Category Archives: Insomnia File

Insomnia File #67: Heist (dir by Scott Mann)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you find yourself awake later tonight, you can always go over to Tubi and watch the 2015 direct-to-video action thriller, Heist.

Heist takes place in Louisiana.  Francis “The Pope” Silva (Robert De Niro) is a mobster and businessman who owns a riverboat casino.  The Pope lives his life according to a set of simple but very specific rules.  He doesn’t lend money.  He doesn’t forgive people who betray him.  If you steal from him, he will track you down and he will get his money back and he will make you regret your decision.  Working as his main henchman is the sadistic Dog (Morris Chestnut).  The Pope’s former main henchman was a man named Luke Vaughn (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) but Luke grew tired of the violence and walked away from it all.  Now, Luke works as a dealer in The Pope’s casino.  His daughter is sick and Luke desperately needs $300,000 to pay her medial bills.  When The Pope refuses to give him the money, Luke teams up with security guard Jason Cox (Dave Bautista) and sets out to rob the place.

The robbery is carefully planned by Luke but, inevitably, things go wrong.  A security guard shows up earlier than he was supposed to.  A shootout leads to Jason’s best friend, Dante (Stephen Cyrus Sepher), getting shot.  The getaway driver panics and drives off, leading to Luke, Cox, and Dante hijacking a bus.  Cox orders the bus driver (D.B. Sweeney) to take them to Galveston but Luke is more concerned with getting the money to his daughter.  Meanwhile, two police officers — Kris Bajos (Gina Carano) and Detective Marconi (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) — follow the bus, each pursuing their own agenda.

Considering that this film is basically a low budget rip-off of Speed (albeit without a bomb threatening to take out the cast), Heist has an impressive cast and they all do a good job of elevating the film above its B-movie origins.  Don’t get me wrong.  There are hundreds of plot holes to be found in Heist.  The film’s big twist really doesn’t make much sense when you think about it.  But, in the end, Heist is an entertaining thrill ride that moves quickly enough that most viewers really won’t have time to obsess on all the lapses of logic.  Morgan plays his role with just enough heart that you want his criminal to succeed.  De Niro brings some extra layers to a role that could have been a caricature.  There’s a brief scene in which he meets his estranged daughter (Kate Bosworth) and, as a result, you suddenly see his character in an entirely new light.  As a character who seems like a much more sinister version of Zach Morris, Mark-Paul Gosselaar keeps you guessing.  And finally, Gina Carano — years before her cancellation — gives an earnest performance that works despite her character being rather inconsistently written.

Heist is an entertaining and fast-paced action film with a good cast and an interesting story.  If you can’t sleep, you might as well be entertained.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator
  63. Hillbillys In A Haunted House
  64. Once Upon A Midnight Scary
  65. Girl Lost
  66. Ghosts Can’t Do It

Insomnia Film #67: Why (dir by Victor Stoloff)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you’re having trouble getting to sleep tonight, you can always go over to either YouTube or Tubi and pull up Why, an obscure film from 1973 that has a semi-interesting cast.

The plot of Why is simple.  Six people gather at their psychiatrist’s mansion for group therapy.  Dr. Peter Carlson (played by Herb Goldberg, an actual psychiatrist) asks the members of the group questions and asks them to do things like try to imagine a moment that made them truly happy.  The members of the group discuss their problems and …. well, that’s pretty much it.

Who is in the group?  Jeannie Berlin plays Gail, a single mother who has been rejected by her family because she had an out-of-wedlock child with a black man.  Cathy Bleich plays Jennifer, who claims to be a teacher but who is also a pathological liar.  Linda Gillen is Christine, a rich teenager who is two-months pregnant and who is implied to be addicted to heroin.  Danny Goldman plays Bill, a suicidal gay man.  Musician Tim Buckley plays musician Glenn, who can’t get over his band breaking up.  And, playing a professional athlete named Bud, is O.J. Simpson.  “I smoke dope,” Bud says at one point before going on to explain why he thinks its important to be a good role model.

Why is an odd film.  It starts out with a lengthy animated sequence (complete with a hippie-style song) and then settles into being a stagey film that feels more like an extended acting exercise than an actual narrative.  It’s a talky film and some of the monologues work while others fall flat.  The best performances are given by Danny Goldman, Tim Buckley, and Linda Gillen but I imagine most people who watch this film will be giving most of their attention to O.J. Simpson, who talks about resenting the pressure to always be perfect.  In the end, there are no real break-throughs and one could argue that makes this the most realistic depiction of therapy ever filmed.

Reportedly, the film start out as a short film starring O.J. Simpson and Tim Buckley that was commissioned by Technicolor to see if video could be transferred to film.  The decision was made to expand the short into a feature.  The actors improvised during rehearsal and those improvs served as the basis for the script.  Again, this will probably be most interesting to people looking for hints into what it was like inside of O.J. Simpson’s head.  (O.J.’s character comes across as being friendly but guarded and quick to get angry about women in general.)

Again, it’s a talky film.  At times, it’s a rather boring film.  Many of the monologues start out strong but they tend to go on and on. Why might cure you of your insomnia.  That said, the film is interesting from a historical point of view.  It’s all very 70s, revealing a group of people trying to navigate a world that was still trying to figure out where they stood in the years immediately following the turmoil of 60s.  The characters have a brand new world ahead of them and none of them know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.  Some things never change.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator
  63. Hillbillys In A Haunted House
  64. Once Upon A Midnight Scary
  65. Girl Lost
  66. Ghosts Can’t Do It

Insomnia File #66: Ghosts Can’t Do It (dir by John Derek)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you find yourself having trouble getting to sleep tonight or tomorrow, you may want to try watching 1989’s Ghosts Can’t Do It.  It won’t necessarily put you to sleep but it will give you something to ponder while you lie in bed and stare up at the ceiling.  For instance, how exactly did this movie get produced without anyone coming up with a better title than Ghosts Can’t Do It?

Bo Derek plays Kate, the wife of elderly billionaire Scott (played by Anthony Quinn, who appears to be drunk in the majority of his scenes).  Despite their age difference, Kate and Scott are deeply in love.  When they’re not playing in the snow and riding horses around the ranch, they’re having sex.  “Sex, sex, sex, sex!” the movie seems to chant in almost every scene.  But then Anthony Quinn has a heart attack, which in this film means that he spends what appears to be hours lying in the snow while trading jokes with Kate.  (It’s important to be able to joke with your partner but if my man had a heart attack, my first reaction would be to get a doctor.)

Scott survives his heart attack but he’s told that, in his weakened state, he can no longer have sex.  Also, he can’t get a new heart because he’s too old.  Facing a future without sex, Scott shoots himself.  Fortunately, Scott’s guardian angel (Julie Newmar) takes sympathy on him and sends his spirt back down to Earth.  Only Kate can see and hear him and, while she’s happy to be reunited with him, they are both upset to discover that ghosts can’t do it.

Scott comes up with a plan.  Kate needs to find a young, virile lover and then murder him so that Scott can possess his body and then he and Kate can have sex whenever they feel like it.  Because that plan makes total sense and there’s no way that it could lead to Kate’s soul being damned to an eternity in Hell, Kate agrees.  Kate travels the world, having sex and looking for a man who will be able to please her after she has murdered him.  Eventually, Kate meets a charming young criminal named Fausto (Leo Damian) and decides that he’ll do.  Scott can’t wait to inhabit Fausto’s body but Kate suddenly realizes that she might not have it in her to be a murderer!  Well, she’ll never know unless she tries.  (I never thought that I would be able to shoot down a drone but then, one night in December….)

While all of this is going on, Kate is handling Scott’s business affairs.  This leads to a meeting with a famous and ruthless businessman named Donald Trump.  Yes, the 45 and 47th President of the United States plays himself in this film.  Kate and Trump meet in a conference room to discuss a deal.  Kate mentions that she read Trump’s book.  Trump smiles and nods.  They have hard-boiled business dialogue.  Kate tells Trump that he’s “too pretty” to be as ruthless as he is.  ‘You noticed,” Trump says.  It’s a pretty dumb scene but, from a historical point-of-view, it’s a reminder of the fact that, long before he was elected President, Trump was already a ubiquitous figure on the American pop cultural scene.

Ghosts Can’t Do It is definitely a misfire, albeit one that is such a huge misfire that it become interesting in the same way that trainwrecks are often interesting.  Almost everything about it, from the dialogue to the attempts at humor to the nearly unreadable font that is used for the opening credits, feels wrong.  There is one brief moment that works, in which Kate dances with her ghost husband and, for the first and only time in the film, we see a flicker of genuine chemistry between Bo Derek and Anthony Quinn.  (Bo Derek, I will mention, is not quite as bad an actress as her reputation suggests.  It’s just that she should have been playing campy soap opera villainesses on late night television as opposed to starring in her husband’s crackpot films.)  Otherwise, this movie is perhaps the worst movie to ever feature both a two-time Oscar winner and a future President.  And, for that reason, it’s a watchable curiosity.  It’s just what insomnia demands.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator
  63. Hillbillys In A Haunted House
  64. Once Upon A Midnight Scary
  65. Girl Lost

Insomnia File #65: Girl Lost (dir by Robin Bain)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have jumped over to Tubi or Prime and watched 2016’s Girl Lost.

Girl Lost tells the story of Shara (Jessica Taylor Haid), who we first see being abused by her mother’s boyfriend and then retreating outside to a pool so that she can run a razor blade over her thigh in peace.  Shara is only 15 but she’s had to deal with things that no one should ever have to experience in a lifetime.  Her mother, Kim (played by Robin Bain, who also directed the film), is a sex worker who expects her daughter to follow in her footsteps and who encourages Shara to pose for risqué photos that Kim then posts online.

Shara spends almost the entire film fleeing.  At first, she and Kim flee Kim’s boyfriend.  Eventually, Shara and her boyfriend, the well-meaning but not particularly bright Jamie (Felix Ryan), end up running away from Kim.  They live on the streets and discover just how difficult it can be to survive on your own.  In the end, no one can survive without money and Shara, just like her mother before her, comes to realize that there’s one guaranteed way to make that money, whether it’s waiting for a creepy guy in a back alley or getting a job talking on the phone to some pervy loser living in his mother’s basement.  Eventually, Shara runs away from even Jamie and ends up working at a Russian-owned brothel.  Throughout it all, her life continues to unravel.  It’s a harsh world that Shara has been born into and it’s one where you either do what you have to do to survive or you end up imprisoned or worse.  The film’s ends on a dark note.  At first, I thought the ending was perhaps a bit too dark.  After all that had happened, I wondered, what it have killed the film to end on a note of hope?  But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the film ended in the the only way that the story could have ended.  From the minute she was born, poor Shara never really had a chance.

It’s a deeply unsettling film.  In fact, if you are trying to find something to help lull you into sleep, this is probably not the best film to go with unless you’re prepared to have some fairly upsetting dreams.  Though shot on a low budget, the film captures the harshness of life on the fringes of society and both Jessica Taylor Haid and Robin Bain deserve a lot of credit for their performances as two characters who are not always likable but who are very recognizable.  It’s a sad film that also serves as a tribute to every lost and forgotten soul out there.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator
  63. Hillbillys In A Haunted House
  64. Once Upon A Midnight Scary

Insomnia File #64: Once Upon A Midnight Scary (dir by Nell Cox)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have gone over to YouTube and watched 1978’s Once Upon A Midnight Scary.

Made for CBS and featuring Vincent Price as the sardonic, cape-wearing host, Once Upon A Midnight Scary was a special designed to encourage young viewers to pick up a book and read.  Price introduced three different stories, each centering around ghosts and each based on a book.  In the first story, based on the book The Ghost Belonged To Me, a young farmboy discovers a ghost hiding in a barn and becomes a hero when the ghost warns him about an impending disaster.  The second story is an adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and it features Rene Auberjonois as a rather neurotic Ichabod Crane, who finds himself being pursued by the headless horsemen.  The third and longest story is an adaptation of The House With A Clock In Its Walls, featuring Severn Darden and a rather annoying child actor.

One thing you immediately notice about this show is that the special doesn’t actually reveal how any of the stories end.  Instead, each story is basically a recreation of the most exciting or interesting parts of the larger story but, whenever it appears that we’re heading for a conclusion, Vincent Price suddenly appears and says, “What happened next, you ask?  Read the book!”  This special basically casts Vincent Price as the world’s most devilish book salesman and while that might be annoying if you’re watching the special because you want to see how the stories turn out, it’s a lot of fun if you’re just watching the show to watch Vincent Price act like Vincent Price.  Vincent is not in the special as much as you might want but he still shows off his unique charm.  It’s impossible to be in a bad mood while watching Vincent Price.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator
  63. Hillbillys In A Haunted House

Horrific Insomnia File #63: Hillbillys in a Haunted House (dir by Jean Yarbrough)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have jumped on Tubi and watched a film from 1967 called Hillbillys In A Haunted House and it would have put you right to sleep.

Hillbillys In A Haunted House has some big names in the cast but, unfortunately, none of them get to do much.  Instead, the main characters are country singer Woody Wetherby (Ferlin Husky), his partner Boots Malone (a very pointy Joi Lansing), and their road manager, Jeepers (Don Bowman).  When we first see them, they’re driving to Nashville and even worse, they’re singing about the fact that they’re driving to Nashville.  They’re scheduled to perform in “the Jamboree.”  However, after they’re delayed by a bunch of cops having a shoot out with two spies, Boots announces that Jeepers is a nervous wreck and that they really need to stop and rest for the night.

Unfortunately, they’re in the town of Sleepy Junction and there’s not much to Sleepy Junction because everyone in town recently moved to Acme City.  As a result, there are no hotels or motels in Sleepy Junction.  But there is a big, deserted mansion that is rumored to be haunted.  With a storm approaching and Jeepers’s nerves even more on edge then before, they head to the mansion.  At the mansion Woody sings a song and then some neighbors stop by and they all sing another song.  Are you getting the feeling that there’s a lot of singing in this movie?  You’re right, there is.  It’s all studio-perfect singing too.  Woody lip-syncs like a pro.

Anyway, the mansion is also being used by four spies, played by Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, a hulking Lon Chaney, Jr., and Linda Ho.  The four of them live in the surprisingly clean basement of the mansion.  Living with them is a gorilla.  The spies planning on stealing a formula for rocket fuel from Acme City but first they need to do something about the hillbillys that are currently in the haunted house.  Carradine and Rathbone try to scare them out with some remote control ghost action.  Jeepers may be a coward and Woody may be a redneck and Boots may have atrocious taste in clothes but all three of them are Americans and they’re not going to stand for any spy nonsense!

If you think it sounds like this was stupid, you’re right.  Carradine and Rathbone both struggle to maintain a straight face.  Poor Lon Chaney Jr. often appears to be out of breath.  There’s way too much singing.  Seriously, couldn’t the hillbillies have just driven another few miles to Acme City and found a hotel?

The film will put you to sleep, though.  It has its uses.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator

Horrific Insomnia File #62: Rollergator (dir by Donald G. Jackson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

Last night, if you were having trouble getting to sleep, you could have logged onto Tubi and watched the 1996 film, Rollergator!  Of course, you would have had to watch the Rifftraxx version but, trust me, that would have been for the best.  There are some films that demand a certain amount of snarkiness in order to be survived and that’s certainly the case with Rollergator.

P.J. (Sandra Shuker) is a teenage girl who has just moved to Los Angeles.  There’s not much to do so P.J. spends her time either hanging out at a local carnival or relaxing on the beach.  It’s while she’s on the beach that she hears a voice calling out to her from a nearby cave.  Of course, she enters the cave to see who is calling for her because, when you’re otherwise alone and only wearing a bikini, it would only make sense to wander into a strange and dangerous location just because a totally unfamiliar voice asks you to.

Anyway, the voice belongs to a purple alligator who is kind of obnoxious.  The alligator can talk.  He says that he’s just escaped from the carnival and now Chico Dennis (Joe Estevez) has sent out a mysterious ninja (Lisa Kaake) to bring him back.  The alligator just wants to be reunited with his former owner, The Swamp Farmer (played by Conrad Brooks, who was a member of the Ed Wood stock company back in the 50s and the 60s).  After giving the alligator a hard time about always being rude and sarcastic, PJ tosses him in her backpack and takes him to …. THE CARNIVAL!  The alligator has a great time at the carnival until he and PJ run into Chico and the alligator realizes that they’re at the same carnival from which he previously escaped!  How many carnivals are in Los Angeles?

Anyway, the majority of the movie is PJ rollerblading around Los Angeles with a talking alligator puppet in her backpack.  The Dark Ninja pursues them on a skateboard but fortunately, a karate instructor (Bobbie Blackford) and a runaway named Slingshot (Jenette Lynne Hawkins) decide to help out PJ and the alligator.  Occasionally, the alligator puppet raps but he’s not very good at it.  Still, everyone loves the talking alligator.  Oddly, no one ever questions the fact that the alligator can talk.  Then again, no one manages to deliver their lines with the least bit of emotion, suggesting that everyone in Los Angeles is fairly blasé when it comes to talking alligators and skateboarding ninjas.

Rollergator is perhaps the only movie ever made about a rapping alligator and, watching it, it was kind of easy to see why there haven’t been any other movies featuring rapping alligators.  This is one of those films that features an alligator puppet for the kids and a lead actress who spends the entire movie in either a bikini or a sports bra for the adult males watching the movie with the kids but what about the women — the underpaid babysitters and the extremely helpful aunts and the exhausted mothers — who would have, if the film had been successful, been forced to watch Rollergator over the years?  The only thing we get is Joe Estevez, bulging his eyes and looking like Martin Sheen on meth.  It doesn’t seem quite fair!

Anyway, did I mention that you could watch this if you were having trouble getting to sleep?  Well, you definitely can but be warned, you may have Rollergator-inspired dreams as a result.  Those are the risks you take.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica

Horror Insomnia File #61: Replica (dir by James Nguyen)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have logged onto Tubi and watched James Nguyen’s Replica.

Filmed in 2005 but not released until 2018, Replica tells the story of Joe Thomas (James David Braddock), a computer chip salesman who has been in a bit of a funk ever since he received a new kidney.  His sales are down.  His pet bird is mocking him by chirping loudly.  His morning drive is boring.  (We know this because, for some reason, the film shows us almost every mundane moment of that commute.)  He’s in danger of losing his job but then, while hanging out at the Golden Gate Bridge, he happens to spot Dr. Evelyn Tyler (Lana Dykstra) jogging by.  Evelyn is the same doctor who performed Joe’s kidney transplant!  Joe strikes up a conversation with her and soon, they’re dating!

(In this movie, dating means eating at a San Francisco theme restaurant, riding a carousel, and running along the beach before heading back home so that Evelyn can model a bikini for a slack-jawed Joe.)

Life is perfect!  Joe’s in love and he’s even managed to sell a gigantic amount of computer chips to Evelyn’s boss, Dr. G (Rick Camp)!  But then Evelyn is killed as the result of a very slow car collision.  Joe is in mourning.  Detective Le (David Nguyen) keeps popping up and suggesting that the car accident that took Evelyn’s life may not have been an accident at all.  (“We found semen in the body,” Detective Le earnestly says while speaking to Evelyn’s boyfriend.)  But then, one day, Joe happens to spot a woman who looks just like Evelyn, except for the fact that she has dark hair and tramp stamp that identifies her as not being Evelyn.  Quicker than you can say Vertigo, Joe is trying to get his new girlfriend to wear a blonde wig and dress just like Evelyn!

Director James Nguyen is best known for directing the Birdemic films.  Replica was actually filmed long before Birdemic but it shows that, even early in his career, Nguyen had his own definite aesthetic.  Everything that made Birdemic so memorable — the terrible sound quality, the pointless shots of people driving, the nonstop references to Hitchcock, the falling-in-love montages that suggest that Nguyen has never actually been on a date, and the suggestion that we’re supposed to take this film seriously — is present in Replica.  If Birdemic claimed to actually be about the dangers of harming the environment, Replica claims to be a film about the ethics of cloning.  While Birdemic featured the characters going out to see An Inconvenient Truth, Replica opens with Joe watching Christopher Reeve advocate for stem cell research.  Reeve is listed in the film’s credits, even though it’s obvious that Nguyen just taped an appearance that he made on a talk show.  Tippi Hedren and Kim Novak are also credited, even though both are only featured in archival footage that shows up on Joe’s television.

In typical Nguyen fashion, any attempt to say anything serious about cloning is negated by the fact that the film’s villain has invented something that he insists on calling “a clone-a-tron.”  (That said, the actor playing Dr. G overacts to such an extent that it’s hard not to appreciate his effort to bring a little life to the movie.)  The film comes out against cloning, despite the fact that Joe pretty much owes what little happiness he has to it.  All in all, it’s a pretty stupid movie but it’s also short so there’s something to be said for that.  In the end, for better or worse, this is a film that could have only been made by James Nguyen.  If you got a good laugh out of Birdemic, prepare for more of the same with Replica.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill

Insomnia File #60: Project Kill (dir by William Girdler)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have always hopped on Tubi and watched the 1976 “thriller,” Project Kill!

In Project Kill, Leslie Nielsen stars as John Trevor, an intelligence agent who has spent six years training a group of men who are regularly given injections of a super soldier serum.  As the film begins, Trevor confesses to his second-in-command, Lassiter (Gary Lockwood), that he worries that the men are actually being used as assassins and that the serum is being used as a mind-control drug.  Yikes!

When Trevor flees from his secret government base and heads to the Philippines, Lassiter is assigned to track him down and bring him back before he can reveal any government secrets.  A crime boss named Alok Lee (Vic Diaz) wants to track down Trevor and learn his mind-control techniques.  Trevor, meanwhile, would rather just spend all of his time in bed with Lee Su (Nancy Kwan).  Unfortunately, because Trevor took a few doses of the serum himself, he soon finds himself losing control and becoming more and more violent.  Lassiter comes to realize that he may not be able to bring back Trevor alive.

Sounds really exciting, doesn’t it?

Well, not quite.  I mean, don’t get me wrong.  There are plenty of fight scenes and there’s a car chase and the film ends with Trevor and Lassiter having a confrontation on a loading dock that’s about as exciting as a fight between two middle-aged, obviously out-of-shape men could be.  Leslie Nielsen’s stunt double puts on a gray hairpiece and shows off some rudimentary karate moves.  To give credit where credit is due, the end of the movie features nearly perfect use of slo mo of doom.

(What is slo mo of doom?  It’s when the action starts moving in slow motion because someone is about to enter a world of pain.  Slo Mo of doom works best when it involves a roundhouse kick and someone yelling, “Noooooooooooooooo!”  Admittedly, that doesn’t happen in Project: Kill but still, the movie’s slo mo of doom works well.)

Unfortunately, in between the occasional action sequences, there are endless shots of people just wandering around.  The film features so much padding that one almost gets the feeling that the film itself was made up on the spot and director William Girdler’s one direction was, “Keep walking until we get enough footage to push this out to 90 minutes.”  As for the plot, I was never quite sure what John Trevor was trying to accomplish in the Philippines.

That said, I think most people are probably going to watch this movie specifically because it was one of the movies that Leslie Nielsen made before he became a beloved comedic icon.  This film is from the era when Leslie Nielsen was a dramatic actor.  The serious intentions don’t matter though.  Nielsen essentially gives the same performance that he gave in The Naked Gun films and it’s impossible not to laugh with him, regardless of how many people he kills.  Nielsen plays the role with a straight face, which, of course, was his comedic trademark.  Even when he faces off against Lassiter, you expect him to say, “Good luck.  We’re all counting on you.”

Project Kill is one of those films where the unintentional laughs save the film.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit

Insomnia File #59: True Spirit (dir by Sarah Spillane)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or Netflix? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night (or this night, for that matter), you could have turned over to Netflix and passed the time watching True Spirit, a rather wholesome biopic from Australia.

Teagan Croft stars as Jessica Watson, who, at the age of 16, became the youngest person ever to sail solo, non-stop around the world.  For Jessica, it was not only the fulfilment of a childhood dream but it was also a true test of survival as, towards the end of her journey, she got trapped in a very violent storm and, at one point, her boat was actually 15 feet below the surface of the ocean.  For the nation of Australia, it was a moment of great pride despite the fact that many of the same people who celebrated Jessica’s accomplishment had earlier tried to prevent her from making the journey.  (Indeed, the film suggests that one reason why Jessica was in such a hurry to start her voyage was because the Queensland legislature was literally putting together a bill that, once passed, would have made it illegal for her to do so.)  The film begins with Jessica already in training for her voyage.  One mistake during a trial run leads to her boat nearly crashing into a tanker, a reminder that, as beautiful as the ocean may be, it can still be a dangerous place.  With the help of Ben Bryant (Cliff Curtis) and the support her parents (Anna Paquin and Josh Lawson), Jessica is determined to make her voyage.  She not only wants to set a world record but she also wants to prove that, even though she’s dyslexic, she can still accomplish anything that she sets her mind too.

There’s really nothing that surprising to be found in True Spirit.  Even if you didn’t already know the true story on which the film was based, you wouldn’t be surprised by how Jessica’s voyage goes.  But, at the same time, it’s a well-intentioned and almost achingly sincere film, one that celebrates a worthy accomplishment and which features a likable lead performance from Teagan Croft.  It’s a film that is determined to focus on the positive, though it certainly doesn’t shy away from the fact that nature can be frightening and unpredictable.  There’s nothing particularly edgy about True Spirit.  Despite a nicely executed storm scene, this isn’t All is Lost.  But it will hold your attention and it’ll probably leave you in a good mood.  It did for me!

Finally, I can’t complete this review without mentioning that Todd Lasance plays a rather obnoxious television journalist named Atherton.  Would it be too much to hope that his name was meant to be a reference to William Atherton, who played a similar reporter in the first two Die Hards?

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker