Lower your brow and grab the popcorn as it’s time to look at ten unmissable B-movie gems….
The cinema is filled with giant mainstream films like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Deadpool and Wolverine. Sure they’re huge and glossy but they fully embrace their heritage as B movie cinema.
Tim Burton’s original Beetlejuice film owed so much to an array of influences, from German expressionist cinema to the B-picture creature features of the 50s. The point of the humble B-movie, which has effectively now become the A movie as far as mainstream tent pole cinema, was without too many airs or graces or deep psychological study, provide escapist entertainment.
So let’s dive back to when B pictures were shot with the change shaken out of a producer’s sofa and look back at 10 unmissable B-movie gems from the booming video era…
Trancers
Charles Band is a deity in B movie-land. So what better place to start than one of the finer points in the inimitable Band’s filmography?
Trancers arrived not long after James Cameron’s Terminator. Just how much influence Cameron’s film had on Band is hard to say given the Arnold starrer was yet to fully claim its lasting legacy. However, it’s another film from 1982 that really has a strong influence on Trancers, Blade Runner.
Right down to the costume and the neon, smoggy, dank world that Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) hunts ‘Trancers’ in, this screams Blade Runner on a budget and Band mines an amazing amount out of it. Things are brought to contemporary LA when Deth time travels back to stop a rogue Trancer.
At a very swift and beautifully paced 76 minutes, Trancers is the epitome of a B movie done incredibly well. So much fun and it launched a franchise as well as the career of Helen Hunt. She’s great, Tim Thomerson is even better as the grizzled bounty hunter.
Scanner Cop
With humble beginnings from a B movie maestro, David Cronenberg, Scanners became an unexpected franchise and then skewed off into two Scanner Cop films which took the telekinetic abilities into the world of police procedurals.
That perfect fusion of mid-90s action flick, cop thriller and Sci-fi horror makes Scanner Cop great on paper and thankfully it’s nicely delivered by Pierre David, a producer known mostly for his Cronenberg films (including the original Scanners). He directed just one film after Scanner Cop (his directorial debut) which is surprising. Sure he’s no Cronenberg but Scanner Cop breezes by with assurance and some visual style.
The body horror VFX are great too. All told every Scanners film is watchable, making it a surprisingly consistent franchise for one which ran five movies (including the two Scanner Cop films).
Retroactive
Jim Belushi went from comedic sidekick to a guy whose best films as a solo artist always seemed to feel like a lesser version of something better (K9 compared to Turner and Hooch). A fall to video land was inevitable, but Belushi cultivated a darker edge as hard-nosed cops and such and became a solid lead in video action and crime thrillers.
1997’s Retroactive is a rock-solid time loop action thriller that especially nails the action part and features Belushi as the antagonist tormenting (on repeat) Kylie Travis who finds herself accidentally stepping into a loop.
In the intervening years since its release, Retroactive has developed a cult following and the reason is simple. It’s a lot of fun. Sure logic and coherence occasionally fall asleep at the wheel but the repeated situations never get wearisome and the cast is great. Belushi in particular has great fun bringing his shlubby and sardonic persona to the screen and adding a dark underbelly.
The Hidden
Jack Sholder’s magnum opus (although I maintain it’s a close call with his underrated A Nightmare on Elm Street 2). The Hidden is ruthlessly simple, with a body-jumping Alien parasite terrorising LA being hunted by a cop and an oddball (with a telling reason for his oddness).
The fact the film motors so efficiently from set piece to set piece with tongue set firmly in cheek, really adds to the lasting appeal of The Hidden, a classic film that many discover late.
Michael Nouri is the classic hard-bitten cop and Kyle MacLachlan is the Fed helping him whilst harbouring a secret. MacLachlan is perfectly cast and is superb in his quirky role, another key strength the film has to make it stand above other genre mashups of the era.
If you still haven’t found The Hidden, get on it immediately.
Dollman
We’ve had Charles Band so it’d be impolite of me to cover B movies and not unleash upon you an Albert Pyun special (produced by Band as it happens). Tim Thomerson, a long-time collaborator with Pyun, stars in a role not unlike Jack Deth. Thomerson is a space cop (as opposed to a space/time transcending Bounty Hunter) who comes to Earth to track criminals. There’s one small problem, he’s 13 inches tall.
It’s as ludicrous as it sounds but Pyun injects style on a budget and the film has plenty of enjoyable set pieces, carried by Thomerson’s grizzled charisma and the presence of Jackie Earle Haley.
Dead Heat
A buddy cop action movie with a gruesome horror twist. The late Treat Williams is partnered with Joe Piscopo (you might remember him from such films as…) as a pair of cops investigating murders carried out by assumed dead criminals.
In the process, Williams ends up dead but is resurrected. The duo are against the clock to put a stop to the crime spree, with Williams decomposing.
Mark Goldblatt, perhaps the finest action movie editor of a generation turned his hand to directing here, a year before making the increasingly reappraised Dolph Lundgren Punisher film. He knows what he’s doing, that’s for sure. Dead Heat is great fun with a dark twisted sense of humour.
The Stuff
Written by another legend of B picture cinema, Larry Cohen, The Stuff has a pretty simple concept, undercut with a sly dig at consumerism. There’s no hanging around either with the gooey, mallow-like substance introduced right from the beginning. Its body horror side effects come later.
The Stuff is wry and enjoyable and the gruesome payoffs, with enjoyably shonky animatronics, make this a surefire winner. It’s perfect Mystery Science Theatre material but made with Cohen’s sure hand and sincerity.
Pumpkinhead
Having lent his exceptional puppetry, animatronic and visual effects work to so many great genre films, Winston stepped into the director’s chair to make Pumpkinhead, a great creature horror of the era aided by the presence of Lance Henriksen.
As we have Winston directing, all the practical creature and make-up effects that horror lived and breathed on are of high standard and Winston’s work as one of the best in the business effectively meant he worked with exceptional directors like John McTiernan and James Cameron.
He learned more than enough to ensure Pumpkinhead was expertly made. It did well enough to spawn into a popular video franchise.
The Stepfather
This schlocky Hitchcock-lite thriller had little impact on the box office but became a huge video hit that was enough to launch sequels and a terrible reboot.
Directed by Joseph Rubin, who aside from some gems like Dreamscape, tended to specialise in potboiler thrillers with a deranged antagonist trying to exert power over his family (see also Sleeping With The Enemy).
So The Stepfather has tight direction and simmers nicely before the finale boils but the biggest strength is Terry O’Quinn as the titular stepfather, with a murderous past. He elevates this from passable late-night thriller material to cult classic with a brilliantly layered performance that goes from smugly ingratiating all the way up to full loon.
Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans
We’ve yet to mention two staples of B movie cinema, including arguably the greatest of all time, Roger Corman. He produced this subversive sequel, directed by another prolific helmer of schlock, Jim Wynorski.
Deathstalker didn’t set the world alight upon its release but the feverish lure of post-Conan, sword and sorcery flicks meant the low-budget Barbarian film made a good return at the box office.
A sequel took four years to arrive and when it did, Jim Wynorski took it to unexpected places, with the titular role recast and a far more wry approach, bordering spoof. By this point, the genre was on a decline so the decision to send up that very genre whilst adhering to its form was interesting.
Often seen as the best of the franchise, it didn’t have the same kind of impact financially, skipping theatres in the US. Still, the franchise as a whole still had two more sequels in it following this.
What’s your favourite B-movie? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth and be sure to sign up to our Free Patreon for more from FM…
Tom Jolliffe