Emerson Graham (Casey Dillard, who also wrote the film) has lost her lover, her friends and even her motivation to be a stand-up comedienne. Now, she spends her nights as a cab driver, but on this fateful night, a mysterious passenger named Roger (a welcomed Richard Speight Jr., Gabriel from TV’s Supernatural) gets her involved with his battle against the demonic curse against his family.

Basically, this is a movie between two actors for a good chunk of the film, shot within Emerson’s rideshare car during a four hour period. I really liked how the demonic parts of this movie just sneak up on you. I’d done no reading about the film before starting to watch it and it really surprised me. I was hooked the whole way through.

I really enjoyed how the romantic parts of the partnership between the leads was played down. This is more about the battle to save the world — and their parts in it, too — than anything else. It was pretty realistic, for a movie where demons are possessing people, that is.

Driven arrives on-demand (Amazon) and on DVD on June 16 from Uncork’d Entertainment. You can learn more about the works of Glenn Payne at his official site. You can also ad-stream the film for free on Tubi.

Driven is the sixth feature film by Glenn Payne, a founding member of the improvisational comedy troupe West of Shake Rag based out of Tupelo, Mississippi. He’s currently in post-production on his seventh film, the horror-thriller, Killer Concept, due in 2021. He’s also written and directed the impressive against-the-budget science fiction set piece, Earth Rise (2014; also on Tubi), about the effects of space travelers on the way to Mars.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR team.

Garrett is trying to recover a lost memory by returning to his family’s vacation home where an unspeakable act took place leaving him institutionalized as a child. If any of this sounds like a bad idea to you, good news. You are not a character in a horror film.

Psychiatrists call what happened to our hero — such as he is, he’s kind of a jerk — dissociative amnesia, but really, pure evil is loose in this house and it’s about to get back at him. It also shows up as a red balloon that cares about as much as copyright infringement as a 1980s Italian moviemaker.

This is the first full length film from writer, director and producer Christopher Wells.

The film festival poster and the online streaming poster.

What you read above was our original review back on June 10, 2020.

After that ran, the director of the movie reached out and felt that our take on the film “. . . seems vindictive. Like I did something to you or something. I don’t mind anyone disliking my film, but this is different because you just cut and pasted the synopsis and then made a snide remark, like you’re trying to be . . . vindictive.” Since we take our thoughts on film seriously and respect the work of filmmakers, we promised to watch this again. And seeing as how the fine folks at Wild Eye Releasing also sent us the DVD (as well as the online screener; but the director gave it to us prior to that), this gave us another opportunity to watch The Luring and take one more look — on October 11, 2020.

So, here we go!

Garrett lost an important memory at his tenth birthday party and hopes to get it back when he visits his family’s vacation home. His doctors call it dissociative amnesia, but perhaps he doesn’t want to learn what he’s really done. While his girlfriend wants this trip to bring them closer, there’s a chance that this could be the end of them both.

Let me lead with the good. Garrett (Rick Irwin) and Claire (Michaela Sprague) seem like a real couple, one that you wouldn’t want to invite to your party because all they do is fight. You feel for her way more than him, which leads us to the bad.

I don’t feel that every movie needs a trustworthy narrator or a heroic protagonist, but Garrett is such a jerk from moment one that when the major reveal happens, it’s not so much horrifying or shocking as much as it elicits a “Yeah, I can see him doing that.”

There’s also a mystery woman who has lured Garrett back here, a red balloon (to the director’s credit, he claims that he took the idea from The Red Balloon and not Stephen King) and an end scene that stuck with me because it seems like it came out of another film.

A nanny notices the boy she is watching is holding the red balloon. The kid, named Doug, states that he was given the balloon by a man, but there’s no one around. The nanny takes the balloon and Doug goes wild, yelling that the man told her she would do that. He then starts yelling, What time is it, what time is it, what time is it?” According to IMDB: “Another hidden message. The frustrated Nanny yells ‘It’s 2:13! it’s 2:13! it’s 2:13!’ Her life will never be the same. Pure evil doesn’t take pity on her or on Doug. Some say the man was the devil because 2:13 when added up is 6. The Nanny yells that time three times which is 666.”

I have no idea what this has to do with the rest of the film, because the kid ends up getting hit by a car like he wandered in off the set of Pet Semetary.

So, in summation, it feels like there’s some talent here. I still didn’t like the movie — it feels disjointed and there’s a moment where a stilt-walking clown shows up to menace Claire for seemingly no reason. But hey — I haven’t put the time and energy into making this. It wasn’t my passion project. All I have is an opinion and you may watch it and fall in love with it.

Movies are great that way.

You can learn more at the official Facebook page. The Luring is available available on DVD and digital June 16 from Wild Eye Releasing.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie from Wild Eye and that has no impact on our review.

This year, Severin released Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection, a collection of 31 remastered films on 14 discs. This movie appears at the center of it and if you know nothing of the story of Adamson — somehow a man who could work with both Colonel Sanders and Charles Manson — get ready to have your mind blown out of the back of your brain.

Beyond his 1995 demise, murdered by live-in contractor Fred Fulford and buried inside his home, Adamson’s life is of extreme interest to me, as it should be anyone coming to this site.

The son of silent film star Denver Dixon and actress Dolores Booth, Adamson was involved in movies from the age of six, as he acted in his father’s 1935 film Desert Mesa.

After helping his father make Halfway to Hell in 1961 and meeting Sam Sherman, the two would join with Dan Kennis to create Independent-International Pictures, the makers of movies like Satan’s Sadists and the astounding Dracula vs. Frankenstein. They’d go on to recreate — rip off, really — the Blood Island films in the U.S., as well as movies in the stewardress — well, he invented that category — western and biker genres, often shot at Spahn Ranch.

This film hits on everything I love and I couldn’t have been more overjoyed watching it. I’ve been holding off, needing something to look forward to and this was more than worth that wait. Alien conspiracies? Murder? Go-go dancing? Shady characters? Stuntpeople? Carnival Magic? This has all of that and so much more.

Outside of a movie where George Eastman, John Saxon and Santo team up to battle Adolfo Celi, Telly Savalas and Christopher Lee to save Edwige Fenech, Marisa Mell and Caroline Munro from being horribly murdered, I can’t think of a film that I more want to watch again and again. While the movie of my dreams will never be made, I am deliriously happy that this exists.

You can get this from Severin.

Back when we first discussed A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge,we touched on the story of Mark Patton, whose role as final boy Jesse was once said to be only subtext, but really is one of the first out gay characters in a mainstream American horror film. There’s no subtext at all as you watch this movie with eyes beyond its 1985 release.

Patton — the star of this film — has struggled with his anger over his horror role for years, as he felt betrayed as the filmmakers knew that he was in the closet. That, again, was the world of 1985.

Director Jack Sholder (Alone in the Dark, The Hidden) claims that at the time that he made that film that he didn’t have the self-awareness to think that the film had any gay subtext. Meanwhile, writer David Chaskin(I, Madman, The Curse) would state that Patton played the role in too gay of a way.

So what is the truth? And where do we go from here?

This film, directed by Roman Chimienti (who also worked on Wrinkles the Clown) and Tyler Jensen, this movie is at once a look back at 1980’s horror films, an examination of the reassessment of them decades later, fan culture and Patton’s story. Any one of these could have made for a great documentary, but I feel that the need to work them all into one story leads to somewhat of a lack of focus.

That said, the scenes of Patton finally confronting Chaskin are quite emotional and the examined thought that the star is finally getting the notoriety for the role that once ruined his life is pretty interesting.

I wanted to love this more than I did, but again, the lack of focus at times bothered me. Some may see Patton as someone who never got past his grudge against Hollywood, but I’m of the mind that we can’t judge someone’s life because we have not lived it. I may have grown up in the years of people being forced to stay in the closet and the aftermath of AIDS, but I never directly confronted either of these life events that obviously shaped who Patton is today. Of all things, he’s a survivor, which is the most life-affirming part of this interesting film.

You can learn more on this movie’s official website and Facebook page. It will be streaming on Shudder soon.

Before starting my latest job, I did a lot of strange writing assignments. One of them was to write questions and answers for teachers as they used movies for their classes. If it wasn’t for this work, I would have never discovered this movie, which was narrated by Harrison Ford.

We all know of Neil Armstrong, but how many of us can say who he really was? This movie made me stop and imagine what it was like to be one of the first men in the space program as well as the many real life losses that Armstrong endured on the way, such as losing a daughter. The film doesn’t shy away from his issues in his marriage or with his family, but presents an all-around bio of a man that not many knew completely.

I’m glad I took that job.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime and Tubi.

Zak Knutson also made Milius, a doc about the famous director. In this film, he chronicles the Rainbow, a Sunset Strip club that has been the epicenter of rock and roll for decades. It’s where the Hollywood Vampires met, where Lemmy played his One Touch machine every night and where so many bands held court.

The main reason to watch this film is to see so many stars remember the past of the magical Rainbow, including Mickey Dolenz, Lita Ford, Ron Jeremy, Ozzy Osbourne, Slash, Gene Simmons and Matt Sorum.

It was always my dream to get to the Rainbow. I stood outside it once, but it was too intimidating for me. This movie is the chance I was waiting for to see what it was like.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime.

Paul Walter Hauser got known for playing Shawn Eckhardt in I, Tanya. Here, he’s playing another real life media story, the character this movie is named for, Richard Jewell.

This is directed by Clint Eastwood, who does one take for every scene and people love him for it. Yes, the same reason these same people made fun of Ed Wood.

As much as this movie presents the media killing the life of Jewell, it does the very same thing to reporter Kathy Scruggs, who died of a prescription drug overdose in 2001.

There’s a scene where she offers sex to Jon Hamm’s FBI agent in exchange for information, a moment that the editor-in-chief of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution stated was “entirely false and malicious.” Employees of the newspaper went even further, claiming that the movie should have a disclaimer that “some events were imagined for dramatic purposes and artistic license.”

Olivia Wilde defended the film and wondered why no one held Hamm’s character to the same standard. That’s probably because his character, Tom Shaw, is a composite based on many people and not an actual person who lived and breathed and left behind people that cared for her.

That makes it hard to believe in this film’s defense of Jewell when it commits the very same attacks on Scruggs. That said, Hauser is good and I always enjoy seeing Sam Rockwell show up.

You remember that friend from high school or college that you went through so much with and then lost touch? You might keep up with one another on the internet or check in on Facebook, but you always mean to hang out someday. Finally, when you do, you’re reminded of their worst annoyances and realize why you never worried all that much about truly staying in touch.

Welcome to that person in film form.

This movie is the very definition of “If it works for you, good for you.”

It may have worked for me twenty some off years ago, but it feels trapped in that time, like a nostalgia band that’s living off two or less hits, moving siblings and relatives to play bass and slowly playing smaller and smaller venues. It’s not totally that way, as this movie did make money. But it just feels like diminishing returns, like a story I’ve seen before, coming from a place where nostalgia and remember that time has replaced any chance of originality.

In the same way that I don’t care about most prequels, that’s how I feel about this sequel. I thought the multiple sendoffs these characters have had were enough. Yet I get it. People love these films and I feel like exactly the kind of person I hated when I was obsessed with the ViewAskewniverse.

So, at the risk of saying things like, “the last twenty minutes of this movie are wasted moments that I will regret forever,” let me just say that if you liked the other films and want more, here it is.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR agency and obviously, I appreciate getting it but probably am doing myself no favors in getting anything else from them.

This is a great set-up from the PR for this film: “A “Diablo Rojo” bus driver, his helper, a priest, and two policemen fall victim to a mysterious spell and end up lost somewhere in the Chiriqui jungle, where they will have to survive the creatures that inhabit the roads, with the old bus as their only refuge.”

Diablo Rojo, or Red Devil, is the name given to the colorful buses that race through the streets of Panama, taking tourists all over and nearly ending their lives with insane driving.

The first movie for director Sol Moreno and the first horror film to come out of Panama, Diablo Rojo PTY makes use of the folklore of its country. I know nothing of Panama’s legends, so this was an interesting trip into the complete unknown.

I now have learned that by the time they are 33, Panamanian witches must commit an act of atrocity worse than eating a baby. I also now know of La Tulivieja, a short woman whose breasts are so full that she must drag them around, followed by ants that drink the milk.

This is a film that has one foot in the 1950’s and another in today, with practical gore and neon hues. It’s unlike anything else that will come out this year, which is an achievement that I mean as a compliment.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime. For more information, check out the official Facebook page.