Episode 173 - Sex & Zen + Thief + Side Roads + Who Killed Teddy Bear + Christmas Evil + SNDN5 + Adam Green’s Aladdin + Cracking Up + Isola

On The Stacks this week, part one (0:00-1:16:31) we cover first the Michael Mak category III Golden Harvest erotic comedy Sex and Zen, in addition to "The Galileo Seven" (the 16th episode of Star Trek (TOS). In part two (1:16:31-2:48:41), we talk about 8 additional films - Michael Mann's beautifully aesthetic 1981 debut crime film Thief, Bill Bordy's super-obscure 1988 no-fi crime picture Side Roads, Joseph Cates' 1965 grim crime drama Who Killed Teddy Bear?, the 1980 Lewis Jackson Santa slasher Christmas Evil, Martin Kitrosser's ridiculous 1991 Christmas-based slasher Silent Night Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker, Adam Green's 2016 papier-mâché and drugs version of Aladdin, Matt Mitler's 1994 Surf Reality thesis film Cracking Up, and the 2000 Toshiyuki Mizutani J-horror / melodrama Isola: Multiple Personality Girl. An extended part three features capsule discussion of everything else we watched since the last episode two weeks ago, and our picks for next week.

The live list of The Stacks is online at https://letterboxd.com/jshopa/list/the-stacks/