The Grindhouse Report

[nate]

Illness has made me miss the past few days of B-Movie TV, but I usually dig their Thursday action theme. Even though the puzzle is part of the charm, I wish they didn't have to always go so cryptic on their FB page.

[nate]

Is this LaFontaine on the "Cut and Run" trailer?

[piranesi]

Illness has made me miss the past few days of B-Movie TV, but I usually dig their Thursday action theme. Even though the puzzle is part of the charm, I wish they didn't have to always go so cryptic on their FB page.

 

Thursday night ACTION:

 

- A bunch of teenagers

- a van

- weed

- a drive out to the desert

Whatever might happen?

A SURVIVAL RUN (1979), that's What!!!

 

What looks like it's starting as a slasher or hills-have-eyes thing, turns a little different when we meet the bad guy who is

RAY FUCKING MILLAND????

 

RAY MILLAND???

Yes, Ray Milland.

I kind of love how aristocratic Ray Milland looks and sounds and yet how willing he is to be in anything.  Like one he lost his hair, he kind of had no choice but get a sense of humor about himself.

And just when you thinkHEY PETER GRAVES!!!!

 

who says this:

"Batista, more beer for the kids!"

This movie is terrible though.  It's like a backdoor pilot they might have shoved into a crossover episode of THE WHITE SHADOW and THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN but it was just going to be called THE [non-bionic] WHITE(s).

They keep playing this horrible song that begins ""We are  young.  We are free.  Anybody knwo a better way to be?  Takin' it easy.  My baby and me!" that I can't find anywhere.  Note that all the lines of the song end rhyming with "free" because the original title of the movie was SPREE.

 

As the teens wander around and stumble on...

cannibals

serial killers

gold prospectors?????

who are aren't really prospecting but  doing something horribly criminal so they need to like kill everyone

But it doesn't matter because Ray Milland says things like

"Your youth is a treasure greater than all the gold in all the deserts of the world."

and "I advise you to address  yourself to the rather formidable jeopardy these strangers have introduced to our endeavor."

and when Ray Milland says things like that they sound glorious.  In fact the only reason this movie was made was so that we can have a few scenes of Peter Graves and Ray Milland barking at each other  Sure it's not Lee vs. Cushing but it's about the closest you are going to get from a director whose IMDB page lists "ABC NUTRITION SPOTS" as a thing.

"So far you've just tasted far edge of experience.  The inner essence is an undiscovered secret."

When one of the teen girls tires to hit on Ray Milland (maybe mockingly given his age) he i utterly withering and sends her scampering.  RAY MILLAND IS THE GREATEST MAN WHO EVER LIVED...

 

 

He's like the Arn Anderson of droll.

 

 

God, 45 minutes in and finally some teenagers are dying!  This movie is the absolute pits.

 

[nate]

Ray Milland saw the face of god, and *still* wasn't sure if Columbo killed one of the Robert Culp villains' car with a potato in the tailpipe.

Wait, what?

[piranesi]

Ray Milland saw the face of god, and *still* wasn't sure if Columbo killed one of the Robert Culp villains' car with a potato in the tailpipe.

Wait, what?

 

One of the best Columbo moments ever is in the other Milland, where Milland is the killer and Columbo presents his final clue to him that seals his fate.  The look of exasperation he gives.  And then when Bob Dishy tries to read him his rights, Milland turns and stares him down and just walks out to the waiting police cars.

 

He's also wearing a swank toupee in that episode.

[piranesi]

On B movie TV right now:

 

Cirio H. Santiago's 1984 MAD MAX ripoff: WHEELS OF FIRE

 

IF YOU THOUGHT MAX WAS MAD - MEET TRACE!

 

Trace.

 

So far this movie is a masterpiece and has given us a pit fight to the death and three car explosions to the death.

 

So far the characters I've met are named:

 

Trace

Stinger

Arlie

Spike

Scourge

Whiz

Scag

 

If there's one thing Cirio is good at, it is taking the pittance that Roger Corman gave him to make a movie and cutting every corner to make sure that if nothing else everything is always moving and there are always lots of people running around making it feel epic AND TRACE IS FLAME THROWERING EVEYRONE!!! PHILIPPINO STUNT MEN ARE ON FIRE AGAIN!!!!

 

Seriously though.  I'm now 17 minutes in and I've seen

 

Pit fight

Car chase

Car explosions

Flame thrower attack

Gun fight

Flame thrower assault on a stone tower???

2n car chase leading to kidnapping and attempted rape (It's a Roger Corman movie guys)

 

and we just got one of those signature Cirio shots where a guy jumps off a mountain like 30 feet up and lands on his feet in a cutaway that is clearly just a guy jumping up and down in front of the camera.

 

This goddamn movie trucks, man.  It is built for the metabolism of an eleven year old with an direct I.V. line of Cap'n Crunch and HOLY SHIT I THINK THEY JUST ANALLY RAPED A DUDE and NOW THEY"RE DRAGGING HIM BEHIND A CAR!!!!

 

edit: at 32 minutes we are introduced to the mole people/sandmen who are cannibals who live underground...and to a girl who knows this because she can read people's minds...MAD MAX RIPOFF MY ASS  THis is 100% CIRIO H> SANTIAGO!! 

 

(note: it's also 100% Roger Corman so we now get to our third rape scene). But if you're doing the math that makes this 200% of a movie!!!!  TRACE IS FIGHTIN THE MOLE PEOPLE!!!!!

 

39 mins: we add a Phillipino dwarf named mud and (oh, yeah a gang rape scene...FUCKING CORMAN!)

 

I can't believe this movie is only like half over or maybe less.  I feel like like I've watched three movies and two snuff films.

 

43 mins: we add a camp full of hippies building a rocket ship to leave the planet (and a quick rape)

 

Most of the clan of bad guys seem to be wearing scuba gear in the desert.  You'd think that would make raping less convenient and attractive but apparently not because just in the time it took me to type this line we get another rape.  At this point, Cirio is using raping as establishing shots.

 

HEY!  48 mins: A CONSENSUAL SEX SCENE!!!!!  It's amazing.  Cirio superimposes them against the firey sky of a setting sun in beautiful slow motiAND ANOTHER RAPE SCENE....

 

Guys, I want to like this movie so much.  But it just keeps raping.

[nate]

That was indeed an assload of rape.

[piranesi]

Illness has made me miss the past few days of B-Movie TV, but I usually dig their Thursday action theme. Even though the puzzle is part of the charm, I wish they didn't have to always go so cryptic on their FB page.

 

They just provided some reason for that:

 

 

Some copyrights holders of certain movies have a part in the contract about no mention on social media. This goes for other channels on Roku as well. So if you want to know a name of a film at a given date or time you are welcome to PM us. Believe me I wish I could it would make my life much easier!

[piranesi]

I'm watching NECRONOMICON: BOOK OF THE DEAD (1993) on B movie tv.  So far it's pretty slow but with huge B movie names popping up and beng amazing:

 

Jeffrey Combs

Richard Lynch

Dan Calfa

David Warner

Gary Graham

 

But I was stunned, stunned to hear this music in the background score in one scene:

 

 

As the title gives away it's the same as this:

 

 

which is one of my favorite pieces of credit music ever.  Although I had never looked it up or anything to see who wrote it.  For a second I thought this was going to be a huge SCANDAAAAAHHHL!

 

But it turns out Daniel Licht wrote the score for NECRONOMICON and the end credits song for DEXTER so it's cool.  But it freaked me out when it popped up in the movie.

 

The movie is an omnibus of Lovecraft stories using the book as a framing device.  It's a little too determined to build mood and it builds to some nice gothic/macabre images that are perfectly horrifying on their own...but it...is...slloooooow. 

 

But, damn.  David Warner gets a really good "guy who is 100s of years old melts when his spell or whatever wears off" scene.  really slow and painful and he's panicking and clawing at his ribs and bones as his flesh melts away....good gross stuff, movie!

[Cliff Hanger]

Combs playing someone other than Herbert West in a Lovecraft anthology seems really wrong.

[piranesi]

Well, he does play Lovecraft.

 

But he looks super weird in it too.  Like, every time I see him in something he looks like his face is shaped different.

[nate]

What was the B-Movie TV Sun 8:00 movie? Looked crazy as hell.

[J.T.]

On B movie TV right now:

 

Cirio H. Santiago's 1984 MAD MAX ripoff: WHEELS OF FIRE

 

IF YOU THOUGHT MAX WAS MAD - MEET TRACE!

 

Trace.

 

So far this movie is a masterpiece and has given us a pit fight to the death and three car explosions to the death.

 

So far the characters I've met are named:

 

Trace

Stinger

Arlie

Spike

Scourge

Whiz

Scag

 

If there's one thing Cirio is good at, it is taking the pittance that Roger Corman gave him to make a movie and cutting every corner to make sure that if nothing else everything is always moving and there are always lots of people running around making it feel epic AND TRACE IS FLAME THROWERING EVEYRONE!!! PHILIPPINO STUNT MEN ARE ON FIRE AGAIN!!!!

 

Seriously though.  I'm now 17 minutes in and I've seen

 

Pit fight

Car chase

Car explosions

Flame thrower attack

Gun fight

Flame thrower assault on a stone tower???

2n car chase leading to kidnapping and attempted rape (It's a Roger Corman movie guys)

 

and we just got one of those signature Cirio shots where a guy jumps off a mountain like 30 feet up and lands on his feet in a cutaway that is clearly just a guy jumping up and down in front of the camera.

 

This goddamn movie trucks, man.  It is built for the metabolism of an eleven year old with an direct I.V. line of Cap'n Crunch and HOLY SHIT I THINK THEY JUST ANALLY RAPED A DUDE and NOW THEY"RE DRAGGING HIM BEHIND A CAR!!!!

 

edit: at 32 minutes we are introduced to the mole people/sandmen who are cannibals who live underground...and to a girl who knows this because she can read people's minds...MAD MAX RIPOFF MY ASS  THis is 100% CIRIO H> SANTIAGO!! 

 

(note: it's also 100% Roger Corman so we now get to our third rape scene). But if you're doing the math that makes this 200% of a movie!!!!  TRACE IS FIGHTIN THE MOLE PEOPLE!!!!!

 

39 mins: we add a Phillipino dwarf named mud and (oh, yeah a gang rape scene...FUCKING CORMAN!)

 

I can't believe this movie is only like half over or maybe less.  I feel like like I've watched three movies and two snuff films.

 

43 mins: we add a camp full of hippies building a rocket ship to leave the planet (and a quick rape)

 

Most of the clan of bad guys seem to be wearing scuba gear in the desert.  You'd think that would make raping less convenient and attractive but apparently not because just in the time it took me to type this line we get another rape.  At this point, Cirio is using raping as establishing shots.

 

HEY!  48 mins: A CONSENSUAL SEX SCENE!!!!!  It's amazing.  Cirio superimposes them against the firey sky of a setting sun in beautiful slow motiAND ANOTHER RAPE SCENE....

 

Guys, I want to like this movie so much.  But it just keeps raping.

 

I saw this when I was in college and remember thinking that the people in this version of post apocalypse earth are the cleanest, healthiest, best armed, and most well dressed people of all.

 

Even The Book of Eli had the good taste to remember that bullets, food, and running water weren't always available.

[piranesi]

This needs to be pinned. This is like a public service, especially to folks like us that lost so much great stuff that was on VHS...

 

Robot Ninja with Burt Ward

Lady Terminator

Deadbeat at Dawn

Last Orgy of the Third Reich

Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-a-rama

Texas Chainsaw Hookers

 

Such classics, all sadly gone now...

 

LADY TERMINATOR on B Movie Tv right freaking now!

[Curt McGirt]

Piranesi, you're gonna have to watch this: 

 

 

http://mikesfilmtalk.com/2015/06/22/death-squad-aka-2047-sights-of-death-what-a-mess/

 

It's on TMC right now and I'm on the verge of changing the channel but the fact that you have Danny Glover, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Stephen Baldwin and RUTGER FUCKING HAUER just making shit up as they go along on an Italian soundstage in 2014 is surreal. 

 

Rutger Hauer was just brushing his teeth for no reason. Then he told Daryl Hannah to "just stop being (long pause)... so goddamn sexy." I have no idea what this film is about and nobody else does either.

 

I SWEAR TO GOD HAUER JUST SAID "FORTUNATE COOKIE".

 

After watching this, I'm convinced that some head member of la Camorra or 'Ndrangheda or some other mafia group secretly funded this film as a way to 1. wash money, and 2. make their kid a movie they might like with a bunch of name actors he saw in other films. I mean, it's not like a film industry still exists in Italy and this got into the theaters there.

[nate]

I watched both "Lady Terminator" and "Machine Girl" over the weekend. Great double bill.

[Jingus]

Don't ya just hate it when you're watching an otherwise tolerable movie, but there's this One Damn Thing that's driving you crazy? It's not a big thing. Not a major part of the film. In fact, it's a small thing, which happens and then is done with in mere seconds. But that One Damn Thing is almost enough to drive you away from the movie entirely.

Welcome to me watching The Barbarians. Considering that this is an Italian sword-and-sandal released in 1987 (long after the fad had peaked), starring a couple of bodybuilding non-actors, while being produced by Golan-Globus and being directed by Ruggero Deodato... I mean, one must be forgiven that assuming the movie would have a large chance of sucking very hard indeed. But it's surprisingly not a bad movie at all; it's more about comradeship and familial love than it is about hacking people up with broadswords, and despite some terrible punchlines the film actually manages to have a pretty good sense of humor. There's a tongue-in-cheek feeling of "yeah, we know EXACTLY what this is" which is contagiously amusing. Even the infamous Barbarian Brothers, despite being nobody's idea of a pair of great thespians, manage to hold their own.

But that One Damn Thing! You see, despite the Barbarian Brothers looking completely identical, the movie oddly tries to give them kinda different personalities. Let us call them "the Leonardo" and "the Michaelangelo". And, for some fucking reason, the Michaelangelo has an unusual catchphrase: when especially amused or upset, he starts braying like a donkey. LOUDLY. And it is the worst sound I have ever heard in my life. It's like some drunken fratboy has this one thing he does at parties which makes his buddies laugh, and he won't stop doing it. Although Barbarian #2 has only made this sound maybe three or four times in the entire movie, I live in constant, cringing, paranoid terror that he might do it again at any moment and that blood might begin spurting out of my ears. For the love of God, man, STOP DOING THAT!

[Jingus]

Upon first learning that Sonny fucking Chiba starred in a Golgo fucking 13 movie back in the 70s, my first response was "why the fuck haven't I heard about this before?!" Unfortunately, having now watched Golgo 13: The Kowloon Assignment, I know the answer. It's just not very good.

It tries to be a jack of all genres, master of none. Is this a "police chase a criminal" procedural in the style of Le Samourai? Is it a whiz-bang high-tech spy movie? Is it a sleazy brutal Sonny-Chiba-in-the-70s affair which makes you want to take the hottest of disinfecting showers afterwards? The sad conclusion I came to is that the movie tries to be all of the above, but in a rather half-hearted manner. The movie actually spends more time focusing on the police who are trying to catch super-assassin Duke Togo than on the man himself, to the point where Golgo 13 almost feels like a special guest star in his own damn franchise.

It doesn't help that the movie's got a lot of sloppy fight choreography, with too many obviously-whiffed airballs among the various strikes thrown. And the action in general feels parsimonious and perfunctory; it's clearly supposed to be fun movie carnage, but it's doled out in awfully small portions. The 70s Sleaze Factor also feels begrudgingly tacked-on; there's a little bit of bloodshed and a tiny amount of the usual misogyny you'd expect in this time/place/genre, but not much. (The standard-issue "thuggish hero rescues a prostitute and acquires her as a trophy girlfriend" subplot makes a cameo here, but the movie seems to literally forget about her after a certain point.) If you edited out a couple of headshots and all ten seconds of nudity, this would easily get a PG-13 rating today. Add on some bad dubbing (but not bad enough to be funny) and a total lack of colorful characters besides Togo himself, and it's sadly easy to see why nobody ever mentions the one time that Sonny fucking Chiba played Golgo fucking 13.

[nate]

B-Movie TV has been showing trailers for For Your Height Only.

Dare I dream?

[piranesi]

I feel kind of dumb right now.  I've been watching a pretty decent little 1986 "drug thugs chase a cop and kid in the woods" movie on B Movie TV called QUIET COOL.

and I recognized Nick Cassavetes and I recognized awesome "Old lady who was never not old" Fran Ryan.

note: Yes, you know who Fran Ryan is.  From this:

or a million other things. She was an old lady from roughly 1966 through about 1993. 

But I couldn't place the face of the lead guy, who was well cast as he was pretty damned quiet and pretty damned cool all throughout for a standard jeans/leather jacket 80s action guy:

Until I closed my eyes and just listened to his voice and suddenly it was so damned clear.

Clearly I need to rewatch THE WARRIORS.

 

And there was a another dude I was sure was a young Brian Cranston and it turned out to be Chris Mulky who is literally in everything ever made:

 

Anyway, this is like the most "working actor" movie I've ever seen.  I don't think there's a single person in it who doesn't have at least 200 random t.v. credits scattered across multiple decades.  Including a bit part for Bob Shaye, the guy who founded New Line and produced like, every Nightmare on Elm Street movie. and OH SHIT THE TWIST IS THAT FRAN RYAN IS THE BIG BAD THAT IS SO FUCKIGN AWESOME YOU ACT THE SHIT OUT OF THAT DEATH SCENE FRAN RYAN I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!!!

 

This is the kind of movie that sounds like this:

 

THEY TOOK IT TOO FAR

THEY FELL IN TOO DEEP

TOO SCARED TO SURRENDER!!

I'm on a mission I know what I gotta do!

One condition.  They're gonna face quiet cool.

 

QUIIIET COOOOOOOOL!

and goddammit that is my favorite kind of movie.

VERDICT: HIHGLY RRECOMMEND YOU WATCH THIS MOST OF THE TIME YOU AREN"T SLEEPING!

[piranesi]

So Bob Vance from the office

 

 

had his own slasher mini-franchise back in the early 90s.

 

He was PSYCHO COP and he was PSYCHO COP 2: PSYCHO COP RETURNS which seems like a bit of a tautological title.

 

They're terrible.  But the trailers are pretty great.  They start with with the Spuds McKenzie 1980s Weekend at Bernie's Spring Break Bachelor Party attitude and then veer off into cheap nudity and cheaper splatters.

 

 

But I do love that in the trailer they actually list the character archetypes by label:

"Miles David Dougal as the hapless yuppy nerd!  Roderick Darren as the life of the party! 1993 Penthouse Pet of the year July Straight as the Bombshell in the teeny leather chaps!  Barbara Alexander as ace accountant Sharon Welles!"

Ace Accountant!!!

The cast list on IMDB leads to a pretty fantastic glossary of absurd z-movies from the early 90s onward. Sadly it's one of those Married with Children era "slashers" where there is no pretense that it is supposed to be frightening or even have jump scares...just be as sleazy and lowbrow as possible. 

Although the ending is both clever and really offensive:

 

 

the fake-cop killer is beaten by a group of bystanders while it is all filmed by an onlooker a la Rodney King.  This being filmed in probably in late 1992 it's a pretty grotesque joke and also one that is like a weird historical footnote probably unrecognized by anyone not ancient-years-old.  But how many slashers have the killer actually confronted by a real-world mob who take action to defeat him?

 

It's weird to think that all these pseudo-porny B movie starlets in this movie were the same age I was when this was made.  What the fuck was I doing?

 

[(BP)]

Wait, Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration? 

[Meltzing Pot]

Something B-Movie TV does sometimes that I appreciate is show a movie, then show you it's sequel the next week. When I realized that they would be showing Psycho Cop 2 last night, I was really excited. Sadly, I fell asleep watching it, but caught enough of the "bachelor party" to know that this movie is wonderful. This is the saddest of bachelor parties, as it's held at the main character's workplace, and is literally just like 3 or 4 dudes hanging out with some strippers at work. Could you imagine your best man coordinating a bachelor party for you, and the best he can come up with is "fuck it, we'll do it at work!" I need to finish watching this movie, as what I did see was amazing. Also of note is that this was a fairly thriving sub-genre in the early-90s, as you also had the Maniac Cop series. God bless B-Movie TV.

[Curt McGirt]

PSYCHO COP!!! There was a video store down by my grandmother's house that I used to walk to and I remember seeing those in the horror section. I think I caught one of them on semi-scrambled HBO. 

[nate]

Pharyngitis kept me from watching this one last night, but I was amused at the considerably porn tasting* performance of one stripper faux-doggystyling the other one.

* I wrote "porntastic" but this is what autocorrect did to it.  Damn, Galaxy S5, what are *you* up to while I'm away....