Christy Murphy’s (Tracy Dali, who was June in Click: The Calendar Girl Killer) strict Catholic parents — Burt Ward is her dad — are worried that their daughter is having sex with her boyfriend Jerry (Richard Gabai, who directed and co-wrote the script; he also made Assault of the Party Nerds). They send her to the Academy of the Blessed Virgin, an all-girls religious school but Jerry shows up as a priest, more determined than ever to finally sleep with Christy.

This is a movie that dares have Linnea Quigley as a character who looks down on teens who have sex, so that’s definitely a twist I didn’t see coming. Michelle Bauer is also in the cast as sex education teacher Miss Bush and this was Leslie Mann’s first movie.

Somehow — and don’t worry, we’ll get to it — Jerry would return in Hot Under the Collar, another movie in which he had to become a priest and get the girl. One would think that this plan has no way of working but somehow Jerry was able to pull it off both times.

To learn more about this movie, I invite you to check out The Schlock Pit, where the great David Wain interviewed Gabai.

You can watch this on Tubi.

During the Iran–Iraq War, U.S. Marine Colonel Doug Matthews (Michael Dudikoff) is training the Iraqi troops only to learn that America is an evil empire that often surrounds itself with even worse allies in the pursuit of blood for oil. Oh wait. I mean that he learns that some of the Iraqis, led by Ali Dallal (Steve Inwood), who are killing innocent people. He challenges Ali to a fight and loses.

Five years later, America’s enemies have changed because “The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” Iraq has invaded Kuwait and Doug’s diabetic teacher brother Ben (Tommy Hinkley) is held hostage so that the Iraqi leader — you guessed it, Ali Dallal — can get one more shot at killing Doug.

Doug has some help, a Kurd named Tanzil (Uri Gavriel) and his ex-girlfriend, Lila (Hanna Azoulay-Hasfari) who is now married to Ali. Ah, what a tangled web!

This was the last film of director Ted Post, who everyone knows made Hang ‘Em High, Magnum Force and Beneath the Planet of the Apes, but I celebrate his TV movies like Night Slaves, Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate and Five Desperate Women as well as his Chuck Norris movie Good Guys Wear Black, the somewhat giallo Nightkill and, most essentially, The Baby.

After Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, director John McNaughton got tons of horror movie offers until he couldn’t hold out any longer. He told The Flashback Files, “When I got the script for The Borrower I was broke. And I got sent bad script after bad script and then came The Borrower, which in some sense was also a bad script, but the conceit that this creature takes the heads off of people and somehow occupies their lives, to me it was like a metaphor for what actors do. That gave me something to take a hold of, other than just the monster that jumps up from behind a tree to scare you and eat you.”

So yes, this movie also has a serial killer, but this one is an alien murderer sentenced to our pitiful backworld planet. His transformation from alien to human didn’t take, so he must keep borrowing new heads every time the old one explodes, using his crab claws to decapitate folks and start wearing their heads.

Diana Pierce (Rae Dawn Chong) and Charles Krieger (Don Gordon) are the cops that have to track it down. The best known people in the cast are Tom Towles — who was Otis in Henry* — as well as Antonio Fargas and Neil Giuntoli, who played Henry in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part II.

Originally made for Vestron, this had an X rating and needed cut, then Atlantic Entertainment Group was going to put it out, but then they closed and the film sat for three years before Cannon put it out in 1991.

*Tracy Arnold also is in it, as well as thirteen crew members from Henry: Ken Hale, Dan Haberkorn, Rick Paul, Cory Coken, Frank Coronado, Robert McNaughton, Jim Moore, Ric Coken, Mic Fabus, Bernd Rantscheff, Richard Fire, Steven A. Jones and Elena Maganini.

Robert James “B.J.” Quinn (John Barrett) is the current middleweight kickboxing champion of the world and he just got past one of his toughest challengers, Chad Hunter (Keith Vitali), narrowly knocking him out with a spinning back fist and doctor stoppage.

But the real battle is after the fight, as B.J. is angered by another fighter, Jacques Denard (Brad Morris), who hits on his girl Carol (Terry Norton right in front of him. They start brawling and when a partygoer named Ken (Gavin Hood) gets in the middle, he gets accidentally dead. Chad tries to stand up for B.J. in court, but Denard’s testimony puts him in jail.

A year later, Denard has his belt and is a cocky showoff who enjoys hurting his opponents. B.J. can never kickbox again — he’s been barred after his convincton — and Chad asks him to train him for a match against the new champ. B.J. has some demons and basically his training is just him beating up the man who spoke up for him in his trial. After their match — which puts Chad in the hospital — B.J. finds Quinn in a bar and beats him so badly that Carol leaves him.

Chad gives B.J. another chance, letting him teach at his school, and Carol comes around. Yet Denard wants revenge and challenges B.J. to a $100,000 unsanctioned karate fight. Chad trains him now and even Denard’s cornerman Howard (Roger Yuan) comes over to their side.

Shot in South Africa, American Kickboxer has one true sequel, To the Death, and another in name only, American Kickboxer 2. Directed by Frans Nel and written by Emil Kolbe and Pittsburgh’s John Barrett (he did stunts for everything from The Octagon, Silent Rage, Forced Vengeance and Steel Dawn to being the stunt coordinator on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, this is fun redemption story for those that love people being kicked in the face.

Helmed by perhaps the best action director Cannon had, Sam Firstenberg, and written by the team of Boaz Davidson, Andrew Deutsch and Greg Latter, this Delta Force installment may have no Chuck Norris, but it does have his brother Mike as Greg Lassiter, the Delta Force point man. It’s actually a movie of sons and brothers, as the commander, Major Charlie Stewart, is Nick — son of John — Cassavetes, intelligence officer Lieutenant Richard O’Keefe is Matthew — son of Arthur — Penn and explosives expert Sam is Eric — son of Kirk Douglas.

Terrorist Kahlil Kadal (Jonathan Cherch) wants America out of the Middle East or he’ll wipe Miami off the face of the Earth using suicide bomber Anwar Hussein (Dan Turgeman) who attacks TV producer Wendy Jackson (Candace Brecker) and puts her in a wheelchair, which he later uses to hide his bomb in the hopes of setting it off on national TV.

Meanwhile, Delta Force must team with Russian Spetsnaz commandos and go on a mission to El-Qutar, Sudalia on the hunt for Kadal. Charlie and Captain Sergei Ilyich Leskov (John Ryan),  the leader of the Russians, can barely get along and the mission goes bad, so bad that Russian Pietre Ivanovich (Mark Ivanir) and Sam get killed and Greg gets wounded.

Of course, Charlie and Sergei get it together and get so good at killing as a team that one of them knifes the bombers foot to the switch while the other one shoots him right between the eyes live on national TV. God bless America. God bless Delta Force.

Directed by Cedric Sundstrom and written by James Booth — and produced by Ovidio G. Assonitis! — this movie sees Sean Davidson, the new American Ninja played by David Bradley, battling the ninja army of Colonel Scarf Mulgrew (also Booth, who had already written American Ninja 2: The Confrontation) and Shiekh Ali Maksood (Ron Smerczak), who also plan on dropping a suitcase bomb in New York City.

Working with Carl Brackston (Dwayne Alexandre) — they have to leave his wedding to handle the mission — and a local contact named Freddie (Anthony Fridjhon) and a plucky teen named Pango (Jody Abrahams, they’re looking for a local Peace Corps worker named Dr. Sarah (Robin Stille, The Slumber Party Massacre, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama) before all hell breaks loose. Freddie is killed, Dr. Sarah is assaulted — and learns that Mulgrew killed her father — and ninjas torture our heroes.

It’s time for another American Ninja.

The call goes out to Peace Corps teacher Joe Armstrong (do I have to even tell you that it’s Michael Dudikoff?) who wants nothing to do with the government. Yet he brings along some rebels from Sulphur Springs, a former penal colony led by Dr. Tamba (Ken Gampu), and kills everyone in his path.

Bradley was not happy at all that after making the series his own in the last film that Dudikoff was back. Sure, he gets to kill the main bad guy, but Dudikoff gets the big battle against the final boss known as Super Ninja (Kely McClung, who is also the first Delta Force member that gets murdered by the ninjas).

It takes 45 minutes for Dudikoff to show up and there’s no Steve James. That makes me really not like this one as much as the others, but then Dudikoff remembers that he loves killing pajama clad martial arts fighters more than teaching reading and starts wiping out karate dudes left and right. That makes things so much better.

You can watch this on Tubi.

You can listen to more about American Ninja 4 on The Cannon Canon.

Incredibly loosely based on the novel Headlong by Emlyn Williams, King Ralph supposes what would happen if the entire royal family of England was electrocuted and an heir needed to be found, which ends up being Ralph Hampton Gainsworth Jones (John Goodman), a Vegas lounge singer who must be groomed by Sir Cedric Charles Willingham (Peter O’Toole).

Directed and written by David S. Ward, who wrote stuff like The Sting and Sleepless In Seattle and directed other perhaps not so prestige stuff as Major League and Down Periscope, it also has John Hurt as Lord Percival Graves, another upper crust snob who wants the House of Stuart take over for the House of Wyndham after all the controversy of an American king, much less one dating a commoner.

Bill Murray was going to do this — makes sense with the lounge singer character — and so was John Candy, who picked Nothing But Trouble instead. As for Goodman, he even said in an interview, “I don’t think anybody’s ready to pay good money to see me get the girl in the movie. I know I wouldn’t go see something like that.”

The movie is better than he thinks it is.

You can get King Ralph in retro VHS packaging from Mill Creek at Deep Discount.

Cross My Heart (1987): Armyan Bernstein is usually known as a producer, but he directed and co-wrote this movie with Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman co-creator Gail Parent.

It has similarities to When Harry Met Sally as David Morgan (Martin Short) and Kathy (Annette O’Toole) — our lead couple — are continually advised by their respective friends Bruce (Paul Reiser) and  Nancy (Joanna Kerns). Now, they prepare themselves for their third date, the one where they may finally make love, and more importantly the one where they’ll reveal themselves for better or worse to one another.

It’s an interesting film, as I never saw Short as a sexual romantic lead before and there it is. This is a movie where their conversation nearly happens in real time. O’Toole is gorgeous and if you have a strange crush on short, well…allow this to be your film.

Pure Luck (1991): One of Becca’s favorite movies, Pure Luck has Martin Short in the traditional role you know and enjoy him for, as a bad luck office worker who can’t help but be overly sure of hismelf despite destroying everything in his path.

Directed by Nadia Tass and written by Francis Veber (it’s based on his French movie La chèvre and it’s not the only movie he made that got remade by Hollywood; there’s also Le Grand Blond Avec une Chaussure Noire (The Man with One Red Shoe), L’emmerdeur (Buddy Buddy), La Cage aux Folles (The Birdcage), Le Jouet (The Toy), Les Comperes (Fathers’ Day), Le Diner de Cons (Dinner for Schmucks) and Les Fugitifs ( Three Fugitives)), Herschel Weingrod and Timothy Harris.

Short’s Eugene Proctor is just as clumsy as his boss’ missing daughter Valerie (Sheila Kelley), so a psychologist named Monosoff (Harry Shearer) decides that he’d be the perfect person to find her. To ensure that he doesn’t screw up, he’s assigned Raymond Campanella (Danny Glover) to the rescue trip to Puerto Vallarta.

In an interview, Tass said, “It was successful in a financial sense but not in a satisfying sense. It was congenial doing a Martin Short comedy, but American comedy is different from Australian comedy. It is broader. American audiences enjoyed Pure Luck, but audiences in other countries did not enjoy it so much with the exception of the Germans. I wanted to do something else with the comedy and so did Danny Glover. I would like to have put a lot more pathos and pain into it. But they wanted a comedy for America.”

He still gets residuals from the film, so there’s that.

It’s a silly film that has a stand out scene with Short’s face swelling up from a bee sting that never fails to make me laugh. Yeah, it’s not much, but if you get one laugh from it, can it be that bad?

You can get the Mill Creek Martin Short Double Feature – Cross My Heart / Pure Luck from Deep Discount.

Detective Sean Thompson is no longer Chad McQueen, now he’s Jeff Wincott, but Billie Blake is still Cynthia Rothrock and that’s the whole reason why I’m watching this.

This time, they’re on the case of Club Syntax where the elite get favors from beautiful women while being protected by numerous martial arts masters who are all battling to determine which fighting group rules the world of combat. Well, they eventually are, but their team is briefly split up while Thompson moves up to detective and gets a new boss, Captain Krantz (Billy Drago).

I mean, it’s pretty much what you want it to be. A fight club gets infiltrated by Wincott and Rothrock; also she dresses up as a hot dog vendor and then becomes a bartender inside that nefarious club.

Directed by Kurt Anderson with a script by Richard Brandes and exploitation producer master Pierre David, this movie is like ordering a hamburger. You know exactly what it is, but you take that first bite and it’s so rewarding and you think — this is why I ordered this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Infernal Machine Gun has a submachine gun with supernatural powers that never misses. It stars Julian Garza, a Northeastern Mexico singer of more than 150 corridos. A corrido is a popular narrative ballad often about farming life, dealing with oppression or what it’s like to be a criminal. Garza recorded several albums of these songs, including Pistoleros Famosos (Famous Gunfighters), Se Están Robando el Marrano (They Are Stealing the Pig) and Andamos Borrachos Todos (We’re All Drunk). Garza was also part of a subgenre known as narcocorrido or drug ballads.

Roman (Edgardo Gazcon) has a pretty horrible life, as he’s stuck cleaning a bank and staring at the gorgeous Nancy (Claudia Guzman). He never approaches her because of his lowly station and scarred visage. Meanwhile, his brother Juan (Garza) and his girlfriend basically abuse him in between all their gambling.

On the way home from another losing night, Juan searches through a car accident and finds the blessed gun, which he names Cuerno De Chivo (Horn of the Goat). He starts by killing all of the other gamblers, then Roman steals the weapon, robs the bank and kidnaps Nancy, all in a potentially insane plot to fix his face and find true love.

Garza wrote this movie originally as one of his corridos and probably hoped to be the star, but he was 56 when it was made and didn’t fit the idea of a young man finding this powerful firearm. Beyond the gunfighting action, there are plenty of other corridas singers that make appearances both in the film and on the soundtrack.

You can watch this on YouTube.