Late Night Cable Review: Cinderella’s Hot Night (2017, dir. Dean McKendrick)


Ever wanted to watch Dean McKendrick and some of his usual late night cable actors try to spoof a Hallmark movie? I’m glad I have now.

You could take that title card, put in the title of a Hallmark movie, and not have to change anything else about it.

The movie starts off with narration from Christine Nguyen. She introduces us to the prince of Cratonia named Steven (Kyle Knies). Steven’s father is not happy about his son being a bachelor.

Sarah Hunter is his secretary named Samantha. She shows up to tell the audience that there is going to be some business dealings with an American company, so that he will have an excuse to meet Cinderella.

The movie wastes no time cutting to Cindy (Karlie Montana) who works at Universal Imports. She’s not having the best of days. At least she isn’t getting fired for wearing that top to work.

In fact, her boss Patrick (William F. Bryant) is concerned about her, and invites her into his Godfather office.

Why does he have that?

Also, I guess he didn’t live happily ever after with Kira Noir at the end of The Deadly Pickup (2016).

The Deadly Pickup (2016, dir. Dean McKendrick)

As you can read, she is getting kicked out of her apartment. Her boss does what any good boss would do to make sure an intern doesn’t lose their position by having to get a job. He gives her a spare room at his house.

Patrick could die tomorrow, and no one where he lives would care.

Then we meet his wife, Mona, played by Beverly Lynne.

That’s a face you can trust. She plays the wicked stepmother character.

They have a butler who has a name within the film, but I think his stage name will do just fine.

If I had to sum-up Regis’ character in this film, then it would be like the maî·tre d in Barbara Broadcast (1977). That guy has to be given a blow job by any waitress or costumer who drops dishes, a glass, or a vase–anything breakable. He doesn’t seem to get any pleasure from it. It’s part of the job for him. He really seems to just want to go about his business managing the restaurant.

Barbara Broadcast (1977, dir. Radley Metzger)

That’s Regis. With that in mind, it has been a whole five minutes of runtime.

By the time they shot this film, Lynne was 43 years-old. I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to see her get a scene. You don’t usually see that in one of these late night cable movies.

Immediately after they finish, Patrick shows up to tell us that his company will have some dealings with the prince.

What’s missing? We have Cinderella. We have the wicked stepmother. We have the father who sometimes is part of the Cinderella story. It’s the stepsisters we need.

Enter Grace (Blair Williams) and Sylvia (Penny Pax). This isn’t the Emma Marx from the first film. This is Penny Pax circa the sequels to The Submission Of Emma Marx (2013).

They’re exactly what you would expect–ditzy and entitled.

Patrick tells them Cindy is coming, and we move onto the next scene.

And that is all you need to see of the next scene. That is all there is to it. This is the only time they meet until much later. This quick, casual, and super-short scene.

Wait a second, this place was burned to the ground in Paranormal Sexperiments (2016).

Paranormal Sexperiments (2016, dir. Terrance Ryker)

Paranormal Sexperiments (2016, dir. Terrance Ryker)

I don’t like it when different films that use the same sets break continuity.

Patrick brings Cindy home. She gets the reception you would expect from the sisters.

Penny Pax, presumedly because she’s sick of her dress causing her to blend in with the bed…

grabs Regis, and drags him to another room. They must really expect privacy in this house because they never close the door.

It even appears to have confused one of the actors or crew members, because they get caught in this shot.

I was confused too. The movie was expecting me to get into this sex scene with those three pink dogs in the background? I couldn’t stop looking at them throughout this part.

The next morning, they make an immigration joke…

before Patrick tells us he is going to hop a plane to go see Steven on his native movie-set.

To quote Christine Nguyen, Cindy has been left in a “den of vipers.” I think Cindy is wondering about that statue behind her. I certainly was.

They make Cindy fetch a bottle of wine.

After arriving in Cratonia, Patrick and Samantha hit it off well. They have sex…

we see an Instagram photo…

and Patrick dies along with everyone onboard the plane.

Christine Nguyen tells us this via voiceover narration in a very nonchalant and upbeat way.

Oh, well. Goodbye, Patrick. We hardly knew you.

Anyways, Nguyen finally decides to show up as Cindy’s fairy godmother.

Cindy’s main problem is that she is lonely. With a little magic, Cindy’s fairy godmother is naked, and ready to pleasure Cindy.

That’s because even James Franco had his mind blown in Interior. Leather Bar. (2013) about the fact that he could be making a movie with pornographic sequences in it and the Disney film Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) at the same time.

It makes sense that these two would end up together. They already did this in a previous movie.

College Coeds vs. Zombie Housewives (2015, dir. Dean McKendrick)

I have two problems with this scene.

The first is that picture of a pineapple on the wall. The second is the tiara. It’s a little difficult to pay attention when you keep wondering how that is going to stay on.

Mona now visits a cameo appearance by Ryan Driller in order to find out that her husband was in a lot of debt, and she’s stuck with it. This part only exists so they can’t pay Regis to stay around, and can con Cindy into doing their bidding in exchange for continuing to stay with them. That’s how she is going to slip into the standard Cinderella role.

We also find out that Regis comes from Iowa and is probably going end up shoveling pig shit.

“Pig shit” must be the magic phrase though, because Grace decides to have sex with him before he leaves.

Now we can skip over some things because it’s the standard Cinderella stuff. The only thing you need to know is that Steven decides to hold a New Year’s Eve party in America.

Cindy has a shower scene so she can have a couple of flashbacks. One of the two flashbacks is to the only time Steven and her have been in a room together up to this point. It’s as if they felt they needed to remind you that they even know each other.

Moaning about not being able to go to the ball, a visit from The Fairy Godmother, and we are at the party.

I beg to differ. What about that tattoo on her arm?

Inside, you know the deal. Hi there, guy on the right.

She ends up running away from the party and The Fairy Godmother’s magic is faulty as usual. It leaves one of the shoes intact.

Steven wants her tracked down, and he’ll creep out Sarah Hunter if he has to in order to find her.

He arrives at what appears to be the entrance to a different house that was used in Bikini Model Mayhem (2015).

Bikini Model Mayhem (2015, dir. Jon Taylor)

Bikini Model Mayhem (2015, dir. Jon Taylor)

After you get over the red Buddha sitting next to a plant in the shape of hair on a troll doll, he has found her. They consummate the shoe fitting.

They live happily ever after.

Mona and her daughters are turned into “scullery maids.”

And I guess Regis went back to Iowa. He gets no closure in this film.

That was different from the usual. The acting is fine all-around. They really did take a generic Hallmark plot and add sex to it. I didn’t like seeing Penny Pax play this kind of character. However, if you haven’t seen her play Emma Marx, then I can’t see it bothering you. The sex stuff was fine even if they really should have taken some of the humorous things out of the room. I mean I liked them for the purposes of having fun with this movie. But if you are watching it for the sex, then I could see it being distracting, and taking you out of the moment. The plot is Cinderella. You know the story.

This one is about average.

Late Night Cable Movie Review: The Deadly Pickup (2016, dir. Dean McKendrick)


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Yes, you read the title of the post correctly. No matter how much that title sounds like a Lifetime movie–it isn’t. I’m not sure how Dean McKendrick beat Doug Campbell to that title.

This time around we have one of those good old misleading posters.

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Death also gives top billing to an actor who is well-known, shows up for one sex scene, and then is killed off. Better than the cameo appearance from Amy Lindsay in Carnal Wishes (2015) that probably accounts for 80% of the views I have on that review. She had as much importance in that movie as Colonel Sanders did in The Phynx (1970).

The Phynx (1970, dir. Lee H. Katzin)

The Phynx (1970, dir. Lee H. Katzin)

That is to say, next to nothing.

That country road is also not to be found in the film. The car of course is impossible to be in this film considering it is a late night cable movie about a hitchhiker who kills her victims after having sex with them. There just isn’t enough room. You will also only see her hitchhike once in this film. However, she does pretty much look like that.

Anyways, the movie opens up with shots of the beach, including a seagull that is here to tell us Dean McKendrick also edited the film in addition to writing and directing it.

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Then we find out that Dean McKendrick and Sal V. Miers joined forces to bring us this movie.

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Does that mean we are going to get a genre spoof with progressive politics mixed together with sex? Not exactly.

Once the credits are done, our deadly pickup appears on the side of the road.

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That’s Breezy played by Carter Cruise. They call her that because the movie was written by Dean McKendrick.

She is picked up by Josh (Michael Hopkins). He is headed for the local state university. She plays along till they have killed enough time for a sex scene to happen.

Once the scene is complete, she sticks him with a poisonous ring, and he dies.

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She then makes a rather pitiful attempt to wipe the car of prints. That’s a little bit of the humor I would expect from Sal V. Miers since because it is softcore, there wouldn’t be the kind of DNA evidence you would expect from actual sex.

Now we meet a couple–Brian and Traci–who have a room for rent and are played by William F. Bryant and Kira Noir respectively.

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Maybe it’s just because I recently read someone else’s review of Clueless (1995), but I took one look at her, and thought: Porno Stacey Dash. It’s actually kind of clever what they do with her. She will only have sex with her husband, which in turn, foreshadows the ending of the movie. The instant they are done having an exposition conversation to setup the plot of the film, Breezy shows up at their door.

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Since none of the other actors are in need of a place to stay, they let her rent a room to help pay his college tuition while Traci works at a bar.

That’s when a cop shows up to discover the last sex scene.

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He is played by Billy Snow, and his character is Deputy Randall.

Next, Breezy decides to take the slowest shower ever. Seeing as Traci is working at the bar, Brian is left alone to stumble upon her in the shower, and seems to be enjoying it more than the audience.

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Traci gets home from work to find Brian very much in the mood for love. The plot will have to wait a bit.

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Now we cut to an office, or somebodies house, where we meet Sheriff Bates played by Michael Gaglio.

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You might recognize him from numerous films of this sort, but he has also appeared in and worked on other films such as Lifetime and SyFy movies. He even played Santa in the movie A Perfect Christmas List (2014).

He recognizes the M.O., and tells Randall to pull the file on a similar case in Nevada. He then sends him out to canvass the houses nearby where the incident occurred since there aren’t many in the area.

That’s plenty of plot for now, so Breezy discovers a guy named Rick (Jon Fleming) on the beach.

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Lucky for them, he has a van parked nearby so they won’t have to worry about the sand. This really makes me wonder. Does she seek out people who have cars large enough to have sex in? Does she let the ones who don’t, live? Doesn’t matter, once the scene is done, he gets pricked by the poisonous ring too.

Deputy Randall then shows up at Traci and Brian’s place. He talks to them about the situation. Then Breezy walks in, so he talks to her alone. As he is leaving, we get this shot of Carter Cruise looking devious.

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Now we cut to the bar where Traci works for that person who left a comment on my review of Bikini Model Mayhem (2016) that was disappointed they didn’t show the bartender more, and he didn’t have a sex scene.

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That’s Charlie, played by Cody Deal. This whole conversation exists so that Charlie can’t point out the obvious to Traci. That being, that if a murderer is on the loose and a random woman showed up to live at your house, that it’s a good idea to look into her a bit.

Then we cut to the police station where Deputy Randall gets a call that they found a dead body on the beach. What?!? We just saw him alive a few minutes ago in between the two scenes above.

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But seriously, he’s dead. I’m guessing something happened that I don’t recall, or they just decided they needed him killed off after some aborted plot they had in mind.

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In between, Sarah Hunter shows up to make her Sophia Loren in Operation Crossbow (1965) cameo appearance.

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Of course she ends up dead too. Breezy is an equal opportunity murderer. It’s a shame. I’m assuming since Sal V. Miers was involved in the production of this movie that after she broke out of prison in Bad Girls Behind Bars (2016), she lost her way, and wound up here to get murdered.

We’re getting down to the wire here as evidenced by Billy Snow’s intense look.

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Breezy and Randall have a conversation at the bar. Traci goes back home to snoop in Breezy’s room. Breezy goes with Deputy Randall back to the police station because she needs to accidentally knock over his coffee. That can mean only one thing.

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Since we need someone to stop Breezy, the sheriff shows up to interrupt her plans to murder him. The sheriff receives a call, and we find out Breezy’s real name is Brenda Johnson. She worked at her father’s factory that made rat poison.

Now Breezy catches Traci looking through her stuff, tries to seduce her, and is told she needs to be out by morning. Traci found some incriminating evidence, so she calls Deputy Randall. The call comes complete with flashbacks, and now Randall is out to catch Breezy.

But they save the best for last. Seriously, it’s like they were teasing the audience the whole time as to whether Charlie would have a scene. After they make good use of a pool table, Deputy Randall shows up to put a stop to the movie, so Breezy threatens to kill Charlie.

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It’s funny, but during this brief scene, Carter Cruise suddenly goes from she can’t act to save her life to I want to see her in something where she doesn’t play a murderous ditz. Deputy Randall takes the shot, and Billy Snow gets to deliver a line he was probably dying for the chance to say.

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Then we get what always feels weird when it happens in these movies–a happy ending I would expect from a mainstream TV Movie.

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They get $50,000 for turning in Breezy, it pays his college tuition, and they decide to have children.

In summary, we have a couple who is tempted to cheat on each other by a woman who moves in with them, and it ultimately brings them closer together by resisting her temptations.

It’s not the worst I’ve seen. I’ve seen far far worse, but I would recommend some of the other late night cable movies I’ve reviewed like Bikini Model Mayhem instead. This, like Wicked Deeds (2016), seems to have been made off the heels of the film noir Carnal Wishes, but it just doesn’t come together as well, nor is as interesting. Also, if you want to see Sarah Hunter in something decent that I’ve reviewed, then watch Bad Girls Behind Bars.