ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A.C. Nicholas, who has a sketchy background and hails from parts unknown in Western Pennsylvania, was once a drive-in theater projectionist and disk jockey, Currently, in addition to being a writer, editor, podcaster, and voice-over artist, he contributes to Drive-In Asylum. His first article, “Grindhouse Memories Across the U.S.A.,” was published in issue #23. He’s also written “I Was a Teenage Drive-in Projectionist” and “Emanuelle in Disney World and Other Weird Tales of a Trash Film Lover” for upcoming issues.

Quick. Name a movie written by the late, great Saturday Night Live and National Lampoon writer Michael O’Donoghue and the late, great Saturday Night Live writer and creator of the cult TV show Square Pegs Anne Beatts, starring John Belushi, Bill Murray, Christopher Guest, and Brian Doyle-Murray. (No, it’s not Nothing Lasts Forever, the famous “lost” Bill Murray film produced by Lorne Michaels and written and directed by Tom Schiller.)

Give up? It’s the American version of La Honte de La Jungle, re-titled for the American market as Tarzoon, Shame of the Jungle and later just Shame of the Jungle. (In the UK, it’s known as Jungle Burger). Whatever its title, it’s a dirty French/Belgian animated film, with the English-language version written and voice acted by all those SNL folks.

But why have I never seen nor heard of this thing, a John Belushi/Bill Murray film, you ask? Good question. I’ll get to it. But first, some details about the film itself. Made back in the heyday of adult animated films like Fritz the Cat, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, and Down and Dirty Duck, Shame of the Jungle, to stick with its final U.S. title, is a twisted, adult version of Tarzan. We have Tarzoon, renamed “Shame” after the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate cried foul, along with “June” and a masturbating monkey living in the “bush” of Africa. (Yeah, the movie’s humor goes there—and I just did too.) Evil queen Bazonga wants to take over the world tomorrow, but unfortunately, she’s bald. Along with her beauticians, who are conjoined twins, she hatches a plan to kidnap June and scalp her for her long, flowing locks.

And it gets smuttier and nuttier from there with an army of human-sized penises bouncing along on their testicles, animals having sex, humans having sex, a racist depiction of African natives, a stereotypical British explorer, and Shame, our hero, meeting one “Craig Baker from Champagne-Urbana,” a drunken frat boy with “69” on his shirt, voiced by John Belushi. If you watch the end credits, Belushi is uniquely credited as having “created and performed” the character.

So now you’re asking, what manner of insanity is this, and who created it? Well, it’s the work of celebrated Belgian animator Picha, a/k/a Jean-Paul Walravens. Picha’s animation has that fun, exaggerated 70s look (if you remember the “Keep on Trucking” bumper stickers, you’ll get the idea) in pastel color. Or maybe it was just the washed-out print I saw. In spots, there are some reused backgrounds, not unlike the economy measures taken by Saturday morning cartoons back in the day. (And let’s not forget about all the kinky cartoon sex.) But overall, the film looks good.

The humor starts low (the “bush” joke) and never rises above sniggering middle-school playground stuff, but you know what? It’s mostly funny, if you like the lowest of lowbrow humor, and it doesn’t wear too thin throughout the short run time. That run time, by the way, is debatable. The gray-market versions that I’ve found online all run about 68 minutes, though I’ve seen reports of 71- and 85-minute run times.

The voice actors acquit themselves well to the dubbing script by O’Donoghue and Beatts, with the coup being that the U.S. post-production team got Johnny Weismuller, Jr., son of the legendary original Tarzan, (Johnny Sr. was born in Windber, in my vicinage of Western Pennsylvania, of all places) to play Shame. Another notable, Adolph Caesar, the booming voice of many 70s trailers, including Dawn of the Dead, is also in the cast. But you’ll be hard pressed to identify the voices of the SNL folks, who have small parts. All, that is, except for Belushi. As mentioned, he wrote his college-kid part himself, and he’s a highlight of the film, especially when he goes off on a drunken tangent about the film The Silver Chalice with Jack Palance.

But back to the burning question: Why is this movie unknown to even the most ardent Belushi and SNL fans? I think the answer is that it was released by International Harmony, a company set-up by the great Stuart S. Shapiro, who created the legendary USA Network series Night Flight. While Shapiro’s work on that show was brilliant, his efforts as a movie distributor were far less successful. He made money with Tunnel Vision, an early sketch comedy, but his company was also the original distributor of the ill-fated Effects, the brilliant, low-budget Pittsburgh horror film. It played only a few theaters in 1980 and disappeared without a trace for decades, the victim of no marketing and bookings due to International Harmony’s financial troubles. It seems Shame of the Jungle was plagued by even more distribution problems. First, there was the copyright issue. So the film had to be retitled and perhaps re-looped. And it initially received an X-rating.

I read where Shapiro said that even though the film was pornographic, he didn’t recall any problems importing it into the U.S. It was later cut to get an “R” rating–hence, the different reported run-times—and it played a few places, mainly at midnight showings. Many sources report that it first played in the U.S. in 1979—indeed, there’s a New York Times review from September 14, 1979–but I distinctly recall midnight showings of the X-rated Tarzoon version in Virginia when I was at the University of Richmond, circa 1978. And while later it made it to VHS, it’s never had an official DVD or Blu-ray release in North America. (It’s part of a Picha Blu-ray box set in Europe.) You can find it on YouTube and the Internet Archive in what I’m going to assume is the cut, R-rated version (but I can’t be sure),

So now you know the name of the lost SNL feature film. It’s a “shame” this film isn’t more widely available (keeping with the film’s low humor, I couldn’t resist the pun). If enough people read this review, see the VHS rip, and convince a company like Vinegar Syndrome to find it, we can all enjoy an oddity that has been lost to the sands of time. I sure hope that happens. Shame of the Jungle, by any name, is worth it.

Naakt over de schutting was the film that Sylvia Kristel made before becoming a worldwide star in Emmanuelle. She’s a small — but important — part of this crime movie, in which pinball arcade owner Rick Lemming (Rijk de Gooyer) becomes part of the drama surrounding singer Lilly Marischka (Kristel), who is dating his karate champ friend Ed Svaan (Dutch martial artist Jon Bluming, the first non-Japanese in being awarded the 6 dan in karate from Masutatsu Oyama and eventually reaching the rank of 10 dan; his students included Chris Dolman, Willem Ruska, Semmy Schilit and Gilbert Yvel).

All Rick wants to do is hang out with his pidgeons and manage his pinball games, but he keeps getting pulled into all sorts of crime and murder. He’s also renting a room to a young teacher named Penny (Jennifer Willems) who knows more than a little about karate.

Lilly has asked Ed to be in an art film with him that ends up being an adult movie; she runs from the set but afterward, nearly everyone involved is murdered and Kristel is injured in an accident while singing at a TV studio, which is a place filled with all manner of villains.

This movie is somehow a comedy, a murder mystery, a musical, a sexy film, a drama and a martial arts movie starring a legitimate martial artist who was such a controversial figure — the Japanese were upset that a foreigner had been given such a high rank — that his master made a challenge to all Asian martial artists to fight him and if Bluming lost, he’d be stripped of his black belt. In the only challenge he had to fight, against Kwan Mo Gun, Bluming won quickly with an open-handed strike.

Naked Over the Fence is definitely worth seeing as a curiousity as it has a very young Kristel singing in English and just being charming. I also really liked the sarcastic way that Rijk de Gooyer played his character; he was also in Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre and played the Dutch version of Archie Bunker.

Cult Epics blu ray of Naked Over the Fence includes a new 4K HD restoration from the original negative, audio commentary by biographer Harry Hosman, behind the scenes features, an interview with director Frans Weisz, B-Movie Orchestra and interview with composer Ruud Bos, a promotional gallery, several trailers for other Sylvia Kristel movies and the limited edition of 1000 blu rays will include an exclusive bonus CD  with soundtrack by Ruud Bos & Slipcase. You can order Naked Over the Fence from blu ray and DVD from MVD and on blu ray from  Diabolik DVD.

“The only law is the Black Tiger’s. The only justice is John Steele’s.”

How are people not losing their minds about this movie?

Directed and written by Robert Boris (the writer of Electra Glide In Blue and Doctor Detroit), this is the story of Vietnam vet John Steele (Martin Kove) and his struggle to fit in with the world after being a career soldier. When his cop friend Lee — and his wife and mother just to out an exclamation point on the crime — is killed, Steele suspects someone they knew in Vietnam, General Bon Soong Kwan (Soon-Tek Oh, Missing In Action 2: The Beginning), who has gone from stealing from the CIA to being an important figure in business.

He’s also running a gang called the Black Tigers, which means that John Steele has to pretty much kill everyone in Kwan’s employ. This is endorsed by his former boss — yes, Steele was a cop once but was too rough even for the LAPD — Captain Bennett (Ronny Cox) who unleashes our hero on Kwan.

This movie is packed with some amazing people, like Sela Ward as Steele’s ex-wife, Bernie Casey as Detective Tom Reese, Sarah Douglas as a district attorney, Jan Gan Boyd from Assassination as Lee’s daughter Cami that Steele promises to raise, plus Shannon Tweed, Peter Kwong (Rain from Big Trouble In Little China), David “Squiggy” Lander as a soldier, Al Leong, James Lew, George Cheung and Phil Fondacaro as a small bartender.

There’s also a bar scene with The Desert Rose Band playing and Astrid Plane from Animotion singing and performing “You’re Not a Lover,” a music video shoot that ends with gunfire when the Black Tigers roll on up. I mean, that scene is worth watching the entire movie for, but this is also a movie well worth all of your time, as Steele also has a killer snake as a pet and is given to wearing camouflage face paint.

Kove usually plays bad guys, like Kreese in The Karate Kid, Nero the Hero in Death Race 2000, Ericson the helicopter pilot who dares screw over Rambo in Rambo: First Blood Part II and as the killer martial artist Mr. Lee in Shootfighter: Fight to the Death. It seems like he’s having so much fun here and wondering who would allow him to star in a movie as the hero.

How was this movie not made by Cannon?

The Kino Lorber blu ray of Steele Justice has a new audio commentary with Kove and director and writer Robert Boris, moderated by film historian Alex Van Dyne (manager of Hollywood’s first video store, Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee) and a trailer. You can get it from Kino Lorber.

What a path from Japan to my little house in Monongahela, PA, USA: Filmed in 1995. Edited in 2005. Completed in 2009. Released in 2012 on DVD-R. Theatrical release and DVD in Japan 2014. Released internationally in 2017. And now finally on blu ray from Visual Vengeance in 2022.

After a surprise phone call from his photojournalist ex-girlfriend interrupts the most important part of his day — his workout — Naoto agrees to meet her to research haunted houses. Along with a professional psychic, they enter the abandoned home of Naoto’s father, a place with a dark secret and a ghost — Naoto’s mother! — with a grudge decades old.

Then a clock flies off the wall and knocks out the psychic, possessing her with the spirit of the long-dead spirit which has been stuck within the walls of the house. And then the goop and gore start flowing through the floorboards and down the walls and Evil Dead gets referenced, but man this shot on video film is closer to a rip-off of a rip-off of a direct to video sequel to that movie and that’s more than a great thing.

I mean, Naoto even finds a shotgun and says “Groovy.” And that’s all you really need, you know?

Extras on Visual Vengeance’s blu ray release — available from MVD — include a new interview with director Shinichi Fukazawa, a commentary track with directors Adam Green (Hatchet, Frozen) and Joe Lynch    (Shudder’s Creepshow, Mayhem), another commentary track with Japanese film historian James Harper, liner notes by Matt Desidero of Horror Boobs, a limited edition slipcase, reversible cover art, a collectible mini-poster, a “Stick your own” VHS sticker set and a vintage style laminated Video Store Rental Card.

A notorious underground classic for the last 25 years, this so-called American Video Nasty is finally available to a mass audience. And thanks to Visual Vengeance — due diligence, I’ve recorded several commentary tracks and written liner notes for some upcoming films — this is available for the first time ever on blu ray. If you haven’t seen one of their releases yet, it’s like the Criterion Collection grew a sack and stopped releasing movies that eight snooty people care about and started releasing movies that eight maniacs care about with all the love and care that pure cinema deserves, if pure cinema is a movie with a flying zombie baby.

Directed by Matt Jaissle from a script by Todd Tjersland and Sammy Shapiro, things get started when police detectives Martin Manners (Steve Sheppard) and Orville Sloane (Gary Browning) arrive too late to save Manners’ sister from being the next target of hockey-masked rapist serial killer Logan (Isaac Cooper), a killer who has aready claimed two hundred victims. Manners snaps when he gets to the scene and becomes judge, jury and executioner as he blows Logan away.

Some time later, a Luciferian gang marches through the cemetery where Logan has been buried. They kill his infant child — living up to the promise of the Satanic Panic — and throw it into Logan’s grave before taking turns urinating on its dead corpse, all the while chanting rituals and making you consider whether you’re ready for what this movie has to deliver. This ceremony brings Logan back, except now he has a yard-long appendage and he’s ready to use it on any girl unlucky enough to get in his way, including German porn star Dru Berrymore and a girl who is assaulting the tradesman’s entrance of a blow-up doll that Logan falls in love with.

Keep in mind — this baby is totally a toy and that fact is never disguised, pushing this movie from simply strange into sheer madness, the kind that I hunt down and treasure.

Two of the cult members, Barney (Jason McGee) and Jack (Christian Curmudgeon) are trying to escape the carnage they created, as the baby comes back as a flying zombie with a cartoon voice and Manners continues to go down a dark path filled with violence and drug use.

How could this movie be made any better? Well, it’s dedicated to Joe D’Amato and trust me, I think the man of many names would approve of the sheer lunacy and exploitation madness that this movie contains.

Just a warning: nearly every scene in this movie is filled with sex, violence or sex being interrupted with violence. It’s a vile, disgusting movie with a helium-voiced flying demon baby, and you’re not going to find anything else like it anywhere.

Necro Files 3000 (2017): Two decades to the very day, the Necro Murders are happening again. Investigative journalist Phineas Hogweather (played by a Count Chocula puppet) is watching his favorite cam girl when she’s assaulted by the undead and very much alive again Logan. After meeting up with occult authority Professor Blackthorn (a baby doll with a Magic Marker drawn beard), the creature is chased around the planet and back to America, where our heroes unleash the Pentagon’s deadly Killbot 9000 and, well, kill everything.

Made in Superpuppettronimation — which mainly means throwing blood at toys — and featuring just as much sex and violence as the original, but maybe even more because it’s harder to be offended by puppets and dolls, I had an absolute blast with this absurd film, one that takes a full minute to explain that we’re in the jungle, as we see the jungle, but then keep hearing Hogweather and Blackthorn discuss just how dark the jungle is.

A more than worthy sequel.

Directed by Elliott Lester and written by Javier Gullón, Aftermath is based on the 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision of a passenger airliner with a cargo jet with Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the part of Roman Melnyk, who is based on Vitaly Kaloyev, who lost his wife and two children in the actual accident and then tracked down air traffic controller Peter Nielsen and killed him in front of his family.

Aftermath is perhaps not the Arnold movie you were looking for, as this is a movie in which he struggles with the lost of his family and attempts to figure out how to deal with Jacob “Jake” Bonanos not being punished.

Unlike the real air traffic controller — who Vitaly claims never showed remorse and actually was nearly rude about it — Jacob’s life has been destroyed by the accident as well. The cycle of pain continues with his son dreaming of killing Roman.

This movie was filmed in the perfect place for Arnold: Columbus, Ohio, the home of his Arnold Classic. Roman’s construction site is actually the parking garage for the Greater Columbus Convention Center.

The Necroambulist virus has changed the world and now, it’s changed the life of the Vogel family, as Maggie (Abigail Breslin) has been bitten and urges her father Wade (Arnold Schwarzenegger) not to find her. He still seeks her out and brings her home, knowing that in a few days or perhaps even a week she will have to take a painful drug cocktail or be killed by him.

This is a mournful, meditative film in which Maggie and her father try to connect before she dies, along with her wondering if she should contact her friends and slowly becoming one of the walking dead, her body filled with black blood and maggots, her senses smelling food when it’s really her stepmother Caroline (Joely Richardson).

Directed by Henry Hobson and written by John Scott 3, Arnold loved the script for this movie so much that he took no money for it. He shows his dramatic range in this film and even in the scenes where zombies are being killed, he’s upset by his violence because he once knew these creatures when they were actual people. This is also a much darker zombie film than the last time Breslin went up against the undead in Zombieland.

One of the amazing things about late in the career movies of big stars is that you can get stuff like, “What if Arnold Schwarzenegger was in a loose adaption of the Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None?”

Yes, before he made the first Suicide Squad, David Ayer made this, which he co-wrote with Skip Woods and cast Arnold as John “Breacher” Wharton, the leader of a DEA’s Special Operations Team who steal $10 million from a drug cartel and blow up the building to cover their crime. Now, after being reinstated, members start dying and the police want to know why.

One of the team, “Smoke” Jennings, was killed during that raid. Now, Tom “Pyro” Roberts (Max Martini) has also been murdered when someone tows his mobile home into the path of a train. Caroline Brentwood (Olivia Williams) and her partner Darius Jackson (Harold Perrineau) are on the case, which has them find the next victims, Eddie “Neck” Jordan (Josh Holloway) literally nailed to the ceiling and Agent Bryce “Tripod” McNeely (Kevin Vance) was has been shot.  It looks like the cartel has come to collect their lost money.

James “Monster” Murray (Sam Worthington) and his wife Lizzy (Mireille Enos) were also part of this mission and reveal to Brentwood that the cartel had kidnapped Breacher’s family and sent videos and pieces of their bodies to taunt him. The team had told him to get over it — how can you get over it? — and it’s also revealed that Brentwood is sleeping with Breacher.

It turns out that two of their number — Lizzy and Julius “Sugar” Edmonds (Terrence Howard) — have been behind the murders, framing the cartel for sniper shooting Joe “Grinder” Phillips (Joe Manganiello) as well as all of the others. But the mystery is not done.

Sabotage had the worst box office of a Schwarzenegger movie in over thirty years. That said, it’s a fun Italian Western-like film that has no small amount of blood and guns.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on September 2, 2019.

Despite the teaming of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Escape Plan underperformed at the U.S. box office. So how have there been three of these films? Simple. International box-office success, as this movie debuted in first place in several foreign markets, with the total international gross more than doubling its $50 million budget, leading to a worldwide gross of $137.3 million.

Ray Breslin (Stallone) is a former prosecutor, businessman and skilled structure engineer, but he’s really known for being the world’s best escape artist. As part of Breslin-Clark, he poses as an inmate to test supermax prisons from the inside out. His goal? Keeping criminals in jail, because back when he was a lawyer, his wife and child were killed by a convict he put away that escaped.

Breslin and business partner Lester Clark (Vincent D’Onofrio) get a multimillion-dollar offer from CIA agent Jessica Mayer, who wants them to test a top secret prison where several prisoners have disappeared. They’re not told where this prison is, but Breslin allows himself to be captured. However, things go wrong right away, as his tracking chip is removed and he has no idea where he is.

Now, he’s under the control of Warden Hobbes (Jim Caviezel) and meets fellow prisoner Emil Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger). Together with Javed, a Muslim prisoner, they start to create an escape plan — but soon learn that they are on a cargo ship in the middle of the ocean.

This movie is packed with interesting supporting players. Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson plays Hush, Ray’s best friend and technical expert. Sam Neill is a prison doctor. And former soccer star Vinnie Jones is the lead guard.

Escape Plan was directed by Mikael Hafstrom (1408) and was written by Jason Keller and Miles Chapman, who has written all of the Escape Plan films. It’s way better than the next two films in the series, but that kind of goes without saying, right?

See also: Escape Plan 2: Hades and Escape Plan: The Extractors.

The American directorial debut of South Korean director Kim Jee-woon (I Saw the Devil), this was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first lead acting role in a decade.

He plays Sheriff Ray Owens, who has left behind Los Angeles for the small town of Sommerton Junction, Arizona. A failed mission led to his partner being crippled and his team killed, so now he writes parking tickets and tries to hide his depression.

Now, Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) has escaped from custody and his men have cleared a path to Mexico for him. The only thing stopping him is the town of Sommerton Junction. Owens realizes that the odds are against him, so he deputizes a vet with PTSD named Mike Figuerola (Luis Guzman) and goofball weapons collector Lewis Dinkum (Johnny Knoxville).

You know why I love Arnold? During filming, he was spotted at a WalMart. He was there buying clothes for the crew, who were freezing during the desert night shoots.