Everyone in Alpha City wants Raphaela but no one more than Frank, a karate kicking dude with something to prove. There’s also a guy called The American, a handsome gangster that she’s also into. All three of them only exist in the neon night of West Berlin, in the shadows of the Metro nightclub, which was the location for Demons.

Written and directed by Eckhart Schmidt, who also made Der Fan, this is less an end of the world story — although much like Tenebre, it certainly seems like not all that many people are left alive — and more one about sex complicating relationships or maybe even humans complicating relationships. I don’t think that Schmidt could make a normal movie if he tried and we’re all the better for that.

Betsy Russell stepped into the role of Molly “Angel” Stewart for the second movie in this series as  the producers could not meet Donna Wilkes’ salary demands. This would start the trend of a new Angel in each movie.

This time, our little girl has grown up and is in law school. She learns that Lieutenant Andrews (no longer played by Cliff Gorman, now it’s Robert F. Lyons), the cop who got her off the streets, has been killed. Luckily, her old street family are all around and played by the same great performers as the original, with Steven M. Porter as Yo-Yo Charlie, Rory Calhoun as Kit Carson and Susan Tyrrell as Solly.

Only one person knows who killed Andrews and that’s another street performer named Johnny Glitter (Barry Pearl, Grease). It turns out there’s a scheme to buy up Hollywood Boulevard and Andrews got caught in the middle. Solly also has a baby that she found and that infant gets caught up in the craziness, nearly getting killed in a shootout and then almost thrown off a building. Avenging Angel has no qualms about being a neon-soaked nightmare world of street people with hearts of gold shooting, killing and playing Weekend at Bernie’s with dead mobsters, much less babies being constantly in death’s grasp.

There’s also product placement — in an exploitation movie! — for Adidas.

Avenging Angel was written and directed by Robert Vincent O’Neil, who in addition to writing the first movie, also wrote Vice Squad, which is a thematically similar and perhaps better movie, as well as Wonder Women, Deadly Force and the third film in this series. He also directed the first film in this series and Blood Mania.

You can watch this on Tubi.

In 1978, director Shin Sang-ok was kidnapped* and taken to North Korea by Kim Jong-il, then the son of the country’s leader. Shin resisted being in North Korea and after two escape attempts, he was re-educated and learned why he was in the country: He was to make several films for the movie-loving soon-to-be despot of the nation.

The last of these films was this giant monster epic in which there’s a hidden message: the monster is really Kim Il-sung, who has betrayed the people’s revolution for his own gain.

In the past of Korea, life is tough. An old and imprisoned blacksmith makes a small doll and in his last moments, demands that the gods create someone to help the oppressed. When his daughter’s blood gets on the doll, it comes to life and begins eating iron and steel, growing in strength with every meal.

Despite aiding the people against a governor, the king sends so many men and kills so many people that Pulgasari voluntarily chooses to die to save everyone. He is reborn when the blacksmith’s daughter — who has lost her father and fiancee to the king — bleeds over the grave, bringing the monster back to life.

The problem is that even after he kills the king, Pulgasari’s hunger will never end. The villagers willingly give him the tools they need to thrive and he always wants more, so our heroine hides inside a metal bell and allows the creature to devour it. Their psychic connection causes him great pain and his stomach explodes.

The crazy thing is this movie has Toho effects. When they were hired, they thought they were going to China, not North Korea. They were well taken care of, as when special effects artist Teruyoshi Nakano said he missed Japanese beer, his entire hotel fridge was fully stocked the next day.

Even crazier, if that’s possible with the whole origin of this movie, Pulgasar was sold in Pakistan as Zombi 34: The Communist Bull-Monster, which affirms to me that a movie can have any story and work within the Zombi numbering system.

*They also took actress Choi Eun-hee, who was his ex-wife and forced them to remarry. They stayed married afterward, even after coming to the United States. After two years of hiding in Reston, VA, Shin and Choi moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as Simon Sheen, directing 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up. I did not make that up.

You know, right off the bat this movie is telling you tall tales. That’s because it’s not the second Boggy Creek movie, it’s the third, following 1977’s Return to Boggy Creek (and followed by two direct-to-video movies, Boggy Creek: The Legend Is True and The Legacy of Boggy Creek).

Charles B. Pierce, who made the original regional classic — as well as one of the greatest regional movies ever, The Town That Dreaded Sundown — wrote, directed and starred in this American-International Picture movie. They had been bugging him for years to make a sequel and he kept turning them down. Then, well, he made this.

“I really didn’t want to do Boggy Creek II. I think it’s probably my worst picture. This time, I spent almost as much on the creature suit as I did on the film itself. I played too big a role in the picture, and I had too many of my friends in it. It’s all right, but it’s not one of my favorites,” said Pierce.

Pierce is University of Arkansas anthropology professor Dr. Brian Lockhart, who brings two of his students, Tim (Pierce’s son Chuck) and Tanya (Serene Hedin, who was in two other Pierce films, Hawken’s Breed and Sacred Ground), as well as her friend Leslie (Cindy Butler, who, you guessed it, only acted in Pierce movies like this, Grey Eagle and The Town That Dreaded Sundown, because, well, she was his wife).

This movie has stories of the Fouke monster, such as a rancher who lost his cattle to the monster, someone who was beaten by the beast, an attorney who soiled himself when it attacked the outhouse he was relieving himself in and the sheriff who lost his fish to the creature and its son.

Then, an old man has kidnapped the younger creature and Lockhart and his students have to try to fight it off before they take the baby skunk ape out to leave with its parent. That darn Old Man Crenshaw, caging bigfoot babies!

Yeah, you should probably just watch the original The Legend of Boggy Creek.

One of the few movies to be rated X for just plain violence, Tenement reminds me of exactly why I love Roberta Findlay. I’m not expecting high art. I’m expecting sheer spectacle and entertainment, which this movie overdelivers.

Also known as Game of Survival and Slaughter in the South Bronx, this movie is another that didn’t need a budget, just a Bronx high rise and a cast willing to do whatever it takes to make the movie, which involves rampant, bloody and over the top destruction of human beings.

A gang starts making their way from floor to floor of the building, acting like they’re the bad guys in a John Carpenter-style defend our home turf film. Imagine of the sad sacks in Death Wish 3 didn’t have Paul Kersey on their side to shoot people for stealing his camera.

Writers Joel Bender (Gas Pump Girls) and Rick Marx (Wanda Whips Wall Street, Warrior Queen, Gor, Doom Asylum) bring the sleaze, Findlay brings the sleaze, the actors bring the sleaze, man, everyone is on their highest volume and it just works.

The poster for this is by John Fasano, who was all over the place when it came to talent. In addition to art directing the magazines Muscle and Beauty, Race Car & Driver, Wrestling Power and OUI, he rewrote and appeared in Findlay’s Nightmare Sisters, directed Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare and Black Roses, and wrote  and script doctored movies like Another 48 Hrs., Tombstone, Color of Night and the Brian Trenchard-Smith directed Megiddo: The Omega Code 2.

Findlay has referred to this movie as a revisualization of her childhood, which is beyond wild. Man, Findlay is something else, doing everything from working in adult as a cinematographer under the name Robert Norman (she worked on CJ Laing’s ‘Sweet Punkin’ I Love You…. which she also wrote), photographed Shriek of the Mutilated and Invasion of the Blood Farmers (using the name Frederick Douglass), acted in several films as Anna Riva, provided Claudia Jennings’ voice in The Touch of Her Flesh and even composed music as Harold Hindgrind and the Cosmic Seven and Robin Aden. She rivals Aristide Massaccesi for alternate names!

You can watch this on YouTube courtesy of the great people at Blechbuster Video.