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.

Alley Cat has three directors. I have no idea why, but Victor M. Ordonez (who is in Nine Deaths of the Ninja and Hellhole), Ed Palmos and Al Valetta (who is in Sole Survivor, Runaway Nightmare and Hollywood’s New Blood) all had their hand in this movie, leaving Robert Waters, who also wrote Fighting Mad, to write the actual story.

Billie (Karin Mani, who was also in Avenging Angel) is our heroine Billie. She starts the movie by stopping some scumbags from stealing her car. They go their boss Scarface (Michael Wayne), who decides that he’s going to turn this tiger into an alley cat, a plan that starts by putting her grandmother in the hospital and beating her grandfather something fierce. The one good thing that happens is that she falls for a cop named Johnny (Robert Torti), who ends up having to arrest her with his partner Boyle (Jon Greene) when she defends some joggers from the very same criminals and has a gun without a permit.

When Billie goes to court, she pays twice the fine of the rapists, whose victims are intimidated by Scarface and never show. Billie reacts like a manaic, gets charged with contempt of court and turns her movie into a WIP film for a little, complete with requisite shower moment.

This is the only women’s revenge movie — yes, Billie gets out and gets said payback — in which the lead character eats at an Arby’s. The old Arby’s, before they had the meats and all they had was that giant beef hat on the sign. And oh yeah — while she’s in jail, her grandmother dies and Billie is robbed of those last moments, so even though her boyfriend wants to legally deal with Scarface, you will be hoping that she shoots him right in the dick.