The Shaolin Invincibles 1977 Written by Chang Cheh and Ni Kuang, directed by Chang Cheh.
A family is attacked by the local leader, a young girl is rescued by a monk. Twelve years later she's trained up and ready for some vengeance. Her pal goes along to help fight the Emperor.
The Emperor has the usual gang of fighting guards. He's also got a pair of kung fu trained apes. It's kind of a sad costume but there you go, it's the 70s. There's plenty of kung fu action but not much story.
I enjoyed it well enough but not enough to desire the Blu-ray. You can see an edited copy of the movie on Tubi, link above. The Tubi version is dubbed and has a very heavily trimmed opening sequence. The scene depicts the killing of the heroine's family and her rescue by the monk that raised her and trained her in kung fu.
Million Dollar Mystery 1985 Written by Rudy De Luca, Tim Metcalfe and Miguel Tajada-Flores, directed by Richard Fleischer. It was Richard's last feature, he'd made some good films in the past: Armored Car Robbery, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Barabbas, Fantastic Voyage, Doctor Dolittle, The Boston Strangler, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Soylent Green and Mandingo.
Sadly this is a poor rip off of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World but without a good story, entertaining actors and comedians. There are a lot of jokes but mostly they are a sorry lot, hardly raising a chuckle.
It did poorly at the box office barely making 10% on it's $10,000,000 cost. There was a tie in with Glad bags. The movie ends abruptly with the two FBI agents talking to the camera explaining it's up to the movie audience to find the last million. Here's the bit on that from the Wikipedia.
Producer Dino De Laurentiis conceived the idea for Million Dollar Mystery when he visited New York and saw a row of people lining up for what he presumably thought was a movie. A companion told De Laurentiis that they were actually lining up for lottery tickets.
Glad Bags sponsored a sweepstakes timed for the film's release. The company gave away entry forms, and the audience would fill out these forms with their answer to where the last million is hiding, based on clues given in the film. De Laurentiis said of the film:
This is a really broad comedy with car chases, designed for the young major movie going audience, about 12 to 24 years old. The sweepstakes gives us the potential to reach even more people – the infrequent moviegoer, the person more interested in winning a million dollars than in going to the movies, and these are the kind of people who use Glad Bags, housewives who maybe go to the movies once or twice a year.
De Laurentiis had high expectations for the film, but it did not turn out to be a hit. The winner of the contest ended up being 14-year-old Alesia Lenae Jones of Bakersfield California, who successfully guessed that the loot was hidden in the bridge of the nose of the Statue of Liberty. Apparently, thousands of contestants had arrived at the same answer, and her entry was chosen in a random drawing.
I bought the Kino-Lorber Blu-ray on one of their sales and it looks nice. Too bad it's such a disappointment. I'm hoping that the commentary explains why it was so poor. One of the locations of the movie is Lake Havasu City Arizona, it's where they moved the London Bridge and rebuilt it as a tourist attraction. Never been.
As I was looking for a copy of the movie to link to I found this other movie that features the bridge. It's a time travel story about Jack the Ripper going through time and winding up in Arizona in the modern day. Terror at London Bridge came out in 1985 and you can watch it on YouTube. I still haven't seen more than the first 5 mins.