88 FILMS BLU-RAY RELEASE: She Shoots Straight (1990)

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If you’ve ever felt like your in-laws were a nightmare, imagine being Joyce Godenzi (wife of Sammo Hung and a former Miss Hong Kong) in She Shoots Straight (also known as Lethal Lady). This time, she plays Mina Kao, a super-cop who marries her supervisor, Insp. Huang Tsung-Pao (Tony Leung), and finds herself part of the Huang family, many of whom are also cops. While dealing with her sister-in-law, Chia Ling (Carina Lau), who is jealous, a gang of Vietnamese ex-soldiers led by Yuen Wah is razing Hong Kong.

The mid-movie shift is a gut-punch. After an impulsive move by Chia Ling leads to a rescue mission, Insp. Huang Tsung-Pao is blown to bits by a booby trap. The scene where the sisters have to tell the family matriarch at her birthday party is one of the most effective melodrama-meets-mayhem moments in 1990s HK cinema. The final act? Pure, unadulterated vengeance on a freighter that makes Die Hard look like a school play.

The final duel between Joyce Godenzi and the muscular female mercenary Yuen Ying (Agnes Aurelio) is legendary. It involves a lot of broken glass, heavy machinery and zero stunt doubles for the wide shots.

Directed by Corey Yuen, this is more than a Girls with Guns movie. It’s a family drama that just so happens to have high muzzle velocity. It bridges the gap between the weeping melodramas of the 80s and the hyper-violent tactical shooters of the 90s. If you want to see Yuen Wah being absolutely despicable and Godenzi proving she was more than just a pageant queen, this movie delivers.

Extras include commentary with Asian cinema expert Frank Djeng, an image gallery, a trailer and a reversible sleeve. Order from MVD.

The Benefactress: A Celebration of Cinematic Freedom (2026)

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The director of Guerilla Metropolitana either has a massive PR budget or a tireless obsession with messaging me directly to watch his film. After receiving a long, intense audio message from him, I felt I had no choice.

Here’s an example of an audio message I got from him: “I’ll tell you from the beginning. It’s not an easy watch at all. It’s not even horror. It’s horrific, but it’s not horror. It’s quite pornographic, although it’s not porn, but it’s quite pornographic. It’s very extreme, very sadistic.

It is almost plotless. It’s got a very basic plot. The film is highly experimental. It puts the theme of artistic freedom at the center. How far can a filmmaker go in the name of artistic freedom? Voyeurism topics like that are in place. The complete rejection of morality in exchange for enlightenment.

Some have called the film a visionary work of art. Others have called the film an offensive, repugnant piece of film. So nothing in between.”

How could I say no after that message?

After the cult success of Dariuss, director Guerrilla Metropolitana was hired by a dying woman with a fake name, Elektra McBride, who has a powerful televangelist husband. She only has one demand: to appear in the film via video link. A seemingly virtuous charity worker, Juicy X, becomes the face of the film and the twisted desires of its unseen patron, as well as her director.

Then, with no set narrative, the Mystery Woman is abused sexually until a gun is produced and we finally watch a cleaner (Marie Antoinette de Robespierre) disinfect the scene.

In a world that has produced cinema like Salo, Sweet Movie, the films of Joe D’Amato and Jess Franco, not to mention Last House On Dead End Street, Forced Entry, Waterpower, Armand Weston’s The Taking of Christina and The Defiance of Good, as well as any number of films by Japanese creatives like Sade Satô, Hideshi Hino, Daisuke Yamanouchi or Hisayasu Satô:, I wonder how shocked anybody can be any more.

What works here isn’t the movie as much as the psychodrama created around it. I miss ballyhoo and selling movies; Metropolitana has gone all out to get people to watch this, often on what seems like a one-on-one basis. That’s commitment. What he made feels like a test for the audience to get through or perhaps one where the viewer reflects on all the things their eyes have seen.

For all the talk toward how shocking this is — and I hate comparing movies to other movies, but here I go — this didn’t destroy me like Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible, which puts the viewer through hell thanks to its unblinking eye as we watch people be ruined and yet still retain a storytelling arc, much less one in reverse. It feels closer to the Nick Zedd Cinema of Transgression era, perhaps without the eye of a Richard Kern.

Often, films like this — I’m looking at you, A Serbian Film — cloak their transgressive nature in a square-up reel explanation that they’re making a political statement or commenting on how the world treats people. Yet they want to have their cake and fuck it repeatedly while you watch, too, and then kill said cake.

I want to understand what Metropolitana wants from this and what he’s trying to say. At the very least, you have to give it to him to not only go full frontal nude on camera, but to wear a t-shirt of his last film while doing so.

As they say, always be selling.

You can watch this for yourself on Fawesome.

CULT EPICS BLU-RAY RELEASE: The Island Closest To Heaven (1984)

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While many know Nobuhiko Obayashi for the masterpiece House, he spent much of the 80s perfecting the Idol Movie, a series of films designed to showcase young starlets. But because it’s Obayashi, you’re not just getting a pop song and a smile. You’re getting a cosmic meditation on grief drenched in postcard-perfect surrealism.

Mari Katsuragi (Tomoyo Harada) is a high school girl dealing with the ultimate bummer: her father has suddenly dropped dead. Before he shuffled off this mortal coil, he filled her head with stories of a place called “The Island Closest to Heaven.” Driven by a need for closure and a promise made to a ghost, Mari hops a plane to New Caledonia in the South Pacific.

She spends the first half of the movie wandering around like a lost tourist, encountering a colorful cast of Japanese émigrés, including a guy who might be a reformed yakuza, and locals who seem to exist in a different time zone of the soul. Eventually, Mari realizes that Heaven” isn’t a specific coordinate on a map, but a state of mind achieved through connection, memory, and probably a really good sunset.

This was a massive “Idol” project produced by Haruki Kadokawa. Tomoyo Harada was one of the “Kadokawa Three” (alongside Hiroko Yakushimaru and Tomoyo Harada). If you were a teenager in Japan in 1984, this was the equivalent of a Taylor Swift film. This was based on a 1966 travel essay/novel by Katsura Morimura. Her book actually put New Caledonia on the map for Japanese tourists; to this day, the island of Ouvéa is marketed to Japanese travelers as “The Island Closest to Heaven.“

Obayashi actually filmed on location in New Caledonia. While most directors would just film the beach, Obayashi uses his signature “video-art” style—chroma-keying, weird color filters, and dream-like transitions—to make the tropical paradise seem to vibrate in another dimension.

The Island Closest to Heaven is what happens when the “Coming of Age” genre meets a travelogue directed by a guy who thinks reality is just a suggestion. It’s sentimental, sure, but it’s also weirdly profound. It’s a movie about how we use geography to map our internal grief.

Extras on the Cult Epics release include commentary by film critic Derek Smith, a visual essay by Alex Pratt,  a making-of, trailers, new slipcase art design by Sam Smith, a reversible sleeve with original Japanese poster art, and a repro 24-page Japanese booklet. Order now from MVD.

CULTPIX MONTH: The Doll (1962)

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Forget your Mannequin whimsy. Arne Mattsson’s The Doll is a dive into the deep, dark end of the loneliness pool, where the water is freezing, and the only thing keeping you afloat is a hollow piece of storefront fiberglass.

Per Oscarsson, a man who could look haunted while eating a sandwich, plays a night watchman who decides he’s had enough of the human race. He liberates a mannequin from the department store and sets up house. It’s not a heist movie; it’s a slow-motion collapse of the psyche. He doesn’t just talk to the doll. Instead, he lives for her.

While the premise sounds like it could’ve been a sleazy proto-slasher or a bizarre Twilight Zone riff, Mattsson treats it like high-art tragedy. This isn’t some magic-doll-comes-to-life romp. It’s a claustrophobic character study that asks: Is an imagined love better than no love at all?

In our world of AI chatbots and watching porn on our phones, not to mention Anton LaVey’s continual mentions of mannequin and android-based love dolls replacing humans, this film is quite prescient. 

If you like your cinema moody, Swedish and psychologically taxing, this is your bag, baby. It’s a film that understands that the scariest things aren’t under the bed. They’re the things we invent to keep from being alone.

You can watch this on Cultpix.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Muthers (1968)

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Kelly (Jeanne Bell, the second black Playboy Playmate in October 1969, the first to be on the cover in January 1970 — with four other black Playmates — and also the first to be on the cover by herself in October 1971; she’s also TNT Jackson) and Anggie (Rosanne Katon, Playboy Playmate September 1978; The Swinging Cheerleaders) are pirates who steal from rich tourists and give to poor people. Then, the Justice Department finds Kelly and lets her know that her sister Sandra has been taken by drug dealer Monteiro (Tony Carreon). If the pirates can get into his plantation and get info, they’ll get immunity for all their past crimes.

They break in, join up with a prisoner, Marcie (Trina Parks, Darktown Strutters), and the bad guy’s woman, Serena (Jayne Kennedy, Body and Soul), then work on blowing the base up real good. That’s because Sandra had already been killed when she tried to escape. Well, the girls try to make it out, but not everyone is on the right side.

Cirio Santiago directed this, Cyril St. James wrote it, and Dimension Pictures released it in the U.S. It’s a combination of women-in-prison and blaxploitation films. I wish it had more tension or reasons to tell you it’s a must-see, but it’s interesting for the leads all being black and otherwise. It has long scenes of padding when you want all the madness of a WIP film. The chase kicks some of that off, but this seems to have all of the ingredients of a firecracker — speaking of Firecracker, that’s a much better Santiago film — but then the fuse sputters.

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Murder In a Blue World (1973)

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Depending on where you found this tape in the 70s, it went by a dozen different names. In Spain, it was the poetic Una gota de sangre para morir amando (A Drop of Blood to Die Loving); in France, the nonsensical Le bal du vaudou (The Voodoo Ball); and in the UK, it was slapped with the grindhouse titles Clockwork Terror or Murder In a Blue World.

It’s director and co-screenwriter Eloy de la Iglesia’s take on a future world that at times may feel very 1973 but also feels way more 2022 than we may want to admit.

To understand this movie, you have to understand De la Iglesia. A member of the Spanish Communist Party and an openly gay man living under the iron-fisted censorship of dictator Francisco Franco, his films weren’t just entertainment. They were Molotov cocktails. He specialized in Quinqui cinema, focusing on delinquency, social protest and the grit of the marginalized. Murder In a Blue World is another of his assaults on the status quo.

Sue Lyon (yes, Kubrick’s original Lolita) stars as Anna Vernia, a dedicated nurse by day who spends her nights acting as the “adistic homosexual killer the police are panicking over. In a stroke of brilliant irony, Anna collects pop art and even owns a copy of the novel Lolita. When she isn’t working, she lures gorgeous young men back to her apartment, sleeps with them and then—inspired by the rhythm of their post-coital heartbeats—slices them open with a scalpel.

She’s dating Dr. Victor Sender (Victor Sorel), a man convinced he can cure the rampant crime in their futuristic city through aggressive electroshock therapy. It’s a classic battle of ideologies: Victor wants to lobotomize the violence out of society, while Anna is the violence society created.

De la Iglesia doesn’t just tip his hat to Stanley Kubrick; he steals the hat and wears it. Early in the film, a family settles in to watch A Clockwork Orange on TV before being brutally attacked by a motorcycle gang.

Enter David (Chris Mitchum), a gang member with a conscience who gets beaten and expelled by his peers. After witnessing Anna disposing of a corpse, David decides to play a dangerous game of blackmail. He doesn’t want to turn her in; he wants her money to buy a motorcycle. It’s a strange, psychosexual cat-and-mouse game between a survivor of the streets and a high-society predator.

When David’s old gang leaves him for dead, he ends up in Victor’s hospital, slated for the doctor’s redemption treatment. Anna, having developed a twisted affection for the boy, realizes she can’t let the state take his soul. In a haunting finale, she reads Edgar Allan Poe to him, choosing to end his life on her own terms while Victor’s patients lose their minds in the background. It’s a bleak, beautiful bath in some dystopian dread.

I love how this movie somehow combines the ancient future of the 70s with the trapping of giallo. This is a strange and wonderful film that I plan on going back to several times.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Mr. Mean (1977)

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If there is one thing you need to know about The Hammer, it’s that Fred Williamson doesn’t wait for permission. While most actors are content to sit in their trailers waiting for lighting setups, Fred was busy staging a cinematic heist.

The story goes that while filming Enzo G. Castellari’s The Inglorious Bastards (the one Tarantino loved so much he borrowed the title), Fred realized he had a crew, a camera and a weekend. Every Friday, he’d essentially kidnap the production equipment and go shoot his own movie. He spent the weekdays writing the script on the fly and Saturdays and Sundays playing the baddest man in Italy.

In Mr. Mean, Fred plays the titular character, a high-stakes hitman hired by a former Cosa Nostra heavy to take out a guy named Ranati (Stelio Candelli). Ranati is the kind of low-life even the Mob can’t stand. He’s running fake charities to steal from the poor. It’s bad for the brand, see? But once the job gets moving, Mr. Mean finds out he’s being set up by the very people who cut him the check.

This has that greasy, gritty Euro-crime aesthetic thanks to the Italian locations, but it’s injected with the soul of a Blaxploitation epic. Speaking of soul, The Ohio Players show up as themselves and provide a soundtrack that absolutely drips with funk.

Is the plot a little messy? Sure. That’s what happens when you write a movie on a Tuesday and film it on a Sunday. But you aren’t watching this for a tight screenplay; you’re watching it for Fred Williamson looking cool in a leather jacket, Raimund Harmstorf as a heavy named Rommell and the sheer audacity of a film made behind the backs of another production’s producers.

Mr. Mean is the ultimate DIY action flick. It feels like a beautiful accident, a collision between the Italian Poliziotteschi genre and the American badass archetype. 

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Mr. Billion (1977)

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Before Jonathan Kaplan was racking up critical acclaim for Heart Like a Wheel or The Accused, he was a king of the drive-in circuit. We’re talking a blistering run of exploitation gold: Night Call Nurses, The Student Teachers, The Slams, Truck Turner and White Line Fever. But even the best directors have a car crash moment. On an episode of  Trailers From Hell, Kaplan didn’t mince words, calling this movie “the biggest failure of his career.“

Written by Ken Friedman (who also wrote several other Kaplan films, such as Bad Girls and Death By Invitation), this was an attempt by Dino De Laurentiis to make an American movie starring Italian actor Terence Hill, who was already well-known to American audiences for They Call Me Trinity.

The plan? Put Hill in a big-budget, globe-trotting action comedy. The result? Total box office poison. Variety reported that Radio City Music Hall actually sued 20th Century-Fox for over $100,000 because ticket sales were so pathetic. When the Rockettes are looking for a refund, you know you’re in trouble.

”When a simple garage mechanic suddenly inherits a billion dollars, he gets more action, excitement, romance, and riotous adventure than money can buy!” Yes, Terence Hill is Guido Falcone, an Italian mechanic who is the only relative not to have begged his rich American uncle for money. When he gets the entire estate, his uncle’s business manager, John Cutler (Jackie Gleason), flies to Italy to try to con him. Despite his sweet nature, Guido is way smarter than he appears and wants to look over the estate; he has to be in San Francisco on a certain date to accept the offer. Cutler, wanting the money for himself, hires Rosie (Valerie Perrine) and her friend Bernie (Dick Miller) to distract Guido and keep him from signing his estate papers.

The movie was originally supposed to feature Lily Tomlin, but the studio gave her the thumb. Enter Valerie Perrine. As the urban legend goes, Perrine introduced herself to the famously modest and sweet-natured Hill by claiming she could light a cigarette with her vagina. Unsurprisingly, the chemistry evaporated instantly. The two supposedly despised each other, making the falling-in-love scenes feel about as romantic as a root canal.

The supporting cast includes R.G. Armstrong as a Southern sheriff, Chill Wills as a military leader, Slim Pickens as a rancher, William Redfield as a company lawyer, Sam Laws and Johnny Ray McGhee as a father and son with differing views on life, and even Leo Rossi as a kidnapper. As I say, it’s the kind of cast I personally would call an all-star, even if no one else would agree.

Hill would also appear in another box-office bomb that year, March or Die, which also starred Gene Hackman and Catherine Deneuve.

I have no idea why Hollywood would hire Hill to play in a movie that’s nothing like what he does best. At least he was able to work with Bud Spencer again and make plenty of late 70s and 80s buddy movies, as well as Super Fuzz as a solo movie three years later.

You can watch this on YouTube.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Molesters (1963)

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Der Sittlichkeitsverbrecher is a Swiss social issue film that aims to educate but often feels like a dark, unsettling drama, blending documentary elements with a grim narrative filled with trench coats and grimacing character actors.

Zurich is under siege and we follow the tireless Swiss police and the high-tech (for 1963) wizards at INTERPOL as they hunt down a rogue’s gallery of voyeurs, fetishists and sadists. Once these guys are caught, the movie shifts from a police procedural into a sterile, white-walled nightmare of psychological testing and the ultimate cure: voluntary brain surgery. 

Director Franz Schnyder was usually known for wholesome Swiss village stories, so seeing him dive into the muck of sex crimes is like finding out your favorite kindergarten teacher moonlights as a bouncer at a dive bar.

The film spends a lot of time on rehabilitation. It treats the human brain like suburban dads treat their old cars. If it’s not running right, just get under the hood, play with the timing belt, and see what happens. Except, you know, they’re cutting into human brains.