Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend (1992)

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June 30- July 6 Puke Week!: Throwing up isn’t very funny, but making your internet friends watch a puke movie is!

Named “Best Drive-In Movie of the Year” by Joe Bob Briggs, this was directed by Richard Cramer, who also made Highway Amazon — the story of bodybuilder Christine Fetzer, who made her money driving across the country wrestling men in hotel rooms — and painted, played guitar and created art installations. When you see this film, you’ll quickly realize that it’s about more than just exploitation, even though it is exploitation.

Marcus Templeton works as a security guard and when he isn’t obsessed about his physical appearance, he’s watching porn, hiring escorts or talking to phone sex operators. His father — a face on a TV screen — keeps yelling at him as he tries weight loss creams and contracts STDs from all the sex workers he’s frequenting. He starts audio and video taping them, which ends when one of them catches him and shoots him right in the head.

Andren Scott, the star of the film, is genuinely great in what is essentially a thankless role. He was shot in a convenience store robbery and wasn’t able to be in the sequel, The Hitler Tapes.

There’s definitely an influence — or outright theft — of Aggy Read’s Boobs A Lot — in the beginning. There’s constant nudity and women on display, yet you never get turned on, just like the narrator of this, who can’t get it up despite all of the women who have been in his bed. You don’t feel sexy; you feel filthy and worried and sad. None of it feels like a life you want; you’re glad that you can finally walk away at the end.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CBS LATE MOVIE: Someone’s Watching Me! (1978)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Someone’s Watching Me! was on the CBS Late Movie on January 21 and June 12, 1981.

John Carpenter was hired by Warner Bros in 1976 to write a script based on the true story of a woman who had been spied on inside her Chicago apartment. The script, High Rise, ultimately became a TV movie that Carpenter was also given the opportunity to direct.

“I thought it was a really, really good idea,” said Carpenter. “So I had my first experience with television. And my first union experience. I got into the Director’s Guild through that. I had a really good time on it, I have to tell you. I met my wife.”

This eighteen-day shoot allowed Carpenter to test many of the techniques that he’d use weeks later when he started work on Halloween.

Originally airing on November 29, 1978 on NBC, this movie concerns Leigh Michaels (Lauren Hutton), who has moved to Los Angeles to escape New York City. As she begins her new career at television station KJHC with new friend Sophie (Barbeau) and a relationship with college professor Paul Winkless (David Birney, who went on to be quite the reader of audiobooks).

However, she’s soon dealing with phone calls and starts receiving unlimited calls. She calls the police, but there’s nothing she can do except wait for the voyeur to come to her.

Fans of Halloween take note: Charlie Cyphers shows up as a cop.

CBS LATE MOVIE: Linda (1973)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Linda was on the CBS Late Movie on September 29, 1975, May 24, 1977 and June 12, 1978.

John D. MacDonald had several of his books turned into movies. The Executioners was filmed twice as Cape Fear, Soft Touch inspired Man-Trap, plus the novels Darker Than Amber, The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything, Condominium and A Flash of Green were all made into movies. Even this story was turned into two TV movies with the second starring Virginia Madsen as Linda.

Linda Reston (Stella Stevens) has a bad marriage with Paul (Ed Nelson, The Devil’s Partner), who is daydreaming of leaving her when she suddenly shoots their friend Anne Braden (Mary-Robin Redd) and turns the gun on Anne’s husband Jeff (John Saxon!) while at the beach. Paul calls the cops and when they arrive, Jeff is alive and the twosome accuses Paul of killing Anne.

As you can tell right away, Linda and Jeff are working together to get rid of their spouses and make a new life for themselves. Luckily, Marshall Journeyman (John McIntire, who replaced both Ward Bond on Wagon Train and Charles Bickford on The Virginian when both of those actors died), an elder lawyer, takes on his case and starts to investigate Linda and Jeff.

Paul sneaks out of his cell and soon learns that his wife has been conspiring with Jeff, which leads Journeyman to get the cops in on a scam to call her and try and get a confession. She’s too tough but man, Jeff folds right away. She tells him he’s spineless and also informs her now ex-husband that she won’t be in jail long.

Originally broadcast as the ABC Saturday Suspense Movie on November 3, 1973, this was directed by Jack Smight, who made one of my wife’s favorite movies, No Way to Treat a Lady, as well as Airport 1975, The Illustrated Man, The Traveling Executioner, Number One with a Bullet and Damnation Alley.

Stella Stevens is quite wonderful in this. She’s so cold and has everything figured out, yet as she laments, she’s never been able to find a man who isn’t spineless. Her husband can’t even bury a dead animal without having a nervous breakdown, and her lover gets her arrested for murder. I’d love a sequel where we learn how she takes over prison.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Mondo Trasho (1969)

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June 30- July 6 Puke Week!: Throwing up isn’t very funny, but making your internet friends watch a puke movie is!

Chickens lose their heads. The Bombshell (Mary Vivian Pierce) rides the bus and reads Hollywood Babylon. A foot fetishist (David Lochary) appears and licks her toes while she dreams that she’s in a fairy tale, which ends with Divine running her over. She’s not dead, so Divine drives her all over Baltimore. Divine then prays to the Virgin Mary, asking her how to be divine and is given a wheelchair to ride The Bombshell around in.

Their car is stolen, they end up in a mental hospital and Mary comes back to give them a knife. She leads a revolt in the sanitarium, gets The Bombshell bird feet that allow her to fly and nearly dies before being given divinity of her own.

Paying tribute to both the mondo genre and Russ Meyer’s Mondo Topless, this movie is filled with music that could never be licensed today. It wasn’t a movie that John Waters, the director and writer of the film, liked, but things would get better or grosser very soon. However, this is the movie where Waters was given the title the Prince of Puke.

You can download this movie from the Internet Archive.

RADIANCE BLU RAY RELEASE: Hokuriku Proxy War (1977)

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 Kawada (Hiroki Matsukata) is a yakuza member of the Tomiyasu Group, who has been promised by his boss, Mr. Yasuhara, that he will receive control of the security business for the speedboat racetrack in exchange for killing a man. He follows through and pays for the crime by going to jail. Years later, when he’s released, Mr. Yasuhara refuses. No problem. Kawada buries him up to his neck until he gets what he wants.

Yasuhara puts a price on Kawada’s head that is answered by the Kanai Group and their leader, Kanai Hachiro (Sonny Chiba). He sends fifty killers after Kawada while also planning to take over Fukui for his own territory.

Screenwriter Kōji Takada based Kawada on Hiroshi Kawauchi, boss of the Kawauchi-gumi. Takada interviewed the yakuza, who held nothing back. After the Hokuriku Proxy War was released, Kawauchi was shot and killed in the same cafe that he had been interviewed in, just like Kawada is shot in the film. The movie character survived; the real gangster didn’t.

Kinji Fukasaku really directed some fantastic movies. This is but one of them. Seek his work out.

The limited edition Radiance Films Blu-ray release has new interviews with Yoko Takahashi and Koji Takada; a video essay by Yakuza film historian Akihiko Ito on the real-life Hokuriku Proxy War murder case; a trailer; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow and a limited edition booklet featuring newly translated archival writings on the film. It’s a limited edition of 3,000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with a removable OBI strip, allowing the packaging to remain free of certificates and markings. You can get it from MVD.

EUREKA BLU RAY RELEASE: The Adventurers (1995)

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Wai Lok-yan (Andy Lau) was just eight years old — during the Khmer Rouge — when his parents were killed as he watched, the victims of Pol Pot, as his father was working for the CIA. Years later, Wai is a member of the Thai Air Force and learns that his father’s murderer — a double agent named Ray Liu (Paul Chun) — is now a rich arms dealer who has moved to America. He makes his way there, thanks to the CIA, but ends up falling in love with Liu’s daughter, Crystal (Jacklyn Wu) and must save her when she’s kidnapped by a gang. Oh yeah — he also has an affair with Liu’s lover, Mona (Rosamund Kwan).

Remember when every Hong Kong director had to work with Van Damme first? Ringo Lam made this before he did Maximum Risk. This was filmed in the U.S., Hong Kong, and the Philippines, showcasing the international scope Lam wanted to achieve in his films.

If you’re going to kill the man who murdered your father, I have some advice for you. Perhaps, just maybe, don’t fall in love with his daughter. I mean, you can cuck him by sleeping with his mistress. That’s fine.

Eureka Classics is releasing this film for the first time in North America from a brand new 2K restoration. A limited edition of 2,000 copies, it features new artwork by Time Tomorrow and includes extras such as audio commentary by film critic David West, interviews with Gary Bettinson and Sandy Shaw, a trailer, and a limited edition collector’s booklet with a new essay by Hong Kong cinema scholar Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park. You can get it from MVD.

Tales from the Crypt S7 E12: Ear Today…Gone Tomorrow ( 1996)

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One episode away from the end.

Directed by Christopher Hart (Eat and Run) and written by Steven Dodd and Ed Tapia, this is the story of Glynn Fennel (Robert Lindsay), a safecracker whose hearing is going, which leads to him screwing up his jobs. Mob boss Malcolm Lawson (Richard Johnson) spares his life, on the advice of his wife Kate (Gretchen Palmer). When Malcolm leaves on business, Kate reveals that she has been given the eyes of a cat and can get Glynn the ears of an owl, as long as he breaks into her husband’s safe. She’ll split the money and he can pay his debts.

“Look, lady, I’m sorry if the product made your skin fall off. But we never do ax-changes on sale merchandise! Next! Some people. Maybe at Doom-ingdales the ghost-omer’s always fright. But not here. Attention all Slay Mart choppers! Interested in tonight’s boo light special? (no longer in the microphone) It concerns a couple of crooks who are about to learn the benefits of dying wholesale. I call this bit of gash-and-carry: “Ear Today… Gone Tomorrow.”

The new ears work so well that Glynn shoots Kate and takes the money for himself. Except that now, she has nine lives. Good Lord, shudder, choke…she and her husband are using criminals like him to harvest these animal organs.

In the original EC Comics story, which was in Haunt of Fear #11, two men own a fertilizer factory next to a cemetery and decide to start digging under the graveyard and use that dirt, including some of the bones of dead people. When they go on vacation together, a field of corn comes to life and kills them. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Davis.

CBS LATE MOVIE: I, Desire (1982)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I, Desire was on the CBS Late Movie on August 5 and 23, 1988..

When you see the name John Llewellyn Moxey on the credits of a movie, you know you’re getting into something extraordinary. Just look at The House That Would Not Die, A Taste of Evil, The Night Stalker, Nightmare In Badham County, Deadly Deception and, well, just about everything he did. I didn’t even mention The City of the Dead and Psycho-Circus!

Originally called I, Desire and airing November 15, 1982 on ABC, who knew this little vampire film would be amongst the best ones I’d find for our vampire week? There’s a great cast — David Naughton from An American Werewolf In London makes for a fine lead, as well as Brad Dourif as a priest, Barbara Stock as the bewitching vampire, Dorian Harewood (he was in Sudden Death!) as a cop, Marilyn Jones as Naughton’s fiancee and even an appearance from Not Necessarily The News‘ Anne Bloom (or Frosty Kimelman in that long-lost HBO program).  Oh yeah — and Marc Silver, who was the guitarist in Ivan and the Terribles, the ill-fated band in Motel Hell.

There are some great twists and turns in this one, as well as an incredible vampiric apartment at the end that I wish I could live in. I’ll assume it’s just a studio set so that I don’t get sad that I can never go back in time and see it for myself.

You can watch this on YouTube.

88 FILMS BLU RAY RELEASE: The Magnificent Cheng Cheh: The Magnificent Trio and Magnificent Wanderers (1966, 1977)

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The Godfather of Hong Kong Cinema, Chang Cheh, had a career that spanned from the wuxia films of the 1960s to the martial arts movies of the 1970s, encompassing a wide range of other genres.

The Magnificent Trio (1966): Starring Jimmy Wang Yu as swordsman Lu Fang, Lo Lieh as Yen Tzu-ching and Cheng Lui as Huang Liang, this is the story of, well, three badass swordsmen who decide to help farmers against the rich people oppressing them.

A remake of Hideo Gosha’s Three Outlaw Samurai, set in the Ming Dynasty instead of Japan, this film features farmers kidnapping Wei Wen-chen, the magistrate’s daughter, in the hope of securing a ransom to feed their children. As for her father, Magistrate Wei, he keeps the poverty of his people a secret from the Emperor, taxing and beating them into submission.

Lu Feng is everything you want in a wuxia hero. To keep the farmers from being arrested, he agrees to take a hundred lashes, passing out from the pain. Man, the things he does to keep these people safe.

Magnificent Wanderers (1977): Nomads Lin Shao You (Fu Sheng), Shi Da Yong (Chi Kuan-chun), and Guan Fei (Li Yi-min) battle the Mongols in this kung fu epic. It’s also a comedy, as the three engage in a fortune-telling scam before meeting wealthy man Chu Tie Xia (David Chiang), who claims they are friends.

However, there’s no real story here; the Mongols are comical morons instead of frightening monsters and I never expect Cheh to do comedy. Working with Wu Ma, there is some action here. I also dig that Chiang’s character has a bow that shoots arrows of gold.

Even if this is a misstep, a year later, Cheh will make The Five Venoms.

This 88 Films set is a limited edition of 2000 copies. It has a limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Grégory Sacré; 1080p HD presentations on Blu-ray from masters supplied by Celestial Pictures; audio commentary on The Magnificent Trio by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) and martial artist and filmmaker Michael Worth; audio commentary on Magnificent Wanderers by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema; a video essay by Gary Bettinson, editor-in-chief of Asian Cinema Journal and a limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing on Chang Cheh by writer and critic James Oliver. You can get these films from MVD.