Guilty Pleasure No. 51: Rage and Honor (dir by Terence Winkless)

Posted on October 23, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1992 film, Rage and Honor, tells the story of two people from different worlds, who come together to kick ass and save a declining American city.

Preston Michaels (Richard Norton) is a cop from Australia who has come to America as a part of an exchange program. When he’s not working undercover, he’s supplementing his income by working as a bodyguard for what appears to be an 80s cover band.

Kris Fairfield (Cynthia Rothrock) is a teacher at the local high school who also moonlights as a karate instructor. She’s haunted by the death of her parents and the subsequent disappearance of her brother. She cares about her students, even though hardly any of them actually appear in the film. In fact, the whole high school teacher thing never really matters much in the grand scheme of things.

Preston and Kris are teaming up to take down spacey drug lord Conrad Drago (Brian Thompson). Conrad has a fierce mullet, a cocaine addiction, and a knowledge of all of the body’s pressure points. His girlfriend is Rita (Terri Treas) and the only thing that could possibly prevent Drago and Rita from taking over the city is a tape that reveals Rita and a bunch of crooked cops killing someone. Kris and Preston are trying to find the tape before Drago and Rita find it. Somehow, it all eventually leads to a homeless stock broker named Baby (Stephen Davies) and a weird fight club that’s run by Hannah the Hun (Alex Datcher).

It’s an incredibly silly film, to be honest. It’s the type of film where Preston gets shot once in the side and once in the leg and neither time does it slow him down. (He does mention that his leg hurts at one point but he never starts to limp or anything like that.) Kris, meanwhile, is given a tragic backstory that is explained to us in-between scenes of awkward comedic relief. Hannah goes from being a calculating villainous to a heroic ally, without the film attempting any explanation as to why. Meanwhile, despite Brian Thompson’s best efforts to be menacing, Conrad is written as being some sort of flakey, New Age drug dealer. He’s about as intimidating as the biggest guy in a drum circle. There’s really not much rage or honor to be found in Rage and Honor.

And yet, it was impossible for me to dislike the film. Every time Cynthia Rothrock did a flying kick and sent some jerk flying, the film won me back. Unfortunately, she didn’t really get to do as much fighting as she should have. She had to share the screen with Brian Thompson and Richard Norton, who both received fight scenes of their own. All three of them looked good fighting but Cynthia was the clear star. What she lacked in actual acting ability, she made up for with pure enthusiasm. Watching her, you realized that she was not only good at fighting but she enjoyed it as well. For all the film’s flaws, Cynthia kicked everyone’s ass and that’s really all that mattered. It was empowering and, even more importantly, it was a lot of fun to watch.

Go, Cynthia, go!

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Spirits (1990, directed by Fred Olen Ray)

Posted on October 22, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

In this sex-filled take on The Haunting of Hill House, Robert Quarry leads a group of researchers to a haunted house. Amy Goldwyn (Brinke Stevens) is the smart psychic who knows the house isn’t safe but who still gets possessed by a demon and ends up hammering a nail through her palm. Beth (Kathrin Lautner) is the self-described “bitch” who has a lesbian past because this is a direct-to-video 90s film. Harry (Oliver Darrow) is the cocky womanizer who gets seduced by a succubus. The house is haunted by the spirit of a fallen priest and his demonic nuns. Only another priest, Father Anthony Vicci (Erik Estrada!), can save the researchers but that holy water that he’s carrying around is only going to work if he regains his faith and seeks forgiveness for his past sins.

As far as I know, Spirits is only available on VHS. So, if you do watch it, you’re going to need a VCR that works. Considering how easily an old VCR can break down and how it’s nearly impossible to get them repaired, you’re going to need to realize that Spirits could very well be the last tape you ever watch on the old machine. Do you want to take the risk? I took the risk and, for what it is, Spirits is not that bad. It’s a Fred Olen Ray films and it’s got Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer in it so you know what you’re going to get. Still, after I finished it, I realized that, if Spirits had been the last thing I ever watched on that old VCR, I would have been pissed. If my VCR is going to break, I’d rather it break while I was watching a tape full of hours of Must See TV from 1996.

Spirits has a few things to recommend it. Brinke Stevens was one of the best of the direct-to-video scream queens and she actually does give a “real” performance as Amy. The sight of Erik Estrada, playing a tortured a priest as if he was a character on a particularly racy telenovela, was certainly entertaining. Finally, there was Count Yorga himself, Robert Quarry, as the main ghost hunter. Otherwise, Spirits is a typical direct-to-video Fed Olen Ray film, with cheesy music, terrible special effects, and laughable dialogue. There’s a lot of nudity, of course but you can find the same amount of nudity in films that you can safely watch on DVD or Blu-ray. If you’re going to risk the VCR, the movie is going to need to have more to offer.

Scenes that I Love: Peter Cushing In Shock Waves

Posted on October 22, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Shock Waves (1977, dir by Ken Wiederhorn)

Today’s scene that I love comes from one of the most underrated zombie films of the 70s, Shock Waves.

In this film, Nazi zombies have emerged off the coast of an island. When a group of stranded tourists explore the island, they come across Peter Cushing, who explains to them just what exactly is going on. Cushing totally steals this scene. It’s always interesting to me that Cushing could convincingly play such depraved characters when, in real life, he was supposedly a very gentle and somewhat shy man. In fact, if you listen to the commentary track that was recorded for Shock Waves’s video release, everyone who worked on the film talks about what a joy Peter Cushing was off-screen.

Here is Peter Cushing in Shock Waves:

6 Shots From 6 Pete Cushing Films

Posted on October 22, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 or more Shots from 4 or more 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, the Shattered Lens pays tribute to Peter Cushing, one of the great actors and horror stars of the previous century. By most accounts, an old-fashioned gentleman who enjoyed gardening and a little painting, Peter Cushing went from the stage to films to television and back again and, along the way, appeared in some of the most popular and beloved films ever made. He was often cast as a rival to Christopher Lee. In real life, the two men were the closest of friends.

Here are….

6 Shots From 6 Peter Cushing Films

Hamlet (1948, dir by Laurence Olivier, DP: Desmond Dickinson)

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)

Horror of Dracula (1958, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)

Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965, dir by Gordon Flemyng, DP: Jack Wilcox)

Shock Waves (1977, dir by Ken Weiderhorn, DP: Reuben Trane)

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977, dir by George Lucas, DP: Gilbert Talyor)

Horror On The Lens: I Was A Teenage Frankenstein (dir by Herbert L. Strock)

Posted on October 22, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

From 1957, it’s I Was A Teenage Frankenstein!

This film was produced as a direct result of the box office success of I Was A Teenage Werewolf. Just as in Teenage Werewolf, Whit Bissell plays a mad scientist who makes the mistake of trying to play God. (He also makes the mistake of keeping an alligator in his lap but that’s another story.) The end result …. Teenage Frankenstein!

The makeup on the Teenage Frankenstein is probably the best thing about this film. If nothing else, this film features a monster who actually looks like he was stitched together in a lab.

Enjoy and please be sure to read my review of this film at Horror Critic!

Here’s The Trailer for Red Notice

Posted on October 21, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier today, Leonard shared the trailer for Uncharted. At the same time that the Unchartered trailer was dropping, the trailer for Red Notice was being released as well. To be honest, I kind of suspect that they’re both the exact same film. Maybe Red Notice is the European edit….

No, actually, they’re both separate films. But judging from the trailer, they both appear to take place in the same cinematic universe. Anyway, Red Notice stars Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot as rival things who end up woring for an FBI profiler who is, of course, played by Dwayne Johnson. It’s always interesting to me that whenever you real life FBI agents, they’re always these kind of nebbish accountant types but whenever they show up in a movie, they’re always played Dwayne Johnson. Dwayne Johnson’s never had to keep track of his money because, if he ever did run out of cash, the people of the world would come together to send him as much extra money as they could. Everyone understands that the world would be a much worse place without Dwayne Johnson.

I guess Red Notice is a wacky comedy time and Netflix has a pretty uneven history when it comes to wacky comedy but I do like all three of the stars so who knows?

Here’s the trailer!

Arcade (1993, directed by Albert Pyun)

Posted on October 21, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

Alex (Megan Ward) is a suburban teen still trying to come to terms with the suicide of her mother. She and her friend, Nick (Peter Billingsley), spend all of their time hanging out at the local video arcade, Dante’s Inferno. (Symbolic name alert!) Also hanging out at Dante’s Inferno is a man (John de Lancie) who is desperate to find people willing to play what he says is the next step in the evolution of gaming. The game, which is simply called “Arcade,” is a virtual reality simulator and soon, all the teens want to play it!

Unfortunately, there’s a problem with Arcade. It was partially programmed with the brain cells of a child who had been beaten to death by his mother. Don’t ask why anyone thought this was a good idea because this is a Charles Band production so you know no one would explain even if they could. The child wants either friends or revenge so, as a result, the game is stealing the souls of the people who play it and transporting them to the virtual reality world.

Realizing that all of her friends will soon be gone, Alex enters the virtual reality world to save them and thwart Arcade! She’ll have to defeat skulls, serpents, and every other CGI challenge that the game can throw at her.

If you remember this film, it’s probably because you’re like me and you saw it on HBO when you were kid. Though the film has an R-rating because of some awkwardly deployed bad language, the film really is a teen boy fantasy, one in which you can enter the world of your favorite video game and save the world with Megan Ward, a hot girl who loves video games just as much as you do. When it was released, Arcade’s special effects were pretty impressive. If you watch the movie today, it’s obvious that the actors have just been superimposed against a virtual background. Watching the film today, I had the same feeling that I had when I recently hooked up my old Xbox 360 and played a few games. It was more primitive than I remembered but that rush of nostalgia was enjoyable for a few hours.. Arcade features an energetic cast (including Seth Green and AJ Langer in supporting roles) and Dante’s Inferno was the coolest arcade I’ve ever seen. It was a hundred times better than the one from Joysicks.

One final note: If you needed any more evidence that Disney is evil, they actually sued Charles Band because they claimed Arcade was too similar to Tron! As a result, Band, working with Peter Billingsley, actually had to redesign a good deal of the CGI before the film could be released. Disney was right about Arcade being a goof on Tron but who cares? I doubt anyone has ever said, “I’ve seen Arcade, I don’t need to see Tron.” Chill out, Disney. There’s room for at everyone at the arcade.

Horror Scenes That I Love: The Monster Meets The Bride in Bride of Frankenstein

Posted on October 21, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Bride of Frankenstein (1935, dir James Whale)

Today’s horror scene that I love comes from 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein. In this wonderfully acted scene, the Bride (Elsa Lanchester) meets the Monster (Boris Karloff) for the first time. Both of their reactions reveal them to be far more human than the people who created them.

Lisa Marie’s Grindhouse Trailers: 6 Trailers For The 3rd Thursday in October

Posted on October 21, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, here we are! It’s the third Thursday in October and that means that it’s time for another edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers!

Since today is Boris Karloff’s birthday, I thought I would devote this edition to everyone’s favorite reanimated corpse, Frankenstein’s Monster! Over the years, there’s been a lot of movies about the Monster. Here are the trailers for six of them!

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

Believe it or not, there was a time when it was felt that the story of Frankenstein and his Monster has been played out. With the Universal films bringing in less and less money, many felt that the Monster’s days were behind it. Then, Hammer, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee came along and said, “No! This is what Frankenstein is all about!”

At least, I assume that’s what they said. I hope they did.

2. Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (1965)

You can’t keep a good Frankenstein down as Jesse James discovered in this 1965 western.

3. Lady Frankenstein (1971)

In this Italian film, the Baron’s daughter continues her father’s scientific experiments! I guess Jesse James wasn’t the only one to meet Frankenstein’s Daughter!

4. Flesh for Frankenstein (a.k.a. Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein) (1973)

Udo Kier is the Baron and Andy Warhol may have been the producer of this film. Or he may have just lended his name out for the money. It depends on who you ask.

5. Blackenstein (1973)

Of course, following the success of Blacula, there was a blaxploitation take on Frankenstein.

6. Frankenhooker (1990)

And, of course, who can forget Frankenhooker?

I hope that your Halloween is full of the type of creativity and scientific curiosity that made the Frankenstein family legendary!

Horror On The Lens: I Was A Teenage Werewolf (dir by Gene Fowler, Jr.)

Posted on October 21, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1957’s I Was A Teenage Werewolf combines two genres that were very popular in the late 50s.

On the one hand, it’s a film about a teenage rebel. Tony Rivers (Michael Landon) is a teenager that means well but he keeps losing his temper. If he can’t learn to control his anger, he could very well be looking at a life behind bars.

On the other hand, it’s also a horror film. When Tony visits a hypnotist (Whit Bissell), the end result is Tony turning into a werewolf and going on a rampage, all while still wearing his letterman jacket.

All in all, this is a pretty fun little movie. You can check out my review of it by clicking here.

And you can watch the movie below!