EDITOR’S NOTE: Death Wish 2 is when Cannon seemed to finally start figuring it out. The public still wanted Bronson, they loved the original film and the Reagan 80s demanded blood for blood. Here’s how the sequel to a movie that probably didn’t need a sequel turned out.
Paul Kersey can’t catch a break. Seriously, in this sequel, he goes through the Trials of Job all over again. You think he went through some bad stuff in the first movie? Michael Winner is just getting started putting our vigilante hero through hell on earth.
Paul has taken his daughter Jordan and moved to Los Angeles, where he’s found love again with radio reporter Geri Nichols (Bronson’s wife, Jill Ireland). However, horror and pain is never far from Kersey, so one day at a fair, some punks steal his wallet. He chases one of them down named Jiver down and teaches him a lesson. The gang — Nirvana, Punkcut, Stomper and Cutter (Laurence Fishburne) — find his address in his wallet and pay a visit to his house. They rape his housekeeper Rosario, beat Paul into la la land and steal his daughter (this time played by Robin Sherwood from Tourist Trap). After raping her, she goes even deeper into her depression and jumps out a window, falling to her death and getting impaled like she’s Nikos Karamanlis or Niko Tanopoulos.
Of course, Paul doesn’t need help from the cops. He only needs one thing: to give in to the rage within, to become the vigilante once more. Det. Frank Ochoa is back to chase him one more time, as he’s the only one who can track him.
Soon, Paul is wiping out the gang one by one, his own personal safety and relationship with Geri be damned. This is the first time we discover that Kersey is able to do magical things like make fake IDs with just a Xerox machine and talk his way into anywhere and out of anything. By the end of this film, he’s gone from a man whose life has been destroyed to a walking angel of death willing to do whatever it takes to kill everyone that’s crossed him.
To be as authentic as possible, this movie was shot in the sleaziest parts of Los Angeles, such as the abandoned and crumbling Hollywood Hotel location. Many of the film’s extras were local color who were either hired to play a bit part or just walked over to the set, such as drug addicts, drag queens, Hare Krishnas and bikers. Even crazier, Bronson’s alcoholic brother was a frequent set visitor, constantly asking for money. Bronson wanted to be careful not to give him too much cash so that he wouldn’t be mugged, but that brother was soon found dead, stabbed in the ass.
My favorite part of this was the score, composed by Jimmy Page in his first post-Led Zeppelin musical appearance here by creating the film’s soundtrack. It’s almost surreal to hear his signature guitar tone over Bronson killing rapists.
All the way back in his teens, Leon Issac Kennedy was a DJ in Cleveland, a job that took him to Los Angeles and finally into two films with Fred Williamson, Hammer and Mean Johnny Barrows. By this point in his career, he’d already become a star as Martel “Too Sweet” Gordone in Jamaa Fanaka’s Penitentiary and had married Jayne Kennedy, the former Miss Ohio USA and NFL broadcaster. Sadly, they’d break up just as this movie was being released and as part of their divorce case, a sex tape — decades before this became something that anyone knew of — that EBONY Magazine claimed that Kennedy had released. He later sued for a million dollars.
But back before all that ugliness, the Kennedys appeared in this remake* of Robert Rossen’s 1947 boxing move of the same name. Supposedly, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus – those who are all things Cannon — studied marketing research and discovered that Americans wanted to see one thing more than anything else: Leon Isaac Kennedy beating people up.
Leon is Leon “The Lover” Johnson, a boxer who we first meet dancing around an opponent and then getting a few more rounds in with a woman who caught his eye in the crowd. In a public bathroom, no less.
Despite the unclean nature of where Leon chooses to do his loving, he’s actually a somewhat decent man who only became a boxer because it can pay for the medical care of his sister Kelly (Nikki Swasey Seaton). To get to the top, he has to deal with a fight promoter named Big Man (Peter Lawford) and get trained by Muhammed Ali, which seems to be the right person to train you and wow, seeing The Greatest up close in the ring sparring reminds you of just how amazing he was, even this late in his career.
He also falls for Julie Winters (Mrs. Kennedy, of course) who ends up leaving him after all his groupie-loving shenanigans, telling him “I just wish you were double-jointed so you could turn around and kiss your own ass.”
Can he get it all together, get the girl, win the big fight and keep his sister as healthy as possible? I mean, have you ever seen a boxing movie before?
That said, this is like no other boxing movie you’ve seen, as Kennedy does near pro wrestling moves as he boxes, like windmill punches, multiple punches to the face piston style and even runs up the ropes to deliver a big punch near the end. Plus, his nemesis has a very pro wrestling name — the St. Louis Assassin — and is played by former WBC Light Heavyweight Champion J. B. Williamson in a role that demands that he grimace, destroy people and throw babies. Yes, he really tosses a baby in one scene.
This is pretty much a perfect cable Sunday do-nothing movie. You know the kind — it comes on WTBS and you have no plans other than getting over that hangover and just watch how it all comes out. That’s high praise for a film, actually, as movies can be the balm that soothes your soul.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Back during Junesploitation, we watched this on June 16, 2021. Our plans for a Cannon month started right then and there. This movie is everything great about the madness that is Cannon Films.
Cannon Films need to be on our site more often, but that’s because I want to make sure that I have the time and energy to properly focus on this astounding company. But hey — let’s get things started by talking about Enter the Ninja, a movie written by the man who stole Priscilla from Elvis, Mike Stone, and nearly starred in it before his acting ability supposedly wasn’t good enough for a ninja movie Luckily, Franco Nero was in the Philippines and Stone was nice enough to remain on set as the fight double for Nero and the fight/stunt coordinator.
That’s right — Django as a ninja. Make that a ninja that cucks his best friend and arrdvarking his wife Susan George and then fighting Sho Kosugi.
If you were wondering why I loved Cannon Films so much, just read that last sentence again.
Cole (Nero) is a soldier who has become a ninja — much like Snake-Eyes in the Marvel comics — before he visits his war buddy Frank Landers and his new wife Mary Ann (Ms. George) who own a giant farm in the Philippines that is threatened by Charles Venarius (Christopher George), whose Venarius Industries wants the oil that’s on their land.
After said cuckolding — Frank had already drunkenly confessed to our hero that he couldn’t life his own katana, so to speak — Venarius’ henchmen kill Frank and kidnap Mary Ann. That means that Cole has to battle his way through all of the many soldiers in his way before battling his old sword brother Hasegawa (Sho Kosugi).
Directed by Menahem Golan, who also gave us The Apple, this is actually the exact kind of movie that I want it to be. Golan said, “It started when Chinese karate films became popular. I looked for something new in Asian martial arts and found information about the ninja culture in an encyclopedia. The ninja were middle-class people in Japan — lawyers, government clerks, etc. It was a secret organization that helped the feudal government. It actually preceded the Chinese karate battles. They used very special methods, developing their sixth sense. That fascinated me and I said I could write story ideas out of it, so we made Enter the Ninja and American Warrior later on. Many imitations followed.”
Actually, Emmett Alston was supposed to be the film’s original director. Supposedly Charles Bronson refused to allow Golan to direct Death Wish II. Alston directed Force of the Ninja and Nine Deaths of the Ninja, which is somehow even better than this.
Also, I know that we got a whole bunch of Kosugi ninja movies, which I love, but man, why did we not get another Franco Nero in karate PJs movie?
You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode where they discuss this movie here.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Yes, I realize that Silent Night, Deadly Night originally came out the whole way back in 1972. But nearly nine years after it first played theaters, Cannon released it as Deathhouse on May 8, 1981. If it makes no sense to release a holiday movie in May, well — don’t worry about it. It’s Cannontown.
Christmas Eve, 1950: Wilfred Butler runs from his home, on fire, and supposedly dies in the snow.
Christmas Eve, 1970: John Carter (Patrick O’Neal, The Stepford Wives, The Stuff) and his assistant Ingrid arrive in a small Massachusetts town. He meets with the town’s mayor, sheriff and major citizens like Tess Howard and Charlie Towman (John Carradine!), who may have lost his voice to a tracheotomy but not his need to smoke, about selling the Butler mansion as soon as possible. While staying overnight with Ingrid, who is also his mistress, they are both killed by an axe. The killer calls the police and says that they are Marianne.
Tess, the town’s telephone operator, hears the call and drives to the mansion, where she is greeted by Marianne Butler before she is hit in the head with a candle holder. Meanwhile, Sheriff Mason finds that Wilfred’s grave is empty. He is killed and thrown into the empty hole.
Mayor Adams is asked to go to the Butler mansion but leaves his daughter, Diane (Mary Woronov, Death Race 2000, Chelsea Girls) at home. She meets up with a man who claims to be Jeffrey Butler, who has taken the sheriff’s abandoned car. Together, they search for the lawman but can’t find him.
After taking Towman to the mansion, Jeffrey goes back to get Diane. On their way to the mansion, Towman stumbles blindly in front of them and is hit and killed. His eyes had been stabbed out and Diane grows worried about Jeffrey.
Well, fuck me, this movie is also about incest! A diary found at the house reveals that Jeffrey is the son of Wilfred and his daughter, Marianne. Afterward, Wilfred turned the house into an asylum and admitted his own daughter. However, on Christmas Eve 1935, he turned all of the inmates loose. They killed every doctor as well as his daughter. Of note here is that many of the inmates in the flashback are played by former stars of Warhol’s factory, like Ondine, Tally Brown, Kristen Steen and Lewis Love, as well as Flaming Creatures auteur Jack Smith, artist George Trakas and his wife at the time, Susan Rothenberg. Warhol superstar Candy Darling also shows up in the film as a party guest.
Well, it turns out that some of the inmates of the insane asylum ended up being important parts of the town — that’s right, all of the important people John met with in the beginning!
Mayor Adams arrives at the mansion and he and Jeffrey face off, guns drawn, each believing the other is the killer. They kill one another as Marianne shows up, but she is really Wilfred, who is alive. He went after the inmates for their role in the death of his daughter and used his grandson/son/secret shame Jeffrey as a patsy. Diane gets the gun and kills the old man. One year later, the mansion is demolished as she watches.
Director Theodore Gershuny worked on plenty of episodes of Monsters and Tales from the Darkside after this film. He was also married to Woronov. The original title for the film was Night Of The Dark Full Moon and it was also nearly called Zora, which makes little to no sense.
There are some really interesting techniques here, especially in the flashback sequences, which feel like tinted photographs come to life with the saddest version of “Silent Night” ever playing behind the action. I love how experimental and dark these sequences look — they remind me a little of the film Begotten.
This is a dark film for your holiday viewing, so if you want to chase away the family for awhile, this is the one to do it.
You know, I keep finding more of these Lemon Popsicle sequels and every time they come on, I just try and close my eyes and ride them out, like nausea that you get from a rollercoaster. I’m kidding — they aren’t that bad — but if it weren’t for my mission to watch every single Cannon movie ever, there’s no way that I would have watched one — much less every single installment — of these movies.
Another Boaz Davidson film, this one has German co-producers and starts with the kind of quality humor that you depend on from this series, as a child pisses in a grown man’s face to start off the funny.
Benzi (Yftach Katzur) is dating nice girl Sally (Ariella Rabinovich), but then he wants Nikki (Orna Dagan), who ends up being more than he can handle so he goes back with his more chaste love interest. And somehow, Benny has become more of a jerk in these movies, so much so that his friend Bobby has to explain to him that Sally is the kind of girl you should be with.
This raises the issue that the guys in these movies can sleep around with prostitutes, all have sex with the same married woman in the same night and be continually ready to bed anyone they even get the slightest interest from, yet when Nikki wants to own her sexuality, she’s instantly a fallen harlot who must be avoided.
For some reason, every time Frieda appears — she’s played by Sibylle Rauch, who was also in plenty of adult movies in the years after this — dudes completely lose their minds. It’s like they’ve never seen a 5′ 10″ platinum sex bomb up close before or something.
I realize that I have to watch so many more of these movies and hopefully, together we can find something worthwhile in them.
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, CannibalWorld, 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
Ah, the VHS clamshell sleeve I remember. Heaven.
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
It’s another Jess Franco joint: it’s different, but the same.
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
Where I have I seen you before? Oy! Another Jess Franco cannibal joint!
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.
Betsy Norman (Ursula Buchfellner, Sadomania) works at a Spanish hotel that’s really a brothel that draws in raincoaters worldwide for their BDSM shows. Shiela (Raquel Evans) and Ron (Antonio Mayans) have made a place where fantasies are catered to and its where Linda (Katja Bienert, who was in quite a few of Franco’s movies of this time) is tempted by this word of sin.
Known in Germany as Die Nackten Superhexen vom Rio Amore (The Naked Superwitches from Rio Amore), this movie has a wild disco soundtrack and a juxtaposition of summer vacation first love with enforced servitude, which is my shorthand for telling you that it’s a Jess Franco movie.
Made right after Bloody Moon, this is more one for the meal than one for the reel for Franco, but his obsessions come through. A warning though, that Bienert was underage while making this movie, just as she was in several other movies she made with Franco such as Diamonds of Kilimandjaro, Lilian (la virgen pervertida), El lago de las vírgenes and Wicked Memories of Eugenie.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally watched this on October 22, 2019 and man, it may not be the movie that Franco usually makes, but it’s deranged and really goes for it as a slasher.
If you’ve watched enough slashers, you’ve reached that point where you say, “There’s no way they’re going to show a bandsaw tear a woman’s head off her body.” But when you really title a movie Die Sage des Todes, or The Saw of Death, and you’re Jess Franco, you go for it.
Seriously — turn back now all that aren’t ready for an incestual slasher that takes no prisoners.
Miguel has a disfigured face, a horrible secret and just got out of being in a mental asylum for five years after stabbing a woman. Now, he’s been released into the loving arms — too loving, hence that secret — of his sister Manuela, who operates Europe’s International Youth-Club Boarding School of Languages. Now, Miguel has his eye on Angela, an attractive student at his sister’s school.
We full-on learn Miguel and his sister’s secret shame, as when the two begin to kiss, she reminds him that the last time they went this far, people died. No one can ever understand them and it can never happen again.
Between the disco dancing and constant murders, this European resort town stays hopping. Perhaps the best sequence is the aforementioned bandsaw murder, which ends with its lone witness, a kid who has to be less than ten years old, getting run over by the killer too. Life is cheap — and in this movie, it’s cheaper than it ever has been before.
I kind of adore that the producers told Franco that Pink Floyd was going to do the music for this. In what universe would that happen?
Of course, this didn’t just end up on any video nasty list. It’s one of the category 1 films that was actually prosecuted for obscenity. If any movie on that list deserves it, it’s this one.
Severin has re-released this on blu ray, selling it with this line: “just when you thought you’d seen it all, Franco shocked the world by delivering surprising style, genuine suspense and a cavalcade of depravity that includes incest, voyeurism and roller disco.” If you aren’t ordering this right now, what’s wrong with you?
No, no, not Sodomania and its long dark journey down a tunnel of love. That’s different.
Jess Franco’s Sadomania is all about the wacky hijinks that ensue when Olga (Uta Koepke) and Michael (Ángel Caballero) find their honeymoon — who goes to the desert on their wedding trip? — trespasses on the grounds of Magda Urtado (Ajita Wilson, Escape from Hell, who was born George Wilson) and her resort boot camp Sadomania, a place where topless women abuse other nude women because they’re in a Jess Franco movie.
Michael is told to leave while Olga does time and gets turned out as a call girl and the top client is the governor (of course it’s Antonio Mayans) who can only perform with his wife while watching a strange scene that feels like it came right out of a Joe D’Amato movie if you know what I mean and I think you do, as a friend from Texas says.
There’s also women being chased, another Franco favorite, along with plenty of torture and eventually, Olga’s man remembers that he needs to rescue her. Anything to get out of digging holes for no reason in the desert with Tara (Ursula Buchfellner) and Conita, who battles a guard in a gladiator match. And oh yeah — Jess himself as a gay slave trader.
Look, if you didn’t think 99 Women was scummy enough, no worries. Jess Franco can always sink lower.
So let’s say that some silver aliens are very advanced, so advanced that they can impregnate women in minutes not months and they decide to do it onstage at a kinda sorta men’s club and pick Mrs. Foncesca (Lina Romay, who else, using her Candy Coster alter ego) to be the one to bring their otherworldly children to life.
Or maybe it’s a spy movie.
Or maybe it’s a dream.
Or maybe it’s Franco’s take on Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.
Or maybe it’s Franco’s take on Rosemary’s Baby.
Or maybe it’s the making of a sex movie within a sex movie.
Or maybe those aliens come back and they’re real.
Look, only Jess Franco would film Lina Romay pouring water all over her nether regions as if he were shooting the Sistine Chapel, but maybe her body was his vision of what God could bring to man with a soundtrack that sounds like a Casio set to demo mode. I really don’t know what he was going for — people don’t even speak any language that exists — but in no way do I feel that I wasted my time watching whatever this was.
I think we’re going to have to get a deprogrammer for me after Jess Franco month.
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