Directed by Yuen Chor and Tun-Fei Mou, this Shaw Brothers movie has two, well, Haunted Tales.
The first, “The Ghost,” was originally a movie called Hellish Soul that was shut down and reshot a few years later (thanks Silver Emulsion!). The second, “The Prize Winner,” also started as a full-length movie before it was turned into a short and added to this movie.
“The Ghost” has newlyweds played by Ling Yun and Ching Li moving into a new oceanfront home but learning that no one around them is normal. Everyone sleeps throughout the day, even the livestock, and then the visions start. Then there’s a car crash. Then a ghost comes back. There’s also an eyeball in the closet. But this part is a traditional ghost story and shot as such. It’s really good. But where the movie really shines…
“The Prize Winner” has janitor Ah Cheng (Chan Shen) taking a spirit board away from some children in the building. He learns that it is haunted by a fox spirit that promises him all the riches that he can handle as long as he doesn’t gamble, have casual sex and murder people. Of course, he does all of those things and this story has numerous funny sex moments followed up by a totally gross ending that blew my mind out of my skull. Turns out that Hong Kong Ouija boards are gigantic and have a planchette that spins around it, which goes round and round until the man is transformed into hamburger. Also: A neighbor has an entire apartment filled with strange dolls.
The two stories don’t really work together but I could care less. I was pleased by both of them and the juxtaposition nature of this movie just makes me wish that there were more exactly like it but also happy because it is such a unique film all to itself.
“Flaming Cloud Devil” Ku Han-hun (Alex Man Chi-leung) has learned the Buddha’s Palm from his master and is challenged by four masters of the Evil Fire God power: “Unpredictable Dashing Ring” Sun- Pi-ling (Shaw Yin-yin), “Heavenly Foot” Wai Chein Tien-chun, “Nine Roped Rings” Lui Piao-piao and “Thunderbolt Devil” Pi Li Shen-chun. He’s left for dead and twenty years later, his hiding place is found by Long Jian-fei (Tung Shing Yee), a cocky young fighter who has just been saved by Dameng, a giant flying bearded dragon. Having been trapped in a cave for two decades, Ku Han-hun is a bit insane, but he tells Long that he will teach him his secret art if he gets him the egg of a Golden Dragon. Our hero goes one further and also brings him a dagger that could just be a lightsaber. Pretty good for a guy who starts the movie thrown off a cliff by the new boyfriend of his former girlfriend.
Along the way, Long rescues sword sisters Chu Yu-hua (Yu An-an) and Chu Yu-chan (Hui Ying-hung), angering their master Sun- Pi-ling, who imprisons him. Wai Chein has also gone on to create an army including an acid spitting dwarf.
Based on Palm of a Thousand Buddhas, this is a shot in studio film that has basic effects, such as an obvious costume for the dragon. But you know, who cares? This has near psychedelic flourishes as the martial arts skills go beyond punches and kicks and become energy radiating from the hands of the fighters, turning them into superheroes battling caves filled with monsters, looking for mysterious object after object. How can you not love a movie that announces its ripped-off Star Wars weapon with the sound of Vader’s labored breath?
Lieh Lo is awesome in this, a goofball hero who is smarter than he appears and who announces himself every time he shows up, saying “Bi Gu of East Island is here!” Have you ever seen a movie where a magic McGuffin heals the acne of an angry female martial arts master before? Nope. You never will again.
This was Taylor Wong’s second movie but man, he already had some magic.
Rene Bond week (August 11 – 17) Rene Bond could brighten up even the most dreary productions, and she was in plenty of them. In the early adult scene she was one of the better actors, particularly when it came to comedy, though she could squeeze into some leather and throw the whips around when the role called for it. Bond appeared in somewhere near 100 films, thanks to her affable professionalism she worked with many filmmakers multiple times and regularly performed with her boyfriend Ric Lutze. Her career received an enhancement when she became one of the first stars to get a boobjob. She retired from film in the late-70s just as the porno chic era was dying down, but before the video era. You can find her in a ton of SWV titles, so take yer pick!
Directed by Stephen Gibson (using the name Stan Gelson; he also made Black Lolita and used the name Norm de Plumé when he made Disco Dolls In Hot Skin and Hackin’ Jack vs. the Chainsaw Chick 3D) and written by a crew that included Harvey Meadowmuffin (another Gibson name), Pierre LaFarce (yet another Gibson name) and Tommy Rott (Arnold Herr, who shot Teaser, Hard Candy and several other movies with Gibson) and based on a joke by Ramsey Throckmorton (also, you guessed it, Gibson), The Playmates In Deep Vision 3-D is the first Eastman Kodak color 3D movie. Shot in the Deep Vision 3D process, there is a cut for drive-ins and another for adult theaters, but it never gets all that explicit.
There are also several other movies made with Deep Vision 3D, all directed by Gibson: Blonde Emmanuelle, Hard Candy and Wildcat Women.
Dr. Jane Kinsey (Becky Sharpe, If You Don’t Stop It… You’ll Go Blind!!!) is doing research on swinging when she meets TV show host Joe Strovack (John Paul Jones, Angie Baby) and everything up until that point was a documentary and now, it switches to a love story. And then it starts having Laugh-In quick bits.
One of those cut scenes has Rene Bond as a waitress and she looks right into your soul and says, “It’s all real.” Except that she had breast implant surgery before this movie was made. But who cares? It’s Rene Bond!
Also showing up, we have Con Covert, who was in everything from A Scream In the Streets to Repo Man. He was also the intruder in Fantasm and shows up multiple times in Hollywood Babylon. Plus, there’s Dalana Bissonnette (AKA Kathy Foster, Sally Jack and Claire Krumpet), Sandy Dempsey (one of the many prisoners of Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS), Suzanne Fields (Dale Ardor from Flesh Gordon), Kathy Hilton (The Toy Box), William Margold, Linda Marie (the succubus from Terror at Orgy Castle), Titus Moede (Boo Boo from Rat Pfink a Boo Boo), Gretchen Rudolph (Run Swinger Run!), Starlyn Simone (also known as Michelle Simone, Simone, Linda Harris — she used that name for A Climax of Blue Power — and Starline Comb, Nora Wieternik (Queen Amora from Flesh Gordon) and Wendy Winders (the woman going down on Charlie Chaplin in Hollywood Babylon).
This movie promised “The Revolutionary New 3-D Process That Will Put “The Playmates” Right in Your Lap!” The 3D process can’t be that good. The humor isn’t all that funny. But hey, it’s something different. And if you can’t watch a movie and wait for Rene Bond to show up, you really need some help.
Rene Bond week (August 11 – 17) Rene Bond could brighten up even the most dreary productions, and she was in plenty of them. In the early adult scene she was one of the better actors, particularly when it came to comedy, though she could squeeze into some leather and throw the whips around when the role called for it. Bond appeared in somewhere near 100 films, thanks to her affable professionalism she worked with many filmmakers multiple times and regularly performed with her boyfriend Ric Lutze. Her career received an enhancement when she became one of the first stars to get a boobjob. She retired from film in the late-70s just as the porno chic era was dying down, but before the video era. You can find her in a ton of SWV titles, so take yer pick!
Frankie Lee (Rene Bond) and her boyfriend Johnnie Ellis (Ric Lutz) have a tough relationship. She’s becoming a big star as a singer and can’t be around whenever he wants her. He has a job she doesn’t understand as a computer programmer and when she comes to work, she’s so attractive that even his CPU hits on her. Come on, she’s Rene Bond. Of course a mainframe is going to fall in love.
The secret is that Johnnie is also sleeping with Alice (Cyndee Summers), Frankie’s best friend. They have a meet-up in her marital bed just in time for her husband Ray (John Barnum) to get home and put him in the hospital, where Frankie visits and give him an old fashioned as both of his arms are broken.
On another secret date, Johnnie tells Alice that he only keeps Frankie around for the money so that he can patent his computer invention. And despite him figuring out how to get both of them in bed at the same time, this story can only end in tragedy.
Rene Bond is amazing in this, singing, bring dramatic and doing comedy all in an hour of screen time. This is a softcore film, a rarity for almost everyone in the cast as well as director and writer Alan Colberg. It even has racing footage and feels like it was an attempt to make a real movie and not just a smoker.
I wish the whole movie was about that computer trying to have sex with Rene Bond.
Based on Wu Cheng’en’s novel Journey to the West — specifically the story of Red Boy — The Fantastic Magic Baby. Chang Cheh pretty much makes Peking opera — there’s even an entire filmed version of one after the main movie — in which Red Boy (Ting Wa-Chung) comes to collect a tribute from the humans who worship the gods Princess Iron Fan and Ox Demon King, who are his parents. He ends up kidnapping Tripitaka (Teng Jue-Jen), a monk whose flesh is said to add thousands of years to your life when consumed, which means that Monkey King (Lau Chung-Chun) and Pigsy (Chen I-Ho) need to fix things.
I tell you that synopsis and it doesn’t matter, because this is basically an hour of long fights, musical sequences, little speaking, wild costumes — stone men and tree people! — and gorgeous visuals filmed against solid colored backgrounds. There’s also so much fog that Lucio Fulci would say, “This is almost enough fog.”
This just washed over me, delighting my senses with its gorgeous visuals and athletic fights. It moves so quickly that you can just sit back and take it all in and feel good in the knowledge that you’re seeing something unlike any other film out there. I love that so many Shaw Brothers movies are shot on sets and this is the extreme version of that, as there’s not even an actual physical location as much as these are shot within a candy colored, misty wonderland.
With fights put together by Peking opera star Li Tong-Chun and Lau Kar-Leung, this is all the action you want in addition to all that arty feel. You can tell people you’re watching high culture.
Also known as Kung Fu Warlord, this is the first of three Shaw Brothers movies based on Louis Cha’s novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes. There are also two sort of sequels, The Brave Archer and His Mate and Little Dragon Maiden.
The children of rebels, Guo Jing and Yang Kang are rescued after the deaths of their parents and trained separately in kung fu in an experiment to see who is the best master. Guo learns from the Seven Freaks of Jiangnan while Yang Kang becomes the son of a prince, so this becomes a prince and the pauper situation.
Guo Jing’s adventures include meeting a beggar who ends up being Huang Rong, daughter of Huang Yaoshi, master of Peach Blossom Island. They travel together, as Guo Jing is taught new styles such as the Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms. To prove himself, Guo Jing must learn several martial arts manuals and increase his abilities.
Directed by Chang Cheh, this film quickly forgets the opening of the two infants and the challenge as to which will be the better martial artist. However, this is a longer adaption between all of the movies, so I’m looking forward to seeing what happens. There are a ton of things happening here, but if you love wuxia movies, this is a great choice. Some reviewers think that there’s too much that happens, but I was interested by everything that happens in this.
Cassie Tate (Kyle Kankonde) and Jack Benson (Titus Makin Jr.) have finally moved past being engaged forever and living with a roommate — Greg Harmon (Charlie N. Townsend) — to finally deciding that it’s time to get married. Jack and Greg go out for a last night as bachelors, but they get in an argument over the fact that now Greg has to move out and find his own life. Jack never comes home and is missing when Cassie turns to Greg for comfort. Almost the very second that they finally start to make love, the police call. Jack has been found.
Jack remembers nothing about what happened and Greg helpfully says that he will keep living in the house and acting as his nurse. To say he goes too far with this — jumping in the shower to soap him down and slowly taking off his shirt first — is exactly why he’s my favorite bad guy that has ever been in a Tubi movie.
Directed by Sara Lohman (Hot Take: The Depp/Heard Trial), who co-wrote this with Amy Irons (Twisted Date), this movie is like a nightmare made for uptight straight people. Greg has no problem with never moving forward in his life and being tied to two people, their third wheel forever, while the supposedly bonded couple feels like they have no real passion the way that Greg does for both of them. He’s always happy, even when wiping out home care nurses. All he wants is to be loved. Is that so wrong?
Sure, he tried to kill his best friend and now basically manhandles him in the shower and takes advantage of him when he’s hurt. Yes, he’s the monstrous villain of this. However, like all great villains, he’s way more fun than anyone else in this movie. You want to see him be happy or at least live to be in a bunch of sequels.
This movie is about the syndicate. Is it the same syndicate that Olga worked for? Or is it something else? Well, it’s the Vogel Syndicate, but I kept yelling about the syndicate like the narrator in White Slaves of Chinatown.
Vanessa (NuNu Thurman) has a good life. Her hard working prosecutor husband Michael (Don Snipes) is moving up to be an assistant DA. She’s helping to raise her sister Maya’s (Angeleah Speights) son Andrew (Dominick English). And she’s a good therapist to her clients. But when her husband decides to arrest all of the members of the aforementioned syndicate, well, he’s soon killed and the police think that she did it.
The truth? Her sister — who brings a new boyfriend named Otto (Karl E. Landler) whose accident keeps changing into the house — is working for the syndicate and killed Michael to save her boy, but sent Vanessa away to save her. Perhaps the bigger news is that Michael and Maya are the real parents of Andre, so she has been lied to basically for years and that oh yeah, Michael’s friend Elijah (Karl E. Landler) was also involved. So then, at the end, when it all seems happy — spoiler after spoiler — he kills Maya and Vanessa now really does have a son in Andre to raise.
So is that happy ending? Maybe?
Directed by David Y. Chung (the cinematographer of another Tubi Original, The Housekeeper) and written by Geoffrey D. Calhoun, this is the kind of twist and turn thriller that Tubi was made for. Sure, you’ll figure it all out long before it ends, but sometimes you eat a whole bag of potato chips too.
“At a high end beach club, a female college lifeguard gets caught up in a secret affair with a wealthy housewife.”
Yeah, but there’s also a Beachwaters.com website, a giallo-style hidden killer, a Sliver love of filming people and a movie-ending fashion show that is as realistic as the Oscars from The Howling III.
Loved it.
Abby (Natalee Linez) is the new lifeguard, one of the few women surrounded by men, but taken in as just one of the guys as she’s a lesbian. Soon, she falls for Imani (Gina Vitori), the rich woman who has hired her to teach her how to swim, but come on, they swim for all of a minute before they’re making out, giving you flashbacks to the days when video stores had that adult but not porn section that you still had to be 18 to rent from but that you could maybe get away with if your significant other didn’t want you embarrassing them by walking out of the porn room curtain in front of everyone in town.
Every young lifeguard is being filmed as they act like, well, young people at a high end beach resort and rack up body counts before being part of this movie’s body count. They’re also all orphans with no next of kin, which means that when the rich and famous want to kill them, they have no one stopping them, investigating their crimes or wondering why the people who should save lives are all dying. Even the one cop in town is in on it.
Directed by Niki Koss and written by Mary Risk, this moves along fast enough and has a nice resolution. I’m always pleased that Tubi continues to be the mom and pop video store of today. And you don’t even have to worry about anyone seeing you rent a slightly dirty film.
Rene Bond week (August 11 – 17) Rene Bond could brighten up even the most dreary productions, and she was in plenty of them. In the early adult scene she was one of the better actors, particularly when it came to comedy, though she could squeeze into some leather and throw the whips around when the role called for it. Bond appeared in somewhere near 100 films, thanks to her affable professionalism she worked with many filmmakers multiple times and regularly performed with her boyfriend Ric Lutze. Her career received an enhancement when she became one of the first stars to get a boobjob. She retired from film in the late-70s just as the porno chic era was dying down, but before the video era. You can find her in a ton of SWV titles, so take yer pick!
This was the first movie that Nicholas Meyer ever wrote. Yes, the same guy who wrote The Day After, Time After Time and the two good Star Trek films (two and four, if you’re playing at home) started right here. One day when he left to visit his parents, the script was altered and young Mr. Meyer wanted to take his name off of the project, but was convinced by his manager that he needed a credit.
Neil Agar (William Smith, Grave of the Vampire) is a special agent for the State Department sent to investigate the numerous deaths at government-sponsored Brandt Research.
It turns out that the scientists there are more obsessed with sex than their research to the point that some of them are literally getting balled to death. By the way, I’m on a quest to get the word balling and ball used in the vernacular again. Please help me.
The truth is the women of the research lab have all become Bee Girls through self-induced mutation. Now they have eyes that allow them to see like insects and the instincts of using and destroying men, several of whom totally welcome the end.
The main reason to watch this is Anitra Ford as Dr. Susan Harris. You may remember her from The Big Bird Cage and being a model on The Price Is Right. She’s in one of my favorite movies, 1972’s Messiah of Evil. If you haven’t seen that, you should probably just stop reading this right now and get on that.
Victoria Vetri plays the heroine, Julie Zorn. Using the name Angela Dorian, she was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for September 1967 and 1968’s Playmate of the Year. When Apollo 12 went to the moon, a photo of her and Playmates Leslie Bianchini, Reagan Wilson and Cynthia Myers was there, inserted into the activity astronaut cuff checklists.
She also appears in Rosemary’s Baby and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. In 2010, nearly a quarter-century into her marriage to Bruce Rathgeb, Vetri was charged with attempted murder after allegedly shooting her husband at close range after an argument. She received nine years in prison on a charge that was finally reduced to attempted voluntary manslaughter. Her husband claimed that she had been saying, “No more Charlie, no more Charlie,” as she’d been convinced that Charles Manson wanted her dead ever since her friend Sharon Tate was killed. In fact, the gun that she used was given to her by Roman Polanski, who her husband claimed that she often slept with along with Tate. Vetri is in a halfway house now and working on making her way back to society.
This movie is also known as Graveyard Tramps, which has nothing to do with what it’s really about. You should watch it anyway.
There are several Bee Girls — called Bee Ladies in the credits — and they include Colleen Brennan (who also used the name Sharon Kelly and is in Russ Meyer’s Supervixens and Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS), Kathy Hilton (If You Don’t Stop It… You’ll Go Blind!!!), Sharon Madigan (Truck Turner) and, perhaps most importantly, Rene Bond, appearing in one of the nineteen movies she made in 1973 and one of the few mainstream efforts. Actually the only one.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.