Rudy Ray Moore was a preacher, a soldier, a Harlem Hillbilly, a comedian, a musician, a singer and finally, an actor and producer. He’s best known for his character Dolemite — hey, that’s why we’re talking about this film — and the underground following that those movies have. He’s basically the Godfather of Rap, with the way he speaks in these films being taken to heart by many of that genre’s key practicioners.

In fact, Snoop Dogg, who appears in this film, said, Without Rudy Ray Moore, there would be no Snoop Dogg, and that’s for real.”

The amazing thing to me is that Moore was a multilayered person. He dreamed of becoming a star, but he took his friends with him on the way, spending his own money to become his own industry. He put his money where his mouth was.

Despite how filthy that mouth could be, he said that he wasn’t swearing just for the sake of being dirty. He would later claim, “It was a form of art, sketches in which I developed ghetto characters who cursed. I don’t want to be referred to as a dirty old man, rather a ghetto expressionism.”

Eddie Murphy was once the king of comedy. Seriously, his rise was like a rocket, hosting Saturday Night Live while he was still as castmember. I just watched an old Sneak Previews where Siskel and Ebert worried that Murphy would be co-opted by Hollywood, forced to do so many bad projects that his magic would go away. Sure, he made Shrek money and would occasionally be in a fun movie like Bowfinger, but there has nothing coming out that hinted at the magic that the star displayed in movies like Trading Places.

Murphy dreamed of making a film about Rudy Ray Moore and has been developing this film with Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (who wrote Ed Wood, Man On the Moon, Big Eyes, American Crime Story and many others) since 2003. However, with Netflix looking for content and director Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow) on board, it finally happened.

Honestly, I couldn’t be happier.

In the 1970’s, Moore (Murphy) hasn’t lived his dream yet. He’s stuck working in a record store and can’t even get his music played on the in-store radio station. The only entertainment work he can get is being the MC at a club where his friend Ben Taylor (Craig Robinson) plays at. Yet one day, he has a revelation.

A homeless man named Rico keeps coming in and loudly yelling about things in rhyme, invoking the name of a man named Dolemite. Moore pays him and the other winos cold hard cash to hear their tales of street hustle and African-American folklore like the Signifying Monkey.

Moore reemerges as Dolemite himself, cast as a pimp with a cane, confidently taking to the stage and winning over the entire crowd. Despite people telling him he’s too profane, too old or too out of shape, he conquers entertainment his own way, selling his records under the counter and from the trunk of his car.

Joining with his friend on tour, he meets Lady Reed (Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who is great in this) and brings her on board. They celebrate one night by watching the movie The Front Page. While the audience around them finds it hilarious, it leaves the group cold. They feel unrepresented by mass media and feel that if they could just get on screen, the five blocks in every town that loves Moore’s comedy albums would come to see them.

Moore unites playwrite Jerry Jones (Keegan-Michael Key) with actor D’Urville Martin (Wesley Snipes, who is astounding), who will direct. Then, he takes over an old theater that has fallen under hard times and transforms it into his own studio. He and his crew may know little to nothing about making a film, but that won’t stop them. Not even having no theater to show it in will stop them.

At the end of the film, as their limo rolls up to the premiere and Moore tells them that they may be failures tonight, but that they accomplished something, so much emotion welled up inside me. This movie felt like a catharis for the maelstorm that has been my life for the past month and showed me that people that care about art can truly make it. Of course, they emerge from the limo to discover that so many people have come to the theater that it must keep showing the movie late into the night.

If you’re a film lover — particularly of the kind of movies we cover on this site — this movie is a joy. Beyond Murphy name dropping the fact that he equates Moore on the same level as Jodorowsky in a recent interview, all manner of 1970’s grindhouse facts are in here to savor.

There’s Nicholas Josef von Sternberg appearing as the director of photography. He’s the son of famous director Josef von Sternberg and would go on to be the DP for Tourist Trap, Dr. Alien and Joysticks, amongst many others.

Bob Odenkirk — one of my patron saints — also shows up as Lawrence Woolner, the head of Dimension Films, who produced Raw Force and was the presenter in the documentary film Beyond Atlantis.

There’s also a scene where Moore is checking off the studios that turned him down. It’s great — Avco Embassy is on there, as is Bryanston.

Plus, if you’re a Dolemite fan, there are references to nearly every one of his films. Man, I’m getting the vapors all over again just writing about it. If I think about it too long, I start to well up with emotion. It just felt so good to see the moment when Moore realizes that all of his hard work has paid off.

None of this may mean much to you if you never saw one of the man’s films. But it meant everything to me. The sheer joy of film is that we must accept that we live in a world with people that are geniuses, whether that’s someone who can essay the rich cultural heritage of the black experience like Moore, the psychosexual rituals that power magic ala Jodorowsky or create the numerous camera tricks and lighting styles that have become the language of film like Bava. They have lived in our same world, breathed our same air and we must acknowledge them, their work and their impact. It inspires me every single day.

You can watch this on Netflix.

We take a second look at Dolemite Is My Name as part of our “Drive-In Friday: Movies About Movies” and Dolemite as part our “Drive-In Friday: First Time Directors & Actors” night featurettes.

Eternal Code is packed with people you know. There’s Richard Tyson from Kindergarten Cop. Scout Taylor-Compton, who was in Rob Zombie’s Halloween films. Yan Birch, who was the Stairmaster in Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs. Mel Novak from Bruce Lee’s Game of Death. Yep, it’s the type of movie where you say, “I know that person.”

After a revolutionary invention — eternal life technology which can movie minds into new bodies — is developed, one of the creators named Bridget finds a character flaw in the company that wants to partner with them. However, the deal has gone too far and too many important people want what they’ve made for this to stop now. After she and her husband gets kidnapped, their hopes rest on her daughter Miranda, military man Corey and a prostitute named Stephanie.

This is all directed by filmmaker and actor Harley Wallen, who has “starred in over 40 feature films and TV shows with legendary stars such as Tom Sizemore, Tara Reed and John Savage among many others.”

There are a ton of characters and a lot going on, but for a lower budget direct to streaming and DVD movie, it’s actually pretty fun.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR team and that has no impact on our review.

From the effects team behind Harry Potter and filmmaker Simon Wells, Dragon Kingdom is an attempt at a new series of fantasy movies. This is a sequel to Knights of the Damned, a movie I didn’t see, and seems to set up another film.

I’m just going to share the description on IMDB, which is filled with fantasy terms like fury bloods: “Born of fire and magic the Dragons’ power is immeasurable. This power could not be harnessed until a Magister used it to spawn an army of fury bloods. Prince Favian of Zaldah filled with anger when King Xalvador named Princess Elizabeth as the next ruler enlisted the Magister’s army to take control of the Kingdom. The only people that can stop him and inform the King of Favian’s insidious plan are the Princess and her two Knights forming an unlikely alliance with two Katori Warrior Women. Their quest will not be easy as their path is blocked by the fury bloods leaving them no choice but to traverse The Dark Kingdom, a land that swallows all who enter.”

For those aforementioned fantasy fans, knowing that Ross O’Hennessey (Lord of Bones from Game of Thrones) is in it is probably a good selling point. I don’t usually watch these kind of movies, so I’m not the best to sell it to you.

Basically, if you miss that aforementioned show and want to watch a bunch of dragons, warrior women and monsters do battle, then Dragon Kingdom is pretty much what you’re looking for.

DISCLAIMER: This was sent to us by the movie’s PR team. That has no impact on our review.

It’s been claimed that Gary Kent is one of the inspirations for Brad Pitt’s character Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time In…Hollywood. After all, they both encountered the Mansons at Spahn Ranch.

While working on the films of Richard Rush, Ray Dennis Steckler and Al Adamson, Kent looked death in the eye and giggled. This is the man who doubled for Jack Nicholson at the start of his career on movies like Hells Angels on Wheels and The Savage Seven.

The film just feels right — like you’re sitting with Kent as he looks back on his crazy life, the loves and the losses along the way. It’s not fancy or overly glossy — it shouldn’t be — but you come away with a respect for stuntmen. Hell, you should have had that before this movie, but if it causes you to learn that, it’s a great thing.

This movie is now available on demand and DVD.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR agency. That has nothing to do with our review.

Of all the many movies that Rob Zombie has brought to the screen, his 2003 film House of 1000 Corpses and its 2005 sequel The Devil’s Rejects probably have done the best with both audiences and critics. They’re wildly disparate movies — the original goes from realism to a phantasmagorical journey below the titular house into the world fo Dr. Satan. And the sequel really works well — it’s a grimy, gritty journey through the world of its serial killing protagonists.

Since then, Zombie has made two divisive Halloween reimaginings, The Lords of Salem (a Ken Russell-influenced movie that completely misunderstood black metal on a level that you’d think a non-musician made it) and 31. He almost made two other films — Tyrannosaurus Rex and a remake of The Blob — while continuing his music career.

Which brings us to 3 From Hell, a movie that I quite frankly had no interest in after the abysmal drivel that 31 assaulted my eyes with. I get it — I’ve seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Eaten Alive and Warlock Moon. I just haven’t made it my life’s mission to continually remake these films to progressively less returns.

So, umm…let’s start the movie.

Since we last saw the Firefly family, they miraculously survived at least twenty bullet wounds each to make it to trial, where they were sentenced to life in prison, with their patriarch, Captain Spaulding (the late Sid Haig) paying the most penalty, as he’s executed via lethal injection. You can tell how rough Haig was at the end, but he still brings plenty of thunder to his role, despite his short time on screen.

Otis (Bill Moseley, who was Chop-Top in the aforementioned — and superior — Chainsaw 2) has escaped from jail thanks to his brother, Winslow Foxworth “Foxy” Coltrane (Richard Brake from Zombie’s 31 and the chemist from Mandy). They set up a plan to free their sister Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie), who is locked in a war with prison guard Greta (Dee Wallace). They kidnap Warden Virgil Dallas Harper (Jeff Daniel Phillips, who was in Zombie’s Halloween and The Lords of Salem), his family and friends — including Austin Stoker — and hold them hostage so that she can finally escape. They all decide to go to Mexico.

Oh yeah, they also kill a clown, Mr. Baggy Britches, before that. He shows up for no reason whatsoever. I know that Clint Howard needs work, but he also deserves better.

While there, we’re reminded that Otis killed Rondo (Danny Trejo), one of the bounty hunters from the last film that was incarcerated along with him. Oh yeah — and Baby is growing crazier than she was before. Or more annoying. Seriously, it’s a fine line.

The three makes their way to a small town in Mexico in the midst of Day of the Dead celebrations — to which I audibly sighed and not in a good way — and stay in the town’s only hotel. In the midst of celebrating the holiday, Rondo’s son Aquarius (Emilio Rivera, Sons of Anarchy)and his Black Satans gang shows up for revenge. The three are tipped off by a little person named Sebastian (Pancho Moler, who played the Nazi killer Sick Head in 31) and end up wiping out the gang. setting Aquarius on fire and getting back on the road.

There are also some random killings I forgot to mention, but by and large, the film feels very unfocused, unplanned and yes, that word again, random. There’s no sense of urgency until the final ten minutes, which place the three into a situation they may not survive. It was the only time this movie seemed to have any promise, outside of rehashing what seemed fresh nearly two decades ago, like Slim Whitman’s “It’s a Sin To Lie” replacing “I Remember You” from House of 1000 Corpses, seeming like faint nostalgia at best and trite at worst.

Let me sum it up with music. Having “In-A-Gada-Da-Vida” play during the closing battle is about as cookie cutter music cue as there can be. You can pretty much say the same thing about this movie, which carbon copies Zombie’s influences ad nauseam to no good end. Then again, maybe that’s just a reference to Chop-Top, because he wanted that song played by KOKLA radio back in Texas.

To wit: Rob Zombie seems like a good dude. He obviously adores his wife. He’s an ethical vegetarian. His music was the entrance music for every independent pro wrestler ever at one point. He has good taste in bad movies. I think he’d be a fun person to discuss pop culture and film with. But man, then we’d get to the question, “So have you seen any of my movies?” and I abhor lying. I’d probably end up feeling bad, but not as horrible as I did suffering through this, literally a movie for an audience who must live inside the stockrooms of a Hot Topic and only come out for 80’s nights and Slipknot tours, high on 4 Look and demanding they make Scream 5. In short, pretty much every single thing I have been created to destroy.

I don’t know if 2019 can get a worse movie. Good news, Travolta. The Fanatic isn’t the worst movie now. Neither is Serenity. You can sleep safe, McConaughey. Here’s hoping neither of you choose to work with Mr. and Mrs. Cummings’ baby boy any time soon, though.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Paul Andolina from Wrestling with Film is here to review a new found footage movie, as no one I know loves this genre more than him.

Scooter is a 2019 thriller about three Youtubers, Paul, Will, and Juan who run the channel The Three Amigoes. These three young men are known for having fun with the different challenges they take on in their videos. There newest challenge is that they are going to travel the 866 miles to New Orleans on motorized scooters. The scooters, however, can be no bigger than 50cc, about 5 horsepower. On their journey they see something they were not supposed to see and this challenge will end up being their last one.

I really enjoy films shot in the found footage and/or mockumentary style. Scooter combines the mockumentary and found footage to come up with a solid but flawed entry. The antics between the three young guys is a blast to watch even if Will can be super annoying. In fact I often wonder how they even made it to their 23rd episode with him being so obnoxious. Paul has a thing for mermaids and this is played up by taking a detour to a mermaid show where Will proceeds to have sex with the mermaid performer. This makes Paul angry for a period of time and Will and Juan keep jabbering on about Paul and Will being mermaid brothers.

When things finally go south while the three stop for a much needed rest at a campground, they witness a rape that turns to murder so fair warning, if you have issues with that type of thing. It is brief but it comes as a stark contrast to the light-heartedness seen within the first part of the film. Things get progressively worse for our protagonists from there.

My biggest gripe with the film it is that cameras are seemingly left in areas or already in areas that make no sense. If you are going to make your movie appear to be found footage or a mockumentary you need to have reasons for shots and a lot of them I felt were too unnatural to be included in the film.

They have a drone that follows them throughout the film but Juan does not know how to get it out of follow-me mode, this wouldn’t be an issue if the drone hadn’t have to been in follow-me mode to begin with to get their overhead shots in the early parts of their scooter trip. I spent most of my time worrying how the drone was even being piloted to begin with because I was unaware you could get a drone to follow you. I felt like a real dummy when I found out drones can be programmed to follow you by GPS.

I had fun with this movie but it also left me scratching my head at times, wondering how the film was compiled. I would have loved for this to have no credits to play up the fact that it was found footage but I know how hard that can be to pull off these days when you need to properly credit those working on your film. 

If you are interested in road-trips gone awry then this is the one for you. It’s a very brief film at about 72 minutes so it’s not much of a time commitment. I’d say give this one a watch when it sees its release.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR team, but that has no impact on our review.

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods co-produced and wrote A Quiet Place before this film, which follows the framework of past movies like Hell Fest and The Funhouse, movies where haunted houses and sideshows house real killers. Eli Roth is the producer of this film, if that helps or hinders your decision to watch this.

With nothing to do on Halloween, a group of friends decide to enter an “extreme” haunted house that promises to feed on their darkest fears. The beginning of this feels a lot like Channel Zero: No End House, with each of their biggest worries dramatically coming to life.

Quickly, the group of young adults learn that some of the monsters inside this house are absolutely real. Either Beck or Woods has a major phobia of stepping on a nail, as that same horrific image from their past film happens twice in this one, along with plenty of other carnage.

Lead actress Katie Stevens also starred in the movie Polaroid which was lost in the disolution of Miramax. She was also an American Idol finalist. Her best friend, Bailey, is also played by a singer, Lauryn McClain of the pop act McClain. The Devil masked character is played by Damian Maffei, who was the leader of the Strangers in the second film in that series, The Strangers: Prey at Night.

While I really come down hard on most modern horror, this movie isn’t all that bad. There are some nice set pieces and plenty of jump scares. It’s not the best film you’ll see all year, but it’s a cut above the majority of the dreck that studios like Blumhouse are passing off as scary films this year.

Haunt is available on demand now. You can also get official shirts from Fright Rags.

Ever since 2008’s Rambo, there have been plans of a fifth film in this franchise. At one point, John Rambo was going to lead a team of commandos against a genetically altered creature in a movie that would have been called Rambo V: The Savage Hunt.

By November 2009, it was reported that the plot would be about Rambo crossing the Mexican border to rescue a girl who had been kidnapped. However, Stallone claimed that he was done with the character, stating, “I don’t think there’ll be any more. I’m about 99% sure, I was going to do it… but I feel that with Rocky Balboa, that character came complete circle. He went home. But for Rambo to go on another adventure might be, I think, misinterpreted as a mercenary gesture and not necessary. I don’t want that to happen.”

At Cannes the very next year, Millennium Films was already advertising Rambo V and planned to make the film with or without Stallone. Luckily, that didn’t happen.

Say what you will about Sylvester Stallone and his films, but he’s one of the few actors who has played multiple characters across multiple films. Don’t believe me? We went so far as to make a list all about this fact.

Now, Rambo has finally returned, with Adrian Grunberg (Get the Gringo) directing. Of course, this film has already been met with critical derision in regards to its script, stereotypes and violence. Yet Stallone’s career is one paved with negative ink. His audience — take it from someone who has watched nearly fifty of his films in thirty days — always comes back.

Eleven years after the last time we saw John Rambo, he’s moved on to live in his father’s ranch in Bowie, Arizona (actually Bulgaria). Along with Maria Beltran and her granddaughter Gabrielle, he has a horse farm and has seemed to settle into his old age. Yet his past life constantly threatens to re-emerge — he’s taking numerous pills, he has flashbacks and he’s built an elaborate series of tunnels under his home.

Gabrielle wants to see the father who abandoned her and goes to Mexico to attempt to connect. It goes horribly, leading to her visiting her friend Jezel and going barhopping. Truly, only Paul Kersey has a worse life than John Rambo, as within minutes she’s been roofied and enslaved by a Mexican cartel.

Our hero allows his need to protect her to take over his common sense and he’s quickly beaten into a near-coma by the gang, including Hugo and Victor Martinez. They take his driver’s license and a photo of Gabrielle, promising that now they’ll make her life a living hell — slicing both her face and Rambo’s with a bloody V.

Rambo is rescued by Carmen, a freelance journalist who lost her sister to the cartel. After healing, he rescues Gabrielle just in time for her to die as they cross the border back into the United States.

What follows is Rambo becoming Jason Vorhees, leading the gang into an elaborate trap ala Home Alone, but with more grand guignol than slapstick. If the ending melee in 2008’s Rambo upset you with its intensity and wanton bloodshed, well…better stay home.

Critics have loudly complained about the levels of blood and guts that the film displays, comparing it to a slasher film. If you’ve read any of the articles about the films that I truly adore, you know that this didn’t upset me in the least.

Of course, the xenophobic nature of Rambo as white savior in Mexico can be somewhat troubling. But honestly, I wasn’t heading into a Stallone blockbuster expecting it to be woke. There are an equal amount of positive Latino characters in this film, but the sheer rage of Rambo losing the last bit of beauty in his world is what this movie is really all about.

Sylvester Stallone is like a smart rock band from your teen years. He knows what works and what doesn’t. He’s coming to town every few months and he’s only going to play the hits. All killer, no filler, as they say. He isn’t going to make you listen to his artsy new single or play all night — the film clocks in at a spartan (John Spartan!) 89 minutes (although there is also a 101 minute foreign version).

Let’s face it — you’re coming to the theater to watch Rambo cut a man’s heart out and show it to him before he dies. This film is ready to deliver. If you’re expecting anything else — subtle nuance, political commentary or shades of grey — you’re in the wrong theater.

All summer long, I’ve had people breathlessly tell me, “You need to see this movie.”

I’ve been down this road before. It was called Hereditary, Ari Aster’s last film.

I debated never watching this film, but then I reasoned that as much as I detested It Follows, I loved Under the Silver Lake.

Maybe Aster would hit paydirt in this one. After all, I love folk horror films like The Wicker Man and Blood On Satan’s Claw. How bad could it be?

Woah boy.

Dani Ardor is dealing with a lot. Her sister has killed her parents and then herself. This has also pushed her already failing relationship with her boyfriend Christian. Somehow, they stay together the whole way to summer, when she learns that his Swedish friend Pelle is going home to his commune family for a once in every ninety years ritual and is taking Christian and his friends Mark and Josh.

Christian had no intention of telling her about the trip. In fact, his friends want them to break up. But then she’s there in Halsingland along with them as they trip out and settle in. Hours later, two of the elders leap off a rock to their deaths, but when the male doesn’t die, the others smash his head with a rock.

The elder Siv explains that this is how life goes here in Harga, with every member dying in the same way at the age of 72. This would also be the point where anyone sane would get out.

Two other guests, Simon and Connie, try to leave but miscommunication separates them. And to top things off, Christian decides to steal Josh’s thesis on the Harga. That’s when we learn that the commune’ runic religion is based on an oracle who is conceived every few years via incest.

Oh, where do we go from here? Mark pees on a tree and gets skinned alive. Josh tries to take photos and gets hit with a mallet. Dani takes more drugs and dances around a maypole whole her boyfriend eats pubic hair before impregnating another girl while the rest of the females all watch and push his butt in deeper. Yes, it may have taken Quentin Tarantino a few films before we all realized he has a foot fetish, but Ari Aster took all of one film and a bit of this one to show us that his go-to horror is obese and aged nudity.

After finding Christian and Maja having sex, Dani has started screaming and all of the women turn it into a song. I laughed the kind of mad guffaw that Max Cady only reserved for classics like Problem Child. Somehow, this film, much like the last one that Aster essayed, has descended from horror into comedy through no fault of its own.

If I told you that the cult members all disembowel a bear and shove Christian into it — get it, his name is Christian and he’s being sacrificed? — would you believe me? Well, you better, because that’s exactly the kind of ridiculous ending this movie has. Can you believe that some people were upset by this and how intense it supposedly got? Then why was I holding my sides and struggling to breathe as I chuckled with the kind of volume that I had once only thought possible in my wildest dreams?

This film is a joke, told with false significance and no small fury, all screaming and yelling and singing and wishing and praying and hoping that someone finds it significant and important and worthy of notice. In short, it is everything that is 2019 — a country that asks for prayers on social media one day and shoots one another in the face the next. A sad moron screaming, “Notice me.”

Somehow, thirty minutes of footage was cut from this movie before release. I have no idea how this is possible, as it felt so ponderous that I fear that it’s being over is just a surprise ending and the truth is I will soon wake up and still have forty minutes left to watch. It’s the kind of movie that The Lord of the Rings films would tell to wrap it up.

There are no surprises. I mean, the opening mural literally tells you everything that will happen in the film. And another piece of art shows a woman falling in love with a man, placing flowers under his pillow and then hiding her pubic hair in his food. This is exactly what Maja does with Christian.

There is all the subtlety of a sledgehammer in this film. Every single story beat is so hammered home — yes, that’s a horrible pun but this movie in no way makes me want to try — that you become wistful for the simple days of Toni Collette flying around without her head.

The funniest thing about this movie is that it sees the Nicholas Cage The Wicker Man as more of an inspiration than the original. That might be all you need to know about this utter turd in the punchbowl.