My wife wants to go away on a fancy vacation. While horror films have forever enriched my life, they’ve also damaged her chances of going anywhere. The tropics? Have you seen Zombi? A resort like Sandals? I assume that Laura Gemser will show up and I’ll be boiled in a pot. And now, thanks to this movie, we can also cross Mexico off the list.

As much as horror may have curtailed my partner’s opportunity to globetrot, it’s also imparted several important lessons to me. To wit: if your mine is over a Satanic temple where left hands were severed to honor demons and every single worker refuses to go any deeper, perhaps it’s time to find a new mine. And if by chance you discover a miniature coffin with a hand inside it, just leave it where you found it. Don’t take it back to your hotel room. This is why I’ve made it forty six years on this Earth without being possessed or dealing with a face melting cult in the desert.

My true joy in the movie Demonoid comes from reading the review that it received when it was released in 1981 and laughing in their prose faces. How can anyone dislike a movie where a possessed man decides that old school Las Vegas is the best place to hide out? Who can dismiss a film where Samantha Eggar obviously dressed herself in some of the most astounding fashions that the early 80’s could unleash? The woman wears an ascot and oversized orange counter to explore a mine (let’s be fair, every outfit she wears in this movie are a paradox, somehow both gorgeous and ridiculous at the same time). And damn anyone who speaks ill of Stuart Whitman! This former boxer and soldier had already played Jim Jones — I’m sorry, James Johnson — in Guyana: Crime of the Century, released less than a year after that tragedy? Here, he plays a battling Catholic priest who we just know could win over Ms. Eggar if he didn’t have that pesky collar and angel on his shoulder to worry about.

Maybe they weren’t watching the Mexican cut (Macabra!), which has more dialogue, more death and a different ending? Look, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. And most of those critics, they never got pleased all that much anyways. Demonoid is worth the whole lot of them. Would they dare to feature an ending so downbeat after 98 minutes of rooting for our British heroine? I dare say no. They’d be afraid to insert so many flashing shots of a demon raising his fist, they’d be too concerned about a soundtrack that practically screams in your face and they’d sooner hide behind their film theory books than make a movie in 1981 that feels like it came from 1974.

Demonoid is why I watch movies. Samantha Eggar screaming at the top of her lungs while a mine explodes all around her? There. An appearance by Haji, she of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Bigfoot, Supervixens and the wonderfully titled Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman(whose real name Barbarella Catton wasn’t sexy enough for a stage name)? You got me. Overacting in nearly every scene? I’m riveted. A poster that promised nubile ladies reclining for a fallen angel carrying a gigantic sword? I might have piddled a little.

Keep your Oscar picks and guilty pleasures. I have no such taste or qualms. Give me Demonoid or give me a severed left hand!

This article originally appeared in Drive-In Asylum #13, which you can get right here!

Appearing under a variety of titles, like Great White, The Last Jaws, Jaws Returns and L’ultimo Squalo, this movie made $18 million in its first month of U.S. release. Universal Pictures had been trying to block Film Ventures from even releasing the film in America, but the request was denied in U.S. District Court. However, about a month into the film’s run, federal judge David V. Kenyon ruled that it was too similar to Jaws and the film was banned from theaters. Guess what? He was totally right.

After watching a windsurfer surf his little heart out over the opening credits, we get to watch a Great White Shark ruin his fun by eating him. That’s when we make our way to the resort town of Amity — I mean, Port Harbor — where Mayor Larry Vaughn — sorry, I meant to say governor William Wells (Joshua Sinclair, Ice from 1990: The Bronx Warriors) — refuses to believe that a shark is attacking his beach.

That’s when horror writer Peter Benton (James Franciscus, Butterfly and the voice of Jonathan Livingston Seagull ) and shark hunter Ron Hamer (Vic Morrow, who has delighted us in so many movies, such as Message from Space) realize they gotta do something. In my wildest dreams, Hamer’s son will grow up to be the evil Hammer from 1990: The Bronx Warriors, another Morrow role.

The governor refuses to cancel the windsurfing regatta (you gotta regatta!) because he feels like that will hurt his political ambitions. Yes, in the bizarre universe of Italian shark movies, the windsurfing lobby is incredibly powerful. That said, Wells did put in shark nets, but all the splashing around makes the shark nuts, so it tears through the nets. The next day, as the windsurfers line up to compete, the shark appears to the sounds of the guitar from the Torso trailer and treats all these teens on their boards as if I’d treat a sushi buffet. And for dessert, may we recommend the governor’s aide? Mmm.

Benton and Hamer head out to sea with some dynamite, but the shark goes off Spielberg’s shooting script and traps them in a cave. While they’re figuring out why the shark would go into business for itself, Benton’s daughter Jenny (Stefania Girolami Goodwin, who is Ann in 1990: The Bronx Warriors, a radio operator in Moses’ group in Warriors of the Wasteland and would go on to be an assistant director on Empire Records and Super Mario Brothers) and her friends head out on a yacht with some steaks and a shotgun, which seems like the worst plan ever. The shark also stops the boat by using its own body to jam the motor of the boat, which seems patently ridiculous.

Of course, the shark yanks her off the boat and ends up eating her leg, which is done as tastefully as Italian scum cinema will allow. In the hospital, she screams at their father to kill the shark. In an attempt to finally get something right and make it up to Benton — his son was the reason why Benton’s daughter was out there in the first place — Governor Welles grabs more steak (was this movie endorsed by Italy’s beef council, who remind you “Manzo è quello che è per cena”?) and heads out on a helicopter with dynamite to blow up the shark real good. Of course, the shark messes up the best plans and drags the governor into the ocean, biting him in half and dragging his helicopter into the unforgiving ocean. This scene is both astoundingly satisfying and completely stupid, which is what I demand from every movie that I love.

Benton and Hamer try one more time to blow the shark up, because much like pro wrestling, Italian ripoff shark fighting also works in threes. This fails — this shark will not get any memos — and Hamer is killed.

There’s another shark hunter who decides to change the game by using spare ribs (the Italian National Pork Board would like to remind you “carne di maiale l’altra carne bianca”) and chaining them to the dock, but of course the shark won’t listen to reason and decides to drag every single person into the ocean and make a meal of the hunter, a cameraman and assorted rubbernecking beachcombers.

While all these shenanigans are going on, Hamer’s dead body floats on by and Benton (who is wearing a jaunty red wetsuit that seems like it would only enrage a crazed shark further and yes, sharks can see tones of colors depending on their species, I looked this up on Google because I really do care about the facts, dear reader) remembers that he has the detonator, so he blows his friend’s body up and takes the shark’s head with it. He then walks over and punches out a reporter played by Giancarlo Prete, who we all know and love as the hapless Scorpion from Warriors of the Wasteland!

It took four writers — Ramón Bravo (who also wrote Tintorera: Killer Shark), Vincenzo Mannino (who helped write Devil Fish, Miami Golem, Murder Rock and The New York Ripper), Marc Princi and Ugo Tucci — to completely rip off the first two Jaws films. But it only took one director to create this carbon copy carnage. That man was Enzo G. Castellari and if you can’t guess by the related credits of the crew, he’s the man who brought us such magic as 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Warriors of the Wasteland, Escape from the Bronx and the original The Inglorious Bastards. He’s brought me such joy in my life and if IMDB is to be believed, he’s ready to bring even more, as he has a film called The Fourth Horseman in pre-production. This thing has to be a fever dream or a made up story, because it has Sid Haig, Michael Berryman, Bill Mosely, Kane Hodder, Franco Nero (as Keoma!), Fabio Testi, George Hilton and Gianni Garko (as Sartana!) in it. Sometimes, life can surprise you.

No matter what you call it, The Last Shark is anything but boring. You’re not going to see anything you haven’t seen before, but if you want to see b-roll footage, model helicopters and a shark that honestly may be better than Bruce was in the first movie (also it’s a shark smart enough to stop boats and grab ropes in its teeth so it can take out docks full of people), then this is the movie for you.

My only issue with this film: Castellari had not yet met Mark Gregory yet. If Mark was in this movie, I may have lost my mind. I mean, even more than I already have.

You can get this on DVD at Cult Action or watch it on Amazon Prime.

Any movie that starts with a couple taking off their scuba equipment to make love underwater inside sunken ship and then being devoured by a school of mutant flying piranha before a James Bond style graphics sequence is immediately going to rocket to the top of any to watch list there is. Get ready: Pirahanha II: The Spawning is here, it can fly and it will eat your fleshy bits clean off.

Anne Kimbrough (Tricia O’Neil, Are You in the House Alone?) is the diving instructor for the Hotel Elysium. She tells her class to stay out of the ship wreckage, but some people just don’t listen and become more food for those little biters.

Anne wants to see the body, but her police officer ex-husband Steve (Lance Henriksen, who I remarked was young in this movie and Becca said, “He’s never been young. He’s always been…leathery.”) won’t allow it. 

This movie is packed with all manner of horrible folks set up to be victims. For example, Jai (Carola Davis, one of the few people to ever pose for both Playboy and Penthouse, has had a really interesting life, co-writing “Slow Love” with Prince, appearing as Roxie Shield in Mannequin and performing the song “Serious Money” that was the original theme song for BET’s Rap City) and Loretta are sea bandits who dock at the vacation spot to steal food before sailing back out to their doom as they soon learn that yes, piranha can fly.

Marine biologist Tyler Sherman (Steve Marachuk, The Eyes of Laura Mars) keeps trying to get with Anne, so for some reason, she takes him to the morgue. Beyond being a diving instructor, she’s was once a marine biologist so that relationship is a natural. They start taking pictures of the dead bodies, but a nurse kicks them out. This is where we learn another important untrue fact about piranha: they can hide inside dead bodies, then fly across the room and kill nurses.

Anne and Tyler beat feet and then do some horizontal mambo. While he sleeps, she studies the photos and is frightened. It gets worse — her ex-old man finds the credit card and comes back to their old house to throw it at her, get mad she’s getting lucky and accuses her of murder. Like I said before, Piranha II: The Spawning is packed with horrible folks.

Much like all films where man — or woman — battle the terrors of the deep, Anne tries to do the right thing and cancel all dives. Raoul, her manager, fires her in response, so she does the only sane — or insane — thing: try and capture a flying piranha as proof. That’s when Tyler drops a bombshell on her: he’s really a biochemist who was part of a team that developed the ultimate weapon, a genetically modified killer fish that can fly. I guess ultimate weapon may be stretching it, because it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you can unleash in a city or the desert or in cold weather. Man, let’s not bring logic into this. Let’s just go with it: flying piranha are the ultimate weapon.

Can it get worse? Sure it can. The piranha are running out of food and turning on one another, which means they will eat anything and everything they can. Anne tries to reason with the resort manager one more time and her ex is even on her side this time, if only to tell her that Tyler is crazy.

Oh yeah — there’s a fisherman whose son gets killed by the piranha and he tries to get revenge and well, it doesn’t go so well.

Of course, while this is all going on, Raoul decides that the resort should have a midnight grunion catching party because that seems like a fun idea for a singles ready to mingle place. Of course, the piranha attack and absolutely decimate anyone and everyone in their path.

Here’s another untrue piranha fact: they are afraid of daylight. Tyler and Anne decide to chase them back to their coffin, err, their sunken ship and taking a cue from every other undersea monster movie, blow it up real good.

What could make all of this even worse? Well, it turns out that Anne and Steve’s son Chris has snuck around behind their back to work for Captain Dumont, with the hope of getting with his daughter Allison. You guessed it — they’re stranded right in the path of the flying fish.

Luckily, everything works out. Chris and Allison survive, free to hopefully spawn themselves someday soon. Anne and Tyler blow up the sunken ship and take out every single little fishie. And Tyler even has the good sense to get chewed up by the monster fish, allowing Steve to not look like a moron that wrecked his own helicopter for no reason and instead the hero that saved his soon to be not ex-wife.

Here’s yet another untrue fact: this film is the first movie directed by James Cameron. Well, parts of it are. Here’s the true story.

The original director was another graduate of the Roger Corman training school, Miller Drake. His script was all about Kevin McCarthy replaying his character from the first movie, coming back from the dead to create flying piranha and even killing Barbara Steele’s character. Producer Assonitis fired him and replaced him with Cameron, who was originally going to do the special effects.

After the first week of shooting, Cameron learned that he was there strictly to follow Assonitis’ orders. There are claims that he wasn’t allowed to see or edit the footage and even broke into the editing room to create his own cut.

Cameron has said, “He just fired me and took over, which is what he wanted to do when he hired me. It wasn’t until much later that I even figured out what had happened. It was like, “Oh, man, I thought I was doing a good job.” But when I saw what they were cutting together, it was horrible. And then the producer wouldn’t take my name off the picture because [contractually] they couldn’t deliver it with an Italian name.”

Lance Henriksen has also stated that the making of this movie was probably the worst time of his life. There was no budget for his uniform, so he bought a waiter’s outfit for $75 and found some badges, then hand carved a gun handle to at least look like an actual harbor officer.

Cameron’s been quoted as saying that this gets better halfway through if you’re drinking a six-pack at the drive-in. I’ll agree — this is a movie made for a large group of people and a variety of substances. I enjoyed it, but as we all know, I’m not really known for having highbrow tastes.

You can get this on blu ray from Shout! Factory.

Jerry Warren made plenty of movies, like The Incredible Petrified World, The Wild World of Batwoman and Face of the Screaming Werewolf. This was the last one he’d make before his death.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5h2qig

Four balloonists and their dog Melvin crash onto a remote island. Yes, I just wrote that sentence. They’re captured by pirates who takes them to meet Sheila Frankenstein (Katherine Victor, who played Batwoman in the previously mentioned film), who is turning shipwrecked sailors into zombies that have to wear sunglasses. Yes, I just wrote that sentence, too. You read it. It doesn’t have to make sense.

Meanwhile, Sheila brainwashes Dr. Hadley (Robert Clark, The Hideous Sun Demon) to help her revive her 200-year-old husband Dr. Von Helsing using the blood of Cameron Mitchell and the bodies of Amazon jungle girls who are the descendants of aliens! Mitchell is great in this, as all he does is quote Edgar Allan Poe.

But let’s not forget the ghost of Dr. Frankenstein, played by John Carradine, that powers all of her experiments from Heaven. Or Hell. Or somewhere else. He keeps yelling and ranting while his monster waits in an underground cave waiting to escape!

Andrew Duggan (It’s Alive) and Steve Brodie (Donovan’s Brain) are also on hand for this mixtape of mind jolting horror. It’s a piece of shit, but it’s a short and somewhat entertaining piece of shit.

You can check it out on Amazon Prime, if you dare!

One could be cynical and point to 1981’s Galaxy of Terror as a blatant cash grab, an Alien clone that pushes itself into squeamish territory that its inspiration only hinted at. You could see it as a disgusting piece of exploitation movie making, filled with faded stars. Or you could just realize that life can be a mysterious, amazing, wonderfully rewarding experience and that a movie can start off ripping something off and become its own gloriously weird and magical thing. Obviously, I’m in the latter camp. And if you aren’t, jump off this ride to Morganthus right now, bub!

Written and directed by Bruce D. Clark and produced by Roger Corman for around $700,000, this is no big budget affair. But it’s a film that uses footage from previous Corman efforts, notably Battle Beyond the Stars, to great effect. And it’s also a proving ground for the talent that would lead the science fiction genre throughout the following decade. James Cameron is the art director, providing some intriguing sets and interesting gore replete with maggots. And of all people, the late and oh so lamented Bill Paxton served as the set decorator, previous to his career as an actor.

Galaxy begins by showing the last survivor of a downed ship being tracked down and killed as he tried to run away with what looks to be a car muffler. We learn that this is all part of a game played between Mitri and the Planet Master, who keeps his identity hidden. They speak of plans being set into motion and sending another ship, The Quest, to its doom.

The ship’s crew is led by Captain Trantor (Grace Zabriskie, Sarah Palmer of Twin Peaks, as well as The Grudge and Child’s Play 2), who has survived an epic disaster which has rendered her unstable and quite possibly a danger to her entire crew. This point is hammered home as the moment the ship is close to Morganthus, it crash lands on the planet’s surface.

Also on board are:

Alluma (Erin Moran of TV’s Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi), a psychic sensitive.

Team leader Baelon (Zalman King, who would go behind the camera to steam up the scream with his Red Shoe Diaries series, as well as production (and at times, direction) duties on films such as Two Moon Junction, Wild Orchid and 9 ½ Weeks), who is a complete dick to one and all.

Quuhod, a mute crewmember and master of the throwing crystal (Sid Haig, who may be my real father. Honestly, if you’re on this site and have no idea who Sid Haig is, life has led you down a dark, dismal path. I’d suggest you stop reading now and go watch Spider Baby or House of 1000 Corpses or Coffy or The Big Bird Cage and so on and so on).

Cabren, the film’s hero, who seems to be the coolest head (and best mustachioed) on the ship (Edward Albert, son of Green Acres star Eddie Albert).

Kore, the ship’s cook (Ray Walston, My Favourite Martian, Mr. Hand from Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Dr. Mnesyne from Popcorn).

Dameia (Taaffe O’Connell, New Year’s Evil), the technical officer.

Commander Ilvar (Bernard Behrens, The Changeling), the overall team leader.

Ranger, a crew member (Robert Englund, again, if you need a lesson on the importance of this fine actor, your priorities need some serious evaluation).

One by one, the team faces their own fears as they explore the planet. Those fears include all manner of gory, horrific deaths. To satisfy the demands of the film’s backers, one of those horrific moments includes a sex scene with the buxom O’Connell, but the results are probably not what any of those backers ever dreamed they wanted. Her fear of sexuality and fantasy of submitting to something more powerful than herself leads to a gigantic maggot having a prolonged, fully nude sex scene complete with simulated intercourse, as she gets covered in slime and enjoys an orgasm so great that it kills her. Seriously — this is either the scene where you wonder aloud about Galaxy of Terror’s sheer lunacy or walk out of the room in disgust. There is no middle ground.

Finally, it’s revealed that this is all a cosmic child’s game and the Master must be replaced by one of the crew. I’ll leave it up to you to watch this film and enjoy the ending for yourself.

It’s worth noting: As Alien gave way to Aliens, an alum of this film, Cameron, would be at the helm. However, there would be no giant maggots or Sid Haig dancing around in a jumpsuit. If you ask me, we’re all the worse for that.

Also known as Planet of Terrors and Mind Warp: An Infinity of Terror, Galaxy demands to be viewed. Be warned – this is exploitation filmmaking at its most exploitative. It’s a scuzzy, scummy film and may not be for all tastes.

You can watch it for free with an Amazon Prime membership or grab it from Shout! Factory.

This review originally appeared on That’s Not Current.