Christine and Betty (Ann and Vicki Michelle, who are real-life sisters; Elke Sommer was their au pair as they grew up) are runaways who want to be models. Christine is soon hired by an agent, Sybil Waite (Patricia Haines) but as you can tell, this isn’t a movie about modeling. It’s about the occult and the job in the country Christine gets is all about getting her in the coven of Gerald Amberley (Neil Hallett) and into his bed; both happen and she soon learns that she can control white magic or magick if you wear Stevie Nicks garb. Sybil is down with darker magic and wants to control Betty.

There’s also this guy named Johnny (Keith Buckley) who wants to help Betty escape, but he also wants to deflower her because, you know, guys.

This was filmed at the Admiral’s Walk in Pirbright, the same place where Terror and Satan’s Slave was shot. Director Ray Austin started as a stunt man on movies like North by Northwest and Operation Petticoat; working with Chee Soo on The Avengers, he helped Diana Rigg be the first Western actor to do kung fu. He was married to Yasuko Nagazumi and the stepfather of her daughter Miki Berenyi from the band Lush. He also directed The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman.

Writer Hazel Adair created the soap opera Crossroads but didn’t make this movie under her own name. Along with wrestling announcer Kent Walton, they created Pyramid Films. She became Klaus Vogel and he was Ralph Solomons; they also made Clinic Exclusive, Can You Keep It Up for a Week?, Keep It Up Downstairs and Game for Vultures.

Ann Michele went on to be in Psychomania, House of Whipcord and Young Lady Chatterley, while her sister Vicki acted in Queen Kong, The Sentinel, the TV show ‘Allo, ‘Allo and The Greek Tycoon. Supposedly, Anthony Quinn “personally asked the producers to reduce the size of Michelle’s part thinking that her good looks and bright costume would detract the audience’s attention from him.” They have both spoken badly of their experiences on this movie, saying that they were hardly paid and pressured into more nude scenes than they had agreed to.

Here’s a drink.

High Priestess

• 1.5 oz. vanilla vodka
• 1.5 oz. blue curacao
• 1.5 oz. grenadine
• 6 blackberries

1. Muddle the blackberries in a glass, then add ice.
2. Mix vodka, curacao and grenadine in and enjoy.

The Streets of Bangkok is based on the Boris Karloff film The Mask of Fu Manchu and it finds Jean Rollin not on a beach or a falling to pieces mansion with vampires living inside clocks, but instead a comic book mystery. Don’t worry. He didn’t forget to have naked women in it.

Secret agent Rick (Gérard Landry) is killed looking for a biological weapon. The photos on his camera are of a sex worker named Eva (Yoko) who is now wanted by the spies and the syndicate. The syndicate! What is this, a Doris Wishman movie? Rita (Brigitte Borghese) and her two female hitwomen are everywhere looking for our heroine.

Eva is rescued by Claudine (Françoise Blanchard, The Living Dead Girl), but they’re soon in the clutches of the syndicate and Eva gets chained up and whipped because Eurosleaze. There’s also a lot of scenes of Eva dancing — Yoko only did two other films, both adult movies but at least one was a James Bond parody, James Bande 00Sex 2 (thanks Gentry on Letterboxd) — but she’s good in this and, as you’d expect from a Rollin movie, inordinately attractive.

This has the biggest mud wrestling arena I’ve ever seen, Françoise Blanchard rocking a mullet and an ending that has the good guy prove he’s not so good and Eva shooting him with tears pouring down her face. And people tied to the train tracks and endless massage scenes!

You might be bored by this. As for me, I found the joy that is the weird timing of a Rollin movie, just endlessly hanging out near the infinite void as he makes a Jess Franco movie, pretty much.

I discovered this movie from Unsung Horrors, who said that it was “Somewhere in between Jean Rollin and Ogroff.”

How could I not want to see this?

So this is kind of cheating, because Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina is more a drama or crime movie than a giallo, but it has enough elements of the form to warrant being included in the company of black gloved killers.

Il Giornale is a newspaper that may remind you of some other media sources in 2021: it has a strictly conservative and fascist audience and seeks to discover the right wing way of looking at every issue, no matter how silly they are, while ignoring the real issues that people are dealing with every single day.

Then a young woman is assaulted and killed, so the bullpen goes all in screaming for the return of the death penalty and actually goes so far as to get involved in the investigation. They believe that an idealistic student protester is behind the sex crime, which their readership is only too happy to get behind.

Gian Maria Volonté plays the editor who gets the fires burning. He always ends up in the more mindful and socially conscious giallo that don’t really fit the standard ideas of what makes one of these films, like Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Todo Modo and, well, this one. Plus Laura Betti (A Bay of Blood, Hatchet for the Honeymoon) and John Steiner are in this if you’re looking for familiar faces. Plus there’s an Ennio Morricone soundtrack.

Sergio Donati, who wrote the script, was the original director but he and Volonté had artistic differences. He also wrote The Weekend Murders, The Island of the Fishmen AKA Screamers, the original Man on Fire and Almost Blue. And oh yeah — Raw Deal!

Life imitates art: two years later, a real right-wing newspaper named Il Giornale started up.

The Radiance Films blu ray of Slap the Monster On Page One has a 4K restoration of the film from the original negative by Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Surf Film and Kavac Film, under the supervision of director Marco Bellocchio. There are interviews with Bellocchio and Mario Sesti, plus an appreciation by filmmaker Alex Cox, new English subtitles, a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters and a limited edition of 3000 copies that comes with a booklet with writing by Wesley Sharer.

You can order it from MVD.

The first movie from director and writer Francis Galluppi who comes right out of the gate with a movie that uses one location — a truck stop where everyone’s waiting for a tanker truck to fill up the gas pumps — and sets the tension on high and just lets everything boil.

The Knife Salesman (Jim Commings) is one of those people that just can’t wait to leave. Charlotte (Jocelin Donahue, The House of the Devil) is the waitress stuck there all day, dropped off by her husband, the sheriff (Michael Abbott Jr.). And then there are the two strangers that blow in full of menace, Travis (Nicholas Logan) and Beau (Richard Brake, the best part of many Rob Zombie movies). They just stole more money than you’d think was possible and are so close, so very close to Mexico.

The radio playing informs everyone that $700,000 was taken from the bank in Buckeye and that listeners should be on the lookout for a green Pinto containing several criminals. This makes Travis and Beau very nervous, as the camera goes to the parking lot, revealing that car as well as the damaged front end the DJ said to take special notice of.

The problem is no one has gas and the refueling truck hasn’t come yet. The pumps are dry. More bad news. The truck has rolled over and isn’t coming today, but no one knows that yet.

So many people come in and out of the diner with various agendas: Deputy Gavin (Connor Paolo). A Native American named Pete (Jon Proudstar). A young couple named Miles (Ryan Masson) and Sybil (Sierra McCormick). Even Barbara Crampton, Alex Essoe and Faizon Love are in this.

It’d be easy to call this a Tarantino-style film. More to the point, it’s a film influenced by the same influences, made by a new filmmaker who is ready to make a statement.

It does — like Tarantino — have a Mexican standoff that — spoiler warning — wipes out most of the cast. The bloodshed isn’t close to being over at that point.

Someone really loved this. Sam Raimi. He approached Galluppi to make one of the new spin-offs. The director told Variety, ““It’s one of the movies that legitimately made me want to make movie. If I’d never seen Evil Dead I don’t think I would have grabbed my friends and went out to the desert and made my first short.”

As for the diner, it’s also been in Identity, Palm Springs, The Forever Purge, and House of 1,000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects and so many more movies were shot there. It’s located at the Four Aces Movie Ranch.

88 Films has been releasing some incredible things this year, but The Project A Collection is the best set yet. It features both Jackie Chan films in a 4K UHD presentation with both the Hong Kong and Taiwan versions, as well as English and Cantonese-language options. There are so many extras, including a perfect-bound book, six lobby cards, a double-sided poster, a slipcase with brand-new artwork from Kung Fu Bob and interviews with Jackie Chan, Lee Hoi San, Mars, Yuen Biao, Dick Wei, Michael Chan Wai-Man, Michael Lai and Edward Tang. There’s even more, such as new audio commentaries by Frank Djeng and FJ DeSanto, making-of videos, outtakes, trailers, still galleries, the Japanese ending and more!

You can order this from MVD.

Project A (1983): Project A has a clock tower stunt in it, but Jackie Chan had not seen the films of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd when he made this movie, as they were not available on home video. He saw this as the evolution of comedy, action and martial arts that he’d been working on since The Young Master.

This movie and Dragon Lord were the first films since Jackie came back from his initial failed time in America and he had something to prove.

Sergeant Dragon Ma (Chan) is part of the Hong Kong Marine Police, which is battling both pirates and their Hong Kong Police rivals. After one fight too many, the Marine and regular police have to join forces.

Beyond Dragon Ma, Project A also has Sammo Hung as Zhuo “Fei” Yifei and Yuen Baio as Inspector Hong Tin-Tzu. In time, they all join together to face pirate lord Sam Pau (Dick Wei), who is smuggling guns directly from the cops.

Up until Project A came out, Hong Kong movies didn’t have the large sets and attention to period detail that other movies did. It’s also a film that isn’t all fighting, but instead a mix of action and combat.

Project A Part II (1987):Sergeant Dragon Ma (Jackie Chan) is back and has been sent on a new mission, far from the pirates who have pledged to kill him at the end of the first film. He soon learns that his new assignment, Sai Wan Police Station, is full of corrupt police like Superintendent Chun (Lam Wai), all except for one officer. He takes that man, Ho (Kenny Ho) and three of his friends to try to arrest gangster Tiger “Awesome Wolf” Au (Chan Wai-man) and is nearly killed. He’s saved at the last moment by his friends in the Marine Police.

Once he gets through that challenge, Dragon gets set up for a jewel robbery and must work with revolutionaries to clear his name. If that’s not enough, he also has three incredibly attractive women to deal with in Yesan (Maggie Cheung), Miss Pak (Rosamund Kwan) and Carina (Carina Lau), who gets kidnapped by the same criminals who have tried to ruin Dragon Ma’s reputation.

Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung only have cameos in this, allowing Chan to take center stage. Who knew that a martial arts movie could pay tribute to the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton while changing the way fights would be filmed? Instead of lining the bad guys up one at a time, Chan battles numerous opponents at once.

By the end, even the pirates love Jackie. This movie is worth watching so many times as the sets, costumes and action has to be savored.