Al Adamson should have never made a children’s film. This is the man who made Psycho a Go-Go, two different softcore movies with flying hostesses (The Naughty Stewardesses and Blazing Stewardesses), the staggering Dracula vs. Frankenstein and a Filipino horror movie that was dubbed, tinted in neon hues and released as Horror of the Blood Monsters. And oh, by the way, his film Satan’s Sadists was shot Spahn Ranch and he was not shy about using that fact to promote the film. And how can we forget his rip off of Eddie Romero’s Blood Island films, the impressive Brain of Blood?

But yeah. So then he decided to make a movie for the kids, it failed, he went into real estate and then ended up murdered by a contractor and buried in the cement under a new hot tub.

So are you ready for Carnival Magic? No. I really don’t think you are.

According to an article in the Austin Chronicle, even the way that film was discovered is unsettling. Alamo Drafthouse programmer Zack Carlson said, “I didn’t know about the movie until I already owned it. It was an entire movie on one giant reel, and written on the side of it, in Sharpie, it said Carnival Fucking Magic. It completely decimated everyone. We couldn’t understand what the movie was, because although it’s made under the guise of a children’s film, it features domestic abuse, vivisection, and, even more uncomfortably, it just has this pervasive air of stale, alcoholic uncles. It’s the most quietly inappropriate kids’ movie ever made. You can tell it was made by people who have never spent any time around children.”

At face value, the movie is all about Markov the Magnificent (Don Stewart, who was on the soap opera Guiding Light for sixteen years), a magician and mindreader whose career has hit the skids. However, when he teams up with a talking chimp — after a while, no one is really all that amazed that monkeys can speak — named Alexander the Great, their dirt poor Stoney Martin Carnival finally has a chance to be a success. Then again, Kirk the alcoholic lion tamer (Joe Cirillo, who played cops in everything from Maniac Cop 2 to Splash, Ghostbusters and Death Wish 3) and the doctor who wants to examine Alexander’s brain may screw it all up.

Of course, Al’s wife Regina Carrol shows up. But what you don’t expect is that the monkey loves women’s bras and stealing cars. You might wonder what child would want to see this or how they’d react being dropped off at the theater in 1981 by their parents and having to confront this film. I’m in my forties and barely survived it with my insanity intact (to be fair, I’ve gone back more than a few times to try and watch it again).

See, there’s a war brewing between Markov and Kirk. Our hero doesn’t like telling many people, but he was raised by Buddhist monks who taught him hypnosis, levitation and how to talk to animals. The main problem is, the more he talks to Kirk’s animals, the less they take our villain as their master.

Speaking of talking, that’s pretty much all this movie does. Everyone talks, about losing their wives, potentially losing their daughters, leaving behind their old lives and worries of their future. I’m not really sure what children want to see the inner workings and turmoil of a ratty circus. After all, we’ve all come to realize just how sinister the big top is and this movie will do nothing to dissuade you from that notion.

I really have no idea who this film is really for. But yet, that’s part of the charm. Every year, there are so many movies made for kids that just fade away. Somehow, this oddity won’t go away, even if the print for it stayed hidden for decades. Beyond all rational reasoning, Carnival Magic is available to watch on Netflix — albeit with riffing from Mystery Science Theater 3000 — and ready to mess with anyone’s brain that stumbles across it.

You can get this from Severin.

This is one of the many movies in which Independent-International used comic book artist Gray Morrow to do the art for the posters. He also did the poster and sales art for Brain of Blood, Cinderella 2000, Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Nurse Sherri, Five Bloody Graves, Blazing Stewardesses and Dynamite Brothers.

This film, produced by Sam Sherman and remixed by Al Adamson, was once Captain Roughneck from St. Pauli, which was directed and written by Rolk Olsen. In that movie, Captain Jolly (Curd Jurgens) and his men have been hired to smuggle a vaccine within a shipment of booze. When government officials try to take that booze from him, he destroys it and the vaccine gets stolen, which gets him blamed for taking it. There are also some nurses — they had to come in somewhere — kidnapped in the jungle.

It’s a little over an hour long and the new material from Adamson has some of the nurses making out. One of them is Swedish model Lenka Novak, who is also in Moonshine County Express, Coach, The Great American Girl Robbery, Vampire Hookers and was one of the Catholic high school girls in trouble in The Kentucky Fried Movie.

Also known as Death Dimensions, Freeze Bomb, Icy Death, The Kill Factor and Black Eliminator, this Al Adamson movie has the kind of cast that gets me so excited, as well as Gary Graver shooting it all.

Dr. Mason (T.E. Foreman) has created a weather control device. As smart as he is, he’s dumb enough to miss the clues that he’s working for a crime boss known as Santo “The Pig” Massino (Harold Sakata). Instead of saving the world, The Pig plans on blackmailing the world. Dr. Mason deals with this by killing himself. And if you were him, how would you protect the plans? Would you send them to another scientist? A reporter? No, you would save them on a microchip and seal them in the forehead of your assistant Felicia’s (Patch Mackenzie) forehead.

Felicia is on the run and soon, the bad guys have to battle Detective Ash (Jim Kelly) and Captain Gallagher (George Lazenby).

Does Harold Sakata’s voice sound familiar? It should. It’s actually James Hong. Think about that during the scene where he uses a snapping turtle to threaten a woman’s breasts.

There’s also a little bit of Hollywood’s past here, as Terry Moore from Mighty Joe Young and Aldo Ray are in the cast.

Al Adamson loved remixes more than any DJ. Doctor Dracula is a re-edited version of Paul Aratow’s Lucifer’s Women with new footage that was shot, re-edited it into the film and released to TV. Want to know how goofy this movie is? Anton LaVey is listed as a consultant.

Dr. John Wainright (Larry Hankin) was once an academic but now is an illusionist who believes that he is the reincarnation of Svengali. His publisher, Sir Stephen Phillips (Norman Pierce) tells him that he is also reincarnated and the leader of a Satanic cult known as the Society of the Bleeding Rose. Stephen explains to John that he must refill the cult’s psychic energy through human sacrifice. He must place his soul into someone else’s during a murder/suicide during a simultaneous orgasm.

This sounds like a lot of work.

Well, that was the story of Lucifer’s Women, a film packed with sex, violence and nudity. I mean, Paul Thomas was in it. How does it get to air on TV?

Enter Sam Sherman and Al Adamson.

Now, Svengali is battling the reincarnation of Dracula, Dr. Gregorio (Geoffrey Lund) and we have another Satanic cultist, Hadley Radcliff (John Carradine!) also in the plot. Dracula has a victim, who you knew had to be played by Regina Carrol. Love interest Trilby (Jane Brunel-Cohen) from the original film is nearly gone and they even got Hankin back to do voice-overs to try and explain it.

It’s exactly the mess you knew it had to be, but come on. You should know what you’re in for by now.

“Can The Beach Bunnie Brigade–Armed Only With Their String Bikinis–Stop The Dreaded Condominium Machine?”

A bunch of teenagers jump in The Complete Van and head off to Sunset Cove to surf, tan and even hang glide. But Kragg (John Durren), a cop who hates teenagers, and Dexter (Jay B. Larson), a real estate rich guy who wants to take over the beach along with Mayor Nix (Burr Smidt), are ready to destroy their fun.

The good news? The kids have retired Judge Harley Winslow (John Carradine) helping them.

In the middle of this somewhat innocuous sex comedy, director Al Adamson figured that this needed more sex and added a scene that’s nearly porn. Otherwise, so little time is spent on the characters — yes, I know it’s a sex comedy, but watch it compared to others and be amazed how little you get to know anyone — taking off their tops and one character eating.

You can watch this on Tubi.

This movie doesn’t even take place in 2047, but I can only assume that Al Adamson and Sam Sherman saw Star Wars get hot and said, “Let’s put some tits on that.”

Overpopulation in the future is pretty bad, so the Controller (Erwin Fuller) makes sex illegal. Cindy (Catherine Erhardt) lives with her wicked stepmother — The Widow (Renee Harmon) — and two stepsisters —  Bella (Bhurni Cowans) and Stella (Adina Ross) — you know the story. You understand that she has a fairy godfather (Jay B. Larson) and that she’ll hook up with her Prince Charming, here named Tom Prince (Vaughn Armstrong). And yes, she disappears and he looks for her.

You may not expect robots to enforce the law against sex and the fact that this is a musical.

I love that the Canadian VHS release of this movie was so cheap that it was a duplicate of the hotel version of this movie. At six minutes, a voice tells viewers that the preview is over and that they must select to watch the whole movie and charge their bill. I can’t imagine anyone buying this thinking they were going to see more sex and instead getting more musical numbers.

Brooke Konrad (Agnes Albright) and Tanner Behlma (Andrew Bailes) are photographers who love to explore abandoned houses. It’s based on the feelings that director and writer John Pata had when he was inside a destroyed house.

During one of their exploratory photo sessions, they’re trapped by bad weather in an industrial structure where an unhoused man (Jeremy Holm) is also hiding out. He resembles Brooke’s deceased father, which starts to unlock past memories as that man committed suicide in front of her.

To make things even worse — can they get worse? — the entire building is filled with black mold that has hallucinogenic side effects. Which means by the end, no one knows what is real, what is memory and what is a strange homeless man raving about everyone being against him.

This is shot in some real abandoned structures and if I didn’t think so at the beginning of this movie, I am completely never going in a house or industrial space that’s been abandoned like the ones in this movie. They’re terrifying already and now that I have to worry about black mold making me crazy — well, more insane — I’m going to think about this all of the time.

The three leads are all really good in this and it feels pretty real, even when the mania overtakes them all.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Robert Sand (Jim Kelly), agent of D.R.A.G.O.N. (Defense Reserve Agency Guardian Of Nations), is just trying to play tennis when he gets called in to save Toki Konuma (Essie Lin Chia, Doomsday Machine), an ambassador’s daughter. This brings him into conflict with another group called Warlock who want the freeze bomb, a new weapon, and use drugs and voodoo ritual murder to get what they want.

They’re led by Janicot (Bill Roy), who has a whole army of people willing to dress up in voodoo costumes, along with an evil woman named Synn (Marilyn Joi) and even a vulture named Voltron.

Based on the book by Marc Olden, this was directed by Al Adamson and written by B. Readick and Marco Joachim.

It’s got a great cast, including Felix Silla (who has a whip and that’s worth watching this for just that moment), Cowboy Lang, Little Tokyo, Regina Carroll and even Aldo Ray as the leader of D.R.A.G.O.N.

It also has Jim Kelly flying with a jetpack like he’s James Bond. That’s worth watching this movie for. Oh yeah — he also punches two dudes right in the cock. And not over the course of the movie. I’m saying he gives them both Roshambo at the same time.

Tim Brown played football and acted, but because of the success of Jim Brown, who did the same things, he had to change his name to Timothy Brown. He stars in this as “Kicks” Carter, a Vegas cop fighting Ziggy’s (Russ Tamblyn) gang. He has to get revenge for his partner’s death and handle TV reporter Stephanie Adams (Tanya Boyd). Also: fight gun runners and save women from a house of ill repute. That’s a lot of work.

Directed by Al Adamson and written by John D’Amato, Sheldon Lee and Budd Donnelly, this is also known as The Murder Gang and Girl’s Hotel.

Regina Carroll shows up — well, she was Adamson’s wife — and so does Jana Bellan (Mary Lou from Sixpack Annie) and Adamson stock player Geoffrey Land. It seems like Tamblyn is having a lot of fun being an absolute lunatic and he makes this worth watching.

Whatever title you’ve seen it as — The Possession of Nurse Sherri, Black Voodoo, Beyond the Living, Hospital of Terror, Killer’s Curse or Hands of Death — you have to admit that you won’t forget this Al Adamson movie.

It’s somewhat inspired by Circle of Friends, a cult that was supposedly run by George G. Jurscek, who believed that a great political and economic collapse would occur before the year 2000. Or maybe it was actually run by a group of people that included Margaret L. Reinauer. They saw themselves as a capitalistic commune that was out to make its members healthy, wealthy and wise. So yes, while they used Gnostic Christianity, Anthroposophical Teachings and — you knew he’d get in here — the books of  Hal Lindsey to preach the end of the world, they also owned security, real estate, investment and construction businesses.

That’s where Reanhauer, the cult leader’s name, comes from.

Sherri (Jill Jacobson) is possessed by his spirit after he dies during an operation and he becomes a green chromakey blob that you could animate on your phone today and it’d look so much better. But hey, this is a small budget in 1977. Now, she’s out to kill all the doctors who let the cult master die unless her nurse compadres Tara Williams (Marilyn Joi) and Beth Dillon (Katherine Pass) can dig up the body of Reanhauer. Also: football hero Marcus Washington (Prentiss Moulden) has lost his eyesight and needs the aid of Tara, which means that yes, Marilyn Joi will be topless.

Did you ever wish that you could combine a possession movie with a New World nurses saga (thanks to Ian Jane for putting that in my head)? Then this is the only movie that I know that has ever tried to do that.