Yes, Nico Mastorakis, the same maniac who made Island of Death, Blind Date and The Zero Boys, made a Police Academy ripoff. It also checks off another box with an appearance by Phillip, who is pretty much James Bond. Also, because this is Mastorakis, there’s some full-frontal nudity.

Also, Mastorakis never meant to actually direct the film, but after seeing that some of the dailies, he fired the original director and took over.

Gerald Okamura, the Hard Master from the first G.I. Joe movie and one of the hatchet men in Big Trouble In Little China, is Chiba, a man who owns a ninja academy in Topanga Canyon. His enemy owns Beverly Hills Ninja Academy. And just like Camp North Star and Camp Mohawk, they must battle.

There’s a mime, a klutz, some attractive women, a wiseacre and all the things you expect from this genre. Is Police Academy ripoff a genre? It is now.

Becky LeBeau, whose IMDB resume has Joysticks, multiple David Lee Roth videos, Hollywood Hot Tubs, Back to School, The Under Achievers, Not of This Earth, Rock-A-Die Baby and both Munchie movies, is in this. That alone should give you reason to find a copy of your own.

Also: a band on the soundtrack is called The Piggy Dicks. That is now my favorite band name ever.

This is part of Arrow Video’s The Nico Mastorakis Collection and has a new interview with Gerald Okamura, looking back on his role as Chiba and his career as an actor and martial artist. You also get a trailer for the movie.

This set is available from MVD.

Julius Lazar (Dick Gautier) and his secretary Missy (Amy Lyndon) have finished up planning his next movie Sex and Violence when they decide to get away for the weekend and go to Hawaii. She has no idea what she’s doing, so that allows T.C. (Will Egan) and Bo (Steve Donmyer) to break in at the exact same time as two of Lazar’s disgruntled employees, Paco (Fernando Garzón) and Lee (John Kreng). Luckily, Bo has a second personality named Simon who is super strong — look, you’re watching a Nico Mastorakis movie, these are the plot twists you grow used to — and he’s able to defeat the two of them, setting T.C. up as Lazar and himself up as a director as young and morally unencumbered actresses show up to become famous in the next big movie from Hollywood’s most popular exploitation director.

If you’re looking for a movie just for nubile and often nude women, well, Mastorakis knew what you wanted. There are ninety women in this, including Bunty Bailey (Dolls, a-ha’s “Take On Me), Teri Weigel (one of the few women to be both a Playboy Playmate and Penthouse Pet, as well as an adult movie star), Roxanna Michaels (Caged Fury), Penny Wiggins (who was The Amazing Jonathan’s assistant Psychic Tanya), Marjean Holden (Sheeva from Mortal Kombat Annihilation), Christina Cardan (Chained Heat) as a non-SAG actress, Kahlena Marie (Streets of Death) as a SAG actress, stuntwoman Laura Albert, Heidi Paine (Wizards of the Demon Sword), Debra Lamb (both Stripped to Kill movies), Jesae (who became adult actress Elise di Medici), Becky Mullen (who was Sally the Farmer’s Daughter in GLOW and is also in the Van Halen video “Poundcake”) and Donna Spangler (Amityville Witches).

While all the women are trying to get a part, DuBois (Ted Lange) shows up with several members of the mob to take back the money that Lazar took from them for his new movie Pink Thunder. There’s also Michelle Wong (Julia Nickson, Rambo: First Blood Part II), who comes to audition just to tell Lazar how much she hates his movies and ends up becoming T.C.’s dream woman.

This has so many ridiculous scenes, including gay bodyguard ninja Brucie (Dan Spreaker) beating up an entire collection of bad guys and Bo getting his brains back from a hypnotist (Ji-Tu Cumbuka). None of it is politically correct, much of it is goofy and Mastorakis shot this because he was looking for somewhere fun to live. He stayed in the mansion that this was shot at for three weeks.

This is part of Arrow Video’s The Nico Mastorakis Collection and has an interview with Dan Hirsch looking back on his role in the film and a trailer as extra features.

This set is available from MVD.

After Easy Money, Saturday Night Live veteran James Signorelli directed one more film. This one — starring Cassandra Peterson as her Elvira character.

In 1981, six years after Sinister Seymour was off the air, the producers of LA’s Fright Night decided to do another show and asked Vampira — Maila Nurmi — to help them with the project. There were creative differences — supposedly Nurmi wanted Lola Falana to play Vampira — and soon the station just did the show themselves (for her side of the story, please watch Vampira and Me).

Peterson had already lived a crazy life before she auditioned and won the role of the new horror host. She was a Vegas showgirl at 17, briefly dated Elvis, played a showgirl in Diamonds Are Forever, posed for men’s magazines like High Society, tried out to be Ginger in a new Gilligan’s Island, was on the cover of Tom Waits’ album (she claims that she doesn’t remember but it totally could be her), played in rock bands in Italy, ended up in Fellini’s Roma, joined the improv group The Groundlings and then ended up as a DQ on KROQ.

Is this Elvira?

Anyways, back to Elvira. The station allowing her to create the image of her character. Originally, she wanted to look like Sharon Tate in The Fearless Vampire Killers, but ended up with the punky and busty look we’ve all come to know and love.

Before the first episode even aired, Normi sued, claiming that Elvira was too close to her character. I’ll leave it up to you, dear reader, but they are quite similar. However, her Valley Girl delivery and sarcastic tone was a real difference and Elvira went from local star to pop icon, which led to this, her first movie.

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark quits her job in LA after the station’s new owner has a #metoo moment with her. She wants to start an act in Vegas, but needs $50,000. Luckily, her great aunt Morgana has just died and she has to travel to Fallwell, Massachusetts to claim the inheritance.

So what does she get? A mansion, a recipe book and Morgana’s pet poodle, Algonquin. But once she’s in town, she learns that no one is allowed to have fun and she sets out to change everyone’s grey demeanor. Oh yeah — and her uncle Vincent just wants the cookbook — which is a book of spells — and he also wants to sacrifice her so that he can take over the world. Thus, magic battles ensue, Algonquin becomes a rat at one point and the town’s morality club gets hit with a sex spell that gets them all arrested for indecent exposure.

Fellow Groundling Edie McClurg shows up as one of the villains, as does former Grease and Taxi heartthrob Jeff Conaway. Other Groundlings in the film are Lynne Marie Stewart, Deryl Carroll, Joseph Arias, Tress MacNeille and John Paragon.

Scripted by Sam Egan and Paragon, who is better known as Jambi and Pterri from his Pee-Wee’s Playhouse days, along with Peterson, this movie’s entertainment level will depend on how much you love puns and Elvira. I adore her, so this movie is totally fun for me.

The Arrow Video release of this film features a brand new restoration of the film from a 4K scan of original film elements. Plus, you get an introduction to the film by director James Signorelli and commentary by him. There’s also commentary by Elvira’s webmaster Patterson Lundquist and a third commentary track with Cassandra Peterson, Edie McClurg and writer John Paragon. You also get a making of feature, Too Macabre – The Making of Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, and another on the making of the Pot Monster. This also includes trailers, storyboards, image galleries, reversible art and a collector’s booklet featuring writing by Sam Irving, Kat Ellinger and Patterson Lundquist.

You can buy it on UHD or blu ray from MVD.

We’ve all seen Hellraiser, I hope, by now, but if this movie has eluded your collection, as it once did mine, this Arrow Box set is incredible and will fit the bill. As the Cenobites say, “We have such sights to show you.”

Hellraiser (1987): Horror movies don’t scare me. Not anymore. Some of them disturb me, like the cannibal films. But only one still kind of scares me. And that would be Hellraiser.

There was a time, before the eight sequels to the film and BDSM became well-known fodder on shows like Law and Order that Hellraiser seemed like it came from some alien land more than its true origins. The monsters of the piece, the Cenobites, looked like nothing we’d never seen before, all leather, blood and open festering wounds. The idea that sex and pain could be united wasn’t trite back in 1987, so it’s difficult to convey the power and fear this film had. It feels wrong. It feels dirty. It feels evil.

How this movie was made for $900,000 blows my mind. It looks lush and gauzy at times and at others, like when we see Frank’s heart and veins being formed, positively nightmarish. It shouldn’t be this good — it was Clive Barker’s directorial debut after seeing two of his stories, Underworld and Rawhead Rex, get made into films he didn’t agree with. What kind of deal with the devil did this guy make to turn out something so perfect on his first try?

The misconception that many people have of this film is that the Cenobites are the villains or the horrific part of the film. If we go to the poster for proof, it says “Demon to some. Angel to others.” Pinhead and his gang are there to move the story forward and certainly look frightening, but they are bound by the rules of Hell and the Lament Configuration, the puzzle box that sets the events of the film in motion. Matter of factly, these rules aren’t truly defined yet — is Pinhead a tortured soul stuck in the wheels of some hellish bureaucracy? Who created these boxes? None of this matters — “You solved the box. We came.” Yes, it can be that simple. You don’t need to know all of those answers right now. When Frank buys the box and Morocco and solves it, he gets the answer to limitless pleasure and the drug of all drugs — as Frank says, “I thought I’d gone to the limits. I hadn’t. The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits. Pain and pleasure, indivisible.”

That’s one of the real horrors of this film: people will do anything to chase a high. That high may be drugs. It may be pain. It may be a sexual experience that makes the mundane life you’re stuck in — like Julia, bored with a suburban life with a husband she never really wanted in the first place. The chance to be with Frank again, no matter if she has to seduce and kill for him, is everything. Notice that as he gains more muscle and skin with each drop of blood, she becomes more and more attractive, her skin gaining new color.

The main horrors of this film are family and other people. The Cotton family had issues before the Cenobites took one step out of Hell. The most horrific part of the film comes when Frank wearing Larry’s skin, stares at his niece in a moment of sexual longing and says, “Come to daddy.” Sure, there are horror film trappings, but this type of morally bankrupt behavior isn’t something confined to the cinema. So much of the betrayal and madness of Frank and Julia could happen. It happens every day.

Hellraiser exists on the border of reality. It’s fantastic, but it feels like it could happen. It’s the dangerous fiction that could overwhelm your truth if you go too far. In that it’s quite similar to Barker’s Candyman, which posits that saying the name of its titular character three times in a mirror is all it takes for him to come for you. That seems too unrealistic, but do you want to take the chance? And much like the black leather garbed creatures in this film, Candyman must adhere to a dream logic that only comes into our reality when you allow the genie from the bottle.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988): Most of the cast and crew of Hellraiser returned to make this movie and you know, despite the reduced budget, the dark tone of this movie and continuation of the themes from the original makes this one of the better horror sequels.

Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence, returning from the first movie) is admitted to a psychiatric hospital where Doctor Channard and his assistant Kyle MacRae listen to her story. She begs them to destroy the bloody mattress her stepmother Julia Cotton (Clare Higgins) died on but Channard ends up being a man who has been obsessed with the Lament Configuration. After a patient slices himself open upon that cursed object, Julia comes back to our reality.

Channard and Julia have been luring mentally disturbed men to his home so that Julia can feed off of them. Meanwhile, Kirsty meets Tiffany, a girl skilled at solving puzzles who is forced by the doctor and his demented mistress to open the gates of Hell with the infernal box at the heart of this story.

Within the dimension of Leviathan, the humans are more duplicitous than the demonic Cenobites that carry out the orders of their master.

Barker had plans to show how each of the Cenobites had once been human and how their own vices lead to their becoming angels to some, demons to others. You’d think that with the success of the first film they could have had a little more money here.

Another intriguing notion is that Julia was originally supposed to rise from the mattress at the end of the movie as the queen of hell and be the recurring character. As the first movie gradually became a success, Pinhead ended up becoming the favorite.

Back in the video rental days, I may have brought this home more than twenty times. I was obsessed by the look of Leviathan’s dimension and the strange sound that it makes — Morse code for God — blew my teenage mind. It still holds up today, despite a litany of lesser sequels.

Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth (1992): Anthony Hickox made both Waxwork movies, so that qualified him to take on the third trip to visit the Cenobites, which was necessary as the two films that had already come out were huge rental successes.

Series creator Clive Barker reprised his role as executive producer, though he was largely uninvolved until post-production, while Tony Randel at least contributed the story.

At the end of the last film, as Pinhead tried to reclaim his humanity, he finds himself split into his demonic form and as the limbo-trapped British Army Captain Elliot Spencer. As for Pinhead, he and the Lament Configuration remain within the Pillar of Souls that appeared as the last movie finished.

The pillar is bought as art by a club owner and when one of his sexual conquests is dragged into it and absorbed, Pinhead emerges and demands more blood. Without the influence of Spencer, Pinhead has become true evil and is using our reality for his own pleasure, which is against the regimented laws that the Cenobites live by.

Ashley Laurence returns for a cameo, as her Kirsty character explains the events of the previous films. And hey — Armored Saint plays the club!

Between the Barbie and CD Cenobites and the more American locale, this film suffers in comparison to the first two movies. That said, when viewed against what was to come, it ends up being pretty decent. The idea that Pinhead lost his faith in humanity after war rings true even many decades later.

Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996): Directed by Kevin Yagher and Joe Chappelle, this is the last Hellraiser to play theaters, only has one returning character in Pinhead (Doug Bradley), the last to involve Clive Barker and is both a prequel and a sequel.

Yagher left the production after Miramax demanded new scenes be shot. This is a theme that will appear in nearly every 90s horror movie that Miramax got their weird creepy hands on. The new scenes and re-shoots changed several characters’ relationships, gave the film a happy ending, introduced Pinhead earlier and cut 25 minutes of the original cut Yagher turned in. These were enough changes that he was able to use the Alan Smithee credit.

Dr. Paul Merchant has designed a space station to be in the shape of a giant Lament Configuration. Yes, within four movies, the Hellraiser franchise does what it took Jason Voorhees ten to arrive at. Yes, we’re in space. And we’re also going back in time, as Merchant’s ancestor creates the original box that starts all of these demonic events.

The Merchant bloodline has been cursed ever since they helped open the gates to Hell. There’s also a new Cenobite, Angelique, who tempts people and this puts her into conflict with Pinhead, who only believes in pain. There’s also a Merchant ancestor in 1996 that has created The Elysium Configuration, an anti-Lament Configuration that creates perpetual light and will close the pathways to Hell forever.

Bruce Ramsay ended up playing all of the Merchants and I kind of like that the end of this movie attempts to close the story. How crazy is it that this was Adam Scott’s film debut?

As you can imagine, Arrow has gone wild on this, packing this set. You get brand new 4K restorations of all four films from the original camera negatives by Arrow Films, as well as a 200 page hardback book, Ages of Desire, with new writing from Clive Barker archivists Phil and Sarah Stokes. There’s also a limited edition layered packaging featuring brand new Pinhead artwork.

Here are the extras by movie:

Hellraiser

Brand new audio commentary featuring genre historian and unit publicist Stephen Jones with author and film critic Kim Newman, an archival audio commentary with writer/director Clive Barker and actor Ashley Laurence moderated by Peter Atkins, another archival audio commentary with writer/director Clive Barker, a brand new 60-minute discussion about Hellraiser and the work of Clive Barker by film scholars Sorcha Ní Fhlainn (editor of Clive Barker: Dark Imaginer) and Karmel Kniprath, a brand new visual essay celebrating the Lament Configuration by genre author Alexandra Benedict (The Beauty of Murder), a brand new 60-minute discussion between acclaimed horror authors Paula D. Ashe and Eric LaRocca celebrating the queerness of Hellraiser and the importance of Clive Barker as a queer writer, a brand new visual essay exploring body horror and transcendence in the work of Clive Barker by genre author Guy Adams (The World House), newly uncovered extended EPK interviews with Clive Barker and stars Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, and effects artist Bob Keen, shot during the making of the movie , with a new introduction by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, the original 1987 press kit, archival interviews with Sean Chapman, Doug Bradley and Stephen Thrower on the abandoned score by his band Coil, trailers, TV ads, an image gallery and drafts of the screenplay.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

Brand new audio commentary featuring Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, archival audio commentary with director Tony Randel, writer Peter Atkins and actor Ashley Laurence, another audio commentary with director Tony Randel and writer Peter Atkins, a brand new 80-minute appreciation of Hellbound, the Hellraiser mythos and the work of Clive Barker by horror authors George Daniel Lea (Born in Blood) and Kit Power (The Finite), a brand new appreciation of composer Christopher Young’s scores for Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II by Guy Adams, archival on-set interviews, behind the scenes footage, archival interviews with Sean Chapman, Doug Bradley, barker, Randel, Keen and Atkins, trailers, TV ads and an image gallery.

Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth

Alternative unrated version (contains standard definition inserts), brand new audio commentary by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, archival audio commentary with screenwriter Peter Atkins, archival audio commentary with director Anthony Hickox and actor Doug Bradley, previously unseen extended interviews with Clive Barker and Doug Bradley, FX dailies, archival interviews Paula Marshall, Anthony Hickox and Doug Bradley, a trailer and an image gallery.

Hellraiser: Bloodline

Brand new audio commentary featuring screenwriter Peter Atkins, with Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, a brand new featurette exploring the Cenobites’ connection to goth, fetish cultures and BDSM, a newly uncovered workprint version of the film, providing a fascinating insight into how it changed during post production — this is worth the price of the entire set! — as well as an archival documentary on the evolution of the franchise and its enduring legacy, featuring interviews with Scott Derrickson, Rick Bota and Stuart Gordon, an archival appreciation by horror author David Gatwalk of Barker’s written work, from The Books of Blood to The Scarlet Gospels and a trailer.

You can get this on 4K UHD or blu ray from MVD.

Rachel Yeung (Cynthia Khan) wants to be a tough policewoman, but her uncle (Paul Chun) is her superior and he keeps her out of the line of fire. When a fashion show is interrupted by two thieves working for the Red Army — Nakamura Genji (Stuart Ong) and Michiko Nishiwaki (Michiko Nishiwaki) — and nearly the entire audience is killed, including the partner of Inspector Otaka (Hiroshi Fukioka), his path of revenge brings the two together. She’s an incredible martial artist; he’s a cop that refuses to follow the rules, causing damage to everything around him in his obsessive quest for justice.

In 79 minutes, we get near non-stop death and destruction, an evil couple who really love each other even though he’s dying from an inoperable disease and two closing fights: Otaka battling Genji with pipes and hooks and Rachel fighting both Nishiwaki and her henchman (Dick Wei).

Cynthia Khan may not be Michelle Yeoh, but she works really hard in this. She was a dancer before becoming an actor and her athleticism comes in handy, even if she’s doubled in the final fight. Man, I could watch as many of these movies as they chose to make.

88 Films’ In the Line of Duty 3 blu ray is a re-release of the film that they had out last year in the out of print box set. This film has the option of Cantonese and two different English dubs and extras like a commentary by Frank Djeng and Michael Worth, an interview with John Sham by Frederic Ambroisine and trailers. You can buy it from MVD.