Deadly Games may have been sold as a slasher, but it’s more of a murder mystery. Sure, the killings are pretty intense — a long drowning, burying a victim alive — but it’s maybe even less a murder mystery and more a late 70s, early 80s small town romantic drama where lots of people swing and one of them — either a cop or Vietname vet — is a masked killer.

It’s interesting how little this movie cares about fitting into any neat and clean box.

Clarissa Jane Louise “Keegan” Lawrence (Jo Anne Harris) is a rock journalist back home after the death of her sister, a murder that she’s out to solve. After all, her sister didn’t jump out of a window like that, right? She had to have been thrown.

Dick Butkis, the Chicago Bears linebacker legend that had such a long career after that as a kid I just thought he was an actor, owns a coffee shop in town. That’s where a lot of the exposition happens, like how strange Billy Owens (Steve Railsback) is, a Vietnam soldier not back home all in one mental piece who is obsessed with monster movies and his horror-themed game of Chutes and Ladders and oh yeah, he also lives in an old movie theater and sounds like someone I’d go out of my way to be friends with. That said, it’s set up that he has to be the masked killer. Certainly the killer can’t be Sheriff Roger Lane (Sam Groom), because he’s nice and plays on the swings and romances Keegan.

Director and writer Scott Mansfield seems out to make a movie that makes you believe it’s a slasher and then pulls the rug out from under you with an ending that completely predates Scream — without spoilers, but man, that does feel like a spoiler.

The board hame in this is Universal monsters inspired and I love that Roger and Billy have been playing it for decades, as well as the killer somehow knowing way too much about it. I can only wish I still had friends ready to play a board game that often.

Coleen Camp and June Lockhart are in this as well, so my casting brain was quite impressed by who Mansfield got to be in this movie.

It’s not perfect, it’s probably too long and too talky, but I enjoyed the laid back vibe of Deadly Games. The last ten minutes are worth the time that it takes to get there and I was pretty surprised by the leap that the film makes.

Arrow Video’s new blu ray release of the film has a brand new 2K restoration from the original camera negative, new audio commentary with The Hysteria Continues, interviews with actor Jere Rae-Mansfield and special effects and stunt co-ordinator John Eggett, an image gallery with never-before-seen production photos and promotional material, the trailer, the original screenplay under the title Who Fell Asleep, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by Ralf Krause, and a fully-illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by film historian/author Amanda Reyes. You can get it from MVD.

Look, when you have a movie called White Skin, Black Thighs and Jess Franco directs it, you may know what to expect.

What I did not expect was to see a love making scene where people are horizontally dancing on what appears to be dry ice, as smoke pours out all over the place.

One of the movies that Franco made with Erwin C. Dietrich, this is pretty much a remake of Le Journal d’une Nymphomane — thanks Adrian from Letterboxd — this is mostly a series of couplings with only the slightest of connecting story, but hey — there’s an alien that lives in the basement and he gets to make love to one of the actresses, which is pretty wild, when you get your mind around it.

There’s are some great production values, but someone must have yelled at Franco to keep his hands off the camera, because there are no zooms in and out. In fact, I felt kind of strange watching one of his movies without the constant camera moves.

The main story is about Marga (Diotta Fatou, who is also in Franco’s uncredited Girls in the Night Traffic and Swedish Nympho Slaves) trying to kill herself after catching her girlfriend Lena (Kali Hansa, Night of the Sorcerers, Demon Witch Child) making love to Victor Kühn (Erik Falk) on stage.

Franco said in a commentary track that Hansa disappeared after this movie, possibly back to her native Cuba “because she was against Fidel Castro…she wanted to be there to fight him because she was a very strong woman. I never heard about her again.”

Victor is married to Lola (Pilar Coll, Around the World In 80 Beds) and when she finds out that her man has led a woman to her suicide attempt, she’s not mad. She is upset that he slept with a black woman, however, and then ends up exploring her other more sapphic side with Lena, so man, that rich Kühn couple just can’t resist that lady, huh?

All in all, this wasn’t as good as the film it’s remaking, which is true nearly all of the time but always definitely true when it comes to the many, many times Franco tried to make his movies again.

Judge Jeffreys (Christopher Lee) lives up to his title, sending women and men to the dungeons as witches and traitors. And worse, he also sends them to their deaths. Based on George Jeffreys, the first Baron Jeffreys, he was known as “the hanging judge” thanks to the rough handling of his cases, including a series of trials in the West Country in 1865, in which he judged between 160 and 700 men and women of treason against the crown.

During the Glorious Revolution, when King James II fled the country, Jeffreys stayed in London until the last moment as the only legal authority in the abandoned kingdom to perform political duties. When William III’s troops took London, Jeffreys tried to flee and follow the King abroad but was recognized by one of the survivors of his trials. A mob tried to murder him and he begged for mercy. He died in the Tower of London from kidney disease.

You don’t need to know history to know this: this is Jess Franco’s Witchfinder General and you’re about to see him go a little wild when it comes to the torture, but nowhere near the madness of Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun or The Demons.

After an innocent young girl named Alicia Gray (Margaret Lee, Our Agent Tiger, Circus of Fear, Venus In Furs)  is tortured on the rack and burnt at the stake, despite the efforts of her sister Mary (Maria Rohm, The House of 1,000 Dolls, 99 Women). She falls for a young rebel, but going up against the power of a man given unlimited power by the crown of England isn’t as easy as it sounds. Actually, it doesn’t sound easy at all.

Howard Vernon shows up as a henchman and an uncredited Diana Loyrs is here too. Perhaps my favorite thing about this movie was that Lee still protested that he didn’t know it would have so much sex and violence in it up until it was released on DVD, which is hilarious, because this was not his first or last time working with Franco.

Lee J. Thompson and Charles Bronson wore together several times. Six, to be exact, with this movie, St. Ives, The White Buffalo, Caboblanco, 10 to Midnight and The Evil That Men Do making up the full list of their collaborations.

Writer Gail Morgan Hickman’s (The Enforcer, Death Wish IV: The Crackdown) script was one that Cannon liked, but at this point, they’d started to overspend, so they weren’t forthcoming with the money the film would need, as producer Pancho Kohner, Thompson and Bronson. The team took the movie to took Hemdale and were immediately given the green light with a much better deal.

Cannon sued for breach of contract and claimed that they had already pre-sold most of the worldwide rights and stated that it would damage their company if someone else made it. After all, Cannon often pre-sold movies based on loglines and pasted together ads well before the movies were made.

A lawsuit was avoided, allowing Cannon to financed and released the movie, with Hemdale getting foreign video rights. As for Bronson, Kohner and Thompson, they got a three-movie deal with Cannon, which ended up being the aforementioned Death Wish 4: The Crackdown, Messenger of Death and Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects.

Bronson plays Jack Murphy and at 65 years old, you really get the sense that just like his character, he’s exhausted. Indeed, he was often frustrated at the delays between takes and would shout, “Let’s shoot! Let’s shoot!” as he wanted to get back to his family. As for Murphy, he has no family, as his ex-wife (Angel Tompkins, who was the titular The Teacher and also was in The Farmer) has started dancing at a men’s club frequented by other cops, making him the target of their jokes. So he drinks away his days and wastes his nights watching the woman he chased away attract other men.

Meanwhile, a woman he put away named Joan Freeman (Carrie Snodgress, who Stallone wanted to be Adrian in Rocky, with Harvey Keitel as Paulie, but money was a major issue; she’s best known for her role in Diary of a Mad Housewife; Neil Young wrote the songs “A Man Needs a Maid,” “Harvest,” “Out on the Weekend” and “Heart of Gold” about her) is out of jail and conspiring to ruin his life, as if it can be further ruined. She begins killing those close to him — mostly cops, as she blames them just as much as him — ending with his ex. Soon Murphy’s headed for jail with many of the criminals he put there.

Somehow, as Murphy is first arrested, he’s handcuffed to Arabella McGee (Kathleen Wilhoite, Road House, Fire In the Sky), a potty mouthed homeless girl that he’d recently arrested. As she repeatedly verbally abuses Murphy with phrases like butt crust, monkey vomit, jizm breath, sperm bank, dildo nose and snot-licking donkey fart, Arabella doesn’t speak like anyone in any movie ever, which is why I find her so endearing and this movie just so delightfully odd. Wilhoite was a method actress and felt that probably her character should have looked more homeless, but she got to keep all of the designer clothes that her character wore, so that probably made wearing it in the film much easier.

Before fiming started, Thompson and Kohner coached Wilhoite all about how to best get along with the tempermental Bronson, which worked, because they got along well according to reports.

She also sang the movie’s theme song!

That said, she wasn’t the first choice for the role. Supposedly, Madonna was up for the role but wanted a million bucks. So was Joan Jett, who had just been in Light of Day. While she didn’t get the part, she ended up growing close to Bronson’s wife Jill Ireland. In a Q&A on her official fan site, Jett answered the question “How did the song, “Don’t Surrender” come about? And who is Jill Ireland?” with the following:

“Jill was Charles Bronson’s wife, also a wonderful actress. We met over the possibility of me co-starring with Charles B. in a movie. We became great friends, she turned me on to crystals, etc. and taught me a lot during our friendship. When she died, I was very upset, but channeled that (what I saw in Jill: strength, honor, dignity) and wrote “Don’t Surrender” with Desmond, inspired by Jill.”

Handcuffed together, the two go on the run, stealing a helicopter and landing on — and crashing through, Demons style — the growhouse of some well-armed marijuana farmers, which gives Murphy the chance to save Arabella from a group assault, making me wonder if Michael Winner directed this movie. You can tell he didn’t because it’s quick, they don’t succeed and the camera doesn’t linger like a lunatic.

Then again, Thompson also made Kinjite…

Anyways, the duo ends up getting along better and better, with even the hint of romance by the end. They take up in the home of one of one of his old partners, but the killings move there too.

Of interest to fans of Jason Vorhees, the growhouse is a location from Friday the 13th Part III and his partner’s house is from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

Murphy thinks that the killings are the result of a vendetta between him and mobster Frank Vincenzo (Richard Romanus) before making his way back to the Bradbury Building in Los Angeles, the same place where Freeman was arrested for shooting her boyfriend, a security guard at the building.

The Bradbury is a historic LA building and you may recognize it from noir movies like the original I, the Jury and D.O.A. as well as a more futuristic take on the genre, Blade Runner. The building demanded that no food or drink was permitted on set during filming, but not having craft services was worth it, because the close is tense, with the cops working for Vincenzo gunning for Murphy and Freeman stalking him with a crossbow and then attacking him with an axe.

Murphy’s Law is also filled with roles for plenty of great tough guy actors, like Lawrence Tierney, Robert F. Lyons and Bill Henderson. It’s a movie that both embraces and escapes many of the things you expect from a Bronson movie It’s violent, profane and removed from reality, but I love how it has both a female protagonist and antagonist, lightening the normal testosterone-filled world of Bronson just enough to make things a little different. The dialogue is beyond ridiculous, which made me love this movie even more. It’s beyond quotable, including the line, “Don’t fuck with Jack Murphy!”

You can get the new blu ray release of this film from Kino Lorber. It has some great extras, like commentary by Wilhoite and film historian Nick Redman, an interview with Robert F. Lyons, two radio commercials and a trailer.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth time this movie has been on our site. Twice —December 5, 2019 and April 27, 2020 from me — and on November 25, 2020 from Phil Bailey. Here’s Phil’s take.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Phil Bailey is a long time photographer and film writer, who doesn’t actually hate everything, but has no fear of being a contrarian.  Follow at Twitter at @stroke_midnight or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/philbaileyphoto

Sumuru, the femme villain bent on world domination, originally created for a BBC radio serial by Fu Manchu creator and author Sax Rohmer. If there is a Sax Rohmer story, then producer Harry Alan Towers must be lurking somewhere nearby. Towers produced a series of Fu Manchu films with Christopher Lee starring as the Chinese scientist bent on world domination and decided to take on Rohmer’s lesser known creation with James Bond girl Shirley Eaton in the lead with The Million Eyes of Sumuru in 1967 and followed it up two years later with The Girl from Rio.

The Girl from Rio was directed by Eurocult legend Jess Franco, sandwiched between his two Fu Manchu films The Blood of Fu Manchu and The Castle of Fu Manchu. This is nowhere as gonzo as his most famous/notorious films, it still boasts some great style and a bevy of beautiful women is all manner of undressed and barely dressed. Shirley Eaton, the blonde who was killed by being painted gold in Goldfinger is Sumuru who doesn’t really do much other than lounge around and look beautiful so Eaton is perfectly cast, but the real stars of the movie are Jess Franco regulars Maria Rohm and Beni Cardoso who just fit better with Franco’s vision (that vision being long legs and bare midriffs) and you can just feel Franco’s energy perk up when they are on screen, especially the impossibly leggy Cardoso as Sumuru’s head torturer/dominatrix Yana Yuma who basically steals the movie.

If you’re waiting fora recap of the plot, forget it, because that’s basically what the director did. Rio suffers from the common ailment of Eurocult films of having simultaneously too much and too little plot, It has so many plot threads that are so underdeveloped you can’t really keep it straight, despite all of the on-screen expository telephone calls. It has something to do with a mobster and a British Lord both vying to plunder Sumuru’s island fortress: Femina. Sumuru’s island fortress comes complete with a torture chamber and an all girl army decked out in pleather halter tops, capes, and go-go boots. There’s a lot of talking, a lot of scantily clad women, just enough nudity to keep the plot moving forward. The whole affair plays out like a super sexy, R rated The Man from U.N.C.L.E episode, which makes sense as the title is an obvious play on The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. tv series.

The Girl from Rio is a trashy if slight Eurocult delight that has loads of stylish eye candy. The trippy Italian comic feel to the scenes on Femina almost make up for how odd and disjointed the rest of the movie is. Structurally the movie is a bit of a mess, obviously stitched together from multiple chunks of footage that never quite convinces you that all of these people are in the same story. All faults aside, the campy, fetishistic delights that Jess Franco indulges in during the Femina sequences are well worth the 90 minutes and make the whole affair worthwhile, if just barely.

Also known as Sexy Erotic Jobb — yes, that’s how it’s spelled on the poster — this movie has Count Roland (Fred Williams) leaving behind his boring life to a rich wife to become a butler to the also rich and famous, which allows him to go back to his youthful days of being on top or under or behind anything in kneehighs.

I always wonder about Franco movies, when we see the set and the crew and Jess himself directing at the end, are we having a meta “We began in a fairytale and we came to life, but is this life reality? No. It is a film. Zoom back camera. We are images, dreams, photographs. We must not stay here. Prisoners. We shall break the illusion. This is Maya. Goodbye to the Holy Mountain. Real life awaits us.” The Holy Mountain moment or is Jess just saying screw it or is this his tribute to all the times that boom mics appear in film?

That said, if you want to see what France’s 42nd Street looked like in 1975 — presumably shot with no permit out of a car window, the way it should be — then the last ten minutes of this are for you. The rest is a light comedy and at no time do you worry for your sanity and what kind of Franco movie is that?

The island in this movie is a bad, bad place, filled with bad, bad people. So when the body of Martin El Pocho washes up on the shore, anyone could be the killer in a town filled with angry fishermen, thugs and women of ill repute. Sheriff Carlos (Antonio Mayans) and the cornoner Dr. Ramiro (Juan Soler) decide to investigate, getting a clue from an old drunk (Jess Franco, showing up in his own movie) to tell them that there’s a pair of sirens on the island that lure men to their deaths.

Those sirens just may be bar owner Alida (Eva Leon, Mansion of the Living Dead) and her sullen emo silent sister Maria (Lina Romay). Meanwhile, a crime lord named Raul (Tony Skios) and his young henchman Andy (Jose Llamas) get invovled, plus Andy is in love with a townie virgin played by Analía Ivars from Franco’s Golden Temple Amazons.

If Jess Franco made a soap opera — or more to the point a telenovella — this would be it. I’d point to this movie as a film that says that he has talent and can tell a story, which would become rare in the years after this. And the new bluy ray release of this really shows off how much the scenery and colors of the area can become characters of their own within his movie.

Any movie that gives you the image of Analía Ivars blasting people with a shotgun while dressed for a white wedding is one worth a watch.

You can get Bahia Blanca from Severin.

Can Al Pereira (Jess Franco) ever catch a break? Stuck in Puerto Rico, down on his luck and broke, he finally gets a job seeing if Carlos Ramos (Eric Fauk) is cheating on his wife Cynthia (Lina Romay), who soon falls into bed with our detective hero and pins the murder of her husvand on him, as he was the last person to see Carlos alive.

Yet when he explains this to the police, they offer to bring him to meet with the dead man’s wife to confirm the story. That’s when the truth comes out. She wasn’t his wife. Olga (Monica Swinn) is, yet she still clears his name.

And soon, Cynthia is back in his life all over again.

Is this Jess Franco’s Chinatown? No, no. It’s just an excuse to use the the pulp detective framework to get down and dirty, featuring numerous dance moments and Lina drinking a Coke in a way that will instantly induce puberty or work better than any little blue pill.

Also, Adrian on Letterboxd shared the lyrics to the song that Lina sings, “Keep It Cool,” and man, it’s really something else, sung phoentically in something approaching English. I’ll summarize a few lines:

“Keep cool, if I come to you,
Keep cool, if I’m kissing you,
Keep cool, if I’m sucking you,
Keep cool, my love, my sweet, keep cool…”

Jess Franco had enough money for film stock and some of the cast, the rest of this movie was made thanks to the kindness of others. And this time, the shadow of Dr. Orloff has been cast on Doctor Conrad Jekyll, one of his students, who has been sent the secrets of using ultrasound to animate his robotic creation, which is really his brother Andros who he murdered after discovering that he was cucking him with his wife. So what does he do? Uses the robot creature to hunt down his ex-lovers and strangle them.

Yes, it’s dream-logic or more to the point, Franco logic.

An example: the robot knows who to kill based on the necklaces that Dr. Jekyll gives to these nightclub women. Inside is a radio transmitter giving orders to kill, baby, kill.

Also known as The Mistresses of Dr. Jekyll, The Secret of Dr. Orloff and Dr. Orloff’s Monster Brides, this only hints at the nightclub scenes of later Franco, as well as the jazz music moments which threaten to obscure the story and take over the film.

Also, a Christmas movie.

You can watch this on KinoCult.

Dr. Orloff’s Monster is also on the ARROW PLAYER. Head over to ARROW to start your 30-day free trial. Subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.

After witnessing an alien abduction as a child and dealing with the trauma of it for her entire life, Aurora (Camille Rowe, The Deep House) has read a book about The Cosmic Dawn before she’s drawn into the orbit of the cult’s leader Elyse (Antonia Zegers).

Wondering just how real this could be? Director and writer Jefferson Moneo claims to have had an alien experience as a child and that this could all be real.

As she becomes entrenced into the cult, her consciouness expands, she learns more about why and how her mother was abducted and begins to worry about the more bizarre way that the cult has begun to act. Then, the film fast-forwards to years after the cult has been broken up, yet Elyse reappears and claims that she can access another dimension and is also planning a mass suicide of all still-believing cult members.

With a score by Alan Howarth, music by MGMT and a perfect scene with the songs “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” — originally by Klaatu and then also released by The Carpenters — as well as a purple/pink neon color palette that feels straight out of Color Out of Space, this is an odd duck of a film and I say that in the best possible tone. I’ve often wondered just why someone would join a cult like this and seeing the reasons why Aurora comes to the initial meetings to the initial joy she feels in belonging to something makes it all seem so much more normal than you’d ever think. And then the movie gets delightfully strange.

Cosmic Dawn is playing select theaters and on demand now from Cranked Up. You can learn more on the official site.