EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Mei-Chun Chang made another 3D kung fu movie we covered, Dynasty, so we were super excited to get this movie, also known as 13 Golden Nuns.

Thirteen women are ravaged by bandits and the rules of the time state that they must go to a convent. What the rules did not state was that they would spend their time there studying the martial arts and gaining all of the skills that they would need to murder those that did them wrong.

I mean, take it from the film itself: “In 18th century China, bandit hordes roamed the provinces pillaging and plundering villages. Whole villages were decimated. Men, women and children slaughtered and the women raped.According to the social customs of the times, the rape victims, because they were no longer virgins, were sent to convents. Under the austere and knowledgeable presence of the Head Shogun Nun, these girls were taught the Revelations of the Budha and mastered the techniques of the martial arts. They became Shogun women capable of defending themselves and others from the bandit marauders.”

Look, someone gets scalped in 3D. I think that’s worth more than the price of this blu ray. There’s some wedding drama — a young woman is marrying an old doctor because the only way he can do acupuncture on her breast is to marry her so it’s not inappropriate and the artist who loves her calls in the bandits because, well, it’s a kung fu movie. The real reason to watch this is to see arrows come out of the screen.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Dennis Wheatley’s writing reflected his conservative worldview, as his heroes defend the monarchy, the British Empire and its class system. If you’re evil in one of his books, you either are from Satan or you’ve stood up to those ideals. As for how well he knew the occult, he was known as an expert on Satanism, exorcism,and black magic, even publishing The Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult, personally picking the titles and writing introductions for each book. The series included works by Theosophist H. P. Blavatsky, Alesiter Crowley and Bram Stoker amongst many others.

He was not a fan of this movie, saying “This is disgusting, obscene, has no relationship to my book. It’s outrageous and disgraceful. And I will never again let this company turn one of my books into a film.”

I kind of loved it.

American occult writer John Verney (Richard Widmark) has been asked by Henry Beddows (Denholm Elliot) to pick up his daughter Catherine (Nastassja Kinski) from the airport. She’s had quite the life, being a member of Father Michael Rayner’s (Christopher Lee) Children of the Lord, a religious order that her mother was also part of. The group wants her back and uses black magic to battle Verney.

Catherine is set to become the human form of Astaroth when she turns eighteen and only Verney can save her from the Satanic forces of the former priest.

While Kinski is nude in this movie — and fourteen years old, which is pretty upsetting even if she had been topless already at the age of twelve — Lee is not. That was his stunt double Eddie Powell. Also: Klaus Kinski turned down the lead, saying that he may have had no issue being in a film where his daughter was fully naked, there was no way he’d stay sober.

If you’re in the mood for more Dennis Wheatley, Hammer also made The Devil Rides Out.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

This movie is literally the center of the Venn Diagram that would be made of the movies that I love the most.

Italian ripoff of a successful film — This movie is obviously trying to be The Exorcist.

Satanism — This film has some of the goofiest and most awesome devil tricks of any of I’ve seen.

Exploitation — No one in this film acts like a normal human being and reality has been supplanted by insanity before the demons even get involved.

Multiple titles — This film is also known as Sexorcist, The Tormented, Devil Obsession, L’Ossessa and was later re-released post-Rocky Horror midnight movie success in 1977 as The Eerie Midnight Horror Show.

And the title card that comes up before the movie begins: THIS FILM IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY.

Daniela is an art student in Italy who is so respected by her teachers that she gets to join them as they acquire religious sculptures from a church due to be torn down. That church was deconsecrated way back in the 1700’s because the priests and nuns decided that they would turn against God and start having orgies in the church. And one of the statues, an incredibly lifelike display of one of the thieves crucified next to Jesus, catches Daniela’s eye. She is told that it was pulled directly from a tree, that it was already inside the wood and all the sculptor had to do was bring out the details. However, many tourists have had mental breakdowns just looking at this sculpture.

Daniela’s life is weird even before the crazy gets started. Her rich parents throw a party and we learn that her mother isn’t just cheating on her husband, she’s doing it pretty much in public. Yep — Daniela catches her mother getting whipped by the thorns of a rose — a scene that Becca just randomly walked into and asked, “What are you watching?!?”

Our heroine leaves for her studio at the university. As she paints, the sculpture comes off the cross in a scene that can only come from the deranged mind of Italian exploitation filmmaking (director Mario Gariazzo wrote Sister Emanuelle and directed Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind). Of course, that revived religious icon then has sex with her, sex that appears to be a dream as she runs from the studio.

Later that night, as Daniela climbs the stairs to her family’s apartment, she keeps thinking she is alone, but the sounds of her footsteps don’t match up. She hears a demon whisper her name and she runs in fear before the demon overcomes her, forcing her into a state of sexual mania and a dream where she is crucified. She spends the rest of the movie trying to get anyone to have sex with her while stigmata appears on her hands and she does all of the tropes of exorcism rip-offs.

And then Ivan Rassimov (All the Colors of the Dark, Shock/Beyond the Door II, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key ) shows up as Satan, giving Daniela her beauty back so that she can work with him to tempt all of the priests, like Father Xeno (Luigi Pistilli, Oliviero from Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key). She tries to seduce him, so to forget that she has tempted him he self-flagellates.

The priest dies and the girl is saved, after she pukes out the demon. But you knew that, right? You’ve seen this film repeated before. But that doesn’t mean that this film isn’t great. And by great, I mean the scummiest version of everything you love about films like this. No matter title you refer to it by, it is everything you want to see.

21st Century released this as The Tormented.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

You gotta love this Amazon description, which assumes that we know who these fellows are:

“FBI agent Brad joins Tony and Nick, the self-styled supermen who battle crime wearing bullet-proof super-suits. They are on a case involving radioactive counterfeit money and people who can be broken down into precious jewels. With some really nice stunts and awesome kung fu, gimmick weapons & gymnastics!”

I mean, I wasn’t interested and then you hit me with gymnastics?

Director Gianfranco Parolini is better known for his Sabata films, as well as God’s Gun. For this movie, he went to Yugoslavia to get the adventures of these three heroes to the big screen. And it wasn’t easy — for one stunt, actor Aldo Canti jumped out of a 20 feet high window, hit a trampoline and then jumped into a truck moving at full speed.

After this movie, the Supermen went around the world: Japan in Three Supermen at Tokyo, Africa in Three Supermen in the Jungle, Hong Kong in the xenophobically titled Supermen Against the Orient,  and seemingly have run out of countries, they went back in time to the wild west in The Three Supermen in the West.

Tony is played by Tony Kendall, who is also in The Whip and the Body and Return of the Blind Dead, as well as the Kommisar X series of films. And Nick, another of the Supermen, was played by actor/stuntman Aldo Canti, a real-life thief with strong mob ties that was released from jail just to appear in this film. He was replaced by Sal Borgese in the other films in this series before coming back for the Turkish co-production Supermenler in 1979.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Kelly (Jeanne Bell, the second black Playboy Playmate in October 1969, the first to be on the cover in January 1970 — with four other black Playmates — and also the first to be on the cover by herself in October 1971; she’s also TNT Jackson) and Anggie (Rosanne Katon, Playboy Playmate September 1978; The Swinging Cheerleaders) are pirates who steal from rich tourists and give to poor people. Then, the Justice Department finds Kelly and lets her know that her sister Sandra has been taken by drug dealer Monteiro (Tony Carreon). If the pirates can get into his plantation and get info, they’ll get immunity for all their past crimes.

They break in and join up with a prisoner, Marcie (Trina Parks, Darktown Strutters) and the bad guy’s woman Serena (Jayne Kennedy, Body and Soul), then work on blowing the base up real good. That’s because Sandra has already been killed when she tried to escape. Well, the girls try and make it out, but not everyone is on the right side.

Cirio Santiago directed this, Cyril St. James wrote it and Dimension Pictures released it in the U.S. and this is a combination women in prison and blacksploitation film. I wish that it had more tension or reasons to tell you it’s a must see, but it’s interesting for the leads all being black and otherwise, it has long scenes of padding when you want all of the madness of a WIP film. The chase kicks some of that off, but this seems to have all of the ingredients of a firecracker — speaking of Firecracker, that’s a much better Santiago film — but then the fuse sputters.

21st Century released this as “Holiday Entertainment!” with Group Marriage.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

If a slasher film can have a pedigree, which in this film’s case comes from its cast, let this be one of them. Seriously, there are some heavy hitters on hand here!

Detective Dinardo (Mike Connors, Mannix) is on the case in New York City, where those who live in a fancy apartment building are those who are dying horribly. All fingers seem to point in the direction of a doorman (an impossibly young Ian McShane), so Dinardo does what any good cop would do. He puts a rookie named Kate (Anne Archer) into harm’s way.

Other than some TV work, this was the first major acting that Maureen O’Sullivan had done in the twelve years since The Phynx. Further boosting this movies megawattage of stardom are Leon Isaac Kennedy (Penitentiary, as well as an early trailblazer of the porn leak thanks to a film he made with his then-wife Jayne Kennedy), Ruth Ford (who would know of high-living NYC apartments as her two spaces inside the Dakota were valued at $8.4 million when she died in 2009), John Heard (everything from Home Alone to C.H.U.D.), Carrie Nye (who in addition to being in The Seduction of Joe Tynan, was married to Dick Cavett), Murray Hamilton (whose resume is vast, but all you need to do is mention his work as the mayor of Amity), character actor Val Avery and Sully Boyer (The Entity, Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws).

This is Tony Lo Bianco’s only directing job, as he is better known in front of the camera, starring in movies like The Honeymoon Killers, Mean Frank and Crazy Tony and God Told Me To). Also known as The Doorman, it’s part of that subset of late 70’s and early 80’s slashers that depict the juxtaposition between the high rise and the low scum of end of the century — and the world — NYC. You can easily pair this with The Fan, Eyes of Laura Mars or even The New York Ripper.