Falling Down is a searing, sweat-soaked descent into the heart of a broken American Dream. It is a film that refuses to offer easy answers, instead holding up a mirror to the suffocating weight of societal expectations, economic displacement and the slow erosion of a man’s identity. I can’t even imagine the controversy were it to be released today. As it was when it was made, the production was notoriously interrupted by the 1992 Los Angeles riots. These real-world tensions bleed into the film, giving its depiction of urban instability an eerie, urgent edge.
William “D-FENS” Foster (Michael Douglas) is not just a character; he is a pressure valve waiting to burst. A former defense industry worker living in a world that no longer requires his services, Foster hits his limit on a sweltering Los Angeles day while gridlocked in traffic. He abandons his car, leaving behind the infrastructure of his life and begins a trek across the city to reach his daughter’s birthday party.
What follows is an odyssey of escalating confrontations. Each stop is a flashpoint, from a convenience store to a gang-ridden alley, a fast-food joint and eventually a sinister military surplus store. Paralleling his journey is Sergeant Martin Prendergast (Robert Duvall), an officer on the verge of retirement who is the grounded counterpoint to Foster’s explosive detachment. As Prendergast pieces together the trail of incidents, the film builds toward an inevitable, tragic convergence on the Venice Pier.
Douglas delivers perhaps the most iconic performance of his career. He portrays Foster with a haunting, fragile intensity; he’s not just a man losing his mind, but a man losing his place in the world. He makes the character’s descent feel like an involuntary biological reaction to a world that has moved on without him. Duvall brings a necessary, grounded humanity to Prendergast, using his trademark understated style to convey the exhaustion of a man who has seen too much, yet still possesses a core of decency. Frederic Forrest is chillingly memorable as the bigoted surplus-store owner, providing the film with one of its darkest pivots, while Barbara Hershey brings a palpable sense of fear to the role of Beth, the woman trying to escape the shadow of her former husband.
The idea that D-FENS would ever get to this birthday party, much less be allowed to be part of it, has always stayed with me. It feels like many people could see this movie as him being the hero, which frightens but doesn’t shock me.
The Arrow Video release of this movie has a new 4K restoration by Arrow Films approved by cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak, as well as archival audio commentary by director Joel Schumacher, editor Paul Hirsch, screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith, LA Times writer Shawn Hubler and actors Michael Douglas, Michael Paul Chan, Vondie Curtis-Hall and Frederic Forrest. There are also interviews with Smith and composer James Newton Howard; Going Home, a location featurette revisiting the real-life Los Angeles sites used in the movie; Deconstructing D-Fens, an archival interview with Michael Douglas; a trailer; an image gallery and a collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by film critics Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Simon Ward. You can get it on 4K UHD or Blu-Ray from MVD.
If you’ve spent any time digging through the bargain bins of VHS history—or if you’ve spent your weekends scouring Tubi for the kind of low-budget, high-adrenaline junk that puts modern CGI-fests to shame—then you know the name PM Entertainment. They were the kings of the direct-to-video era, a studio that understood a fundamental truth about action cinema: nobody cares about the plot as long as you blow up enough cars and someone gets kicked in the face with artistic precision.
Firepower (1993) is the quintessential PM production. It is a glorious, neon-soaked movie that feels like it was written by someone who had only ever seen RoboCop and Enter the Dragon and decided the best way to merge them was to set the whole thing in a future where crime is legal, and the fashion sense is pure early-90s dystopian chic.
Welcome to the year 2007. I know, I know—we’ve lived through that year, and it mostly involved dial-up internet and the rise of social media, but in the world of Firepower, it’s a lawless nightmare. Cities have been carved up into Hell Zones, essentially pockets of urban collapse where the police are forbidden to tread. It’s a brilliant setup for a low-budget movie because it explains why everything looks like it was filmed in a half-abandoned industrial park in Sun Valley.
Enter our dynamic duo: Darren Braniff, played by Chad McQueen, and Nick Sledge, played by tGary Daniels. Braniff is the straight man cop, the guy who plays by the rules until the rules stop working, and Sledge is the loose-cannon Brit who is basically a one-man wrecking crew. They’re tasked with infiltrating the Hell Zone to bust a racket involving a counterfeit AIDS vaccine.
It’s the kind of high-stakes, socially conscious plot point that was ripped straight from the headlines of 1993, then immediately discarded in favor of guys fighting in a death-cage. Once they step into the zone, the movie stops pretending it’s a police procedural and starts being what it actually is: a collection of excuses for Gary Daniels to display his world-class kickboxing prowess.
Daniels is the crown jewel of this production. Long before he was holding his own against Stallone in The Expendables, he was the go-to guy for legitimate martial arts talent in films that couldn’t afford a massive budget. He’s agile, he’s mean, and he has that quintessential cool that makes him the star of every scene he’s in. Even when he’s playing second fiddle to McQueen, your eyes are naturally drawn to his technique.
But why did I choose this movie?
Firepower is famous for being the only film role for the late, legendary WWE Hall of Famer, The Ultimate Warrior. Cast as the main villain, The Swordsman, Hellwig is an absolute wall of muscle. The film handles him perfectly: he doesn’t have much to say, which is smart, because his job isn’t to deliver Shakespearean monologues. It’s meant to look like a mountain of neon-colored menace, crushing people in a cage. Watching him move against the more technical martial artists is a bizarre, fascinating contrast.
The heart of Firepower is the Death Ring, an underground tournament run by the villainous Drexal (Joseph Ruskin). The plot eventually forces our heroes to enter the tournament, which turns the movie into a series of increasingly elaborate death matches. This is where the film earns its reputation. PM Entertainment was famous for its practical effects. They didn’t have the budget for big-screen explosions, so they made sure their small-screen ones were everywhere. The car chases are well-executed, featuring daring stunts that feel genuinely dangerous. They had a knack for blocking off streets and turning Los Angeles into a playground of burning rubber and flying steel.
The fighting, meanwhile, is classic 90s DTV. It’s not the polished, wire-fu spectacle of Hong Kong cinema (though Daniels brings some of that training to the table), nor is it the slow, heavy brawling you’d see in a modern UFC fight. It’s raw, it’s rhythmic, and it’s over-the-top. The scene where the characters are forced to perform in a continuous take in front of the cameras shows just how talented these guys were at adapting to tight schedules and limited resources.
To prepare for his role, Jim Hellwig reportedly trained for three weeks with martial arts instructor Richard Rabago and the film’s fight coordinator, Art Camacho (who also plays Viper). It wasn’t enough to make him a world-class kicker, but it was certainly enough to make him look like a terrifying physical threat on screen.
Daniels initially turned down the role because the pay wasn’t up to his standards, and he was sick of deathmatch movies. The executives at PM finally convinced him to read the script, and he realized the character of Sledge had enough sarcastic wit to be worth the trouble. Thank goodness he changed his mind. Without him, this would just be another forgotten relic.
Like many films of the era, Firepower relies on that specific 90s vision of the future: dark, gritty, filled with leather trench coats and neon lighting. It’s an aesthetic that has aged into a kind of nostalgic perfection, even as it becomes outdated, even though it’s supposed to be the future.
Spoilers: Poor Darren. Not only is his fighting name Alley Cat, but his wife gets killed because he’s poking around and well, maybe that’s not so sad because all she ever did was yell at him and one of the girls in the fight club, Lisa (Alisha Das, who is also in Nightwish and has gone on to be “considered a global authority on spirituality with a special focus on angels”), was already showing him interest. So in the PM Entertainment world of men writing men’s movies, I guess that’s happy. What isn’t is seeing Warrior slice his partner’s head clean off and hold it up, which I wasn’t expecting.
The P in PM, Richard Pepin, directed, and the script was by Michael January. Keep an eye open for George Murdock (the voice of God in Star Trek V), stunt coordinator and former pro wrestler Nils Allen Stewart, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs (who played Joe Jackson in The Jacksons miniseries because he looks exactly like Joe Jackson to the point that I thought, “Why is Michael Jackson’s dad in this movie?”) and, of course, Gerald Okamura.
This is the movie where Gerald Okamura fights Ultimate Warrior and I’m glad I watched it.
Madness (1992): Also known as Gli occhi dentro (The Eyes Inside) and Occhi senza volto (Eyes Without a Face), this Bruno Mattei* giallo — made a few decades late, but hey, give the man a break — tells the story of Giovanna Dei (Monica Carpanese, who is also in Mattei’s Dangerous Attraction and Legittima Vendetta). She’s the creator of a comic book called Doctor Dark, the tale of an anti-hero who is a Pagan professor by day and a babysitter killer by night, cutting out his victim’s eyes and replacing them with shards of broken glass. Now, someone is acting out the murders in real life and leaving the ocular evidence in her apartment.
Written by Lorenzo De Luca — who wrote Anthropophagus IIand The Fourth Horsemen which will have Franco Nero as Keoma and Fred Williamson as Cobra, as well as appearances by Mick Garris Alex Cox, Ruggero Deodato, Fabio Testi, Enzo G. Castellari, Gianni Garko, Ottaviano Dell’Acqua, R.A. Mihailoff, Massimo Vanni and more but that feels like IMDbs — and shot by much of the same crew that worked on the aforementioned Dangerous Attraction.
There’s a fair amount of story taken from Tenebre — like the line “If they kill someone with a power drill, do they take it out on Black and Decker?” which comes directly from Peter Neal’s question “Let me ask you something? If someone is killed with a Smith and Wesson revolver…do you go and interview the president of Smith and Wesson?” in Argento’s movie, as well as the idea of art becoming real-life murder. Doctor Dark’s trick of putting glass into the eye sockets of his victims feels a lot like Manhunter. And, of course, there’s Eyeball to be taken from as well. And while we’re on the subject, the entire plot of Sexy Cat. But the most grievous theft is in the Italian VHS release of this film, which completely takes two murder scenes from Lamberto Bava’s A Blade in the Dark. Did Mattei think no one would notice**?
That said, it may just be the fact that I love giallo and am a Bruno Mattei apologist, but I found myself liking this movie. You’d have to be a superfan of both for me to recommend it to you, but if you are, come on over and watch it with me.
*Using the name Herik Montgomery.
**Trick question. He didn’t care.
Bugie rosse (1993): A ruthless serial killer is stalking the Roman night, targeting male prostitutes with a cold, methodical precision that feels less like passion and more like pathology. Into this neon-and-shadow underworld steps Marco (Tomas Arana, Body Puzzle), a journalist who thinks he’s chasing a story but quickly realizes the story is starting to chase him back. His investigation pulls him deep into the city’s gay clubs, back rooms and coded encounters—territory that immediately invites comparisons to Cruising, except filtered through the glossy, psychosexual lens of late-period giallo.
Marco’s descent is as much internal as it is procedural. The deeper he goes, the more the film toys with the idea that exposure changes you—that proximity to desire, especially desire you don’t fully understand, begins to blur boundaries. He’s married to Adria (Gioia Scola, who is in another late 80s/early 90s giallo that needs more people talking about it, Obsession: A Taste for Fear), a stewardess who represents stability, normalcy and the hetero safety net the film keeps returning to like a nervous tic. The movie almost reassures the audience she’s there, like a defense mechanism, because otherwise Marco’s increasing discomfort (and curiosity) around male attention might actually lead somewhere more transgressive. And that’s where the tension lives: the film flirts with queerness but keeps one foot planted firmly in early ‘90s conservatism, no matter how one of the suspects, Andrea (Lorenzo Flaherty), makes him feel.
Still, it pushes further than most gialli ever dared. Traditionally, the genre treated queer characters as punchlines, perverts or disposable misdirection. Here, there’s at least a surface-level neutrality as men meet men, desire exists and the camera doesn’t leer at it with the same cruelty you’d expect from earlier entries. There’s even a surprisingly prescient detail: the use of early internet chat rooms as a way for men to connect. In 1993, that’s borderline sci-fi for this kind of movie, and it gives the film a strange, forward-looking edge, as if it accidentally stumbled into predicting the digital cruising culture that would explode years later.
Plus, I’m always happy to see Natasha Hovey (Cheryl from Demons) in a movie, as well as Alida Valli (Suspiria, Eyes Without a Face, The Killer Nun, Fatal Frames). It was directed and written by Pierfrancesco Campanella, who also made the 2003 giallo Bad Inclination and the shorts La goccia maledetta, L’idea malvagia and L’amante perfetta.
And then there’s that ending. Full spoiler territory, but it’s the kind of twist that reminds you why you’re watching this stuff in the first place: Adria disguising herself as a young man and deliberately entering her husband’s hunting ground is equal parts absurd and weirdly perfect. It collapses the film’s anxieties about identity, desire and performance into one final, lurid gesture.
Enter Starlet DuBois, played by Florence Guérin, who feels like a relic from an alternate timeline where the giallo boom never died. She’s a decade late to be a proper genre queen, but she makes up for it by diving headfirst into plenty of fun late in the game entries like Bizarre, Cattive Ragazze, Faceless, Too Beautiful To Die, Knife Under the Throat. She’s the kind of presence these movies need—hypnotic, slightly unreal, like she wandered in from a better production and decided to stay.
Her character’s setup is pure exploitation insanity: by day she’s Starlet, by night she becomes Sherry (kind of like Angel), a Times Square sex worker prowling the neon gutters of the Deuce, hunting for the man responsible for her brother’s death. And what a death it is! This isn’t just backstory, it’s a dare. Russian roulette…with a hand grenade. The result? Multiple casualties, injuries and one very specific mutilation that becomes the film’s obsession. Because the killer she’s tracking isn’t just murdering men. He’s targeting their masculinity in the most literal, grindhouse way possible, turning the whole thing into a revenge story filtered through body horror and psychosexual panic.
Trying to impose some kind of order on this chaos is Flanigan, played by David Hess—yes, that David Hess — bizarrely cast as a quasi-heroic cop. And if that sounds strange, just wait until the movie asks him to dress up as Guérin’s character as part of the investigation. It’s the kind of tonal whiplash only late-era Italian exploitation could deliver: deadly serious one minute, completely unhinged the next.
If this all starts to feel like it’s referencing Body Double, well, that movie was a giallo, so Brescia is just getting back some interest for the Italians. DePalma’s film was called Omicidio a Luci Rosse in Italy, which means Red Light Killer. This is Blue Light Killer.
Stylistically, this is where Brescia’s late-career quirks really take over. He’d been dabbling in music video aesthetics — Iron Warrior already hinted at it — and here you get pulsing lighting, awkward slow motion and sequences that feel like they’re one synth track away from MTV rotation. There are even flashes of primitive computer graphics.
But most of all, it has David Hess in a dress, trying to pretend he’s Florence Guérin, one of the most gorgeous women in the history of, well, existence. And he’s David Hess.
I Will Dance on Your Grave, I Will Dance on Your Grave: Savage Vengeance, I Spit on Your Grave 2: Savage Vengeance — whatever you call this, it’s a kind of, sort of sequel to I Spit On Your Grave, to the point that Camille Keaton is in it, using the name Vickie Kehl. In fact, she even has the same name as the original, Jennifer.
How can every movie that followed the scummy first movie be so much worse?
Man, Camille Keaton has had it rough in the movies. She started as Solange in What Have You Done to Solange?, playing the doomed girl around whom the entire movie’s narrative revolves. She’s also in some further Italian weirdness like Tragic Ceremony, Sex of the Witch and Madeleine: Anatomy of aNightmare before being decimated at length in Day of the Woman AKA I Spit On Your Grave. I’ve spent so much time considering rape revenge (and revengeomatic) movies, that force us through so much pain in order to get to the catharsis; do we need so much pain to get to redemption?
And yet here we are again, as this starts with Jennifer being assaulted by four men in a park, then is doxxed by a law professor, revealing to their class that she killed everyone who attacked her and got away with it. Angry, she goes on a vacation with her friend Sam (Linda Lyer), which ends up with — you guessed it — Sam being raped and killed before Jennifer is attacked and left for dead, stabbed in the chest. Well, you also can prognosticate that Jennifer returns, with a chainsaw and shotgun, and slices men’s heads in two and blasts another right in the dick.
Shot in Tennessee for $6,000 by Donald Farmer, this had some insane behind the scenes happenings, according to critic Dan Tabor: “The strangest part in all of this is Camille Keaton under the name Vickie Kehl actually decided to go along with it and star in the film even though she was married to Meir Zarchi who directed the original I Spit on Your Grave. So she had to know this film was done without his permission. But after filming concluded on No Justice, she began shooting what amounted to a fan film, only to change her mind halfway through production. It’s rumored she called her husband, crying, and left the film about 75% finished, which is why this film barely clocks in at over an hour.”
When Keaton walked off, Farmer was left with a jigsaw puzzle where half the pieces were missing, leading to the disjointed, dream-like (or nightmare-like) pacing that defines the final cut. Meir threatened to sue, which is why there’s so much ADR that changes plot details. One assumes that Farmer was going to go all The Boogieman and use footage from the first movie to set things up. Now, he would have to remake that, and in the attack, no one takes off their pants. Farmer claimed the DP — he had a DP on this? — didn’t like the idea of making the sexual moments dirty.
The bad guys, Dwayne and Tommy, are cartoonish versions of the squalid original bad guys. In fact, Tommy even keeps dead bodies in his house. This film is like a cover band version of a great band, and it just reminds you to enjoy the inspiration, not what Xeroxes what you already liked. The lack of grime makes the cartoonish villains feel less like threats and more like community theater actors who wandered onto the wrong set.
I asked, “Do we need so much pain to get to redemption?” The original I Spit on Your Grave argued that the audience must earn its comeuppance by enduring the assault in real time. Savage Vengeance fails because it treats the assault like a box to be checked; at least Meir’s movie has something resembling a soul. This is…man, what a weird film. I’m amazed that it exists.
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.
Today’s theme: Tobe Hooper!
About the Author: Parker Simpson is a writer and podcaster focusing on cult films and their social impacts. They currently cohost Where Is My Mind, a podcast focusing on underappreciated films from a variety of genres and countries. They have also held panels, chartered local organizations, and written articles to their blog. When not writing or studying, they like to spend time with their pets and go outside. Check out the podcast Linktree and blog.
Being a fan of Freddy Krueger led me to this, and I was very intrigued seeing this in Tobe Hooper’s late output. Surely this will be a compelling feature.
Night Terrors is a direct to video effort that Tobe Hooper was asked to direct after Gerry O’Hara left the project. Featuring Robert Englund as the Marquis de Sade and a slew of actors familiar to the direct to video scene (including William Finley), it follows a young woman visiting her father in Egypt (it’s really in Israel) as she gets wrapped up in a cult run by de Sade’s descendant.
If you read that and thought “what the fuck?” to yourself, you’d be correct! How de Sade’s family ends up in Egypt is never explained, nor is the formation of his cult. The film reeks of unexplained bullshit thrown in just to happen. Naked dude on a horse? Painted snake lady? Exorcisms during an orgy featuring snakes? Cool, I guess. I’m ok with weirdness, but after a certain point it needs to make some sense.
Another choice is to intercut the modern day storyline with de Sade’s ramblings from his prison cell. I’m all for giving Robert Englund more screentime, and to his credit he is very fun to watch. But the back and forth makes no sense; it would work better as a straight period piece like it was originally intended.
Englund’s performance excluded, the acting from most of the cast is questionable at best. Zoe Trilling as Genie (a play on Eugenie, ha ha) overacts and screams a lot. I don’t like that her character is constantly a damsel in distress and is saved by forces outside her control, but she doesn’t make it any more watchable. Most everyone else phones it in. No one, not even Englund or Finley, truly attempts to elevate this nonsensical script; they all just play into its absurdity (intentionally or not). Combined with the silly premise, it’s really quite fun to watch.
The whole movie looks cheap. 90s DTV has a certain charm that I find irresistible, but even with the on location filming, the budget is painfully clear. The dungeon/basement settings are particularly hard to look at. A 4:3 ratio does nothing to help the film, and there is a distinct orange tinge over everything, likely indicative that this needs a restoration.
I feel bad not liking this. Tobe Hooper, Robert Englund, and de Sade should have been a match made in heaven (or hell, depending on what you believe). Turns out none of them can help a lousy script. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but watching this is akin to watching a car crash. At least it was fun.
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.
Today’s theme: KNB!
About the Author: Parker Simpson is a writer and podcaster focusing on cult films and their social impacts. They currently cohost Where Is My Mind, a podcast focusing on underappreciated films from a variety of genres and countries. They have also held panels, chartered local organizations, and written articles to their blog. When not writing or studying, they like to spend time with their pets and go outside. Check out the podcast Linktree and blog.
Dude, I don’t know how to begin this write up. This fucking movie is so bizarre I highly recommend you watch it before reading on. It’s on Prime and Tubi. Go in cold, like nature intended.
If you’re being insolent and reading on… alright then. Doppelganger centers on Holly Gooding, a woman who moves across the country after her implication in her mother’s murder. She moves in with Patrick, a struggling writer trying to break into Hollywood. They begin a strange relationship, but Holly’s sanity increasingly comes into question as “doppelganger” commits violent acts she’s accused of.
I know this thing covers a lot of ground. It’s very cliche and riffs on many sources, ranging from Truman Capote to Brian De Palma. It also combines multiple genres: comedy, neo-noir, romance, horror, erotic thriller, it’s all there. It’s paced in a way that you wouldn’t think would be able to fit in everything, but surprise! It works, and it’s for the best most of the time.
Like all good 90s horror movies, Doppelganger throws in a heavy dose of offbeat comedy that is either hilarious or beyond annoying. You have multiple side characters that are so damn entertaining, but pushed aside to focus on the leads (more on that later). Patrick’s writing assistant is close to insufferable, yet she has fantastic one-liners that attempt to snap him back into reality. In terms of plot twists and visuals, it wants to be a De Palma movie so badly, yet it cannot shake the trends of the time. This leaves me no other choice but to place it in a special category known as camp: a film that in spite of its silliness, is seemingly aware of what it’s doing and doesn’t mind winking back to the audience (a normally hated trait of mine).
The casting of Drew Barrymore is simultaneously genius yet a terrible mistake. Holly Gooding’s struggles with mental health (that feels too kind to put here) and rough relationship with her family closely resemble Barrymore’s; I wouldn’t be shocked if this role was written with her in mind, like how Marilyn Monroe was Truman Capote’s inspiration for Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The issues are 1. Barrymore is rather young to be playing the female lead in a film with several erotic moments (including a topless shower scene) and 2. She is a charisma vacuum. I couldn’t buy her as sultry, just a weird edgy girl who needed an apartment. Pairing her with George Newbern, a frequent Superman voice actor, threw me off. Newbern, bless his heart, also has no real magnetism and is playing a wannabe screenwriter. Director/writer Avi Nesher tried channeling his best Hepburn/Peppard pairing and ended up with a mentally ill girl and dollar store Quentin Tarantino. Which isn’t terribly far from the source material, but trying to put that in an erotic thriller/horror film just doesn’t work. That being said, the clusterfuck is very fun to watch.
Where the camp comes in is found in other choices. My god, this movie looks far better than I expected. There are times you can tell it’s a soundstage with walls; other times the locations are immersive. This whole thing looks like it had a much higher budget than it likely did, a common trait of 90s B-rate horror films. Then there’s the editing… Nesher knows his pacing is quick considering most of his content is pretty mundane. How to spice it up? Quick cuts from everyone and everything! I broke my neck watching. Also, the score is insane. Too much. Too dramatic. Too anxiety inducing for regular everyday things. And yet it works. This film has no right to position itself as such a moving piece and yet it assures the audience that it is. There’s a certain nerve to be found and it’s really quite entertaining to watch.
Up to this point the reason for the season, KNB EFX has yet to be mentioned, or even considered to why it should be put in relation to the film. Hello spoilers! Go watch the movie. Please, it’s worth your time.
For most of the film, it’s just a regular thriller with flashes of grotesqueness, ranging from bloody showers to distorted reflections to a couple of murders. It’s not enough to warrant Kurtzmann, Nicotero, and Berger’s involvement, but a gig is a gig. Then the finale happens, and a gooey transformation of a singular woman into two skinless ghouls (her dual personalities) ensues, killing her psychiatrist who has taken advantage of her before morphing back. It’s the last thing you would expect from a film like this (that’s becoming a running theme here, isn’t it?).
Even before the final twenty minutes, before realizing it was a riff on Capote, before connecting Drew Barrymore’s childhood to it, I knew Doppelganger was deeply rooted in abuse, mental instability, and the loss of identity as it pertains to show business. Barrymore’s past closely mirroring the events of the film adds a subtle layer of meta, one welcome in a world pre-dating Scream’s takeover of the genre. Within that lies the dual personalities of Holly – one that acts on her violent impulses, and one that goes about her day, frightened of what the other will do next. Having developed due to her troubled childhood, she can’t form particularly healthy relationships, the most prominent being with Patrick (I believe the kids call this a situationship). The disturbing reveal that she has been taken advantage of by her psychiatrist also follows this trend. Paired with Patrick’s concurrent storyline of being a struggling writer in the entertainment industry, and a plot mixed with insecurity arises, not long before David Lynch tried his hand at similar themes. And just like my initial watches of Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, I know I’ll need a few more tries to fully unpack… this.
This is definitely one of my favorite watches of the month so far. Thanks to Lance and Erica of Unsung Horrors for putting myself and many others onto this little movie last year! Glad I could finally watch it.
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.
Holly Gooding (Drew Barrymore) was suspected of murder in New York City, so she goes to Los Angeles. Could she have an evil twin doing these things? Patrick Highsmith (George Newbern) doesn’t care. Seriously, 1993 Drew Barrymore could stab someone in front of me and I’d defend her. Patrick is the same, even when his ex-girlfriend and writing partner, Elizabeth (Leslie Hope), tries to speak truth to him.
The end of this movie is the most magical bullshit ever. Dr. Heller (Dennis Christopher), Holly’s therapist, is the person behind all of this murder, er, and he shows off his extensive latex mask collection. Just before he kills Patrick, Holly splits into two people and kills him. Yes, we’ve been told there’s no way a doppleganger can be real and get evidence, then it happens before our eyes. You thought Malignant wasn’t basing its twist on direct-to-video 1990s horror?
The end almost leads us to feel like this was all an analogy. Who can say!
Drew got a role for her mother, Jaid, as her mom in this movie, a woman who tries to kill her for her trust fund and is then killed. I guess confession and wish fulfillment.
Plus, George Maharis, Sally Kellerman, Danny Trejo as a construction worker and Luane Anders from Reform School Girl(and many other movies, I know).
Director and writer Avi Nesher also made She, which is more than awesome. Oh! He also made Ritual, a Tales from the Crypt Presents movie. It wasn’t created as a series tie-in, but released on home video that way.
17. A 90s Horror Film That Was Made for Television
Yes, a horror story. Within a few days, NBC’s Amy Fisher: My Story, CBS’s Casualties of Love and ABC’s The Amy Fisher Story all hit the small screen, and people did not go unmoved.
This time, we have Drew Barrymore playing Amy, and yeah, I’ll make a statement: I would kill someone for 1993 Drew Barrymore.
Director Andy Tennant would go on to work with Barrymore again on Ever After. He also made Fools Rush In and Sweet Home Alabama, so if you dated someone in the 90s, you saw his movies. It was written by Janet Brownell.
It all begins with Amy in bed, barely alive after a suicide attempt and wondering where it all went wrong. Oh yes, it was when she slept with Joey Buttafuoco (Tony Denison). Made a year after Drew was in Poison Ivy, this finds her playing yet another dangerous young girl who shouldn’t be using sex the way she is, but we all want to see it. You know, an exploitation film.
Fisher would go on to be with another old man bad for her, Louis Bellera, and even made an adult film — against her wishes, so she said — in the early 2000s. On March 6, 2008, Fisher was a guest on the Howard Stern Show to discuss the video. After the first phone call from Mary Jo Buttafuoco’s daughter, Jessica, Fisher left the show quickly. In 2010, she appeared in Deep Inside Amy Fisher alongside Lisa Ann, Tommy Gunn, Dale DaBone and Marcus London. She also appeared in Amy Fisher Is Sex (of course, Evan Stone is in that), My Wife’s Hot Friend 10, Amy Fisher With Love, Fatal Seduction (at least Katsuni is in that), and Seduced by a Cougar 22.
She reunited with Mary Jo Buttafuoco for appearances on Entertainment Tonight and also did the coin toss with Joey for the 2006 Lingerie Bowl, which was a thing. The New York Euphoria beat the Los Angeles Temptation 13-12.
Anyways: Casualties of Love was about Amy being crazy, while Amy Fisher: My Story had her being taken advantage of, and this one says, “Both things can be true.”
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film Eastand The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey.
Today’s theme: Made for TV Movie!
“And maybe for the college boys, the truest mirror is the toilet bowl staring back at them in the morning after a toga party.”
This insightful line of dialogue is “uttered” by a faceless ventriloquist’s dummy during a set at a strip club in When a Stranger Calls Back, a copy/paste sequel produced by Showtime in 1993.
Starting with a revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1984, Showtime produced many original films during a run that lasted until around 2007. Never reaching the acclaim of HBO Films, and never reaching the depths of Cinemax Friday After Dark programming, Showtime was able to carve out an interesting middle ground, particularly in the horror genre. The first film that comes to my mind when I think about Showtime is John Carpenter’s Body Bags. But Showtime was also the home of films such as Psycho IV: The Beginning, The Birds II: Land’s End, as well as Jim Wynorski’s remake of The Wasp Woman. Pursuing the list of films now, I feel the need to find some of these potential hidden gems. Once this month is over, I might have to seek out The Tiger Woods Story, a 1998 film directed by LeVar Burton, starring Keith David as Tiger Woods’ dad.
When a Stranger Calls Back gets the gang from the first film back together. Carol Kane as Jill, the babysitter who was tormented in the original movie, but she has since turned her trauma into a career as a counselor, while finding time to take self-defense classes on the side. Charles Durning as Detective John Clifford, using his skills to track down men who harass babysitters (a very niche skill set). And director Fred Walton. Not much to say about Walton other than he also directed April Fool’s Day, followed by a string of made-for-TV films, including a remake of William Castle’s I Saw What You Did.
Not only did the director and main stars come back, but the basic template from the first film returns. The most often heard complaint about When a Stranger Calls is that the film loses steam after that iconic opening sequence. But what film could possibly match the energy and suspense crafted in that first 20 minutes? People rarely talk about how great the last 15 minutes are as well. Truly scary.
While the bookends of When a Stranger Calls Back does not match the intensity of the original, it makes a decent effort. We get a legendary scream queen as the tormented babysitter (Jill Schoeien), and a killer who is creepier than the one in the first film. Kind of a Francis Dolarhyde meets Peeta from The Hunger Games. And I think that the second act here is more interesting than the one in the first film. Of course having more Carol Kane is always a good idea in my book. Watching Carol Kane’s stunt double do a jumping scissors kick against her attacker? Peak cinema.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Casualties of Love was on USA Up All Night on February 13, 1993; November 25 and December 3, 1994.
Of the three Amy Fisher movies, NBC’s Amy Fisher: My Story, ABC’s The Amy Fisher Story with Drew Barrymore, and this film, which aired on CBS on January 3, 1993 — the same night as ABC’s film — this is the only one featuring Lawrence Tierney.
Alyssa Milano is Amy, which is probably why this was on USA Up All Night so often.
Director and writer John Herzfeld also made numerous TV movies, including Daddy, A Father’s Revenge, The Ryan White Story, The Preppie Murder, and Remember, which features Donna Mills. He also produced several ABC Afterschool Specials, 2 Days in the Valley, Don King: Only in America, and the John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John film Two of a Kind.
This one has a lot of Joey Buttafuoco (Jack Scalia), coked out and playing drums. And his brother is played by Bud, Leo Rossi! Man, did I cast this movie?
This one tells Joey’s side of the stor,y and the USA Network bought it while it was being filmed. Milano said, “Our version was the one from Joey Buttafuoco’s point of view: That she was a lunatic. Since then, we’ve learned that his version wasn’t all true.”
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