What other movie will give you this: Wang Bao-Ling (Chan Sze-Kai) is seduced by Shi Jong-Jie (Si Wai), a ghost optometrist who is also a vampire. He leaves her with a pair of possessed contact lens to replace her broken glasses, which soon take over her life and make her lead new victims to him.
Directed by Kuei Chih-Hung (Curse of Evil, The Boxer’s Omen) and written by Yun-Wen Chen and Kuang Ni, this will make you wary of strange men who give you free contacts that allow you to see ghosts. This boasts the full color palette of Japanese gothic horror like The Vampire Doll and they both flow from the bloody heart of Hammer horror.
As Shaw would do more horror — as well as Kuei Chih-Hung — things would get crazier, gorier and just plain goopier. Yet here’s a fully formed idea — it was only his second horror movie after The Killer Snakes — and this is moodier than his later work.
When boyfriend Au-ping (Lin Wei-tu) finds himself unable to help — and a slowly dying Wang Bao-Ling begins to seek victims from the beauty salon where she works — they turn to several supernatural professionals, but stopping a vampire isn’t simple. Even worse, every night, the vampire’s eyes glow and then so do our heroine’s as well, ending with him using her for his lurid ends, leaving her naked and trapped in a cobweb inside a haunted house every morning. Now that is a walk of shame.
This movie also taught me that vampires are allergic to cigarettes and that everything in Hong Kong is neon.
I learned about this film from the Unsung Horrors podcast, who described it as “the most(?) Italian of perhaps any Hong Kong horror film.” Listen to the episode!
Golden Oldies Week (July 27 – August 3) Something Weird Video have released such a wide range of movies over the last 30 years that trying to categorize them can be tricky. They started out as a gray market mail order distributor (aka a bootlegger) not unlike the Cape Copy Center or Sinister Cinema and eventually moved into the niche se ploit titles that would set them apart. The movies on this list are the kind of cult genre titles that were the bread and butter of many of the bootleg companies of the 90s and most were not exclusive to SWV. If you look in the catalogs or on the website these would be under categories like “Nightmare Theatre’s Late Night Chill-O-Rama Horror Show,” “Jaws of the Jungle,” “Sci-fi Late Night Creature Feature Show,” or “Spies, Thighs & Private Eyes.” Many of these are currently available as downloads from the SWV site (until the end of 2024)!
Rafael Baledon also made La Maldicion de La Llorona, yet today I want to discuss this werewolf film, which blows my mind.
Clarisa Fernandez is well-to-do, but is dealing with a curse, which is that she’s a werewolf. Luckily, or perhaps not so much for the humans they encounter, her doctor is a werewolf as well. They fall in love, which seems to be pretty much a happy ending, but not for anyone that knows them.
This is a movie that starts with no dialogue for ten minutes and ends with a werewolf hunting dog saving the say. Honestly, that sounds like the best review I can give this movie, which I adore.
Golden Oldies Week (July 27 – August 3) Something Weird Video have released such a wide range of movies over the last 30 years that trying to categorize them can be tricky. They started out as a gray market mail order distributor (aka a bootlegger) not unlike the Cape Copy Center or Sinister Cinema and eventually moved into the niche se ploit titles that would set them apart. The movies on this list are the kind of cult genre titles that were the bread and butter of many of the bootleg companies of the 90s and most were not exclusive to SWV. If you look in the catalogs or on the website these would be under categories like “Nightmare Theatre’s Late Night Chill-O-Rama Horror Show,” “Jaws of the Jungle,” “Sci-fi Late Night Creature Feature Show,” or “Spies, Thighs & Private Eyes.” Many of these are currently available as downloads from the SWV site (until the end of 2024)!
Directed by Glauco Del Mar and written by Antonio Velazquez, this South America import with some scenes shot in New York City sexploitation movie starts with Sofia (Carmin O’Neal) and Dr. Anderson (Roberto Maurano) burying Mr. Montel (Guillermo De Córdova) after he has a cataleptic fit. Seconds after his funeral, he bursts out of his coffin and starts exploring the world of sex because, well, who knows. But it works — it has a demented theremin soundtrack and feels like Doris Wishman in the best of ways. After he experiences so many sexual hijinks, including lesbians and drag queens, which is like going from zero virginity to turbo in moments. He also drags a blonde from an alley into her apartment and takes her while an old woman watches, saying “Oh, if only I were ten years younger.”
Also known as Unsatisfied Love, this is a movie that begins with a virgin crying in his coffin, has the same music Andy Milligan used to use, long shots of squirrels, a grave escape that feels completely taken from Night of the Living Dead yet made the same year, bad dubbing, unsynched sound, enough shots of feet that Wishman and Quentin Tarantino would be pleased and a movie that feels like “What if Carnival of Souls was about losing your virginity?”
Oh man, this movie is a weird one. And that’s why we often visit the East, to see movies that we would never dream of.
The Shaw Brothers aren’t just all fighting movies. No, sometimes they produced movies in which blood frogs and all manner of strange demons decimate and assault families.
The House of Shi was once a wealthy family, but after the tragic murder of thirteen of their number — and them being thrown down a well — they’re been cursed. The kind of curse that awakens a demon who kills the survivors one by one in various gory ways when it’s not attacking every woman in the cast.
The craziest thing of all was that this movie was exclusively released to something called the ZiiEagle, which was packed with Shaw Brothers movies.
This was directed by Chih-Hung Kuei, who also made Corpse Mania and The Boxer’s Omen. So if you’ve seen those movies, you should know to not expect anything in the realm of our senses. Where does one find frogs with steel teeth, anyway? Or a gigantic worm that doesn’t just devour people, but leaves behind most of their bodies covered in pink ooze?
I think I’ve seen all the Shaw Brothers non-supernatural films and the HK Database says that this is a drama, so…let’s just agree that it may have demons and magic but it’s kind of its own thing.
Long Fei (Jason Piao Pai) left behind the world of martial arts fisticuffs and now lives in a secluded mountain studio where he and his assistant Fatty (Wong Chun) have spent five years carving a woman out of crystal. Long Fei wishes that his woman had a soul, so he adds some blood because you know, nothing bad would happen, and of course everything bad in this movie happens as the crystal woman (Yu-Po Liu) starts killing people.
Masked Poison Yama (Wei Hao Ting) and his son (Yu Hsiao) want to kill Long Fei, so they spend much of the movie inside a treehouse lab where they mix plants, snake venom — yes, the movie shows us it being extracted, it’s a Shaw Brothers movie — and animals to make a poison that blows people up from inside their stomach. Yes, they show it. You know you want it.
Yet the son is soon killed by the crystal female and Yama declares revenge on everyone, first using poison gas to kill everyone in the family of former fighter Prince Tian Di (Jung Wang). As this is all going on, he sends his men White Judge and Black Judge after Long Fei and Fatty, who are hiding out in an inn where the owner decapitated people and serves their flesh.
This movie is, well, absolutely wild. There are battles in a graveyard, a school of masked female assassins, wire-assisted swordplay and every character coming together for one final battle. I just realized that Hus Shan also directed Inframan, Kung Fu Zombie and Dynamo. Yeah, that makes sense even if this movie doesn’t — like how is the crystal woman related to the assassin academy? — but who cares? It looks good, it moves fast and it’s super weird.
Golden Oldies Week (July 27 – August 3) Something Weird Video have released such a wide range of movies over the last 30 years that trying to categorize them can be tricky. They started out as a gray market mail order distributor (aka a bootlegger) not unlike the Cape Copy Center or Sinister Cinema and eventually moved into the niche se ploit titles that would set them apart. The movies on this list are the kind of cult genre titles that were the bread and butter of many of the bootleg companies of the 90s and most were not exclusive to SWV. If you look in the catalogs or on the website these would be under categories like “Nightmare Theatre’s Late Night Chill-O-Rama Horror Show,” “Jaws of the Jungle,” “Sci-fi Late Night Creature Feature Show,” or “Spies, Thighs & Private Eyes.” Many of these are currently available as downloads from the SWV site (until the end of 2024)!
Also known as Isle of the Snake People, the original title of this movie translates as Living Death. It was directed by Juan Ibanez, who also directed star Boris Karloff in The Incredible Invasion, House of Evil and The Fear Chamber.
Karloff’s box office value led to these movies being financed by Columbia Pictures, which would then distribute them. Karloff received $100,000 per film, which is about $641,000 in today’s money. He rejected the scripts for all four movies, but agreed to make them when Jack Hill — yes, the maker of Spider Baby — rewrote the stories.
Filming was to take place in Mexico City, but Karloff’s emphysema (as well as the fact that he’d already lost a lung to cancer and had pneumonia in the other) would not allow him to work in the city’s altitude. He shot his scenes — with Hill directing — at the Dored Studios in Los Angeles, with additional scenes shot in Mexico with a Karloff stand-in named Jerry Petty.
Captain Labesch has arrived at a far-flung island to stop the voodoo rites being carried out by Damballah (Karloff). He’s warned by local rich white man Carl van Molder (also Karloff) to leave well enough alone. There’s a temperance subplot too, but who cares when Kalea the snake dancer is turning women into zombies that eat policemen?
She is played by Yolanda Montes, who used the stage name Tongolele and was known as The Queen of Tahitian Dances. A vedette in the Mexican cabaret, Tongolele is a potent mix of Swedish and Spanish who was born in Spokane, Washington and continues to be a star in Mexico to this day. She even released an album at one point. I have to say, she looks like she stepped straight out of 2020, with her shaved head and fierce makeup. She’s seriously volcanic, taking over the film from the moment she appears,
Human sacrifice. Dance numbers. Near-psychedelic images. Zombies. Well, as to that latter part of this movie, Night of the Living Dead came out in the years between when this movie was made and when it was released. By that point, this seemed dated. No matter. Watching it today, I was beyond entertained by it.
Golden Oldies Week (July 27 – August 3) Something Weird Video have released such a wide range of movies over the last 30 years that trying to categorize them can be tricky. They started out as a gray market mail order distributor (aka a bootlegger) not unlike the Cape Copy Center or Sinister Cinema and eventually moved into the niche se ploit titles that would set them apart. The movies on this list are the kind of cult genre titles that were the bread and butter of many of the bootleg companies of the 90s and most were not exclusive to SWV. If you look in the catalogs or on the website these would be under categories like “Nightmare Theatre’s Late Night Chill-O-Rama Horror Show,” “Jaws of the Jungle,” “Sci-fi Late Night Creature Feature Show,” or “Spies, Thighs & Private Eyes.” Many of these are currently available as downloads from the SWV site (until the end of 2024)!
Directed, shot by and edited by Jon Hall, who also plays Dr. Otto Lindsay, The Beach Girls and the Monster is the kind of strange movie that I love so much. The surf footage was shot by Dale Davis — who also is in this as Tom — and he also made the surf documentaries Walk on the Wet Side, Strictly Hot and The Golden Breed. Even better, it has sculptures, the monster’s head,and the Kingsley the Lion, which were all created by Walker Edmiston — who plays Mark — who had a kid’s show in Los Angeles and went on to be the voice of Ernie the Keebler Elf, several characters on Lidsville, Sigmund from Sigmund and the Sea Monster, the Zuni Fetish Doll in Trilogy of Terror and Magneto on the 1980s Spider-Man, as well as playing Professor Crandall on The Dukes of Hazzard.
Can it get even better than that?
Let me introduce you to the The Watusi Dancing Girls” rom Hollywood’s Whisky a Go Go club on Sunset Boulevard. And how about that soundtrack with appearances by The Hustlers and the theme song “Dance Baby Dance” by Frank Sinatra Jr. and Joan Janis.
Bunny (Gloria Neil, Sarah in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) is found dead after being attacked by a seawood covered lizard creature. No, not Slithis. Or Zaat. Or one of the Humanoids from the Deep. This, according to Dr. Lindsay, is a fantigua fish that has grown large enough to exist out of the ocean. Did it grow lungs? What kind of scientist is he? And why does he call the kids loafers and little tramps?
Maybe he’s mad that his son Richard Lindsay (Arnold Lessing) is a beach bum, that his best friend Mark (Edmiston) has moved in and sculpts, and that his wife Vicky (Sue Casey, Evilspeak) drinks and flirts all the time, seeming like the kind of woman that John Ashley would certainly sleep with and cuck him were this Blood Island and not Santa Monica. Richard was there when Bunny died, so all he cares about now is his girlfriend Jane (Elaine DuPont) and living life for fun instead of doing research with his old man.
In case you can’t guess, there’s no such thing as the monster. Yes, the doctor is dressing up, all to make his son more serious by killing everyone that he is friends with as well as getting rid of his second wife.
Also known as Monster from the Surf and Surf Terror, this movie is totally The Horror of Party Beach but I don’t care. It’s like a sitcom or Scooby-Doo episode except that all sorts of people die and it ends with a misunderstood father, who is dressed as an undersea monster, driving his car off a cliff and blowing up real good.
Chan Sau Ying (Ni Tien) is going to die from tuberculosis and even then her husband Chun Yu (Wong Yung) can’t stop abusing her. Her new servant Leung Yi Wah (Chan Sze Ka) takes pity on her and they work together to drown Chun Yu in a pond, but then Sau Ying watches as her husband rises from the swamp and seeks revenge.
Kuei Chih-Hung was making his version of Diabolique here but that movie didn’t end with a naked woman having blood slowly spit all over her and her entire nude body covered by painted spells.
Ghosts that spit green vomit, animal guts falling like rain and a grime and rain filled swamp location make this movie just feel messy and gross, which quite often is how I like it. Sure, it moves slow in parts — it is forty years old, after all — and some of the acting leans toward silly humor when the movie seems deadly serious, but when the last ten minutes give you the sleaziest exorcism you’ve even seen, there are no complaints.
If you’re wondering why people are fans of this movie — and it may seem slow yet full of gorgeous filmmaking — stick around. The last 15 minutes are exactly what you’re looking for.
Heaven and Hell has it all. Director Chang Cheh. Nearly all of the Venom Mob. Angels and humans falling in love. A battle between heaven and hell. The martial arts you demand and also the weirdness you hope is coming too as the Venoms escape a hell that looks like a combination of Hong Kong and Mario Bava but somehow more neon and all the fog in the world.
Yi-Min Li ‘s character gets kicked out of Heaven for helping David Chiang and Maggie Li fall in love and sent down to Earth as a Hong Kong cab driver who is killed when he can’t stop connecting lonely hearts like Alexander Fu Sheng and Jenny Tseng. He then gets sent to gambler’s hell, a place where he should not be, and the demons just sigh as if to let us know that there is no worse job than working in the punishing world of fire.
The Buddha of Mercy shows up and helps him assemble three of the four Venoms, who all share exactly how they ended up in Hell, and then they fight their way out in battles that are impossibly perfect and have a sheer joy of punches and kicks despite being in the eternal despair of souls. They must face the men that killed them on Earth, now demons, and make their way to be reincarnated.
This movie started shooting in 1975 and saw stops and starts along the way, as well as the money running out. There are also musical numbers. I can only imagine that serious martial arts fans hate this as they wanted fight scenes and instead, they got an exploration of the many levels of the afterworld.
Basically if Alejandro Jodorowsky got hired by Shaw Brothers, this would have been the film he made.
Golden Oldies Week (July 27 – August 3) Something Weird Video have released such a wide range of movies over the last 30 years that trying to categorize them can be tricky. They started out as a gray market mail order distributor (aka a bootlegger) not unlike the Cape Copy Center or Sinister Cinema and eventually moved into the niche se ploit titles that would set them apart. The movies on this list are the kind of cult genre titles that were the bread and butter of many of the bootleg companies of the 90s and most were not exclusive to SWV. If you look in the catalogs or on the website these would be under categories like “Nightmare Theatre’s Late Night Chill-O-Rama Horror Show,” “Jaws of the Jungle,” “Sci-fi Late Night Creature Feature Show,” or “Spies, Thighs & Private Eyes.” Many of these are currently available as downloads from the SWV site (until the end of 2024)!
Carradine had sold everything he owned to start a traveling Shakespeare actor’s company and when it folded, he was penniless, which led to the kind of roles that we love him in. In fact, the actor would get to go wild in these parts unlike any straight films he’d made. He’d make several movies in Mexico such as Diabolical Pact, Enigma de Muerte, Autopsy of a Ghost and La Señora Muerte, but this time, he’s a vampire!
A Transylvania Airlines plane has crashed in Mexico. bringing Aura to the country — all of the male vampires are dead — and into competition for leadership of the vampire women with Dracula’s widow Countess Véria. They’re also biting luchadors and using them as henchmen, which puts Mil on their trail.
Meanwhile, the women have Count Branos (Carradine). Once he was such a powerful vampire that he was the man who taught Dracula. Yet now, after a vampire hunter put a stake through his brain instead of his heart, he’s become a moronic and sad man, crying in a cage and dreaming of the days when he ruled the world of the undead.
Yet its a ruse, as Véria sacrifices her own life to make him powerful again and man, Carradine goes absolutely wild in the role as an unbound master vampire. Sure, it’s all the way at the end of the movie, but man, it’s great.
Also: a car runs Mil off the road and it’s driven by bats. By bats!
Even better, this movie starts off as all Carradine movies should, with him speaking directly to the camera. All movies should start this way.
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