Genocyber (anime OVA, 1994)

Genocyber is a five-episode 1994 anime OVA directed by Kôichi Ôhata based on Tony Takezaki’s 1992 manga Genocyber: The Beauty Devil from Psychic World. The anime is a fine example of a good idea somewhat weakened by self-indulgent visual excess.

There’s a cyberpunk influence here, and a monster movie influence. Among other things it’s a mad scientist story.

This is a near-future world where attempts are being made, unsuccessful as usual, to eliminate war. As usual it seems that this peaceful utopia will be a global totalitarian state. National armies will be outlawed. There is a problem. Private corporations such as the Kuryu Corporation have more military power than most countries. And their ethical standards are much the same as those of governments - in other words they don’t have any ethical standards.

There are actually two mad scientists and they have been investigating the powers of the mind. There is within the human mind a mind shadow that can harness life energies and make them tangible, and potentially powerful in the physical world. The result is a kind of corporeal mind-creation, the Vajra.

Their research is centred on two sisters, Elaine and Diana. Whether they can be described as sisters or perhaps twins or whether they’re something else entirely is open to debate. They may be the daughters of one or other of the mad scientists.Diana has no functional body, only a cyberbody. Elaine has the mind of a child, or perhaps that of a wild animal.

Eventually two monstrous creations have come into being, the Vajranoid and Genocyber. This is the world of anime so it wouldn’t do to jump to conclusions about which is good and which evil.

As usual when people try to bring about world peace it leads to war. A US supercarrier is involved. By chance Elaine is aboard the carrier. She has been adopted by a kindly female doctor, Myra. There’s another mad scientist and he has harnessed the Vajra to create the Vajranoid, a superweapon which is both cybernetic and biological and maybe something else. A lot of mayhem ensues. Cities get destroyed.

There’s an enormous amount of blood and gore. There’s so much that it quickly ceases to have any impact. Seeing a head explode might shock the first time but seeing a head explode for the 143rd time becomes tiresome. This anime needed more creepiness and dread and less gore.

That’s the first three episodes. Then it changes gear completely for the final two episodes. We’re in future society, the last refuge of humanity. It’s a utopia and like all utopias it’s actually a totalitarian dystopia. There’s another pair of sisters. There’s a young man and a young blind woman making a living with a sideshow act. There’s a strange religious cult. The cult incorporates element of Christianity combined with loads of other millenarian stuff. The connection with the three earlier episodes is rather tenuous. These two episodes feature a lot less gore, they’re much more atmospheric, they’re much weirder and much more interesting.

There are some genuinely cool ideas here. The plot is never fully explained. In fact the plot is totally incoherent. This OVA is not a complete success but it does have lots of WTF moments which I enjoy. I do like all the weird disturbing never-quite-explained sister stuff. These are sisters with a psychic link but the link is more mystical and mysterious than that. There are also plenty of suggestions of weird things being destined to happen.

I don’t object to gore but it tends to bore me. Too often it’s used to cover up a lack of real imagination. That’s a pity here since there is some real imagination in Genocyber. There’s a stupendous quantity of action. There’s some nudity and a small amount of sex.

This is a product of an era in anime when boundaries were being pushed and in which a major selling point for violent anime was that it was seen as very much not kids’ stuff. That did lead to excess for the sake of excess and Genocyber is guilty of that at times. Genocyber is very very violent indeed.

Whatever its faults Genocyber is unpredictable and in its own way memorable, and entertaining in a bizarre way. Recommended.

If you enjoy the wild crazy sex and violence-fuelled excesses of late 80s/early 90s anime then Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (1989) does it much better, as does the 1989-94 OVA Angel Cop.

Discotek’s Blu-Ray presentation is fine. The only worthwhile extra is a fairly informative essay.

Revenge of the Virgins (1959)

Revenge of the Virgins is a 1959 B-western but it’s no ordinary B-western. This is a wild crazy nudie B-western written by the legendary Ed Wood Jr. It was directed by Peter Perry Jr and he’s almost as interesting as Ed Wood.

Now Ed Wood Jr is notorious for topping so many lists of the worst film directors all time. I can actually think of a couple of worse directors than Wood but he would definitely make my All-Time Five Worst Directors list. On the other hand, as a screenwriter and novelist he was surprisingly interesting and entertaining. You’ll always get touches of Ed Wood craziness and weirdness but he was quite capable of taking a deliberately tongue-in-cheek approach and as a writer his craziness could be, in its own odd way, inspired.

I don’t think I will ever again be tempted to watch another movie that he directed but if I see his name listed in the credits as screenwriter of a movie then I will seek out that movie. I consider The Violent Years, a juvenile delinquent movie that he scripted, to be a must-see movie.

Peter Perry Jr directed a whole slew of nudie movies in the 60s and they’re all good-natured and offbeat and enjoyable. Perry understood how to make a nudie movie that offered more than just naked ladies.

Revenge of the Virgins deals with an Apache tribe trying to stop gold prospectors from moving into its territory. There are only a handful of tribe members left. Less than a dozen in fact. They are all young, female and incredibly hot. They all spend the entire movie topless. The leader of the tribe is a blonde babe. She was kidnapped and raised by the tribe.

Melvin Potter (Charles Veltmann Jr) and his wife Ruby (Jodean Lawrence) have just arrived in a small town out West and hope to buy the saloon. They need money.

Grizzled old prospector Pan Taggart (Stanton Pritchard) may be able to help them. He knows where there is an abundance of gold for the taking. They will need to hire some gunmen. The local Apaches are not friendly.

The expedition sets out. Five men and a woman, all armed. They don’t trust each other too much, with good reason.

And then suddenly an arrow comes from out of nowhere and the expedition is one man short. They know the Apaches are now stalking them although they don’t know that the Apaches are all gorgeous young babes. They may be gorgeous bare-breasted babes but they’re dead shots with a bow and they’re smart enough not to contemplate a frontal assault. Their plan is obviously to pick off the members of the expedition one by one.

This would be the time for the expedition members to present a united front but they’re still planing to double-cross each other. And those Apache gals just keep stalking and shooting and then scooting.

That’s it for the plot but it’s a perfectly serviceable plot for a B-western.

What makes the movie interesting is the tone. Right at the start we get a voiceover that tells us that it may be just a tall tale told by old prospectors around the campfire. Clearly we’re not supposed to take the movie too seriously. But it does not become an out-and-out spoof nor does it indulge in out-and-out goofiness. In fact it gets rather dark at times. This is a story of a party of people being stalked by warriors who are smart, skilful, ruthless and remorseless. There’s a certain atmosphere of doom and desperation descending upon out gold-crazed adventurers. They haven’t even set eyes on the amazonian warrior girls who are slaughtering them one at a time.

When people talk about Ed Wood Jr there’s a tendency to focus on his most famous and most catastrophically inept movies as a director, such as Plan 9 from Outer space. It’s actually much more interesting to look at Wood’s forays into relatively conventional storytelling, both as director (in his attempt at a noirish crime thriller, Jail Bait) and as screenwriter (in the hugely entertaining girl juvenile delinquent movie The Violent Years) and as a novelist. What makes these efforts fascinating is that they are fairly straightforward but with a slightly off-kilter tone and occasional WTF moments.

Revenge of the Virgins follows that pattern. The plot is slightly outlandish but it does not venture into the world of the crazy and impossible. The tone is just slightly odd in an unsettling way. Is this trying to be a gritty dark-edged western or is it deliberately trying to be offbeat? Is it intended to be tongue-in-cheek? It’s hard to be sure, and that’s what makes it interesting.

Revenge of the Virgins is also, in a weird kind of way, a girl gang movie. And Ed Wood was obsessed with girl gangs.

The Apache maidens are all extremely pretty and if you’re into bare breasts you won’t be disappointed.
An oddball movie but I found myself thoroughly enjoying it. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the classic Ed Wood-scripted juvenile delinquent movie The Violent Years (1956) and his wild juvenile delinquent novel Devil Girls. And I’ve reviewed Jail Bait (1954), the only movie directed by Wood that is almost watchable.

I’ve reviewed quite a few of Peter Perry Jr’s sexploitation movies and I recommend all of them - The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill (1966), Kiss Me Quick! (1964), My Tale Is Hot (1964) and The Joys of Jezebel (1970).

Red Heat (1985)

Red Heat is a 1985 women-in-prison movie starring Linda Blair. I have to be upfront about this - I’m a major Linda Blair fan. If it’s a sleazy, violent, scuzzy 80s exploitation flick and she’s in it I will watch it.

Red Heat is also a very dark spy thriller. The CIA is undertaking a major espionage operation in Germany involving a female East German scientist who has turned traitor and is selling secrets to the West. The CIA, being the CIA, make an unholy mess of the operation which ends in complete failure and with both the lady scientist and an innocent bystander sentenced to long terms of imprisonment in a horrific East German prison.

The innocent bystander is American college student Christine Carlson (Linda Blair). She has zero interest in politics and was not involved in the operation at all. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Christine’s boyfriend is an American soldier, Mike (William Ostrander). In his innocence he assumes. That the US Government will try to rescue his girlfriend. He soon finds out the truth. The CIA doesn’t give a damn about Christine. They’re too busy covering their own asses and trying to cover up their failure.

As a spy movie this belongs the dark gritty cynical school of spy movies. The East Germans are the bad guys, but the CIA are the bad guys as well. There are no good guys in the worlds of espionage and international politics.

This is a women-in-prison movie so of course there are lesbians. At this point I should perhaps say that if you’re the type of person who expects 80s movies to conform to 2020s political ideologies or if you’re a sensitive soul you are going to hate this movie and you’re going to be upset by it. In which case you should watch some other movie.

Firstly there’s the sadistic lesbian chief warder. There’s also Sofia (Sylvia Kristel). Sofia is serving a life sentence and she’s the queen bee. She shares the lesbian chief warder’s bed and she and her lesbian gang exercise a reign of terror over the other prisoners.

That lady spy mentioned earlier is in the same prison. The East Germans want Christine to befriend her to get her secrets out of her.

Sofia sees Christine as a threat. Christine is a sweet innocent girl but she does have an underlying strength of character that Sofia senses, and that makes Sofia determined to destroy her. Somehow Christine will have to survive, and with only the vaguest hope of eventually, maybe, getting out alive.

Christine’s boyfriend wants to find her but he has no idea where she is and the CIA absolutely refuse to help. It all seems hopeless but he really loves Christine and he’s not going to give up.

This movie starts as a spy thriller. Then for most of its running time it’s a very dark women-in-prison movie. And then at the end it becomes an action thriller. The action scenes come as a relief after the relentless grimness.

There is not a hint of camp to this movie. The spy thriller element is cynical, the prison scenes are harrowing and the climactic action scenes are bloody. This is a tough movie.

This is the sort of thing Linda Blair did so well - playing a nice girl who is pushed too far and learns to become a tough chick avenging angel. Blair had a knack for doing this in a totally convincing way.

One thing I love about Blair is that she didn’t look like a movie star. She was attractive, but in a girl-next-door kind of way rather than a glamorous movie star kind of way. And she could be sexy in a tough-but-sensitive way, and sexy in the way that a regular woman is sexy rather than in a glamourised supermodel or movie star way. She has to convince us that Christine really is a very ordinary girl who learns to do what she has to do in order to survive. Blair does this successfully.

I have heard it suggested that Sylvia Kristel was miscast as Sofia. I totally disagree. She was a fine actress and playing a sadistic psycho bitch was something she was quite capable of doing and she does an excellent job here.

In order to work this movie needed two actresses with charisma, but with the right sort of slightly unconventional charisma. Blair and Kristel work perfectly together. You know that when these two chicks have their final showdown it will be memorable.

It’s a somber film but it’s well-paced and the tension is built up effectively and relentlessly. It’s gripping and it’s entertaining. A must-see for Linda Blair fans, and I’d say it’s a must-see for Sylvia Kristel fans as well as a demonstration of her considerable versatility as an actress. Red Heat is highly recommended.

Red Heat is included in a Women in Prison Triple Feature DVD set. The DVD transfer for Red Heat is rather dark but I suspect that that is actually how the movie was shot. I like the dark scuzzy look the film has.

Red Heat was a follow-up to the excellent 1983 Linda Blair women-in-prison movie Chained Heat. They’re both delightfully sleazy but with a subtly different vibe. Maybe Chained Heat is slightly the better film but both are worth seeing.

Knife of Ice (1972)

Knife of Ice (Il coltello di ghiaccio), released in 1972, was the fourth movie Umberto Lenzi made with star Carroll Baker and it’s a bit of a change of pace.

The first three movies are what I describe as proto-gialli - they have some of the style and feel of the later gialli but there are major differences. They’re stylish erotic thrillers that lack the blood and gore of the full-blown giallo. Knife of Ice is an interesting hybrid. Structurally it’s a giallo but in style and tone it’s a proto-giallo. And it has hints of the supernatural.

This was a Spanish-Italian co-production set in Spain. The bullfight credits sequence seems to have no connection to the rest of the movie but in fact it includes a clue.

Umberto Lenzi co-wrote the screenplay with Antonio Troiso. The original inspiration for this movie was Robert Siodmak’s 1946 classic The Spiral Staircase, a movie for which Lenzi had enormous admiration. Lenzi and Troiso made major changes to the plot so if you know how The Spiral Staircase ends that won’t help you in guessing the ending of Knife of Ice. Lenzi did not want to do a remake but rather a totally different movie taking the 1946 movie as a jumping-off point.

Martha Caldwell (Carroll Baker) arrives at her uncle’s home in Spain with her cousin and best friend Jenny Ascot (Ida Galli). Her uncle suffers from a severe heart complaint. He’s being treated by Dr Laurent (Alan Scott). It’s not quite clear if Dr Laurent is Martha’s boyfriend but they’re obviously close.

Then two murders take place. It seems there is a serial killer on the loose. The police find occult symbols and evidence of a Black Mass having taken place. There are signs that a satanic cult might be active. Two of the central characters have a great interest in the occult. There’s a crazy guy hanging around and he seems to be on the scene when a murder takes place. Inspector Duran (Franco Fantasia) certainly thinks he could be dealing with satanic cult murders.

Then the plot twists start to kick in. Regardless of the identity of the murderer or the motive there’s no doubt that Martha has been marked down for murder.

There’s no shortage of sinister suspects. There’s Martha’s occult-obsessed uncle, there’s the slightly creepy housekeeper, there’s the weird satanist guy, there’s the doctor, there’s the black-clad chauffeur.

Like a full-blown giallo this movie has multiple murders but there are no spectacular murder visual set-pieces. Lenzi is more interested in the atmosphere and in building a sense of dread. We feel that Martha is in great danger but we don’t know why and that adds to the dread.

This movie not only lacks gore, it also has no nudity or sex. That probably hurt it at the box office. Lenzi’s three previous movies with Carrol Baker were sexy thrillers and they were huge hits. Knife of Ice enjoyed much more modest commercial success.

Those earlier Lenzi-Baker movies were very stylish films with an atmosphere of glamour and decadence. In this film Lenzi is aiming for a very different feel. He throws in quite a few gothic horror tropes and the overwhelming tone of the movie is gothic. He keeps us in doubt as to whether it might turn out to be gothic horror or merely gothic melodrama but the gothic vibe is strong. There are plenty of moody creepy fog-bound scenes. It’s obvious that Lenzi was determined not to get stuck in a rut. A couple of years later he would turn the giallo genre upside-down and inside-out with his brilliant Spasmo.

Martha is mute. She isn’t deaf. She experienced an appalling shock as a child (seeing her parents killed in a train accident) and she hasn’t been able to speak since. It’s a challenging role for an actress but Carroll Baker does an excellent job.

Alan Scott is very dull as the doctor but the supporting players are very good.

Knife of Ice is low-key but enthralling and I enjoyed it immensely. Highly recommended.

Severin’s Blu-Ray includes something increasingly rare these days - genuinely worthwhile extras. There’s a longish and very informative interview with Lenzi and a very perceptive video essay by Stephen Thrower.

I’ve also reviewed the first three Lenzi-Baker collaborations, Orgasmo (AKA Paranoia, 1969), So Sweet...So Perverse (1969) and A Quiet Place To Kill (1970).

Murder in a Blue World (1973)

Murder in a Blue World (AKA Una gota de sangre para morir amando AKA A Drop of Blood To Die Loving AKA A Clockwork Terror) is a 1973 Franco-Spanish co-production which is a mishmash of genres. It’s also a bit of a mess.

When it was released Spanish critics accused it of heavily plagiarising Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Director Eloy de la Iglesia reacted with outrage to the accusations but those critics had a point. Large chunks of this movie are lifted directly from Kubrick’s movie. This is not an homage, this is grand larceny. Interestingly the scenes copied from A Clockwork Orange are copied badly. It’s like a backward pupil copying the homework of the smartest kid in the class but still getting the answers wrong.

It has the same kind of not-too-distant future setting as Kubrick’s movie. There is a juvenile delinquency problem. We see a home invasion, carried out by a gang of four juvenile delinquents (just as in Kubrick’s film). We see the gang driving along a quiet country road at high speed (just as in Kubrick’s film). The gang members brutalise the husband and rape the wife (just as in Kubrick’s film). But while the scene in Kubrick’s movie is genuinely disturbing because it’s filmed with so much skill and style the equivalent scene here is dull and obvious and crude.

Then there’s a fight as the gang leader tries to reassert his dominance over the gang (just as in Kubrick’s film).

This ends with David (Christopher Mitchum) being cast out of the gang. Later he will be beaten up up by his former gang-mates (just as in Kubrick’s film).

Dr Sender (Jean Sorel) is working on a new technique of behaviour modification to cure violent offenders (just as in Kubrick’s film). David ends up in custody and is chosen to be one of the experimental subjects (just like Alex in Kubrick’s film).

But Murder in a Blue World is actually more like three or four movies jumbled together without rhyme or reason. There are two main plot strands. The first is the one stolen (sorry, homaged) from A Clockwork Orange.

The second is much more interesting. It’s a serial killer story with some genuinely intriguing and unsettling elements. A number of young men have been murdered. We know that the killer is Ana Vernia (Sue Lyon), a nurse at Dr Sender’s clinic. I’m not revealing a spoiler here - we know she is the killer pretty much from the beginning.

Ana is one crazy chick. She thinks the world is entirely inhabited by dead people who think they are alive. It’s OK to kill them because they’re already dead. In fact she’s doing them a favour, freeing them from their nightmare existence. She is an angel of mercy. Killing them is an at of love. She always has sex with them first - for her the killing is just an extension of the love-making. This is all truly creepy and Sue Lyon is great - she makes this strange confused twisted character oddly believable.

This part of the movie is excellent and it should have been the focus of the whole movie.

Director Eloy de la Iglesia was gay and he adds lots of gay elements that feel like they’ve been shoehorned into the story. There’s a scene in which Ana masquerades as a butch lesbian. Why? I have no idea. There’s also a gay rape which I assume was included to shock the bourgeoisie.

Eloy de la Iglesia was also a communist so there’s political content that is also shoehorned into the story, stuff about the evils of capitalism and consumerism. It’s heavy-handed and embarrassing.

While Sue Lyon is terrific the other main cast members present problems. Christopher Mitchum is very good but he makes David much too sympathetic. A Clockwork Orange works because the viewer feels so conflicted about Alex - he’s so likeable but he’s also a vicious little thug. We are conflicted about the things that are done to him - are they justified or not? David is just likeable. He’s just a slightly naughty little boy. David needed to be given much more of a nasty edge for the Clockwork Orange Rip-Off plot strand to work. I’m not sure if the fault is Mitchum’s or the director’s.


Jean Sorel was a superb subtle actor with an extraordinary knack for playing super-nice charming guys whom we do not trust one little bit. He’s entirely wasted here in a nothing part.

The few really striking images are mostly lifted (sorry, homaged) from Kubrick’s movie.

There’s an attempt to link the two major plot strands but it just doesn’t work. The two stories just don’t mesh. The final scene is just so absurd that it pretty much makes a mockery of the whole movie.


There’s an extraordinary lack of erotic heat, perhaps not surprising given that the director presumably had no interest in male-female eroticism.

Murder in a Blue World is two movies in one, one of them really interesting and one of them a total failure. The Clockwork Orange stuff ends up going nowhere, although maybe the director thought it was some kind of critique of capitalism.

Almost worth seeing for Sue Lyon’s performance and the interesting twists on the serial killer theme but overall it’s a bit of a trainwreck. Hard to recommend this one.

The Panther Women (1967)

The Panther Women (Las mujeres panteras) is a 1967 Mexican wrestling women movie but it’s also a Santo movie, without Santo. It’s also a witchcraft in the modern world movie.

We open with what seems to be a Satanic ritual. This is actually the Panther Women cult. It’s left a little bit vague is to whether these are actual Satanists or whether it’s a pagan cult (I lean towards the latter explanation). Whatever they are they are clearly up to no good.

The leader of the cult is the glamorous but evil Satanasa (María Douglas). Centuries before this the founder of the cult, Eloim, had been killed by a member of the Pietrasanta family. Before dying Eloim vowed vengeance on Pietrasanta’s descendants. Satanasa intends to be the agent of that vengeance. The killing the last surviving members of the Pietrasanta family will bring Eloim back to life. The culmination of the ritual killings will be the sacrifice of the youngest Pietrasanta, a girl named Paquita.

The weapons Satanasa intends to use are two panther women. They’re lady wrestlers who can transform into panthers.

Famous lady wrestlers Loreta Venus (Ariadne Welter) and Golden Rubi (Elizabeth Campbell) are determined to foil this evil scheme.

Cop Capitán Arturo Díaz (Eric del Castillo) knows he’s going to need outside help so he calls on El Angel (played by pro wrestler and actor Gerardo Zepeda). El Angel is a pro wrestler who moonlights as a masked crimefighter. His identity is a secret. He is also a scientific genius and he has a secret laboratory. He has a secret radio link to police headquarters. Yes, he’s Santo in all but name.

The Pietrasantas get hunted down one by one.

The panther woman do their transformation thing in the wrestling ring.

Eloim is revived, but he’s a shambling zombie-like creature. Eventually there will be a showdown between Eloim and El Angel.

The big problem with this movie is El Angel. He’s fine, but he takes over the movie. As does Eloim. There’s just not enough focus on the Panther Women and the two wrestling women heroines. They’re the most interesting characters but they’re reduced to being minor supporting players.

The big drawcard here is Tongolele as one of the Panther Woman. Tongolele is a legend in Mexico as a dancer and burlesque star. She looks amazing, she was a sultry exotic dancer and she has charisma.

María Douglas makes a fine sinister villainess. Elizabeth Campbell is great as Golden Rubi but doesn’t get anywhere near enough to do.

There are some decent fight scenes, Tongolele does a great sexy dance and there are the obligatory wrestling scenes.

René Cardona was a very experienced director and he keeps things moving along. It’s a very competently made movie. Alfredo Salazar was also an experienced screenwriter but his script isn’t focused enough.

El Angel looks cool. The makeup effects for Eloim are very cool and very creepy. The Panther Woman makeup effects and costumes really needed a lot more thought.

Wrestling was and is a huge part of Mexican popular culture so wrestling hero movies had a guaranteed audience.

This was the fourth of the 60s luchadora (lady wrestler) movies. Despite its problems it’s good fun. Panther Women is worth a look but there are much better Mexican cult movies from that era, such as the magnificent The Bat Woman.

The Powerhouse Indicator Blu-Ray offers a nice transfer wth an informative audio commentary. There’s also a booklet of essays, and a lot of pretentious nonsense they are too.

Alien from the Abyss (1989)

Alien from the Abyss is a crazy 1989 monster movie directed by the great Antonio Margheriti.

We start with a couple of do-gooders, crusading journalist Jane (Marina Giulia Cavalli) and cameraman Lee (Robert Marius), trying to get to an island where nuclear waste is being dumped into an active volcano. They get machine-gunned from the air.

They survive and reach the island. There’s a mad scientist, Dr Geoffrey (Luciano Pigozzi), but the guy who’s really in charge of the E-Chem facility is much scarier. That’s Colonel Kovacks (Charles Napier). He’s head of security and knows nothing of nuclear physics but the E-Chem head office lets him make the scientific decisions because they’re like totally evil and he can be relied on to maximise profits. Lee has taken incriminating video footage. He gets captured and tortured.

Jane escapes. She is rescued by a nerdy snake-hunter, Bob (Daniel Bosch). They’re pursued through the jungle by the E-Chem security guards. The guards are armed with automatic weapons but Bob has his trusty snakes as allies. Every snake on the island is deadly and there are lots of them.

Narrow escapes and plenty of mayhem follow before he gets her to his jungle hideaway and introduces her to his snakes. She is not impressed.

She is also not impressed that he doesn’t want to join her crusade against E-Chem and rescue her cameraman buddy.

But he changes his mind because Jane is a pain in the ass but she’s kinda cute.

The whole facility seems like it’s become a huge nuclear bomb about to explode.

That’s when the alien spaceship lands! We later find out that the aliens have been attracted by all the radiation. Aliens just love radiation.

This is one mean nasty alien. It’s not just the huge jaw-like chopper things. He can also slime you to death.

Colonel Kovacks has to figure out how to kill the alien. Jane just wants to get that videotape back. Bob just wants to get into Jane’s pants but he’s not having much luck.

The plant is getting closer to meltdown, the volcano could blow at any moment and the alien has embarked on a killing rampage. He’s one of those unstoppable monsters. Shooting him just annoys him.

I believe Margheriti was disappointed by the monster but I think he’s rather cool.

There are lots of gunfights and countless explosions. Lots of guys get chomped or slimed by the monster. This is what cinema is all about!

The acting is mostly adequate for the kinds of movie this is. Luciano Pigozzi is fun as the cynical disillusioned mad scientist who isn’t as evil or mad as he appears to be.

And of course there’s Charles Napier being Charles Napier and he’s huge amounts of fun to watch.

It goes without saying that this was a low-budget movie (shot in the Phillipines) but Margheriti always knew how to make a low budget go a long way. And he keeps things powering along. If the action slows down for a minute or so, add more explosions.

This is a remarkably tame movie on the sex and nudity front. There is zero nudity and zero sex. Despite Bob’s best efforts. Jane is not going to come across because she has a Cause and that means more to her than a man.

There is naturally a great deal of silliness and goofiness but there’s adventure and excitement and an unstoppable slimy monster. And deadly snakes. And explosions.

Margheriti could handle most genres and he does a solid job here.

Alien from the Abyss (also released as Alien from the Deep) is not a movie you want to take the least bit seriously but it’s fine entertainment. Highly recommended.

Severin’s Blu-Ray release looks very nice indeed and there are some extras.

It’s Nothing Mama, Just a Game (1974)

It’s Nothing Mama, Just a Game (AKA Beyond Erotica AKA Lola) is a Spanish-Venezuelan co-production and it’s crazy twisted eurosleaze. This is definitely not a giallo. It’s not supernatural horror but I would still class it as gothic horror.

Juan’s family owns a sugar plantation in Venezuela. To say that Juan (David Hemmings) is odd would be putting it mildly. He lives there with his mother (played by Alida Valli). She is every bit as crazy as he is, but in a different way. The plantation has been slowly going broke since the death of Juan’s father. Now they’re reliant on financial support from Juan’s uncle. The uncle despises Juan’s mother but he despises Juan even more. He is concerned that Juan may be not just useless but dangerously crazy.

We already know Juan is crazy after the opening scene in which he watches a pretty young woman named Lucia mauled to death by his dogs. Lucia had been the maid. Now she will have to be replaced. Lola (Andrea Rau) is the lucky girl.

Lola isn’t completely stupid or completely innocent. A man trying to get into her pants is something she can deal with. She is probably no naïve virgin. Her problem is that she has no idea at first that Juan is playing a much crazier game than that.

She is also over-confident.

Juan is not primarily motivated by sex but I don’t think he’s motivated by power either. He seems to be a man still stuck in his childhood, playing games of make-believe. The games do not seem to have a specific objective. The game is an end in itself. When he’s playing his games he can forget that the estate is failing and that he has contributed to the decline through his incompetence and childishness. He can feel that he is in control of his life, when in reality his life has been spiralling more and more out of control.

Lola does not want to play the game, but she ends up doing so. She even learns to enjoy doing so. Perhaps, even in a perverse way, it makes her feel more in control. On the surface she might be the submissive partner but in fact she has the real power. She starts to realise that she can end up calling the shots. She might now be a better game-player than Juan.

Juan’s uncle arrives. His aim is to sort things out and if Juan really does prove to be insane he intends to pull the financial plug on Juan and his mother. Juan is outmatched by his uncle but the uncle is outmatched by Lola.

Lola has something that gives her the whip hand over both men - the sexual power of women. She can make them dance to her tune. But if power always corrupts it corrupts Lola as well.

There’s some powerhouse acting here. David Hemmings is superb. He’s incredibly creepy and scary and evil but Hemmings also makes us realise that Juan is more of a deranged child than anything else. He makes the character chillingly believable.

Andrea Rau (from Daughters of Darkness) is equally good as Lola, a young woman who finds herself both repelled and fascinated by Juan. She is drawn into the game, and develops a bit of a taste for sexual kinkiness.

The bizarre relationship between Juan and Lola is something you probably wouldn’t get away with today. It would almost certainly be seen as dated and offensive and problematic, but in the 70s it was assumed that audiences for grown-up movies were in fact grown-ups and could deal with subject matter that was a bit confronting. One Spanish critic at the time compared this film to The Night Porter, and there is a certain affinity between the two films.

Alida Valli is excellent as well. The mother is possibly more evil than Juan since she has more awareness of the evil she is covering up.

It would be tempting to see this as yet another film attacking the decadence of the bourgeoisie but that’s a tedious and simplistic interpretation. This movie is more in the gothic mould of Poe - a story of familial decay and degeneracy. The flashbacks scattered throughout the story suggest that the decay and degeneracy were already well and truly evident in Juan’s father’s day. The decay and degeneracy are now blossoming in a truly unhealthy way.

I’m always dubious about attempts to over-explain character motivations by relating them to traumas in the past. That can lead so easily to half-baked Freudianism. This movie seems like it’s going to succumb to that temptation but it doesn’t really. The flashbacks just let us know that things have been getting crazy in this family for a very long time.

This is a very unwholesome family and their evil infects everybody with whom they come in contact. We know just enough about Lucia to assume that she had been drawn into Juan’s twisted games. Lola is certainly drawn into those games.

The men and women are equally twisted. To try to see this movie in feminist terms is to miss the point. Every member of the family and everybody who comes in contact with them is tainted by madness. Whether they’re male or female is irrelevant.

There’s a moderate amount of sex and nudity. There’s lots of kinkiness.

Mondo Macabro’s Blu-Ray looks terrific and there are plenty of extras.

Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death (1978)

Kim Ki-young’s Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death (also known as Killer Butterfly and several other titles) is a 1978 Korean horror movie. Although whether it’s really a horror movie can be debated. It’s certainly an exercise in weirdness.

At a picnic a young woman offers a young man named Young-gul an orange juice. She then tells him the orange juice was poisoned and that they will both die. Young-gul survives.

He then tries to kill himself. He is obsessed with death.

A strange old man turns up in Young-gul’s seedy apartment and tries to sell Young-gul a book on the will. The old guy claims that he cannot die. When it’s put to the test it appears that the old guy might be right, in a way.

Young-gul gets a job with an archaeologist who collects skulls. He is trying to prove that Korans are descended from Genghis Khan’s Mongols. Young-gul finds a 2,000-year-old skeleton for him.

This is when Young-gul encounters the ghost. In Chinese and Japanese folklore ghosts are corporeal. They can even have sex. They can also fall in love. On the evidence of this movie that is true of Korean folklore as well. The ghost is a very attractive young woman. She wants to have sex with Young-gul. She wants his love. She also wants to eat his liver. Young-gul doesn’t know much about women. He wonders if all girls are like this.

Later Young-gul gets mixed up with the archaeologist’s daughter. She is obsessed with death as well. She is a virgin. The archaeologist offers to pay Young-gul to pop her cherry.

There’s also a cop investigating the headless corpse mystery. And strange masked guys stealing corpses.

There’s still more weirdness to come. And butterflies are important.

I have to confess that this is my first Korean movie and I also know nothing of Korean culture so I may be missing some cultural nuances in this movie. It’s not always easy to understand the humour of other cultures. It’s possible that quite a few scenes in this movie were being played for laughs. Or the movie might just be very crazy. It is very crazy, but maybe it’s supposed to be crazy in a funny way.

There are plenty of horror movie elements here but this does not feel like a horror movie. It feels like an art-house movie or an experimental film.

It’s a depressing movie obsessed with death. Maybe it’s supposed to be about the triumph of death over life, or the triumph of life over death.

I like weird movies but I did not find watching this movie to be an enjoyable experience.

It is however undeniably very very strange and morbidly fascinating. They don’t make movies like this any more. In fact sane people never did make movies like this.

This was a very low-budget movie. The special effects are laughably bad. I don’t mind bad special effects if they’re done in a fun way but in this case they’re just very very bad. It includes the worst skeletal transformation scene I have ever seen in a movie.

I have no idea what the director was trying to achieve in terms of tone. Despite all the weird goings-on it doesn’t really achieve an effectively creepy atmosphere but maybe Kim Ki-young was just aiming for morbid artiness.

It’s a movie that should tick all my boxes (I generally like arty horror) but somehow it just never grabs my interest. I don’t think I could honestly recommend it but it might just be a case of a movie that doesn’t work for me but might work for others so I’m hesitant to advise people to avoid it. It sure is weird.

Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death is available on Blu-Ray from Mondo Macabro.

King Kong Escapes (1967)

King Kong Escapes was a Japanese US co-production between Rankin-Bass and Japan’s Toho studio. Made in 1967 it was directed by Ishirô Honda but was inspired as much by The King Kong Show animated TV series of the time (which I've never seen) as by Japanese monster movies or the original King Kong movie.

At the North Pole the mad scientist Dr Who (Eisei Amamoto) has built a giant robot ape. He needs the robot ape to dig deposits of Element X out of a cavern. Dr Who is in the employ of an unnamed country which it’s reasonable to assume is meant to be China (Red China hysteria was huge in 1967).

He is taking his orders from the beautiful but deadly superspy Madame X (Mie Hama).

Meanwhile a super-advanced United Nations submarine skippered by Commander Carl Nelson (Rhodes Reason) has to take refuge in an inlet in a tiny island. The island is of course the island on which the legendary King Kong was supposed to live and by one of those amazing coincidences which abound in this movie Commander Nelson (a character clearly heavily based on Admiral Nelson in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) and his executive officer Lieutenant Commander Jiro Nomura (Akira Takarada) are totally obsessed by the subject of King Kong. They believe he really existed. They’re Kong experts.

Nelson and Nomura, accompanied by the ship’s nurse Lieutenant Susan Watson (Linda Miller), land on the island. They discover that Kong not only was real, he’s still around. The island is also swarming with dinosaurs.

Given that we know that Kong has an eye for a pretty girl we’re not surprised that he takes a shine to Susan. I can’t say that I blame him. She’s cute and blonde and adorable. But of course Kong has lousy luck with women. Whenever he thinks he’s found Miss Right something always goes wrong.

Kong has more urgent things to worry about. Dr Who’s robot ape has broken down so he decides to kidnap Kong. A real giant ape should even more useful than a robot one. Kong will be easy to control. He’ll be hypnotised. What could go wrong?

So far the action has taken place on Kong’s island and at the North Pole so the good people of Tokyo are probably breathing a sigh of relief that at least their city is not going to get stomped this time. But they’re wrong!

Doctor Who is perhaps not the brightest of mad scientists. His schemes always seem to contain some fatal flaws. He loses control of Kong. He thinks he can threaten Commander Nelson into helping him regain control of the recalcitrant ape. The key of course is Susan. Cute blondes can persuade giant apes to do anything.

Meanwhile Madame X seems to be cooking up schemes of her own.

There’s no point in complaining that this movie is very silly. It’s fairly obvious that it’s supposed to be silly. We’re not supposed to take it the least bit seriously.

The special effects are not very convincing but they’re fun and fun matters more than realism. The submarine miniature is cool. And there’s a flying sub. It’s not as cool as the one in the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV series and it’s more of a miniature hovercraft sub but it’s kinda cool as well.

We get a reasonable amount of mayhem with both Kong and the robot ape slugging it out, not just for dominance but for possession of the luscious Susan.

Mie Hama has huge amounts of fun as the sexy but evil lady spy Madame X. Linda Miller is just bursting with cuteness as Susan, Kong’s love interest. The two male heroes are perfectly adequate.

Eisei Amamoto as Dr Who manages to seem evil, crazy and incompetent all at the same time and his performance is most enjoyable.

King Kong Escapes is lightweight good-natured goofy fun and if you’re content with that then it’s definitely recommended.

King Kong Escapes looks lovely on Blu-Ray. The disc is barebones.