June 15: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Rip-Offs! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

Directed and written by Nevzat Pesen, this is based on the stage play by Maxwell Anderson and, of course, the incredible Mervyn LeRoy-directed 1956 movie. Rhoda and her mother Christine Penmark are played by actual daughter and mother Alev and Lale Oraloğlu, which adds to the drama of the story. And it stays closer to the play yet keeps the moralistic ending of the American film. Rhoda’s name is Alev, just like the actress playing her.

The major differences? Well, unlike the 1956 version, you actually get to see Claude Daigle — Cemel — get murdered, which is a shock. And while the class struggle is a subtext in LeRoy’s movie, the differences between the Penmarks and Mrs. Daigle’s role (Nedret Güvenç) seem even more pronounced. Poor Cemel, not only does he have to be wiped out, but he actually has a crush on Alev/Rhoda. Trust me, I’ve been there, little Cemel, mean girls are just so much forbidden quince. Or grapes, Turkey is known for both those fruits for this pun.

While most Turkish cinema of the time focused on comedy and drama, this outright horror story of a young girl obsessed with getting what she wants by any means necessary had to blow minds. Keeping with Turkish cinema’s disregard of copyright law when it comes to music, it also has moments of “Maria” from West Side Story.

I also dug the scene between Alev/Rhoda and the Leroy character, played between a toy train, as he informs her that he knows that she’s a bad little girl.

This needs to somehow be released on blu ray because much like other foreign versions of classic films,it allows you to see a movie that you worship in a whole new light when seen through another set of eyes.

June 14: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Free Space! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

This movie is certifiably insane.

Zoey (Nicola Seixas) and Frankie (Thomas Emery Dennis) are on the way across the country for art school.. Or a better life. Or something, anything, but mostly making love in the middle of the desert where surely someone is watching. 

On their way, they keep hearing urban legends about Billy Badd (Elvis Restaino, Happy Hell Night, Bloodsport: The Dark Kumite and the production designer of Playboy: Women of Wal-Mart). A waitress at a diner has a tattoo of his name and recoils in horror at the mention of it. A cop turns around and runs the other way rather than face him. And when they meet him, they’ll find out why.

Directed by Alex Downs and written by Mark Hovater, who also played Hollywood, this is the kind of one and done ripoff of The Hitcher by way of Mad Max that I’m absolutely shocked that Vinegar Syndrome has never released.

This also totally flips the gender script as Billy is more interested in assaulting Frankie, which means that Zoey has to mountain climb and ride her way to his hideout, bringing along a face painted vet who has dreamed of killing Billy forever.

Elvis Restaino’s pop culture referencing performance in this movie has to be witnessed to be believed as its so over the top there is no real top to go over anymore. It feels like white trash low end The Night of the Hunter with no children to be corrupted, only teenagers trying to make it in a van.

You can watch this on YouTube.

June 12: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Westerns! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

John Liu’s first kung fu lessons came from his grandfather but the flexible kicks that he became famous for were from his lessons with “Flash Legs” Tan Tao Liang, who put him through a rigorous training regime — Drunken Master-style pain like resting each foot on two piles of bricks — to improve his skills.

He started off as an actor in several Hong Kong movies — Secret Rivals, The Invincible Armor, Snuff Bottle Connection — before directing and writing four quite baffling movies: Zen Kwan Do Strikes Paris, Made In China (AKA Ninja In the Claws of the CIA) and the unfinished — until 2021 — New York Ninja. Years later — and after his acting career ended — Liu developed Zen Kwan Do, which he claimed was popular in France

Man, those four movies.

Man, this movie.

As always, John Liu plays John Liu, except this time he’s in 1886 Mexico. He’s the son of the best fighter in China, a man who was given two gold dragons by the Emperor to prove just how talented he was. Those dragons, however, were a curse. He had to fight anyone who came his way. His last challenger, however, just wanted to fight him for honor. But during that fight, John’s father gets jumped and killed. With his last words, he makes the honorable martial artist the guardian of his son and of one of the dragons.

After his guardian is killed — fighters kept showing up and one finally killed him — John takes all the fighting skills he has known, the gold dragons and himself to the New World, where he wants to protect the Chinese who are fighting racism and the slavery of working on building railroads.

That sounds like a movie that makes a fair amount of sense.

Well, this is a John Liu movie.

Once he arrives in Mexico, he battles a gang of outlaws. They overcome him with their guns and push his face into a blazing campfire. Now blind as a result of his pride, he gives up. The woman he once saved — Paulette  (Cyrielle Clair, Sword of the Valiant and another major film I’ll get into in a minute) — trains him with a series of tests, like a mobile that makes sounds, a cactus he must defeat with his feet and even being able to catch knives blind that she throws at him with no warning. There’s another scene where she throws a series of eggs at him and while blindfolded, he knocks every one out of the air before they touch him.

There are enemies in wait. There’s a killer (Phillip Ko Fei) sent by the Chinese government. There’s a karate fighter (Roger Paschy) who is the guardian of a large chubby child who may never learn martial arts. There’s a scene where the kid nearly wipes himself out with nunchucks.

Paulette and John alternate training with arguing, including one time when she goes to town without telling him for two days and leaves him alone. When she returns, he asks why she didn’t leave a note. She tells him he couldn’t read it anyway. A pause and he yells, “Because I’m blind!”

This has a lot of messages in it. There are Chinese people being mistreated. There’s pride. There are the dragons, which are the symbols of the Chinese bloodline and the endless bloodshed. Most of all, while John is the best fighter of all time, he doesn’t want to fight.

But the end, man. The end. John gets shot by the mayor of the town — after winning his greatest fight — who was trying to kill Paulette. Then she’s killed by a female assassin who is killed by the chubby kid and as John Liu sits on the beach and discusses death. And we end up with that goofball kid and dead bodies everywhere.

Back to Cyrielle Clair. The credit for her in this movie literally says “Star of Tusk.” I was wondering, at the scene where John cuts open a cactus to drink while struggling to survive the desert if this movie was suddenly becoming El Topo. I mean, I get it. I’m obsessed with Alejandro Jodorowsky and see him in so many movies. But when the credits of a film — inside the film itself — call out the fact that one of the few actors in it starred in Jodorowsky’s comeback picture, well…there are no coincidences, right?

I adore this movie and not just for how weird it is. It’s a Western Kung Fu Zaitochi that’s assistant directed by Godfrey Ho. Of course I’m going to enjoy it. But I really love it because it uses the same TV sports highlight theme throughout.

June 11: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is 80s Horror! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

I feel like I haven’t really given Lambverto Bava a fair chance. Then again, whenever I say that, people always remark that I’m always mentioning that I like his movies. Demons is a near-perfect movie but I’ve always qualified that by saying that he had Argento, Franco Ferrin and Dardano Sacchetti on board along with Michele Soavi as assistant director. And then I think, well, you know, I kind of really like Macabre and it has some really grimy stuff in it. A Blade In the Dark, Blastfighter, Dinner with a Vampire, Graveyard Disturbance, The Ogre, Demons 2 and Midnight Ripper all have charms. I’ve even come around to liking Delirium e foto di Gioia, Maybe not Monster Shark. But the more I think about it, I really do like Lamberto Bava.

This is the movie that put me over the edge into perhaps even love.

In July of 1986, Lamberto was hired to create five TV movies under the title Brivido Giallo (Yellow Thrill). Of course, none of these were giallo and only four got made: The Ogre, Dinner with a Vampire, Graveyard Disturbance and Until Death.

There were some hurt feelings about this movie when it was made. It was based on an older script by Dardano Sacchetti, but Lucio Fulci went on record saying that he was planning on making an adaption of The Postman Always Rings Twice with the title Evil Comes Back. Fulci said that Sacchetti wrote it up and sent it to several producers and later found out that when Luciano Martino bought it, his name wasn’t on it. Fulci said, “…because of our friendship I decided not to sue Sacchetti, but I did break off all relations with him.” Sacchetti responded, “The producer of Evil Comes Back didn’t have the budget required, and he gave up to do the film. That’s it. Years later, as the screenplay was mine, I sold it to another producer who used it for a b-movie with Lamberto Bava.”

Gioia Scola really could have been a remembered giallo queen if she’d come along 15 years early. As it is, she was in some of my favorite late 80s films in the genre, including Obsession: A Taste for Fear, Too Beautiful to Die, Suggestionata and Evil Senses.

In this film, she plays Linda, a woman whose husband Luca (Roberto Pedicini) left her eight years ago. All the men of the small village wondered why he’d leave behind such a stunning woman. In fact, this movie could have been called Ogni uomo vuole scopare Linda. She gave birth to Luca’s son and unknown to the town, has since become the wife of the man who helped kill her husband, Carlo (David Brandon).

Together, they run a small hotel near the lake. During one rainy night, Marco (Urbano Barberini) arrives to stay. And it seems like he knows way too much about what’s going on. Her son Alex (Marco Vivio) may as well, as he wakes up every night screaming, dreaming of his father clawing his way out of a muddy grave. She hires Marco as the handyman, but Carlo thinks they’re sleeping together. In no way can this turn out well.

How does Marco know where all the old clothes are kept? How does he already know the family recipes? And why is he so close so quickly with Alex?

What’s intriguing is how close this is in story and tone, yet goes off on its own path, to Bava’s father’s film Shock. The difference is where the father would use camera tricks and tone to create a mood of dread, his son will put you directly into the middle of the muck and grue with comic book lighting and great looking effects from Angelo Mattei. And keeping the family tradition going, Lamberto’s son Fabrizio was the assistant director. How wild that Mario’s grandson was AD on movies like Zoolander 2 and Argento’s Giallo and The Card Player, using the name Roy Bava for those last two movies.

My favorite fact about this movie is that it was released on VHS as The Changeling 2: The Revenge. Trust me, it has nothing to do with The Changeling.

You can watch a gorgeous version of this thanks to Dr. Sapirstein on YouTube.

June 10: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Kung Fu! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

It’s real easy to make Gymkata a punchline. But how many movies have ninjas on horseback and Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas as a secret agent?

Based on The Terrible Game by Dan Tyler Moore, this was directed by Robert Clouse, who seemed to have a talent for making movies that I love, including The Ultimate Warrior, Force: Five, The Pack, China O’Brien and its sequel, Game of Death, Battle Creek Brawl, Enter the Dragon and The Pack. Its writer, Charles Robert Carner, also made the amazing Blind Fury.

Jonathan Cabot (Thomas) is tasked by the Special Intelligence Agency (SIA) to play The Game, the athletic spectacle that the country of Parimsitan makes foreigners play. It’s like American Gladiators but to the death with the winner getting any wish they want. The SIA wants that wish to be allowing the United States to place a Star Wars early warning satellite system in the country. Cabot is told that he can save the country and also learn about his missing father, who they claim was an SIA agent. He’s trained in the fighting arts by Hao (Conan Lee) and soon falls for Princess Rubali (Tetchie Agbayan) who he saves from the enemy by using his combination of karate and gymnastics or, as the movie says in the title, Gymkata.

Can Cabot defeat Commander Zamir (Richard Norton)? Will he find his father who supposedly died in The Game? Does he win The Game which no outsider has succeeded in winning in 900 years? Certainly you know the answers to all of these, right? How about this one: Is it strange that we’re cheering on American imperialism?

There’s also a “Town of Crazies” that luckily has a pommel horse in the middle of downtown so that Cabot can thrill us all with his abilities. And the leader is called The Khan and he’s played by Buck Kartalian who was Julius in Planet of the Apes and Peter Fudd in Please Don’t Eat My Mother. Isn’t his real name better than his name in this?

Kurt Thomas was a great enough gymnast that he has several moves named for him: the Thomas flair, the Thomas salto, the Thomas on High Bar and the Thomas flair on pommel horse. I never knew that in gymnastics, new moves are named in the gymnastics rule book after whoever first performs them in an international competition. So Scott Steiner would not get to call the rana the Frankensteiner, because Huracán Ramírez did the huracán rana first.

For all the worst movies this film is on, it’s never boring and always ready to delight you with people screaming, fist fights and yes, gymnastic chop sockery. There are way worse movies, trust me.

June 9: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Fred Williamson! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

Adolph Caesar — the man whose voice told us “A mind is a terrible thing to waste” and the trailer for Dawn of the Dead — is standing outside Madison Square Garden where a tournament has been set up to decide the new king of martial arts in the wake of the death of Bruce Lee. Never mind that Bruce died in 1973 and this is six years later.

This event is actually one of the Oriental World of Self Defense shows put on by Aaron Banks, who is all over this movie. Starting in 1966 as small shows on the east coast, the shows grew in popularity until they ran monthly at Madison Square Garden.

Banks also is given to saying some of the dumbest things ever in this movie, like how he knows that Bruce was killed by the “Touch of Death” which even got reported in Black Belt magazine years later, with them claiming that  Lee died from “a delayed reaction to a Dim Mak strike he received several weeks prior to his collapse.”

The quivering palm, as they also call it.

The same power that Count Dante claimed that he had.

Like the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique.

Then they edit old Bruce Lee footage to make you think he agrees.

If you are offended by the truth being punched, kicked and chopped, you might not enjoy this movie. If you love the tabloid world of grindhouse pseudo-reality films, get on board.

After that, we see how hard it was for Fred Williamson to get to the show. He wakes up late — in bed with a gorgeous woman, as he should — before battling his way through traffic and people who think that he’s Harry Belafonte. That’s an easier way to MSG that Ron Van Clief has, as the star of The Black Dragon — and a man who fought Royce Gracie in a UFC match at the age of 51 — has to battle through four muggers.

Then it’s time for us to discover the story of Bruce Lee from this movie in a way that has never been told this way again. Using footage from a 1957 movie The Thunderstorm, we learn that a young Bruce was karate obsessed and wanted to live up to the samurai legacy of his great-grandfather. You may at this point wonder if the people who made this knew that samurai were from Japan.

Using footage from The Invincible Super Chan, we discover the life of that Chinese samurai before Bruce comes to America and becomes an actor despite the fact that he was in movies from his toddler years and was in 27 movies before The Big Boss in 1971. It ends with an actor named Bill Louie dressed up as Kato from the Green Hornet — Lee’s breakthrough in the U.S. — as he saves two women — one is Gail Turner, Patty from Don’t Go In the House — from being assaulted. Then he kills one of them with a shuriken.

Then we’re back in MSG and The Hammer tells us that the whole idea of a tournament to replace Bruce Lee is pretty stupid. Fred, you’re in the movie about it. You’re literally breaking kayfabe when you look at the camera and say, “Two guys fighting for Bruce Lee’s title that doesn’t even exist, I mean, that’s kind of absurd, isn’t it?”

Meanwhile, the karate match to determine the next martial arts superstar is really a boxing match. This is after a match where Bill Louie ripped out a man’s eyes and threw them to the crowd and suddenly in Italy, Lucio Fulci felt a twitch and wondered why he suddenly was interested in martial arts.

Also known as Dragon and the Cobra — perhaps to cash in on Williamson playing Black Cobra? —  this was released as a Sybil Danning’s Adventure Video title and man, that back title alone makes me lose consciousness. Maybe that’s Sybil using Dim Mak on me.

Matthew Mallinson only directed this film, but he also edited Tales of the Third Dimension, Unmasked the Idol, The Order of the Black Idol and Caged Fury. It was written by Ron Harvey, who help turn Zombie Holocaust into Dr. Butcher M.D. There’s a connection between that movie and this film, as Terry Levene produced Fist of Fear Touch of Death and he was the man behind Aquarius Releasing, He also owned the rights to the movies torn apart for this. A movie this absolutely scummy could only come from Aquarius Releasing, I guess.

This is a movie with the sheer balls to end with this line describing Lee in a movie devoted to people dressed like him, the actor redubbed saying things that he never said and then going through his best Brucesploitation clones: “He was the prototype. Everything else is just an imitation.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

June 6: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Free Space! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

The power of Zombi — or as we call it in the U.S. Dawn of the Dead — in Italy is unquestioned. Not only did Lucio Fulci take it further, grosser and harder with Zombi 2, it led to an entire industry of films that were inspired by it, fueled by both the past mondo and cannibal films inside their DNA.

Becchino (Renzo Montagnani, Joe D’Amato’s Il Ginecologo Della Mutua, Maluc in When Women Had Tails and When Women Lost Their Tails) is working in a graveyard when he finds a book of voodoo, which seems to place this as much in the realm of Evil Dead — or as they call it in Italy, La Casa except it’s a few years early — as it does the works of Romero, which always beat around the bush as to what caused the outbreak.

The spell he reads brings back an entire group of the dead back from the brink, including Ciclista (Cochi Ponzoni), Buonanima (Gianfranco D’Angelo) and Mercante (Duilio Del Prete). They soon kill Becchino and bring him back as one of them. All head off to a hotel where they drink and sing old songs like “The Captain’s Testament” while luring people into their hotel and, well, eating them.

We never see any of that, by the way. The budget probably didn’t allow for it. It’s probably for the best, as nearly every scheme never pays off, like a traveling salesman that is missing most of his internal organs because of various illnesses or when they accidentally bring back a woman’s first wife — with the help of her son, no less, what is this, Burial Ground? — and she dies of a heart attack.

She being Nadia Cassini (the Woodstock, NY born actress that somehow came to Italy and ended up being in a lot of movies only I would care about, such as When Men Carried Clubs and Women Played Ding-Dong — yes, Italian sex comedies were fixated on cavemen for some reason — as well as Starcrash, one of the Schoolteacher movies once Edwige Fenech quit making them, Sergio Martino’s Spogliamoci così, senza pudor (Sex With a Smile 2) and, strange enough, two 2Pac videos, “California Love” and “How Do u Want It”), who the zombies bring back to life to have some of the pleasures of the slowly turning green flesh, at which point she does one of the wildest bump and grinds you’ve ever seen as she can barely stand up and do a zombie shuffle at the same time. It’s honestly worth watching this entire movie just for this scene.

At this point, the army — alerted by the boy who tried to bring Cassini’s first husband back to life — attacks the hotel, forcing the dead to head off to what is supposed to be a shopping mall but really looks like a grocery store.

If you’re keeping a list of zombie movies with grocery store scenes, you can always start with this, Messiah of Evil and Pathogen. 

Anyways, it all ends as a dream, with the gravedigger still digging that same grave.

Once you watch Nello Rossati’s other films, like the absolutely deranged Top Line, this all makes a lot more sense. The script comes from one of that movie’s writers, Roberto Gianviti (who also wrote Murder Rock, The Psychic, Five Women for the Killer, The Sensuous Nurse, A Lizard In a Woman’s Skin and so many more), Paolo Vidali (the second AD on The Sister of Ursula and the writer of Don’t Touch the Children! and A Woman In the Night) and Rossati, who I always forget was the man who directed and wrote Django Strikes Again. How did a guy who mainly made sex comedies get two movies out of Franco Nero?

This is a curiousity but there are no subtitles and if you’ve never watched commedia sexy all’italiana, the chances that you will hate every moment are quite high. Then again, I say take a chance. You never know what movies may work for your taste.

You can watch this on YouTube.

June 4: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Cars! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

The Ferat rally car used in the film wasa prototype for the Škoda 110 Super Sport, which is now known as the Škoda Super Sport Ferat Vampir RSR because of this movie. The car is so famous in Czechoslovakia that Škoda remade it as part of their Icons Get a Makeover series.

This was directed by Juraj Herz, who also made the must-see films Morgiana and The Ninth Heart. He also wrote this with Jan Fleischer. It was based on “Upír Ltd.” by Josef Nesvadba. Another movie based on that writer’s work, Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea, also has the Škoda Super Sport Ferat Vampir RSR in it. That movie is a science fiction film about the Third Reich trying to go back in time to give Hitler a nuke and the twin of the pilot of the time machine — who choked to death on a croissant — trying to stop them.

Dr Marek (Jirí Menzel) loses his driver Mima (Dagmar Havlová) — who he obviously has feelings for — to the Ferat team, which has developed a car that just may be fueled by human plasma through the lead foot of the driver.

The real vampire is the Ferat company, which sucks the blood of all who work for it. Or, well, uses them and throws them away, like any big corporation. The car is also a vampire in a way that may not be about blood. Once driven, it obsesses everyone that has felt its power.

I love that Juraj Herz is the vampire in the silent movie within this film, just as much as how Ferat is taken from Nosferantu and Mimi is very close to Mina Harker.

June 3: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Poliziotteschi! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

They tried other titles for this movie — Mafia Junction, Super Bitch, Blue Movie Blackmail (in the UK, where Stephanie Beacham’s nude scenes were the selling point) — but there may have never been a film with a better name than Can Anyone Be More of a Bastard than Inspector Cliff?

Also: No. There cannot.

Inspector Cliff Hoyst (Ivan Rassimov, as always, a sinister and suave man) is an undercover cop who spends as much time committing his own crimes as he does stopping drug smugglers like Mama the Turk (Patricia Hayes). Meanwhile, Beacham plays Joanne, a sex worker who gets rich men on camera and then blackmails them. Cliff may or may not love her, but he knows that he can take her away from all this if they can put Mama’s gang up against the gang that Joanna works for, run by Morrell (Ettore Manni).

Then, they can get that statue filled with heroin.

Between killers who sing while doing their jobs, Rassimov laughing that sinister laugh and comedy actress Hayes seemingly having a blast playing a gangster, this movie is all about swinging London and the fact that for everyone here, death is around every corner.

Massimo Dallamano was the cinematographer on A Fistful of Dollars, so you know he knows his double crosses. He was also smart enough to get a swinging score from Riz Ortolani that was so good, it was used in the movie he would have directed had he not died, Red Rings of Fear.

There’s also an old rich politician who likes to dress up like a rabbit. I could watch Rassimov read a newspaper, so I was thrilled by having him as the hero — well, not really, more like villain who runs the story, I guess — and there’s so much strange stuff in here that it’s worth sitting down with.

June 2: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Monsters! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

Yuta once worked at the Institute for Super Physics and Chemistry but lost his job as he was working on a team that was making a way to enlarge living things. Now, he works at his parents’ sushi restaurant at the Tsukiji Fish Market. One day, he accidentally dumps his food into the Sumida River and a kaiju mutant squid arises followed by an octopus. As always, the Japan Self-Defense Forces can’t stop the monster, so they must call upon the SMAT (Seafood Monster Attack Team). But when a giant crab comes out of the water, perhaps mankind is for dinner.

This is the twenty-seventh movie for Minoru Kawasaki, who also made Executive Koala, The Calamari Wrestler, Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit (a sequel to The X from Outer Space), The World Sinks Except Japan (a comedy take on Nihon Chinbotsu/Japan Sinks) and Super Legend God Hikoza. He has created a movie where rice vinegar cannons blast monsters, where sliced off pieces of kaiju create entirely new foods for food lovers and a giant chef robot with a knife is able to battle for Tokyo’s survival.

In Japan, this movie’s title translates as Three Giant Monster Gourmet.

This doesn’t have the effects of even the old Toho movies, but it’s a lot of fun and has some big ideas inside it. However, Monster Seafood Wars does get one thing right. All kaiju and the robots fighting them should use pro wrestling moves.

You can watch this on Tubi.

You can also buy this on blu ray from SRS.

You can also check out the official site.