Leung Chang (Yuen Biao) has been studying kung fu without any hard work. That means that when he fights people and defeats them, it’s because his wealthy father has given money to his servant Yee Tung-choi (Chan Yung) which he uses to pay off his opponents.

Three of Chang’s friends go to see the Lok Fung Lin Chinese Opera troupe. One of them asks out the lead actress and is turned down. He gets insistent and she reveals that she is a man, Leung Yee-tai (Lam Ching-ying). The friends try to attack him, but he’s a Wing Chun expert. Chang, thinking that he’s a great fighter, wants to avenge his friend. Yee Tung-choi tries to bribe Yee-tai, but that fails and Chang discovers just how bad of a battler he is.

Chang asks Yee-tai to teach him Wing Chun but he wisely refuses, as the rich kid would just use it the wrong way. Chang’s father buys the Lok Fung Lin troupe and gives his son a job as Yee-tai’s personal assistant. Now, he follows him everywhere and begs to be taught. And by the end, another prodigal son — Ngai Fei (Frankie Chan) — will teach Chang where he was wrong.

Directed by Sammo Hung, who wrote the movie with Barry Wong, The Prodigal Son is a martial arts movie that actually has a lesson to be learned. I loved it.

The Arrow Video blu ray of this movie has so much! Start with the 2K restorations from the original elements by Fortune Star of both the original HK theatrical and home cuts, then get into extras like two commentary tracks — one by martial arts cinema expert Frank Djeng and actor Bobby Samuels and the other with action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema — as well as featurettes on Wing Chun and Sammo Hung, as well as a double-sided poster, trailers, a reversible sleeve with art by Joe Kim and an illustrated book. You can buy it from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Friday the 13th Part 2 was on USA Up All Night on August 13, 1993 and May 13, 1994.

Of course, there was going to be a sequel. Sean S. Cunningham refused to direct it because he was against the studio plan to bring Jason back from the dead. He said that it was too stupid and would never work. Hmm.

Beyond a plan to be an anthology of stories on Friday the 13th (which sounds a lot like the plans for Halloween), another thought was that Alice would be a reoccurring hero in this series, continually facing off against Jason again and again in sequel after sequel (again, think Halloween and Laurie Strode). Sadly, after was stalked by a fan, she said she wanted out (she even stayed out of acting for a long time).

That’s why this movie starts with her death. I always wondered why this happens, because it invalidates all of the emotional investment that you put into the last film!

So of course, everyone decides that re-opening Crystal Lake would be a great idea. We’ve got Ginny (Amy Steel, April Fool’s Day), Sandra, Jeff, Scott, Terry, Mark, Vickie and Ted, who sit around a campfire and listen to the legend of Jason. Even Crazy Ralph from the last movie shows up to warn everyone before getting killed.

Here’s my problem with this sequel: it rips a lot off. Jason doesn’t have his trademark hockey mask, so he steals the look of the Phantom of The Town that Dreaded Sundown. And then there’s the issue of taking two murders shot for shot from Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood. A machete to the face and a couple stabbed together by a spear? Attention director Steve Miner: Bava did it first and better. Miner would go on to direct Halloween H20, so his sins are many.

Just like Shakespeare, everyone dies. Except Ginny. She discovers Jason’s altar to his dead mother and ends up stabbing him in the should with a machete. And then the movie does another shock ending, making you think Jason survived. He, of course, did not. Or he did. You know how these things go.

My question is: Did Jason rise from the dead? Or was he alive in the forest all these years? And how did he learn how to use a telephone? Let’s just stop asking questions.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Loch Ness Horror was on USA Up All Night on January 19, 1990.

You can get this sticker from Exploitation-Vocation on Tee Public.

Shot in Lake Tahoe, California which is supposed to be Scotland and featuring the Nessie puppet that would return to the screen to play Jack the Ripper in the “Bullshit or Not?” section of Amazon Women on the Moon, this Larry Buchanan movie is, well, complete junk and I say that in the best of ways.

The Loch Ness Monster is wilding out on swimmers while waiting for her egg to hatch, all while a World War II German bomber lies beneath the freshwater loch and Scottish scientist George Sanderson (Sandy Kenyon) and American sonic expert Spencer Dean (Larry’s son Barry) hunt it down. Also: Jack Stuart (Doc Livingston), the person to first take a photo of the monster and he’s not George Spicer, who did that in our reality, has a daughter named Kathleen (Miki McKenzie) who Spencer falls in love with. And yes, Professor Pratt (Stuart Lancaster) and his team are looking for the German bomber, finds the egg and every one of Pratt’s crew gets eaten by the monster. Pratt won’t give the egg back and soon kidnaps Kathleen.

Every time the monster shows up it’s awe-inspiring just how bad it looks, which makes me love this movie even more. I can’t believe how cheap this movie is, that the creature bites necks and that it’s set in the 40s and yet no pains were taken to make it look that way. Well done all around.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Northern Kicks, Southern Fists aired on USA Up All Night on September 28, 1990.

Xin nan quan bei tui was also released in the U.S. as The Secret Rivals 3 and Assignment to Kill. It has “Northern Kick” Shao Yi-Fei (John Liu) is looking for the murderer of his younger brother and his friend “Southern Fist” Shen Yin-Wai (Alexander Rei Lo) is the killer. They must work together to find out who really did it — he’s played by choreographer Robert Tai — which means ninety minutes of fights.

Directed by Hsin-Yi Chang and Sung Yee Cheung and written by Chien-Chi Chang, this really has nothing to do with Ng See-yuen’s 1976 movie Nan quan bei tui AKA Secret Rivals AKA Northern Leg, Southern Fist AKA Silver Fox Rivals.

This movie feels like it would be more at home on USA’s Kung Fu Theater which I may have watched just as much as USA Up All Night.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I’ve really been getting into the Unsung Horrors podcast and was overjoyed to discover a remake remix rip-off movie that I never knew about. Even better, it’s based on one of my favorite movies: The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue AKA No Profanar el Sueño de los Muertos (Don’t Disturb the Sleep of the Dead), Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, The Living Dead, Breakfast at Manchester Morgue and Don’t Open the Window.

Kang Myeong — the George Meaning of this movie — gets a ride from Soo-ji — Edna Simmonds — on his way to a seminar on the environment while she’s traveling to check up on her sister Jyun-ji. — Katie — and her husband Yeong-tae Jeong — Martin — only to learn that he’s dead.

Well, not for long.

One of Kang Myeong’s American teachers is now working at a supersonic transmitter that is removing insects in a more humane way, but it’s also animating the nerves of the newly dead. We learn this when the town drunk — who has been dead for several days — attacks Soo-Ji.

What’s different here is that nearly everyone has had their sharp edges smoothed off. Kang Myerong is never as mean to Soo-Ji as Geroge was to Edna, but then again, he isn’t as gorgeous as Ray Lovelock. But otherwise — up until three-quarters of the way through this movie — this is the same movie that you know and love under so many titles. It’s also missing the gore and when a movie is known for just how upsetting its moments of violence are, that’s a pretty big loss.

The other thing you might miss is that the cops come around a lot faster and the head officer is in no way as much of a real cop as Arthur Kennedy was.

Yet what makes up for this is just how weird it is that we have an alternative reality version of this movie and that the zombies are basically all painted silver, which is again in contrast to the very realistic dead bodies that populated Jorge Grau’s horror masterpiece. It attempts to make up for this with shocking photos of actual birth defects, as the movie goes further than its inspiration by stating that the machine is turning new babies into monsters.

Another title for this South Korean zombie xerox is Strange Dead Bodies, which is a fabulous alternative and one that would get me into the theater (or, you know, in front of my TV).

You can watch this on the Korean Film Archive YouTube channel.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Omen III: The Final Conflict was on the CBS Late Movie on October 17, 1986.

Directed by Graham Baker (Alien Nation) and written by Andrew Birkin (Slade In Flame), this was released in Germany and Hungary as Barbara’s Baby, as if the third Omen movie wasn’t enough of a reason to get people into theaters.

It starts with the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom killing himself, setting Damian Thorn (Sam Neill) up for his father’s old job and his final path toward taking over the world. Yet Father DeCarlo (Rossano Brazzi) has found the Daggers of Megiddo from the ruins of the Thorn Museum that burned back at the end of Omen II, While Damian romances reporter Kate Reynolds (Lisa Harrow) and tries to take over her son Peter (Barnaby Holm), the priest and six other holy men attempt to destroy him.

Oh yes — after the alignment of stars in the Cassiopeia constellation on March 24, 1981, a second Star of Bethlehem appears and Damien orders his followers to kill all boys born in England on the morning of March 24, 1981, as one of them may be Jesus Christ. One of the followers even kills her own son with an iron.

But man, the end of this movie? Jesus himself shows up to kick Damian’s ass. I can only imagine that some audiences found this inspiring, others found it over the top and a lot just stayed home. I kind of love this movie for just how wild it gets, but it’s so far removed from the other films in the series. I can’t wait to see the fourth.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Lovely But Deadly was on the CBS Late Movie on May 24 and December 6, 1985; May 29, 1986 and July 25, 1988.

Mary Ann “Lovely” Lovitt (Lucinda Dooling, The Alchemist, Surf II) has gone back to school to get revenge for the drug overdose death of her brother. Yes, twentysomething teenagers, martial arts, bad drugs and more await in this film directed by David Sheldon, the writer of Grizzly and the director of Devil Times Five. He also co-wrote this with Lawrence David Foldes (Young Warriors) and Patricia Joyce.

Stay for fistfights with cheerleaders in the locker room and an appearance — as one of the bad guys! — by former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rick Moser as drug dealing football player Mantis Managian (he even dates Pamela Jean Bryant from H.O.T.S.). Mel Novak is his boss!

Dooling is great in this and I’ve seen it described as a white girl version of Coffy, which pretty much says it all.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Outland was on the CBS Late Movie on July 30, 1986 and December 16, 1988.

Federal Marshal William O’Niel (Sean Connery) has been assigned to the titanium ore mining outpost Con-Am 27, operated by the company Con-Amalgamate on the Jovian moon of Io. It’s rough work in a place where gravity a sixth of Earth’s with no breathable atmosphere and the men are forced to work in heavy spacesuits with hardly any air. But there is money and productivity is up ever since the new manager, Mark Sheppard (Peter Boyle), was hired.

O’Niel is left behind with his wife and son leaving for Jupiter, but he does have a mission. That’s because several miners have died from getting stimulant psychosis and tearing off their suits. That may be because the miners are abusing polydichloric euthimal, a drug that allows them to stay awake for days at a time. The side effect? After ten months, they go insane.

With only one person on his side — Dr. Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen) — O’Niel has to battle the corrupt mining company and their men, many of whom don’t want a chance to their way of life, no matter how wrong it is.

Outland is pretty much a Western in space, directed and written by Peter Hyams, who told Empire, “I wanted to do a Western. Everybody said, “You can’t do a Western; Westerns are dead; nobody will do a Western.” I remember thinking it was weird that this genre that had endured for so long was just gone. But then I woke up and came to the conclusion – obviously after other people – that it was actually alive and well, but in outer space. I wanted to make a film about the frontier. Not the wonder of it or the glamour of it: I wanted to do something about Dodge City and how hard life was. I wrote it and by great fortune Sean Connery wanted to do it. And how many chances do you get to work with Sean Connery?”

If you love this movie, I recommend the comic book adaptation by James Steranko.

The CBS version of Outland features scenes that were cut from the movie to extend parts of the film. This allowed the network to sell more commercial slots to advertisers.