Tag Archives: 2002

FANTASTIC FEST 2025: Dildo Heaven (2002)

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Allow me to play this broken record again, but it’s astounding just how much the moviemaking of Doris Wishman, Bruno Mattei and Jess Franco line up. At the end of all of their careers, there they are, making movies way past their contemporaries, even if it’s shot on video now. As Bruno would make Zombies: The Beginning and Franco would make so many movies in hotel conference rooms with quick zooms into the anatomy of his actresses, Doris would come back to make this film, one that is so close to her past movies, even if it looks better when every other director who shot on video was supposedly taking a step down quality wise.

Doris was 89 when she made this and was working at the Pink Pussy Cat in Miami — which is in the movie and so is Doris, as well as a photo of Chesty Morgan on the wall — and it allowed her to finally have sync sound in a film and seemingly look back on her own career. Yet in this movie, she still does all the things you want: the apartment is needlessly over-decorated, sex scenes often just show feet rolling around in the bed, dialogue feels like one of those Russian spy stations that are trying to read English phrases to send coded messages and all the men are jerks. And, as if ready to seem like another of my favorite warped directors, Claudio Fragasso, Doris places several stuffed animals in this, and they are often zoomed in on.

This is the story of three roommates—Lisa, Beth, and Tess—who all want to sleep with their boss. Only Tess has succeeded so far, except that she’s had to hide her short dark hair and wear a blonde wig to win him over. There’s also a teenage peeper who keeps looking in on the girls and fantasizing about them, which transforms into footage from The Immoral Three. Not to be outdone, but when a TV comes on later, it’s playing Doris’ Love Toy. Never mind that these movies were shot on film, and the jump between media is jarring.

That peeping tom also has a dream where he has two penises, which reminds me of the creepy story where Bill Cosby told Keenan Thompson that after he played Fat Albert, “You know, life is good in the movies or whatever, but you just be ready, because when this movie comes out, you’re gonna need two dicks — because women are gonna be all over you.” That pervert also goes to Dr. Faust, who promises that his cream can make his small-eyed monster into a bigger beast. That reminds me of a joke that used to make my dad laugh, even when he was going through dementia.

“Dad, I finally got this penis cream. It’s going to make me so much bigger when I rub it on it.”

“Does it work?”

“They said it might take a few months. But my hands are huge!”

This movie made me overjoyed, as it feels like, unlike so many directors, Doris got the opportunity to finish her career on her terms, making a movie that was uniquely hers. She never fit any mold, starting to direct movies much later in life than most and continuing it well past nearly all of her nudie cutie contemporaries. I’ll think about this film and how the women finally discover that perhaps dildos are better than men — and then a new neighbor knocks on the door — more than any movie I’ll see made in this year or any other.

It feels and looks like sub-VCA porn and never gives you the payoff. And that’s the payoff. And it’s terrific.

Thanks to the incredible theironcupcake on Letterboxd, whose Doris reviews were an inspiration to me. She even wrote down the lyrics to this film’s theme:

“When love has left and you’re bereft, reach for your dildo
When life’s a mess and fraught with stress, reach for your dildo
When a lover twice caught cheating
Says for you his heart’s still beating
Send him away, don’t let him stay
Reach for your dildo!
My dildo is very close to me. I keep it in my drawer
It’s HIV negative, it has no flaw
Someday I’ll find my love divine, and I’ll be overjoyed
But ’til that fateful day, my dildo fills the void
Reach for your dildo!”

I’m thrilled that there’s a new 2K version of this film, especially one that features a poster by one of my favorite artists, Corinne Halbert.

No matter how much they clean this up, however, it still has the scuzzy and wonderful heart within. I get all emotional just thinking about Doris, a woman who some would think should just be playing bingo or taking it easy, was out there making movies into her eighties.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Reflections of Evil (2002)

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July 14-20  Vanity Project Week: “…it might be said that the specific remedy for vanity is laughter, and that the one failing that is essentially laughter is vanity.” Are these products of passionate and industrious independent filmmakers OR outrageous glimpses into the inner workings of self-obsessed maniacs??

Born in Akron, Ohio, Damon Packard is the grandson of Sam Pollock, who organized the Amalgamated Meat Cutters of Akron, working to limit the workweek, establish employer-paid wellness funds, implement a prepaid direct-service medical care program, raise wages, and more. At the time of his death, he owned one of the largest and most respected private collections of union-related publications in the United States, with most books signed by their authors.

He started making films in college, including the Miles O’Keefe-starring Dawn of an Evil Millennium, as well as Apple, an elf fantasy film made while he lived in a tent for two years in Hawaii. After receiving an inheritance, he made this film, which he directed, wrote, and starred in, as well as handling most of the other aspects. He created 23,000 DVDs and gave them for free, as well as sending the movie to celebrities.

It starts with an introduction by Tony Curtis, stolen from another film. It features numerous snippets of movies that aired on the CBS Late Movie, giving the impression that you’re sitting in front of a thousand TVs all changing channels at once. It’s also about Steven Spielberg making Something Evil, as well as Julie, a teen who died from an overdose in a supernatural drug cult in the early 70s just like an afterschool special, now a specter searching from beyond the grave for her brother Bob (Packard), an overweight homeless man who wears several unworking headphones, all the clothes that he wears on his back and seems to lose his mind every few minutes.

With a drug freakout inside Universal Studios on E.T. Adventure, a bloody axe fight that Bob recovers from immediately, strange audio blasts followed by Carpenters songs, appearances by Lana Turner, George Hamilton and Joey Heatherton, an extended vomit sequence, 137 minutes of Los Angeles being Hell, even the guardians of the city losing their minds, anger and rage at all times. Shot on 16mm, Super 8 and Digital 8, formats don’t matter when so much has to be related to you, as if you’re either watching one of those tapes you’re forced to endure when you get a minimum wage job or you’re being Stockholmed into a death cult. Maybe both.

I’m struggling to explain what I’ve seen. It ruined me for a few days, rendering me unable to watch any other films and I consider that the highest compliment I can give a movie.

DVDR Party has the Something Evil remix for sale, as well as all of Packard’s films. I feel like I’m going to blow my next pay on his movies. Maybe it’ll be enough for him to make something new.

You can watch this on Tubi.

JUNESPLOITATION: Pandora Peaks (2005)

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June 20: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Exploitation Auteurs!

At one point during this movie, I put my head in my hands and took the Lord’s name in vain because, well, I was actually thanking God for the fact that I lived in the same reality that produced Russ Meyer.

This is his last film — whatever it is, I guess a film will describe it — after Meyer’s Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. From 1979 to his death in 2004, it was a time of announced and never-filmed or unfinished projects. As porn entered the video store and bedrooms, Russ — who had battle censorship for so long — was rich and lived off the sales of the movies he’d already directed. In Jimmy McDonough’s Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film, Meyer said, “I got all the money I’ll ever need. You gotta be hungry to make a movie. I don’t have the desire, the urge.” You could call him and he’d answer the phone himself, ready to sell you a movie. He didn’t have to make Mondo Topless, Too or the color remake of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Reading about Blitzen, Vixen and Harry makes me wistful. So does The Jaws of Lorna AKA The Jaws of Vixen AKA The Bra of God, Up the Valley of the Beyond. Russ was selling old movies for $79.50, way more than other VHS, but he was the only person selling them. No more new films. No more fire, I guess.

Well, there was The Breast of Russ Meyer. Somehow, for the usual money watching Meyer, this cost $2 million dollars and went around the world to find the most incredible breasts Russ had ever seen. It seemed like a vision in his rapidly declining brain, mixing profiles of Meyer vixens who were doomed to later in life back problems, biographical moments of his Army service and even Kitten Natividad and Russ making love on screen. It was 12 hours long at one point and most of it was given to the Museum of Modern Art.

Other than some footage that aired on Johnathan Ross’ Incredible Film Show, the only way to see all this weirdness—just moments of it—is in Pandora Peaks, a movie that Russ shot throughout the 90s, keeping the actress—born Stephanie Schick—on a $9,000 a week retainer. She claims in this that she worked in a bank and had several businesses before making herself her business, expanding her measurements to 72HHH-22-36.

Russ keeps showing up to talk about his life and his past movies. Just when you think you may learn something, we’re back to Peaks dancing or a German girl named Tundi — who may have the Dr. Ruth voice you hear talking of sex throughout and who McDonough referred to as “truly freakish…a nineteen-year-old Hungarian who spoke no English and resembled a giant triangle made flesh” — as well as another cantilevered specimen named Leosha — that was a Russ word, as is gravity-defying — and Candy Samples, relating how much she likes using her breasts.

Another movie starring Meyer’s then-partner,  Melissa Mounds, was supposed to be made as well. Supposedly, longtime collaborator Jim Ryan oversaw this movie. The end of Russ’ life makes me sad — him losing the only person he cared about, his dog Harry; being physically abused by Mounds; the emotional loss of friends he served in the war with. He was a man abandoned by his lawman father, who never mentioned the mental illness his mother and sister battled or his worries that he had it. Instead, he invented himself. So if this movie feels all of the place, strange and perhaps a bit too overenthused by sweater meat, know that’s how its creator wanted it. He did it his way, even when it didn’t make sense.

MILL CREEK BLU RAY RELEASE: The King of Queens (1998-2007)

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Premiering on CBS on September 21, 1998, The King of Queens was one of those shows that always seemed to be on. I had never watched it, and all I knew about Kevin James was that he was Mick Foley’s high school wrestling teammate. But when I showed the box set on our weekly “What Came In the Mail” segment on the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature, people were excited and told me that I needed to watch it soon.

It’s a simple set-up. Doug (Kevin James) and Carrie Heffernan (Leah Remini) are pretty much The Honeymooners, a middle-class couple living in Queens, except that her father Arthur (Jerry Stiller) has lost his latest, much younger wife and burned his house down, so now he has to live with them. That’s all there is to it, as it’s about them, their weird friend, and Doug’s schemes to get ahead.

There’s Doug’s straight man, Deacon Palmer (Victor Williams), nerdy mommy’s boy Spencer “Spence” Olchin (Patton Oswalt), cousin Daniel Heffernan (Gary Valentine), dog walker Holly Shumpert (Nicole Sullivan) and even Lou Ferrigno, playing himself. Plus, as you know, I love crossovers; there are four with Everyone Loves Raymond.

The leads are fun, everyone knows their role, and this feels like the kind of show you can just put on and veg out to. I love sitcoms and feel like they’re kind of lost art, so it was fun getting into this for a few episodes. I didn’t like the last season, where Doug and Carrie split, but I could see myself watching more of it.

What fascinates me is that when James started his second show, Kevin Can Wait, his wife, Donna Gable, was portrayed by Erinn Hayes. Yet in the second season, she died off camera and was replaced by Vanessa Cellucci (played by Leah Remini), Kevin’s former rival from the police who becomes his partner in life and at a security company, Monkey Fist Security. Donna’s death is off-handedly mentioned by someone saying, “Ye, it’s been over a year since she died.”

This is where it gets meta.

On the AMC TV show Kevin Can F**k Himself, Allison McRoberts (Annie Murphy) has a man-child of a husband, Kevin (Eric Petersen), who sees life as a sitcom while hers is a drama. Kevin becomes so horrible to her that she begins to plan his death. When people find out, she fakes her passing, and he soon gets another girlfriend who looks and acts exactly like Allison.

She’s played by Erinn Hayes.

I’ve always wondered how we got the beautiful, capable wife and immature husband dynamic ingrained in us and how many relationships it has harmed. It makes me think about how I behave. Then again, as I write this, I am in a basement surrounded by movies and action figures. Hmm.

Mill Creek has released every episode in one gigantic box set. It has extras such as James doing commentary on the pilot with show creator Michael Weithorn; a laughs montage; behind the scenes; a writers featurette; a salute to the fans and the 200th episode celebration. You can get it from Deep Discount.

ARROW VIDEO 4K UHD RELEASE: Narc (2002)

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Detroit narcotics cop Nick Tellis (Jason Patric) is recovering from an undercover operation gone wrong. In the hopes of getting a desk job, he agrees to return to active duty as the partner of Detective Henry Oak (Ray Liotta) as Oak looks into the death of his partner, Michael Calvess. The film goes into what it’s like to be a cop, as the decisions often end up with lives ruined — the cops, the criminals and even the bystanders. That’s why Tellis wants to escape this world, unlike Oak, who wants to destroy the dealers who he feels addicted his friend and partner.

Director and writer Joe Carnahan couldn’t get this sold until Ray Liotta found it and became the star and producer. What a loss that would have been if this just faded away. This totally changed the way that I see Patric, as he’s so powerful in this, working against Liotta, one of the best actors of his era. Nothing in this makes me ever want to be a cop, as it feels like being in the end of the world every single day. Even if you save someone, as Oak did with a child prostitute, you have to protect them every day and even cover up their crimes. Nothing ever works out. No one understands. And the next day, it starts again.

What a powerful and bleak film.

 

The Arrow Video 4K UHD of Narc has a new filmmaker-approved 4K remaster, immersive Atmos audio and hours of previously unreleased on-set interviews and brand-new bonus features, such as an archival feature commentary with director Joe Carnahan and editor John Gilroy (which is incredible, I watched it with the film and it’s packed with information); a new introduction from Carnahan; interviews with Carnahan, director of photography Alex Nepomniaschy, actor Krista Bridges and costume designer Gersha Phillips; promotional featurettes; press kit interviews with Carnahan, Ray Liotta, Jason Patric, Diane Nabatoff, Alex Nepomniaschy and William Friedkin; a trailer and image gallery.

Plus, you get a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Nathanael Marsh, a double-sided poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Nathanael Marsh and an illustrated collectors’ booklet featuring new writing by Michelle Kisner, a new interview with producer Diane Nabatoff and archival interviews and articles. You can order it from MVD.

2024 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 8: Swimfan (2002)

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8. POOL PARTY: Is there a swimming pool in your plot? Take a dip, mind the drip.

Look, I never went on a date in high school and missed the prom, so who am I to give advice to the kids, but as I watched this movie, people still under the age of twenty are basing their life decisions on their first relationships instead of realizing life is long and when you’re young, if Madison (Erika Christensen) wants to get her canoe shellacked while you’re trying to teach her to swim, why worry that you already have a girlfriend when you’re both about to go away to college and will break up by Thanksgiving?

The kids are into drama, that’s why. As for me, I was drinking in my room and watching movies all night, which is exactly how I spend my fifties, except I do have a wife now. I get that morality. I don’t get teenage dating morality.

Ben Cronin (Jesse Bradford) is a swimming star who is being worked hard by his coach (Dan Hedaya, who deserves better). He’s good enough to get a scholarship, which may separate him from his girl Amy (Shiri Appleby).

He meets Madison Bell, the new girl in school, by almost hitting her with his car. He gives her a ride home and she leaves her notebook, which is a trick to getting another date. Ben is a bit weirded out to learn that school weirdo Christopher (James DeBello) is her cousin. They have a nice little diner date, she tells him she had a boyfriend back in New York that plays baseball and he tells her he has Amy.

Then he gives her the beans in the swimming pool. They paddle up Coochie Creek. They do some schnoodlypooping. And they also have sex.

Much like every insane woman in every erotic thriller, that night of passion unlocks the killing machine inside Madison’s mind, making her try and force Amy out when all she seemingly wanted was one night of love like in that Heart song. Look, more advice, when you’re having sex and someone says, “I need you to tell me you love me, just for me. It doesn’t mean anything,” it means something. And you’re probably going to lose your friends, rabbit and anything else you love.

Madison then dates and kills his rival Josh (Clayne Crawford), makes it seem like Ben is on steroids and then sets him up for Josh’s murder. Oh yeah, she also runs Amy off the road dressed like Ben.

Our protagonist heads off to the hospital where Amy’s baseball boyfriend Jake is in a coma, a place that Madison still visits. He sets her up and when she confronts him, his jock friends videotape her confessing as she thinks that it’s just her and Ben. The sixteen year old always alive in my old body hates this moment, because the enemy has become the hero and I can’t deal with that, even today when I have compromised so many times.

If you think this is where this movie ends, you have never seen an erotic thriller.

This was produced by Furthur Films, which is owned by Michael Douglas, the absolute lord and master of getting insane women to try and destroy his life while also being a rich jerk that we have to somehow cheer for.

Director John Polson is also an actor and mainly works in episodic cable today.

All these years, I thought this movie starred Julia Stiles. No, that’s Erika Christensen. In the same year as this, she also had sex in a swimming pool in The Banger Sisters. I want to know how her character was able to get Amy into an office chair, perfectly in the center of the pool yet can’t swim herself.

Also: I thought Jesse Bradford was Freddie Prinze Jr.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: Dildo Heaven (2002)

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Doris Wishman week (July 21 – 27) Doris made the loopiest of movies. A self-proclaimed prude who made nudist camp movies, her filmography is filled with contradictions. When she tried to be mean spirited with something like Bad Girls Go To Hell there was always an undercurrent of silliness and fun, but when she tried to be silly and fun in things like Keyholes Are For Peeping there was an underlying seediness and grime that couldn’t be wiped off. It’s hard not to love her!  

Allow me to play this broken record again, but it’s astounding just how much the moviemaking of Doris Wishman, Bruno Mattei and Jess Franco line up. At the end of all of their careers, there they are, making movies way past their contemporaries, even if it’s shot on video now. As Bruno would make Zombies: The Beginning and Franco would make so many movies in hotel conference rooms with quick zooms into the anatomy of his actresses, Doris would come back to make this film, one that is so close to her past movies even if it looks better when every other director who shot on video was supposedly taking a step down quality wise.

Doris was 89 when she made this and working at the Pink Pussy Cat in Miami — which is in the movie and so is Doris, as well as a photo of Chesty Morgan on the wall — and it allowed her to finally have synch sound in a movie and seemingly look back on her own career. Yet in this movie, she still does all the things you want: the apartment is needlessly over decorated, sex scenes often just show feet rolling around in the bed, dialogue feels like one of those Russian spy stations that are trying to read English phrases to send coded messages and all the men are jerks. And, as if ready to seem like another of my favorite warped directors, Claudio Fragasso, Doris places several stuffed animals in this and they are often zoomed in on.

This is the story of three roommates — Lisa, Beth and Tess — who all want to sleep with their boss. Only Tess has succeed so far, except she’s had to hide her short dark hair and wear a blonde wig to win him over. There’s also a teenage peeper who keeps looking in on the girls and fantasizing about them, which transforms into footage from The Immoral Three. Not to be outdone, but when a TV comes on later, it’s playing Doris’ Love Toy. Never mind that these movies were shot on film and the jump between media is jarring.

That peeping tom also has a dream where he has two penises, which reminds me of the creepy story where Bill Cosby told Keenan Thompson that after he played Fat Albert, “You know, life is good in the movies or whatever, but you just be ready, because when this movie comes out, you’re gonna need two dicks — because women are gonna be all over you.” That pervert also goes to Dr. Faust, who promises that his cream can make his small one eyes monster into a bigger beast. That reminds me of a joke that used to make my dad laugh, even when he was going through dementia.

“Dad, I finally got this penis cream. It’s going to make me so much bigger when I rub it on it.”

“Does it work?”

“They said it might take a few months. But my hands are huge!”

This movie made me overjoyed, as it feels like unlike so many directors, Doris got the opportunity to finish her career on her terms, making a movie that was uniquely hers. She never fit any mold, starting to direct movies much later in life than most and keeping it up way past nearly all of her nudie cutie contemporaries. I’ll think about this film and how the women finally discover that perhaps dildos are better than men — and then a new neighbor knocks on the door — more than any movie I’ll see made in this year or any other.

It feels and looks like sub-VCA porn and never gives you the payoff. And that’s the payoff. And it’s wonderful.

Thanks to the incredible theironcupcake on Letterboxd, whose Doris reviews were an inspiration to me. She even wrote down the lyrics to this film’s theme:

“When love has left and you’re bereft, reach for your dildo
When life’s a mess and fraught with stress, reach for your dildo
When a lover twice caught cheating
Says for you his heart’s still beating
Send him away, don’t let him stay
Reach for your dildo!
My dildo is very close to me, I keep it in my drawer
It’s HIV negative, it has no flaw
Someday I’ll find my love divine and I’ll be overjoyed
But ’til that fateful day, my dildo fills the void
Reach for your dildo!”

Junesploitation: Equilibrium (2002)

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June 21: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is 200s Action! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

“Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, the Cleric has determined that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically-predictable element. The gun kata treats the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position representing a maximum kill zone, inflicting maximum damage on the maximum number of opponents, while keeping the defender clear of the statistically-traditional trajectories of return fire. By the rote mastery of this art, your firing efficiency will rise by no less than 120 percent. The difference of a 63 percent increased lethal proficiency makes the master of the gun katas an adversary not to be taken lightly.”

If a movie has dialogue like this, I’m going to love it.

After World War III, the survivors founded the totalitarian nation of Libria, a place that outlaws all emotion, forces the population to take the emotion-suppressing drug called Prozium II and hunts down anyone who goes against this, labeling them Sense Offenders, who are soon hunted by the Grammaton Clerics. When they show up, you’re dead, and they’re also going to destroy any art, music or books you have before shooting you a thousand times.

Yet Libria, the its leader, Father (Sean Pertwee) and the Tetragrammaton Council are being challenged by the Underground.

John Preston (Christian Bale) is one of the clerics and he’s a single father after his wife was killed for being a Sense Offender. When his partner Errol Partridge (Sean Bean) saves a book of poems and takes them to the Nether — you know, the Cursed Earth or the Forbidden Zone — to read, he tells Preston that now that he has felt emotion, he can die. So Preston kills him.

The poem that he reads is “He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” by William Butler Yeats. Here’s the poem: “Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

His new partner, Andrew Brandt (Taye Diggs), looks up to him. Yet since killing his partner, Preston has stopped taking the drugs and spares a Sense Offender, Mary O’Brien (Emily Watson). He soon meets the leader of the Underground, Jurgen (William Fichter), who convinces him that he must kill Father. At the same time, he’s also been charged with finding a conspiracy within the clerics by Vice-Counsel DuPont (Angus Macfadyen).

When O’Brien is terminated, he has an emotional breakdown and is arrested by his partner. He soon learns that DuPont is the new Father, having started a new group within the Tetragrammaton Council of those who don’t take the drugs either. As you can imagine, this leads our hero to killing everyone he can with a sword and guns. It’s why you came and saw this movie. I mean, the hero kills 118 people in this movie.

Equilibrium was produced by Jan de Bont’s production company, Blue Tulip Productions. The budget was covered by tax incentives thanks to de Bont’s Dutch citizenship and the international sales paid for this movie’s budget. So when critics didn’t like it and it only had a limited release, it didn’t matter.

When he was told about those reviews, director Kurt Wimmer said, “Why would I make a movie for someone I wouldn’t want to hang out with? Have you ever met a critic who you wanted to party with? I haven’t.”

This movie has been forgotten but I’d love if more people watched it. Sure, it takes a lot of inspiration from other literature, but it also has warrior monks who have guns that form the logo of their country when they fire them and it takes place in some side future that looks like a gothic world.

ARROW VIDEO UHD RELEASE: Dark Water (2002)

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Honogurai mizu no soko kara (From the Depths of Dark Water) was directed by Hideo Nakata and written by Yoshihiro Nakamura and Kenichi Suzuki, based on the short story collection by Koji Suzuki. The actual story is Floating Water but they used the name of the book for the movie.

Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) is a single mother trying to see where life takes her next after her divorce. She gets a job as a proofreader and rents a cheap apartment where the roof always leaks. Meanwhile, her daughter Ikuko (Rio Kanno) has to start over again as well, attending a kindergarten close to their new apartment. A young girl named Mitsuko Kawai (Mirei Oguchi) disappeared from their building a year ago and in between keeping her ex-husband from kidnapping their daughter, Yoshimi starts seeing that girl, wearing a yellow raincoat and carrying a red bag.

She believes that the girl died in the water tower above their building and is the reason why everything floods. Yet when Mitsuko comes after her daughter, she has to make a choice to give up everything to save her.

This was the second movie by Sakata to be based on a novel by Suzuki. He previously directed Ring and the sequel Ring 2. As with most Japanese horror, there was an American remake directed by Walter Salles that had Jennifer Connelly in it. At least it has the same doomed ending.

The Arrow Video release of Dark Water has a 4K Ultra HD blu ray presentation in Dolby Vision, along with extras like interviews with director Hideo Nakata, author Koji Suzuki, cinematographer Junichiro Hayashi, actresses Hitomi Kuroki and Asami Mizukawa, and theme song artist Shikao Suga. There’s also a making of, trailers and TV commercials. All inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter Strain with an illustrated collector’s booklet with writing on the film by David Kalat and Michael Gingold.

You can get Dark Water from MVD.

VISUAL VENGEANCE ON TUBI: Scream Queen (2002)

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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.

Horror star Malicia Tombs (Linnea Quigley) mysteriously dies after leaving the set of her latest, now unfinished, low budget shot-on-video shocker. Soon, an unseen masked killer is chopping and hacking his/ her way through the cast and crew as punishment for Tomb’s death.

Let’s get meta. This super obscurity was shot in 1998 by indy horror stalwart Brad Sykes, and finally finished in 2002. Just like how Linnea’s character was in a lost movie, this itself was a lost film for some time but now it’s been released by Visual Vengeance.

After she left the set of director Eric Orloff’s (Jarrod Robbins, Evil Sister 2) Scream Queen, Malicia died in a car accident. As Detective Hammer (C. Courtney Joyner, the writer of From a Whisper to a Scream, Class of 1999 and Prison as well as the director of Trancers III) can’t find out who killed her, the entire movie just goes away, taking down several careers.

Or so it would seem, as Orloff and the cast and crew — special effects guy Squib (Bryan Cooper, who also worked on this movie’s effects), Christine (Nicole West), Runyon (Kurt Levee, Evil Sister), Jenni (Emilie Jo Tisdale, Escape from Hell) and Devon (Nova Sheppard) — are invited to a mansion by Malicia, who is not only alive but able to pay everyone as long as they don’t leave the set.

Is she a ghost? A demon? Or did she fake her death and is trying to find out who was trying to kill her with the bomb in her car? And who is the masked killer taking out everyone? And hey — how about Linnea singing “This Chainsaw’s Made For Cutting” in this movie?

The first movie by Brad Sykes (Plaguers, Hi-Death) and it may be shot on video, but you can already see the promise of his work. Make sure to check out the interview I did with Brad too!