What if Roddy Piper was a Navy SEAL down on his luck who got mixed up with a femme fatale played by Tawny Kitaen in an erotic thriller? Yes, this sounds like an AI movie that I’d write just for myself, but it’s real, and it’s directed by Serge Rodnunsky, who went from being part of the American Ballet Theater with Baryshnikov to making movies like Life After Sex, Rage of Vengeance and, well, this movie.

Also, His brother Jim invented the CableCam that you see moving all over the gridiron during football games.

How can this be any better? What if Trevor Goddard, Kano from Mortal Kombat, was in it? And how about if we got Ator himself, Miles O’Keefe? And Brent Huff, too? What, was Italy too busy for these guys? This is, I can definitely say, a dream cast. This movie is one of Sybil Danning or Jon Saxon, away from being a pantheon.

That said, it does have Camilla More. Yes, Tina Shepherd from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. And is that stuntman Bob Ivy Bubba Ho-Tep himself? It is! And Juan Fernández, who played The Collector and was in Kinjite? Yes.

Does what this is about even matter at this point?

I guess so, or I wouldn’t have a site.

Piper is caught between the ATF, Kitaen — who hired him to run drugs for her husband — and the drug dealers. Stick with it, the last twenty minutes are all action and Piper even unleashes some wrestling moves! Yes, I can hear you asking. Does Tawny Kitaen get naked? No. But maybe if you like Camilla More, you will enjoy this. And Piper is frequently undressed for the ladies. Or the guys.

This was a LIVE Entertainment release that also played on Showtime—thanks, as always, The Schlock Pit—and it reminds me of a better time, when you could gather all of these actors and have just the barest idea of a plot and make Dead Calm with a pro wrestler and the girl who danced on a car in a Whitesnake video.

You can watch this on YouTube.

This isn’t a sequel to the Madonna movie Body of Evidence, but instead more of a remake than a sequel to the superior 1993 Gregory Dark-directed movie Body of Influence. This is a one-and-done for director, writer and music supervisor Brian K. Smith, who tells the tale of psychotherapist Dr. Thomas Benson (Daniel D. Anderson) and his patient Leza Watkins (Jodie Fischer). In the past, Dr. Thomas had fallen in love with one of his patients, only to watch helplessly as she killed her husband. You see, he’s socially awkward and maybe didn’t want to make the faux pas that would occur when you know you stop a maniac from raping and murdering someone you love while you’re in their house.

Leza has psycho-sexual nightmares and does the Vertigo trick on the not-so-good doctor, as she looks just like his dead patient. He refuses to treat her, and then she convinces him through her sexual skills, which get pretty wild, something that perhaps this social nebbish is not ready for, according to his brother Rick (Jonathan Goldstein), who is a private dick. Lexa’s already married — and yes, a patient, so ethics, etc. — but she keeps convincing our therapeutic lead that she needs his out-of-matrimony skills, as her husband is rich, old and hates sex.

Really, skip this and just watch the original. It has Shannon Whirry in it, and Gregory Dark has no idea how to make a bad erotic thriller. This one would be an example of a poor effort.

VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the Patreon for the Video Archives podcast. You can hear a preview here.

My parents were both teachers and I think they would have been offended, as hippie pacificists, by this but they would come around to love it.

Director Robert Mandel also made F/X and School Ties, as well as episodes of Lost and Prison Break. The script comes from Roy Frumkes, who made Document of the Dead and wrote Street Trash. He was joined by Rocco Simonelli and Alan Ormsby, whose career is filled with magic, such as Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, Deathdream, Deranged, the movies within a movie in Popcorn and so much more.

Jonathan Shale (Tom Berenger) is a black ops killing machine, forced to return home after a mission gone bad. He meets up with his girlfriend, Jane Hetzco (Diane Venora), who works as a teacher at Miami’s Columbus High School and all seems good for a little rest and relaxation. Except that one of the Kings of Destruction gang has followed her while jogging and broke her leg.

You or I would call the police.

Shale goes to war.

By the end of the first day, he’s beaten several students down and earned the ire of Principal Claude Rolle (Ernie Hudson) but begins to bond with teachers and students, as they have been in a war zone, just like him. Everyone is seeming to get along except the KOD and their leader, Juan Lacas (Marc Anthony, pre-singing days). It turns out that Rolle is dealing cocaine through the gang, which means that Shale beings his mercenary team to battle it out in the high school against the gang, a rival merc squad led by Janus (Willis Sparks) and gangster Johnny Glades (Rodney A. Grant).

Roger Ebert hated this movie. Hated it. “”I am so very tired of this movie. I see it at least once a month. The title changes, the actors change, and the superficial details of the story change, but it is always about exactly the same thing: heavily armed men shooting at one another. Even the order of their deaths is preordained: First the extras die, then the bit players, then the featured actors, until finally only the hero and the villain are left.”

Lovers of action movies, however, adored it, leading to three sequels: The Substitute 2: School’s Out,  The Substitute 3: Winner Takes All and The Substitute: Failure Is Not an Option. Berenger did not come back for those, as Treat Williams played Carl Thomasson (Karl in movies 3 and 4), a man who is friends with the sole survivor of Shale’s mercenary group, Joey Six (Angel David, taking over for Raymond Cruz). As for Shale and Jane, they are married and teach in foreign nations as part of the Peace Corps.

This was filmed in the summer in Miami, where kids stuck in summer school ended up being extras, getting served Papa John’s Pizza every day.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Based on the novel Tainted Evidence by former NYPD officer Robert Daley, this movie finds director and writer Sidney Lumet (Prince of the City, Serpico, Network, The Wiz) looking into corruption within the police itself.

Detectives Liam Casey (Ian Holm) and Joey Allegretto (James Gandolfini) have been watching Jordan Washington (Shiek Mahmud-Bey) forever and now they have the tip that allows them to knock on his door. He answers with a blast of machine gun fire that wounds Casey. He runs and kills two cops.

In response, Liam’s son Sean Casey (Andy Garcia) is given the case instead of the older Elihu Harrison (Colm Feore). In a case where he goes against Sam Vigoda (Richard Dreyfuss) Sean argues that Washington deserves to go to jail. Vigoda agrees that he’s a killer but claims that the cops were corrupt and coming to murder his client.

Sean becomes the new District Attorney and begins dating one of Vigoda’s clerks, Peggy Lindstrom (Lena Olin). He soon learns that the cop that Washington said was behind everything has been killed. As a former police officer and the son of a cop, all of this corruption puts him in the middle of many agenda and lies.

Dreyfuss’ role is loosely based on attorney William Kunstler, who defended Larry Davis, a drug dealer who shot six cops, claimed that the cops were selling drugs and wanted him dead. The Manhattan District Attorney who opposed him, Robert Morgenthau, may have inspired Ron Leibman’s role of Morgenstern.

I don’t watch many crime dramas, but I know that Lumet is a talent. This is well-made and even had three different endings at one point.

The Arrow Video blu ray of Night Falls On Manhattan has a new 2K remaster from the original negative by Arrow Films; two archive commentaries, one from director Sidney Lumet and one with Andy Garcia and Ron Leibman and producers Josh Kramer and Thom Mount; The Directors: Sidney Lumet; on-set interviews with Lumet, Garcia, Dreyfuss, Olin, Holm and Leibman; behind-the-scenes footage; a trailer; TV commercials; limited edition packaging featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tom Ralston and an illustrated collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Nick Clement and original production notes.

You can buy this from MVD.

We’ve all seen Hellraiser, I hope, by now, but if this movie has eluded your collection, as it once did mine, this Arrow Box set is incredible and will fit the bill. As the Cenobites say, “We have such sights to show you.”

Hellraiser (1987): Horror movies don’t scare me. Not anymore. Some of them disturb me, like the cannibal films. But only one still kind of scares me. And that would be Hellraiser.

There was a time, before the eight sequels to the film and BDSM became well-known fodder on shows like Law and Order that Hellraiser seemed like it came from some alien land more than its true origins. The monsters of the piece, the Cenobites, looked like nothing we’d never seen before, all leather, blood and open festering wounds. The idea that sex and pain could be united wasn’t trite back in 1987, so it’s difficult to convey the power and fear this film had. It feels wrong. It feels dirty. It feels evil.

How this movie was made for $900,000 blows my mind. It looks lush and gauzy at times and at others, like when we see Frank’s heart and veins being formed, positively nightmarish. It shouldn’t be this good — it was Clive Barker’s directorial debut after seeing two of his stories, Underworld and Rawhead Rex, get made into films he didn’t agree with. What kind of deal with the devil did this guy make to turn out something so perfect on his first try?

The misconception that many people have of this film is that the Cenobites are the villains or the horrific part of the film. If we go to the poster for proof, it says “Demon to some. Angel to others.” Pinhead and his gang are there to move the story forward and certainly look frightening, but they are bound by the rules of Hell and the Lament Configuration, the puzzle box that sets the events of the film in motion. Matter of factly, these rules aren’t truly defined yet — is Pinhead a tortured soul stuck in the wheels of some hellish bureaucracy? Who created these boxes? None of this matters — “You solved the box. We came.” Yes, it can be that simple. You don’t need to know all of those answers right now. When Frank buys the box and Morocco and solves it, he gets the answer to limitless pleasure and the drug of all drugs — as Frank says, “I thought I’d gone to the limits. I hadn’t. The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits. Pain and pleasure, indivisible.”

That’s one of the real horrors of this film: people will do anything to chase a high. That high may be drugs. It may be pain. It may be a sexual experience that makes the mundane life you’re stuck in — like Julia, bored with a suburban life with a husband she never really wanted in the first place. The chance to be with Frank again, no matter if she has to seduce and kill for him, is everything. Notice that as he gains more muscle and skin with each drop of blood, she becomes more and more attractive, her skin gaining new color.

The main horrors of this film are family and other people. The Cotton family had issues before the Cenobites took one step out of Hell. The most horrific part of the film comes when Frank wearing Larry’s skin, stares at his niece in a moment of sexual longing and says, “Come to daddy.” Sure, there are horror film trappings, but this type of morally bankrupt behavior isn’t something confined to the cinema. So much of the betrayal and madness of Frank and Julia could happen. It happens every day.

Hellraiser exists on the border of reality. It’s fantastic, but it feels like it could happen. It’s the dangerous fiction that could overwhelm your truth if you go too far. In that it’s quite similar to Barker’s Candyman, which posits that saying the name of its titular character three times in a mirror is all it takes for him to come for you. That seems too unrealistic, but do you want to take the chance? And much like the black leather garbed creatures in this film, Candyman must adhere to a dream logic that only comes into our reality when you allow the genie from the bottle.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988): Most of the cast and crew of Hellraiser returned to make this movie and you know, despite the reduced budget, the dark tone of this movie and continuation of the themes from the original makes this one of the better horror sequels.

Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence, returning from the first movie) is admitted to a psychiatric hospital where Doctor Channard and his assistant Kyle MacRae listen to her story. She begs them to destroy the bloody mattress her stepmother Julia Cotton (Clare Higgins) died on but Channard ends up being a man who has been obsessed with the Lament Configuration. After a patient slices himself open upon that cursed object, Julia comes back to our reality.

Channard and Julia have been luring mentally disturbed men to his home so that Julia can feed off of them. Meanwhile, Kirsty meets Tiffany, a girl skilled at solving puzzles who is forced by the doctor and his demented mistress to open the gates of Hell with the infernal box at the heart of this story.

Within the dimension of Leviathan, the humans are more duplicitous than the demonic Cenobites that carry out the orders of their master.

Barker had plans to show how each of the Cenobites had once been human and how their own vices lead to their becoming angels to some, demons to others. You’d think that with the success of the first film they could have had a little more money here.

Another intriguing notion is that Julia was originally supposed to rise from the mattress at the end of the movie as the queen of hell and be the recurring character. As the first movie gradually became a success, Pinhead ended up becoming the favorite.

Back in the video rental days, I may have brought this home more than twenty times. I was obsessed by the look of Leviathan’s dimension and the strange sound that it makes — Morse code for God — blew my teenage mind. It still holds up today, despite a litany of lesser sequels.

Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth (1992): Anthony Hickox made both Waxwork movies, so that qualified him to take on the third trip to visit the Cenobites, which was necessary as the two films that had already come out were huge rental successes.

Series creator Clive Barker reprised his role as executive producer, though he was largely uninvolved until post-production, while Tony Randel at least contributed the story.

At the end of the last film, as Pinhead tried to reclaim his humanity, he finds himself split into his demonic form and as the limbo-trapped British Army Captain Elliot Spencer. As for Pinhead, he and the Lament Configuration remain within the Pillar of Souls that appeared as the last movie finished.

The pillar is bought as art by a club owner and when one of his sexual conquests is dragged into it and absorbed, Pinhead emerges and demands more blood. Without the influence of Spencer, Pinhead has become true evil and is using our reality for his own pleasure, which is against the regimented laws that the Cenobites live by.

Ashley Laurence returns for a cameo, as her Kirsty character explains the events of the previous films. And hey — Armored Saint plays the club!

Between the Barbie and CD Cenobites and the more American locale, this film suffers in comparison to the first two movies. That said, when viewed against what was to come, it ends up being pretty decent. The idea that Pinhead lost his faith in humanity after war rings true even many decades later.

Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996): Directed by Kevin Yagher and Joe Chappelle, this is the last Hellraiser to play theaters, only has one returning character in Pinhead (Doug Bradley), the last to involve Clive Barker and is both a prequel and a sequel.

Yagher left the production after Miramax demanded new scenes be shot. This is a theme that will appear in nearly every 90s horror movie that Miramax got their weird creepy hands on. The new scenes and re-shoots changed several characters’ relationships, gave the film a happy ending, introduced Pinhead earlier and cut 25 minutes of the original cut Yagher turned in. These were enough changes that he was able to use the Alan Smithee credit.

Dr. Paul Merchant has designed a space station to be in the shape of a giant Lament Configuration. Yes, within four movies, the Hellraiser franchise does what it took Jason Voorhees ten to arrive at. Yes, we’re in space. And we’re also going back in time, as Merchant’s ancestor creates the original box that starts all of these demonic events.

The Merchant bloodline has been cursed ever since they helped open the gates to Hell. There’s also a new Cenobite, Angelique, who tempts people and this puts her into conflict with Pinhead, who only believes in pain. There’s also a Merchant ancestor in 1996 that has created The Elysium Configuration, an anti-Lament Configuration that creates perpetual light and will close the pathways to Hell forever.

Bruce Ramsay ended up playing all of the Merchants and I kind of like that the end of this movie attempts to close the story. How crazy is it that this was Adam Scott’s film debut?

As you can imagine, Arrow has gone wild on this, packing this set. You get brand new 4K restorations of all four films from the original camera negatives by Arrow Films, as well as a 200 page hardback book, Ages of Desire, with new writing from Clive Barker archivists Phil and Sarah Stokes. There’s also a limited edition layered packaging featuring brand new Pinhead artwork.

Here are the extras by movie:

Hellraiser

Brand new audio commentary featuring genre historian and unit publicist Stephen Jones with author and film critic Kim Newman, an archival audio commentary with writer/director Clive Barker and actor Ashley Laurence moderated by Peter Atkins, another archival audio commentary with writer/director Clive Barker, a brand new 60-minute discussion about Hellraiser and the work of Clive Barker by film scholars Sorcha Ní Fhlainn (editor of Clive Barker: Dark Imaginer) and Karmel Kniprath, a brand new visual essay celebrating the Lament Configuration by genre author Alexandra Benedict (The Beauty of Murder), a brand new 60-minute discussion between acclaimed horror authors Paula D. Ashe and Eric LaRocca celebrating the queerness of Hellraiser and the importance of Clive Barker as a queer writer, a brand new visual essay exploring body horror and transcendence in the work of Clive Barker by genre author Guy Adams (The World House), newly uncovered extended EPK interviews with Clive Barker and stars Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, and effects artist Bob Keen, shot during the making of the movie , with a new introduction by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, the original 1987 press kit, archival interviews with Sean Chapman, Doug Bradley and Stephen Thrower on the abandoned score by his band Coil, trailers, TV ads, an image gallery and drafts of the screenplay.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

Brand new audio commentary featuring Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, archival audio commentary with director Tony Randel, writer Peter Atkins and actor Ashley Laurence, another audio commentary with director Tony Randel and writer Peter Atkins, a brand new 80-minute appreciation of Hellbound, the Hellraiser mythos and the work of Clive Barker by horror authors George Daniel Lea (Born in Blood) and Kit Power (The Finite), a brand new appreciation of composer Christopher Young’s scores for Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II by Guy Adams, archival on-set interviews, behind the scenes footage, archival interviews with Sean Chapman, Doug Bradley, barker, Randel, Keen and Atkins, trailers, TV ads and an image gallery.

Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth

Alternative unrated version (contains standard definition inserts), brand new audio commentary by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, archival audio commentary with screenwriter Peter Atkins, archival audio commentary with director Anthony Hickox and actor Doug Bradley, previously unseen extended interviews with Clive Barker and Doug Bradley, FX dailies, archival interviews Paula Marshall, Anthony Hickox and Doug Bradley, a trailer and an image gallery.

Hellraiser: Bloodline

Brand new audio commentary featuring screenwriter Peter Atkins, with Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, a brand new featurette exploring the Cenobites’ connection to goth, fetish cultures and BDSM, a newly uncovered workprint version of the film, providing a fascinating insight into how it changed during post production — this is worth the price of the entire set! — as well as an archival documentary on the evolution of the franchise and its enduring legacy, featuring interviews with Scott Derrickson, Rick Bota and Stuart Gordon, an archival appreciation by horror author David Gatwalk of Barker’s written work, from The Books of Blood to The Scarlet Gospels and a trailer.

You can get this on 4K UHD or blu ray from MVD.

Colonel Michael Bishop’s (Mark Dacascos) last mission went FUBAR and was possibly — to use the title of this movie — sabotaged. He was the only survivor of something that government has disavowed. After healing, he’s been working as a bodyguard for billionaires, but when his clients start getting killed off, he realizes that the same operative, Sherwood (Tony Todd), that killed his team and is now coming after him.

This was directed by Tibor Takács (The Gate) — who made four movies with Dacascos — and was a mid 90s direct to video film that you’d find in the action section. It also has Carrie-Ann Moss as FBI special agent Louise Castle, John Neville (Baron Munchausen!) as Bishop’s handler Professor Follenfant and Graham Greene as Castle’s boss Tollander.

Bishop and Castle are named for chess pieces and, as you can easily follow, are being manipulated like the very same pieces. At least their names aren’t Pawn and Pawn. Dacascos is athletic, the bad guys are suitably bad — Todd is always great no matter the material — and revenge is achieved in the most splattery way possible. Back in 1996, this would have been in your five nights for five bucks stack. Today, it can be on the shelf of your collection.

The MVD blu ray release of this movie has extras including new interviews with Mark Dacascos and Tony Todd, a trailer real of Dacascos movies, double-sided artwork and a collectible mini-poster. You can get it from MVD.