Lindsay Finch (Mary Charlotte Wilcox, The Beast of the Yellow Night and Psychic Killer) loves to go to funerals, where she mourns and then kisses the dead men passionately after everyone else leaves. Throw in a theme song that sounds like it comes from James Bond, while we see flashbacks of her relationship with her dead father, visiting his grave and her pigtails, and I’m all in.

She has swinging hippie parties at her pad, and her friend Wade (Christopher Stone, the late husband of Dee Wallace, who appeared with her in Cujo and The Howling) tries to get with her. Just when it seems she’s giving in to his makeout moves, she screams at him to stop, and he calls her a bitch, because this is 1973. She dreams of her father in yellow-hued flashbacks and hugs a stuffed animal.

Later, she goes through the funeral notices to find the services for young men. We then meet Fred McSweeney, a mortician, as he picks up a male prostitute. That job is just a cover for his true love — a Satanic coven that meets at night, inside the mortuary, where they have orgies with dead bodies. McSweeney takes the young man to his workplace, where he pumps the manwhore full of embalming fluid while he’s still alive, all while Lindsay goes to another funeral where she tries to make out with Bobby. She’s surprised by Alex (Lyle Waggoner, TV’s The Carol Burnett Show and Wonder Woman, as well as the honor of being the first nude centerfold in Playgirl and the appointed mayor of Encino, California), the man’s brother.

Speaking of that embalming scene, it goes on and on and on, with the young man screaming, “I’m blind!” over and over. It’s nearly campy instead of frightening. To say this film has a tone issue is an understatement.

Lindsay sneaks out to Bobby’s funeral, where she starts to associate Alex with her father. He’s a wealthy gallery owner, and they begin a romance—one she refuses to consummate, even after they are eventually married. Every time she sees him, she gets yellow-hued flashbacks with a music box soundtrack of her playing with her father. But more about that in a little, OK?

McSweeney speaks to Lindsay after he catches her at a funeral, telling her about a group she should join. Yet she tries to remain normal, even going on a date with Wade that ends in failure. That’s when she decides to see what McSweeney’s group is all about.

She walks into an orgy with the dead, which freaks her out enough to go back home. Then she and Alex fall in love with no dialogue, just a montage. It’s a strange part of an incredibly strange film, with this happy-go-lucky relationship coming out of nowhere in a film otherwise about sex with dead people.

Lindsay keeps talking to the cult and ends up getting a dead body of her very own. But Wade follows her and is killed by McSweeney. She screams in horror. This scene wasn’t in the original script, nor was the Satanic group in the one that follows, but they were used to pad out the film and add more horror elements so it would play better at drive-ins.

Again — tone being all over the place — we’re treated to a nude cult disrobing Wade’s corpse and having their way with it before Lindsay awakes screaming. But the marriage isn’t working out well, with Alex following her all over town and their maid — complete with the most stereotypical Irish accent ever — telling him that his wife spends her days at her father’s grave, wearing pigtails and dressed like a little girl. You should see the look on Alex’s face when he catches her as she yells, “This is not your place, go away!”

Alex tries to get Lindsay to go on a holiday to visit his mother, but he discovers a registered letter from McSweeney to his wife for a meeting at 10 PM. He follows her to the mortuary, where he discovers his wife surrounded by nude devil worshippers as she makes love to a dead body. She looks frightened and then McSweeney murders Alex, which calms her.

McSweeney drugs her as she lies in her bed, then brings in her husband, now embalmed so he can last forever, finally a man whom she can be attracted to: the combination of her father — who we see in flashback being shot accidentally by her — and the man she fell in love with. The editing here — combined with dissonant instruments and a remix of the title theme — is crazy, like this film has suddenly become Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

We see intercut shots of Lindsay getting under the covers with her dead husband and her getting in the coffin with her father as everything goes sepia tone and the theme song returns.

Love Me Deadly isn’t for everyone. It’s one of those films that I hesitate to recommend to normal folks. But it is the kind of movie I text people about in the middle of the night.

This is…well, it’s something. If you enjoyed The Baby, well, then you’re on the right wavelength for this one.

You can watch this on Tubi.

It’s time to stop fighting it and just embrace the neon-soaked, low-budget glory. I am a Jim Wynorski apologist. It’s a support group with surprisingly high membership. Wynorski is the ultimate cinematic high-wire act: a man who realized early on that if you have enough smoke machines, a few former Playmates and a script that moves at 90 miles per hour, nobody cares if the ancient temple is clearly a rented warehouse in Van Nuys.

The director may have flunked out of film school, but he turned an introduction to Roger Corman into a lifelong career. He didn’t just survive the grind of the B-movie circuit; he thrived in it, starting with a writing credit on one of my favorite Corman sci-fi riffs, Forbidden World, and moving on to Sorceress, Screwballs, Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time and so many more.

He stepped behind the camera and never looked back, giving us the mall-horror essential Chopping Mall, as well as Deathstalker II, Big Bad Mama II, Sorority House Massacre II and III, Return of the Swamp Thing, and 976-EVIL II, another film of his that, yes, I admit I enjoy. I even like his Cinemax After Dark movies, like the Body Chemistry sequels and  Munchie.

So alright. I like his movies. I’ve learned something. I can even respect that he’s gone the way of most horror directors of my youth, alternating between children’s movies like A Doggone Christmas and A Doggone Hollywood with the softcore stuff he’s known for, SyFy-style creature movies and weirdness like Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre.

But if every movie Wynorski made was like The Lost Empire? He’d probably be one of my favorite directors.

We start in Chinatown, where three masked intruders try to steal the glowing eye of a statue. Everyone dies in the battle except for one cop, who barely makes it. And then, the next day, terrorists take over a school before Inspector Angel Wolfe (Melanie Vincz, Hunk) takes out everyone, which almost includes an undercover fed named Rick Stanton (Paul Coufos, 976-EVIL II). Luckily, she stops from killing him just in time and then, as is customary in police and federal working relationships, they aardvark.

When they wake up the next morning, Angel and Rick learn that her brother Rob (Bill Thornbury, Jody from Phantasm!) was the police officer who survived the jewelry store shootout. In the hospital, he hands her a throwing star and says, “The Devil exists, and the Eye knows where.” Instead of being freaked out, Rick launches into exposition mode to tell us all about Lee Chuck (when I realized this was Angus Scrimm, I lost my mind), a man who has become immortal yet must give Satan a new soul every day.

Keep in mind that we are about fifteen minutes into this movie, and we’ve already had a cop-versus-ninja battle, terrorists fighting a lone cop, a sex scene and an occult backstory. I already was head over heels for this one.

When Angel examines the crime scene, one of the glowing eyes makes its way into her purse — all on its own — before Inspector Charles Chang (Art Hern, Simon King of the Witches) goes into even more exposition, explaining the Eyes of Avatar, two jewels that the Dragon-God blessed with the power to rule the world. He tells her that Lee Chuck is real, has one eye and has joined the cult of Dr. Sin Do (also Angus Scrimm!).

With her brother dying from his wounds, Angel decides that she must destroy Sin Do, who has begun recruiting an army of terrorists, including Anthony Kiedis’ dad Blackie Dammit and Angel Pettijohn as Whiplash. So she does what any of us would. No, she doesn’t file the paperwork to get a task force and involve multiple police and federal units. She instead learns that Dr. Do — no relation to the video game character Mr. Do, although both have castles — only accepts groups of female soldiers in threes. And that means that she has to bring in her old friend, the Native American supersoldier Whitestar (Raven De La Croix, perhaps the greatest of all Russ Meyer’s women next to Tura Satana; she was also the associate producer, costume designer and animal handler of this movie while doing all of her own stunts) and Heather (Angela Aames, Fairy Tales, H.O.T.S.), a convict who she promises to parole — how does she have that power? — if she helps like some nascent version of the Suicide Squad.

Whatever. Logic be damned, the ladies are off for Golgotha, Dr. Do’s castle fortress, where more ninja battles and a cast that includes Robert Tessier (who was one of the four members of Stunts Unlimited along with Hal Needham, Glenn R. Wilder and Ronnie Rondell Jr.), Linda Shayne (Miss Salmon from Humanoids from the Deep who would go on to direct Purple People Eater), Kenneth Tobey (who was in so many movies, like the original The Thing, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, The Howling and more), Anny Gaybis (who was in a movie with one of my favorite titles, Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman!) and Tommy Rettig (Jeff Miller from the Lassie series and the star of one of the strangest movies to ever escape Hollywood, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T) await.

I mean, this movie is so close to being in the same continuity as Big Trouble In Little China that Alan Howarth did the music for it. I’ll go ever further and say that thanks to Blackie Dammit being in it, it might even be in the same universe as 9 Deaths of the Ninja. It’s a total blast, a movie that is somehow the answer to the unasked question, “What if Russ Meyer directed Enter the Dragon?”

This is definitely the movie to put on if you’re down. I mean, how can you be sad after watching a movie where Angus Scrimm’s bad guy character has a giant snake and can survive losing his head, much less one that features a prison shower flashback just to prove that one of the heroines was in jail at one point and hints that Raven De La Croix has supernatural powers? We’re going to have to go through a black hole and come out the other side to figure out how many I’d give this movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Also known as Nam Angels, this Jack Starrett-directed film (he also made Run, Angel, Run!, Race with the Devil and Hollywood Man, among others) has a great high concept: a biker gang called The Devil’s Advocates is sent to Cambodia to rescue an American diplomat because they are the only ones who can get the job done.

They’re led by a Vietnam vet — and the brother of the Army Major who has recruited them — Link Thomas, played by the always dependable William Smith. They’re under the orders of Captain Johnson (Bernie Hamilton, who was Captain Harold Dobey on Starsky and Hutch) and include fellow vets Duke (Adam Roarke from Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and Frogs) and Dirty Denny, as well as Limpy (Paul Koslo, Vanishing Point) and Speed (Eugene Cornelius, who was Space in Run, Angel, Run!).

They head to Vietnam,  but come on, we all know it’s the Philippines because the mechanic who works on their bikes, Diem-Nuc, is played by Vic Diaz. It doesn’t matter because by the time you start trying to figure out locations*, our heroes are doing wheelies and blowing things up with rocket launchers and machine guns while they do wheelies.

This movie does have some basis in reality. Sonny Barger, the Maximum Leader of the Hells Angels, sent LBJ a telegram offering the skills of his club in the Vietnam War. That inspired Alan Caillou, who originally wrote that The Losers would live. Starrett and Smith rewrote the script to the ending we know now.

If you watch Pulp Fiction, you can see a scene from this movie being watched by Butch’s girlfriend the day after his fight. When he asks what she is watching, she says, “A motorcycle movie, I’m not sure the name.”

Smith was a real-life Renaissance man: a champion arm wrestler, a record holder in reverse curling with 163 pounds ad a 31-1 amateur boxing record. Take it from Miles Spencer: “Fluent in five languages, he held a PhD and served as a Russian intercept interrogator during the Korean War. With both CIA and NSA clearance, he flew secret ferret missions over Soviet Russia.”

When he commands a biker gang in the jungle, you don’t question it. Just like how he makes every movie better just for being in it.

Most biker movies of the era were about terrorizing small towns. The Losers is unique because it attempts to give these outcasts a sense of warped patriotism. They aren’t fighting for The Man. They’re fighting for their brother and for the thrill of the chaos. The nihilistic ending reinforces the title: in a war like this, even the heroes are just losers in a different uniform.

*They’re reused from Too Late the Hero.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Also known as Ninja Turf, this was directed by Woo-sang Park, who, as we all know, directed Miami Connection. It’s about new kid at school Tony (Phillip Rhee, who created and starred in the Best of the Best series of movies) and how he instantly vibes with a gang leader named Young (Jun Chong, whose company Action Brothers Productions made this movie happen; he’s a celebrity martial arts trainer who taught Sam J. Jones, Lorenzo Lamas and Phillip Rhee). Their friendship is enough to get him threatened by another gangster, Chan (James Lew). In the middle of Young saving Tony, they get offered a job as security guards. Yes, that can happen.

In between their security gigs, they rumble with the Blades and Spike’s Gang, which has Biff Tannen as a member. It is genuinely jarring to see Thomas F. Wilson (credited as Tom Wilson) playing a member of Spike’s Gang. Released the same year as Back to the Future, this film shows a version of Wilson that is arguably meaner than Biff. In Ninja Turf, he isn’t a cartoonish bully getting hit with manure; he’s part of a legitimate urban threat. Seeing him in a world where people actually get stabbed creates a strange cinematic cognitive dissonance.

But when they’re not fighting, Tony hooks up with Chan’s sister Lily. This enrages his enemy and his friend, too, as all Young can think about is feeling alone. And oh yeah, his mom, who lives to drink and sleep with men.

Young has some issues. He also screws up when those issues get to him, as he and Tony do security for a mob boss, and he steals a briefcase filled with money from a drug deal. That boss sends a swordsman named Yoshida (Ken Nagayama) and a fighter called Kruger (Bill “Superfoot” Wallace). They meet up with Chan, who eagerly tells them where to find his enemies, and they even torture a whole bunch of Tony and Young’s school buddies. They catch up with Young, who kills Yoshida and breaks Kruger’s knee, all while Tony is studying.

On the way to the hospital with his injured friends, Young is stopped by Chan and his entire gang. His mother comes out into the street and tells him that she’s sorry for everything she’s ever done, and, wow, Chan beats her into oblivion while her son watches. Then, the gang brutalizes him, and Tony gets there too late. Grabbing his friend’s wooden sword, he chases away the gang and probably kills Chan. 

The death of Young is one of the meanest pivots in 80s action. Usually, the best friend dies to give the hero a reason to win a tournament. Here, Young dies because of a series of desperate, human mistakes—stealing money to escape a life that was already suffocating him. When Tony holds him at the end, it’s not just a friendship moment. Instead, this is the immigrant promise croaking out a death rattle. They came for a better life and found James Lew and a briefcase of death instead.

Jaime Mendoza-Nava, who wrote this movie with Ji-woon Hong, was mostly known for composing music for films and TV shows. Some of the 300 works he contributed to include music for The Witchmaker, The Stewardesses, Dream No Evil, Grave of the Vampire, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, Mausoleum and Death Wish Club, which is really “The Case of Gretta Connors” from Night Train to Terror.

This isn’t as amazing as Miami Connection, but it’s the dark, opposite-coast version of friendship amid street fights. It’s a lot of fun, even if the ending is nihilistic pain.

You can watch this on Tubi.

As you know, I do love alternate titles. This was known in the U.S. as When the Screaming Stops and even better, The Swinging Monster, both titles that make no sense, what with this being set in an indeterminate time and the only swinging coming from how many gorgeous women are in it. That said, the first other title got a gimmick from distributor Independent Artists, who added Shock Notice, turning the screen red with flashing lights before each murder.

This was more than just a creative flourish. It was a desperate marketing ploy by Independent Artists to compete. Similar to William Castle’s Percepto”or the Bell System”in other films, the red-tinted screen served as a psychological trigger. It essentially told the audience, “Put down your popcorn and look up, something expensive and messy is about to happen.” It turned a standard creature feature into a sensory assault, bridging the gap between a gothic fairy tale and a proto-slasher.

Directed and written by Amando de Ossorio, this is about a German boarding school for girls — parents, don’t send your babies to German boarding schools — where the young ladies are getting murdered in such bloody and horrifying ways during every full moon. This leads the teacher, Elke Ackerman (Silvia Tortosa, Horror Express), to hire a hunter named Sigurd (Tony Kendall, The Whip and the Body) to protect her pupils. Ossorio juxtaposes the sterile, buttoned-up environment of the boarding school with the wet, neon-lit grime of Loreley’s grotto. It’s a visual representation of the 1970s struggle between traditional morality and the burgeoning sexual revolution.

Each night, Sigurd patrols the school grounds — noticing the many gorgeous students under his protection, naturally — before he meets Sigurd a cloaked woman (Helga Liné) that he keeps missing despite chasing her. He also meets Professor Von Lander (Ángel Menéndez), who has made a dagger that can transform the creature — the Loreley — back to her human form. And as you can imagine, he’s already fallen for her, despite his job and the fact that she’s killed numerous people.

Sigurd is also in love with Elke — maybe he’s The Swinging Monster — and Loreley has already gone after her while restraining him in the undersea cave where she lives with an army of feral women. It’s an entire world removed from our own, like another time and place, which our somewhat modern man destroys with bombs before leaving behind the monstrous world and embracing a love of reason. I’m not so sure I’d make the same choice.

I’ve read a lot of reviews that make fun of this movie, that say it has bad effects, that it’s kind of stupid. Those people are small-minded, sad folks who can’t embrace the world of Eurohorror, where every man looks like a superhero, and every young girl’s bodice is practically either ripped open or covered in blood. A world where gorgeous women lie in wait inside lagoon caves, ready to transform and destroy.

Critics who pan this for bad acting or an illogical plot are missing the point. This isn’t a movie you watch for a tight script; it’s a movie you experience for the Technicolor blood, the insane creature design and the sheer audacity of a plot that treats a lizard-woman heart-thief as a legitimate romantic rival.