Franco Nero is private eye Larry “Cobra” Stanziani, who even gets his own song that says, “I don’t give a damn, I am the Cobra.” He returns to Italy hired to discover who killed a narcotics agent and reconnect with his young son who — spoiler warning — gets murdered and then we get to see lots of people get killed by Cobra.
Enzo G. Castellari wanted to make this as a tribute to Chandler. That’s not why it has a fistfight in a disco, but I’m good with it. Also this movie was selected specifically because — in addition to Soavi — it has Sybil Danning in it.
I can watch Franco Nero lose his mind and murder criminals all day. I am a very simple film watcher.
17. A Horror Film From the Hong Kong New Wave(1979-1984).
Did Italian horror cinema have an influence on director Tsui Hark? Well, between the title of this movie — which comes from the tagline for Zombie — and the fact that it stole its soundtrack from Suspiria, I would say yes. There’s also a fair bit taken from Sacrifice! and Cannibal Holocaust as well as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Also called Hell Has No Gates, No Door to Hell and Kung Fu Cannibal, this is about Agent 999 (Norman Chu) who is after Rolex (Melvin Wong), a thief, all the way to a cannibal village. Yet Rolex ends up saving him from the cannibals just in time for he himself to get chowed down on.
This is like a film noir detective against flesh eating ghouls mixed with comedy and ill-advised transvestite comedy. It doesn’t work as much as you’d hope, but Hark would move on from thie and The Butterfly Murders to Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind and Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain.
Heaven and Hell has it all. Director Chang Cheh. Nearly all of the Venom Mob. Angels and humans falling in love. A battle between heaven and hell. The martial arts you demand and also the weirdness you hope is coming too as the Venoms escape a hell that looks like a combination of Hong Kong and Mario Bava but somehow more neon and all the fog in the world.
Yi-Min Li ‘s character gets kicked out of Heaven for helping David Chiang and Maggie Li fall in love and sent down to Earth as a Hong Kong cab driver who is killed when he can’t stop connecting lonely hearts like Alexander Fu Sheng and Jenny Tseng. He then gets sent to gambler’s hell, a place where he should not be, and the demons just sigh as if to let us know that there is no worse job than working in the punishing world of fire.
The Buddha of Mercy shows up and helps him assemble three of the four Venoms, who all share exactly how they ended up in Hell, and then they fight their way out in battles that are impossibly perfect and have a sheer joy of punches and kicks despite being in the eternal despair of souls. They must face the men that killed them on Earth, now demons, and make their way to be reincarnated.
This movie started shooting in 1975 and saw stops and starts along the way, as well as the money running out. There are also musical numbers. I can only imagine that serious martial arts fans hate this as they wanted fight scenes and instead, they got an exploration of the many levels of the afterworld.
Basically if Alejandro Jodorowsky got hired by Shaw Brothers, this would have been the film he made.
Released the same year as Hex, this sorta sequel is less frightening and more gambling. And sex. Lots of sex. Sex where characters break the fourth wall and speak directly to you while they’re having it.
Chih-Hung Kuei directed this yet there are hardly any of the maggots and worms and murder and weirdness that you want. Instead, it’s about a compulsive gambler by the name of Cai Tou (James Yi Lui) whose bad luck is fixed when a mysterious elderly man fixes him up with the ghost of his daughter.
I mean, his last plan was to get his wife to sleep with the gangster he owed money to, which ended up with her decimating his scrotum and then leaving Cai Tou. Now, he has a spectral wife who is jealous of other women yet is only able to make love to her husband by possessing them.
We live in a weird world where some cultures have gambling movies as an actual genre. Let’s love the fact that so many odd and fascinating subcultures exist.
Chan Sau Ying (Ni Tien) is going to die from tuberculosis and even then her husband Chun Yu (Wong Yung) can’t stop abusing her. Her new servant Leung Yi Wah (Chan Sze Ka) takes pity on her and they work together to drown Chun Yu in a pond, but then Sau Ying watches as her husband rises from the swamp and seeks revenge.
Kuei Chih-Hung was making his version of Diabolique here but that movie didn’t end with a naked woman having blood slowly spit all over her and her entire nude body covered by painted spells.
Ghosts that spit green vomit, animal guts falling like rain and a grime and rain filled swamp location make this movie just feel messy and gross, which quite often is how I like it. Sure, it moves slow in parts — it is forty years old, after all — and some of the acting leans toward silly humor when the movie seems deadly serious, but when the last ten minutes give you the sleaziest exorcism you’ve even seen, there are no complaints.
Bruce Lee only made four movies but the number of movies made by his imitators could be incalculable.
The Clones of Bruce Lee may be among the strangest of those movies.
Seconds after the death of Bruce Lee in Hong Kong, Colonel Colin (Andy Hannah) of the Special Branch of Investigations and Professor Lucas (Jon T. Benn, who was the bad guy in Lee’s Way of the Dragon) take the samples of the actor’s DNA needed to create three crimefighting remakes, played by Bruce Lai, Bruce Le and Dragon Lee.
While Dragon Lee becomes an actor battling corruption on the sets of the movies that he makes, Bruce Lai and Bruce Le meet up with Chuck, who is played by Bruce Thai and yes, looks just like Bruce Lee. Their job: defeat Dr. Ngai, who has harnessed the secret of the Shaw Brothers bronzemen through scientific means. This isn’t new for director Joseph Velasco, who as Joseph Kong also made Bruce and the Shaolin Bronzemen and Enter the Game of Shaolin Bronzemen.
This movie is as wild as you hoped it would be, from Bolo Yeung (who was Bruce’s enemy in Enter the Dragon) and Chiang Tao training the clones to Professor Lucas turning heel when no one knows just how hard he worked to make these clones of the actor. He decides to kill them all and he’s 33% effective. He does so by making the clones fight one another kind of like a Capcom palette swap.
How exploitative is this movie? It uses footage from Lee’s funeral. It also has the gall to take the theme from Rocky by Bill Conti which you have to grudgingly respect. I mean, what better montage music is there?
EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks for being part of the second Cannon Month. There are so many movies to get to, from the rest of the films Menahem Golan directed to 21st Century’s 70s films that they distributed to the thousands of titles that Cannon owned. Trust me — there will be a third Cannon Month. This is one of the 21st Century-distributed movies and I’m kind of fascinated as to why they would have the rights.
Pogo is the cartoon character who said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Sure, it was created for kids, but it had political satire that appealed to adults. Cartoonist Walt Kelly created it and the strip was syndicated to American newspapers from 1948 until 1975, then there was a revival from 1989 to 1993 with writer Larry Doyle and artist Neal Sternecky, who eventually did the whole cartoon himself. Actually, some newspapers carried reprints from 1975 to 1982 because that’s how popular Pogo was.
Chuck Jones had made The Pogo Special Birthday Special for the strip’s 20th anniversary but fans and Kelly disliked it. Walt and his wife Selby wrote and hand-animated We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us, which was unfinished due to Walt’s poor health but the storyboards were used for the book of the same name. Finally, in 1980, this stop-motion film was made.
While this was released on VHS and played cable quite often — and Selby Kelly sold DVD on her site before her death — it has never officially been released on DVD. There was a ViewMaster set which makes sense, as the stop motion characters lend themselves well to that format.
Actually, the release of this movie is so weird. There were movie posters and ads in Variety claiming that it was to be released by 20th Century Fox. That never happened. It played once in August 1980 in New York City and its Kennedy Center debut never happened.
The stop-motion animators worked hard to ensure that the movie could be released four months prior to the 1980 election along with a promised a $1 million promotional budget and national Pogo for President write-in campaign.
Instead, 21st Century released it as a video rental through Fotomat huts — yes, this was a thing before digital cameras where you’d drive up and get your film developed but I never knew they had movies — in a plain generic Fotomat box.
On November 2, 1982 — the day of the mid-term elections — HBO premiered a new cut of the film that had narration added by Len Maxwell. This movie is really talky, so now it became even more filled with words. That’s the version that aired on cable through 1992 and that Disney Home Video released in 1984 and United American Video in 1989.
Directed by Marc Paul Chinoy, this film’s claymation characters seem a bit too dimensional when I think of Walt Kelly’s art, yet it’s still an interesting look. The strange thing is that this is based on the strip where Pogo ran for President and that was in 1952 and 1960 so the stories were nearly thirty years old by the time this movie came out, so some of the timely references are no longer so on the mark.
That said, the cast is strong, with Ruth Buzzi as Miz Beaver and Miss Mam’selle Hepzibah; Kelly’s friend journalist Jimmy Bresin as P.T. Bridgeport; Stan Freberg as Albert the Alligator; Jonathan Winters as Porky Pine, Molester Mole and Wiley Catt; Skip Hinnant (the voice of Fritz the Cat) as Pogo and Vincent Price as Deacon Muskrat.
It also has a good soundtrack featuring Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. Yet it just feels like something I’m unsure kids would be interested in, as the subtext of political commentary has become the entire story. But hey, Will Vinton has always said that The Adventures of Mark Twain was the first full-length claymation movie and this was at least five years before that.
21st Century created a one-sheet poster, trade ads and trailers but decided not to release this as the rights were so murky that even they worried about being sued.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was on the site for the first time on May 23, 2020. The Babysitter was not produced by Cannon but was released on video by HBO/Cannon Video.
The ABC Friday Night Movie for November 28, 1980, The Babysitter was directed by Peter Medak, who was also in the chair for movies like The Changeling, Cry for the Strangers, Zorro the Gay Blade, Romeo Is Bleeding, Species II and The Ruling Class. What an amazing lineup of films to have on your resume and such a disparate list of movies.
Dr. Jeff Benedict and his wife Liz (TV movie supercouple William Shatner and Patty Duke) have moved from Seattle to Chicago. Between their daughter Tara (Quinn Cummings, The Goodbye Girl) and the demands of housework, Liz isn’t doing so well. That means they bring in a live-in nanny named Joanna Redwine (Stephanie Zimbalist, before Remington Steele) and that’s when things go to seed.
Before you can say movie of the week, Joanna has Liz drinking again and convinced that Jeff has a mistress. While that game is afoot, she’s also trying to convince Jeff that loading his clown into her cannon while wifey is passed out is beyond a good idea
This is when you fire the babysitter. That said — if they did, we would not have the next hour and change of this movie.
Before it’s over, the bodies of the last family Joanna killed — wrapped in plastic a half decade before Laura Palmer — have shown up, she’s wearing Patty Duke’s lingerie and served up a dinner of raw beef tongue. The family is lucky that they know John Houseman, who saves them all.
I have a weakness for both made for TV movies and ones where babysitters slowly drive a family insane. This movie is at the center of this magnificent cycle and must be experienced. These TV movies are exploitation films, with small budgets and insane stories, that scream at you the entire time they are on the screen.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Last Rites was not produced by Cannon but was theatrically distributed by Cannon Releasing Corporation.
You know, vampires think they’re so smart. They’ve been pulling that Alucard scam for decades and humans haven’t figured it out. Like in this small town, where a drag race leads to two injured teens. The girl is declared deceased — she isn’t — and rushed to the A. Lucard Funeral Home. Soon, A. Lucard himself(Gerald Fielding), Dr. Cummins (Victor Jorge) and an assistant drink her blood and then stake her. Yes, the most important people in town are vamps and they’re using the locals as feeding stock.
Marie (Patricia Lee Hammond) and Ted Fonda (Michael Lally) call Dr. Cummins when her mother (Mimi Weddell) gets sick. He gives her a sedative, says she’s dead and drinks up. Then he calls in Lucard to bury the body. Then Marie decides she wants a home funeral — what kind of maniacs want a dead body just sitting at home? — so mom comes home. She could turn at any minute, so Lucard sends his assistant to stop that. Well, Ted tosses him out the window and the kindly Mrs. Bradley is now walking the night.
A low budget regional New Jersey movie — made in Vineland — that spends as much time hanging with vampiric small-town politicians as it does showing that fanged bloodletting that you expect, this movie has a blue collar take on blood-drinking ghouls.
Director, writer and producer Domonic Paris was also behind the movie Splitz and a series of documentaries including Amazing Masters of Martial Arts, Bad Girls of the Movies, Afros, Macks & Zodiacs and Film House Fever. Now he writes movies like A Turtle’s Tale: Sammy’s Adventures.
Of everyone in this movie, Mimi Weddell — who has no lines — did the most afterward. She was already 65 when this was made, but ended up being in everything from Student Bodiesand The Purple Rose of Cairo to Hitch, The Thomas Crown Affair and an episode of Sex and the City.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Beyond Evil was not produced by Cannon but was theatrically distributed by Cannon Releasing Corporation. You can read another take on the movie here.
Architect Larry Andrews and his new wife Barbara (horror movie super couple John Saxon and Linda Day George; if these two ever had a child it would either be a demon or a gleaming golden angel) have moved to a small island off the coast of the Philippines. Del (former minor league baseball player Michael Dante; he’s also in The Farmer and was introduced to acting by John Wayne), Larry’s business partner, had promised them a brand new condo. Instead, they’re moving into Casa Fortuna, the haunted former home of Esteban and Alma Martín (Janice Lynde), who died after a fight started by Alma’s obsession with the occult.
Within what seems like minutes, next door neighbors and psychic surgery experts Dr. Solomon (David Opatoshu) and his wife Leia (Anna Marisse) warn Larry that Alma wants his young bride’s body for her own. At the same time, Barbara is luring Del into the home with promises of sex and then shoving him off the balcony.
You know what this movie needs? An exorcism. Well, it gets it.
Herb Freed is kind of a forgotten king. I mean, the dude made Haunts, Graduation Day and Tomboy, which are three other movies I watch all the time. He wrote the script with producer David Baughn and Paul Ross.
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