Like many Shaw Brothers films, the original 36th Chamber of Shaolin was a serious kung-fu flick with some humor thrown in for good measure. Return to the 36th Chamber served as almost a satire of the martial arts genre, as it made an attempt to embrace the growing popularity of comedy in kung-fu movies. By the time Disciples of the 36th Chamber came along in 1985, the popularity of Jackie Chan and his unique brand of martial arts comedy had been firmly established (at least within Asia), and most other filmmakers were trying to ride that particular trend. And while it may have worked for certain movies, Shaw Brothers seldom seemed to have the right comedic sensibilities to make an all-out comedy, often resulting in disappointing genre mash-ups that never quite succeed as either kung-fu movies or as comedies.

Disciples of the 36th Chamber is not a terrible film so much as it is an uneven and problematic movie that relies too much on comedy that isn’t all that funny. By the time Shaw Brothers made this film, the production company had already seen its better years pass by. Yes, there were still good movies produced by the Shaws in the 1980s, but things were not the same as they had been in decades earlier. Disciples of the 36th Chamber is representative of the studio trying to hold on to its former glory, while chasing after the successes of other companies. And in the end it simply makes for a movie that is more of a historic curiosity than it does a memorable movie that is entertaining.

The single biggest problem with the film is Hou Hsiao’s performance as real-life martial artist and Chinese folk hero Fong Sai-Yuk, who was taught kung-fu by his mother. Not as popular a film subject as Wong Fei-hung, Fong Sai-Yuk still managed to be the main character in a handful of films, including two popular movies starring Jet Li. But in Disciples of the 36th Chamber, Fong Sai-Yuk is perhaps the most unlikable hero of any martial arts movie ever made. As played by Hsiao, Sai-Yuk is arrogant and stupid, and even the though Shaw Brothers movies aren’t always known for great character depth, the entire film is populated by one-dimension characters recycled from past productions.

There are, however, some saving graces to be found in Disciples of the 36th Chamber. Gordon Liu makes the film immensely watchable whenever he is on screen (which is not often enough). And though the comedic script is by and large dull and sometimes confusing, there are some good action sequences. Following the most tried and true of all Shaw Brothers formulas, the final reel is a show-stopping fight extravaganza in which every lame, boring and confusing moment that had come earlier is quickly forgotten.

Produced in South Africa during the height of the racist apartheid system that made segregation legal, Death of a Snowman is a unique entry into the blaxploitation genre for a variety of reasons. There were only a handful of black action films to come to the United States via other countries, and most of those were films that had started out as something else, but were then re-titled and re-edited for the American market (the best example being Mean Mother, which started out as the Italian film El hombre que vino del odio). Death of a Snowman is, however, one of the only—if not the only—movies produced outside of the United States that was specifically modeled after the blaxploitation movies that had become popular throughout America.

Ken Gampu stars as Steve Chaka, a newspaper reporter covering a series of violent crimes committed against criminals. Someone calling themselves “War On Crime” claims responsibility for the brutal murders of Soweto’s criminal empire, and promises more deaths will come until the streets are free of illegal activities. Meanwhile, Chaka’s good friend, white police detective Lt. Ben Deel (Nigel Davenport) is investigating the War On Crime murders. Deel doesn’t believe Chaka is involved in the crimes, but he does believe the reporter is being used by the vigilante organization, which tells Chaka of its actions just before they are committed. The more Chaka and Deel investigate the case, the more deadly things become, and the higher the body count, as War On Crime leaves an ever-increasing pile of bullet-riddled corpses stacking up.

Death of a Snowman falls into a very specific class of blaxploitation film in which it can’t be considered one of the A or B-films of the era—Shaft, Truck Turner, Foxy Brown—nor is it one of the low-rent Z-grade flicks indicative of the times—The Guy from Harlem, Speeding Up Time, Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes. This leaves the film in the awkward position of being neither among the best of the genre nor the worst. Instead, director Christopher Rowley’s movie finds itself in the company of such films as Matt Cimber’s The Candy Tangerine Man and The Black Six, and Greydon Clark’s Black Shampoo—none of which should be confused with great cinema, but all of which are entertaining in their own right.

As an obviously low budget exploitation film, Death of a Snowman succeeds more often than it fails. The story is interesting—despite the fact the heroes have relatively little screen time together (perhaps a result of South Africa’s racist policies?)—and the direction is standard drive-in movie competent. The soundtrack offers a nice funky groove that helps propel the film a decent pace, and more than almost anything else, helps to establish the blaxploitation vibe.

The film is perhaps most interesting as a piece of cinematic history. It was filmed and takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa, but there is never any mention of apartheid. The film seems to gloss over politics as much as possible, and if you knew nothing of how things were in South Africa, you’d never have any inclination from watching Death of a Snowman. But if you do know about apartheid, then you begin to pick up on little traces of it throughout the film.

Death of a Snowman is also significant for its casting of Ken Gampu. One of the first black South African actors to work in Hollywood films, Gampu became a recognizable character actor who appeared in many movies shot in Africa. In film, he was most famous for playing soldiers, tribal leaders and cops, with Death of a Snowman being one of his more significant roles. Gampu was also known for his work on the stage, including his historic casting in a South African production of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, in which he had to be granted special permission by the government to appear on stage with white actors. Years later, when asked about his performance in Of Mice and Men, Gampu was quoted as saying, “For the first time the black man was on an equal footing with the white man, and you know – the heavens didn’t fall.”

Having been released on VHS as Black Trash and Soul Patrol—both being the sort of title that cost ninety-nine cents—Death of a Snowman seldom made it on the radar of fans of blaxploitation, or any other genre of exploitation film for that matter. Terrible transfer of bad prints, combined with poor dubbing and generic box art made this movie the type that begged to be ignored. This new release now from Synapse Films finally gives Death of a Snowman some of the respect that it deserves, for even though this is not the greatest bit of exploitation cinema you could hope to see, it is entertaining and worth a watch.

Kurt, David, and Heather buckle in for a smashed metal and burnt rubber edition of Missing Reel, as they examine the existential Car Chase pictures of the Grindhouse era.

This time around Kurt, David, and Heather challenge the oncoming cold of Winter with one of the hottest genres that grindhouse ever spawned – the Cheerleader movie!

2. Death Wish (1974) – Sadly, this series degenerated into a sad lampoon of itself, but the original still holds up, and Bronson still carries the film as a man who becomes a vigilante when his family is ravaged by a senseless crime.

3. The Great Escape (1963) – Not the first of Bronson’s tough guy ensemble films (that would be The Magnificent Seven), but probably his best in terms of both picture and performance.

4. Hard Times (1975) – Something of a forgotten classic, in which Bronson beats the crap out of people with his bare hands.

5. Machine-Gun Kelly (1958) – Having cut his teeth in television and a string of smaller supporting roles, Bronson moved up the ranks to leading man in this Roger Corman-directed tale chronicling the life of real-life bank robber George “Machine Gun” Kelly.

6. The Mechanic (1972) – This is Bronson as the top of his early 1970s game, starring as a ruthless hitman who takes on a young protégée.

7. Mr. Majestyk (1974) – It’s a toss up between this one, where Bronson plays a watermelon farmer squaring off against the mob, or Telefon, where he’s a KGB agent.

8. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) – Bronson proves that Sergio Leone doesn’t need Clint Eastwood to make a great western.

9. Red Sun (1971) – Bronson’s deadly gunslinger teams up with Toshiro Mifune’s equally badass samurai, and film has one of the greatest pairings of asskickers you could ever hope for.

10. Rider on the Rain (1970) – An all-time great forgotten classic, in which Bronson tracks down a serial rapist.

Ed Gein was the real-life blueprint of the mother’s-corpse-tending, suit-of-women’s-skin-wearing, mutilating cannibal killer. And as such, writers and directors of the grindhouse era did everything they could to twist his story in to one classic film after another. Kurt, David and Heather examine three!

5.) Anna Falchi in Dellamorte Dellamore a.k.a. Cemetery Man (1994)
As the unnamed love interest in this Italian zombie film, Anna Falchi is just plain sexy. Then she dies and comes back to life, and she’s not quite as sexy as she was when she was alive, but she’s still sexier than some women who haven’t become zombies.

4.) Mathilda May in Lifeforce (1985)
Often referred to as the “naked vampires from outer space movie,” Lifeforce is about a naked vampire from outer space, played by Mathilda May, who is naked throughout the movie. And honestly, all that is memorable about the movie: Mathilda May naked. Whether or not she is scary or if the movie is any good is up to debate, since the only thing you can remember about the movie is that Mathilda May is naked.

3.) Linnea Quigley in Return of the Living Dead (1985)
She started out as Trash, the hyper sexualized punk rocker who just wanted to party, and then she turned into a naked zombie. And who would have thought a naked zombie could be so appealing? Unfortunately, Linnea Quigley’s time as a monster on screen is somewhat limited. But still, she does have the intense hip-swinging walk just before she bites the head off of some homeless guy.

2.) Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Although she was not originally listed in the credits by name, and she only appears on screen as The Bride for less than five minutes, Elsa Lanchester is responsible for introducing the concept of the Sexy Monster Woman to the world of film. Others have played variations of female monsters cobbled together by Dr. Frankenstein, but Elsa Lanchester will always be the first and the best.

1.) Melinda Clarke in Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993)
When she started out the movie as the girlfriend of the hero, Melinda Clarke was just really cute. But after she died and came back as a punk rock zombie that was into self-mutilation, she became the stuff of the most perverse fantasies. The zombified Melinda Clarke managed to look disgusting, scary and sexy all at once, making her ultimate Sexy Monster Woman.

DEATH RIDES A HORSE – 1967 director: Giulio Petroni; starring: Lee Van Cleef, John Phillip Law

With the exception of Clint Eastwood, no American actor is more closely associated with spaghetti westerns than Lee Van Cleef. Already established as a character actor in both film and television westerns, Van Cleef would have likely spent his entire career as a supporting actor in a variety of roles. But his career took a dramatic turn when Sergio Leone cast him as one of the heroes in For a Few Dollars More, and then again as one of the villains in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. These two films reinvigorated Van Cleef’s career, and turned him into a major star in Italian westerns. He would go on to star in over a dozen more spaghetti westerns, including his own franchise film, Sabata. And yet with all these westerns to chose from, with the exception of Leone’s film, none of those starring Van Cleef would ever top Death Rides a Horse.

This grim tale of vengeance starts when young Bill Mecita witnesses the brutal murder of his family by a group of marauding bandits. An unseen stranger saves Bill from from the family’s burning house, and fifteen years later the boy has grown up to be John Philip Law (Golden Voyage of Sinbad). And if you were to guess that Bill has spent the last decade and a half training himself to become a well-oiled killing machine with only one thing on his mind, then you wouldn’t be too far off base. Bill is looking to send the varmints that butchered his family on a one way trip to Boot Hill. But it seems our hero ain’t the only one looking for a little pay back. A gunslinger named Ryan (Van Cleef), fresh out of prison, has a few scores to settle, and his path of revenge crosses with that of our Bill. Will the two men come to see that they can both join together on their murder-happy spree, or will they allow petty differences like blinding hatred and the all consuming need for vengeance to keep them apart?

Directed by Giulio Petroni, and accompanied by Ennio Morricone’s score, Death Rides a Horse is a shining moment in a genre that was more often than not plagued with some truly crappy filmmaking. Luciano Vincenzoni has crafted a great script, which should come as no surprise, since he co-wrote For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. John Philip Law turns in a decent performance, although his performance at times resembles that of a plank of wood. And even when he’s not wooden, he still seems like he has a pole up his ass. But despite Law’s performance which neither makes nor breaks the film, the one thing Death Rides a Horse has going for it is Lee Van Cleef. Giving one of the more inspired performances of his spaghetti western career, Van Cleef steals the film and helps elevate to level well above so many other genre entries.

Drawing influence from such Alfred Hitchcock thrillers as Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt and Pyscho, The Stepfather was something of an anomaly within the horror genre when it arrived amidst the hack ‘em and stack ‘em exploits of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and the other crazed killers of the decade. Revealing the identity of the killer in the opening shot, limiting the body count, and keeping the violence relatively tame by the standards of the day, The Stepfather relied on mounting tension and creeping dread to carry it where other films depended on guts and gore to make their point. The end result is a film that seemed almost revolutionary at the time, relying on psychological horror rather than visceral terror to deliver the scares.

Long absent on DVD, and arriving just days before the theatrical release of a remake, The Stepfather has earned its reputation as a cult movie. It was well received by critics and audiences, but didn’t fare well theatrically, only to find life on home video, and even spawned two inferior sequels. Over twenty years later, the movie still holds up more often than not. The scenes that were effectively creepy and downright scary in 1987 are still that way, while some of the more awkward falling-flat-on-its-face moments come across just as bad if not worse than they did two decades earlier. But as a whole, the film works, especially the underlying pitch-black comedy that can be lost on anyone taking the film too seriously. In many ways The Stepfather is a comedy, even more so today, as it reflects the skewered, Reagan-era notion of the ideal family living the American Dream. Crazed killer Jerry Blake is more a byproduct of the just-say-no generation of Reaganomics-nurtured middle class than any of the other killers of the decade, and is in many ways the big brother (or stepfather) of American Psycho‘s Patrick Bateman.

The Stepfather works for a number of reasons, including a script that is a bit more intelligent than many of the other genre entries of that era, direction and cinematography that work in tandem to create a finely crafted visual aesthetic, and a quirky musical score. But what sells the film, and has allowed it to live on in the hearts of fans, is the lead performance by Terry O’Quinn as Jerry Blake, the murderous Stepfather. At a time when crazed killers on screen were personified by Freddy Krueger–who by A Nightmare on Elm Street III, also released in 1987, had become a wisecracking comedian–O’Quinn’s twitchy performance recalls Anthony Perkins in the first Psycho and Jim Siedow as the cook in the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre. These are the insane murderers grounded in reality, who maintain a relatively normal appearance on the surface but are capable of cracking at any moment, which makes them far more terrifying than a ghost wearing a glove with knives for fingers.

The Stepfather certainly has some moments that don’t work, several of them courtesy of Shelley Hack. Hack’s performance at times is nothing short of laughable, and unintentionally so. On the flip side, there are other moments of the film that are intentionally funny, but are so dry it may be lost on some people who don’t see the film for the black comedy that it is. But despite the moments that either haven’t aged well or never fully worked, The Stepfather has held up well over the last twenty-plus years. It is still a creepy film with a dark sense of humor that manages to entertain consistently.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: There were a lot of films made during the blaxploitation era, but only a few of them are classics. Willie Dynamite is a classic. On one hand it is perhaps the most realistic portrayal of the pimp-ho relationship, showing the mental manipulation that allows a pimp to keep his bitches in check. On the other hand the film is like a surreal fairy tale — an urban fable that uses twisted irony, dark comedy and street brutality to tell its story. It’s almost like a Ralph Bakshi cartoon come to life. The outrageous costumes worn by Willie only add to the surreal feeling the film has and help to lighten what is ultimately a dark and disturbing film. The difference between this film and The Mack is that The Mack has at its foundation a political message. But there ain’t no politics involved in Willie Dynamite. Willie ain’t out to make the neighborhood a better, safer place by sharing his ill-gotten gains with the community. Willie is simply out to get rich sellin’ poontang.

The weakest part of the film (other than the really annoying soundtrack) is the frequently flat direction by Gilbert Moses III that gives the film a made-for-television feel. But Moses’ lack of creative flair is more than compensated for by the standout performances of the cast, led by Roscoe Orman who is excellent as the ruthless, self-centered pimp. Orman is best known for his role as Gordon on Sesame Street (how can you not love a movie that stars Gordon from Sesame Street as a ruthless pimp?). The late great Diana Sands is also very good as the tough-yet-sensitive social worker who is all too familiar with life on the streets. Sands died of cancer shortly before Willie Dynamite opened. The supporting cast includes Thalmus Rasulala as Sands’ boyfriend, Albert Hall and the ever-evil whitey George Murdoch as a pair of hardboiled cops and Roger Robinson as Bell the pimp. Robinson’s performance is the highpoint of the film —imagine if Liberace were a pimp.