Death Warrant is the first movie sold by David S. Goyer, way before he wrote Kickboxer 2, Demonic Toys, Pet Sematary 2, Dark City, the three Blade films (he directed Blade: Trinity), Ghost Rider, the Christopher Nolan Batman films, Man of Steel, Batman vs. Superman and the upcoming Terminator: Dark Fate. It’s directed by Deran Sarafian, who directed To Die For, a 1989 vampire rental favorite, as well as episodes of House and Lost. He also directed another rental favorite, Claudio Fragasso’s (Monster Dog, Shocking Dark, Rats: Night of Terror) apoc-romp Interzone that stars Bruce Abbott (Re-Animator).
Detective Louis Burke (Jean-Claude Van Damme) of the Quebec Royal Canadian Mounted Police has come to Los Angeles to confront the man who killed his partner — Christian “The Sandman ” Naylor. After finding bodies hanging from the ceiling, he’s able to defeat his enemy, shooting him multiple times in the chest.
More than a year later, Burke joins a task force to solve a series of murders inside California’s Harrison State Prison. Burke will pose as an inmate while attorney Amanda Beckett (Cynthia Gibb, Jack’s Back) acts as his wife in the undercover sting.
Burke soon becomes friends with his cellmate Konefke (George Jenesky, who played Francis “Psycho” Soyer in Stripes before changing his name to Conrad Dunne) and an older clerk named Hawkins (Robert Guillaume!). Despite saving the two men multiple times, they refuse to speak about the murders. In fact, no one wants to talk.
Luckily, with the help of a teenage hacker (Joshua John Miller, who would later write The Final Girls), they discover that human organs are being sent out of the prison. That’s when Burke learns that the Sandman is still alive inside the prison.
While Beckett attends a party hosted by the state attorney general Tom Vogler (George Dickerson, Blue Velvet), she plans on telling him that her boss is behind everything. At the last minute, she finds out that he’s behind it all — his wife needed a liver transplant and even all his money and power couldn’t get her one. So he used the prison as a way to murder healthy prisoners and harvest their organs and kept making money from it after she got better.
Sandman has been sent to the prison to kill Burke and shut it all down. During a riot, Hawkins is injured but saved by Priest, but seconds later, Sandman kills the younger man. Finally, we get a big battle in a boiler room between Burke and Sandman that has all manner of craziness — burning against the metal door, kicking the bad guy in the flames and having him walk out and keep fighting and finally a bolt going through the Sandman’s head to kill him.
There’s also some conjugal romance between our hero cops, if you’re coming here for some tender moments. I think not. I think you’re coming for Van Damme kicking a serial killer into a furnace.
Donald Petrie has directed plenty of movies you may know, even if you don’t know him. Mystic Pizza, Grumpy Old Men, Richie Rich, My Favorite Martian, Miss Congeniality, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days…he’s made some memorable films. This effort is from the time when Dana Carvey was a star on Saturday Night Live, but before Wayne’s World made him a bigger star.
Carvey plays con man Eddie Farrell, who is working a scam with his friend Lou Pesquino. They sneak into an empty house and discover that the owner is out of the country and the house sitter can’t make it. After a gang of thugs get sent by mobster Sal Nichols (Detective Hugh Lubic from Masters of the Universe and Strickland from Back to the Future), the two split up and Eddie takes on the identity of the home’s real owner, Jonathan Albertson.
Soon, Eddie is growing close to businessman Milt Malkin (Robert Loggia) and his wife Mona, as well as their daughter Annie (Julia Campbell, the mean girl from Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion). It all starts as a con, but soon Eddie is falling for her.
This is a movie packed with actors that you rush to IMDB to look up, like Milo O’Shea as Eddie’s uncle Max (he was Durand-Durand in Barbarella), the first acting role of jazz musician John M. Watson Sr. (he’s the bartender in Groundhog Day) and Del Close, who was one of the most influential people in the history of American improv. He’s also Reverend Meeker in the vastly underrated 1988 remake of The Blob.
I really need to get to a Robert Loggia week on this site, even if nobody but me wants to talk about how great he is in movies like the Independence Day movies (actually, he’s the only good part of the sequel other than the fact that it mercifully ended), Lost Highway, Big (one could argue that he’s playing the same exact role from that film in Opportunity Knocks) and The Believers.
You may be surprised — certainly, many people watching this and reviewing it on Letterboxd are — that in 1990, we didn’t have the cultural sensitivities toward stereotypical accents. Just keep that in mind and understand that this is a goofy comedy that just wants to entertain you.
You can get the new blu ray of this movie from Mill Creek, who have been releasing plenty of 1990’s movies in great packaging that makes it look like you rented that movie from a video store like Blockbuster.
Even better, if you want a copy, they were cool enough to send us an extra copy as a giveaway! Just share this post on Facebook or Twitter, then send us a link or screenshot to bandsaboutmovies@gmail.com. We’ll pick one random entrant to win their very own Mill Creek blu ray of Opportunity Knocks!
DISCLAIMER: Mill Creek sent us this for review, but that has no impact on what we thought of the film.
Before he worked in films — supposedly — Bob Logan wrote material for comedians Joan Rivers, Sam Kinison, Garry Shandling, Rodney Dangerfield and Arsenio Hall. This is but one of three different projects that Logan worked on with Linda Blair, including Up Your Alley (her second project with “The Unknown Comic” Murray Langston) and the completely unhinged VHS tape How to Get Revenge. He also directed Meatballs 4, which teams Corey Feldman with Jack Nance. Yes, Jack Nance from Eraserhead.
Logan brought together Leslie Nielsen and Blair for this comedic retelling of The Exorcist that was a rental store staple. Seriously, when I announced Linda Blair week, people immediately asked if I was covering this.
Father Jebediah Mayii (Nielsen) — if you don’t think this movie is going to continually replay that pun, you have no idea what you’re in for — casted out the devil from Nancy Aglet (Blair) back in 1973. But now, after watching The Ernest and Fanny Miracle Hour (Ned Beatty and Lana Schwab), she’s got that demon inside her all over again, spraying her family with split pea soup.
Young priest Father Luke Brophy begs Mayii to help, but the elder priest won’t. The last exorcism nearly killed him, so instead the Supreme Council for Exorcism Granting decides that the rite will be given on live TV along with Ernest and Fanny.
Thus the hijinks ensue, including Mayii training with “Body By Jake” Jake Steinfeld as well as a little song, a little dance and a little bit of jokes about what’s in your pants, Mayii comes back to have a final battle with Satan, commented on by “Mean” Gene Okerlund and Jesse “The Body” Ventura. Look for Wally George, Jack LaLanne and even Variety columnist Army Archerd in cameos.
Will you like it? Here’s the level of comedy here: Blair plays Nancy in this movie and Reagan in the original. Nancy Reagan. Get it? It’s a fun reminder to me of being young and renting movies, particularly ones that never really played in theaters. If you’re of the same age as me, you’ll probably look at it more favorably than the younger generation.
Remember when Scott Baio got telekinetic powers and instead of joining the X-Men and saving the world, he decided to just look at Heather Thomas’ breasts while goofy around with Willie Aames? Well, those guys grew up to be a Trump supporter and Bibleman. Heather Thomas? She retired because she had so many stalkers before becoming a political activist, serving on several advisory boards and supporting mostly Democratic candidates.
But I digress. We’re here today to discuss Zapped Again!
This movie doesn’t avoid the original at all, continually referencing it as Kevin Matthews tries to fit in at Ralph Waldo Emerson High School. He’s rejected by the cool kids in the Key Club, so he joins the Science Club. In their clubhouse, he finds vials of the liquid that gave Barney Springboro (Baio from the original, not even coming back for even the briefest of a cameo) his powers.
Kevin then uses his powers to cause chaos for everyone, including lifting his teacher Miss Mitchell’s (Linda Blair, literally the only reason I watched this movie) skirt. She tells him after class that she knew he did it and remembered when Barney did the same to the entire school.
Our protagonist only has eyes for Amanda, the rich mean girl, while the real right woman for him is fellow Science Club geek Lucy. Lyle Azado shows up in a quick role as the school’s coach who falls in love with Miss Burnhart (returning from the original film, played again by Sue Ane Langdon).
Also, when Blair’s character can’t make it to class, Karen Black fills in. No complaints there, even if it makes no sense.
Back in 1990, made for cable comedies could be made about teenagers using their mental powers to see women naked. Today, I doubt such a thing could occur. Whether or not that’s a good or bad thing — to be honest, I suffered through this boring film buoyed only by the hope that Blair and Black would return — is up to you, dear reader.
Michael Lehmann has a career of ups and downs as a director. His debut was Heathers, which I’d claim as his critical high point. He followed that up with this movie, which was lost in the wake of New World Pictures bankruptcy and then Hudson Hawk, a film which is a cultural touchpoint for a waste of time (and you know that I love it and feel differently than the rest of the world). The rest of his films — Airheads, 40 Days and Nights, My Giant — are fun films, but stray far from the bombast of his debut.
The Brazilian Cocorada are shapeshifting insects that can become human, newly migrated to a suburban Ohop neighborhood, learning everything about how to be normal from the Sunday paper. Dick (Ed Begley Jr.) gets a job at the nuclear power plant in the hopes that he’ll soon learn how to destroy the world so that only bugs survive.
That mission is soon subverted as the bugs start to become even stranger, if that’s possible. His wife Jane (Stocker Channing, forever Rizo from Grease) becomes addicted to consumerism and doesn’t even notice her husband drifting into an affair. Their son Johnny (Robert Jayne, who went from Night of the Demons 2 to world-class blackjack player) goes from straight A’s to metal and smoking weed. Their daughter Sally becomes pregnant and then a militant lesbian. And even the family dog, Spot, starts killing and eating.
When their mission becomes compromised, Aunt Bea (Dabney Coleman!) is sent to finish the mission, but the Applegates decide they love the humanity they’ve been sent to destroy. They retreat back to the jungle and their neighbors go there to find them in an improbably sweet but appreciably happy ending.
This is yet another movie that has never been released on DVD. Luckily, VHSPS has it.
BONUS: Listen to Becca and I discuss this movie on our podcast.
When I was young, I was too sure of my pop culture loves to ever find love. Or maybe I was just doing things the right way, because my life turned out great. I claimed I’d never be with someone who listened to modern country or pop punk or who would dare to like a movie as inept as Ghost Dad. I’m happy to report that I’m happily married to someone who checks off all of the above.
Sidney Poitier is an American treasure. This is the film that makes you question that status.
Elliot Hopper (Bill Cosby) is a workaholic widower who cares more about work than his family, forgetting his daughter Diane’s (Kimberly Russell, TV’s Head of the Class) birthday in his dogged pursuit of a promotion and company car. To make it up to her, he gives her his car, leading to him riding in a taxi driven by Curtis Burch, a Satanist who drives the car off a bridge into the water, killing Elliot — yes, this is a comedy — and sending his ghost back to his family.
Luckily, his three children can see him when it’s totally dark. He’s then pulled away to London by Sir Edith (Ian Bannen, who died in a car accident in real life), a paranormal researcher who tells him that the powers that be screwed up and he has until Thursday to save his mortal body. Hijinks ensue, with Elliot doing magic tricks with his son Danny, quitting his job and falling in love with Joan (Denise Nicholas, TV’s In the Heat of the Night).
There’s also the not so comedic moment of Diane slipping on roller skates that little sister Amanda left on the steps and breaking her neck. This being a family comedy, everything works out.
The writers of this film were obsessed with ghosts. Phil Alden Robinson (here under the pseudonym Chris Reese) wrote and directed Field of Dreams the year before, while S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock would go on to direct another movie that my wife loves, Heart and Souls.
It’s kind of hard to watch anything with Bill Cosby in it after the revelations of the last few years. At least this isn’t Leonard Part 6.
Bonus: You can listen to Becca and I discuss this movie on our podcast.
The dream of most long-haired nerds in 1990 — well, this one at least — was to shred on guitar and to date Traci Lords. This movie shows you that the only way to that goal is to find a voodoo woman and sell your soul to the Devil. And if you have to kill people along the way to keep what’s yours, that’s the price you have to pay.
Stephen Quadros stars as Angel Martin (although his solos are played by Nitro guitarist Michael Angelo Batio), a kid who wants to go from the pizza shop to the Sunset Strip by any means necessary. Today, Quadros is better known as an MMA announcer for a large variety of groups, but back in the day, his drumming was so good that Gene Simmons tried him out for KISS.
Once tendonitis flared its ugly head, Quadros went into acting, appearing in a veritable barrage of B-movie delights. He fist fought OJ Simpson in CIA Code Name: Alexa. He fought demons with spin kicks in Demon Wind. And he was the fight coordinator for the DMX/Jet Li vehicle — yes, this happened — Cradle 2 the Grave.
His co-star is the aforementioned Nora Louise Kuzma, who rechristened herself Traci Lords after the first name she always wanted and the surname of the star of Hawaii Five-O, Jack Lord. In 1986, video rental stores across the country scrambled to erase her films from their inventory — she was underage for every one of her films except for Traci, I Love You, the one film she owned the rights to. Supposedly, she was offered big money to stay in the adult industry — I kind of doubt that with all the problems she caused, but money leads as they say — and went mainstream. Between a music career — her album “1000 Fires” is underrated — and modeling, Lords has remained acting ever since.
Here, she plays Lindsay Roberts, the manager of Spastic Colon, a band of fitness dudes who hire Angel. Unbeknownst to all but him, he can live forever if he keeps taking souls. And of course, he falls in love with Lindsay. I mean, who wouldn’t? What woman makes a little hat look as fetching as Traci?
Amazingly, this movie was almost made with Linda Blair playing Lindsay’s part. It’s the producers had their pulse on exactly what I look for in films! And what I look for is muddy, near shot on video demonic possession films with sex symbols in them!
Troy Donahue — who played Merle Johnson in The Godfather Part II and would also appear with Traci in John Waters’ Crybaby — is in here and it’s sadly the last film of screen great Aldo Ray. Again — these are filmmakers who may have asked — what do the fat kids of today want to see? They want to see Aldo Ray be belligerent!
Shock ‘Em Dead is never going to be on anyone’s best movies of all time list. But it’s the kind of movie that I’ll sneak on if you’re too drunk to drive home and crashing on my couch. You’ll wake up and say, “What the hell did we watch last night?” And I’ll just laugh, having led one more soul to this movie and getting one step closer to being a guitar wizard thanks to Satan.
The in-between music in this is used to great effect on Acid Witch’s “Midnight Movies” EP. If you love metal-themed films, I suggest you check it out.
I wonder, after doing an entire week of Andy Sidaris movies, if these quick descriptions of what they’re all about at the beginning of each article are starting to seem repetitive. To wit: a new enemy appears and menaces gorgeous male and female secret agents who use inventive weapons and double entendres to defeat them. It’s not me who is repetitive, I fear. And I have like eight more Sidaris movies left to get to! I should just shut up and get in the hot tub before more killers show up.
A brutal murder in Las Vegas starts off this adventure, which brings in new villain Juan “Jack of Diamonds” Degas, played by Erik Estrada. Donna returns, again played by Dona Speir, but Taryn is missing in action.
Degas wants to smuggle next-generation technology weaponry into the United States, but he’s decided to do it through Miami, which means that he needs to get the L.E.T.H.A.L. Agents out of the way, starting with Donna and newcomer Nicole (Roberta Vasquez, who was Pantera in Picasso Trigger).
This bad guy takes things even further by kidnapping Donna’s mom, which means that he’s going to die like all Andy Sidaris villains: at the end of a rocket launcher. Yes, there are also remote controlled boat bombs, double crosses and ninjas. You just kind of expect these things by now. What you may not expect is an incredibly young Danny Trejo to show up as one of the henchmen, which was a cool surprise.
Edy from past films shows up again as a lounge singer who performs several times, including a song all about, well, guns. And there’s fine dialogue such as “Hiya my ass!” as a ninja is shot and Donna screaming “Don’t just do something! Stand there!”
I recommend not watching these films until it’s so absurdly late that it’s become early. They work best that way.
Joe Dante is one of my favorite directors of all time. It could be because he also grew up loving monsters, even writing for the zine Castle of Frankenstein before becoming a bona fide director. Or perhaps it’s all the Easter Eggs he puts in his films. It’s probably because each barely contains a lunatic zeal, as if they come right out and say, “I can’t believe someone is paying us to make this movie!”
The original Gremlins was a big financial success and Warner Brothers wanted Dante to make a sequel right away. However, Dante saw that movie as having a finite end, it was a rough experience making the movie and he only saw the sequel as a way to make money. So Warner Brothers moved on without him, inventing all manner of situations where the Gremlins would end up on Mars or in Las Vegas. Finally, they asked Dante one more time and he asked for triple the budget of the original and complete creative control. He got it. Oh boy, did he.
Dante has always felt that too much time has passed between the two films and that the strange cable universe only suggested by this movie has become way too true. Sure, it has. But what I really love about this one is that it tells you right from the beginning that nothing is going to make sense, so just sit back and enjoy it. This is to quote Dante, “one of the more unconventional studio pictures ever.” It’s also probably his most personal film.
While this movie begins — after the Looney Tunes intro we’ll discuss in a bit — in a very ordinary way, by the end it has completely embraced being a cartoon, made in a world where physics and logic don’t apply. What other movie would invite critic Leonard Maltin, who hated the first, to savage that film before the Gremlins murder him?
Mr. Wing (Keye Luke, returning for a cameo) is the last hold out in Chinatown, unable to leave his shop of mysteries and allow it to be razed for the new state-of-the-art Clamp Center, the new headquarters of billionaire Ted Turner/Donald Trump hybrid clone Daniel Clamp (John Glover, who makes any movie he appears in instantly better).
The elderly man dies and Gizmo ends up becoming the test subject of Dr. Catheter (Christopher Lee, who apologized to Dante for being in The Howling 2) and his team of maniacs. He’s soon rescued by the returning Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) and his now-fiancee Kate Beringer(Phoebe Cates, who really would have been a perfect giallo actress and now I bet you can’t get that idea out of your head either).
Clamp ends up meeting Billy, who works in the concept design area, and becomes his friend. That also means that his superior Marla Bloodstone (Haviland Morris, Sixteen Candles, Home Alone) gets attracted to him and starts her pursuit to the consternation of Kate.
Meanwhile, Gizmo gets wet all over again and spawns George, Lenny, Daffy and the most insidious of all mogwai, Mohawk. I mean, this guy is evil even before he makes the change. Soon, they’re tying up Gizmo and electrocuting him, ripping off his fur and hitting him with toy trains.
If you know the rules of the mogwai, of course these bad boys are going to get wet and multiply further, as well as eat after midnight and go full gremlin. It gets even worse when they get into the lab and start trying every formula they can get their hands on, like a mutagen that creates a brainy gremlin voiced by Tony Randall, a vegetable gremlin, an electrical gremlin, a bat gremlin who can’t be destroyed by bright light, a spider gremlin and hundreds more.
Meanwhile, horror movie host Grandpa Fred (Robert Prosky, The Great Outdoors, Christine) turns into an investigative journalist with the help of Japanese tourist Mr. Katsuji (Gedde Watanabe, who played perhaps the most racist character ever, Long Duck Dong in Sixteen Candles) and the world discovers that monsters have taken over the Clamp building. Also, Murray and Sheila Futterman (Dick Miller and Jackie Joseph) have come to town at exactly the wrong time.
There’s also a completely bonkers moment where Dante involves you, the audience, in the film. Just like in The Tinger when the titular monster breaks free in the theater, the gremlins take over the projection booth, making shadow puppets and showing the nudie cutie movie Volleyball Holiday. Then, Part Bartel as the manager of the theater enlists Hulk Hogan’s help to quell the rebellion of the gremlins. This scene never appeared on home video releases until DVD. That’s because in the TV/video version, the gremlins take over your TV and do shadow puppetry over white noise before changing the channels and finding the John Wayne movie Chisum. The Duke forces the gremlins to settle down. Lee’s voice here was done by Chad Everett.
It’s audacious that this was even allowed to happen, as the studio worried that audiences would just leave. Dante countered by having a test screening where people loved this segment. For once, test screening made a better movie!
Believe it or not, the original cut was even longer. Executive producer Steven Spielberg claimed that there were too many gremlins and several scenes were cut. Way to keep it fun, Steven!
Back to Looney Tunes. Joe Dante talked Chuck Jones into coming out of retirement to animate the opening, which sets the tone for chaos. In fact, instead of the friendly Bugs Bunny introducing the movie, the near-manic Daffy Duck just takes over. In the video version, there is even more of this beginning, including Daffy misspelling the movie as Gremlin Stew and deciding to name it The Return of Super-Daffy Meets Gremlins 2 Part 6: The Movie. This was cut because audiences expected a live-action film and were confused thinking they were watching a cartoon.
Daffy even comes back at the end, as Daffy pops in and out making comments before Porky Pig ends the film. He comes back again and takes over for Porky before the Warner Brothers logo smashes him.
There are so many crazy secrets in this movie. I’ll try and share a few of my favorites.
The end of the world tape that Clamp keeps to show when and if that ever happens is based on the very real Armageddon tape that Ted Turner had instructed CNN to create.
Sylvester Stallone gave his endorsement for Gizmo to dress up as Rambo.
The musical number is stolen nearly shot for shot from the 1934 Busby Berkely musical Dames.
Randall Peltzer, Billy’s dad, was supposed to return after the gremlins were killed at the end and give to Gizmo his newest invention, a wet-suit to keep him from ever getting wet again. The scene was set, Hoyt Axton was available, but everyone thought the movie was too long and the scene would never be shown, so they didn’t shoot it.
If you listen to Gizmo speak to people, he doesn’t always say their names. He refers to Mr. Wing by his real name Keye Luke. And when he meets John Astin, who plays a janitor, he calls him Gomez.
There are music cues from past horror movies used throughout, such as the song from Tarantula when Mohawk transforms into the spider gremlin, the theme from The ‘Burbs when the bat gremlin flies away and a Hammer-esque song when Christopher Lee is in his lab.
Vectorscope Labs has an office in the Clamp building. That’s the company from Dante’s Innerspace. Dr. Quatermass also keeps an office there.
There’s so much to remember here that every time I think I’ve finished writing this, I think of something else, like the Phantom of the Opera gremlin or the fact that Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith are in the salad bar.
Regardless, I love this movie. It continually takes huge bloody bites out of the studio hand that fed it — way after midnight — multiplying and becoming better by the second. It is that most rare of sequels that eclipses the original by many miles.
Lana Clarkson is back, but this sequel to Barbarian Queen is one in title only, as it’s a completely different story. Here, she played Althalia, who goes from being a princess to leading peasants and an army of female fighters against Arkaris. That said, this is a Roger Corman produced film, so prepare for plenty of women being tortured and menaced in all manner of pre-#metoo ways.
This one is all about a magic scepter that only Althalia has the secret to, but if she uses it, her father — who is missing after a recent battle — will die. Her brother seeks the throne and her ex-kinda boyfriend is all wishy-washy, so she runs into the forest to escape.
There, she finds a group of Amazons who force her to mud wrestle — yes, did I mention this is a Roger Corman produced film? — before allowing her into their tribe. Soon, they’re battling her brother’s soldiers before our heroine is captured and tortured on the rack — again, did I mention Corman produced this? — before escaping and saving all the land.
I never thought that I’d be wistful for Barbarian Queen, but the sequel really leaves a lit to be desired. Somehow, some way, Barbarian Queen III: Revenge of the She-King was announced but never happened.
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