Ben Nagy reviews ‘Crawler’: Snake alien with arms facepalms Maryland people to death
In his 60 years here on this planet, Baltimore-area director Don Dohler also had his eyes on the stars. The filmmaker ignored budgetary and regional limitations and ended up producing 14 flicks in addition to directing 11 of em — mostly science fiction and monster flicks — including Alien Factor, Alien Factor 2 and Nightbeast […]
Ben Nagy reviews ‘Asher’: Assassinating ain’t easy when you get older
A lot of people aren’t going to have the attention span for a hired killer movie like Asher anymore because the John Wicks of the world have had their say on that kind of movie and made it more about the progressively complex fight choreography and shoot-n-boot and onto the next victim. (Nobody with Bob […]
Ben Nagy reviews ‘Storm Warning’: Tourists run afoul of backwoods redneck pot-growers — but it’s Australia, so it’s different
Storm Warning is a 2007 flick done by a director who rose to horror fame for a spell at the turn of the century with a lot of stuff from the 1970s. Got that? Jamie Blanks directed Urban Legend and Valentine, two of the more memorable installments in the late 1990s “Hey, slashers are cool […]
Ben Nagy reviews ‘American Zombieland’: Looking for Woody? This is the wrong place. Looking for ‘Fat Ass Zombies?’ Bingo!
Sometimes in film marketing the easiest way to get an eyeball or two on the flick is just to name (or rename) something really close to a popular release and this trawling’ll get some people who aren’t looking too closely caught in the net. The Italians really got that down to a science in the […]
Ben Nagy reviews ‘Clownado’: Evil clowns get sucked up in storm and slaughter folks in the Midwest
First an announcement: If you’re a filmmaker and you haven’t submitted your flick to the World Drive-In Movie Festival, the deadline’s in about three weeks (July 14th). I did a video explaining everything to everyone that you can find here: Full details about the WDIMF are here. Don’t wait much longer to start shooting your […]
Ben Nagy reviews ‘Butcher Boys’: Writer of the original TCM weaves a tale of urban cannibalism
It’s been said time and time again by Joe Bob that “‘Saw is king,” meaning that, apart from it being narrowly defeated by the original Night of the Living Dead in his 1982 newspaper poll about the world’s greatest drive-in flick, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre probably will be pointed at for all time as […]
Ben Nagy reviews ‘Bad Ass’: We celebrate Danny Trejo’s 79th with a feature ripped straight from the Internet
Fans of drive-in fare are very, very familiar with the work of Danny Trejo, whether it be from his frequent collaborations with Robert Rodriguez (The two Machete flicks, Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, etc.) or the constant stream of roles, both wide release and direct-to-video/streaming he’s accumulated in genre […]
Ben Nagy reviews ‘Garden Party Massacre’: It’s comedy over carnage when a guy with a pickaxe shows up
So before we get to the latest installment of The Screening Room, there’s a question that I’ve been struggling with. It’s not one of those easy ones. Stuff like, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Or, “Who shot JFK?” (Which, by the way, Joe Bob has already solved if you know where to […]
Ben Nagy reviews ’30 Miles From Nowhere’: Things get tense for middle-aged college chums at funeral/reunion
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A bunch of old school friends are brought together by the death of one of their old college pals, and that person’s passing gives them an opportunity to head out to a cabin in the woods. Yeah, it’s the premise of The Big Chill, which was one […]
Ben Nagy reviews ‘The Gardener’: When Robert Bronzi’s not handling plants, he’s wasting home-invading scum
I’ve kinda gotten behind on my Robert Bronzi flicks. If you don’t know who he is, he’s the 21st century Hungarian incarnation of Charles Bronson whose genre-flick career has taken off because he bears an uncanny resemblance to the Drive-In Hall-of-Famer. Bronson, for those of you who haven’t read Joe Bob’s old columns or gotten […]