There was no one more important in middle school than Sho Kosugi. In retrospect, we should have worshipped him even more, because without him bringing the weapons and skills to Cannon’s Enter the Ninja, we would not have the ninja elements that have been used in everything from G.I. Joe to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, video games and a million Godfrey Ho movies.

You can’t imagine the literal madness when the idea that Sho would be on TV every single week became common knowledge.

From January 20 to August 31, 1984, NBC aired thirteen episodes of the adventures of John Peter McAllister (Lee Van Cleef). Let me just quote the narration at the beginning of each episode: “John Peter McAllister, the only Occidental American to achieve the martial arts discipline of a ninja. Once part of a secret sect he wanted to leave, but was marked for death by his fellow ninjas. He’s searching for a daughter he didn’t know he had; pursued by Okasa, once the Master’s student, now sworn to kill him. That Master found a new student. That’s me, Max Keller. But we knew Okasa would be behind us, in the shadows, ready to strike again.”

Max Keller may have been the unexciting Timothy Van Patten but the evil Okasa? That’s Sho Kosugi. Actually, Sho also was Van Cleef’s fight double, the series’ fight choreographer, ninja technical advisor and stunt coordinator.

While the show was cancelled in less than a year, seven movies were made out of the episodes.  In the U.S., they had the simple title of The Master Ninja, but in Europe they got rad names like Ninja – The Shadows Kill and The Ninja Man.

When these aired on Mystery Science Theater 3000, the credits have an orange colored martial arts scene which seems to have come from someone videotaping people practicing karate. It really looks like the credits come from a home VHS labeling program and not the kind of company that could license a movie.

Master Ninja (1984): The first film is episodes one and two of the series. In the first, Peter meets Max and together they help the Trumbulls (Claude Atkins and Demi Moore) save their airport from the sheer evil that is Clu Gullagher. And if you wondered, does Gene LeBell show up, you have seen more than enough American kung fu movies. This was directed by Robert Clouse, who certainly understood how to shoot martial arts thanks to being the director of Enter the Dragon, Game of Death, Golden Needles, Battle Creek Brawl, Gymkata and Deadly Eyes (actually, that was has chihuahuas dressed as killer rats). It was written by series creator Michael Sloan, who also created The Equalizer and wrote for the reboot of Kung Fu in the 90s.

The second part, “Out-of-Time-Step” finds the Master and Max helping a dance club as he searches for his daughter. Lori Lethin (Bloody Birthday), Brian Tochi (Takashi from Revenge of the Nerds; more to the point of ninjitsu the voice of Leonardo the ninja turtle) and Swamp Thing Dick Durock all are on hand. This portion was from director Ray Austin, who directed the 80s returns of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. and the Six Million Dollar Man and written by Susan Woolen, who acted in both of those reboots.

Isn’t it strange that in order for western audiences to accept ninjas that we needed Italian western heroes to ease the transition, with Franco Nero battling Kosugi in Enter the Ninja and Lee Van Cleef here? Did no one want to see Jack Palance wear those cool ninja shoes?

Master Ninja 2 (1984): The second movie of The Master — it’s really episodes 3 and 4 of the show — is probably best known for airing on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Yet for those alive in 1984 who loved all things ninja, the idea that we could see Sho Kosugi on NBC once a week was a big deal.

The first part, taken from the episode called “State of the Union,” has McAllister (Lee Van Cleef) and Keller (Timothy Van Patten) dealing with union issues. This may point to my issues as a kid with this series. I had no interest in the human world of this show. I wanted ninja fights. If you read this site on any basis, you will realize this has not changed.

So if you want to see a ninja help Crystal Bernard from Wings then this would be the movie for you to watch.

This section is directed by Alan Meyerson, who also directed Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach and Private Lessons. The script was from staff writer Susan Woolen.

Woolen would also write the script for “Hostages,” directed by Ray Austin, which has our ninja master and his young student save a senator’s daughter. Randi Brooks (Cherry from TerrorVision), George Lazenby and David McCallum show up as this turns into an espionage film when again, all we want is ninja on ninja.

Of course, I wanted to be Sho Kosugi as a kid.

I still do as an old man.

Another of the movies that Film Ventures International redid for TV, this uses footage from Prisoners of the Lost Universe as its opening credits and renamed The Stranger to become Stranded In Space.

Astronaut Neil Stryker (Glenn Corbett) is the only survivor of his mission. He is held in quarantine for such a length that he starts to suspect the government. It turns out that Dr. Revere (Tim O’Connor) and a operative by the name of Benedict (Cameron Mitchell) are pumping him full of drugs and interrogating him. It turns out that Stryker has landed on another version of our world named Terra and is being studied.

On this other world, a war destroyed most of the population and those that remain follow the Perfect Order, a one world government that keeps individual thought out of peoples’ minds. With the help of Dr. Bettina Cooke (Sharon Acker) and Professor Dylan MacAuley (Lew Ayres), Stryker is trying to get on a spaceship and fly it back to our reality.

This aired as the NBC Monday Night Movie on February 26, 1973.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Nicole Grace (Traci Lords) and Susan Warfield (Crystal Bernard) become friends at a club and when they learn that they look enough alike that Nicole can get away with using Susan’s ID and insurance to get care for her ulcer at an ER. They both have a dark past — Nicole did time for shoplifting and Susan’s dad left when she was two and her mother has just died. A few weeks later, Susan tries to check in with Nicole, but she’s disappeared and the hospital says that the patient they had — named Susan Warfield — has died. An Aaron Warfield has authorized her to be cremated and a lawyer is suing the hospital for $10 million dollars, as they had the wrong blood type, due to them thinking she was someone else. The real Susan is running low on cash, so she hides out at the vacant apartment and starts wearing Nicole’s clothes.

This death ends up introducing her to her real father Edgar Warfield (George Dickerson) and the idea of her half-brother Aaron, who her father tells her to never meet as he’s not kind to women. She’s also driving Nicole’s car, which almost ends up with the cops arresting her. She tries to make it home but a man is stalking outside and she’s saved by Ron Holden (Judge Reinhold), who seems to be a good person. Well, seems to be, because spoiler warning, he’s Aaron and as they investigate the case together, he’s killing people that can tell that he’s the one who murdered Nicole.

The last movie directed, written and produced by Larry Cohen, this has some good ideas. And yes, maybe it’s the least of his efforts, but it’s a sort of American giallo about both the hero and villain not being who they say they are. My only issue is that Crystal Bernard is attractive, but no one would ever confused her with Traci Lords.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Vampirella was created by Forrest J Ackerman and comic book artist Trina Robbins for Warren Publishing, first appearing in her own black and white horror comic magazine, making Vampirella a sister book to Creepy and Eerie. Archie Goodwin was the main writer who took her from a host of horror stories to a character all her own.

In the Warren magazine — the origin has since been changed as the comic book is now published by Dynamite — Vampirella comesfrom the planet Drakulon, a world where blood flows like water for most of the year, until droughts threaten the planet. When an American space ship crashes on her planet, she follows the astronauts home to try and save her people. There, she learns that Dracula is one of the Vampiri, the people of Drakulon, and has been corrupted by demons.

In the movie — which was one of the Roger Corman Presents Showtime films — Vlad Tepish (Roger Daltry) kills all of the rulers of Drakulon and leaves for Earth to take it over. Ella (Talisa Soto) follows him to get revenge for her father.

After being stuck on Mars, she is taken to Earth by a spaceship crew and soon joins Adam Van Helsing (Richard Joseph Paul) and his army of vampire hunters as they head to Vegas to battle Tepish, who is now singer Jamie Blood.

This film was in development for a long time. All the way back in 1976, Hammer was going to make it with wither Caroline Munro and Valerie Leon as Vampirella and Peter Cushing as her friend Pendragon, as well as roles for Orson Welles and Donald Pleasence. Supposedly, Jim Warren wouldn’t give up the merchandising rights.

Riccardo Chiaveri’s interpretation of Munro as Vampi.

Valerie Leon as Vampirella.

Hammer and American-International Pictures almost made a Vampirella movie in 1976 with John Hough directing, Christopher Wicking writing and Barbara Leigh as Vampirella.

There was also a 2019 script reading that had Munro, Judy Matheson and Georgina Dugdale, Munro’s daughter, as Vampirella.

When asked about the film, director Jim Wynorski was not happy with the film that he made, telling Big Gay Horror Fan “My take on Vampirella is that it’s a mess. The last time I watched it was to do the commentary which was awhile ago. It’s a film I cannot watch. Everything went wrong. Everything! I like Talisa Sota as a human being. She’s very pretty and she’s very sexy. But she’s not Vampirella. They forced me to use her. She just didn’t have the body for the costume. Roger Daltry was great. But, yeah, it was in Vegas. There was embezzlement on the set. It was really a nasty, nasty picture to work on. And it came out badly, too. So, I’m just saying that’s one that I look at and say, it could have been and it wasn’t…I should have had Julie Strain. But they didn’t think Julie Strain meant anything. So they put somebody wrong in the role. I should have stopped and said let’s just not do this. But, I was going to lose the rights in 6 months, so I did what I had to do. At least, I got the film made. But I should have said no.”

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

Directed by Ernest Pintoff, written by Peter Bellwood and Larry Ferguson and based on a story by Michael Timothy Murphy and Larry Sturholm, St. Helens aired on HBO on May 18, 1981, a little more than a year after the real eruption.

St. Helens begins on March 20, 1980 with an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale being unleashing by the volcano, the first activity in more than a hundred years. It causes Otis Kaylor (Ron O’Neal) to nearly crash into some loggers as he makes an emergency landing.

United States Geological Survey volcanologist David Jackson (David Huffman) soon shows up to learn more. He’s actually playing someone very close to David Johnston, a scientist who died in the actual volcanic eruption. His parents were angry that not only was her son portrayed as a daredevil but also how much the movie got wrong about the science. Before the movie aired, 36 scientists who knew Johnston signed a letter of protest against the film, saying that “Dave’s life was too meritorious to require fictional embellishments” and that he “was a superbly conscientious and creative scientist.”

He soon becomes friends with a waitress and single mom named Linda Steele (Cassie Yates) and upsets her boss Clyde Whittaker (Albert Salmi) and the locals at Whittaker’s Inn about the danger of the eruption, all while Sheriff Dwayne Temple (Tim Thomerson) tries to keep law and order.

Watching this movie in 2024, it’s amazing how MAGA the people of the town are. It’s no accident that Bill McKinney from Deliverance is one of them. The loudest is the owner of the Mount St. Helens Lodge, Harry R. Truman (Art Carney), who refuses to leave the blast radius and becomes so famous for his stand that he basically can’t leave if he wants to live up to the character that he has created for himself. His sister, Gerri Whiting, served as a historical consultant for the film. According to her, Harry Truman and David Johnston were friends.

At 8:32 a.m. PDT on May 18, 1980, David hikes to find a massive bulge that has been growing on the north face of the mountain while Harry goes fishing in Spirit Lake. As David promised to the locals, they are both annihilated by a force similar to a nuclear bomb going off in their faces.

Sadly, the David who played David — David Huffman — died a sad death as well. He was only 39 years old when he was stabbed twice in the chest while fighting with a would be car thief. He died near instantly.

Why would I watch a movie so surrounded by death and sadness? Because it’s the first Hollywood movie scored by Goblin. Let me tell you, there’s nothing that says the Pacific Northwest more than Italian prog rock.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Don’t Open the Door to the Man In Black is a TV movie directed by Giulio Questi, who made some of the oddest giallo films ever, Death Laid an Egg, as well as Arcana and one of my favorite Westerns, Django Kill…If You Live, Shoot! It was written by David Grieco.

Francesca (Claudia Muzii) is a fragile woman undergoing treatment, which has been recommended by her friend Lorenza (Aurore Clément). The root of her depression lies in a failed relationship with a man who also dated her mother, a famous actress who died before her time. Yet there’s more to it when Francesca is found dead as well.

While this is a basic TV movie, it’s still nice to see the face of Giuliano Gemma (A Pistol for Ringo). By the late 80s and early 90s, most Italian genre directors had moved to the small screen to tell their stories. This is a fine tale but not anything that needs to be hunted down.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Crime in via Teulada was originally broadcast in 1979 on television as 15 segments of 5-minutes each. It was called Striped Mystery and the show aired before RAI’s Variety. It was an attempt to mix reality and the world of the movie, as it was also shot at RAI’s studios in Rome. The original version was called Giallo A Striscio.

In 1980, it was released in theaters as a 61 minute long movie.

The huge Rai building is filled with activity as so many shows are being made, including a crime film, a historical drama, a musical program called Discoring and the variety show Domenica In. In the midst of all this craziness, an actress named Diamante (Mariarita Viaggi) is killed and one of the RAI employees, Ely (Margherita Sestito), finds the body where film reels are stored. When security comes to help her, the body is gone.

Two of Ely’s co-workers, blind switchboard operator Lia (Auretta Gay) and production assistant Sandro (Pietro Brambilla), take over the case when a dancer named Annie (Barbara D’Urso) are murdered and — spoiler warning — Ely are killed. There are also some actors playing themselves, such as Pippo Baudo, Domenico Modugno, Nanni Loy, Filippo Albertazzi, the Tessler Twins, Renato Rascel and Corinne Clery wandering about and anyone could be killed next. Everything seems to point to an actor named Enrico (Branko Vatovec), who is also Lia’s brother, but the killer really could be anybody. And by that, I mean someone with ties to all of the victims from their past.

Director and co-writer — with Amedeo Pagani — Alan Lado made some really interesting giallo in the past, such as Short Night of Glass Dolls and Who Saw Her Die? He also made the Star Wars ripoff The Humanoid and Last Stop On the Night Train.

It also has a soundtrack by Fabio Frizzi that uses some of the music from The Gates of Hell.

It’s pretty fun with people getting turned into silver statues and an axe carrying giallo murderer. There’s even a dummy drop early in the movie!

You can watch this on Daily Motion.