This week we abandon our original idea to cover the utterly insane 1987 Karate Kid ripoff Karate Warrior with something with a little more meat on the bone, Tentacles. The 70's was an embarrassment of riches, and in many case just plain embarrassing when it came to the animal attack cash-grabs that arose from the titanic success of Jaws. This is one such movie, a unique twist on American International Pictures' typical process of working with foreign films. Rather than import some cheap Italian movies they hired Italian producer Ovidio Assonitis to make a movie here in America with an Italian crew and a star-studded cast of Oscar winners who couldn't say no to a fast paycheck and a little bit of that California sun.

Starring John Huston, Bo Hopkins, Henry Fonda, and more, this blatant Jaws ripoff treads water for 90 minutes, peppering its story with strange asides and bon mots, with characters who trot into each scene to ad-lib and keep their scene partners guessing until it comes time to take on the film's big bad villain, a giant octopus that can't keep its tentacles off anything that swims into its proximity. Is mankind to blame for its feeding frenzy? Maybe? Who can say, really? There's a rich industrialist whose underwater construction project may have something to do with it but this is AIP and it's asking way too much for anyone to answer any questions ever. Just go with it.

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This week we take a step back to the golden age of the slasher movie, 1982, for a look at a movie that misses the mark by a significant margin and yet it still remains strangely compelling. Starring Bill Paxton in one of his earliest roles, Mortuary attempts to cash in on the slasher boom but can't quite figure out what it is about Halloween and Friday the 13th that makes them so successful. Hint: It's their simplicity. Mortuary can't help but complicate matters with numerous inexplicable subplots that remain unresolved all the way to the end of the movie: Why is there a satanic cult? We'll never know.

Young Christie is haunted by a memory of her father's murder that she can't quite square with the known facts. Was he murdered or did he drown and why doesn't anyone believe her when she says she witnessed his murder? Meanwhile, a dude in a black cloak is stalking the night, killing randos while trying to get close to Christie. It's plainly obvious from the jump who the killer is since he's only wearing makeup and not a mask. There's a weird, unpleasant tone of necrophilia running throughout the movie and just about everyone sucks but hey! Christopher and Linda Day George are on the set together and that has to count for something. Honestly, Bryan's not sure why he put this one on the list.

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This week we're joined by Tyler Hyde from the podcast That's Spooky to discuss the made-for-tv scare film, Mazes & Monsters. The film represents the first lead role for future superstar, Tom Hanks in a movie about the dangers of playing Dungeons and Dragons. No, I'm not making that up.

In the early 1980's as Dungeons and Dragons became a sensation of tabletops everywhere, it didn't take long for scolding parent groups to cry foul to every media outlet that would listen and raise a moral panic that rose in tandem with the moral panics around heavy metal music and horror movies. The disappearance of and tragic suicide of James Dallas Egbert III thrust D&D into the headlines and craven opportunists and sensational headlines ignored all the factors that drove him to suicide and placed the blame squarely at D&D, the one thing in his life that brought him joy and provided an escape from the pressures of being a child prodigy. His story informed Rona Jaffe's book, Mazes and Monsters, which led to the rapid development of this TV movie also starring Chris Makepeace and Wendy Crewson.

The story concerns four friends at university who play Mazes and Monsters, the legally distinct dungeon crawler role playing game that causes one player to lose his shit and fall into a psychotic delirium which leads him to murder, madness, and suicide. It is, without question, one of the most toxic movies we've ever seen with a message that seems to be: under no circumstances are you to use your imaginations. You should be thinking about a sensible career now. It's a real bummer, you guys.

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