Near the end of World War 2, a team of Russian soldiers find themselves battling an army of reanimate corpses turned into horrific killing machines built by the deranged descendant of Victor Frankenstein.
Actually, the plot is simpler than that, it's basically a slasher film where the killers hack their way through soldiers rather than fornicating teenagers. With the added bonus of a mad scientist ranting towards the end. Plus, the monsters are actors in costumes, which unfortunately feels like a novelty these days.
If you love all things horror, then this movie is pure fun with a side order of imaginatively scary monsters. If you like plot and story however, it's a bit thin in those departments. Even worse is the film's use of shaky cam. It doesn't make the movie feel any more real, as if it was footage released from old Soviet archives. No, it just gives me flashbacks of playing Wolfenstein 3D as a teenager. Filmmakers who may be reading this please take note: skaky cam is a perfectly fine filmmaking technique that should never be used again. EVER.
What's that? You say "But I have a legitimate reason to use shaky cam..."
No. No you don't. No Shaky Cam.
Despite these shortcomings, I enjoyed this movie. It's the perfect type of movie to watch late at night with a bunch of friends with the lights out. Or if you can't decide between watching Enemy at the Gates or Hellraiser.
The vatican send Father Wu to the chinese town of Wine-Spring to reopen the Catholic church there. The church had been closed for years ever since it was taken over by an evil that impaled the previous priest with the church's own cross. Opposing the church's re-opening is taoist priest Master Chiou and his two students, Sun and Moon. Chiou strongly disapproves of the Catholic Church's presence in China and views the priest a a corrupting foreign influence (As an interesting side note, many of the rites at the church are in English, rather than Mandarin, like the rest of the movie's dialogue, or Latin.) Chiou, in return, does little to gratiate himself to Father Wu we attends mass in drag and causes a minor scene when discovered.
When the former priest rises from the grave as a vampire (For some reason, when he died, they left his body in a back room with the cross still in his back rather than, you know, burying him.), Master Chiou and Father Wu must overcome their differences to save Wine-Spring from the supernatural threat. Complicating matters is the town's corrupt mayor who, in Scooby Doo fashion, is using his own fake vampires as a cover for his drug smuggling.
This movie movie offers a good mix of horror, action and comedy. If you liked Mr. Vampire of Tsu Hark's Vampire Hunters and didn't mind the production values and want to see more chinese vampire movies, you'll enjoy this movie.
What would you get if Ultraman was redone by in Hong Kong by the Shaw Brothers? You'd get Super Inframan of course!
When the evil Demon Princess breaks free from the center of the Earth where she had been imprisoned since the ice age, she immediately declares to the world her intention to conquer the Earth.
When she sends her demons and her army of Skeleton Men to attack the Science Headquarters (Yes, you read that right. It's a big metal dome with lots of blinking lights, exactly the kind of place you'd expect Kirk, Spock and McCoy to beam into along with an ill-fated red shirted ensign- in other words, it's a Science Headquarters), it falls to Rayma (played by Danny Lee) and the science patrol to stop them.
The Evil Demon Princess and her blond wig.
Now the Science Patrol may be motorcycle riding kung fu experts dressed in silver jumpsuits that would make Evel Knievel jealous, but these monster are just too much for them to handle. That's when their boss, Professor Liu Ying De breaks out his secret weapon: he transforms Rayma into the kung fu cyborg superhero, Inframan. As Inframan, Rayma wastes no time battling the Demon Princess's minions, starting with the Plant Monster and the Spider Monster.
The Professor goes boating with Drill Mutant and a skeleton man.
For a while Inframan seems to have the demons on the run. That is until they steal Inframan's blue prints and kidnap the Professor and his daughter in order to lure Inframan into a trap. Inframan and the Science patrol go the Demon Princess's lair for the final battle with her and her minions, but will they survive?
If you love Shaw Brothers movies and Superhero movies, find a copy of this movie and watch it. This movie is pure fun and has surprisingly good special effects for a low budget movie from the mid 70s that looks like a power ranger episode. If you need more convincing watch one of these clips:
If you can see only one campy 70's King Kong remake, see The Mighty Peking Man. If you wanna see two campy 70's King Kong remakes, see The Mighty Peking Man twice.
When an earthquake in the Himalayas unleashes a gigantic ape man and his bikini-clad pet blond girl (played by Evelyne Kraft), fortune seeking adventurer Johnny (played by Danny Lee) hauls them both off to Hong Kong and puts them on display. The ensuing antics pretty much follow the rest of the plot of King Kong.
This movie the Shaw Brother's response to Dino De Laurentiis's 1976 King Kong remake. The Shaw Brother's film in my opinion manages to be much more fun while having a smaller budget than other.
I got my copy as part of the Rolling Thunder Pictures Presents
triple feature along with Detroit 9000 and Switchblade Sisters. However if the prospect of nearly six hours of low budget movies doesn't excite you, this movie is also available to stream on Netflix.
When militant bikini-model amazons ride out on the warpath it is up to local superhero Dharma (Aldo Canti) to protect the villages in the valley (that is why they give him one-fifth of all their harvests after all!) But Dharma can't fight off an army of Amazons with just his mad jumping skills, his spiffy leather mask, and his half-length red cape, so he enlists the help of superstrong Moog (Marc Hannibal) and kung fu master Chung (Shaw Brothers actor Hua Yueh). Together the three of them spend much of the following ninety minutes getting into fights. With all this fighting going on, will they ever manage to find enough down time to fashion a stockpile of homemade firebombs and three wooden tanks for their final battle against the amazons?
This movie was a co-production by legendary Hong Kong studio Shaw Brothers and Italian studio Cinemotografica, and was released the same year Shaw Brothers released the better know Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires with Hammer Studios. The film was shot in Italy and despite the Shaw Brother's participation, it doesn't have that their Hong-Kong movies do.
Should you decide to look up this movie yourself, I must warn you, the soundtrack just might drive you to jab pencils into you ear.
When the evil Queen Caprys invades a neighboring city state, it is up to heroic strongman Maciste (played by bodybuilder Gordon Mitchell to prevent her from completing the job by preventing her from feeding it's infant king (and descendant of Ulysses) to her pet Cyclops. What follows is a series Maciste's heroic exploits: wrestling a lion, helping the bad guys move giant containers of wine into their palace, playing tug of war over a pit of hungry lions (the makers of this movie must have been fond of lions), and waking up next to a very large muscular man after a night of heavy drinking. All while wearing nothing but a loin cloth.
The film is fairly typical of Italian Sword and Sandal movies of the time and the main character, Maciste, is also featured in a whole series of Italian movies in the 1920s and again in the 1960s. The film has faded badly to a yellow color, but this is common among old low budget films. The plot isn't the most coherent in the world and I found myself wondering how the various scenes connected to each other. If you like old B movies I would recommend rounding up a group of victims -er "friends" to watch it with while. (Though I think that's the only way anyone ever watches these movies!)
Near the end of World War 2, a team of Russian soldiers find themselves battling an army of reanimate corpses turned into horrific killing machines built by the deranged descendant of Victor Frankenstein.
Actually, the plot is simpler than that, it's basically a slasher film where the killers hack their way through soldiers rather than fornicating teenagers. With the added bonus of a mad scientist ranting towards the end. Plus, the monsters are actors in costumes, which unfortunately feels like a novelty these days.
