October Positivity: I’m In Love With A Church Girl (dir by Steve Race)


In 2013’s I’m In Love With A Church Girl, future Fyre Festival promoter Ja Rule stars as Miles Montego.

Miles is wealthy and powerful and glamorous and he owes it all to his career as a drug dealer.  However, at heart, he’s still a good son who loves his mother and who worries about disappointing her with his criminal lifestyle.  His mother is big into church and she wants Miles to settle down with a good Christian girl.  Miles is like, “It’ll never happen.”  But then, at a party thrown by his accountant (Vincent Pastore), Miles meets and falls for Vanessa Leon (Adrienne Bailon).  Vanessa is a …. wait for it …. church girl!

Falling in love with Vanessa changes Miles.  He realizes that there’s more to life than just making money and hanging out with the members of his drug-dealing crew.  He goes to church with Vanessa and is shocked to discover that the preacher owns a nice suit and drives a fancy car.  The preacher explains that it’s not a sin to by stylish.  Tell that to the Amish, preach.

Anyway, Miles may be finding God but the DEA still wants to take down Miles and his crew.  Martin Kove appears in one scene as the DEA supervisor who orders Stephen Baldwin and Michael Madsen to make Miles their number one priority.  Madsen isn’t in much of the film but Baldwin makes many appearances, popping up regularly to remind us that Miles is still under surveillance.

Miles’s new-found faith is tested when his mother dies.  Then, when Vanessa ends up in the hospital, Miles really struggles.  If you’ve ever wanted to see Ja Rule deliver an angry and impassioned monologue about faith, I’m In Love With A Church Girl is the film for you!

To give credit where credit is due, I’m In Love With A Church Girl was clearly made with the best of intentions.  The film was written by Galley Molina, a real life former drug dealer who later became a preacher.  Molina reportedly based the film on his own life story and the end result is an very earnest film that does seem to believe it’s own message.  That’s a good thing.

The bad thing is that the film, with its 2-hour running time, is almost painfully slow and the rather simple story is stretched so thin that the film itself becomes a bit of an endurance test.  The other problem is that Ja Rule is, to put it charitably, not a very good actor.  He sleepwalks through the film with a somewhat dazed expression on his face, projecting little of the charisma that you would probably need to get an otherwise sensible person like Vanessa to overlook your drug dealing career.  He certainly doesn’t have the screen presence to carry a two-hour film and he big dramatic monologue is more likely to inspire laughter than tears.

(It doesn’t help that it’s hard to look at him without thinking about him bragging about how great the Fyre Festival was going to be.)

The film is so well-intentioned that I kind of hate to be critical of it but I’m In Love With A Church Girl doesn’t really work.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 3.1 “Inside Straight”


Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network!  It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.

Everyone’s book for another season of bicycles and law-breaking.

Episode 3.1 “Inside Straight”

(Dir by Michael Levine, originally aired on August 3rd, 19997)

One night, while on a date with Chris, TC spots a man holding a gun.  TC draws his own gun and yells at the man to drop his weapon.  The man turns around.  He fires so TC shoots and the man goes down.  It turns out that the man was an undercover narcotics detective with a spotless record.

TC is suspended and the bike patrol basically stops doing their job and instead proceed to harass the dead man’s wife and his partner until they discover that the wife and the partner were having an affair and, conveniently, the cop was actually shot by someone who happened to be standing behind TC.  It seems like simple forensic evidence (like the amount of bullets on the scene) should have proven that without the bike patrol even getting involved but I guess the cops in Malibu or wherever this show takes place are extremely incompetent.

Meanwhile, the poker game of mobster Joseph Tataglia (Joseph Campanella) gets held up,  The thief is a degenerate gambler who tries to frame TC’s older brother, Teddy (Andy Buckley — how, it’s David Wallace from The Office!).  The real thief is easily exposed and captured.  I’m not really sure what the point of this story was.  Tataglia last appeared during the first season but this episode acts as if he’s been a continual presence in the show for the past two seasons.  I imagine viewers were confused as to who he was or why he had so much pull with Palermo.

There’s a scene where TC is subjected to an intense interrogation from Internal Affairs and I have to admit that it made me laugh because TC and Palermo were wearing their dorky bicycle cop uniforms while being yelled at by someone in a suit.

Another scene features Victor and Cory telling Chris and TC that there’s a huge crowd waiting to see the movie that they want to see.  Victor says TC might have to flash his badge to get tickets.  Police arrogance is annoying in general but it’s even worse coming from people who ride bicycles.

It appears that nothing had changed with the start of a new season.

Forever Knight – S1:E3 – “For I Have Sinned”


“He was brought across in 1228. Prayed on humans for their blood. 
Now, he wants to be mortal again.To repay society for his sins. 
To emerge from his World of Darkness. From his endless Forever Night.”

The Prologue opens in the back of an electronic store, where a couple is making out. The woman pushes her Security Guard lover away playfully and states she has to go, fastening a cross around her neck before leaving. Inside her car, the woman puts on a wedding ring. Before she can leave, a figure grabs her from the back seat, ripping the cross from her neck and whispering “You don’t deserve this.” as she screams. It’s time for another case!

Nick arrives at Janette’s nightclub, greeting each other with a small dance before Nick relays the recent murders in the city. “Two women, one decapitated, one disembowled.” Janette wonders why he came to her. She doesn’t care about mortals and reminds Nick that he’s “not people”, by dipping her finger in her blood filled glass, offering a taste. Schanke arrives in the club, getting a little close to one of the vampire patrons when Nick escorts him out. “It’s dangerous in there, Schanke.”, to which Schanke argues that his entire lineage are filled with ladies men who fooled around. They don’t have much time to go into details as he tells Nick about the latest crime scene.

With the chalk outline and blood splatter, Nick is quickly able to discern the crime as a crucifixion and has the cops on the scene bring in the guard as a suspect. One thing is certain, there is a an incredible about of blood loss. Could another vampire be doing this? At the morgue, Natalie’s analysis supports Nick’s theory. Death by a coronary. As she removes the victim’s cross, she sees Nick flinch and says “These things really make you uncomfortable, don’t they?” His response is that they make him sick. Natalie apologizes, noting he’ll have to keep the cross as evidence, with the other two woman all having had crosses with them and were all Catholic. 

In a church, a priest listens to a confession. The voice in the other room explains that he’s not a sinner, that he holds the keys of perdition and of death. Father Pierre Rochefort (Michael McManus, TV’s Lexx) tries to dissuade the individual, but only receives a warning that more sinners will face his wrath. The priest hears footsteps scamper away, visibly shaken. 

At his apartment, Nick tries some garlic pills that send him into a short fit. As he recovers, he examines the cross Natalie gave him that causes him to remember being in a chapel in the Dark Ages. He recalls Joan(Christine Cox, who ironically played a cop in her own vampire show, Blood Ties) who tells him he’s cursed because his salvation has him living in fear of death. As he raises his hand to the nearby cross in the flashback, his hand catches fire. At the same time, he drops the evidence cross into his palm, which burns a small imprint. “Well, the garlic pills are definitely an improvement.”, he whispers. 

The next day, Father Pierre approaches another priest and asks his advice about going to the police. The elder price reminds him that what’s said in the confessional stays there, and has to be protected. This leaves Father Pierre a bit troubled. That night, Schanke makes a visit to Janette’s nightclub, where he catches the attention of Alma (Tracey Cook). She dazzles him with her vampire eyes and leads him into the back of the club, away from the others. Janette breaks up Alma and Schanke before she can have a drink. Janette warns Schanke to stay away from the club, else he might find himself a permanent member of the night shift. Schanke quickly runs out of the room and the club.

At a Naughty phone line service desk, a woman named Magda receives a call from the villain. He tells her he knows her name and that she “profanes the church by feeding the fires of lust”, threatening to burn her alive. Playing the call for her manager, she’s sent home. The poor girl can’t even make it out of the building before she’s caught by the masked killer. Nick, who happens to just be driving in the vicinity, hears her screams and pulls over his car, taking flight. He arrives in the building from the room and pulls his firearm on the villain. The villain pushes the girl into Nick’s arm and reveals a revolver of his own, shooting Nick at point blank range before darting down the stairs. Nick makes the girl call an ambulance, using the moment to change the villain out into the alleyway. He stops the masked individual who turns out to be Father Pierre. Nick’s seen a lot over the years, but even he seems shocked at the revelation. 

In the Interrogation Room, Father Pierre says that he’s not protecting the killer, but the rules and beliefs of his religion. Nick scoffs at this, but the Captain (who’s also in the room) kicks Knight out after his outburst. Father Pierre poses a question: “Faith is the cornerstone of the church…I believe in it. Is there nothing you believe in that strongly?” We see another flashback, with Nick talking to Joan, who is due to be burned at the stake. He offers to make her a vampire, but she refuses. It’s something Nick can’t understand. She gives him her cross to remind him that “the faith you’ve lost is always there to regain.”

At the Precinct, Magda finds Nick, asking him if he’s okay. He shrugs off the shooting as just a grazing and that he’ll be fine. Magda suggests setting herself up as bait, but Knight refuses, sending her away. She then turns to Father Pierre, who comes into the hallway from the interrogation room, but he sends her away as well. The Captain has Nick find someone to put Magda in a hotel until everything’s safe. 

Back at Nick’s apartment, Natalie discovers the old wooden cross and Nick tells her it belonged to Joan of Arc. Natalie is amazed by this, gently caressing the cross while listening as Nick talk about Joan. “You know, she had this incredible strength, this courage…” he smiles, reminiscing. “Faith.” Natalie smiles, still admiring the cross. Nick asks Natalie to bring the cross closer to him. When she does, he flinches, but fights against it. To Nat’s question of why he fears it, he says it’s because it’s “the One True Light and we’re creatures of the Dark.” Nick tells Natalie that he has to spend the day in the church in case the villain returns. 

Dawn. We find Nick staring at the front of Father Pierre’s church. He has a quick conversation with Schanke, letting him know he doesn’t need any extra backup as it might tip the villain off. In the church, Knight moves through the pews, pausing at a row of candles. He remembers watching Joan, burning at the cross. He tries to run out the door, but with the sun already out, he’s trapped. Instead, he hides himself inside Father Pierre’s confessional box. Schanke, still feeling some guilt over his antics at Janette’s, steps into the church and into the other area of the confessional. Knight hears Schanke out, having some fun at the poor guy’s expense. 

As the evening starts, the police are ready to close the stakeout when Schanke catches sight of Magda. She snuck out of the hotel and made her way into the church. Schanke gets knocked out in his car, and Magda is kidnapped by the villain and is taken behind the church to a hilltop where a large cross awaits. The villain ties Magda to the cross, preparing to start a bonfire. Knight arrives (via flight) and tackles the villain, eventually knocking him out. The villain’s torch lands in the kindling, starting the bonfire. Remembering Joans words about Faith being ready to be reclaimed, he leaps over the fire onto the platform and unties Magda. He covers her head with his jacket and jumps away from the bonfire saving them both. “How….” she breathes, “How did you do that?!” to which Knight replies…”A little bit of adrenaline…and a lot of faith.” 

With the day (or night) saved, everyone’s at the precinct. Magda thanks Father Pierre and Nick as well, giving him her cross. He refuses at first, but she places it in his hand and closes it, smiling. Nick makes his way to the recovering Schanke and Natalie. Natalie notices the cross in Knight’s hand, amazed he’s able to hold it. “It still burns, but not as much.”, he says. Natalie suggests that he’s perhaps one step closer to redemption. Schanke offers to get them all food, but Nick states he can’t, putting on his sunglasses in a move that would make CSI’s Horatio Caine proud…”..the sun is coming up.” are his final words. 

Horror On TV: Hammer House of Horror #7 “The Silent Scream” (dir by Alan Gibson)


Today’s episode of televised horror is The Silent Scream, the seventh episode of Hammer House of Horror.  It was originally broadcast in the UK on October 25th, 1980.

A quick content warning for everyone: This episode features some scenes of animals in distress so I personally would advise viewer discretion.  That said, I simply had to share this episode because it features Peter Cushing’s final performance for Hammer Studios.  He plays a seemingly kindly old man who has a very dark secret.  A youngish Brian Cox plays the ex-con who gets a job working for Cushing.  This is a very unnerving episode with an ending that truly sticks with you.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: The Beast Must Die (dir by Paul Annett)


You have 30 seconds to decide who is the werewolf.  Is it the professor?  Is it the wife of the big game hunter?  Is it the long-haired hippie who has a history of cannibalism?  Is it the concert pianist?  Is it the diplomat?  Make your guess and then….

This is the challenge that is presented to the viewers of the 1974 film, The Beast Must DieThe Beast Must Die is a werewolf film.  Calvin Lockhart stars as millionaire big game hunter Tom Newcliffe.  Tom has invited a group of people to his English mansion because, according to him, one of them is a werewolf and he plans to hunt down whoever it is.  It’s not a terrible premise and I imagine that, in 1974, it was probably quite revolutionary to cast a black actor as a millionaire with a large British estate.  (In America, the film was marketed as being a blaxploitation film under the title Black Werewolf.)

That said, The Beast Must Die is still best-known for its “Werewolf Breaks.”  At certain points in the film, a stopwatch appears on the screen and a narrator asks us if we’ve figured out who the werewolf is yet.  The viewer is given 30 seconds to make a guess before the film continues.  The “Werewolf Breaks” were apparently added to the film after production was completed and director Paul Annett was not happy about them.  The Beast Must Die is, in many ways, a pretty grim film or, at least, it would be if not for the campy narrator telling us that it’s up to us to solve the mystery.

But you know what?  I like the Werewolf Breaks.  They’re fun and, without them, The Beast Must Die would come across as being a film that takes itself way too seriously.  Calvin Lockhart, who was so good in Melinda, overacts to a tremendous degree as Tom Newcliffe and, as the film progresses, he goes from being merely eccentric to actually coming across as being rather unhinged in his attempts to discover who is the werewolf.  It’s never really clear how he settled on his suspects.  (All of them are described as being in the area of several unexplained deaths but it seems like the same could be said of probably hundreds of other people as well.)  But once he has them at the mansion, he’s determined to keep them there until he figures out which is infected with lycanthropy.  (In this film, the werewolf curse is described as basically being a virus.)

Fortunately, the suspects are played by an interesting gallery of British and American character actors.  Charles Gray plays the shady diplomat.  Malene Clark is Tom’s wife.  Michael Gambon is the pianist while Ciaran Madden plays his wife.  Tom Chadbon plays the hippie cannibal while Anton Diffring shows up as the head of security for the mansion.  Best of all, Peter Cushing plays the professor who is an expert on werewolves.  It’s always a joy to see Peter Cushing in any film.  He’s particularly good here, handling his often overwritten dialogue like the pro that he was.

The Beast Must Die is an uneven film.  The opening sequence, which features Tom testing the mansion’s security systems, seems to go on forever and the plot is full of twists that fall apart if you give them too much thought,  But the Werewolf Breaks made me smile and the supporting cast is a delight.  It’s a fun film to watch during the Halloween season.

October Hacks: L.A. Slasher (dir by Martin Owen)


In 2016’s L.A. Slasher, an androgynous killer wearing a white suit and a mask decides that reality stars are the worst people in the world so he starts kidnapping them and torturing them and live-streaming their murders.  Even worse, he talks to them and talks to us about how he feels about them.  I say “even worse” because the voice of the Slasher is provided by Andy Dick.  Andy Dick’s nasal voice is even more whiny than usual in this film and it left me wondering what if perhaps death would preferable to listening to Dick speak.

L.A. Slasher is meant to be a satire and I will give it some credit.  It hits its targets and there’s even some bite to the scenes in which people on social media start talking about how much they love the slasher.  In many ways, this film predicted the Cult of Luigi.  Unfortunately, the film itself is so overdirected and cartoonishly-staged that it’s never quite as effective as it wants to be.  It’s essentially a live action cartoon and a fairly exhausting one of that.  The flashing lights, the constantly prowling camera, the jump cuts, the neon, it’s meant to be overwhelming but instead it’s just annoying.

There are a lot of familiar faces in the cast.  Dave Bautista and Danny Trejo shows up as drug dealers.  Mischa Barton is the Actress.  Drake Bell is the Popstar.  Brooke Hogan is the Reality Star.  And, of course, Eric Roberts shows up very briefly as The Mayor.  Personally, I think the film would have worked better if Andy Dick had played the Mayor and if Roberts had been the voice of the Slasher.  Roberts has a much better voice and, with Dick playing the Mayor, it would be easy to just leave his scenes on the cutting room floor.

In the end, I think the main problem is that L.A. Slasher is a film from 2016 that acts as if it’s the first film to ever criticize reality television and the people who populate it.  Even in 2016, that argument was hardly new or original.  It certainly didn’t need to be made in the voice of Andy Dick.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

  1. Paul’s Case (1980)
  2. Star 80 (1983)
  3. Runaway Train (1985)
  4. To Heal A Nation (1988)
  5. Best of the Best (1989)
  6. Blood Red (1989)
  7. The Ambulance (1990)
  8. The Lost Capone (1990)
  9. Best of the Best II (1993)
  10. Love, Cheat, & Steal (1993)
  11. Voyage (1993)
  12. Love Is A Gun (1994)
  13. Sensation (1994)
  14. Dark Angel (1996)
  15. Doctor Who (1996)
  16. Most Wanted (1997)
  17. Mercy Streets (2000)
  18. Raptor (2001)
  19. Rough Air: Danger on Flight 534 (2001)
  20. Strange Frequency (2001)
  21. Wolves of Wall Street (2002)
  22. Border Blues (2004)
  23. Mr. Brightside (2004)
  24. Six: The Mark Unleased (2004)
  25. We Belong Together (2005)
  26. Hey You (2006)
  27. Depth Charge (2008)
  28. Amazing Racer (2009)
  29. The Chaos Experiment (2009)
  30. In The Blink of an Eye (2009)
  31. Bed & Breakfast (2010)
  32. Enemies Among Us (2010)
  33. The Expendables (2010) 
  34. Sharktopus (2010)
  35. Beyond The Trophy (2012)
  36. The Dead Want Women (2012)
  37. Deadline (2012)
  38. The Mark (2012)
  39. Miss Atomic Bomb (2012)
  40. Assault on Wall Street (2013)
  41. Bonnie And Clyde: Justified (2013)
  42. Lovelace (2013)
  43. The Mark: Redemption (2013)
  44. The Perfect Summer (2013)
  45. Self-Storage (2013)
  46. Sink Hole (2013)
  47. A Talking Cat!?! (2013)
  48. This Is Our Time (2013)
  49. Bigfoot vs DB Cooper (2014)
  50. Doc Holliday’s Revenge (2014)
  51. Inherent Vice (2014)
  52. Road to the Open (2014)
  53. Rumors of War (2014)
  54. Amityville Death House (2015)
  55. Deadly Sanctuary (2015)
  56. A Fatal Obsession (2015)
  57. Las Vegas Story (2015)
  58. Sorority Slaughterhouse (2015)
  59. Stalked By My Doctor (2015)
  60. Enemy Within (2016)
  61. Hunting Season (2016)
  62. Joker’s Poltergeist (2016)
  63. Prayer Never Fails (2016)
  64. Stalked By My Doctor: The Return (2016)
  65. The Wrong Roommate (2016)
  66. Dark Image (2017)
  67. The Demonic Dead (2017)
  68. Black Wake (2018)
  69. Frank and Ava (2018)
  70. Stalked By My Doctor: Patient’s Revenge (2018)
  71. Clinton Island (2019)
  72. Monster Island (2019)
  73. The Reliant (2019)
  74. The Savant (2019)
  75. Seven Deadly Sins (2019)
  76. Stalked By My Doctor: A Sleepwalker’s Nightmare (2019)
  77. The Wrong Mommy (2019)
  78. Exodus of a Prodigal Son (2020)
  79. Free Lunch Express (2020)
  80. Her Deadly Groom (2020)
  81. Top Gunner (2020)
  82. Deadly Nightshade (2021)
  83. The Elevator (2021)
  84. Just What The Doctor Ordered (2021)
  85. Killer Advice (2021)
  86. Megaboa (2021)
  87. Night Night (2021)
  88. The Poltergeist Diaries (2021)
  89. The Rebels of PT-218 (2021)
  90. Red Prophecies (2021)
  91. A Town Called Parable (2021)
  92. Bleach (2022)
  93. Dawn (2022)
  94. My Dinner With Eric (2022)
  95. 69 Parts (2022)
  96. The Rideshare Killer (2022)
  97. D.C. Down (2023)
  98. Aftermath (2024)
  99. Bad Substitute (2024)
  100. Devil’s Knight (2024)
  101. Insane Like Me? (2024)
  102. The Wrong Life Coach (2024)
  103. Broken Church (2025)
  104. When It Rains In L.A. (2025

On-Stage With The Lens: MacBeth (dir by Phillip Casson and Trevor Nunn)


In 1978, Trevor Nunn staged what would become a legendary production of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth.  The play was produced in a small studio theatre, with the actors working in the round were minimum sets and costuming.  Shifts in location or mood were indicated are by lighting changes.  It was a production that captured both the intensity of the play but also the horror of Shakespeare’s play about ambition, guilt, fate, and multiple murders.  Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were played by Ian McKellen and Judi Dench.

This production was filmed and, in 1979, broadcast on Thames Television in the UK.  Here, for today’s staged horror, is the Trevor Nunn production of MacBeth, starring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench.

 

The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: Insane Like Me? (dir by Chip Joslin)


After his girlfriend and his brother are killed while throwing a party at the local abandoned insane asylum (every town has one!), veteran Jake Morgan (Britt Bankhead) finds himself tossed into a not-abandoned insane asylum.  Jake swears that everyone was killed by vampires.  The local sheriff (Eric Roberts) swears that Jake is the murderer.  The sheriff also happens to be the father of Jake’s dead girlfriend.

Jump forward a few years and Jake has been released from the asylum.  He returns to the town to take out the vampires.  The sheriff still claims that Jake is crazy but it soon becomes apparent that the sheriff has got a secret or two of his own….

This 2024 movie got off to a good start and it had an effective ending.  I appreciated that Eric Roberts got to do a bit more than he usually does in these type of films.  Sheriff Eric Roberts gets to beat someone up and I nearly cheered, even when I wasn’t supposed to.  Considering the amount of movies that I’ve watched that have just featured Roberts delivering his lines from behind a desk, it was nice to see him moving around and actually playing a character.

Unfortunately, the middle part of the film drags.  When is say drag, I don’t just mean that it moved slowly.  I mean that it was so incredibly boring that I found myself checking the time every few minutes.  We meet a group of teenage victims and let’s just say that some of them were better actors than others.  This is a movie that should have been nonstop vampire mayhem.  Instead, it got bogged down with not-very interesting characters delivering flat dialogue.

One final note: the movie features a doctor named Stoker.  It’s amazing to think that the entire town is full of vampires and yet no one ever points out that oddness of the doctor being named Stoker.  I guess today’s vampires just aren’t that well-read.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

  1. Paul’s Case (1980)
  2. Star 80 (1983)
  3. Runaway Train (1985)
  4. To Heal A Nation (1988)
  5. Best of the Best (1989)
  6. Blood Red (1989)
  7. The Ambulance (1990)
  8. The Lost Capone (1990)
  9. Best of the Best II (1993)
  10. Love, Cheat, & Steal (1993)
  11. Voyage (1993)
  12. Love Is A Gun (1994)
  13. Sensation (1994)
  14. Dark Angel (1996)
  15. Doctor Who (1996)
  16. Most Wanted (1997)
  17. Mercy Streets (2000)
  18. Raptor (2001)
  19. Rough Air: Danger on Flight 534 (2001)
  20. Strange Frequency (2001)
  21. Wolves of Wall Street (2002)
  22. Border Blues (2004)
  23. Mr. Brightside (2004)
  24. Six: The Mark Unleased (2004)
  25. We Belong Together (2005)
  26. Hey You (2006)
  27. Depth Charge (2008)
  28. Amazing Racer (2009)
  29. The Chaos Experiment (2009)
  30. In The Blink of an Eye (2009)
  31. Bed & Breakfast (2010)
  32. Enemies Among Us (2010)
  33. The Expendables (2010) 
  34. Sharktopus (2010)
  35. Beyond The Trophy (2012)
  36. The Dead Want Women (2012)
  37. Deadline (2012)
  38. The Mark (2012)
  39. Miss Atomic Bomb (2012)
  40. Assault on Wall Street (2013)
  41. Bonnie And Clyde: Justified (2013)
  42. Lovelace (2013)
  43. The Mark: Redemption (2013)
  44. The Perfect Summer (2013)
  45. Self-Storage (2013)
  46. Sink Hole (2013)
  47. A Talking Cat!?! (2013)
  48. This Is Our Time (2013)
  49. Bigfoot vs DB Cooper (2014)
  50. Doc Holliday’s Revenge (2014)
  51. Inherent Vice (2014)
  52. Road to the Open (2014)
  53. Rumors of War (2014)
  54. Amityville Death House (2015)
  55. Deadly Sanctuary (2015)
  56. A Fatal Obsession (2015)
  57. Las Vegas Story (2015)
  58. Sorority Slaughterhouse (2015)
  59. Stalked By My Doctor (2015)
  60. Enemy Within (2016)
  61. Hunting Season (2016)
  62. Joker’s Poltergeist (2016)
  63. Prayer Never Fails (2016)
  64. Stalked By My Doctor: The Return (2016)
  65. The Wrong Roommate (2016)
  66. Dark Image (2017)
  67. The Demonic Dead (2017)
  68. Black Wake (2018)
  69. Frank and Ava (2018)
  70. Stalked By My Doctor: Patient’s Revenge (2018)
  71. Clinton Island (2019)
  72. Monster Island (2019)
  73. The Reliant (2019)
  74. The Savant (2019)
  75. Seven Deadly Sins (2019)
  76. Stalked By My Doctor: A Sleepwalker’s Nightmare (2019)
  77. The Wrong Mommy (2019)
  78. Exodus of a Prodigal Son (2020)
  79. Free Lunch Express (2020)
  80. Her Deadly Groom (2020)
  81. Top Gunner (2020)
  82. Deadly Nightshade (2021)
  83. The Elevator (2021)
  84. Just What The Doctor Ordered (2021)
  85. Killer Advice (2021)
  86. Megaboa (2021)
  87. Night Night (2021)
  88. The Poltergeist Diaries (2021)
  89. The Rebels of PT-218 (2021)
  90. Red Prophecies (2021)
  91. A Town Called Parable (2021)
  92. Bleach (2022)
  93. Dawn (2022)
  94. My Dinner With Eric (2022)
  95. 69 Parts (2022)
  96. The Rideshare Killer (2022)
  97. D.C. Down (2023)
  98. Aftermath (2024)
  99. Bad Substitute (2024)
  100. Devil’s Knight (2024)
  101. The Wrong Life Coach (2024)
  102. Broken Church (2025)
  103. When It Rains In L.A. (2025

Made-For-TV Horror: Good Against Evil (dir by Paul Wendkos)


The 1977 made-for-TV movie Good Against Evil opens with a woman giving birth in a hospital.  Her baby daughter is forcefully taken from her and given to her father, the sinister Mr. Rimmin (Richard Lynch).

Two decades later, Jessica Gordon (Elyssa Davalos) has grown up and is working at a boutique in San Francisco.  When her car is rear-ended by a free-spirited, van-driven single guy named Andy Stuart (Dack Rambo), it’s love at first sight.  Jessica and Andy are so caught up in their whirlwind romance that they don’t even notice that there’s a schlubby guy following them everywhere that they go and that strangers are giving them dirty looks.  Someone does not want Jessica and Andy to end up together.

How could anyone object to two young people falling in love, you may ask.  Well, it turns out that Jessica is meant to be a bride of Satan and the plan is for her to eventually give birth to the Antichrist.  Everyone in Jessica’s life works for Mr. Rimmin …. or, at least, everyone but Andy.  Andy suddenly showing up and falling in love with Jessica throws a big old monkey wrench into Rimmin’s carefully crafted scheme.  Mr. Rimmin reacts by sending an army of adorable cats to harass Andy.

This might sound like it has the makings for a good made-for-TV horror film and, in fairness to Good Against Evil, the first 50 minutes or so are pretty well-done.  The movie does a good job of building up and maintaining an atmosphere of paranoia and I enjoyed watching all of the people attempting to discreetly keep an eye on Andy and Jessica whenever they went out.  When Mr. Rimmin finally abducted Jessica and took her back to his mansion, I was prepared to see Andy risk his life to rescue her….

That didn’t happen, though.  Instead, Andy got involved with the case of a little girl who was possessed.  (Again, in all fairness, he got involved because he read a news story about the girl drawing a pentagram while in a coma and he assumed that meant she was a victim of the same cult that abducted Jessica.)  Andy meets the girl’s mother (played by Kim Cattrall) and then helps an exorcist (Dan O’Herlihy) perform an exorcism.  The movie ends with Jessica, still in the clutches of Mr. Rimmin.

Good Against Evil was apparently a pilot for a television series that wasn’t picked up.  I assume the plan was that Andy would have a weekly supernatural adventure while trying to recuse Jessica from Mr. Rimmin.  The idea had some potential.  As always, Richard Lynch is a wonderfully sinister villain.  But the pilot shoots itself in the foot by getting distracted with the whole exorcism storyline.  It’s wonderful to see the great Dan O’Herlihy as a priest but the exorcism storyline really does come out of nowhere and the exorcism scene itself so blatantly copies The Exorcist that they really should have given William Peter Blatty an onscreen credit.  Sadly, because this was a pilot, the movie ends with the main storyline unresolved.  The joke is on us for caring about two people in love.

Good Against Evil is one of those films that can be found in a dozen Mill Creek box sets.  Ultimately, it’s as forgettable as its generic name.

Doctor Who — The Sea Devils (1972, directed by Michael Briant)


Having been captured by UNIT at the end of The Daemons, the Master (Roger Delgado) is now a imprisoned on a small island in the English channel.  He claims that he is reformed and he now spends most of his days watching the BBC.  (Has he not been punished enough?)

When the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and Jo Grant (Katy Manning) visit the Master to try to learn the location of his TARDIS, they come up empty.  They do, however, learn that several ships have gone missing and, understandably, they suspect that the Master is involved.

They’re correct.  The Master has duped his warden, Trenchard (Clive Morton), into helping him steal electrical equipment so that he can contact The Sea Devils, a race of bipedal reptiles the live under the sea.  The Sea Devils, much like their cousins, the Silurians, were the original inhabitants of Earth.  They’ve now woken from hibernation to discover that mankind — who they last knew to be a collection of barely evolved monkeys — have taken over the planet.  And they’re not happy about it.

The Silurians and the Sea Devils appeared in three serials during the original run of Doctor Who and all of them followed the same basic plot.  The Silurians or the Sea Devils woke up from their hibernation.  The Doctor tried to broker a peace with humanity.  Humanity reacted by blowing them up.  The Sea Devils were usually more reluctant to make peace than the Silurians.  In The Sea Devils, the Doctor himself is forced to sabotage their base to keep them from attacking humanity but that’s nothing compared to the atomic bomb that the British government wanted to drop on them.  Whenever a Silurian or a Sea Devil shows up, it means that the Doctor is going to disappointed in humanity once again.

The Sea Devils is a serial of which I have fond memories because Malcolm Hulke’s novelization was the first Doctor Who book that I ever read.  (Malcolm Hulke also wrote the serial itself.)  I read the book before I even saw the show.  The novelization was my introduction to the Doctor, UNIT, and especially the Master.  Hulke was one of the best writers of the Doctor Who novelizations, taking the time to add depth to the characters.  This was especially true of Trenchard, who is portrayed far more sympathetically in the novel than he was on the show.

The Sea Devils also features one of Roger Delgado’s finest turns as the Master.  This was the Master’s first appearance during the ninth season of Doctor Who and Delgado shows that, even when imprisoned, the Master never stops manipulating and scheming.  This episode shows why Delgado’s Master was such a classic villain and truly a worthy opponent of the Doctor.  Delgado does such a good job in the scenes where The Master pretends to be reformed that it’s easy to understand how he managed to trick Trenchard.  At the end of the serial, The Master makes another escape, again by fooling the humans around him.  Delgado made The Master into a magnetic and compelling villain.

Roger Delgado appeared twice more as the Master before his untimely death in an auto accident.  Jon Pertwee later said that Delgado’s death was one of the reasons that he decided to step away from the role of the Doctor.  The Master would eventually return and he would be played by several different actors.  For me, the true Master will always be Roger Delgado.