Comedically prescient as all get out, Eat the Rich is all about class warfare, rampant snobbery, low-class politics and, of course, the most sarcastic form of cannibalistic fine dining.

And I would have known about all these stiff-upper-lipped British themes, discussions and subtle comedy before now, if only my VCR worked the way it was supposed to in the early ’90s. Those were the days, when KOBC Channel 34, Oklahoma City’s UHF television station, broadcast religious programming in the morning, Western reruns in the afternoon and low-rent syndicated shows during prime time. When normal broadcasting went bye-bye around 11 p.m., KOBC became the best non-cable station around.

From Z-grade horror and UK sex comedies to rarely seen campy treasures from all around the world, you never knew what you were in for, and I was here for it … but it was past my bedtime. So I used my parents’ VCR to tape dozens of films off KOBC, with 1-900 sexy singles’ lines ads, Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unexplained shills and Channel 34’s own sad weather reports.

Eat the Rich was one of those tapes, except the VCR only recorded the first five minutes before skipping to the 6 a.m. farm report. Never were cattle futures so sad! Even in the era of Blu-ray special editions, this British satire was impossible to locate until I found it on Amazon Prime. Even better, it was only $3.99 to rent. God save the Queen and her fascist regime!

Featuring bit-part players of England’s alt-comedy faction the Comic Strip and, even better, music from Motörhead, it’s off to a ripping start, well past the originally allotted five minutes. In the posh restaurant Bastards, the abusive patrons dine on cheetahs, koala and pandas.

After a row with a blowhard patron, put-upon waiter Alex (Lanah Pellay) is having not anymore, shouting, “Oi! Where’s my fuckin’ tip?” He’s thrown out by staff and, through a series of blows to his ego and his superego, becomes a leader of a group of nonmilitary anarchists who want to, undoubtably, eat the rich.

Concurrently, former boxer Nosher Powell is a faux politician, a lager-swilling lout who gets all the racist football fans in his corner because he brokers deals with his ill temper and his uncompromising fists. (Sounds like the politicians in Oklahoma — right, Markwayne?) As you can imagine, all these punked-up parties and fucked-up parts end up riotously dead, with arms dealer Lemmy coming out top. And why wouldn’t he?

Though the film was a massive flop on a grand scale, it’s still a Comic Strip Presents movie, giving the well-to-do British society two fingers way up. It’s directed by Peter Richardson, with alternative-comedy regulars such as Nigel Planer, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson in brash cameos. But Eat the Rich is comedian and cabaret singer Pellay’s show as Alex, with every line dripping in sarcastic wherewithal and venomous barbs that made me guffaw in all-knowing titters. Pellay is a true revelation, 30 years too late.

It took me three decades to find, watch and embrace this, but Eat the Rich is a properly digested and classically disposed comedy that needs to be rewatched, reassessed and, true to the movie, regurgitated. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

I’m all for supporting one’s children in their endeavors. I wonder if Hollywood feels the same. Like, when the likable Chris Lemmon found himself starring in several unlikable B movies throughout the ’80s (like C.O.D.), did his famous father — Jack Lemmon, legend — watch those? Specifically, the aggressively stupid military comedy Weekend Warriors.

And if so, what did he say? “Well, Son, I was not expecting the plane to go loop-de-loop when the pilot got a beej from the showgirl.”

Anyway, Weekend Warriors, also known as Hollywood Air Force. Unofficially, it’s Police Academy on a Military Base. Whatever you choose to call it, one thing’s for sure: Bert Convy never directed anything better. To be fair, the perennial game show host and Cannonball Run second-stringer never directed anything else, so there’s that.

From The Movie Store — purveyor of fellow low-rent titty flicks Ski School, Meatballs III, Meatballs 4 and Basic Training, which this most resembles — the film takes place in the summer of 1961. To avoid the draft, a number of horny ne’er-do-wells spend drill weekends in the Air National Guard, where they pull pranks on authority figures — namely, their oblivious colonel (Lloyd Bridges, in what amounts to a Hot Shots audition) and strict sergeant (Vic Tayback, Mansion of the Doomed), whose bald head they top with whipped cream and a cherry after drugging him. (Convy, you card!)

Serving as the Steve Guttenberg fill-in, Lemmon leads the ragtag assemblage, which includes a nerdy mortician, a bisexual gossip columnist, an entire doo-wop group and a muscleman meathead with an Elmer Fudd speech impediment Convy leverages from start to finish. Among the actors sinking their teeth into these challenging roles are Matt McCoy and Tom Villard, thereby marking the We Got It Made reunion no one wanted.

When the boys embarrass visiting Congressman Balljoy (Graham Jarvis, Mr. Mom), they’re in danger of being sent overseas to face real danger, lest they pull off an upcoming inspection. If you think a missile gets knocked askew, a sexual assault is played for laughs, a puking contest is held and a massive fart becomes an actual story point … well, you’re wrong. But only because there’s no puking contest.

Weekend Warriors isn’t funny. (Disagree? Dude, you were probably 12.) It’s also amazing the degree to which its third act misjudges what its target audience wants from such a film. An elaborate tarmac show of military hardware sure ain’t it — with or without little person Deep Roy (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) disguised as a little girl. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Are you ready for the summer? Are you ready for the sunshine? If so, sorry — you’re bound to be disappointed by Meatballs Part II.

Although Ivan Reitman’s original is no great shakes, Ken Wiederhorn’s in-name-only sequel is uninspired idiocy — a half-assed, quarter-hearted attempt to lovingly spoof the summer-camp subgenre, as well as the rite of passage itself.

Run by Richard Mulligan (Scavenger Hunt), who deserved better, Camp Sasquatch houses misfits of various school grades for four weeks. The newest counselor-in-training is a bad boy (John Mengatti, Tag: The Assassination Game) only there to avoid reform school. Mulligan grooms the teen — not that way, calm down — to don the boxing gloves for the annual Champ of the Lake competition against the neighboring military-minded Camp Patton.

Meanwhile, the nerdy counselor (Archie Hahn, Amazon Women on the Moon) tries hard — really, really hard — to get the busty counselor (Misty Rowe, National Lampoon’s Class Reunion) alone for nookie. And, most memorably, an alien that looks like a gray turd is dropped off by his parents’ spaceship for camp. The younger Sasquatch boys hide the E.T. in their cabin and name him Meathead. Soon, Meathead gets stoned, which is the movie’s idea of high comedy.

The product of three writers and Eyes of a Stranger director Wiederhorn, Meatballs Part II suspiciously lacks sauce. It best serves as a time capsule, capturing the moment just before bit players Paul Reubens and John Larroquette saw their dwindling careers rescued — if not supercharged — by, respectively, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and a four-Emmy run on TV’s Night Court. After being reduced here to a lisping, gay-panic stereotype, Larroquette has to be especially grateful.

Establishing pieces suggest the pic aimed for an Airplane!-style spoof, then prove it fell far short. Even the unmemorable theme song is lazy: “We’ve been waitin’ for the summer to hit the beach / No more apples for the teacher, gonna eat a peach.” Wow, movie, you really went all out to earn that rhyming badge. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

As the title card of Don’t Tell Larry informs us, every office has that one weirdo. (To which I say, “One?“) At the cruise company of this movie’s case, the resident oddball is the titular Larry. Played by the Ed Helms-ian Kiel Kennedy (It’s a Wonderful Binge), he’s a dimwitted, socially awkward new hire who eats raisins one by one, spearing each with a sharpened pencil.

So when the CEO (Ed Begley Jr., Strange Darling) suddenly plummets to his death under dubious circumstances, company MVP Susan (Patty Guggenheim, The Happytime Murders) suspects Larry. Recruiting her office bestie, Patrick (Kenneth Mosley, Searching), Susan schemes to plant evidence to get Larry fired — less because he could be a threat, more because she doesn’t want him to discover she purposely didn’t invite him to the CEO’s retirement party.

Speaking of co-workers, Greg Porper and John Schimke share writing and directing duties on Don’t Tell Larry, adapting their 16-minute 2018 short into a full feature. The high-gloss result may bear the rhythms of a well-timed comedic engine, but lacks the type of jokes to make it purr. The scenarios into which Porper and Schimke drop Susan and Patrick are the stock and trade of 1970s multicamera network sitcoms, with no circumstance more far-fetched than passing off a jar of urine as kombucha.

Only at intervals do punch lines land as intended. Most of them involve either Molly Franco’s dead-on savage portrayal of an egocentric influencer or Kennedy, whose supporting-player status takes him offscreen too often. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Of all the wavering output of the early 1970s independent studios, most of the Apple Films catalog have been the hardest movies to find. Usually, I have to go for bootlegs, downloads and other shady dealings.

That’s strange, because it was part of the Beatles’ far-reaching Apple Corps, a freewheeling production company investing in records, books, electronics, and numerous Pop Art items that have filled the dumpsters of time. In the end, Apple Corps was a good deal gone bad, with really only the music remaining. Apple Films’ only big hit was Yellow Submarine, maybe also Let It Be. Other films like Born to Boogie and The Concert for Bangladesh are essentially forgotten.

Which brings me to Son of Dracula, the apparently world’s “First Rock-and-Roll Dracula Movie!” according to the advertisements. It’s a take on the vampire mythos starring songster Harry Nilsson and ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, who also produced. But that’s not the most surprising thing about this — instead, this is: It was produced by Jerry Gross, the guy behind Mondo Cane, Teenage Mother and The Black Godfather. The father of the backbeat and the father of cinematic slime, together again!

One dark and ultimately confusing night, Count Dracula is assassinated by an unseen hand and his midget friend. Afterward, Merlin (Ringo Starr, in perhaps a prequel/sequel to Magical Mystery Tour?), the guardian of the netherworld, is summoned to his vampiric concubine to give birth to an immediate scion.

A hundred years later, Nilsson’s new count, Count Downe —ugh — comes to town in a stylish motorcar wanting a lay of the land. After going over some astrological charts with Merlin, he heads to Piccadilly Circus, performs a rousing cut of  “At My Front Door” for the bar patrons and, appropriately, sucks the blood of the buxom maiden. So far, so good!

In case you were wondering, the backing band has Ringo on drums, as well as rock luminaries Peter Frampton, Leon Russell, Keith Moon and John Bonham. Where was that supergroup in the early ’70s and beyond? That’s the movie I’d like to see.

Son of Dracula instead shows Count Downe wanting a life-changing operation to make him a mere human. He does it, of course, to find his one true love. To mark the occasion, Downe has a party, with his hit song “Jump in the Fire” riding up the charts and heating up my speakers. During his preliminary operation, Dr. Van Helsing pulls Downe’s vampire teeth and commits other somewhat-laughable tortures.

This is where the movie loses me: Frankenstein’s monster attacks the Count, aided by a werewolf, a black cat, and, once again, a midget, for, I’m guessing, some revenge plot that seems to try everything while doing nothing. Look, by this time, I don’t know what’s happening, but the music is really good! True to form, it’s truly top-notch, top-shelf and above-board, as it should have been.

Directed by famed cinematographer Freddie Francis, the story and screenplay, the production values and the very bad acting — Nilsson’s nonexistent on-camera talent should live without you — is why most audiences avoided this in droves.

While Dracula and Frankenstein fanatics are not in any way clamoring for this home release, Son of Dracula has never been distributed on any home media format, leaving Beatles completists and Nilsson apologists in the lurch. It’s not very good, but I’d take a big box set with a pristine copy of the film, a 180-gram vinyl soundtrack and other associated memorabilia, like a swatch of Count Downe’s cape to make our own solo-Ringo dreams come true. While we’re at it, how about getting Ravi Shankar’s Raga reissued for my own personal edification … please? —Louis Fowler