Horror has many subgenres, but the most fascinating just might be slashers. Unlike creature features, or anything to do with zombies, vampires, or the supernatural, a slasher often exists in a reality close to our own. In these worlds, a human killer is on the loose, stalking their unsuspecting prey. Their victims could be us, and when we look outside on a dark night, horror fans wonder if one of those movie madmen could be lurking around a corner. Slashers had their heyday in the 80s, then again in the late 90s, both times petering out before making a comeback the past few years. And none of it would be possible without these classics. They make up the Mount Rushmore of slasher films.

‘Psycho’ (1960)

Image via Paramount Pictures

While maybe not the first slasher (1932’s 13 Women arguably gets the credit), Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho was the first to become a pop culture sensation. Before Psycho, horror on screen existed in the gothic, with the impossible being the source of fear. What made Psycho so terrifying was that it seemed like it could really happen. Based on Robert Bloch‘s novel of the same name, the film begins with Marion Crane (Jennifer Leigh), a thief on the lam who decides to spend the night at the Bates Motel, run by a seemingly harmless Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). As Marion and so many others will soon find out, there is a lot more going on at this motel than meets the eye.

Psycho isn’t a high body count movie with buckets of blood. The early 60s weren’t ready for that yet. In fact, Psycho was the first movie to ever show a flushing toilet! The kill count is low in this one. It’s the slow build and the unwinding tension that makes it so good. The shower scene is filmed and scored masterfully, and the mystery surrounding Norman’s mother has a terrifying ending. Perkins is such a talented actor that a simple shy smile will have you doubting his intentions. If you think Psycho isn’t a slasher, we dare you to watch it, then try to take a shower afterward.

‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ (1974)

Image Via Bryanston Distributing Company

October 11, 1974 was a monumental day for horror. On this day, both Bob Clark‘s Black Christmas and Tobe Hooper‘s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre were released. It’s tempting to put Clark’s film on this list because of how it influenced Halloween, but the saw can’t be denied. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre begins with a group of friends who stop for help at a seemingly abandoned house in Texas, only to encounter an imaginable terror. Inside waits Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), a chainsaw-wielding cannibal who wears the faces of his victims. For Leatherface and his family, these kids are now on the menu.

If Psycho is nearly bloodless, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is filled with it… at least that’s what your mind tricks you into believing. In reality, there is very little of the red stuff. The violence is so intense and non-stop that our imagination lies to us. It’s a hot, sticky, uncomfortable movie, with a captivating final girl in Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns), a fighter who never stops screaming in terror. Hooper brilliantly disturbs the viewer in every scene and keeps you on edge for the entire runtime. Its success led to a franchise. Those are hit-and-miss. This perfect film is where it all begins, complete with a smart message about the failures of industrialization. Are we supposed to feel sorry for Leatherface as much as we fear him?

‘Halloween’ (1978)

Image via Compass International Pictures

Perhaps the most famous slasher of them all is John Carptenter‘s Halloween. Without it, not only would a thirteen-film franchise not exist, but neither would Friday the 13th and Jason Voorhees, nor the last name on this list. Halloween has a bare bones, simplistic plot. In Haddonfied, Illinois, the sister killing Michael Myers (Nick Castle) has escaped from a psychiatric hospital. On Halloween night, now wearing a chilling white mask, the silent Shape looks to relive his past crime when he spots a trio of high school girls, led by babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).

If you watch slashers from the 80s and 90s before Halloween, finally getting around to Carpenter’s masterpiece hits differently. It feels like a trope-heavy slasher just like all the others. There’s a reason for this though. Halloween is what perfected all of those plot beats the subgenre would come to rely on. The minimalism of the low budget makes the film lifelike rather than a slick Hollywood creation. Laurie is the perfect final girl as a shy young woman forced to fight for her life. And, oh, that score. No matter how many times you hear it with the Boogeyman lurking in the shadows, it’ll never fail to send a shiver down your spine. Halloween is a suburban nightmare like no other. If you’ve never seen a slasher before, start here.

‘Scream’ (1996)

Image via Dimension Films

The slasher fad died out in the late 80s, and for much of the 90s, horror lost its identity. It was saved by one of its best filmmakers when Wes Craven, the man behind A Nightmare on Elm Street, directed Scream. A brief synopsis hints at a movie just like everything that came before it. High school students in California are stalked by a killer in a mask who picks them off one by one, as final girl Sidney Precott (Neve Campbell), the object of their terror, struggles to bring them down. Yes, this is another masked psychopath, but this time, rather than being silent, they prefer to terrorize with phone calls. The history of scary movies is their favorite subject, and the only way to make it out is to maneuver through slasher stereotypes.

Kevin Williamson‘s clever meta horror script is a love letter to the past, and it’s all done so well that it created a new chapter for slashers. Forget being a slow-moving stalker, Ghostface is fast. What makes him really stand out is that he doesn’t have an established backstory. Rather than being a known entity like Michael Myers of Jason Voorhees, the villain in Scream is unknown. On top of the horror, viewers also have to figure out the mystery. While other movies in the franchise dropped the ball in the third act reveal, Scream teases us with both the obvious and the unpredictable, leading to a spot-on final act.

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By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 15 seconds ago

Like many critics, I felt like Starfleet Academy had a very rocky start, one that presented the show as a broad, lowbrow comedy for juvenile (in both senses of the word) audiences. To my astonishment, the show steadily improved as we warped through Season 1: the vulgar slang (mostly) disappeared, the thin characters fleshed out, and the comedy got minimized. At its worst, early Starfleet Academy felt like Beavis and Butt-Head meets Doctor Who. Now, each adventure feels like one of Voyager’s wackiest episodes, albeit one with the melodrama and fan service turned up to 200 percent.

The most recent episode, “300th Night,” is a new high for the series, in large part because it builds upon the mythology laid down by the very first episode. In this tale, Caleb finds his mother while the Federation finds itself at the mercy of Nus Braka’s deadliest attack yet. All of this is setting up what should be a satisfying season finale of Starfleet Academy next week, but unless that episode can win back the viewers it already lost, this show may be completely doomed.

Mommy Issues? More Like Mommy Subscriptions

The first episode of Starfleet Academy saddled main character Caleb with some seriously sad lore: his mother was unfairly busted by Starfleet, forcing Caleb to grow up on the run from Federation authorities. After he learned that she escaped prison, Caleb used the resources of Starfleet to try to reach out to Mommy Dearest. He never found her, but in “300th Night,” she is located on a planet that is about to be invaded by Nus Braka’s merry band of pirates.

With all of Starfleet being recalled to Betazed, Caleb is forced to steal a shuttle to go to his mother’s rescue. However, most of his fellow space cadets invite themselves along, and the best and brightest youngsters in the galaxy make a rough landing in a real hive of scum and villainy. There, they find Caleb’s mom and more trouble than they can handle, and Chancellor Ake must decide between saving the students she swore to protect and risking an intergalactic incident.

Starfleet Academy At Its Best

I was very hard on early episodes of Starfleet Academy, and for good reason: the show continuously used humor as a crutch, and the humor was often as juvenile as an episode of Jackass. Additionally, the show took big swings when it came to Star Trek lore, but the bad didn’t always connect. For every successful homage to past episodes of Deep Space Nine or Voyager, we’d get something controversial, like an episode revealing that most Klingons in the galaxy died (off-screen, no less) in their sleep, which means their souls went straight to hell (turns out it was not a good day to die).

Recently, however, Starfleet Academy has learned how to walk and sometimes even run without the crutches: most of the humor has been replaced with more dramatic beats, resulting in characters that feel more like serious cadets and less like sparring siblings. The show stopped making huge changes to franchise lore, leaning instead into episodes that follow up on previous adventures from Deep Space Nine and Voyager. The cherry on top of this is that the show seems to have finally learned proper pacing, resulting in tense episodes that are genuinely rewarding to watch.

In my always humble opinion, “300th Night” is the best episode of Starfleet so far. It continues the recent trend of following up on older stories, in this case, carving a new tale out of Voyager’s infamous Omega particle.  The episode also reunites Caleb with his mom, deepens his relationship with Tamira, and establishes Nus Braka as one of the most effective villains in Star Trek history. The result is an episode that you can enjoy as a chunk of series mythology, as a character piece for Caleb, or simply as a taut thriller in its own right.

The Talaxian Furfly In The Ointment

Don’t pour that Saurian Brandy too soon, kids: “300th Night” still has a few distracting flaws in it. The first is SAM, whose childlike character recently gained 17 years of life experience, during which the holographic Doctor served as her adoptive father. The previous episode implied that she would be very different, and SAM in “300th Night” says she didn’t like her old self. However, her new self isn’t very different: between giving long, unfunny bits of word salad and screaming half her lines, the new SAM seems inexplicably more annoying than the old one.

SAM’s more annoying moments are a reminder of a depressing fact: while Starfleet Academy is relying less on comedy than ever before, the attempts at humor that we do get are still exceedingly subpar. Other less-than-satisfying comic bits include the return of glitter vomit and Jet Reno getting a few “well, that just happened”-style quips. However, to the show’s credit, these bits of bad comedy are few and far between, and “300th Night” mostly focuses on the high drama of Caleb and his buddies breaking all the rules to make the galaxy’s most unlikely family reunion finally happen.

A Day Late And A Bar Of Latinum Short

As a Starfleet Academy hater from the beginning, I was surprised at the thought that kept bouncing around my head during “300th Night”: “Why the heck did the show wait so long to get so good?” This latest episode builds on plot elements laid down in the first episode, but this most recent adventure is infinitely more polished, led by actors and writers who are infinitely more confident in these characters. At long last, Starfleet Academy has achieved the impossible: it is now a good enough Star Trek show that I don’t mind recommending it to a friend. 

However, the show now finds itself in a state of limbo: it hasn’t been renewed beyond Season 2, and big changes at Paramount have made it increasingly likely it will be renewed. This is a bitter irony, but I’m convinced the show would already have been renewed if its early episodes focused more on the dramatic storytelling of “300th Night” and less on broad humor and lame attempts to appeal to young audiences. Now, Starfleet Academy may have finally transformed into a decent Star Trek show, but it won’t live long or prosper because embarrassing early attempts to appeal to new fans continuously drove everyone away.

Too busy chasing new fans to satisfy any of the old ones? That’s Alex Kurtzman at his best, baby.

By Jennifer Asencio
| Updated 27 seconds ago

Daily Wire’s King Arthur epic, The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin, is about the lives of Merlin and his father Taliesin as their legendary lives affect Briton during the 4^th through 6^th centuries. One of the major events of this era was the introduction of Christianity to the British Isles; the story is contemporary to the real-life Saint Patrick of Ireland, who converted the island nation to worship Jesus. This is a major theme of the show as Taliesin becomes a convert and later, Merlin channels divine energies to help unite the Britons against the Saxons.

Since it was produced by Daily Wire, I was skeptical of a show that was branded by its creator, Jeremy Boreing, as “probably the most Christian piece of entertainment since Braveheart.” I’m very eclectic in my spiritual beliefs, and definitely not Christian. I was also a religion major at first, but I specialized in Buddhism and neopaganism. I am far from the target audience of a Christian show. Despite this, I genuinely enjoyed most of the Left Behind series, a heavily preachy book set about the Rapture and its aftermath, but I was expecting The Pendragon Cycle to be heavily preachy and evangelical in the same vein as Left Behind.

The Pendragon Preaches Knights And Swordfights, Not Jesus

So it was with pleasant surprise that I watched the series and didn’t feel proselytized to at all. Sure, there are characters who convert to Christianity through direct contact with the bright light that is the show’s “One True God,” called by his medieval name of Yesu. But there were no attempts to convert anybody else, and no attempts to convert the audience.

Taliesin says nice things about his God, and Merlin can’t understand why everyone doesn’t embrace Him, but a show that was preaching would expect its audience to accept the truths of the two bards as their own personal truths rather than merely those of characters on a show. The Pendragon Cycle never does that. The show no more evangelizes Christianity than Deep Space Nine evangelizes the Prophets and the Orbs.

Other Religions Clash With The One True God

The other thing I noticed about religion in the show was its treatment of other gods. Bel, the god of the Atlanteans, is a terrifying bull who blows up his people’s island with a volcano, but he at least has the courtesy to warn Charis beforehand so she has time to evacuate as many as she can, including her father, Avallach, and sister Morgain.

In Briton, the druids worship Cernunnos, who was a real deity honored all over western Europe in the pre-Christian era. He is portrayed as a terrifying skeleton, similar to the Grim Reaper, but with antlers like a deer’s; historical Cernunnos looked a lot like what we think of as a satyr or Pan from Greek mythology, but with antlers instead of goat horns. As a character, his glowing red eyes are very scary, but so are the primeval woodlands that are his domain. He is never portrayed as evil himself; characters do evil things to harness his power for their personal gain, but he is never accused of being demonic or Satanic.

The Pendragon Cycle Does Not Engage In Evangelism

Evangelists believe every other religion in the world is Satanic, especially other forms of Christianity that are different from theirs; they don’t consider Catholicism to be Christianity at all. They believe the various other religions and Christian sects are expressions of Satan trying to trick humans into turning away from God. Even the saints of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox religions are viewed as “pagan” and therefore “Satanic,” and no mercy is shown to ancient religions like Druidism or those of the pre-Columbian Americas. This is why they have such urgency to convert people: they believe they are saving people from a terrible fate.

None of that is in this “Christian” show. Very few of the major characters actually convert to Christianity and never enter into conflict with their pagan kin and allies about it. No attempts are made to enforce the religion on the other Britons or even convince them that Yesu is anything but a deity more forgiving than the primordial gods of the natural world, the ones who reign over volcanoes and deep forests and hungry predators. No one is ever asked to hate the Old Gods, not even the Atlanteans, whose god destroyed their home.

Indiana Jones Is Preachier Than The Rise Of Merlin

Merlin channels the power of God frequently, but he never expects anyone to convert to his way of thinking, except in one instance that really proves the point. In a flashback to his childhood in the cold open for Episode 5, he stands before the druids and proclaims the power of God to them; they protest that other Christians have destroyed their holy groves. Merlin decries this act as “the act of ignorant men,” then proceeds to destroy their meeting place. I remember being annoyed by his hypocrisy, but later on, he sobs to Charis that he doesn’t understand why the druids weren’t convinced by his power. Charis’s response really sums up how religion in the show is treated overall: “Not every man will choose to believe… and nothing you or anyone else can do will change that.”

The Pendragon Cycle isn’t trying to change anyone’s belief and isn’t even trying to tell as Christian a story as old 1950s blockbusters like The Ten Commandments or Dimitrius and the Gladiators. Even Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade gets preachier and talks about Christianity far more than Jeremy Boreing’s masterpiece. Maybe a better comparison for the level of religious discussion in The Pendragon Cycle would be Raiders of the Lost Ark, which invokes the powers of the same God Merlin follows, but to everyone’s delight rather than the derision the King Arthur series has received.

King Arthur Was Always A Christian Legend

Finally, as I have mentioned before, the entire mythos of King Arthur is steeped in Christianity. He is ordained by God to be the Once and Future King, and famously quests for and achieves the Holy Grail, something even Indiana Jones didn’t get to keep. The original folk tales King Arthur was based on came from around the time The Pendragon Cycle takes place and were further solidified and Christianized in the 1300s by Thomas Mallory.

The Arthur we know from classics like Excalibur and even shows like Netflix’s Cursed was always Christian. Anyone who enjoyed King Arthur content before can easily appreciate the Daily Wire show because it has all the same themes they’ve been savoring all along. Avoiding this show over perceived religious proselytizing and the expectation of overbearing religious messaging is, as another Jeremy B once said, “nonsense on stilts.”

The Daily Wire Factor

Daily Wire does have a lot of conservative Christian content, but most of it is Catholic or archaeological. They’re not talking to Evangelicals or trying to convert the masses. None of their fictional content has overly religious overtones, and all are merely projects that mainstream Hollywood won’t touch because they can’t warp them to reflect their own values and politics.

The Pendragon Cycle is only as religious as it needs to be and is only a story that happens to include Christianity rather than being a Christian show. Its mild religious overtones shouldn’t be an excuse to miss out on this incredible production; it’s definitely a weak excuse, and I say that as one of Charis’s “not every [wo]man.”

The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin is now streaming in its entirety on Daily Wire+.

Netflix has a healthy stream of limited programming, and there is no creator more dependable in that arena than Mike Flanagan. The horror director burst on the scene in the 2010s, best known for his adaptations of Stephen King. It was his bleak and heart-wrenching limited series, The Haunting of Hill House, however, that cemented his status as one of the best horror filmmakers of the modern era. Flanagan’s deal with Netflix allowed him to release consistent shows that never missed the mark.

After the success of putting his spin on Shirley Jackson, Flanagan turned to Edgar Allan Poe. 2023’s The Fall of the House of Usher took the original short story and contextualized it for the modern era. The series wasn’t just a rehash of one of Poe’s seminal works, but a love letter to many of the poet’s contributions. The result was another Flanagan production that redefined what it means to be a part of a terrible family and even what viewers were willing to allow into their living rooms.

‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ Weaponizes One of Poe’s Famous Stories

Mike Flanagan’s appreciation for Edgar Allan Poe’s work shines through in every element of The Fall of the House of Usher. Its lack of subtlety is an asset, as each of the main characters is named after figures in Poe’s work. Even a young version of Roderick Usher (Zach Gilford) writes the poem “Annabel Lee” for his wife in the series. Flanagan uses one of Poe’s most famous works, “The Masque of the Red Death,” in horrifying fashion in the second episode of the series.

Similar to the story, Roderick’s (Bruce Greenwood) youngest illegitimate child, Prospero “Perry” Usher, throws a masquerade, which becomes the site of a gruesome scene. In the series, Perry is motivated by his hedonistic lifestyle and a sense of revenge for his family members who don’t believe in his pursuits. He invites everyone to an exclusive party at a condemned building belonging to the Ushers’ company, Fortunato Pharmaceuticals. The rave is meant to inspire the worst urges in people, which should have culminated in being rained on by the sprinklers in the building.

Perry hooks up the sprinklers to the water tanks on the building, unaware that they were filled with corrosive chemicals that Fortunato was trying to hide. When Perry turns on the sprinklers, the entire party is disintegrated with acid, including himself. He dies horribly, just like his character in the story. Although Poe’s work often pairs vivid, occasionally beautiful gore with lyricism, Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher is grimmer and less aesthetically pleasing.

This episode is Poe through the lens of Flanagan, who has never been one to shy away from the brutalities of horror. He had already made one of the most grueling scenes of all time in Doctor Sleep with the torture and murder of a 12-year-old boy. Episode 2 is much the same, except on a grander scale. When the scene is first presented to the audience, there is no indication that there is something other than water in the sprinkler system.

Perry looks up to the ceiling, beckoning the spray of the sprinkler, only for it to immediately start sizzling flesh. As soon as the carnage starts, it takes some time for it to stop. The party-goers are unable to escape the room, as Carla Gugino‘s Verna locked the exits. Viewers had to watch the excruciating scene as the skin melts off the flesh of all the characters.

Though most of the characters in the scene aren’t the easiest to empathize with, there is no joy in watching this scene. Flanagan is known for the emotional violence he inflicts upon his characters, but this is something different. This locks viewers along with the characters in the room, desperate for escape. When the torture does end, the remaining corpses are some of the most disturbing images put on screen. Flanagan proves that he is a horror director first: The Fall of the House of Usher promises to deliver on that front.

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Monaleo has been keeping fans on their toes lately, and this week was no different. The rising star, who’s been riding the momentum of her latest ‘Who Did The Body’ tour, took to social media with an unexpected update that quickly got fans talking and sending well wishes.

RELATED: Prayers Up! Monaleo Cancels Shows, Shares Update After Emergency Surgery For Softball-Sized Cyst (UPDATE)

Monaleo Gives Update On Status Of Her Tour Following Emergency Surgery

On Friday, the rapper revealed that she has canceled the remainder of her ‘Who Did the Body’ tour after undergoing emergency surgery earlier this week. In a message shared on X, Monaleo explained that after speaking with her doctors she made the difficult decision to call off the final 12 tour dates — including her March 6 hometown stop in Houston — so she can focus on her recovery. Earlier in the week, she had already been forced to cancel shows in Memphis and New Orleans due to the sudden medical emergency that required immediate surgery. In her heartbreaking post, she revealed:

“This is the hardest decision I’ve had to make in my entire career. I gave everything I had to every city, every crowd, every night. This tour has been such an incredible chapter in my life, and I hate that this is how it has to end for now. But, my health has to and always will come first.”

Roomies Rally Around Monaleo With Support

Fans quickly flooded The Shade Room’s Instagram comment section with support for Monaleo following the news. Many shared prayers and well wishes for her healing. A few also kept it simple, saying health is wealth and that no one is mad at her for putting herself first and focusing on recovery.

One Instagram user @pvpiace said, “Love you queen !!!! Take care of yourself for that baby boy!!“

Then Instagram user @makyla.aliese commented, “get better soon🥺🩷🩷”

While Instagram user @kamcoldhearted added, “As she should ❗️health always comes first ❤️”

This Instagram user @ashanti_playhouse shared, “She can always do another tour she can’t get another life 🤷🏽‍♀️. I’ll never be mad at an artist for putting themselves first“

And, Instagram user @prettyyy.p wrote, “Women go through so much“

Finally, Instagram user @feettickler_25 said, “Get rest! Your true fans will still be here when you return!“

What’s Really Going On With Monaleo?

As previously reported, the Houston rapper announced that her Memphis and New Orleans tour stops on March 3 and 4 would be canceled due to a medical emergency. At the time, she shared that she had already completed 25 shows and was giving “110%” every night, but explained that the rest of the tour would be a day-by-day decision as she focused on recovering ahead of her next scheduled stop in Houston on March 6.

After that initial update, Monaleo later shared a more detailed health update with fans, admitting she was “upset” and didn’t expect things to unfold this way. According to the rapper, she began experiencing a sharp pain in her lower abdomen on Monday that worsened even after taking pain medication, prompting a trip to the emergency room. Doctors later discovered an inflamed cyst “the size of a softball” that had twisted, cutting off blood flow and causing internal bleeding — which ultimately required emergency surgery and resulted in the loss of one ovary and a fallopian tube.

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By Robert Scucci
| Published 22 seconds ago

The only thing I love more than a solid neo-noir crime thriller is a parody that only cares about one thing: jamming as many jokes into the premise as humanly possible. The Naked Gun franchise holds up so well because there are so many visual gags happening in the background while its characters speak almost exclusively in puns and non sequiturs that the movies practically demand multiple viewings. 1993’s Fatal Instinct is cut from the same cloth, but it’s rarely celebrated these days because critics brushed it under the rug upon release. It currently holds a 14 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Here’s the thing about movies like Fatal Instinct. They’re meant to be stupid. They’re meant to be over-the-top exercises in character incompetence and miscommunication. Everything about Fatal Instinct is intentional, with the goal being to make the smartest, stupid crime thriller you could beam into your skull on Tubi. I normally agree with old Roger Ebert reviews, but I can say with confidence that he was wrong to give Fatal Instinct a one-and-a-half star review.

Ned Ravine Is Your New Favorite Idiot

Fatal Instinct follows the exploits of Ned Ravine (Armand Assante), a cop with a law degree who incarcerates criminals and then takes them on as defense clients. More often than not, his efforts backfire because, as the arresting officer, he already has the evidence proving the person he’s defending is guilty. When approached by sexbomb Lola Cain (Sean Young) to look over some legal documents, their meeting quickly leads to an extramarital affair that he needs to hide from his wife, Lana (Kate Nelligan).

Fortunately, or unfortunately for Ned depending on how you look at it, Lana is having an affair of her own with her mechanic, Frank (Christopher McDonald). It’s fortunate because Lana is far too distracted with her own sexcapades to suspect Ned of foul play. It’s unfortunate because Lana and Frank plan to kill Ned under very specific circumstances in order to cash in on his handsome life insurance policy.

Meanwhile, convicted felon Max Shady (James Remar) finishes his sentence and swears revenge on Ned, who, thanks to his double dipping into law enforcement and the legal field, landed him behind bars for seven years. The reason? Ned Ravine is a total idiot.

Of course, all of these plot points are established between wild sexual encounters involving a fridge, a belt sander, and just about any smooth surface you can think of, making you wonder exactly how Fatal Instinct landed a PG-13 rating. My guess is that since everything is so ridiculously over the top in every conceivable way, the censors were willing to let this one slip through the cracks. It’s overtly sexual, but also so slapstick that there’s no way anybody could take any of it seriously.

Profoundly Stupid In The Smartest Ways

Jam-packed with double entendres from start to finish, it takes a special kind of director like Carl Reiner to fully realize the kind of shtick that writer David O’Malley wanted front and center. Facial expressions and elaborate sight gags dominate Fatal Instinct. Guns have volume knobs on their silencers. Cigarette smoke billows out of mouths like a fog machine. Detectives slip repeatedly in crime scene blood. Sports commentators sit at the back of the courtroom offering instant replays for the viewing audience at home.

Fatal Instinct is so dumb that it’s actually smart. There are so many laugh-out-loud moments that you’ll want to freeze frame, rewind, and replay. It’s the only way to keep up with its rapid-fire joke delivery, and even then you might still miss a punchline or two. Don’t let the critics fool you on this one because it doesn’t deserve to sit in the trenches over at Rotten Tomatoes. It’s good, dumb fun if I’ve ever seen it, and that’s all it’s ever trying to be.

As of this writing, Fatal Instinct is streaming for free on Tubi.

Former Below Deck star Emile Kotze is suing NBCUniversal for $850 million after claiming the network perpetrated a “coordinated campaign of exploitation, harassment and deceit” during his time on the show.

Kotze, who appeared on season 3 of the Bravo series, was 23 years old when he worked as a deckhand on the reality show. Now 34, Kotze has been embroiled in a legal battle with Bravo’s parent network since June 2025, Us Weekly can confirm.

Kotze claimed in his initial lawsuit that he was “sexually harassed, manipulated and subjected to degrading treatment” during and after he filmed the show in 2015.

The yachty filed a first amended complaint on June 13, 2025, less than two weeks after he initiated the lawsuit in the Southern District of New York.

In October 2025, Kotze filed a second amended complaint, claiming that after he was cast on Below Deck, the showrunners decided they wanted him to be part of a “showmance” with female crew member Raquel “Rocky” Dakota.

One executive allegedly pointed to Kotze’s South African background and possible “traditional values” as something that would help with the story line.

“We can get some fish-out-of-water tension with him. Plus, he’s not union or anything, we can push him harder,” the executive allegedly said, according to the court filing.

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The Below Deck franchise has had its fair share of chaos over the years, but there were some moments that stood out more. During season 7 of the Bravo show, chief stew Kate Chastain and bosun Ashton Pienaar had a scary confrontation when the latter was drunk after a night out. Ashton ended up punching […]

Kotze further claimed that once filming began, production “piled” him with alcohol during his downtime and was “encouraging him to ‘make a move’” on Dakota, despite his alleged hesitation about pursuing a romantic relationship with her.

Kotze alleged that during cast nights out after charters, the producers would encourage them to take shots and do drinking games. He claimed that one such night led to Dakota “in a distraught emotional state” climbing the yacht’s mast and jumping overboard.

Kotze claimed in the docs that he was “traumatized witnessing this, as he feared for Rocky’s life.” He alleged that production “treated it as a dramatic plot twist – cameras kept rolling, and they later used the footage as entertainment.”

“After filming, Defendants defamed Plaintiff by deceptively editing footage to portray him in a false and damaging light, misappropriated his likeness for continued commercial gain without consent, and engaged in a cover-up and retaliation campaign to silence and discredit him when he sought redress,” the lawsuit read, claiming that Kotez’s alleged mistreatment continued once filming wrapped.

NBCUniversal had no comment.

Kotze is seeking between $633 million and $850 million in damages, claiming in his lawsuit that $123 million was lost in future earnings because his “once-promising yachting career was destroyed.”

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He said he is seeking “no less than $10 million” in damages for emotional distress and proposed for punitive damages he be awarded $500 million.

Kotze also asked the court to demand that the network remove or delete any “intimate images or photos” of him from all platforms and stop future distribution or streaming of season 3 episodes “containing defamatory or unauthorized content.”

If the episodes remain up, Kotze wants the network to add a disclaimer to the show “clarifying that certain portrayals of the Plaintiff were manipulated.”

NBC, meanwhile, filed a motion to dismiss the first amended complaint in October 2025, but a judge denied the motion on January 3, People reported.