Look, there’s no such person as Joe Livingstone, the director of this movie. Or William Palmer, its writer. They’re both Godfrey Ho, the Hong Kong Ed Wood who made at least eighty movies from 1980 to 1990 and may have used over forty screen names, making him the Asian Aristide Massaccesi.

Ho is the master of a cut and paste style of filmmaking that challenges the notions of art and copyright clearances — or he’s a hack out to make a quick buck. He’s also famous for dropping footage of ninjas into movies even if the plot doesn’t call for it. I take issue with this: movies always call for more ninjas.

His love of the word ninjas also led to making movies that have titles like The Ninja Force, Ninja The Protector, Full Metal Ninja, The Ninja Squad, Thunder Ninja Kids: The Hunt for the Devil Boxer, Ninja Terminator, Zombie vs. Ninja, Thunder Ninja Kids in the Golden Adventure, Ninja Force of Assassins, Ninja Knight Brothers of Blood, Ninja of the Magnificence, Ninja Powerforce, Ninja Strike Force, The Ninja Showdown, Power of Ninjitsu, Ninja’s Extreme Weapons, Ninja’s Demon Massacre, Cobra vs. Ninja, Death Code: Ninja, Golden Ninja Invasion, Rage of Ninja, Ninja: The Battalion, Empire of the Spiritual Ninja, Ninja Operation 7: Royal Warriors, Ninja Commandments, Ninja In Action, Ninja: American Warrior, Ninja Operation: Licensed to Terminate, Ninja Operation 6: Champion on Fire, Ninja Phantom Heroes, Bionic Ninja, Tough Ninja the Shadow Warrior, Twinkle Ninja Fantasy (that’s one I gotta track down), The Blazing Ninja and probably ten movie ninja movies. Seriously, those guys are like cockroaches.

He would film footage for one movie, then re-use those shots over and over, which kind of makes him the Asian Roger Corman, but then he’d also find obscure Thai, Filipino and other Asian films, then graft them onto his movies — making him the Asian Bruno Mattei? — and then have several movies made with the budget of one, except no one can even tell where his footage begins and where the other films end.

Ho didn’t stop with stealing footage. He has no idea that music is a copyrightable thing either, so his movies are filled with all manner of sonic thievery, including songs from Miami Vice, Star Trek, Star Wars, anime and even music from Wendy Carlos, Chris & Cosey, Tangerine Dream, Clan of Xymox, Vangelis and Pink Floyd.

Other than some rich musicians and the gullible film public, who gets hurt, right? Well, Richard Harrison, for one. He’d worked with Ho in the past at Shaw Brothers and made a deal to be in a few of his films. A few movies ended up being, well, a veritable onslaught of low-level ninjas films with his name above the title, which did damage to his career. Harrison was the unwilling feature actor in almost a dozen different movies, which sent him back to the United States. Yes, a guy who worked for everyone from Alfonso Brescia, Antonio Margheriti and Alberto De Martino to appearing in Bruce Lee ripoffs and Eurospy films had finally had enough.

And then, out of nowhere, Ho was making mainstream movies. Well, as mainstream as a Cynthia Rothrock film would be. After directing her in Honor and Glory and Undefeatable, he also made Laboratory of the Devil, a remake/remix/ripoff/ unauthorized sequel of The Man Behind the Sun. And then, he went back to his old tricks and used all the same footage to make a sequel to that movie, Maruta 3 … Destroy all Evidence. And then…

Somehow, this movie is 81 minutes and feels like nine hours. It’s all about Alex, who we also find out is the Shadow Warrior*, and now, he has to fight a smuggling ring who are all vampires, which as we all know, hop in China. No one at all is surprised that vampires exist. It is just matter of fact. There’s also a gambler looking to get even with the mob boss who sent him to jail, in case you get bored.

This is also somehow a sequel to Robo Vampire. Trust me, you have no reason to watch that. Or this. I mean, this movie has a silver lame suited superhero moonwalking against vampires, so really you can do whatever you want. Also, this movie makes so little sense that Robo Vampire could very well be the sequel, for all we know.

The poster is pretty awesome, though. And to be perfectly honest, I love these movies.

If you decide you can handle a director who makes Jess Franco look like Fellini, this is on Tubi.

Based on the novel The Butterfly Revolution by William Butler, Summer Camp Massacre is not the slasher that you’d be led to believe it is from the title and poster. It is, however, one of the few movies that’s never even come out on DVD.

Donald Poultry is a sensitive young man given to writing a diary in his tape recorder. A summer at camp is supposed to make him come out of his shell, but the arrival of Mr. Warren (Chuck Connors) means that this summer will not be like any he’s ever had before.

That’s where the story seems to be going until the kids go all Lord of the Flies and take the camp over themselves, getting single digit kids drunk and watching satellite TV all night. Honestly, it sounds like a dream summer, but so does smoking a whole pack of cigarettes until you’re actually forced to do it.

Penelope Spheeris was one of the writers of this and it has themes from her film Suburbia throughout. It was directed by Bert L. Dragin, who also wrote and directed Twice Dead.

Filmed at Six Flags Over Georgia in Austell, Georgia, this is the kind of movie that I can’t really figure out. Who is it for? What is it really all about? Is it a slasher, which it seems like from that poster? Is it a comedy? Is it even funny? It’s a complete mess. But yet, I’ve watched it more than once.

It was written by Bonnie and Terry Turner, who would write for Saturday Night Live for six years before creating 3rd Rock from the Sun and That ’70s Show, as well as the scripts for Coneheads, the two Wayne’s World movies, Tommy Boy and The Brady Bunch Movie. We can forgive them for the Whoopi show, That ’80s Show and this movie, right?

For this, they were joined by Michael A. Simpson. Who? Oh, you know, the guy who made the two Sleepaway Camp sequels, Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland.

I mean, this is the kind of movie where the line, “I’m a graduate of State University. I also attended the David Lee Roth University where I studied rear projection,” is the highlight. So just know what you’re getting into.

So what is Funland? Well, it’s a theme park owned by Angus Perry (William Windom, Dr. Seth Hazlitt on Murder, She Wrote) that used to be owned by its clown mascot Bruce Burger, who is really former accountant Niel Stickney (David Lander, Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley). And now that the mob has rubbed out Angus and taken over, Niel has gone completely out to lunch, seeing hallucinations of his dead boss and trying to kill the new owners.

There are a lot of comedy names in this, like Bruce Mahler, Robert Sacchi (yes, the Bogart cop from one of the strangest giallo you’ll see, The French Sex Murders), Clark Brandon from Fast Food and Mr. Merlin, Michael McManus (who, like Mahler, did time in a Police Academy film), Mary Beth McDonough (one of the Waltons) and a very young Jan Hooks, who had worked with the Turners in Atlanta comedy (and got them on to SNL).

If you’re looking for a movie where a demented clown slashes his way through a theme park, well, this is not it. But it’s…something.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally wrote about this movie on January 30, 2019. However, with a new blu ray coming from Kino Lorber, we felt it’d be a good idea to bring this movie back to our readers’ attention.

Ruggero Deodato has been celebrated on this site, not just for Cannibal Holocaust, but for movies like Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man; Concorde Affaire ’79; House On the End of the Park; Raiders of Atlantis; Cut and Run; Body Count; The Washing Machine and Dial Help. From those movies, you can tell that Deodato has hit nearly every genre. Now, with this one, he returns to his peblum roots — Hercules, Prisoner of Evil was the first movie he directed — and enters the post-Arnold Italian barbarian boom with not one but two American swordsmen who look like living and breathing He-Man toys, David and Peter Paul, better known as The Barbarian Brothers.

I honestly can’t be impartial about this movie, as it’s packed with so much that I love. I mean, just from the voiced over credits, when the names Golan, Globus and Deodato come up, I can’t help but cheer. This is the kind of feel good junk food movie that I love, a film that completely rips off Conan the Barbarian in all the best of ways — times two.

Instead of reciting the script over again — the old review does a decent enough job of that — let me extol the reasons why I love this movie so much.

It’s got an amazing cast. And the Barbarian Brothers. Perhaps realizing that the Brothers may look like a 1983 first wave Masters of the Universe figure but have the acting skills of, well, a 1983 first wave Masters of the Universe figure, Deodato wisely fills the film with all manner of amazing people. There’s Michael Berryman as the Dirtmaster, the henchman tasked with running The Pit, or the place where slaves do manual labor. George Eastman shows up for a few seconds to arm wrestle in a cantina scene. Eva LaRue — who somehow is both of the third installments of RoboCop and Ghoulies — as the long-lost adopted sister of the brothers. And perhaps, most importantly, Richard Lynch, who as always turns in a game performance despite the absolute silliness of the proceedings. I mean, the dude has hair extensions and fake fingers after the young brothers bite his fingers off.

It’s got the Barbarian Brothers. For two guys who look like they should be serious warriors — or barbarians, if the title has anything to say about it — they spend much of the movie making fun of one another. They seem to screw up everything they touch and mostly only escape from situations by being bulls in a proverbial China shop. You have to love that despite the movie being set in what seems to be the distant past — unless Deodato is pulling a Yor Hunter from the Future fakeout on us — they speak as if it were 1987, calling one another bonehead repeatedly.

It’s got a great score. Pino Donaggio has written music for everything from Don’t Look Now and Tourist Trap to Dressed to Kill, The Howling and Body Double (and yes, Giallo In Venice and Gor II), so you know that when you hear his music, it’s going to elevate anything it plays behind.

It’s got fun effects and sets. One of the craziest thing about the new blu ray of this is that it’s so crystal clear that you can see the strings moving a dragon’s mouth up and down, which is rather disconcerting. That said, the swamp set — where most of the film takes place — looks awesome otherwise. This is also a movie with magical belly button jewelry, which is a sentence I’ve never written before.

It’s got Mad Max wrapped up in its sword and sorcery. Despite — again — being set in the past, most of Kadar’s warriors look like they should be in the employ of Immorten Joe. Also, Kutchek and Gore — our heroes — live with a band of traveling circus performers who use their skills to throw knives and blow fire at their attackers. It’s like the hard-driving armanda of — again! — Immorten Joe, but only 28 years earlier.

If you ever want to sit down and have me talk over a movie and extol its virtues — of which many would say there are none — then let it be this movie. I even have the great new blu ray from Kino Lorber, so it looks fabulous!

You can get a copy of your own right here. This has my highest recommendation.

We covered this movie on February 23, 2019, but to be perfectly honest, I could watch this movie every single day. Directed by five different people — Joe Dante, Carl Gottlieb, Peter Horton, John Landis and Robert K. Weiss — and starring tons of folks that I love, it’s the most perfect of all cinematic junk food.

Rather than give you a breakdown of everything that airs on WIDB-TV (channel 8) during its broadcasting day, I’ll just touch on the fact that this movie unites so many of my favorite people in one place.

There’s Russ Meyer as, well, Russ Meyer the video store owner, because what other place would have giant movie posters all over it for Supervixens? An assortment of comedians enacting a roast in the place of a funeral, with Charlie Callas, Rip Tayor, Jackie Vernon, Slappy White, Henny Youngman and Steve Allen being upstaged by Joe Dante favorite Belinda Balaski, who goes from sadness to anger to comedic force in one incredible performance. Ed Begley, Jr. as the Invisible Man. William “Blackula” Marshall as the leader of the Video Pirates. Henry Silva appearing in Unsolved Mysteries years before that show was a thing (it debuted in 1987, most of this film was shot in 1985). David Alan Grier as Don “No Soul” Simmons, something that never fails to make me smile. Andrew “Dice” Clay before anyone knew who he was, shooting Ken Wahl’s wife and getting Jimmy Olsen in trouble. And oh yeah — the main segment has Steve Forrest (the star of S.W.A.T. and Mommie Dearest‘s Greg Savitt), John Travolta’s older brother Joey, Lana Clarkson (Barbarian Queen and, sadly, a future Phil Spector victim), Sybil Danning and Forrest J. Ackerman as the President of the United States in a movie that should star Zsa Zsa Gabor. Stick around after the credits or you’ll miss a picture-perfect Kroger Babb riff starring Carrie Fisher and one of my favorite movie people to ever exist, Paul Bartel. Oh! I almost forgot Monique Gabrielle as Taryn Steele!

I have no idea who this movie was for other than for me. It’s a movie that speaks the language of the movie geek long before the internet existed and was doomed to bomb (or play HBO forever and find worshippers).

I’m so happy to have the new Kino Lorber blu ray of this. Beyond featuring a documentary with interviews with nearly everyone involved, it also has the deleted segments Peter Pan Theater, The Unknown Soldier and The French Ventriloquist’s Dummy. Plus, there are outtakes of every single routine from the roast of Harvey Pitnik and audio commentary from Kat Ellinger and Mike McPadden.

You can get the new blu ray from Kino Lorber, who were nice enough to send us a copy. This is one of those movies that I feel that everyone should have in their collection. There is no way that I can be unbiased on this one.