Kreola (Demetra Hampton, who played comic book character Valentina in the Italian TV series) has come to Santa Domingo to see her photographer husband Andy (Teodosio Losito). He’s already worried about her having eyes for Marco (Marco Carbonaro), but then the real trouble happens. Marco is looking for Iris (Cristina Rinaldi, P.O. Box Tinto Brass), who has fallen under the spell of a craggy old seafarer named Leon (John Armstead, Errore Fatale).

Kreola is supposed to try and lure the old man into her arms so that Andy can take back Iris, but she ends up falling in love with the sea captain too. As Jo Ann (Cinzia Monreale, probably pleased to be in a movie where Lucio Fulci or Joe D’Amato isn’t killing her), a writer, explains, the islands are where foreign women lose all inhibitions and leave their men.

Sadly, after two movies of Antonio Bonifacio that I really liked — Olga O’s Strange Story and Scandal In Black — I was let down by this. It seems to really go nowhere and I was hoping for at least some turn to the giallo after seeing that Daniele Stroppa wrote it. Instead, it’s lifeless.

Rex Kyōryū Monogatari or Rex: A Dinosaur Story was originally written by Masanori Hata and illustrated by CLAMP. It was serialized in the shojo magazine, Kadokawa Shoten: Asuka, in 1993.

Chie (Yumi Adachi) and her paleontologist father Akiyoshi Tateno discover tyrannosaur eggs and one hatches to bring Rex to our time. Chie becomes his friend and protector. The birth of the dinosaur — he comes from the lost continent of Mu! — allows her to be the mother that her own parent Naomi (Shinobu Otake) never was even when that maternal character comes back into her life to study Rex.

At the end, shaman Mr. Shinoda (Fujio Toneda) takes the cute dinosaur back home, perhaps even to find his mother. There’s also a long sequence where Rex gets to get in all of the Japanese experience of the holidays, which is watching fireworks and feasting on KFC and Coke. If this were an American movie I would be angry at all the product placement but here I find it charming.

The scientists even make Rex into a celebrity and make him appear in all sorts of commercials like anyone who gets famous in Japan. One of them, Morioka (Mitsuru Hirata), even attacks the little creature and decides to become a Yakuza and kidnap Rie and her friend for himself.

Director Haruki Kadokawa was a pretty big deal for some time, producing movies like G.I. Samurai, Virus, Sailor Suit and Machine Gun amongst many others, and directing The Last Hero, Heaven and Earth, Aijou monogatari and more. In 1975, he inherited his father’s publishing company Kadokawa Shoten and announced a new and ambitious plan for his company. They would  produce film adaptations of the best-seller novels and comics of the publishing branch. A few weeks into the release of this movie, Kadokawa was charged with smuggling and embezzling money from his company in order to fund a cocaine addiction. He served two and a half years of a four year sentence, but this movie was pulled from theaters.

He made a comeback and is still making movies.

I loved this movie and if you don’t, stop being cynical. It has a dinosaur dressed in a Christmas outfit running and playing in the snow with the little girl who loves him. It made me tear up numerous times and that’s what all holiday movies should do.

You can download this at the Internet Archive.

Two men have been murdered after hiring an unknown prostitute. Sergeant Peckham (Chelsea Field) and her boyfriend, police psychologist David Stratton (Steven Bauer) are assigned to the case. They believe that it might be Felicity (Pamela Anderson), an amnesiac woman who has a dream where she kills men.

Pamela Anderson’s first movie was directed by Worth Keeter, who got his start making movies like Wolfman, Unmasking the Idol and Tales of the Third Dimension In 3D for Earl Owensby Studios before eventually making TV shows like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Beetleborgs. It was written by Gene Church and Terri Treas, who was Kelly Cobb in House 4.

Matt McCoy, who became the focus of the Police Academy series after Steve Guttenberg left, is also in this.

One of the most infamous movies branded with Hong Kong’s Category III adults only rating, Taxi Hunter is the story of Ah Kin (Anthony Wong), a man who was quiet and kind until he loses his pregnant wife to an unprofessional taxi driver.

If you’ve seen Herman Yau’s Ebola Syndrome, you know the levels of craziness that he can bring to the screen. Now, he puts the Taxi Hunter on the hunt, testing drivers to see if they meet his level of professionalism. If they don’t meet his grade, they die.

The problem? Well, other than all the death and destruction, his brother-in-law Yu Kai Chung (Yu Rong Guang) is a cop who may be forced to kill Ah Kin to stop his path of yellow cab serial killing.

If you’re ready for taxi chases, gunplay and, well, pregnant women being dragged by taxi cabs to their bloody doom, well…you still aren’t ready for this movie.

The 88 Films release of Taxi Hunter has commentary by Hong Kong film expert Frank Djeng, interviews with writer Tony Leung Hung-Wah, action director James Ha and Anthony Wong, a trailer, an image gallery and a reversible cover with new artwork by Sean Longmore and the original poster. You can get it from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Bikini Car Wash Company II was on USA Up All Night on February 24, 1996 — with the first movie — as well as July 13, 1996; January 31 and July 20, 1997 — both times with the first film — and March 7, 1998 — again with The Bikini Carwash Company. 

What questions remained unanswered by the first movie? So many cars need washed, so I guess there’s some reason for this movie, which at least has a different director in Gary Dean Orona who started a career of sexy movies with this effort.

At least this has a reason to be: the carwash gets so big that a gigantic company buys it and the girls need to raise $4 million in a week to get the car wash back. The carwash women — nearly all of them are back, such as Melissa Reese (Kristi Ducati), Amy (Rikki Brando), Sunny (Sara Suzanne Brown) and Rita (Neriah Davis) are here — decide to sell lingerie on TV to get the cash they need.

I applaud that Melissa has become the CEO and Amy the lawyer. They realize their bodies have power but so do their minds. But sometimes, I wonder why so many of my friends are successes. They can discuss strategy and money and investing. I can at length with no research discuss sex comedies.

Ismael (Karra Elejalde, Timecrimes) breaks into the house of a fine art restorer of religious icons and shoots her dead and a second bullet makes her daughter mentally handicapped. It also leaves Leire (Ana Álvarez) traumatized to the point that she will forever be in an institution. Twenty years later, he’s working in a bar and sees her. He’s convinced that she’s seen him, so he kidnaps her and demands a ransom. Yet they soon come together and build a strange relationship, even if he keeps threatening to throw her in the path of an oncoming train.

Directed by Juanma Bajo Ulloa, who wrote it with his brother Eduardo, this film finds Ismael going from wanting to murder Leire — with the help of his lover Maite (Lio) — before she turns him in. Yet he feels something for her. Is he her savior? Her father? Her lover? Can he be all of these things?

Can a man who casually murdered a mother and crippled a child become someone with empathy and even love? This movie asks that question while not being afraid to get dark and uncomfortable getting there.

The Radiance Films blu ray release of The Dead Mother has a 4K restoration of the film supervised and approved by director Juanma Bajo Ulloa, who also provided a commentary track. It also has a documentary about the making of the movie, a short film titled Victor’s Kingdom, a photo gallery, the trailer, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow, a book with writing by Xavier Aldana Reyes, Ulloa, co-writer Eduardo Bajo Ulloa and an appreciation by Nacho Vigalondo. There’s even a soundtrack CD.

You can get this from MVD.