Nobody loves Exoricst II: The Heretic as much as Bill Van Ryn, who is the creative force behind the website Groovy Doom and the zine Drive-In Asylum. Of course, I had to invite him to write about it.

Indulge me for a second and consider the challenge of following a cultural phenomenon like The Exorcist. You’re a bigwig at Warner Bros, and you understand there are potential millions to be made from a sequel, but nobody involved with the original will play ball. Friedkin and Blatty are both out, Burstyn says absolutely not. What do you do? 

Well, you go full speed ahead of course, with a crazy metaphysical script that blends elements of every genre known to mankind, combines them in a blender, and splashes the screen with a druggy, hallucinatory concoction of ideas that rarely coalesce. Linda Blair, who originally said no but ultimately said yes, contends that the original script she was given was much better than the final product, and really anything might have been better than what was actually made. John Boorman was hired to direct, Max Von Sydow agreed to reprise his role as Merrin (in flashback scenes), and Kitty Wynn returned as Sharon to fill the vacancy left by Burstyn. Regardless, the completed Exorcist II was a movie that no audience member wanted, and it brought almost unanimous scorn upon itself from the moment it debuted in theaters (with the notable exception of both Martin Scorsese and Pauline Kael). The negative reactions to the film are now legendary – Friedkin told a story about how Warner Brothers executives were chased down the street by angry filmgoers who attended the film’s opening, and Blatty claimed to have been the first person to start laughing at the film when he saw it. After the disastrous opening, Boorman made alterations to the movie by actually going to theaters and cutting the prints right there on the spot, six theaters a day. The cuts did nothing to help.

But let go of all that. Let’s allow Exorcist II: The Heretic to be what it wants to be, and you may start to see the film differently. Most astonishingly, it is not a retread of the first film, which is probably what audiences *really* wanted. Instead, it thrusts us into totally unfamiliar territory, and it never gives in. We do get another Catholic priest as a hero, Richard Burton as Father Lamont, but it drops most of the Catholic imagery that the first film contained (and exploited for shock value). Instead, Father Lamont is seen haunting the psychiatric facility of Dr. Gene Tuskin (Louise Fletcher), an ultra modern office space that can best be described as a glass honeycomb connected by sliding automatic doors that open and close like those on a spaceship. Lamont is on assignment from the Vatican, investigating the death of Father Merrin. Regan, now Tuskin’s psychiatric patient and apparently the most gentle teenager who ever existed, lives with Sharon in a Manhattan penthouse that would make even the most jaded Russian billionaire envious. Chris MacNeil is absent, apparently off-camera earning the laundry baskets full of money that would be required to fund such an extravagant lifestyle. 

In addition to the film’s obvious horror elements, there’s an early detour into total science fiction in the form of a fictional machine that Tuskin has invented called the “synchronizer”. This flashing device allows two subjects to share a hypnotic connection — or something. It’s necessary, because it allows the characters to discover the demon Pazuzu still lurking in Regan’s subconscious, and to share psychedelic hallucinations of flying with Pazuzu, who is revealed to be a demon closely associated with locusts. We flash to scenes in a strange Catholic church in Africa, accessible only by a death-defying climb inside of a terrifying cliff formation. The jarring mixture of these exaggerated, unfamiliar scenarios and locations starts to have a strange effect on the viewer; Exorcist II rarely takes place in the ‘real’ world, and even when it does, the real world doesn’t seem to be populated by people with motivations we can understand – just try and figure out what’s going on when Regan starts having ‘flashbacks’ while she’s tap dancing in a high school talent show. She keeps convulsing during the number, yet nobody reacts to the fact that she’s having seizures, and the number continues until she finally dives right off the stage.

The film’s intriguing imagery envisions evil as something that is communicated from one individual to another, the way the brushing of wings between locusts transmits signals to other locusts to become a destructive swarm. Regan is special because her previous exorcism gives her the ability to resist evil instead of succumbing to it, therefore breaking its chain reaction. It also links her to an African named Kokumo (James Earl Jones), who was the little boy on whom Father Merrin once performed an exorcism many years before Regan. Conversely, Kitty Wynn’s character suffers a terrible fate because she, too, was touched by the evil of Regan’s possession and was unable to resist. 

These bizarre concepts are the schizophrenic soul of Exorcist II. It’s easy to see why audiences rejected it, considering they were expecting more of the same, and what they got was a bad acid trip. Although it was not technically a financial failure, earning double its budget in theatrical release, it seriously underperformed and was eagerly forgotten by almost everyone involved. It was Boorman’s involvement that most likely kept the film heading into this commercial dead end, since he was involved in the screenplay and was determined to make a movie completely different from the first film. But he’s hardly the only one to blame, as the other screenwriters were apparently smoking the same thing. Many of the actors deliver stilted performances, and Burton is just plain hammy. We’re never quite sure who James Earl Jones’ character is in the film, his involvement is so limited. A scene where Blair uses her psychic healing abilities to get a mute little girl with autism (Dana Plato) to start talking comes off as laughable. 

Regardless, I truly enjoy this insane film in spite of its failings. The visuals are often breathtaking, and probably looked incredible on a large theater screen. The film does inspire a few moments of excitement, the most notable being when Blair sleepwalks along the rooftop edge of the skyscraper where she lives, a terrifying scene that was achieved by having Blair actually walk along the edge of a skyscraper with no harness or means to catch her if she fell. The world is full of underperforming sequels, but there aren’t many as fascinatingly strange and unexpected as this one, and it’s interesting to take the film on its own peculiar terms. 

From The Baby to The Pink Angels, Graduation Day, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, Love at First Bite, Michael Pataki is in so many great movies. He’s even the Klingon Korax who starts a fight in the Tribbles episode of Star Trek. He’s everywhere —  The Sidehackers, The Return of Count Yorga, Airport ’77, Grave of the Vampire, Dracula’s Dog, Dead and Buried, The Glove, Sweet Sixteen, Rocky IV, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers…man, I love Pataki! He’s even the voice of George Liquor on The Ren & Stimpy Show!

What you may not know is that he also directed this movie, a soft core musical version of the Cinderella story that played on Cinemax After Dark off and on throughout the late 80’s and early 90’s. That’s where I first encountered it, with no idea that Pataki directed it. I certainly did take notice of its star, Cheryl Lynn “Rainbeaux” Smith, however!

If Cheryl Smith didn’t exist, someone would have to invent her. Much like Pataki, her resume literally reads like a list of some of my top films of all time: Lemora, Caged Heat, Phantom of the Paradise, The Incredible Melting Man, Laserblast, Up In Smoke, Nice Dreams, Vice Squad, Parasite…she shows up in so many films worth watching. For example, the movie Video Vixens has her and pretty much the entire cast of The Last House on the Left in a silly sex comedy.

She was even a member of The Runaways after the band broke up during the making of We’re All Crazy Now. She even played drums for an early version of Joan Jett’s solo band. Sadly, she died at just 47 years old after two decades of heroin abuse. But let’s not dwell on the negative. Let’s celebrate this ridiculous film.

Cinderella features Smith in the title role, as she suffers at the hands of her incestuous stepsisters and maneater stepmother (Yana Nirvana, Marilyn Corwin and Jennifer Stace, who were all members of the LA Knockers, an all-female dance troupe that has a crazy history that I’ve been exploring online. One of their members, Lissa Kastin, was killed by the Hillside Stranglers, for example.). Until she can escape, she sings songs and dreams of a better life.

On the other side of the kingdom, The Prince no longer can enjoy sex and his parents are fighting over the fact that he won’t get married. So the King throws a party where his son can find the one woman who can satisfy him. He sends the Royal Chamberlain to find willing women, but the servant is too interested in getting those women for himself. And keep in mind — throughout these sexy shenanigans, there are songs for each scene.

Cinderella is left behind to have a nightmare about being assaulted, which is such a 70’s thing that wouldn’t appear in movies today. She’s saved by her fairy godmother, who is a black gay man who happens to be a kleptomaniac and transvestite. Basically, this is the kind of movie that if it played in a hipster movie theater in 2019, there’d have to be all manner of social media apologies and handwringing over problematic content.

Sy Richardson, who played this role, does a similar turn in another sexy take on children’s stories, 1978’s Fairy Tales. He also shows up in Petey Wheatstraw as Petey’s father, as well as Detective Wasserman in Bad Dreams.

Somehow, a magic wand the fairy godmother once stole works, so he helps her get to the party while he gets to work stealing the crown jewels. He also enchants Cinderella’s private parts so that they become a snapper, whatever that means. Honestly, it sounds painful.

The Prince has a blindfolded orgy with every willing girl in the land, but Cinderella’s magical ladybusiness is exactly what he’s been looking for. Now, the Prince has to go back throughout every single bedroom all over his father’s land to find that perfect fit. By the time he gets to Cinderella, he’s on a stretcher, but she takes care of him and together, they save the fairy godmother from an angry mob.

Obviously, this entire movie is completely goofy. You kind of have to watch it through the lens of 1977, when people didn’t really worry about offending anyone. I’ve always loved that it’s also called The Other Cinderella, just in case you’d mix it up with the Disney movie. No, this is the one with titties.

You can get this on DVD from Full Moon.

I was afraid to write about this film here. What else can I say about it? My love for it as pure as the adoration you feel for your first love. This is what movies are all about to me: a dream world that is punctuated with staccato blasts of violence, neon and Goblin’s never topped soundtrack. It took the remake of the film to get me to write down my feelings on this film.

Suspiria is all about the impact that magic has on our world, a subject about which creator Dario Argento said, “There’s very little to joke about. It’s something that exists.” The genesis for the film came from a trip through the “Magic Triangle,” the place where the countries of France, Germany, and Switzerland meet.

The movie theorizes that if there are three Fates and three Graces, there must be three Sorrows: Mater Lacrymarum, Our Lady of Tears, Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs” and Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness. This was inspired by a 19-century book by Thomas de Quincey called Suspiria de Profundis.

Argento brought his wife Daria Nicolodi on that aforementioned trip and when he lamented that they hadn’t seen a witch, she shared a story her grandmother, the French pianist Yvonne Müller Loeb Casella, had told her of an academy that she attended on the border between Germany and Switzerland that had a faculty that practiced black magic.

While Argento claims that this story was false and other elements were more of the inspiration for the movie, Nicolodi feels otherwise. “Suspiria was imagined and written by me, thanks to the fundamental inspiration of my grandmother’s story,” she said. “Then, for the usual quibbles related to the cinema industry, this story was signed by both of us.”

Even the end of the movie was inspired by a dream that Nicolodi had in which she encountered an invisible witch and then a panther exploded.

While she was to originally star in the film, to make it more marketable to American audiences, Jessica Harper took over the lead. You can still see Nicolodi at the airport scene in the beginning and hear her as the voice of Helena Markos (supposedly, that’s a 90-year-old ex-prostitute who Argento found on the streets playing that role).

Suzy Bannion (Harper) is an American ballet student lost in Germany, arriving in a violent rainstorm and looking for her new school, the Tanz Dance Academy As she arrives, another student, Patricia, flee in terror. Despite the storm and her pleas over the intercom, no one will allow Suzy into the school. The cab drives her back to down as she watches Patricia run through the woods.

Patricia finds her way to a friend’s apartment but within moments, she’s pulled out a window — Argento’s biggest directorial signature — stabbed and then lynched through the apartment’s stained glass skylight while her friend watches on, helplessly, before she’s impaled by pieces of bloody stained glass.

You might say, “Wait, what is happening here?” Argento isn’t going to slow down or explain anything to you. What do you expect from one of the last movies shot in Technicolor and specifically lit to take advantage of the otherworldly colors that that film stock produced? Argento told cinematographer Luciano Tovoli that they were trying to make the film look like Disney’s Snow White. In fact, he had to be talked out of making the students of the school all twelve years and under by his producer — and father — Salvatore Argento. Argento made the girls all around twenty years old but didn’t rewrite their dialogue, which is why they act so naive and their dialogue is so childlike. Next time you watch this movie, notice the doorknobs. They were placed at the same height as the actress’ heads so they would have to raise their arms to open them. All so they would really be children, not adults.

The next morning, Suzy goes back to the school where she meets the headmistress, Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett in the final role of her career) and Miss Tanner (Alida Valli, who is also in Argento’s Inferno). She’s supposed to stay with Olga (Barbara Magnolfi, The Suspicious Death of a Minor), but she’s kicked out in moments and must return to the school. There are some scenes cut from the film that reveal that Olga is probably a witch in training, hence why she plays with Suzy so much.

The next day, Suzy starts her classes but quickly grows dizzy. Then, she becomes friends with Sara (Stefania Casini, The Bloodstained Shadow). Later that evening, when the girls are getting ready for dinner, maggots rain from the ceiling. Again — why? Supposedly its just rotten food, but it feels like something much more sinister is happening, especially when Sara notices the academy’s director wandering the halls late at night and hiding behind the curtains.

Can things get worse? Sure they can. The school’s blind piano player is killed by his own dog. And just as Suzy remembers that Patricia had uttered the words “secret iris” to her, she passes out just as a man enters her room, chasing Sara through a series of rooms until she becomes entangled in barbed wire before the black-gloved man decides that this is now a giallo and slits her throat. This was an incredibly painful scene for Casini to shoot, as even though the barbed wire was fake, it still entangled and tore at her skin.

Suzy learns from Sara’s friend Dr. Frank Mandel (Udo Kier!) that the school had been established by Helena Markos, a woman that everyone in town believed was a witch. She is now dead, the victim of a fire, and another of Mandel’s friends, Professor Milius (Rudolf Schündler, Karl from The Exorcist and Father Conrad from Magdalena, Possessed by the Devil, one of the scummiest possession movies you will ever see) believes that her coven is suffering without her as their leader.

Suzy returns to the school and discovers that she is alone. She follows the sound of footsteps to Madame Blanc’s office, where a mural of irises opens a secret door. Entering this passage, she overhears the Blanc and the teachers plotting her doom. And then, running from Blanc’s nephew Albert and his servant, she finds Sara’s body.

As Suzy hides in a room, she discovers that Helena Marcos is sleeping there. As the witch awakens, she possesses Sara’s body and come after Suzy to kill her. A flash of lightning reveals where Marcos is hiding and Suzy stabs her through the neck with a giant neon peacock quill — quite literally The Bird with the Crystal Plumage — and kills the old woman. The entire school begins to burn and fall apart around her, killing the teachers who had just been planning to kill her. As Suzy escapes into the rainy night, she pauses to smile. I absolutely adore this scene, this moment of survival, this brief bit of exhilaration. Suspiria is quite literally a haunted house ride and our heroine has survived.

The Italian band Goblin — credited as The Goblins — composed the score along with Argento before the movie was filmed. Of note are the hushed whispers of Claudio Simonetti, who has said that that much of what he says in the songs is nonsense.

I’ve gone on record numerous times about my hatred for the remake of this film. But I want to use this time to talk about what this movie is, not what that one isn’t. Everything magical about film is within these 98 minutes. Instead of worrying about narrative cohesion and things making sense, I find it best to just sit back and let Suspiria take you somewhere amazing. You’d do well to watch this movie with that in mind.

You can watch this for free on Tubi, but I recommend going all in and grabbing the Synapse 4K blu ray from Diabolik DVD.

Directed by John Landis and written by the ZAZ team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker (who would go on to Airplane! and The Naked Gun), this movie is a complete mess and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve probably watched this film more than any other thanks to a taped off HBO copy I had throughout my teenage years.

Containing a number of exploitation films produced by Samuel L. Bronkowitz (a combination of everyone from Samuel Bronston and Joseph L. Mankiewicz to legendary American International Pictures producer Samuel Z. Arkoff), this movie just never stops or lets up. If a scene isn’t funny for a little bit, stick around. Something really comedic — or strange — is right around the corner.

How can you not adore a film that begins with a news anchorman warning you, “The popcorn you’ve just been eating has been pissed in?”

Starting with a commercial for Argon Oil, the first real segment of the film is an extended watch of A.M. Today, as a gorilla (special effects master Rick Baker) goes wild on set. That’s followed by a trailer for Catholic High School Girls in Trouble, which is pretty much every softcore sexploitation movie the late 1960’s and early 1970’s foisted on drive-in and grindhouse screens. The sound effects alone make this segment worthwhile.

A segment called See You Next Wednesday shows a theater that offers Feel-A-Round technology. It’s really just an excuse for Landis to get this catchphrase into one of his films, which he repeats throughout his career. It’s the last line that Frank Poole’s father says to him in a letter from home in 2001: A Space Odyssey. And Landis has used it in movies from Schlock and The Blues Brothers to the video for Thriller, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Trading Places and Spies Like Us (among many of his other films). It also shows up in Amazon Women on the Moon, which is pretty much a spiritual sequel to this. It’s called The Cheeseburger Movie while the original is called The Hamburger Movie in France, plus they both end with the song “Carioca.”

There are so many moments here that it’s hard for me to list them all. I’ll try. Big Jim Slade, making the album The Wonderful World of Sex much better for the ladies. Building “a fighting force of extraordinary magnitude” in the film’s longest movie-within-a-movie, the Bruce Lee ripoff A Fistful of Yen. That’s Armageddon, an Irwin Allen-style movie that stars George Lazenby and Donald Sutherland as “the clumsy waiter,” a part that never fails to make me laugh. A Leave It to Beaver in court sketch that predates the way modern comedy would reinvent old shows, even bringing original Wally Tony Dow along for the ride. The blacksploitation (and jewsploitation) film Cleopatra Schwartz. Danger Seekers, which could never — and probably should never — be made today. And literally so much more.

The humor was going to extend to the title of the film, which was going to be either Free Popcorn or Closed for Remodeling, either which would have let to total chaos.

Look — to paraphrase Mitch Hedberg, you’re either going to love this, hate it or not care either way. But you can watch it for free on Tubi or Amazon Prime. Or just order the blu ray from Shout! Factory. We also featured The Kentucky Fried Movie — with a second look — as part of our weekly “Drive-In Friday” featurettes with a tribute to the old USA Network’s “Night Flight” programming block from the ’80s.

You’ve got to love the balls of the people who made this movie, starting it with the words, “This film is dedicated to millions who love Bruce Lee.” Then, they have a fake Bruce Lee literally go to Hell.

Bruce (Bruce Leung Siu-lung, The Beast from a movie that’s just as crazy as this, Kung-Fu Hustle) wakes up from being dead and faces the lord of the underworld, who threatens him with an earthquake. Then, Bruce goes to a restaurant where he meets three new friends: Caine from TV’s Kung Fu, Fang Kang the One-Armed Swordsman and of all people, Popeye. Yes, really.

To Bruce’s surprise, there’s been a gang terrorizing hell, made up of Dracula, James Bond, Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman and Clint Eastwood. Our hero does what you or I would do were we in hell: he starts a martial arts school.

Meanwhile, the Godfather Vito Corleone, Regan from The Exorcist and Emmanuelle (played by Jenny, Emmanuelle of N. Europe, blowing my mind that if there can be a Black Emmanuelle and an Emanuelle with only one m, there can be honorary Emmanuelles from different regions of the globe) decide to take over the King of the Underworld’s throne.

Bruce ends up becoming the King’s bodyguard before he finally battles the leader of the Underworld, wins and goes back to Earth. So is Bruce alive again? The mind boggles.

THere’s also an extended part of the film where the “third leg of Bruce” is discussed. Yes, his real power is in his penis. I can’t believe that this movie exists and that it’s taken me so long to find it.

You should just watch this whole movie. It’s on Amazon Prime and the YouTube link below.

Before Fulci became known as the godfather of gore, he made movies in nearly every genre. This is the next to last film he’d make — Silver Saddle follows it in 1978 — before 1979’s Zombie announced to the world that he was here to tear eyeballs, unleash bats and provide dazzling if incomprehensible odes to mayhem.

Fulci is no stranger to the Giallo, with some of his most important films being A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Don’t Torture a Duckling and the unappreciated Perversion Story. The title refers to the film’s exploration of the duality of human nature, a theme that Fulci often revisits in his work. Here, he’d team up again with writer Roberto Gianviti and begin his long partnership with writer Dardano Sacchetti, who sought to lend a touch of Argento to the original script’s traditional mystery.

What emerged was a film shrouded in mystery and darkness—a rumination where death is inescapable and always close, a world where doom hangs over every moment, captivating the audience with its enigmatic atmosphere.

The film is set in Dover, England, in 1959, a time of social change and upheaval. A woman commits suicide by literally diving from the Cliffs of Dover. Forgive the harmful effects — Fulci tends to use wooden bodies in his films for some reason, much like the end of Duckling. The main point is that her daughter Virginia may be living in Italy, but she can clearly see her mother’s day.

Today, Virginia (Jennifer O’Neill, Scanners) lives in Rome and is married to a wealthy businessman named Francesco (Gianni Garko, Sartana himself!). As she drives him to the airport for his next business trip, she begins to see visions. An older woman is being killed. A wall is torn down. And a letter is under a statue. How strange is it that the house she is beginning to renovate looks precisely like the one in her visions?

When she tears down the wall that looks like the one in her dreams, she finds the skeleton of her husband’s ex-lover and the police want to charge him with the murder. Virginia becomes the detective of the story, obsessed with saving her husband with the help of psychic researcher Luca Fattori. Soon, they believe that the real killer is Emilio Rospini (Gabriele Ferzetti, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service).

So who is the woman? Why was her body in that room, which was once her husband’s bedroom? Why is the woman’s face on the cover of the magazine that Virginia buys? That’s because Virginia’s visions aren’t the past but premonitions of the future.

Meanwhile, she’s given a wristwatch that plays a haunting theme every hour in the house. This eerie soundtrack, composed by Fabio Frizzi, adds a layer of suspense and tension to the film and was reused to incredible effect in Kill Bill. The growing knowledge that the victim isn’t dead yet—and that Virginia may be that victim—darkens every frame of Fulci’s epic.

Quentin Tarantino was so in love with this film that he intended to remake it with Bridget Fonda sometime in the 2000s, but this never happened.

Perhaps just as interesting as the film is the life of its star, Jennifer O’Neill. Possibly best known for her long career as a Cover Girl model, she has been married nine times to eight husbands (she married, divorced, and remarried her sixth husband, Richard Alan Brown). By the age of 17, she’d already attempted suicide so as not to be separated from her dog, had a horse break her neck in three places and married her first husband. She’s also had a horrible history with guns, having accidentally shot herself in 1982 and being on the set of the TV show Cover Up in 1984 when co-star Jon-Erik Hexum accidentally killed himself. While waiting for a delay, he had been playing Russian roulette with a prop gun and was unaware that the discharge could still cause damage. Placing the gun to his temple, he fired and caused so much damage to his brain that he died six days later.

In the first of the remade Scorpion movies, Nami was framed for her involvement in the murder of a politician who was threatening to expose corrupt practices. She escaped from jail to get revenge on those who set her up, including her lover, but was captured at the end. Now, she’s been sent back to prison. The rest of the inmates have been punished for her escape, making her life even rougher. And now, a tougher warden is on the way to make sure she never gets out. Scorpion!

Yu Kohira returns to direct this film, but now we have the third actress to portray Nami Matsushima, Yoko Natsuki.

In this installment, one of the guards just wants peace in the jail, so he’s willing to give the women the cigarettes and chocolate that they need to remain calm. Trust me — this technique never fails to keep my wife happy. However, the new warden just wants to be tough and make life hell for everyone.

The guard tries to expose the abuses of the new warden and ends up chained to Scorpion as they escape into the mountains. So we go from a women in prison movie to a chase film, so at least this one doesn’t follow all the steps of the previous films. Sure, it still feels like we’ve seen this all before — because we have — as this is literally a reboot of the series again!

I did enjoy the kabuki aspects of the film, though. It’s just hard to go from watching the Meiko Kaji films to this, as there’s not much of the style and swagger. However, the scene where the warden tries to quell a riot by shooting his gun into the air, only for a woman to tell him to go have sex with himself, was totally awesome.

Once the escape into the mountains happens, Scorpion finally becomes herself. I love how she continually subverts the male gaze of the guard, willing to kill him and drag his corpse instead of letting him touch her. He asks her if she’s even a woman, but she has no reply.

As the final assassin comes upon them, however, she’s won him over with her toughness and resolve. He sacrifices himself, dashed on the rocks so that she can be free to have her revenge.

The film closes with Scorpion dressed in her trademark black hat, stalking the urban environments of Japan, on her way to get her final bloody payback.

This isn’t the best of the Scorpion movies, but I get that people just want more of them. Maybe they should just watch the first three over and over again like I do.

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…Day of the Animals. If this movie is any indication, I wish that he had made many more films.

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.

You can watch the original or Rifftrax version on Amazon Prime, or watch this on Shudder.