RETURN TO HORROR HIGH (1987)

 This one is a pretty good example of the things that sucked about 80s horror films. Of course the main thing is that it's really a comedy  that they threw just a bit of blood into to try and fool you. Trying to fool you is another negative component as we not only get dream sequences that prove to be unreal but the structure of making a movie lends itself to a whole slew of fakery and even succeeds in giving this a totally awful ending. Besides that there's some terrible miscasting, Marcia Brady(Maureen McCormick) as a police officer being the main culprit in this department. George Clooney shows up for about 5 minutes(so he gets top-billing on every release forever!) before getting his face smushed on a window. Another annoying thing, particularly to gorehounds and slasher-movie fans, is that they cut away from most all of the explicitly gory bits and mostly just show the aftermath of our killer's rampage. One positive aspect is Alex Rocco, who manages to be great as the film-within-a-film's sleazy producer who just wants more tits and blood in his movie(boy can I relate to this fellow!). Steer clear of this unless you're one of those 80s obsessed crazy kids.
 There was a really good 1970s HORROR HIGH movie but I'm pretty sure there's no connection to that one here.




                                                         Superior Thai poster!:

MA BARKER'S KILLER BROOD (1960)

 This movie starts off with a guy getting gasoline poured all over him and burned alive while pleading for his life! If that's not a great attention grabber I don't know what is. Amazingly this thing was shot in 1959 and features stuff like cops being shot down and run over in the streets, actual blood and holes when someone gets hit by a bullet, Russian roulette and a strong female lead character. I don't think the feminist message was meant as anything positive though and probably works better as a cautionary tale about what happens when you have a weak father figure. More importantly, to me, this was a great kitschy gangster tale with a bunch of famous names from the 30s including Machine Gun Kelly, John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Al "Kreepy" Karpis and others joining up with Barker's crew from time to time. While wildy historically inaccurate(apparently the real Ma Barker never picked up a tommy gun and mowed down policemen) this works great as an old-timey exploitation great with some great over-the-top acting by Lurene Tuttle as the titular gangster matriarch.
 Tuttle would go on to be in PSYCHO and a gazillion TV shows over the years. One of her sons here(the sissy one that she slaps around on occasion for not having enough guts), Don Grady, would go on to become Robbie on MY THREE SONS.




                                     Spanish title = WITH CRIME IN THE BLOOD

A WEREWOLF IN THE AMAZON (2005)

 The great Paul Naschy appears in this as a Nazi-fied version of Dr. Moreau who has to leave his island of mutant creatures and start experimenting on the locals in The Amazon jungle. Oh and, as usual, he's also a Wolfman since he used some of his magic gene-splicing potion on himself. There's also a tribe of Amazon women that Naschy created just for fun and to occasionally have some sex with and some cannibalistic beastly monster folks that he keeps in cages. While this might sound like fun, sadly, since this was filmed in 2005, it's all pretty shoddily put together. You do get some nudity and blood and Mr. Naschy is fine in his scenes but mostly it focuses on a group of fairly annoying young people looking to get high and end up getting killed in typical slasher movie fashion. There's also a bit of strange attempts at comedy thrown in that fall really flat. 
 Director Ivan Cardosa did make the superior, and way weirder, SECRET OF THE MUMMY, back in the 80s when there was still a chance of seeing something good.

THE BOY WHO DRANK TOO MUCH (1979)

 Scott Baio, still playing Chachi on HAPPY DAYS at the time, stars as the titular drunken boy in this cautionary TV-movie. Baio, as the macho-named Buff Saunders, plays the son of a full-fledged alcoholic ex-hockey star dad that he tries and emulate. The highlight is a teen party where Buff gets wasted and hits on his friend's gal and then pass out and soils the rug. Besides this it's a pretty typical AA-fueled afterschool special sort of deal. Baio does come off as a dick through most of it which was the complete opposite of his persona at the time though maybe it's prophetic because many people seem to see him that way these days.
 There were a couple of other Baio TV-flicks in this same vein around this time including STONED from 1980, where he discovers the dangers of the devil-weed!, and RUN, DON'T WALK  from 1981 where he's a crippled dude who helps cheer up a depressed gal in the same situation. These were actually part of the AFTERSCHOOL SPECIALS program so I'm sure they're just as sappy and preachy as this prime-time special.

                                               CBS special presentation!:

EAGLE SHADOW FIST (1973)

 The problem with kung fu movies set in more modern times is that anyone with a gun can just shoot a kung fu master and your fight scene would take about 3 seconds. This movie has the balls to set the movie in China during World War II and just have heroic Chinese martial artists chop the guns out of those evil ol' Japanese soldiers with nary a fear of getting their asses shot off.  If that's not angering enough all later releases of this advertise it as a Jackie Chan flick and it's not really. Going through my collection of Jackie Chan films recently I've watched a few real stinkfests but this one might be the bottom of the barrel. If you want to see Jackie with a short buzzed haircut playing second fiddle to a pretty bland main star, then getting his ass kicked and finally murdered in a bloody fashion then maybe this is for you. Otherwise look to any number of Jackie's superior outings.
 I believe this is the first film that Chan has any type of sizeable role in though(besides the stuff he did as a little kid) so I suppose it has some historical importance if nothing else. AKA FIST OF ANGER, FISTS OF ANGER and NOT SCARED TO DIE

NIGHT EYES (1982)

 Not to be confused with that other Canadian killer-rat movie, OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN. This one is a Hong Kong co-production, which is kinda weird since there's nothing at all Chinese about it up until one scene where our teenage protagonists go and see GAME OF DEATH in the theater(which just so happened to have also been made by producers Golden Harvest and directed by the same director as this, Robert Clouse). What it is though is a great little animals-gone-wild tale of larger than normal rats(small dog-sized to be exact) on a gory feeding rampage. The monsters were created by dressing dachshunds up in custom-made rat suits and for close-ups some bitey rat-puppet heads. A good gory 80s flick, Scatman Crothers shows up to get feisty and they even kill a baby which is not something you see much. More commonly known as DEADLY EYES.

                                        Known in Australia(and the U.K.) as RATS:

VIRGINS FROM HELL (1987)

 This Indonesian exploitation extravaganza starts out as a female biker gang takes on some evil mobsters. Very stylishly decked-out in bright short-shorts and leopard print they kick butt for a little while until they suddenly just give up. From there it becomes a more standard women-in-prison situation with some unique tortures for our inmates including sticking one of them in a bag with some unidentified rodent, another gal getting hung upside down and swung into barbed-wire, a roasting alive and, of course, the more common 'threatening a lady with some unwanted lesbianic-action' scene. The main bad guy is called Mr. Tiger(seemingly only because he has pictures of tigers in his office) who enjoys a bit of sadistic whipping and whatnot before he gets down to the raping antics. His goal, apparently, is to develop an aphrodisiac drug that he can make a fortune on(which doesn't really seem all that evil if you just ignore it's potential use as a date-rape drug). Eventually a scientist(who looks a bit like Indonesian action star Barry Prima, but isn't) helps our ladies get the revenge they've been craving since the beginning. Overall a pretty decent and goofy excursion into sleaziness(even though it strangely doesn't feature any naked boobs whatsoever for some reason) that's worth a look even though it gets a bit overly predictable towards the explosive finale. AKA MAIDENS REVENGE

                                                    Rapi films get rapey!!:


                                                              Exciting Japanese VHS!:

Known in Germany as VIRGINS OF HELL!: 

MASTER WITH CRACKED FINGERS (1973)

 Jackie Chan plays a character named Jackie Chan whose parents were killed and then he grows up to seek revenge on the creep who snuffed his pop. About as basic as these kung fu flicks can be. Strangely the dubbing job on the English version I have of this is totally ridiculous with the theme from the POPEYE cartoon playing during one fight followed by Jackie's old master(Simon Yuen) farting in a skinny effeminate characters face. Also everyone has over-exaggerated comedic British accents. The most memorable, and absurd, scene though has the old master shove a young naked boy into a bag of snakes to teach him to ignore his surroundings or something. Not something I want anyone to walk in on my watching!
 Chan was very young when he made this(it's his first adult starring role) and even he doesn't recommend you watch it. Apparently it was never completed with Jackie and the final battle, where both fighters are conveniently blindfolded, isn't Mr. Chan at all. There's also apparently a couple of differing versions of this with varying degrees of stupid comedic content. AKA SNAKE FIST FIGHTER, TEN FINGERS OF DEATH, SNAKE FIST NINJA, LAST TIGER FROM CANTON, STRANGER IN HONG KONG and CUB TIGER FROM KWANGTUNG

THE BIG BRAWL came out in 1980 so they re-released this, under a snazzy new title, to capitalize on Jackie's newfound fame:

They really seamlessly cut that new title into the opening without a jarring edit or anything!: