EDITOR’S NOTE: Did you know that Visual Vengeance has a ton of movies on Tubi? It’s true. Check out this Letterboxd list and look for reviews as new movies get added. You can find this movie on Tubi.
Shot on Super 8, this film tells the story of how PR exec Jim Matthews (David Rommel) tries to leave his wife, genetic designer Meredith Weaver (Anna Zizzo) for his secretary Jenny Dole (Joan Dinco). His wife doses him with her latest experiment, which causes his extremities that start thinking on their own and destroying his mind. Yes, his hands, his arms, his legs, even his cock all can move away from his body to kill and feed, kind of like a demented version of the Myron Fass Captain Marvel that split. into different parts.
Directed and written by Tom Berna (his only film, however he has acted and provided special effects for several others), Colony Mutation has great acting from Rommel and the relationship between Meredith and her sister Suzanne (Susan L. Cane) feels authentic. How strange that a body horror film is mostly about the human emotions of a marriage being destroyed and a woman falling in love with a man who is already taken.
That said, it’s as dark as dark gets and the special effects are the result of the beyond microbudget. But who cares when the idea is this good? Where else would you get a movie with a killer penis and a man who no longer can control his body because he couldn’t control his body? Milwaukee, Wisconsin was far from Hollywood and films made like this are the last bastion of what regional filmmaking was, grimy and rough blasts of unreality that infect our brains.
Nicole Grace (Traci Lords) and Susan Warfield (Crystal Bernard) become friends at a club and when they learn that they look enough alike that Nicole can get away with using Susan’s ID and insurance to get care for her ulcer at an ER. They both have a dark past — Nicole did time for shoplifting and Susan’s dad left when she was two and her mother has just died. A few weeks later, Susan tries to check in with Nicole, but she’s disappeared and the hospital says that the patient they had — named Susan Warfield — has died. An Aaron Warfield has authorized her to be cremated and a lawyer is suing the hospital for $10 million dollars, as they had the wrong blood type, due to them thinking she was someone else. The real Susan is running low on cash, so she hides out at the vacant apartment and starts wearing Nicole’s clothes.
This death ends up introducing her to her real father Edgar Warfield (George Dickerson) and the idea of her half-brother Aaron, who her father tells her to never meet as he’s not kind to women. She’s also driving Nicole’s car, which almost ends up with the cops arresting her. She tries to make it home but a man is stalking outside and she’s saved by Ron Holden (Judge Reinhold), who seems to be a good person. Well, seems to be, because spoiler warning, he’s Aaron and as they investigate the case together, he’s killing people that can tell that he’s the one who murdered Nicole.
The last movie directed, written and produced by Larry Cohen, this has some good ideas. And yes, maybe it’s the least of his efforts, but it’s a sort of American giallo about both the hero and villain not being who they say they are. My only issue is that Crystal Bernard is attractive, but no one would ever confused her with Traci Lords.
Olga’s (Serena Grandi, Delirium) life is one that will forever be damaged by childhood trauma, as her father killed himself before her eyes. Now, along with her husband Paolo (David Brandon), she is finally going home. This starts with a hell of a dream sequence, as Olga remembers her mother covered in blood and her shooting her father in the face. This memory or vision or way of dealing with her father’s suicide is why she has blamed herself for it since she was young. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Carlo Ferranti (Dobromir Manev), believes that confronting her past will help her heal. After all, she has a good marriage and a supportive partner, right?
She gets the opportunity to see her old friends like Isabel (Daniela Poggi) and Sheila (Florinda Bolkan), as well as experience the club where she once danced and sang. But one night, while staying at her family’s home, Olga is attacked by a mysterious intruder. Only Inspector Michael Manning (Stéphane Ferrara), a police officer she once had an affair with, believes her. Everyone else thinks that Olga has finally lost her mind.
The stalker remembers that our heroine used to be an exotic dancer called Olga O — yes, not much of a name change or disguise — and keeps using that name as he chases her on motorcycle and leaves those messages. Yet she also feels drawn to danger and if that feels like, well, a strange vice, that’s because this is co-written by the man who wrote so many gialli — including The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh — Ernesto Gastaldi. Along with Daniele Stroppa and Maria Cociani, he’s put together a pretty good plot that makes one look to the past but enjoy what they are currently watching. What helps is that the cinematographer was Luigi Kuveiller (Deep Red, A Quiet Place In the Country, A Lizard In a Woman’s Skin), who definitely knows how to shoot a giallo movie, and the director Antonio Bonifacioas picked up a few things from working with Joe D’Amato. I also liked his Appuntamento in nero and this improves on that.
By the end, Olga is seeing dead bodies in her bed, unsure of who to trust and may even have tried to kill herself. Is there anyone who can save our heroine? I really enjoyed Olga’s Strange Story and it was worth the time that it took for time to find it.
Nina (Mimi Rogers) is an art dealer. When she gets her weekly massage, a new masseur shows up, Fitch (Bryan Brown). What follows is a long discussion and a connection as he rubs her body. When asked what it was like to be nude for the entire film, Rogers said it didn’t always feel great. “I thought it would, but nothing I did felt good. I was either straining my neck or laying on a cold metal table. I did that because I thought it was a fascinating script with interesting dialogue. Sort of like My Dinner With Andre with a massage table. Also, it was an opportunity to work with Nicolas Roeg. He waited for me to have my baby so we shot four-and-a-half months after I gave birth. My body was not what it usually is.”
Rogers and Brown are both good in this and if it weren’t for their chemistry and ability to make the dialogue about the meaning of life sound conversational, this would feel like a movie that just wanted to have nudity throughout. Yet it never feels like its exploiting her and instead it feels like you learn so much about both of them. I’d have never watched this Nicholas Roeg movie if it wasn’t for it coming out on blu ray and I’m glad that I did.
The Unearthed Films blu ray of this movie also has a TV edit. You can get it from MVD.
Directed by Enzo Barboni, who wrote the movie with Marco Tullio Barboni, Sons of Trinity (AKA Trinity & Babyface and Trinity & Bambino: The Legend Lives On) finds the sons of, well, Trinity and Bambino being Trinity (Heath Kizzier) and Bambino (Keith Neubert).
Just like their fathers, Trinity loves women and getting in trouble as he works as a bounty hunter while Bambino is a sheriff who doesn’t want bothered by his cousin. They end up having to stop a wealthy landowner by the name of Parker (Siegfried Rauch) and the Ramirez Brothers from evicting the people of San Clementina. As always, there’s a beautiful woman — Bonita (Yvonne de Bark) — to get Trinity to do the right thing.
This is decent but Terence Hill and Bud Spencer are superior in every way to the young cast. It did make me smile, as the fight scenes remind me of their films, but it just feels like something is missing. But hey — Jack Taylor shows up, as do Riccardo Pizzuti (the creature from Lady Frankenstein), Renatoi Scarpa (Prof. Verdegast from Suspiria) and José Lifante (Dr. Death from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen).
I realize it’s unfair for me to think this would be anything or anywhere as fun as the films that inspired it, but I think the potential was there. A cameo from Hill and Spencer would have at least brought a smile and some sense of passing the mantle so to speak.
October 13: A DTV Horror Sequel released by Dimension Films
After the death of their father, Eli (Daniel Cerny) and Joshua (Ron Melendez) are adopted by William (Jim Metzler) and Amanda Porter (Nancy Lee Grahn, Julia Wainwright Capwell on Santa Barbara from 1985 – 1993 and Alexis Davis on General Hospital since 1996), moving from a farm to Chicago. Eli seems like he’s going to have a harder time than Joshua fitting in, as he reads a prayer at dinner that goes like so: “Let us give thanks to He Who Walks Behind the Rows, who protects our crops and keeps the infidel and unbeliever in the torments of hellfire eternal. Amen.”
I laughed like a maniac.
Eli also has a suitcase filled with corn that he plants in an abandoned lot in the middle of urban Chicago, where the boys also have to go to Catholic school, which goes about as well as you think. T-Loc (Garvin Funches) gives the young Amish-like kid a hard time while his brother goes off and plays some b-ball and becomes friends with neighbors Malcolm (Jon Clair) and Maria (Mario Morrow, Oneisha from Family Matters).
The secret is that Eli is from Gatlin, Nebraska and hasn’t aged since 1964. By this point in the movie, he’s fed his corn with the head of a homeless man, murdered his adopted mom by knocking her down and having a pipe go through her head and set a social worker on fire. Luckily, his new dad just wants to make money on his corn, which can grow anywhere and never rots.
Eli takes over most of the students when he feeds them his corn and then goes about killing adults with bugs and by crucifying Father Frank Nolan (Michael Ensign). Joshua learns that his brother has a secret bible — it’s a hardcover of U of M grad Steve King’s Night Shift — that keeps him alive and oh yeah, we get to see the kaiju that is He Who Walks Behind the Rows. If you look closely, you may see Ivana Miličević and Charlize Theron in the thrall of Eli and that cornshucking beast.
Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest was the first film in the series made under Dimension Films and Miramax Films, who also made Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering, Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror, Children of the Corn 666: Isaac’s Return, Children of the Corn: Revelation and Children of the Corn: Genesis.
Director James D.R. Hickox was the editor of Waxwork, Waxwork II, Masters of the Universe, Beastmaster 2 and Greystoke before he made Children of the Corn III. He hadn’t seen either of the first two movies. He’s the brother of director Anthony Hickox.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Witch Academy aired on USA Up All Night on June 18, 1994; January 27 and November 11, 1996; June 28, 1996; March 29 and November 21, 1997.
Did you watch Evil Toons and say, “I want a movie somehow even worse than this without Madison Stone to make up for the abject boredom that I felt while watching it?”
Good news! Or, well, horrible news.
Mark Thomas McGee, who wrote Equinox, wrote this for director Fred Olen Rey. It has Ruth Collins — yes, Bubbles from Firehouse and Tina from Doom Asylum — in it, as well as Veronica Carothers (who played two different roles in Vice Academy 3 and 4), scream queen Michelle Bauer and Priscilla Barnes, who was once Felix Leiter’s dead wife in Licence to Kill. You may know her from getting killed in Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects. Or maybe you remember her more fondly — and more alive — as Nurse Terri who replaced Suzanne Sommers on Three’s Company. And oh hell, let’s throw in Suzanna Agar (Shock ‘Em Dead, Evil Toons).
Playing Satan? Robert Vaughn who, as we all know, deserves better. So did Gary Graver, who shot this a decade after Orson Welles died and so did his dream of making a completed movie with him.
If you want to watch women paddle one another and somehow see what should be something every red blooded American boy — and hey girls too, the world is robust and filled with all manner of people and we love them all — should adore rendered into sheer boredom, then by all means, seek out this fecund steaming pile of trash.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Wild Malibu Weekend! aired on USA Up All Night on June 23 and December 2, 1995; August 23, 1996; February 8 and November 1, 1997.
Directed by Jason Williams, who played Flesh Gordon, this has The Ultramatics playing while in one long cut women spray whipped cream all over their breasts and play other supposedly sexy games with one another and look, it was the 90s, you know?
Let’s just discuss the cast.
Mary Johnson is played by Barbara Moore, who the Playboy 1992 Playmate of the Month, as well as a National Pro-Am dancing championship with dance partner Igor Suvorov and an NDCA Ballroom Dance instructor. Her sister in the movie, Kelly, is played by Kathy Pasmore who was in Takin’ It Off Out West. Shauna O’Brien may be the best known of the contestants. She was Lady Chatterley in Lady Chatterley’s Stories and was also Penthouse Pet of the Month in January 1992. If you watched a direct to VHS mature and not adult movie, you probably saw her in it.
Behind the camera, writer Gregory Poirier also scripted National Treasure: Book of Secrets, The Lion King II and the Jackie Chan movie The Spy Next Door. Yes, really. An even loftier career was found by executive producer Bob Murawski, who edited The Hurt Locker, Spider-Man and oh yeah, co-founded Grindhouse Releasing. As for this film’s editor, it was Paul Hart, who also edited Nude Bowling Part, a movie many in the crew worked on, as well as editing Gone With the Pope.
That said — this isn’t good unless you’re a teenager watching USA Up All Night.
The most expensive film ever made at the time, Waterworld lives in the same rarified air as Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate, except that it was one of the highest grossing films of 1995.
The thing is, while it cost $175 million, it made back $264.2 million worldwide, as well as having a profitable video and cable release. It’s still making money, because the stunt show based on the movie, Waterworld: A Live Sea War Spectacular, is still running at Universal Studios Hollywood, Universal Studios Singapore, Universal Studios Japan and Universal Studios Beijing 27 years after the movie was released.
Writer Peter Rader came up with the idea for Waterworld during a conversation with producer Brad Krevoy literally as a Mad Max rip-off. He probably also read the comic Freakwave by Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy*, which had been nearly optioned as a movie. Co-writer David Twohy even outright said that he was inspired by The Road Warrior and the filmmakers hired that movie’s director of photography, Dean Semler, for this film.
Before filming began, Steven Spielberg warned star Kevin Costner and director Kevin Reynolds not to film on open water, a lesson he learned from Jaws. They didn’t listen and watched the set sink. And hey, Reynolds quit before the movie was done because he and Costner fought so much.
So what did this all lead to?
Waterworld is way better than it’s been said to be. It is, quite literally, Mad Maxon jet skis. Costner is the web-footed Mariner, a man who recycles his own urine as drinking water because since the polar ice caps melted, the drinking water is quite limited and the Earth is just plain filled with water. He saves Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and a kid named Enola (Tina Majorino), protecting them from The Deacon, a one-eyed Dennis Hopper, and then uses the map on Enola’s back to find the only dry land on Earth, which is the top of Mount Everest.
It just takes two hours and fifteen minutes** to get there.
*Ironically, McCarthy would later co-write Mad Max: Fury Road.
**The Costner cut is three hours long.
The three disc limited edition Arrow 4K UHD release of Waterworld has everything you ever wanted about this film.
There are three cuts of the film newly restored from original film elements by Arrow Films, six collector’s postcards, a double-sided fold-out poster and a limited edition 60-page perfect bound book featuring writing on the film by David J. Moore and Daniel Griffith, and archival articles, as well as a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Paul Shipper.
The theatrical cut disc comes with the following extras: Maelstrom: The Odyssey of Waterworld, a feature-length making-of documentary including extensive cast and crew interviews and behind-the-scenes footage; Dances With Waves, an original archival featurette capturing the film’s production; Global Warnings, in which film critic Glenn Kenny explores the subgenre of ecologically themed end-of-the-world films; a production and promotional still gallery; a visual effects still gallery; original trailers and TV spots.
You also get the TV cut and the extended European Ulysses cut, which includes previously censored shots and dialogue.
If you love Waterworld, you need this. Get it now from MVD.
Let’s be straight: I could type out the entire script of this movie by memory. That’s how important this movie was to a 23-year-old me. I even worked in an ad agency inside a mall and often felt like the characters in this, walking the shops and stores of Station Square with no shopping agenda. Even now, 28 years later, I can quote from this movie at any time and so much of it is part of my vocabulary.
I was probably one of the few people back then who loved it, because it bombed and writer and director Kevin Smith apologized for the movie at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Today, as Smith says on the intro to the Arrow blu ray, this movie has aged into being seen as a success.
This movie is all about the adventures of T.S. Quint (Jeremy London) and Brodie Bruce (Jason Lee) as they navigate the Eden Prairie Center Mall — actually in Minnesota*, but supposedly New Jersey — and attempt to get over the loss of their respective girlfriends, Brandi Svenning (Claire Forlani) and Rene Mosier (Shannen Doherty). Along the way, they interact with Jay and Silent Bob, meet Stan Lee and even go to the dirt mall.
That’s an oversimplification of a movie that once — and yes, still — meant so much to me. What comic book geek doesn’t see themselves as Brodie, a man who can somehow win over Doherty despite only caring about Superman being able to shoot semen like a shotgun and playing as Hartford on his Genesis? Even all these years later, I see him as one of the coolest characters in the movies of my youth and have followed Jason Lee through so many characters as a result.
From Michael Rooker trying to hunt down Brodie — and having to eat a curious pretzel — to the gameshow Truth or Date being made at “their mall” and Priscilla Barnes as a multi-nipple having fortune teller, there are so many moments in this movie that I remember and instantly laugh about. It also sets up Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back back as Suzanne the orangutan makes her first appearance.
While Jay and Silent Bob Reboot felt like a massive misfire, I’m happy to see that this movie has lost none of its fun and good feelings. Sometimes, as Smith says, things just age well.
Sadly, the malls we once haunted are all gone. Even the one I worked at is now all office spaces and tourist restaurants. We go there every once in a while for fondue. But all I can see is when it was once filled with people like me, those with no set shopping agenda.
*Fargo was being filmed in the same town at the same time.
The Arrow re-release of this movie comes with so much, starting with a 4K restoration by Arrow Films of both the Theatrical and Extended cuts of the film, approved by director Kevin Smith and cinematographer David Klein. There’s also audio commentary with Smith, producer Scott Mosier, archivist Vincent Pereira and actors Jason Lee, Ben Affleck and Jason Mewes.
Plus, you get an introduction to the film by Smith, an interview with the director, a tribute to producer Him jacks, interviews with Mewes and cinematographer David Klein, an animated making-of documentary featuring Minnesota crew members who worked on the film, deleted scenes, outtakes, behind-the-scenes footage, interviews on set, an archival making of featurette, a Q&A with Smith, the music video for “Build Me Up Buttercup,” a still gallery, dailies, a theatrical trailer, Easter eggs and a press kit for the soundtrack.
It all comes in an amazing package that has an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Philip Kemp, a fold-out poster featuring replica blueprints for Operation Drive-by and Operation Dark Knight, and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Robert Sammelin.
B&S About Movies 