Lang nu bai mo (1982)

... aka: 狼女白魔
... aka: Long neui baak mo
... aka: White Demon Wolf Girl
... aka: Wolf Devil Woman
... aka: Wolfen Devil
... aka: Wolfen Ninja
... aka: Wolfen Queen

Directed by:
Chang Ling (Pearl Chang)

At some kind of Satanic ceremony complete with men in rubber monster masks, a guy gets carried into a room on a crucifix and is turned into a bloody mess when the leader (decked out in a gold lamé skull-and-crossbones KKK hood and a Freddy-like claw glove!) stabs a voodoo doll and then dips it in a bubbling cauldron. Witnessing the act in horror, a young couple with an infant flee into the snow. They're hunted down by some red ninjas and, feeling trapped, decide they'd rather commit suicide than go back. As for their child, they're just going to leave that in the hands of the Gods. After stabbing each other, they head butt the side of a mountain and cause an avalanche (!!) Afterward, when the bad guys are searching for the bodies, a pack of "wolves" (played by a non-threatening assortment of German Shepherds) arrive just in the nick of time to chase them off. While the other wolves devour parts of the parents, the legendary White Wolf digs the baby girl out from under the snow and takes it back to its amazing ice cave. Now part of the pack, the White Wolf becomes her protector. It saves her when she falls down a mountain, brings her food and medicinal leaves when she's hurt and does other such things until she's reached full adulthood. Adult Wolf Devil Woman (Pearl Chang) now spends her days frolicking in the snow and hunting dressed in animal rags and with a ridiculous stuffed wolf atop her head!

Passing through her part of the forest are Rudolph Li (Feng Shih) and his "funny" bumbling assistant Rudy Wan (Ko Pa), who have been on a two-month-long search for the fabled "Great White Ginseng Root," which is powerful enough to put a stop to Blue Devil (who's also referred to as "Red Devil" approximately one time) and his cult of followers. When Wolf Devil Woman and the White Wolf show up, she's accidentally shot with an arrow and the wolf is killed. The men follow a trail of blood back to the ice cave where they find the injured girl and help nurse her back to health. Master Li even helps readjust her spine while she returns the favor by chomping down on his hand and drinking his blood twice. I'll spare you any bad puns about it being love at first bite but you get where this is going... Or do you?

The men teach Wolf Devil Woman language and how to read and write, help bring out her tender side and give her the new name "Snow Hibiscus" (?!) They also learn that Wolf Devil Woman, uh, I mean Snow Hibiscus, uh, I mean "Snow Flower" (which they suddenly start calling her for most of the rest of the film), uh, I mean "White Wolf Girl" (which they then randomly start calling her) ate the ginseng root years earlier when she was younger. Seeing how it only grows once every thousand years that causes quite the problem. Once they reveal to her that her wolf mother is dead, her hair suddenly turns white, her eyes glow and then she refuses to accompany the men back to civilization.

Li and Rudy return home, where Li's father Master Yu (Hsieh Wang) decides that they'll just go ahead and try to stop the Blue Devil Cult themselves without the flower. That works out about as well as you'd expect when they get ambushed in a graveyard by fireballs and the ninjas. Li is abducted and dragged back to the evil demon's lair where he becomes a possessed follower after breathing in some smoke. Blue Devil has a collection of corpses he's turned into zombies with a "golden needle" that he wants to use in his quest for world domination. Or, as he puts it, "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! They're all part of my great plan! Ha ha! I want to rule the world... forever! All living things shall bow down to me! I shall be the king of the world! Ha ha ha! No one shall stand against me! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

Wolf Hibiscus Woman Snow Devil Flower or whatever they're now calling her finally gets over her wolf mother's death and makes her way to the village. She first goes to a restaurant where she washes down five chickens and five fish with five jugs of wine and then has a major freak-out where she starts ripping out her hair and pukes all over the floor. Villagers beat her with sticks and try to drown her in a well but she's saved by white-haired good wizard Master Chu (Ying Chih). Then she and Rudy (with eventual assist from Li, who was merely faking being possessed!) set off on a quest to stop Blue Devil. On their way, they make pit stops in various places (graveyard, desert) to fight Blue Devil's henchmen, who get hung, decapitated, dismembered, disemboweled and even snapped in half. That all leads to a bonkers finale featuring zombies, hopping vampires, lasers, rubber spiders, poison gas, multi-colored lights and smoke, cartoon fire, tons of wire work of people flying, flipping, spinning and getting knocked around and all kinds of other cheap fx stuff.

Weird? Check. Childish? Check. Ridiculous? Always. Boring. NEVER! I loved the hell out of every minute of this nonsense except for the parts where rabbits are actually shot with arrows and ripped in half. This is busy plot wise, fast-paced, gory and filled with brainless action, blood sprays, monsters and wonky wire work. Our heroine has a hilarious fur lasso weapon that doubles as a whip and she uses to swing through the trees a la Tarzan. She even decapitates two men with it after dragging them down the beach with a horse! As an added bonus, the horrendous English dubbing sends this even further over the edge into SBIG territory. The English version comes courtesy of Joseph Lai's IFD Films and Arts, which credits "martial arts direction" to "Charles Chan" on the poster and "Benny Ho" (Godfrey Ho) as the writer. While Wolfen Queen is the title used on the (fantastic!) poster, this was first released on home video in the U.S. under the title Wolfen Ninja by TransWorld Entertainment in 1986. It was also released on VCD by Ocean Shores.

And can take a second to give it up for Pearl Chang? What other woman from the early 80s was directing, writing, producing and starring in their own action vehicles made for their own production company? Sadly, this is her only horror effort and, even more unfortunately, the two "sequels" were re-titled for international release and have nothing at all to do with this one aside from Chang's involvement. Both were, in fact, made before this "original." Wolf Devil Woman 2 is actually Matching Escort and was also issued under the titles Fury of the Silver Fox and Venus the Ninja. Wolf Devil Woman 3 is Miraculous Flower aka Phoenix the Ninja.

This is (loosely) based on author Yusheng Liang's 1957 novel Baifa Monü Zhuan, which was later and much more famously brought to the screen by Ronny Yu as The Bride with White Hair (1993), starring Brigitte Lin. However, while Bride was a critically-acclaimed hit, this one's straight-up schlock. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing! For the record, there were many other adaptations of this same book, including Story of the White-Haired Demon Girl (1958), White Hair Devil Lady (1980) and others, plus TV versions in 1978, 1986, 1995, 1999 and 2012.

SBIG

Nude per l'assassino (1975)

... aka: Assassin for Models
... aka: Assassino per fotomodelle (Killer for Photo Models)
... aka: Der geheimnisvolle Killer (The Mysterious Killer)
... aka: Die Nacht der blanken Messer (Night of the Bare Knives)
... aka: Nackt für der killer (Naked for the Killer)
... aka: Nude for the Killer
... aka: Nude x l'assassino
... aka: Strip Naked for the Killer
... aka: Strip Nude for Your Killer

Directed by:
Andrea Bianchi

Gotta love a title that just cuts right to the chase. Shame about the movie itself. A young woman named Evelyn goes to get an abortion but doesn't come home as the gynecologist accidentally kills her. He and an acquaintance then place her body in a bathtub to make it look like she accidentally drowned instead. Not long after, the doctor is attacked and killed outside his home by a knife-brandishing psycho dressed in a black leather duds, gloves and a motorcycle helmet. We then meet talent scout, photographer and all-around lothario Carlo Bianchi (Nino Castelnuovo). At a pool, he spots the statuesque, bikini-clad Lucia Gerosini (Femi Benussi) and stalks her to a bar where he brags about his credentials ("Harper's Bazaar! Vogue! Elle!") and then invites her into the sauna so he can examine her, uh, portfolio. Seeing how everything looks great, he takes her back to his modeling agency, Albatross Photo, where she meets the rest of his co-workers and some of the other models.

Albatross is owned by aggressive and extremely unpleasant lesbian Gisella Montan (Amanda) and her equally odious, 350-pound husband, Maurizio (Franco Diogene), both of whom use their modeling studio to try to get laid. Gisella immediately takes Lucia to her office so she can also examine her, uh, portfolio, while Maurizio takes another model named Patrizia (Solvi Stubing) on a romantic date that includes a red-lit lesbian stripper stage show. Not too surprisingly, the wife usually gets her way while the hubby always strikes out. In fact, he's actually a mother-obsessed virgin with an inflatable doll, which begs the question: Why exactly are these two even married in the first place? The other primary models on display are Doris (Erna Schurer), a flat-chested blonde without eyebrows, and the scrawny, mustachioed Stefano (Wainer Verri). Among the primary staff are flamboyant make-up man Mario Ferreri (Claudio Pellegrini) and photographer Magda Cortini (Edwige Fenech), who's still in the process of working her way up in the business.

For some reason that can only be attributed to possible career advancement, Magda is interested in dating sleazy and obnoxious man-whore Carlo and gets the ball rolling by seducing him in a darkroom and then going down where, well, probably a thousand wanna-be models, have gone before. His idea of a charming post coital conversation involves talking nonsense about molecules in milk making coffee taste better and, when she looks perplexed, informing her "It's stupid for me to explain. You don't understand a damn thing anyhow." That's followed by him putting his hands around her throat and threatening to strangle her over a newspaper article. Magda behaves like it's all nothing and is casually chatting it up with him just a few seconds later. At first I figured this must mean Magda is also the killer because only a psychotic would agree to date Carlo in the first place. Hell, I'd even try to explain that to her except I have a sneaking suspicion she wouldn't understand a damn thing anyhow.

We discover that the woman who died getting the abortion used to be an Albatross model and the motorcycle-killer is targeting only agency employees. He / she starts by taking out the gay make-up man. Next up is Lucia, who's been putting out for Gisella in hopes of improving her chances of becoming a successful fashion model. After the two have a spat - Gisella slaps her and calls her a "cheap whore" for having slept with Carlo (well, if the shoe fits...) - Lucia is stabbed to death after walking around the house completely nude for a good five minutes. Next up, Maurizio takes Doris on a terrifying high speed drive to a country house where he attempts to rape her and then threatens to bash her head in. She responds to that by taking off her clothes, lying on the couch and cheerfully agreeing to have sex with him. However, he's unable to perform. After she leaves, he whips out his inflatable girlfriend but gets killed before he can even fully pump her up. As all of this is going on, a police commissioner (Lucio Como) wanders in and out asking incredibly moronic questions.

I can't fault this one for false advertising as there is indeed a killer and indeed a lot of stripping nude. However, I can fault it for being a colossal failure on nearly every other front. While the nudity is gratuitous and nearly non-stop, there's little suspense and the mystery elements and killer reveal are so incompetently handled it's almost laughable. Though the killer isn't unmasked until the very end, a really clumsy clue at the very beginning narrows it down for us considerably. The killer is given a photograph of eight people and it's revealed they are also in the photo. Another person pictured is already dead. The person who gives the killer the photo is about to die. And prior to handing the photo over, the victim names four of the others off who are pictured. That leaves just two people that it could possibly be. One of the two is prominently featured up until this point then suddenly just disappears (almost if they want us to forget all about them for a little while...) while the other is barely shown at all. So, yeah, there's not much of a "mystery" really going on here.

So now that we have the plot being a bust out of the way, we should make mention of the painfully awful dialogue, the fact there is almost no directorial style to speak of and that there's not a single likable character in the entire film. Carlo has to be one of the most repellent leads I've ever seen in any of these films. He helps cover for the doctor after the botched abortion by staging it like a drowning (and probably was the one who impregnated her in the first place), uses every woman he runs across, strangles and berates his girlfriend and then threatens to rear-entry rape our heroine during the "funny" final scene... and the filmmakers behave as if he's the most charming guy in the entire world! The fact they let him live and don't castrate him like they do another character is a missed opportunity if there ever was one.

As far as the violence is concerned, most of it takes place off-screen and we just see the thick-red-paint-drenched aftermath. While most of the kills are stabbings, they throw in a few variations like a pair of ears, a breast and a wiener being removed, though that and all of the nudity don't do much to elevate this poorly-plotted, by-the-numbers effort. Strip was made toward the end of the giallo cycle when this type of film was falling out of favor with audiences and ideas and innovation were clearly in short supply. Increasingly more graphic sex films were popular though, prompting many directors to focus almost entirely on nudity as opposed to paying much attention to the mystery / horror aspects of these "thrillers." That seems to be the case here. While I can't say I personally had much fun watching this dumb, cynical film, some people seem to like it.

Bianchi, one of the sleazier Italian directors of his day, primarily made sex comedies, horror films and porn (both soft and hardcore). He was brought in to shoot additional and more exploitative scenes for the controversial What the Peeper Saw (1972) and also made the possession / sex film MALABIMBA (1979), which had more explicit X-rated inserts added to it so it could play in adult theaters, Angel of Death (1987), which involves Nazi scientists conducting experiments in a jungle and a couple of late 80s slashers: Maniac Killer (1987) and MASSACRE (1989). He will forever be best know however for his trashy zombie movie fave Burial Ground (1981).

To my knowledge, this title did not get an official U.S. release until Blue Underground put it out on DVD in 2005. An English-dubbed version was released theatrically in the UK, but had five minutes of violence and nudity removed.

★1/2