Howling 2 aka Howling II : Your Sister Is A Werewolf (1985)

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Howling II : Your Sister Is A Werewolf (1985)
Directed By: Philippe Mora
Starring: Christopher Lee, Sybil Danning, Reb Brown, Annie McEnroe, Marsha Hunt, Judd Omen, Ferdy Mayne, Patrick Field, Jimmy Nail, Steven Bronowski, James Crawford, Jirí Krytinár, Ladislav Krecmer, Jan Kraus, Petr Skarke, Igor Smrzík, Ivo Niederle, Ed Kleynen, Stephen W. Parsons

Howling 2 - Sybil Danning

The 1980s were exactly like this.

Stefan Crosscoe: “This type of bullet killed your sister. Unfortunately, they were removed during the autopsy and as a result, she can never rest in peace. Notice anything about them?”
Ben White: “They’re silver.”
Stefan Crosscoe: “Yes. Do you know what that means? This type of bullet, Mr. White, means your sister … is a werewolf.”


You know something is wrong when a movie has its characters repeating its title in dialogue, as if the audience needed to be reminded: “Ah yes, that’s why this movie is called Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf! I had forgotten!” (It reminds me of the time when Sylvester Stallone exclaimed “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot“) Anyway, this sequel to Joe Dante’s film The Howling concerns the brother (Reb Brown) of Karen White (from the first film) discovering that werewolves exist, then taking his new girlfriend/TV reporter Jenny (Annie McEnroe) along with werewolf hunter Stefan (Christopher Lee) to Transylvania to put an end to the reign of Stirba (Sybil Danning), queen of the werewolves. By the way, the original title of this film was Howling II: Stirba, Werewolf Bitch. In my opinion, they should have stuck with that.

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Troll and Troll 2

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Troll (1986)
Directed by: John Carl Buechler
Starring: Noah Hathaway, Michael Moriarty, Shelley Hack, Jenny Beck, June Lockhart, Sonny Bono, Phil Fondacaro, Brad Hall, Anne Lockhart, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Gary Sandy

Troll 2 (1990)
Directed by: Claudio Fragasso
Starring: Michael Stephenson, George Hardy, Margo Prey, Connie Young, Robert Ormsby, Deborah Reed, Jason Wright, Darren Ewing, Jason Steadman, David McConnell, Gary Carlson, Mike Hamill, Don Packard, Christina Reynolds, Glenn Gerner

Torok the Troll at the bar

Before I turn you into a tree, can I fix you a martini?


Produced by Charles Band and Empire Pictures, Troll is a bizarre little film that takes its villain from Norse mythology and Scandinavian folk tales, although I guarantee you won’t confuse it with those stories, or anything from the world of Tolkien. Directed by John Carl Buechler, a makeup effects man who would go on to direct Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood, it’s an underwhelming, mediocre piece of dark fantasy about a sneaky troll who slowly takes over an apartment building made up of 80s era malcontents, like yuppies, swingers, and Nam veterans. Into this building moves the Potter family, with daddy played by Michael Moriarty (a Larry Cohen favorite), mom played by Shelley Hack (who would appear in The Stepfather a year later), little girl Wendy Anne (Jenny Beck, looking like Heather O’Roarke’s lost twin), and her older brother Harry (Noah Hathaway). Yes, that’s right – his character’s name is Harry Potter, Jr, and this movie arrived over a decade before J.K. Rowling flooded the world with those damned books. Now, did Rowling lift her Harry Potter character from a low-budget monster/fantasy flick from 1986? Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t, but besides the fact that this movie stars the late Sonny Bono as a swinger and features the debut of Julia Louis-Dreyfus playing a nearly-naked wood-nymph, the Harry Potter question is the most interesting thing you’ll take away from Troll.
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Double Down – Neil Breen

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Double Down (2005)
Directed by: Neil Breen
Starring: Neil Breen, Laura Hale, Mike Brady, Robert Di Francesco, Bonnie Carmalt, George Kerr, Maynard Mahler, Ruth Mahler, Marry Taylor, Alan Rogers, Huel Washington, Bill Frid

Neil Breen in Double Down

Don’t push it or I’ll give you a film you won’t believe.

Buy Double Down on DVD

Among stock footage of clouds, the title card “Double Down” comes up, then the name “Neil Breen” and then a few moments later “Produced, Written, & Directed by Neil Breen.” That’s it – no other references to the rest of the (limited) cast and crew, communicating to us that this is a vanity project – real estate agent-turned-actor/director Neil Breen’s baby all the way. Lengthy shots of the American southwest evoke a Manos/Birdemic vibe, and then we meet Neil Breen himself, playing “Aaron Brand”, a super secret agent with big time hacking skills (first in his class in college in computer science, fighter pilot with lots of medals, the top agent of the “Defense Intelligent Agency”, able to control any government computer or satellite from a laptop and some cell phones in the desert). When he is recounting his life story through voice-over (pretty much the entire length of the film), you could swear he was reading his resume. But the government assassinated his fiancée and so now he works as a terrorist. What a guy! Folks, watching Double Down, I was truly floored. I had seen some trailers for Breen’s “movies” but nothing prepared me for what I was to experience. After I watched it I learned an important lesson – never say out loud that a particular film is the worst movie ever made. Something else will soon surface that will make you eat those words.
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Nick Fury, Agent of Shield – David Hasselhoff

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Nick Fury: Agent of Shield (1998)
Directed by: Rod Hardy
Starring: David Hasselhoff, Lisa Rinna, Sandra Hess, Neil Roberts, Garry Chalk, Tracy Waterhouse, Tom McBeath, Ron Canada, Bill Croft, Roger R. Cross, Peter Haworth, Scott Heindl, Adrian G. Griffiths, Campbell Lane

David Hasselhoff - Nick Fury - Agent of Shield

Eye am very excited to be working for Shield again!


I don’t read comics. Never read Superman, Batman, X-Men, or Spiderman. The Avengers? Don’t know a thing about them other than what the recent crop of Marvel movies tells me. In those movies there’s a guy called Nick Fury, Agent of Shield. The mysterious eye-patch wearing operative, played by Samuel L. Jackson, kinda hangs out in the shadows, running a secret government organization and keeping watch over our heroes. Jackson as Fury was given a much bigger part in The Avengers, but did you know that before the recent Marvel stuff there already was a movie made about Nick Fury, Agent of Shield? And in that movie, the part of Nick Fury was played by David Hasselhoff, former driver of a sentient black Pontiac Trans Am, father figure to hot lifeguard babes, and darling of Germans everywhere?
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Manos: The Hands of Fate – Diane Mahree, Tom Neyman

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Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)
Directed by: Harold P. Warren
Starring: Tom Neyman, John Reynolds, Diane Mahree, Harold P. Warren, Stephanie Nielson, Sherry Proctor, Robin Redd, Jackey Neyman, Bernie Rosenblum, Joyce Molleur, William Bryan Jennings

Torgo and the Master in Manos: The Hands of Fate

Strange way to start off the Olympics…


Manos: The Hands of Fate is a bizarre film that almost defies the idea of “good” or “bad”, like the time Roger Ebert refused to give a rating to John Waters’ Pink Flamingos, likening it to a geek show where “stars simply seem not to apply. It should be considered not as a film but as a fact, or perhaps as an object.” That’s exactly what Manos is – some kind of object, a horrible-but-fascinating object, looking like a movie, but in reality being closer to an anti-movie. Give it any amount of stars you wish, or don’t give any – like Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space, they are all accurate. You see, once upon a time, in 1966, a fertilizer salesman named Harold P. Warren made a bet with screenwriter Stirling Silliphant that he could make a successful horror movie on a very low budget. As Warren had no experience in filmmaking, this was a very bad bet. However, his experience with fertilizer came in handy, since he managed to deliver the cinematic equivalent. Manos: The Hands of Fate is so inept, weird, and surreal, it’s like the movie was made by desert freaks on some kind of weekend bender. If the Manson family filmed a movie at Spahn Ranch, it might look something like Manos.
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