If you’re going to tour Europe on a bus, stopping in quaint small towns, check and double check your inventory. There’s a pretty good chance that at least one of those tiny and charming hamlets and burgs will be replete with the undead. Bring crosses and garlic accordingly.

To think that my high school teachers said I’d learn absolutely nothing from watching horror movies!

The villagers of Tolnia can’t be found on any map. That’s probably just as well, as it’s lorded over by a Countess (Helga Line, Nightmare Castle, Horror Express) who is served by mute villagers who may or may not be zombies. They’re definitely cannibals, but nice ones, because they’ll cut off their own limbs to feed you. Oh yeah — there’s also a ghost boy wandering about.

Of course, like most Spanish horror made under the reign of Generalissimo Francisco Franco — who is still dead — scenes were shot in nude and non-nude variants. But for a movie entitled The Vampire’s Night Orgy, there is little to no orgy-ing happening.

If you live a stressful life, however, let me give you some advice. There is quite nothing like ingesting your favorite vices and being half-awake through four Eurohorror films of carrying quality in the middle of the night at a drive-in. It’s as close to lucid dreaming as some of us may ever get and it totally reaffirmed my love of life. I didn’t even get a hangover!

Before he made his first movie — Troika — in 1969, Frederic Hobbs was an artist who went from the traditional to a whole way of presenting art, creating parade sculptures that took art from the museum to the people. That’s when he figured it out — to get the people to see something as art, you should hide it in a film. He also created the films Roseland and Alabama’s Ghost before this one. And honestly, nothing can prepare you for this.

Imagine if David Lynch made a 1950’s nuclear warning monster film. But before you go see it, you get in a car crash and suffer a really bad concussion. Cool. Then, someone spikes your Icee with a dose of LSD that would cripple Owsley “Bear” Stanley. You now have a very, very small idea of just how crazy things are about to get.

There are two stories happeninghere: a scientist is trying to crack the code on a mysterious sheep-like creature while a conservative landowner fights being bought out by prospectors. All in Virginia City, Nevada, which was once the richest city in America after the silver and gold rush. The mines went dry, the people went away and the only people left are tourists staring at a dead husk.

I have to tell you, you’ve never quite seen a creature quite like the Godmonster. At once it appears to be the most real and yet fakest creature ever seen on the silver screen. It very well could be one of Lovecraft’s ancient ones for all I know, as it saunters and stumbles and falters across the frame, scaring children at birthday parties and blowing up gas stations.

There’s also a subplot with a fake dog funeral. Don’t ask me how any of this ties together, because all of it has blown my mind sky high, like a Jigsaw song from 1975.

Imagine a movie where the creature doesn’t do a single thing until more than one hour into the run time of a movie under ninety minutes, all while the nonprofessional actors can’t act and the professional ones chew scenery like they’re the godmonsters of the fringe festival.

I get real down sometimes when I think the world could be a better place than it is. The Godmonster of Indian Flats proves to me that somewhere out there, at some time, in some corner of the cosmos — let’s say a drive-in that smells like skunk weed and MD40 — some brave souls had no idea what the actual fuck they were getting into when it started playing. That fact makes me happy, imagining people driving away before the movie even ends, telling their friends and family that they suffered their way through a movie where a lamb emitted smoke and gave his life so that an entire town could die. There aren’t enough stars in the galaxy and every reality ever to properly review this movie. I’ll have to go back to college to invent some kind of formula so that my fragile mind can try and quantify it.

You can get this on blu ray from the amazing and astound folks at Something Weird and the AGFA. It’s also on Amazon Prime, if you’re brave. Or stupid. But probably you should be both.

Burt Reynolds said that White Lightning was “the beginning of a whole series of films made in the South, about the South and for the South. No one cares if the picture was ever distributed north of the Mason-Dixon line because you could make back the cost of the negative just in Memphis alone. Anything outside of that was just gravy.”

It was originally going to be directed by Steven Spielberg after his films Duel, Something Evil and Savage. The famous director said, “I spent two-and-a-half months on the film, met Burt once, found most of the locations and began to cast the movie, until I realized it wasn’t something that I wanted to do for a first film. I didn’t want to start my career as a hard-hat, journeyman director. I wanted to do something that was a little more personal.” He left the film to direct Sugarland Express instead.

Bobby “Gator” McKlusky (Reynolds) is serving time in an Arkansas prison for running moonshine when he discovers that his brother Donny was murdered by Sheriff J.C. Connors (Ned Beatty). He agrees to go undercover to get the dirt on the sheriff.

He’s teamed with Dude Watson, a local stock car racer and moonshine runner on probation. Gator gets his own job doing the same thing alongside Roy Boone (Bo Hopkins). Of course, once he gets one look at Boone’s woman Lou and running afoul of Connors’ henchman, Big Bear (R.G. Armstrong, Pruneface from Dick Tracy). Diane Ladd shows up as Maggie and an uncredited Laura Dern plays her daughter.

White Lightning was directed by Joseph Sargent, who was also responsible for Nightmare and Jaws The Revenge. It’d be followed by Gator, with only Reynolds returning. If it wasn’t for these two movies, we wouldn’t have so many of the films we’ve covered this week.

Marc Lawrence had a career filled with playing the heavies, mostly gangland types. In fact, his autobiography was entitled Long Time No See: Confessions of a Hollywood Gangster.

Lawrence found himself under scrutiny for his political leanings. He was the son of Polish and Russian parents and was married to Odessa-born novelist and screenwriter Fanya Foss. Once called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he admitted he had once been a member of the Communist Party and named Sterling Hayden, Lionel Stander, Anne Revere, Larry Parks, Karen Morley and Jeff Corey as fellow Communists. Blacklisted, he continued to make films in Europe before returning to America.

He’s probably best known for playing gangers in Diamonds Are Forever and The Man With the Golden Gun, but he also shows up in plenty of genre films like From Dusk Till Dawn and Dream No Evil. He directed several episodes of TV shows before helming Nighemare In the Sun, which was written by his wife and stars Ursula Andress and Aldo Ray. This was the only other film that he’d direct. He also wrote the movie and it starts his daughter Toni. It’s also one of the strangest movies you’ll find.

Also known by many, many names — The 13th Pig, Daddy’s Deadly Darling, Horror Farm, Daddy’s Girl, The Strange Exorcism of Lynn Hart, The Strange Love Exorcist and Roadside Torture Chamber — Pigs is all about Lynn Webster (Toni Lawrence), who has escaped a sanitarium and hides out in the diner owned by Zambrini (Marc Lawrence).

Behind the diner lies a pigpen of swine that have been taught to eat human flesh. Zambrini soon has a partner in murder as Lynn begins to kill any man that reminds her of the father that assaulted her. She killed him and she’ll kill anyone else who gets in her way.

This movie is pretty much the 70s — complete insanity and murderous intent, capped off with off-kilter camera angles. Suffice to say, I loved every single moment of it.

Toni Lawrence would go on to appear in several TV shows and the Final Destination inspiration Sole Survivor. She was also once married to Billy Bob Thornton, who honestly has some amazing taste in ladies.

Jesse Vint plays the sheriff who tries to see the good in everyone. He shows up in plenty of redneck cinema with appearances in movies like Bobbie Joe and the Outlaw, Black Oak Conspiracy, the Walking Tall TV series and Macon County Line. He also stars in the absolutely incredible science fiction weirdo film Forbidden World.

Marc Lawrence’s original cut of the film is the one released as The 13th Pig. However, there are two additional versions. The Love Exorcist / Blood Pen titled versions begin with another actress playing the role of Lynn Webster, who runs away from an attempted exorcism. The Daddy’s Girl version, which was released on VHS, started with Lynn’s father attacking her. She stabs him to death, ends up in the asylum but escapes when a nurse takes off her uniform to make love to a doctor. She wears those clothes, takes that amorous caregiver’s keys and runs away. Multiple actresses play Lynn in these scenes and all wear completely bonkers wigs.

Vinegar Syndrome has re-released this film, packed with extras like the alternate openings for Daddy’s Girl and The Strange Love Exorcist. You can also watch this on Amazon Prime.

Matt Cimber has pretty much lived a life — he was married to Jayne Mansfield, he created the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling and he directed movies like Butterfly, The Witch Who Came from the Sea and Hundra amongst others. And in 1973, he was able to convince six currently playing NFL stars to appear in a black version of the biker film. The results? Amazing.

The Black Six is made up of six All-Pro NFL stars:

• Gene Washington, San Francisco 49ers (who also was in Cimber’s Lady Cocoa and Airport ’75)
• Willie Lanier, Kansas City Chiefs (who is in the NFL Hall of Fame and was named to the NFL 75th Anniversary All-Time Team)
• Carl Eller, Minnesota Vikings (an NFL Hall of Famer who went on to found substance abuse clinics)
• Mercury Morris, Miami Dolphins (a Pittsburgh native who was drafted to West Texas State, the alma mater of tons of pro wrestlers, including Tully Blanchard, Stan Hansen, Ted DiBiase, Dusty Rhodes and both Funk brothers to name but a few)
• Lem Barney, Detroit Lions (an NFL Hall of Famer who sang backup on Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and played himself in Paper Lion)
• Joe Greene, Pittsburgh Steelers (one of my hometown heroes, Greene is probably one of the greatest — if not the greatest — Steelers ever. He  appeared in a famous Coke commercial, as well as Fighting Back: The Rocky Bleier Story and Smokey and the Bandit II and is also an NFL Hall of Famer)

Washington already had some acting experience, so he stars as Bubba Daniels, a Vietnam War vet who returns home to find that his brother has been killed by a white supremacist biker gang. Their leader, Thor, is played by Ben Davidson, an avid real-life biker who played for the Oakland Raiders. You can also see him in M*A*S*H*, Conan the Barbarian and as Porter the Bouncer in Behind the Green Door.

Bubba and his gang — the Black Six — decide to avenge that death, which leads to battles with racist townies, uncaring police and Thor’s gang. The final battle ends with Thor blowing up his own bike to kill them all or so it would seem. According to Mercury Morris’ book Against the Grain, the players protested that ending — guess they didn’t realize that nearly every biker movie ends with the heroes getting killed — so that’s why the movie ends with the title card that says “Honky, look out…Hassle a brother, and the Black 6 will return!” 

It’s all pretty depressing stuff, to be honest. But you can say that for nearly all biker and blaxploitation cinema. It’s still amazing to be that at one point, the NFL didn’t have the control that it does today and that six of its biggest stars could go off and make a movie together.

You can get The Black Six on Mill Creek’s new Soul Team Six DVD collection, along with five other films.

DISCLAIMER: Mill Creek sent us this set, but we were planning on buying it anyway. It has no bearing on this review.

Before he made Stacey, Andy Sidaris was known as a pioneer in the world of sports television, directing thousands of hours worth of football, basketball, Olympic games and special events for ABC’s Wide World of Sports. He eventually won seven Emmy Awards, but is perhaps best known for his invention of the “honey shot,” where he’d zoom in on the cleavage of female audience members and cheerleaders.

After helping make Monday Night Football into a ratings powerhouse and working on shows like Kojak and Gemini Man,  Sidaris moved into making his own movies by partnering with Roger Corman, raising half the funds for his debut film, Stacey. This is not truly his first film, as that would be The Racing Scene, a documentary about actor James Garner’s racing team.

Stacey Hanson (Anne Randall, May 1967 Playboy Playmate of the Month) has two jobs: private eye and race car driver. Wealthy older woman Florence Chambers hires her to determine whether or not her three family members are worthy of being in her will: the secretly gay John, his adulterous wife Tish (Anitra Ford from Messiah of Evil!) and Pamela (Cristina Raines from The Sentinel!), who is in a Manson-esque cult.

Meanwhile, houseboy Frank, who has been sleeping with and blackmailing everyone in the family, has been killed and no one is safe. This is the movie that I learned that none of Sidaris’ heroes and heroines knows how to shoot a gun, yet the villains are easily able to shoot everyone around them resulting in spectacular crimson geysers of gore.

If this all seems rather close to a later Sidaris film, Malibu Express, that’s because other than a few characters, they’re largely the same film. The sad fact that I can logically discuss Andy Sidaris films and know enough facts about them that I can drop at will either makes me feel like I’m doing the right thing or ponder where it all went wrong. There’s a thin line between madness and genius. The films of Andy Sidaris make me confront that head on.

Whereas the later films of Sidaris postulate a shared universe of L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies and various drug dealing enemies that eventually become friends, this is a self-contained affair. But as he’d move on from doing TV — he was still working on shows like The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries and ABC’s Monday Night Football — Andy was ready to embrace the world of film completely. Yet one thing never changed: Sidaris loved showing off gorgeous women, but don’t write off his films as simple exploitation. His women are always capable, empowered and intelligent.

Meiko Kaji is truly the goddess of women’s revenge films. Where Christina Lindberg showed promise and poise as she destroyed everyone in her path in They Call Her One Eye, Meiko showed her power in all of the Female Prisoner Scorpion films and then two Lady Snowblood films. In fact, to get his cast ready for what Kill BIll was all about, supposedly Quentin Tarantino made them watch these films.

You can see the inspiration for those two films directly in the way that Lady Snowblood hops time and space, showing you the story of its heroine’s life in a nonlinear fashion.

A woman named Sayo has lost everything. Her husband and son were murdered and then the convicts assaulted her. After stabbing one of them to death, she was imprisoned for life. Unable to escape to get the vengeance that she claims it would take seven lifetimes to fulfill, she seduces multiple prison guards, with her child born in prison and trained for a life of revenge. She is a child of the netherworld and as such, must be trained for a violent life.

Now named Yuki for the snow in which she was born, the young warrior trains under the warrior priest Dokai to become a living instrument of her mother’s hatred.

Yuki learns the names of the three men she must find and goes after them one by one. She has no remorse, even after learning that one of them, Takemura Banzo, saw his life fall apart after what he did to her mother. He’s a drunk, a cheater at gambling and his daughter has turned to selling herself. Yuki gets him pardoned at the gambling den and then reveals her identity to him on a beach before killing him.

She’s also been led to believe that her final target, Tsukamoto Gishiro, had died in a shipwreck just as she began looking for him. She becomes involved with a reporter named Ashio whose story draws out the man who personally murdered her father, Kitahama Okono.

Through all manner of twists and turns, we learn that Ashio’s father is really Gishiro, who had faked his death when he learned that Yuki was on his trail. She will stop at nothing to have her revenge, feelings and her life be damned.

While this movie is based on Kazuo Koike’s Lady Snowblood manga, the role of Yukio was written specifically for Meiko Kaji. Both this film and its sequel were directed by Toshiya Fujita, who was also behind Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo and Street Cat Rock: Beat ’71.

There are literally geysers of blood in this movie, a dark rumination on revenge. It is near-poetic, an odyssey into the depths that pain can cut across multiple lives.

You can watch this on Shudder or get the Criterion set from Diabolik DVD.

The fourth and final of the first Female Prisoner Scorpion series, this movie has Meiko Kaji coming back to portray Nami Matsushima — the Scorpion — one more time. However, director Shunya Ito was replaced by Yasuharu Hasebe, who worked with Meiko on the Stray Cat Rock series. Scorpion remains on the run after the last film, starting things off the same way, with a lone voice screaming her name.

This time, our heroine is found by the police — including her new nemesis Hirose — in a wedding chapel. Despite handcuffing her, she’s able to escape and makes her way to find Kudo, a political radical who now works in a sex show club. He’s covered by scars from multiple run-ins with the police, so he has no problem keeping Scorpion hidden.

However, one of the girls in the club, upset that Kudo had rebuffed her advances, finds the detective’s handcuffs in Kudo’s room and calls the police. They show up and beat Kudo until he finally gives in and sells out the Scorpion. Yep, she falls in love with him, even gives her body to him willingly unlike every other time in this series and he still lets the cops know where she is. He even leads them to her. Bad move, Kudo.

Soon, Nami is back in prison and sentenced to death. Despite a guard who reaches out to her and asks her to open her heart and ask for forgiveness, Scorpion finally reappears. That’s my main issue with this film. Despite opening with an awesome sequence of Scorpion in her trademark trenchcoat and black hat, the rest of the movie is all about Nami reacting and running instead of being the master manipulator that we know that she can be. That said, by the end of the film, she comes back to who she should be all along, escaping the prison with the help of the warden, murdering the detective who won’t give up on capturing her and then returning to find Kudo, getting her revenge. She tells him that she didn’t stab him. Instead, it was Nami, the woman who fell in love with him. Now, she is only the Scorpion.

This is the final film that Meiko Kaji would play Scorpion, but in 1976, Yutaka Kohira would direct New Female Prisoner Scorpion: #701. He followed that up with New Female Prisoner Scorpion: Special Cellblock X. Evil Dead Trap director Toshiharu Ikeda also presented Scorpion Woman Prisoner: Death Threat in 1991, a new version of the story.

You can watch this on Shudder. Or you can grab the Arrow Video box set at Diabolik DVD.