Since the second issue of 2000 AD, Judge Dredd has ruled over the streets of Mega-City One, a domed city that contains most of the East Coast of America. The Judges are empowered to be judge, jury and executioner, keeping the lawless post-apocalyptic land of the future as safe as possible.

This movie isn’t anywhere near as beloved as the comic. Co-creator John Wagner said, “I hated that plot. It was Dredd pressed through the Hollywood cliché mill, a dynastic power struggle that had little connection with the character we know from the comic.” He also added, “The story had nothing to do with Judge Dredd, and Judge Dredd wasn’t really Judge Dredd even though Stallone was perfect for the part.”

Joseph Dredd (Stallone) assists first-year Judge Hershey (Diane Lane) in ending a block war (an uncredited James Remar appears in this scene). As Dredd and Hershey quell the rebellion, Herman “Fergee” Ferguson (Rob Schneider) is caught up in the arrests.

Meanwhile, Judge Griffin (Jurgen Prochnow, Sutter Cane from In the Mouth of Madness) releases a former judge named Rico (Armand Assante), who just so happens to be Dredd’s brother, from prison. He reactivates an ABC Warrior combat robot (another 2000 AD series) and murders Hammond (Mitchell Ryan, the Dark Shadows TV show and Dr. Wynn from Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers), a reporter who was critical of Dredd’s methods.

Dredd is put on trial by the Chief Judges, including the villainous Griffin and his mentor, Chief Justice Fargo (Max von Sydow). To save our hero, Fargo agrees to step down and enacts the final service of all Judges — doing the long walk into the Cursed Earth while Dredd is sentenced to life in prison.

Rico causes chaos while the cannibalistic Angel Gang attack’s Dredd’s transport to prison. Joining up with Fergee, they escape and are saved by the final sacrifice of Fargo, who is killed by Mean Machine Angel. Before dying, Fargo reveals that Dredd and Rico are the progeny of the Janus project, a genetic engineering effort to create the perfect judge. This explains why Dredd’s DNA was at the crime scene, as Rico’s is identical to his.

Of course, Dredd has to come back and save Mega-City One, ending with a battle between the man who is the law and Rico atop the Statue of Liberty.

To be perfectly honest, Judge Dredd is a mess. Even though it was made more than three years after Demolition Man, a film that it is quite similar to, it feels incredibly dated. The film gets the look of Mega-City One right, but none of the humor or nuance. That said, the Gianni Versace-designed costumes are awesome and I love that Adrienne Barbeau is the voice of computer at the Hall of Justice.

The film had to be submitted to the MPAA five times to get an R rating when its goal was PG-13. And the constant creative disputes led director Danny Cannon to swear he’d never work with another big name actor. He’s gone on to direct I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and Geostorm, as well as being a major part of the CSI and Gotham TV shows. Stallone wanted an action comedy film while Cannon wanted a darker, more satirical vision that was closer to the source material.

Stallone would tell Uncut “I do look back on Judge Dredd as a real missed opportunity. It seemed that lots of fans had a problem with Dredd removing his helmet, because he never does in the comic books. But for me it is more about wasting such great potential there was in that idea; just think of all the opportunities there were to do interesting stuff with the Cursed Earth scenes. It didn’t live up to what it could have been.”

If you live anywhere other than Pittsburgh, this movie — much like Striking Distance — is a DVD that you can find in the $1 section. Here, it’s a prized commodity, a remembrance of the Steel City in the 1990s and a time when the owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ wife decided that she wanted to make a movie.

That’s right — Howard Baldwin, chairman of the Pittsburgh Penguins, was one of the film’s backers. The goal was to use the stadium and a game between the Pens and the Chicago Blackhawks as a backdrop, but there was a lockout due to the owners and players not coming to terms. That meant that an exhibition game between the two teams didn’t have the intensity that the filmmakers wanted, so they got the minor league Johnstown Chiefs and Wheeling Thunderbirds to play in front of 3,000 extras, with the rest of the crowd being cardboard cutouts. Seriously — look for the fake fans.

Darren McCord (Van Damme!) may be French Canadian, but he’s a true Yinzer. Once, he was a firefighter but he was unable to save a young girl from a house fire. He lost his wife and barely sees his family, who live in a nice house up on Mt. Washington while he’s probably living in Carrick or Brookline (I’m trying to make this review so Pittsburgh-centric that it will only appear as blips and bleeps to anyone outside of Allegheny County).

Now he’s the fire marshall for the Civic Arena — long gone for the several times renamed PPG Paints Arena — and finds himself in the midst of a terrorist situation when former CIA agent Joshua Foss (Powers Boothe, who played Jim Jones in the made for TV movie Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones) wires the Igloo up with explosives and takes the Vice-President hostage.

Yes, this is a movie directly tied into the end of a hockey game causing bombs to blow up an ice hockey arena. A film where JCVD does battle with the Pens’ penguin mascot, Iceburgh. Where even supposed good guys are really on the side of evil. And where Van Damme can create homemade flamethrowers and even get on the ice himself to save the day.

If you’re a fan of 1990’s hockey, this is the film for you. Jay Caufield, Mario Lemieux and Luc Robitaille, as does venerable Pens announcer Mike Lange, who is one of the few announcers left who isn’t some vanilla pretty boy who barely knows the game. Instead, he’s given to loudly shouted Lange-isms like “She wants to sell my monkey!” and “Get in the fast lane, grandma! This bingo game is ready to roll!” You can hear his signature “It’s a hockey night in Pittsburgh!” call in this film as well. Not to brag, but of all the names in my phone, the fact that I have Lange’s makes me probably the happiest (we worked together on several radio commercials).

I rarely take pictures with celebrities, but Mike Lange transcends my rules.

Director Peter Hyams has an interesting IMDB list, working on films like Capricorn One, The Star Chamber, 2010, Outland, Running Scared, The Presidio, Stay Tuned and Timecop before this one. He’d go on to make The Relic — a film I was asked to quiet down during my laugh-filled viewing of it at Mann’s Chinese Theater — and End of Days. He elevates this above it being just another Die Hard clone.

You know who else does? Powers Boothe. He’s one of the best bad guys ever here. And to top it all off, he read the audio book of the film. This is the holy grail here in Pittsburgh, a valuable artifact worth its weight in pierogies.

BONUS: Listen to Becca and I discuss Sudden Death on our podcast:

Lewis Gilbert made a literal ton of movies — more than forty over six decades — including Sink the Bismark!, Alfie, You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker and Educating Rita, Here, he’s doing an adaption of a James Herbert novel. You may know the writer from his multiple books dealing with plagues of rats which were turned into Deadly Eyes. Actually, you probably don’t. I kind of get obsessed about things no one else cares about.

David Ash (Aidan Quinn) is an American parapsychology professor at Oxford who was motivated by the death of his twin sister Juliet to discredit the existence of ghosts. Ms. Webb asks him to travel to Sussex, where he’s met by Christina Mariell (Kate Beckinsale) and asked to intervene in some ghost-related sightings. He’s really been called by the withdrawn Nanny Tess (Anna Massey, Peeping Tom) who notices even stranger things happening between Christina and her brothers Robert and Simon (Anthony Andrews and Alex Lowe).

Of course, David has fallen for Christina. I mean, 1995 Kate Beckinsdale (actually, we don’t need to put a year on her). But she’s a bit way too close with her brother Robert. You know — British horror movie close. Once they finally make love — I’m talking about David and Christina — he wakes up the next morning to an empty house and finds a grave that claims that the whole family died in 1923. That’s because their mother saw all three of the siblings having sex, drowned herself in the lake and then their nanny locked them in a room and set the house on fire. Oh British upper crust — you’re the best.

Haunted isn’t discussed much when it comes to ghost movies. But hey — it’s worth checking out, particularly if you like strange British people. Because my sole experience with British people would be the movies of Hammer and Amicus, I know no other kind.

Empire Records may not be a musical, but without music, it wouldn’t really have much of a story, would it? It does fit into the main prerequisite for this week: it was a total bomb on release before finding an audience that was ready for it years after it was actually made. This coming of age and battle against the corporation film may have just been too much for 1995, but in 2019? It fits right in.

Writer Carol Heikkinen supposedly worked at a Tower Records store (IMDB claims that it was store #166 at Phoenix’s Christown Mall) and used tons of stories that she had experienced while working there.

This is the story of 24 hours in the life of Delaware’s Empire Records, an independent music store. It starts when Joe (Anthony LaPaglia, The Client, Annabelle: Creation), the store manager, allows Lucas (Rory Cochrane, Dazed and Confused) to close the store alone for the first time.

That’s when he learns that Music Town, a national entertainment big box store, is buying Empire Records. To keep its spirit of independence alive, he takes all $9,000 from that day’s sales and sets out to quadruple it in Atlantic City. Sure, he doubles it, but Lucas’ luck could never hold out.

The next morning, a decimated Luchas is found by A.J. (Johnny Whitworth, who ended up being Blackout in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance before anyone cared about superhero movies) and Mark (Ethan Embry, Pete on Sneaky Pete). He tells the two of them of his plight as they try to keep him away from Joe, who is looking for the missing deposit once the bank and the actual owner call.

The real heart of Empire Records lies within the kids that work there, like Corey (Liv Tyler), Gina (an impossibly young Renée Zellweger), the suicidal and soon-to-be bald Deb (Robin Tunney, The Craft) and her hanger-on boyfriend Berko (Coyote Shivers, who was married to Liv Tyler’s mom at the time, former groupie Bebe Buell).

The truth of it all is that Joe had wanted to become co-owner all along and had hoped to use that $9,000 to make it happen, keeping the store independent. Meanwhile, all hell is breaking loose because the store is dealing with Rex Manning Day.

Yes, former 80’s pop star Rex Manning (Maxwell Caulfield) is coming to the store, which has a line of older women and gay men ready to greet him. The store employees and even Rex’s assistant (Debi Mazar, who continually wins me over in small roles) openly hate the singer, but Corey has been planning to give him her virginity. He blows her off and ends up sleeping with her best friend, Gina, as all hell breaks loose.

So much of Empire Records really does hold true to the hijinks ensue manifesto. It’s an episodic account of this one big day in the heart of a record store, complete with shoplifters being converted into employees, a mock funeral for Deb to cheer her up, an all-night benefit to “Save the Empire” and love winning against all costs. Oh yeah and Gwar shows up.

It’s amazing that this movie even made it on the screen, as it was severely edited in post-production, with three significant characters and 40 minutes of footage ending up on the cutting room floor.

Reviewers said things like the movie was a “soundtrack in search of a movie,” “deserved a bullet to put it out of its misery” and it was a “lost cause.” That said — the soundtrack album peaked at #63 on the Billboard charts and The Gin Blossoms’ “Til I Hear It From You” and Edwyn Collins’ “A Girl Like You” made it into the top 40.

Today, a film that only made $300,000 on initial release plays revival houses and has enjoyed several home video re-releases. April 8th has now become Rex Manning Day to so many people now.

Sadly, this movie may not mean much to kids today, as music stores have disappeared. Yes. even the big stores like Music Town.

BONUS: Listen to Becca and I talk about this movie on our podcast.

Another Stuart Gordon H.P. Lovecraft (based on his story The Outsider) project, Castle Freak is not for the weak of heart or stomach. It’s a slasher and splatter freakout shot in the vacation home of producer Charles Band. But what would you expect from the people who brought you Re-Animator and From Beyond?

John Reilly (Jeffrey Combs, deranged and demented as ever), his wife Susan (Barbara Crampton, who is producing a reboot of this film) and their blind teenage daughter Rebecca have moved to Italy to live in a 12th-century castle complete with a castle freak in the basement.

Susan and John are at odds since the drunk driving incident that cost the life of their son and the eyes of their daughter. And the freak has been trapped in the basement for decades because the Duchess who once owned the castle is tormenting him because she can’t torture her adulterous and absent husband.

Everything gets gory and bonkers when John brings back the town prostitute and loses her to the freak, who eats her anatomy in the worst of ways. And then, the freak comes for Rebecca. Trust me — this is not a movie to watch with the kids, even if Full Moon put out an action figure of the lead character.

You can watch this for free on Tubi or on Shudder with or without commentary from Joe Bob Briggs.

Paul Andolina, whose writes the site Wrestling with Film, may love Russian and Mexican films, but today he’s here to talk about a movie that features an Irish legend. Good to see you back on the site, Paul!

The great thing about the Leprechaun film franchise is each entry offers something a bit different than the last. Even the Leprechaun in the Hood films are different from each other. Of the 6 films Warwick is part of it’s almost impossible to pick a favorite for me, however, after a lot of stressing about it, I have decided to cover Leprechaun 3 next.

Leprechaun 3 is set in Las Vegas and follows Scott, a young man on his way to college and his misadventures in sin city. He encounters a young lady, Tammy, stranded on the road and takes her to her job as a magician’s assistant at the Lucky Shamrock Casino. He begs her to let him in the casino and she agrees as long as he doesn’t gamble. He doesn’t listen though. Before we are introduced to Scott, we meet Lucky, an amputee who has dragged a bag into a local pawnshop. He pawns the statue of a leprechaun with a medallion hanging from it for $20 to the owner, Gupta, while warning him to never touch the medallion.

Gupta removes the medallion, the leprechaun comes to life, and proceeds to make poor Gupta’s life a living hell for what little of it remains. Scott loses all his money and heads to the pawn to sell the watch his grandfather gave him. He finds Gupta dead and after calling the police, finds one of the leprechaun’s coins and wishes he was back at the casino on a winning streak. He is magically transported back and the leprechaun follows him because he needs his last shilling.

The thing that makes this film so unique is that Scott is bitten by the leprechaun and begins to transform into a leprechaun, it’s one of my favorite aspects of the movie. I’ve been known to lovingly refer to it as Leprechaun 3: The Leprechauning on multiple occasions. This entry really plays up the humor that is here and there throughout the films. It takes the humor to an entirely different level than most of them, in that it is extremely well done. It’s not just goofy for the sake of being goofy. In fact, the director Brian Trenchard-Smith understands the silliness of a killer leprechaun and uses it to make a highly enjoyable story.

There is some exposition with a CD-Rom of folklore giving us all we need to know about the lore of the leprechaun in this particular film. The lore concerning the leprechaun, his gold, and his weaknesses changes wildly throughout the franchise so this really is a neat way to set up the rules of this particular movie’s universe when it comes to the evil green guy. The movie has amazing practical effects, probably more so than the rest of the franchise. When Scott transforms into a leprechaun it looks horrendous. Green bodily fluids are splattered around as well as copious amounts of the red stuff. There’s a body horror moment where a casino worker explodes after her wish to be beautiful again goes awry with the help of the wee person. 

This film is one I often think about often when the Leprechaun movies are brought up. It has a great setting, excellent humor, and the characters are fun to watch go about trying to fulfill their most wanted desires. It’s full of rhyming, comedic timing gold and if I had to show someone only one film that best captures the spirit of the franchise it would be this one. My favorite part is probably when Scott realizes how much he enjoys potatoes in all forms of preparation when he begins transforming into a devilish leprechaun. Give this one a watch if you’re a fan of the more silly than scary Nightmare on Elm Street movies or just want to see Warwick Davis do his best Elvis impersonation.

From 1969 to 1974, then in syndication forever, the Brady Bunch presented the clean and fun adventures of a blended family. Personally, I loved the 1990’s The Bradys TV show, because it tried to inject massive gravitas into a show that never came near it. Regardless, twenty years after the show went off the air, Betty Thomas directed this tribute to the show.

Real estate developer Larry Dittmeyer (Michael McKean, always a welcome bad guy) has sold every house on the block except to one: the Bradys. The family is the same as you remember them and by that, they’re stuck in 1974 while the rest of the world has moved on. I love that this is never explained. People just move on.

The other joy of this film is that it references nearly every major plotline from the show. And many of the cast members show up, like Florence Henderson as Grandma Brady, Barry Williams as a music producer and Christopher Knight as a gym teacher. Maureen McCormick, Susan Olsen and Mike Lookinland’s scenes were all deleted. There’s an awesome inside joke here as Ann B. David shows up, but not as Alice the maid. Instead, she plays a truck driver named Schultzy, which is the character she played on The Bob Cummings Show. Only Eve Plumb refused to participate and sadly, Robert Reed died three years before the movie was made.

Even Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, and Peter Tork of The Monkees show up, as well as RuPaul, David Leisure and Jean Smart. And kudos to Gary Cole (shoutout to anyone who remembers his show Midnight Caller) and Shelley Long — as well as all of the kids — for being perfect in their roles.

This movie is a great introduction to the Bradys or a great remembrance of them. Sure, it makes fun of them, but it never feels rude or mean. It feels like it really loves its subject matter.

Cruel Jaws has been released as Jaws 5 in many countries. It has nothing to do with the Jaws series of films other than ripping off footage from the first three films, as well as Deep Blood and The Last Shark. In fact, it goes so far to be Jaws that it rips off Hooper’s dialogue about what we know about sharks with some minor differences: “All they know how to do is swim and eat and make baby sharks, and that’s all.”

This one comes from the demented mind of Bruno Mattei, who also brought us crowd pleasers (if you consider me and my dog in the middle of the night a crowd) like Shocking Dark, The Other Hell and Rats: Night of Terror.

Dag Soerensen looks like Hulk Hogan, but he’s really the owner of the worst Sea World ever. His wife died in an accident and his daughter is in a wheelchair as a result, but even worse, he’s now behind on the rent. Greedy mobbed out real estate dude Sam Lewis is ready to shut him down, but Dag thinks he can capture the shark and save his little dolphin and seal mom and pop (well, until mom died) attraction.

It turns out that the shark in this one is a tiger shark engineered by the Navy to be a superweapon, yet it is now killing people all over Hampton Island. Dag and his family team up with Bill Morrisson, who desperately wants to be Hooper (even getting the stolen line mentioned above), to take out the shark with — you guessed it — explosives.

Most of the shark action — including the windsurfing scenes and the shark getting blown up — were ripped off completely from The Last Shark. Mattei also rips off Deep Blood and shark footage from the first three Jaws films, turning this into more of an exercise in sampling than an actual film. Yet I love it — where an American film would only hint at the bodies that wash up from an attack, Mattei revels in showing us gory bodies. I also adore that Mattei used the mafia subplot from the original novel that Spielberg took out of his movie. I’m certain he didn’t even realize what he was doing, which makes the end results even more entertaining.

There’s a windsurfing battle scene here — again, like I said, it’s all ripped off from The Last Shark — where one character says to another, “You’re a piece of shit. You’re vomit. You’re nothing.” while synthesizer beats bleat out of the screams of the crowd. Between that dialogue, the obvious cuts back to Castellari’s film and the fact that the two main windsurfers aren’t even moving as they race, I don’t know if I’ve ever been happier with an action sequence in a movie.

As part of this week of shark infested cinema, I tried to watch modern films that came out in the wake of Sharknado and couldn’t finish a single one of them. They all ape the Troma style, letting you in on the fact that they’re basically comedies. Screw that — I’d rather watch an inept film like this, with amateur American actors being unleashed upon dialogue stolen from other films while an Italian auteur (never has that word been applied to someone who exemplifies it less) barely puts together a coherent film.

Let me state my case one more time: Bruno Mattei used the music from Star Wars in this movie. Is this a hidden comment on how blockbusters destroyed the art and promise of the New Hollywood? Of course not. That said, I was so happy when the John Williams refrain played over dudes chumming the waters that I poured a drink over my head.

Shout! Factory almost released Cruel Jaws on a split blu ray with Exterminators of the Year 3000 in 2015, before realizing how much of the film is taken from other movies. “It came to our attention through several of our fans that Cruel Jaws had several scenes in it of unauthorized footage from Jaws 1-3 and other Italian-made shark films that makes it impossible for us to release this in the U.S. & Canada without risking legal ramifications. We gave serious thought about editing out the material of course, but it’s quite a bit of scenes to remove and we knew ultimately that doing that would not satisfy the film’s fans or new ones we wanted to attract.”

If you want to see it for yourself, Revok and Cult Action have it.