TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN COSMOS 2: THE BLUE PLANET (2002) **

Musashi, the little kid from Ultraman Cosmos:  The First Contact, is all grown up and has become an astronaut.  He encounters a dead planet in his travels and arrives there just in time to watch Ultraman Cosmos fight a giant monster named Scorpus.  When he returns home, Musashi decides to visit some friends on the island of Saipan where Scorpus once again appears and is fought off by a manta ray-type monster named Rayja who acts as protector of the ocean.  A mermaid babe then takes our hero into the deep to show him her hidden home world under the sea.  Predictably, Scorpus returns with its master, the evil Sandloss, in tow with the intention of decimating the Earth to ash, and the underwater kingdom right along with it.

Once again there’s some silliness here that seems a little ill-fitting. The stuff with the mermaid is lame and feels like an attempt to capture some of the female demographic.  The SRC offshoot, SEA who are an underwater division of science exploration aren’t nearly as memorable either.  Besides, let’s face it:  Being underwater isn’t nearly as cool as being in outer space.  The subplot with the mermaid’s jealous boyfriend slows things down to a crawl too.

The monster battles are where it’s at though.  Scorpus is a pretty decent monster.  He looks like a cross between Gamera and an oversized bedbug and shoots red flames.  The scenes of his worldwide destruction are well done, and it’s a shame that so much of the film is a slog because whenever he and his minions are tearing up the town, The Blue Planet rocks.  The moderately stylish finale when Sandloss blots out the sun and battles two Ultramen in darkness is solid, but it’s not quite enough to put this one in the win column.  The Rayja creatures are decidedly less cool and look especially goofy when they start talking.  Although the scenes of kaiju kicking butt fit the bill, whenever the action switches underwater, the movie sinks like a stone.

AKA:  Ultraman Cosmos:  The Blue Planet.

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN COSMOS: THE FIRST CONTACT (2001) ***

A young astrology nut named Musashi (Konosuke Tokai) desperately wants to meet his hero Ultraman.  Luckily for him, he gets his chance when Ultraman crashes to Earth after fighting a metal lobster monster in space. The Scientific Research Circle hears about his encounter and takes the kid on as an honorary member.  Eventually, Ultraman must stop another alien from trying to take over Earth.  

The CGI during the monster fights is a bit chintzy.  However, some of the goofy touches are surprisingly endearing.  Musashi’s robot sidekick had the potential to be annoying, but he winds up being rather cute and innocuous, all things considered.  I also liked that the SRC spaceships came equipped with humorously oversized boxing gloves so they could safely do battle with rampaging kaiju.  

The best thing I can say for Ultraman Cosmos:  The First Contact is that it handles the scenes with the kid characters much better than Ultraman Tiga, Ultraman Dyna, and Ultraman Gaia:  Battle in Hyperspace did.  I especially loved the scene where Ultraman repays Musashi for nursing him back to health by scooping him up in his arms and flying him over the city.  That’s the good stuff right there. 

I also enjoyed the rivalry between the SRC, who want to capture and study the monsters, and the military outfit SHARKS, who naturally just want to destroy them.  It helped give the human drama a bit of a different dimension than your typical Japanese monster movie.  The SRC’s efforts also makes you think of the monsters with a hint of compassion. 

That’s not to say there isn’t some dumb stuff here.  The scene where the citizens of Earth band together to stop the monster by… uh… singing it a lullaby is particularly cringe-inducing.  And at ninety minutes, it’s by far the longest Ultraman flick I’ve watched so far this week.  (It’s over twice as long as Ultraman Tiga Side Story:  Revival of the Ancient Giant.)  Because of that, it’s not nearly as fast-paced as some of the best Ultraman movies.  However, when it manages to find the right balance between giant rubber monsters and genuine heart, it works. 

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN TIGA SIDE STORY: REVIVAL OF THE ANCIENT GIANT (2001) ***

Ultraman Tiga Side Story:  Revival of the Ancient Giant is a direct-to-video spin-off of the Ultraman Tiga series.  At forty-four minutes, it’s a lot shorter than some of the other Ultraman movies I’ve watched this week (and those were short to begin with).  If you’re like me and you’re trying to watch 365 movies on Tubi in 365 days, you take the shorties when you can get them.

In the future (2038), Tsubasa Madoka (Shogo Yamaguchi), a member of the Super GUTS team (and the son of Ultraman Tiga) gets sucked into a wormhole along with a dinosaur and winds up 5000 years in the past.  The monster threatens a village of peaceful mountainfolk, and the bad guy wants to use it to vanquish “The Warrior of Light” that the people worship once and for all.  It’s then up to Ultraman Tiga to save the day.

Revival of the Ancient Giant is a “Side Story”, and as a self-contained spin-off it’s a lot of fun.  I guess they thought whisking the son of Ultraman 5000 years into the past wouldn’t screw up the continuity too bad.  Even if you just somehow stumbled upon this without much knowledge of Ultraman in general, you’d probably dig it.

The effects are kind of inconsistent.  Some of the monsters and costumes are very good, while others look like an episode of The Land of the Lost.  That’s part of the charm though.  There was also a really weird effect where the bad guy is standing in front of the monster, and it just looks like he’s standing in front of a big screen TV that’s playing scenes from the movie behind him.  And you know what?  It’s just odd and goofy enough to work. 

The villain himself is really cool too.  He looks like a cross between Darth Vader and the Joker, if such a thing is imaginable.  I mean, if you’re going to steal, steal from two of the best, right?

I’m not saying all of it works.  The stuff with the prehistoric GUTS team flying around on wooden airplanes is cheesy, and the fights where they shoot Street Fighter 2-inspired orbs of light at their enemies isn’t nearly as fun as the giant monster battles.  However, those are relatively minor quibbles all in all.  The final fight kicks ass too, so that’s all you can ask for from something like this.

AKA:  Ultraman Tiga Gaiden:  Revival of the Ancient Giant.  AKA:  Ultraman Tiga:  The Outside Story.

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN TIGA, ULTRAMAN DYNA, AND ULTRAMAN GAIA: BATTLE IN HYPER SPACE (1999) ** ½

A kid who’s obsessed with Ultraman has a dream where he gets sucked into the TV while watching an Ultraman video.  One day after school, he finds a red sphere that grants wishes and naturally, he wishes to meet Ultraman.  Then, Ultraman Gaia comes through a portal and winds up in the real world.  Naturally, some bullies get ahold of the sphere and wish for giant monsters to destroy the world. 

All the stuff with the juvenile protagonists makes this feel like one of those bad kid-friendly Godzilla movies.  The brats are pretty annoying and get in the way of the monster mashing.  The “meta” aspect isn’t really used to its full advantage either and the filmmakers kind of forget about it rather quickly.  If anything, it just seems like a lame attempt to shoehorn the kids in there and cater to younger audiences.  I know these Japanese Sci-Fi flicks are a bit of wish fulfillment as it is, but having the kids actually wishing and receiving giant monster battles is a bit on the nose for me.  Maybe even a little up the nose. 

While it was a little bit of a comedown from the other Ultraman movies I’ve seen this week, there was still some good stuff here.  Once the three Ultramen finally join forces, it starts to kick some serious ass (it just takes forever).  The opening scene where Ultraman does battle with a monster that looks like a giant glowing vagina is fairly decent too.  The final monster, “King of Mons” (who is clearly modeled on Godzilla) is badass, and the final six-man tag-team battle is one for the books.  The scene where the three Ultramen split up and fight monsters on land, sea, and space is fun too.  If only we didn’t have to sit through so much kiddie crap in the beginning, it might’ve been a classic.  That said, the finale is strong enough to almost make all the Little Rascals shit tolerable.  Almost.

AKA:  Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna and Ultraman Gaia:  The Decisive Battle in Hyperspace.  AKA:  Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna and Ultraman Gaia.  AKA:  Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna and Ultraman Gaia:  The Great Decisive Attack of Super-Time and Space.  AKA:  Ultraman Gaia:  The Battle in Hyperspace.

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN TIGA AND ULTRAMAN DYNA: WARRIORS OF THE STAR OF LIGHT (1998) *** ½

Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna:  Warriors of the Star of Light kicks off with a fun battle between Ultraman Dyna and a goofy rubbery-looking monster that looks like a cross between Gamera and a piece of moldy cheese.  This fight is cut short when an approaching alien ship blows the beast up.  Then, the alien villain tricks the “Super GUTS” team into powering her Transformer-style robot monster whom she uses to defeat Ultraman Dyna.  As she makes plans to conquer the world, Dyna sets out to find Ultraman Tiga to join the battle and save mankind. 

Let me get this out of the way before I go any further:  Some of the CGI effects in this are reeeeeaaaallly bad.  And when I say reeeeeaaaallly bad, I mean like reeeeeaaaallly bad.  

The good news is, when the movie concentrates on the old school monster mashing the Ultraman series is known for, Warriors of the Star of Light kicks major ass.  The man-in-rubber-suit battles are downright exquisite this time around.  The monsters themselves are pretty damned cool as well.  The Transformer-style robot is badass and gives Ultraman a run for his money.  The bad guy’s final form is impressively designed and quite elaborate too, and the scenes of citywide destruction are also very well done.  Plus, you get two Ultramen for the price of one.  How can you go wrong?

The human drama basically boils down to the usual “believe in yourself”/”be part of the team”/”never say die” cliches you’d expect from something like this.  You know, just enough of it to give the human actors something to do, while simultaneously not getting in the way of the monster mashing.  And let’s face it, that’s the only reason we’re watching it in the first place.  That said, the scene where the humans stand together and profess their belief in the “Power of Light” to resurrect their fallen hero…  Well folks...  That’s the kind of cornball shit I live for. 

AKA:  Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna:  Warriors of the Planet of Light.  AKA:  Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna.

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN ZEARTH 2 (1997) ** ½

Ultraman Zearth suffers a crippling defeat at the hands of his evil counterpart, Ultraman Shadow before the opening credits even have a chance to fire up.  Unfortunately, that means Ultraman’s human host, Asahi (Masaharu Ishibashi) spends most of the movie kicking rocks and sulking because he got beat up.  Meanwhile, the hot alien chick that controls Ultraman Shadow uses a mind control beam to kidnap hundreds of civilians to keep him powered up.  It’s then up to Ultraman Zearth to stop being such a wimp and kick some ass. 

Ultraman Zearth 2 is an uneven, but mostly entertaining affair.  Some of the computer graphics are so shoddy that it makes the action look like cut scenes from a PC video game.  Fortunately, much of the action comes in the form of guys in old school rubber suits beating the crap out of each other.  When all this is going down, the movie works, even if some of the monsters are overly cutesy this time around.

 

As with the previous entry, the Ultraman team works out of a gas station, but this time they have a clam-faced alien who washes cars and has a credit card machine built into his hands.  Unlike the last flick, it’s kinda slow going (even though it’s only a little over an hour long) and suffers from a decided lack of Ultraman in the middle act.  The good news is the final showdown between Ultraman Zearth and Ultraman Shadow is well done and entertaining.  However, that doesn’t quite make up for his absence elsewhere in the picture.  Regardless, the flick contains one unintentionally hilarious scene where the alien villainess receives what can only be described as a “Golden Shower” from her boyfriend.  This shit has to be seen to be believed and is further proof that watching a ton of Ultraman movies back-to-back was a good idea. 

AKA:  Ultraman Zearth 2:  Superhuman Big Battle – Light and Shadow.

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN ZEARTH (1996) ***

After recently enjoying Shin Ultraman and being a fan of the original series, I thought this column would be a good opportunity to catch up on some of the Ultraman movies.  Fortunately for me, Tubi has scads of them.  So, prepare yourself.  The next week or so is going to be Ultraman-centric.

An underground monster with the unlikely name of Cotton-Poppe is stealing gold and eating it.  (Including an Ultraman statue!)  Team Mydo (who use a gas station as their cover) goes into action in their jet Skyfish to investigate.  Turns out, Cotton-Poppe is just using the gold to power up the big-brained Alien Benzene that’s out to destroy Earth.  Meanwhile, Ultraman Zearth comes to Earth but unlike other iterations of the character, he has poor aim and suffers from OCD!  Every time he gets a little dirt or muck on his hands, he has to compulsively wash them!

 

Ultraman Zearth is short and sweet (under an hour long) and has more comedy elements than your typical Ultraman series.  Because of the shortened running time, it sort of feels more like an episode of the TV show than an actual movie.  That’s part of the charm though.  It moves like lightning and has no fat on it whatsoever, something that’s kind of essential for a Japanese giant rubber monster movie. 

I also liked that this Ultraman is a germaphobe, which gives him an interesting and surprisingly human weakness.  Not enough Japanese giant spacemen have mental disorders if you ask me.  Having him use his electric toothbrush to turn into Ultraman was a neat touch too.

Sure, Ultraman Zearth isn’t perfect.  While the original Ultraman theme remains a banger, some of the music in the final battle is grating as hell.  (It’s just someone saying, “Yeah!  Yeah!  Yeah!” on repeat.)  The shitty music kind of prevents the finale from really taking flight as the monster mashing in the third act is of the solid, if unspectacular variety.  That said, there’s still a lot of silly fun here, and the kooky touches help to distinguish it from the (many) other iterations of the franchise. 

TUBI CONTINUED… FORBIDDEN ADVENTURES (1972) **

Forbidden Adventures is a costume softcore comedy anthology flick from the director of Playgirls and the Vampire.  Like most anthologies, it’s uneven as all get out.  Like most Italian sex comedies, it’s not very funny.  That said, it’s an innocuous slice of cheesy ‘70s skin cinema. 

In the wraparound segment, “Tribunal” (**) various women are brought before the court and put on trial for their various sexual transgressions.  These scenes wouldn’t have been all that bad if they weren’t mired with unfunny comedy bits and slapstick schtick.  Overall, it’s a serviceable but undistinguished way to tie all the stories together. 

The first “case” is “The Naughty Nun” (** ½).  A sexy babe (Angela Covello) is on the eve of becoming a nun in a convent.  This cheeses off her boyfriend, Enrico (Franco Agostini) because that means they can’t screw anymore.  After one night in the habit, she sends for Enrico to come and make love to her.  Let’s just say it doesn’t go as expected. 

Like with the wraparound segments, the comedy is painfully unfunny.  However, the surprise twist at the end is genuinely amusing.  If only it had a bit more T & A, it could’ve been a winner. 

Up next is “The Trick” (**).  A lowly housekeeper named Lisa (Orchidea de Santis) becomes privy to the fact that the lady of the house (Shirley Corrigan) is sleeping with the handsome new butler under her husband’s nose.  Turns out, she and the butler are in cahoots and have an elaborate blackmail scheme in motion.  Naturally, it all winds up going south. 

This tale is more or less straightforward.  Fortunately, it doesn’t have as much comedy as some of the other segments do.  A healthy dose of skin certainly helps too.  However, the twists are predictable, and it all seems to get wrapped up way too quickly in the end.

Femi Benussi stars in the next tale, “4 Wives” (** ½).  She’s an unhappily married woman who gets tired of her husband drinking and gambling with his friends at all hours of the night.  After a bout of drunken antics, he and his pals like to take turns plowing the local farm girl.  Femi spies on them one night and tells the men’s wives the next morning.  The ladies then hatch a plot to get back at their husbands once and for all. 

This one is thematically similar to the other stories.  (People having sex with someone posing as another person.)  It works slightly better than the others, thanks to its light comedic touch and the reliance on durable bedroom farce cliches.  That doesn’t exactly translate into actual laughs, but Benussi’s performance (and nude scenes) is fun to watch. 

The final tale is “The Miracle” (**).  Betta (Rosemarie Lindt) leaves her loutish priest husband to be with a hunky friar.  When his order catches him giving Betta the old in-out, they coerce him into joining in on the action.  Problems arise when she becomes pregnant. 

Again, this story covers a lot of the same ground as the others that preceded it.  The religious sex scenes are similar to the ones found in The Naughty Nun, except with the roles reversed.  (Nuns are swapped out for Friars.)  Ultimately, it suffers from an overall lack of humor (not to mention skin), which makes it a cut below the rest. 

AKA:  Tales of Erotica.

TUBI CONTINUED… VIDEOVERSE (2021) **

A sexy babe named Maya (Anna Claire Clouds) finds a videotape buried in her backyard.  She and her husband (Ian Mark) watch the mystery movie and are shocked to learn it’s a porno from the ‘80s starring the dead adult actress Cassandra Essex (Lexi Luna), who used to own the house.  Before long, they and their hot-to-trot houseguest Doreen (Jazmin Luv) begin to lose touch with reality and find themselves in Cassandra’s “sex dimension”.

 

Videoverse is a breezy, if forgettable 21st century Surrender Cinema flick.  The idea is relatively sound, but the set-up is a little more complicated than necessary for something as silly as this, and even at a scant sixty-seven minutes, it still feels a tad longwinded.  The ‘80s porno scenes are kinda fun though, even if the filmmakers really don’t take full advantage of the concept.  (The aerobicizing scene had potential, but it ultimately goes nowhere.)  At least the house makes for a rather amusing setting as it’s chockful of Full Moon posters and paraphernalia.

On the plus side, the ladies are all easy on the eyes, even if they do have a little trouble with the admittedly clunky one-liners and unfunny zingers the script gives them.  They also have a habit of getting naked at the drop of a hat, which helps to make up for many of the film’s storytelling problems and failed attempts at comedy.  Jayden Cole in particular looks fine as hell as the sultry fortune teller.  Clouds and Luv are equally hot as the babes in the woods who are slowly seduced into the ‘80s era of erotic excess.  Luna, on the other hand, seems to be trying too hard as she overdoes it with her silly accent.  That said, she still looks great in a variety of outfits (including a dominatrix get-up).  While the ladies do disrobe at a decent clip, all the lesbian scenes end abruptly before they even have a chance to gather steam, which is unfortunate.  

AKA:  Cassex.

TUBI CONTINUED… “2” – I, A WOMAN PART 2 (1969) ***

Siv (Gio Petre) is a lonely housewife married to an eccentric antiques dealer named Hans (Lars Lunoe), who is mired in debt and is perpetually hounded by creditors.  That still doesn’t stop him from showering her with jewelry and taking nude pics of her.  One night, he makes her wear a fancy dress and invites a friend over for dinner and pimps her out to him.  More degradation follows until Siv finally learns his shocking secret. 

While I acknowledge I haven’t seen the first one (when has that ever stopped me from watching something with “Part 2” in the title?), I assume it features more of the same. Director Mac Ahlberg does a fine job with all the sex and nude scenes.  They are all tastefully done, and are, dare I say, even a bit artistic.  Then again, Ahlberg’s a cinematographer by trade (who went on to work for everyone from Stuart Gordon to Sean S. Cunningham to John Landis), so it’s no wonder the sex scenes look first rate, even if they aren’t exactly out and out steamy. 

The plot stuff is mostly your standard melodrama sort of thing.  The big difference is the unusually complex relationship our heroine has with her mother in-law, which is something you don’t normally see in this something like this.  If I’m being honest, “2” – I, a Woman Part 2 is kinda hit-and-miss for the first seventy-five minutes but stay with it.  If you do, you’ll be treated to a totally bonkers twist ending, which helps bump this one into the win column.  Like, I knew the husband was gonna be nuts, but I didn’t think he was gonna be THAT nuts.  It makes for the perfect capper on what otherwise would have been a fine, if forgettable sex flick and makes it something of a minor classic. 

Man, I might have to track down Part 1 (and 3!) now.

AKA:  I, a Woman Part 2.

TUBI CONTINUED… TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN REVISITED (2019) * ½

In the dystopian future, a group of radical feminist scientists treat young Billy Hampton (Bill Paxton) like a human guinea pig, swapping his genders and sexual preferences on a whim using a mixture of surgery, shock treatment, and hypnosis.  They then use their devious techniques to brainwash him into becoming a killer and send him off to Wales to assassinate one of their political opponents.

Co-written by none other than William S. Burroughs, Taking Tiger Mountain was originally released in 1983.  It has since been cleaned up and re-edited, with new scenes added and/or old scenes modified.  The results were re-released shortly after Paxton’s death in 2019.  Shot in black and white, it drags like a son of a bitch, and often feels like an overlong, needlessly pretentious student film.  Despite a fine performance from Paxton, it’s basically a slog from the word go. 

The filmmakers gamely try to create a post-nuke world on a shoestring budget.  However, the surveillance camera footage sequences and the constant droning from radio broadcasts detailing the fallout of World War III are more monotonous than anything.  Even though it’s little more than an hour long, it feels much longer due to the fractured narrative.  This is one of those movies that were so dull that it took me several days to get through.  I’m sure there are folks that have climbed actual mountains in shorter time.

 

If you’re a fan of Paxton and want to see him early on in his career, you might want to give it a shot.  (Or, if you just want to see his dick, as it makes several appearances.)  Even as a curiosity piece, it’s still dreadfully unsatisfying.  Honestly, if I ever a hankering to see a youthful Paxton doing something weird and arty, I’ll just watch the Barnes and Barnes “Fish Heads” music video (which he directed).

TUBI CONTINUED… SEX AND THE LONELY WOMAN PART II (1971) **

Gregg (Sergio Regules, who was also in the first movie, but playing a different character) is a struggling television writer who picks up a sexy stranded motorist named Carolyn (Barbara Mills) on the highway and brings her back to her swinging Palm Springs mansion.  She tells him all about how her studio honcho hubby is in the closet and denies her much-needed sexual affection.  Gregg and Carolyn hit it off and soon become lovers.  Their bliss is short lived when she is raped and kidnapped by a gang of thugs. 

As with Sex and the Lonely Woman, this was directed by Ted Leversuch.  It was actually made BEFORE the first one (as The Perfect Arrangement) and was just retitled here in America.  They’re totally unrelated, other than the fact that they’re both about Regules banging unhappily married women.  The first one was sort of a variation on an Armando Bo movie.  This one feels like a low budget version of a Joe Sarno flick.  You know, the whole “Sexual Misadventures of Well-to-Do Housewife Stuck in a Loveless Marriage and Imprisoned in Her Boring Domestic Life” bit.

 

Mills is very good at playing the lonely longing wife and is quite sexy.  Sadly, Regules is kind of a dullard this time out.  To make matters worse, he doesn’t have a whole lot of chemistry with Mills, which causes the sex scenes to be more fizzle than sizzle.  The good news is there are a lot of them in the second act, including a bathtub scene, a slow motion underwater skinny-dipping sequence, and even a From Here to Eternity-inspired sex scene on the beach. 

The big problem is that the third act is needlessly convoluted and downright mean-spirited.  In fact, it seems more like a knee-jerk moralistic punishment from the screenwriters for the heroine’s free love lifestyle than a realistic extension of the story.  It’s especially weird that even though he’s top billed, Regulas virtually disappears from the narrative after the second act.  Oh, and if you thought the ending of the “first” one went on forever, wait till you see Part II’s longwinded (and dull) finale.

AKA:  The Perfect Arrangement.

TUBI CONTINUED… SEX AND THE LONELY WOMAN (1972) ** ½

Marta (Susana Groisman) is an unhappily married woman stuck with an uncaring husband Ricardo (Freddie Deacon).  Her world is turned upside down when an unconscious escaped convict named Paul (Sergio Regules) washes up on the shore of her beachfront home.  She secretly nurses him back to health in the basement and the two eventually fall in love.  Complicating matters is the fact that her husband is also the warden of the prison where Paul has escaped.  Things go from bad to worse when Ricardo’s sleazeball friend (Romolo Bondi) finds out about the lovebirds and blackmails Marta.

Groisman is quite beautiful and has a sort of budget version Isabel Sarli type quality to her.  Voluptuous and sultry, she is quite fetching even while playing such a sad sack character.  Likewise, Ted Leversuch’s direction sort of feels like he was going for a watered-down version of an Armando Bo melodrama.  It’s all sort of hit-and-miss, but fortunately there’s just enough drama to keep you invested in the characters and just enough nudity to placate the exploitation crowd. 

The nude scenes are all tastefully done and give the audience an equal measure of tease (there are lots of side boob shots in the early going) and please (Groisman’s bathtub scene is a real eye-opener).  They also occur with enough frequency to keep you from losing interest whenever the pacing slows.  It’s a shame that the final chase/escape scene goes on forever.  It’s almost as if Leversuch thought he was making a “real” movie for a minute.  Had he cut the finale in half, Sex and the Lonely Woman might’ve skated by with a *** rating.  His sporadic artsy-fartsy touches aren’t really all that successful either (like the yellow-tinted love scene).  Actually, the scratched-up, jumpy print gives it a fun Grindhouse quality, and makes it feel a little more down-and-dirty than it probably is.  Because of that, it works better as a straight-up skin flick than a softcore drama with stylistic aspirations.

TUBI CONTINUED… BLOOD CAR (2007) ** ½

In the future, gas is so expensive that nobody can afford to drive cars anymore.  Archie (Mike Brune) is a teacher who tries in vain to create a new vegan engine.  When he accidentally cuts himself, blood gets into the motor, and it starts right up.  Naturally, having the only car in town has its advantages.  Namely, the hot babe Denise (Katie Rowlett) who works at the local meat stand now wants to fuck him every night… but ONLY if he can keep the car on the road.  The problem is, for the car to run, the blood in the tank needs to be human.  So, Archie does what any horny dude would:  Go around feeding people to his car in order to get some. 

Blood Car is basically a car version of Little Shop of Horrors.  In fact, it probably could’ve been titled Little Body Shop of Horrors.  Overall, it’s pretty amusing, even if it isn’t exactly laugh out loud funny.  Still, I appreciated the weird vibe that’s more quirky than silly.  Another bonus is the lean running time of seventy-five minutes, which is about as long as the thin premise could’ve probably handled.  Even then, there are some stretches where the film threatens to… uh… run out of gas.  While there are a few bumps in the road, it remains mildly entertaining and is just clever and odd enough to be memorable. 

Brune isn’t too bad in the lead.  He seems a little too passive at times, but he makes for an OK dorky hero. Rowlett is a lot of fun though as the sexy meat-slinging siren who’s hot to trot as long as he keeps it on the road.  The only real “star” is My Girl’s Anna Chlumsky as the cute nerd who runs the wheatgrass stand.  She’s pretty entertaining, even if the movie never fully puts her in the driver’s seat.  (Okay, that’s enough car puns for one day.)

TUBI CONTINUED… WEREWOLF BITCHES FROM OUTER SPACE (2017) NO STARS

You know, just the other day I was wondering whatever happened to Janeane Garafalo.  Turns out, she’s been busy “starring” in this no-budget horror comedy.  You know you’re in trouble when she’s the only name in the cast.  That is, unless you count Lloyd Kaufman and… uh… The Toxic Avenger. 

Feminist werewolf women from the planet Uranus are sent by their alien leader (a chihuahua) to Earth.  Any time they encounter chauvinist men, annoying women, or just assholes in general, they spin around real fast, turn into werewolves (or wear Halloween werewolf masks that were probably purchased at Kmart for cheap on November 1st), and kill them.  There’s a lot of other stuff that happens (like an idiot cop who has a puppet for a partner), but it’s just way too mind-numbingly stupid to go into right now.  I may, however, discuss the rest of the movie with my therapist on my next visit.

I don’t know how the hell they roped Garafalo into this.  She’s the “star” but is only in it for like a minute as a pretentious art gallery owner who is killed by the extraterrestrial lycanthrope ladies.  Kaufman’s role is limited to a badly greenscreened cameo.  Don’t let his participation fool you into thinking this is going to be a bad sub-Troma wannabe flick.  It’s actually a godawful sub-Troma wannabe flick. The cringy humor is well below the low standards of your average Troma movie.  So is the painfully amateurish acting.  

The werewolf attack scenes are repetitive too.  These scenes might’ve been worthwhile if there was some gore or if there was any nudity in general.  Unfortunately, it’s heavily padded with weird asides (like a filmstrip on chiggers) and impromptu dance numbers that add nothing to the proceedings.  No less than three directors (including Nick Zedd) are credited to this fucking mess.  At least we do get a happy ending when the feminist werewolf women go back to Uranus, which is where the movie belongs.

TUBI CONTINUED… NOAH’S SHARK (2021) * ½

Did you know that the Devil, who first took the form of a snake to trick Eve in the garden of Eden, also transformed into a shark and deceived Noah’s son into sneaking him aboard the Ark?  Now, in the present day, a disgraced priest and a documentary filmmaker are on a quest to find the remains of the Ark.  They quickly run afoul of a crimson-cloaked cult that are determined to stop them from finding the Ark at any cost.

Noah’s Shark is much like your typical Mark Polonia movie, except with a lot more Jesus talk.  Although the scenes of the CGI shark are far from the worst I’ve seen in his films, they do lack the chintzy charm you’d expect from Polonia.  On the bright side, the premise is about as ridiculous as you could hope for, and there are a couple of genuine snickers to be had. 

That said, there is an overall sense of déjà vu that hangs over the picture.  The scene where the priest performs an exorcism on a piece of wood from the Ark is awfully similar to Polonia’s Amityville Exorcism, which was also about a haunted piece of lumber.  In fact, it’s the same priest character from that movie, which makes this a semi-sequel.  I think.  Or maybe it’s the beginning of the PCU.  (Polonia Cinematic Universe.)  I don’t know.

Strangely enough, the shark somehow gets lost in the shuffle in all this (Polonia keeps showing the same nightmare/flashback to remind you of the movie’s title), which is a little disappointing.  There’s also a subplot about a sexy redhead witch that’s a lot more interesting than the plot at hand.  Another subplot (about the first expedition to find the Ark) just feels like padding, as does the Found Footage camcorder POV scenes, not to mention the repeated footage of shit we already saw. 

Despite the great title, Noah’s Shark ultimately leaves viewers at sea.  I wanted to enjoy it, but it was ultimately a slog from the word go.  It took me four days to watch it all.  It might take viewers with a lesser tolerance for Mark Polonia movies forty days and forty nights.

TUBI CONTINUED… REVENGE OF THE EMPIRE OF THE APES (2023) **

The opening crawl contains no less than three spelling errors, which doesn’t give you a whole lot of confidence in this, the fourth film in director Mark Polonia’s Empire of the Apes series.  After the crawl, we get a recycled scene from the last one, Invasion of the Empire of the Apes, where a female prisoner is nearly raped by a horny ape.  Then, the plot begins. 

Two ape terrorists are arrested for trying to blow up a space station and are sentenced to an icy prison planet.  (Scenes of two guys in monkey masks walking in front of green screened images of a frozen tundra is what passes for “an icy prison planet” in this movie.)  As they seek shelter and warmth, they are pursued by alien “flyers”.  (They look like something out of How to Train Your Dragon.) Eventually, they stumble upon a crashed ship containing a warrior woman, and together they form an alliance to fix the spacecraft and get revenge on the evil aliens who condemned them all to death.

Revenge of the Empire of the Apes is an improvement over the last two outings in the series, although that’s not saying very much.  Once again, the effects are piss poor (the CGI space battles look like cut scenes from a 3DO game), although the ape masks are slightly better this time out.  (There were only two apes, so I guess they could afford to spring for masks that weren’t on the clearance rack for this entry.)  I’m not sure I can say this is the best one of the franchise or anything.  What I can say is that the ape on human sex scenes (including some ape on human S & M) certainly make it the most memorable.  Granted, the human and simian boinking isn’t exactly erotic, but it’s just weird enough to give it a reason to exist. 

TUBI CONTINUED… DEVIL STORY (1986) ***

The first ten minutes or so of Devil Story is enough to qualify it as some kind of demented work of genius.  A misshapen guy who looks like a melted marshmallow in a Nazi uniform, runs around the countryside indiscriminately stabbing people.  The funniest bit occurs when a stranded motorist asks the clearly unhinged individual for directions and gets stabbed for his troubles.  

Meanwhile, another stranded motorist almost gets struck by lightning and imagines a cat attacking her.  Then, she and her boyfriend go to a castle to spend the night with a couple of old coots who tell longwinded flashbacks about the town’s history involving pirate ships running aground.  

It was right about this time I began to get nervous.  It was here I thought the movie was going to start to run out of gas.  Luckily, Devil Story still some nutty WTF lunacy left in the tank.

You see, a horse gets loose and runs into a field where a toy pirate ship pushes through a little sand dune.  The audience was probably supposed to think it was the presumably regular-sized pirate ship the old couple was talking about as it began breaking through a mountain.  The fact is it looks like a four-year-old filmmaker’s backyard homemade version of Fitzcarraldo.

That is to say, it’s awesome!

Then there’s the scene where the wayward horse encounters our bald antagonist and gets into a fist fight (hoof fight?) with him.  When the horse kicks the baddie in the stomach, it causes him to puke blood for two straight minutes.  As Martin Scorsese would say:  “Cinema!”

Devil Story is one of those movies where the kitchen sink approach yields uneven, but sometimes hilarious results.  Like, I couldn’t tell if the bad guy was supposed to be wearing a Halloween mask or he was supposed to look like that, and the make-up was just piss-poor.  (It turned out to be a case of the latter.)  Or like just when you think things can’t get any weirder, a mummy shows up.  Because of that, Devil Story is sort of review-proof.  Sure, it’s bad, but depending on your mileage, this could be a minor camp classic. 

I mean, I originally was going to give it ** ½.  However, the day after I watched it, some people at work asked me if I had seen anything good lately.  So, I told them about Devil Story.  Folks, the LOOKS my co-workers gave me when I was just describing the plot makes it worth ***.

TUBI CONTINUED… ZOMBIE PIRATES (2014) * ½

Produced by Fred Olen Ray, Zombie Pirates tells the story of Linda (Sarah French), a sexy cat burglar who is coerced by a shady antique dealer (J.C. Pennylegion) into looking for some priceless pirate treasure.  The only way to conjure up the mythical booty is to offer up five sacrifices in five nights at the stroke of midnight to a boatload of undead pirates.  Naturally, when Linda fails to make the fifth and final sacrifice in a timely manner, the zombie buccaneers come after her.

I wanted to like this one, but there were just too many dreary stretches and extended periods where nothing happened.  If you dig long scenes of a guy who looks like Colonel Sanders droning on and on about the history of pirates, then this will be your Citizen Kane.  If you enjoy entire dialogue scenes that are filmed with the “Vignette” filter left on the camera, then this will be your Casablanca.

Once the zombie pirates finally show up, things slowly start to come alive (no pun intended), but not much.  The poster artwork and skeletal pirate make-up is very much inspired by the old Blind Dead movies, particularly The Ghost Galleon, as the scenes aboard the zombies’ boat harken back to that old flick.  The zombie make-up is also pretty cool.  (One even has a zombie parrot!)  The kills are serviceable too, and include a knife through the mouth, some gut ripping, and skull chewing.  

The final zombie attack is OK I guess, but it’s ultimately too little too late.  It certainly doesn’t make up for all the dull scenes that came before, especially the parts where our heroine disposed of the bodies, which had a tendency to drag.  (And I don’t mean because they involved her literally dragging the corpses onto a boat for minutes on end.  I mean they are repetitive and really bogged the pace down.)

TUBI CONTINUED… ATTACK OF THE GIANT TEACHER (2020) **

Kenzo (Makoto Kojima) is a lowly teacher who learns his night school is about to be shut down.  As a final farewell, he and his ragtag group of students decide to put on a musical for the last day of school.  Little do they know that’s when an alien invasion of Earth is about to occur.  Luckily, two of his students are tiny aliens in disguise and they give their beloved teacher a super pill that makes him grow to enormous proportions so he can duke it out with the giant alien menace.

Attack of the Giant Teacher has a potentially good idea.  It’s just a shame that you have to wait until the final ten minutes for the teacher to become a giant.  (Aside from the opening flash forward, that is.)  Till then, you’re stuck with a lot of boring Stand and Deliver-style stuff.  While the teaching scenes aren’t bad exactly, there’s very little for you to hang your hat on until the climax rolls around.  (Aside from the random scene where a lawyer fights a waitress wearing wrestling tights.)

The effects are kind of cheesy, although I guess that’s to be expected.  (The main alien looks like a cross between a burned-out lava lamp and Tom Servo from Mystery Science Theater 3000.)  However, the Ultraman-style fight scene at the end is rather ill-fitting with the whole teacher narrative.  I guess it would’ve been okay if the final fight wasn’t so damned brief.  If you’re more invested in whether or not the teacher and his students will rally together to put on the big musical rather than if the teacher will become huge and fight off the impending alien invasion, then you might dig it.  Personally, there weren’t nearly enough scenes of the giant teacher battling UFOs, which, to me, seemed like the entire goddamned point.  Because of that, I can’t give Attack of the Giant Teacher a passing grade.

TUBI CONTINUED… FROZEN SCREAM (1975) *

“Immortality?  Why would anyone want to live forever in a world like this?”

This question is pondered out of the blue by an unseen narrator early on in Frozen Scream.  The query is posed in between a scene of a floating head that’s superimposed over a starfield and a scene where a bug-eyed strangler murders a couple in a swimming pool.  Shortly thereafter, there are phone conversations where the camera never is on the person talking, which means it’s easier to dub in the dialogue after the fact.  (This is also known as “Pulling a Doris Wishman.”) 

I wasn’t even five minutes into the flick, and I already knew I was in deep trouble.

Five minutes later, the narrator comes back, identifies himself as a cop, and tells us how he’s been investigating the murders.  Unfortunately, he chose to do this during a long dialogue scene between the heroine and her doctor, so there’s narration stacked upon dialogue and overlapping to the point that it feels like a ramshackle Altman movie.  This technique is used throughout the film, which begs the question:  Why go through all the trouble to poorly dub your dialogue if you’re just going to dub narration over the whole conversation anyway?

Speaking of the dialogue, it’s spoken by actors who A) Flub their lines B) Speak in blank, expressionless monotone and C) Have accents so thick it sounds like Lili Von Shtupp impersonating Dr. Ruth.

In short, this movie is like a seven-layer cake of suck with each layer suckier than the next.

Bright spots include an OK nightmare scene, a few nifty (albeit brief) gore effects (including an axe to the face and a shard of glass to the eye), and a nude dream sequence.  The most hilarious scene involves a rock band singing covers of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Rock Around the Clock”, but slurring the words in such a manner that I assume was their slick way of avoiding paying any royalties.

Co-Written by Michael (Blood Diner) Sonye.

TUBI CONTINUED… WONDER WOMEN (1973) ***

Nancy Kwan is an evil dragon lady with a prosperous side business.  She sends out her hit team of all-girl assassins to bring back top athletes and then uses their body parts and organs to transplant onto old rich farts so they can live forever.  Ross Hagen is the cranky ex-cop who gets hired by Lloyd’s of London to bring down her organization.

Wonder Women is a weird flick.  Kwan plays sort of a female-flipped version of Fu Manchu.  The transplant scenes feel like a Ted V. Mikels movie. The stuff with busty ladies in tight outfits seem like something out of a Russ Meyer daydream.  Hagen’s scenes are like a generic made-in-the-Philippines actioner.  All this sounds like an ideal mash-up of genres, but unfortunately, most of the exploitation elements are kept to a minimum.  Even though things kick off with a trippy multicolor scene of topless women swimming around in a pool, that’s about all the skin we get.  (I mean, it’s rated PG for God’s sake!)

The beginning is choppy as hell too.  There were times when I was struggling to tell what was going on.  However, if you’re a patient viewer, you eventually figure it out, mostly from osmosis.  Even then, it kind of takes a while for it to make sense.  Fortunately, the fractured narrative becomes a bit cohesive as the film goes on.  I will say the scenes with Hagen run on a bit long though, and there will be times when you’ll start to wonder where the Wonder Women are.

Is the plot choppy?  Sure!  Is the storytelling structure erratic as hell?  You bet.  BUT… even with those detriments, I must be honest when I say that director Robert Vincent O’Neil’s kitchen sink approach is quite admirable.  While there are certainly some rocky stretches here, the sillier aspects of the flick eventually won me over.  I mean by the time Kwan was giving Hagen a tour of her personal prison of misshapen freaks, I had to admit I was having a good time.  The set-up for a sequel, which sadly never happened, also goes on too long, but since it features some of my personal favorite ‘70s actresses, Marilyn Joi, Robyn Hilton, and Leslie McRae, it’s hard to complain too much.

The cast is solid throughout.  Hagen is grouchy but fun, and Kwan makes for a solid villainess.  It doesn’t hurt that her all-girl army (including Roberta Collins and Maria de Aragon… who went on to play Greedo in Star Wars!) are easy on the eyes.  Sure, Wonder Women is messy and uneven, but it’s hard not to like any movie that features both Sid Haig AND Vic Diaz. 

The music is probably the best part though. The soundtrack is full of funky toe-tapping ditties that will keep you moving and grooving, even when the plot isn’t moving and grooving.  Also, the opening theme was later incorporated by Vinegar Syndrome, which by itself is pretty cool too. 

O’Neil later went on to direct the iconic Angel.

AKA:  The Deadly and the Beautiful.

TUBI CONTINUED… FANTASTICOZZI (2016) *** ½

FantastiCozzi is a fun, breezy documentary on Italian genre filmmaker Luigi Cozzi.  At first, the camera finds him behind the counter of his video store where he relates his story in his own words.  Luigi starts out as a little kid obsessed with science fiction and grows up and becomes the Italian correspondent for Famous Monsters of Filmland.  He then begins writing movie reviews and strikes up a friendship with none other than Dario Argento, who asks him to co-write Four Flies on Grey Velvet.  Eventually, Cozzi shifts to directing gialli (The Killer Must Kill Again), sex comedies (The Naked Housekeeper), and even his own Italian version of Godzilla.  Other films featured are his cheesy Star Wars knock-off, Starcrash, his Alien clone, Contamination, and my personal Cozzi favorite, Hercules.

Director Felipe M. (Deodato Holocaust) Guerra uses a couple different source interviews with Cozzi to generate the film.  In all of them, Luigi seems like a gregarious guy and is obviously a natural storyteller.  Guerra also gives us a nice assortment of clips of the films, and even some behind-the-scenes footage.  Although I wish the film delved more into Cozzi’s Godzilla (it would probably make for its own illuminating documentary), the stuff we do get is fascinating.  The scenes of the colorization process of Godzilla are especially mind-blowing as artists are shown hand painting the black and white film a frame at a time.  

Most of the time is devoted to Starcrash, which is fine.  The behind the scenes look at the special effects are a lot of fun and the side-by-side comparison of Star Wars and Starcrash (accompanied by Meco’s Star Wars disco theme!) is particularly great.  I also enjoyed scenes from the vintage documentary on Contamination where Cozzi reveals the alien eggs are nothing more than balloons painted green and touched up with slime.  The best tidbit however was learning that when they made Hercules, no one told Lou Ferrigno they were making a sequel simultaneously.  He thought they were just doing reshoots of another movie!  The producers purposefully kept him in the dark because if he knew he was making Herc 2, he would’ve asked for more money!  Incredible!

TUBI CONTINUED… YOU NEVER GAVE ME ROSES (1982) **

Chuck (Alfonso Landa) is a low-level enforcer who works for a gangster named Max.  His job detail is to walk up and down Bourbon Street and make collections.  When the hookers can’t pay, he smacks them up a bit.  Max eventually decides to make him a full partner, but before Chuck can get his feet wet, Max is brutally gunned down.  Soon, goons come crawling out of the woodwork to shake Chuck down.

Directed by Jack (Crypt of Dark Secrets) Weis, You Never Gave Me Roses (which is listed on Tubi as Death Brings Roses) boasts some good Bourbon Street location work.  Too bad the story is pedestrian, the plot is uninvolving, and the pacing is curiously stagnant.  I guess it almost works as a travelogue for the French Quarter in the ‘70s. It’s certainly much too mundane to cut it as a slice-of-life tale of a streetwise pimp.  Nor is it nasty and tough enough to make for a seedy crime story.

Landa is kind of dull in the lead, but it’s nice seeing some real stars appearing in a Weis movie for a change.  Scott Brady is good as a Mafioso and Broderick Crawford also shows up as a bartender.  The best part though is seeing Henny Youngman (!) basically playing himself.  Not only that, but he also does his usual schtick on stage, which means You Never Gave Me Roses would make for a good double feature with The Gore Gore Girls (which also featured Youngman in a small role).  

It’s Crypt of Dark Secrets’ Maureen Chan who makes the most memorable impression as a hot to trot hooker who bangs Chuck and says, “When you make love, it’s like going to the toilet!  No emotion.  No feeling.  No nothing!”  If the script had a couple more howlers like this one, it might’ve been worth it.  However, I don’t think anyone will be giving You Never Gave Me Roses its flowers anytime soon.

AKA:  Death Brings Roses.

FRANKY AND HIS PALS (1991) *

Franky, Drak, Humper, Wolfie, and Mummy are a group of monsters that have been living inside of a cave for a hundred years.  After they find a treasure map, Franky accidentally farts so hard that it blows a hole in the side of the mountain.  The pals then go out into the real world searching for treasure and encounter aerobicize classes, Halloween costume parties, and the joy of peeping on people while they’re doing the nasty.

Franky and His Pals looks like an unholy amalgam of a low budget Sid and Marty Krofft show from the ‘70s and a ‘90s shot-on-video horror flick.  Although there’s enough suggestive humor here to warrant a PG-13, it’s not really for kids.  Or adults.  Or humans for that matter.

I was flummoxed by this flick at every turn, which is really saying something coming from such a die-hard bad movie connoisseur.  The gags are awful (the vampire, “Drak” goes to a bar and orders a… wait for it… Bloody Mary!) and the sexual humor doesn’t work at all (the hunchback, “Humper” watches a couple doing it and says, “Ride me like a cowboy!” over and over again).  It’s also heavily padded with annoying songs, including a rap that recaps the events of the movie… TEN MINUTES into the film!  We’re only ten minutes in!  What is there to recap?  The ending where the film simultaneously throws up its hands and gives up AND sets itself up for a sequel will have you tearing your hair out.

The oddest part is the romance that blooms with the werewolf, “Wolfie” and a gay ballerina.  In a movie like this (and certainly one made during this time period), you’d think there’d be a lot of crass jokes made at the only gay character's expense.  However, their storyline is treated with a surprising amount of dignity.  (Or as much as you would expect from a SOV horror comedy.)  Furthermore, all the characters never comment negatively on their relationship, and are generally accepting of their union.  That sole touch was enough for me to give Franky and His Pals * instead of ½ *.  (Unfortunately, the progressive attitudes only extend so far as the only two black characters are treated like scared caricatures out of a horror flick from the ‘30s.)

TUBI CONTINUED… CRYPT OF DARK SECRETS (1976) ***

A sexy snake woman named Damballa (Maureen Chan) is out in the swamp performing voodoo rituals.  That doesn’t seem to bother a retired Army Ranger named Ted (Ronald Tanet) who settles down in a little cabin in the middle of the swamp.  A trio of no-good swamp rats learn where he keeps his cash and kill him and make off with the loot.  It’s then up to the sexy snake babe to exact revenge.

Crypt of Dark Secrets has an odd, low budget look and feel.  Many of the swamp sequences are downright gorgeous while some interior shots are blurry and out of focus.  A handful of the actors are hammy and amateurish while other players are quite good.  Some stretches are strangely captivating while others are a total bore.  (Like the flashback that tells Damballa’s story, which basically just boils down to a massive exposition dump.)  For all its uneven qualities, there are a few genuinely surprising moments (like the fact that the killers immediately turn themselves in once they learn they’ve been cursed) and director Jack (Mardi Gras Massacre) Weis makes good use of the swamp locations, which helps make this an imperfect, but memorable winner.

The thing that really puts the movie into the win column is Maureen Chan as Damballa.  Her willingness to do sexy voodoo ceremonies totally nude at the drop of a hat really endears her to the audience.  There’s a particularly awesome scene where she revives the dude’s corpse by doing a sexy dance over his body and bumping and grinding on his chest.  Naturally, he comes back to life, and they bone.  

I think I have a Do Not Resuscitate clause in my will, but now I might have to amend my will and make an exception for sexy snake women.  I mean have a sexy snake woman at least TRY to bring me back to life with her sexy nude gyrations before you pull the plug on me.  It can’t hurt.

AKA:  Dark Secrets.

TUBI CONTINUED… HONEYMOON OF HORROR (1964) *

After a whirlwind courtship, Lilli (Abbey Heller) marries a handsome artist named Emile (Robert Parsons).  She knows she’s in trouble straight away when dozens of his eccentric artist friends crash their honeymoon and throw a surprise party.  The fact that he leaves at all hours of the night while his creepy butler leers at her doesn’t help matters either.   Or that every time she winds up alone with one of her husband’s whack-a-doodle friends, they reveal themselves to be potential psychos.  Then, there’s the matter of the persistent caller who hangs up whenever Lilli comes on the line.  Is the mysterious person on the other line trying to warn her?  Or are they nuts too?

Honeymoon of Horror has a potentially intriguing set up, but after that, it’s duller than dishwater and boring as fuck.  It might’ve been worthwhile if the filmmakers were satirizing the art scene and skewering the quirky characters that populate it the way, say, Roger Corman did in A Bucket of Blood.  These bozos get on your nerves from the moment they arrive on screen and act more as red herrings than any sort of art world caricatures.

Apparently, there’s an alternate version that includes some cheap nude inserts.  I can’t tell for sure it would’ve made a difference since it’s so damned dull.  However, it might’ve taken the sting out of all the dreariness.  On the plus side, Heller isn’t bad (it’s a shame that this was her only film role), and I did enjoy the extensive use of library music, some of which was more famously used in Night of the Living Dead.

A cheap floozy gets the best line of the movie when she shrugs off a near rape and says, “He was a minor sex maniac… NOT a murderer!”

AKA:  Orgy of the Golden Nudes.  AKA:  The Golden Nymphs.  AKA:  Orgies.  

TUBI CONTINUED… THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE IN APARTMENT 14F (2019) **

Two slackers go to a drug dealer’s apartment hoping they’ll get hired as low-level muscle.  While hanging around the apartment, they bide their time by using a drone equipped with a camera to spy on the hooker who lives in the apartment below.  When the drone gets stuck on the next level, they are horrified to see the apartment is overrun with zombies.  Panicked, they stay inside, hunker down, and decide to wait out the zombie apocalypse.

Written by Shaun Donnelly, one of the masterminds behind Lingerie Fighting Championships (one of the characters wears an LFC shirt) and costarring the LFC champ, Jolene Hexx as the hooker, The Zombie Apocalypse in Apartment 14F is a semi-amusing attempt to churn out a low budget zombie flick with limited locations and cast members.  Too bad the two leads aren’t very funny.  Since most of the running time is devoted to them locked in the apartment together, the whole thing has a tendency to get repetitive in a hurry.  I mean having two slackers doing drugs, making pop culture references, and generally just hanging out doesn’t exactly translate into gripping cinema. 

If this was made during the pandemic, I might’ve given it some slack as the premise does offer a novel way to make a zombie movie on a (very) small scale.  Since it came out a full year before COVID, I can’t quite bring myself to go easy on it.  It also doesn’t help that you can see the twist ending coming from a mile away.

Hexx is easily the best thing about the movie, even if she isn’t in it very much.   (Although I’m sure you already guessed that if you’re familiar with my love for her abilities in the ring.)  She gets naked briefly for shower and sex scenes, and the film briefly comes to life whenever she is front and center.  Unfortunately, she spends most of her screen time barely visible on a teeny monitor.  One thing is for sure, the day she has a starring vehicle, I’ll be the first one in line to see it.

TUBI CONTINUED… RUNAWAY NIGHTMARE (2018) ***

Many low budget horror movies try to recapture the look and feel of old ‘70s Grindhouse movies by using fake intermission ads, trailers, and scratched prints.  Very few go for the “Taped Off Television in the ‘80s” vibe.  The WNUF Halloween Special is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.  Runaway Nightmare is a neat attempt to recreate that bygone era with fake station breaks, regional TV commercials, and bumpers.  (Like The WNUF Halloween Special, the broadcast takes place on Halloween.)

This is basically a riff on the old After School Specials, but when you’re watching it, it has commercials for psychics, thrift shops, and Halloween stores left intact.  My only real complaint is that the movie itself never quite feels like a real After School Special. It just feels like… you know… another Dustin Ferguson movie.  However, the ads and commercials are really well done and are worth the price of admission on their own merit.  In fact, I might go so far to say that Runaway Nightmare (which has no relation to the 1982 flick of the same name), just might be my favorite Ferguson joint so far.

The plot of the movie within a movie has a teenager fighting off the advances of her drunken stepfather and accidentally killing him in the process.  She flees the scene and is picked up off the side of the road by two degenerates who drug her and sell her to some Satanists looking to sacrifice a virgin on Halloween night.

Many ads are repeated throughout, which I’m sure served two purposes:  To recreate the experience of watching old TV broadcasts who always used the same couple of sponsors, and to pad out the running time.  (It’s only thirty-eight minutes long.) I’m not really complaining since many of them are pretty sweet.  My favorite bit was a Trick or Treat montage set to “The Monster Mash”.  (I’m not entirely sure how Ferguson got the rights to the song, but hey, don’t ask, don’t tell, right?)

TUBI CONTINUED… THE PRODIGAL PLANET (1983) **

The Prodigal Planet is the fourth and final chapter in Donald W. Thompson’s series of Tribulation films that began with A Thief in the Night.  As with the other movies, it picks up almost immediately where the last one left off.  Our hero, David (William Wellman, Jr.) is about to be executed by the Antichrist’s “Unite” foot soldiers when he’s saved at the last minute by an underground freedom fighter named Connie (Terri Lynn Hall).  Together, they team up to take down the Antichrist once and for all.  Most of their time though is spent riding around the wasteland in his armored RV looking for survivors and avoiding “Doomsday People” AKA:  Mutants.  Along the way, they naturally run into the preacher from other movies who now lives in a hole and is reduced to eating rats for food who tells them lots of long-ass Bible speeches and vital exposition.

The Prodigal Planet feels closer to your average post-apocalypse movie as the scenes in the burned-out cities crawling with mutants in monk robes has a real Omega Man-type vibe to them.  (Other than the shit-ton of Jesus talk, that is.)  Some of this isn’t too bad, but the biggest detriment is the over-inflated running time.  A Thief in the Night was a breezy hour or so.  This one is over two hours, and it drags like a sumbitch in several places.

You get a little bit of everything in this one though.  There’s nuclear bombs, awful religious songs, post-nuke cliches, and of course, lots of Bible quoting.  Stick with it though because the finale is good for a few chuckles.  I also liked how villains die from convenient train accidents and fiery stock footage explosions.  Sure, it’s not quite enough to offer you salvation, but it does take some of the sting out of the overlong running time.

AKA:  A Thief in the Night 4:  The Prodigal Planet. 

RAD (1986) ** ½

Rad is a boilerplate sports movie with the novelty of the sport in question being BMX racing.  It was directed by Hal (Smokey and the Bandit) Needham, who might not be the first guy you think of for something like this.  However, he always had a knack for filming stunts, and he fills the flick with lots of scenes of bike riders doing tricks and flying in the air in slow motion.

Cru (Bill Allen) is a great BMX rider trapped in a small town.  When the big BMX race, “Helltrack” comes to town, he must decide whether or not to ditch the SATs for the big race.  With the help of his new gal (Lori Loughlin), he signs up for the race, defying his mother (Talia Shire, whose husband, Jack Schwartzman produced this) who wants him to go to college.  Naturally, everyone in town starts rooting for him and comes to his rescue when the greedy sponsor (Jack Weston) tries to stonewall him out of the race.

Rad probably has too much plot for something like this, but it does contain some odd touches that help to elevate it above the typical sports movie cliches.  There’s a funny scene where Allen courts Loughlin while riding bikes together at a school dance that feels sort of like a BMX version of Roller Boogie or something.  Then, there’s the “ass sliding” scene, which is just a naughty sounding way to describe… uh… sliding down a water slide… on… uh… your ass.  (I mean, how else are you going to slide down it?)  

The ’80s time capsule aspect works in its favor though, and some of the rampant product placement is also good for a laugh.  It nearly tops Mac and Me in that regard.  The big race is sponsored by 7-11 and Kix cereal, and there’s even a giant Kix cereal bowl the racers have to go through during the race!

The cast is pretty good too.  Allen is solid in the lead, and Loughlin is great as the sexy tomboy with a heart of gold.  Weston chews the scenery gamely as the villain, and Ray Walston is fun as the old fuddy-duddy who might not be so bad after all.  Shire is kinda wasted though.  After all those Rocky movies, she can do the whole “cheering from the sidelines” thing in her sleep by now.

AKA:  Hell Track.  AKA:  BMX Hellriders.  AKA:  BMX Hellraiders.

TUBI CONTINUED… IMAGE OF THE BEAST (1981) * ½

A Thief in the Night Part 3 picks up where A Distant Thunder left off, with Patty (Patty Dunning) set to be executed for not accepting the mark of the beast during the Tribulation.

It must be said that this opening sequence is something else.  Patty is led to the guillotine for her crimes and is given a heavenly stay of execution when God causes an earthquake to bring her sentencing to a halt.  You would think that alone would make her profess her belief in God, but when she fails to renounce the devil in a timely manner… well…  Let’s just say it doesn’t end well.  

I guess I’m kind of spoiling things when I say this is easily the best part of the movie.  Heck, this is probably the best scene in the whole series.  It’s well worth watching this scene based on its own merits and shows that director Donald W. Thompson had a flair for the dramatic.  It’s just a shame that it all goes into the toilet after that.

The focus then shifts to David (William Wellman, Jr.), a freedom fighter who’s infiltrated “Unite”, the foundation of evil.  His big plan is to… uh… make a fake hand stamp so everybody thinks he has “the mark of the beast”.  However, he spends most of his time in a barn hanging out with the preacher from other movies.  This guy has a big mural of the timeline of the Tribulation and overexplains Biblical prophecies to David (and the audience) and says things like, “This is not God’s temper tantrum!”  Eventually, God rains plague after plague upon man.

After the cool opening guillotine scene, the film slows to a freaking crawl.  Other attempts at suspense are downright laughable.  The grocery store sequence is particularly cheesy, and the attack of the giant locust (although all we see is its stinger) is lame.  These goofy moments unfortunately are not enough to carry it over the many dull patches.

AKA:  A Thief in the Night 3:  Image of the Beast.

TUBI CONTINUED… A DISTANT THUNDER (1978) * ½

A Distant Thunder is the sequel to Donald W. Thompson’s entertaining Christploitation flick, A Thief in the Night, and it picks up right where that film left off.  Patty (Patty Dunning) wakes up in an internment camp awaiting execution from the evil “Unite” group that’s taken control of the world after the Rapture caused all the good Christians to ascend to Heaven.  She’s naturally hysterical, so her friends think that letting her explain to the audience how she wound up in this predicament is the best cure for what ails her.

It's somewhat noteworthy that Thompson doesn’t rely on flashbacks to the first film.  (Aside from some split-second shots that act as half-assed premonitions.)  He could’ve easily slapped and pasted them in there to save time and money.  Instead, what we have is an interesting, if awkward way to do a sequel.  You see, the first movie was Patty’s “dream” and this is the actual Tribulation.  While I kind of admire that unique angle, the fact is A Distant Thunder just doesn’t work nearly as well as A Thief in the Night. 

Likewise, Dunning isn’t half as good here as she was in the first movie.  In that film, had a wide-eyed Candace Hilligoss quality about her.  Here, she seems to think hysterically screaming and screeching equals “acting”.  The constant scenes of characters preaching to the audience fall short of the heights of the first one, too.

I guess it wouldn’t have been so bad if the original wasn’t a surprisingly effective thriller.  However, A Distant Thunder is basically the film I expected A Thief in the Night was going to be.  It’s pretty bad from start to finish, and not exactly in an entertaining way.  Sure, there are some semi-amusing bits like equating the mark of the beast (which all people need in order to buy things during the Tribulation) with having a credit card, and the low-fi special effects for the “earthquake” scene are good for a chuckle.  Other than that, this is mostly a dud.

Like A Thief in the Night, the aim was to scare people into joining Christianity.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they gained a lot of converts from that film.  However, I’m not sure anybody would’ve signed up after watching this this one.  I guess maybe they were trying to bore people into Heaven this time around.

AKA:  A Thief in the Night 2:  A Distant Thunder.