EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on October 30, 2020.

Along with Edge of the Axe and Deadly Manor, Spanish horror director José Ramón Larraz made this movie explicitly for the burgeoning American video rental market. It has all the cheap thrills you want, but it feels like a Michelin star chef just made you a mac and cheese pizza.

Helen Hewitt (Lorin Jean Vail, The Patriot) and her husband Bob (Scott Thompson Baker, Open House) have just moved into the country villa of her recently deceased Aunt Catherine. Everyone there is pretty much beyond rude and more in your face hostile to them both, which is only the start of the weirdness they endure. I mean, I would have given up when the corpse of Catherine sat straight up when Helen kissed her.

Actually, even before they get there, Helen learns that her father was Catherine’s ex-husband and that he died soon after she was born. Her aunt has held a grudge out against the family, but still gives her everything she owns before she commits suicide during the video will by drinking poisoned milk. Yes, you read that correctly.

This is another movie I have to add to my poison milk Letterboxd list, which also includes La muñeca perversa, The Cat O’Nine Tails, The Two Mrs. Carrolls, The Killing Kind, Impulse, The Woods, Confessions, Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker, Edge of Darkness and Revenge of the Living Dead Girls.

Jack Taylor — who was in more horror movies than even I have watched, but I’ll list out the Nostradamus films, The Ghost Galleon and Female Vampire to start — plays a blind musician who plays a concert while everyone in the town conspires against the two newcomers. Eurohorror queen Patty Shepherd also shows up as a character named, get this, Gertrude Stein.

It’s not great, but the idea of a great movie is in here. But you know me. This is exactly the kind of goofball horror that I love.

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

Cross My Heart (1987): Armyan Bernstein is usually known as a producer, but he directed and co-wrote this movie with Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman co-creator Gail Parent.

It has similarities to When Harry Met Sally as David Morgan (Martin Short) and Kathy (Annette O’Toole) — our lead couple — are continually advised by their respective friends Bruce (Paul Reiser) and  Nancy (Joanna Kerns). Now, they prepare themselves for their third date, the one where they may finally make love, and more importantly the one where they’ll reveal themselves for better or worse to one another.

It’s an interesting film, as I never saw Short as a sexual romantic lead before and there it is. This is a movie where their conversation nearly happens in real time. O’Toole is gorgeous and if you have a strange crush on short, well…allow this to be your film.

Pure Luck (1991): One of Becca’s favorite movies, Pure Luck has Martin Short in the traditional role you know and enjoy him for, as a bad luck office worker who can’t help but be overly sure of hismelf despite destroying everything in his path.

Directed by Nadia Tass and written by Francis Veber (it’s based on his French movie La chèvre and it’s not the only movie he made that got remade by Hollywood; there’s also Le Grand Blond Avec une Chaussure Noire (The Man with One Red Shoe), L’emmerdeur (Buddy Buddy), La Cage aux Folles (The Birdcage), Le Jouet (The Toy), Les Comperes (Fathers’ Day), Le Diner de Cons (Dinner for Schmucks) and Les Fugitifs ( Three Fugitives)), Herschel Weingrod and Timothy Harris.

Short’s Eugene Proctor is just as clumsy as his boss’ missing daughter Valerie (Sheila Kelley), so a psychologist named Monosoff (Harry Shearer) decides that he’d be the perfect person to find her. To ensure that he doesn’t screw up, he’s assigned Raymond Campanella (Danny Glover) to the rescue trip to Puerto Vallarta.

In an interview, Tass said, “It was successful in a financial sense but not in a satisfying sense. It was congenial doing a Martin Short comedy, but American comedy is different from Australian comedy. It is broader. American audiences enjoyed Pure Luck, but audiences in other countries did not enjoy it so much with the exception of the Germans. I wanted to do something else with the comedy and so did Danny Glover. I would like to have put a lot more pathos and pain into it. But they wanted a comedy for America.”

He still gets residuals from the film, so there’s that.

It’s a silly film that has a stand out scene with Short’s face swelling up from a bee sting that never fails to make me laugh. Yeah, it’s not much, but if you get one laugh from it, can it be that bad?

You can get the Mill Creek Martin Short Double Feature – Cross My Heart / Pure Luck from Deep Discount.

Puneet Issar is the man known as both Shekhar and Superman in this 1987 B. Gupta-directed remix remake ripoff of 1978’s Superman. He’s sent to Earth by his Kryptonian father Jor-El (Dharmendra) and as the planet explodes, the footage from Richard Donner’s film, as well as the John Williams score, is used.

After landing in India, Shekhar has the same upbringing as Clark Kent, except that he seems to really enjoy the song “Beat It.” He then grows up, goes to college and falls for Gita, who is also being pretty much stalked by K. K. Verma (Shakti Kapoor), so we have our Lois and Lex. After his father has a heart attack, Shekhar finds a tube in the rocket that brought him to Earth and becomes Superman, all while Gita finds work both in a hostel and at the Daily Times. Shekhar joins her and they both learn that Verma is now a criminal mastermind, complete with an army of strong women.

This is a Superman that has telekinesis — that he uses to feed orphans with dancing food — and a Lex Luthor that frequently has dancing girls show up and perform musical numbers for his pleasure.

Of course, Superman flies around the world just like the Hollywood film and yes, it’s the exact same footage. What a magical world we live in.

You can watch this on YouTube.

You’d think that Michael Moriarty would have had enough of window washers falling off of high rises, but he’s back — well, he’s playing a security expert instead of a thief, this time Dennis Randall — and he’s trying to figure out why people keep dying inside a possessed high rise.

The mystery that I will solve for you is that director Ken Barnett is really two people.

Original director Ken Wiederhorn (Shock Waves) was replaced by Freddie Francis. Yes, the Amicus director, making his last movie.

He wasn’t the only replacement. Moriarty replaced Roger Daltrey and Jenny Agutter (An American Werewolf In London) replaced Lucy Guttridge.

Released in the U.S. as The Curse V and as Demons 7: The Inferno in Japan, this movie starts with some great deaths — and Agutter in some of the most ridiculously unrevealing lingerie ever seen in a movie — and becomes a haunted high rise movie that can’t compete with Demons 2 or Poltergeist 3.

It does have Kevin McCarthy playing a psychic trying to investigate what’s happening as well as a finale that has Agutter’s hair and wardrobe looking different in nearly every scene.

This was a Sandy Howard production, just like Blue Monkey, so it definitely was on the shelf of your video store.

Look, you can watch any one of these three movies in any order you’d like. Things just seem to happen, plot lines stop and start with no reason behind them and most of the movie is fight scenes, which is as it should be. If you’re the kind of person who needs things to make sense, run fast and run hard.

These were directed by Joseph Kuo, the same man who brought the world Mystery of Chessboxing, World of the Drunken Master, Deadly Fists of Kung Fu, The Old Master, 36 Deadly Styles, 18 Bronzemen, Shaolin Kung Fu and so many more. His movies are all pretty wild but these ones, well, they take that level of strangeness to unseen levels.

Ninja Death I (TUBI LINK): The description of this on Tubi says that it’s “A late-‘80s martial arts film about the owner of a prostitution brothel who is also a secret kung fu artist on the side with a powerful master.”

Sure, OK.

Tiger (Alexander Lo Rei, USA Ninja) is a bouncer at a Hong Kong brothel who learns that another house with red doors has opened across town but it’s all a trap. That jack shack’s owner, The Grand Master is hunting for a fighter with a plum tattoo across his chest and that man is, of course, Tiger, who is trained by The Master to battle that man’s various ninjas and fighters.

Also, this movie begins with a baby being protected from an unstoppable warrior who kills everyone he touches including taking a man’s eyeballs out. There’s also a credit sequence of ninjas battling in front of a red seamless background and I could watch an entire movie of just that.

There’s also a torture scene where The Master keeps poking Tiger in all his pressure points and asks him if he saw Drunken Master because he sure has. He then has dudes beat Tiger with sticks, pours snake venom all over him and makes then freezes him inside a block of ice. He also makes him drink vinegar because that’s training. How this so-called training teaches you to fight is a mystery; I get the wax on, wax off lesson of Miyagi, but how does this make Tiger a better fighter? And when Tiger asks for a lesson about ninjas, the Master tells him a long story that’s mostly a long and involved sex scene.

The Master is also a ninja — with a baby mask for a face — and he ends up facing Devil Mask, who is controlled by The Grand Master with a flute and also has the power to become a tornado.

There’s also a girl named Sakura in love with Tiger and Devil Mask is probably The Master’s brother. So much happens that you may be bewildered but that’s OK, there are still three more parts to make your head spin.

Ninja Death II (TUBI LINK): “When his master is killed, a young martial artist must continue his training with other teachers to prepare to fight the evil ninja in his pursuit.”

Spoiler warning, Tubi!

The second chapter uses its first half to explain what we just saw but it helps it make more sense: In the flashback that started the last movie, The Master was the man who ran away with young Tiger, the man who lost his eyes has become a blind fortune teller and Devil Mask is Tiger’s brother and The Master’s brother. Then, he kills himself by karate chopping himself in the brain as his injuries from the last movie are too much to handle.

Oh yeah — that entire sequence feature’s John Barry’s score for You Only Live Twice.

At one point, Tiger is poisoned by ninjas and falls down a waterfall and yet lives because he’s nursed back to health by a kindly old man and his granddaughter. Tiger is nearly insane from the poison and he pretty much assaults the girl because he dreams that she’s Sakura and is poisoned which is a defense that would not work in any country. He apologizes when he’s healed as if it helps. The grandfather gives him the antidote as long as he promises to come back and marries the girl, but then as soon as Tiger leaves, ninjas kill them all and it’s basically the good guys cleaning up the mess of the bad guys.

There’s a lot more training because the big battle is coming.

Ninja Death III (TUBI LINK): “The blind fortune teller and his crew, Tiger and the Japanese brother and sister prepare to battle the Grandmaster, Devil Mask and infinite ninjas.”

After the second problematic and repetitive part of the series, Ninja Death III rebounds with moments like Tiger nearly being able to fly, Devil Mask becoming a horizontally flying force of ninja magic and The Grand Master, who has gold clothes and hammers that he can throw. Actually, that weapon is called the Double Sky Hammer and I better get it right.

Also, that description is correct: there are so many ninjas in this I lost count.

Tiger learns a new style from the blind fortune teller — who remarks after everyone in a village “I can’t see anything” — and learns who his mother the Princess is.

You have to respect a ninja series that not only has ninja battles but goes all in on the sleaze. If you’re going to have a hero who runs a cathouse, you better show the cats — and cat — in action. I mean, the second movie goes wild with a bloody ninja attack while people are in the midst of people exploring the clouds and rain, as the Chinese say.

In my magical dreams, there are action figures of every character in these movies.

Watching a Godfrey Ho movie, you often ask yourself, “Have I seen this before?”

That’s because he reuses so much footage and has so many similar titles that it can be incredibly frustrating to know if you really have just spent a small;l part of your life seeing the same ninja movie again.

If you already saw Ninja Masters of Death or Ninja Project Daredevils, you’ve already seen G.I. Joey.

Also, if you’ve somehow already checked out the Korean war movie 13se Sonyeon (At 13 Years Old), you have also already seen this movie.

Or some of it.

That means that some of this movie is about the eternal struggle between capitalism and Communism. But with ninjas, so it does feel as dire as a Thanksgiving dinner when someone has just come back from college and wants to fight their Fox News parents and you just want to eat some cranberries.

Nothing in the description of this movie happens in the movie.

In fact, I wish that all arguments over belief structures had easy-to-follow color-coded ninjas for me to cheer throughout their battles, because then I’d actually care about politics.

If you ever have a conversation with me in person, please know that all I really want to talk about is cannibal movies, mondo films, the crossover between Gary Garver in porn and horror movies, Cannon movies and Godfrey Ho. No one ever wants to talk about those things. I never want to talk about politics because the world is a ratchet effect: one side blocks movement back to the left, another turns everything to the right and you are a spoke on their wheel. There is no two-party system, you are being lied to, there are only poor people and those that have everything and all we can do is take care of our immediate circle of people and attempt to start a better world on a small scale, if we can, except you know, the world is heading toward a climate change that will negatively impact everything on earth.

Can we just talk about fucking ninjas now?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Also known as Ninja Death Squad, this comes from Godfrey Ho, who created at least a hundred movies from ten movies or so the legend goes. All with ninjas. Sometimes he would shoot new footage of ninja fights and throw them into other films. Sometimes, you have no idea if what you are watching is new, old, a movie he made or something he stole and this can all happen within the same thirty seconds of footage.

Starting at Shaw Brothers as an assistant director to Chang Cheh, Ho eventually become the person behind an array of movies that have interchangeable titles and reused Richard Harrison so many times that he ruined that actor’s career.

He’s also a man of mystery — his multiple names number as many as Bruno Mattei, the director he most closely resembles — and his company with Tomas Tang may be a misnomer because he very well could be Tomas Tang. Regardless, IFD purchased tons of movies from numerous Asian-speaking countries for clearance prices and discovered that if Sho Kosugi wasn’t going to make twenty movies a year, they — or he! — certainly could.

According to Den of Geek, Lai had a falling out with Tang, who formed his own company, Filmark. Yet both companies — despite reports of a rivalry — used Godfrey Ho as a director and many of the same actors, so it was as if two companies were made to sell twice as much product.

Supposedly, Tang died in a fire. Ho would keep on making movies, particularly ones with Cynthia Rothrock.

Anyways…

This movie is edited at least in part from a film called Maestro Bandido. So some of this is about a gang of ninjas that specialize in killing for governments, all before they’re figured out and a special agent hunts them down. These ninjas all doing the best stuff, like turning flowers into bombs and summoning snakes, so their powers are beyond what you assume ninjas can do.

The bad guys are all in black. The good guy in white. And the leader is purple. That’s about the only things in this movie that you have to guide you. The rest, well, you’ll figure it all out.

You can watch this on Tubi.

We’ll get to Death Game later today, but what’s amazing is that that film has been made so many times, including this movie, which came out years before Death Game itself.

Little Miss Innocent (1973): Directed by Pittsburgh native Chris Warfield and written by E.E. Patchen — potentially from a draft of Death Game that was making the rounds at that time — Little Miss Innocent begins when Carol (Sandy Dempsey, who appeared in more than sixty adult films and used just as many names; there’s a theory that she died in a boating accident at the age of 26 that has never been proved correct) and Judy (Terri Johnson, who was also in Flesh Gordon) are picked up by record producer Rick (John Alderman, Superstition) in his fancy convertible.

Judy is a virgin, a fact that Rick didn’t know. Seconds after he takes her, Carol shows up and makes love to him. It’s nearly any straight man’s fantasy, except that the girls are insatiable and while that may make a great title for a Marilyn Chambers movie, it’s another thing for a man in his late 40s to live up to.

Rick expects the girls to leave but they end up moving right in, which seems fine if strange at first, but Carol also has a mean streak that starts showing up. All Rick wants to do is sleep on the couch, his Penthouse Forum letter seemingly out of control as the biological humor of men being out of their prime as they age being displayed throughout. The girls’ carnal needs have sapped him of his ability to work and even stay awake, almost vampiric in their need for continual gratification.

With camera work by Ray Dennis Steckler and second unit direction by George “Buck” Flower, this is a curiosity that goes beyond just being IMDB trivia fodder. Despite the girls blackmailing him and claiming to be underaged, Rick is suffering under the male delusion that he is the alpha in this situation, continually bedding two attractive women. Yet again, what should be a dream is shown to be a nightmare, as that very alpha nature is sapped. Every orgasm needs a refractory period that takes longer and longer for him, an issue the girls never need to deal with. Performing under the pressure of being arrested can’t be good for the libido either.

Warfield didn’t fall out of love with this story. In 1987, he’d remake the film under the same title, keep the same song and much of the script, only going all out with the hardcore — and then some for some straight and uptight men — with Eric Edwards playing Rick, Summer Rose as Judy and Sheri St. Claire as Carol.

Originally released by Vinegar Syndrome, Little Miss Innocent is also available as an extra feature on the new release of Death Game from Grindhouse Releasing.

Little Miss Innocent (1987): Writer Chris Warfield believed in his pre-Death Game remake — yes, somehow that’s possible, theories abound that he knew of that film’s synopsis and made his first — that he made a second version of it, this time an all-out adult version with actual sex.