Directed by Garo Setian (Automation) and written by Joe Knetter (Pretty Boy), this film is may not have the budget of even one Disney+ series episode, but hey, do any of those have souls being extracted so bodies can live beyond death? And do any of them have Michael Pare in them?

Pare is Kip Corman, an adventurer who travels the universe with his daughter Taylor (Sarah French). They meet a scientist Jackie (Anahit Setia) on space station Stella Starr* and bring her aboard. But she’s being tracked by Dykstra** (Olivier Gruner) and his crew of lunatics because she knows how to bring the dead back to life. Kip is also being chased by Ezekiel (Hunter Setian), the son of Elnora (Sadie Katz) that wants him dead. After all, he stole the last coin she has from her dead sister.

This has some great looking monsters, inexpensive appearing starship interiors and plenty of cheap thrills. If I saw this when I was nine, you have no idea how many Kip Corman comic books I would have drawn in my notebook. Sure, it has no real budget to speak of. Who cares? Just suit up, strap in and kick it into hyperspace.

*Starcrash reference and you can imagine how happy this made me.

**Ding! Star Wars reference.

You can see Space Wars in the following theaters:

April 21-27: Lumiere Cinema, Beverly Hills, CA (Q&A on first night) Camelot Theatres, Palm Springs, CA
April 22: The Frida Cinema, Santa Ana, CA (Q&A with cast and crew)
April 28-May 3: Galaxy Theatres Boulevard Mall, Las Vegas, NV
April 28 & 29: Moonlite Drive-in, West Wyoming, PA (double bill w/ ESCAPE FROM DEATH BLOCK 13)
April 30: Miami International Science Fiction Film Festival, Miami, FL May 5 & 6: The Fallon Theatre, Fallon, NV

It will be available wherever you watch movies on demand on May 2 from Uncork’d Entertainment.

An aspiring actress named Clara Edwards (Savannah Lee Smith, Gossip Girl) has just arrived from Texas — to quote Poison, “She stepped off the bus out into the city streets. Just a small town girl with her whole life packed in a suitcase by her feet. But somehow the lights didn’t shine as bright as they did on her mama’s TV screen,” but I digress — and after an executive tries to casting couch her, she thinks about leaving town. But when she gets invited to a murder mystery party attended by the upper elite of entertainment, she thinks there’s a chance she can make it. There’s only one problem: the murder is real and she’s blamed for it.

Directed by Jake Helgren (his career is a mix of holiday and horror, for every A Christmas to Treasure there’s a Fatal Fandom, a Welcome to the Christmas Family Reunion to a Bad Connection) and written by Ellen Huggins (who also wrote the Tubi originals Good Wife’s Guide to Murder and The Ex Obsession), Murder at the Murder Mystery Party — a giallo title with a giallo-esque poster, too — finds Clara struggling to win any auditions and living with her friend and roommate, writer Abril Hernandez (Catherine Toribio).

One day on set, she sees Jade Jensen (Gracie Gilliam, Disney’s Teen Beach movies), an actress she grew up with in Victoria, Texas — home of Stone Cold — back when she went by the name Becky Sue Baskin. Jade/Becky Sue introduces Clare to Jimmy G (Bret Lada) who totally involves her in a #MeToo moment.

Meanwhile, Clare and Abril do some research on something overheard between Jade and Jimmy G: The Party. It’s a VIP celebrity event where everyone is assigned a character for — here comes the title — a murder mystery. Every year, there’s a new theme in a new location. So Clare steals a dress, sneaks in as one of the catering crew and we have a movie.

She ends up as part of the Clue-like players of this game as Miss Pink, along with the Silver Bandit, who is Kai Cliff (Trent Culkin) who is just out of rehab; Mister Blue, who is aging action star Davis Fordham (Jason Brooks, Peter Blake from Days of Our Lives); the Red Duke is reality star turned soap opera star Chase Osman (Samer Salem) and Lady Lavender who is Broadway actress on the skids Edie Parson (Emily Goss). And, of course, the Green Queen, who is her old frenemy Jade.

They’re all led by Head Gamemaker (Claudia Christian, Commander Susan Ivanova on Babylon 5) as part of the dark and secret show — well, gameshow– that is watched via hidden cameras. Each character is given a greeting card explaining their role for the evening. Well, before you know it, Jade is dead and everyone contributed to her murder. Except that, well, she’s really dead.

Because everyone has to stay in character at all times, they keep up with the game, as studio heads, agents and producers are all watching and waiting. The winner will get to meet them and either improve their career or start it off in the best way possible. The players go from room to room, some of which are death traps, but fame does seem so elusive and so close at hand.

This is just as much an escape room as is it Clue — or Cluedo as it’s known everywhere else — and not every player is going to make it to the end of the game. I mean, are you ready for a totally intense cake eating scene? You’ll know what I mean when you get to it.

What I love the most about this movie is how it plays with the occult and conspiracy dynamics within the heart of the dream factory and proves that even when one tries to remain above this secret game, it’s so much easier to become part of it. The same bodies found in a “plane crash” once stepped over another set of bodies before; The Party will still be played next year with an entirely different round of hopefuls and now the survivors have ascended into becoming the new elite. For now.

This is definitely one of the better Tubi originals, told with sass and style, filled with murder and mystery.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Brittany Murphy (Freeway, Drive, Clueless, Cherry Falls, Don’t Say a Word) is the very definition of gone before her time, an actress who died at the age 32 in a very mysterious way. 2009 was a time of actresses being torn apart by tabloids and TMZ and Murphy was no different. But so many years afterward, the public is still fascinated by her tragic life.

HBO did What Happened, Britney Murphy? last year and if you haven’t had enough, this doc — hey Stacey Dash shows up — will tell you everything you need to know and more. But I mean, when you have a gorgeous star flame out and also get involved with a con artist named Simon Monjack who would also soon die — but not before they went everywhere with her mother Sharon, who posed for nearly a couples photo with Monjack after her daughter passed away — you can see why people want to know more.

Would Murphy have come back in the #MeToo era, fighting back at the producers who laughed that she wasn’t f**kable? I’d like to think so. I wish the intervention her friends tried before her marriage worked. But this is more than a documentary and more of a warning to those with low self-esteem. And as always, avoid Svenglais who want to be your manager, agent and make-up person at all costs.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Renee (Tammin Sursok, Tubi original Love and Penguins and the upcoming sequel You, Me and the Penguins) keeps arguing with her daughter Cherie (Monroe Cline, Tubi original Teardrop) about working harder in cheerleading and getting a scholarship. She ends up pushing her away and when Cherie moves into her father’s house, Renee decides that she should probably get accepted on a high school cheering team and getting that scholarship for her daughter, despite being at the very least thirty.

Oh man — Tubi is bringing it.

Director Traci Hays told Fangoria, “I was drawn to this campy, over-the-top, self-aware, dark comedy because of its twists and turns that follow a flawed and fierce female lead with something to prove. It’s a nostalgic classic high school tale reminiscent of films like Heathers, Mean Girls, The Breakfast Club, and Clueless.”

You had me for a while there, Traci.

Anyways, between clashing with the assistant principal (Doug Dawsom), the captain of the team (Aliyah J. Vasquez) and teacher Mrs. Jenkins (Rhyn McLemore), as well as getting all heated up over a young man named Ramsey (John Paul Kakos) who teaches the ways of love, even getting caught by her friend Lana (Courtney James Clark), Renne takes over the school through her cheering powers and, well, straight up drug planting and murder.

Hilariously, after all that, Coach Forrest (Sasha Hatfield) still wants to give her a scholarship.

This movie claims to be based on a true story, which one assumes would be the case of Wendy Brown, a 33-year-old mother who took her 15-year-old daughter’s place on her cheer team. When her daughter enrolled in a school in Nevada, Brown went to Ashwaubenon High School in her place, all with the goal of making up for the things she never did in her life, like earning a high school diploma and being a cheerleader.

This movie should have pushed for even more craziness, but as it is, I had a lot of fun watching it. The budget is obviously low, but the concept is high, even if it’s based, as mentioned above, on a story that is incredibly true.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I am of the age — let’s just call it old — where I had no idea who Vanessa Hudgens is. So to those of you reading this wondering the same thing, she debuted in the movie Thirteen before becoming famous as Gabriella Montez in the High School Musical series and recorded two albums in the 00s, V and Identified. She was also in Sucker Punch, Spring Breakers and a Netflix movie series called The Princess Switch. She also dated Zac Effron and Austin Butler. Now, I wish I hadn’t gone too deep into her private life, as I learned she attends the controversial Hillsong Church and at the start of the pandemic, she posted on Instagram that it was inevitable that people would die from the COVID-19 pandemic in a very oh well kind of way. You could say, well, she’s young, but she was 32 when she did that.

Anyways…

Let me go into Dead Hot with an open mind.

You may read the description “After a ghost hunt gone wrong, students of witchcraft Vanessa Hudgens and GG Magree travel to Salem, Massachusetts to seek out proper mentorship from experts in witchcraft” and think you’re about to see perhaps a horror movie. After all, it has the horror category listed on Tubi.

Nope. This is, instead according to the PR for it, “The Craft meets The Simple Life.”

They also say that it’s an “intimate journey into the supernatural realm” and a “coming-of-age story that explores identity, feminine power and sisterhood.”

Um, sure. I guess.

Hudgens is joined by Australian electronic music producer, DJ and singer GG Magree (who I learned from Twitter did get COVID-19 while touring and luckily for her best friend was not one of the people who inevitably died). Her website says that she delivers “a heavy dose of what can only be characterized as relentless club anthems” and the “best way to experience GG Magree is live.” She also said on Twitter, “Words don’t do it justice to how personal the whole filming experience was, capturing some of the deepest darkest elements in my own personal life. I was lucky enough to pop my executive producer cherry &score the movie.”

Um, sure. I guess.

According to Variety, “Hudgens and Magree are both self-taught students of witchcraft who have been experimenting and connecting with the spirit world for most of their lives. During the pandemic, they spent their quarantine together watching shows about the afterlife, and exploring how ghost hunters, mediums and witches engaged with the spiritual world.”

What follows is what seems like episodic TV that didn’t get bought by anyone else and jammed into a Tubi show that people like me will watch because, as you know from this site, I will watch anything the channel plays.

I don’t want to be a gatekeeper that laughs at these girls playing with spirit boards — I mean, far be it from me to make fun of Ouija, seeing as how I’ve watched hundreds of movies with spirit boards for this list I keep adding to — and the other things tourists do when they spend a few days in Salem, as well as say words that mean nothing like “hot,” “magical” and “spiritual.”

As we continue to live in the never-ending Satanic panic — trust me, it never ended, it just switched targets and is now called Q-Anon — it makes me a little happy that people will make shows about stuff like this. I was laughing like an absolute maniac when Vanessa repeatedly asked Siri what electromagnetic frequencies are. and Siri couldn’t come up with an answer and she lost her mind and called her phone a slut. There’s also night vision wine drinking and a long cookie-making scene where you can tell that neither of these girls has ever made cookies without the supervision of much older adult. And oh yeah — GG’s grandmother was choked to death and this has a very gravitas scene where she explains it, as well as a massive freakout later where she feels a spirit touch he and then remembers that Tawny Kitaen nearly died in Witchboard.

They made three of those movies — yes, I have seen Witchboard 2: The Devils Doorway and Witchboard III: The Possession more than twice — and if they made more Dead Hot I would watch every single episode. I really thought that Vanessa and GG were going to realize that their sisterhood meant that they were meant to be together, but Vanessa was just wine drunk and in the morning GG was like, “Oh me too, sister, that’s hot,” but the camera catches one tear slide ever so slowly down her face because she was this close to nirvana, but as well all know from Paul Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, there was a way to hell, even from the gate of heaven.

Also: I only know that quote because it’s in a Danzig video.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Following a tragic accident in 1977, the three Winters siblings — Vera (Elena Ontiveros), Wes (Brandon McLemore) and Ethan (Jackson Lee Turner) — move into the strange home that they’ve just inherited. At this point, you understand what’s going to happen: dark secrets, odd happenings and total doom.

Directed and written by Brendan McLemore, the Winters family tries to pass off all the strangeness as the result of their collective trauma. But you know that there’s no way that that’s true. But man, I saw the Amazing Kreskin do that fingers touching table moving thing all the while that he told us that there’s no such thing as ghosts.

You know what I’ve learned about being in a haunted house? One: get out. Two: Don’t bother with a seance. Three: If you find a ring and someone tells you that it’s haunted, don’t wear it.

I do love that the family finds an antique dealer named Alfred (Philip Neil Parker) who conveniently has a wife named Jackie (Angela Moore) who just so happens to be a parapsychologist. That’s super convenient and I think an incredible business model. Or a scam where the husband tells you everything is haunted and you have to hire his wife to take away the ghosts or sell them the valuables for a loss.