TUBI CONTINUED… KINGS OF CULT (2015) ***

This is labeled as a “documentary” on Tubi, but it’s essentially a filmed Q & A with exploitation legends Charles (Puppet Master) Band and Roger (Little Shop of Horrors) Corman sitting in director chairs and fielding softball questions about their careers, their influence, and their legacy.  Corman is his usual smooth-talking Zen self and makes no bones about the movies he made.  Band is more animated and has some funny stories (he was once babysat by Marilyn Monroe!).  If you’re a fan of Corman and have seen him as a talking head in countless other documentaries, some of his stories will be overly familiar.  Band, on the other hand, offers some cool insights on the Italian filmmaking process in the ‘60s where his father worked.

While Band and Corman are only one generation removed from one another, they still have a lot in common as they are both mavericks when it comes to working on the fringe of the mainstream.  The duo also talk about how they milk their successful films and concepts for all they are worth.  (Band is preparing an eleventh Puppet Master while Corman is busy producing yet another shark movie for the SYFY Channel.)  If you’re a fan of either director, you’ll probably have as much fun as I did just listening to them sitting around and talking shop. Out of all the anecdotes, my favorite story was how Band came up with the iconic poster for Ghoulies.  (Spoiler:  Weed was involved.)

That said, I’m not sure how much replay value something like this will have.  Still, for what amounts to basically a filmed hour-long chat, it’s quite entertaining.  It’s certainly more informative than most genre filmmaking documentaries as this one delves pretty deep into the distribution and marketing aspect of motion pictures, which is something that usually isn’t covered in these sorts of things.  That aspect alone makes Kings of Cult worth a look.

TUBI CONTINUED… SAVAGE VENGEANCE (2023) NO STARS

In the Ozarks in the late 80’s, inbred cannibals kill and eat their victims.  At least that’s what the opening crawl says.  The cannibals we get in this movie look less like extras from Wrong Turn and more like cast members from the Jersey Shore.

The filmmakers try in vain to make Savage Vengeance resemble a lost relic of the ‘80s, but they overdo it with all the fake tape rolls and manufactured static.  I get it.  You’re trying to make the movie look like an old VHS tape.  However, all this is obviously just a filter on a camera (or more likely a phone).  The footage also looks way too new to be filmed on an old videotape and the actresses don’t much look like they came from the ‘80s either.  I mean did women in the ‘80s have giant arm tattoos of the Epcot ball?  Did they carry around trendy water bottles wherever they went?  I don’t think so.  When the fashions don’t look very ‘80s and the vehicles certainly don’t look like the ‘80s and the music absolutely does not sound like the ‘80s, then what’s the damn point?  Why even attempt to set the movie in the ‘80s if you can’t even make it look like the ‘80s?

This is a remake of Donald Farmer’s 1993 flick (which starred Camille Keaton).  It contains long scenes of our heroines aimlessly walking around, first in slow motion, then in regular motion, and then in fast motion.  Like, make up your goddamned mind, people.  Better yet, cut the scene altogether.  I guess if they didn’t, the movie would be less than an hour long.  At least these scenes play out silently, so you don’t actually have to listen to the actresses yammering on.

It takes fucking forever for anything to happen.  Then, when it finally does, we are treated to a scene where a pregnant woman is beaten in the stomach with a crowbar.  Lovely.  If you somehow make it past that, you’ll be treated to one of the fakest looking castrations cinema has ever seen using the most obvious looking dildo in history.  Then again, the production company didn’t spend any money on the rest of the movie.  Why am I not surprised they didn’t spring for a realistic looking dong?

Farmer also coproduced and has a cameo as a professor.

EXPEND4BLES (2023) *** ½

So, the word on the street for Expendfourbles has been downright toxic.  The meager box office totals labeled it a complete bomb.  Did that shake my belief in my beloved franchise?  Not really.  Sure, the lack of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis was disheartening (although I can’t blame Bruce for sitting this one out, all things considered), but I still went in hoping for the best. 

In their place with have 50 Cent and Megan Fox as the new Expendfourbles.  Not exactly Mickey Rourke and Terry Crews, are they?  Still, they have enough cred to make them, at the very least, honorary Expendfourbles.  Cent was in Escape Plan with Sly and Arnold, and Fox was in Midnight in the Switchgrass with Bruce.  I guess there were worse choices out there.  

The big news was the additions of Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais.  As a massive fan of The Protector and The Raid, their inclusion took the sting out of missing some of the bigger names.  Besides, even though he’s the villain, and they don’t really make the best use of his talents, Uwais still gets more to do here than he did in The Force Awakens.

The scuttlebutt of the Hollywood rumor mill (not to mention the “and” billing) sorta implied Sly was gonna die in this one.  Now, I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but he makes his entrance on a motorcycle with the word “Resurrection” emblazoned on it.  So, yeah.  Maybe don’t get the hankies out just yet.

Uwais is a baddie who goes to “Gaddafi’s Old Chemical Weapons Plant” (I’m not kidding, that’s what the text at the bottom of the screen says) to get detonators for a bomb that can start World War III.  The Expendfourbles are called in, and fuck up big time, which means Christmas (Jason Statham) is taken off team.  The rest of the team have to stop him from completing the bomb, and when they are captured, Christmas finds an old ex-Expendfourble (Jaa) to plan a rescue mission.

This is definitely a step down from Parts 1 and 3.  (There’s no way it was going to touch Part 2, which for my money, is still one of greatest movies of all time.)  However, it is far from the disaster critics have made it out to be.  After the watered-down PG-13 Part 3, it was good to have a bunch of F-bombs and bloody violent deaths aplenty back in the series.  We get bloody knife wounds, decapitations, and smoldering corpses, just to name a few.  

Yes, Sly is largely absent from the proceedings.  That means Statham does most of the heavy lifting, which is perfectly fine by me, especially when we get to see him fighting alongside Jaa and getting into fisticuffs with Uwais.  The other team members are enjoyable too.  Dolph Lungren gets some fun moments and Randy Couture is handed the bulk of the comic relief (which admittedly, isn’t all that funny).  As for the other big addition to the cast, Andy Garcia chews the scenery gamely as the team’s new CIA handler.  The big surprise I guess was that Fox wasn’t nearly as bad as I was anticipating as the new team leader.  In fact, it felt like the filmmakers knew this might be the last one, so they were trying to combine the abandoned Statham spin-off “The Expendables:  A Christmas Story” and the all-girl Expendables spin-off, “The Expendabelles” into one movie, which I’m perfectly OK with. 

Overall, Expendfourbles gives you your money’s worth and keeps the old Golan-Globus macho brand of filmmaking alive, at least for another year.  Action icons kill bad guys and make funny quips after.  Stuff blows up real good.  And there’s at least one jaw-dropping action scene where Statham plays chicken on a machine gun-mounted motorcycle that harkens back to the insanity of his Transporter 2 days.  What can I say?   I had fun.

As far as Sly’s Part 4’s goes, it’s no Rocky 4 or Rambo 4, but then again, what could be?  For rabid action fans, there’s plenty here to like.  Bottom Line:  I would say it’s highly recommend4ble.

AKA:  The Expendables 4.

TUBI CONTINUED… I DRIP BLOOD ON YOUR GRAVE (2020) ½ *

From the outset, this looked like it was going to be Dustin Ferguson’s no-budget version of I Spit on Your Grave.  A woman (Jennii Caroline) is beaten and raped.  Afterwards, she goes home to pray.  Then… clips from Ferguson’s Night of the Clown are shown?  (We know it’s Night of the Clown because there’s a text at the bottom identifying the film.)  In it, some friends (one guy is inexplicably dressed like Madonna) hold a seance and resurrect a killer clown whose simple make-up is kind of effective (it’s a Leatherface mask painted up like clown).  He then kills a woman, and we cut back to Caroline praying some more while clips from Ferguson’s Camp Blood 4 play out.  This time, a different guy in another clown mask (which isn’t nearly as cool looking) kills people.  Then, in scenes from Blood Claws, a woman is stalked and murdered by an unseen killer.  Escape to Black Tree Forest features a scene of a killer in a Friday the 13th Part 2 inspired get-up chasing a woman through the woods.  In Silent Night Bloody Night 2 (one of the films I’ve actually seen although I don’t remember a thing about it), Santa Claus kills a naughty girl with a snow shovel.  Next up is Doll Killer in which a guy in a cheap Halloween mask kills a prostitute in an alley.  In The Dummy 2, a group of friends hold a (sigh) seance and resurrect a killer ventriloquist dummy who murders a woman in a Friday the 13th Part 4-inspired scene.  Faces of Dying finds a camcorder-wielding psycho stalking and stabbing an unsuspecting woman.  In Gloved Murderess, a woman kills herself with a kitchen knife.  (You know, for variety’s sake.)  Finally, our victim decides she’s had enough of clips from Dustin Ferguson movies, dons a nun’s habit (a la Ms. 45), and goes around shooting rapists.

This is the most inexplicable movie I have seen in some time.  It would be one thing if Ferguson made a clip show package of his old films, but to sneak them into something advertised as an I Spit on Your Grave knockoff (or a Ms. 45 knockoff depending on what title you saw it under) is positively stupefying.  Is he somehow punishing the viewer for wanting to see a good old-fashioned rape n’ revenge movie?  Or was Ferguson so high as a kite that forgot to make an actual movie and put in a bunch of clips from his other flicks as filler?  I’m not sure, but the results are baffling to say the least. 

I mean, if you knew you were gonna make a clip show movie, wouldn’t you… you know… put the best clips from your films in there?  The clips from Blood Claws features long scenes of a woman doing her homework by a koi pond, buying groceries, feeding her dog, and shots of her pulling out of not one but TWO parking spaces!  Then, they don’t even show her get killed.  What the fuck?

It’s a good thing this is only forty-five minutes long.  Then again, the repetitive nature of the film makes it feel much longer.  Since it’s solely comprised of scenes of women being stalked and killed you might start to think Ferguson’s only got one trick up his sleeve.  (Either that, or he reeeeaaallly hates women.)

AKA:  Ms. Vengeance.

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN ZERO SIDE STORY: KILLER THE BEATSTAR (2011) ***

One year after the events of The Revenge of Belial, Ultra Force Zero (Ultraman Zero, Jean-Bot, Glenfire, and Mirror Knight) go to pay Princess Esmerelda (Tao Tsuchiya) a visit.  Before they even get a chance to play catch-up, she and Jean-Bot are kidnapped by a rogue robotic planet-like sphere that’s on a collision course with a heavily populated planet.  Rei (Shota Minami) and Hyuga (Hiroyuki Konishi) answer her distress call, and soon after, Ultra Force Zero also makes the scene to do battle with a giant robot army.  It doesn’t take long before a mysterious entity drains them of their superpowers, and they must do battle against an evil version of Jean-Bot called Jean-Killer.

The Revenge of Belial was probably my least favorite of these Ultraman movies, but it at least looked cinematic.  Ultraman Zero Side Story:  Killer the Beatstar just looks like two episodes of the TV show slapped together.  (Which makes sense because it kinda is.)  Coming off the heels of my least favorite entry, I went into this Straight-to-Video sequel with some amount of trepidation.  Fortunately, this one has a lot more heart and is loads more fun than The Revenge of Belial.

The monster battles and Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robot matches are a blast.  I liked Gomora’s dust-up with a trio of robots, including one called “King Joe” who looks like he has two trashcan-shaped dicks.  Speaking of crotch-centric robots, there’s another one that shoots flames from its bathing suit area.  I’m not sure just who thought up all these dick-bots, but may the Lord bless them and keep them forever.

On the downside, Glenspark’s antics are still pretty annoying, but at least his space pirate buddies are nowhere to be found this time out.  The saxophone-heavy score is kinda odd too and sounds like it would be a better fit in a ‘90s Skinamax movie than a newfangled Tokusatsu show.  Still, there is plenty of good shit here.  And by “good shit”, I am specifically referring to the scene where the bad robot finds his humanity and begins to cry.  Is it corny?  Fuck yeah!  However, that’s the kind of corny crap I live for.

AKA:  Ultraman Zero Gaiden:  Killer the Beatstar.

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRA GALAXY LEGEND SIDE STORY: ULTRAMAN ZERO VS. DARKLOPS ZERO (2010) ***

ZAP SPACY crewmembers Rei (Shota Minami) and Hyuga (Hiroyuki Konishi) answer a distress call coming from inside a mysterious wormhole.  They get sucked into the vortex and soon learn it’s a pathway to the Multiverse.  It seems the Multiverse is being threatened by a race of aliens who are using an evil version of Ultraman Zero called Darklops Zero as muscle.  The real Ultraman Zero eventually shows up to join the fight and must square off against not only Darklops Zero, but an evil army of Ultraman clones.

Despite the potential inherent in utilizing the Multiverse concept, Ultra Galaxy Legend Side Story:  Ultraman Zero vs. Darklops Zero doesn’t set out to reinvent the wheel.  Instead, it opts to deliver a breezy good time.  I find it interesting that the Ultraman series was doing the whole Multiverse thing a good decade before the MCU and DC flicks.  Sure, maybe it doesn’t explore the Multiverse idea to its fullest, and there may have been a missed opportunity or two along the way, but it is fun to see Ultraman Zero and Rei fighting and/or joining up with slightly different Multiverse versions of themselves.

After so much newfangled CGI in The Revenge of Belial, it was nice to see some good old-fashioned monster mashing for a change.  The highlight is when Rei’s pet monster, Gomora squares off against its evil robotic Multiverse counterpart.  The fights between Zero and the evil Ultramen are decent too and keeps the pace and energy going at a steady clip.  Sure, there are still a few of the requisite greenscreen battles here, but even they feel a little more grounded this time out.  

All in all, Ultraman Zero vs. Darklops Zero delivers the goods.  It’s slightly longer than an hour and hits the ground running and never stops.  Any Ultraman fan worth their salt should enjoy it.

TUBI CONTINUED… ULTRAMAN ZERO: THE REVENGE OF BELIAL (2010) * ½

The villainous Belial is back (this time sporting a badass crimson trench coat) and up to his old tricks again.  He travels to a distant galaxy with his Darklops army in tow seeking total domination.  The Ultramen can only afford to send one Guardian of Light to stop him and Ultraman Zero volunteers for the job.  He arrives on a planet overrun by monsters and almost instantly runs out of energy.  He then must merge with a young freedom fighter and team up with a space princess to stop Belial once and for all.

After a great prequel (Ultraman Mebius:  Ghost Rebirth) and a strong follow-up (Mega Monster Battle:  Ultra Galaxy:  The Movie), The Revenge of Belial is a massive letdown.  After having so many Ultramen battling in the previous entries, I guess they thought it would be a nice change of pace to have a more stripped-down approach.  While Zero is an OK Ultraman, he just can’t quite carry a movie on his own.  It doesn’t help that his kid sidekick is annoying or that the plot is so jumbled that a narrator has to occasionally step in to make sense of things.

The fact is there’s some really lame stuff in this one.  Zero’s run-in with a boatload of space pirates is painfully juvenile, and the CGI backgrounds also look kind of chintzy this time around.  (Like the one that occurs on the Mirror Planet.)  The greenscreen backgrounds just don’t have the same weight or charm of a good old-fashioned model city, if you ask me.  Zero’s new friends (who include a robot that talks like a pirate, a “Mirror Knight”, and a jet that turns into a robot a la Transformers) are kind of weak too.

Belial still remains a worthy adversary though.  I liked his new look, and his fight with Zero is solid.  (The part where Zero gives him a super pile driver is cool.)  His kaiju form during the final battle is also quite snazzy.  It’s a shame that the movie he inhabits leaves him lost in space.