The last movie that fight choreographer Sammo Hung made with his mentor director Huang Feng (Lady Whirlwind, Hapkido) before directing The Iron-Fisted Monk, The Shaolin Plot is about Prince Daglen (Chan Sing) who is creating a library of Chinese martial arts manuals and learning each form so he becomes the greatest fighter in the world.

With only two manuals left, he sends a renegade monk (Hung) with two cymbals he uses to chop heads to take the Wu-Tang and Shaolin books. Yet for his plan to happen, Daglen will have to get inside the Shaolin temple, which will see him battle Little Tiger (James Tien) and a warrior monk team (Casanova Wong and Kwan Yung Moon).

I’m such a fool for movies like this, where people need to take all of the knowledge and moves and create their own ultimate style. Anything with the Wu-Tang or Shaolin makes me happy and as long as these movies keep getting re-released, I’m going to never stop watching them and throwing little kicks in the air as I cheer the fights.

As a fat guy who loves martial arts, I just have to say, “Thank you Sammo.” You have made all of us so proud.

The Arrow release of this movie has a 2K restoration from the original film elements by Fortune Star. It also has two commentary tracks, one by martial arts film experts Frank Djeng and Michael Worth and another by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema. Plus, there are trailers, a double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Ilan Sheady, a reversible sleeve with both artwork and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Peter Glagowski.

You can get it from MVD.

Tobe Hooper followed up The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with another film that examined the horror and depravity that existed with South Texas.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre co-writer Kim Henkel was inspired by Joe Ball, the Alligator Man, who owned a live alligator attraction in the 1930s. Despite being suspected of several murders, legend had it that Ball would feed the dead women to his alligators. Ball started as a bootlegger before opening his Sociable Inn in Elmendorf, Texas, which was surrounded by a pond where he’d charge people to watch him feed them live cats and dogs. After former girlfriends, barmaids and even his wife went missing, two policemen tried to question him. He pulled a gun and shot himself — either in the head or the heart. That said — there are many that believe the stories about Joe Ball to be simply Texas folklore. He did exist, though.

Working under the title Death Trap (the film is also known as Horror Hotel and Starlight Slaughter), this entire film was made on a soundstage, using the Raleigh Studios pool as a swamp. This enabled Hooper to create what he called a “surrealistic, twilight world.” True to form, issues with the producers took him away from the film before the shooting ended, but he had a decent relationship with the actors. Cinematographer Robert Caramico finished the direction of the film once Hooper left.

This movie starts grimy and stays that way. Buck (Robert Englund in an early role) demands kinky sex from Clara Wood (Robert Collins, Matilda the Hun from Death Race 2000!), who refuses. This scene contains the line, “I’m Buck and I’m here to fuck,” line that Quentin Tarantino used in Kill Bill.

No one says no in Miss Hattie’s (Carolyn Jones, who is better known as Morticia Addams!) house of women, so Clara is kicked out. One of the girls takes pity and gives her money to stay at the Starlight Hotel, a rundown motel in the swamp. There, she meets the owner, Judd (Neville Brand, famous for playing Al Capone in The Untouchables TV series and The George Raft Story), who we soon learn is a demented sex maniac. He attacks her, chasing her into the swamp where a Nile crocodile eats her. Yep — don’t get too attached to anyone here. This is very Psycho territory, where bad people meet even worse ends.

A couple soon arrives — Faye (Marilyn Burns, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and Roy (William Finley, Winslow Leach from Phantom of the Paradise), along with their daughter Angie (Kyle Richards, Lindsey Wallace from Halloween!) and dog Snoopy. Don’t get attached to Snoopy, who isn’t long for this world. As Angie finds a dead monkey and screams, the dog runs into the swamp where he is eaten. Roy goes to kill the gator, but is stabbed by Judd’s scythe. Then, the insane motel owner ties Faye to the bed and tries to grab Angie, who hides under the porch of the building.

Harvey Wood (Mel Ferrer, The Visitor, The Antichrist and first husband of Audrey Hepburn) arrives with his daughter Libby looking for Clara. Sherrif Martin (Stuart Whitman, Guyana: Crime of the Century, The Monster Club, Ruby) helps them as they search for Harvey’s runaway daughter. Libby goes out with the sheriff while Harvey stays back at the hotel. As he finds Faye tied to the bed, he’s also killed by Judd and his scythe.

The sheriff kicks Buck out of the bar — remember him? — and he goes to the Starlight with his underage girlfriend. While they’re having sex, they hear a scream. Buck discovers Faye, but is pushed into the swamp where he is devoured.

Finally, Libby comes back and saves her sister and Angie. Judd goes insane and chases them into the swamp where he’s eaten by his own gator. Or crocodile — the movie is never sure.

I’ve always joked that Rob Zombie is continually trying to remake The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. After watching this, I get the feeling that this is the movie he wants to make. It’s covered in a layer of filth from beginning to end, with characters coming and going, people getting killed horrifically and style triumphing over coherent plot. Even better, there’s a mix of actors that you instantly recognize playing some great roles, particularly Neville Brand, whose muttering insanity is total perfection. There’s also a great electronic score that really sets the mood — even ending in a crash after the final credits.

True to his promise, Hooper delivers a film that feels like a nightmare throughout. Its dream logic makes for an occasionally funny, often grotesque movie that is never boring.

Here’s the episode of the podcast about this movie.

The third sequel to Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, this film finds Ilsa — didn’t she die a few times along the way? — changing sides from the Third Reich to the USSR as she runs Siberian Gulag 14, where she mentally and physically decimates men.

When Stalin dies, Ilsa burns the camp to the ground leaving no one alive except for Andrei Chikurin, who escapes and vows to get revenge. Twenty years later, he learns that Isla now runs a brothel in Canada when the Russian hockey team plays several games there.

According to the amazing Canuxploitation, Ilsa is actually a Canadian creation. When Lee Frost and David F. Friedman made big money with Love Camp 7 in Canada, Cinepix’s Andr Link and John Dunning wrote the script for Ilsa and got Friedman on board as a producer. Despite being the man who hired Dyanne Thorne for the role, issues with Cinepix and producer Don Carmody would have Friedman disown the movie.

Amazingly, this was produced by Ivan Reitman (using the name Julian Parnell).

This movie has a Siberian tiger named Sasha that Ilsa feeds men to, as well as many icy and watery graves and a scene where men arm wrestle over a running chainsaw. And each night, the men wrestle one another while a nude Ilsa challenges them to be the only two to come to her room where she’s definitely ahead of the adult film curve and very into DP (and I thought that was popularized by Ginger Lynn). She also has a mad scientist named Leve who has figured out ways to use photos and music to get into people’s brains.

Andrei Chikurin (Michel Morin) is the one man that she can’t break. He’s the one who killed her tiger and escaped the gulag and now, as the manager of the Russian hockey team, he somehow finds the one Montreal bordello called Aphrodite that Ilsa is the boss of. As he sits in the waiting room, her men take him and she tries to break him again — and make love to him, of course — before he’s freed by the Russian mafia and all manner of near Eurospy wildness goes down.

Director Jean LaFleur also made The Mystery of the Million Dollar Hockey Puck which has a lot of footage that was taken for this movie. It’s in no way as insane as the other Ilsa films — I mean, they have to contend with Jess Franco’s insane Ilsa, The Wicked Warden — but there’s lots of silly fun to be had. There’s also the ending, where Ilsa is left in the midst of nowhere, left with just her money to burn to stay alive.

If you thought that Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS was the limit, this movie makes it feel as if Jess Franco tool that movie as a personal challenge to somehow create something innumerable times sleazier.

Considered the third movie in the series — even if it wasn’t filmed as a sequel — and also known as Greta, the Mad Butcher, Ilsa: Absolute Power and Wanda, the Wicked Warden, this stars the women who is Ilsa, Dyanne Thorne, as Greta. She’s running a psychiatric hospital for young women, which gives her plenty of opportunities to indulge her more, shall we say, psychosexual side.

Probably shot at the same time — who knows, maybe even the same place — as Barbed Wire Dolls, the heroine of this story is Abbie Phillips, whose sister died inside the walls of Greta’s hospital, and now must infiltrate the hospital and find out why.

The amazing thing about this movie is that as wild as Ilsa has been in the past, she’s now entering the ninth circle of voyeur hell where director Jess Franco and his muse, Lina Romay, reside. Lina plays a prisoner named Juana who keeps the other female prisoners in line as well as lined up for prostitution and pornography. Also, in one scene that might break your mind, she follows a prison toilet BM by forcing Abbie to be human toilet paper. Yes, this happens and yes, this movie played American theaters and I have no idea how.

Snuff movies, acupuncture gone wrong, scarred women being used by cruel men, Lina Romay no doubt looking as perfect as she ever will or ever did and being the meanest woman in the world in a manner so brutal that she can only devour — literally — the previous champion in an ending that is either going to flip your stomach, raise your fist in triumph or both and Franco pretty much running through the motions he did in so many other women in prison movies, except Franco through the motions is still way more magical and insane and upsetting and sleazy and can you endure this than anyone perhaps ever.

John Dhannay (Tony Musante) is trying to manage a coup in an African country for the CIA when one of his men, Douglas Grayson (John Steiner) kidnaps two actors — Jack (Gianrico Tondinelli) and Aliki De Mauro (Claudia Cardinale) — and puts John’s ability to lead in question.

Directed by Damiano Damiani, who co-wrote the script with Nicola Badalucco which was based on The Grosvenor Square Goodbye by Francis Clifford, this is a tense thriller that puts nearly everyone into the line of fire, including an ambassador played by John Forsythe.

While most of the movie takes place in a small hotel room, it stays packed with tension throughout. What helps is the score by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis or as I call them Oliver Onions. You may not end up liking John at all by the end, but you will realize that he gets the dirty work done.

A mix between political thriller and poliziotteschi, this kept me watching intently.

The Radiance Films release of this movie has a new 2023 restoration of the film from the original camera negative presented with Italian and, for the first time on home video, English audio options. It has audio commentary by Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth, interviews with editor Antonio Siciliano and actor Wolfango Soldati, a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters, a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Italian crime cinema expert Lucia Rinaldi and the Radiance Films packaging that looks so great in your collection. You can get this from MVD.

Beyond the Door II is, of course, Mario Bava’s Shock retitled by Film Ventures International.

Shock was Bava’s last film. Following a series of failures to reach theaters, including Rabid Dogs, Lamberto Bava continued to push his father to make a new movie. Originally written by Dardano Sacchetti and Francesco Barbieri after they wrote A Bay of Blood, this movie was loosely based on Hillary Waugh’s The Shadow Guest. Lamberto has also stated that he wanted this to be a modern film that was influenced by Stephen King.

Bava started pre-production as early as 1973, shooting screen tests with Mimsy Farmer for the lead role. Shot in five weeks, some of the film was directed by Lamberto based on his father’s storyboards, which is why he has the credit “collaboration to the direction.” He directed all of Ivan Rassimov’s scenes.

It’s a sparse film — there are only three characters (well, three living characters). Dora (Daria Nicolodi, who should be canonized for giving birth to both Suspiria and Asia Argento, as well as roles in Deep Red, Inferno, Opera and so much more) and Bruno (John Steiner, Yor Hunter from the Future‘s Overlord) are a newly married couple who have just moved back into her old home — the very same place where her drug-addicted husband killed himself — along with her son, Marco.

Dora’s had some real issues dealing with her husband’s death. And Bruno is never home to help, as he’s a pilot for a major airline. Either she’s losing her mind or her son is evil or he’s possessed or her new husband is gaslighting her or every single one of those things is happening all at once. You have not seen a kid this creepy perhaps ever — he watches his mother and stepfather make love, declaring them pigs before using his potential psychic powers to throw things at them. Then he tells his mom he wants to kill her, followed by nearly making his stepfather’s plane crash just by putting an image of the man’s face on a swing.

While Bava was sick throughout the filming (and his son Lamberto would fill in), you can definitely see his style shine through the simple story. There’s one scene of Dora’s face and her dead husband’s and then her face that repeats vertically that will blow your mind.

The secret of the film? Dora’s ex-husband forced her to take a mix of heroin and LSD, at which point she tripped out and killed him. Bruno dumped his body in the ocean and arranged for her to be placed in an insane asylum until she recovered. Now, the ex-husband’s ghost has returned and demands blood. And he gets it.

Perhaps the finest shot in here is when Dora is lying in the bed and you see her hair fall like she’s upside down, but then it goes back like it’s in the wind, all while it seems like she’s being ravaged. I have no idea how Bava did this shot, but it’s so visually arresting that it’s stuck in my mind for days. There’s also his famous Texas switch where Marco runs into his mother’s arms, only to be replaced by her ex-husband and that horrifying scene with the rake.

There’s also music from I Libra, a Goblin off-shoot. It seems kind of strange against Bava’s old school direction, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t love it. It’s a stylish and scary film that’s way better than any Exorcist clone, despite its U.S title.

William Girder died in a helicopter crash while scouting locations in 1978. If that hadn’t ended his life, who knows the heights of lunacy he would have achieved?

In just six years, he directed nine feature films — Asylum of Satan, The Get Man, Three on a Meathook, The Manitou, Sheba Baby, Project: Kill, the astonishing Abby, Grizzly and this movie.

This had to have been the first movie about the loss of Earth’s ozone layer. Who knew that it would drive everyone nuts, including animals? Certainly not the hikers in this tale who turn against one another and try to survive all of the animal assaults.

Steve Buckner (Christopher George, who is fighting with Michael Pataki and George Eastman for most appearances on this site) has a dozen or so hikers who are about to go to Sugar Meadow for a nature hike, even though Ranger Chico Tucker (former NFL player Walt Barnes) tells him that the animals have been acting strangely.

Along for this nature trail to hell are anthropologist Professor MacGregor (Richard Jaeckel, Grizzly), a married couple named Frank and Mandy Young (Jon Cedar, who in addition to being a recurring Nazi on Hogan’s Heroes was also the co-star, co-screenwriter and associate producer of The Manitou and Susan Backlinie, the first victim in Jaws), rich Shirley Goodwyn (Ruth Roman from The Baby!), her son Johnny, teenage lovers Bob Dennins (Andrew Stevens, who was in the Night Eyes films) and Beth Hughes, a former pro football player dealing with cancer named Roy Moore, a magical Native American guide named Daniel Santee (Michael Ansara, Killer Kane from the 1980’s Buck Rogers series as well as the voice of Mr. Freeze), a television reporter named Terry Marsh (Lynda Day George, always ready to scream “BASTARDS!”) and finally, a frenzied Leslie Neilsen in the role of his career as Paul Jenson, an ad executive who acts like every account guy I’ve ever had to deal with in my 24-year-long ad career.

Before you know it, wolves are attacking people in sleeping bags, vultures circle overhead, hawks knock women off cliffs, Leslie Nielsen goes beyond bonkers and kills a dude with a walking stick and threatens to assault women before wrestling a bear and getting his neck torn out, rats attack the sheriff who decides to eat before trying to figure out how to deal with this emergency, dogs turn on the people they loved, rattlesnakes bite people and the military dons hazmats suits to deal with all of it.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, this movie is stupid. And awesome. It’s stupid awesome. And if you only know Nielsen from his later comedic roles, take a look at him in this movie. I love this movie. I don’t care what you think of me.

Here’s the drink to enjoy while you watch this movie.

Tentacle Painkiller

• 2 oz. Kraken spiced rum
• 4 oz. pineapple juice
• 1 oz. orange juice
• 1 oz. cream of coconut
• Dash of nutmeg
• Pinch of salt

1. Pour rum, pineapple juice, orange juice and cream of coconut into a cocktail shaker with ice. Mix it up.
2. Pour into a glass filled with ice. Drop in salt to give it the taste of the ocean and then top with nutmeg.

You can watch this on Tubi or get the blu ray from Severin.

Don Hulette somehow went from the music to Starhops to directing this, which feels like a glitch in the matrix which is IMDB. Kind of the same feeling one gets realizing that they’re about to watch a trucking movie starring Chuck Norris, who said, “I didn’t know anything when I made that movie. We shot it in just 11 days. But it was amazing, people loved it anyway. It’s a down-home kind of movie. It’s still my dad’s favorite.”

J.D. (Chuck Norris) is a trucker from California who learns that his friend was paralyzed after being beaten by Texas City cops Sergeant Strode and Deputy Boles, who have a history of entrapping truckers and sending them to jail. J.D. warns his brother Billy to stay out of Texas City, the kid doesn’t listen and goes missing.

That brings J.D. to town, winning over single mom waitresses and accidentally killing mechanics, which gets him sentenced to death by Judge Trimmings. Luckily, J.D.’s new hash slinging old lady calls in a convoy of big rigs to save him. Jack Nance is in this, too. Yes, the same Jack Nance who was in Eraserhead. Life’s funny like that.

While not a Film Ventures production, it did play on a double feature they distributed along with Kill or Be Killed.

Of course, Beyond the Door II is really Mario Bava’s Shock.

We went to see Blood and Black Lace in the theater once and there was someone who talked about the movie before it began. Maybe he was bad at speaking in public, but in short, told everyone how the movie inspired Friday the 13th (I’d say A Bay of Blood versus that one) and how it had a different title. And that was it. I was incensed. I wanted to get up out of my seat and scream that Mario Bava is the reason why lighting is the way it is and his use of color and how I can cite hundreds of films that he influenced. But I sat in my seat and boiled while the movie unspooled, because I’m really passionate about Mario Bava and don’t need to make a scene and miss seeing one of his films on the big screen.

Shock is Bava’s last film. Following a series of failures to reach theaters, including Rabid Dogs, Lamberto Bava continued to push his father to make a new movie. Originally written by Dardano Sacchetti and Francesco Barbieri after they wrote A Bay of Blood, this movie was loosely based on Hillary Waugh’s The Shadow Guest. Lamberto has also stated that he wanted this to be a modern film — check out Stephen Thrower’s part of the Arrow Video release for more about that notion — that was influenced by Stephen King.

Bava started pre-production as early as 1973, shooting screen tests with MImsy Farmer for the lead role. Shot in five weeks, some of the film was directed by Lamberto based on his father’s storyboards, which is why he has the credit “collaboration to the direction.”

I kind of love that this was called Beyond the Door II here in the U.S., but I really like the original title better. It’s a sparse film — there are only three characters (well, three living characters).

Dora (Daria Nicolodi, who should be canonized for giving birth to both Suspiria and Asia Argento, as well as roles in Deep Red, Inferno, Opera and so much more) and Bruno (John Steiner, Yor Hunter from the Future‘s Overlord) are a newly married couple who have just moved back into her old home — the very same place where her drug-addicted husband killed himself — along with her son, Marco.

Dora’s had some real issues dealing with her husband’s death. And Bruno is never home to help, as he’s a pilot for a major airline. Either she’s losing her mind or her son is evil or he’s possessed or her new husband is gaslighting her or every single one of those things is happening all at once. You have not seen a kid this creepy perhaps ever — he watches his mother and stepfather make love, declaring them pigs before using his potential psychic powers to throw things at them. Then he tells his mom he wants to kill her, followed by nearly making his stepfather’s plane crash just by putting an image of the man’s face on a swing.

While Bava was sick throughout the filming (and his son Lamberto would fill in), you can definitely see his style shine through the simple story. There’s one scene of Dora’s face and her dead husband’s and then her face that repeats vertically that will blow your mind.

The secret of the film? Dora’s ex-husband forced her to take a mix of heroin and LSD, at which point she tripped out and killed him. Bruno dumped his body in the ocean and arranged for her to be placed in an insane asylum until she recovered. Now, the ex-husband’s ghost has returned and demands blood. And he gets it.

Perhaps the finest shot in here is when Dora is lying in the bed and you see her hair fall like she’s upside down, but then it goes back like it’s in the wind, all while it seems like she’s being ravaged. I have no idea how Bava did this shot, but it’s so visually arresting that it’s stuck in my mind for days. There’s also his famous Texas switch where Marco runs into his mother’s arms, only to be replaced by her ex-husband and that horrifying scene with the rake.

There’s also music from I Libra, a Goblin off-shoot. It seems kind of strange against Bava’s old school direction, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t love it. It’s a stylish and scary film that’s way better than any Exorcist clone, despite its U.S title.