Martial Arts

Enter the Game of Death (1978)

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As Bruceploitation pictures go, Enter the Game of Death is hardly the craziest, but it still is semi-“out there.” Bruce Le (Challenge of the Tiger) dons Lee’s iconic yellow jumpsuit to play Chang.

After winning an arena kickboxing match (a nearly unbearable sequence at seven minutes), Chang is offered a job as a bodyguard. When he politely refuses, his would-be employer sics a team of shirtless fighters (reportedly including American Ninja’s Steve James) on him. Chang handily beats these wussy-dubbed hooligans, but then some Japanese guys rape his cousin, who’s so ashamed she kills herself.

So enraged at this turn of events, Chang joins the Blue Robe Organization and agrees to help its proprietors recover a stolen military document that will save his country. Said document is located at the tippy top of a pagoda, through each level of which he must fight:
• The first level finds him battling a bald guy who throws fistfuls of death marbles.
• Level two is inhabited by a guy tossing poisonous snakes. When he’s nearly defeated, he bites the head off one serpent and sprays Chang with its blood as if it were a water hose.
• On floor three, Chang spars with a white-haired fellow with nunchucks and lotsa candles.
• The gimmick of the fourth floor is a lame one: It’s all red.
• Finally, at the penthouse level, Chang tussles with the Asian version of Grizzly Adams.

Naturally, this five-story sequence is where director Joseph Kong (The Clones of Bruce Lee) rips off the real Bruce Lee’s Game of Death; naturally, this is where the film gets fun. Then it’s outside for even more punching and kicking more bad guys, including big bad Bolo Yeung (Bloodsport). You could do worse! —Rod Lott

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Thriller

The House That Vanished (1973)

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As many glamorous models do, Valerie (Andrea Allen, Old Dracula) exhibits terrible taste in men; her boyfriend, Terry (Alex Leppard, Crowley), is a two-bit thief whose idea of a date is taking Valerie with him to a remote mansion in the woods … and ordering her to stay in the car while he goes for a little B&E. Bored, she disobeys and joins him. Inside the house, the two have to hide in a closet upon realizing they’re not alone. From their vantage point, they watch in terror as a busty prostitute (Barbara Meale, Sex and the Other Woman) is brutally murdered by a man they cannot see, beyond the genre-appropriate black leather gloves covering his grabby, stabby hands.

A horrified Valerie hightails it outta there. The next day, Terry’s car shows up, but Terry himself does not. Nor does he later, and given the circumstances, it’s not exactly the kind of disappearance she can report to the police. In an attempt to locate him, friends accompany Valerie to the scene of the crime … if only she could find it. Why, it’s as if they’re looking for The House That Vanished.

That title is a bit of a ruse, as House does not reside in the realm of the supernatural, where so many of director José Ramón Larraz’s best-known works do, including Black Candles and Vampyres, to name only two. That’s not to say he’s out of his element, but with the Spanish filmmaker shooting British actors in British locations, one could make the case that screenwriter Derek Ford (Don’t Open Till Christmas) possesses a greater claim of authorship. In Larraz’s favor, The House That Vanished noticeably bears a dominant stamp of suspense, although hardly “in the great Hitchcock tradition” shouted by its ad campaign.

However, if you want to talk Hitchcock blondes, Allen is as functional as Tippi Hedren and as gorgeous as Kim Novak. Vanished (also released under the nonsensical and overly punctuated title of Scream — and Die!) gives her nearly every frame to fill, which she does with considerable allure and enough aplomb. Her Grace — er, grace — makes up for deficiencies elsewhere, such as a herring so red, it’s sunburned. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sex

Coed Dorm (1971)

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Unless you’re an Uschi Digard completist (and if that’s the case, I salute you), I can’t much recommend Coed Dorm, an ultra-obscure campus comedy in the throbbing vein of Animal House, the National Lampoon classic that looks positively academic by comparison.

The only other picture directed by The Severed Arm’s Thomas S. Alderman, the sexploitationer takes place on the grounds of Farouk University — oft referred to as “Farouk U,” geddit? — where “world-famous gynecologist” Dr. Maurice de Sade (Ray Dannis, The Undertaker and His Pals) teaches sexuality classes, offering to assist all the female students himself with hands-on instruction. One new student (Diane Patton) is a virgin, and she’s named Virgie — geddit?

Her house mother gets naked and gets busy with several men throughout the film, including a fat guy dressed as Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Col. Sanders. At an alumni dinner, guests are shocked — shocked, I tell you! — by the topless girls’ choir (of which Digard’s “Miss Melons” is a member) and by Dr. de Sade treating them all to his dance rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Oh, and Virgie dies when she falls from a hospital window. Now that’s comedy!

More boring than titillating, Coed Dorm is such a rarity that Something Weird Video’s print doesn’t even have credits. To make up for it, they include their usual generous helping of nudie-cutie shorts, one of which — Double Trouble, in which a guy mixes up twin sisters — has more plot than the feature. —Ed Donovan

Get it at Something Weird Video.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Dracula 3000 (2004)

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Any vampire film carrying the tagline “In space, the sun never rises” should be approached with considerable caution. After all, the sun doesn’t need to rise, because where but space does that flaming ball of gas sit? Dracula 3000 is that film, but other reasons exist that encourage avoidance, not the least of which is Casper Van Dien’s name leading the credits.

The Starship Troopers himbo stars as Abraham Van Helsing, captain of the spaceship Mother III. After his craft locates a ghost ship missing for years, he decides to investigate; you know how that’s gonna turn out. He and his crew members — stock roles filled by Tiny Lister (The Human Centipede III [Final Sequence]), Erika Eleniak (Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood) and Coolio (China Strike Force), who is saddled with the not-at-all-racist moniker of “187” — accidentally end up resurrecting Dracula (here called Count Orlock) from the ashes.

As played by Langley Kirkwood (Dredd), this Drac is one of the shoddiest-looking Dracs to grace the screen. He looks like an in-costume dad/ financial adviser beamed in from your local church’s “fall festival.” Spend five bucks at your local Halloween supply store, and you’re every bit his equal.

187 is the first among the crew to get bitten, and if you can imagine the rapper fitted with red contact lenses and a pair of fangs, you may have a hint of the kind of unintentional comedy that results. And if you do not, this kind: “Do you know how many times I’ve thought about ejaculating on your bazongas?” a vampiric 187 asks Aurora, before proceeding to talk about “stroking my anaconda.” More people are bitten, while others are staked, and yet you’ll be the only one reeling in pain.

Do not insult the comparative genius of Wes Craven Presents Dracula 2000 by mistaking this as a 2000 sequel. Dracula 3000 looks as if director Darrell James Roodt (Dangerous Ground) shot it in the lower level of a South Africa franchise location of Jiffy Lube. Considering he managed to find a way to include a scene of Coolio taking bong hits, but failed to get Eleniak to strip out of a sailor suit while emerging from a giant cake, Roodt deserves as much scorn as you can muster.

Just when I thought I’d finally found a genre movie with a muscular African-American man who doesn’t exclaim, “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!,” Lister pops up in an end-credits stinger to utter those very words directly to the camera, then punctuates them with a slap to Eleniak’s ass. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

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Win a Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare Prize Pack!

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We’re not playing the game, it’s playing us! A harmless game of “Truth or Dare” among friends turns deadly when someone — or something — begins to punish those who tell a lie–or refuse the dare. Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare, starring Lucy Hale (Pretty Little Liars) and Tyler Posey (Teen Wolf) opens in theaters Friday the 13th!

Here’s how to enter to win the Truth or Dare Game Night Pack:

Continue reading Win a Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare Prize Pack! →

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