WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Hell’s Bloody Devils (1970)

It just makes sense that the Third Reich would regroup in Las Vegas, I guess. FBI agent Mark Adams (John Gabriel) poses as a member of a Sin City organized crime gang to get into the world of war criminal Count von Delberg (Kent Taylor) and stop him from his plan to counterfeit U.S. dollars. He’s helped by Israeli agent Carol Bechtal (Vicki Volante), whose parents were killed by von Delberg during the war. But the Count hasn’t slowed down or gotten with the times. He’s working with the Bloody Devils, a motorcycle gang, to carry out his plans.

This started as a spy movie called Operation M, then became The Fakers, and a few years later, bikers — real bikers, the kind that get busted for weapons charges during filming — joined the cast.

You know who else is in there? Colonel Sanders. He’s in one of his KFC restaurants. The Colonel had sold the restaurants in 1964 but retained ownership of the Canadian stores and served as a brand ambassador, even as he began to despise the way the new owners made his chicken cheaper and less to his taste. In 1975, he said, “My God, that gravy is horrible. They buy tap water for 15 to 20 cents a thousand gallons, then mix it with flour and starch to make pure wallpaper paste. And I know wallpaper paste, by God, because I’ve seen my mother make it. There’s no nutrition in it, and they ought not to be allowed to sell it. Their fried chicken recipe is nothing in the world but a damn fried doughball stuck on some chicken.” KFC has paid for product placement in this movie, which may seem strange, but the Colonel also shows up — as does his chicken — in some Herschell Gordon Lewis movies. The Godfather of Gore used to serve up the original recipe as his craft service. The Colonel is also in Blast-Off GirlsThe Big Mouth and The Phynx.

John Carradine plays a pet shop owner. That’s enough to make me watch.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Hells Angels On Wheels (1967)

Directed by Richard Rush (The Stunt Man) and written by R. Wright Campbell, this is the tale of Poet (Jack Nicholson), a gas station attendant with a short fuse and a soul-crushing job. When a run-in with the notorious Hells Angels leaves his bike damaged, Poet doesn’t cower. Instead, he demands restitution. This display of suicidal bravery impresses the club’s charismatic leader, Buddy (Adam Roarke), who invites Poet to trade his mundane life for a permanent seat on the open road.

As a “prospect,” Poet is initiated into a subculture of beer-soaked brawls, police harassment, and brutal turf wars. However, the actual danger isn’t the rival clubs or the law; it’s the volatile romantic triangle that forms between Poet, Buddy, and Buddy’s restless girlfriend, Shill (Sabrina Scharf). What begins as a quest for freedom quickly spirals into a claustrophobic power struggle where the code of the road is tested by jealousy and betrayal.

“The violence, the hate, the way-out parties…exactly as it happens!” Roger Ebert said, “The film is better than it might have been, and better than it had to be.” He noted that, unlike so many other biker movies, everyone in this looks filthy, as they should.

Shot on location in Northern California, the film utilized actual members of the Hells Angels (including Sonny Barger) as extras and technical advisors, lending an unsettling air of legitimacy to the way-out parties and chaotic ride sequences. While Nicholson was still a few years away from Easy Rider, his performance here serves as the blueprint for the rebellious, anti-authority persona that would define his career.

You can watch this on YouTube.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Hellcats (1968)

The Hellcats bury Big Daddy, who was killed by their mob contact, Mr. Adrian (Robert F. Slatzer, who directed this as well as Bigfoot), when he learned that the crook was also a snitch for Detective Dave Chapman. All of these relationships are symbolized at the start of the film — the biker gang is burying their boss while the cops and the crooks watch from a distance.

Adrian decides to kill off Chapman when he’s on a date with his fiancée Linda (Dee Duffy, who was a Slaygirl and Miss June in the Matt Helm movies The Ambushers and Murderer’s Row). Dave’s brother, Monte (Ross Hagen, who was also in The Sidehackers), returns from the war to learn what happened. He and Linda decide to act like a biker couple and get revenge.

He does so by getting drawn and quartered longer than the leader of the gang, Snake (Sonny West, a member of Elvis’ Memphis Mafia). This earns him the right to have sex with Sheila (one-and-done actress Sharyn Kinzie) and brings our protagonists into the gang’s scam to bring back drugs from Mexico.

Tom Hanson, who directed Zodiac Killer, shows up here as Mongoose. Gus Trikonis, who made Nashville WomanThe EvilShe’s Dressed to Kill, and more, is Scorpio. Tony Lorea, who plays Six-Pack and also acted in Supercock, went on to be the assistant director of Sweet SixteenThe Glove and Ladies Night. Was this entire gang made up of exploitation movie directors? Where’s Bud Cardos?

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Hazing (1977)

Also known as The Campus Corpse, Here Come the Delts and The Curious Case of the Campus Corpse, this was directed by Douglas Curtis (The Sleeping Car) and written by David Ketchum (Agent 13 from Get Smart) and Bruce Shelly.

Craig Lewis (Jeff East) pledges a fraternity along with Barney (Charles Martin Smith), a super-smart kid. They’re asked to run down a mountain only in jockstraps to prove how bad they want to join. Craig is a runner, so he’s fine, but when the other guy gets hurt, Craig runs off to get help. When he returns, the other man is dead and instead of calling the police, the frat decides to hide the body.

This has the weirdest plan: After hiding the body for a week, Rod (Brad David) and Phil (Jim Boelsen) force Craig to go to Barney’s classes. Then, they take the corpse to a ski lodge and make it look like he died going down the hill. Does it work? Hmm…

This looks like a TV movie and wildly vacillates between goofy comedy and thriller. It makes no sense and is kind of a mess. I loved it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Haunted Palace (1963)

Despite being marketed as Edgar Allan Poe’s The Haunted Palace, the story in this is really H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. It gets its title from a poem by Poe that would become part of The Fall of the House of Usher

Everyone in Arkham believes that Joseph Curwen (Vincent Price) is some kind of evil magician. Well, they’re right, as he and his lover Hester Tillinghast (Cathie Merchant) keep something unspeakable in the basement that they use to terrify young women in rituals. Exra Weeden (Leo Gordon) and a mob catch them and decide to burn Curwen alive. Before he goes up in an inferno of small-minded townspeople, he curses everyone and says he will come back for revenge.

A century later, Curwen’s great-great-grandson Charles Dexter Ward (Price) and his wife Anne (Debra Paget) come to town. The people hate them already; the people are strange and deformed. Charles becomes overly interested in a picture of his ancestor to the point that it starts to change who he is. This pleases caretaker Simon (Lon Chaney Jr.).

Dr. Marinus Willet (Frank Maxwell) explains to Charles and Anne that his predecessor had a black magic tome, the Necronomicon, and had summoned both Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth. He mated them with teenage girls, which led to the town being full of freaks. Well, good news: Charles is slowly and surely becoming Joseph, and everyone in the city is going to pay. 

This begins with the Poe poem — “And travelers, now, within that valley, through the red-litten windows see vast forms, that move fantastically to a discordant melody.” — and ends with it: “While, like a ghastly rapid river, through the pale door, a hideous throng rush out forever and laugh, but smile no more.”

The Embalmer (1965)

Il mostro di Venezia (The Monster of Venice) is at once a giallo and an Italian Gothic; it’s a movie that, when I started watching, I immediately knew was meant for me. 

A skull-masked serial killer is swimming the canals of Venice, where he takes women, drowns them and then embalms their bodies so that they stay alive for him forever. This would be the perfect time for some college girls to come to town, but hey, who am I to say what you do when a mad scientist is on the loose, taking over a monastery deep inside the bowels of Venice? Who are we to look down upon him as he hangs out with a bunch of decaying, dead monks?

Reporter Andrea (Luigi Martocci) falls for one of those girls and, when one of her friends is taken, decides to become the giallo hero, trying to do what the police fail to do. 

I don’t get all the hate for this movie, but then again, it hits all my buttons. Krimi killer. Wax museum vibes. Giallo plot. Gothic setting. Jazz. Girls in peril. Defund the giallo police. Defend The Embalmer. 

Director Dino Tavella only made one other movie, A Dirty War

You can watch this on Tubi.

Never Talk to Strangers (1995)

The kids today get mad about sex scenes being in movies. Well, let me tell you, this 1995 erotic thriller has one of the wildest romance scenes I’ve ever witnessed, one that, frankly, kind of blows my mind and makes me like this film even more. Which means that yes, sex scenes can be good.

We know that.

Dr. Sarah Taylor (Rebecca De Mornay) dealt with the trauma of being assaulted by her father (Len Cariou) every single day by becoming a criminal psychologist. She doesn’t seem to connect well with humanity. She slept with neighbor Cliff (Dennis Miller) once, and that didn’t go well. But now she’s seen Tony Ramirez (Antonio Banderas) at the mall and ends up dating him. I mean, it’s 1995, Antonio Banderas. You get it. She does too. 

The problem is that she starts. getting threats, the deeper their attraction goes, and her cat gets killed. Then she finds out he’s been keeping files on her and is looking into her boyfriend, who disappeared. Well, here’s the twist. Her father killed her mother and brainwashed her, creating several personalities that live inside her, and she’s basically been stalking and threatening herself. It gets wilder. The ending has been called laughable and idiotic. That’s probably what those who have never seen a giallo would say.

Directed by Peter Hall and written by Lewis A. Green and Jordan Rush, this also has Harry Dean Stanton as a criminal. If it seems like they have chemistry, De Mornay and Stanton dated after meeting during filming One from the Heart, only to break up when she had an affair with Tom Cruise while filming Risky Business.

That sex scene — wow. Saxophone sqwonks, as it always does, as De Mornay licks down Banderas’ spine, bites his rear and then slides behind him to simulate pegging him until she leaves him on his knees, going around a metal cage and sticking her tongue through it so he can suck it. I’ve never witnessed a more transgressive sex scene in a mainstream erotic thriller that wasn’t made direct for video. 

You can watch this on Tubi.

Revolver Lily (2026)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror FuelThe 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: Once upon a time, Yuri was one of Japan’s deadliest assassins, but she’s retired now and spends her days running an underground brothel. A news report about a former colleague who has died under mysterious circumstances doesn’t quite sit right. The dead man’s son is now the target of a military manhunt, and Yuri will do whatever it takes to keep him safe.

 You’ll come for the plentiful action and intrigue but you’ll stay for the great acting, splendid cinematography, and gorgeous period costumes and set design with director Isao Yukisada’s Japanese film Revolver Lily, set in 1924 Tokyo. The army and navy are at odds with each other over a large sum of money for which a third party has different plans (I won’t spoil the details here).

For an anti-war film, Revolver Lily is heavy on the gunplay and martial arts combat. The action is choreographed well, and star Haruka Ayase is terrific in the lead role of Yuri Ozone, a former spy and assassin who has tried to leave her past behind her. Action film devotees know that this never works in the genre. Ozone is often stoic until it comes time to kick butt, and Ayase nails both the dramatic and physical requirements of the role. She was nominated for Best Actress at the 2024 Japanese Academy Awards for her work in the title role, and rightfully so.

The supporting players are also solid, including Jinsei Hamura as Shinta, a young orphan boy with all kinds of dangerous people on his tail; Hiroki Hasegawa as Ozone’s confidant Iwami; and Kotone Furukawa and Kavka Shishido as two employees at the brothel that Ozone runs. Loads of other renowned actors are also featured — too many to name here as the cast is quite sizable. 

Yukisada helms Revolver Lily masterfully. It’s a slow burner that runs 2 hours and 19 minutes, but the film is so well crafted and acted that you won’t be checking your watch at any point. Strongly recommended for cinephiles of all stripes.    

Revolver Lily, from Well Go USA, receives a digital release on January 27, 2026 and lands on Blu-ray and DVD exclusively through Amazon on February 10.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Broken Bonds (2026)

After witnessing a fatal shootout, three waitresses — Nia (Ciera Angelia), Stacey (Bella Chadwick) and Tonya (Robyn Rose) — hide the cash that remains. As you can imagine, this may not end well for any of them.

Nia has an abusive boyfriend. Tonya is trying to get her career moving. Stacey wanted to be a doctor, but caring for her dying father has led her to work at the bar, the same place Nia and Tonya are toiling away. As they just try to do their jobs, they get caught in a battle between drug dealer Victor Brown (Marcus Woods) and second-generation cop Ethan Craig (Don Snipes). Ethan is sure that Victor killed his cop hero father and wants to get revenge. 

Directed by David Y. Chung (The Divorce Lawyer, Dark Deceptions) and written by Jhayla Mosley (Surprise 2The Deceitful Wife), this has a much better story than you’d expect from a Tubi Original. This one is worth watching.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Siege of Terror (1970)

Nutty Frog wrote this description of the movie on IMDb and man, it’s so all over the place that I had to share it: “At the Grand Hotel in Miami, Carla falls into the arms of her husband, the eminent Dr. Warren, and confesses to having seen Nick, the man he killed in New York, at the airport – Carla was a nightclub dancer. New York and Nick’s lover. Later, Warren accidentally discovered the real reason why Carla agreed to marry him: a combination of Nick, who plotted his death and the enjoyment of his inheritance. The pain arouses Warren’s thirst for blood, and strange events appear that will force Detective Andrew to intervene.”

Carla (Libertad Leblanc) has killed her pimp Nick (Carlos Piñar), and her husband and therapist, Dr. Warren (Riccardo Garrone), helps her get rid of the body. But this is a giallo, so she keeps seeing Nick, and it’s driving her insane. Or she is still sleeping with Nick, who is still alive, and they want to take Dr. Warren’s money. Or maybe he was abusing her, and that sent her over the edge. It’s never clear, but isn’t that why we watch giallo? Somehow, the giallo police — Andrew (Tony Kendall) — are so bad at solving this case that they disappear until right before the movie ends.

Shot in Miami by an Italian and Spanish team of filmmakers, this was directed and co-written by Luis Marquina. The best part is the sitcom romance Andrew has with Marta (Loredana Giustini), who, in one wacky scene, accidentally takes LSD.

You can watch this on YouTube.