MESSENGER OF DEATH (1988)

  So this Charles Bronson Cannon films revenge epic starts out with a bang as a whole family gets shotgun-massacred, including a bunch of children. Then Bronson gets involved. Now since he's just playing a newspaper reporter here there's really no logical reason why he kicks so much ass(throwing people out windows, down multiple flights of stairs and generally being an intimidating guy are some of his superpowers) except that's just what Bronson did best at this stage of his career. Basically pretty predictable but if you like Bronson at all it's still worth a watch at least once. 

 As a bonus the crazy killer from 10 TO MIDNIGHT(Gene Davis) shows up here in a way less crazy role.

CURSE OF EVIL (1982)

  This is one of the weirder Shaw Brothers studio films I've seen. The story concerns this family that has a dark past involving 13 people ending up dead. It's presented as a possible ghostly haunted house situation but becomes more bizarre as the film progresses. There are bitey, man-eating frogs(that roar like Godzilla), a rapey snake-man monster and a rapey regular guy that uses hypnotism to trick his victims. Decapitations, flesh-chomping, animal entrails and quite a bit of other gross gore are on display. It starts out a bit slow with all the family drama but more than makes up for it by the end. Now I just need to replace my shitty bootleg version of this so I can watch it without all the glitchy freezes. 

                                         Hungry killer frogs attack!:

TRIUMPH BY TWO KUNG-FU ARTS (1980)

  For a movie with kung fu right there in the title this one sure takes it's time before we even get to any fight scenes. For the first half hour or so it's all heavy melodrama about a guy seeking revenge for his dead father and his mom's disappointment with him for not getting it and generally for being such a loser. When we finally get to some fighting there are some weird choices including one of the end fight scenes being just a series of stills shown over some music. Some bits are also too dark to really see what's going on but I suspect that's just the garbage public domain transfers available. Skip it. AKA A FIST FOR A FIST

CHALLENGE THE INVINCIBLE (1979)

  Cheap, crappy, Taiwanese kung fu flick. To make matters worse I watched this on YouTube and some scenes were so dark that they were basically unwatchable. The plot concerns a family, or maybe just a group of people that call each other "brother" and "sister" a lot, who have to deal with one of them double-crossing the group. Also there are a few scenes where they train some armies for the king which, I guess is the reason for the alternate title of THE ART OF WAR BY SUN TZU which make this seem like some kinda historical drama which it is not at all. There is one dumb scene where our main lady makes a bad guy smell her ass that gave me a chuckle besides this though it's pretty forgettable stuff.

 There is some notably absurd background Muzak including lovely renditions of The Beatles' Blackbird that appears over and over. 

INTERNATIONAL HOUSE (1933)

  I haven't seen a ton of comedies with Bela Lugosi in them so I checked this one out. Lugosi, as usual, does play the foreign bad guy here but at least he's not a mad scientist again. This is mainly a W.C. Fields slapstick showcase and he's pretty entertaining to watch. There's also a slew of other celebrities of the time including Burns & Allen, Cab Calloway(who sings a song about marijuana!), Rudy Vallee and Rose Marie from THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW(billed as Baby Rose Marie since she was only 10 years old when this was made). The big invention, that everyone in the movie is gathered to see, is just a T.V. but that was obviously a big deal back then. Old-timey sex jokes and weird dance numbers make this an amusing enough time-waster. 

TWISTED ISSUES (1988)

  I suppose this shot-on-video horror flick/music video at least serves as an interesting time-capsule showing what the skater-punk scene was like in Gainesville, Florida back in 1988. Besides that it's like pretty much every other experimental shot-on-video thing made in the 80s. It inter-splices news footage and TV junk with homemade gore. There's sort-of a plot about a skater getting whacked and coming back as a killer zombie-monster with his board drilled onto his foot but it seems like mostly just an excuse to feature your friend's band on the soundtrack. Apparently different scenes were shot by various people which would explain the disjointed nonsensical mess that results. Makes for good background noise and visuals if you're a nostalgic garbage-music fan but good luck sitting through it all.

                              Works better as a 3 minute short!:

ACES GO PLACES II (1983)

  This is the 2nd film in the ACES GO PLACES series from Hong Kong and the one I've seen the most. It's a total action/comedy mash-up with crazy stunts and car crashes galore. There's a robot vs. kung fu(plus a robot vs. an army of mini-robots) scene, lots of slapstick, bicycle stunts, dumb jokes, a character that's supposed to be Clint Eastwood called Filthy Harry, and lots of weirdness. Director Tsui Hark has a recurring role as an insane person. If you enjoy stupid Hong Kong hijinks that you could actually watch with a little kid, if you have to, give it a look.  AKA MAD MISSION 2

ACES GO PLACES series:

1. MAD MISSION (1982)

2. ACES GO PLACES II (1983) AKA MAD MISSION 2

3. ACES GO PLACES III: OUR MAN ON BOND STREET (1984) Tsui Hark directs this one after just appearing in the first 2 films AKA MAD MISSION 3

4. MAD MISSION 4: YOU NEVER DIE TWICE (1986) Ringo Lam directs AKA ACES GO PLACES IV

5. MAD MISSION V: THE TERRACOTTA HIT (1989) AKA ACES GO PLACES V

There was a Sammo Hung movie called LUCKY STARS GO PLACES in 1986 but that's part of another series and a 6th movie in 1997(which seems more like a remake since it has a completely different cast) called 97 ACES GO PLACES

SINFONIA EROTICA (1980)

  The old story of a husband and his mistress trying to drive his wife crazy. The twist here is that "the mistress" is actually a rather flamboyant gay fella making this the gayest film director Jess Franco has ever made(male on male anyway, lesbianism is in almost all of his movies of course). I guess technically he's bi since there's also a nun that gets sexually abused by our male leads but ends up liking it because "hey this was filmed in the 70s!". Lina Romay does a pretty good job as the neglected wife but overall this is a pretty depressing tale with no clear viewpoint except maybe that people are pretty shitty. 

 One unexpected thing that did stand out to me from this is that during the finale they use the bed spear kill from FRIDAY THE 13th PART 2. Of course this was previously used in Mario Bava's BAY OF BLOOD but I would not have guessed it was gonna show up here.

 Loosely based on the writings of the Marquis DeSade who seems to be Franco's go-to guy for inspiration. AKA EROTIC SYMPHONY

PAGANINI HORROR (1988)

 So Paganini is a phantom who kills off this 80s girl-group who sound like either Bon Jovi( or Olivia Newton-John depending on the song) with his golden violin-sword while they're trying to shoot their music video in an old mansion because of some haunted sheet music . It's kind of like that other Italian horror movie Stagefright but even stupider! Director Luigi Cozzi claims his gore budget was cut right before filming started so that explains why there isn't even a ton of that on display. Donald Pleasence  shows up as The Devil himself in a couple of scenes and Daria Nicolodi has a bigger role and apparently helped write the screenplay which I assume couldn't have taken very long.