School of the Holy Beast

School of the Holy Beast (1974)
Director: Norifumi Suzuki
Starring: Yumi Takigawa
Personal Rating: 4.5/5

"A young Japanese woman in search of her missing mother discovers a sinister secret deep within the Sacred Heart Convent in director Norifumi Suzuki's notorious nunsploitation classic. After taking religious vows to gain entry into the convent where her mother was last seen, Maya (Yumi Takigawa) descends into a hedonistic world where sinful archbishops and whip-wielding nuns torment her in the most unholy manner imaginable."-© Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

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Notable DVD Releases This Week

Available May 27th, 2008:

Come Drink With Me (Dragon Dynasty)
1966, Hong Kong, Director: King Hu

Dario Argento Collection (Anchor Bay/Starz)
Italy, Director: Dario Argento

Heroes Of The East (Dragon Dynasty)
1979, Hong Kong, Director: Chia-Liang Liu

Phenomena (Anchor Bay/Starz)
1984, Italy, Director: Dario Argento

Tenebre (Anchor Bay/Starz)
1982, Italy, Director: Dario Argento

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Xploited Cinema

Django

Django (1966)
Director: Sergio Corbucci
Starring: Franco Nero
Personal Rating: 5/5

"Sergio Corbucci crafted one of the most popular and widely imitated of the Italian Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s with this violent but stylish action saga. A mysterious man named Django (Franco Nero) arrives in a Mexican border town dragging a small coffin behind him. When he attempts to save a woman who is being attacked by a group of bandits, he finds himself in the middle of a conflict between Mexican gangsters and racist Yankee thugs, with the innocent townspeople and a fortune in Mexican gold stuck somewhere in between. Django becomes a force to be reckoned with when it's discovered his coffin actually contains a Gatling gun. Django proved so popular in Europe that over 30 sequels and follow-ups were produced, though Franco Nero would not return to the role until 1987's Django 2: Il Grande Ritorno (the only sequel endorsed by Corbucci, which proved to be the last film in the series)."-© Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

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Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs

Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs (1974)
Director: Yukio Noda
Starring: Miki Sugimoto
Personal Rating: 5/5

"Based on a manga by Toru Shinohara, the Zero Woman series was a popular Japanese exploitation franchise of the 1970s, and it holds up strikingly well today. RED HANDCUFFS begins with female cop Rei (Miki Sugimoto), otherwise known as Agent Zero, seducing a Westerner who has been killing women with his sadistic sexual fetishes. Once she gets him back to the hotel room, however, she metes out her own brand of justice, of which her fellow cops do not approve, and Rei promptly lands in jail. Elsewhere, the maniacal criminal Nagumo (Tetsuro Tamba) is being let out of prison, and it isn't long before his brutal celebration leads to the kidnapping of an important politician's daughter. Charged with retrieving the girl without the media's knowledge, the police turn the job over to Rei. What follows is a melee of violence, sex, and violent sex, as Rei coolly does what it takes to get the job done."

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Notable DVD Releases This Week

Available May 20th, 2008:

Anguish (Blue Underground)
1987, Spain, Director: Bigas Luna

Bohachi Bushido: Code Of The Forgotten Eight (Discotek)
1973, Japan, Director: Teruo Ishii

Diary of the Dead (Dimension Extreme)
2007, USA, Director: George A. Romero

The Killing Hour (Blue Underground)
1982, USA, Director: Armand Mastroianni

Lucker: The Necrophagous - The Director's Cut (Synapse Films)
1986, Belgium, Director: Johan Vandewoestijne

Buy them at:
DVD Empire
Xploited Cinema

Return of the Street Fighter

Return of the Street Fighter (1974)
Director: Shigehiro Ozawa
Starring: Sonny Chiba, Hiroshi Tanaka, Masafumi Suzuki, Masashi Ishibashi
Personal Rating: 4.5/5

"After attracting notoriety at movie theaters around the world (along with plenty of profits) with the brutal kung-fu hit The Street Fighter, the character of Takuma Tsurugi (Sonny Chiba) was quickly revived for Return of the Street Fighter. This time, Tsurugi is hired by Japanese mobster Otaguro (Hiroshi Tanaka) to kill a pair of captured employees so they cannot inform on his activities (he has teamed with the American mafia under the guise of building a martial arts center). When Otaguru orders Tsurugi to kill his old friend Masoaka (Masafumi Suzuki), Tsurugi refuses and is forced to go on the run with. To make matters worse, Junjo (Masashi Ishibashi), Tsurugi's old nemesis, has reappeared and set his sights on revenge. Tsurugi takes a vicious beating from Junjo, but recovers in time to punch, kick, and gouge his way through everyone who has crossed him during the finale. Although critics considered it to be little more than a hyper-violent cartoon, Return of the Street Fighter found favor with action fans who loved the first installment and its success inspired another sequel, The Street Fighter's Last Revenge."-© Donald Guarisco, All Movie Guide

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Burial Ground

Burial Ground (1981)
Director: Andrea Bianchi
Starring: Karin Well, Peter Bark
Personal Rating: 3.5/5

"Another entry in a nearly endless string of Italian variants on George A. Romero's zombie films, Andrew Bianchi's Le Notti del Terrore (Burial Ground) borrows its scenario most heavily from Night of the Living Dead. The story opens with a loony professor unsealing a crypt and releasing voodoo-animated corpses, who immediately make up for lost time by devouring him and every other living human within reach. They eventually gate-crash the professor's posh country villa where a collection of painfully annoying upper-crust types are throwing a party... and since these jet-setters are also phenomenally stupid, the shambling zombies are soon enjoying a human buffet. Virtually plotless, this silly little gore-fest may hold a certain perverse appeal for those looking forward to seeing these obnoxious characters eaten alive (at least the zombies have the good sense to keep silent). The most outrageous scene comes when a young mother is so overjoyed to see her weird, huge-headed son (played by an adult dwarf) back from the dead that she immediately decides to breast-feed him!"-© Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

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The Brood

The Brood (1979)
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Oliver Reed, Art Hindle
Personal Rating: 2.5/5

"Canadian director David Cronenberg followed his graphic vampire variation Rabid with this multi-layered, speculative horror film which addresses the way the repressed demons of the psyche can force their way to the surface. Psychologist Dr. Raglan (Oliver Reed), director of the controversial Psychoplasmic Institute and author of the book "The Shape of Rage," encourages his patients to outwardly manifest their anger and fear (aided by some experimental drugs), which then takes physical shape as actual sores, cancers or strange new organs. One of Raglan's more successful patients (from his point of view, anyway) is Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar), who is undergoing therapy following a painful divorce from her husband Frank (Art Hindle). When Frank discovers evidence that Nola may have injured their daughter Candice (Cindy Hinds), he begins to suspect Raglan's techniques but is unprepared for the most horrifying by-product of her rage: a progeny of sexless, dwarflike mutants who are born for the sole purpose of acting out her violent fantasies of revenge. Containing only enough energy to carry out their murderous tasks, the brood is dispatched to kill Nola's parents, then a woman she believes is having an affair with Frank. By the time Frank discovers the origins of the tiny offspring, they have already abducted Candice and taken her to the institute, where Frank must confront Nola in person. Although it contains one of the most visceral and nauseating scenes in movie history (during the film's climax), this nevertheless remains the most subtle of Cronenberg's early horror projects, with a strong subtext about the devastating effects of divorce." -© Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

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Street Trash

Street Trash (1987)
Director: Jim Muro
Starring: Mike Lackey, Vic Noto, Bill Chepil
Personal Rating: 3.5/5

"This shocker will most likely appeal to fans of pitch-black beyond-bad-taste comedy. Others may find it highly offensive and gory as it chronicles the fate of homeless Brooklyn winos when they get into some tainted wine and begin melting into slimy puddles of human goo. The wine, called "Tenafly Viper," is being sold by the owner of a liquor store who found it lying around in his basement and sells it to the bums for a buck. It is later revealed that the wine was deliberately spiked by the government."-© Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

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Dragon Princess

Dragon Princess (1976)
Directors: Yataka Kodaira, Yutaka Kohira
Starring: Etsuko Shihomi, Sonny Chiba
Personal Rating: 4/5

"When Yumi (Etsuko Shihomi) was a child she witnessed her father Kazuma (Sonny Chiba) ambushed by Nikaido (Bin Amatsu), and his thugs, who want control of the karate world. He spares his life on the condition that he leaves Tokyo. Blinded in one eye, Kazuma flees to New York City with Yumi and trains her himself so she can one day return to Japan and get revenge."

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