Author Archive: Retro

Romantic tale about an exiled prince who goes to Hollywood and falls for a nightclub singer. Written by Don Hartman. Color. Dir. Jacques Tati.

Greedy sailors capture a giant lizard off the coast of Ireland and sell it to a London circus. Then its mother shows up.

Group of scientists lands on Mars only to find that the Martian ruling class is planning to conquer the world. The humans must join forces with the Martian underground to save Earth. Dir. Lesley Selander

Claire Brennen stars as a waitress who leaves the greasy-diner business for the excitement of the carnival. She quickly discovers that she despises freaks and human oddities.

One of the better efforts from prolific cult director Jesus Franco, this Swiss-German horror film stars Klaus Kinski, in his final film for Franco, as the notorious Jack the Ripper. A respected doctor by day, Kinski bloodily dismembers London prostitutes by night, until the local Inspector’s girlfriend (Josephine Chaplin) goes undercover to catch him. Full of graphic gore and nudity, the film is likely to appeal to horror buffs more than Kinski’s usual fanbase, but his is a mesmerizing and quite effective performance. Herbert Fuchs and Lina Romay are among the Franco regulars in the cast, with Fuchs turning in an amusing cameo as a would-be extortionist.

Martial arts legend Ron van Clief stars in this action thriller about rival gangs in search of a lost “finger fighting” manual written by Bruce Lee. From the heyday of 1970s Blaxploitation and kung fu flicks, this movie demonstrates much of the same crude dialog and cut-rate film techniques usually found in those genres but succeeds by having a legitimate bad ass like van Clief in the lead role.

A meteor crashes into a lake where a corpse of a Mafia murderer is buried. A cosmic reaction from radiation instills new life into the decomposed being.