My Mom's a Werewolf - 1989

I put 1987 and then I rethought and figured it was 1985 before I found it was 1989.  You need backstory on these years don't you?  No?  Oh, sorry.

I'm charging through the boxset, and I'm sure I'll slow down, but for right now, here's My Mom's a Werewolf.  MMW is the story of a bland suburban house mom that is bored and frustrated with her husband, feeling neglected, and entertains the fancy of a local werewolf played by John Saxon.  John Saxon bites her toe and soon enough, mom is changing into a werewolf.

This is a comedy obviously, and although it was not funny, I did find it entertaining.  The 80's charm is in full swing as the corny music plays, and it's appealing in the low-value way.  For a Friday night rental with the kids, which is probably what it was going for, it fills the void.

It went quick, and it wasn't too bad.  The werewolf makeup is even alright, and the acting was good enough.  Without checking IMDb I would bet these people have all made movies before and after.  This wasn't a single movie for anyone involved, I wouldn't think.

I give it a average 2.5

The Howling V: The Rebirth - 1989

I knew the first Howling came out in the early 80's, but I did not know they had this quickly gotten to the 5th sequel.  The 5th sequel, and another sequel not based on the books.

I'm working towards The Howling, the original from 1981.  I guess I'm going to see and chronicle these sequels before I get around to rewatching the first Howling.  I don't intend on seeing The Howling Reborn from 2011, but I will watch Howling 6 and probably 7.

The Howling V is a pretty far take-off from the first 4 which I've reviewed most of.  I did watch Howling 4, and not review it, a mistake which I regret (if you're wondering).  I'll write a retrospective review of number 4 sometime, if I don't convince myself to rewatch it.

Howling 5 is a murder mystery wodunnit type of film, it's the kind of thing we've seen before in many different horror or suspense movies.  The movie stars no one I've seen in anything else, and the director was the co-director to MST3k favorite Space Mutiny.  A bunch of random ass strangers get invited to a Hungarian castle, and when they arrive some of them start getting knocked off.  Turns out they all have things in common, and the guy who invited them has reason to believe one of the invited guests might be a werewolf.

It's relatively slow moving, and the plot is unoriginal as sin.  I think I've seen this exact movie before, actually, except it took place in a mansion.  House on Haunted Hill is basically the same thing is what I'm saying.  And this movie is a huge departure from the other Howling movies as well.  At this point, the series has no theme of any type, and the plots are all over the place.  That said, I guess this is exactly like the others in that case?

Full of dialogue, full of accents, and with a little bit of nudity, it gets something like a 1.5.

The Hot Box - 1972

Women in Prison films I explored maybe 1-2 times on here before.  It's not my favorite of the cult genres, but it's one I go to if I want to see rampant nudity, perhaps some rape, and mindless action violence.  And last night, I wanted all of that.

Produced and co-written by Jonathan Demme, this is from the Corman wheelhouse and also the Filipino director Cirio H. Santiago.  If you don't know, that means schlock, exploitation, and cheapo budgets with non-actors and minimal outlook the whole way round.

The Hot Box was filmed in the Philippians, and it has four hot American nurses who are captured by a group of guerrillas early into the movie.  They are swiped from the beach, taken by this ridiculous overacting stereotype guy and I begin to think "oh no" about how good this will be, but soon they're traded off to another group of guerrillas, a group who is actually sensible and decently written.  I guess future Academy Award winner Demme did his job decently here.

There's lots of absurd nudity in the first 30 or so minutes as the girls bathe, as the girls have their shirts torn off for various reasons.  The nudity slows from time to time after that, and then ramps up again towards the end.  They didn't ever get any full nudity in here, no crotch shots in this one, but the tits are good and there's plenty of them, so your appetite will be fulfilled.

It's above average for this type of thing. The women are well written, and two or so of them are actual developed people for once.  The guerrillas are made to be sympathetic, and it's done well.  The movie is overly long again, and I checked how much was left many times towards the end.  It drags it's ass and you'll be distracted for sure, but overall, whatev.  It ain't too bad.  I give it 3.

The Mad Bomber - 1972

"Dorn didn't have to keep a diary, the newspaper did it for him."  This was a great line from this Bert I. Gordon directed film, a director which I don't believe we've seen on this blog before. 

I put on The Mad Bomber because the Amazon art was amazing and because I wanted something 70s again.  There's been a lineup of 80s movies recently, and I was wanting something with that slower, more character driven build I now equate to the 1970s.

IMDb claims this movie is from 1973 and called The Police Connection.  Also known as Detective Geronimo.  The plot is described as "Los Angeles detectives Minelli and Blake must track down a serial rapist who may know the identity of a mentally disturbed bomber."  And yes, that does happen, in the first like 20-30 minutes, but really for most of the film we follow the bomber himself, William Dorn as played by odd looking Chuck Connors.

William Dorn is a driven man.  Tall and a big gangly lookin, William starts bombing places early into the movie, much like the movie I just saw, The Train Killer.  Also like Train Killer, motivation and reasoning goes unexplained, and instead we watch both killer and the police detective who's chasing after him.  A hospital is bombed while a rapist is in there doing his thing, and soon enough the police nab the rapist and get a description of the man,  After a hilarious scene where they're artist rendering his face, police are after Dorn!

The Mad Bomber felt inspired by Dirty Harry quite a bit, but with a more human and centered killer.  It has that same gritty bad boy cop and unreasonable but somehow contained killer.  I liked the movie, I think it was compelling and the killer was well played.  I give it a 3.5 star rating.

The Train Killer - 1983

Also known as Viadukt.

I put this on because the name, The Train Killer.  I thought this might be a horror movie, and I also figured it might be a suspense or a thriller.  It actually turned out to be a dramatic story, one that I have to say was well done and interesting.  I had a feeling this might have been dubbed, and sure enough it was Hungarian originally.

Szilveszter Matuska is a war veteran and husband in post war Europe.  I think this movie took place in Germany, I wasn't too sure.  Either way we start with a preamble about how Matuska is disgruntled and ready to start derailing trains.  No real explanation is given, as to why, but we watch as he goes out and tries an initial attempt, unbolting some screws from the track.

As his first attempt is unsuccessful, he continues to try and do it, while he goes about his life in general.  He is a put together man, and I admire the way they made him likable instead of a psychopath.  He's charming, outgoing, successful.  And as he tries to derail trains, his smarts eventually figure out how to do it.  Making a train jump the tracks with little to no injuries, and eventually, detonating dynamite on a bridge and killing many people.

The movie is ambiguous in intent.  Matuska is neither a villain nor a hero, and we get an almost opinionless view of his actions.  People around him are horrified, and it also seems the Hungarian government knows what he's doing and approves of it, so around him is motivation, while he himself just claims he wants "to show people".

I wasn't expecting much, but this is honestly pretty compelling in it's storytelling.  We follow Matuska, and we witness the train accidents.  They probably destroyed real trains from the look of it, either way if it's models it looks fantastic.  The characterizations of those around him seem realistic and they're all dynamic people.  Main actor Michael Sarrazin really nailed the role, and several other characters were all well acted.  It was a great movie....  I dunno dude.

Review 500!  It makes sense this one was just a standard ass, "from the boxset" review that went unnoticed by me.  But at least it was a good movie.

The Patriot - 1986

Action movies?  Is that the theme I should be expecting here, on the Excellent Eighties boxset? So far, I've had three action movies on here.  Have to say, I would not be disappointed.  I'd go for that.  Action movies are satisfying as fuck.

In this one, some guy that looks like a rip off of William Hurt stars as a guy with a gun, and he has to protect somethin' or other and be with a girl who is dating the bad guy...  or eventually the dude becomes the bad guy. Not William Hurt gets the girl, there's a bit of nudity, and there is a nuke somewhere.

Leslie Nielsen had a "role" that was more of a cameo, there was an okay amount of action, and things happened from my memory.  It struck me how, in these movies, the average action hero goes from simple dude to a killing machine in like 15 minutes.  I thought of this with Laser Mission too.  Brandon Lee is just a dude.  In this, fake William Hurt is at least in the army.  But these guys get into the plot, pick up a gun and just start mowing down red-shirts left and right.  What about the value of human life?

Despite being clearly limited in terms of locations and budget, this movie was fine.  No big time lessons learned or missed, nothing major, just a whatever action movie for a Wednesday night home in the cabin (these were the conditions I watched it under).  I guess 2.5?

Deathrow Gameshow - 1987

I put on Deathrow Gameshow with the intention that I was not going to watch the whole thing.  Watch the first 20-30 minutes or so, I thought, and get it out of the way.  Save myself some torture later.

However, this is a movie that I also had known the name of because I've ran across it on IMDb and on lists of all sorts before.  I guess it has a bit of a following, because I have heard about it for literally years.

It's sad that I know this cover art so well.

The first thing I noticed about the movie that kept me watching, it is a comedy.  A comedy where, early on in the movie I actually laughed, hard, at a joke they made.  I believe it was some of the fake commercials.  I dunno man, I am a fan of fake commercials. 

From there we get the story of a Robocop-esque future where things are slightly same and slightly different, the differences for a lot of comedic effect.  Humanity has now decided to go full blown into their violent and overbearing ways.  Deaths are now shown on TV, and in fact our main character Chuck runs a TV show where death row inmates take place in competitions where it's either live or die.  Chuck has his life threatened every day, but when gangster Luigi Pappalardo comes after him, his life might actually be in danger.

I was going to watch about 20 minutes, I watched the whole thing.  It wasn't funny the whole way through, but there was some humor, enough to keep me going.  There was also nudity, likable characters, and enough nonsense along the way to make your night stay entertaining.  This would be a good friends hanging out movie, drinky smoky movie, or midnight movie at a theater.

Scarecrows - 1988

I thought for a minute this was another movie I'd already seen.  I confused this with Dark Night of the Scarecrow, which I saw all the way back in my first month of this blog in 2015.  Man....I'm coming up on doing this for 5 years.  Holy shit bruh.

Scarecrows stars Ted Vernon, an actor who I don't know.  It doesn't star anyone else, however considering those facts the acting was not bad.  Scarecrows is a horror movie, and I was in a horror movie mood last night, and you know what....  it ain't half bad.

A bunch of criminals are on a hijacked airplane flying away from a bank robbery where they got 3 million dollars.  As they escape, one of them turns on the others, grabbing the money and jumping from the flight while they pass over some middle-of-nowhere type place.  He lands in a old cornfield, full of scarecrows and an abandoned house.  His band of thieves circles around to get their money back, but at the same time, the one who landed starts hearing weird noises and voices coming from the corn field...

I liked this movie.  It wasn't full of good deaths, or gory or classic feeling for a slasher, but it was weird and off kilter and creepy.  They did get a particular atmosphere going here, and the characters are all memorable and somewhat likable.  They made a choice to have some of the characters actually show a bit of development, and they also made the criminals different enough to not entirely blend together.

You may not leave the viewing of this talking about it or even remembering a lot of it, but while you're watching, it entertains.  It might be one of the better "killer scarecrow" movies out there, considering there are not that many.  I'll give it a 3ish, average rating.

Casablanca Express - 1989

Donald Pleasence stars...  okay, Donald Pleasence doesn't star.  Donald Pleasence is in this actioner from the late 80's, a movie which I guessed was from the earlier 80's.  It looks pretty old on the boxset.  Jason Connery is the hero in this one.

I put this on last night cause it was next after...whatever the fuck I watched last.  The Mormon movie.  I watched this one, and here's a general thought on the 80's boxset so far:

I'm not a big fan so far.  These late 80's movies are all trying too hard, and the early 80's movies are just bad.  These movies are spread out in terms of plot and type, but so far not a good movie.  Shadows in the Storm is probably the best so far!  It had the best pacing, the best acting, and the most actual intrigue.

This movie is about a train carrying Winston Churchill that's going to a conference somewhere.  The bad guy Germans get wind of this and they plant dynamite on the train, and good guy Jason Connery as Alan Cooper is the only one who knows this, so it's up to him to stop it.  He gets sent in solo to do so, and the movie is his best effort to stop the train and save the president...

Aaaannd, it's pretty okay.  It was certainly slow sometimes, it wasn't greatly paced, but it had some decent action parts towards the end especially, and it has a ticking clock that's done well.  There is a part at the end where the Germans are shooting up the train, and the amount of characters that we know who are shot was very high.  It was nice to not just have anonymous randos shot who we don't care about, but rather the guy we've seen several times.

Pleasence is one of the British commandos in charge, and he's in about 6 scenes total, mumbling nonsense dialogue about this or that.  It's not even a film for Pleasence completists like myself.  Directed by Sergio Martino who did Hands of Steel and Alligator, it's competent enough and not amateur feeling, but it certainly isn't a great movie by any stretch.  I've given both of those around 3 stars, and I'll give this 2.5 stars.

Savage Journey - 1983

Well, I certainly would not have chosen to watch this.  Twisted Obsession, yeah, I could get behind it maybe.  Some of these others, sure.  Why not.  But a 80's movie about Mormons?  Nah.

I've probably made this clear by now, but I am not a religious man at all.  I don't give a flying fuck about religion, I don't believe in god, and I honestly don't think there's any real evidence Jesus ever existed in the first place.

All that aside, it's interesting to see a story of Mormons that is not about Joseph Smith and his founding of the religion, but rather a journey when the religion was young.  It is about the Mormons going from place to place, facing persecution, facing hatred, and their struggles with this as they progress through maybe 10-15 years.

We follow Joseph Smith's main man Brigham Young as our main character.  Brigham is a farmer turned religious leader, and he talks the talk and walks the walk as he guides the Mormons from somewhere to Illinois, to Utah, and the different obstacles they face at each place. Along the way we are also shown some of what Mormons believe in.

The movie is about what you'd expect.  It's acted decently, it has a nice little story I guess.  Being historical and probably based on religious writing, some of the details are glossed over and we never get a feeling for WHY a lot of these things happen, they just DO happen.  There is no explanation in the movie for why the Mormons are disliked for example, and I assume this movie was possibly made for the Mormons?  Cause I doubt many people who don't know the Mormon history will understand what is happening a lot of the time.

As a casual moviegoer, like I say I don't think this is for me.  But as a movie, it is slow, it has nothing horrible about it, but it certainly isn't good.  I will give it 1.5 stars I guess.

Twisted Obsession - 1989

Okay, so I just finished this movie and there are a few of these that make me really wanna take to the internet.  I want to know if this was a French director, I want to know about financing, and I want to know why and how Jeff Goldblum is in this movie.

I watched Crawl, La Llorona, and then this in a marathon.  Rainy day in Idaho.  Winter is here.

Twisted Obsession stars Jeff Goldblum as a writer who is working on a movie for a new young director.  They have some great script, and Goldblum believes in this kid as the director, but there are naturally issues to arise and complicate our movie.  Among the issues is the directors younger sister, a nubile little thing that likes Goldblum.

This reminds me right away of Shadows in the Storm, because it's the same idea genesis.  Older weird guy getting the hot young girl and she likes him, and thus complication is born into his life.  In this, the girl is all over Goldblum and not just trying to get something from him, at least it seems so, and he's going right along with it.

Primarily, that's it.  It's not until way later the reality of the plot comes into focus, and the last 20 minutes goes a bit off the rails.  It's one of those that saved everything for the very end while it had a meandering, unfocused first hour.  Thanks guys.  Way to do it.

However, it's also a movie that makes you interested, drags you into it, and ideas start zapping through your head.  I thought of some movie ideas while I viewed this, primarily for horror movies, but hey it still counts.

This is certainly lesser known, it probably has it's die hard fans but really this is a strange blip on Goldblums IMDb, surely done because he wanted to do something different and unique.  It doesn't feel Hollywood, I will give it that.  It also doesn't feel like a "good movie" though it surely had good parts.  It feels uneven, it feels a bit predictable, and it even feels unclear at times despite the straight forward plot.

Also, there are parts of this in French, and these Mill Creek boxsets don't have or offer subtitles.  Nice.  I'll just guess what they said.  I don't really care, tbh.  There is also a shot of a shaved vagina in this, and that gets most of the focus when people talk about this online.  It's a split second shot, but it is strange, so I guess we're supposed to talk about it.

It tries, it succeeds sometimes, and surely that is worth around 3 stars.