KILLING IN ISTANBUL (1967) ****

This is the movie that put Turkish B movies on the map.  Apparently, Turkey is lax when it comes to copyright infringement laws, so their movies tend to blatantly steal from American cinema.  However, the way they adapt the material can often be straight-up nutty (as anyone who’s seen 3 Giant Men can attest).  That said, Killing in Istanbul is quite simply a fantastic hodgepodge of horror, crime, and superhero movies. 

Kilink (Yildirim Gencer) is a dastardly supervillain who wears a skintight skeleton leotard and skull mask.   He was a popular character in Italian comics, but something tells me that nobody bothered to pay for the rights to feature him in this movie.  Kilink kills a professor and steals his formula, which will allow him to rule the world.  While the professor’s son mourns over his grave, a wizard appears and grants him the power to turn into a superhero (uh… who’s name is… uh… “Superhero”) whenever he says the magic word, “Shazam”!  He then battles Kilink to avenge his father’s death and save the world. 

What I love about this movie is the way it simultaneously steals from other sources but manages to find a way to completely make it its own.  Yes, it blatantly rips off the Captain Marvel serial.  However, the costumed hero is actually a mash-up of Superman and Batman.  Speaking of serials, Kilink himself is basically a riff on the old Crimson Ghost serial.  Instead of a skull head and hooded body, he wears a skintight outfight that feels equal parts scary and sexy.  The way he seduces women in particular is kind of creepy.  Oh, and the theme song is just needle drops on old James Bond soundtracks, which adds to the fun. 

The movie’s biggest asset is that it moves like lightning.  That has something to do with the choppy print, but it often feels like someone took all the dull parts out and just left in the good stuff.  Not only do the fight scenes occur at a zippy pace, the dialogue scenes whizz by too.  The breakneck action also helps the film harken back to the old timey serial days, except you don’t have to wait a week to see how Kilink (who is really more of the main character after all) will get out of his latest jam. 

Oh, and the scenes where “Superhero” flies are fucking terrible.  And by “fucking terrible” I mean “I loved every second of it”. 

Some may be put off by the non-ending, but that’s okay because the sequel, Kilink vs the Flying Man picks things up right where this one left off. 

AKA:  Kilink in Istanbul.

CENSOR (2021) **

Enid (Niamh Algar) works for the British Board of Censors and spends her days watching horror movies and cutting out all the material she deems offensive.  When she sees a new movie called Don’t Go in the Church, it reawakens a repressed memory of her sister’s disappearance.  She then sets out to find the mysterious director responsible for the film looking for answers.  Predictably, it leads her down a path of long buried secrets, and eventually, murder.

Censor is set in England in the ‘80s at the height of the “Video Nasties” scare.  I’ve watched a few documentaries about the Video Nasties, but I think this is the first narrative film I’ve seen about them.  While the central mystery Enid is trying to unravel isn’t exactly involving, the way director/co-writer Prano Bailey-Bond evokes the niche era in time that the film depicts is extremely well done. 

Despite the movie’s dedication to recreating the time period and a setting that is ripe with horror and old school VHS history, I found it strange that it doesn’t quite work as a horror flick itself.  Maybe if it leaned heavier into the Video Nasty aesthetic and delivered on the gore, it would’ve eked by.  Other than a gruesome accidental death and a decapitation, the gore is kinda weak.  (It often feels like it’s trying to be one of those “elevated” horror flicks.)  One thing is for sure:  If this was released in the ‘80s, it wouldn’t have had any trouble with the censors.

At least the movie is bolstered by a strong performance by Algar as Enid.  Even when the plot is spinning its wheels, you feel compelled to watch just on the strength of her performance alone.  It would be interesting to see what she could do with a script worthy of her talents.

BIG BOOBS BUSTER 2: ADVENTURE SUMMER (1990) ** ½

Two Japanese schoolgirls follow a chesty classmate into a magical portal.  Once inside, they are transported to a weird island inhabited by a variety of oddballs.  There, the gals are almost cooked alive by a tribe of cannibals and get chased by a female flamenco dancer who throws exploding roses.  Elsewhere, a mad scientist uses a ray to enlarge women’s bust lines. 

As far as I can figure, Big Boobs Buster 2:  Adventure Summer is completely unrelated to the first film.  It also has a lot more plot, which isn’t exactly a good thing when the copy you’re watching doesn’t have any subtitles.  While it does continue the superhero theme which made the original so endearing, it also adopts a manic, grab bag, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink kind of approach.  While some of this is admittedly inspired, needless to say, the results are decidedly mixed. 

There’s also less nudity here than in the original, which is a tad disappointing, but what we do get is pretty entertaining.  There’s a T & A music video where a pop idol has a wardrobe malfunction in front of her fans (who are all mimes for some reason) and a segment with a topless firebreather.  That’s just enough to compensate for some of the various missteps along the way.

I will say this:  Big Boobs Buster 2 sure does cram a lot into its seventy minutes running time.  However, the overreliance on cheap looking special effects (which resemble something out of a ‘90s music video) gets to be a bit much at times.  Still, there are some winning moments sprinkled here and there.  For instance, I liked the scene where our heroine used a super plunger to stab a bad girl in her boobs.  And besides, the scene where two superheroines shoot lasers out of their boobs at one another is almost worth the price of admission.  Almost. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE EROTIC WITCH PROJECT (2000) * ½

FORMAT:  DVD

In the early 2000’s, erotic spoofs of The Blair Witch Project were all the rage.  All you needed was a video camera, a forest, and a couple of actresses willing to get naked and you were all set.  As far as these things go, director John (Playmate of the Apes) Bacchus’ The Erotic Witch Project isn’t a patch on Jim Wynorski’s The Bare Wench Project (which wasn’t even all that good to begin with), but at least it features a horny guy wearing a gorilla costume, so there’s that.

Darian Caine and her college coed friends go into the woods of Bacchusville, New Jersey looking for the mythical Erotic Witch armed with only a video camera.  The witch supposedly emits a powerful sexual energy that makes anyone who enters the woods horny.  The girls find dildos and naughty stick figures in the woods and realize they’re on the right trail.  They soon fall under the spell of the witch and get it on with each other every chance they get.    

The Erotic Witch Project falls well short of some of Bacchus’ other Seduction Cinema parodies.  Even as far as Blair Witch rip-offs go, this is one of the weaker ones.  It does the bare minimum with the idea and Bacchus doesn’t milk the concept for all its worth.  As with most of these things, the interviews with the redneck locals who claim to have seen the witch are the roughest part.  They go on too long, aren’t funny at all, and get in the way of the lesbian sex.  

The sex scenes themselves offer more fizzle than sizzle.  Most of the time is devoted to girls fondling each other while one of them holds the camera.  Even if the camerawork wasn’t of the shaky-cam variety, there still wouldn’t be much to recommend here as most of the scenes go on too long and aren’t very sexy.  

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE SINFUL NUNS OF ST. VALENTINE (1974) *** ½

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on September 13th, 2019)

Star-crossed lovers Lucita (Jenny Tamburi) and Esteban (Paolo Malco) are kept apart by her devious father (Franco Ressel) who refuses to let them marry.  As a desperate measure, he wisks her off to a convent to become a nun while accusing Esteban to be a heretic.  With the Spanish Inquisition hot on his trail, the wounded Esteban drops by to rescue Lucita from the nunnery.  That night, her sexy roommate Josefa (Bruna Beani) is murdered and Lucita is blamed.  The nuns eventually decide to help him free his love from the clutches of the Inquisition.  However, the demented abbess (Francoise Prevost) has a few ulterior motives, and all of them are positively filthy. 

Part of the fun of The Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine is the way it hops from genre to genre, seemingly on a whim.  It goes from smutty nunsploitation to exploitative Inquisition drama to a straight-up murder mystery.  Despite the wacky shifts in tone, it remains a fun mash-up that almost always delivers the sleazy goods.  The scenes of forced lesbianism, torture, and whipping are strong enough on their own.  Add to that the fact that all of this happens to women wearing nun habits, and that just makes it even better.  (If that’s your sort of thing, that is.) 

Imagine a cross between Mark of the Devil and Behind Convent Walls, and that might give you an idea of what to expect. 

I also liked how it starts mid-story with the hero already on the run.  Even once we get to the convent, there’s very little filler.  The final scenes are especially memorable.  It’s here where the nuns are condemned to death and locked inside the convent where they slowly go mad, fighting, raping, and killing each other.  

If you think you’ve seen it all folks, then you should definitely check in on The Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE INCREDIBLE PROFESSOR ZOVEK (1972) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on March 25th, 2021)

Zovek was basically Mexico’s answer to Harry Houdini.  Throughout his career, he performed incredible escapes and feats of astonishing strength and agility.  He died way too young at the age of thirty-one while performing a helicopter stunt.  This was his first and only solo starring vehicle. (He starred in Invasion of the Dead with Blue Demon the next year, which proved to be his second and final film.)  He’s kind of fun to watch too.  Sometimes he’s dressed like Tonto from The Lone Ranger.  Other times he’s gussied up like a caped superhero. 

Zovek stars as himself.  He gets a premonition of a plane crash and sends his chauffeur and girlfriend to investigate.  While Zovek is busy performing his act in a dinner theater, they are kidnapped by the bad guy.  (I guess the supposedly psychic Zovek didn’t see that one coming.)  It’s then up to Zovek to rescue them before the mad doctor performs a fiendish experiment on them.

The Incredible Professor Zovek is really slow to start.  It begins with long scenes of him yelling at people and hypnotizing women, which kind of plod on and on.  The version I saw didn’t have subtitles, so I had no clue what was going on in these scenes if I am to be completely honest.  When we finally meet the villain, things pick up considerably.  It doesn’t hurt that his secret lair comes complete with a giant hypno-wheel, an open BBQ pit, and a torture dungeon filled with caged Dr. Moreau-style animal men. 

I also dug Zovek’s nightclub act.  He gets brought out on stage and is tied and chained up by guys in Lucha Libre masks while sexy women wearing bikinis and executioner hoods kiss him on the cheek before dropping him into a tank of water.  It’s not exactly great, but after watching so many wrestling scenes in Mexican horror movies, it makes for a nice change of pace. 

The fight scenes are OK, but they aren’t up to director Rene (Night of the Bloody Apes) Cardona’s usual standards.  The close-ups of the faces of the caged monsters leering from their prison bars are effective though.  The scenes of the animal men chowing down on bones is pretty cool, and the brain surgery sequence (complete with an awesome shot of a woman’s pulsating brain) is the highlight. 

So, if you can get past the talky first act, you will be treated to some decent WTF Mexican Cinema.  The last reel where Zovek has a melee with a mafia of midget monsters and duels to the death with a deranged dog man… well…  That’s the sort of shit I live for when I watch these movies.

ATTACK OF THE SUPER MONSTERS (1982) ***

Hey, remember where you were in the year 2000?  That’s right, the year when dinosaurs returned to Earth and Lord Tyranis tried to take over the world by turning dogs into crazed killers?  Thank goodness Gemini Force was there to stop him by hopping into their spaceship and saving humanity.  Oh, and remember when that plan failed, he also turned bats and rats against us?  Oh the 2000s!  No wonder Gen Z has so much nostalgia for that era!

I’ve seen some weird shit, but this is some weird shit.  I’ve seen movies that were actually a few episodes of a live action Japanese TV show edited together.  I’ve seen movies that were actually a few episodes of a Japanese cartoon edited together.  This is the first time I’ve seen a movie that is a few episodes of a Japanese live action/animation hybrid edited together. 

What makes it so weird is the decision-making process of what should or should not have been live action.  Namely, all the monster scenes look like something out of a cheap Godzilla knockoff.  The animated stuff is mostly confined to… uh… humans?  You would’ve thought actors would’ve been the easiest things to film.  Instead, we get lots of repetitive animated shots of the Gemini Team hopping into their spaceship… which happens to be live action.  I mean wouldn’t it have been easier to animate the spaceships and monsters and not the other way around?  Anyway, that brand of zaniness sort of makes this meandering but engagingly cheesy flick worth a look. 

The animated scenes are a bit hit and miss, but the rubbery dinosaurs and monster mashing are top notch and/or bottom of the barrel… take your pick.  The best parts are when the Gemini ship sports giant pizza slicers and it flies THROUGH the dinosaurs.  Like I said… weird shit.  But it’s my kind of weird shit.