After the Police Academy with stunts awesomeness of the first movie, this has four new squad members join the Hong Kong Police Academy to be join the Banshee Squad led by Madam Wu (Sibelle Hu). However, many of them don’t get along with the existing team, like Susanna (Amy Yip), who is so well-endowed that she has to cut holes in the chest of her bulletproof vest. There’s also the male team, the Tiger Squad, who are led by Inspector Kan (Stanley Fung). Just like the original, Wu and Kan have a thin line between love and hate in their relationship.

That said, this time there’s competition for Madam Wu’s affection, as there’s a new antiterrorist trainer, Mr. Lu (Melvin Wong). The majority of this movie is all training until with twenty minutes left, it remembers that they need to bring the Banshee Squad and Tiger Squad back together and have all the good girls and guys stop fighting with one another.

There’s more dancing than fighting in this, more pranks and hijinks than fisticuffs. And you know, I don’t care. I love these movies, with their 80s fashion looks, lovable characters and blasts of action from producer Jackie Chan’s Jackie Chan Stunt Team. There are four of these movies and I will watch every single one of them with a huge grin.

So yeah, nothing happens, but when the first movie was such a success, they rushed this one. Just enjoy it for what it is and that we can watch movies like this in high definition now and not 20th generation VHS tapes that we bought at a convention that tape rot in months.

The 88 Films blu ray release of this movie has a 2K remaster from the original negatives and extras including a new commentary by Frank Djeng, interviews with director Wellson Chin and stuntmen Go Shut Fung and Mars, a trailer, stills gallery and a reversible cover with new artwork by Sean Longmore and the original poster art. You can get it from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Did you know that Visual Vengeance has a ton of movies on Tubi? It’s true. Check out this Letterboxd list and look for reviews as new movies get added. You can find this movie on Tubi.

I don’t want to jinx it, but every time I think that I am running out of movies that blow my mind with how unhinged they are, I discover something new. Usually, those grubby film highs come from Italy or Turkey or from the early 70’s, but man, Beyond Dreams Door was made at the end of the 80’s and comes from Ohio of all places.

Made with the cinema school at The Ohio State University, this is a film all about Ben, who stopped dreaming once his parents died when he was 9. Now, the dreams are coming for him, a fact he learns from the dream version of himself who warns:

“Beyond dream’s door is where horror lies,
Where love may sleep with sorrow’d eyes,
Where demons wait to greet the ones,
Who dare not reach its darkened shores,
Beyond dream’s door tomorrow dies.*”

As low as the budget for this film may be, its concept is high. Somehow, this also looks like anything but a movie made for thousands of dollars. It’s slick as hell and certainly doesn’t seem like director Jay Woelfel’s first movie. In fact, I saw Art of the Dead a few years back and recognized that he edited it. I’m glad he’s still working, whether that means composing music, writing films and even acting.

Imagine a movie as hard to explain as Phantasm with — amazingly — less of a budget. That’s what you’ve got here. And it’s exactly as great as you’d hope.

*Thanks to the astounding Bleeding Skull for writing that poem out.

Directed by Mark Byers and written by Daniel Yost (whose next movie was Drugstore Cowboy), Criminal Act is also known as Tunnels. It has what I refer to as a Sam cast: Catherine Bach, John Saxon, Luis Avalos from The Electric Company and Vic Tayback are the best known members.

Pam Weiss (Bach) and Sharon Fields (Charles Dallas) are an investigative reporter and her photographer. Their boss, Herb Tamplin (Saxon), wants them to settle down and learn how to be good reporters. They’re willing to instead run right at danger and both be the love interest of Ron Bellard (Nicolas Guest), the brother of the movie’s villain Lance Bellard (Victor Brandt).

This is also supposed to have giant mutant rats and be kind of like C.H.U.D. but instead only has a homeless guy who occasionally bites someones. Yes, the millionaire evil brother is cleaning the homeless up by sending them out of the city which is totally illegal.

That said, Rick Zumwalt — Bull Hurley from Over the Top — is in this and I can’t fault a movie that has both him and Daisy Duke in it, much less John Saxon. Vic Tayback’s role is so small it had to be him stopping at catering and walking on to pay for the craft services he quaffed down.

Not the movie I was hoping for but what can you do?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Jealous Eyes was directed by Bruno Gaburro (Malombra, Fashion Crimes), who its OK to be jealous of yourself because he was once married to Erika Blanc. It was written by Roberto Leoni (who wrote Santa Sangre the same year and also was the writer of American Rickshaw and My Dear Killer).

Also known as Blue Chill, this is an erotic thriller in which Chris (Donald Burton) loses a friend and moves into his apartment to compose a song in memory. That means that he’s blowing his sax at all hours of the day and night, so this movie has not just 80s sex sax but also straight up saxophone. He meets Eva (Dalila Di Lazzaro, who is the female monster in Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and also shows up in Frankenstein 80, which is pretty much all it takes to get me obsessed; she’s also the headmistress in Phenomena) and he can put away his sax — am I getting paid for using that word so much or is this a search engine optimization trick? — and start hearing it on the soundtrack as they start having some adult naptime. Have hot pudding for supper. Moistening the Pope. You know. The sex.

She claims that her husband Senator Verani (Gérard Manzetti) and her stepson — who this being an Italian movie, she is also sleeping with — are busing her and that Chris needs to kill them both. Look, when you just start dating someone and pillow talk turns to “you need to kill for me,” you are in a giallo. Or a neo-noir. Or an erotic thriller. As you can imagine, when they are killed, Eva tries to get him to confess to the crime. But ah, perhaps she tried the same thing with his friend. And doesn’t he have a song to write?

Gaburro edited footage from this movie and Alcune signore per bene into 1993’s Rose rosse per una squillo (Scandalous Liasons). This is how I get into these gialli rabbit holes, because I just read what Alcune signore per bene is about: “Sexual infedelity, blackmail, murder and suicide plague a fashion house and its nymphomaniac owner…” And it has Eva Grimaldi and Florence Guérin in it? Time to start looking.

Dark Bar is a secret place where people can do drugs and have sex together and keep it a secret. However, Elisabetta (Barbara Cupisti, who was as close as you get to a giallo queen in 1989, showing up in Stagefright, Opera and The New York Ripper, as well as Eleven Days, Eleven Nights and Cemetery Man) plans on blackmailing someone and that gets her killed. Now, her jazz trombone playing sister Anna (Marina Suma) looks into her sister’s death which puts whoever killed Elisabetta after her.

This movie breaks the mold not only by having its black gloved killer have a gun as their murder weapon but also by the discovery of Elisabetta’s body in the next stall while the janitor makes love to someone else. It’s a great shot as sex is happening feet away from a grisly corpse.

This has Richard Hatch in it, which is an American star, sure. It also has a jazz score by Carlo Siliotto (The House of the Blue Shadows) which is a lot different from other gialli. Director and writer Stelio Fiorenza only shot three shorts and this movie, as well as working as an assistant director on Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind and Play Motel. He includes some cool touches, like a high heel telephone — what is it with late 80s Italian exploitation and weird telephones? — and Cupisti’s dress that is covered in eyeballs. And the Dark Bar itself feels like an Italian director who watched a few Lynch movies and decided that it should also be punk rock and I am all for all of these things. The bad guys all wear fedoras and are the henchmen of a blind woman who listens to sea shells and the tarot for what to do next.

It’s not good but it’s interesting which is sometimes better than good. It definitely has ideas and style. Style goes a long way in a giallo especially a late 80s one. I really wish someone would gather some of these — Vinegar Syndrome, if you really want your Forgotten Gialli set to live up to its name, release this — and share them with people who don’t want to hunt them down on Russian hack sites without subtitles.

Rospo Pallenberg, the director of this film, is probably better known for the movies that he collaborated on with John Boorman, like Exorcist II: The Heretic, Excalibur and The Emerald Forest. This is the one and only movie he ever directed and sadly, it’s mostly known for being one of Brad Pitt’s first roles.

Brian Woods (Donovan Leitch, son of Donovan, the man who sang about smoking bananas in “Mellow Yellow”) has just been released from a mental hospital after his father was killed suspiciously. He quickly falls in love with Paula (who can blame him, she’s played by Jill Schoelen from Popcorn), but she’s already dating the big jock in town, Dwight (Pitt, who met Schoelen on set and got engaged to her at the end of filming). For some reason, the school’s principal Mr. Dante (Roddy McDowell!) is also in love with her. Once we get that all settled, a bunch of murders start happening and any of Paula’s suitors could be the killer.

I mean, how can you not love a movie where Paula’s district attorney dad (Martin Mull!) gets shot by arrows and spends the entire movie stumbling around and trying to get rescued?

The kills in this movie are ridiculous: one teacher is killed on a Xerox machine and every kid gets a copy of it. Another is having way too good of a time on a trampoline before a flag gets put under it.

It all ends with Dwight’s head in a vice and Brian making him choose between the two men. Paula screams, “Stop fucking with my emotions!” and literally sends a claw hammer into his brains and slicing him in half with a circular saw.

Seriously, this movie is just weird. It has no set tone and usually, that’d make me hate things, but it works here. Also, if you like Wall of Voodoo, they and lead singer Andy Prieboy are all over the soundtrack.

You can get this on blu ray or 4K UHD from MVD. Each includes the 2018 4K restoration from the 35mm original camera negative, as well as interviews with Jill Schoelen and Donovan Leitch, an R-rated cut and a trailer. There’s also a DVD without these extras.

Ignore the Lucio Fulci Presents, as he had nothing to do with this other than to sign over his name. It was directed by Enzo Milioni, who also made Quello strano desiderio and The Sister of Ursula, and was written by Millioni and Giovanni Simonelli, who directed Hansel e Gretel.