EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Since childhood, Kay has constantly suffered from horrifying dreams, some of which are just frightening landscapes that leave her feeling uneasy and others that show loved ones being killed by a supernatural force. Those dreams have come and gone, but now they are happening more often, growing in intensity and impacting her work as an artist.

Worried that all of this stress may hurt her newfound success as an abstract artist, Kay decides to vacation on a small island, along with her husband David (Alan McRae, Three Ninjas), her brother Eric and his wife Brooke. As their pilot drops them off on the island, he mentions that a hurricane is on the way and he has to leave as soon as possible. Even stranger is the fact that the island — which they expected to be a resort town — is a deserted ruin. And not just any ruin, but the one in Kay’s dreams, leading her to feel that everyone is in danger.

David, Eric and Brooke are then killed one after the other. But who killed them? The film gives us three possible stories, each of which are plausible: the pilot never left the island and just dropped them off there to kill them (a theory that is somewhat proved when the pilot is seen later); Kay believes that a monster from her dreams can cross over into reality thanks to the island (which could be true, as the murders only happen when she is asleep) and finally, that Kay is really the killer, falling into a trance and acting out repressed resentment.

After everyone else dies, Kay locks herself into the beach house and tries to stay awake, even burning herself with cigarettes. But that night, the pilot makes his way into the house. She shoots him with a flare gun, killing him and sending the house up in smoke. As she tries to leave, a flaming skeleton is waiting for her.

But wait! It was all a dream, as Kay awakes on Christmas morning in bed. After telling her parents about the dream, they hand her a black cat to her horror. Huh? Supposedly Kay is killed by the Slayer and this is a flashback, but it certainly doesn’t seem that way.

Director J.S. Cardone says that he was inspired by H.P. Lovecraft and the idea of dreams versus reality, but the movie doesn’t have much to do with Lovecraft. That said, this movie looks way more expensive than its budget would lead you to believe, there are some good death scenes and it has a bleak atmosphere.

Here’s a drink.

Hurri-Kay

• 2 oz. white rum
• 2 oz. dark rum
• 2 oz. passion fruit juice
• 2 oz. orange juice
• .5 oz. grenadine
• .5 oz. simple syrup
• .25 oz. lime juice
• Maraschino cherry

1. Add all your ingredients — other than the cherry — in a shaker filled with ice.
2. Mix it up, pour over ice and toss in that cherry.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Mei-Chun Chang made another 3D kung fu movie we covered, Dynasty, so we were super excited to get this movie, also known as 13 Golden Nuns.

Thirteen women are ravaged by bandits and the rules of the time state that they must go to a convent. What the rules did not state was that they would spend their time there studying the martial arts and gaining all of the skills that they would need to murder those that did them wrong.

I mean, take it from the film itself: “In 18th century China, bandit hordes roamed the provinces pillaging and plundering villages. Whole villages were decimated. Men, women and children slaughtered and the women raped.According to the social customs of the times, the rape victims, because they were no longer virgins, were sent to convents. Under the austere and knowledgeable presence of the Head Shogun Nun, these girls were taught the Revelations of the Budha and mastered the techniques of the martial arts. They became Shogun women capable of defending themselves and others from the bandit marauders.”

Look, someone gets scalped in 3D. I think that’s worth more than the price of this blu ray. There’s some wedding drama — a young woman is marrying an old doctor because the only way he can do acupuncture on her breast is to marry her so it’s not inappropriate and the artist who loves her calls in the bandits because, well, it’s a kung fu movie. The real reason to watch this is to see arrows come out of the screen.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Dennis Wheatley’s writing reflected his conservative worldview, as his heroes defend the monarchy, the British Empire and its class system. If you’re evil in one of his books, you either are from Satan or you’ve stood up to those ideals. As for how well he knew the occult, he was known as an expert on Satanism, exorcism,and black magic, even publishing The Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult, personally picking the titles and writing introductions for each book. The series included works by Theosophist H. P. Blavatsky, Alesiter Crowley and Bram Stoker amongst many others.

He was not a fan of this movie, saying “This is disgusting, obscene, has no relationship to my book. It’s outrageous and disgraceful. And I will never again let this company turn one of my books into a film.”

I kind of loved it.

American occult writer John Verney (Richard Widmark) has been asked by Henry Beddows (Denholm Elliot) to pick up his daughter Catherine (Nastassja Kinski) from the airport. She’s had quite the life, being a member of Father Michael Rayner’s (Christopher Lee) Children of the Lord, a religious order that her mother was also part of. The group wants her back and uses black magic to battle Verney.

Catherine is set to become the human form of Astaroth when she turns eighteen and only Verney can save her from the Satanic forces of the former priest.

While Kinski is nude in this movie — and fourteen years old, which is pretty upsetting even if she had been topless already at the age of twelve — Lee is not. That was his stunt double Eddie Powell. Also: Klaus Kinski turned down the lead, saying that he may have had no issue being in a film where his daughter was fully naked, there was no way he’d stay sober.

If you’re in the mood for more Dennis Wheatley, Hammer also made The Devil Rides Out.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

This movie is literally the center of the Venn Diagram that would be made of the movies that I love the most.

Italian ripoff of a successful film — This movie is obviously trying to be The Exorcist.

Satanism — This film has some of the goofiest and most awesome devil tricks of any of I’ve seen.

Exploitation — No one in this film acts like a normal human being and reality has been supplanted by insanity before the demons even get involved.

Multiple titles — This film is also known as Sexorcist, The Tormented, Devil Obsession, L’Ossessa and was later re-released post-Rocky Horror midnight movie success in 1977 as The Eerie Midnight Horror Show.

And the title card that comes up before the movie begins: THIS FILM IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY.

Daniela is an art student in Italy who is so respected by her teachers that she gets to join them as they acquire religious sculptures from a church due to be torn down. That church was deconsecrated way back in the 1700’s because the priests and nuns decided that they would turn against God and start having orgies in the church. And one of the statues, an incredibly lifelike display of one of the thieves crucified next to Jesus, catches Daniela’s eye. She is told that it was pulled directly from a tree, that it was already inside the wood and all the sculptor had to do was bring out the details. However, many tourists have had mental breakdowns just looking at this sculpture.

Daniela’s life is weird even before the crazy gets started. Her rich parents throw a party and we learn that her mother isn’t just cheating on her husband, she’s doing it pretty much in public. Yep — Daniela catches her mother getting whipped by the thorns of a rose — a scene that Becca just randomly walked into and asked, “What are you watching?!?”

Our heroine leaves for her studio at the university. As she paints, the sculpture comes off the cross in a scene that can only come from the deranged mind of Italian exploitation filmmaking (director Mario Gariazzo wrote Sister Emanuelle and directed Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind). Of course, that revived religious icon then has sex with her, sex that appears to be a dream as she runs from the studio.

Later that night, as Daniela climbs the stairs to her family’s apartment, she keeps thinking she is alone, but the sounds of her footsteps don’t match up. She hears a demon whisper her name and she runs in fear before the demon overcomes her, forcing her into a state of sexual mania and a dream where she is crucified. She spends the rest of the movie trying to get anyone to have sex with her while stigmata appears on her hands and she does all of the tropes of exorcism rip-offs.

And then Ivan Rassimov (All the Colors of the Dark, Shock/Beyond the Door II, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key ) shows up as Satan, giving Daniela her beauty back so that she can work with him to tempt all of the priests, like Father Xeno (Luigi Pistilli, Oliviero from Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key). She tries to seduce him, so to forget that she has tempted him he self-flagellates.

The priest dies and the girl is saved, after she pukes out the demon. But you knew that, right? You’ve seen this film repeated before. But that doesn’t mean that this film isn’t great. And by great, I mean the scummiest version of everything you love about films like this. No matter title you refer to it by, it is everything you want to see.

21st Century released this as The Tormented.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

You gotta love this Amazon description, which assumes that we know who these fellows are:

“FBI agent Brad joins Tony and Nick, the self-styled supermen who battle crime wearing bullet-proof super-suits. They are on a case involving radioactive counterfeit money and people who can be broken down into precious jewels. With some really nice stunts and awesome kung fu, gimmick weapons & gymnastics!”

I mean, I wasn’t interested and then you hit me with gymnastics?

Director Gianfranco Parolini is better known for his Sabata films, as well as God’s Gun. For this movie, he went to Yugoslavia to get the adventures of these three heroes to the big screen. And it wasn’t easy — for one stunt, actor Aldo Canti jumped out of a 20 feet high window, hit a trampoline and then jumped into a truck moving at full speed.

After this movie, the Supermen went around the world: Japan in Three Supermen at Tokyo, Africa in Three Supermen in the Jungle, Hong Kong in the xenophobically titled Supermen Against the Orient,  and seemingly have run out of countries, they went back in time to the wild west in The Three Supermen in the West.

Tony is played by Tony Kendall, who is also in The Whip and the Body and Return of the Blind Dead, as well as the Kommisar X series of films. And Nick, another of the Supermen, was played by actor/stuntman Aldo Canti, a real-life thief with strong mob ties that was released from jail just to appear in this film. He was replaced by Sal Borgese in the other films in this series before coming back for the Turkish co-production Supermenler in 1979.