Reviews

J. G. "Pat" Patterson Jr. Only directed and wrote one other movie, The Body Shop, yet he also acted in the movies Moonshine Mountain, Preacherman and Whiskey Mountain, produced Just for the Hell of It, How to Make a Doll, She-Devils On Wheels, The Gruesome Twosome and Axe, and did makeup for Three On a Meathook. He also was the assistant director of Moonshine Mountain.

Born Jr. Junius Gustavious Patterson, he started his entertainment career as Don Brandon, doing an onstage horror show before playing movies, as well as hosting Shock Theater in Charlotte, NC as The Mad Daddy and The Monster of Ceremonies.

Sadly, he died in 1975 from metastatic malignant melanoma but he did leave behind these two films, which are right up my alley, movies made specifically for the Southern drive-in circuit featuring people from North Carolina in stories that folks from that state might be able to relate to.

Unlike The Body Shop, this avoids the heavy gore that you'd expect - well, the opening is intense - and is really about how a murder trial tears apart a small town. Rev. Samuel Moss (Barry Bell, who also was in the Earl Owensby movie Chain Gang 3D and has small parts in Maximum Overdrive and Trick or Treat) is in a loveless marriage with the older Clair (played by Patterson's wife Nita; she also did makeup for this). He is taken by a young parishioner with a troubled marriage, Marilyn Howard (Katherine Cortez, who was much later in Critters 3) and this leads to - some may claim - their deaths. But who did the killing?

Is it cucked husband Joss Howard (Kenneth G. Sigmon)? A strange man named Mose Cooper (Patterson)? The religious man's wife? Or someone totally unknown? Whoever it is, they've shot up the holy man and as for his lover, "someone ripped her tongue, right out of her head, and damn near ripped her head clean off her body!" And hey, is that Larry Drake in the courtroom? Yes. Before he became a star on L. A. Law, the actor broke in with movies like This Stuff'll Kill Ya! And Trucker's Woman.

Reissued as High Voltage, the selling point of this movie is the death device. It makes two appearances, once at the middle of the story and again at the end. This is exploitation, but the chair is never played as anything but the most horrifying invention of all time. Grown men get sick and almost cry, the switch is on for a long time and the final person who gets electrocuted goes out like an unrepentant killer. That's after a big courtroom reveal and gun battle! Worth Keeter, who would go on to direct Unmasking the Idol, L. A. Bounty, The Order of the Black Eagle, Tales of the Third Dimension in 3-D and numerous episodes of Power Rangers, is one of the people who gets killed.

The strangest thing is that most of the cast is made up of locals who never did another movie, along with professionals like Don Cummins, who wrote the dialogue and also appears in Slithis and Axe as the announcer on the radio and television. He plays District Attorney Grover in this and is one of the better talents, which is faint praise when you can pick up when most of the actors are reading off crew cards. That said, this film is authentic even in how amateur hour the execution ended up.

Cinematographer Darrell Cathcart has the kind of resume that makes me crazy in the greatest of ways, as he was behind the camera for Trucker's Woman, Death Screams, Final Exam, Lady Grey, Living Legend: The King of Rock and Roll, Wolfman, Seabo and Dark Sunday. A lot of the crew also worked on Axe, which is a movie that I hope that more people watch.

There are some reviews that hate on this film. That feels like punching down. Instead, I found this an incredibly interesting document of a time in film when regional movies could be made, even ones outside of horror.

Before Herschell Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman made this movie, adult films were black and white smokers played in the back rooms of men's clubs and social clubs. They were hired by film distributor Alfred N. Sack to make a "color 35mm film of cute girls carousing around with beach balls, or whatever." Sack made most of his money working with his brother distributing black cinema at a time that it barely existed. He paid the two $7,000.

Comedian Billy Falbo plays Lucky Pierre, who mainly walks into situations where he sees women naked. Unlike many of the nudist films - in which people may have been nude but were engaged in volleyball or other games - this was the first of the nudie cuties, a film where pretty girls got naked in a comedy. In his book A Youth in Babylon: Confessions of a Trash-Film King, Friedman estimated that there were six hundred ripoffs over the next decade.

You can see a pre-gore film William Kerwin as a man hiring a plumber and Lewis regular Lawrence J. Aberwood's voice as the announcer as well as pretty ladies including Kay Montie, Pat O'Farrell, Linda Cotton, Dorothy Holbrook, Toni Carroll (her last role; she also appeared on some television and was the first wife of producer David L. Wolper), Gail Jordan and Ginger Hale, who would appear in two other movies for the team, Goldilocks and the Three Bares and Boin-n-g, as well as Peter Perry Jr.'s The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill.

Filmed in Cutie Color and Skinamascope, this feels like Benny Hill but somehow slow, as if naked women can be boring. In 1961, this was obviously volcanic in its intensity, but today it is a reminder of the wars of the sexual revolution. However, so much of adult moves on from here, so we should look at it as a monument.

What other movie will give you this: Wang Bao-Ling (Chan Sze-Kai) is seduced by Shi Jong-Jie (Si Wai), a ghost optometrist who is also a vampire. He leaves her with a pair of possessed contact lens to replace her broken glasses, which soon take over her life and make her lead new victims to him.

Directed by Kuei Chih-Hung (Curse of Evil, The Boxer's Omen) and written by Yun-Wen Chen and Kuang Ni, this will make you wary of strange men who give you free contacts that allow you to see ghosts. This boasts the full color palette of Japanese gothic horror like The Vampire Doll and they both flow from the bloody heart of Hammer horror.

As Shaw would do more horror - as well as Kuei Chih-Hung - things would get crazier, gorier and just plain goopier. Yet here's a fully formed idea - it was only his second horror movie after The Killer Snakes - and this is moodier than his later work.

When boyfriend Au-ping (Lin Wei-tu) finds himself unable to help - and a slowly dying Wang Bao-Ling begins to seek victims from the beauty salon where she works - they turn to several supernatural professionals, but stopping a vampire isn't simple. Even worse, every night, the vampire's eyes glow and then so do our heroine's as well, ending with him using her for his lurid ends, leaving her naked and trapped in a cobweb inside a haunted house every morning. Now that is a walk of shame.

This movie also taught me that vampires are allergic to cigarettes and that everything in Hong Kong is neon.

I learned about this film from the Unsung Horrors podcast, who described it as "the most(?) Italian of perhaps any Hong Kong horror film." Listen to the episode!

Directed by Glauco Del Mar and written by Antonio Velazquez, this South America import with some scenes shot in New York City sexploitation movie starts with Sofia (Carmin O'Neal) and Dr. Anderson (Roberto Maurano) burying Mr. Montel (Guillermo De Córdova) after he has a cataleptic fit. Seconds after his funeral, he bursts out of his coffin and starts exploring the world of sex because, well, who knows. But it works - it has a demented theremin soundtrack and feels like Doris Wishman in the best of ways. After he experiences so many sexual hijinks, including lesbians and drag queens, which is like going from zero virginity to turbo in moments. He also drags a blonde from an alley into her apartment and takes her while an old woman watches, saying "Oh, if only I were ten years younger."

Also known as Unsatisfied Love, this is a movie that begins with a virgin crying in his coffin, has the same music Andy Milligan used to use, long shots of squirrels, a grave escape that feels completely taken from Night of the Living Dead yet made the same year, bad dubbing, unsynched sound, enough shots of feet that Wishman and Quentin Tarantino would be pleased and a movie that feels like "What if Carnival of Souls was about losing your virginity?"

Somehow, the cinematography is great.

Fred (Christopher Reeve) and Erma (Bess Armstrong) own Fred and Erma's Calamari Cafe but seemingly not for long. Fred dreams of being the Baskin Robbins of squid but he's three months ahead on rent to Mr. Chumley (Meat Loaf). Despite the idea of janitor Mae Gaston (Judd Nelson) to use his family's barbecue recipe, Fred starts to lose his mind and even tries to stab Mr. Chumley.

"Next time I book a table for 8 o'clock, Wolfgang, I expect to be seated at 8 o'clock! Yes, a good whine. Not a great whine, but locally groan, that's for sure. A pleasant enough boo-que. Almost reminds me of a good scream sherry! I hope you brought your appetites, kiddies, because tonight's tasteless tidbit is something I'm sure you'll savor. It's a real epi-gorian delight about a nice young couple who find the restaurant business a little hard to swallow. I call this adventure in fine dying "What's Cookin.""

When Officer Phil Farley (Art LaFleur) arrives the next day to arrest him, he's diverted by a dish of steak and eggs. It smells so good that more people show up and it turns out that they're eating Mr. Chumley, served up by Gaston, who soon blackmails Fred into half the profits. Now Gaston Fred and Erma's Steakhouse is a big deal, but Gaston worries that Fred can't handle it. This gives him an idea - kill Fred and Erma. He just misjudges just how much they want this place to turn a profit and how much Farley loves the meat.

Directed and written by Gilbert Adler, this is one of the better episodes of the show. Do you think Meat Loaf ever got tired of being typecast as characters who are eaten or turned into soap?

It's based on "What's Cookin'?" from The Haunt of Fear #15. It was written by William Gaines and Al Feldstein and drawn by Jack Davis.

Directed, shot by and edited by Jon Hall, who also plays Dr. Otto Lindsay, The Beach Girls and the Monster is the kind of strange movie that I love so much. The surf footage was shot by Dale Davis - who also is in this as Tom - and he also made the surf documentaries Walk on the Wet Side, Strictly Hot and The Golden Breed. Even better, it has sculptures, the monster's head,and the Kingsley the Lion, which were all created by Walker Edmiston - who plays Mark - who had a kid's show in Los Angeles and went on to be the voice of Ernie the Keebler Elf, several characters on Lidsville, Sigmund from Sigmund and the Sea Monster, the Zuni Fetish Doll in Trilogy of Terror and Magneto on the 1980s Spider-Man, as well as playing Professor Crandall on The Dukes of Hazzard.

Can it get even better than that?

Let me introduce you to the The Watusi Dancing Girls" rom Hollywood's Whisky a Go Go club on Sunset Boulevard. And how about that soundtrack with appearances by The Hustlers and the theme song "Dance Baby Dance" by Frank Sinatra Jr. And Joan Janis.

Bunny (Gloria Neil, Sarah in The Man from U. N. C. L. E.) is found dead after being attacked by a seawood covered lizard creature. No, not Slithis. Or Zaat. Or one of the Humanoids from the Deep. This, according to Dr. Lindsay, is a fantigua fish that has grown large enough to exist out of the ocean. Did it grow lungs? What kind of scientist is he? And why does he call the kids loafers and little tramps?

Maybe he's mad that his son Richard Lindsay (Arnold Lessing) is a beach bum, that his best friend Mark (Edmiston) has moved in and sculpts, and that his wife Vicky (Sue Casey, Evilspeak) drinks and flirts all the time, seeming like the kind of woman that John Ashley would certainly sleep with and cuck him were this Blood Island and not Santa Monica. Richard was there when Bunny died, so all he cares about now is his girlfriend Jane (Elaine DuPont) and living life for fun instead of doing research with his old man.

In case you can't guess, there's no such thing as the monster. Yes, the doctor is dressing up, all to make his son more serious by killing everyone that he is friends with as well as getting rid of his second wife.

This was written by Joan Gardner (who did tons of cartoon voices), Robert Silliphant (who wrote The Creeping Terror and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?) and Don Marquis.

Also known as Monster from the Surf and Surf Terror, this movie is totally The Horror of Party Beach but I don't care. It's like a sitcom or Scooby-Doo episode except that all sorts of people die and it ends with a misunderstood father, who is dressed as an undersea monster, driving his car off a cliff and blowing up real good.

It's 66 minutes of your life. Live it.

Directed by Alfred Vohrer and written by Egon Eis and Wolfgang Lukschy, this is - like all krimi - based on the novel by Edgar Wallace, who is also the father of King Kong and giallo. It's the first of a series of 14 movies filmed by Vohrer and was originally adapted in 1939 as The Dark Eyes of London AKA The Human Monster. It was remade in 1968 by Vohrer as The Gorilla Gang.

Wealthy men who have just bought insurance policies are dying and Scotland Yard is on the case. A large, bald and monstrous killer is on the loose. He's Blind Jack, played by former pro wrestler Ady Berber. Chief inspector Larry Holt (Joachim Fuchsberger) suspects a blind church as being part of these killings, so he hires braille expert Nora Ward (Karin Baal, who was also in the very krimi What Have You Done to Solange?) to help, which puts her in danger. By the end of the movie, she's menaced with a blowtorch and nearly drowned, but at least the top cop wants to marry her when it's all over.

This ad is from Zombo's Closet, an amazing site.

Foggy streets, seedy nightclubs, a young Klaus Kinski being odd and so much mood. While made in 1961, this didn't make it to the U. S. until 1965, playing a double feature with The Ghost.

The TMZ crew is all back together --Harvey Levin, Charles Latibeaudiere, Fabian Garcia, Towanda Robinson. Katie Hayes and Eric Colley -- yelling at one another and treating celebrities as if they are the most important thing in the world, just as you want them to.

Kim Kardashian and Kanye vs. Taylor Swift. The Rock vs. Vin Diesel. Drake vs. Meek Mill. Pete Davidson vs. PETA. The Jimmy Kimmel and Aaron Rodgers one feels pretty real, even if a lot of these other ones may not. Man, there are a lot of beefs, you know?

They made this before Drake's Kendrick Lamar feud. Where's the Tubi TMZ movie of that? They got that Donald Trump bullet to the ear one out fast. Where's the important stuff? I need the TMZ crew to yell at each other and go deep into every lyric.

I am cursed to watch every Tubi Original and I am way behind. Please forgive me and the demons that have my soul under contract. I signed it in blood.

"I hate to say this, but dad's fracking site may be a good thing this time."

The Asylum sure loves disaster movies even if they never have the budget to pull it off.

Dr. Cami Weddle (Jessica Morris), a geologist named Dan (Quintin Mims) and her assistant and fiancee Finn (Canyon Prince) all believe that a faultline is about to split the United States in half worse than an election.

Her son Eric (Crew J. Morrow) and his girlfriend Brenda (Roxanne G. C. Brooks) are almost killed in a quake but saved by his mining father Alan (Chris Bruno), all while our heroine is arguing with her daughter Emily (Allison Gold), who wants to move in with dad. Yes, in the middle of this fault line split, there's a family split in the Weddle household.

There really is a New Madrid Seismic Zone, even if it hasn't had any quakes since the 1800s. But fracking has caused it to become dangerous and at the same time, all of this natural disaster death will bring back our married couple, unless a rival expert doesn't nuke the fault. How would that fix anything?

Like every Asylum movie, a couple is on the outs, someone once made a mistake predicting another disaster, a governor (Alison Chace) is corrupt and pays for it with her life and the new fiancee just lets his love go, like a gender swapped Dr. Melissa Reeves.

Directed by Nick Lyon Writers and written by Gil Luna and Joe Roche, this ends in the cheesiest way possible and no one is really all that broken up about all the people who died. Bad relationships conquer all.

My wife asked me if I was reviewing this. I answered positively and she said, "I knew it. It sounds cheap. They couldn't get good people for this."

She should post reviews because they would be way meaner than mine.

Moira Cole (Shawnee Smith) lost nearly her entire family when her cousin Lee Morris went insane and killed them all, including her husband Dillon, donning the mask that has led to the media calling him the Skulleton. She tries to live her life afterward, but every October, another sequel to the slasher franchise made about her life story is released and reminds her of the horror that she barely endured.

Directed by Ante Novakovic and written by Anthony and James Gaudioso (who also appear in the film), this film shows how Skulleton survived, as he was rescued after being shot by Moria by his sister Sam (Taryn Manning) and has spent the last decade or more chained up in her basement, drugged out of his mind.

Moria's sons Michael (Drew Moerlein) and Connor (James Gaudioso) have grown up alternately afraid and angry of the history of their family being known by everyone in the world. Their mother is still withdrawn but working through her emotions with therapist Dr. Lucien (Bruce Dern).

Meanwhile, as a new series of murders starts to happen, their family will have to deal with it all over again, as Detective Cyphers (Tyrese Gibson), Detective Fink (Kresh Novakovic) and James (Anthony Gaudioso) are asking questions.

This is an uneven film that starts with so much promise, feeling like Halloween, which is obvious, as well as Scream. The open is so good and the idea of processing the trauma of this family remains a great idea. However, this starts to crawl just when you want it to fly. I really wanted to love this and ended up barely enjoying it, which is a shame, because Smith is really good -- even if she looks younger than her sons -- and the killer looks intimidating if a bit too much Spirit Store.

Trinity (Stakiah Lynn Washington) goes by the name of Lady Bars and has dreamed of being a rapper since she was young. Working with her best friend Dante (Melvin Gray Jr.) as her producer, hype man and cheerleader, she finally gets to play her songs for her hero, Young Reckless (Terayle Hill). Sadly, she gets to perform on stage with him on the night that he dies.

Young Reckless' label, Gold Volt Records, sees her video and watches it, as well as a video of her rapping the song "Sassy", go viral and decide to add her to their artists, seemingly only to upset Ms. Halo (B. Simone), the label's star rapper.

Trinity is living her dream, but it all seems like it could be a nightmare once she starts getting stalked and people around her start dying. Who is the giallo-style killer in the midst of the rap game? And is Trinity all good? Did she steal her songs? Or is she using Young Reckless' lyrics that she found which were also stolen lyrics?

Directed and written by Michael A. Pinckney, this has every stereotype that you might expect, like a record label owner who is making millions but still likes to sell guns, a producer who falls in love with his latest star, an aging star who is mean at first but warms to the heroine and an ending that seemingly sets up a sequel.

That said, "Sassy" is a pretty good song, but I don't know if I'd kill anyone if they stole it from me.

Faith One is marooned in space and its commander (Bob Legionaire) requests its immediate destruction, as it has been filled with an infectious gas. Several years later, Hope One - its crew is Colonel Hank Stevens (James Brown), Dr. John Andros (Baynes Barron), Dr. Paul Martin (Russ Bender) and Dr. Lisa Wayne (Francine York) - get a distress call and find a strange ship.

On this ship, humans make first contact and, being humans, immediately kill the alien and blow the ship up.

They meet some more aliens, like a sea monsters and crabs, as Dr. Andros dies and Colonel Stevens is all sexist to Dr. Wayne and they go from arguing to making out. You know, if you're the only woman on a space ship with four men, maybe don't start a relationship. It seems like things could get strange.

An American-International Pictures film, this was also known as Space Monster. It was directed and written by Leonard Katzman, whose series Dangerous Curves was on the CBS late night Crimetime After Prime Time. He was also the showrunner for Dallas.

If the monsters look familiar, that's the alien from Wizard of Mars and the sea monster from City In the Sea.

Known as Rockettes in the UK, this was filmed at Radio City Music Hall with the 1982 Rockettes. It played there as a movie before it aired on TV.

Lisa Norwood (Shanna Reed), Terry Riga (Deborah Geffner) and Melissa Rizzo (Maureen Teefy) are three dancers trying to get the one chorus line position open under choreographer Maureen Comly (Gwen Verdon). Sheree North also shows up as a former dancer and John Heard as a love interest.

If you watch TV movies, you recognize director Jerrold Freedman's (Kansas City Bomber, A Cold Night's Death) name. He co-wrote the story with Brian Garfield, who wrote the novel that Death Wish is based on, as well as The Stepfather.

Really, the reason to watch are all the dance scenes, some of which seem like space disco numbers. The rest is soap opera, but it's fine. It's no All That Jazz, which Deborah Geffner was also in.

I was a pro wrestler for years and people always said, "This isn't ballet." Dude. Ballet is way rougher.

Imagine Con Air where instead of Cameron Poe finally getting home on a plane filled with killers, he served out his prison sentence and came back home to killers.

Instead of Nicholas Cage, Gary Busey is the hero, Buck Matthews, newly home to his wife Christie (Denise Galik) and daughter Jennifer (Judith Barsi, who was Thea Brody in Jaws: The Revenge and sadly was killed by her father at a way too young age).

His hometown is being ruled by that gang of killers I mentioned, a post-apocalyptic gang of motorcyclists led by Blade (William Smith). On his first night back at work on a construction site, Buck stops the bikers from assaulting a nurse named Dawn (Kimberlin Brown). To pay him back for his good deed, Blade and his gang follow him home, beat him into oblivion, kill his wife and send his daughter into a near-catatonic state.

Would the cops help? Not the sheriff (Seymour Cassel), who probably set Buck up for his first prison bid and threatens another. His friend Deputy J. B. Deveraux (Yaphet Kotto) wants to help, but the police department is corrupt. Buck calls in a favor from a Miami drug dealer he saved in prison, Jamie (Jorge Gil) and gets an armored truck that shoots missiles.

This movie was in the same script package as Rolling Vengeance, so once you know that, you'll get it.

As you can imagine, Buck kills every single member of the gang that he can, as well as force feeding Blade a mountain full of cocaine, which is a wild death for a final boss. As for the sheriff, he blows up real good in Buck's truck. The rest of the cops come through and J. B. drops bombs on the bikers from his biplane while blasting James Brown's "Gravity."

That's because this movie may seem like a Cannon film but it was produced by Scotti Brothers.

Yes, the record label that released albums by Leif Garrett, David Hallyday, Felony, "Weird Al" Yankovic and Survivor.

Now it's starting to make sense, right?

Right?

They may want you to think that Eye of the Tiger was based on the song by Survivor, but that was just a gimmick. Yes, that song was also in Rocky III and was used by Hulk Hogan before he took "Real American" from Barry Windham and Mike Rotundo.

This film actually started as a spec script called Midnight Vengeance, written by Michael Thomas Montgomery as part of an "Action Package" with the aforementioned Rolling Vengeance and a third unproduced script. He didn't have an agent but instead sent posters and cold-called a hundred companies to make these movies. As the owners of Survivor's record label, the Scotti Brothers owned "Eye of the Tiger" and thought that would make a good title for an action movie.

This is the kind of movie where bikers kill a woman and then come and ride their bikes around her funeral, which causes Busey to decapitate one of them with a wire across the road, then goes to the hospital and lubricates a stick of TNT, shoves it up a biker's ass and lights the fuse while interrogating him. The bikers respond - well, Buck did cut the head off Blade's brother - by digging up his wife and dragging her coffin all over the front yard like Big Bossman at the funeral of Al Snow's dad.

If you like the song that this takes its name from, good news. You're going to hear it a lot.

This movie is pretty good. It's no Stone Cold, but what movie is? But for a late 80s non-Cannon revenge movie made by a record company - they also released Eddie and the Cruisers II, Lady Beware, In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro, He's My Girl, The Iron Triangle, The Resurrected, Stealing Heaven and Death of a Soldier - it's pretty solid. I mean, Gary Busey flips out on an entire town while they're trying to play bingo.

Oh man! How can I forget? This was directed by Richard C. Sarafian. Yes, the same guy who made Vanishing Point!

Danny Stetson (Michael O'Keefe) wants to be an Olympic athlete until he falls in love with Rebecca (Karen Allen) - and can you blame him - and joins her at Homeland, a religious community led by Neil Kirklander (Peter Fonda). His parents Kevin (Brian Dennehy) and Diana (Elizabeth Ashley) run out of ideas to get him back and hire bounty hunter Charles Pratt (James Woods).

Directed by Ted Kotcheff (First Blood) and written by Scott Spencer (Endless Love), Robert Kaufman (Love at First Bite) and Robert Mark Kamen (The Karate Kid), this film is also known as Missing Pieces and Captured. Comedian Bill Engvall shows up in a small part, as does Peter Horton.

This has some great acting in it from Woods and O'Keefe as the deprogramming scenes are really rough. This was an early take on escaping cults and wasn't noticed in theaters, but Kotcheff had Rambo show up two weeks later.

Jonathan Kaplan started with movies like Night Call Nurses and The Student Teachers before eventually making The Accused. Along the way, he made a few TV movies like this one, written by Tim Maschler and David Smilow.

Nick Demec (Richard Hatch) is a con artist who decides to get in on the bodybuilding scene on Muscle Beach, taking the mentally challenged bodybuilder Todd Nash (Tim Kimber, who now co-owns Gold's Gym) as his client. Call girl Jenny O'Rourke (Kay Lenz) sees right through him, but somehow he decides to become a way better person than he was when this movie started.

Bobby Van from Make Me Laugh is the MC, Franco Columbo and Frank Zane play themselves, Paul Bartel and James Hong appear and an alternate title - Shaping Up - which is better than the one they went with. Ah, the magical days of 1980 when Pumping Iron inspired so many TV movies!

Cisco (Bruce Boxleitner) once tried out for the Houston Astros and didn't make the team. But now that they're in the World Series - this wouldn't really happen until 2005 and they wouldn't win until 2017 - he's decided to make things murderous.

Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen (who not only directed Sahara for Cannon, he also made The Wild Geese) and written by Cy Chermak (the writer of 4D Man and producer for Kolchak: The Night Stalker), this is filled with big stars - well, for me - all being pulled into this disaster.

This movie really has enough plot for an entire series, much less a TV movie. Lynda Day George is troubled actress Margot Mannering! Tamara Dobson (Cleopatra Jones) is her friend Lisa! Karen Valentine is news reporter Lois Marshall! Maggie Wellman is Kathy, a groupie who Cisco thinks is an Astro wife and he abducts, only to strap a bomb to her! It's also the last movie of Nancy Kelly, the mother of The Bad Seed! Even better, you get Murray Hamilton, Michael Parks, Hugh O'Brian, Dr. No Joseph Wiseman, rodeo cowboy Larry Mahan, Dick Enberg as a radio announcer and Lisa Hartman as a stewardess! And how could I forget! Monica Gayle, my beloved Patch from Switchblade Sisters, is in this!

"The motion picture you are about to see is a work of fiction. It does not reflect the opinions, attitudes or policies of the Houston Astros to whom we are deeply grateful." I love this credit. I loved this movie, as well. It's just so silly, but I'm so into both TV movies and disaster spectacles.

This is not the Roy Scheider-starring Night Game, which also has the Astros involved in a murder plot, not is it New York Met pitcher Tom Seaver's book, Beanball: Murder at the World Series.

Directed by Richard Grand, who co-wrote it with Ted Zephro, Fyre decimates its protagonist, Fyre (Lynn Theel, Humanoids from the Deep, Without Warning), before the movie even gets rolling. She's assaulted at a drive-in by three men while her boyfriend watches helplessly. When she tries to explain it to her father (Bruce Kirby), the only member of the family that seems kind of her, they all go to a picnic without her. After her brother (Ron Thomas, Cobra Kai member Bobby) starts a fistfight with some kids over her looks, they leave. Everyone has a good laugh over this, including mother (Cheryl Marie Jensen), until they laugh so hard they drive off the road and die.

Yes, the stage has been set for Fyre to go to Los Angeles and become a sex worker. Well, first she's a singer in a bar that gets assaulted by the owner and saved by her man, Nick Perrine (Tom Baker, not the Time Lord), who goes to jail for four years for the punch up. Soon, Fyre is addicted to the money that comes from walking the streets. But those streets are dangerous and filled with criminals, like Preacher (Allen Garfield) and Pickpocket (Frank Sivero).

Her pimp might be the same man who raped her at the drive-in, so think of the weird coincidences of that. How can that happen?

The real reason for fans of streetwalker cinema to watch this is the scene where Fyre does a dance on stage with Carol (Donna Wilkes). Yes, Angel. And no, she's not playing Molly Stewart in this, but man, you may not be expecting a sapphic sleaze scene when this movie has been so Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway up until now. Donna Wilkes really made the most of her late 70s and early 80s career, nearly getting Mike Brody killed (Jaws 2) before walking the Sunset Strip, being obsessed with Klaus Kinski - her father! - and perhaps killing most of his patients and stalking Marianna Hill (Schizoid) and being stalked by Frankie Avalon as a psychic maniac that she got a blood transfusion from (Blood Song).

As for Fyre, this movie feels improvised and that it just kind of hangs out before it figures that it's over. Nearly everyone gets shot, Fyre kills her pimp and then goes back home, all for a man to immediately hit on her. The end? The end.

I can't believe this played the CBS Late Movie.

The Webbers - Gary (Richard Benjamin), Dianne (Paula Prentiss), Melissa (Molly Ringwald) and Jay (David Hollander) - leave Los Angeles behind for Oregon after Gary loses his job. I mean, what are they leaving behind? Smog? Little Jay being addicted to Cinemax After Dark? Melissa's punk rock boyfriend Johnny Crud (Clinton Dean)?

Oregon is just like the MAGA world of today, filled with doomsday preppers, gun lovers and book burners. But strangely, the kids start to like it and Benjamin goes kind of crazy like he always does and a big storm ends up bringing the whole town together.

The family had friends who did the same thing, the Baumgartens - Charlie (Tony Roberts), Rita (Andrea Marcovicci) and Claire (Laura Bruneau) - but the country has changed them. Even when Dianne tries to teach the local children who can't read, she's treated like a criminal.

Directed by Jud Taylor (The Disappearance of Flight 412) and written by Patricia Jones and Donald Reiker (who scripted The Jesse Ventura Story together), this is a fine TV movie that used Ringwald's fame once it was released on VHS.

Whether you call this movie Blood Seekers, The Horror from Beyond or Blood Thirst, the biggest question is, "How was a black and white movie made in 1971?"

That's because it was shot on location in the Philippines in 1965 and went unseen until it played double features with Bloodsuckers or as that movie was called in England, Incense for the Damned.

New York City detective and sex crimes specialist - years before Benson and Stabler - Adam Rourke (Robert Winston) has come to Manila to help Inspector Miguel Ramos (Vic Diaz) to solve a series of crimes. All of them have incisions on the inside of their arms, which means that maybe a blood cult is behind it.

Adam goes undercover as a writer seeking the story of the latest victim, Maria Cortez, who was a hostess at Mr. Calderone's (Vic Silayan) Barrio Club, which is filled with beautiful women like Theresa (Judy Dennis), and Serena (Yvonne Nielson). When he comes back to his room, he's attacked by an intruder and later meets his police contact, the one-legged Herrera (Eddie Infante).

Miguel's sister Sylvia (Katherine Henryk) flips out on Adam, accusing him of not trying to solve the case. While this is happening, Theresa is attacked by a monster as Serena falls while dancing, suddenly appearing older. Seeing as how she and Calderone ran from Peru after the deaths of several young women, you can pretty simply determine that they are using the blood of women to keep her looking her best.

Adam is the worst detective ever and pretty much seemingly here in the Philippines to get laid. Don't ask me how Sylvia goes from mad at him to in love or why Serena invites him home, then tells her at that Calderone killed his wife, made it look like suicide and forces her to dance at the club. She then drugs him and takes him under the club.

Serena ties Adam to a tree and tells him that was was chosen to become a golden goddesses. She must keep killing women to remain ravishing, mixing their blood with the powdered roots of ancient trees and the electrical energy of the sun harnessed in a small container. She takes too long explaining this and starts to age, which ends up with all of the men running after her. There, they meet the monster that does her bidding and defeat him with, well, an artificial leg.

Directed by Newt Arnold and written by N. I. P. Dennis, Arnold wouldn't direct again for another 17 years - he mostly did second unit - and the movie that brought him back was Bloodsport.

This is at once a cheap monster movie and a film noir but it somehow outdoes expectations. It's 74 minutes, with dancing women and a bubble faced monster that was recycled from the Outer Limits episode "A Feasibility Study." Can a woman take the Aztec secret for eternal life and keep it going for centuries? The answer is yes.

Stacey (Vickie Benson, Cheerleader Camp) and Cheryl (Kristal Richardson) own a scuba shop, but also decide to help save a missing boy along with their friends Rick and Fuji. They end up being kidnapped themselves and taken to the undersea base of Madame X, AKA Countess Magda von Cress (Rosanna Simanaitis), a totally mean, totally eyepatched super villainess who of course is my favorite person in this movie. She even has a small dog!

Madame X is after the Power Stone - "The secret of the ancient Mayans! The secret of nuclear fusion!" - but she didn't count on two women who can swim underwater and ride motorcycles. Not even a tarantula can stop them. And then in the last half of this movie, it becomes Raiders of the Lost Ark!

The bad guys in this work for the Scorpio Peanut Company. Let that set in.

This movie taught me that people can speak underwater, that if you're a bad guy you can dress however you want no matter how hot the jungle is, that a film can have tons of action and locations and still drag, that women in bikinis are our last line of defense and that you should always screen your henchmen.

Director Barry Clark and writer Gabrielle Rivera have made a movie that feels like if Andy Sidaris didn't care at all about showing naked women. It has the feel of his movies, but none of the sheer wildness of them and no one remembers that you're supposed to have several hot tub scenes.

The Invisible Avenger is a compilation of two television pilot episodes of a planned Republic Pictures TV show called The Shadow. Yes, the very same hero whose radio show had just ended in 1954. The TV show didn't get picked up and this movie was released, which. Is kind of curious as none of the advertizing - or the name - lets you know this is about Lamont Cranston and his alter ego. It had new footage added and was released again as Bourbon Street Shadows, again barely letting you know that this was a movie about The Shadow.

Some of this movie was directed by cinematographer James Wong Howe, whose only other directing credit is for the Harlem Globetrotters movies Go Man Go. He had a strange life in the Hollywood system, as his marriage to Sanora Babb was not recognized by the state of California until 1948, as they banned interracial marriage (she was white). It was the first time he could admit that he was with his wife, as the morals clause prohibited him from saying he was with a white woman. They also lived in separate apartments due to his traditional Chinese views before she moved to Mexico City to protect him from the blacklist. He would go on to be one of the most recognized cinematographers of all time.

Along with Ben Parker (Teen-Age Strangler) and John Sledge, he directed the episodes that make up this TV pilot. It's very much torn from the headlines, as Pablo Ramirez (Dan Mullins), an expatriate to New Orleans from the Caribbean nation of Santa Cruz, is planning a coup against that country's leader, the Generalissimo. The secret police of that country are trying to kill him and trumpet player Tony Alcalde (Steve Dano) summons Lamont Cranston (Richard Derr) and his mentor Jogendra (Mark Daniels) to help. They don't get there in time, as Tony is killed, so they decide to help Ramirez as The Shadow.

Written by George Bellak and Ruth Jeffries, this is the sixth film that features this character. Again, it's so odd that this is a superhero movie that wants to be sold as horror or anything but The Shadow.

Allow me to play this broken record again, but it's astounding just how much the moviemaking of Doris Wishman, Bruno Mattei and Jess Franco line up. At the end of all of their careers, there they are, making movies way past their contemporaries, even if it's shot on video now. As Bruno would make Zombies: The Beginning and Franco would make so many movies in hotel conference rooms with quick zooms into the anatomy of his actresses, Doris would come back to make this film, one that is so close to her past movies even if it looks better when every other director who shot on video was supposedly taking a step down quality wise.

Doris was 89 when she made this and working at the Pink Pussy Cat in Miami - which is in the movie and so is Doris, as well as a photo of Chesty Morgan on the wall - and it allowed her to finally have synch sound in a movie and seemingly look back on her own career. Yet in this movie, she still does all the things you want: the apartment is needlessly over decorated, sex scenes often just show feet rolling around in the bed, dialogue feels like one of those Russian spy stations that are trying to read English phrases to send coded messages and all the men are jerks. And, as if ready to seem like another of my favorite warped directors, Claudio Fragasso, Doris places several stuffed animals in this and they are often zoomed in on.

This is the story of three roommates - Lisa, Beth and Tess - who all want to sleep with their boss. Only Tess has succeed so far, except she's had to hide her short dark hair and wear a blonde wig to win him over. There's also a teenage peeper who keeps looking in on the girls and fantasizing about them, which transforms into footage from The Immoral Three. Not to be outdone, but when a TV comes on later, it's playing Doris' Love Toy. Never mind that these movies were shot on film and the jump between media is jarring.

That peeping tom also has a dream where he has two penises, which reminds me of the creepy story where Bill Cosby told Keenan Thompson that after he played Fat Albert, "You know, life is good in the movies or whatever, but you just be ready, because when this movie comes out, you're gonna need two dicks - because women are gonna be all over you." That pervert also goes to Dr. Faust, who promises that his cream can make his small one eyes monster into a bigger beast. That reminds me of a joke that used to make my dad laugh, even when he was going through dementia.

"Dad, I finally got this penis cream. It's going to make me so much bigger when I rub it on it."

"Does it work?"

"They said it might take a few months. But my hands are huge!"

This movie made me overjoyed, as it feels like unlike so many directors, Doris got the opportunity to finish her career on her terms, making a movie that was uniquely hers. She never fit any mold, starting to direct movies much later in life than most and keeping it up way past nearly all of her nudie cutie contemporaries. I'll think about this film and how the women finally discover that perhaps dildos are better than men - and then a new neighbor knocks on the door - more than any movie I'll see made in this year or any other.

It feels and looks like sub-VCA porn and never gives you the payoff. And that's the payoff. And it's wonderful.

Thanks to the incredible theironcupcake on Letterboxd, whose Doris reviews were an inspiration to me. She even wrote down the lyrics to this film's theme:

"When love has left and you're bereft, reach for your dildo When life's a mess and fraught with stress, reach for your dildo When a lover twice caught cheating Says for you his heart's still beating Send him away, don't let him stay Reach for your dildo!

My dildo is very close to me, I keep it in my drawer It's HIV negative, it has no flaw Someday I'll find my love divine and I'll be overjoyed But 'til that fateful day, my dildo fills the void Reach for your dildo!"

Liliana Wilczkowska was born in Poland and was orphaned by the Nazis. She grew up in Israel, moving to the U. S. in 1957 to marry Josef Wilczkowski ten days after they met. Her husband and one of his meat market employees died in a robbery in 1965 and by the 70s, she was using her 73-32-36 body as an exotic dancer, going by the name of Zsa Zsa "Chesty" Gabborr, dancing mainly to pay for her two young daughters.

She made it to the "Combat Zone" of Boston red light clubs and took on the name Chesty Moore. Dancing to Tom Jones' "Delilah," she would often allow men to touch her breasts to prove they were real. You have to understand that her body defies imagination.

Wearing bras specially made by Texas company Command Performance, she would often appear with two little people, each carrying a breast. She married - and quickly divorced - National League umpire Dick Stello, and then she appeared in two of Doris Wishman's films. I'll get to one of them in a moment. She's also the only person I can think of that is in a Wishman movie and a Fellini film, as she was cut from Casanova.

Morgan kept dancing four months a year - she made $8,000 a week - and doing real estate in the off season until 1991, when she was 54 years old. Tired of the constant legal battles, she became a landlady just as she became famous all over again when John Waters featured a scene from Deadly Weapons in his movie Serial Mom.

In this film, she plays Crystal, an ad exec whose lover Larry (Richard Towers) has just been killed. To get revenge, she drugs and smothers man after man with, well, her mams. There's Tony (Harry Reems), Captain Hook and by the end, even her own father in her way. Chesty also seems always just on the verge of falling asleep.

Do you need any more reasons to watch this? Well, the soundtrack, made up of library cuts from KPM Music's KPM 1055 Dramatic Background, is incredible. That song "Hippy?" That's the trailer music for Torso. You'll fall in love with the theme, "Hard Selling Woman" by Mike Lease with The Studio G's Beat Group. And despite how grimy this may all feel at times, you may fall for this film, too. There's nothing else like it and somehow, the sequel is even weirder.

Jane Tennay (Chesty Morgan) is Agent 73, given her name because of her, well, large bust. Her agency has sent her to kill heroin dealers one by one. After each murder, she has to take a photo as proof, using the camera that been inserted inside her left breast. And like Snake Plissken with bodacious ta tas, Agent 73's sweater meat will explode if she doesn't get her job done in time.

If that all makes sense to you, welcome to the cinematic universe of Doris Wishman, as this is the second appearance of Chesty Morgan, who might even be playing the same character she was in Deadly Weapons.

As she looks for the crime boss Toplar, she starts to fall for a fellow agent named Tim (Frank Silvano). But hmm...could Toplar be someone she's already close to?

In 2002, Doris Wishman was on Conan with Roger Ebert - which had to be a thrill for him - and let the world know she was still making movies like Dildo Heaven. We should all be praising the woman who said, "After I die I will be making movies in hell!"

The furniture in this didn't come from the past. It came from a place beyond , a world where everyone has fake eyelashes and too much makeup and is barely able to walk on the highest of high heels, where giant breasts can make a flash so huge it fills the entire screen. We'll never live in this world but we can visit for a few moments at a time and watch a secret agent cover those boobs with poison so a guy licks them off and dies, never mind that she's so much bigger in the chest than his girlfriend.

Also, in keeping with my theory that Doris has a lot of Bruno Mattei in her, this takes nudist footage from Blaze Starr Goes Nudist and has the same surgery scene from The Amazing Transplant. Unlike Bruno, Doris made those movies, so I guess she can take from her own work. Maybe that makes her closer to Jess Franco.

Jane's boss in this, Bill, is played by Peter Savage. He was a boxer that grew up with Jake La Motta and wrote the book Raging Bull. He also made the movie Cauliflower Cupids, which has Jane Russell, Alan Dale and several boxers, including La Motta, Rocky Graziano, Willie Pep, Paddy DeMarco, Tony Zale and Petey Scalzo. Savage wrote, directed and stars, so this is a vanity production, but one very low on cost.

This is probably one of the more coherent of Wishman's movies and it still makes no sense. And by that, I mean it's incredible.