DR. ORLOFF'S MONSTER (1964)

 This one is kind of a crappier version of director Jess Franco's earlier THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF due mainly to the fact that it features a similar shambling robotic monster(instead of Morpho, this time he's called Andros). The plot here deals with Professor Jekyll(the original title was THE MISTRESSES OF DR. JEKYLL) killing his brother who was sleeping with his wife. Now instead of turning into some type of Mr. Hyde-like creature he just brings his brother back as the fore-mentioned Andros and sends him out to kill showgirls and strippers. Why exactly he does this I wasn't too sure of, but hey whatever floats your boat. There's a shocking amount of nudity here for 1964 that probably didn't make it to all that many countries that this played in. Franco himself shows up in a small part playing a piano. This is made a sequel to the first ORLOFF film by telling us the doctor, who came up with this way of reanimating corpses and turning them into zombified robot-killers(and who dies within the first few minutes of the film) is Dr. Orloff even though he bears no resemblance to Howard Vernon. Not essential viewing unless you're a Franco nut like myself. AKA BRIDES OF DR. JEKYLL, THE SECRET OF DR. ORLOFF and DR. JEKYLL'S MISTRESSES

Definitely more Frankenstein-like than Jekyll-ish!:

  

SERIAL MOM (1994)

  Going from the cool anti-mainstream punk-rock aesthetic of his earlier films to the sad mainstream space that these later works occupy is always a letdown when viewing John Waters' output. This one is down there at the bottom of the pile for me as far as his films go right above that last movie he did about sex or whatever. This one is about getting a big Hollywood actress(Kathleen Turner) to do the worst acting possible within a very stupid plot and laugh at her. At least that's what I think the point was. On the plus side it features scenes from BLOOD FEAST , DEADLY WEAPONS, STRAIT-JACKET among other films that I would rather be watching. Also Suzanne Somers and Traci Lords show up which is cool. Maybe this will be the next one of his works to become a big stupid Broadway show. 

MUAY THAI GIANT (2008)

 So the basic premise of this movie seems to be lifted from a POPEYE cartoon except our giant(power-lifter/pro wrestler Nathan Jones) has to eat some spicy Thai food called somtum(which is also the original title) before he can kick ass. They make us wait almost until the very end of the movie though before that pays off and at 1 hour and 43 minutes that's quite a wait. Most of the movie focuses on the giant's 2 young girl partners who I'm assuming are actual martial artists since they do most of the actual fighting. So if you're into girl-powered muay thai this might be your thing. Maybe they shoulda called this 2 GALS AND A GIANT or something to be more accurate. 

STREET LAW (1972)

 Franco Nero does his Charles Bronson bit in this vigilante epic. Of course DEATH WISH only came out at the beginning of this same year, so I'm not sure how much of an inspiration it was in this getting made or not. Either way it stands on it's own as a fast-moving Eurotrash action/revenge flick. The bank-robbing villains here never get as rapey as you might expect but they do appear to believe in equal-opportunity brutality towards anyone who gets in their way.  You get death by construction vehicle, car chases and lots of bullet holes in various people. Maybe the most macho role Franco has been in and that's saying a lot!

THE WILD GOOSE LAKE (2019)

  Another one of those long-ass modern Asian films. As with most of them I've seen this one is really well-done if not a little slow and drawn-out at points giving it that artsy-fartsy feel that all the "serious" film fans drool over. You won't find any geese in this but you will find gangster antics involving a cop getting shot and killed by our main character(Ge Hu) and lots of gangsters on motorcycles. A guy gets an umbrella shoved through him at one point which I found to be the highlight. A lot of the rest of it seemed to be moving in slow-motion. If you like modern movies that are trying to emulate film-noirs and have a lot of endurance though check it out.  

Alright I guess those are geese in the trailer but it's very foggy and they look like flamingos!:

THE PYX (1973)

I own this on a DVD under the title HOOKER CULT MURDERS and brought it to a movie night gathering many years ago and remember being pretty letdown due to it not living up to that title in the least. Viewing it more recently, with lowered expectations and under it's original PYX title, I would give it a higher rating. It's still a pretty somber tale of our main character's (Elizabeth Lucy played by Karen Black(who also supplies a few songs on the soundtrack)) downward spiral that culminates right in the opening of the film with either a suicide or a murder. The film is shown partly in flashback which is an interesting choice. Definitely a slow-burn of a film so if you're looking for something to laugh at with a group of friends this might not be optimal but for a weird little downer of a Satanic 70s experience give it a look.

DEATH OCCURRED LAST NIGHT (1970)

  This is a pretty depressing film about a father's search for his mentally-slow daughter, who is kidnapped and forced into prostitution. Sort of an Italian version of that movie HARDCORE except that film was about a decade away from being made. While often referred to as a giallo, it really isn't at all. It exists outside the giallo or typical police action flick and falls into a more realistic dramatic category that leaves you feeling pretty down by the end despite the revenge that is dealt out. If you can handle the downer vibe it's worth checking out though. If there is one aspect that is pretty unrealistic it's that I've never seen a retarded girl that looked like a super-model before, maybe that's an Italian thing though. 

FANGS (1981)

  So someone in Egypt(possibly director Mohammed Shebl?) got the idea to remake THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW but without the super overt homosexuality. That's not to say it isn't gay at all. There's plenty of crazy outfits and song and dance numbers, but instead of Tim Curry as Dr. Frank N Furter you get a curly-haired, heavy-set Egyptian Dracula(Ahmed Adawiyya) who wears some glam-rock platform boots but still seems fairly, especially straight in comparison. In the middle of the film it shifts to a bunch of skits comparing vampires to evil blood-sucking greedy capitalists which kinda slow things down. It all culminates in a big vampire meltdown though and one fellow even wears a ROCKY HORROR t-shirt in case there was any doubt as to the inspiration for this. Chock full of stolen music including stuff from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, Ennio Morricone, JAWS, THE PINK PANTHER, The Beatles and a bunch more! Strangely they didn't take anything from ROCKY HORROR but they made up for that with the original weird tunes. 

 The only film I've seen from Egypt so far and one of the weirdest things I've seen in a while. The film even takes the time to scold any audience member who is watching that is too dumb to get their message. Highly recommended for lovers of bizarre obscurities.

     

SPIRITED KILLERS: GHOST WAR (1991)

  Since the first SPIRITED KILLER movie was released in 1994 I'm gonna say this isn't actually any sort of a sequel to that film despite it being billed as SPIRITED KILLER 3 on my DVD. Whatever it is though, it is pretty terrible. The main problem is that the whole thing is a very monotonous series of fight scenes strung together with the most simplistic plot and only interrupted occasionally to inject some horribly unfunny slapstick bits. This unfortunately is also the case with SPIRITED KILLER 2, which I'm also not sure actually has any connection to this one. Towards the end we do get an ogress who rips out and chomps down on some intestines in a very zombie-like fashion so that's something. Also there's a character called The Ass Devil which might have been the only thing I chuckled at while watching this. Best to avoid this made-up series of martial-arts films.

WU TANG CLAN (1980)

 Terribly re-titled as part of the rap group The Wu Tang Clan's collection on VHS. This movie has no mention of Wu Tang at all and deals with prisoners of the Shaolin temple. The interesting part of this one is that the prisoners are supposedly tortured but since, as everyone who has seen at least a couple of kung fu flicks knows, the similarities between torture and training are almost indecipherable which raises the question of whether they are actually being punished or trained by their captor who just purely coincidentally happens to be a former Shaolin student himself. From there everything kinda plays out like you would guess though and it goes on a bit long at an hour and 46 minutes but I guess you could do worse in kung fu cinema. 

 IMDB claims this was the inspiration for the Wu Tang Clan group's name which I'm pretty sure is impossible since this was originally called THE HEROES or THE SHAOLIN HEROES in English up until it's VHS release years later. Also usually this film is given that credit.

DIAMONDS OF KILIMANDJARO (1983)

  This Jess Franco jungle adventure flick is sorta similar to his GOLDEN TEMPLE AMAZONS (and they might have been partially filmed at the same time, even though AMAZONS was released later, because Jess was fond of doing that) since they both have a lady-Tarzan(Sheena?) character featured. In this one a group of people is sent to rescue our heroine(Katja Bienert) who is living in the jungle with her dad who is the "Big White Chief" leader of an African tribe. Some double-crosses happen and it's all really stupid(and probably pretty "racist" by today's definition). There's some native nudity, ridiculous stock footage of crocodiles and other assorted animals, Lina Romay in an old-lady get-up and a head gets chopped off but it's not the most exciting jungle epic. AKA THE TREASURE OF THE WHITE GODDESS

   

Re-titled to make it seem like a cannibal film on the German DVD cover!:

PTERODACTYL WOMAN FROM BEVERLY HILLS (1997)

 So someone(director Philip Mora perhaps?) had the idea to make a movie where a lady gets turned into a pterodactyl and that was it. No actual plot("white man bad, Indians good, get revenge" pretty much sums that up) was thought up, no discernible characters were imagined and no jokes, that are even slightly funny, for what I'm told is a comedy, were written. Some cool dinosaur stock footage was used and a half-assed reptile/bird costume was obtained for star Beverly D'Angelo which we get to see her hump her husband in, so that's something. Speaking of Miss D'Angelo, why the hell is she in this movie? I mean she had already starred in VACATION among other big Hollywood films, could things have really gotten that desperate in the 90s for her? Same question can be raised for Brion James from BLADE RUNNER. To even out the goodness of the stock footage you get the badness of a cgi stealth fighter vs. a cgi pterodactyl. Stay away from this unless you really need a nap.

 Director Mora would go on to make that ridiculous HOWLING III sequel which is better than this but not by much.

 

THE LADY PROFESSIONAL (1971)

 The Shaw Brothers take on the gangster genre here with this story of a hit-lady(Lily Ho) seeking revenge for her dead dad and other treachery. Surprisingly no kung fu action is involved though there is one scene where Bolo Yeung shows up that almost turns into martial arts but mostly consists of a weird shoving match. You do get gun-fu and Lily's deadly dart-throwing compact. The super red 70s blood flows pretty hard, especially in a scene where a guy gets tossed in some type of industrial strength wood-chipper doo-hickey and turned into chunks of gore. 

   

THE GORGON (1964)

  This is kind of a goofy one for Hammer studios because it deals with a monster from Greek mythology coming back from the dead and possessing a woman, oh and then turning people into stone and killing them. No, not Medusa, but her sister Maguera, the lesser known of the three Gorgon sisters(in actual Greek mythology the 3 gorgon sisters were Euryale, Stheno and Medusa, so I'm not sure where they got this name from but it is slightly easier to pronounce. Maybe they borrowed it from that giant Japanese robot in THE MYSTERIANS). As usual Hammer makes everything look great(except those very fake-looking snakes in Maguera's hair) and you get to see Christopher Lee in a rare heroic role. Also since the Gorgon only appears during a full moon it all plays like a weird female version of a werewolf tale which is cool.