Wai Lok-yan (Andy Lau) was just eight years old — during the Khmer Rouge — when his parents were killed as he watched, the victims of Pol Pot, as his father was working for the CIA. Years later, Wai is a member of the Thai Air Force and learns that his father’s murderer — a double agent named Ray Liu (Paul Chun) — is now a rich arms dealer who has moved to America. He makes his way there, thanks to the CIA, but ends up falling in love with Liu’s daughter, Crystal (Jacklyn Wu) and must save her when she’s kidnapped by a gang. Oh yeah — he also has an affair with Liu’s lover, Mona (Rosamund Kwan).

Remember when every Hong Kong director had to work with Van Damme first? Ringo Lam made this before he did Maximum Risk. This was filmed in the U.S., Hong Kong, and the Philippines, showcasing the international scope Lam wanted to achieve in his films.

If you’re going to kill the man who murdered your father, I have some advice for you. Perhaps, just maybe, don’t fall in love with his daughter. I mean, you can cuck him by sleeping with his mistress. That’s fine.

Eureka Classics is releasing this film for the first time in North America from a brand new 2K restoration. A limited edition of 2,000 copies, it features new artwork by Time Tomorrow and includes extras such as audio commentary by film critic David West, interviews with Gary Bettinson and Sandy Shaw, a trailer, and a limited edition collector’s booklet with a new essay by Hong Kong cinema scholar Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park. You can get it from MVD.

Directed by Abel Ferrara and written by Nicholas St. John, who worked on nine movies with Ferrara, this black-and-white film has Kathleen Conklin (Lili Taylor) get bitten by Casanova (Annabella Sciorra) and become a vampire, an addict, or both.

Ferrara made this as a metaphor for drug addiction as he had been on heroin for years and has Kathleen, after hitting bottom at an orgy of death and blood drinking, accepting that she is powerless and needs God as she’s reborn and visits her own grave.

Taylor is incredible and the visuals are so bleak. As always, New York City feels like the end of the world in a Ferrara movie. It also has Christopher Walken, Edie Falco, Jamel Simmonz from the Flatlinerz, Fredro Starr from Onyx and Michael Imperioli in the cast. While some may see it as an arty film filled with pretense, I’d remind them that Ferrera comes from the grindhouse and knows how to use horror to tell a story about something real.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD release of The Addiction has a brand new 4K restoration from the original camera negative by Arrow Films. There are also extras that include a commentary by director Abel Ferrara, moderated by critic and biographer Brad Stevens; Talking with the Vampires, a 2018 documentary about the film featuring actors Christopher Walken and Lili Taylor, composer Joe Delia, cinematographer Ken Kelsch and Ferrara himself; interviews with Ferrara and Stevens; a feature on the editing; a trailer; an image gallery; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter Strain and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring writing on the film by critic Michael Ewins and an interview with Ferrara by Paul Duane.

You can buy it from MVD on 4K UHD or Blu-ray.

In Italy, when erotic thrillers became big sellers on cable and video, old masters came back, like Martino and Mattei, to make Giallo movies that were softcore or adult thrillers or whatever title people wanted to sell them as. And in America, I wondered, why didn’t the names of the past come back? Brad Sykes recommended this one to me. As the credits started, Lee Frost’s name came up, and I instantly jumped from my chair and fell to the ground like an old person who needed a Life Alert. Rolling around and yelling as I struggled to get up from the weight of my office chair, I started laughing like a lunatic.

Fuck yes, Lee Frost!

Like the Italian masters — lunatics — I worship, Lee Frost used a ton of names, like David Kayne, R.L. Frost, F.C. Perl, Elov Peterson, Les Emerson, Carl Borch, Leoni Valenti, no, and so many more. He started with sexploitation like Surftide 77 and the baffling in a good way The House on Bare Mountain before going deep into roughies like The Defilers, The Pick-Up and The Animal, as well as American mondos like Mondo Bizarro, Mondo Freudo and The Forbidden.

Just like Italian exploitation fiends who jumped from trend to trend depending on what was hot, Frost made Westerns (Hot Spur, The Scavengers), biker films (Chrome and Hot Leather), occult movies (Witchcraft ’70), horror (The Thing with Two Heads), hicksploitation (Dixie Dynamite), Naziploitation (Love Camp 7), blacksploitation (The Black Gestapo) and porn. Yeah, you knew that was coming. But Frost made A Climax of Blue Power, the kind of adult movie that looked at porno chic and said, “What if we made something that upsets everyone that sees it?”

Somewhere in here, Frost had the time to write Race With the Devil.

How can we make this better for me? What if it were an Emanuelle — well, Emanuelle Griffith — movie? And what if Shannon Whirry played the role?

She’s a supermodel, yes, just like so many of the many Emanuelles that we have come to love. She’s also a female empowerment person who gives TED talks to other women about how men have to give up their control of the world, saying, “Good morning, ladies, and welcome to a man’s world!”

This enrages Richard Tate (Michael Christian, oh wow, Eddie from Poor Pretty Eddie), who kidnaps her and forces her to be debased. Detective Sam Weston (Bo Svenson) is looking for her, as is Sergeant Jim Lytel (Tony Burton, Apollo Creed’s trainer). Along the way, Rip Taylor plays a travel agent, Francine York is the leader of the feminist club that has Emanuelle speak, Whirry has to cover herself in butter to get through a dog door naked and then decides to drink water out of a toilet. It’s like Lee Frost hadn’t made a movie in more than a decade, because that’s true, and he decided to get it all out of his system because this was the last movie he’d make.

Yes, a captive Whirry, forced to eat fancy meal while watching a stalker on a monitor, long monologues from both leads and the kind of quality that lands a movie on a video store shelf with masking tape and a magic marker warning you that you have to be 18. And even if you are, you should watch this in the shower to save time because of how many times you’ll need a shower.

What would make it the absolute number one and the best? What if Lee Frost has a cameo? There’s also a song called “Feminazi March,” written by Frost, which combines sexploitation and Nazis, two things he definitely got boners over.

I don’t know who this movie is for other than me, but for all my complaints that erotic thrillers aren’t out on DVD, MVD has you covered. You can get this from them, along with the Julie Strain movie Midnight Confessions.