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THE EAGLE FIST (1981). A very slight, but entertaining enough kung-fu movie features Chi Kuan Chuan as a young martial artist/militia member who runs into an eccentric kung-fu master while arresting several bandits. He leaves his home to train with the master, who's training methods include: forcing Chi to stand in a sewer all day, catch birds in a closed room, write with a pen that's attached to a basket of rocks, do handstands in a tree, and so on. Eventually Chi becomes an expert at the titular style, as well as "toad" kung-fu, and nerve locks. The plot there-on-out revolves around Chi attempting to locate a book of kung-fu secrets that had been stolen from his teacher years ago. Obviously a late entry in the kung-fu sweepstakes, when the genre as a whole was beginning to wind down, the plot is so slight as to be invisible, the performances are engaging if perfunctory, and the fighting scenes (choreographed by co-star/director Cheng Chi Ying) are competent without being inspired. In short, it's the sort of movie that gets made on the tail end of a genre, good, but lacking the fire that lit up previous films. That isn't to say that this is a bad movie at all, far from it, its pretty entertaining on its own terms, and has a number of very funny scenes, as well as one of the most over-the-top endings in which every character practically turns out to have some sort of secret identity, as well as a lengthy fight with a bad guy who wears a gold plate on his back to protect a sensitive nerve ending.
EAGLE VS. SILVER FOX (1983). This movie is completely asinine. I haven't seen too many kung-fu movies that are dumber than this one. First of all it was directed by Godfrey Ho, who made plenty of dumb movies, this one isn't quite as outrageous as some of his other movies, and what this one lacks in outrageousness it makes up for it in sheer weightless stupidity. Hwang Jang-Lee is the villain (as usual), the Silver Fox, who spends most of his time, like Skeletor, berating his underlings for their incompetence, and constantly threatening to "do it myself" but never does until the end. First of all, you have to hear the dubbed voice on this guy, its just incredible. Obviously whoever did the dubbing here thought of himself as an actor, and decided to give Silver Fox the intonations of a hammy 19th century theater hack. So instead of your typical evil strangled mid-Atlantic accent, you have Silver Fox sounding like Todd Slaughter!! Silver Fox's two main henchmen are a pain of bald-headed morons who are dubbed to sound like cockney chimney sweeps. They say things like, "I think he wants to take his beddy-byes in the coffin!" uh, okay…? The hero is one of the dullest imaginable, a serious lunkhead who makes Jimmy Wang Yu look like Jack Nicholson. The plot revolves around a clan trying to deliver a secret message, but who are waylaid by Silver Fox and his minions who kill them all but one, our hero, who, of course, learns kung-fu from a passing expert who finds him near death (do these guys just go around looking for near-dead young guys to teach revenge-seeking kung-fu to?). Later he teams up with one of the dumpiest women to appear in a kung-fu movie, and of course, a goofy Buddhist monk, who comes very close to spying on them having sex. The fight scenes are just awful (and the constant slow-motion doesn't exactly highlight the competence of the actors here), and when Hwang, who was a competent on-screen fighter shows up at the end to do his thing, it just shows how amateurish the whole production is.
EDGAR ALLEN POE'S THE BLACK CAT [Il Gatto Nero] (aka THE BLACK CAT) (1990). Really terrible and misguided attempt by Luigi Cozzi/Lewis Coates to complete Dario Argento's unfinished "Three Mothers" trilogy. In preparation for her husband's latest film, embarrassingly titled "Suspiria de Profundis" (cue Goblin's theme music) Florence Guerin finds herself haunted by the spirit of the witch portrayed in the film. Like all of Cozzi's films, this has more than enough unintentional laughs, but they can't compensate for the almost delirious amateurishness of the entire production. On top of that you have Cozzi's trademark incomprehension, as the ending comes out of nowhere and there are too many shots of deep space. Guerin's performance is narcoleptic to say the least, and why is this called "The Black Cat" anyway?
EDGE OF SANITY (1989). It took too damn long, but here's the ultimate Anthony Perkins movie. It is a brazenly silly slasher film based on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and stolen in large part from Ken Russell and was directed by frog ex- porn director Gerard Kikoine. Perkins plays the limping Dr. Jekyll who is working on a new kind of anesthesia, but when his pet monkey spills some whatever on it Perkins is transformed into the sadistic Jack Hyde ("Hyde, Jack Hyde") and spends most of the film running around Whitechapel, carving up whores, and firing up his crack pipe in order to give him a sadistic kick. This is extremely 80s: not only does Perkins as Jack Hyde come to resemble a member of a dour British pop band, but one hooker is dressed up like Madonna (?), and everyone wears too much eye make-up, to the point that this more closely resembles an esoteric Whitesnake video rather than a horror movie. Then again, you can't get much more 80s than a blazing crack pipe, can you? I don't know where they came up with this little tidbit, but it was a stroke of genius, seeing Perkins going crack-pimp nuts was incredible, and I don't think I've ever seen Perkins act stranger than he does in this film. He's obsessed with bare asses ("look at that! Just look at that!"), jerks off while watching two people have sex, makes a hooker masturbate with his cane and continually asks "do you love me?" Obviously this is all related to Jekyll's TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCE of seeing a woman get it on in a barn with a bearded guy who gives Jekyll a good beating when he's found out. For some reason, most of the scenes are either bathed in blue or pink light and by the time the "surprise" ending came I was ready for anything. It's too bad more directors didn't put Perkins in flamboyant films worthy of his eccentric acting. Now all we need is a horror movie for the Oprah era featuring a werewolf who shouts self-improvement catch phrases while tearing people's throats out ("grrrrrr: you've got to escape from your inner shame zones, arf!")
8mm (1999). From the writer of Seven and the director of Batman Forever comes another Hollywood attempt at an "edgy" and "transgressive" film that's pretty hilarious. Nicholas Cage plays a private eye who's hired by the widow of an ultra-rich industrialist to investigate the origins of a mysterious snuff film found in his possession. Cage's trek leads him to LA where he meets up with Joaquin Phoenix, a porn shop clerk ("hey, we've got 'Private Dick' with John Holmes") who guides him, Virgil-like, through the world of underground porno ("Mexican S&M, Asian bondage") and Cage eventually ends up in New York and the world of S&M weirdo Dino Velvet (Peter Stomare). You could probably make a better movie about snuff films than this, since the creepy thing about the possible existence of snuff films would be that there are as many people who would want to see an actual murder as the existence of these films would suggest (read The Gods of Death for an unconvincing investigation into snuff films). Unfortunately writer Andrew Kevin Walker and director Joel Schumacher ignore all of this and make the film into a foolish endeavor complete with just-in-time punches to the crotch and absurd guest-villains of the week. Cage's performance is a riot of self-parody and will probably make this movie into a "cult" item years from now.

EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS (aka Emanuelle e gli ultimi cannibali, Trap Them and Kill Them, Emanuelle's Amazon Adventure, 1977). Joltin' Joe D'Amato was onto something in the late 70s, at least with Emanuelle in America and this film. His mixing of light-hearted softcore screwing and unbelievable outbursts of extreme violence is unmatched. He must have been looking to top what he did in Emanuelle in America with this film, that cashes in on the cannibal film craze of the period, but also fits well enough into the usually asinine exploits of D'Amato's greatest contribution to world cinema: the Black Emanuelle films of Laura Gemser. The question must be posed: would you die for Black Emanuelle? I would, but that's another story. While this film doesn't top Emanuelle in America, it's just about as good, save the fact that it's missing any hardcore inserts (though any day now I'm sure some will pop up). Our epic starts in New York City, as Emanuelle goes undercover in a mental asylum with a doll that takes pictures (not as spectacular as her conch-shell camera in Emanuelle in America, but close) and finds a deranged woman who was found in Amazonia taking a chunk out of a nurse's boob (E. later informs us that the nurse was "well known for her lesbian proclivities", thanks babe). Emanuelle goes to see an "anthropologist" (aren't they all?) who's played by Gabriele Tinti, who was, of course, in Emanuelle in America, playing a sexually frustrated nobleman. Anthropologist Mark comes off as kind of pathetic, and keeps asking E. to come to his house and he sounds like me trying to get a date: "come on, come to my house, I'll show you evidence of international cannibalism, c'mon, come to my house, it's fun, I've got spears and stuff", the only major difference is Mark gets to have a long sex scene with Black Emanuelle, but not before showing her "real" footage of cannibalism in Africa, that proves that Joe was thinking of Emanuelle in America, seemingly, Black Emanuelle gets off on seeing torture and murder (if only…). E. and Mark run off to Amazonia, a place that, as Mark tells us, "lives by it's own rules" (baby! say baby, dammit!). They meet some locals, and have sex, while the virginal daughter of the Graham Greene-esq fatass know-it-all masturbates. They set out to find the mythical cannibal tribe that held the cannibalistic biyatch in New York with a nun in tow. There's some light lesbo stuff between E. and the masturbating virgin (in other words a virgin) before our team runs into Donald O'Brien and his wife. Donald plays a character named Donald, so he wouldn't get confused, and, unlike the rest of the cast, Don actually uses his face for something other than an imitation of a brick wall, and when Donald O'Brien is your best actor you, as my ghetto neighbors would say, is fucked. Don watches his wife do it doggie style with a black stud and doesn't get to bothered by it (he's as limp as a month old green onion). Later Don tries to feel up our virginal masturbator (again, i.e. a virgin) and Mark comes to the rescue, and gets bitch slapped by Don, who's in the Amazon to "hunt" (for what? big spiders?). Things don't get good until the nun is grabbed by the cannibal tribe (the black guy does a good job watching her while she pees) and is tortured and killed. The scene, featuring a nipple being cut off and a disemboweling is really pretty hard to take, and I was surprised that I was as disgusted as I was, but then again, it's a little hard to accept the fact that the movie's gone from a light-hearted screw epic to a hardcore gore flick. After that Don and his horny wife find what they've been looking for, "diamonds" that look more like plastic building blocks, and, to celebrate their find, and seemingly forgetting the jungle teeming with cannibal savages, decide to do it ("I'm sure we'll get out of here alive!"). Of course wifey is captured, and Don is speared, so off they go to get the wife. They don't do very well, as Mike tries his hand and strategizing, and just manages to get nearly everyone killed. The nun's killing was gross, but Don's wife having her intestines pulled out of her vagina is just plain wrong, not morally wrong per se, but aesthetically, as the dummy they're pulling the chicken guts out of looks to have been made of cardboard. Don is then bisected in as bloodless a bisection as you can imagine. Joe at least tries to be effective with these crummy effects through persuasive editing, and you have to admit the man could be inspired. The best part is watching our "heroes" Mark and E. stand by viewing all of this with E. clicking away getting her scoop. The ending is preposterous, but kind of weirdly poetic and surreal, as E. rises from the water in the nick of time. Cannibal Holocaust gave us the succinct "I wonder who the real cannibals are?" Joe wasn't that succinct, and this one gives us a moving final soliloquy from E.

EMANUELLE: I didn't think I was capable of shooting at a man, then they say a journalist will do anything for an ar-ti-cle. I should be satisfied to have collected enough material for a really sensational scoop…but it isn't so……Manolo, Phillipe, Salvatore lost their lives because they followed us on this……………adventure, and for what? That I'd like to know. And sister Angela's so sweet, and Maggie and Donald, with their shabbiness….
MARK: Don't take it badly, Emanuelle, it's nobody's fault.

There won't be a dry eye in the house after that. Fortunately, before things get too serious (I came close to losing it there) Nico Fidenco offers up a truly shitty theme song that has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIE. "Make Love on the Wing" is the worst Euro-disco piece of shit I've ever heard. It's a masterpiece! Fidenco deserves some kind of lifetime achievement Oscar for his long career of turning out cheesy funk scores. Some enterprising entrepreneur should release the theme songs from Black Emanuelle films on a compilation disc. A million seller or my name isn't ultra_caligula!

EMPEROR CALIGULA: THE GARDEN OF TABOO (aka CALIGULA: THE UNTOLD STORY, 1983). Shoddy even by Joltin' Joe D'Amato's standards, this inevitable cash-in on Bob Guccione's bloated Caligula marks a new low in historical pageantry. David Cain gives some sort of anti-performance as the depraved Caesar who sees Rome as "one big neck for me to chop". He rapes Christian virgins, conducts orgies, and of course has people tortured and murdered, i.e. Michele Soavi (!) who's hamstrung and has his tongue cut out. Laura Gemser plays the pagan friend of Christian Fabiola Toledo, who kills herself after being raped by self-proclaimed god Caligula. Gemser plans on assassinating him but, in the most improbable bit in film history, falls in love with him, and he with her. This leads to soft focus cliché romantic scenes: rides on horseback and long walks on the beach; I guess even bloodthirsty psychopaths have their soft side. The whole thing could easily pass for an American TV movie save the tits; so insipid it makes Guccione's production look like Aeschylus, you have to wonder if Joe didn't feel the least bit guilty foisting this on the viewing public. There is, of course, a hard-core version that pushes the sleaze factor to tolerable levels with a graphic orgy and horse masturbation, but fortunately or unfortunately this version is quite hard to find.
ENTER THE DRAGON (1973). Probably the quintessential kung-fu movie for many people, since while there have been innumerably better movies, this remains the most popular. Bruce Lee plays Lee, a secret agent sent to a mysterious island martial arts tournament to find out what the drug kingpin boss who runs the tourney (Shek Kin) is up to. The last half-hour or so still hold up today, with Lee given an opportunity to show off his tremendous skills, though some parts are pretty weak, and much of the cast seems to be there for no reason (as much as I like John Saxon I still don’t know why the hell he’s in this) and Jim Kelly is killed off much too soon. Most of this I’ll blame on hack director Robert Clouse, who for some reason, despite his obvious lack of affinity for the genre became the stock low-budget American martial arts director for many years, helping to embalm such films as Jackie Chan’s (who appears in this) The Big Brawl, and the unimaginably awful Gymkata. Angela Mao plays Lee’s ill-fated sister, Shek Kin is doubled by Lam Ching-Ying during his big fight scene, Sammo Hung is the fighter at the beginning, Yuen Biao, David Chiang and Lo Lieh are all in there someplace.
EXHAUSTED: JOHN C. HOLMES, THE TRUE STORY (1983). If you're looking for a serious, in-depth documentary on everyone's favorite cocksman you'd be better off watching the fictional Flesh and Blood, this is a phony-baloney documentary that's more interested in showing Holmes in action. The interviews with Holmes try to portray him as an intelligent carnal artist, but in reality he was a sleazy, violent, drug-addicted con man. Released five years before Holmes' demise from AIDS in 1988, and of course there's no dirt (i.e. Holmes' drug-addiction, prison sexcapades, and arrest on murder charges). The clips are all from Bob Chinn's movies released by Caballero. Incredibly director Paul Thomas Anderson restaged several scenes from this (hilariously) in his movie Boogie Nights!
THE EYE CREATURES (aka ATTACK OF THE THE EYE CREATURES, 1965). Lumpy skinned creatures with gaping mouths and a lot of things that sort of resemble eyes invade Earth to terrify smoochin' teenagers, which is all they can do since they don't seem to have any genuine powers. Can John Ashley (a few years from doing movies in the Philipeans) and his weird-looking girlfriend save the day? Another wonder from Larry Buchanan features abominable continuity gaps, "eye creatures" who have heads monster heads and simple black leotards for bodies, or gigantic zippers running up their backs. The investigating cops are very ugly, there's a crotechy old man who "don't like smoochin'!" a guy who wears really disturbing pajamas, and voyeuristic Air Force personnel. The scariest thing about this film is that someone shelled out the money to make it.
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