Based on Catherine and Co. by Edouard de Segonzac, this is about Catherine (Jane Birkin) — are you shocked? — who becomes a sex worker and starts her own business. She also sells stock and repurchases her business.

Directed by Michel Boisrond, this was written by Catherine Breillat, whose first novel at 17, l’Homme facile (A Man for the Asking), was banned for French readers under 18. She would go on to make Romance and Anatomy of Hell, both of which feature adult actor Rocco Siffredi. She also acted in Last Tango in Paris.

She isn’t without controversy, as actress Caroline Ducey accused her of allowing actors to go too far with her sexually during Romance (not Siffredi). She has also been outspoken about actress Asia Argento, who had starred in her film The Last Mistress. She didn’t believe that Weinstein was guilty and referred to Argento as being involved in “semi-prostitution.” Argento responded by calling Breillat “the most sadistic and downright evil director she’d ever worked with.”

Directed and produced by Matt Cimber and written by Mikel Angel under the pseudonym of George Theakos, The Candy Tangerine Man presents the dual lives of businessperson Ron Lewis (John Daniels). By day, he’s a successful executive, a loving husband and a devoted father. By night, he’s the Black Baron, riding down the Sunset Strip in his yellow and red Rolls Royce to collect the money from his sex workers.

He was a GOOD FATHER by day…and a MEAN MUTHA at night!

Unlike every real pimp in the world, he treats his women right. Sure, some of them try to steal money from him and he has to deal with them, as well as organized crime, but he’s selling sex for the betterment of his family. See? He’s an alright guy. Sometimes, you just need to keep the girls in line as well as protect them from some guy going all The New York Ripper on them.

While this is derivative of every other blacksploitation movie, it does get to the hand down the garbage disposal gore scene two years before Rolling Thunder.

Git Back JACK–Give him no JIVE…He is the BAAAD’EST Cat in ’75!

I will not call this by its main title, as I’m a white person and have no right to use it. Instead, I’m going to call it Boss or The Black Bounty Killer. And despite its incendiary title, it is a major movie in black film history, as Dana M. Reemes’ wrote in Directed by Jack Arnold: “Jack Arnold seems to have been artiste exécutant on this picture; content-wise, we must regard Fred Williamson as the film’s auteur. He is like a black Clint Eastwood in a Cottafavi western. William’s bounty hunter turns the tables on the town’s White establishment with an intelligent and biting wit. He is very popular in the nearby Mexican village and is generous to its inhabitants—a kind of cinematic third-world unity. From an ideological standpoint, it is interesting to note that the only White male who turns out to be worth much is the blacksmith, a simple, honest tradesman.”

Boss and Amos (Fred Williamson and D’Urville Martin) stop a stagecoach robbery and save Clara Mae (Carmen Hayworth). They then learn that several of the bodies in the aftermath have rewards for their capture, while one was due to become the sheriff of the town of San Miguel, as recommended by Jed Clayton (William Smith). Does Mayor Griffin (R. G. Armstrong) know that this man was a criminal?

They end up becoming the lawmen of this town and Boss even romances the white Miss Pruit (Barbara Leigh), which starts off on the wrong foot when she has fond memories of the slaves her father once owned. This may not be the best way to handle things. But by the end, Boss and Amos are defending the town from Jed, who has killed Clara Mae and kidnapped the Mexican boy, Poncho, who has become friends with them. Then, the mayor shoots Boss twice, who somehow is able to kill him with a knife. He tells Amos, “Don’t let me die in a white town,” before they leave. Does Boss survive? I’d like to think he does.

Jack Arnold did so much, like The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Mouse That Roared and The Space Children. He produced this with Williamson, who wrote the script. It’s way better than you’d expect, made at the height of the Black Power movement, yet it makes the hero the outsider who is fighting the sins of white America.

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.