Kill Butterfly Kill: Years after being assaulted by five men, Tang Mei-Ling (Juliet Chan) — or Donna, depending on the language you choose — hunts them down one by one, joined by Richard, a retired hitman (“Tattooed Ma” Sha) and several of her girlfriends. She’s spent six years to get bloody revenge and she’s going to take her time getting it.

The wild thing is that there are times that this is a rape revenge movie, other times when it’s an action film and then moments when it gets surreal. Fog rolls in, neon lighting takes over and Tang Mei-Ling becomes a female demon, purring that she wants to kill. The entire screen itself gets taken over and moves and bends and distorts as we become part of her destruction of these evil men.

Also known as Underground Wife, this is a Taiwan black movie that shares exploitation themes and action with socially conscious themes. That said, these films never forget that they are scummy.

American Commando 6: Kill Butterfly Kill: IFD is a company that you probably know. They had Joseph Lai, Godfrey Ho and Thomas Tang make hundreds if not thousands of similar titled ninja movies that combine other films with hastily shot gunplay or martial arts battles.

It’s like watching two movies that only have one moment where they meet.

Three years ago, special agent Aaron Nolan (Mark Miller) broke up the Garvino gang. But now the brutal Garvino (Mike Abbott) is on the street again. Aaron and his partner Rick Hammet set out to neutralize him. Meanwhile, Donna is a nightclub owner who is their only ally in the war against Garvino, spurred on because years ago, five of his men raped her. Now, teaming with Richard, she’ll get the revenge she needs while Arron goes after his target.

This feels like the two movies are nearly decades apart, much less the quality of the film stock, so in no way does it ever appear to be seamless. And isn’t that how we want it?

If you know IFD movies, you know that the music is always stolen from incredible places. This one features “Arca” by Richard Norris, “Divine Particles” by Takkra and “Oxygene Part 1” by Jean-Michael Jarre. IFD loves some Jean-Michael Jarre.

The Neon Eagle Video release has a new 4k restoration from the best surviving elements of the export English language cut of the film prepared by IFD Films. It also has the Mandarin edit — Underground Wife — and a 4K scan of the IFD remix American Commando 5: Kill Butterfly Kill.

All of these various versions of this unique film are here making their official U.S. home video and worldwide blu ray premieres.

Extras include audio commentary by Kenneth Brorsson and Paul Fox of the Podcast On Fire Network for Kill Butterfly Kill and — worth the price of the entire thing — an IFD trailer collection.

You can buy this from MVD.

You can learn more at the Neon Eagle Video website.

Directed and written by Bingjia Yang, this is the story of blind swordsman and bounty hunter Cheng the Ghostkiller (Xie Miao). With each kill, he gets closer to being able to pay for an operation to give him sight. Yet he also wants justice to exist and he helps Ni Yan (Gao Weiman), a bride accused of murdering her own brother after being assaulted at her wedding, for personal reasons.

Obviously borrowing from the Zatoichi series — which also inspired Blind Fury — this movie looks gorgeous and has some great visual style when it comes to the fight scenes. You may wonder if a blind swordsman should look so good when he’s slicing the competition into ribbons, but these are not the things you should think about. You should sit back and enjoy the seventy-seven minutes of fast action and a plot that actually is pretty decent.

This movie was successful enough that there’s already a sequel.

You can learn more at the official site.

Al Adamson made two movies about air hostesses in the same year, this one along with Blazing Stewardesses. It follows the Roger Corman nurse style and was inspired by movie that Hemisphere had, The Swinging Stewardesses, which was making big business. Sam Sherman couldn’t find another so they made their own.

Debbie Stewart (Connie Hoffman) is a new stewardess from Kansas City who rents a room with three other stewardesses. She’s dating several people, including Cal (Richard Smedley, whose wife Lana Wood angrily came to the set thinking he was making an adult movie) and the much older Brewster (Robert Livingston).

Shot by Gary Graver, the girls include Barbara Watson (Marilyn Joi, Cleopatra Schwartz from The Kentucky Fried Movie and someone who was in one of the real Corman nurses movies, appearing as a topless dancer under her other name Tracy Ann King in The Student Teachers), Margie (Donna Young, who shows up in Blacksnake and The Black Gestapo), Jane (Sydney Jordan, whose only other role is in the documentary White Buffalo: An American Prophecy) and Diane (Sandy Carey, using the name Mikel James; she’s also in Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death; Deep Jaws; Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman and plenty of adult). There are also roles for Susie Ewing (who also used the name Susan McIver for movies like Girls for Rent and her appearance as Hot Pants in Smokey and the Bandit) and, of course Al Adamson’s wife Regina Carrol, here playing a plane passenger with a dog. That’s also Gary Graver’s Sean as a young perv on the airplane.

A movie that unites directors Al Adamson and León Klimovsky, Mean Mother actually is a mash-up, as Adamson takes footage from Klimovsky’s El Hombre que Vino del Odio and adds in his own blaxploitation movie and makes something new.

Beauregard Jones (Clifton Brown, who is really singer Dobie Gray) and Joe (Dennis Safren) run away from Vietnam. Jones gets to Spain while Joe ends up in Rome. They both get into crime — and some ladies — before meeting back up in Canada.

To say this movie makes no sense is senseless. It’s two movies that in no way work together forced to work together, a slow European crime movie and a quick American cash-in on black-fronted films. The fact that it even attempts — and that people were, well, hoodwinked into seeing it — is why I keep coming back to the films of Al Adamson.

You know how Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups old commercials used to go? Well, the makers of this movie got a real smart idea. They took the two big trends of the early 70s — blacksploitation and martial arts — and made one movie with both of them.

Stud Brown (Timothy Brown, a former NFL player who was also on M*A*S*H*) and Larry Chin (Alan Tang) unite to battle drug dealers and find Chin’s brother Wei (James Hong). They’re up against a corrupt cop named Detective Burke (Aldo Ray!) and the disappearance of our hero’s brother may not be as tragic as it seems.

What makes this movie worth watching is the dream team of director Al Adamson and producer Cirio H. Santiago. Lovers of truly bottom basement movies see these two names and feel a certain twinge, the kind you get when you remember young love or holidays gone by.

Another important thing for lovers of 70s exploitation cinema to notice is that the deaf mute love interest Sarah is played by Carol Speed, who is known and loved as Abby. And don’t forget to check out other Karate Blaxploitation reviews with Force Four, Velvet Smooth, Devil’s Express, and The Black Dragon’s Revenge.

Donna Taylor (Susie Ewing-McIver) is a sex worker recruited by the Syndicate to blackmail a politician by taking him to a motel room, drugging him and taking some photos. Yet she soon learns from Sandra (Georgina Spelvin, The Devil In Miss Jones) and Erica (Rosalind Miles, Friday Foster) that she’s actually poisoned the man and they’ll kill her if she goes to the authorities. She heads to Mexico but her car get stolen by a hitchhiker, which means she needs a ride, which she gets from H. R. Stringham (Robert Livingston) who wants him to make love to his developmentally challenged son Ben. He’s more child than grown-up, at least in his brain, so she runs and steals a car. She’s saved by David, the man that she turned down for a ride before and they have sex.

While that’s going on, H.R. and Ben have met Sandra and Erica. Sandra is the one to be Ben’s first and she follows up that act by blowing his brains out and then shooting his dad. If this was a Hollywood movie, Donna and David would get away, but this is an Al Adamson movie, so Erica kills her and David tracks her down — he’s already murdered Sandra — and kills her.

It’s a ride. A ride through the desert.

After two men assault one of her girls, Margo (Regina Carrol) finds him and whips him. In between this movie being Screaming Eagles and tough women in foreign prison movies getting hot, this was reshot and re-edited to make it fit into the changing world of exploitation. Another thing that changed was while movies had been shot by Al Adamson at the Spahn Ranch for a while, now the specter of the Manson Family hung over everything. So when cult leader King (William Bonner) makes life tough for the bikers and also controls the ranch’s owner Parker (Kent Taylor), you get taken out of the movie and wonder how much of this is based on things Adamson and his crew actually experienced.

Sam Sherman told Filmfax: “We even had some members of the Manson gang in it, people who had been hanging around. I don’t know if they were killers or not. What happened in this instance was one of those things you can’t imagine or even predict.”

Ross Hagen is the hero, as much as anyone in a biker movie can be the hero, is the lead.

Also known as Commune of Death, a title that leans into the Manson parts of this movie, this is a film that ends with Hagen dropping his motorcycle off a cliff and onto a car, which inexplicably explodes.

A lost movie from Al Adamson and Sam Sherman, this softcore Western was filmed on Spahn Ranch, the same place where Charles Manson and his Family were living as they attempted to commit Helter Skelter.

The cast has Gary Kent, the stuntman who Danger God was made about, as a prospector; Bambi Allen (who also appeared in adult films as Holly Woodstar; she’s also in Satan’s Sadists and The Bang Bang Gang under the name Chata Cruz) and Rene Bond (one of the first adult stars; mainstream appearances include one of the evil women in Invasion of the Bee Girls, Please Don’t Eat My Mother! and the TV movie Betrayal) as two kidnapped girls; and for the evil men stealing all these ladies, there’s John “Bud” Cardos, George “Buck” Flower and Eric Stern.

It did play theaters but it just can’t be found. If it were, it would have showed up on Severin’s all-encompassing box set.

Shot in the summer of 1969 at Spahn Ranch, which was the home of the Manson Family at the time, The Female Bunch also has moments filmed at Hanksville and Capitol Reef in Utah as well as Las Vegas, Nevada. Adamson loved shooting outside. He must have loved every second of this movie.

All the bad men she’s dealt with leaves Sandy (Nesa Renet) wanting to end it all. Her friend Libby (Regina Carrol) takes her into the desert to meet Grace (Jennifer Bishop), who leads a gang of women that run drugs and use men.

This is the last movie of Lon Chaney Jr., filmed after Dracula vs. Frankenstein. His voice sounds painful, the result of throat cancer radiation treatments.  He plays Monti, an old Hollywood cowboy who is loyal to Grace. Kim Newman, who writes some great film reviews, wrote a short story about this movie, “Another Fish Story.” In this tale, Charles Manson is trying to using one of the Ancient Ones to destroy the world while Lon Chaney Jr. is given a mission in the desert that will keep The Family from bothering Adamson and crew.

To join this gang of women, you have to be buried alive in a coffin. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but if I got to hang out with Chaney and Russ Tamblyn, I may let you throw some dirt on my grave.

Dracula vs. Frankenstein feels like the most Independent-International movie there is. I have no other way to explain why this movie seems like it came from another reality. It has Dr. Durea (J. Carrol Naish, in his last movie), the last descendent of Dr. Frankenstein, killing women with his assistant Groton (Lon Chaney Jr. in his next to last movie) to try to come up with an elixir that will fix his legs and his henchman’s simple brain. They’re visited by Dracula (Zandor Vorkov, really Raphael Peter Engel, given that name by Forrest J. Ackerman and someone who once ran record stores; according to this interview in Fangoria, he’s wearing a rental cape that was once used by Bela Lugosi) who wants them to finish their cocktail so that it can allow him to walk in the daytime which he feels will make him finally able to take over the world.

The doctor and his assistant decide to set up their lab — using the Kenneth Strickfaden equipment from the Universal films — in a haunted house known as the Creature Emporium. They keep killing women while Dracula is sent after the man who put the doctor in a wheelchair, Beaumont (Forrest J. Ackerman). A biker named Rico (Russ Tamblyn) gets involved and Dracula gets his blood hot over a showgirl by the name of Judith Fontaine (Regina Carroll).

I nearly forgot! Dracula also has the corpse of the Frankenstein Monster, which he took from Oakmoor Cemetery. he’s played by both John Bloom and Shelley Weiss. The goal is to also bring that creature back to life. Graydon Clark is in here as The Strange, a hippie leader, and of course the kids all drop acid.

Judith also learns that the doctor has kept her sister Joanie (Maria Lease) and her friend Samantha (Anne Morrell) nude and trapped between life and death. He’s using a special enzyme in their plasma that comes from the fear before death to create his magical elixir so that he can heal his leg, fix his quiet friend and help Dracula. His hypothesis is that if Judith watches Mike (Anthony Eisley), a hippie that has fallen for her and she for him, die that the enzyme in her blood will be strong enough to complete his work. He sends Grazbo the dwarf (Angelo Rossitto) and Groton after them, but the little guy falls through a trapdoor and onto an axe, Groton gets shot by the cops and he himself falls onto a guillotine which cuts his head off.

But oh Mike, you aren’t safe. Dracula attempts to take Judith and when our hero tries to save her, the vampire blasts him with his ring and turns him into ashes. Now, the fanged Frank Zappa lookalike tries to drink her blood in a desecrated church but the Frankenstein Monster falls in love too and fights Dracula. This sounds like the kind of story an elementary student would make up in class when they should be studying and that’s why I love it. Dracula rips off the creature’s arms and head but gets burned by the sunlight.

Lon Chaney Jr. was in bad shape during this, lying down between takes and not speaking as he barely could be heard. He would speak to Adamson’s father and say things like, “You and I are the only two left. They’re all gone. I want to die now. There’s nothing left for me; I just want to die.”

What makes me love this even more is the theory that this was a sequel to Satan’s Sadists with Russ Tamblyn and the other bikers from that film coming back. Sam Sherman decided to turn it into a horror film and much of the biker footage was cut as a result. Not all of the biker footage could be cut, which is why Tamblyn and his biker gang wander in and out of the movie.

This movie has one of my favorite lines of all time, as Dracula has hypnotized Forrest and is taking him to his doom. He gives him directions as he speaks and I wonder, why doesn’t he just have him drive as he’s already taken over his will? He says, “I am known as the Count of Darkness, the Lord of the Manor of Carpathia. Turn here.”