This seems like one of those nudie-cutie movies but since it was made before those existed there's not actually any nudity but just a bunch of girls running around in old-time bathing suits. The story concerns a couple of prehistoric tribes that have mating problems. The people of Wongo also worship an alligator that they call a dragon since this was filmed in Florida and alligators were plentiful. It's all pretty dumb but I suppose it was a bit more thrilling in 1958 when you could go to the movie theater and look at a tit and the idea of women being kickass was just a novelty. Kitschy campiness abounds though so if that turns you on give it a spin.
This was also an equally stupid song by The Tubes!:
Well this is a pretty big mess of a film. Apparently it was released in 1977 under the title of DR. SHAGETZ but then sometime in the mid 80s some new footage, featuring big 80s boobs!, was shot and added and it was given the EVIL TOWN moniker. I'm not sure if either version got much of a release before it ended up on video though.
The plot deals with a mad doctor(Dean Jagger, called Dr. Schaeffer and not Dr. Shagetz in the version I watched) who is searching for a way to keep people alive forever using pituitary gland juice or something of that nature. It jumps back and forth between some 70s campers and some 80s chicks being captured and raped by a couple of hicks. A very jarring mess but the boobs are nice to ogle.
One of the four directors credited on this, Mardi Rustam, went on to kinda/sorta remake this as EVILS OF THE NIGHT which I found way more entertaining. Oddly it was also released before EVIL TOWN on good ol' VHS.
By the time this came out, in 1991, there must have been something like 100 movies that already used the title CAGED WOMEN so that gives you some idea of the creativity and originality involved in this Italian/ Portugese co-produced women-in-prison flick. Packed full of boobs and degradation though it certainly delivers what you'd expect from this sub-genre. Main gal, Pilar Orive, who seems to have had a very small acting career in the 90s, is certainly not hard to look at completely naked throughout most of the film. While nothing particularly exceptional happens here they do manage to jam in a THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME homage to bring it all to a close. Good watch for sleazoid completists. AKA CAGED WOMEN IN PURGATORY
Known in France under the very unsexy title of HIGH SECURITY DISTRICT:
Eurocult director Jess Franco is not really known for his action thrillers and this BOYS FROM BRAZIL-inspired crapfest might be a good example of why. This film deals with some Nazi-hunters looking for the titular Mengele(who is not a commando at all but a doctor who likes to practice horrible experiments on his patients, played by Howard Vernon (who looks and acts nothing like the actual fellow he's supposed to be portraying)) Jack Taylor is one of the hunters and the rest of the team includes a karate guy, an acrobat, an assassin and a guy who just likes hunting Nazis I think. The main experiments here seem to be Mengele breeding people with monkeys to make some wacky monkey-men. There's very little in the way of sexiness, horror or even much quality action so be prepared for mostly just stupidity.
Apparently Franco claimed to have not actually been the director here, but merely the original writer, and assigned the blame to Andrea(BURIAL GROUND) Bianchi. Most pseudonymous credits list the name Frank Drew White as director. It is packed with his usual cast though including even Lina Romay in a very small part. The reality seems to be that Franco started directing and gave up when the producers wanted more of an action flick than he intended.
This kung fu flick is sort of a Brucespolitation movie since it features Bruce Li. He shares the spotlight with Chin Yuet-Sang and an American dude named John(Michael Winston, who was only in this one film) to make up the titular three. The plot deals with Li's Auntie trying to keep her house from being sold and Li and his kung fu school coming to help her with some gangsters. It's pretty typical stuff but has some added nostalgic value for anyone who used to watch this back in the 80s on the local kung fu theater program since it was shown a bunch back then, most newer viewers will probably not be as forgiving with the goofy-ass humour and nonsensical dubbing. There is a ridiculous disco scene reminding us this was shot right after SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER came out in Hong Kong that is pretty amusing. AKA THE LAMA AVENGER and DRAGON ON FIRE
This is one of the best-looking films directed by Euro-sleaze master Jess Franco, unfortunately it's also one the more boring films of his. It's basically a drama about a love triangle set during World War 2. There's a minimum of actions scenes and stock footage, from a 1971 Italian war movie titled HEROES WITHOUT GLORY, is used for some of that. It's is a little weird to see Luke Skywalker himself(Mark Hamill) in a Franco flick but this is a very tame version of a Eurotrash film with nothing very exploitative about it. There's also a bit of music that makes me think ol' Jess wanted to do his version of CABARET or something. Christopher Lee, as always, does a decent job and might be one of the only reasons to watch this. AKA FALL OF THE EAGLES
This kung fu master(Jack Long) has to travel around and defeat all the other masters in China just so he knows he's the best. Along the way he picks up a student(Lee Yi-Min) who he trains in the Pei-Mei(probably best known as that guy with the long white beard in KILL BILL) style. There's also the basic revenge tale here with Lee trying to get revenge for his murdered father. This one is pretty much wall-to-wall fighting(well choreographed thanks to Corey Yuen, who also appears as one of the grandmasters) so if that's your scene this will most likely be for you.
I caught this one last weekend down at the drive-in theater as part of a slasher-movie-themed event and while this was not really a slasher I still found it more entertaining than I had initially expected. I've never seen the horror flick THE STEPFATHER, which came out a few years later, but I imagine it was highly influenced by this. Director Michael Winner(know bets to me as the director of the original DEATH WISH and a bunch of other excellent Charles Bronson vehicles) delivers an effective tale of a girl who knows her new stepdad is trying to off her mom but nobody will believe her. There are a bunch of cheesy lines of dialogue which I found delightful. The musical cues, credited to Led Zeppelin bass guitarist John Paul Jones, seem way out of place and more fitting to a Lifetime movie but overall I found this dumb 80s thriller worth staying up late at the chilly drive-in to view.
I first saw this grimy, gruesome New York City sleazefest when I was around 12 or 13 years old back in the VHS days. It was a pretty scarring experience that left an indelible impression on my young mind. This film exists in a 70s porn-aesthetic world of gruesome misogynistic horror. At the time I thought the inclusion of jokes while horrific scenes involving brain-drilling, decapitations, eyeball-chomping cannibalism and all kinds of various tortures were going on only served to make things even more off-putting. Watching now, as an adult, there's obviously a great deal of black humour and I find the whole thing to be a riot. Director Joel M. Reed takes the basic outline of H.G. Lewis' classic THE WIZARD OF GORE and injects so much debauchery that he created a 42nd Street classic of his own. Unfortunately Reed would never reach these disgusting heights again and would follow this with only one crappy zombie movie 5 years later. Midget star Louie DeJesus, whose Ralphus character is the standout performance here, would go on to appear in a bunch of porn films.
This was originally titled THE INCREDIBLE TORTURE SHOW and wasn't given the FREAKS moniker until it was re-released in the 80s. Othjer AKA's include SARDU, MASTER OF THE SCREAMING VIRGINS and THE HERITAGE OF CALIGULA: AN ORGY OF SICK MINDS(video title)
There are some alternate scenes involving Sardu & Ralphus in some homosexual antics that are included on the blu-ray release.
So this Charles Bronson Cannon films revenge epic starts out with a bang as a whole family gets shotgun-massacred, including a bunch of children. Then Bronson gets involved. Now since he's just playing a newspaper reporter here there's really no logical reason why he kicks so much ass(throwing people out windows, down multiple flights of stairs and generally being an intimidating guy are some of his superpowers) except that's just what Bronson did best at this stage of his career. Basically pretty predictable but if you like Bronson at all it's still worth a watch at least once.
As a bonus the crazy killer from 10 TO MIDNIGHT(Gene Davis) shows up here in a way less crazy role.
This is one of the weirder Shaw Brothers studio films I've seen. The story concerns this family that has a dark past involving 13 people ending up dead. It's presented as a possible ghostly haunted house situation but becomes more bizarre as the film progresses. There are bitey, man-eating frogs(that roar like Godzilla), a rapey snake-man monster and a rapey regular guy that uses hypnotism to trick his victims. Decapitations, flesh-chomping, animal entrails and quite a bit of other gross gore are on display. It starts out a bit slow with all the family drama but more than makes up for it by the end. Now I just need to replace my shitty bootleg version of this so I can watch it without all the glitchy freezes.
For a movie with kung fu right there in the title this one sure takes it's time before we even get to any fight scenes. For the first half hour or so it's all heavy melodrama about a guy seeking revenge for his dead father and his mom's disappointment with him for not getting it and generally for being such a loser. When we finally get to some fighting there are some weird choices including one of the end fight scenes being just a series of stills shown over some music. Some bits are also too dark to really see what's going on but I suspect that's just the garbage public domain transfers available. Skip it. AKA A FIST FOR A FIST
Cheap, crappy, Taiwanese kung fu flick. To make matters worse I watched this on YouTube and some scenes were so dark that they were basically unwatchable. The plot concerns a family, or maybe just a group of people that call each other "brother" and "sister" a lot, who have to deal with one of them double-crossing the group. Also there are a few scenes where they train some armies for the king which, I guess is the reason for the alternate title of THE ART OF WAR BY SUN TZU which make this seem like some kinda historical drama which it is not at all. There is one dumb scene where our main lady makes a bad guy smell her ass that gave me a chuckle besides this though it's pretty forgettable stuff.
There is some notably absurd background Muzak including lovely renditions of The Beatles' Blackbird that appears over and over.
