THE SCREAMING TIGER (1972)

 Jimmy Wang Yu really hates the Japs in this one. You see his village was massacred by a few Japanese fellows whose boat wrecked there and from then on he vows to commit genocide on all Japanese people! A bit of an over-reaction perhaps but racial hatred is not all that unique in kung-fu cinema. This one has the typical revenge angle but a couple of unique things. For one there's a guy who walks around with a bamboo laundry basket on his head who preaches tolerance which is nice, there's a kung fu vs. sumo wrestling bit and there's enough blood that it had to be cut to get a British release. Also the big finale includes fighting on a train, a river and a waterfall which adds some nice production value to the scenery. Other than that pretty standard.
 My VHS tape comes in a box calling it THE SCREAMING NINJA because Ninjas were so hot in the 80s. Stupidly they didn't put a picture of a ninja though, just a screaming tiger. AKA WANG YU: KING OF BOXERS and TEN FINGERS OF STEEL

 
 

                                                                   French poster:

SHAOLIN VS. LAMA (1983)

 As a rule I generally don't like to spoil the endings of movies but if you've seen one of these Hong Kong(or Taiwan in this case) kung-fu flicks you've pretty much seen most of them. Guy gets his ass kicked, guy gets trained by a master of some sort and then guy gets revenge. So spoiler alert I guess:   In this one our hero(Alexander Lo) gets trained in a Buddhist monastery(where they say "Buddha's name be praised" many times!) so he learns about having mercy. When the big final fight comes instead of killing the big baddie(Shan Charng) he breaks his leg and lets him live with all the evil he's done. Instead of being a hobbled loser though Charng instead starts beating up his own head and commits suicide while proclaiming "I'm the devil! I must die!". So even if this is a super-generic film this might be one of the most ridiculous endings I've seen in one of these films and that's certainly worth something.


                                 Super widescreen scratchy version!:



                                                   
                                                                French poster:

One of those hand-painted African posters!: 

THE GANGSTER (2012)

 So I guess the award for the most generic title ever for a gangster movie goes to Thailand for this one. That's a shame because this is a pretty interesting movie that's supposed to be based on actual mob activity in the country back in the 50s and 60s. They even get some testimonials from what I'm assuming are actual people from that era that gives the film a partly documentary feel. Like most modern Asian films it runs a bit long at almost 2 hours but mostly moves along pretty well with all the gun-fu, knife-fu and other fighting styles on display. Also might be one of the few Thai movies where you can see guys with pompadour hairdos.

SUPERBEAST (1972)

 I recall viewing this one many years back on a T.V. showing and finding it rather dull. Upon re-watching it now (in super pristine blu-ray-o-vision!) it's still a pretty slow-moving affair. It is an interesting idea to mix ISLAND OF LOST SOULS with THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME I just think it coulda used a bit more action to liven things up and maybe a bit less in the talky-talk department.
 This not-cut-for-T.V. version does feature boobs and some actual autopsy footage so I guess that's a slight improvement.


                    Originally released on this equal opportunity double-bill with a Satanic 70s epic!:

KING KONG VS. GODZILLA (1962)

 Got to catch this monster-mash classic down at the drive-in over the weekend. One of my childhood favorite and still a goofy good time if you can deal with the Japanese rubber-suit monster flicks at all. Only the 3rd film in the original GODZILLA series and already they paired up the 2 most famous giant monsters. They also throw in a giant octopus for Kong to fight. Kong here being a very ugly squished-face version of the giant ape that is obviously not the original RKO monster since he's also way taller. Laughable dubbing abounds in the U.S. version, which is also shorter due to scenes being trimmed so they could add news reports with American faces. There's also a lot of familiar music from CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON that shows up.
 Godzilla would return 2 years later to fight MOTHRA and Kong would get a sorta-sequel 5 years later with KING KONG ESCAPES where he fights a giant robot ape.
 There is supposed to be a new version of this but since it will be a stupid CGI crap-a-thon I have little interest in watching it.

                                                                  Hammer meets Toho!:

Apparently King Kong was a lot more popular in Italy since the movie was re-titled THE TRIUMPH OF KING KONG there with no mention of Godzilla at all!:

RIOT IN A WOMEN'S PRISON (1974)

 This women-in-prison flick might have some of the tamest rioting ever in a film like this. These gals tend to just like throwing foam-rubber mattresses around wrasslin' with the guards(who seem to be mostly nuns). Unfortunately it also has some of the worst dubbing ever. Everyone talks super fast with an accent to make it even harder to understand. There's some nudity, of course, and the requisite shower scene happens but little in the way of any real action up until the midway point. A dog winds up getting hanged in what's the most brutal scene to anyone who likes dogs, a girl's head gets busted open in a rare bloody scene and it all kinda ends rather blandly. This doesn't really seem like something made around 1974 and seems closer to something from the 60s(which is an idea even more reinforced thanks to a few hippie characters that show up early on) Not on the best examples of this normally more sleazy sub-genre.  AKA EROTIC CONFESSIONS FROM A WOMEN'S PRISON
 There is a French release of this(titled PENITENTIARY FOR PERVERTED WOMEN) with lesbian porn spliced in for added sizzle!

Known in Spain(and Italy) under the super generic WOMEN'S PRISON title: 

            France gave it the way snazzier title of PENITENTIARY OF PERVERTED WOMEN!:

ZERO WOMAN: RED HANDCUFFS (1974)

 The first ZERO WOMAN film. The rest wouldn't come out until the 90s and 2000s and from what I've seen are total garbage. This one here I recall being particularly putrid. Luckily this first entry is the complete opposite. Full of insane violence, multiple rapes, police brutality involving a blowtorch, bondage and other disgusting acts, this one delivers all the goods that the later series doesn't. The plot, involving our main character(Miki Sugimoto) going undercover to rescue an important hostage from a gang of semi-retarded rape-happy knuckleheads is a bit clunky(I mean the gang seems fairly incompetent right from the start so why didn't the police just murder everyone right away?) but if you don't want to think too much and just want some over the top brutality give this a watch.

THE PANTHER SQUAD (1984)

 So if CHARLIE'S ANGELS was a low-budget Eurotrash film and there were 6 girls instead of 3 and they were led by Sybil Danning and Jack Taylor this might be the result. Taylor seems to be playing a drunken spoof of a James Bond-type while Danning dons a lovely heavy metal leather outfit through most of the film. The gals are also decked out in some new-wavey ensembles complete with that 80s big hair. The fight scenes are delightfully absurd as our female heroes kick ass on everyone they encounter. There's a bunch of stock footage of rockets and explosions as the villains are some environmental wackos who want to stop space exploration. The most sci-fi thing I've seen from Eurocine studios(a laser gun even shows up at one point!) but it's still mostly just an action movie. Whether the movie was meant to be taken at all seriously or was intended as one big take-off I'm not exactly sure but either way it's a goofy memorable oddity.
 On the negative side the main thing sorely lacking is any nudity and also for all the violence on display not any blood or gore to really elevate this thing to cult greatness.
 Release on VHS as FEMALE MERCENARIES II which would make this a sequel to Ted V. Mikels' THE DOLL SQUAD which was released on video as FEMALE MERCENARIES complete with a fake cast and crew listed on the slipcase.

Full Moon studios ad lets you hear some of the very 80s music in this one!:



Why you would release this tape without a picture of Sybil Danning I have no idea!:

VANESSA (1977)

 This EMMANUELLE rip-off flick from Germany starts out in a similar way to the Australian sex flick FELICITY that I also recently watched(and is included in a sexy DVD box-set with this one) where a young gal(Olivia Pascal here) starts of in a Catholic school and then ends up in Hong Kong discovering their sexuality. Of course that template was set back in 1974 with the first EMMANUELLE movie being set in the orient. I guess Hong Kong was just a sexy and exotic place to shoot these sort of films. Well you get plenty of sexy lady nudity here including full Eurobush so it's definitely a visual treat if that's what you're into. The plot, as usual, is down around the classic porn level and is just an excuse to shoot some more ample nudity.

                                                       Saucy "whore" scene!:

LAURE (1976)

 Probably the most interesting thing about this EMMANUELLE-rip-off sexplotation flick is that it's the only EMMANULLE movie(it also goes by the name of FOREVER EMMANUELLE) that actually features the real life lady who the character is based on. Before seeing this I didn't even know there was a real Emmanuelle but apparently it's a lady named Marayat Bibidh a.k.a. Emmanuelle Arsan(who looks a lot more like the Black Emmanuelle, Laura Gemser, than the original version played by Sylvia Kristel). She was also allegedly the director of this film though she's not credited. That might be because it was actually her husband(the lengthy-named Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andrian) who did a bunch of the directing (before quitting when he didn't get to make the pro-swinging epic he envisioned) and also wrote the books in the first place and then credited them to his wife's alias. I guess it's for the best that no one is named as director because this isn't a very good movie. It's filled with artsy-fartsy sex scenes and inane dialogue about the nature of love and relationships. There's also a primitive island tribe that unfortunately doesn't turn out to be cannibals so this doesn't turn into one of those kind of movies. More of a curiosity really but it's a lot easier just to look up the real Emmanuelle if you want to see what she looks like.
 There is supposedly a lesbian scene featuring Miss Arlan that was disappointingly cut from the DVD that I watched.

AMERICAN CHINATOWN (1996)

 Director Woo Sang Park, who previously made MIAMI CONNECTION which was an enjoyably clunky mess of a martial arts film, returns with this sorta similar kung fu epic(minus the rocking band from M.C.). Decidedly non-Asian actor Robert Z'Dar(of MANIAC COP fame) heads up a Korean gang who is constantly battling the Vietnamese and Chinese gangs in L.A.'s Chinatown. He's not the main character though, that would be Lee Tai Joon(billed here as Henry Lee), who falls in love with Z'Dar's vaguely Asian-looking sister. Then he gets stabbed in the stomach for this but somehow remains loyal to the gang. It's all really dumb, the action scenes are terribly choreographed and the acting is extremely cringe-inducing even by kung-fu movie standards. There are a couple of bloody bits and you might get a couple of chuckles but this is a tough one to recommend.
 Park did make a CHINATOWN 2 but IMDB lists it as coming out in 1993 so I'm not sure what that is all about.

THE IRON MONKEY (1977)

 This dude's family gets arrested and murdered for being traitors so naturally he goes to a Shaolin Buddhist temple and learns "monkey fist"-style kung fu in order to exact his revenge. A fairly pedestrian affair with not much that really stands out. You do get to watch a monkey and a bird fight each other during the opening credits which might be the only thing I remember from this one. AKA BLOODY MONKEY MASTER and SCHOOL OF SHAOLIN
 There was an IRON MONKEY II the next year also starring Chen Kwan Tai but I'm not sure how much of an actual sequel it is.

DAY OF THE DEAD (1985)

 Got a chance to catch this classic down at the drive in last weekend. It's hard to look at this one objectively since I've loved it ever since I was a wee teen. The fact that it was the final installment to director George Romero's dead trilogy(until he screwed around and made another inferior one) was enough reason to celebrate it's existence. Of course knowing the back story it's hard not to be disappointed that, due to budgetary reasons, his full vision for what was supposed to be the final chapter isn't quite materialized here. What you do get though is a bunch of amazing pre-CGI fx work, people get ripped apart before your very eyes, an over the top performance by the great Joe Pilato(who would go on to play that fake Dean Martin in PULP FICTION and unfortunately not much else of note) and the first zombie hero in the series, Bub(Sherman Howard, who I once saw at a convention asleep at his table). So if you overlook the pretty stagnant setting and not very subtle anti-military tone this one is a true gore-lovers trip.
 Romero would follow this with LAND OF THE DEAD in 2005 which I recall being entertained by at the time but never feel the need to re-watch it unlike the first 3 films. 
 There was a DAY OF THE DEAD 2: CONTAGIUM in 2005 which has nothing to do with this one except for stealing the title.  There's also a terrible-looking 2008 remake that I never bothered watching and from the trailer looks less like any kind of actual remake and just another stupid modern-day zombie flick. And finally there's DAY OF THE DEAD: BLOODLINE in 2018 which actually does look like a remake but I'm not sure why anyone would bother watching it.