After numerous other theatrical and made-for-television adaptions where Peter Ustinov played Hercule Poirot, including Murder On The Orient-Express, this would be the actor’s last time playing the role.
This time, he was directed by Michael Winner, who you probably wouldn’t consider for the restrained world of Agatha Christie. He spoke to this by saying, “You won’t see Lauren Bacall walking around machine-gunning everyone. In fact, it’s my first picture in years that was under budget on blood.”
Bacall plays Lady Westholme, an American become British high society lady and a member of Parliament for the Conservative Party as the result of marriage. She’s on her way to Jerusalem along with her secretary Miss Quinton (Hayley Mills!) and lawyer Jefferson Cope (David Soul) by sea, the same voyage that also has the troubled Boynton family — Lennox (Nicholas Guest), Raymond (John Terlesky — what!?! Deathstalker!?!), Carol (Valerie Richards) and Ginerva (Amber Bezer) — who she shares the law services of Cope with, as the Boynton children are pretty much slaves to their stepmother Emily (Piper Laurie), unless the new will goes through.
Poirot also meets up with an old friend, Dr. Sarah King (Jenny Seagrove), who falls for Raymond, all as Cope is having an affair with Lennox’s wife Nadine (Carrie Fisher), which really seems to be so many coincidences that all gathered these people all on the same boat. And oh yeah, John Gielgud is on board to play Colonel Carbury. He described leaving to in this movie as such: “Leaving for Israel to do a rather absurd part in an Agatha Christie… Peter Ustinov and Betty Bacall are to be in it and possibly Michael York, so it might be fun, even with that vulgar, but quite funny director, Michael Winner.”
In late Cannon fashion, the budget was cut from $9 million to $7.5 million and then to $6 million. When they wanted to cut it further to $5.5 million, Ustinov threatened to quit and if he left, so would the rest of the cast. Most of the cast — particularly Bacall — were shocked that this was filmed in Israel in the hot summer instead of a sound stage or in England.
Jean-Claude Van Damme — the Muscles from Brussels — first appeared in a film in 1979, where he had an uncredited role in André Delvaux’s Woman Between Wolf and Dog. After moving to the United States with his childhood friend Michel Qissi, who plays Suan Paredes in this film and would go on to appear in several JCVD movies. Their first appearance was in Breakin’, which has gone on to be a memorable meme.
After becoming a friend and sparring partner with Chuck Norris — he even bounced at the action hero’s bar Woody’s Wharf — Van Damme would go on to be part of the stunt team for Missing In Action. Then, he achieved a sizeable role in No Retreat, No Surrender, playing the Russian bad guy Ivan Kraschinsky that Kurt McKinney must train — with the ghost of Bruce Lee no less — to defeat.
After an abortive attempt at playing the lead villain in Predator, it was time for Van Damme to star in his own film. Bloodsport — based on the maybe real life of Frank Dux — would be that movie, making $65 million on a $2.3 million dollar budget.
U.S. Army Captain Frank Dux (Van Damme) once trained in the ways of ninja under sensei Senzo Tanaka (Roy Chiao, who appeared in Game of Death, Enter the Dragon and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) after he tried to steal a katana from the master as a child. he was trained alongside Senzo’s son Shingo, who has died in a martial arts tournament. Frank goes AWOL to be part of the Kumite, an illegal martial arts battle to the death, for revenge.
That puts Rawlins (Forest Whitaker) and Helmer (Norman Burton, who played Felix Leiter in Diamonds Are Forever and the boss in Fade to Black), two Criminal Investigation Command officers, on his trail.
Once Dux makes it to Hong Kong, he becomes fast friends with American fighter Ray Jackson (Donald Gibb, Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds), which is good, because they’re the only gaijin in this tournament. However, once they learn Dux represents the Tanaka clan and how he has the ”death touch” — and Jackson breaks bricks with his forehead — they’re accepted.
After several rounds of awesome fights — this movie is pretty much all fights, making it one of the most fun movies ever made — Frank, Ray and the evil champion Chong Li (Bolo Yeung) remain. Li hates Frank for beating his fastest knockout record, but our hero is more interested in Janice Kent, a reporter.
During day two, Ray has Chong beat, but pauses to do his taunt move and gets his butt handed to him, landing in the hospital. Dux vows to get revenge for his friend, but his new lady, who he has only known 24 hours, argues that he should just leave. This woman will never understand Kumite!
The police and officers chase and catch Frank, who agrees to go back if he can finish the final battle. Chong kills his opponent and the crowd turns on him. They hate him even more when he cheats, throwing a pill packed with dust into Frank’s eyes. Frank rises above all that nonsense and wins, sparing the life of his enemy while getting revenge.
So how true is Bloodsport? According to Sheldon Lettich, who wrote the film, told Asian Movie Pulse:
“I had known Frank Dux for a number of months before I came up with the idea for Bloodsport. Frank told me a lot of tall tales, most of which turned out to be BS.” One of those tall tales were about his military history: “Frank also used to tell me, and just about everyone he spoke to, that he had participated in secret missions for the C.I.A. and the U.S. military, and that he had won the Medal Of Honor for his heroism. He even showed me the Medal, which he had supposedly been awarded by the President. Years afterwards, when numerous people began questioning his stories, he stopped claiming that he won the Medal, and then began claiming that he’d never told anyone he won it.”
That said, somewhere in all those stories, there was the idea for a movie. And Dux had a backup that could prove he had actually been in a Kumite tournament: “There was one guy who he introduced me to, named Richard Bender, who claimed to have actually been at the Kumite event and who swore everything Frank told me was true. A few years later this guy had a falling-out with Frank, and confessed to me that everything he told me about the Kumite was a lie; Frank had coached him in what to say.”
Another article in the LA Timestakes the story even further, showing how Dux claimed that a rival ninja teacher was conspiring against him and that he’d been reinventing his past for decades. I’ve also read on Pro MMA Now that if you do the math, for Frank Dux to win 56 consecutive knockouts in a row in one tournament would mean that 72 quadrillion fighters were in it. That’s only around ten times more people that are alive right now.
Whether or not this movie is based on a true story, Van Damme does seven splits in it. It also features an eleven minute-long flashback, which kind of tests the limits of just how long a flashback could, should and can be. And any movie where JCVD makes this face is a winner in my book.
Based — loosely based! — on Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth with a little part of The Wizard of Oz as several actors play parts above and below ground, Albery Pyun’s science fiction fantasy tells the story of Wanda Saknussemm (Kathy Ireland), a nerd — as if — who gets dumped for not having a sense of adventure. That’s when she learns that her archaeologist father has fallen down a bottomless put near Zamboanga and before you know it, we have Atlantis, a thousand-year-old alien spaceship and a journey literally to, you guessed it, the center of the Earth.
So where does the title come from? When Wanda finds her way inside the inner Earth, she becomes the alien, at odds with gangster Mambino (Deep Roy) and Lord Over while falling for charming Charmin’ (Thom Mathews, who I always call Tommy Jarvis). Hey! There’s Linda Kerridge from Fade to Black as Wanda’s aunt and a bar owner!
Pyun and Ireland would return for the direct-to-video sequel Journey to the Center of the Earth, which suffered the Cannon curse of cuts and budget woes. The pre-production work and storyboards were wasted as the final film bears little resemblance to the script, which is why it started as a movie made Rusty Lemonrande — the producer of Yentyl and Captain EO — and Pyun coming on and this turning into a sequel. Nobody was happy with how it ended up. But it does have Emo Phillips in it.
This ran on cable pretty often when I was young. Now you can get it from Vinegar Syndrome.
Leave it to Golan and Globus to make a Catholic movie.
In 1858, a 14-year old asthmatic and illiterate girl named Bernadette (Bernadette Soubirous) saw a light with a beautiful young woman inside. You may know the miracle by the town she lived in, Lourdes.
Made two years after Alain Cavalier’s Thérèse, this Cannon-produced movie was filmed in both English and French. We may never see what she sees, but we come to believe that in the face of unbelievers, including the church, Bernadette must be telling the truth. Director Jean Delannoy’s also made a sequel, The Passion of Bernadette, so if this seems to end before the story does, that could be the reason.
This movie plays non-stop in one of the shrines in Lourdes, so it must be pretty faithful. No pun intended.
Colonel Kjemba (Robert DoQui, Sgt. Reed from RoboCop) has called in Vietnam vets Virelli (Peter Fonda), T.J. Christian (Reb Brown, forever Yor) and Cliff Taylor (Ron O’Neal, forever Youngblood Priest) who join up with Wilson Jeffords (James Mitchum, forever Robert’s son) and ) to stop a rebel uprising, but you know, sometimes you never know what side of the battle you’re really on.
In Richard Kiel’s autobiography Making it Big in the Movies, he claims to have only turned down four roles in his whole career. Peter Fonda’s part in this is one of them.
I mean, this is Avatar 21 years earlier and around a few hundred million less in the budget. But does that movie have Peter Fonda being racist and Reb Brown screaming at the top of all of his lungs?
Directed by Chuck’s brother Aaron and this time, Norris is Colonel James Braddock all over again, but we’ve discovered that his wife Lin Tan Cang (Miki Kim) isn’t dead, a fact that Reverend Polanski (Yehuda Efroni, Cannon utility fielder) imparts his way. And there’s another surprise. He has a 12-year-old son, Van Tan Cang (Roland Harrah III).
Don’t get used to having a wife Braddock.
Before you can say “Cannon pictures,” Vietnamese General Quoc (Aki Aleong) kills Lin and has his soldiers take Braddock and Van to be tortured.
The real co-star of this movie is Chuck’s Heckler & Koch G3 with grenade launcher and shooting bayonet. While Chuck used to base his movies on Reader’s Digest, this time he was looking to 20/20 for material.
This was supposed to be directed by Joe Zito, then Jack Smight, but after all the creative differences, it all worked out with Aaron. Chuck told reporters that “It’s probably the best movie I’ve ever done.”
Sadly, a Philipines Air Force helicopter used in this film crashed into Manila Bay, an accident that killed four soldiers and wounded five other people on the same day that the verdict from The Twilight Zone: The Moviecase was delivered in Los Angeles Superior Court.
This may not live up to the first two films, but it’s still pretty entertaining. Sadly, Cannon was in so much financial trouble that they couldn’t even afford to publicize it, which nearly caused Norris to sue the company.
Philippe Blot made four movies and three of them, this one, In the Shadow of the Sandcastle and Hot Blood have Sylvia Kristel in them, so of course, I’m going to watch at least three-fourths of his films. I’ll also be jealous the entire time, as he was Kristel’s second husband.
In this movie, she plays Julie, a waitress who has decided to hitch a ride with Giovanni (Gary Graham from the Alien Nation TV show), who we know — and she doesn’t — has just slept with his wife Elvira’s (Leigh Wood, who is also in the strange R-rated Stocks and Blondes edit of Wanda Whips Wall Street) sister and then survived an axe attack by her senator father (Joe Condon, who has the amazing screen credit of doing security for the wrestling dog movie Russell Madness), but he gets the upper hand and murders the man before deciding that he’s God.
As a driverless black Cadillac and Giovanni’s brothers-in-law pursue them, our protagonists have all manner of adventures, like Giovanni being bitten by a snake and going through drug-like dreams as the venom works its way out of his system, three mentally challenged brothers give Julie a sponge bath in a garage, Giovanni keeps cucking men and trying to prove that, yes, he’s (or He’s) God.
He also keeps trying to seduce Julie and you know, it’s Sylvia Kristel. We get it.
Somehow for a movie weird enough to have animator Chuck Jones play a cop, it also ends — spoilers — with Giovanni dying as he crashes his motorcycle into a semi. But you know, he’s finally scored and if you get to enjoy Ms. Kristel, one imagines you can die at any time and not feel like you wasted a moment of your life.
But then the driver of the Cadillac? It’s been him all along.
This is an art film that makes you want to think it’s a sexy movie until you’re watching it and then it’s all about philosophy, the kind that college freshmen discover before the holiday break and come home to tell their parents that there is no God up in the sky. But then, you know, Sylvia Kristel, so I’ve dealt with worse discussion for far less attractive people.
What I’m really saying is that I’m shocked that Vinegar Syndrome hasn’t put this out for $40 with a limited slipcase so people could use the word fever dream in their breathless social posts. Who am I kidding? I have money I’m just fiending to spend on just such a release.
Stray Days was directed by Filippo Ottoni, who directed Detective School Dropouts for Cannon. He co-wrote this with Umberto Marino and it has songs by Enrico Ruggeri.
And that’s it! I can’t find this movie, I can’t find a description of it and no one else has reviewed it. Perhaps we should consider this a placeholder until I eventually find this movie or someone else smartens me up.
Directed and written by Harry Hook, who also made the 1990 Lord of the Flies, The Kitchen Toto is about Jonathan Graham, a regional police officer in the British colony of Kenya dealing with the uprising of the Kikuyu tribe. When they kill a black priest who’s condemned them, he takes in the man’s young son Mwangi (Edwin Mahinda) as his houseboy. Or kitchen toto, which is where this gets its name from.
Mwangi is trapped between two worlds, the independence his country needs so badly and the British who have treated him so well. Well, except for John’s son Edward, who uses him for target practice with his air rifle. When the Kikuyu tribe tries to recruit the servants to push out the English rulers, our protagonist has a life choice to make.
Look, not every Cannon movie is ninjas and explosions. Sometimes, they’re stiff upper lip explorations of the United Kingdom’s past. But yes, they really should all be ninjas and explosions.
This was the last film of Edward Judd, who was in The Day the Earth CaughtFire, Because of the Cats and The Vault of Horror.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I think this was the movie — we first watched it on January 2, 2018 — where I started to understand Jess Franco. And here we are, many movies and zooms later.
Sure, Jess Franco is just making a new version of The Awful Dr. Orloff with this film, but with bigger stars and plenty of gore. And when you’re looking for a movie to watch at 4 AM — and I often am — it certainly does the trick.
Dr. Frank Flamand (Helmut Berger, The Damned) is a plastic surgeon surrounded by gorgeous women who walk arm in arm to his fancy car. But a former patient wants revenge, so she tosses acid at him. Instead, she catches his sister, Ingrid, directly in the face, ruining her gorgeous looks.
Fast forward to a modeling shoot in Paris, where Flamand’s assistant Nathalie (Brigitte Lahaie, The Grapes of Death) drugs and abducts Barbara Hallen (Caroline Munro, Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter, Dr. Phibes Rises Again). As she locks her into the basement of the doctor’s clinic, Nathalie gets into an argument with Gordon, a maniac who lives down in the basement and chops off women’s arms for a hobby.
Still with us? Then let’s go to New York, where Barbara’s dad Terry (Telly Savalas, Lisa and the Devil) is searching for his daughter, turning to Sam Morgan (Chris Mitchum, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Tusk, Bigfoot, Chisum) to help find her. He first travels to a Paris morgue, where her body supposedly is, but the headless victim is not her as it’s missing a mole.
Flamand and his sister meet Dr. Orloff (Howard Vernon, who played Orloff in six of his seven films) and learn how they can cut off Barbara’s face to replace Ingrid’s thanks to a Nazi scientist named Dr. Karl Heinz Moser (Anton Diffring, who played numerous Nazis in his career, including in Jerry Lewis’ long lost The Day the Clown Cried). Plus, Franco’s longtime muse, Lina Romay, appears here as Orloff’s wife. When the doctor returns to his office, he learns Gordon has cut up Barbara’s face.
Morgan beats up Barabra’s photo director before a bouncer makes him leave. He has to call Terry with some bad news — his daughter had been working as a prostitute.
The doctor finds another face donor for the surgery, but Moser destroys it. That means they need to find yet another victim, during which Barbara’s credit card is traced to Flamand’s clinic. Morgan starts surveillance and notices that Nathalie is wearing Barbara’s clothes.
He arrives at the clinic and takes out Gordon, but is overcome and locked into the cell with all of the girls. The villains leave them bricked up and with their air running out.
But Sam has sent Barbara’s dad a message, who gets ready to rescue everyone. And then…the movie ends.
Yep.
The original ending of the film had Sam saving the day, but Franco wanted to make it different and leave it open as to whether Sam and Barabara survived. Why? Why ask.
Oh yeah — I almost forgot. This film is replete with surgical horror, like faces being sliced and lifted off, needles into eyeballs, scissors into throats and much, much more. If only it lived up to the promise of its poster, but that said, it’s grimy and seedy fun if you can’t find anything else.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.