A hospital is plagued by black magic that can only be stopped by a married pair of physicians from Hong Kong, Dr. Zhongping Qi (Ti Lung) and his wife, Ciuling (Tanny). The skeptical wife volunteers for a ritual, uncovering an evil, zombie-controlling wizard, Kang Cong (Lo Lieh), who sustains his youth by drinking human breast milk.

Directed by Meng-Hua Ho and written by Kuang Ni, the paragraph above does describe the story, but so much happens that it can barely contain the wildness of this movie. An exotic dancer named Miss Hong (Terry Liu) ages while having sex, eyeballs are destroyed like Fulci took a trip to Hong Kong, nails go through the heads of zombies, sex causes mayhem, and doctors have to treat worms under the skin and pus-filled growths that appear to be human faces.

The evil black magician decides he wants Dr. Zhensheng Shi’s (Lam Wai Tiu) wife, Margaret (Lily Li), so he possesses her and brings her to his manor, shaves all her pubic hair, burns it, and then turns her into his breast milk machine. The very next day, she’s fully pregnant and gives birth to a bloody mutant. This is but another hurdle for our heroes to jump over. Yet even when a witch doctor fails against the voodoo dolls of Kang Cong, what hope do they have?

This was released in the U.S. as Revenge of the Zombies.

The Arrow Vide0 release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. There’s a commentary track by critic Samm Deighan and a U.S. opening. You can get this set from MVD.

Inspired by a 1950s series of Malaysian movies*, this film is about Sheng Yun (Danny Lee, The Killer, Thunder of Gigantic Serpent/King of Snakes, Infra-Man), a man who has risen past the handicap that polio dealt him to become a lawyer. He tries to helps a man, Lin Yang Ba (Ku Feng), who has killed a criminal to protect his daughter Yue (Chen Ping) and his coconut oil business. Before he is hung, Lin Yang gives Sheng Yu a black magic spell that transforms him into an oily maniac.

The real problem is that Yue is really in love with Chen Fu Sin (Wa Lun) and wants nothing to do with him. That means he goes on a rampage, wiping out all manner of criminals, like a plastic surgeon, a woman who accuses men of rape and a blackmailer. Look, if someone asks you to look at the magic spell on their back, lie in a hole in your yard and cover yourself with oil, I guess you do it.

Some people think all the Shaw Brothers did was martial arts movies. Oh man. I hope you know that they made movies like The Boxer’s Omen, Human Lanterns and Corpse Mania. Somehow, director Meng-Hua Ho (The Cave of the Silken Web, Black Magic) and writer Lam Chua made a movie that feels like The Heap, Man-Thing and Swamp Thing with a bit of Toxic Avenger except, you know, in 1976.

You would also think that because this is a superhero movie that it would be for children. Well, no. Not with the near-constant nudity and threat of sexual violence in every scene. It’s so strange how the goofy costume of the creature is juxtaposed against the sheer depravity on display in this movie, including scenes where a woman reveals her burned breast and the Oily Maniac attacks an abortionist mid-baby killing.

*According to IMDB, this is based on the Malaysian legend of the orang minyak (oily man), a creature that comes to life out of crude oil and is fueled by the hope for revenge by those who have been done wrong. There are also three Malaysian films — Curse of the Oily Man, Orang Minyak and Serangan Orang Minyak — as well as two modern movies, Orang minyak and Pontianak vs. Orang Minyak, which has the oily man battle a vengeful ghost woman.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. It has commentary by Ian Jane. You can get this set from MVD.

Director Burt Kennedy was mainly known for Westerns like Support Your Local Sheriff!, Hannie Culder and Dirty Dingus Magee, as well as Suburban Commando and All the Kind Strangers. He was supposed to direct this, but walked off the set because he was embarrassed by the script, which was written by Norman Wexler (Saturday Night Fever, Joe) and based on the book by Kyle Onstott (there are 15 of them!). What did he expect when he signed on to make the sequel to Mandingo?

With four days of planning, Steve Carver (Steel, The Arena) took over for producer Dino De Laurentiis. Several actors also left, but Carver replaced them with Pam Grier and Royal Dano (Norton and Brenda Sykes returned from the first film but played different roles; Lillian Hayman reprises her role as Lucrezia, the exact role she had in Mandingo). It was nearly a Paramount movie, but they thought it was X-rated; United Artists took over distribution.

Drum (boxer Ken Norton) is born to a white madam, Marianna (Isela Vega), who raises him with her black lesbian lover, Rachel (Paula Kelly), and claims that it’s that woman’s child. His skills as a boxer make him an in-demand slave, as well as someone that women — and men like Bernard DeMarigny (John Colicos) — want to sleep with, even if a black and white union will lead to the slave being lynched. Drum and his friend Blaise (Yaphet Kotto) find themselves being sold to Hammond Maxwell (Warren Oates, playing the son of Perry King’s character), while their friend Regine (Pam Grier) is taken as the man’s lover. This enrages his fiancée, Augusta Chauvel (Fiona Lewis), while Maxwell’s daughter Sophie (Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith) delights in teasing the slaves, trying to get them to touch her and then claiming to be raped.

Somehow, Drum is able to resist her, but Blaise isn’t so smart. Soon, he’s chained up and due to be castrated at a dinner party, just in time for a slave revolt. 

This movie has some…wild dialogue. Like this…

Regine: And titties! You likes big titties, don’t ya?

Hammond Maxwell: Oh, you know I loves big titties.

Or this…

Augusta Chauvet: Must you persist in being a vulgarian, Mr. Maxwell?

Hammond Maxwell: Miss Augusta, you just gotta get used to the idea that ****** fornicatin’ is what Falconhurst is all about! If my ******* stop fornicatin’, we stop eatin’!

Augusta Chauvet: Since the conversation has descended to this level, I feel I can voice my feelins’ concernin’ your beddin’ with Regine every night.

Hammond Maxwell: Well, I don’t do it every night. It’s bad for my liver.

Augusta Chauvet: I don’t think you should do it at all!

Hammond Maxwell: Now, Miss Augusta, you ain’t gonna start meddlin’ around in my poontang now, is you?

Vincent Canby said of this, “Life on the old plantation was horrendous, I agree, but movies like this are less interested in information than titillation, which, in turn, reflects contemporary obsessions rather more than historical truths.” I bet he was absolutely disgusted to have to see it. 

This tops all the racism in the film by also being wildly homophobic, with villain Bernard DeMarigny rubbing Drum’s shoulders and telling his young buck how much he will love being with a man. All in a horrible French accent! Look, I know this is an indefensible movie, but I was entertained, perhaps by how insane it was that this played not just grindhouses, but real theaters.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Pupi Avati made Zeder, the zombie movie that really isn’t a zombie movie, so I was excited to see his take on the giallo, basing it on a story he heard about a priest being exhumed in his childhood.

The Valli di Comacchio area has a fresco on the rotting wall of a church that may be the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. Painted years ago by the long-dead and always mysterious Legnani, it is being restored by Stefano (Lino Capolicchio, who was the Italian voice for Bo Duke), who is also living in the home of the painter’s sisters. Those very same sisters — according to town legend — assisted their brother in torturing and killing people so that he would have inspiration for his artwork.

No one wants Stefano to fix this painting. People start dying and the secret behind the murders may be in the very painting that our lead is fixing. What a time to start a romance with school teacher Francesca (Francesca Marciano)!

I love when the giallo moves out of Rome and into the small cities, such as Fulci’s masterful Don’t Torture a Duckling and Antonio Bido’s The Blood Stained Shadow. Why should the metro locales have all the deep, dark secrets and horrific murders, right?

Don’t go in expecting sleaze and gore. Do expect to be surprised and delighted by the world and mood that this movie creates. This one needs to be unearthed and celebrated by way more than know it now.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD is a great way to do so. It has a 4K restoration from the original camera negative, graded by Arrow Films, as well as a restored original lossless mono Italian soundtrack and newly translated optional English subtitles. You also get two new commentaries, one by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson and the other by Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth.

There’s also Painted Screams, a brand new feature-length documentary on the film directed by Federico Caddeo, featuring interviews with co-writer/director Pupi Avati, co-writer Antonio Avati, assistant director Cesare Bastelli and actors Lino Capolicchio and Francesca Marcia. There are also video essays by Chris Alexander and Kat Ellinger, the Italian theatrical trailer, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter Strain, a double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter Strain and an illustrated perfect bound collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Matt Rogerson, Willow Maclay, Alexia Kannas, Anton Bitel and Stefano Baschiera.

You can get this from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Creature from Black Lake was on Chiller Theater on Saturday. August 7, 1982 at 1:00 a.m.

If I’ve learned anything from my week of watching Bigfoot movies, it’s that Yankees aren’t wanted in the places where Bigfoot resides. You can also rewrite that sentence to cover that city folks aren’t wanted when Bigfoot decides to walk on through Western Pennsylvania or Southeastern Ohio.

This one is all about two dudes: Rives (John David Carson, Empire of the Ants) and Pahoo (Dennis Fimple, House of 1000 Corpses). That’s right, Pahoo. Dennis Fimple was 36 when he played this young twenty-something just back from ‘Nam and looking for something, anything, maybe even Bigfoot. Rives is more concerned with hamburgers, fries and Cokes. And oh yeah, redhead goddesses. Well, everyone gets what they want in Black Lake.

You get a lot of character actors in here, like Western star Dub Taylor as Grandpa Bridges, Bill Thurman whose career stretches from The Last Picture Show to Mountaintop Motel Massac, re, and Jack Elam, who is the best part of this film as the tracker Joe Canton.

Elam lost an eye to a sharpened pencil at a Boy Scout meeting as a child (he also literally grew up picking cotton) before serving in WW II, becoming a studio accountant and even managing the Bel Air Hotel in LosWorld Warngeles. A character actor in numerous gangster and Western films, as well as TV, Elam came up with a quote that many have stolen over the years in relation to how Hollywood sees people. He said that casting directors about him:

• Stage 1: “Who is Jack Elam?”
• Stage 2: “Get me Jack Elam.”
• Stage 3: “I want a Jack Elam type.”
• Stage 4: “I want a younger Jack Elam.”
• Stage 5: “Who is Jack Elam?”

He shows up in some crazy roles, such as Doctor Nikolas Van Helsing in the Cannonball Run films and in The Norseman, Charles B. Pierce’s bonkers ode to Vikings that stars Lee Majors. The film was re-released theatrically in 1982 as part of a multi-film package called “5 Deranged Features.” Also on the bill were Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971) (under the title They’re Coming to Get You so perhaps people went thinking they were about to see the American cut of All the Colors of the Dark), The Wizard of Gore under the name House of Torture, Shriek of the Mutilated and The Corpse Grinders under the title Night of the Howling Beast.

If you’re up for seeing college students try to get laid while eating burgers and hunting Bigfoot, then this is probably the exact movie you’re looking for.

What this movie really has going for it is cinematography by Dean Cundey (Halloween, The Fog, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Rock ‘n Roll High School and many, many more great movies). There are some interesting shots, and it’s not your typical dark, swampy seventies affair.