John Dahl made plenty of neo-noir — Red Rock West, Kill Me Again, and The Last Seduction — and oh yeah, he directed Joy Ride, too. Writer Bill Geddie was Barbara Walters’s business partner and helped create The View. Together, they made an American giallo.

Seattle medical examiner Dr. David Krane (Ray Liotta) finds a matchbook at a crime scene that reminds him of the one he saw when his wife, Mary (Stellina Rusich), was killed. When he learns that Dr. Martha Briggs (Linda Fiorentino) has a way to transfer memories with Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF), he gets samples of his dead wife’s and the murder victim’s spinal fluid and shoots himself up with it, which allows him to relive those murders.

This is what we call bullshit giallo science, kind of like being able to see someone’s last moments of life through their eyeball or that people with the XYY chromosome have a criminal tendency.

Krane’s co-worker, Curtis Avery (David Paymer), looks at the sketch of the killer Krane has made and says that it’s Eddie Dutton (Kim Coates). Krane arrives at a hotel where Dutton is hiding and gets into a fight; the criminal is shot by Detective Don Bresler (Peter Coyote). As a result of all this, Krane is fired, but steals Dutton’s spinal fluid on the way out.

It turns out that Krane has been on a downward spiral. He was a drunk, asleep in the front yard on the night that his pregnant wife was killed. As he has more flashbacks, he starts to have heart attacks due to the side effects of the fluids. That’s when he discovers that the baby inside his wife wasn’t his. 

Detective Stewart Gleick (Christopher McDonald) reveals that Detective Joseph Bodner is the father. He’d met Mary when they testified against Bresler, who is a corrupt cop. Ah, it all makes sense now. And hey — Kim Cattrall is Mary’s sister. So there’s that.

Roger Ebert said, “In the annals of cinematic goofiness, Unforgettable deserves a place of honor. This is one of the most convoluted, preposterous movies I’ve seen—a thriller crossed with lots of Mad Scientist stuff, plus wild chases, a shoot-out in a church, a woman taped to a chair in a burning room, an exploding university building, adultery, a massacre in a drugstore, gruesome autopsy scenes and even a moment when a character’s life flashes before her eyes, which was more or less what was happening to me by the end of the film.”

He makes it sound even better.

But is it a giallo? Well, it was released in Italy as Specchio della memoria, which translates as Mirror of Memory.

That would be a resounding yes.

Based on the Dark Horse comic book by John Arcudi and Doug Mahnke, The Mask was directed by Chuck Russell (A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: Dream Warriors, The Blob, Eraser) and written by Mike Werb from a story by Michael Fallon and Mark Verheiden. Was it a success, despite having newcomers Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz in the leads? You bet. It made $352 million on an $18 million budget.

Stanley Ipkiss (Carrey) is a bank teller who everyone abuses. But for some reason, when gangster Dorian Tyrell (Peter Greene) sends his girl Tina (Diaz) into his bank to take photos for a robbery, she falls for him. Even his best friend, Charlie Schumaker (Richard Jeni), is surprised.

Things are looking up for Stanley, who soon finds a wooden mask that transforms him into a green engine of madness. He’s soon chased by Detective Lieutenant Mitch Kellaway (Peter Reigert) and newspaper reporter Peggy Brandt (Amy Yasbeck), who want to figure out who this new crime player is and how he ties into the coming war between Tyrell and his boss Niko (Orestes Matacena).

Russell and Werb turned the violent comic book into a romantic comedy, complete with Stanley performing “Cuban Pete” at a nightclub while dodging cops and robbers. A dog turns into The Mask, Tyrell becomes a giant monster (that’s Jeep Swenson, who also played Bane in the abortive Batman and Robin), and Carrey went all out in this, becoming a living special effect. He was only paid $450,000 for this and had to act even though he was violently ill with the flu at one point.

While Son of the Mask was a flop, Carrey and Diaz have discussed a sequel as late as 2025.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD of this film has a 4K restoration of the film from the original camera negative by Arrow Films approved by director Chuck Russell, two archive audio commentaries (Chuck Russell alone and Russell with New Line co-chairman Bob Shaye, screenwriter Mike Werb, executive producer Mike Richardson, producer Bob Engelman, ILM VFX supervisor Scott Squires, animation supervisor Tom Bertino and cinematographer John R. Leonetti); new interviews with Russell, Mike Richardson, Mike Werb, Mark Verheiden, visual effects supervisor Scott Squires, editor Arthur Coburn, Amy Yasbeck and choreographer Jerry Evans; a video essay by critic Elizabeth Purchell on canine sidekick Milo; archival features; deleted scenes; a trailer; an image gallery; an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and original production notes; a double-sided fold-out poster featuring two original artwork options and six postcard-sized reproduction artcards. You can get it from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Blondes Have More Guns was on USA Up All Night on February 15, 1997.

Yes, a Troma Naked Gun. Such is the dichotomy of my life: I love USA Up All Night and hate Troma, despite most USA Up All Night movies coming from Troma. I love parties, but I hate gatherings.

Detective Harry Bates, his partner Dick Smoker and his dog, who is a man in a suit, get screwed up with two half-sisters, Montana Beaver-Shotz (Elizabeth Key) and Dakota Beaver (Gloria Lusak).

The only film of director George Merriweather, who wrote this with Dan Goodman (the composer of Evil Come Evil Go and the cinematographer of Brother and Sister — in which a man discovers his half-sister is Rene Bond and you know what happens after that — as well as Bob Chinn’s Panama Red — a PG rated movie with Rene Bond and John Holmes in it — and Return Fire) and Mary Guthrie, this was way better than expected.

You can watch this on Tubi.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Official synopsis: Darklands tells the story of a newspaper reporter lured into a conspiracy of pagan rituals and human sacrifice whilst investigating the death of a steelworker. 

With Darklands, director Julian Richards delivers a riveting fright-fare mashup of traditional U.K. folk horror and set pieces with a postindustrial vibe. The result is an intriguing work that feels like an elevator pitch of “The Wicker Man (1973)  meets The Road Warrior/Mad Max 2 (1981).”

The film also boasts noir elements as journalist Frazier Tuck (Craig Fairbass) assists newly assigned cub reporter Rachel Morris (Rowena King) in investigating the workplace death of her brother, which seems suspicious to her despite what the local authorities say. This leads him down a deadly path filled with conspiracy theories, modern-day Celtic pagans, nationalist political figures, and men of the cloth, to name but a few of the characters, with a super supporting cast on hand.

Twenty-nine years on, many of the elements seem familiar — some obviously did so as soon as the film was originally released — but there’s plenty of interest here for scare-fare aficionados to warrant a revisit or a first-time watch. 

The remastered Director’s Cut of Darklands, from  Jinga Films, has been released worldwide on multiple streaming platforms including Amazon, Sky, Apple TV, Plex, Google, Fandango, Tubi, Fawesome, and Philo.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Jurassic Women was on USA Up All Night on December 7, 1996, August 9, 1997 and February 6, 1998.

A meteor shower causes a spacecraft to crash-land on a planet inhabited by cavemen and gorgeous women, who have been at war for centuries. Captain David Clayton (James Phillips) and Dr. Cody Sinclair (Jonathan Vakeen) are the humans from our time who get captured by the men and saved by the women, but the captain goes all incel because none of the women want him.

This has a jurassic name but no dinosaurs. It does have Jan-Michael Vincent,

Director John Pieplow also made the Dee Snider movie Strangeland. He wrote this with David Heavener. There’s all the potential in the world for this movie and it somehow doesn’t live up to any of it.

You can watch this on Tubi.