Wasted Weekend - 8/27/21

 We've nearly made it to the weekend once again and I'm going to do my level best to give you some good or at least serviceable suggestions of things to watch online instead of doing anything responsible. I feel like there's a little bit of a slowdown of new things popping up on streaming services around this time of the month before the wave of new titles hit over the next week. Still, it's the internet and there's always something to wrap your eyeballs around.

Grizzly is hardly obscure but it is a solidly entertaining Jaws-on-land with a bear animal attack jam. It's is just the kind of thing I like to put on during a bleary eyed Sunday morning while I muster the strength to go pick up breakfast tacos. It's a little slow in parts but it's filled with actors I like - Christopher George, Richard Jaeckel - the kill scenes are all pretty great and the ending is totally bananas. Grizzly regularly hops on and off different services but I noticed it on Tubi earlier this week.

Speaking of actors I like - I have never seen the 1972 made for tv prison drama The Glass House but it stars Alan Alda, Vic Morrow, Clu Gulager, and Billy Dee Williams! Based on a Truman Capote story and directed by Tom Gries - Helter Skelter - Glass House has a reputation for being a truly bleak slice of prison life and it's definitely the kind of obscure, downer 70s film that I look for. I'm willing to give it a shot and it's currently streaming on Prime.

Nothing I tell you can prepare you for the cast featured in 1990s Catchfire/Backtrack. Directed by and starring Dennis Hopper opposite Jodie Foster and an onslaught of familiar faces - Dean Stockwell, Joe Pesci, Catherine Keener, Charlie Sheen, and Vincent Price (?) just to name a few. The question of whether Catchfire is any good is one only you can answer but it is an absolutely brain melting bit of late 80s-early 90s WTF material. See Dennis Hopper playing saxophone in front of an Hieronymus Bosch triptych, witness him defend a burrito in a gunfight, marvel while he saves a baby lamb from falling into a crevasse. You can watch all of this insanity on Prime and Vudu.

I often struggle with modern attempts at psychotronic/exploitation/drive-in fare as they are frequently too self aware for my tastes. I prefer that even the lowest of budget genre flicks take themselves somewhat seriously. I can't say from the looks of things that Lake Michigan Monster takes itself seriously at all but it does look like a genuinely earnest attempt at low budget regional filmmaking - also people say it's really fun! This has been available on Arrow for some time but appears to be streaming on Prime and Tubi as well.