Cross Mission (1989 93 minutes)

Sleazy General Romero, the dictator of some unknown South American country, pledges to the cameras to stop the drug lords and their evil ways and then he burns some token crops. Too bad he is secretly the biggest of the drug lords and he is trying to weed out the competition. Some guy from America working for 'The Organization'  (but he may also be working undercover) hooks up with a nosy reporter and goes to pay the general a visit. Deep in the jungle, the rebel forces have been waiting for their moment to strike. This could have been another of your average gunfights in the Amazons type movie until the general reveals his secret Macumba Voodoo powers he learned from his mother. Poof! First he makes a little creepy mini me (the same guy who played the title character in Ratman) appear in a cloud of smoke. Then he zaps the reporter with blue rays from his fingertips, saying they are better then any lie detector-  "Hands that can cure....or kill!.....Annihilate!". If this doesn't send your brain into outer space then i don't know how to help you.  The American and the reporter somehow get caught up in the crossfire between the rebels and the general's men. They get captured by the army and are to be sent to the infamous Camp 5 prison when the rebels rescue them. Luckily, the American is some sort of Commando type and is able to lead them on an assault of the infamous camp. The reporter doesn't fare so well as she gets zapped again by the general. Don't worry, the mini me makes a few more appearances as well before the explosion filled finale. Poof!

Galaxy Of Terror (1981 81 minutes)

On the Alien rip off planet of Morganthus, the last survivor of an exploring spaceship gets blasted by some unknown force causing the Planet Master of Xerxes to send out a rescue party of his own hand picked crew. This is the oddest crew ever since it contains Sid Haig, Joanie from Happy Days, the guy who played Freddie Kreuger, and the guy who was My Favorite Martian. They get to the planet and find no survivors but now they are being stalked by some unknown force. For some reason they decide to incinerate every corpse they find. After awhile they come across some ruins that could have been designed by Gary Numan.

Then comes the craziest 10 minutes ever: Sid Haig is pouting over losing his sacred crystal throwing weapons when they magically piece themselves back together but when he reaches for them they attack him. He cuts off his own arm to save himself but then the severed arm picks up one of the weapons and throws it right at Sid's chest. Then another crew member finds the arm (now all covered in maggots) and incinerates it but not before one of the maggots crawls away and then grows giant size and attacks her with its gross slimy body, ripping her clothes off in the process. What?!?!? Who needs logic when your imagination is cooking up stuff like that. Later on, Freddie Kreuger has to fight his evil twin and then Joanie gets her body all torn apart by tentacles. Could it be that the Planet Master is somehow behind all of this? Things whoosh by so fast you're going to need an oxygen mask by the time the zombies of all the dead crew members show up. Hollywood, if you dare try to remake this I'm going to smash you good.

Blood Beat (1982 83 minutes)

A hunter is out in the woods stalking whoever is playing the haunted version of Phillip Glass on the Casio. He misses and hits a deer instead so he brings it home to the quirky mom who wears a macrame pancho, paints all day, and may or may not have psychic abilities. It's the holidays and her  kids are coming - the son brings his quirky girlfriend who may also have psychic abilities. They go out hunting with some other guy and the girlfriend ruins it by freaking out in the woods and then she runs into another  guy stumbling around that has his guts all stabbed open. At this point I'm lost too. The situation at home is a little tense and the mom just wants to paint so the hunter is all distraught and goes to pout in the corner, watching TV with his headphones on. Meanwhile,  quirky girlfriend finds a suit of samurai armor that magically appears and disappears - is it somehow connected to mom's paintings? Then comes the scene that blows your face off - a random guy is sitting on his

waterbed in his robe and trucker hat playing with his dog named Chewkie and reading the paper. He nags his wife to go make him his nightly tea and orange drink and when she goes to the kitchen a glowing samurai spirit stabs her and then chases the husband all around before it shoots him with an arrow right on front of the house where the main characters live - all  while the quirky girlfriend is convulsing in bed like she's having an orgasm.  What follows is a crazy mix of The Exorcist and Enter The Ninja that  includes assault by

flying kitchen objects, more random samurai attacks on some campers in the woods, stock World War II footage, and the familiar strains of Orff's Carmina Burana during the final battle. The origin or reason for the samurai is never even mentioned or explained. What else would you expect from a director named Fabrice-Ange Zaphiratos

Horror of the Humongous Hungry Hungan (1991 98 minutes)

Jack Palance narrates a few minutes of mumbo jumbo about a voodoo ritual that sounds like it was stolen from the Ripley's Believe it or Not show and then some girl has a bad dream about the Hungan monster chasing her. The Hungan is a strange creature - it's supposed to be some super powerful voodoo zombie created from old human body parts but it looks like the German singer Heino and has one big crazy claw arm like a Resident Evil mutation. 

 
 

Some scientist at the Fitzgerald Institute is busy trying to resurrect one and is able to succeed while the janitor and security guard are busy playing pranks on each other. Cut to a hard rockin' party where a couple dressed in matching shirts ponder whether they can get up early enough the next day to go camping. maybe they should lay off the Mountain Dew. Then they introduce the band Cry Wolf who will play their hit 'It's Getting Better'. What follows is one of the greatest dance party scenes of all time. Meanwhile, the Hungan is busy killing a bunch of people including nurses, waitresses and a couple of winos. I'm not up on all of my Monster Rules, but at one point the Hungan seems to be chewing gum. Back at the party, a Pee Wee Herman impersonator temporarily invades the dance floor but the band sets him straight before blasting out another jam. The same girl has another bad dream and some more party goers wonder about getting up early enough to go camping (Bad Dream Girl is going with them). We are forced to look at one colorfully mulleted dude in his banana hammock undies before the troop finally sets off into the woods. The Hungan is there waiting, patiently chewing his gum. Hopefully, someone will have some leftover fireworks stashed in their truck to blast that thing back to hell before everyone gets massacred. this stuff is like folk art to me: real people telling a scary monster story but at the same time telling another story about what it was like to be growing up in 1990 - and not one of them stared into the camera during that dance scene.

 

Raiders of Atlantis (1983 88 minutes)

Miami 1994. You've just completed a mission kidnapping some old guy and now you're paid and off to an  island to hide out. Your only worry is that horrible disco song Black Inferno is stuck in your head. At the same time, some scientists are trying to raise a sunken Russian sub which may hold the key to this 12, 000 year old artifact they're trying to decipher. Their efforts  cause a tidal wave which raises the sub as well as this island with a big dome over it. All of the sudden the craziest looking Road Warrior clones you've ever seen show up and start killing everyone. It seems that  they are the spirits of Atlantis from the domed island. 'We have come back to the world  that has always been ours You have no  place in it - you cannot defend yourselves. Our civilization does not accept intruders...you have violated our world...all of you will be EX-E-CUT-ED!' says the leader with the crystal skull mask. The kidnappers rescue the remaining scientists and end up right in harms way.  Explosions. Flamethrowers. Three wheeled motorcycles with giant spikes on them. An awesome sequence involving a jukebox and a dangling corpse's feet making that disco song skip. Helicopter attacks. The female scientist gets taken by the raiders and the kidnappers have to get her back. The raiders have a metallic echoing death scream whenever they bite the dust (which happens many many times). This is like the 10 best movies all smashed together into one. Director Ruggero Deodato staked his claim with the infamous Cannibal Holocaust. Raiders of Atlantis puts him into the stratosphere.

 

Goblin (1993 75 minutes)

Some people can get their friends to do anything. Consider Todd Sheets, director of the Zombie Bloodbath trilogy and this lesser known gem - he can get his friends to endure having pig intestines (or whatever it is) thrown on them for minutes at a time while he films it in an awesome heavy metal nerd attempt at gore. This story concerns a group of post high school teens who have just rented a house. One of them dresses just like my brother did in the 90's with a Dork Knob Ponytail and oversized sherbert colored shirt tucked in way too much. They unknowingly unleash the title monster, who looks more like a fat guy in some rags and a Goofa Man mask than anything, and it starts terrorizing everyone with power tools and saws. At one point, one of the heavy metal girls changes from one pair of acid wash jean shorts into another less gaudy pair only to climb a ladder before getting clobbered by the Goblin. I guess she didn't want pig intestines on her concert-goin' outfit. The teens decide to fight back and the lead guy looks right into the camera and says 'Were gonna fix the Goblin's engine!'. I wanted to punch that guy right through the screen at that point. They get a rototiller and chase the fat Goblin around with it before it turns the tables and chases them around with it  just like a Scooby Doo episode. Then another heavy metal guy in a leather jacket and workout shorts shows up and snoops around. This wouldn't be a big deal but it  goes on for a full 10 MINUTES before he gets goozled by the Goblin with a pair of grass clippers, all while some song goes on and on about evil never sleeping. It's not even to the part where the zombies show up yet. Goblin stinkin' rules.

The Sisterhood (1988 88 minutes)

In the year 2021, after the nuclear holocaust, some women who have strange powers (like being able to shoot laser beams from your eyes and esp with animals) band together to form The Sisterhood. Many of them were captured at the Battle of 12 trees but two still roam the wasteland looking for a way to free the others. Meanwhile, a leader of some raiders gives a heartfelt speech about finding parts for his great War Wagon ( "Kill, pillage, rape...do whatever feels good....but whatever you do, do not come back without those parts I need!") before attacking the small village where the woman who played the blind girl in Ice Castles lives. The raiders  kill her brother which makes her mad so she ends up with The Sisterhood (because she has secret powers too). At one point they get chased by some mutants into the  Forbidden Zone and end up finding a cave with a vault in it just like in the Fallout games. It's all full of weapons and even an armored vehicle with rocket launchers + they even have instructions on how to use them. Say your prayers, stupid  raiders with your beards and your sexist war mongering ways. This plays out like a Society For Creative Anochronisms wet dream future come true -  one where you run around with swords and armor made out of a hubcap and speak in quasi medieval slang but at the same time you are still allowed modern conveniences like bubble baths, jukeboxes, cut off jean shorts and Valley Girl - isms like 'Chow Down!'. Don't forget to meet at Dynamite Willies.

Ghoul School (1990 74 minutes)

At Trenchcoat Mafia High (somewhere in the middle of New Jersey), 2 former students have a plan to rob the janitor's secret stash of something - unfortunately while messing around in the basement they release some kind of toxic chemical that gets into the water that turns the swim team into zombies. Meanwhile, old-timey New York TV personality Joe Franklin has a phone conversation where he acts like the phone is going to give him cooties and then Jackie the Joke Man Martling shows up for rapid fire joke time. Back at the school, 2 nerds watch a bootleg video of Robot Ninja while the struggling rock band Bloodsucking Ghouls practice for their big gig coming up at the school dance. All you need to know is the lead singer's name is Blade and he has a knee length leather jacket with fringes on it. Finally the zombies start attacking and everyone goes bonkers. This is all full of off-kilter elements - the members of Bloodsucking Ghouls have obviously never touched instruments before, the basketball team has only 5 guys and can't even do a lay up drill , the cops that show up have a shotgun that's about a foot too short, and everyone has their shirts way too tucked in. Luckily, you get an axe in the crotch here and a nail in the eye there so its' all good in the end. The origins of Jersey Shore? Right here, brother.

 

Parole Violators (1994 87 minutes)

Ex cop Miles Long does a show called Video Cop where he catches on tape ex cons doing more crimes and then he beats them up, leaving them ductaped to a telephone pole for the police to pick up. Generic cholo Chino gets out on parole (Miles busted him 6 years ago for being a child molester) and Miles is waiting for him, camera in hand and promises Chino he will catch him in the act again. Then Miles has a yelling conversation with his cop ex-girlfriend and they try to rekindle the old flame (" the dinner was cold but everything else was hot") before heading out to the park with her daughter. Chino can stay straight for only about 5 minutes before kidnapping another little girl but luckily Miles is right there to chase them. Chino gets away only  after Miles gets hit by a car about 3 times and falls off a cliff but Chino swears revenge and kidnaps the ex-girlfriends daughter. Then the rest of the movie (about an hour) is one fight after another as Miles and the mom try to get her back. This is like one extended Jackass stunt as Miles gets the bejeepers beaten out of him time and time again but keeps coming. At one point Chino has the daughter tied up on a raft in a pool and starts poking holes in the raft as Miles has to fight off a bunch of guys and that's not even close to the climax so get used to the 2 note background fighting music. There's only a brief respite at the hospital for a touching scene where the mom prays for forgiveness for cussing out her daughter but 2 minutes later she has a shotgun in her hand blowing away a gang of skinheads that Chino recruits to protect him. What's not to love - there's bad grammar ("Miles, your luck has just ran out") - one thug  wears a Samhain shirt ,gets beaten with a 2 x 4, and talks like one of those dolls where you pull the string - another thug is named Goon, really hates bird references,  has a queasy scene where the mom tries to seduce him and then falls for the old 'shake the bush while you're back there peeing so i know you're still there' ploy - and then as one guy is falling off a roof his slow motion scream sounds like a Tie Fighter coming straight at you

Twisted Nightmare (1982/1987 90 minutes)

An odd assortment of college students head up to Camp Paradise. There's the muscular Korean guy with the crossbow, the black guy who looks like Quark from Star Trek and Dean the Party Machine, who has a bad back, anger management problems, and really hates being called 'pussy'. The rest of the kids act like they've never even seen each other before, which is strange because a flashback shows they were at that exact place two years ago when the handicapped younger brother of one of them spontaneously combusts after being picked on. He's been waiting in the woods ever since for revenge. His  sister lights black candles and cuts herself and there's some reference to an Indian curse and some devil worshipping but this is really about some big hairy burned guy stomping a mudhole on everyone. One couple falls for the old 'kittens in the barn' ploy, others die by bear trap and getting impaled on deer antlers. The best is when the old coot sheriff gets his head torn off and then the convulsing body shoots it's own head when it hits the ground. Take that you dumb cop! Dean gets really pissed when someone puts sugar in his gas tank and then flips off the killer, only to get zapped by an electrified fence. Whenever someone is in peril, underwater Jimmy Page jams with the drummer for the Power Station in the background and then there's a big explosion. You can't go wrong with that.

Wizards of the Lost Kingdom (1985 72 minutes)

This starts off with some stolen footage from Deathstalker (1983) and Sorceress (1982) but where those movies were too preoccupied with boobs to be much fun, this is all about the wonder of a child's imagination. An evil wizard is doing some conquering when the good wizard entrusts his son with a ring of power and sends him off to escape into the woods. The kid loses the ring in about 10 seconds but he does have a companion creature (who looks like a cross between a sheep and Chewbacca and  sounds like a mix of Foster Brooks and the Swedish Chef from the Muppet show) to keep him company. They meet up with Bo Svenson(as a master swordsman) and  go on a quest to recover the ring and a sword of power to defeat the evil wizard who really hates midget henchman. Along the way there are many trials including a woman that turns into a gross spider monster, skeleton warriors, a cave full of ghosts, and a huge headed warrior that turns out to be a cyclops + some brightly colored optical effect wizard laser light battles that outdo CGI anyday. And all of this happens in just over  an hour? Huzzah!

Demon Queen (1986 54 minutes) / Scream Dream (1989 69 minutes)

In Demon Queen, a woman who was probably third runner up in the local Pat Benatar lookalike contest is some sort of demon vampire who likes to take guys to hotel rooms,  rip their hearts out, and smear the blood all over herself.  She hooks up with lowly drug dealer Jesse and chaos ensues. This is all full of crazy jump cuts and music edits, a seriously long dream sequence with the synthesizer left on autopilot, a deformed midget drug dealer in a tie and blue jeans, a completely out of place visit to a video store to discuss the merits of Make Them Die Slowly, sound effects from a ping pong battle in an outer space vacuum chamber, a mall food court hookup  montage, the hit song 'let me be your angelfire' a bunch of nasty throat rippings, and yet another visit to that video store - all of this happens in less than a hour and if you take away the opening and closing credits and that dream sequence it happens in about 25 minutes. Genius.

The band Rikk-O-Shay had it made. They had a hit in 'Scream Dream', a burly ex-football player type guitarist with a cool white striped Explorer, not one but two fancy dancing backup singers, fans who 'think Van Halen is elevator music' and a big tour lined up. Too bad their lead singer, Michelle Shock, is a devil worshipper who's into human sacrifice. Her number one fan steals his girlfriend's car payment money to go see the concert and she repays him by sprouting demon hands and then biting his johnson off. The she gets fired from the gig for being so crazy so she goes to the county fair to pick up some more studs to sacrifice. The one backup singer with the fringed leather jacket and white turtleneck (he looks like the one armed guy from Def Leppard - but with both arms) has to kill her, but her one hand crawls away and a rubbery demon puppet mouth chews on stuff. Meanwhile, the band is still sweating it out making background music like an endless doom metal / sabbath riff and then their manager hires a new singer who promptly gets possessed by the Michelle Shock demon. At their next gig they perform their new hit 'Ballbuster for your love' before the new singer commits groupie-cide on a couple of faces. Can she be stopped so the tour can continue? This is so great that the 'angelfire' song even makes a cameo. I declare director Donald Farmer to be the master of white trash vampire fantasy metal videos.

R.O.T.O.R (1988 89 minutes)

Back when gas was 69 cents a gallon, director Cullen Blaine had a vision of a Texas sized combination or Robocop and Terminator. Robotic Officer Tactical Operation Research is the brainchild of Coldyron, a no nonsense Dallas police captain who just wants to get the scum off the streets. His cyborg cop is outfitted with a combat chassis made of an 'unknown' alloy, has a standard cop mustache, and  the ability to see backwards through time. He is also rendered helpless by honking your car horn repeatedly. After Coldyron has an argument with some politican over funding, ROTOR gets prematurely released in an accident and proceeds to wreak havoc on a couple caught speeding. He shoots the guy and spends the rest of the movie chasing the woman all over Texas. It's up to Coldyron to put an end to the robotic killing spree.

  

This has the best dialog west of a David Mamet play:
"I'll make more noise than 2 skeletons making love in a tin coffin, BROTHER"
"The only difference between heroes and villains is is the amount of compensation they receive for  their services"
"I got more than a newspaper, and you get to guess what it is"
"You look like you got both eyes comin' out of the same whole"
"ROTOR will walk through a busload of nuns to get to a jaywalker"
Plus there's so much more: the suave janitor Shooboogie (whose Native American anecdote is referenced at the climax), a comic relief robot that reads Creepy magazine, a guy with giant fake buck teeth, a nice 'going out to lunch' music montage, and Coldyron's scientist partner who looks like a cross between Bride of Frankenstein and a wrestler from GLOW.
I would say Mr. Blaine got it just right

 

Project Shadowchaser (1992 92 minutes)

Romulus the cyborg (who looks like the old wrestler Sting or Guile from the Streetfighter game) gets mad at his creators and puts a scientist's head through a computer monitor. Then he is somehow able to recruit a gang of mercenaries to go all Die Hard at a Hospital where the President's daughter (played by Meg Foster - the woman with the creepy eyes from They Live) just so  happens to work. The best idea the police can come up with is to revive the hospital's architect, who's been frozen in a cryogenic prison, except they can't even do that right and accidentally wake up an ex-football hero (played by Martin Kove - the bad sensei in Karate Kid) instead.  Even after the feds figure out the mistake they still go through with their fool plan of infiltrating with hospital which gets all of the SWAT guys killed and leaves the football hero alone against the cyborg - so you know the final battle is going to involve throwing some kind of 'touchdown pass' while the building explodes. Along the way we get a bunch of crawling around in air vents, some cyber Blade Runner-isms, a couple of double crosses, and even a robotic surprise or 2 + Martin Kove has this sweet beard after waking up from his cryogenic sleep.

Demonoid (1981 78 minutes)

  

Some hooded cult worshipper steals the Devil Hand and gets attacked by some other cultists, who then chop off her hand and put it in a metal coffin. Cut to modern times and a rich couple who own a mine accidentally stumble upon the cultists temple buried within the mine. They come out with the metal hand coffin and scare the miners. The idiots take the thing home the evil hand promptly possesses the guy who then decides to blow up the mine (with all of the miners inside) and then goes to Vegas to shoot some craps with his new evil hand. Y'see, the hand makes you do BAD things. He makes so much money shooting craps some grifters kidnap him and take him out to a shack to beat the secret out of him. The hand turns the tables by doing some face crushing and then burns  the shack down, killing the guy in the process. But the hand doesn't care 'cuz it has a plan. The burned body gets sent back to L.A. to get buried where the hand possesses a cop. All this time the wife is trying to track her now dead husband down. Ironically, the hand is trying to get back to her to fulfill some sort of curse or something,. She enlists the aid of a priest who changes his accent every few minutes to help her. In the world's best scene, the possessed cop kidnaps the wife and goes to a plastic surgeon and demands 'Cut off my hand or I'll kill you!'. The disembodied hand then grabs the cops gun, shoots the nurse and then crushes the cop's face. Ha, take that you dumb cop! They even find time for a car chase and then the hand hitches a ride on a train. You can't outsmart it. If you try to hide out a hotel, it will find you. If you think you've destroyed it, it will friggin' mail itself back to you. The only thing you can do is praise it's face crushing genius.

Undefeatable (1993 90 minutes)

Crazy death match fighter Stingray is having some marital problems that all stems from his crappy attitude towards women so his wife leaves him and that makes him even more crazy. In the meantime, Cynthia Rothrock is involved in some other kind of underground street fighting for money that involves dressing like a cross between Janet Jackson and Debbie Gibson while not letting your hands touch the ground in a fight. Stingray puts a purple streak in his hair and goes out looking for women who look like his wife (and wear flowered  dresses) so he can tie them up at his secret warehouse lair. He also pokes people's eyeballs out. One day, Cynthia Rothrock's sister goes out wearing a flowered dress and you can probably guess where this is headed. Seriously, this is so great I can't even pick out a favorite bit - is it the eyeballs in the fishtank or the fighter named Bear who wears football shoulderpads and baggy weightlifter pants? Is it the reaction shots of the fight watchers and their crazy outfits - from those black baseball hats with the metallic "Nasty" logos to a 3 sizes too large 'Fuck Censorship' t-shirt and trenchcoat? Or is it the drawn out end fight in all of it's knife licking glory? Sadly, this was Don Niam's (the guy who plays Stingray) only fictional martial arts movie. Most of the rest of the cast and the director made another movie the same year called Honor and Glory that just doesn't have it so I'm convinced that it's Don's magic that makes this such a treasure. He gives  private martial arts lessons in Las Vegas. Maybe you can get him to show you that knife-licking technique

Warbus (1986 92 minutes) / War Bus Commando (1989 90 minutes)

I had to re-watch these after the viewing the  recent  atrocity  The Expendables. War is brutal, stupid and has consequences + explosions look so much nicer with real flames. In Warbus, some fleeing missionaries barely escape a part of the 'Nam that's being overrun by the enemy and meet up with a few straggling marines so off they go to find a base or border or some safe point. Along the way they come across a bunch of dead soldiers, some are crucified, others are booby trapped to explode. There are some things that need to be blown up like the occasional bridge or fuel depot but everyone on the bus has problems that can't be solved with a few well placed grenade tosses. You keep waiting for the eventual double cross to take place and by the end I couldn't tell for sure if it had happened or not.

In War Bus Commando, also known as Warbus 2, Mark Gregory (the guy who played Trash in the Bronx Warriors) is a special forces lone wolf named Johnny Hondo who single-handedly attacks a Russian base in occupied Afghanistan to free some guy. I was wondering to myself 'when is he going to break out the rocket launcher' about 10 seconds before he did it to blast some guys on the other side of the river. He's  back home in the States enjoying some hunting when he's approached by the guy who played the dean in Animal House with a new mission. It seems Hondo's dad is a disgraced General who left a secret package of documents or something back in Afghanistan so Johnny needs to go back and get it to restore dad's honor. Of course it's hidden inside a bus so he has to fight both the Russian army and Afghan rebels to get to it, meeting an orphan boy and a couple soldier prisoners along the way. At least they're smart enough to fortify the bus with makeshift armor before heading for the border. After much fighting, slow motion gun shooting, and explosions (even a helicopter or 2) we get to the eventual double cross and of course it's all about stupid money.
Sadly, neither bus survives to ride off into the sunset

A Night To Dismember (1982 69 minutes)

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I'm usually pretty against voice over narration but when someone at the film lab destroys most of the footage for your movie and you still have to finish it i guess you do what you gotta do.  The Kent family has the bad luck of everyone winding  up suddenly dead. Poor Vicki gets out of the institution and some family members don't want her back so they start trying to spook her into craziness.  Then there's the  killing....lots of it - with some of the most passive axe chopping ever committed to film.  Then a detective shows up but he seems more interested in peeping in Vicki's window than working on the case. I think he's the one doing the narration. Everything is overdubbed - all of the character's voices, all of the sound effects, various random stock library film music, everything. All at once I'm reminded of the opening monologue in Oliver Stone's JFK, Brian De Palma's Sisters, HG Lewis, Godard, Truffuat and more. If David Lynch had made this it probably would've won some kind of award at Cannes. Dogma 95 be damned, If Lars Von Trier or Harmony Korine would  put a couple decapitations or someone getting their chest punched through and heart ripped out in their stuff, maybe I would still remember the names of any of their movies. Doris Wishman, you are my hero. I am awestruck.

LIght Blast (1985 89 minutes)

Any movie that opens with some people getting their faces melted off and then Erik Estrada shows up in his underwear to pull a gun out of a stuffed turkey to blast a bad guy that looks like a mix of David Crosby and Gallagher should be rated pretty high. Estrada's so cool he gets 2 bits of theme music  , one a jaunty bass line for when he's walking and another jazzy number with horns for all of the car chases. It seems some disgruntled scientist created a laser that melts stuff but he needs to point it at an LCD display in order for it to work, so he offs the train yard with the giant digital clock and then the announcer's booth at the stock car races.  The city won't give in to his demand for millions of dollars so Estrada puts on his sleuthing cap to save everyone from horrible face melting death.  Along the way we get a kung fu funeral home worker, multiple acts of violence against volkswagon beetles, a lot of slow motion gunfights, explosions and people on fire and a super car chase with a dune buggy + you can't have a car chase in San Francisco without a bunch of slow motion jumps over those big hills. Most movies are a chore to get through in one sitting, this one's smooth like lemonade.

 

Strike Commando (1987 90 minutes)

Strike Commando is an Ass Kicker. Your whole damn army couldn't beat him. Probably the only ones who would stand a chance would be those 2 guys from that Contra game for the old NES. He's on a mission to blow a bunch of stuff up when the colonel leaves him for dead, luckily he gets rescued by some rebels and Father Le Due and nursed back to health. He finds evidence of the Dirty Russians getting involved in this war and makes it back to HQ. Of course the stupid colonel wants more proof and sends him back into the bush where  he finds that the rebels have all been massacred by that evil bastard Jakota, the Russian leader. In the world's most touching scene, he gives a dying boy the Disneyland speech, with it's popcorn trees, cotton candy, rivers of ice cream, and a Magic Genie at the end just waiting to grant your wishes. He loses it after this and his blind rage makes him get captured by the Russians. Jakota likes to taunt him by doing pushups in the hot sun (to show off his muscles) while we get a nice long torture montage. Jakota  also has a compulsion to say the word 'Amerikanski', especially in slow motion while falling off a cliff.  Fortunately for us, no army can control the force that is Strike Commando, and the best part is that just when you think it's over, it ain't over because there's always one more score to settle. Soon enough, you too will be screaming 'Ja-Ko-Ta!' whenever your heart yearns for vengeance.

The Outing AKA The Lamp (1987 87 minutes)

People will never learn. Those magic lamps are  a ruse and the Genie inside just wants to get out and kick ass on mankind. The people on the old timey boat didn't get it. Those 3 swamp hillbillies who broke into that old witch's house to steal her riches didn't get it and the group of teenagers who decide to spend the night in the museum after the field trip certainly don't get it. And then you've got that awful ex-boyfriend Mike to deal with. He thinks he's so cool with his sunglasses on a string and sleeveless shirt and tie. He's a reckless driver, picks fights with girls, says the 'N' word and carries a butterfly knife. But he must have some powerful friends because 5 minutes after getting arrested he's at school pushing your face in a locker and then after getting kicked out of school he's hanging out right outside. Oh, and he'll be at the museum tonight too, along with that genie. We get death by ceiling fan, spear, poison snake attack, ceremonial horned mask, reanimated mummy, and giant genie demon before it's all said and done. I bet that lamp is still around somewhere just waiting for another dumbass to rub it.