Yearly Archives: 2020

Terror in the Jungle (1968)*

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post originally ran way back in November 2019 as part of our Pure Terror month. If there’s one thing Mill Creek Entertainment knows, it’s being green and recycling. If you’re a fan of their sets like I am, you soon realize that you often have the same movie multiple times on multiple sets. After I got the Explosive Cinema set at Eide’s Entertainment, I knew that my OCD would demand that I review this entire set, too. So here’s Terror In the Jungle, a movie that I love.

I kind of wish that I was alive in 1968 just so I could have been part of this movie. Seriously, I’ve never seen a film that so quicky changes its tone and central theme so quickly, abandoning characters that its taken time to set up for an entirely new situation. And then we get the airplane, with swinging bands playing on it and people going bonkers before it crashes? I want to live in this insane world.

After we meet all these folks — bound for Rio — we better not get too used to them. Except for little Henry Clayton Jr., who is taking his stuffed lion to live with his mother after his parents split up. There’s also Mrs. Sherman, who may or may not have killed her husband, but has a suitcase full of money and is given to insane crying jags. And there’s an exotic dancer on board as well! And some nuns, traveling with one of their dead sisters in a coffin! And then there’s a band! And a rich dude that talks about cannibals!

Everybody is having so much fun that the band plays their big hit and Marian, the exotic dancer, shows off and even the nuns enjoy it. However, the movie soon turns into sheer insanity, as the plane begins to crash. Money spills all over the plane, a nun gets pulled out of an open door and half the cast abruptly dies. Seriously, somehow this went from “Soft Lips” to dudes getting their foreheads split in half and a gory death with a birdcage. I have no idea what brought on this narrative shift.

Then, to top all this off, every single other person we met is eaten by alligators.

You read that right.

The entire cast is dead.

Everyone except Henry, who is now floating down a reptile filled river in the coffin of a dead nun.

What the actual hell is going on here?

The natives — yes, the cannibals that were discussed on the plane that call themselves the Jivaros — find Henry and thanks to his blonde hair and the magic of 1968’s worst special effects, he has a halo. The leader of the tribe declares that he is a god, except that one of them thinks he has to die. So he chases Henry into the jungle and the kid’s stuffed lion transforms into a real lion and eats the dude.

So wait — is Henry really a god?

This is a movie that starts with the declaration that “This picturd was filmed on location in the Jivaros Regions of the Amazon Jungle. Without the assistance and encouragement of the Government of Peru it would not have been possible.”

It’s also the kind of movie that randomly has Fawn Silver be Marian, the exotic dancer. If you don’t know who she is, she’s Criswell’s assistant in Ed Wood’s Orgy of the Dead.

It also has three directors — Tom De’Simone directed the plane sequence, Andrew Janzack the jungle parts and the temple close was directed by Alex Graton. That may explain the strange narrative leaps that this makes.

Let’s break down each director.

Tom De’Simone went on to become adult film director Lancer Brooks, as well as creating some of my favorite films, like Hell Night, Reform School Girls and Chatterbox. Andrew Janzack never directed another movie, but was the cinematographer for The Undertaker and His Pals.

Alex Graton would finally direct another movie eleven years later, a romantic comedy entitled Only Once In a Lifetime that has Claudio Brook — yes, the same Claudio Brook who was in Luis Buneul’s The Exterminating Angel — in it.

I love IMDB because it has comments directly from De’Simone in the review. I’ll share it below for your enjoyment:

“OK, now it’s my turn to weigh in on this disaster. I’m the director who’s credited with this fiasco but in my defense I have to explain that there were three directors on this film and we all suffered under a producer with no experience, no taste, no sense and worst of all, NO MONEY.

I was fresh out of film school working as an editor when I was introduced to him when he was looking for a director. I convinced him I could handle a feature having already won two awards at film festivals for two shorts I had done. This was the biggest mistake in my life. Once on, for a mere $50 a day, I realized what I had gotten into. He hired a bunch of non-SAG actors who actually PAID HIM to be in his movie. None had any experience in front of a camera and all the characters were his creation. I was stuck in that plane mock-up for two weeks with these desperate souls trying to create something from nothing. The script was only half written when we started and he said he would finish it when we got to the jungle. When we completed the plane interiors, including the now famous “crash” scene, the rough cut was 83 minutes long and we hadn’t even reached the jungle part of the story.

I told him we had to make some serious trims, both for time and for performances. He refused to cut anything. He was so in love with the crap we had he actually once said he believed that the actress playing the stewardess would win an Oscar for her scream scene in the fire. I knew I was doomed. We argued over and over about what I felt should be dropped, trimmed and eliminated until I had it. I walked from the production and that wonderful salary. Undaunted, he went to Peru and used the cameraman as the replacement director. Down there they wrote the second half of the script and shot it as he wrote it.

Back in LA they now had a bigger disaster, naturally. The film was way too long, badly shot, badly acted and unwatchable. He and this second director fought, as did I, and he then walked away as well. Now the producer was over a barrel. He had sunk what little money he borrowed and still believed he had a hit on his hands if he could just get it finished. He hired a third guy to come in and fix the problem. This genius hired a bunch of extras, put bad wigs on them and went to Griffith Park in LA and shot more crap that was even more laughable than what they got in Peru. After that the producer shopped around for stock footage of native ceremonies and came up with some god-awful crap from a 40’s schlock film and cut it in . . . the final disaster is what’s on screen. I’ve lived in shame my entire career because for some reason I always get the credit for making this turkey. I was one of three victims! The entire debacle was the brain child of the producer and none of us had a chance in hell to make it any better than it was doomed to be from the start.

And that’s the truth.”

In case you haven’t realized it yet, I love this movie. Like, beyond love. I’m going to bother everyone I know to tell them just how great it is and then laugh when they look at me and wonder why I enjoy this blast of craziness so much. Beware!

You can watch the full movie on You Tube.

1917 (2019)

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In the same way that I’m dispositioned to despise anyone from Upper St. Clair or Mt. Lebanon — Pittsburgh-centric content, yinz guys — I’m also usually on high alert to dislike Oscar bait like this film. So let me get all my vitriol out of my system before it begins: for a movie that people are proclaiming as a human experience of war, all I could see were the technological advancements and filmmaking tricks that allowed for the continuous shot style of the first half of this movie.

It’s fine. It was up for the biggest prizes in movie making and yep. It’s a fine movie. It has no real soul or reason for you to watch it more than once, but this may be more of an indictment of this reviewer than this film.

It left me cold and I felt like I was begging it for warmth. Just a casual outline of the events of the movie seem like they could be moments worth viewing, such as the choice to save or murder the downed German pilot. Instead, they are just moments.

Sam Mendes has had a wonderful run so far, between his highly regarded James Bond films, Jarhead, Road to Perdition and American Beauty. He has an eye for huge visuals and the ability to tell a great story. This isn’t a small movie, despite really only centering on one character’s experience in the war.

I probably enjoyed the scenes with the drunken soldiers blessing Schofield and Blake before they ventured into No Man’s Land more than anything else in the movie. Although I wonder what the narrative point is of the film, which informs us at the end that everything that the leads have endured was truly for nothing, as the orders will probably change in the next week. This is not the first movie I’ve watched recently that offered little to no hope. Or maybe that was just life itself.

Again — I felt like this movie was an awesome technical achievement. Perhaps the self-congratulatory nature of Hollywood and the press put me off, as I didn’t need to hear its creators sing its praises so much. Or perhaps a steady diet of Mexican, Phillipino, Hong Kong and Italian junk movies have eroded my movie watching abilities, only allowing me to savor movies where black-gloved madmen strangle women and gas-guzzling mutants rise from the grave.

Probably. So what?

The Skydivers (1963)

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Oh, yes. I love this movie! I bow at the altar of Coleman Francis. I bow.

For I came here to see Jimmy Bryant and the Night Jumpers do the “Tobacco Worm” and the “Stratosphere Boogie” . . . and eat popcorn . . . and drink coffee. Lots of coffee, even more so than in a Bill Rebane flick (Invasion from Inner Earth), but smoke even more, just like in, well, a Coleman Francis movie. (Oh, since you asked: Jimmy and the boys are sort of a redneck, twaggy bluegrass version of Booker T. and the M.G’s; please tell me you know of the iconic instrumental “Green Onions” and get that reference. Don’t make me feel like an old bastard.)

“Yeah, I call B.S on the pseudo-intellectual B&S About Movies writer,” you say. “You never heard of them or the movie, R.D, until Sam bought the Mill Creek “Explosive Cinema” 12-pack.”

Sorry, ye mighty Internet Warrior. You’d be wrong.

Because of my longstanding love of rock ‘n’ roll and movies; slumming, collecting, and working in the vintage vinyl marketplace, doing road work, and working on the radio, I thrive, THRIVE on rock ‘n’ roll movie oddities and obscurities. If a flick has even the slightest cameo by a rock band in it, I’ve tracked down that movie and seen it. Even more so with today’s public domain catchall disc sets. Back before the digital realm, I taped ’em off UHF-TV and have shelves of 6-hour mode recorded VHS tapes packed with these flicks.

Skydivers

The Skydivers is the second of three films written and directed by Coleman Francis (1961’s The Beast of Yucca Flats seated his Ed Woodian fate, along with 1966’s Night Train to Mundo Fine), primarily a TV and Drive-In flick bit actor who appeared on episodes of Dragnet and turned up in Russ Meyers’s Motorpsycho! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and had a somewhat larger part in the juvenile deliquent rock ‘n’ roll flick, 1959’s T-Bird Gang, which is just one of the many made in the backwash of 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause and Blackboard Jungle. (Now I am really missing the old AMC Network’s “American Pop” film series. Tears.) While I have never seen the riffed version, MST3K took The Skydivers to task in the ’80s; perhaps you’ve seen that version.

The Skydivers is not, however, a rock ‘n’ roll or juvenile delinquent flick: it’s a bargain basement film noir of the Double Indemnity (1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) variety. It does not, however, qualify as “explosive cinema” and it is as out-of-place alongside Tony Tulleners’s Scorpion (1986) on the Mill Creek “Explosive Cinema” set as it is seeing me sitting in front of a plate of sushi or inside a Starbucks. So don’t be fooled by the movie’s tagline: “The first feature length motion picture showing the daredevils of the sky who free fall from heights of 20,000 feet with only a ripcord between life and death!” (Insert yawn, here.) “Thrill jumping guys, thrill seeking girls, and daring death with every leap,” indeed. Not in a Coleman Francis joint.

Anyway, Anthony Cardoza . . . wait, where do I know that name from . . . holy B&S About Movies, BatSam! Tony starred in . . . speaking of . . . Ed Wood’s Night of the Ghouls and directed Alvy Moore (The Witchmaker) from TV’s Green Acres in Smokey and the Hotwire Gang. Yep, and Coleman Francis helped ‘ol Tony in the production of another humdinger, Bigfoot.

Anyway, Tony-boy is the producer behind this vanity project as part of a unhappily married couple who owns a decrepit airfield-skydiving school in the middle of nowhere New Mexico. Of course, Harry is the loser-dickhead who dragged his wife Beth (don’t be confused; actress Kevin Casey, in her only role, is a “she”) out into the desert—and he’s the one who’s restless and cheats on her. And the woman, Suzy, he’s cheating with is a femme fatale (Marcia Knight, Mako: The Jaws of Death) who’s had enough, so she seduces another guy to kill him. But wait, the wife is restless as well and she’s having an affair with her husband’s army buddy.

And they plot against each other. And they jump out of planes. And they sit in coffee houses and listen to a couple tunes from Jimmy Bryant and the Night Jumpers—who are the only reason to check out this mess.

And they’re the only reason I know this movie exists. And now: you know it exists. Email your disdain to the fine folks at Eide’s Entertainment in Pittsburgh for carrying that cursed copy of the Mill Creek “Explosive Cinema” set and selling it to Sam (we love you, guys!).

You can watch TV-taped VHS rips on You Tube without the riffing, but I think you’ll need the MST3K riffed version to make it thought.

That, and a nice, strong pot of coffee. Stratosphere Boogie, babydoll!

You can also find a copy of this Coleman classic on this Mill Creek set.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook.

Wives of the Skies (2020)

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Set in 1965, this movie is all about Fran and Marcy, two Fine Air stewardesses. Derrick is a British photojournalist who wants to interview them for his documentary.

The statement for the film claims that it “makes a contemporary socio-cultural statement regarding the meme of “the good girl, drawn bad.”  Wives of The Skies clarifies the impact of the overarching “men’s gaze” which objectifies women as carnal sex objects men seek, while they look for love…  along the way, addressing the primitive issue of Trust vs. Mistrust, Wives of The Skies displays the Japanese art of Kinbaku.”

Yes — the Japanese BDSM art of tight binding.

It was written and directed by Honey Lauren, who was in Vice Academy 5 and 6 before starting to make her own films. She was inspired by the men who order the 1960’s airline uniforms off of eBay, which sent her on the path of making this film.

Wives of the Skies is the winner of 24 awards, including Best Film at the New York Cinematography Awards and Best Original Screenplay at the Indie X Film Festival.

You can see it at these places and dates:

Pictures up Film Festival: April 3rd – 5th  in Los Angeles, CA

April in Los Angeles, Indie X Film Festival at Raleigh Studio http://indiexfest.com

The New York Cinematography Awards: June 29th at the Dolby Screening Room in NYC for their Golden Eagle Awards: http://newyork.cawards.org

The Canadian CCinematographyAwards: July 4th in the Toronto Screening Room for their Golden Eagle awards, http://newyork.cawards.org

The Geelong International Film Festival: July 17th -21st in Australia https://www.geelonginternationalfilmfestival.com/

American Golden Picture International Film Festival  in Jacksonville FL https://americangoldenpictureiff.com/

New Hope Film Festival: July 23rd – Aug. 2nd in New Hope, PA

DISCLAIMER: I already told you that this movie was sent to us by its PR people. You know that has nothing to do with our feelings on the movie.

Iron Angel (1964)

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Mill Creek Explosive Cinema set, you are one strange duck. You assault us with Crown International Pictures releases that have been seen by tens of people and then, in the middle of it all, give us a black and white war movie from the mid 60’s about women in combat. How do you do what you do?

North Korea: A bunch of citizen soldiers have to take out a mortar position and make it back to the safety of Uncle Sam, but that’s not as easy as it seems.

Jim Davis, Jock Ewing himself, leads the men. Don “Red” Barry, who played Red Ryder, shows up, as does Tristram Coffin (Rocket Man from King of the Rocket Men) and L.Q Jones, who we all know would someday make The Brotherhood of Satan and  A Boy and His Dog, films that just blow my mind for how astounding they are.

Director Ken Kennedy would go on to be the set decorator for Return to Boggy Creek. He also directed the women in danger movie The Velvet Trap and the 1990 version of The Legend of Grizzly Adams, which starred Gene Edwards as Grizzly. Who? He was one of the stuntmen from the TV series. L.Q. Jones is in that, too.

This would be Margo Woode’s last film, as she played heroine Nurse Lt. Laura Fleming.

A gung ho movie about Americans winning the war in Korea. So there’s that. You can download this from the Internet Archive if you want to see a war movie that just about no one else will watch in 2020.

Precious Cargo (2016)

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After watching Claire Folani kicking ass in Inferno: Skyscraper Escape (and we remember her holding her own alongside Jackie Chan in 2003’s The Medallion), I decided to give another one of her action movies a spin—this one with the added benefit of Bruce Willis. Ah, but the caveat emptors are afoot as this is another one of those films where Willis is barely it. That’s because this show belongs to Mark-Paul Gosselaar—yes, Zack Morris from the Saturday morning TV series Saved by the Bell.

Watch the trailer.

After the manipulative Karen’s (Claire Forlani) contracted diamond heist for her ex-lover Eddie (Bruce Willis), a sociopathic crime boss, goes awry (that’s her story; she ripped him off), he wants her dead. Better yet, he’ll kidnap her and recruit Karen’s ex-partner and lover Jack (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), the “Michelangelo of Thieves,” to steal an armored car carrying $30 million in jewels as her ransom. And why would Jack help Karen? Well, she’s pregnant . . . with his child (that’s her story). Who’s screwin’ who here—literally and figuratively: everybody. The double-crosses—amid the blood and bullets—are everywhere.

As with my review on Line of Duty, I won’t sugar coat: the reviews on this one aren’t great. Does this, like Line of Duty, pushes the limits of Die Hard, Lethal Weapon and Speed inspired-credulity? Oh, hell yes. But again, I say: screw credibility. Enjoy the retro-‘80s/’90s action ride. Relish the smarmy-cheesy one-liners, the over-the-top gun battles, the car explosions, the boat vs. Jet Ski chases, and the beach-front dock shoot out.

Now, would the producers have liked to have secured the services of the Chrises Evans or Pratt for their leading man? Perhaps Zoe Saldana for their leading lady?

Sure they would. What producer wouldn’t?

But I think Gosselaar—who’s more than capable—carries this action film on his shoulders against the resumes of Chris Evans and Chris Pratt with self-confidence. And while the series wasn’t all that great, Gosselaar was very good as the burnt-out professional ballplayer in Fox TV’s short-lived sports drama, Pitch (honestly: he was the best thing in the series), and he’s proven his adult-sized comedic chops in ABC-TV’s currently airing Mixed-ish. While Gosselaar has done a quite a few U.S cable TV movies, he also held his own in his first overseas theatrical film for producers Randall Emmett and George Fulra, 2015’s Heist, a crime drama starring Robert De Niro and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

You’ve seen a few of prolific producer Randall Emmett’s 113-and-climbing resume (his longstanding co-producer is George Furla) in U.S theatres with Bruce Willis’s 16 Blocks (2006), Nicolas Cage’s The Wicker Man (2006), Al Pacino’s 88 Minutes (2007), Jake Gyllenhall’s End of Watch (2012), and Sylvester Stallone’s Escape Plan (2013) and Escape Plan: The Extractors (2019), and his most recent work on Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman (2019). The rest of Emmett’s films—as with Precious Cargo—make their U.S debuts as direct-to-DVDs or online streams, and appear as theatricals in the overseas Eurasian markets.

Emmett also produced several films in the prolific direct-to-DVD oeuvre of writer-director Steven C. Miller (Arsenal and Line of Duty) with the films Extraction (2015), Marauders (2016), First Kill (2017), and Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018). Emmett even found his way into B&S About Movies’ “Amityville Week” of reviews with Amityville: The Awakening (2017). Again, Emmett is prolific: he has eleven more films in 2020 in various states of filming and pre-post production.

Writer Max Adams is new to the game and building on his promising resume of eight writing credits, which includes Steven C. Miller’s Extraction (starring Bruce Willis; also of First Kill) and the aforementioned Heist. Precious Cargo marks his commendable directing debut. The screenplay was based on his well-received 2008 Florida State University film school short, while the feature-length version of Precious Cargo became a national finalist in the 2010 Script Pipeline screenplay competition. His recent work, the positive-reviewed two-season military drama Six, aired on The History Channel.

Sorry, there are no TubiTV freebies on this one. You can pick up the DVD of Precious Cargo at your local Redbox (or stream it) or you can stream it on Amazon Prime, Google Play, You Tube Movies, and Vudu.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook.

Inferno: Skyscraper Escape (2020)

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Yes. At first glance this looks like an Asylum Studios mockbuster inversion of 2018’s Skyscraper. But let’s be honest: Didn’t that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson “summer blockbuster” stupidly steal from The Towering Inferno and Die Hard?

Yep.

And the studio knew it. Just look at these “tribute” posters (below) to both of those disaster-film antecedents. And you know those ridiculous “prosthetic leg” stunts we guffawed at? Well, this Euro-production has its share of the impossible as well. . . .

Along with all-over-the-place accents from its unknown bit-player, international cast. . . .

And the wood in the acting department is adrift.

And don’t be poster duped by Inferno: Skyscraper Escape either. This is another Christmas Icetastrophe (which, ironically, rips off The Rock’s San Andreas) where the image on the poster never occurs in the movie. And, shouldn’t it be a woman hanging off the chopper? (Oops. Plot spoiler!)

Skyscraper Inferno
Actually, it’s a woman doin’ the chopper hangin’, but okay.

Holy déjà vu stendhal syndrome, Batman!

So, did you read our B&S About Movies review for Skyscraper, yet? Then you’re up to speed. But wait . . . this Euro-Towering Inferno comes with a very cool twist: this time, it’s the man who is the whiny bitch-boy damsel-in-distress and the wife is the kickass mountain-climbing structural engineer.

Briana Bronson (Claire Forlani, Precious Cargo) is a career woman gallivanting in Paris while working on an Antwerp-under construction skyscraper project; her soon-to-be-ex-hubby Tom is the stay-at-home dad with two whiny-bickering, smarter-than-the-adults teens (is there any other kind in these movies?) back in Antwerp, Belgium. Of course, the building’s destruction serves as the catalyst to bring them back together—as all biblical Armageddons do.

While hammering out the details of their divorce (Briana’s evil-greedy bosses set her up in an “affair”), they all end up trapped on the 60th floor when a “gas leak” ignites the spire of glass and metal (see Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, China’s Shanghai Tower, and Taiwan’s Taipei 101; but the more accurate across-the-channel The Shard in London is the model here). Since hubby Tom is the “Neve Campbell” (and since this all ties into The Rock and San Andreas, he’s the “Carla Gugino”) of these action proceedings, it’s Briana who goes “The Rock” on everyone’s ass and saves the day.

If you watch American network television, you’ve seen the series work of British actress Claire Forlani. She was Queen Igraine on Starz’s Camelot (2011), portrayed Lauren Hunter on NCIS: Los Angeles and Alicia Brown on Hawaii Five-O for CBS-TV, and she’s currently on NBC-TV’s Departure. But Forlani’s been around since the early ‘90s, with support roles in Kevin Smith’s Mallrats, Nicolas Cage’s The Rock, and Brad Pitt’s Meet Joe Black, along with a long list of direct-to-DVD and Euro-produced films. (Australian actor Jamie Bamber from SyFy’s Battlestar Galactica reboot is her husband, Tom.)

The Eurasian theatrical one-sheet.

The director behind this French-Belgium co-production shot in Bulgaria is Eric Summer: don’t worry, I never heard of him either. But he has a pretty impressive resume of French language television series and TV movies. He made his international film debut with the 2016 animated feature Leap! starring Elle Fanning (Maleficent, The Neon Demon).

However, chances are you’ve seen (but may not know it) the work of Phillip J. Roth (I sure have, and do), the writer behind this film originally known as Crystal Inferno during its overseas theatrical run. His direct-to-video/cable career stretches back to the early ‘80s with the sci-fi-actioners Prototype X29A (Terminator rip) and A.P.E.X (love ‘em both; still have the cable-taped VHS), Digital Man (Universal Solider rip), Total Reality (Total Recall rip), Velocity Trap (Demolition Man rip) and Interceptor Force (both with the always-welcomed French-bred action star Oliver Gruner). And while you can say most of his films are rips of popular films, there’s no denying that 2016’s Arrival starring Amy Adams ripped Roth’s own 2001 cable-aired Epoch (right down the floating stone monolith space-spires). Most recently, you’ve seen quite a few of Roth’s sequel productions in the Boogeymen, Death Race, Doom, Jarhead, Lake Placid, The Messengers, Sniper, Taken, Wrong Turn, and SyFy’s monster-shark franchises.

But even with the Phillip J. Roth pedigree, and my having seen the aforementioned films from his resume during my video store days, I have to admit I didn’t know this movie existed. I discovered it by accident on TubiTV—as result of my searching for a copy of the Frank Harris-directed Skyscraper starring Anna Nicole Smith from 1996, which I linked in the mini-career retrospective included in my Mill Creek “Explosive Cinema” reviews for two of his Leo Fong-starring films: Killpoint and Low Blow.

And truth be told: If you want to be trapped in a Murphy’s Law skyscraper, you want it to be Roth’s monolith—and not Anna Nicole Smith’s. Sorry, Frank, I love ya, brother, but Roth’s wins the Towering Inferno sweepstakes this time.

Don’t believe me? You can check out both—Inferno: Skyscraper Escape and Skyscraper ‘96—for free on TubiTv and compare. Since this was rolled out internationally market-by-market and not worldwide-premiered, the release dates are all over the place: it premiered in Europe in 2017 (before The Rock’s 2018 version), Asia in 2018, the U.S in 2019, and made its worldwide, free online streaming debut in 2020.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

The Serpent Warriors (1985) aka Calamity of Snakes (1982)

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From the Editor’s Desk, December 10, 2022: Pure insanity! As with Delirium (out now) and UFO: Target Earth (coming in 2023), both which we previously reviewed on a whim just because we love ’em, here’s another obscurity that’s readying for a reissue. Well, not a “whim,” per se: those two reviews were inspired by our “Video Nasty Week” and “Space Week” features.

On December 10, Unearthed Films—with a special thanks to the gang at Dawn of the Discs Facebook—officially announced the April 2023 Blu-ray release of the original Calamity of Snakes as an official 2k scan restore-remaster for preservation in the Hong Kong Category III horror cinema annals.

The bonus materials include: A commentary from Nathan Hamilton and Brad Slaton, a Full Length Documentary: From Shaw to Snakes: The Venom and Violence of Early Chinese Language Horror Cinema, and Reptilian Recollections: Lin Kuang-Yung In Conversation With Chui-Yi Chung. The release, which comes with an English dub and subtitles, features three cuts: the Full Uncut version, an Alternate Cut, and a Cruelty Free Cut (but there is so much cruelty in Calamity, e.g., the hard-to-watch, extended snakes vs. mongooses battle, the jumping (well, thrown) snakes vs. samurai sword battle, the gassing and flame throwings—complete with their dying-wiggling aftermath—what’s left in that cut?).

Based on the likes, shares, and comments on the Unearthed post, everyone is clamoring for the calamity on this one!

Well, anyway: here’s what we had to say about The Serpent Warriors . . . and the career of porn purveyor, John Howard, back in March 2020.

“I’m sick of these mother f’in snakes in this mother f’in plane!” shouts Samuel L. Jackson. Only, there is no plane. But there is a temple (of dud and not doom). And we have Eartha Kitt in place of Samuel L. Jackson.

“John Howard didn’t make this or Scorpion! He only made Spine, you stupid mother f’er. Don’t make me go medieval!” threatens Mr. Jackson on your VHS-lovin’ ass.

Yes, ye analog warrior of the snowy tundras: Contrary to the web-chatter: B&S About Movies brings you this caveat emptor regarding the “specialty video” oeuvre of writer-director John Howard, he of the shot-on and edited-on 3/4-inch video, lo-res and audio-buzzing Big Box/SOV horror-classic Spine.

Nope. John Howard never went “mainstream” and he never worked outside of the adult film industry. Not only did the John Howard of Spine fame not direct the 1986 Tony Tulleners-starring Scorpion (he did, however, direct the Linnea Quigley one, also released in 1986), he did not direct this Hong Kong-Taiwan actioner. Hey, you know how it is with these Asian-Pacific Rim-produced oddities from the ‘80s VHS fringe: they’re infamous for their untraceable, Americanized director-pseudonyms—thus the John Howard-confusion.

So sure, with our adult film knowledge and the infamy of Spine, the name of “John Howard” piqued our interest—at first. Then we see the what-the-hell-why-not-we-need-a-paycheck kitchen sink cast and say, “Oh, hell yes! We must watch this!”

Yep. The same “New Line” that repacked the ’70s TV movie Death in Space.

Seriously, how can you turn away from a film starring ‘60s TV cowboy Clint Walker (in his final film) from our beloved TV movie, possessed construction equipment romp Killdozer, Eartha Kitt—as a snake-mistress bitch!—from TV’s Batman, Christopher Mitchum from the ‘80s apoc-slop fests Aftershock and SFX Retaliator, and the comely Anne Lockhart from Battlestar Galactica: TOS?

You can’t. You break out the hot-air popper and convince the little lady to go out to have a few drinks with her girlfriends. “No, sweetie, really. I’m not trying to get rid of you for a booty call. I just wanna hug my VCR and reel in the ’80s for the evening,” you assure her furrowing brow.

While its rare VHS goes for about 40 to 60 bucks in the online marketplace, beware of those bogus DVD-r grey-market rips of The Serpent Warriors (and know your regions before you buy, if you must). If there’s ever a film that the fine folks at Vinegar Syndrome or Arrow Video need to reissue, it’s this slithery, beautiful disaster that, somehow “roped” Catwoman and BSG’s Sheba into starring.

“Okay, so what’s the movie about, already? Get to it R.D.”

Crazy ass heavy metal snakes, that’s what! Seriously: Every time the snakes appear, you get screeching metal guitars!

Another You Tube clip bites the dust.
Thanks for ruining the bit, content flagger.

After that, uh, I don’t know. You have to take in account this movie is a patch job from two different directors, the other being some guy named Niels Rasmussen who, if we believe the IMDb (they got the whole John Howard thing wrong, so, well, you know), he was the editor on some late ‘70s never-heard-of-it-before 3D Asian slop fest, Revenge of the Shogun Women, and the Frankie Avalon-starring ‘80s horror film, Blood Song.

Most of the film is actually culled from a 1983 Chinese nobody-ever-heard-of-it (well, if you’re a normal person) nature run amuck potboiler Calamity of Snakes starring iconic Chinese actor Yuen Kao. Kao worked on some 70-plus films from the early 1950s to the late 1980s—most notably the martial arts movies The Angry River (1971) and Flying Sword Lee (1979), for us fans of the genre. Here, Kao’s been Americanized as “Jason King.”

Nope. This is not a repack of The Serpent Warriors. This is a reedit-repack of King of Snakes, aka Da she wang (1984), done up by Godfrey “Oh, no!” Ho, the master of remake-remixes.

You know, we’re a having a “Kaiju Week” in the coming weeks at B&S About Movies, and that just about sums up what’s going on with this snake fest. Remember how 1955’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters was Americanized with those annoying inserts with Raymond Burr and he’s never in any scenes with the lead Asian actors? That’s what’s going on here: you’re really getting a repack of Calamity of Snakes with awful American dubbing and worse American-acted inserts shot outside of Las Vegas, Nevada.

The “plot,” such as it is, concerns the death of Yuen Kao’s Taiwanese sister some 40-years ago on a Pacific South Seas island. The group of Americans—well, the relative of one of them—responsible now find themselves stalked by a snake worshipping tribe that’s triggered by the discovery of a den of snakes at a construction site managed by Kao.

So a zoologist-herpetologist (Clint Walker and his assistant-son, Chris Mitchum, and their lab assistant, Anne Lockhart) are dispatched to the site. The trio soon discovers the building site sits upon the ancient temple of a snake-worshiping cult (so, yes: we are in Spielberg rip-off territory here, not only with Raiders of the Lost Ark, but Poltergeist as well) and that Clint’s father was responsible for the murder of Kao’s sister. Of course, they discover it all too late and find themselves attacked by thousands of deadly snakes. And Eartha Kitt is going to take over the Earth with her reptile minions.

At least I think that’s what’s going on. . . .

Well, the one thing we do know: If you were offended by the animal mutilations committed by Ruggero Deodato in Cannibal Holocaust, then buckle up, young VHS warrior. Calamity of Snakes is beyond the offensive in its on-screen killing of reptiles. At least The Serpent Warriors gives you a reprieve from the animal cruelty and just pillages Calamity of Snakes for stock-snake footage—of which there’s plenty of it!

The Serpent Warriors’ source material: 1982’s Ren she da zhan, aka Calamity of Snakes, which is actually a horror action-comedy-thriller in the vein of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead. (In this reviewer’s opinion: yes, even with the cringing animal violence.)

“I’m sick of these mother f’in pieces-o-shite movies in my mother f’in VCR!”

Okay, Samuel L., calm down. Here, have a Royale with Cheese and let the B&S About Movie hoards enjoy the original William Chang/Cheung, aka Chi Chang, version of the film, Calamity of Snakes, on Daily Motion, since there’s no online rips of The Serpent Warriors. By the way, both films are in the marketplace under a variety of titles; however, because of the two-films-in-one mess that it is, it’s hard to know which retitle is which: is it a retitle of Calamity or The Serpent Warriors? Throughout the overseas markets the titles used are Snake Inferno, Golden Viper, War Between Man and Snakes, and Revenge of the Snakes.

What we do know: The title of The War Between Men and Snakes, which itself features alternate footage, is the South Korean-language cut of Calamity. Phew! Oh, and there is an undubbed/non-subtitled, previously issued laser-disc version of Calamity of Snakes out there for the taking. Also, the release dates vary: some video repositories use dates of 1983 and 1987 for both films.

And the adult film industry-employed John Howard of Spine fame didn’t make any of them. Nor did William Riead of Scorpion fame. Neither did Joe Livingstone, aka Willie Palmer, aka Godfrey Ho . . . but he did make Robo Vampire!

Our thanks to the folks at Unearthed Films for the pull-quote.

New film Intel for 2022: Inspired by Unearthed Films’ reissue, I started digging . . . I really needed to know MORE . . . and discovered Paul Freitag-Fey’s insane, deep review of Calamity of Snakes/The Serpent Warriors from 2017 for Daily Grindhouse. God bless ya, Paul!

Paul sifted through the confusion to discover that four distinct films with a total of seven different titles were made from director Chi Chang’s original.

During its next year of release, Calamity of Snakes reached English-speaking countries via a dubbed version issued on Brentwood’s out-of-print “Eastern Horror” DVD collection (which are easily Googled). One of the first remixes was released in Pakistan as Revenge of the Snakes (1982) (artwork). Then, Korean directors Kim Seon-gyeong and Qi Zhang (either using the original Calamity or the Pakistani cut) added addition scenes (of a girl having a nightmare initiating the horror), as the film we previously mentioned, The War Between Man and Snakes (1983). This was a Korean-only release.

Then, apparently—not with the Chang original, but the Korean cut—the film was repurposed by U.S. filmmaker Niels Rasmussen, aka’in as John Howard, as The Serpent Warriors. That cut—using three different sources—edited-out the animal cruelty and most of the plot—with new sequences shot in Los Angeles, California, Honolulu, Hawaii, and Nevada. From that point, Rasmussen’s remix failed to find distribution in the U.S. but was distributed in Denmark, Spain, and Germany (as Snake Inferno), and Hong Kong as Golden Viper.

As the early ’90s arrived, the titles became more confusing as the original Calamity of Snakes was re-release as Snake’s Revenge (shouldn’t it be Snakes’ Revenge?) with newly, computer-generated snakes, while 8 minutes from the original film were cut for a 78-minute running time. And, as you can see from our VHS image above, New Line (no, not that one) finally brought The Serpent Warriors version to U.S. home video shelves.

So, in the end: If you must have the snake violence: go for the Calamity of Snakes original—which you can get in a restored version from Unearthed Films.

Phew. I’m exhausted. No more snake films or Hong Kong Category III films for me. Yeah, right. That’s not gonna happen.

April 2023: With the new reissue coinciding with “Day 11: What Movie Upsets You?” for our second annual, “April Movie Thon” feature, we’ve taken a fresh look at the Calamity of Snakes orginal.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Agramon’s Gate (2019)

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There’s this party. And these kids. And this psychic reader that they invited. And then, something goes wrong and someone crosses over from the other side to haunt everyone. He or she or it is named Agramon and they cannot be stopped.

This movie comes to us from Harley Warren, who also sent Eternal Code our way.

Yeah, I don’t do Ouija boards or seances at parties. Horror films have taught me so much. No one in this movie learned those lessons.

Laurene Landon (Maniac Cop) is in this, as is Yan Birch (The Stairmaster from The People Under the Stairs). They play Richie’s parents, who we see in flashbacks, and Yan’s character comes back from the dead to get this whole mess going. Or maybe it’s that demon in the title. Just you know — follow my advice. Nobody should get their fortune read or reach out to the dead. Bad stuff always follows.

Agramon’s Gate is available on demand from Midnight Releasing. You can learn more at the official Facebook page.

DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by its PR company.

Scorpion (1986)

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Where do I begin with this review?

Okay, so Sam, B&S About Movies illustrious proprietor, swings by Eide’s Entertainment, a cool vintage music, comics, magazines, and videos joint in Pittsburgh and picks up a copy of Mill Creek’s “Explosive Cinema” 12-film pack—for the sole purpose of getting a copy of Brent Huff kicking ass in 1985’s Nine Deaths of the Ninja (and it really is the BEST movie in the set!). So, Sam and I get to talking about the other films on the set—1986’s Scorpion, in particular.

Directed by Columbia Pictures’ behind-the-scenes-of-movies documentary purveyor William Riead, Scorpion—the only starring role of karate champ Tony Tulleners, the one guy the “invincible” Chuck Norris could never beat—chronicles the adventures of super-agent Steve “Code Name: Scorpion” Woods. After Scorpion thwarts a Los Angeles airline skyjacking, he uncovers an international scheme involving the assassination of an imprisoned drug-kingpin turned government informant. And when the bad guys murder his partner—he lets loose his “sting” to avenge the death.

Now if this low-budget romp sounds familiar, like Steve McQueen’s Bullitt* familiar, that’s because it’s practically a shot-for-shot rip-off of McQueen’s iconic action film—right down to Don Murray (!) (Governor Breck from Conquest of the Planet of the Apes?) in the corrupt lawyer/politician role played by Robert Vaughn (watch this Vaughn scene from Bullitt to see what I mean). In fact, there’s touches of Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry”-era films in the mix (watch this scene from Magnum Force and you’ll see what I mean).

What got us into this mess in the first place!

But as with those low-budget romps from Crown and American International Pictures, the cast is the thing: it’s why we suffer through them—and enjoy them. So, in line behind the always-a-pleasure-to-see Don Murray, we also get Robert Logan from the hit ‘60s TV series 77 Sunset Strip and Daniel Boone, Bart Braverman, who’s been in everything, from 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) as a kid actor to the hit ‘80s TV series Vegas, Ross Elliot, who’s been in everything as well, from the early Clint Eastwood war movie Kelly’s Heroes (1970) and TV’s The Virginian, Bonanza, and Gunsmoke, Robert Colbert from Irwin Allen’s TV series The Time Tunnel and Hunter in the ’80s, and John Anderson, who’s been in everything, from ’60s TV’s The Rat Patrol and MacGyver in the ’80s.

So, why is Scorpion the only movie Tony Tulleners ever did, you ask? He did, after all, kick Chuck Norris’s ass three times in the ring—and Norris ended up with the film and TV career? What happened?

Did Tulleners see the film, realized it sucked, and quit Hollywood? Or did Hollywood think Tulleners sucked—and gave him his walking papers? Truth be told: Scorpion really is awful: just a like an ’80s action direct-to-video flick should be. Like Crown International Pictures awful. Hey, wait a minute. Crown made this! Ah, no wonder it’s so bad. But again, what saves this blatant rip-off of Bullitt and Dirty Harry is the fact that Crown made it—and we know the barrel of crap we are getting into with that studio—and we want to get into the muck and mire with that studio. Why? Again, it’s the crazy “Where’s Waldo” who’s who casting of our beloved UHF-TV ’60s and ’70s television reruns cast in Crown’s oeuvre.

Nope. William Riead didn’t make this.

Here’s the thing with Scorpion, the feature film writing and directing debut by William Riead: No one would be talking about this film at all if it wasn’t for it being confused with the “specialty video” Scorpion (1986) shot by John Howard of Spine fame and starring Linnea Quigley (aka Jessie Dalton). So don’t be duped by the reviews on Riead’s Scorpion, in KY Jelly-anticipation for Linnea Quigley’s “hot tub kidnapping” and “extended bondage-torture scene.” Stow the pocket rockets, boys. Move along, now.

And god bless ‘em, Don Murray is still active in the business. He most recently starred in the 2017 limited-series reboot of Twin Peaks and is currently filming the low-budget direct-to-video western Promise. Most recently, Bart Braverman starred alongside Jeffrey Donovan of TV’s Burn Notice in the two season run of Hulu’s 2016 series, Shut Eye.

And writer-director William Riead is still at the keyboard and behind the camera. He made, what I think, is a pretty decent romantic-thriller that’s above the usual Lifetime damsel-in-distress flick-junk, 2001’s Island Prey (aka Broken Vows) with Don Murray, along with Ed Asner (TV’s Lou Grant), Tony Dennison (TV’s Prison Break, The Closer, and Major Crimes), and Olivia Hussey (Black Christmas, Ice Cream Man, Turkey Shoot).

From a karate-action flick to a Mother Teresa biopic. Everyone in Hollywood has has to start somewhere.

Riead’s most recent effort was his fourteen-years-in-development passion project: 2014’s The Letters, a biographical drama that explored the life of Mother Teresa and starred Max von Sydow (Flash Gordon, Judge Dredd) and Rutger Hauer (Nighthawks, Blood of Heroes). Sadly, Riead’s passion didn’t translate into box office gold: the $20 million film’s worldwide gross was less than $2 million (and does not deserve to be called-out in our “Box Office Failures Week”). The beautifully shot and acted film won the Audience Favorite “Best of the Fest” Award at Arizona’s Sedona Film Festival, while Riead won the Best Director and Juliet Stevenson (as Mother Teresa) as Best Actress at Rome’s International Catholic Film Festival.

You can watch a VHS rip of Scorpion along with the trailers for Island Prey and The Letters, all courtesy of You Tube. There’s no PPV online streams or free rips of Island Prey available, but The Letters is widely available on all the usual streaming platforms—including You Tube. There’s no online rips of John Howard’s Scorpion but, if you absolutely must see the cover, you can, on Letterboxd (don’t worry; there’s no nudity and it’s safe to look at, provided ropes don’t offend you).

Phew! See what happens when you go shopping at Eide’s Entertainment? Again, watch out for more reviews from Mill Creek’s “Explosive Cinema” 12-pack all this week.

Speaking of Tony Tulleners . . . we blew out a week of martial arts flicks with Ron Marchini!

* Hey! Don’t forget that we blew out two weeks of rubber-burnin’ mayhem with our “Fast and Furious Weeks” one and two.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.