Jeff Pillars Movies
The U.S. Army's most unlikely soldier, Ernest P. Worrel (Jim Varney), finds himself responsible for saving the world when he and his troopmates are sent out to take down a tyrant. As with other entries in the Ernest series, this one is filled with plenty of low-brow, slapstick humor. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jim Varney
- 1997
- R
A blood-red moon is never a good sign, and when one pops up over New York City, one can be sure that the Big Apple is in for serious trouble. This time it heralds the arrival of a kung-fu serial killer (Darren Shahlavi). At night, he stalks the crimson bathed streets, killing off the world's best martial artists, one by one. At every resulting crime scene one of New York's finest detectives shows up and amuses the crowds of on-lookers and service personnel with dumb sleight-of-hand tricks. As the story progresses, the battles, featuring professional wrestlers and fighters sporting strange hair and peculiar makeup, become increasingly strange. The film's production values are unusually low, and keen-eyed viewers can readily spot an abundance of support cables showing up in key fight scenes. However, the fight scenes themselves are comparable to the spectacular sequences in this film's Hong Kong cousins and employ a smashing variety of martial arts techniques. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gary Daniels, Darren Shahlavi, (more)
- 1988
- R
This cliché-ridden car-racing feature doesn't even get off the blocks. The unshaven villains have greasy hair and black T-shirts, while the clean-shaven good guys are blonde and sport light-colored action wear. Andrea (Marla Heasley) invents a revolutionary new car engine and goes to the Charlotte Motor Speedway to try it out. She meets driver Al Pagura (Joseph Bottoms), and the two fall in and out of love. George Kennedy plays the heavy, and somewhere an underdeveloped plot about racetrack corruption appears. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joseph Bottoms, Marc Singer, (more)
- 1987
Clearly inspired by Herschel Gordon Lewis's seminal splatter opus Blood Feast, this sleazy direct-to-video mess involves 14th-century priest Goza (Theo Dupuay), whose pact with the Devil grants him immortality and curses him with a constant craving for human flesh. As in Lewis's film, our cannibal poses as a restaurateur -- in this case the proprietor of a beachfront delicatessen, where the catch of the day isn't always seafood. Filled with unconvincing but enthusiastic gore effects, this seedy little item pays due homage to Lewis' outrageous oeuvre by reveling in its own tastelessness, but is less entertaining than Jackie Kong's similarly-themed Blood Diner, lensed the same year. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
