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.

TUBI CONTINUED… A THIEF IN THE NIGHT (1972) ***

Decades before Left Behind was all the rage, this low budget Christian flick packed them in on the religious roadshow circuit.

Patty (Patty Dunning) finds herself on her own after her husband is taken to the promised land after the Rapture.  Flashbacks reveal how she met him and how her poor unchristian-like choices led her to being left behind.  It seems as though she had every opportunity to accept Jesus Christ as her Lord and personal savior but failed to do so again and again.  Meanwhile, nations around the globe combine to form a singular world government called “Unite” and urges all “Citizens” to be tattooed.  Patty refuses, and soon finds herself to be an enemy of the state.

The opening where Patty awakens to find her husband has been raptured up to Heaven while she is now stuck on Earth works surprisingly well.  The title sequence featuring a weirdo Christian band also has an odd, eerie quality to it.  In fact, the whole thing kinda feels like a Ron Ormond-directed version of Billy Jack or something.  (And I don’t mean that as in, “There’s a guy in a funny hat who Kung Fus people”, but that “There’s a lot of hippie-dippy sermonizing” and the film has a scrappy low budget DIY appeal.)  

Heck, even the more cliche aspects of the film kind of work better than they should.  The effective montage scene of Patty and her husband in happier days plays out as a series of still photographs.  This has more of an emotional impact than your typical romantic interlude since often, when you look back and think of a loved one, it’s usually through pictures and/or snapshots of a particular moment in time.  The scenes of radio broadcasts detailing the widescale disappearances kind of have a Night of the Living Dead feel to them too.

The final act is perhaps the least effective, but that’s mostly because the film’s budget is so low that it can’t quite pull off its ambitious aims.  Still, it’s a nice try, and some of the Dutch angles during the final chase are pretty cool looking.  Sure, A Thief in the Night is little more than a religious scare film, but hey, when it works it works.

Three sequels followed.