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.

In 1976, William Shatner was seven years away from the end of Star Trek and three years from the theatrical movie, so he was taking whatever work he could get, which meant The Tenth Level, A Whale of a Tale and the TV series Barbary Coast.

And oh yeah — Mysteries of the Gods.

Let me tell you, the seventies were a weird time to be alive. People had biofeedback machines in their plants so they could talk to them, everyone was recovering from Vietnam and Watergate, and aliens were everywhere.

Harald Reinl (who also directed The Return of Dr. Mabuse, The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism and Chariots of the Gods) directed the German version of this movie, with the American parts directed by Charles Romine (Behind Locked Doors). This is based on the work of Erich von Däniken, whose ancient astronaut theories now form the basis of so much of basic cable alien shows while he himself has been seen as a charlatan for some time.

Shatner wears some astounding clothes that have huge collars and often bare his chest, like some lusty Doc Savage flying all over the world to interview old women about crystal skulls and debate with scientists. Man, for that reason alone, this movie is worth a watch, plus there’s plenty of synth music and a short running time. This is a good start if you’ve just getting into 20th century carny paranormal documentaries.

And if you did grow up at that time, you’re like me and you’re freaking out the Jeane Dixon is in it.

This was originally distributed in the U.S. by Hemisphere Pictures but 21st Century got it a few years later. I love that some places got this movie as William Shatner’s Mysteries of the Gods. Captain Kirk will prove it to you!

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.

American-International Pictures’ Blacula was a big success. Its director, William Crain, and AIP wanted to make more black films that were classic stories retold for a new audience. What’s interesting here that while adapting Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, the evil side of Dr. Henry Pride (Bernie Casey) appears to be a mix of King Kong, Frankenstein’s Monster and an evil white man.

Pride may be a celebrated and wealthy African American medical doctor, but as he fails to discover a cure for cirrhosis of the liver — along with his colleague Dr. Billie Worth (Rosalind Cash) — he begins to experiment on himself and others. Coming just a few years after the way our government treated the Tuskegee airmen with their syphilis experiments, this feels like not only a crime against nature, but a black man attacking his very race.

By the end, he’s killing sex workers and their pimps, leading the police to Watts Towers, where he climbs upward — again, like King Kong — before being shot and falling to his death.

This also had the working titles The Watts Monster, Hyde, Serum and Decision for Doom. Along with the aforementioned Blacula, Scream Blacula Scream, Sugar Hill, Blackenstein, JD’s Revenge, Abby, Ganja and Hess and Petey Wheatstraw, there are some other black-themed horror films from this era but not enough. Later films in the genre that I would recommend are Bones, Def by Temptation and Tales from the Hood.

How incredible is it that the South Korean VHS release of this had the Iron Maiden artwork from Killers on its back cover?

21st Century rereleased this as The Watts Monster.

You can watch this on Tubi.

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.

Dennis Wheatley’s writing reflected his conservative worldview, as his heroes defend the monarchy, the British Empire and its class system. If you’re evil in one of his books, you either are from Satan or you’ve stood up to those ideals. As for how well he knew the occult, he was known as an expert on Satanism, exorcism,and black magic, even publishing The Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult, personally picking the titles and writing introductions for each book. The series included works by Theosophist H. P. Blavatsky, Alesiter Crowley and Bram Stoker amongst many others.

He was not a fan of this movie, saying “This is disgusting, obscene, has no relationship to my book. It’s outrageous and disgraceful. And I will never again let this company turn one of my books into a film.”

I kind of loved it.

American occult writer John Verney (Richard Widmark) has been asked by Henry Beddows (Denholm Elliot) to pick up his daughter Catherine (Nastassja Kinski) from the airport. She’s had quite the life, being a member of Father Michael Rayner’s (Christopher Lee) Children of the Lord, a religious order that her mother was also part of. The group wants her back and uses black magic to battle Verney.

Catherine is set to become the human form of Astaroth when she turns eighteen and only Verney can save her from the Satanic forces of the former priest.

While Kinski is nude in this movie — and fourteen years old, which is pretty upsetting even if she had been topless already at the age of twelve — Lee is not. That was his stunt double Eddie Powell. Also: Klaus Kinski turned down the lead, saying that he may have had no issue being in a film where his daughter was fully naked, there was no way he’d stay sober.

If you’re in the mood for more Dennis Wheatley, Hammer also made The Devil Rides Out.

Johnny (Lee Chung-Ling) and Michael (Lin Wen-Wei) are on a holiday, ignoring that Johnny’s dad feels that he doesn’t know what responsibility is. His mother mentions how they all come from good families, so he’s safe to hang out with these friends. Little do they know that the boys are in a motorcycle gang.

Guo Jian-Zhong (Ling Yun) and his wife Chen Mei-Juan (Terry Lau Wai-Yue) have taken her sister Guo Ji-Lia (Kong San) to the beach house of her boyfriend Si Wei (Danny Lee). They’re not well-off and are just scraping by, but young and innocent and happy.

These two groups are going to meet and yes, bad things are going to happen.

Yes, Shaw Brothers made a biker movie and it was directed by Chih-Hung Kuei, the man that brought us so many insane journeys, like Corpse Mania and Curse of Evil.

The island is remote and only can be accessed by boat, so even the police aren’t here. As the gang and the two couples meet, at first it’s simple male catcalls to Guo Ji-Lia and her leather mini skirt. Soon, they are spraying graffiti all over their van, throwing ketchup at them and then tossing gigantic leeches. They lure the men away by attacking the house and when they are gone, assault both of them women, with one of them dying. Now, the film goes into Straw Dogs and beyond that to Last House On the Left, somehow inverting the inspiration with rich antagonists and working class heroes. In fact, it owes Peckinpah’s film so much that there’s even a scene of hot oil being used on the wealthy thugs.

This film proved to me that Argento doesn’t have a trademark on shoving a woman’s head through a glass window, that it can be really satisfying to watch a tractor mow through a rich biker, that setting traps in your house is always the best idea, that ending your movie in caps is the best — THERE IS NO RULE OF LAW THAT A KILLING WHICH RESULTS FROM THE USE OF EXCESSIVE FORCE IN SELF-DEFENCE IS ONLY MANSLAUGHTER; IF SUCH A KILLING IS DELIBERATE IT IS MURDER. — and that more movies should have spearguns being fired at punks.

Also: This movie is total exploitation to the point that somehow, an escort company has placed a review on Letterboxd which is a wild business plan.

Filled with the stars of the second and third generations of director Chang Cheh’s stable of actors such as Alexander Fu Sheng, David Chiang, Ti Lung and Chi Kuan-Chun, as well as several of the actors that would later become collectively known as the Venoms Mob, Shaolin Temple — also known as Death Chambers — is so much more than just the prequel* to Five Shaolin Masters.

The leaders of the Shaolin Monks have started to come to the conclusion that time is running out and they must train more fighters to fight the Qings, yet they’re still forcing fighters to sleep outside the temple for weeks at a time to test their resolve.

Two of those fighters — Fang Shih Yu and Ma Chao-hsing — are accepted and must survive the even harsher world that is inside the temple. Fang Shih Yu struggles to learn tiger boxing and keeps failing until a mysterious person begins teaching him the tiger-crane style, which makes him a much stronger fighter.

Yet will all the training — and new monks — be enough when the Qing army attacks and attempts to burn the temple down?

This movie has an amazing training sequence that lasts ten minutes within the maze inside the temple. You have to respect people that only are concerned with fighting and meditation when they’re not building thrill rides that beat people into submission. And the last half an hour is one gigantic fight as the monks use all the skills that they’ve learned in the film.

*Actually, it’s the fifth part of the Shaolin Cycle, following Heroes Two, Men from the Monastery, Shaolin Martial Arts, Five Shaolin Masters and The Shaolin Avengers.

You may wonder why this movie is also called One-Armed Boxer 2 and The One Armed Boxer vs. the Flying Guillotine. That’s because it’s pretty much a sequel to One-Armed Boxer, but man, the name Master of the Flying Guillotine was just too awesome not to use.

It’s also one of the few martial arts movies that for some reason has a nearly all Krautrock soundtrack, with “Super” and “Super 16” from Neu!’s second studio album, Neu! 2 played as the opening theme and Master Fung’s theme; “Rubycon, Part One” from Tangerine Dream’s sixth studio album Rubycon used as The One-Armed Boxer’s theme; and three songs from Kraftwerk’s fourth album Autobahn — “Mitternacht,” “Morgenspaziergang” and “Kometenmelodie 2” — appearing.

If you can’t guess already, this movie is straight-out incredible.

Yu Tien Lung, the One-Armed Boxer, is stalked by the blind Fung Sheng Wu Chui who was the master of the two Tibetan lama he killed in the first movie. Unlike those men, this villain has the flying guillotine, a bladed hat on a chain that can take its victim’s head completely off their body.

Before the battle you’ve been waiting for, our protagonist must battle a Thai boxer, a yoga master and a kobojutsu — the martial arts of Okinawa — master. And yes, you get a satisfying battle between the enemies by the end.

With a tagline that claimed, “It’s A Mean Machine – Cuts Your Head Off Clean!” this film lives up to everything you dreamed that it would be. Jimmy Wang Wu wrote, directed and stars in this. He made The Chinese Boxer, a movie that moved martial arts away from weapons and into the bare-handed combat that Bruce Lee and so many others would make into a worldwide phenomenon.

Obviously, so much of Kill Bill — and even the video game Street Fighter — owe a debt to this movie. You should check it out.

You can watch this on Tubi.

A gender flipped adaption of The Legend Of The White Snake, this Lo Chen-directed film starts with a village running out of water and praying to various animal deities. Only the snakes answer, in the person of Snake Prince (Ti Lung) and his two snake friends, Yellow and Black Snake (Wong Yu and Ng Hong-Sang). They spy on the villagers as they sing and dance — get ready, this movie is filled with musical numbers — and become enamored of several of the ladies, including Hei Qin (Lin Chen-Chi). They’re run off by the men of the village, but when the people come to Snake Mountain and ask for water, he only wants Hei Qin to join his kingdom. He grants them access to all that water, even after they threatened to burn down the entire hillside, which would end up killing everyone.

Unfortunately, Hei Qin has a jealous sister who wants the riches of the snake kingdom and the humans left behind in the village hate the idea that a snake god is making sweet love to the most beautiful woman they’ve ever seen. So they do what they threatened, which is set the hillside on fire, and then use sulphur to smoke out the snakes, who transform into their true gigantic snake form. A ton of snakes and humans die — the snakes die for real, because this is a Hong Kong movie — and then the snakes are all killed by the humans, who set them on fire and stab them repeated times. To remind you this is a Shaw Brothers movie, Hei Qin takes the sharpened stick that killed Snake Prince and stabs herself with it, which cuts to a statue of the lovers on Snake Mountain and their ghostly giant forms staring toward the afterlife.

I told you the story but in no way will that prepare you for this film. Imagine a rock musical with funked out guitars, dance numbers with cute girls that seem like they’re in a Shaw Brothers cover version of an AIP beach drive-in movie, all with effects from Daiei (the same people who brought you Daimajin and Gamera) starring bad ass Ti Ling, who usually is fighting yet here he’s a singing snake god. Then imagine every color in the Bava rainbow being unleashed. That gives you just part of what this is about to share with you. Yet for as innocent and magical that this movie is, it ends with gore and sadness. Such is the world of Shaw Brothers.

Director Cheng Chang-ho (King Boxer, Temptress of a Thousand Faces) moved from Korea to Hong Kong to spend several years at Shaw Brothers before moving to Golden Harvest, making five movies that were set in modern times.

Detective Lung (Shin Il-ryong) is trying to find out who killed his father when he discovers that his father was a smuggler and that his business partner was the murderer. Now hiding under a new name — Wang (Chao Hsiung) — that man thinks that he is safe from Lung. He’s wrong. Our hero quits the force and heads to Bali, ready to get revenge for his father. He’s joined by his old man’s former partner, Chang (Chan Sing), who has a love for explosives.

Even better, you get the inked up Michael Chan Wai-Man and a John Lennon-glasses wearing Sammo Hung as the henchmen that they battle. Whether they’re chasing the bad guys — well, badder guys — in cars, on foot or riding motorcycles, this is a high action fight to the finish.

The Eureka! blu ray release of The Double Crossers has  1080p HD presentation from a brand new 2K restoration of both the Hong Kong theatrical cut and English language export cut. There’s new audio commentary on the Hong Kong theatrical version by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng, as well as new audio commentary on the export version by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema, plus a trailer. It’s all inside a reversible sleeve featuring original poster artwork, as well as a limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Darren Wheeling and a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by James Oliver. You can get it from MVD.