Brinke Stevens Movies

In this low-budget horror film from director Thom Eberhardt, a beautiful advertising executive Denise Watson (Anita Skinner) is the sole survivor of an airplane crash in a remote wilderness area. As her haunting journey continues, Denise is attacked by cannibalistic zombies, and even her friends at home are affected. Eberhardt's film echoes the Australian thriller The Survivor in its set-up, but its tone is closer to Herk Harvey's classic Carnival of Souls without being nearly as interesting. Cult favorite Brinke Stevens appears briefly in a party scene. Eberhardt followed this uninvolving effort with the intriguing Night of the Comet before making the leap to mainstream films. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Feminist film director Amy Jones and feminist novelist Rita Mae Brown collaborated on this by-the-numbers slasher gorefest, alleviated somewhat by desultory attempts at developing the victims as characters. The film concerns an overnight slumber party, attended by a group of nubile young women, who find themselves harassed by a gaggle of over-sexed young men. Their sexual escapades are punctured by the intrusion of an insane killer wielding a power drill. But the women rule the day when the lone survivor of the killer's hydraulic drill bands together with her sister and a neighbor to form their own posse and hunt down the murderer. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Sam Cooper (Steve Gutenberg) is an attaché in the U.S. State Department when, on the day before his wedding, a dying scientist hands him a formula that induces invisibility, and Sam finds himself fleeing with the maid of honor to escape both Russian and U.S. agents. Hotly pursued by everyone, Sam has to use the formula on himself, inviting a series of minor disasters. Critics have been unanimous in agreeing that this secret formula worked on the plot, the continuity, the pacing, and the acting -- making just about everything invisible and doing it in 3-D. The very decision to make a movie about an invisible man in 3-D should have warned of trouble ahead. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Largely improvised by director Rob Reiner and his cast, This Is Spinal Tap looks and sounds like a "real" documentary, with Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Christopher Guest as David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls, and Nigel Tufnel, the key members of a going-nowhere British heavy metal band called Spinal Tap. The "group" started as an informal skiffle band, eventually maturing into an R&B act called the Thamesmen (their hit was "Gimme Some Money"). After going through a psychedelic period with "Listen to the Flower People," the band mutated into Spinal Tap, a hard rock outfit responsible for such albums as "Intravenous DeMilo," "The Sun Never Sweats," and "Bent for the Rent." This Is Spinal Tap finds them in the midst of their first American tour in years as they support their new LP Smell the Glove, with filmmaker Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner), who specializes in TV commercials, on hand to document the occasion. Just about anything that can go wrong does: shows get canceled, stage props go wrong, wireless guitar pickups start broadcasting air-traffic reports, no one shows up for in-store appearances, David's girlfriend tries to take over the band, they wind up billed second to a puppet show at an amusement park, and the group teeters on the verge of breakup. After the film's initial release, McKean, Guest, and Shearer did a short club tour as Spinal Tap; the "band" reunited in 1992 for a new album, Break Like the Wind, followed by a full-fledged tour and TV special, The Return of Spinal Tap. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Red Hot Rock features uncensored versions of 11 rock music videos, including songs by Queen and by Duran Duran. ~ All Movie Guide

This slapstick farce features Dusty Bottoms (Chevy Chase), Lucky Day (Steve Martin), and Ned Nederlander (Martin Short), as three silent movie cowboy stars who get the axe from their Hollywood studio. Just at that opportune moment, a woman named Carmen (Patrice Martinez) asks them to come to her forgotten little town south of the border and do some work for her, for a tidy sum. The three "stooges" agree, thinking they are going to perform their singing cowboy routine, but instead Carmen wants them to get rid of the nasty El Guapo (Alfonso Arau) who is running roughshod over the good citizens of the town. Not the kind of heroes they appear to be in the movies, they have a difficult time helping out the distressed townsfolk. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This parody of horror movies centers upon an impish little genie who was accidentally released from its bowling-trophy home by a lively group of curvaceous coeds after they end up trapped in a shopping mall. To stop the mischievous demon, the girls team up with a few geeky nerds. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

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

Peter Rader directed this horror film about a teen-aged orphan named Lynn (Kim Valentine) who accompanies her young brother David (Eric Foster) to live on their grandparents' farm after their father dies. Before long, it becomes obvious that all is not right on the farm, and that the grandparents (Ida Lee and Len Lesser) are hiding a dark secret. Cult favorite Brinke Stevens stars as the kids' insane mother, whom the grandparents have drugged to control her homicidal impulses, and screenwriter Peter Jensen provides the atmospheric photography. Some chilling moments and a particularly creepy performance by Lesser make this average slasher film worthwhile. Producer Nico Mastorakis had co-written the story for the abominable The Greek Tycoon (1978) before turning to genre filmmaking. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

In Transylvania Twist, producer Roger Corman and director Jim Wynorski make Mel Brooks movies look like Noël Coward drawing-room comedies. The film begins with nubile innocent Patty (Monique Gabrielle) being chasing through the woods by the Greatest Horror Hits of the 1980s --with Jason, Freddy Krueger, and Leatherface all vying for a piece of her. Robert Vaughn has the hammiest role as a vampire named Lord Byron Orlock. His ravishing niece Marissa (Teri Copley), an American singing star, arrives at Lord Byron's castle in Transylvania after the death of her father. Accompanying her is Dexter Ward (Rick Altman), her wise-cracking Donald O'Connor-inspired sidekick. What happens next involves a frantic search for a mysterious book that will raise "the evil one" from the dead. The flimsy plot serves as a handy clothesline on to which to hang self-referential parodies of the horror film genre, with time out for some clever editing of an appearance by long-dead Boris Karloff. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Vigilante cops must stop a group of drug dealers who are poisoning the cocaine supply. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide