Of all the early Cannon movies, I would never have expected that a roughie American version of an Italian western would be one of the ones released on blu ray — Ronin Flix — but life is always so surprising.

The Kid (Gary Allen, one of the movie’s writers) and his Mexican sidekick Amarillo (Jeff Kanew, the other one of the movie’s writers) ride through the Wild West of New Jersey, a place where The Kid meets and falls in love with a young girl played by Susannah Campbell. Most of this movie will have her being assaulted by bandits, miscreates and even her father, who kills himself and gets buried by The Kid.

William K. Hennigar directed Mr. Mari’s Girls and Seven Days Too Long, another early Cannon movie. As for Allen, he would go on to act in everything from Annie Hall to Alice, Sweet Alice and The Sentinel while Kanew would direct Revenge of the Nerds, Gotcha!, Tough Guys, Troop Beverly Hills and V.I. Warshawski.

This is a more than sleazy regional oddity. I can get behind lots of scummy stuff in a movie, but one that has near-constant sexual assault isn’t really my thing. Your mileage — I hope not — may vary.

Cannon was making money on Joe Sarno’s films, getting them into theaters as Sarno divided his time making movies in the United States and in Sweden, Germany and Denmark. His early films are stark black and white affairs and life is never easy for anyone within them. Also, the phrase Deep Inside is the greatest adult title ever and would eventually be used along with the names of actresses, such as Sarno’s uncredited X-rated Inside Jennifer Welles and Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle.

Millicent Redmond (Peggy Steffans, the Findlay Flesh trilogy) is a woman who is frigid in bed and therefore gets her pleasure manipulating others, like seeing what kind of trouble she can get Lina (Mary Park) into; plays around with the relationship between her old lesbian roommates Neva (Tia Walter) and Jean (Sheila Britt, The Swap and How They Make It); heats up older lesbian who loves younger women Mavis (Bella Donna, not the Belladonna whose retirement still makes one wistful) and gets Pam (Lara Danielli) involved with the absolute wrong man.

Sarno’s movies have an existential sadness that I absolutely love. I can only imagine what raincoaters felt about these movies, already worried about being in public watching filth, worried about the cops coming in and then the movie they went up against so much just depresses them beyond comprehension.

“And the heat goes on with Linda and Chuck, Lisa and Walter, Robin and John.”

That tagline and who is in this movie — thanks to the always astounding Grindhouse Cinema Database — is nearly all I could find about this movie.

Its director, William K. Hennigar, also made another movie Cannon released in their early days, The Wicked Die Slow, and ran camera on three Barry Mahon movies — A Good Time With a Bad Girl, Sex Club International and Run Swinger Run! — all made in 1967.

Some of its cast members did more than a one and done appearance, like Robin Nolan who shows up in Shaft and Teenage Gang Debs; Christopher Penncock was Gabriel Collins on Dark Shadows; Helen Stewart is also in Hennigar’s aforementioned The Wicked Die Slow; Verne Williams was Cujo in The Last Dragon and was part of Bad Guys Inc., a prank created by Joey Skaggs in The Art of the Prank); Maria Lease would go on to direct several adult films as Joanna Williams, Jack Williams, Wray Hamilton and Jennifer Ray; as an editor she used the name Mario Graves and edited Planet of the Dinosaurs; she appeared in Al Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein and finally, wrote and directed Dolly Dearest. That’s what I call a career!

As of the writing of this, one person each has written a user review and critic review on IMDB. Now, I join them, the smallest fan club of a movie that no one else wants or needs to watch. Yes, who was looking for Sally Kellerman and Michael Moriarty in a movie about a mysterious ice cave?

Made by Romanian director Radu Gabrea and writer Mike Werb (who would go on to make Darkman III: DIe, Darkman, Die; Face/Off, The Mask and Food of the Gods II), this movie is essential for those of us who have a David Mendenhall and have already watched Going Bananas and Over the Top. Or maybe you’re doing a marathon of the films of Virgil Frye and need something to pair with Revenge of the Ninja or Up from the Depths.

Mendenhall plays Alex Ostrow, whose mother Valerie (Sally Kellerman) is a scientist looking for a rare Chilean spider. They’re soon joined by Manny Wise (Moriarty) and his daughter Ona (Marcia Christie) on the hunt for the cave of that spider and pursued by Valerie’s husband Victor Talbot (Norbert Weisser) and his underling Frank Hagen (Virgil Frye).

At one point, Alex has to fix a TV for a tribe of cannibals so fierce that they cut off their victim’s manhood and shove it down their throat. He gets I Love Lucy to air, but they’ve seen it before and grow angry. This is a movie for kids — well, it’s PG-13 — but it’s also Cannon.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As part of Jess Franco Month, these movies were on the site on February 15 of this year. Now, Vinegar Syndrome is releasing them as only they can, newly scanned and restored in 4K from their 35mm original camera negatives. Beyond English and German langauge tracks, there;s also an alternate feature-length extended Spanish versions for both films (sourced from tape with newly translated English subtitles). Plus, Franco expert Stephen Thrower is interviewed about both movies, there are two archival Franco interviews and trailers and still galleries for both movies.

Also known as Sadist Erotica, The Case of the Two Beauties, Two Avenging Angels and Red Lips Sadisterotica, this mindblast from Jess Franco is kinda sorta a Eurospy movie, but you get the feeling that Mr. Franco just wants to get to the choking and nudity and whipping and forget whatever minor plot there is.

Basically: two lesbian detectives are trying to find criminals, so they themselves pose as a supercriminal named Red Lips (this goes back to Franco’s 1960 movie, Red Lips, which was before Bondmania). The police have no idea and the tone of the films go from swinging fun and humor to outright brutality with no warning whatsoever.

I have no idea if I can explain what happens in this movie, which starts with an attractive brunette — Franco loved his brunettes, so get ready — being ripped to shreds by a werewolf man while a rich guy named Klaus Thiller watches and paints it all.

Then Red Lips steals a painting and we learn that the two lesbians, the blonde Regina (Rosanna Yanni, Count Dracula’s Great Love) and redhead Diana (Janine Reynaud, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail) wear the mask and outfit when it suits them.

So yeah. The girls get hired to find someone that Thiller probably killed, they sleep with every man around them and yet still wind up with one another. Also: every few minutes, just when things threaten to get boring, there’s a go go dancing scene filled with nudity and blaring music.

This movie made no sense and I loved it for that reason.

Regina (Rosanna Yanni, Count Dracula’s Great Love) and Diana (Janine Reynaud, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail) are back again for the third Red Lips movie from Jess Franco.

If the last film — Two Undercover Angels — made no sense, guess what? This one doubles down, almost a stream of consciousness film made up of murders, jazz clubs, stripteases, our girls play saxophones and near-escapes.

The sell copy for this claims, “Stiffs, Satanists and Sapphic sadists all after a secret formula for human clones!”

Maybe it’s the fact that I watched Jess Franco movies one after another and pounded what’s left of my brain into putty, but I loved every single minute of this movie.

Also known as Castle of the Doomed, it feels like Franco ran out of ideas here and just decided to have more things happen to the point that continuity and plot became the contrivances that lesser people try to bring up as necessary elements for a movie.

Nope. Not to Jess Franco.

Knife throwing clones? Evil lesbians? Good lesbians? Satanic murderers? Yeah. It’s got all that and an ending that doesn’t solve anything.

The failure of this movie would bring an end to the girls’ adventures until 1999’s Red Silk, although you can perhaps consider Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties a spiritual side quest.

But I think you should only watch a few Jess Franco movies in a row if you want to survive. And my head is already throbbing.

Also note: Two Undercover Angels had a monster in it. Kiss Me Monster has no monster.

Somewhere in there is a koan that will change your life.

As María Pérez (Ofelia Guilmáin) receives last rites, she tells Father Andrés (Enrique Aguilar) about the influence that a religious medal — The Scalpular — had on her sons’ — Julián (Carlos Cardán) and Pedro (Enrique Lizalde) — lives. Meanwhile, two robbers wait outside to attack and rob the priest.

Julián is a soldier who soon deserts the army to join the rebels — the film takes place on during the Mexican Revolution — blowing up a train before he’s arrested. A sympathetic soldier helps him escape, yet Julián denies the power of the medal — denying God — and is shot and badly wounded.

Pedro falls for a woman well above his social status, Rosario (Alicia Bonnet’s), and narrowly avoids being killed thanks to the power of the medal. It turns out her uncle wants their relationship stopped at all costs, so he sends a letter about an evening rendezvous from Rosario while hiring bandits to kill him.

Andrés and Federico, the other two sons, have been lost since being kidnapped by a gang, but perhaps the priest will soon meet them and they will all learn how the power of the scapular binds them all. And that strangely, the old woman has been dead for seven years.

Director Servando González makes a whimsical yet melancholy fantastic film here, powered by a script by Jorge Durán Chavez and Rafael García Travesi, who wrote 94 movies, including several Santo films and The Mummies of Guanajuato.

This movie looks beyond gorgeous, even as it shows scenes of condemned and hung men swinging after their deaths. Somehow uniting multiple genre and countries of cinema, as well as being folk horror by way of Mexican Catholicism, this movie finds death everywhere and still finds a reason to smile (and by frightened at the same time).

You can watch this on Tubi.

Take Noriaki Yuasa, the director of the original eight Gamera movies, and pair him with Kazuo Umezu, who created The Drifting Classroom, and have them make a movie that should be for kids but is the type of motion picture that destroys minds and reaps souls (and is filled with nightmarish visions and brutal murders).

Sayuri has returned to her family after years in an orphanage but trouble has followed her. Before she even arrives, a maid dies of a heart attack, her mother has amnesia from a car wreck and her sister won’t leave the attic, all while her father ignores them to study poisonous snakes and a fanged figure haunts her dreams.

Soon, our heroine is staying up in that attic with her scarred sister who tells her that she just wants to taste her hands and who breaks her dolls and oh yeah, rips a frog in half and throws it in her face. Yes, a kid-friendly movie.

And an amazing one at that.

If you can’t make the fest — you can get a pass NOW at the official site — The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch recently made its worldwide blu ray debut and home video premiere outside Japan thanks to Arrow. This release also has commentary by film historian David Kalat, an interview with manga and folklore scholar Zack Davisson, a trailer and an image gallery. You can order the blu from MVD.

It’s also available on the ARROW player. Head over to ARROW to start your 30 day free trial (subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly). ARROW is available in the US, Canada and the UK on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices , Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.

Find a Place to Die is a remake of the American western Garden of Evil. After a long fight with a gang of killers led by Chanto (Mario Dardanelli), Lisa (Pascale Petit) escapes with her life while her husband does not. She hires a former Confederate officer named Joe Collins (Jeffrey Hunter) and another gang to gain revenge. But all that gold that Lisa and her husband had found — plus her beauty — put everyone against each other.

There’s also the crazy character of Reverend Riley, a man of the cloth who doesn’t deny himself the pleasures of the flesh. Played by Alfredo Lastretti, he’s the best part of this movie.

Director Giuliano Carnimeo made Light the Fuse… Sartana Is Coming, Have a Nice Funeral on Me, Amigo… Sartana, Sartana’s Here… Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin and I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death under the name Anthony Ascott, as well as They Call Him Cemetery, The Case of the Bloody Iris and Ratman. He co-wrote the film with Lamberto Benvenuti, who made The Legacy of Caine.

Sadly, a year after this movie, Hunter was injured in an explosion gone wrong making the crime movie Cry Chicago (¡Viva América!). On his way back to the U.S., he went into shock and couldn’t speak or move. Doctors could only find a displaced vertebra and a concussion, yet within seven months, he would suffer an intracranial hemorrhage while walking down the stairs at his home, crack his skull and die after brain surgery was not successful. He was only 42.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Luke Barrett (Antonio Sabato) wakes up next to a dead man and no memory of how he arrived at this point. The bullet meant to kill him just grazed him, giving him a concussion and amnesia. He rides into town and learns that he and his partner Donovan were just about to kill his brother Victor (Klaus Kinski) for cash. How did he get here? And what happens after?

Twice a Judas was shot by Aristide Massaccesi, who we all know and love, and features Claudia Rivelli as Luke’s wife. She’s Ornella Muti’s sister in real life.

The strangest thing about this movie is that the bank that is trying to remove Victor is presented as being for the people, which we all know in no way can be true. Maybe they’re just a little less horrible than Victor, a land owner who wants his land, he wants it farmed and then he wants everyone else’s land too.

Director Nando Cicero mostly made comedies, while writer Jaime Jesús Balcázar wrote The Devil’s Honey, Jess Franco’s The Castle of Fu Manchu and Goldface, the Fantastic Superman.

You can read another take on this movie as part of Drive-In Friday: Kinski Spaghetti Westerns.

Between Between God, the Devil and a Winchester and the Italian title of this movie, Anche nel west c’era una volta Dio (God Was In the West, Too, At One Time), I think that it has my favorite Italian western title. And despite a tagline promising “A orgy of bloodletting that very few will survive,” it’s actually an adaption of Treasure Island but with horses and cowboys.

Directed by Marino Girolami (Zombie Holocaust) and written by Tito Carpi (Marta, Tentacles), Manuel Martínez Remís and Amedeo Sollazzo (Primitive Love, Two MafiosI Against Goldginger), this movie works, with the desert sands being the seas and outlaws taking over for pirates. Treasure remains treasure.

Future Godfrey Ho victim Richard Harrison plays Father Pat Jordan, who recognizes that the stolen gold belongs to a mission and makes the mission his. Gilbert Roland plays the Long John Silver — he has an iron arm instead of a wooden leg — as Juan Chasquisdo. There are even eyepatches and hooks for hands out here in the west.

Sadly, the movie doesn’t ever really get exciting despite the two titles that it has. It’s a boy’s adventure when you need Italian westerns to be filled with blood.

You can watch this on Tubi.