This Italian giallo starts out with a murder in a pharmacy and then turns into a pretty dull mystery for most of the rest of it's runtime. There is a lady who gets killed by a hot bowl of pasta fagioli and it does have a pretty interesting, if not abrupt, ending which I will not spoil because I'm not a complete asshole. It's too bad everything else is fairly generic. Also they didn't even have the decency to throw some nekkid ladies in this. AKA THE CAT'S VICTIMS ( I don't recall any cats in this!) WATCH ME WHEN I KILL is just as crappy of a title since no one ever forces or even wants anyone to see them kill at any point.
Sammo Hung directs and stars in this version of THE DIRTY DOZEN set in Vietnam. Pretty good action packed stuff that is mostly a war movie but becomes a kung fu flick for the big ending. There's a Russian roulette homage to THE DEER HUNTER and lots of bloody squibs are on display. Towards the big finale Sammo get to chop off the hand of his future real-life wife(Joyce Godenzi) with a machete. Weird kink!
So this lady(Susan Strasberg) has a growth on the back of her neck and it turns out to be a Native American demon seeking revenge on whitey. Thanks to some help from Tony Curtis and an Indian medicine man(played by Michael Ansara in some red-face makeup) they do battle. This includes STAR WARS lasers and Satan himself showing up. Goofy but enjoyable mess of a film that is sort of an EXORCIST-rip-off but unique enough to stand apart from most of those.
This had to be director William Girdler's biggest film given the FX work and stars involved(Burgess Meredith and Stella Stevens also show up briefly). This would sadly be his last film before dying in a helicopter crash.
Known in Germany as SUPER ZOMBIE: THE BIRTH OF HORROR!:
This Tsui Hark-directed kung fu movie starts out with a dog getting caught in a bear-trap and that kinda sets the dark tone for a lot of this film. This is also the movie that made me realize that Hark is not a big fan of animals(though I guess that could be said of a lot of Hong Kong directors). Besides bear-traps there are a lot of swords in play and as a result one of our heroes ends up becoming a one-armed swordsman. It never lives up to the grandeur of that classic fu film and veers a little too much on the speedy wirework side of things for my taste. There's also a bit much in the dramatics and dumb philosophizing but it doesn't totally ruin the whole film.
So they managed to come up with a satisfactory ending to this true-life crime tale, which we know didn't actually have one. Besides that I suppose it's somewhat accurateto real life, though nowhere near as gory since this was made in England in the 50s.
Not the first(Alfred Hitchcock's silent film THE LODGER is sort-of considered that) or last Ripper film this one plays out like a standard classy 50s mystery.
The American release features a bloody color sequence at the climax. There's also a continental European version with actual nudity.
The DVD I own of this has the way more horror-ish title of BLOOD SUCKERS while the actual onscreen title is the duller FREEDOM SEEKER. The worse title might be a bit more fitting since a lot od this film plays like an action-adventure about a group of friends searching for their lost British compatriot in Greece. There is a lady vampire involved though and that leads to a bloody orgy scene/60s psychedelic freak-out. Too bad that's the really only exciting scene in the film and this never reaches the classy heights of similar Hammer Studios productions of this time-period. Peter Cushing only shows up for a few small appearances while Patrick Macnee, from THE AVENGERS TV show, has a significantly larger role. AKA INCENSE FOR THE DAMNED
Originally released in America on a double-bill with Filipino horror BLOOD THIRST:
This early blaxploitation flick is definitely in that SWEET SWEETBACK'S BADASSSSS SONG wheelhouse where the films were more about serious social issues and not so much just action movies starring black folks. That's not too say there's not a lot of action in this one. The action consists mainly of radical black revolutionaries shooting cops and cops shooting up the ghetto. Starring the future Lando Calrissian(Billy Dee Williams) as a very angry black man and that bad D'Urville Martin this is an interesting and artfully-shot(including many flashbacks) film that doesn't seem all that too far removed from where the U.S. could potentially be headed in the future.
This was re-released in 1976 as BLAST with additional footage shot by Allan Arkush. That version seem a bit harder to find today.:
This one is a very epic Wuxia martial-arts flick. While it looks great and was obviously director well by Tsui Hark I can't say it was all that engrossing and at over 2 and a half hours that can be a bit of a problem. The story deals with kung fu being banned by the emperor and then our 7 heroic swordsmen(or is it swordspeople since one of them is a lady?) have to save a village. It starts out pretty cool with decapitations and limbs flying everywhere but then settles into pretty predictable territory. I've read that it was inspired by THE SEVEN SAMURAI but I don't see much in comparison to the Kurosawa classic.
Filmed in '88 but not released until '92 this might be the best movie 80s new-wave rock star Adam Ant was ever in that I've seen. That's not really saying much though since I haven't really seen him in anything else besides all his music videos. This is a Charles Band Empire Pictures produced deal and those are never really all that great. This one gives us Ant, offscreen for most of the film, as The Devil(Diablo) himself making deals for souls and killing off much of the cast. There are some cool FX including a chair that eats people, a fat guy who turns into a pig-man and some zombies who show up for a second but most of this is pretty lackluster nonsensical stuff.
For a Dutch slasher movie from the 80s this one is surprisingly well shot. It gets a bit bogged down in the police procedural stuff midway through but pulls it out with a boat chase and enough of a mystery to make things not boring. It's also pretty unique to have the killer in scuba gear and do most of his killing from the water. It gives the kills a very JAWS-like feel.
The English dub has some pretty heavy Dutch accents.
Not to be confused with the 1978 Joe Dante animals run amuck classic, this one is more of a jungle adventure flick starring the great William Smith as a nefarious hunter taking some people on a hunt for diamonds. Perhaps if this had been called anything other than PIRANHA it would not have been as disappointing. Actual piranhas only show up during the opening credits and one fleeting scene but that's hardly worth naming your whole movie after. For William Smith completists only.
This film was marketed as a MOST DANGEROUS GAME take-off but that's also some false advertising. AKA PIRANHA! PIRANHA!
I believe the first ULTRA FORCE is Michelle Yeoh's ROYAL WARRIORS from 1986(a sequel to Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock's YES, MADAM!) under a different alias. I've never seen that one but I don't think there's any direct connection other than both movies being about Hong Kong police. Other alternate titles for this are MEGAFORCE 2 (making this a sequel to 1989's KILLER ANGELS which is also sometimes called ULTRA FORCE(confused yet?)) and RAW FORCE 3 (not sure what that makes it a sequel to but let's just say it's this classic). To obscure things even more YES, MADAM! is also known as ULTRA FORCE 2 in some places.
None of that really matters though since this stands on it's own as an ass-kicking action-packed epic. Moon Lee(aka Mona Lee) is our main gal here and really stands out. If you can deal with all the repetitive gun-fu on display and not very complex storyline give it a look for some great 80s Hong Kong action.
Unfortunately, as is the case with a lot of these HK actioners, a few of the actors involved with stunt work(including Lee) were pretty badly hurt in the big fiery finale. This might be the only movie from there that I've seen where they actually stop the action to give a disclaimer about how bad the accident was though. I assume that means things went pretty awry. AKA DEVIL HUNTERS
I saw this film at a recent gathering of friends to view films on 16mm and was told that this was a STAR WARS ripoff. I think that might have been pretty tough to pull off since it was released only 5 months after Lucas' all-time blockbuster. What it actually is though is one of the weirdest roles for horror icon Christopher Lee. Mr. Lee plays an alien who dresses up in something that resembles a superhero outfit, doesn't have to speak any lines of dialogue since he communicates telepathically and runs around killing some competing enemy aliens that look like albino Braniacs or something. There's also a goofy spiky helmeted robot and Robert Vaughn as a turtleneck-wearing earthling who gets abducted and taken for a flying saucer trip. It's all pretty awful and should probably only be viewed in it's Riff Trax version if you really feel the need to see this.
