I wasn’t ready for Mirror, Mirror. I had no idea it’d grab me, thinking it was just another clone of The Craft. But nope. It’s something else entirely.

Megan Gordon (Rainbow Harvest) is the new girl in school, a shy and withdrawn goth who is taunted and treated like shit by everyone other than Nikki and Ron, a popular girl and her jock boyfriend. Now here’s where this movie stands out. Megan isn’t one of those fake Hollywood versions of what they think goth is. She honestly looks insane in so many of her outfits, wearing tiny hats and headdresses that Vulnavia would be proud to put on. Her hair is shaved in weird places and even when she has to wear her tennis uniform, she looks incredibly out of place and uncomfortable. In short, if I was 15 years old, I would be making her the perfect mix tape.

Megan’s dad has recently died, which is why she and her mother Susan (Karen Black!) have moved. In their new home, she finds an antique mirror in her room which keeps returning even when it is taken away. Oh yeah — her dog dies too, for some reason on top of the kitchen counter, and Willaim Sanderson (The Rocketeer, TV’s Newhart, Fight for Your Life) shows up as a weird pet undertaker who starts dating Susan.

Megan learns that the mirror gives her magic powers, which she uses to get revenge. But despite the warnings of the antique dealer who was in charge of the house’s furnishings (Yvonne De Carlo!) that the mirror grants its powers at the cost of the user’s life, Megan grows more and more addicted to having the power.

Soon, Megan starts to get everything she wants. And when she doesn’t, she kills everyone in her way. Along the way, she inverts the sexual predator role, going after the men in the movie with so much passion that they often beg her to slow down or to leave them alone.

I’m not saying this is a perfect movie. There’s an extra long sandwich-making scene that feels way off script. But Megan killing Ron is quite intense, as is the way she murders her rival in the shower. And not since 1988’s remake of The Blob has a sink been so murderous.

By the end of the movie, Megan has lost control of the mirror and it starts killing people she didn’t want it to go after. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the scene where the mirror is coated with blood, leading to Megan making out with her own reflection.

The end takes the sisterhood between the two main characters to a frightening conclusion when seen through the mirror’s reflection.

For a straight to video 80’s horror movie that was followed by three sequels, this is much better than you’d expect. You can find Mirror, Mirror on Shudder and Amazon Prime!

At 3 AM, my mind works like this: “Sam, there is a movie that rips off Coma and has Linda Blair in it. We must not sleep. We must watch this.”

Director Alec Mills only did one other film, Bloodmoon, but he was a camera guy and cinematographer on several Bond films like License to Kill and Moonraker. I would assume, after watching this movie, that he did the parts that are really boring, like the travelogue footage when Bond makes it to another country.

I’m on a quest to watch every Linda Blair film, so this is part of that Quixotic endeavor. Here, she plays Maggie Healey, an American who learned to be a nurse and moved to Australia where she gets a drug-addicted rich boyfriend who likes to draw pictures of her on his sailing ship. I’m not making any of this up.

She becomes a nurse at this clinic where they advise long-term sleep therapy. Being in a medically induced coma for two weeks sounds awesome and I fully endorse whatever these wacky Aussies are doing. Unfortunately, all of the bare-breasted women and men in pajamas that they have sleeping Michael Crichton-style end up killing themselves. The drama!

I really need to get around to planning a Linda Blair week. If you want to watch it yourself, it’s on Amazon Prime.

You know what Gordon Sumner said. The Russians love their children too. None of that comes up in this movie. But it seemed like a great opening.

The U.S. and Russia have already fired most of their missiles before this movie even begins, with most of humanity dying in the process. In order to finish World War 3 with no more bloodshed, each country picks their best soldiers and sends them to battle to the death in Virginia.

Sgt. Tom Batanic (brother of director David Prior, Ted) and Sergei (Robert Z’Dar, Maniac Cop) spend most of this movie fighting one another with all manner of weapons before going mano y рука. Just as they decide to stop fighting, the mysterious forces that run the world blow up the building they’re in. Yep — the U.S. and Russia have been working together the whole time. But good news — our heroes have survived and the FBI saves the day.

Thrill to a decimated world that actually looks like an office park! Swoon to the forced romance between Batanic and Lt. Tavlin! Become sure that this is just as shitty of a movie as Killer Workout, another Prior directed film! Discover the true fact that Robert Z’Dar was once a Chippendales dancer!

It’s on Amazon Prime. But come on. There are so many better films to watch.

Have you ever seen a pro-life horror movie? No? Well, then you’ve never seen The Suckling!

A teenage couple goes to a whorehouse to have an abortion — because you know, that’s where you go. After they flush the dead fetus down the sewer, it finds some radiation and comes back to life as an unstoppable monster. It covers the entire house in placenta, then kills the johns and prostitutes one by one.

Is it any good? Fuck no, it’s a horribly bad movie. But aren’t those the best? You bet. I loved every minute of this film, one that starts with an intro like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that makes it seem like this could have really happened. Throw in some ill-advised dream sequences, the worst fashion choices ever and special effects that are way better than you’d think and you have a great movie to watch in the middle of the night.

Also known as Sewage Baby (“all he wanted was a cuddle”), the film ends with the monster going back inside its mother’s womb. She goes into an insane asylum, but when some horny orderlies try to rape her, the monster returns. This entire paragraph may be the scummiest I’ve written since starting this site.

Today’s version of the video store, Amazon Prime, has this up for free if you’re a Prime member. I wouldn’t rush to watch it, but I wouldn’t skip it, either.

After the two Creepshow movies, where can you turn for a modern portmanteau filled with Stephen King stories? How about the cinematic version of the TV show Tales from the Darkside?

The success of Creepshow led to thoughts of making it into a TV series. Warned Brothers owned some aspects and Laurel Entertainment, who produced the film (its George Romero’s company) opted to create their own version. Two episodes of the show, “Word Processor of the Gods” and “Sorry, Right Number,” were based on King stories.

Starting with the intro “Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality. But…there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit…a dark side,” and ending with “The dark side is always there, waiting for us to enter — waiting to enter us. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight,” the show was a dark journey into the supernatural. It was followed up by Monsters, another anthology show of somewhat lesser quality (although several of the episodes are great fun and there’s a King written episode, “The Moving Finger”).

Several people, including Tom Savini, think that this movie is the real Creepshow 3, but his quote may be referring to the similar nature of the movies and the involvement of King and Romero.

The movie begins with Debbie Harry of all people, playing a housewife who is preparing the main course for a dinner party — Timmy (Matthew Lawrence, brother of Woah! Joey). As the film progresses, they will be our framing device as Timmy reads from the actual book Tales from the Darkside.

In Lot No. 249, based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story and adapted by Beetlejuice writer Michael McDowell, a grad student named Edward (Steve Buscemi has never looked so young!) has been framed for a theft which ruins his scholarship. He wants revenge on Susan (Julianne Moore in her screen debut) and Lee (Robert Sedgwick, brother of Kyra) and gets it by reanimating a mummy to kill them both.

Susan’s brother Andy (Christian Slater, Untamed Heart, Robin Hood) kidnaps Edward and brings the mummy to kill him. At the last moment, he can’t do it and releases him. He probably shouldn’t have done that, as Edward soon sends the reanimated versions of Susan and Lee to kill him!

The next story, The Cat from Hell, is based on a King story and was adapted by Romero. A black cat is bedeviling Drogan (William Hickey, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation), a pharmaceutical owner whose latest drug has killed over 5,000 cats in testing. One by one, the cat has killed everyone in his house, so he hired a hitman named Halston (New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, who is also Buster Poindexter).

After a comical battle, the cat goes down Halston’s throat (seriously, this special effect is insane and kudos to the special effects crew, which includes KNB) and then emerges to kill the old man.

The third story is also written by McDowell and is based on the Yuki-onna, a spirit in Japanese folklore. Preston is a drunken and depressed artist played by James Remar (Raiden from Mortal Kombat: Annihilation) who witnesses a gargoyle kill a man. The monster swears to not kill Preston as long as he never tells anyone what happened.

Starting with that night, his life changes for the better. He meets and marries the gorgeous Carola (Rae Dawn Chong, Quest for Fire) and they have two children. He becomes a famous artist. He even wins back Robert Klein as his agent. All is well, but he can’t forget the monster.

On their tenth anniversary, he decides to tell his wife, which was the wrong idea. She was the monster all along and their children are also monsters (!). At the end, they all fly away after she kills him.

Finally, Timmy escapes by throwing the woman into the oven, then looks directly at us and says, “Don’t you just love happy endings?”

There was an announced sequel to this movie that was never filmed. A screenplay was written by McDowell and Romero, along with Gahan Wilson. Segments would have included an adaptation of Robert Bloch’s “Almost Human,” as well as Stephen King’s “Pinfall” (originally planned for Creepshow 2) and “Rainy Season.” Sadly, it never was filmed.

Director John Harrison was part of the Image Works, along with Dusty Nelson and Pasquale Buba (whose family name and hometown of Braddock was used for Martin). They produced the film Effects together. Harrison is also a music composer, creating the music for this film, as well as Creepshow and Day of the Dead. He wrote and directed Frank Herbert’s Dune in the early 2000’s, plus he wrote and co-produced the follow-up Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune.

Here’s some trivia I found interesting. Because of the samples and music cues that were used from Day of the Dead, Harrison recieved a co-writing credit on the Gorillaz’s songs “M1 A1” and Hip Albatross.

This is a pretty well-done film. I miss the Creepshow framing device, but it’s a great way to get more stories into one film. I remember catching the end of the third film as a teen and being freaked out by it. It’s still pretty powerful nearly thirty years later.

The beauty of Predator is that it starts as a war movie and suddenly becomes a slasher before you even realize it. It subverts the macho tropes of Arnold movies by inserting a killing machine that is tougher, better armed and just plain unstoppable. And that killer? He’s just here for sport.

So why do I love Predator 2 so much? Because it’s literally a grindhouse or Italian exploitation version of Predator. Instead of the jungle, we get a literal concrete jungle. Instead of Arnold, Jesse and Carl Weathers, we get character actors galore, like Danny Glover, Robert Davi, Gary Busey and Bill Paxton. It has the feel of RoboCop with a non-stop media barrage led by real-life junk TV icon Morton Downey, Jr. (“Zip it, pinhead!”), and a populace that is constantly armed and always looking for a chance to use it. It’s one of the few slices of the future where it feels like today — the technology is only nominally better and everything pretty much sucks for everyone. And holy shit, is it fucking hot.

The 1997 of this movie is really 2018, to be honest. Except LA is in the midst of a war between the Colombian and Jamaican drug cartels. It’s a perfect place for a Predator to hunt — and once that alien sees Lt. Harrigan (Glover) in action, it seems like it’s playing a game to capture the lawman as his ultimate prize. That’s when we meet Special Agent Peter Keyes (Busey), who is posing as a DEA agent, and new team member Detective Jerry Lambert (Paxton at his most manic).

There’s a scene where the Predator interrupts a voodoo ritual (the girlfriend screaming for her life is former Playboy Playmate turned porn star (that was a rare thing in the 1990’s) Teri Weigel) and wipes out everyone, skinning them alive and taking pieces of them as trophies. One of the team, Danny (singer Rubén Blades) comes back to the crime scene, only to be killed by the camoflagued alien.

Harrigan starts tracking the killer, thinking he’s dealing with a human. He even consults King Willie (Calvin Lockhart, The Beast Must Die), the voodoo loving gang leader. That’s when we get that immortal line that Ice Cube sampled, “There’s no stopping what can’t be stopped. No killing what can’t be killed.” A short battle follows with an awesome two cut (literally) of Willie screaming and his severed head being carried away, continuing the scream.

Two massive action scenes follow: Lambert and team member Cantrell (María Conchita Alonso) battling a gang and the Predator on a train, then Keyes and his team battling the Predator in what they think is the perfect situation.

It comes down to Harrigan and the Predator battling one on one, from rooftop to buildings to a spacecraft. Harrigan overcomes the alien with its own weapons, then an army of other Predators appear (this made me stand up and cheer when I saw this 27 years ago in the theater) and one of them hands the cop an ancient gun as a trophy before they leave him behind. That gun is engraved “Raphael Adolini 1715,” a reference to the Dark Horse comic book story Predator: 1718, which was published in  A Decade of Dark Horse #1.

To be honest — a TON of this film is taken from Dark Horse’s Predator: Concrete Jungle. The first few issues feature  Detective Schaefer, the brother of Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer, as he and his partner, Detective Rasche, fight a Predator in New York City. And the inclusion of the Alien skull was inspired by Dark Horse’s Aliens vs. Predator series.

I love that Lilyan Chauvin is in this as Dr. Irene Richards, the chief medical examiner and forensic pathologist of Los Angeles. How woke is Predator 2? The main cop is African American leading an ethnically diverse team when that diversity isn’t an issue at all? Then you have a woman in charge of all pathology? How ahead of its time is this movie?

Adam Baldwin from TV’s Firefly has a brief role as a member of Keyes’ team. Plus, Robert Davi plays a police captain, Kent McCord from TV’s Adam-12 is a cop, Steve Kahan (who played Glover’s boss in four Lethal Weapon films) plays a police sergeant and Elpidia Carrillo reprises her role as Anna Gonsalves from the original in a cameo.

If you read the book version, you learn even more: Keyes recalls memories of speaking with Dutch in a hospital, as he suffered from radiation sickness. However, the soldier escaped, never to be seen again. Arnold himself escaped, refusing to do this movie because of the script, and he was nearly replaced by Steven Seagal and Patrick Swayze!

Director Stephen Hopkins went on to direct The Reaping, Lost in Space, The Ghost and the Darkness and Judgement Night (he also directed A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child before this). He had to recut the film twenty times to get an R rating! I’d love to see the uncut version of this. Shout Factory, how about it?

For now, you can watch the film online on HBO Go.

One of my favorite things about the film is this outtake. Stick through it to see Danny Glover dance along with some Predators!

Also: Holy shit, Gary Busey. He is in character the entire time, discussing how they’re hunting the Predator while also talking about it as a film. If this doesn’t make you love him, nothing will.

A rickshaw driver in Miami is protected by an Asian witch when he comes up against a conspiracy involving him being videotaped having sex with a mysterious redhead and it causing the death of the son of a faith healing televangelist played by Donald Pleasance — all directed by Sergio Martino (Torso, All the Colors of the Dark, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and so much more)!

This seems like the perfect union of everything I love in movies. It’s pure junk and perfect for 3 AM weekend viewing! Scott (U.S. Olympic Gold Medalist Mitch Gaylord, American Anthem) just wants to get ahead in class and help his roommate with his rickshaw business. But after that aforementioned redhead hooks up with him, all hell breaks loose. Reverend Mortom’s (Pleasance) son Jason was taping the action and Scott flips out, beating the guy’s ass. But soon, Jason ends up getting killed when the boat the action happened on is set ablaze. Soon after, a hitman (Daniel Green, in a role made for George Eastman) comes after Scott, killing his roomie with another inferno.

There’s also an ancient Chinese woman, Madame Luna, who Scott helped with his rickshaw who uses a cobra, a cat and magic to rescue our hero throughout the movie. She also wrote him a letter that he never seems to get to finish. Even after it’s been eaten by rats, her voice still plays in his head when he is near the paper.

The cops are also after Scott, thinking that he’s killed the reverend’s son and his roommate. So our hero goes to the Pink Pussycat and kidnaps the redhead — who we soon learn is Joana Simpson, the girlfriend of the dead man. I should also mention that Scott is pretty much the most moronic asshole to ever be seen as a hero in a film and that’s covering so much territory. Yet even after kidnapping Joana at gunpoint she still likes him and ends up helping him.

Throughout, Martino uses tons of crazy zooms, weird cuts that defy editing logic and everyone is constantly running and grimacing. It’s like a Rob Liefeld comic come to life. And it’s awesome. And by awesome I mean that anyone normal — like Becca — will tell you that this is a shitty movie.

However, let me make my argument. Any movie where Donald Pleasence is an evil televangelist with a warthog statue that is locked in eternal combat with a sorceress directed by my favorite giallo director is going to obsess me. There’s also a shower sex scene where our hero keeps his jeans on, confounding me even further. There’s also a magical key that unlocks the secret of the statue that burns through the killer’s hand. There is also a magical cat. Holy fuck, this movie. I have no idea how anyone would even come up with these concepts.

It turns out that Scott and the reverend’s son were both born on the highest day of the Chinese calendar — 6/6/66 — which means that when Scott says that he wears a tiger t-shirt because he was born in the year of the tiger, he is full of shit. He was born in the year of the horse and American Horse is a much shittier title than American Tiger or American Rickshaw. It’s also the title of a song by the band The Cult, but I think I’m probably the only person who knows or cares about that.

Donald Pleasence comes to attack the Chinese woman, but the cobra and cat attack him before he chokes her. Have you ever heard Pleasence do a Southern accent at the same time that he can’t shake his British voice? You will. I’d say this role was beneath him, but I can also point to so many other films that he was in that are worse.

The killer finally catches up with Scott, who runs across railroad ties and trips — he was an Olympic gymnast — before a semi takes out the killer, who suddenly has a snake come out of his eyeball! Again — this fucking movie!

Scott takes the statue back to Madame Luna, who is young again. The cops listen to Joana, who tells them that Scott is innocent. And the Reverend goes on TV and transforms into a warthog while Luna outs him to the world. Yes, you just read that correctly. Then, his wife screams that he is the devil and shoots him as everyone watches the warthog under his skin emerge. “He was the devil!” she screams as the cops matter of factly lead her away. A man just turned into a giant bloody pig. This should be a much bigger deal than the way the cops behave.

Just watch this trailer and wonder, “How could a movie like this be created and no one is constantly talking about it?” When I hear people complain that they’re bored and hate the world, it’s movies like this that I point them to.

Amazon Prime has become the video store of today, with me searching through strange cover art and discovering movies I’d otherwise never watch. You can watch American Tiger on there — and it’s complete with tracking issues! How magical is that?!?

UPDATE: Cauldron Films is releasing this on blu ray — literally its first on-disc release in the U.S. This is a full bells and whistles release, complete with a full 2K restoration, interviews with director Sergio Martino and production designer Massimo Antonello Geleng, location visits, commentary by Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger, a limited edition slipcase and only 1000 copies will be made. Check out the link and order this ASAP. I know that I already did!