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.

Ellen (Traci Lords) and Charley Reed (Phillip Troy) are burglars who are on the right side as they work for insurance companies, stealing back things that have been taken by others. This job brings them to the safe of organized crime kingpin Vito Malta (Jorge Rivero), which contains gems taken by his men from a jewelry store. Before you can say, “Why is Traci Lords a never nude in this?” she’s in the shower, fully clothed with her husband, the mission complete.

Her husband, however, is an idiot. Instead of marveling at his luck at getting to take pants on showers with Traci Lords whenever he wants, he decides to not give the jewelry back to the insurance company and fence it with Ellen’s brother Rick Corbit (Zach Galligan). Malta figures this out and his men chase them down, killing Charley, nearly ending Rick’s time on this planet and sending Ellen to the police station.

Detective Alan Little (Jaime Alba) remembers Ellen when she was a jazz singer, so he has a crush on her and allows her to go get revenge.

A PM Entertainment action film, this was directed by Lords’ husband at the time,  Brook Yeaton. It’s the kind of action film that if it came on Cinemax at 2:45 a.m. and you were high, you’d probably not get up to turn the channel. In short, the movies that I spend most of my life finding and writing up.

You can watch this on YouTube.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn

No long-time kaiju fan was more pleased than I when rumors began to swirl that Godzilla Minus One – the first Japanese Godzilla film in more than a decade – wasn’t just good. It was great. I didn’t want my expectations to ruin the experience of seeing the film for the first time, so I avoided spoiler-laden websites and subreddits.

Secretly, I was super excited. I hadn’t seen a Godzilla movie on the big screen since the 2014 American series launch Godzilla. A film that left me with the same feeling one has when they’re hungry and they eat bad pizza. It fills you up, but the calories are empty. I never saw any of the sequels because I was now certain that Hollywood, regardless of how much money they spend on effects or how many great actors they cast, will never truly be able to make a great Godzilla movie. It’s a film series that is uniquely Japanese. No other country on earth has had an atomic weapon dropped on it in a time of war. And that makes them uniquely qualified to make movies about an atomic monster. The original 1954 film was infused with melancholy and a foreboding sense that no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse.

Godzilla Minus One recreates that feeling better than any other Godzilla film made since then.

The film begins at the end of WW2. When Japan had nothing. Zero. Then Godzilla shows up and things get worse. Minus One.

Kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) abandons his mission and lands on nearby Odo Island with “technical problems.” While there, a giant lizard known by the locals as Gojira goes on a rampage. Once again, Shikishima freezes and cannot bring himself to shoot the monster. Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki), the only other survivor of the attack, blames Shikishima for the death of his comrades.

The next act in the film shows an accurate portrayal of the grim life of post-war Japan where people survived on their wits and the kindness of strangers. Shikishimi, now suffering from PTSD and cultural shame, forms a makeshift family with a young woman named Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and an orphaned toddler named Akiko (Sagae Nagatani.)

He gets a job on a boat sweeping mines from the sea and it isn’t long before his old buddy from Odo Island makes his next appearance. This time he’s huge, having grown even bigger from America’s A-bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the pacific.

The boat team crosses the big guy’s path, and a chase ensues. Despite the film’s paltry (by Hollywood standards) 15-million-dollar budget, the jeopardy in this scene feels real. I’ve always loved it whenever Godzilla swims, but it’s the first time I’ve felt like I was watching Jaws with a kaiju.

When the big guy finally makes landfall and attacks Ginza, it’s one of the best sequences ever achieved by Toho Studios. Not only is the destruction from G’s heat ray astounding in its execution, but it’s also one of the rare times we see Godzilla himself suffer what appears to be painful injuries after unleashing his weapon. (See GMK from 2001 for another great example of this.)

The resulting nuclear explosion blows Oppenheimer’s bullshit a-bomb away. And that’s important. I for one, am pleased as punch to see transnational audiences embrace a low-budget monster movie. IAs I’m writing this, Godzilla Minus One has grossed over 104 million dollars globally and is Oscar nominated for Best Special Effects. It should have been nominated for Best Picture. This movie succeeds on every level where every other budget-bloated major Hollywood 2023 release has failed.

Godzilla Minus One is a compelling drama. It’s also a period piece that’s historically accurate. Are you listening, Ridley Scott? It’s scary, exciting and fun. All for a cool 15 mill. This movie is proof positive that story and well-developed characters matter and you don’t need a billion dollars and 3 hours to do it. Did I mention the film was released globally entirely in Japanese with subtitles? So much for the “audiences don’t like to read” argument.

In the finale, Shikishima joins forces with Tachibana and a team of war veterans to do what the Japanese government can’t do and what the U.S. government won’t do. They defeat Godzilla in a thrilling finale. Or do they? Godzilla has powerful regenerative abilities. In Godzilla 2000 these cells were called Regenerator G-1. Here, they don’t name this ability, but it’s a nice callback for die-hard fans and the end result is the same. Godzilla is never defeated for long in any movie. If it were that easy, he wouldn’t be the star of cinema’s longest running series in history. Kudos to writer/director/effects artist Takashi Yamazaki for achieving something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. He’s made Godzilla relevant again in a serious way. Without cheesy dubbing.

Toho Studios, if you’re reading this,

もっとゴジラ映画をお願いします!

Motto Gojira eiga onegaishimasu!

More Godzilla films, please!