Category Archives: Movie reviews

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: The Beach Girls and the Monster (1966)

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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.

This was written by Joan Gardner (who did tons of cartoon voices), Robert Silliphant (who wrote The Creeping Terror and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?) and Don Marquis.

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.

It’s 66 minutes of your life. Live it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

SHAWGUST: Hex (1980)

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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.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

SHAWGUST: Heaven and Hell (1980)

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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.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: Mil Mascaras contra Las Vampires (1968)

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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)!

Back in Drive-In Asylum #8, I wrote about “John Carradine vs. Mil Mascaras” and this movie is the film where it happens.

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.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: Dead Eyes of London (1961)

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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)!

“There was a ring of blind men
Sent by the reverend to kill
Wealthy old pigs feasting on swill
Inside the mouth of madness
The killer creeps into view
A shadow cast in torment
Coming for you

Dead Eyes of London, they’re watching you
Dead Eyes of London, follow you home
Dead Eyes of London, they’re watching you

You’re never coming back, you’re never coming back”

Directed by Alfred Vohrer and written by Egon Eis and Wolfgang Lukschy, this is — like all krimi — based on the novel by Edgar Wallace, who is also the father of King Kong and giallo. It’s the first of a series of 14 movies filmed by Vohrer and was originally adapted in 1939 as The Dark Eyes of London AKA The Human Monster. It was remade in 1968 by Vohrer as The Gorilla Gang.

Wealthy men who have just bought insurance policies are dying and Scotland Yard is on the case. A large, bald and monstrous killer is on the loose. He’s Blind Jack, played by former pro wrestler Ady Berber. Chief inspector Larry Holt (Joachim Fuchsberger) suspects a blind church as being part of these killings, so he hires braille expert Nora Ward (Karin Baal, who was also in the very krimi What Have You Done to Solange?) to help, which puts her in danger. By the end of the movie, she’s menaced with a blowtorch and nearly drowned, but at least the top cop wants to marry her when it’s all over.

This ad is from Zombo’s Closet, an amazing site.

Foggy streets, seedy nightclubs, a young Klaus Kinski being odd and so much mood. While made in 1961, this didn’t make it to the U.S. until 1965, playing a double feature with The Ghost.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: TMZ No BS: Biggest Celebrity Beefs (2024)

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The TMZ crew is all back together –Harvey Levin, Charles Latibeaudiere, Fabian Garcia, Towanda Robinson. Katie Hayes and Eric Colley — yelling at one another and treating celebrities as if they are the most important thing in the world, just as you want them to.

Kim Kardashian and Kanye vs. Taylor Swift. The Rock vs. Vin Diesel. Drake vs. Meek Mill. Pete Davidson vs. PETA. The Jimmy Kimmel and Aaron Rodgers one feels pretty real, even if a lot of these other ones may not. Man, there are a lot of beefs, you know?

They made this before Drake’s Kendrick Lamar feud. Where’s the Tubi TMZ movie of that? They got that Donald Trump bullet to the ear one out fast. Where’s the important stuff? I need the TMZ crew to yell at each other and go deep into every lyric.

I am cursed to watch every Tubi Original and I am way behind. Please forgive me and the demons that have my soul under contract. I signed it in blood.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Continental Split (2024

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“I hate to say this, but dad’s fracking site may be a good thing this time.”

The Asylum sure loves disaster movies even if they never have the budget to pull it off.

Dr. Cami Weddle (Jessica Morris), a geologist named Dan (Quintin Mims) and her assistant and fiancee Finn (Canyon Prince) all believe that a faultline is about to split the United States in half worse than an election.

Her son Eric (Crew J. Morrow) and his girlfriend Brenda (Roxanne G.C. Brooks) are almost killed in a quake but saved by his mining father Alan (Chris Bruno), all while our heroine is arguing with her daughter Emily (Allison Gold), who wants to move in with dad. Yes, in the middle of this fault line split, there’s a family split in the Weddle household.

There really is a New Madrid Seismic Zone, even if it hasn’t had any quakes since the 1800s. But fracking has caused it to become dangerous and at the same time, all of this natural disaster death will bring back our married couple, unless a rival expert doesn’t nuke the fault. How would that fix anything?

Like every Asylum movie, a couple is on the outs, someone once made a mistake predicting another disaster, a governor (Alison Chace) is corrupt and pays for it with her life and the new fiancee just lets his love go, like a gender swapped Dr. Melissa Reeves.

Directed by Nick Lyon Writers and written by Gil Luna and Joe Roche, this ends in the cheesiest way possible and no one is really all that broken up about all the people who died. Bad relationships conquer all.

My wife asked me if I was reviewing this. I answered positively and she said, “I knew it. It sounds cheap. They couldn’t get good people for this.”

She should post reviews because they would be way meaner than mine.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: Indecent Desires (1968)

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Doris Wishman week (July 21 – 27) Doris made the loopiest of movies. A self-proclaimed prude who made nudist camp movies, her filmography is filled with contradictions. When she tried to be mean spirited with something like Bad Girls Go To Hell there was always an undercurrent of silliness and fun, but when she tried to be silly and fun in things like Keyholes Are For Peeping there was an underlying seediness and grime that couldn’t be wiped off. It’s hard not to love her!  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: J.H. Rood made the documentary Don’t, which you can find on the Internet Archive. He became interested in making films in high school, and in 1991 founded Ghoul Inc. Productions. His first films, shot between 1991 and 1994, were mostly horror, and were shot on his dad’s camcorder and edited by hooking two VCRs together. In 2013, he and  best pal and film collaborator Alex Lopez started making movies seriously and have created The Abode of Mad Tales, Honky Thunder and The Bitter End. His influences include Roger Corman, Larry Buchanan, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Ted V. Mikels, S.F. Brownrigg, Frank Henenlotter, Ed Wood and Dario Argento.

Anyone even remotely familiar with the “roughie” subgenre is likely familiar with Doris Wishman,The grand dame of the Grindhouse. In a field dominated by men, she out sleazed them all. With movies like My Brother’s Wife, The Sex Perils of Paulette and Bad Girls Go to Hell, Doris went toe to toe with the likes of Joe Sarno, Barry Mahon and others, bringing an interesting female-helmed flare to the seedier theaters back in the day. Not afraid to tackle the sex and violence, she carved her niche in cinema history, one film at a time. Indecent Desires is by far my favorite of her films. It’s not the most extreme in any way, though it does touch a nerve or two. What I love about it is that it is absolutely bonkers. I suppose if I were so inclined I could really find all sorts of subtext and nuance in it and see it as artistic, and there is certainly that side of it, but mostly it’s just bizarre, surreal and kinda creepy.

A lanky, odd looking fellow is walking through a city park in New York. In real life, the weirdos always look “normal”, but in this film, we’ve got this guy figured out from the get go. He peeks into a trash can and finds a discarded doll. He pulls the doll from the bin and takes it home with him. This is where the unease really sets in. What could this guy possibly want with this child’s toy? Wait for it.

While our buddy is at home with his new plastic friend, we’re introduced to Ann, a pretty young woman who lives and works not far away. Ann has a boyfriend and a job, and what looks to be a fairly normal life. But…for reasons that are never quite explained, she has some sort of supernatural connection to the doll. Our sleazy doll finder discovers that when he caresses the doll, he can feel a woman’s warm, soft body, and it’s Ann that he’s groping! Poor Ann suddenly begins to feel invisible hands working her over, and is convinced she’s losing her mind. Doll dude eventually figures out who’s flesh he’s fondling and begins to stalk Ann. Frustrated and angry with the real woman he knows he’ll never have, he starts venting his rage on the poor doll with head-twisting, belt-whipping and even cigarette burns. Ann’s Man and her friends know something isn’t quite right with her, but no one really has any idea what to do for her. It’s a pickle,I tell ya!

Sharon Kent stars as Ann. She was in quite a few roughies in the late 1960s, such as Mr. Mari’s Girls and The Hookers (two other favorites of mine) and went on to some mainstream work as well. Zeb, AKA the creepy doll guy was played by actor Michael Alaimo, who has popped up in many films over the years, but I always think of him as the exterminator in Mr. Mom.

It’s a wacky movie that doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, but if nothing else it’s quite entertaining.

SHAWGUST: The Killer Snakes (1974)

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At some point in the 70s, movies about people having an unusual affinity for animals, despite being unable to connect with other people, were big. There’s Willard and Stanley, for example. Or The Killer Snakes, a movie that — because it’s made in Hong Kong — goes harder on the idea.

Gwan Fu-Cheng (Chow Gat) has one of those restaurants that could never exist in the U.S., a place where snakes are kept and used for their different body parts to benefit people, like Hu Bao-Chun (Richard Chen Chun), who wants the gall bladder of a cobra in a drink to make his date swoon. She does not seem very impressed.

The snake is kept alive until another customer has a use for another body part, as many snakes are clinging to life. But the cobra escapes through his prison inside a wall to find Chen Chih-Hung (Kam Kwok-Leung), a young man who has been disturbed by a childhood filled with abuse by both of his parents. Chen Chih-Hung has no fear of this snake with a giant hole in its body and its innards exposed, as he picks it up bare-handed and stitches it up, naming it Lu Pao and giving it a home.

Chen Chih-Hung gets some good fortune, as he gets a new job and starts romancing Xiao Chuan (Maggie Li Lin-Lin). And oh yeah — he and Lu Pao help the rest of the snakes in Gwan Fu-Cheng’s business escape through the wall.

If all seems good, it can’t last. Our protagonist is mugged and ruins one of his delivery jobs, then Xiao Chuan’s father gets sick. She misses their standing date and he responds by trashing her booth in the shopping area. Again, all he has is Lu Pao.

Giving up on true love, he visits sex worker Zhang Jin-Yang (Helen Ko Ti-Han) and she decides to get more money out of him by sending the same men who beat him up before — they end up being her security — and they’re all surprised by the fact that Chen Chih-Hung walks around with a cobra. And that’s when our protagonist goes to an antagonist, as he kidnaps Zhang Jin-Yang. Now tied up in his snake lair, he plans on using her for the pleasure of himself and several of his snake friends. At the same time, Gwan Fu-Cheng figures out where his snakes have gone — to Chen Chih-Hung’s secret room — and he has to be killed as well. Chen Chih-Hung leaves the body of the sex worker and shopkeeper together and it seems like that’ll keep the cops off him.

As if things can’t get any worse, Xiao Chuan’s father dies and she can’t pay for anywhere to live. Her friend Fang Fang (Terry Lau Wei-Yue) works at a hostess bar where she turns tricks, so she gets her a job, but poor Xiao Chuan is a virginal innocent, which is what the man who drank Lu Pao’s gall bladder, Hu Bao-Chun, is ready to pay to destroy. You can only imagine how our snake loving murdering rapist feels about his one true love working in the sex industry.

“First he taught one snake, then hundreds more…then he trained them all the kill!” While major labels like Arrow Video and Shout! Factory release Shaw Brothers box sets, there are several of the movies that the studio put out that may never see the legitimate light of those big budget releases. This would be one of them.

Directed by Chih-Hung Kuei (Corpse Mania, Curse of Evil, The Boxer’s Omen) and written by Kuang Ni, this is a sleazy, filth-infested and often disgusting affair. Would you be surprised that I liked it?

SHAWGUST: Temptress of a Thousand Faces (1969)

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At once a Shaw Brothers film, a Eurospy action movie and kind of like the Hong Kong Danger Diabolik, Temptress of a Thousand Faces is why I watch movies.

Officer Chi-ying (Tina Chin-Fei) is trying to hunt down the Temptress, who she publically dares to come after her. The Temptress agrees to this by stealing her identity, flirting with an entire club full of men and cleaning out a jewelry store while wearing Chi-ying’s face. Our heroine’s name gets cleared by her photographer boyfriend Inspector Yu (Liang Chen), who ends up being the one in peril when dealing with the titular villainess and her army of henchwomen.

Yes, the Temptress really does have a thousand masks, maybe even more, as well as an unlimited supplies of knockout gas and scantily clad women ready to answer her every command. This is a movie that at once has a strong female heroine and antagonist, but also one that has fan service aplenty, like the Temptress appearing being bathed by her handmaidens and Chi-ying fighting barefoot in a near see-through gown, but the men around them are such morons that they can’t help but shine, no matter how much of the male gaze gets thrown their way.

There’s a bomb that gets deactivated with seven seconds left — just like Goldfinger — as well as a volcano base — just like You Only Live Twice — and even the Bond theme playing just because, well, this movie is a riot and unafraid where it’s taking stuff from. That’s how good it is.

It all ends with Chi-ying battling the Temptress after she wears the face of our heroine and makes love to her man while she’s forced to watch. A twin adversary kung fu spectacle, topped only with our heroine and her reclaimed man shooting near thousands of bullets and wiping out an entire base full of dedicated domina female supertroopers.

I may not have any power over Arrow, but I know another Shawscope box set has to be coming. I dream that this and Infra-Man end up on it, movies that show that the Shaw Brothers made more than just their typically amazing kung fu movies.

You can watch this on YouTube.