Police Academy, Real Genius, Bachelor Party, Surf Ninjas, Moving Violations. These are just some of the films of Neal Israel, who directed Tunnel Vision with Bradley R. Swirnoff and wrote it with Michael Mislove.

As of 1985, Tunnel Vision is the biggest channel in the world, one that is completely free of censorship. The government, led by Senator McMannus (Howard Hesseman) is investigating them, bringing owner Christian A. Broder (Phil Proctor) in front of the Congressional Oversight Committee. They plan on watching an entire day of the channel, which is this movie.

Vincent Canby said of this, “When undergraduate humor fails, as it does in Tunnel Vision, it doesn’t die alone, it threatens to take you with it.”

I felt more for it than he did, but I have a weakness for unconnected comedy sketches turned into a movie. See  The Groove Tube, Kentucky Fried Movie, Amazon Women on the Moon, Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video…

So what’s in it? Or more to the point, who? Ron Silver — in his first movie — as Dr. Manuel Labor. If that joke is funny to you, you are the correct audience for this. As for me, I love seeing Ron Silver show up in things. Ghoulardi himself — and dad of Paul Thomas Anderson and the voice of ABC — Ernie Anderson is in this. So are Gerrit Graham, Betty Thomas, Joe Flaherty, Pat Proft, John Candy, Al Franken, Tom Davis, Laraine Newman, Dick Tufeld (the voice of Robby the Robot), Chevy Chase and tons of others. Sometimes, the sketches are as creative as being as filthy as possible. I mean it, I have no idea how this got an R rating. At others, it’s creative. As these movies often can be, it’s uneven.

There’s a trailer for The Pregnant Man, a game show called Remember When that asks very personal questions,  Young People After School Press Conference in which Henry Kissinger gets abused by children and puppets, a trailer for the just a head cop movie Get Head!, the Archbishop of the New Catholic Church (Dody Dorn) taking off her robes and getting nude — Dorn would go on to edit Memento — and Secret Camera, a hidden camera show made by the CIA.

The MVD release of Tunnel Vision has a brand new 4K HD transfer presented in 1080p in both 1.66:1 and 1.33:1 aspect ratios, commentary by cult film historian Marc Edward Heuck, a new interview with Israel conducted by Stuart Shapiro, a continuity script, a photo gallery, TV commercials and a trailer. Plus, you get a mini-poster and a limited edition slipcover. Get it from MVD.

Just read this IMDB synopsis and tell me you don’t want to watch this: “In the year 1900, China was being invaded by an eight-nation alliance (Japan, Russia, England, France, Germany, the United States, Italy and Austria-Hungary). Meanwhile, three martial artists join a xenophobic kung fu cult, with a large following, whose leader claims that he can teach his followers how to become bulletproof.”

Chi Kuan-chun, Alexander Fu Sheng and Leung Kar-yan play the three brothers who have been taken in by The Boxers and seek to battle the foreign forces that have taken over their country.

Directed by Chang Cheh, this has brave men believing that Taoist magic can protect them from bullets. It goes about as great as that sounds. It has two and a half hours of story, a cast of nearly thousands — and one Richard Harrison  — and if you know Chang Cheh, plenty of people get stabbed.

When this came out in the UK, 45 minutes were cut out — the anti-foreigner elements had to go and it became Spiritual Fists. This upset its director, who believed that it was the best artistic statement he’d made in his career. It’s a big movie but not one afraid to just stop and show you a martial arts demo. If you love Shaw Brothers, you’ll be ready for that.

All four films on the Horrible History box set from Eureka are presented on Blu-ray from HD masters supplied by Celestial Pictures. Extras include two new commentaries by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) and martial artist and filmmaker Michael Worth, two new commentaries by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema, interviews and essays on these films, an O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Grégory Sacré with a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on all four films in this set by writer and critic James Oliver. It’s all limited to 2,000 copies and you can get it from MVD.

I have no idea what’s in the water in Miranda, California, but wow.

Hitler himself — now Adolf Schwartz (Edward Schaaf) — lives in a Bavarian castle there, in a pentuple with The Headsperson (Candy Samples, using the name Mary Gavin; she’s also in Fantasm and Fantasm Comes Again, as well as Meyer’s Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, playing The Very Big Blonde, which sums her up), The Ethiopian Chef (Elaine Collins, Deep Jaws), Limehouse (Su Ling, Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks) and Paul (Robert McLane, one of the first actors to appear in a movie that accurately depicted gay lovemaking, A Very Natural Thing). After a scene where every one of his lovers abuses him, he retires to a bubble bath where he is killed by a black-gloved killer who throws a piranha in the tub.

Is this a Giallo?

No, as much as it’s a Greek tragedy just because it has Kitten Natividad as the Greek Chrous. Born Francesca Isabel Natividad in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua State, Mexico, she went from not knowing English until she was ten to being her Texas high school class president. A maid and a cook to Stella Stevens, she enlarged her bust and started dancing, eventually gaining a 44G bra size. By the second movie she made with Meyer, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, she’d had another breast surgery and left her husband for the auteur. She kept on dancing, doing nude photograph and eventually hardcore porn, as well as being the stripper for Sean Penn’s bachelor party before he married Madonna.

But yeah, she’s the Greek Chorus. It’s incredible.

Margo Winchester (Raven De La Croix, who designed her own costumes and did her own stunts; it’s hard to say which of Meyer’s women is the most perfect, but you can make a case for her; supposedly she was once engaged to Greg “The Hammer” Valentine) hitchikes into town and is instantly in trouble, making Sheriff Homer Johnson (Monty Bane) hot and bothered and then being insulted by local rich kid Leonard Box (Larry Dean), who she kills in self-defense, which gets her into Johnson’s bed.

To keep her busy — and out of other beds — Homer gets her a job at Alice’s (Janet Wood, Pamela from Terror at Red Wolf Inn) diner, where Alice’s husband Paul — yes, the same one who porked Hitler’s keister — also works. Paul and Margo soon make love at the edge of a lake, while the Sheriff gets head from Chesty Young Thing (Marianne Marks) and is nearly caught in bed with Pocahontas (Foxe Lae).

At this point, Margo decides to strip in public and is attacked not only by a limberjack named Rafe (Bob Schott) but every man in the place. Homer saves her, but he and Rafe murder one another.

Then, Margo reveals that she’s a secret agent, out to learn who killed Hitler. It turns out it was Alice, Eva Braun Jr., who chases our heroine through the scenic landscape, both nude, before they make up and start, well, making out. Paul shows up and shoots her — she wanted revenge for him buggering the Fuhrer, he wanted revenge because he loved the guy — and Margo ends up arresting both of them.

Shot around the summer cabin of Wilfred Bud Kues, a war buddy of Meyer’s for decades, this found Russ and Roger Ebert working together again to make a movie that has men somehow recover from axe wounds, a masked killer, overwritten dialogue in the best way and one of Meyer’s last movies that finds him going out in a way that he could be proud of.

Scanned in 4K from the original negative by Severin Films with new and archival special features curated in association with The Russ Meyer Trust, the Severin release of Russ Meyer’s Up! comes with audio commentary by film historian Elizabeth Purchell, an interview with actress Raven De La Croix and a radio commercial. You can get it from Severin.

Fairy tales are alike in many countries. This film is based on “The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids” from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which Russian kids known as “Волк и семеро козлят” (“The Wolf and the Seven Kids”) and Romanian young ones know as “Capra cu trei iezi” (“The Goat and Her Three Kids”). So yes, there are five kids in this, but that feels like splitting the difference.

Directed by Elisabeta Bostan, this was filmed in three languages — Romanian, Russian and English — and features performers from the Moscow Circus, the Moscow Circus on Ice and the Bolshoi Ballet.

It’s also way weird.

Rada (Lyudmila Gurchenko, who was awarded People’s Artist of the USSR in 1983) is gathering fruit in the woods, leaving her children home. She’s watched by Petrika the donkey (George Mihaita), Rassul the lynx (Valentin Manokhin), a young wolf (Savely Kramarov) and leader Titi Suru (Mikhail Boyarsky), who listen to her singing and begin plotting on taking her family from her.

Matei (Petya Degryarov), the oldest child, runs away from home to the fair while Titi Suru keeps trying to sing Rada’s song to the children, convincing them that he is their mother. They are too smart for him — keep in mind, this guy looks like a glam rock werewolf — but when their mother’s voice gets sore from calling for her lost son, they no longer recognize her. Everyone gets kidnapped by Titu Suru and his gang, except that Rada is too smart for him, ice skating with him until he falls into the cold water, only saving him when she has her children safe.

Now, re-read that and get this in your head: the big bad wolf is sexy, always smoking a pipe and looking kind of like Phil Lynott if he were, you know, a wolf. The goat mother — a single mom, mind you — Rada is also quite attractive and every time the two get together, sparks fly. They’re going to get it on. You know it. They know it. But the wolf is a wolf and he wants to steal her children, because for all he protests how much people treat wolves so badly and have preconceived notions of them, he’s also, well, a wolf.

Sure, all the songs sound pretty much the same — I can hear you now, “It’s a leitmotif, you moron!” — but who cares? It’s the 70s and everyone is wearing makeup and everyone has glitter all over them and this is what the children of the world of The Apple are put in front of to be babysat while their parents go do mad coke at Mr. Boogalow’s latest record release.

These songs will get stuck inside your head but you won’t feel bad about that.

There’s also a parrot that is a human with a gigantic rainbow pompadour. The whole world of Ma-Ma feels like no other place on Earth, even starting with all of the actors getting into their costumes together. This will both delight and terrify your child.

You can watch this on YouTube.