What James Bond hath wrought! Among the many imitations of Ian Fleming’s 007 were American rip-offs like Derek Flint and Matt Helm, but often overlooked here in 2022 are Germany’s Kommissar X films. The series of novels began in 1959 and number at least SIX-HUNDRED TWENTY! You read that right. Truly, no man is Bert Island.
The Kommissar X (also known as Commissioner X) tales were similar in style to Germany’s own Jerry Cotton novels which began publication in 1954. The Jerry Cotton character even beat Kommissar X to the big screen, with professional Smug Prick George Nader starring as the federal agent in eight movies.
Kommissar X was played by Tony Kendall, with Brad Harris as his sidekick Tom Rowland.
KISS KISS, KILL KILL (1966) – Also released under the titles Hunt for the Unknown, Chasing the Unknown and Jagd auf Unbekannt, this was the first film appearance of Kommissar X, aka Private Investigator Joe Walker, and his colleague Police Captain Tom Rowland. Like James Bond and Jerry Cotton, Joe Walker had his own memorable theme music to accompany him as he kicked butt, bedded down with beautiful women and drove fancy sports cars.
Stylish villain Oberon (Nikola Popovic), called “O’Brien” in some dubs, is a mastermind who has accumulated a fortune in gold through dishonest means and wiped out his accomplices in order to nab their share of the loot, too. He also has plans to abduct a nuclear physicist, which gets Kommissar X mixed up in all this.
In Yugoslavia, our hero tangles with some of Oberon’s underlings and renews his acquaintance with Captain Tom Rowland, who is in the country to train police departments in state-of-the-art criminology. Ultimately, the pair trail Oberon to his island fortress, where they face the villain’s army of beautiful female soldiers as they try to recover the stolen gold AND the nuclear physicist. Continue reading
KONG ISLAND (1968) has also been released under the titles King of Kong Island and Eva, the Savage Venus. Every one of those titles could let viewers build a strong case for false advertising. There’s no island, no king OR King Kong and though the third title listed above may hint at something lurid, the wild jungle woman of that title has very little screen time. 
BURT DAWSON (Brad Harris) is the muscular soldier of fortune who hires on for any job, legal or illegal. Kong Island opens with Burt and a few accomplices on the run after robbing a payroll. They stop in the wilderness to split the loot only to be double-crossed by their colleague Turk (Paul Carter), who shoots down the other survivors of the raid. 
THE RIDER OF THE SKULLS aka El Charro de las Calaveras (1965) – Halloween is fast approaching, so here is another seasonal post from Balladeer’s Blog. Regular readers know how much I enjoy the campy, so-bad-they’re-good horror films from Mexico. I reviewed several of them 
El Charro arrives in a nearly deserted town with a dilapidated cemetery in which assorted skulls lie around in piles. The masked hero encounters the first of three monsters he will fight in this flick – a ridiculous looking werewolf with a headpiece so large it makes him look like the mascot of a sports team. 
Next we have a series of scenes featuring some of the more sinful citizens of the deep southern town. Adultery, bigotry, covetousness, greed and outright murderous passions lurk behind every corner of this Mayberry-turned-Sodom and Gomorrah. These scenes go on so long even Larry Buchanan would scream “Pick up the pace, dammit!” at the screen.
WAVELENGTH (1983) – This is an unjustly neglected science fiction film that stars Robert Carradine, Cherie Currie and Keenan Wynn in a very unconventional love triangle: both Carradine and Currie are fighting over Wynn. (I’m kidding!) 
ROOSTER: SPURS OF DEATH – This cosmically bad and tasteless movie was completed in 1977 but not released until 1983, presumably because there’s never been much demand for films from the ugly subgenre of cockfighting flicks. (Cocksploitation?) 
Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog know how fond I am of bad and weird movies. I cannot yet review Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, the horror version of A.A. Milne’s characters from the Hundred Acre Wood, because it has not been released yet. A full trailer is out now and you can view it below. 
With Frontierado rapidly approaching on August 5th – or for those of us who kick things off the night before – August 4th – let’s take a look at some of the most obscure but laughably weird Italian westerns. And what better way to start that list than with one of the countless Spaghetti Westerns with phony Django titles? 
1. DJANGO KILL (1967) – Originally titled If You Live, Shoot!, this was one of the many Eurowesterns to be re-released to theaters years later as a phony Django movie just so it could clean up on the guaranteed cash cow of the Django name. 
MURDERCYCLE (1999) – Okay, I want a Ghost Rider vs Murdercycle film! ESPECIALLY with Nicolas Cage as Ghost Rider. Anyway, despite the title, this movie is a nice throwback to the days before so many low-budget filmmakers were trying to be intentionally over-the-top and campy with their productions and titles in hopes of garnering sales from a reputation for being so-bad-it’s-good. 
Let’s take this from the top – an object from space lands near a Top Secret government facility concealed within a seeming shack in the middle of nowhere. It’s not a meteor but an alien weapon and when a man on a dirt bike draws near the fallen object he falls victim to its jack-in-the-box/ face-hugger tech. 
