Bad Man, Trained to Kill and Trained to Kill USA to some, The No Mercy Man was the first and last film for director Daniel Vance, as well as Dean Cundy’s first movie ever.

Prophet (Rockne Tarkington, Black Samson) and his gang of carnies have come to the home of the Hands and nearly killed their patriarch Mark (Richard X. Slattery) and assaulted young Mary (Heidi Vaughn). And even after she stabs one and escapes into the desert, her Vietnam vet brother Steve Sandor — a Greenville, PA native as well as Darkwolf in Fire and Ice and the man himself in Stryker — just says that the cops can handle it.

Two of Olie’s fellow vets visit and we soon discover just how withdrawn Ollie has become, not even telling his family that he had been a decorated commander of an Army Ranger LARRP (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol).

Meanwhile, Prophet, Dunn (Ron Thompson), their men and Pillbox’s (Sid Haig) motorcycle gang plan on breaking back into the Hand house, stealing their guns and killing pretty much everyone in town.

This movie also has its own theme song “The No Mercy Man,” which was written by Lois Vincent and Don Vincent (the composer of the music for Blood Mania and The Night God Screamed) and performed by Al Gambino and Glory, with these lyrics: “Love and lust are the same to him, like being raped by the devil.”

Pretty much a Western — and a Tarantino favorite — this may have come out a month before Walking Tall, but later posters had no problem putting this movie in the same cinematic universe, saying “Like Billy Jack and Buford Pusser, he stood tall!” You could also consider it a proto-Missing In Action, except Chuck Norris’ PTSD was soon forgotten so that he could sidekick the Vietnamese villains that still had American POWs into another dimension (they also come from the two versions of Cannon).

Also known as Pushing Up Daisies, this was directed by Ivan Nagy (a former bookmaker for the mob and boyfriend of Heidi Fleiss; he also directed episodes of CHIPs and HBO’s The Hitchhiker, as well as the movies Captain America II: Death Too Soon and Skinner) and co-written by Ross Hagen (who wrote and directed The Glove and Click: The Calendar Girl Killer, as well as acting in 89 movies including this movie).

Four criminals — Maddux (Hagen), Kelly (Kelly Thordsen), Wilber (Hoke Howell) and A.J. (Eric Lidberg) — have just successfully broken two of their members out of jail, killed a whole bunch of cops via machine gun and make a big score while dressed as nuns. Soon, they’re on the run again, killing even more cops on the way to the Mexican border, if they make it.

Yet this is no normal movie, as the editing is jarring, the montages are frequent and there are even sequences made out of still photos. It also has a two-minute-long sequence of heavy reverb audio and slow motion of a racist prison guard stabbing a black jailbird that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie and has credits running over it.

It’s really something else and I have no idea who this is for or how they hoped to sell it. Not every movie can be Easy Rider, which only seems slapdash. A lot of movies learned just how difficult it is to make a movie that seems like it wasn’t all that difficult to make.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on December 18, 2017.

Christmas Eve, 1950: Wilfred Butler runs from his home, on fire, and supposedly dies in the snow.

Christmas Eve, 1970: John Carter (Patrick O’Neal, The Stepford Wives, The Stuff) and his assistant Ingrid arrive in a small Massachusetts town. He meets with the town’s mayor, sheriff and major citizens like Tess Howard and Charlie Towman (John Carradine!), who may have lost his voice to a tracheotomy but not his need to smoke, about selling the Butler mansion as soon as possible. While staying overnight with Ingrid, who is also his mistress, they are both killed by an axe. The killer calls the police and says that they are Marianne.

Tess, the town’s telephone operator, hears the call and drives to the mansion, where she is greeted by Marianne Butler before she is hit in the head with a candle holder. Meanwhile, Sheriff Mason finds that Wilfred’s grave is empty. He is killed and thrown into the empty hole.

Mayor Adams is asked to go to the Butler mansion but leaves his daughter, Diane (Mary Woronov, Death Race 2000, Chelsea Girls) at home. She meets up with a man who claims to be Jeffrey Butler, who has taken the sheriff’s abandoned car. Together, they search for the lawman but can’t find him.

After taking Towman to the mansion, Jeffrey goes back to get Diane. On their way to the mansion, Towman stumbles blindly in front of them and is hit and killed. His eyes had been stabbed out and Diane grows worried about Jeffrey.

Well, fuck me, this movie is also about incest! A diary found at the house reveals that Jeffrey is the son of Wilfred and his daughter, Marianne. Afterward, Wilfred turned the house into an asylum and admitted his own daughter. However, on Christmas Eve 1935, he turned all of the inmates loose. They killed every doctor as well as his daughter. Of note here is that many of the inmates in the flashback are played by former stars of Warhol’s factory, like Ondine, Tally Brown, Kristen Steen and Lewis Love, as well as Flaming Creatures auteur Jack Smith, artist George Trakas and his wife at the time, Susan Rothenberg. Warhol superstar Candy Darling also shows up in the film as a party guest.

Well, it turns out that some of the inmates of the insane asylum ended up being important parts of the town — that’s right, all of the important people John met with in the beginning!

Mayor Adams arrives at the mansion and he and Jeffrey face off, guns drawn, each believing the other is the killer. They kill one another as Marianne shows up, but she is really Wilfred, who is alive. He went after the inmates for their role in the death of his daughter and used his grandson/son/secret shame Jeffrey as a patsy. Diane gets the gun and kills the old man. One year later, the mansion is demolished as she watches.

Director Theodore Gershuny worked on plenty of episodes of Monsters and Tales from the Darkside after this film. He was also married to Woronov. The original title for the film was Night Of The Dark Full Moon and it was also nearly called Zora, which makes little to no sense.

There are some really interesting techniques here, especially in the flashback sequences, which feel like tinted photographs come to life with the saddest version of “Silent Night” ever playing behind the action. I love how experimental and dark these sequences look — they remind me a little of the film Begotten.

This is a dark film for your holiday viewing, so if you want to chase away the family for a while, this is the one to do it.

Black motorcycle police officer Mark Johnson (Yapphet Koto, who directed and co-wrote this movie with Sean Cameron) and Jeff McMillan (Quinn K. Redeker) patrols the worst neighborhoods, seeking to control the gangs like the Virgins. Yet wen Mark bonds with their leader Big Donnie (Ted Cassidy), it causes a rift in the gang with Donnie’s lieutenant Kenny (Virgil Frye).

Originally named Speed Limit:65, the film finds the gang now menacing Mark’s girlfriend Margaret (Pamela Jones) and Donnie’s pregnant partner Judy (Corinne Cole).

This movie is near-impossible to find, so if you have a copy, please let me know.