Tune In Tuesday: Night Screams

High school football star David has just won a four-year scholarship to the University of Oklahoma, and - with his parents away for the night - is planning to mark the occasion with a party for his buddies and girlfriend. But, as the evening’s festivities get underway at a local nightclub, two violent fugitives take refuge in the basement of David’s home. When the action moves over to David’s place, it quickly becomes clear that someone is intent on spoiling the celebration - as, one by one, the revelers get picked off and butchered in various gruesome ways. But are the stowaway crooks responsible for the carnage, or is this the work of someone even more unhinged?

Special Features Include: 

both its Pre-Release and Standard Theatrical versions

Brand new commentary track with director Allen Plone & cinematographer Eric Anderson, moderated by special features producer Ewan Cant

"Blood and Chopsticks: Echoes of Night Screams" (80 min) - a brand new making-of documentary featuring interviews with its cast and crew

An Exceptional Slasher, especially for the late 80s. The gore is plentiful and the concept novel. Even if you see the twist coming, it is still very well done. Of course I must mention the sweetheart dancers and The Dogs? a dance troupe and Rock Group. who appear in the film. A wonderful bit of regional charm.

Creatively shot and well acted. The special features are revelatory. 

       -Lou

Tune in Tuesday #6 "Remote Control"

A video store clerk stumbles onto an alien plot to take over earth by brainwashing people with a bad '50s science fiction movie. He and his friends race to stop the aliens before the tapes can be distributed world-wide.

Director Jeff Leiberman made one of the best cult movies of the 70s with "Blue Sunshine " and made his idiosyncratic mark in the slasher genre with "Just before dawn". This 1988 entry is far less known/regarded. It is a unique,  campy and fun little nod to 1950s sci-fi and then current fads. Kevin Dilon is excellent as our lead, and the whole vibe is one of fascination at discovering some weird old sci-fi flick on a basic cable tv station at 3 am. 

Tune In Tuesday #4 Cthulhu Mansion

After a drug deal gone wrong, a group of punks attempt to flee a local amusement park by taking a mysterious old magician named Chandu (Frank Finlay; Lifeforce) and his beautiful daughter hostage. While trying to evade the police, the punks force Chandu to take them to his secluded mansion where they plan to seek refuge for the night and wait for the heat to die down. Unbeknownst to them, Chandu's obsession with the black arts and the occult has summoned an evil that not even he can control. As the house itself begins to terrorize and kill the trespassers, the survivors desperately attempt to uncover the horrifying secret to the mansion’s magical spells, along with Chandu’s own dark past...

Directed  by the incomparable JP Simon (Pieces) and with a definite early 90s Full Moon video feel, this one pleases with its outrageous creature effects, claustrophobic old dark house setting and sense of Eerie dread coupled with a gritty, home invasion plot. A criminally overlooked early 90s gem, perfect for a friday night beer and pizza watch.

Tune In Tuesday #3 "The Lamp"

from the back cover:

After a group of thieves decide to ransack the home of a strange, old Gypsy woman, murdering her in the process, they unwittingly free a vengeful genie named Jinn who has been held captive for centuries in an ancient oil lamp. Soon after, the lamp is acquired by a local museum. But as Alex Wallace, daughter of the museum's curator, decides to sneak a group of her friends into the museum after hours for a night of partying, she doesn't realize that Jinn is looking for a new 'keeper' and that Alex is the perfect vessel to carry out the genie's diabolical actions...

This one gets points for taking the "group of kids in an isolated location get killed off in creative ways 1 by 1" of the slasher movie and adds the twist of it being a evil Djinn, a giant, green glowing monster . It has a handmade charm and the death scenes are creative and the monster is spectacular,  not a lost classic by any means but a fun little genre effort for those that have seen the usual and want something a little different.  

Tune In Tuesday #2: Halloween Double Feature!" Inn Of The Damned/Night Of Fear"

Both originally made for a Australian horror series called fright, both written and directed by Terry Bourke.

Satan bless the documentary not quite Hollywood.  It opened a world of Australian genre cinema to a generation raised on video store oddity, and it hit right as special edition blu rays were replacing dvds. 

This double feature from Terry Bourke features two segments originally made for Australian TV. Night of Horror, with its backwoods rural attack on a young blonde woman, prefigures the Texas Chainsaw,Massacre by two years. Itt is also a exercise in visual storytelling, it has no dialogue.

Inn of the damned is considered the first Australian horror western, taking place in 1890 and concerning a husband and wife who own an inn, who slaughter there victims as revenge for the death of there children.

Both movies feature excellent transfers and a wealth of extras, and are a great entry point into Australian Genre pictures of the late 20th century.  

Tune In Tuesday #1 "OC & Stiggs"

Oc and stings, 1987. Directed by Robert Altman and based on characters from national lampoon. A deconstruction of the then popular teen sex comedy that savagely satirizes capitalist America and has been wildly misunderstood.

Altman got started  in the 50s, but really came up in the Hedonistic yet Anarchic 60s and 70s, and his style, bathed in pot smoke and a constantly roving camera and overlapping dialogue, helped define 70s Cinema. By the 80s, the Hedonistic tendencies remained, but the anarchic spirit was replaced by a cozy consumer conformity.

Adapting two sociopathic teen characters from national lampoon, Altman assembled a stellar cast for this vicious deconstruction of the then popular teen comedy. Basically a series of vignettes with the ritual anti-heros waging war against the schwab family, a prototypical mutant American family of the Reagan era. Too bad audiences didn't get the joke,  as this movie has been savaged by the main stream and cult film heads alike. Hopefully this Blu Ray by Radiance films helps to recontextualize OC & Stiggs as what it really is, A fascinating one off from a truly one of a kind director.