Legend of the Werewolf (1975)

No matter what you think of this movie, you have to give it up for the poster. This is truly one of my all-time favorite movie posters of all time, one that punches you in the face and says, “You’re gonna watch this werewolf movie!”

It has a different origin story than a normal werewolf film, as here Russian werewolves kill a man who has just watched his wife die in childbirth and then raise the dead parents’ son to become a human wolf.

He’s known as Etoile the Wolf Boy in the circus, but soon loses his lupine look until the full moon rises. When that does — and he kills a member of the traveling carnival — he goes on the run.

This is really the sad tale of a wolf boy — a wolf young adult, I guess — who falls in love with a courtesan with a heart of gold who keeps on entertaining her clients, who soon get devoured by said wolf young adult.

Enter Professor Paul Cataflanque (Peter Cushing). He’s a forensic pathologist, who quickly figures out that a wolf is behind all the murders. And seeing how Etoile now takes care of the wolves in the zoo, he’s going to have to deal with putting every one of them to sleep under the orders of the police.

There’s no way he isn’t going to turn into a werewolf and kill just about everyone, right?

Legend of the Werewolf is one of seven Tyburn Film Productions, a studio that tried to fill the void felt after Hammer stopped producing new movies. Their other films include The GhoulPersecutionSherlock Holmes and the Masks of DeathMurder EliteG’olé! and Peter Cushing: A One-Way Ticket to Hollywood.

Directed by Freddie Francis, this was written by Anthony Hinds under his pseudonym John Elder. Under that name, he also wrote Hammer’s werewolf film The Curse of the Werewolf as well as Frankenstein Created WomanScars of DraculaThe Reptile and many more.

15 Things You Didn’t Know About Bigfoot (#1 Will Blow Your Mind) (2019)

Originally known as The VICE Guide to Bigfoot, this tells the tale of a clickbait journalist — in case you missed it in the title — who goes to the Appalachian mountains to report on a Bigfoot convention.

While the movie starts out making fun of sites like, well, VICE, it soon becomes yet another film where people wander the woods and yell each others’ names really loud. Or maybe I’m just old and the joke of making a movie all about a type of journalism that is already a joke doesn’t ring true with me (it hits different or has a weird flex or whatever currently way of saying that, feel free to fill in the blanks).

Seeing as how this movie wasn’t affiliated with VICE, I wonder how it was connected to it at any point. Maybe the filmmakers pushed ahead, sure they could get the name approved. Who can say? Well, maybe the filmmakers. If you’re one of them, let us know.

There is some humor in this, if only that once city folk find their way into the woods, they don’t do so well. Then again, YMMV. See, I can use the language of the times. Sometimes.

You can learn more at the film’s official site.

Hysteria (1965)

Produced by Hammer and released by MGM, this Freddie Francis-directed movie is kinda sorta a nascent giallo, in that a foreigner in a strange land must overcome amnesia and solve a crime that the police are ineffectual at investigating.

Chris Smith wakes up in an English hospital after a car accident, unable to recall much of his life. Even four months later, he still can’t remember much and is under the care of Dr. Keller and his bills and apartment are being paid by a mysterious benefactor.

Also — he may hallucinate from time to time. And he keeps seeing a woman in a photo that he’s sure that he knows. And oh yeah, before we forget, dead bodies start showing up in the shower.

This was written by Jimmy Sangster, Swho also wrote The LegacyWhoever Slew Auntie Roo? and tons of stuff for Hammer including Dracula Prince of DarknessThe Revenge of FrankensteinThe Mummy and more. He also wrote one of the best non-Bond Eurospy films, Deadlier than the Male as well as some great made for TV movies that also have a giallo feel like Scream, Pretty PeggyA Taste for Evil and No Place to Hide.

There are better noir, giallo and Hammer movies for you to seek out, but hey — it’s not a total waste of time. I’m a Freddie Francis and Jimmy Sangster fan, so I enjoyed  it.

Junesploitation 2021: The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist (1977)

June 29: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is gangsters.

In Italy, they call this movie Il cinico, l’infame, il violento, which means The Cynic, the Infamous, the Violent. This poliziotteschi is a sequel to another Umberto Lenzi film, 1976’s The Tough Ones, with Maurizio Merli playing the role of Inspector Leonardo Tanzi in both movies.

Luigi “The Chinaman” Maietto (Tomas Milan, The Big Gundown, Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot!) escapes from prison and sends two of his men to kill the man who put him away — Tanzi. He’s left for dead and even the newspapers print that he’s dead, but he’s just biding his time, waiting to get revenge.

Tanzi just wanted to stay retired — it looks like he’s become a giallo author — but now he’s a vigilante who comes up against Maietto and American syndicate boss Frank Di Maggio (John Saxon).

This movie boasts three writers whose work pretty much hits every side of the Italian exploitation experience. There’s Lenzi himself, who made everything from Eurospy films (Super Seven Calling CairoThe Spy Who Loved Flowers008: Operation Exterminate), Westerns (A Pistol for a Hundred Coffins), giallo (OrgasmoA Quiet Place to KIllOasis of FearSo Sweet…So PerverseSeven Bloodstained Orchids, SpasmoEyeball), cannibal movies (Man from Deep RiverCannibal Ferox), peplum (IronmasterSamson and the Slave Queen), horror (Nightmare BeachGhosthouseDemons 3Hitcher in the Dark) and so much more. Then you have Ernesto Gastaldi, who wrote so many films that I love, including The Whip and the BodyThe PossessedThe Sweet Body of DeborahDay of AngerAll the Colors of the DarkTorsoMy Name is Nobody and tons of other great films. And then there’s Dardano Sacchetti, who wrote just about any Italian genre film worth watching.

Man, somehow Junesploitation has led me to many Italian crime films. For this I am very excited!

Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968)

I’ll be perfectly honest. This could have been the worst movie ever made and you put Barbara Steele in green body paint and I’ll watch it anyway. Luckily, it’s a pretty great movie.

Director by Vernon Sewell (The Blood Beast Terror) and written by Mervyn Haisman (Dr. WhoJane and the Lost City) and Henry Lincoln (who wrote The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which Dan Brown completely ripped off to make The DaVinci Code, as well as one of the main researchers into Rennes-le-Château and an honorary Militi Templi Scotia knight in recognition of his work in the fields of sacred geometry and Templar history), this movie piles on the occult and I couldn’t love it anymore for that fact. Or that it was based on “The Dreams in the Witch House” by H. P. Lovecraft.

Antiques dealer Robert Manning is looking for his brother, who has gone missing after visiting their family’s ancestral home in Graymarsh. He arrives in the middle of a party — people are painted like they are on Laugh-In and there’s a catfight tournament seemingly being held — and by the first evening’s rest, his dreams are filled with images of ritual sacrifice. That’s when he joins up with occult expert Professor Marsh (Boris Karloff!) to battle the forces of Satan himself.

Making this all the better, Morley, the owner of the Craxted Lodge*, is played by Christopher Lee.

Also — Michael Gough appears as a sinister butler!

When this was released by American-International Pictures in the U.S., all of the nudity in the virgin sacrifice scenes were, well, sacrificed.

Honestly, no one is going to blame you if you just watch the scenes with Steele leading wild orgies of death and psychedelic mayhem. They even distort her voice and toss all kinds of different colors all over these scenes, which make them more than worthy of the time it takes to watch this movie.

*It’s actually Grim’s Dyke, an allegedly haunted house that also was the setting for Zeta One, several episodes of the Avengers and Cry of the Banshee. It was also the home of W.S. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Junesploitation 2021: Street Law (1974)

June 28: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie — is free.

Il cittadino si ribella (The Citizen Rebels) finds Franco Nero getting beaten down by muggers, so he goes looking for his own justice, only to get beat down even worse until he finally learns how to get revenge. This was the first vigilante film in the poliziotteschi genre, as this made it to Italian theaters before Death Wish.

Once Franco makes friends with a thug named Tommy (Giancarlo Prete), he finally gets to take out the people who done him dirty in spectacular fashion. I mean, there are absolutely no permits in this movie and tons of stuntmen — including Franco doing all of his own stunts — defying death just to entertain you.

Plus, you get music by Guido and Maurizio DeAngelis (AKA Oliver Onions), which makes any movie better. And yeah! A pre-Ringo Barbara Bach!

Strangely enough, while this movie inspired Vigilante, it was released in the UK as Vigilante 2.

I pretty much love everything Enzo G. Castellari made, like KeomaThe Last Shark1990: The Bronx WarriorsThe New BarbariansEscape the BronxThe Inglorious Bastards…just add this to the list. I mean, Franco Nero shotgun blasting scumbags while wearing a turtleneck? Let me see the movie made this year that can live up to that. Even the ending made me emotional.

Just watch it! You can find it on Tubi.

Daimajin (1966)

Produced by Daiei Film, this is the first film in a trilogy of movies that are all somewhat similar, made with different directors and the same crew, shot at the same time.

Daimajin is a spirit that has been trapped inside a mountain who is struggling to emerge. As the villagers pray at a shrine, the evil Samanosuke slaughters the family of the area’s leader, Lord Hanabusa, except for his son Tadafumi and daughter Kozasa, who are rescued by a samurai named Kogenta.

As the children become adults, Samanosuke’s power grows in the region and then decides that in order to have complete control of the people, he must smash the half-buried statue of Daimajin. The villagers begin to pray that the statue will come to life and save them.

Director Kimiyoshi Yasuda also made several of the Zatoichi movies, while writer Tetsurô Yoshida would write all three of these films and one of my favorite kaiju movies, Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare.

In the U.S., this movie was released as The Devil Got Angry, The Vengeance of the Monster, and Majin, the Monster of Terror.

Speaking of the yokai, Takeshi Miike is making a sequel to his film The Great Yokai War which will be called The Great Yokai War: Guardians. Imagine my excitement when I learned that Daimajin is in this movie!

You can also read Jennifer Upton’s review of this film.

You can get this movie as part of Arrow Video’s new The Daimajin Trilogy. Along with an illustrated collector’s book featuring new essays by Jonathan Clements, Keith Aiken, Ed Godziszewski, Raffael Coronelli, Erik Homenick, Robin Gatto and Kevin Derendorf, there are restored versions of all three films. Daimajin has an introduction by critic Kim Newman, an exclusive video essay about the special effects of the Daimajin films by Japanese film historian Ed Godziszewski, audio commentary by Japanese film expert Stuart Galbraith IV and the alternate U.S. opening credits for Majin, the Monster of Terror. Get it now from MVD.

Norman J. Warren Week: Spaced Out, aka Outer Touch (1979)

“Computer’s Log: Star Date 6969: Space, Space, Space. I’m sick of schlepping through space. I though it would be exciting to boldly go where no computer has gone before. To check out strange, new galaxies and kinky, new life forms. But noooo. I’m stuck, here, on this spaceship with three crazy chicks. All they do is snort coke, pop ludes and play with themselves. Its obnoxious.”
— Heed the words of the (fey-gay) ship’s computer. For you will not laugh in the year 6969. You’ve been warned.

The whole universe?

By the time of the release of this not-funny Star Wars, well, more of a Close Encounters of the Third Kind rip, Norman J. Warren had two sexploitation flicks under his belt with the 1968 pairing of Loving Feeling and Her Private Hell; then he branched into horror with a trio of films: Satan’s Slaves (1976), Prey (1977; which had a sci-fi twist), and Terror (1978). So, after those films, of course, Norman’s next logical step was . . . a space comedy.

Courtesy of Simon Sheridan’s liner notes for the 2008 DVD reissue of the film, we come to know the original script was presented to Warren as “S.E.C.K,” aka Sexual Encounters of the Close Kind. Warren found the script a “funny but very corny” take on Fire Maidens from Outer Space (1956), so he agreed to direct, provided he was allowed to do a re-write. His new take on the script was known as Outer Touch, a play on the fact the aliens of the film are “out of touch” with Earth-human customs. The title was later proven as too esoteric, so the title of Spaced Out was used in the international marketplace.

And the studio behind the reimaging: Miramax. In addition to the new title, the Weinstein brothers, Bob and Harvey (the 30-year-old teenager rock ‘n’ roll comedy, Playing for Keeps was another of their early films), re-edited the film with new, sexed-up voice overs (provided, in part by Bob Saget, later of U.S. TV’s Full House fame; for another such, horny computer; see Warriors of the Lost World with its comic-crackin’ smart-cycle). As is the case with most directors-for-hire on a producer’s product: Warren wasn’t consulted on the Americanized changes by Miramax.

So, does this “low-budget humor-comedy” — as the U.S. VHS box claims — parody just about every convention in science fiction from 2001: A Space Odyssey* to Star Wars** — without mentioning its Spielbergian raisons d’être?

Well, Outer Touch certainly tries. But make no mistake: This is no BBC production of Red Dwarf or Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. But to its credit: Outer Touch fairs better Galaxina in the comedy department (in my review’s opinion), but fails worse than its fellow Brit space comedy, Morons from Outer Space, in the production department — and that film’s no winner in the comedy department, either.

How cheap is Outer Touch?

Well, space ship exterior sections — when on Earth — were created by stretching sheeting over scaffolding.

Remember how David Winters cheapjacked all of his effects shot from Battlestar Galactica for Space Mutiny and Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam swiped their SFX from Star Wars — though Spaced Out isn’t as awful as either. But the mix n’ match SFX-jacking by Uncle Norm is worse than . . .

Remember when the 1977 Star Pilot recut of 1966’s Mission Hydra 2+5 Cormanesquely raided stock footage from Toho’s ’60s space epics Gorath and Invasion of the Astro Monster to “update” the film — with no care as to the continuity of the spaceships? Remember when 1967-to-1972 mess that was The Doomsday Machine ripped the same Toho footage to an even lesser, mismatched effect?

Well, that’s what we have in the frames of Outer Touch — only Warren clipped all of his spaceship footage from Britain’s ITV’s Space: 1999again with no care as to the continuity of the space ship changing from shot-to-shot.

To borrow from Sam Pacino’s review of Galaxina: “Cracked Magazine saw what Mad Magazine did and created a second-rate version that spent nearly half a century with a fan base primarily comprised of people who got to the store after Mad sold out.” And from frequent guest writer Herbert P. Caine‘s own Galaxina review: “Galaxina is a comedy with no laughs, a sex farce with no titillation. . . . as a science fiction movie, it reminds one of nothing so much as a black hole, sucking up all talent and effort that its cast and crew may have thrown at it.”

That’s — with all due respect to the late Norman J. Warren whom we love around the B&S Cubicle farm — is Spaced Out: A second rate version of a film void of laughs or titillation that you plucked off your video store’s rental shelf when copies of Leslie Nielsen’s later Naked Space, aka The Creature That Wasn’t Nice (1983) (itself awfully unfunny) wasn’t available to rent. I can’t believe I am saying this: I’d rather be watching Nielsen’s second sci-fi comedy, 2001: A Space Travesty — at least that film gives me Ophélie Winter to gander upon. (Sorry, there, Jennifer Upton, my fellow Norman J. Warren fan-in-arms. I know that’s sexist to call out an actress like that, but you’re not reviewing this film, now, are you? Can you give me a pass, here, sister-friend? I just need something to hang onto with these inept Not a Space Comedy, comedies.)

Oh, come on, You Tube: this film is not a “youth corrupter” by a long shot. It’s not like it’s an uploaded Russ Meyer movie. An age-restricted trailer that can’t be embedded? Please. You can only watch it direct on You Tube via an account sign-in? Ugh. Making our readers work for their analog noshin’ is not cool.

Not noted on the U.S VHS, as was the theatrical one-sheet: Oui and Playboy model Ava Cadell stars as the alien, Partha.

So, if the back of the VHS — and six minutes of the black leather fetish version of the purple-wigged and silver-suited babes of Space: 1999 (embedded below) — doesn’t sell the analog goods, we’ll make the effort to tell you that we’re dealing with, as the ship’s computer tipped us earlier, three horny alien babes (Partha, Cosia, Skipper) from Betelgeuse whose cargo ship (the Space: 1999 stock footage) crash lands on Earth to the attention of four sexually-hung up humans: the mild-mannered Oliver and Prudence, Willy (our bumbling, porn-obsessed comic relief), and a guy, Cliff, who would never associate with either — but so goes for walking the dog at the wrong time . . . and that’s not a sex pun; he really was walking his dog when abducted (don’t ask about the dog, as I lost interest and don’t remember).

Yes, of course, the aliens kidnap the Earthlings. What movie did you think you were watching?

Then — keeping in mind that an alien-astronaut’s main sources of employment is examining and slaughtering Earth cows — mistakes a heard of stampeding cows as a “hostile force,” so they lift off, regardless of their ship’s damage.

Yes, of course, we are lost in space. What movie did you think you were watching?

Along with way, the alien babes learn about Earth sex from Willy’s porn magazine collection, the uptight Cliff’s scores with Partha; she transforms into a nympho, and, due to their exotic Earth-anatomy, the girls decide to sell Cliff and Willy to an intergalactic zoo. And, as I lazily finish off this review to a film that I’ve given more digital ink than it deserves: sexual intercourse and dirty jokes, (ahem) ensues, in this (ahem) trope-laden and (ahem) cliche-ridden universe. (Yes. Triple word score! All three — not just in one review — but in one sentence! I rock!)

But, seriously, folks. This comedy is not pretty and there’s nothing more to tell. Except we wonder who in the hell paid off the critics at the Monthly Film Bulletin and (GASP!) Variety for those VHS box plugs.

For there is no plot: Outer Touch is just a disconnected collection of soft-sex vignettes that makes David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker’s early “dirty-comedy” mess The Kentucky Fried Movie taste good. And that’s a pile of rank poultry that in no way foretells of that trio’s brilliance with Airplane! and Naked Gun — the very films that inspired this 2001: Not a Space Comedy in the first place. (Okay, well, yeah . . . they came after, but, well . . . oh, never mind. I give up on this review.)

In the 1999 article “Alien Women: The Politics of Sexual Difference in British SF Pulp Cinema” by Steve Chibnall, in the pages of British Science Fiction Cinema, Warren called the film “dreadful in a nice sort of way.

No, sorry, Mr. Warren, as much as I enjoy your works, this is just dreadful. There’s nothing “nice” about it.

Outer Touch, aka Spaced Out, was unavailable on DVD until 2008, when the original, U.K. Outer Touch-cut was reissued — but under the better known U.S. title of Spaced Out. According to Simon Sheridan’s DVD liner notes, prior to its DVD release, Outer Touch never aired on U.K. television. We did, however, experience the film on HBO and Showtime as Spaced Out via Miramax’s distribution of the film, which also issued it on VHS in the U.S.

Norman’s next “spaced out” epic, sans the comedy, but lots of gore.

Thank the cinema lords, Warren saw the sci-ploitation writing on the wall and returned to horror with the offensive-sloppy Alien inversion that was Inseminoid. Then he had to go make the (not a) spy comedy, Gunpowder. But Warren course-corrected with the bonkers horror, Bloody New Year. So goes Norman J. Warren’s nine-feature film career. Sadly, we lost him at the age of 78 on March 11, 2021.

You can watch Spaced Out on You Tube. Since that’s not Bob Saget’s voice — and the original voice of British actor Bill Mitchell — as the Voice of Wurlitzer the Jukebox, the upload is the U.K. version of the film. The film — in its Spaced Out or Outer Touch form — was not, thankfully, included as part of Bloody Terror: The Shocking Cinema of Norman J. Warren 1976 to 1987 — even though it is shockingly bad. For that, Powerhouse films, we thank you.

* Be sure to check out our tribute 2001: A Space Odyssey and its antecedents with our “Exploring (Before “Star Wars”): The Russian Antecedents of 2001: A Space Odyssey” featurette.

** You can learn more about Star Wars and all of its rips — its droppings, if you will — with our “Exploring: After Star Wars” featurette.

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.

Norman J. Warren Week: Inseminoid, aka Horror Planet (1981)

Editor’s Note: We featured this film in our two featurette overviews written by Sam Panico, the proprietor of B&S About Movies, on the rash of Alien-inspired films of the ’80s — “Ten Movies that Ripoff Alien” and “A Whole Bunch of Alien Ripoffs All at Once” — as well as his third part of our “Exploring: Video Nasties Section 3” series. Since this is our “Norman J. Warren Week,” I’ve been inspired to give it a full review proper.


Sam, our Movie-Themed Drink Mixmaster of Ceremonies and overall Chief Cook and Bottlewasher at B&S About Movies, experienced Norman J. Warren’s second foray into the sci-fi genre (his first was the truly awful, HBO-ran comedy Spaced Out from 1979) as a home video release. I, on the other hand, was fortunate (not really) enough to see this mess — and Luigi Cozzi’s Alien cash-in, Contamination — at the local Twin Cinema. Is this as gory and demented — and poorly edited as Cozzi’s? Well, like James Dalton tells the patrons of The Double Deuce, “Opinions vary.” The opinion that doesn’t vary: this movie sucks. Well, we take that back: not if you watch the unsensored version. But still: Think of all of the things that made Alien a “wow moment” film. Think of all of the things that made Mario Bava’s Alien antecedent Planet of Vampires a UHF-TV classic. Now, take all of that all away. Then turn the premise into a (trashy) battle of the sexes, message-we-didn’t-ask-for allegory about the male-powered hierarchy corruption of females.

U.S. theatrical one-sheet.

Thus, unlike with 20th Century Fox being sued by science fiction writer A. E. van Vogt over copyright infringement for using his The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950) (you did O’Bannon, end of story) in the creation of Alien, the studio had enough common sense not return a legal volley at Shaw Brothers and company for ripping off what was — regardless of it being of a uniquely layered, superior quality — a ripoff itself.

This movie has been, rightfully, criticized for bad sets, poor acting and bad special effects. However, in truth, these are all things you truly need to make a great genre film. But right there in the title, you know what you’re getting . . . if you want to get it. And you know we do: someone is getting inseminated by something from space. . . .

Image of U.S. home video version courtesy of Amazon.

So, what does £1 million and a two-month production schedule get you?

A British/Hong Kong co-production, this was financed by Run Run Shaw of the famous Shaw Brothers, who would also foist 1979’s Meteor into our theaters, if not our hearts. It’s directed by Norman J. Warren, who was part of a new school of ’70s British horror, pushing the boundaries of explicit sex and violence much further than the Amicus and Hammer studios of the previous decades. Cases in point: the obscure Satan’s Slave (Warren’s third film, but first horror film) and the better-known, also David McGillivray-penned Prey and Terror.

Bottom line: If you’re going to make a movie called Inseminoid . . . and a bunch of censors don’t get upset, you’ve really failed at your job. This was one of the first U.K. movies to quickly be released on home video after its appearance in cinemas, which led to it reaching seventh place on the British video sales charts in November 1981. One of the reasons why this movie was so controversial — I mean, other than the fact that it’s a movie for people who want to see an alien impregnate a human female — is that the producers did a direct mail campaign that featured lead actress Judy Geeson screaming alongside a headline that screamed “Warning! An Horrific Alien Birth! A Violent Nightmare in Blood! Inseminoid at a Cinema Near You Soon!”

Director Norman J. Warren came to regret that exploitation-inspired marketing gimmick, saying “The problem with mail-drops is that you have no way of knowing who lives in the house, or who will see it first. It could be a pregnant woman, and old lady, or even worse, a young child. So it was not such a good idea.”

Concerned with a group of Nostromo-inspired archaeologists and scientists excavating the ruins of an ancient civilization on a distant planet, the screenplay was written by Nick and Gloria Maley, a husband and wife special effects team who worked on Warren’s (very good) Satan’s Slave. The screenplay’s working title, known as Doomseed, was changed to Inseminoid, so as to avoid confusion with the A.I.-rape tale Demon Seed (1977), which makes no sense, as that big-budgeted, Herb Jaffe Productions’ sci-fi programmer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor wasn’t exactly a hit (or remembered much four-years later). (In some mainland Euro-countries, the film was releases as Seeds of Evil.)

The U.K.-paperback tie-in based on Nick and Gloria Maley’s screenplay. Image courtesy of Vault of Evil: Brit Horror Pulp Plus, where the book is discussed at length by readers.

Of course, Ridley Scott shocked the world when esteemed British actor John Hurt had an alien rip out of his stomach. So, those scenes of a male impregnated via a “face hugger” had to be one-upped. So, this time, the Xenomorph doesn’t waste time laying eggs in a derelict craft for some wayward space jockeys to stumble into: ol’ Xeno goes straight to the incubator source and (violently) rapes Judy Geeson (who we all fell in love with in her film debut, To Sir, with Love (1970); Rob Zombie honored Geeson with roles in his The Lords of Salem and 31). As would any Earthbound-cum-human rape victim of the I Spit on Your Grave or Abel Ferrara-Ms. 45 variety, Geeson’s raging-Ripley has a psychotic break (or a psychic link with her “attacker,” ugh) and kills the crew — then devours their flesh to nourish her “inseminoid” that soon births as hybrid twins.

Do the twins stowaway on the ensuing rescue ship . . . uh, you really don’t know your Alien ripoffs very well, mijo.

You can find out by streaming Inseminoid on Amazon and You Tube.

You say you want to buy a copy of all of, well, most of, Warren’s films? The Indicator/Powerhouse imprint released Bloody Terror: A five-film box set of Warren’s films, which includes Satan’s Slave, Prey, and Terror, as well as Bloody New Year, alongside Inseminoid. So, there you go: You have yet another reason to own a region-free Blu-ray player.

Here’s some trivia: The alien planet in the film was shot on the rocky, Mediterranean island of Gozo. And here we are, all of these years later, reviewing a psychological horror film shot on the island, Gozo (2020). That’s how B&S Movies, rolls.

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

Norman J. Warren Week: Bloody New Year (1987)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review originally ran on October 30, 2019. Now it’s back for our celebration of Norman J. Warren.

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Also known as Time Warp Terror, this movie was inspired by 1950’s horror films. On this island where the kids get trapped, it’s always 1959. It also has the band Cry No More all over it, lending it the perfect bit of 1980’s cheese that you may be looking for. Imagine The Beyond, but for kids. That’s pretty much what this is.

The final feature film directed by legendary British horror filmmaker Norman J. Warren (a long-time resident of the video nasty list), Bloody New Year is about a bunch of kids named Rick, Janet, Lesley, Spud and Tom, who save American tourist Carol from the bouncers and a ride operator of an amusement park. They end up stealing a boat and making their way to an island which has The Grand Island Hotel, a place where its always been New Year’s Eve 1959.

There’s even a movie theater that’s showing Fiend Without a Face, which plays before Spud gets offed. Actually, just like Shakespeare, everyone dies, becomes a zombie and all end up back at the New Year’s Eve party. Such is life and death in the resort areas of the U.K., I guess.

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.