Kino Cult is a new label that embraces a trademark brand of “unapologetically weird” with such diverse genres as European erotica, grindhouse classics, and cinematic rediscoveries that defy categorization. One of their first three releases is Lorna the Exorcist.

This release has an introduction by Stephen Thrower, commentary by Tim Lucas, and interviews with Gérard Kikoïne and Pamela Stanford.

You can get Lorna the Exorcist from Kino Lorber.

Patrick Mariel (Guy Delorme) decides to take his perfect family to the south of France on holiday, but before long, his wife Marianne (Jacqueline Laurent) and his on the cusp of womanhood daughter Linda (Lina Romay) are dealing with supernatural trauma.

Moments before they even depart, threatening phone calls start coming to their home from Lorna (Pamela Stanford), a woman from Patrick’s wild past who is the reason for his success and someone who has transcended mortality to become a demonic succubus, as a Jess Franco character often does. The deal that she made in blood with Patrick has come due and now, she’d rather take Linda than anything else.

Stanford was also in Franco’s Succubus, but here she’s coating her face in tons of makeup — like a John Waters character or a heel All Japan Women’s wrestler from the 1980s — and unleashing small crabs on her victims. You can’t say that Jess Franco doesn’t try to make it weird. He also shows up as the doctor of a clinic who is taking care of an always nude insane woman (Catherine Lafferière)  who has also been possessed by Lorna. Howard Vernon is also in this as Lorna’s butler. And yes, if you wondered how much Jess Franco loves the body parts of women, especially what’s between their thighs, the zoom lens will tell all.

I mean, this movie starts with a long sapphic dream encounter between Lorna and Linda and most of the movie has no story other than love scenes and occult attacks. Please understand that this means that this movie is great.

Franco made this movie for producer Robert de Nesle, who put it out as a clone of The Exorcist, as happened often in the 70s, then re-released it with inserts and called it Luscious Linda, as if trying to figure out what Franco movie it is as the director also made The Story of Linda, AKA Captive Women, as well as Who Raped Linda? And because this is Jess Franco, he remade this movie in 2002 as the shot on video Incubus.

Kino Cult is a new label that embraces a trademark brand of “unapologetically weird” with such diverse genres as European erotica, grindhouse classics, and cinematic rediscoveries that defy categorization. One of their first three releases is The Dark Power, a video rental favorite from North Carolina indie Phil Smoot.

This release has a 4K Restoration from 16mm materials, a featurette with Smoot and the cast — who also have a commentary track — as well as an interview with editor Sherwood Jones and archival interviews and features.

You can get The Dark Power from Kino Lorber.

My father, grandfather and uncle used to play this game when we had cookouts, late into the night, where they would list the initials of a famous actor and they’d all have to guess. Tom Mix, Rex Allen, Tex Ritter…the list would go on and on. Then there would be “LL” — who of course ended up being Lash LaRue.

Lash started his career as the Cheyenne Kid, the sidekick of singing cowboy Eddie Dean, whose whip wasn’t just for show. Lash was an expert in using one, able to disarm villains and perform other tricks (he was also the trainer for Harrison Ford as he prepared to play Indiana Jones).  After appearing in all three of Eddie Dean’s singing western films, Lash starred in eleven “Marshal Lash LaRue” strange western films for PRC, a Poverty Row (the name given for the lower than B-level studios that churned out films in the 1940’s) studio and Eagle-Lion. Unlike many cowboys, Lash spoke with a street patois, not unlike the actor he resembled, Humphrey Bogart (so much so that character actress Sarah Padden (Murder by Invitation) asked if they were related. When Lash said no, she looked him dead in the eye and asked,   “Did your mother ever meet Humphrey Bogart?”).

But unlike those big-time Hollywood stars, Lash would actually come to your town, showing off his whip skills and convincing young cowboys and cowgirls that there was at least one movie star hero who could actually do all of the things he did on screen.

Unbeknowst to Lash, his role as a villain in 1972’s Hard on the Trail was actually in an adult film. While he had a non-sex role and had no idea that the film was X-rated, he spent the next ten years repenting as a missionary.

That brings us to 1985’s The Dark Power, a regional horror movie made by director Phil Smoot, who also directed Alien Outlaw, which also starred LaRue.

A North Carolina regional horror film, this one starts with a near full minute of a yard sign. Yep. It reads:

SAMMY & EARL
“THE FIX-IT BROTHERS”
IF WE CAN’T FIX-IT… THROW IT AWAY!
CALL 99 FIX-IT

What follows is a chubby child messing around with a bow and arrow, juxtaposed with wild dogs chasing after him, POV-style. Once the four dogs catch up to him, he runs for about ten feet before falling down and crying. Luckily, he’s saved by Ranger Girard (Lash, of course) and his skills with the bullwhip, which never come near the dogs thanks to some, well, poor editing and sound dubbing.

Meanwhile, one of the Ranger’s friends, a Native American mystic, expires Citizen Kane-style after saying the word, “Toltec.” Turns out that the Toltecs were Aztec occult priests who liked to live inside the Earth and build great evil power. The bad news? They’re coming back, thanks to their eagle symbols that no one understands but the ranger. Luckily, a local news girl and her inept cameraman — everything he shoots turns green — are here to tell the tale.

The Native American mystic’s house is sold to some college kids, who take turns eating snacks, working out in leotards, being racist to one another,  drinking beer and taking baths and showers. It’s as if they demanded that some kind of inhuman force rise and kill them all, one by one. Good news — they’re gonna get what they asked for.

While all that’s going on, the reporter keeps flirting with Lash, who has gone from looking like Bogie to looking like a grandfatherly man with Q-Tip-esque hair. Imagine a more well-groomed Santa Claus, in a Scoutmaster outfit, with a whip. I guess I can see how some ladies — and bear lovers — could be into this. I mean, just check out this sexy dialogue:

Mary: Of course, some girls might be a little crazier about whips than others.

Ranger Girard: You know about my whip?

The Toltecs rise from their graves, accompanied by a soundtrack that is recorded on what can only be described as an xylophone and kazoo symphony. Also — they speak like the characters from a cartoon and slap one another often. Let the art below illustrate both their look and the cultural sensitivity of this movie:

The townspeople all suck. Let’s be honest. They’re all fat, mean and given to fits of pure stupidity. They even let their fat children steal their vehicles. Thank God Lash is there to defend them, beating on zombie Aztec priests with the power of his whip skills, slur yelling dialogue like, “All right, you demonic bastard, let’s take this outside!” and “Feel my whip, you son of a bitch!”

Man — at one point Lash was one of the biggest stars in the country. Yet here he is, in one of his last films, gamely swinging his whip at the undead.

Kino Cult is a new label that embraces a trademark brand of “unapologetically weird” with such diverse genres as European erotica, grindhouse classics, and cinematic rediscoveries that defy categorization. One of their first three releases is Alien Outlaw, a video rental favorite from North Carolina indie Phil Smoot.

This release has a 4K Restoration from 35mm materials, a featurette with Smoot and the cast — who also have a commentary track — as well as an interview with editor Sherwood Jones and archival interviews and features.

I love the packaging of the Kino Cult movies and am excited that the label is committed to physical media releases of some strange stuff. You can get Alien Outlaw from Kino Lorber.

If you didn’t get enough of Lash LaRue in The Dark Power, have I got good news for you! The master of the whip — no, not El Latigo or Indiana Jones — returns to battle aliens this time, in a movie directed by Phil Smoot, whose name I will drunkenly yell at people for years because it amuses me.

Smoot also directed — surprise, surprise — The Dark Power, as well as serving as a camera operator on Carnival Magic, a movie that has wiped out whatever brain cells I had left from art school.

Jesse Jamison (Kari Anderson) is a gun-shooting lady about to put on a show in a small Southern town — it was shot in Allegheny County and Sparta, North Carolina — and then some aliens just so happen to show up. Luckily, she has the help of locals like Alex (LaRue) and Sunset (Sunset Carson, a former rodeo star who became a B-level cowboy star for Republic in the 1940s).

Much like Without Warning, this movie somehow rips off Predator years before that movie was made.  Life’s weird like that sometimes. It’s amazing that LaRue would return to be in these low budget movies. At one point he was of the biggest actors in cowboy movies and even toured showing of his films, showing that he could actually do all of the whip stunts for real.

Sadly, he ended up playing a villain in a pornographic western, Hard on the Trail. I say sad not because I look down on adult movies, but because no one told LaRue it was a movie with sex. He was so upset that he became a missionary for ten years and didn’t come back to act until 1984’s Chain Gang. That said, LaRue was no angel. He was married ten times and was also in Ron Ormond’s Please Don’t Touch Me.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of my favorite movies so it’s been on the site a few times. It’s back as the Kino Lorber blu ray release has me really excited. The new special edition blu ray has a commentary track by action film historians Mike Leeder and Arne Venema and a trailer. You can get it from Kino Lorber.

Enter the Ninja is a movie written by the man who stole Priscilla from Elvis, Mike Stone, and who also nearly starred in it before his acting ability supposedly wasn’t good enough for a ninja movie. Luckily, Franco Nero was in the Philippines and Stone was nice enough to remain on set as the fight double for Nero and the fight/stunt coordinator.

That’s right — Django as a ninja. Make that a ninja that cucks his best friend and arrdvarking his wife Susan George and then fighting Sho Kosugi.

If you were wondering why I loved Cannon Films so much, just read that last sentence again.

Cole (Nero) is a soldier who has become a ninja — much like Snake-Eyes in the Marvel comics — before he visits his war buddy Frank Landers and his new wife Mary Ann (Ms. George) who own a giant farm in the Philippines that is threatened by Charles Venarius (Christopher George), whose Venarius Industries wants the oil that’s on their land.

After said cuckolding — Frank had already drunkenly confessed to our hero that he couldn’t life his own katana, so to speak — Venarius’ henchmen kill Frank and kidnap Mary Ann. That means that Cole has to battle his way through all of the many soldiers in his way before battling his old sword brother Hasegawa (Sho Kosugi).

Directed by Menahem Golan, who also gave us The Apple, this is actually the exact kind of movie that I want it to be. Golan said, “It started when Chinese karate films became popular. I looked for something new in Asian martial arts and found information about the ninja culture in an encyclopedia. The ninja were middle-class people in Japan — lawyers, government clerks, etc. It was a secret organization that helped the feudal government. It actually preceded the Chinese karate battles. They used very special methods, developing their sixth sense. That fascinated me and I said I could write story ideas out of it, so we made Enter the Ninja and American Warrior later on. Many imitations followed.”

Actually, Emmett Alston was supposed to be the film’s original director. Supposedly Charles Bronson refused to allow Golan to direct Death Wish II. Alston directed Force of the Ninja and Nine Deaths of the Ninja, which is somehow even better than this.

Also, I know that we got a whole bunch of Kosugi ninja movies, which I love, but man, why did we not get another Franco Nero in karate PJs movie?

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode where they discuss this movie here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Mummy’s Revenge was on Chiller Theater on June 23, 1979 at 1 a.m.; April 5, 1980 and June 12, 1982.

Directed by Carlos Aured (Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll) and written by its star, Paul Naschy, La venganza de la momia is exactly what I wanted it to be.

Pharaoh Amenhotep (Naschy) and his lover Amarna (Rina Ottolina) have become beyond depraved, torturing and murdering anyone they want to defile. Anchaff (Fernando Sí¡nchez Polack), a priest who wants to make things more moral, drugs him and buries him alive. He isn’t mummified, so his soul and corpse won’t cross over and he will be unable to kill anyone else.

Nathan Stark (Jack Taylor) and his wife Abigail (Maria Silva) find his tomb and bring his sarcophagus to London so that it can be looked at by Sir Douglas Carter (Eduardo Calvo). What they don’t know is that they’re followed by Assad Bey (Naschy) and Senofed (Helga Liné), two followers of the pharaoh who want to use the blood of women to bring back their ruler. Also: Carter’s daughter Helen (Ottoline) looks like Amarna, so she will be given her soul so that Amenhotep can murder and rule.

This movie looks gorgeous and Naschy takes from Universal and Hammer while making a movie filled with gorgeous ladies and lots of murder. I wish that he’d made just as many of these movies as his El Hombre Lobo films. The mummy itself is frightening and it just plain works.

This was part of the Nightmare Theater package, as well as Death Smiles On a Murderer, Marta, Maniac Mansion, Night of the Sorcerers, Fury of the Wolfman, Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Horror Rises from the Tomb, Dear Dead Delilah, Doomwatch, Bell from Hell, Witches Mountain and The Witch).

I can’t even imagine just turning on the TV and this movie playing. Chiller Theater knew how to make people happy.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was on the site before but I’m so excited about the Kino Lorber blu ray. It has two audio commentaries, one with director Sam Firstenberg and stunt coordinator BJ Davis and the second with Firstenberg moderated by filmmaker/editor Elijah Drenner. There’s also a making of and the trailer. You can get it from Kino Lorber.

Director Sam Firstenberg and stars Michael Dudikoff and Steve James — that’s as Sergeant Joe Armstrong and Sergeant Curtis Jackson to all of us — are back in the second of five (well, six if you count American Samurai) movies in this series.

Now US Army Rangers, our heroes are helping the Marines, led by Captain Bill “Wild Bill” Woodward (Jeff Weston, who is your trivia answer to what actor could be in an Altman movie — The Player — and a Full Moon film, of which you can choose from Puppet Master II or Demonic Toys). Their ranks have been disappearing thanks to ninjas, so they called in the right soldiers.

They’re part of a plan by Leo “The Lion” Burke (Gary Conway from Land of the Giants and The Farmer; he also wrote this movie along with James Booth, who was in Avenging Force) who is creating super ninjas from the research of Alicia Sanborn’s father. He has a cool base on Blackbeard Island, his own ninja named Tojo Ken (Mike Stone, forever providing the stunt power behind Cannon’s ninja films, as he was the fight coordinator) and could have really made something of himself were it not for our heroes.

I love everything Firstenberg directed. And seeing Steve James elevated from sidekick to equal hero in this made me beyond glad. It’s basically a comic book movie made with no budget and all the heart in the world.

87 people die in this movie. Ninja war is hell too.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Of course American Ninja has been on the site before. It’s back because Kino Lorber has released a new blu ray special edition. Extras include two different audio commentaries: one has director Sam Firstenberg and stunt coordinator Steven Lambert and the second has Firstenberg moderated by filmmaker/eitor Elijah Drenner. There’s also a making of feature, A Rumble in the Jungle: The Making of American Ninja, as well as the trailer. You can get it from Kino Lorber. It has my highest recommendation.

According to Vintage Ninja — and who are we to doubt a ninja with photographic evidence — this film was in production as Sho Kosugi finished Ninja 3: The Domination and before he had a falling out with Cannon and went off to make 9 Deaths of the Ninja, which was called American Ninja in some markets which meant that this movie was called American Warrior in other countries.

Cannon often tried to sell movies before they were made, so the next version of this movie would star Chuck Norris — wearing the evil ninja costume from the aforementioned Ninja 3 — but then Chuck decided — allegedly — that he didn’t want to cover his face. He also probably would have said that ninjas were sneaky and too violent and to please, think of the children. But hey — that’s no insult to Chuck. He knew his brand.

So Cannon went with Michael Dudikoff, who while athletic wasn’t a martial arts star like Kosugi and Norris. Luckily, he had stuntman and Enter the Ninja creator Mike Stone to help.

Joe Armstrong (Dudikoff) has a choice: join the Army or go to jail. He’s barely settled in when he saves Colonel William Hickock’s (Guich Koock) daughter Patricia (Judie Aronson, After Midnight, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter) from the ninjas of the Black Star Order. He’s the only man who survives and he ends up protecting Patricia — and being targeted by the Black Star Master Ninja (Tadashi Yamashita, Seven, The Octagon) — while still getting thrown in the brig.

The rest of the soldiers dislike what they perceive as him not caring about others. But because he’s so silent — he can’t remember anything about his past and has no idea how he became such a skilled hand-to-hand fighter — he’s targeted by Corporal Curtis Jackson (Steve James, who is amazing in this) but after one fight they become friends.

Patricia — against her father’s wishes — sets up a date with Joe but during their dinner they’re noticed by Sergeant Rinaldo (John LaMotta, who was director Sam Firstenberg’s first movie One More Chance) who is selling weapons to Victor Ortega (Don Stewart, Markov from Carnival Magic), the main bad guy who has been hiring all of those ninjas.

As Rinaldo and the ninjas work to set up Joe for the weapons thievery and several murders, our hero is saved by Ortega’s butler Shinyuki (John Fujioka). He’s a soldier who never knew World War II ended, but still was able to save and rescue Joe after the death of his parents. Fujioka specialized in Japanese soldiers still fighting the war, playing similar parts in The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark and the Bud Spencer and Terence Hill movie Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure.

Only Jackson, Patricia and an MP named Charlie (Phil Brock) are on Joe’s side and things get worse when we discover that Patricia’s dad is the one really selling the weapons to Ortega, who is about to host an entire convention of criminals and terrorists in the Philippines to sell off all of the weapons. They didn’t figure on an American Ninja ruining all of their plans.

While I prefer Kosugi in the Cannon ninja movies, this is a fine film and Firstenberg really knows how to keep the story and action moving. Steve James is another favorite and he’s great in literally every second he gets on screen. It’s a shame that he died so young.

This movie is a million times better than it should be. They may have made four sequels and a few associated movies like American Samurai and Lethal Ninja, which was also sold as American Ninja 5: The Nostradamus Syndrome.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode about American Ninja here. There’s also a watchalong here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nightmare Castle was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, April 24, 1976 at 11:30 p.m.

A couple of months ago, I was doing my usual weekend of looking at used DVD stores when I noticed an older man staring at the stacks of used movies. He stopped and asked, “Do you mind if I ask you what movies I should get?” It turns out that his wife had recently died and he missed watching horror movies with her and wanted to bring back some memories. He had no idea how streaming worked and had just gotten a DVD player, so as we continued talking, it turned out that he really liked Barbara Steele in movies and was surprised that he could own this film. It made me feel really great that I could help someone out like this as well as realize that Ms. Steele has been bewitching men of all ages all around the world for decades.

Mario Caiano has made movies across nearly every genre that an Italian director can work in, from peplum like Ulysses Against the Son of Hercules to westerns such as A Coffin for the Sheriff, giallo like Eye in the Labyrinth and berserk freakouts like Love Camp 7, The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe and the kinda giallo Ombre Roventi.

This is the kind of gothic madness that I love so much, starting with Stephen Arrowsmith (Paul Muller, Malenka) discovering his wife Muriel (Steele) having the gardener plant some seeds inside her. He shoves a hot poker in the man’s face, burns her with acid and then electrocutes both of them before removing their hearts and giving their blood to de-age his servant Solange (Helga Liné!). And then he finds out that he isn’t the heir to the castle — it turns out that Muriel has an identical sister named Jenny (also Steele) who is mentally deranged but will become his new bride.

I’m in. All in.

Stephen and Solange begin to gaslight Jenny but she has the ghosts of the dead lovers on her side, as well as Dr. Derek Joyce (Marino Masé, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times). This movie looks beyond beautiful and really allows Steele to showcase her acting skills (and her piercing eyes).

“If you’re gonna scream, scream with me,” sang Glenn Danzig in the Misfits’ “Hybrid Moments,” which was inspired by this movie. Nightmare Castle is everything great about black and white gothic melodrama and I just want to live within every frame of this film. It’s also the first horror score that Ennio Morricone would write.

You have so many choices to see this. For the easy way, just stream it on Tubi. Or you can do what I did and buy the Severin blu ray, which has commentary by Steele, an interview with Caiano and Castle of Blood and Terror Creatures from the Grave included.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Creature From the Haunted Sea was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, December 14, 1968 at 1:00 a.m.

Sparks Moran is also known as XK150. Played by Robert Towne, he is to get into the gang of Renzo Capetto (Antony Carbone) and stop them before they steal money from Cuba and pay for General Tostada (Edmundo Rivera Alvarez) to start a counterrevolution.

The gang isn’t all that normal. It includes Capetto’s lover Mary-Belle Monahan (Betsy Jones-Moreland), a homicidal nice guy named Pete Peterson Jr. (Beach Dickerson) and Mary-Belle’s brother Happy Jack (Robert Bean). They have created a legend that the Creature from the Haunted Sea is killing the Cuban soldiers but there is really such a monster that is chasing the crew.

Everyone falls in love but only Sparks and a local sex worker named Carmelita (Blanquita Romero) survive. The creature, however, is happy because it ate well.

Directed by Roger Corman and written by Charles B. Griffith, this movie was written fast and made even faster. Yet Corman seems to have good memories of making it. He said, “It’s been suggested that Creature from the Haunted Sea is my most personal film. That’s actually not a bad suggestion, considering it’s got my favorite ending of them all — a last scene I invented on a whim and literally phoned to Chuck Griffith from Puerto Rico. This was the story about a band of Batista’s generals making off with a treasure chest of gold from Cuba. The man they hire to captain their boat is a mobster. He murders the generals and covers up the crimes by inventing a story about an undersea monster who devours people. But there is an undersea monster. “We have always killed off our monsters with fire, electricity, floods, whatever,” I told Chuck. “This time, the monster wins. The final shot in this picture,” I insisted, “is the monster sitting on the chest of gold at the bottom of the ocean floor. The skeletons of all the people in the picture are scattered around him and he’s picking his teeth. That’s it. The monster wins.”

You can watch this on Tubi.