SCREAM 7 (2026) ***

Ghost Face(s) is on the loose once again.  This time they come after not only the O.G. Final Girl of the series, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) but her teenage daughter Tatum (Isabel May) as well.  Making it even harder to unmask the killers is the fact that they hide their identities behind AI technology. 

It took a while for me to get around to seeing Scream 7.  The early reviews were toxic, which was surprising, especially considering the fact that they brought Neve back to the franchise.  Maybe it was the low expectations, but I thought this was one of the best entries in the series. 

Maybe the hate was centered around the killers’ use of AI.  I know it’s low hanging fruit, but I thought it was implemented well enough.  I mean Ghost Face has always hidden behind a voice modulator.  Hiding his face behind AI that alters his appearance on Face Time calls just feels like the next step in the technological order. 

Having original screenwriter Kevin Williamson back to not only co-write the script, but direct was a no-brainer.  I’m actually surprised it took them so long to bring him back to the franchise.  He does a fine job behind the camera and delivers some solid suspense sequences.  The opening set piece (set at the original Scream house, which has been retrofitted into an Airbnb) gets the movie off to a strong start.  We also get fun stalk and slash scenes in a theater, behind a wall, and in a tavern.  Williamson also ups the gore too and gives us at least one applause worthy death that plays like a riff on the famous kill from My Bloody Valentine. 

The thing that makes the film work is that Sidney is once again front and center where she belongs.  It’s a nice change of pace from all that “passing the torch” crap they have been trying to sell us for the past few entries.  Just give her a daughter who’s a chip of the old block and have them kick Ghost Face’s butt together.  Williamson keeps it simple and the results are damned entertaining, especially for a seventh entry in a long running slasher series. 

OBLIVION (1994) ***

Longtime Incredible Hulk scribe Peter David wrote this low budget Sci-Fi western for Full Moon.  It’s got a great cast, some genuine laughs, and moves at a breezy pace.  It’s definitely one of the company’s better mid-'90s efforts. 

Andrew Divoff is Redeye, a snake-faced outlaw who takes over the titular futuristic Wild West town and kills the sheriff.  His son Zack (Richard Joseph Paul) comes to town, but since he’s an empath, he refuses to get involved.  Once Redeye and his gang take the pretty Miss Mattie (Jackie Swanson) hostage, Zach sets aside his nonviolent ways to kick some alien ass. 

Directed by Sam (Elvira’s Haunted Hills) Irvin, Oblivion is a rip-roaring good time.  The only fault I could find with his direction was that he goes a bit overboard with the slow-motion in some scenes.   It would’ve been different if he was doing a homage to Spaghetti Westerns or something, but it just seems like a way to draw out the action.  However, that’s just a minor drawback, all things considered. 

David’s script isn’t exactly “smart” but it is pretty clever.  I enjoyed the “futuristic” touches like a Wild West town having an ATM and the cowboys playing handheld video poker.  The funniest scene is when a somber funeral is interrupted by a bingo game in the next room.  The fun giant scorpion stop motion monsters by David Allen are cool too. 

The leads aren’t as good as the supporting cast but that’s perfectly acceptable, especially when everyone seems to be having a ball. Julie Newmar is a hoot as Miss Kitty, the madam of a brothel who still purrs like she’s playing Catwoman.  We also have Carel (Twin Peaks) Struycken as a psychic undertaker, Musetta Vander (who kind of resembles a Great Value Ornella Muti) as Divoff’s whip wielding dominatrix cowgirl sidekick, Meg Foster as a cyborg deputy, Star Trek’s George Takei as the town drunk, and Isaac Hayes as a trader. 

David’s script has plenty of solid one-liners too. One of my favorites came when Divoff told his slow-witted henchman, “I have hemorrhoids smarter than you!”  It’s Takei who gets the best line in the scene where he gets drunk on Jim Beam and says, “Jim, beam me up!”

AKA:  Aliens and Desperados.  AKA:  Alien Desperados.  AKA:  Welcome to Oblivion. 

ULTRAMAN: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS (1987) **

Hanna-Barbera teamed up with Tsuburaya Productions for this cartoon adaptation of the beloved Japanese superhero Ultraman for American audiences.  It’s kind of ho-hum, and it suffers from some needlessly Americanized aspects.  Still, Ultraman completists will want to check it out.

Three stunt pilots have a near death experience and are saved by aliens who fuse with their bodies to make them Ultramen.  Meanwhile, monsters from a distant nebula fall to Earth hidden inside of asteroids.  The pilots eventually embrace their new powers by doing battle with a plant monster in New Orleans, a robotic lizard in San Francisco, a clumsy dinosaur in Utah, and finally a monster that grows at an exponential rate in New York. 

Even though the film is from Hanna-Barbera, the animation itself looks closer to a typical Japanese anime.  It is kind of neat seeing the Japanese mythology tweaked for US audiences, as is the way they make use of American iconography.  (Ultraman bases are hidden inside of golf courses and Mount Rushmore.)  However, the Americanization takes away some of the uniquely Japanese aspects of the source material and as a consequence, it feels more like a watered-down imitation.  In an effort to make something more accessible, the producers have wound up making it more generic. 

The brash pilots (voiced by Michael Lembeck, Chad Everett, and Adrienne Barbeau) aren’t really endearing (I think Top Gun was a major influence here) and their comic relief robot companions are pretty annoying too.  Also, even though this was intended as a feature length standalone movie, it still feels like a bunch of episodes strung together, thanks to the fractured narrative.  That said, Ultraman:  The Adventure Begins is essentially a goofy cartoon meant for kids and maybe a dude in his forties shouldn’t be over-analyzing every little detail of it. 

AKA:  Ultraman:  USA.

ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS: BLOOD OF THE LEOPARD (1993) *** ½

Lin Chung (Tony Ka Fai Leung) is a benevolent soldier and Kung Fu expert.  His beautiful wife (Joey Wang) catches the eye of a sleazy lowlife who also happens to be the pampered son of a high ranking general.  Meanwhile, Lin Chung befriends an obnoxious but knowledgeable Kung Fu monk named Ru (Elvis Tsui) and the pair becomes inseparable.  After Chung is framed for an attempted assassination, he is punished and sent to the front line of battle.  While he is away, his wife is killed by her stalker.  Naturally, Chung and Ru go out for revenge. 

Based on the Chinese classic, The Water Margin (which had been filmed many times before), this ‘90s version of the historical Kung Fu epic has a little something for everybody.  There’s romance, comedy, drama, and of course, lots of action.  The various sword fights and Kung Fu battles are handled with a lot of pizzazz and feature some impressive and frenetic wirework.  We even get a couple of brief (but choice) gory moments as there is at least one memorable beheading scene and one semi-comic bit in which a guy is cut in half lengthwise. 

The dynamic between Ru, Ching, and his wife is what sets All Men are Brothers apart from similar action epics of the era.  There's a funny scene where the monk spends the night at our hero’s house and has a quiet Kung Fu duel with his host, so they won’t wake up his wife.  Her reactions aren’t too different from a wife who has to put up with her husband and his best drinking buddy.  Except instead of pounding cans of Budweiser, these guys just Kung Fu one another at all hours of the night.  Tsui gets some solid laughs as Ru and together with Leung, they make an amusing team.  Their camaraderie and chemistry helps make this one a real winner. 

AKA:  The Water Margin:  The True Colors of Heroes.  AKA:  The True Colors of a Hero.  AKA:  Waterside Story:  Heroic Character. 

THE LATE LATE LATE SHOW (199?) **

The Late Late Late Show is one of the lesser Something Weird compilations.  It’s mostly an assemblage of trailers for Eurospy movies (Danger in the Middle East, To Catch a Spy, Agent of Doom), but it’s padded out with assorted odds and ends from various other genres.  There are ads for Westerns (The Fury of the Apaches, Lost Treasure of the Aztecs, Duel of Fire), Viking flicks (King of the Vikings), war pictures (Escape from Saigon), jungle movies (Prisoners of the Jungle), sword and sandal epics (Messalina, Hercules of the Desert), and swashbucklers (Prisoner of the Iron Mask, Musketeers of the Sea).   

It ends with a short called The Gentleman in Room 6, which is told entirely in first person POV.  The gimmick is used to conceal the main character’s identity until the last shot, but you’ll probably figure out who it is long before then.

I certainly give it points for finding trailers for so many rare films.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve heard of, let alone seen any of the titles featured in this collection.  While I can’t say it’s great, it’s still worth a look, if only because there are more trailers for obscure movies here than you can shake a stick at.  I will say that “obscure” doesn’t necessarily translate into “entertaining”.  Most of the trailers are tepid at best, so fans of more exploitative fare might want to skip this one.  Some previews are heavily padded with publicity stills like Duel of Fire and Operation Gold Ingot.  Also, the biggest names here are Fernando Lamas, Eddie Constantine (who appears most frequently), and Aldo Ray, which adds to the obscure vibes. 

Only you know for sure if you can stand an hour or so of ho-hum espionage trailers.  The problem is that there is a sameness to many of the trailers (including the use of similar fonts and the same announcer’s voice frequently reappearing), which makes the hour-long running time feel a bit longer.  If, however, you do have a very particular itch to scratch, then The Late Late Late Show is just the salve you’re looking for. 

The complete trailer list is as follows:  The Fury of the Apaches, Danger in the Middle East, To Catch a Spy, Agent of Doom, M.M.M. 83, X-Ray of a Killer, Lost Treasure of the Aztecs, Eyes of the Sahara, Dangerous Agent, King of the Vikings, Duel of Fire, Walls of Fear, Stranger from Hong-Kong, Killer Spy, Secret File 1413, Operation Gold Ingot, Escape from Saigon, Headlines of Destruction, The Black Monocle, Death Pays in Dollars, Sergeant X of the Foreign Legion, Nest of Spies, Prisoners of the Jungle, Messalina, Hercules of the Desert, Sea Fighters, Destination Fury, Prisoner of the Iron Mask, Musketeers of the Sea, and The Gentleman in Room 6. 

ART OF WAR (1978) **

A guy moseys into town and befriends two fugitives.  When a slaver murders their favorite street vendor in cold blood, they team up with the cook’s son to get revenge.  Adding to the urgency of the situation is the fact that our hero’s fiancée has also been kidnapped by the slaver. 

The comedy portions of Art of War are brutally unfunny and are often a chore to get through.  In an especially unbelievable scene, one of the comic relief sidekicks plays a trick on our hero and pisses on his head.  This of course makes them best friends.  What the actual fuck.  In most Kung Fu movies that would normally get the guy a first-rate ass-kicking, but here it’s a heartwarming scene of male bonding. 

The fight scenes are… fine.  They wouldn’t make or break the movie one way or the other anyway.  They certainly would’ve played better without all the comedy sound effects.  In fact, the fights feel secondary to all the comic relief shenanigans.  (The guys all have goofy names like Plum Flower, Crazy Sabre, and Wild Chicken, if that gives you an idea of what we’re dealing with here.)  Plus, the subtitles on the copy I saw were small, blurry, and hard to read (especially when they appear on top of a white background), which didn’t help matters at all. 

Still, I have a rule, and that’s if a movie can show me something I’ve never seen before, I can’t judge it too harshly.  Art of War has at least one jaw-dropping scene that’s worthy of praise.  I’m talking about the part where the street vendor is killed.  The villain takes a bite of chicken and finds a bone in it.  Disgusted, he spits the bone out and it impales the guy in the middle of the forehead, killing him instantly.  The rest of the flick ain’t so hot, but that scene is finger-licking good. 

AKA:  Kung Fu Means Fists, Strikes and Swords.

LAST REVENGE OF THE DRAGON (1978) **

A brash Kung Fu fighter can’t wait to step in the ring with the champ (Bolo Yeung), so he mops the floor with him at the press conference for everyone to see.  The embarrassed promoter, who happens to be a feared underworld figure, retaliates by having the fighter’s brother severely beaten.  This sets off a chain of increasingly violent reprisals between the two families.  The families eventually decide to settle the matter with an old school karate match. 

Last Revenge of the Dragon suffers from way too much soap opera drama with our hero’s family.  The brother character alone has one too many subplots as he has a problematic drug habit AND a white girlfriend his family doesn’t approve of.  Either of these subplots would’ve sufficed.  Having both just slows things down.  (If it was the main character who had all that drama going on, I might’ve felt differently.)  On the plus side, the scene where the brother tries to detox from weed is some Reefer Madness type shit. 

It’s a shame the film is overburdened with so much family drama because the fights themselves are pretty decent.  (I liked the scene where the hero’s brother in-law grabs a bat to avenge his disgraced daughter.)  I just don’t think the plot with two rival families lent itself to the Kung Fu genre.  It probably would’ve worked better as a straight gangster picture.  It’s especially a shame that Bolo disappears so early into the film because he’s really the only one in the cast that has an intimidating presence.  

For everything the movie does right, it has at least one lumbering subplot with the family that gets in the way.  The finale where our hero rides his motorcycle into the rival family’s dojo is admittedly cool.  I just wish we didn’t have to sit through the bullshit with his siblings’ out of control gambling, drug addiction, reckless partying, relationship woes, parenting problems, etc. to get to it. 

AKA:  The Big Family.  AKA:  The Godfather’s Kung Fu Family.  AKA:  Wu Tang Gambinos.  AKA:  Last Challenge of the Dragon.