gone all out for a movie that not many people were all that concerned about. So what! This features a new 2K scan, interviews with actress Jennifer Delora, Brian Smedley-Aston and Larraz (archival, not new, as he died in 2013) and a trailer for the Savage Lust VHS release. There’s also a commentary track with Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan.
You can buy Deadly Manor from Arrow Video, who were kind enough to send us a review copy.
Austrian-born ghost hunter Professor Dr. Hans Holzer wrote the book Murder In Amityville that the incredibly salacious and totally awesome Amityville II: The Possession was based on. Eight years later, The Amityville Curse was made, based on another of his books. Holzer wrore a hundred plus books, so people really need to get on making more movies based on his crazy ideas.
This was directed by Tom Berry, who is mainly is known as a producer, helping make movies like Scanners II: The New Order, The Paperboy and Screamers. If you rented movies in the 1990’s, you probably picked up a movie that he touched from far away in the Great White North.
Marvin and Debbie bought the house next to the Amityville house because, well, we wouldn’t have a movie if they didn’t. It’s possessed because there’s a tunnel that connects the houses. And also, yes, if it wasn’t possessed I probably wouldn’t be watching this movie.
They bring up some of their friends to help get it back in shape, like Frank (Kim Coates, Carlo from Battlefield Earth), Abigail (Cassandra Gava, the witch who tries to seduce Arnold in Conan the Barbarian) and Bill.
Frank ends up possessed and kills just about everyone but the ladies. He also wipes out Mrs. Moriarty, the former housekeeper. And there’s also a story of a priest who died here when the house was once a rectory. This doesn’t reach the absurd heights of some of the other Amityville films, but it does have a dude getting shot with a nailgun, so there’s that.
Should you get it? Well, you know me and my curse when it comes to Amityville. Of course you should get it! It’s now available from Vinegar Syndrome.
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