TUBI CONTINUED… NIGHT OF THE AXE (2022) ***

A deranged axe murderer kills two orderlies and escapes from the nuthouse.  He cuts two holes in a pillowcase, drapes it over his head, and sets out to chop up a bunch of locals with his trusty axe.  The killer eventually sets his sights on a house party where a bunch of friends are holding a makeshift high school reunion. 

Night of the Axe had a retro ‘80s slasher vibe that I really dug.  From the Halloween-esque backstory of the killer to his Friday the 13th Part 2-inspired look.  From the POV stalking scenes to the bloody font used in the credits.  It all shows writer/director Shawn Wright really has the genre down pat.  This is an especially impressive feat considering this was Wright’s feature debut.  

Wright embraces the cliches of the genre at every turn.  The dumb characters smoke pot and have premarital sex, which leads to some gratuitous (and welcome) T & A (although I don’t think the actresses in the ‘80s had clit piercings).  And at a mere hour, the film never wears out its welcome.  I guess you could criticize Wright for not trying to bring anything new to the table, but that’s not such a big deal when he efficiently checks all the boxes you’d expect from an ‘80s slasher.  I mean you don’t have to hit it out of the park every time at bat.  Sometimes, a clean ground-rule double gets the job done, especially when you only have an hour to kill.  

I can’t quite tell if the gore effects were bad on purpose, or just plain bad.  (The guy who gets his arm chopped off is clearly just sticking his elbow out of his T-shirt.)  Either way, it kind of works as it ultimately adds to the film’s low-fi charm.  (Many kill scenes involve the axe resting gently on the actors’ skin, which is amusing.)  Besides, any movie that features a News Break that interrupts a television showing of The Beast of Yucca Flats is OK by me.

TUBI CONTINUED… DEMON PREDATOR (2022) *

In the future, an AI-enhanced cyborg becomes self-aware and escapes from a laboratory.  A couple on a nature hike have the misfortune of running into the rogue robot, who kills them.  Eventually, a SWAT team is sent out to take down the angry android once and for all.  

Although Demon Predator is only forty-seven minutes long, this Dustin (Amityville in the Hood) Ferguson-directed dreck still feels heavily padded.  There’s a longwinded Star Wars-inspired opening crawl, a slow-moving credits sequence, never-ending driving scenes, and some nauseating Found Footage segments of the couple traipsing through the desert.  All that just adds up to a whole lot of nothing.  

The robot is the best thing about the movie, which isn’t saying a whole lot.  Sure, the stop-motion effects that bring it to life are kind of crappy, but I’d rather watch a toy robot moving around via stop-motion animation than some shoddy CGI creation any day.  It’s a shame too, because the early scene where it skedaddles out of the lab had promise.  

However, all hope that this was going to be a good flick was shattered once things switched over to the Found Footage format.  The long scenes of the couple wandering around the middle of nowhere often feel like some YouTuber’s nature hike video that inexplicably got spliced into the movie.  It’s like someone trying to pass their vacation videos off as a sci-fi action thriller.  The picture sinks even further downhill when it stops on a dime for an extended, cheap-looking, and dull News Report segment where a reporter interviews a scientist at length about the rampaging robot.  

Ferguson himself must’ve gotten bored with all this shit as he finally switches gears in the last ten minutes and tries to make it look like an actual movie.  (Which is to say it’s a lame, no-budget Predator rip-off.)  By then, it’s too little too late.  We’ve been jerked around so much that by the time the climax comes around, we would gladly accept ANY resolution as long as it meant the flick was over.

TUBI CONTINUED… SEXUAL INADEQUACIES (1970) ** ½

The title of this “White Coater” skin flick (which is done in the style of Danish sex documentaries but is really just a crass Italian exploitation film) is a bit misleading as it’s not about impotency or erectile dysfunction.  Rather, it’s a lurid expose on sexual deviation and perversion.  In fact, “Sexual Deviation and Perversion” would’ve made for a much more accurate (and better) title.

An on-screen narrator tells us that during puberty, masturbation is perfectly normal, that is, unless it is done to excess.  Then it can lead to… dunh… dunh… DUH!  Sexual deviation and perversion!  Then, we move on to several different vignettes that focus on said deviations and perversions.

The first sequence is about a nymphomaniac who tries to curb her urges by taking a cold shower before finally succumbing to her desires.  The next section is on voyeurism.  Here, we see a series of men sneaking a peek at women getting undressed.  Conversely, we also see some exhibitionists, one of whom is a pervert who exposes himself to young girls.  It’s then suggested that sadists and masochists are a product of childhood trauma.  Oh, and the views on homosexuality are hilariously wrongheaded and outdated.  We also get a funny scene where a couple has sex under laboratory conditions.  

Naturally, nearly all the so-called clinical information that is portrayed here is hilariously outdated or just plain wrong.  That’s sort of what makes it amusing though.  Unfortunately, the film was made with a conservative attitude and looks down on its case studies with contempt.  It often portrays them in the worst possible light too and tries to make them all subjects of scorn.  I’m thinking specifically of the bizarre sequence where a high-powered lawyer keeps his fetish doll in a Dr. Phibes-style secret chamber.  Sure, Sexual Inadequacies won’t win any awards for sensitivity, but moments like these deliver their fair share of unintentional laughs.

AKA:  In the Labyrinth of Love.  AKA:  The Labyrinth of Sex.

TUBI CONTINUED… SEX AND THE LAW (1968) ** ½

Sex and the Law is a Danish “White Coater” (a sex flick that purports to be a documentary on sex starring “real” doctors dispensing healthy sex advice, but it’s really just an excuse to show a bunch of nudity) on the permissive attitudes regarding sex in modern-day Denmark.  A woman (who sports a badly dubbed Danish accent) tells us she got busted for appearing in porn and then lists reasons why pornography is actually helpful.  We also see scenes of men buying dirty magazines in adult bookstores (one even uses a book to seduce his girlfriend), man on the street interviews where a reporter asks passersby their views on sex and pornography, and a comic segment on Peeping Toms.

The most interesting aspect is the discussion on the fine line between art and porn.  Even for a rather straightforward exploitation flick, they manage to make a couple of valid points.  A sculptor who uses nude models is more or less left alone while a porno director lives in constant fear of being busted by the authorities.  There is also a frank talk about the hypocrisy of S & M smut being against the law while violence in mainstream cinema goes unchecked. 

Most of Sex and the Law is in black and white, but it does switch to color (although the palette is still somewhat muted) for a few instances.  The most notable is when a man and woman model various sexual positions for the camera.  There’s also a handful of color fantasy vignettes near the end.  Other sex scenes end abruptly or are done for comic effect or are just plain unsexy on purpose, which can be a tad frustrating.  (The shooting of a porno is scored like a horror movie.)  If you can’t already guess, all this is uneven as hell, but when it works, it manages to be kinda amusing.  

Director Gabriel Axel later went on to direct Babette’s Feast, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film!

AKA:  Danish Blue.  AKA:  The Dear Toy.

TUBI CONTINUED… DAGMAR AND CO. (1971) ***

Sexy prostitute Dagmar (Diana Kjaer from Fanny Hill) has her world turned upside down when a wealthy client proposes marriage and asks to her to give up walking the street and settle down.  Dagmar gives the idea careful consideration before closing out her retirement fund.  That’s just a fancy way of saying she goes around from bank to bank cashing out all the money she’s accrued during her career as a hooker.  Ever the professional, Dagmar keeps all her appointments on her last day as a sex worker and aims to give her customers a send-off they won’t forget.

Dagmar and Co. contains non-stop nudity in the first act and a fun, playful vibe throughout its running time.  The story is a tad episodic, and not all the comedic vignettes work, but Kjaer has a winning personality, and her presence keeps you watching, even through some of the sillier sections.  While the humor is a little on the uneven side, there are still plenty of laughs to be had.  Some of the highlights include Dagmar posing as a nurse to deflower a nervous virgin and banging a composer to the tune of the “William Tell Overture”.  The film threatens to derail late in the game when Dagmar must elude her violent pimp in order to escape her old life.  However, this potentially unpleasant third act complication is wrapped up in comedic fashion, and winds up being just as silly as everything else in the picture.  

Co-writer Louis M. Heywood was also responsible for writing such classics as Planet of the Vampires, Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, and Witchfinder General.  I think he’s the one we should be thanking for all the great dialogue.  My favorite line came when a Japanese businessman gets one look at Dagmar and says, “She’s built like a brick pagoda!”

AKA:  Dagmar’s Hot Pants Inc.  AKA:  Dagmar’s Hot Pants.

TUBI CONTINUED… BARBIE AND KENDRA STORM AREA 51 (2020) **

Remember that small sliver of time when a bunch of yahoos were going to stampede Area 51?  Well, you can relive that oh-so-dated moment in history with the sporadically amusing Barbie and Kendra Storm Area 51.  It’s not great or anything, but it’s downright Shakesperean compared to its predecessor, Barbie and Kendra Save the Tiger King.

Barbie (Cody Renee Cameron) and Kendra (Robin Sydney) return home after briefly becoming trapped in the movie Robot Wars.  (Don’t ask.)  Since the pandemic is still going on, they decide to stay on the couch and watch a conspiracy theory TV show.  The show purports to blow the lid off the top-secret incident where a group of aliens (led by a sexy queen) traveled to Earth to abduct a little girl.  Convinced the government has been lying to them all these years about UFOs, Barbie and Kendra pack their bags for Area 51.

This was a marked improvement over Barbie and Kendra Save the Tiger King, if only because it was a good half-hour shorter.  The movie-within-a-movie (which is a mash-up of The Day Time Ended and Space Thing) is also semi-enjoyable this time around, and it contains a few actual laughs, which is something that can’t be said for Save the Tiger King.  The narrator does a fairly solid Morgan Freeman impression too.  

I’m not saying it all works.  Characters that sound like everyone from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Bullwinkle J. Moose to Fat Bastard from Austin Powers kind of grate on the nerves after a while.  However, the jokes about the alien pyramid being some sort of half-assed Alexa device are good for a couple of dumb laughs.  The Space Thing sequences also provide the film with some T & A, which is certainly a plus.  On the flipside, the Barbie and Kendra scenes are hit-and-miss and aren’t nearly as good as the dubbed-dialogue movie.  However, I did like the part when they called aliens “extra-testicles.”

TUBI CONTINUED… BARBIE AND KENDRA SAVE THE TIGER KING (2020) ½ *

Here’s a relic of the pandemic.  (I know it was only three years ago, but still.)  It’s a sequel to Corona Zombies (which I liked more than I probably should’ve) where the ditzy duo Barbie (Cody Renee Cameron) and Kendra (Robin Sydney) mysteriously find themselves back at home.  With nothing to do and nowhere to go, they settle on binge watching their new favorite show, Tiger King.  

Man, remember when Tiger King was all anyone could talk about?  (Besides COVID, wearing masks, catastrophic death tolls, and such.)  Now, it just seems like so long ago.  Has the world finally moved past COVID?  Has the world finally moved past Joe Exotic?  I sincerely hope so.  

Anyway, the “show” the titular bimbos watch is an unfunny, foulmouthed variation on What’s Up Tiger Lily?  Scenes of Terror in the Jungle and Luana, the Girl Tarzan play out with “comedy” dubbing over the soundtrack.  A little boy named Lil Tiger Joe (voiced by the late Leslie Jordan of all people) boards a plane with his trusty stuffed animal tiger.  The plane crashes in the jungle, and Lil Joe is the only survivor.  Meanwhile, his movie star father sends out a search party to rescue him.  Occasionally, things switch back to Barbie and Kendra on the couch for more lame shenanigans.  

The humor is often painful.  The dubbed movie portions are torturous.  The stuff with Barbie and Kendra work slightly better, if only for the actresses’ bubbly presences.  Unfortunately, the material they’ve been given is anything but funny.  Things really get weird when the flick stops on a dime so Barbie and Kendra can interview one of the stars of the real Tiger King show via Zoom.  In fact, the show seems like so long ago that I don’t even remember who the guy on the show was.  

Overall, watching Barbie and Kendra Save the Tiger King is preferable to getting COVID (or mauled by a tiger), but not by much.

AKA:  Tiger King:  The Movie.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE FALLEN VAMPIRE (2007) **

The Fallen Vampire is an uneven, frustrating, but fitfully engaging documentary on beloved horror icon Bela Lugosi.  Things kick off with Lugosi getting the lead in the Broadway production of Dracula.  Hot off the popularity of the play, Bela resorts to taking a drastic pay cut to ensure he'll be cast in the big screen adaptation from Universal Pictures.  

Then, the film backtracks to Lugosi’s early life.  Stories of his upbringing sometimes conflict as he often lied about his humble beginnings.  Even now, some details of Lugosi’s life pre-Hollywood are still up for debate.  I liked that though, because it adds to his overall sense of mystery.  

From there, it’s more or less the standard rags to riches to rags story.  After the success of Dracula, Lugosi turns down Frankenstein and is forced to look on as the man who played the role, Boris Karloff eclipses him in popularity as the screen’s top horror star.  Eventually, he becomes typecast in unsatisfying horror roles, the size of the parts grows smaller, and he spends much of his later life struggling with addiction.  

There aren’t any real major revelations here, so much of this will feel like an old hat for fans of Lugosi.  The overuse of public domain interview clips (which have turned up in countless similar documentaries) gets to be a bit much too.  The new interviews aren’t particularly earth-shattering either, but I did get a kick out of seeing Lugosi’s Mark of the Vampire leading lady, Carol Borland attesting to his ladies’ man status.  

The film also gets sidetracked when it starts to detour into the historical context of the Dracula legend.  There’s a bit about Transylvania burial customs that just seems like filler.  I mean, this stuff would be okay if we were watching a Dracula documentary, but this is supposed to be about Bela Lugosi.  I could’ve also done without the cheap shots that were made at the expense of the movies Bela made with Ed Wood.  (The narrator calls Glen or Glenda “an artistic failure”, which couldn’t be any further from the truth.)

Now that I got that off my chest, there’s still some good stuff here.  I liked seeing the stills from the old Broadway version of Dracula where Lugosi’s make-up is much more pronounced than what wound up in the film version.  We also get a funny bit where Bela stalks Betty Boop (“You have booped your last boop!”) and an amusing snippet from a newsreel where Lugosi donates blood for the war effort.  (The narrator says, “It’s time to give back some of that blood you’ve taken!”)

AKA:  Bela Lugosi:  The Fallen Vampire.  

TUBI CONTINUED… NIGHTFALL: 100 YEARS OF VAMPIRE FILMS (2010) ** ½

From Nosferatu to Twilight, Nightfall:  100 Years of Vampire Films takes us on a century-long journey of bloodsucker cinema.  Things kick off with a brief history lesson of the vampire as the real-life Vlad the Impaler, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, and the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula are discussed.  Then, we plunge headlong into the movies.

Clips from such silent era films as The Vampire, Les Vampires, and (of course) Nosferatu are shown.  The ‘30s are represented by Dracula, The Vampyre, and Mark of the Vampire, and the ‘40s give us Son of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and Scared to Death.  There are also segments on the Mexican film, El Vampiro, Hammer horror movies (including Horror of Dracula, The Brides of Dracula, and The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires), Sci-Fi bloodsuckers (Queen of Blood, Planet of the Vampires, and Last Man on Earth), comedies (The Fearless Vampire Killers, The Vampire Happening, and Dracula the Dirty Old Man), and adaptations of Carmilla/lesbian vampire flicks (Blood and Roses, Vampyres, and Vampyros Lesbos).  There are even clips from a few movies I had never heard of before (like Sodium Babies).

While some of this is kind of fun, the documentary overall looks pretty cheap and ragged, especially when covering the historical aspects of vampires.  There are also odd detours that don’t really add much to the film, like the interview with a blogger who recreates Stoker’s novel in blog format.  In fact, the only “name” who is interviewed is Lifeforce director Tobe Hooper, but he’s only in it for about fifteen seconds.  It’s also odd that there’s a section devoted to Frankenstein in a vampire documentary.

Sure, it’s easy to pick apart everything that’s “wrong” with Nightfall:  100 Years of Vampire Films.  The nudity is blurred out, many shots are repeated, and most of the footage comes directly from trailers.  That said, it makes for a breezy, hour-long jaunt through decades of vampire moviemaking.  It’s ultimately inessential, but it’s definitely watchable and (mostly) entertaining.

AKA:  Nightfall.

MITCH GUESTS ON THE DTV CONNOISSEUR PODCAST

Matt from the DTV Connoisseur had me on the podcast once again.  This time, we chatted about the documentary Mail Order Murder:  The Story of W.A.V.E. Productions and Eaten Alive!  A Tasteful Revenge.  If you’ve never seen a W.A.V.E. Production, what are you waiting for? But before you do, you should definitely listen to our conversation:  DTVC Podcast 129, "W.A.V.E. Productions" by DTVC Podcast (spotify.com)

TUBI CONTINUED… BLONDE SAVAGE (1947) ** ½

Steve (Leif Erickson) is a pilot who gets hired to come to Africa and map out an uncharted jungle area so his crooked employer Harper (Douglass Dumbrille) can find a mysterious tribe.  Problems arise when Harper learns Steve is the ex-lover of his trophy wife (Veda Ann Borg).  When Steve’s plane crashes in the jungle, he and his pal Hoppy (Frank Jenks) are taken prisoner by the tribe who force them to face their leader, the beautiful blonde bombshell Meelah (Gale Sherwood).  Naturally, Meelah and Steve fall in love, and he helps her get revenge on the man who murdered her parents years ago.  (SPOILER FOR ANYONE WHO HAS NEVER SEEN A JUNGLE MOVIE FROM THE ‘40S:  It’s Harper.)

Blonde Savage starts out with a terrific hook.  Steve enters a lawyer’s office and announces he needs someone to defend him on murder charges.  The only thing is:  The murder hasn’t been committed yet.  If the police let Harper go free, Steve will gun him down in cold blood.  Then, we go into a flashback that takes up the bulk of the movie that explains Steve’s hatred towards Harper.  It’s a neat little device that helps separate the movie from the glut of similarly themed genre pictures of the era.  Honestly it was probably only there to pad out the running time to feature length.  

Heck, even though the film is only an hour long, it still has a tendency to drag here and there.  The print is jumpy too, which can be annoying, but I enjoyed it for what it was:  A (slightly) better than average jungle picture.  As such, it won’t win over any new fans, and it doesn’t have as much stock footage as you might expect.  That said, if you’re old enough to remember the days when crap like this played on TV non-stop (like me), you may get a kick out of it.

BIRDEMIC 3 – SEA EAGLE (2022) ***

Birdemic 3 – Sea Eagle has a new leading man in Evan (Ryan Lord), but it’s the same old story.  He walks around aimlessly before awkwardly hitting on a girl (Julia Culbert) who instantly accepts a date with him.  On the date, he talks incessantly about himself and his job (he sells anti-aging skin cream) and how he routinely makes multi-million-dollar sales.  Together, they have long romantic interludes where they walk around and talk to strangers, most of whom spout off about global warning (and for a change of pace for the series, wildfires).  Eventually, the happy couple dance for the longest time imaginable.  Naturally, their bliss is ruined when more birds attack.  Then, it’s time to randomly find some guns, grab some coat hangers, and battle killer birds.  

Yes, everything that happened before in Birdemic:  Shock and Terror and Birdemic 2:  The Resurrection happens again in Birdemic 3 – Sea Eagle, and I for one, wouldn’t have it any other way.  I will say that some of the bloom is off the rose now.  Part of the reason this one doesn’t quite match its predecessors is that the birds don’t attack until the last twenty-five minutes or so of the movie.  Previously, writer/director James Nguyen gave us a 50/50 split of cheesy romance and bad bird effects.  This one is more like 70/30.

That said, Nguyen delivers what we’ve come to expect from a Birdemic movie.  The acting is still as wooden as ever.  The dialogue seems like it was cut-and-pasted from Wikipedia’s global warming page.  The CGI is just as shitty as you’d hope it to be.  However, it just isn’t quite as good as the others.  Or bad.  You know what I mean.  

At first, I was a little upset that my favorite character “The Tree Hugger” was absent from this entry.  I’m happy to report that in his place, we have a guy named “Dr. Extinction” who carries on the tradition of crazy, rambling nutbar who spouts unending amounts of environmentalism propaganda.  He does such a fine job that I found myself forgiving the movie for not including Tree Hugger this time around.  Dr. Extinction gets a particularly great scene where he forces our heroes to pull off to the side of the road so they can listen to his incoherent gobbledygook about global warming that culminates with him giving them some truly priceless advice:  “HAVE LOTS OF SEX!”  This scene alone is worth the price of admission, even if the rest of the film doesn’t quite (ahem) fly as high as its predecessors. 

AGFA MYSTERY MIXTAPE #2: LATER IN L.A. (2020) **

The second volume of Mystery Mixtapes from the American Genre Film Archive kicks off with that “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” anti-piracy PSA that used to play on DVDs back in the ‘00s.  Some younger folks may have nostalgia for this PSA, but as someone who worked at a video store during this era, I always found it to be grating and annoying.  That was the first sign that Later in L.A. wasn’t exactly going to be my cup of tea.  

As with the first installment, most of the sequences come from the same four or five sources, which takes some of the fun out of it.  Segments include Bob Costas interviewing Tim Burton just before the release of Batman Returns (he asks about Sean Young’s unorthodox campaign to play Catwoman, but Burton unfortunately dodges the question), a documentary on the making of Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu, snippets from Gorgon Video Magazine (including Lloyd Kaufman being interviewed at Troma Studios, KNB doing effects for The Horror Show, and the making of Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout), an ad for VHS horror releases (including Howling 2 and Dawn of the Dead), a behind the scenes look at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles “Coming Out of Their Shells” Tour, and the making of Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce.  It all ends with Tom Snyder interviewing Peter Cushing, Forrest J. Ackerman, and a “Professor of Monsters”.  Along the way, the tape is interspersed with local news bumpers as well as Vincent Price doing commercials for cheesesteaks and videotapes.  

As someone who enjoys these things for nostalgic purposes, AGFA Mystery Mixtape #2:  Later in L.A. kinda fell flat.  I guess ‘90s kids will dig it, but since I am a child of the ‘80s, it didn’t do a whole lot for me.  (The Ninja Turtles shit goes on way too long.)  At any rate, the random bit of Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig cutting up at the Golden Globes seemed like a rather useless inclusion for something like this.

AGFA MYSTERY MIXTAPE #1 (2020) ** ½

The good folks at the American Genre Film Archive put together this uneven but mostly amusing mixtape that collects bits and pieces from retro television broadcasts and old horror-related videos.  The snippets come from USA Up All Night’s B- Movie Awards Show where hosts Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda Shear hand out awards to Scream Queens like Linnea Quigley.  Also featured are the interview with Stuart Gordon, some behind the scenes footage of Bride of Re-Animator, and the profile on F/X artist Screaming Mad George that originally appeared in Gorgon Video Magazine Vol. 2.  Robert Englund, Wes Craven, Rick Baker, and Walter Koenig also appear in clips from Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors tape.  

Lesser-known bits are taken from a documentary on The Exorcist called Didn’t You Used to Be Satan?  We also get scenes from The Making of a Horror Film, a profile on producer Dick Randall made during the production of Don’t Open Till Christmas.  Randall is a real character and is a lot of fun to watch.  The scene where he watches dailies of the film and makes Mystery Science Theater 3000-style commentary on the action is pretty funny.  It all ends oddly enough with Scatman Crothers rapping about Stanley Kubrick.

Maybe I would’ve given this a higher rating if I hadn’t already been so familiar with a lot of the footage.  Because of that, there wasn’t really any sense of discovery for me.  I also wish they had culled more snippets from other sources instead of just using bits from the same four or five tapes.  In fact, you’re probably better off just watching Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors, Gorgon Video Magazine Vol. 2, or the Up All Night special in their entirety.  

That said, they do use some choice clips.  I mean, who wouldn’t want to see Bill Moseley give an award to The Toxic Avenger?  That alone is worth ** ½ in my book.

GEOSTORM (2017) **

While watching Geostorm, I had this feeling that it was playing like a half-assed Roland Emmerich movie.  Once the end credits rolled, my suspicions were confirmed.  Turns out, it was written and directed by Emmerich’s longtime producing partner, Dean Devlin.  He must’ve been the wrong half of the ass.  Devlin combines all the usual disaster movie cliches with a lot of Armageddon-inspired space shit.  (Right down to the final teary-eyed goodbye.)  Some of this works in small doses, but the clunky plot mechanics often get in the way of the fun.

The world is plagued by outbursts of extreme weather.  Scientist Gerard Butler saves the planet when he invents a weather satellite to maintain and correct the erratic climate shifts.  When the thing malfunctions and people wind up frozen to death in the desert, it’s up to Butler to go into outer space to fix it.

Gerard Butler vs. the Weather.  Sounds like a can’t-miss proposition.  Honestly, there are moments when you can kind of see what they were going for, and it almost-but-not-quite works.  However, the government cover-up/political intrigue/international sabotage subplots really bring the movie to a halt in the second act.  Once the weather hits the fan, it’s not quite enough to win you back from all the dull plot stuff.  I mean, who needs human villains when you have a global storm?

A few of the disaster scenes are OK.  My favorite bit was when buildings toppled into one another and crumbled like a skyscraper version of dominoes.  Devlin also delivers a nifty escape scene when Secret Service agent Abbie Cornish evacuates President Andy Garcia from an out-of-control lightning storm in Orlando.  However, many of the weather-related set pieces (cyclones in India, a hailstorm in Japan, frozen waves in Brazil) feel rushed and are ultimately unsatisfying.

Butler is fun.  Casting him as a brilliant scientist suggests that no one was really taking any of this seriously.  However, even he can’t save the picture when it gets bogged down.  The supporting cast (which includes Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, and Zazie Beets) do what they can to stand out from the uninspired scenes of weather destruction.  Unfortunately, just about everyone involved winds up getting left out in the rain.

SHIN KAMEN RIDER (2023) ** ½

A motorcycle rider becomes infused with grasshopper DNA and transforms into a badass superhero called Masked Rider.  (How’s that for an opening sentence for a review?)  After his creator is killed by the evil organization, S.H.O.C.K.E.R., he sets out to destroy their nefarious half-human half-insect henchmen.  Eventually, Masked Rider comes face to face with an evil version of himself who must decide if he will fight for his corrupt bosses or stand alongside his twin brother.

Shin Kamen Rider belongs in the same newfangled series of reboots of Japanese classics as Shin Godzilla and Shin Ultraman.  While I didn’t think it was quite as fun as the new Ultraman flick, I did enjoy it more than the Godzilla reboot.  Like Shin Ultraman, it is essentially an entire TV series condensed into two hours.  The good news is, that means Masked Rider does battle with bug-infused “Augments” every twenty minutes or so.  The bad news is the stuff in between the action is kind of dull.  Plus, there are way too many massive exposition dumps that gum up the works (particularly in the third act).  Also, at two hours, it all feels rather bloated and overlong.  

Then again, who watches this crap for the plot?  The fight scenes are fun enough and have enough variation to keep from feeling stale.  The fight that is done in sort of a half-animation half-live action rotoscope style is especially cool.  The gore is surprisingly solid too as Masked Rider smashes a bunch of heads as if they were oversized cherry-flavored Gushers.  The villains are fun as well, with the Spider Augment (who kind of looks like a cross between Spider-Man and the Predator) and the Scorpion Woman being my two favorites.  I also dug Masked Rider’s trusty motorcycle, Cyclone, who in one scene follows dutifully behind him like a horse trailing a cowboy in an old western.  

I don’t know if they will eventually bring Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman, and Shin Kamen Rider together for a big Avengers-style crossover or not.  I for one, would be all for it.  Although none of the films individually knocked my socks off or anything, they all certainly had their moments.  Plus, Masked Rider is a cool enough character to suggest he’d play off the other major players rather well.  Heck, I’d even be down for just a straight sequel to this.  Provided they streamline things a bit.

AKA:  Shin Masked Rider.

A FATHER’S REVENGE (1988) *** ½

When his flight attendant daughter (Helen Patton) is kidnapped in Germany by ruthless terrorists, family man Paul (Brian Dennehy) and his wife (Joanna Cassidy) grab their passports and head on over there to see what’s being done by the authorities to insure she’ll be returned home safe and sound.  Unfortunately, both the American and German governments sit on their hands way too long, which infuriates the family.  With the clock ticking away, a reporter (Ron Silver) gets Paul in touch with a former SAS mercenary (Anthony Valentine) to get her back.  The only catch:  Paul wants to tag along on the mission.

A Father’s Revenge is a crackling good Made for TV Movie that benefits from economical storytelling, tight pacing, and strong execution from director John (2 Days in the Valley) Herzfeld.  The thing that really elevates the film from your average TV flick though are the excellent performances.  Dennehy, who never had an ungenuine moment on film in his entire career, delivers a powerhouse performance as the concerned father who eventually takes matters into his own hands.  Cassidy is his match in every way and the two have dynamite chemistry together.  Silver is also quite good as the journalist who not only wants a big scoop, but also delivers on his promises to the family.  

Since this is a TV movie, there are all the usual fade-in and fade-outs that signal the commercial breaks.  However, that’s about the only tell-tale sign this was made for television.  Overall, Herzfeld makes things look and feel rather cinematic, especially when compared to many TV Movies of the Week from the era.  While most of the action is weighted towards the end, Herzfeld keeps the tension brimming throughout and punctuates the film with a strong finale.  Couple that with Dennehy’s fine work and you have yourself a memorable drama in nearly every regard.

AKA:  Payback.

TUBI CONTINUED… SOMETHING TO SCREAM ABOUT (2003) ***

Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama’s Brinke Stevens hosts this hour long look at B-Movie Scream Queens.  The actresses featured are a good mix of modern-day beauties (Debbie Rochon), ladies who appeared in classics (Night of the Living Dead’s Judith O’Dea), Skinamax icons (Julie Strain), fan favorites (Felissa Rose), and unsung Scream Queens (Lilith Stabs).  Each actress talks about how they got their start in the business, experiences meeting fans at conventions, receiving fan mail, their willingness (or sometimes unwillingness) to do nudity, and their fear of aging and/or the use of cosmetic surgery.  

The overall look of the documentary is a little on the cheap side, but it remains a breezy, entertaining, and fun way to kill sixty minutes, especially if you’re a fan of Stevens, Rochon, and Strain.  I also dug the fact that they gave the floor to some lesser-known actresses like Ariauna Albright who give a little bit of insight to some of the smaller budgeted horror flicks out there.  The clip selection is rather decent too as snippets from films such as Bloodletting, the Slumber Party Massacre trilogy, Sleepaway Camp, Terror Firmer, and many Andy Sidaris movies as shown.  I highly enjoyed the compilation of Brinke screaming too.

Something to Scream About kind of loses points when writer/director Jason Paul Collum tries to get serious.  Things threaten to go off the rails near the end when he tries to find a link between horror movies and real-life violence (which is complete hogwash).  It works much better when he keeps things light.  Still, it is sad to hear the late Strain talking so bluntly about her disillusionment with the industry.  Then again, when you’re one of the hardest working women in the business, I can see how easy it would be to get burned out and feel used by the Hollywood system.  

Collum later made the similarly themed Screaming in High Heels.

TUBI CONTINUED… TEENAGE GANG DEBS (1966) ****

I’ve been wanting to see this ever since I bought the Something Weird Greatest Hits CD as two of the best songs from the collection “Don’t Make Me Mad” and “Black Belt” come from this movie.  (The score itself is equally fine.)  Boy, this didn’t disappoint.  It’s one of the best Juvenile Delinquent flicks ever made.  

Terry (Diane Conti) is the new bad girl in town who immediately makes a play for Johnny (John Battis), the leader of a gang called The Rebels.  First thing she’s got to do is go toe to toe with Johnny’s gal, with the winner of the catfight getting the privilege of being his plaything.  When Terry balks at having Johnny’s initials carved into her chest, she seduces his second in command, Nino and goads him into starting a knife fight with her man.  After Nino (Joey Naudic) kills Johnny and assumes control of the gang, Terry slowly begins manipulating him into doing her bidding.  

Made well after the initial Juvenile Delinquent movie craze of the ‘50s and just on the cusp of the avalanche of biker flicks in the ‘60s, Teenage Gang Debs is a bit meaner than what came before and yet stops short of showing the more exploitative elements of what would follow.  It has some great black and white cinematography, and the excellent handheld camerawork puts you in the thick of the action during the various catfights, switchblade duels, and gang rumbles.  The same goes for the dance sequences as the camera is so close to the actresses that you feel like you’re right in there shaking a tailfeather with the teenage gang debs themselves.  

One touch I found hilarious:  Even though he’s supposed to be a tough gang leader, Johnny wears a dress shirt and buttoned-up cardigan.  How are we supposed to take him seriously when he dresses like Mr. Rogers?

After hearing the songs so many times on the Something Weird CD, it was a real treat to finally hear them in their proper context within the film.  “Don’t Make Me Mad” really got those delinquent gals moving and grooving on the dancefloor but it's the “Black Belt” number that really brings the house down.  Not only is the song a straight-up banger, but the choreography that goes along with it is spectacular (the dancers punch and kick in time with the music like Kung Fu fighters), which results in a peak cinematic experience.  

The thing that really ties everything together is the electrifying performance from Conti.  She makes Terry a character you truly love to hate.  She’s tough-talking, cold, and calculating, and it’s a blast seeing her chew men up and spit them out.  

The ending is something else too.  It’s possibly the only ending I’ve seen that reminded me of both Faster, Pussycat!  Kill!  Kill! and Freaks.  If that’s not a recommendation, I don’t know what is.

AKA:  Leather Jacket Jungle.

TUBI CONTINUED… COCAINE SHARK (2023) NO STARS

Cocaine Shark is one of the worst movies I have ever seen.  In fact, it barely qualifies as a movie.  It feels like you’re watching half a movie and another half of a movie, but with no real coherent link between the two.

I have a feeling the filmmakers were in the middle of making a movie about a crab shark and halfway through production, they saw the trailer for Cocaine Bear and decided they wanted to make a shark-themed rip-off.  The problem is, they wanted to strike when the iron was hot, and rather than just making a brand-new movie about… you know… a cocaine shark, they gave us a slightly retooled version of the crab shark movie that also features a subplot about a new drug that gives its users hallucinations of sharks.  

I’ve heard of chasing the dragon, but these bozos swim with the sharks.

Anyway, we’ve got this crab shark plot (the monster looks like a hermit crab with the head of a hammerhead shark) mixed with this undercover cop subplot where he takes the drug and maybe/kinda/sorta turns into a shark man whenever he’s tripping balls.  (The shark man costume makes the Land Shark from Saturday Night Live look like some real Rick Baker shit.)  This all might’ve been OK, but the whole thing is so incoherently edited and indifferently slapped together that you have no idea what’s going on half the time.  

For instance, the cop has a beard in the beginning of the movie.  Then, he’s clean shaven in the middle act.  Lo and behold, the beard reappears again at the end.  He also relates flashbacks from a hospital bed that tries to make sense of all the glaring continuity errors and explain the unexplainable occurrences (like why the henchman’s face is randomly melting off).  

It's like trying to put together a hundred-piece puzzle comprised of sixty-four pieces that came from three entirely different puzzles.  

Let’s face it.  The very IDEA of a Cocaine Shark is awesome.  However, what the Hell can you make of a movie called Cocaine Shark that doesn’t even have a Cocaine Shark in it?  Instead, we’re left with a crab shark and a half-assed were-shark.  Jesus Christ, man.  Maybe watching 365 movies on Tubi in 365 days wasn’t such a hot idea after all.