Skullduggery (also known as Warlock and Blood Puzzle) is a 1983 slasher where the devil uses a role-playing game and a cursed boy named Adam to kill people. Everyone works in a costume story and is involved in community theater. It came out on VHS from by Media Home Entertainment and Video Treasures.
Igor and the Lunatics was financed by Troma Entertainment and they disliked the movie so much that they did extensive reshoots. Just think — a movie too poor for Troma! A cult made up of Paul, Igor and Bernard go to jail and when they get out, they start killing all over again.
You can watch Skullduggery on Tubi andIgor and the Lunatics on Vudu.
Directed by a big name — John Frankenheimer — and written by Mae Woods (her only script, she mainly worked as a producer and as Walter Hill’s assistant), this predates the true crime world of these days as a librarian named Margaret (Blythe Danner) becomes obsessed with a serial killer.
“City life got you down, kiddies? Looking for a home on derange? Well, look no further because I’ve got exactly what you want. It’s a charming tomb with a view. Think of it as your own little house on the scary. You’re not interested? What’s the matter? Afraid you can’t get a morgue-age? Oh well, that’s exactly how the woman in tonight’s tortured tale feels. She’s upset because there’s a killer loose in her neighborhood. In a putrid property I call Maniac at Large.””
This episode has quite the cast, include Clarence Williams III, Adam Ant, Salome Jens (The Foolkiller), Irwin Keyes and Harper Roisman (the mountain man who nurses Michael Myers back to health in Halloween 5). It gives Danner the chance to lose her mind as she starts to believe that she’s been locked in the library with the killer.
This episode was based on “Maniac at Large” in Shock SuspenStories #27. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by George Evans.
Outside of Sedona, Arizona is Bradshaw Ranch, a paranormal hotspot that has seen rumors of black helicopters flying overhead, underground military tunnels, military troops walking the streets, strange lights in the sky, Men In Black and aliens. It’s right down the road from Skinwalker Ranch and has just as many strange vortexes and interdimensional portals.
This documentary was created after six months of research by “paranormal investigators, psychics and open-minded scientists.” Their goal was to get evidence on film and on scientific instruments of the weirdness that exists in the area. The sales copy claims that what they found “uncovered transcended the boundaries of our understanding, revealing a profound revelation: we are not alone in the universe.”
The area was settled by Bob Bradshaw, who bought 140 acres of land and started building a town he called Bitter Creek. If you’ve seen it before, it’s where the Elvis movie Stay Away Joe was made. Almost as soon as he and his wife Linda moved there, however, they started to see balls of blue light in the night skies and strange creatures that they couldn’t explain. Yes, Bigfoot shows up.
If you also have an open mind — and love paranormal shows, you’ll enjoy this exploration into a place perhaps not as covered as other hot spots.
Colonel Michael Bishop’s (Mark Dacascos) last mission went FUBAR and was possibly — to use the title of this movie — sabotaged. He was the only survivor of something that government has disavowed. After healing, he’s been working as a bodyguard for billionaires, but when his clients start getting killed off, he realizes that the same operative, Sherwood (Tony Todd), that killed his team and is now coming after him.
This was directed by Tibor Takács (The Gate) — who made four movies with Dacascos — and was a mid 90s direct to video film that you’d find in the action section. It also has Carrie-Ann Moss as FBI special agent Louise Castle, John Neville (Baron Munchausen!) as Bishop’s handler Professor Follenfant and Graham Greene as Castle’s boss Tollander.
Bishop and Castle are named for chess pieces and, as you can easily follow, are being manipulated like the very same pieces. At least their names aren’t Pawn and Pawn. Dacascos is athletic, the bad guys are suitably bad — Todd is always great no matter the material — and revenge is achieved in the most splattery way possible. Back in 1996, this would have been in your five nights for five bucks stack. Today, it can be on the shelf of your collection.
The MVD blu ray release of this movie has extras including new interviews with Mark Dacascos and Tony Todd, a trailer real of Dacascos movies, double-sided artwork and a collectible mini-poster. You can get it from MVD.
Director Chun-Ku Lu (Holy Flame of the Martial World) is here to tell us the story of Yun Fei Yang (Norman Chui), an orphan who is given the worst tasks at Wudang, a martial arts school. Every privileged student abuses him, but he remains there, studying and working on his kung fu when he isn’t being treated like trash. There’s a real problem, however, as the rival Wu Di school and their best fighter, Kung Suen Wang (Meng Lo), is coming back to duel the school’s master swordsman Qing Song (Jung Wang) after having already defeated him twice.
Yun Fei Yang also is in love with the daughter — Fang Er (Yeung Jing-Jing) — of the leader of the school, Chief Dugu (Alex Man Chi-Leung), who has left for two years. As Dugu rests as a tavern, he’s attacked by four killers — Wind (Yuen Tak), Thunder (Wong Lik), Rain (Yuen Qiu) and Lightning (Kwan Fung), in case you ever wondered if John Carpenter watched these movies — and is saved by Fu Yu Shu. Yet after he’s attacked a second time, Yun Fei Yang is blamed and the school starts to tear itself to pieces A new master shows up, Fu Yu Xue (Tony Liu), and he soon steals away the school.
Yun Fei Yang starts to train with a stranger — Shen Man Jiun (Chan Si-Gaai) — and begins to master the signature style of the school, the Silkworm, all while running for the law, who thinks that he is a murderer. Yet despite the odds being against this “bastard,” the only way the true Wudang style will live on is through him.
Don’t think that this movie is rooted in our world. After all, Yun Fei Yang soon learns how to spin himself into a cocoon and emerge as a silver armored superhero who can shoot webs and emit blasts of energy. By the end, the final battle takes place inside his cocoon and it ends with the bad guy turned into a skeleton.
Based on a TV series, Reincarnated or The Transformation of the Heavenly Silkworm, this would be followed by a sequel, Return of the Bastard Swordsman.
This week, Bill and Sam are joined by Steven Moore, who is part of the new Yor Hunter from the Future comic book from Antarctic Press. The show gets started at 8 PM EST on our Facebook or YouTube channels.
Johnny Legend’s Untamed Video (August 25 – 31) Welcome to the wonderfully wacky world of Johnny Legend’s Untamed Video! Take a walk on the wild side with troublesome teenagers, sleazy sex kittens, way-out hippies, country bumpkins, big bad bikers, Mexican wrestlers, and every other variety of social deviant you can think of.
Jennie (Beverly Lunsford) is married to a man old enough to be if not her father, surely her older uncle, named Albert Peckingpaw (Jack Lester). But when Mario Dingle (Jim Reader) starts working on their farm, she suddenly decides to perhaps lying under a wrinkled elderly gent isn’t the life she wants. He catches them, drugs them and throws them in a hole while going off to dig their graves. The only person that can save them is sex worker Lulu Belle (Virginia Wood), who is heading out to meet Albert for a reason yet to be found out.
Originally titled Albert Peckingpaw’s Revenge and Tender Grass, this once-melodrama was recut by Robert Carl Cohen, who added in Lulu Belle, added the strip tease scene, threw in the silent movie title cards and made it sleazy, basically. It was nearly a different movie than what original director and writer James Landis (The Sadist) had in mind.
Making this work harder are the soundtrack by Davie Allan and the Arrows and cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond. What other hicksploitation sex scandal film has that?
“RIVER BOTTOM YOUNG STUFF! she’s hitched to an old-man-husband, and he’s got a young stiff for a hired man–it’s what you call a triangle!”
Johnny Legend’s Untamed Video (August 25 – 31) Welcome to the wonderfully wacky world of Johnny Legend’s Untamed Video! Take a walk on the wild side with troublesome teenagers, sleazy sex kittens, way-out hippies, country bumpkins, big bad bikers, Mexican wrestlers, and every other variety of social deviant you can think of.
I first watched this movie in the best of ways. On our weekly webcast, Drive-In Asylum, we had the great opportunity to have Bret McCormick, director of The Abomination, as a guest. This was the movie that he chose to watch with us.
Director, writer and producer John Parker started this film as a short and then expanded it. He had been inspired by a dream that his secretary, Adrienne Barrett, had and picked her to star in the film along with Bruno VeSota, who would go on to star in several Roger Corman films.
Barrett plays the Gamin, a young woman who wakes up from a nightmare to be in another one. Newspapers scream that there was a mysterious stabbing, men try to assault her only to be beaten into oblivion by police and a pimp buys her a flower, then asks her to accompany a rich man (Ve Sota) as she dreams back to stabbing her abusive father after he had shot and killed her mother.
After an evening touring the city’s bars and nightclubs, they enter his elegant apartment where he ignores her attempts at seduction as he gorges on a huge meal. He finally attempts to attack her and she stabs him with the same blade that murdered her father and he plummets to the street, holding her necklace in a death grip. She saws off his hand as people watch without caring and the same cop appears that saved her in the alley, only now with the face of her father as she runs away, clutching the severed hand.
The pimp comes back to pull her into a jazz club, soon followed by the cop and the dead body of the rich man, whose bloody stump points her out as his killer. The audience surrounds her, laughing, as she wakes up back where she began, in the hotel room. She goes to put on her necklace and finds that its being held by a severed hand.
Dementia was briefly released in 1953 before it was banned by the New York State Film Board, who deemed it “inhuman, indecent, and the quintessence of gruesomeness.” Perhaps that’s because it’s a movie that shows the violence and fear that women live with every day, but goes further to have a heroine who strikes back with the kind of strength that seperates a man’s body part. Today, this would be considered an art film, or maybe even elevated horror, but in the 1950s, the only genre it could fit into was horror. When it was re-released in 1955, theater employees submitted medical examinations of patrons to “heart specialists” who would assure the theatergoers that they would not be frightened to the point of death. One of the big reasons why the 1955 re-release was troubled was that some areas of the country weren’t ready for the interracial dancing in the jazz club.
Originally, Dementia has no dialogue and only sound effects and a score by composer George Antheil, with vocal effects by Marni Nixon and jazz musician Shorty Rogers and his band the Giants performing in the night club scene. Jack H. Harris, who had a habit of getting films and re-releasing them — Equinox, Dark Star — added narration by Ed McMahon and release it as Daughter of Horror.
When we showed this, Bret was worried that our audience would hate it. After all, The New York Daily News said, “The presentation, designed as a shocker, is enough to drive anybody crazy with alternate sessions of tedium and bedlam.” The good news is that it was received well, much like how Preston Sturges said, “It stirred my blood, purged my libido. The circuit was completed. The work was a work of art.”
Even if you haven’t seen this movie, you may have. It’s what’s playing in The Colonial Theater when The Blob attacks. And Faith No More used it as the inspiration for their video “Separation Anxiety.”
Supposedly, Aaron Spelling was one of the people in the nightclub. Did you see him?
The re-edit by Harris is strange to the ear, as you’re listening to the friendly voice of Carson’s sidekick saying things like, “Come with me into the tormented, haunted, half-lit night of the insane. This is my world. Let me lead you into it. Let me take you into the mind of a woman who is mad. You may not recognize some things in this world, and the faces will look strange to you. For this is a place where there is no love, no hope…in the pulsing, throbbing world of the insane mind, where only nightmares are real, nightmares of the Daughter of Horror!”
Johnny (Lee Chung-Ling) and Michael (Lin Wen-Wei) are on a holiday, ignoring that Johnny’s dad feels that he doesn’t know what responsibility is. His mother mentions how they all come from good families, so he’s safe to hang out with these friends. Little do they know that the boys are in a motorcycle gang.
Guo Jian-Zhong (Ling Yun) and his wife Chen Mei-Juan (Terry Lau Wai-Yue) have taken her sister Guo Ji-Lia (Kong San) to the beach house of her boyfriend Si Wei (Danny Lee). They’re not well-off and are just scraping by, but young and innocent and happy.
These two groups are going to meet and yes, bad things are going to happen.
Yes, Shaw Brothers made a biker movie and it was directed by Chih-Hung Kuei, the man that brought us so many insane journeys, like Corpse Mania and Curse of Evil.
The island is remote and only can be accessed by boat, so even the police aren’t here. As the gang and the two couples meet, at first it’s simple male catcalls to Guo Ji-Lia and her leather mini skirt. Soon, they are spraying graffiti all over their van, throwing ketchup at them and then tossing gigantic leeches. They lure the men away by attacking the house and when they are gone, assault both of them women, with one of them dying. Now, the film goes into Straw Dogs and beyond that to Last House On the Left, somehow inverting the inspiration with rich antagonists and working class heroes. In fact, it owes Peckinpah’s film so much that there’s even a scene of hot oil being used on the wealthy thugs.
This film proved to me that Argento doesn’t have a trademark on shoving a woman’s head through a glass window, that it can be really satisfying to watch a tractor mow through a rich biker, that setting traps in your house is always the best idea, that ending your movie in caps is the best — THERE IS NO RULE OF LAW THAT A KILLING WHICH RESULTS FROM THE USE OF EXCESSIVE FORCE IN SELF-DEFENCE IS ONLY MANSLAUGHTER; IF SUCH A KILLING IS DELIBERATE IT IS MURDER. — and that more movies should have spearguns being fired at punks.
Also: This movie is total exploitation to the point that somehow, an escort company has placed a review on Letterboxd which is a wild business plan.
Based on Gu Long’s Before and After the Duel, the third installment in the Lu Xiaofeng series, this was directed by Chor Yuen. Just as the title states, this is about the sword fight between Ye Gucheng (Jason Pai) and Ximen Chuixue (Elliot Ngok), which will be to the death on the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Once friends, no one knows why they are engaging in such a battle and when Ximen postpones the duel, Lu Xiaofeng (Tony Liu) and his fellow martial artists Sikong Zhaixing (Lung Ting-sang), Hermit Pine (Shum Lo), Hua Manlou (Sun Chien) and Monk Honest (Walter Tso) decide to learn the why.
That takes them to gambling dens, to rumors of revenge, to finding out that Ye may have been poisoned and that his wife, Leng Qingqiu (Ching Li), has grown ill. Strange still, only Ximen can heal Ye from his affliction, but will he?
Which technique is stronger? Wavering Sword or Floating Goddess? While the story that gets you there is long and wandering, at least Lu Xiaofeng is one cool hero. He’s nearly unstoppable with a sword and he has no issue telling those he fights exactly that. There are so many people with something to lose in this bet between two men, but when honor is in danger of being lost, that’s when both will have to put their life on the line.
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