EDITOR’S NOTE: Five Elements Ninjas was on USA Up All Night on June 5, 1992 as Super Ninjas.

Chang Cheh directed ninety movies from 1965 to 1993* as well as wrote all the lyrics to the songs featured in his films. The majority of his most well-known movies in the West feature the Venom Mob of Kuo Chui, Lu Feng, Chiang Sheng, Sun Chien, Lo Mang (along with Wei Pai), a group of martial arts masters who appeared together and separately across numerous Shaw Brothers films.

Also known as Super Ninjas, Chinese Super Ninjas and Chinese Super Ninja, this movie seems as if the weirdest and most violence-obsessed kid in your grade school class was suddenly given enough money to stop scribbling in his notebooks and instead allowed to make a movie that is pretty much non-stop ninjas horribly murdering one another.

This is, quite frankly, the highest praise that I can give to a movie.

I mean, let me sum up the first five minutes: Chief Hong (Chan Shen) has challenged his rival Yuan Zeng (Kwan Fung) for the title of martial arts master, which mainly entails sending each other’s students after one another in battles to the death. Hong has cheapened these wars of honor by inviting a foreign samurai to the contest. He kills one of Zeng’s students before being stopped by Liang Zhi Sheng (Lo Mang). Before he commits seppuku, he throws a spiked ring to Zeng, which poisons the master and keeps him from doing kung fu until he heals.

There’s no time to heal, as a new challenge arises from the Five-Element Ninjas. Zeng asks Sheng and Tian Hao (Cheng Tien Chi) to fortify the school while ten of his best men answer the challenge. What follows is a series of increasingly brighter colored ninjas, basically showing you every Mortal Kombat fatality nearly a decade before the game came out. The ninjas also send Senji (Chen Pei-Hsi) to infiltrate the school. Yes, Hong and Mudou (Michael Chan, who didn’t just play triad gangster roles, but left the police to become one), the leader of the ninjas, are pretty much the winners before the fight even gets started.

Within a few weeks, she has mapped out the entire school and Mudou’s ninjas attack as she offers herself to Sheng. He refuses her, but allows her to play the flute for him. As she entertains him, everyone in the school except for Ha escapes and visits his old ninja master. Joined by four other fighters, he challenges the Five-Elements Ninjas and Mudou, who has killed Hong and taken the title of master.

This movie is quite frankly fantastic. It blew my mind throughout and never lets up, like a children’s show that has wall-to-wall gore. As the first movie in our week of Hong Kong films, it has set a high bar that other films will really have to battle to scale and exceed.

You can watch this on Tubi.

*The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, Five Deadly Venoms and Crippled Avengers, to name a few.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Echoes was on USA Up All Night on March 30, 1990.

Michael Durant (Richard Alfieri) has always dreamed of a man who is trying to kill him. Spoiler: It’s his twin brother who died in the womb. Now, that man wants to possess him, which mostly means that he gets mean to his girlfriend Christine (Nathalie Nell).

That said, this movie is quite interesting because it presents a supernatural idea, but treats dream possession as if it were a fact of life, and everyone just moves on. It’s also the last movie for Gale Sondergaard, Mercedes McCambridge (who played Pazuzu), and Ruth Roman, who plays Michael’s mom.

It’s nearly an Alfieri vanity project, as he co-wrote it with Richard J. Anthony and sings one of the songs on the soundtrack. It’s directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman, who also directed Alfieri’s script for Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks. I know him from his first movie, Hercules in New York. He also directed I Think I’m Having a Baby, Strange Voices, the Cannon movie Rescue Me as well as several movies that Alfieri acting in, such as Macbeth, Children of Rage, an episode of Magnum P.I. by the title “I Never Wanted to Go to Paris, Anyway” and a Trapper John, M.D. episode titled “In the Eyes of the Beholder.” In fact, the only film Alfieri acted in that Seidelman didn’t direct was In Search of Historic Jesus.

You’ll probably hate the protagonist, as he’s a jerk to everyone even before he gets possessed. I wanted this to be better because it has the right idea. It just isn’t great.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The Last Horror Movie reunites the wacky lovebirds Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro, who previously starred in Starcrash and Maniac, and makes another appearance for Joe on the Video Nasty Section 3 list.

Director David Winters was one of the few stage actors and dancers in West Side Story to be in the film version. He then became a choreographer and was the first to choreograph the Watusi, as well as the originator of the Freddie. He also helped Elvis and Ann-Margaret dance in Viva Las Vegas. His first directorial effort was the Alice Cooper film Welcome to My Nightmare, and he produced everything from Linda Lovelace for President to Young Lady Chatterley, Killer Workout and owned Action International Pictures. He also dated Lovelace after she divorced Chuck Traynor. She credited him for introducing her to culture. The guy did so much! He directed Racquet, did the choreography for Roller Boogie, made Mission Kill with Robert Ginty and oh yeah, also directed Thrashin’!

Anyways, both Spinell and Munro are two people who make me love life the moment I see them. The blonde highlights in her hair in this movie got me through the rest of a tough week. This film is very 1982, and therefore, it is perfect.

Spinell is Vinny, a cab driver who lives with his mother (Filomena Spagnuolo, Spinell’s real mother, who ends the movie by asking if she can take a hit off his joint; that’s also Spinell’s real apartment) but dreams of making a horror movie with scream queen Jana Bates (Munro), who is going to be at Cannes to promote her latest film Scream along with her manager and ex-husband Bret Bates (Glenn Jacobson) and producer and current boyfriend Alan Cunningham (Judd Hamilton). She gets a note that says, “You’ve made your last horror film. Goodbye,” and finds Bret murdered, but the body disappears when the police come to investigate. This turns into more of a whodunnit than a slasher, but I mean, Spinell still gets to chainsaw someone to death.

Just like the movie within this movie, this was shot with no permits at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. If you think it’s not realistic for an actress in a horror movie to win an award, that same year Isabelle Adjani won the Best Actress award for Possession.

The Tromatic Special Edition of The Last Horror Film has an introduction by Lloyd Kaufman, “new” audio commentaries and interviews, the short Mr. Robbie, highlights from the Tromadance Film Festival and a full episode of Kabukiman’s Cocktail Corner. You can get this from MVD.

I just want to know why Depeche Mode is so highly billed and why Lloyd is on this, but what do I know?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters, Part 2 was on USA Up All Night on August 17, 1991; February 21, 1992 and January 9, 1993.

Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters was 1982’s Jopi Burnama-directed Perempuan Bergairah (Passionate Woman), which was remixed by Troma’s Charles Kaufman. This is another movie starring Eva Arnaz, the Indonesian female action queen of movies like Barang Terlarang (Violent Killer), AKA I Want to Get Even, Violent Killer, Lady Exterminator and Violent Assassin. Also: Once the wife of Barry Prima.

Directed by Arizal (who made I Can’t Hold It and I Can Hold It Long, two movies that feel part of a longer story, plus Special Silencers, a film in which “red pills are obtained from a forest-dwelling mystic, which aid in meditation. However, if used by the untrained, they cause a huge tree to grow in the stomach and burst its way through the skin. This is sold by Troma as “They’re back and they’re more ferocious than ever!  Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters 2! This is the story of women. Women shattered by violence.  Women left alone, the sole survivors of slaughtered families. Women are sold into a vicious and brutal international crime syndicate. Women subjected to poverty, horror and brutal sex. Experience a secret glimpse into the erotic realm of the Asian underworld, where women are a high-priced commodity and anything is available… for a price.

Pushed to the farthest limits of sanity and battered beyond ordinary human capacity, there is one woman who decides to fight against her destiny. She’s tougher than a rabid canine! Braver than a battalion of Bruce Lees! With vengeance pulsing through her veins, she journeys back into her past, kicking anything that gets in her way, settling the ultimate score… swiftly and permanently! Her task is to terminate the misery and sexual torture of her soul-sisters in slavery. She and her fighting female friends are out to topple the power pyramids of the Asian underworld! Fighting ferociously with fists and feet flying, these females are out for revenge!”

Breathless, huh?

Starting with a totally different aspect ratio, this turns into an Indonesian They Call Her One Eye as Arnaz goes from a college girl with a boyfriend out of town to a kidnapped and turned out sex worker who starts to learn how to get revenge. But does that movie have flaming snakes, black magic, a fight scene where its heroine holds a baby the entire time and a soundtrack that is both disco and Indonesian country?

It must be the Troma name, horrible dub, and poor quality of the transfer that are keeping more people from losing their minds over this movie. Let’s fix that. This was beyond entertaining.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Beach Girls was on USA Up All Night on February 19, October 14, 1991 and July 14, 1995.

Bud Townsend directed Terror at Red Wolf Inn. For this, we should not make too much light of The Beach Girls, a movie with little to no plot and frequent appearances of the boom microphone. We should also realize that this movie is a lot like other beach films, mostly Malibu Beach, which was also a Crown International Picture.

Sarah (Debra Blee, Savage Streets), Ginger (Val Kline in her only movie) and Ducky (Jeana Keough, now a Real Housewife of Orange County) are staying in a beach house. Ginger and Ducky are pretty much degenerates, but Sarah is a virgin. Suddenly, a whole bunch of marijuana washes up and their house becomes an even bigger party palace.

Uncle Carl, who owns the whole place, is played by Adam Roarke from Frogs and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. So there’s that, you know?

Honestly, I’ve watched a million of these movies and they’re the cinematic equivalent of smoking the sticky green that these girls found on the beach, then eating like seven bowls of cereal. They used to make so many of these movies and I think I watched them all. Now that I’m way older than all of the kids in this movie, I think, “Man, this would have been a fun movie to make.” So maybe you should think thoughts like that instead of thinking how sex comedies are problematic — all exploitation movies are problematic, that’s why they’re exploitation movies — and just inhale.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Burned at the Stake was on the CBS Late Movie as The Coming on September 16, 1987 and March 3 and July 6, 1988.

Also known as The Coming, this movie starts in the late 1600s in Salem, as Ann Putnam (Susan Swift) is caught experimenting with black magic. To protect herself, she turns over the names of those who were also involved, sending Reverend Samuel Parris (John Peters) on an orgy of stake burnings to not only destroy all of the witches but to bring back the fear of the Lord in his worshippers. Meanwhile, in 1982, Loreen Graham (also Susan Swift) is possessed by Ann’s spirit.

By 1982, Bert I. Gordon had given up on giant animals after Empire of the Ants and would go on to make movies like Let’s Do It, The Big Bet, Secrets of a Psychopath and Satan’s Princess. That said, along the way, he’d made Picture Mommy Dead and Necromancy, so he was about more than Costco-sized vermin.

Ann Putnam is a real person who, at the end of her life, tried to atone for all the people who died at her hands — well, as the result of her identifying them — and said that they were innocent. As for Gordon, making this near the end of a long career, he’s put together a movie that can’t decide if it wants to be supernatural or a dream. He’s still making an occult movie that could play as a made-for-TV film minus all the profanity and gore the genre had embraced by 1982.

In this film. Putnam can only save a young girl by changing history and bringing someone back in time to fix it. It honestly makes no sense, but it had enough eerie visuals to keep me watching. There’s a skeleton-handed killer who the movie never really explains and we wonder who the protagonist is, who the villain is and how we’ll get the story all figured out. I wonder if Gordon ever divined it himself.

You can watch this on YouTube.