TUBI CONTINUED… THE LIONESS (2019) * ½

Megan (Lacey Hartselle) is a stripper who lives in an apartment with a bunch of other strippers who mostly just sit around and complain about their lives to one another.  When they’re not doing that, the ladies think up new stripper names, have flashbacks to their crummy past, and try to figure out how they’re going to support their families.  At the club, some money goes missing and soon, everyone is a suspect.  We eventually learn Goldie (Gabriele Orebaugh) is the culprit and she brings down a world of shit on the other girls seeing as the money belonged to the Mob and all.  She and Megan then make a run for it, but can they trust one another? 

The constant breaking of the fourth wall sort of makes this feel like a stage play adaptation, and for all I know, it probably is.  However, the strippers don’t have anything substantial to say to the camera as their monologues are amateurishly written and painfully performed.  It certainly does little to endear them to the audience.

Speaking of underwhelming audience experiences, it's also frustrating that the stripping scenes feature no nudity.  Heck, the strippers don’t even really dance.  They just pout and slowly circle around the pole.  Even worse is the fact that the stage is just a stripper pole in front of a tinsel curtain.  What can you say about a movie about strippers that can’t even afford to film in a real strip club?  I know they were going for a theatrical feel with all the monologues and shit, but that strip club set wouldn’t cut it in an Off-Off-Off Broadway play.  

Even though the fourth-wall breaks are kind of annoying, that storytelling device is still somewhat novel in something like this.  Once the plot focuses on the missing money and the girls going on the lam, it becomes rote and boringly predictable.  All in all, The Lioness has very little bite.

TUBI CONTINUED… INVISIBLE ENEMIES (1997) **

Invisible Enemies begins in 2024 (hey, that’s just a few days away!) with Jackson (played in the future by Jan Van Sickle) relating a flashback to his son.  You see, back in his college days, Jackson (played in his youth by Jason Guess) stumbled upon an old pair of glasses while walking around campus.  When he put the glasses on, he found he could see into other people’s lives (he mostly just sees them arguing and generally acting shitty to other people).  Eventually, he learned the glasses belonged to none other than the Devil himself (who talks in a Freddy Krueger voice).  Naturally, the Devil goes after his hard-partying sister and it’s up to Jackson to save her. 

This isn’t great by any stretch of the imagination, but I liked the ‘90s aesthetic.  The sight of ladies wearing combat boots with sundresses and black choker necklaces just does something to me, I guess.  Even though the set-up is promising, things get real Jesus-y, real quick.  Not that it matters much.  I mean, you’re talking to the guy who watched the whole Thief in the Night tetralogy a few months ago for this column.  

The opening is solid, but Invisible Enemies ultimately winds up feeling like something you’d be forced to watch at a church youth group lock-in.  Fortunately, it’s short (thirty-seven minutes), moves at an acceptable pace, and doesn’t wear out its welcome.  (It almost feels like a pilot for a Christian horror TV series that didn’t get picked up.)  At least the scenes of the translucent Devil tormenting the sister at a rave are good for a laugh. 

Van Sickle gets the best line of the movie when he describes his life as a “Slow-motion swan dive into the toilet”.  That doesn’t exactly describe the movie, thankfully.  Just don’t expect anything close to being “good” though. 

TUBI CONTINUED… I WAS A TEENAGE SERIAL KILLER (1993) ** ½

Mary (Kristin Calabrese) is a teenage hooker who gets fed up with taking men’s shit and decides to get revenge by killing all the scumbags that do her wrong on a daily basis.  Mary’s methods of disposal include shooting, poisoning, and strangling.  Eventually, she runs into a male serial killer, and while I wouldn’t say they “fall in love”, he proves to be someone she can play house with.  (And by “play house with”, I mean “murder scumbags with”).  But will her happiness last?

I Was a Teenage Serial Killer was the low budget short film debut of director Sarah Jacobson.  It’s very rough and amateurish in places, but there are certainly moments here that work.  There are times where it feels kind of like a black and white gender swapped version of Henry:  Portrait of a Serial Killer, but with a punk rock DIY attitude and sense of humor.  The scene where Mary kills a guy during sex for removing his condom is rather effective, and also contains some surprising nudity.  Too bad a lot of the shots (both in this scene and elsewhere in the movie) are out of focus. 

The film is only twenty-five minutes long, but it manages to pack in a surprisingly high body count in that short amount of time.  Although the death scenes aren’t overly gruesome, they are fairly bloody.  Jacobson’s stabs at humor (pun possibly intended) are successful maybe half of the time.  It helps that Calabrese has a likeable screen presence about her.  She makes Mary’s final confession scene heartfelt, even if some of the dialogue is a bit on the nose.  

Sure, I Was a Teenage Serial Killer is pretty uneven.  However, it does have what is probably the only death by Dustbuster scene in cinema history.  Because of that, I’d say it’s worthy of your time. 

TUBI CONTINUED… FEEDERS 3: THE FINAL MEAL (2022) **

After a twenty-four year wait, director Mark Polonia finally returns with the third chapter in the Feeders franchise.  It starts with a spoof of Plan 9 from Outer Space with horror movie host Mr. Lobo doing a riff on the Criswell opening.  Basically, he’s just apologizing to the audience upfront and stating the movie’s “not bad, just misunderstood”. 

Yes, Polonia goes “meta” this time out.  

A director is making a low budget movie about the original alien invasion.  To adjust for the times, he makes the leads women (amusingly called “female Derek” and “female Bennett”).  That means we get to see recreations of scenes from the first movie while the actors and crew members make snide comments about the chintzy production design and dialogue.  This portion of the movie is the most fun.  Too bad there’s too many other subplots and unnecessary characters (everyone from an FBI agent to a German scientist) that get in the way.  In fact, I’m not sure it wouldn't have worked better as an anthology, seeing how the various plotlines never really intersect in a meaningful way. 

The last one took place on Christmas.  This one is set at Halloween.  It’s a shame that Polonia doesn’t take advantage of the holiday the same way he did with Part 2.  There’s a fun scene where the aliens are mistaken for trick-or-treaters, but it seems like Polonia could’ve gotten more mileage out of the situation.  

And like Part 2, it’s heavily padded.  There’s not one, but TWO prologues (the Mr. Lobo sketch and another intro about the vastness of space), long news report scenes, long flashbacks to the first movie (in addition to the recreations in the movie within a movie), flashbacks to the second movie, and an intermission featuring two other horror movie hosts (Count Gore and Marlena Midnite).  The CGI upgrade on the UFOs effects look as good as you could hope for from a Polonia flick.  The aliens themselves are still done in the old school manner, but somehow look even worse than they did in the ‘80s.  (Unless that’s supposed to be the joke.)

TUBI CONTINUED… FEEDERS 2: SLAY BELLS (1998) ***

Originally, I was going to try to do a Twelve Days of Christmas type of thing for the Tubi Continued… column, but since I was running behind, I instead just started watching as many short movies as possible in order to finish watching 365 movies in 365 days.  Despite that, I was still able to work in a few Xmas movies like Axemas, Santa’s Got Style, and this surprisingly fun Christmas-themed sequel. 

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, extraterrestrial feeders are stirring and kill a woman wearing an ugly blouse.  Mark Polonia is the star, his upper lip filled with thick hair, and he sees crappy looking UFOs flying through the air.  When all of a sudden, there arose such a clatter. The audience gasps when they see what was the matter:   To what to their wondering eyes did appear, but the miniature monsters attacking Santa Claus and his reindeer!

I was flat-out shocked how much I enjoyed this, especially seeing how bad the original was.  It’s still no classic or anything, so let’s get the bad news out of the way first.  The kills this time around are pretty weak and mostly just involve victims spitting up blood.  The feeders themselves look better (sorta) but lack the charm of the monsters in the first flick.  It’s also padded with flashbacks to Part 1, scenes of kids watching cartoons, and women wrapping presents.  There are also long chunks of middling material in between the highlights. 

That said, there are two sequences that will be burned into my memory for years to come.  The first comes when the feeders attack Santa Claus while he’s flying his sleigh.  And no, I don’t mean a guy dressed as Santa Claus.  I mean the real McCoy.  Jolly Saint Nick himself (and his elf RIP).  This scene taken on its own terms (even if it doesn’t exactly take the fullest advantage of the idea) is worth an extra Half-Star. 

The second scene comes when Santa takes his revenge on the aliens.  If you ever wanted to see Kris Kringle go Charles Bronson on a bunch of clay puppets, Feeders 2:  Slay Bells has you covered.  This scene, like the sleigh attack is worth an extra Half-Star.  I can’t say it will replace Santa Claus Conquers the Martians as the definitive Santa vs. Aliens movie, but it does have some big laughs waiting for you under the tree. 

TUBI CONTINUED… FEEDERS (1996) * ½

Feeders is an early Polonia Brothers effort.  They’ve made some bad ones in their time, but boy, is this one ever rough.  They made it before they perfected their craft (“perfected” is totally not the right word… but… oh well…) and there are some moments that are spectacularly inept.  That might sound like pure gold to Bad Movie aficionados (and, admittedly, the flick has its moments), but it’s rather painful at times.

Aliens land in a small town and run around the forest.  Derek (co-director Jon McBride) and Bennett (co-director John Polonia) are two friends on a road trip who go camping in the nearby woods.  Eventually, they come face to face with the hungry aliens. 

I am usually halfway forgiving about things like budgetary limitations when I review Shot-on-Video horror flicks, but… man.  This one was rough.  Sure, it was shot on video, but so was your cousin’s piano recital in 1989, and I don’t think I’d want to watch that.  The special effects for the UFO look like something out of a Commodore 64 game, and the rubbery aliens are good for a laugh.  The negative vision POV shots of them scurrying around get old real fast though. 

I thought this was going to be the Tubi movie that finally made me crack mentally.  Fortunately, things improved once the little critters started burrowing their hungry maws into unsuspecting people.  The gore in these scenes is okay, and the greenscreen severed head is particularly hilarious.  That still doesn’t excuse all the long dull walking scenes and the score that will put you to sleep.  The best special effect though is the use of the Polonia twins, John and Mark playing the hero and his evil double. 

Co-director (that’s right it took three people to cobble this mess together) McBride was also responsible for the much better SOV efforts, Cannibal Campout and Woodchipper Massacre. 

TUBI CONTINUED… KAMEN RIDER ZERO-ONE: REAL X TIME (2020) **

An AI intelligence with a severe God complex wants to destroy the world in no less than sixty minutes.  The only people who will be spared are his faithful, creepy, cult-like servants.  Naturally, the only one who stands in his way is Kamen Rider Zero-One.  When he gets sidelined by the baddie, other Kamen Riders step up to lend him a hand. 

Kamen Rider Zero-One:  Real x Time has a solid gimmick of taking place in real time.  Even though it’s only eighty minutes long, it makes clever use of flashbacks and/or showing events that are happening concurrently to open the narrative up just a bit.  The filmmakers even use a little timer at the bottom of the screen during some scenes to keep things honest, a touch I appreciated.  (It also helps to let you know just how much time is left in the movie, so you don’t have to keep on hitting the “Display” button.)

That said, like Kamen Rider:  Heisei Generations Forever, it has way too many characters and too much cutting back and forth between them.  It starts off in fine fashion with a neat opening sequence, but it quickly gets bogged down afterwards even with a semi-streamlined plot.  At least there’s more motorcycle action this time around, including a fun chase scene that is done in one long take.  

Another goofy touch is that all the Kamen Riders’ weapons and shit look like cheap toys.  (I guess they were taking a page from the Ultraman playbook.)  While it’s not exactly great, it still has a few random weird asides (like the guy with literal abs of steel) to keep you sort of invested.  Fans will surely eat it up, but honestly, Kamen Rider Zero-One:  Real x Time needed a bit more up its sleeve to be worthwhile for non-Kamen Rider enthusiasts. 

AKA:  Kamen Rider Zero-One:  Real Time.  AKA:  Kamen Rider:  Zero-One:  The Movie:  Real x Time.