EDITOR’S NOTE: This was on the site for the first time on December 3, 2020. Sword of the Barbarians was not produced by Cannon but was theatrically distributed by Cannon Releasing Corporation.

Known in Italy as Sangraal, la spada di fuoco (Sangraal, the Sword of Fire), this is the first of two barbarian movies that Michele Massimo Tarantini made. For a director better known for his commedia sexy all’italiana films, this is pretty decent. By that, I mean that you have to have an affinity for Italian sword and sorcery. If you haven’t figured out that I do, well, now you do.

This also has the alternate name, Barbarian Master, which is a very metal movie name.

Sangraal (Pietro Torrisi, who started his career in peblum movies like The Ten Gladiators and ended it in sword and sorcery movies like Gunan, King of the Barbarians) is Sangraal, whose father’s kingdom has been decimated by the evil warlord Nantuk (Mario Novelli, Warriors of the Year 2072, Amok Train, Eyes Behind the Stars). He leads his people to a new land which is ruled by Belem (Luciano Rossi, whose career hits all of the Italian trends, from westerns like Django to the Eurospy Killer 77, Alive or Dead to giallo sich as Death Carries a Cane and Death Smiles at a Murderer and poliziotteschi, war films and exploitation in Salon Kitty).

Nantuk has become a king, yet the Goddess of Fire and Death* (Xiomara Rodriguez) demands more. Sangraal must die or Nantuk will lose everything. So he does what any madman usually does and crucifies our hero — hello, Conan the Barbarian — and forcing him to watch everyone in the village be killed**, including the Goddess personally murdering his wife. He’s saved by the archer Li Wo Twan (Haruhiko Yamanouchi, the only actor I know who has been in both Joe D’Amato and Wes Anderson movies) and Belem’s daughter Ati (Yvonne Fraschetti, Demons 2).

This movie actually has something to say about love, loss and grief, as a wizard tells Sangraal that he must give up on the memory of his dead wife and keep on living if he wants to defeat Nantuk, who is devoted to killing him. Then again, as you deal with these issues in your life, I doubt you will ever battle an evil king. That said, perhaps you’ll find something in this to help you.

You have to give it to the servants of Nantuk. When Sangraal challenges our antagonist to a duel to the death by the traditional rules — with no interference — they refuse to help, even when their leader demands they kill our hero. And then, they just let Ati go at the end.

This movie has taught me that goddesses can be killed, if you have a magic crystal crossbow.

Also — and perhaps most importantly — Sabrina Siani (who is pretty much the queen of these movies, thanks to appearances in The Throne of Fire, Ator the Fighting Eagle and, most importantly, her turn as Ocron in Conquest) is in this as the Goddess of Gold and Life.

This is why I watch movies, to be battered into happiness by Italian barbarians battling half-naked and fully naked evil beings.

You can get this from Revok.

*If you’re watching this and wonder, “Have I seen this village get destroyed before?” You’re right. It’s the exact same footage that is in The Throne of Fire.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site  on July 5, 2018. Graduation Day was not produced by Cannon but was theatrically distributed by Cannon Releasing Corporation.

By 1981, all manner of slasher had been slashed. From dates on the calendar to holidays to high school, college, probably every trade schools, if you could kill someone someplace on some special day, there was a great chance that cinemas, drive-in and video stores had documented evidence of the murders. But a track team getting offed? What a twist!

At one of their track meets, star runner Laura Ramstead collapses at the finish line, pushed too hard by her coach and dying of exhaustion. Soon, her sister Anne is on leave from the Navy, back home with the mother and stepfather she desperately wanted to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a killer is wiping out the track team one by one, complete with giallo-like black gloves and a stopwatch. With each kill, he or she uses bright lipstick to cross another member off of the team’s photo. If Anne has gloves just like the killer, is it all a coincidence? Hmm?

There are all manner of people of interest, from Kevin, Laura’s boyfriend, to Dolores (Linnea Quigley!) the team’s bad girl and Principal Gugilone (Michael Pataki, who is in almost every movie that we watch), who has a stopwatch and plenty of knives in his desk drawer. And oh yeah, Coach Michaels (Christopher George, Gates of Hell/City of the Living Dead, Day of the Animals, Mortuary, Pieces, pretty much every movie that I watch that doesn’t have Michael Pataki in it, so this is a rare crossover), who isn’t allowed to coach any longer, despite the fact that it was a blood clot that really killed Laura.

Hey look! There’s Vanna White as a school bully! And more dead bodies! Soon, Kevin and Coach Michaels get into a huge argument over who the killer is, but the cops get there and shoot the wrong guy. Yep, it’s Kevin and he has Laura’s corpse all made up in her graduation cap and gown. He also has a sweet Vampirella poster on his wall.

A fight ensues and Anne ends up pushing Kevin into spikes — but not before body after body is revealed. That night, he comes back to kill her — an undead version of him at least — but it’s all a dream. It’s just her asshole stepfather, which makes it even easier to leave the town behind forever.

I ended up liking this one way more than I thought that I would. It has some elements of style, plenty of gore and lots of ridiculous moments, like a bed of spikes killing a high jumper. Plus, there’s a heavy metal concert with the band Felony, a roller disco scene and a combination football/knife murder weapon. Truly, something for every member of the family to enjoy. Director Herb Freed also gave us Tomboy and Haunts.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Beyond Evil was not produced by Cannon but was theatrically distributed by Cannon Releasing Corporation. You can read another take on the movie here.

Architect Larry Andrews and his new wife Barbara (horror movie super couple John Saxon and Linda Day George; if these two ever had a child it would either be a demon or a gleaming golden angel) have moved to a small island off the coast of the Philippines. Del (former minor league baseball player Michael Dante; he’s also in The Farmer and was introduced to acting by John Wayne), Larry’s business partner, had promised them a brand new condo. Instead, they’re moving into Casa Fortuna, the haunted former home of Esteban and Alma Martín (Janice Lynde), who died after a fight started by Alma’s obsession with the occult.

Within what seems like minutes, next door neighbors and psychic surgery experts Dr. Solomon (David Opatoshu) and his wife Leia (Anna Marisse) warn Larry that Alma wants his young bride’s body for her own. At the same time, Barbara is luring Del into the home with promises of sex and then shoving him off the balcony.

You know what this movie needs? An exorcism. Well, it gets it.

Herb Freed is kind of a forgotten king. I mean, the dude made Haunts, Graduation Day and Tomboy, which are three other movies I watch all the time. He wrote the script with producer David Baughn and Paul Ross.

You can watch this on Tubi or order it from Vinegar Syndrome.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally was posted on August 27, 2018. Alien Contamination was not produced by Cannon but was theatrically distributed by Cannon Releasing Corporation.

As a large ship drifts into New York City, you may wonder, “Am I watching Zombi?” No, you’re watching Contamination or Alien Contamination, but the similarities may be international. Both films shared the same production offices and director Luigi Cozzi (Starcrash, Hercules) was so impressed that he wanted to hire the same cast, but only ended up with Ian McCulloch.

The ship is packed with large containers of coffee, which really hide green eggs that pulsate and make droning sounds. The crew of the ship is more than just dead. They’re in pieces and the rescue team soon discovers why. The eggs tend to explode, spraying acid all over the place that’s toxic to anything human. As soon as it touches them, they explode in glorious slow motion bursts of red food color and Karo syrup.

The military soon links the green eggs with a recent mission to Mars that caused one astronaut to disappear and the other, Commander Hubbard (there’s Ian McCulloch!) to become a drunk. He joins Colonel Stella Holmes and New York cop Tony Aris (Marino Masé, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times) on the case, which takes them all the way to a Columbian coffee plantation (well, the movie was funded by Columbia cocaine dealers) and Hubbard’s old partner, who is now in the thrall of a gigantic alien cyclops (!).

Originally intended as a straight sequel to Alien, this movie enters James Bond territory at times and is not afraid — at all — to wipe out characters left and right. It also has a scene where a green egg menaces a girl in the shower, which should be frightening yet comes off as hilarious. That said, this has a loud Goblin soundtrack that makes this seem like a much better movie than it is.

But hey — who can hate a movie with dialogue like this?

NYPD Lt. Tony Aris: Jesus Christ, the whole world is going to be wiped out and all this broad’s worried about is getting changed!

Colonel Stella Holmes: Listen, Aris, if I have to die with the rest of the world then I want to have a proper dress on and clean underwear.

That’s better than the first few minutes of the film, where almost the entire dialogue is muffled. But hey — you can either choose great dialogue or awesome gore. Guess which one you get here?

Want to see it for yourself? Shudder and Amazon Prime both have this streaming and you can get the Arrow blu ray at Diabolik DVD. You can also watch Contamination with commentary from Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder.

Based on the Isaac Bashevis Singer book The Magician of Lublin, this Menahem Golan-directed movie was co-written by Golan, Irving S. White and Sheldon Patinkin, who was a major force in Chicago theater, serving as a chair of the Theater Department of Columbia College Chicago, artistic director of the Getz Theater of Columbia College, artistic consultant of The Second City and of Steppenwolf Theatre and co-director of the Steppenwolf Theatre Summer Ensemble Workshops.

Yasha Mazur (Alan Arkin) is a con man and womanizer, but he’s also a stage magician of some fame. While he’s married to Esther (Linda Bernstein), but he never sees her. Instead, his life is on the road and filled with so many relationships with women, such as Zeftel (Valerie Perrine), his mentally deranged assistant Magda (Maia Danziger), the widow Emilia (Louise Fletcher) and her daughter Halina (Lisa Whelchel), a sick child who Yasa loves as if she were his own but will never be able to provide for.

Oh man — this all gets messy. Zeftel is leaving to work for a man who is really trying to sell her into human trafficking, so Yasha performs a smaller show and misses his big break and make enough money to be a success in Emilia’s eyes. Magda kills herself and as Yasha tries to burglarize a rich count, he has a vision of death. Also: Lou Jacobi, Murray from Amazon Women On the Moon, plays Yasha’s manager.

The magician comes home and lives in a tomb, giving advice to those who come to him. Emilia has become a rich kept woman for the rich man and begs for his forgiveness while Magda’s family — Shelley Winters is her mother; she also worked with Golan in Diamonds, Over the Brooklyn Bridge, Déjà Vu and The Delta Force — comes and attempts to kill Yasha, but he has escaped and fulfilled his dream of flying away.

Isaac Bashevis, who wrote the original book, also saw his stories Yentl and Enemies, A Love Story made into movies in the 80s. Also, predating Stranger Things, Golan used “The Magician,” a Kate Bush song that doesn’t appear on any albums, as the theme for his film.

This is a magic-realist story that would probably have been a great film if made by someone like Ken Russell or Alejandro Jodorowski. I love Menahem, but this is perhaps a bit out of his scope, although the does throw a big cast at this.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on November 7, 2021.

Yes, don’t be fooled by that title, as this is otherwise known as Yotzim Kavua, Greasy Kid Stuff or, most obvious, Lemon Popsicle 2. Yes, the film that inspired The Last American Virgin doesn’t just have one sequel, but many, many chapters to tell.

Even better, it played on double bills in the UK with Rosemary’s Killer, which we know better as The Prowler.

Directed and written by Boaz Davidson, this film boasts the same lost in translation insanity of the last one as well as twenty-two songs from the fifties. Which is weird, because while the boys have hair and clothes from the era and the music is right, the girls have makeup straight out of 1979. Maybe memory really is a fickle thing, huh?

That said, every guy in this movie is beyond a jerk. Not just in a “aren’t 80s sex comedy guys horrible” way but in a “why aren’t these young men in jail” and “why do these women keep taking them back” way. Its “heroes” Benji, Bobby and Huey are willing to screw one another over to keep screwing and one just ponders why they ever became friends in the first place.

Nobody brings anybody a bag of oranges, I’ll tell you that much.

Someone does, however, throw eggs at a child directly after making out. I am not making this up.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie was first on the site on November 10, 2021.

While it wasn’t released until 1979, the movie that became Savage Weekend — also The Killer Behind the Mask — started as The Upstate Murders. That means that it predates most of the commonly accepted “first” slashers like Halloween and Friday the 13th.

It was acquired by the Cannon Group — one of the few slashers they put out along with Silent Night, Bloody Night*, X-Ray, New Year’s Evil and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, although I can make an argument for Cobra, Hero and the Terror and 10 to Midnight being slashers and I consider Schizoid Americanized giallo — and had a budget of $58,000.

This is a slasher with the most ridiculous of conceits — everyone comes to upstate New York to see a new schooner — but it also has a heroic gay character (Nicky, played by Christopher Allport, who was in both Jack Frost movies and ironically killed in real life by an avalanche) and a woman escaping a bad marriage which seemingly has followed her. Also, since the aspect ratio got screwed up, the boom mic is a frequent co-star.

That said, it has a sewing needle through the head, someone accidentally killed by a bandsaw when the wrong light switch gets turned on, a hanging and an Upstate New York Chainsaw Massacre. It’s not perfect — it’s barely even worthwhile — but at least director/writer got to go on and make the much more interesting Schizoid, which has hot tub therapy sessions, scissor murders, Donna Wilkes being in love with her father Klaus Kinski and a love scene where Kinski has sex with a stripper against a hot water heater.

*I realize that this film is a Dewey-Friedland Cannon release and not Golan-Globus. That said, Golan-Globus distributed Graduation Day, Don’t Go Near the Park and The Hills Have Eyes Part 2, but did not make them.

Eric Lewald developed X-Men: The Animated Series, but before that he directed — with Glenn Morgan — and wrote this sex comedy that got distributed by Cannon that played drive-in double features with Gas Pump Girls.

It’s about two roommates — small-town virgin Jane (Ashley Vaughn) and promiscuous Vivian (Leslie Blalock) — as they deal with their first year of college. Also, every few moments, a woman takes her clothes off because that’s the kind of movie this is.

Shot in Knoxville, TN, this also has Georgina Harrell as Maxine “The Machine,” a woman who will look down a man’s pants and declare, “What? All meat and no potatoes?” She would parlay this experience into being in The First Turn-On!! It also has a band with goat masks, a dream sequence with pig masks and a heavy teacher called Professor L.P. Bilbo (B.M. Culpepper) who ends up gang banging with every female in the movie, including our formerly innocent protagonist Jane.

Several IMDB posters — who claim to be in the movie — say that this was shot on location by two University of Tennessee Graduate students and that Cannon added in all the sex scenes. I have no idea how they did that when the leads are in several of them, but maybe they mean the cutaways to more nudity. They also would like you to believe that the original version of this movie is a coming of age film instead a movie about coming, but this sounds like the way Christopher Lee would claim Jess Franco fooled him into being in a softcore movie and was so angry he was in several more of his movies.

It took three people to write Gas Pump Girls: director Joel Bender, who also wrote The Returning and The Immortalizer as well as editing Warrior Queen; David A. Davies, who also wrote the 1990 TV movie Buried Alive and Isaac Blech, who also wrote the songs.

June (Kirsten Baker, Friday the 13th Part 2) and her friends graduate high school and help out at the failing gas station run by June’s uncle Joe (Huntz Hall, who I was amazed that was in this; when I asked the late great Mike McPadden why, he said, “If you can get Huntz Hall and Joe E. Ross to do a few hours work in Gas Pump Girls, for example, you get them.”) and keep Mr. Friendly (Dave Shelley) from putting him out of business. Hiring her boyfriend (Dennis Bowen) and the local gang the Vultures, June works on keeping Uncle Joe’s business alive through titillating uniforms and sexy advertising.

Does this sound like Starhops to you?

The aforementioned Joe E. Ross shows up with pro wrestler Mike Mazurki as two gangsters hired to kill June, but the Vultures take care of that. Actually, the teens get through all of the challenges that Mr. Friendly throws their way and have a successful business — and plenty of sex, naturally — before college even begins.

The cast also includes the last movie role of Sandy Johnson, who was the June 1974 Playboy Playmate of the Month, but more importantly played Michael Myers’ doomed sister Judith in Halloween; Steve Bond (who did a Playgirl centerfold in October of 1975 and was in Massacre at Central High and Picasso Trigger), Ken Lerner (one of the Malachi Brothers on Happy Days) and Demetre Phillips (Stone Cold, Only You) as the Vultures; Cheech Marin’s one-time wife Rikki; Leslie King (who was Tammy in Jennifer and would later write To Die For, which starred Steve Bond); Linda Lawrence (Death Dimension) and Cousin Brucie getting to be this movie’s Wolfman Jack.