TUBI CONTINUED… MAD FOXES (1981) ****

Hal (Jose Gras) is a smug, sportscar-driving asshole who takes his (much) younger girlfriend out on the town to celebrate her eighteenth birthday.  When an altercation at a traffic light with some Nazi bikers turns deadly, they retaliate by beating up Hal and raping his girlfriend.  Hal then calls his Kung Fu buddy who owns a karate school and asks him for a favor:  Kick some Nazi biker ass!  Well, wouldn’t you know it?  The Nazi bikers retaliate (again) and toss a grenade into the dojo in the middle of a karate class!  From there, Hal and the bikers keep ping-ponging back and forth, meting out vengeance until just about everybody near and dear to him ends up dead.  

Mad Foxes is frickin’ awesome.  It’s got everything you could possibly want in a movie.  Sex, violence, fast cars, motorcycle gangs, Kung Fu, Nazis getting punched in the face, explosions, T & A…  You name it, Mad Foxes has it.  In between, there are plenty of jaw-dropping moments, head-scratching plot developments, and brain-melting scenes of violence.

Now, not a whole lot of this makes logical sense, but that’s a good thing since you never know where this crazy flick will go next.  I’ll admit, some of it is a little hard to stomach, and yet, you can’t deny a movie that just delivers awesome sequence after awesome sequence.  There’s a hilarious nightclub scene where the dancing runs the gamut from disco to ballroom.  The part where the members of the karate school interrupt the Nazi biker funeral and have an all-out brawl over the biker’s flaming corpse is just incredible.  The ending is fucking unbelievable too.  

Okay, so this is the part of the review where I state that the version on Tubi has been cut.  It is a good ten minutes shorter than the running time listed on IMDb, and that site’s Parents Guide also suggests that there is a lot more sex and gore not present in this version.  I’m not even sure how that’s possible as it’s already brimming with disgustingness.  I guess I’ll have to track down the uncut version at some point.  Even in a truncated form, Mad Foxes still kicks all kinds of ass.

AKA:  Stingray 2.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE LAST VAMPIRE ON EARTH (2010) *

If you can’t already tell by the thumbnail picture, this is one of the most obvious Twilight rip-offs ever made.  It also happens to be one of the worst.  It’s so bad it makes the official Twilight movies look like Dracula in comparison.

The Last Vampire on Earth tells a time-honored love story.  Pale boy meets pale girl.  Pale boy almost loses pale girl.  Pale boy wins back pale girl.  Pale girl invites him over to her family’s house for dinner.  Pale boy pukes up mama’s chicken because… he’s a vampire.  Pale girl is sick, and since her religion doesn’t allow her to receive blood transfusions, it means the only way she can be saved is if pale boy bites her and turns her into a vampire.  

Imagine if someone had $7 at their disposal, a cast of people without an acting bone in their body, lots of white face paint, and a desire to remake Twilight.  (There’s even a recreation of the “Say it… ‘vampire’” scene.)  That’s about what you get with The Last Vampire on Earth.  

This is a bad movie, to be sure.  I don’t want to oversell just how bad it is, but director Vitaliy Versace left the “Vignette” filter on throughout the whole damned running time.  I repeat:  HE LEFT THE VIGNETTE FILTER ON THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE DAMNED RUNNING TIME.  Every shot has a black circle around the frame, which is a sign of ineptitude the likes of which I have never seen.  It’s like when you play a prank on grandma and mess with the settings on her phone’s camera.

Also, everything is way too dark.  I know everyone is supposed to look pale and all, but the lighting is so bad in some scenes that everyone looks like a corpse.  Even the people who aren’t supposed to be vampires look like one of the undead.  

The acting is some of the worst I’ve ever experienced.  Every single line delivery sound like someone reading right off their script.  Sometimes, it sounds like the actors are pronouncing the dialogue phonetically, as if English was a fourth or fifth language.  

The biggest laugh in the movie comes during the scene where pale boy is playing ping pong with himself.  The ineptly edited jump cuts are supposed to represent his “super speed” as he runs back and forth between both ends of the table.  This has nothing though on the WTF jaw-dropper of a scene where pale girl reveals her big secret to pale boy.  I’m not sure what the fuck the filmmakers were thinking here, but it’s one of the most spectacularly bad taste moments I’ve sat through in recent memory.  That’s not exactly a recommendation, but if you’re a Bad Movie fan who thinks they’ve seen it all, The Last Vampire on Earth will likely test even the most die-hard Grade Z movie fan’s mettle.  

You’ve been warned.  

TUBI CONTINUED… SPLATTER BEACH (2007) ** ½

There have been reports of people being killed by sea monsters, and a fledgling journalist named Rupert (Dave Fife) sets to get to the bottom of the matter.  While his horny friends Rodney (Brice Kennedy) and Tonya (Erika Smith) are off boning at his parent’s beach house, Rupert is combing the beach looking for clues.  After dispatching the horndog couple, the monsters crash a rock concert on the beach.   

Directed by Mark and John Polonia, Splatter Beach is a hit-or-miss, sometimes fun, sometimes silly send-up of beach party movies and late-night creature features.  The animated opening credits sequence nicely sets the tone, which is kind of like a mix between Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Horror of Party Beach, and Humanoids from the Deep.  While much of this is wildly uneven, I did enjoy the monsters, who look like a seaweed-covered version of The Slime People.  The beach party scenes are less effective, but you can have fun with them, just for the fact that it’s obvious that many of the concertgoers are dancing against a greenscreen background of a beach.  

While the opening is fun, the second half suffers from a lot of padding.  Long scenes from The Creature from the Haunted Sea play out on TV, and there’s music video sequences that contain scenes of stuff we’ve previously seen.  Despite all this, it’s moderately fun and entertaining, although it falls short of being laugh-out-loud funny.  In fact, it might’ve eked by with *** if the finale hadn’t been so damned anticlimactic.  (It’s shown in a series of still photographs.)  

Although B-Movie Queen Misty Mundae is top billed, she’s not in it nearly as much as you would think.  She plays the crazy neighbor who knows all about the monsters, but of course, nobody believes her.  Misty brightens up the movie whenever she appears, and I wish we saw a lot more of her.  (If you catch my meaning.)  

TUBI CONTINUED… DIRTY SCOUNDRELS (2001) ***

Asuka (Mayu Asada) is a sexy pickpocket who operates on crowded Japanese subway trains.  Her methods are simple but effective:  She seductively rubs up against her targets to arouse them before slyly lifting their wallets.  When her wallet is stolen by another pickpocket, she is convinced her latest victim, Yuji (Yota Kawase) was the one who took her cash.  Since Yuji got pretty handsy with her on the subway, Asuka then blackmails him into becoming her partner in crime, saying she’ll go to the cops and ruin his good name if he doesn’t throw in with her.  Together, they begin stealing more wallets from unsuspecting commuters, and eventually, she convinces Yuji to commit more elaborate crimes.  Predictably, things threaten to fall apart once they start having feelings for one another.  

The early scenes of Asada slowly roping the poor straightlaced dope into a life of crime have a fun, Something Wild-type vibe to them.  The way he falls in love with her even though she is obviously using him for her own ends is kind of sweet too.  Naturally, he’s engaged, which complicates matters, but I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say that everybody winds up getting what they want in the end.  

Although Dirty Scoundrels starts off kinda kinky with all the scenes of groping in public places, it soon settles down into a sorta square romantic crime comedy.  While predictable, it’s always engaging, and the performances by Asada and Kawase are rather charming.  Their courtship scenes are sweet, and even the gratuitous subplots (like Asada taking Kawase to meet her grandmother, who is also a pickpocket), manage to entertain.  It clocks in at a scant fifty-one minutes, so it does feel a bit rushed at times (especially towards the end).  However, the quirky characters and occasional steamy softcore scenes make it worthwhile.  

TUBI CONTINUED… MURDERBOT (2023) ***

The original title of this fun Jim Wynorski sci-fi/horror mash-up was Killbots.  I think it was originally intended to be a sequel/reboot of Wynorski’s Chopping Mall (which was also alternately titled Killbots), but the title was changed shortly before release.  I have to assume original Chopping Mall producer, Roger Corman denied Wynorski and producer Charles Band the rights to the title.  It’s not a big deal either way as there is very little connective tissue linking the two films (aside from a throwaway line of dialogue).  In fact, it shares more DNA with Tourist Trap (another Band production) than Corman’s Chopping Mall as it focuses on a group of teens trapped in a ghost town.

Wynorski’s long-time muse, Rocky DeMarco stars as the titular creation, a sexy cyborg who becomes self-aware and escapes the desert laboratory where she was created.  She plans to hook up with a computer server and take over the world using AI.  On her journey, she stumbles upon a one-horse town and kills the few remaining citizens.  Meanwhile, a van full of teens stops in town for gas and comes face to face with the robot menace.  

Murderbot reminded me a lot of the Terminator rip-offs of the mid-to-late ‘90s.  The shots of DeMarco’s Heads Up Display and her glowing red eyes would look right at home in a DTV Don “The Dragon” Wilson sci-fi/action flick.  Wynorski also lends the film a Spaghetti Western vibe as DeMarco often struts down the empty streets of the desolate ghost town like a lone gunfighter in a Sergio Corbucci movie.  Then of course, there are the uniquely Wynorski touches that are impossible to resist (such as the fact that all the scientists in the top-secret underground desert facility are sexy buxom women), and the inclusion of his regular supporting players (such as Becky LeBeau, Lisa London, and Lauren Parkinson) will make Wynorski fans rejoice.

Murderbot is only forty-four minutes long, which is good news when you’re trying to watch 365 movies on Tubi in 365 days like I am.  However, Wynorski die-hards will probably wish he was given a little more time to flesh things out.  (I would have particularly liked more scenes with the sexy scientists.)  The flipside of that is the film wastes no time getting down to business, and when it heats up, the action doesn’t stop.  

The kill scenes are solid too.  There’s a decapitation via car hood, exploding heads, and brain splattering, just to name a few.  Some of the characters are annoying (like the nerd who’s always playing the trumpet), but I did love the hilarious scene where the Gen Z teens can’t call for help because they have no idea how to use a payphone.  Little moments like this help make Murderbot a blast from start to finish. 

AKA:  Killbots.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE AMITYVILLE CURSE (1990) **

Okay, folks.  Here we are.  The last movie in our Amityville April series.  This is the fifth in the franchise, and the only one of the “official” entries I haven’t seen.  Because of that, I saved it for last.  I thought I may enjoy it more after watching so many of the no-budget unrelated Amityville rip-offs.  As it turned out, that wasn’t the case.  It’s not terrible or anything, but it’s awfully dull and slow moving.  If I’m being completely honest, it’s probably the weakest of the official Amityville films.

A group of friends pool their money together and buy a house in Amityville (not THE house, just A house) with the intent of fixing it up and flipping it for a profit.  As you can probably guess, this house is haunted too.  It seems a priest was murdered in a confessional booth twelve years earlier.  The booth was then stored in the house’s basement and voila!  The place is haunted AF.

Throughout the film we get a dog attack, a spider attack, and lame psychic visions.  Most of the boring home repair scenes play like This Old House though.  Oh, and one annoying guy films everything with his home movie camera, which set an unfortunate precedent for the series.  

Journeyman character actor Kim (The Last Boy Scout) Coates takes the acting honors as the nervous, bespectacled, chain-smoking guy who eventually snaps and starts killing his friends.  Casting him as a psycho in an Amityville sequel was a good idea, but unfortunately, he’s kept on a tight leash for most of the running time.  When he finally does get to strut his stuff, the movie does show signs of life.  The ending, where he winds up with a burnt Freddy Krueger face and chases a lady around the house who defends herself with a nail gun, is decent.  It’s just one of those too little, too late scenarios as the bulk of the film is just too plodding for its own good.  Cassandra Gava (the hot witch from Conan the Barbarian) is pretty good as Coates’ sexy wife.  However, the rest of the cast are comprised of irritating psychics, gossiping old biddies, and insufferable assholes.  

Well, now that I’ve finally waded through all the official Amityville movies and a LOT of the unofficial ones, here is how I stack them up:  

THE OFFICIAL AND UNOFFICIAL AMITYVILLE HORROR SERIES RANKING:  

1. Amityville:  The Awakening ***

2. The Amityville Horror (2005) ***

3. Amityville Witches ***

4. The Amityville Terror ***

5. Amityville 3-D ** ½ 

6. The Amityville Horror (1979) ** ½ 

7. Amityville Dollhouse ** ½ 

8. Amityville:  The Final Chapter ** ½ 

9. Amityville in Space ** ½ 

10. Amityville Toybox ** ½ 

11. Amityville Christmas Vacation ** ½ 

12. The Amityville Moon ** ½ 

13. Amityville 2:  The Possession **

14. Amityville Horror:  The Evil Escapes **

15. Amityville 1992:  It’s About Time **

16. Amityville Death House **

17. Amityville Exorcism **

18. The Amityville Asylum **

19. Amityville Cop **

20. The Amityville Harvest **

21. Amityville:  A New Generation **

22. Amityville Uprising **

23. The Amityville Curse **

24. The Amityville Haunting **

25. Ghosts of Amityville **

26. An Amityville Poltergeist **

27. Amityville Clownhouse * ½ 

28. Amityville in the Hood * ½ 

29. Amityville:  No Escape * ½ 

30. Amityville Scarecrow 2 *

31. Amityville Karen *

32. Amityville Theater *

33. Amityville Island ½ *

34. Amityville Hex ½ *

35. Mt. Misery Rd. ½ *

TUBI CONTINUED… GHOSTS OF AMITYVILLE (2022) **

Olivia (Junie Liv Thomasson) is a little girl who is still grieving the sudden loss of her mother.  Hoping for a fresh start, her father (Jonas Thomasson) moves them into a creepy new house in Amityville.  When he is unexpectedly called into work, he is forced to leave Olivia home alone. Before long, she begins seeing a creepy clown who pops up when he’s least expected and terrorizes her wherever she goes.  

Things kick off with a not-bad opening title sequence full of vintage creepy clown footage.  The first act, in which our pint-sized heroine is stalked by the supernatural clown killer, is rather decent too.  There is some genuine tension in these early scenes, and I give director JT Kris credit for adequately conveying the anxiety a child feels when left home alone.  Thomasson also does a fine job as the child in peril and carries the film about as far as anyone could’ve, given the circumstances.  

Unfortunately, once it is revealed that the first act has all been a (SPOILER) dream, it takes a lot of wind out of the movie’s sails.  To make matters worse, the script keeps playing the same “It’s All a Dream” card over and over again.  Every time it’s revealed that what we’ve just seen has been a dream… AGAIN, it just gets more and more tiresome.  Before long, the film becomes an endurance test of the audience’s patience.  (This also happens to be one of those fake Amityville flicks where everyone talks with the thickest brogues you ever heard.)  

Even at a relatively scant seventy-four minutes, it still feels bloated and overlong.  When the movie should be over, it isn’t.  When it finally does decide to end, it’s at the most arbitrary spot imaginable.  It’s a shame too because the first act could’ve been a solid self-contained short film.  Had the rest of the picture been as strong, Ghosts of Amityville had a ghost of a chance being worthwhile.  As it is, this ghost is rather busted.