Director Burt Kennedy was mainly known for Westerns like Support Your Local Sheriff!, Hannie Culder and Dirty Dingus Magee, as well as Suburban Commando and All the Kind Strangers. He was supposed to direct this, but walked off the set because he was embarrassed by the script, which was written by Norman Wexler (Saturday Night Fever, Joe) and based on the book by Kyle Onstott (there are 15 of them!). What did he expect when he signed on to make the sequel to Mandingo?

With four days of planning, Steve Carver (Steel, The Arena) took over for producer Dino De Laurentiis. Several actors also left, but Carver replaced them with Pam Grier and Royal Dano (Norton and Brenda Sykes returned from the first film but played different roles; Lillian Hayman reprises her role as Lucrezia, the exact role she had in Mandingo). It was nearly a Paramount movie, but they thought it was X-rated; United Artists took over distribution.

Drum (boxer Ken Norton) is born to a white madam, Marianna (Isela Vega), who raises him with her black lesbian lover, Rachel (Paula Kelly), and claims that it’s that woman’s child. His skills as a boxer make him an in-demand slave, as well as someone that women — and men like Bernard DeMarigny (John Colicos) — want to sleep with, even if a black and white union will lead to the slave being lynched. Drum and his friend Blaise (Yaphet Kotto) find themselves being sold to Hammond Maxwell (Warren Oates, playing the son of Perry King’s character), while their friend Regine (Pam Grier) is taken as the man’s lover. This enrages his fiancée, Augusta Chauvel (Fiona Lewis), while Maxwell’s daughter Sophie (Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith) delights in teasing the slaves, trying to get them to touch her and then claiming to be raped.

Somehow, Drum is able to resist her, but Blaise isn’t so smart. Soon, he’s chained up and due to be castrated at a dinner party, just in time for a slave revolt. 

This movie has some…wild dialogue. Like this…

Regine: And titties! You likes big titties, don’t ya?

Hammond Maxwell: Oh, you know I loves big titties.

Or this…

Augusta Chauvet: Must you persist in being a vulgarian, Mr. Maxwell?

Hammond Maxwell: Miss Augusta, you just gotta get used to the idea that ****** fornicatin’ is what Falconhurst is all about! If my ******* stop fornicatin’, we stop eatin’!

Augusta Chauvet: Since the conversation has descended to this level, I feel I can voice my feelins’ concernin’ your beddin’ with Regine every night.

Hammond Maxwell: Well, I don’t do it every night. It’s bad for my liver.

Augusta Chauvet: I don’t think you should do it at all!

Hammond Maxwell: Now, Miss Augusta, you ain’t gonna start meddlin’ around in my poontang now, is you?

Vincent Canby said of this, “Life on the old plantation was horrendous, I agree, but movies like this are less interested in information than titillation, which, in turn, reflects contemporary obsessions rather more than historical truths.” I bet he was absolutely disgusted to have to see it. 

This tops all the racism in the film by also being wildly homophobic, with villain Bernard DeMarigny rubbing Drum’s shoulders and telling his young buck how much he will love being with a man. All in a horrible French accent! Look, I know this is an indefensible movie, but I was entertained, perhaps by how insane it was that this played not just grindhouses, but real theaters.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Also known as Desperately Seeking Yeti and titled The Beauties and the Beast, this features Uschi Digard, Susan Westcott, Colleen Brennan (billed as Sharon Kelly), and Jacqueline Giroux in its cast, all gorgeous despite how destroyed this print is. And as you’ll learn from the commentary track — which features Demon Dave from Dark Forces, Joe Rubin from Vinegar Syndrome and David Gregory from Severin, this print came from the same sale that got Severin The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals.

Director Ray Nadeau was a post-production editor on Messiah of Evil and the producer of Fangs. This is 79 minutes of hippies being threatened by a Bigfoot when they’re not being rewarded with silver dollars by a mysterious man, playing guitar or making filthy love. But we can’t hate on this yeti, because when he stares into the window of a cabin with two girls inside, they get so afraid they can only be sated by a sapphic embrace. He also interrupts a couple mid-Chesterfield rugby, sending the man nude and screaming into the woods while this skunk ape gets down with the lady, but just fondling. That’s all he needs.

These hippies have been staying in a summer camp for kids, then leaving just before the following season. It seems to work for them, but then some criminals get involved, but that doesn’t stop long softcore scenes, which are almost full adult, but as always, hide the male genitals. 

Anyways, some people would say this is all a waste of time. I’ve made movies that are ephemeral in nature my life, so you know that I loved every moment of this, non-synchronized sound and all. 

You can get this from MVD.

Directed by Stewart Spark, who wrote the script with Paul Butler, this begins with the end of a movie: Jamie Lancaster (Lyndsey Craine) is the sole survivor of a monster attack in a cabin in the woods. Claiming that her friends were killed by these creatures, she is arrested by the local cops and locked up for a crime she didn’t commit. Before too much running time, the police station is ripped from our reality and thrown into a nightmarish dimension of elder gods who want to return to ours and taste human flesh.  

Within this squad house, there’s Inspector Landry (Andrina Carroll), who is getting too old for this shit and is ready to retire. There are two cops who don’t get along, Dennis (Arron Dennis) and Melvin (Daniel Thrace). And an entire jail cell of criminals and those arrested for getting out of control, like soon-to-be-wed Blair (Fenfen Huang) and her bridesmaids Ruth (Juné Tiamatakorn), Chelsea (Michaela Longden) and Crystal (Louella Gaskell). They’ll all have to confront the Lovecraftian horrors at the center of this fun comedy horror hybrid. Nicholas Vince, who was the Chatterer Cenobite, even has a small role.

This is a party movie, one best enjoyed with an entire room of friends and a bunch of beer. Sure, there are plenty of twists and turns at the end, but this is also full of gore and even has a chainsaw attack. I had a blast with it and am looking forward to whatever Spark and Butler do next.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Is there anything scarier than a human head living on after decapitation? Probably, but today, we’re diving into 1963’s La Cabeza Viviente, or The Living Head.

Director Chano Urueta’s films frequently made their way north, with titles like El Baron del Terror (released as The Brainiac) and El Espejo de la Bruja (featured in horror host packages as The Witch’s Mirror). Urueta even appeared as an actor in films like The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.

The story begins with archaeologists unearthing the Aztec tomb of Acatl, a warrior whose head was severed in battle. A flashback reveals the gruesome fate of the person responsible for Acatl’s death, who has their heart ripped out – say it with me, “Bali mangti Kali Maa” — in a ritual sacrifice. High priest Xiu and high priestess Xochiquetzal then do the sensible thing and entomb themselves with Acatl’s head.

However, treasure hunters disrupt this ancient resting place, opening the chamber to the air and causing the mummified bodies to crumble to dust. All that’s left behind is a gaudy costume jewelry ring adorned with an eyeball, which becomes the focal point of the subsequent terror. 

Is there a curse? Of course there is. Why would you steal from the Aztecs? You wouldn’t, and you’re someone reading an article about mummy movies, not an archeologist who went to school for years to learn your craft. I would think that someone would teach you not to break into the tomb of maniacs who tore out the hearts of their own people, but higher education is a strange place.

As for Mexico, it is fantastic, as writing team Federico Curiel and Adolfo Lopez Portillo are restrained here compared to The Brainiac; yet we’re still talking about a movie where a man’s head has been alive for four hundred years and can command a mummy to kill people.

Who can stop him? Professor Mueller (German Robles, playing the good guy instead of a vampire as usual), as well as his son-in-law Roberto (Mauricio Garces, who is the head) and daughter Marta (Ana Luisa Peluffo, one of the first Mexican actresses to appear nude on screen in her home country; The Force of Desire was a big deal as a result), probably. 

Mueller’s daughter Marta is the reincarnation of Xochiquetzal, because mummy movies are based around coincidence as much as predestination. Is she going to put on that glowing Ring of Death with an eyeball in the middle of it? Certainly. Is a mummy going to tear out the hearts of mortal men? Boy howdy, I hope!

I say that there is a mummy in this, but he’s not even wrapped up. That’s how good the Aztecs were. They could mummify you without the need for leaves or bandages. Plus: Their mummies can talk!

There have been too many questions already, but I ask: If you were a professor with a mummy head and an evil ring just sitting around your home, would you give that ring to your daughter to wear? These are the kind of decisions that people make in this film, somehow all dumber than a stiffly walking zombified Aztec mummy and a head that’s sitting on what appears to be a sponge cake.

But you’re not coming to a Mexican mummy movie for things that make sense. 

Throw in a dub by K. Gordon Murray, and you have even more reason to celebrate this film, as the booming voice of Paul Frees intones as the professor and loud music blares over everything as the words barely match the lips. I don’t say this as an insult. I prefer my movies dubbed.

Maybe the professor isn’t the hero we want him to be. He unleashes a giant spider on his own home and just walks away from it, like someone else will deal with that. And why isn’t he just donating this mummy, this head, this ring to a museum instead of inviting metaphysical dread into his abode? And when the police find the bloody knife of the mummy in his study, do they arrest him? Of course not. They have no idea who did it, and the whole time, the head is giggling at them. Even a four-hundred-year-old decapitated Aztec head realizes that horror movie cops are, at best, fools.

This movie wants to entertain you, despite its reliance on monologue. You get the exact same time travel montage from The Brainiac. You’ll thrill to Martha in a diaphanous white nightgown looking for all the world like an Italian Gothic Horror heroine except she’s carrying an Aztec warrior’s head on a tray. You’ll get grossed out by organs that get cut out of the bodies of scientists and show up right next to the head as bombastic music reminds us that Mexico might be Heaven, at least for horror geeks.

I like to imagine that when this played on late night horror host shows, people came home from night turn shifts at the steel mill, came into the middle of this movie and were stupefied by it. Such is its power. In my wildest dreams, I want Acati and Jan Compton from The Brain That Wouldn’t Die to have a meet-cute and have lots of little craniums. I think we can all admit that they deserve happiness.

Capt. Steve O’Bannon (D.B. Sweeney) is searching for a mysterious radiation linked to aliens and conspiracy, but he keeps blacking out. One of those times, he wrecks his John Denver-killing ultralight plane into a wedding shoot being conducted by Caroline (Danica McKellar). And then, global warming, conspiracy and aliens.

Yes, the dinosaurs of the past are now aliens, and they are warming up our planet with volcanoes so that they can come back. 

Also, back when he was a kid, young Stevie had his mind screwed with by these same aliens while watching cartoons.

Why did I watch this, besides Winnie Cooper? Because an alien jogs down the beach and hops onto a model, scratching her to death. The CGI is abysmal, just like I like it.

Director Andrew Prowse also did Driving Force, Demonstone and episodes of Farscape. Writer Richard Manning also wrote the movie  Tyrannosaurus Azteca and the TV series Farscape. And writer David Kemper produced…75 episodes of Farscape. As for that show, Francesca Buller, who is in the cast, played M’Lee, ro-Na, Raxil and War Minister Ahkna on the show.

Someone also throws up an alien.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Released as Toho’s 55th Anniversary Film in 1987, this movie is based on The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, a 10th-century Japanese fairy tale about a girl who comes from the Moon and ends up as a baby inside the stalk of a glowing bamboo plant. Directed by Kon Ichikawa, who wrote it with Shinya Hidaka, Mitsutoshi Ishigami and Ryûzô Kikushima, it begins with bamboo cutter Taketori-no-Miyatsuko (Toshiro Mifune) finding Kaya (Yasuko Sawaguchi) inside that tree. She looks like his recently deceased daughter — who died because the family had no money to pay for her care — so he takes her home just in time for her to quickly grow into an adult.

She’s beyond gorgeous, so every man wants her. She decides to put them through a series of trials to even get close to her. Two of the men are unworthy, and when the third tells her that he failed but is honest, she plans to marry him. Instead, she is called back to space. If this reminds you of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, you won’t be alone. And hey, there’s a sea monster!

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

Directed by John Landis, who wrote it with Mick Garris, this takes trailers of old Universal horror movies to explain why the horror genre is so amazing. While this played theaters for a limited run, I first saw it on video, back in the pre-internet days when finding movie trailers wasn’t as easy as it is now.

Jamie Lee Curtis’s scenes were filmed at Universal Studios locations like Dracula’s Castle, European Street and the Psycho House.

With clips from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Mummy’s Hand, The Wolf Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Invisible Agent, The Mummy’s Tomb, Captive Wild Woman, Son of Dracula, Weird Woman, The Mummy’s Ghost, The Mummy’s Curse, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, Tarantula, This Island Earth, Curucu, Beast of the Amazon, The Mole People, The Creature Walks Among Us, The Deadly Mantis, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Psycho, Brides of Dracula, King Kong vs. Godzilla, The Birds and The Night Walker, this also shows a lot of E.T. and trailers for Jaws 3D, Halloween 3 and Videodrome, as well as See You Next Tuesday, an ongoing Landis joke.

While you can find any of these trailers easily today, this is a great time capsule.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.