EDITOR’S NOTE: The Ultimate Warrior was on the CBS Late Movie on July 2 and November 24, 1982 and February 6 and July 15, 1986.

There had been post-apocalyptic movies before — End of the World came out in 1916 — and the genre was already a big deal by 1975, following The Omega Man and Soylent Green. So when most people believe that end of the world movies started in 1979 with Mad Max, they’d been around long before.

The Ultimate Warrior is pretty much a western — all good post-apocalyptic movies are — with a frontier town under attack. That town would be a small fort in what’s left of New York City, a place led by Baron (Max Von Sydow). One of his followers is a former scientist named Cal (Richard Kelton), who has developed plague resistant seeds that grow in the dead soil, creating a desert in the wasteland.

And, just like every western — and again, post-apocalyptic movie — there are gangs of bad people making the lives of good people hard. One of those gangs is led by Carrot (William Smith!) and Baron is so worried about them that he hires on a loner gunslinger — or fighter — named Carson (Yul Brynner).

Even with his abilities, the settlement is still doomed. So Baron sends his pregnant daughter Melinda (Joanna Miles) away from the citty with the goal of building a new world on a North Carolina island. But escaping the city isn’t easy and it costs nearly everyone their lives and Carson his hand, but the ultimate warrior is nothing if not resilient. Or deadly.

Director and writer Robert Clouse knew how to make a movie with fights as the main draw, as he directed Enter the Dragon and Game of Death with Bruce Lee, as well as Black Belt Jones with Jim Kelly, Golden Needles, Force: Five, The Big Brawl with Jackie Chan, Gymkata with Kurt Thomas, two China O’Brien movies with Cynthia Rothrock and Ironheart with Bolo Yeung. He also made the animal attack movies The Pack and the rats on the loose film Deadly Eyes.

And yes, this movie is where the wrestler got his name from.

After The Seven Minutes and Blacksnake were failures at the box office, Russ Meyer went back to what worked best. Sex comedies.

He said, “I’m back to big bosoms, square jaws, lotsa action and the most sensational sex you ever saw. I’m back to what I do best – erotic, comedic sex, sex, sex – and I’ll never stray again.”

He wrote this himself and claimed it was based on Horatio Alger’s tales. “They were always about a young man who was totally good, and he would always set out to gain his fortune and he would always come up against terrible people. They did everything they could to do him in, but he fought fair, you know, and he always survived and succeeded in the end. So, that’s just one facet of the thing.”

Supervixens would be the biggest commercial success Meyer had since Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, making $8.2 million on a $100,000 budget.

Clint Ramsey (Charles Pitts) works at a gas station for Martin Bormann (Henry Rowland) — Hitler’s personal secretary who ran to America and runs his small shop in the desert — and is married to SuperAngel (Shari Eubank). All she does all day is call and harass him at work when she isn’t demanding that he come back home and make love to her. When a customer — SuperLorna (Christy Hartburg) — flirts with him, she flips out and tries to kill him with an axe. He goes to a bar where Super Haji (Haji) comes on to him as a a cop named Harry Sledge (Charles Napier, playing the same character from Harry, Cherry and Raquel) tries to sleep with his wife but can’t perform, so he murders her in the bathtub. He burns down their house and sets up Clint, who runs from the law.

The rest of the movie is a series of his adventures, from being molested and mugged by Cal (John LaZar) and Super Cherry (Colleen Brennan), taken care of by a farmer whose wife SuperSoul (Uschi Digard) assaults him, sleeping with the deaf daughter of a motel owner named SuperEula (Deborah McGuire) and finally, discovering his true love, Super Angel (also Eubank). Of course, Harry shows up and wants to destroy their happiness, even if Clint only sees him as a friend. They’re both nearly blown up before the dynamite claims the villain like Wile E. Coyote.

Meyer said that the where Harry beats, stabs, stomps and drops a radio in the tub to kill Super Vixen was the most trouble he’d had with censors, other than Kitten Natividad’s full nudity in Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. He also had to deal with watching this movie in the theater with Eubank and her father, who hated that his daughter was working with Russ Meyer. After the film ended, Eubank’s father sad he actually liked the film.

The one thing that’s interesting about this movie is that it’s unafraid to show glimpses of penis unlike so many other sex films. It’s also absolutely ridiculous and so over the top that I have no idea who can take it seriously, other than people still being upset about the murder scene. At least Super Vixen comes back as a ghost and is able to be in charge of her own sexuality, as all ends happily because of love.

Don Edmonds and produced by David F. Friedman, Ilsa is one of the most notorious exploitation movies of all time. Gene Siskel said it was “the most degenerate picture I have seen to play downtown” and people were shocked by its depictions of castration, torture, human experiments and sexual degradation. Of course, it was a huge success.

Based on Ilse Koch, a woman who ran the Buchenwald concentration camp, where she supposedly killed some prisoners to get their tattooed skin. Even if time — and court cases — have proved that she was not as horrible as those claims, the legend stuck.

She did not, however, look anything like Dyanne Thorne. The actress went from the stage and comedy albums in New York City to singing in Las Vegas and acting in movies like Point of Terror. She was also a church ordained, non-denominational ministers of a church called the Science of Mind. Later in life — she also studied anthropology — Thorne and husband Howard Mauer offered weddings in Las Vegas. She would even dress like Ilsa if you wanted.

Ilsa runs a prison camp and also uses it for her sexual needs, which can’t be satisfied by any man. When any of them orgasm before her, they lose their manhood and are killed. The only man that survives her bedroom is Wolfe (Gregory Knoph), who looks like the perfect Aryan Ubermensch. He will be, however, her undoing.

Meanwhile, a visiting German general gives Ilsa the Iron Cross for her service as she proves that women are superior when it comes to dealing with pain. He also asks her to urinate on him, so…yeah. You may not be ready for this movie, to be perfectly honest.

The other reason this movie works is a great cast. There’s George Buck Flower as Dr. Binz, Ilsa’s assistant doctor. He was also an uncredited assistant director, casting director, set decorator and grip. It also has appearances by Uschi Digard, Colleen Brennan (AKA Sharon Kelly; she’s also in the first sequel) and Sandy Dempsey.

Ilsa comes after Lee Frost and Friedman’s Love Camp 7 became a success in Canada, which found André Link and John Dunning of Cinepix Film Properties wanting to make their own cash-in. There were some worries that this movie would backfire, so it starts with a square-up: “The film you are about to see is based on documented Holocaust facts. The atrocities shown were conducted as medical experiments in special concentration camps throughout Hitler’s Third Reich. Although the Nazis and Schutzstaffel’s crimes against humanity are historically accurate, the characters depicted are composites of notorious Nazi personalities; and the events portrayed, have been condensed into one locality for dramatic purposes. Because of its shocking subject matter, this film is restricted to adult audiences only. We dedicate this film with the hope that these heinous, absolutely HORRIFIC crimes will never happen again.”

It also has its share of fake names. Herman Traeger is Friedman, Jonah Royston is Saxton, Flower used C.D. Lafleuer and Richard Kennedy was Wolfgang Roehm. The editor had to have used a fake name, as Kurt Schnit means “short cut” in German.

Despite — spoiler warning — Ilsa being shot in the head and her crimes being covered up, she somehow survived and appears in three sequels that all also end with her being killed or near-death.

Most incredibly, this was shot on the set of Hogan’s Heroes, which had been cancelled and was due to be toen down. The filmmakers told them they would be destroying it, which got them the use of the entire pre-built world that appears so much more sinister than it did when Colonel Klink was running things.

From a story by Robert Ayre and a play by Ketti Frings, this is the tale of John Gwilt (Jason Robards), a postman who decides that he wants to become a tree. He plants himself in his back yard and waits for it to happen while his wife Jane (Sandy Dennis) tries everything she knows to get him to be normal. At the same time, John finds a sympathetic figure in librarian Estelle Benbow (Jean Simmons).

Directed and written by Pancho Kohner, who produced the Bronson movies Assassination, Death Wish 4, Messenger of Death, 10 to Midnight, The Evil That Men Do, St. Ives, The White Buffalo and  Kinjite, this is definitely a movie of its time.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Keep telling yourself: She’s just a child. She’s just a child. She’s just a child. She’s just a child. She’s just a child. She’s just a child.

Also known as The Cursed Medallion, this Italian ripoff was directed by Massimo Dallamano (What Have You Done to Solange?).

Richard Johnson (The Haunting and Dr. Menard from Zombi 2) is a BBC filmmaker working on a documentary about demonic images in paintings. His daughter Emily (Nicoletta Elmi, Who Saw Her Die?, Deep Red) is having nightmares about how her mother died in a fire.

Edmund Purdom (2019: After the Fall of New York) advises him to bring his daughter along to Italy for some bonding time, along with their governess Jill, who is love with her boss. But then so is Joanna (Joanna Cassidy, The Glove), the producer of his movie. It also seems like Emily is in love, like real love, with her dad too. Was everyone incestual in 1970’s horror?

Michael meets Contessa Cappelli, an expert on satanic paintings. She warns him not to use a painting in his work. It depicts a child — wearing a medallion just like the one his daughter has been wearing — watching her mother burn. Is it any wonder that demonic possession soon follows?

This movie looks gorgeous. You can see the difference when a real director takes on a ripoff and decides to make it his own movie instead of aping The Exorcist directly.

I’m shocked that more people don’t discuss this film. It really fits into the genre of 70’s occult film quite well.

A mezzanotte va la ronda del piacere (At Midnight the Pleasure Patrol Goes) is also known as The Immortal Bachelor, Midnight Pleasures and Midnight Lovers.

Gabriella (Claudia Cardinale, Blonde In Black Leather) is trapped in a loveless marriage to Andrea (Vittorio Gassman) and sees a lot of herself as she sits on the jury for the murder trial of Tina (Monica Vitti), who has killed her husband Gino (Giancarlo Giannini).

Or did she?

As Tina testifies, Gabriella wishes she had the passion in her marriage that Tina seemed to have. And then she learns why Tina and Gino had their last fight. Her new lover was Andrea. Gabriella begs her husband to testify in Tina’s defense but he leaves the country, only for Gino to show up, alive and ready to fight — and make love — to his wife again.

Director Marcello Fondato, who co-wrote this with Francesco Scardamaglia, was one of the writers of Black Sabbath and Blood and Black Lace.

FVI didn’t release this movie in the U.S. until 1980. Cardinale and Vitti are much better in Blonde In Black Leather, which New World released here as Lucky Girls.

Roger Ebert hated this and said, “Faithful readers will recall that I have, in the past, occasionally referred to Idiot Plots. The Immortal Bachelor is a classic Idiot Plot, requiring that everyone in the movie be an idiot. If they weren’t, they’d solve their problems instantly and the movie would be a short subject.”

Also known as Simone e Matteo – Un gioco da ragazzi, Simón y Mateo and Kid Stuff, this stars Antonio Cantafora and Paul L. Smith in one of the series of movies they made trying to imitate Terence Hill and Bud Spencer that includes Carambola!, Carambola’s Philosophy: In the Right Pocket, We Are No Angels and The Diamond Peddlers.

FVI took it one step further by renaming them in America as Terrance Hall and Bob Spencer. Smith sued, saying The only thing an actor has is his name and if that’s taken away, he has nothing.” That case was Smith v. Montoro, 648 F.2d 602. Smith alleged that he had acted in the leading role and had a contract granting him star billing. However, when the film was distributed in the U.S. by FVI, his name was stripped from the film. The Ninth Circuit federal court of appeals granted Smith standing to sue the filmmakers, but it is unknown how the case was finally settled. Rumors say that he won.

Toby and Butch (Cantafora and Smith) are dumb criminals moving insecticide from Italy to France but in truth, they don’t know that they are smuggling guns. There are also gangsters trying to get the guns but they can’t outfight these two. 

This was directed by Giuliano Carnimeo (Find A Place to Die, the Sartana films) and written by Sergio Bazzini and Tulio Demicheli. The music — which will repeat throughout and get stuck in your head — is by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis, the men who call themselves Oliver Onions.

You can watch this on YouTube.