Night of the Sharks (1988)

You can’t miss Treat Williams in Night of the Sharks. He’s the one wearing minimally buttoned Hawaiian shirts and a baseball cap emblazoned with a big, red “S” — which, it goes without saying, stands for “Shit, what did my agent get me into?” (Oh, just an Italian B movie to keep your tummy full before your mid-1990s comeback, Treat.)

Williams’ fisherman character, David Ziegler, lives the hammock-and-shack life on the Caribbean shore, complete with a bolo-wearing sidekick (Foxy Brown’s brother, Antonio Fargas). The plot ostensibly concerns Ziegler fighting for his life when his dumb brother sends him a CD encoded with all the secrets of a criminal overlord (John Steiner, Caligula) that many a goon will kill to keep. But director Tonino Ricci is no dummy (despite Thor the Conqueror’s evidence to the contrary); ergo, his movie is titled Night of the Sharks, not Disc of Incriminating Data.

Sharks do appear, although mostly in sunlight. In fact, a particular shark pesters Ziegler daily, not unlike an unchained Doberman on a USPS mail carrier’s route. It swims in shallow water around Ziegler’s boat; Ziegler shouts it’s a “son of a bitch”; the shark shouts back. From shot to shot and scene to scene, however, its fin changes shape. In close-up, it’s toothless. Not that you’ll mind.

Perhaps sensing Dead Heat was going to tank, Williams gobbled up an easy paycheck in semi-paradise, whether you consider that to be the Dominican Republic or in bed with Janet Agren (City of the Living Dead) as his still-hot-to-trot ex-wife. (It’s certainly not listening to the cancer-ravaged voice of Christopher Connelly, playing a priest in his final role.)

Sharksploitation pics often don’t climax in an all-out jungle war, but that just makes this junk that much more fun. They also often don’t contain genuine star wattage like Williams, who, ever the professional, appears to have taken this as seriously as his 1970s’ lead roles. Yes, even when he’s arguing with a shark — which, it goes without saying, ain’t the stuff of Sidney Lumet. —Rod Lott

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Holistay (2023)

Shot on the cheap in Las Vegas subbing for San Diego, Holistay is the third horror movie within less than a year about a double-booked rental home. Diminishing returns apply with this limp, unpolished go-round.

Vacationing from Ireland, a couple played by Erin Gavin (Dread) and Gavin O’Fearraigh arrive first to the cul-de-sac property backing up to a golf course. They barely have a chance to christen the bedroom when couple No. 2 enter, L.A.ers played by Gabriela Kulaif and Steven Martini (Major Payne). Within two minutes of meeting, the pairs agree to share the space.

Not consulted for that agreement? “Some weird guy with a hood” standing outside in the dark — aka a druid — and his banshee companion who dresses like Stevie Nicks. Each appearance is akin to encountering a Renaissance Faire attendee overdoing it. Strangely, Holistay sidelines this threat for most of the movie, as our weekenders safari, shop, nap, talk, drink wine, take pot edibles, talk, hot tub, do “epic” hot air ballooning, talk, read Martha Stewart Living, talk, talk more, discuss fish recipes, talk and all too easily forget about their supernatural visitors.

A glorious exception finds Martini’s East Coast goombah character armed and angrily yelling into the night, “Hello! What the fuck are you? Banshee? Bunch of fuckin’ geese? Huh, punk? Goose! I’m from New York! You want some-a-me?” His hysteria is unintentionally hysterical.

Joining the foursome in overall apathy is Holistay’s director, Electile Dysfunction documentarian Mary Patel-Gallagher in her first narrative feature. She turns her script’s subplots — involving an international fugitive and money stolen from an Alzheimer’s fundraiser — into the plot for a bulk of the time, seemingly forgetting about making a horror film until the end. To some degree, I can’t fault her for that, because otherwise, not much of anything is going on. Now that, I fault her for.

At the climax, she offers viewers a twist they won’t accept because it’s a cheat. While I believe Patel-Gallagher has a counterargument at the ready, I rewatched the pic twice and still contend it’s a cheat, because the person/people in question wouldn’t/don’t act that way in private. Which speaks to an even greater problem of characters’ unnaturalness permeating this thrill-free movie — one in which they don’t even unload grocery bags believably. —Rod Lott

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House of Frankenstein 1997 (1997)

Hoping to launch a new series, NBC did the monster mash with House of Frankenstein 1997, a three-hour movie stretched across two nights. It was not a graveyard smash, nor a ratings one. Nice try, though, peacock — although maybe you should’ve scheduled it before Halloween instead of the week after?

In a marked detour from Universal’s 1944 House of Frankenstein, the titular spot is a hip Goth club, despite looking like the Hard Rock Cafe and Meow Wolf got together without protection and beget a pop-up experience for The Crow. Its proprietor (Greg Wise, Johnny English) has a team in the Arctic Circle looking for the frozen corpse of Frankenstein’s monster to display in his Los Angeles hotspot. Lo and behold, they find it!

However, the mute monster (Peter Crombie, 1988’s The Blob) is alive — alive, I tell ya! — and flees to the L.A. streets, where his facial scars and odd coloring won’t look out of place. He’s saved from homelessness by a kind pal (Richard Libertini, Fletch) who teaches him how to eat Froot Loops.

Meanwhile, Det. Vernon Coyle (Adrian Pasdar, Near Dark) investigates a serial killer dubbed “the Midnight Raptor” — actually a vampiric man-bat whose flight is rendered by director Peter Werner (I Married a Centerfold) in RGB Predator vision. As if that weren’t a full docket, Coyle’s also hunting a man who turns into a wolf, but at least that intros him to a near-victim (Meet the Parents’ Teri Polo) who’s totally DTF.

As scripted by J.B. White (NBC’s Peter Benchley’s The Beast), House of Frankenstein 1997 ends with closure, yet also a clear path toward further adventures the network chose not to take. That decision was wise because even juggling so many balls, the made-for-TV “event” is about twice as long than it needs to be.

The first half is the strongest, with Pasdar and Polo using their likability to overcome foolish dialogue, culminating in a sex scene that’s actually erotic, primetime limitations be damned. The hokey second bides time before pretty much lifting its club-set climactic showdown from the previous year’s From Dusk Till Dawn. As expected, the effects are telepic-chintzy with one notable exception: the makeup for the man-bat. The less said about the werewolf transformations, the better. —Rod Lott

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Bad Channels (1992)

On the AM dial, KDUL is gearing up for a big night. The station’s switching formats from polka to rock ’n’ roll, with DJ Dangerous Dan O’Dare (Paul Hipp, The Last Godfather) manning the platters after an FCC-mandated hiatus. The promo plans include an on-site story by a TV reporter (MTV VJ Martha Quinn), but not an alien invasion.

Yet Bad Channels wouldn’t be a Full Moon film without the unplanned. A UFO brings two visitors to the KDUL studio: a robot with baby-blue peepers and a creature with a giant rock head “like a turd with a porthole window.” These alien beings cover the station in fuzzy green mold and abduct female listeners through the airwaves. Because this is a Charles Band production, the ladies shrink as they’re collected into miniature glass tubes.

Bad Channels’ gimmick is that immediately before abduction, each woman — from a sexy waitress (Charlie Spradling, Puppet Master II) to a sexy nurse (Melissa Behr, Ring of the Musketeers) — imagines herself cavorting in a music video, which director Ted Nicolaou (TerrorVision) shoots in full. Although the score comes from 1970s rock dinosaurs Blue Öyster Cult, the videos feature other songs, all unknown, from other bands, all unknown. Showcasing a group calling itself Sykotik Sinfoney, the third clip gives us the Full Moon catalog’s most frightening and/or disturbing sequence. Would you expect anything less from a makeup-dependent metal act whose members include Crusty Udder and Stankly Poozle?

Coming from Full Moon’s golden age — you know, when 45 minutes marked the halfway point, not the end — Nicolaou’s movie is an ambitious mix of science fiction and light satire, like George Pal’s The War of the Worlds meets Roger Corman’s The Little Shop of Horrors — but insipid, because its groupie mom had sex with Trixter in the alley. Still, something dumb can be mighty entertaining, which this is. Watch for an end-credits stinger with Tim Thomerson reprising his Dollman role for a few seconds — all the justification needed to bring Behr’s still-shrunk nurse back for Dollman vs. Demonic Toys the following year, and all the proof Band’s brain was decades ahead of Kevin Feige’s. —Rod Lott

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Flamin’ Hot (2023)

WTFIn most biopics, the truth is often tangled, even fabricated. While I know many people already look at them as reality stretched to a breaking point, I tend to give the benefit of the massive doubt with cultural biopics I’m more entertained by.

And, like the snack food they epitomize, Flamin’ Hot is a real maltodextrin of a film, with the classic Cheetos taste reimagined for a new hungry audience. In other words: Latinos like movies based on our own snacks. (Hey, Bimbo: Your screenplay about the raisin pound cake is in turnaround!)

Born and brought up in a Southern California labor camp, Richard Montañez was a small-time businessman as a kid, charging students a quarter for a bean burrito. Of course, once he had the money to pay for candy bars, a cop said he was a thief, charging him with robbery. Fuckin’ cops, man!

As times change, Richard (now played by Jesse Garcia) and his girlfriend are petty criminals in the barrio. But with a kid on the way, they put that stuff behind them and look for work while white people call them “wetback” multiple times. Richard finds a job at Frito-Lay. With his only qualifications being a Ph.D. — “poor, hungry and determined” — he starts at the bottom: janitor.

While still pushing a broom (despite a stalling economy, thanks to Reagan) he learns all about the chip factory from “engineer maintenance leader” Clarence C. Baker (Dennis Haysbert), which leads him to develop Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and the whole Flamin’ line of products.

With actress Eve Longoria’s capable direction, Garcia is very affable as Montañez, playing a respectable former cholo who makes it to the top. I was also taken back by Annie Gonzalez as Richard’s supportive wife and, unsurprisingly, Emilio Rivera as his stern dad. I hope I never get on this cabron’s bad side!

Snack foods are forever dominant with Latin flavors. Even better, there really is a great story here, even though opinions differ regarding the truth of Montañez’s story; to be fair, I enjoyed the cinematic story anyway. Besides, for every businessman getting a biographical film — from Steve Jobs to Ray Kroc — what’s wrong with a movie based on the snack-work of Montañez? Growing up, not everyone could have a computer, but they always had a big bag of them in their Cheeto-dusted hands!

On it surface, much like the food it fully endorses, Flamin’ Hot looks like a good movie to snack on. But when you get to the meat disodium inosinate/disodium guanylate of the matter, it’s a five-star multicourse meal for many viewers, served Flamin’. —Louis Fowler

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