Comedy

Vamp (1986)

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Before Sinners was picking undead chords and From Dusk Till Dawn strummed along to a scantily clad Salma Hayek, 1986’s Vamp busted out massively bombed in empty theaters. With the statuesque domme Grace Jones bringing New Wave androgyny to the neck-biting role as a vampire demigod, Vamp set up the whole blueprint of the “vampiric whores” mythology. It’s a blood-caked piece of dark erotica with a pulsating electronic beat sequenced with shrill screams, grimy alleys and an artistic flair for the supernatural. 

On the other side of the churched-up coin, Vamp is a long-forgotten piece of semi-demonic trash that implies a much better movie, a conceit of both vampire lore and semi-nude ladies, one I still enjoy in all its low-budget, badly edited, completely rushed grandeur.

Released when horror-comedies were trying to get their foot (and other extremities) through the door, the movie starts with a trio of ’80s movie teens, Keith (Chris Makepeace, Meatballs), A.J. (Robert Rusler, Thrashin’) and Duncan (Gedde Watanabe, countless Asian stereotypes), trying to find strippers for their frat party. Craigslist hadn’t been invented yet, so they drive to the big bad city with a soundalike copy of Robert Palmer’s “Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)” blaring.

They enter the After Dark Club, a rough but serene establishment where white women with jiggly asses in spandex dance onstage. Then Katrina (Jones) performs a very arty, very kabuki, very unerotic striptease; think David Bowie meets Keith Haring at a downtown art show with fusion tapas and no lube, and you’ll get the vibe. Being a hungry vampire, she eats A.J.’s heart, drains him and, sadly, is put on ice for most of the movie.

That’s okay, though, because Keith meets a ditsy waitress (Dedee Pfeiffer, Michelle’s sister), eats some cockroaches and wars with an albino punk (Billy Drago). Eventually, the undead A.J. helps him save the day (night?). In the climax, Katrina flips the bird from beyond the grave.

The best part of Vamp is the casting. Even though she’s barely part of the movie and has no discernible dialogue, fresh off Conan the Destroyer and A View to a Kill, Jones casts an intimating shadow over the comedic proceedings, made all the stranger by the club managers who look like they came out of a Goodfellas casting call. What’s her story, I wonder …

The guys are also well cast. As the hero , once-a-nerd Makepeace holds his own, with ’80s mainstay Rusler doing his preppy-punk thing that, kudos, he does well. The biggest surprise is Watanabe, doing an Asian take on a W.A.S.P. that’s kind of groundbreaking when you think about the time.

What hurts Vamp is that it’s half-baked. It has a real storyline and some great characters, but does nothing with them. I could see someone wanting to remake this in the Sinners/From Dusk Till Dawn vein, but I guess that ship has been burned, most likely with a raised finger. Oh, well, at least Jones’s end-credits song, “Vamp”, is actually pretty darn good. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Comedy

Micro Budget (2024)

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If your bucket list line-items “Hear Barney Miller utter the phrase, ‘knee-deep in pussy,'” I come bearing great news: Micro Budget allows you to cross that off. It’s merely one surprise in a movie that qualifies as a surprise itself. After all, “improvised indie mockumentary” doesn’t engender confidence these days, and its generic, Google-challenged title further diminishes hope.

Give yourself over to it anyway, because here’s even greater news: Micro Budget is capital-F funny — enough to threaten triggering a hernia.

Speaking of do-or-die to-dos, Ohio nobody Terry (Patrick Noth) has always longed to make a movie. His ever-patient, exceedingly pregnant spouse, Erica (real-life wife Emilea Wilson), supports her hubs so much, she’s agreed to uproot their lives to L.A. so Terry can achieve his dream before their firstborn arrives to forever postpone such folly.

Naturally, in tackling an ambitious disaster film, Terry has bitten off more than he can chew, much less get his big mouth around. Lucky for us, his cousin (director Morgan Evans, who co-wrote with Noth) is around to document it all the behind-the-scenes chaos. While shooting in a rented Airbnb home in Malibu, the cast members inquire about their motivation, which Terry answers: “A big, scary meteor coming to Earth.” The dialogue he’s given them is equally clueless: “I can’t believe Toronto’s gone. I can’t believe Drake died.” A running gag hinges on Terry’s inability to understand movies don’t have to be shot in order.

If Terry has no idea what he’s doing, wait until you meet the intimacy coordinator, a skeevy guy (Neil Casey, 2016’s Ghostbusters) whose first question arriving to set is, “Now, who’s porkin’?”

Bawdy and boisterous without slipping into hateful, Micro Budget boasts a solid lineup of comedians both known (Chris Parnell, Maria Bamford, Bobby Moynihan, sitcom legend Hal Linden) and deserve-to-be (Nichole Sakura, Brandon Michael Hall, Carla Jimenez, Jon Gabrus), as well as a superstar cameo I won’t spoil. There’s not a weak spot in the bunch.

If you can’t handle cringe comedy, move along, little ones. Not for nothing does the “Lights. Camera. Asshole” tagline adorn its poster. While Micro Budget isn’t quite as successful as Christopher Guest’s Best in Show, it’s the next best thing. This isn’t Pulp Fiction, Scorsese. —Rod Lott

Get it at OVID.tv.

Mystery

The Ugly (2025)

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If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, where does that leave the blind? Im Yeong-gyu (Kwon Hae-hyo, Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula), a sightless stamp engraver in his twilight years, found love with a garment worker he married. It vanished when she abandoned her husband and infant son 40 years prior.

Now an adult, son Dong-hwan (Park Jeong-min, Decision to Leave) receives unexpected news from the police: Not only have his mother’s remains been found, but she didn’t disappear as assumed; she was murdered. This news arrives amid a crew shooting a documentary about the elder Im, so the producer (Shin Hyeon-bin, Beasts Clawing at Straws) helps Dong-hwan discovered what happened to the woman he never knew.

What they find on the surface is unimaginable cruelty from greedy relatives and asshole co-workers who nicknamed her “Dung Ogre.” All insist she was so hideous-looking — hence the film’s title of The Ugly — no photos exist. Most barbarous is the treatment from her piggish employer (Im Sung-jae, Emergency Declaration). Dong-hwan’s father sums it up with “What we see as beautiful, we respect; the opposite, we scorn.

The Ugly represents a departure for filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho, the creative conductor behind the Train to Busan franchise. Not particularly knotty in plotting, his film solves its mystery through simple sequential peeling of layers. With each successive interview, Dong-hwan grows further torn between wanting to know and afraid what he might learn next. Both leads are marvelous, but especially Park. In his incredible final shot, Sang-ho doesn’t leave us with a spinning top, but delivers the closure we need, only to rip open a whole new line of questioning. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Reading Material

Reading Material: Short Ends 3/8/26

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Line 1 of Robert Guffey’s latest, Hollywood Haunts The World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos, reads: “The secret history of the world can be decoded through film.” Guffey makes good on that thesis across nine chapters (a third of which are new to this Headpress collection), fusing his interest in movies with that of conspiracies, to varying effect. On the plus side, he catalogues Twin Peaks’ extensive references to rocket scientist/occultist Jack Parsons, discusses the real-world government experiments informing such fictions (?) as The Manchurian Candidate, and posits the U.S. military supplied UFO secrets to the makers of The Man from Planet X and The Thing from Another World. You don’t even have to believe it to enjoy it. Elsewhere, a quasi-poem covering the whole of Invisible Ghost, a Bela Lugosi cheapie, baffles for five pages. A few rail-jumpers like that hamper an otherwise enjoyable trip from a tour guide likely (and proudly) on at least one agency watchlist.

As readers of his classic making-of-Psycho book know, Stephen Rebello can write about an old movie like nobody’s business. What’s better than that? Him writing about 152 old movies! In particular, Hitchcockian Thrillers: Must-See Films in the Style of the Suspense Master. Pay no mind to the subtitle’s misnomer, as Rebello pans several entries, but as readers of his classic Bad Movies We Love book know, pleasure abounds regardless of the film at hand. This Bloomsbury hardback groups reviews by a dozen Hitch-ready themes (amnesia, voyeurism, doubles, etc.), IDs the MacGuffin of each and includes titles from the obvious to the obscure to the oddball. Rebello’s deep love for the medium (note the number of times he mentions the cinematographer) throbs on every page, as does his knack for turn of phrase (“a dozen other ‘You in danger, girl’ epics”). Pretty much essential.

Edinburgh University Press’ ReFocus series has examined revered auteurs like William Wyler, Jane Campion, Robert Altman and now … H.G. Lewis?!? Yep! And ReFocus: The Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis is a splendid collection of essays on the Godfather of Gore. I was predisposed to Gary D. Rhodes’ chapter on Lewis’ work in Oklahoma (which our own book interviewed Lewis about), but who knew HGL’s Carving Magic industrial short could merit a fascinating piece on its own (courtesy Jack O’Dwyer)? That’s the type of expectation upender lurking within the contents. Another: Richard J. Hand’s history lesson on the HGL’s Blood Shed Theater, a Grand Guignol-style live venue in Chicago that sounds like a solid argument for time travel. From mannequin heads to chocolate milk, Kate Russell surveys the intentional comedy in Lewis’ post-Blood trilogy pictures, while editor Calum Waddell redeems Blood Feast’s Connie Mason and makes a convincing case for her Final Girl status. It’s refreshing to see Lewis taken seriously, even when he’s taken to task.

After watching Morgan Neville’s brilliant Netflix culture documentary, Breakdown: 1975, two thoughts tore circles through my brain: First, “I really need to see Executive Action and The Parallax View.” Second was, “Shit, I forgot to review Andrew J. Rausch’s The Taking of New York City: Crime on the Screen and in the Streets of the Big Apple in the 1970s.” (My apologies, Andy!) NYC may not have had the greatest of decades then, but those felonious activities and bankruptcy troubles informed some great cinema. And also not-great. You’ll find movies of both types covered, with each year’s crop of art prefaced by Rausch setting the historical stage so the reader has full context of the times, too; after all, the two are inexorably linked. The films you’d expect are here, of course, but so is forgotten fare like Super Cops, The First Deadly Sin and From Corleone to Brooklyn. Rausch’s exhaustive, scrutinize-all scope is the main reason to make room on your TBR pile.

Nearly four summers ago, Jon Lewis knocked my Merino wool socks off with the excellent Road Trip to Nowhere: Hollywood Encounters with the Counterculture. Now, with his monogram of 1988’s Die Hard for the BFI Film Classics line, I was prepped to be blown through the theater’s back wall (to borrow the actioner’s marketing promise). I wasn’t. But don’t interpret that as time ill-spent. All in all, it’s yippee ki-okay. The initial section is more interested in global politics than I or the movie ever was; I more appreciated Lewis digging into the casting of Bruce Willis in the Schwarzenegger/Stallone era, then breaking down each and every “whammy” the movie delivers — all 17 of them, per a heretofore unknown-to-me theory of producer Joel Silver. In its closer, the slim volume considers the internet discourse on Die Hard’s merits as a Christmas movie.

And finally, The Novelizers: An Affectionate History of Media Adaptations & Originals, Their Astonishing Authors — and the Art of the Craft: The Slightly Revised and Hugely Expanded Second Edition. Whew! This 644-page behemoth from David Spencer (and BearManor Media) boasts a cover as unappealing as its title is overlong, but also impressive breadth inside. The oft-derided (but not by me!) world of film and TV tie-in novelizations has one of its strongest defenders in Spencer. Whether you enjoy author interviews or author profiles, you’re in luck! That said, I was more drawn to the chapters that dive into the specialized, from tie-ins for Sherlock Holmes and British telly to the possibly counterintuitive novelizations of musicals — all illustrated in full color and detailed with full passion. —Rod Lott

Get them at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Predator: Badlands (2025)

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The Predator franchise has always worked for me. Sure, there are a few clunkers in there — Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, I’m looking at you — but from the original Predator to the Robert Rodriguez-produced Predators to the gloriously Indigenous-heavy Prey, every film in this roster has been a true popcorn movie.

Add the latest installment, Predator: Badlands, to the ever-growing list of more-than-watchable sequels, because this film not only delves deep into the Predator mythos, but, in the end, it takes the Predator and turns him into a real stand-up guy lonesome scion of alien revenge.

No, really.

The Predators — or, as they’re called now, the Yautja — are in this clan that a little guy named Dax is about to be initiated into. Challenged by his brutish father who, sadly, decapitates his older brother for being weak — Yikes! Are you sure that wasn’t my dad? — Dax crash-lands on the alien world of Ganna, where he’s going to become a man or, you know, die trying.

On the hostile planet — apparently, it’s a real hellscape — he immediately finds vine-like strangling creatures, exploding caterpillars and large plants that shoot out poisonous spikes and immediately paralyze the body. And that’s in the first 15 minutes.

Eventually, he finds an android survivor (Elle Fanning) from a Weyland-Yutani (shades of Alien’s Xenomorphs?) scouting party. Along with a cute rolling-ball creature they call Bud, they try to find the mythical Kalisk that Dax wants to kill to impress his father.

While that’s going on, the android’s identical twin sister and a bunch of space marines find Dax’s ship. They take all the weapons and, of course, want to capture and eviscerate him. They all engage, entangle and enrage with a round of alien psychoanalysis about grief and loss, as well as old-fashioned shoulder cannons and wrist-controlled atom bombs.

With sparse alien dialogue and the mannerisms of a hardened warrior, New Zealand actor Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi is more than serviceable as Dax, alternating between immature warrior to seasoned champion for whom, as the mid-credits scene teases, more adventures will come.

But if anything needs more credit, it is Dan Trachtenberg, directing his third entry in the franchise. Between Prey and the animated Predator: Killer of Killers, he is on a creative streak I am actually down with, giving Dax and all the Yautja actual characteristics that make than more than, well, Predators.

In the end, Predator: Badlands is just a wildly entertaining entry in a nine-movie series that is only picking up camouflaged steam, and I am here for it. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

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