Released in the Philippines as Police Protectors, the UK as Hard Boiled 2 and with an original title that means 12 Hours of Terror, The Last Blood has Interpol officer Lui Tai (Andy Tam) and Big B (Alan Tam), a gangster on vacation get caught up in the Japanese Red Army trying to kill the Daka Lama (Law Shu-kei). It turns out that he has the same blood type as Big B’s girlfriend May (May Lo), a type that only three people in all of Hong Kong have. Those three people must be found to save their lives while the terrorist cell led by Kama Kura (Chin Lo) must be defeated.

The JRA kills two of them, but the last one is Fatty (Eric Tsang), who doesn’t want to help a gangster or the police. But when his girlfriend and nearly all of his family are murdered by the terror cell, he decides that he needs revenge.

Directed and written by Jing Wong, this has the gunplay and violence that you’d expect from a movie that is trying to live up to Hard Boiled. I guess they both have lots of weapons and a hospital setting, so it makes sense.

The 88 Films blu ray of this movie has commentary by Frank Djeng and a trailer. You can get it from MVD.

Cult Epics has released several Marleen Gorris movies, including Broken Mirrors and A Question of Silence. This is the best of the three that I have watched.

The world has ended and seemingly the only survivors are those who escape from a plane crash: Sean (Paul Freeman), Frank (Mark Hembrow), military man Nick (Kenneth Colley), naturalist Pierre (Marc Berman), Jack (Ian Tracey), Joanna (Shelagh McLeod) and Mrs. Godame (Patricia Hayes). They figure that if they’re the last one left, every man should impregnate Joanna, which doesn’t seem like something she’s interested in.

Produced by Alex Maas and shot by cinematographer Marc Felperlaa, who filmed his Amsterdamned, this gets dark as Nick tries to impose religion on the island. When faced with some of the men being gay or becoming gay as the days become months and years, something bad has to happen. But man, it gets really horrible for everyone. This is a bigger movie from Gorris but it’s also really well done.

The Cult Epics blu ray has a new 2K HD Transfer from the original 35mm print, commentary by Peter Verstraten, behind the scenes footage, news footage, a trailer, a promotional gallery and an audio introduction by Dick Maas. You can get it from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Strangest Dreams: Invasion of the Space Preachers was on USA Up All Night on March 1 and 2 and October 18, 1991 and June 20, 1992.

Directed and written by Daniel Boyd (Chillers), this is the story of dentist Walter Bennett (Jim Wolfe) and accountant Rick Lowery (Guy Nelson) who have gone on a vacation to the mountain cabin of Truman Gator (John Marshall). They want to prove that they’re real men, but all they find are rednecks in the wild and wonderful woods of West Virginia, the House of Dung, a rockabilly icon named Johnny Angel (John Riggs), his groupies Dreama (Stacy Weddington) and Rhonda (Piper Thayer), more rednecks that want some Gray Poupon — which I thought was fancy and beyond my family’s means as a kid only to learn that it only costs $3.99 a jar today — as well as a pond filled with nudists, two old people who have adopted a small adult as their child, a survivalist named Vic 20 (Jesse Johnson), Jimmy Walker (yes, the actor, playing himself) and Reverend Lash (Gary Brown), a radio evangelist whose sermons play 24 hours a day.

There’s also a spaceship that has crash landed. The alien survivor asks to be taken somewhere to rest and when the shell that covered the creature breaks away, it ends up being Nova (Eliska Hahn), who is more attractive as a female. The Reverend is also an alien with an army of bad guys that she has flown here to stop.

Boyd didn’t have much experience here and it shows. There are some ideas — as you can see above — but he’d get much better from this as Chillers is pretty fun. But even though this is rough, there’s just enough to keep it entertaining, like the idea of Elvis living in the Appalachians.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Marilyn Diaries was on USA Up All Night on October 23, 1993 and July 8, 1994.

Ernest G. Sauer — using the name Eric Drake here — also made Breakfast In Bed, another Marilyn Chambers-starring softcore film that shares the same writing team as this movie, Don Shiffrin and Gary P. Conner. Sauer, Shiffrin and Chambers also teamed for Bedtime Stories, New York Nights, Bedtime Fantasies, Bikini Bistro, Fantasies Vol. 1 (Debbie Rochon is in that), Desire (Amy Lynn Baxter is also in that), Little Shop of Erotica (which has witchcraft and Veronica Hart), Naked Fairy Tales (again with Hart and 80s adult actress Raven) and Sex and the Girl Next Door. Sauer and Shiffrin also made Broadcast Bombshells (with Baxter and Rochon), Affairs of the Heart (which has New York Blue‘s Robin Byrd in it), Web of Desire (an early cybersex-themed softcore movie with Baxter), while Sauer on his own made Marilyn Chambers’ All Nude Peep Show, Incredible Edible Fantasies (Chambers and Juli Ashton from Night Calls is in that), Lusty Busty Fantasies (Chambers and Rochon), All My Best, and the Chambers-less The Naked Detective and Beauty School (which has Sylvia Kristel and Hart).

As you can see, the 80s and 90s were a big era for Marilyn Chambers to do movies that could play on Cinemax, Showtime and USA Up All Night. These movies often have similar casts and crew, like John Altamura, who was also the Toxic Avenger in the second and third movies. He’s also in Party Girls, the Chambers movie that gets reused in every one of her movies or so it seems.

In this movie, ex-lovers Jane (Tara Buckman) and Jim (Michael Rose) have reunited to look for the author (Chambers) of an erotic diary. This would be the part where the fog comes in and the sax solo begins.

Seriously, not a single person has written about this movie on IMDB or Letterboxd, it’s not available on any DVD or blu ray that I can find, it’s not streaming and it took a long time to even find a video to watch. Why would I spend so much time on it? Because, well, Tara Buckman was also in Night Killer and a host of Italian movies, so I’m fascinated by her. She was in a ton of TV shows to start her career (Buck Rogers, Quincy, Hart to Hart), the TV movie Death Car On the Freeway and then her big break in The Cannonball Run where she played Jill Rivers and drove the Lamborghini Countach with Marcie Thatcher (Adrienne Barbeau). She’s also in Silent Night, Deadly Night, Never Too Young to Die, Xtro II: The Second Encounter and two Joe D’Amato movies, Blue Angel Cafe and High Finance Woman. She was one of the last contract players Universal had, appearing in their TV series in the 70s and also having a regular role in the second season of Lobo. She finished up her acting career after making the Nico Mastorakis-directed Terminal Exposure, which has a cast that I love: John Vernon, Joe Estevez, and Hope Marie Carlton (Taryn from the Sidaris movies).

The cinematographer for this movie had quite the career. Larry Revene had more than a hundred camera operator and cinematographer credits, including Barbara Broadcast, Hot T-Shirts, The Devil In Miss Jones Part II, Hollywood Hot Tubs, Doom Asylum, Deep Throat II, Young Nurses In Love, Slammer Girls, New York’s Finest, Bedroom Eyes II, the Joe D’Amato movie The Crawlers and Charlton Heston Presents the Bible. He also directed Wanda Whips Wall Street.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Bikini Carwash Company was on USA Up All Night on January 16, June 25 and December 18, 1993; May 20, 1994; June 20, 1997 and March 7, 1998, both times with the sequel. 

George “Buck” Flower was working on a TV show called Nutz, Yutz and Klutz and it was set in a car wash. He wondered what a movie would be like with attractive women working in a car wash and here we are.

Directed and co-written by Ed Hansen (Takin’ It Off, Takin’ It Off Out West), this starts with Jack McCowan (Joe Dusic) looking for the local Sunshine Car Wash, which he is supposed to manage for his Uncle Elmer (Michael Wright). He meets Melissa Reese (Kristi Ducati, Meatballs 4, Sorceress), makes a date and a business plan. She has plenty of friends who wear swimsuits. Perhaps they can wash cars.

For some reason, things hit a stumbling block when Assistant District Attorney Donovan Drake (Matthew Cory Dunn) and the police show up to try and stop the nearly-naked car spraying. But that’s a minor bump as most of this movie is just breasts on windshields. Seriously, it’s devotion to women buffing and sudsing cars is single brained.

I mean, there are also butts.

So yes, the car wash is open and Amy (Rikki Brando, Buford’s Beach Bunnies), Sunny (Sara Suzanne Brown, who shows up in the sequel as well as Gregory Dark’s Secret Games 2: The Escort), Tammy Joe (Brook Lynn Page in her only role), Stanley (Eric Ryan), Big Bruce (Scott James) for the ladies and Rita (Neriah Davis, Playboy Playmate of the Month March 1994).

Also: Jim Wynorski shows up.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m Dangerous Tonight was on USA Up All Night on June 20, 1992;  July 3, 1993 and June 24, 1994.

Based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich, this Tobe Hooper-directed movie first aired on USA on August 8, 1990. Bruce Lansbury and Philip John Taylor wrote the script.

Tiverton College professor Dr. Jonas Wilson is sent a sacrificial altar that has a carcass inside it that’s wearing a red cloak. Wilson decides to wear the cloak, which possesses him. He murders a security guard, kills his wife and then commits suicide.

Another teacher, Professor Gordon Buchanan (Anthony Perkins), uses Wilson in his lecture on animalism. One of his students, Amy (Madchen Amick) goes from his class to Wilson’s estate sale, where she buys the red cloak and decides to make it into a dress, but not before Eddie (Corey Parker)  — one of the students in a play — tries it on and nearly kills someone.

Amy’s life isn’t too great. Her parents are dead, she lives with her Aunt Martha (Mary Frann), cousin Gloria (Daisy Hall) and invalid grandmother (Natalie Schaefer, Lovey Howell!) who she is made to take care of. This usually keeps her from anything but class, yet she sneaks out to see Eddie at the dance and the red dress she’s made from the cloak compels her into nearly stealing away Gloria’s boyfriend Mason (Jason Brooks).

When she gets home, her grandmother somehow is able to tear the dress off her and tries to save her from it. She falls down the stairs and dies. Gloria, for some reason, now wants the dress. She thinks that Mason is going to propose to her but after they have sex, he tells her that he just got drafted to play in the NFL. She puts on the dress, kills him, rams into Amy and Eddie’s car while they make out and then drives off a cliff, dying in a gigantic fireball.

Wanda the coroner (Dee Wallace) finds the dress on Gloria’s body and it possesses her into killing people. Amy tries to find her, but Wanda finds her first — but not before killing her aunt — and forces her into the dress. Things get, well, as crazy as a made for cable movie can get. Actually, they get real crazy, because this was directed by Tobe Hooper.

Can a movie about a possessed dress be awesome? Yes. This one does it right. It’s a ridiculous idea but some of the most fun movies are, too. I also love when R. Lee Ermey shows up in a movie and he’s the cop on the trail of the dress.