Sukkubus – den Teufel im Leib (Sukkubus – The Devil In the Body) is a Swiss/German co-production that takes you into the snow and ice-covered mountains as three men — Senn the leader (Peter Simonischek), Hirt (Giovanni Früh) and teenage Handrbub (Andy Voß) — as they drive their herd through the treacherous Swiss Alps, starting the story by finding the ravaged and frozen bodies of a past team of farmers just like them that didn’t make it. As they melt in the sun, birds land on them and begin feasting on them.

The three men pray for protection as their journey continues.

This journey has no women and all work, which leads Hirt to non-stop obsession about pleasure, starting with bothering young Handrbub, which is dealt with swiftly by Senn. Then, after a day in which the boy finds a piece of wood that looks like a face, Hirt and Senn get drunk and assemble a body around the face, conducting rituals through their words as Hirt mounts the straw doll they have made and basically thrusts it into life, revealing the titular Sukkubus nearly halfway through the film.

Played by Pamela Prati (Lith in Ironmaster and Aracne in The Adventures of Hercules, as well as Transformations, another film in which she plays a succubus) the doll becomes a bright blue eyed living creature in front of the men’s eyes, ominously inching toward Handrbub who can only scream in horror. And while he and Senn want to avoid this demon as she appears in their weakest moments, Hirt wants to feel her touch.

Mondo Macabro, who keeps putting out movies that shock and surprise me, says, “This film is the real deal, based on a gruesome and ancient story, much retold by people who live in the Alps – the huge mountain range that spans six European countries.”

I agree. This just feels odd in the best of ways, showing the isolation and madness of the men while they face death every single step of their journey, all while living in lust, fear and some sadistic combination of the two as the epitome of male desire stalks their every move.

Based on the fable The Guschg Herdsmen’s Doll, which was also filmed in 2010 as Sennentuntschi: Curse of the Alps, this Mondo Macabro release features a 1080p presentation from a 4K restoration of the original camera negative, a German audio track with optional English subtitles, an exclusive interview with actor Peter Simonischek and the film’s trailer. You can get it from Mondo Macabro.

Night of the Eagles is kind of amazing, at least for its cast, because can you believe that Luke Skywalker, Jess Franco, Charlie Sheen’s brother and Count Dooku all made a movie together?

After the success of their two previous movies, Dark Mission: Evil Flowers and Countdown to Esmeralda Bay — both directed by Franco — Eurociné’s boss Marius Lesoeur pushed this movie to get done as soon as possible, thinking it would be a blockbuster. It would lead to a feud between Lesoeur and Franco that would last for the rest of Franco’s life.

Lee plays Walter Strauss, who has a daughter named Lillian (Alexandra Erlich) who has to decide between two men, a soldier named Peter (Hamill) and a composer by the name of Karl (Ramon Estevez), which brings her from being a cabaret singer to the front lines to tragedy, pretty much like everyone and everything in this movie.

With war scenes taken from Alfredo Rizzo’s Heroes Without Glory, Alain Payet’s Hitler’s Last Train and Nathalie: Escape from Hell, as well as Convoi de filles, a movie that Franco co-directed with Pierre Chevalier.

It’s fine — it’s not my kind of movie, but I can respect that Franco was making big movies — well, for him — after Faceless did well. Am I a bad person if I prefer to watch movies where Jess zooms the camera right into the middle of the love of his life?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Teito Monogatari (The Tale of the Imperial Capital) was the first novel to popularize onmyōdō — a system of natural science, astronomy, almanac, divination and magic that developed independently in Japan based on the Chinese philosophies of yin, yang and the five elements — and fūsui mythology – Japanese feng shi of the energy flow and exchange both within and external to our bodies — in modern Japanese fiction. It’s also written by natural history researcher and polymath Hiroshi Aramata and re-imagines the 20th century of Tokyo as influenced by the occult. It also has ties to mythology and the story of Taira no Masakado, a 10th-century samurai warlord who has since become something of a demigod thanks to his stand against the central government. However, his malevolent spirit must constantly be looked after and as such, the cities of Edo and Tokyo have felt a debt to keep him happy even a thousand years after his death. His shrine remains well-maintained, even as occupies some of the most expensive land in the world and faces Tokyo’s Imperial Palace.

A sequel to Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis, this is an adaptation of the eleventh book (Great War in the Capital) in the series. In its center, we discoer Yasunori Katō, a mysterious former lieutenant of the Imperial Japanese Army, killed twenty years ago but just like Taira no Masakado he’s become a vengeful oni. Yet he is devoted to the destruction of Tokyo*.

There’s also an anime adaption called Doomed Megalopolis.

In 1945, American forces are unleashing bombs over Japan and to stop this, the Buddhist shaman Kan’nami Kouou has been given the mission of cursing the Allied leaders through magic, but that’s when the innocents killed in the war combine their souls and reincarnate Yasunori Kato, who wants the war to continue and Tokyo to finally be destroyed, and must battle the psychic Yuko Nakamura, who is empowered by the love of a nurse, Yukiko Tatsumiya, who was abused in her youth by Kato.

Obviously, a multi-book epic that draws on centuries of Japanese history is not going to be an easy watch for American audiences. That may be why the second adaption of these stories stays away from the more occult-based magic and sticks to ESP and psychic powers.

And yes, M. Bison from Street Fighter was based on Yasunori Kato, as well as Eagle Cape from Riki-Oh. 

*The movie is different than the book, where Kato is still alive and never destroyed. The target of his spiritual assassination is not Hitler, but Franklin Roosevelt, who is cursed with polio which allows Truman to become President and drop the bomb on Tokyo.

Steve Miner is a secret success story, between directing Friday the 13th Part 2, Friday the 13th Part III, House and yeah, sure, Lake Placid and Halloween H20. Here, he’s working from a script from Pitch Black creator David Twohy and telling the story of a male witch who has come to our time to destroy our world for Satan. He’s blasted through a time portal and is followed by the witchhunter Giles Redferne (Richard E. Grant).

Julian Sands is that Warlock and man, the movie is great because of him, as well as some deft writing and a great cameo by Mary Woronov.

Satan has told the Warlock to reassemble The Grand Grimoire, a spell book separated into three pieces which can unmake Creation when united, because that seems like a good idea. In his way is not just Giles, but Kassandra (Lori Singer), a woman who the magician has rapidly aged.

If you watch this and think, “Man, that age makeup is horrible,” you’re not alone. Singer was allegedly hard to deal with and turned down the makeup of FX artist Carl Fullerton, despite it being fully tested and approved. On the day of shooting, she refused to be made up as a forty-year-old woman and would not wear any prosthetics, so Fullerton had to use stippling, shadowing and a gray wig. The sixty-year-old makeup needed prosthetics, which Singer agreed to, but refused to have any near her nose or eyes.

New World Pictures was suffered financial difficulties when this was made and that led to the movie being shelved for two years. It was released by Trimark and ended up making them some cash.

You can watch this on Tubi.

You know what blew my mind? There was a video game!

EDITOR’S NOTE: This sequel article originally ran during our Junesploitation coverage on June 15, 2021. 

The only thing better than a sequel is one that’s in name only. That’s exactly what The Curse II: The Bite is all about. It’s really a movie called The Bite, which was directed by Fred Goodwin, who is really Frederico Prosperi, whose only other credit is producing the nature on the loose movie The Wild Beasts.

The film came to be after the success of The Curse. Producer Ovidio G. Assonitis and his company TriHoof Investments started making this film and another called The Train, which also became an in-name-only sequel as well called Beyond the Door III (AKA Amok Train).

Our heroes are young lovers Clark (J. Eddie Peck, the star of Lambada) and Lisa (Jill Schoelen, who is one of my favorite unheralded scream queens with roles in The Stepfather, Cutting Class, The Phantom of the Opera, Popcorn, When a Stranger Calls Back and Chiller) whose cross-country trip has taken them right past an abandoned nuclear test site crawling with mutant snakes. Clark gets bit and starts to slowly mutate into a snake himself.

Luckily, Lisa has some help from a sheriff (Bo Svenson) and Harry Morton (Jamie Farr) a traveling salesman who is also a doctor of sorts. He tries to treat the snakebite and uses the wrong medication, which pushes the mutation further as he furtively seeks the couple out to save them as much as he’s trying to save himself from a malpractice lawsuit. Why is a traveling salesman also a doctor? That’s just how the world of this movie works.

Also, if you ever wanted to see a movie where Jamie Farr has conjugal relations with trucker women, come on down to Curse II: The Bite!

There are some great Screaming Mad George effects in this, as well as an astounding scene where Clark tries to use his hand in a Biblical manner on Lisa. His mutated snake hand. Man, I was screaming at the television! Stick with this movie because while it starts off slow, but it gets ooey, gooey and great by the end. And by great, the kind of great when Italian filmmakers are let loose in America. You know what I’m talking about.

This worked out so well that a movie called Panga became Curse III: Blood Sacrifice and Catacombs was retitled Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice.

You can say what you want about Joe D’Amato’s movies, but the guy knew a very important fact: if you get someone as talented as Enzo Sciotti to paint the poster to your film, people will want to see it.

That said, this is the kind of D’Amato movie that fascinates me, as it stars Tara Buckman, an actress who has obsessed me since Night Killer, in a movie that’s at once closer to reality than that movie and also still so far away from the world that you and I live in.

Shot in Virginia — I assume right around when the aforementioned Mattei movie was made — Buckman plays Angie, a cabaret singer who steals the heart of Raymond Derek, a rich man with political aspirations, a gorgeous wife and a path toward the upper one percent. Their love takes it all away, yet when she fights for him, he reacts in the most pompous and entitled way possible. Truly, she is too good for him, even if she’s the traditional bad girl.

Look, this is a movie so confident of its sexiness that Laura Gemser shows up and keeps her clothes on. And also one so in love with its theme song that Buckman sings it four times.

I kind of love that you expect Buckman’s character to just be someone out to get the money out of our lead protagonist, but she’s better than everyone else in this movie put together, willing to use her body to keep her man going, selling every bit of herself and still remaining strong and whole in a world where everyone else is a compromised individual.

Yeah, alright, I get a lot out of Joe D’Amato movies. Perhaps more than you do. You may just watch this and laugh and say, “What a piece of junk.” I invite you to see the world through more positive eyes, a place where a softcore movie by a jaded porn-making hack can teach you a lesson in life.