Angelique Pettyjohn Movies

Mike Jittlov, a master of special effects who's strutted his stuff in several short films, is both the director and star of The Wizard of Speed and Time. Jittlov plays himself, an eager-beaver director who offers a reel of special effects to a TV producer. The director makes a huge bet to the producer that he, Jittlov, can expand his reel into a fantastic feature film. Unfortunately, he's out of money, so Jittlov is obliged, Rocky style, to employ friends and family for his epic. In the picture-within-a-picture, Jittlov plays a second role, as the Wizard of Speed and Time (from the movie of the same name). The producer sends out some hired goons to prevent Jittlov from finishing his job, but our hero--both of him--emerges triumphant. Adding to the Pirandellian quality of The Wizard of Speed and Time is the fact that the avaricious fictional producer is played by the film's real producer, Richard Kaye. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In a typical "B"-movie delivery with overtones of more modern sex and violence, this routine story features Tom Keena as Dave Dearborn, who has served his stint as a Marine and also as an undercover journalist working in Saigon and other Asian sites. Now Dave is in charge of a floating restaurant on a junk in Singapore and believes his past is behind him until he is requested to track down a Chinese defector, a nuclear scientist who has been researching antimatter. Dave soon discovers that his ex-girlfriend is now the lover of his chief suspect, a member of a Hong Kong Triad gang. The unsung hero will soon need all of his talents garnered as a Marine, as well as his contacts from his journalism days, to find the scientist and bring him to a safe haven. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Alex Cox's directorial debut was a wickedly funny and willfully bizarre story that became a major cult item once it began making the art-house rounds a year after its release (an initial run in a string of Southern grind houses and drive-ins, where it was billed as an action film, was a resounding failure). Having lost his job and his girlfriend, punk rocker Otto (Emilio Estevez) meets a guy named Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) who offers him $25 to drive his wife's car out of a "bad area." When a handful of angry people start chasing Otto, he realizes that something is up, and he discovers that Bud repossesses cars for a living. With few immediate prospects, Otto joins Bud at the repo yard and is soon "ripping" cars with the best of them. When an anonymous source posts a $20,000 reward for a missing 1964 Chevy Malibu, it turns out that what's valuable isn't the car itself, but what's in the trunk, which is very hot, glows brightly, and kills anyone who comes in contact with it. A vaguely surreal modern-noir science-fiction comedy with echoes of Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Repo Man is packed with more incongruous sight gags than anyone can absorb in one viewing; keep your eyes peeled for the air fresheners, the generic newspaper box, and the watches without hands. Harry Dean Stanton gives a superb comic performance as the intense but laid-back Bud, Emilio Estevez delivers perhaps the best work of his career as the petulant but goofy Otto, and Tracey Walter is hilarious as the spaced out repo-yard man Miller. Iggy Pop wrote and performed the theme song and The Circle Jerks appear as a lounge band. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Dr. Bragan (James Craig) is a workaholic rocket scientist with NASA who is coming unglued from the stress. A colleague arranges for him to take a much needed holiday in Japan, and Bragan accepts, hoping to use this free time to pursue his first love, botany. He brings a potted Venus Flytrap with him, with plans to study carnivorous flora and prove his theory that human beings are descended from plants. His Japanese assistant, Noroko, arranges for them to work in seclusion at her father’s abandoned resort hotel, located on a mountain next to an active volcano. They get to work in the greenhouse, toiling night and day to strengthen the Venus Flytrap with the alien Nipponese soil, which causes it to grow to an unusual size. But Bragan is as obsessive and abusive as he was in America, and his constant mood swings cause Noroko to suspect that he is going mad. An experimental graft with a Japanese carnivorous plant succeeds in creating the "Sectovorus," a bizarre, vaguely human creature with vicious flytrap paws, and Bragan knows he is on the right track. Unfortunately, the beast must be fed mice, chickens, puppies and eventually human blood to keep it alive, and the stronger it grows, the more dangerous it becomes. When the Sectovorus learns to uproot itself and venture to a nearby village for victims, Dr. Bragan must decide whether to protect his work of genius, or lure it into the volcano to save mankind. Revenge of Dr. X was scripted by cult filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr., and is also known as The Double Garden, The Devil Garden and The Venus Flytrap. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide

Upon completing Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, a tearful Liza Minnelli declared publicly that she would never, ever work with tyrannical director Otto Preminger again. Worse luck for her: Junie Moon contains what may well be Minnelli's best non-musical performance. Based on the novel by Marjorie Kellogg, the film surprisingly manages to evoke humor and pathos from some of the least promising material in movie history. Minnelli plays an emotionally imbalanced young girl whose face is horribly disfigured by her psycho boy friend Ben Piazza. Ken Howard is cast as an epileptic who has wrongly been diagnosed as mentally retarded. And Robert Moore (future director of such films as The Cheap Detective and Murder by Death) portrays a homosexual, confined to a wheelchair after a hunting accident. After meeting one another in a hospital, these three social outcasts decide to move in together, forming a united front against a cold, judgmental world. The devastating events that follow might have lapsed into the grotesque and exploitational, but director Preminger is extremely careful to depict his protagonists as three-dimensional human beings rather than "freaks." Unfortunately, some filmgoers, assuming that any film with a title like Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon just had to be a campy laff riot, were turned off by the repellant aspects of the early scenes and refused to give the rest of this fascinating film a chance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Filipino scarefest is better known by the title Mad Doctor of Blood Island. The principle villain, however, is not a "he" but an "it". A frantic search is conducted on a remote island for a deadly, green-blooded "Chlorophyl Monster." Notice how we aren't making any toothpaste jokes here. It should come as no surprise that John Ashley is the star; his leading lady is the luscious Angelique Pettyjohn, while Ronald Remy is the eponymous mad doctor. Remy would make a return appearance in a sort of sequel, Beast of Blood ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This amusingly weird, painfully threadbare production pits a town of lethargic ex-hippie parents against their own offspring, who have been transformed into pasty-faced zombies (with cute little black fingernails) after their school bus passes through a cloud of radioactive fallout from a nearby nuclear plant. The kids' condition makes it difficult to for their deadbeat parents to reach out to them, thanks to their newly-acquired tendency to turn everyone they touch into an overcooked brisket in two seconds flat. In keeping with zombie-movie rules of engagement (as established in Night of the Living Dead), the bodies begin piling up before the nominal hero (local sheriff Gil Rogers) arrives at an effective zombie-killing method -- which in this case involves cutting off the children's hands. The most entertaining moments in this cheap and silly film come from its painfully bad attempts at horror and -- even more laughable -- social commentary. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

When Dan (Jeremy Slate) wins a motorcycle worth $2,000, he plans to sell the bike for a down payment on a ranch and settle down. After the motorcycle is stolen by Tony (Michael Walker), Tampa (Adam Roarke) takes possession of it. Dan is soon after the thugs who took the bike and who are on the way to Mexico. One by one, Dan eliminates the crooks with boulders, fists, and ropes, and he makes grisly and effective use of a pit of rattlesnakes to exact his revenge. His girl Cathy (Jocelyn Lane) shudders in terror as the men beat themselves into bloody submission in this manic macho motorcycle movie. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Elvis Presley plays Scott Heyward, the son of a Texas oil millionaire in this thin storyline. Scott changes places with the poor but honest water-skiing instructor Tom Wilson (Will Hutchins) to find out if women love him for himself or his money. Tom goes to the posh penthouse previously occupied by Scott, and Scott takes over as the instructor. Scott's father Duster (James Gregory) blows a gasket when he finds out what his son is doing. Boat builder Sam Burton (Gary Merrill) talks Scott into driving his new boat in the big race. Elvis delivers 8 songs in one of the more lackluster vehicles of his 1960s film catalogue. A bevy of beauties, some exciting race scene, and glossy production all help this one across the finish line. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide