Meegan King Movies

This gory, scary low-budget shocker from the Roger Corman stable concerns the battle over a salmon cannery in a Pacific Northwest town. Genetically treated salmon escape the plant and are eaten by coelacanths, who mutate into humanoid monsters with giant craniums and sharp claws. The creatures begin attacking teen couples, killing the boys and mating with the girls (in some pretty graphic monster-rape scenes). Eventually, a bunch of them create total pandemonium at the annual salmon festival. Barbara Peeters directs with flair, Rob Bottin's effects are nauseatingly effective, and the cast is good, especially Vic Morrow as a racist fisherman and Doug McClure as the stalwart hero. An uncompromising shockfest with enough gratuitous blood and nudity to keep fans happy, the film features an Alien-inspired shock ending which still makes viewers jump today. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

Several former college students find their former drug experiences catching up with them in an unexpected and terrifying manner in this clever horror outing. Jerry Zipkin (Zalman King) is a bright but troubled man in his late twenties who graduated from Stanford University in 1968 but hasn't had much luck getting his life in order since then. One night Jerry attends a party with a few old college buddies, and is shocked when one of them, Frannie (Richard Crystal), suddenly loses all his hair in a single lump and goes on a bloody rampage. When circumstantial evidence makes Jerry a key suspect in the murders of three women at the party, he sets out to find out what happened, and with the help of another school friend, surgeon David Blume (Robert Walden), he discovers a link between Frannie's bizarre behavior and several similar incidents which recently occurred. In each case, the killers attended Stanford in the late '60s, and all had used Blue Sunshine, a potent but tainted variety of LSD sold by Ed Flemming (Mark Goddard), a bootleg acid chemist who is now a respected mainstream political candidate. Jerry struggles to stay one step ahead of the law as he tries to piece the story together, knowing that another victim of the drug could go insane at any moment. Blue Sunshine was directed by Jeff Lieberman, who has two other cult favorites to his credit, Squirm and Just Before Dawn. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The fifth season of The Waltons gets under way as budding writer John-Boy Walton (Richard Thomas) prepares the first edition of his own newspaper, "The Blue Ridge Chronicle." The lead story concerns a car accident caused by the local mayor, whom John-Boy is convinced was drunk at the time. Worried about the mayor's reputation, the Walton family is dead set against John-Boy printing this story...and even more staunchly opposed to his "freedom of the press" policy when he covers a crime involving four teenagers--including his own brother Ben (Eric Scott). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi