The Eric Roberts Collection: Red Prophecies (dir by Rodney James Hewitt and Christopher Gosch)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I was going to take a short break from reviewing the many films of Eric Roberts but then I came across 2021’s Red Prophecies on Tubi.

Actually, did I just say 2021? Coming up with a date for this film is actually a little bit more complicated than that. This film was apparently actually filmed in 2014 but it sat on the shelf for a while. The version that was released has a prologue and an epilogue that were obviously filmed in 2020. Russian actor Alexander Nevsky appears in both scenes, talking about his plans for manipulating the upcoming U.S. elections. It’s one of those scenes that is meant to be chilling but instead just reminds the viewer of how ludicrously melodramatic and performative most political discourse has been since 2017.

The majority of the film features Eric Roberts as John Payne, an American reporter who moves to Russia and becomes famous for his ability to predict what’s going to happen in Russian politics. For instance, Payne writes that an opposition leader is going to be arrested and he is! Payne gets his information from “The Oracle,” an anonymous source who sends him emails that John, who is supposed to be a veteran reporter, types up without question. Casper Van Dien, who is playing some sort of Russian intelligence agent, tries to figure out where Payne is getting his information from. Stephen Baldwin shows up as a shady Russian politician. Michael Madsen plays a UN official who Payne suspects is actually corrupt. (A corrupt UN official is probably the most plausible of the film’s plot points.) It’s all a part of a huge plot to destabilize both Russia and the United States. How it all links together is anyone’s guess. The story is not easy to follow, which is probably why the film sat on a shelf for seven years until someone realized that there was a market for international conspiracy films in the United States.

There’s a lot of familiar faces in this movie. We don’t actually hear their voices in the film because apparently, it would have cost too much money to have them come back to do ADR. So, instead, we get one person trying to sound like a dozen different people. Eric Roberts, Stephen Baldwin, and Michael Madsen all have very distinctive voices so when they all sound like a 20-something using autotune, you’re going to notice.

This was a messy film. I’m not really sure if it was mean to be pro-Russian or anti-Russian. The film takes place in Russia and it deals with people being oppressed and opposition leaders being murdered by the government but one name this is never mentioned is the name of Vladimer Putin. Is this movie supposed to be taking place in the real world or an alternate world? I was never quite sure. Several of the characters could have easily been cut from the film and again, buying the film’s story means accepting that a famously hard-boiled reporter would automatically trust an email sent to him by someone calling themselves The Oracle. It’s nice to see the cream of the B-movie, straight-to-video crop all in one film together but otherwise, Red Prophecies doesn’t add up to much.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: The Rideshare Killer (dir by Ashley Scott Meyers)

Posted on April 30, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

W-Ride! W-Ride! W-Ride!

2022’s The Rideshare Killer ends with the creation of W-Ride, a rideshare app for women only. All of the drivers are women. All of other passengers are women. Men are not allowed to get in the car. The sounds like a good idea to me, though I imagine it would probably lead to a lawsuit in real life. Actually, forget probably. It would definitely lead to a lawsuit. That said, I would still download the app.

Unfortunately, Julia (Tuesday Knight) only comes up with the idea after almost all of her friends and co-workers are murdered by a serial killer. Julia is the CEO of Rock N Ride, the rideshare app that is singlehandedly making taxis obsolete. She and two friends run it from her living room. They all have laptops so we know they’re coders. Who is the killer? I won’t spoil it, beyond saying that it won’t take you by surprise. That said, I did laugh out loud when I heard the killer’s motive because it seems like something that could have been accomplished without necessarily becoming a serial killer. Someone obviously did not think things through before deciding to become a criminal.

The main reason I watched this movie was because Eric Roberts was in it. He plays the detective who is investigating the murders. It’s a typical Eric Roberts cameo. He delivers his lines with his signature half-smile, as if he can’t believe the kids today with their laptops and the rideshares. As for the rest of the movie, it’s pretty dire. The budget was obviously low and the cast stiffly delivers their lines with the type of overly precise diction that one would expect to hear in a high school theatrical production. Tuesday Knight is not a bad actress but she’s tripped up by a poorly written script.

That said, I’ll never get W-Ride W-ride W-ride out of my head.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: The Chaos Experiment (dir by Philippe Martinez)

Posted on April 29, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2009’s The Chaos Experiment, Val Kilmer stars as James Pettis, a twitchy man who shows up at the offices of a Michigan newspaper and says that he wants them to publish an editorial he has written. The editorial is about global warming (yawn) and the danger of humanity going extinct (double yawn). Pettis goes on to explain that he has trapped six people in a steam room and that he has turned the temperature up to 130 degrees, the better to demonstrate what destroying the environment is doing to humanity.

Cynical detective Manicni (Armanda Assante) is called and he listens to Pettis’s story. Mancini has some doubts as to whether or not Pettis is who he says he is. As Pettis describes what is happening in the steam room, Mancini comes to suspect that Pettis is either lying or else the murders happened a while ago. Pettis, for his part, seems to grow more and more delusional as he speaks to Manicni.

When we’re not listening to Mancini and Pettis, we’re watching six unfortunate people trapped in steam room. They are played by Eric Roberts, Patrick Muldoon, Megan Brown, Eve Mauro, Quinn Duffy, and Cordelia Reynolds. They start out as a friendly group but, once it becomes apparent that they’re trapped in the room, they lose it. They start turning on and attacking each other. The first to die is killed while strangling another hostage. The second is taken out by a unseen person with a nail gun. Cast as a former football player who claims to be from “Dallas-Fort Worth,” Eric Roberts goes from being the voice of reason to being a paranoid wreck. Meanwhile, the viewer is left to figure out whether or not any of this is happening or if it’s all just in Pettis’s mind.

I kind of cringed when Pettis said he had written an editorial about global warming but the environmental stuff is just a red herring. The film is actually about the cat-and-mouse game between Pettis and Detective Mancini and the investigation into whether or not Pettis has actually trapped six people in a steam room. It’s an intriguing premise and Val Kilmer gives a surprisingly committed performance as the unstable Pettis. Unfortunately, whenever the film cuts to the people in the steam room, it gets bogged down in all the usual Saw-style dramatics. I appreciate that the film found room for Eric Roberts to give a real performance (and Roberts does a good job, going from being affable to murderous over the course of the movie) but, even at the time when this film first came out, the people-trapped-in-a-room thing had been done to death and the scenes in steam room were ultimately a bit too repetitive to be as effective as they needed to be. That said, the film does end with a nice twist and it did hold my attention.

If nothing else, this is your only chance to see Val Kilmer, Armand Assante, Patrick Muldoon, and Eric Roberts, all in the same movie. That counts for something.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: Sink Hole (dir by Scott Wheeler)

Posted on April 28, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2013’s Sink Hole opens with a fracking plant about to go online. A couple of local activists get in a hot air balloon and, while floating over the site of the plant, hold up a cardboard “NO FRACKING” sign which absolutely no one would be able to read from the ground.

Still, this is supposed to be a badass moment. Of course, it’s ruined when steam is released from the plant and the hot air balloon crashes into a power station. One of the activist is killed. Local paramedic Joan Conroy (Gina Holden) is traumatized. Joan’s daughter, Paige (Brooke Mackenzie), dumps her boyfriend because he’s the son of the guy who opened the plant and she feels that he should have done something to stop his father. (Like what, exactly?) That, of course, makes things awkward when it’s time for the two of them to board a school bus and go to a track meet together. Making thing even more awkward is that the track coach and bus driver is Paige’s father, Gary (Jeremy London).

Predictably, the fracking causes a big sinkhole to open up in the middle of the road and, as a result, Gary, Paige, and the entire track team are trapped underground. It’s up to Joan to save them. Eric Roberts also makes an appearance in this film, playing the local police chief. It’s a typical Eric Roberts cameo. Anyone could have played the role but it’s still nice to see a sleepy-eyed Eric delivering his lines with his trademark off-kilter smile.

I was actually excited when this movie started because I thought it starred Jason London but it turned out to be his far less interesting twin, Jeremy. Sink Hole has all the makings of an Asylum film but it’s not an Asylum film. If it was an Asylum film, I imagine the pace wouldn’t have been as slow and there at least would have been a giant snake or something to keep things interesting. This film actually tries to push a message but the action is too slow and the actors playing the track team are all stuck portraying one-dimensional stereotypes. This sink hole is not worth getting lost in.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: The Demonic Dead (dir by Rick Vargas)

Posted on April 27, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Eric Roberts appears for about 18 seconds in 2017’s The Demonic Dead. He plays the Devil, which means that he wears a black suit and he flashes a sinister smile while he speaks to Maria Cruz (Ronee Collins). Maria is angry with God so she agrees to become a servant of the Devil.

What is Maria’s job? She and an army of zombies hide out in the hills and kill people. Reno (Arben Selimi), a demon hunter whose violent methods have apparently generated some controversy within The Church, is sent to take Maria out. Reno’s wife, Katherine (Kat Kaevich), wants Reno to abandon the whole demon hunting thing because being a demon hunter is a real drag on their marriage. Reno thinks about Katherine and we are treated to a rather long relationship montage, all set to a song called Katherine!

Anyway, Maria is targeting a group of college students, one of whom just happens to be a longtime friend of Reno’s. Reno goes to help, carrying his special golden gun with him. Eventually, Katherine follows and we get some zombie mayhem. One unfortunate person gets his guts pulled out on camera. “Kidney!” Maria says at one point.

This was a very, very low-budget film and it was way too amateurish to be effective. The acting was unpolished and the pacing was so off that this rather short film still felt a bit too long. That said, there was some thought behind the story and the film did attempt to explore what being a demon hunter would actually do to someone’s psyche. The film had some ambition, which is more than I can say for a lot of low budget horror flicks.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: Dawn (dir by Nicholas Ryan)

Posted on April 26, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2022’s Dawn has a running time of 78 minutes. Eric Roberts is in the film but unfortunately, his nameless character is killed off at the four minute mark. It’s a bit of a pointless cameo, even by Eric Roberts’s standards. If you’re going to get Eric Roberts in your film, do something more than just have him pathetically beg for his life. Is it worth watching a 78-minute Eric Roberts film if you already know that Roberts is going to be in at least 74 of those minutes?

Eric Roberts’s character is killed by Dawn (Jackie Moore), a serial killer who drives around and pretends to be an Uber driver and who makes her victim play various games before killing them. Dawn is a celebrity on the Dark Web. It’s always funny to me how movies like this pretty much use the Dark Web as their go-to plot device. If someone needs a motivation …. hey, Dark Web! If a plot twist doesn’t make any sense, just say it’s somehow connected to the Dark Web or a Russian troll farm. It’s not difficult. Since the entire film is pretty much just Dawn tormenting a couple (played by Sarah French and Jared Cohn), it’s important that Dawn be such a charismatic and witty killer that we’re willing to put up with antisocial actions. Unfortunately, as played by Moore, she’s just annoying.

Roberts is not the only celebrity to make an appearance as Dawn. In one of the film’s few effective moments, Nicholas Brendon shows up as a man at a gas station who is a huge fan of Dawn’s and who wants her to murder him. Later, Michael Pare shows up as a cop who pulls over the car. How many times has Pare played a cop in movies like this? He always seems to be pulling someone over.

Anyway, it didn’t take me long to get bored with this, despite the fact that both French and Cohn gave better performances than the film deserved. There’s only so much that can be explained away by saying, “Dark Web.”

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: Doc Holliday’s Revenge (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on April 25, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2014’s Doc Holliday’s Revenge takes place in late 1800s, just outside of the town of Tombstone. Following the murder of Morgan Earp, the legendary Doc Holliday (William McNamara) is seeking revenge and hoping to kill every suspected members of the Clanton gang before he himself is killed by tuberculosis. When a suspected Clanton gang member named Indian Charlie (Oliver Rayon) stumbles wounded into the homestead of Elizabeth (Ashley Hayes) and Joseph Cooley (Bart Voitilla), Holliday comes looking for him. Elizabeth stands up to the gunslinging dentist.

This is a bit of an odd viewing experience. Much like David DeCoteau’s earlier Bonnie and Clyde film, it’s an attempt to do a historical film on a budget. As such, there’s a lot of narration and sepia-toned stock footage. Newspaper headlines flash across the screen. Tom Berenger, as Judge Wells, narrates the story and is filmed in extreme close-up and with a greenscreen behind him. Strangely, the same thing seems to have been done with William McNamara, who spends most of the film sitting on his horse and talking to people who are clearly off-camera. It also appears that the majority of McNamara’s scenes were also done with a greenscreen. It’s a weird effect, one that leaves the viewer wondering if both Berenger and McNamara are meant to be playing ghosts. That said, it’s oddly effective. At the very least, it reinforces the idea of Holliday being a mythical figure, a ghostly spirit of Americana. Eric Roberts also shows up very briefly at the beginning and the end of the film, playing Elizabeth’s estranged father. Unlike McNamara and Berenger, it’s clear that Roberts actually was on the set when he filmed his scenes.

Doc Holliday’s Revenge feels like a companion piece to David DeCoteau’s Bonnie and Clyde: Justified. (Ashley Hayes was in that film as well, playing Bonnie Parker.) The budget is low and the dialogue is far too modern for a historical film but the cast at least seems to be trying and the film holds your interest while you’re watching it. (Good luck remembering much about it afterwards, though.) If nothing else, it’s better than Bigfoot vs DB Cooper.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: Bigfoot vs D.B. Cooper (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on April 24, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2014’s Bigfoot vs DB Cooper tells what happens when a bunch of shirtless frat boy types go turkey hunting in the Washington wilderness in 1971. One of them is planning on getting married and this weekend is going to be their last chance to all get together and stare at each other in their underwear. One-by-one, each member of the group strips down to his underwear and then poses with his rifle and then flexes in front of a mirror. Finally, the groom takes a shower and starts to….

What?

You’re right. This is indeed a David DeCoteau film.

Now, the title is not a lie. Bigfoot is in the movie and receives a “….as himself” credit. He’s big and covered in red fur and he spends a lot of time voyeuristically watching the frat boys while they run around the woods in their underwear. His dialogue consists of growls and I will admit that I smiled whenever the captioning read, “GROWLING!”

D.B. Cooper is also in the film. The film gives us the details of skyjacking and his subsequent jump into the night over Washington. In this film, he lands just in time for a climatic fight with Bigfoot. Of course, that fight last for one minute and it features Cooper saying, “The most successful skyjacking in aviation history can’t end like this!”

That said, the film is mostly just a collection of scenes featuring the handsome but oddly sexless frat boys wandering around in their underwear and standing in front of mirrors. The camera lingers on them to such an extent that it almost starts to feel like David DeCoteau is intentionally parodying himself. For the record, I’ve enjoyed quite a few DeCoteau films. I love the “Wrong” films that he’s done with Vivica A. Fox. He’s a director who is willing to embrace the melodrama and who has a good sense of humor and healthy self-awareness about the films that he’s making. (And again, I think it can be argued that there’s some intentional self-parody at work in this one.) Unfortunately, Bigfoot vs D.B. Cooper is incredibly dull.

Eric Roberts and Linnea Quigley are top-billed, though neither actually appears on screen. Roberts narrates the film and talks about Vietnam. Quigley provides the voice of the unseen flight attendant who speaks to D.B. Cooper.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: Hunting Season (dir by Eduardo Castrillo)

Posted on April 23, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yeah, I got nothing.

Seriously, 2016’s Hunting Season is so mind-numbingly dull and bad that I have no idea what to say about it. Usually, when I see an indie film that is this bad, I keep it to myself because I generally don’t believe in kicking people when they’re down. I’m far more comfortable trashing a bad film from a major studio than a mediocre one that was shot by some guy who put the entire budget on his credit card. But a visit to the imdb revealed several comments from people who worked on the film and were never actually paid for their efforts so screw it. This is one of the worst films that I have ever seen in my life.

Stock brokers are kidnapping people and hunting them for sport. Tom Sizemore plays Nick, who I guess is supposed to be the head stockbroker. If I sound confused, it’s because the soundtrack was so muddy that I often struggled to understand what people were saying. Sizemore disappears from the film, which is a shame because his unhinged, seemingly improvised performance was one of the only interesting things about the film. (At one point, Sizemore looked straight at the camera and extended his middle finger. I’m not sure if that moment was scripted or not.) Eric Roberts shows up for four scenes, playing the father-in-law of one of the stock brokers. The character’s daughter apparently has some sort of psychic connection with her husband and she shouted all of her dialogue. Clifton Powell shows up as a guy in a bar. Miguel Nunez Jr. plays an FBI agent.

Along with not being able to hear the dialogue, I also struggled to understand just where everyone was in relation to everyone else. The film was so haphazardly edited that it was impossible to really keep track of time or location or anything else that would have helped make the film interesting. It’s a talky film but good luck understanding what anyone’s saying. Most of the scenes have so many visible edits and so many close-ups that I got the feeling that everyone was on set at a different time. It makes for a disjointed and dull story. I couldn’t follow a bit of it.

Eric Roberts has appeared in nearly 800 films. This one might be the worst.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: Megaboa (dir by Mario N. Bonassin)

Posted on April 22, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Bless the Asylum and their love of giant monster movies!

In 2021’s Megaboa, a group of college students accompany Dr. Malone (Eric Roberts) a field trip to a remote island. They’re on the island specifically to explore some caves and study some drawings. It’s time to have some fun with anthropology! But when Dr. Malone gets bitten by a venomous spider, a group of students go off in search of an orchid that can neutralize the venom. This eventually leads to them discovering that they’re not alone on the island. There’s also a giant snake, a megaboa if you will.

This is pretty much a typical Asylum film. Giant snakes, tank top-wearing heroines, and Eric Roberts hamming it up in his usual delightful fashion. “Far out!” Dr. Malone says when he first sees the giant snake and how can you not agree with him? Those who complain that the Asylum makes cheap movies are missing the point. The film may be cheap but they’re almost always fun as well. This one features a giant snake that is actually kind of cute and it also features a scene of someone shouting, “Get me out of here!” after being swallowed by the snake and how can you not enjoy that? It’s like a much more honest and self-aware version of Anaconda and, best of all, it’s got Eric Roberts delivering his lines with a twinkle in his eye. He knows better than to take any of this too seriously and hopefully, you do as well.

Megaboa is fun. It’s like the type of films that I used to look forward to watching on the SyFy channel. Get together with a group of your wittiest friends and watch it. Don’t be afraid to talk back to the movie. Don’t be afraid to laugh when the snake first shows up. Tell the characters when they’re doing something dumb, that’s the point of the film. Megaboa is pure entertainment.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed: