Also known as Blue Christmas, this movie is somehow way ahead of its time, as UFO abductees return to Japan with blue blood, which upsets everyone else because, well, do racist people really need a reason? And this also has a deeper story inside it, a remembrance of at least 17 Japanese citizens that were taken by the North Korean government.

Maybe it’s the time I’m watching this in — then again, you could have felt the same way at the start of AIDS or in how Japan and Korea view one another — but this is hitting too close to home. Reporters struggling to reveal the truth, lovers on opposite sides of a conflict united only by their hearts, human lives reduced to blood and organs under the scalpel, prejudice and feelings presiding over facts.

Director Kihachi Okamoto was drafted during the last years of World War II, into the very worst fighting, and was alone among his friends in that he survived. Most of his films have a very cynical edge, even his gangster films and it’s wild that this movie is from Toho.

There’s also the professor who broke this story, why he disappeared and where all the blue blood people are going. As for the UFOs, unlike most other Toho science fiction, they’re never seen.

Sure, this is long at 133 minutes, but it’s so strange, nearly shot like a parody yet dark in its tone. The closest thing I can compare it to is either Eyes Behind the Stars or Footprints on the Moon, but neither is anything like this. To be honest, the end of this has stuck with me for some time and this feels like another strange film that I’ll have to go back and watch several times.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally covered this movie back on October 22, 2020, but the new Blur Underground 4K UHD and blu ray release is a reason to celebrate. You can get it right here from MVD and it comes with so much! You get bith an ultra HD blu ray (2160p) and HD blu ray (1080p) widescreen version of the movie, plus two audio commentaries — producer Tony DiDio, director of photography Gary Graver and star Pamelyn Ferdin or Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson, as well as new interviews with director Dennis Donnelly, acor Wesley Eure, acress Kelly Nichols, as well as an interview with actress Marianne Walter and two new features, Slashback Memories – David Del Valle Remembers Cameron Mitchell and “They Know I Have Been Sad,” a video essay by Amanda Reyes and Chris O’Neill. But wait — there’s more! You get a theatrical trailer, TV and radio ads, and a poster and still gallery.

You can see the trailer here.

Not only does this movie excite me because it’s a slasher and a Cameron Mitchell movie, but it’s also a “based on a true story” riff, which is always fascinating.

Los Angeles producer Tony Didio wanted to make a low-budget horror film after seeing how well The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. He knew the film’s distributors — uh-oh — and contacted them to see why they were re-releasing the movie again. While he should have realized it never really stopped playing theaters until the advent of home video — and even afterward for some time — he was smart enough to stay clear of working with the, and making and releasing his own slasher.

Supposedly based on a series of killings in either Michigan or Minnesota that were ritualistic and sex-based, this has famously been cited as one of Stephen King’s favorite movies.

If Pieces can say that “it’s exactly what you think it is,” The Toolbox Murders takes things even further into what I refer to as the pornography of violence, treating each kill as another scene in a gradually escalating orgy of evisceration. That said, the film then goes from slasher to character study in the final act, totally changing everything up on the viewer.

As for Mitchell, he’s completely off the rails in this and I loved every minute of his performance. And this being 1977, of course there’s an incest angle, because the 70’s were just greasy and sweaty and gross.

Vance Kingsley, Mitchell’s role in this, tries to rise above all the sin by using every tool in his, well, toolbox to perforate, slash and decimate every sinner he meets before being killed for love, which then uses scissors to escape into the night. There’s even a square up card at the end for a “this really happened*” shocker.

Wesly Eure loved being in this, relishing the opportunity to do something subversive after being the goody Will Marshall on Land of the Lost. I wonder how Pamela Ferdin felt, as she is better known for being the voice of Lucy on Peanuts (though she is also in the original The Beguiled).

Director Dennis Donnelly would go on to direct plenty of TV, including one of The Amazing Spider-Man episodes in the 70’s, along with Supertrain, Hart to Hart and The A-Team. That makes sense, as this really does look like a TV movie, unless you take into account all the nudity, sex and gore. And speaking of carnal knowledge, that’s adult actress Kelly Nichols playing Dee Dee, the woman who gets nail gunned in the tub (she was still working in the field doing makeup as Marianne Walters, the name she used for this film, as late as 2015).

Despite a 1986 sequel never happening, in a strange twist Tobe Hooper would direct the remake to this in 2004, which was followed by an official sequel in 2015 and an unoffical one, Coffin Baby, in 2013 that used footage from a scrapped sequel. That movie was tied up in legal wrangling, but has since been released. They all have a more supernatural element than the down-to-earth feel of the original.

*But totally didn’t.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally ran on October 17, 2017, which was early in the life of this site. I’ve adjusted it, added to it and hopefully improved it to celebrate Arrow Video’s release of 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.

Arrow Video’s new release of Shock features a brand new 2K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative. There’s new audio commentary by Tim Lucas, author of Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark, plus new interviews with Lamberto, Dardano Sacchetti and critic Alberto Farina.

You also get a video essay by author and critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, The Devil Pulls the Strings and Shock! Horror! – The Stylistic Diversity of Mario Bava, a video appreciation of Shock by Stephen Thrower that is worth the price of this disk.

You get even more — the Italian theatrical trailer, 4 U.S. Beyond the Door II TV spots, an image gallery and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Troy Howarth, author of The Haunted World of Mario Bava.

You can get this from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As we explore the movies of Curtis Harrington, let’s discuss perhaps one of his better known films. This was originally on the site on February 1, 2020.

Curtis Harrington had the thread of magic running through all of his films. One of the leaders of New Queer Cinema, he also directed Queen of Blood, Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, What’s the Matter with Helen?, Who Slew Auntie Roo?, the Sylvia Kristel-starring Mata Hari, tons of episodic television shows and the TV movies Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell, The Dead Don’t Die, Killer Bees, The Cat Creature and How Awful About Allan.

His links to the occult, include the study of Thelema with his close associates Kenneth Anger (he played Cesare, the somnambulist in the magician/filmmaker/author’s movie Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome), Marjorie Cameron — who is pretty much the nexus point of twentieth-century occult doings and appears in his film Night Tide — and avant-garde film pioneer Maya Deren, an initiated voodoo priestess.

Harrington was also the driving force in rediscovering the original James Whale production of The Old Dark House and — as a friend of Whale near the end of his life — advised the making of the movie Gods and Monsters.

His final film was Usher, based on a high school film he made of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the Hosue of Usher. He cast Nikolas and Zeena Schreck — the daughter of Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey — who financed the movie by brokering the sale of Harrington’s signed copy of Crowley’s The Book of Thoth. Perhaps even more interesting is the theory that singer Taylor Swift is a clone of Zeena. No, really.

But hey — we’re here today to discuss 1977’s Ruby, a movie that brings Piper Laurie from Carrie into a story about possession and flashbacks.

In 1935, a lowlife mobster named Nicky Rocco is betrayed and executed in the swamps as his pregnant girl Ruby (Laurie) watches. The moment he dies, she goes into labor. Fast-forward sixteen years and she’s living with a mute daughter named Leslie (Janit Baldwin, Gator Bait, Phantom of the Paradise, Born Innocent, Humongous) and running a drive-in with several ex-mobsters like Ruby’s lover Vince (Stuart Whitman!) and Jake (Western actor Fred Kohler Jr.), a wheelchair-ridden man whose eyes were once cut out.

Ruby misses her days as a lounge singer, but the present has some nasty surprises. A poltergeist begins killing people at the theater, including the projectionist and a creepy guy who runs the concession stand (Paul Kent, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Prey for the Wildcats and the founder of the Melrose Theater). Before long, our heroine — such as it is — believes that Nicky’s spirit has returned and believes that she caused his death.

Vince is visited by Dr. Keller (Roger Davis, Dark Shadows, Nashville Girl and the first husband of Jaclyn Smith), who helped him get out of jail early. He’s a clairvoyant who believes that there’s something in the drive-in, which is true, because Nicky starts speaking Ruby’s name over the speakers at the drive-in. Before long, Ruby’s daughter is speaking with the voice of her dead father and showing the wounds he endured before his death.

The producer chose to change the ending, and both Curtis Harrington and Piper Laurie refused to be involved in the re-shoot. It was allegedly shot by Stephanie Rothman (the director of The Student Nurses and the writer of Starhops). This ending, where Nicky comes back from the grave and drags Ruby into the swamp, was part of the TV commercials for the film.

Keep an eye out for Len Lesser in this — he was Uncle Leo on Seinfeld — as well as Crystin Sinclaire, who appeared in Eaten Alive and Caged Heat.

Yes, that Stonestreet name on this indicates that this was intended to be a series, so this is another back door pilot that was burned off as a TV movie — it aired as the NBC Movie of the Week on January 16, 1977 — and was released in the UK on DVD as part of the Universal Vault Series. Here’s to more TV movies coming out in physical form.

Liz Stonestreet (Barbara Eden!) lost her cop husband in the line of duty. To keep his memory — and mission to keep law and order — she becomes a detective. In this pilot, her latest case goes from finding a missing man to working in an adult theater to trying to find Amory Osborn (Ann Dusenberry, Jaws 2), an heiress mixed up in the world of vice. It’s also the debut of LaWanda Page.

Russ Mayberry did plenty of TV, as well as Unidentified Flying Oddball for Disney. This was written by  Leslie Stevens, who created The Outer Limits, as well as writing Incubus, the William Shatner movie shot completely in Esperanto. He also wrote The Invisible Man TV series, which Riding With Death was cobbled together from as well as Return to the Blue Lagoon and Sheena.

This isn’t good, but how strange is it that just a few years before, Eden had to hide her belly button on I Dream of Jeannie and here, she’s an usher at a down and dirty porn theater?

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We first posted this on February 23, 2018 and I think about this film almost every single day. I’m deranged.

Legend has it that David Cronenberg for the idea for the torture TV channel that lends its name to his opus Videodrome from this Joe D’Amato film, which is also known as Trap Them and Kill Them. Think of this — a film that upset Cronenberg for its mash-up of snuff, cannibalism and sex. Take it from me. This one totally lives up to its promise. Or lives down. You almost have to appreciate it for how lurid it is, as if it just screams at you, “I am the kind of movie you should feel ashamed for watching.”

First, a history lesson. This film isn’t about the French film Emmanuelle, which starred Sylvia Kristel and had an extra “m” in the title. Nope, that series was made to cash in on the trend and features Laura Gemser, an Indonesian-Dutch actress who is more dark brown than black. But why quibble? This is exploitation filmmaking, after all. The Black Emanuelle films follow the formula of the original, all about a young woman discovering her sexual identity. But I have no idea how they morphed into a series where she becomes an investigative journalist who increasingly discovers more and more depraved behavior. Is there a thin line between swingers clubs and cannibals in the jungle? I would hope that there is. After five increasingly batshit Joe D’Amato vehicles, Gemser teamed with Bruno Mattei for two women in prison movies starring the titular heroine.

It’s really Emanuelle in America that sets up the craziness of these films, as D’Amato casts her up as a journalist that goes from learning how the rich and famous have sex to seeking out a snuff film conspiracy to giving up on journalism altogether when her story gets, well, snuffed.

Somewhere in between that picture and this one, our heroine has had a change of heart and is back in the yellow journalism game.

We start in a New York City mental hospital, where Emanuelle is undercover, looking for a lesbian nurse who is abusing her patients. Her idea of undercover is wearing lots of makeup and carrying around a stuffed animal. And how does she get her info? Well, once she learns about a girl who was raised by the Apiaca, a tribe of cannibals thought to be lost, she meets the girl and has sex with her. We realize this girl is a cannibal when she bites a girl’s nipples off within her first minute of screen time. That’s the kind of movie this is, one where the heroine makes out with a girl who just ate a piece of someone’s tit.

Again — I’m warning you. You’re in for some real scum here.

She contacts Professor Mark Lester (Gabriele Tinti, the husband of Gemser who also appeared in Enter the Devil and Lisa and the Devil), a curator at the National History Museum, and gets him to join her on a visit to the Amazon. How does she convince him? Well, she has sex with him. Come on. Get with the program.

They’re also joined by several others, including Isabel, MacKenzie (Donald O’Brien, Dr. Butcher, M.D.), Sister Angela and Maggie (Nieves Navarro, All the Colors of the Dark).

The film alternates between Emanuelle in danger and Emanuelle having sex. There’s a scene that defies logic with Emanuelle and Isabel making out while a monkey steals their cigarettes, lights one up and watches. Yes. A real, honest-to-goodness monkey.

Look — if there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching cannibal films. most of the white folks aren’t on the straight and narrow. MacKenzie is really after some diamonds and his wife, Maggie, is just here to sleep with the natives.

Soon, much like Shakespeare — if the bard had dared to make a film that combines a Cinemax After Dark film and an Italian gutmuncher — everyone dies except Isobel, Lester and our girl. She covers her body with tattoos — pay attention, Dr. Butcher, M.D. — and convinces the natives that she is a goddess. Everyone escapes on a rubber raft and gets over it, surely after plenty more sex.

Trivia note: American hardcore band Trap Them take their name from this film.

Gemser would become a costume designer after acting, working on several films, including Beyond Darkness, Quest for the Mighty Sword and Door to Silence. She also created the most demented costumes ever for the movie Troll 2. And she also was responsible for this, which I found thanks to the Found Footage Festival:

Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals isn’t the kind of adult film that’ll get you in the mood, unless you’re a maniac. But when you get bloody peanut butter and sexy chocolate together, you get a movie that should not, cannot and yet does exist.

After all of that, if want to watch Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals for yourself, Severin has released it on blu-ray with all the attention that it deserves. Make that more than deserves.

A bunch of small time hoods rob a grocery store for five grand without realizing that it’s a protected mob store. On the run, they hide in an adult bookstore, which by the fate of Italian exploitation movies is run by Lorna (Anna-Maria Clementi, Sister Angela from Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals) the girlfriend of the same mobster they’ve already screwed over. They kidnap her and head for Canada, but instead end up at the home of three college kids — Frank (Christian Borromeo, who was in another very similar movie, House on the Edge of the Park), Sue (Annj Goren, who was also in Hard Sensation and Porno Holocaust) and Faye (Brigitte Petronio, Cindy from House on the Edge of the Park) — and treat them exactly like you’d expect teenagers to be treated in a Joe D’Amato movie.

Written by George Eastman* and having softcore and hardcore versions, this is worth watching for the streets of Times Square in the late 70s, filled with several great marquees. D’Amato was also this film’s cinematographer under his real name Aristide Massaccessi.

*IMDB lists Tito Carpi, who hundred-plus writing credits include Tentacles, Giovannona Long-Thigh, Escape from the Bronx and so many more, as the writer.

Beyond his two decameron films, Joe D’Amato also made this commedia sexy all’italiana about a gynecologist who — despite his average looks — has a line of women who can’t wait for him to see to them. Most of the Italian sex comedies I’ve seen get lost in translation and feel dated — which makes sense, as they were made in the mid 70s in a foreign country — but this one actually made me laugh.

Dr. Giovanardi (Renzo Montagnani, When Women Had Tails, When Women Lost Their Tails) is brought in by Doctor Lo Bianco who is hiding out from his debts on an island. A libertine married to a lesbian — how progressive for 1977 — he gets set up by his secretary Pamela (Paola Senatore, Like Rabid Dogs, Ricco the Mean Machine) to put out for a wide array of clients, giving some the babies they want and others the exact type of lovemaking they adore, including one client who wants violent aardvarking so badly that she punches our hero right in the face as hard as she can, knocking him across the room.

Keep an eye out for Daniela Doria (who got stabbed through the throat in The House by the Cemetery and also is in The New York Ripper, The Black Cat and City of the Living Dead), Loretta Persichetti (Salon Kitty, Nine Guests for a Crime), adult actress Marina Hedman and Lorraine De Selle (Cannibal Ferox, Gloria in House on the Edge of the Park, the warden in Violence in a Women’s Prison, Women’s Prison Massacre and more).

The most amusing thing is that Montagnani played the same role as an irresistible male several times despite appearing in no way like a man who should be doing this.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally posted these movies back on May 18, 2021 and May 21, 2021 when we had a week of Bruno Mattei. Well, the scum always rises to the top, huh?

Emanuelle and the Erotic Nights (1978): Known in Italy as Emanuelle e le porno notti nel mondo n. 2, this movie is more like the Superman and Batman of Italian scummy cinema teaming up, as Joe D’Amato and Bruno Mattei (credited as J. Metheus) team up to unleash their absolute lack of restraint upon audiences, bringing along Laura Gemser, Black Emanuelle herself, to host the proceedings.

This being a mondo, you may wonder, how long until a real animal is abused? Oh, not long. That said, the majority of this film is given over to strip clubs and magic acts. Unlike other D’Amato and Mattei adult mondos, this is relatively tame by comparison. If you want full and unfiltered Joe and Bruno, you’d want Notti porno nel mondo.

Gloria Guida, Miss Teenage Italy 1974, appears in this. You may recognize her from The Bermuda Triangle and as the titular character in Blue Jeans. Ajita Wilson, who was in Fulci’s Contraband, also appears.

I’m always amazed that these mondos continually feature sex change footage, which is often faked. Who was clamoring to see this? That said, I do love Mattei’s super quick-cut editing style and unlike many mondos, this never gets boring.

Notti Porno nel Mondo (1977): Not to be confused with the above movie — that’s the safer one — this film finds Joe D’Amato and Bruno Mattei at the helm, starting things off with Laura Gemser appearing as Emanuelle with one m, saying, “It’s your old friend Emanuelle again…”  before taking us on a journey.

What a horrific journey it is!

Also known as Sexy Night Report, there’s a 70-minute edited version of this movie that’s still pretty rough. But man, the unedited one? You need to wash your eyes with fire after watching it.

Sure, this being a mondo means most of the footage is faked. So yesh, while a good portion of this one is beyond unreal, with scenes like a man in an ape costume “performing” with an exotic dancer and another where an Amsterdam red light girl shows off for a crowd before choosing a man from the window watchers, leaving his wife outside. Then, the movie descends into what I can only imagine Sodom and Gomorrah looked like to Lot’s wife before she was turned into seasoning.

Yes, in case you wondered if you were still watching a mondo, we have chickens getting their heads cut off, rituals in foreign countries, ping pong balls being launched out of a special place, a magic trick that turns someone into a hermaphrodite and, of course, a man’s member being chopped off again and again, as the scene is replayed from every angle, looking faker and faker each time.

It’s like Mattei — Jimmy Matheus! — and D’Amato — uncredited! — were thinking, “We’ve shown these raincoaters naked women for the last ninety minutes or so. Let’s show them a pisello get sliced off and then someone get their head cut off to remind them who we are.”

We get it, Bruno and Joe. Or Vincent Dawn and Aristide Massaccesi. Or David Hunt and David Hills.

Marina Hedmann — speaking of extra names, she was also known as Marina Lotar, Marion Bibbo, Bellis Marina Hedman and many, many more —  from Emanuelle in America, La Pretora, Play Motel and plenty of adult films (she was one of the first Italian actresses to appear in porn) appears.

If this looks way better than it should, despite being shot all in the same room even though they claim it’s all over the world, because Enrico Biribicchi shot it. He lent his skills to plenty socially unredeeming movies, including The Return of the Exorcist, Emanuelle in America, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, Buio Omega, Erotic Nights of the Living Dead and Porno Holocaust. He was also the cinematographer for Antropophagus.

This being a Mattei movie, rest assured that plenty of recycled footage appears. There’s some stuff from several Erwin C. Dietrich movies, some of Jess Franco’s Mondo Erotico and even stuff from D’Amato’s Eva Nera*.

Notti Porno nel Mondo is absolutely ridiculous, a movie that I would never recommend to anyone but absolute maniacs with no taste whatsoever. If you read this far, that’s probably you.

*Thanks to Adrian on Letterboxd for figuring out where those scenes came from.