The Lost Empire 1983

"Now it's beginning to make sense !"

"What are you talking about ?"

"I'm talking about international terrorism. mass murder and a legend of supernatural horror that goes back over 200 years !"

   In later interviews Wynorski said that The Lost Empire being his directorial debut and as he was afraid of never getting the chance to direct again, he tried to cram as many of his favorite genre elements in one movie as possible. Clocking in at barely 85 minutes he manages to throw together James Bond, Enter the Dragon, Dirty Harry, Indiana Jones & a Russ Meyer bosom epic while mixing in woman prisoners (and gladiators), kung fu, evil religions cults, ninjas, devil worship, giant remote controlled laser cannons, zombies, a gorilla on a chain leash and an island fortress.

  Starting off with a lengthy on screen crawl that attempts to explain the highly convoluted plot, but it's best not to try and figure too much out here - just sit back, enjoy & put your brain in neutral. Things kick off with an elderly oriental store owner selling a necklace to a buxom blonde when suddenly the eyes on an idol located in the store start glowing red and a bunch of ninja guys burst in and throw the oriental guy out the front window. Some cops show up and start blasting away while the ninja guys whip out pointed stars on chains and use them to take care of the police.

  Next we cut to a school where some guys are holding a classroom of kids hostage with the police presence commanded by Kenneth (The Thing From Another World) Tobey, when a black clad police person on a motorcycle crashes thru the school doors and blasts away the bad guys (but not before uttering a Dirty Harry like smart ass comment). As all this happens in the first 10 minutes, you know some stuff is really going on here.
   Turns out the Dirty Harry on the motorcycle is Officer Angel Wolf (Melanie Vince) who's the sister of one of the cops at the store shootout. Rushing to hospital (and wearing a silver body suit unzipped for max cleavage) she arrives just as he's dying and takes one of the pointed stars he managed to grab in the shootout. Her FBI boyfriend Rick Stanton (Paul Coufos) immediately identifies it as belonging to "Lee Chuck" who's some sort demon/devil guy that has to collect departed souls everyday (or something to that effect). Plus he's tied into religious cult leader Dr.SinDo (Angus Scrimm from Phantasm), who conducts gladiator like tournaments on his island fortress.

   As tournament entries have to be in groups of three, Angel has to round up a couple of more kick ass type chicks. First up she heads out to the desert and we get a bit of Native American mysticism as she summons "Whitestar" (Raven De La Croix) who shows up wearing a fringed white buckskin bikini (and constantly throws out Mae West like one-liners). For the third member Angel & Raven go to a women's prison (all right! - this movie has everything!). Once there they witness a fight in the prison yard in between Heather (what - no cool name for her?) McClure played by Angela Aames and Whiplash (Angelique Pettyjohn - Star Trek & Blood Island).

  Whiplash strips down to her prison approved dominatrix outfit & whip and the girls go at it. Luckily there's also a handy mud puddle close by so they can fall in, after which Heather kicks Whiplash's ass (but not before a couple more of the girls get their tops ripped off). This prison seems to pretty lax on the rules as along with wondering around the yard to watch the catfight, Angel & Whitestar also get to recruit Heather while she's taking a shower and seem to get her out on some sort of work release deal with no problem.

  Showing up on the island the girls are thrown into rigorous training - usually in as skimpy clothing as possible (no worry -Whitestar gets to keep her fringe bikini), while been overseen by Koro (Robert Tessier - The Longest Yard) - who's bushy black eyebrows seem to disappear and reappear from scene to scene. The plot at this point takes about seven left turns, with the evil Sin Do (or is it "Lee Chuck" ??) wanting to conquer the world with his giant laser cannon - which I think is powered by the eyes from the idol (or maybe those are just used to increase his evil powers ??).

   Along the way we get women gladiator sword fights, kung fu, a guy in a gorilla suit on a chain leash that's used to hunt down escaped prisoners (and gets beaten up by Raven De La Croix), disembodied talking heads, gratuitous nudity (including but not limited to Raven De La Croix), plus Angus Scrimm peeling his face off. There's really no way to describe this - the wooden acting & the intentional funny or not dialogue combined with Wynorski's enthusiasm and his "throw everything against the wall and see what sticks" writing & directing style all add up to one jaw dropping movie experience.
   Wynorski has been talking of a DVD release of this for years, but lately there's been a bunch of rumblings on his Facebook page about an upcoming release of this and his 1986 Dawn of the Dead/slasher mash-up Chopping Mall - along with some theatrical showings.

Terminal Island 1973

"Where We Dump Our Human Garbage !"

    A really good & sleazy little movie - that was marketed as standard 70's WIP exploitation, but however thanks to director Stephanie Rothman  (and an interesting cast) 1973's Terminal Island throws some different stuff into the sweaty females in halter tops & shorts milieu. Rothman was one of the few female directors working in the exploitation field having started out with Roger Corman & New World. She directed most of 1966's Blood Bath re-shoots and later wrote & directed the first New World film The Student Nurses from 1970. Roger gave her complete creative control and allowed her to tackle some social issues in otherwise what would have been straight ahead drive-in fodder. Later with her husband Charles Swartz she helped form Dimension Pictures and became one of their in-house directors. Although often dismissed as New World wanna-be, Dimension was responsible for creating and distributing bunches of drive-in classics including The Devil's Wedding Night & Gator Bait (1973), Dr. Black & Mr. Hyde (1976), Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) & Cheerleaders Wild Weekend (1979) - plus Terminal Island.

   At some point in the future the death penalty has been outlawed in Calif. and everybody convicted of 1st degree murder in banished to desolate San Burno Island AKA "Terminal Island". Kicking off with some news people who are preparing a TV special on the prison island (which seems to be setting up a social commentary plotline - that ends up going nowhere), this set-up does give us some background history on the island and its prisoners. A new prisoner Carmen (Ena Hartman) who after being dropped off meets up with Dr. Milford (a pre-Magnum P.I. Tom Selleck) who ominously warns her about conditions in the island. As mentioned before this does have an interesting cast - along with Selleck, there's also Phyllis Davis from from the WIP classic Sweet Sugar, Marta Kristen from Lost in Space, Don Marshall (Land of the Giants), Barbara Leigh (almost Vampirella) and hey look there's Magnum's future co-star & helicopter pilot pal Roger Mosley.

   Carmen soon discovers that all the females on the island are forced to do the manual labor (and sexual satisfy the guys), while everyone is ruled by the evil boss Bobby (Sean Kenney - from Star Trek & The Corpse Grinders) and his right hand thug  Monk (Roger Mosely). It soon reveled that there's another gang of convicts on the island which are the "good guys" (led by Don Marshall) and they soon capture all the woman which leads to war between the two factions of prisoners. Although Rothman gives all the woman interesting roles (Marta Kristen shows you how to make Gilligan's Islands type hand grenades), she doesn't forget what everybody came for. We got bunches of  violence, sleaze & of course the must have woman in prison nudity (supplied by Barbara Leigh and in lieu of a shower scene - a skinny dipping Phyllis Davis). The movie climaxes with a terrific slam bang battle complete with explosions, slo- motion bloody squibs & and even a 70's hippie utopian ending.

   If the movies does have a fault its that instead of focusing on one or two main characters everybody is just thrown together in two gangs of prisoners. At first Ena Hartman is set up as a kinda Pam Grier like kick ass female prisoner, but she just ends up being thrown into the mix. The guys especially suffer because of this as you just end up with a bunch denim clad dudes running back & forth in the forest (which makes it sorta hard keeping track of which side who is on). In spite of this, you got here a a prime example of 70's exploitation (plus its got Barbara Leigh AND Phyllis Davis). Out on DVD in an excellent presentation from Code Red.