Joe (Walter Olkewicz, Jacques Renaul from Twin Peaks) is worried that he’s going to close his bar, which seems more like an Italian family place than a place to drink, but who knows, right? Anyways, just as he thinks everything is at its lowest, he heads to a disco nearby that’s packed and learns that it’s not the mirrorball or the coke or 135 bpm remixes or the dancing, it’s the wet t-shirts.

Hot T-Shirts comes at the line between the old Cannon and the Golan-Globus version that’s better known and was directed and written by Chuck Vincent, whose show business career took him from managing the Yale Repertory and the Negro Ensemble Company to hardcore (Roommates, Visions) and more mainstream movies like Hollywood Hot Tubs, Deranged, Warrior Queen and Bedroom Eyes II.

Therefore ensues several scenes of disco music overlaid with women getting water all over their chests because in 1980, that’s what entertainment was, I guess. Corinne Wahl, who was once married to Ken, is in this, as the ringer in the wet t-shirt contests, which, as I’ve said before, constitute most of this movie’s intricate storyline.

For the raincoaters — or streamers now, right? — Randy West shows up.

That said, this movie proves that nude college students can actually be boring. Who knew?

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally watched this movie on July 7, 2021, but as it’s the first Golan-Globus Cannon 1980s list on the voluminous wikipedia list of Cannon’s movies, this feels like a great place to start. 

Based on the 1976 novel of the same name by Bernard Taylor, this film pulls no punches if you’re thinking that children are safe in a movie.

Alan and Kate Marlowe are walking with their four children — Davy, Lucy, Sam and Matthew — when a pregnant stranger (Angela Pleasence  — yes, Donald’s daughter) follows them home, staring oddly and doing strange things like cutting their telephone line before giving birth in their home. The next day she disappears — I guess hospitals weren;t around in 1980 England — and keep her child, who they name Bonnie. I also figure that the adoption system wasn’t a thing either.

Within days, Matthew is dead while lying in the same playpen as the mysterious baby. The Davy drowns in a creek, supposedly saving Bonnie’s life, which makes sense, until then Sam dies in a barn and Bonnie’s ribbon is nearby. Suddenly people are calling the Marlowes child killers. Then, Bonnie gets the mumps and kisses him, giving him the illness as well as a dream where he realizes she has killed all of his children other than Lucy.

By the end of the film, Bonnie has claimed the Marlowes’ unborn child when she trips Kate, broken up their marriage and used mind control — wow, where did that come from? — to make Lucy walk out a window. This ending is nothing like the book, so I’ve heard. I do like the close where Alan sees the woman in the park who started all this insanity, but nobody will listen to his prophecy of doom.

This was directed by Gabrielle Beaumont, working from a script by her husband Olaf Pooley. She was the first woman to direct an episode of Star Trek and also made Death of a Centerfold, He’s My Girl and Beastmaster III: The Eye of Braxus.

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. This article originally ran on September 24, 2021.

Oh, call it what you will, you ol’ ’80s “Midnight Movie” and VHS-renting road dogs: Mondo Cannibale, Cannibal World, Cannibals, White Cannibal Queen, A Woman for the Cannibals, or Barbarian Goddess. All we known is that, once again, Jess Franco, casts himself as the patron saint of the video nasty, as he sticks his hands into the boiling native vats and fucks up a genre. While shooting, this soon-to-be U.K.-banned ditty was titled Rio Salvaje, aka Wild River, probably as an ersatz sequel to Umberto Lenzi’s 1972 progenitor, Man from Deep River. As if we’d be duped by a Franco joint.

White Cannibal Queen

On the plus side: Franco gives us the always welcomed Al Cliver (The Beyond) and Sabrina Siani (Conquest and The Throne of Fire). According to Franco, he did this movie and fellow cannibal romp Devil Hunter (1980) for the money and had no idea why anyone would enjoy these films. (Is it just me, or does Franco have a lot of those type of films in his career? He said the same thing about his NaziZom rip, Zombie Lake.) Franco also went on record that Sabrina Siani was the worst actress he ever worked with and that her only good quality was her “delectable derrière.”

Whatever, Jess. Pedophilic Pig.

However, to Franco’s credit, he does change it up a bit: Instead of looking for the usual lost tribes or oil, or whatever vegetable or mineral MacGuffin we need to steal from a peaceful native tribe to make a better life for the white man, our civilized man — with one arm, who lost it during the first expedition — returns to the jungle where he lost his family to rescue his now teenage daughter — who’s become the blonde white cannibal queen of the tribe.

Cannibal Terror

Now, don’t let Jess Franco bamboozle you with Cannibal Terror, aka Terreur Cannibale (1981). While Franco penned the script, it’s actually a way-too-late French entry into the genre directed by Alaine Deruelle, and not a repack of White Cannibal Queen, aka Mondo Cannibale. But it does raid that Franco film for stock footage. As result, we see Sabrina Siani, the White Cannibal Queen, while not starring in the film, appearing in a bar scene (oops); several shots of the dancing cannibals from Franco’s film are redux, here; a background actor (said to have a distinctive, Mick Jagger-type face) appears in three roles, here: as two cannibals, a border guard, and a third cannibal eating Al Cliver’s wife; the guitar player at the bar, here, found Al Cliver after he had his arm cut off in White Cannibal Queen (oops).

White Cannibal Queen and Cannibal Terror also share actors Olivier Mathot and Antonio Mayans, both whom have starring roles, as well as porn actress Pamela Stanford, who has a major role in Cannibal Terror, but a support role in White Cannibal Queen by way of stock pillaging. The leading woman change up is Silvia Solar from Umberto Lenzi’s Eyeball (1975).

As far as the “plot” goes in the French remake/ripoff: Two criminals take their kidnapping victim to their partner’s jungle hideaway. The local cannibal tribe hunts them down one by one.

Devil Hunter

And don’t let Jess Franco hornswoggle you with Devil Hunter (1980), aka, Sexo Canibal, The Man Hunter, and Mandingo Manhunter, for he is director Clifford Brown and writer Julius Valery, incognito; his second wife, Lina Romay, co-directed, while his first wife, Nicole Guettard, edited.

And since Devil Hunter was shot back-to-back with White Cannibal Queen, Al Cliver returns in the leading hero role. And Antonio Mayans, from it’s-not-Franco’s-film-but-it-is Cannibal Terror, returns as Cliver’s co-star. The change up, here, is that Ursula Buchfellner, a German model who became Playboymagazine’s “Playmate of the Month” in October 1979, stars as our resident damsel-in-distress. Did you see the Euro-adult comedies Popcorn and Icecream (1979), Cola, Candy, Chololate (1979), and Hot Dogs in Ibiza (1979), and Jess Franco’s women-in-prison romp Hellhole Women, aka Sadomania (1981)? Well, now you know four more Ursula Buchfellner’s films than most (normal) people. Do you feel blessed by B&S?

As far as the “plot” goes, well, it’s pretty much a retread of Cannibal Terror: After the kidnapping by white bandits of a top model/actress (Buchfellner) on a jungle shoot/location scouting trip, an ex-Vietnam vet (Cliver) and his mercenary pal (Mayans) head into the deep jungle of the island nation to rescue her, not only from the kidnappers, but from cannibals who worship a “Devil God.” And (snickering) the “God” is a tall African dude with ping-pong eyes falling out of his head.

And get this: Jess Franco claims the makers of Predator stole their idea from this movie.

Whatever, Mr. Franco. Ye who commits celluloid theft, himself.

Needless to say: All of the stock footage padding from White Cannibal Queen and Cannibal Terror, along with the expected Franco-sleaze, and awful dubbing, is back — to lesser . . . and lesser effect. Wow, Jess, thanks for making White Cannibal Queen look even better than it’s allowed to be. But it does “splatter” nicely to make the U.K.’s “Video Nasties” list, which is the whole reason we’re reviewing this film this week for our “Video Nasties Week.”

So, there you go. Now you’re an educated Euro-cannibal flick consumer in-the-know that Cannibal Terror and Devil Hunter aren’t alternate titles to White Cannibal Queen, but three distinct — as distinct as a Franco joint can be — separate films . . . that are different, but the same. Sorta. Kinda. Oh, Franco!

But you know Franco: He’s a magnificent, maniacal bastard and we love him for it. What would our youth have been without Franco flicks and Venom tunes?

We did a whole week of cannibal films with our “Mangiati Vivi Week” tribute back in February 2018. You can also learn more about the genre with our review of the documentary Me Me Lai Bites Back (2021). And there’s more “nasties” to be found with our “Section 1,” “Section 2,” and “Section 3” explorations.

You can purchase White Cannibal Queen from Blue Underground or watch it as a free-with-ads-stream on Tubi.

You can purchase Cannibal Terror from 88 Films or watch it as a VOD on Amazon Prime.

You can purchase Devil Hunter from Severin Films or watch it as as free-with-ads-stream on Daily Motion.

Based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade — that can be said about a lot of other Jess Franco movies — this is all about the rich Martine de Bressac (Lina Romay, but really Candy Coster, because she has on her blonde wig), who has just returned to her husband Marques Armando de Bressac (Armando Borges) after spending some time away and by away, I mean that she was in a sanitarium.

Yet when she gets home, she learned that her husband has been sleeping with men and women, but mostly with a nun named Norma (Susan Hemingway, who is also in Franco’s Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun) who has conspired with Armando to murder Martine and live off her money.

The only problem is that Norma is also in love with Flor (Mel Rodrigo), the bisexual boy that Armando is also lying with, so things are complicated.

Lit by candles, scored by Franz Liszt and a flirtation with the supposed death of Martine and even a Bay of Blood double stabbing and you have a movie that looks, feels and plays better than a lot of what Franco would do in the decade to come. Soft focus and lens flares make this look like a trip through a dream, but one that’s trapped in a home where everyone wants something carnal of their own and the death of its protagonist, who can be overcome and murdered by orgasm if the desire is pushed to its limit.

This is the only Franco movie I’ve seen that balances a sapphic encounter between Coster and Hemmingway with a male on male love scene between Borges and Rodrigo.

You can get this from Severin.

A criminal organization somewhere in the Canary Islands with friends in high places is kidnapping famous women and selling them to their fans, which is pretty much the most illegal and immoral version of OnlyFans ever.

Who can stop them?

Two dancers — actually Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties — with the names of Cecile (Lina Romay) and Brigitte (Nadine Pascal) who are currently in prison, but the police ask them if they’d like to solve the case.

If all this movie gives you is Lina in high heels and a gold bikini being chased by a helicopter, is your life so bad?

Also: a magic ring that can hypnotize women.

I’d like to see the script to one of Franco’s movies, because I can only imagine it says, “Diamonds are stolen. Strippers become detectives. Zoom in to honeypot. The end.”

You can buy this from Severin.

Also known as The Cannibals, Die Blonde Göttin, White Cannibal Queen*, A Woman for the Cannibals and Barbarian Goddess, this cannibal film — did you get the context clues — has director Jess Franco doing his best to make an Italian movie, what with Al Cliver (who is also in Franco’s Devil Hunter) and Sabrina Siani (Conquest, The Throne of Fire, Quest for the Mighty Sword) in the cast and its appearance as a category 3 video nasty.

Franco only did these movies for the money, but he still takes some time to make this film look halfway decent. He luckily has Siani as Lana, a girl whose mother was killed before she was kidnapped and made into, well, a white cannibal queen. Now, Cliver — her father — has to come back to the jungle and rescue her.

Franco wrote this with an uncredited Jean Rollin and co-directed it with Francesco Prosperi who made the aforementioned The Throne of Fire as well as Gunan, King of the Barbarians with Siani.

So while Franco disliked everything about this movie, I loved the slow motion blood and guts munching, the fact that the cannibals all looked like movie punks and that for being, well cannibals, they all wore very civilized looking sandals. It’s a good idea to have support and protection for your peds in the green inferno.

Also. Cliver only has one arm because these guys already ate it before, you know, killing his wife and stealing his daughter and turning her into their blonde goddess. Franco himself shows up in this and somehow, he has the worst dubbing of any character in the movie, which endears him to me even more and makes me think, well, at least everybody equally gets painted with the same brush.

You can watch this on Tubi.

*That’s the name R. D Francis reviewed this under when he did a Jess Franco triple feature.

In my experience, performance — whether in a band or as a pro wrestler — is a lot of things you don’t want to do at all. In fact, a good portion of it is the kind of work that you wouldn’t want to do if you were being paid for it. Non-stop practice in the worst of conditions for sets that last ten minutes in places where no one wants to see you perform, but you keep at it, and every few times you reach a level of transcendence that no drug can give you so you keep at it even when everyone thinks you’re dumb for caring so much.

Director Chûsei Sone directed many of Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno movies, which are not porn, but films that revolve around sex to tell narrative stories. His Angel Guts movies are well-regarded and he eventually moved away from the genre and even made a mainstream hit, Flying, before he died.

So while the draw of this movie may seem to be the groupies, the truth is that it’s incredibly realistic as to what it’s like to be in a band. Rehearsals are tense at times. Not everyone gets along. And it feels like it could fall apart and your loved ones would be happier if it did. And then you play a show and you’re high and staring at the lights and you remember being a fat kid in your room trying to do David Lee Roth spin kicks and there you are, the one on the stage, and for at least a few seconds, you’ve made it. You’re living your dream. And then it’s gone.

But at least you had it.

Charles B. Griffith — the Quentin Tarantino-named “Father of Redneck Cinema” — is credited with 29 movies but he probably wrote plenty more. From 1955 to 1961, he was Roger Corman’s main screenwriter, starting with two unfilmed Westerns (Three Bright Banners and Hangtown) and moving on to an uncredited rewrite on It Conquered the World and his first credit Gunslinger. He went on to make Not of This Earth, The Flesh and the Spur, The Undead, Teenage Doll, Naked Paradise, Attack of the Crab Monsters and Rock All Night before making two movies — Ghost of the China Sea and Forbidden Island —  for Columbia (which didn’t go well).

Griffith reunited with Corman after and really went into the prime of his career of making movies, writing stuff like Beast from the Haunted Cave, Ski Troop Attack, The Little Shop of Horrors, A Bucket of Blood, Creature from the Haunted Sea and many, many more.

His films rank among some of my favorites of all time — The Wild Angels, Death Race 2000, rewrites on Barbarella — and he went on to direct, act and — as all must in the 80s — work for Cannon Films.

Beyond a script Cannon tried for years to get made — Oy Vey, My Son Is Gay — Griffith made this movie, which started as part of a series of joke movie titles that he shared with Francis Ford Coppola at a Christmas party. He showed them to Menahem Golan — half of all things Cannon — and after writing The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington didn’t work out, Griffith made up a story to go with the title, all about a hippie who creates a drug that makes anyone that takes it into an ad exec. Golan bought it, as long as the ugly guy became the good guy.

In typical Cannon fashion, Griffith had three weeks to write and do preproduction, four weeks to shoot and two weeks to edit. Then, as always, the rug was pulled out Cannon style: They wanted Oliver Reed. Great actor. Maybe not a comedic actor.

Griffith told Sense of Cinema, “Heckyl and Hype could have been a very good picture. Oliver was great as Heckyl. Wonderful. He played the part with a kind of New York accent and everything, but when he was Hype, he didn’t know how to do it… Reed played Hype as Oliver Reed, slow and ponderous.”

It’s a good looking movie, but man, it’s a movie that has no idea what it wants to be. Kind of like Cannon at the time, which had just been bought by two Israeli madmen who were about to take the small New York studio and make it into something so much bigger than it was supposed to be. But that’s a story for another time. Check back in March.

I worry at times, will the Italian exploitation industry of the 1980s ever run out of wonders to make me delirious with? Is there a bottom to this well of movie drugs? Well, sure there is, but every time I think I can’t get that high ever again, I put on something like Patrick Still Lives and walk away dazed. Seriously, well done, Mario Landi, you absolute maniac.

Full warning: This is the same lunatic that made Giallo in Venice, so if you think that this is something you can put on to babysit your kids while you do something in the other room, by all means, show your kids a movie where a woman is assaulted by a telekinetic powered poker.

Also, this is totally an unauthorized sequel to the Australian film Patrick, which has no scenes where the wind picks up and a blonde nurse paws at herself in gynecological detail and really, isn’t it a worse movie for it?

“You Need to Know … This Time Patrick Will Kill You!”

Oh man, do I ever.

Gabriele Crisanti produced this movie, along with Giallo in Venice, Savage World Today, Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror and Satan’s Baby Doll. Like any good producer, he put his girlfriend in the film, Mariangela Giordano (she’s the Countess in Killer Barbys, as well as making appearances in The Sect, Decameron n° 4 – Le belle novelle del Boccaccio and many more movies). In both this movie and the aforementioned Giallo in Venice, Giordano dies in ways that would potentially upset even Lucio Fulci. She said later, “Looking back I shouldn’t have done them. But I was in love with Gabriele. I would have done anything for him. Now I can see how the increasingly gruesome ways he had me killed in them was a reflection of the breakdown in our own relationship. This movie is the worst instance of how shocked I was in retrospect by something I’d done on film. That poker scene is so disgusting, so terrible, only Gabriele could have sweet-talked me into actually doing it! It took two days to film that scene, and because the poker had to keep thrusting between my legs before it came out of the top of my head, it got more and more painful as we kept going. And it was cold and freezing. I don’t know why Gabriele always insisted on making these movies during winter.”

This movie has lots of J&B, a better car decapitation than Hereditary, green glowing eyes, women stripping in front of coma patients, strobing lights, more nudity than most pornography, a ridiculous plan, dogs eating people, a scalding, a hook to the neck, a health spa that looks like a foreboding castle, Patrick wearing a blonde wig and looking even more ridiculous than I thought he would, a rocking Goblin-esque score by Berto Pisano and an origin story that involves a beer bottle.

I wonder how the people who live in the mansion — Villa Parisi, Via Mondragone, Frascati, Metropolitan City of Rome — feel, knowing that this film, Blood for Dracula and Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror were made there. Surely that place has to be Amityville haunted.

You can get this from Severin.