You know how slashers go: you need to get the horny teens to wind up in a secluded place with some promise of sex and drug hijinks. An abandoned mental hospital? That’s not frightening — it’s a good place to screw!

Of course, inside the walls of this old asylum, there’s more than just a place to party hearty. There’s also a deformed maniac who just so happens to be the attorney that split final girl Kiki’s parents up and caused her mother to die a decade before. Again, in slashers, there are no coincidences. Everything has been ordained, as if by freakish fate.

Now, the former Attorney Mitch Hansen has become The Coroner, a serial killer who uses surgical tools to wipe out anyone in his way.

The dual roles of Kiki and her mother Judy are played by Patty Mullen, Penthouse Pet of the Month for August 1986 and 1988’s Pet of the Year. You may also remember her from playing the title role in Frankenhooker and being married to Joey Image, one of the drummers for The Misfits.

However, Jane — one of the many friends of Kiki set up to die, as is the wont of the slasher — would grow up to be Kristen Davis. Yes, from Sex and the City. So if you ever wanted to see her get her face sawed off…

There’s also a punk band played inside the asylum named Tina and the Tots. Tina  is played by Ruth Collins, who was also in Witch Academy and was paid $100 extra to show her breasts. Because you know, you can’t have a slasher without them (actually you totally can).

This was all written by Rick Marx, who also was behind the movies Taboo American Style 1: The Ruthless Beginning, Wanda Whips Wall Street, Blonde Justice #3 and Christy In the Wild. In case you didn’t guess, those are all adult films. He also wrote Snapped for Chuck Vincent, Warrior Queen, a biography on WOR late-night fixture Joe Franklin and the two Gor movies.

Behind the camera? None other than Richard Friedman (Scared Stiff, Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge). This movie is all over the place in tone and presentation, but if you rented it back in the late 1980’s — it’s pretty much a perfectly goofball slasher that would go well with a six-pack and pizza — you probably have much fonder memories than I do. After all, if you went and watched Bloodsucking Freaks without seeing it through the lens of being 15 years old and landlocked in a small town, you probably wouldn’t understand why people liked it either.

You can get this on blu ray from the fine folks at Arrow Video or watch it for free on Tubi!

Donald G. Jackson sure made a lot of post-apocalyptic films. Roller Blade, Roller Blade Warriors: Taken by Force, The Rollerblade Seven, The Legend of the Rollerblade Seven, Return of the Rollerblade Seven and three different movies in the Helltown series. He also made I Like To Hurt People, a movie all about pro wrestling. These things would all come together to create this film, where “Rowdy” Roddy Piper plays Sam Hell, the last fertile man on Earth.

In the post-apocalyptic wasteland of this film, atomic fallout has led to men and women being unable to breed. The government seeks out those that can make children and uses them to keep the human race alive. Meanwhile, frogs have become able to walk and talk like humans, all while falling for human women.

Sam Hell (Piper) has been located by the government as they followed the trail of pregnant women left in his wake. They wanted to use him to breed their collection of fertile women, but it turns out that the frogs took all of them. So now, he must use his fighting skills to break into Frogtown and rescue the women, then knock every single one of them up.

The team behind this operation — Spangle (Sandahl Bergman, who was also in the near-perfect post-apoc film She) and Centinella (Cec Verrell, Hollywood Vice Squad) — outfits Hell with a codpiece that will cause his junk to explode if he tries to run off.

Of course, hijinks ensue. A Frog lady named Arabella (Kristi Somers, Savage Streets, Girls Just Want to Have Fun) falls for Hell. Spangle is drugged and ensures the Dance of the Three Snakes for the Frog leader Commander Toty. And Nicholas Worth — serial killer and necophilliac Kirk Smith from Don’t Answer the Phone — shows up as a Frog who tortures Hell.

This film is worlds better than I ever imagined that it could be. The part of Sam Hell was written with Tim Thomerson in mind, but New World wanted Daniel Stern. The final two actors considered for the role came down to Piper and Ed Marinaro. I think they made the right choice.

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome, who have a features packed blu ray they’ve just released that I’ve gotta get.

Cirio H. Santiago, so many of your movies have crossed my path. You pretty much owned the market when it came to post-apocalyptic films made in the Phillipines, thanks to movies like Raiders of the Sun, Dune Warriors, Equalizer 2000, Wheels of Fire and Stryker. (And we can’t forget the majesty that is Firecracker and the Jaws rip, Demon of Paradise.)

Now, you’ve taken the end of the world to its logical extreme: women against everybody.

We don’t have much time until 2021 AD. That’s when women will be enslaved by men after a nuclear war. Luckily, The Sisterhood will be ready to protect them. They start the movie by kicking the asses of Mikal (Chuck Wagner, who is also in America 3000 and was Automan) and his men.

The Sisterhood also rescues Marya (Lynn-Holly Johnson, For Your Eyes Only), whose family was killed by the aforementioned Mikal. The two members who save her are Alee (former Breck girl Rebecca Holden) and Vera (Barbara Patrick, Lord of Illusions). If her last name seems familiar, that’s because she was Barbara Hooper before getting married to T-1000 himself, Robert Patrick.

Each of the members of this female fighting force have super powers and Marya’s is the abolity to speak with her hawk, making her a distant relative of Marc Singer. Alee can shoot lasers out of her eyes. Vera can heal people with a touch. Throw in the religious nature of the Sisterhood — they’re led by the mysterious ghost known as Reverend Mother — and you have a movie that is the needle in the end of the world haystack.

Now, they must battle their way through a city filled with evil men, ruled by Lord Barak, who is played by Robert Dryer, who caused big issues for Linda Blair in Savage Streets.

During the swordfights in this, Holly-Johnson cut off a stuntman’s finger. Do you now realize the immense pressure and danger people went through to entertain you with these post-apocalyptic pictures?

There’s also a character named Dynamite Willie who keeps the peace at his bar by lighting sticks of dynamite and yelling as loudly as possible. He might be the best part of this movie.

Also, this is one of the lone films where one of the bad guys learns a lesson and changes his ways, which is incredibly forward thinking for a Phillipines made, Roger Corman produced Mad Max ripoff filled with bare breasts and cars with rocket launchers on them.

You can watch this for free on Tubi.

Roger Corman protege Carl Colpaert made his directorial debut on this film by combining repurposed excerpts from Mamoru Oshii’s (the original Ghost In The Shell) anime Angel’s Egg with new footage shot in America. The result combines live action and animation to create the story of two soldiers, Frank and Goose, and their lives after the end of the world.

Frank and Goose start the film on the hunt for oxygen, with only six days left. After a violent confrontation leaves Frank injured, a small girl named Angel appears holding an egg. It turns out that Angel is really an angel and she has to decide if she wants to help mankind survive or allow it to fade away in the apocalypse.

Meanwhile, Frank meets Doctor Sarah, another survivor, and they share an interlude where he plays her a haunting theme on the piano (Horatio Moscovici’s “Carnavalito Tango”).

While not the greatest movie I’ve ever seen, this movie still deserves to be checked out. It’s pretty incredible that the Corman factory got their hands on the anime rights so cheaply and when they realized just how little Western audiences would comprehend it, they just went all out and made it into a new film that can stand on its own.

Beyond a new 2K version of the film, this Arrow Video release also includes newly filmed interviews with producer Tom Dugan and actor Tony Markes, as well as Before The Aftermath: The Influence of Angel’s Egg, a new appreciation of Mamoru Oshii’s original film by anime expert Andrew Osmond.

You can get this now from Arrow Video.

DISCLAIMER: Arrow Video sent us this movie, but that doesn’t impact our review.

When I was a kid, I wasn’t allowed to have toy guns and military toys were not allowed in our house. I can remember thinking how strange it was that my grandfather loved war movies so much, hearing him listen to screaming and bullets and explosions in films late into the night when he’d get home from a double shift at the mill. And yet here I am, thirty years later or so, pretty much doing the same thing, watching Stallone movies at 6:12 AM while the rest of the world enjoys their last few minutes of sleep.

The first time I saw Rambo III was at a friend’s house unbeknownst to my parents. And this kid was obsessed with Rambo, right down to the necklace and knife that had a compass and opened up to hold tools. Yeah, 1988 was the kind of time when kids idolized war movies. We didn’t know that war was a funny thing and that the very Taliban soldiers that we cheered on in this film would one day change sides because global diplomacy is funny that way. It was simpler to just hate and fear Russia back then than it is today, where nothing at all seems sure and everything feels made up.

But I digress. Let’s talk about John Rambo.

Colonel Sam Trautman tracks down Rambo in Thailand, where he’s stick fighting for a monastery. He wants nothing of the war, even when shown how Russian troops in Afghanistan are killing civilians. Trautman goes on the mission and is captured, with all of his men killed. That’s when Rambo tells the man in charge of this op, government suit Robert Griggs, that he’ll rescue Trautman.

That leads me to one of my many rules of movies. This one is simple. Never trust a government spook. And my second rule: never, ever trust Kurtwood Smith.

Rambo soon meets arms dealer Mousa Ghani and asks him to bring him to Khost, where Trautman is being held. The Mujahideen in the village take to Rambo after he plays a game on horseback with them, but after a Russian helicopter attacks them, they refuse to help him. Instead, only Mousa and a young boy named Hamid are willing to help. 

Rambo — of course — destroys everyone in his path to save his mentor. He uses everything from his bare hands to explosive arrows and even a tank to kill everyone in his path. And while the Russians almost take them out, the brave Afghani people rise up to rescue our heroes.

This movie used to end with a dedication to the brave Mujahideen, but now just thanks the gallant people of Afghanistan. That said, Masoud is based on Ahmad Shah Masoud, a real-life Afghan resistance who later became the minister of defense before leading the resistance against the Taliban. And in the original cut, Rambo felt so at home with the freedom fighters that he stayed here versus going back to America.

Up until Back to the Future Part II, this was the most expensive movie ever made. And, like many Stallone films, it was fraught with issues. Just a few weeks into filming, most of the crew including the director of photography and director Russel Mulcahy (Razorback, Highlander) were fired.

Stallone told Ain’t It Cool News that Mulcahy “went to Israel two weeks before me with the task of casting two dozen vicious looking Russian troops. These men were supposed to make your blood run cold. When I arrived on the set, what I saw was two dozen blond, blue-eyed pretty boys that resembled rejects from a surfing contest. Needless to say, Rambo is not afraid of a little competition but being attacked by third rate male models could be an enemy that could overwhelm him. I explained my disappointment to Russell and he totally disagreed, so I asked him and his chiffon army to move on.” Mulcahy was replaced by Peter MacDonald, a veteran second unit director.

The Guinness Book of World Records went on to label this the most violent film ever made, with 221 acts of violence, 70 explosions and over 108 on-screen deaths. They should have held on for the next one in the series, which goes way beyond this. Of course, this won Stallone another Razzie for Worst Actor, but I don’t think he was all that concerned. After all, he got paid a Gulfstream jet to be in this movie.

My Best Friend’s Birthday was co-written by Craig Hamann and Quentin Tarantino when the director was still working at Manhattan Beach’s Video Archives. With just $5,000 they spent four years making the film along with several of their video store and acting school friends, including Roger Avary.

The original cut was about 70 minutes long, but due to a film lab fire, only 36 minutes of this comedy still exist.

There’s at least one recognizable face here other than Tarantino, who plays Clarence Pool, one of the leads. It’s Allen Garfield, who plays an entertainment magnate. Garfield is a tragic story, as the actor suffered a stroke after being cast in Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate. Polanski decided to use Garfield’s paralyzed face for his character rather than hide it or recast the role, but Garfield suffered a massive stroke in 2004. Since then, he’s been a resident in the long-term nursing care section of The Motion Picture Home.

How did Garfield even get involved in this? He was Tarantino’s acting coach at the time.

The plot concerns Clarence trying to give his friend Mickey (Hamann) a great birthday, but failing every step of the way. It all starts in a radio station, where there’s tons of Tarantino’s pop culture banter and an early version of the Pulp Fiction drug snorting tragedy. Since this is a comedy, it involves itching powder.

Roger Avery commented on the film by saying, “Had we ever finished the film it would have looked something like a sloppy version of She’s Gotta Have It; a miracle considering the budget. Contrary to legend, the rest of the film was not “lost in a lab fire.” It was simply never finished due to loss of steam.”

Rich Turner, who plays Oliver Brandon, was later cast in minor roles in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and as the American tourist in Avery’s Killing Zoe. Mickey’s ex-girlfriend is Linda Kaye, who would go on to do stunt work in films like Bad Dreams, Reservoir Dogs (she gets hit by the car) and Pulp Fiction, where she gets shot in the scene where Marcellus and Butch fight in the street.

Crystal Shaw Martell is in this as Misty. She’s also in the films Evil Spawn, American Drive-In, Sword of Heaven, Hard Rock Zombies and Hardbodies, as well as working as a production assistant on The Being.

Some of this movie became part of True Romance. While it’s not a great film per se, its a fascinating initial glimpse into what Tarantino would later make.

Sho Kosugi was a big deal when I was growing up in the 1980’s. His movies like 9 Deaths of the Ninja, Pray for Death, Enter the Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja and Ninja 3: The Domination — and his role as Okasa on the TV series The Master — made him the ninja movie actor. In Black Eagle, he plays Ken Tani, a special government agent who just wants to spend more time with his kids. However, standing in his way is a villainous Jean-Claude Van Damme, not yet ready to embrace superstardom.

Codenamed Black Eagle,  Ken is needed when a jet carrying a laser tracking device is shot down over the Isle of Malta by Russian forces. Soon, Colonel Vladimir Klimenko and his men are all over the place looking for the device. His key man is Andrei (Van Damme), who goes up against Black Eagle, CIA agent Patricia Parker and Black Eagle’s kids Brian and Denny (Kosugi’s real-life kids Kane and Shane).

Director Eric Karson was also behind the Chuck Norris movie The Octagon and produced Lionheart, another Van Damme film. The story kind of crawls in the beginning, but the fights between the two main characters is pretty much worth your time. That said, you also get to see Van Damme doing a split while throwing knives, which is always fun.

There’s also a Catholic priest who went into the faith to avoid a life in the CIA. So there’s that, I guess.

You can watch Black Eagle for free on Tubi.

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 Times takes 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.