Have you ever wandered into a scuzzy dive bar, chatted up the bartender, only to have him pour you a free top shelf shot. But it goes into the dirtiest glass you’ve ever seen. Cigarette butt at the bottom. Some old kooze’s lipstick ring permanently pressed into the rim.
A $500 shot of tequila sipped through a poop chalice is still a $500 shot of tequila. You just have to scrunch up the face, and filter it across your front teeth. Sucking it through the thin cracks of your incisors.
That’s the experience of enjoying a Tubi original on a Saturday night. Expensive liquor weighed against that heavy push in your bladder, cause you really have to pee. But you’re stuck in a locked car.
The finale comes on like pulling over to relieve yourself on the side of an abandoned Sav-On that’s been turned into a Spirit Halloween. Knowing that once you get back in the car, you’ll have to pee again in about twenty minutes.
You take the good, you take the bad, and there you have the facts of a Tubi original.
Tubi went in a decidedly different angle with its originals this Halloween. Instead of a new monster movie or a creepy slasher, it delivered two back-to-back domestic thrillers aimed at scaring the cheater out of all of us. Fitting for an end of spooky season run that has been plagued by the non-stop onslaught of Klein-Eleven videos.
If you know, you definitely know. I’m not going to get into any of that other than to say Ethan must have had a grueling time navigating his free horror movie treats on Tubi.
A couple of weeks ago, we got the amazing cinematic cheatasterpiece Psycho Side Chick where a serial killer goes full Captain Crunch on her fauxiance after she discovers he has a wife and baby on the way.
Now, for Halloween Weekend proper, we get One Night Stand, which serves as the perfect “side piece” to Psycho Side Chick. Actually? Perhaps they are a little too similar.
One Night Stand follows the adventures of a black-hooded rain slicker wearing serial slasher dubbed “The Black Widow Killer” which doesn’t quite make sense, as she’s not out killing any variation on what a black widow is.
She, herself, is the black widow. The local nightly news also calls her “The One Night Stand” killer and sometimes they just call her by her first name “Eve.”
Her modus operandi? She murdalizes cheating spouses, and sometimes their spouse, too. What makes her different from Psycho Side Chick is that she leaves a Dum-Dums sucker stuck to her victims.
We know these are Dum-Dums cause there’s a great scene where, after she strangles a guy with a stretch of copper wire in the front seat of his car, she gets really excited that she pulled “the mystery flavor.”
I feel you, girl.
She then places a black plastic bodega bag on his hat like a head. Not over his face, or tight around his neck. Just perched so his corpsey visage is sticking out.
Haha. Ok. You do you, movie.
The main plot is just one further adventure for Eve. She seduces a married man, who has bet his pals $500 that he can be the first to bag a chick. And that he does.
Only, he goes one step further and takes her home for a passionate night of Tubi style love making, which means they’ve got some high profile Halloween commercials on the line, so we’re not getting much more skin than a couple of well placed cleavage shots.
Co-directors Rockey Black & Kellen Lee are good at getting this all across in what turns out to be a mostly PG-13 rated thriller like the ones Sony used to make. Obsessed comes to mind. Remember that one? Where Ali Larter goes after Idris Elba, and Beyonce has to fight for her man? It was notable for a scene where Ali downloads the new Crudo album featuring Dan the Automator and Mike Patton before fans could get their hands on it. Well, it’s exactly 20 years later, and we still don’t have that record. Thanks, Ali.
Back to One Night Stand…
Eve, played to perfection by Robyn Rose, has an unconventional air about her. While she is hella sexy and sells smoking hot like collars at a priest convention, slinking through her local dodunk dive bar with maximum confidence, she also leaves a mean mayonnaise and Braunschweiger sandwich aftertaste the next morning.
This movie’s main victim, Jaylen Burns, played by up and coming future Oscar winner DeJuan Ford, understands this almost immediately, and begins visibly sweating through the post-nut depression and shame almost as soon as the sheets are ruined.
I’ve never seen a character realize he’s f’ed up this bad this quickly.
The rest of the short runtime has Eve playing with her food, as she torments Jaylen to the point of insanity. Sidling up to his fashion designer wife, pretending to be a pigtailed, Where’s Waldo looking British chick.
Jaylen Burns is desperate to cover his tracks, looks pretty suspicious, and then loses it when he finds his chick on main is pregnant…And yeah…
You’re right.
This is kind of Psycho Side Chick all over again. But that’s ok. I’m down to clown when these man-killing Thots come hoeing around. This type of Tubi trash will never not be fun. Like dumping an entire can of Sour Creme and Onion flavored Pringles directly into your mouth.
It appears that Tubi blew their budget on Psycho Side Chick. As the seams show through a little harder here. I feel like this was shot in two different locations dressed up as six. And it works to the charm of this cheap aesthetic.
That brings me back to my initial thesis, there at the begining. The script, plotting, vibe and acting is all top shelf. These two directors are masters in their craft of creating addictive Tubi thrills. While this looks cheaper than Psycho Side Chick, its staging is more naturalistic and flows without that Vertical microdrama sheen that has been plaguing a lot of Tubi Originals lately.
That’s all to say, this is top shelf liquor served in the dirtiest shot glass imaginable. And that’s ok, we’re just here to get drunk. This’ll definitely do the trick.
It’s become a tradition to watch these Tubi originals with my 84 year old mom, who loves them almost as much as I do. Her two cents this round? She thought One Night Stand had too much monologuing.
And she’s right. There is considerably more dialogue here than usual. But it helps set up real characters who we hate to see get offed. Most slashers don’t put this much thought into making the audience not just empathize, but also genuinely like, its victims. I felt One Night Stand does a nice job of that.
One Night Stand is streaming for free on Tubi right now. When someone offers you a shot of Jose Cuervo 250 Aniversario, but serves it to you in a styrofoam cup dug out of a Tomi’s Chilli Burger dumpster?
Guzzle that shiz, then crush the cup with a burp. It don’t go down ez if it ain’t chee-Zee. I wish the One Night Stand killer would come tee off on me. Please.
