Detroit narcotics cop Nick Tellis (Jason Patric) is recovering from an undercover operation gone wrong. In the hopes of getting a desk job, he agrees to return to active duty as the partner of Detective Henry Oak (Ray Liotta) as Oak looks into the death of his partner, Michael Calvess. The film goes into what it’s like to be a cop, as the decisions often end up with lives ruined — the cops, the criminals and even the bystanders. That’s why Tellis wants to escape this world, unlike Oak, who wants to destroy the dealers who he feels addicted his friend and partner.

Director and writer Joe Carnahan couldn’t get this sold until Ray Liotta found it and became the star and producer. What a loss that would have been if this just faded away. This totally changed the way that I see Patric, as he’s so powerful in this, working against Liotta, one of the best actors of his era. Nothing in this makes me ever want to be a cop, as it feels like being in the end of the world every single day. Even if you save someone, as Oak did with a child prostitute, you have to protect them every day and even cover up their crimes. Nothing ever works out. No one understands. And the next day, it starts again.

What a powerful and bleak film.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD of Narc has a new filmmaker-approved 4K remaster, immersive Atmos audio and hours of previously unreleased on-set interviews and brand-new bonus features, such as an archival feature commentary with director Joe Carnahan and editor John Gilroy (which is incredible, I watched it with the film and it’s packed with information); a new introduction from Carnahan; interviews with Carnahan, director of photography Alex Nepomniaschy, actor Krista Bridges and costume designer Gersha Phillips; promotional featurettes; press kit interviews with Carnahan, Ray Liotta, Jason Patric, Diane Nabatoff, Alex Nepomniaschy and William Friedkin; a trailer and image gallery.

Plus, you get a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Nathanael Marsh, a double-sided poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Nathanael Marsh and an illustrated collectors’ booklet featuring new writing by Michelle Kisner, a new interview with producer Diane Nabatoff and archival interviews and articles. You can order it from MVD.

Based on the works of Edogawa Ranpo, this anthology film features four different stories told by manga artists and directors. It’s a strange film that looks gorgeous and feels incredibly dense.

“Mars Canal, by Suguru Takeuchi, starts the film. A wordless episode, it has a nude man wandering a wasteland and longing for a lover long gone.

“Mirror Hell” was directed by Akio Jissoji (Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis, Ultra Q: The Movie) has Ranpo’s Detrective Kogoro Akechi (Tadanobu Asano) trying to solve a mystery, as women are turning up with burned faces and a mirror figures into the solution.

“Caterpillar” was directed by pinky director Hisayasu Satō and has its lead, a war hero, return home deaf and without limbs, dependent on his wife for everything. All he can do is see and her beauty stands in contrast to the way that she treats him.

Manga artist Atsushi Kaneko directed the final story, “Crawling Bugs,” as an actress is kidnapped by her limo driver.

I’ve never seen any of the work of any of the filmmakers in this and they’ve really created something unique. It’s definitely something different and if you love aesthetically pleasing films that also strive to upset you, good news. This one will do the trick.

The Arrow Video Blu-ray release of Rampo Noir has new audio commentary by Japanese film experts Jasper Sharp and Alexander Zahlten; new interviews with directors Suguru Takeuchi, Hisayasu Sato and Atsushi Kaneko, cinematographers Masao Nakabori and Akiko Ashizawa and Yumi Yoshiyuki; premiere and making-of features; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Luke Insect and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Eugene Thacker and Seth Jacobowitz. You can order this from MVD.

I have to speak with pride for my Italian filmmaking countrymen: they do not give a fuck.

Any other movie these days that would put a child in danger would not do what director Enzo G. Castellari and writers Tito Carpi, Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino and Leonardo Martín do in this movie.

When the question is asked, “Does this go too far?” I assume Castellari laughed and drank another shot of J&B, delirious in the director’s chair.

Castellari claims he saw Bullitt and wanted to make this, but he probably was thinking of The French Connection. I mean, Fernando Rey is in it, just to assure us that, yes, this Italian movie will be stealing a lot from that movie.

But who cares? This is the story of a tough cop, Vice-Commissioner Belli (Franco Nero), battling perhaps even tougher bad guys, the kinds of drug dealers that’ll blow up their own men just to take out a few lawmen. These new criminals are so disgusting that even the the old-school organized crime bosses like Cafiero (Fernando Rey) try to take them out, only to learn that some of their most loyal men have decided to work for the other side.

Even after all the work it takes to convince Commissioner Aldo Scavino (James Whitmore) that he has a case, Belli must watch as the old man is killed. Soon, the new mob beats his lover Mirella (Delia Boccardo) into submission and then well…runs his daughter over with a car.

Any other movie would hold back from this and do it off-screen.

Welcome to Italy.

In Erica Schultz’s The Sweetest Taboo: An Unapologetic Guide to Child Kills In Film, she refers to this scene as one of the best ever made: “…High Crime’s car death is definitely top tier.” It’s shocking, so wild that I had to rewind it to ensure I had just seen what I thought I had. So when Belli goes wild, killing off everyone in his path — and looking suave doing it, I’m secure enough in my manhood to say Franco Nero is smoldering — we understand. I mean, we just watched his kid fly over the roof of a car and get run over.

When I was researching this movie, I saw that someone on Letterboxd referred to its soundtrack as dull and plodding. I want to go total Inspector Belli on that person, throwing the kind of slaps that an Italian action hero is known for. I was humming along the entire film and it’s been trapped in my head ever since. I don’t know how anyone could watch this and not fall in love with this movie.

The Blue Underground release of High Crime has so much. It includes a 4K UHD and Blu-ray with the film on it, along with three commentaries (Castellari; Nero with Mike Malloy; Troy Howarth, Nathaniel Thompson and Eugenio Ercolani); interviews with Castellari, Nero, Massimo Vanni, Roberto Girometti and Oliver Onions (Guido and Maurizio De Angelis); a featurete by Eurocrime! director Mike Malloy; an alternate ending; a trailer; a poster and still gallery; and the soundtrack on CD.

Get it from MVD.

I must tell you, any movie that starts with Lesly Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” playing while a girl blasts a room full of possessed nuns and priests to chunks with a shotgun, I’m probably going to love that movie. That movie would be The Convent, which explains that Christine (Oakley Stevenson in her youth, Adrienne Barbeau in the present) believed that these nuns and priests were forcing her to have an abortion and that they were abusing children. She’s lived hidden in a house for years, never coming out, becoming an urban legend. The church becomes vacant and a place where people whisper ghosts congregate.

Clorissa (Joanna Canton) is the next in a long line of sorority pledges who must go into the church and spray their Greek letters inside. Along with her brother Brant (Liam Kyle Sullivan), goth best friend Mo (Megahn Perry), stoner Frijole (Richard Trapp), cheerleader Kaitlin (Renée Graham) and frat boys Chad (Dax Miller) and Biff (Jim Golden) — each is a stereotype of what you expect from a horror movie, which allows this film, directed by Mike Mendez and written by Chaton Anderson, to turn things on you — they decide to enter the church.

After police officers Starkey (Coolio) and Ray (Bill Moseley) bust them for smoking up inside the former religious area, everyone runs, except for Mo. She’s hiding from the police so that she doesn’t screw up her probation. She promises Frijole sex — she gives him her panties as insurance — if he doesn’t tell the police where she is. As she hides inside the frightening house of the holy, he makes plans to come back and get his stash and, perhaps more importantly, to get laid, as Mo is a virgin.

Surprise! Mo is kidnapped by Satanists named the Lords of Hell. Led by Saul (David Gunn), who also works at Dairy Queen. While he and his group are mall goths that she sees right through, they really do plan to kill her and bring Satan into our world. She’s stabbed but soon becomes possessed by an actual demon who quickly kills everyone but Saul and Dickie Boy (Kelly Mantle).

Clorissa runs away and comes to Christine for help, who laughs it off, as no teenager is a virgin today. Well, the real issue is that Clorrisa’s brother Brant is one, as is Dickie Boy. Luckily — or maybe not — Dickie Boy plans to have sex with Brant so that they can both survive, but he’s soon turned into the Anti-Christ, the role that Christine’s son was to fulfill. She blows up the church and takes everyone out but Clorissa and Brant. And, well, that cute little dog. But he couldn’t be a demon, right?

Shot on sets from Leprechaun 5: In the Hood and feeling like Demons American Style, this is filled with blood, gore and one of my favorite things in movies, reshoot wigs. They’re all over the movie, so make a drinking game where you spot them. That said, this is a lot of fun. And it’s one more entry on a potential Letterboxd list of horror movies with Coolio in them (Dracula 3000, Red Water,  Leprechaun 5: In the Hood, Pterosaurus and he did play a demon on Charmed once).

The Synapse 4K UHD and Blu-ray release of The Convent has a new 4K remaster of the uncut version supervised and approved by director Mike Mendez, as well as cast and crew audio commentary; a commentary by the Lords of Hell, Saul and Dickie Boy; a video tour of the locations; a making-of; an electronic press kit; liner notes from Corey Danna; a deleted scene and outtakes; a still gallery and trailers. You can get it from MVD.

Joseph Prince (Colin Firth) somehow scores the beyond-beautiful Cynthia (Lisa Zane), a bad girl who might seem out of the league of a park ranger/artist. On the night of their honeymoon, she disappears. He spends days, months, and years looking for her while being laughed at by his best friend Elijah (Billy Zane, and yes, he and Lisa are sisters; consider then the Ivan and Rada Rassimov of this kind of sort of Giallo) makes fun of him.

This leads him to the big city, where he tries to locate her by pictures of her tattoo—nearly getting murdered by Danny Trejo—and meets another of her past loves, Jenny Purge (Lisa Blount), a woman with whom she made BDSM art films. Oh, Joseph, you barely knew this woman and kept getting shocked that she ran drugs and had a girlfriend. And is that the Log Lady as a nun? Sure is.

There’s also a scene where Joseph goes to see Parasite, The Head Hunter and The Evil Below in the theater, which I want from my erotic thrillers.

Directed by Andre R. Guttfreund (who won an Oscar for short In the Region of Ice and primarily worked in TV, directing episodes of Knots Landing) and written by Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato, who would later write The Net and Catwoman, this is the dumbest of the dumb movies, and for that, I loved it. It wants to be neo-noir or Giallo or something, yet it has a scene where Mr. Darcy and Machete discuss what a succubus is. Where else will you get that movie drug?

You can watch this on YouTube.

In Italy, when erotic thrillers became big sellers on cable and video, old masters came back, like Martino and Mattei, to make Giallo movies that were softcore or adult thrillers or whatever title people wanted to sell them as. And in America, I wondered, why didn’t the names of the past come back? Brad Sykes recommended this one to me. As the credits started, Lee Frost’s name came up, and I instantly jumped from my chair and fell to the ground like an old person who needed a Life Alert. Rolling around and yelling as I struggled to get up from the weight of my office chair, I started laughing like a lunatic.

Fuck yes, Lee Frost!

Like the Italian masters — lunatics — I worship, Lee Frost used a ton of names, like David Kayne, R.L. Frost, F.C. Perl, Elov Peterson, Les Emerson, Carl Borch, Leoni Valenti, no, and so many more. He started with sexploitation like Surftide 77 and the baffling in a good way The House on Bare Mountain before going deep into roughies like The Defilers, The Pick-Up and The Animal, as well as American mondos like Mondo Bizarro, Mondo Freudo and The Forbidden.

Just like Italian exploitation fiends who jumped from trend to trend depending on what was hot, Frost made Westerns (Hot Spur, The Scavengers), biker films (Chrome and Hot Leather), occult movies (Witchcraft ’70), horror (The Thing with Two Heads), hicksploitation (Dixie Dynamite), Naziploitation (Love Camp 7), blacksploitation (The Black Gestapo) and porn. Yeah, you knew that was coming. But Frost made A Climax of Blue Power, the kind of adult movie that looked at porno chic and said, “What if we made something that upsets everyone that sees it?”

Somewhere in here, Frost had the time to write Race With the Devil.

How can we make this better for me? What if it were an Emanuelle — well, Emanuelle Griffith — movie? And what if Shannon Whirry played the role?

She’s a supermodel, yes, just like so many of the many Emanuelles that we have come to love. She’s also a female empowerment person who gives TED talks to other women about how men have to give up their control of the world, saying, “Good morning, ladies, and welcome to a man’s world!”

This enrages Richard Tate (Michael Christian, oh wow, Eddie from Poor Pretty Eddie), who kidnaps her and forces her to be debased. Detective Sam Weston (Bo Svenson) is looking for her, as is Sergeant Jim Lytel (Tony Burton, Apollo Creed’s trainer). Along the way, Rip Taylor plays a travel agent, Francine York is the leader of the feminist club that has Emanuelle speak, Whirry has to cover herself in butter to get through a dog door naked and then decides to drink water out of a toilet. It’s like Lee Frost hadn’t made a movie in more than a decade, because that’s true, and he decided to get it all out of his system because this was the last movie he’d make.

Yes, a captive Whirry, forced to eat fancy meal while watching a stalker on a monitor, long monologues from both leads and the kind of quality that lands a movie on a video store shelf with masking tape and a magic marker warning you that you have to be 18. And even if you are, you should watch this in the shower to save time because of how many times you’ll need a shower.

What would make it the absolute number one and the best? What if Lee Frost has a cameo? There’s also a song called “Feminazi March,” written by Frost, which combines sexploitation and Nazis, two things he definitely got boners over.

I don’t know who this movie is for other than me, but for all my complaints that erotic thrillers aren’t out on DVD, MVD has you covered. You can get this from them, along with the Julie Strain movie Midnight Confessions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Director Matsuo Akinori’s Hong Kong/Japan coproduction Asia-Pol (AKA Asiapol Secret Service and Asia Secret Police Force; 1966) is a 1960s James Bond inspired movie with a difference . . . a few, actually, when compared with other Bond knock-offs from around the world. Overall, it’s an entertaining watch from the combined production efforts of the Shaw Brothers and Nikkatsu studios, which right there makes it worthy of recommendation.

Ryutaro (Jimmy Wang Yu, a major action star for the Shaw Brothers), a secret agent for the titular Japan-based organization, searches for Georgie Eaton (Jo Shishido), the ringleader behind a gold smuggling scheme who happens to have a highly selfish chip on his shoulder regarding wanting revenge on Japan. It’s possible that Ryutaro’s father may have been mixed up with the baddies, and he hopes to clear his deceased father’s name.

Interestingly, quite unlike James Bond and the heroic knock-off characters he inspired, Ryutaro is uninterested in women. This despite the fact that the beautiful Asia-Pol secretary Sachiko (Ruriko Asaoka) is making her interest in him strongly known. He also throws out a lovely young lass who was waiting for him in his room. The young woman who gets the most attention from him is Ming Hua (Fang Ying), who may be his sister and therefore is a pawn in the evil game Georgie and his underlings play.

Aside from the differences it sports, Asia-Pol shares many tropes and cliches in common with the 1960s Bond films and knock-offs. From “Ha! You’ve walked right into our trap!” lines to the main villain explaining his grandiose plans in detail before leaving the hero to escape his certain-doom predicament, it’s all here, just in case the viewer has never seen a sixties spy movie before.

There’s a certain charm to the lo-fi aspect of the inventive gadgets on display — from cigarette case phones to incendiary devices — and though the fight scenes and chase scenes also show budgetary limitations, everyone involved obviously gave their all. The prolific Akinori was no stranger to action cinema, and he keeps things interesting with solid pacing. The cast members all provide interesting performances, and Toshiro Mayazumi’s jazzy score fits the proceedings perfectly.

Aficionados of sixties secret agent adventures should find plenty to enjoy with Asia-Pol. Akinori and his cast bring a big helping of spirit to the film, making for a fun cinematic ride.

From January 31, Asia-Pol will be available on FILM MOVEMENT PLUS, which can be found on its own site at filmmovementplus.com or via Amazon Prime Video.

Also known as Fatal Instinct — the most “we’ve got that erotic thriller at home” title ever — this movie was directed by John Dirlam (a camera op on Silk Stalkings, which had to prepare him for this, as well as the cinematographer of The Vineyard and If You Don’t Stop It…You’ll Go Blind!!!) and written by George Putnam, who also wrote Unlawful Entry.

Cliff Burden is a detective looking into the death of a developer. He falls in love with the top suspect, Catherine Merrims (Laura Johnson), just as you’d expect in a film noir. Or an erotic thriller. Except all the sex happens offscreen, so…why would you have Ashlyn Gere in your cast and do that to your audience?

The plot does not matter at all. In the meantime, Madsen wanders around this big, fancy apartment building and tries to keep this rich woman away from the law while being the law. There’s no reason why someone killed the developer, and that murder does not mean anything. Yes, this is just a movie of hanging out, tough guy dialogue and lovely cinematography, which was Dirlam doing double duty.

Is there neon? Is there a saxophone soundtrack? Then, yes, this is an erotic thriller because there’s a sexy tennis scene along the way. It’s not the Skinemax you’re looking for, but hey, this is from a time when Michael Madsen was the selling point for direct-to-video detective films.

Katt Shea launched her directing career with Stripped to Kill, which is, as I always say, way better than it should be. She followed that up with several movies for Roger Corman — Dance of the Damned, Stripped to Kill 2: Live Girls and Streets, which led to this movie. Since then, she’s made The Rage: Carrie 2, Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase and the Netflix movie Rescued by Ruby. She draws on her acting past to help inform her films and can turn what should be exploitation movies into exploitation art movies. She doesn’t forget where she came from but still rises above it.

This won the Grand Jury prize of Best Film at Sundance, but it became a success on video and cable. In 88 short minutes, we meet misfit Sylvie Cooper (Sara Gilbert), watch her become friends with Ivy (Drew Barrymore) and then everything falls to pieces.

Sylvie doesn’t fit in at her rich school, paid for by her TV newsman father, Darryl (Tom Skeritt). Her mother, Georgie (Cheryl Ladd), is close to death, stuck on an oxygen machine and barely there most of the time. Ivy senses that there’s a place she can belong here, as a poor girl at the school on a scholarship. She shows her legs to Dad, fixes Mom’s oxygen and lets Sylvie think that she has someone with whom she can fit in with. Maybe that mercy killing of a dog was intense, but Ivy seems like she could be good, right?

Ivy moves in and slowly becomes a part of the entire family’s life, replacing Georgie in Darryl’s bed. The first time, she drugs Sylvie and has Daryll kneel between her young thighs. Soon, she’s wearing his wife’s clothes, and even the dog chooses her as a favorite over Sylvie.

Then she shoves Sylvie’s mom off the balcony, and no one suspects her because Georgie is mentally ill and near death. Finally, Sylvie confronts her, which ends up with a car accident, a hospital visit and her almost death, Ivy becomes her mother as she fights her way through the pain and the drugs, and they kiss…only for Ivy to shove her tongue in Sylvie’s mouth, ending the dream and bringing back the reality where this friend has murdered her mother and stolen her father.

Shea never presents Ivy as the villain. She does horrible things, but we understand her and the fact that she wants love. Everyone in this wants love. The original ending — this had four of them — saw Ivy getting away with it, and New Line — who wanted a teenage Fatal Attraction — needed a square-up reel where the villain needed to be punished. She dies, even though Shea wanted to make sequels. That said, there are sequels, but not with her characters, Alyssa Milano, Jamie Pressly and Miriam McDonald starring.

That said, Ivy only exists in this movie as the manifestation of the desire that others have. For Dad, she’s a younger version of his wife who wants to have sex and isn’t dying. For Sylvie, she’s a best friend who she can come out to. But what does Ivy want? Love. To be a mother. I think she’s been played as much as she’s playing everyone else.

The strangest thing? This movie is based on truth. Producer Melissa Goddard had a friend stay with her and her family when she was young, and that friend slept with her stepfather, Mike Medavoy, the co-founder of Orion Pictures.

I know we all get old, but when I see Drew Barrymore in ads for phone games, I get sad. For most of my teen years, she was my ideal, a strange creature who was barely understood, someone who would bring trouble into your life, like a manic pixie femme fatale. I hate seeing her selling crock pots at WalMart. You used to ruin families. Now you have a talk show.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.