Howard Thorne (Nick Moriarty) stalks and assaults women on a regular basis. Or maybe he’s just dreaming of it. He wants nothing to do with his junkie wife Vicki (Adele Rein, The Girl With the Hungry Eyes). When they go to a costume party together, she learns who he really is while he learns what it’s like to be a victim. Then, they both go to Hell.
Like many films of this time and genre, there were many prints of this, some with more filthy scenes that could have just been spliced in. The Something Weird VHS of this supposedly had more of the later nightmare footage.
Made for John Lamb (Sexual Freedom In Denmark, The Raw Ones, Sexual Liberty Now, possibly the director of Zodiac Killer) by Jack Hill, this is a drugged and fuzzed-out roughie that’s more art than nearly any other movie in the genre and one that actually is sexy. Credit for that goes to not just Hill, but Rein, who has a volcanic scene with herself in a mirror. There’s also Cathy Crowfoot (who would go on to shoot and produce The Boy With the Hungry Eyes) as The Crow, a martial arts-using vengeance-seeking former victim out to destroy Howard. Also: A Dracula-voiced host, played by Ron Gans, the voice of New World Pictures trailers and the Halloweenradio commercial.
You can also see Carol Baughman (My Tale Is Hot), Rene De Beau (Orgy of the Dead), Gaby Martone(Mermaids of Tiburon) and Luana Anders (who convinced Jack Nicholson to join her improv class) show up.
This VCI Blu-ray release has two commentary tracks: one by noted film historian, podcaster and artist Rob Kelly and the other by Jack Hill. There’s also a photo and poster gallery. You can get it from MVD.
Bewitched aired throughout the most tumultuous time in modern history — hyperbole, that could also be today, but true, as rehearsals for this show’s first episode were on the day Kennedy was shot and the episode “I Confess” was interuppted by Martin Luther King Jr.’s death — from September 17, 1964, to March 25, 1972. The #2 show in the country for its first season and remaining in the top ten until its fifth season, it presents a sanitized and fictional world that at the time may have seemed contrary and fake to the simmering 60s, but today feels like the balm I need and an escape.
Within the home on 1164 Morning Glory Circle, Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery) and Darrin Stephens (Dick York, later Dick Sargent) have just had a whirlwind romance and ended up as husband and wife. At some point, she had to tell him that she was a witch, a fact that he disapproved of, and that she should be a normal housewife instead of using her powers. Yet she often must solve their problems — usually caused by her family, such as her mother Endora (Agnes Moorehead) — with a twitch of her nose.
Creator Sol Saks was inspired by I Married a Witch and Bell, Book and Candle, which luckily were owned by Columbia, the same studio that owned Screen Gems, which produced this show. You could use either of those movies as a prologue for this, which starts in media res — I like that I can use such a highbrow term to talk of sitcoms — with our loving couple already settling into the suburbs.
Author Walter Metz claims in his book Bewitched that the first episode, narrated by José Ferrer, is about “the occult destabilization of the conformist life of an upwardly mobile advertising man.” As someone who has spent most of his life in marketing, maybe I should look deeply into the TV I watched as a child. Bewitched was there all the time in my life, wallpaper that I perhaps never considered.
Head writer Danny Arnold, who led the show for its first season, considered the show about a mixed marriage. Gradually, as director and producer William Asher (also Montgomery’s husband at the time) took more control of the show, the magical elements became more prevalent. What I also find intriguing is that with the length of this show’s run, it had to deal with the deaths of its actors and York’s increasing back issues, which finally forced him to leave the show and another Dick, Dick Sargent, stepping in as Darren, a fact that we were to just accept.
That long run, the end of Montgomery and Asher’s marriage and slipping ratings led to the end of the show, despite ABC saying they would do two more seasons. Instead, Asher produced The Paul Lynde Show, using the sets and much of the supporting cast of this show. He also produced Temperatures Rising, which was the last show on his ABC contract, which ended in 1974.
Feminist Betty Friedan’s two-part essay “Television and the Feminine Mystique” for TV Guide asked why so many sitcoms presented insecure women as the heads of households. None of this has changed much, as the majority of sitcoms typically feature attractive women and funny but large husbands, a theme created by The Honeymooners, and the battles between spouses. I always think of I Dream of Jeannie, a show where a powerful magical being is subservient to, well, a jerk. At least on Bewitched, Samantha is a powerful, in-control woman with a mother who critiques the housewife paradigm.
Plus, unlike so many other couples on TV at the time, they slept in the same bed.
Bewitched‘s influence stretched beyond the movie remake. The show has had local versions in Japan, Russia, India, Argentina and the UK, while daughter Tabitha had a spin-off. There was even a Flintstones crossover episode!
Plus, WandaVision takes its central conceit — a witch hiding in the suburbs — from this show. And Dr. Bombay was on Passions!
This is the kind of show that has always been — and will always be — in our lives. Despite my dislike of Darren’s wedding vows of no magic, there’s still, well, some magic in this show. Just look at how late in its run it went on location to Salem for a multi-episode arc, something unthought of in other sitcoms.
You can watch this just for the show itself, to see the differences between the two Darrens and when Dick York had to film episodes in special chairs because of his back pain, when the show did tricks like have Montgomery (using the name Pandora Spocks) playing Samantha’s cousin Serena to do episodes without York or just imagine that the world was changing outside. Yet, magic and laughter were always there on the show, throughout the lives, divorces and deaths of its principals and supporting cast.
The Mill Creek box set is an excellent, high-quality way to just sit back, twitch your nose and get away from it all. This 22-disc set has everything you’d want on Bewitched, including extras like Bewitched: Behind the Magic, an all-new documentary about the making of Bewitched, featuring special guest appearances by actor David Mandel (Adam Stephens), Steve Olim (who worked in the make-up department at Columbia), Bewitched historian Herbie J Pilato, film and television historian Robert S. Ray, Bewitched guest star Eric Scott (later of The Waltons) and Chris York, son of D. York (the first Darrin). There are also sixteen new episodic audio commentaries, moderated by Herbie J Pilato that include behind-the-scenes conversations with Peter Ackerman (son of Bewitched executive producer Harry Ackerman), David Mandel, Bewitched guest star Janee Michelle (from “Sisters at Heart”), Steve Olim, Robert S. Ray, former child TV actors and Bewitched guest stars Ricky Powell (The Smith Family), Eric Scott (The Waltons), and Johnny Whitaker (Family Affair and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters) and Chris York (son of D. York). There’s also an exclusive 36-page booklet featuring pieces by Bewitched historian Herbie J. Pilato, as well as an episode guide. You can order it from Deep Discount.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Seven Golden Men was on the CBS Late Movie on June 19 and December 18, 1974 and July 23, 1975.
7 uomini d’oro was directed and co-written — with Mariano Ozores — by Marco Vicario. Albert the professor (Philippe Leroy) has six men as part of his gang — Adolf (Gastone Moschin), August (Giampiero Albertini), Aldo (Gabriele Tinti), Anthony (Dario De Grassi), Alfonso (Manuel Zarzo) and Alfred (Maurice Poli) — who are all from different counties and each have different skills. He has another secret weapon, his lover Giorgia (Rossana Podestà, who was married to Vicario and was Hera in the Cannon version of Hercules). They team up to rob the Swiss National Bank. Of course, the job goes to plan, but later, the six men are detained for their passports and Giorgia turns on her man, starting an affair with the bank manager in an attempt to make all the spoils for herself.
As for the gold they stole, well, it ends up as part of a truck crash. Everyone has to get over all of the double crosses, because now, it’s time to rob the Bank of Italy. That would be Il grande colpo dei uomini d’oro.
Speaking of crime, it was illegal to film in front of that Swiss bank. So they did it, no permits, and got it before everyone got busted.
The Godfather of Hong Kong Cinema, Chang Cheh, had a career that spanned from the wuxia films of the 1960s to the martial arts movies of the 1970s, encompassing a wide range of other genres.
The Magnificent Trio (1966): Starring Jimmy Wang Yu as swordsman Lu Fang, Lo Lieh as Yen Tzu-ching and Cheng Lui as Huang Liang, this is the story of, well, three badass swordsmen who decide to help farmers against the rich people oppressing them.
A remake of Hideo Gosha’s Three Outlaw Samurai, set in the Ming Dynasty instead of Japan, this film features farmers kidnapping Wei Wen-chen, the magistrate’s daughter, in the hope of securing a ransom to feed their children. As for her father, Magistrate Wei, he keeps the poverty of his people a secret from the Emperor, taxing and beating them into submission.
Lu Feng is everything you want in a wuxia hero. To keep the farmers from being arrested, he agrees to take a hundred lashes, passing out from the pain. Man, the things he does to keep these people safe.
Magnificent Wanderers (1977): Nomads Lin Shao You (Fu Sheng), Shi Da Yong (Chi Kuan-chun), and Guan Fei (Li Yi-min) battle the Mongols in this kung fu epic. It’s also a comedy, as the three engage in a fortune-telling scam before meeting wealthy man Chu Tie Xia (David Chiang), who claims they are friends.
However, there’s no real story here; the Mongols are comical morons instead of frightening monsters and I never expect Cheh to do comedy. Working with Wu Ma, there is some action here. I also dig that Chiang’s character has a bow that shoots arrows of gold.
Even if this is a misstep, a year later, Cheh will make The Five Venoms.
This 88 Films set is a limited edition of 2000 copies. It has a limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Grégory Sacré; 1080p HD presentations on Blu-ray from masters supplied by Celestial Pictures; audio commentary on The Magnificent Trio by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) and martial artist and filmmaker Michael Worth; audio commentary on Magnificent Wanderers by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema; a video essay by Gary Bettinson, editor-in-chief of Asian Cinema Journal and a limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing on Chang Cheh by writer and critic James Oliver. You can get these films from MVD.
However, there is this film, which was directed and produced by Menahem Golan for American-International Pictures. Well, it was co-directed, as it’s said that Raphael Nussbaum assisted. You may know him from 1973’s Pets or the Frank Stallone movie Death Blow for Justice, AKA W.A.R.: Women Against Rape.
Starring Audie Murphy in his first non-Western since 1958, this has him playing Mike Merrick, a spy sent to Egypt to stop German scientist Professor Schlieben (George Sanders), who is developing a rocket that can be shot into the United States. Then, Muslims attack, wanting to destroy the rocket on their own and kill the American. So he runs, taking the scientist’s daughter (Marianne Koch, The Unnaturals) and tries to escape.
Written by Marc Bohm (who would also write X-Ray for Cannon) and Alexander Ramati (whose The Assisi Undergroundwas a Cannon movie, too), this almost starred Stephen Boyd and Senta Berger.
Audie Murphy may have been a war hero, but he’s no James Bond. Also, there is so much day for night and night for day.
Official synopsis: Tetsuo, a low-level yakuza, is double-crossed by his boss and attacked. His younger brother Kenji, an aspiring artist with no connections to crime, comes to his aid and kills Tetsuo’s assailant. Fearing repercussions from the yakuza, they flee to Manchuria where they risk coming under suspicion of rival gangs. Seijun Suzuki remains loyal to the conventions of the yakuza film, yet Tattooed Life contains flashes of his later creative genius, including a final act of explosive visual excess that has become one of the director’s all-time classic scenes.
Seijun Suzuki directs the yakuza drama Tattooed Life with flair, and although the majority of the film involves brotherly drama and romances that cannot be, the climax provides a fine payoff. Hideki Takahashi gives a standout performance as older brother and yakuza member Tetsuo, who does his best to hide the identities of himself and his younger brother Kenji (Kotobuki Hananomoto, also solid as a tortured artist consumed by love with their boss’s wife), as both are on the run after a yakuza murder.
Lighthearted moments prevent the film from becoming overly heavy, as camaraderie, cautiousness, suspicion, and semi-unrequited love are all at play. Lighter on violence than later films in the subgenre, there are still flashes of ferocity and danger. The members of the sizable cast all give fine performances, and just wait until you get a load of the beautifully choreographed swordplay. Tattooed Life comes strongly recommended from me for aficionados of Suzuki’s work, yakuza films, and Japanese cinema in general.
Tattooed Lifescreens on OVID in May 2025. For more information, visit https://www.ovid.tv/.
It’s also available from Third Window Films and has extras such as audio commentary by William Carroll, author of Seijun Suzuki and Postwar Cinema, a newly edited archival interview with Seijun Suzuki, a newly edited archival interview with art director Takeo Kimura, a trailer, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow, a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Tom Vick and a newly translated archival review of the film, all in a limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings. This is the first time this movie has been available in the West and you can get it from MVD.
Misawa (Rentaro Mikuni) is a post-war success. He works at a big ad agency and lives in a massive home with his wife (Masumi Harukawa) and their son. But then, two criminals — Kawanishi (Ko Nishimura) and Sabu (Hideo Murota) — show up and want to bring him into their plan, as they have kidnapped the baby of cancer researcher Dr. Sakata (Ken Mitsuda).
Directed by Kinji Fukasaku, this film arrives decades before home invasion movies were supposedly invented. It also has Misawa be no hero, instead a man who deals with the attempted assault of his wife by doing the same to her later. He’s living on credit, giving his life over to the foreign enemy who dropped two nukes on his countrymen. Maybe he’s as much a criminal as the bad guys. He definitely has less of a code to live by.
The Arrow Video Blu-ray release of The Threat — available for the first time outside of Japan — has extras including audio commentary by Japanese film expert Tom Mes; Warning Warning Danger Danger, a brand new 20-minute video appreciation by critic and Japanese film specialist Mark Schilling; the original theatrical trailer; an image gallery; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella; an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring writing on the film by Hayley Scanlon and a double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella. You can order it from MVD.
Director Matsuo Akinori’s Hong Kong/Japan coproduction Asia-Pol (AKA Asiapol Secret Service and Asia Secret Police Force; 1966) is a 1960s James Bond inspired movie with a difference . . . a few, actually, when compared with other Bond knock-offs from around the world. Overall, it’s an entertaining watch from the combined production efforts of the Shaw Brothers and Nikkatsu studios, which right there makes it worthy of recommendation.
Ryutaro (Jimmy Wang Yu, a major action star for the Shaw Brothers), a secret agent for the titular Japan-based organization, searches for Georgie Eaton (Jo Shishido), the ringleader behind a gold smuggling scheme who happens to have a highly selfish chip on his shoulder regarding wanting revenge on Japan. It’s possible that Ryutaro’s father may have been mixed up with the baddies, and he hopes to clear his deceased father’s name.
Interestingly, quite unlike James Bond and the heroic knock-off characters he inspired, Ryutaro is uninterested in women. This despite the fact that the beautiful Asia-Pol secretary Sachiko (Ruriko Asaoka) is making her interest in him strongly known. He also throws out a lovely young lass who was waiting for him in his room. The young woman who gets the most attention from him is Ming Hua (Fang Ying), who may be his sister and therefore is a pawn in the evil game Georgie and his underlings play.
Aside from the differences it sports, Asia-Pol shares many tropes and cliches in common with the 1960s Bond films and knock-offs. From “Ha! You’ve walked right into our trap!” lines to the main villain explaining his grandiose plans in detail before leaving the hero to escape his certain-doom predicament, it’s all here, just in case the viewer has never seen a sixties spy movie before.
There’s a certain charm to the lo-fi aspect of the inventive gadgets on display — from cigarette case phones to incendiary devices — and though the fight scenes and chase scenes also show budgetary limitations, everyone involved obviously gave their all. The prolific Akinori was no stranger to action cinema, and he keeps things interesting with solid pacing. The cast members all provide interesting performances, and Toshiro Mayazumi’s jazzy score fits the proceedings perfectly.
Aficionados of sixties secret agent adventures should find plenty to enjoy with Asia-Pol. Akinori and his cast bring a big helping of spirit to the film, making for a fun cinematic ride.
From January 31, Asia-Pol will be available on FILM MOVEMENT PLUS, which can be found on its own site at filmmovementplus.com or via Amazon Prime Video.
Created by ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, Esperanto is supposed to be a universal second language for international communication. In English, the name means one who hopes and it’s the largest constructed international auxiliary language with a few thousand speakers.
Zamenhof had some big dreams that go past making an easy and flexible language. He thought that this new way of speaking would lead to world peace.
Incubus is the second film to be made in the language, following Angoroj. This was directed and written by The Outer Limits creator Leslie Stevens, who used the cancellation of that show to make an art house movie with that show’s cinematographer Conrad L. Hall and composer Dominic Frontiere.
This is the story of a spring in Nomen Tuum that heals the sick and makes ugly people ravishing and oh yes, there are many succubus and incubus there to lure humans to Hell.
Kia (Allyson Ames) wants a pure man to be her perfect target, but her sister Amael (Eloise Hardt) tries to tell her that if she falls in love, she will lose so much. Then she goes after Marc (Shatner), a soldier here to heal his wounds of battle. He’s with his sister Arndis (Ann Atmar) who is so dumb that she loses her sight by staring at the sun.
This gets wild, as Marc’s purity defiles the demons, who call upon an incubus (Milos Milos, whose life is insane; he was the bodyguard for Alain Delon and a friend of Stevan Marković, who died owning sexually explicit photos of Claude Pompidou, wife of French President Georges Pompidou, causing a big scandal and an unsolved crime; Milos went to America where he married Cynthia Bouron, who had a paternity case against Cary Grant, and was beaten to death and found in the trunk of her car outside a grocery store. As for Milos Milos, he was dating Barbara Ann Thomason, the wife of Mickey Rooney, at the same time he was married to Cynthia Bouron, and they died in a murder suicide that many believed that Rooney engineered) to kill Marc and defile and murder his sister.
This was thought to be a lost film, shown only at the San Francisco Film Festival — where Esperanto speakers laughed at how bad the actors spoke — and in France. Between the language and the scandal over Milo killing his girlfriend and himself, the movie was kind of dead. It was found in 2001 when it was reassembled from existing materials.
The Arrow Video release of this movie has it restored in 4K from the last known surviving 35mm print. Extras include commentary by writer and genre historian David J. Schow, author of The Outer Limits: The Official Companion, a second commentary by William Shatner and a third by producer Anthony Taylor, cinematographer Conrad L. Hall and camera operator William Fraker; an alternate 1.37:1 presentation of the film; Words and Worlds: Incubus and Esperanto in Cinema, a newly filmed interview with genre historian Stephen Bissette; Internacia Lingvo: A History of Esperanto, a newly filmed interview with Esther Schor, author of Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language; An Interview with the Makers of Incubus, an archive interview by Schow with Taylor, Hall and Fraker; a trailer; a reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by Richard Wells and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Frank Collins and Jason Kruppa.
Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.
The first English language movie by Michelangelo Antonioni, who wrote the story with Tonino Guerra and Edward Bond, this was based on Julio Cortázar’s 1959 short story “Las babas del diablo.” It would go on to inspire The Conversation and Blow Out.
Thomas (David Hemmings) is bored with shooting models — Veruschka von Lehndorff appears as herself — and has been taking photos in hostels and parks — one of the people whose photos he takes is author Cortázar — trying to capture humanity. One of the people whose photos he has taken is Jane (Vanessa Redgrave), who demands that he stop shooting her. He feels like he’s being followed afterward and she asks that he give her the film. He gives her the wrong roll; she gives him a fake phone number. That’s when he blows up the film and discovers a dead body. He begins to have his life turned upside down, but this isn’t a film about the mystery of who is killed and why. As Antonioni said, Blow-Up isn’t about “man’s relationship with man, it is about man’s relationship with reality.”
That all sounds quite intelligent and raises the idea that this movie is about Thomas’ feelings that he is out of step with life and he’s given up on art for material gain, which causes him to fade away from the world, as even the tools he knows so well fail to ground him and prove the truth of whether or not he saw a murder. Even his mastery of the camera is now in question.
Or maybe the truth is they ran out of money.
Director Ronan O’Casey wrote to Roger Ebert and informed him that scenes that would have shown “the planning of the murder and its aftermath – scenes with Vanessa, Sarah Miles, and Jeremy Glover, Vanessa’s new young lover who plots with her to murder me – were never shot because the film went seriously over budget.”
This had to be incendiary when it was made — it still feels that way — with scenes of the Yardbirds performing live and Jeff Beck destroying an amp and a guitar and an open depiction of sexuality, including a threeway between Hemmings, Jane Birkin (who recorded the duet “Je t’aime… moi non plus” with Serge Gainsbourg) and Gillian Hills.
Antonioni didn’t want to explain the movie to anyone. He did say, “By developing with enlargers…things emerge that we probably don’t see with the naked eye. The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears. Hence there’s a moment in which we grasp reality, but then the moment passes. This was in part the meaning of Blow-Up.”
I love this thought that Hemmings had of the director, who was twice his age when this movie was made. “For a man of his age, he was impressively eager for new experiences. I think perhaps he was a little in thrall to the idea of swinging London and even once shooting had started, he spent a great deal of time hanging around in search of oscillation, often with photographers and models. Perhaps he considered it all research, but in his quest he raved ceaselessly, night after night in clubs and discotheques, in the company of the new goddesses of the fashion world, with his fierce eyes shining intensely in the dark, grave face as he drank grappa till his ears bubbled and tried to extract every last ounce from the swinging city – a man from Rome, a modern Bellini, determined to leave his mark in the middle of the liberated new world.”
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