Geisha Girl (1952), by George Breakston and C. Ray Stahl

What, a comedy that I find actually somewhat funny?! Also the home of ZORO, the greatest wizard who ever lived.

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Castle Sinister (1948), by Oscar Burn

A short, punchy film noir about fast-talking Nazis. Oh, and a man in a triple-nostriled skeleton morph suit.

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Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976), by Don Edmonds

1975 saw the release of what could easily be called the archetypical Nazisploitation film, Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. That film featured Dyanne Thorne as Ilsa, a Nazi commandant who tortures prisoners at a concentration camp, while also seeking a man who can give her an orgasm. Those who fail in this task--i.e. all of the male prisoners at the camp--are castrated. As you may well expect, She-Wolf is a miserably gruesome watch, with much of the torture that's shown looking pretty authentic, thanks to the filmmakers only showing what they could technically accomplish, and implying the rest. When making the follow-up, which brought Ilsa to 1970s Saudi Arabia, the filmmakers toned down much of the disturbing content in an effort to seek an audience that wasn't comprised entirely of weirdos and perverts. But they still had to appeal to, y'know, weirdos and perverts, because it was still a film about a big-breasted, often-nude Teutonic blonde torturing people in ways that were occasionally erotic. While many consider this mixture of interests to be a failure, I'm of the opinion that the producers of Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks managed to create an atmosphere of camp which both the original film and this film's followup, Ilsa, Tigress of Siberia, were sorely lacking. This is, generally speaking, a feel-good exploitation movie, where it's just one bit of nonsense happening after another. It grows on you after a while.

Ilsa is now the lieutenant of a powerful Middle Eastern crime lord, El Sharif. El Sharif deals both in human trafficking and in drugs, and he and Ilsa's activities have caused them to be investigated by an international commission led by Commander Adam Scott and a pudgy, wimpy German dude named Dr. Kaiser. The pair have a spy planted in El Sharif's palace but she is captured and tortured before they arrive. Despite knowing that the two are spies, Ilsa falls for Commander Scott when he turns out to be a regular sex machine. Eventually her relationship with him causes El Sharif to sentence her to molestation at the hands of a leprous beggar whom she had flogged at the start of the movie. This causes her to help out a group of rebels seeking to oust El Sharif and replace him with the legitimate ruler of this region, his nephew Prince Ali. In the end Ilsa is betrayed by Ali and thrown in his dungeons to await a hideous fate.

I had to piece together aspects of this plot over multiple viewings, because as far as director Edmonds is concerned, story is as secondary and incidental as a hillbilly's napkins at an all-you-can-eat barbecue buffet. No, we're here to see sleaze, and they are quite insistent on pouring on that sleaze whenever they can. Gore, dismemberment, torture, cannibalism, pedophilia, and rape are all key themes, though unlike She-Wolf none of it is brought "too far." For all that means. For example, they may talk about letting rats feast on someone's vaginal tissues, but they don't show it. We still get a girl whose breasts are crushed in a vice (which is actually a lot funnier than it sounds) and of course there are the women whose vaginas are outfitted with proximity mines. These mines are tested, by the way, by "the love machine"--a piston-driven mechanical arm that ends with an immaculate pewter dildo. (Might not want to use that too much, pewter can be real nasty on the skin I've heard.) Legit gross-out points to the scene where a girl's legs are eaten by ants--and then there's the guy who buys one of the girls, but says over a pair of pliers, "I don't like the scrape of teeth..."

Dr. Kaiser's arc in this movie is, um. Interesting. On the drive to El Sharif's palace he says, "I hope they do not give me...a sheep's eye. I have been all over the Arab world and it is a common gift to give to foreign guests. But they are disgusting, and I do not know if I could eat another one." Then of course El Sharif feeds him "the eye of [his] most beautiful sheep"--Kaiser's spy. Later, El Sharif sends an underage male prostitute to Kaiser's room, and despite initial resistance, there is every indication that he ended up taking him up on his offer! It's equal parts horrifying and comical, because despite its implications, it's so blatantly glanced over that it feels like a background gag! I have no idea what to make of this. I think it's best I move on. It is noteworthy that the same actor played a Nazi General in She-Wolf of the SS who commanded Ilsa to give him a golden shower. So he's always been a class act.

I don't really even know if I can call this film racist, because while it seems to assert that Arabs are vicious and have a propensity for human trafficking, it's not really something that's specifically dwelled on besides the provision of the setting. There are local people fighting El Sharif for presumably noble purposes, and it's not like the white Europeans are much better, with Dr. Kaiser being a pedophile, Commander Scott leaving Ilsa to die after sleeping with her, and Ilsa being, well...Ilsa. The sleaze is universal, and frankly, after watching movies like The Sheik and The Barbarian, this movie is pretty fair in its treatment of Arab folk. Though that's not saying much.

If you want uncut sleaze as only the '70s can deliver it, this is the film to watch. It's the one Ilsa movie I've bothered to go back to, and despite the change in tone, it is the most watchable of all of them in terms of content and lack of boredom. There's always something happening--whether you like it or not.

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The Gorilla Man (1943), by D. Ross Lederman

Oh, right, like I'm going to ignore a movie called The Gorilla Man. This movie is tough to track down, as it is often confused with Bela Lugosi's The Ape Man, also released in '43--but sure enough, I found it. Let's just say there are some substantial differences between this film and the similarly-named account of Professor James Brewster's misadventures in gorilla-human hybridization.

Captain Craig Killian is coming back from a raid with vital intelligence on the next big Nazi push. He is intercepted by an outfit led by Nazi agent Dr. Dorn, and his psychopathic surgeon Dr. Ferris, who make him their prisoner in an attempt to find out what he's learned. The whole time they pose as British doctors, and keep on giving him too much morphine. Doesn't help that our introduction to Dr. Ferris is him experimenting on a dude's brain without anesthetic... Then the gaslighting begins. After learning the intel, the Nazis work to frame Killian for murder and convince his superiors that his information is the product of a disturbed brain. Fortunately, Killian has a stouthearted love of England, and he's a legendary climber, which saved his life on the front more than once--it's for that climbing skill that they call him "the Gorilla Man." All's well that ends well, but you'll be on the edge of your seat until then.

A lot of the suspense of this movie arises from the horrifying character of Dr. Ferris. Seriously, the makers of this film didn't want to fuck around when it came to showing off the sort of sick fucks the Nazi echelons attracted (and continue to attract, unfortunately). Again, his first appearance is him operating on someone's brain with no anesthesia...and then it's mentioned that several of his other patients have died of "heart failure" after visiting his operating theater. He also wears these glasses that quadruple the size of his eyes and make him look like some sort of fucking fish monster. He's specifically mentioned to be a "psychopathic killer" and when Dorn slaps around Nurse Kruger (whose family he's holding hostage, by the way), those freaky eyes glaze over and he has to be restrained before he can kill her. And yes, he does get to murder at least one person in the movie...and he sends a child to be the first to find the body. Brrrr.

Oh, did I mention that Ferris is played by John Abbott? Yeah, Mowgli's Wolf dad from The Jungle Book. Have fun recognizing his voice and seeing your childhood crash and burn before your very eyes.

There's also an interesting twist of sorts, where Killian's excuse to escape the hospital, that he needs to deliver a message from one of his dead men to said man's widow, turns out to actually be true. This is where we need to consider this as a propaganda film, as many of these wartime thrillers were. The focus on the actual war effort arguably makes it a war film that strays deep in mystery territory, rather than the usual reverse; consider films like Black Dragons, which clearly began life as horror or mystery films until war references were inserted by mandate by studio heads. By choosing to pursue an actual narrative outside of just shouting at the viewer that the Nazis are bad, we get to see how bad the Nazis are in person. The movie never gets much further thematically than "Nazis are devious," but it's still a comparatively complicated story that's well-written, well-shot, and well-acted.

Of course, there's another message, too: Nazis are stupid. (They are.) In attempting to get Killian back into their clutches, Dr. Ferris poses as a cab driver, but does nothing to disguise himself save for a shitty Cockney accent. He deserves to get ambushed and decked in the face by Killian. A single glance in the rearview mirror would find him out at once and I assume that's how Killian spotted him.

But there's also the fact that Killian's ex-girlfriend gets killed...that's a little brutal for a '40s movie, and, again, unexpected. Man, this movie has some tone issues. Thankfully, there is not a trace of comic relief, showing that at least someone in this era of movies had a brain in their head for once.

I think it's great that they named this movie The Gorilla Man so that they could convince people it was a monster movie--there's even a poster that shows a gorilla-like monster hand reaching for a screaming woman. Yeah, that never happens in this. Frankly, throwing in a monster or, Gods forbid, a man in a gorilla suit, would slaughter this movie. And because there's a good head at the wheel it never comes to that. I found out that the director, D. Ross Lederman, also made Find the Blackmailer, a surprisingly well-made mystery caper released the same year--expect that up here sooner or later. If you can find yourself a copy of The Gorilla Man you'll be in good hands, if you like mysteries, horror, war movies, or any combination of the above. Check it out!

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Lady Street Fighter (1985), by James Bryan

I could hardly help myself. After writing up my review for Frozen Scream, I decided to go straight into Lady Street Fighter, the next of the great Renee Harmon films. I hope your ears are prepared for even more of that luscious German accent, because this is one great movie.

We open with a scene of a woman being gruesomely tortured by men who want to know the location of a certain dog. Rather than talk the woman dies under torture. It turns out the dog in question is a stuffed one presently in the possession of Linda Allen (Renee Harmon). The dead woman, Billy, was Linda's sister--after learning of her sister's death, she decides to use what leads she has to break into the organization that killed Billy. The dog contains a microfilm with a master file detailing all the tiers of operations in this gang. Once this premise is established in the first ten minutes, all that's left is to follow Linda as she eludes government agents and criminals alike through authentically tacky stripper acts at the "Goo-Goo Club" (note that everyone but Renee says it as "Go-Go Club"). Up until the first half-hour, the movie behaves like a run-of-the-mill sleazy crime film, albeit a quirky one with some odd choices in editing and sound mixing. But eventually Linda arrives at a party hosted by Max Diamond, one of the members of the crime organization, and all Hell breaks loose. There is too much for to describe happening at this party, which every overly-decadent eccentric movie gangster party ever; one of the least remarkable things, to give context, is Renee Harmon sucking on a stalk of celery like it's a dick. Not only is a tremendous amount of insanity set up at one time, with very little warning, but it's shot professionally, with fascinating set-ups, acting, and framing. Everything from there on out is cooldown, until the literally explosive climax.

On the surface, Lady Street Fighter appears to make sense, but the mark of Bryan is high on it. Either I have worse attention problems than I thought, or nothing in this film leads to anything in particular. I never want to overuse the description that something "looks like a dream" but there's always something mystifyingly elusive about the sequence of cause and effect in how this movie turns out. I have so much difficulty following the dialogue sometimes because, like in Don't Go in the Woods, there are some lines which are written like they're bad translations, even though this was an American project made generally by English-speaking Americans. Some of Renee Harmon's lines are hard to make out because of her accent, but even when you can understand her, there's a seeming gap between content and context.

There's still a shape to the movie, though, even if it sometimes does screwball things like having cops who show up at murder scenes seconds after the murder is first discovered, or giving us a heroine who crushes and burns her enemies in car crashes. This movie is all about Renee Harmon kicking ass. Gas fires aside, Linda Allen's quest for sororal vengeance is pretty cool, and she has a lot of great fighting moments. She's also pretty good-looking for her age, and many of the characters in the film seem to think so too...though this isn't always a service to the audience.

The soundtrack also makes the movie. Sure, it's a ripoff of Ennio Morricone, but what isn't? In all seriousness, this movie has its own unique version of the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, plus a weird Don't Go in the Woods-style Casio ditty that plays near the beginning which will be in your head for years to come. The music from this movie overlaps with those of Don't Go in the Woods or Frozen Scream to form a master soundtrack that I would pay good money to hear on CD.

Fun fact: this movie was followed up with a remake called Run Coyote Run, made available only recently. Run Coyote Run is sometimes noted as being a sequel to Lady Street Fighter as well as a remake, but I don't see it. I'm not overly psyched about Run Coyote Run because it's largely the same movie as Lady Street Fighter, being entire scenes pasted over from the latter film and strung together with '87-era video segments. But if I ever feel like getting really meta, maybe someday I'll take a look at that one too.

If you're a fan of the other movies James Bryan and Renee Harmon made, and you want to see them take a crack at a crime film, you are well-covered. Hell, this is one to try even if you like your crime films, y'know, good. It will probably just be a little surreal in places, but if you like crime films and you're not used to a little surrealism, you can just get out of my face.