Editor’s Note: We first reviewed this off-the-rails war romp from Willy Milan on September 25, 2018, as part of our “Fucked Up Futures” series of reviews. But regardless of its Mad Max pretensions, it’s still just the same ol’ Filipino Rambo knockoff — only with a coat of post-apoc paint. Amazing what a three-wheeled trike can do to “future up” a movie. Thus, we’ve brought Mad Warrior back for “Philippines War Week.”

Remember when I said, we’ll get to the sequel to W Is War in the future? The future is now. And in this future, everyone will ride a tricycle with armor and flames all over it.

After World War III, the planet is destroyed. But on an island in the Pacific, some survive in a fortified colony and are led by Maizon, a one-eyed cyborg bad guy who makes everyone fight in gladiator battles. Rex, our hero, tries to escape with his son, but he is caught and his son is killed. Oh yeah — Maizon also killed his father and wife, too!

Rhea helps him escape, taking him to the scientist colony Ophelos, where her father, Zeus, leads a peaceful people.

Let me tell you a few other things about Maizon. He often takes off his armor to reveal that his face is all scarred up. He can’t give up on his dream of seeing Rex’s blood stain the sands of his arena red. He has armies of gladiators ready to die for him. He raw dogs a black girl in the dirt while his entire army turns their back. And oh yeah. He’s a werewolf.

Look — any movie that starts with a two-minute long nuclear explosion set to disco music is going to be one that I grow obsessed by. This movie is bonkers. Every outfit is great. Every character is awesome. Every line of dialogue is unhinged.

There’s a scene where a gladiator salesman tells Maizon all about his gladiators that is full of wonderfully bad acting, sparklers and maniacal goofball laughter.

The final scenes of this movie are everything you want a film to be: explosions, tricycles, gladiator fights, machine guns, militaryesque hand signals, an army of dudes with mashed spiked mohawks, literally bad guys by the thousands getting mowed down by machine gun fire to the sounds of disco synth, people on fire, more explosions, a nice wood fence, a subterranean cave base, slow death reactions, leaping martial arts, axes, running, even more explosions, one hit kills, guns that shoot knives, a lightsabre duel, a bad guy blowing up real good, sparklers, a makeout session over the dead body of the previously mentioned bad guy and so much more.

The love interest closes the film by telling our hero, “You’re really crazy. Crazy like a mad warrior.” He rides his horse off into the sunset and I start screaming like a maniac. This movie. This movie!

Cult Action has this. I would advise getting it now and starting your own gladiator army!

We’re all over this movie. Dustin Fallon reviewed it for us. So did R. D Francis. Sam took a shot at it and even appeared with Groovy Doom and Drive-In Asylum’s Bill Van Ryn on Scream Queenz to dish on its Satanic majesty.

Now, Arrow Video has released this 70s shocker on blu ray and we couldn’t be more excited.

Ben is a recent widower, but hey — he’s taking his new girl Nicky on a road trip and making out with her whenever he can. Unfortunately, that trip also has his daughter K.T. (fake Jan Geri Reischl) along for the ride and she’s perfectly ready to drip sticky melted snow cone all over her new mommy’s face and ruin some side of the road necking.

The journey takes them to the town of Hillsboro, where the townspeople have been hiding from a great evil that seems to be killing everyone and making their children go missing. And the murders? Well, toys are involved and people are reduced to madness just by confronting the evil in their midst.

Strother Martin is Doc Duncan, who is either the human behind all of this or Satan himself and man, he’s great in this movie. Everyone is. It’s a low budget drive-in film, sure, but it’s also astoundingly sure of itself and a film that presents itself with great intelligence. It has one hell of an exploitation title but also has so many disquieting moments that will stay with you long after you finish watching.

The new Arrow Video release has a great looking version of the film, plus brand new audio commentary by writers Kim Newman and Sean Hogan, a video essay by David Flint entitled Satanic Panic: How the 1970s Conjured the Brotherhood of Satan, an exclusive new interview with actors Jonathan Erickson Eisley and Alyson Moore, plus original trailers and TV and radio ads.

Editor’s Note: This review first ran as part of our “Mark Gregory Tribute” on September 12, 2018. We’ve brought it back for our “Philippines War Week.”

Terrorists are making genetic experiments on kidnapped girls. And Professor Larson has a dream. That dream is probably your nightmare, as he wants to create a master race to rule the world. Luckily, some scientific organizations in Asia and Europe have hired a group of mercenaries to kill everyone. Yay!

But wait! This movie is a North Korean/Italian co-promotion! Kim Il-Sung actually allowed this movie to be made in his country and, well, it’s a total piece of shit.

That said — Mark Gregory is the bad guy, the leader of the terrorists. And who is being paid $65,000 by FSR (Final Solution Research) to stop him? Frank Zagarino — Stryker himself! Plus, Sabrina Siani (Conquest, The Throne of Fire) came along too. Did you know her mother used to come to nearly every set she was on and get in the way? Well, she also encouraged Jess Franco to film her daughter naked, so there’s that.

There is also a veritable army of North Korean extras ready to do whatever it takes to make this entertaining. They failed!

There is one goofball scene where Lou, a commando, talks about how he spent the last year with the Bolshoi Ballet and how he had to kill a ballet dancer who was ready to stop disarmament talks between Russia and the U.S. Not only does this sound like the kind of script conversation that Quentin Tarantino used to get paid to write (like that discussion about the Silver Surfer that comes out of nowhere in Crimson Tide) and a way better movie than what I suffered through.

But Mark Gregory is in it! That has to count for something.

An interesting trivia note: the evil Professor Larson was played by Charles Robert Jenkins, a United States Army soldier who lived in North Korea from 1965 to 2004 after deserting his unit and crossing the Korean Demilitarized Zone. He immediately regretted this decision and was treated poorly for years. In 1982, Jenkins appeared as Dr. Kelton, painted to be the mastermind behind the Korean War, in the film Unsung Heroes. This was the first evidence to the Western world that he was alive, but the U.S. government did not acknowledge this fact until 1996. He was given a Japanese wife, who was allowed to go back to Japan and he eventually was able to go there, where he spent the rest of his life.

The country of Japan asked for the U.S. to pardon him for treason, but they refused. Jenkins put his conscience to rest by reporting to Camp Zama on Patriot Day, September 11, 2004. He showed up in full uniform with all of his medals and saluted the military police.

On November 3, he pleaded guilty to charges of desertion and aiding the enemy, but denied making disloyal or seditious statements. Those charges were dropped and he was sentenced to 30 days in the brig. He was released early for good behavior and received a dishonorable discharge.

He published a biography in Japan called To Tell the Truth, which was re-published nearly a decade later in the U.S. as The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea. He died in Japan on December 11, 2017.

His story would make a much better movie than Tan Zan: Ultimate Mission. But you can still watch this movie for free on Amazon Prime.

Editor’s Note: This review previous ran on June 21, 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.

For all the magical reasons that we love the old days of the video store, there was one drawback. Often, the movie that you wanted to rent just might be out of stock. So if you wanted to rent Rambo: First Blood Part II or Commando, there’s a chance that every copy of that movie may be out. Yes, in the days of streaming, this may seem crazy to you, but you couldn’t always get what you wanted.

But if you try sometimes, you just may find you get Ron Marchini.

A former U.S. Army drill sergeant, a survivor of a drive-by shooting, a martial arts tournament fighter said to be the best in the country in 1969 and the toughest opponent Chuck Norris ever faced — or so Black Belt Magazine would have us believe — Marchini appeared in a Murder in the Orient and New Gladiators before getting noticed in 1976’s Death Machines, a film in which he played White Death Machine.

It would be nearly a decade before Ron became a VHS industry all to himself, working with directors like Charlie Ordoñez and Alan Roberts to hit the rental audience with movies like Forgotten Warrior, Omega Cop and Return Fire. They aren’t good movies, but they’re great for what they are. And it’s always pretty amazing that in the midst of the jungle, Marchini chooses to always wear yellow t-shirts.

This film finds our hero — Steve Parrish is his name —in Central American but we all know it’s the Philippines. Some rebels have kidnapped American Ambassador Porter Worthington and only our man Ron — or Steve — can come in and set things right. This was probably shot at the same time as Forgotten Warrior and even goes all Boogeyman 2 on us by recycling plenty of footage and using it as flashbacks.

The best part of a military 80s movie is when the hero gears up, covering himself in weapons before killing everything and everyone. This movie has that happen twice and it has the theme song play so many times that you’ll swear it’s the only audio in the entire movie. Also, the bad guy wears a pirate hat and our hero has a samurai sword and man, this movie is so ridiculous I kind of want to watch it again. Oh, and is there a part two? You bet! And Jungle Wolf II is also known as Return Fire — and III, depending on the foreign repack.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Yeah, a direct to VHS Filipino war movie was not where I was expecting Muslim rebels vs. Christian military to be the theme, but hey, here we are.

After a battle between some rebels and the Philippines military, Hadji is captured and sent to prison. Somehow, a Colonel still allows him to see his son Basaron before he spends the rest of his life in the big house. He tells his son to always obey the law, trust God and not end up here in jail. He grows up with the dream of being a lawyer and isn’t sure how to deal with his father being released from prison, as the man is considered a hero by the rebellious people while Basaron has lived for the law.

Basaron has also lost his girlfriend Narsheva after Bashir assaults her and then marries her, because their religion demands that a man marries any woman he deflowers. Basaron responds to all of this by beating up his rival. And then a civil war breaks out with the rebels wanting our hero on their side and the colonel who allowed him to see his father asks him to join the air force, which he ends up doing.

Can Basaron end a conflict that has raged for generations? Will he survive? And how does his father figure in?

Director Francis Posadas made 79 movies between 1979 and 2017, including Wild Force, G.I. Baby and Magnum Muslim .357. I have to check out more of his stuff after this, because this is one weird action film. Anthony Alonzo, who plays Basaron, was Sgt. W2 in Wily Milan’s transcendent W is War.

You can watch this on YouTube.

I can’t imagine being the father of a kid who dragged you to the theater to see Dune without you knowing a single thing about it. This is a movie that spends the first ten minutes explaining the world of Dune and how important melange — spice — is, extending life, expanding consciousness and allow space to be folded. There’s also an insane amount of nonsense words blasted at the viewer, stuff like landsraad, gom jabber and sardaukar. Sure, people who devoured the books — hi, I was 12 and never thought I’d ever see a naked woman ever — were ready for the movie. But man, even I can admit that the film can be impenetrable.

They gave out a glossary before the movie! Yes, a glossary!

For years, this movie lived in development hell. First, there was an attempt by Apjac International — — headed by Arthur P. Jacobs, the producer of the Planet of the Apes films — to make an adaption with David Lean. One assumes that he was picked because he’d already made Lawrence of Arabia. Anne of the Thousand Days and Condorman director Charles Jarrott was also asked, but Jacobs died in 1973 and the rights went to a French consortium.

That’s when Alejandro Jodorowsky started his quixotic quest to make this movie, as told in Jodorowsky’s Dune. If only that movie had come to the screen — planned to star Brontis Jodorowsky as Paul Atreides, Salvador Dalí as Shaddam IV, Orson Welles as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, Gloria Swanson as Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, David Carradine as Duke Leto Atreides, Hervé Villechaize as Gurney Halleck, Udo Kier as Piter De Vries and Mick Jagger as Feyd-Rautha with music by Pink Floyd and Magma. As the storyboards, designs and script neared completion, the money stopped coming in. All we have to see for the effort are the designs by Chris Foss, Jean ” Moebius” Giraud and H.R. Giger, but man — what could have been*.

Dino De Laurentiis acquired the rights from the consortium and hired Herbert to write a new script and Ridley Scott to direct, but a combination of the pain of Scott’s brother Frank dying and the sheer level of work that would be needed to make the film caused Scott to leave the project.

By 1981,  De Laurentiis renegotiated the rights from Herbert. After his daughter Raffaella saw The Elephant Man, she told her father that David Lynch was the man to make the film, despite the fact that he never read the book, didn’t know the story and didn’t like science fiction. He agreed to make the film, turning down the opportunity to direct Return of the Jedi.

Lynch worked on seven different scripts for the film and his initial cut was four hours long. Universal expected a two-hour movie and that led the filmmakers to cut numerous parts of the film, film new ones and add the opening voiceover that attempts to explain the story. There’s another version that tries to explain even more — the extended cut — that Lynch took his name off of and replaced with Alan Smithee**. As the director would later say — he rarely will discuss the film, won’t be part of a director’s cut and considers it the only failure of his career –“I started selling out on Dune. Looking back, it’s no one’s fault but my own. I probably shouldn’t have done that picture, but I saw tons and tons of possibilities for things I loved, and this was the structure to do them in. There was so much room to create a world. But I got strong indications from Raffaella and Dino De Laurentiis of what kind of film they expected, and I knew I didn’t have final cut.”

As for Jodorowsky, he was upset that Lynch had the opportunity to make this film yet he believed that he was the only other director capable of making the movie. He refused to see the film until his sons made him go and he ended up being overjoyed, seeing that it was a failure. He said that he knew that the fault was not Lynch’s but the money men.

Herbert would say in his short story collected Eye, “I enjoyed the film even as a cut and I told it as I saw it: What reached the screen is a visual feast that begins as Dune begins and you hear my dialogue all through it.”

As for the critics, they hated it. Harlan Ellison claimed that this was because they were denied early access to the film. Luckily, over the years, people have come around to seeing this as a flawed piece of art.

Dune is a movie that simple to explain — a young nobleman named Paul Atreides becomes the leader of a band of rebels on a desert planet — and difficult at the same time to really go into, because the original book is 412 pages of Herbert being inspired by psilocybin and cultivating mushrooms.

I’ve always just tried to go along for the ride and enjoy the astounding visuals and the cast in this. I mean, José Ferrer, Freddie Jones, Sting, Brad Dourif, Kyle MacLachlan, Jack Nance, Patrick Stewart, Jürgen Prochnow, Paul Smith, Dean Stockwell, Max von Sydow and Sean Young all in one movie***? And sandworms? And energy shields that look like Atari graphics?

Also, to this day, I remain stunned that they made coloring books and action figures for this movie.

Dune is available in limited edition UHD, blu ray and steelbook editions. Each has the new 4K restoration from the original camera negative, while the UHD and blu ray editions come with a sixty page book featuring new writing on the film by Andrew Nette, Christian McCrea and Charlie Brigden. If you’re into extras, all of these releases are beyond stuffed with them, such as commentary tracks by film historian Paul M. Sammon and Mike White of The Projection Booth podcast; the documentary Impressions of Dune; multiple featurettes on the making of the movie; eleven deleted scenes; the 1983 featurette Destination Dune, originally produced to promote the film at conventions and publicity events; features on the film’s toys and music — with Toto interviews!; and even more interviews with people like Paul Smith, make-up artist Giannetto de Rossi, production coordinator Golda Offenheim and make-up effects artist Christopher Tucker.

If you have any interest in Dune at all, trust me, you need to have this release. Plus, as one of the first UHDs I’ve added to my movie collection, it just looks incredible.

*To be fair, it would have been a 14-hour movie that was only inspired by the book. Herbert said that the script was “the size of a phone book.”

**The name he chose for the screenwriting credit was Judas Booth, which is a play on two traitors and how he felt about the producers of Dune.

***Aldo Ray was originally cast in the role of Gurney Halleck but his alcoholism was out of control. His wife Johanna ended up casting many of Lynch’s films and their son Eric DaRe was Leo on Twin Peaks.

Editor’s Note: This review ran on December 19, 2020. We’ve brought it back for our “Philippines War Week” tribute of films.

Look, there’s no such person as Joe Livingstone, the director of this movie. Or William Palmer, its writer. They’re both Godfrey Ho, the Hong Kong Ed Wood who made at least eighty movies from 1980 to 1990 and may have used over forty screen names, making him the Asian Aristide Massaccesi.

Ho is the master of a cut and paste style of filmmaking that challenges the notions of art and copyright clearances — or he’s a hack out to make a quick buck. He’s also famous for dropping footage of ninjas into movies even if the plot doesn’t call for it. I take issue with this: movies always call for more ninjas.

His love of the word ninjas also led to making movies that have titles like The Ninja Force, Ninja The Protector, Full Metal Ninja, The Ninja Squad, Thunder Ninja Kids: The Hunt for the Devil Boxer, Ninja Terminator, Zombie vs. Ninja, Thunder Ninja Kids in the Golden Adventure, Ninja Force of Assassins, Ninja Knight Brothers of Blood, Ninja of the Magnificence, Ninja Powerforce, Ninja Strike Force, The Ninja Showdown, Power of Ninjitsu, Ninja’s Extreme Weapons, Ninja’s Demon Massacre, Cobra vs. Ninja, Death Code: Ninja, Golden Ninja Invasion, Rage of Ninja, Ninja: The Battalion, Empire of the Spiritual Ninja, Ninja Operation 7: Royal Warriors, Ninja Commandments, Ninja In Action, Ninja: American Warrior, Ninja Operation: Licensed to Terminate, Ninja Operation 6: Champion on Fire, Ninja Phantom Heroes, Bionic Ninja, Tough Ninja the Shadow Warrior, Twinkle Ninja Fantasy (that’s one I gotta track down), The Blazing Ninja and probably ten movie ninja movies. Seriously, those guys are like cockroaches.

He would film footage for one movie, then re-use those shots over and over, which kind of makes him the Asian Roger Corman, but then he’d also find obscure Thai, Filipino and other Asian films, then graft them onto his movies — making him the Asian Bruno Mattei? — and then have several movies made with the budget of one, except no one can even tell where his footage begins and where the other films end.

Ho didn’t stop with stealing footage. He has no idea that music is a copyrightable thing either, so his movies are filled with all manner of sonic thievery, including songs from Miami Vice, Star Trek, Star Wars, anime and even music from Wendy Carlos, Chris & Cosey, Tangerine Dream, Clan of Xymox, Vangelis and Pink Floyd.

Other than some rich musicians and the gullible film public, who gets hurt, right? Well, Richard Harrison, for one. He’d worked with Ho in the past at Shaw Brothers and made a deal to be in a few of his films. A few movies ended up being, well, a veritable onslaught of low-level ninjas films with his name above the title, which did damage to his career. Harrison was the unwilling feature actor in almost a dozen different movies, which sent him back to the United States. Yes, a guy who worked for everyone from Alfonso Brescia, Antonio Margheriti and Alberto De Martino to appearing in Bruce Lee ripoffs and Eurospy films had finally had enough.

And then, out of nowhere, Ho was making mainstream movies. Well, as mainstream as a Cynthia Rothrock film would be. After directing her in Honor and Glory and Undefeatable, he also made Laboratory of the Devil, a remake/remix/ripoff/ unauthorized sequel of The Man Behind the Sun. And then, he went back to his old tricks and used all the same footage to make a sequel to that movie, Maruta 3 … Destroy all Evidence. And then…

Somehow, this movie is 81 minutes and feels like nine hours. It’s all about Alex, who we also find out is the Shadow Warrior*, and now, he has to fight a smuggling ring who are all vampires, which as we all know, hop in China. No one at all is surprised that vampires exist. It is just matter of fact. There’s also a gambler looking to get even with the mob boss who sent him to jail, in case you get bored.

This is also somehow a sequel to Robo Vampire. Trust me, you have no reason to watch that. Or this. I mean, this movie has a silver lame suited superhero moonwalking against vampires, so really you can do whatever you want. Also, this movie makes so little sense that Robo Vampire could very well be the sequel, for all we know.

The poster is pretty awesome, though. And to be perfectly honest, I love these movies.

If you decide you can handle a director who makes Jess Franco look like Fellini, this is on Tubi.

You have to feel bad for the Vietnam vets in this movie. They go back to Nam with the best of intentions, hoping to destroy the Golden Triangle’s drug empires, but when they get there they learn that their fellow soldiers are the ones behind it all.

How did they get there? Well, Chris Mitchum had a gas station that he stopped some criminals from robbing, so they responded by killing his adopted son and assaulting his wife. Instead of, you know, going through counseling and working through it, she decides that the best thing she can do is kill herself while he’s calling the cops. I’m not one to tell anyone how to deal with their grief, but somewhere between anger and bargaining and acceptance and hope is drawing up the plans for a mobile battle RV and building motorcycles with rockets on them.

I mean, this movie starts out as Death Wish, has our hero get arrested and then the authorities tell him to get together with his old commandos and go do some real killing. This feels like the kind of movie a bunch of strange children with too many G.I. Joes and perhaps too much knowledge of cocaine would film on their parent’s camcorder in stop motion. Inside their mind, the movie looks like the stuff of dreams. To adults, it looks like an action figure just standing there while children scream things about adopting babies in flashback sequences.

This is a movie that has a commando unit named the Rat Bastards and an adopted Vietnamese child named Charlie. If you can commit to that — and you love John Phillip Law as much as I do — then you really can’t lose.

Here’s how the hiearchy of renting movies worked in the 80s: Are all the Stallone, Arnold and Van Damme movies out? Then reach for some Michael Dudikoff. Oh, those are out? Does the store have any Cirio Santiago stuff? Good deal. No? They’re all out? Well, I guess Bobby A. Suarez will do. I recommend Cleopatra Wong and another movie he wrote Bionic Boy.

And this movie obviously.

You can watch this on YouTube.