Xanadu was more than a flop. As part of a double bill with Can’t Stop the Music, it was the inspiration for the Golden Raspberry Awards, which recognize the worst films of the year. Yes, somehow a disco rollerskating remake of Down to Earth — itself the sequel to Here Comes Mr. Jordan — ended up being a critically reviled mess. Go figure.

The film was originally going to be a relatively low-budget roller disco picture. But as more prominent performers joined the production, it grew larger and larger in scope. Yet rollerskating improbably remained a recurring theme. Also, the strange mix of Jeff Lynne’s Electric Light Orchestra and Olivia Newton-John — along with Cliff Richard and The Tubes — made for an eclectic soundtrack that became a hit independent of the moribund status of the film that inspired it.

But hey — what do you want from a movie that quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” a poem written after a night of opium indulgence?

A large mural of the Nine Muses of Olympus comes to life, with women emerging from it and flying away. In the original script, Sonny Malone (Michael Beck from The Warriors, Megaforce and TV movie giallo lost gem Blackout) painted that mural, which makes sense. In the movie, it’s just the start of things as we follow one of those muses to Earth and meet Sonny as he’s about to give up on his dream of being an artist.

Sonny’s latest job is painting an album cover for a band called The Nine Sisters, which has a beautiful woman in front of an art deco auditorium, who just happens to look like the roller skater who kissed him and ran away. Sonny’s obsessed with her and learns that her name is Kira and well, she’s Olivia Newton-John and also one of the legendary Muses.

Later, Sonny befriends Daniel “Danny” McGuire (Gene Kelly!) who was once a big band leader but is now a construction mogul. Turns out he had a Muse once who looked just like Kira, who gets the two men to build a gigantic nightclub. For some reason, both of these guys got mad when they learned that the woman they love is some Olympian ideal.

Of course, Kira has gone against the Prime Directive and fallen in love, so shes called back to Xanadu, but Sonny can get there by roller skating as hard as he can through the mural. After debating her father Zeus, he and his wife Mnemosyne agree to allow Kira to return to Earth for a moment or maybe forever — you know, that whole time is different between the afterlife and here kind of conundrum.

Kira and the Muses perform at the new nightclub — also called Xanadu — before flying back to the real Xanadu. Yet a waitress who looks just like Kira stays behind, giving no easy answers.

Xanadu is the second movie of this week of musicals that features Adolfo Quinones, also known as the breakdancer Shabba Doo. You may remember him as Ozone in the two Breakin’ movies. And one of the Muses is Sandahl Bergman, who would soon be amazing in movies like Conan the Barbarian and She. This is also strangely the second movie this week that John “Fee” Waybill and Vince Welnick of The Tubes showed up in.

Somehow, director Robert Greenwald emerged to create the celebrated TV movie The Burning Bed before starting a new career in the next century creative left wing documentaries like Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism and Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.

Amazingly, this became a well-received musical years after it failed as a movie. Me, I remember Marvel Super Special #17, the comic book adaption and wondering why anyone would want to read it.

Xanadu is a movie that could only emerge in 1980. That said, it has some great songs like “Magic” and “Suddenly,” but somehow this is a musical that proves that you can make a bad movie from great songs. It’s all too much — too much skating, too much gloss, too much schmaltz. Yet there’s something to love under all that glitter.

Directed and written by Gene McPherson, The Last Prom is a remake of the 1962 film and it updates it in a way that it kept shocking students for decades. I mean, I know that I saw it in 1988 in my high school.

Sandy Clark (Sheelagh Bevan) may have broken up with her boyfriend, but her friend Judy Grant (Mary LeClair) and her boyfriend Jim Miller (Ron Bohmer) fix her up with Bill Donovan (Jamie Bozian). Soon, they’re at the big event and the boys are getting trashed on vodka while no one is watching and they’re all joy riding and you see where this is going. Nearly everyone is about to die, as this is a slasher movie as much as anything that came out in the golden era of the genre.

Even though Bill caused the crash and killed everyone, he still goes to Sandy’s funeral. I have no idea why this happens.

This film also led to the mock accident that schools put on outside in the parking lot every year. When they did mine, the effects looked so bad and I had begged to be allowed to do them and was refused, as I was told that the levels of gore that I had planned would upset people. Isn’t that the point? Wouldn’t people at prom maybe behave a little better if they had seen a cheerleader’s intestines all over the Lincoln High School teacher’s lot?

I kind of love the ghost images and foreshadowing with the scenes of the bloody van and Sandy’s face heading toward a windshield. It’s shot like a documentary otherwise but man, it sure comes off as the most doom student scare movie I have ever sat through numerous times. If only everything they forced us to do in school was this good.

You can watch this on YouTube.

I’ve recently been reading the book Satanic Panic: Pop Culture Paranoia in the 1980’s and reminded of my own misspent youth. In sixth grade, a teacher knew that I was religious and thought I could warn my fellow classmates about the dangers of evil music and movies. He gave me a mimeographed sheet of heavy metal (and non-metal) bands to study and by the time I got to Black Sabbath, my soul was sold to rock and roll.

By eleventh grade, I was squarely in the devil’s camp in the eyes of my teachers. My love for bands like King Diamond and Danzig, along with my predilection for drawing Leatherface in class, marked me as a subject of interest. Obviously, I was doing drugs and black mass rituals — I could easily discuss Dungeons & Dragons, too. I was to be more feared the dead-eyed athletes who would soon realize their lives were peaking at 17 while mine hadn’t even started yet.

It’s to those times in my youth, when I wanted to escape my hometown and sat in my room blaring Samhain’s “November Coming Fire” and reading Fangoria, that this movie perfectly fits in. It is disgusting. It is unrepentant. It has no moral or social value. It is filled with the kind of gore than makes churches throw VHS tapes into a blazing bonfire. In short, it is everything amazing and wonderful and metal about horror movies.

The movie starts with two Germans exploring a beautiful Greek beach. Someone emerges from the ocean and murders them. Meanwhile, five travelers are joined by Julie (Tisa Farrow, who some may know as the sister of Mia, but we all know her as Anne from Zombi 2), who asks for a ride to the island. However, Carol (Zora Kerova, Cannibal Ferox, The New York Ripper) uses her tarot cards to learn that something bad will happen. No one listens to her.

The pregnant Maggie (Serena Grandi from Delirium) stays behind on the boat and is abducted by the killer, who quickly beheads a sailor.

The island is in ruins and completely abandoned, except for a woman in black, who writes go away in the dust. Upon finding a rotting corpse that has been eaten, everyone runs back to the boat, which is floating unmanned, then goes to the house of Julie’s friends. There, only the family’s blind daughter Henriette has survived.

The young girl panics and attacks Daniel, but when she is calmed, she tells everyone of the maniac that is stalking the island. Daniel is wounded and needs medicine, so Andy and Arnold head to town. Meanwhile, Daniel flirts with Julie, which causes Carol to run into town and Julie to follow her. While all this drama is going on, the killer rips out Danel’s throat.

Everyone travels to a mansion that belonged to Klaus Wortman, who died along with his wife and child in a shipwreck. This caused his sister, the woman in black, to lose her mind. And to hammer that point home, we soon see her hang herself.

Everything seems like its going to get better when a boat rifts to shore. On board, Julie finds Klaus’ journal. It turns out that he is alive…and the killer! Soon, Maggie is confronted by him and we learn that it’s George Eastman, who is in so many awesome Italian movies, such as Baba Yaga, 2019: After the Fall of New York, The New Barbarians, Blastfighter, Rabid Dogs, Hands of Steel, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, oh man! So many amazing films! This is his star-making role though and he really goes for it. He has a flashback where we learn how he accidentally stabbed his wife while trying to convince her that they should eat their dead son to survive. After eating his family, he went insane. Soon, Klaus breaks out of his flashback reverie, stabs Arnold and rips out and eats the unborn baby inside Maggie’s belly. Holy fucking shit, this movie!

I wish that those teachers who thought I was a Satanic terror in 1988 could see me now, jumping up and down with glee at 2:44 AM on a school night screaming “GEORGE EASTMAN!” while drinking a beer and holding a small dog.

What follows can’t really top that, but fuck it if Eastman isn’t going to try, including eating his own intestines after Andy hits him the stomach with a pickaxe! That’s a commitment to your role!

The American version of this film, The Grim Reaper, has 35 cuts in an attempt to get an R rating. That’s correct – nine minutes are missing, including the baby being devoured and the killer eating himself. It just ends when he is stabbed in the stomach. It also replaces the electronic Italian score with the music from Kingdom of the Spiders.

Director Joe D’amato and George Eastman would return in a spiritual sequel called Absurd. If you want to see this,  grab the insanely awesome Severin Video rerelease or watch it as The Grim Reaper on Tubi.

BONUS: Here’s a drink to go with the movie.

Tasty Baby on a Greek Beach

• 1 oz. rum
• 1 oz. Southern Comfort
• 1 oz. vodka
• 1 oz. grenadine
• 2 tbsp. lime juide
• 1.5 oz. orange juice

1. Mix and serve over ice.
2. Watch over your shoulder for Klaus Wortman.

Also known as Pick-Up Summer and Flipper Girls in Germany, this Canadian film comes after the Crown International beach movies and before Porky’s. Most of the action revolves around a place called Pete’s, an arcade that is hosting a pinball competition, which also has a Miss Pinball pageant, which I really hope was a thing at some point.

Speaking of movies leading to something more, director George Mihalka and cinematographer Rodney Gibbons would make My Bloody Valentine* after this, a movie that is much better remembered than this teen summer comedy that revolves around disco, burger joints, amusement parks and hijinks between a biker gang and our heroes over the pinball trophy.

Film Ventures International bought this for America and changed the name, thinking pinball was dead. It did pretty well and people didn’t even notice that it was made in Quebec and not California. It’s a pretty innocent movie when it comes to teen comedies.

*Helene Udy, who played Sylvia in that classic slasher, Thomas Kovacs, who played Mike, and Carl Malotte, who played Dave, are all in Pinball Summer as well.

Directed and written by Murray Mintz, Cardiac Arrest is about a serial killer who is surgically removing the hearts from his victims. It feels like a TV movie and that’s not a bad thing.

Clancey Higgins (Garry Goodrow) and Wylie Wong (Michael Paul Chan) are the cops, Leigh Gregory (Max Gail) is the man whose wife Dianne (Susan O’Connell) needs a heart transplant and a famous doctor (Ray Reinhardt) just may be running a black market for hearts.

There’s even a part for Fred Ward, who always makes me happy when he shows up in a movie. But wow, the box art for this is so amazing that I was hoping that the movie that was inside the packaging could live up to it. It doesn’t, but there’s some charm in Goodrow and how he plays his role.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Martial arts movies make little to no sense most of the time. Then, there’s this movie.

Steve Chase is a martial artist who goes to the desert for what he thinks is an Olympic style meet. Nope. An ex-Nazi general was defeated at the 1936 Olympics by a Japanese martial artist named Miyagi, so he’s out for revenge.  Luckily, Steve and his girl Olga escape.

To fix up his team, von Rudloff’s miniature henchman Chico goes around the world to recruit a new team. And Steve ends up meeting Miyagi and joining his team, which leads to the madcap fight between he and his girl when she is kidnapped and forced to join his team.

Finally, Steve must fight and defeat Luke, the ultimate fighter, leading the Nazi to killing himself rather than face defeat.

I’ve given you a straight reading of the film. To see it is to know how different it is, as it’s either filmed by someone who wants to be an artist or someone who has been in the sun too long. This is often the same thing.

This movie was a success for four years in its native South Africa, where many Japanese martial arts forms were done to perfection. Yes, that makes no sense to me either. Neither does the sequel, but trust me, I’ll be covering that one soon enough, too!

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Shuji Goto, Kings of the Square Ring comes from a curious time in the time of pro wrestling, martial arts and what would someday be known as mixed martial arts.

This film shows nearly every style that was known in the late 1970s when it was filmed. You get to see kickboxer Benny “The Jet” Urquidez fighting Takeshi Naito, sumo Takamiyama and Muay Thai expert Toshio Fujiwara — the first Japanese person to win a title in that style — against Monsavan Lukchiangmai and Seepree Kiatsompop. Plus, you get boxing, as Paul Fuji fights Abdul Bey.

The majority of the film is devoted to New Japan Pro Wrestling and its star Antonio Inoki. It first shows the fight he had with Muhammad Ali — a match that everyone thought was fake but was more real than either man wanted it to be — as well as a fight with Everett “Monster Man” Eddy, who was in Disco Godfather and did stints for Petey Wheatstraw. There’s even training footage of Willy Williams, who was one of Inoki’s most famous challengers, a man who fought bears and trained in a waterfall like a real person who had come straight out of a Street Fighter video game.

Beyond the intense Karl Gotch-taught training in the New Japan dojo, the film also shows Inoki battle Bob Backlund, Andre the Giant and Tiger Jeet Singh, as well as a match between Willem Ruska and Buffalo Allen, who would later become Bad News Brown in the WWF.

This reminds me of Fist of Fear, Touch of Death, another 1980 documentary on the mysterious world of martial arts. It had to make Inoki happy that his obviously not real world of real martial artists and fighters coming to Japan to challenge him would be treated as fact by an actual movie.

What remains is a true document for fans of this era and the opportunity to see matches and people you may have only seen in magazines, read about or seen clips of.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Joe Brezy (Joe Dallesandro making his last movie in Italy) is the kind of person that’ll escape prison, kill a man with a rock and stab an old man with a pitchfork before most of us have our second cup of coffee. Then, he asks an old man for everything that he knows about the cabin where Liliana (Patricia Behn), her sister Paola (Lorraine De Selle, House On the End of the Park) and her husband Sergio (Gianni Macchia) are having a very tense vacation.

The next day, when Sergio goes hunting and Liliana goes shopping, Joe makes his way inside and forces her to help him dig out the fireplace. As each person returns to the house, he makes them dig as well, as he’s hid money there before he got sent to jail. Oh yeah, he also reveals that Paola and Sergio are having an affair and forces them to make sweet — well, not so sweet — love in front of her.

The captives come up with a plan to escape, but Joe ends up shooting everyone but Liliana, who he wants to take away from all this madness. Instead, she shoots him and that’s our movie.

This was written by Mario Gariazzo (Play Motel, Enter the Devil, Eyes Behind the Stars) and he intended to direct it, but Fernando Di Leo — whose company Cineproduzioni Daunia 70 produced many of Gariazzo’s movies — ended up making it instead. He wasn’t happy with the finished movie, saying that in Roberto Curti’s Italian Crime Filmography that it was a “disappointing film indeed, including my toying with Lorraine De Selle’s nude scenes. It’s mediocre, but not because I did wrong – I just wasn’t interested in it.” He added, “…you don’t always have the chance to do what you want, and often you know very well you’re making a bad movie, but you do it anyways.”

As for the soundtrack, Luis Bacalov brought music he had already used for Caliber 9 and The Designated Victim.

For being someone not known for his acting, Dallesandro is pretty good in this. That’s because he’s just seducing women and being a wildman. He’s used the right way and man, De Selle is the reason this all works. It’s a one room meltdown, primal violence and wanton lust.

You can watch this on YouTube.