Directed by Nick Castle | Starring Lance Guest, Catherine Mary Stewart, Dan O’Herlihy Let’s be clear: The Last Starfighter is ridiculous. It’s about a trailer park teenager who becomes an intergalactic hero because he’s really good at an arcade game. This is pure Reagan-era fantasy, a cinematic fever dream born from the unholy union of … Read More “The Last Starfighter (1984): Beam Me Up, Beta Unit” »
Directed by Glenn Gebhard | Starring Pat Berry, Keith Brennan, Tom Brennan There’s a special place in cinematic purgatory for movies that try to make 4×4 desert racing look thrilling and somehow end up with the intensity of a retirement home bingo night. Desert Steel is that kind of movie—a low-octane, straight-to-video relic that should … Read More “Desert Steel (1994): More Rust Than Racing” »
Directed by Deryn Warren | Starring Mark Hamill, Apollonia Kotero, Amanda Wyss You know you’re in trouble when a movie with the title Black Magic Woman has all the mystique of a burned-out lava lamp. This 1991 straight-to-VHS occult “thriller” stars a sleepy-eyed Mark Hamill, two actresses trying to salvage their dignity (Apollonia Kotero and … Read More “Black Magic Woman (1991): A Hex of a Mess” »
Directed by John D. Patterson & Hugh Parks | Starring Mary Crosby, Andrew Stevens, Amanda Wyss Alternate Title: Sybil With a Shotgun You ever trip over an old VHS tape in a dusty thrift store bin, look at the cover and think, “This might be insane in a fun way”? And then you pop it … Read More “Deadly Innocents (1989): Psycho Babble and Hostage Nonsense in VHS Hell” »
Alt Title: Two Indians, a Car, and a Whole Lot of Metaphor There’s a version of Powwow Highway that might’ve worked—a gritty, soul-searching road movie about Native identity, broken systems, and the tension between tradition and protest. But this? This is a meandering, slow-rolling sermon on wheels that feels like it was written by someone … Read More “Powwow Highway (1989): Smoke Signals Without the Fire” »
Directed by Deran Sarafian | Starring Brendan Hughes, Sydney Walsh, Amanda Wyss, Scott Jacoby Alternate Title That Would’ve Been More Honest:“Bram Stoker’s Waste of Time” Once upon a time, someone tried to make a sexy vampire thriller on a budget that couldn’t afford garlic, let alone fangs. The result was To Die For (1988), a … Read More “To Die For (1988): Softcore Satanism for the Late-Night, Half-Asleep Crowd” »
Directed by Savage Steve Holland | Starring John Cusack, Diane Franklin, Amanda Wyss, Curtis Armstrong Tagline Should’ve Been:“Heartbreak. Hilarity. Hallucinations. And a hamburger that sings Van Halen.” Welcome to the gloriously deranged, wildly creative, and borderline unhinged world of Better Off Dead—a teen comedy so off the rails it makes Ferris Bueller look like a … Read More “Better Off Dead (1985): A Suicide Comedy So Weird, It Lives Forever” »
Directed by Scott McGinnis | Starring Mia Sara, Clayton Rohner, Tim Daly, Paul Le Mat Tagline Should’ve Been:“She had a secret… and it was bad acting.” In the sweaty, neon-soaked wasteland of ‘90s erotic thrillers—where plot goes to die and every saxophone wail signals a wardrobe malfunction—Caroline at Midnight stumbles in wearing lingerie and a … Read More “Caroline at Midnight (1994): A Steamy Pile of Cinemax Garbage” »
Directed by Bernard Rose | Starring Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Vanessa Williams The Setup: Urban Legends and Academia—A Match Made in Horror Hell Candyman opens with the kind of earnest academic nonsense that only exists in horror movies or very expensive liberal arts schools. Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen), a grad student with more curiosity than … Read More “Candyman (1992): Say His Name—But Maybe Just Once, Because After That It Gets Weird” »
Let’s not sugarcoat it: Jade is the erotic thriller that forgot the “erotic” and tripped over the “thriller.” It’s the cinematic equivalent of watching someone try to be sexy while giving a TED Talk about paint samples. This 1995 embarrassment is slick, sweaty, and dumber than a sack of doorknobs, written by Joe Eszterhas—he of … Read More “Jade (1995): David Caruso’s Leather Jacket and Other Things That Should Be Arrested” »
