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TMZ NO BS: Hollywood's Messiest Divorces (2023)
Split
Divorce isn't easy, trust me. I've been through it. But I never had someone serve me paper's at my grandmother's funeral or try and negotiate while I'm dealing with brain surgery like Doctor Dre.
From Brad and Angela's split to Kanye and Kim Kardashian, TMZ gets into it in this breakdown on the messiest divorces in Hollywood.
For tabloids - which TMZ is the closest thing there is to them today, as a weekly newspaper is behind the times by the time it hits supermarkets - divorce was always what sold big. Johnny Depp and Amber Heard; Liz and well, any of her many husbands; Carson and his many wives. The big d word moved papers and I know I read tons of stories of who was right and who was wrong over the years.
If you're as pop culture obsessed as I think you are, you might not learn much new here, but it's well produced and pretty even in the way that it deals with Kanye, so that's interesting.
TMZ NO BS: Hollywood's Biggest Lies (2023)
TMZ
Ually make fun of the TMZ crew but this episode of their Tubi specials gets into how they fight for the First Amendment. Sure, it's over the Mel Gibson drunk driving case, but the idea that the LAPD would get a search warrant for all of their phone records to out the source who told TMZ about four pages deleted from the arrest report is insane. It's even legal to do that now after the Patriot Act.
This time, Hollywood's biggest lies - yes, it's right there in the title - are exposed. Like did Kim Kardashian and her mother engineer her sex tape? What happened when Jussie Smollett claimed that he was attacked in a hate crime? Did Milli Vanilli really lipsync their songs? And yes, what really happened with Mel Gibson?
It's really incredible how much of this cuts through things that are accepted and shows us what really lies beneath Hollywood. Sure, these stories are all rather innocuous when it comes to lies, but the Gibson one, as I mentioned earlier, goes much deeper than I thought it would.
This Never Happened (2024)
Never happened
Directed by Ted Campbell (Final Heist), who co-wrote the script with Richard Pierce, This Never Happened is all about Emily (María José De La Cruz) who is the next in her family's history of being able to see the dead. After all, her grandmother could as well and that's why she lived out her days alone in a mental hospital.
Emily goes with her boyfriend Matteo (Javier Dulzaides) to his father's funeral in Mexico City. Afterward, his mother Melora (Andrea Noli) tells him that the house will be sold in a few days. Matteo's friends - Olivia (Conny Cambambia), Ale (Juana Serrano) and Nica (Gonzalo Zulueta) - decide that one weekend in their old house would give them closure.
You know what happens next.
I mean, Matteo even says to Emily, "You forgot to take your pills."
Here are a few words of advice for the characters in this movie but well, they're all dead so it's hard to say, right? Don't go back home with your boyfriend. If his friends all seem like drug addicts and may have put drugs in your drink, don't trust them. If you can see the dead, maybe leave instead of dealing with that big toothed monster in the swimming pool. And if you buy Tarot cards, make sure they're not razor sharp, no matter how good the scene is, because you're going to die.
I think that Less Than Zero properly prepared me for a life of hating rich people. This movie is much the same, as they the thing that never happened is - spoiler warning - a girl being drugged and assaulted by several of them at a party in this same house. Now, her spirit wants revenge and is swimming in the pool, activated by those magic crystals that got thrown into the water. That's more advice. If you have magic objects, don't be throwing them into the pool.
Then again, I am all for rich kid comeuppance and this movie delivers on that. Tubi horror has been getting better and I'm hoping that a year from now, we'll all be amazed at just how far they've grown. Until then, this has a nice budget, an attractive cast and a scene where a blender leaks blood everywhere. Can you really ask more from free?
Deadly Gossip (2024)
Not bad!
Quinn Walker (Susan Ateh) has just returned to detective work after the death of her police officer husband, a man who everyone loved and who she knew as an abuser. She's kept that a secret from everyone but most essentially from her son Liam, who idolized his dad. She's become even more of the mean mom that he forced her to be, keeping her son from his interest in detective work and using true crime websites to help others solve crimes.
On the first day back on the job, she nearly shoots a suspect who ends up being an actor in the middle of a scene. It gets her noticed and while some of the press is bad, many see her as a hero for the way she tried to save someone, even if it was on a movie set.
She's also just been assigned a new partner, Carter (Jay Rincon), a London detective who has come to America to - as we learn later - find the murderer of his father. They don't get along and she doesn't trust him, but her son sees him as someone worth knowing.
In the middle of all this drama, there are also murders.
Mia Bailey is the hottest actress in Hollywood and she's about to star in a movie based on her friend Anna's (Roisin Browne) script, Blind Items. At the same time, there's a blind items website that reveals who will die next, from Mia in the place where her career started to her business manager Jason Cohen (Luis Donegan-Brown) and almost everyone connected to Mia and Anna, who came to the city of dreams together, living with a circle of friends, all of whom are either dying or suspects, like Ozzie, a former military veteran and now spiritual healer.
As Quinn tries to deal with her grief, her new partner and being a mother, she starts to depend on her son, who is able to find clues that she never saw and use the internet way better than she ever would be able to. However, this puts him in danger.
I really liked Quinn's boss, Captain Ellis (Doña Croll), who has a really great scene with Quinn where she explains that she knew that she always had a hard time being the wife of someone that everyone saw as a much better person than he really was.
The strange thing is deciding to have a London detective in the U. S. When does this ever happen? It's kind of strange, but not enough to put me off the movie.
Director and co-writer - with Daniel Mahler Landman - Nanea Miyata also directed A Party To Die For, another Tubi Original. I liked how whoever is behind the murders goes through some twists and turns, using Quinn's recent incident in the news against her. And by the end, there's a moment that makes who the killer is up in the air, as the messages haven't stopped on the site.
Tales from the Crypt: The Reluctant Vampire (1991)
Too silly
"I want to suck... Oh, hello kiddies. You caught me in the middle of my homework. Your old pal the Crypt Keeper's a real believer in continuing dead-ucation. Which brings us to tonight's murderous morsel. It's a juicy little tale about a real blood sucker who never learned to go for the jugular. I call this plasma play "The Reluctant Vampire.""
Directed by Elliot Silverstein (The Car, A Man Called Horse) and written by Terry Black (Dead Heat), this stars Malcolm McDowell as Daniel Longtooth, a vampire who choose to get his fix from the blood bank he works at. It's run by Mr. Crosswhite (George Wendt) and he takes every chance to be rude and mean to his workforce, saving his sexual harassment for Sally (Sandra Dickinson).
It turns out that Daniel is drinking so much that the blood bank is in danger of going out of business. He decides that he must use his vampire abilities to get victims and refill the plasma to save the job of Sally, who he is in love with.
Meanwhile, the police - led by Detective Robinson (Paul Gleason, forever a jerk in every movie) - have brought in Rupert Van Helsing (Michael Berryman, looking like Judge Doom) to hunt down the vampire who they believe is haunting the streets, draining muggers and low level criminals of their blood. What complicates matters is that Mr. Crosswhite knows that Daniel is a vampire and is using him to fix his business.
Maybe Sally knows too, as we find out in this episode's happy ending.
Terry Black wrote five episodes of this show, including three using the name Donald Longtooth. Yes, the same last name as the character in this episode.
I'm not a fan of the total comedy episodes of this show, but what can you do?
TMZ NO BS: Hollywood's Dumbest Moments (2024)
Yellow
The TMZ crew all gets together and yells at one another about the dumbest celebrity decisions, like how T. I. wanted to be there for his daughter's gynecologist visits and to be sure she was still a virgin. According to Global News, his daughter said that T. I. had been going with her to these doctor visits since she was 14 or 15 and she "couldn't have said no" to her dad when he asked to join for the appointments. She also revealed on Instagram that she has harmed herself in the past to deal with her emotions.
Want even dumber? There's Justin Bieber saying that Anne Frank would have been a "Belieber," "Live for Now" the Kim Kardashian Pepsi commercial where she solves a protest and police unrest by giving a cop a soda - created by a team of white people and which caused Pepsi to have to write "Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding. Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize. We did not intend to make light of any serious issue. We are removing the content and halting any further rollout. We also apologize for putting Kendall Jenner in this position." - as well as the celebrity "Imagine" video during the COVID-19 era and Adam Levine cheating with a woman and using his band's Instagram account to send messages.
Of all of these decisions, the fact that I watch multiple Tubi TMZ shows in a row to write about them on this site may be among the silliest.
That said, this is just like lying on my grandmother's bed with a stack of National Enquirer, Star, National Examiner and Globe newspapers and tearing through them, learning about Liz Taylor's sad last days and who was on drugs, who was on the watermelon diet, who was a friend of Dorothy and who was a cheat. Those are some of the best days of my childhood.
Late Night with the Devil (2023)
Well done
An international co-production of Australia, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates - with all the logos before the movie begins to prove it - Late Night With the Devil takes place on Halloween night 1977 in New York City. Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) has been the host of a show called Night Owls with Jack Delroy for several years and try as he might, he has never come close to the ratings of Johnny Carson, something that numerous people - Joey Bishop, Joan Rivers, Alan Thicke, Les Crane, Bill Dana, David Brenner, Pat Sajak, Ron Reagan, Dennis Miller, Steve Allen, Arsenio Hall, Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, David Frost, Jerry Lewis and Regis Philbin - all tried to do. The only night that he came close with on the evening when his wife Madeleine Piper (Georgina Haig) came on the show to discuss her brave fight with cancer.
On this night, the sponsors who want to pull out are there, producer Leo Fiske (Josh Quong Tart) is trying to manage the pressure, Jack's sidekick Gus McConnell (Rhys Auteri) keeps bugging the host and a guest just might finally tip the ratings Jack's way when he needs it most.
Lilly D'Abo (Ingrid Torelli) is the last survivor of the mass suicide of the followers of Szandor D'Abo (Steve Mouzakis). D'Abo is based on Anton Szandor LaVey, as we see from a documentary within the movie, La Satanisme aux U. S. A. '71 which is obviously taken from Angeli Bianchi... Angeli Neri AKA Witchcraft '70.*
Yet Lily - and the parapsychology helping her, Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) - aren't the only ones experiencing the occult.
There are rumors that Jack is part of The Grove, a highly influential group of rich and powerful men. It's based on the Bohemian Grove - a two-week encampment of some of the most prominent men in the world where the first Manhattan Project meetings were held and also where a yearly Cremation of Care ceremony in front of a giant owl representing old god Moloch, complete with the voice of Walter Cronkite - and there are whispers that Jack got his show as the result of his membership.
Along with Lily and June, the other guests are psychic medium Christou (Fayssal Bazzi) - whose name may reference philosopher, metaphysician and composer Ianni Christou and who may be inspired by Doris Stokes, a psychic who regularly appeared on the Australian talk show The Don Lane Show, and the look of Australian hypnotist Reveen) and a former magician turned professional psychic debunker and leader of the International Federation of Scientific Investigation into the Paranormal by the name of Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss, playing a character definitely based on "Amazing" James Randi, who called Stokes a liar on the aforementioned Don lane hosted program, at which point Lane said, "You can piss off," and kicked him out of the studio). Both of these characters are amazing and so well acted; in fact, Bliss wasn't even the original actor and had been a reader for the film's auditions.
Plus, they show Haig investigating Amityville and making fun of the Warrens.
As the show starts - complete with monologue - Christou takes the stage and he's obviously doing cold reading, where you blast out multiple cues to a large audience, such as "Is there someone who is thinking of a name that starts with R?" and "Someone has lost a family heirloom, where are they?" He's also obviously using someone that interviews all of the guests before the show, which enables him to do his best psychic reading. This again is very similar to how James Randi figured out how televangelist Peter Popoff was knowing all about people in his audience.
Yet Christou must have some psychic power because he's suddenly overtaken and brings up someone named Minnie, which is Jack's wife's secret nickname. Haig questions everything about his methods and at that point, Christou throws up black bile and soon dies in an ambulance, unknown to the studio audience.
Then, we finally meet Lily, who came from a cult that worshipped Abraxas, the ancient god who Epiphanius said was "the cause and first archetype" of everything. Even when not possessed, Lily is disquieting in the way that she speaks to people. Yes, she's a teenage girl and awkward, but there is something that doesn't add up. Her eyes are too wild.
She refers to the demon inside her as Mr. Wriggles. Jack wants to see the demon on his show, something that June doesn't agree with. After all, Satan was big ratings in the 70s, as seen on one of the magazines shown in the film, saying that a movie of the week was entitled Hail Abraxas. Also, Dr. June's book, Conversations with the Devil, brings to mind Michelle Remembers, another occult paperback that made the talk show circuit (you can learn all about that book in the doc Satan Wants You). The demon makes her levitate, speak in a strange voice, scars her face and everything else you expect from the decade that gave us The Exorcist (there's even a black and white photo of Lily floating in the sky above an apartment building, just like another 1977 Satanic moment Exorcist II: The Heretic).
Carmichael claims that Jack set all of this up and to prove it, he hypnotizes Gus and the entire audience sees him pulls worms out of his body, something that doesn't show up on video. Yet when they watch the footage of Iris, they can see the same demonic events and even Jack's wife's ghost on the stage - she shows up multiple times in the movie, if you look** - at which point the prophecies in the film about Gus (make your head spin means he dies with his head turned around, Regan-like, after pulling a cross and saying, "The power of Christ compels you.") and Carmichael ("He's all wax no wick," as he burns from the inside out) brutally happen and even Dr. June is killed as revenge for slapping Iris when she revealed that she and Jack have been sleeping together.
Only Jack remains, now trapped within his show, finding out that he has met the demon before at the Grove and that he lost his wife for the show that made him famous. He finds Madeleine dying in the hospital and she begs him to end her pain. He takes a ritual dagger and stabs her, waking only to find that he has killed Lily. Surrounded by dead bodies, he keeps repeating the phrase that brought the audience and Gus out of a trance: "Dreamer, now awake."
Directed and written by Colin and Cameron Cairnes, this is a movie almost made to appeal to me. I have a huge affection for the talk show celebrity of the late 1970s, as well as the occult decade that eventually fell to the Satanic Panic. And quite frankly, no matter what you think of the movie, David Dastmalchian is incredible. He got the role based on a Fangoria article about his love of regional horror hosts. That's why there's a line to references Berwyn, Illinois, which is a shot out to Svengoolie.
One of the major issues people had with this movie is that three of the title cards used AI. There was almost a boycott fo the film, which led to the directors and writers saying. "In conjunction with our amazing graphics and production design team, all of whom worked tirelessly to give this film the 70s aesthetic we had always imagined, we experimented with AI for three still images which we edited further and ultimately appear as very brief interstitials in the film."
You won't notice.
Another issue that many had was that this plays fast and loose with it being found footage with so many camera angles backstage. Forcing the film to fit the constraints that nobody has set down betrays a lack of intelligence and creativity, in my opinion. The ending also upsets some, as they see no need for it, but it makes so much sense. After all, the demon of the grove appears as an owl, which explains where Jack got the name of his show from.
This quote by the Cairnes sums up my fascination with this time: "In the '70s and '80s there was something slightly dangerous about late-night TV. Talk shows in particular were a window into some strange adult world. We thought combining that charged, live-to-air atmosphere with the supernatural could make for a uniquely frightening film experience."
This film captures that feeling.
Sure, it's a lot of the same ideas that were explored in Ghostwatch and the superior WNUF Halloween Special (and its sequel, Out There Halloween Mixtape).
But any movie that starts with a fake documentary that feels like The Killing of America and has "Forever My Queen" by Pentagram playing is going to be hard for me to hate, after all.
*During a ritual, Szandor says, "So it is done." Those same words replace "End transmission" as the movie ends.
**According to IMDB, "At the end of the prologue explaining Jack Delroy's backstory, she can be seen (at around 8 mins) in a TV monitor behind Jack when he is leaning on the doorstep. 2. at 19:18 When the psychic is talking to the mother and her child she appears as a ghostly image near jack after an audio glitch. 3. Early on in the film (at around 24 mins) in a mirror backstage just as the crew is about to go back on the air; and again in Carmichael's pocket watch as it sits on a table on set. 4. She also appears (at around 1h 17 mins) on the stage in one quick shot after Jack asks the producers to step through the playback frame-by-frame, standing behind him with her hand on his shoulder and one minute later also for a quick shot just after lights turned off."
Allonsanfàn (1974)
Interesting
Set against the backdrop of the Italian Unification in early 19th-century Italy, after the fall of Napoleon, Fulvio (Marcello Mastroianni), an aristocrat who has dedicated his life to the revolution, has become disillusioned.
You will understand why, as the movie starts with Fulvio being released from prison after authorities spread the rumor that he sold out the Master of Sublime Brothers, a secret society of revolutionaries, to be freed. His formers friends put him on trial until they find out that their missing Master committed suicide days earlier. The group disbands and Fulvio finally goes home after decades gone, just as his relatives mourn his death.
His lover Charlotte (Lea Massari) wants to go to Sicily to start another revolution but Fulvio is exhausted by it all. He decides not to tell his fellow revolutionaries that the authorities are coming and most of them die, including Charlotte, moments after they are reunited with their son Massimiliano (Ermanno Taviani). The survivors have no idea that Fulvio has turned against them and think the money his lover left will go to the struggle; he wants to take their son to America.
He manages to nearly convince one of the revolutionaries, Lionello (Claudio Cassinelli), to kill himself before their boat capsides and kills him anyway; he also seduces his lover Francesca (Mimsy Farmer) while using the money to send his son to a boarding school while making it appear as if he were robbed. It all seems to come together, except for the titular Allonsanfàn (Stanko Molnar).
Directors and writers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani were inspired by 19th-century Italian operas, as well as an ill-fated 1857 revolutionary expedition led by Carlo Pisacane. Originally, the movie ended with Fulvio choosing not to betray his companions, but the Tavianis were themselves disillusioned with Italy itself.
It also has a great team working on the soundtrack, as it was composed by Ennio Morricone and directed by Bruno Nicolai.
Poison Ivy (1985)
Camp colors
Airing on NBC on February 10, 1985, between when Michael J. Fox was a star on Family Ties and then a huge star after Back to the Future, Poison Ivy was directed by Larry Elikann (who did eighteen ABC Afterschool Specials) and written by Bennett Tramer, who wrote Without Warning and would go on after this to create Saved By the Bell.
If you enjoyed High School U. S. A., well, this will be something else you will probably get into, as Fox and his love interest, Nancy McKeon, were in both and were also NBC stars. Fox is Dennis Baxter, the Bill Murray of this and McKeon is Rhonda Malone, who is studying to be a psychologist. There's also a Color War - yes, this movie is Meatballs - and it has Robert Klein as the owner of the camp, Cary Guffey from Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a kid that wants to escape camp, Adam Baldwin as one of the bad guys, Joe Wright from Silver Bullet as a camper who runs scams and flams, Thomas Nowell (who was in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives) as a young writer with a crush on Rhonda and Matthew Shugailo as a chubby kid who uses humor to get through the summer's hijinks.
Oh yeah - Fox and McKeon met on the set of High School U. S. A. And dated for three years.
Shen yong fei hu ba wang hua (1989)
Loved it
After the Police Academy with stunts awesomeness of the first movie, this has four new squad members join the Hong Kong Police Academy to be join the Banshee Squad led by Madam Wu (Sibelle Hu). However, many of them don't get along with the existing team, like Susanna (Amy Yip), who is so well-endowed that she has to cut holes in the chest of her bulletproof vest. There's also the male team, the Tiger Squad, who are led by Inspector Kan (Stanley Fung). Just like the original, Wu and Kan have a thin line between love and hate in their relationship.
That said, this time there's competition for Madam Wu's affection, as there's a new antiterrorist trainer, Mr. Lu (Melvin Wong). The majority of this movie is all training until with twenty minutes left, it remembers that they need to bring the Banshee Squad and Tiger Squad back together and have all the good girls and guys stop fighting with one another.
There's more dancing than fighting in this, more pranks and hijinks than fisticuffs. And you know, I don't care. I love these movies, with their 80s fashion looks, lovable characters and blasts of action from producer Jackie Chan's Jackie Chan Stunt Team. There are four of these movies and I will watch every single one of them with a huge grin.
So yeah, nothing happens, but when the first movie was such a success, they rushed this one. Just enjoy it for what it is and that we can watch movies like this in high definition now and not 20th generation VHS tapes that we bought at a convention that tape rot in months.
Frog Dreaming (1986)
The Go Kids
Everett De Roche also wrote a ton of films that more people should see: Roadgames, Patrick, Harlequin, Link, Razorback, Fortress and more. I can say the same for this film's director, Brian Trenchard-Smith, who said of his own work, "There is something you always get in a Trenchard-Smith movie: pace, a strong visual sense, and what the movie is actually about told to you very persuasively. Whatever I do, I'll still be applying a sense of pace: trying to find where the joke is and trying to make the film look a lot bigger than it cost." I'd recommend his film's Stunt Rock, Dead-End Drive-In, Turkey Shoot, Night of the Demons 2 and even Megiddo: The Omega Code 2, which is way better than it ever should be.
This was originally to be directed by Russell Hagg, who wrote Trenchard-Smith's BMX Bandits and was the art director of A Clockwork Orange.
Henry Thomas, Elliot of E. T., plays Cody, an American orphan living in Australia, raising by his guardian Gaza (Tony Barry). He's a smart kid, intelligent enough to build his own railbike, and also interested in the cryptozoological legends of his adopted home. In Devil's Knob national park, there are water monsters known as Bunyips, including one called Donkegin. There's also another creature called the Kurdaitcha Man who is some kind of supernatural judge who comes after those who do harm to one another, murder animals without the need for food and destroy the environment.
Cody decides to explore the bottom of a pond in a diving suit of his own design. He gets stuck and everyone but his friend Wendy (Rachel Friend) thinks he is dead. What he thought was a monster is instead a steam shovel that has been stuck for years. That's what satisfies the adults; the kids still can see the Kurdaitcha Man as he returns it to the pond.
For a kid's movie, this is pretty terrifying. But I always think that there should be an element of the fantastic - and frightening - in these films to inspire.
The title refers to an Aboriginal myth. Alternate titles include The Go-Kids in the UK, The Quest in the U. S., The Mystery of the Dark Lake in Italy, The Boy Who Chases Ghosts in Bulgaria, The Spirit Chaser in Germany and Fighting Spirits in Finland.
Lisa Frankenstein (2024)
Frank
Directed by Zelda Williams, the daughter of Robin, in her debut, Lisa Frankenstein was written by Diablo Cody, who claims that it takes place in the same universe as Jennifer's Body, It's set in 1989 and really feels like a movie made for those who may not have been alive at that time and want to feel a cinematic version of it rather than those who lived through it and saw films that inspired this movie, like Weird Science.
Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton, who was in Big Little Lies, Blockers and Freaky), besides being saddled with that name, has lost her mother to an axe murderer and now has a horrible stepmother Janet (Carla Gugino), who has pretty much taken her father (Joe Chrest) from her. The positive things in her life include her somewhat goofy stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano) and best friend Lori (Jenna Davis, the voice of M3GAN). And oh yes, the cemetery where she sits near an unnamed musician (Cole Sprouse, who was Cody on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody) who had fallen in love with a woman before she left him for another man and he was struck by lightning.
After a boy named Doug (Bryce Romero) tries to assault her at a party, Lisa ends up back at the grave, wishing she could be together in death with the musician. Lightning hits his grave and he comes back from the dead as a zombie who follows her. He's missing body parts, ones that he soon gains by killing anyone who has wronged Lisa, who uses a tanning bed to fuse their parts with his body before the police start to figure out that everyone dead has a connection to Lisa.
I realize that this film may not be for me as a target audience, but I liked its look and soundtrack. Cody's dialogue is an acquired taste, as hardly anyone speaks like that in real life, but hey, we're watching a movie. The leads are charming and if this came out in 1989, when I was 17 and the audience for it, I probably would have loved it way more than I did in 2024 when I am 51.
False Face (1977)
False face
Released regionally as False Face in 1977 through United International Pictures (a joint venture of Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures that distributes their films outside the United States and Canada; it started as Cinema International Corporation) and was made on a $400,000 budget in Atlanta and Covington, GA. Most of it is shot in Covington's antebellum Turner mansion, one of the few Southern mansions spared by General William Tecumseh Sherman during the Civil War.
In 1979, it was re-released by AVCO Embassy, cut to PG and called Scalpel.
Phillip Reynolds (Robert Lansing) is both a plastic surgeon and a sociopath. He's probably already killed his wife and when he watches his daughter Heather (Judith Chapman) make love to her boyfriend, he becomes so upset that he kills the boy and makes it all look like an accident. Heather runs away, which is inconvenient, as Phillip's dead wife's father gives his fortune to her instead of Phillip or Bradley (Arlen Dean Snyder), the old man's ne'er do well son.
What does one do at this point?
Find an exotic dancer whose face has been beaten into nothingness, train her to be his daughter and collect the estate.
Everyone is convinced of the ruse except Bradley, who is killed while Jane - and Heather, who has returned - watches in horror. Of course, by this point, Phillip is dating his fake daughter, which is another level of strangeness that we expect from regional films. At this point, the women find one another and set upon making things right.
Directed and co-written (with Joseph Weintraub, who usually was an editor) by John Grissmer (who also directed Blood Rage and wrote The Bride, which is so worth watching), this is a slice of Southern Gothic by way of horror but yet made, as all regional greatness is, outside of the traditional system.
Apple Seed (2019)
Apple Seed
Prince Mccoy (director, writer and star Michael Worth) has lost out on all the dreams he once had as he grew up in the small town of Apple Seed. His childhood bank foreclosed on everything his father owned, which he blames for his father's death. And now, he has no home, no girlfriend and no hope. So he decides to drive across the country in his 1967 Mustang - which is all he owns - and make that bank pay for what they've done.
He picks up an old man named Carl Robbins (Rance Howard), a strange senior who has a bucket list on a napkin and a mission to lead Prince on a journey that will change both their lives, meeting a variety of people, like the love that Prince let get away, as they also confront the errors they've made in their own lives.
That's because just like Prince wants to, Carl also robbed a bank. And despite his advanced age, he's facing a prison sentence that will last for the rest of his life. Is Carl's past going to be Prince's future? And what happens when they make it to Apple Seed?
This is the last film that Rance Howard was in, released two years after his death. It also has a role for his son Clint.
There's also an appearance by Robby Benson that echoes the movie Ode to Billie Joe, based on the song of the same name.
Worth told Diversions LA, "I did a film with Rance in Flagstaff, Arizona and I knew I had to do a film for him. It was just one of those things I wanted to get made. We completed the project just before Rance passed away."
As I get older, I've been thinking of the journey of my life. This movie made me reflect on things and wonder when I will go from Prince to Carl in my experience.
Fear Is the Key (1972)
Fear is the key
John Talbot (Barry Newman, Vanishing Point) shows up in a small Louisiana town and nearly immediately starts a fight with some cops, goes to jail and it's soon discovered that he is wanted for killing a policeman and robbing a bank. He then escapes, abducting Sarah Ruthven (Suzy Kendall), who just so happens to be the daughter of a millionaire. But nothing in this movie is as it seems.
Directed by Michael Tuchner with stunt sequences coordinated by Carey Loftin (Bullit, The French Connection), Fear Is the Key is really about Talbot faking his way into becoming a criminal in order to find out who killed his wife and son, going the whole way to the depths of the ocean to get the answers and retribution that he craves.
It's also Ben Kingsley's first movie, although he would only work on the stage on on TV for a decade until he was in his next movie, Ghandi.
As exciting as the book that this was based on, written by Alistair MacLean, there's nothing like getting a twenty-minute car chase that features Newman driving a 1972 Ford Gran Torino. Loftin was the king of scenes like this, as well as being the driver of famous car scenes in Duel and Christine. That chase happens at the beginning of the movie, which may seem like a strange way to structure a movie, but sometimes, you give it your best shot right from the starting flag.
The Headless Eyes (1971)
Headless Eyes
Arthur Malcolm (Bo Brundin, who was in Meteor, The Day the Clown Cried and Raise the Titanic) can't pay the rent - he's a starving artist, you know? - so he tries to sneak into a woman's bedroom and steals money off her nightstand. He thinks that she's sleeping, she thinks he's a rapist and this comical misunderstanding ends with her popping out his eye with a spoon and knocking him out a window.
Arthur pulls himself back up and decides that he's going to keep being an artist but to do so, he's going to kill people and use their eyeballs in his art.
It was produced by porn luminary Henri Pachard and distributed by J. E. R. Pictures as a double feature with The Ghastly Ones. The director and writer? Kent Bateman, who was the father of Jason and Justine, and would one day produce Teen Wolf Too.
Back to that porn connection, it has adult actors Larry Hunter (who was also in The Amazing Transplant with another actress from this movie, Mary Lamay) and Linda Southern. Another actress, Ann Wells, was also in Anything Once, Career Bed and The Detention Girls, was married to Bateman but is not the mother of his famous children.
Don't be confused by the poster. This is not a movie about eyeballs moving on their own. No, it's a movie about a man with an eyepatch saying "My eye!" and "I'm twisted!" while plucking other eyeballs out of their sockets. Over and over. Sometimes even in focus. Also: set to music stole from the Cecil Leuter and Georges Teperino albums TV Music 101 and TV Music 102.
This is the kind of movie that as soon as it starts, you're either going to love or despise it.
I loved every minute.
Stella Maris (1918)
Stella Maris
In this film, Mary Pickford plays not one, but two roles in a movie different from anything she had ever done before. One is beautiful, rich, but crippled Stella Maris and the other is deformed and abused orphan Unity Blake. For one of the first times in film, one actress would play two roles using double exposures and complex editing from director Marshall Neilan and cinematographer Walter Stradling.
Based on William John Locke's 1913 novel, this begins with Stella Maris trapped in her London mansion bedroom. Unable to walk since birth, her wealthy family tries to keep her from the horrors of the world, such as World War I. There's a sign on her door which tells anyone entering, "All unhappiness and world wisdom leave outside. Those without smiles need not enter."
Unity Blake is an uneducated orphan who has been abused to the point that she is afraid of every person she meets. She's been hired by Louisa (Marcia Manon) to work in the mansion.
John (Conway Tearle) may be married to Louisa, but it's never been happy. He frequently visits Stella, who he has never told that he is married. Instead, he wants her to think that he is as perfect as her worldview.
One night, Unity loses the food she is delivering and as a result, a drunken Louisa beats her senseless. Louisa is arrested and jailed, while John decides to adopt Unity, who soon falls in love with him. Stella's family wants her kept from the rich girl, as seeing another woman so broken will let her know that the world is a horrible place.
Unity decides to become educated, learning from her new guardian Aunt Gladys (Josephine Crowell), as Stella gets an operation which allows her to walk. She agrees to marry John, just as Louise gets out of jail, telling the young girl the truth about the man she is in love with.
That night, Aunt Gladys is overheard telling others that Louise will never allow John to live the life he deserves. Unity, realizing that John will only love Stella, murders Louise and kills herself, freeing John and allowing Stella to believe that there may be sadness, but there can also be joy afterward.
What I love about the golden age of media that we live in now is that movies like this, that may otherwise not be seen and could even be lost can now exist in my collection.
It's Pat: The Movie (1994)
Pat
Julia Sweeney created the character Pat O'Neill Riley for Saturday Night Live but it wasn't intended to be a mystery as to the character's gender. Sweeney said, "I'd been an accountant for like five years, and there was one person I worked with in particular who had a lot of mannerisms like Pat. This person sort of drooled and had the kind of body language of Pat. I started trying to do him. I was testing it out on my friends and they were just like, "Yeah, it's good, but it doesn't seem like a guy that much." Like I couldn't quite pull off being in drag convincingly enough. So then I thought, maybe that's the joke. I'll just have one joke in here about how we don't know if that's a man or a woman just to sort of cover up for my lack of ability to really play a guy convincingly."
First appearing on December 1, 1990 and showing up in twelve other episodes, Pat is of another era, a time when non-binary and transgender people were seen mostly as someone to joke about. Let's be honest, they still are and even worse today. But for a time, Pat was the first character of its type.
Sweeney said about this film - yes, everyone from SNL was getting a movie at this stage - "I wrote It's Pat with Jim Emerson and Steve Hibbert. We had a great time writing and a lot of fun making the film. The movie didn't do well at the box office, not by a long shot. In fact, It's Pat became a popular example of a film so despised that it got a zero percent Rotten Tomatoes rating! I guess in that way, it's sort of a badge of honor. But I can't help it, I love this film. It has so many people in it who I love, and loved. Many are dead: Charlie Rocket, who played Kyle, and Julie Hayden who played his wife (who died of cancer a couple of years after the film premiered,) my dad who played the priest who married us, and my brother Mike who had one line at the wedding shower of Pat and Chris. And there are so many good friends in the film too: Kathy Griffin and Dave Foley and Kathy Najimy and Tim Stack and Tim Meadows. And the band Ween! We had so much fun together."
Yes. Ween is in this. It still makes me laugh that they show up.
Pat (Sweeney) and Chris (Dave Foley, who continually has played women in nearly every show that he's been part of) have met, found out that they both like to eat and become engaged. Yet Pat can't get her life together, she has a neighbor (Charles Rocket) obsessed with her and an appearance on America's Creepiest People turns her into a celebrity, which causes the couple to break off their engagement. The entire free world then becomes obsessed by whether or not Pat is a man or a woman while Pat tries to get Chris back.
Sweeney didn't want to make the film. She said, "I resisted it completely. I just didn't know how we could make it last for two hours. But 20th Century Fox was really keen; our producer was really keen. So we thought, OK, we'll write the script. And after three months, we fell madly in love with the script. Unfortunately, Fox did not."
This was made by Touchstone Pictures instead of that studio.
It also has an uncredited writer.
Quentin Tarantino.
Playboy: You were hired to do a rewrite of It's Pat. As one now familar with the perspiring androgyne from Saturday Night Live, is Pat a he or a she?
Tarantino: The androgyny aspect is only a part of Pat's appeal. What I love about the character is that Pat is so ******* obnoxious. To tell the truth, I don't know what Pat is. But I know what I want Pat to be: I want Pat to be a girl. There was only one sketch that Julia Sweeney, the actress who plays Pat did on Saturday Night Live that gave a clue to what Pat is. It was the sketch that Pat did with Harvey Keitel. They're stranded on a deserted island and they have sex - and Harvey still doesn't know what Pat is. And the thing is, they kissed in it. At one point they were thinking of taking the kiss out of the sketch. But Harvey, being Harvey, demanded they keep it in, that there'd be no integrity without the kiss. So that was the first time we'd seen Pat in an intimate situation - a smooch. There is a certain way that you hold your head, the way you come in for a kiss. And sitting there, watching it, I thought that Pat didn't kiss like a guy. Pat kissed like a girl.
Sweeney was so upset after this that she never wanted to play the Pat character again. However, she had previously agreed for Pat to be honored as mayor for the day"in West Hollywood on Halloween. She would play Pat one last time on October 31, 1994, but claims that it was "halfhearted and pathetic."
Tales from the Crypt: Dead Wait (1991)
TOBE!
"Welcome aboard, fright-seers! Looking for a little hell-iday fun? You've come to the right place! We specialize in all sorts of hackage tours! (cackles) So what will it be? A few days in a scream park? Or would you like me to book you into a nice, quiet dead and breakfast? Or perhaps you'd like to go treasure haunting like my friend, Red. He wants to steal a priceless black pearl in a tasteless tidbit I call: "Dead Wait.""
Red Buckley (James Remar) and his partner Charlie (Paul Anthony Weber) have been planning to steal a black pearl from plantation owner Emilie Duvall (John Rhys-Davies). There's not much time, because the island where Duvall lives is about to be taken over by a revolution. So Red kills Charlies as they argue and decides to get the pearl for himself. He then meets Emilie at a bar - he's pretty sickly, as he's filled with water worms that have carved tunnels through his skin - along with the man's much younger wife Kathrine (Vanity), who seduces the crook and they decide to kill her husband and split the pearl. The problem? Emilie has a worker named Peligre (Whoopi Goldberg) who does voodoo and plans on taking care of Red.
If you're wondering how gross this one is going to get, well, Emilie has swallowed the pearl and Red has to dig through his worm-filled corpse to find it. That's what you get when Tobe Hooper directs! But seriously, this is an intriguing episode.
It was written by Gilbert Adler, who also wrote Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice and directed and wrote Bordello of Blood.
There's also a scene afterward where the Crypt Keeper has a talk show and interviews Whoopi.
Crypt Keeper: Oooh. Talk about being headed off at the pass. We've got a guest, kiddies. Whoopi! It's a pleasure to meet you. I want you to know that I loved your movie The Killer Purple.
Whoopi: That's Color Purple, Crypt Keeper.
Crypt Keeper: Oh! Right. Well, um, congratulations on winning that Academy A-weird.
Whoopi: Well thanks, but it's actually called an Academy Award.
Crypt Keeper: Whatever. Look, it's a pleasure to meet a big star like you.
Whoopi: Now, you're a pretty big star. I mean, I'd love it if you would be in my next film.
Crypt Keeper: Really?
Whoopi: (pulls out a machete) Yeah, it's just a bit part.
Crypt Keeper: I'm flattered!
Whoopi: But you don't know what bit I want.
Crypt Keeper: Well, as long as I don't wind up on the cutting room floor!
Whoopi: (Points the machete at him) Okay!
Crypt Keeper: (Gasps)
Whoopi: (Smiles at the camera)
This episode is based on "Dead Wait!" from Vault of Horror #23. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Davis.
Rejuvenatrix (1988)
Needs to be released!
Also known as The Rejuvenator, this forgotten film was inspired by The Wasp Woman. It was directed and co-written by Brian Thomas Jones, along with Simon Nuchtern (who directed the new sequences for Snuff as well as Savage Dawn and Silent Madness). Steven Mackler, who produced this film, had met Jones after he was impressed with the director's short movie Overexposed. Mackler had a deal with Sony Video Software to make three movies and sent him the script for a movie called Skin, which was writtem by Nuchtern.
In an interview with Matty Budrewicz, Jones said, "I read the script and, when I finished, I said to myself "I can't direct this script, but I know how to make this movie. It's Bride of Frankenstein meets Sunset Boulevard! I pitched the concept to Mackler and he let me rewrite it."
As for his changes, he stated, I've never really been a true fan of blood, guts and gore so when I was writing I tried to weave in all these themes of vanity, addiction, obsession and greed. I really wanted to make it my own movie-something really heartfelt and dramatic."
Ruth Warren (Jessica Dublin, who was in Trinity Is Still My Name; So Sweet, So Dead; Fragment of Fear; Sex of the Witch; Death Steps In the Dark and much later Troma's War) is a rich actress who has aged out of leading roles. Dr. Gregory Ashton (John MacKay) has been working for her in an attempt to make her young again. He's running out of time, as she's grown frustrated by a lack of results.
His new formula needs testing but she takes it, amazed at the results and becomes a younger woman by the name of Elizabeth Warren (Vivian Lanko). What she didn't know before she took the formula is that it was based on parts of human brains and she must constantly be given those pieces of mind, so to speak, or she will transform into a monster that is chronically hungry for brains, more brains.
It's never been released on DVD or blu ray, which is shocking when you think that it's exactly the kind of movie that Vinegar Syndrome puts out. It's not just a cheap direct to video film, though. It is filled with heart and characters that you start to care about along with sequences filled with goopy FX that stand up to anything else from the late 80s.
Plus, it has an appearance by the Poison Dollys, an all-female heavy metal band from Long Island. Members Gina Stile, Gail Kenny, Mef Manning and Roulette started as a cover band but added originals as time went on and worked with Kip Winger. One of their songs, "Love Is for Suckers" was recorded by Twisted Sister.
Gina Stile left Poison Dollys to form Envt with her sister Rhonni and was in Vixen from 1997 to 2001. She also played in Ban Animals, a Heart tribute band along with Marco Mendoza, Yngwie Malmsteen drummer John Macaluso and Great White bassist Teddy Cook.
How did I never see Rejuvenatrix until now?
Jones looks back on this movie with some sadness: "I've always been quite disappointed it never got the exposure or recognition I feel it deserved, even though it has developed its fans from those lucky enough to have seen it. The reviews and the fact it did OK on video... I probably should let it go but I'll always hold a grudge for that SVS guy who didn't understand the genre or its fandom and realize the potential of what he had."
Ghosts (1996)
Ghosts
Ghosts began production in 1993 under the title Is It Scary? With the director Mick Garris and was supposed to play before Addams Family Values. For a time, it was the longest music video ever - Pharrell Williams' "Happy" is longer now - and is still the most expensive at $15 million. That's because it was all paid for by its star, Michael Jackson.
A lot of that money is because Jackson backed out of the original plan. Garris went to film The Shining miniseries and Stan Winston, who did the makeup and special effects, took over.
Unlike Thriller and Captain EO, two of Jackson's long and expensive videos that were seen by millions and can still be watched in some places today, Ghosts has disappeared after playing before Thinner.
In a small town, The Maestro (Michael Jackson) loves to scare kids - Mos Def is one of them - and perform magic tricks. The town's mayor comes to kick him out of town, saying, "He's a weirdo. There's no place in this town for weirdoes." If this feels like how the public was treated Michael Jackson in 1996, it's no accident.
Also: the mayor - as well as the ghoul version of the mayor and two other characters, Superghoul and a skeleton - is played by Jackson.
The Maestro challenges the mayor to a scaring contest and the first to show fear must leave town. He brings his entire family of ghosts to dance with him, then possesses the mayor. After that, the Maestro says that he will leave town, but falls to dust and then rises as the Superghoul. This makes the mayor so upset that he dives out a window, allowing the Maestro to remain.
I do have to say, a thing lost about Jackson after all his life's controversies is just how good his music is. This features several I hadn't heard before-"2 Bad," "Is It Scary" and "Ghosts" from HIStory and Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix - and they're really amazing. The dancing is great, too, as are the effects, if somewhat dated.
Of course, this was made after the first time that Jackson escaped child molestation charges and this feels like, well, that trial. Except it gets supernatural.
Written by Jackson, Garris, Winston and Stephen King, this has one jaw dropping moment, when Jackson becomes a dancing skeleton and escapes his mortal form. I've always wondered if he wished that he could do that in reality.
Nathan Rabin explained the end of this way better than I can and his words prove why he inspired me to write about movies: "Ghosts has a happy ending: The common folk and especially their adorable children welcome Maestro back into the fold and embrace him for being a showman and an eccentric with a straight line to the spirit world. In the real world, alas, Michael Jackson wasn't as lucky. He had to die young and mysteriously to rehabilitate his terminally tattered image."
2012 (2009)
2012
Director and writer Roland Emmerich said, "I always wanted to do a biblical flood movie, but I never felt I had the hook. I first read about the Earth's crust displacement theory in Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods."
In that book, Hancock states that a civilization near Antarctica left "fingerprints" in Ancient Egypt and other civilizations, such as the Olmecs Aztecs and Mayans. Hancock believed that in 10,450 BC, a major pole shift took place that brought Antarctica closer to the South Pole, causing global destruction and sinking Atlantis. This is based on the Charles Hapgood's theory of Earth Crustal Displacement, which has no geological experts supporting it, as the model that they follow is plate tectonics. There's also a strange - well, isn't there always - strange racist bent, as there is no way - according to the author - that "jungle-dwelling Indians" could not possibly come up with a sophisticated calendar and it had to be an master white race who taught them.
That same book also inspired Emerich's 10,000 B. C.
This starts in 2009, as geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and astrophysicist Satnam Tsurutani (Jimi Mistry) determine that a new type of neutrino from a solar flare is heating the Earth's core. Adrian alerts White House Chief of Staff Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt) and President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover), who start a plan to save humanity without warning them and causing a panic.
By the next year, forty-six nations are building nine arks in the highest point of the world, in the Himalayas, to be able to survive a new flood. Any major artifacts are stored in secure locations while the people in the mountains start to work on the arks, like Tenzin (Chin Han), the brother of Buddhist monk Nima (Osric Chau). The money comes from rich people, like Yuri Karpov (Zlatko Buric), a rich Russian who plans on saving his girlfriend Tamara Jikan (Beatrice Rosen) and his twin sons Alec and Oleg (Alexandre Haussmann and Philippe Haussmann).
Former science fiction writer Jackson Curtis (Jon Cusack) works for Yuri as his chauffeur. The call to board the arks comes in, just as Jackson returns from a vacation with his kids Noah and Lilly (Liam James and Morgan Lily), getting them back to his ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet) and her new husband, Gordon (Tom McCarthy). Having met conspiracy radio talk show host Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson) on the vacation - as well as Adrian, who has read his book - Jackson starts to believe that the Earth is doomed, a fact that is told to him by the Russian twins.
Jackson gets to his family with no time to spare as all of California falls to an earthquake as he races to the airport and Gordon gets the plane off the ground as the runway cracks and falls. Trying to get Charlie to find out where the arks are, he decides to stay and watch Yellowstone's supervolcano, which kills him.
Nearly all of the rest of the world has died other than Carl, Adrian, First Daughter Laura (Thadiwe Newton), the Russians and Jackson and family, who all make it to the Himalayans and only Yuri and his boys have tickets, stranding Tamara, who is taken in by Jackson and family, who meet Nima, and all of their families try to break into one of the arks.
Nearly everyone after everyone died dies - I have a major problem with Tamara dying as she's treated as an afterthought throughout the whole movie and her sacrifice is treated as nothing, with no one sad - and Jackson and his ex-wife reconcile and Adrian and Laura get together as the arks make it safely away from the flood.
There's an alternate ending where Adrian's father Harry (Blu Mankuma) and his jazz singer partner Tony Delgado (George Segal) survive. It's pretty much a return to 70s disaster movies and I like that.
How it was marketed was controversial. There was a website for the Institute for Human Continuity, along with Jackson's book Farewell Atlantis and radio broadcasts from Charlie Frost, as well as his site This Is the End. Visitors could also register to get a ticket on the arks. NASA's David Morrison was upset by this, as he got a thousand or more letters from worried people thinking the site was real. He said, "I've even had cases of teenagers writing to me saying they are contemplating suicide because they don't want to see the world end. I think when you lie on the internet and scare children to make a buck, that is ethically wrong."
It also had a new commercial placement that had never been done before. Called a roadblock campaign, it showed the thrilling two-minute escape from the earthquake scene - it's the best part of the movie - on 450 American commercial television networks, local English-language and Spanish-language stations and 89 cable outlets at some point between 10:50 and 11:00 P. M. 90% of all households watching ad-supported TV - 110 million viewers - saw the commercial.
The whole idea of 2012 being the end of the world is supposed to have come from the Mayan calendar. But nope. They found a series of astronomical alignments that would happen in 2012, which only happened every 640,000 years, as the sun would line up with the center of the Milky Way on the day it would be lowest on the horizon. Versions of this alignment happen every December, to be honest. And while the Mayan Calendar ended in 2012, they didn't see it as the end of the world.
Emmerich claimed, "I said to myself that I'll do one more disaster movie, but it has to end all disaster movies. So I packed everything in." Then he made Independence Day: Resurgence and Moonfall.
Return to Oz (1985)
Return to Oz
In 1954, Walt Disney Productions bought the film rights to thirteen of L. Frank Baum's Oz books - all of the remaining books other than The Wizard of Oz - for their TV series Disneyland. The Rainbow Road to Oz was planned and it would have featured many of the Mouseketeers, including Darlene Gillespie as Dorothy Gale, Annette Funicello as Princess Ozma, Bobby Burgess as the Scarecrow, Jimmie Dodd as the Cowardly Lion, Doreen Tracey as the Patchwork Girl, Tommy Kirk as the son of the Wicked Witch of the West and Kevin Corcoran.
The songs "Patches,""The Oz-Kan Hop" and "The Rainbow Road to Oz" were previewed on September 11, 1957 on the Disneyland show's fourth anniversary. A few months later, the project was cancelled, either because Walt Disney was unhappy with it, the actors couldn't carry a real movie or the budget had grown too large. The rest of the songs would finally be part of the 1969 Disneyland Records album The Cowardly Lion of Oz.
Roger Ebert called William Murch "the most respected film editor and sound designer in the modern cinema." After working on the sound of movies such as THX-1138, The Godfather and American Graffiti, he edited The Conversation and Apocalypse Now (he also won an Oscar for the sound mix) before suggesting that Disney make their Oz movie in 1980. As they were about to lose the rights, Disney took him up on his offer and selected him to direct and write along with Gill Dennis.
It would be the only movie Murch ever directed (he did do one episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, "The General") as he would go back to editing, working on The Unbearable Lightness of Being and the restoration of Touch of Evil. He also won Oscars for sound and editing for The English Patient and editing for Julia, Cold Mountain, The Godfather Part III and Ghost.
Murch based this movie on the second and third Oz books, The Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz, along with elements of the book and stage play of Tik-Tok of Oz. He also used parts of the book Wisconsin Death Trip - yes, this gets that dark - and went as far away from the original movie as he could. The main goal was to be more faithful to the books than the 1939 movie which is why this is a cult film and not a success.
It was not an easy film to make.
Filming was to be shot 75% on location but a switch in Disney leadership led to the budget - which had already gone from $20 to $28 million - pushed the movie to Elstree Studios and the Salisbury Plain, where temperatures were so cold that lead actress Fairuza Balk would cry from the cold but never complain.
At some point, original cameraman Freddie Francis quit, frustrated by working with Murch.
A few weeks later, Disney was unhappy with the footage they had seen and fired Murch, who said that he felt "...what the soul feels after it's left the body after a car accident - pain but tremendous relief."
Then his friends Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola spoke up for him and informed Disney that they wouldn't be all that friendly with the studio if Murch couldn't finish his movie. Lucas also promised that he would replace Murch if the director had any problems.
Dorothy Gale (Balk was picked from thousands of actresses and said even getting to audition for the movie was a huge deal) has been taken to a sanitarium by Aunt Em (Piper Laurie, yes, Carrie's mother was Auntie Em) and Uncle Henry (Matt Clark) because she won't stop talking about Oz. If you had been to Oz and it was in color and you lived in black and white and had friends like a talking lion and fought winged monkeys, would you ever stop? But to stop her from her delusions - or reality, as it were - Dr. Worley (Nicol Williamson, Merlin from Excalibur) and Nurse Wilson (Jean Marsh, the co-creator of Upstairs, Downstairs) plan on sending Dorothy to electroshock therapy.
This movie already upset me as Toto runs out to join Dorothy as she's taken away and she silently mouths the words "Go home. Please go home." He howls in abject sadness.
Lightning takes out the power and a young girl helps Dorothy escape down a river, where Dorothy floats away on a chicken coop. She wakes up in Oz with a chicken named Billina (Mak Wilson, voiced by Denise Bryer) who can talk. They learn that the Yellow Brick Road has been destroyed and all her friends the Tin Man (Deep Roy!), the Cowardly Lion (Johann Kraus from Hellboy II: The Golden Army) have been transformed into stone. She's attacked by The Wheelers, but saved by Tik-Tok (played by Michael Sundin and Tim Rose - who was Howard the Duck and Admiral Ackbar - as well as being voiced by Sean Barrett, whose voice is also in Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal) - a mechanical man - who told her that the King of Oz, the Scarecrow, had told him to wait for her.
They go to Princess Mombi (also Marsh), who collects peoples' heads. They barely escape and discover that the Nome King (also Williamson) has taken the Scarecrow (Justin Case). As they ran through the Deadly Desert, they meet a new friend in Jack Pumpkinhead (played by Stewart Harvey-Wilson, voiced by Brian Henson) and the Gump (played by Stephen Norrington - the directed of Death Machine, Blade and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and voiced by Lyle Conway, who designed the Blob effects in The Blob), whose head is used to fly them to the mountain of the Nome King, where the big bad transforms everyone but Dorothy into ornaments. She saves everyone by guessing that they are all the green ornaments, then gets her ruby slippers back - MGM owned the rights to those and they aren't in the original story, but Disney wanted them and paid huge for it - and wishes everyone back to Oz.
Everyone from Oz wants Dorothy to rule their world, but she wants to go home. She meets the rightful ruler, Princess Ozma (Emma Ridley), who was the girl who helped her to escape. As she goes back to Oz, Auntie Em tells her that the mental ward burned down and only Worley died while his nurse was jailed for their horrible operations on young women. When she gets to her room, she can see Ozma and Billina in her mirror.
Harlan Ellison said, ""It ain't Judy Garland. It ain't hip-hop. But it's in the tradition of the original Oz books."
Neil Gaiman, years before he wrote Sandman, reviewed the movie for Imagine magazine and said that it was "Terrifying and visionary, funny and exciting, Return to Oz is one of the very best fantasy films I've ever seen."
Other critics - and audiences - were not as kind. It's a movie that none were prepared for, thinking it would have the same wonder as the movie they had seen on TV so many times without knowing the original stories.
The film wasn't a financial success. But it was nominated for a Best Visual Effects Academy Award but lost to Cocoon. The nomination was given to Claymation master Will Vinton, Ian Wingrove, Zoran Perisic and Michael Lloyd.
The Kiss (1988)
The Kiss
Pen Densham had a cool path to directing. He left school at fifteen to be a photographer and shoot The Rolling Stones, then moved from England to Canada to direct commercials and documentaries with Marshall McLuhan. He then formed found Insight Productions with John Watson and earned 70 international award for their movies, including two Oscar nominations. One of the movies they made, If Wishes Were Horses, was called "The best film of any length shown on Canadian TV."
It brought him to the attention of Norman Jewison who got him to Hollywood. He and Watson started Trilogy Entertainment Group, serving as creative consultants on movies like Footloose and Rocky II before becoming big successes with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. They also produced the new versions of The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone, as well as Poltergeist: The Legacy in the 1990s and 2000s.
He also directed two movies, The Zoo Gang and what we're here to talk about today, The Kiss.
Felice Dunbar (former model Joanna Pacula) and her sister Hillary (Pamela Collyer) are totally living the start of The Parent Trap. Felice is to live with her aunt (Céline Lomez) and Hillary with her father. As they take a train away from the Belgian Congo, her aunt - wearing a serpent medallion - attacks the young girl. The lights go out as she kisses her, blood coming from her mouth, and when they come back on, the aunt is a lifeless deformed body and the little girl is alone but has the talisman.
Years later, Hillary lives in America with her husband Jack (Nicholas Kilbertus) and her daughter Amy (Meredith Salenger). Her sister calls her in the hopes of meeting her family, but she refuses. She goes to a gun shop and while looking in the window, a car smashes her into the store, killing her.
Five months later, Felice - who works as a model - shows up in town and moves in. Next door neighbor Brenda Carson (Mimi Kuzyk) reacts to her as if she is a cat and becoming allergic. Amy hates her aunt immediately and after making fun of her with her friend Heather (Sabrina Boudot), her BFF is almost murdered when her necklace gets stuck in an escalator. This is absolutely my childhood trauma, so I'm glad I didn't see this until now.
Felice starts making moves on her sister's widower, while Amy confides to her boyfriend Terry O'Connell (Shawn Levy, who directed the Night at the Museum movies) about finding her friend's bloody sunglasses inside her aunt's room, as well as a serpent talisman. Terry follows her aunt to a hotel room where he watches her in the midst of a ritual. She transforms into a cat and nearly kills him. He barely gets away, only to be run over and his death made to look like a suicide. Amy then tells a priest who remembers Hillary telling him about her sister and how evil she was. He tries to run when she shows up and spontaneously combusts. How many powers does this werecat have? And how wild it is that when they do a DNA test on her, it shows that she is already dead?
Felice reveals that she must continue living - inside the blood - of Amy, trying to transform her into what she is. It takes Brenda the neighbor, Amy and her father - as well as garden shears, a propane tank and a swimming pool - to stop her.
This was written by Stephen Volk, who also was the writer of Gothic, The Guardian- that makes sense - and Ghostwatch.
Slay (2024)
Totally great!
Mama Sue Flay (Trinity The Tuck), Robin Banks (Heidi N Closet), Bella Da Boys (Crystal Methyd), and Olive Wood (Cara Melle) are four drag queens on tour that planned on playing at a famous club, The Bold Tuck, but have accidentally been booked at The Bold Buck, a biker club in the middle of nowhere.
It's a mistake that any of us could make, right?
They try to make the most of it, as the bartender Dusty (Neil Sandilands) pays them anyway and at least two people show up, probably the only other two LGBTQ+ people for miles, Jax (Donia Kash) and Steven (Gabriel Harry Meltz). As they start their act, Travis (Daniel Janks) starts screaming at them to get off the stage and in all the confusion, another local, Marv (Gustav Rossouw) starts to bite people. Yes, we're in Bat Country and the film seems like Slither, Feast, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, VFW and From Dusk till Dawn having a few drinks with To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
In no way is that a bad thing, as this movie has style, great lighting, fun special effects and plenty of surprises to dish out.
It's a movie aware of vampire movie history as well as one that doesn't make the locals all into bigots and even gives Travis a redemption arc that he never would have had unless he met our heroines and fought vampires with them. The ladies also struggle against in-fighting and realize the love they have for one another.
Also: garlic bread and a sprinkler system make for some amazing weapons. You don't have to dress like Blade -- to call out a great discussion in this film -- to be a bad ass vampire killer.
I had a blast watching this. It feels like it needs a bigger audience than just a Tubi Original -- not a bad thing, I love these movies after all -- and it feels good to see drag queens unite a town and disrupt both vampires and those that are close minded. If only the real world could be the same.