The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: Devil Woman (1970)

Posted on by

Frank Henenlotter’s Sexy Shockers (September 1 – 7) We all know Frank Hennenlotter as the director of the Basket Case films, Bad Biology, Brain Damage, and Frankenhooker, but he’s also a cinematic curator of the crass! An academic of the pathetic! A steward of sleaze! A sexton of the sexual and the Sexy Shocker series is his curio cabinet of crudity. Skin and sin are mixed together in these homegrown oddities, South American rediscoveries, and Eurohorror almost-classics. Your mind may recoil with erotic revulsion at the sights contained within these films, so choose wisely!

There are two movies with the name Devil Woman. This one and 1973’s She yao jing AKA Bruka Queen of Evil, which is the sequel, at least spiritually I guess. The 1970 Devil Woman was directed by Jose Flores Sibal. It begins with the birth of a young girl who has snakes for hair. Her father throws she and her mother into the rainy night and we catch up with them years later when she has grown into the teen Manda. She keeps her head covered at all times and the children often bully her. One day, they try to pull the wrap off and many of them end up dying by snake bite. The townspeople set her mother’s house on fire and again, she runs off into the night.

When she grows to adulthood, Manda (Divina Valencia) has become a snake goddess who takes over a gang, which brings her into conflict with a martial artist named Su Wen when she kidnaps his girlfriend. This movie, as you probably expect, has tons of human on snake violence and has a very similar story to its sequel. Also, there’s no transaction, which means you’re working your way through it Tower of Babel style.

Can you believe that you live in a reality that has not just one but two Filipino snake-haired woman movies?

B&S About Movies podcast episode 46: Won Ton Ton the Dog Who Saved Hollywood

Posted on by

Michael Winner didn’t just make violent movies and try to live only on steak tartare. He also made this comedy about the Golden Age of Hollywood. Won Ton Ton the Dog Who Saved Hollywood is one of the mid 70s movies that tries to put as many cameos in as possible and hopes that you won’t notice the movie isn’t all that great. Why am I doing an episode about it? Because these kind of movies are the ones I get obsessed about.

You can listen to the show on Spotify.

The show is also available on Apple Podcasts, I Heart Radio, Amazon Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

Tales from the Crypt S4 E11: Split Personality (1992)

Posted on by

Directed by Joel Silver — normally a producer; this is the only script he has directed — and written by Fred Dekker, this story has a con man named Vic (Joe Pesci) dating twins April Dobbs and June Echeson Blair (Jacqueline Alexandra and Kristen Amber Citron) to get their inheritance. However, things don’t always work out on Tales from the Crypt.

“Oh, hello kiddies! Tonight’s coffin caper is so crammed with ghastly greed, sickening sex, and vomitous violence, that parental guidance is advised. So… guide your parents out of the room, so we can have some fun! (cackles) This tale concerns a gambling man with a bad case of double vision, who’s about to hit the hack-pot. I call this twin helping of horror “Split Personality.””

Vic starts out stealing ten grand from Don (Burt Young), then crashes his car because of two black cats. This leads him to the Blair mansion, where the twins hold him at gunpoint. He uses his smarmy charm to talk about their father’s architectural abilities as he starts to seduce both of them, all to get the $2 billion bucks they are worth. He takes it so far that he creates a twin for himself, Jack, who is him with sunglasses and a ponytail.

He switches identities every month and marries both twins, April as Vic, June as Jack. Things are so good that the girls even discuss just giving themselves at the same time to whatever husband is home. When they discover that there’s only Vic, it’s bad news for him, because just like how they couldn’t stand to share their father, they can’t share him. So they chainsaw him in half and each take a bloody piece back to their beds to fondle and sleep with.

This comes from Vault of Horror #30 and was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Johnny Craig. In that story, the twins are more innocent, but the end of the story is almost the same, as they split the antagonist with an axe.

CANNON MONTH 3: Bloodtide (1982)

Posted on by

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.

When you see the names Brian Trenchard-Smith and Nico Mastorakis listed as producers, you know that you’re probably getting into something good. Also known as Demon Island, this film was directed by Richard Jeffries, who is probably better known for the films that he’s written like Scarecrows and Cold Creek Manor. He’s only directed one other film, the 2008 TV movie Living Hell.

It’s funny, when I discussed this movie earlier today with Bill from Groovy Doom, he referred to it as “the monster movie with no monster.” That’s an apt description.

It’s also about a treasure hunter named Frye (James Earl Jones) whose underwater scavenging brings back an ancient sea monster that demands virgin blood.

Meanwhile, Neil and Sherry (Martin Kove and Mary Louise Weller, who appeared in Q The Winged Serpent the same year as this movie) have come to the island looking for his missing sister Madeline (Deborah Shelton, who also sings the song over the end credits with her then-husband Shuki Levy). Plus, Lydia Cornell stops hanging out with Cosmic Cow on Too Close for Comfort and shows up as Jones’ girlfriend.

Inexplicably, Lila Kedrova from Zorba the Greek and Jose Farrar — well, he’s less of a surprise as Jose may have been the first actor to win the National Medal of Arts, but he’s also in spectacular junk like The Sentinel, Bloody Birthday and The Being — both appear.

Arrow’s write-up promised “blood, nudity and beachside aerobics.” This delivered, as well as some great dream sequences and moments where beachfront rituals seem to go on forever. That said, I had a blast with this movie, as any film that has Martin Kove skipping around the waves holding a miniature engine while the ladies go wild and James Earl Jones yells at everyone will hold my attention.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: The Hand of Pleasure (1971)

Posted on by

Frank Henenlotter’s Sexy Shockers (September 1 – 7) We all know Frank Hennenlotter as the director of the Basket Case films, Bad Biology, Brain Damage, and Frankenhooker, but he’s also a cinematic curator of the crass! An academic of the pathetic! A steward of sleaze! A sexton of the sexual and the Sexy Shocker series is his curio cabinet of crudity. Skin and sin are mixed together in these homegrown oddities, South American rediscoveries, and Eurohorror almost-classics. Your mind may recoil with erotic revulsion at the sights contained within these films, so choose wisely!

Director Zoltan G. Spencer also made The Satanist and Terror at Orgy Castle. This time, he’s telling the story of the Hand of Pleasure, a secret organization of robotic women under the command of Dr. Dreadful (Spencer). He looks like the kind of thing if you saw it outside your home, you’re be terrified, wearing one of those old plastic see-through masks of an old man. Then again, he does say “Please excuse the mask… my face is the greatest horror of them all!” He wants to have his women sleep with spies and learn their secrets while a Sherlock Holmes-looking man — also old — tries to figure out what is happening.

Joe (William Howard, Brides of Lucifer)is one of those spies and his spying consists of watching strip club dancers and sleeping with Jill (Terri Johnson, Blood Sabbath). They end up at the doctor’s wax museum, where he claims “If my sex-transference machine can turn a woman into a man-hating robot, just think what it will do to a man!”

There’s unsynced sound, softcore performances that are so fun that everyone is smiling even when they’re whipping and choking the life out of each other, crazed narration, music that feels like it came from another dimension that we can only dream of listening to more of, stock footage, female and male full frontal, a hero that ends up making love to several women at once at the end even stacking them up as they pass out, a brainwave scanner that seems like something Cobra’s Dr. Venom would make yet only have a metal strainer to use and evil robot women who kill with their pleasurable mouths.

This movie is as wild as you’d hope and also filled with glorious padding, from nude bathing scenes that may still be playing and horse races. I’d go watch it right now if it was in a theater.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: The Geek (1971)

Posted on by

Frank Henenlotter’s Sexy Shockers (September 1 – 7) We all know Frank Hennenlotter as the director of the Basket Case films, Bad Biology, Brain Damage, and Frankenhooker, but he’s also a cinematic curator of the crass! An academic of the pathetic! A steward of sleaze! A sexton of the sexual and the Sexy Shocker series is his curio cabinet of crudity. Skin and sin are mixed together in these homegrown oddities, South American rediscoveries, and Eurohorror almost-classics. Your mind may recoil with erotic revulsion at the sights contained within these films, so choose wisely!

The 70s and its obsession with Bigfoot is something I’ve written about several times. But little did I know The Geek existed, a movie that has no known director that was shot in Oregon and has Lynn Holmes (The Undergraduate), Nora Wieternik (Flesh Gordon) and Rene Bond’s husband Ric Lutze in it. No one is sure who the other actors are, either. They play three couples who are looking for Sasquatch in the woods or as this movie refers to it, The Geek.

Of course, as you expected, all the couples have sex. Perhaps you didn’t think one would say that his sister allowed him to fondle her breasts, but look, this is 1971 sleaze and there aren’t any rules like good taste. We haven’t even gotten to the monster, who looks like Andre the Giant on The Six Million Dollar Man if he got stuck in the costume and kept pissing himself inside it.

This movie is 50 minutes long and finds time to have two crypto sexual assaults in it, which had to be what some people were looking for. I learned that Bigfoot has a small pink member and that he prefers it doggy style. Squatchy style?

This is the kind of adult film that is just so squalid and sweaty and disgusting and you know I had to watch it. There are some things in this life you need to live through, like Bigfoot pornography.

CANNON MONTH 3: Cheering Section (1977)

Posted on by

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.

He may have only lived 48 years, but Harry Kerwin got to make some wild movies, like It’s a Revolution, Mother; Sweet Bird of Aquarius; God’s Bloody Acre; Tomcats and Barracuda. Cheering Section is a pre-Porky’s teen sex comedy that hits a lot of the same locker room beats, just four years before that was made. He wrote this along with his regular partner Wayne Crawford, who went on to write Valley Girl and play Jake Speed.

If you’re going to watch a cheerleading movie, pick The Pom-Pom Girls. But if you choose to watch this, it’s about star athlete Corey (Tom Leindecker) who wants to make his football team a winner but keeps getting involved with the Coach Jackson’s daughter, Melanie (Rhonda Fox). If they win the final game, the coach will allow them to date. That’s it. That’s pretty much the movie, other than a bikini car wash scene. This movie, released by Dimension Films, will make you realize that the New World nurse and cheerleader movies are cinema by comparison.

21st Century re-released this as a double feature with Dr. Minx.

You can watch this on YouTube.

CANNON MONTH 3: Supervan (1977)

Posted on by

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 is a vansploitation movie. Yes, that’s really a genre and there are several films in it, of which I can name Blue Summer, The Van (obviously), Best Friends, C.B. Hustlers (which has Uschi Digard in it), Mag Wheels, Van Nuys Blvd. and I guess you could almost count On the Air Live with Captain Midnight. There’s a great article on it by Jason Coffman that goes deep into the genre that I totally recommend.

The beauty of this movie is that it posits a world where solar energy is already happening, van culture is the driving force in society and there is no AIDS to worry about, so all of the vans are a rocking and absolutely no one is knocking. It is surely paradise, if paradise only gets 11 miles to the gallon, fuel crisis be damned.

Our hero Clint Morgan has traveled to The Invitational Freak-Out, a major event for custom van enthusiasts, which means that any time we’re near it, we get to see plenty of b-roll footage of painted vans and all of the accouterments — this is not a word you want to use when selling Winnebagos — that they have inside.

Clint saves Karen (Katie Saylor, Invasion of the Bee Girls) from some bikers from another exploitation genre and they destroy his van The Sea Witch. That’s when he goes to the super genius van designer Bosley and together, they all make Supervan, which uses solar power and lasers. It was really made by George Barris — who designed so many other Hollywood cars — and was based on a stock Dodge Sportsman van. This thing was so big that it had a phone intercom system inside it.

Oh yeah. It turns out that Karen’s dad owns a car company that is out to make a van that uses more gas than ever before — what does it get 3 miles to the gallon? — and they have to take Supervan to the show to prevent him from making it happen, but he puts the cops on their tail.

We’ve seen Clint before on our site, as Mark Schneider is also in the Crown International Pictures movie Burnout, which is one of the few dragsterpolitation movies I can think of, so perhaps he is the perfect star for all things vehicular in nature.

Director Lamar Card is also there, in the nooks and crannies of strange movies that I find myself obsessed with, like producing the scumtastic Nashville Girl and directing the only Fabian-starring, Casey Kasem-coke sniffing disco freakout Disco Fever.

Beyond the near gynecological explorations of all of these vans at the absolute expense of story,  this movie has a cameo by Charles Bukowski — the firebrand of a man who wrote “what matters most is how well you walk through the fire” — judging a wet t-shirt contest. I am in no way making that up.

There’s never really been a movie like Supervan. To be fair, I don’t think the world could have handled two. To quote the love ballad from the film, when I think of Supervan, “I’ll always remember you as a milestone in my life.”

21st Century distributed this at one point.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CANNON MONTH 3: Cub Tiger From Kwang Tung (1973)

Posted on by

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 has so many names, but that’s because it was released both before and after Jackie Chan became a big star in Hong Kong in Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master. In 1979, a version with new inserts and a Jackie stand-in showed up in Hong Kong. This goes by names like Little Tiger of Canton, Ten Fingers of Death and after it was sold to producer Dick Randall, he dubbed and repackaged it as Master with Cracked Fingers. He sold to 21st Century who released it in 1981 as Snake Fist Ninja.

Hsiao Hu (Jackie Chan) has been forbidden to fight by order of his foster father (Tien Feng). However, he’s been training with a beggar known as “The Man Who Isn’t There” (Yuen Siu Tien, in new footage where he’s playing the same role as Drunken Master) and soon learns that his real father was murdered when protecting the people. However, all that fighting back causes the gang to kill his adopted patriarch and now Hsiao Hu has two reasons to get a pound of flesh from these criminals.

If you bought cheap VHS back in the day, you probably got this remixed Jackie movie along with Fantasy Mission Force.

You can watch this on YouTube.

CANNON MONTH 3: Way of the Tiger (1973)

Posted on by

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.

Director Li Kuan-Chang also made The Cub Tiger from Kwangtung, which was rereleased as The Master With Cracked Fingers after Jackie Chan became a bigger deal. This rips off Fist of Fury and The Big Boss while trying to make you think its a Bruce Lee movie.

It stars Tong Lung, who spends more time running than fighting in this, but to paraphrase the words of MXC, “He’s not running from, he’s running to.” This has him fighting the Japanese who are invading China, much like the aforementioned Bruce Lee movies. Otherwise, it’s not your normal Bruceploitation. It’s more just a kung fu movie brought to the U.S. to cash in on the martial arts craze of the early 70s.

This was brought to the U.S. by 21st Century, who renamed it Challenge the Dragon. They also licensed it to Continental Video.

You can watch this on YouTube.