Josh, Still Turning Green
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Josh, Still Turning Green
@dr-david-banner.bsky.social
200 followers 340 following 260 posts
Horror nerd, movie nerd, crime fiction nerd, general nerd.
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Always and forever
Movie poster for JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO
August 11, 2025 at 3:58 AM
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#Junesploitation Day 30: Italian Horror! @fthismovie.bsky.social
This was maybe the perfect note on which to end Junesploitation. A stealth Italian movie (filmed on location in Florida with an American cast, but directed by Vittorio Rambaldi, cowritten by Umberto Lenzi, and featuring some nauseating effects by Carlo & Alex Rambaldi) about a rage virus let loose on a college campus. Basically it’s 28 Semesters Later. The movie is a ton of fun, pouring on the silliness and the gore in equal measure. Coincidentally it contains a human-turned-obvious-dummy moment just like yesterday’s movie so it feels like it was meant to be. I enjoyed the hell out of it and will definitely revisit. With that, we bid adieu to another Junesploitation. Thank you to everyone who read these and everyone who shared their own reviews in the FTM comments, it’s been a blast reading them all. Let’s do it again next year!
June 30, 2025 at 6:31 PM
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My final #Junesploitation pick of 2025, first time watch. Take me away, murdermonkeys!
Movie poster for PRIMAL RAGE
June 30, 2025 at 1:05 PM
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#Junesploitation Day 29: ‘80s Action!
It just doesn’t feel like Junesploitation without a visit from Chuck Business. Here, Bronson plays a former assassin who is lured out of retirement to avenge a friend murdered at the hands of a sadistic torture-enthusiast called The Doctor. The plot is secondary, however. What matters are these two things: at one point Bronson wins a fight by picking up an opposing assassin by the dick, and at another point a villain is sent sailing out of a high window, leading to a dummy-in-the-place-of-a-human stunt rivaled in its stunning awfulness only by Marge Thompson getting pulled through the front door in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Needless to say, I’ll be watching this one again very soon.
June 29, 2025 at 7:57 PM
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Today’s #Junesploitation pick, first time watch. Time for a visit with the patron saint of #Junesploitation, Chuck Business
Movie poster for THE EVIL THAT MEN DO
June 29, 2025 at 3:08 PM
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#Junesploitation Day 28: Cannon! @fthismovie.bsky.social
This was a history-making choice, as I believe this may be the single dumbest premise of any movie I’ve watched for Junesploitation over the last decade-plus of doing this. Judd Nelson is Eddie Keaton, a conman on the run from a loan shark (the lone bright spot in this movie, Andrew “Dice” Clay, inventing his standup persona before our eyes) who switches places with a spoiled trust fund dildo (Dana Olsen, who wrote Wacko, which also featured Andrew Clay pre-Dice, and he went on to write Memoirs of an Invisible Man and The ‘Burbs) in order to graduate prep school for him and get enough money to get himself out of trouble. Their plan makes no sense whatsoever, and other than a scene featuring some awkwardly body-doubled breakdancing Nelson really never does anything to separate himself from the rest of the prep school dildos. Also, this movie shares rarefied air with my beloved Buckaroo Banzai in that the end credits tease a sequel that never happened, though unlike Buckaroo it’s probably a good thing we never got a follow-up to this nonsense.
June 28, 2025 at 11:26 PM
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Today’s #Junesploitation pick, first time watch. Let’s skip school!
Movie poster for MAKING THE GRADE
June 28, 2025 at 4:00 PM
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#Junesploitation Day 27: Free Space! @fthismovie.bsky.social
This was a bit of a frustrating one in that it has a decent premise, a solid cast (nice seeing Paul Soter outside of a Broken Lizard project), and some nicely creepy vibes, but unfortunately it just doesn’t all come together as a movie. I still liked it overall, but it feels packed with unrealized potential. Morgan (Kue Lawrence) is an introverted kid headed to summer camp after enduring a family tragedy and being haunted by horrifying nightmares. What’s causing the (well-staged) nightmares I will not reveal, but chances are you’ll be able to figure it out if you’ve seen any movie ever. Anyway, at camp he hears a campfire story that becomes frighteningly real, and the search for the truth is compelling even when it’s predictable. All in all it’s a good spooky movie that could have been a great spooky movie.
June 27, 2025 at 7:16 PM
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Today’s #Junesploitation pick, first time watch. Let’s go to camp!
Movie poster for MARSHMALLOW
June 27, 2025 at 1:21 PM
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#Junesploitation Day 26: Eurosploitation! @fthismovie.bsky.social
First of all, the title is a dirty lie as our main character Wally (Maurizio Merli) isn’t a cop, he’s a private eye on the trail of a kidnapper, so already this movie is not to be trusted. Couple that with the fact that it opens with what appears to be the credit sequence to a weekly detective tv show (with nudity, because Italy) and the movie becomes a straight up surreal experience. And I wouldn’t have it any other way! It’s pretty silly and extremely predictable, but it’s also undeniably entertaining in a very ‘70s big-guns-and-bigger-mustaches kinda way. Toss in Joan Collins with the vamp meter turned up to 175 and you’ve got yourself a fun little goofy Italian lark. I’d have watched the tv show every week for sure.
June 26, 2025 at 8:28 PM
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Today’s #Junesploitation pick, first time watch. Dirty who? Harry? Nope, never heard of him.
Movie poster for MAGNUM COP
June 26, 2025 at 1:15 PM
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#Junesploitation Day 25: Wings Hauser! @fthismovie.bsky.social
What a weird little movie. Alice (aggressively Canadian Lynne Adams) is having her house renovated, and one of the carpenters on the job (aggressively bananas Wings Hauser) begins killing people to protect her. Is her sleazy cheating husband (aggressively rodent-like Pierre Lenoir) next? And what attracts women to that little weasel? And what’s the deal with this carpenter fellow? Hmmmm… The answers will not shock you, but they may leave you staring at the screen with your jaw agape wondering just how this movie got made. It’s certifiably nuts, but I ain’t mad at it. It’s a pretty fun movie altogether, bolstered by Hauser’s one-of-a-kind manic energy. As was the case with his performance in Vice Squad, one may wonder how much of it is acting and how much is just him being a legitimately frightening human being. I kinda love it.
June 25, 2025 at 6:16 PM
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Today’s #Junesploitation pick, first time watch. Can Wings Hauser be trusted with power tools? Let’s find out…
Movie poster for THE CARPENTER
June 25, 2025 at 1:11 PM
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#Junesploitation Day 24: Hong Kong Action! @fthismovie.bsky.social
Two estranged brothers, one a criminal and the other a cop, attempt to reconcile while also having to be at odds. We’ve seen it all before (hell, the basic plot is the same as Johnny Dangerously) but sprinkle on a bit of that John Woo style and everything old becomes new again. Lung Ti and Leslie Cheung are excellent in the leads, but the true breakout star is Chow Yun-Fat as an underworld enforcer torn between them. He’s magnetic in every frame, and it’s easy to see why he graduated to the lead in Woo’s best-known (and arguably best) features, The Killer and Hard Boiled. While the balletic gunplay and slo-mo theatrics never quite match the heights of those two, this is still a stylish and compelling action thriller that’s absolutely worth watching.
June 24, 2025 at 6:13 PM
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Today’s #Junesploitation pick, first time watch. Looking forward to finally catching up with this one!
Movie poster for A BETTER TOMORROW
June 24, 2025 at 1:10 PM
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#Junesploitation Day 23: New World Pictures! @fthismovie.bsky.social
Tom Hanks created a monster. After his Oscar-nominated turn in Big, every other studio couldn’t get their body-switching comedy out there fast enough. New World Pictures took their shot with this one, their novel twist on the formula being that the kid in the movie (TV’s Ferris Bueller Charlie Schlatter) is inhabited by the spirit of an actor who was famous by that point almost entirely just for being so old that he played God over a decade previously, George Burns. Burns (actually 91 but playing a spry 81) has a few good one-liners (mostly in voiceover) and Schlatter (also older than his 18 year old screen self at 22) does a reasonably likable impression of him, making this an amiable but fairly unremarkable comedy. Schlatter doesn’t have the innate charm of Tom Hanks, and his performance never really breaks the barrier of just being an impression of Burns. Not the weakest of the body-switching lot, but not the strongest either.
June 23, 2025 at 8:30 PM
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Today’s #Junesploitation pick, first time watch. I don’t feel a day over 81 myself, so this feels like the right choice
Movie poster for 18 AGAIN!
June 23, 2025 at 2:52 PM
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#Junesploitation Day 22: Teenagers! @fthismovie.bsky.social
See, what we got here is two Coreys. You don’t want your Coreys breeding like this, someone is gonna have to call an exterminator. Anyway, this was pretty fun. One Corey (Haim) fails his driving test but his best friend and backup Corey (Feldman) pressures him to take his grandpa’s classic Cadillac for the weekend anyway and hijinks ensues. They picked the right Corey for the lead, because you can believe Haim truly wants to do the right thing whereas Feldman always seems to be courting trouble. Add Heather Graham to the mix as the girl of Haim’s dreams and you’ve got a bunch of pretty people getting up to all sorts of silly vehicular shenanigans. Overall it’s a good time, especially when Haim’s exasperated parents (Richard Masur and Carol Kane) get involved. Glad I finally caught up with it!
June 22, 2025 at 9:42 PM
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Today’s #Junesploitation pick, first time watch. At least if Mango Mussolini gets us all killed, I’ll die having finally experienced the pinnacle of Le Cinéma de Coreys. Let’s ride!
Movie poster for LICENSE TO DRIVE
June 22, 2025 at 2:11 PM
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#Junesploitation Day 21: Westerns! @fthismovie.bsky.social
Now THAT’S a movie! Smart, somber, and not afraid to be grim, it follows a group of citizens-turned-lynch-mob as they seek revenge for a murdered rancher. Henry Fonda is incredible in the lead, starting the movie as a guy who gets drunk just to have an excuse to beat the shit out of whoever looks at him funny, and ending it a mere 75 minutes later with an internal struggle for his very soul. That man could convey more with a single look than most actors could do with entire speeches. If you’re looking for a rip-snortin’ shoot-em-up kind of western look elsewhere, but you’ll miss a captivating consideration of the meaning of justice and the struggle to keep your humanity in violent times. I absolutely loved this, even though there are elements that are certainly problematic today (some dubious racial casting in particular, like Anthony Quinn as a Mexican). I have a feeling this is gonna linger in my mind for quite some time.
June 21, 2025 at 6:58 PM
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Today’s #Junesploitation pick, first time watch. Time to cross a major #MovieShame title off my list, yay!
Movie poster for THE OX-BOW INCIDENT
June 21, 2025 at 2:36 PM
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#Junesploitation Day 20: Exploitation Auteurs!
There’s nothing I can say about this one that will matter. It’s Russ Meyer, so you know what you’re getting into. Boobs. Lots and lots of boobs. Gratuitous nudity. Gratuitous violence. Gratuitous Charles Napier. Headache-inducing editing. Characters with no personality beyond their names and/or boobs. Ebert loved this stuff. Do with this information what you will.
June 20, 2025 at 8:10 PM
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Today’s #Junesploitation pick, first time watch. “She breasted boobily toward the stairs, and titted downward”
Movie poster for Russ Meyer’s SUPERVIXENS
June 20, 2025 at 1:44 PM
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#Junesploitation Day 19: Free Space! @fthismovie.bsky.social
I am going to make a bold prediction here: there is not another movie I will see during this year’s Junesploitation that could possibly be worse than this. This movie is the weakest of tea, I’ve had plain water that was stronger than this tea. Nonentity Craig Boyett stars as Chris, an American ninja passing through a small town who gets involved in a stand against local Klansmen. His ninja skills involve somersaulting away from enemies and…um…well, that’s pretty much the extent of his ninja skills. I don’t recall ever having seen a more ineffectual “hero” in a movie before. He gets his ass kicked nine ways from Sunday to the point where you’re left wondering if the movie is actually pro-Klan. It’s not even fun bad, it’s just dull as can be.
June 19, 2025 at 9:34 PM
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Today’s #Junesploitation pick, first time watch. Ninjas vs the Klan feels like a cathartic way to go in the current climate, let’s do this. In the holy words of the prophet Vanilla Ice: Go ninja go ninja go!
VHS box art for NINJA VENGEANCE
June 19, 2025 at 2:53 PM