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 Snake Fist vs. the Dragon, this starts with the monkey style kung fu of Koo Ting-sang (Pomson Shi) battling the snake style of Hsia Sa (Charlie Chan Yiu Lam). Monkey defeats snake and is merciful, allowing him to live. This is a mistake.

Years later, Lung (John Cheung Ng Long) starts as a janitor and works his way up to be a student of Teacher Ho (Hau Chiu Sing), who is still rough on him, getting him drunk and leaving him in a field where he’s nearly killed by a snake. Luckily, the much older Koo Ting-sang (Pomson Shi) saves him. He offers to get a real monkey to teach Lung his style, but instead he goes back to the school and learns drunken style. Lung also finally fights back against the Yan brothers (Wan Faat and Cheng Hong Yip), who have been bullying him for most of the movie.

In response, their father Yan Fung Tien (Tong Tin Hei) hires two killers: Hsia Sa and another snake fighter, Lun Chun (Wilson Tong Wai Shing). What are the odds? They go to the school and kill everyone except Lung, He barely makes it to the woods where Koo Ting-sang lives and his second teacher is soon killed by the snakes. That means he must go through a training montage, watching a monkey fight and bite off the head of a snake. He finally learns his drunken monkey style and, as you expect, gets back the honor of those who trained him.

Directed by Cheung Sum, this movie is everything I love about kung fu films. Yes, there’s Brucesploitation but this is Jackiesploitation, making a film similar to Drunken Master while being just sleazy enough to throw in a mondo animal scene. 21st Century sold it by saying, “Bruce Lee is gone by Johnny Chang must carry on!”

You can watch this on YouTube.

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 seems like every one of my favorite 1970s studios put out a family wilderness movie. I mean, Sunn Classic had their Grizzly Adams movies, Cannon had The Alaska Wilderness Adventure and 21st Century had this, The Legend of Black Thunder Mountain, which starts with a whole bunch of volcano stock footage.

Well, as we soon discover, “Black thunder, you know, is the Indian name for earthquake. They say its the earth speaking from inside her soul. And that fire and smoke from a volcano is a warning, that the earth is angry with man. Well, it turns out the earth had good reason to be angry.”

Anna (Holly Beemer) and Jamie (Steve Beemer) Parrish are lost, their dad (Ron Brown, who was also in Lefty, the Dingaling Lynx and Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar) has been knocked out by two criminals, George (Keith Sexson) and Buzz (John Sexson). As they look for their father, the children meet plenty of stock footage animals, as well as a real bear named Mrs. Mullen, who is played by Bozo the Bear. If he looks familiar, he was Ben the Bear on the Sunn Classic TV series The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. There’s also a bald eagle named Balderdash, but he hasn’t been in anything else.

Directed by Tom Beemer — yes, whose kids are in this — and who wrote this along with Susan Shadburne (who also wrote the frightening The Adventures of Mark Twain, so it makes sense that Will Vinton was an editor on this), Tyler Johnson (whose only other IMDB credit is writing a Harry Styles video and that has to not be true), Lola Thompson and Don Chasan.

Yes, when we had only a few channels and went to the movies often, producers would make family wilderness movies with weird pop songs in them and sometimes make it look like volcanos were going to kill kids.

You can watch this on YouTube. Watch it in Spanish like I did.

Another film with Death Duel‘s Third Master (Yueh Hua), Full Moon Scimitar starts with Ding Peng (Derek Yee) sparring in sword battles that don’t go to the death. However, he wants to get ahead of his rival Liu Ruo Song (Wang Yong), who sends his wife to seduce him and steal his sword manual before they fight. Our hero is humiliated, leading him to ask his father’s spirit for guidance. He soon meets Qing Qing (Liza Wang) and learns of a weapon called the Full Moon Scimitar. Yet even when he obtains it, he wants glory and honor instead of peace.

Directed by Yuen Chor, this is another tale of the difference between the martial world and the world of normalcy, a place that Ding Peng wants to escape and that Qing Qing wants him to remain in. The martial world is one of shadows and fog, a place lit like a Mario Bava movie, a violent universe where you must be ready to defend yourself at any moment. There is no rest.

This is a movie brave enough to answer the question “When you get to the top of the mountain, what comes next?” It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll, as Bon Scott sang. And when you get there, like an Italian West gunfighter, you have to be ready to defend your title with your life at a moment’s notice. It seems exhausting and unsustainable, as this film’s moral reminds us.

Originally made as Agowa gongpo (Crocodile Fangs), this is the story of Tony Akom (Nat Puvani) and John Stromm (Min Oo), two workaholic doctors always at odds with their wives, who are angry that they work so much. They decide to make up for it and take them on vacation, which is a major mistake, as they are dragged underwater by a crocodile mutated by nuclear testing into an unstoppable creature of wife chewing destruction. Now, they must destroy it and join up with fisherman Tanaka (Manop Asavatep) and a photographer named Peter (Robert Chan Law-Bat) to make it happen.

When the English language version of this film was created by producer Dick Randall, all sorts of cuts happened. Out was the hurricane that opened the original film. In was a new beginning shot by Randall in which a crocodile eats two naked women. This one movie didn’t have enough crocodile human feasting for Randall, who added in a scene from Krai Thong in which three kids turn into a snake. And the ending, in which Tony threw dynamite into the crocodile’s gullet was edited with Peter strapping himself with the TNT and swimming right into the giant mouth of the croc. Above all else, all Jaws rip-offs must end with the beast being blown up. That’s the rules.

What breaks the rules is that much like The Ghost Galleon, I can only imagine that some of the effects in this were created by a toy boat in a bathtub. Yet going even further, this has a reptile crawling all over it.

Original director Sompote Sands also made the aforementioned Krai Thong, as well as The 6 Ultra Brothers vs. the Monster Army, Hanuman and the Five Riders (a bootleg Kamen Rider) and Jumborg Ace & Giant.

A warning: This movie was condemned by the American Humane Association for a moment where a real crocodile is murdered on screen. This isn’t Italian, mind you. It’s from Thailand.

The Synapse release of Crocodile has an audio commentary with dearly departed film historian Lee Gambin, an  interview with original director Won-se Lee, the original theatrical trailer, and deleted and alternate scenes. You can get it from MVD.

Also known as Abbot of Shaolin, this is all about Chi San (David Chiang), who has been sent by his Shaolin masters to learn a special kung fu from a Wu-Tang priest. There, he befriends Wu Mei (Lily Li) and runs afoul of the priest’s brother Pai Mei (Lo Lieh) and nephew Dao De (Ku Kuan Chun), who support the Quin. Well, before long, those evildoers have burned the Shaolin Temple to the ground and with his dying breath, the master tells Chi San he must travel to bring the Shaolin back to life. Drunk with power, Pai Mei kills his brother and attempts to seek out our hero, who has been gathering new students and preparing to rebuild the Shaolin Temple.

Director Ho Meng-Hua gets a Shaolin monk vs Tibetan lama fight in this, as well as a giant white eyebrow villain in Pai Mei that can shut off all of his body’s pressure points, which makes him one of the unbeatable Shaw Brothers final bosses that seemingly can defeat two or more good guys at the same time.

I’ve seen the Shaolin Temple burn so many times and even another film with Pai Mei — Executioners from Shaolin — and his brother White Lotus try to get revenge — Clan of the White Lotus — but I’ll watch it over and over again. Gordon Liu even showed up as Pai Mei in Kill Bill Volume 2, so when Westerners think of Shaw Brothers movies, he may be the exact character they imagine.

Thanks to Erich Kuersten, who correctly pointed out that I confused Lo Lieh with Gordon Liu. Check out his site, Acidemic. It’s awesome.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Fyre was on the CBS Late Movie on June 14, 1988.

Directed by Richard Grand, who co-wrote it with Ted Zephro, Fyre decimates its protagonist, Fyre (Lynn Theel, Humanoids from the Deep, Without Warning), before the movie even gets rolling. She’s assaulted at a drive-in by three men while her boyfriend watches helplessly. When she tries to explain it to her father (Bruce Kirby), the only member of the family that seems kind of her, they all go to a picnic without her. After her brother (Ron Thomas, Cobra Kai member Bobby) starts a fistfight with some kids over her looks, they leave. Everyone has a good laugh over this, including mother (Cheryl Marie Jensen), until they laugh so hard they drive off the road and die.

Yes, the stage has been set for Fyre to go to Los Angeles and become a sex worker. Well, first she’s a singer in a bar that gets assaulted by the owner and saved by her man, Nick Perrine (Tom Baker, not the Time Lord), who goes to jail for four years for the punch up. Soon, Fyre is addicted to the money that comes from walking the streets. But those streets are dangerous and filled with criminals, like Preacher (Allen Garfield) and Pickpocket (Frank Sivero).

Her pimp might be the same man who raped her at the drive-in, so think of the weird coincidences of that. How can that happen?

The real reason for fans of streetwalker cinema to watch this is the scene where Fyre does a dance on stage with Carol (Donna Wilkes). Yes, Angel. And no, she’s not playing Molly Stewart in this, but man, you may not be expecting a sapphic sleaze scene when this movie has been so Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway up until now. Donna Wilkes really made the most of her late 70s and early 80s career, nearly getting Mike Brody killed (Jaws 2) before walking the Sunset Strip, being obsessed with Klaus Kinski — her father! — and perhaps killing most of his patients and stalking Marianna Hill (Schizoid) and being stalked by Frankie Avalon as a psychic maniac that she got a blood transfusion from (Blood Song).

As for Fyre, this movie feels improvised and that it just kind of hangs out before it figures that it’s over. Nearly everyone gets shot, Fyre kills her pimp and then goes back home, all for a man to immediately hit on her. The end? The end.

I can’t believe this played the CBS Late Movie.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Great Alligator was on the CBS Late Movie on May 26, 1982; June 17 and December 28, 1983; and June 13 and August 30, 1984.

Sergio Martino directed some of my favorite films of all time, such as The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, All the Colors of the Dark, 2019: After the Fall of New York, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key as well other completely out there films like Hands of Steel, Torso, American Tiger, The Mountain of the Cannibal God and The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail. Throw in a script co-written by one of my favorite Italian scuzzfest actors and directors — George Eastman — and you have the recipe for a movie that should blow my mind.

The Great Alligator should be, well, great. And there are moments where it feels like it’s going to be, as it attempts to be a mash-up of Jaws and Cannibal Holocaust, which again, seems like a great idea. Throw in the gorgeous Barbara Bach before she married Ringo Starr, Claudio Cassinelli (Murder Rock) and Mel Ferrer — who went from the A-list and marrying Audrey Hepburn to appearing in some of the most crazed films, like The Visitor, Nightmare City and Eaten Alive! to name but three — and you have a cast ready to make it happen. And the central theme of the movie — tourists anger the god of a resort island who then becomes a giant alligator and eats them all — is great, too.

Turns out that Kuma, that river god, doesn’t like how Mel Ferrer runs Paradise House and wants none of his native people to work with the whites any longer. The natives then wipe out anyone that works there, no matter where they come from and Cassinelli and Bach must climb the waterfall that Stacy Keach fell off of in The Mountain of the Cannibal God to find the only person who may be able to save them, Prophet Jameson (Dr. Menard from Zombi 2).

That said, once the face painted natives and a giant alligator attack everyone, burning down Paradise House and menacing screaming tourists, who survives and what will be left of them is up for grabs. Look for appearances by Bobby Rhodes (the pimp from Demons), Romano Puppo (Trash’s father from Escape from the Bronx) and Sylvia Collatina (Mae Freudenstein, the ghost girl of The House by the Cemetery)!

The huge body count, numerous alligator attacks and attempts at being something more than a Spielberg clone — outside of the way the attacks are filmed and that Ferrer keeps everything a secret so tourists keep coming — make this a movie that I enjoyed on some level. But much like Martino’s post-giallo efforts, I keep wishing for him to go from simply good to flat out amazing. The ideas are there. The execution, however, is not.

You can get this from Severin.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Rocky II was on the CBS Late Movie on November 18, 1988.

After the success of Rocky, the producers were eager to make a sequel. While Sylvester Stallone would write the script and star again, John G. Avildsen was tied to Saturday Night Fever (a script disagreement led to him being removed from the film three weeks before shooting started; he was replaced by John Badham). Stallone went all out to get the job, just like he did to get the starring role in the original film. Producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff understood how much of the success of the first film came from Stallone and helped him get the job.

The film begins immediately at the close of the last movie: world heavyweight boxing champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) has defended his title against Rocky Balboa (Stallone), yet his promise of no rematch is rescinded the moment reporters surround the two men. Their private moments are much different then public; when Rocky goes to Apollo’s hospital room, he asks if he gave his all. The champion agrees that he did.

Rocky decides to retire after learning that he has a detached retina and that one punch could blind him. He has a new life now, one of endorsements and agents, but also one of true love as he marries Adrian and they expect a child.

Apollo is on a different path, as he’s now obsessed with a rematch. Rocky is the only mark on his perfect career. Despite everyone close to him telling him to drop it, he demands a rematch, smearing the good name of Rocky even in retirement.

Rocky’s inexperience with money and inability to read basically reduces his life to pure pain. Even a job at a slaughterhouse doesn’t last as the film compounds the boxer’s tragedy, moment by moment. Rocky begs Mickey to take him back and train him, but the older boxer refuses until he sees the way Apollo is taunting him.

Adrian has gone back to working at the pet store and refuses to support Rocky’s need to fight one more time. She goes in labor early and while their child is healthy, she remains in a coma. Rocky blames himself and stops training, but days before the fight, she awakens and tells him to win.

Apollo boasts that he will beat Rocky in no more than two rounds to prove the first match was a joke. Yet Rocky fights right handed instead of left, taking an even more brutal encounter into the fifteenth round, yet Apollo is way ahead on points. Rocky switches back to southpaw — leaving his bad eye open to damage — and takes out the champ with a massive punch that takes both to the canvas. Luckily, he rises in victory. 

According to John G. Avildsen, another reason he didn’t do this film was because he didn’t like the story. He was, however, excited to do the third movie, where Rocky would have been elected mayor, only to be caught in a scandal when Paulie stole from the treasury. Rocky would take the blame and end up back in his old neighborhood. Notably, a similar plot occurs — spoiler warning — in the movie Stallone and Avildsen did collaborate on, Rocky V.

This is one of my dream action figures to own.