Willa (Camila Banus), Hailey (Jasmine Shanise), Kenzie (Shonte Akognon), Flynn (Virginia Ma) and Liev (Justin Chu Cary) used to be a gang that robbed banks. But on their last job — and just before Willa gave birth to her daughter with Liev — they miss one armed guard who shoots Liev and sends the girls on the run.

Now, many. years later, Willa’s daughter Sophia has a heart condition and the only person who can give her the lifesaving donation she needs to survive is Liev. Except he’s just been put into a coma after standing up for other prisoners and meeting with a reporter.

That means that the gang has to get back together — and deal with Willa and Hailey hating each other because they both loved the same man — to break in, rescue their old friend and save a sick young girl.

Directed by Ted Campbell, who wrote the story with Richard Pierce, this finds the gang — who hasn’t seen each other for years — coming together to gather the needed tissue from Liev with the help of a surgeon turned butcher named Toth (Andy Umberger). They also find a way to get the word out about the abuses in the prison by Warden Locke (Tim Abell).

The end of this gets tense and that’s appreciated. It speaks to the continuing quality of the movies that Tubi is picking for their original films. As the girls race to get the heart tissue out of the prison, they find themselves facing the same situation that the movie started with, as several of their gang find themselves shot and near death. Should they leave them behind or can everyone make it?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Jaira Thomas and written by Briana Cole (The Marriage Pass), this finds Brandon (Asan N’Jie) and Andrea (Savannah Steyn) going on a vacation to the UK to try and fix their marriage. He’s a workaholic and it seems like whatever got them together is long gone. Even when they make their way to their resort, he’s answering work calls.

Things change when they meet Percy (Solomon Israel) and Chanelle (Adwoa Akoto), a married couple who encourage them both to get what they want. For Brandon, that may be a watch and standing up for himself. For Andrea, it’s finding what she feels is lost from the marriage. After a night of getting their groove back on, they’re shocked when Percy calls them to his room. He’s killed Chanelle and needs help getting rid of the body.

From that giallo-esque beginning, Played and Betrayed finds two couples switching the dynamic, going from innocent to role player and getting Brandon and Andrea closer while they deal with something they never thought they’d ever get into and emerge as people — and a couple — they never thought they were.

I don’t know if I totally believe the changes that they go through in just a few weeks, much less the way they bring in the story of how Percy and Chanelle helped Tia (Lola Wayne) kill off her horrible husband, but I guess when you go so far down the path, you have no problem doing some dark deeds and being just fine with it. By the end, it seems like our protagonists have become our antagonists.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I get it. This movie isn’t a giallo. But what is it, really? It was sold under so many titles, from the more horror-centric Cauldron of Death (complete with completely insane poster) to the more crime-oriented Gangland, the great Italian title Un Tipo Con una Faccia Strana ti Cerca per Ucciderti (A Guy With a Strange Face Is Looking for You to Kill You), The Dirty Mob, Mean Machine and even O Exolothreftis (The Terminator) in Greece.

It was written by Jose Gutierrez Maesso, who wrote Django and was an uncredited writer for the magical Pensione Paura. He’s joined by Santiago Moncada, who wrote A Bell from Hell, Hatchet for the Honeymoon and The Corruption of Chris Miller, along with Mario di Nardo (The Fifth Cord, Five Dolls for an August Moon). Directing all of this mayhem is Tulio Demichelli, who made the utterly insane Assignment Terror, as well as The Two Faces of Fear,  Espionage in Lisbon and the well-named There Is Someone Behind the Door.

Make no mistake — this is a movie awash with exploitation, gore, aberrant behavior and no real heroes. In short, it’s exactly the kind of movie you come to this site to read about.

Rico Aversi (Chris Mitchum) has just got out of jail, two years after Don Vito (Arthur Kennedy, the inspector from The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) killed his father. Everyone wants Rico — notice that his named is spelled completely unlike the title of the movie — to kill the boss off, but Rico just wants to enjoy life outside of prison.

Malisa Longo (Cat in the Brain) plays his girlfriend — and who used to love Rico’s woman — and she enjoys sleeping with the hired help, which gets one unlucky member of the workstaff castrated in shocking detail. Then, his John Thomas gets shoved in his mouth and he’s dipped into acid and turned into soap. This movie is not interested in being unoffensive. Plus, you get Paola Senatore (Eaten Alive!) as Rico’s sister, whose death sets him finally on the path to revenge.

Robert Mitchum is one of my favorite actors ever, so it kind of pains me to admit this his son kind of slumbers through this leading role. But then again, everyone else in this movie is going to seem boring next to Barbara Bouchet, who pretty much sets the screen on fire, dances on the flames and sets it ablaze all over again in this movie. Anyone could show some leg to get the attention of some criminals. Bouchet goes all in, dancing nude on the roof of a car, covered in fog, giving her all no matter how grimy this scumfest gets. Without her, this movie would be passable. With her, it’s transcendent.

So yeah. It’s not a giallo. But man, if you’re coming in looking for bad behavior, gorgeous women and great clothes, it has all of that covered.

Gary Graver was many things — a film director, editor, screenwriter, cinematographer and as Robert McCallum, the director and cinematographer of 135 adult movies. He’s in the Adult Video News Hall of Fame for his work, which includes Amanda By Night, Coed Fever, Suzie Superstar and Unthinkable, which won the AVN Award as Best All-Sex Video of 1985.

But what he’s best remembered for today is his work as Orson Welles’ final cinematographer, spending most of his life working on the master’s long unfinished film The Other Side of the Wind, the story of which was told in They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead.

In 1970, Graver made an unannounced pitch to work with Welles, who told Graver that only one other person had ever pitched him in that way — the legendary Gregg Toland who he worked with on Citizen Kane. To quote Variety, “From that day forward, Orson Welles was the central figure in Gary Graver’s life: more important than his wife, his children, his bank account and his health. For the rest of Orson’s life (and his own) Graver belonged to the great director.”

In fact, Welles even edited several of Graver’s adult work — so that Graver could get back to the business of working on his films — including a scene in the movie 3 A.M. which shows all of his genius, albeit in filthy lesbian romp.

Graver’s career is all over the place. Sure, he worked on movies that the arthouse could swoon over like John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence and Welles’ F for Fake, but he also has grindhouse pleasing fare on his resume like The Toolbox Murders, Trick or Treats, Mortuary, They’re Playing with Fire and Satan’s Sadists.

Originally, this movie was going to be a serious drama entitled The Boys, but the producers demanded that Graver re-edit it into a comedy. Those producers were Film Ventures International, the people who brought you Beyond the Door, Grizzly, Day of the Animals, The Dark, The Visitor, The Incubus, Pieces, Great White and so many more amazing films. They also released Antropophagus as The Grim Reaper and Bava’s Shock as Behind the Door II. Seriously, the list of films that they released is absolutely incredible and I haven’t even got to stuff like Stunt Rock and The Force Beyond.

By 1984, the company was almost bankrupt due to Universal suing them over the similarity of Great White to Jaws and the poor box office performance of Mutant. Montoro responded by taking a million dollars from the company’s bank account and vanishing, never to be seen or heard from again.

I told you all that to tell you this, the story of Texas Lightning, one of the most confusing movies I’ve ever seen.

Karl Stover (Cameron Mitchell!) is a macho truck driver who feels like his son Buddy is too soft, so he takes him on the road. The fact that his son is played by his real life child Cameron Jr. only adds to the gravitas of this movie. Also — you’ve never lived until you’ve seen cowboy Cameron in a shiny gold shirt.

Buddy soon falls in love with the first girl he meets, a barmaid named Fay, played by Maureen McCormick from The Brady Bunch. This isn’t her first redneck go-round, as she played one of the Hammer sisters in Moonshine County Express opposite John Saxon as a kung fu fight stock car driver.

Keep in mind when you’re watching this movie that none of the painted characters on the poster are actually in this film. This is probably the best movie I’ve seen where Cameron Mitchell punches the hell out of a truck stop bathroom while trying to explain the facts of life to his son.

Seriously — if you watch this hoping for some trucking and womanizing, you’re left with a pretty downbeat drama, despite Graver’s re-editing efforts. I assume this probably ran second or third in drive-ins, so nobody complained.

Mitchell Jr. ends up going back to his hotel with the barmaid, who cons him out of money for her sister’s operation before they start making out. This gives his father’s friends the license to smash down the door and assault her, which leads to the son to want revenge. Somehow, this movie has a happy ending montage and was still intended as a comedy. How can it be funny when we have Mitchell holding and hugging and crying over his son while a bunch of cowboy hat-wearing, sweat stains having gang team up on Marcia Brady? Your guess is as good as mine.

This was produced by Jim Sotos, who directed Sweet Sixteen and Forced Entry, which is also known as The Last Victim. It’s an R-rated remake of Shaun Costello’s adult film of the same name, substituting Tanya Roberts and Nancy Allen for Laura Cannon, Ruby Runhouse and Nina Fawcett. The latter two were two transient hippies who let their loft be used for filming as long as they could be in the film. They ended up so high on mescaline that their scene took five hours to shoot. Of all Harry Reems movies, it’s the only one that he claims to regret making.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Note: You can read another take on this movie here.

Chuck (Chuck McQuary) has decided Hooter College isn’t for him so he starts managing a band with three of his classmates in it. The Splitz are lead singer Joan (Patti Lee), guitarist Gina (Robin Johnson, making her first movie after the three year Robert Stigwood Organization contract after she made Times Square) and drummer Susie (Barbara Bingham, Beyond Darkness). The Splitz are having a tough time playing dives and Chuck wants to get them onto bigger stages.

Funny thing. One of those dive bars is CBGB.

He also wants Gina, who he takes home one night and meets her mobster father Vito (Raymond Serra) and sex-crazed uncle Vinnie (Dom Irrera).

There’s also a sex comedy plot where Dean Hunta (Shirley Stoler, Martha Beck from The Honeymoon Killers) decides that the Phi Betas will lose their sorority house and works with Sigma Phi’s Lois Scagliani (Forbes Riley, Splatter University) and Delta Phi’s Fern Hymenstein (Tara King) to make it happen. Seeing how the girls are being treated, The Splitz join the Phi Betas.

There are a lot of shenanigans during the three games that the sororities play, including the Phi Betas getting a caveman-like coach named Warwick (Tom McCleister), The Splitz blackmailing the dean’s husband and said dean being hypnotized and nearly stripping on stage before the big show.

The soundtrack is a mix between some interesting 1982 bands and doo wop. So you get “Heart of Glass” and “One Way Or Another by Blondie along with Del Shannon.

Director Domonic Paris also made Dracula’s Last Rites and the mixtape films Film House Fever and Bad Girls In the Movies. He wrote it with Bianca Littlebaum, Harry Azorin and Kelly Van Horn, who went on to produce The Day After Tomorrow and Eight Legged Freaks.

There’s a fun music cameo in this, as a chef is played by Bobby Pickett, who we all know better as Boris, the man who unleashed the “Monster Mash.” It was, as they say, a graveyard smash.

This movie promises to be a sex comedy yet it is rarely sexy and never all that funny. That said, I love the band and want so much better for them.

You can watch this on Tubi.

A mezzanotte va la ronda del piacere (At Midnight the Pleasure Patrol Goes) is also known as The Immortal Bachelor, Midnight Pleasures and Midnight Lovers.

Gabriella (Claudia Cardinale, Blonde In Black Leather) is trapped in a loveless marriage to Andrea (Vittorio Gassman) and sees a lot of herself as she sits on the jury for the murder trial of Tina (Monica Vitti), who has killed her husband Gino (Giancarlo Giannini).

Or did she?

As Tina testifies, Gabriella wishes she had the passion in her marriage that Tina seemed to have. And then she learns why Tina and Gino had their last fight. Her new lover was Andrea. Gabriella begs her husband to testify in Tina’s defense but he leaves the country, only for Gino to show up, alive and ready to fight — and make love — to his wife again.

Director Marcello Fondato, who co-wrote this with Francesco Scardamaglia, was one of the writers of Black Sabbath and Blood and Black Lace.

FVI didn’t release this movie in the U.S. until 1980. Cardinale and Vitti are much better in Blonde In Black Leather, which New World released here as Lucky Girls.

Roger Ebert hated this and said, “Faithful readers will recall that I have, in the past, occasionally referred to Idiot Plots. The Immortal Bachelor is a classic Idiot Plot, requiring that everyone in the movie be an idiot. If they weren’t, they’d solve their problems instantly and the movie would be a short subject.”

Also known as Simone e Matteo – Un gioco da ragazzi, Simón y Mateo and Kid Stuff, this stars Antonio Cantafora and Paul L. Smith in one of the series of movies they made trying to imitate Terence Hill and Bud Spencer that includes Carambola!, Carambola’s Philosophy: In the Right Pocket, We Are No Angels and The Diamond Peddlers.

FVI took it one step further by renaming them in America as Terrance Hall and Bob Spencer. Smith sued, saying The only thing an actor has is his name and if that’s taken away, he has nothing.” That case was Smith v. Montoro, 648 F.2d 602. Smith alleged that he had acted in the leading role and had a contract granting him star billing. However, when the film was distributed in the U.S. by FVI, his name was stripped from the film. The Ninth Circuit federal court of appeals granted Smith standing to sue the filmmakers, but it is unknown how the case was finally settled. Rumors say that he won.

Toby and Butch (Cantafora and Smith) are dumb criminals moving insecticide from Italy to France but in truth, they don’t know that they are smuggling guns. There are also gangsters trying to get the guns but they can’t outfight these two. 

This was directed by Giuliano Carnimeo (Find A Place to Die, the Sartana films) and written by Sergio Bazzini and Tulio Demicheli. The music — which will repeat throughout and get stuck in your head — is by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis, the men who call themselves Oliver Onions.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Beyond the Door II is, of course, Mario Bava’s Shock retitled by Film Ventures International.

Shock was Bava’s last film. Following a series of failures to reach theaters, including Rabid Dogs, Lamberto Bava continued to push his father to make a new movie. Originally written by Dardano Sacchetti and Francesco Barbieri after they wrote A Bay of Blood, this movie was loosely based on Hillary Waugh’s The Shadow Guest. Lamberto has also stated that he wanted this to be a modern film that was influenced by Stephen King.

Bava started pre-production as early as 1973, shooting screen tests with Mimsy Farmer for the lead role. Shot in five weeks, some of the film was directed by Lamberto based on his father’s storyboards, which is why he has the credit “collaboration to the direction.” He directed all of Ivan Rassimov’s scenes.

It’s a sparse film — there are only three characters (well, three living characters). Dora (Daria Nicolodi, who should be canonized for giving birth to both Suspiria and Asia Argento, as well as roles in Deep Red, Inferno, Opera and so much more) and Bruno (John Steiner, Yor Hunter from the Future‘s Overlord) are a newly married couple who have just moved back into her old home — the very same place where her drug-addicted husband killed himself — along with her son, Marco.

Dora’s had some real issues dealing with her husband’s death. And Bruno is never home to help, as he’s a pilot for a major airline. Either she’s losing her mind or her son is evil or he’s possessed or her new husband is gaslighting her or every single one of those things is happening all at once. You have not seen a kid this creepy perhaps ever — he watches his mother and stepfather make love, declaring them pigs before using his potential psychic powers to throw things at them. Then he tells his mom he wants to kill her, followed by nearly making his stepfather’s plane crash just by putting an image of the man’s face on a swing.

While Bava was sick throughout the filming (and his son Lamberto would fill in), you can definitely see his style shine through the simple story. There’s one scene of Dora’s face and her dead husband’s and then her face that repeats vertically that will blow your mind.

The secret of the film? Dora’s ex-husband forced her to take a mix of heroin and LSD, at which point she tripped out and killed him. Bruno dumped his body in the ocean and arranged for her to be placed in an insane asylum until she recovered. Now, the ex-husband’s ghost has returned and demands blood. And he gets it.

Perhaps the finest shot in here is when Dora is lying in the bed and you see her hair fall like she’s upside down, but then it goes back like it’s in the wind, all while it seems like she’s being ravaged. I have no idea how Bava did this shot, but it’s so visually arresting that it’s stuck in my mind for days. There’s also his famous Texas switch where Marco runs into his mother’s arms, only to be replaced by her ex-husband and that horrifying scene with the rake.

There’s also music from I Libra, a Goblin off-shoot. It seems kind of strange against Bava’s old school direction, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t love it. It’s a stylish and scary film that’s way better than any Exorcist clone, despite its U.S title.

William Girder died in a helicopter crash while scouting locations in 1978. If that hadn’t ended his life, who knows the heights of lunacy he would have achieved?

In just six years, he directed nine feature films — Asylum of Satan, The Get Man, Three on a Meathook, The Manitou, Sheba Baby, Project: Kill, the astonishing Abby, Grizzly and this movie.

This had to have been the first movie about the loss of Earth’s ozone layer. Who knew that it would drive everyone nuts, including animals? Certainly not the hikers in this tale who turn against one another and try to survive all of the animal assaults.

Steve Buckner (Christopher George, who is fighting with Michael Pataki and George Eastman for most appearances on this site) has a dozen or so hikers who are about to go to Sugar Meadow for a nature hike, even though Ranger Chico Tucker (former NFL player Walt Barnes) tells him that the animals have been acting strangely.

Along for this nature trail to hell are anthropologist Professor MacGregor (Richard Jaeckel, Grizzly), a married couple named Frank and Mandy Young (Jon Cedar, who in addition to being a recurring Nazi on Hogan’s Heroes was also the co-star, co-screenwriter and associate producer of The Manitou and Susan Backlinie, the first victim in Jaws), rich Shirley Goodwyn (Ruth Roman from The Baby!), her son Johnny, teenage lovers Bob Dennins (Andrew Stevens, who was in the Night Eyes films) and Beth Hughes, a former pro football player dealing with cancer named Roy Moore, a magical Native American guide named Daniel Santee (Michael Ansara, Killer Kane from the 1980’s Buck Rogers series as well as the voice of Mr. Freeze), a television reporter named Terry Marsh (Lynda Day George, always ready to scream “BASTARDS!”) and finally, a frenzied Leslie Neilsen in the role of his career as Paul Jenson, an ad executive who acts like every account guy I’ve ever had to deal with in my 24-year-long ad career.

Before you know it, wolves are attacking people in sleeping bags, vultures circle overhead, hawks knock women off cliffs, Leslie Nielsen goes beyond bonkers and kills a dude with a walking stick and threatens to assault women before wrestling a bear and getting his neck torn out, rats attack the sheriff who decides to eat before trying to figure out how to deal with this emergency, dogs turn on the people they loved, rattlesnakes bite people and the military dons hazmats suits to deal with all of it.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, this movie is stupid. And awesome. It’s stupid awesome. And if you only know Nielsen from his later comedic roles, take a look at him in this movie. I love this movie. I don’t care what you think of me.

Here’s the drink to enjoy while you watch this movie.

Tentacle Painkiller

• 2 oz. Kraken spiced rum
• 4 oz. pineapple juice
• 1 oz. orange juice
• 1 oz. cream of coconut
• Dash of nutmeg
• Pinch of salt

1. Pour rum, pineapple juice, orange juice and cream of coconut into a cocktail shaker with ice. Mix it up.
2. Pour into a glass filled with ice. Drop in salt to give it the taste of the ocean and then top with nutmeg.

You can watch this on Tubi or get the blu ray from Severin.