A few weeks ago, Scientific American asked, “Are ‘Cocaine Sharks’ Really Scarfing Down Drugs off Florida’s Coasts?” Sadly, that article is more about Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, but there’s some interesting information, including this quote:

“…the idea may not be as wacky as it sounds—especially in the waters off Florida. There sharks in a diverse assemblage swim along a major drug-smuggling throughway, which potentially exposes the toothy predators to floating bundles of narcotics. “This is the only place in the world where a shark could come into contact with such massive doses of cocaine,” says Tom Hird, a marine biologist and broadcaster based in England.”

Some literally insane scientists even did tests on sharks by having them eat cocaine — did they never see a single shark movie? Do they know that LL Cool J rapped “My hat is like a shark fin” after living through Deep Blue Sea? — along with this wild story:

“In 2016 scientists in Switzerland examined the effects of cocaine on zebra fish, a type of striped minnow commonly used in scientific experiments. The researchers were surprised to find that most of the cocaine accumulated in the fish’s eyes instead of their brain. Some zebra fish eyes contained concentrations of cocaine that were 1,000 times higher than levels that would be lethal to humans. The Swiss scientists were also surprised to find that instead of revving up the zebra fish, the cocaine suppressed their movements. “You’d think that a shark on cocaine is going to be swimming around all over the place at 1,000 miles an hour,” Hird says. “But that is us taking our human brains and putting it into the shark’s head.””

But let’s forget about science.

Let’s watch Cocaine Shark.

Originally released as Kanizame Shakurabu (Crab Shark) in Japan, this was retitled with the success of Cocaine Bear. It’s the story of a drug dealer named Gaurisco (Ken Van Sant) and his new creation, HT25, which is made from sharks. To paraphrase Mr. Show, “It’s great. It’s shark crack. It gets you really high.”

Directed by Mike Polonia and written by the mysterious Bando Glutz, this has effects by Brett Piper and Anthony Polonia that encompass an entire ocean’s worth of mutated creatures. Opposing them and the drug dealer is Nick (Titus Himmelberger), a hard-boiled detective who runs afoul of femme fatale Persephone (Natalie Himmelberger) as well as the hallucinations people have on HT25 which allow them to kill as a shark crab hybrid.

I really enjoyed reading other reviews of this movie. Nearly everyone hated it because it doesn’t have many sharks, there’s not really cocaine, it’s made with stock footage and it’s only an hour long. Obviously, any of these people would tell you how much they love exploitation movies yet when they are the ones exploited, they realize that sometimes a great poster, an awesome title, a tie-in to some popular pop culture buzz and a little filmmaking magic was enough to con you into watching a movie. Being mad about this movie is like being angry at Jerry Warren or Jerry Gross or someone not named Jerry that got you to watch movies that you never thought you’d watch like Sam Sherman.

I love that movies like this exist and I’ll never get tired of them.

You can watch this on Tubi.

You know, I waited for years for this movie and, like Lemmy always sang, perhaps the chase is always better than the catch.

Originally filmed in Hungary in 1983, this movie was just a rumor for around four decades. But now it’s here.

Now we can talk about it.

Yellowstone National Park is expecting to have 50,000 people show up for a concert. Chief Ranger Nick Hollister (Steve Inwood) is in charge of making sure that everyone remains safe. That’s not going to be easy, because a poacher has killed the cub of a giant grizzly named Tawanda. Nick tries to warn Eileene Draygon (Louise Fletcher), who is putting on the rock show, but that goes over as well as closing the beach on the Fourth of July.

Samantha Owens (Deborah Raffin) is in charge of the bears and feels that instead of killing Tawanda, a grizzly expert named Bouchard (John Rhys-Davies) can just tranquilize it and place it into captivity. Great plan, but teenagers are already being killed by the bear. That’s right, George Clooney, Laura Dern and Charlie Sheen, early into their careers, are slashed by the titular terror.

By the end of this, the bear gets backstage and kills the so-called bear expert before its lured onstage and knocked off into equipment, causing a huge electrical explosion that the crowd thinks is just part of the show. Screw them. That bear should be rampaging in the mosh put right now.

The big crowd at that show was because the band Nazareth was performing. It was the largest public gathering in Hungary since the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

Originally called The Predator, this film was abandoned by its producer Joseph Ford Proctor on the first day of shooting. It was finished by co-producer Suzanne C. Nagy, who held the rights for decades, thanks to a Japanese investor who showed up and paid for the rest of the filming. The Hungarian government took most of the film’s equipment for non-payment of bills, which is why post-production was never finished.

Cannon Group, Inc. bought the film in 1987 and planned to finish its post-production and release it, but then Cannon started to falter and the movie was lost again. This feels very on-brand for Cannon.

This was written by Joan McCall, who played Allison in Grizzly. She also wrote Heart Like a Wheel and episodes of Days of Our Lives, Another World, Search for Tomorrow, Santa Barbara and Divorce Court. She also acted in William Girdler’s Project: Kill and played Julie, the heroine murdered by Leif Garrett with a stick in the throat in Devil Times Five. She was the wife of Grizzly writer David Sheldon, who co-write the script with her.

Sheldon was originally going to direct this movie but one imagines that when Edward L. Montoro of Film Ventures International disappeared, the rights to this got murky. They got probably worse when Proctor bought the movie and chose to make it with a German producer who has only directed one other movie, André Szöts.

Oh — if you’re like me and love to spot people, Deborah Foreman is in this as Nick’s daughter. Plus, the hunters who screw everything up trying to get the bear are Halloween alumnus Charles Cyphers, Marc Alaimo (Arena), Charles Young and Jack Starrett. That’s right, the director of Race With the Devil, Cleopatra Jones and Final Chapter: Walking Tall was in Hungary, playing a small role in this movie.

Oh yeah again — the robotic drummer in the band The Predator is Barbie Wilde, the female cenobite from Hellraiser II and gang leader Manny Fraker’s girlfriend in Death Wish 3!

It’s not great, you can hear cues from off camera and most of the movie is about getting a concert on the stage. But hey — it’s another bear against man movie and I’ll watch all of those.

Just like Grizzly, Claws knows that it’s Jaws and goes for it.

It was also released in Canada and Mexico as Grizzly 2, but it’s not a sequel.

It was also called Fauces, which means Jaws, in Spain.

A bunch of poachers come to Alaska and decide that they want to hunt a grizzly bear. They should have killed it, but no, they just wound it instead. Now the bear wants revenge — yes, this time it’s personal — and it goes all in on bear-on-human violence.

Only hunter Jason Monroe (Jason Evers) and an Alaskan named Henry (Anthony Caruso) can stop this wild beast. But do we want that? Humanity has it coming. Even if the bear once attacked Monroe, I’m always going to be on the side of the bear.

I mean, they call it the Satan Bear. I’m not sure I could love this bear any more than I do.

Jason has gone a little Ahab on this whole thing and his obsession with the bear has caused his wife Chris (Carla Layton) to leave him and start sleeping with their son Bucky’s (Buck Monroe) Boy Scout leader Howard (Glenn Sipes), which is the ultimate slap in the face to a rugged outdoorsman like Jason. There are a ton of flashbacks to better days, but do we care? No. Would we rather watch the bear kill a sheriff and some scientists dumb enough to think their inventions could stop nature’s perfect land-based predator? Yes.

By the end, Jason, Henry, Howard and forest commissioner Ben Chase (Leon Ames) are in the woods, putting their lives on the line and man, Jason has to be conflicted here, what with trying to kill the animal that has ruined his life and having to save the life of the man who is balls deep in his estranged wife when he’s not galavanting through his woods.

This was directed by Richard Bansbach (who did the editing on the American opening of Terror of Mechagodzilla) and Robert E. Pearson with a script by Chuck D. Keen (who was also the cinematographer and he made a lot of outdoor bear-related movies such as Challenge to Be Free, The Timber Tramps and Joniko and the Kush Ta Ka) and Brian Russell (The Annihilators, Beyond Death’s Door).

Honestly, it makes Grizzly look big budget, but I’m all for animal attack movies. It doesn’t matter how much it costs, I’m here for the body count.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Ah Fen (Hsiao Yao) is best friends with Xi Xi. Just look at them having fun in the fields together.

Xi Xi is a snake.

Ah Fen is his owner.

Rich college boy Tang Shi-De (Tsung Hua) is in love with Ah Fen.

And then there’s Man-Ling (Dana), who has a plan with her lover Hu Lin (Frankie Wei Hung) where she’ll seduce Shi-De and steal his family’s money.

Hu Lin has some of his gang kidnap Man-Ling and Tang Shi-De, but they get Ah Fen instead. The poor daughter of a farmer and child of high caste fall in love and get married, so Hu Lin tries to blow up their limo, but the bomb gets foiled by the snake. Yes, this really happens.

But Shi-De hates Xi Xi.

He hates all snakes.

A snake killed his mother.

Now he’s forced his wife to leave her reptile friend forever, just in time for Hu Lin to try and kill her again.

As if that’s not enough, it feels like there’s a sex scene between Man-Ling and Hu Lin every few seconds.

Ah, Shaw Brothers, you are more than just martial arts. You have directors like Sun Chung, who also made Human Lanterns and The Devil’s Mirror, creating movies where gorgeous actresses handle cobras and a mongoose vs. snake scene is the best fight in the whole film. Actually, this movie, if anything, needs more Xi Xi and less humans.

Alley Oates (Deborah Rose) and detective Jersey Callum (Ed Nelson) and Gordon Mullin (James Eustermann are trying to find the killer in a horrifying child murder case when a tip leads them to the mortuary of the prime suspect, Chen (Robert Yun Ju Ahn). They find three mummified corpses that he claims are demons called kyoshi that can only be sated with the taste of human flesh, something he’s been feeding them as part of his mortician career. Once he’s arrested, the demons start looking for their own food, locking everyone inside the mortuary and possessing the coroner’s secretary, Mrs. Poopinplatz (Phyllis Diller), as well as her poodle Floofsoms — played by Binnie, who was also in The Man With Two Brains, Ruthless People and most famously appeared as Gonk in Elvira: Mistress of the Dark — transforming her and it into the creatures that you remember from the VHS box art.

Also: Norman Fell with a ponytail, conducting an autopsy on a suicide case named Dana (Denise Young) who suddenly wakes up screaming. If that’s not crazy enough, Fell was the third choice for the role behind Alice Cooper and Warren Zevon.

Directed and written by James Cummins, who took his special effects skills and added in make-up effects from Bill Corso to go wild. Cummins did the effects on House and this aims to outdo that one. This is an unconventional film, one in which the heroine has to overcome the trauma of losing her child and having ovarian cancer, all while not being the typical expective young female lead.

I’ve stared at the box art for this movie for years and somehow never watched it. I’m glad that I finally did, as while the start of the story is a slow burn, it eventually remembers that it’s a VHS rental movie, a popcorn horror film that should do all it can to make you laugh and scream out loud.

You can watch this on Tubi.

“Baby Shark” in the universe of this movie is “Sea Shark Swim.” There’s a kid named Kirby (River Dalton) who loves that song and his dad, the shark hunter Brock Banner, sends him a stuffed version of that beloved shark. He decided to make it even more special by including an actual shark tooth from the giant monster that he just caught, sewing it inside the toy.

In case you were wondering, “Could that stuffed shark become possessed and eat everyone?” the answer is yes.

And the dad calls it a devil fish, like something out of a Lamberto Bava movie.

By the point that Kirby is being watched by his babysitter Lyla (Daniella Donahue) — and she gets him drunk so she can have people over for a party and he’s like four or five — the shark has begun to kill all of her friends. That brings Brock back to save his son.

Where’s Kirby’s mom? She’s out getting laid.

Directed by Mark and Anthony Polonia, this is exactly the kind of movie you think it is, but also because the Polonias worked on it, it has some heart beating beneath it all. I laughed more than a few times and if a movie about a stuffed killer shark can give you that gift, it’s a worthy film.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Based on the novel by David Fisher, The Pack was directed and written by Robert Clouse, whose career found him making everything from Enter the Dragon and Game of Death to Gymkata and China O’Brien. Oh yes, he also made Deadly Eyes, a film that has giant rats played by dachshunds in fur suits.

There are two moments of nature at the beginning of this film. A horse is menaced by unseen predators while a family leaves the dog they adopted for the summer on Seal Island, thinking that a life of being homeless is better than a life in the city. That dog is accepted by the pack and becomes part of the growing army of dogs that has finally had it with mankind.

Jerry (Joe Don Baker) has just moved with his family to this tourist spot and nearly loses his dog to one of the feral pack. He’s keeping his eyes open for that dog, not realizing how many of them there are. That’s how things get started and they get to the point where the dogs are cosplaying Romero zombies, the humans forced to board themselves into a house while all those pups bark their heads off and threaten to come inside and tear them to bloody chunks.

As with all eco-horror, there is only way to stop these dogs. You have to blow them up. They had gotten to the point that they started killing domesticated dogs, but good news. The vacation dog from the opening hasn’t fully turned to evil and Jerry plans on domesticating him.

That’s a happy ending to most humans, but as I looked at my five pound long haired chihuahua practically frothing at the mouth next to me, I knew that he would someday join the pack and murder me. Such is the way of nature.

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?

Cat lady Henrietta Winslow (Cecilia Loftus) lives in what looks like a haunted house. But that’s where he family must go to hear the reading of her will. She plans on leaving half of her money to her niece Myrna (Gladys Cooper),  the other half to her granddaughter Margaret (Claire Dodd) and the estate to her granddaughter Elaine (Anne Gwynne).  Meanwhile, Myrna’s husband Montague (Basil Rathbone) has invited realtor Gil Smith (Broderick Crawford) and antiques dealer Mr. Penny (Hugh Herbert) to help him creak up the estate.

Smith saves Henrietta’s life by keeping her from poisoned milk — this has already been added to my poisoned milk Letterboxd list — but she’s later killed when she is cremated one of her murdered cats. Her money is not to be given to anyone until her faithful maid Abigail dies (Gale Sondergaard) and she tries to throw everyone out, but they won’t leave.

Meanwhile, Montague’s son Richard (Alan Ladd) catches his father with Margaret and threatens to tell Myrna, just in time for Abigail to be murdered. The killer is using secret tunnels in the house to pull off their scheme, but one of the surviving black cats solves the case by setting them on fire.

An attempt to cash in on the success of The Cat and the Canary, this was directed by Albert S. Rogell. The original script by Eric Taylor and Robert Neville was rewritten by Robert Lees and Frederic I. Rinaldo.