In the 80s, Jess Franco seemed to go between adult films and adventure movies that looked back to cinema’s past. Bangkok, City of the Dead — directed by Franco as Clarence Brown and soundtracked by him as Pancho Villa –finds rich girl Marta (Helena Garret) kidnapped by Akuto and Aminia (Lina Romay), who decide that since they’re not getting a cut of the 20 million dollar ransom from their boss Malko (Antonio Mayans), they should just keep her for themselves and make sure her boyfriend Riao (José Llamas) can save her. Except that Malko kills Akuto, Aminia tries to make him give the girl back, Riao tries to save her, and her father Flanagan (Eduardo Fajardo) hires Panama Joe (Bork Gordon), a private detective who is not Al Pereira, to also save her.

There’s no hardcore sex — but Lina dancing in a leopard bikini, which I can appreciate — and no diamond theft, either. If you’re a frequent guest in the Jess Franco Cinematic Universe, you’re used to seeing Lina eat bananas, amongst other things, and the camera being pulled into the tractor beam it seemed to have between her thighs.

Shot at the same time as Trip to Bangkok, this has Lina as a pirate queen and a talking parrot, as well as Jess making an Oriental adventure movie — again — and that’s fine because sometimes I like to sit back and watch his films as if they are waves cresting over me as my feet are buried in the sand.

Dean Baker (William Berger) is a depressed American writer whose wife Shirley (Muriel Montossé) has just left him and who has been considering suicide. Then he falls for the much younger Jill (Analia Ivars) at a dance club, which leads to five criminals (Ricardo Palacios, Antonio Mayans, Luis Barboo, Juan Soler and Alfredo Kier) chasing him through Casablanca — he was drunk during a poker game and told one of the card players that they could kill him and take all of his money he just won — just when he’s found a reason to live again.

One of ten movies Jess Franco directed in 1985, this was written by Santiago Moncada (Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Swamp of the Ravens, Voodoo Black Exorcist, A Bell from Hell, All the Colors of the Dark) and made once before as Ace of Hearts (Juego sucio en Panamá) by director Tulio Demicheli (thanks Kino Detour).

This feels personal for Franco, telling the story of an artist on the wrong side of life when most of it is over instead of begun, drinking himself into oblivion as love fails him and lust leads him into dangerous places. I’m on the downside of that hill and drinking on a work night, writing what I’ve wanted to write all day instead of what I had to write all day. These are the things I think of as I watch a Jess Franco movie, but luckily, Lina Romay showed up looking for an autograph in this and just seeing her eyes and smile makes me forget that life is often about just trying to make it through.

Oliver (José Llamas) and Mary (Karin Dior) just wanted to go on a honeymoon. Still, their guides, Mark (José Miguel García) and Marco (Diego Porta) lead them to the lizard god-worshipping Tobonga tribe, who also eat people. Conchita gets lashed to a sacrificial altar just in time for this story to end, and we find a trio of martial arts students led by Lina Romay. I never knew how badly I needed to see Candy Coster in a karate gi. They decide to visit the Tobongas and steal their diamonds, in case you were wondering whether or not this was a Jess Franco movie. Finally, the karate instructors kill Sylvia, the wife of the jungle guide (Mabel Escaño); Lina Romay joins forces with Oliver to rescue his wife.

That parrot that talks? That’s Jess Franco.

This movie makes no logical sense, despite what I tried to figure out above. Why is Lina with the evil drug pusher karate instructors? Is she an undercover cop? Why does she decide to help Oliver? How did Jess Franco make a movie with nearly no sex? Was he trying to make an Indiana Jones movie infused with this love of pulp? Santiago Moncada wrote this ten years before, and one day, did Jess just think, “Sure, I can make that.”

Look, I know this objectively isn’t good, but I feel better watching these movies. They make me happy, something that’s in short supply in this world. Yes, what makes me feel good is ultra-low-budget movies that make no sense, but just look at Lina dressed for karate action and tell me if you’re not moved.

I think about Jess Franco and Lina Romay a lot. I’d like to feel that they had a great relationship — they were together for years — and they lived up to the title of this movie, The Voyeur and the Exhibitionist. Working together on this as co-directors, Lina sits in an apartment, in front of posters of Mick Jagger and Lou Reed, and for 54 minutes, she gets horizontal with Mari Carmen G. Alonso (who performed as Rossy Pussy in this and another Franco movie, Para las nenas, leche calentita) and another man while the exhibitionist watches and makes a mess of himself.

An early Spanish X film — Franco and Romay made ten really fast to get ahead of the censorship ending — this has no real story other than someone likes to watch and someone likes to be watched. Lina says, “Maybe I look like a maniac, but it’s a game that amuses me.” She’s the power bottom, the real one in control, as the male gaze only can see when she performs for it.

This is the magic of Jess Franco, that he can cause people to write long and hopefully poetic write-ups on movies that are really just dirty sex. Do we want them to be more than they are or are they more than they are I can’t answer, but like always, I think about Jess and Lina growing old together, two perverts who found each other’s yum in a world where that rarely happens.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this on Saturday, Jan. 18 at midnight at the Coolidge Theater in Brookline, MA (tickets here). For more information, visit Cinematic Void. 

Initially intended for Michelangelo Antonioni, this film had the potential to be another Blow-Up. However, Carlo Vanzina and Enrico Vanzina created it with only a limited connection to the novel that inspired the title. The book, written by fashion journalist Paolo Pietroni under the pseudonym Marco Parma, generated significant controversy upon its release for naming prominent figures in Italy’s fashion industry.

The plot of this film, unlike any other, revolves around a serial killer prowling the streets of Milan, targeting glamorous models with a deadly pair of scissors, a weapon suggested by the renowned writer Franco Ferrini, known for his collaborations with Dario Argento. The initial choice of a gun as the killer’s weapon was quickly discarded, as it didn’t quite fit the unique essence of the Giallo genre.

Meanwhile, Yellowstone Park ranger Bob Crane (played by Tom Schanley) senses that his sister Jessica (Nicola Perring) is in distress. His journey takes him across the world, where he unexpectedly finds himself mingling with the rich and famous. Can he rescue her, or will he find himself in the crosshairs of the killer? And will Donald Pleasence ever turn down a film role?

One thing is certain: Barbara (Renée Simonsen), a model and friend of Jessica’s, is interested in Bob, but there are hints that she might also be obsessed with Jessica.

I often think about the connection between Dario Argento and Brian De Palma. This movie shares similarities with its murder scenes set in Italy and its modern American methods of death, which are reminiscent of the drill in Body Double and the psychic elements in Sisters.

Unlike many Giallo films, this one made a significant impact in Italy, sparking a small wave of comeback films set in the fashion world and the sequel Too Beautiful to Die. While I prefer that sequel and certainly think it surpasses the third film, the Vanzina brothers’ The Last Fashion Show, I’ve come to appreciate this film over time.

Never forget that this has one of the most amazing moments in Italian exploitation movies: Donald Pleasence going to town on a Wendy’s salad bar.

VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the Patreon for the Video Archives podcast. You can hear a preview here.

You have to feel bad for the Vietnam vets in this movie. They go back to Nam with the best of intentions, hoping to destroy the Golden Triangle’s drug empires, but when they get there they learn that their fellow soldiers are the ones behind it all.

How did they get there? Well, Chris Mitchum had a gas station that he stopped some criminals from robbing, so they responded by killing his adopted son and assaulting his wife. Instead of, you know, going through counseling and working through it, she decides that the best thing she can do is kill herself while he’s calling the cops. I’m not one to tell anyone how to deal with their grief, but somewhere between anger and bargaining and acceptance and hope is drawing up the plans for a mobile battle RV and building motorcycles with rockets on them.

I mean, this movie starts out as Death Wish, has our hero get arrested and then the authorities tell him to get together with his old commandos and go do some real killing. This feels like the kind of movie a bunch of strange children with too many G.I. Joes and perhaps too much knowledge of cocaine would film on their parent’s camcorder in stop motion. Inside their mind, the movie looks like the stuff of dreams. To adults, it looks like an action figure just standing there while children scream things about adopting babies in flashback sequences.

This is a movie that has a commando unit named the Rat Bastards and an adopted Vietnamese child named Charlie. If you can commit to that — and you love John Phillip Law as much as I do — then you really can’t lose.

Here’s how the hierarchy of renting movies worked in the 80s: Are all the Stallone, Arnold and Van Damme movies out? Then reach for some Michael Dudikoff. Oh, those are out? Does the store have any Cirio Santiago stuff? Good deal. No? They’re all out? Well, I guess Bobby A. Suarez will do. I recommend Cleopatra Wong and another movie he wrote, Bionic Boy.

And this movie obviously.

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.

In the days before the internet, we could build our own cults. Amongst my family, we were obsessed with Pee-Wee Herman. Just imagine, in a time that could only be predicted by TV Guide, Pee-Wee would randomly show up in movies like Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie and Nice Dreams, here he was only known as “The Hamburger Guy.” As the 80’s began, Pee-Wee started by performing five months of the live The Pee-wee Herman Show at the Roxy Theater in LA and getting a taped special on HBO.

That special dominated my eight-year-old mind, presenting a world that at once childlike and at the other end, strangely sinister and adult. I watched it so many times that I could recite every single word and still can. The end, where Pee-Wee finally learns to fly, can often reduce me to tears.

In the five years between that special and this movie, Paul Reubens pretty much became Pee-Wee, even asking his parents to go by the names Honey and Herman Herman. His David Letterman appearances — major surprises, as we stated before — were riotous bursts of anarchy on a show that was already breaking nearly every rule of television. So when a Pee-Wee movie was announced, we lost our collective minds.

Somehow, Pee-Wee Herman is the rarest of cases of someone who became famous without losing a single ounce of his weirdness. And much like the HBO show that came before, I can still recite every word of this movie, quote it at will throughout the day and get misty-eyed just thinking of moments within it.

The story is incredibly simple: Pee-Wee’s most prized possession — his bike — has been taken by Francis. Now, he must get it back. A psychic tells our hero that his bike is in the basement of the Alamo, so we’re off to adventure.

That’s it. It’s that easy.

From wrestler Silo Sam chasing Pee-Wee around dinosaurs to his speech to Dottie (I actually gave this exact same “I’m a rebel, a loner” speech to a date once and was convinced she was going to slap me; she cried and told me it was the saddest thing she’d ever heard, somehow never seeing this movie before), dancing to “Tequilla” at a biker bar while Satan’s Helpers (look for Elvira) look on and so much more, there are so many moments in this film that simply listing them would take on the feel of Chris Farley talking to Paul McCartney.

I mean, without this film, you may not have Danny Elfman and Tim Burton making big budget movies.

To write the film, Reubens, Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol purchased the book Syd Field’s Screenplay and were as literal as possible. “It’s a 90-minute film, it’s a 90-page script,” said Ruebens. “On page 30 I lose my bike, on page 60 I find it. It’s literally exactly what they said to do in the book.” In my crazed mind, I also wish that Ruebens had followed through with his plan to remake Pollyanna with Pee-Wee in the lead.

There are so many easter eggs in this film, like the magic shop owned being named after Mario Bava, the Chiodo Brothers animating Large Marge, the Aleister Crowley head in the aforementioned magic shop, James Brolin playing Pee-Wee, the start of my crush on E.G. Daily, Professor Toru Tanaka as Francis’ butler and even the first acting role for Darla the dog, who was Queenie in The ‘Burbs and Precious in Silence of the Lambs.

There are so many lines in this, too. I leave you with my favorite:

Simone: Do you have any dreams?

Pee-Wee Herman: Yeah, I’m all alone. I’m rolling a big doughnut and this snake wearing a vest…

PS: I have just one more ridiculous Pee-Wee story to tell. In 1989, Pee-Wee exchanged fake marriage vows with Chandi Heffner — the adopted daughter of Doris Duke, the richest little girl in the world. Chandi was a Hare Krishna devotee and sister of the third wife of billionaire Nelson Peltz and all of 35-years-old when she was adopted, as Duke believed that she was the reincarnation of her only biological child Arden, who died days after being born. Chandra and Pee-Wee were “married” by Imelda Marcos at Duke’s Honolulu mansion Shangri-La. If you think the world is not amazing and special, you’re a fool.

Blood Tracks will be available as part of Vinegar Syndrome’s Lost City of Black Friday sale. It will kick off at exactly 12:01 AM EST on Friday, November 29 and end at 11:59 PM EST on Monday, December 2 on Vinegar Syndrome’s site.

Imagine The Hills Have Eyes, but in a skiing lodge, with a hair metal band.

It stars Easy Action, the first Swedish band to ever get a worldwide record deal, which is a fact on their Wikipedia page that kind of smells fishy. Abba?

The band split up in 1986, a year after this effort, when guitarist and band leader Kee Marcello quit the band to join Europe. That band went on to sell 30 million albums, so he did pretty well. Singer Zinny J. Zan went on to join the band Kingpin, which you would know better by their later name, Shotgun Messiah.

American hair band Poison used the chorus of Easy Action’s 1983 single “We Go Rocking” in their song “I Want Action,” which led to a lawsuit that the Swedish band won.

The original lineup just played their hit album That Makes One at the Sweden Rock Festival. That makes me happy.

There’s a whole bunch of mayhem, hairspray and murder in this movie, including people getting their eyes eaten, axes to the head and impalings. It’s pretty grisly, which is great, because it juxtaposes the ridiculous antics of this band and its groupies trying to make a movie in the snow.

The best part of all of this is that Easy Action were all afraid to act, so director Mats Helge Olsson got them drunk. You can tell — they’re destroyed for most of the movie. I advise that you’re in the same condition when you watch this.