EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Joe’s big directing bid and its lack of reaction pushed him into only caring about more commercial films (porn). It’s a shame because this is a work of sheer weird art made by a maniac. We originally wrote about this movie on October 5, 2020. There’s also a cocktail recipe based on this movie at the end of the article.

I love Joe D’Amato. I can’t hide my devotion and even when his movies descend into outright exploitation, I love him even more. This is probably his best film — a remake of the 1966 film The Third Eye — that he would talk down by saying, “I personally opted for the most unrestrained gore, since I don’t consider myself very skillful at creating suspense.”

It’s also a movie that he shouted — while filming — “We’re making a movie to make people throw up. We must make ’em vomit!”

I wish he was still alive so I could hug him right now.

Frank Wyler has just lost the love of his life, Anna Völkl (Cinzia Monreale, Emily from The Beyond). That may have something to do with his voodoo using, wet nursing maid Iris (Franca Stoppi, The Other Hell and the dog-loving mother in George Eastman’s Dog Lay Afternoon), who is only too happy to have her boss suckle on her bosoms for emotional succor.

So our protagonist does what any of us would. He digs up his woman and turns her into a body that will never age. Of course, any other filmmaker wouldnt show this process in graphic detail, but you’re not watching any other director make this movie. This is the kind of film where a hitchhiker is killed and when our hero gets too stressed out, his mother figure gives him an old fashioned and then helps him hack up the corpse.

The crazy thing is, Frank can pick up women, like the jogger he gets in the sack in less time than it will take you to read this. Of course, he has to show off Anna, the girl goes nuts and Frank ends up biting through her neck. Such is life. Or death.

Imagine how Frank feels when his dead lover’s twin shows up! Why it’s enough to call of his engagement to Iris, which is one of the oddest scenes in a movie that pretty much starts strange and finishes beyond strong in the category of astounding weirdness.

Come for the necrophilia. Stay for the awesome Goblin soundtrack.

You can watch this on Tubi or buy it from Severin.

BONUS: Here are two cocktail recipes!

Dark and Stormy (simple version)

• 2 oz. dark rum (Goslings Black Seal is traditional, but I use Kraken)
• 3 oz. ginger beer
• 1/2 oz. lime juice

1. Fill a highball (or Big Gulp) glass with ice. Add rum.
2. Pour in ginger beer and lime. Stir, garnish with a lime wedge and drink up.

Beyond the Darkness and Stormy (complicated version, based on this recipe)

• 2 oz. dark rum
• 3 oz. ginger beer (go for a lower sugar and spicier brand)
• 1 oz. spiced simple syrup (read on…)
• Lime for garnish

Making this recipe means making your simple syrup a few days in advance. To do that, use this recipe:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 6 sticks cinnamon (making sure to grate a quarter stick into the mix)
• 30 whole cloves
• 10 allspice berries (or just double the ground allspice below)
• 1/4 tsp ground all spice
• 1 vanilla bean cut in half and seeds scraped out
• 1/2 tsp fresh grated nutmeg
• 1/4 cup fresh ginger sliced (you can always use a dash of dry ginger spice, but I have some rad frozen ginger cubes I’ve been dying to use)
• 3 oz lime juice

Making simple syrup is, well, simple. Throw everything in a pot and simmer it over medium — not too hot — heat. Once it gets warm, turn it on low and stir it until it thickens on your spoon. Let it cool.

Then, strain out the spices and store it in a container in the fridge.

Here’s how to make this magic work:

1. Fill a highball (or Big Gulp) glass with ice. Add the ginger beer and then the simple syrup. You’re going to be amazed, because the syrup will sink to the bottom.
2. Hold a spoon upside down at the top of the glass at the top of the ginger beer later. Pour the rum over the spoon like you’re an absinthe fiend. Prepare yourself to shit your pants at how cool this is. I’m not going to spoil it.

Originally called La casa del dio sconosciuto (House of the Unknown God), this movie starts by informing you that it was very loosely inspired by Prosper Mérimée’s La Vénus d’Ille before quoting Blaise Pascal: “The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.”

Then a whole bunch of nuns get possessed and get it on.

I mean, you can lock up gorgeous nuns but in the Mondo D’Amato they are going to spend most of the movie flipping out, touching one another and rehabilitating a wounded man by repeatedly hiding the bishop. Yet that young man has brought the devil with him!

Paola Senatore stars as Isabella, the duchess who has been left in this convent for her own protection and that doesn’t go so well. Marina Hedman is Sister Marta and you may remember her from Play Motel, a movie that rivals this one for sheer prurience. Aïché Nana plays the Mother Superior, which is probably an inside joke, as she’s most famous for dancing an infamous striptease during a private party at the Rugantino restaurant and nightclub on the Viale di Trastevere in Rome that got so much attention, it caused a national scandal and inspired the orgy scene in Fellini’s film La Dolce Vita. Sister Veronica is Giovanna Mainardi, one of the female guards of SS Experiment Love Camp. Sister Giulia is Maria Rosaria Riuzzi from Emanuelle and Francoise and Salon Kitty. Finally, the exorcist who tries to fix it all is Donald O’Brien, whose Italian film credentials are beyond reproach: Dr. Butcher, M.D.; Keoma; Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals; Yeti Giant of the 20th Century; The Sect; Ghosthouse and about fifty more.

This movie — moved along by the Nico Fidenco soundtrack — feels like a nightmare and then a dream and then another nightmare and then a priest leads the nuns through the convent trying to get Satan out of their midst while a murder happens and every nun unleashes their full wanton carnal needs as they struggle to the altar. Sure, it’s exploitation, but in the hands of D’Amato, it approaches scumbag art.

Images in a Convent is part of Severin’s new Nasty Habits box set. It also has Cristiana Devil Nun, Story of a Cloistered Nun and Bruno Mattei’s The True Story of the Nun of Monza. You can order it from Severin’s website.

Master Wang (Gordon Liu) is really the eleventh prince of Manchuria in disguise, trying to discover which of the other fourteen heirs to the throne are trying to kill him. He’s pretending to be a jewelry dealer which brings him into the world of jewel thief Dirty Ho (Wong Yue). Also, Wang is such a good fighter that he’s able to defeat people without ever seeming to be fighting them!

Wang conspires to get Ho to ask him to teach him in the ways of fighting. After Master Wang is injured, he demands that Ho take him on a journey to a ruined city battered by the wind in an astounding segment of this movie.

While so much of this Lau Kar-Leung-directed movie is given to comedy and wine-tasting, the last fights of the film make it worth a watch. It’s also a film that subverts the usual master and student story and has a Manchu character as the hero.

The Arrow Video Shaw Scope Volume One box set has a brand new 2K restoration of Dirty Ho from the original negative by Arrow Films. There are uncompressed Cantonese, Mandarin and English original mono audio, as well as newly translated English subtitles and English hard-of-hearing subtitles for the English dubs.

It also has alternate English credits, an appreciation of the movie by film critic and historian Tony Rayns, a Hong Kong trailer and an image gallery.

You can get this set from MVD.

You can also stream this movie on the Arrow player. Visit ARROW to start your 30-day free trial. Subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.

The Old School Kung Fu Fest is back and the Museum of the Moving Image and Subway Cinema will co-present eight newly restored films and one fan favorite classic by Kuo on glorious 35mm. Four titles will be available exclusively online, December 6–13, and another five films for in-person big-screen viewing at MoMI, December 10–12. 

To see any of these shows, visit the Museum of the Moving Image online or Subway Cinema.

The Three Dragons — Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao — remain enshrined in the stars of Hong Kong — and even world — cinema. They all were trained by Yu Jim-yuen, who also taught Corey Yuen, Yuen Wah, Yuen Tai, Yuen Miu and Yuen Bun. All of these men honored him by taking on his name as their own.

Chan spent ten years studying under Yuen and was even adopted as his godson when his parents left the country. In his book I Am Jackie Chan, he described Yuen as a brutal taskmaster: “Master believed in just three things: discipline, hard work and order. Discipline came quickly and painfully, measured in strokes of the cane. Hard work was the rule of the day – a few minutes of stolen rest often meant an hour of extra practice for any unlucky students caught slacking off.”

Chan may have thought of running away every single day, but he credited Yuen as being just as much a father as his biological one, saying “Charles Chan was the father of Chan Kong-sang*, Yu Jim-yuen was the father of Jackie Chan.”

Yuen moved to America, teaching martial arts and appearing in this one and only film which is worth tracking down just to see him in action. You have to understand that he’s 74 years old here.

He plays Grandmaster Wan, who has come to America to help one of his students who now has a school of his own. He’s under attack by other schools and in debt to gangsters, so Wan helps him by defeating each of the rival dojos. However, his student has been betting on the fights and hasn’t been honest, so Wan disowns him and takes up with Bill, an honest student who wants to learn kung fu from the source.

Man, between the Yellow Magic Orchestra cover of “Firecracker,” a discofied “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man” and Patrick Hernandez’s “Born to Be Alive” this movie is nearly a disco film as much as it is martial arts. It has plenty of fights though, with Bill (Bill Louie, who was in Death Promise) taking most of the hard work on when it comes to chops, kicks and throws.

The best part of this movie is that Bill has learned his moves from a toy robot. No, I’m not making that up.

It’s also totally a travelogue movie and I’ve read a lot of reviews that say that this movie is a disjointed mess. It also has lots of corny jokes about how The Old Master doesn’t speak much English and how a larger woman is in love with him. You know, perhaps my brain is pickled from the many movies I’ve made it live through, but I found all of the incongruous moments of this movie made it that much more charming.

*Jackie Chan’s real name.

The Old School Kung Fu Fest is back and the Museum of the Moving Image and Subway Cinema will co-present eight newly restored films and one fan favorite classic by Kuo on glorious 35mm. Four titles will be available exclusively online, December 6–13, and another five films for in-person big-screen viewing at MoMI, December 10–12. 

To see any of these shows, visit the Museum of the Moving Image online or Subway Cinema.

Ah Pao wants to learn kung fu for a very important reason: He must his father’s death at the hands of the man known as the Ghost Faced Killer, who in turn in hunting down different leaders, throwing down his ghost face killing plate and then murdering them with his five elements style.

“The game of chess is like a sword fight
You must think first before you move
Toad style is immensely strong and immune to nearly any weapon
When it’s properly used it’s almost invincible”

Ah Pao finally makes his way to The Chang Sing School yet he discovers another layer of struggle, as he’s bullied by every older student. Yet it’s the school’s cook who teaches him some moves after challenging him to steal one piece of rice from his bowl and Ah Pao cheating to get it. Yet even the moves that he’s taught, the cook says, will never be enough. The Ghost Faced Killer is unstoppable to the point that even by owning his symbol, Ah Pao has marked everyone in the school for death.

Yet perhaps chess master Chi Sue Tin — an old enemy of the Ghost Faced Killer — may be the one who can teach our hero everything he knows — the chess boxing kung fu and the strategic link between the game and the martial art. Finally, when faced with the most powerful fighter in the world, Ah Pao and Chi Sue Tin team up using double horse style to challenge the man who has haunted both of their lives.

I mean, the Ghost Faced Killer walks in a room, laughs, throws down a personalized plate and then kills everyone in his path. That takes guts and style and man, we should all look to this villain and take away the good parts of what he did and add them to our lives.

The Old School Kung Fu Fest is back and the Museum of the Moving Image and Subway Cinema will co-present eight newly restored films and one fan favorite classic by Kuo on glorious 35mm. Four titles will be available exclusively online, December 6–13, and another five films for in-person big-screen viewing at MoMI, December 10–12. 

To see any of these shows, visit the Museum of the Moving Image online or Subway Cinema.

At once a prequel and sequel to the movie that made Jackie Chan a star — Drunken Master — this film focuses on Beggar Su (Simon Yuen) and his friend Fan Ta-Pei. It’s like showing up for a Star Wars sequel and having it be all about Han and Chewbacca and man, isn’t that what you really wanted?

Our heroes have been mysteriously asked to meet one another and begin drinking to no surprise and remembering their teenage past together. Despite stealing grapes, they begin to work for a winemaker named Chang Chi who is a secret master of martial arts. They beg him to train them, they both fall for the same woman and their defense of innocents using their new Drunken Boxing abilities leads to the evil Tiger Yeh coming to attack their master. This explains how they drifted apart and why they’ve been brought back together.

Look, it’s no Drunken Master. But hey — the fights are nearly the same. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t entertaining.

If you’re really into movies that cash in on Jackie Chan, I recommend Gold Ninja Video‘s Jackiesploitation blu ray!