AMITYVILLE BACKPACK (2024) ** ½

A loser named Luther (Mike Hartsfield) buys a backpack at a garage sale in Amityville.  The first day, it kills his cat.  Then a janitor.  Then the girl he has a crush on who won’t give him the time of day.  Then his boss.  Finally, the demented backpack comes for Luther. 

The backpack itself is kind of cool.  It looks like a homemade version of a Loungefly bag.  It’s shaped like the famous house and is adorned with little plastic sleeves that are shaped like the iconic windows.  (Flames are seen inside of it when it gets angry.)  When it transforms, it even grows the house’s chimney too. 

As Luther the loser, Hartsfield looks like an amalgam of Fred Armisen and David Cross.  He delivers a tour de force performance.  Many scenes hinge on his ability to rant and rave to no one in particular (or at least to a backpack).  The surprising thing is, these moments (while they aren’t exactly laugh out loud funny) are amusing more often than not. 

Amityville Backpack proves that sometimes the dumbest ideas can be the most entertaining.  I mean I can’t quite in good conscience call this a “good” movie, but when you’re dabbling in the world of fake Amityville flicks, you take what you can get.  For example, I found myself genuinely amused when the backpack took a break from its rampage to lounge by the pool and drink a beer.  Or the part where it rides around the city on its skateboard.  Touches like this is what separates it from something like Amityville Scarecrow. 

Yes, as with the recent rash of Amityville movies, there are still too many cheap looking scenes of news anchors delivering updates on the crime spree that act as padding.  These little deterrents are to be expected as they come with the territory.  As a viewer, you have to ask yourself, “Am I the kind of person who wants to see a backpack shoot a guy point blank in the face?” 

Since I gave this ** ½, you can probably guess what kind of person I am.

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WINTERBEAST (1992) **

Winterbeast has a weirdly misleading title.  For one, there are multiple beasts, each one as improbable and silly looking as the next.  For another, it doesn’t even look like it takes place in winter.  There’s not one flake of snow to be found nor do you see anyone’s breath during the outdoor scenes. 

The plot has a forest ranger looking for some missing campers.  When he finds a dead body on a totem pole, he tries to shut the mountain down.  Naturally, the local bigwig doesn’t want to scare off the tourists, so he tries to keep a lid on it.  Eventually, the ranger and his buddies try to put a stop to the goofy looking monsters who are stomping around the woods. 

The film is really uneven and choppy.  One minute the ranger and his pal witness somebody’s face exploding (it looks like some third graders tried to recreate the face melting scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark) and the next, they’re back at their post like nothing happened.  The film stock also changes numerous times, which makes me think this was piecemealed together over several years. 

The Jaws-inspired subplot with the monsters ruining the tourist trade really bogs things down.  However, the film has enough odd moments sprinkled about to keep you watching.  The scene where the ranger stumbles upon a character wearing a clown mask and dancing around some corpses is surprisingly effective. 

The monsters are easily the most amusing thing about the movie though.  One looks like an alien made of bubblegum, another resembles Groot on steroids, and there’s a giant chicken that looks like a close cousin to the bird monster in The Giant Claw.  The final demon is just a guy wearing not-bad devil appliances, but he’s the least memorable creature in the cast.  The effects seen in the opening dream sequence are pretty cool too. 

Ultimately, this is a hodgepodge.  If you enjoyed something like Equinox, you might not mind sitting through this just to see the silly-looking stop-motion monsters.   Those fun special effects aside, Winterbeast is bound to leave you cold. 

You can order my latest book, The Video Vacuum Strikes Back! HERE: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=mitch+lovell&crid=2349LP809O62V&sprefix=mitch+lovell%2Caps%2C599&ref=nb_sb_ss_p13n-expert-pd-ops-ranker_1_12 

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DOWN TWISTED (1987) **

Cinematography that’s too dark?  Check.  Muddled sound that makes the dialogue hard to hear?  Got it!  Confusing plot?  Yup.  Must be an Albert Pyun movie. 

Thieves steal an ancient relic and head to LA.  Carey Lowell, two years away from becoming a Bond girl, gets roped in by her roommate into going along with her to a drug deal.  Well, wouldn’t you know it?  The roommate (Trudy Dochterman) winds up dead and Carey, along with a wimpy lawyer (Charles Rocket) gets kidnapped by a colorful gang of punks.  They are both soon embroiled in the search for the priceless artifact and grudgingly have to work together in order to stay alive. 

I think Down Twisted could’ve worked, but the script was just far too disjointed.  This is one of those movies that relies on opening crawls, radio announcements, and obvious ADR to convey plot information to the audience.  Not that any of it is really all that helpful.  

The ending is weak too as things just sort of peter out.  Afterwards, there’s a long montage set to UB40’s cover of “Suspicious Minds” that looks like it might’ve been meant for a closing credits spiel, but someone forgot to put in the actors’ names.  If anything, it helps to pad things out. 

The first act is the best.  It’s here where Pyun seems to be trying to turn the usual action trope on its ear by making the actress a capable action hero while turning the lead actor into the whiny sidekick character that’s usually reserved for women in these kinds of pictures.  However, since the movie hinges on characters not being who they seem, that dynamic quickly shifts.  Before long, Carey is back to playing the more typical character of the girl who’s just along for the ride. 

Down Twisted also suffers from a muddy look.  Even the daytime scenes look too dark.  The script is as muddled as the cinematography.  It tries to pull the rug out from under you every twenty minutes or so through characters double crossing each other or revealing their true nature.  This all seems superfluous though as the big reveals ultimately just boils down to another scene of Lowell and Rocket being chased. 

This is far from Pyun’s worst, but I don’t think it will win over anyone unfamiliar with his work.  The cast helps to keep you invested, even when the plot is spinning its wheels.  Lowell is quite good, and you can tell the Bond producers probably saw this when they were casting Licence to Kill as she handles herself exceptionally well in the action scenes.  Rocket has some nice moments too, especially later on when his character shows signs of being a competent action hero.  Fans of Pyun will enjoy seeing his usual cast of characters such as Thom Mathews, Linda Kerridge, and Norbert Weisser popping up in there as well.  You’ll probably also get a kick out of seeing Courteney Cox in her film debut.  It’s just a shame that Down Twisted’s plot is so twisted that it leaves its leads in the lurch for much of the running time. 

AKA:  Treasure of San Lucas.

You can order my latest book, The Video Vacuum Strikes Back! HERE: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=mitch+lovell&crid=2349LP809O62V&sprefix=mitch+lovell%2Caps%2C599&ref=nb_sb_ss_p13n-expert-pd-ops-ranker_1_12 

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MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (2026) ***

Travis Knight’s Masters of the Universe reminded me of Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger.  Both movies unwisely spend an inordinate amount of time treating its main character like a dork.  Like that film, once it stops seeing its hero as a joke and embraces the source material in the correct spirit, it kicks a lot of ass.  If the screenwriters didn’t try to beat the critics to the punch by poking fun at He-Man instead of properly propping him up as the iconic character that he is, this could’ve been a classic.  Fortunately, the last act is a legitimately great Masters of the Universe adaptation.  Maybe if there is a sequel (although the low box office receipts suggest otherwise) the filmmakers can use the momentum they gained in the last twenty minutes and carry it into the next movie. 

Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) is stuck in a dead-end job on Earth.  When his home world of Eternia is threatened by the evil Skeletor (Jared Leto), his childhood friend Teela (Camila Mendes) brings Adam home to save the day.  When he wields The Sword of Power, Adam becomes the super-strong He-Man and does battle with Skeletor’s legions of minions.

I could’ve done without some of the dopey humor in the early going, but once the action switches over to Eternia, the film gets markedly better.  The humor is actually funny in this section too, especially when it leans into the campy gay innuendo between He-Man and Skeletor, which is often priceless.  (I especially liked the scene where Skeletor gets inside of He-Man’s head and they lift weights in a gym.)  

Say what you will about Leto, but he is uproarious in this.  He takes the character of Skeletor and amps things up to Frank N. Furter levels of campiness.  He deftly walks the tightrope of the character we know and love from the cartoon with the modern-day meme version.  Idris Elba is also quite good as Duncan, He-Man’s teacher, and gets the best-defined character arc of the film.  As He-Man, Galitzine is solid for the most part.  It’s just that the movie does him a disservice by turning him into a total cheeseball for half the running time.   

Coming from someone who had all the toys and playsets as a kid, I enjoyed seeing that world realized on the big screen.  I got a kick out of seeing guys like Trap Jaw, Moss Man, and Ram Man in a big-budget epic.  I did however feel bad for poor Fisto.  Yes, he has a funny name.  We get it.  This is one joke that the movie runs into the ground.  It almost felt like the film was trying to make an over/under Kalshi bet of how many Fisto jokes it could squeeze into two hours. 

You can order my latest book, The Video Vacuum Strikes Back! HERE: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=mitch+lovell&crid=2349LP809O62V&sprefix=mitch+lovell%2Caps%2C599&ref=nb_sb_ss_p13n-expert-pd-ops-ranker_1_12 

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HOT SPUR (1968) **

There had been nudie westerns in the past (most notably Russ Meyer’s Wild Gals of the Naked West), but I think Lee (Chain Gang Women) Frost’s Hot Spur might’ve been the first roughie western.  Written and produced by Frost’s usual collaborator Bob Cresse, it tells the story of Carlo (James Arenas), a Mexican stable boy who is roughed up by two cowpokes.  Later, he gets a job working at a ranch where the surly cowboys happen to rope cattle.  After the rancher O’Hare (Joseph Mascolo) catches him making eyes at his wife (Virginia Gordon), he kicks Carlo off his property.  He then sets out for revenge by kidnapping the rancher’s wife and raping her.  See, O’Hare raped his sister years ago and Carlo’s just been waiting to pay him back. 

The fiery opening credits are the best part.  They play like the credits featured in Bonanza except played in reverse.  There’s also a fun scene where a cowboy is going at it with a gal in the floor of the stable.  One of the other dudes gets the bright idea to put a saddle on his back and has another woman ride him like a horse while he is having sex.  I’ve heard of horseplay before, but this is ridiculous. 

Other than that amusing bit, this is pretty rough going.  That’s not only due to the rapey subject matter, but because of the fact that it’s pretty repetitive and the attack scenes are all rather rote.  The western setting, while novel, doesn’t really add anything to the proceedings either.  There are scenes of whipping and rope bondage, although they are nothing that really takes advantage of the surroundings.  I give Frost and his crew credit for making it look like a legitimate B western.  Ultimately, the fact that this was filmed in the great outdoors rather than an NYC apartment is the only real selling point. 

As the rancher O’Hare, Mascolo has a Ben Gazzara type of quality about him.  He gives the best performance of the entire film as everyone else in the cast is rather weak.  He later went on to a memorable appearance as the human villain in Jaws 2. 

AKA:  Fiery Spur.  AKA:  The Longest Spur.  AKA:  The Naked Spur.

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THE LUSTFUL TURK (1968) * ½

Unconfirmed sources state that at the time, this was the most expensive nudie ever made.  I don’t know, it looks pretty cheap to me.  The costumes and sets feel like they came from a community dinner theater.  It also features wall to wall narration, which means the production saved money on sound equipment.  Much of the narration comes in the form of people sitting around and reading letters.  This is a good way to pad the scenes out.  Also, if the plot calls for a boat crossing the ocean or something, the camera just cuts away to a painting of a boat and hopes the audience puts two and two together.  Heck, it’s so cheap that they couldn’t even afford to show a cutaway to the sun setting.  Instead, we get a shot of a construction-paper sun setting that looks like a fourth grader’s art project.

Maybe I was just expecting more from writer/producer David F. (Blood Feast) Friedman and director Byron (The Head Mistress) Mabe. 

The plot is simple.  In the 19th century, a sultan (Tom Ato) buys a virginal young Englishwoman named Emily (Abbe Rentz) and her servant Eliza (Gee Gentell) for his harem where he forcibly indoctrinates them into womanhood.  However, the constant narration is needlessly wordy and overly flowery.  It also suffocates the action.  The awkward structure that revolves around people sitting and reading letters does it no favors either.  In fact, I found my attention starting to wander by the time we get to the scene where there’s a flashback inside of a letter. 

The softcore action itself is rather tepid.  It’s almost like Friedman and Mabe were so enamored with the idea of making a “legitimate” smut movie that they forgot to make it smutty.  Even the light bondage and S & M scenes fall flat.  The sequences of fair maidens being ravished get repetitive too.  I guess if you’ve seen one deflowering you’ve seen them all. 

There is at least one line of dialogue that had me cracking up though.  It’s spoken by the title character when he realizes someone other than himself has taken a slave girl’s virginity and he asks her, “How long have you been joined to the uncircumcised pig?”

KNOCK AT THE CABIN (2023) ***

I make no secret about my disdain for M. Night Shyamalan’s movies.  I’ve never liked one of his films.  Usually, when the premise is good, the ending is either predictable (The Sixth Sense) or just flat-out sucks (Signs).  The ones I’ve come closest to enjoying are the ones that are consistently goofy throughout (like The Happening and Old).  Then, there’s the ones that are terrible all the way through (like Unbreakable and The Village).   Well, I guess the law of averages dictates I’d be bound to like a M. Night joint at some juncture. 

Dave Bautista approaches a little girl (Nikki Amuka-Bird) playing in the woods and begins acting super creepy.  She runs and tells her two dads (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge) who lock the cabin door.  Soon, Dave’s “friends” show up to the cabin stating they have important “work” to do.  They eventually break in, tie the family up, and tell them they have to make a sacrifice in order to save the world. 

Knock at the Cabin starts off like a siege movie with the dads doing everything they can to stop the intruders, which isn’t much since the cabin isn’t exactly Fort Knox.  I don’t want to spoil the best parts, which tend to be a tad philosophical, but the central crux of the story is quite compelling.  Most of Shyamalan’s work has a great beginning and a crummy ending or vice versa.  I guess the surprising thing here (there isn’t really a “Shyamalan Twist” in this one) is that the film is at its best when it’s just a bunch of people sitting around and talking. 

M. Night gets a lot of mileage out of Dave Bautista.  He plays a gentle giant that sometimes borders on Lenny from Of Mice and Men, but there’s always a possibility he could snap at any point.  Groff and Aldridge are quite good too, as is Amuka-Bird (although she isn’t given much to do besides cower in fear for the last two acts). 

So, chalk this one up as the first M. Night movie I enjoyed.  Maybe he’s got another winner up his sleeve.  Despite his track record with me, he still displays enough potential in his films that keep me (sometimes foolishly) coming back for more.  I guess whenever M. Night knocks, I’ll still answer.