SHE KILLED IN ECSTACY (1971)

  This one is a pre-Lina Romay film by director Jess Franco. Instead of her we get Soledad Miranda running around killing off doctors to get revenge for her dead husband(Fred Williams). These doctors were all on a board that didn't approve of experimenting on fetuses and stripped this Frankenstein-ish fellow of his medical license which then leads to the drastic measure of taking his own life. I've seen some folks argue there's a pro-choice message in this but I think that might just be wishful thinking since, as with many of Franco's movies, the narrative is not all that clear in the morality department. What is clear is that Franco is certainly a master of mixing the sleazy with the stylish and that is on display here quite a bit. You get Miranda in lots of sexy outfits, Howard Vernon's peen on full display, Franco himself as a rather slimy-looking doctor, castration, death by an inflated pillow and a really snazzy jazzy soundtrack!   

 This would sadly be Soledad's 2nd to last film(EUGENIE DE SADE would be the last) as she would die in a car accident in the same year this was shot.

Ladies and gentlemen I present "the world's smallest subtitles!!":

FIVE FOR HELL (1969)

  So for long stretches of this movie it is really quiet which seems very bizarre for a war flick and also makes it extremely difficult to stay awake while viewing. On the contrary when the soundtrack does kick in it seems like something way more suitable for a light-hearted comedy romp than a WW2 film where Nazis are getting mowed down by machine guns. Besides the music though there's not a whole lot that sets this one apart from any cheap Eurotrash war movie of the 60s beyond Klaus Kinski who's always fun to watch. here he's a German colonel who gets to bang Margaret Lee who's the only female character that shows up. For Kinski completists only! 

KILL AND KILL AGAIN (1981)

  In another great example of how the 70s didn't really end until a few years into the 80s we have this martial arts extravaganza from South Africa starring South African martial artist James Ryan. It is technically the sequel to 1976's KILL OR BE KILLED so that kinda explains the 70s feel. What's harder to explain, at least to your sensitive PC friends, is a burly black man(Ken Gampu) named Gorilla but it was a different world back then and South Africa at the time was certainly different. The film itself moves at a nice pace and has the feel of a Bruce Lee American production but with a way less charismatic star. 

 On a side not I recall my parents taking me to see a movie called FORCE FIVE, which came out the same year as this and featured a very similar plot, including 5 kung fu-ing maniacs sent in to rescue someone. Must have been something in the air. That one was actually directed by the guy who directed Bruce Lee in his big films, Robert Clouse. The black guy in this one is not named Gorilla but Lockjaw and my foggy childhood memory recalled pro wrestling terror Abdullah The Butcher playing that role(It was in fact Sonny Barnes). I remember this movie being amazing at the time but I was only 10 so maybe I should give it a re-evaluation sometime.   

A MAN CALED TIGER (1973)

  Jimmy Wang Yu was a martial arts star that I always found fairly generic in the 2nd chapter of his career after he left the Shaw Brothers studios(despite being amused by his goofy-sounding name). Learning that Bruce Lee was originally planned to be the main attraction in this movie makes Wang Yu seem even worse in comparison to what could have been. The plot here is a bit more complex than your standard modern-day kung fu epic involving Jimmy becoming one of the members of a gang of mobsters in order to find out who is responsible for his dad's death. The fight scenes are decent enough but nothing really pops this  above the typical chopsockey fare of the day.