Not to be confused with the recent M. Night Shyamalan film — but how I hope it is — the Split from 1989 is very much a prototypically bizarre YouTube clip stretched out into interminable movie length, so I guess that’s something to be technologically proud of.

Within minutes of pressing play, the screen is soon filled with bad teeth, bad accents and bad dialogue — including the classic line “We came for breakfast, not for AIDS!” — with the immediate start-stop bent going between this homeless man’s world and some sort of technologically unsound underworld, giving the movie an infinitely more intriguing first half-hour than many other futuristic-repressed films of the time.

The homeless man, actually, is a sort of quick-change artist, slipping in and out of one bad comedic persona after another; he’s also on the run from this nameless group of American computer-hacker types who are desperately trying to track down the man, whose real name we learn is the unlikely Starker (Timothy Dwight).

Apparently living off the grid, especially in a time when it was easier to, strange computer graphics come to life, pixelating and swirling, proving somehow that Big Brother really is watching Starker and, of course, brainwashing all of us. By the way: Everyone is living in some form of a dystopian future, but I only learned that from reading the back of the Blu-ray case — it still looks and feels like generic 1989 Los Angeles to me.

While writer/director Chris Shaw’s film drags as we follow Starker around from one supposed comedy bit after another, where he goes to art shows as an Austrian psychoanalyst and hangs out at a Terry Gilliam-esque woman’s house, for example, keep with it; if you persevere and give it a few minutes, Split eventually becomes an absolute cheesy mind-melt as it barrels down toward a typically dark and depressing ending that I’m not sure I really get yet, but I appreciated nonetheless.

Apparently one of the first films to use CGI — and it shows — Split was a very low-budget outing with a message bigger than it could possibly contain: Conformity is a soul-destroying beast and the only thing that can save us all is a fat urinal cake to be dropped in the water supply cleaning our clouded visions — something I’ve written about in clandestine pamphlets for years. —Louis Fowler

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Shot on video for Canadian television by the catchpenny production company known as Emmeritus, The Tower has nearly as many establishing shots of the building in question as its home country has provinces. According to those shots, the titular site varies in size between “skyscraper” to “office complex,” with only one thing for certain: It’s a building, eh.

Written and directed by Ghostkeeper’s Jim Makichuk, the movie opens with two men discussing possible problems with the tower’s safety, considering three people have vanished inexplicably from its floors of late. One of the guys declaratively states twice, “There is nothing wrong with the security of the Sandawn Building.” You know what that means: There is totally something wrong with the security of the Sandawn Building! And you, the viewer, stands to benefit.

Touted for its energy efficiency, the place is run by a $30 million computer system named LOLA (disembodily voiced by Monique Verlaan), developed by the blinky-eyed, mumble-mouthed boy genius Watson (Alfred Topes, punchable). What Watson somehow fails to notice is that LOLA has discovered sweet, sweet sentience, acquiring increasingly higher reserves of power via murder. After scanning various workers for potential heat gain, she absorbs them whole when they flip an electrical switch, press an elevator button, fuck against a copier, what have you.

On this particular Friday night, a soap opera’s worth of characters are trapped and in danger of LOLA vaporizing them for their BTUs, including:
• the dorky nightwatchman (George West) and his incredibly sexy girlfriend (Zuzana Struss, sexy) who sexily drops by for a sexy dip in the top floor’s pool;
• a past-his-prime ad man (Ray Paisley, Cold Creek Manor) and the sassy new copywriter (Kenner Ames, Canadian Bacon) working overtime on a Magic Marker posterboard campaign for something called Sparkle;
• the secretary (Jackie Wray) whose single-mom status will not surprise you when you see her hair;
• lovers (Jennifer Cornish and Paul Miklas) who plot to kidnap Old Man Sandawn (George T. Cunningham, Emmeritus’ Shock Chamber), who dips his ink in the company well because he’s married to a frowny crone (Dorothy Clifton, Emmeritus’ The Hijacking of Studio 4).

There’s also a black stripper/video vixen (Charlene Richards, Emmeritus’ Mark of the Beast) who legitimately wants to bed Watson, but we don’t have time to get into that.

Not to be confused with 2012’s Korean Towering Inferno rip-off or the 1993 Paul Reiser vehicle (although that Fox prime-time pic bears a plot similar enough to raise eyebrows) or any of many, many films bearing the same name, The Tower stands tall on its own. What other movie would show you computer graphics continually drawn and re-drawn, as if Makichuk were squeezing every penny out of the license for some AutoCAD shareware knock-off? Would have the balls to lure an elderly woman to her grave with the promise of a feather boa? Would dare present the same shot three times of two ladies climbing down a flight of stairs? Would stop itself to have a character literally look up the definition of “snake” … and then share the results?

As terribly dated as it is terribly acted, this Tower harnesses the power of pure entertainment — often accidental, but thoroughly genial. These days, that’s enough. —Rod Lott

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Upon its dismal original release, Starchaser: The Legend of Orin was positioned to be a Star Wars for the next generation, which, of course, it wasn’t. But, for cartoon nerds whose first love was weirdly cheap French animation — think Fantastic Planet — but needed a wholly North American story they could glom on to, I guess this flick will do just fine.

Orin is a slave working in the coal crystal mines and before he can say “Lord, I am so tired … how long can this go on?” he finds a glowing laser-sword — a light-saber, if you will — in the dirt. Before he can toss it out, a little wizard pops out of the handle and tells him he’s his people’s only hope. This all sound somewhat familiar yet?

Filled with plenty of misplaced promise, he takes on a couple of robots and their laser-whips, escaping his nightmarish hellhole to the mildly bad-dreamish surface world filled with swamp-monsters, man-droids and a supposedly cool Han Solo-type that suggestively calls Orin “my little water-snake” in between making out with a sex robot that I’m pretty sure was on the cover of Aerosmith’s Just Push Play.

They go on various adventures, visiting dumb planets and fighting stupid aliens, all in an effort to take down the dastardly overlord Zygon. I’m not giving anything away to say that they do, but it’s all still nowhere near as pseudo-exciting at George Lucas’ sci-fi spree; with the further adventures of Anakin Skywalker — whizzer! — and gang still a good 15 or so years away, I guess Starchaser was the best you could do for swashbuckling adventure in 1985.

Directed by Steven Hahn, this film is probably more famous for spending about 17 days in the theaters, when it was quickly pulled by distributor Atlantic Releasing after making only $3.3 million. But, somewhere out there, the dream for a live-action Starchaser is alive, when Rilean Picture announced one is coming in March.

Of 2012, that is. —Louis Fowler

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While minding his own business, peeping on the mostly willing girl across the street, young Mike (Edward Furlong) gets a call from his generic horndog buddy — probably named Doozer or something equally dumb — telling him about this great new video game he’s reading about in the latest issue of Fangoria, because every little bit helps, right guys?

The video game is called Brainscan and it promises to be the most immersive experience in horror gaming on your 16 32 64-bit system and, at the very least, it’ll let Frank Langella enter your subconscious, as he is wont to do. Mike plays the game and finds himself in a first-person world of murder and madness as whomever he kills in the game, is found dead in real life. Bummer, dude.

Beyond the silliness of the game itself, the movie Brainscan goes one better by introducing the wholly grating boogeyman known as the Trickster, a horrific sprite from the video game world (?) here to convince Mike to kill himself while eating all of his well-stocked stash of junk food. With a stretched-out face and a shocking-red faux-hawk, it’s very easy to see why T. Ryder Smith isn’t at very many horror conventions signing copies of the movie poster handed to him by pudgy Trickster clones.

Although many of you younglings might not remember it, Brainscan comes from a time long ago and far away when Furlong was the affable-enough boy-king of the first-run genre picture, riding somewhat high after Terminator 2: Judgment Day. But, sadly, too many silly scripts like Pet Sematary Two and this techno-trash caused his star to extinguish faster than a cigarette under Furlong’s well-worn Doc Martens boot heel.

Even worse, by the time this picture was out in theaters, the technology was already practically outdated, no matter how many cool-ish gadgets and Aerosmith posters director John Flynn (Rolling Thunder) threw on the screen. And even though the CGI was getting technically better, the actualized concept of virtual reality and cyberspace were still the thing of badly rendered William Gibson novels and horribly cartoonish Thomas Dolby screensavers.

Despite those winning attributes, realistically Brainscan isn’t even nostalgically good for the time, leading most viewers to check their futuristic Apple Watches and Fitbits to see how much time is left on the thing. To be fair, however, this flick does make a rather unwatchable double feature with Lawnmower Man 2: Jobe’s War if you truly hate yourself.

Or you can just take a nap. Whatever.   —Louis Fowler

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“What the hell is this?”

That’s probably what acclaimed author Ray Bradbury said, concurrently spitting grape soda out of his nose, when watching a cowboy-suited Darren McGavin on the run from a group of Man Who Fell to Earth rejects, as I did, too.

Taking a handful of stories from Bradbury’s collection of the same name was a highly ambitious project, one that was probably a little too big for the dreams of director Michael Anderson (Millennium) and star Rock Hudson (Avalanche), but they gave it their made-for-TV all and delivered The Martian Chronicles, a cinematic oddity which includes, yes, Darren McGavin (Billy Madison) running around Mars while dressed as a flashy cowboy.

Originally broadcast in three long, excruciating parts, the first night’s section deals with the landing and subsequent explorations of Mars and how Martians, for really no good reason at all, like to elaborately screw with our puny human brains. Examples of this include astronaut Nicholas Hammond (The Black Cobra 2) finding his Illinois childhood home on the red planet and astro-nut Bernie Casey (Never Say Never Again) grabbing an alien gun (for lack of a better term) and proclaiming himself as the second coming of the Martians. Or something to that effect.

Meanwhile, Hudson looks on coolly as the greatest astronaut who’s ever lived.

In part two, we find former astronaut McGavin opening up a Wild West-themed diner, promising to serve hot dogs and chili at 1970s prices to all the future immigrants. (Where and how he got these wieners and sauce is never explained, but I would’ve liked an explanation.) Sadly, no one ever comes to said eatery except for an alien offering him a deed to a portion of Martian land, whom McGavin promptly shoots. All this is done in a sparkly, spangly cowboy outfit, mind you.

Meanwhile, Hudson looks on coolly as the planet Earth explodes into nothingness.

You’d think that after such a dark revelation, things would get a little more entertaining, but instead we find an old man and his robot wife and daughter making dinner and looking to the stars while a lovelorn Christopher Connolly (Hawmps!) flies a foot-pedaled aircraft around the planet, only to find an insanely grating Bernadette Peters, practicing for her upcoming role in Heartbeeps, no doubt.

Meanwhile, Hudson looks on coolly as the temporal gates collide and time becomes a figment of our imaginations.

With workmanlike direction from Anderson, he seemed to forget all the tenuous life lessons he learned on Logan’s Run and made the most by-the-book miniseries possible, all the while barely covering the book. Well, except for that one scene where Darren McGavin goes bonkers dressed a cowboy, which is kind of the worst story in the book, but hilarious on the screen. He should have gotten his own series after that.  —Louis Fowler

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