11 Rebels (2024)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Official synopsis: In Kazuya Shiraishi’s action-packed epic, ten convicts are promised freedom in exchange for defending a small town in feudal Japan. Tasked with holding a fortress against encroaching government forces, they fight with the desperation of men with nothing to lose. But when the officials who recruited them renege on their promise, the warriors realize they’ve been used as pawns in a larger scheme. Betrayed and outnumbered, they must forge their own fate or die trying.

Director Kazuya Shiraishi finds an excellent balance of gripping period drama and violent action in his samurai vs. criminals epic 11 Rebels (11 no zokugun). The result is a superb feature that is sheer captivating entertainment.

The amount of characters is practically Shakespearean, and the cast members all acquit themselves strongly. Standouts among the leads include Takayuki Yamada as Masa, a man sentenced to death for killing the samurai who raped his wife; Taiga Nakano as local army member Washio Heishiro; and Sadao Abe as Mizoguchi Takumi, a heel army leader.

Jun’ya Ikegami’s screenplay has an interesting backstory, as it is based on a screenplay written by Kazuo Kasahara (Battles Without Honor and Humanity; Yakuza Graveyard) in the 1960s. Ikegami’s version and Shiraishi’s realization of the source material are absolutely current cinematic takes, including the severed limbs that fly throughout the film. The historical set designs are marvelous, and cinematographer Naoya Ikeda captures everything beautifully.

Carnage, court intrigue, allegiances and betrayals: 11 Rebels has all this and more. Highly recommended for aficionados of samurai films, period dramas, and Japanese cinema in general.

11 Rebels debuted on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD on June 10 from Well Go USA Entertainment.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Black Devil Doll from Hell (1984)

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Chester Novell Turner made this movie and Tales from the QuadeaD Zone.

It is enough.

He had been writing horror stories, doing home remodeling and attending a filmmaking correspondence course. Home video cameras had democratized movie making, and you can make fun of Turner’s films, but what have you done?

Well, people thought Turner died until 2013, when Massacre Video tracked him down and got permission to release his films.

With his girlfriend at the time, Shirley L. Jones, in the lead role, Turner pressed record and made some art, if by art you mean a movie in which a Rick James devil doll has sex with a woman, ruining her for other men, even when his head falls off mid-romping. A doll bought in a hobby shop with a tongue made from latex and a coat hanger, operated by Turner’s nephew.

This isn’t the kind of movie with fleeting sex scenes. These go on so long that they go from gratuitous to just plain demented, and there’s never really been anything else like it. What if Amelia hadn’t run from her Zuni fetish doll and spread for him? This is that. I can’t believe it either, but here it is, ready for you to be upset about. Or enjoy. Maybe somewhere in the middle?

Check out Jennifer Upton’s review.

You can buy this from Massacre Video for $10, but you should spend twice that on this one.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Black Force (1975)

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Jason (Owen Watson, a two-tour Navy SEAL who was dojo brothers with Ron Van Cleff; his wife Sydney Filson is also in this), Billy (Judie Soriano), Adam (the best-named action hero ever, Warhawk Tanzania, who you may remember from Devil’s Express) and Eric (Professor Malachi Lee, an Isshin Ryu from the dojo of Master Ed McGrath; at 6’7″ he could hit a spinning kick without spinning; sadly he died the year this was made) are Force Four, the other name for this movie, or more to the point four butt kickers who come up against the evil Z (Sam Schwartz), who has stolen a voodoo icon of some sort. Whatever, we’re here for the fights, which have punches and kicks missing by quite a few inches, but again, who cares?

Directed by Michael Fink, who also made another Owen Watson movie, Velvet Smooth, and written by Leonard Michaels, who wrote those two Fink/Wilson movies as well as The Men’s Club, and Janice Weber, this is all about the funk from Life, USA. Which is life, really.

The credits also tell us that all of the kung fu is real: “All martial arts sequences in this film are authentic. No attempt has been made to enhance or alter actual fights by the use of special effects or trick photography. A slow-motion camera was used to capture certain techniques.” This should be no surprise because this looks as clumsy as can be.

The outfits are good, though.

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Black Cobra (1975)

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Do you think that when Jack Palance bounded to the stage, ready to do one-arm pushups and accept his Best Supporting Oscar for City Slickers after being nominated for Sudden Far and Shane, that he had a flashback and said to himself, “I’m in the A list tonight, but man, how can it compare to being in a movie where Laura Gemser dances with snakes?”

Seriously, the man who would become a star again at the age of 73 has a wealth of roles in aberrant movies in his past, but playing Judas Carmichael in a Joe D’Amato movie may be the pinnacle. Or the pit.

Gemser plays Eva, a snake dancer who obsesses Judas, because he has a snake collection at home — as you do — and he wants to show it to her. So she finally gives in and moves in with him while confining her horizontal dancing to the ladies — including Candy (Ziggy Zanger, who Gemser would go on to appear in Black Emanuelle, White Emanuelle with, along with Nieves Navarro, and just writing that sentence made me a little faint). Judas’ brother Jules (Gabriele Tinti) wants Candy all for himself, so he messes around with the snakes with her — which seems ill-advised — and she gets killed by a mamba. And then he doubles up and kills off Eva’s lover Gerri (Michele Starck, Forever Emmanuelle) and ends up taking Eva from his brother!

Of course, that’s not the end of matters. Eva’s more devious than she looks. And so is Judas. I mean, if your mom names you Judas any time in a year that doesn’t have BC in it, you’re not going to turn out all that great.

Bruno Mattei edited this movie — a fact that makes me love it so much more — and it was also called Emmanuelle And The Deadly Black Cobra, Hot Pants and finally and most awesomely Emmanuelle Goes Japanese, which makes no sense for a movie set in Hong Kong.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Black Caesar (1973)

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Tommy Gibbs (Fred Williamson) was abused by a white cop named Captain Jack McKinney (Art Lund) before growing up to become the leader of Harlem’s black mafia. He ends up taking over the world for a while, but you know how gangster movies go.

Larry Cohen, who directed and wrote this, said that Sammy Davis Jr. wanted to be in it. He told Camera In the Sun, “Davis wanted to do a picture in which he was the star, instead of being a flunky to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. So I suggested that they do a gangster movie like Little Caesar, since he was a little guy, and so was Jimmy Cagney, and so was Edward G. Robinson. And I thought he could play a little hoodlum working his way up in the Harlem underworld.” Davis couldn’t pay, as he had IRS problems, so American-International Pictures was looking for a movie with a black star. The rest worked out splendidly.

Never mind that the movie ends with Tommy’s wife, Helen (Gloria Hendry), getting tired of all the abuse and helping rivals get the job on him. He gets shot a whole bunch of times but just won’t die, even beating the evil cop into gore with a shoebox. Then, he stumbled back into his old neighborhood where a gang beats, robs and kills him. Well, at least in Europe and then when it came to home video.

Never mind that Timmy was alive for the sequel, Hell Up In Harlem, which has him fall in love with religious woman Sister Jennifer (Margaret Avery) and learn that people close to him ordered the death of his wife Helen. I mean, sure. That’s a totally different reality from what I just watched.

It doesn’t matter. Larry Cohen could do no wrong, and Fred Williamson is the king of New York in this movie. Cohen was also bothered by real mobsters while making this, so he gave them parts in the film and put them on the poster. There were no problems after that.

This and Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off are the only movies with a James Brown soundtrack. It’s as amazing as you think it will be.

JUNESPLOITATION: Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal (2001)

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June 18: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Rock and Roll!

This movie is so much better than it has any right to be. The third movie in a series of air disaster movies with a Hot Topic aesthetic should not be this good.

Slade Craven (John Mann, lead singer of Spirit of the West) is the Marilyn Manson of this universe, set to play his final concert on a TransContinental Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Toronto that will be covered by Z-Web-TV, who has sent cameraman Ethan (Ben Derrick) and reporter Erica Black (Monika Schnarre, who of course we all know from Waxwork II: Lost In Time).

FBI agent Kate Hayden (Gabrielle Anwar) has been trying to arrest computer hacker Nick Watts (Craig Sheffer, Cabal from Nightbreed) and finally tracks him down, just in time for Craven to get replaced by Satanic superfan Simon Flanders, who wants to crash this plane into Stull, Kansas. FBI agents Frank Garner (Joe Mantegna, predating his FBI agent role on Criminal Minds) and Dave Barrett (Mike Dopud) come on board just in time for Satanic agents to blow up a control tower, killing an FAA agent (Brad Loree, who was Michael Myers in Halloween: Resurrection).

When fans see through Simon’s disguise, he reveals that Erika — and co-pilot MacIntosh (Rutger Hauer) — are both part of the plan to crash the plane. Why Stull, Kansas? According to Wikipedia, “Since the 1970s, the town has become infamous due to an apocryphal legend that claims the nearby Stull Cemetery is possessed by demonic forces.” The film even brings up the unproven story that Pope John Paul II refused to fly over the city because of how Satanic it is.

Craven ends up saving the day and with the help of the hacker — and a copy of Flight Simulator — he lands the plane. The hacker is supposed to be arrested, but we’re left with the idea that he’s about to have kinky sex with the FBI agent.

The funniest part is when Temu Marilyn Manson has to land the plane. He takes off his evil necklace and starts to pray to God. This is after a long scene where he gets checked by the TSA and has to show off every evil piece of jewelry he has.

The last movie released by Trimark, this was directed by Jorge Montesi — it has the look of TV shows, like his work on Total Recall 2070, Relic Hunter, Jake 2.0, Mutant X, Highlander, Forever Knight and the TV movies Omen IV: The Awakening and the remake of Mother, May I Sleep With Danger? — and written by Wade Ferley.

Do we not know that Craig Sheffer was in the last movie in this series in a different role? Is this prescient as it pertains to 9/11? Do I like the drugs even if they don’t like me?

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Black Angels (1970)

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Satan’s Serpents and The Choppers are happy to coexist, but the cops start pushing racial tensions between them in the hopes that the two biker gangs will wipe one another off the face of the planet. Any wars these gangs had before this were about turf, not the color of their skin. But Lt. Harper (Clancy Syrko) hates bikers, and there you go.

What sets this beyond other biker films is that there’s a pet racoon who smokes weed, a mountain lion, snakes used to kill people, bikers pissing all over one another, screaming stuff like “It’s champagne! I just blessed you with my golden shower!” and people have names like Chainer (he has a chain) and Knifer (because he has a knife). They’re named like off-brand GI Joe lines, like America’s Defense and The Corps, used to name the bad guys. There’s also a go-go dancer who doesn’t let a full-on brawl stop the dance.

Mostly, people ride bikes. If you like to see people ride bikes, that’s good news. People ride lots of bikes.

This was directed and written by Laurence Merrick, who also made Guess What Happened to Count Dracula? and Manson. He was killed by a stalker in 1977.

Also known as Black Bikers from Hell.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: National Lampoon: Lemmings (1973)

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June 16-22 SNL Week: Saturday Night Live is celebrating 50 years on the air, can NBC last for another 50 years??

The magazine National Lampoon did a stage show that came out of the radio show. Directed by Tony Hendra, Michael Keady and Sean Kelly and written by Hendra, Kelly, David Axelrod, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Rhonda Coullet, Christopher Guest, Paul Jacobs, Harold Ramis, Anne Beatts, John Boni, Garry Goodrow, Douglas Kenney, P.J. O’Rourke, Alice Playten and Henry Beard, just from that sentence you’ve already figured out that a lot of SNL people started here.

Starting at The Village Gate on January 25, 1973, this ran for 350 shows. It begins with Belushi coming out to welcome the audience to the Woodshuck Festival: Three Days of Peace, Love and Death. Then, Paul Jacobs from Neverland Express does “Lemmings Lament,” sounding just like David Crosby. Christopher Guest is Dylan singing “Positively Wall Street,” Chevy Chase does John Danver on “Colorado,” Rhonda Coullet is Joan Baez singing “Pull the Tregroes, Negroes” (which has a much worse title); Belushi does Joe Cocker, Guest is James Taylor and there’s even a band named Megadeath years before Megadeth.

Supposedly, this was filmed for HBO — which started in November 1972 — but the tapes were lost.

Most of the acts in this are dead or your parents’ music now. Yet in 1973, this was really going after them and started careers. It’s too bad that Chevy Chase ended up being Chevy Chase.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Stuart Saves His Family (1995)

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June 16-22 SNL Week: Saturday Night Live is celebrating 50 years on the air, can NBC last for another 50 years??

How does a character who was in short sketches get to be in a movie? Ask nearly everyone in the 1990s who had a recurring Saturday Night Live character.

Al Franken created and played the character Stuart Smalley, basing it on people he met in Al-Anon as he went through it to support his wife. First appearing on February 9, 1991, Stuart shared on his public access show how he was a member of many 12-step groups. He became popular enough to have a book, I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!: Daily Affirmations by Stuart Smalley. This led Harold Ramis to get with Franken and push for a film.

By the way, in Live From New York—an Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, Franken says that he wanted Mike Myers to play the part, but when they did the read-through, it only worked when he did it, as he wrote it in his voice. Robert Smigel suggested he do the part. He also admitted that he would always be around when Lorne Michaels picked the sketches to make sure Stuart got on.

In the film, Stuart loses his show. He has to come back home for a funeral, facing off with his dysfunctional family of brother Donnie (Vincent D’Onofrio), sister Jodie (Lesley Boone), mom (Shirley Knight), and dad (Harris Yulin). There’s also a battle over where the body will be buried between Dad and his cousins, Ray (Joe Flaherty) and Denise (Robin Duke). By the end, you will be sure of why Stuart has needed all of this therapy, but at least he becomes famous for his self-help and ends up with a good friend, Julia (Laura San Giacomo, always perfect).

Sadly, despite Gene Siskel calling it “smart and hip” and Roger Ebert calling out that “it has more courage than a lot of serious films,” it made under a million at the box office. Stuart would return one more time to the show and cried, yelling, “You didn’t want ‘funny and poignant. You wanted Dumb….and Dumber….and Dumber….and Dumber!” He would also return in 2004 when Al Gore hosted.

This movie’s failure did exactly what Stuart worked to fix. It put Al Franken into a depression. At least it made more than It’s Pat, which grossed $60,000. It’s a sweet film with a good heart and way better than it should be.

JUNESPLOITATION: Ragazzi del Juke-Box (1959)

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June 17: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Lucio Fulci!

This is 39 of 57 movies directed by Lucio Fulci, so I have made my way through all of his genre films and am now in the comedy and musical movies. Like 1960’s Urlatori alla Sbarra, The Jukebox Kids is a musicarello, and Fulci was the first director — with this movie — to make just such a movie.

I Ladri, the first movie Fulci made, flopped. His career was on the line, so this populist film is what emerged. Record company owner Commander Cesari (Mario Carotenuto) and his granddaughter Guilia Cesari (Elke Sommer) are at odds over what music to release. He likes the classics, she loves rock and roll. He goes to jail, she goes out to the nightclubs and starts to sign bands to release; it’s very similar to Urlatori alla Sbarra, but you know Italy. Fin che la barca va, lasciala andare.

You get to see and hear Adriano Celentano and the Modern Jazz Gang,  I Campioni, Fred Buscaglione and his Asternovas, Betty Curtis, Tony Dallara, Gianni Meccia, Ornella Vanoni and more. Plus, Anthony Steffen years before he was an Italian Western star and Fulci himself showing up as a talent show boss.

Basically, Scopitones — a type of jukebox featuring a 16 mm film component; the Italian versions were called Cinebox — with a story between all the songs. It’s funny because the screamers, as these artists were called, were looked down on by adults and said to be so rebellious. Today, they seem quaint. So does the way Fulci shot them. No zooms. No throwing up entrails. Everyone’s eyes are safe.

You can watch this on YouTube.