Written by Stephen Tolkin and directed by Albert Pyun — who interned on a Toshiro Mifune TV series under Akira Kurosawa’s Director of Photography before making movies like Cyborg, Alien from L.A., Radioactive Dreams, The Sword and the Sorcerer and so many more — this film started at Universal, who got the rights after the CBS TV movies.

The rights were then sold to The Cannon Group with the idea of Michael Winner directing a script by James Silke (Ninja 3: The Domination) and supposedly starring Michael Dudikoff as Cap and Steve James as the Falcon, the sheer idea of which makes my brain delirious. The Variety ad that announced this movie initiated Jack Kirby’s lawsuit against Marvel, as it claimed that Stan Lee created the character and not he and Joe Simon, who invented Cap all the way back in 1941 and Lee didn’t bring the character back until 1964.

After two years of development, Golan left Cannon in 1989 — stay tuned for August on this site for a sequel to Cannon Month — and as part of the settlement, he was given control of 21st Century Film Corporation and the film rights to Captain America.

Then, comic book fans waited. And waited.

It premiered in 1991 in the Phillipines as Bloodmatch as part of a double feature with Snoopy, featuring an ad that trumpeted Golan as the producer of Superman, which is not as true as saying he was the producer of a Superman, the best not mentioned Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Also, Jean Claude Van Damme is not in this movie, no matter what that ad claims.

So that’s how we got a Captain America played by Matt Salinger, the son of the writer of The Catcher In the Rye, and fighting Scott Paulin as the Red Skull, who was a child prodigy that the Axis experimented on, sending Dr. Maria Vaselli (Carla Cassola, Demonia) to America where she creates the Super Soldier Syrum.

There’s some good casting here, and by that, I mean character actors that get me a -typing. those would be Ned Beatty, Darren McGavin (the younger version of his General Fleming character is played by Billy Mumy while his A Christmas Story wife Melinda Dillon is in the cast as Steve Roger’s mom ), Ronny Cox as the President and Michael Nouri.

The one thing I do like about this film is that in the years after World War II, the Skull has built a conspiracy crime family with his daughter Valentina De Santis (the character Sin in the comic books, she’s played by Valentina De Santis) that has assassinated everyone from the Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King to Elvis, which he claims was the one time they did the wrong thing. Now, they want to brainwash the President and Cap, along with Sharon Carter (Kim Gillingham, playing that role and Bernice, the 1940s girlfriend of our hero), must stop him.

So how weird is it that the son of J.D. Salinger, whose book was often in the hands of programmed assassins, is battle the man who programmed said assassins, at least in this movie?

Ronnie Cox once said that the script to this movie “remains to this day the finest script I have ever read… how those guys messed that film up, I will never know.” And Stan Lee, ever the PR man, said that the reason for the reshoots was because “Pyun did it so well and so excitingly that everyone in the audience [at the screening] kept clamoring for more.”

Sure, True Believer.

As for Jack Kirby, everything you know in comic book movies is the result of his creativity. Even after his death, his family has attempted to gain the money and recognition that that creation deserves. When most comics these days struggle to be released once a month, Kirby was at one point — according to Mark Evanier — drawing twenty pages of comics a week, up to five pages a day, which is about a full issue of a comic every week. All for no real ownership, no insurance and no promises. For just one month’s example, in November 1963, Kirby drew 139 pages of comics and seven covers. His Fourth World era contract was for 15 pages a week, so Kirby gave then twenty.

Think about that the next time you watch everyone make money from his work.

Dedicated to Jess Franco and Jean-Luc Goddard — man, talk about the literal furthest points apart — Austrian director Carl Andersen not only references the director, but uses an actress named Jessica Franco Manera who either was his daughter — which I think is complete kayfabe BS, as the only daughter I’ve seen listed for Franco is Caroline Reviere, his step-daughter from his marriage to Nicole Guettard.

That said, this movie feels like it could be one of his children, if he shot on black and white and had watched Begotten a few times while smoking jazz cigarettes. Manera plays Odile, who like a character from many a Franco movie has a sexual encounter with two showgirls and then loses all touch with reality, eventually finding her way to Elizabeth Bathory.

Andersen also made Vampiros Sexos, in case you wanted to know how much he loved Franco. And much like some of the darker trips Jess took, this movie seems determined to shock, so if anything offends you, perhaps you should consider this unwatchable. I mean it — there’s envelope pushing and then there’s setting the envelope on fire and shoving it up someone’s rectum (which I’m shocked did not happen in this movie).

The Cinema of Transgression doesn’t care if a movie about female vampires and menstruation and people urinating on the dead upset you, you know?

Aurora Productions was a film production company established in Hollywood, California in 1978 by Rich Irvine and James L. Stewart, who were former Disney execs. They released six movies, The Secret of NIMH, Heart Like a Wheel, the two Eddie and the Cruisers movies, Maxie and this film, which was the one that ended the studio.

Monroe Clark (C. Thomas Howell) wants to be a lawyer, but he soon meets Zack Barnes (Peter Horton) and Wiley (Christopher Rydell, Trauma) who show him that there’s another way to live your life, a more carefree zen state of beach volleyball. However, Monroe’s uncle Max (Terry Kiser, always the villain, right?) wants to evict the volleyball players. You can imagine how act three of the hero’s journey will play out.

Side Out also has Courtney Throne-Smith; Harley Jane Kozak (The House on Sorority Row);  pro volleyball players Randy Stoklos, Sinjin Smith, Craig Moothartm Steve Obradovich, Steve Timmons, Ricci Luyties, Tim Hovland and Mike Dodd; Tony Burton (Duke from Rocky) and Kathy Ireland.

Filmed on some of California’s most popular beach areas, including Hermosa, Zuma and Manhattan beaches, this movie had Horton and Howell being trained by Jon Stevenson, one of the most successful and respected pros in the game of beach volleyball, who acted as the film’s major consultant, volleyball technical adviser and game choreographer.

The final match between Horton and Howell against Stoklos and Smith took six days to film. For Horton, it was the opportunity to live out his dream of playing volleyball for a living, saying “One of the reasons I was attracted to this project was the chance to play volleyball and get paid for it. That’s a scam.”

The script comes from David Thoreau, who mostly wrote for TV, and was directed by Peter Israelson, who mainly made music videos, including Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All” and Expose’s “Seasons Change.”

Perhaps the strangest thing to me is that this film features “Playing with the Boys” by Kenny Loggins, which also played during the Top Gun volleyball scene, perhaps making that song the unofficial anthem of beach volleyball.

There aren’t many beach volleyball movies — I guess Green Flash and Spiker are the only two that I can remember — so if you’re looking for a film in this very small genre or just want to stare at Horton, well, this is for you.

The Mill Creek blu ray release of Side Out comes in retro VHS packaging and can be bought from Deep Discount.

What if RoboCop was a champion tennis player killed by terrorists?

Then she’d be Lady Battlecop and spend 81 minutes battling Team Phantom and the NASA-made mutant Amadeus, who does wrestling moves but also has psychic abilities because why not?

If RoboCop himself can be based on the look of Japanese shows — along with no small debt to Judge Dredd, let’s be completely honest — then Japan can take back the favor and take us to Neo-Tokyo and made this little movie that has a great theme song about women being made for tennis so they never give up, which is weird and one wonders, if 11th century France, what did women think their value was before that? And isn’t the value of a woman more than just tennis?

Going off on another tangent, why did NASA invent Amadeus? And why did the Vatican invent Mikos Stenopolis in Absurd? What was the point? Did we need a murderous psychic man in space? What did the Catholic Church want with a man who could survive eating his own intestines?

These are the kind of things that dominate my mind on a day filled with snow and sitting inside watching the roads get covered again. That said, Lady Battlecop has a great costume.

Good Lord, this movie.

Wings Hauser is a typically out of his mind Wings Hauser, playing Sergeant Arliss Ryder, who is transformed into a cyborg killed machine and joins Captain Bill Quinton’s (Alex Cord,  Airwolf, Chosen Survivors) Strike S.Q.U.A.D. (Scum Quelling Assault Urban Division), a special team of cops who have all been implanted with similar technology that makes them immoral criminal killing machines that also want to have sex with anything and everything — all created by candidate for mayor and secret BDSM* fan Jim Miller (played by one-time Watergate burglar and jail rat eater G. Gordon Liddy).

I mean, I’m already in. Can it get better?

You better believe it.

Sy Richardson (Repo Man) plays Sgt. Joker, a constantly laughing cop who must molest every criminal, while Brion James is Reverend Mony, a street preacher who screams about the evils of sex and roasts a pimp alive as part of a sermon. Cops jerk off their guns when they’re not murdering perps and all is well in this insane slice of Gregory Dark-directed madness.

I can’t believe this movie exists and I am beyond happy that I have watched it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

*The two worlds of late night cable softcore cross over as the dom is played by Roberta Vasquez, who was Pantera in Andy Sidaris’ Picasso Trigger, as well as his films Guns, Do or Die, Hard Hunted and Fit to Kill. A former California state trooper, she was also the Playboy November 1984 Playmate of the Month. This proves that the worlds of light and shadow can come together to make, well, soft focus lovemaking.