Kill Butterfly Kill: Years after being assaulted by five men, Tang Mei-Ling (Juliet Chan) — or Donna, depending on the language you choose — hunts them down one by one, joined by Richard, a retired hitman (“Tattooed Ma” Sha) and several of her girlfriends. She’s spent six years to get bloody revenge and she’s going to take her time getting it.

The wild thing is that there are times that this is a rape revenge movie, other times when it’s an action film and then moments when it gets surreal. Fog rolls in, neon lighting takes over and Tang Mei-Ling becomes a female demon, purring that she wants to kill. The entire screen itself gets taken over and moves and bends and distorts as we become part of her destruction of these evil men.

Also known as Underground Wife, this is a Taiwan black movie that shares exploitation themes and action with socially conscious themes. That said, these films never forget that they are scummy.

American Commando 6: Kill Butterfly Kill: IFD is a company that you probably know. They had Joseph Lai, Godfrey Ho and Thomas Tang make hundreds if not thousands of similar titled ninja movies that combine other films with hastily shot gunplay or martial arts battles.

It’s like watching two movies that only have one moment where they meet.

Three years ago, special agent Aaron Nolan (Mark Miller) broke up the Garvino gang. But now the brutal Garvino (Mike Abbott) is on the street again. Aaron and his partner Rick Hammet set out to neutralize him. Meanwhile, Donna is a nightclub owner who is their only ally in the war against Garvino, spurred on because years ago, five of his men raped her. Now, teaming with Richard, she’ll get the revenge she needs while Arron goes after his target.

This feels like the two movies are nearly decades apart, much less the quality of the film stock, so in no way does it ever appear to be seamless. And isn’t that how we want it?

If you know IFD movies, you know that the music is always stolen from incredible places. This one features “Arca” by Richard Norris, “Divine Particles” by Takkra and “Oxygene Part 1” by Jean-Michael Jarre. IFD loves some Jean-Michael Jarre.

The Neon Eagle Video release has a new 4k restoration from the best surviving elements of the export English language cut of the film prepared by IFD Films. It also has the Mandarin edit — Underground Wife — and a 4K scan of the IFD remix American Commando 5: Kill Butterfly Kill.

All of these various versions of this unique film are here making their official U.S. home video and worldwide blu ray premieres.

Extras include audio commentary by Kenneth Brorsson and Paul Fox of the Podcast On Fire Network for Kill Butterfly Kill and — worth the price of the entire thing — an IFD trailer collection.

You can buy this from MVD.

You can learn more at the Neon Eagle Video website.

Shot in 1979 but not released until 1983, this was directed by Gérard Kikoïne but had Radley Metzger as an advisor. It was filmed at the same time as Metzger’s 1979 movie The Tale of Tiffany Lust, which also had French actresses Dominique Saint Claire and Morgane in the cast and uses cinematographer Gérard Loubeau.

Adrianne (Dominique Saint Claire) finds herself working as a non-performer in adult movies and somehow gets a ticket to New York. There she meets a gambler who introduces her to sexual freedom, as if she were Emanuele, but not Black Emanuelle. Of course, with those risks comes danger, as always lurks in these golden age movies which were less about the act and more of the reasons before.

Vanessa Del Rio is in this as a therapist and Désirée Cousteau as Cassandra, an erotic spirit who guides our heroine through her adventures, which at the end take her back home to a committed relationship, which is an odd close for a Radley Metzger movie, but who am I to judge?

Gérard Kikoïne also made Dragonard and Master of Dragonard Hill for Cannon, as well as Edge of Sanity and Buried Alive, the 1990 one with Donald Pleasence, John Carradine, Robert Vaughn and Ginger Lynn.

Immoral Minority Picture Show was made in 1983 and went unreleased until 2009. It’s very much a Kentucky Fried Movie but probably closer to Movie 43.

Director and writer Scott Mansfield — yes, the same director as Deadly Games — put together this sketch-filled movie and sure, most of them aren’t funny, but there’s a great slasher sequel parody called Don’t Scream On My Face that has a great part for Linda Blair. There’s also a Lite Blood ad with Count Dracula (James Sikking) talking about how he needs to cut the fat. And John Carradine introduces great moments in Polish history, which means he sits in silence. How about a slasher called The Hanukah Horror?

None of these jokes are funny but I can’t hate a movie that includes such a cast. I mean, David L. Lander and Michael McKean as Third Reich soldiers? Marilyn Chambers as Marilyn Chambers? Colleen Camp is in this! Barbara Bosson (did she and Sikking ever talk about this on Hill Street Blues?)? Georg Stanford Brown from Roots and the former husband of Tyne Daly? Sybil Danning? Juila Duffy? Meadowlark Lemon and Jimmie Walker as the first black men on the moon? Deborahg Harmon? Sunny Johnson (Flashdance)? Audrey Landers from Dallas? Kim Lankford from Knots Landing? Squire Fridell (Ronald McDonald in Mac and Me)? P.J. Soles!?! Wendi Jo Sperber!?! Jennifer Tilly? James MacKrell (Lew Landers in Gremlins and The Howling)? Ed Marinaro (did he also discuss this movie on the set of Hill Street Blues?)? Diana Muldaur? Newhart‘s William Sanderson and Peter Scolari? Bruce Weitz (can I make that Hill Street Blues joke again? I can.)? Fred Willard? Keenan Wynn?!? Jere Rae Mansfield, who called herself “the blonde that died on every Aaron Spelling show?” Marie-Alise Recasner (Island of Blood)? Miguel A. Núñez Jr. (Spider from Return of the Living Dead)? Erika Eleniak? Adult director Paul Thomas? Karen Lorre? Sniglets Rich Hall?

Yes, it’s not good, but I loved it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Wolfman vs. Godzilla (Densetsu no Kyojū Ōkami Otoko tai Gojira or Legendary Beast Wolfman vs. Godzilla) is an incomplete fan film that was directed by Shizuo Nakajima. Nakajima also made Wolfman vs. Baragon, another fan film that he made with the assistance of several former Toho employees. Though filming began in 1983, it is unknown if the film is complete or will ever be released.

During his tenure at Toho, Nakajima served as a production assistant on Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla and Terror of Mechagodzilla. He still updates his Facebook page with clips of the movie.

With costumes by  Fuyuki Shinada, who would go on to design the monsters in Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, there was ten hours of footage shot for this movie. It was unknown until a panel at a Godzilla convention in 2012.

Images from Wolfman vs. Baragon.

As far as can be told from the story, a werewolf becomes irradiated and grows to daikaiju size. Godzilla awakens from the North Pole and the two creatures fight. Godzilla may be a more out of control monster such as he was in the early Showa series but is the hero.

You can see the footage that exists here:

References:

• Poster art: Jeff Zornow
• WikiZilla. Wolfman vs. Godzilla.
• Godzilla Fandom. Godzilla vs. Wolfman.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Private School was on USA Up All Night on October 1, 1991; May 29, 1992; May 29, 1993; January 7 and July 23, 1993; April 15 and July 14, 1995; August 2, 1996 and May 23 and August 7, 1997.

I honestly can’t get my head around the fact that the same Noel Black who made the intense and upsetting Pretty Poison also made Mischief and Private School. Life’s odd.

Christine “Chris” Ramsey (Phoebe Cates) and Jim Green (Matthew Modine) keep trying to lose their virginity while his friend Bubba Beauregard (Michael Zorek) somehow hooks up with Betsy (Kathleen Wilhoite) and Jordan Leigh-Jensen (Betsy Russell). Chris and Jordan hate each other over Jim too, so there’s that.

Once Private Lessons did well, this was easy to get made. It doesn’t have anything to do with that movie other than bring back R. Ben Efraim as a producer, Dan Greenburg as screenwriter and that movie’s star Sylvia Kristel, who is reduced to playing a cameo as a new character.

Speaking of cameos, Martin Mull is a druggist, Paula Abdul is a cheerleader — she also choreographed the routine — and Brinke Stevens is in the shower scene.

But this is, at heart, a movie where the guys dress as girls Bosom Buddies style to sneak into the girl’s dorm and where sex acts are played over loudspeakers to humiliate people. The Cherryvale Academy for Women and the Freemount Academy for Men basically exist so that horny young men can look at bare breasts. The women are unfulfilled, the men go home to masturbate, such would be 1983.

At least this has a fun soundtrack. “You’re Breaking My Heart” by Harry Nilsson, “The American Girl” by Rick Springfield, “Rock This Town” by The Stray Cats, “Nasty Girl” by Vanity 6, “I Want Candy” by Bow Wow Wow, “Da Da Da” by Trio, “Li’l Red Riding Hood” by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs and Phoebe Cates, performing two songs and not just starring in the movie.

Efraim was a big believer in market research and literally tested every single thing about Private School down to the title. He loved the word private in his movies and he also produced Private Resort.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Staying Alive was on USA Up All Night on September 16, 1995.

Saturday Night Fever producer and writer Robert Stigwood and Norman Wexler dreamed of a sequel to the film pretty much since the original was released. What they came up with, Staying Alive, was a script that John Travolta disliked. It was too much of a downer and he couldn’t be convinced to do the film for several years.

Finally, after four years of this, Travolta and Stigwood met. The star had an idea. What if Tony Manero became a dancer on Broadway? And what if he was a big star? Wexler thought that it would be better if Manero ended up in the chorus and the two reached an agreement to start the film.

Travolta had just seen Rocky III and wanted the same energy for Staying Alive. Paramount got Sylvester Stallone on board, Travolta told him his idea of the happy ending and toned down the rawness of the original film.

What emerged was…well, whatever this movie is.

Tony Manero was once the king of 2001 Odyssey, ruling the disco dance floor. Now, he lives in poverty and works on his dream of being in a modern dance musical. When he isn’t teaching or dancing, he’s a waiter that’s constantly beset upon by beautiful women. Ah, the sad life of Tony Manero — constantly getting laid and dancing his heart out.

Our hero has changed — moving away from Brooklyn has matured him somewhat and toned down the levels of profanity he used to freely toss around. But he’s still horrible to women, particularly his dancer and rock singer girlfriend Jackie (Cynthia Rhodes, Tina Tech from Flashdance and Penny from Dirty Dancing; she’s also in Xanadu, but let’s cut her some slack). He can go after anyone, but she has to be his alone. Speaking of guys that surround Jackie, Richie Sambora and Frank Stallone play in her band.

Tony’s really into Laura (Finola Hughes, who was nominated for both the Worst New Star and Worst Supporting Actress Razzies for her role in this film; she’s also in The Apple, pretty much damning her soul to bad dance movie hell for all eternity). He pursues her right into a one night stand and can’t understand why that’s all it ends up being. She replies, “Everyone uses everybody.”

Jackie and Tony break up just in time for the two of them — and Laura — to try out for the biggest dance musical to ever hit Broadway — Satan’s Alley. They get small parts and our villain gets the lead. Look for Patrick Swayze as one of the other backup dancers.

This leads Tony into his very own walkabout spirit quest, where he takes the 16 mile walk from Manhattan to Bay Ridge. The 2001 Odyssey is now Spectrum, a gay club, and this makes him realize how much his life has changed. He apologizes to his mother for how he was. She tells him that being so selfish is how he escaped a dead-end life. Of note, Donna Pescow was to return in the audience of Tony’s Broadway show and Tony’s father (Val Bisoglio) filmed scenes that were deleted. Now, the film implies that he is dead.

Tony and Jackie get back together, with her helping him work hard and take over the vacant lead male role. While he and Laura openly hate one another, they have as much chemistry dancing vertically as they once did horizontally. Tony takes things too far on the sold out opening night and kisses her at the end of the first act; she responds by slashing at his face.

Backstage, the director flips out on Tony and Laura tries to lure him back into bed. The second act is everything of the 1980s — fog, lasers, glitter, silver lame and probably metric tons of white flake. Our hero throws away Laura at the end and goes wild with his very own solo dance before she jumps back into his arms to a standing ovation. He reunites for good with Jackie and celebrates as only he can — by recreating the strut from the beginning of Saturday Night Fever.

Despite being a critical failure — that’s putting it mildly —  Staying Alive was a commercial success. The film opened with the biggest weekend for a musical film ever with a gross of $12 million dollars, finally earning $127 million on a $22 million budget.

I have my own theory on this film: it’s a Jacob’s Ladder situation.

Some time after Saturday Night Fever, Tony died. As dance was the most important thing in his life, his limbo — the time between heaven and hell — is spent trying to get a role as a dancer. The play Satan’s Alley is quite literally the place he could go to, if he makes the wrong choice. His apartment building is filled with other dead people; his life of constant temptation is the devil trying to convince him to follow him and give up on purity, just as Satan once led his brother Frank Jr. to renounce the priesthood.

Tony’s walk back to his hometown is literally a journey to the land of the dead — his mother is the one who has passed on and that’s why she can now forgive him. 2001 Odyssey, once a place full of life, has now become Tony’s worst fear, a loss of his masculinity. The place where his racist, gay bashing friends once called home has become their hell.

When Tony dances on to the Broadway stage, he must choose — heaven or hell. Or, as he does, making one’s own choice. He tosses Laura — the scarlet woman, the temptress — down to joyously dance and realize his full potential. He offers a hand in forgiveness to her before realizing his one true love — no, not Jackie. Himself. He struts down the street and on his way to heaven, which is embodied in the alpha and omega of Saturday Night Live and Staying Alive as that strut, down the street, to the Bee Gees.

Sometimes, a movie is so bad that you have to invent your own mythology to get through it. This, obviously, would be one of those films. Just don’t ask me to explain that Stallone cameo in the beginning.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mr. Mom was on USA Up All Night on December 23, 1994 and January 13 and April 26, 1996.

Mr. Mom sets up so many comedy patterns for the 80s.

Michael Keaton: Born in Pittsburgh — Kennedy Township or McKee’s Rocks — and starting his career on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, Keaton went to LA and his first big role was Night Shift, which led to this movie. His character in his early films is often a very Bill Murray smart everyman who deals with life’s pains before being smart enough to come out on top, a role he would play in Gung Ho — made close to home in Beaver, PA — and Johnny Dangerously. By Beetlejuice and Batman, he was as big a star as it gets. He’s a rare star in that even though his career has had ebbs and flows, he’s always been great in everything he’s made and comes off as, well, a Yinzer. Someone you’d like to have an Iron with. He’s playing that character he’s known for here, a smart guy whom life has treated badly named Jack Butler. He’s lost his auto job and is now the stay-at-home dad while his wife works.

Teri Garr: I wonder if Keaton and Garr ever got into silly Pittsburgh versus Cleveland spats; she’s from Lakewood. Trained in ballet and a student of Lee Strasberg, her career has vacillated between comedy — Young Frankenstein, Tootsie — and drama — The Conversation, One from the Heart, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I always think of her as the mom who is way funnier than she should be, probably because this movie is what I knew her from. Her Caroline is intelligent, capable and more than a match for anyone in the movie.

Martin Mull: It’s difficult to explain to young folks the impact and strangeness of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and the spin-off Fernwood 2 Night. Soap operas were all normal, straight affairs before that show and the fact that a supposedly legitimate talk show from the setting of that show could exist on its own outside of the show is even stranger. By this point in his career, Mull was often the smarmy bad guy, a role he would play in Take This Job and Shove It, Cutting Class, Ski Patrol and so many more.

Important friends: This film follows what would be an 80s staple. Often, the friends and small roles are just as funny as the main characters, like Christopher Lloyd as fellow unemployed car worker Larry, Edie McClurg as a check-out lady (McClurg’s career is filled with memorable small roles), Ann Jillian as flirty mom Joan (as an 11-year-old boy, I had no idea what I was feeling when I saw Ann Jillian, but I knew she didn’t look like any other woman I knew) and another Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman actor Graham Jarvis.

John Hughes: Story editor and producer Lauren Shuler read a John Hughes article in National Lampoon which caused her to become friends with him. A story he told her about taking care of his kids made her laugh; could it be a movie? They finished the script together, but the fact that Hughes lived in Chicago and not Hollywood led to Universal firing him and bringing in TV writers to redo the script. Shuler always claimed that the original script was a lot funnier.

Don’t feel bad for Hughes. He’s already sold National Lampoon’s Class Reunion and National Lampoon’s Vacation. This movie got him a three-picture deal and he made Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science in just two years. By the 90s, he moved back to Chicago and died too young at 59. If you were alive in the 80s, his comedy shaped so much of what you watched, from the popular teen comedies to secretly anarchic movies like Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Vacation.

The idea for this is simple. Jack loses his job, his wife is smarter than him and becomes a success in advertising (a field Hughes knew well, he had created the Edge Credit Card Shaving Test ads) while he stays home all day doing what she used to do. Where it works is the creativity of director Stan Dragoti (Love At First Bite), cinematographer Victor J. Kemper (The Hospital, Eyes of Laura Mars, The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure) and Keaton, who is beyond likable and never gets to be too much like other stars would be in such a high energy role.

Where this movie is ahead of its time is that Caroline still gets the career that she wants. The movie ends seeing her commercial on TV and her getting more money and more respect from her boss.

If anything, Mr. Mom has given us this dialogue, which is as funny today as it was in forty years ago.

Jack: No problem. Come on over here Ron. Let me show you what I’m doing, taking advantage of some of the time off. To, uh, add a whole new wing on here. Gonna rip these walls out and, uh, of course re-wire it.

Ron: Yeah, you gonna make it all 220?

Jack: Yeah, 220, 221. Whatever it takes.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Vals was on USA Up All Night on April 12 and 13 and November 15, 1991; April 25, 1992 and February 26, 1993.

Sam (Jill Carroll, Psycho II), Trish (Elena Stratheros), Beth (Michelle Laurita, who danced in Footloose and went on to be the cinematographer on Alanis Morrisette’s videos for “You Oughta Know,” “Jagged Little Pill” and “You Learn” as well as directing that last song’s video as well as “Head Over Feet”) and Annie (Gina Calabrese, The Dungeonmaster, Vicious Lips) are Valley Girls who decide to help Mr. Stanton (John Carradine) keep his house for orphaned boys.

They also get mixed up with the drug dealing Lance (Michael Leon) and Stone (Robert Dyer, Savage Streets), as well as battle the Bevs, girls from the other side of town. Plus Chuck Connors plays Trish’s producer dad who loves the cocaine, he’s on a plane with cocaine and yes Chuck is all lit up again. Sonny Bono plays a “spaced-out musician,” Tiffany Bolling is Sam’s mom (and you thought the MILF in these movies was first in American Pie), Shirley Rothman is Trish’s mother (and also co-wrote the script) and Sharana Lee from Gymkata is a rival Valley Girl.

The Vals was directed by James Polakof, who also made Demon Rage, and co-wrote this with Deborah Amelon, who went on to write Parent Trap III, and Rothman.

Obviously, this is unfairly compared to Valley Girl. It had the title Valley Girls before that movie was released. It was actually filmed first and went unreleased, but when that movie did well, it was finally put out. It doesn’t have the same level of soundtrack, as it features the bands Annine, Daphna Edwards and Unicorn Gang, Wet Picnic and Frankie Bleu. It didn’t even get to film at Sherman Oaks Mall, instead taking place in a secondary shopping plaza in Stockton, CA, the Weberstown Mall. Unlike so many malls, it’s still in business.

This movie is way better than it needs to be.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nothing gives me greater joy than when our site gets mentioned on my favorite podcast, The Cannon Canon. There are a few movies they’ve covered that I haven’t, so it’s time to fix that.

I have no idea why Lone Wolf McQuade hasn’t been on the site.

I mean, it pits Chuck Norris as McQuade — along with a pet wolf! — against Rawley Wilkes (David Carradine) and has a supporting cast of Dana Kimmell (Friday the 13th 3D, Sweet Sixteen) as McQuade’s daughter, Barbara Carrera as the love interest and Robert Beltran, Leon Isaac Kennedy, L.Q. Jones and R.G. Armstrong as fellow cops.

Directed by Steve Carver (The Arena, Steel), this had the director work with writer B.J. Nelson to “mess up” Norris’ on-screen image by having him grow a beard, drink beer and be in a Sergio Leone-inspired movie. Carradine is also a great for him; he told Psychotronic Magazine, “Chuck had a feeling when I was working with him, that he wanted to be a better actor. At one point, when we were working on the fight, I got close to him, and I said. This is really right man, puttin’ your face in the dirt.’ And he looked at me, you know, and he didn’t expect that from me. And we got to be buddies. For just that period. I don’t hang around with Chuck. Chuck mainly doesn’t like to work with co-stars. His movies are all solo movies.”

Carver had high marks for Norris and spoke of the difficulties of getting the trained martial artist to loosen up and act: If you block a scene with an athlete, if you ask an athlete to move from point A to B, or to pick up something, or do anything, he will do these movements mechanically. Which is not a bad thing, because with every rehearsal the movement becomes more fluid. Whereas a theatre actor will project their movements and their dialogue. It’s a stage to them. That’s the difference. Chuck was a little bit stiff in An Eye For An Eye. He became looser in Lone Wolf McQuade. After that he became better with every picture he did.”

It all worked, as Roger Ebert noted the Italian Western parts of the story and even gave this film three out of four stars. And how can you not love a movie where Chuck Norris uses a supercharged truck to break out of a makeshift grave?

Sadly, Carver and Norris would have a parting of the ways. Norris credits Lone Wolf McQuade as the inspiration for his hit television series Walker, Texas Ranger.  In fact, the pilor had to be rewritten because it was a Lone Wolf McQuade. This Orion Pictures film, much like the other Cannon Pictures movies that Norris worked on, are all owned by MGM. Left in the dust were Carver and his production partner Yoram Ben-Ami, who sued the producers of Walker, Texas Ranger for $500 million dollars. He would say years later that the lawsuit was where he and Chuck stopped being friends, as well as saying, “MGM and CBS had bigger and better and more lawyers than we did, all the way to the Supreme Court. We failed to convince the Supreme Court that there were similarities. Now, you and I and anybody else knows that there are similarities between Lone Wolf McQuade and Walker Texas Ranger.”

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode of Lone Wolf McQuade here.