“Kingdom of the Spiders” * (1977, Kino Lorber) Pesticide use, that smoking gun of many a nature-gone-amuck horror film in the 1970s, drives an army of tarantulas to prey on the occupants of a small Arizona town. Well-remembered for giving drive-in and TV viewers the heebie-jeebies with scenes of real, fist-sized spiders crawling over its cast — which includes a somewhat restrained William Shatner, Tiffany Bolling, and Altovise Davis (wife of Sammy Jr.) — “Kingdom” retains its power to creep out by neatly crystallizing everything that people find unpleasant about spiders, and does so on a drive-in movie budget. Kino’s Blu-ray has three commentary tracks – vintage tracks with (among others), Bolling and director John “Bud” Cardos,” and a new track with writer Lee Gambin — and interviews with Bolling and writer Steve Lodge.
“The One-Armed Swordsman” * (1967, Arrow Video) Jimmy Wang Yu may be the best swordsman at the Golden Sword school, but it doesn’t keep him from losing an arm to his master’s petulant daughter; after much brooding and training, he returns as a one-armed revenge machine. Landmark film for Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers Studios and Hong Kong martial arts films as a whole, which found great success by replacing the traditional stately wuxia setpieces and philosopher-scholar heroes with director Chang Cheh’s approach: gritty, blood-soaked fights and troubled loner leads. Arrow’s Special Edition Blu-ray, part of its huge “Shawscope Vol. 3” set, includes a 4K image restoration, Mandarin and English audio options, commentary by David West, interviews with Wang Yu and co-stars Lisa Chiao Chiao and Ku Feng, video reflections on the film’s impact, and a featurette on Wang Yu’s numerous turns as the One-Armed Swordsman (and other similarly impaired toughs).
“Ninja Terminator” (1985, Neon Eagle Video) An evil ninja empire responds to the theft of its Golden Ninja Warrior statue, which grants the owner invincibility (or something like that), by dispatching the titular assassin to dispatch the three mascara-wearing rebels who took the chintzy idol. Delirious cut-and-paste Hong Kong action by director Godfrey Ho, who constructed numerous ninja films by folding footage from older titles (here, it’s the Korean film “The Uninvited Guest of the Star Ferry”) into new scenes, many featuring American actor and former Italian Western star Richard Harrison glumly going through the ninja motions. Such a Frankensteinian effort naturally leads to an incomprehensible plot (made more surreal by curious choices like Harrison’s legendary Garfield phone), though the fight scenes culled from “Star Ferry” which feature super-kicker Hwang Jang-lee (in a blond bob wig and leisure suit) led much-needed excitement. Neon Eagle’s Blu-ray features a 4K restoration of “Terminator” from the original negative, two commentaries which discuss the eccentricities of Ho’s ninja films at length, interviews with Ho and English dubber Simon Broad, and an overview of ninja cinema by author/historian Chris Poggiali.
“Bloodmoon” * (1990, Severin Films) Tensions are high at a Catholic girls’ school in what may or may not be Australia, where the students and new headmistress fraternize with boys from a nearby private school and run afoul of surf-loving townies; a psychopath is also on the loose. The arrangement of that sentence is not accidental, as director Alec Mills (a frequent cinematographer for James Bond films) seems only mildly interested in delivering basic horror movie requirements for this curious Australian production, although his focus on the tawdry/sudsy material can also be described as casual. However, “Bloodmoon” still entertains, though largely as a string of visual non sequiturs: the Lockhorns-on-meth relationship between headmistress Christine Amor and henpecked husband Leon Lissek; the Antipodean glam-metal act Vice performing at a school dance; and the indignities suffered by the killer (whose identity is revealed early) in the finale. Severin’s Blu-ray includes a 4K camera negative scan, a feature-length interview with the prolific Lissek and shorter interview clip with Amor, as well as the “Fright Break,” which allowed to recoup their ticket costs if “Bloodmoon” proved too intense during its theatrical release.
“Ninja Academy” * (1988, Arrow Video) For reasons known only to themselves, a wildly diverse group — which includes rich kid Will Egan, trigger-happy British spy Michael David (aka Agent 007-11), accident magnet Robert Factor, and a mime (Jeff Robinson) — join B-movie vet Gerald Okamura’s Topanga-based ninja academy (which offers a one-week course). This does not sit well with Okamura’s rival (Seth Foster), who dispatches his Beverly Hills ninja students to upend their studies. Wobbly low-budget comedy from Nico Mastorakis strains to ape both the “Police Academy” film series and the then-popular strain of Caucasian ninja films; less humor is derived from the gags than from pondering why Mastorakis decided to set one of the students’ tasks at a nudist colony (actually, that isn’t hard to figure out), how the slovenly Foster became a top ninja (ask Chris Farley, one guesses), and really, the whole mime thing. Arrow’s Blu-ray, part of its “Nico Mastorakis Collection,” offers a high-def transfer of “Ninja Academy” and interviews with Mastorakis, who doesn’t seem to love the movie, and the genial Okamura.
“Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man” * (1976, Raro Video) Italian cops (and roommates!) Ray Lovelock and Marc Porel’s brand of law enforcement — the sort of shoot-first-don’t-bother-with-questions variety championed by the current administration and its most rabid followers — is tolerated by their superior (Adolfo Celi), as long as it brings down gangsters like their latest quarry, Renato Salvatori. Italian action-crime drama (poliziotteschi) from Ruggero Deodato of “Cannibal Holocaust” infamy borders on the parodic, with its wall-to-wall violence (which often drags civilians into the fray) and the leads’ swaggering displays of testosterone, and is perhaps best enjoyed as a spoof, however unintentional, of the sort of hyperbolic, Armed Alpha Male thrillers that filled theaters on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1970s (see also: “Dirty Harry”); Deodato does serve up some exceptional action setpieces (the astonishing rush-hour motorcycle pursuit that opens the picture), which occasionally balance the bonkers pH set by the episodic plot structure and the leads’ wrecking ball approach to crime and interpersonal relationships. Raro’s Blu-ray includes a vivid remastered transfer from the original camera negative and Italian and English audio options; there’s also observant (and patient) commentary by historian Rachel Nisbet, a vintage making-of featurette with Deodato and Lovelock (both now deceased), and a brace of Deodato’s work in TV commercials.
Also: Arrow has UHD versions of William Friedkin’s grim and controversial thriller “Cruising” * with Al Pacino, the uproariously goofy shark pic “Deep Blue Sea” * with Samuel L. Jackson and LL Cool J’s parrot, the overly ambitious “Chronicles of Riddick,” * which attempted to put Vin Diesel’s agreeably amoral criminal from “Pitch Black” on a far-too-large space epic canvas, and Marc Porel turns up in Lucio Fulci’s still-underrated “Don’t Torture a Duckling” * (the title makes sense when you watch it), which manages to deliver both a gruesome crime thriller and a scathing (and prescient) rebuke of prejudicial politics and small-town mindsets.
