John Carl Buechler Movies

When a pair of attractive female slaves escape from their captors, they find themselves stranded on a strange jungle-covered planet. While the girls explore their new surroundings, they discover that they are being hunted by the planet's ruler. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Young Judy Bower (Carrie Lorraine) is spending the summer with her stupid, abusive father, David (Ian Williams), and nasty stepmother, Rosemary (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon). On a dark and stormy night, their car breaks down on a lonely road in the woods and they are forced to seek shelter. As they walk, Rosemary throws Judy's beloved teddy bear into the woods, and the imaginative child envisions it coming to life as a great fanged beast which slaughters her tormentors. The idea of loyal toys protecting their young owners from the ravages of the adult world is forcefully made, and imbues the rest of the film. They come upon a creepy old house owned by elderly Gabriel Hartwick (Guy Rolfe) and his wife, Hilary (Hilary Mason). Gabriel is a doll-maker and dazzles Judy with his collection of exquisitely detailed creations. Another car breaks down in the storm as well, bearing amiable Ralph Morris and two trampy hitchhikers. What they and the Bowers don't know is that the dolls are alive, and protect the young (Judy) and the young at heart (Ralph) from the evils of adulthood. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

A touch of comic relief adds to this otherwise predictable sci-fi actioner about a mad scientist (Roy Dotrice) holed up in a remote jungle fortress in Mexico with his time-machine and robotic know-how. He plans on zapping himself back to the Roman Empire to reign as emperor in Caesar's stead thereby ruining a certain 20th-century pizza franchise. Standing in the way is a pilot who was saved from imminent extinction when the evil doctor patched him together with mechanical body parts. Once the crazed scientist decides to do away with his "Man-droid," the 'droid-human escapes and rounds up a gang of accomplices to head back up-river and do the scientist in. Patrick Reynolds plays Mandroid. (Reynolds is the heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune who divested his stock and leads a national anti-smoking organization.) ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The production team responsible for the twisted cult classic Re-Animator -- including director Stuart Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna -- returned the following year with this equally depraved (perhaps more so) follow-up, based once again (and very loosely) on the pulp-horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. Also returning to the fray is Jeffrey Combs, here playing the mild-mannered Crawford Tillinghast, apprentice to the dangerously obsessed Dr. Pretorious (Ted Sorel) and co-inventor of an enigmatic and ominous-looking device known as "The Resonator" -- a machine designed to stimulate the vestigial sensory apparatus contained within the human pineal gland. Such stimulation allows participants to "see" the slimy creatures which occupy a dimension parallel to our own, but with some chilling side effects -- the first of which being that the interdimensional vision works both ways. When a powerful sentient force devours Pretorious and assumes his consciousness, Tillinghast panics and destroys the Resonator -- soon to find himself in a padded cell, accused of his mentor's murder. Called to the case are Dr. McMichaels (Barbara Crampton, another Re-Animator alum) and amiable cop Bubba Brownlee (Dawn of the Dead's Ken Foree), who escort Tillinghast back to the shattered laboratory in an attempt to corroborate his deranged account by re-creating the experiment. Their attempts are all too successful, and the Pretorious-thing emerges to take control of the reactivated Resonator and draw the others into its hideous realm. Also called forth are the participants' darkest sexual desires -- another interesting by-product of pineal stimulation -- and, in Tillinghast's case, an uncontrollable urge to devour human brains. Just when it seems it can't get any weirder...it does. Gordon explores this demented scenario with relish, allowing nearly every scene to go completely over the top into surreal mayhem while retaining the dark brooding sense of menace characteristic of Lovecraft's work. (It's not likely, however, that the author's dignified upbringing would have explored the psychosexual dimensions of the premise -- at least not in the kind of detail seen here.) All manners of perversities abound, accompanied by the wizardry of four dueling special-effects studios and the rich, creepy score by Richard H. Band, bringing the film to a literally explosive climax and a chillingly poetic final shot. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

First shot in 1983 but not released until 1985, this low-budget, amateur fantasy is about Paul Bradford (Jeffrey Byron), a computer whiz who takes on the forces of evil in the guise of Heavy Metal (Blackie Lawless), the leader of an eponymous L.A. band, and Mestema (Richard Moll) the black magician who forces Paul into seven separate confrontations with powerful enemies, much in the manner of Hercules and his challenges (each confrontation directed by a different individual). The nasty Mestema is holding Paul's girlfriend Gwen (Leslie Wing) hostage, giving him all the more reason to meet these challenges, armed with his computer and nothing more. And all this happens in a mere 73 minutes of running time -- counting the long credits -- or about 10 minutes a challenge. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

When a family moves into a San Francisco apartment, an opportunistic troll decides to make his move and take possession of little Wendy (Jenny Beck), thereby paving the way for new troll recruits, the first in his army that will take eventual control of the planet. As luck would have it, the building conveniently rests on a crease in the time-space continuum, so it isn't hard to open the door to trollworld, or whatever the troll would call it. But even the path to world domination begins with a single step, so the troll begins by disposing of each tenant with his pointy magical ring; each victim then turns into a fern (this may be the only existing film in which the late U.S. Representative Sonny Bono becomes a houseplant). Fortunately for the human race, the next door neighbor is a kindly old witch who has just the game plan to win back Wendy (now under the troll's influence as evidenced by her poor social skills and equally bad eating habits), vanquish the paranormal pest, and save the human race from imminent troll tyranny. The stage is then set for inevitable battle between the good witch and the evil troll for control of the world, but first she and the brave family must combat a twenty-foot tall ubertroll who looks akin to a Furby doll left in the sandbox over a long, hard Minnesota winter. ~ Jeremy Beday, All Movie Guide

With the whimsical tagline "Jack Deth is back and he's never been here before," director Charles Band melds Blade Runner, The Terminator, and Jingle All the Way for this low-budget science fiction adventure. The story takes place in Angel City in the year 2247, when enforcer Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) has just retired from the weekly grind after vanquishing villain Martin Whistler (Michael Stefani) and his roving cohorts, called "trancers." But Whistler and his trancers have gone back to Christmas 1985, with the insidious plan of exterminating the ruling council by killing off all the council members' ancestors. So Deth agrees to go back in time to get Whistler and the trancers all over again. To do so, he must transfer his memory into the body of one of his ancestors, who in this case has just had an erotic interlude with the perky and attractive Leena (Helen Hunt), who works as a Santa's elf at a shopping mall and gets to wear a skimpy, tight-fitting elf suit. Deth discovers that Whistler has taken over the body of the police inspector and has started transforming the Los Angeles population into trancers --including Santa Claus. With Leena's help, Deth sets out to even the score. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Richard Hill is Deathstalker in this sweat-drenched Sword-and-Sorcery romp. Armed with the Sword of Justice, which renders him invincible, Hill takes on main villain Victor Bo. Barbi Benton is the delectable damsel in distress, whose costume budget must have come to about 18 cents. This Argentine/U.S. production was released in Argentina as El Cazador De La Muerte. It must have developed a following, or why else would there have been a Deathstalker II, Deathstalker III, and Deathstalker IV? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Fans of outrageously bad drive-in fare from New World Pictures will find much to love in this bargain-bin science fiction weirdness -- one of several Alien rip-offs foisted on defenseless audiences by Roger Corman's legendary B-movie factory. The plot -- which, of course, is irrelevant to the action -- involves a food-research team on a distant planet, whose latest genetic product decides it would rather eat than be eaten...and boy, is it hungry. Then enters our hero, an undefined government specialist (Jesse Vint) whose dreams in hypersleep find their way into almost every scene in the film -- his apparent powers of precognition, however, are never mentioned. Vint responds to the team's distress signal and shows up with his robot pal to blast the slime-beast to smithereens -- and, of course, to engage in a little intergalactic nookie with the team's female personnel. Meanwhile, the constantly mutating monster chews its way through virtually the entire cast before one cancer-ridden scientist devises a highly original (and extremely disgusting) solution. The ever-thrifty Corman recycled sets and scenes from Battle Beyond the Stars and Galaxy of Terror to pad out this weekend wonder, making up for its threadbare production values (which include plenty of cheap scares, nudity, and graphic gore). ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide