Thanks to Paul Andolina, whose website is Wrestling with Film, for sending this to us!

Every October since about 2014, I’ve participated in a friendly movie watching competition called the Halloween Horror Movie Marathon Madness. The first couple years I joined in I tried to stick to horror movies as much as possible. However since certain actors and directors are considered Wild Cards during the Madness I can get away with non horror fare. Such is the case with today’s film, Saigon Commandos. I came across this film while searching for movies starring P.J. Soles, who most will recognize from Carpenter’s film Halloween.

Saigon Commandos centers around a Military Police officer named, Stryker, during a drug war, a series of murders and an election happening in Saigon, Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It is based on a book in a series of novels written by Nicholas Cain, who served as an MP in Vietnam. He couldn’t get his memoirs published but was told they would publish his works if he fictionalized them with more violence and sex. The series ran for twelve novels, Saigon Commandos being an adaption of the ninth one.

Released in 1988 and starring Richard Young as Stryker, and P.J. Soles as a journalist, Saigon Commandos is not too easy to find. This is a shame as I found it to be a decent film concerning the Vietnam War that didn’t solely focus on what was going on in the jungles but more on what was happening in Saigon. Corruption is running rampant, heroin flows freely in the city streets, and someone is going around killing people with hollow point rounds. I knew I was in for a treat when it opened with a Vietnamese band singing House of the Rising Sun in a bar/stripclub. At times it felt like it was unintentionally funny especially when an AWOL soldier is shot in the ass by drug dealers. As he is on the examination table in the medic’s office in Camp Pershing, he screams in a manner that has to be heard, I found myself cracking up. 

There are quite a few plot points happening at once in this film, with Stryker dealing with an AWOL Specialist who has made it his mission to get vengeance when some of the corrupt politician Trui’s men kill his fiancee when trying to get to Stryker. There is also an investigation into who exactly the hollow point killer is, as well as Trui and his men trying to win the election by fear mongering.

This film has a bit of action and even a small skirmish in the jungles of Vietnam when Stryker is forced to head into the shit to get two of his friends to sign a disposition backing up his alibi when his commanding officer of the military police turns up shot in the head in his bed after a night of Stryker’s heavy drinking.

I had very low expectations for this film and it turned out to be quite fun. If you can manage to track down a copy, I highly recommend it. I bought a German DVD that has both German, and English audio tracks. The picture quality isn’t the greatest but I think it adds to the enjoyment of it. 

I’m going to tell you right now that this movie’s poster is like the metric system that Canada — this post-apocalyptic flick’s country of origin — uses. Whatever you plan on rating the film, double that and add thirty. That’s how much better the poster is than the actual thing you’re about to watch.

You should also know that one year after this movie was made, the filmmakers re-released it as a sequel to itself with new art and a new title, Empire of Ash II. It is, however, the same movie. This is the kind of absolute bullshit that makes me love movies and confounds me as I attempt to organize my collection.

Let me see if I can explain this properly: There are a bunch of bad guys called LARD (Leukocytes Acquisitors for Remission of Disease) who are killing everyone under the orders of a preacher. They also like to steal blood. There’s also an evil girl who dances in her leotard while staring intently at the camera.

There’s also a bad guy that has a rocket launcher hat. Yes, a rocket shoots off from his head, which seems to be the kind of dumb shit that even Cobra Commander would frown upon.

If the idea of chubby bikers shooting computers in Canada dressed up as New Idaho while post-apocalyptic vehicles meander about while hair metal plays makes you as happy as it does me, let me say that this movie is for you. It makes 1990: The Bronx Warriors look like a multi-million dollar movie, however. This is as low budget as it gets without a camcorder. But hey — we’re here to see people dress up in shoulder pads and shoot one another, not talk about how much movies cost.

You can grab this at Cult Action, which seems like some kind of scheme invented to take most of my paycheck. That site has way too many movies that I want.

It’s time for our favorite Native American warrior, Thunder, to return. This time, he takes on a racist militia in Las Cruces, New Mexico. They’ve refused to pay the very specific amount of $53,000 for attacking and abusing him (yes, Thunder gets beat up again) after destroying his village.

If the promise of Mark Gregory wearing buckskin and teaching children how to shoot arrows seems like a good idea, then you’re ready for this one. Actually, this feels incredibly prescient, as a bunch of good old boys get all trashed on beer and male bonding before entering his village en masse and starting some shit.

Yes, director Fabrizio De Angelis is back for a third Thunder film, along with Mark Gregory and the man who seemingly wrote every Italian movie in the 1980s and 1990s, Dardano Sacchetti. Coming along for the ride as Sherriff Jeff? Diabolik himself, John Phillip Law!

The bad guys are beyond bad here, as they whip our hero and drag him behind a truck before blowing up his village. Of course, Thunder has been dragged behind a truck before. He just wants paid in cash this time, trying to be peaceful.

That said — we all know why we’re watching a Thunder movie. We want the slowly simmering, bad acting of Mark Gregory to explode into violence, baseball batting, gathering an army of Native American warriors and jumping dirt bikes. It’s more of the same, but watching this film in the pst-Trump era makes me feel like it could really happen. You get frame after frame of heavy set MAGA types shooting up a reservation while their leader watches from a helicopter. Actually, it feels way too real.

So how does Mark Gregory react to these red staters blowing up his home and making him run behind their trucks while tied to the bumper? By getting all pouty. Such are the acting chops of Gregory!

How did three Thunder movies get made? Was there such a demand for them? Were video stores really that awesome that they potentially could have an entire Thunder section? Dare I dream of a video store with a Dardano Sacchetti section, where I could choose to rent favorites such as Manhattan Baby and Warriors of the Year 2072?

Keep in mind, this movie may give you a seizure like you’re in a Cronenberg film. I mean, just to set up the scene where Thunder decimates a classic car with a baseball bat, we get a long, loving look at an old redneck in short shorts lovingly washing said car. Then Mark Gregory tears that car apart like only he can. And by that, I mean he stares off into space while absentmindedly hitting it with a bat before heading off to a hardware store filled with people and going buck futter in the aisles until the shop owner pulls a gun — in front of paying customers, no less!  You’ve never seen a store so shitty or one that sells stuff that is near unnecessary that isn’t called the Red White and Blue Thrift Store in your life! And then to top this all off, Thunder fills the aisles with gasoline — that he pulled off the shelf, because that’s how it’s stored — and sets the store on fire! And it’s a drugstore, not a hardware store, a store that has full cans of gas right next to TV sets. The world of Thunder is not our own. It is a parallel universe of goofball lunacy, one where one lone man who walks as if he has a tomahawk up his ass can wear tight jeans, a fringed shirt and turquoise whilst leading the local fuzz on one hell of a manhunt.

How many times must they burn down Thunder’s home, tie up his woman and beat him? Well, once he brings an entire army of Native Americans on horseback to beat up three rednecks, that seems like it should be the last time, right? If Thunder had this whole posse on his side the whole time, where were they when he was being dragged behind a car? It’s best not to ask these kinds of questions and just sit back and watch them chase those guys down and give out some justice, I guess.

This movie also makes some major leaps of tone, such as how we go from this chase to a wacky truck stuck in the desert scene, complete with goofball synth. Then, Thunder lays down the law to the cops. It’s time for his brand of law with the white man. And right after that, an entire lineup of big fat white dudes shoot up the shack where Thunder is hiding as he makes big goofy eyes and runs away. Man, Thunder. You can’t catch a break.

Our hero replies by busting up a political rally by blowing stuff up real good as he rides in on a dirt bike, face painted up and ready for a fight. He ends up trying to bury one of the fat politicians alive rather than take a payoff, but gets held up by the sheriff. He gets the money and uses it to rebuild the village before heading off into the sunset with his woman.

One supposes that because we never got Thunder 4 that this was the last time he got in trouble with the law. Me, I’m still holding out hope. I mean, after a week of Mark Gregory movies, I realize that I have watched every single second that he ever committed to film. And now, I have both a sense of completeness and sadness. Do I have to use Go Fund Me to make the Italian action film of my dreams, a movie where Thunder meets Trash in the future and they walk in way too tight denim down an alley before somersaulting through fire?

You can grab this at Revok. Or use the internet to find double dubbed versions of it like me.

Before Dr. Strange was in big time movies, he was in TV movies. There, he was played by Peter Hooten. Why am I telling you this? Because Pete is here to star with our man Mark Gregory today in Just a Damn Soldier.

The story here is that Hooten’s character gets together his mercenary pals to steal some gold from a bad guy and sell it to the Afghan rebels that would one day become the Taliban because his girlfriend was killed by the Russians. That Taliban part is me editorializing. It’s also totally true.

Ferdinando Baldi is back in the chair for this one, as he must have had a deal to create every Mark Gregory commando style movie. Also: Mark gets shot in the knee, limps and is fine by the very next scene.

You should do what I do. Shoot roman candles at the TV while drunk, screaming Mark Gregory’s name over and over while savoring every second of this film. You can watch it for free at Amazon Video!

Terrorists are making genetic experiments on kidnapped girls. And Professor Larson has a dream. That dream is probably your nightmare, as he wants to create a master race to rule the world. Luckily, some scientific organizations in Asia and Europe have hired a group of mercenaries to kill everyone. Yay!

But wait! This movie is a North Korean/Italian co-promotion! Kim Il-Sung actually allowed this movie to be made in his country and, well, it’s a total piece of shit.

That said — Mark Gregory is the bad guy, the leader of the terrorists. And who is being paid $65,000 by FSR (Final Solution Research) to stop him? Frank Zagarino — Stryker himself! Plus, Sabrina Siani (Conquest, The Throne of Fire) came along too. Did you know her mother used to come to nearly every set she was on and get in the way? Well, she also encouraged Jess Franco to film her daughter naked, so there’s that.

There is also a veritable army of North Korean extras ready to do whatever it takes to make this entertaining. They failed!

There is one goofball scene where Lou, a commando, talks about how he spent the last year with the Bolshoi Ballet and how he had to kill a ballet dancer who was ready to stop disarmament talks between Russia and the U.S. Not only does this sound like the kind of script conversation that Quentin Tarantino used to get paid to write (like that discussion about the Silver Surfer that comes out of nowhere in Crimson Tide) and a way better movie than what I suffered through.

But Mark Gregory is in it! That has to count for something.

An interesting trivia note: the evil Professor Larson was played by Charles Robert Jenkins, a United States Army soldier who lived in North Korea from 1965 to 2004 after deserting his unit and crossing the Korean Demilitarized Zone. He immediately regretted this decision and was treated poorly for years. In 1982, Jenkins appeared as Dr. Kelton, painted to be the mastermind behind the Korean War, in the film Unsung Heroes. This was the first evidence to the Western world that he was alive, but the U.S. government did not acknowledge this fact until 1996. He was given a Japanese wife, who was allowed to go back to Japan and he eventually was able to go there, where he spent the rest of his life.

The country of Japan asked for the U.S. to pardon him for treason, but they refused. Jenkins put his conscience to rest by reporting to Camp Zama on Patriot Day, September 11, 2004. He showed up in full uniform with all of his medals and saluted the military police.

On November 3, he pleaded guilty to charges of desertion and aiding the enemy, but denied making disloyal or seditious statements. Those charges were dropped and he was sentenced to 30 days in the brig. He was released early for good behavior and received a dishonorable discharge.

He published a biography in Japan called To Tell the Truth, which was re-published nearly a decade later in the U.S. as The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea. He died in Japan on December 11, 2017.

His story would make a much better movie than Tan Zan: Ultimate Mission. But you can still watch this movie for free on Amazon Prime.

I thought that I had watched every Mark Gregory movie there was. I’d made it through 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Escape from the Bronx, Adam and Eve vs. the Cannibals and even Thunder. But now you’re telling me that he’s playing a terrorist who goes up against Bo Svenson and Fred Williamson in a movie written by Dardano Sacchetti (Zombi, The House by the Cemetery, The Beyond, Blastfighter, Demons, Demons 2, Hands of Steel)? Holy shit, it’s like getting a Christmas gift months after the holiday is over!

Latin American revolutionaries — led by Mark Gregory, who still hasn’t learned how to walk properly but has cut his hair — invade a military base on Puerto Rico, steal a nuclear bomb and kill Lt. Tony Turner’s (sure, Brett Baxter Clark was in Teen Witch, but he’s also the gardener who sexes up Harlee McBride in the Cinemax After Dark classic Young Lady Chatterley II) pregnant wife.

Lt. Tony decides to steal a jet and its pilot: Captain Beck, played by Fred “the Hammer” Williamson! They follow the terrorists back home, take them out and almost die when the weapons are due to go off. Funny story — it was just a training weapon and a story to get the U.S. media excited about the Delta Force again.

Your enjoyment of this film is based around how much you enjoy seeing Mark Gregory loopily walk around with a nuclear weapon on his back and Fred Williamson wiping out an entire army while dropping one liners like, “Hey, this beautiful brown body’s got a lot of living left to do, pal!” This is a movie that has a puke grenade. This is a movie that has Fred driving a bus while a helicopter shoots at it point blank. Me? All in.

Good news. Not is this movie amazingly and ridiculously awesome, there’s a sequel. And you can watch both of them for free at Amazon Prime or buy them at Revok.

You know when they say that something is loosely based on something? I just read that this movie is loosely based on The Monkey’s Paw. Sure, they both have wishes that go wrong, but I think the similarities stop there.

Directed by David DeCoteau, who went on to bring us Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge, Puppet Master: Axis of Evil, Bigfoot vs. D.B. Cooper and the completely unhinged Eric Roberts voiced A Talking Cat!?!, this movie delivers everything its title promises (which is a much better one than its original name, The Imp).

Three frat guys spy on three sorority girls (Babs, played by Robin Rochelle from The Slumber Party Massacre; Rhonda and Frankie, who is Carla Baron, now a real-life psychic profiler) as they prepare two new members (Taffy is scream queen Brinke Stevens and Lisa, Michelle Bauer, the scream queen who was Penthouse Magazine’s July 1981 Pet of the Month and also known as adult star Pia Snow) for an initiation, which consists of paddling and whipped cream. The boys get caught and to make up for it, they have to go with the girls to steal a bowling trophy.

While they try and get said trophy, they run into a burglar named Spider (scream queen supreme Linnea Quigley), who helps them break in. They quickly screw up and break the trophy, freeing Uncle Impy. That wacky little guy promises three wishes for freeing him. One of the guys wants gold, Taffy wants to be prom queen and one of the dudes just wants to have sex with Lisa (well, you can see his point). Impy senses that the sorority girls are watching him (indeed, Babs’ dad runs the mall) via cameras and he possesses both of hem.

Hijinks, as they say, ensue, with human heads being used as bowling balls, sorority girls getting turned into demons, bowling ball-fu (as Jim Bob would say), all-knowing janitors, Molotov cocktails, more severed heads and so much more.

Most of the cast stuck around to be in another DeCoteau film, Nightmare Sisters. Both are very much Charles Band direct to video films — a bit of gore, a little comedy and some T & A. And they’re the only two movies that have all three of the major scream queens — Quigley, Stevens and Bauer — appear in the same movie together.

I mean, if you like demons, bowling and attractive women, this movie would have everything you’re looking for. You can watch this on Shudder and even get commentary by Joe Bob Briggs.

Remember how awesome the video store was? MVD sure does and their Rewind Collection series is here to celebrate “cult classics and more from the video store” with blu ray and DVD collector’s sets loaded with special features. Many of the films in this series — which are numbered and come in a slipcase that looks like an actual beat up rental box — haven’t been released on blu ray in North America and some have never even been released on DVD!

The first MVD Rewind release I’ve had the chance to watch is 1988’s Bram Stoker’s Shadowbuilder. It’s all about an evil archbishop and his followers who have brought a demon to our world with the hopes of destroying it. It’s able to turn anything to shadows which fade away in the light, but that very same demon is also afraid of light. Yet with each kill, it grows stronger and harder to kill, as well as gaining the power to control dogs.

Now, the demon has a young boy in its crosshairs, as that child has the potential to be a saint. Killing him will open the doorway to Hell and allow more demons loose into our realm of existence. Luckily, a renegade priest named Jacob Vassey (Michael Rooker from Guardians of the Galaxy, but I’m certain readers of this site can name many other films he’s been in) is ready to battle the Shadowbuilder. And hey! There’s Tony Todd with long hair and an eye patch (he’s also amazing in the making of feature, with every word out of his mouth sounding like poetry)! There’s also a really interesting section where actor Andrew Jackson, who played the Shadowbuilder, talks about how the voice of the villain came to be.

I’m certain that in 1988, having the Catholic Church be the bad guys felt pretty edgy. But today? I think today we can all accept that they’re probably housing Shadowbuilders. Also, if you’re guessing that this story has little to do with the original story, then you were renting movies in the 1980’s too! That said, the making of feature explains exactly how the original tale inspired it, including writer Michael Stokes, who has gone on to write for the kid’s show Paw Patrol!

Director Jamie Dixon keeps things moving. He only has one other directing credit to his name, the TV movie Bats: Human Harvest. However, he’s been the visual effects supervisor for films such as Prometheus, The Chronicles of Riddick, Titanic and so many more.

Beyond the great packaging (complete with poster and reversible artwork) and 1080p transfer, MVD really brings it here with the special features, including commentary from the director and features like its visual effects, child star Kevin Zegers, who was also in the Air Bud series and The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, and the aforementioned making of the film.

Diabolik DVD has this release as well as the entire MVD catalog. This was just released on August 28, so hurry and grab it today! It hits all the buttons here — Michael Rooker, occult horror, killer dogs, a cool looking bad guy…it’s as if it was made for this site!

Disclaimer: I was sent this movie by its PR team, but as you know, that has no bearing on my review.

Any movie that refers to its titular monster as the “critter from the shitter,” you know what you’re getting into. Oh, Italian cinema. I love you so.

Marlis and Peggy are modeling on a Caribbean Island when Peggy gets eaten by rats. You know. The kind of thing that happens every time they shoot the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover.

Peggy’s sister Terry (Janet Ågren, City of the Living Dead, Eaten Alive!) shows up to investigate along with Fred (David Warbeck, The Beyond). They learn that the real culprit is a two-foot tall ape/rat hybrid, which is something out of Alex Jones’ worst nightmares. And yours and mine as well, as it’s played by Nelson de la Rosa, who you may also remember as Marlon Brando’s miniature twin in The Island of Dr. Moreau. His attacks are filled with screaming rat noises and really seem like harrowing moments to have filmed.

Shockingly, this movie is directed by Giuliano Carnimeo, whose Case of the Bloody Iris is one of my favorite giallo films! It’s written by Dardano Sacchetti, who of course helped create The Beyond, The New York Ripper, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, The Church and so many other Italian genre favorites. Dardano, thank you for all the complete lunacy and demented fun that you have brought into our lives!

The end of this film is a joy. A shocker that will surprise you with just how effective Italian genre filmmaking can be. It made me howl in abject joy!

Shameless put out a region 2 DVD a few years ago, which you can find here but the American version from Apprehensive Films is out of stock. Hint: You can find this one on YouTube.