In the early 2000s just as nostalgia for the 1980s was really ramping up, VH1 launched I Love the 80’s, a series that featured musicians, comedians, and actors talking about relics from the 80s like Rubik’s Cubes, Alf, and Duran Duran. Each topic was presented as a short stand-alone segment featuring comments and memories from a handful of talking heads before moving on to the next one. Like blocks of music videos, there was no overall overarching narrative for each episode — topics were presented and discussed briefly before moving on to the next one.

A better name for 2021’s IN SEARCH OF TOMORROW might have been I Love the 80s: Sci-Fi Movie Edition. With a run time of just over five hours and a tagline claiming “The Definitive ’80s Sci-Fi Documentary,” I was curious as to how the documentary’s content would be organized and presented and what exactly would be covered. Five hours is a long time.

The scope of the documentary is sci-fi movies from the 1980s, and while not every single science fiction movie from the decade is touched upon, an awful lot of them are. Movies are discussed chronologically (except when they aren’t) and segments are broken up into bite-sized (niblet-sized?) portions. The documentary doesn’t explain how the content is about to be presented so the beginning felt a little disjointed until I caught on and realized this film is exactly like I Love the 80s. Films are introduced, various people discuss and comment on them for approximately three minutes, and then it’s on to the next one — rinse and repeat until the end of 1989 is reached, five hours later.

For the most part movies are presented in a chronological fashion, year by year, but occasionally a topic will be presented — “world building,” for example — and the program will touch on a series of movies in that category. I just search Google for the top 10 sci-fi films of 1984 and of those, six (The Terminator, Ghostbusters, Dune, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, The Last Starfighter, and The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonsai Across the 8th Dimension) are all specifically covered, while two of the others (Repo Man and Night of the Comet) are mentioned in other groupings. The final two films, Starman and The Ice Pirates, are not discussed directly but do appear in montages.

The talking heads featured throughout the film vary. In the three-minute segment covering Howard the Duck we get input from six people: Ed Gale (the actor who portrayed Howard), Craig Miller (publicist for Lucasfilm, Ltd), Angelique Roche (host of Syfy Wire), Julie Brown (writer/actor of Earth Girls are Easy), Tim Cogshell (NPR film critic) and Phil Tippet (special effects/stop-motion supervisor). As with each segment, comments are presented along with clips from the film and behind the scenes footage. While everyone who appears in the documentary is knowledgeable, several of them were unknown to me, and few megastars appear. For E.T. we get Dee Wallace; representing Aliens are actors like Mark Rolston and Carrie Henn (who played the young girl, Newt), but no Sigourney Weaver. In between names like Billy Dee Williams and Gene Simmons are people like Ian Nathan (editor of Empire Magazine), John Knoll (ILM), Craig Safan (composer), and Gray Scott (“Futurist”).

Big films like Back to the Future, Predator, and E.T. get lengthier coverage than most, but no single film takes over the documentary’s focus for long. If anything, I was surprised at how much screen time films like Explorers, Flight of the Navigator, and Spacehunter got. I think of all the movies featured there were only two I hadn’t seen: Miracle Mile, and Akira.

Although the five-hour runtime of IN SEARCH OF TOMORROW may seem intimidating, the style of presentation makes it convenient to pause the film and consume the content over multiple viewings. I learned a few things from watching the film, and even more than that, kept a running tab of movies I want to revisit in the near future because of it. Highly recommended for fans of 80s sci-fi.

Throughout the years I’ve watched hundreds of UFO, cryptid, and supernatural documentaries, and spent the majority of my life hoping to personally see something that would convince me any of those things existed. I have stood at the bow of a ship traveling through the Bermuda Triangle, scanning the water something, goddammit anything, to persuade me into believing all those stories I read as a child were true. I’ve been to Mt. Rainier, Gulf Breeze, Roswell, and half a dozen other UFO hotspots in hopes of catching any hint of a flying saucer zooming across the sky. Not a one. I even bought a book full of magical spells at a garage sale as a young teen and hid in my closet reading supposedly ancient gobbledygook in an attempt to summon demons to smite my enemies. None materialized.

It turns out the secret to experiencing the supernatural is forming a ghost hunting crew, buying some night vision cameras, and making a documentary. While despite my begging they’ve never shown themselves to me, it appears ghosts can’t resist coming out of the woodwork to make their on-screen debut.

Steve T. Shippy directed, produced, and edited the documentary A HAUNTING ON DICE ROAD – THE HELL HOUSE. Not only is Shippy a filmmaker but also a paranormal investigator and former professional rapper known as “Prozac.” If that’s not a combination of skills you can trust, I don’t know what is.

The titular house resides on Dice Road in Saginaw, Michigan and was originally owned by the Pomeraning family. According to the film, the house is one of the most haunted places in America, which I find odd as every single Google search I could come up with lead back to this documentary. The strange activity began back in the 1970s, when the original owners reported “loud knocks on the walls” to the local police dozens of times. Despite multiple stakeouts, investigations, and the fact that the family had two teenage boys, no one was ever able to determine the source of the knocks. Current and former residents, neighbors, police, firement, and other random people line up in front of the camera to give their first hand knowledge of the case. Based on the number of people interviewed and the events witnessed this house should be as famous as “that one” in Amityville.

The interview footage is intercut with Shippy and his ghost hunting pals snooping around the property in the dark. Half the footage is of Shippy alone, recalling spooky tales about the home. The other half is of all three stooges performing their own ghost investigation with random handheld gadgets that randomly flash and light up. It’s not important to know what these things do or how they work. All you need to know is that flashing lights means there’s a g-g-g-ghost! Half a dozen times an entity (read: shadow) passes by in the background. If you miss it, don’t worry as each time it happens the film rewinds, magnifies the grainy footage up 10x, and plays it again in slow motion. All of Shippy’s footage is filmed at night, either by flashlight or with night vision cameras. Incredibly, Shippy and his team were able to capture more paranormal activity on camera than every professional paranormal investigator combined has caught on film in the history of paranormal investigations. On cue, walls knock, shadows appear, doors creak open, radios turn on, and so on.

An hour into the film during one of these segments, Shippy breaks out the ol’ Ouija board and starts asking it questions in the dark. “Who are you!” he demands to know, with both hands controlling the planchette. The former rapper doesn’t get a reaction until he asks if the spirit is upset they are there, at which point the planchette doesn’t merely lead Shippy’s hands across the board but literally zips out from under his hands completely and slides across the board under its own power, stopping dramatically on the word YES. And it’s at that moment that viewers have to make a decision. Either MC Prozac and his gaggle of goons have just captured undeniable evidence of paranormal activity, or this scene is fake and everything in the entire “documentary” becomes suspect. Based on my use of quotation marks around the word “documentary,” you can guess which side of the pearly gates I land on.

The investigation footage goes off the rails when handheld “PK readers” lead the researchers to a jar buried underneath the house containing evidence of a witch’s curse. The longer the investigation goes on the more this documentary begins to feel like a knock-off version of the Blair Witch Project. The fact that I can’t find a single reference to this case online that doesn’t also mention this film makes me think that this entire thing was made up, or if not, extremely exaggerated. I don’t have a PK meter or an EMP scanner, but I was born with a BS detector and it was going off the entire time.

Mildly entertaining as a haunted house story, completely unbelievable as a documentary.

There are multiple reasons why most of us have never robbed a bank: there’s a pretty good chance of getting caught, prison isn’t a wonderful place to spent 10-20 years, and, occasionally, bank robbers get shot and killed in the process. But, turns out, that wasn’t always the case, and specifically not in Canada.

In the 1980s, Gilbert Galvan Jr escaped from a medium security prison in Michigan, high-tailed it into Canada, and eventually decided to try his hand at robbing banks there. What he quickly learned was that bank employees and security guards in Canada are much more polite than in the states. Tellers refrained from placing dye packs or pressing silent alarm buttons simply because Galvan asked them nicely not to, while security guards were more concerned with making sure no one got hurt than stopping a robbery in progress.

BANDIT is based on Galvan’s biography, who in the 1980s held the record for the most consecutive bank and jewelry store robberies (59) until he was caught by a task force dedicated to finding him. Galvan avoided capture for so long by wearing elaborate disguises and flying back and forth across the country to rob banks far away from where he lived, giving him the real life nickname “the Flying Bandit.”

Josh Duhamel plays Galvan perfectly, keeping the anti-hero likeable. The chemistry between Duhamel and his girlfriend/wife Andrea (Elisha Cuthbert) is palpable, as her personal morals clash with the man she has fallen in love with. Nestor Carbonell (Richard from “Lost”) plays John Snydes, head of the task force dedicated to taking down the bandit, while the local underworld kingpin is portrayed by Mel Gibson, the man bankrolling Galvan’s adventures.

At two hours the film drags a bit in places and there’s not as much action as one might think in a film about bank heists, but it’s an entertaining watch that’ll have viewers rooting for the bad guys… even the nice ones.

Although Galvan reportedly netted more than $2 million from his string of robberies, police were never able to track down any of the money, which Galvan claims to have spent.

Earlier this week, Peacock (NBC Universal’s streaming service) announced the cancellation of 2021’s Punky Brewster reboot after a single season. My reaction (and apparently, millions others) was… “there was a Punky Brewster reboot?”

One of Peacock’s best kept secrets was 2021’s PUNKY BREWSTER, a reboot of the original show that aired in the mid-80s. Soleil Moon Frye returns as Punky Brewster, now a middle-aged single parent of three. Living in the same Chicago apartment she grew up in, Punky is raising her 15YO biological daughter Hannah along with her two adopted sons, Diego (14) and Daniel (11). By the end of the first episode, Punky has also taken in Izzy, a seven-year-old who reminds Punky of her childhood self. Also along for the ride is Punky’s ex-husband Travis (Freddie Prinze Jr.), who despite being separated comes and goes freely to and from the apartment. Also back is Punky’s childhood friend Cherie (Cherie Johnson), who now manages Fenster Hall, Punky’s childhood shelter.

PUNKY BREWSTER is an interesting mix of new and old. Many of the storylines are progressive. In one episode, Cherie and her girlfriend Lauren propose to one another; in another, Diego defends Daniel in a fight after he goes to school with painted fingernails while wearing a sarong. That being said, the show has a very 80s sitcom feel, right down to the laugh track. Issues are introduced, lessons are learned, and everything is neatly wrapped up by the end of the episode.

Unlike the original show which occasionally dipped into darker subject matters (remember the time Punky gave Cherie CPR after she hid inside an abandoned refrigerator during a game of hide-and-seek?), the 2021 reboot keeps things pretty light. Most of the episodes revolve around the family unit’s relationships — Punky’s relationship with her ex-husband, Izzy’s relationship with her new family, Cherie’s relationship with her girlfriend, and Hannah’s relationships with boys. There’s also a series overarching storyline regarding Punky and her birthmother, who makes contact with Punky for the first time.

For those who grew up watching the original, PUNKY BREWSTER offers plenty of callbacks. In one episode, the treehouse Punky and her friends built in the original series is repaired and updated. In another, Punky and Cherie run into their childhood friend, Margaux. During an 80s block party, Izzy dresses up as the original Punky Brewster: bandannas, mismatched Converse, and all. Punky keeps a photo of Henry hanging on her apartment wall, which she occasionally speaks to. In her car, Punky cranks the 80s tune “Maniac,” which calls back to the first episode of the original series. And of course, you’ll get to hear catch phrases like “Holy Macanoli!” and “Punky Power!” more than once.

The series is not perfect. Most confusing is Punky’s relationship with her ex-husband Travis, who sometimes knocks when he enters the apartment and sometimes doesn’t. It is alluded to that the couple split due to Travis’s commitment to his gigging rock band, but throughout the series he watches the kids and even turns out a tour to stay at home, which begs the question why he didn’t do that before divorce papers were filed. We are presented with a divorced couple who constantly hang out, occasionally kiss, and no doubt would have been reunited by the end of season two. Also problematic were the episode where Izzy gets to meet her WWE heroes and the episode where Punky teaches the kids a lesson by making them sleep in her brand new shiny SUV. Both episodes push product placement to the point that they almost felt like commercials. The SUV episode features lingering shots that look like advertisements.

The problem with most rebooted sitcoms is that they start with the question “what are those kids you grew up watching up to now?” and don’t move forward from there. In Fuller House, and the Saved by the Bell reboot, and to a certain extent The Connors, that’s all we get. But in a few cases, like Netflix’s Cobra Kai, the story continues.

PUNKY BREWSTER has that kid-friendly Dis-Com feel. I would have loved a second season in which Punky stepped out of the house and we got to see what Chicago was really like for the kid-turned-adult still full of Punky Power. I enjoyed the first season and was looking forward to the show moving forward — not in a gritty fashion, but a slightly more adult one. Maybe though, in this single season, we saw what we needed to see — that Punky Brewster and her clan turned out okay.

Jennifer is a private school student who, after being merciless tormented by her classmates, uses her psychokinetic powers to exact revenge. If this sounds similar to Stephen King’s Carrie, which was released two years prior… it is. It’s exactly that movie.

The bullies in Jennifer are a group of snotty prep girls who torment Jennifer because she’s an outsider, what with her southern drawl and all. The leader of the prissy pack is Sandra, the daughter of a senator and a particularly cruel girl who derives great enjoyment from bullying Jennifer when she’s around, and everyone else when she is not. Despite being a less than ideal student, Sandra comes from money, and money buys a lot of favors in this prep school.

Jennifer’s complaints about the bullies to her father Luke fall on deaf ears. Luke’s a crazy old religious zealot after all who believes his daughter was blessed with the ability to talk to, control, and materialize snakes.

(She can.)

Revenge movies don’t work unless the entire audience agrees that the mean kids deserve what’s coming to them, and Jennifer goes out of its way to make sure they won’t sympathize with anyone except Jennifer (and eventually one lone defector, Jane). Sandra and her squad aren’t just cruel to Jennifer. During swim class, Sandra straight up tries to drown her. Later that night, Sandra and her goons hide Jennifer’s clothes up a ladder and take naked pictures of her. In another one of Sandra’s schemes, she kills her own cat and hangs it Jennifer’s school locker in an attempt to frame her. When one of the girls in Sandra’s posse (Jane) starts to fall out of line, she tells her boyfriend to rape her. In the final act of the film, Sandra and her friends kidnap Jennifer, throw her in the trunk of a car and take her to the roof of a parking garage to torment her.

Well, the joke’s on them, because — ha, ha — Jennifer can not only control snakes but has the power to materialize them out of thin air. In a manic and psychedelic sequence, Jennifer summons a multitude of venomous snakes that proceed to bite and strangle every last one of those prep school jerks. I didn’t go into Jennifer thinking I would be rooting for poisonous snakes to kill a bunch of teenagers, but that’s where I found myself. The following day when the headmaster tries to pin the whole thing on Jennifer, MORE SNAKES.

Sometimes when a horror movie ends, I like to imagine what the following day might be like. Even the dullest detective is going to be asking how a dozen people in two different locations suffered snake bites, and if the school thought they were getting pressure from a senator before, wait until someone calls to tell him his daughter wrecked her car, burned to death, and was strangled by a snake all at the same time. The odds of any of those things happening seem slim; all three happening simultaneously seem astronomical.

It’s difficult to find a deeper meaning in this film. Luke, Jennifer’s crazy old father, knew Jennifer had the power all along. The one teacher who stuck up for Jennifer is run off. At least a dozen people have fresh holes in their necks. If Jennifer has any lesson at all, it’s beware of who you pick on, because they might be a crazy psychokinetic who can create and control snakes.

After Robert Kraft is appointed as the chairman of a committee that manages the local cemetery, he accidentally places two black pins (used to denote a purchased grave has been “filled”) on a large map of the cemetery’s plots. Hours later, Kraft learns that the two people whos plots he placed pins on died in an automobile accident. In an attempt to prove the deaths were a coincidence, another black pin is placed marking another purchased plot. Within 24 hours, that person has also died. As Kraft struggles to determine whether the deadly power lies in his hands, the pins, or the map itself, the board of directors ask him to place black pins on all their reserved plots on the map. They soon wish they hadn’t.

Convinced the deaths have a more earthly explanation, the local police department asks Kraft to place a black pin on a man’s plot who is known to be out of the country. The following day when a telegram arrives announcing the man’s death, the mystery deepens as Kraft blames himself for the deaths.

While I Bury the Living was billed as a horror film, it’s really a murder mystery that itself feels like an episode of the Twilight Zone. To maintain suspense viewers don’t actually see any of the deaths and so there aren’t any special effects to speak of, save for the map itself which appears to grow, wobble, and glow at different times throughout the film.

With roughly half a dozen major characters to choose from, what might have fooled audiences 60+ years ago is pretty obvious today. Still, the director did a good job of keeping the audience guessing as to who (or what) is behind the murders up until the film’s climax. With a run time of 77 minutes, most the fat has been already been trimmed, save for an unimportant side plot involving Kraft and his fiancé. Fans of gore can safely skip this one, but anyone looking for a morbid mystery might enjoy its twisty plot.

Hell High rode in on the tail end of the 80s slasher film wave and got lumped in with them, although it’s really more of a revenge flick. The film opens with a six-year-old child causing the death of two horny hooligans. One of the hooligans was attempting to date rape the other which makes it tough to feel too sorry when he is killed moments later, a trend that runs throughout the film.

After an eighteen year jump, we arrive in modern times. The little girl, Brooke Storm, is revealed to be a high school teacher, still occasionally suffering from the traumatic childhood event. Several of her students are creeps who like to peer into people’s homes, pull mean-spirited pranks, and display a general disdain for authority. The teens continue to push things too far (one of them molests the teacher in bed after she accidentally takes one too many Quaaludes) until the teacher snaps and turns on them. Very quickly, the hunters become the hunted.

The first hour of the film is a slow burn that builds up to the final twenty minutes. The kids don’t know their teacher is after them until it’s too late. The teens are separated in a ways that make sense, which make them — or at least most of them — easy pickings. The film wraps things up in a satisfying way; there’s a twist that mostly works, but isn’t strong enough to make it a true classic.

The film’s biggest problem isn’t the special effects or back-loaded action; it’s that there’s nobody viewers can relate to or root for. The film’s conflict lies between a group of despicable teens and a murderous, psychotic teacher. Which one’s the good guy?

Fans of modern horror may find the first two thirds of the film too slowly paced, but the third act makes up for it. Worth a watch if only as a reminder that students should be nice to their teachers.

In Jaws, it took an entire town — and ultimately, three men — to bring down a great white shark. In Ghost Shark, two rednecks manage to drop one with a 357 Magnum, a crossbow, a grenade, and a bottle of hot sauce. Unlike Jaws, viewers of Ghost Shark won’t have to wait for the sequel for the shark to return. In fact, the shark has already returned from the grave and claimed its first victim before the opening credits.

With a new thirst for blood, Ghost Shark begins feasting in Smallport. Unlike Jaws, it turns out ghost sharks can pretty much materialize wherever there’s water, including, but not limited to: swimming pools, Slip and Slides, fire hydrants, car washes, rain puddles, and in one very unfortunate incident, inside a guy who just happened to be drinking a glass of water.

The only person is town who seems to know what’s going on is Finch, the mysterious lighthouse keeper played by Richard “Bull from Night Court” Moll. It seems there’s a cave near the lighthouse that works a little bit like Pet Sematary, and unfortunately that’s where the great white’s corpse ended up. It also happens to be where Finch murdered his wife, but that’s another story. While the adults in the film run around disbelieving everything they’re told, it’s the kids who formulate and execute the winning plan.

The acting in Ghost Shark isn’t terrible as far as SyFy movies go, but any lack in urgency by the largely teenage cast is made up for by Moll, who yells and slams his fists down enough for everyone. For the most part the film is played seriously, although a few lines delivered a genuine chuckle. (“We don’t need to chum. We are the chum!”)

While the movie’s premise is obviously ridiculous, it’s played pretty much straight throughout the film. The special effects are obvious CGI but surprisingly good, and the kills, and there are many, are better than you would expect from cable fodder. There aren’t any huge plot holes, and it keeps things moving along. It’s no Jaws and it’s not trying to be, but it is a fun 90 minute romp with a few jumps and a few laughs hidden in the belly of the beast.

Before I talk about Frankenstein 1970, let me talk about what Frankenstein 1970 is not. For starters, Frankenstein 1970 was not released in 1970; it was made in 1958. And the film doesn’t appear to actually take place in 1970. The sets look like they’re leftover from a haunted house Three Stooges film. Finally, despite starring Boris Karloff, Frankenstein 1970 doesn’t feature anything that looks like Frankenstein’s monster.

It does, however, feature a mummy with a bucket on its head.

Frankenstein 1970 is a sequel to the original Frankenstein of sorts, although the setup is so similar to the original that it could almost be considered a reboot. Baron Frankenstein (Karloff), the last living relative of Dr. Frankenstein, is determined to follow in his family’s footsteps and animate the dead. Unfortunately castle living is expensive, and although he has the vision, he’s missing the funds. Lucky for him, a documentary film crew interested in the Frankenstein legacy arrives and agrees, in exchange for rights to film at the castle, to provide Baron Frankenstein with enough money to buy his own atomic reactor — the irony being that as the film crew wanders around filming the castle, Baron von Frankenstein is in the basement working on his experiment.

Baron, like his ancestor, successfully animates his creation, but accidentally drops the only pair of eyeballs he has on hand. Because of this, his creation spends much of the movie stumbling around with a bucket over his head. Don’t worry; the monster eventually obtains a pair of eyeballs the hard way.

If I had to guess, I’d say the director was banking on two names (Frankenstein and Boris Karloff) to sell this film, and shooting in black and white must have been an attempt to draw comparisons to the original. Unfortunately, Karloff plays Frankenstein (Baron, not the monster) a little too lightly. His performance is all over the place, and his menacing presence as the monster is sorely missed here (a guy hidden by bandages and a bucket is no replacement). Perhaps the most confusing part of the film is Frankenstein’s motivation. We never learn why he wants to animate a corpse, or what his plans are if he succeeds.

Between the atomic reactor and a lethal radiation cloud, Frankenstein 1970 is unmistakably a film of the 1950s, when such topics were popular. As a whole the film isn’t terrible and there are some interesting ideas, even if they aren’t fully fleshed out. That being said, if you haven’t watched the original in a while, watch that instead.

Evil Toons opens as a four-woman cleaning crew is dropped off at suburban home for a weekend-long deep cleaning engagement. The house was the site of multiple murders and is rumored to be haunted, but the women don’t mind staying there alone and unarmed because I don’t know why. Should you have any doubts as to what kind of cleaning crew this is, the four actresses are former adult film star and December 1982 Penthouse Pet of the Month Monique Gabrielle, AVN Hall of Fame member Madison Stone, fellow AVN Hall of Fame member and former Essex and Vivid film star Barbara Dare (billed here as Stacey Nix), and Suzanne Ager, whose single line biography reads “ex-girlfriend of director Fred Olen Ray.”

Shortly after the crew settles in (fighting the urge to immediately change into lingerie), a strange old man (played by strange old man David Carradine) drops off a copy of the Necronomicon. Later that evening (after one of the girls shows the others her sweet strip tease moves, as women often do), one of the ladies decides to read aloud from the ancient book (never a good idea) and ends up summoning a demon right out of the book. The demon turns out to be a cartoon wolf that seems too comical to be deadly, but that turns out not to be the case. And when I say “cartoon,” I’m being literal — this is a two-dimensional, hand drawn cartoon wolf. The wolf has his way with one of the women before killing and possessing her, who in turn attempts to kill all of the other girls, because that’s just what adult film stars who have been possessed by Satanic cartoon wolves do.

The cast (rounded out by Arte Johnson and Dick Miller) never take the material too seriously, and neither should viewers. The actors frequently call out horror movie tropes and make self-aware jokes to the audience. Aside from less than 30 seconds worth of hand-drawn animation, the film’s most expensive prop was a pair of plastic fangs (I’m guessing the ladies brought their own wardrobe). Parts of the film made me uncomfortable (the animated wolf is a little rapey, and David Carradine hanging himself was a bit on the nose), but for the most part this is horror comedy by adults for adults.

Directed by Fred Olen Ray, the man who brought you Beverly Hills Vamp, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Bad Girls from Mars, and Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold.