BONUS WILDCARD WEEK (September 22 – 28) Go order something from the SWV website and watch it!
Bill (Christopher George, taking a vacation from his wife, who is in nearly every movie with him), Jamie, Dan (Preston Pierce, Angels’ Wild Women) and Diana (Roberta Collins, Matilda the Hun from Death Race 2000) are on a treasure hunt deep in the Southern backwoods, seeking an inheritance of prices Civil War rifles. Sure, why not?
After thirty minutes of more of travelogue and dirt bike footage, you may wonder, “Has slasher month gone to Sam’s head? When are we going to get to the senseless violence?” Patience, slashawan.
The deeper into the South our protagonists find themselves, the less hospitality they get from the locals, but hey, there’s plenty of money on the other side of the rainbow on Whiskey Mountain, right? Well, there’s also a drug operation that runs everything around, even the cops, all headed up by Rudy (John Davis Chandler, probably the only actor I know that appeared in both Adventures In Babysitting and High Plains Drifter).
This is a movie that has all real marijuana as props and a soundtrack by the Charlie Daniels Band, along with the exact kind of horrors you know await them yankees when they ask too many questions and push too hard. It’s also filled with Peckinpah-esque slow-motion — most effectively when George is double firing shotguns — to go with a brutal scene where we only hear the assault on the girls and see still evidence as it develops on Polaroids. Also — it’s 1977 and technically a motorcycle movie. so that means that it also has a potential downer ending freeze frame.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Over the next several days, I’ll be covering movies either directed by Menahem Golan or produced by Golan and Globus before they bought Cannon.
Golan and Globus also produced a Western, God’s Gun, starring Leif Garrett and Lee Van Cleef in which Garrett was mentored by Cleef. The producers paid Garrett to stay in Israel for two months until filming began on that movie, which was released before this.
Kid Vengeance stars both of them but in totally different roles, as Garrett is Tom, who watched Van Cleef’s McClain murder most of his immediate family, getting gang member Jesus (John Marley) to shoot dad (David Loden), before he rapes and murders mom (Dalia Penn) and kidnaps sister Lisa (Glynnis O’Connor). Once he comes out of hiding, Tom makes his way across the plains and like some tween slasher antagonist, he kills them all off, one by one, by arrow, by scorpion, by snake, bye bye.
Instead of Gianfranco Parolini, this was directed by Joseph Manduke, who made the TV movie Beatlemania and Omega Syndrome. It was written by Ken Globus, who also wrote the Golan/Globus movies Operation Thunderbolt and Lupo! and was on second unit for their films The Highway Queen, The Passover Plot and Kazablan. He was joined by writers Bud Robbins and James Telfer.
Isaac (Jim Brown) helps Tom learn how to be a man, but if you’re hoping for a Jim Brown heroic role, this isn’t it. This is not a sequel to Take a Hard Ride, despite what you may have heard. Maybe watch that instead.
EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.
Also known as Bruce’s Revenge, Return of Fists of Fury and Ninja vs. Bruce Lee, this was made as Zhong lie Jing wu men. It super stars — that’s what they said — Bruce Le as Bruce Wong, who comes to Manila to visit his uncle who has apparently forgotten and just left home. So he wanders the streets and meets a young thief named Piggy and save a girl from the deadliest pimp in the Philippines, Mr. Cross.
One of the women Bruce saves is his cousin, who runs a martial arts school with his other cousin. He helps them fight Mr. Cross, who has one henchman who is such a gay stereotype that even far right people will be offended by this movie’s homophobia. Anyways, Bruce shuts almost everything down, so the bad guys hire a killer named Sakata to kill everyone, starting with his male cousin,.
This movie has an instrumental version of Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” that completely made me insane, screaming out the lyrics. “I’m standing on the edge of time, I’ve walked away when love was mine, Caught up in a world of uphill climbing, the tears are in my mind and nothing is rhyming.”
Also: This ends with the police all coming to bust up the final fight between Mr. Cross, Sakta, Sakata’s brother, a hundred goons and Bruce. Piggy watches, all alone on the beach, crying, realizing that he will forever be alone. So…an unhappy ending?
If you were Asian, did martial arts and looked like Bruce Lee with aviator sunglasses on, you always had a job in 1977.
Director Joseph Velasco also went by Joseph Kong and made Bruce’s Secret Kung Fu,. Thundering Ninja, The Clones of Bruce Lee, Treasure of Bruce Lee, The Young Dragon, Enter the Game of Death, Bruce’s Deadly Fingers, Bruce and the Shaolin Bronzemen and Kung Fu Master: Bruce Lee Style. He made more off Bruce Lee than Bruce Lee made off of Bruce Lee.
EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.
It’s bad enough in these movies that the antagonists keep burning down the Shaolin temple. Now, the villains are working with the Russians, who bring General Tolstoy (Roy Horan) and his guns to battle their fists. All because China and Russia are trying to sign a peace treaty and show people want non-stop war and an invasion of Manchuria.
Yet for all I know about the martial world, I had no idea what a snuff bottle was of what it has to do with this movie. Well, I learned.
Snuff bottles were used during this time to hold powdered tobacco, which was illegal. However, snuff was used as a remedy for colds, headaches and stomach disorders. It was carried in a small bottle, instead of a box like in Europe. They were pieces of fine art and some even had painting inside the bottle.
Because the Russians can’t tell the Chinese factions apart, the bad guys show them a snuff bottle when they meet so they don’t fight. I guess that makes sense and is also kind of racist.
The hero is John Liu, who would one day be New York Ninja, Dragon Blood, Ninja In the Claws of the CIA and the hero who is there when Zen Kwan Do Strikes Paris. He gets to battle Hwang Jang Lee, all choreographed by Yuen Woo Ping. There’s also another good guy, Kao (Yip Fei-Yang), who is the master of daggers and a child thief named Xiao (Wong Yat Lung).
Kind of cool to see foreign bad guys in the time before Hong Kong movies became about the present and not the past. And now, you too know what a snuff bottle is.
EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.
What is a mystagogue? According to Wikipedia, it’s “A mystagogue is a person who initiates others into mystic beliefs, and an educator or person who has knowledge of the sacred mysteries of a belief system.”
Fang Shao Ching (Carter Wong) has one of those mystagogues. His blind teacher refuses to reveal the 18th secret move to him as he’s too impatient. That said, if a martial artist uses the 18th strike, it doesn’t just kill their opponent. They die as a result of the blow as well. So maybe the teacher is right to not share this strike.
Soon, Fang Shao Ching and his sister Fang Ping (Feng Hsu) must protect a prince from the Ching government, which has taken over. They’ve sent many killers to murder him, including Yeun Ming (Chang Yi), who has perhaps the greatest weapon since the flying guillotine. He has these magnetic knives called the Bloody Birds that can either be knives, spinning blades, boomerangs, bombs or even drills that go right through flesh.
Sure, the fighting isn’t the best, but the main bad guy has skin that can’t be pierced and a throne that shoots bullets. Plus, you get rooms full of traps and I love when kung fu meets dungeon crawling. It’s no Shaw Brothers but is still pretty fun.
According to Temple of Schlock, this was originally called Da Mo Mi Zong and first played in 1976. It was first released in the U.S. by Headliner Productions as Mystagogue Superman and it as played as Killer Fists and 18 Shaolin Disciples.
EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.
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 House 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.
This was picked up by 21st Century after Dimension Pictures went out of business.
EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.
Ms. Johnson (Jacqueline Cole, director Grayden Clark’s wife) has perhaps the smallest cheer squad ever at Benedict High School. Just four girls — Debbie (Alisa Powell, The Toolbox Murders), Sharon (Sherry Marks), Patti (Kerry Sherman, Eyes of Fire) and Chris (Hillary Horan, Young Doctors In Love) — who are more interested in playing touch football and getting scored on by the football team than doing their routines.
After their car breaks down on the way to their big game, Billy the janitor and bus driver (Jack Kruschen, The Apartment) rescues them. And by rescue, I mean sacrificing them on an altar to Satan. They’re saved again by a hobo (John Carradine), the sheriff (John Ireland) and his wife (Yvonne De Carlo) and you know what I always say: never trust Old Hollywood. Or a lawnman with a name like Sheriff B.L. Bubb.
Shot in ten days with no permits, Satan’s Cheerleaders is mindless fun with an entire town devoted to the Lord of the Flies and a cheerleader with a secret of her own. Sure, it could be better, but this is the kind of movie that was meant to either get drunk to or get laid during at the drive-in. As such, it did its job.
Dragon Art Theatre Week (September 8 – 14) Pssst. Hey…buddy… you wanna see some naked movies with your mom in em? This stuff here is premium split tail in action, my friend, straight from the vaults at Something Weird Video. It’s all the HARD X stuff on the SWV site that I could find on Letterboxd and let me tell you, when I say HARD X I mean it! These movies show it all baby, whatever sort of freaky shit you’re into, these movies have got it. Nipple clamps, ice cubes on the balls, lesbos, homos, cumshots, whips, leather, you name it! Plus we got air conditioning and the cleanest bathrooms on the deuce. Just step inside … and if you need some luudes or a lid talk to my man Shifty over at the popcorn counter. Tell him Klon sent you.
Jeanne Silver was born in Tempe, Arizona with a missing fibula in one leg , which meant that the bottom half of it had to be amputated. After running away to New York City at the age of 16, she danced in clubs — she had already started that back home at 15 after being busted several times for burglary — before posing for adult magazines and performing in adult films.
Directed by Alex De Renzy, this is a collection of scenes with Jeanne that doesn’t shy away from showing off her leg. It begins with her looking at her own centerfold in Cheri before looking right at you, the viewer, and saying, “My name is Long Jeanne Silver and I’m handicapped and horny! Due to a quirk of nature I was born with a bigger dick than John Holmes, and baby, you better believe I know how to use it!”
When this played Hollywood sin palaces after Mike Weldon bought it, people kept walking out and what seemed like a sure-fire sensation wasn’t drawing. That’s because the scene where Jean takes a young man’s backside offended people. Go figure. Johnny Legend, the future director of My Breakfast With Blassie, had the job of figuring that out and then going from theater to theater to trim that moment of onscreen gomorrahy.
Today, Silver is alive and well in Arizona. She even showed up in Clownado a few years back. Her kindness is something to take notice of, as she routinely keeps in contact with her fellow actors and even handles funeral arrangements for them. She never forgets a birthday, either.
As for this film, you may be offended by it, but it shows that everyone has a right to sexual expression. If anything, Jeanne’s birth defect didn’t handicap her. Instead, it just opened her world to some wild adventures.
EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.
He may have only lived 48 years, but Harry Kerwin got to make some wild movies, like It’s a Revolution, Mother; Sweet Bird of Aquarius; God’s Bloody Acre; Tomcats and Barracuda. Cheering Section is a pre-Porky’s teen sex comedy that hits a lot of the same locker room beats, just four years before that was made. He wrote this along with his regular partner Wayne Crawford, who went on to write Valley Girl and play Jake Speed.
If you’re going to watch a cheerleading movie, pick The Pom-Pom Girls. But if you choose to watch this, it’s about star athlete Corey (Tom Leindecker) who wants to make his football team a winner but keeps getting involved with the Coach Jackson’s daughter, Melanie (Rhonda Fox). If they win the final game, the coach will allow them to date. That’s it. That’s pretty much the movie, other than a bikini car wash scene. This movie, released by Dimension Films, will make you realize that the New World nurse and cheerleader movies are cinema by comparison.
21st Century re-released this as a double feature with Dr. Minx.
EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.
This is a vansploitation movie. Yes, that’s really a genre and there are several films in it, of which I can name Blue Summer, The Van (obviously), Best Friends, C.B. Hustlers (which has Uschi Digard in it), Mag Wheels, Van Nuys Blvd. and I guess you could almost count On the Air Live with Captain Midnight. There’s a great article on it by Jason Coffman that goes deep into the genre that I totally recommend.
The beauty of this movie is that it posits a world where solar energy is already happening, van culture is the driving force in society and there is no AIDS to worry about, so all of the vans are a rocking and absolutely no one is knocking. It is surely paradise, if paradise only gets 11 miles to the gallon, fuel crisis be damned.
Our hero Clint Morgan has traveled to The Invitational Freak-Out, a major event for custom van enthusiasts, which means that any time we’re near it, we get to see plenty of b-roll footage of painted vans and all of the accouterments — this is not a word you want to use when selling Winnebagos — that they have inside.
Clint saves Karen (Katie Saylor, Invasion of the Bee Girls) from some bikers from another exploitation genre and they destroy his van The Sea Witch. That’s when he goes to the super genius van designer Bosley and together, they all make Supervan, which uses solar power and lasers. It was really made by George Barris — who designed so many other Hollywood cars — and was based on a stock Dodge Sportsman van. This thing was so big that it had a phone intercom system inside it.
Oh yeah. It turns out that Karen’s dad owns a car company that is out to make a van that uses more gas than ever before — what does it get 3 miles to the gallon? — and they have to take Supervan to the show to prevent him from making it happen, but he puts the cops on their tail.
We’ve seen Clint before on our site, as Mark Schneider is also in the Crown International Pictures movie Burnout, which is one of the few dragsterpolitation movies I can think of, so perhaps he is the perfect star for all things vehicular in nature.
Director Lamar Card is also there, in the nooks and crannies of strange movies that I find myself obsessed with, like producing the scumtastic Nashville Girl and directing the only Fabian-starring, Casey Kasem-coke sniffing disco freakout Disco Fever.
Beyond the near gynecological explorations of all of these vans at the absolute expense of story, this movie has a cameo by Charles Bukowski — the firebrand of a man who wrote “what matters most is how well you walk through the fire” — judging a wet t-shirt contest. I am in no way making that up.
There’s never really been a movie like Supervan. To be fair, I don’t think the world could have handled two. To quote the love ballad from the film, when I think of Supervan, “I’ll always remember you as a milestone in my life.”
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