69 EsSINtial SWV Titles (September 15 – 21): Klon, who came up with this list, said “This isn’t the 69 BEST SWV movies, it isn’t my 69 FAVORITE SWV movies, my goal was to highlight 69 of the MOST SWV movies.” You can see the whole list here, including some of the ones I’ve already posted.

The Oumi Kingdom is in shambles after General Daijo Yuki (Bin Amatsu) and his ninja Orochimaru (Ryūtarō Ōtomo) kill Lord Ogata (Shinichiro Hayashi) and his wife. Soldiers loyal to Ogata have succeeded in helping his son Ikazuchi-Maru to escape but Orochimaru transforms into a serpent and tries to kill him. Luckily, a giant eagle flies in and saves Ikazuchi-Maru.

Trained by Dojin Hiki (Nobuo Kaneko), Ikazuchi-Maru grows to become a ninja who specializes in toad magic. One evening, Hiki is attacked by Orochimaru and it’s revealed that the old man once taught the evil ninja and was also the eagle that saved our hero, who arrives too late — along with Tsunade (Tomoko Ogawa) — to save him. Now out for revenge, he goes after the ninja while Tsunade follows, given a spider pin by the spider woman who saved her.

Ikazuchi-Maru renames himself Jiraiya and becomes friends with Saki (Yumi Suzumura) and her little brother Shirota (Takao Iwamura), saving them from Daijo Yuki’s men. But oh, the twists and turns, as it turns out that while she loves our hero, Tsunade is also the daughter of Orochimaru! And there’s still a battle between the ninjas in their toad and serpent forms to follow.

Man, I absolutely loved this movie. It combines the martial arts movie with kaiju and has so many strange things about it. People hopefully loved it too, but I bet so many people who watched the American-International TV versions just thought it was dumb. Not me!

AIP also redubbed the monsters, so the Orochi-Maru Dragon sounds like Godzilla and Gaira from War of the Gargantuas, the Ikazuchi-Maru/Jiraiya Toad roars like Rodan, the giant eagle is Mothra and Sunate’s giant spider now sounds like a metallic monster and also has the voice of Kiyla from Ultraman. They also removed the opening and closing songs and replaced them with basic instrumentals. The toad also was used on the Toei series Kamen no ninja Aka-Kage.

You could almost see a lot of Star Wars in this movie. An evil magic fighter orphans a young boy who is destined to have great power who is saved by an old man and raised in the ways of the very same magic. He becomes friends with the daughter of that enemy — Leia is, after all, Darth Vader’s daughter — and he finally becomes strong enough in magic that he can fight back and the evil magic fighter becomes briefly good before his heroic sacrifice. Sure, we can all get behind that Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey, but sometimes, things get a little ripped off.

Speaking of that Hero’s Journey, this is based on a Japanese folktale, The Tale of the Gallant Jiraiya, and was directed by Tetsuya Yamanouchi (Akakage, The Ninja Hunt) and written by Masaru Igami (Prince of Space, the main writer of Kamen Rider, Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot) and Mokuami Kawatake.

The title in Japan was Great Mystic Dragon Battle, which is super metal, and it has even better ones over the entire world, like Grand Duel in Magic, Ninja Apocalypse and Monsters of the Apocalypse. If you’ve ever seen the Taiwanese movie Young Flying Hero, that feels like a remake of this movie.

Frank Henenlotter’s Sexy Shockers (September 1 – 7) We all know Frank Hennenlotter as the director of the Basket Case films, Bad Biology, Brain Damage, and Frankenhooker, but he’s also a cinematic curator of the crass! An academic of the pathetic! A steward of sleaze! A sexton of the sexual and the Sexy Shocker series is his curio cabinet of crudity. Skin and sin are mixed together in these homegrown oddities, South American rediscoveries, and Eurohorror almost-classics. Your mind may recoil with erotic revulsion at the sights contained within these films, so choose wisely!

Mondo Cane 2 (1963): New Guinea, Germany, Singapore, Portugal, Australia, America and beyond, no country is safe when Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi have their cameras rolling. Paolo Cavara, who helped make Mondo Cane, had moved on to make other films, including Black Belly of the Tarantula and Plot of Fear.

This time around, their journey takes us through vivisections, lynchings, tranvestitites, sex clubs, alligator hunts and a trip to a mortician’s school. Everything in this consists of cutting room footage of the first film, including a scene where a monk sets himself ablaze that was totally faked with the help of special effects wizard Carlo Rambaldi.

As the mondo had grown beyond their film, this time Jacopetti and Prosperi go abti-establishment, even laughing about how the dog scenes in the original movie kept them off screens in England. They’re incredulous and probably desensitized over all that they have seen.

Mondo Freudo (1966): Mondo Freudo is all about “a world of sex and the strange & unusual laws that govern it,” as told by two absolute maniacs: the producer/director/distributor team of Lee Frost and Bob Cresse, with Cresse himself ranting as we try and make it through another swing through the world of mondo.

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.

This was written by Joan Gardner (who did tons of cartoon voices), Robert Silliphant (who wrote The Creeping Terror and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?) and Don Marquis.

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.

It’s 66 minutes of your life. Live it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

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.”

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?