Altin Çocuk means Golden Boy, who is the name of the superspy played by Goksel Arsoy. His mission? Stop Demetrius (Altan Gunbay), a supervillain who plans to destroy Turkey by firing missiles into Istanbul’s biggest nuclear reactor. Golden Boy was also Arsoy’s nickname, so this is his show. He also produced it.

This even gets the James Bond formula down so well that it starts with credits over a gorgeous woman and has an action scene before the main story, as an evil spy named The Wolf rises from the waves and tries to kill our hero with a speargun. But wait — it turns out that The Wolf was actually wearing a Golden Boy disguise and the killer is our hero. Hit the strip club sounding music and we’re off to the Eurospy — err, Turkspy? — action.

They even shot some of the opening in London to give this a more continental air. We get to see Golden Boy drive a sportscar and win over some British ladies before we get down to the actual spy intrigue. But once he gets back to Turkey, he learns that his fellow agent S-99 has been killed and starts to investigate. He also meets a capable female (Sevda Nur) who fights by his side for the rest of the movie.

Directed by Memduh Un, this even has an ending where Golden Boy and his female friend SCUBA into Demetrius’ underwater lair just like Thunderball.

Golden Boy would return in Altin Çocuk Beyrut’ta (Golden Boy in Beirut).

Made in Indonesia two years after Hellraiser by director Susilo S.W.D. and writer Djoko S. Koesdiman, this remake remix ripoff follows the same beats as the original, but has a heart and energy that makes you love it. While later sequels seemed to not even be about the Cenobites — and often weren’t as they were films that started as other stories and had the Lament Configuration shoved in — and the recent film that has none of the lunatic joy and sexiness of the first two or three movies, it seems like everyone is having a blast making this.

Nadia — who is Kristy — has a bad relationship with her recently widowed father Bramasto — Larry — who has married an evil stepmother named Astria or Julia, as we know her in the Clive Barker-directed inspiration. Astria has a secret, as she slept with Bramasto’s brother Lukito — Frank — before her husband and the affair has continued beyond his death, as she’s now part of his occult rituals from beyond the grave.

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The sex has been toned down, as you can imagine with this being made in a highly Muslim country, and the effects and Cenobites do their own thing. The Lament Configuration looks like a vegetable with a strange face in it, the Cenobites appear to be zombies in latex masks joined by a pretty decent female follower of Leviathan.

The effects are pretty fun, too. They often take the form of puddles of blood with eyes in them, which is kind of scary when you think long enough about it. Frank, I mean, Lukito’s transformation is also pretty close to the real thing.

You can get this on DVD from Sloppy Second Sales.

A few weeks ago, Scientific American asked, “Are ‘Cocaine Sharks’ Really Scarfing Down Drugs off Florida’s Coasts?” Sadly, that article is more about Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, but there’s some interesting information, including this quote:

“…the idea may not be as wacky as it sounds—especially in the waters off Florida. There sharks in a diverse assemblage swim along a major drug-smuggling throughway, which potentially exposes the toothy predators to floating bundles of narcotics. “This is the only place in the world where a shark could come into contact with such massive doses of cocaine,” says Tom Hird, a marine biologist and broadcaster based in England.”

Some literally insane scientists even did tests on sharks by having them eat cocaine — did they never see a single shark movie? Do they know that LL Cool J rapped “My hat is like a shark fin” after living through Deep Blue Sea? — along with this wild story:

“In 2016 scientists in Switzerland examined the effects of cocaine on zebra fish, a type of striped minnow commonly used in scientific experiments. The researchers were surprised to find that most of the cocaine accumulated in the fish’s eyes instead of their brain. Some zebra fish eyes contained concentrations of cocaine that were 1,000 times higher than levels that would be lethal to humans. The Swiss scientists were also surprised to find that instead of revving up the zebra fish, the cocaine suppressed their movements. “You’d think that a shark on cocaine is going to be swimming around all over the place at 1,000 miles an hour,” Hird says. “But that is us taking our human brains and putting it into the shark’s head.””

But let’s forget about science.

Let’s watch Cocaine Shark.

Originally released as Kanizame Shakurabu (Crab Shark) in Japan, this was retitled with the success of Cocaine Bear. It’s the story of a drug dealer named Gaurisco (Ken Van Sant) and his new creation, HT25, which is made from sharks. To paraphrase Mr. Show, “It’s great. It’s shark crack. It gets you really high.”

Directed by Mike Polonia and written by the mysterious Bando Glutz, this has effects by Brett Piper and Anthony Polonia that encompass an entire ocean’s worth of mutated creatures. Opposing them and the drug dealer is Nick (Titus Himmelberger), a hard-boiled detective who runs afoul of femme fatale Persephone (Natalie Himmelberger) as well as the hallucinations people have on HT25 which allow them to kill as a shark crab hybrid.

I really enjoyed reading other reviews of this movie. Nearly everyone hated it because it doesn’t have many sharks, there’s not really cocaine, it’s made with stock footage and it’s only an hour long. Obviously, any of these people would tell you how much they love exploitation movies yet when they are the ones exploited, they realize that sometimes a great poster, an awesome title, a tie-in to some popular pop culture buzz and a little filmmaking magic was enough to con you into watching a movie. Being mad about this movie is like being angry at Jerry Warren or Jerry Gross or someone not named Jerry that got you to watch movies that you never thought you’d watch like Sam Sherman.

I love that movies like this exist and I’ll never get tired of them.

You can watch this on Tubi.

You know, I waited for years for this movie and, like Lemmy always sang, perhaps the chase is always better than the catch.

Originally filmed in Hungary in 1983, this movie was just a rumor for around four decades. But now it’s here.

Now we can talk about it.

Yellowstone National Park is expecting to have 50,000 people show up for a concert. Chief Ranger Nick Hollister (Steve Inwood) is in charge of making sure that everyone remains safe. That’s not going to be easy, because a poacher has killed the cub of a giant grizzly named Tawanda. Nick tries to warn Eileene Draygon (Louise Fletcher), who is putting on the rock show, but that goes over as well as closing the beach on the Fourth of July.

Samantha Owens (Deborah Raffin) is in charge of the bears and feels that instead of killing Tawanda, a grizzly expert named Bouchard (John Rhys-Davies) can just tranquilize it and place it into captivity. Great plan, but teenagers are already being killed by the bear. That’s right, George Clooney, Laura Dern and Charlie Sheen, early into their careers, are slashed by the titular terror.

By the end of this, the bear gets backstage and kills the so-called bear expert before its lured onstage and knocked off into equipment, causing a huge electrical explosion that the crowd thinks is just part of the show. Screw them. That bear should be rampaging in the mosh put right now.

The big crowd at that show was because the band Nazareth was performing. It was the largest public gathering in Hungary since the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

Originally called The Predator, this film was abandoned by its producer Joseph Ford Proctor on the first day of shooting. It was finished by co-producer Suzanne C. Nagy, who held the rights for decades, thanks to a Japanese investor who showed up and paid for the rest of the filming. The Hungarian government took most of the film’s equipment for non-payment of bills, which is why post-production was never finished.

Cannon Group, Inc. bought the film in 1987 and planned to finish its post-production and release it, but then Cannon started to falter and the movie was lost again. This feels very on-brand for Cannon.

This was written by Joan McCall, who played Allison in Grizzly. She also wrote Heart Like a Wheel and episodes of Days of Our Lives, Another World, Search for Tomorrow, Santa Barbara and Divorce Court. She also acted in William Girdler’s Project: Kill and played Julie, the heroine murdered by Leif Garrett with a stick in the throat in Devil Times Five. She was the wife of Grizzly writer David Sheldon, who co-write the script with her.

Sheldon was originally going to direct this movie but one imagines that when Edward L. Montoro of Film Ventures International disappeared, the rights to this got murky. They got probably worse when Proctor bought the movie and chose to make it with a German producer who has only directed one other movie, André Szöts.

Oh — if you’re like me and love to spot people, Deborah Foreman is in this as Nick’s daughter. Plus, the hunters who screw everything up trying to get the bear are Halloween alumnus Charles Cyphers, Marc Alaimo (Arena), Charles Young and Jack Starrett. That’s right, the director of Race With the Devil, Cleopatra Jones and Final Chapter: Walking Tall was in Hungary, playing a small role in this movie.

Oh yeah again — the robotic drummer in the band The Predator is Barbie Wilde, the female cenobite from Hellraiser II and gang leader Manny Fraker’s girlfriend in Death Wish 3!

It’s not great, you can hear cues from off camera and most of the movie is about getting a concert on the stage. But hey — it’s another bear against man movie and I’ll watch all of those.

Just like Grizzly, Claws knows that it’s Jaws and goes for it.

It was also released in Canada and Mexico as Grizzly 2, but it’s not a sequel.

It was also called Fauces, which means Jaws, in Spain.

A bunch of poachers come to Alaska and decide that they want to hunt a grizzly bear. They should have killed it, but no, they just wound it instead. Now the bear wants revenge — yes, this time it’s personal — and it goes all in on bear-on-human violence.

Only hunter Jason Monroe (Jason Evers) and an Alaskan named Henry (Anthony Caruso) can stop this wild beast. But do we want that? Humanity has it coming. Even if the bear once attacked Monroe, I’m always going to be on the side of the bear.

I mean, they call it the Satan Bear. I’m not sure I could love this bear any more than I do.

Jason has gone a little Ahab on this whole thing and his obsession with the bear has caused his wife Chris (Carla Layton) to leave him and start sleeping with their son Bucky’s (Buck Monroe) Boy Scout leader Howard (Glenn Sipes), which is the ultimate slap in the face to a rugged outdoorsman like Jason. There are a ton of flashbacks to better days, but do we care? No. Would we rather watch the bear kill a sheriff and some scientists dumb enough to think their inventions could stop nature’s perfect land-based predator? Yes.

By the end, Jason, Henry, Howard and forest commissioner Ben Chase (Leon Ames) are in the woods, putting their lives on the line and man, Jason has to be conflicted here, what with trying to kill the animal that has ruined his life and having to save the life of the man who is balls deep in his estranged wife when he’s not galavanting through his woods.

This was directed by Richard Bansbach (who did the editing on the American opening of Terror of Mechagodzilla) and Robert E. Pearson with a script by Chuck D. Keen (who was also the cinematographer and he made a lot of outdoor bear-related movies such as Challenge to Be Free, The Timber Tramps and Joniko and the Kush Ta Ka) and Brian Russell (The Annihilators, Beyond Death’s Door).

Honestly, it makes Grizzly look big budget, but I’m all for animal attack movies. It doesn’t matter how much it costs, I’m here for the body count.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Ah Fen (Hsiao Yao) is best friends with Xi Xi. Just look at them having fun in the fields together.

Xi Xi is a snake.

Ah Fen is his owner.

Rich college boy Tang Shi-De (Tsung Hua) is in love with Ah Fen.

And then there’s Man-Ling (Dana), who has a plan with her lover Hu Lin (Frankie Wei Hung) where she’ll seduce Shi-De and steal his family’s money.

Hu Lin has some of his gang kidnap Man-Ling and Tang Shi-De, but they get Ah Fen instead. The poor daughter of a farmer and child of high caste fall in love and get married, so Hu Lin tries to blow up their limo, but the bomb gets foiled by the snake. Yes, this really happens.

But Shi-De hates Xi Xi.

He hates all snakes.

A snake killed his mother.

Now he’s forced his wife to leave her reptile friend forever, just in time for Hu Lin to try and kill her again.

As if that’s not enough, it feels like there’s a sex scene between Man-Ling and Hu Lin every few seconds.

Ah, Shaw Brothers, you are more than just martial arts. You have directors like Sun Chung, who also made Human Lanterns and The Devil’s Mirror, creating movies where gorgeous actresses handle cobras and a mongoose vs. snake scene is the best fight in the whole film. Actually, this movie, if anything, needs more Xi Xi and less humans.

Alley Oates (Deborah Rose) and detective Jersey Callum (Ed Nelson) and Gordon Mullin (James Eustermann are trying to find the killer in a horrifying child murder case when a tip leads them to the mortuary of the prime suspect, Chen (Robert Yun Ju Ahn). They find three mummified corpses that he claims are demons called kyoshi that can only be sated with the taste of human flesh, something he’s been feeding them as part of his mortician career. Once he’s arrested, the demons start looking for their own food, locking everyone inside the mortuary and possessing the coroner’s secretary, Mrs. Poopinplatz (Phyllis Diller), as well as her poodle Floofsoms — played by Binnie, who was also in The Man With Two Brains, Ruthless People and most famously appeared as Gonk in Elvira: Mistress of the Dark — transforming her and it into the creatures that you remember from the VHS box art.

Also: Norman Fell with a ponytail, conducting an autopsy on a suicide case named Dana (Denise Young) who suddenly wakes up screaming. If that’s not crazy enough, Fell was the third choice for the role behind Alice Cooper and Warren Zevon.

Directed and written by James Cummins, who took his special effects skills and added in make-up effects from Bill Corso to go wild. Cummins did the effects on House and this aims to outdo that one. This is an unconventional film, one in which the heroine has to overcome the trauma of losing her child and having ovarian cancer, all while not being the typical expective young female lead.

I’ve stared at the box art for this movie for years and somehow never watched it. I’m glad that I finally did, as while the start of the story is a slow burn, it eventually remembers that it’s a VHS rental movie, a popcorn horror film that should do all it can to make you laugh and scream out loud.

You can watch this on Tubi.

“Baby Shark” in the universe of this movie is “Sea Shark Swim.” There’s a kid named Kirby (River Dalton) who loves that song and his dad, the shark hunter Brock Banner, sends him a stuffed version of that beloved shark. He decided to make it even more special by including an actual shark tooth from the giant monster that he just caught, sewing it inside the toy.

In case you were wondering, “Could that stuffed shark become possessed and eat everyone?” the answer is yes.

And the dad calls it a devil fish, like something out of a Lamberto Bava movie.

By the point that Kirby is being watched by his babysitter Lyla (Daniella Donahue) — and she gets him drunk so she can have people over for a party and he’s like four or five — the shark has begun to kill all of her friends. That brings Brock back to save his son.

Where’s Kirby’s mom? She’s out getting laid.

Directed by Mark and Anthony Polonia, this is exactly the kind of movie you think it is, but also because the Polonias worked on it, it has some heart beating beneath it all. I laughed more than a few times and if a movie about a stuffed killer shark can give you that gift, it’s a worthy film.

You can watch this on Tubi.