Tag Archives: 1987

MVD BLU RAY RELEASE: Ghost Riders (1987)

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Reverend Thadeous Sutton (Bill Shaw) and citizens have gathered for the hanging of Frank Clements, who curses the preacher and all of his family before he dies. A century later, that curse — and the undead gang — continue to haunt the preacher’s grandson and his family. And when it comes to bad hombres who can’t be killed again, things look pretty rough.

Directed by Alan Stewart from a script by Clay McBride (who wrote Look Who’s Toxic, another movie Stewart was involved on) and James Desmarais, this film pits a Vietnam vet, a woman interested in the history of the Clements outlaws and the professor who is the grandson — also played by Shaw — of the preacher from the opening of the film.

Shot on the Western set and using cowboy actors from Texas Safari Ranch in Clifton, Texas, it’s kind of weird that the bad guys look nothing like the cover and are killed with normal bullets, but hey — it’s a low budget regional horror movie that somehow got a video release and then was brought back for today’s boutique video rediscovery market.

The actual blu ray is great, with extensive commentary that shows how a movie like this could be made and make money. The extra features are way more interesting than the actual film and allow me to recommend this, as there’s a lot of great information within this release.

Ghost Riders comes from the producers and writers of Action U.S.A. and is now available on blu ray. It has commentary from director of photography/producer Thomas L. Calloway, writer/producer James Desmarais and moderator Steve Latshaw, a documentary featured named Bringing Out the Ghosts: The Making of Ghost Riders, Low Budget Films: On the Set of Ghost Riders, a photo gallery and trailers. You can buy it from MVD.

JESS FRANCO MONTH: Las chicas del tanga (1987)

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Lina Romay directed 13 movies in between starring in 123 films, most of them with the man for whom she became a muse, Jess Franco.

Surprisingly, this film — despite a title that means The Girls In Thong — is nowhere near as racy as the other movies Franco made on this end of his career, feeling more like a comedy than anything else.

The men are stupid, the women are attractive, there’s no translation and no awkward anatomy zoom lenses. That said, this is quite obviously for people that have created their own Letterboxd lists to track how many Franco movies they’ve watched.

Maybe it’s so chaste — well, for Franco — because Antonio Mayans had his wife Juana de la Morena and both of his daughters, Ivana and Flavia, in the cast (actually, that’s BS because Flavia was also in Emanuelle Exposed and Bahía blanca). Speaking of that Emanuelle Franco movie, its lead Muriel Montossé is also in this, as are Eva León (Voodoo Black Exorcist, Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll) and Analía Ivars (Gold Temple Amazons, Lust for Frankenstein).

JESS FRANCO MONTH: Esclavas del crimen (1987)

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Tsai Chin is the daughter of the infamous — and now dead — Fu Manchu, so she’s one Sax Rohmer character. As she controls a large empire of women soldiers who command erotic chemical hypnosis powers, she’s also another Rohmer supervillainess, Sumaru, who Jess Franco already made two movies about — The Million Eyes of Sumaru and The Girl from Rio.

Of course, she’s played by Lina Romay and yes, there’s lots of torture, as she kidnaps a rock band and a private detective named Mandell seeks to chop and kick his way through her forces. As for Fu Manchu, he’s in hell and can only speak through an urn, while Nayland Smith hired Mandell.

This whole thing was shot in a hotel, which is a late career Franco directorial trademark it seems, and there’s no concern for coherence or continuity. It does, however, have its female army dress in thongs and high heels, which doesn’t seem to be the most intimidating of uniforms, but when Franco and Romay build a fighting force of extraordinary magnitude, I guess they can really do anything they’d like.

Lily C.A.T. (1987)

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Sure, Lily C.A.T. is Alien, but isn’t Alien also Queen of Blood, Planet of the Vampires and It! The Terror from Beyond Space? Hey, what if they throw in some of The Thing too?

The Syncam Corporation is investigating a new planet and has hired the deep-space cruiser Saldes to take a hypersleep trip of 20 years — which will feel like a month for its crew — to see what they can find. At least two of the crew are imposters and one of them is definitely a killer, which gets worse when each dead body disappears, a victim of a super bacteria, while another member of the crew — perhaps one you’d least expect — is something more than they seem.

Director Hisayuki Toriumi directed Gatchaman, the anime that was translated here as Battle of the Planets, while writer Hiroyuki Hoshiyama wrote episodes of The Ultraman, Urusei yatsura and Mobile Suit Gundam. These shows will not prepare you for how gory this movie is, even in its American version. That’s due to creature designer Yoshitaka Amano, who worked on Gatchaman and Vampire Hunter D.

My favorite part of this is when the captain explains how once you start time jumping, the things you are working for and the people you are making the money for no longer matter and you become forgotten. It’s a shockingly raw and honest moment of pain in the midst of a science fiction gore cartoon.

You can watch this on Tubi.

WATCH THE SERIES: Mr. Vampire

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There are five Ricky Lau-directed Mr. Vampire movies — Mr. Vampire. Mr. Vampire II, Mr. Vampire III, Mr. Vampire IV and Mr. Vampire 1992 (the only direct sequel) followed by several connected movies by other directors, such as Billy Chan and Leung Chung’s New Mr. Vampire (these first six movies will be the ones that we’ll be covering), Lam Ching-ying’s Vampire vs Vampire and Magic Cop (AKA Mr. Vampire 5), Chan’s Crazy Safari (also known as The Gods Must Be Crazy II), Andrew Lau’s The Ultimate Vampire, Wilson Tong’s The Musical Vampire, Wu Ma’s Exorcist Master, Wellson Chin’s The Era of Vampires and Juno Mak’s tribute to this series, Rigor Mortis. There are also two TV series: Vampire Expert and My Date with a Vampire.

All of these movies have the Chinese vampire in common. Called the jiangshi, these hopping corpses of Chinese folklore are as much zombies as they are vampires. They first appeared in Hong Kong cinema in Sammo Hung’s Encounters of the Spooky Kind.

Mr. Vampire (1985)

Master Kau (Lam Ching-ying) is pretty much Dr. Strange by way of Taoist priesthood, as he keeps control over the spirits and vampires of China from his large home, which is protected by many talismans and amulets, staffed by his students Man-Choi (Ricky Hui) and Chau-sang (Chin Siu-ho).

Master Yam hires Kau to move the burial site of his father to ensure prosperity for his family. However, the body looks near perfect, showing that it may be a vampire. Taking it home, Kau instructs his students to write all over the coffin with enchanted ink. They forget to do the bottom of the coffin, which means that the vampire escapes and murders his rich son, turning him into a jiangshi.

Wai (Billy Lau) is a policeman who is sure that Kau is responsible (he also has a grudge because a girl (Moon Lee) he likes has eyes for Kau), so he arrests him even as the vampire begins killing others. Kau’s students are tested by a vampire’s boat and also a seductive spirit, but when Master Yam becomes a fully vampiric demon, only the help of another Taoist priest named Four-Eyes (Anthony Chan) can save the day.

Based on stories producer Hung heard from his mother, this movie nearly tripled its budget at the box office. Just a warning — not just Italian movies have real animal violence. There’s a moment where a real snake is sliced apart instead of a fake one due to budget. The snake was used to make soup, but there’s no report on whether the chicken whose throat was cut on screen was used as stock after.

Golden Harvest tried to make an American version — Demon Hunters — with Yuen Wah playing Master Kau and American actors Jack Scalia and Michele Phillips (taking over from Tonya Roberts) were in Hong Kong to film scenes, but the movie was stopped after just a few weeks.

Mr. Vampire 2 (1986)

This film is more about a vampire family than continuing the story of the first movie, despite being directed by Ricky Lau and bringing back female star Moon Lee and Lam Ching-ying.

Archaeologist Kwok Tun-Wong (Chung Fat) and his students have found not just one jiangshi but a mother, father and their son, all kept still because of the magical talismans on their foreheads. Intending to sell the boy on the black market — who would want a child hopping vampire is a question we may not be able to answer — the talismans are removed and Dr. Lam Ching-ying (yes, Lam Ching-ying used his real name for the role), his potential son-in-law Yen (Yuen Biao) and his daughter Gigi (Lee) must stop the plague of the vampires.

Mr. Vampire 3 (1987)

Uncle Ming (Richard Ng) isn’t a great Tao priest like Uncle Nine (Lam Ching-ying), but like an HK version of The Frighteners, he has help from two ghosts. Big and Small Pai. He comes to a small town where supernatural bandits are ruling the night, all led by the evil — I mean, with a name like this, she should be malificent — Devil Lady (Wong Yuk Waan).

This movie has a first for me — evil spirits trapped in wine jars and then friend in hot oil. This is definitely closer to the spirit of the original film, which made fans pretty happy. Also, a witch with a skull inside her hair and a Sammo Hung cameo as a waiter!

If you’re used to the pace of American movies, you may want to drink plenty of Red Bull or Bang before starting this one.

Mr. Vampire 4 (1988)

Four-eyed Taoist (Anthony Chan) and Buddhist Master Yat-yau (Wu Ma) are neighbors, but engaged in a sort of humorous war of words, pranks and ideologies with each other. As a convoy passes their homes — including a vampire that is soon hit with lightning and becomes super powerful — they must put aside their dislike and work together.

You may miss Lam Ching Ying, who for the first time isn’t the lead in a Mr. Vampire sequel. There’s nearly an hour, however, where the two leads try to destroy one another with not a hopping bloodsucker in sight. So while the stereotypical gay character isn’t fun at all, there’s still the knowledge you’ll gain, like eating garlic to defeat a curse.

Mr. Vampire 1992 (1992)

After three sequels, it’s finally time to make an actual sequel to Mr. Vampire, with Master Kau (Lam Ching-ying), Man-choi (Ricky Hui) and Chau-sang (Chin Siu-ho) all coming back.   What a wild story they’ve been brought back for, as the soul of an aborted fetus lives within a statue before seeking to take over the fetus that is growing within Mai Kei-lin (Wuki Kwan), the one-time love of Master Kau.

There’s also The General (Billy Lau), Mai Kei-lin’s husband, who is bit by his vampire father and seeks to escape his curse with the help of Kau.

Also — this is a comedy.

What’s most amazing — to me — is that I found my copy of this in my small Western Pennsylvania hometown, in the literal sticks, an all-region DVD that I can only assume came from a foreign exchange student at one of the local small colleges, as there were several other similar films. $1 later and my movie room has hopping vampires on the shelves.

New Mr. Vampire (1987)

Don’t confuse this New Mr Vampire with Mr. Vampire 1992. This installment was directed by Billy Chan and has Chung Fat and Huang Ha as rival brothers Master Chin and Master Wu, with Chin Siu-ho (playing Hsiao Hau Chien) and Lu Fang (known as Tai-Fa) as their disciples.

This is my least favorite of the jiangshi movies I’ve seen, except for the fact that the filmmakers seem intent on making John Carpenter pay for taking so many Hong Kong movie mythos for Big Trouble in Little China by outright stealing music from Halloween and Escape from New York.

Are you willing to take a journey into the world of Chinese vampires? Let us know what you find. Remember, if you get bit, just take a bath in rice milk, then grind down their fangs or drink their blood to heal yourself.

Cross of the Seven Jewels (1987)

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Directed by, written by and starring Marco Antonio Andolfi — who also did the special effects — who claims he based this on comic books, plays and his real life, which really says a lot I guess. Eight years later, he took all this footage, re-edited it and threw in some footage he stole from The Serpent and the Rainbow like a good Italian filmmaker and called the film that ensured Talisman.

Marco Sartori (Andolfi) is wearing a huge cross with seven jewels — everyone cheer for the title reference — that gets turn off by some motorcycle criminals, which was what really happened to Andolfi and inspired this. Well, he needs that cross because without it, he turns into a weresomething, by which I mean that he’s nearly naked, except for a furry bikini and mask.

A mob boss (George Ardisson, who was once Secret Agent 3S3 and Thesus in Bava’s Hercules in the Haunted World) explains how he can get the cross back and lets one of his best girls, Maria (Annie Belle, who was in D’Amato’s Absurd and L’alcova) come along.

There’s also a fortune teller named Madame Amnesia played by former Miss World Zaira Zoccheddu, as well as Satanic cult that is whipping women and having sex because that’s how you raise the prince of all things evil from his slumber and sure, he looks like Chewbacca, but come on, he’s also the father — maybe? — of our hero. He at least did his mom and if I were a bad guy, I’d definitely say that out loud to get under a werewolf’s skin. Or fur.

Also, Gordon Mitchell leads the Black Mass and really, that’s enough to get me to spend $40 on this whenever Severin gets around to putting it out on blu ray.

Child of Peach (1987)

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There are movies that blow your mind and then there are movies that make you wonder if you’ve been experiencing reality properly. I use the term movie drugs on here pretty often.

Welcome to the black tar heroin of movie drugs.

Chung-Hsing Chao was an actor who’d been in movies like  Buddha’s Palm and Dragon Fist, Heroic Rivals and Born Invicible, as well as a stunt coordinator for Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow II, The Miracle Fighters and Magnificent 7 Kung Fu Kids. He also directed this movie along with Chun-Liang Chen. These are simple facts.

They can’t explain to you what you’re about to see.

The first of the Taiwanese Peach Kid trilogy — along with Magic of Spell and Magic Warriors — the movie adapts the Japanese legend of Momotaro, a hero born from a giant peach who battles demons with his animal friends, not unlike Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare.

Again all facts.

So how about this? Imagine if Superman’s parents found him inside a piece of fruit and name him Peach Kid and raise him to be a good person, which means fighting King Devil, the man who has wanted him dead since he was a baby. But also keep in mind that Superman’s parents are an old married couple and are constantly battling one another in a war of words, more like a real married couple than the comic book unreality.

Also imagine that movies for kids can be filled with incredible degrees of violence and profanity while still telling a positive lesson. Where monkeys peeing is the height of comedy — it is — and speaking of animals, our hero can team up with Tiny Dog, Tiny Monkey, Tiny Cock and Knight Melon to fight evil, which takes the form of a witch and her army of miniature 80s hair metal dudes.

There’s also a peach-based robot, a Sun Sword, demon dismemberment, stunts that look way to painful to have not been, incredible fights, wire work, a demonic mutant shark getting definned and so much more.

Really, these kinds of movies need to be experienced in what I refer to as analog moments, where you stop taking notes and just let the high overtake you. This is high level strangeness from Taiwan, a country very much unlike our own, made decades ago and unconcerned with looking or feeling or acting like any movie that’s come before or since. Shut off that part of your mind that says that this is alien, that this is silly, that this is a goofy martial arts movie and you can see how fake the effects are. Pretend you’re a child again. Pretend you’re a cosmic being. Pretend that the world can be this good, if even for the running time of this film.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Goodnight, God Bless (1987)

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Also known as Lucifer, this movie has a killer that even the police start to realize may have an actual mission from Satan himself. He starts with a schoolyard massacre and then comes after the only survivor, Mandy, who is being protected by the police. It’s pretty shocking, to be perfectly honest, to see a priest stab a woman and then just open fire on a playground packed with small children. You don’t see that in many — any — slashers.

Sadly, this movie never gets better or stranger or remains as shockingly original as that first scene. The cop falls for Mandy’s mom, they go on a bird watching vacation and the priest just keeps killing people when he isn’t stalking our little child protagonist.

The killer priest is a great idea and so underused. So maybe instead of this one — spoiler warning — you could watch Seven Bloodstained Orchids, Silver Bullet, Don’t Torture a Duckling, City of the Living Dead, To the Devil a Daughter, Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil and Happy Hell Night.

Philippine War Week II: Eye of the Eagle (1987)

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If you joined us for our “Philippine War Week I” and made it though this second and final week, you know the production drill of these films. Nick Nicholson, Steve Rogers, Jim Moss, Mike Monty and Vic Dias all “star” here — and with the added incentive of Robert Patrick, yes that one: the T-1000 one.

What? No tigers? Nope, Rocky III wasn’t until ’82.

Everyone has to start somewhere and Patrick debuts, here, as Cpl. Johnny Ransom for this Cirio H. Santiago faux-Stallone romp. Patrick also starred for Cirio in the Max Mad rip, Equalizer 2000. Then Patrick became a defacto “star” in The Raiders of the Lost Ark rip, Future Hunters — by way of Cirio cutting in footage from Equalizer 2000. Or that may be the other way around: Patrick ended up in Equalizer 2000 by of way hunks of his Future Hunter work being cut in. You know how it goes in the Philippine editing suites of Silver Star Productions.

It’s been critiqued that Cirio’s Killer Instinct (1989), aka Behind Enemy Lines, which also stars Patrick, is a sequel to Eye of the Eagle; it’s not: the only throughline is that Patrick’s character is also named Johnny Ransom — and for no particular reason. But all of the war footage certainly looks the same, because it is — and is par for the course when it comes to the recycling war coffers of the Philippine Rambo Consortium.

Adding to the confusion: Eye of the Eagle is also known as The Lost Command. And Battlefield Vietnam. And Killer Instinct, aka Behind Enemy Lines, is also known as Eye of the Eagle 2: Inside the Enemy, and as Killed in Action (instead of Missing in Action IV to evoke a little Chuck Norris). And Last Stand at Lang Mei (1989) — which has nothing to do with the other two films, outside of Cirio H. Santiago directing them — is known as Eye of the Eagle III.

We give up. Is one a sequel to the other? We really don’t care.

Patrick also starred in another 1987 film, Warlords from Hell, that is believed to be another Cirio cut n’ paste joint: it’s not. That’s actually a trashy action flick about American bikers taking on a Mexican drug cartel that shot in the U.S. and was directed by Clark Henderson; he’s known for his behind-the-scenes production work on Roger Corman’s Forbidden World and Space Raiders, Cirio’s Wheels of Fire, and major U.S. films such as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and The Cider House Rules.

And now, back to our program of Eye of the Eagle. The first one.

All of the usual, endless barrage of (stock footage) gun battles and over-the-top explosions ensues as Sgt. Rick Stratton (Brett Baxter Clark, who got his start in Tom Hanks’s Bachelor Party and the teensploitation romp Malibu Express; he also appears the Filipino war flick, Delta Force Commando), along with Cpl. Johnny Ransom (Patrick), set off with their “Eagle” squad to stop a band of U.S. renegades known as “The Lost Command” terrorizing South Vietnam. Stratton also has a side hussle: avenge the murder of his brother by the renegades. One of the missions Stratton and Ransom need to pull off is a train hijacking — and yes, those are shots of an electric model train. Hey, Silver Star productions can’t afford tanks or planes — only ones cut in from other films — so why did you think they could afford more than a model train and one real rail car to shoot on? Is there a mouthy, know-it-all pesky female photo journalist to get them into scrapes? Ah, you know your Philippine war flicks better than we thought.

You can enjoy the awful sound and jumpy edits and bad-everything-else-we-love on You Tube.

Of course we dug up Eye of the Eagle II and Eye of the Eagle III for you, both on You Tube. Sorry, that is actually kind of mean of us. Eh, you know you wanna watch ’em.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Philippine War Week II: Mission Terminate (1987)

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We come here, not to bury Philippine Namsplotation films, but to praise Richard Norton. That’s right, kids: it’s another B&S About Movies film-geek fandom joint.

Aussie actor Richard Norton got his start in Chuck Norris’s The Octagon (1980) and Forced Vengeance (1982), contributing to multiple episodes of CBS-TV’s Walker, Texas Ranger, starring in Robert Clouse’s Force: Five (1981) and Gymkata (1985), and with Michael Dudikoff in American Ninja (1985). And do we really have to remind you that Richard Norton starred as Slade in the great Cirio H. Santiago’s Philippine post-apoc’er Equalizer 2000 (1987)? Well, now you know: Richard Norton is right up there with Mark Gregory, Michael Sopkiw, and Daniel Greene on the B&S About Movies A-Team.

While we haven’t seen all of Richard’s almost 70-and-climbing credits, we’ve seen most of them. And some are great — like the films we’ve mentioned — while others are not so great. There’s not another actor that’s more hard working, who was stuck in some questionable projects over the years, who started out as a bodyguard to the Rolling Stones and personal trainer to Mick Jagger. We reviewed his most recent effort, if you’re interested: the 2021 Australian crime-thriller, Rage.

See. The fanboy section of the review has ended. That didn’t hurt. Back to the movie . . . and to hell.

Also known as Return of the Kickfighter, the plot concerns, you guessed it: more corrupt American soldiers on a war-profiteering tear, democratic freedom on the Indonesia mainlands, be damned.

So, to the chagrin of their Vietnamese guide (Asian Martial Arts mainstay and Brucesploitation star Bruce Le), a U.S. marine unit raids a Vietnam village — for a gold stash — and they kill the villagers.

Yes. Of course, we “flash forward” ten years. Haven’t you been paying attention at all this week? That “flashback” set up is how all of that old ’70s war footage is clipped into the film, so as to up the production values.

Well, eh, actually . . . this time, it’s 15 years. And someone is murdering the members of the unit — one by one. And the chicken shit leader of that raid, now a high-ranking officer with a cushy government desk job with the Pentagon, needs to clean up the mess. So, with a little lie there and half-truth there, he sends in the only man for the job (again?): Pentagon black-ops agent Major Brad Cooper, aka the man we came to see, Richard Norton. But Cooper gets wise pretty quick and figures his Pentagon boss, Col. Ryan, committed the atrocity all those years ago. So Cooper is sidelined from the mission. But Cooper goes rogue. And his “mission” objective changes.

He meets Quan Niehn, the Vietnamese guide from 15 years ago. Turns out, Quan and his brother nursed an injured Ninja Master hurt in that raid back to health and, in payment, the Master taught the brothers the ways of the Ninja. Then the brothers went “Cain and Able,” with Quan to the good Vietnamese side and his brother to the evil Viet Cong side. And the plot twist is that we think Quan is killing the members of the unit, but it’s really his evil brother — the leader of a secret, Mountain stronghold terrorist boot camp. So, once Quan and Cooper make nice, Coop calls in his old Queen’s Cobras unit to kick the evil brother’s ass. The firefights and explosions and bodies plowed down by more bullets than John Rambo and John Matrix can handle, ensues.

What makes this work is the martial arts, something Sly and Arnie couldn’t bring to the table. The Return of the Kickfigther handle is clearly the more effectively, descriptive title, with Bruce Le (1978’s Return of the Red Tiger and Enter the Game of Death) and Hong Kong action star Dick Wei (1978’s Five Deadly Venoms and 1980’s Claws of the Eagle) mixing it up with Richard Norton — who keeps his Australian accent on-camera (a HUGE difference in quality for this film against most we’ve reviewed this week), which is explained away as being an “All American” since he was trained by the American military.

Ugh. The full movie was uploaded when we made the schedule — now it’s gone. Well, you can at least watch this “Kill Count” montage and eight minute fight scene (embedded above) between Richard Norton and Bruce Le on You Tube. Director Anthony Maharaj, here in his debut, got his start as a screenwriter with the Philippine war flick Final Mission (reviewed this week; look for it) and the post-apoc’er Future Hunters for Cirio H. Santiago. Maharaj and Norton worked on a second Indonesian war flick, Not Another Mistake (1989) — no, we didn’t review that one, this week. You can’t do ’em all.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.