Bovie Movie

In this action-horror flick from director Robert Rodriguez and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino, Tarantino stars with George Clooney as a pair of bad-to-the-bone brothers named Seth and Richie Gecko. After a string of robberies that left a river of blood in the Geckos’ wake, the sadistic siblings head to Mexico to live the good life. To get over the border, they kidnap Jacob Fuller, a widowed preacher played by Harvey Keitel, and his two children, Kate (Juliette Lewis) and Scott (Ernest Liu). Once south of the border, the quintet park their RV at a rough-and-tumble trucker bar called The Titty Twister, where Seth and Richie are supposed to meet a local thug. After a couple of drinks, they realize that they’re not in a typical bar, as the entire place begins to teem with vicious, blood-sucking vampires. With the odds stacked greatly against them, the Fullers and Geckos team together in hopes of defeating the creatures of the night. Makeup artist Tom Savini and blaxploitation star Fred Williamson appear as allies against the vampires, and Cheech Marin fills three different roles.

This regional horror weirdness from Michigan begins on a college campus in the late 60s, where mad professor John Saxon once performed murderous atrocities under the aegis of a secret government eugenics project before being shot dead by one of his associates. Twenty years later, a string of murders seems to indicate the professor’s return from the dead. As it turns out, Saxon’s experiments produced a drug which transmogrified him into a superhuman being capable of manipulating the will of others. Intending to procure a hidden supply of the “Nietzsche Drug” from the catacombs beneath the campus, the professor gathers a team of zombie slaves to do his bidding. His evil plans are challenged by a young psychic (Amy Raasch), an activist reporter (Dawn of the Dead alum David Emge) and the sole survivor of a previous supernatural attack (Sarah Barkoff). As the zombie hordes amass against our heroes, the psychic takes a dose of Saxon’s drug herself in order to level the playing field, and the two square off for a metaphysical battle of attrition. Filmmaker Douglas Schulze’s script tries gamely to interweave elements of Timothy Leary-style drug counterculture, social commentary and religious symbolism, but nothing really meshes properly. There are nevertheless some styish touches, and Saxon carries off his difficult role with panache.

One of the most popular kung fu films ever, and perhaps the peak of the famed Bruce Lee’s career, Enter the Dragon achieved success by presenting a series of superbly staged fighting sequences with a minimum of distractions. The story finds Lee as a martial-arts expert determined to help capture the narcotics dealer whose gang was responsible for his sister’s death. This evil villain operates from a fortified island manned by a team of crack martial artists, who also host a kung fu competition. Lee uses his skills to enter the contest and then tries to chop, kick, and otherwise fight his way into the dealer’s headquarter. The story is, of course, merely an excuse for showdown after showdown, featuring masterly fighting by Lee in a wide variety of martial arts styles. Essential viewing for martial arts fans, the film was also embraced by a larger audience, thanks to a fast pace and higher-than-usual production values.