The official trailer for Guillermo Del Toro’s take on the Mary Shelley’s classic gothic horror Frankenstein has finally been released.
An earlier teaser was sent out months ago, but that was mostly played off like sizzle reel of what Del Toro had been up to with this latest adaptation. This official trailer gives us a much more closer look at the type of adaptation Del Toro decided to take with Shelley’s novel of the tortured scientist and his creation.
Even though it will be show up on Netflix on November 7, 2025, I do believe that this film needs to be seen on the big screen when a select cities get them on October 17, 2025.
The new American Ninja, Sean Davidson (David Bradley), travels to a remote island nation and gets captured while investigating a corrupt British ninja named Colonel Mulgrew (James Booth), who is trying to help an evil sheikh (Ron Smerczac) purchase a suitcase nuke. With Sean and his associates being held hostage in an old British fort, the original American Ninja, Joe Armstrong (Michael Dudikoff), is called in to rescue Sean and thwart the terrorist’s plot. Joe has retired from the Ninja game and is now work as a member of the Peace Corps but he’s persuaded to battle evil one last time. In typical Cannon Films fashion, he has an army of rebels backing him up as he attacks Mulgrew’s compound.
The fourth American Ninja film teams up Michael Dudikoff with the David Bradley, who took over the American Ninja franchise with the third film. The idea was probably to use the presence of Dudikoff to give Bradley the credibility that he lacked in his previous American Ninja outing but the film actually sabotages David Bradley further by having Bradley spend nearly the entire film tied up while Dudikoff gets to fight the bad guys. Dudikoff and Bradley barely even interact in the film, with Bradley mostly being present for the slowly-paced opening while Dudikoff shows up for the more exciting, fight-filled finale. It’s almost as if the film was set up as an elaborate prank to make Sean look even less worthy as a replacement as Joe. While it’s true that Sean does get to fight Mulgrew at the end of the movie, Joe gets to fights the Super Ninja (Kely McClung). Fighting a Super Ninja is always going to be more impressive than fighting a British guy.
American Ninja 4 is a Cannon film but it was definitely not made during Cannon’s heyday and it is never as memorable as any of the previous American Ninja films. The poster features Dudikoff and Bradley both ready to battle, much like those old issues of Marvel Team-Up that would feature both Spider-Man and the Human Torch working together to battle Doctor Doom, Doctor Octopus, or any of the other evil comic book doctors. (Marvel had a lot of them.) Bringing the two American Ninjas together would seem to promise double the action but instead, it’s just an underwhelming team-up. Cannon would have been better served by adapting the issue of Marvel Team-Up where Spider-Man and John Belushi battled the Silver Samurai. That was an exciting story!
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix has got 1991’s American Ninja 4! When Michael Dudikoff teams up with David Bradley, it’s twice the ninja action!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
American Ninja 4 is available on Prime and Tubi! See you there!
In this 1993 film, John Rhys-Davies plays Professor Kissel. The professor is a mad scientist with a German accent who has taken over a small island in the Caribbean. From his compound, he has developed a process by which he can turn anyone into a cyborg! The cyborgs follow his orders and …. well, it’s never quite clear what exactly Professor Kissel plans to do with the cyborgs. I guess he just wants to keep them around so that they can do random evil things.
DEA agent Philip Ryan is captured by Kissel and transformed into one of those cyborgs! However, Philip has a brother named Jack (played by martial artist David Bradley). Jack used to work for the government until he was disillusioned when one of his investigations went terribly wrong. However, Jack is willing to come out of retirement to save his brother. Teaming up with a journalist named Cathy (Alonna Shaw), Jack infiltrates Kissel’s compound and battles the cyborgs. Along the way, Cathy falls in love with Jack. I’m not sure why that happens as Jack tends to be a bit surly and self-absorbed. Indeed, he and Cathy somehow manage to have not just zero but less than zero romantic chemistry.
Does this movie sound dumb? Well, that’s because it was pretty dumb. It was directed by Sam Firstenberg, who directed the first two American Ninja films. And it stars David Bradley, who starred in the last three American Ninja films. The American Ninjas were fun but Cyborg Cop just kind of drags. A huge part of the problem is that David Bradley was a good martial artist but he was a less than impressive actor. Seeing as how Jack is trying to save his brother from being turned into an emotionless robot, Cyborg Cop calls for a bit more acting than the American Ninja films did. Unfortunately, it’s hard to make a film about human emotions when your lead actor isn’t capable of showing them. It doesn’t help that Jack is written as being someone who is always in a rather foul mood. Also, from the minute he lands in the islands, he wears a fanny pack around his waist and it just looks so utterly ridiculous. It’s hard to take a fight seriously when one of the combatants is wearing a leather fanny pack. The other big issue is that it takes forever to actually get to the cyborg action. For some reason, the film tries to generate some suspense about what Kissel’s plan is, despite the fact that the word “cyborg” is right there in the title!
On the plus side, the film does feature John Rhys-Davies playing a mad scientist and he’s just the type of cheerfully theatrical actor who can do justice to the role of someone who spends most of his time ranting about how much smarter he is than everyone else in the world. Rhys-Davies, who is best known for playing Indiana Jones’s friend Sallah and for playing both Gimili and the talking tree in The Lord of the Rings, appears to have had a lot of fun as Prof. Kissel and it’s fun to watch him in the role. This is a case where most people watching the film will proudly cheer for the bad guy because the bad guy is so much more entertaining than the good guy.
Cyborg Cop somehow led to two sequels. The work is never done.
Last night, I started watching the Hellraiser reboot. I fell asleep about 40 minutes in.
That’s never a good sign, especially when it comes to a horror movie. A horror movie is supposed to be so scary that you can’t sleep. It’s supposed to be so intense and disturbing that it gives you nightmares, even if you actually do manage to get some rest. A horror movie is supposed to haunt you, not bore you. That’s especially true of the Hellraiser movies, which are defined by their grotesque imagery and the terrifying implications of the Cenobites.
This morning, I finished watching the movie. Somehow, I did not fall asleep again.
The Hellraiser reboot asks the question: “If Doug Bradley isn’t playing Pinhead, is there any point to watching this crap?”
Based on this movie (and, to be fair, the two previous Hellraisers as well), the answer would appear to be no. Jamie Clayton takes over the role of Pinhead in the new Hellraiser and the results are a bit underwhelming.
I mean, the Cenobites still look somewhat frightening, don’t get me wrong. And the puzzle box is a huge part of the reboot’s plot. And there’s still a lot of blood and a lot of talk about how suffering can be music and a lot of people get ripped apart by magical space chains. But, with all that in mind, the Cenobites still come across as being kind of boring. They’ve gone from being frightening creatures beyond imagination to just being generic bad guys.
A big problem is that Jamie Clayton never quite captures the all-encompassing contempt for existence that Doug Bradley brought to the role. Bradley played Pinhead as a regal sadist, delivering his lines with a withering condescension. As played by Bradley, Pinhead was really neither good nor evil. He had transcended such concerns in his search for experience. Hence, he could get away with announcing that he and the Cenobites were angels to some and demons to others. In the original Hellraiser, Pinhead (and Bradley) made his first appearance by saying, “You called, we came,” and that pretty much summed up what made the character so frightening. Bradley’s Pinhead had no concern as to the circumstances that led to him being called and he certainly had no patience for anyone who thought they could talk their way out of the situation. Bradley’s Pinhead was beyond such concerns and that made him all the more frightening.
Jamie Clayton’s Pinhead, on the other hand, is smug and not much else. She’s playing a game with humanity but that leaves her vulnerable to losing. That’s a mistake that Bradley’s Pinhead would not have made. (Or, at least, he wouldn’t have made it in the original movie. The Hellraiser sequels are a different story.) There’s nothing particularly regal about Clayton’s Pinhead. She’s just another horror villain. With her demanding a sacrifice from anyone who cuts themselves on the puzzle box, she’s not that much different from the little girl in Ring.
(In Clayton’s defense, she’s not the first person to replace Doug Bradley as Pinhead. Bradley also did not appear in the two previous Hellraiser films, Revelations and Judgment. Bradley felt the scripts were poorly written and, perhaps more to the point, Dimension Films wanted him to take a pay cut.)
As for the reboot itself, it’s about Riley (Odessa A’zion), a recovering drug addict who, along with her boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey), steals the puzzle box and then cuts herself on the box which leads to the Cenobites stalking all of her annoying friends. Riley is an incredibly unlikable character and her friends are kind of whiny so who cares? Gordan Visnjic plays a decadent businessman who is trying to manipulate the box to his own ends. Visnjic has a good scene at the start of the film, one that perfectly captures the privileged ennui that would lead to someone getting involved with the Cenobites. But, eventually, even Visnjic is reduced to being a one-dimensional character.
The main lesson of this Hellraiser film (and the previous two films as well) is that things work better with Doug Bradley than without him.
The 2018 film, Await Further Instructions, takes place in the United Kingdom during the Christmas season. However, it tells a story that could take place anywhere and at any time. That’s even more obvious today than when the film was first released.
A dysfunctional family has gathered for the holidays. Nick (Sam Gittins) brings his girlfriend, Annji (Neerja Naik). Nick’s sister, Kate (Holly Weston), is both pregnant and a racist. She brings her husband, Scott (Kris Saddler). Tony (Grant Masters) and Beth (Abigail Cruttendon) are the parents, trying to keep some sort of order as dinner is served. Finally, Granddad (David Bradley) dislikes everyone as grandfathers are allowed to do. Once someone reaches a certain age, bad behavior is casually dismissed as someone just having a bad day.
The family dinner is interrupted by reports of some sort of ill-defined disaster. A dark substance appears to have surrounded the house, trapping them inside. Bizarre messages start to appear on the television, telling the family to obey orders and to await further instructions. Some members of the family dare to unplug the television, just for Tony quickly plug it back in. Hypodermic needles are dropped through the chimney, along with a message that one of them is infected and that they have to take the vaccine if they’re going to survive. Even after taking the shot leads to one member of the family vomiting to death, Tony continues to insist that everyone has to follow the instructions coming from the television. The television accuses one of them being a sleeper agent. The television demands a sacrifice. The television warns of terrible consequences if its instructions are not followed. Those who try to resist find themselves being attacked by the other members of the family. “Worship me,” the television suggests at one point and much of the family is willing to do just that.
Await Further Instructions was made in 2018 but it’s a film that feels as if it was specifically made for the COVID era. (I write this as someone who is voluntarily vaccinated and who is still more than happy to put on a mask if someone politely requests that I do so.) While a good deal of the film’s horror does come from grotesque imagery and Cronenberg-style body horror, the reason why the film sticks with the viewer is because it perfectly captures the paranoid atmosphere that everyone has had to deal with over the past two years. (Indeed, if this film had been made today, critics would probably say that the film was a bit too on the nose in its portrayal of people putting blind faith in instructions coming from unseen forces.) Tony goes from being a slightly addled father to being a monster, precisely because that’s what he’s ordered to do and he doesn’t have the courage or the imagination to question why. This is the story of a family that’s destroyed because they put more faith in authority than in their own common sense. It’s a story about family that turns on itself because it’s ordered to do so. It’s a story that feels very relevant today. One need only read one of the thousands of self-pitying social media updates from people talking about how they’ve shut their families out of their lives to realize that many people, if they were in the same situation, would probably behave the same way that Tony behaves in this film.
By confining the action to one location, the film creates a visceral atmosphere of claustrophobia. Even if the family could escape from the house, the viewer has to wonder if there’s anywhere left to go. The film declines to make clear if the same horror is happening to the rest of the world or if it’s just concentrated on that one house. Is everyone being told to await further instructions or is just that one family? Await Further Instructions not only captures the horrors of blind conformity and overwhelming paranoia but also the horror of isolation and again, it’s hard not to feel that this 2018 film predicted the future. For all the horrors of the COVID era, the isolation was the most psychologically damaging. Families were destroyed. Friendships were broken. Faith in institutions was lost. All while people were ordered to shut up and await further instructions.
Even more now than when it was first released, Await Further Instructions is a powerful and visceral horror film.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1993’s Cyborg Cop! Selected and hosted by BunnyHero, Cyborg Cop stars David Bradley and John Rhys-Davies. It’s a film about a cyborg who is a cop! The movie starts at 8 pm et and it is available on YouTube.
Following #MondayActionMovie, Brad and Sierra will be hosting the #MondayMuggers live tweet. We will be watching 1987’s Best Seller, a classic thriller starring James Woods as an assassin and Brian Dennehy as the cop-turned-author who Woods wants to tell his story. Both Dennehy and Woods give excellent performances in this conspiracy-themed thriller. It is available on both Prime and Tubi and it starts at 10 pm et.
It should make for a night of intense viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto twitter, start Cyborg Cop at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! Then, at 10 pm et, start Best Seller and use the #MondayMuggers hashtag! The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy. And reviews of these films will probably end up on this site at some point over the next few weeks.
When I started the 44 Days of Paranoia, I said that I was going to not only look at some of the best conspiracy-themed films but some of the worst as well. With that promise in mind, today’s film is 1963’s They Saved Hitler’s Brain.
Beyond what’s obvious from the film’s title, what exactly is They Saved Hitler’s Brain about?
Your guess is as good as mine.
The film starts with a Mr. Van Pelt, who is a top official at the Central Intelligence Division. It turns out that Mr. Van Pelt is also a part of a shadowy conspiracy that operates out of the South American country of Mandoras. The conspiracy is developing a poison named as “G-gas” but a scientist named Dr. Bernard has developed an antidote to G-gas. So Van Pelt orders his henchmen to blow up Dr. Bernard in his car.
Van Pelt then assigns two CID agents to investigate Dr. Bernard’s death. Vic Gilbert is a real man’s man who is upset at having to work with a woman. Toni Gordon wears an extremely short miniskirt, demands to be taken seriously as a CID agent, and — well, that’s about the extent of her characterization. Anyway, Vic and Toni spend some time exchanging some cutesy dialogue and reading a lengthy dossier about Mandoras. It turns out that Mandoras is full of Nazi war criminals which, of course, brings us back to the film’s title.
Also, it turns out that Dr. Bernard told his colleague, Dr. Coleman, about the antidote. So, Van Pelt sends his henchmen to kidnap Coleman but fortunately, Toni just happens to be driving by at the same time that Coleman is kidnapped. Toni follows the henchmen and Coleman to Van Pelt’s secret hideout. The henchmen spot Toni and end up shooting her as she flees to a phone booth but not before Toni manages to call Vic.
Vic then shows up and discovers that Van Pelt is a traitor. Fortunately, Toni isn’t quite dead yet so she manages to shoot Van Pelt before she expires but then Vic dies anyway, the result of driving his car into a power station.
And then, suddenly, an entirely new movie begins!
That’s right — They Saved Hitler’s Brain is one of those films that was essentially created by editing two unrelated movies together. All of the Vic and Toni footage was apparently filmed in the late 60s by a bunch of students at UCLA who were hired by the film’s distributor to lengthen the original 1963 film so that it could be sold into television syndication. Considering that the original film (which was titled Madmen of Mandoras) was a thorough mess, the addition of the equally confusing prologue serves to make They Saved Hitler’s Brain into one of the most completely incoherent films ever made.
Anyway, the “second” part of They Saved Hitler’s Brain deals with Coleman’s daughter and her boyfriend (who, we find out, is yet another CID agent) going down to Mandoras and searching for her father. It turns out that the government of Mandoras has been secretly taken over by a bunch of Nazi war criminals who take their order from — wait for it — Hitler’s Brain!
It turns out that Hitler’s head has been preserved in a jar and, despite no longer having a body, he’s still capable of plotting, ordering people about, and dramatically rolling his eyes. From his hiding place in Mandoras, he’s come up with Plan G, a scheme that will allow him to conquer the world. Unless, of course, the CID can stop him…
(Were the filmmakers worried about getting sued by the CIA? Seriously, CID just doesn’t have the same ring to it…)
Now, I have to admit that I have a soft spot for terrible films like They Saved Hitler’s Brain. There are a lot of bad movies out there but there are only a few movies that are so bad that they’ve managed to become classics of ineptitude. To the filmmakers behind movies like They Saved Hitler’s Brain, I would say that if you can’t take pride in making one of the best films ever made, why not take some pride in making one of the worst?
Through the Shattered Lens 