When a general’s son is taken hostage as ransom to free a bandit leader, the general’s daughter Golden Swallow (Cheng Pei-pei, who Western audiences may recognize as Jade Fox from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) goes to rescue her brother and battle the bandit gang. She’s protected by a drunk named Fan Da-Pei (Yueh Hua), who is really Drunken Cat, a secret martial arts master, who saves her from a poison dart.
The bandits have worked their way into a monastery led by an evil abbot named Liao Kung (Yeung Chi-hing), who once helped Fan Da-Pei to be accepted into the school that taught them both their martial arts skills. As a result, the hero doesn’t want to battle him. He also believes that there’s no way their battle won’t end in death.
Director King Hu also made A Touch of Zen, which is an essential Hong Kong film. There’s an urban legend that Jackie Chan is rumored to play one of the child singers at the beginning of the film, but Pei-Pei Cheng has stated that he is not in the movie.
Softcore Smorgasbord (August 4 – 10) All of the movies on this list have at one time or another been available through Something Weird Video. I’m sure I’ve missed some but many of them are still available on their website (until the end of 2024). These are their vintage softcore movies listed under categories with ridiculous names like: Nudie Cuties, Sexy Shockers, Sexo a-go-go, Twisted Sex, and Bucky Beaver’s Double Softies.
Two spy groups, M.A.F.I.A. and S.I.N. — they never tell what those mean — are at war. On the side of good, or M.A.F.I.A., we have Agent Silk Suit (Sal Rogge). The evil, or S.I.N., is led by Dr. Sexus (Bob Oran) and his henchmen Poontang Plenty (Joyana Frederics, The Brick Dollhouse), Bigjob (Rick Wright) and several women wearing the finest lingerie of 1966. Everyone seems like they get along well enough and are all after and his assistant Karen (Lisa Ryan), who uses their invisibility formula to disappear and show up naked. And before long, the good guys and bad guys are on the same side and trying to find that invisibility pill.
This is a world where women suck toes with champagne on them before killing people. 1966 spying was way different, I guess. This was directed by C. Davis Smith, Doris Wishman’s cinematographer, and is like a radio play about Fu Manchu played over softcore action that never really gets all that sexy, except for the aside where a naked woman (June Robert, The Beast Who Killed Women) poses while drinking all that pasteurized liquid.
Knowing that Wishman actually had a cinematographer may short out your central nervous system. This also has some roughie action with a steam torture that doesn’t get all that upsetting. You know how old wrestling magazines used to tell you about the secret world of apartment wrestling? This is like that, shot in New York City places where rent was cheap.
Smith also directed the sex scenes in Wishman’s Satan Was a Lady and Come With Me My Love. Beyond this movie, he also directed File X for Sex: The Story of the Perverted, Graffiti and All My Men under his name and In Flight Service and To Turn a Trick as Charles Andrew. He also edited the video for Run-DMC’s “KIng of Rock.”
I love The Rialto Report, which interviewed Smith, who said of this movie, “People loved spy films at that time. … James Bond movies, I Spy, Get Smart. I figured a sex version would be a good money-maker. And it did ok. I stole all the ideas. The title came from TV series, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and I stole the name of our heroine from the Bond movie, Goldfinger. Except our heroine wasn’t called Pussy Galore but Poontang Plenty! Special Agent 0069, of course.”
He added, “The budget for S.I.N. was $5,000 and I got that from these two stunt men – Sam Stewart and Bob Oran. In fact we shot most of it at Bob’s apartment, which he used as a basic film studio. Sam and Bob were part of the same repertory company that existed making sex films in the 1960s. Sam had an acting part in S.I.N. too. He married one of the regular actresses, Sheila Britt, and they’ve been married ever since.”
Joyana Frederics is like an East Coast Tura Satana, doing karate movies and appearing vaguely Asian. Other than the two adult films she acted in, she appeared in two episodes of Adam-12 and an episode of Ironside.
Golden Oldies Week (July 27 – August 3) Something Weird Video have released such a wide range of movies over the last 30 years that trying to categorize them can be tricky. They started out as a gray market mail order distributor (aka a bootlegger) not unlike the Cape Copy Center or Sinister Cinema and eventually moved into the niche se ploit titles that would set them apart. The movies on this list are the kind of cult genre titles that were the bread and butter of many of the bootleg companies of the 90s and most were not exclusive to SWV. If you look in the catalogs or on the website these would be under categories like “Nightmare Theatre’s Late Night Chill-O-Rama Horror Show,” “Jaws of the Jungle,” “Sci-fi Late Night Creature Feature Show,” or “Spies, Thighs & Private Eyes.” Many of these are currently available as downloads from the SWV site (until the end of 2024)!
Directed, shot by and edited by Jon Hall, who also plays Dr. Otto Lindsay, The Beach Girls and the Monster is the kind of strange movie that I love so much. The surf footage was shot by Dale Davis — who also is in this as Tom — and he also made the surf documentaries Walk on the Wet Side, Strictly Hot and The Golden Breed. Even better, it has sculptures, the monster’s head,and the Kingsley the Lion, which were all created by Walker Edmiston — who plays Mark — who had a kid’s show in Los Angeles and went on to be the voice of Ernie the Keebler Elf, several characters on Lidsville, Sigmund from Sigmund and the Sea Monster, the Zuni Fetish Doll in Trilogy of Terror and Magneto on the 1980s Spider-Man, as well as playing Professor Crandall on The Dukes of Hazzard.
Can it get even better than that?
Let me introduce you to the The Watusi Dancing Girls” rom Hollywood’s Whisky a Go Go club on Sunset Boulevard. And how about that soundtrack with appearances by The Hustlers and the theme song “Dance Baby Dance” by Frank Sinatra Jr. and Joan Janis.
Bunny (Gloria Neil, Sarah in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) is found dead after being attacked by a seawood covered lizard creature. No, not Slithis. Or Zaat. Or one of the Humanoids from the Deep. This, according to Dr. Lindsay, is a fantigua fish that has grown large enough to exist out of the ocean. Did it grow lungs? What kind of scientist is he? And why does he call the kids loafers and little tramps?
Maybe he’s mad that his son Richard Lindsay (Arnold Lessing) is a beach bum, that his best friend Mark (Edmiston) has moved in and sculpts, and that his wife Vicky (Sue Casey, Evilspeak) drinks and flirts all the time, seeming like the kind of woman that John Ashley would certainly sleep with and cuck him were this Blood Island and not Santa Monica. Richard was there when Bunny died, so all he cares about now is his girlfriend Jane (Elaine DuPont) and living life for fun instead of doing research with his old man.
In case you can’t guess, there’s no such thing as the monster. Yes, the doctor is dressing up, all to make his son more serious by killing everyone that he is friends with as well as getting rid of his second wife.
Also known as Monster from the Surf and Surf Terror, this movie is totally The Horror of Party Beach but I don’t care. It’s like a sitcom or Scooby-Doo episode except that all sorts of people die and it ends with a misunderstood father, who is dressed as an undersea monster, driving his car off a cliff and blowing up real good.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Last of the Secret Agents? was on the CBS Late Movie on July 8, 1975.
Marty Allen and Steve Rossi — who used the catchphrase “Hello Dere!” — were a comedy from 1957 until 1968 that appeared on over 700 television shows including 44 appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.
This film is their spy spoof, featuring Nancy Sinatra acting and singing “The Last of the Secret Agents,” which is also in the Billy Murray movie The Man Who Knew Too Little.
Paramount Pictures knew all about comedy teams. In the 1940s, they made big money off of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in the 1950s. There was the hope that Allen and Rossi could do the same here, but it didn’t happen. That said, they did make Allen and Rossi Meet Dracula and Frankenstein.
In this movie, they play tourists who are recruited by the Good Guys Institute to battle Zoltan Schubach and THEM, who are stealing art treasures.
It was directed by Norman Abbott, who worked a lot with Jack Benny and was a director for the Get Smart! TV show, amongst many other programs.
Lou Jacobi shows up (he’s Murray, the man who gets lost inside his TV in Amazon Women on the Moon), as does Thordis Brandt (The Witchmaker), Harvey Korman and the one-time wife of Russ Meyer, Edy Williams.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Dracula: Prince of Darkness was on the CBS Late Movie on March 12, 1973 and July 12, 1974.
Made six years after The Brides of Dracula — which has Baron Meinster (David Peel) as the antagonist instead of Dracula — and is the third of nine Hammer Dracula movies, this was shot at the same time as Rasputin, the Mad Monk and played double features with The Plague of the Zombies. If you went, you got plastic vampire fangs and zombie eyeglasses.
It begins by reminding us how 1958’s Dracula ended with Doctor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) finally ending the reign of Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) with sunlight. Ten years later, Father Sandor (Andrew Keir) has already tired of burying bodies as if they were vampires. After all, Dracula is gone.
That said, he still tells four English tourists — Diana (Suzan Farmer), Charles (Francis Matthews), Helen (Barbara Shelley) and Alan (Charles Tingwell) — not to visit Karlsbad. But no, the Kent family are dumb and go anyway, even as their carriage driver refuses to take them any closer. They decide to go look at a castle where the servant, Klove (Philip Latham), tells them that his master Count Dracula always wanted to give a place for visitors to stay. He says that and soon kills Alan, mixing his blood with Dracula’s ashes to bring the king of the vampires back, then luring Helen into his crypt where he can feast on her. Charles and Diana barely make it out alive and are saved by Father Sandor.
Dracula has followers everywhere, even amongst the church, but as always, the protagonists survive. Dracula dies in an interesting way here, drowning under ice, which I was not aware was a way to kill him. This scene almost really did kill stuntman Eddie Powell, who became trapped underwater.
Lee wasn’t too pleased with this film, saying, “I didn’t speak in that picture. The reason was very simple. I read the script and saw the dialogue! I said to Hammer, “If you think I’m going to say any of these lines, you’re very much mistaken.”” Writer Jimmy Sangster denied this, claiming,”…vampires don’t chat. So I didn’t write him any dialogue. Christopher Lee has claimed that he refused to speak the lines he was given…So you can take your pick as to why Christopher Lee didn’t have any dialogue in the picture. Or you can take my word for it. I didn’t write any.”
Regardless of this, he, Sangster and director Terence Fisher would keep on making Hammer movies.
Roadshow Rarities (June 30 – July 6) In the old days of theatrical releases some of the more lavish movies would be promoted by holding limited screenings in large cities. These roadshow releases would generate hype before the nationwide release and allow producers to tweak the film to the audience’s reaction. This model also worked for low budget productions that may have had no intention of a wide release. These explo roadshows traveled an informal circuit of theaters, churches, revival tents, high school auditoriums and anywhere else they could run a projector. They frequently promised more than they delivered and left town before the angry audience could catch up to them. Through the restoration efforts of SWV many of these movies have survived to piss audiences off to this very day!
Somehow, this West German movie originally called The Doctor Speaks Out (Der Arzt stellt fest…) played to American audiences as The Wages of Sin and The Price of Sin. Sure, in its native country it was a mediation on abortion, but over here, it was a chance to see a woman fully nude. Never mind that she was having a baby at the time.
Being that this played the grindhouse circuit, it also came complete with a not-real doctor discussing the miracle of birth and then, yes, showing more babies come out into the world in shocking detail.
Those moments are on the Something Weird blu ray re-release that Kino Lorber has just put out. You also get a second movie, The Misery and Fortune of Women, audio commentary by film historian Alexandra Heller-Nicholas a medical lecture and book pitch by Donn Davison, who released this movie in America and two baby birthing films, Life and Its Secrecies and Triplets by Cesarean Section.
What an astounding time for movies. And just think — you can have this on your shelf, just like I do, when someone is at your house and wonders, “You know, I’ve always wanted to see triplets get cut out of a human being.”
June 27: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Barbara Steele! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
Michael Reeves only directed three movies: this film, The Sorcerers and Witchfinder General. He also had something to do with Castle of the Living Dead* and assisted Don Siegel, worked for Jack Cardiff on The Long Ships and for Henry Levin on his movie Genghis Khan.
Made in 21 days for hardly any money — even when Barbara Steele made $1,000 for one day of work, that day was 18 hours long — and most of the crew is in the movie. Reeves also wrote the script, along with F. Amos Powell and Mel Welles (the director of Lady Frankenstein), under the name Michael Byron.
Two hundred years ago in Transylvania, a witch named Vardella was burned at the stake, but not before threatening to come back for revenge. This would end up ruining the honeymoon of Philip (Ian Ogilvy) and Veronica (Barbara Steele) and that’s not even counting the squalid hotel owned by Ladislav Groper (Welles).
As they enjoy breakfast, Count Von Helsing (John Karlsen) delights in sharing the legend of Dracula and the story Vardella. Well, those foreigners have no interest in this weird old man and blow him off. That night, Phillip catches Groper peeping on his wife and beats him into oblivion. If that doesn’t make this a rough wedding getaway, he wrecks their car into a lake and when they pull out his new bride, it’s the dead body of the witch instead of the gorgeous Steele.
Now, Phillip has to make nice with Von Helsing and be part of his plan to take this dead body, drug it and perform an exorcism to get his wife back. It seems like a lot of work, but I’ve done so much more for women who couldn’t stand in the brightness of Steele’s flawless alabaster skin.
How do you kill a witch? You drown it. That’s also how you find out if someone is a witch.
This played double features in America — distributed by American-International Pictures — with The Embalmer.
*Depending on who is asked, Reeves either did minor second unit work, a polish on the script’s dwarf character, a complete takeover of the movie or nothing at all.
Joe Sarno week (June 16 – 22) Joe Sarno was called the Bergman of 42nd St, but don’t let that stop you from watching his movies! He was able to shape dramatic stories that were entertaining and of-the-moment while working with tight budgets and inexperienced performers but he never lost sight of why people were buying the tickets – HOT SEX!
In the sex films of the 60s and 70s, the line between sex and the occult is as thin as the flimsiest of garments. Carla (Laurene Clair, who was also known as Patricia McNair and is also in director and writer Joe Sarno’s Deep Inside) goes from visiting a Tarot card reader with her friend Enid (Carol Holleck, who was in Sarno’s The Swap and How They Make It) to joining The Cult of Pan,a coven of sexually open ladies led by card reader Martha (Helena Clayton, Suburbia Confidential) and who draw on the power of red roses for their psychosexual energy.
What she doesn’t know is that Enid and Martha have worked together to bring her into the orbit of these women, all to get her away from living with her dominating Aunt Julie (Liz Love, also known as Bella Donna — and not Michelle Sinclair — and who was in Sarno’s My Body Hungers and the Joseph Marzano version of Venus In Furs) and cousin Tracey (Laura London), who is constantly reminding people that she’s met a nice boy and plans on marrying him.
That’s not the life that Carla wants but she has no idea how to get there.
“Once you have tasted the wine of Delphi and touched a rose from the garden of Pan to your breast, you will forever be a priestess of Pan.” That’s what the ladies say and soon, they’re drinking, rubbing flowers all over their barely clothed bodies and everyone gets as kinky as a one room shot 1966 softcore movie can get. I mean, the very idea that women had that secret garden and weren’t dependent on men for their pleasure, much less could get even more orgasmic bliss alone or with another woman, takes the very idea of fantasy and makes men force head on that they really aren’t necessary unless they rise above their normal roles and become enlightened.
Even the suburban women so ready to spend the rest of their lives in a minute every few nights of the missionary position soon realize that striking one another with thorned blooms and committing blasphemy as they praise Pan. Before the end of this movie, Aunt Julie and Tracey have abandoned their chaste ways and are after every man they can get, as well as becoming addicted to those roses that come every day to their door.
How amazing is the world of Sarno, another below the Hollywood budget filmmaker who created black and white worlds of dubious women who are content to not live in the world of black and white, no matter how they’re shot, and become something else, something other?
June 17: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Lucio Fulci! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
I was reading through Letterboxd reviews the other day and I saw someone mention in a Fulci horror film that there was a humorous moment that they didn’t enjoy but that made sense because Fulci wasn’t known for making comedies.
Of the 57 movies Lucio Fulci directed that are listed on Letterboxd, 16 are comedies.
Anyways…
Like many of his comedy films (thirteen, in case you were guessing), this stars the team of Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia. As always, they play two Sicilian morons. Franco is completely deranged and uses his body and wild face to try and communicate in the loudest ways possible while Ciccio is the mustache-having bully who thinks he’s the more intelligent of the duo but is quite dumb.
In this movie, they have an older brother who is such an incredible thief that he is known as the Master. Paolo (Maro Pisu) wants his brothers to stop being criminals so that they don’t lead the police to him, so he sets them up with money, homes and girlfriends. Yet the two are so annoying that they can never keep these women and way too dumb to not want to be criminals like their brother.
Then Paolo meets two singers, Marilina (Lena von Martens, Operation Counterspy) and Rosalina (Mirella Maravidi, Requiescant, Terror-Creatures from the Grave) who are totally gorgeous and just as insipid as his siblings. He sets them up and leaves the country to hire experts to pull off his most daring and final heist, robbing the Bank of Italy.
The problem is that the ladies are gangsters and want the brothers to show just how good they are at being crooks and pull off their brother’s plan before he gets back.
A heist film that is a comedic version of Seven Golden Men, this even finds Franco and Ciccio dressing up as Diabolik to rob a safe. Plus, you get appearances by Solvi Stubing (Strip Nude for Your Killer), Kitty Swan (House of 1,000 Dolls), Maria Luisa Rispoli (Kriminal) and Adriana Ambesi (Fangs of the Living Dead).
I have to confess that I hated the movies of Franchi and Ingrassia when I first watched them but now find them charming. Maybe it was Argento discussing. how great they are in an interview I saw with him or it could be that I had to learn how to appreciate their basic humor. However I got here, I laughed several times while watching this and loved the space age sets and opening super thief action.
John Duncombe (Anthony Quayle), the British consul in Florence, has come home from his wife’s funeral and makes the decision to tell his son Andrea (Stefano Colagrande) that his mother is dead. He hides the truth from his other son, Milo (Simone Giannozzi).
Andrea has to become a grown-up well before he should, while Milo is allowed to be a child and can act has badly as he wants. As for their father, he becomes absent from their lives until it is almost too late.
Director Luigi Comencini understands the time that exists and is so fragile between being a child and an adult. He shows how all three of these men navigate this loss in their own ways. It’s a really dramatic film that made me consider how I went from a child to a grown-up and how my father made his journey as well.
This was remade in 1984 as Misunderstood with Gene Hackman in the lead role.
The Radiance Films blu ray of Misunderstood has a 2K restoration from the original negative, as well as extras such as interviews with co-screenwriter Piero De Bernardi, Cristina Comencini and Michel Ciment; a visual essay by David Cairns on Comencini and the filmmaker’s affinity for childhood stories and a trailer. This limited edition of 3000 copies is presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings. There’s also a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original promotional materials and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing bycritic Manuela Lazic and a newly translated archival interview with Comencini.
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