This is a James Bond-rip-off movie starring a fellow named Ian Hunter as the smooth ladies man/Ninja/spy Duncan Jax. Not to be confused with the former lead singer of Mott The Hoople this Ian Hunter is known only for this movie and it's sequel, THE ORDER OF THE BLACK EAGLE(where somehow Jax is no longer doing the ninja bit), that came out in December of this same year. While Bond-rip-offs are not my particularly favorite subgenre this one features a baboon, ingeniously named named Boon, as Duncan's partner in espionage antics and monkey movies sure are! There's a sexy evil Asian lady, wrestler Dan Spivey as an evil henchmen, a cheesy soundtrack, a masked villain who sounds like Darth Vader and lots of explosions(including most importantly a bomb-tossing baboon!). If you're an action movie fan you might find a few laughs here but I'm not sure how it ever received a sequel.
Eurocult director Jess Franco goes the comedy route this time. Not just a comedic take on James Bind but a simulation of a comic book with captions and word balloons that pop up from time to time. There were quite a few of these silly Bond cash-ins made in this era and I'm not a huge fan of any of them but this was mildly amusing and something outside of the usual Franco sleaze milieu.
Jess Franco had directed 2 Fu-Manchu films and then followed it up with this more obscure character from the novels of Sax Rohmer. Sumuru(dubbed into English as Sunanda for some weird reason), the evil female supervillain is basically just a non-Asian feminist version of Fu-Manchu complete with her own all-woman city of soldiers to do her bidding. This film follows 1967's THE MILLION EYES OF SUMURU(also produced by Harry Alan Towers and starring Bond girl Shirley Eaton in the title role)) and like that movie it's a mix of 60s spy flick with futuristic sci-fi trappings. The gals all wear go-go outfits and everything is super-stylized. Franco's Rohmer adaptions are not my favs from his filmography, I guess I enjoy when he uses this influences to go off on his own crazy tangents more, but they are still visually pretty amazing.
This played on TV under the name of FUTURE WOMEN with the nudity removed and extra scenes of touristy crap to pad out the runtime.
This one has got to be one of the strangest examples of Bruce Lee-sploitation ever. If you described the plot of this movie to your average lame-brain civilian they would probably assume you were on some heavy psychedelics.
OK, so, intermingling reality with fantasy, Bruce Lee(or in this case Bruce Leong doing his best Bruce Lee impression) dies and is sent to this underworld where he becomes friends with Popeye, The Sailor Man and The One-Armed Swordsman, from the kung-fu flick THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN. There's a gang of bad guys consisting of Zatoichi, The Blind Swordsman, Clint Eastwood and James Bond(why all these heroic characters are now evil here I have no idea, but they are). This gang is led by a couple of fellows named The Exorcist, who has an unexplained French accent, and The Godfather. I guess in Hong Kong popular movie titles make for good names. They also pal around with Emanuelle from all those soft-core classics except here she has an English accent for no reason. If this isn't enough idiotic insanity Dracula shows up along with that Cobra Kai gang in the skeletons suits(who I think are supposed to be zombies?) and a bunch of mummies. Everyone does kung fu(usually very badly!) and it all ends with Bruce Lee floating away like a balloon.
You might think this is a movie for children, and I would too, except there's sex scenes and very ample boobs and almost complete nakedness on display. The whole thing reminded me of on of those crazy Turkish superhero films where copyright is no issue and even Spider-Man himself might be a murdering bastard. I was fortunate enough to see an actual film print of this last night in a theater and it surely made me question my sanity. I was also a little sad that I will probably never find another Brucesploitation film that will top this in the bat-shit wacky department. AKA DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU
The title sequence alone might be better than anything Hollywood has ever attempted:
By looking at the poster for this Italian/German exploitation flick you might think it's a sexploitation or women-in-prison sort of a deal but this is actually part of the Kommissar X series which were these James Bond-ish pulpy crime dramas that were popular in Europe in the 60's. This is the 5th in the series and is about women being drugged and turned into prostitutes on a secret island in Asia. You would think with this sleazy premise we'd get a lot of nudity and sex and you do a few peaks at some boobs but not a whole lot. It's basically filled with the heroics of Kommissar X played by Tony Kendall and his sidekick played by a musclebound Brad Harris who had earlier in his career been in a few Italian Hercules films. One of the bad guys is portrayed by one of my favorite character actors Herbert Fux from MARK OF THE DEVIL and an angry midget also threatens our heroes. Basically it's a pretty silly secret agent/spy film which might be of interest to 007 fans. AKA THREE GOLDEN SERPENTS
Filipino-made, martial arts-filled, James Bond takeoff flick featuring the amazing kung-fu abilities of Mr. Weng Weng, who is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest man to ever be the star of his own motion picture. This is truly the type of picture that needs to be seen to be believed and is something that could only be made in The Philippines. Standing at a tiny 2'9" and dubbed with a pip-squeaky little voice, Weng elevates this movie from what would have been just another silly kung-fu spoof to something remarkably entertaining. He does all his own stunts which consist of lots of hits to his enemies balls, some nifty acrobatics and a bunch of gun-play. Plus his comedy stylings, peeping on naked ladies, disco dancing or cracking nutty one-liners work great in his portrayal of a mini-James Bond who, of course, is quite the ladies man. The bizarre dubbing and slapstick antics only help to keep me watching what most people would probably label a terrible film but that's their loss. For such a little guy, Weng is reportedly the biggest star to ever come out of the Philippines and I can see why. You can't help but root for this guy. This is actually Weng's 5th film appearance and he went on to do a few more as Agent 00. I'll definitely be looking to find some of his other films.
