gamera64

Somehow I managed to miss this Mexican Santo flick until just recently. I guess that's not hard to do since he has something like 52 films he starred in. This one is towards the top of the heap though. Coming later in his career you can tell he's becoming a bit old by '82 but that doesn't stop our masked hero from getting in the ring and jumping around like a younger nut. This film might be the weirdest Santo movie I've seen. It involves a jungle cult that's headed by two identical twin sisters with massive bosoms(these are both played by the same actress, Grace Renat, tahnks to a charmingly crappy split-screen effect) that use an illuminated meteorite to see the future. One sister is unfortunately evil(we know this because she wears the black outfit) and with her accomplice, pro-wrestler Tinieblas(who I'm pretty sure plays a good guy in earlier lucha-libre films) they form their own bad-guy cult that worships a C3PO Halloween mask. There's also kung fu vs. wrasslin' and a jungle gal and her wolf(really just a big dog) brother that never do anything all that wild but the thought was nice. The highlight is Santo throing a guy into a rotating plane's propeller that neatly slices him into 2 halves. Good trash cinema!

Bigfoot, along with UFO's, The Bermuda Triangle and The Loch Ness Monster were super popular subjects throughout the 1970's. There were tons of movies, books and TV shows dedicated to these and other stupid, easily-explainable mysteries but I suppose those were different times when people wanted to believe in the existence of scary monsters and magical beings like Evel Kneivel for example. This made for TV documentary about Bigfoot (here called the Manbeast!) is basically just an overlong version of the 70's TV show IN SEARCH OF... without the Leonard Nimoy narration(this one is narrated by professional animal and monster hunter Peter Byrne). In fact this thing was based on a book titled IN SEARCH OF MYTHS AND MONSTERS so there ya go. Directed by Nicholas Webster, who is best known for the holiday gem SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS, all the actual "encounters' with the Manbeast are recreated here with people in cheesy costumes(by Rob Bottin who would go on to do the much superior FX work on THE THING among other big films) and told in such an earnest way that makes everything seem so silly. Check it out if you dig 70's TV or just Bigfootsploitation in general covered in lots of unintentional cheese.

A porno flick that starts out with a girl being kidnapped then raped in all inputs and even tortured with pliers isn't the kind of movie you would think would have a happy ending. Amazingly enough this one kinda does. There's a tease of a castration but sadly only a tease. Woulda made the movie a lot more exciting but probably not for the perverts in the audiences back then. Only in 1970's porn would rapist fantasies like this exist. It sure was a different time. It's worth seeing this oddity just for the sickness aspect of it but it does get pretty boring after awhile. The movie's only a little over an hour long but it's all basically one scene of three people screwing. Rene Bond looks good throughout her "ordeal".