JUST THE TWO OF US (1970) ***

Denise (Elizabeth Plumb) and Adria (Alisa Courtney) are two lonely housewives who spend a lot of time with each other when their husbands go away on business.  They go out to lunch one day and witness a lesbian couple holding hands.  That makes them curious enough to experiment with each other.  Denise winds up falling hard for Adria, but she rejects her for a younger man. Denise then befriends the couple who take her to a swinging party where she gets high for the first time and is seduced by an older woman. 

Co-directed by Barbara (Humanoids from the Deep) Peeters and Jack Deerson (the cinematographer of Two-Lane Blacktop), Just the Two of Us is a quiet, effective lesbian drama that contains just enough skin and sex to play at the grindhouse.  It’s surprising just how thoughtful and progressive this romantic drama is.  Because so much emphasis is placed on Plumb and Courtney’s relationship, when they finally get together, it really means something.  When they grow apart, you really feel for Plumb. 

Part of why the film works is that the performances are all strong.  Plumb is the standout as the confused and lovesick Denise.  Her chemistry with Courtney is considerable, both in and out of bed.  

Just the Two of Us only occasionally veers into time capsule kitsch.  The musical interludes are badly dated and the party scene is kind of chintzy.  Since the party ends with a hot lesbian sex scene on a pool table, it’s hard to complain.  

AKA:  The Dark Side of Tomorrow.

BLOOD GAMES (1990) ***

An all-girl team of sexy baseball players crush their male counterparts on the diamond.  When their coach welches on a bet, the girls’ coach (Ross Hagen) holds the guy at gunpoint until he coughs up the money.  The guys’ team finds out what happened and they retaliate by stabbing Ross. The violence escalates until the women kill the son of the crooked man who owns the town.  He then offers a bounty on their heads and the women are soon in a fight for their life.

Blood Games blazed the trail for female baseball movies.  By that I mean it came out two years before Penny Marshall’s A League of Their Own.  In fact, this flick features one of the worst games of baseball ever played on screen.  The budget was so low that they couldn’t even afford to play on a real ballfield.  Instead, they play in some field in the woods where the grass is knee high.  The girls also wear booty shorts, which I’m not really going to complain about, but man, it would be hell on their legs if they had to slide into home.  Another odd thing about their wardrobe:  No hats.  How do they expect to catch a fly ball without a visor to block the sun? 

The ladies also have their own tour bus, which raises the question:  Do they go across the country hustling baseball games?  Is such a thing even financially viable?  Maybe that’s why they couldn’t afford pants and hats for their uniforms. 

Luckily, the baseball stuff is quickly brushed aside in favor of the violent back-and-forth between the women and men.  The scenes of them stalking, fighting, and killing one another is a lot more convincing than the scenes of them playing ball.  I guess this was meant to be a literal war of the sexes.  Even if it isn’t entirely successful, there are still plenty of scenes that pack a punch. 

The movie is more effective in the first half when the crazed rednecks are attacking the women’s tour bus.  The scenes of the ladies being hunted in the woods play like First Blood, but with boobs and baseball bats.  While that sounds like it can’t miss, there’s way too much annoying slow motion in the second half.  I guess they had to get this thing up to 90 minutes somehow.  

Blood Games does have one standout sequence.  It comes when perennial drunk George “Buck” Flower sneaks into the ladies’ locker room.  The ensuing shower scene in a classic.  The bit where one of the girls uses a hair dryer to dry off her boobs is priceless.  

In short, Blood Games pretty much gives you everything you'd want from a female revenge picture.  

AKA:  Baseball Bimbos in Hillbilly Hell.

NETFLIX AND KILL: V/H/S: VIRAL (2014) ***

I wasn’t much of a fan of the first two entries in the V/H/S anthology series.  Even though the franchise is of the Found Footage variety, I still decided to give this one a whirl.  Boy, I’m glad that I did.  Not only is this third installment a dramatic improvement in many ways, it’s one of the best Found Footage horror films ever made. 

The wraparound segment, Vicious Circles (**) is the weakest link.  A guy keeps filming his girlfriend with his new camera.  When he sees the cops closing in around his block, he decides to film all the excitement.  Meanwhile, his girlfriend gets captured by the lunatic driver of an ice cream truck and he desperately tries to rescue her.     

The Found Footage aesthetic is especially annoying in this segment.  The videotape footage is full of popping, scratching, and static, but it’s really overdone, almost to the point of parody.  Although there are some grisly moments here, like a guy losing his feet while being dragged by the speeding truck, the fractured narrative and odd plot detours (like a family barbecue that turns deadly) don’t really lend themselves to the wraparound format.  Luckily, the stories themselves are a lot of fun. 

The first tale is Dante the Great (***).  A failing magician finds a magic cloak that allows him to do amazing and impossible illusions.  He becomes an overnight sensation, but we soon learn that fame comes with a price:  He has to feed his assistants to the cloak in order to gain more power.   

This segment plays fast and loose with the form.  It’s not really a Found Footage flick, but more of a mockumentary.  The sequence where the magician takes out an entire SWAT team with his magic powers is awesome and his duel to the death with his sexy assistant is one for the books.  It’s almost enough to make you wish it was its own standalone full-length feature. 

Parallel Monsters (***) is up next.  A scientist works on creating a doorway to a parallel universe.  He opens the door and is startled to meet his alternate self.  They get along famously and decide to switch places to see how the other half lives.  Very weirdly as it turns out. 

Directed by Nacho Vigalondo, this story has a cool Outer Limits Meets Playboy Channel vibe.  The Found Footage gimmick works well here because the scientist is filming it all for his scientific research.  The scene where the two parallel dimension scientists film each other is really cool too.  You never know quite where it’s headed and the big reveal in the end (which I wouldn’t want to spoil) is guaranteed to make your jaw drop. 

Bonestorm (****) rounds out the pack and it is by far the best use of the Found Footage gimmick I have seen.  A group of teens go down to Tijuana to finish filming their skating video.  The ditch they’re skating in just so happens to have some weird satanic markings on it.  When one of the kids cuts his elbow and bleeds on the pentagram, it awakens an evil group of zombie cultists. 

This segment is fun, especially if you’re like me and made skate tapes in your younger years.  The filmmakers really capture the feeling of hanging out with your friends on a lazy afternoon and shredding.  When the shit hits the fan, the feces really flies.  The scenes of the skaters caving in zombie skulls with skateboards, slicing them up with samurai swords, and blowing them up with firecrackers are worth the price of admission.  This is some of the best zombie mayhem I have seen in a long time.  It also helps that the zombies all have a great Burial Ground-inspired look to them. 

V/H/S:  Viral is easily the best in the series and one of the best anthologies of 21^st century.  Folks, this is why you watch all the sequels in any particular series.  You never know when you’re going to be surprised. 

AKA:  V/H/S:  New Virus.

NETFLIX AND KILL: XX (2017) ** ½

XX is a modern anthology horror film directed by four women.  Unfortunately, that’s about the only thing novel about it.  The stories themselves are mostly thin and uneventful, but it must be said that each director gets about as much mileage out of them as they possibly can. 

I guess another unique thing about XX are the Wraparound Sequences (***).  Before each story, there is a little segment where a bunch of creepy old toys and dolls run around on their own.  I don’t know what they have to do with anything, but they reminded me of a Tool music video.

The Box (** ½) is the first story.  It was directed by Jovanka Vukovic and based on a story by Jack Ketchum.  It starts off with a little boy sitting next to a strange man holding a box on a subway.  He asks the man if he can look inside his box and he is happy to oblige.  Afterwards, the boy starts acting strange and eventually stops eating altogether.  Pretty soon, everyone in the family except for his mother is on the starvation kick.

This segment is filled with promise, but it ultimately fizzles out in the end.  There’s no shocking twist or grand finales here.  Quite the opposite in fact.  It’s more of a denial of an ending than a satisfying conclusion.  An open-ended ending might have worked for a feature length film.  However, for a short such as this, it leaves things frustratingly unresolved.  It does have the benefit of one gnarly cannibalism scene.  Since it turns out to be all a dream, I guess it doesn’t count. 

The Birthday Party (**) is the weakest story of the lot.  A harried mother tries to get everything ready for her daughter’s birthday party.  The preparations come to a halt when she finds her husband dead in his office.  She doesn’t let that stop her though and she continues on with the festivities as if nothing’s happened. 

It’s hard to tell what director Annie Clark was going for here.  Was it supposed to be a black comedy thing or a psychological horror type of deal?  She tries to split the difference and consequentially, nothing really works.  This scenario is ripe with humor, but Clark never goes for laughs.  She also doesn’t focus enough on the mom’s fragile mental state to make it click as a psycho drama.  Unlike the last segment, this one does have a decent twist ending, which comes via title card that explains everything we just saw.  It’s an OK punchline, I just wish the set-up was better.

Things improve remarkably with Don’t Fall (***).  A quartet of friends go hiking through the desert.  They make camp and find some nearby cave drawings that could be gibberish or could be a taken as warning.  That night, an evil Native American spirit possesses one of the campers and turns her into a monster.  She soon starts picking off her friends one by one.

This tale isn’t really typical of an anthology movie.  There are no twist ending or messages about morality.  It’s just a straightforward horror show.  Don’t Fall is short and to the point and doesn’t fuck around.  While I appreciated that aspect of it, I have to admit that there’s not a whole lot to it.

Her Only Living Son  (** ½) comes to us courtesy of Karyn (Aeon Flux) Kusama.  It revolves around a single mother whose son is approaching his eighteenth birthday.  She is shocked to learn from his principal that he is abusive to his classmates, but is even more shocked to learn that the teachers approve of his behavior and even praise his leadership abilities.  Eventually, we learn who his real father is and why his birthday is of such significance.

This final tale continues some of the same themes of previous stories:  A son going through a strange transformation, birthday stress, and a mother doubling down on her maternal instincts.  The conclusion is obvious and done in such a low-key manner that it leaves you feeling shortchanged.  (Maybe if the budget was a tad higher Kusama could’ve delivered the goods.)  On the plus side, the set-up is well done, and the performances are strong all around. 

THE DOUBLE O KID (1993) **

Corey Haim stars as a junior special agent who is given an assignment to drop off a package to one of his superiors.  During the exchange, Corey comes into possession of a vital code key that a group of evil hackers need to hold the world for ransom.  Soon, the bad guys come after him, and it’s up to Corey to save the world.

I’ll pretty much watch anything either of the Two Coreys are in, but even I have to admit that Haim looks pretty out of it in this movie.  He does come to life a bit when Nicole Eggert enters the fray as his love interest.  The two of them were paired more effectively later in the year in the much better Blown Away though. 

At least the villains are interesting.  It’s nice seeing Wallace Shawn chewing the scenery a bit as the leader of the hackers and Brigitte Nielsen gets an odd scene when she wears a cocktail dress in a Jacuzzi.  Oh, and if you ever wanted to see John Rhys-Davies murdered by a killer arcade game, here’s your chance. 

Sure, there are a handful of weird moments here, but most of it is more dumb than funny.  Like the scene where Corey is chased by a killer hockey team.  Because of this scene, it might make a good double feature with Prayer for the Rollerboys.  It’s not altogether unwatchable though.  There are plenty worse secret agent spoofs out there, that’s for sure. 

PHANTOM OF THE MALL: ERIC’S REVENGE (1989) ****

Malls were the epitome of ‘80s culture.  I know.  I was there.  I spent a better part of the decade in one.  Because of that, a mall was the perfect setting for an update of Phantom of the Opera.  Besides, YOU try getting a teenager from the ‘80s to listen to opera music. 

Eric (Derek Rydall) saves his girlfriend Melody (Kari Whitman) from a housefire before apparently dying in the blaze.  A year later, a mall is erected on the ashes of Eric’s house.  Before the stores are even open, people start winding up dead at the monument to consumerism.  As it turns out, he survived the fire and now the horribly burned Eric is hiding in the ductwork waiting to get revenge on the people who wronged him. 

The layout of the mall lends itself nicely to the material.  Instead of the sewers of Paris, Eric gets around through the ventilation shafts of the mall.  The scenes of Eric spying on his girlfriend from the vents and using the security system to stalk his victims are very effective.  The body count is surprisingly healthy and some of the kills easily outdo the best franchise slasher movies of the era.  Eric uses fans, forklifts, and escalators to mow down his victims.  The best kill by far is the snake-on-the-toilet gag that has to be seen to be believed.  Besides, you’ve got to love any mall that have stores that sell flamethrowers and display them conveniently enough for any madman to make use of them. 

Honestly, the film probably plays better now than it did on its original release.  That’s because we can now look back nostalgically on the setting and remember the glory days of the shopping mall.  I’m sure readers of a certain age have fond memories of shopping in malls back in the ‘80s.  I myself felt a wave of nostalgia seeing such stores as Sam Goody, B. Dalton, and Florsheim Shoes featured so prominently in the background. 

Director Richard (Dark Wolf) Friedman isn’t content on an anthropological study of ‘80s mall culture.  In addition to the aforementioned gore, he also delivers some fine action set pieces.  We get a Commando-inspired swinging stunt and the man-on-fire effects are some of the best the ‘80s have to offer.   

The supporting cast is a lot of fun.  Pauly Shore gets some laughs while playing a watered-down version of his usual persona as “Buzz”, Melody’s wisecracking friend.  Morgan Fairchild has a couple of good moments as the sexy mayor who may or may not be the one responsible for Eric’s disfigurement.  It was also great seeing the star of the ultimate mall horror movie, Dawn of the Dead, Ken Foree in a sizeable role as a security guard. 

It’s Rydall who steals the show as the mostly unseen Phantom.  I especially loved the scenes of him using stolen gym equipment to get pumped up on his down time from killing.  Just when you think Eric can’t get any cooler, he has a kickboxing duel with the evil security guard.  This is what sets him apart from the other screen Phantoms.  Say what you will about Lon Chaney, Claude Rains, and Robert Englund, but did they ever partake in a kickboxing duel to the death while under their Phantom mask?  Didn’t think so.   

That scene alone virtually guarantees that this is the best Phantom movie of all time.  

AKA:  Phantom of the Mall.  AKA:  Phantom Nightmare.

NETFLIX AND KILL: THE BAD BATCH (2017) ***

If you’re a “Bad Batch” candidate (basically any type of criminal and/or other type of free-thinking individual), you’re sent to a desert prison that looks like something out of an ‘80s post-apocalypse movie.  Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) is dropped off at the gates of the prison and wanders around for a bit before being captured by a group of cannibals who dismember her leg and arm for a cookout.  She is still somehow able to escape (on a skateboard) and with the help of a bag man (a very famous person whose appearance I wouldn’t dream of spoiling) makes it to a place called “Comfort” where she is fitted with a prosthetic leg.  After she is all healed up, the restless Arlen grabs her leg, finds a gun, and goes out for revenge on the people who ate her. 

Director Ana Lily Amirpour has a nice eye for detail.  The prison has a great lived-in quality to it.  Even if it feels like a mash-up of various other movies, it looks authentic.  She also delivers the goods on a handful of squirm-inducing sequences.  One thing is for sure, you’ll never listen to Ace of Base quite the same way again after watching this flick.   

I also liked the “rules” of the prison.  I dug the way Jason Momoa is forced to draw a sketch of a man in exchange for information.  Even the slightest character touches were endearing.  Like the way Waterhouse cuts out a picture of an arm and stands in front of the mirror to make herself feel complete.  It’s these little touches that keeps the movie a step ahead of other similar genre films. 

The Bad Batch is also important as it gives us yet another interesting exploitation movie role for Keanu Reeves to sink his teeth into.  He plays a cult leader called “The Dream” who looks like Nicolas Cage cosplaying as Jim Jones.  The Dream presides over his congregation by standing atop a giant neon boombox and spouting a lot of fortune cookie wisdom.  That is to say, he’s pretty awesome.   

The movie can’t quite keep up its weird allure consistently throughout the running time.  After a stellar start, things sort of stall once Waterhouse joins forces with Momoa.  It particularly fizzles out in the third act.  Still, there’s enough moments of sheer invention and plenty of bizarre imagery to make it wholly recommended.