THE NIGHTMARE NEVER ENDS (1980)

  Beeing a big fan of wacko 80s anthology flick NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR I feel it's my duty to check out the source material that they used to construct that film. This film, starring NIGHT COURT's Richard Moll and B-movie fav Cameron Mitchell, makes up the last segment of NTTT except in that version someone added a bunch of claymation that isn't here. You do get an overly smug Satan character vs. a bunch of obviously ineffectual heros, Nazis, a fairly gory climax on an operating table and most importantly Cameron Mitchell dancing to power pop in a disco after getting slipped a Mickey by the Devil. It's all kind of pointless though and sorta plays like a shitty version of THE SENTINEL. 

 There are various edits of this under different titles including SATAN'S SUPPER(allegedly the shortest cut), SHIVER and CATACLYSM.

                                      Pretty cool homemade trailer!:

THE TOOLBOX MURDERS (1978)

 This is a great example of slasher movie that actually came out before HALLOWEEN kick-started the avalanche of similar films. It all starts out with a flurry of bloody, graphic murders of various women, including porn star Kelly Nichols, using various implements of destruction found in your average toolbox. The first third of this film is super sleazy mixing a bathtub masturbation scene with Miss Nichols, other assorted scantily-clad females and graphic bloodletting. From there it does slow down a bit but is still a great watch thanks to the batshit-crazy acting job of Mr. Cameron Mitchell who goes from kidnapping young girls to singing silly songs about about lollipops all the while never failing to convey that he is a complete wack-job psycho barely hanging onto sanity. This has to be my all-time favorite performance of Mr. Mitchell's and I'd recommend any grindhouse aficionados check it out if they haven't already.
 I got a chance to view a slightly-aged 35mm print of this last night on a weird double-bill with the 80's nutso monster/ghost/zombie movie SPOOKIES which was quite the experience.
 The film ends with a claim that this movie is based on a true case from the 60's which I'm willing to bet is a big load of horse-crap.
 There was a remake of this, directed by Tobe Hooper, in 2004 that wasn't particularly good and was basically a remake in name only since it had a very different plot.


The 'mystery movie' aspects of this are pretty laughable since Mitchell is so bad at wearing a mask that you can see most of his face under it for a large part of the movie:

THE REBEL ROUSERS (1970)

 After EASY RIDER was a big hit there came a whole slew of these outlaw biker flicks and many of them, like this one here, had an all-star cast.  Cameron Mitchell is our main main, not looking nearly as bloated as I'm used to seeing him, as a fellow who runs across some bikers led by Bruce Dern who he went to college with.  This doesn't stop the gang from beating the shit out of him just for the hell of it.  These are the kind of bikers that I don't think are necessarily evil but they don't really give a fuck about what they have to do to have a good time or a cheap thrill.  Dern is the only one of them who has any kind of conscience at all regarding his actions and this leads to some bickering and bike-racing on the beach.  Their disregard for decency  might eventually lead our gang of knucklehead hog-riders into the neighborhood of rape and murder as the movie goes on and things get more serious.  Diane Ladd, who is in a few of these biker flicks and later on the mom in WILD AT HEART, is Cameron's lady friend and the object of Jack Nicholson's molesting hands and tongue.  Nicholson is pretty awesome here as a sleazeball in awesome stripey-pants who will fuck over his best friend for a thrill.  Harry Dean Stanton is also part of the gang in a stupid-looking suit and pork-pie hat.  While overall this film teases a lot more violence than you actually get onscreen(you mostly just get a lot of general mayhem and anarchy) it's still a neat little low-budget, time-capsule, throwback, drive-in semi-classic that would play all the time on TV back when I was a kid and broadcast TV had a reason to exist.    
 This was actually filmed in '67 and not released until after EASY RIDER to cash in on the Nicholson connection.

“With the unbridled passion of men possessed, they blasted their way through all opposition in a campaign of sexual self-indulgence that left nothing but burned-out shells of humanity strewn in their path.”:

MINNESOTA CLAY (1964)

 The great thing about spaghetti-westerns is that they're generally not the same as old time boring American westerns.  So when you get one like this here that's basically in the same exact mold as a typical U.S. western it always feels like a bit of a letdown to me.  This one covers all the bases and you get the expected nasty Mexican bandits, including the great Fernando Sancho who's always good in the role as the scummy bandit here as our head bad guy.  In the role of revenge-seeking hero we get Cameron Mitchell as a slowly-going-blind gunslinger and he does a decent enough job but overall you're probably better off watching director Sergio Corbucci's later films(including one of the best Eurowesterns ever in DJANGO) for a better time.

 

RAW FORCE (1982)

This movie has a little something for everyone.  You get kung fu ninja zombies, cannibal monks, Cameron Mitchell doing some gun fu, bad guys that dress like the Village People, an Adolph Hitler impersonator, A Bruce Lee impersonator, man(and zombie)-eating piranhas, as well as boobs, blood and general mayhem.  Shot in the Philippines, where life is cheap and wild women and good booze abound, this one is great for a few laughs thanks to the horrible acting and insanity.  Camille Keaton, of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE fame, shows up topless in a small part.  The flick goes from comedy to horror to kung fu flick in the blink of an eye.  I feel it's a true masterpiece amongst trash films.  Troma wishes it could make something this entertainingly off the wall.  I also love the alternate title of KUNG FU CANNIBALS.  Brilliant!