Editor’s Note: We first reviewed this Cirio H. Santiago (July 5, 2019) flick — originally known as Death Force — that came back in a post-Rambo world to video as Fighting Mad, although it’s more blaxploitation that Namsxploitation and more Kung fu than Rambo. Call it what you will, but it’s a Cirio war flick that fits great into our “Philippines War Week” of reviews.

An American soldier — on his way home from the Vietnam War — is left for dead and is saved by a pair of Japanese stragglers from WWII, who train him in the way of the samurai. This movie is also known as Deadly Force, The Force and The Black Samurai, as well as several other titles. It’s a compound of blaxploitation and the Kung fu genres, with some social commentary mixed in along the way.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Japanese soldiers who didn’t surrender after World War II. Here, they help our hero Doug — James Iglehart, who was Randy Black from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls — learn the ancient fighting skills he’ll never to make it back home.

Turns out that Doug and his buddies —  McGee (Leon Isaac Kennedy, Too Sweet from the Penitentary) and Morelli (Carmen Argenziano, Grave of the Vampire) —  have stolen gold on the way back from Vietnam for a crime boss. On the way back, they stab our hero, slash his throat and dump him off the boar. Luckily, those aforementioned Japanese soldiers are ready to teach him that violence really does solve issues.

McGee really wants Doug’s wife Maria, who is played by Jayne Kennedy, who appeared on the cover of Plaboy and was selected by Coca Cola USA as the Most Admired Black Woman in America. She was married to the actor playing McGee — Leon Isaac Kennedy — in real life. And back in the days before the Internet, the two appeared in a sex tape so infamous, it’s referenced in a Mr. Show sketch (it’s at the beginning of the “Show Me Your Weenis!” episode where Wyckyd Sceptre gets caught on tape).

The soldiers that help our hero are played by Joe Mari Avellana, who was the Scourge in Wheels of Fire, and Joonee Gamboa, whose characters constantly bicker back and forth.

This movie has an amazing tagline: “She’s in Playboy. He’s out of Penitentary. Jayne Kennedy and Leon Isaac in Fighting Mad.” A bit misleading, as he’s the villain, but what can you do?

Cirio H. Santiago is to blame — or praise — for this. He made more movies than we’ve probably reviewed on this site like Wheels of Fire, Demon of Paradise and Stryker — and a whole bunch of Rambo knockoffs we’re getting to before the end of this week.

You can get Fighting Mad on Mill Creek’s new Soul Team Six blu ray/DVD collection, along with five other films. It’s also available under the title Vengeance Is Mine on a double disc with Vampire Hookers from Vinegar Syndrome. Or you can watch it on Amazon Prime.

DISCLAIMER: Mill Creek sent us the Soul Team Six set, but we were planning on buying it anyway. It has no bearing on this review.

A blind sculptor and his captive muse are at the center of this Edogawa Rampo adaption, directed by Yasuzō Masumura (Giants and Toys, Irezumi). This movie looks like the inside of a maniac’s dream after they’ve done days and days of psychedelics and I couldn’t be more excited to have watched this.

Aki works as an artist’s model, but she’s never been hired like this before. She’s been kidnapped and taken to a warehouse filled with gigantic female body parts like eyes, legs, lips and breasts as well as two huge male and female figures. There, Michio tells her that he plans on using her to sculpt his most perfect version of the female body.

At first, she wants to escape, but she slowly comes to obsess over her captor as much as he does her. However, his mother, who has helped him to this point, may keep their strange romance from achieving its perfect flower.

Make no mistake — this is a dark and strange movie for grownups. But if you’ve ready for the challenge, it will reward you with an eerie story and some incredible visual scenes.

The Arrow Video blu ray of Blind Beast has new commentary by Asian cinema scholar Earl Jackson, a new introduction by Japanese cinema expert Tony Rayns and Blind Beast: Masumura the Supersensualist, a brand new visual essay by Japanese literature and visual studies scholar Seth Jacobowitz. You can order it directly from Arrow.

Editor’s Note: We first reviewed this movie on September 15, 2018. We’ve brought it back for our “Philippines War Week” tribute of reviews. And we always want to talk about a Mark Gregory movie as much as possible. Over and over, again and again, because, again, it’s Mark Gregory! Why else would we do a full week of his movies.

When I was a very young child, my grandfather would come home from working night shift at the J&L Steel Mill and sit in front of the TV drinking Pabst and watching war movies. The entire house would be bathed in blue light and the sounds of machine gun fire. Forty some years later and here I am, doing the same thing. I’m not slaving away in the furnace, but I am writing a project for my real job while watching war movies. I’d like to think the films my grandpa watched were better than the junk I end up watching.

Yes, this is a movie where John Vernon and Mark Gregory somehow end up in the same frame. This blew my mind and made me wonder if I was on my death bed and my brain was attempting to calm me as my soul transitions to the next plane with the kind of Jacob’s Ladder scenario that I have heard so much about.

This time, Mark is playing Johnny Hondo, a special forces commando who never dresses in any form of camouflage whatsoever. I mean, the dude dresses all in black for daytime missions and all in white for night missions. He kills lots of people all over the world when he isn’t chillaxing on his Montana ranch. That’s where General Ross (Vernon) finds him and arranges for Johnny to meet his estranged and dying father.

It turns out that Johnny’s dad once drove a school bus filled with the Shah of Iran’s gold from that country to Afghanistan. With my poor US school system education, I never realized that that’s only a distance of around 800 miles. To get his father’s honor back, he has to complete the mission. And if you’ve seen any 1980’s post-Rambo films, you know that the system is corrupt and against our hero Johnny Hondo.

Luckily, Johnny has backup. There’s a plucky young Dondi-like child and his sister. The moment we meet her, we know that she has only been placed in this movie to die. And then there’s the mechanic who gets the war bus moving again. He’s played by Bobby Rhodes from Demons and Endgame, so he instantly becomes my favorite person in this movie. Literally, every line of his dialogue is profanity, much like talking to me in person.

This movie also has some of the most chipper 1980’s synth on its soundtrack, to the point that you forget that we’ve basically been waging war in Afghanistan since this one was made back in 1989.

This one’s directed by Pierluigi Ciriaci, who brought us pretty much all of the Mark Gregory war movies that we’ve covered this week. And much like every Italian movie made in the 1980’s, it was written by Dardano Sacchetti.

Much like the films that entertained my grandfather, this is filled with explosions, gunfire and plenty of people being riddled with bullets. Unlike the movies that he enjoyed, it also has a hero that has decided to wear a white turtleneck with a beige coat and drive a schoolbus into a warzone.

Want to experience all the action and bus driving for yourself? Then I recommend you head to Amazon Prime, a place where there is nothing but Mark Gregory films as far as the eye can see!

Editor’s Note: We first reviewed this movie on July 15, 2019. While it’s more sci-fi and less Rambo, Jun Gallardo, who has made a mess of South Pacific war flicks — and recycled footage from them over and over again — fits nicely into our “Philippines War Week“ tribute of reviews.

Take Chris Mitchum (son of Robert, star of The Day That Time Ended, Faceless, Bigfoot and, perhaps most astoundingly, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Tusk).

Add a bit of Gordon Mitchell, who played Colonel Morgan in Endgame, Dr. Frankenstein in Frankenstein ’80 and Igor in Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks.

Grab a recipe for a movie already made. Let’s say, FX. Make it in the Philippines with Jun Gallardo, using the American name John Gale.

Then — and most importantly — add some Linda Blair.

Mitchum plays Steve Baker, a special effects guy who gets drawn into the theft of a million dollars when he gives Doris, a prostitute/secretary for the mob a ride. If you are wonder, “Does Linda play the hooker?” then you’ve been paying attention to her roles in the late 1980’s.

The mob is at war with another mob, with Mitchell’s character Morgan in charge of it all. Well, sooner than you can say, “I saw this already with Bryan Brown,” Steve is using his movie skills to fool the criminals.

Christine Landson (who was in two other movies, Blood Hands and Desert Warrior as Sterraz Amazon, a name which I’m going to scream out loud while I drive home tonight) is in this as Steve’s wife, who gets kidnapped by the mob. They have an amazing sex scene that has her topless while buildings blow up real good all around them, which is pretty much the main reason I loved this movie so much.

There’s also a snake that shoots bullets, a home security system that simulates a haunted house and a tank made out of plywood. The movie ends as it should, with people running around with machine guns killing everyone in sight. Is it spoiling the movie if I tell you it ends sadly, with uplifting synth, but the bad guy gets blown up with a missile? Would it upset you to know that Linda dies 48:10 in?

I assure you: SFX Retaliator is a complete piece of shit. And I loved every single frame. Watch it for yourself.

The Dalton Gang terrorized Kansas and the Oklahoma territories on their way to infamy, robbing two banks in the middle of the day — October 5th, 1892 — at the same time and in the same town of Coffeyville, Kansas.

Nicholas Barton has directed several westerns in recent memory like Wichita and Deadman Standing. The genre doesn’t get much attention these days, so it’s always good to see an effort come out. Plus, he wrote this movie and appears in it as John Kloehr.

This film was made at the Old Cowtown Museum, the same Wichita location as several movies, including One Day Only, Home on the Range, Bloody Dawn, Midnight Shanghai, The Only Good Indian and Stolen Women, Captured Hearts.

The plan — made because Coffeyville was called No-Gun Town — is soon foiled by the townsfolk who don’t follow that law. Will the Daltons escape? Will they outdo their cousins the James Gang by living up to Bob Dalton’s claim that he could “beat anything Jesse James ever did — rob two banks at once, in broad daylight?” And will the townsfolk be around to celebrate ousting them? History — or this movie — will tell the tale.

Death Alley is available on demand and on DVD from Uncork’d Entertainment. You can learn more on the official site and Facebook page.

Editor’s Note: This review ran on September 13, 2018. We’ve brought it back for our “Philippines War Week” tribute.

Before Dr. Strange was in big time movies, he was in TV movies. There, he was played by Peter Hooten. Why am I telling you this? Because Pete is here to star with our man Mark Gregory today in Just a Damn Soldier.

The story here is that Hooten’s character gets together his mercenary pals to steal some gold from a bad guy and sell it to the Afghan rebels that would one day become the Taliban because his girlfriend was killed by the Russians. That Taliban part is me editorializing. It’s also totally true.

Ferdinando Baldi is back in the chair for this one, as he must have had a deal to create every Mark Gregory commando style movie. Also: Mark gets shot in the knee, limps and is fine by the very next scene.

You should do what I do. Shoot roman candles at the TV while drunk, screaming Mark Gregory’s name over and over while savoring every second of this film. You can watch it for free at Amazon Video!

Editor’s Note: This review previous ran on June 20, 2021, as part of our “Ron Marchini Week.” We’ve brought it back for our first “Philippines War Week” of films. Yes. We said, “first” week. As usual, we go overboard, so we’ll have a second week of films come December 5 to the 10th.

Man, this movie has some alternate titles. In France, they call it U.S. Warrior. In Spain, Traición a un Soldado or Betrayal of a Warrior. Greece? O Hamenos Polemistis (The Lost Warrior). In the UK, they call this Forgotten Warrior. But in West Germany, this gets my favorite title: Commander Rainbow.

Steve Parrish (Ron Marchini) was escaping a POW camp when Thompson, one of his fellow soldiers, doesn’t want to be slowed down by a wounded man. He shoots the soldier, then shoots Steve so that he couldn’t tell anyone else. Luckily, some villagers saved our hero and he chose to stay behind, choosing to marry Malia (Marilyn Bautista, Driving Force, Bloodfist), one of the women in the village where he has settled. His wife gives birth to a son and the warrior soul in Steve is content to be, well, forgotten, just like the title says, as he just likes teaching everyone martial arts.

Our hero plans to live out his days in the jungle, but Thompson’s orders send him back to ‘Nam with the goal of rescuing POWs. Instead, he works with the Viet Cong to try and kill Steve, pausing to assault and murder the wife of our protagonist. Somehow, Steve gas a sword and darned if he isn’t going to kill everyone in the Philippines — sorry, Vietnam — to get the payback that his warrior spirit demands.

This movie kills so many bad guys that it needs two directors, Nick Cacas (Deadly Commando) and Charlie Ordoñez (Jungle Wolf). Parrish would return in that movie, as well as Return Fire: Jungle Wolf III, which of course has nothing to do with any of these movies.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Editor’s Note: This review previous ran on June 20, 2021, as part of our “Ron Marchini Week.” We’ve brought it back for our first “Philippines War Week” of films. yes. We said, “first” week. As usual, we go overboard, so we’ll have a second week of films come December 5 to the 10th.

Jake Turner (Ronald L. Marchini, who co-wrote and co-directed this) is on a rescue mission to liberate Jennifer Boyden, a DEA agent and the daughter of his old sergeant, who is being held by Pike (Joe Meyer, who has been in a bunch of Marchini’s films), an American drug lord in the jungles of Colombia. I mean, what was he doing anyway? Punching people for money?

Joe Estevez is in this, in case you need to know about the quality level of this film. This is a movie made for those with the kind of resolution that can watch five Philippines-shot war movies in a day and tell each and every one of them apart.

Also known as Fight to Win, this was also given the completely wrong title of Karate Commando: Jungle Wolf 3, a sequel in name only. In Greece, it was called Hamos stin agria zougla (Doom in the Wild Jungle). Now that’s a movie title. And yes, we’ve reviewed the first Jungle Wolf and it’s sequel, which is also known as Return Fire, just to add to the “sequel” confusion.

Perhaps the nuttiest thing about this movie is that the co-writer was Joe Carnahan, who went on to make Smokin’ Aces, The A-Team, Boss Level and The Grey, as well as the upcoming Western version of The Raid. Or is it? Because this is a movie that has Burt Ward as an evil doctor who helps out the drug kingpins and it’s just a cameo. And it’s also a film that was only released in the Netherlands, which must have appreciated an Indiana Jones-referencing title 24 years after Raiders of the Lost Ark.

You can watch this on YouTube. Trust me, this is not Delta Force 3.