June 6: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Paul Naschy! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

Released in Spain as La rebelión de las muerta (Rebellion of the Dead Women), this León Klimovsky-directed and Paul Naschy-written movie was also released in Italy as La Vendetta dei Morti Viventi (Revenge of the Living Dead), in Germany as three titles — Rebellion of the Living Dead, Invocation of the Devil  (blame The Exorcist) and Blood Lust of the Zombies in 1980 to cash in on Dawn of the Dead — and after playing double features in the U.S. with The Dracula Saga, it returned — like a zombie — from Independent Artists as Walk of the Dead, complete with a “Shock Notice” before every murder.

I can’t even imagine what people who saw this expecting Romero thought. It’s closer to the 40s zombie movies mixed with some giallo, as a serial killer is murdering gorgeous women, all of whom are brought back to life by a mystic named Kantaka (Naschy), who is building an army of, well, sexy female zombies. He also has a brother, Krishna (Naschy in a second part) making people feel good about themselves and enlightened. Naschy even gets a third role as Satan!

At the heart of the movie is Elvire (Rommy, The Killer With a Thousand Eyes), the kind of ravishing redhead that seemingly only lives in Eurohorror movies. She’s just lost her father and butler. Kantaka wants to add her to his growing group of sensual and sultry walking dead.

A lot of people say bad things about this movie but they are closed minded folks who can’t grip the fact that a surrealist Spanish horror film with a fuzzed out jazz score, Paul Naschy, Mirta Miller (Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf), María Kosti (The Night of the Sorcerers), lots of slow motion, plenty of stock footage and the kind of feeling that even Naschy said felt drug-induced can be what movie watching should be about. I could care less being into what’s the hottest and parroting the words of film Twitter. Nope, I’m happy watching an absolutely battered copy of this, so excited that Rommy is in a cover version of an Italian gothic by way of an American zombie movie, diaphanous white gown and all. This movie is made on location in its own world and we’re all the better to spend just a few minutes within it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

June 5: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is 90s Action! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

How awesome is it that Ice T has played both the hero and the villain in movies that are remixed versions of The Most Dangerous Game? He started here as Jack Mason, the homeless man hunted by the rich and powerful and just three years later, he would be Vincent Moon, the crime overlord who has gathered a hundred of his best killers to, well, kill one another in Mean Guns. It’s as wild as the journey that took him from singing lyrics like “I got my twelve gauge sawed-off, I got my headlights turned off, I’m ’bout to bust some shots off, I’m ’bout to dust some cops off” to playing Detective Fin Tutuola for a quarter of a century on prime time cop TV.

Ernest Dickerson has made a cool path in his career, too. Starting as the cinematographer for several Spike Lee movies, as well as John Sayles’ Brother from Another Planet, Robert Townsend’s Eddie Murphy Raw and James Bond III’s Def by Temptation, he directed some really interesting films, including Juice, Demon Knight and Bones. He’s since directed episodes of The Wire and The Walking Dead. 

But back to the most dangerous game

In just a few days, Jack Mason has lost his dog and his only human friend, another unhoused man named Hank (Jeff Corey, who was blacklisted and became an acting coach before returning to acting and being in movies like Jennifer and The Premonition). Between that, being on the streets of Seattle and never dealing with the loss of his wife and daughter, he decides to kill himself. He’s saved by Walter Cole (Charles S. Dutton, a powerhouse of an actor who nearly spent his life in prison) who runs a soup kitchen and refers him to Thomas Burns (Rutger Hauer), a man who runs hunting parties and needs someone who knows how to survive to guide a party that includes CIA psychologist and hunt leader Doc Hawkins (Gary Busey), Texas oil tycoon John Griffin (John C. McGinley) — who is also grieving over a lost daughter — and wealthy Wall Street trader Derek Wolfe Sr. (F. Murray Abraham) and his son Derek Wolfe Jr. (William McNamara)

Of course, the hunt is to kill human game. And his time on the street has taught him how to be more ruthless than any of these evil people or even the ones who have been led to be part of this group. You know, kind of like Hard Target without the splits.

Writer Eric Bernt also was behind Virtuosity, Romeo Must Die and then you see that he also wrote Highlander: Endgame and the remake of The Hitcher and you want to be nice but man, really?

That said, I kind of love this movie because the cast is pretty great and I’m all for Ice T snarling nearly every line of dialogue that he has.

June 4: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Free Space! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

I’m obsessed by the true fact movies that Sunn Classics and Schick Sunn Classics released in the 1970s. There’s Peter Graves telling the world about The Mysterious Monsters, Rod Serling narrating The Outer Space Connection, a movie about 70s hot topic The Bermuda Triangle, the religious strangeness of In Search of Noah’s Ark and In Search of Historic Jesus,  The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomena, near-death experiences in Beyond and Back and Beyond Death’s Door, the snuff disasters of Encounter With Disaster and two that I had never been able to find. One is pretty much lost, The President Must Die, and the other is today’s movie, The Lincoln Conspiracy.

“Ladies and gentlemen, everyone sitting in this audience has been exposed to the traditional story of the assassination of President Lincoln. For over a century history books have taught us that the murder was committed by a crazed actor named John Wilkes Booth. The history books go on to say a few southern rebels helped him and no one else. The motion picture you are about to see will shock you. Because the true story of President Lincoln’s assassination can not be found in any history book. It is a story of corruption, treachery and cover-up. It is a story every American has a right to know.”

With that opening, we’re off and running with this movie, which was based on the book of the same name by David W. Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier Jr. If that last name sounds familiar, he’s the man behind so many of these movies. He has a wild life story, starting as a Cajun Catholic, converting to Mormonism and then to evangelical Christianity. He also wrote The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams and founded Sunn with Rayland Jenson and Patrick Frawley. They were the kings of market research and four-walling, a process in which they bought space at a theater and did all the ads, then collected all the ticket money. They realized that there was a Christian audience that wanted G rated movies on one hand and paranormal ones on the other. Sunn was ahead of its time when it comes to what is on basic cable today.

It made the movie look better to be based on a book. Schick Sunn Classic Books started to put this out, which is a genius movie that exploitation masters since Kroger Babb have used to make money. The main idea of the book and the movie is that historians and have been part of a big cover-up. This all started when President Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, Union spy Lafayette C. Baker, Senator Benjamin F. Wade, Senator John Conness, other congressional Radical Republicansm and a cabal of Northern bankers and speculators all wanted to capture the President and keep him hidden until they cold impeach him. The reason? Lincoln wanted to unite the country after the Civil War and they were upset that they would lose money.

Baker found out that actor John Wilkes Booth wanted to kidnap Lincoln and was brought into the plan. After he failed several times, he was told to stop and instead, he decided on his own to kill Lincoln on April 14. He had a diary that incriminated several of the men who paid for him to do the plot and they were panicked. A Confederate double agent James William Boyd was killed and the trial that followed and the autopsy were altered to make it appear as if Booth was killed, while sympathetic people got him to England.

Maybe. You know how speculative history is.

The book and film’s theories and perhaps not all that well researched use of source material* made historians lose their minds. But weren’t they covering it up?

The movie casts Robert Middleton (Even Angels Eat Beans, amongst many other movies) as Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, John Dehner (who was an animator on Fantasia and was a radio actor before a long acting career in movies and TV) as Colonel Lafayette C. Baker, Bradford Dillman (Bug, Piranha, The Swarm) as John Wilkes Booth, Ted Henning as Robert Campbell, Whit Bissell (a scientist in Creature from the Black Lagoon and I Was a Teenage Werewolf), Ken Kercheval (Dallas), as John Surratt, James Green (One Hour to Live) as Capt. James William Boyd, Len Wayland as Ward H. Lamon, Edmund Lupinski as Edwin Henson, Greg Oliver (the killer in Scalpel) as Rep. George Julian, Frank Schuller as Lt. Everton Conger, Patrick Wright (Track of the Moon Beast) as Major Thomas Eckert), Sonny Shroyer (Enos from The Dukes of Hazzard) as Lewis Paine, Wallace Wilkinson (who was in Cannibals Apocalypse, Invasion U.S.A. and The Visitor) as Dr. Samuel Mudd, Mimi Honce (who was also in Scalpel and Asylum of Satan) as Mary Surratt, Ben Jones (yes, this movie has both Cooter and Enos in it) as Samuel Arnold, John Anderson (the car salesman in Psycho) as Lincoln and Sunn’s narrator in nearly every movie, Brad Crandall, who also was the voice of movies and shows like the “The Curse of Dracula” parts of Cliffhangers!, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and the Wizard on the early 80s Spider-Man cartoon.

Basically, it’s a Southern all-star low budget cast.

Director James L. Conway went from Sunn movies like their Classics Illustrated TV movies such as Last of the Mohicans to Beyond and Back, Hangar 18, The Boogens and episodes of shows from Hardcastle and McCormick, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Charmed to The Orville and The Magicians. He also produced Charmed and created the series Burke’s Law and University Hospital.

As always with Sunn, I loved every minute of this, no matter how fake the beards looked.

Want to watch it? It was just released by Kino Lorber.

*The movie ends with this: “The story you have just seen is true. It has been authenticated with the following documents: Lafayette Baker Papers; James William Boyd Papers; Chaffey Shipping Company Papers; Andrew Potter Papers; National Detective Papers; Rep. George Julian’s Diary; James V. Barnes Papers; Ray A. Nef Papers; Paine-Powell Papers; Michael O’Laughlin Testimony; Edwin M. Stanton Letters; John Wilkes Booth Letters; Richard D. Mudd Papers; Dr. Samuel Mudd Papers; Col. Julian Raymond Papers; Larry Mooney Papers; John Wilkes Booth Purported Missing Diary Papers; “Web of Conspiracy” by Theodore Roscoe; “Mask of Treason” by Vaughn Shelton; “Why Was Lincoln Murdered?” by Otto Eisenschiml; “In the Shadow of Lincoln’s Death” by Otto Eisenschiml.”

June 3: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Revenge! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

Inspired by a 1950s series of Malaysian movies*, this film is about Sheng Yun (Danny Lee, The Killer, Thunder of Gigantic Serpent/King of Snakes, Infra-Man), a man who has risen past the handicap that polio dealt him to become a lawyer. He tries to helps a man, Lin Yang Ba (Ku Feng), who has killed a criminal to protect his daughter Yue (Chen Ping) and his coconut oil business. Before he is hung, Lin Yang gives Sheng Yu a black magic spell that transforms him into an oily maniac.

The real problem is that Yue is really in love with Chen Fu Sin (Wa Lun) and wants nothing to do with him. That means he goes on a rampage, wiping out all manner of criminals, like a plastic surgeon, a woman who accuses men of rape and a blackmailer. Look, if someone asks you to look at the magic spell on their back, lie in a hole in your yard and cover yourself with oil, I guess you do it.

Some people think all the Shaw Brothers did was martial arts movies. Oh man. I hope you know that they made movies like The Boxer’s Omen, Human Lanterns and Corpse Mania. Somehow, director Meng-Hua Ho (The Cave of the Silken Web, Black Magic) and writer Lam Chua made a movie that feels like The Heap, Man-Thing and Swamp Thing with a bit of Toxic Avenger except, you know, in 1976.

You would also think that because this is a superhero movie that it would be for children. Well, no. Not with the near-constant nudity and threat of sexual violence in every scene. It’s so strange how the goofy costume of the creature is juxtaposed against the sheer depravity on display in this movie, including scenes where a woman reveals her burned breast and the Oily Maniac attacks an abortionist mid-baby killing.

*According to IMDB, this is based on the Malaysian legend of the orang minyak (oily man), a creature that comes to life out of crude oil and is fueled by the hope for revenge by those who have been done wrong. There are also three Malaysian films — Curse of the Oily Man, Orang Minyak and Serangan Orang Minyak — as well as two modern movies, Orang minyak and Pontianak vs. Orang Minyak, which has the oily man battle a vengeful ghost woman.

You can watch this on YouTube.

June 2: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Zombies! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

What do you watch when you’ve seen nearly every major zombie movie?

You hunt.

Directed by Alex Visani, who wrote the script with Tom Larini and Dan Sabatta — who also appear in the movie — Zombi New Millenium is all about Daniel (Sabatta), a black magic user who has created a new zombie virus that can be spread by mobile phones and television screens (Demons 2, you know?) and the zombies all look a lot like, well, Demons.

Daniel’s plan was to become rich and immortal, using his theory that there are three dimensions: Earth, Hell and the internet. He believes that demons gain their power through humans, so by using a computer programmer, he’s made a subliminal virus that will allow him to have power over the demons, but of course they take over the programming and spread their virus everywhere, creating demons and zombies that spread their infection and destroy humanity.

Visani has moved on to make movies like Born Dead, Blades In the Darkness, Stomach and Mind Creep. This is obviously an early effort, but even here there are some interesting moments, like the idea of phone calls causing transformations and people tearing their faces off. I mean, if I made a movie when I was young, I would have ripped off the intestines eating from Antropophagus and been indebted to Luigi Cozzi and Lucio Fulci too. I mean, I still would if I made a movie now.

Don’t expect much more than a grainy videotaped film that is indebted at once to Italian splatter and Japanese ideas. But hey — greater things were in the future. Everyone starts somewhere.

You can watch this on YouTube.