Death Among the Pines (2025)

This is one we covered over two podcast episodes late last year, first with screenwriter Tom Jolliffe in episode 238, and then in episode 249 with two of the films stars, Nicolette McKeown and Stephen Kerr. Both fantastic conversations, and both worth checking out. Now that the film is coming to the UK, it's time to review it on our site as well.

Death Among the Pines has McKeown as Angela, a young woman whose husband (Olly Bassi) is away for work, leaving her alone in their secluded house during a stormy night. Her peaceful evening is disrupted by a knock on the door from a mysterious young man (Nathan Shepka, who also directed) whose car broke down. Despite how suspicious he looks, she lets him in, gives him some of her husband's clothes to change into while his dry, and offers him a glass of whiskey. At the same time, this mysterious young man is at the center of a police manhunt, and when local officer Donny (Kerr) comes to Angela's house to see if their fugitive is hiding out there, she has a decision to make: should she turn this young man over, or protect him from Kerr and the rest of the police.

This was absolutely fantastic, both a tight, smaller-scale thriller that brings you back to the old cable thrillers of the 90s; but also layered and nuanced from the writing, to the performances, to even the cinematography and editing. One of my favorite things was the way Kerr's Donny was introduced into the story. Tom as the writer knew that two characters could only sustain the story so long, so we'd need a third eventually, but he brings Donny in when things are just starting to get interesting between Angela and this mysterious stranger, as opposed after that when things were about to run their course. From there, McKeown, Shepka, and Kerr all play it like Donny's a party crasher, but because we don't really know who anyone is yet, anything could happen from that point, and as a viewer I couldn't wait to see it unfold. I don't want to give anything beyond that away, because I want people to experience this as fresh as possible, and everything else I want to say feels like it could be a spoiler, so I'll leave it at this: if you're looking for an evening thriller done on a smaller scale, but makes the most of it's budget, this should be at the top of your list.

I think the best place to start is in Nicolette McKeown's performance as Angela, because I don't know that the rest of it works if her performance wasn't as great as it was. There was a lot that this movie asked of her, and the way she took it and ran with it makes the whole thing compelling. From there, Shepka and Kerr play two angles of the triangle with McKeown, and they do this dance in their performance where they know as actors outside the film that everything hinges on McKeown, but as characters both think they're in control and that Angela is potentially there for the taking. It's exactly what I want when I fire up a movie like this: excellent performances, a lot of mystery and intrigue, but all in a fun and entertaining spirit. In the podcast episode I did with McKeown and Kerr, they talked about how acting is a career where you get to play make-believe as an adult, and maybe that's the ultimate thing that comes through in the performances, everyone was enjoying themselves, which becomes infectious as the viewer.

This is now the third collaboration between Nathan Shepka and Tom Jolliffe we've done, after When Darkness Falls and The Baby in the Basket, and one element that seems to be a part of all three is a setting that evokes a sense of isolation and claustrophobia. In When Darkness Falls, it's the juxtaposition of the expansiveness of the Scottish Highlands that is beautiful and open during the day, but at night when everything is dark becomes constrictive; in The Baby in the Basket it's the island location, cut off from the rest of the world; and here it's Angela's house, an oasis from the storm outside that may not be such a safe haven. On the surface it feels like limiting locations should make the film easier to produce, but as we've seen with a lot of modern DTV that likes to work in one or two locations, to carry the energy needed to keep things interesting over 90 minutes can be difficult, and a lot of those films resort to all manner of padding to get us over the finish line. For Shepka and Jolliffe to make these stories compelling and have them unfold organically without any padding or dead spots is quite a feat unto itself, and as a result I've really enjoyed watching all three of these movies.

The 90s cable thriller has a bit of a bad connotation, but one of the best ways I remember to spend 90-120 minutes was stumbling upon something while channel surfing, sitting with it for a bit to see what happens, and the next thing I know the credits are rolling and whether I thought the movie was good or bad I had a fun time. It's the crassness of the "good or bad" I think that turns people off, but also, the "bad" often came because maybe we had an actor or two who thought they were slumming it and wanted to get their scenes done and over with; or even if that actor or two did a great job, perhaps they made demands that led to scenes being rewritten so they no longer fit the rest of the story; or maybe a line producer or distributer made suggestions that led to an unevenness that disrupted the flow of the film. What we get here with Death Among the Pines is an example of what happens when everyone is pulling in the same direction, we get the fun of the 90s cable thriller, but with a consistency and higher quality all around, which makes it even better to watch.

Finally, our podcast is no stranger to Scotland, as we have Scott Murphy from All 90s Action, All the Time on the pod every couple months or so to talk about Seagal's DTV oeuvre, plus we've had the director of this film Nathan Shepka on a couple times, and now Nicolette McKeown and Stephen Kerr as well; but this summer as the US hosted the World Cup, the Scottish fans showed up in a big way. It started in Boston, where they wore special tartan-patterned Red Sox jerseys to Fenway Park and made the atmosphere there the most fun its been in years, especially with the team in last place at the time they visited. (The Red Sox then went on an historic run of success and are now firmly in a playoff spot.) The fun of the Scottish fans there was infectious, as stories ran all over the country about them, and I think it helped build more excitement for the World Cup among us Americans. So while Spain won the World Cup on the pitch, if there was a trophy for best supporters, the Scottish fans would've won that, and hopefully all of that goodwill will lead to more of us Americans consuming more Scottish cinema, because there's a lot of great stuff like this film available for us to watch.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can get this on Tubi, or VOD on Prime; and then in the UK, on September 7th it's be available on VOD. This is absolutely worth checking out, especially if you're looking to support indie filmmakers, fire this up on an evening where you're looking for a fun watch. Also, you can check out the podcast episodes we've done on this, episode 238 with Tom Jolliffe, and 249 with Nicolette McKeown and Stephen Kerr.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33089967

Illicit Behavior (1992)

This is one that Jon and I covered on episode 231 of the podcast, back in October, when we paired it with Deadly Desire as part of a Jack Scalia double-feature, and I wanted to finally get it on the site because it has some other great names; plus we haven't done any Joan Severance before, and that needed to be corrected! In addition to us, Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well. Trigger warning: sexual assault and abuse are mentioned in this review.

Illicit Behavior has Severance as a housewife with a police officer husband (Scalia) who's known for getting into trouble, and can be a bit of a brute. She also has a brother who inherited a family bar and some other money, which she would like to have to herself. At some point in a therapy session with Scalia, she tells her psychiatrist (Adam-12's Kent McCord) that her brother sexually abused her when they were growing up. This causes Scalia to go to his bar and kill him. That starts an IA investigation by Robert Davi, whom Severance tells that Scalia has been physically abusive toward her. Will Davi fall for her feminine wiles, or get wise to her tricks before it's too late?

This has a few things going for it. First and foremost, we have the names, which, in addition to the ones I mentioned above, we also have James Russo as Scalia's partner, and Jenilee Harrison of Three's Company Fame as Severance's sister-in-law. Names like that give us as the viewer something to anchor in on as the story goes in all kinds of directions, like this one does. And that story, written by Erotic Thriller mainstay Jag Mundhra, goes to some places that I think would've been problematic by 1992's standards, but are much more so today. One of the most common counters to someone's abuse claims is that the victim is making it up to damage the reputation of the alleged abuser, and it leads to many people not reporting abuse at all--"who would believe me anyway?" The reality is abuse claims like this are seldom made up, but using the idea of it being made up as a device for Severance's character to manipulate the men in the story only exacerbates the problem. I don't know that that's something people can get beyond, but if you can, Severance turns in a great performance which does give this some value and makes it worth a watch.

Speaking of Severance, almost 1400 posts in, and she's finally getting her first movie on the site. This feels like a massive oversight, but as I've discussed before, my goal of doing a lot of Erotic Thrillers when I started the DTVC back in 2007 was diverted by all of the engagement I got on the action posts, and Erotic Thrillers were one of many genres that were left behind. With the new series of Jon and I doing Erotic Thriller double features on the podcast, it's led to more of those getting reviews here too, and will lead to more Severance as well, because this is one four films of hers we've already done. When we think of the Queen of Erotic Thrillers, Shannon Tweed and Shannon Whirry both come to mind, but I think Severance is equally worthy of that title, and I think each of them inhabit a unique space in the world of Erotic Thrillers, which for me leaves room for three queens. The space Severance inhabits is this kind of "awe shucks" pretty woman on the surface, who makes guys think she's just there for the taking, while below the surface is slowly--or not so slowly perhaps--wrapping them around her finger to get them to do whatever she needs them to do. Shannons Tweed or Whirry couldn't play that part, the same way Severance wouldn't be able to replace Tweed in Scorned or Whirry in Animal Instincts, but I like that if they're given parts that work for them, you know going in depending on who's on the tin what kind of Erotic Thriller you're going to get. As I said above, we already have a few other Severance films watched that we can review on here, so hopefully we'll see her again soon and make her a bigger part of the site.

Jack Scalia, not Joan Severance, was the reason we watched this though, as Jon and I thought it would be cool to do a Scalia double feature to tie the episode in with Jon's PM Entertainment Podcast, because Scalia had done his share of PM flicks too. I think the biggest thing Scalia brings to the table here is he looks the part, so it's not outside the realm of possibility that Severance's character would fall for him. At the same time, he does a great job of playing a hot-headed lunkhead, which makes a lot of his character's decisions more believable as well. If Severance is one of the Queens of Erotic Thrillers, I don't know if Scalia is a king, that title probably goes to Andrew Stevens, but Scalia has done his share of these, so he at least deserves some consideration--maybe he's the Duke of Erotic Thrillers. Compare that to Robert Davi, who has done his share of these as well, but this was one of the rarer ones where he's kind of a lead, as opposed to his usual roles as the lead's partner or as some kind of fly in the ointment making things harder for other characters involved. He does a great job selling himself as the lovestruck dupe who's willing to do anything Severance tells him to do because he needs her so bad. Scalia and Davi make a great yin and yang, two New York Italian-Americans who were born in the early 50s, Scalia in Brooklyn and Davi in Queens, transported to Los Angeles where they're easy pray for Severance. 

I don't want to dwell on the fake abuse aspects of this because it can be triggering and I don't want to do that, so I'll just say quickly that I think that plot device was used because the classic "woman simply using her feminine wiles to get men to bump off other men for her" may have seemed too worn at that point, especially for someone like Jag Mundhra who had written a lot of these. There's another problematic aspect of this though that I do think using this device is more of a commentary on and the way it's used here turns the notion on its ear. It's the idea that men who save women from some kind of abusive or dangerous situation are somehow deserving of their romantic love as a result. It's a bad trope we see a lot in action movies--Seagal saves a beautiful woman half his age from a trafficking brothel, and she professes her undying love to him, that kind of thing. Here Severance feigns the damsel in distress role, and Davi thinking he's "won" her by protecting her from Scalia, is none the wiser that she might have ulterior motives. So while we have one element of this that's problematic and shouldn't have been a plot device, there's this other element that exposes another problematic trope at the same time. Maybe next time they can find a way to do the second thing without the first.

Finally, you'll notice my screen of Severance has her in a St. Louis Cardinals cap. You knew that was going to happen if I saw an MLB baseball cap in a movie. I was trying to think of where else we'd seen MLB baseball caps on the site before, and how many we had at this point, but because I haven't tagged them, it would be hard to tell, but I think either way this is our first St. Louis Cardinals one. Of all the MLB baseball games I've seen (according to my MLB Ballpark app, it's 76 and counting), I've only ever seen the Cardinals once, when they played here in Philly during Albert Pujols's last season in 2022, which makes him the player with the most career home runs I've ever seen play live (his 703 home runs 7 more than Alex Rodriguez, who I saw play with the Texas Rangers in 2002). I've never been to St. Louis before--or the state of Missouri for that matter--but as a lifelong baseball fan that's a park and baseball environment I've always wanted to experience. Maybe someday I'll be able to make the trip out there and make it happen, but at the very least we have a reason to spotlight them with this paragraph in this review.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently catch this free on Fawesome, which I think is a good way to go. Just remember depending on who you're watching this with that descriptions of abuse play a big part in the plot, and in ways that are not always handled well. And check out the podcast episode we did as well, number 231 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104485/

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

The Big Fall (1997)

For this month's PM post, I figured I'd do the third of three films C. Thomas Howell did with them, having already done the first two. When you look at all the names included too, you can see why a review was needed. In addition to us, Matt Spector at Bulletproof, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance, and David Wain at The Schlock Pit have covered this as well.

The Big Fall has Howell as Blaise Rybeck, a private investigator with a big heart who's having trouble making ends meet, despite having a nice big office, an office assistant (Kathy Griffin), and an intern (Sam Seder). All that changes when beautiful possible femme fatale Emma (Sophie Ward) comes to Rybeck asking her to find her brother, who disappeared while flying a light plane. Turns out he was involved with some rough characters, including Jeff Kober and Titus Welliver, but as Howell gets in deeper, he starts to realize maybe Emma isn't who she said she is, and maybe she's more involved with them than he thought. Then, as if we didn't have enough players, a young FBI agent who has a past with Howell is now assigned to take them down too. Will Howell solve the crime and get out alive?

This is an interesting one compared to the other two Howell did for PM. It flows back and forth between what we expect to be a PM Entertainment film, with explosions and people crashing through glass windows, but they feel shoehorned into Howell's attempt at a neo-Noir that leans heavily on more classic Film Noir themes. Like in the first ten minutes, we get these well-shot, stylized scenes of Howell smoking a cigar at an exclusive club while flirting with Kelly Rutherford, which then bleeds into a fight scene, car crashes, and Howell falling off a roof and crashing through a window. But then we don't see as much action for longer stretches than we're used to in a PM flick, and in the struggle between PM elements and neo-Noir, the latter wins out mostly. Also some of the PM elements don't feel as great, like the car chase later in the film where the cinematography wasn't what we usually get on PM action scenes, and was shot to make the thing feel a bit claustrophobic. There are some things for this to hang its hat on though. Howell actually bungee jumps. He also has a fight scene with Titus Welliver, which is something I feel like I'd want if I see their two names on the tin. And then we get these other names, like Kathy Griffin, Sam Seder, and Jeff Kober, who, along with Welliver, add a little more flavor, as did the one-off scene with Rutherford, and Sophie Ward as our Film Noir femme fatale. This is probably more for PM completists, but because I consider myself one, I think this is worth checking out on a free streamer.

We're now at 17 films for C. Thomas Howell, which feels like a good number, plus we have a couple we discussed on the pod that I could review soon, so that number could go higher. A lot of his tags came in the first few years of the site, when he had teamed up with The Asylum and was making War of the Worlds movies with them. It wasn't until later when Kenner from Movies in the Attic told me to watch The Sweeper that I discovered his PM Entertainment oeuvre, and while I didn't like this one as much as that or Pure Danger, I think these three work better than his Asylum output. Even this one is trying things that I don't know if The Asylum would've let him try, and while it may not always fit for PM, I appreciated that he had the room to do it, because when it did work, like the scene with Kelly Rutherford, I thought it worked really well. In my review of Mutant Vampire Zombies from the 'Hood! I said that Howell just didn't click for me, but I think seeing his PM films I have a new perspective, so it'll be interesting to see how he goes from here. Also this is his fifth directed film on the site, which isn't a bad number either. 

Denney Pierce is the action director for this movie. If you're not familiar with him, he does a lot of work with Spiro Razatos, especially stunt driving, and so like Razatos, he's a big part of why a lot of the PM films we love so much are great, but also why so many 2010s big budget action movies were great. I thought he did well as action director here, despite the fact that the film didn't have a lot of scenes for him to work with. Also, Igor Meglic, who is Razatos's action DP, wasn't on this either, instead we had Clive Sacke as second unit DP, and Jürgen Baum, who himself had done a lot of second unit DP work, as cinematographer. I'm not saying they did a bad job, but I think it may have explained why the chase scene near the middle didn't look the way we expect a PM action scene to look. And I think you can also say that about Jürgen Baum as cinematographer, he did a good job, but because he's not Richard Pepin or Ken Blakey, the film didn't have as much of the PM feel we've come to expect, and in that sense this movie feels more like one of the PM films Pepin and Merhi distributed, as opposed to one they produced in house. Probably not a selling point as a film on its own, but almost 60 PM flicks in, seeing some of these unique elements becomes more interesting the more of these we watch.

In the second screenshot you may recognize that young man as Sam Seder, host of The Majority Report YouTube channel, which was originally on Air America (or still is on that too, if that still exists, I'm not sure anymore). While I don't watch The Majority Report, it gets pushed to me a lot, and I do remember its early days when he co-hosted with Janeane Garofalo. The fact that the show has lasted this long, and has navigated all of the changes in the media landscape in that time, is quite a feat, and now it looks like it's thriving on YouTube. It's strange though, when you look at his four box on IMDb, The Big Fall isn't listed among them. To quote Jillian Michaels when he was debating her, "Come on Sam!"--or rather, instead of debating, she was looking things up on ChatGPT and reading off the answers to him as a form of rebuttal. As great as anything is you've done, or are going to do, getting shot by Jeff Kober in a drive-by and crashing through the plate glass window of a café will always be the tops. Even if a stunt man did it, it was your character, and you developed him to the point that we really felt it when you were lying there close to death, and Howell put a hand on your character's mother's shoulder and told her you were going to pull through. Even if you don't appreciate it, The Big Fall will always be part of your four box in my heart.

Finally, Sophie Ward didn't look all that comfortable smoking cigarettes in this movie. It reminded me of when we see younger actors do it today, because they didn't grow up around smoking, so it's not a natural thing for them. It'll be interesting to watch as we get further away from the generations that were comfortable smoking, how we'll be able to make period pictures. It's like the young Millennial women speaking in vocal fry while on dates with Don Draper on Mad Men. At some point though, us who grew up with smoking, during a time when parents smoked while tying their two-year-old's shoes as they sat in their stroller, while their friends came over to chat with them and smoked too, will die off, and the only people left will be people who are unfamiliar with it, kids who grew up with hipster parents that act like they're older than they are, and kind of don't remember a time when smoking was prevalent either, despite saying they do. In 2035 when the newly Netflix-owned HBO Max (after they bought it off Paramount+ when Oracle had to sell it off when ChatGPT couldn't pay to lease the data centers they built for them, losing hundreds of billions of dollars in the process) decides to reboot The Wire, are kids who were born in 2002 going to be able to look like Dominic West when they smoke? (And yes, I'm assuming they'll make it a period piece because Y2K will be so in then.)

This is going off the rails, so I better wrap it now. You can get this free on Amazon, I think even if you don't have Prime. There's also a version on YouTube that's not as great quality, but it'll do in a pinch, and you can find that in my PM playlist on my YouTube channel. 

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115677

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Mirror Images (1992)

On an upcoming episode of the DTVC Podcast, Jon and I look at two Shannon Whirry films, Mirror Images 2 and Private Obsession, and I figured I'd do the first Mirror Images in the process, and then figured it would be perfect for this month's Erotic Thriller review.

Mirror Images has Delia Sheppard as Kaitlin, the wife of political consultant Jeff Conaway; and her twin sister Shauna, who lives a less settled life with her on again off again boyfriend Joey Zoom (Nels Van Patten). When Shauna has to go on the run because a guy she's encountered may want to kill her, Kaitlin takes the opportunity to pretend to be her sister and live her life. It's exciting to start with, but when she encounters that same bad guy, and Conaway's new assistant Julie Strain ends up dead, she decides to find out what's going on. With the reluctant help of detective John O'Hurley (that's right, Peterman from Seinfeld), she goes in deeper to get to the truth. But will she like everything she finds? And will she make it out alive?

This is a great one. I think the second one is even better, but this one does the trick. Sheppard is great in both roles, you always gotta love Julie Strain, and Conaway works as the jerk husband--plus how can you not appreciate Peterman as the detective! It does have issues, like the idea that the baddie has burning heroin in a small, ornate jewel case that he uses to drug the women, when it's not exactly clear how that works at all, but when the rest of the film is enjoyable, I kind of just went with that part; but then when the only African American character has the character name "slave girl," that's a bit more problematic, and probably would be reworked if there were ever a modern remake. That aside, it is still the early 90s you want, with the sex you want, and the cast you want, so I think you get what you came for here.

We'll start with Delia Sheppard, who I thought did a great job in the lead. I was looking at her IMDb bio, and she doesn't have many leading roles like this, if she has any, which makes this one unique in the Erotic Thriller genre. The way the story works, she doesn't have to play duel roles as much as she has to play the "good" sister pretending to be the "bad" sister, which is still not easy, but she makes it work. Director Gregory Dark and cinematographer Paul Desatoff (not eventual Christopher Nolan cinematographer Wally Pfister, who would do a lot of Dark's stuff after this) do a great job creating this juxtaposition between Kaitlin's home being bright and open, and Shauna's being dark and more confined; and costumer designers Lothar and Ricardo Delgado do a great job giving her white outfits when she's playing herself, and darker outfits when she's playing Shauna; but ultimately it's up to Sheppard to pull all this off, and as I said above, I think she did great at that. This is the fourth time we've seen her here, as she plays the German woman who develops feelings for Whirry in Animal Instincts, and has two small roles in the Amir Shervan films Young Rebels and Killing American Style, so we'll tag her, as I have a feeling as we do more of these Erotic Thrillers we'll see more of her here as well.

Our one Hall of Famer is the great Julie Strain, and while her role is small, it's always great to see her. This is her 12th film on the site, which puts her firmly as second-most all-time among women on the site, but still 35 behind the top spot, which is Cynthia Rothrock at 47. If I continue the site for another 20 years, it is possible she may catch Rothrock, but it'll be an uphill battle. Even if she doesn't she's one of the best, and we'll hopefully see her again soon. This is also our fourth Gregory Dark film on the site, and considering I have another three of his watched that I plan to review soon, I figured I might as well tag him now so I'll have fewer to have to go back and add tags for if we decide to do it later. This is also our third Jeff Conaway film, the other two being PM flicks. I feel like I can't be the only one who gets "Gimme Shelter" in their head when they see Jeff Conaway's name, can I? "It's just Jeff Conaway, it's just Jeff Conaway!" Finally, you heard right in the earlier paragraphs, the great John O'Hurley plays the detective investigating Strain's murder. J. Peterman in an Erotic Thriller is too fantastic for words. And he does have a love scene with Sheppard. One fun fact about him: he was born in my home town, Kittery, ME. Even I wasn't born there, I was born across the river in Portsmouth, NH, so it's rare to see that! Oh, and I can't finish this paragraph without mentioning George "Buck" Flower as the creepy landlord, another great touch.

We do have two Presidential Portraits in this, in Jeff Conaway's office he has one for Reagan and one for Bush 41. This is an interesting conundrum when it comes to these, which ones count and which ones don't. Like is just having a Presidential Portrait enough, or is the spirit of it that it represents the time that President was in office, and so having one in a film just to have it, even if that President wasn't in office at the time the film took place, kind of goes against that spirit. For example, when I was on the White House Down episode of the Exploding Helicopter Podcast, the White House is full of Presidential Portraits, do all of them count, or do none of them count? I'm kind of leaning toward the latter on that, but because both Reagan and Bush 41 have portraits here, and Bush 41 was in office during the time this took place, it still counts. The other thing is, if we only count this for Bush 41 and not Reagan, that leaves them both tied with four overall, so I guess then we'll use the fact that Reagan also appears here as a tie breaker.

Finally, we're going way off topic, but I wanted to give a quick shoutout to my Gunners, who won the Premier League this past week, their first time since 2004, meaning since I've been writing this site in 2007, they hadn't won a title at all. And in true European sports style, they won when the team behind them failed to earn all three points in their penultimate game, meaning there were no longer enough points available to catch my Gunners on the final matchday. It's an overall much better approach compared to how we do sports in America, where we have bloated leagues, unbalanced schedules, and regular seasons that don't matter because you don't win a title for that, you could go undefeated but if you lose in the playoffs, your season is a total waste. Even when one of my Boston teams were a favorite, a win for a championship wasn't guaranteed, so I don't get to enjoy a moment like I did today, where I could watch Arsenal knowing they were already champions. The reason US sports will never be that good? Billionaires, like everything else bad about America, Billionaires.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this free on Fawesome, fully uncut, which I think is a good way to go, but I think if you were able to track down a physical copy it would be worth having too. Either way, you should check this one out if you haven't seen it, or haven't seen it in a while.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102452/

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Intimate Stranger (1991)

This was one I watched on cable when it first came out, because my friend's parents had a descrambler box, so we could watch anything on Showtime, HBO, or even the pay-per-view channel. I'd always wanted to review it for the site, but when it first appeared on Tubi, I missed my chance. When it came back recently, I made sure I didn't miss it again.

Intimate Stranger has Debbie Harry (yes, that Debbie Harry, only under the name "Deborah") as an aspiring singer who makes money as a phone sex operator. When a man calls (Tim Thomerson) and claims to be killing a woman while he's on the phone with her, she goes to the police, only to have the detectives laugh at her. Luckily James Russo was listening, and as he's trying to make detective, he sees this situation as his opportunity. So he borrows a bunch of call tracing equipment and had his buddy in the department run some credit checks on the caller's credit card. As they get closer, will they be able to stop someone when they don't even know what he looks like? But can he kill her when he doesn't know what she looks like either? 

Beyond the fact that this was a fun Erotic Thriller, my biggest takeaway was that 12-year-old me shouldn't have been watching this. It's explicitly sexual and really dark. It's possible too that I didn't see the beginning where Thomerson kills a woman he has tied down to a bed, while telling Debbie Harry over the phone that "my inside stuff comes out, and her inside stuff comes out. My inside stuff is white, her inside stuff is red." The thing that did make more sense to me at the time than it did now, was Debbie Harry in the lead. I knew her from Blondie, so why wouldn't she be in a cable Erotic Thriller? But now I'm like, I know her from Blondie, why is she in this cable Erotic Thriller? It's a novelty that makes it stand out, and we even get a couple of original songs from her that are only in this film, like her cover of "Piece of My Heart." In addition to that, Thomerson is fantastic as the killer, always love seeing young James Russo in these early 90s films, Paige French was great as Harry's younger sister, and we have nice one-off scene with Tia Carrere. While this is available on Tubi, you should go check it out.

If my friend and I did start this in the middle, the thing that got us to keep watching was Debbie Harry. At the time though I didn't know that this was a novelty, that she really didn't have any other lead roles like this; but because she was in it, it made it much easier to track down 35 years later, I just had to search her name on IMDb. Watching it now, when I'm roughly the same age Harry was when she made this, I see that she was supposed to be playing a younger character, but the maturity of her personality makes that impossible. Like when she's in the police precinct reporting the murder she heard, and the detectives are laughing at her, it doesn't work, because there's no way to not make Harry come off like she's in complete control of that room. In a way though that makes it all the more interesting, because she's such an immense artistic talent that it's there in every thing she does, every scene, like when she's reading Leather Nun, or sitting in a dimly lit bar drinking Wild Turkey, or sticking her cigarette between her toes while she's lying on her couch taking a phone sex call. I can see why she didn't do more of these, because even though it's stylish and fun to watch, the story is a bit all over the place, and it ended up direct-to-Showtime, so I imagine if you're Debbie Harry the juice of these films isn't worth the squeeze. But at least we have this one.

As a 12-year-old I wouldn't have been dissecting why I was drawn to these movies beyond the sex and the hot women, but looking at it now, I can see how it informed some of my tastes later on as I grew up. In addition to Erotic Thrillers, I was watching other Film Noir at that time, like Humphrey Bogart films on The Movie Loft on TV38, and episodes of Miami Vice, which had a lot of Film Noir elements, so my brain was tuned to enjoy stuff like that. Ten years later, as the DVD market exploded in the early 2000s, Erotic Thrillers became more straight-up soft core porn and less stylized Film Noir with a lot of sex in them, but now I could get all five seasons of Miami Vice on DVD, and I could pick up both the more famous Bogart Film Noir films, and get some of the lesser-known ones in DVD bargain bins. I think as a result, I forgot how great the Noirish elements were in these 90s Erotic Thrillers, but coming back to them like I have, especially now that many more of them are available on streaming, I can see the aesthetic that I more subconsciously appreciated back then. I mean, look at that first screen I posted of Harry sitting at the bar, between the light, the composition, the colors, all of it is fantastic, and it's part of why I love these movies so much.

Another reason is all the names we get in addition to the lead. James Russo is someone we see in a lot of modern DTV playing a mob boss or a crooked cop, but there was an earnestness in a young James Russo that I always love, going back to his part in Beverly Hills Cop. I decided to finally tag him, and see that this is only his 4th film on the site, which feels low, but I think part of that is he also did a couple that we covered on the pod which I haven't reviewed yet. That's one less than Tia Carrere, who now only has five films on the site, which also feels low. She's only in this for one scene, but this is the same year Showdown in Little Tokyo and Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man were released, so I think she did okay all things considered. Then we have the great Tim Thomerson, who's making his 17th appearance on the site, and is absolutely scary as the killer in this. There's one scene in particular where he's cutting the crust off a sandwich and eating it while Grace Zabriskie lies dead on the floor next to him, which was chilling. Rounding out the cast, Paige French plays Harry's younger sister. You probably don't remember, but way back in December of 2007 we saw her in Meatballs 4, so it's been almost 19 years; and then we had Mel Johnson Jr., who we all know from Total Recall, playing Harry's neighbor across the hall in her apartment. So while Debbie Harry was the biggest name, we had a lot of other great names in this too.

Finally, look at that double bill on that marquee. First off, I would love to have seen Marked for Death in the theater. As it was, my friends and I rented it as soon as it came out on VHS. It's crazy to think that Seagal's first four or five movies were so big, he was able to live off of that reputation to the tune of another six big screen movies, and roughly 40 DTV films. Here in 1990 when this was shot though, we didn't know we weren't going to get much more great Seagal after this, we thought that ride was going to go on forever. And then with The Krays, I bought that on VHS back in the late 2000s because it has the Kemp brothers from Spandau Ballet in it, but I never got around to watching it, and I have no idea what happened to that copy. The interesting thing is, in 1991, PM Dawn released "Set Adrift Off Memory Bliss," which sampled Spandau Ballet's "True." It was kind of mind-blowing at the time, "True" hadn't been released that long ago, and now it's being sampled in a hip hop song? And the video had Tony Hadley in it, giving it his stamp of approval. 35 years later, it was probably the smart move by Hadley and Spandau Ballet, because "True" has like 300 million more views on YouTube than "Set Adrift Off Memory Bliss."

So, with a thrill in my head and a pill on my tongue, I'd say it's time to wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi here in the States. It's definitely worth it. They may not make movies like this anymore, but they made 'em then, and we're lucky we can have them at our fingertips--until Tubi or whatever streaming service decides to take them down, of course.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104519

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Midnight Warrior (1989)

For our PM review for April, I wanted to get this one in, because I had discussed it recently on an episode of the PM Entertainment Podcast, where I was part of a three-person weave along with host Jon Cross and Chris the Brain from Bulletproof Action. In addition to us, Ty and Brett at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

Midnight Warrior, aka "Mid-night Warr-ee-orr," stars Kevin Bernhardt as Nick Branca, a young Italian-American man who doesn't know how to eat spaghetti properly, but is great at finding provocative footage of news stories that he can sell to local TV stations for good money. One night as he's out chasing one of these stories, he saves a woman from a burning car after a PM-style crash. That makes him a hero, and everyone wants him to cover their stories now. The problem? Branca has found a nice girl from up the street named Angelina Mantucci (Lilly Melgar), and after a date or two he decides he wants to leave the Mid-night Warr-ee-orr life and settle down. His slimy boss Buddy (Bernie Angel) doesn't like the idea of his cash cow calling it quits, so he makes a decision on his own to do something to bring Branca back. But will this decision be his undoing?

We're do you go with this one? Great soundtrack? Check, as I'm writing this, I have the theme song in my head, which was just "Mid-night Warr-ee-orr" repeated as B-roll of LA at night flashed before us. Well-shot? For sure, Joseph Mehri's direction with Rick Pepin's cinematography was great. What about the acting? For the most part it worked--though poor Nonna in the extended family scene having to follow Bernhardt's all over the place card tricks and riffing for Rick Pepin's daughters was a tough spot to put her in. It's the story where we lose it I think. The premise was great, but early on we kind of don't know where it's going, then when we think we do, the rug is pulled out from under us in the kind of bonkers twist only PM could give us. We also get our PM car explosions and pizza joint owners getting shot through plate glass windows that mitigate any of the missteps. The fact that this would be number 2 on the spine if all the PM films were rereleased in original release order is a mark in its favor as well. If you've seen a lot of PM films, and you're looking for one to kill 90 minutes, I think this is a great choice.

This is our 57th PM film on the site, and I'd say if I were ranking them all, I'd put this in the bottom half. It's not horrible, but it's not one of those all-time PM classics either. As Jon, Chris, and I discussed on the PM pod, it seemed like the PM crew were still figuring things out, so this was the film where they learned to walk so later in the 90s they'd be able to drag Jack Scalia on a satellite dish from the back of a bread truck that's speeding down the highway. An interesting note on this, it's Joseph Mehri's 16th directing credit, which puts him one behind Fred Olen Ray for second all-time on the site, after Albert Pyun's 44ish (depending on how we count some of his films that were finished by someone else). That begs an interesting question: could he go into the Hall of Fame again? He and Richard Pepin are both in together as the P and M of PM Entertainment, and I only tag them separately for their directing work--which may not be fair to Pepin, because he did a lot of great cinematography work that he's not tagged for. Because my Hall of Fame is based off of sports halls of fame, I did some digging. The Baseball Hall of Fame says no, you only get inducted once, and that covers everything. The Basketball one on the other hand, does allow for multiple inductions, like in the case where a team was inducted, then allowing for an individual to be inducted as well. An example of this would be Michael Jordan, who was inducted as part of the Dream Team, and as an NBA player. So maybe not only Merhi, but Pepin as well should have their own individual inductions. It's worth considering.

The premise that this film was based on, "if it bleeds, it leads," was something that has only gotten worse in the intervening 30-plus years, not better. If you watch the news here in Philly, you'd think we were all living in RoboCop's Detroit or something; and the cable news phenomenon just exacerbated things even more. In 2016 Trump became the perfect "if it bleeds, it leads" president, where everything he did warranted a "breaking news" chyron at the bottom of the screen. None of the media outlets could handle it in 2020 when Biden was elected, the chyron looked silly when it was "Biden's dog bit one of his secret service detail." I guess that's the same as starting a coup to prevent a lawful transfer of power, tomato-tomahto, right? But this is what's fascinating about DTV films from this time, they may have missed the mark on a lot of Sci-Fi stuff, but they were spot on about a lot of socio-cultural stuff like this. The thing they couldn't have predicted though was OJ, he took what was happening in the late 80s/early 90s, and supercharged it. Bernie Angel would've had Bernhardt coming out of retirement to follow OJ during the Bronco Chase. And had it been PM, the Bronco would've flipped through a police car barricade, only for Bernhardt to save OJ before it exploded.

Usually this paragraph would be a round-up of all the other cast and crew, but because there weren't many other people to discuss, I thought I'd use it as a round-up of all the other bonkers moments I missed. First, near the beginning, we find out that Bernie Angel's character's base of operations is a diner. He has his own circular booth, with TVs plugged in via extension cords, and all manner of papers and documents strewn about. Even in 1989, who did that? Even in a café today, they'd see that and say "um, no... no, you can't do that here." Later, our hero visits his mom, who makes him some pasta. When he meets the neighbor lady, his face is covered in red sauce, like he'd never eaten pasta in his life, or forgot how to use a fork to put food in his mouth. After he saves the woman from the burning car, a local TV reporter goes to his house so they can hook up. When he gets home though, he doesn't know who's there, he just sees clothes lying around and hears the shower get turned on. His first thought is it's his mother visiting. What? Does his mother use his shower a lot? And does she leave her clothes lying around too? I mentioned above about poor Nonna. I have no idea what that was, it was some extended family thing that Bernhardt's character and Melgar's character were attending, but whose family was it, his or hers? And why was he doing a magic trick for Rick Pepin's kids? Then he finishes by having Nonna do some, while he hits on Melgar's character, and the best Nonna can think to do is sing a song from the Old World. Your guess was as good as mine. Finally, when our hero and the neighbor lady are back at his place, she mentions wanting a dog, and his response is to go on this soliloquy about why he prefers birds. It was so fantastic, Jon created a shirt for it that you can buy on the PM Entertainment Podcast Threadless page. I've been meaning to get one myself!

Finally, look at that image above. Do you see the "Bo Knows" ad in the upper right corner? As a kid in the late 80s, it didn't get any better than Bo Jackson. I'd watch This Week in Baseball and couldn't wait to see what Bo Jackson highlights they had for us, like when he tried to call time out then hit a home run anyway when the ump wouldn't grant it; or when he threw Harold Reynolds out at home on a play he had no business making. His time with the Raiders I didn't see as much, because the late afternoon AFC game was usually blacked out after the Patriots were on in the early window, so we always had the CBS NFC game in that window, but I remember the highlights of him trucking Brian Bosworth to get a touchdown. As a running back, he threw his body into defenders like he had a spare at home in the closet, so it probably wasn't so much that he got injured and it cut his career short as much as he managed to not get injured for so long despite playing like that. Either way, he was a force, and we may never see anyone like him again. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can stream this on Fawesome here in the States, plus there's a decent version on YouTube which is included in my PM Entertainment playlist, which you can find on our DTVC YouTube channel. And also don't forget to check out the episode we did on the PM Entertainment Podcast!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145082

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Scorned (1993)

This is one Jon Cross from After Movie Diner and the PM Entertainment Podcast and I will be covering on an upcoming episode of the DTVC Podcast, which makes this one unique, because I usually do the podcast episode first and the blog post after, but I wanted to get some Shannon Tweed up this month and this felt perfect for that post too, so I figured why wait?

Scorned features Tweed as a woman married to a man who's trying to move up the corporate ladder (Dan McVicar), and in so doing, has her sleep with a potential client. When Andrew Stevens swoops in and gets the position her husband was supposed to receive, said husband does the most sensible thing in that situation and kills himself in his old office before he has to vacate it for Stevens. As if this isn't bad enough, Tweed discovers the company won't pay out his life insurance. At this point she has nothing to lose, so she takes on a fake identity as a high school tutor, and gets herself moved into Stevens's family's pool house, where she seduces him, his son, and his wife, while trying to make their lives hell as payback. Will Stevens find out what she's doing in time to stop her?

This is a classic of the Erotic Thriller genre for a reason. You have iconic images like the one above, it hits all the Erotic Thriller bingo card spots, but then you have Tweed turning in this chilling, yet sympathetic performance, a supporting performance from Kim Morgan Greene as Stevens's wife that was better than it had any business needing to be, and then Stevens as a director who understands what makes these movies work, and is able to deliver them at a higher level than most. It has some plot holes, which I won't discuss to avoid giving anything away, but they leave you thinking "why didn't they see that before?" There are also some stunt moments that look a little silly--though we won't put the blame on our man Cole S. McKay as stunt coordinator for that, I don't know if he had the freedom he'd have on a PM flick, because I don't remember a PM flick featuring two dummies falling down the stairs meant to represent two women falling down the stairs together. Overall though, as I said, this is a classic. If you haven't seen it before, or you haven't seen it in a while, definitely try to track down a copy and check it out!

With this movie Shannon Tweed moves into a tie with Kathleen Kinmont for third all-time among women at the DTVC with 10 films, one behind Julie Strain's 11, and way behind Cynthia Rothrock at 47. Obviously we'd like to get that number up, but when you go through her IMDb bio, a lot of the stuff she's done isn't available anywhere. The streaming world is still coming around to embracing the 90s Erotic Thriller, but also some of those films she made then had very limited releases, or only a cable TV release, and now they're possibly gone to us forever. Even this one, something considered a classic in the genre, isn't on any streamers and isn't easy to track down as a physical copy. It's a world that deserves to be seen, so hopefully as many of these movies can be made as available as possible. Back to this one, out of all of the films of hers we've covered so far, this is probably her best performance, and the film itself might be best of those too. She goes for it in every way, and gives us a femme fatale that we almost root for. Out of the ten, I think this is only the second Erotic Thriller of hers we've done, so I think as we get deeper in on this genre, it'll be fun to see more of these, because she's one of, if not the Queen of Erotic Thrillers, and a big part of why that genre was so popular in the 90s.

Another part of that was Andrew Stevens, who directed, produced, and starred in this. While the Queen of the Erotic Thriller could be up for debate (though Jon and I had it between Tweed and Joan Severance), it feels like Stevens is the King. In the We Kill for Love documentary, he talked about how he was transitioning from actor to producer, but understood that as an actor he still had enough of a name to get funding for a movie and sell it better to distributors. What that means, at least for me, is that as an actor he wanted Tweed and their other co-stars to have more of the spotlight, which helps make this a unique entry, because it's told from Tweed's standpoint, when most of these are told from the male lead's point of view. Also, Stevens and his DP, Christian Sebaldt, crafted some really inspired shots, like the one above that looks like something out of a De Palma film. He knew how to make an Erotic Thriller, and the genre wouldn't have been what it was without him, which really comes through in this one.

As I mentioned above, we do have another Hall of Famer in this, stunt coordinator Cole S. McKay, who does stunt coordinating on a lot of Erotic Thrillers. I don't know if I'd say it's his hallmark, but we do get someone thrown through a window. It is interesting that the film decided to go with the dummies falling down the stairs instead of hiring two stuntwomen to do it, and maybe it's safer that way, but beyond PM, I've seen stuntmen fall down the stairs in other Erotic Thrillers McKay was stunt coordinator on, so I wonder if it was a budget and safety thing here. Watching all of these in the 90s when they were new, I had no idea who Cole S. McKay was, but we do take for granted that stunts should look a certain way, without considering who's doing them and what kinds of risks are involved. It's fun now since I've been doing this site and I know who he is to go back and watch these, and admire his work in making it all look realistic--or not if he needs to go with dummies instead of actors.

Finally, what do we have here? A Red Sox cap? How do you not love that? Maybe if you're a Yankees fan, but I can at least appreciate a Yankees cap in the wild too (though to be fair, I didn't mention that Traci Lords's character was wearing an oversized Yankees shirt to bed in the Intent to Kill review--must've slipped my mind!). The team was pretty rough at that period, I couldn't have imagined them not only winning four World Series in the 2000s and 2010s, but also that the ownership group that brought those World Series would be so disliked by Red Sox fans after--me included--because they decided to stop spending and are now treating the team like "hey, aren't you happy we've won four?" Yes, it's been 30 years since that hat was shot in this movie, but it would only be a short 11 years between that and 2004, when the Red Sox broke the curse, which to me that 11 years felt much longer than the 20 years since. With baseball season starting, I'll still be rooting for my Red Sox, even if the owners don't care as much about spending to win as they used to.

And with that, let's wrap this up. This is not an easy find, but if you can find it, it's worth checking out. I believe there are some used VHS and DVDs out there, so as long as the dealers aren't gouging you'll be good. And keep an eye out for that podcast episode later this month!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111093/

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Checkmate (2025)

This is probably the perfect movie for a review that was supposed to be the last one of February, but technically is the first one in March. It also has Lorenzo Lamas in it, someone we haven't seen in a long time, so that was a selling point too. I don't usually do the procedural serial killer film, but based on those other factors I thought I'd give this one a try.

Checkmate has Joyce Glenn as Brittany, a police detective in Louisville who's been put on ice after she shoots a hostage in a stand-off. Her psychiatrist (Sarah Pribis) has to clear her to go back to active duty, but isn't sure she wants to do that yet, so office work it is. But when a killer is using a chess theme to toy with the police department, the fact that Brittany knows a lot about chess has Captain Sommers (Lamas) make the tough call to put her on the case. And she's coming up with answers, but when a rich kid ends up as one of the victims, the weight of the state government is coming down on her, and she only has 48 hours to solve the crime before the feds are called in. When the ME gives her a clue to who the killer might be, can she figure it out before it's too late?

Again, this isn't exactly a genre I watch a lot, so some of the issues I have with it might be things that people who like these movies more don't see as a problem, but overall I thought this was a pretty good deal. The main issue for me was the story got repetitive. Person murdered, crime scene moment, Brittany finds a new clue, Lamas tells her she only has X amount of time to solve this, problem with boyfriend or father, wake up from a nightmare, repeat. For me, to get to the 90-minute mark, I could've done with less of that, and more of a few different areas. One, I think more between Brittany and her boyfriend Brad (Andra Fuller) could've replaced one of the murders. Early on we get the sense that he's kind of a creep who can't get the hint that she's not interested, which we find out later isn't the case. And developing that relationship more would've developed Brittany's character more as well. Two, Brittany seems to be the only woman working in their department. If that wasn't meant to be important, we needed at least one other woman, but if it was, that could've been explored more too. Finally, this was shot and takes place in Louisville. That's a unique location, all anyone knows about Louisville is the Kentucky Derby and baseball bats, but the movie didn't lean into that uniqueness at all. It could've been set in Anywheresville, USA as a result. All that said, this does what you want a movie like this to do, Glenn was great in the lead, I liked Dorien Wilson as the father, and Lamas was solid and we got a good amount of him--I don't want to spoil much more beyond that though. I think if you like serial killer procedurals, this one is worth checking out.

Normally we start with the film's Hall of Famer, but I wanted to discuss Joyce Glenn here first because she's the star. The only thing I want from a lead character in a movie is to be able to root for them and care if they succeed, and she gives us that. I think it's particularly important here, because there's this added element of the case is about to be taken away from her, so if we don't care enough, we'd be like "fine, let the Feds handle it." This is one of the things I like about these Tubi Originals, they give an actor like Glenn who's been doing more supporting stuff a chance to lead a film, and while you need to have a thick skin with this kind of thing (some of the reviews of these are harsh, to say the least), if you take it and run with it like Glenn did, hopefully other people making movies will see it and cast you as the lead in their projects as well. I don't know that a movie like this could have a sequel, because you can't have it be "Checkmate 2" and go back to that chess well again, but can it be a sequel if it's not called "Checkmate 2?"; but I think another serial killer procedural with Glenn at the lead and Lamas and Wilson back would be worth the watch.

We last saw Lorenzo Lamas back in October of 2021 when we covered Atomic Eden, where Lamas had a cameo at the end, so he got the tag. And I think that's why I hadn't done another Lamas film in so long, because I was afraid they were going to be like that with scant Lamas, and at least Atomic Eden had more names to discuss. I took a chance on this one though, and I'd say we were rewarded. He has a solid supporting roles as a good leader who cares about Glenn's character, believes in her, and wants her to succeed. This could've done that the other way and had him be a jerk who's opposing her, but doing it the way they did allowed Glenn to lean on Lamas's experience in the scenes they had together, which gave the movie a more organic feel overall. (The same thing is true of her scenes with Dorien Wilson, so I wonder if the filmmakers decided to go with more of that, than her scenes with Andra Fuller's Brad, because there was more chemistry between Glenn and Wilson or Lamas.) This is now 36 movies for Lamas, so the 40 Club is something we should aim for with him. I have him seventh all-time among DTV stars, but with Adkins at 8 close on his heels, we should get him to 40 before Adkins hits that mark at least. I see our old friends The Asylum have another Tubi Original with Lamas in it, President Down, with Gail O'Grady as the Commander in Chief, so we'll have to do that at some point. Also, based on how he looks here, could he play the lead in a Jim Jarmusch biopic?

I want to get into the people involved in creating this a bit, because I think they're worth highlighting as well. First we have director Jamal Hill, who grew up here in Philly. He has a fair amount of directing credits to his name, including Deuces with Larenz Tate and Meagan Good, and that shows in the film we get. It's competently made, even if it was a genre film made on a budget, and in some ways it's the genre film made on a budget that needs a solid professional director to carry it home, because it's easier to miss things when everything's tight and done on the quick. Our DP was Tyler Eckels, whose work I'd also seen in 72 Hours, a Phillippe Phactory film Ty and I covered on episode 224 of the DTVC Podcast. Unlike that film, which wasn't as well-lit or the color was turned down in post-production, here we get some nice shots, especially with the Louisville skyline in the background; and overall this movie looked nice, which we don't often see nowadays, everything's usually darker and more washed out, so that was refreshing too. I did think the screen POV shots like the one below weren't as effective, but that might've just been me. And last but not least, the screenwriter was Patrice Escoto, and I think she does a solid enough job on this. I wondered though how much of her script she expected to be in the final product. There were some lines that felt more like placeholders that look good in an initial draft, but when spoken out loud don't sound as natural. Also the story gives away the game in the opening scene, which may not have been as obvious in writing it, but seeing it live I think they could've used a couple more red herrings. The story does a good job in making Brittany a compelling lead though, and Glenn then takes that and fleshes it out, which is the most important thing. 

Finally, as I've mentioned a couple times, this took place in Louisville, Kentucky. I've been to the state of Kentucky before, but not Louisville. I bring this up because I think for most people, outside of the Kentucky Derby, we don't know much about Louisville, and it felt like this movie missed a trick in not giving us a more complete view of the city. I browsed Google Maps a bit, and saw a place called Burger Boy that looked like a nice deal, and even if they couldn't shoot there, could Brad have brought food from there when he and Brittany had an eat-in date?--instead of the "Thai" he said he was bringing, that ended up just being a salad. I also saw a coffee shop called Blak Coffee that looked nice, and even if you couldn't have shot there, maybe Brittany brings her dad a coffee from there when they meet at the park. It doesn't have to be like Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, but Louisville isn't New York or Chicago, if a film features it we need more to make it its own character in the story--or at least I'd like more.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As a Tubi Original, it's available on Tubi, so you can stream it for free, you just have to deal with commercials (which, there's one for a credit card collaboration with a retail chain that has this song that goes "wake up call," but it sounds like "wake up, Carl," so that gets in my head and my cats are wondering "who's Carl?" as I'm singing it to them). I think this is worth checking out on there, especially if you're a fan of these kinds of procedurals, and hopefully we'll get more like this from the people involved in the future.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35675045

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Angels of the City (1989)

Continuing our trend this year of doing a PM post to start the month, I wanted to do something with Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, and decided the first of the two he directed would be a good way to go. (We've done the other one before, Coldfire.) Now you might be thinking, wasn't 57 Seconds the first February post? I'm still under he delusion that I'm posting on Saturdays instead of Sundays, and maybe I need to give up the ghost on that. Anyway, in addition to us, Mitch at the Video Vacuum covered this as part of his "It Came from the Thrift Shop" series, and Jon at PM is looking to cover this one soon too.

Angels of the City is about a group of kids in their late 20s going to USC, but acting like they're in their early 20s. They get an assignment from their sociology professor to interview people from another level of society from themselves, so two guys  decide to interview a lady of the night. Their girlfriends (Kelly Galindo and Cynthia Cheston), on the other hand, are pledging a sorority, and part of their initiation is to pretend to be ladies of the night for an evening. Both the guys and the girls end up in the middle of a turf war between two rival pimps, though the ladies get it much worse when they're kidnapped by one of them, and have to fight for their lives in some of the worst places of LA. Will they make it home alive?

This is quite a movie. Yes, it has the low-budget look of early PM, and you definitely see them trying to make the best of limited resources, like in an early scene where a lady of the night is being chased by some baddies on Hollywood Boulevard, and we see reused footage and locations being looped to extend the chase. But the thing is, the scope of what LHJ and company were trying to do here is admirable, and I think they pull it off in a lot of ways. Essentially it's a darker version of the 80s teen romp film, where a bunch of rich kids run up against the seedy underbelly of the city, but instead of that underbelly being a bunch of caricatures and stereotypes, they're complete people, while the kids, especially the two young ladies, see just how much they've started life on third base. I think the other issue is this movie has a 30-minute epilogue, and while it resolves itself well, there is a sense of "how did we end up here?" Grading PM on a curve though, between the ambition to want to do this commentary on 80s teen romp comedies, and the novelty of watching early PM--including a great death scene for Cole S. McKay--this is worth checking out.

Usually we start with the Hall of Famers, but I wanted to spotlight the film's director, co-writer, and co-composer Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs. In his review, Mitch mentioned that the same year this came out, his Welcome Back Kotter costar John Travolta had Look Who's Talking released in theaters, and while I know LHJ would've loved to have had a film like that himself, I liked that he took advantage of the platform PM was giving him to try to do something deeper. And it felt like everyone else at PM was into it and onboard, perhaps because it's the story of LA that wasn't often told. It's not just that there's a seedy underbelly, but that seedy underbelly exists right next to places like USC where some of the richest kids live; but also that that seedy underbelly is composed of actual human beings who didn't have it as lucky as those rich kids at USC, and to see that juxtaposition come through in every scene, even in what felt like a tacked on epilogue, was really impactful. The only other film he directed after this was Coldfire, but considering the kind of social commentary he demonstrated here, it would be nice if someone else gave him the platform to do more of this.

Many of the PM names you know and love are here. We have Rick Pepin on cinematography, furthering a template that PM used with him, and later Ken Blakey, where you could have an actor without a lot of directorial experience take the helm, and lean on either Pepin or Blakey as their DP. It also serves to give us the "PM look" we know and love later on, even if the quality of the film stock on this early one isn't quite what they use later. We also see Cole S. McKay doing stunts, including a great death scene as one of the rival pimp's goons; plus I've finally tagged stunt coordinator Michael J. Sarna, who starts off with 28 tags! When we look at the PM stunt coordinators, he's right there with McKay, Spiro Razatos, and Red Horton and "Broadway" Joe Murphy, so his tag was long overdue. Paul Volk, someone who probably should also be tagged, does editing duties on this, which I think he earns his money on some of these scenes where things are happening in different locations, and he needs to make them appear to look like one. Finally, Addison Randall was an assistant director, a name we see a lot of in early PM. If you look at their first handful of films, other than this one with LHJ at the helm, all of the other films were directed by either Joseph Merhi, Charles Kanganis, or Addison Randall.

I was trying to think of teen romp films that this could be answer to, and the two that first come to mind are License to Drive and Adventures in Babysitting. Another could be Risky Business. There's a cutesy, Hollywood idea of what sex work is, and what it means to be pushed to the margins of society, and the main characters experience it, live through it, and end up on the other side sleeping in their comfortable beds, while the people who are struggling no longer exist. And I think maybe that's why LHJ wanted the 30-minute epilogue, because it wouldn't have felt right to him to just roll credits after the young ladies escape their ordeal. He adds another layer in that epilogue too, where the sociology professor is more fascinated by what the girls experienced than concerned, so even he's coming from a place of seeing sex workers and other people struggling as more a novelty than as actual people. Ten years later when I was in college studying anthropology, my professors seemed more sensitive to this, making sure we looked at people as fellow human beings, and not subjects in a case study for a paper, and maybe that was why I was more sensitive to what LHJ and company were going for with the professor character in this film.

Finally, at the beginning of the film the radio announcer mentions Magic Johnson, and later a guy delivering Chinese food is wearing a Magic Johnson jersey. In 1989, the Lakers were a year removed from winning their fifth title with Magic, and despite the rise of the Pistons and the Bulls, plus the Trailblazers in the Western Conference, there was no reason to believe that run wouldn't continue. Two years later they lost to the Bulls in the Finals, and then Magic revealed he was HIV positive, and that was it. Now, no one should feel bad for Lakers fans, because they've won six more titles since 2000, which puts them in a tie with my Patriots for the most among the US Big 4 sports during that time, but it is interesting to think how we get so used to the world being one thing--that Magic Johnson had to retire early because he was HIV positive--that it's hard to put into perspective what that time capsule looked like right before it. Yes, the Lakers were declining a bit from their 80s dominance, but there was a sense that they still had another six or seven years left with Magic, they just needed to retool and within a couple years they'd be back. But alas it never happened, and the 90s were a lost decade for the Lakers, until they drafted Kobe and traded for Shaq. Again, not feeling bad for Lakers fans, just saying the mentions of Magic Johnson here forced me to look back at that slice of time and think about how different things were.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this free on Tubi here in the States, which I think is a great way to go. Between the novelty of early PM, and just the scope of what Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and company were going for, I think it's worth checking out.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099042

And check out my newest novel, Mark in Sales, on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.