B & S About Movies podcast Episode 113: Mummies

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I love mummy movies. Here are three: The All New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy in “For Love or Mummy”, Dawn of the Mummy and The Mummy Theme Park. So sit down, drink some water from the Nile, eats a few dates and let’s talk mummies.

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Theme song: Strip Search by Neal Gardner.

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ARROW VIDEO SHAW SCOPE VOLUME 4 BOX SET: Bloody Parrot (1981)

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The bloody parrot of this film’s title is a legend of a bird born on the devil king’s birthday, when all the lesser demons gave him their blood so that it might grant three wishes to whoever discovered it. Those wishes, however, tend to go poorly. One example is Guo Fan, a government worker who has lost a treasure and begs the bird for their return. The prize does come back at the cost of his son’s life. He then monkey’s paw wishes for the son back, so his wife kills him and commits suicide.

The treasure disappears again, and that’s when fighters from around the world learn that if they find the parrot, they will become rich. Swordsman Yeh Ting Feng (Pai Piao) and constable Tieh Han (Tony Liu) start hunting for the truth, which ends with Tieh being killed and Yeh carrying his coffin like some Shaw Brothers Django. There’s also a Parrot Brothel where Pei-yu (Jenny Liang) works. There’s a whole hall of mirrors for her to show off her curves in.

If you liked the gross-out side of Shaw Brothers — Hex, Black Magic, Human Lanterns — then this is what you’re looking for. It also has plenty of sleaze and Wuxia moments to make one strange cocktail. Director Hua Shan has so many cards to deal you, from nudity to martial arts battles, sword fights, maggot eating, autopsies and demonic possession, to name a few. Who are we to deny the man who made Infra-Man?

I mean, this is a movie where a woman sews a man’s face onto a Frisbee and uses it as a weapon.

If that doesn’t make you watch this, is there any hope?

As a warning, this movie makes no sense whatsoever, and I’m not advising you to engage in mind-altering substances — you may not even need them — but if you can’t get high and watch a movie that combines Bava colors with kung fu and obscene levels of puking, then what are you living for?

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. It has a commentary by critic Samm Deighan. You can get this set from MVD.

ARROW VIDEO SHAW SCOPE VOLUME 4 BOX SET: Bat Without Wings (1980)

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The Bat looks like Gene Simmons, and that’s precisely why I chose to watch this. He’s some kind of martial arts supervillain who assaults and murders women and then sends back their body parts one at a time to their husbands. He’s also so strong that he kills twenty-six martial artists before he gets stopped. However, five years later, the killings begin again, despite the original Bat being chained up in a cave, surrounded by the dead bodies of his victims, kind of like a Far East Frank Zito.

Oh yeah, and the bad guy can fly and his real name is Red Baron. He also has a cave lair filled with traps, like exploding boxes and a pond filled with poison.

Look, this isn’t the best movie you’ve ever seen, but it does have a KISS-looking evil wizard martial artist in an insane cape that can leap hundreds of feet in the air, sucking the blood from women and killing men in combat.

If you can’t find a reason to enjoy that, there really is no hope for you.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. It has a commentary by critic Samm Deighan. You can get this set from MVD.

ARROW VIDEO SHAW SCOPE VOLUME 4 BOX SET: Hex After Hex (1982)

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There are three Hex movies, but they aren’t all that connected, other than the fact that the protagonist of this film, Ma Su (Lo Meng), is the neighbor of the main character in Hex vs. Witchcraft. He finds the same bag of gold that was behind all of the supernatural moments of that film, including the tablet of Liu Ah Cui, whose spirit possesses Yeung Suk Yi (Nancy Lau Nam-Kai) and has her seduce Ma Su.

Kuei Chi-Hung has created a movie in which Yoda randomly shows up, and then Darth Vader appears with a lightsaber that removes clothing. There’s also a real estate developer who hires Ma Su and plans to complete his development by June 30, 1997, which is when Hong Kong became part of China again. In fact, this evil landowner even gets branded with what was supposed to say ‘1997,’ but Shaw Brothers replaced it with their logo.

Eventually, Ma Su fades into the background, and Yeung Suk Yi goes on the offensive to get back at the developer for kicking everyone out of their apartment. By the end, Ma Su has fallen for the ghost and invokes a monkey god to battle an animated statue of Thomas Jefferson because, well, why not at this point? What if it also turns into a slot machine and makes everyone rich with the gold it spews out? Let’s do that too.

They could have made twenty of these movies, and I would watch every one.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. You can get this set from MVD.

ARROW VIDEO SHAW SCOPE VOLUME 4 BOX SET: Hex vs. Witchcraft (1980)

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Released the same year as Hex, this sorta sequel is less frightening and more gambling. And sex. Lots of sex. Sex where characters break the fourth wall and speak directly to you while they’re having it.

Chih-Hung Kuei directed this, yet there are hardly any of the maggots and worms and murder and weirdness that you want. Instead, it’s about a compulsive gambler named Cai Tou (James Yi Lui) whose bad luck is reversed when a mysterious elderly man pairs him with the ghost of his daughter.

I mean, his last plan was to get his wife to sleep with the gangster he owed money to, which ended with her decimating his scrotum and then leaving Cai Tou. Now, he has a spectral wife who is jealous of other women, yet is only able to make love to her husband by possessing them.

We live in a weird world where some cultures have gambling movies as an actual genre. Let’s love the fact that so many odd and fascinating subcultures exist.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. You can get this set from MVD.

ARROW VIDEO SHAW SCOPE VOLUME 4 BOX SET: Bewitched (1981)

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Detective Wong King Sun is investigating the horrific and violent death of a little girl at the hands of her father, who claims that he was under the influence of a wizard. This takes the detective all the way to Thailand to learn more and, as happens in films such as this, to be cursed by a powerful magician named Magusu, who was supposedly played by an infamous Malay sorcerer. That’s what the credits say, and who are we to deny the words of Shaw Brothers or any exploitation studio when you get right down to it?

Wong King Sun decides to fight black magic; he needs a white magic monk. What follows is an entire movie of one-upmanship battles over whose magic is strongest, including a gut-churning moment when the evil magician grabs that pause that refreshes. Except that we’re not talking about Coca-Cola. This dude likes to sip from a big urn filled with unborn children and blood.

If that last sentence made you wince, turn back now. Bewitched is a ride through absolute chaos. It’s gorgeous, it’s frenetic, and it’s also unafraid to try and make you throw up throughout its running time. And if this one seems like it’s going to be too much, its sequel, The Boxer’s Omen, goes even further. Director Chih-Hung also made the equally blood-and-madness-filled Corpse Mania.

We all know that old Chinese chestnut of advice, right? Don’t take the virginity of village women, ghost them and then just move on, or you’ll be covered in body hair, unable to get it up, and eventually hammering a spike into your daughter’s head so that she stops being possessed and attempting to kill you.

“The moral of the story is to admonish people against casual sex and to be on guard against witchcraft.” That’s what the end says. As for me, I’m all about movies with neon colors, glittery bats that come to animated life and actual black magic rituals being used to entertain audiences.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. It has a commentary by critic James Mudge. You can get this set from MVD.

ARROW VIDEO SHAW SCOPE VOLUME 4 BOX SET: Hex (1980)

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Chan Sau Ying (Ni Tien) is going to die from tuberculosis, and even then, her husband Chun Yu (Wong Yung) can’t stop abusing her. Her new servant Leung Yi Wah (Chan Sze Ka) takes pity on her, and they work together to drown Chun Yu in a pond, but then Sau Ying watches as her husband rises from the swamp and seeks revenge.

Kuei Chih-Hung was making his version of Diabolique here, but that movie didn’t end with a naked woman having blood slowly spit all over her and her entire nude body covered by painted spells. Instead, the climax delivers a shocking and visceral finale that leaves a lasting impression.

Ghosts that spit green vomit, animal guts falling like rain, and a grime-and-rain-filled swamp location make this movie feel just messy and gross, which quite often is how I like it. Sure, it moves slowly in parts — it is forty years old, after all — and some of the acting leans toward silly humor when the movie seems deadly serious, but when the last ten minutes give you the sleaziest exorcism you’ve ever seen, there are no complaints.

If you’re wondering why people are fans of this movie — and it may seem slow yet full of gorgeous filmmaking — stick around. The last 15 minutes are exactly what you’re looking for.

The Arrow Vide0 release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. You can get this set from MVD.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Eugenie (1970)

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An adaptation and modern-day update of Marquis de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom, this was the second de Sade film made by Jess Franco*, but by no means the last. In fact, it’s not even the previous movie, called Eugenie, that he would make. While this one is Eugenie… The Story of Her Journey into Perversion (or De Sade 70 or Marquis de Sade’s Philosophy in the Boudoir), there’s also the better-known — and Soledad Miranda-starring — Eugenie de Sade.

Eugenie (Marie Liljedahl, Inga, Dorian Gray) has spent her entire life in a convent, and despite an exterior that drives men and women wild with lust, she’s inexperienced in the ways of the world. Her father (Paul Muller, Nana, Barbed Wire Dolls) wants to bed Madame Saint Ange (the wife of producer Harry Alan Towers who appears in 99 Women, Venus In Furs and The Bloody Judge amongst other movies; don’t judge her being in this as nepotism, because she’s amazing in this movie), who agrees as long as she can take Eugenie to her secluded island mansion, where she and her step-brother Mirvel (Jack Taylor, whose career in exploitation movies took him all over the world) can seduce her and probably each other and definitely everyone and play the kind of strange incestual games that only the super rich seem to play.

Sir Christopher Lee also shows up as the narrator for all this wallowing and also as Dolmance, the leader of a cult of fiends that drug young women and beat them with whips and yeah, Sir Christopher claims he had no idea what kind of movie he was in, which I find hilarious, because this wouldn’t be the last time he’d work with Franco. Providing his own wardrobe — the smoking jacket he wore in Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace — Lee claimed that he was unaware there was a nude woman on the sacrificial altar behind him, as Franco and crew had wrapped drapery over her that they’d yank off as soon as the camera started and would then recover her when he was done with his scene. I mean, I love Jess, but sometimes he can barely focus the camera. One wonders how he’d ever had the chicanery and ability to pull one over on a man who was once quite literally a secret agent.

This movie feels like a dream. I’ve said that of other Franco movies, but trust me, a much better-realized, better-shot dream, with a score by Bruno Nicolai that makes it seem way classier than it is.

*The first is Marquis de Sade: Justine.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The True Story of Eskimo Nell (1975)

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After studying at USC, director Richard Franklin returned to Australia, where he directed four episodes of the Australian police drama Homicide before making this film and Fantasm. Based on the folk poem “The Ballad of Eskimo Nell,” which is about well-endowed Dead-Eye Dick and sidekick Mexican Pete being unable to satisfy sex worker Eskimo Nell, this finds Dead-Eye Dick (Max Gillies) as a common peeper. He discovers a husband about to kill Mexico Pete (Serge Lazareff) for sleeping with his wife, so he saves him, and they head to Alaska to find Nell.

Franklin says it was never his intention to make a sex comedy, as he wanted to make something like Midnight Cowboy. The poem is known only in what Franklin called the English world of Canada, Australia, and England, so it had limited hopes in the U.S. However, as government funds were used to make this movie, a softcore comedy, people were not happy. Franklin said, “The theatres were picketed, and it was actually fairly successful in terms of damaging the picture. I thought it would be great publicity, but the one thing people don’t want to hear is that tax dollars have been wasted. The minute they hear that, they’re less inclined to throw good money after bad, if you see what I mean. So the film was not successful.”

It also didn’t help that a British film based on the same poem, Eskimo Nell, was released at the same time, when it didn’t make it to Australia until 1976, when it was called The Sexy Saga of Naughty Nell and Big Dick.

Or that sex symbol Abigail was upset about being fully frontal in this film. A public rift was reported in the Australian press between Franklin and the singer/actress, with the headline “Movie Producer Abigail: He Used My Body.”

If The Alaska Kid is familiar, it’s because he’s played by pro wrestler Paul “Butcher” Vachon.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Equinox (1970)

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Also known as The Equinox … A Journey into the Supernatural and The Beast, this movie was directed by Jack Woods and Dennis Muren. It started as a $6500 film that Muren made with his friends Dave Allen, Jim Danforth and Mark McGee while he was in business classes at Pasadena City College. Strangely enough, Ed Bagley Jr. was one of the cameramen!

Producer Jack H. Harris hired editor Woods to add enough footage to make this a full-length film. When the final movie was released, Muren was listed as the associate producer, even though he directed the entire movie and created many of the effects.

Four teenagers — David Fielding, Susan Turner, Jim Hudson (Frank Bonner, who would go on to be Herb Tarlek on WKRP in Cincinnati) and Jim’s girlfriend, Vicki — have gone looking for a lost scientist named Dr. Arthur Waterman, who is played by Fritz Leiber. Leiber isn’t just any actor. Nope, he’s one of the foremost fantasy authors of all time and the person who actually came up with the term sword and sorcery. He was brought into this project by Famous Monsters of Filmland editor Forrest J. Ackerman.

They have a picnic — as you do when you’re in the foreboding woods — then make their way to a mysterious castle. They also learn that Dr. Waterman’s cabin has been destroyed, and even worse, the demon Asmodeus (played by Jack Woods, the new director, when he’s a park ranger at least) is hunting them with his army of monsters. He really goes after them once they get a book of spells from an old man inside a cave. Those monsters — a giant ape and a green-furred giant — are marvels of stop-motion. Our heroes barely escape as the ape kills the old man.

It turns out the book belonged to Dr. Waterman, who used it to conjure demons of his own, but lost control of a tentacled beast that destroyed his home. After Asmodeus kills Jim, he reveals his true form as a winged demon. Dave and Susan are killed before our remaining teens, Dave and Susan, make their way to a cemetery.

After a battle with Asmodeus, they destroy the demon with a giant cross, which causes the cemetery to explode, killing Susan. Another giant monster appears and tells Dave that he will die in one year and a day, which drives him insane. The movie quickly moves to that time, where we see Susan — now looking totally evil — showing up at his insane asylum.

The entire crew that made this movie did so much more afterward. Muren would go on to become a nine-time Oscar-winning visual-effects artist for his work on Star Wars and Jurassic Park. Danforth would create matte and stop-motion work for The Thing, Creepshow, Clash of the Titans, and Prince of Darkness, among others. Mark McGee, who was in high school when he worked on this film and was already writing for Famous Monsters (he’s the one who got connected with Leiber and brought Forry along to be a doctor’s voice), wrote the scripts for Sorority House Massacre II and Sorceress, both movies directed by Jim Wynorski. Finally, David Allen would go on to work on everything from Flesh Gordon, Laserblast and The Howling to Full Moon efforts like the Puppet Master series and The Dungeonmaster.

You can see the influence of Equinox on movies like Evil Dead and Phantasm. It’s the bridge between the Ray Harryhausen stop motion movies they loved and the occult-tinged efforts that would make up 1970s genre films. This is a movie packed with ideas and talent.