A plague killed most of the grown-ups and the world is filled with orphans. Some adults did live, like Albert (James Earl Jones). He raises Lee (John Stockwell) who grows up and heads out to L.A. to join the Clippers, who are led by Mick (Darrell Larson) and his second in command Whitey (John Diehl). They refuse to let him in. When they send him away with Yogi (Rae Dawn Chong), he defends her from the DAs, another gang, and breaks the no guns rule. It’s decided that instead of giving him to Ray (Danny De La Paz), that troop’s boss, he will fight their best soldier one on one. Lee defeats the female DA and joins the gang.

There’s also a worker from a corporation named Sunya named Wickings (Kim Cattrall) who wants the gangs to work to make the city livable. There’s also some intrigue with Whitey being killed by DAs Bolo (Norbert Weisser) and Carver (Robby Benson).

Of course, by the end, everyone goes back to Albert’s farm, Lee and Wickings fall in love and everyone battles the corporation. Even at the end of the world, biker gangs learn to work together, making their own company and taking over Los Angeles for their own needs.

Director Aaron Lipstadt also made Android. When this played Mystery Science Theater, the title for the film is red text displayed on a black background. At least the end — unlike every FVI movie on the show — uses footage from the movie it is on.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Just how into cocaine do Lillian Weller (Pamela Sue Martin) and Jake Gregory (Steve Railsback) get in this movie? Well, it was also released as Cocaine Paradise.

It’s also the first movie I’ve ever seen where a guy pierces a girl’s ears while they have sex.

Directed by Thomas J. Wright (not only did he direct No Holds Barred but he painted all of the Night Gallery paintings) and written by Martin and Eliza Moorman, Where it shines is that Ian McShane is incredible as Sidney, the drug dealer who helps make all of this addiction happen. Well, she introduces Jake to drugs and he takes it too far, freebasing and finally living in his car. She’s an addict as well but the truth is that she can handle her drugs.

I guess movies like this have had an effect on me because I always think, “I shouldn’t do coke because Steve Railsback — man, his name even sounds like drugs — got all messed up in Torchlight.”

You can watch this on YouTube.

I’ve never seen a movie that looks like The Legend of the Suram Fortress.

Directed by Georgian SSR-born Soviet-Armenian director Sergei Parajanov and Georgian actor Dodo Abashidze, this was the first movie that Parajanov had made in 15 years after being censored by Russia and 4 years in jail for “lewd acts and bribery.” That’s because he was bisexual and he was sentenced to five years in a hard labor camp despite a letter from Andrei Tarkovsky to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, which stated, “In the last ten years Sergei Parajanov has made only two films: Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors and The Colour of Pomegranates. They have influenced cinema first in Ukraine, second in this country as a whole, and third in the world at large. Artistically, there are few people in the entire world who could replace Paradanov. He is guilty – guilty of his solitude. We are guilty of not thinking of him daily and of failing to discover the significance of a master.” The letter was also signed by Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Leonid Gaidai, Eldar Ryazanov, Yves Saint Laurent, Marcello Mastroianni, Françoise Sagan, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Andrei Tarkovsky and Mikhail Vartanov.

This is not the first tragedy in his life, he was married to a Muslim woman who converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity for him. Her relatives saw this as blasphemy and killed her. Knowing this will make this movie even richer for you, as he lived the pain that his characters do.

Much like The Color of Pomegranates, this film uses tableaux — a static scene containing one or more stationary actors who poses with props and scenery, combining theater and visual art to tell the story — to create a surreal effect as it moves from dramatic image to image, filled with actors who each speak their part within these pieces of motion art.

This is an adaption of a traditional Georgian folk story of Durmishkhan, who has been freed by his master and now wants to buy the freedom of his lover Vardo. He is told another story by a merchant who lost his mother because of the cruel nature of his master. He killed that man and became a Muslim to escape the law.

Durmishkhan works for this man and marries a woman and has a son named Zurab. As his boss retires, he gives the business to him and converts again, this time to being Christian and dreams of the Muslims killing him for his crime.

Vardo becomes a fortune teller who is called upon when the Muslims invade their country. Despite all their efforts, the Suram Fortress is falling. She fortells that a blue-eyed young man from the countryside must be walled inside the fortress alive and it will stand. The bou who she be her son, Zurad, volunteers and gives his life to save the country and Christianity.

The band Voidcraft used this movie for one of their videos, “The Vertical Mammal.”

The Legend of the Suram Fortress feels like a movie that was made before cameras were invented, if that makes sense, something captured through time and delivered to us in the future. Filmed in the grassy scenery of Georgia with all actors facing the camera as we study the frame for its many meanings. It’s presented plainly but holds many secrets, literally the most pure expression of the secret and the occult.

You can watch this on YouTube.

La Gabbia (The Trap) is based on a story called L’Occhio, which was written by filmmaker Francesco Barilli (The Perfume of the Lady In Black, Hotel Fear), who was trying to direct the movie himself. He couldn’t get producers to pay for the film unless Shelley Winters was in the lead. He sold the idea to Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, who also made Identikit.

The screenplay was written by Concha Hombria, Roberto Leoni and Alberto Silvestri, along with Lucio Fulci, who didn’t direct as he was coming back from hepatitis.

Barilli is quoted in Troy Howarth’s Splintered Visions: Lucio Fulci and his Films as saying, “Lets’ talk frankly here, that movie sucks…” Fulci used profanity when asked about Griffi, who he felt stole his chance to direct this movie. He ended up directing The Devil’s Honey, which is pretty much what this movie could have been.

That said, this does have an Ennio Morricone score, so that helps.

Michael Parker (Tony Musante) is an American in Italy who is dating Hélène (Florinda Bolkan). 15 years ago, he dated Marie (Laura Antonelli), who has finally found him again. Amazingly, she’s his girlfriend’s landlady. What are the chances? He thinks they can just have a quick affair, but she won’t let him go. In fact, she puts him in a cage. And to make things even weirder, her daughter Jacqueline (Blanca Marsillach) soon falls in love with him.

When Hélène returns, she can no longer find him. She’s used to him wandering from woman to woman, but he always comes back. As for Marie, Michael once taught her the ways of love and then left. She never found a man who satisfied her in the same way and now, she refuses to even let him go to the bathroom outside of her sight. Also: Jacqueline could be his daughter.

Made in the brief time before giallo would become the erotic thriller, this has Michael being held so close to his girlfriend, finally paying for his years of seducing women and leaving them alone. Of course, I would rather have seen what Fulci had done with this movie. Or Barilli, come to think of it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

It doesn’t matter if a mine has gold in it. If it closed because a supernatural force killed everyone that went into it, perhaps you don’t need to reopen it. Well, there wouldn’t be a movie if this didn’t happen and The Strangeness, shot on 16mm with real stop-motion animation, is the result.

You can say that this movie drags — and it does — but it also has a monster that eats people and dissolves them with acidic spit and then pukes them up. It leaves behind messy corpses that are crawling with maggots, so you know, don’t eat during this.

Director Melanie Anne Phillips — who used the name David Michael Hillman — wrote this with Chris Huntley, who plays one of the trapped people in the mine and also did the special effects.

The beginning of the movie was shot without permission at a real mine called The Red Rover. About a month after, real-life miners hired to see if the mine was worth reopening entered and went further in than the film crew had. They all died. Not from being devoured and thrown up by a monster that looks like a woman’s secret garden filled with tentacles and slime, mind you, but from poison gas exposure. The rest of the movie was shot in Phillips’ grandparents’ garage using tin foil painted black for the walls of the mine.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The last Animagic movie by Rankin/Bass Production, this is based on The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum and is not tied to any of the continuity of the other Rankin/Bass specials such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, Frosty’s Winter Wonderland, Rudolph’s Shiny New Year and Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July.

I can only imagine how this movie — made in the middle of the Satanic Panic — went over. It starts with the Great Ak telling the Immortals the story of Santa Claus so that they will keep him alive forever. Yes, Claus was once an abandoned baby given to the lioness Shiegra before he was stolen by a wood nymph named Necile.

In the world of humans, Claus tries to spread joy but has to battle the dark Awgwas who make children do bad things. Eventually, the Angwas attack Santa so many times that the Immortals get involved and destroy them, even telling Santa that they have perished. This is a show for kids. To bring that point home, this ends with Santa on his deathbed, asking his friends to decorate a tree to remember him, just as the Immortals decide to allow him to join them.

Baum introduced the Forest of Burzee in his short story”The Runaway Shadows or A Trick of Jack Frost” before using in The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus, “A Kidnapped Santa Claus,” “Nelebel’s Fairyland” and Queen Zixi of Ix. Burzee is in the same universe as Oz. Some examples include Queen Zurline of the Wood Nymphs and Queens Lulea and Lurline of the Fairies probably all being the same person and in The Magic Cloak of Oz, embassies between these universes are created and Santa becomes the ambassador to Oz.

It may also freak you out when you realize that most of the cast of this comes from Thundercats, so yes, Santa has the same voice as Mumm-Ra — Earl Hammond — possibly the most Satanic of all 80s cartoon characters.

Common Sense Media said, “Of possible concern for the youngest viewers are the several mentions that Santa’s going to be visited by the spirit of death, some mildly scary monsters and a sad scene in which Santa talks about his mortality fading and that he wants decorating Christmas trees to be a kind of memorial to him. Fantasy violence includes a battle with magical powers to defeat the monsters once and for all. The ending is happy and safe, but be prepared to offer reassurance and answer questions about death and immortality.”

Who is going to do that for me?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

The titular storm in director Shinji Sômai’s Typhoon Club (Taifû kurabu; Japan, 1985) is both a literal one, as the story takes place before, during, and after a typhoon event in Japan, and a figurative one as a group of rural junior high school students deal with the realities of teen life and the frustrations of a lack of adult role models. Yuji Kato’s screenplay treats its teenage characters with a realistic eye, and the ensemble cast of young performers nail every nuance that is asked of them.

Starting with the near-drowning of a boy by the girls he was spying on at the school pool — closed at night, but when did that ever stop teenagers who wanted to swim by the moonlight? — and featuring a maddening sequence of a boy stalking and terrorizing a girl classmate — whose back he has scarred with acid during science class in an earlier scene — inside their school that is more unnerving than many horror movie scenes, there are many reflections on death and danger. Typhoon Club isn’t solely focused on the gloomy, though, as the students try their best to live life their way, including a lesbian couple and their energetic friend, and a boy who hopes to escape his smaller town and attend high school in Tokyo. There’s a dance sequence that feels more authentic than practically any one that you can name from a major Hollywood feature about teenagers.

Beautifully shot, framed, helmed, written, and performed, Typhoon Club deserves its reputation as a classic slice of Japanese cinema. If you haven’t seen it before, this new 4K restoration is a perfect way to watch it.

Typhoon Club, from Third Window Films, is now available in a new 4K restoration, region-free blu ray.

Bonus Features

• New 4K digital remaster from the original negatives
• Feature audio commentary by Tom Mes
• Selected audio commentary by Josh Slater-Williams
• Assistant Director Koji Enokido Talk Event
• Introduction by Ryusuke Hamaguchi at the Berlin Film Festival
• Trailer 
• Slipcase with artwork from Gokaiju
• ‘Director’s Company’ edition featuring insert by Jasper Sharp – limited to 2000 copies

Giandomenico Fracchia (one of the many characters of comedic actor Paolo Villaggio) is given a challenge that he must succeed at or lose his job: sell a castle in Transylvania to nearsighted Arturo Filini (Gigi Reder), who doesn’t realize that he is buying Castle Dracula.

The duo get involved in the family drama of Count Vlad (Edmund Purdom!) and his sister Countess Oniria (Ania Pieroni, Mater Lachrymarum!), who is about to be married in an arranged ceremony to Frankenstein’s Monster (Romano Puppo, Lee Van Cleef’s stuntman and one of the pallbearers at his funeral). There’s also a beautiful vampire slayer named Luna (Isabella Ferrari) waiting to take out all of the undead.

Director Neri Parenti is known for his comedy films with Villaggio, as well as cinepanettoni, or comedy movies intended to be watched over the holidays. He also made The Face with Two Left Feet, a parody of Saturday Night Fever.

There’s a scene where Fracchia takes his girlfriend to the movies. They’re watching Return of the Living Dead. It scares the character so much that he nearly decimates the theater. By the end of the movie, this has all been a dream and our hero is back in the same theater except that Dracula is sitting behind him.

This looks way better than you’d expect but that’s because the cinematographer was Luciano Tovoli, who shot Suspiria, The Passenger, Tenebrae, The Sunday Woman and many of Barbet Schroeder’s films. I won’t mention that he also lensed Dracula 3D.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Also known as Bicheongoesu (The Undead Beast) and The Flying Monster, this has Dr. Kim (Kim Ki-Ju) and Kang Ok-hee (Nam Hye-Gyeong) trying to prove that dinosaurs still exist and then, when they attack, trying to stop them.

Directed by Kim Jeong-Yong and written by Lee Mun-ung, this film keeps the budget low by taking many of its monsters from Tsuburaya Productions TV series. Pestar comes from Ultraman, Seagorath, Seamons, Bemstar and Terochilu are from Return of Ultraman, Verokron and Fireman are from Ultraman Ace and there are also kaiju from the Taiwanese film The Founding of Ming Dynasty.

It’s kind of strange because it barely works because this movie doesn’t seem to all work together but you get that when you mix new footage with 1970s Japanese TV effects. That said, I had plenty of fun watching it. I mean, even the worst giant monster movie is still pretty great.

You can watch this on Tubi.