I'd Call It Summer of CHEER

You watch enough movies and you become afraid...afraid that there just isn't enough wonder left in the junkyard of Amazon Prime's made-for-TV genre section from the 1970s. 

Then you watch Summer of Fear and find a new reason for living.

Quick Plot: Rachel is a teenage (I think?) tomboy living with her parents and brothers on a Californian ranch. Most of her days are spent riding her beloved horse Sundance, finding boxes to stand on to kiss her foot+ taller boyfriend Mike, and hanging out with her BFF Carolyn (FRAN DRESCHER!!!).

Life takes a downturn when her aunt and uncle die in a car accident, leaving their college-aged (I THINK?) daughter Julia orphaned and alone in the mysterious Ozarks. Despite having not seen the young woman in over ten years, Rachel's parents take the beautiful but slightly odd Julia into their home. 

You don't need a winter's bone to sense something is amiss. Before she's even unpacked, Julia is stealing the affections of Mike, fitting better into Rachel's homemade dress, and stirring up a wild spirit in Sundance. The friendly neighborhood professor (MACDONALD CAREY FROM DAYS OF OUR LIVES!!!) confirms Rachel's suspicions that her cousin is a practicing witch, leading our frizzy-haired heroine the challenge of unmasking the evil in her own home.

I don't know how else to say this other than to employ a lot of exclamation points:

SUMMER OF FEAR IS EVERYTHING I'VE WANTED AND MORE.

Based on a novel by I Know What You Did Last Summer YA scribe Lois Duncan and directed by a young Wes Craven, Summer of Fear (aka Stranger In Our House) feels like it should be the centerpiece of a slumber party hosted by drag queens. The world's most flammable cars explode mid-air, uncles and brothers shamelessly flirt their younger female relative, and Linda Blair's hair grows five inches with every reel.

Seriously, whatever is happening on Linda Blair's head should have had its own trailer. It's like someone shaved all four of my cats, sewed the fur together into a blanket, spilled the same serum used in Village of the Giants all over the mess, then tried in vain to brush it out. 

AKA, perfection.

High Points

Sure, Rachel is a tad whiney and not necessarily the brightest at setting traps for her evil sorceress cousin, but as a scrappy teen, Linda Blair is a pure joy to watch 

NOT a Low Point
I normally balk at the "special appearance by" credit so prevalent in the '80s, but if said guest star is MacDonald Carey, Days of Our Lives's Horton patriarch himself, it is indeed special

Lessons Learned
The Ozarks are a bed of a lot of folklore and mysticism

In the late '70s, it was customary to keep an autographed photo of your solid feller on your nightstand

If your cousin is from a rural region, it's totally acceptable to have a crush on her

Film Trivia of DreamsIf IMDB is to be trusted, Summer of Fear was filmed a house that was eventually owned by Sinbad. For some reason, this pleases me greatly

Rent/Bury/Buy

Summer of Fear is a thing of glory, at least if you have an unreasonable affection for cheese that involves catfights, witchcraft, and tame rat kings that settled on Linda Blair's head for safety. You can find it on Amazon Prime. Obviously.

Karma Kameldoon

Is Patrick Muldoon the worst actor alive to actively get work? I say this as someone who was TOTALLY Team Austin & Carrie back in the ‘90s heyday of Days of Our Lives, but with age comes wisdom comes the realization that, well, this guy kind of sucks.

Naturally, that means his presence in a sleazy low budget thriller streaming on Amazon Prime is a must-watch.

Quick Plot: In one of the best credit sequences of all time, a catchy modern pop song plays while we get a fog-hued montage of Patrick Muldoon and Patsy Kensit tearing through 19th century London as Jack the Ripper and his bloodthirsty girlfriend. It’s cheesier than my dream plate of nachos and I’m instantly in love.

Cut to the present, where Dr. Trey Campbell (Muldoon in smart people’s glasses) works at a mental asylum on the Rhode Island coast. He’s so dedicated to his work that his annoying daughter Theresa and even more annoying wife Carly (Cry-Baby’s Amy Locane, who went on to have some of her own very bad karma via a vehicular manslaughter prison sentence) complain that he never has time for them. New England island vacation it is!

Before we can hop on a ferry, we first meet schizophrenic patient Maureen Hatcher, a beautiful murderer currently under heavy restraints in Trey’s hospital. Maureen believes that she’s really Agnes, the reincarnated gal pal of Jack the Ripper, and that Dr. Trey is the current embodiment of the famed killer. It’s a complicated doctor/patient relationship.

As Trey leaves to vacation with his horrid family, Maureen flirts with his substitute doctor. Like a true gentleman, he rebuffs her advances in the name of professionalism only to then pull a Kill Bill and attempt to rape her under sedation. 

It doesn’t end well.

Maureen escapes the world’s worst guarded mental hospital with ease, taking out a few more employees and stockpiling random body parts along the way. She makes a quick stop at a lesbian bar to pick up a similarly sized blond with an even worse southern accent than herself to murder and stage the body in a car accident. The world’s best car accident ever.

One of the signs of a great movie--I mean a REALLY GREAT MOVIE--is spontaneous combustion.

Like a gorilla drinking a martini, it just makes everything better.

Don't lie: Seeing this just improved your day tenfold

In the case of Bad Karma, we get our dose of Best Movie Ever when Maureen props her victim in the vehicle, puts it into drive, and watches it coast over a cliff, blowing up before it hits the water. I may have almost failed high school physics, but I’m fairly certain that this is not possible in modern engineering.

From there, Bad Karma slowly goes downhill. Sure, we do eventually get Patrick Muldoon attempting a British accent, and there’s a lot of inefficient police work and severed hands to keep the cheese cold. We get some token sleaze as Maureen hitchhikes with a dad who puts the moves on her despite his kids being the backseat, but the overall energy just doesn’t quite stay where the dairy queen in me wants it to be.

It’s a hard feat.

High Points

If a spontaneously combusting compact doesn’t get you going, check your pulse

Low Points

Needs more cheddar

Fun Fact

Bad Karma was produced by Mark L. Lester, the demigod responsible for Class of 1984 and far more importantly, Class of 1999. Note that it's never the wrong time to discuss Class of 1999

Lessons Learned

Rhode Island mental hospitals for the criminally insane can also be used as public school classrooms

A gunshot to the shoulder is not nearly as fatal as you think it is, despite your medical school education

Extremely violent mental patients are allowed daily eyebrow plucking sessions

No woman can resist the charms of Patrick Muldoon

Rent/Bury/Buy

Look, there’s nothing GOOD about Bad Karma, especially when you realize director John Hough is the same man responsible for The Watcher In the Woods. But hey, those in the mood for a mildly sleazy thriller with high doses of Patrick Muldoon in a top hat won’t find anything better.