Believe it or not, historian Paul Hutton called Young Guns the most historically accurate of all Billy the Kid films. I mean, John Tunstall is depicted as an older  man while he was only 24 when he was murdered and younger than the Regulators. But still, despite combining some people, it’s close, or so they say.

Directed by Christopher Cain (The Principal and Dean Cain’s dad) and written by John Fusco (Crossroads), this film number one at the US box office and eventually grossed $56 million against an $11 million budget. It and it’s sequel were big deals — I mean, Bon Jovi did the theme song “Blaze of Glory” — but somehow, I never saw either.

Lincoln County, New Mexico. Cattleman John Tunstall (Terence Stamp) is trying to civilize the young wayward men in his employ who he calls the Regulators. They are Josiah Gordon “Doc” Scurlock (Kiefer Sutherland), Jose Chavez y Chavez (Lou Diamond Phillips), Richard “Dick” Brewer (Charlie Sheen), Dirty” Steve Stephens (Dermot Mulroney), Charlie Bowdre (Casey Siemaszko) and William H. “Billy the Kid” Bonney (Emilio Estevez). He’s in a land war with another rancher, Lawrence Murphy (Jack Palance) and makes the mistakes of hiring one of his men, J. McCloskey (Geoffrey Blake), who sets up a trap to kill him. Lawyer Terry O’Quinn (Alexander McSween) deputizes them, except that Billy is too brutal and hot headed, leading them all to be called outlaws for killing plenty of Murphy’s hired guns.

He sends Buckshot Roberts (Brian Keith) after them and he succeeds in killing Doc and splintering the group, as Jose warns them all not to become lost in revenge, which is exactly what Billy goes on to do. It all leads to a huge battle where nearly everyone dies except Chavez, who makes it to California, Doc who marries Murphy’s mistress Yen Sun (Alice Carter), Alex’s widow Susan McSween (Susan Thomas) becomes a famous cattlewoman, Murphy gets arrested and Billy rides away, only to eventually be killed by Pat Garrett (Patrick Wayne, yes, John’s son) years later and buried next to Charlie.

You can see Tom Cruise get shot by Siemaszko at one point as well as Randy Travis shooting a Gatling gun. One of the guys who gets knifed is Jack Palance’s son Cody.

Somehow, Siemaszko never knew that Warren G and Nate Dogg sampled his dialogue for “Regulate.” “Regulators, We regulate any stealin’ of his property. We’re damn good too. But you can’t be any geek off the street. You gotta be handy with the steel, if you know what I mean. Earn your keep. Regulators, mount up.”

The Lionsgate UHD of Wild Guns has audio commentary with Dermot Mulroney, Lou Diamond Phillips and Casey Siemaszko, a making of, a feature on Billy the Kid and trailers. You can get it from Diabolik DVD.

Released in the U.S. as Top Squad, this Wellson Chin film has a group of women called The Banshee Squad, who are being trained by Madame Wu (Sibelle Hu) to be an unstoppable police force. It’s the same thing Mr. Kan (Stanley Fung) is doing nearby with Tiger Group, an all-male commando squad. Of course, there are going to be hijinks between the two groups.

Wu has issues with her recruits —  May (Kara Hui), Amy (Sandra Kwan), Jean (Ellen Chan) Karen (Ann Bridgewater), Amin (Lee Pooi-Ling) and Betty (Regina Kent) — who just want to get with the men. Well, she does as well, but she’s at least more quiet about it. She has to bring in an American CIA agent — Madame Law (Cynthia Rothrock) — to get the girls combat ready for their first mission.

You know that I’m going to love a Hong Kong action movie that is trying to be Police Academy. If this sounds like something you’d like, well…it’s pretty awesome.

Extras include commentary by Frank Djeng, interviews with Rothrock and Chin, alternate titles, trails and more. Get it from MVD.

Colonel Jerry Maxim (James Luisi) has answered magazine ads that promise an island of erotic fun and ends up killed by several women. Retired soldier, spy author and forcibly retired hero Derek Johnson (Robert Lipton) gets the call from the man who told him to quit, General Grant (Larry Taylor), and sent to that island, a place where several military men have already vanished from.

Christine Newhouse (Merete Van Kamp) is the woman who owns the island and she was once in the army before being assaulted by Maxim and it getting covered up by everyone. We should be cheering her on, not the government. And hey — there’s Shannon Tweed as a helicopter pilot, taking the men to an island populated by survivors of sexual abuse who can’t wait to cut their heads off.

There’s a good idea in here but it’s buried in making the man the hero and who needs that? You have women in post-apocalyptic makeup eating human flesh and destroying the men who tried to hurt them. That’s what we want!

The Phantom Empire is a very meta film. Its title refers to the 1935 Gene Autry movie serial — which was kind of remade as part of the show Cliffhangers! — as well as having Robby the Robot in its cast, Jeffrey Combs’ character Andrew Paris saying that he went to Miskatonic University (the same school from Re-Animator) and vehicles from director Fred Olen Ray’s movie Star Slammer and Logan’s Run show up, as well as footage from 1977’s Planet of Dinosaurs. Maybe by referential sometimes I’m also saying cost-effective.

Ray got the idea for this film while filming Commando Squad in a Bronson Canyon cave. He wrote the script over the weekend and then started filming the day after Commando Squad wrapped, using the same cast and crew. That’s impressive but the original inspiration for the 1935 Phantom Empire is wilder. Writer Wallace MacDonald came up with the entire movie — plot, characters, their names, costumes, literally every single moment of the serial — while he was being treated with nitrous oxide by his dentist.

A cave creature with millions in diamonds around his neck emerges from a cave and rips someone’s head off before it’s stopped. A party is made of Cort Eastman (Ross Hagen), Denae Chambers (Susan Stokey), Andrew Paris (Combs), Professor Strock (Robert Quarry) and Eddy Colchilde (Dawn Wildsmith, Ray’s wife) to enter the caves and see what they can salvage.

They soon find a hidden world, Robby the Robot and a queen played by Sybil Danning, which is really why most people rented this. Throw in Michele Bauer as a cave girl and that’s why they definitely rented this.

Secrets and Perfume was directed by Vittorio De Sisti and written by Francesco Massaro and Franco Ferrini, based on the story “Scarlet” by Oreste De Fornari and Carlo Alberto Bonadies. It starts when store detective Eddy (Jerry Calà) and shopgirl Barbara (Lucrezia Lante della Rovere) get engaged and then perfume that she has been given by a secret admirer causes her to burst into flames. Working with Inspector Turroni (Umberto Smaila), he starts to look into the murder and learns that a sex worker named Portia (Eva Grimaldi) was also killed, also because of the same strange perfume. It turns out that both girls also had a piece of a picture taken years ago when they were childhood friends at a summer camp along with Mariri (Marina Viro) and a mysterious other girl, all watched over by Sister Melania (Mara Venier). Well, it must be this place, this horrible place, because the U.S. doesn’t have a copyright on summer camp accidents that cause revenge murders.

For some reason, this comedy giallo worked for me. I was in a good mood when I watched it and the idea that store lights would set a woman ablaze was so outrageous that I just had to watch and figure out where this would end up.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The title of this movie translates as someone is listening but it was released in English-speaking places as High Frequency.

Peter (Vincent Spano) is a satellite television communications technician who works in a control station in the Swiss Alps. His life is pretty boring, as other than watching monitors, he just plays chess over the ham radio and tries to find other people to talk to. One of them is Danny (Umberto Caglini) and one night, they accidentally get to watch a murder.

It’s very innocent how an older man and a young boy become friends in the time before the internet. Of course they would come together to try and stop others from getting killed. This looks more like an American movie, kind of like an Italian Cloak and Dagger.

Directed by Faliero Rosati, who wrote the story with Franco Ferrini and Vincenzo Cerami, the main story in this is about a man physically isolated helping a boy emotionally isolated by the loss of his father. I’m surprised that no one decided to remake it the U.S., as it’s very much the kind of movie that would come out at the end of summer.

Is it a giallo? Mitigating factors: Pino Donaggio did the music and the spy in it is played by David Brandon, who was in Stagefright, Delirium and Olga O’s Strange Story.