What you get here is a story of a priest who gets a blood transfusion and becomes a vampire. It's a Korean horror film by director Park Chan-wook who also did the awesome OLDBOY and the even more awesome SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE. Like those movies it has an amazingly stylish look to the film and and some disturbing visuals. Unfortunately like those movies it also suffers a bit from a long run-time(over 2 hours!). Unlike those this one goes off into the supernatural realm with the whole blood-drinking, super-hero-powered vampires thing. There's a love story thrown in also that I imagine could remind some people of TWILIGHT(but a TWILIGHT not made for brain-damaged 12 year-olds complete with slit wrists, fountains of blood, boobs and a naked fat man in a coma getting a not-so-sexy sponge bath). I feel overall Park's movies are worth checking out and I always enjoy them while watching them even if I can't see myself sitting through them more than once since unlike these vampires my lifespan is not eternal.
Producer K. Gordon Murray brought over two of these Santo movies in the 60's and re-dubbed our Mexican masked wrestler's name as Samson(there's also SAMSON VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN). I imagine this may have been done because the Italian Samson and Hercules peplum movies were a big deal at the time. Our Samson here ain't no Greek god though, he's more like a Batman type of hero who helps the police solve some murders happening around a wax museum. One of the odd things about this dubbed version is that it's never explained why every once in a while Samson stops the investigation to go have a wrestling match. It's just something he enjoys doing I suppose. It's also weird that they didn't bother to dub over all the wrasslin' fans loudly shouting SANTO! SANTO!.
As a fan of mexi-lucha cinema I found this flick fun and amusing if in the right state of mind. Getting to this state may require a bit of alcohol and/or at least a sense of humor which obviously is lacking in most "serious" movie-viewing jackoffs. But for those looking for a good example of Santo's 1960's exploits this movie works as well as any. I'll take this over most Hollywood "action" shitfests anyday. As for the plot it's about Santo's quest to rid Mexico of an anti-social Hitleresque type(who was ironically a survivor of a concentration camp during World War II) that wants to spread murder and chaos throughout the world and also set up a sweet wax museum(of course a bit of HOUSE OF WAX is ripped off here). There's monsters(real & wax), wacky henchmen(one that looks like Vincent Price strangely enough and the other that looks like "Batboy"), a caveman/wrestler and many scenes of old-school pro-wrassling. If you dig this movie look for Santo's 70's adventures for a more colorful example of monster-bashing goodness.
This old clunky horror flick is probably best known today for historical purposes rather than being a great film. This was the first film featuring zombies. Of course these aren't your modern-day over-hyped, gut-munching type but your old-timey voodoo, mind-controlled, shambling slave sort. Bela Lugosi is the main highlight here as our evil villain with the awesome name of Murder Legendre. This is a very dashing Lugosi complete with sweet bad-guy mustache and matching beard. You also get a little racism thrown in, since it's the 30's, when someone talks about the worst thing for a woman would be to have her body in the hands of natives. Pretty dull whenever Bela isn't onscreen but worth a watch if you dig the classics and can deal with a very low-budget example of one.
Although it feels like this movie is everywhere today due to being in the public domain the original film was actually lost for a bunch of years up until being rediscovered in the 60's.
I've seen a few people refer to this as Lamberto Bava's remake of his father's BLACK SUNDAY(a.k.a. THE MASK OF SATAN) but after watching it I think it's definitely more in the crappy rip-off department. The only thing that it takes from Mario Bava's film is the whole mask with the spikes in it thing and a witch who comes back and gets revenge. It also goes under the alternate title BLACK SUNDAY which is pretty ballsy for such a shitty imitation. The majority of the plot varies greatly from the original SUNDAY film though and is unfortunately way less stylish and iconic. Also we have no one here that is anywhere near the great Barbara Steele so they let a guy be the lead and he seems like an extremely dumb fellow throughout.
The movie starts of with a bunch of nitwit skiers who end up trapped in an ice-cave where they unleash some evil forces. Pretty quickly things stop making sense until we devolve into one of those- "was it a dream or did it really happen"-types of stories, and I hate those! Needless to say this was not a fun watch. Perhaps the fact that it was originally made for Spanish TV may have been a big reason. For a TV movie though it does feature a bit of nudity and gore which I doubt you would see in anything made for TV here in America.
This one is also alternately known as DEMONS 5:THE DEVIL'S VEIL which kind of makes sense since our group do sorta resemble the monsters from DEMONS and all the DEMONS sequels I've seen(besides part 2) are terrible!
I'd never heard of this weird little 70's horror flick until I picked it up on a double-feature disc with the Piper Laurie vehicle RUBY and I thought it was actually way better than the main feature. As a lover of killer spiders in films and the owner of a pet tarantula it was hard not to love this story of a gal who lives in a mortuary and gets revenge on her shitty dysfunctional family and her horrible friends using an army of her pet tarantulas. Where you might expect a straight ahead animals-run-amok type of a film this one throws in murder, incest, coffin antics and a general creepy feeling over everything. The plot sorta rips off WILLARD except with a chick and spiders and lots of added elements. There's also a drive-in scene where DIRTY HARRY and MAGNUM FORCE are playing which would be a pretty cool night at the movies(at least until a carload of kids start freaking out over some awesome-looking spiders and inadvertently kill each other in a ridiculous display of pussy-ness) While this is only rated-PG and there's not really any blood or gore to speak of I think it's messed-up enough for lovers of the strange and bizarre to appreciate it.
This Italian/Spanish film starts out with a crud-faced lady(Polish actress with the cool name of Magda Konopka) killing a doctor to obtain his youth serum. She becomes beautiful and younger looking but the downside is that she becomes kinda homicidal at times. Though technically she wasn't above killing anyway since she already did it so no big deal. I always assumed this was a superhero movie along the lines of DANGER:DIABOLIK because of the masked character on all the posters but apparently that is just an outfit that our main character wears while stripping. This film was based on an earlier comic book but it's definitely no superhero, or super-villain, type of a thing. I've seen this movie referred to as a giallo which would be really stretching the definition of that word. I think I would just call it a Euro-thriller. It tends to delve a little too much into the police procedural area for my liking but it's still an OK movie. You get a cat-fight, some murders, a few bare breast shots and they throw in a couple of neat plot twists at the end. Without giving it away the very end is really absurd and unbelievable. This whole thing might have been a better watch for me if they went for a more straight forward giallo or at least stuck to the horror elements more. Despite the title Satan never shows up nor does any devil-worshiping go on.
While Christmas movies, children's films and musicals are some of the worst things ever created by the human race this one here at least has the decency to be full of kitsch value, bizarre elements and it appears to have been filmed by maniacs who tried to throw everything into the film that a kid of the early 60's could want(besides maybe some monsters which would have been fantastic). Of course you get the titular Martians who are just idiots with their skin painted green wearing stupid hats with antennas on them, a possibly insane Santa Claus who laughs uncontrollably at nothing, a guy in a ragtag polar-bear suit and a guy in a shitbox robot suit who both terrorize some annoying little kids. There's also a bumbling Martian who acts like Gilligan and Pia Zadora(who would go on to get very naked in NC-17 rated films when she got older) as a little Martian girl. While this film is extremely stupid with dumb sci-fi elements it's at least stupidly mildly amusing and not even close to the worst when you dig into the holiday crap that's out there. I also appreciate that they kept the music part down to just one awesomely obnoxious song about Santy Claus that should have become a seasonal classic.
Some lady Mexican wrestlers, or Luchadoras if you're the international type, take on a mad scientist who enjoys dressing like an evil masked Mexican wrestler. He throws a gorilla brain into a guy to make a gorilla-man named Gomar and also hypnotizes a masked lady wrestler named Vendetta to do his evil bidding. Even with all this wackiness going on this movie is pretty dull and sleep-inducing. There's lots of female wrasslin' matches and a head-scratching finale that uses the classic KING KONG ending. Director Rene Cardona went on to remake this in 1972 as the way better and way gorier NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES which I would highly recommend checking out. This earlier version is only for real lovers of Mexi-crap cinema. There's also a re-edited version of this film with a redone soundtrack called ROCK 'N' ROLL WRESTLING WOMEN VS. THE AZTEC APE(done by the great Johnny Legend) which at least throws in some amusing music bits to liven things up. There's also a version titled SEX MONSTER and I have no idea what they added to that one but it sounds interesting. A sequel appeared the following year where our ladies take on the Aztec Mummy which is pretty much the same film but with a long-haired mummy and there's another one where they fight a robot of some sort and probably a few others that I haven't seen yet. I usually find myself watching these movies at around 3 a.m. when insomnia is plaguing me and they usually cure that very quickly.
I'm not sure if the way cooler, and more descriptively titled DR. JEKYLL'S DUNGEON OF DEATH version of this 70's torture film is more graphic than this one but it does feel like they cut away from anything too gory in the print that I viewed which is a shame because there isn't a whole lot else to recommend this flick for. Whatever edition you watch though I imagine it's still pretty tedious for most of it's running time. Most of the film consists of Dr. Jekyll(who is the great grandson of the original Dr. Jekyll) beating on women inter-cut between scenes of his captive victims, who he experiments on, having karate fights. Why Jekyll only kidnaps karate students is never explained but I guess martial arts was big at the time so what the hell. The actor who plays Jekyll is very grating to watch and I guess his intent was to show how evil he is by acting in an annoying over the top fashion but it makes for a long ride. His brilliant idea is not to inject himself with his great grandfather's Mr. Hyde potion but use it on others(just brilliant!). He is helped by a large, limping, scarred and deformed black manservant named Boris(who looks a bit like Blackenstein), a black sharpshooter/psychopath and Jekyll's mute nutso sister(throw in some incest here for the hell of it). At least there are some interesting characters present even if they never really do a whole hell of a lot. The ending is OK with just about everyone ending up dead which is the sort of 70's ending I prefer. I imagine this film would appeal to sadists(who enjoy seeing people beaten to death in boring, crappily choreographed American kung-fu fights, women having hot water poured on them and other general misogyny) and masochists who enjoy being beaten senseless with horrendous acting. I don't think I could make it through another watch without some heavy psychedelic drug usage. AKA THE JEKYLL EXPERIMENT
FEMALE VAMPIRE is one of my fav Jess Franco directed films. It's also one I've re-watched a whole bunch but I've never seen this version of it before. What EROTIKILL is, is a re-edited version that takes away some of the more crazy dream-like scenes and makes things more stream-lined and typically horror/vampire movie like. It is almost like watching a different film and I'm not sure if I like it more or less but it's an interesting viewing after seeing the original version so often. This would probably be the preferable edition for people that aren't into the whole artsy-aspect of Franco's work but I'm sure it would still seem pretty strange to the average viewer. There's also a hardcore version, titled INSATIABLE LUST, out there with full explicit blowjob scenes amongst others.
The story is pretty simple as it basically consist of Lina Romay playing a vampire who roams about in a mostly undressed state(bare vagina and full euro-bush proudly on display) feeding on folks and sucking out their blood and semen. Jack Taylor from PIECES(and a million other eurotrash flicks) plays one of her victims and Franco himself(with sweet 70's moustache and long greasy hippie hair) plays a doctor who is the only one who knows what's going down. There's also a non-ending finale, lesbian antics aplenty and gratuitous blood bathing and air-humping. A good watch for europerverts and non-retarded goths(do those exist?). AKA's= BARE BREASTED COUNTESS, JACULA, EROTIC KILL, SICARIUS: THE MIDNIGHT PARTY, THE LAST THRILL, THE LOVES OF IRINA and there's at least two dozen more in various cut and/or uncut form.
Back in the 80's heavy-metal was very scary to old people, church going kooks and conservative nutjobs and this film tries to cash in on that scary image. Of course nowadays it just all looks extremely silly. I'd always assumed this was some kinda slasher movie but it's really not so much. It's actually the story of a Satanic heavy metal band that turn a bunch of small-town high-school kids into homicidal killers. Things do get a little slashery here and there but I would call this more of a demonic possession kind of film since they also tend to turn into stupid-looking demons. Big Pussy from THE SOPRANOS shows up and gets promptly eaten by an insectoid speaker-demon and Tony Iommi from Vanilla Fudge plays drums in our hellspawn band. I think my favorite death bit here involves a guy whose heart explodes after he peeps a pair of bare tits. With an overload of dumb metal songs, some story elements lifted from INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and a final fight scene with rubber-suited monsters that looks like it belongs in a GODZILLA movie this might be slightly amusing just for it's cheese-factor but I think I'm gonna stick with HARD ROCK ZOMBIES if I wanna re-watch something dumb from the 80's crapheap.
The coolest thing to me about this spaghetti-western is seeing big George Eastman(best remember by horror/gore fans as the cannibalistic monster-man in ANTHROPOPHAGOUS) as a leader of a band of outlaws. Besides this it's a pretty standard revenge tale that's kinda forgettable. A few things do stick out though such as our main villain(Horst Frank) making his henchmen/slaves duel it out GAME OF DEATH-style wearing metal claws like Wolverine from The X-Men and there's an elaborate torture device that Eastman ends up in that involves snakes and rats in an unpleasant manner. For this stuff alone which adds more of an exploitation style to the western action I would say check this one out. According to the poster above this played at some point along with DJANGO THE LAST KILLER which seems like it would be a cool George Eastman-filled night at the movies!
Lots of porn flicks from back in the 70's featured characters who may or may not have been slightly retarded(PRETTY PEACHES with Desiree Cousteau is probably the best examples of this style of fuck movie) and that's exactly what you get here. In this one we're also told our titular Dixie is very young(14? 15? it's never made totally clear) in addition to being very stupid. Abigail Clayton stars and she would go on to make a bunch more porn and finally end up in the great slasher film MANIAC with Joe Spinell. There's really not much going on in this but if you like to watch someone who's clearly not underage but pretending to be constantly get taken advantage of this is for you. I can't imagine that they could make a porn today even pretending to be a day under 18.
This starts out as just another pro-Christmas propaganda short with old Santa Claus telling some sneaky ass little obnoxious 40's kids the story of Christmas then after a few minutes of that this crazy old(presumably drunken) fuck starts babbling about how monkeys celebrate the holiday just like us people do. To prove this point we are treated to some stock footage of little nutty monkeys goofing around eating pretzels and bananas and whatnots. Then the holiday portion of our narrative takes us to a monkey Christmas where one little gentleman is dressed as Monkey Claus and the other fellows jump around a tree and play with some toys. It all ends with more pseudo-religious talk from this fat weirdo. Judging solely from this film the 40's musta been a very strange time to be alive and have half a brain. Worth a look if, like me, you're a fan of oddball simian cinema.
The grand tradition of mixing stupid slapstick comedy with horror elements in Hong Kong action movies continues with this sequel to a movie that I'm not exactly sure I've ever seen but that doesn't matter because this seems to be a story within itself. It all starts out like some episode of THREE'S COMPANY where a married man mishears his wife talking to various people, thinks she's cheating on him and then overreact because of it. There's also a silly crime drama thing going on with a group of female cops posing as prostitutes to catch a dealer of some sort. This film keeps on getting exceedingly dumb as it goes on. About 15 minutes in they shoehorn in a ghost story with kung fu Buddhist monks fighting ghosts. There's also a gangster character running around and a headless body and matching floating head creating havoc. In one of the weirdest scenes two guys have a contest to see who can piss the furthest and the loser gets castrated which some how will stop ghosts since they hate castrated penises and eunuchs. It's all very bizarre yet watchably dumb, at least for me. I think I just appreciate the idea of mixing a kung fu ghost movie with a slapstick comedy and crime story. The kitchen-sink method of Asian exploitation cinema. The average viewer's threshold for stupidity will most likely be much lower. AKA THUNDER COPS
Paul Bartel's 2nd film is all about a kinky nurse and what kinda crazy s & m bondage antics she gets up to on her lunch break. While this plays for under 10 minutes Bartel manages to tell a coherent story and even throw in a couple of twists at the end. This film would be a great opening feature to play before EATING RAOUL since they both deal with sexual perversions. Thanks to this film Gene Corman decided on Bartel to direct PRIVATE PARTS and we got some great slices of cinematic weirdness.
Paul Bartel was one of my favorite directors from the 70's & 80's. From PRIVATE PARTS to DEATH RACE 2000 to EATING RAOUL his films all have a crazy energy to them that I can really get into so it was great to get a chance to check out his first film here which is a pretty neat 30 minute short. The story concerns a woman named Jane who has a suspicion that her life is secretly being filmed for a movie. This basic story has been recycled by Hollywood for that stupid TRUMAN SHOW movie and before that Woody Allen made something similar and I'm sure there have been others but for me it works better in short form here. It's a horror/comedy/drama mix that Bartel was only able to make cuz he stole some film and equipment from a company he worked for. That's what real dedicated filmmakers do. My favorite character is Jane's boyfriend who splits up with her because she doesn't share his obsession with cinema. I can really relate to that fellow and I feel his pain. The insane director is also a nice touch. I think the main thing I find amusing is that the horrifying idea presented in this film, being filmed constantly and having no privacy, is something internet-obsessed, reality TV-loving people today would love to have happen to them.
Bartel later remade this as an episode of Steven Spielberg's AMAZING STORIES but I can't imagine that a bigger budgeted TV-version of this would be all that great.
This monster-filled spook-show short feels like it really wants to be a sexploitation movie but it never quite gets to that nudie cutie level. The sexiest thing we get is a bunch of girls running around in their short nightgowns.
It all starts out with a mad doctor(we know he's a mad doctor cuz it says so on his lab coat) warning the viewer about how super spooky this movie is gonna be and then no title card so I have no idea if this was called something else at some point, then a guy in a gorilla suit frolics about while the credits are read to us like we're retards(and if you're watching this you just might have to be a bit retarded to enjoy it fully). Some sorority girls show up in an allegedly haunted house and try to spend the night and also try to have a pajama party I guess. It turns out the house isn't exactly haunted but there is our mad scientist fellow hanging out in the basement doing some important experiments on how to turn people into big hairy apes(this gives us the wonderful site of a gorilla wearing a nightie). He's got a Vampira-like gal down there who does nothing but sit around looking all goth, a gorilla helper named Big G, a humpbacked henchman named Igor and a wolfman who might also be a flasher. They stop the movie towards the end so during theatrical performances people in monster costumes could run off the screen and terrorize the audience. The gals boyfriends show up, then the cops show up, there's a big rumble, everyone runs around like it's a Scooby-Doo episode and it ends with a gorilla hitting a bong. Probably one of the dumbest things you could find yourself watching complete with horrible jokey performances but I'm sure this was never really meant to be analyzed as a film but used for a spook show thrill and then forgotten. It might make for good goofy background visuals at a Halloween party nowadays. I also have to give it extra credit for having so much dumb Gorilla activity jam-packed into 30 minutes!
Shot back in the 70's and not released until '85 on video this film features lots of wrestling footage from back before the 1980's came along and wrestling became an embarrassing thing for anyone over 7 years old to admit to watching. Coming out of the Detroit area this mainly focuses on local bad guy The Sheik as he takes on a bunch of big stars from back in the day including Dusty Rhodes, Bobo Brazil, Ox Baker, Terry Funk and others. Also appearing are Andre The Giant, Abdullah The Butcher, some midgets and a fat lady who wrestles a man. They were nice enough to set all these matches to some rocking tunes which makes it extra cool. While there's no actual story here and it's not really much of a documentary since we don't really learn much of anything, besides some silly wrestling storylines and stupid skits abound, it is a cool collection of vintage clips if you dig that sort of thing and it's all edited well enough that it moves along quickly. Check it out if you're any kind of fan of wrestling or just general violence and bloodshed set to a beat.
I LIKE TO HURT PEOPLE was originally supposed to be a horror/wrestling film called RINGSIDE IN HELL then it was switched to an actual documentary titled just RINGSIDE until they ran out of money and shelved the whole thing. Eventually New World Pictures took all that old footage, filmed some crappy new wraparound bits and released it on video as the fake pseudo-doc that we have here. The credited director, Donald G. Jackson, would go on to become best known for HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN.
Hard to believe it took all the way up until 2006 for somebody to get the idea to mix a monster movie with a women-in-prison flick but it did. Of course since it's a newer movie it's not shot on film and looks more like a TV show but besides all that, and unlike most newer things I've seen, I have to give this movie credit for at least being an entertaining super low budget monster movie. The big plus here is that they use practical effects for everything, there's lots of gore, tons of tits on full display, lesbianism all around(including a tongue bath), cheesy cheap-shit werewolf suit with red light-bulb eyes, a puking scene and an homage/rip-off of AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. There are way worse modern things out there you could waste your time on and I'd recommend this as long as you're not completely allergic to new movies.
I love how the DVD release shown above is just the poster for Jess Franco's BARBED WIRE DOLLS with some werewolf teeth thrown over it.
This one is sort of a mix between a proto-slasher flick and a psychological horror film and it's also kind of a shitty confusing mess of a movie. There's a scissors-wielding maniac running around killing women which would make for a decent movie on it's own but then they screw that all up by having this other story about a crazy lady on a farm and her wacky flashbacks to something bad from her childhood. A bunch of stuff happens(including a rape scene that doesn't really happen) that brings these two stories together in a convoluted way and then we get a stupid ending. A chubby Cameron Mitchell and a chubby Aldo Ray appear and don't do a whole lot. We get no blood or nudity thanks to it's stupid PG-rating but there is some gratuitous goat-milking going on. I'd say this might be a good film to skip. It does have a pretty sweet VHS cover though which makes the movie look way sexier than it is.
If only the rest of the film stuck with the cool vibe of the opening scene this might not have been half bad:
I tend to like movies with voice-over narration and this one starts right out with a voice from nowhere telling us about the plight of some poor people in a shitty apartment building so that's pretty cool. This is a super low-budget, New York-shot, kung-fu flick about some greedy landlords trying to force tenants out of a craphole building. You would think by the title this would be some sorta DEATH WISH rip-off and I guess that sorta applies here since it's about a man's quest for revenge after his dad is killed but it plays out more as a straight-forward martial arts extravaganza. Complete with horrendous acting, drug-dealing pimps, dummies getting thrown off rooftops and chopsocky thrills this one is good for a few laughs and would most likely be even better with some alcohol to wash it all down. The two big highlights for me were the ridiculous theme song by some band named Opus and an equally ridiculous murder scene where a guy has a bag full of rats shoved over his head. In addition to this you get some boobs, a giant 70's car-phone, an old kung fu master, stupid plot holes, a box full of rats(rats are like the ultimate weapon of choice in this) and the boom mike makes a few guest appearances. This film proves to me that sometimes there's good stuff down at the bottom of the celluloid barrel. AKA's= ENTER THE WHITE DRAGON(I coulda sworn our hero here is a Latino fellow?), SLUMFIGHTER & PAY-OFF TIME
A couple of guys get a bus and lots of beer and go on a summer vacation that's full of hot chicks, lots of drunk driving, an 8-track stereo, some senseless violence and a biker guardian-angel. This is pretty much a plot-less, lighthearted sex romp that's exclusively for people who dig that laid-back 70's vibe. There are lots of sex scenes but they're all technically soft-core. Possibly there was a hardcore cut of this at some point since it's filmed by porn director Chuck Vincent(his 2nd film) and features hardcore mainstay Eric Edwards in one bit but apparently this edited version is all that exists today. Worth a look if you want something not very heavy but full of boobs and you probably won't remember it right after watching anyway. AKA LOVE TRUCK(it's not even a truck!)
The most unique thing about this spaghetti-western is that one of our main hero characters, Trinity, is a black fellow from Trinidad. While this is balanced out by making Sartana the typical blonde-haired blue-eyed type it's still not something you see too much in this genre and it even goes as far as to flirt with the idea of interracial love in a dream sequence. Of course this is also evened out with racial slurs like Sambo etc. dropped here and there. This film is not a sequel to either the Trinity or Sartana films but just borrows the names like so many other movies back then. It's definitely closer to Trinity in the way it feels and you get slapsticky fights(including a really long barroom brawl!), a piano player obsessed with Tchaikovsky and a Mexican bandit who tells us when the movie is over. Not at all for serious western fans but anyone that likes the more comedic style might find it at least mildly amusing. AKA TRINITY AND SARTANA ARE COMING
I think my favorite thing about these stupid Corman produced sexy teachers films, besides the bouncing boobs, is that you almost always get the great Dick Miller playing an asshole character. Usually it's a coach of some sort and that's what he is here. In this one he is his usually ignorant self spouting out lines about how much he hates faggots and whatnot. There's also various dumb plots about women-libbers getting to play football, nude-modeling and some kinda insurance scam ring that develops into attempted murder and silly car chases. You also get a couple of old-lady peeping-Toms. It's overall a really forgettable film and the director, Barbara Peeters, would go on to make the far superior HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP a few years later.
An offshoot of the naughty nurses series this here started off the similar tawdry teachers set of films for Roger Corman's New World Pictures.
Right away you get naked boobs on display so you know what you're in for. From there on out you get a weird mix of a sex flick with what almost feels like a sort of experimental student film about the generational gap shot in an extremely 70's style until it all settles into what are a few different plots going on all involving teachers and students at a high-school. Drug-dealers and the mafia get involved, sex-education is made a big deal of and Dick Miller appears in one of his most absurd roles as a stupid gym teacher and part-time clown-mask wearing rapist. Also Chuck Norris shows up for a split-second as a karate instructor. They seemed to throw almost everything they could into this one(besides some blood and guts) and it comes off as a pretty big mess but still worth a look for a weird slice of 70's exploitation. There's also a really hot super skinny chick in here named Rose Cypress(aka Tara Strohmeier) that I wouldn't mind seeing more of. AKA COLLEGE CO-EDS(they're not even in college!) & SELF-SERVICE SCHOOLGIRLS
This is an early, pretty crappy spaghetti-western about a scheming wife(Rosalba Neri) who's trying to screw over her husband so she kills him to get control of his land. The main problem here is our hero(Mark Damon) who is very dull, has an orange tan, seems to be wearing blue-eyeshadow which might not be the best look for a convincing western tough guy. He also appears to be a bit of a peeping-Tom and reminds me of a pompous, douchey version of Ricky Ricardo. A little kid does get slapped around at one point so if you dislike kids maybe that might be a plus. Complete with the standard stupid barroom fight and dumb Mexican characters this one is very skipable. The one good thing is Rosalba Neri plays the corrupt wife so at least there's an attractive lady to ogle but that's about it. AKA 10,000 DOLLARS FOR JOHNNY YUMA
Here our dickhead hero murders some bandits and then feels romantic about it:
Back in the 50's Johnny Yuma was also a character in a TV series called THE REBEL but I don't think this movie had any relation to that show. Also Johnny Cash did the theme song which, like most Johnny Cash songs, is pretty cool:
Fred "The Hammer" Williamson took his nickname from this tale of a tough dock-worker who gets mixed-up in the boxing game and the mafia. That seems a little strange to me since Williamson would go on to do better, more memorable and more successful stuff(BLACK CAESAR) but I guess this is where his standard bad mother-fucker/lovable nice-guy character got started. It has all the stuff you expect from a 70's blaxploitation flick including pimps, evil honkies, outrageous clothing, drugs and violence. The strangest bit is probably a scene in a nightclub where a whip-weilding dominatrix-stripper does her thing. A great supporting cast including the great William Smith as his typical monsterous musclehead character, that bad D'Urville Martin, that guy who played Goeorge Jefferson's brother on ALL IN THE FAMILY(Bernie Hamilton), Leon Isaac from PENITENTIARY(who is super young and looks like a little kid here) all do a good job. The only downside to this is that it doesn't really ever go over the top in the action sense like some of the later black-action films and sticks to a basic boxing scam/mob plot but it's still a good watch even if just for historical reasons.
Probably the most memorable thing about this spaghetti-western flick is the bad-ass theme song by Luis Bacalov used throughout. This was later on used in KILL BILL so I guess Quentin Tarantino agrees there. Besides that though you do get a family of degenerates as our bad guys which includes a gay pox-faced sleazy fellow and Lee Van Cleef as our man-in-black hero which is always a good thing. The Beast(Salvatore Baccaro) from the nazisploitation film THE BEAST IN HEAT also shows up for a bit and there is the promised big duel at the end. While not the most original thing ever it's worth a look if you're a hardcore euro-western junkie or Van Cleef aficionado. AKA THE BIG SHOWDOWN
What you basically get here is an earlier, gentler version of Christina Lindberg's THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE. The focus here though isn't on the revenge aspects (in fact I'm not even sure if the revenge actually takes place at all since some of the sequences in this film seem to just be dreams or fantasies of Lindberg's and not really happening) but more on the blackmailing, abuse and exploitation of our main character Lena. In reality it's all just an excuse to shoot some great-looking nude scenes and get some great photos of Christina who probably looks better here than in anything I've ever seen her in, and that's saying something since she always looks good to me. The pimp character here(Heinz Hopf) is the same guy from THRILLER and he does make for a good sleazy type. Here he gets to tie Lindberg up with ropes and perform a sorta-rape(I say sorta because Lena seems more disinterested than brutalized and the line between consensual and forced is blurred by her ennui). Also in the middle of this film we get to go out to the movies and watch some of TARZAN TRIUMPHS from the 1940's. Probably only worth a look if you're a big Lindberg fan like myself or a non-discriminating Euro-boob & bush fan but I can see it boring most everyone else with it's slow-pace. AKA DIARY OF A RAPE & THE DEPRAVED
Having only previously seen the film PASTORAL from Japanese director Shuji Terayama and not really being a big fan I wasn't too sure what to expect from this earlier more controversial art film. I'm still not sure if I'm a fan of this director or not but I will give him credit for creating some truly cutting-edge cinema with few boundaries that I can't see being viewed anytime soon by the general public in any comfortable way.
The idea here is that children have revolted against their parents, killed them off and formed a new revolutionary society, at least that's what I took away from watching this in Japanese with no subtitles. Also a midget cuts a head off a chicken, a guy gets hung up on a cross like Jesus while a not-very sexy threesome of scarred-up folks goes on and similar to PASTORAL lots of women wear white face. Of course the most controversial aspect to this film is you get naked kids but with it's insane imagery including kids dragging old people through the streets I can't imagine anyone confusing this with porn of any sort unless artsy-type films with a deeper societal message really turn you on. Again I'm reminded of cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky and I think it's pretty interesting that on two different sides of the planet such mind-bending examples of transgressive cinema were being made at about the same time.
I viewed the 27-minute version of this and apparently there is an alternate 72-minute version that was released in 1996. There are also scenes edited into this from another Terayama 12-minute short film called PAPER-SCISSORS-ROCK WAR.
Gianni Garko stars here as Sartana. Now I'm not sure if this Sartana has any relation to the Sartana in the other bunch of movies they used his name in but here it seems like Sartana has some supernatural powers working for him and it's not up until the very end that we find out if this is true or not. This adds certain spooky horror-elements to the film and even has our main man returning from the dead like a zombie or something. Klaus Kinski shows up for a bit as a knife-flinging assassin who wears bells on his boots(which seems like a bad-idea for a guy who needs to sneak up on people a lot). You also get the stereotypical cackling old man, a creepy casket-maker/gravedigger guy and the leader of the Mexican bandits(Fernando Sancho) plays this same role in just about every other spaghetti-western out there. There's some good stylish action in this one even if it coulda gave us some more Kinski goodness. AKA GUNFIGHTERS DIE HARDER
I got a chance to experience this film which was lost for many years last night in a theater and I have to say it's definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of insane cinematic head-trips. This film is really the story of a man's decent into madness as he ends up stuck in a strange outback Australian town where binge-drinking, gambling & friendly drunken fistfights are everyday expected events. A place for rugged manly men who shoot kangaroos for sport and when they don't die fast enough don't mind using their bare hands and knives to finish the job.(these kangaroo kill scenes are edited together from real hunts which might upset ultra-sensitive animal lover-types) Donald Pleasence isn't our main character here(that would be Gary Bond) but he really steals the show as an alcoholic doctor of sorts who's a complete madman under his seemingly intellectual exterior. It does start out a bit slow at first and you're not sure where things are going but this all works to build things up until they reach an insane climax. A strange view into a part of Australia that I'm not sure I could ever live in but it would be one hell of a vacation. AKA OUTBACK
This zombie flick starts out with two hot gals getting attacked by desert-dwelling undead creatures who pop up out of the sand. From there it takes us into a time-warp where minutes turn to hours and everything seems to stand still while we get hit with boring dialogue, crappy battles scenes and not enough in the way of the expected flesh-eating goodness that you might expect. There is one slightly amusing scene where a guy gets bitten by a zombie and then has the slowest, most over-exaggerated death scene ever. This film is credited to Jess Franco and if he is responsible it's one of his duller movies with none of the obsessive/pervy sexiness of a lot of his films. Also it's hard to believe Franco turned down making ZOMBIE LAKE because of it's awful script and then decided this would be a good project to take on. On the positive side this was shot on actual film stock and I would rather watch this again than have to sit through any of the 10 billion shot-on-video homemade shitpile excuses of zombie movies that have been made over the last 20 years. This is also a good film to watch if you're feeling a little under the weather since you will get plenty of shut-eye. AKA THE TREASURE OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE OASIS OF THE LIVING DEAD & BLOODSUCKING NAZI ZOMBIES(might be one of the greatest alternate titles ever!)
There's an alternate Spanish-cut of this that features Lina Romay that has only been released in Spain and I've never seen it..
All of these Corman-produced(Roger's wife Julie Corman is responsible for this one) nursesploitation flicks deliver on the boob count but not so much on the plots that you give a crap about. It all starts out with an animated credit sequence complete with nude cartoon ladies and then there's three main gals we follow around. One is the Spanish chick who's trying to help an innocent guy accused of robbing a gas station, the other two are white gals and they're trying to help a speed-addicted basketball player and an impotent rock star who looks like a bit like Harry Shearer's character from Spinal Tap. There's no black chick here which is pretty much the only element that's different about this when you compare it to all the rest of these types of things. Candice Rialson is our main blonde candy-striper and she would go on to be in a bunch of exploitation flicks throughout the 70's with her biggest role being in HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD. Dick Miller also shows up for a small bit as a dickhead heckler at a basketball game. There's attempted rape, streakers and a girl eating a Twinkie in a bathtub(which I'm assuming has got to be a fetish for someone out there). Like all of these flicks it's equally heavy on the drama as it is on the boobs so I guess it all equals out in the end.
"I've never seen or heard so many bastards in all my life"
Lee Van Cleef stars in this story of an outlaw who winds up becoming the sheriff of a town. His partners include Lionel Stander(the old guy from that HART TO HART show) and Gordon Mitchel(Hercules from those old Hercules movies), who shows up as a bounty hunter type. From there we get some double-crossings and the usual spaghetti-western shenanigans. The real goody-good guy is played by Antonio Sabato and he's kind of an annoying naive fellow. The awesomely named Herbert Fux from MARK OF THE DEVIL also shows up for a small bit. While this isn't the worst thing ever it's what I would consider a middle of the road spaghetti-western really only memorable for Van Cleef and you can find him starring in better stuff around the same time. The title itself is completely forgettable and I think it must be the name of at least one other action movie if not more. One big disappointment I have with this film is that they have the great Bud Spencer in it but he's all clean cut and shaven playing a boring boss character instead of his usual gruff head-smashing self.
Clunky old monster movie with what might be one of the most ridiculous-looking monsters ever! What you get here is a slow-moving, shuffling-footed tree-monster, named Tobanga!, who looks like he escaped from the set of THE WIZARD OF OZ. He has an exceptionally dumb face on himself for added laughs and his preferred method of inflicting death on his victims is stealthily sneaking up on people and grabbing them. I think if I was a big hulking tree-monster I would just go around falling on folks since that seems to do quite a bit of damage even from non-evil trees. This movie basically plays like an early prototype of those John Ashley Filipino blood island creature flicks like MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND & BRIDES OF BLOOD and in my mind I like to think they all took place on the same nutty island. A good watch for fans of old cheese.
Thanks to director Jess Franco what we get here is one of the most insane interpretations of the classic Universal monster ever put on film. It's like Franco took a few elements from FRANKENSTEIN, THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, a few other movies, including his own, and some classic literature and mixed them all up into a jazz-infused monster mash.
The plot is kind of all over the place and inconsequential to the series of bizarre images on display or maybe it's just complete nonsense, depending on your point of view, but I dig it regardless of that just for it's insane anarchistic feel. It all starts out with Dr. Frankenstein building his creature(who in this film is painted silver which goes unexplained, as does pretty much everything else that happens) with the help of Morpho(Franco himself as an Igor stand-in). Dr. Frank is killed off in the first 5 minutes but don't worry cuz he keeps getting rejuvenated over and over again just to spout ridiculous inane lines about life and death and the evil of Cagliostro(an evil madman who uses the power of magnetism to control an army of the undead played by Howard Vernon with a sweet goat-tee). In addition to Cagliostro's skull-faced(rubber-masked) minions he has a strange-sounding, feather-handed, bird-woman helper named Melissa who is either a cannibal or a vampire or maybe both. Also Frankenstein's daughter shows up and they force her to make a bride for the monster. This ends up with heads being chopped off and girls being kept in cages. The oddest scene, in a film that's made-up of oddball scenes, is probably where we get to watch a topless Frankenstein monster whip a couple who are surrounded by poisonous spikes.
This is probably one of the weirdest films in the Francoverse and for that I give it extra-mind-warping credit. Nothing really makes much sense but I do find it entertaining in it's own way.
There's a couple of different versions of this movie. In some we get Lina Romay(her first film role ever) as a strange gypsy woman who doesn't interact with any of the main characters and was obviously shot at a completely different time. There's also a version with a few scenes(including the poison spikes bit) re-shot but full of nudity without Lina, which seems weird since Lina was so into getting naked. AKA THE EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE EROTIC ADVENTURES OF FRANKENSTEIN & THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN
This is a pretty cool old psychological-type horror flick with some good creepy atmosphere and a few plot twists to keep things interesting. It starts off as the story of a young girl who sees her mother kill someone right before her eyes making her a bit unhinged. While this would later on become the plot to a zillion slasher movies here it's used to kick off what is sort of the Hammer studios version of the film DIABOLIQUE and I'm a big fan of that 50's French classic so a similarly well done thriller was a nice find. One thing modern viewers might find strange is how well-behaved the crazy homicidal characters are in this. I guess this musta been some kinda proper English thing. Director Freddie Francis would go on to make a bunch of monster flicks for Hammer and most importantly TROG, the cult classic where JOAN CRAWFORD fights a killer caveman. NIGHTMARE is one of your blander titles but it's alternate, and also quite polite, U.K. title of HERE'S THE KNIFE, DEAR: NOW PLEASE USE IT is a more catchy one.
Spanish western starring William Shatner as a half-breed Indian and also his identical evil twin(who's evil because he smokes too much of that ole' peyote, and according to this movie peyote makes Indians want to rape and kill whitey). The jazz score for a lot of this movie seems very out of place and I kept waiting for some old west beatniks to show up. Also native Americans are not really shown in a very positive light except it's such a goofy movie I can't imagine anyone ever getting offended by it. Shatner does his usual over-acting, which I can dig, and it works perfectly with the silliness of it all and he gets to fight himself. Probably only of interest to Star Trek-nerds who want to see what Shat did in between Trek seasons or your typical cult movie obsessive-types. For a better Indiansploitation flick check out JOHNNY FIRECLOUD.
Monte Hellman, who's a director best known for TWO-LANE BLACKTOP(but personally I think I like his movie COCKFIGHTER with Warren Oates better) made this artsy/romance/spaghetti-western flick which features Fabio Testi and Warren Oates along with a kinda weird supporting cast that includes Sam Peckinpah in a cameo and my fav bit actor Sydney Lassick(unfortunately, as he often did, Lassick also only shows up for a tiny scene and then disappears).
The basic plot here concerns Testi who's freed from jail and is supposed to go kill Oates so a railroad can be built. He ends up banging Oates wife(Jenny Agutter) and then a bunch of shootouts occur. Technically Testi is presented as our hero but doesn't seem all that heroic but that's not really my problem with this film. The main problem is that things go by pretty slowly and drag on and on up until about 3/4's of the way through the run-time when we finally get some action. I've also only ever seen an edited print of this so I imagine an uncensored version would be slightly more exciting with the full nudity and violence. Might be worth a watch for the ladies though, with it's triangular love story and all, which is a rare thing for this genre but it's a little too slow-moving overall for me.
Only in the 70's would there be a western where Leslie Nielsen plays a bad guy who gets a little rapey with a young lady complete with a soundtrack by 60's folk-singer Janis Ian. I'm not sure how graphic this film originally was since the print I viewed seemed to be some sort of TV-cut version with offensive language censored out but I at least got to see Nielsen get a little molesty.
This American western somehow ended up in my spaghetti-western box-set (which I've watched 20 films from in the last week) and I guess that's because it was filmed in Spain. The story centers on four main characters and is about two men searching for a suspected Mexican murderer/bank-robber and his girlfriend decides to tag-along so he doesn't get himself killed. The gal is played by the chick in Stanley Kubrick's LOLITA and seems way more of a 60's chick than an old west chick and along with the folk ballads sprinkled throughout, the whole movie has that feel. Although the film is boring in many parts it does have enough tension and fighting going on between all the characters and even has a great 70's downer ending that I would give an A+ to so it didn't feel like a complete waste of time.
Janis Ian shows up as "The Singer" in the intro and then is never seen again. Was she some kinda hippie ghost?:
So this kid sees his family raped and murdered right before his very eyes by a gang of dirty western outlaw types and then grows up to become a revenge seeking John Phillip Law(DANGER:DIABOLIK). Along his path of vengeance he gets some help from one Mr. Lee Van Cleef. Why is Van Cleef helping him out? We find that out in the revealing conclusion and I'm not really the kind of asshole that spoils the ends of movies for people.
Pretty decent, if not also pretty basic and by-the-numbers, Eurowestern with a good soundtrack by the master of western soundtracks Ennio Morricone. I will say that this movie does seem to be a little overrated since I've heard so much high praise for it and it's really just an OK film in this genre and entertaining enough for what it is but nothing spectacular(It is a pretty cool title and tagline though). Also noticeably John Phillip Law seems to be doing a John Wayne impersonation throughout much of the movie which is a little weird.
I assume these 70's White Fang movies were meant as children's films at the time which is kinda odd now since they're filled with violence and this one has a bunch of shots of wolves being gunned down and an alcoholic character. I can't imagine this would be considered acceptable viewing for the coddled youth of today but the 70's were wilder, freer days. I've seen the Lucio Fulci-directed entry in this series and remember nothing at all about it except I think a guy wrestles a bear in it, either that or I had a cool dream after watching it. This one is directed by an even crappier Italian director, Mr. Alfonso Brescia, who would go on to make a slew of really awful STAR WARS-rip-offs in the later 70's like WAR OF THE ROBOTS etc.
In this not so epic tale of a fur-trapper(who looks a bit like Johnny 'Wadd" Holmes) and his pet wolf you get an annoying little blond-haired boy with a pet dog named panty-waist(at least I think that's what his name was though it coulda just been the horrible dub-job), an old fat hairy wino who somehow gets himself a love interest(these scenes might make you ill), the theme from JAWS shows up a couple of times and there's lots of snowy scenes with wolves(dogs?) being made to attack people. Also there are some shoot-outs and stuff blows up once in a while. While this is part of a spaghetti-western set I own I'm not sure I would classify it as a western at all(maybe a Pacific-Northwestern?) but there is a barroom brawl so I guess you could vaguely describe it as that.
A film watchable by true bad-film appreciators only. AKA LONE HUNTER OF THE WILD NORTH
front.jpg)
-poster.jpg)
