EDITOR’S NOTE: Cannon didn’t produce this movie, but released it on video in Germany on the Cannon Screen Entertainment label.

Whether you call this Aces Go Places 3 – Our Man from Bond Street or Mad Mission III, this sequel to Aces Go Places brings back Sam Hui as King Kong, Karl Maka as Albert Au and Sylvia Chang as Nancy Ho.

King Kong is in Paris when he sees a gorgeous woman in 80s movie punk glasses about to blow up the Eiffel Tower. He chases her up into that romantic building and finds himself battling Big G (Richard Kiel, obviously playing a copyright free Jaws!) and Oddjob (Japanese pro wrestler Thunder Sugiyama, who was also in Message from Space), who in addition to his bowler hat now has the same steel hand as Dr. No.

Image from http://doubleosection.blogspot.com/2008/09/dvd-review-mad-mission-3-our-man-from.html

King Kong loses the trail of the henchmen after they all parachute off the tower. As he dives after Jaws — fighting him in mid-air! — he lands in the Seien River below where he’s picked up by a shark submarine and meets Queen Elizabeth (Huguette Funfrock) and James Bond (French Sean Connery lookalike Jean Mersant). They want King Kong to steal one of the crown jewels called the Star of Fortune from a Hong Kong police vault. There’s one rule: his partner Detective Albert “Baldy” Au (Maka) and his wife Supt. Nancy Ho (Chang) can’t find out.

Of course, this isn’t the real Bond. He’s an imposter and working with  Big G, Jaws and that bazooka-carrying assassin Jade East, as well as having a fake Queen Elizabeth who emerges from paintings in their little villain army.

The real spy is Tom Collins, who is played by Peter Graves and he is 100% playing Jim Phelps from Mission Impossible, as his tape recorder gives him a mission and then explodes. That explosion takes him out of the movie until the close, but until then, we have post-apocalyptic movie punks on dune buggies, Santa Claus motorcycle stunt teams, a sub that can flip over and turn into a cruise ship, a one man jet ala Octopussy and a closing cameo by a fake Ronald Reagan.

Somehow, this movie got followed by a fourth installent with Ronald Lacey (Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark) as the main bad guy and a fifth episode with Conan Lee as Chinese Rambo.

Obviously, I loved every minute. This movie never takes itself seriously and has repeated fake arm gags. Director Tsui Hark (Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain, Black Mask, Iron Monkey) and writer Raymond Wong Pak-ming have made a movie that will delight spy film and martial arts movie fans while keeping things moving as fast as humanly possible.

As for the English dubbed version, it has some footage cut and extra footage with Peter Graves. The dialogue was written by Larry Dolgin, who did the same job on Deported Women of the SS Special Section and whose voice can be heard in so many dubbed films, including Street Law, Nightmare City, Pieces, Blastfighter, Cannon’s Aladdin and so many more. He was also the voice of Lucio Fulci in the English dub of Cat In the Brain. He also acted in Caligula: The Untold Story, Ghoulies II and Robot Jox and before all that, he was a singer in The Cables, a vocal and instrumental group that released the songs “Choo-Choo” and “Midnight Roses” on the RCA Victor label. According to dubbing actor/director Ted Rusoff — the husband of Carolyn De Fonseca — Dolgin recieved a large inheritance in the 1990s and retired to a villa in Sardinia.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally ran on October 30, 2021. Legend was not produced by Cannon but was released on video in the UK by Cannon Screen Entertainment Limited.

This Ridley Scott movie has always stood out from his other work to me, as it’s quite literally a children’s story about the most archetypical battle between the good of Jack (Tom Cruise) and evil of the Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry).

Much like how the original fairy tales were incredibly dark, this movie is filled with morbid imagery and a villain that may overwhelm viewers, making them love him more than the protagonist.

The death of the unicorn in this film is a moment that many 1980’s children will remember as quite possibly the end of said childhood. The true star of this movie remains Curry, who is absolutely incredible (as always). He spent five and a half hours a day just to get into the makeup, which then needed a full hour of bathing to remove all the adhesive. One day, Curry grew impatient and claustrophobic, removing the makeup and some of his own skin. He was off the film for a week to recover.

Interestingly enough, the European and director’s cut of this film don’t use Tangerine Dream, but instead feature music by Jerry Goldsmith. There was also a Bryan Ferry song, “Is Your Love Strong Enough?” that features Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and a music video for that as well.

If you look in Meg Mucklebones’ swamp and when the unicorn is chained up, you can even spot Pazuzu from The Exorcist. Much like many of Scott’s Blade Runner, this movie wasn’t considered a classic when it was released. But today? It totally is.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode about this film, click here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Fake-Out was not produced by Cannon. It was, however, released on video in Germany by Cannon Screen Entertainment.

Did Matt Cimber make this movie just for me?

First off, Cimber has led a crazy life. He went from doing plays in Vermont to Broadway, where he directed the revival of Bus Stop and met his future wife, Jayne Mansfield, who he made Single Room Furnished with. Under the names Gary Harper and Rinehart Segway he directed Man and Wife, Sex and Astrology and The Sexually Liberated Female then made The Black Six, Lady Cocoa, The Candy Tangerine Man and The Witch Who Came from the Sea.

Cimber also teamed with actress Laurene Landon to make Hundra and Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold. He also was one of the co-creators behind the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, serving as executive producer and director of the syndicated television program — Mark Maron played him on the Netflix series — and his career is often a mix of exploitation and female empowerment, but it can get kind of murky. Seventies murky, you know? It has to be sexy, but women are still dangerous but yet need to be naked a lot of the time.

Another actor that Cimber teamed with twice was Pia Zadora. Have I not revealed how much I love Ms. Zadora in these digital pages? Well, Cimber made Butterfly and this movie with her. Financed by Pia’s then-husband Meshulam Riklis — he also paid for The Lonely Lady and perhaps her Golden Globe Award as New Star of the Year — it’s the tale Bobbie Warren (Zadora), a gangster’s moll who everyone thinks is going to snitch, so they plan her demise.

Written by John F. Goff (Drive-In Massacre, C.B. Hustlers, The Capture of Bigfoot) and Cimber, this movie was also called Nevada Heat and places Pia into the Lola Falana role from Cimber’s Lady Cocoa. She’s been arrested and doesn’t want to deal with jail — I mean, she does teach an aerobics class but then she has to deal with a sapphic shower assault — so she turns state’s evidence and is protected by a cop named Clint Morgan (Desi Arnaz, Jr., who once teamed with four of horror’s greatest stars in Cannon’s House of Long Shadows) and Lt. Thurston (Telly Savalas), a boss officer with a gambling habit and the need to end every sentence with the word baby.

I honestly believe that Telly is playing himself.

My favorite Telly story: He lived for twenty years in the Sheraton-Universal Hotel and would just come down to the hotel bar — which was renamed Telly’s — in his slippers and watch games and shoot pool with normal non-celebrity folk. One of his friends said, “He could be eating a sandwich, you know, putting something in his mouth and someone would come over and slap him on the back and say, “How ya doin?” He’d say, “Delightful.””

Delightful.

Man, I love Telly. I love that he’s in this movie.

This whole thing is set at the Riveria Hotel in Vegas, which Riklis owned at the time and one imagines that he forgave Telly’s debts if he just showed up for a few minutes in his wife’s movie. It even ends with an ad for the casino, saying “The production is indebted to the Riviera Hotel for its many considerations and extends you a cordial invitation to visit and enjoy its newly remodeled facilities.”

How’s the movie? Pia once said, “I threatened to commit suicide if Fake-Out was released.”

But it’s not horrible as long as you’re the kind of person who loves to see Larry Storch and George “Buck” Flower — who made Takin’ It Off Out West with screenwriter Goff, Taylor St. Clair and Julie Strain — show up in films.

You will also love it if you’re also like me and give Pia a pass no matter what she does. You can also enjoy her work in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Voyage of the Rock Aliens, Hairspray,  Troop Beverly Hills, Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult and of course Butterfly and the The Lonely Lady.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was first on the site on September 15, 2019. Convoy was obviously not produced by Cannon, but they did release it in Germany on the Cannon Screen Entertainment label.

Way back in 1974, William Dale Fries Jr. was working as a creative director for Bozell & Jacobs, an Omaha, Nebraska-based ad agency. He created a Clio Award-winning (the Clios are the Oscars of the ad industry, but perhaps AVN awards would be more appropriate) campaign for Old Home Bread that featured a truck driver named C.W. McCall, which led to a series of songs called “Old Home Filler-Up an’ Keep on a-Truckin’ Café”, “Wolf Creek Pass” and “Black Bear Road.”

Fries wrote the lyrics and sang those songs, while Chip Davis — who would go to dominate your parents’ holidays with Mannheim Steamroller — wrote the music.

Their song “Convoy,” though became a monster. A true crossover, it became the number-one song on both the country and pop charts in the US, number one in Canada and number two in the UK. In fact, it’s such a big song that it’s listed 98th among Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time.

Please note: McCall is no one hit wonder. The aforementioned “Wolf Creek Pass” hit #40 in 1975. and three other songs — “Old Home Filler-Up an’ Keep on a-Truckin’ Cafe”, “‘Round the World with the Rubber Duck” (the pirate-themed sequel to “Convoy” where the convoy leaves the US and travels around the world, touring the UK, France, West and East Germany, the USSR, Japan and even Australia, where the lyrics “Ah, ten-four, Pig Pen, what’s your twenty? Australia? Mercy sakes, ain’t nothin’ down there but Tasmanian devils and them cue-walla bears” are sung) and “There Won’t Be No Country Music (There Won’t Be No Rock ‘n’ Roll)” — reached the Billboard Hot 100 when things like that really mattered. And to top that off, a dozen McCall songs reached the Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart.

Let me explain one more time how big of a song this was: Sam Peckinpah — yes, the guy who directed The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and played a drunk in utterly bizarre Ovidio G. Assonitis film The Visitor — made a movie about it. Even stranger, it was the most successful movie of his entire career.

Somwhere in the Arizona desert, truck driver Martin “Rubber Duck” Penwald (Kris Kristofferson, pretty much the most attractive man to ever drive an 18 wheeler) is passed by Melissa (Ali McGraw, a woman able to break the hearts of both Robert Evans and Steve McQueen, but once you see her in this film you’ll say, well, yes, I understand how they could throw caution to the wind and ruin their lives for Ali McGraw; PS — I learned pretty much 99% of my writing style from The Kid Stays In The Picture), a photographer who gets him in trouble with his arch enemy Sheriff “Dirty Lyle” Wallace (Ernest Borgnine, The Devil’s Rain!). It turns out that the Rubber Duck has been pulling his rig into the driveway of Lyle’s wife Violet (Cassie Yates, who we all know and love from Rolling Thunder) if you know what I’m driving at.

Along for the ride are fellow truckers Pig Pen/Love Machine (Burt Young, who I will always love thanks to Amityville II: The Possession) and Spider Mike (Franklyn Ajaye, The ‘Burbs). After a big brawl, Melissa ends up riding with Rubber Duck as Lyle gives chase.

A giant convoy — yes, there has to be one — saves our hero, brought together through the magic of the Citizen’s Band radio. Sure, the National Guard gets involved after the trucks petty much ruin a Texas jail, but everything works out just fine.

During this period of Peckinpah’s life, he was struggling with addictions to alcohol and drugs. Much of the film is actually directed by actor and friend James Coburn, who was originally brought in to serve as second unit director. The movie was made at twice the budget, but still made tons of money at the box office.

However, rumors of increasingly destructive alcohol and cocaine abuse would ruin the director, leading to him making only one movie, The Osterman Weekend, before his death. At one point, a cocktail of blow, quaaludes and vitamin shots led Peckinpah believing that both Steve McQueen and the Executive Car Leasing Co. were conspiring to murder him.

Speaking of cocaine, Ali MacGraw, who was always uncomfortable in front of the camera, used powder and tequila to perform until she went too far one day on set, which led to her quitting for good.

The soundtrack to this movie is exactly what was playing on my hometown radio station, WFEM in New Castle, in 1978. “Lucille” by Kenny Rogers. “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” by Crystal Gayle. “Okie From Muskogee” by Merle Haggard. All it’s missing is the Steckman Memorial death report at 7 AM, with the theme music of BJ Thomas singing “Morning Has Broken” followed by Paul Harvey and it’s exactly the music of my young life. I also realize that that was a joke that literally no one other than me would get, but when you own your own web site, you can make obscure jokes about the small power country music FM stations of your youth, too.

Somewhere out there, there’s a print of Peckinpah’s two and a half hour plus director’s cut before the studio took it from him. I would watch that right now.

You know who else must have liked this movie? Tarantino. Stuntman Mike’s hood ornament in Death Proof is the Rubber Duck’s.

Finally, one more moment from my youth.

Saturday afternoons belonged to WUAB in Cleveland’s Superhost (the nights belonged to Saturday Night Live and Chilly Billy Cardille’s Chiller Theater). Superhost was really Marty Sullivan, a floor manager and occasional news anchor at the station who showed monster movies and the Three Stooges every weekend from 1969 to 1989 in a baggy Superman suit with a red nose. He made his own version of “Convoy” that was so popular that it aired every single week, because none of us had VCRs, much less the internet. It might seem silly to you today, dear reader, but having horror movie hosts that would do things this ridiculous created memories that will never go away and bring happy tears to my eyes even as I type this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was first on the site on November 19, 2020. The Atlantis Interceptors was obviously not produced by Cannon, but they did release it in Germany on the Cannon Screen Entertainment label.

This is the first VHS tape I ever rented. It was 1983. Prime Time Video had just opened. And the tape box promised delights we’d never dreamt of before. I was thinking this was going to be the best parts of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Mad Max. And wow, was I disappointed. But how would I feel 35 years later?

After trying to raise a Russian sub, the descendants of Atlantis attack our heroes, but they look a whole lot like punk bikers from an Italian post-apocalyptic movie. Which they totally are. Our heroes have to uncover the secret of Atlantis and stop them before they take over the world.

Christopher Connelly is Mike, our main hero. You may recognize him from Benjior TV’s Peyton Place. Or more likely, you know him from Manhattan Baby or 1990: The Bronx Warriors.

Plus, there’s Gioia Scola (Conquest), Tony King (The Toy), Stefano Mingardo (Blastfighter), George Hilton (The Case of the Bloody Iris), Ivan Rassimov (need I regale you with my love of his films?) and a young Michele Soavi before he became a director!

I’ll be super honest. This movie is a complete piece of shit. There are moments of greatness, such as whenever Crystal Skull appears or when a corpse keeps turning a jukebox off and on. I wanted to love this movie as a child and I wanted to love it even more as an adult. But sadly, that love never filled my heart.

There are people that love this film. And I get it. I like Ruggero Deodato. I just can’t get into this movie.

You can get this from Severin.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was first on the site on December 5, 2020. Knives of the Avenger was obviously not produced by Cannon, but they did release it in Germany on the Cannon/VMP label in 1985. 

You can’t really judge Mario Bava’s work on this film, as he entered a troubled production and rewrote and reshot it in just six days.

After the apparent death of her husband King Arald (Giacomo Rossi Stuart, Crimes of the Black Cat, here called Frank Stewart), Karin (Elissa Pichelli, using the Americanized name Lisa Wagner) has run from the murderous Hagen (Fausto Tozzi, billed as Frank Ross). Now, Rurik, a knife-throwing stranger (Cameron Mitchell, using the name…well…Cameron Mitchell) has rode into town like a Roman Shane and is defending her and her son Moki. Of course, Moki may also have been his son and he could very well have aassaultedKarin in the past, but I guess him learning how to throw knives — and aiming them at the right people — is some kind of redemption?

This is much closer to a western than a peblum, but when you think that Bava pretty much fixed this movie — or at least got it done — in less than a week, you have to admire his talent. That said, this is not one of his best.

This played on double bills with Gamera the Invincible, which seems like a pairing I’d never put together.

A young man (Hugo de Sousa) with a parachute lands in the middle of a desert but he has no memory of how he got there and no idea who he is. He’s lost and finds several other lost people as well, all of whom just wander this wasteland in the hope of finding the truth.

Director and writer Robert G.Putka was inspired to make Mister Limbo after suffering a major mental problem in his life: “Like every great breakthrough, this started with a breakdown. Back in the fall of 2016, my body and mind betrayed me, and I had a longform nervous breakdown. After years of panic attacks and generalized anxiety, it all came to a head as I was about to release my first feature film, MAD. What should have been a moment of vindication, turned into my own personal hell in a hotel room in Las Vegas.

I had the mother of panic attacks. A real nasty one lasting at least 5 hours, after which I finally, thankfully, passed out due to a heavy dosing of Xanax. But during those five hours, I alternated pacing the floor and curling up in the fetal position on the bed. I felt like I was going to die or, at the very least, collapse. This panic attack was different from all the other ones I’d encountered and learned to cope with.

Upon returning to Cleveland a few days later, the realization that I was far from out of the woods became painfully apparent. Five years later, I still haven’t fully healed from that experience. I still deal with physical remnants of that bottoming out, some of which have become chronic. I also still struggle trying to maintain a healthy mind, as anxiety is a daily stumbling block to living a “normal” life, whatever that even is anymore. But with that said, I’m in a good place spiritually and philosophically. I feel this has given me the type of clarity necessary to take my own crises of faith, fear, and regret, and inject these ideas into a story that I hope is both personal and cathartic as it is reflective and universal.

In a lot of ways, I’m the same person I was. In some cases, worse. But in a few ways, I’m better than I ever was. I’m certainly more hopeful, and that counts for a lot. The succinct version: I made this film after having emerged from a tumultuous period in my life. It helped me to better understand the power of forgiveness – both of oneself and others — and how it frees us to move on to better things. Maybe it can do the same for others.”

Soon, the parachute-wearing man known as Mister Limbo meets Craig (Vig Norris), another lost soul trapped in the sandy dunes, but instead of a parachute he has on yellow boots and a comfy bathrobe. There’s also The Drifter (Cameron Dye from Valley Girl), another desert dweller that either has the answers or just more questions for everyone. And oh yeah — a woman offering them drugs and chanting “Everything is everything.”

De Sousa and Norris work really well together and have such a perfect charm together. The film might be   a simple idea — wandering for answers in the desert — but they make the time that you spend with them feel warm and cozy. Who knows where their characters go from here, but if all we have is this desert hangout, then at least we have something special to remember them by.

MIster Limbo is available on digital from Terror Films.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Ghoul was not produced by Cannon. It’s a Tyburn Film Productions movie. It was, however, released on video VHS in Germany by Cannon/VMP.

Tyburn didn’t make all that many movies. In their attempt to be Hammer after that studio stopped making movies, they put out seven films: Legend of the Werewolf, Tales That Witness Madness, Persecution, Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death, Murder Elite, Peter Cushing: A One-Way Ticket to Hollywood and this film.

Dr. Lawrence (Peter Cushing) was once a man of faith but now he’s hiding inside a rural country estate, keeping his son away from the world, the son who learned how to be a cannibal as Lawrence did missionary work there.

While Cushing’s wife died in 1971, by all accounts he never got over it. According to co-star Veronica Carlson, director Freddie Francis made Cushing do multiple takes during the scene where he talks about his love for his late wife, an experience that caused the actor, cast and crew to be reduced to tears. This feels like a Wiliam Castle BS story, however, as Francis would have already known this, having directed Cushing as Arthur Grimsdyke in Tales from the Crypt, a movie during which Cushing suggested that he speak to a photo of his recently deceased wife Violet Helene Beck.

Writer Anthony Hinds has just as much a pedigree for British horror as Francis and Cushing, having written The Brides of Dracule, The Curse of the Werewolf, The Reptile, Frankenstein Created Woman, Scars of Dracula, Taste the Blood of Dracula and Night Creatures. He wrote this using his John Elder name.

Veronica Carlson stars as the final girl of sorts, Daphne Wells Hunter. She also came from Hammer films like Dracula Has Risen from the Grave and The Horror of Frankenstein. John Hurt shows up as a frightening handyman, Gwen Watford as Ayah the Indian servant, Alexandra Bastedo (The Blood Spattered Bride) as Daphne’s friend Angela and Ian McCulloch is on hand years before he would challenge the bloodiest cinema Italy could create.

In the U.S., this was released as Night of the Ghoul and The Thing in the Attic. If the setting seems familiar, the movie was set in the 1920s because the sets of The Great Gatsby were still standing at Pinewood Studios.