Red-Barracuda

Russ Meyer made this mondo documentary off the back of shooting Fanny Hill in Germany. It was the first of his two 60's shockumentaries about strippers and for my money at least, a superior watching experience to Mondo Topless. This one has Meyer travelling around various western European countries, such as France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Italy. He investigates boob-related aspects of each of these countries. Where this one worked better as a film for me compared to Mondo Topless, was that the whole travelogue structure was kind of enjoyable in and of itself, with us getting a view of various places in early 60's continental Europe, which works fairly well now in a time-capsule sense. The erotic content had its moments too, even if it all does get somewhat repetitive after a while. Meyer's eye for a well-composed shot is evidenced throughout the entire runtime too. So, on-the-whole, this one was a bit better than I was expecting really.

This is the final Lone Wolf and Cub film, although I get the feeling it wasn't intended as such, as it has no conclusive wrap-up ending at all. In this one, the evil character Retsudo sends his lethal daughter and three resurrected dead warriors after our heroes. Its possible that this may be the least impressive of the films from this series, albeit it's a relative point given that the standard is pretty remarkable overall for a movie series which knocked out six movies in (very) quick succession. For whatever its worth, this one felt like it had less build-up and was perhaps a bit messier story-wise overall. Nevertheless, it still displays plenty of the kinds of things we love about these films such as insane, stylised bloody violence, mass attacks and odd-ball characters. There're ninjas hidden in walls, the baby cart equipped with a gatling gun and the surreal idea of undead warriors 'swimming' through the earth. Tomisaburo Wakayama once again is splendid in the title role and the sequences in the snow did give this one a distinct feel from the others. Amusingly a lot of this is soundtracked to music which wouldn't have been out-of-place in a mid-70's American action movie, with some improbable wah-wah guitar action soundtracking scenes of samurai swedging. All-in-all, while it's a lesser entry in the series, it's still sure to satisfy fans of chambara films.

This film seems to have a pretty bad reputation but I can't really concur with this assessment. Sure, its daft and limited in some ways but its also rather entertaining throughout, or at least that's what I thought. It follows the very specific idea from the original movie of genre-mashing a crime film with a vampire horror flick. In this one, five criminals travel to Mexico to rob a bank but in true Dusk Till Dawn tradition, vampires enter the fray and complicate matters somewhat.

This one begins with a fun film-within-a-film sequence starring b-movie legend Bruce Campbell and super-hot Beverley Hills 90210 babe, Tiffany Amber-Thiessen. As nice as this opening is, you sort of wish those two might stick around for the rest of the movie, rather than get violently obliterated within the first couple of minutes! In the event, we have the likes of Robert Patrick and Bo Svenson putting in decent turns. While the characters on offer are very standard, they are also well defined enough to be more than serviceable. But the film works best as a bit of genre-mashing fun, with the requisite crime and vampire elements awkwardly combining once again! Also, it seems like quite a few folks seemed to have an issue with the plethora of silly POV shots that punctuate the whole movie, such as shots from inside mouths and gaping wounds or a fan-cam - I personally found all this nonsense, rather entertaining, which is what I would say of this movie as a whole. A silly but fun sequel to a film which was pretty ridiculous in the first place.