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.
Leng Rushuang (Shih Szu) is hunting for a criminal, Chief Jiao Tianhao (Lo Lieh), who was once the security for a convoy. Yet the Forest’s Four Evil Spirits gang have kidnapped his son, as well as framed him for rape and murder. Sure, Leng thinks he could be innocent, but she’s also looking to get him back in custody no matter what it takes.
We get promised a flaming dagger technique that I’d love to see more of, but hey — I’m all for the Shaw Brothers movies where a female fighter is the lead. I wish she were in it more, but at the end, she does a high wire fight, and it’s incredible. I wish this had more of that! At least there’s a scene where she fights an entire harem packed with warrior women, so I can’t say that I wasn’t entertained!
Both Stanley Siu Wing and Shen Chiang are credited for this film, which may have been finished as early as 1971 and Shaw Brothers hung on to it for some time.
The 88 Films release of Lady of the Law has a commentary track by David West, a stills gallery and new artwork by Rob Bruno. You can get it from MVD.
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.
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.
June 9: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Free Space!
Hey Derek Ford, thanks for making this movie, which is also called The Sexplorer. Man, it’s as scummy as I would expect from you.
Monika Ringwald AKA Marilyn Rickard was in Satan’s Slaveand British men’s magazines like Witchcraft and Health and Efficiency. Here she’s a girl from Venus who has come to our planet to explore, which leads her to a gym with naked people, an adult movie theater, a wedding and a balloon room, all guided by the voiceover of her leader.
Mark Jones would one day be an Imperial Officer, but he plays Lecher here. Prudence Drage would be the handmaiden in the Bible fantasy in A Clockwork Orange, but she was also in two of the Adventures of… movies, Virgin Witch and Eskimo Nell. Tanya Ferova played a stripper in this and Terror. Juliet Groves was also in Naughty Girls and Keep It Up, Jack, which also had Veronica Peters, who posed for plenty of men’s magazines in addition to being in this.
When this came to America, pun not intended, it had inserts.
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.
Loulou (Lina Romay), Fifi (Brigitte Monnin), Gigi (Anna Gladysek), Mimi (Maria Mancini), Simone (Monica Swinn) and Coco (Pamela Stanford) — an all-star team of Jess Franco’s actresses — work at a brothel where they protect the rebels and their leader Carlos Ribas (Fred Williams). But when the government comes back into power, they arrest these women and plan on using them as a joy division for their troops until they escape and live in a convent.
As you can imagine, these ladies of loose morals get into some shenanigans. I wrote that sentence as if it were a one-line review in the TV Guide.
There’s a statement in this about government authoritarianism, but really, Line Romay, Pamela Stanford and Monica Swinn were all I needed to read to make me watch it. Also, if you looked at Maria Mancini’s name and wondered if she’s Carla’s sister, I want to thank you for making me not feel alone in my complete nerdiness. She’s also in Giallo in Venice and Seven Women for Satan.
No nuns in my childhood looked like Lina Romay, but I don’t think that ever existed outside of this movie.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will play this Saturday, Jan. 4 at 7:00 p.m. at Central Cinema, Knoxville, TN with The Psychic (tickets here). It’s also playing on Friday, Jan. 24 at midnight at The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, TN (tickets here). For more information, visit Cinematic Void.
When a movie starts with a fashion model dying during a back alley abortion and it being covered up as a drowning, all before the opening credits, you know that you’re in for something demented. When you realize that the film was written and directed by Andrea Bianchi, who brought us Burial Ground, you will either run screaming or sit down and pay attention.
The doctor who performed the operation is killed by a maniac in a motorcycle suit, but nobody at the Albatross Modeling Agency cares. All Carlo, the head photographer, cares about is using his modeling connections to pick up women. That’s how he meets Lucia (Femi Benussi, Hatchet for the Honeymoon), whom he takes from the steam room to the modeling agency.
Magda (Edwige Fenech looks better than I’ve ever seen her look in any movie) is jealous, so she surprises Carlo with some black lace, and they begin an affair. We then see a photo of the main agency members, like Mario, Magda, Carlo, Stefano, Dorris, Maurizio and his wife, and the owner of the studio, Gisella. There’s one other person in the photo—Evelyn, who we saw die in the beginning.
Mario heads home, and the killer shows up. When their helmet is removed, Mario knows the killer. But it’s too late. He’s dead now. The killer takes the photo so that they have a checklist of who to kill.
So then there’s Maurizio, who is cheating on his wife with a prostitute. He takes her on a crazy ride through the streets and then takes her back to his place, where he begs and threatens her life before she suddenly wants to have sex with him — because, you know, that’s how things worked in the 1970s — before he lasts all of a minute and starts embracing his blow up doll. Honestly, what the fuck? Of course, he’s killed right afterward. Good riddance.
Carlo later witnesses Gisella being murdered and even photographs the attack, but he’s hurt in a hit-and-run accident. While he’s recovering, Magda develops the film, but the killer ruins the negatives.
After killing Doris and Stefano, the murderer tries to kill Carlo and Magda, but the killer is knocked down the stairs. So who is it? New model Patrizia — Evelyn’s sister — blames him for her sister’s death. However, she dies before she can tell the police of his involvement.
The movie ends with Carlo playing around by mock choking Magda before initiating anal sex with her, as she tells him not to, in a scene meant as a comedy but lost in translation and the fact that forty-plus-year-old Giallo could never anticipate the #metoo movement.
The title of this film says it all. It’s the most nudity I’ve ever seen in a movie. And it’s one of the most lurid I’ve seen, too. I do not know if Bianchi intended this as a comedy, but it feels like one.
It’s almost incredible that a movie with this much nudity and mayhem moves at a glacial pace. It felt like the film’s first hour was the entire running time and contained wall-to-wall misogyny. I know, I know, that’s the majority of Giallo, but it feels so overwhelming and alien when seen with today’s eyes. I mean, should I be shocked that a movie called Strip Nude for Your Killer is so sexist? And why do I love it so much? Maybe it’s because Edwige Fenech makes me watch anything that she is in.
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