Cobbled from episodes of the children’s TV series Masked Ninja Red Shadow, this Japanese feature has popped up under numerous titles in its lifetime. Thanks to importing, white people like me are apt to encounter it as Ninja Scope. Whichever name it bears, the flick packs a lot of action in a mere 52 minutes.
It pits the red-masked, swoopy-haired superhero Akakage (Yuzaburo Sakaguchi, Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx) and kid-ninja sidekick Akokage (Kaneko Yoshinobu, Watari) against a cult. Do you think the cult leader is cool with this? No, he is not, so he sends in his clowns to battle. By “clowns,” I mean creatures of all shapes and sizes and sativa-inspired designs, including a: • rock monster • giant, flame-breathing toad • rectangle-faced goon with sawblade sandals
For these and other colorful storybook shenanigans in which our heroes find themselves, the matinee movie occasional pauses to allow Akakage to bust that fourth wall and inform audience members to don their 3-D viewers. With each fight sequence, Ninja Scope diverts to black and white to allow for anaglyph antics; while it’s kind of a bummer to lose color, when it comes to pushing objects toward the lens, the filmmakers didn’t dick around.
With a pantyhose-headed puppeteer, exploding plums and a dude on a kite, Ninja Scope never rests to allow itself to get dull. It’s as if your eyes ate 12 bowls of cereal in a sitting. —Rod Lott
As his great aunt’s sole living heir, Tony (Roberto Guinar) inherits her Mexican mansion — lush landscape, spacious back patio and creepy clown doll included.
The doll, named Payasito (“Little Clown”), is played alternately by a limp bag of rags and dwarf Margarito Esparza Nevares, whose white-greasepaint face suggests the unholy union of Bob Hope and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus performer Michu. Because it can, Payasito frightens Tony’s pregnant wife down a short flight of stairs to her death, but the baby is saved.
Years later, that lucky embryo swells into Tony’s tot son, Roy (Alan Fernando), whose attachment to the doll rivals Velcro, glue traps and static cling. This skeeves out Tony’s new trophy wife, Doris (Mexico Playboy model Lorena Herrera). Every time she and her hoochie-mama pants try to hide and/or ditch Payasito, the damn thing escapes and/or returns and kills somebody. Repeat until you hit the bare minimum for feature-length qualification, which you can do if you direct the dwarf to move … verrrrry … slowwwwwly.
Also known by its English title of Diabolical Inheritance, Herencia Diabólica is referenced in shorthand as “the Mexican Chucky.” Not to desiccate the corpse of director Alfredo Salazar, but he wishes this thing were mas like Child’s Play. In a still photograph, Payasito may strike you as creepy, but in motion, he inspires laughter; with Chucky, the opposite is true.
Salazar clearly exhibited better luck at the typewriter, where his formidable résumé includes screenplays for such Mexploitation mainstays as The Batwoman, the Wrestling Women, the Aztec Mummy and many a Santo adventure — yep, even the one with big-breasted vampire ladies. —Rod Lott
When Sam & Dave, the classic ’60s soul group, performed their signature hit, “Soul Man,” I wonder how they felt about the Blowfly parody “Hole Man” and if they were proud about it. What about the artists whose original tunes inspired “Y.M.C.(G.)A.(Y.)” or “Shittin’ on the Dock of the Bay”?
Because I definitely would be proud of it … even though I’d sheepishly look down at my feet in total shame and absolute guilt.
I learned of those songs when I discovered Blowfly. When I was a somewhat nerdy, yet eclectic teenager, I was on way to a school marching band competition. Somewhere in the middle of rural Oklahoma, the bus made a roadside stop for bathroom breaks and caffeinated drinks.
I noticed a rack of outré music journals, cult movie zines and, of course, thoroughly profane Mexican nudie mags. All I had was $20 for lunch, but I bought $19 worth of the strange magazines and a liter of Diet Dr Pepper with the change. Oh, yeah!
The music magazine — sorry, I can’t remember the name — had articles about Doug Sahm, Lou Reed and, more importantly, Blowfly (aka Clarence Reid). Reading, learning and wanting to know more about the nastiest rapper, I was heterosexually enamored.
Since then, I’ve encounter him and his music in the most prurient of places — such as a dying record store in San Antonio, a flea market in New York City or a beer-stained trash can in Fort Collins, Colorado, to be sure — all leading to the 2010 film The Weird World of Blowfly.
Although Blowfly died in 2016, this documentary — a cock-umentary, if you will — finds him in the middle of his ill-advised comeback tour. With his history of party records in tow and the help of manager Tom Bowker, he’s trying to make a comeback, but, at 70, it’s harder than it sounds.
Sadly, he’s playing to lackluster crowds in small clubs and, worse, the worst crowds somewhere in Europe. Through the film, we find out that his royalties are gone, he needs surgery on his leg, and, most of all, people have been flatulent on his backstage pizza.
A demented genius, a warped personality and a hyper-sexed fuck demon: This is the Blowfly persona. Yet we instead finding him reading the Bible with his aged mother, goofing around with Bowker’s pre-teen daughter and having a midnight snack of McDonald’s hash browns with ample amounts of ketchup and maple syrup.
I never knew about the two conflicting sides of this man, but talking heads like Ice-T, Chuck D and other performers pay tribute, making sure he stayed a dirty secret in your dad’s party records. To be fair, the greatest tribute comes from Bowker when a slick hipster decries Blowfly, upon which the manager truly castigates, denigrates and dominates the hipster in his own personal hell.
Whether you’ve been taken by “Hole Man” or another one of Blowfly’s infamous bits of wordplay surrounding comically slick crevices, gaping love holes and other places to stick your wanton meat stick, The Weird World of Blowfly is the perfect condom to the real-life cultish career. —Louis Fowler
Late Night with the Deviltells the story of an American cultural institution — the post-prime-time talk show — turned into a circus of satanic trickery by a malevolent force. Other than Jimmy Fallon, that is.
The movie is cleverly presented as a long-suppressed live episode of the syndicated, ratings-starved Night Owls from Halloween night 1977. Although still smarting from the death of his beloved wife (Georgina Haig, TV’s Snowpiercer), host Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian, The Last Voyage of the Demeter) has lined up a really big show in hopes of staving off cancellation.
The lineup includes a medium (Fayssal Bazzi, We’re Not Here to Fuck Spiders) and, for built-in friction, paranormal investigator/skeptic á la James Randi (Ian Bliss, Man-Thing). Last but the furthest from least, a parapsychologist (Laura Gordon, Saw V) brings a young patient (feature-debuting Ingrid Torelli) rescued from a fringe church rumored to sacrifice children. The girl also claims to be possessed by a demonic entity she calls — and this isn’t eerie at all — “Mr. Wriggles.”
With millions of eyeballs watching, what better time to attempt to draw this Mr. Wriggles out, right?
From the monologue to each guest segment — with black-and-white backstage footage during commercial breaks — Late Night with the Devil admirably replicates the ’70s-era vibe of the chat format, particularly for those who grew up ending each weekday evening with Johnny Carson. All the details are here: the corny jokes, silly skits, forced patter with the bumbling sidekick (first-timer Rhys Auteri), cheesy title cards, smoking guests — plus subliminal images, gushing fluids, fateful on-air “demo” and so on. It’s nearly as faithful to its ruse as the infamous Ghostwatch, but with its time-capsule approach, likely owes more debt to WNUF Halloween Special.
A never-better Dastmalchian, who also produced, anchors the Australian pic with a committed performance that skillfully takes his character from empathetic to pathetic at a moment’s notice. If only he were able to convince sibling directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes (100 Bloody Acres) to end their script 10 minutes earlier, the movie would resonate with the intended staying power. After the prologue, it never needed to leave the studio. But do tune in, ladies and gentleman, and don’t touch that dial. —Rod Lott
Fans of The Goonies, you’re never getting that sequel you so nakedly desire. (Also, the original movie is not as good as you remember it, but that’s neither here nor there.) So make do with Weston Razooli’s debut feature, Riddle of Fire. It may be as close as you’re going to get.
Wyoming-set, but Utah-shot, this “faerie” tale follows a trio of kids it dubs the Three Immortal Reptiles (Charlie Stover, Skyler Peters and Phoebe Ferro). With dogged determination — not to mention motorbikes, paintball guns and ski masks — they embark on a quest for a particular blueberry pie for the boys’ bedridden mother (Danielle Hoetmer). If they can bring her that, she’ll give them the TV password in exchange to play video games.
Easier said than done, of course, as the Reptiles run afoul of those “woodsy bastards” known as The Enchanted Blade Gang, led by a witch (Lio Tipton, 2016’s Viral) who’s up to some shit both criminal and mystical. Throw in a ragamuffin forest sprite (Lorelei Mote), a speckled egg, malt liquor, frozen crag legs, a ’76 Cadillac Delta and the theme from Cannibal Holocaust, and you have an unfailingly sunny-vibed adventure comedy steeped in folklore and shining in 16 mm splendor.
Riddle of Fire’s success hinges most on its casting of the kids, the small pints with big imagination. Razooli struck something akin to gold, particularly with Ferro and even with Peters’ slight speech impediment gaining subtitles. As a whole, the kids are as rambunctious as they are charming, giving audiences a glimpse of what The Little Rascals might look like, had it dabbled in the occult, with a smidge of O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief” spread on top.
For the film’s last quarter or so, Riddle loses its way. A dance sequence teed up as an intended showstopper (à la Little Miss Sunshine) instead pushes the cuteness too far without allowing the off-kilter material to keep pace — and in cloyingly slow motion, no less. That deflates a balloon that heretofore avoided such Stevia-sweetened manipulation.
Helping Riddle of Fire cast its freshman-film spell of amusement is a killer “dungeon synth” soundtrack featuring Fog Crag Records, Lost Cascades, Hole Dweller, et al. —Rod Lott
