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.

Directed and co-written (with Rubens Francisco Luchetti) by Jose Mojica Marins — the alter ego of Coffin Joe — Hellish Flesh is the tale of Dr. George Medeiros (Marins) and his wife Rachel (Luely Figueiró). He’s quite the scientist. But he’s neglecting his gorgeous bride over the need for science, so she hooks up with his best friend Oliver (Oswaldo De Souza). Together, they come up with a plan to kill him and take his money. Step one is throwing acid in his face. Step two is spending all his money. Yet he didn’t die during step one, so you better believe that he will come for revenge. Except that when he does come home, he doesn’t seem upset at all. As for Oliver, well, after spending most of his friend’s money, he got stabbed by another lover, leaving Rachel alone.

This is a movie filled with screaming and while strange, it doesn’t enter into the world of the Coffin Joe films. He doesn’t descend a staircase of naked women or go to Hell and learn that he is Satan. But still, it’s a movie where an acid-deformed scientist works on his revenge and even when making a morality story, Marins still can’t make a normal movie.

Just like Grizzly, Claws knows that it’s Jaws and goes for it.

It was also released in Canada and Mexico as Grizzly 2, but it’s not a sequel.

It was also called Fauces, which means Jaws, in Spain.

A bunch of poachers come to Alaska and decide that they want to hunt a grizzly bear. They should have killed it, but no, they just wound it instead. Now the bear wants revenge — yes, this time it’s personal — and it goes all in on bear-on-human violence.

Only hunter Jason Monroe (Jason Evers) and an Alaskan named Henry (Anthony Caruso) can stop this wild beast. But do we want that? Humanity has it coming. Even if the bear once attacked Monroe, I’m always going to be on the side of the bear.

I mean, they call it the Satan Bear. I’m not sure I could love this bear any more than I do.

Jason has gone a little Ahab on this whole thing and his obsession with the bear has caused his wife Chris (Carla Layton) to leave him and start sleeping with their son Bucky’s (Buck Monroe) Boy Scout leader Howard (Glenn Sipes), which is the ultimate slap in the face to a rugged outdoorsman like Jason. There are a ton of flashbacks to better days, but do we care? No. Would we rather watch the bear kill a sheriff and some scientists dumb enough to think their inventions could stop nature’s perfect land-based predator? Yes.

By the end, Jason, Henry, Howard and forest commissioner Ben Chase (Leon Ames) are in the woods, putting their lives on the line and man, Jason has to be conflicted here, what with trying to kill the animal that has ruined his life and having to save the life of the man who is balls deep in his estranged wife when he’s not galavanting through his woods.

This was directed by Richard Bansbach (who did the editing on the American opening of Terror of Mechagodzilla) and Robert E. Pearson with a script by Chuck D. Keen (who was also the cinematographer and he made a lot of outdoor bear-related movies such as Challenge to Be Free, The Timber Tramps and Joniko and the Kush Ta Ka) and Brian Russell (The Annihilators, Beyond Death’s Door).

Honestly, it makes Grizzly look big budget, but I’m all for animal attack movies. It doesn’t matter how much it costs, I’m here for the body count.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Ah Fen (Hsiao Yao) is best friends with Xi Xi. Just look at them having fun in the fields together.

Xi Xi is a snake.

Ah Fen is his owner.

Rich college boy Tang Shi-De (Tsung Hua) is in love with Ah Fen.

And then there’s Man-Ling (Dana), who has a plan with her lover Hu Lin (Frankie Wei Hung) where she’ll seduce Shi-De and steal his family’s money.

Hu Lin has some of his gang kidnap Man-Ling and Tang Shi-De, but they get Ah Fen instead. The poor daughter of a farmer and child of high caste fall in love and get married, so Hu Lin tries to blow up their limo, but the bomb gets foiled by the snake. Yes, this really happens.

But Shi-De hates Xi Xi.

He hates all snakes.

A snake killed his mother.

Now he’s forced his wife to leave her reptile friend forever, just in time for Hu Lin to try and kill her again.

As if that’s not enough, it feels like there’s a sex scene between Man-Ling and Hu Lin every few seconds.

Ah, Shaw Brothers, you are more than just martial arts. You have directors like Sun Chung, who also made Human Lanterns and The Devil’s Mirror, creating movies where gorgeous actresses handle cobras and a mongoose vs. snake scene is the best fight in the whole film. Actually, this movie, if anything, needs more Xi Xi and less humans.

Based on the novel by David Fisher, The Pack was directed and written by Robert Clouse, whose career found him making everything from Enter the Dragon and Game of Death to Gymkata and China O’Brien. Oh yes, he also made Deadly Eyes, a film that has giant rats played by dachshunds in fur suits.

There are two moments of nature at the beginning of this film. A horse is menaced by unseen predators while a family leaves the dog they adopted for the summer on Seal Island, thinking that a life of being homeless is better than a life in the city. That dog is accepted by the pack and becomes part of the growing army of dogs that has finally had it with mankind.

Jerry (Joe Don Baker) has just moved with his family to this tourist spot and nearly loses his dog to one of the feral pack. He’s keeping his eyes open for that dog, not realizing how many of them there are. That’s how things get started and they get to the point where the dogs are cosplaying Romero zombies, the humans forced to board themselves into a house while all those pups bark their heads off and threaten to come inside and tear them to bloody chunks.

As with all eco-horror, there is only way to stop these dogs. You have to blow them up. They had gotten to the point that they started killing domesticated dogs, but good news. The vacation dog from the opening hasn’t fully turned to evil and Jerry plans on domesticating him.

That’s a happy ending to most humans, but as I looked at my five pound long haired chihuahua practically frothing at the mouth next to me, I knew that he would someday join the pack and murder me. Such is the way of nature.