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Miami Blues

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Despite its popularity and the wealth of material available, Hollywood has a hard time adapting modern pulp fiction to the screen. There have been exceptions: Elmore Leonard hit the bullseye with Out of Sight and Get Shorty , while prolific novelist Donald Westlake had to wait until 1973 for his most faithful screen adaptation, The Outfit . Filled with villains who can be downright depraved and heroes who are often morally questionable themselves, pulp is a genre that takes courage to attempt—and a big set of balls to get right. Based on the first Hoke Moseley novel by noir novelist Charles Willeford and written and directed by George Armitage, Miami Blues (1990) is about as close to perfect as you can get. It’s pulp fiction without the Tarantino pretension: stripped down to its raw criminal brutality yet balanced by a worldview so pessimistic you can’t help laughing. That it exists at all may be credited to producer Jonathan Demme, who had already established a similar offbeat sens...
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The Dirty Dozen

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While its status as the ultimate Sunday afternoon “dad movie” for the boomer generation is firmly established, The Dirty Dozen (1967) isn’t the stodgy WW2 reenactment contemporary viewers might expect. In fact, director Robert Aldrich’s film is an unexpected template for “slobs vs snobs” comedies like Animal House, Stripes and Caddyshack , pitting its condemned cadre of unwashed commandos against the uppity West Point elites and turning the idea military discipline into a class war punchline. An establishment rebel himself, Major John Reisman (Lee Marvin) is tasked with raiding a heavily guarded villa behind Nazi lines and taking out the high command with extreme prejudice. Trouble is, his “soldiers” are a handful of misfit prisoners facing extended prison time or the death sentence unless they cooperate. Bucking the system – and the odds – Reisman must whip his recruits into shape for the mission…and hope they don’t put a bullet in his head before they get there. Leaning into the ...
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Planet of the Vampires

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On a sliding scale of Mario Bava masterpieces, 1965’s Planet of the Vampires lands somewhere in the middle. That’s not a knock on the film itself, which is a gloriously atmospheric piece of pulp sci-fi imagination. More a result of the incredible body of work the Italian director managed to produce during his career. Although set in the far reaches of space, Bava’s film fit comfortably in the same gothic oeuvre as his previous work, substituting spaceships and foggy alien landscapes for castles and crypts. Investigating a distress signal on a seemingly abandoned planet, two ships are dispatched to the surface and immediately run afoul of a mysterious force that compels the crews to turn on one another. Those with enough will power to resist proceed to bury their dead and search for an explanation. But the dead don’t stay buried long! While the original Italian title – Terrore nello spazio (“Terror in Space”) – is generic in the extreme, Planet of the Vampires is just as misleadi...
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The Monster / Visitor Q

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As its name implies, the nuclear family has always been at risk of meltdown. The social pressure and internal struggle to keep up appearances are bound to turn ugly from time to time. And the two latest releases from Radiance Films offer painful dissections of two wildly different households. Both are dysfunctional, vicious and perverse - but while The Monster (1977) finds no escape from hereditary cruelty, Visitor Q (2001) suggests the only way “out” is “through.” At the beginning of director Luigi Zampa’s film - with a script from Sergio Donati that had been floating around since the early days of the giallo craze - the audience is introduced to what we assume is the titular “monster.” A serial killer has been cracking skulls all over town, leaving tabloid journalist Barigozzi (Johnny Dorelli) as both a valuable eyewitness and a prime suspect. As his literary star ascends, Barigozzi sweetens the pot with payoffs, side gigs and cheesy sponsorships all built around the murder...
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Bad Georgia Road / Mag Wheels

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I’m betting Smokey and the Bandit wouldn’t have been a pop-culture sensation if Burt Reynolds had raped Sally Field in the backseat. But that’s the tactic used in Bad Georgia Road (1977), released the same year, which pits an uptight city girl against a hooch-running roughneck trying to outwit the authorities and the competition. Carol Lynley plays Molly, the heiress of a moonshine business run by Leroy (Gary Lockwood) and Arthur (Royal Dano) who aren’t exactly thrilled by the idea of a New Yorker cutting in on their half of the profits. But Molly is inexplicably turned on by Leroy’s misogynistic shenanigans, setting up a series of meet-cute, fish-out-of-water escapades until finally she’s fornicated into submission. Yep, it’s that creepy. Even setting aside the rape-as-seduction scene (which is impossible), Bad Georgia Road flubs almost every chance to be entertaining. A Dukes of Hazzard -style country cop who dresses up in drag to catch the boys in the act has some potential,...
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The Owl vs Bumbo / Where's Officer Tuba?

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Jackie Chan may be the most recognizable Hong Kong action star of the last 40 years, but his childhood friend and frequent collaborator Sammo Kam-Bo Hung has had a career that eclipses Jackie’s in many respects. Both trained at the China Drama Academy and worked their way up through bit parts in Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest productions to become in-demand performers. But Sammo upped his game from stuntman to stunt coordinator to producer, director and, eventually, his own production company. And as the Hong Kong vaults have opened for more North American releases, casual fans are finally getting a chance to appreciate just how skillfully Hung built his career onscreen and off. The Owl vs. Bumbo (1984) sets up a buddy comedy with George Lam as “The Owl,” a heist artist who ripped off the mob for millions, and Bumbo (Hung), an ex-thief sitting on the hefty proceeds from a bank job. They’re both blackmailed by a straight-arrow cop trying to weed out the corruption in his own ...
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The Haunted Cop Shop

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Hong Kong humor isn’t always appropriate for mixed company. Even the initiated have to admit its full of homophobia, crude sexual innuendo and outdated pratfalls. But then again, so was every installment of Police Academy . And at least T he Haunted Cop Shop (1987) adds ghosts, vampires and a quickie-mart manager who’s also a master of kung fu! Set at a rural police station used as a Japanese after-hours club during the occupation, the current staff unwittingly releases General Issei – now a bloodthirsty vampire - from the spirit world. As he makes the rounds turning victims into his undead slaves, two cops and their superior look to undo the damage without becoming supernatural casualties themselves. A sort of Abbott & Costello Meet the Hungry Ghosts , this Wong Kar-wai co-written spoof happily embraces the broad comedy clichés established by Sammo Hung’s Encounters of the Spooky Kind - and even gives it a name-check. What’s most surprising is that, for all the narrative c...
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Frankenhooker 4K UHD

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Hearkening back to the Roger Corman era, when everything you needed to know about a movie was right there in the title, Frankenhooker (1990) is a creative low-budget effort from writer/director Frank Henenlotter, whose Basket Case (1982) was the best movie ever made about a Siamese twin living in a wicker basket. Both films are actually cleverer than you’d expect and share a self-deprecating sense of humor. Starring Patty Mullen, former 1987 Pet of the Year and a genuine Jersey girl, Frankenhooker begins with her dismemberment courtesy of a remote-controlled lawnmower. Racked by grief, her fiancé heads into the streets of Manhattan to collect body parts from all-too-eager prostitutes in hopes of reconstructing her. The end result, however, is a purple, pasty-faced monstrosity who escapes the lab and goes out looking for more “tricks.” There’s not a frame of Henenlotter’s film that isn’t ridiculous, offensive, stupid, or all three at once. But it’s also all in good fun. Synapse’s new...
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Enter the Video Store: Video Vengeance

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Nostalgia is the enemy of objectivity. Most of the movies that crowded video-store aisles in the late ’80s and early ’90s were not lost masterpieces, no matter how much we want them to be. They were spur of the moment rentals sold on a lurid box cover and forgotten as soon as the tape was rewound. But junk has its own archaeology. And Arrow's Enter the Video Store: Video Vengeance box set gathers five artifacts from the twilight of the VHS era, when a recognizable face, two explosions and a vaguely tough-sounding title could still get a movie onto the shelf. Not all of them hold up. A couple barely held together in the first place. But each has enough sunburned location work, oddball casting and misplaced ambition to earn its spot in the weird little time capsule. Ministry of Vengeance (1989) stars John Schneider (yep…Bo Duke of The Dukes of Hazzard ) as a former Marine turned peaceful minister whose family is murdered by terrorists, sending him on a holy-war revenge spree. Peter...
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Reanimator Academy / Red Flag Down / My Best Friend's a Corpse

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Student math and reading scores may be in the toilet, but, if this generation’s shot-on-video content is any barometer, their visual literacy is off the charts. Growing up on YouTube and TikTok has produced some next-level skills when it comes to cinematic storytelling compared to where we were in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Not buying it? Just take a look at these three recent SOV releases and judge for yourself. Shot over the course of one long weekend on the campus of Texas Christian University in 1992, no-budget wunderkind Bret McCormick was stretched to the limit with Reanimator Academy . A horror-comedy involving Looney Tunes -style gangsters, a disembodied head and a houseful of drunken fraternity brothers, the film scrapes the bottom of the barrel in almost every category. It was part of a wave of titles produced by Full Moon veteran David DeCoteau to fill the empty shelves of mom & pop video stores, where the only real qualifier was hitting the 60-minute mark. McCormick hides u...
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Futureworld

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Three years after the massacre at Westworld, the most advanced amusement park in the world is set to re-open with a splashy new attraction. But is history doomed to repeat itself?   Futureworld (1976) stars Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner (Gwyneth Paltrow’s mom) as a pair of Woodward and Bernstein-type reporters invited to the grand re-opening to ensure that the facility is safe and trouble-free – much like Sam Neill and company in the first Jurassic Park . Only instead of rampaging dinosaurs, our heroes uncover a robotic conspiracy to replace all the world’s leaders in a bid for global domination. Or something to that effect. Actually, the motives behind Delos, the company in question, are a little vague. They have the technology to create perfect human replicas this time around, not just robotic gunslingers and sex slaves; an improvement upon the android assembly lines in Michael Crichton’s original Westworld (1973). But the sequel drops much of the satirical edge in favor of a ...
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The Frighteners

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Director Peter Jackson describes The Frighteners as his “transition” film; namely because it falls between his early New Zealand horror imports and the worldwide phenomenon of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. And that’s a pretty accurate appraisal of his first studio effort. For despite attracting a big-time star (Michael J. Fox) and major Hollywood involvement (producer Robert Zemeckis), The Frighteners is a movie that heads off in so many different directions it ends up nearly pulling itself apart at the seams. That’s not to say that the individual story strands are uninteresting. The film’s teenage serial killers (Dee Wallace Stone and the uber-creepy Jake Busey) are a continuation of the themes explored in Heavenly Creatures, albeit this time from beyond the grave. And lead character Frank Bannister (Fox), a supernatural con man who teams up with a trio of ghosts, represents the sort of high concept comedic riff Zemeckis is famous for. But layered atop one another, the tone o...
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Graduation Day

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You don’t always need to have the best house on the street. Sometimes just being in the neighborhood is close enough. Which is exactly the case with Graduation Day (1981), a harmless slasher released during the genre’s heyday that can’t quite compete with the big-name franchises, but delivers a highlight reel of the decade’s music, fashion and embarrassing trends. Even if you didn’t live through the ‘80s, now you can watch people die during them! After the accidental death of a star sprinter, the track and field athletes at Midvale High are being picked off one by one in mysterious retribution. Is it the victim’s sister, a bitter but beautiful Navy officer? The principal, a high-strung administrator? Maybe the head coach, a ruthless taskmaster? Or could it be one of the athletes themselves decked out in a pair of black leather gloves doing the deed? There’s a giallo -esque approach to the script, but the actual movie is much more straightforward, staging a handful of entertai...
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Corruption

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Every year a new batch of students emerges from the educational system with a choice to make: how do I live my life? It’s not the economics that are in question – although that’s a major priority. It’s the moral and ethical implications that are the tricky part. Mike Nichols’ The Graduate might still be the pinnacle of American post-collegiate angst, but Mauro Bolognini’s Corruption (1963) takes on the same philosophical argument with an even greater spiritual crisis at stake. Jacques Perrin plays Stefano, the sensitive son of a powerful Milanese publisher who has returned from school with an unexpected plan to enter the priesthood. His father Leonardo (Alain Cuny) has other ideas…and a perverse plan to change his son’s mind. A Mediterranean yacht trip with Leonardo’s beautiful mistress Adriana (Rosanna Schiaffino) is designed to loosen Stefano’s moral resolve, but the young man soon discovers that even off the boat the world has little use for spiritual guidance. Bolognini give...
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The Magnificent Cuckold

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The hypocritical lothario is a common enough character in commedia all’italiana . Egotistical husbands who justified their own sidepiece but resented a wife enjoying the same extra-marital activities have been played for laughs in Italian cinema since the ‘50s. But by 1964, the tide was turning in the battle of the sexes. Director Antonio Pietrangeli’s The Magnificent Cuckold still had a sense of humor, but there was a new threat of creeping modernity quietly insinuating that the alpha male was an endangered species. Like his family hat business that is slowly going out of style, Andrea (Ugo Tognazzi) lives a bourgeois existence built around three-martini lunches, dinner parties and casual affairs. Even the wives of his business associates participate in the gossip-fueled social circle of complicated hotel room rendezvous. But not Maria Grazia (Claudia Cardinale); Andrea’s better half is a virginal ideal of fidelity. Her spotless reputation is his greatest status symbol…right up...
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Fatal Flying Guillotine

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On the short list of badass fantasy weapons, the “flying guillotine” has to be in the top three (for your consideration, I propose the glaive from Krull and tri-blade from The Sword and the Sorcerer to round out the list). Not familiar with this particular Hong Kong accessory? Well, there are several varieties but the one used in 1977’s Fatal Flying Guillotine looks like a dinner bell with rotating blades welded to the bottom. It’s about as aerodynamic as a city bus, but cinematically effective nevertheless, providing plenty of head-lopping action in this Taiwanese take on the short-lived guillotine trend. Carter Wong (Big Trouble in Little China) plays Shen Ping, a righteous fighter who petitions some Shaolin monks for a rare medicinal book that can save his sick mother. Unfortunately, the Valley of No Return’s resident nutjob Shen Mo Chao has his own designs on the thing—and an alarming habit of answering every minor disagreement by launching his twin guillotines. A fake book...
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Mutant Genesis / The Behemoth

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Few of life’s simple pleasures could compete with “two-for-one” video-rental night back in the ‘80s. Instead of choosing a reliable Hollywood blockbuster you could scoop up some tantalizing B-movies with interesting cover art and walk away knowing it only cost 99-cents anyway. How bad could they really be? The answer: pretty damn bad. But somehow masochistically enjoyable. Let’s reenact the scene with a pair of modern B-movies desperate for a blind-buy in the Walmart bargain bin: the Chinese sci-fi action-copycat Mutant Genesis (2026) and horror festival also-ran The Behemoth  (2025). In the former, the last dregs of humanity struggle against a conquering robot army after an AI apocalypse. Director Qilin Li’s video game cutscene epic mixes some not-bad acting with sketchy CGI Terminators. Their only real threat is reluctant warrior, An Xin, who is half machine herself. Loaded with blatant references to The Matrix , Star Wars and even Resident Evil , there’s no originality ...
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Ten Women in Black

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Let’s face it, women are way more interesting cinematically than men. There’s an internal dialogue and range of emotions that makes for complex, layered storytelling . Meanwhile, guys are firing guns in slow-motion and daydreaming about ancient Rome. I might be exaggerating for effect…but not by much. Which is why when women finally get a chance to lay their cards on the table, as in 1961’s Ten Women in Black , you can count on them to bring up the subjects everyone else is avoiding. Kaze Futaba is a serial philanderer with a wife and at least ten mistresses that he can recall. The women are all well aware of each other’s existence and their pecking order in his casual affairs. So they playfully agree to have him killed so none of them have to share. But when one of their number pulls a fast one, Kaze might wind up facing a fate worse than death. Directed by Kon Ichikawa but written by his wife under her professional name, Natto Wada, Ten Women in Black is far too attuned to the...
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The Hot Spot

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The whole neo-noir ‘90s thing is almost as inexplicable as the depression-era film fixation of the ‘70s; there was just something in the water. But it wound up producing some interesting left-of-center titles like Bound, The Last Seduction and After Dark, My Sweet . Ironically, the film with the best pedigree of the bunch, The Hot Spot (1990), didn’t even burn a hole in the upholstery. Directed by Dennis Hopper and starring Don Johnson, this almost Lynchian bit of small-town debauchery deserves more recognition than just being known as “that movie where Jennifer Connelly appears topless.” Rolling into town in his vintage Studebaker, Harry Madox (Johnson) is an opportunist who stumbles onto an easy bank robbery job. But after burying the loot, he’s blackmailed by his boss’s wife, Dolly, (Virginia Madsen) to continue their sexual escapades. Harry stays out of jail, but his real interests lie in starting a new life with the virginal Gloria (Connelly), if he can only manage to get...
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Cyclops

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David Cronenberg’s battle cry “Long live the New Flesh!” didn’t makes much of a dent in mainstream cinema. But for a select few filmmakers, the director’s unique take on human evolution – or de -evolution, as the case may be – echoed and amplified their own ideas about body horror. Joji Iida’s Cyclops (1987) is a V-cinema showcase of practical effects, teenage telepaths and misunderstood mutants that carries on Cronenberg’s biological revolution into distinctly Japanese territory. Continuing his mentor’s secret experiments, Tooru Takamori protects his adopted “sister,” Miyuki, from clandestine operatives while caring for his pregnant wife. As Miyuki begins to suspect a larger conspiracy, she becomes the focus of a menacing stranger hiding behind oversized sunglasses. But exactly what he’s hiding behind those shades is only the tip of the evolutionary iceberg. Cyclops drops viewers into a story that seems to be missing its opening chapters, forcing you to untangle a complicated ...
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Go

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Few films embrace the hedonistic nihilism of the Y2K phenomenon better than Go , director Doug Liman’s 1999 post- Pulp Fiction era comedy that shifts perspectives and narrative gears with giddy cinematic energy, sending its characters on an ecstasy-fueled bender…only to have them wake up and face another day of suburban monotony. Forget the run-on sentence, this is run-on filmmaking at its most frantic, flawed and fashionable. Facing impending eviction, grocery store cashier Ronna (Sarah Polley) recruits her fellow employees to score some X from a local drug dealer (Timothy Olyphant) in hopes of making a quick sale to two prospective buyers (Scott Wolf and Jay Mohr). But the plan goes awry, putting each character in a predicament that only seems to get worse as the night progresses. Using a Run Lola Run format, John August’s script starts over from the same spot every 20 minutes or so, following a new protagonist – and a new series of misadventures – that neatly weave together in ...
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TAG: The Assassination Game

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An obscure part of the John Carpenter multiverse, 1982’s Tag: The Assassination Game was written and directed by Carpenter collaborator Nick Castle, who also had the honor of playing “The Shape” in the original Halloween . And, despite being marketed as an ‘80s college comedy, it’s obvious Castle picked up a trick or two from his proximity to the famous slasher franchise as TAG is a surprisingly effective thriller that aims for Hitchcockian suspense way more often than laughs. A reporter on the school paper, Alex (Robert Carradine) proposes a feature on the campus “assassination” game in hopes of scoring with one of its star players, Susan (Linda Hamilton). But while they’re busy firing rubber darts, one competitor is really playing to win, racking up a body count not just on paper…but hidden in the back of his closet! Lifting several crew members from his Halloween days, Castle does a terrific job balancing the copious film noir references, relatively tame kill sequences and co-e...
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Laurin

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For any physical media collector how one organizes that collection is an intensely personal decision. Alphabetical by title? Grouped by genre? Year of release? Separated by director? Either way, shelving and rearranging new purchases is an important part of the process. But where do you put a film like Laurin (1989), director Robert Sigl’s slightly supernatural serial-killer period piece that slips between the cracks of easy description and seems to demand a category all its own. Essentially orphaned after the death of her mother, Laurin (Dora Szinetar) is convinced that her new teacher, Mr. Van Rees (Karoly Eperjes), is responsible for the disappearance of several children in the village. And her suspicions makes her a vulnerable target as the killer attempts to cover his tracks. A German film shot in Hungary with English-dubbed dialogue, Laurin feels out of step with reality from the get-go. Sigl mixes and matches visual influences ranging from Bava to Bergman almost indis...
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Shogun's Ninja

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Not every film is the result of personal artistic expression. Sometimes it’s difficult to disguise all the cooks in the kitchen juggling studio demands, passing fads and budgetary constraints. Shogun’s Ninja (1980) was released during a particularly tenuous time for Japanese cinema, with homegrown productions fighting for attention against Hollywood hits, the Hong Kong action craze and episodic television. That being the case, it winds up as one crazy grab bag of traditional chanbara, Jackie Chan-inspired stunts and desperate trend-chasing that appeals to no one – and everyone – at the same time! Set during the Warring States period of feudal Japan, Takamaru (Hiroyuki Sanada) returns from exile in China to extract his pound of flesh from Shiranui Shogen (Sonny Chiba), who murdered his family in bloody clan warfare. He’s joined by a cadre of surviving childhood friends and the daughter of a Shaolin monk who followed him on the journey back. But Takamaru’s training hasn’t prepared ...
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Lionheart / Death Warrant

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My name is Greg and I’m a JCVD apologist. Actually, there’s no official support group out there (not that I’m aware of, anyway), but it often feels like fans of the “Muscles from Brussels” should get together twice a month for a reassuring pat on the back. Putting the actor’s personal life aside, his filmography isn’t something the average Letterboxd user would brag about. But there’s something irresistible about the “go-for-broke” way Jean-Claude approaches every project; good, bad or brutally average, JCVD is always unashamedly himself. Lionheart (1990) finds him playing Lyon Gaultier, a deserter from the French Foreign Legion making his way to L.A. to visit his dying brother. Short on cash, Leo teams up with a street fight promoter (Harrison Page) and fights his way across the country, facing one badass after another, in hopes of providing financial support to his sister-in-law and five-year-old niece. Taking a kinder, gentler approach to the ‘90s action formula, director Sheld...
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