As part of the films that the zombie shell corporation that was once FVI released on video by sandwiching the actual film between new credits and changing the title, Ator 2: The Blade Master became Cave Dwellers. For the credits for this film, the bottom half of the screen is cut off and a black background is placed over it to show the credits. Within the top half of the screen and within the end credits, footage is shown from the 1963 sword and sandal film Taur, il re della forza bruta. I think Joe D’Amato would be kind of amused by this level of rip-off magic.

Joe D’Amato wanted to make a prehistoric movie like Quest for Fire called Adamo ed Eva that read a lot like 1983’s Adam and Eve vs. The Cannibals. However, once he called in Miles O’Keefe to be in the movie, the actor said that he couldn’t be in the film due to moral and religious reasons. One wonders why he was able to work with Joe D’Amato, a guy who made some of the scummiest films around.

Born Aristide Massaccesi, this man of many names had his paws in everything from being a camera operator on Bava’s Hercules in the Haunted World to cinematography on What Have You Done to Solange? before directing his own films like Death Smiles on a Murderer, Beyond the Darkness, Antropophagus, 2020 Texas Gladiators, Endgame and so many more. He also worked with porn stars like Rocco Siffredi on Tarzan X – Shame of Jane before being an early innovator of porn-based parodies/cover versions of other works of art, such as Shakespeare porn (Othello 2000), mythology (Hercules – A Sex Adventure), famous icons (Scarface, Amadeus Mozart) and, of course, plenty of looks into the deviance of the Roman empire.

This time around, Aristide Massaccesi is known as David Hills, for those keeping score.

Akronos has found the Geometric Nucleus and is keeping its secret safe when Zor (Ariel from Jubilee) and his men attack the castle. The old king begs his daughter Mila (Lisa Foster, who starred in the Cinemax classic Fanny Hill and later became a special effects artist and video game developer) to find his student Ator (O’Keefe).

Mila gets shot with an arrow pretty much right away, but Ator knows how to use palm leaves and dry ice to heal any wound, a scene which nearly made me fall of my couch in fits of giggles. Soon, she joins Ator and Thong as they battle their way back to the castle, dealing with cannibals and snake gods.

Somehow, Ator also knows how to make a modern hang glider and bombs, which he uses to destroy Zor’s army. After they battle, Ator even wants Zor to live, because he’s a progressive barbarian hero, but the bad guy tries to kill him. Luckily, Thong takes him out.

After all that, Akronos gives the Geometric Nucleus to Ator, who also pulls that old chestnut out that his life is too dangerous to share with her. He takes the Nucleus to a distant land and sets off a nuke.

Yes, I just wrote that. Because I just watched that. I love it, because it was shot with no script in order to be made in time to compete with Conan the Destroyer.

Appearing under a variety of titles, like Great White, The Last Jaws, Jaws Returns and L’ultimo Squalo, this movie made $18 million in its first month of U.S. release. Universal Pictures had been trying to block Film Ventures International from even releasing the film in America, but the request was denied in U.S. District Court. However, about a month into the film’s run, federal judge David V. Kenyon ruled that it was too similar to Jaws and the film was banned from theaters. Guess what? He was totally right.

After watching a windsurfer surf his little heart out over the opening credits, we get to watch a Great White Shark ruin his fun by eating him. That’s when we make our way to the resort town of Amity — I mean, Port Harbor — where Mayor Larry Vaughn — sorry, I meant to say governor William Wells (Joshua Sinclair, Ice from 1990: The Bronx Warriors) — refuses to believe that a shark is attacking his beach.

That’s when horror writer Peter Benton (James Franciscus, Butterfly and the voice of Jonathan Livingston Seagull) and shark hunter Ron Hamer (Vic Morrow, who has delighted us in so many movies, such as Message from Space) realize they gotta do something. In my wildest dreams, Hamer’s son will grow up to be the evil Hammer from 1990: The Bronx Warriors, another Morrow role.

The governor refuses to cancel the windsurfing regatta (you gotta regatta!) because he feels like that will hurt his political ambitions. Yes, in the bizarre universe of Italian shark movies, the windsurfing lobby is incredibly powerful. That said, Wells did put in shark nets, but all the splashing around makes the shark nuts, so it tears through the nets. The next day, as the windsurfers line up to compete, the shark appears to the sounds of the guitar from the Torso trailer and treats all these teens on their boards as if I’d treat a sushi buffet. And for dessert, may we recommend the governor’s aide? Mmm.

Benton and Hamer head out to sea with some dynamite, but the shark goes off Spielberg’s shooting script and traps them in a cave. While they’re figuring out why the shark would go into business for itself, Benton’s daughter Jenny (Stefania Girolami Goodwin, who is Ann in 1990: The Bronx Warriors, a radio operator in Moses’ group in Warriors of the Wasteland and would go on to be an assistant director on Empire Records and Super Mario Brothers) and her friends head out on a yacht with some steaks and a shotgun, which seems like the worst plan ever. The shark also stops the boat by using its own body to jam the motor of the boat, which seems patently ridiculous.

Of course, the shark yanks her off the boat and ends up eating her leg, which is done as tastefully as Italian scum cinema will allow. In the hospital, she screams at their father to kill the shark. In an attempt to finally get something right and make it up to Benton — his son was the reason why Benton’s daughter was out there in the first place — Governor Welles grabs more steak (was this movie endorsed by Italy’s beef council, who remind you “Manzo è quello che è per cena”?) and heads out on a helicopter with dynamite to blow up the shark real good. Of course, the shark messes up the best plans and drags the governor into the ocean, biting him in half and dragging his helicopter into the unforgiving ocean. This scene is both astoundingly satisfying and completely stupid, which is what I demand from every movie that I love.

Benton and Hamer try one more time to blow the shark up, because much like pro wrestling, Italian ripoff shark fighting also works in threes. This fails — this shark will not get any memos — and Hamer is killed.

There’s another shark hunter who decides to change the game by using spare ribs (the Italian National Pork Board would like to remind you “carne di maiale l’altra carne bianca”) and chaining them to the dock, but of course the shark won’t listen to reason and decides to drag every single person into the ocean and make a meal of the hunter, a cameraman and assorted rubbernecking beachcombers.

While all these shenanigans are going on, Hamer’s dead body floats on by and Benton (who is wearing a jaunty red wetsuit that seems like it would only enrage a crazed shark further and yes, sharks can see tones of colors depending on their species, I looked this up on Google because I really do care about the facts, dear reader) remembers that he has the detonator, so he blows his friend’s body up and takes the shark’s head with it. He then walks over and punches out a reporter played by Giancarlo Prete, who we all know and love as the hapless Scorpion from Warriors of the Wasteland!

It took four writers — Ramón Bravo (who also wrote Tintorera: Killer Shark), Vincenzo Mannino (who helped write Devil Fish, Miami Golem, Murder Rock and The New York Ripper), Marc Princi and Ugo Tucci — to completely rip off the first two Jaws films. But it only took one director to create this carbon copy carnage. That man was Enzo G. Castellari and if you can’t guess by the related credits of the crew, he’s the man who brought us such magic as 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Warriors of the Wasteland, Escape from the Bronx and the original The Inglorious Bastards. He’s brought me such joy in my life and if IMDB is to be believed, he’s ready to bring even more, as he has a film called The Fourth Horseman in pre-production. This thing has to be a fever dream or a made up story, because it has Sid Haig, Michael Berryman, Bill Moseley, Kane Hodder, Franco Nero (as Keoma!), Fabio Testi, George Hilton and Gianni Garko (as Sartana!) in it. Sometimes, life can surprise you.

No matter what you call it, The Last Shark is anything but boring. You’re not going to see anything you haven’t seen before, but if you want to see b-roll footage, model helicopters and a shark that honestly may be better than Bruce was in the first movie (also it’s a shark smart enough to stop boats and grab ropes in its teeth so it can take out docks full of people), then this is the movie for you.

My only issue with this film: Castellari had not yet met Mark Gregory yet. If Mark was in this movie, I may have lost my mind. I mean, even more than I already have.

Marooned first went into production in 1965 with Frank Capra directing from a screenplay by Walter Newman. They couldn’t get the budget they needed to make the movie, which by the time John Sturges directed this in 1969 ended up being $8 million.

You know how everyone talks about the moon launch being faked? This is the opposite of that, as the people making this wanted it to look as realistic as what they saw on TV every night. NASA, North American Aviation and Philco-Ford created the film’s hardware, which included what would become Skylab, the headsets that would later be worn by the launch crews, the Mission Operations Control Room at Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Air Force Launch Control Center at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Commander Jim Pruett (Richard Crenna), “Buzz” Lloyd (Gene Hackman) and Clayton “Stoney” Stone (James Franciscus) are the first crew of an experimental space station. Five months into their mission, Lloyd starts to act strangely and they decide to go back to Earth. The problem? They don’t have enough fuel, leaving them, well, marooned.

NASA Director of Manned Spaceflight Charles Keith (Gregory Peck) and Chief Astronaut Ted Dougherty (David Janssen) argue over whether or not the men can be saved. The President — only heard and not seen, it’s John Forsythe — says that the American people need to see these men saved, so a rescue mission is on while the astronaut’s wives — Lee Grant, Mariette Hartley and Nancy Kovack — watch as their men slowly die in space.

As a kid, this always upset me with the scene of Richard Crenna drifting into space to his doom. The nice thing is that Russia ends up working with the U.S. to save the men.

Based on a novel by Martin Caidin — who also wrote Cyborg, the book that was adapted by The Six Million Dollar Man — this won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects. But what’s really interesting about this movie to me is that it somehow — despite its Columbia Pictures A-list status in 1969 — it would one day be owned by Film Ventures International and renamed Space Travelers. That’s why this movie — one with three Academy Award winners in Gregory Peck, Gene Hackman and Lee Grant — would end up on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

I love that FVI put all the care of a basic font over a space image to replace the Marooned title in the credits.

This movie was also a major flop when it played in theaters but at least there was a Super 8 home version so you could watch astronauts run out of air in the comfort of home!

You can watch this on Tubi.

When Women Had Tails was directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile (Autostop rosso sangue), who wrote it with Marcello Coscia and Lina Wertmüller. Yes, 1970s art house film director Lina Wertmüller. The first woman to ever be nominated for a Best Director Oscar.

It’s the story of seven cavemen who were sent on a boat — Ulli (Giuliano Gemma), Kao (Lando Buzzanca), Grr (Frank Wolff), Maluc (Renzo Montagnani), Put (Lino Toffolo), Uto (Francesco Mulé) and Zog (Aldo Giuffrè) — and now they live alone on a small island. One day, they find what they think is an animal in their trap but its really a woman named Filli (Senta Berger). As you can guess, she upsets their natural order even more than the beat that attacks them. Ulli, being the alpha, must have her and for his lust makes him fight his own brothers.

Somehow, this caveman sex comedy also has a soundtrack written by Ennio Morricone and directed by Bruno Nicolai.

This movie was so popular that it had two sequels, When Men Carried Clubs and Women Played Ding-Dong and When Women Lost Their Tails. As hard as this was to watch, you know that I will also be watching both of those movies.

Directed by Elliott Hong and written by David B. Randolph and Tim Clawson, They Call Me Bruce? begins with a young Bruce watching his grandfather die and being unable to save him. He tells the boy that there is a beautiful woman in America who will take care of him. Then we see that Bruce (Johnny Yune) has become a chef in the U.S. and is struggling as he works for gangsters.

The gangsters figure that he’d be a great patsy to take their cocaine across the country, telling him that the woman he’s looking for is in New York. They provide him with a limo, a driver named Freddy (Raf Mauro) and places where he has to drop off his Chinese flour across the country. As to why he’s called Bruce, it’s because everyone is racist and thinks he looks like Bruce Lee.

Bruce is followed by Karmen (Margaux Hemingway), who works for a rival gang and wants to ruin his deliveries, as well as federal agent Anita (Pam Huntington), who has already bugged him and placed a tracking device on him.

They Call Me Bruce? was an HBO movie in my youth and by that, I mean it was on HBO all the time. Eight year old me laughed so hard when Bruce went into a telephone booth like Superman and came out dressed like a ninja. Older me, well, I still laughed.

There’s also a karate dojo where Bruce tries to train. The master there is John Fujioka, who was Shinyuki in American Ninja. Bruce barely makes it five minutes before he’s thrown out. That karate dojo would be used again for another movie, as its where Cobra Kai trains in The Karate Kid.

This played in 325 theaters and was a surprising success before going to cable and home video. Unfortunately, the sequel, They Still Call Me Bruce was not as popular.

You can watch this on Tubi.

This film was inspired by the 1955 French film Les Diaboliques and was originally titled  Screamer and Seven Sisters by its writer and director Mark Rosman. It also has the alternate title House of Evil, but none of those are as evocative and interesting as The House On Sorority Road.

Vincent Perronio, who often works with John Waters, was the film’s production designer. It was shot in Pikesville, Maryland and used the University of Maryland for its establishing shots. The crew used a house that was being foreclosed on for shooting and discovered two squatters living there, who were hired to be video assistants on the film.

The movie opens with a flashback sequence that was requested by its distributor, Film Ventures. It was shot in black and white, then tinted blue. We see a baby being delivered via c-section, but the mother is told that the child died.

Fast forward to today, as seven sorority sisters are drinking up at their own small graduation party. Katey (Kathryn McNeil, Monkey Shines), Vicki (Eileen Davidson, who went from acting on soap operas to appearing in the real-life soap opera The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills), Liz, Jeanie (Pittsburgh’s own Robin Meloy Goldsby, who is now a piano player in Germany), Diane (Harley Jane Kozak, Parenthood) Morgan  and Stevie want to spend a few more weeks in their sorority house before heading out into the real world, but their house mother Mrs. Slater isn’t having any of their shenanigans.

Seriously, Mrs. Slater is a real pip. For example, when Vicki is batter dipping the corn dog on a water bed with her boyfriend, Slater bursts in and stabs the bed with her walking cane. So that leads to the girls playing a prank — making the old woman jump into the swimming pool to get her cane at gunpoint. There’s a stumble, the gun goes off and the old woman dies. The seven sisters all decide to hide her body in the pool until after their big blowout.

Of course, that’s when the killer shows up, who is Slater’s deformed son Eric. Turns out that doctor from the beginning had given her an illegal fertility drug that led to him turning out like this. So the doctor drugs Katey — our final girl — and tries to kill Eric to cover up his crimes, but Eric easily dispatches him. This leads to a showdown between a clown-costumed maniac — who has even decapitated one of the other girls and left her head in the toilet — and Katey which ends inconclusively.

Film Ventures also asked for the ending, where Katherine is discovered floating dead in the pool, dead at the hands of Eric. They felt like that the ending was too downbeat, so that’s why we got the ending we did, where Katey stabs Eric but his eyes open right before the final credits.

This is a movie filled with not just plenty of murder, but lots of party scenes too. The Washington, DC-based power pop band 4 Out of 5 Doctors shows up to play five of their songs. If you’ve ever seen The Boogeyman, they’re in that too.

Ronin Flix was selling a limited edition blu ray of this film earlier this year, but it’s currently sold out. It’s definitely worth a watch, as it predates films like I Know What You Did Last Summer where the teenagers are as much victimizers as victims.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by David A. Prior, who co-wrote the story with Lawrence L. Simeone, Raw Nerve is a straight-up American giallo even if it doesn’t have the fashion, great music or psychosexual trappings. But inside its heart lies yellow blood even if its killer uses a shotgun.

For years, a shotgun killer has been murdering women in Alabama. Jimmy Clayton (Ted Prior) has psychic visions of the cimes and meets with Captain Gavin (Glenn Ford in his last appearance) and Lt. Detective Bruce Ellis (Jan-Michael Vincent). They don’t take him seriously and nearly jail him as a suspect. The only person who seems to believe him is reporter Gloria Freedman (Sandahl Bergman), who is coincidentally Ellis’ ex-wife. She interviews Jimmy and soon falls in bed with him.

Meanwhile, Clayton’s friend Blake Garrett (Randall “Tex” Cobb) has been warning Gloria to stay away from Jimmy and even kidnaps Jimmy’s sister Gina (Traci Lords) for her own protection. Blake is cornered in a parking garage and tells Jimmy that he promised to protect his friend and his sister, but he let them down. He dies as he drives his truck off the building, leaving behind a shotgun that proves he’s the killer.

But there’s ten minutes left.

Gloria dresses up to take Jimmy on a date and Jimmy reveals that he’s really Billy, another personality, the one who killed his parents and all of the young women. Just as he’s about to choke her, Ellis shoots him dead.

This has it all and by all, I mean Glenn Ford being grumpy with everyone, former Elvis bodyguard Red West, hints of incest, an incredible hall of mirrors murder to start the movie, red heels triggering the killer, Tex Cobb cracking open a warm beer before killing himself and Bergman stamping and screaming in place to get Jimmy’s attention, as well as that outfit she wears at the end. She’s really a genre actress that more people should have a crush on.

You can watch this on YouTube.

PM Entertainment Group Inc. was an American independent production and distribution company who produced  low-to-medium budget films mostly targeted for the home video market. It was founded by Richard Pepin and Joseph Merhi after they worked together at City Lights Entertainment.

They were pretty smart, because they could get actors for a good salary by allowing them to direct. This is how Wings Hauser and Jeff Conaway worked for them. They also filled the void of Cannon — beyond what 21st Century did for a bit — by making action movies that starred Cynthia Rothrock and Don “The Dragon” Wilson.

Traci Lords was also someone they worked with a lot. After becoming famous due to appearing in adult movies underage and starting an acting career, these direct to video action movies offered her steady money and PM plenty of name recognition on the box cover.

This starts when a bunch of thugs are selling guns when the cops get involved. Detective Frank (Jeff Conaway) tries to take them down and is helped by Jackie (Lords), who is working with the LAPD as part of her community service by taking photos. When she takes out one of the bad guys, she gets in trouble with Frank’s boss, Captain Ralph Phipps (Richard Roundtree) because she’s just supposed to be a photographer and not fighting criminals.

As for Jackie’s crime, she was shooting a model who brought cocaine into the home and that was enough for her to lose her son Kevin. Frank is all about having Jackie work with him because, well, she’s Traci Lords. But the rest of the cops regret it, as she starts discovering some dirty police officers like the pimp killing Eddie (Robert Miano), the guy who got her busted and cost her custody of her boy.

Directed and written by Charles T. Kanganis, this has a sexy scene at a shooting gallery, a lovemaking moment intercut with a young child making the least nutritious breakfast of all time and a running subplot of two swordfighting lesbians who keep getting arrested for trying to stab each other. Other than that, however, it’s sadly not good. But you know, I named my second guitar after Traci Lords, so I watched the whole thing.

Wikipedia claims that this is the first movie given an NC-17 for violence instead of sexual content. By the look of things — you can see the rating on the MPAA site — it seems true but after all, sometimes hype is better than the actual real tale, right?

Police detective Vicki Stewart (Traci Lords) is undercover as a prostitute with her lover Al (Scott Patterson) as backup when she finds the crook she’s been hunting, Salvador (Angelo Tiffe). As he starts making out with her, he finds her concealed handgun and everything goes wild with cars blowing up, machine guns firing on crowded streets and Lords even flying out of the limo.

Captain Jackson (Yaphet Kotto) takes her off the case after all of the property damage, even if she got $50 million worth of drugs off the streets. As for Salvador, his boss gives him a week to get the white powder back.

If Vicki isn’t on the case, she’s going to have some fun. She overhears a rape victim being discharged and tells her there’s no way that the three men who destroyed her will ever see jail. Instead, she visits them at home and brutalizes them. She also goes to a factory where the boss sexually harasses women and slaps him into oblivion, all things that get her in even more trouble.

Vicki has had what we call “a day” and it gets worse when she catches Al in bed with someone else. She sets his car on fire and then heads back to the police station, the very place where Salvador is coming to get his cocaine.

Directed and written by Charles T. Kanganis, this is the perfect use of Traci Lords in a movie. She’s a near-unstoppable force of destruction who is the best cop on the force despite how much destruction happens around her. She’s actually a very male-coded hero and yet, you know, looks like Traci Lords.

You can watch this on YouTube.