William Girdler’s Grizzly was such a profit-churner in 1976 that another outing for the killer bear was just a matter of time. But 37 years’ time?

Shot in Hungary in 1983, but held up first by money troubles and then pure indifference, Grizzly II: Revenge finally saw the light of day in 2020 — a gap the film touts as a positive with Selznickian aplomb. It’s only by the grace of God — or Suzanne C. Nagy (who confusingly credits herself as producer and executive producer) — giving director André Szöts’ only feature some finishing touches. Those amount to:
• shooting a musical performance in close-up and against black so she didn’t have to worry about matching backgrounds
• grabbing sound effects from YouTube
• adding visual effects as unconvincing as Birdemic’s
• and padding generously with stock footage from Adobe Stock, iStock, Shutterstock, Getty Images and more, to get this thing over the magic 70-minute mark

Her bananas patchwork is like nothing you’ve seen. Unless, of course, part of your day is hallucinating things like Raiders of the Lost Ark’s John Rhys-Davies in Crazed Davy Crockett mode, ominously growling lines such as “You got the devil bear!”

By an enormous stroke of luck, Grizzly II opens with a troika of pre-A-list celebs in Academy Award winner George Clooney, Academy Award winner Laura Dern and HIV winner Charlie Sheen, playing friends hiking their way to the big rock concert at Yellowstone Park. After setting up camp for the night, Clooney and Dern get frisky, leaving Sheen (who resembles Jason Schwartzman) as the third wheel. No matter, because five minutes in, the future stars are dead, killed by an uncommonly tall bear presumably angry for its poached cubs.

With the grizzly on the loose, out for vengeance and often depicted with a limited-articulation puppet, the park’s most principled ranger (Steve Inwood, Staying Alive) and its “director of bear management” (Deborah Raffin, Death Wish 3) think maybe having tens of thousands of people gathered for an outdoor concert isn’t the greatest idea. Coming from the Mayor Larry Vaughn School of Decision-Making, however, park boss Draygon (Louise Fletcher, Exorcist II: The Heretic) disagrees. The final scene is a riot, in both senses of the word.

If only Draygon listened to reason, many lives would be spared … but we wouldn’t have a movie. Then again, whether we have one now depends on your criteria for calling each scene complete, as Nagy has taken so many shortcuts to deliver her Revenge, the titular carnivorous mammal has no time to shit in the woods. Unfortunately, not enough are taken — shortcuts, not shits — where viewers will wish Grizzly II had: during Yellowstone’s would-be Woodstock. I mean, whatta lineup: Toto Coelo! Set the Tone! The Dayz! Landscape III! Korlátolt Felelősségű Társaság! —Rod Lott

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If Dr. Giggles and Dr. Pimple Popper merged practices, Cyst would be their collab. Short on budget and tall in imagination, this goopy, goofy horror comedy is a two-location wonder like the kind Charles Band’s Full Moon Entertainment used to make, minus the visual flatness.

In 1961, three patent examiners return a final time to the medical office of Dr. Guy (George Hardy, the dad from Troll 2) after a disastrous first demo of a machine he calls “The Get Gone.” For America’s acne-afflicted, blister-bodied, polyp-peppered and sore-saddled, Guy’s invention could be a godsend, as it promises “painless” skin removal. It lies.

Dr. Guy basically pisses on his own hospitality and Nurse Patty won’t allow it! Tired of his misogynist ways, the incessant bullying and torrents of milky discharge on her face — from patients’ squeezed zits (why, what were you thinking?) — the long-suffering Patty (a strong and stunning Eva Habermann, TV’s Lexx) is working her last day when she becomes the hero of this sebaceous story, seemingly torn from the time-yellowed pages of EC Comics’ Weird Science.

That shift happens after The Get Gone goes wrong and a cyst it slices off the back of the doc’s meek assistant (Darren Ewing, Troll 2’s tree boy) suddenly sprouts spidery legs and a thirst for human blood. From there, Cyst is a mess — on purpose, of course — with fluids shooting and spilling and oozing and killing as Patty takes charge to help her fellow trapped characters try to stay alive while the little malevolent, malignant mass grows to full rubber-monster stage. Not all succeed.

In his third feature as director or writer, the Texas Cotton-pickin’ Tyler Russell gooses Cyst along with a sure hand and a tongue so in-cheek, it gets mail there. The reverential injection of B-level camp is not only on purpose, but obviously encouraged behind the scenes, being produced in part by Greg Sestero (The Room’s Mark and ergo, author of The Disaster Artist). I somehow missed Sestero’s name in the opening credits, because I didn’t recognize him as one of the patent examiners.

There’s zero mistaking Hardy, however. Destined for eternal Troll 2 infamy even after he leaves this mortal coil, the real-life dentist turned accidental actor certainly has limitations in range. While the aw-shucksness that’s made him a horror-convention fan favorite isn’t present in this villainous role, Hardy’s dopey nature and above-amateurish delivery are — and they actually work for the unhinged mad-scientist persona. With Nic Cage-mannerisms aiming to leap over over-the-top, Dr. Guy is as anything-goes intent on securing that patent as a former game-show host to a second stint as POTUS.

But will lowbrow art imitate life, even in a nice, compact 69 minutes? To find out, give Cyst a good poke. —Rod Lott

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My favorite Stephen King film is probably Maximum Overdrive, with its Emilio Estevez “performance,” AC/DC soundtrack and Green Goblin truck mowing down everything in sight. That being said, Trucks, based on the same material, definitely isn’t.

I’m not sure who or what gave director Chris Thomsan and writer Brian Taggert the wherewithal to make their own version of King’s short story — I’m guessing the USA Network — but none of Overdrive’s very minimal star power, grinding soundtrack or Marvel Comics-inspired vehicular damage is present; instead, everything is replaced with Timothy Busfield and some people outrunning two or three trucks.

A sullen Busfield is Ray, a grease monkey with a not-so-sullen son, both mourning the death of their wife/mother. They run the local garage/diner and, I think, the town’s premier UFO tour with the incredibly bland Hope (Brenda Bakke). As she brings tourists to town, they run amok of the titular automobiles on the roadway, which eventually trap them in the small diner.

While Overdrive was literally filled with bloody gags — both the funny and the cruel kind — Trucks is more sputtering along a road of bloodless gugs, as each large vehicle saunters around the gas station, barely providing any true fear for the trapped veteran actors or hysterical newbies.

You’d think that remaking what many consider to be the worst King flick — again, not me — it would be nothing but up for all involved, but with Trucks, it’s somehow nothing but down — all the way down. —Louis Fowler

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After her nutty Aunt Catherine takes a fatal swig of strychnine, Helen (Lorin Jean Vail, 1986’s The Patriot) learns she’s the sole survivor of the family — and, therefore, sole beneficiary of an estate worth $8 million.

With husband Bob (Scott Thompson Baker, 1987’s Open House), Helen moves to Spain to occupy her aunt’s property in the hoity-toity neighborhood Eight Mannors [sic]. The only thing about the home stranger than the kitchen’s trapdoor is the collection of oddballs among the house staff and neighbors, from a hot maid and a blind man (The Panther Squad’s Jack Taylor) to a priest and a guy whose wardrobe is Nazi garb.

As the requisite strange occurrences begin — e.g., a piano playing on its own, carbon monoxide poisoning, suffocation by shower curtain — Helen and her many fashionable ’80s sweaters believe these hangers-on may be after her inheritance and, by extension, her life. The group murder of a violinist hired for a private performance lets viewers know early that despite Bob’s you’re-just-paranoid protestations, Helen’s suspicions couldn’t be more spot-on.

But the movie sure could be. Never as fun as it inches toward, Rest in Pieces is only as clever as its punny title, which is to say the film from José Ramón Larraz (hiding behind the Joseph Braunstein pseudonym he used for Black Candles and Edge of the Axe) is an undistinguished shocker. His horror films of this era play like comfort food to former lurkers of video-store aisles, yet not every Larraz sticks to the ribs.

Sure enough, this one passes right through, with the big takeaway being its casting coup of honest-to-God Academy Award winner Dorothy Malone as Aunt Catherine — her final role if not for the résumé-saver Basic Instinct. Heroine Vail, however, is in no danger of getting near an Oscar, for several reasons — stopping acting in 1988 being the least of them. —Rod Lott

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There was a time in Hong Kong cinema when Category III flicks about insanely graphic serial killers were all the rage, with The Untold Story one of the best remembered and most award-winning, which is completely surprising to me because — and let’s be honest — it’s kind of terrible.

Directed by Herman Yau with all the skill and dexterity of a low-budget TV-movie journeyman, Story stars a skin-crawling Anthony Wong as the untold storyteller, a glasses-wearing creeper with a boiling-over penchant for ultraviolent outbursts, one of which luckily takes him to exotic vacation destination Macau.

But, as you can guess, that’s really only half of the untold story.

Once there, he opens a restaurant that specializes in the best steamed pork buns in town, absolutely filled with the perfectly cooked meat of the previous night’s kill. City on Fire’s Danny Lee, who seems to always have a hooker on each arm, leads an investigative squad of buffoonish cops only interested in ogling Lee’s women while simultaneously eating free pork buns and harassing the only woman on their team, mostly for not having heaving breasts.

After years of destructive desensitization, the grue and gore aren’t really all that shocking, with the exception of the brutal scene where Wong uses a handful of chopsticks in a way they were hopefully never intended for. While the last half of the movie mostly features Wong constantly beaten while in police custody, in scenes that might give a few fascist viewers untold boners, I’m really not sure what was the point.

With a little urine drinking — according to Wong, it helps heal your busted-out, broken-down innards — the film’s abrupt ending, complete with a Dragnet-styled voiceover, only adds to the back-alley greasiness of the cleaver-heavy proceedings, a dirty job that won Wong the Best Actor trophy at the Hong Kong Film Awards. —Louis Fowler

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