In a future where murders are sporadic, a sadistic serial killer — and scientist — by the name of 50557 (Jeffrey Combs) tests the theory of Dr. Nordhoff (David Warner) that everybody can be rehabilitated. Maybe they can get even worse. Even the advice of 40132 (Ron Perlman), a rehabilitated killer, isn’t enough. So what else can they do but send him to a world that he can do little to damage.
As he’s sent down, a tech asks, “What about the inhabitants of the planet?”
Dr Nordhoff says, “I wouldn’t worry. He’s just one man. How much damage could he possibly do?”
Cue the Hitler speech.
This episode is based on “The Exile” from Weird Fantasy #14, written by William Gaines and Al Feldstein and drawn by Wally Wood, in which it’s revealed that yes, the Führer was a space alien.
This episode was directed by William Malone, who also made Scared to Death, Creature, House on Haunted Hill, Feardotcom and the “Only Skin Deep” episode of Tales from the Crypt. It was written by David J. Schow.
Also: Did you know Chrome the robot wants to have sex? She’s to bad sex puns as The Cryptkeeper was to horror ones, except, you know, most people love that guy. No one likes Chrome.
You can download all of the episodes here or watch this episode on YouTube.
For years, Kevin Pollak has done a Shatner impersonation. So why not have him in a Shatner-directed and starring episode as the potential son-in-law of the man who is Kirk?
A pilot (Pollak) has been engaged to Adm. Kornfeld’s (Shatner) daughter Dulcine (meta here, it’s Shatner’s real-life daughter Melanie, who was also in Syngenor, Cthulhu Mansion, Bloodstone: Subspecies IIand Bloodlust: Subspecies III). He’s been forced to wait until the wedding night to consummate their union. While waiting for her — and her father to deactivate the chastity device that keeps him away from her lady business — he falls for Emmy (the Swedish Bikini Team’s Heather Elizabeth Parkhurst), a sex bot who he gets stuck inside, just when that device is hacked by his soon-to-be bride.
Not based on an E.C. Comic, this episode was written by National Lampoon alumnus Chris Miller and Kevin Rock.
You can download all of the episodes here or watch this episode on YouTube.
“Anatomy Lesson” is directed by Gilbert Adler and written by Kevin Rock. Billy Rabe (Jeremy London) is the son of a small-town coroner (Jim Metzler) who keeps wanting to kill things. However, he’s stopped over and over again by The Bearded Man (Jeff Fahey). When he turns 18, Billy decides to kill that person so that he can finally be the murderer he’s dreamed of becoming. There’s also Linda (Devon Odessa), a girl who is in love with him, but he just wants to watch her die.
Want to know what happens? The Bearded Man and Billy’s mom (Joanna Gleason) are robots who keep watch over killers on Earth. They’ve already taken out Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac, so now it’s Billy’s turn.
This episode isn’t based on an E.C. Comic story. However, the story “A Lesson in Anatomy!!” was in Weird Fantasy #12. The plot is sort of close. “Chased away from his father’s lab while he dissects a body, Stevey finds a stranger in the forest. Wanting to brag, Stevey tells the man all sorts of falsehoods, which he believes; But Stevey soon learns a secret about the stranger he doesn’t expect to discover.” It was written by William Gaines and Al Feldstein and drawn by Jack Kamen.
You can download all of the episodes here or watch this episode on YouTube.
From June 7 to July 23, 1997, HBO attempted something similar to Tales from the Crypt, adapting the science fiction books of EC Comics for pay cable. But where the Crypt Keeper had bad puns about horror and death, sexy robot Chrome (Maureen Teefy) seems DTF years before we knew what that meant, constantly hitting us with sexual innuendo.
In “Dream of Doom,” Arthur Bristol (Robert Carradine) is trapped in a dream that turns into another dream, an art film like way of kicking off a dirty science fiction anthology TV show. Lolita Davidovich appears as a doctor, Adam Arkin is a therapist, Lin Shaye is a nurse, and Peter Jason is a priest.
Descartes gets name dropped and this gets weird. It’s a good start, directed by one of the shows producers, Walter Hill, and written by David S. Goyer.
This story is based on “Dream of Doom” from Weird Science #12, which was written by William Gaines and Al Feldstein and drawn by Wally Wood. In that story, just like this one, Aman experiences a sequence of dreams occurring after dream after dream. He’s also a comic book artist who works for Gill Baines. What’s the company, CE Comics?
You can download all of the episodes here or watch this episode on YouTube.
When Klon put this challenge together, it was to get people to lighten up. I’m in a basement with no windows, working two jobs at home, never leaving, always trying to make people happy, then I cut the grass. No complaints other than I’m past fifty and wondering how I got here and how soon I will be dead. But hey, Whiskers, a movie in which a child, upset that his parents will get rid of his pet, makes a wish on an Egyptian cat goddess and transforms his pet into a 30-year-old man.
There’s war on the horizon, false flags, no one cares about anyone and ICE is brutalizing people and don’t worry, this sadly won’t age and man, how can I be angst ridden when that cat is on a skateboard? Just take a gander. That cat is ready to fucking shred, you sad sack fucks.
So yeah, Jed Martin (Michael Caloz) spends so much time with. his cat Whiskers that his parents decide to get rid of it. 1990s parents. The human Whiskers is Brent Carver, who goes all out in this. There are also bullies who call Jed Cat Boy.
Jim Kaufman’s directing credits are mostly for TV, but he did do Night of the Demons III. This was written by Wendy Biller and Christopher Hawthorne.
Also for parents, of which I am not one: Michael Yarmush, who is Fingers, and Michael Caloz, who plays Jed, were the voices of Arthur and D.W. on the much-despised cartoon Arthur.
This is not religious, it’s Canadian. That can be confusing.
I am a very simple man and Champions — AKA Karate Tiger: The Champions* — is the movie I am looking for. Yes, it’s every underground fighting movie ever — but it has Nikos from the My Big Fat Greek Wedding movies (Louis Mandylor) as William Rockman, the one-time Terminal Combat champion of the world, who quit the sport — it’s UFC — when he killed someone in training. Yes, it’s every underground fight movie you’ve ever rented, but somehow dialed up beyond what it should be.
After Terminal Combat has been outlawed, Max Brito (Danny Trejo, having the best time ever) gathers the champions, like The King (Ken Shamrock) and either takes their wives or kills their brothers, like Rockman’s sibling Ray (Jeff Wolfe), which brings everyone into a tournament to the death that has some wild characters in it, like a Japanese master (Rich Rabago) who doesn’t want to fight a female competitor and then kills her to the silence of everyone watching. Awkward.
There’s a microchip in the head of The King, which Max Brito uses to make him kill! A microchip in the World’s Most Dangerous Man’s head! That’s the only way I can believe that anyone in this can beat him.
Then, this movie doubles down with roles for George “Buck” Flower, Lee Reherman (Hawk from American Gladiators who plays the Jesus-living fighter Steele Manheim), Bobbie Blackford (Sgt. Kimberly Pepatone, who is here to bust the fight ring like Stryker from the Mortal Kombat games), Larry B. Scott (from Revenge of the Nerds), Harrison Young (Senator Able, who has his own prison fighter, Vedder, who is played Cristos, who was in Desperado), Lelagi Togisala (who is Jackal, a trickster who –s poiler — gets stabbed by Vedder), Fabian Carrillo (the Latin Dragon), David Rowe (Mage) and HOLY SHIT Kool Keith playing himself? Dr. Octagon, Dr. Dooom, Black Elvis, Reverand Tom, Mr. Nogatco, Poppa Large, Keith Korg, Rhythm X, Mr. Gerbik, Big Willie Smith, Tashan Dorrsett, Dr. Ultra Crazy…Kool Keith is in this underground MMA movie!?!
Directed by Peter Gathings Bunche and written by George Francisco, Peter McAlevey and Thomas S. McNamara, this is the kind of movie that gives Ken Shamrock a bazooka and has him blow people up real good. If that doesn’t make you feel something good, you’re lost.
* I have to straight up quote Matty from The Schlock Pit — and bow before his knoweldge — who has blown my mind with this: “Champions was released in Germany as the penultimate film in the Karate Tiger franchise: an eleven-strong series of generally unrelated biff-‘em-ups that, a la Italy’s sprawling La Casa horror saga, were retitled and slapped together for marketing purposes. To wit: Karate Tiger = No Retreat, No Surrender (1985); Karate Tiger II = No Retreat, No Surrender II (1987); Der Kickboxer: Karate Tiger 3 = Kickboxer; Karate Tiger IV = Best of the Best (1989); Karate Tiger 5 = The King of the Kickboxers (1990); Karate Tiger 6 = Kickboxer 3: The Art of War(1992); Karate Tiger 7 = To Be the Best (1993); Karate Tiger 8 = Fists of Iron (1995); Karate Tiger 9 = Superfights (1997); Karate Tiger: The Champions = Champions; and American Karate Tiger = Showdown (1993). To further confuse matters, The King of the Kickboxers is also known as Karate Tiger 4 in Hungary; Best of the Best II (1993) is known as the ridiculous sounding Karate Tiger 6: Best of the Best 2 in the Czech Republic and, sometimes, Germany; and Fighting Spirit (1992) is known as Karate Tiger 6 in several European countries.”
I love an auteur project. And I love an erotic thriller. So when my star vehicle chocolate gets into the sexy peanut butter, I’m all over it.
George Saunders started his entertainment career as a professional ballet dancer with the San Francisco Ballet and attended NYU and Juilliard. His IMDB bio states he’s “very proud to have worked with the Navy Seals through the Coronado Special Warfare Center and the men and women of the U.S. Army and the Marines during his involvement with Military Films.”
By the 1990s, he was making his own movies, including Street Angels and Vendetta. So, of course, he’d find his way to the erotic thriller, as it’s a genre that always sells.
Jennifer (Nicole Gian) and Charlie (Saunders) are in a dying marriage, the result of him shooting and killing a teenage intruder and the resulting PTSD. So when Tina (Lisa Boyle) moves in to rent a room and John (Dan Frank) gets a home nearby, you can see that our protagonists will stray with them.
Yet this is where the Giallo shows itself in the DNA of the erotic thriller; Tina and John are no strangers. And they have a plan. What it has to do with Charlie killing that burglar, him being a photographer who hasn’t had any inspiration, or the marriage failing, well, there are enough twists and turns to make this somewhat memorable.
As for the script, Charlie tells Tina, “I know you need it hot and steamy. Your glass of milk, I mean.” She replies, “I can’t stand a cold glass of milk at night. You’d have to handcuff me to the bed to get me to go to sleep.” This is where the saxophone starts playing.
Joe Bob spoke up for this movie in his 1996 Drive-In Awards, as Saunders was nominated for Best Actor — “the haunted artist surrounded by nekkid women who can’tunderstand why he gets so much sex in one movie.” This was also up for Best Movie — “the story of a scruffy, frustrated painter who keeps having these nightmares about the young burglar he blew away three months ago, then rents out a room in his beach house to an oversexed bombshell who teaches him the real meaning of Aardvarkus Suburbicus.” as well as Best Femme Fatale — “* Nicole Gian, Intimate Deception, as the wily but sexually frustrated wife who likes to lurk in the neighbor’s bushes” and Most Breasts at 33.
And yet, according to The Schlock Pit, who interviewed Saunders, it wasn’t sexy enough to sell to Playboy. He told the site, “We made many good deals, both overseas and domestically, but we did not get a Playboy deal. Why? You will like this: not enough hard fucking. You be the judge! I tried, but perhaps I came off as too romantic…”
June 15: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Free Space! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
I approached this movie with a strange and melancholic blend of joy and sadness. Joy because it’s everything I love about movies: Italian maniacs let loose in Miami making a movie that at once combines Lethal Weapon, Ghost Dad and Tron while being shot on film in the very late for the Italian exploitation film industry year of 1997. Even better, it has the high concept of combining Terence Hill and “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler as buddy cops.
The cheerlessness comes from the fact that this is at the end. This is the last movie that Antonio Margheriti (Anthony M. Dawson in America) would direct, the last that Bruno Corbucci would write and really the event horizon of an era of films that I love with all my heart.
Yet in this bubble of time, you still get Margheriti combining actual car chases with the practical miniature effects that you hope for in his movies. The explosions are as big as they can be. And sure, maybe Terence Hill is thinking about better days alongside Bud Spencer. Perhaps Marvin Hagler is probably remembering when he fought world middleweight champ Alan Minter, who said, “No black man is going to take my title.” Then he hit him so many times so quickly that he opened four gigantic wounds on the champ’s face and Hagler won his first title as the fans in Wembley Arena launched beer bottles his way. How did he end up here in Miami trying to tell jokes and being in his fourth movie for these wacky Italians?* And was Margheriti dreaming of filming cobwebbed staircases being navigated by a candelabra-wielding Barbara Steele?
No matter. Here they are in Miami and a movie needs to be made.
Skims (Hill) is an ex-cop turned computer salesman who comes back to Miami to see his old cop friend Mike Davis (Hagler). But we know why he’s in town. He’s undercover, investigating a microchip stealing plot. He’s also excited to reconnect with former cop — and the widow of his partner — Chelo (Giselle Blondet) and bond with her tech-loving daughter Lily (Jennifer Martinez).
Our hero finally tracks down the villain behind all of the drama in this, a man named Abel Van Axel (Stephen Edward, who showed up in three episodes of Miami Vice), who goes by the even cooler — if unnecessary — name of Mr. X. What is he, the final boss of a Konami beat ’em up?
Despite being informed that Skims is the greatest cop of all time, he gets blown up real good and dies. We even see his funeral. I’m shocked they didn’t run the credits.
Except that Skims has somehow survived and shows up on Lily’s computer, looking like Trinity by way of Automan, fighting dinosaurs and transforming like he’s fueled by Energon. His power set is beyond crazy here, even moreso than the goofball abilities Hill had in my beloved Super Fuzz. He can be invisible unless someone tells him they love him, he can travel through telephone lines and is now a hologram, which is explained as “the result of modern technology and Biblical faith.”
Of course the bad guys pay and Skims carries around the bad guy’s gun, turning it on him, and everyone is all smiles by the end. Even me, as I watch the credits and try not to think that it’s over, it’s over, all the rainbows in the sky start to weep, then say goodbye. Apologies to Roy Orbison, obviously.
The best thing in this whole movie is that Skims forgets that he’s just been killed by techno gangsters and real estate lords and decides to screw around with his fellow cops while they’re lifting weights, playing ghost reindeer games with them like he’s Super Fuzz — “He’s a super snooper. Really super trooper. A wonder cop a one like you never saw.” — and I could watch a 90-minute movie of these antics.
You may ask, who else is in the cast? Well, who isn’t? This is the last movie of Richard Liberty, who unites the decades of Romero films by playing Artie in The Crazies and Dr. Matt “Frankenstein” Logan in Day of the Dead. He plays Captain Holmes. The old lady who pulls out a gigantic handgun and fires it at criminals is Florance McGee, who was also a senior citizen in Super Fuzz and was Phoebe Russell in Empire of the Ants. Tommy Lane was a stuntman who was in Shaft and Ganja and Hess along with playing the trumpet and flugelhorn. Wikipedia thinks that he’s the same Tommy Lane who was in the Rock ‘n’ Roll RPMs with Mike Davis. He wasn’t.
There’s also Roger Callard (Conan the Librarian from UHF), Edoardo Margheriti (who would go from doing effects on Yor Hunter from the Future to being a second unit director for Hudson Hawk) and a lot of folks who were in Florida-based productions such as Wild Things and B.L. Stryker.
Beyond Corbucci, this was written by Terence’s son Jess and executive producer Ferdie Pacheco. It was the only movie that Ferdie ever wrote or produced. He was better known as the personal physician and cornerman for Muhammad Ali. He left Ali’s team in 1977 when after Ali won against Earnie Shavers, he felt that the post-fight physical showed that the boxer was falling to pieces. In the book Muhammed Ali: His Life and Times, Pacheco said, “The New York State Athletic Commission gave me a report that showed Ali’s kidneys were falling apart. I wrote to Angelo Dundee, Ali’s trainer, his wife and Ali himself. I got nothing back in response. That’s when I decided enough is enough.” When they reunited in 2002 and Ali was suffering from Parkinson’s, The Greatest told The Fight Doctor “You was right.”
This also has one of my favorite things about Italian movies going for it: absolutely strange alternate titles. I get Virtual Weapon as it tells you that this is a Mel and Danny ripoff with a tech twist and the French title Cyberflic means Cybercop. But then the Japanese title is Point of Dead, which is a great title that says nothing. Germany got Zwei Fäuste für Miami (Two Fists for Miami), Hungary the very metal Én vagyok a fegyver (I Am the Gun) which spoils the ending of the movie and Italy had Potenza virtuale (Virtual Power).
I always worry that I am going to run out of Italian movies to obsess over but so far, I keep finding new things to write over a thousand words about.
*In case you wondered, Indio and Indio 2 for Margheriti, as well as Across Red Nights for Maurizio Bonuglia.
Vincent Moon (Ice-T) has had it with the hundred people — a hundred people! — who have done him wrong. He lures them all to the prison that his crime syndicate has built — yes, this script is insane — and hides $10 million dollars. Only three people will be allowed to survive, as he’s also left guns throughout and gives everyone six hours to be the last person standing. If more than three people are alive in six hours, his kill squad will wipe everyone out and if anyone tries to escape, he has snipers ready to shoot them.
Albert Pyun knew how to set up a movie.
In the middle of all this violence, four people come together: killing machines Marcus (Michael Halsey), D (Kimberly Warren) and Lou (Christopher Lambert) as well as Cam (Deborah Van Valkenburgh, The Warriors but yeah, also Too Close for Comfort!), an accountant who tried to do the right thing and tell the police about what Moon’s syndicate is doing. Cam is in shock at all the bloodshed, but surrounded by these three stone cold assassins, she may survive.
In the midst of all this chaos, Lou also has a daughter, Lucy (Hunter Doughty), who is waiting in a car. He takes care of her and wants the money to make sure she has a future.
The killers are all as Pyun infused as you hope they would be, played by actors like Yuji Okumoto (Chozen, the best bad guy of all time, from The Karate Kid Part II) and Thom Mathews (The Return of the Living Dead and Tommy Jarvis from Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives). James Mathers, who was Dr. Jekyll in Dr. Jekyll’s Dungeon of Death, also is in this.
Shot in Los Angeles’ The Twin Towers Correctional Facility — which was empty at the time of filming, due to budget problems (thanks Schlock Pit!) and where Blast was also made by Pyun — this movie looks so much better than its budget would let you believe. It also has, as much Pyun movies do, a cast that makes it work, as Ice-T seems to be having the time of his life as a silver grilled mambo loving maniac.
In case you’re wondering why there’s hardly any blood while everyone is being killed, well, they couldn’t get the prison dirty. And everyone only had one costume for the duration of shooting.
Credit also goes to Andrew Witham’s script, which is filled with tough killer dialogue and little bursts of weirdness. Sure, it’s The Most Dangerous Game, but this movie is a marvel of low budget magic, as it has so many wild lines, a Three Stooges-style suitcase bomb death and even a line — “You’re Now In The Purgatory Network. Audio and Visual surveillance is constant by Lucifer Command.” — that can be read that the entire prison is in the afterlife.
Pyun also pulls off some small budget miracle here as while Lambert was paid half the budget, he was only available for a third of the shooting days. Most of his scenes were done in two eleven-hour days and the rest is all clever shots and fake Shemps, as Sam Raimi would credit.
It also looks wild, as Director of Photography George Moordian had secured free film stock by Moordian from Fuji Film and loved how Se7en had bleached the film. He fought to get the same look and it totally works, making this feel like it is inside some strange past future.
All in all, this is a near perfect movie.
The MVD blu ray of Mean Guns has an introduction and commentary by Pyun along with new interviews with producer Gary Schmoeller, executive producer Paul Rosenblum and compose Anthony Riparetti as well as a trailer. It all comes in a limited edition slipcover along with reversible art and a collectible mino-poster.
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.
Rudd (James Michael Taylor) is a rich guy who wants to use his Kronos Project to explore time. He has an actual time machine designed by Dr. Carrington (Jeffrey Combs) and a team ready to go into the time stream and be part of the Civil War and battle dinosaurs and even a Dinoman.
The dinosaurs all come from Planet of Dinosaurs, the Dinoman seems to have the same head as Repligator, the story feels like the Bruce Jones and Richard Corben comic Rip in Time, a train crash that comes out of Horror Express and a feel that is very 70s live action Saturday morning but then there are very adult explorations of the impact of time travel.
Some people are going to see the quality of the acting and the budget and instantly start judging these movies. Maybe they should watch more of Bret McCormick’s movies. This feels like an entire bunch of movies all smashed together into one film and we’re all the better for it.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.