Tag Archives: Insomnia File

Insomnia File #65: Girl Lost (dir by Robin Bain)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have jumped over to Tubi or Prime and watched 2016’s Girl Lost.

Girl Lost tells the story of Shara (Jessica Taylor Haid), who we first see being abused by her mother’s boyfriend and then retreating outside to a pool so that she can run a razor blade over her thigh in peace.  Shara is only 15 but she’s had to deal with things that no one should ever have to experience in a lifetime.  Her mother, Kim (played by Robin Bain, who also directed the film), is a sex worker who expects her daughter to follow in her footsteps and who encourages Shara to pose for risqué photos that Kim then posts online.

Shara spends almost the entire film fleeing.  At first, she and Kim flee Kim’s boyfriend.  Eventually, Shara and her boyfriend, the well-meaning but not particularly bright Jamie (Felix Ryan), end up running away from Kim.  They live on the streets and discover just how difficult it can be to survive on your own.  In the end, no one can survive without money and Shara, just like her mother before her, comes to realize that there’s one guaranteed way to make that money, whether it’s waiting for a creepy guy in a back alley or getting a job talking on the phone to some pervy loser living in his mother’s basement.  Eventually, Shara runs away from even Jamie and ends up working at a Russian-owned brothel.  Throughout it all, her life continues to unravel.  It’s a harsh world that Shara has been born into and it’s one where you either do what you have to do to survive or you end up imprisoned or worse.  The film’s ends on a dark note.  At first, I thought the ending was perhaps a bit too dark.  After all that had happened, I wondered, what it have killed the film to end on a note of hope?  But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the film ended in the the only way that the story could have ended.  From the minute she was born, poor Shara never really had a chance.

It’s a deeply unsettling film.  In fact, if you are trying to find something to help lull you into sleep, this is probably not the best film to go with unless you’re prepared to have some fairly upsetting dreams.  Though shot on a low budget, the film captures the harshness of life on the fringes of society and both Jessica Taylor Haid and Robin Bain deserve a lot of credit for their performances as two characters who are not always likable but who are very recognizable.  It’s a sad film that also serves as a tribute to every lost and forgotten soul out there.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator
  63. Hillbillys In A Haunted House
  64. Once Upon A Midnight Scary

Insomnia File #64: Once Upon A Midnight Scary (dir by Nell Cox)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have gone over to YouTube and watched 1978’s Once Upon A Midnight Scary.

Made for CBS and featuring Vincent Price as the sardonic, cape-wearing host, Once Upon A Midnight Scary was a special designed to encourage young viewers to pick up a book and read.  Price introduced three different stories, each centering around ghosts and each based on a book.  In the first story, based on the book The Ghost Belonged To Me, a young farmboy discovers a ghost hiding in a barn and becomes a hero when the ghost warns him about an impending disaster.  The second story is an adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and it features Rene Auberjonois as a rather neurotic Ichabod Crane, who finds himself being pursued by the headless horsemen.  The third and longest story is an adaptation of The House With A Clock In Its Walls, featuring Severn Darden and a rather annoying child actor.

One thing you immediately notice about this show is that the special doesn’t actually reveal how any of the stories end.  Instead, each story is basically a recreation of the most exciting or interesting parts of the larger story but, whenever it appears that we’re heading for a conclusion, Vincent Price suddenly appears and says, “What happened next, you ask?  Read the book!”  This special basically casts Vincent Price as the world’s most devilish book salesman and while that might be annoying if you’re watching the special because you want to see how the stories turn out, it’s a lot of fun if you’re just watching the show to watch Vincent Price act like Vincent Price.  Vincent is not in the special as much as you might want but he still shows off his unique charm.  It’s impossible to be in a bad mood while watching Vincent Price.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator
  63. Hillbillys In A Haunted House

Horrific Insomnia File #63: Hillbillys in a Haunted House (dir by Jean Yarbrough)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have jumped on Tubi and watched a film from 1967 called Hillbillys In A Haunted House and it would have put you right to sleep.

Hillbillys In A Haunted House has some big names in the cast but, unfortunately, none of them get to do much.  Instead, the main characters are country singer Woody Wetherby (Ferlin Husky), his partner Boots Malone (a very pointy Joi Lansing), and their road manager, Jeepers (Don Bowman).  When we first see them, they’re driving to Nashville and even worse, they’re singing about the fact that they’re driving to Nashville.  They’re scheduled to perform in “the Jamboree.”  However, after they’re delayed by a bunch of cops having a shoot out with two spies, Boots announces that Jeepers is a nervous wreck and that they really need to stop and rest for the night.

Unfortunately, they’re in the town of Sleepy Junction and there’s not much to Sleepy Junction because everyone in town recently moved to Acme City.  As a result, there are no hotels or motels in Sleepy Junction.  But there is a big, deserted mansion that is rumored to be haunted.  With a storm approaching and Jeepers’s nerves even more on edge then before, they head to the mansion.  At the mansion Woody sings a song and then some neighbors stop by and they all sing another song.  Are you getting the feeling that there’s a lot of singing in this movie?  You’re right, there is.  It’s all studio-perfect singing too.  Woody lip-syncs like a pro.

Anyway, the mansion is also being used by four spies, played by Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, a hulking Lon Chaney, Jr., and Linda Ho.  The four of them live in the surprisingly clean basement of the mansion.  Living with them is a gorilla.  The spies planning on stealing a formula for rocket fuel from Acme City but first they need to do something about the hillbillys that are currently in the haunted house.  Carradine and Rathbone try to scare them out with some remote control ghost action.  Jeepers may be a coward and Woody may be a redneck and Boots may have atrocious taste in clothes but all three of them are Americans and they’re not going to stand for any spy nonsense!

If you think it sounds like this was stupid, you’re right.  Carradine and Rathbone both struggle to maintain a straight face.  Poor Lon Chaney Jr. often appears to be out of breath.  There’s way too much singing.  Seriously, couldn’t the hillbillies have just driven another few miles to Acme City and found a hotel?

The film will put you to sleep, though.  It has its uses.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator

Horrific Insomnia File #62: Rollergator (dir by Donald G. Jackson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

Last night, if you were having trouble getting to sleep, you could have logged onto Tubi and watched the 1996 film, Rollergator!  Of course, you would have had to watch the Rifftraxx version but, trust me, that would have been for the best.  There are some films that demand a certain amount of snarkiness in order to be survived and that’s certainly the case with Rollergator.

P.J. (Sandra Shuker) is a teenage girl who has just moved to Los Angeles.  There’s not much to do so P.J. spends her time either hanging out at a local carnival or relaxing on the beach.  It’s while she’s on the beach that she hears a voice calling out to her from a nearby cave.  Of course, she enters the cave to see who is calling for her because, when you’re otherwise alone and only wearing a bikini, it would only make sense to wander into a strange and dangerous location just because a totally unfamiliar voice asks you to.

Anyway, the voice belongs to a purple alligator who is kind of obnoxious.  The alligator can talk.  He says that he’s just escaped from the carnival and now Chico Dennis (Joe Estevez) has sent out a mysterious ninja (Lisa Kaake) to bring him back.  The alligator just wants to be reunited with his former owner, The Swamp Farmer (played by Conrad Brooks, who was a member of the Ed Wood stock company back in the 50s and the 60s).  After giving the alligator a hard time about always being rude and sarcastic, PJ tosses him in her backpack and takes him to …. THE CARNIVAL!  The alligator has a great time at the carnival until he and PJ run into Chico and the alligator realizes that they’re at the same carnival from which he previously escaped!  How many carnivals are in Los Angeles?

Anyway, the majority of the movie is PJ rollerblading around Los Angeles with a talking alligator puppet in her backpack.  The Dark Ninja pursues them on a skateboard but fortunately, a karate instructor (Bobbie Blackford) and a runaway named Slingshot (Jenette Lynne Hawkins) decide to help out PJ and the alligator.  Occasionally, the alligator puppet raps but he’s not very good at it.  Still, everyone loves the talking alligator.  Oddly, no one ever questions the fact that the alligator can talk.  Then again, no one manages to deliver their lines with the least bit of emotion, suggesting that everyone in Los Angeles is fairly blasé when it comes to talking alligators and skateboarding ninjas.

Rollergator is perhaps the only movie ever made about a rapping alligator and, watching it, it was kind of easy to see why there haven’t been any other movies featuring rapping alligators.  This is one of those films that features an alligator puppet for the kids and a lead actress who spends the entire movie in either a bikini or a sports bra for the adult males watching the movie with the kids but what about the women — the underpaid babysitters and the extremely helpful aunts and the exhausted mothers — who would have, if the film had been successful, been forced to watch Rollergator over the years?  The only thing we get is Joe Estevez, bulging his eyes and looking like Martin Sheen on meth.  It doesn’t seem quite fair!

Anyway, did I mention that you could watch this if you were having trouble getting to sleep?  Well, you definitely can but be warned, you may have Rollergator-inspired dreams as a result.  Those are the risks you take.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica

Horror Insomnia File #61: Replica (dir by James Nguyen)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have logged onto Tubi and watched James Nguyen’s Replica.

Filmed in 2005 but not released until 2018, Replica tells the story of Joe Thomas (James David Braddock), a computer chip salesman who has been in a bit of a funk ever since he received a new kidney.  His sales are down.  His pet bird is mocking him by chirping loudly.  His morning drive is boring.  (We know this because, for some reason, the film shows us almost every mundane moment of that commute.)  He’s in danger of losing his job but then, while hanging out at the Golden Gate Bridge, he happens to spot Dr. Evelyn Tyler (Lana Dykstra) jogging by.  Evelyn is the same doctor who performed Joe’s kidney transplant!  Joe strikes up a conversation with her and soon, they’re dating!

(In this movie, dating means eating at a San Francisco theme restaurant, riding a carousel, and running along the beach before heading back home so that Evelyn can model a bikini for a slack-jawed Joe.)

Life is perfect!  Joe’s in love and he’s even managed to sell a gigantic amount of computer chips to Evelyn’s boss, Dr. G (Rick Camp)!  But then Evelyn is killed as the result of a very slow car collision.  Joe is in mourning.  Detective Le (David Nguyen) keeps popping up and suggesting that the car accident that took Evelyn’s life may not have been an accident at all.  (“We found semen in the body,” Detective Le earnestly says while speaking to Evelyn’s boyfriend.)  But then, one day, Joe happens to spot a woman who looks just like Evelyn, except for the fact that she has dark hair and tramp stamp that identifies her as not being Evelyn.  Quicker than you can say Vertigo, Joe is trying to get his new girlfriend to wear a blonde wig and dress just like Evelyn!

Director James Nguyen is best known for directing the Birdemic films.  Replica was actually filmed long before Birdemic but it shows that, even early in his career, Nguyen had his own definite aesthetic.  Everything that made Birdemic so memorable — the terrible sound quality, the pointless shots of people driving, the nonstop references to Hitchcock, the falling-in-love montages that suggest that Nguyen has never actually been on a date, and the suggestion that we’re supposed to take this film seriously — is present in Replica.  If Birdemic claimed to actually be about the dangers of harming the environment, Replica claims to be a film about the ethics of cloning.  While Birdemic featured the characters going out to see An Inconvenient Truth, Replica opens with Joe watching Christopher Reeve advocate for stem cell research.  Reeve is listed in the film’s credits, even though it’s obvious that Nguyen just taped an appearance that he made on a talk show.  Tippi Hedren and Kim Novak are also credited, even though both are only featured in archival footage that shows up on Joe’s television.

In typical Nguyen fashion, any attempt to say anything serious about cloning is negated by the fact that the film’s villain has invented something that he insists on calling “a clone-a-tron.”  (That said, the actor playing Dr. G overacts to such an extent that it’s hard not to appreciate his effort to bring a little life to the movie.)  The film comes out against cloning, despite the fact that Joe pretty much owes what little happiness he has to it.  All in all, it’s a pretty stupid movie but it’s also short so there’s something to be said for that.  In the end, for better or worse, this is a film that could have only been made by James Nguyen.  If you got a good laugh out of Birdemic, prepare for more of the same with Replica.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill

Insomnia File #60: Project Kill (dir by William Girdler)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have always hopped on Tubi and watched the 1976 “thriller,” Project Kill!

In Project Kill, Leslie Nielsen stars as John Trevor, an intelligence agent who has spent six years training a group of men who are regularly given injections of a super soldier serum.  As the film begins, Trevor confesses to his second-in-command, Lassiter (Gary Lockwood), that he worries that the men are actually being used as assassins and that the serum is being used as a mind-control drug.  Yikes!

When Trevor flees from his secret government base and heads to the Philippines, Lassiter is assigned to track him down and bring him back before he can reveal any government secrets.  A crime boss named Alok Lee (Vic Diaz) wants to track down Trevor and learn his mind-control techniques.  Trevor, meanwhile, would rather just spend all of his time in bed with Lee Su (Nancy Kwan).  Unfortunately, because Trevor took a few doses of the serum himself, he soon finds himself losing control and becoming more and more violent.  Lassiter comes to realize that he may not be able to bring back Trevor alive.

Sounds really exciting, doesn’t it?

Well, not quite.  I mean, don’t get me wrong.  There are plenty of fight scenes and there’s a car chase and the film ends with Trevor and Lassiter having a confrontation on a loading dock that’s about as exciting as a fight between two middle-aged, obviously out-of-shape men could be.  Leslie Nielsen’s stunt double puts on a gray hairpiece and shows off some rudimentary karate moves.  To give credit where credit is due, the end of the movie features nearly perfect use of slo mo of doom.

(What is slo mo of doom?  It’s when the action starts moving in slow motion because someone is about to enter a world of pain.  Slo Mo of doom works best when it involves a roundhouse kick and someone yelling, “Noooooooooooooooo!”  Admittedly, that doesn’t happen in Project: Kill but still, the movie’s slo mo of doom works well.)

Unfortunately, in between the occasional action sequences, there are endless shots of people just wandering around.  The film features so much padding that one almost gets the feeling that the film itself was made up on the spot and director William Girdler’s one direction was, “Keep walking until we get enough footage to push this out to 90 minutes.”  As for the plot, I was never quite sure what John Trevor was trying to accomplish in the Philippines.

That said, I think most people are probably going to watch this movie specifically because it was one of the movies that Leslie Nielsen made before he became a beloved comedic icon.  This film is from the era when Leslie Nielsen was a dramatic actor.  The serious intentions don’t matter though.  Nielsen essentially gives the same performance that he gave in The Naked Gun films and it’s impossible not to laugh with him, regardless of how many people he kills.  Nielsen plays the role with a straight face, which, of course, was his comedic trademark.  Even when he faces off against Lassiter, you expect him to say, “Good luck.  We’re all counting on you.”

Project Kill is one of those films where the unintentional laughs save the film.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit

Insomnia File #59: True Spirit (dir by Sarah Spillane)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or Netflix? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night (or this night, for that matter), you could have turned over to Netflix and passed the time watching True Spirit, a rather wholesome biopic from Australia.

Teagan Croft stars as Jessica Watson, who, at the age of 16, became the youngest person ever to sail solo, non-stop around the world.  For Jessica, it was not only the fulfilment of a childhood dream but it was also a true test of survival as, towards the end of her journey, she got trapped in a very violent storm and, at one point, her boat was actually 15 feet below the surface of the ocean.  For the nation of Australia, it was a moment of great pride despite the fact that many of the same people who celebrated Jessica’s accomplishment had earlier tried to prevent her from making the journey.  (Indeed, the film suggests that one reason why Jessica was in such a hurry to start her voyage was because the Queensland legislature was literally putting together a bill that, once passed, would have made it illegal for her to do so.)  The film begins with Jessica already in training for her voyage.  One mistake during a trial run leads to her boat nearly crashing into a tanker, a reminder that, as beautiful as the ocean may be, it can still be a dangerous place.  With the help of Ben Bryant (Cliff Curtis) and the support her parents (Anna Paquin and Josh Lawson), Jessica is determined to make her voyage.  She not only wants to set a world record but she also wants to prove that, even though she’s dyslexic, she can still accomplish anything that she sets her mind too.

There’s really nothing that surprising to be found in True Spirit.  Even if you didn’t already know the true story on which the film was based, you wouldn’t be surprised by how Jessica’s voyage goes.  But, at the same time, it’s a well-intentioned and almost achingly sincere film, one that celebrates a worthy accomplishment and which features a likable lead performance from Teagan Croft.  It’s a film that is determined to focus on the positive, though it certainly doesn’t shy away from the fact that nature can be frightening and unpredictable.  There’s nothing particularly edgy about True Spirit.  Despite a nicely executed storm scene, this isn’t All is Lost.  But it will hold your attention and it’ll probably leave you in a good mood.  It did for me!

Finally, I can’t complete this review without mentioning that Todd Lasance plays a rather obnoxious television journalist named Atherton.  Would it be too much to hope that his name was meant to be a reference to William Atherton, who played a similar reporter in the first two Die Hards?

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker

Insomnia File #57: Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster (dir by Thomas Hamilton)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or Netflix? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

Ah, the mystery of Boris Karloff.

On screen, Karloff was a horror icon.  He brought Frankenstein’s Monster to life and influenced generations of actors and horror filmmakers.  He was also the Mummy and the first actor to play Sax Rohmer’s international criminal, Fu Manchu and, of course, he won over a whole new generation as narrator of How The Grinch Stole Christmas.  Over the course of his long career, Karloff appeared in movies both good and bad.  He worked for Mario Bava and Roger Corman and James Whale and Peter Bogdanovich.  He was also the host of Thriller, a much-beloved horror anthology series.  At the height of his fame, he was often credited by just his last name.  Everyone knew who Boris Karloff was.

Off screen, Boris Karloff was a quiet and rather dignified gentleman, one who was widely considered to be one of the kindest and most generous men in Hollywood.  Born William Henry Pratt, Karloff’s father was a diplomat and his family assumed that he would follow their career.  Instead, William Henry Pratt immigrated first to Canada and then to California and transformed himself into Boris Karloff.

Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster is a documentary that both explores the mysteries of Karloff’s life and also pays tribute to him as an actor.  It attempts to answer the question of how such a kindly man could also be responsible for some of the greatest moments in horror.  Full of archival footage and interviews with those who worked with Karloff and also those who were influenced by his films (like Guillermo del Toro), the film presents a portrait of a talented actor who was as expressive onscreen as he was somewhat withdrawn in real life.  For Karloff, his roles became a way to escape from the troubles of the real world.  As the film makes clear, Karloff didn’t start his career planning to eventually become a horror actor and, occasionally, he did chafe a bit at being typecast.  However, regardless of what role he was playing, Karloff always gave it his best.  He may have appeared in some bad films but he never gave a bad performance.  The film not only includes clips from his films but also an examination of what made his performances so special.  The analysis of Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Terror, and Targets is especially interesting.

If you’re a fan of horror, this documentary is for you.  It’s currently available on Shudder.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000

Insomnia File #56: Exterminators of the Year 3000 (dir by Giuliano Carmineo)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or Netflix? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you’re having trouble getting to sleep tonight, you might want to try going to over to YouTube and doing a search for a 1983 Italian film called Exterminators of the Year 3000.  It won’t cure your insomnia.  In fact, it’s such a peculiar film that it will probably keep you awake for the rest of the night.  However, you will be having fun.  Seriously, if you can’t sleep, you might as well have fun.

The film’s plot will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Road Warrior or Mad Max: Fury Road.  Due to a series of nuclear wars, society has collapsed.  The world is an arid wasteland.  Some survivors live in tiny communities.  Others drive motorcycles across the desert and prey on anyone that they can find.  Water is the most valuable commodity in this world.  The second most important thing to have is a good car.  Your car can be the difference between life and death.

Fortunately, Alien (Robert Iannucci) has a good car.  Unfortunately, Alien keeps losing it.  Alien is a wasteland drifter who spends half of the film looking for his car and the other half of the film helping a kid named Tommy (Luca Venantini) search for water for his community.  Tommy has a bionic arm.  When he’s captured by a group of evil bikers led by Crazy Bull (Fred Harris), his bionic arm gets ripped off.  In one of the strangest scenes that I’ve ever seen, Alien use duct tape to reattach the arm.  If that’s not odd enough, it also appears that he accidentally attached the arm upside down.

That’s just one of the many weird details that sets Exterminators of the Year 3000 apart from all of the other Italian Mad Max rip-offs.  There’s also the fact that Alien eventually and somewhat randomly runs into his ex-girlfriend, who looks like a model and, for some reason, is named Trash (Alicia Moro).  Alien and Trash agree to help Tommy but, the entire time, Alien keeps casually suggesting that maybe they should just abandon Tommy and take all the water for themselves.  This isn’t one of those things where Alien is just pretending to be a cynic, either.  The film leaves little doubt that Alien would have no problem just abandoning Tommy and taking the water for himself.  Even if Trash can convince Alien not to sell out the kid, they’re still going to have to fight a group of people who are all dressed like the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  While Alien and Trash travel to get the water, Tommy gets a new arm that’s so strong that he can literally throw a piece of metal into someone’s forehead even while standing a few yards away.  Tommy also has a gerbil, which is not only cute but, in something of a rarity for an Italian exploitation film from the 80s, manages to survive the entire film.  (Seriously, I instinctively cringe whenever I see a cute animal in an Italian film from the 80s because I’ve seen enough of them to know what’s probably going to end up happening.)

Of course, Crazy Bull and his bikers continually show up and cause trouble.  Fred Harris gives such an enjoyably over-the-top performance that not even the usual bad dubbing can hurt it.  For whatever reason, Crazy Bull refers to his gang as the Mothergrabbers.  How can you not love a film that featured the main villain shouting, “Into battle, my merry band of Mothergrabbers!?”

Exterminators of the Year 3000 is a fun movie.  The action moves quickly.  There are lot of explosions.  The villains all snarl with panache.  There are plenty of slow motion shots of cars crashing.  And there’s enough odd moments to keep things interesting.  The film even ends with a sudden miracle.  How could anyone resist?  This is Italian exploitation as it most entertaining.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA

Insomnia File No. 54: Jud (dir by Gunther Collins)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or Netflix? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have gone over to YouTube and you could have watched the the 1971 film, Jud.

In fact, looking the film up on YouTube might very well be the only way that you could have watched Jud.  Jud is one of those obscure, 70s indie films that has apparently never gotten a proper video release in the United States.  The version that’s been uploaded to YouTube was taken from a Chinese VHS tape.  It had Chinese subtitles and the image was pretty grainy.  There was a point where, for three minutes, the image froze and only the audio could be heard.  In other words, it’s not the ideal way to watch any movie but, with Jud, that’s probably the best that anyone could hope for.

As for what Jud is about, it’s about a man named …. well, Jud.  Played by an appealing actor named Joseph Kaufmann, Jud has just returned to the United States from serving in Vietnam.  His uncle arranges for Jud to live at a rooming house, one that is full of the usual indie film eccentrics.  Jud doesn’t want to talk about what he saw in Vietnam and no one seems to want to talk to him about it.  But perhaps someone should because Jud is still haunted by flashbacks and nightmares, making this one of the first films to attempt to sympathetically deal with PTSD.  Jud just wants to get on with his life but, after everything he’s seen, he feels out of place in the civilian world.  A one night stand with a friendly hippy (played by future B-movie queen Claudia Jennings) leads to nowhere.  A fight in a diner leads to a police chase.  The only person who is interested in Jud’s story is Bill (played, quite well, by Robert Denman), whose status as a closeted gay man in the early 70s has taught him something about alienation.

Jud is an uneven film.  There are moments of real insight but there also moments where the film itself gets a bit too heavy-handed for its own good.  A lengthy scene where the viewer is subjected to close-ups of Jud’s roommates eating seems to go on forever.  (Anti-war films of the 70s always seemed to feature close-ups of old people eating for some reason.  I guess it was meant to be a commentary on American gluttony but it always feels more like lazy symbolism.)  Especially when compared to other films of the period, Jud deserves credit for portraying Bill sympathetically but it’s still hard not to feel that the character’s ultimate fate is a cliché.

That said, Joseph Kaufmann gives a good performance as Jud and wisely underplays the scenes that would lead a lesser actor to overact.  (Sadly, Kaufmann died in a plane crash, just two years after the release of Jud, at the age of 29.)  Despite featuring a bit more folk music that I would normally listen to, the film has a great soundtrack and, even more importantly, the songs fit well with the action.  (If nothing else, the lyrics help to share what Jud is feeling but can’t quite articulate.)  Finally, for a history nerd like me, Jud is interesting because it serves as a time capsule.  This low-budget, indie film was shot on the streets of L.A. in the early 70s and it has a bit of documentary feel to it.  Until someone invents a time machine and people get the ability to visit the past in person, films like Jud will do.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street