The first children’s film ever made in Canada by a commercial studio independently of either the National Film Board of Canada or the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Le Martien de Noël is the first — retoactively — of the Tales for All kid movie series that also includes The Peanut Butter Solution. 

Before Quebec would give birth to child movies like Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang, director Bernard Gosselin and writer Roch Carrier made this movie which is…well, it’s pretty wild. Cathy and Frankie meet the Christmas Martian, who has literally fishnet over his face, when his flying saucer crash lands in the snow. What’s that alien’s name? Poo Flower.

The kids help Poo Flower fix his ship and escape a bunch of Earthlings chasing him when they aren’t eating candy or watching an alien turn into a llama. There isn’t much holiday stuff in it until the end, but then again, it has a weird alien flying with a magic wand and bubbles flying out everywhere. It’s not like any Christmas movie that would ever get made in our country, a strange piece of magic that’s lo fi but all heart. I’d never seen this before but wow, it made an impression.

You can watch this on Tubi.

El vampiro de la autopista has Jess Franco favorite Wal Davis playing both a ghostly baron and that baron’s grandson, so in effect both victimizer and victim. It’s a Spanish film made in snowy Germany and it embraces its Eurohorror vibes by having nudity — and yes, too much talking — every few minutes.

There are so many rules when it comes to inheriting the home of the basement and all of them start with don’t and yes, one of them is don’t go in the basement. There’s also a vampire who doesn’t bite necks but just gently strangles women, often after they’ve taken a bath. I mean, if you have a bathing fetish — I wonder about you sometimes dear reader — this would be the movie for you to savor.

Director and writer José Luis Madrid also directed and wrote Seven Murders for Scotland Yard; this film has an amazing title, great artwork and impeccable scenery. I wish it had more, but sometimes, we must meditate on what we get and just savor pale Spanish vampires and their murder-filled business.

You can get this from Mondo Macabro (at Diabolik DVD) or watch it on Tubi.

The Mongols have taken over China but White Dragon (Jimmy Wang Yu) and his huge spear stand in their way. Two rebels die to give a young thief named Kenny a tube with a secret message and White Dragon agrees to protect him as they journey to deliver that information to the Prince, who hates White Dragon as he once defeated his father in a duel and ruined the man’s life.

That tube contains a secret list of rebel leaders that the Prince can use to save China, even if he hates White Dragon, who is selfless and still wants to return it to him, even if the Prince had no honor and stabbed him with a secret dagger hidden inside his Magic Sword.

This all leads up to a twenty-minute long final battle that seems like a contest between White Dragon and the Prince to see how many soldiers they can kill. The final boss, General Tai (Yi Yuan) has one of those amazing martial arts movie weapons, a sword that turns into a whip. I have no idea how a weapon like that would work in real life, but who cares? This is the world of unreal weapons and even more fantastic warriors using them to unleash their fighting skill.

It’s intriguing that this was directed and written by a female filmmaker, Kao Pao Shu, which doesn’t happen too often in martial arts cinema. She would direct herself in The Female Fugitive and also make The Master Strikes.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Deadly Duo has Ti Lung and David Chiang as Bao Ting Tien and Little Bat and they must fight the Five Elements Great Fighters, who are River Dragon (Bolo Yeung), Golden Demon, Fire Demon Lui (Yeung Chak-lam), Leopard (Wong Pau-gei) and Mole (Lau Kar-wing) to rescue Sung Prince Kang.

Directed by Chang Cheh — with Godfrey Ho as the first assistant director (!) and Lau Kar-leung (!) directing the action scenes — this is a movie based as much around the heroics of its leads as it is a series of astounding weapons, including the typical swords and spears, as well as cymbals and a weapon that literally spits fire.

Chang Cheh made six movies in 1971 (King Eagle, The New One-Armed Swordsman, Duel of the Iron Fist, The Anonymous Heroes, Duel of Fists and this movie) and man, how did he do it? He’s throwing in underwater action here too! I mean, it’s not like he slowed down in 1972, a year in which he made eight movies, including The Boxer from Shantung.

These Shaw Brothers epics just keep me alive. I may not always be able to follow every beat of the story but they’re just so relentlessly entertaining that I can’t stop watching.

You can watch this on Tubi.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn

In Duel of Fists, a Hong Kong engineer must travel to Thailand to find his long-lost professional boxer brother who is having problems with the mob. David Chiang is Hong Kong engineer cum kung fu expert Fan Ke. His dying father tells Ke that he has an older half-brother in Thailand. He knows nothing of him other than that he is a professional kick-boxer. He departs immediately for Thailand.

Meanwhile, half-brother Wen Lieh (Ti Lung) is being forced to box for some Bangkok gangsters because he needs the money for a life-saving operation for his mother. He must fight Cannon, a boxer notorious for killing men in the ring.

After meeting, and becoming friends, the two charismatic men finally discover they are brothers and band together to fight the evil cookie-cutter gangsters.

Shot mostly on location in Thailand, Duel of Fists is not among Chang Cheh’s best work. The story is predictable and the fights in the ring, although well-choreographed, are long and drawn out but packed with very little drama when compared to other Chang Cheh pairings with David and Ti. Even the showdown between Cannon and Wen Lieh lacks spirit. There is some improvement during the finale when the dynamic duo pair up against the gangsters, owing mostly to the loud ‘70s pimp clothing that David Chiang sports.

Now. Let’s talk about the girlfriends of our heroes. Wen Lieh’s ladylove Yulan (Ching Li) does nothing but stand around and worry for her man’s fate. Fan Ke meets a nice Thai girl named Meidai (Parwarna Liu Lan Ying) who dresses just as goofy as he does and does nothing but look doe-eyed in every scene.

Last, there are entire scenes that serve no purpose other than to promote the fact that they shot Duel of Fists on location in Thailand. There are plenty of glamour shots of Ti Lung riding a motorcycle through the streets of Bangkok and David Chiang’s character even has time to sightsee at some temples while looking for his brother. Viewers who are really into Thai kick boxing may find this film interesting and it’s nice to see Lung and Chiang in a modern setting with modern clothes and haircuts, but for the rest of us, it’s much less than a worthy effort from the team of Cheh, Chiang and Lung who brought us some of the greatest Shaw Bros. epics ever made. Watch those instead!

Count Yorga and  his servant Brudah have been revived by the supernatural Santa Ana winds. Sure, I mean, whatever it takes to get more of Yorga facing off with early 70s hippies, right?

This time around, Yorga is going after not just adults, but the children of an orphanage and their teacher Cynthia Nelson (Mariette Hartley). One of the students, Tommy, even watches as the brides of Yorga rise from a graveyard.

How bad does Yorga want her for his bride? Well, he sens is undead army after her entire family, tearing them apart and hypnotizing her into thinking they’ve left her in his care. Also, Yorga now doesn’t just have the disigured Brudah helping him, he also has a witch who can tell the future. And she believes that unless Cynthia isn’t killed or turned soon, she’ll be the death of her master.

This one is, if possible, even more bleak than the first film but still finds moments of humor, like Yorga watching The Vampire Lovers.

The ads for this film refer to Yorga as the Deathmaster. That would be the name of another Quarry-starring vampire movie, The Deathmaster, but it is not a Yorga sequel. There was a plan to make a third film in which Yorga would live in Los Angeles’s sewers with an army of undead homeless people.

American-International Pictures also considered a movie that would have had Count Yorga face Dr. Phibes. Instead, Quarry would play Phibes’ adversary in Dr. Phibes Rises Again. As it was, Quarry was pretty much Price’s enemy nearly every time they were in a movie together, just as much off-screen as on-screen. It was mainly because Quarry was AIP’s new horror star and Price’s contract was nearly up.

I love that this movie ends with nearly every character either dead or turned into a vampire; the hero has become the villain, the children are about to be consumed and Yorga’s curse keeps unliving.

Arrow Video’s The Count Yorga Collection has brand new 2K restorations of Count Yorga, Vampire and The Return of Count Yorga from new 4K scans of the original 35mm camera negatives. Plus, you get an illustrated perfect bound collector’s book featuring new writing by film critic Kat Ellinger and horror author Stephen Laws, plus archive contributions by critic Frank Collins and filmmaker Tim Sullivan. The limited edition packaging has reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Heather Vaughan, fold-out double-sided posters for both films featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Heather Vaughan, twelve double-sided, postcard-sized lobby card reproduction artcards and a reproduction pressbook for Count Yorga, Vampire.

The Return of Count Yorga has new audio commentary by film critic Stephen R. Bissette;  audio commentary by David Del Valle and  C. Courtney Joyner; The Count and the Counterculture, a brand new interview with film critic Maitland McDonagh; Chamber-music of Horrors, a brand new interview with David Huckvale about the scores for both films; an archival interview with film critic Kim Newman; the trailer; radio spots and an image gallery.

You can get it from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Although released by 21st Century as Lunatic in 1981, this is really a re-release of  The Night Visitor, which was on the site on April 10, 2022.

Salem (Max Von Sydow) has escaped a near-inescapable insane asylum, a place where he’s been trapped since being wrongly charged with killing a farmhand. Now he truly is deranged and is out for revenge on those he believes are guilty: his younger sisters Emma (Hanne Bork) and Ester (Liv Ullmann) and her husband Dr. Anton Jenks (Per Oscarsson), the man who accused Salem of the murder.

Beyond the fact that the villain is actually the hero of this, it has an incredible score by Henry Mancini that was made for synthesizer, 12 woodwinds, organ, two pianos and two harpsichords — with one tuned to be flat and add dissonance.

Originally entitled Salem Came to Supper and released again ten years later by 21st Century Film Corporation as Lunatic (before that company was bought and rebranded by Menahem Golan after the breakup of Cannon), this was directed by Laslo Benedek (who made the 1951 Death of a Salesman) and written by Guy Elmes, who adapted several Italian films for Western audiences.