Paul Koslo
In the final decades of the 20th century, the Philippines was a country where low-budget exploitation-film producers were free to make nearly any kind of movie they wanted, any way they pleased. It was a country with extremely lax labor regulations and a very permissive attitude towards cultural expression. As a result, it became a hotbed for the production of cheapie movies. Their history and the genre itself are detailed in this breezy, nostalgic documentary.
The brief feature introduces viewers to the film, looking at the changes between novel and script, the cast member's memories of working with Heston, the racial overtones presented in the film, and the film's status as a cult favorite.
Eddie Lomax (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is a drifter who has been in a suicidal funk since the death of his close friend Johnny (Danny Trejo). Riding his motorcycle into a small desert town where Johnny once lived, Lomax is confronted by a gang of toughs, who beat him and steal his bike. However, Lomax is not a man to take an injustice lying down, and soon he begins exacting a violent revenge on the men who stole his motorcycle, with local handyman Jubal Early (Pat Morita) lending a hand and several area ladies offering aid and comfort.
An electrocuted killer returns from the dead to take revenge on the authorities who caught him.
An American tourist lands in a Slavic prison run by a twisted woman and the U.S. ambassador.
In this road drama, a depressed ex-daredevil is hired to drive an experimental stunt car across the country to L. A. He is accompanied by a country-singer
Set in the future, a group of terrorists with an android leader storm a hospital when the President's daughter is inside, taking her hostage. To find a way of freeing her, the police decide to consult the architect who designed the building, but he's currently in jail for some crime, and the punishment of the future is to be frozen solid for one's sentence. The cops accidentally thaw out the wrong guy, a football player who decides to keep the mistake a secret and help the police in exchange for his freedom. Will he be able to defeat the terrorists and rescue the hostages, despite not knowing the first thing about architecture?
A follow-up to the novel and film of the same name, focusing on a group of troubled teens in 1960s Oklahoma.
Scientists at a secret underground complex have found a way to travel to another dimension. Three dimension-travellers are the first to go through the gate - but are soon attacked by something that interrupts the communication with Earth. This horrible something uses the gate to travel back to the underground complex. Most of the staff are evacuated, except four heavily-armed militaries and Dr. Casserly and Dr. Summerfield who just can't stand each other.
A huge solar flare is predicted to fry the Earth. Astronauts aboard the spaceship Helios must go to the Sun to drop a bomb equipped with an Artificial Intelligence (Freddy) and a Japanese pilot (as a back up if the Artificial Intelligence fail) at the right time so the flare will point somewhere else.
Mac, the two-fisted, savvy cop finds that he's being saddled with a new partner, a known burnout, to work with him on a new and difficult case. The new partner is Ellis, an amazing detective, one who puts Sherlock Holmes to shame with his lightning-fast deductions. But he keeps assuming the personalities of entire casts of Television shows. This can be a problem when people begin shooting at them.
50 years after a nuclear war, the two superpowers handle territorial disputes in a different way. Each fields a giant robot to fight one-on-one battles in official matches, each piloted by a man inside, known as robot jockeys or jox. The contest for possession of Alaska will be fought by two of the best. The conscientious Achilles fights for the Americans. Opposing him is a Russian, Alexander.
A recent high school graduate is faced with two options, either go to a business school where his father wants him to go to, or get a full time job. However he decides to defy his father and go to Hawaii. Trouble is he has no money. Along the way he comes to understand his parents and eventually bonds with his father.
Prepare to get tangled in the jungles of Belize when an arms smuggler loses her partner in a deadly shootout and finds herself on the run in the tropics of Central America. Helen is an amateur, making her money as an illegal arms trader to Central American terrorists. And as she runs for her life after the deal goes bad, she has no choice but to trusts Jeff, a British Intelligence Agent - it's a life and death chase, where passion and loyalty are easily confused...
Upon his return from Vietnam, an ex-soldier finds his neighborhood has deteriorated badly, and is being terrorized by a vicious street gang. He calls some of his GI buddies, and together they hatch a plan to get rid of the gang.
Al Mackey and Marty are homicide cops in Hollywood and hot on the trail of the murderer of a movie mogul that was moonlighting by making child porno pictures. Willie is one of several suspects with motive, opportunity and the evil means to carry out this act. A medal should be in order instead of being arrested
Brady Hawkes, Billy Montana, and Jeremiah Hawkes are on a train bound for a huge gambling event when the train is taken over by a gang of vicious killers in search of money. As ransom, the gang takes young Jeremiah hostage. Brady and Billy embark on a quest to rescue him and form a small gang of their own along the way.
Accountant Roy is sentenced to prison because he cooked up balances. He hopes that his companions, who profited from his cheat, will help him to a revision of his judgment. Meanwhile he has to adapt to a life in jail - which works out quite well, especially when he meets the self-conscious convicted thief Jane and falls in love. He starts to woo her. But then, while working in the prison's accounting department, he discovers that the prisoner's accounts are not properly kept. The director tries to keep him in her prison as long as possible.
Harvard graduate James Averill is the sheriff of prosperous Jackson County, Wyo., when a battle erupts between the area's poverty-stricken immigrants and its wealthy cattle farmers. The politically connected ranch owners fight the immigrants with the help of Nathan Champion, a mercenary competing with Averill for the love of local madam Ella Watson. As the struggle escalates, Averill and Champion begin to question their decisions.
Based on the real-life Oregon criminal case which dramatizes the unique dispute in which Greta Rideout instigated the prosecution of her husband, John, charging him with raping her.
Charles Bronson is out for revenge in this action drama. Jackie Pruit (Jill Ireland) is the girlfriend of notorious gangster Joe Bomposa (Rod Steiger). When it looks as if Jackie's life is being threatened by Bomposa's goons, the FBI moves in to protect her, in hopes that she'll have incriminating evidence that the Bureau can use against Bomposa in court. Veteran agent Charlie Congers (Bronson) is assigned to watch over Jackie, and while it soon becomes obvious that she knows almost nothing about Bomposa that would be of any use to the FBI, he also falls in love with her. However, Bomposa decides that it would be a lot more convenient to have Jackie out of the way, and he orders her to be executed. Bomposa's henchmen manage to slip through FBI security and murder her, but now they have to answer to the angry and vengeful Congers.
The Sacketts is a 1979 American Western television film directed by Robert Totten and starring Sam Elliott, Tom Selleck, Jeff Osterhage, and Glenn Ford. Based on the novels The Daybreakers and Sackett by Louis L'Amour, the film recounts the story of the Sackett brothers in 1869 who leave their Tennessee home and start a new life together in Santa Fe.
Roots: The Next Generations is a television miniseries, introduced in 1979, continuing, from 1882 to the 1960s, the fictionalized story of the family of Alex Haley and their life in Henning, Lauderdale County, Tennessee, USA. This sequel to the 1977 miniseries is based on the last seven chapters of Haley's novel entitled Roots: The Saga of an American Family plus additional material by Haley. Roots: The Next Generations was produced with a budget of $16.6 million, nearly three times as large as that of the original.
Coming back from an extended business trip, Frank discovers that his girlfriend Janie is now working at a new resort hotel where the owner has given her a permanent place to stay, as well as other gifts, in exchange for her affections. The two of them get into a fight and things quickly get out of control and the police are called and in turns into a hostage situation...
A Native American travels around a resort town, murdering cops and rich people with a high-powered crossbow, while demanding that the town's richest residents pay him money to stop the killings.
A professional gambler finds himself on the run from the mob, the federal government, and a band of Indians, all of whom have an interest in a piece of land he won in a poker game.
A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival.
After a band of drunken thugs overruns a small Indian Nation town, killing Minister Goodnight and raping the women folk, Eula Goodnight enlists the aid of Marshal Cogburn to hunt them down and bring her father's killers to justice.
Harper is brought to Louisiana to investigate an attempted blackmail scheme. He soon finds out that it involves an old flame of his and her daughter. He eventually finds himself caught in a power struggle between the matriarch of the family and a greedy oil baron, who wants their property. Poor Harper! Things are not as straight-forward as they initially appeared.
Watermelon farmer Vince Majestyk (Charles Bronson) goes after the Mob, when they try to strong arm him to use their melon picking crew.
Two San Francisco detectives want to bring down a local hijacking boss. But they'll have to get to him before a hitman does.
A Los Angeles detective is sent to New York where he must solve a case involving an old Sicilian Mafia family feud.
Laban Feather brews Tennessee moonshine with his sons Thrush, Zack, Hawk, and Finch. The chief rivals of the Feather Family in producing and selling illegal corn liquor are the Gutshalls, father Pap, and sons Ludie, Seb, and Villum. In addition to fighting over the white lightning market, the two families have also been feuding over some land that each believes is their property. As a prank, Ludie mails a postcard from a fictitious woman named Lolly-Madonna to the Feather household, in order to get the brothers squabbling over which son has attracted the mysterious admirer. But the joke has unexpected consequences when Thrush and Hawk kidnap a woman who was passing through town to meet her fiancée, assuming that she is Lolly Madonna.
Cleopatra Jones is assigned to crack down on drug trafficking in the United States and abroad. After she burns a Turkish poppy field, the notorious drug lord Mommy is furious at the loss of her supply and vows to destroy her.
When a gunman opens fire on a crowded city bus in San Francisco, Detective Dave Evans is killed, along with the man he'd been following in relation to a murder. Evans' partner, Sgt. Jake Martin, becomes obsessed with solving the case.
Danny, Shooter, Fatback, and the Kid. They learned a trade in the army. Killing.
A band of Mexicans find their U. S. land claims denied and all the records destroyed in a courthouse fire. Their leader, Louis Chama, encourages them to use force to regain their land. A wealthy landowner wanting the same decides to hire a gang of killers with Joe Kidd to track Chama.
Due to a home-steading law, a fur trapper schemes to keep his land by hiring a hooker, a pickpocket and a thief to pose as his family.
Kowalski works for a car delivery service, and takes delivery of a 1970 Dodge Challenger to drive from Colorado to San Francisco. Shortly after pickup, he takes a bet to get the car there in less than 15 hours.
Robert Neville, a doctor, due to an experimental vaccine, is the only survivor of an apocalyptic war waged with biological weapons. The plague caused by the war has killed everyone else except for a few hundred deformed, nocturnal people calling themselves "The Family". The plague has caused them to become sensitive to light, as well as homicidally psychotic.
Some bikers are hired by the CIA during the Vietnam War to rescue a captured agent from the clutches of the Red Chinese army. After a round of drinking, fighting, and whoring around, the cycle gang, led by Big Bill Smith, fix up their Yamahas with machine guns, grenades and armor plating, and storm the enemy camp.
A tale from downtown, where the morality of business is not always as transparent as the shining glass fronts of the office buildings. The film follows the adventures of a young man on the way up, intent on building an image to match his ambitions. In doing so he leaves a trail of hurt feelings among those he uses as steps toward his goal.
The official feature-length documentary about the rise and fall of Charles Band's legendary Empire Pictures studio.
