The ups and downs of Renny Harlin’s career are amazing and demand further investigation. How does one recover from Cutthroat Island? As we brace for Harlin’s return with three new The Strangers movies, this project needs to come to life.

Until then, The Long Kiss Goodnight.

Harlin and his leading lady, Geena David, were married from 1993 to 1998, but she filed for divorce shortly after her personal secretary, Tiffany Bowne, gave birth to Harlin’s first child, Luukas “Luke” Harlin, in August 1997. As the timelines up, some of that affair occurred during the making of this film. I don’t know how that colors your enjoyment of this film.

It did well, but writer Shane Black wondered if it would have done better with a male lead. Some of that is because their past film, the previously mentioned Cutthroat Island, did so badly.

Davis has a fascinating career as well. She told Vulture in 2016, “Film roles really did start to dry up when I got into my 40s. If you look at IMDb, up until that age, I made roughly one film a year. In my entire 40s, I made one movie, Stuart Little. I was getting offers, but for nothing meaty or interesting like in my 30s. I’d been completely ruined and spoiled. I mean, I got to play a pirate captain! I got to do every type of role, even if the movie failed.” Yet where I’ve always admired her is that while she’s attractive, that hasn’t been the main reason why she’s been so remembered, starting back in Tootsie.

In this movie, she plays two sides of the female experience: amnesiac good girl schoolteacher Samantha Caine and unstoppable badass Charlene “Charly” Elizabeth Baltimore. She only fully engages in her real Charly self when she’s nearly drowned on a water wheel while completely nude, which seems like a subject drenched with some subtext. Regardless, she’s the capable one of team she forms with Samuel Jackson’s detective, Mitch Henessey. And yet at the end, she is comfortable enough to put that life behind her again — without amnesia leading her to follow that path — and become a partner to a man and a mother.

The real success of the film is that the people who made it loved what they did. It’s one of Jackson’s favorite films he was in to watch — he was killed in the original cut until an audience member loudly protested during an early test viewing — and Davis said, “I love that movie. My character might be my favorite role—it’s a close call between Thelma and that one. Anyway, that movie came out great and got some good reception, but it didn’t soar to heights, let’s say, perhaps as we wanted it to.” As for Harlin, it’s his favorite of his movies, saying, “…it’s just very simple. It’s a movie that had a really good screenplay, which meant that I was able to get really good actors. It’s always challenging to make a movie, but it sure makes it easier when you have a good screenplay like in that one. When you have characters that are complex, and you have good drama and have some humor and some good action, you kind of have all the ingredients. When you have that you don’t even need some crazy special effects — you just need to let the characters do their thing. It was a great experience.”

The Arrow Video release of The Long Kiss Goodnight has limited edition packaging with reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sam Hadley, an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Clem Bastow, Richard Kadrey, Maura McHugh and Priscilla Page, a seasonal postcard and a thin ice sticker. It has so many features, starting with a brand new 4K restoration by Arrow Films from the original 35mm negative approved by director Renny Harlin; two new commentaries (one by Walter Chaw and the other by film critics Drusilla Adeline and Joshua Conkel, co-hosts of the Bloodhaus podcast); a trailer; an image gallery; new interviews with stunt co-ordinator Steve Davidson, make-up artist Gordon J. Smith and actress Yvonne Zima; new visual essays by film scholar Josh Nelson, critic and filmmaker Howard S. Berger and film scholar Alexandra Heller-Nicholas; deleted scenes; archive promotional interviews with director Renny Harlin and stars Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson and Craig Bierko; making of and behind the scenes footage. You can order this from MVD.

Directed and written by Ron Ford, this movie sends Trace (Tyrone Wade), the greatest alien fighter of all time, to Earth, where a million alien souls — the worst ones — have been unleashed. He’s to protect Sandy (Roxanne Coyne) and if the first two letters of her name didn’t give it away, she’s Sarah Connor. He’s, well, I guess a Terminator but one of the good ones, working for the ruler of the galaxy, who is Omnipresent Praxima, who is really Burt Ward, who was once Robin.

Does this movie maybe feel like it’s about Scientology? Sure. But it’s also filled with the kind of things that Wild Cat Line callers on Coast to Coast AM would scream about at 4:09 in the morning.

This also has a bad guy named Gorek (Mark Sawyer), who can jump from body to body, so it’s also The Hidden.

I say none of this in a mean way. This is precisely what I choose to watch when I don’t have to review movies that people ask me to or go upstairs where murder porn plays all day and night. A Temu JCVD is in this and he punches a latex masked gray alien in the face. I have always wanted to punch a gray alien in the face, so this is wish fulfillment on the greatest of scales.

Speaking of Coast to Coast and Art Bell, he once had an Anti-Christ Line and asked people to call in but only if they were the Son of Satan. Tons of people called, but the next time they tried this, the actual Anti-Christ was said to have called and he claimed that he was from Pittsburgh. I’m telling you this because I miss that show and being up in the middle of the night either laughing or frightened. More movies should have that energy and be like this, and more people who write about movies online should recognize that not everything has to be perfect.

Action star Tony Markham (Jeff Rector) is sick of Hollywood and not getting much sleep, thanks to the same dream every night, one where he meets dinosaurs and sees a cavegirl named Hea-Thor (Denise Ames) that he believes he’s destined to be with.

If you look at the cover of this, you may think you’re getting a sex comedy with dinosaurs. Then you see that it was directed, written and produced by Donald Glut and realize that this is something special. This is the kind of movie that mixes well-done stop-motion dinosaurs with bare breasts and lots of them, sure. But it also has Karen Black make a cameo, as well as Forrest J. Ackerman, William Marshall as a paleontologist and Donna Spangler. And Ed Fury from peplum like Ursus as Ur-So? My cup — and many of the cup sizes in this — runneth over.

Actually, this is both Marshall and Fury’s last film.

Man, Donald Glut. His website just makes me smile, as it’s all somewhat attractive women holding up his books for the bibliography. It feels like he got to puberty and decided that he’d never stop loving seeing women topless or dinosaurs attacking cavemen. And who are we to tell him that he’s wrong? I mean, male gaze and all that, but clearly he loves women as much as a good fart joke. I also think he added the IMDB facts, like this one: “Unlike past Hollywood stereotypes, he didn’t want any of the cavewomen in the film to scream when they see dinosaurs. He wanted the actresses to be sexy and feminine at all times, so they never lose what guys perceive as femininity, but still be tough and handle their own. He felt that would enhance their overall appeal. He said, “I made a conscious effort that they would not, as in many other prehistoric-type movies over the years, come off looking like strippers or hookers.””

A lot of times, you may wonder, “Is this an exploitation movie?” when you watch something. For this, they shot a clothed and unclothed version. There’s your answer. This is an exploitation movie. And one way after anyone couldn’t see half-naked cavewomen, so it was obviously a labor of love. In short, I’m proud to have it in my collection, but maybe my wife would shake her head at me if she knew it was there.

Extras on the Visual Vengeance Blu-ray release — the first Blu-ray ever of this movie — include:

• Limited Edition slipcase by Rick Melton and Dinosaur Valley Girls logo sticker
• Remastered SD master from original tape elements
• New 2023 commentary and an archival commentary with director Don Glut and C. Courtney Joyner
• Dinosaur Valley Guy: interview with director Don Glut
• Don Glut: The Collection – A look inside Don’s legendary dinosaur home museum
• The Making of Dinosaur Valley Girls
• PG-13 cut
• Deleted and alternate scenes
• Actress auditions reel
• Dinosaur Tracks, Jurassic Punk and Dinosaur Valley Girls music videos
• Original storyboards
• Production image galleries
• Mu Wang in Mu-Seum and Danse Prehistoric
• Original promotional trailer
• Visual Vengeance trailers
• Reversible sleeve featuring original home video art
• 2-sided insert with alternate art
• Folded mini-poster
• “Stick Your Own” VHS sticker set

You can get this from MVD.

Years ago, Odessa (Dave Larsen) and Kyle James (David Gunn) killed their parents and became media darlings. But when they escape death row and break into the Ryan family’s home, they have no idea what they’re in for.

Sure, dad Charles (Burke Morgan) is weird and we expect him to be be a horrible person, but mother Rea (Damian Hoffer) is a murderous sex worker and daughters Jami (Nanette Bianchi) and Jenny (Renee Cohen) also have even more secrets. They may even be quite attracted to the James brothers.

And while we’re exploring hidden things, we must ask, what’s in the basement?

This is somehow Natural Born Killers mixed with a bit of The People Under the Stairs, but that gives away so many of the twists in this. Parts of it are clunky, the acting isn’t perfect and it seems like it wants to be edgelord Tarantino — do you remember the post-Reservoir Dogs 90s? — but that gives this a charm that won me over. There was once a time when movies like this were available at your video store and you’d wonder exactly what you were about to watch when you brought that blind rental home. I miss those opportunities and if you do as well, good news. Killers is easier to find now, thanks to its Synapse release. Unless you were in Germany reading this and then, you probably already know all about it.

This Synapse release features audio commentary with director Mike Mendez and horror scholar Michael Gingold, trailers, liner notes booklet by critic/writer Heather Drain and an alternate ending. You can get it from MVD.