Elvira Mistress of the Dark (5 Stars)

Wow! This was one of the first films I bought after buying my first DVD player in 2003, and yet I haven't watched it for at least 15 years. I'd forgotten how good it is. What's wrong with me? It's trashy, it's campy, it's brilliant. 

In the film Elvira plays herself. Her real name is Cassandra Peterson, but as soon as she puts on her black wig she becomes Elvira. She first appeared on television in 1981 as the host of "Movie Macabre", a series of so-called bad movies. After each commercial break she appeared to comment on the film so far, usually in a derogatory manner. Whether or not the films really were bad, "Movie Macabre" always had big ratings. I can think of two reasons.

That's how the film begins. Elvira is in the studio showing a cheap science fiction film. She quits her job after being groped by the head of the television channel. Then she finds out that she's been named in the Will of her great aunt Morgana. She drives to Fallwell, Massachusetts (population 1313) for the reading of the will. She's been left a house, a dog and a book.

The house is old, but it has style. I'd like to live there.

The dog is cute, if you like poodles with mohawks.

The book is written in a foreign language. Elvira thinks it's a cookbook, but it's actually a book of magical spells. Elvira's Uncle Vinnie is determined to get his hands on the book. When she refuses to sell it to him, he attempts to steal it. Vinnie is already a master of the dark arts, while Elvira is only just learning her powers. A mighty battle ensues.

The film is delightfully cheesy. Elvira's dialogue consists of a stream of one-liners. I can't imagine anyone not liking it.

Success Rate:  - 1.4

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Super Ninja Doll (5 Stars)

Forget the MCU. It had its day. Now we need superhero films like "Super Ninja Doll".

It was made way back in 2007 as the 16th film in the Medina Collection. I can verify that the lead actress, Christine Nguyen, hasn't aged a day since then. As she wrote on Facebook in 2020, "I'm Asian. I'll always be a schoolgirl".

And here she is, sitting at school reading a copy of "Super Ninja Doll". What she doesn't realise is that the comic isn't fantasy. They're adventures that really take place in an alternate reality. The comic jargon is "another dimension". The ruler of this dimension is the evil Tantella. She wants to conquer the Earth by kidnapping the Earth's top scientists and draining their intelligence.

This is Tantella's henchman Gorath, played by the magnificent Evan Stone. Did you know he's appeared in over 1300 movies in his 25 year career? He's been busy.

In the film Gorath becomes stronger by having sex. Before going into action he needs sex to charge himself. I find that weird. With me it's the opposite. After having sex I'm worn out, definitely not in a fit state to conquer the Earth.

The first person that Gorath meets on Earth is Mike Gaglio, Christine's school teacher. I love this screenshot. There's no dialogue, the scene speaks for itself. Mike is an incredible actor, perfect in whatever role he plays.

Here he is telling off Christine for reading comics in class.

He sits down behind his desk before continuing the conversation. Wise thinking.

He confiscates her comic, but Christine has another one. And then kapow! Super Ninja Doll sucks Christine into the comic and asks her for help against the forces of evil. Christine receives a mystical artefact. Whenever she holds it in the air she transforms into Super Ninja Doll.

Christine transforms from this...

into this. I preferred her as a schoolgirl, but she needs her super powers.

This is the second film on the Blu-ray with "Tarzeena". The B film? I'm just going by their order. This is definitely the better of the two films. I'd go as far to say as it's one of the best films in the Medina collection. I like it more every time I watch it. I'm also happy to say that the film's remastering is very good. Every scene looks perfect, especially the facial close ups. This is a must buy for anyone who likes super heroes, science fiction or schoolgirls.

Timestalker (4 Stars)

This is the 13th film of the Stuttgart Weird Weekender Festival.

Do you believe in reincarnation? That's a question often asked in "Timestalker". Agnes lives in Scotland in the 17th Century. She's married, but when she sees a man about to be executed she falls in love with him. Love at first sight. She has to save his life, so she distracts the executioner, but in the process she trips onto the axe and dies.

But she's born again in the next century. She knows the man must have been reincarnated near her, so she immediately begins to look for him. She finds him and declares her love for him, but he doesn't recognise her and thinks she's mad.

She's reincarnated repeatedly over the centuries in different countries. The man is easy to find. His name is always Alex and he always lives close to her. But she always dies before she can get anywhere.

That's the film's premise. I shan't say any more, because it should be coming to cinemas soon. I liked it a lot, but it shouldn't have been made as a comedy. It would have been a lot better as a serious film about an eternal love.

Heroic Times (1 Star)

This is the 12th film in the Stuttgart Weird Weekender Festival.

It's another old film, not a re-release, but it was remastered for 4K last year. It's an animated film that was released in Hungary in 1984, based on an epic poem. Like "Loving Vincent", it was created by putting together a series of oil paintings that were painted over a period of four years. Unfortunately, it's not up to the quality of "Loving Vincent". Instead of strictly using 12 pictures per second, it makes a lot of short cuts. Sometimes the camera pans from left to right over a single scene. Some scenes are used a few times.

There's no dialogue in the film. The story is told in a voiceover by a narrator. It's about Toldi, the younger son of a knight. After the death of his father, his older son takes his place as a knight, even though Toldi is a better warrior. In the following 90 minutes (which seemed much longer) Toldi works his way up into the king's favour and becomes a great hero in battle. That would have been a good place to end the film, but we see that 20 years later times have changed. Knights no longer duel, it's just jesters putting on a show imitating knights.

Despite the remastering, the picture is still fuzzy. Look at the screenshot above. It hurt my eyes to watch it. And the story is uneven. It was a dull film that seemed to last forever. I was glad when it was over.

Ghost Killer (4 Stars)

This is the eleventh film in the Stuttgart Weird Weekender Festival.

It's the first film in the festival that was made with a large budget.

Fumika is a high school student. Her age isn't stated in the film, but she calls herself a child, which would make her under 16. While walking home she finds a bullet case and carries it home with her. A strange man follows her home. She finds out that she's the only one who can see him. He's the ghost of Kudo, a hitman who was killed after being betrayed by his gang.

Kudo tells Fumika that he'll remain with her until he gets revenge on the man who killed him. But what can a Japanese schoolgirl like Fumika do? Whenever Fumika grips Kudo's hand he takes complete control of her body for a few minutes. She can fight with his martial arts and weapons skills. Fumika is passive in her body, seeing everything that she's doing but unable to control it. When they detach she argues with Kudo, because she doesn't approve of him making her kill people.

I might have given the film five stars, but one thing disturbs me. In many of the fight scenes we see Kudo fighting, even though he's in Fumika's body. That spoils it. We see Kudo and Fumika exchanging places from shot to shot. I suspect the reason is because the actor who plays Kudo is a skilled martial artist, and he can do many stunts that the actress who plays Fumika can't. If that's the case, they should have found another actress. If it's any other reason, they simply blundered.

Messiah of Evil (3 Stars)

This is the tenth film in the Stuttgart Weird Weekender Festival.

Unlike the previous films in the festival, it isn't a new release. It was made in 1973. There was a long introduction, with a woman speaking enthusiastically about it for almost 20 minutes. She emphasised that most of the crew had worked on well known big budget films in the 1970's and 1980's, so we could expect something special. I admit that I was caught up in the hype.

Then it started. What was I watching? There were so many plots and subplots that I could hardly keep up. The main story began with a woman visiting her father to see why he hasn't been answering her letters. She finds his home abandoned and tries to find out if he's still alive. Her investigations uncover that a dark stranger came to the town a hundred years ago and has promised to return on the anniversary. And there are people in the village who are cannibals. It all gets confusing.

Maybe I'll watch it again to try to understand it. Maybe not.

Zero (3 Stars)

This is the eighth film in the Stuttgart Weird Weekender Festival.

Hus Miller is an American businessman visiting Dakar, the capital of Senegal. He wakes up in a bus with a bomb strapped to his chest and a timer counting down from ten hours. A woman gives him a mobile phone and leaves quickly. A voice on the phone tells him he has ten hours to complete five tasks, and if he fails the bomb will explode.

Never mind what the tasks are. The film is ridiculous. If I'd been in that situation I would have handed myself over to the police and given them the phone to have the number traced while the bomb is disarmed. Maybe the mysterious caller would have found out and killed him, but it's obvious from the start that his survival chances are low. Good acting, reasonable action scenes, but a poor story.

A Mother's Embrace (2 Stars)

This is the seventh film in the Stuttgart Weird Weekender Festival.

It's a Brazilian film made in Portuguese. I usually tag films by their language, not by their country, but this might not be appropriate in the case of Brazil. The language spoken in Brazil is Portuguese, but I've been told that the dialect is so different that people from Brazil and Portugal can barely understand one another.

Ana is a firefighter. There are heavy floods, and her team is called to a nursing home by someone claiming it's collapsed. It was a false alarm. The nursing home is still standing, but when the team examines the building they're convinced that it's in such a poor state that it has to be evacuated. The home's owner objects. The fire team's work is made difficult by carnivorous monsters that live below the home. The old people in the home aren't human. They're shape shifters, and one of them takes the form of Ana's mother. Or is it really her mother? When we discussed the film afterwards there were different opinions.

It's a terrifying horror film, but my overall impression is negative. When the film ended there were still too many loose ends. I prefer the mysteries in films to be explained.

Suzzanna: The Queen of Black Magic (4 Stars)

This is the sixth film in the Stuttgart Weird Weekender Festival.

Sometimes I feel that I'm isolated from the world's cinema by living in Europe. There have been great films made in other countries. There have been great film stars who played roles in other countries. Today I watched a documentary about Suzzanna Martha Frederika van Osch, usually known simply as Suzzanna. She's described as the greatest icon of horror films, surpassing Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and Bela Lugosi. That's high praise indeed. Is it true? I'd never heard of her, because she appeared exclusively in Indonesian horror films in the 1970's and 1980's. After beginning her career as a child star in the 1950's, she crossed into horror and made about 30 horror films. The documentary showed many excerpts from her films. She was typecast as a vengeful spirit seeking revenge, but she did it so well. They were films that used the same gore effects as the Italian films of the time, complete with severed limbs and exploding heads. What made them stand out was Suzzanna's terrifying stare. She had a face that nobody could forget.

The film also deals with aspects of Suzzanna's private life. She married a man who was 23 years younger than her. When she died there were allegations that he had killed her. It was little more than celebrity gossip. There was no proof, but rumours can continue for years.

After watching the documentary I decided I wanted to watch her films to judge her for myself. It's not possible. None of her films are currently available with English subtitles. Yes, I'm isolated. I'm hoping the documentary will arouse interest in her films.

Vexier (4 Stars)

This is the third film in the Stuttgart Weird Weekender Festival.

At this point I'm starting to think that none of the films are really weird. "Vexier" is a stunning social drama. It's about a woman who wants to escape from an abusive relationship. I shan't say more than that. No monsters, no weird special effects, nothing trashy, just a powerful film.

The film's director and cinematographer are local boys. They've been making amateur films since their teens. This was their first feature film. It was made on a small budget, about 20,000 Euros gathered by crowdfunding. Nothing about it looks cheap. It's well polished, outstanding quality. It's not an original story, but as I've often said, a film doesn't need to be original to be good.

A surprise guest was the Swabian comedian Dodokay, alias Dominik Kuhn. He said that he briefly appeared in the film, but I didn't see him. Maybe I misunderstood.

Self Driver (2 Stars)

This is the second film in the Stuttgart Weird Weekender Festival.

"Self Driver" is another low budget film. It was filmed in Toronto in 14 days and cost a few thousand dollars. Despite the low price it has high production quality. The director introduced the film, telling us that it had been filmed with a camera that was new on the market. He couldn't have made the film a year earlier.

It's about a taxi driver who's struggling to make money. A customer offers him a job working with an app that will make him much more money. He has to follow instructions given by the app, otherwise deductions will be made from his account. This comes to clashes when customers tell him to drive one way but the app tells him to drive another.

The film is weird. The app's mechanical voice gives him absurd instructions, such as telling him to hit a customer. But he has to do it. He needs the money.

The film's atmosphere is overpowering, but as it continues I kept waiting for an explanation to finally be made. There's no explanation. At the end of the film we know nothing more than at the start. I can see a message: what's more important, earning money or doing what's right? That wasn't enough for me.

U Are The Universe (4½ Stars)

This is the first film in the Stuttgart Weird Weekender Festival.

It's a relatively new film festival. It started last year as a spinoff of the monthly Weird Wednesday event. The Weird Wednesdays started ten years ago, showing mostly cult horror films. Mostly. There have been a few films that I wouldn't call weird, but as they say, weirdness is in the eye of the beholder. Recently the frequency has increased to two Wednesdays a month, one of which is a newly released low budget film. The festival is showing almost exclusively new low budget films.

Unlike the Fantasy Film Festival, which takes place simultaneously in several German cities, the Weird Weekender is a purely Stuttgart event.

Due to its niche appeal, the festival takes place in a relatively small theatre, which only has 102 seats. Here's the festival team. Judging by the abundance of bald heads in the audience, the team members are younger than the viewers. They held to the Weird Wednesday tradition of starting films late. There was a delay of 35 minutes. The German audience waited patiently. In England we would have been stamping our feet and jeering.

The opening film is "U Are The Universe", a Ukrainian science fiction film made in 2023. I don't approve of the title, but I'll let it pass, because the "U" is probably a reference to Ukraine. A Ukrainian astronaut called Andrukha has the job of delivering nuclear waste material to Jupiter's moon Callisto. It means a lot of solitude. Two years there, two years back. He's accompanied by a friendly floating robot called Max.

Max gives Andrukha the news that the Earth has exploded, making him the last human in the universe. There's no explanation why the Earth exploded. Maybe a Fascist dictator like Putin was tossing nuclear bombs around. The spaceship has enough food left for 16 months. Just when Andrukha is getting used to being the last man alive, he receives a message from a French woman called Catherine who's on a space station orbiting Saturn. He decides to travel to her. After all, the human race has to survive, doesn't it?

So the film is a love story set in space.

After the film there was a question and answer session with the director Pavlo Ostrikov by video link from Kyiv. Many of the questions dealt with his problems making a film in a country at war. For him the main problem was the money. Putin's invasion of Ukraine has caused massive inflation, and the film's production had to be paid in Euros. The film's budget lay beneath a million Euros, which might not seem much to us, but for him it was an enormous fortune.

He named "2001: A Space Odyssey" as his inspiration, but I saw more of "Dark Star" in it. He said that it's the first science fiction film made in Ukraine since it became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991.

While I was waiting, one of my friends said that the Weird Weekender wouldn't be a festival, it would be a trashtival. That's unfair. The only thing trashy about "U Are The Universe" is its title.

Tarzeena (4 Stars)

Fred Olen Ray has done it again. He's re-released two classic Christine Nguyen films on Blu-ray. Today I watched "Tarzeena", comparing the DVD and Blu-ray versions side by side on two screens. My first impression is that the remastering is mixed. In close ups the faces look clearer on the Blu-ray, but in the jungle and desert scenes there's hardly any noticeable difference. I wanted to show screenshot comparisons in this review, but for some reason I can't watch the Blu-ray on my computer. The screenshots in this post are all taken from the DVD. That's a shame. I'll try to solve the problem before I review the other film on the Blu-ray.

If I'd been judging this film on Christine Nguyen's merit, I would have given it five stars. It's let down by the mediocre acting of the husband and wife team Alexandre Boisvert and Nicole Sheridan. Every other actor in the film is excellent.

Christine looks like a Bettie Page impersonator when she's in the hands of the evil Doctor Mortimer.

He throws her onto a bed, still screaming, but all he wants to do is plant a chip in her brain to make her obey him. I have to say, I find a woman who obeys me boring. I prefer a woman with spirit who'll argue with me and reach for her whip if I don't give way.

I wrote more about the film in my last review.

As usual, Retromedia Blu-rays are available exclusively from Makeflix.

Here's an updated summary of the Retromedia films so far, with the Blu-ray releases marked.

The Medina Collection

1. Thirteen Erotic Ghosts (2002)
2. (BR) Bikini Airways (2003)
3. (BR) Haunting Desires (2003)
4. Curse of the Erotic Tiki (2003)
5. Bikini Carwash Academy (2004)
6. Erotic Dreams of Jeannie (2004)
7. Teenage Cavegirl (2004)
8. The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful (2005)
9. Bikini Chain Gang (2005)
10. Ghost in a Teeny Bikini (2006)
11. Bikini Girls from the Lost Planet (2006)
12. Harlots of the Caribbean (2006)
13. Girl with the Sex-Ray Eyes (2006)
14. Bewitched Housewives (2006)
15. The Girl from BIKINI (2006)
16. (BR) Super Ninja Doll (2007)
17. (BR) Tarzeena (2007)
18. Voodoo Dollz (2008)
19. Bikini Royale (2008)
20. (BR) Bikini Frankenstein (2009)
21. (BR) Twilight Vamps (2009)
22. Bikini Royale 2 (2009)
23. (BR) Bikini Jones and the Temple of Eros (2009)
24. Housewives from Another World (2010)
25. Lady Chatterley's Ghost (2010)
26. Bikini Time Machine (2010)
27. Sexual Witchcraft (2010)
28. Bikini Warriors (2010)
29. The Teenie Weenie Bikini Squad (2011)
30. Dirty Blondes from Beyond (2012)
31. Busty Housewives of Beverly Hills (2012)
32. (BR) Baby Dolls Behind Bars (2012)

The McKendrick Collection

1. Strippers from another world (2013)
2. Big Bust Theory (2013)
3. Intergalactic Swingers (2013)
4. (BR) All Babe Network (2013)
5. Great Bikini Bowling Bash (2014)
6. Stacked Racks from Mars (2014)
7. Atomic Hotel Erotica (2014)
8. Lolita from Interstellar Space (2014)
9. Sexy Warriors (2014)
10. Bikini Avengers (2015)
11. (BR) College Coeds vs Zombie Housewives (2015)
12. Lust in Space (2015)
13. Erotic Vampires of Beverly Hills (2015)
14. Invisible Centerfolds (2015)
15. (BR) Cinderella's Hot Night (2017)
16. (BR) Sleeping Beauties (2017)

The Apocrypha

1. (BR) Bad Girls Behind Bars (2016)
2. Vixens From Venus (2016)
3. Cyborg Hookers (2016)
4. Cosmic Calendar Girls (2016)
5. Escape From Pleasure Planet (2016)
6. (BR) Paranormal Sexperiments (2016)

The Medina Collection consists of films directed by Fred Olen Ray using the pseudonym Juan Medina. The McKendrick Collection consists of films directed by Dean McKendrick. The Apocrypha consists of films directed for Retromedia by other directors.

Notes:

(1) "Bikini Carwash Academy" (Medina 5) was re-released with a different opening credits sequence, listing the director as Sherman Scott.

(2) "Tomb of the Werewolf" (not listed above) was directed by Fred Olen Ray using his own name, but it's in the Medina style. It has almost the same cast as "Haunting Desires".

(3) Dean McKendrick made seven erotic thrillers for Retromedia, not listed above.

(4) Apocrypha? If you have a better name for these films, let me know.

That's 14 out of 54 films released on Blu-ray so far. Let's hope the others will follow soon.