Skylar Reagan (Alicia Ziegler) is having some problems. She failed her last training exercise, one where she was asked to fire nuclear warheads on London after butting heads with her deputy — and one-time lover — Malik Wheeler (Chris Jones). When he commanding officer Kathleen Wolff (Carolyn Hennesy) remarks that she needs people who will follow orders — as most of her soldiers believe in Q-Anon-style conspiracy theories and ask to be paid in crypto — for what’s coming.

The next day, Reagan plans on breaking off her military team with Wheeler and leaving him behind for good. And just minutes after picking up Smith (Brian Gilleece) and Diaz (Matias Ponce), as well as meeting up with security detail Chelsea Lin (Nina Yang), a routine check of a warhead — well, it is a warhead being protested by people open carrying submachine guns — leads to a mysterious attack that may be from another world and which requires Reagan and Wheeler to do what their last training mission proved they couldn’t: launch a nuclear weapon at a friendly target. This one isn’t in London, though. It’s in America.

Directed by Craig Goldstein and written by Mark Keavey, Echo Base was a movie announced several months ago that I’ve been anxiously awaiting on Tubi. This really plays off the uncertainty of our time with no one believing what they are seeing, chemtrails getting discussed, people doing their own research and even other soldiers putting family and religion above duty when they believe that they are in Armageddon.

It also takes from The Outer Limits episode “The Architects Of Fear,” but I bet the filmmakers thought that they were ripping off Watchmen.

There’s plenty of stock footage, some dodgy CGI and nuclear tension the likes of which you haven’t seen since the Cold War. The slick way that this plays with the anxiety in which I now navigate a world in which the conspiracies that I once looked at as fun and now being espoused by people who can’t comprehend a seventy-year-old rich person never caring for them or needing them other than to fuel his need for power, well, that kind of made me really on edge the whole time I watched this. I think someone could watch this and say. “See? They admit it. It is true.” And then someone else shouts, “Disinfo!” And then someone says something super racist. You know how it goes.

Someday soon, someone is going to make a MAGA anti-trans zombies movie with this line: “In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you, Barbara, and I’m just standing in their way.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

The rich and famous are weird. They’re the kind of people who tip you a few thousand dollars all in $2 bills. But when you’re serving them, like the crew of this movie, you do it with a smile and worry about how it all makes you feel after.

Sadie (Mae Wilkerson) is the biggest thing to happen to music since probably Britney. On the day her father died, she strummed a guitar, sang a song and uploaded it to the internet. Ever since, she’s been famous. So famous that she can date two men — Robbie (Paul Toweh) and Christopher (Troy Osterberg) — and go from TV to tour with no time for her to recover. She’s on the verge of burning out, a fact that her bodyguard Bill (Charles Mesure) worries about and her agent Kara (Sarah Jane Morris) is pushing her through.

Maybe a boat vacation will help?

The crew of the luxury yacht — Reaghan (Shellie Sterling), Kyle (Freddie L. Fleming), Dylan (Anthony Starzynski) and Captain Jimmy (Jason Faunt) are here for their every need. Yet the slightest hint of drama or paparazzi sends Sadie off the deep end. And perhaps her team don’t all have her best interests in mind.

After all, the night before the cruise, she was so upset that she handed Sadie her bracelet over a stall in the women’s room, telling her that she no longer wanted it. That’ll be important later, you know. So will all the little innuendo and glares, as well as the fact that Captain Jimmy was once Kara’s first client. And that Sadie’s lawyer Camille (Sara Coates) was beaten into a coma that same night at the club.

Sadie is destined to drown after being tossed overboard. And you’ll probably put it all together long before Reaghan does. But it’s a well-shot and quick enough affair, directed well by Jodi Binstock, who made another decent Tubi original, Prisoner of Love.

You can watch this on Tubi.

A young housekeeper named Sandra (Ilean Almaguer) has come to work for the wealthy Ash family –Kit (the main draw for many in this movie will be that Denise Richards is one of the leads ) and Preston (Richard Gunn) — who are still enduring the trial by media that has ensued when their last housekeeper mysteriously disappeared.

If you told me that director and writer Stuart Altman did this entire movie by using Chat GPT, I would be inclined to believe you. When Kit and Preston need to create a charitable group to get the heat off themselves, they call it The Foundation. First name, first pass, that’s good enough. A lot of this feels one take good enough as well, as if the big reveal was that Preston was a robot, I would be praising the acting chops of Gunn. As I am not doing so, I can spoil this for you and tell you that he’s made of wood not metal.

The thing that kept me watching was the location. This was sat the home of Robert Joshua in the Forest Glen neighborhood of Boardman as well as in the surrounding area of Youngstown, Ohio. I grew up less than half an hour away and am morbidly pleased to report that for several years in a row, Youngtown was the murder capital of the U.S.

Producer Paris Jones really knew how to sell this: “I have always been enamored by 90s thrillers, so when I was pitched the concept of The Housekeeper, a mix of all the 90s elements I love with a dash of Jordan Peele’s Get Out.” I don’t know about any connection to Get Out, but this totally would have been the kind of movie you’d settle to rent when everything was out at the video store.

Originally known as Among the Ashes, this movie feels so all over the place, even in its performances. Preston comes off as both sympathetic and abusive, sometimes in the same scene and I don’t mean that to say his role is complex. It’s misguided. He has a memory room no one is allowed to go in, which should make us feel for him when the reveal happens, but he also gets a lapdance from the other housekeeper before she’s killed. In a better movie, we may care for the twists and turns and wonder who to root for. Not here.

I did like the political commercials that The Foundation made. This feels like a movie that didn’t need the housekeeper of the title and could have just focused on the married rich people and their antics. It didn’t go far enough, though, to make us think they were truly evil as all the most well-off people are. Then again, if that was the movie, we wouldn’t get the cliche lines like, “You’ve really brightened up our home.”

Also: This has one of those “whoops, ran out of time” endings, defying expectations while not surprising me in the least.

You can watch this on Tubi.

There has been a Laemmle in the movie business since there’s been a movie business. Carl Laemmle started Universal Pictures and his nephews Max and Kurt started the Laemmle theater chain.

Decades later, we have this film, the story of a beloved Arthouse Cinema chain in Los Angeles with an astounding legacy. Over four generations, Laemmle’s have dedicated themselves to supporting, innovating, and elevating the art of filmmaking. Popularizing independent films, documentary films, and their filmmakers, the Laemmle Theatres’ impact on Hollywood and world cinema cannot be overstated. Filmed over 2+ years, Only in Theaters chronicles the Laemmle family, their business, and their determination to survive. But in a changing world, this is also a story about the future of cinema.

Filmed over two years, Only in Theaters is about this family, their business and their determination to survive. Maybe it’s about the future of cinema and how we’ll see movies in the future. Hopefully, that will be in movie houses. Directed by Raphael Sbarge, this has appearances by Ava DuVernay, Cameron Crowe, Allison Anders and Leonard Maltin.

I really felt for Greg Laemmle in this. He had so much to consider and felt that he was close to solving it before COVID-19. Yet in spite of all he and his theaters have endured, he seems to endure.

I always think about those lucky enough to live in Austin, New York or Los Angeles and the theaters they have to support. The closest theater to us is at least half an hour away. While I consume so many movies a day, it’s rare that I actually see them on anything other than a TV or laptop. This movie made me want to change that, even if I have to get away from my comfortable home.

You can get this on DVD from Kino Lorber.

A few weeks ago, Scientific American asked, “Are ‘Cocaine Sharks’ Really Scarfing Down Drugs off Florida’s Coasts?” Sadly, that article is more about Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, but there’s some interesting information, including this quote:

“…the idea may not be as wacky as it sounds—especially in the waters off Florida. There sharks in a diverse assemblage swim along a major drug-smuggling throughway, which potentially exposes the toothy predators to floating bundles of narcotics. “This is the only place in the world where a shark could come into contact with such massive doses of cocaine,” says Tom Hird, a marine biologist and broadcaster based in England.”

Some literally insane scientists even did tests on sharks by having them eat cocaine — did they never see a single shark movie? Do they know that LL Cool J rapped “My hat is like a shark fin” after living through Deep Blue Sea? — along with this wild story:

“In 2016 scientists in Switzerland examined the effects of cocaine on zebra fish, a type of striped minnow commonly used in scientific experiments. The researchers were surprised to find that most of the cocaine accumulated in the fish’s eyes instead of their brain. Some zebra fish eyes contained concentrations of cocaine that were 1,000 times higher than levels that would be lethal to humans. The Swiss scientists were also surprised to find that instead of revving up the zebra fish, the cocaine suppressed their movements. “You’d think that a shark on cocaine is going to be swimming around all over the place at 1,000 miles an hour,” Hird says. “But that is us taking our human brains and putting it into the shark’s head.””

But let’s forget about science.

Let’s watch Cocaine Shark.

Originally released as Kanizame Shakurabu (Crab Shark) in Japan, this was retitled with the success of Cocaine Bear. It’s the story of a drug dealer named Gaurisco (Ken Van Sant) and his new creation, HT25, which is made from sharks. To paraphrase Mr. Show, “It’s great. It’s shark crack. It gets you really high.”

Directed by Mike Polonia and written by the mysterious Bando Glutz, this has effects by Brett Piper and Anthony Polonia that encompass an entire ocean’s worth of mutated creatures. Opposing them and the drug dealer is Nick (Titus Himmelberger), a hard-boiled detective who runs afoul of femme fatale Persephone (Natalie Himmelberger) as well as the hallucinations people have on HT25 which allow them to kill as a shark crab hybrid.

I really enjoyed reading other reviews of this movie. Nearly everyone hated it because it doesn’t have many sharks, there’s not really cocaine, it’s made with stock footage and it’s only an hour long. Obviously, any of these people would tell you how much they love exploitation movies yet when they are the ones exploited, they realize that sometimes a great poster, an awesome title, a tie-in to some popular pop culture buzz and a little filmmaking magic was enough to con you into watching a movie. Being mad about this movie is like being angry at Jerry Warren or Jerry Gross or someone not named Jerry that got you to watch movies that you never thought you’d watch like Sam Sherman.

I love that movies like this exist and I’ll never get tired of them.

You can watch this on Tubi.

This isn’t the Giuseppe Colizzi-directed, Terence Hill and Bud Spencer-starring Italian Western Dio perdona… io no!

Nor is it the Rick Ross album.

Instead, this is Janaya Black-directed and written film is the latest Tubi original.

Black was behind Surprise, another Tubi film that I’ve received tons of comments on, one that really got under viewers’ skins. This is a similar film in which a good man gets tested and eventually passes the point of no return, becoming someone that he never dreamed that we could become.

Pastor Pete Dawson (Robert Q. Jackson, A Good Man) has created Purposeful Ministries, a social media way of preaching since the beginning of COVID-19. He doesn’t believe in the prosperity Gospel like so many megachurches, but is instead a very real man that preaches the very real Word of God.

Behind every good man is a good woman, but maybe Pastor Pete has a wife that has bigger dreams — at least of power and notice — than he does. Marcy (Ciarah Amaani) is constantly pushing him to do more with his ministry, which is good in some ways, but there are hints that she wants more out of life than just a minister husband who preaches on a live stream. That said, she’s given Pete a great life up until now as well as his son PJ (DJ Burch).

In order to get their church to the next level, Pete has to turn to his best friend from the streets, Brian Snake Miller (Michael Miles), a former criminal who was assaulted in jail which has changed his entire life. Yet he has the cash they need to create the dream of an actual building for their church.

Throughout the movie, I thought that Marcy and Snake would end up hooking up and that would lead to the image that we saw at the beginning of this movie, one that has Snake dead and Pete standing over his wife, ready to kill her. But no — spoilers on — it’s even crazier. PJ had been having issues with Snake, as he pulled him off the basketball court after seeing how he treated other kids, but maybe that past rape in jail made Snake’s mind snap. Because one day, on a day when Marcy is at her highest because she just learned that her husband is about to work with the famous Bishop Harris (Grover McCants) from Faith and Truth Ministries, she comes home to find Snake’s hand down the pants of her son.

Instead of killing him, she realizes that that would cost the church the money it needs to get started. She makes Brian pay $5,000 a month to her, keep funding Purposeful Ministries and stay away from PJ. And then she makes PJ promise to never tell his father that any of this happened. Man, this movie has gone from basic drama to sheer insanity and that’s why I keep watching Tubi Originals.

The problems start piling up, as PJ keeps flipping out and refuses to play basketball. Marcy starts shopping well beyond the means of Pete, who doesn’t care about clothing or looks. And Pete gets robbed by someone outside the church and beaten.

Pete begins to suspect that his wife is sleeping with Snake, as he finds checks from him to her that she claims are from her 401K. And then Snake buys him a gun after the attack outside the church, which just puts the weapon he needs into his hand. After a day of playing with PJ, he finds himself back at the church and catches his wife and Snake arguing about the new church van that he claims the money was for.

That’s when Pastor Pete busts in with a gun and starts speaking the truth to everyone, screaming at his wife about how everything has been a lie. As he puts a gun in his face, he learns that PJ is not his son and Brian ins the father, which…wow, I did not see coming. This movie brings the insanity and the big time acting!

God Forgives, I Don’t is the kind of movie where a child can gun down his own father with a Colt 45 that has no recoil. In Corinthians‬ ‭10:13, it is written “No temptation has overtaken you, except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”*

Pastor Pete is finding out just how true that is.

*I wrote that quote before I saw that the movie has it in the credits!

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Partridge Inn in Augusta, Georgia is listed as a three-star hotel online. Part of the Curio Collection by Hilton, it’s one of the only hotels in Georgia to be a member of Historic Hotels of America and is the closest golf course to the famous Augusta National Golf Course. Built in 1890 as a modest two-story private residence, it was converted to an inn in 1910. In 1978, it was saved from demolition and reopened in 1987, then was renovated again in 2014.

As for the flooded basement in this movie, that’s actually the Family Y of Greater Augusta.

In Five Star Murder, the Patridge Inn is the five-star Libertine Grand Hotel, where we first meet some strange guests: Caroline (Damaris Lewis), who received a letter telling her who her father is and plans on flying to Spain the very next day; Harold (Ted Ferguson) and Joan Steele (Jill Jane Clements), an argumentative older couple; influencer Rose (Kimberly Blake) and her boyfriend Dylan (Darrell Snedeger), who are celebrating their one week anniversary and homeless by choice Quinn (Quinn Bozza), who just sold his shoes for some coffee.

Checking them in are the head of the hotel, Brianna (Rachel G. Whittle) and her assisted Marcos (Adam Ignacio). These guests would be bad enough if it wasn’t for the major storm coming in. As the hotel is buffeted by wind and heavy rains, everyone is evacuated, except for the above guests — who refuse to leave — and the two staff members.

And then the murders start.

The Libertine Grand Hotel was built by Louis Laurent, a genius who was inspired by “D’où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?” (“Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?”), a painting by Paul Gauguin. Filled with themes such as the “contrast between enlightenment and superstitious, irrational, even barbaric traditions” and the cycle of birth and death, as well as what Gauguin called “The Beyond” — alert Fulci — this was a controversial work that upset people because of how obscure it was.

According to Vanity Fair, “When Gauguin embarked on this, his climactic work, in 1897, he was in pathetic shape, suffering from syphilis and such a serious case of suppurating eczema that the locals took him for a leper. This once prosperous part-Peruvian Parisian had ended up a penniless outcast; worse, his eyesight was beginning to fail. After being unable to paint for six months, he vowed to commit suicide. Before doing so, however, Gauguin was determined to create one last masterwork, into which, as he said, “I wanted to put … all my energy.””

The film says that he tried to kill himself after the painting, which is true. Or was he trying to get attention? As that same article says, “After finishing Where Do We Come From?, Gauguin decided to carry out his vow to kill himself. He claimed to have climbed up into the mountains, taken a huge dose of arsenic, and lain down to die in the hope that his body would be devoured by ants. Supposedly, the arsenic didn’t work; more likely, he never took any.”

As the film starts, Laurent takes arsenic in front of that painting — claimed to be the actual painting — and dies. That’s when we discover that people come to the hotel in the hopes of solving the puzzle box that its creator has made, hiding his fortune inside the penthouse.

Everyone is connected. Rose is Laurent’s niece, who wanted to get away from his rich shadow. Dylan, Quinn, Harold and Joan are all hunters. Brianna was dating Laurent and lost her marriage as a result. Even the heroine of the film, Caroline, ends up being the man’s daughter.

Directed by Jose Montesinos (The Soulmate Search, 5 Headed Shark Attack) and written by Chris Retts (Wade In the Water), Five Star Murder sets up a great storytelling engine and way of getting all of these characters into one place and then killing them off, one by one. It’s pretty entertaining and not just for a Tubi original.

You can watch this on Tubi.

First, outside of some names, this is not the H.P. Lovecraft novel or the Full Moon movie The Lurking Fear*. Instead, it’s the tale of a small town that has lured in a reality show to see the Martense, a therapy hospital that was ground zero for a tortured-filled existence for the mentally ill and criminally insane.

As the crew films Andrew Seville (Robert Davi), he reveals the past of the Martense, which was built by Dr. Oliver Martense, who had heterochromia iridium, which gave him two different colored eyes. He believed that bodily fluids and their magnetic properties could be used to heal people from their mental illnesses. Some would have called the way he treated his patients barbaric, however.

Now, as the crew enters the closed-down asylum, they’re about to deal not only with how frightening the place is but the fact that it may contain actual demons.

As the reality crew and their Hollywood big-shot director sit outside, Officer Hansen (Michael Madsen) comes to kick them out. However, they have permission to be there from his boss, Sheriff Nassar (Christopher Mormando), who arrives there with Officer Quade (Gianni Capaldi). The crew — which includes Mike (Jonathan Camp), Marlene (Laticia Rolle), Molly (Skye Stracke) and Mike’s fiancee Crystal (Elisabetta Fantone) — gets trapped inside the asylum with Seville, who may not be the most trustworthy person.

Directed and written by Darren Dalton (who was in Red Dawn and The Outsiders before becoming a director; he’s also written The Day That Time Forgot and The Day the Earth Stopped) and Robert Killings (who wrote the movie American Fright Fest and appears in this movie as David), The Lurking Fear sets up a lot of suspense as to what’s happening that gets revealed by its closed captioning, as it says “monster makes noises” which let me know that hey — there are monsters and people haven’t lost their minds.

Some of those monsters are all little kids with different colored eyes, so that means that Dr. Oliver Martense was sleeping with his patients and has created an entire family inside this place that has lived since the patients went insane and ate everyone. Seville is also behind all of it, orchestrating the deaths of the crew. Davi is having the time of his life making this movie, devouring the scenery and asking for seconds.

And then Madsen takes over for him because they were brothers! What!?! This also ends with Crystal watching babies be born and their umbilical cords get bitten as everything gets so dark that we don’t know if we’re watching the strange mutant kids eating afterbirth or the baby. Or the mother? Man, this went all art movie at the end and super slow motion, which doesn’t match the rest of the film, but hey, Madsen isn’t even listed on the movie’s IMDB, so who can say with this thing? It feels like it has something to say about money, small towns, and Hollywood, but it eventually ends. That’s a bold choice.

*The Lovecraft story also inspired Bleeders.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Radu (Anders Hove) and director and writer Ted Nicolaou are back in the fifth movie in the Subspecies series along with Subspecies, Bloodstone: Subspecies II, Bloodlust: Subspecies III and Subspecies 4: Bloodstorm. Have you ever wondered how Radu went from a warrior in the Crusades, battling for the Church, to a blood-obsessed monster? Wonder no more!

Radu was stolen by crusaders on the night of his birth from a demon mother and vampire father, trained by a brotherhood of monks to kill for the Church until he finds his way to the castle of the vampire Vladislas (Kevin Sprita, who was Mel in the second and third films; he’s taking over for Angus Scrimm; if you didn’t know, Vladislas is also the father of Radu), wielding the Sword of Laertes and in search of the Bloodstone.

If you’re a fan of this series — and I am! — this will give you the fan service you crave. Like having Denice Duff, the heroine Michelle from the second movie, is the female vampire Helena who turns Radu and who will create his enemy Stefan. Or Ash (Marko Filipovic) from the side sequel Vampire Journals is showing up!

This is only 80 minutes, and it’s been two decades since we’ve had a new Subspecies. It feels like nearly too many ideas and too much for one film, which leads me to hope that this isn’t the end of the story.

Subspecies V: Bloodrise gives me hope for Full Moon, as it looks gorgeous thanks to its Serbian setting and the cinematography of Vladimir Ilic, who also shot the Robert Davi movie My Son Hunter.  Dare I dream that someday there will be a new Trancers or a big-budget Puppet Master?

You can buy this from MVD or watch it on Tubi.