Released in the U.S. as Top Squad, this Wellson Chin film has a group of women called The Banshee Squad, who are being trained by Madame Wu (Sibelle Hu) to be an unstoppable police force. It’s the same thing Mr. Kan (Stanley Fung) is doing nearby with Tiger Group, an all-male commando squad. Of course, there are going to be hijinks between the two groups.

Wu has issues with her recruits —  May (Kara Hui), Amy (Sandra Kwan), Jean (Ellen Chan) Karen (Ann Bridgewater), Amin (Lee Pooi-Ling) and Betty (Regina Kent) — who just want to get with the men. Well, she does as well, but she’s at least more quiet about it. She has to bring in an American CIA agent — Madame Law (Cynthia Rothrock) — to get the girls combat ready for their first mission.

You know that I’m going to love a Hong Kong action movie that is trying to be Police Academy. If this sounds like something you’d like, well…it’s pretty awesome.

Extras include commentary by Frank Djeng, interviews with Rothrock and Chin, alternate titles, trails and more. Get it from MVD.

Mecca Noble (Moni Ogunsuyi) is the hottest reality star on Trophy Wives, but she’s told that they need to make the show even wilder for the next season. She soon learns that Angela Wright (Samantha Brown) is having her husband Damien’s (Eddie G.) baby, hooking up with him when he was drunk after his team won a big game.

Directed by Alicia K. Harris and written by Lu Asfaha, this is pretty predictable, but why else are you watching Tubi Originals, right? You want to see the crazy blonde girl manipulate everyone and make the suffering wife cry. No one will listen to her and soon, people are dying and maybe she can save her marriage because of course her husband is faithful and maybe the blonde has had this plan forever to ruin football.

I’m still going to watch these movies and write about them. Someone has to have an obsession and not just killer blondes in these tearjerkers.

You can watch this on Tubi.

When a movie has the working title Want A Ride, Little Girl? you know it’s going to be scummy. What may surprise you is that William Shatner — who director William Gréfe met at an airport — is in the lead role.

Don’t be fooled by the supernatural looking poster. No, this is a slasher with Shatner’s Matt Stone as the bad guy picking up young women, freaking out Shat-style and getting rid of their bodies. He’s being trailed by a detective named Karate Pete (Harold “Oddjob” Sakata), which is, pardon the pun, pretty odd. He’s on the trail because Stone keeps bilking and killing old women for their money.

Jennifer Bishop (who is also in Gréfe’s Mako the Jaws of Death) plays the daughter of one of these older women who suspects that the leisure suit-wearing Stone is a shyster. And oh yeah — Ruth Roman is in this!

Sakata almost died making this, as the rig that was used for his hanging death failed and he was nearly hung for real. Shatner saved his life — breaking a finger in the process — and the entire accident can be seen on the He Came from the Swamps documentary.

This movie belongs to Shatner. As a child, his character kills William Kerwin with a sword in a kind of pre-Pieces opening, then murders a puppy and gets so worked up in one scene that he supposedly farts on camera. His assortment of 70’s fashions are pretty astounding and every single frame of this feels as sweaty and gross as a night in the Everglades.

Impulse is being presented in a beautiful new master lovingly restored in 4K from rare archival 35mm film elements.

Extras include:

• Spectacular new 4K restoration created from rare archival film elements
• Two disc set containing over 15 hours of bonus materials!
• KINGDOM OF THE SHATNER – William Shatner Live in Santa Monica – Oct. 9, 2022
• Provocative, in-depth interviews with director William Grefé
• Additional interviews with producer and make-up artist Doug Hobart and art director Roger Carlton Sherman
• Audio commentary by William Grefé
• Haunting alternate French soundtrack
• Hours of rare cinematic treasures from the vaults of William Grefé
• Glossy illustrated booklet with liner notes by acclaimed underground filmmaker Jacques Boyreau
• Beautiful embossed slipcover with new art by esteemed painter Dave Lebow
• Still galleries, trailers and an ad gallery by Bill Van Ryn of Drive-In Asylum
• Two bonus features! The Devil’s Sisters and The Godmothers
• Glossy illustrated booklet with liner notes by acclaimed underground filmmaker Jacques Boyreau

You can get it from MVD.

Colonel Jerry Maxim (James Luisi) has answered magazine ads that promise an island of erotic fun and ends up killed by several women. Retired soldier, spy author and forcibly retired hero Derek Johnson (Robert Lipton) gets the call from the man who told him to quit, General Grant (Larry Taylor), and sent to that island, a place where several military men have already vanished from.

Christine Newhouse (Merete Van Kamp) is the woman who owns the island and she was once in the army before being assaulted by Maxim and it getting covered up by everyone. We should be cheering her on, not the government. And hey — there’s Shannon Tweed as a helicopter pilot, taking the men to an island populated by survivors of sexual abuse who can’t wait to cut their heads off.

There’s a good idea in here but it’s buried in making the man the hero and who needs that? You have women in post-apocalyptic makeup eating human flesh and destroying the men who tried to hurt them. That’s what we want!

After the Robot Wars, what is left of Earth lives in a city on the moon by the name of New Washington, surviving because of the anti-radiation drug Raddic-Q2 from the distant planet Delta 3. They are soon under the grip of Omus, the Robot Master (Jack Palance), who has crashed the latest vessel filled with the drug and plans on being emperor.

He’s opposed by Senator Smedley (John Ireland), Dr. John Caball (Barry Morse), Jason Caball (Nicholas Campbell), Kim Medley (Anne-Marie Martin) and the cute robot Sparks, who teleports by turning the camera off and turning it on again once he’s moved.

I remember being really excited about this movie because it was an H.G. Wells story, but no, it’s not. It’s a Canadian science fiction movie made by George McCowan. Hey, it has Carol Lynley (The Beasts Are On the Streets) in it so I watched it. The effect of Palance projected into the sky was also a major reason, as I’m a sucker for him just getting a paycheck anywhere that he can.

If I watched this when I was under ten, I’d be telling you how insane it is.

You can watch this on Tubi.

A plague killed most of the grown-ups and the world is filled with orphans. Some adults did live, like Albert (James Earl Jones). He raises Lee (John Stockwell) who grows up and heads out to L.A. to join the Clippers, who are led by Mick (Darrell Larson) and his second in command Whitey (John Diehl). They refuse to let him in. When they send him away with Yogi (Rae Dawn Chong), he defends her from the DAs, another gang, and breaks the no guns rule. It’s decided that instead of giving him to Ray (Danny De La Paz), that troop’s boss, he will fight their best soldier one on one. Lee defeats the female DA and joins the gang.

There’s also a worker from a corporation named Sunya named Wickings (Kim Cattrall) who wants the gangs to work to make the city livable. There’s also some intrigue with Whitey being killed by DAs Bolo (Norbert Weisser) and Carver (Robby Benson).

Of course, by the end, everyone goes back to Albert’s farm, Lee and Wickings fall in love and everyone battles the corporation. Even at the end of the world, biker gangs learn to work together, making their own company and taking over Los Angeles for their own needs.

Director Aaron Lipstadt also made Android. When this played Mystery Science Theater, the title for the film is red text displayed on a black background. At least the end — unlike every FVI movie on the show — uses footage from the movie it is on.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Was Film Ventures International fighting Cannon for the rights to show Israeli movies in the U.S.?

Directed by Rafi Bukai, this was the Israeli entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 59th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.

“Forward people, towards redemption. Red Flag, Red Flag. Red Flag will triumph. Long live communism and freedom.” This Italian song, “Bandiera Rossa,” is also called “Avanti Popolo” after the first words in the song, which mean “Forward people.” That song is sung by the soldiers in this movie.

This is set on June 11, 1967, just as the cease fire of the Six-Day War starts and two Egyptian army men, Gassan and Haled, make their way through the Sinai desert to reach home. It feels like they have entered another planet as they seek any way to survive.

Finally, the protagonists meet and befriend three Israeli soldiers who should be their enemy. The war means nothing to them, other than something to live past. Tell that to the Swedish soldier, dead in a Jeep filled with high end alcohol or the British reporter who wants to see even more violence.

Chip (Vincent Van Patten) and his friends Stephanie (Susan Pratt), Brian (Robert Weaver), Angela (Robert Weaver), Sal (Cosie Costa) and Dianne (Randi Meryl) just wanted to head out to the desert, get drunk and probably have sex. Then they crashed their van and have to walk through the hot sands to get help, running into Kandaris (Peter Graves) and Professor (Ray Milland), who seem like good guys but nope, they’re not. Everyone is in trouble. You are too, because that poster looked so exciting and then this movie just seems like it’s grinding you into pure ennui.

Yes, Larry Spiegel directed and wrote this (he also made Evil Town a few years later) and you start to feel like this is the kind of movie that they keep on hand for when you have panic attacks and need to calm down and finally get some sleep. Maybe I’m letting you in a bit too deeply into my life. And I hate writing about a movie just to tear it down, but this film has Graves and Milland in charge of a Mexican drug gang while some kids just want to have soft swinging while camping in a van.

Oh yeah — Spiegel also produced Death Game, so that’s where I recognize him from.

I wish I could report this was better than it was. But…it isn’t.

If there’s a hicksploitation hall of fame, Shelley Winters should probably be in it. She’s in one of the movies that defines so many of the genre’s themes, The Night of the Hunter, as well as some of its best — and most exploitative examples — films, such as Bloody Mama and Poor Pretty Eddie. She also plays a housekeeper Katy who has also had a space baby sometime in the past in the astounding 70s blast of odd called The Visitor.

Somewhere in the Deep South, this is all about barefoot farmer’s daughter Ellie (Sheila Kennedy, Penthouse Pet of the Month for December 1981 and the 1983 Pet of the Year) getting revenge for her father’s murder at the hands of her stepmother (Winters) — who killed the kindly old man while she chowed down on fried chicken.

She only has one weapon. Her body. And she knows how to use it.

George Gobel, Edward Albert and Pat Paulsen all show up, but the main thrill of the film is its rampant nudity. Somehow, this movie is also a version of the Greek myth of Elektra, if you can wrap your mind around that.

Director Peter Wittman was also behind exactly one other movie, Play Dead, where a woman kills with her brain and her dog. It’s not great or even good, but it’s the kind of movie that you stayed up to watch on a Friday night on Cinemax. If you never did that, you’re probably going to hate this. If you did, you have a near-limitless capacity for enduring boring films. Not that I would know or anything.

You can watch this on Tubi.