Lee Frost was behind some strange films like Race With the Devil, Love Camp 7, Chain Gang Women and The Thing with Two Heads. None of those films will prepare you for this one. After all, how does one prepare for a movie where an army of black men gets inspired by the wrong side of World War II and becomes the new master race?

General Ahmed (Rod Perry of TV’s S.W.A.T.) starts a People’s Army to protect the black people of Watts. Still, after chasing the drug dealers out of town, his second-in-command, Colonel Kojah (Charles Robinson, who played Fabulous from Sugar Hill and would go on to be Mac on TV’s Night Court), takes over, turning the group into a fascist paramilitary outfit that controls every racket in town.

With a concept like that, you’d hope that the film itself would be more out of control. Sadly, it isn’t. That said, Uschi Digard shows up, and really, that’s worth seeing the film in the first place. Comparing the Black Panthers to the Third Reich and castration are things that you don’t see in movies any longer. I’d argue that this is the lone movie that combines both.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Jason (Owen Watson, a two-tour Navy SEAL who was dojo brothers with Ron Van Cleff; his wife Sydney Filson is also in this), Billy (Judie Soriano), Adam (the best-named action hero ever, Warhawk Tanzania, who you may remember from Devil’s Express) and Eric (Professor Malachi Lee, an Isshin Ryu from the dojo of Master Ed McGrath; at 6’7″ he could hit a spinning kick without spinning; sadly he died the year this was made) are Force Four, the other name for this movie, or more to the point four butt kickers who come up against the evil Z (Sam Schwartz), who has stolen a voodoo icon of some sort. Whatever, we’re here for the fights, which have punches and kicks missing by quite a few inches, but again, who cares?

Directed by Michael Fink, who also made another Owen Watson movie, Velvet Smooth, and written by Leonard Michaels, who wrote those two Fink/Wilson movies as well as The Men’s Club, and Janice Weber, this is all about the funk from Life, USA. Which is life, really.

The credits also tell us that all of the kung fu is real: “All martial arts sequences in this film are authentic. No attempt has been made to enhance or alter actual fights by the use of special effects or trick photography. A slow-motion camera was used to capture certain techniques.” This should be no surprise because this looks as clumsy as can be.

The outfits are good, though.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Do you think that when Jack Palance bounded to the stage, ready to do one-arm pushups and accept his Best Supporting Oscar for City Slickers after being nominated for Sudden Far and Shane, that he had a flashback and said to himself, “I’m in the A list tonight, but man, how can it compare to being in a movie where Laura Gemser dances with snakes?”

Seriously, the man who would become a star again at the age of 73 has a wealth of roles in aberrant movies in his past, but playing Judas Carmichael in a Joe D’Amato movie may be the pinnacle. Or the pit.

Gemser plays Eva, a snake dancer who obsesses Judas, because he has a snake collection at home — as you do — and he wants to show it to her. So she finally gives in and moves in with him while confining her horizontal dancing to the ladies — including Candy (Ziggy Zanger, who Gemser would go on to appear in Black Emanuelle, White Emanuelle with, along with Nieves Navarro, and just writing that sentence made me a little faint). Judas’ brother Jules (Gabriele Tinti) wants Candy all for himself, so he messes around with the snakes with her — which seems ill-advised — and she gets killed by a mamba. And then he doubles up and kills off Eva’s lover Gerri (Michele Starck, Forever Emmanuelle) and ends up taking Eva from his brother!

Of course, that’s not the end of matters. Eva’s more devious than she looks. And so is Judas. I mean, if your mom names you Judas any time in a year that doesn’t have BC in it, you’re not going to turn out all that great.

Bruno Mattei edited this movie — a fact that makes me love it so much more — and it was also called Emmanuelle And The Deadly Black Cobra, Hot Pants and finally and most awesomely Emmanuelle Goes Japanese, which makes no sense for a movie set in Hong Kong.

Armando Crispino really only did two horror films, 1972’s The Dead Are Alive and this 1975 giallo, which is a shame, as this is a pretty decent entry in the genre. Known in Italy as Macchie Solari (Sunspots), it does indeed feature sunspot footage from space before we see any major murders. And if you’re looking for a movie packed with autopsy footage, good news. It totally lives up to its title.

Simona Sana (Mimsy Farmer, who is also in Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet and The Perfume of the Lady in Black; I am legally and ethically forced to remind you that she is a perfect angel somehow on Earth, a fragile flower of magic and splendor) is a pathology student who is trying to work on a theory about suicides, one that’s disputed by a young priest, Father Paul, whose sister — Simona’s dad’s latest fling — has recently killed herself. It turns out there’s been a whole series of self-killings which are being blamed on, you guessed it, sunspots.

I mean, what can you say about a movie that starts with several of said suicides, like sliced wrists, a self-induced car explosion and a man machine gunning his kids before turning the gun on himself? Obviously, this is a rather grisly affair, with real corpse photos spread — quite literally — throughout the film.

In between all of the gore, corpse penises, two bodies falling to their deaths and crime museums, there’s also Ray Lovelock (The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) as Simona’s boyfriend, an out there Morricone score and a heroine who hallucinates that the dead are coming back to life.

The plot gets pretty convoluted, but if you’re on this site, you obviously appreciate films like this and will get past it. This is an Italian 70’s murder movie, though, so if you get easily upset about the way men behave, well, be forewarned.

Richard Pryor may have co-written Blazing Saddles, but didn’t star in it. Fred Williamson thought it was too silly, so the two of them got together and made their own Western comedy. The script was just 12 pages, and Pryor ad-libbed most of it.

Williamson said, “I wanted to give him an idea, a concept, and then just turn the light on him and let him do whatever he wanted. You know what they say about comedians—that you can just open the refrigerator door, and the light comes on, and the jokes roll on out. Well, Richard’s light didn’t come on.” Pryor also said, “Tell them I apologize. Tell them I needed some money. Tell them I promise not to do it again.”

Only the second movie Williamson would direct after Mean Johnny Barrows, he plays Big Ben and Pryor is Sam Spade. Ben is always making up for Spade’s schemes and, well, that’s the movie. You’ll hear the song “Adios Amigo” many times. Like, so many times that you’ll have no problem remembering the name of the movie. Too bad it’s nowhere near as good as it should be.

Directed by Gérard Pirès — who wrote the story with the author of the book that it’s based on, Jean-Patrick Manchette, although John Buell’s novel The Shrewsdale Exit has also been cited as an inspiration in other places — L’agression is the story of Paul Varlin (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who obviously has road rage issues. Well, after some bikers hit on his wife, those very same men end up nearly killing him and his family.

Stay tuned. As Paul pulls over, he charges the three helmeted motorcycle maniacs, who knock him out and then assault and kill his wife and daughter. Yes, Paul has screwed up and he can’t admit it to himself. All he wants is revenge.

There’s also Sarah (Catherine Deneuve), the sister of Paul’s dead wife, who realizes that her brother-in-law is going about this as badly as you can imagine. He’s no Paul Kersey. She even saves them both at one point, as she’s a better physical fighter — and maybe even mental — than he is.

Pirès went on to make the comedy series Taxi in France. There’s no hint of that in this movie.