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Reviews
De UFO's van Soesterberg (2023)
Well made
De UFO's van Soesterberg is directed by Bram Roza and just like the title says, it's about the night of February 3, 1979. In the air above Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands, a giant black UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) hovered overhead and was seen by twelve people. All of them were military officers and their stories were all the same.
Roza runs UFO Meldpunt Nederland, a site that tracks UAP sightings in the Netherlands. Yet he never allows this film to turn into the breathless kind of narrative of a show like Ancient Aliens. Everyone from witness to critic is given plenty of time to share their story. It's all illustrated with gorgeous artwork and it just feels well beyond what I've come to expect from paranormal documentaries. This also has a wonderful score by Mike Redman.
The director also made the movie Xingadix Lives! Which is about De Johnsons, a 1992 Dutch horror film thriller directed by Rudolf van den Berg.
So many of these witnesses have been embarrassed and afraid to appear in interviews. I'm so pleased that this film so effortlessly and perfectly tells their stories. Even if you're not into UFO stories, you may find something to enjoy in this.
Heaven's Revenge (2022)
HEAVEN!
I'm consumed by the idea that African American movies on Tubi flow from the same filone as American giallo or sex thrillers without their filmmakers ever having seen a traditional giallo. Heaven's Revenge feels like the direct to video softcore murder movies of the 90s but infused with the viewpoint of a filmmaker who may have read about them but again, didn't experience them.
This started as a 22-minute short before being expanded to a full length movie. It was directed, written and produced by LaNease Adams, who was the first African American women e to be a contestant on The Bachelor. She also stars as Heaven, who falls in love with professional wrestler Jackson Davis (Marcus Nel-Jamal Hamm).
She told Heart and Soul, "My new feature film Heaven's Revenge was inspired by classic films such as Misery, Fatal Attraction, Unfaithful and A Thin Line Between Love and Hate. We wanted to make a film that was a thriller, but with strong passion, strong dialogue, and a film that leaves the audience with an opinion on what they've just seen. A lot of the feedback has been different from men, than women. Men tend to believe that Heaven Bailey, our leading character, was crazy. But women overwhelmingly see the issue with how Jackson Davis treated Heaven in the relationship, which made her act crazy."
Both actors wrote the script with Miranda Bowden and it feels like a lot of this movie is ad libbed. It's really strange because so much is them arguing and every time it feels like they've reached some kind of accord, a screaming match ensues. I mean, yes, Heaven did break into Jackson's house and shoot him, then convince his family - if not the police - that she saved him and is nursing him back to health when she's really throwing him in the shower and slapping him around while he makes crying noises like that burned up guy played by Jordan Peele in the crowd that cries as Keegan-Michael Key makes fun of him. She also lures his new girlfriend Sarah (Jeni Jones) to his house, gets her drunk and then flips out and murders her.
The democracy of Tubi movies is so pure to me. It seems like nearly anyone can tell the story that they want to tell and it can air there where just about anyone can find it. It's the closest thing to the video store that today's streaming world has.
The Punisher: Dirty Laundry (2012)
A good Punisher
The Punisher used to be the kind of comic book character whose t-shirts you could wear but today, just like conspiracy theories, it's all been ruined. He's also never really had a fair shake at a movie, as The Punisher, The Punisher and Punisher: War Zone are all fine but missing a lot of what makes the character work when the right creative team is on it. Yes, I realize that the character is also on Daredevil and had two seasons of his own show. Jon Bernthal has the right look for Frank Castle and he has said that he used this short as inspiration for how he portrays the character.
Yet the best interpretation of the Punisher is this short, directed by Phil Joanou (Three O'Clock High, Rattle and Hum) and written by producer Adi Shankar, Chad St. John and star Thomas Jane, who had already played the role in The Punisher.
When he played this movie at San Diego Comic Con, Jane said, "I wanted to make a fan film for a character I've always loved and believed in - a love letter to Frank Castle & his fans. It was an incredible experience with everyone on the project throwing in their time just for the fun of it. It's been a blast to be a part of from start to finish; we hope the friends of Frank enjoy watching it as much as we did making it."
The story is simple. All Frank wants to do is wash his clothes, but the neighborhood he's in won't allow it. A pimp named Goldtooth (Sammi Rotibi) is abusing his girls and attacking a young boy named DeShawn (Karlin Walker). As he watches his clothing spin, he tries to get away by grabbing a Yoo-Hoo. A disabled veteran named Big Mike (Ron Perlman) reveals that he tried to stop them once and that's how he ended up crippled. Frank buys a bottle of whiskey from him and proceeds to do what he does best, kill every single person in his way.
It's exactly who the character is, someone you wouldn't want to be around and a man who is only kept alive by a war that he fights alone.
It's around ten minutes and definitely worth a watch.
C.B. Hustlers (1976)
All for Uschi Digard
Stu Seagall created hyper-realistic training for military personnel and also directed Insatiable with Marilyn Chambers. How can you top that? He was the executive producer for Silk Stalkings, Renegade and the third Beastmaster movie. And more? He directed, wrote and produced Drive-In Massacre, which this was shot back-to-back with.
He also directed this movie, which was written by John Alderman, John F. Goff and Martin Gatsby. It's about a couple named Dancer (John Alderman) and Scuzz (Jacqueline Giroux) who are the pimps for three women known as the C. B. Hustlers, who are played by Janus Blythe (Ruby from The Hills Have Eyes), Catherine Barkley and - most importantly - Uschi Digard, billed as Elke Vann. They always tell people in public that the girls are their daughters, but the truth is that they collect 40% of their $25 fee for each sex act, which they set up with C. B. radios.
In C. B. terms, they used to call the areas where sex workers would line up as pickle park, party row or the back row.
Sheriff Elrod P. Ramsey (Bruce Kimball) wants to bust the girls, so he brings on newspaper men Boots Clayborn (John F. Goff) and Mountain Dean (Richard Kennedy) to track them down. Of course, Boots falls for one of the girls and ends up helping them stay ahead of the fuzz. Or as C. B. users would say, bears driving bubble gum machines. Or a smokey. Or, if they're women, Mama Bears.
It's also a vansploitation movie! The Hot Box 1 and Hot Box 2 vans were made by Custom Touch of Van Nuys, California.
There's one major reason - well, two - to watch this and that's Uschi Digard, whose lovemaking scene is filmed as if you are under her. It's worth sitting through all the bad country music, long walking scenes and the dumb plot, because I often wonder if God exists and upon rewatching this scene more than once, I can confirm that the answer is affirmative.
The Beer Drinker's Guide to Fitness and Filmmaking (1987)
Charming!
There's no way I would have ever seen this movie if it wasn't for the Chattanooga Film Festival.
"My father says if people don't come and see this movie, we'll starve," says Tate Sullivan, introducing his father's The Beer Drinker's Guide to Fitness and Filmmaking.
Fred G. Sullivan only made one other movie and that's a shame. He made Cold River in 1982, which was a historical movie. This is more like a home movie, but you may not know when it's real and when it's f for fake. Fred directed, wrote, produced, edited and stars in this, along with his four kids, his wife Polly, his business partners, his neighbors and nearly everyone who ever knew him.
Fred wants to be a filmmaker and a star. He wants it so bad that he'll let you watch his proctology exam. As for Polly, she grew up rich and fell for him and now they're off in the country where he muses about movies and daydreams all day. And yet, you can understand how she felt that way.
Not all of us have our home movies released on VHS. Imagine how amazing it would be if that were true and then your VHS was rediscovered by some movie nerds, logged on Letterboxd and discussed on Discord. It would be weird and yet if Fred were still alive -- he died playing basketball -- I think he'd be elated.
Nightflyers (1987)
Lost movie nearly
Before he became known for Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin wrote a 23,000-word novella titled "Nightflyers," which was published by Analog Science Fiction and Fact. A few years later, encouraged by his editor James Frenkel, Martin turned it into a longer story which was published in a split book with Vernor Vinge's True Names as part of their Dell's Binary Star series.
You don't need to know this, but this is in the same "Thousand Worlds" universe as other Martin stories such as Sandkings, A Song for Lya, The Way of the Cross and Dragon, With NMorning Comes Mistfall, the short stories in Tuf Voyaging and Dying of the Light.
Director Robert Collector (Red Heat, the Linda Blair and Sylvia Kristel one) left shooting before the movie was finished and used the name T. C. Blake. Writer and producer Robert Jaffe (he wrote Demon Seed, Motel Hell and the deranged Scarab) took the short version as his inspiration.
First off, kind of like Fulci with Conquest and his fog, this entire movie is supposed to look this misty. It was a deliberate choice by the producers, director and cinematographer who wanted the movie to look like a dream. Seeing as how it's never been released in any high definition media, the VHS look of this makes it appear even more phantasmagorical.
The Volkryn are ancient space gods kind of like Kirby's the Celestials, as they go blindly through the galaxy creating stars in their wake. An unseen pilot named Royd Eris (Michael Praed, Prince Michael of Moldavia on Dynasty) has brought together a crew of scientists with Miranda Dorlac (Catherine Mary Stewart, who seriously rivals Jessica Harper for being in multiple cult movies that lunatics like me obsess over; as for her, she's in movies I go wild over like The Last Starfighter, Night of the Comet and The Apple) as our heroine. There's also Michael D'Brannin (John Standing), Audrey Zale (Lisa Blount, forever from Prince of Darkness), Keelor (Glenn Withrow), Eliza (Annabel Brooks, who replaced Bianca Jagger), Glenn Withrow (Michael Des Barres, yes, the guy from the band Detective who was on the remade WKRP In Cincinnati) and Darryl (James Avery, the voice of the Shredder and Uncle Phil).
Royd and Miranda are into one another, which has some issues, as he's a clone of his mother Adara, who is also the computer that runs the ship and decides that this woman -- in a power suit with mirrored shades -- is going to take her son away from her, so she goes all HAL and kills everyone. This would fit in well with a lot of Alien clones, even if it's not all the way on Alien. Maybe a late Galaxy of Terror? An early Event Horizon? It's flawed, sure, but so is Lifeforce and both of these movies would go together well.
I mean, take a look at Stewart in that outfit. Murder computer mom is so correct.
This was also a SyFy series in 2018. It lasted for ten episodes.
Mirage (1990)
Mirage
I'm a big fan of killer car movies. We can subgenre this into filones, such as possessed automobiles (The Car, Christine, Ferat Vampire, Maximum Overdrive, Super Hybrid), killers in vehicles (Duel, Joyride, Death Car on the Freeway, Death Proof, Wheels of Terror) and movies that have killers who get in and out of cars (The Hitcher, Hitcher In the Dark). There are even ones where the hero drives a car to get revenge (Rolling Vengeance, The Wraith, The Gladiator).
Mirage is somewhere in the middle of these, as a black pick-up truck is seemingly driven by a young man who could also be a demon. And all he wants to do is kill everyone that comes to his desert to make out.
My wife lived in Vegas for a few years and when I went out to meet her family, we went and shot guns in the desert and had a picnic. She said no matter how many times she went to parties or events in the middle of said desert, she never saw anyone just take off their tops and get drunk in the middle of a place where you get dehydrated immediately.
Chris (Jennifer McAllister ) and Greg (Kenneth Johnson) are introduced to us as they're making love in the back of their truck with a toolbox on the accelerator as it just drives out in the infinite space of the desert, as if nothing could stop it or hurt them. Along with another couple who are just as into arguing as they are having make-up sex, Trip and Mary (Kevin McParland and Nicole Anton), and her ex Kyle (Todd Schaeffer) and his new girlfriend Bambi (Laura Albert), the desert seems as good a place as any - I recommend a furniture store like in Chopping Mall - to soft swing. Also: Kyle is Greg's brother, which suggests that Chris is a horrible person.
Yes, after a day in the sun of being stalked by a black truck and having Greg and Kyle get in a punchup, the kids find a note written in blood that says, "You are all going to die!" This note is more than prophetic as the driver of the black truck even has grenades that he uses to blow these kids up real good. Thanks to Unsung Horrors, I learned that the bad guy - known only as Villain in the credits - is B. G. Steers, who may be Burr Steers, who was one of the radio voices in Reservoir Dogs and the "Flock of Seagulls" character in Pulp Fiction. His character - other than the out there Trip, who dies bleeding from the mouth and speaking of the astral plane.
Steers, if he is Burr Steers, also directed 17 Again, Igby Goes Down and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
This was directed by William Crain, who also made Midnight Fear, and co-wrote it with Chuck Hughes and Michael Crain. It's interesting in that there are too few desert and daytime slashers, even if you can see Chekov's bow and arrow appear from the very open of the film. Also: the best part is when one of the jocks utters a gay slur and promptly gets run over by a truck. Well, the best part other than the effects by R. Christopher Biggs, who went on to work on Demolition Man and the TV series Martin. One imagines he transformed Martin into Sheneneh.
Strangely, this movie has an SST Records soundtrack with bands like Sister Double Happiness, Minutemen, fIREHOSE and Dinosaur Jr. What, no Saint Vitus or Negativland?
Quiet! Mom's Working! (2023)
WOW!
"What happens in mom's basement, stays in mom's basement." Yes, why is Del (Shane Brady) strapped to a table? Why is mom (Ana Krista Johnson) threatening him with a phallic drill? Will the daughter (Jillian Shea Spaeder) stop fighting with her brother? And what will dad (Jim O'Heir) say when he gets home?
Patrick Hogan is known for his sound work (Fire Country, Cobra Kai) but this is a short that he directed and wrote. And it's an absolute burst of fun, one filled with tough talk, angry mom faces and dildo nunchucks. You may see the ending coming, but when it's done this well, does that matter?
Shadow (2024)
Intense
Ahtna (Katy Wright-Mead) and her daughter Elise (Valentina Gordon as the younger child, Christy St. John as the grown up) are playing when things grow rough. The mother gives chase and her daughter slams her fingers inside a doorframe. Then, her shadow begins to chase Elise through the home, changing in shape, size and even appearance, looking like her mother sometimes and something frightening when you get closer.
There's no dialogue to speak of, but there is a mother repeatedly banging her head into the kitchen floor, an everyday piece of fright mixed with the black and white starkness throughout. Director and writer Kamell Allaway is someone to watch.
Fck'n Nuts (2023)
WOW!
Sandy (Maddie Nichols) may be 19, but she's still a child. She still lives at home with her parents (William E. Harris and Michele Rossi) and every man she introduces them to leaves her. She's in love with Dan Deakins (Vincent Stalba), who is kind and sweet and hey, he knows wine. He's in love with her too, but that means that he has to meet the family. Things go as absolutely bad as they can, beyond embarrassment and into pus-oozing anaphylactic shock.
This movie has a look that lives up to its name. Director and writer Sam Fox has created something truly special here, a piece of art that takes what in lesser hands would be sophomoric and here aspires to masterpiece. Here I was worried meeting my far right wing in-laws for the first time. I had nothing to worry about. I mean, I'm still alive.
A must watch!
Catacombs (2024)
Wow!
I love the slasher Prison. More horror movies should be set in correctional facilities and Catacombs is a strong entry in this unexplored genre. As a thunderstorm is just outside the walls, a guard has to go deep into the sections of the old jailhouse, confronting the horrors that wait within. Director and writer Chad Cunningham really needs to expand this into a feature, as I'd love to see what he can do with a bigger budget and more time. Mike (Kenneth Trujillo) is faced with more than he ever expected and -- again -- I'd love to see how this buried part of this correctional facility affects the rest of the prison.
Todo está perdido (2022)
So pretty
Todo está perdido is the tale of the Pérez family. They may seem normal, but so much of this short is about them fertilizing an egg that the laid of the house has just laid. Directed by Carla Pereira Docampo and Juan Fran Jacinto, who wrote the script with Paco Alcázar, this looks like nothing else, a puppet-style presentation with artwork that as much retro as it is unfamiliar. The colors are so gorgeous and vivid as well. I can't even imagine how long this took to make, because it feels so meticulous. Yet it is open and airy, filled with a light comedy touch. This is something else. Well worth watching!
Disciple (2024)
Great!
Made as a student film while director and writer Boston Enderle was at Western Kentucky University, this is a bold and well-made film about Isaac (Coltyn Parks), an abused preacher's (Greg Brandenburg) son. When he doesn't pay enough attention to his father's teachings, he's forced to pray while slicing stigmata -- the wounds of Christ -- into his hands. Then, he has a meeting with the Verdant God (Trinity Graves), an ancient being, and finds that he can finally escape the brutality that he and his family have lived with for their entire lives. A truly interesting idea that is treated with the care that it deserves, I'd love to see a longer and deeper take on this.
A.A. (2024)
Fun
Directed by Auden Bui, this has a very simple idea: There's more to A. A. than alcoholics anonymous. Bui has some great talent in this -- Anna Akana, Malcolm Barrett, Ryan Decker, Sage Porter, Brandon Potter, Bobby Reed and Uttera Singh -- who lean way hard into their roles. Can you imagine going out for an open casting call and getting the role of "Member of ********* Anonymous" much less have to say dialogue like, "There I am with four dingleberries in my face?" Acting is a rough business. That said, this is a short worth being proud of, a basic story told well and even a little twist at the end.
Þið kannist við... (2023)
Great!
Known as Þið kannist við... (You Know...) in its native Iceland, this Guðni Líndal Benediktsson directed (with a script co-written with Ævar Þór Benediktsson) has a holiday tradition I've never heard of before. The Yule Cat, which eats people who don't get clothes as Christmas gifts.
I'm amazed because this is a real thing. Jólakötturinn is "a huge and vicious cat from Icelandic Christmas folklore that is said to lurk in the snowy countryside during the Christmas season and eat people who do not receive new clothing before Christmas Eve."
The Yule Cat was often used by landowners as a threat to their field workers to finish collecting wool before autumn was over. Those who didn't work hard enough were made to fear this holiday beast.
This short looks gorgeous and has a really great effect for the cat. When else will you see a horrifying Christmas kitten?
The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals (1969)
Wonderful!
Oliver Drake may have started as an actor, but he's probably best-known as a prolific screenwriter (151 movies!) and director (41 films, including two adult movies - Angelica: The Young Vixen and Ride A Wild Stud as Revilo Ekard and he was not fooling anyone with that Alucard scam) of low-budget Western films.
A former cattle rancher, he brought his own trained horse with him to Hollywood. 1917, appearing with his trained horse. After acting in silent films, he directed, wrote and produced films for Gene Autry, Tex Ritter and others for RKO, Monogram and Republic. He was so invested in the Western film genre that he used his Pearblossom, California ranch for location shooting.
But by 1969, he was pretty much done in Hollywood. He'd moved to Las Vegas and decided to make a horror movie. Many claim that he didn't ever work in horror before, but he wrote the 1968 proto slasher No Tears for the Damned AKA Las Vegas Strangler as well as The Mummy's Curse, Riders of the Whistling Skull, the giallo-esque Sinister Hands and Weird Woman.
In Tom Weaver's Interviews With B Science Fiction and Horror Movie Makers, this movie's star Anthony Eisley (Dracula vs. Frankenstein) said, "The director was quite senile at the time - the absolute epitome of total confusion."
That claim is denied by the director's daughter, who said on IMDB, "Oliver Drake would have agreed with these reviews. I should know because he was my father. He was his harshest critic & did not enjoy watching this after it resurfaced on VHS. It is also incorrect that this was the only monster movie he ever made, The Mummy's Curse comes to mind. But I completely disagree with comments by Anthony Eisley that my father was senile during the making of this film! Its true that this film was never finished and sat on the shelf for years. My father went on to write two books, both of which were very well received by critics. He attended many Western Film Festivals as the guest of honor and gave very informative and entertaining speeches about the early days of film-making."
The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals was written and co-produced by William C. Edwards. He only has three movies on his IMDB page with one being the aforementioned Ride A Wild Stud ("When men were men - and women didn't forget it!") and Dracula (The Dirty Old Man), another movie that has a jackal-man, as Dracula - using the Alucard name, see it never gets old - enslaves Dr. Irving Jekyll, making him a werejackal and forcing him to bring women to his cabin. It's the kind of movie where you can see the stick that's holding up a vampire bat.
Man, Edwards loved the Alucard trick. After all, this has a mummy named Sirakh instead of Kharis and the Ananka character - yes, he also adored Universal horror movies - is Akanna. Well, guess what? This movie is kind of, sort of a sequel to that movie, as it brings back the werejackal under the name Irving Jackalman.
So how did this get made? Well, Drake ended up in Vegas and Edwards was working with Vega International Pictures. According to an article in The Las Vegas Sun, this was just the first of many films the studio had in the works: "The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackal is designed as a breakaway from the high camp and pseudo-intellectual spook picture. Said one Vega executive, "There's no social comment and no hidden meaning. The horror characters were designed to scare the hell out of the audience and that's that.""
Supposedly, the production ran out of financing before it was completed and all of the footage was confiscated by an unpaid contractor, which is how it ended up on VHS when Academy released a decimated looking copy in 1985, complete with sitar music - I guess that's Egyptian, said someone - and surf rock instrumentals instead of whatever music the filmmakers intended. Or maybe Drake himself was looking to sell it at one point. There are also vague reports of it playing in 1969 at an L. A. theater for investors and on a horror UHF show. Somehow, Drake sold They Ran for Their Lives to the CBS Late Movie, so anything is possible.
Maybe I should tell you the story of this movie now.
The sarcophagus of Princess Akana (Marliza Pons, who was a famous belly dancer in Las Vegas and supposedly had an uncredited part in Cleopatra and is also in Did Baby Shoot Her Sugardaddy? Along with Rene Bond) is being displayed by controversial archeologist Dave Barrie (Anthony Eisley), along with another mummy. She's remarkably well-preserved and he falls in love with her, falling for the curse of the jackal, which transforms him into a jackal by the light of the full moon. And by jackal, I mean he looks a lot like my chihuahua.
Let me tell you, the place that he stores these mummies is in no way hermetically sealed or scientific minded. It's a shack probably in Hendersonville and it looks like a total mess.
The princess wakes up and Dave falls in love with her, taking her on dates and teaching her how to put on a bra, which is a modern invention that she doesn't understand. I have to tell you, I've seen a lot in movies but nothing prepared me for a movie where a werejackal by night explains to an undead Egyptian how a Maidenform works. They also go see a Vegas show, at which point the other mummy awakens and attacks an exotic dancer before blasting his way through a wall.
I was wondering, how could this get better? And then John Carradine shows up for all of a minute to say scientific things like, "I can tell from the mold accumulation that this casket is 4,000 years old."
Is this heaven? Yes, if heaven has a werejackal and a mummy battling on Fremont Street back when Vegas was seedier and cooler and filled with tourists who just look and keep gambling, because yeah, sure, you see monsters fighting every day but you only get the chance to do Vegas once every few years.
Can it get better? Well, the mummy is played by a man named Saul Goldsmith, which is the least frightening mummy name ever.
This is eighty minutes of film with two sentences of plot, which is just how I like it. You come here wanting to see monsters and man, you get monsters. It also completely rips off the Universal version of The Mummy but adds in a Herschell Gordon Lewis-style tongue ripping out effect. It also has a scene where Dave takes Akana - who also has a magic ring that can hypnotize people - on a double date where he claims that "She's not from here. She comes from ... back east."
The cinematographer of this was William G. Troiano, who also worked on the Vegas productions Ride a Wild Stud, They Ran for Their Lives and No Tears for the Damned. He'd follow this by going to work on Horror of the Blood Monsters. He also shot She Freak, The Devil's Messenger and The Wild World of Batwoman. What a career!
The makeup effects - such as they are - are by Byrd Holland, whose credits stretch across the gamut of my cinematic obsessions, working on everything from Rabid and The Baby to Lemora, The Undertaker and His Pals and Terror Circus. Supposedly, he spent days doing a transformation scene that was cut from the film. He was assisted by Jack Shafton (the creature developer for The Intruder Within and effects on Jennifer) and Tony Tierney (effects for Dracula vs. Frankenstein and The Astro-Zombies). Its effects come from Harry Woolman, who was also on Evilspeak, Hangar 18, In Search of Historic Jesus, The Incredible Melting Man, Rattlers, Supervan, Love Camp 7, Dolemite, Don't Go Near the Park and so many more movies. Again, what a career!
This movie really is a nexus point for my fascinations.
It has no fewer than four assistant directors. Wyott Ordung shot second unit for The Navy vs. The Night Monsters and wrote Robot Monster. Willard Kirkham was on second unit for The Dark and Plan 9 from Outer Space. Russell Hayden only worked on this film, but Robert Farfan was an assistant director on Rebel Without a Cause, which is classy, and more movies I'd be proud to say I worked on, like Bride of the Monster and Moonfire.
This is a movie filled with werejackal murders of winos and cops. I've oversold it beyond belief so when you watch it, you may wonder why I love it so. I love the idea of it, I adore the fact that it exists and this to me is why movies are made in the first place. It has Carradine solemnly intone, "We can't just stand by and let a 4,000-year-old mummy and a jackal man take over the city!" It was made by people who had astounding careers both before and after. And here we are, in a world where we can say, "I know I could watch a movie that critics worldwide agree is true cinema that makes the blind see and the lame walk, but I'm going to watch The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals and disappoint everyone."
Souling (2023)
Souling
An unsuspecting woman (Jacquelyn Ferguson, who also directed and wrote this with Jason Anders, who is one of the disturbing people who gather) finds herself at the center of an ancient Pagan tradition when she was just trying to take a bubble bath.
According to the filmmakers, this modern-day folk tale was inspired by a medieval practice that led to trick-or-treating. There's a banquet put in front of the woman, who stares at the sack masked faces of those who have sat around her table, finally grabbing fistfuls of food and devouring it before enlightenment arrives.
While I'm not entirely sure what it all means, but I did learn that Souling was done during Allhallowtide and Christmastide. It included eating soul cakes ("sets of square farthing cakes with currants in the centre") singing, carrying lanterns, wearing a costume, setting bonfires, playing divination games (including one that has been slightly altered to become bobbing for apples), carrying a horse's head around and performances.
I kind of want to try Souling now.
We Joined A Cult (2023)
YES!
Directed and written by Chris McInroy, this is the tale of Wes (Kirk C. Johnson) and Luke (Carlos Larotta), two guys who wanted to play kickball and ended up in the cult of "He Who Blows In the Wind." Things get as out of hand as you imagine quite quickly with possession, brain licking, blood sprays and Lenny (Brant Bumpers). McIntroy also made GUTS, which is one of the few films made lately that made me physically sick, so I'm super excited to report that this has tons of the red stuff and no small shortage of moments that will make you feel queasy. A success! May you never run out of Karo syrup and red food coloring or whatever it is that you use!
The Curse of the Velvet Vampire (2023)
Love the movie in the movie
Two Chinese horror aficionados meet in a cult video store to watch the mysterious vampire film called The Curse of the Velvet Vampire. Which stars the band 802 and a lot of beautiful vampire girls. They even worked with Warpigs Brewing to create a beer called Velvet Vampire.
Directed by Christoffer Sandau Schuricht, who wrote the script with Poul Erik Madsen (he and Schuricht made The Beast Will Kill Us All together) and Andreas Asingh (the lead singer of 802), this gets the Demons mask in immediately and I wish there was a video store like this close to me even if it rents tapes that seemed cursed.
I love the look of this and wish we'd gotten the full movie that 802 was in, because whatever it is, it's awesome.
Cart Return (2023)
Carts
"Your chances of being killed by a cart are extremely low. But never zero..." With those prophetic words, Cart Return, directed and written by Matt Webb, begins.
You can tell a lot about people by watching if they return a cart or not. Melanie (Whitney Adkins) is one of those people who just refuses to bring her's back. This brings out of reality and right into a horror movie.
She's also one of those people who talks on her phone the entire time she's shopping, bringing everyone into her self-absorbed conversation. There are quite a few grocery parking lots where I'd love to see this short happen for real.
The Rainbow Bridge (2024)
Dogs
Tina (Tru Tran) takes her elderly dog MeeMoo (Fat Tony) to a clinic claiming to enable human-pet communication in the last moments before death. Then things get strange, because the two mad scientists -- Dr. Bailey Picadilo (Heather Lawless) and Herb (James Urbaniak) -- running the place learn that Tina and MeeMoo share an unusually strong bond that transcends time and space. They might just be the key to something great. But is the cost too much to pay?
Directed and written by Dimitri Simakis, this gets into how Tina and MeeMoo can create a world between our world and the one of our dead pets. This is what the scientists have been working on for thirty years. I loved that MeeMoo explained that he is just a chapter in Tina's life, not that it makes losing a pet any easier.
The phone number for the Rainbow Bridge -- 323-685-2626 -- didn't work. Ah, my plans to speak to my chihuahua Cubby will have to wait. I plan on him being alive forever.
Make Me a Pizza (2024)
The value of a pizza
Woman (Sophie Neff) is starving, so she orders a Meat Lover's Pizza that she can't pay for. Yet, in that old adult film cliche, perhaps there's some other way she can pay the delivery man (Woody Coyote). Yet he explains that sex can't be equated to currency and wonders what is the true value of pizza? How does her offer of a carnal evening of pure pleasure possibly pay for all of the many hands that have gone into the creation of these slices?
Then, they decide to become a pizza yet somehow create a pizza god that asks them to leave their flesh behind to become part of the pizza. Will this make them free? Probably.
Directed by Talia Shea Levin who wrote the script with Woody Coyote and Katie Peabody, this is one of the strangest shorts I've seen in some time and that's a complete compliment. It gets the 80s VCA porn aesthetic -- was there one? -- while making me so hungry for a hot slice of pie. You know. Pizza.
Ultraviolet (2006)
Release the Wimmer cut!
Kurt Wimmer directed the Brian Bosworth movie One Tough ******* and wrote the remake of The Thomas Crowne Affair and Sphere before he directed Equilibrium, the first movie of his I took notice of. He created a style of fighting, Gun Kata, for the film and it just stands out from so many of the 2000s science fiction action movies. I was beyond excited for Ultraviolet, but wow it had so many problems that I was sure I'd never see it.
Shot digitally on high-definition video, this movie was Wimmer's attempt at making a comic book movie. There are even tons of Ultraviolet comic covers to give the idea that we're in the middle of a much longer story. The basic idea is sometime in the near-future, a super soldier experiment leads to the creation of hemophages, vampiric humans that are stronger and smarter than normal humans. Like mutants...keep that in mind.
The war between humans and vampires leads to the end of civilization. There is now only the ArchMinistry, a powerful corporation and joint world government. There's a resistance that is fighting back and one of their soldiers is Violet Song Jat Shariff (Milla Jovovich). Her latest mission is to break into a blood bank and steal a weapon that can kill her kind. It ends up being a child named Six (Cameron Bright) who is a clone of Vice-Cardinal Ferdinand Daxus (Nick Chinlund) and filled with a virus that can destroy the hemophages. Despite this, Violet is sentimental and allows him to live despite hating all of humanity.
By the end of the movie, it's revealed that Daxus and the hemophages are working together to create a new virus that will allow them to control even more of the world. William Fichtner also shows up and if I ever make a movie, that guy has to be in it.
Not a lot of it makes sense, but really, we're here to watch large battles and gun fights. In the post Matrix world, everyone was making movies like this. I just happen to like this one because, well, it's fun. Who cares that Six spends most of the movie living in a briefcase? Do I need to know motivations? Rotten Tomatoes said, "An incomprehensible and forgettable sci-fi thriller, Ultraviolet is inept in every regard."
Um...this is a movie where you watch Milla Jovovich in various cool outfits, she has color changing hair and she shoots a whole bunch of religious zealots when she isn't racing around on a motorcycle. I mean, you tell me that's what I'm going to see and I'm going to see it.
Anyways...
Wimmer and Jovovich were locked out of the edit by Sony, who said that the movie was too emotional and it needed to be PG-13. They cut it from 120 minutes to 88 minutes. Because of this, the visual effects are visibly unfinished and use incomplete temp-renders that were never meant to be seen outside of the editing room.
Everywhere in the world, this didn't do well. Well, Japan loved it. They even made an anime sequel, Ultraviolet: Code 044.
In the very same year, Cameron Bright played Leech in X-Men: The Last Stand. His role is to cure mutants, which is just like this movie. He would play a vampire again once he got older. He's Volturi vampire Alec in Twilight New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn Part 2.
An aside: Gun Kata was taken from Gun Fu. Wikipedia refers to it as a "style of sophisticated close-quarters gunfight resembling a martial arts combat that combines firearms with hand-to-hand combat and traditional melee weapons in an approximately 50/50 ratio." This martial art first shows up in A Better Tomorrow, directed by John Woo, and gives guns the same style that open hand combat and wuxia movies had within Hong Kong cinema. In the 1990s, it came to America in movies like Desperado, The Replacement Killers (which had Woo's star Chow Yun-fat in it) and The Matrix. Today, John Wick has taken Gun Fu as far as it can go, but in 2002, Wimmer would use it in Equilibrium.
After the failure of this movie, Wimmer didn't direct for years until he made Children of the Corn. While he was recovering from this, he wrote Street Kings, Law Abiding Citizen, Salt, the remakes of Total Recall and Point Break, Spell, The Misfits, Expend4bles and The Beekeeper. I hope he gets the opportunity to make another movie and prove his talent to his detractors.
Equilibrium (2002)
Gun Kata!
"Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, the Cleric has determined that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically-predictable element. The gun kata treats the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position representing a maximum kill zone, inflicting maximum damage on the maximum number of opponents, while keeping the defender clear of the statistically-traditional trajectories of return fire. By the rote mastery of this art, your firing efficiency will rise by no less than 120 percent. The difference of a 63 percent increased lethal proficiency makes the master of the gun katas an adversary not to be taken lightly."
If a movie has dialogue like this, I'm going to love it.
After World War III, the survivors founded the totalitarian nation of Libria, a place that outlaws all emotion, forces the population to take the emotion-suppressing drug called Prozium II and hunts down anyone who goes against this, labeling them Sense Offenders, who are soon hunted by the Grammaton Clerics. When they show up, you're dead, and they're also going to destroy any art, music or books you have before shooting you a thousand times.
Yet Libria, the its leader, Father (Sean Pertwee) and the Tetragrammaton Council are being challenged by the Underground.
John Preston (Christian Bale) is one of the clerics and he's a single father after his wife was killed for being a Sense Offender. When his partner Errol Partridge (Sean Bean) saves a book of poems and takes them to the Nether - you know, the Cursed Earth or the Forbidden Zone - to read, he tells Preston that now that he has felt emotion, he can die. So Preston kills him.
The poem that he reads is "He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" by William Butler Yeats. Here's the poem: "Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
His new partner, Andrew Brandt (Taye Diggs), looks up to him. Yet since killing his partner, Preston has stopped taking the drugs and spares a Sense Offender, Mary O'Brien (Emily Watson). He soon meets the leader of the Underground, Jurgen (William Fichter), who convinces him that he must kill Father. At the same time, he's also been charged with finding a conspiracy within the clerics by Vice-Counsel DuPont (Angus Macfadyen).
When O'Brien is terminated, he has an emotional breakdown and is arrested by his partner. He soon learns that DuPont is the new Father, having started a new group within the Tetragrammaton Council of those who don't take the drugs either. As you can imagine, this leads our hero to killing everyone he can with a sword and guns. It's why you came and saw this movie. I mean, the hero kills 118 people in this movie.
Equilibrium was produced by Jan de Bont's production company, Blue Tulip Productions. The budget was covered by tax incentives thanks to de Bont's Dutch citizenship and the international sales paid for this movie's budget. So when critics didn't like it and it only had a limited release, it didn't matter.
When he was told about those reviews, director Kurt Wimmer said, "Why would I make a movie for someone I wouldn't want to hang out with? Have you ever met a critic who you wanted to party with? I haven't."
This movie has been forgotten but I'd love if more people watched it. Sure, it takes a lot of inspiration from other literature, but it also has warrior monks who have guns that form the logo of their country when they fire them and it takes place in some side future that looks like a gothic world.
Outer Reaches (2023)
Outer Reaches
Directed and written by Karl Redgen, this is the story of two explorers trying to find a new home for the human race. Hargrave (Cam Beatty) and Nestor (Michael M. Foster) crash land on an isolated planet, they learn that the only thing there other than them are a swarm of sentient microorganisms. The air is breathable, but when Nestor gets them into his body, they must weigh the decision to leave. Is their own survival or the chance of spreading this virus going to happen?
The creature begins to speak through Nestor, telling Hargrave that if he wants his friend to live, he has to bring them into the universe so that they can have freedom after a thousand years. It's an insidious virus that can even take on the voices inside Hargrave's mind.
There are a lot of great ideas in this for such a short film. The effects are really good and the audio that finishes the film suggest that this isn't over yet.