Why did I watch this? Well, look at the directors and you can pick out the ones I would be obsessed by: Curtis Everitt, Donald Farmer, Alaine Huntington, Blair Kelly, James M. Myers, Melvin Pittman, Tim Ritter, Jerry Williams and Logan Winton.
That’s right, Farmer and Ritter.
I mean, even on the line that describes it on IMDB, it doesn’t even make the effort: It’s like Sharknado, but with cats.
It’s also an anthology as so much microbudget horror seems to be these days. I mean, cats do abuse a priest in it, so there’s that. I imagine there;s a YouTube category for that. I do have a weakness for stuff like this, usually if it has a Ouija board or is in Amityville or has a shark, but I’m trying to do this cat movie challenge and how many Garfield movies can one man watch?
I expected nothing from this and was awarded in abundence.
The cover looks nice, the actual cartoon isn’t all that horrible, and cats are always fun to watch. There, I’ve said a few nice things. At least everyone got paid.
I have a friend who loves James Storm so much that whenever someone complains, he always sends them a picture of him that says, “Sorry about your damn luck.” Even people in our friend group who have no idea who he is—a star for TNA Wrestling for some time—love him now.
In this, Storm plays former world champion Tommy Majic, who someone wants to see fight again, so they kidnap his wife Cindy (Tracey Birdsall). There’s also Suzi (Finnish rock star and stuntwoman Jessica Wolff), who was planning on a marriage of convenience to a rich man, breaking the heart of her fiancé, before men kidnap them and her friend from Japan, who has come to see her get married, Akira Fujiyama (Kaori Kawabuchi). They’re all now in Hotel Underground — they even kidnapped her mom (Christa Billich) — a place that is both an underground fight club and also a place where a man named Dr. Butcher (Big Bad Ralph) cuts people up and also pops out as if he were a character in a dark ride. Oh — there’s also Debi (Australian rock star and pro wrestler Nicole Sharrock), who wants to kill men who abuse women.
This is a movie made with plenty of pro wrestlers and stuntpeople, like Jessica Wolf and Erika Reid. Director Steve Ravic has worked with the same crew — and many of the same actors — on several of his films. In this, he’s making something with flashbacks, weird color patterns and layered edits. It’s kind of wild and also feels like it could have been a VCA movie from the 80s, quality-wise, just without sex. There are so many stories going on, sometimes all at once, but this isn’t something you see on streaming and think it will be the finest in cinema. Enjoy it for what it is — an underground fight club populated by pro wrestlers with issues. I feel like I have lived this.
April 22: Earth Day Ends Here — Instead of celebrating a holiday created by a murderer, share an end-of-the-world disaster movie with us. You can also take care of the planet while you’re writing.
When they were kids, Madolyn and Quinn watched Snakes on a Train, as their grandmother was fooled by The Asylum and rented the wrong movie. Instead of being upset, they bond over mockbusters before growing up to be Lieutenant Commander Madoyln Webb (Jhey Castles) and Dr. Quinn Ramsey (Lindsey Marie Wilson). Even though they are no longer close, they quickly realize that the monsters attacking Earth in 2025 are all from the movies they watched when they were young.
The threat comes from aliens who have misinterpreted Asylum films as real-life mythology and are 3D printing the monsters to invade Earth. Great idea, but as usual for these movies from this studio, well, it’s an Asylum movie.
That said, Michael Paré is in it.
Directed by Michael Su, this was based on a story by The Asylum’s effects artists, Tammy Klein and Glenn Campbell, and written by Marc Gottlieb. It gives you the robots of Transmorphersand Atlantic Rim, a Sharknado, Mega Shark, Crocosaurus, koalas from Zoombies, multiple-headed sharks, a giant octopus, Mega Piranha, Mega Boa, Mecha Shark…everything that the studio still had effects of and could easily re-use the CGI.
But hey — it’s an end-of-the-world movie, set in 2025, not even about 2025.
Aisha Osagie (Letitia Wright, Black Panther) is a Nigerian girl seeking asylum in Ireland. As you can imagine, she’s not treated well by anyone and is seen as less than nothing. Luckily, she has a good lawyer in Peter Flood (Loran Cranitch) and starts a friendship with Conor Healy (Josh O’Connor, Challengers).
Aisha may have a sad existence, but it’s better than the violence that she’s left behind, as her father and brother were both killed, and her mom has gone into hiding. She, much like so many of the asylum seekers that she befriends, can be taken away at any time, which means their lives start to feel almost meaningless.
Director and writer Frank Berry has put together a good movie that has flown under the radar and ended up on Tubi. It has so much to say about the world- the country, if you’re in the U.S.- that we’re living in today. It ends in a totally anticlimactic way, but even that makes so much sense, and it seems like it has to be that way.
Directed by Adam Meyer, this film claims that Scream was based on the real serial killer Danny Rolling, also known as the Gainesville Ripper, who murdered Florida college students Christina P. Powell, Sonya Larson, Christa Leight Hoyt, Tracy Inez Paules and Manuel R. Toboda during a four-day period in 1990. He decapitated one and set the bodies up for people to find much like a slasher villain.
Kevin Williamson, the writer of Wes Craven’s movie, watched an episode of ABC News’ Turning Point and wrote Woodsboro Murders, which changed its name to the title we know these days.
Rolling may have had multiple personalities, which were the result of abuse from his police officer father. He carried that abuse to his wife and son before getting divorced, being arrested for raping a woman who looked just like his ex-wife and going to jail numerous times for robbery. By the 90s, he’d go on to kill Julie Grissom, her eight-year-old nephew and her 55-year-old father before shooting his own father in the stomach and head. Somehow, his dad lived, but lost an eye.
After killing five women and abusing their bodies in August 1990, he was arrested for robbing a Winn-Dixie. Cops found him in jail, identified by one of his teeth that had been extracted while incarcerated. He pled not guilty and even wrote a book with his future fiancee, journalist Sondra London, titled The Making of a Serial Killer.
By 1994, however, he pled guilty and was executed in 2006, not before singing to the 47 people who came to watch him die. They cut his mic off and then his life.
How much of Williamson and Craven’s film comes from this? It was more an inspiration. But hey — we have a Tubi Original about it, so you can watch that.
Noah Hazard (Dimitri “Vegas” Thivaios) may love his girlfriend Lea (Jennifer Heylen) and their daughter Zita (Mila Rooms), but the true love of his life is his gold Lexus. However, he soon puts everyone in danger by helping his cousin Carlos (Jeroen Perceval) pick up Kludde (Frank Lammers) from prison and immediately go on a run to steal drugs.
Somehow this leads to a man having sex with Noah’s car, a criminal kidnapping his daughter, crazy stunts through the streets of Antwerp, this never leaves the inside of the car, which you would think limits the film, but thanks to animation and just plain strangeness, you never feel trapped.
Directed by Jonas Govaerts (Cub) and written by Trent Haaga (68 Kill), this is an example of a Tubi Original that moves to the top of the heap. If this is what it takes to get experimental foreign films to America, so be it, because I have no idea where else Hazard would fit in. It’s well-shot, the soundtrack is amazing — Thivaois is a DJ — and even has a strong message by the close. It’s in a world that is our own but not quite; it’s like a video game come to life.
Icons Unearthed: Star Wars “digs up the real story of how the legendary films were made. Filmed everywhere from Tunisia to England, Canada to Italy, and all 50 states, this series features a treasure trove of incredible information, including Marcia Lucas’s first-ever on-camera interview.”
With that sales copy, I had to see this. Originally airing on Vice and now available from Mill Creek, this six-part series takes you through the original films and the prequels while telling you all about the lives of the people who made them, including George Lucas, who may not be part of it, yet his spirit looms over it all.
Directed by Brian Volk-Weiss (who has directed plenty of comedy specials), this goes deep into everything you’d ever need to know about the Star Wars saga. You hear from Richard Edlund, John Dykstra, Anthony Daniels, Billy Dee Williams and the aforementioned Marcia Lucas, who adds so much behind how the movies were made and edited.
If you want to go beyond the stars of the film — while some are in this — and hear about how the films were shot and edited, as well as the unvarnished moments of special effects and how they came to life, this is the documentary for you. I really got into it, rewatching several of the episodes as they were so rich with info. The Mill Creek set also has uncut interviews with Marcia Lucas, Anthony Daniels and Billy Dee Williams. It’s even balanced when discussing the prequels, reminding so many of us that people who saw them at the age we saw Star Wars may have their own reasons for loving them more than we do.
You can get this Mill Creek Blu-ray release from Deep Discount.
Directed and written by Jon McDonald, this film seemed to escape my radar when it came out in 2022.
Back in the sixties, Professor Ruckus Mandulbaum (Cary Elwes) invented the Titan Badge, which creates superpowers by changing the molecular structure of its wearer’s DNA. He started a family — America’s first family of superheroes — by adopting three street children: Ansel (Alphonso McAuley) who has increased strength, Vista (Penelope Mitchell) who can read minds and Maya (Elaine Tan) who can teleport.
Into the seventies, the team changes, as the children rebel against their father, sort of like how Professor X’s students, The Doom Patrol’s Chief and Sir Reginald Hargreeves of The Umbrella Academy all lost their students. Actually, this feels an awful lot like The Umbrella Academy if it were directed by Wes Anderson.
In 1979, Vista and Ansel decide that they want their powers back. It’s like a drug, one they’ve come down off of and now, they want that feeling back. They decide to steal two of the badges, not realizing that their father must scan them to make that happen. So they take the entire Hyperion Museum hostage, which brings back one of their old villains, Ares (Keli Price).
Their father has created three generations of the team by now and, like an even weirder Walt Disney, hosts a weekly show called the Hyperion Club that broadcasts the exploits of his many children. He seems unaware of the strain and damage he’s put his children through, robbing them of their powers when they decide to show any independence. He’s a more malevolent Charles Xavier, a character I never saw as much of a hero. That said, he may be so senile that his handlers are making every decision for him.
The success of this film is because of McDonald, a former animator and storyboard artist, who is able to create the visual look of two eras in this, as well a very unique take on superpowers. It’s a shame how close it hews to other comic tropes, as it feels like the lack of a third act and the way things emotionally instead of violently resolve is quite adult — and strong, to be frank — for a comic book movie.
This movie was part of the DailyWire+ streaming service, just like Run Hide Fight, Convicting a Murderer and Am I Racist? Because of that, this probably slipped under most radars. If you want to see a superhero movie that may not be perfect but has many ideas that keep it fresh, even if to get there it had to replicate some DNA, check it out.
Here’s a coincidence: Rafia Iqbal is a Canadian actress who doubled for Ritu Arya in The Umbrella Academy and is known for her role as Hyperion in the TV series The Boys.
In this movie, directed and written by Steven Morris, a small Midwestern town is filled with depression and drug dependency after a serial killer named Sammy the Elf killed several people over the holidays ten years ago. Today, Christina (Kayla Kelly) is finally coming back to the place of her childhood trauma. She finds a place where all of her old friends are parents and a whole new series of killings.
This has Lynn Lowry in it, which is always a plus in my book, as well as Jessa Flux, who was Carmilla Karnstein in Debbie Does Demons. It has some fun kills in it, but loses energy after the tense opening and the fun animated credits. That said, for the budget that it has, it’s not the worst holiday horror movie that I’ve seen, even if Shawn C. Phillips is in it. Ah, that’s mean and it’s Christmas.
Again, as always, never go back home to the place where your past traumas were. And double down on that over the holidays.
A year after he made Godzilla vs. Hedorah, Kazuhiro Nakagawa with this short, which starts with a news report of Hedorah being defeated by Godzilla, then moves to Gigan attacking.
While the last short felt like it was in the Godzilla: Final Wars continuity, this short has a Showa era-Gigan. While Godzilla is the Godzilla: Final Wars suit, Gigan was crowd funded with those fans names in the credits. The “Gigan Suit Launch Project” project was an official Toho campaign.
Gigan slashes Godzilla’s face in this, just like he did when they first fought in Godzilla vs. Gigan. You can also see the scar in the sequel to this, Fest Godzilla 4: Operation Jet Jaguar, which again has a crowd funded suit for Jet Jaguar and a new origin.
While this is mainly just a battle between the two monsters, it’s a great battle. Godzilla seems down and out before blasting Gigan right in the face with his atomic breath, which made me jump up out of my seat.
I had no idea that all of these official shorts existed, which makes this year’s Kaiju Day so much more interesting!
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