Known in its native Philippines as Itim (Black), The Rites of May is the first movie by director Mike de Leon. It begins during a seance, as the medium tells Teresa (Charo Santos) that her sister Rosa (Susan Valdez), a Catholic nun, is dead. Teresa asks if she may speak to the dead, but the medium says that she must wait until Good Friday.

Meanwhile, Jun (Tommy Abuel) has come back home to visit his infirm and mute father Dr. Torres (Mario Montenegro). While there, he is doing photography work for a magazine, shooting the celebrations of Lent in Manila, an extremely religious city. As he takes photos, he meets Teresa, which is supernaturally predestined to happen. She keeps going in and out of fugue states. As Jun takes photos of her, he will see her sister Rosa as well as her connection to his father.

The director told the Cannes Film Festival, “I got interested in doing a film that used a camera to tell a story with one character, no dialogue and just sound effects. One thing I liked about Blow-up was the idea of existential alienation. Monologo was a ghost story. The character takes photos and he does not realize that he has photographed a ghost or a presence in his own house. I mean, his camera saw it but he did not. That kinda blew my mind.”

Despite failing in cinemas, this movie won  Best Picture, and Charo Santos was recognized as Best Actress, at the 1978 Asian Film Festival. Since then, it’s been recognized as a classic. It’s heart in the unknown feels authentic, as spiritist Becky Gutierrez wrote the seance scenes, which she based on actual ritual. It also uses the ghost in its story to symbolize the past of the Philippines, a country that seems as if it can move past a history filled with violence yet will forever remain haunted by it. de Leon started this as a simple ghost story but it grew into this epic with deep themes.

This was shot in shot in de Leon’s grandparents’ house in San Vicente, San Miguel, Bulacan. I have an affinity for films that get into the supernatural and the religious filmed in family homes, like Martin. Can you think of any others?

The Rites of May is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including audio commentary by Filipino film historian Andrew Leavold, the documentary Itim: An Exploration In Cinema and Filipino film scholar Anne Frances N. Sangil discussing this film.

You can order this set from Severin.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Track of the Moon Beast was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, January 10, 1981 and Saturday, November 20, 1981 at 1:00 a.m.

Bill Finger wrote Death Comes to Planet Aytin, The Green Slime and this film, as well as two episodes of the Batman TV show, which would be the first time he was credited for writing Batman, a character that he co-created with Bob Kane, who ended up taking most of the credit for years. Finger co-wrote this with Charles Sinclair in two days, calling their story The Lunar Analog. Sinclair totally forgot working on it and was shocked when his son called him and said he saw his name on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Directed by Richard Ashe (the only movie he ever directed, although he was second unit on A Place for Today, Diary of a Mad Housewife and Girls Are for Loving) and shot in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this is the story of mineralogist Paul Carlson (Chase Cordell) and how he gets smacked on the head with meteor, which makes him turn into a lizard at night.

His girlfriend Kathy Nolan (Donna Leigh Drake) and former anthropology professor and noted stew maker Johnny “Longbow” Salinas (Gregorio Sala) try to help as much as they can until NASA figures out that the meteor has become part of him and that he will soon blow up real good. So Paul goes into the desert to die alone. You’d think his friends and the government would help him, but no, Johnny uses a meteorite arrow to shoot him and make him explode. One presumes he ends up curling up with Kathy that night and they have a piping hot mug of his chicken, corn, green peppers, chili and, sign, onion stew.

Frank Larrabee and his band are the real stars of this, as they perform the song “California Lady.” They were the house band at the Ramada Inn in Albuquerque where the filmmakers were staying and also where the footage was shot.

Originally, Kathy was going to have been played by Cheri Caffaro from the Ginger movies. If that isn’t exciting enough, this never really played theaters and went straight to TV, meaning that there is a gore cut of Track of the Moon Beast that has never been seen.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Lipstick was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, March 5, 1983 at 2:00 a.m. I can’t believe it.

Never trust Chris Sarandon.

I learned this at a young age with Fright Night, but this was before that and you still should never trust him. Don’t trust him in The Sentinel, don’t trust him in The Princess Bride, don’t even trust him as the voice of Jack Skellington.

Christine McCormick — played by Margaux Hemingway, herself a supermodel who appeared on the covers of Cosmopolitan, Elle and Vogue as well as serving as the spokesperson for Fabergé’s Babe perfume — is the face of a new brand of lipstick. She also is the guardian of her 13-year-old sister Kathy (Margaux’s sister Muriel, who was also in Star 80 and Personal Best), who has a young girl crush on her teacher, Gordon Stewart (Sarandon). For some reason, he thinks that Christine has the connections to get his music out to the world.

He comes to her beach photo shoot, but there’s no time to chat, and she forgets that they were to meet at her apartment. As he plays his atonal music — more on that in a second — she leaves the room to take a phone call from her lover Steve (Perry King, who really was in some awesome junk and I say that in the best of ways).

Hurt by her seeming rejection, his assault is brutal in its quickness. Saying, “So you fuck priests, too” he shoves a photo of her brother Martin (John Bennett Perry, Matt Perry’s dad) in her face, breaks it and then smears lipstick all over her face, telling her he wants it all over him. He ties her to the bed and takes her — the scene is too male gaze, too beautiful in a way because it’s a disgusting act — and even when they’re caught by Kathy, he suggests that the little girl joins them.

Once free, Christine gets a lawyer, Carla Bondi (Anne Bancroft), who tells her that it won’t be easy to convict him. And it isn’t. Christine’s sexual image as a model, even the fact that she has fantasies and a sex life, is used against her. So when Gordon goes free, it’s no great surprise.

Christine decides that she’s done with California and modeling after one last job. Except that the last job is in the same exact abandoned building where Gordon is rehearsing a synth ballet. He ends up finding Kathy, using her heartbeat as an instrument and then raping her as well. When she gets back to the photo shoot, Christine finds the rifle she had packed — literally, they packed to leave and are doing the photoshoot and then getting out of town — and shoots at Gordon as he tries to get away. As he gets out of the car, she pumps round after round into him. And in the end, no jury will convict her.

But maybe not. Because I believe that everything that happened after the not guilty verdict is in her head. There’s no way that she’d leave modeling literally from her last shoot. The coincidence that Gordon would be in the same building, in a California filled with places to rehearse, is infinite. The idea that she can successfully shoot him so many times in broad daylight and still not go to jail is the kind of fantasy that only appears in exploitation movies. Like Lipstick.

Director Lamont Johnson started as an actor and was mainly known for TV movies like Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232, Crisis at Central High and That Certain Summer, as well as Spacehunter: Adventures In the Forbidden Zone. It was written by David Rayfiel, who was the scriptwriter for The Firm, Havana and the 1995 remake of Sabrina.

Michael Winner turned down producer Dino De Laurentiis’ offer to direct this film and that shocks me. In his autobiography, Winner said that “Chris Sarandon was not a very good actor unless he was playing nut cases.” Then again, he used him in The Sentinel.

Even stranger, in 1998’s Little Men, Muriel Hemingway and Sarandor played husband and wife Jo and Fritz Bhaer.

That’s really fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo shooting the lipstick ads, while the clothes for this movie were designed by Jodie Lynn Tillen, who was the costumer for Messiah of Evil and Lemora! While uncredited, Donfeld also worked on the clothes. He was most famous, perhaps, for creating the TV costume for Wonder Woman.

French singer and music composer Michel Polnareff did the music for this, which is beyond wild. It’s completely unsettling — he also did a disco soundtrack for the film — and when it plays while Gordon assaults Christine, it’s horrifying, setting up his assault of her body, brain and ears as his atonal noise blasts, filling the room with painful beats and shrill screams. Later, when it’s played in court and the jury must hear it, you nearly feel bad for the bad guy but no, he’s absolutely the worst.

Despite critics hating this movie and it failing with audiences, it was remade as Insaf Ka Tarazu, College Girl and Edi Dharmam Edi Nyayam in India and Arzu in Turkey.

The real victim? Margaux. This movie was supposed to launch her career in Hollywood, but Muriel got most of the notice. She would make a few movies over the next seven years — Killer Fish, They Call Me Bruce and Over the Brooklyn Bridge, the first movie for Sam Firstenberg — before working in foreign genre movies like Goma-2 and straight to video films like Fred Olen Ray’s Inner Sanctum and Inner Sanctum II, Joe D’Amato’s A Woman’s Secret and Donald Farmer’s Vicious Kisses. Sadly, she became heavily involved in drugs and died at 41 from suicide. Her sister Mariel has always claimed that her death was not self-induced, but instead drugs.

Harlan Ellison, that cantankerous madman of my heart, once said of this movie, “Lipstick panders to the basest, vilest, lowest possible common denominators of urban fear and lynch logic. It is the sort of film that, if you see it in a ghetto theater filled with blacks, will scare the bejeezus out of you. The animal fury this film unleashes in an audience is terrifying to behold. It gives exploitation a bad name; and it has less to do with rape, which is the commercial hook on which they’ve hung the salability of this bit of putrescence, than it does with the cynicism of Joseph E. Levine, a man who probably has no trouble sleeping with a troubled conscience.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Over the next several days, I’ll be covering movies either directed by Menahem Golan or produced by Golan and Globus before they bought Cannon.

I had no idea that this Italian Western was an Israeli co-production and just a few years before they’d make it to the USA, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus would work with The Irwin Yablans Company and Cannon Film Distributors to bring this movie to screens all over the world.

Sam Clayton (Jack Palance, as always, a grinning force of complete menace) and his gang have taken over Juno City, stabbing men and assaulting women before leaving the town in the bloody dust. No man will ride out to stop them, except Father John (Lee Van Cleef), a holy man who rides out unarmed and takes the guilty gang members to jail.

The gang breaks them out of jail and kills the priest, sending a young boy named Johnny (Leif Garrett!) to Mexico to bring Lewis, the twin brother of the dead man of the cloth, and he comes back with vengeance on his mind, even if it turns out that Clayton ends up being Johnny’s father.

Also known as Diamante Lobo and A Bullet From God, this is Lee Van Cleef’s last filmed Western (and second movie with Garrett). It was a rough film for Richard Boone, who had started having health problems, then got drunk and walked off the set, leaving the Israeli location before he even dubbed his dialogue. He’d say in an interview, “I’m starring in the worst picture ever made. The producer is an Israeli and the director is Italian, and they don’t speak. Fortunately it doesn’t matter, because the director is deaf in both ears.”

That deaf director was Gianfranco Parolini, better known in America as Frank Kramer, and the maker of some wild stuff like Sabata; Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century; Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill; The Three Fantastic Supermen and writing If You Meet Sartana… Pray for Your Death. It was written by John Fonseca, whose career is all over the place, acting in The Uranium Conspiracy (also produced by Golan), serving as a dialogue coach and even shooting stills on the sets of Don’t Open Till Christmas and Slaughter High.

How did I get this far without telling you Sybil Danning is in this movie? Am I slipping?

This may not be the best Italian Western you’ve ever seen, but honestly, the end with Palance rambling in a cemetery and alternating between being paternal and horrifying, well, that’s worth the price of this blu ray. And Lee Van Cleef? Always just right.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Ebony is track star Pam Rogers (Rosanne Katon, Zapped!, Motel Hell, Body and Soul, The Swinging Cheerleaders).

Ivory is Ginger Douglas (Colleen Camp!) is her enemy on the track, a rich girl who is the scion of a supermarket empire.

Jade is Jackie.

They’re all She-Devils in Chains — the original title — trapped after being kidnapped at a Hong Kong track meet. Director Cirio Santiago is working with a bit more budget and a PG rating here, which leads to this being way less sleazy than the prison movie that you think it is going to be.

One of the bad guys is played by Rocco Montalban, which is one of the best acting names I’ve ever seen.

A Dimension Pictures film, this was bought by 21st Century. It was released by Wizard Video as Foxforce — hey Quentin — before 21st Century licensed it to Continental Video as American Beauty Hostages.

Speaking of Tarantino, the back of the box — The Unknown Movies has the entire text and it’s so good — refers to this movie’s protagonists as “3 spittin’ kittens on a roaring rampage of revenge!” That’s the same phrase used to describe the bride’s vengeance, a “roaring rampage of revenge,” in Kill Bill.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Every time I write about a Laura Gemser movie, I always say to myself, “Just be cool. Don’t write an entire article just about how gorgeous she is and how you can’t even concentrate on the screen when she’s in a movie.”

So let me get it out of my system.

There’s an absolutely insane moment in this movie where Laura’s husband Carlo (Gabriele Tinti) demands that she pose for him in front of a desert vista filled with dead bodies and blood. As she barely remains inside her dress, she bends backward and begins a series of poses that make her seemingly take the form of Kali, all at once becoming the goddess of time, death, violence, sexuality, female empowerment and motherly love as she transcends this mortal world of warfare and sadness to become ethereal, something beyond our understanding.

Thanks, I feel a lot better.

This movie is supposed to be all about Crystal (Nieves Navarro)…

Wait a second, Nieves Navarro is in the same movie as Laura Gemser?

Why did anyone make movies after this? You have pretty much scored a perfect cast.

Anyways, I guess I should finish this review I started.

Crystal’s husband has left her, as if any man is dumb enough to run from Susan Scott, and she has moved in with her daughter Magda (Ziggy Zanger, who also in Black Cobra with Gemser and her name sounds like a Spice Girls lyric). She sleeps with their servant Ali (Tarik Ali), who is mainly teased by her daughter, and then both of them fall for a spiritualist named Horatio (Al Cliver, did I cast this movie?).

After an evening reconnecting with Laura and Carlo, as well as drinking too much with former Hollywood actor, Hal (Feodor Chaliapin Jr.), mother and daughter end up having a menage a trois while everyone watches.

Pina (Annie Belle, yes, I definitely casted this movie) soon comes to stay and falls for Laura. They end up stranding her husband in the desert after he forces Laura to pose on the top of a pile of human excrement while villagers throw feces at her. Yes, this happens, and no, this is not a Joe D’Amato movie. I am as shocked as you.

As if that’s not wild enough, Horatio later — I mean, after the obligatory visit a foreign brothel and watch ladies and then a lovemaking scene between Gemser and Belle that the foreign investors were just throwing money at — hypnotizes Laura into having convulsions and killing a goat drinking its blood because, well, that’s what you do in Italian movie parties.

So yes, Horatio ends up sleeping with Pina even though her psychic powers allow her to block his hypnosis — yes this happens — and then her mom tries to kill herself and Pina realizes that she should just let Al Cliver fight zombies and run off with Laura Gemser. After all, Al Cliver is no sex guru when you’ve seen George Eastman do the same in Emanuelle Around the World.

Sex gurus are to Black Emanuelle as stolen diamonds are to Jess Franco.

Director Brunello Rondi worked with Fellini on the scripts for 8 1/2, La Dolce Vita, Juliet of the Spirits, Orchestra Rehearsal and City of Women. His first film, Violent Life, was written by Pasolini and he also directed Le tue mani sul mio corpo, Run. Psycho, Run and The Demon. He wrote this film with Ferdinando Baldi, the director of Treasure of the Four Crowns.

The alternate Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle title suggests that there is an Emanuelle or Emmanuelle cinematic universe where Black Emmanuelle (Gemser) and White Emmanuelle (Belle, whose movie Laure is also called Forever Emmanuelle and not only was directed and written by the real Emmanuelle Arsan, but co-stars her) cross over and by cross over, I mean scissor.

Also: Disco dancing.

According to Temple of Schlock, this was released by Dimension Pictures as Smooth Velvet, Raw Silk in 1978 and re-released in 1979 as Naked Paradise. VCI released it on home video as Naked Paradise before 21st Century, who bought it from Dimension, licensed it to Continental Video as Emanuelle In Egypt.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

What if Death Wish had a bad payoff? Then it would be Tomcats, a movie that has a great poster and really gets you into the theater with it and then says, “Thanks for your money.”

A bunch of maniacs — M.J. (Wayne Crawford), Johnny (Daniel Schweitzer), Billy (Jim Curee) and Curly (Sam Moree) — are assaulting waitresses and get away with it. One of their brothers, Cullen (Chris Mulkey), decides that he has to get justice all on his own for his dead sister Wendy.

Take another look at that poster, which makes you think this is going to be a wacky sex comedy and go read that paragraph again.

Director Harry Kerwin also made Barracuda, Cheering Section, God’s Bloody Acre, It’s a Revolution Mother and Sweet Bird of Aquarius. You may recognize his last name, as his brother is William Kerwin, who shows up in several Herschell Gordon Lewis movies. He plays a detective in this that allows Cullen to go outside of the law.

The trailer is also great as it has Don Steele talking you into the theater only for them to just grab your money and run.

Released by Dimension Pictures in 1977. this was bought by 21st Century, who licensed it to Continental Video under the title Avenged. It was also released as Getting Even and Deadbeat.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Carrie (Jillian Kesner, Firecracker), Chicago (Janice Heiden) and Mitzi (June Fairchild, the jumper in Head) are going to be in prison forever after they take part in a riot. Then they get volunteered into a program being researched by Dr. Blalock (Warren Stevens). He believes that his methods can reduce how socially unredeemable criminals are by using observation, therapy, drugs and a nurturing environment. But mostly drugs.

Each of the girls is supposed to be with a set group of boys, but Carrie is fascinated by the doctor’s violent alpha male son Carter (Peter Hooten, proving that his demented line readings in Night Killer are no accident; he talks the same way here). We soon learn that the Blalocks are getting poor, so Mrs. Blalock (the girl across the hall in Eraserhead) has talked him into this study, where the girls will live in their house and be given drugs by a shady government organization in an MK Ultra’s style conspiracy. The drugs don’t calm the girls down at all. It makes them want to have sex nonstop, get into brawls and, for some reason, stay in public fountains.

Some of the therapy works. Mitzi is constantly laughing and hard to understand, sure, but she also decorates her room with penguins and wears a tuxedo t-shirt. Dr. Blalock learns that she’s obsessed with them because they remind her of the man who abused her as a child, a Catholic priest. She has this revelation that basically a penguin raped her just in time for a boy to come over that has a crush on her and knows that she loves penguins. He dresses up as one and she loses her mind and smashes his head in.

Gus Trikonis knew how to make a drive-in movie. The Evil, Nashville Girl, The Sidehackers, Moonshine County Express, Supercock and The Swinging Barmaids aren’t great movies. But they’re good drive-in movies and there’s a difference. These movies are better when you’re half awake, drinking or smoking, and maybe even making out and catching moments of them. When you pay attention to them, they fall apart. When watched when distracted, they’re exactly what they should be. You can say the same for the films that Hugh Smith wrote, like Black Oak Conspiracy, Night Creature and The Glove.

I love that Jillian Kesner’s character is so matter of fact. If anything, the drugs sharpen her and allow her to navigate the world in a way that she never has before. When the doctor comes on to her, she doesn’t react in shock or shame; she just tells him that in no uncertain terms will they ever have a relationship beyond doctor and patient. She’s the one who figures all of this out and has the tools to escape the place that fate has trapped her in.

There are a lot of people who’ve reviewed this online and really were let down by it. I have no clue what movie they saw. A science fiction conspiracy version or a Corman nurse cycle movie with fistfights, car races and a penguin-based freakout? How can you not enjoy that?

This was re-released by 21st Century as part of a double feature that had The Swinging Barmaids renamed Eager Beavers and this movie titled The Classroom Teasers.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

This is the first movie that Fred Williamson would make as Jesse Crowder. He named the character for someone he knew in high school and looked up to, as he wasn’t to be messed with. After playing the role in this, No Way Back, Blind Rage and The Last Fight, the real Crowder threatened to sue. Williamson’s lawyer showed him some phone books and asked him which Crowder he was.

In this film, NYC district attorney Riley (Art Meier) hires our hero to transport mob accountant Finley (Bernard Kuby) to Los Angeles while Crowder both battles killers and sleeps with every woman he meets. I am not even kidding, I have no idea how he’s learned how to fight like he has as all he does is get horizontal.

This is an hour long, has no budget, scenes seem to stretch on forever unless there’s a fight or lovemaking and who cares? Fred is incredible and it has a vibe based on his swagger. If you like him, you’ll like it. He has that kind of magnetic cool that few action heroes do today.

One of four movies directed by Williamson in 1976, this was originally released by Atlas Films and re-released by 21st Century.

You can watch this on Tubi.