David Cole (Maxwell Caulfield) is a cop with married to Joanna (Shannon Whirry), who is frustrated by their sex life, which threatens to end their marriage. Then she finds out that he likes to watch and wants to watch her, so everything seems to go well. But this is an erotic thriller directed by Gregory Dark, so you know that things are going to go wrong.

Based on a real Florida — always Florida — case in which a cop and his wife taped her outcall dalliances with other men for money, this is at once an example of the male gaze and female empowerment through said male gaze, as Joanna finds herself getting exactly what she wants and her husband learns that maybe he just likes looking instead of actually doing anything.

Dark gets his best cast maybe ever — mainstream cast, that is — in this one, with Jan-Michael Vincent, David Carradine, John Saxon and U.S. Olympic athlete Mitch Gaylord (yes, the lead of American Tiger).

This movie casts Carradine as a strip club owner who gets the Coles to help him blackmail Jan-Michael and when the press gets wise, John Saxon, as their lawyer, has a defense that claims that Mrs. Cole became obsessed with carnal crimes because of a prescription drug side effect.

Yes, it’s completely stupid. But how many Cinemax late night movies have you made?

I mean, yes, we have seen this before. A woman changes identities with her identical twin sister, finally getting to sip from the fountain of the fantasies she’s kept hidden in her vanilla marriage, but if I’ve learned one thing from a week of Gregory Dark mainstream movies, it’s that dream life has a dark grey lining under every silver cloud.

Directed under the name Alexander Gregory Hippolyte, somehow this movie brings along Kenickie and J. Peterman into the world of Dark, a place usually occupied by Delia Sheppard (who plays both twins), Dominique Simone, Kelly Royce and Julie Strain, who somehow has the sheer level of universal appeal that allows her to straddle — seductively straddle at that — the light side of the softcore force that is Andy Sidaris and the darkest of the dark that is Gregory Dark.

Where Sidaris presents a world that only exists in Dallas, New Orleans, Hawaii or Savage Beach, places dominated by jacuzzis, men who can’t shoot and the occasional remote controlled weapon interrupting synth-driven touching, Dark’s world is one where the forbidden fruit bites back, where getting to live the filthy life of your darkest dreams ends up decimating your vanilla white picket fence life, but along the way you get silky lingerie, gorgeous framing and, yes, lots of saxophone. I’ve been discussing the usage of saxophone in these movies all week and the only person who loved sex and sax more was probably Lucio Fulci, who showed us just how a woman can really enjoy one in The Devil’s Honey.

Look, I know the internet has all the dirty filth you want, but why is no one making movies like this any more? I mean, a bunch of hacks ape giallo and everyone loses their mind over it and people add some neon and synth and everybody thinks they’re Carpenter. Be brave and try to make one of these movies. Maybe they don’t make them like this any more. And sadly, Julie Strain is gone and while I want her to find the eternal rest she deserves, I wouldn’t be sad to discover that she’s become a sexy ghost.

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can check out an alternate viewpoint from R.D Francis in this article.

This movie is so not from our reality and that makes me love it so much. Imagine a world in which Nick West (Martin Hewitt) can put on a nightly radio show where he gets multiple female callers to have phone sex with him. And he’s very not so great at it, other than having a gravelly voice, but they instantly become jelly on the phone lines, telling him how horrible their husbands are and why only he truly understands them.

Then one night, Honey (Tracy Tweed, sister of Shannon) gets through to Nick, who decides to dial Radio Moscow with her live on the air while people listen because obviously, the FCC does not prosecute for obscenity in the world of Night Rhythems.

Nick ends up taking it to Honey so hard — there’s some choking — that they both pass out but she doesn’t wake up. She’s dead and several very horny women basically heard Nick kill her on the air with his lovemaking. Even he isn’t sure what happened.

The one person who can help Nick is Cinnamon (Deborah Driggs, the one-time wife of American Rickshaw star Mitch Gaylord), an ex-dancer that understands the world that Honey came from, a place where the criminal Vincent (David Carradine) controls the ladies on and off the stage of his club. The cops are on his trail, mainly Jackson, played by Sam J. Jones, but Nick also keeps scoring with the ladies, like Jamie “The Brat” Summers, Julie Strain, Kelly Royce, Kristine Rose (who is in Joe D’Amato’s Passion’s Flower and Eleven Days, Eleven Nights 2), Tamara Longly and Alicyn Sterling.

You may figure out the twist early, which is fine, because obviously, it’s Bridget (Delia Sheppard) as the person trying to go from being Nick’s producer to taking over the show. What is a shock is that Wally Pfister, who has been the cinematographer for Christopher Nolan’s films (as well as Amityville: A New Generation and several more movies for Dark).

It all adds up now. Every frame is filled with smoke, sax solos, neon and the need to make the kind of love that only exists in movies, where no one gets a sprain or kneels on someone’s hair or looks anything less than their absolute sexiest.

Gregory Dark knows what he’s doing. This is probably one of his better efforts, at least mainstream.

God bless the Barbarian Brothers, Peter and David Paul, and God bless John Paragon, who worked on not just one but two of their movies (he wrote and directed Twin Sitters but only directed this). Here’s, he’s working from a script by Jeffrey Kerns, based on a story by Charles Osburn and Kurt Wimmer, who made the absolutely berserk movies Equilibrium, Ultraviolet and the Children of the Corn remake that came out in 2020 that nobody realized ever came out (he also wrote Salt, the Point Break remake, The Thomas Crowne Affair remake, Sphere and Law Abiding Citizen).

Peter Jade earns his living as a crook. David Jade is a Los Angeles cop. After the thief of a brother finds the key to opening a safe filled with diamonds, he gets targeted by criminal supervillain Philip Chamberlain (Roddy McDowall!).

The brothers are very Tango and Cash in this, as David wears jeans and Peter wears the finest of suits. Can they get it together and solve the mystery (and avenge the death of David’s partner?)?

The supporting cast in this is worth the price of admission. There’s Star Trek‘s James Doohan as Chief O’Brien. David Carradine as Mr. C, Peter’s prison burglar mentor. Billy Mumy of Lost in Space and “Fish Heads” fame as an assassin. Troy Donahue as a corrupt politician. And lots of other familiar faces like Tim Stack (Son of a Beach), Lewis Arquette (the father of that famous family), Steve Kanaly (Ray Krebbs!), Lynne Marie Stewart (Miss Yvonne!) and video girl Bobbie Brown in a quick role as Peter’s girlfriend.

I have a major soft spot for the Barbarian Brothers. This movie moves quickly, offers plenty of harmless laughs and is kind of like empty calories. It’s not their best movie — I mean, it’s The Barbarians, hands down — but it’s still worth a view.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Anthony Hickox made both Waxwork movies, so that qualified him to take on the third trip to visit the Cenobites, which was necessary as the two films that had already come out were huge rental successes.

Series creator Clive Barker reprised his role as executive producer, though he was largely uninvolved until post-production, while Tony Randel at least contributed the story.

At the end of the last film, as Pinhead tried to reclaim his humanity, he finds himself split into his demonic form and as the limbo-trapped British Army Captain Elliot Spencer. As for Pinhead, he and the Lament Configuration remain within the Pillar of Souls that appeared as the last movie finished.

The pillar is bought as art by a club owner and when one of his sexual conquests is dragged into it and absorbed, Pinhead emerges and demands more blood. Without the influence of Spencer, Pinhead has become true evil and is using our reality for his own pleasure, which is against the regimented laws that the Cenobites live by.

Ashley Laurence returns for a cameo, as her Kirsty character explains the events of the previous films. And hey — Armored Saint plays the club!

Between the Barbie and CD Cenobites and the more American locale, this film suffers in comparison to the first two movies. That said, when viewed against what was to come, it ends up being pretty decent. The idea that Pinhead lost his faith in humanity after war rings true even many decades later.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Somehow, someway Joe D’Amato got Margaux Hemingway, Apollonia (yes, the female star of Purple Rain) and Dan McVicar (The Bold and the Beautiful) in one of his movies, had the budget to shoot in New Orleans and responded by delivering a film that has less sleaze than normal but still doesn’t skimp on the nudity that this movie promised to rental and cable viewers.

Ellen Foster (Hemingway) has watched her husband commit a murder and goes on the run. He sends a hitman after her in the guise of a journalist with whom she has a Mardi Gras affair with but of course, things are not as they seem.

If you spent your small Friday hours watching Cinemax or Showtime in the 90s, you know exactly the kind of movie that you’re getting into. That’s not a bad thing, as making these kind of movies was something that D’Amato could — and often did, seemingly — in his sleep. This time, he just has a more expensive cast.

Also the most attractive woman on the set — apologies to the lovely Ms. Hemmingway and Ms. Kotero — was Laura Gemser, off camera and designing the costumes that were just cast to the floo during the sex scenes.

This would be the last non-adult film that Joe D’Amato would direct. But if he’s going out, he’s bringing along some old friends like Cinzia Monreale (who was in his Buio Omega), Maurice Poli (Papaya dei Cairibi) and Donald O’Brien (Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, Immagini di un convento).

It’s shot in Austria, which may explain the Teutonic decorated dorm room. I don’t know. I do know that O’Brien is a handyman accused of putting Monreale (who many will recognize as the blind Emily from The Beyond) into a coma and the rich kids that get away with it while also making his death look like a suicide. So she brings him back from the dead an hour in and everyone dies.

It’s sad to be honest. It feels like Patrick more than Frankenstein and maybe it’s for the best that D’Amato went off into the world of adult. But he also made The Crawlers on the way out and I’d rather think of that as his last movie.

Damon Santostefano did the Fangoria videos Fright Show and both Scream Greats before a career that would see him make Three to Tango and Bring It On Again.

But man, this movie is something.

Harrison Harrison (Billy Morrissette) is a scientist who loses his arm in a regeneration experiment that leads to the limb becoming a reptilian force of evil, but he’s also a mother’s boy — his mom Helena is played by Elke Sommer! — and she has him and Doctor Hans Vaughan (Oliver Reed) wrapped around her finger, so our protagonist visits the homeless church led by Preacher (Johnny Legend) and recruits amputee veteran Stripes (Garrett Morris) and an army of the homeless.

Yeah, we already reviewed this once before, but this is all part of our plot to get you to watch it. Look, the link if even down there waiting for you.

It’s kind of like a comedy version of the Lizard from the Spider-Man comics and it doesn’t all work but when it does, it does. And that’s more than most movies can claim these days. It also has plenty of absolutely bonkers effects and I’m certain Morris thought, “How come every movie I’m in seems to have body horror in it?”

You can watch this on YouTube.