From 1959 to 1971, Filipino filmmakers Eddie Romero and Gerry de León —along with Hemisphere Pictures marketing consultant Samuel M. Sherman—booked flights for drive-in audiences to Blood Island. This dark den of zombies, medical experiments, wanton women and terror would last four movies that fans of exploitation films have obsessed over ever since.

I’ve loved these movies ever since I first discovered them when Severin’s first re-releases came out a few years ago. I was so lucky to see many of them at the drive-in.

Now, Severin is re-releasing all of them – scanned uncut in 4K with improved color and audio plus over 8 combined hours of special features – in a new box set that you can get directly from the Severin Films Webstore.

Terror Is a Man (1959): Call it Blood Creature, Creature from Blood Island, The Gory Creatures, Island of Terror, Gore Creature, or its most well-known title, Terror Is a Man, but what you should really call it is the first of the Blood Island films. These movies, produced by Eddie Romero and Kane W. Lynn, include Brides of Blood, The Mad Doctor of Blood Island and Beast of Blood.  You can also consider The Blood Drinkers a Blood Island movie.

This movie was in theaters for nearly ten years—until 1969, when distributor Sam Sherman re-released it as Blood Creature with a warning bell that alerted the audience to impending gore.

William Fitzgerald (Richard Derr, who was almost The Shadow in a TV pilot that was turned into a movie called The Invisible Avenger) is the lone survivor of a ship that has crashed on Blood Island. Also, there are Dr. Girard (Francis Lederer, whose Simi Hills home is considered a landmark residence), his frustrated wife Frances (Greta Thyssen, who was in three of the Three Stooges shorts and Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers) and his assistant Walter Perrera.

Much like The Island of Dr. Moreau, Girard is making half-man, half-animals like the panther he’s been experimenting on that tends to attack villagers. Of course, the doctor’s wife falls in love with the protagonist, and the beast gets loose and kills all sorts of people, including his creator. But hey — that mummy-like cat-eyed fiend seems to survive at the end, as a small island boy sends him away on a rowboat.

Gorgeous natives. Strong men. Crazy doctors. Werecats in bandages. Blood Island. Indeed, this one has it all.

The Severin release includes extras such as interviews with Samuel M. Sherman, co-director Eddie Romero, Pete Tombs (co-author of Of Immoral Tales), and critic Mark Holcomb, a trailer, and a poster and still gallery.

Brides of Blood (1968): This movie, which was originally known as Island of Living Horror, was rereleased with Count Dracula’s Great Love. The former was retitled Cemetery Girls and the latter was renamed Grave Desires.

Much like all of these Filipino horror films, it’s completely bonkers.

The tropics are the place for three Americans to find, well, complete insanity.

Dr. Paul Henderson, a nuclear scientist investigating nuclear bomb tests, is played by Kent Taylor. He was once a major star, playing the title role in fifty-eight Boston Blackie movies. His name is also half the inspiration for Superman’s alter ego (the other star is Clark Gable).

He’s married to the gorgeous but always ready-to-cuckold Carla, Beverly Powers. Beverly was once the highest-paid exotic dancer in the world before becoming an actress and starring with Elvis in Speedway, Kissin’ Cousins and Viva Las Vegas. She also pretty much played herself in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. After all that acting, she became a minister with The Living Ministry in Maui, Hawaii.

Then there’s Jim Farrell, a young Peace Corps member played by John Ashley. Ashley was an AIP star who appeared in Dragstrip Girl and sang his song “Let Yourself Go Go Go” in Zero Hour! He was also a regular in their beach movies, appearing at Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, Beach Blanket Bingo, and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.

After living in Oklahoma for a while, Ashley produced these movies with Hemisphere Pictures, living in the Philippines for part of the year and helping to create these little bits of madness.

Our protagonists soon learn that Blood Island is cursed. It’s now a place that has been irradiated by nuclear fallout from those bomb tests, with vines that attack people and butterflies that bite. There’s also a beast in the jungle that tears women apart to get off because, hey, why not?

Carla learns that the beast is one of the villagers, Esteban, but it comes at the price of her own life. She’s an early “sex and people who want sex must be destroyed” casualty decades before this type of destruction de rigeur.

Between carnivorous trees eating Carla’s remains and the movie ending in a vast orgy, this is probably unlike any other film you’ve seen before. You can say that about every single film from this studio.

The press book for the movie suggested that all female theatergoers would get the chance to become Brides of Blood and receive a free engagement ring. There was even the idea of giving away fake marriage certificates, but legal concerns prevented that.

Extras on the Severin release include commentary from  Samuel M. Sherman; interviews with co-director Eddie Romero, Sherman and Beverly Powers; the alternate Brides of Blood Island title sequence and a Jungle Fury title card; a teaser; a trailer and a poster and still gallery.

Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969): We’re back ten years after we first got to Blood Island. Eddie Romero and Gerardo de Leon have returned in the directing chair, and this time, they’ve brought even more blood, beasts and boobs than they did in their last effort, Brides of Blood.

This film was syndicated to TV as Tomb of the Living Dead and is also known as The Mad Doctor of Crimson Island because, in some states, like Rhode Island, the word “blood” wasn’t allowed in movie advertising.

After Brides of Blood, John Ashley discovered that the film was so well-received that distributors asked him to make more. He moved to the Philippines and got to work.

The film starts with an initiation, as at some theaters, you are given a packet of green liquid and asked to recite the oath of green blood so that you can watch the unnatural green-blooded ones without fear of contamination. Years later, Sam Sherman said that he came up with this idea, and he got incredibly sick when he drank one of the packets. The film’s other gimmick is rapidly zoomed in and out, like Fulci on speed, whenever a monster appears. That was to cover the harmful special effects, but it made plenty of theatergoers sick. Man — destructive green liquid and frequent pans and zooms. It’s as if they wanted kids to puke!

A woman runs naked through a jungle before a green-skinned monster kills her. Yes, that’s how you start a movie!

Then we meet our heroes, like pathologist Dr. Bill Foster (Ashley), Sheila Willard (Angelique Pettyjohn, who was famously in the Star Trek episode “The Gamesters of Triskelion” and early 80s hardcore films like Titillation, Stalag 69 and Body Talk) and Carlos Lopez (Ronaldo Valdez, who would become the first Filipino Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel).

The ship’s captain, who got them there, tells them how the island is cursed and how its people bleed green blood. Everything falls apart — Sheila’s dad, who she hoped to take home, is now a drunk. And Carlos’ mother refuses to leave, even after the mysterious death of her husband.

It turns out that Dr. Lorca has been experimenting on the natives, who just want to be healthy. Instead, they’re becoming green beasts that murder everything they can. Look out, everyone! I hope you’ve drunk your green blood before this all began!

Angelique Pettyjohn claimed that the love scene with John Ashley was not simulated. Seeing how Severin finally found the uncut film, and I haven’t seen any penetration, I think she’s full of it. But who am I to doubt her?

To make this even better, the American trailer of this is narrated by Brother Theodore!

Extras on the Severin release include commentary by Nathaniel Thompson and Howard S. Berger and a second commentary with Samuel M. Sherman; interviews with Pete Tombs, Mark Holcomb and Eddie Romero; a trailer and a poster and still gallery.

Beast of Blood (1970): All good things must end. This is the final of the Blood Island films and the last movie that Eddie Romero would make for Hemisphere Pictures.

As Dr. Bill Foster (John Ashley), Sheila Willard, her father and Carlos Lopez escape from Blood Island, this movie’s Beast gets on board and goes buck wild, killing everyone he can and blowing up the ship. He survives and heads back to the jungle while Dr. Foster spends months recovering. Everyone he knew or loved is now dead.

Of course, he’s going back to Blood Island.

Dr. Lorca (Eddie Garcia), who apparently died at the end of the last movie, is still alive but horribly scarred. He controls the beast, which can live without its head and even talk and control its own body from afar.

This is less of a narrative movie for me and more a collection of magical images, as bodies squirt blood and beasts have swampy faces and make strange noises while their heads rot inside beakers and lab equipment.

To promote this one, which played a double bill with Curse of the Vampires, the producers printed counterfeit 10 bills that folded in half, with the other side revealing a poster for the film. Those fake sawbucks were scattered all around the neighborhoods where this movie played.

Extras on the Severin release include commentary by Samuel M. Sherman, interviews with Celeste Yarnall and Eddie Garcia; a Super 8 digest version; a trailer; a radio spot and a poster and a still gallery.

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. 

Satan’s Sadists (1969): Al Adamson made his breakthrough with this movie, going on to direct Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Cinderella 2000, Nurse Sherri and one of the most legitimately unhinged movies I’ve ever survived, Carnival Magic. Even stranger, he was murdered and buried beneath his hot tub in 1995, killed by his live-in contractor Fred Fulford in a plot that could have been one of his films.

However, today we’re talking about his contribution to biker films.

The Satans are a motorcycle club who roam the American Southwest, led by Anchor (Russ Tamblyn, TV’s Twin Peaks) and including Firewater (John “Bud” Cardos, Breaking Point), Acid (Greydon Clark, who directed Satan’s Cheerleaders), Romeo (Bobby Clark, TV’s Casey Jones), Muscle, Willie and Gina (Regina Carrol, Adamson’s wife who appears in nearly all of his films). We’re introduced to the gang as they beat up a man, rape his girlfriend and then push them and their car off a cliff.

They have the bad luck to get in the way of hitchhiker Johnny Martin, a Vietnam vet who is just trying to figure it all out. He gets picked up by Chuck Baldwin (Scott Brady, the sheriff from Gremlins) and his wife Nora. The old man’s a cop and wants to help the young Marine as he travels the highways. They all go to a diner, where we meet Lew (Kent Taylor, half of the inspiration for Superman’s alter ego), the owner, and Tracy, a waitress.

The Satans show up and ruin the budding romance between Johnny and Tracy, as they earn the ire of Chuck and his wife, who tosses a drink in one of their faces. Chuck tries to pull his gun, but the old man’s authority means nothing to the hardened toughs who beat the fuck out of him and rape his woman. Then, they kill all three — but not until Anchor screams out a totally inspired rant:

“You’re right, cop. You’re right, I am a rotten bastard. I admit it. But I tell ya something. Even though I got a lot of hate inside, I got some friends who ain’t got hate inside. They’re filled with nothing but love. Their only crime is growing their hair long, smoking a little grass and getting high, looking at the stars at night, writing poetry in the sand. And what do you do? You bust down their doors, man. Dumb-ass cop. You bust down their doors and you bust down their heads. You put ’em behind bars. And you know something funny? They forgive you. I don’t.”

The Satans don’t leave witnesses. Well, except for our hero and the waitress, who just escaped from Muscle and Romeo. Meanwhile, the gang meets three young girls and start partying with them. Gina can’t take seeing Anchor with other women, so she jumps off a cliff.

Willie tries to kill our heroes, but a rattlesnake saves them (!). Meanwhile, Firewater finds his body and comes to tell Anchor, who has gone insane and murdered all three girls. They fight and Firewater leaves the leader for dead. As he finally finds Johnny and Tracy, he is killed by a landslide (again, nature itself is against the bikers).

Finally, Anchor catches up to them and goes nuts, giving another soliloquy about being Satan. He raises Chuck’s gun to kill everyone, but Johnny simply throws a switchblade at him. “In Vietnam, at least I got paid when I killed people,” he says and at that, he and Tracy ride off on the villain’s cycle.

Satan’s Sadists was filmed at the Spahn Movie Ranch in Simi Valley, CA, at the same time the Manson Family lived there. Some movies would hide this fact. This poster will prove that this one wears it on its bloody sleeve.

Truly, this is a movie that does not give a fuck. Just about no one gets out alive or unscarred. Any moments of pleasure are stolen or taken by force. The poster promises human garbage and this film delivers.

Angel’s Wild Women (1971): After two men assault one of her girls, Margo (Regina Carrol) finds him and whips him. In between this movie being Screaming Eagles and tough women in foreign prison movies getting hot, this was reshot and re-edited to make it fit into the changing world of exploitation. Another thing that changed was while movies had been shot by Al Adamson at the Spahn Ranch for a while, now the specter of the Manson Family hung over everything. So when cult leader King (William Bonner) makes life tough for the bikers and also controls the ranch’s owner Parker (Kent Taylor), you get taken out of the movie and wonder how much of this is based on things Adamson and his crew actually experienced.

Sam Sherman told Filmfax: “We even had some members of the Manson gang in it, people who had been hanging around. I don’t know if they were killers or not. What happened in this instance was one of those things you can’t imagine or even predict.”

Ross Hagen is the hero, as much as anyone in a biker movie can be the hero.

Also known as Commune of Death, a title that leans into the Manson parts of this movie, this is a film that ends with Hagen dropping his motorcycle off a cliff and onto a car, which inexplicably explodes.

Both films are available on one blu ray from Severin. Extras include commentary on both movies by producer/distributor Samuel M. Sherman, outtakes, trailers and TV and radio commercials. You can get this from Severin.

Director, writer, producer and ape costume wearer David L. Hewitt made some wild movies like The Wizard of Mars, Monsters Crash the Pajama Party, Girls from Thunder Strip, Journey to the Center of Time and Dr. Terror’s Gallery of Horrors before doing effects for films like Syngenor, It’s Alive III, Shocker, Superman IV, Willow and many more.

Shot in Bronson Canyon and Simi Valley in California, this is a movie filled with stock footage and stolen monsters, like the cave monster coming from Goliath and the Dragon. There’s also a plastic dinosaur at one point obviously being held by someone’s hand, which had to have been the same effect from One Million AC/DC. 

Circus owner Mark Remington (Anthony Eisley, who in addition to campaigning for school prayer ended up being in some bafflingly goofy movies that I love, such as The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals and Dracula vs. Frankenstein) is losing money and sure he’s about to go out of business.  He goes to Africa to find Gorgo, a giant ape, who is known by April Adams (Megan Timothy), one of those white women brought to the jungle by her older scientist father.

I was not expecting her father to be named Tonga Jack (Kent Taylor), but this movie is just ridiculous — and I’m not being so bad it’s good here, this movie is just ready to eat your brain — like having Bruce Kimball play a clown and a witch doctor who is — you knew it — in brownface. Supposedly, the costumes are from a real headhunting tribe. This may also be William Castle ballyhoo.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Two years after the original film was such a box office blockbuster, Cheng Cheh and stars Jimmy Wang and Lisa Chiao Chiao returned for this sequel. Yet when it begins, Fang Gang (Wang) has hung up his sword and is living in peace with his wife, Xiao Man (Lisa Chiao Chiao).

There are problems in the martial world that will soon require his attention. The Eight Sword Kings are challenging the masters of all rival schools, with any who refuse to fight being outright murdered. They capture every single master and demand that if the students want their teachers back, they must all cut off their sword arms and give them to them. So one of the students does what he must and kidnaps Fang Gang’s wife to get him to return and kill every single one of the Eight Sword Kings, each of whom also brings their students to the battle.

There’s the high flying Winged Blade (Yuen Cheung-yan), the sickling carrying Hooking Blade (or Ape’s Arms King Yuan Qian, played by Lau Kar-Leung), the camouflaged Buried Blade, the spinning weapon wielding Whirling Blade (Tong Gai), the monstrous Giant Blade (Ku Feng), the smoke throwing Thunder Blade, the seductive Thousand Blade (Essie Lin Chia) and the final boss, Unseen Blade (Tien Feng, who played the One-Armed Swordsman’s master in the first movie!), along with the enforcers known as Guan Heng (Fong Yau) and Guan Shun (Wu Ma).

This being a Cheng Cheh movie, expect all the blood that Shaw Brothers could brew up, as well as numerous deaths on all sides of the battles — lots of people being impaled, which is to Cheh as eyeballs being destroyed is to Fulci — plus the weirdest and wildest weapons you’ve ever seen. You know how Mega Man had to learn how to defeat each of his enemies who all had a unique move? It started here.

The Arrow Video Shaw Scope Volume Three box set has a brand new 2K restoration of The Return of the One-Armed Swordsman as well as commentary by critic Samm Deighan and a trailer.

You can get this set from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nightmare In Wax was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, May 8, 1976 at 11:30 p.m., Saturday, May 21, 1977 at 11:30 p.m., Saturday, May 12, 1979 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, July 25, 1981 at 1:00 a.m.

From voicing Jesus in The Robe to the 1951 version of Death of a Salesman, Cameron Mitchell had plenty of big roles in even bigger films. But we’re not here to talk about those. We’d rather talk about his appearances in movies like Night Train to Terror (his segment also appears as another stand-alone movie, The Nightmare Never Ends), The Demon and Blood and Black Lace.

This time out, Cameron is Vince Rinaud, an FX artist who is disfigured by Paragon Pictures studio boss Max Block, who was also a rival for the attention of actress Marie Morgan. Yes, all it takes to ruin a man is to throw wine in his face and then a cigar. Who knew?

Leaving movies behind, Vince gains an eyepatch and a wax museum, while Paragon quickly loses four of their stars. Is it a coincidence that they soon appear as wax statues in Max’s museum?

This movie is pretty much a direct ripoff of House of Wax, except instead of dead bodies being under the wax, Vince uses a serum to turn people into zombies that just stand there under his control. There are also two cops who are the worst detectives this side of a giallo on the case — one of them is Bud Cardos, who appeared in Satan’s Sadists and directed The Dark!

But hey — Cameron Mitchell wearing a cape and an eyepatch. If that makes you happy, we’re happy you’re reading our site.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Herbert Biberman was so against the U.S. Lend-Lease to the United Kingdom that the FBI suspected Jewish director of being a Nazi. After being investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, he was one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to be questioned by Congress. Beyond being blacklisted, he was jailed for six months. Other than 1954’s Salt of the Earth, this is the only movie that he made after that. He was kept out of the Director’s Guild until he was posthumously added back in 1997.

His film Slaves was not well-reviewed. Vincent Carnaby summed up many other notes by saying that it was “…a kind of cinematic carpetbagging project in which some contemporary movie-makers have raided the antebellum South and attempted to impose on it their own attitudes that will explain 1969 black militancy. The result, which opened here yesterday at the DeMille and neighborhood theaters, is a pre-fab Uncle Tom’s Cabin, set in an 1850 Mississippi where everybody—masters and slaves alike—talks as if he had been weaned, at best, on the Group Theater, and, at worst, on silent-movie titles.”

Stephen Boyd — are you shocked that I am excited to mention that he’s in Marta? — plays the evil slaver in this. He said of being in it, “Some people have the impression that people are in this picture because they want to say something. I don’t have a damn thing to say. MacKay says it, and what he says, God knows….Show me a business anywhere which is successful, and I will show you a man who could very easily be MacKay. And that, to me, is really the point.”

He gets to purchase Luke (Ossie Davis), a slave who had been promised by his elderly master that he would get to be a free man. At the same auction, he also purchases Cassy (Dionne Warwick) to be his lover against her will.

Boyd has some involved speeches in this and excels at being evil. Davis is good as well and you feel for his character, a man sure he will never see his children again. While sold as exploitation, it’s nowhere near Mandingo or Goodbye Uncle Tom, but then again, the latter is as horrible as it gets.

Originally distributed unrated by Continental Distributing AKA the same Walter Reade Corporation that screwed up Night of the Living Dead‘s release and caused it to be a public domain movie. In fact, this played doubles with Night! It was rereleased in 1981 with an R rating by 21st Century.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Miguel Zacarías is the same Michel Zacharias that executive produced Demonoid and The Bees, but before that he directed fifty-five films and wrote fifty-one. He directed and wrote this film and must have really enjoyed bringing religious films to the screen, because he also directed Jesus: Nuestro Senor, Jesus: el Nino Dios and Jesus, Maria Y Jose.

Yet this movie was sold in America by New World and that was probably because for most of the movie, Jorge Rivero (billed as George Rivers; you may know him as Mace from Fulci’s Conquest or from the Santo movies he co-starred in like Operation 67 and El tesoro de Moctezuma or the movie Fist Fighter and Fist Fighter 2 where he played the amazingly named C.J. Thunderbird) and Kandy (sold in America as Candy Wilson; she only appeared in one other film, Si vous n’aimez pas ça, n’en dégoûtez pas les autres, which translates as If You Don’t Like It, Don’t Disgust Others) are naked for the entire movie. Other than Kandy’s long hair spirit gummed to her chest and strategically placed scenery to keep one from seeing full frontal, this movie doesn’t skimp on the naked time, but then again, Rivero and Kandy have nearly perfect bodies.

This movie is set inside what 1969 thought the Garden of Eden looked like and after that apple gets bit into, well, it also turns into the best stock footage available as well as animal madness and this being Mexico, one can imagine that the ASPCA was nowhere near the set of this movie. There’s also a moment when giant flaming wooden daggers literally rain down, keeping Adam and Eve from finding one another until the end, when they have found loincloths and I’ve never been more upset about original sin.

Supposedly, Kandy was an American tourist lured into being in this movie. Can a Biblical film be sleazy? God bless you, Mexico.

This was originally released in the U.S. by New World Pictures in 1971, then picked up by Dimension Pictures in 1972. 21st Century got it when they bought Dimension’s films.