“Don’t Lie”, Dir. Alex Magana, Short Film Review By Case Wright


So we meet again….Alex … Magana. Now look, I assume that most of my readers are good, kind, and decent, but what if you’re not?! I mean what if you’re not that great or you did one REALLY bad thing that you feel guilty about. I’m not saying putting your neighbor in a woodchipper kind of thing, but let’s just include the lessor felonies. If you just need that self-flagellation, my dear ne’er-do-well compadre, this film and Alex Magana is for you.


Alex Magana assaults the senses and art herself. In fact, from the hackneyed plots to the p*rn quality acting, he is the Ed Wood of the digital age! If you don’t believe me, check out the “Smiling Woman”… SERIES…yes, it’s a series! I refuse to call it a franchise! I won’t do it! Luckily, your misery is brief because as terrible as Alex Magana’s films are – he can’t write stories longer than 4 minutes.

“Don’t Lie” shows an influencer, who I think seems a little old for the gig; however, we must let all things slide with Alex. Typically, Alex just films out of his apartment and the hall in his apartment building. The lead actress could be homeless or just live near the building; so, she could be young, but life on the street is hard. In fact, all of the actors could be homeless and this brief filming was their only exposure to …. home. *Sheds Tear*

The story continues where her boyfriend stages her murder to gain additional subscribers, which doesn’t make sense because why subscribe to the deceased? But, Whatever. A psycho then teaches her and her boyfriend a lesson about … honesty… with a knife. Apparently, neither she nor her boyfriend understand how their legs can make them move around and even away from things or people.

If we look at “Don’t Lie” like an industrial film, like “The Importance of Good Manners”, “Why you should drive safely”, and “Don’t ever put that in your Bu..” anyway. My point is that maybe “Don’t Lie” is salvageable as a lesson film. The lesson is this: Don’t let Alex Magana have any recording devices! EVER! He’s got to be stopped! He’s really prolific! How is paying for all this very very low budget dreck?!

Jungle Siren (1942, directed by Sam Newfield)


Captain Gary Hart (Buster Crabbe) and his sidekick, Sgt. Mike Jenkins (Paul Bryar), are sent to the jungles of Africa, where Nazi infiltrators are encouraging Chief Selangi (Jess Lee Brooks) to side with the Third Reich and allow them to set up a base.  In their effort to stop the Nazis, Hart and Jenkins are aided by Kuhlaya (Ann Corio), a woman whose parents were killed by Selangi and who now lives in the jungle with a chimpanzee and a doctor (Milton Kibbee) who serves as her protector.  Kuhlaya carries a bow and arrow, which she used to battle the Nazis.  Hart and Jenkins have actual guns and probably could have ended the Nazi plot early just by using them as soon as they arrived but then the movie couldn’t be stretched to 68 minutes.

This is a pretty bad Poverty Row film, memorable just for Crabbe’s typically earnest and athletic performance and the presence of Ann Corio, who was a famous stripper in the 40s who tried to transition into films after Mayor La Guardia ordered the closure of New York’s burlesque houses.  Corio had legs for miles but she was a terrible actress.  At one point, Mike Jenkins says that if he keeps exercising, “I’ll have a physique like Buster Crabbe!”  That’s about as clever as this slow-moving film gets.

As is typical of jungle films that were made in the 40s, the “tribesmen” are pretty much treated as if they’re interchangeable and the only one who is given a personality is the evil Selangi.  Several of them are killed over the course of the movie, not because they were doing anything wrong but just because they were in the wrong place.  (The most egregious example is an innocent native who ends up with one of Kuhlaya’s arrows in his back because he was unfortunate enough to step in front of Selangi at the last moment.)  No one, our heroes included, really seems to care about them or their future.  Even by the standards of the era, Jungle Siren feels extremely condescending and prejudiced in its portrayal of the natives.  The idea that the Nazis, with their Aryan obsession, would ever team up with Chief Selangi is just one of the film’s problems.

Director Sam Newfield was responsible for some entertaining and cheap westerns.  I’ve reviewed a few of them.  He should have stayed out the jungle.

Brad’s “Scene of the Day” – The revenge training sequence from FULL CONTACT (1992), starring Chow Yun-Fat!


One of my favorite Chow Yun-Fat action films is Ringo Lam’s FULL CONTACT. Up until FULL CONTACT, Chow Yun-Fat was mostly the suave hitman or tough cop in his action films. Here, he’s a man content with operating on the wrong side of the law to try to get ahead. Unfortunately, he is betrayed by his best friend and criminal cohorts and left for dead in a foreign country. This rock-fueled montage sequence shows him healing up and then preparing to take his revenge, while his best friend / betrayer tries to “be there” for his girlfriend who thinks he’s dead. It’s a badass, multi-fingerless, Chow Yun-Fat who wears bandanas, rides a motorcycle, hangs with a cute dog, and ultimately takes no prisoners. My guess is this scene will make you want to watch FULL CONTACT!

(Note: The video is frozen for the first 8 seconds. After that, the fun begins)

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Harvey Keitel Edition!


4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today is Harvey Keitel’s 86th birthday! Harvey Keitel is one of the great, fearless actors of our time (BAD LIEUTENANT, anyone). He has been working hard since 1965, and he’s still going strong today, adding up to a career that spans 60 years and counting. His work for great directors like Scorsese and Tarantino has been vital to the quality and success of those films. I really came to appreciate Keitel when he had somewhat of a career resurgence in the early 90’s when I was in my late teens. He’s just a great actor who makes everything he appears in better.

Today, in honor of Harvey Keitel’s 86th birthday, here are 4 Shots from 4 Films!

MEAN STREETS (1973)

FINGERS (1978)

RESERVOIR DOGS (1992)

FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (1996)

I Come In Peace (1990, directed by Craig R. Baxley)


“I come in peace.”

“And you go in pieces.”

How have I not reviewed this one yet?

Dolph Lundgren is Jack Crain, a Houston cop who teams up with FBI agent Larry Smith (Brian Benben) to investigate who is killing criminals in H-town.  The killer is a drug dealer but not your everyday drug dealer.  He’s an alien named Talec (Matthias Hues) and he’s figured out how to say “I come in peace,” but the rest of the English language is beyond him.  “I come in peace,” turns out to be the scariest phrase you can hear when you’re being pursued by a white-haired, intergalactic mass murderer.  His targets include Jesse Vint and Michael J. Pollard.  This terminator wannabe is after character actors!

On the second-tier action stars of the 90s, Lundgren was the one who could actually act.  Van Damme could actually do all the acrobatic stunts his characters did but he couldn’t show emotion like Lundgren.  Steven Seagal seemed like he could handle himself in a fight but he lacked Lundgren’s self-aware humor.  Lundgren plays Jack as almost being a parody of the type of hard-boiled cop who is always getting yelled at by the commissioner for wasting the city’s money.  Brian Benben is remembered, by some, as the star of HBO’s Dream On, the sitcom that convinced a generation of young men that there’s nothing women love more than obscure pop cultural obsessions.  Benben is actually pretty funny in I Come In Peace.  He’s the everyman who can’t believe he’s having to deal with an intergalactic drug dealer.  Good heroes need a good villain and Matthias Hues is just right as the drug dealing alien who literally doesn’t know what he’s saying.

If you want to see a Terminator rip-off with nonstop action, a memorable villain, frequently (and intentionally) funny dialogue, an Al Leong cameo, and Dolph Lundgren as a hero who pushes people around just because he feels like it, I Come In Peace is the movie for you!

#MondayMuggers presents STRATEGIC COMMAND (1997) starring Michael Dudikoff!


Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday May 12th, we are showing STRATEGIC COMMAND (1997) starring Michael Dudikoff, Paul Winfield, Richard Norton, Amanda Wyss, Bryan Cranston, and Michael Cavanaugh.

This movie focuses on Rick Harding (Michael Dudikoff), a former Marines officer, who’s now working in the FBI as a chemical weapons designer. While packing up one night, a group of armed soldiers break into the FBI research lab. Interestingly, these soldiers are led by a man named Carlos Gruber (Richard Norton).

So, join us tonight for #MondayMuggers and watch STRATEGIC COMMAND! It’s on Amazon Prime. The trailer is included below:

Monday Live Tweet Alert: Join Us for Eve of Destruction


As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasion ally Mastodon.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We snark our way through it.

Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1991’s Eve of Destruction!

It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in.  If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, pull up Eve of Destruction on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag!

Enjoy!

Scenes That I Love: Katharine Hepburn and James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story


On this date, 118 years ago, Katharine Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut.  She would go one to become a cultural icon, a performer who survived being labeled box office to poison to eventually become one of our most acclaimed actresses.  Hepburn was a total of four acting Oscars over the course of her career, a record that has yet to be topped.

Today’s scene that I love comes from 1940’s The Philadelphia Story and it features Katharine Hepburn acting opposite another one of my favorite performers, the great James Stewart.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Jess Franco Edition


4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today is the 95th anniversary of the birth of Jesus Franco!  One of the most prolific filmmakers of all time, Franco made movies that …. well, they’re not easy to describe.  Jess Franco was responsible for some of the most visually striking and narratively incoherent films ever made.  He made films that you either loved or you hated but there was no mistaking his work for being the work of someone else.

Today, in honor of his birthday, here are….

4 Shots From 4 Films

The Awful Dr. Orloff (1962, dir by Jess Franco, DP: Godofredo Pacheco)

A Virgin Among The Living Dead (1970, dir by Jess Franco, DP: anyone’s guess)

She Killed In Ecstasy (1970, dir by Jess Franco, DP: Manuel Merino)

Female Vampire (1973, dir by Jess Franco, DP: Jess Franco)

Brad’s “Video of the Day” – Chow Yun-Fat sings OH VERY NICE! 


Chow Yun-Fat was such a big Hong Kong movie star, and he couldn’t do anything wrong in the late 80’s. While he’s most well known for his action films, he also starred in a lot of comedies. He was often goofy and over the top and the audiences loved it. In the hit film, THE DIARY OF A BIG MAN (1988), Chow plays a man married to two of the most beautiful women of Hong Kong cinema, Sally Yeh (THE KILLER) and Joey Wong (GOD OF GAMBLERS)… at the same time. Needless to say, it’s not an easy situation. Fair warning, if you’ve never seen a Chow Yun-Fat comedy, this may take some getting used to. I personally love it and can’t help but smile as big as Chow when I watch it. I present Chow Yun-Fat singing “Oh Very Nice” from THE DIARY OF A BIG MAN. Enjoy my friends!