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.

Three Brian Aldis novels have been made into movies. Brothers of the Head, AI (yes, the Kubrick started and Spielberg ended movie) and this one, which was the first movie that Roger Corman had directed for two decades.

This is probably the best cast that Corman ever had, with John Hurt as the future scientist, Raul Julia as Dr. Frankenstein, Bridget Fonda as Mary Shelley, INXS singer Michael Hutchence as Percy Shelley, Nick Brimble as Frankenstein’s Monster and Jason Patric as Lord Byron.

So it stands to reason that he should make a movie where a man goes back in time — thanks to a military weapon and a computer car — to the time of the Shelleys and the real monster. Or monsters.

This is also the last movie Corman directed. It’s also the only movie where a future man faxes Mary Shelley her novel that she’s written before she writes it.

Godfrey Ho.

The Bruno Mattei of Hong Kong.

Making a superhero movie.

It’s about time.

Using the name Alton Cheung, this is the story of Sam and Gus, two dudes just trying to chill and discuss Gus joining the FBI. So when they decide to stip a robbery, of course a radioactive cat scratches Sam and gives all the powers of a cat, which basically entails the ability to scratch up all of the furniture in your house and the need to knock over every drink on the coffee table.

His enemy? Father Cheever, a ponytailed religious zealot who wants to start a utopia.

Look, there’s also another movie about a girl dressed as a man fighting pirates that has nothing at all to do with this movie, sometimes playing all over the story we came here for. Also, who dressed Catman? He’s all in like vinyl dress clothes, like some business guy dressing up for BDSM night at the goth club but he couldn’t find the right sunglasses but found his stepson’s Cyclops mask and said, “I’ll be damned, this completes the look.”

It doesn’t.

There’s also another movie in this series, Catman in Boxer’s Blow, and I have to tell you, I don’t know if I can make it through it. Trust me, I’m going to try.

Look, sometimes even I just don’t know. Back in 1990, Salman Rushdie was targeted for death and it was all people talked about and his bok The Satanic Verses was available everywhere and got way bigger than it would have been otherwise. I mean, my parents bought a copy.

Three brothers — a cop and two low level bad guys — lose their sister to the outbreak of violence in the protests over the book, so they decide to avenge her and Islam’s honor by hunting down and killing Rushdie. They’re the good guys.

Rushie is a Bond supervillain who wants to destroy so that he can build casinos, nightclubs and brothels around the world. He’s also hiding in the Philippines where the Israeli Army guards him but can’t stop God, as three Quaran appear in the sky and lighting strike him to Hell.

So what did Rushdie himself think of a movie where three goofballs dress as Batman to come and kill him? After it was banned in the UK, he asked for that to be overturned, saying “As a writer, I am opposed in principle to the use of the archaic criminal laws of blasphemy, sedition and criminal libel against creative works, even in the case of a film which quite plainly vilifies me.”

It’s also 2 hours and 48 minutes out of your life.

Luckily, the always dependable White Slaves of Chinatown have it on their YouTube page.

Fabrizio De Angelis may not rank as high as his Italian moviemaking brethern, but the guy made all three Thunder movies and that alone makes him a star in my world even before you factor in Killer Crocodile, the Karate Warrior series and the fact that he wrote Zombie Holocaust, which became Dr. Butcher M.D.

So hey — what if he remade The Karate Kid and brought son of Italian movie star Antonio Sabato Jr. in for the Daniel-san role? He’d make me deliriously happy, that’s what. He plays Kevin Foster, who has to leave behind Oakland and his dad, police officer John Foster (David Werbeck!) asks his friend Billy to look after him.

As soon as the kid with the iron hands comes to town, he ends up hooking up with karate champ Jeff Hunter’s girl Kim (Natalie Hendrix, whose acting biography is filled with roles playing reporters and news anchors). They win a dance contest and so instead of a fistfight, they end up having a car race through the Tunnel Of Death. And then the goons destroy Kevin’s friend’s Jeep. And then, and only then, does he get his ass handed to him and challenged to a martial arts battle.

There is no rock. There is little karate. I was mesmerized for every single minute of the 86-minute run time of this movie. It’s also shot nowhere near where it’s set and is instead made in Savannah, Georgia.