The first movie directed by Sammo Hung, The Iron-Fisted Monk begins when the title character (Chan Sing) sends Hawker (Sammo Hung) to the Shaolin temple. He tries to run away, as the master (James Tien) is too rough, but is found and undergoes four tests. While he’s continuing to train, he’s wrongly accused of assaulting the sister of Llang (Lo Hoi-pang) when, in truth, it’s really a Manchurian official (Fung Hak-on) who believes that he is above the law.

By the end, Hawker has redeemed himself by teaching the dye factory workers kung fu, even if they all die at the hands of the Manchu. Man, those guys are horrifying, because they also assault and kill Llang’s wife, murder his mother and end up killing him. Can Hawker and the Iron-Fisted Monk get revenge for, well, just about everyone else in this movie?

Sammo Hung always inspires me. Not just because he’s a larger individual who is still so graceful, but because his movies always have so much well-filmed and planned action, as well as an actual plot that keeps me watching.

The Arrow Video blu ray of The Iron-Fisted Monk has a 2K restoration from original film elements by Fortune Star. It has commentary by martial arts cinema expert Frank Djeng, interviews with Hung and Wong, a trailer, new art by Gary Mills on the sleeve and poster, and a collector’s book. You can get it from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Dynasty was on a special Chiller Theater on Friday, July 16, 1982. It was on the Money Movie set instead of inside the castle. 

Qian Dao Wan li Zhu AKA Super Dragon AKA Dynasty was the first Hong Kong/Taiwan 3D film, as well as using the Sensurround 8-track stereophonic sound system. That way, the things you’ve come to expect from martial arts films — punches, kicks, swords and flying guillotines — mix up with things you will in no way expect — flying heads, crushed skulls, metal umbrellas as weapons and even a man battling with his amputated knubs — while flying directly at your face.

The prince of the Emperor is accused of treason against the throne by an evil eunuch and his sword-wielding henchman and must fight for his life, which is all the set-up you need for 94 non-stop minutes of fighting. It’s not the best martial arts you’ve ever seen, but it is one of the few that made it into the third dimension.

Director Mei-Chun Chang*also made Young Dragons: Kung Fu Kids and understood that we want to see 3D bust our eyeballs. And serving as the 3D advisor on this? Michael Findlay. Yeah, the very same.

http://www.chillertheatermemories.com/Collectables3.html

In 1982, Chiller Theater showed three 3D movies. Along with this film, they also showed Revenge of the Creature and Gorilla at Large.

Kino Lorber has released a special edition blu ray of this film, working alongside the 3-D Film Archive to create something that be viewed with either BD3D polarized or traditional red and blue glasses (it comes with one pair). That’s because this blu ray was made with Adaptive Multi-Band Anaglyphic Encoding, which they claim is a vast improvement over any previously used process for red/cyan 3D imaging. I’ll be honest, in my trial of this, it worked perfectly. The disk also features a restored comic book, some 3D slideshows and a 3D music video.

*Chang also directed another 3D martial arts film, Revenge of the Shogun Women.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Invincible Superguy was on USA Up All Night on July 27, 1990.

This movie was meant to be played in the middle of the night.

A pair of rapist thieves get hired to steal gold from a palace which brings in a girl dressed as a man who wants to stop them and Devil Man, a metal masked man with a zombie army and oh yeah, there’s someone named Superguy, as the title promised there would be.

Devil Man has a giant birthmark and you will be pleased that he knows that he needs to wear a mask. For some reason, Super Guy is in this for literally a few minutes. That’s it. He gets the title and shows up for basically a cameo, but it’s good work if you can get it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Orca was on USA Up All Night on December 16, 1995.

If you read comic books in the summer of 1977, there’s no way you didn’t know about Orca. Despite everything that nature — and SeaWorld — could teach us, it was time to meet a predator even more deadly to man than the great white shark. To quote Neko Case: “You know they call them killer whales.”

Orca raises the Jaws rip-off stakes: if the name Orca can be Quint’s boat, here, it can be an entire movie. Dino De Laurentiis called writer Luciano Vincenzoni (he also wrote The Good, The Bad and the Ugly) in the middle of the night and told to find a fish tougher and more terrible than the great white to make a movie that could go up against Spielberg’s. Vincenzoni’s brother told him all about the killer whales and the rest is scumtastic movie history.

Directed by Michael Anderson (Logan’s Run, Doc Savage), Orca is the kind of movie that critics have assaulted for years. I’m here to tell you that every single one of them is wrong. It’s a completely ridiculous film, a shameless reboot of both Jaws and Moby Dick, but by no means is it not entertaining as hell. And it has an incredible Ennio Morricone score, something that so many fish films could only wish they aspired to.

Captain Nolan (Richard Harris, who nearly died doing his own stunts and also would grow enraged if anyone dared compare this movie to any other film) catches fish and marine animals so that he can pay off his boat. His crew is looking for a great white, which comes after crewmember Ken (Robert Carradine, Lewis from Revenge of the Nerds). An orca saves Ken and Nolan decides to repay its kindness by capturing it. After he harpoons the whale, he learns that he’s killed its mate, which miscarries and drops a fetus onto the deck of the ship that the callous captain hoses off into the ocean while our titular hero/villain/sea mammal screams in anguish. This is when you wonder: how did this movie get a PG rating?

Novak (Keenan Wynn, The Dark, Piranha), another crew member, cuts the female loose and its mate drags her dead body to shore. The villagers all rise up against the crew, who demand that Nolan kill the orca, who has gone wild and is ruining local fishing. When Nolan refuses to put the fish out of its misery, it retaliates by sinking all of the fishing boats and breaking all of the town’s fuel lines, because of course killer whales can hold grudges.

That’s what brings Dr. Rachel Bedford (Charlotte Rampling), a whale expert, into the movie. She believes that orcas are like humans, a fact that Nolan can understand. He sees himself as one of the whales, as his wife and unborn child were killed by a drunk driver. He promises not to fight the whale, but it kills Novak, attacks Nolan’s house and then bites off the leg of his injured worker, Annie (Bo Derek in her film debut).

Nolan and his crew, including Paul (Peter Hooten, who was also in Derek’s first actual filmed movie, Fantasies, as well as the 1970’s Dr. Strange TV movie and Just a Damned Soldier with Mark Gregory), all take off after the orca, along with Native American Jacob Umilak (Will Sampson, the magical Native American in films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Poltergeist II). That’s when the orca goes buckfutter and wipes out nearly everyone by either grabbing them, biting them, crushing them and tossing icebergs at the boat.

The orca throws Nolan all the lace like a ragdoll, killing him, but leaving Bedford alive. We watch as Nolan sinks into the water in a crucified pose and the killer whale decides to swim under the ice. Now, there’s some conjecture here: is the killer whale trapped or has it decided that with its revenge complete, all it can do is die when faced with the path or revenge that it has wrought? I can see the poetry of this thought, but then I realize that I’ve just watched a film filled with no subtlety whatsoever, so perhaps the orca swam on, discovered a new mate and remains ready to wipe out all of humanity at a moment’s notice.

Orca is everything I love about movies: it’s big and dumb and bloody. It’s the kind of movie a fine actor like Richard Harris chews the scenery with just as much viciousness as a killer whale devours one of Bo Derek’s shapely gams. It also takes shark films to the next level. Every single one of the humans in this movie are amongst the dumbest people ever, doomed by the fact that they even know Captain Nolan. The moment he hoses Orca’s son into the icy waters, he’s sealed his fate. This is one of the few films where you root for the beast and savor its revenge.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll be amazed at Bo’s bloody stump. I want more people to love this movie even a fourth as much as I do.

You can download the host segments from this episode on the Internet Archive.

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 Rodgers 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 I’ll be bringing to the drive-in.

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.

Can’t make it to the drive-in? You can watch this on Tubi or get the blu ray from Severin.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Van aired on USA Up All Night on July 7 and 8 and November 25, 1989; June 15, 1990 and October 4, 1991.

The song in this movie, “Chevy Van” by Sammy Johns*, is a lie, because the protagonist of The Van, Bobby (Stuart Goetz), drives a 1976 Dodge B200 Tradesman customized by George Barris.

As for me, I grew up with two Ford Custom vans, one a basic panel van that I used to be a landscaper and the other a fully customized one with tables and chairs and shag carpeting. Yeah! 9 miles to the gallon!

Crown International Pictures took what worked for American-International Pictures and their beach party movies and added sex and drugs. This movie comes from the days before AIDS, before women truly being characters with agency in movies (well, not all the time) and even before Porky’s.

What it does have is Danny DeVito as Bobby’s friend Andy. And such well-known vans that two of the automobiles from this movie, Straight Arrow and Van Killer, were released as toy cars.

Bobby wants Sally (Connie Hoffman) but she’s already dating tough guy Dugan (Steve Oliver). So he tries to get with Tina (Deborah White), who is way too good for him, before racing Dugan and rolling his van. He survives and moves on vanless.

Director Sam Grossman only directed this film. Writer Robert J. Rosenthal also wrote The Pom Pom Girls, Malibu Beach and Zapped! while Celia Susan Cotelo was also a writer on Malibu Beach.

If you liked this, I can also recommend Van Nuys Blvd. and, of course, Supervan.

*Nine other songs by the artist are in this: “Early Morning Love,” “Jenny,” “Rag Doll,” “Hang My Head and Moan, “Country Lady,” “You’re So Sweet,” “Peas in a Pod,” “Bless My Soul” and “Hey, Mr. Dreamer.”

Prefect Cesare Mori (Giuliano Gemma, A Pistol for Ringo) has been given special legal powers thanks to Mussolini to fight organized crime in Palermo.  Working with Officer Francesco Spanò (Stefano Satta Flores), he walks right into the home of boss Antonio Capecelatro (Rik Battaglia) and shoots him in the head before going so far as to cause the suicide of Don Calogero Albanese (Francisco Rabal), a man who escaped the police for four decades.

Based on the true story of Cesare Mori, a man whose attacks on organized crime found it moving to America and back to Sicily after the end of World War II. He arrested and convicted thousands of criminals before he was made a senator. Some say because he went after highly-ranked government officials and they needed him to leave town before they were implicated. Mori spoke up against Mussolini working with Hitler and found himself removed from power afterward.

Directed by Pasquale Squitieri, who wrote this with Arrigo Petacco and Ugo Pirro, this film also boasts an appearance by Claudia Cardinale and a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. It has the alternate title I Am the Law, which seems like it inspired a certain judge from Mega City One.

The Radiance Films blu ray of The Iron Prefect comes with an archival interview with director Pasquale Squitieri and star Giuliano Gemma, a new interview with the biographer Domenico Monetti, an appreciation of Giuliano Gemma and the film by filmmaker Alex Cox — yes, the director of Repo Man — as well as the original trailer, a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Italian cinema expert Guido Bonsaver and an original article on the real-life Cesare Mori and his Mafia raid as depicted within the film.

You can get this from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nothing gives me greater joy than when our site gets mentioned on my favorite podcast, The Cannon Canon. There are a few movies they’ve covered that I haven’t, so it’s time to fix that.

Directed by John Flynn from a screenplay by Paul Schrader and Heywood Gould, based on a story by Schrader, Rolling Thunder is the story of a man who should by all rights be dead. He might be, when you get down to it. U.S. Air Force Major Charles Rane (William Devane) has spent seven years as a POW in Vietnam. They throw a parade for him, but there’s no real joy for him back home in San Antonio. His wife Janet (Lisa Blake Richards) has moved on and who can blame her for needing a man? You can’t blame his son Mark for not looking at him as anything but a stranger. And you can’t fault the town itself for the strange way that they view him as some ghost or as an object, like Linda Forchet (Linda Haynes), the girl who wore his ID bracelet every day, sees him. There’s nothing in him to return affection or even emotion. All they can do is give him some piece of the American dream. A brand new Cadillac and 2,555 silver dollars, one for every day he was captured.

That’s when The Texan (James Best), Automatic Slim (Luke Askew), T-Bird (Charles Escamilla) and Melio (Pete Ortega) — the Acuña Boys — bust in, take those silver dollars and try to torture a man who has been tortured by the best. They mangle his hand in a garbage disposal and when his son tries to save his dad by bringing out those silver dollars, they just shoot him. Kill his wife, too.

Only one person may know how he feels. Master Sergeant Johnny Vohden (Tommy Lee Jones). They were in Hanoi together all that time. He’s so disconnected from this world that he’s signed up for another ten years in Airborne. So when Rane uses Linda to get intel, when he finds those boys, he doesn’t even need to be asked to be in on the revenge. It’s just what has to be done.

After a disastrous test screening — Devane said “the Mexicans set the theater on fire! They were really, really, really down on it,” Twentieth-Century Fox pretty much gave the film to American-International Pictures who made a lot of money off it.

Part of the reason why that test screening went so badly was that the hand in the garbage disposal was much worse in the original cut of the film. It was filmed with a lamb shank for the hand and when the scene played, writer Heywood Gould said, “One woman fainted, another person ran into the lobby and demanded his money back, and another guy was so freaked out, that he entered in his car in the parking lot, and crashed into another car.”

Rolling Thunder shows up in the work of Quentin Tarantino quite a bit. Beyond the company that he assembled to re-release movies — Rolling Thunder Pictures — the seven years reference in the Christopher Walken speech in Pulp Fiction is a direct reference to how long Rane was a prisoner. There’s an Acuña Boys cup in Jackie Brown, an actual Acuña Boys gang in the second Kill Bill and an ad for a fake restaurant in Grindhouse. Is it any accident that his acting teacher was James Best?

As you can imagine, Paul Schrader didn’t like the movie. He doesn’t like much. But I kind of love that about him, you know? In Schrader On Schrader, he says that he wrote the movie to criticize U.S. involvement in Vietnam as well as fascistic and racist attitudes in America. Rane was originally written as a white trash racist, with many similarities to Schrader’s more famous character Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. In fact, Bickle was in the script in a cameo. Schrader claims that he wrote a film about fascism and the studio made a fascist film. There is a newspaper clipping about Rane — spelled incorrectly — at the end of Taxi Driver, so these movies are in the same cinematic universe, a term I know Schrader would attack me for using in connection with his art.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode of Rolling Thunder here.