Tag Archives: 1983

Chattanooga Film Festival 2025 Red Eye #5: Get Crazy (1983)

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Allan Arkush based most of his early films on his real life. Rock ‘n Roll High School is pretty much about going to New Jersey’s Fort Lee High School. And this film is all about his experiences working at The Fillmore East as an usher, stage crew member and in the psychedelic light show Joe’s Lights, which got him on stage with everyone from The Who, Grateful Dead and Santana to the Allman Brothers and Fleetwood Mac.

I have no idea what experiences helped shape Heartbeeps, Caddyshack II and Deathsport, which he helped finish.

That said — Get Crazy lives in the exact heart of everything I love: hijinks movies, huge casts, rock and roll and cult films. It’s pretty much, well, everything.

This movie takes place on one night, December 31, 1982, as the Saturn Theater is getting ready for its annual New Year’s Eve blowout when its owner Max Wolfe (Allen Garfield, who sadly died of COVID-19) has a heart attack when arguing with concert promoter Colin Beverly (Ed Begley Jr.), leaving his stage manager Neil Allen (Daniel Stern) in charge, along with past stage manager Willy Loman (Gail Edwards). Man’s nephew Sammy (Mile Chapin) is trying to find his uncle so that he can get the rights to the club and sell them while everyone else tries to put on one last show.

This is a movie packed with familiar faces, like Bobby Sherman and Fabian as Beverly’s goons, who continually try to destroy the building and ruin the show. Seriously, there are so many people to get into, like Stacey Nelkin (Ellie Grimbridge!), Anne Bjorn (The Sword and the Sorcerer), Robert Picardo, Franklyn Ajaye, Dan Frischman (Arvid!), Denise Galik (Don’t Answer the Phone), Jackie Joseph (Mrs. Futterman!) and Linnea Quigley.

At this point, you may be saying, “Where are Clint Howard, Dick Miller, Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov?” They’re here. Of course they’re here.

I haven’t even gotten into the bands in this!

Nada (Lori Eastside from Kid Creole and the Coconuts) has a 15-member girl group that plays New Wave, garage rock, bubble gum and when Lee Ving jumps on stage, punk rock. Beyond Ving, Fear members Derf Scratch and Philo Cramer also appear.

King Blues is, well, the King of the Blues. He’s played by Bill Henderson (who was also Blind Lemon Yankovic and the cop in Clue, which also features Ving as Mr. Boddy).

Auden (Lou Reed!) is Bob Dylan, hiding from his fans, driving in a cab all night trying to write a song.

Reggie Wanker (Malcolm McDowell) is Mick Jagger, bedding groupies the whole show before he has a moment of mystic revelation. His drummer, Toad, is John Densmore of The Doors.

Captain Cloud (the Turtles’ Howard Kaylan) and the Rainbow Telegraph have a van just like Merry Pranksters and drugs just as powerful.

I mean, how can I not love a film that has a theme song by Sparks? Come on!

This was directed at the same time that Arkush did Bette Midler’s cover of “Beast of Burden,” complete with an appearance by Stacy Nelkin.

Anyways — forgive the fanboyishness nature of this. Actually. don’t. We should all love movies this much and feel this strongly about them.

I got to interview Allan Arkush about this movie:

B&S ABOUT MOVIES: So how does it feel finally having Get Crazy get released 37 years after it was — for all intents and purposes — a lost movie?

ALLAN ARKUSH: It feels good on two levels. Naturally I couldn’t be happier that the movie will be available looking better and sounding better than it ever has. But in many ways equally rewarding was reassembling some of the original editorial team from Get Crazy and Rock ‘n’ Roll High School to make all of the extras. Kent Beyda and I go back to 1978 and he cut the extra The After Party, but he did more than edited it, using all 60 hours of interviews he wrote it and gave it shape. He also had edited the two 1983 videos. Mark Helfrich from RNRHS cut “Not Gonna Take It No More 2021” from the iPhone footage “Nada 2021″ gave us and I couldn’t be happier about that. The extras were a way for all of us to tell the whole saga of Get Crazy. Tara Donovan, one of my AFI students, working for a year producing it for nothing. Ed Stasium, The Ramones producer did the score and our original music Editor Ken Karman came back to spread his magic. And so many more…No Dogs In Space and almost all the cast and crew. What a joy. But let’s go back to the beginning.

I worked at the Fillmore East as an usher and then on the stage crew and working the lights for psychedelic shows. I was living in that environment — which was very exciting — and going to NYU film school at the same time and realizing that you could do so many of the things in your life that you’d like to do. And making a living from it!

So after making Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, I thought that it’d be good to do the next part of my life and tell the story of working in rock ‘n roll. Danny Opatoshu and I got together to write the script and it ended up becoming a real memoir of the events of my life as well as an actual plotline.

We ended up meeting with a few companies and one of them said, “We love this, but you need to set it in the present day.” We changed some stuff around and then before we started shooting, they wanted it to be a broader comedy like Porky’s or Airplane! 

Danny said, “I’m gone,” so we got in more writers, we made the changes and that’s the version that you watched. But when the movie was done, the people who ran the company didn’t like it. They didn’t think there was a market for it. So they dumped it and took a tax loss, then they went under and their library got sold, then got sold again and then it got lost.

They put out the VHS — which was in the thousands and it’s not even in stereo — and that was it.

When it came time to release a DVD, no one could find the negative. The sound elements — because it moved around so much — and all the sales and the paperwork were gone for like thirty years. Thirty years!

I would get calls every couple of years with people from independent distribution companies asking, “What can you remember about where you recorded the audio?” People would say to me, “God, I love your movie, where is it?” And I said, “I don’t know.” I honestly did not. Finally, someone said to me, “Let my company find this movie for you and let’s get it out there.”

They found out that it was at MGM. Wow, MGM had bought the library that had it and now that everything was getting ready to be streamed, they went through their vaults and organized things. So we tried to buy it from MGM and they didn’t want to sell it. And that’s where I decided to call MGM and speak to the people in charge myself and I heard from their Legal Department of Business Affairs and they said, “We’re not interested.”

So that was the end of that.

Then I got a call from Frank Tarzi at Kino Lorber a year later and he said, “We want to put this out, so don’t say anything.” And Kino Lorber negotiated for over a year and then when they said yes, Frank asked if I wanted to do a commentary. I thought to myself that this movie is really my life story, my autobiography and this has been a really long trek. Frank Tarzi has been a big supporter. I called my friends who edited the original film, asked them if they wanted to be involved and they were on board. I called Danny next and said, we can tell our story back to everyone. This gave us the chance to tell the whole thing our way and it really gave us an opportunity to close the circle.

We got a small — very small — budget to make this but hey — I worked for Roger Corman! I’m used to that! So we put together a home movie — using Zoom, because this was made during the pandemic — and it’s amongst people who should really get together and talk more often.

B&S: I’ve always loved Get Crazy because it feels like a story about a great time in someone’s life. It’s my favorite kind of movie — a hijinx movie. It’s the kind of movie where all you need is that quick line: one night at a concert hall…and hijinks ensue.

ALLAN: How did you see it first?

B&S: I know that I rented it at some point and then I had a bootleg. Sorry.

ALLAN: It’s OK. I did too! And I still have the original VHS, because those were the only ways to have my movie.

You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles and updating my Letterboxd list of watches.

88 FILMS BLU RAY RELEASE: The Lady Is the Boss (1983)

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Directed by Lau Kar-leung, this movie is an absolutely fantastic time.

Wang Hsieh Yun (who is also Lau Kar-leung) is having trouble bringing in new students to a very traditional martial arts school. The daughter of the school’s owner, Chan Mei Ling (Kara Hui,  My Young Auntie), has returned home from America and plans to change things. Now, she’s the boss of his students — Wong Yuen Shuei (Robert Mak Tak Law), Ng Ming Fat (David Cheung Chin-pang). Li Hon Man (Gordon Liu), Cheuk Jin Shing (Hsiao Ho) and Ah Wing (Wong Yue) — and they trade their gis for streetware. It works — new students are filling the dojo.

Yet as successful as she is, Chan Mei Ling angers the local tough Big Boss (Johnny Wang Lung Wei), who starts kidnapping her female students. That means that Wang Hsieh Yun has to save the day.

This combines the traditions of Shaw Brothers martial arts films with the 1980s — fights happen on BMX bikes and the fashion is loud — and really is entertaining. The closing. The gym fight scene is worth waiting through several movies. From aerobics, kung fu, to using flash photography as a weapon, this movie was a surprise every step of the way.

The 88 Films Blu-ray release of The Lady Is The Boss includes audio commentary by Frank Djeng, a video essay by Fred Ambroisne, a trailer, a still gallery, four collector’s art cards and a slipcase with new artwork by Lucas Peverill. It can be purchased from MVD.

APRIL MOVIE THON 4: Copkiller (1983)

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April 3: National Film Score Day — Write about a movie that has a great score.

L’assassino dei poliziotti is also known as Copkiller, Corrupt, Bad Cop Chronicles #2: Corrupt, Corrupt Lieutenant and The Order of Death. After making movies about the Italian Communist Party, director Roberto Faenza was considered so politically incorrect that he had to go outside Italy to find funding for movies like this one.

Filmed in New York City and at Cinecittà Studios in Rome, this film stars Harvey Keitel as corrupt cop Lt. Fred O’Connor and former Sex Pistol John Lydon as the criminal that obsesses him.

O’Connor has been making money off drugs with Sgt. Bob Carvo (Leonard Mann, Vengeance Is a Dish Best Served Cold), which they invest in a Park Avenue apartment. However, Carvo wants out, as his wife—and O’Connor’s ex-girlfriend—Lenore (Nicole Garcia)—suspects rightly that he’s on the take.

Then, O’Connor meets Fred Mason (Lydon), who is really Leo Smith. He keeps claiming that he’s the Copkiller, a man who has been murdering police officers. When O’Connor catches him in his apartment, he ties him up. He keeps him captive, even going to interview his wealthy grandmother, Margaret (Sylvia Sidney), who tells him that after the death of his parents, he swore off their wealth and compulsively confesses to crimes that he didn’t commit.

This film plays with who the guilty person is—either the seemingly mentally ill Smith or the manipulative O’Connor—before flipping the script right before the dark ending.

So much of who Lydon is in this movie is, well, post-Sex Pistols Lydon, given to rants. The song “The Order of Death” from the Public Image Ltd. album This Is What You Want… This Is What You Get refers to the film, with the line “This is what you want… This is what you get” coming from the Hugh Fleetwood novel Order of Death that this movie is based on. As for Keitel, he’s essaying an early version of his character from Bad Lieutenant.

Backing it all up is a solid score by Ennio Morricone, whose career of more than four hundred films goes from classy fare like Days of Heaven and Cinema Paradiso to scumtastic stuff such as Hitch-Hike, Last Stop on the Night Train and What Have You Done With Solange?

You could also view this — instead of as a cop movie — as a film where two male closer than friends break up because of a woman, only for the jilted one to keep a young man captive and engaging in a BDSM relationship with him. That said, Keitel is, as always, great, and I wish Lydon was in more than just this one movie (and not just because the other film he had planned to act in was to be directed by Russ Meyer). He’s excellent in this.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Commando the Ninja (1983)

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Also known as American Commando Ninja, IFD claims that this is made by Joe Law. Really, who can tell you the truth? Who even knows how many titles this has, how much music it stole or what it’s about? Hocus pocus, as the sensei says at the beginning. It doesn’t have to make sense. Seeing as how this was produced by Joseph Lai and Betty Chan, all bets are off.

Jow Law is also Law Chi AKA Chi Lo, the director of The Crippled Masters, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu (using the name Lo Ke), Girl with Cat’s Eyes and Magic Swords.

This poster has nothing to do with the movie you’re about to watch. Who cares? You’re here, one assumes, for ninjas. Or commandoes. Or Commando the Ninja.

IFD also lets us know what this should be about: “David, an up-coming young master of Ninjitsu, is recruited by his master to steal the formula for a bacteriological weapon and to free the Japanese scientist who is responsible for developing it. He is pitted against two wily opponents: Mark, a KGB operative, and Martin, who are bent on using the formula in a bid for world domination. The fate of humanity is in the hands of David and a group of four surprisingly acrobatic young fighters.”

Ninjas. “Life means nothing to them,” says Mister Tanaka, a man who shows up in this outfit, wearing an outfit like my dad’s in the mid-80s, a striped red polo, and short shorts.

If you asked IFD twice what this movie was about, they’d say, “A Japanese scientist tries to conceal a deadly formula, but an undead ace and his ninja devils are determined to use it to cause mischief and mayhem. It is up to Lung, a master of the lost art of Hocus Pocus, to keep evil at bay and prevent mass destruction on a global scale.”

Sure, maybe.

IMDB lists the director as Chi Lo, who used the name Joe Law to make Crippled Masters and Lo Ke to direct Deadly Hands of Kung Fu.

This also combines a Taiwanese TV show, another movie called Born a Ninja, and the kind of dialogue that only can come from an 1980s dubbed into incomprehension ninja movie can give you. Or it’s Silent Killers. It could have many titles, but it would still be hard to tell you what happened.

Let me try.

Mister Tanaka had a secret formula from World War II that could destroy the world. That much is true. Two women want the formula, and they are Becky, who wears a yellow vest and Confederate flag shorts. Still, I think that means she’s into late 70s and early 80s redneck trends in America a little too late as they move across the globe and isn’t racist like my neighbor who wears short shorts and throws away all his kids toys after his wife took them and also has a huge Southern Cross up on his garage wall despite being an Italian man in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Did I go on a tangent? Becky is joined by Brenda, who loves denim so much that she wears it on the top and bottom. They’re joined by a master of the hocus pocus style, Larry, who involves your everyday kung fu and the ability to shoot fire out of his fingertips.

As for the evil guy ninja, that’s Meng Fei, who was also in the Ninja Death trilogy, Night Orchid, Everlasting Chivalry, The Sun Moon Legend and Middle Kingdom’s Mark of Blood. He’s pretty impressive in the last fight scene.

Anyway, Mister Tanaka keeps dreaming of dead people who were killed by this secret back in the war. The secret is a mirrored mustache that you put on a devil mask. There’s also a white ninja named David who battles Larry before they decide to be friends, get a room, drink beer and eat fried cabbage.

Or maybe that was the last movie? Have years of drinking, substances, and Godfrey Ho movies dulled my reason, and when confronted by this synth-scored shot on video, my mind just wanders in between different martial worlds, unsure of all the things I’ve seen, all the ninja deaths I’ve felt as if they were my own? In truth, the only important thing is that ninjas can become straw men and that you can swallow a sword in the middle of a fight and live.

I do know one thing. When David sees Larry hanging out with the two ladies, he says, “Two chicks? You are an animal!” That’s exactly how I felt.

Like all IFD movies, this steals a lot of the soundtrack. There’s Miklos Rozsa’s soundtrack for The VIPs, electroacoustic composer Francis Dhomont’s “Pointe De Fuite,” the Michelle Yeoh-starring Royal Warriors, Alexander Lo Rei ninja films like Ninja Death, lots of the John William soundtrack for The Protector, the Bill Conti soundtrack for For Your Eyes Only and the Roy Budd soundtrack for Something to Hide. I’m shocked there was no Sisters of Mercy, myself.

You can watch this on Tubi.

88 FILMS BLU-RAY RELEASE: The Lady Assassin (1983)

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Directed and written by Lu Chun-ku (Bastard Swordsman), this is about the power struggle between the Fourth Yung Cheng (Tony Leung) and Fourteenth Princes (Mok Siu-Chung) — as the Kangxi Emperor (Ching Miao) is dying — with the Lady Assassin Lui Si Niang (Leanne Lau) caught between them and bodyguard Teng Tsung (Norman Chui) ready to protect the Fourteenth Prince with his life. He just might, as the Fourth Prince has hired the unstoppable Min Geng-Yiu (Jason Pai Piao) to kill everyone in his path.

Yes, there are some parts about how the rulers treat the Han Chinese, but it also has most of the cast battling a Japanese ninja (the director!) and his army of gold ninjas. After you just read about all that palace intrigue, let me assure you that there are throwing stars, wire fighting, sword battles, a giant throwing star and two people cut in half—all in one scene—one up and down and the other left to right.

The title doesn’t come into play until the movie’s last few minutes, but who cares? Let me reiterate: giant throwing star and gold ninjas.

The 88 Films Blu-ray release of The Lady Assassin comes with a set of 4 collector art cards, an interview with Poon Kin-Kwan, a stills gallery, a trailer and a reversible sleeve featuring original art. You can get it from MVD.

MOVIES THAT PLAYED SCALA: Variety (1983)

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Directed by Bette Gordon and written by Kathy Acker, Variety is the story of Christine (Sandy McLeod), a woman in the city looking for work and ending up in the ticket booth of the Variety, a job that her boyfriend Mark (Will Patton) hates. None of the men that she encounters turn her on, even though a co-worker named Jose (Luis Guzmán) tries. Then she meets Louie (Richard M. Davidson), an older wealthy man who takes her to a baseball game before disappearing. She becomes obsessed with him and her sexuality is awakened by this man and a series of prank phone calls (Spalding Gray is the voice).

According to Downtown Express, “The film is a sort of Who’s Who of downtown street cred: music by John Lurie, cinematography by frequent Jarmusch collaborator Tom de Cillo, script by former sex worker and Pushcart Prize-winning feminist novelist Kathy Acker, and roles played by Spalding Gray, Luis Guzmán, Mark Boone Junior and photographer Nan Goldin, who also took production stills.” Despite that, the theater isn’t really in Times Square. It’s the Variety Photoplays, which was located on Third Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets in the East Village, the same theater as Taxi Driver where Jodie Foster jumps into the cab to escape her pimp.

As a feminist filmmaker, Gordon got criticism and praise for making a film about pornography. Yet I loved Christine’s character, someone fascinated and also upset by the sex that she spends so much of her time around, but it’s not real sex, it’s created for the male gaze. However, it inspires her, even as she reads her sexually frank writing to a boyfriend who doesn’t seem to care, is surrounded by men who just see her as the law of the invisible sex object and the strange man who keeps ghosting her. This movie has stuck with me since I watched it and I wonder, did Louie come back to meet her in that alley?

MOVIES THAT PLAYED SCALA: Videodrome (1983)

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Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

“The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena: the Videodrome. The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television.”

As a kid, David Cronenberg used to pick up American television from across the border and worried that he’d see something he wasn’t supposed to see. Videodrome’s CIVIC-TV was based on the Canadian television network Citytv, which had a show called The Baby Blue Movie that played stuff like Camille 2000 and Wild Honey. There’s also an urban legend that Cronenberg saw Emanuelle In America and wondered how anyone could enjoy a movie that combined sexuality with snuff footage. I don’t know — or care — if that story is true. I’d like to just have complete faith in it.

The director was between Scanners and The Dead Zone and got a bigger budget on this movie than he never had before. Of course, it barely made its money back yet became a classic film, which is usually the way of the world.

Max Renn (James Woods) is the president of CIVIC-TV, a Toronto UHF television station that shows footage on the absolute limit of what is allowed to be shown on TV. One of the satellite dish operators shows Max Videodrome, which is either coming from Malaysia or Pittsburgh — as a lifelong resident, I am pretty pleased with that — that shows people being tortured and murdered with no storyline to get in the way.

Max’s lover, Nikki Brand (Debbie Harry) is so turned on by Videodrome that she goes to try out and never returns. Max is now obsessed and learns that the channel is so much more than just a video show. It may also be the voice of a political movement.

Media theorist Brian O’Blivion is the only person who can guide Max further down the tunnel. At the homeless shelter where O’Blivion’s daughter Bianca (Sonja Smits, The Pit) conducts marathon TV watching experiments. He soon learns that O’Blivion was killed by his partners who created Videodrome but lives on in the hours of video footage he created. Oh yeah — Videodrome also creates brain tumors and hallucinations which are both the symptom and the cause.

Videodrome is really part of an ideological war between its sex and violence-obsessed viewers and Barry Convex (Leslie Carlson, Black Christmas) and the Spectacular Optical Corporation, a combination ophthalmology and arms company. They program Max — via videotapes inserted into a vaginal opening in his chest that causes his body to transform and even grow a gun in his hand — to murder anyone that gets in their way, which may or may not all be hallucinations, until Bianca reprograms him to start killing for her father’s cause, shouting “Death to Videodrome. Long live the new flesh.”

That new flesh means ascending outside of the bonds of our normal form, which for Max means suicide. Or does it? There were plenty of endings made for this movie, including one where Max, Bianca and Nicki appear on the set of Videodrome, all with slits in their chests filled with sex organs. As an atheist, Cronenberg cut this ending, as he felt it may make people think he believed in Heaven. He was also forced to cut all manner of berserk things from the script, like Max having a grenade for a hand, as well as him melting into Nicki as they kissed and a total of five more characters dying of cancer.

This sequence sums up why I love this movie so much:

Max Renn: Why do it for real? It’s easier and safer to fake it.

Masha: Because it has something that you don’t have, Max. It has a philosophy. And that is what makes it dangerous.

You can hear dialogue from this movie in tons of songs, including “Microphone Test” by Meat Beat Manifesto, “Master Hit” by Front 242, “Children” by EMF, “Draining Faces” by Skinny Puppy, “Scared to Live” by Psychic TV and so many more.

For a movie made in 1983, it really could have been made today. There’s so much to experience here and I will be going back for another experience. See you in Pittsburgh.

RETURN OF KAIJU DAY: Attack of the Galactic Monsters (1983)

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I have no idea how and why this exists, but I’m ready to find out.

Supposedly made for Hawaiian TV, this 55 minute movie is made out of parts of War In Space and Godzilla scenes from the TV show Zone Fighter. And it’s a mess, a glorious mess, nearly an hour of footage of space ships, aliens yelling and kaiju beating one another up.

Or maybe it’s an elaborate hoax, a bootleg put together to sell at cons and post to the internet.

Does it matter? This does what I have always wanted: Chop out the boring exposition and human drama and just give the audience what they want: explosions, kaiju combat and destruction.

I could tell you that this is about Hell, the Supreme Commander of the Empire of Galaxy kidnapping the daughter of Captain Takigawa and holding the Earth hostage.

Meanwhile, Zone Fighter was a Toho tokusatsu show that took place — in continuity! — between Godzilla vs. Megalon and Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. It’s all about the zone Family, whose planet Peaceland was destroyed by the evil alien race known as the Garogans. The children of the family are Zone Fighter, Zone Angel and Zone Junior, powered by toy-like weapons.

King Ghidorah and Girus show up, as does Godzilla, who has a special cave built for him by the Zone Family so he has a place to relax. It lasted for 26 episodes before poor ratings ended the show, even with the appearances of Toho’s most famous monsters. Also: Every bad guy monster dies horribly on this show.

For an example of that, Godzilla sets Wargilgar on fire in this, as we watch that poor kaiju dance around ablaze. Burn, Tokyo, burn! There’s also a magnetic kaiju named Jikiro that gets torn apart. In America, we only saw fights between monsters. Kids in Japan demanded blood.

This also ends as so many Japanese movies do with one of the heroes bravely sacrificing his life to save everyone else. I didn’t understand the idea of nobility as a child and it just made me sad. It still does. But then again, did I really want. these antenna aliens telling me how to live my life? Today, I’d do the same thing, but it’s not as cool to drive a minivan into a spaceship as it is to drive a big flying battleship.

Anyway: This movie goes good with drugs.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

ARROW VIDEO SHAW SCOPE VOLUME 3 BOX SET: Bastard Swordsman (1983)

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Director Chun-Ku Lu (Holy Flame of the Martial World) is here to tell us the story of Yun Fei Yang (Norman Chui), an orphan who is given the worst tasks at Wudang, a martial arts school. Every privileged student abuses him, but he remains there, studying and working on his kung fu when he isn’t being treated like trash. There’s a real problem, however, as the rival Wu Di school and their best fighter, Kung Suen Wang (Meng Lo), is coming back to duel the school’s master swordsman Qing Song (Jung Wang) after having already defeated him twice.

Yun Fei Yang also is in love with the daughter — Fang Er (Yeung Jing-Jing) — of the leader of the school, Chief Dugu (Alex Man Chi-Leung), who has left for two years. As Dugu rests as a tavern, he’s attacked by four killers — Wind (Yuen Tak), Thunder (Wong Lik), Rain (Yuen Qiu) and Lightning (Kwan Fung), in case you ever wondered if John Carpenter watched these movies — and is saved by Fu Yu Shu. Yet after he’s attacked a second time, Yun Fei Yang is blamed and the school starts to tear itself to pieces A new master shows up, Fu Yu Xue (Tony Liu), and he soon steals away the school.

Yun Fei Yang starts to train with a stranger — Shen Man Jiun (Chan Si-Gaai) — and begins to master the signature style of the school, the Silkworm, all while running for the law, who thinks that he is a murderer. Yet despite the odds being against this “bastard,” the only way the true Wudang style will live on is through him.

Don’t think that this movie is rooted in our world. After all, Yun Fei Yang soon learns how to spin himself into a cocoon and emerge as a silver armored superhero who can shoot webs and emit blasts of energy. By the end, the final battle takes place inside his cocoon and it ends with the bad guy turned into a skeleton.

Based on a TV series, Reincarnated or The Transformation of the Heavenly Silkworm, this would be followed by a sequel, Return of the Bastard Swordsman.

The Arrow Video Shaw Scope Volume Three box set has a brand new 2K restoration of The Bastard Swordsman as well as commentary by Frank Jeng and a trailer.

You can get this set from MVD.

The Creature Wasn’t Nice (1983)

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Also known as Naked Space and Spaceship, The Creature Wasn’t Nice was directed and written by Bruce Kimmel, who is probably best known for his other movie, The First Nudie Musical, as well as his acting career. He’s also worked on numerous stage plays, written twenty-five books and even put on production of a musical, Levi, that was based on the story of Levi Strauss with a book by Larry Cohen and a score by the Sherman Brothers. He also came up with the idea for The Faculty.

Kimmel’s director’s cut was only seen twice before producers cut it to pieces. Kimmel loved the old science fiction movies but thought that slashers were evil and despicable.

Beyond Leslie Nielsen — which explains the Spaceship and Naked Space titles being named after Airplane! and The Naked Gun — this has a great cast with Cindy Williams, Gerrit Graham and Patrick Macnee, all of whom seem to be having a wonderful time. Along with Kimmel, they make up the five-person crew of the Vertigo, which is looking for new life when they must land on a planet.

Soon, a goopy red alien is on board and singing “I Want To Eat Your Face” and there’s also a series of parodies, like a cooking show and an elderly Dirty Harry. There’s also footage from This Island Earth and Spectreman, as well as a talking computer that was supposed to be played by Broderick Crawford.

It’s all over the place and frequently falls apart, but Cindy Williams is so plucky and Leslie Nielsen is always funny even in sub-zero parody films and this doesn’t reach those lows.

This feels like if no one on Dark Star smoked grass.