October Positivity: Revelation Road 2: The Sea of Glass and Fire (dir by Gabriel Sabloff)

Posted on October 27, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Eric Roberts is in this!

That, in itself, isn’t a surprise. Eric Roberts was also in the first Revelation Road. He plays the same role in the 2013 sequel. Roberts is Sheriff Jenson, the not particularly religious sheriff who has to deal with a town that’s gone mad in the wake of the Rapture. Over the course of one night, dozens of people (including Jenson’s mother) vanished as their souls flew into the air. Jenson isn’t sure what happened but he knows that there is panic in the streets and that there is also a crazed motorcycle gang to deal with. In the first film, Roberts was onscreen for maybe two minutes. He gets closer to five minutes in Revelation Road 2 and you know what? it’s always nice to see Eric Roberts!

As for the rest of the film, it picks up where the previous one ended. Josh McManus (David A.R. White) is trying to get home to his family while also resisting the urge to become a killer. It’s not easy. Flashbacks reveal that Josh was actually brainwashed by the CIA to be a remorseless killer. He’s haunted by a mission in the Middle East and the amount of people he killed over there. He’s joined in his drive home by Beth (Noelle Coet), a teenage girl who has been sent by Jesus himself (Bruce Marchiano) to help guide Josh in the right direction. Pursuing Josh is the fearsome Hawg (Brian Bosworth), a motorcycle gang leader who is haunted by his own personal tragedy. Hawg’s daughter, Cat (Andrea Logan White), struggles to understand her father’s anger and hatred.

Revelation Road 2 is a definite improvement over the first film. If the first film seemed to take forever to go nowhere, Revelation Road 2 is all about Josh’s determination to get back home. Once he starts that car up, nothing is going to stop him. If the first film seemed to be a bit too eager to show off Josh’s talent for killing people, Revelation Road 2 features Josh trying to hold back on his murderous instincts. Flashbacks to Hawg’s past life bring some much-needed nuance and context to his actions and they keep him from being just a one-dimensional villain. I would dare say that Bosworth actually gives a legitimately good performance in this film.

Though the film wears its influences on its sleeve (Hi, Mad Max!), Revelation Road 2 is still a surprisingly well-done action film.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

October Positivity: Revelation Road: The Beginning of the End (dir by Gabriel Sabloff)

Posted on October 26, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Eric Roberts is in the 2013 film, Revelation Road: The Beginning of the End.

Of course, he’s only in it for a few minutes. In fact, if you blink, you will miss him. He plays Sheriff Jenson, who is in charge of enforcing the law in a small desert community. He appears long enough to tell salesman John McManus (David A.R. White) not to leave town. McManus has just killed three armed men who were attempting to rob a general store. The store’s owner (Ray Wise) invites him to dinner but the cops are curious as to how a salesman could be so proficient at killing people.

Revelation Road plays out over the course of one long night. A group of bikers, led by the fearsome Hawg (Brian Bosworth), are seeking revenge for the death of their compatriots. Meanwhile, Iran is pushing the world towards war. In a motel, a woman asks John for money. Lighting flashes. Lights flicker on and off. The Earth shakes. It’s a fearful time, largely because the world itself is coming to an end. A little over an hour into this 88 minute film, there’s a sudden blinding light and suddenly, a fourth of the cast vanishes. One person who does not vanish runs into a kindly stranger, played by Bruce Marchiano. Marchiano will be well-known to viewers of faith-based cinema for the number of times that he’s played Jesus. So, you can probably guess what’s happened.

Revelation Road ends with the promise of a sequel, which means that the film also ends with a lot of unanswered questions. It makes Revelation Road difficult to really review because it’s obviously meant to be a prologue to the actual story. I will note that Revelation Road is a surprisingly violent movie, at least by the standards of most faith-based films. Then again, most of the violence was in self-defense and the Bible itself is full of stories of violent men who found redemption. In fact, you could probably argue that it’s impossible to do an apocalypse movie that isn’t violent. We’ll just have to wait to see where this story is heading.

I’ll review the sequel tomorrow.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

October True Crime: The Company We Keep (dir by Jeff Edelstein)

Posted on October 24, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Like Ed Kemper, the 2023’s The Company We Keep is based on the crimes of Edmund Kemper.

The Company We Keep does take a few liberties with the true story. For one thing, it’s set in the present instead of the 70s. As well, Carter Holcomb (Cary Mark), who is this film’s version of Kemper, works not for the Highway Department but instead at a grocery store. His boss is Pete Matthews (Eric Roberts). Pete is a terrible manager but he’s played by Eric Roberts so you can’t help but like him.

Otherwise, The Company We Keep sticks closer to the facts of the case than some of the other films that I’ve seen about Kemper. Carter Holcomb has just been released from prison. His juvenile record has been expunged. He’s living with his harsh mother (Sharon Jordan). And he’s murdering hithchhikers, keeping their remains in his closet, and imagining having conversations with them.

It’s a creepy movie, largely because Ed Kemper is a very creepy killer. It’s also rather oddly paced and it doesn’t really have much a plot, beyond Carter getting annoyed with his mother and killing people. Like the real Kemper, Carter is friends with the cops who are investigating the murders and that certainly adds an interesting wrinkle. There’s a clever scene where Carter gets arrested just to discover that it’s his friends playing a trick on him.

Though the film has some pretty serious pacing issues, It’s still a well-acted film. Cary Mark is appropriately awkward as Carter Holcomb and Sharon Jordan wisely doesn’t play his mother as being an over-the-top tyrant but instead as someone who has suddenly found herself living with a son who she really doesn’t know. And, of course, the film features Eric Roberts, giving an amusing performance as the incompetent boss from Hell. As I’ve always said, any film is improved by the casting of Eric Roberts.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: Space Sharks (dir by Dustin Ferguson)

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Odd film, Space Sharks.

This 2024 movie imagines what would happen if a bunch of …. well, space sharks …. were developed by a group of mad scientists in a space station and then were sent down to Earth where they were invisible except for when they bit someone’s head off. This is one of those films where new characters are continually introduced, just to be killed a few minutes later. There’s a subplot about a bunch of former drug addicts taking a hike through the wilderness which leads to some of them getting space sharked.

On the one hand, the movie is pretty bad. Even though it’s only 70 minutes (and about 15 of those minutes is taken up with the opening and the end credits), it moves extremely slowly. The plot never makes any sense. The special effects aren’t very special. The Space Sharks are a lot more impressive on the poster than in the actual movie. In fact, the poster has absolutely nothing to do with the actual movie. You get the idea.

On the other hand, as is so often the case with low-budget horror films, it’s hard not to be fascinated by the dedication that was put into making such a bad movie. There’s an undeniable charm to these DIY productions. At least, there is for me. This film has “Wow, someone actually made this!” appeal to it. Your mileage may vary. What director Dustin Ferguson has done here — coming up with a great title and then making a mediocre film — is what we regularly praise Roger Corman, Sam Arkoff, Herschell Gordon Lewis, and William Castle for doing.

The movie also has a surprisingly effective synth score and Eric Roberts! Eric is in the film for maybe two minutes and, in the role of a random scientist on the space station, he’s playing a minor character that any actor could have played. But who cares? It’s Eric Roberts!

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: 2 Bedroom 1 Bath (dir by Stanley Yung)

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 2014 shocker, a young couple moves into what seems like a perfect 2 bedroom, 1 bath apartment. Rachel (Michele Hooks) and Kevin (Andrew W. Walker) are hoping to start a family in their new apartment. Their landlady (Dee Wallace) is very happy to hear that. In fact, it’s hard not to feel that she’s a bit too happy to hear it….

In many ways, 2 Bedroom 1 Bath is a typical “is it haunted or not?” thriller. From the minute that they move into the apartment, Kevin starts to have strange and nightmarish visions. He imagines himself trying to pick up a baby, just for it to fall to the ground and shatter like a doll. Dark shadows move in the background while pale faces are reflected in the windows. After taking a shower, Rachel doesn’t notice that ghostly figure in the mirror behind her. Things get creepier and stranger after Rachel gets pregnant and Kevin finds himself not only tempted by student but also taunted by mysterious messages that appear in the mail box.

It’s a bit predictable but Hooks and Walker both give strong performances and director Stanley Yung does a great job of creating an ominous and dream-like atmosphere. This is a film that features several dozen jump scares and just about everyone of them is effective. It’s an effective piece of haunted apartment horror.

As for Eric Roberts, his role is a small one. He plays the fertility specialist and he has three scenes with Rachel and Kevin. When Roberts first appeared, I assumed his character was going to be revealed to be a part of the supernatural conspiracy but no. He was just a well-intentioned doctor with two patients who had no idea how much trouble they were about to face. To be honest, I’m so used to seeing Eric Roberts playing villains that it was kind of nice to see him playing a sympathetic professional for once.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: Sorority Slaughterhouse (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on October 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

At a college that appears to be located on a beach in Hawaii, Dean Whitman (Eric Roberts) is about to lose his job. He’s been accused of taking advantage of his female students, something that he admits is true. Somewhat drunk and disillusioned with the world, Whitman has a conversation with a creepy clown doll. (The doll comes out a box that specifically says that it was made by voodoo priestess.) Whitman decides to play with a gun and — whoops! — shoots himself in the head. Whitman’s mind is transferred into the doll’s body. In the form of the clown doll, Whitman goes after the sorority that he blames for his downfall.

Eric Roberts is only onscreen for a handful of minutes in 2015’s Sorority Slaughterhouse but we hear his voice throughout the film. It turns out that doll is a total pervert! What’s odd is that the doll is also really small and it moves somewhat stiffly, leading me to wonder just how exactly it manages to effortlessly kill so many people. Admittedly, most of the deaths are edited in such a way that we never actually see the doll and the victim in the same shot but it’s still hard to look at that doll and imagine it as a killer. Of course, the victims are all just dumb enough to fall victims to a killer doll. One girl uses the doll as a vibrator. A guy is suffocated with a balloon animal. Someone else is murdered by having Drain-O poured over her. I can’t imagine that product placement was appreciated.

This is a David DeCoteau film and I’m pretty sure that the sorority house was the same house that DeCoteau used in Bigfoot vs D.B. Cooper. It’s hard not to appreciate DeCoteau’s determination to make mockbusters for next to no money. This film obviously owed a lot to Child’s Play and the DeCoteau-directed Puppet Master films and DeCoteau wasn’t going to let a lack of special effects get in the way of the particular killer doll movie. That said, the action moves very slowly and the doll is in no way intimidating, even if it does sound like Eric Roberts reading dirty DMs. Personally, when it comes to collaborations between Eric Roberts and David DeCoteau, I prefer A Talking Cat!?!

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

The Eric Roberts Collection: To Heal A Nation (dir by Michael Pressman)

Posted on May 26, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1988’s To Heal A Nation, Eric Roberts stars as Jan Scruggs.

When we first meet Scruggs, the year is 1971 and he’s taking his seat on a commercial airliner. When the blonde woman sitting beside him starts to flirt with him, Scruggs mentions that he’s happy because he’s finished up his tour of duty in Vietnam. Upon hearing that Scruggs is a Vietnam vet, the woman immediately requests to be moved to a different seat.

Eight years later, things haven’t gotten much better. Scruggs works for the Department of Labor in Washington D.C. He’s married to Becky (Glynnis O’Connor) but he’s struggling to deal with the past. He drinks too much. He has trouble sleeping. He doesn’t feel like he can open up about the things that he saw in Vietnam because nobody wants to talk about it. He was one of the thousands of people who served in Vietnam who now feel as if they’ve been abandoned by their country. However, after attending a showing of The Deer Hunter, Scruggs has a vision of a monument that that features the name of every American who was killed in the Vietnam Conflict.

Scruggs devotes the next several years of his life to getting the monument built, appealing to both the government and private citizens for funding. At first, everyone treats Scruggs and his efforts like a joke. Even some fellow veterans feel that Scruggs is pushing too hard and that he’s just going to end up embarrassing himself. But Scruggs refuses to give up and finally, with the support of a senator (Laurence Luckinbill) and a Texas millionaire named H. Ross Perot (Conrad Bachmann), Scruggs is able to make his dream a reality.

Based on the true story of the struggle to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., To Heal A Nation features a young Eric Roberts giving a nervy but likable performance as Jan Scruggs, a man who becomes so obsessed with building a monument to those who lost their lives in Vietnam that he occasionally seems like he’s close to going over the edge himself. It’s a good film for Memorial Day and one that still feels relevant today. The way that Scruggs was treated after returning from Vietnam is the way a lot of our veterans were treated and continue to be treated after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. We love our soldiers when they fight in popular wars that result in a definite victory. When they serve in an unpopular war, they’re often deserted by people who don’t want to be reminded of recent history. One can certainly see that in the attempts by the national media to gloss over what happened during our final days in Afghanistan. This film is a reminder that no one should be forgotten.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

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: