The Indie Film Cafe Movie Reviews!

Psssst…hay you…YOU!!! Wanna see what a $250.00 SOV film looks like? Of course you do! ’cause we here at Indie Film Cafe has FOUND one!!! Its called Phobe: the Xenophobe Experiment, and its, ummmm…well you just has to wonder where that $250 bucks ended up going to in the end. I mean, you can gets a cheap Ghillie Suit at Walmart fer less than 20 bucks these days. Special FX?? Nope, not there either, apparently. Pulse-pounding, hot mullet-dripping action?? Welll……no. Check out the latest episode of IFC, with Moody, the Moocow, and special guest Gaz Morgan, and hear us moan and groan our way through this modern stinky Sc-Fi classic that has to be seen to be believed!!! :=8D

So here we go with the plottage: mullet-haired chick finds space ball (actually, it’s a rolled up ball of tin foil, but who cares?); mullet-haired space dude (named DAPP!!!) comes to retrieve it – turns out tin foil ball is actually a SPACE EGG that will hatch a PHOBE!! And what is a phobe, pray tell? Well, its a ghillie-suited critter who runs amuck and causes mischief, clearly because it lacks a kewl mullet of its very own, and space dude has to shoots it with a SPACE RPG and make it go SPACE BOOM before it ghullies all over what looks like the smoldering remains of rural SE Ohio.

This is what happens, folks, when a local public access TV station has free equipment to lend out to folks with ideas, clearly back before digital cameras leveled the playing field and just about anyone cud make a moovie, which is why this looks so cheap and crappy. But hay, these folks made a full length feature film, with a lil spit and duct tape and aluminum foil, and a trip or two to the local Walmart clearance isle, and here it is! Ok, its moore than a little slow, and it is painfully amateurish at times, but its also kind of fun if you sits back and just kind of let the story tell itself. But wow, the mullets, or as they are known by our wonderful and odd cousins up north in Canada, “Hockey Hair”, yeah they can be a bit…distracting.

So, this mooovie stars pretty much no one; I think they were actually working at said local Walmart. Erica Benedikty is our plucky Canadian writer and Director – she actually has made a couple shorts and Canadian TV flicks, and apparently Phobe was a script that had been polished, like a pearl in an oyster shell, from back in her college days, just WAITING for the 250 bucks (Canadian!) to drop out of the sky. I mean, there are worse dreams to come to life, folks, you go Canada with your glorious hockey hair-ed self! My favorite thing about Erica is her quote on IMDB: “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it in post”. The words of a true indie mastercrafts-person! It would seem this flick was a big hit in Canada – go figure! Now Severin Films has picked it up for YOU to buy!!! :=8D

Oh Canada – its pretty stinky stuff, but we’ve seen worse. The MooCow gave it a 9, Moody gave it an 8, and Gaz went with a 7, giving Phobe a total Stink Score of 24, and that’s a Stinky Average of 8.0, ranking it on the Ladder of Stink right next to 10 udder stinkers, including the likes of Cemetery High, Robot VS the Aztec Mummy, and Snow Shark. 

We gots trailerage right HERE. It is on Youtube and Tubi for free, you cheapskates! You can buy the DVD right from Severin Films itself, or Target, FYE, Barnes & Noble, Oldies.com, Walmart, and yes its even at Amazon and on Prime for streaming – good god its everywhere! No Blu ray as of yet, but when it comes out (it seems inevitable) we will let you know! You can also find the DVD second hoof at Ebay and Odds & Sods. Amazon also has an interesting 8 x 12 tin poster for the moovie that you know you just wants! And Cinematerial.com has TWO digital posters you can download! No mugs or tee shirts, unfortunately. Entertainment Weekly has a fun, interesting article on this flack, if yer into all the deets, and its been featured on the AV Club, the Daily Grindhouse, Triskaidekafiles, and Screen Anarchy, and you can check out an interesting interview with the filmmakers at Movie Vigilante! 

Uh boy here we go again – YES, it is yet an-udder wackadoodle chop-socky/ninja/vampire mash-up from the the one and only Godfrey Ho, and this frisky little gobbler is full of…well, something. Check out the Latest Episode of Indie Film Cafe, in which Moody, the MooCow, and special guest co-host JoLynn try to make sense of this weird, over-the-top hopping-vampire moovie madness! GOOD LUCK!!! :=8O

Soooo…there is this group of young Asian girls who work for…someone, they have some friends, there is this red ninja, a black ninja, a witch who resurrects some hopping vampires, and somewhere along the line these disparate elements cowbine in what can only be construed as some kind of black devil magic brew of a film, in which several separate moovies are ground together to make hash…errr, a Godfrey Ho film. same thing. Down Among the “Z” Movies says it best:

“I’m planning a post with 20-25 more Godfrey Ho films, which are largely interchangeable – he takes two unrelated films and splices them together to make a new, often incomprehensible, one.”

Behold the Godfrey Ho experience. You can always tell his ninja moovies from someone else’s because in the Godfrey Ho world dark shadowy secret invisible assassin ninjas generally run around in broad daylight wearing bright neon costumes, and usually with a headband with the word NINJA sewn on, sort of what you might find in a dime store back in the 80’s.

The ninja/hopping vampire flick is liberally spliced into the girls and the hotel industry flick, making it so that it appears the Red Ninja is trying to stop the black ninja from using his hoard of evil hopping vampires from taking over the Hong Kong hotel industry, because…reasons. Honestly, I would love to go to a Hopping Chinese Vampire hotel – BOOOO Red Ninja, yer spoiling our fun!

Among the madness is one of my favorite chop-socky scenes of all time, when Red Ninja in the form of blonde cutie Deborah Grant is attacked while she suns on her beach blanket from below by a sand-dwelling hopping vampire, you know as you do…so weird!
And if you love the oddball Asian hopping vampire, known as Jiangshi, like we do, well this is one of those moovies that has ’em in spades – and they really seem to be enjoying themselves too!

But the best jaw-dropping scene of them all is when Deborah Grant survives an assassination attempt when someone tries to drop a pig on top of her from a roof, which then turns into a hopping vampire, which sadly hops away after it fails its task. Simply amazing!

Well, the votes are in, and yeahhhhh, this flick is the stuff that 10’s are made from – and both Moody and the MooCow simply had to award 10’s to this ridiculous Godfrey Ho nonsense; JoLynn has a warm spot in here heart for hopping vampires (don’t we all?), and went with a 9.5, giving VRVTNQ Stink Total of 29.5, which is a Stinky Average of 9.8! On the Ladder of Stink this flick is tied with Geteven and Curse of the Mummy Cat, a couple of real stinkers that juuuuust missed Stinky Heaven! Oh so close!

Well, I wish I had a trailer for you, but Godfrey Ho doesn’t really do trailers, they cost money! But someone did upload it to Youtube, so if you wanna check it out for free, there you go. It is floating around Prime too. And it has been saved on the Internet Archive, as it should be. As for physical media, this is one of those very difficult moovies to find – BUT, you can find it through folks like DVD Lady, and you can find the VHS tape on LastDoDo. Udderwise u have to go overseas for places like ZDDVM to find copies, and hope they work on your American machines. There IS a DVD combo that came out that you can find every now and then on EBAY which pairs this moovie along with Dracula The Love Story To Die For – grab it if you can find it! It also pops up on Amazon every now and then too. I also found it on Deep Discount.com and FYE! Sorry, no real schwag for this flick, but it is discussed at B&S About Movies and SoGoodReviews.com.

Hey everybody… Jonathan Moody here for the last time this week. I’m excited to chat about this crazy movie. So it all came about when I asked Leila Toba if she would like to guest host this episode. She had been on a few episodes already so I assumed she would be excited for this one. And she was. She decided she would pick the 1993 Roger Corman-produced Killer Dino flick, “Carnosaur”… and she brought a long two of her friends: Sean and Brandon.

Here is the plot from IMDB: 

A genetically manipulated and very hungry dinosaur escapes from a bioengineering company and wreaks havoc on the local desert town. A security guard and a girl environmentalist try to stop both it and the company’s doomsday bioweapon.

So pretty much that’s the story of Carnosaur. At the time it was made there was another little movie being made about killer dinosaurs… Jurassic Park. But it’s not like anyone has ever heard of that movie, right? Wait… you mean it was a big success and spawned lots of sequels. Well what about Carnosaur? 2 Sequels to it. Okay not bad for a little Dino movie.

As I said earlier it was produced by Roger Corman so you can expect some cheesiness and fun to it. It was also directed by two directors: Adam Simon who directed Brain Dead, Body Chemistry 2, and The American Nightmare, among others; and Darren Patrick Maloney who directed this as well as Andromina: The Pleasure Planet. It was written by Adam Simon and John Brosnan who also wrote Beyond Bedlam and Proteus. 

The movie starred some pretty cool actors. Diane Ladd played Dr. Jane Tiptree. Diane has been in a lot of great movies including Chinatown, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Playing the infamous Flo), Wild at Heart, among many others. To have Diane in a Roger Corman produced film is fantastic. Raphael Sbarge played Doc . He was in the show Once Upon a Time and in Risky Business, among others. 

There’s also Harrison Page who played Sheriff Fowler. He was in Lionheart (Which we will do on Indie Film Cafe at some point), The TV Series Sledgehammer, Quantum Leap, and many more. And there’s also Jennifer Runyon as Ann “Thrush”… Jennifer was in Ghostbusters (1984), Up The Creek, The In Crowd (1988), and many more. Not to mention this also had Clint Howard and Ned Bellamy in it. Clint is known for working on Corman productions including the 1979 film, “Rock N Roll High School”, which we just did for Patreon Only. 

The only problem with this episode was that it had too many hiccups with zoom. There were times where Leila and her friends could not be heard all the way and sometimes when I even had to ask if they could repeat certain stuff. After a while I just kind of went with it. That’s the issue with zoom and internet issues all the time.

As for the movie to me it was pretty bad. I mean not a stinker, stinker-bad, but pretty damn bad. Especially with a company like Corman’s company: you would think that it could have been a bit better of a movie. The carnosaur looked silly but I guess that’s what’s to be expected in a movie like this. I’m so glad it did well enough where it made sequels tho. I have not seen the sequels. In fact this was the first time I watched this movie even. 

Anyhow that’s pretty much it for this write up… The scores are now in: Since we had 4 people and only 3 people can score sadly Brandon had to sit out. Leila loved it a lot better and didn’t find it as stinky as the rest of us, giving it a 5. I gave it an 8.5, and Sean gave it and 8.5, making the Total Stink Score of 22, which is a Stinky Average of 7.3. This puts it on the Ladder of Stink next to Horror of the Blood Monsters, the only other 22 we have. Interesting.

Well that’s it for now – and that’s the last special guest one we did. From now on it’s just Jonathan or Paul doing the episodes. It was a thoughtful idea but I don’t think it worked as well. 3 episodes a month is clearly enough for us. Anyhoo… The Moo Cow is going to take over and tell you awesome people how you can find this movie and where and all that fun stuff. Take it away… Moo Cow…

Well, you can find the trailer HERE. Its pretty mooch all over the internet at this point, for free including YouTube, the Internet Archive, and its on Prime. For the DVD and VHS (yeah, it’s that old…) hie thee hither to Amazon. Re-sale market includes Alibris and Ebay. Ebay also has the Carnosaur Collection 3DVD box set, but it ain’t cheeeep. Its on Amazon too, but also pricy. But that’s for 3 stinky dino flicks, so that’s where the moolah goes. Cinematerial.com has a poster of the Carnosaur 1 and 2 posters smooshed together, which is a thing; udderwise there ain’t mooch schwag for this film out there. Plenty of dino stuff, but nut an honey for this moovie, or the franchise, I guess its kind of forgotten. Siskel and Ebert reviewed it back in the day, and it appears on Brandon’s Cult Movie Reviews. The Schlock Pit also does a write up worth checking out. JoBlo Horror Originals cowsiders it a Mockbuster, but I dunno about that, I just think its a stinky dino moovie :=8/

Hey everybody and welcome back to the Indie Film Cafe Reviews. Jonathan Moody here to talk about another indie flick we reviewed here on the show – this time the sweet and caring Lenore is back with us. If you remember Lenore came in at Season 2 and stayed for a long while. She was Paul’s roommate and unfortunately she left for school and has only come back when she comes to visit. Well she came to visit Paul again, so we had to snag her for another episode. And I picked a pretty fun one for her. I picked the 1997 action packed martial arts flick, “Drive”.

The story from IMDB:

A prototype enhanced human, on the run from Chinese-hired hit men, hooks up with a dread-locked bystander, and the two of them elude their pursuers narrowly each time.

And that’s sort of the gist of it. There’s a few more things that happen and some actors in the cast you may know and love, so let’s get in to that.

Drive stars Mark Dacascos (Only The Strong, Double Dragon, Boogie Boy, and much much more) as Toby Wong. Wasn’t that a line in Reservoir Dogs… “Toby…Toby Wong. Toby Wong. Fucking Charlie Chan”— never picked that up til I did this review right here. Hmm! Mark gets to use a lot of his really sweet martial arts moves and some of his own stunts from what I’ve read.

The dread locked bystander is Kadeem Hardison (most notably Dwayne Wayne from A Different World) who plays Malik Brody. And Kadeem is not really a martial artist. Though I think he does get to throw a few punches in every now and then.

And along the way they meet Brittany Murphy (Clueless, Cherry Falls, 8 Mile, and many more) who plays Deliverance Bodine. She works at a small town motel that becomes a big part of some action sequences in the flick. I do believe she gets to play with a gun herself. Oh we miss Brittany here on Indie Film Cafe.

The films director is Steve Wang who directed The Guyver, Kung Fu Rascals, which we reviewed for What the F Fridays, as well as some Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight episodes. We love Steve Wang. In my personal opinion (And I bet the Moo Cow would agree) we need more films directed by him.

The writer is Scott Phillips who wrote Stink Of Flesh (Which we also reviewed for What the F Fridays), Gimme Skelter (Which one day we will be reviewing… maybe Season 7, we’ll see), and and a movie on Tubi called, “Crowbar” I’m kind of interested in checking out. Scott is a very fun writer. He knows how to write a genre film. Especially one this silly.

I can’t really say much more than what the podcast would talk about. There are some really fun scenes especially the ones at the motel. Later the last act involves a fight at a club/bar that looks incredible. I would say you should def check this movie out.

We did get to watch it on glorious 4K thanks to MVD Rewind Collection. My only gripe with it is it just came with the 4K so I’d have to buy a blu ray separately but at least I have the movie the best possible way to see it. And that’s the one I’d recommend.

And the Stink Scores are in: Paul gave it a 3.5. I gave it a 3. And Lenore surprised us both by giving it a Stink Score of 1.5, for a total of 8, and a Stinky Average of 2.7, which puts it really low on the Stinkometer. Putting it on the ladder of stink with Arcade, Hey Stop Stabbing Me, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, and A Better Place. That’s a pretty cool group of great films.

Well that’s gonna be a wrap for me on this one. I’ll be back for one more before giving it back to the Moo Cow! Speaking of the Moo Cow he’s gonna tell you all how to find this movie and other fun things that go along with it. Take it away… Moo Cow!

Moo! Well, we gots our trailer right HERE. There is also Steve Wang’s 4k trailer too! And you can watch it for freeby and the bean on the Tube of You as well as Tubi. If u want the DVD you can get it on Amazon, the aforementioned MVD store (where u can get the Blu Ray Director’s cut as well), Best Buy, etc. Grab the Special Collection Blu Ray from Amazon, Grindhouse Videos, and HD Movie Source. Buy it re-sale via Ebay. Cinematerial.com has a ton of digital posters you can download for free, as does themoviedb.com! Ebay also has a blu ray-poster combo! You can buy real glossy, matte, and even laminated posters up to 24 x 36 at MoviePosters2.com! They also have mugs, tote bags, mouse pads, sweatshirts, tee shirts, hoodies, phone cases and udder schwag too, so check them out! The moovie Kill cownt is HERE, and some fun outtakes are HERE. And there is even a FANCUT on Youtube! ReelBlack Podcast did a review of this moovie too.