Tubi Thursday: Without Warning (1980)

 I was going to promote this, but, you know...

This is definitely a Cult Classic and somehow escaped my attention until today.

Let's jump right into the terror that is...

In the Cold Open, a Hunter- Cameron Mitchell- is out with his Son- who is a dead ringer for William Smith.

He's attacked by...something that throw alien creatures onto its neck and it seems to kill the son as well.

The Story proper involves a pair of couples going out to the same Woods.

Greg- a 70s TV Star that never broke out- is the real lead, but that is also a young David Caruso in his Film Debut.

I bet he wishes that it was First Blood.

We also get a long setup involving a Boy Scout Troop led by F-Troop's Larry Storch.

It leads to him being killed and they run away.
That's it.

The duos go swimming.  Our Heroes leave when Caruso and the lady start to make out.

Good call.

They wander back and the pair are gone.
They wander around until they find a shack and they find...

They drive to Town- after the unseen creature attacks the van- and run across the creepy guy from earlier- Martin Landau.

He believes their claims, but nobody believes him.

It all comes down to Jack Palance- who owned the Gas Station- and things don't go well.

The creature finally makes himself known when the duo hide out at a nearby House!

Early Kevin Peter Hall here to 'Serve Man.'

Greg is sadly killed, so our Final Girl must run away.

Fortunately, Palance and Landau (whose salaries were half of the Budget) are here for the big climax.

To see how it all plays out, stream it now.

A Film with really good moments, but boy does it take way too long between them.

The basic idea- an Alien comes to Earth to hunt Humans- sure is a good one.  Maybe you could get a big, Action Director like, say, John McTiernan to do it.
Hell, keep Kevin Peter Hall.

Oh, right.

The make-up work with the discs look good.  The effect of them flying...not always great.
Think of them less like frisbees and more like a creature throwing face huggers.

The Alien looks great.  More of it please.

If you can deal with the slower pace, this Film- which is close enough to the 1970s to be a '70s Film- has good moments of effects and action.

Now let's play a Game called Where's Alien?

A Greydon Clark Film that could have been really good.  If you can accept the slow pace, it's worth a watch as a Cult Classic.

Holiday Flix: Wacko (1982)

 A Horror Film Parody that came after Scream.  The 1981 Film Scream, to be clear.  That's what everyone means, right?

1982 brought us Wacko, a Parody of the then-recent trend of Slasher Films in the U.S.  Who else to make fun of other Movies than the Director of Angels Revenge and Black Shampoo.  Yes, it is Greydon Clark, the man who later bring us such Classics as Final Justice, The Uninvited and his magnum opus- StarGames.

The Plot is an intentional mish-mash of Halloween and Prom Night.  Weirdly, there's not a strong Jamie Lee Curtis Parody here.  Was that too obvious?  There is a John Travolta one, since...um, Carrie...I guess.

The Film features many Characters Actors of past and present, such as George Kennedy (also in Uninvited), Charles Napier (famous for battling Ron Jeremy's evil dick) and Joe Don Baker (also in Justice).

Is this a Parody Film for the ages or another Student Bodies?  To find out, read on...

A pumpkin-headed killer- played by Clark in this Scene- kills a girl, but leaves 2 survivors.

One of them is missing, while the other is our Final Girl- Julia Duffy from Newhart.

13 years later, Duffy's Mom (Stella Stevens- who would Guest Star on Newhart) and Dad (Kennedy) are...well, a bit off too.

A running gag involves him peeping on his Daughter...because reasons.
Also the little Brother is Damien...because other reasons.

A crazy man suspected of being the killer escapes this year, which drives a Detective- Joe Don Baker- to suspect that he will kill again.

Of course, he's a non-Walking Tall Joe Don Baker...so he's just a fat, crazy drunk.

The School is celebrating Halloween and Prom Night- see the Intro- on the same night...somehow.  It's a real mystery.

Here's a real topical joke for you- Hitchcock vs DePalma.

Napier- in his one Scene- tells Baker to let it go, but he won't.

He's also named Chief O'Hara.

Are you laughing yet?

The Film is essentially just a bunch of B-Plots and random gags.  They include...

- Andrew 'Dice' Clay as fake John Travolta, who's too horny.

- Duffy's Boyfriend- Norman Bates- getting excited and 'revving like a lawnmower.

- A creepy Principal.

- Kennedy being a terrible Doctor (it turns out his first name is just Doctor- ha).

- A Mad Scientist- who's apparently Joseph Mengele- mutating the Football Team...in a bit with no follow-up.

On the plus side, you can see that they fixed the typo from 2 pictures back.

Throughout the Film, Baker pursues some numerous suspects, including the Janitor (in a Scene where they literally say it is time to question the suspicious Janitor), a bald weido in a trenchcoat and a guy who keeps trying to get his attention.

The end of one chase with the bald guy ends in his car going up a ramp and...flying away.

Huh?!?

The Film FINALLY gets to the point in the last 20 minutes and the killer offs Clay and a few others.

They confront Duffy, who keeps maiming them and they keep getting back up.

It's a joke about how you can't kill Michael Meyers and Jason can't be killed.  Too bad they explain the joke.

Side-note: we were only 2 and 3 Films respectively into those Film Series' when this came out.  Think about that.

The killer turns out to be- dun dun dun- Baker the whole time.

The original killer did escape, but was nice now.
The bald weirdo was the traumatized kid from the beginning.

They all learn...um...I'll get back to you on that one.  The End.

A silly Film that can be fun.  Like Airplane or its ilk, they throw a joke a minute (often less) at you.  Unlike that Film, these jokes...aren't that funny.  Supposedly Clark bought a Parody Script and then got his friends to help him 'liven it up.'

That facts comes to you courtesy of a 2019 Director's Commentary on the Blu-Ray release.  As you can see, I did NOT get Caps from that release.

The Film is all over the place story and reference-wise.  While it directly parodies 2 Films (kind of), it also parodies Psycho, The Omen and others.  Why though?  On top of that, it is full of random stuff that is either creepy- like Kennedy's pervy dad- or just random- like Dr. Mengele.

I can see those guys hanging around for like 5-6 hours and getting drunk while pitching bits and lines.  It just feels like nobody sober then went behind them to polish this thing.  As such, it is less Airplane and more National Lampoon's Movie Madness.  Or, if you want a more modern comparison, it is less Scary Movie and more Scary Movie 5.

All of the best Comedies literally explain the joke to you, right?

Happy Halloween!  Just watch out for Lawnmowers.

Tubi Thursday: Black Shampoo (1976)

 Let's look back at a Film about a Hair Stylist who ends the Film wielding a Chainsaw.  Curious?
Read on...

In Los Angeles, a Hair Salon is bright (at least in the better, Blu-Ray print) and busy.

It's main Attraction?

The Lead Stylist- a big, black sex machine that's a hit with all the ladies.  No, you shut your mouth!  Rude.

He's here to keep setting up Scenes that are almost Porn...but nothing is visible on-camera.

I'm pretty sure that Machete was parodying this...

He falls head over heels for his Receptionist, which gives us the most romantic and forced montage until Julie & Jack.

What could go wrong?

Well, she used for a guy named- you guessed it- Mr. Big and he sends his goons to smash up the place to get her back.

Our Lead is always conveniently away when the bad things happen, since we have to save THAT for the Finale.

He gets all mopey when it seems like she really wants to be gone, but she's just protecting him.  Sadly, The Cure's first Album wouldn't come out until 1979, so he'd just have to settle for going to his Cabin.

She eventually takes some evidence from the bad guys and flees to him, getting the Salon (and random Customers) caught in the crossfire.

As teased by the Intro, we *finally* get something interesting as he fends off a trio of Gangsters with a small chainsaw!  He wins and the Film just cuts to a distorted frame.  The End.

Oh and did I mention that this was done by Greydon Clark?  Yes, the guy behind Stargames and Dark Future!  Same one!

This is...not as interesting as it might sound.  If you love that retro, '70s vibe and don't ask for much else, you get it here.  The Music, the Fashion- all of that.  Sadly, a great Story doesn't come with that.

Our Hero only has 3 Settings- Mildly-Bemused (when constantly asked for sex), Sad (when she's gone) and Pensively-Mad (see above).  He's not exactly the most emotive guy and you kind of need this when the Plot is thinner than a line of you-know-what at Studio 54.

Other than the funky (somewhat insistent) music and silly flourishes (like fading into a film distortion for every transition), there's little here to make the Film stand out amongst stuff like Black Samurai and the like.  Sadly, it got far less acclaim than, well, the 'white version'...

A fun concept kind of gets buried in all of the Montages and nothing.  A decent, random Ending saves it from being a complete loss.

Quick Review: Rifftrax vs. Greydon Clark

Greydon Clark is not the most famous of the 'Bad Movie Directors' out there.  He does hold a special place in the hearts of the Rifftrax Crew though, since they've done, well, a big chunk of his Filmography!

To begin, my most recent watch of the group and one they redid from MST3K.  If Joe Don can go for seconds, so can they?

The Plot: A Texas Lawman is stuck in Malta with an Italian Criminal he was trying to bring in.  He battles indigestion- not a joke, but a real Plot Point- and the Mob as he tries to get, well, the Title.

Thoughts: A serious misfire for a number of reasons.  The Film tries to have it both ways.  It has Joe Don as an 'unlikely Action Hero' with faults, but then also has him try to look bad-ass.  It's like if you cast modern Seagal as John McClane- it doesn't work.  It also looks and feels very cheap.  It's silly in a mostly bad way (if watched without Rifftrax of MST3K).  It's not as interesting as they clearly thought.  It's just bad and dumb, although it does feature Greydon as a guy named 'Bob,' so I'm happy.

Next up, Clark goes Horror for a Film I actually covered as a normal Film.  Well, normal is not the right word for this...

The Plot: A mutated monster hides out as a cat, but ends up on a bad guy's yacht with some random 'teens.'  The creature reveals itself in time, letting them try to fight for survival on the high seas!

Thoughts: A strange and silly Horror Film.  A cat-like monster hiding inside of a cat puppet-thing kills some evil Businessman and some 'teens' on a boat.  Who thinks of that?  Oh right- the guy who would write Satan's Sadists!  Seriously, what is this creature?  On the plus side, it is complete trash, completely-dated and features a sad George Kennedy.  The guy feels worse being in the Film than I feel watching it (unriffed- like I did).  It's a bizarre mess.  On the plus side, it features one of Greydon's kids in this Sequel Bait...

Now we get to the tail end of Clark's Film Career.  Can his second-to-last Film be his best?

The Plot: Surviving Humans are forced to live in some sort of Train/Subway Station by Robot Overlords.  One guy discovers a baby is born and leads a revolution.  Children of Men this is not.

Thoughts: A weird mess of a Film.  An off-screen Robot Apocalypse apparently happened and leads to surviving Humans being forced to live in a Subway Station running Night Clubs.  So is this just reverse Westworld?  The Effects are cheap, the Plot is dumb and the Acting is...yeah, it's bad.  The whole thing then takes a weird turn that I still don't really (care to) understand.  It's just dumb.  On the plus side, it features the first Andy Sidaris Film Lead I saw- Cody from Malibu Express.

For the finale, we have the Film so bad that it gets name-dropped as 'shit' in the other Clark Riffs.  It's also his last Film, so enjoy...

The Plot: A Space Prince (not to be confused with the Prince of Space) crash lands on Earth and befriends a kid.  Can they survive in the Wild AND escape the Alien threat now leveled at both of them?

Thoughts: Clark's magnum opus of insanity.  Why is this the most infamous Film of his?  Well, besides being his last, he also cast his two Sons as the Leads.  Casting Brothers as kids that aren't related- always a winning strategy!  The actual Plot is just plain nuts.  On top of that, he somehow roped Tony Curtis into this!  Most notably, it features a Compute A.I. that appears as...Pennywise?

There you have it- Rifftrax's four Greydon Clark Films- so far.  Here's hoping for more, as this guy made cheap crap that we can all enjoy (ironically)!

Impossibly-Cool Cover Art: Uninvited

A Cat can be scary- granted.
A Cat Puppet- less so.

Throw in George Kennedy and Clu Gulager and NOW you've got some Horror.

Take it from this Poster for the Film in question...

Ghost Cat!
Cat Cloud?

"Hey Steve, did the Forecast mention anything about giant, floating Cat Heads in the sky?"
"Yeah, 40 percent chance- why?"
"Um...no reason."

Here's the original...

As with some of these, I didn't change *that* much.  I didn't need to though, right?

Lost in Translation(?): Uninvited (1989)

Remember this Film?  It's the one where the alien monster hides inside of a cat.

It's also the Film where the Truck rolls over and 'breaks glass' about 200 times.

How do you sell this to a French-speaking market?  How do you make it seem like it has that certain je ne sais quois?

Let's see...

Wow.

A lot to unpack there...

Cat Puppet.  Monster Puppet (that looks like a cat giving birth through its mouth).  Cruise Ship.  Green sky.  George Kennedy.

Sold?

Here's the original...

Color and contrast.  Plus, as you can see, I did not make that sky green- they did!

Not Patrick: Psychic Killer

Well, it's MUCH better than Patrick Still Lives.  I'll admit it- I still feel stupid about that movie.  For you newer readers, here's the short version: I thought that I had found a sequel to 1975's Patrick, but it was actually Italian Remake-sploitation.  They use the same basic premise, but make it Ten Little Indians-style about 'Patrick' killing people with silly powers like psychically-heating up a pool.  To be fair, it's so stupid that it's funny as hell!  With that bad memory, I was wary of today's movie- Psychic Killer.  Well, much to my surprise, it's not that bad.  It's not that great either, but it is much better than the previous film mentioned. A man gets psychic powers, so he decides to get revenge in roughly a 72-hour time-span.  You're new to this whole 'crime thing' for someone who was in Prison!  It's like Patrick meets The Abominable Dr. Phibes (which was made around the same time)!  To find out why this movie succeeds and fails, read on...

Our hero has a major freak-out in the intro.  What does this have to do with anything?  Nothing.  Moving on...

After having one conversation with a black inmate about being wrongfully-convicted, the man uses his voodoo powers to kill a pimp and transfers his powers to our hero in death.

He is set free when a man says that he committed the crime and...I realize that it doesn't really work that way.  It might have in the '70s, but whatever.

Back at home (which he still owns?), he learns about how his powers work.  Revenge time!

His first kill involves making a cheating psychiatrist hear voices, wander outside and...apparently snapping his neck.  If you could figure that out from just what they showed, congratulations.

Another- the Nurse that abandoned his mother- is killed when he turns the shower really hot and she crashes herself through the glass doors.  He didn't make her do that, mind you, but...murder, I guess.

What is it with Patrick films and water attacks?  There's the pool scene from Patrick, this one and the super-heated pool from Patrick Still Lives.  Weird, right?

In another kill, he takes out the dubious cop who got him arrested by making his gas pedal stay down.  Apparently the idea of just blocking the pedal with his foot never occurred to him...so he dies.

Since our hero is obviously tied to the people killed, he's the main suspect.  This makes our Non-Trout-Cop call in his Therapist...who says that she drove 300 miles to get there.  How far away was the Prison again?

By the way, this lead to a romance angle.  Dull surprise.

The pair join forces with a guy who basically says that 'the mind can do anything.'  He's a Doctor, by the way.  Thanks, '70s.

How will they defeat this all-powerful psychic?

It's simple- they rush his comatose body to be cremated, burning him alive.  That's...dark.  The End.

Better late than never.  This film is both easy to recommend and hard to recommend.  I like to begin these summaries in a confusing manner- just to trick you into continuing to read.  This movie has some good, silly moments that make it an easy recommendation.  Whether it's the shower kill (with nudity to boot) or the guy crushed by a giant stone while singing opera into a tape recorder, this movie has some amusing moments.  On the other hand, the pacing is really weird and the story is not that great.  It's taken very seriously, which is a nice juxtaposition to the silly bits.  The ending, therefore, comes off as really dark and twisted.  It's a pretty logical conclusion, but it still comes out of nowhere tone-wise.  In summary, this is a neat, rare flick to track down if you're into that kind of thing.  As a whole, it's odd in both pacing and tone.  Sorry to drop a non-committal brick on your head like that...

Next up, a week full of Seagal films.  I'm a glutton for punishment- which is why I'm covering The Foreigner. Stay tuned...